Wait, wasn’t this blog supposed to keep me accountable? (Year 2 of the Quest)

A few months ago, the leader of our run club asked if anyone had a blog because he wants to publicize them on the club website.

I started this blog to keep me accountable on my goal—six major marathons in ten years—but life has a funny way about happening while you try to make plans.  When I started this blog, my personal paradigm was that life in my forties was going to be about work and running and my cat.  The guy I had a crush on probably didn’t know I was alive, anyway….

Well, he found me.  The day before my birthday he asked me to lunch, and about a month later, I accepted.  At that lunch, he asked me to a concert, and to my surprise, actually followed through.  It was probably the most nerve-wracking first date of my life, but by summer, we had dedicated Sunday—the day I was supposed to write my blog post—as our day to be together.  Of course, when you have an amazing man, why on earth would you say, “um, no, I have to write a blog post” when he wants to spend the day with you?

So my day dedicated for blogging was filled with adventures.  Concerts and ice skating, botanic gardens and even running, days filled with fun and love.  One of the things that we have in common is college cross country, so he started running with my run club, as well as with me. 

Summer changed into fall, and he decided that he would join me in Las Vegas, running his first half marathon.  More of my time was being spent training for Chicago, but he was racking up the miles, too, preparing for Vegas.  He was my biggest cheerleader in Chicago, and after finishing a tough race, patiently waited for me to finish Vegas.

As I entered Year 2 of this journey, it was clear that I just purely didn’t have time to keep up with a weekly blog.  However, I have been running.  A lot.  With an unpredictable work schedule, I decided to save my race money for my three international marathons and train like crazy to get closer to BQ pace.  Meaning, my goal is in mileage—2016, to be exact—rather than in races.

Trying to stay on pace of this goal in winter was tough.  The cold, the dark, my work schedule, time with the boyfriend, even keeping running clothes clean were all challenges.  Even with having running friends and a great club, I have fallen behind pace quite a bit.  The blog, behind even more.

I had to step back and consider why I am writing the blog in the first place.  The goal is to hold me accountable towards my quest.  Well, I signed up for the London lottery last week.  I also started to put together the framework for being a charity runner at the NYC marathon next year.  I’m slowly knocking seconds off my runs, inching closer to Boston qualification, and really utilizing the power of positive thinking (from myself and my running club) to believe it is possible.  I even shocked myself and did a 7:55 mile last week, only 49 seconds slower than my high school PR, set when I was 15.

However, I’m still lagging a bit behind pace to do 2016 miles in 2016.  Quite a bit.  (Did you see the last post?  I’m stuck in April!)  The cold temperatures and the short days made it difficult to get out the door and run.  The days have gotten longer and the weather warmer, so I’m thinking it’s time to get streaky…

Um, not this streak...

Until I catch up a bit on the mileage, I’m going to try to grab some miles every day.  It’s a challenge because I’m 41, and rest is very important to prevent injury, so walks are included in this mileage grab, even walks that are a normal part of my life.  I also have to remember (again!) that I’m on a quest, and that the journey is significantly more important than any destination—or any goal.

It’s time to get faster, crush some serious mileage, and streak!!!  Ethel, cover your eyes!

#KiloMay

My running club, the Libertyville Running Club, is never dull.  It is full of fun, creative people, which leads to a lot of silly inside jokes and crazy spontaneous events.

(For starters, Jill and Trisha write these entertaining blogs about running and life.  I call this my Serious Journal in contrast.)

When our leader went out of town to run a marathon (again), he left the club in the hands of one of his friends and regular runners.  Jeremy was left to do the map…and accidentally ended up writing it in kilometers instead of miles.  He corrected the map, but after he posted it on the Facebook group—and several people, including our fearless leader, noticed.  With it being the last day of April, at a point where most of the club was between marathon training plans, KiloMay, the celebration of kilometers in the month of May, was born.

(He’s left me in charge a couple of times to lead runs.  The first time, it started to thunder, and I just said, “don’t get hit by lightning.”  Why he trusts me to do anything, I have no idea.) 

Of course, the next step was to switch our Strava accounts to kilometers.  It’s been an interesting adventure to try to keep clicking the seconds off the mileage pace when you have to convert your mileage to…kilometerage?  Kilos? 

Another aspect of running a bit blind is that I’ve been tracking how I’ve been doing with 2016 miles in 2016 using a calendar.  6 miles a day is about 10 kilos, but how does this translate?  How many miles have I done this month?  Am I on pace or have I fallen behind? 

Okay, yes, I'm woefully beyond pace...but I marathon train in the summer.

It has been a fun change of pace, as well as keeping myself from overdoing things.  You can’t stress about pace or mileage when you are running a bit blind.  However, let me say how glad I am that it is June, that I’m back to mileage, and pushing forward towards my 2016 miles in 2016…

Mind Games Part 2: Attitude Adjustment

Of course, just one recovery run isn’t enough to erase doubt and boredom.  The next Saturday, I missed the club run, so I had to go out later in the day to run. 

I do think the end of winter running season is the hardest time of year to get motivated.  You’re sick of the cold, sick of the ice, and sick of doing laundry of all those layers.  I decided to take the opportunity and run in an area I hadn’t been in a long while, to distract me from how much time this run was going to take.  It’s a town that has a plethora of bike trails connecting the subdivisions, and part of the fun is getting lost within the various backyard trails.  However, it was Easter Weekend, so my mind was wishing I was enjoying the fun of family and celebration rather than running.

The start didn’t bode well, as I ended up back near the start on the first trail and a dead end at the second.  Soon, I was at one of my favorite forest preserves and decided that running the trail around it, then heading back to the car, was good enough.

While doing that loop, I had an epiphany.  According to our club leader’s training plan, these long runs weren’t about logging miles as much as pushing them at a pace, something I wasn’t doing.  I decided right there and then that I needed to pick up the pace on the Saturday runs so that Sunday’s runs were true recovery, where I was going to be tired from Saturday’s effort. 

I picked up the pace and ran back to the car.  Of course, when I stopped my Strava, I noticed that it had paused about right when I started going faster.  Well my legs would remember what my phone neglected to record.  The important part, to pick up the pace and really work on mentally pushing myself, had happened.

What has surprised me, more than anything, is how much faster I am running just by having a positive attitude.  By keeping myself focused on the task at hand and having a can-do attitude has taken serious time off the clock.  (Of course, so has running all the miles I’ve been doing.)  I’m now thinking that anything is possible again.

Mind Games, Part 1

I’ve been running mile after mile after mile, but it doesn’t seem like I get any faster.  It’s what makes running—actually, any athletic endeavor—a challenge:  your mind.  Mine is more that my brain moves at the speed of light, but my feet struggle to do a mile under 10 minutes.  Long runs are both a constant stream of conscious and a constant feed of “I’m bored.  I’m so flipping bored.  How much longer do I have to be bored?”

Of late, I’m disappointed with my slow, slugglish pace when I upload my run.  It’s very discouraging when I’ve done so much speed work and run my recovery miles, yet rather than improve, I am still at 12+ min pace, rather than the 10:30 pace I’m trying to reach.  I don’t have a choice here; to qualify for Boston I have to be able to run a marathon near 9 min pace, and even if I’m wearing a charity bib, almost all the runners finish before five hours.

It’s always been a struggle to get motivated to do the longer runs of marathon training because they take hours, and then I’m spent all day.  Add in winter where I’m not running as much during the week, and I feel even slower.  I had started dreading the long run, the time, the boredom….and I wanted a distraction.  Of course, I’m the type of runner who when distracted, slows down even more.  Not helpful. Also not helpful…not having a big race on the horizon because there’s no PR for me to chase.  I needed a reboot, a way to push myself through, to maximize my limited time with mileage.

About a month ago, I started out on my Sunday recovery run, feeling sluggish and slow, tired and battling a headache.  While it was a recovery run, I did have a deadline:  the sunset.  My route would take me on trails that closed at sunset, 7:05 pm, so that was the cutoff.

After about a mile and a half, I hit a stoplight and checked my watch:  6:34 pm.  I thought about the route and guesstimated that I would really have to push myself to finish the trails in a half hour.

The trail coursed through the local high school’s athletic fields and then followed some power lines.  It seemed like I could not get out of the high school area, but as I turned onto the trail at the power lines, I could see the trail all the way to the golf course.  “Oh, that’s not so far,” I thought.  “Maybe I can do this.”  I coursed down the hill, and as I crested the hill by the golf course, I checked my watch again.  6:47 pm.  18 minutes is totally doable.

I ended up leaving the park at 6:58 pm, about seven minutes ahead of schedule.  My next deadline was to finish in under an hour, or 7:15 pm.  It was about two miles, so well under my usual pace.  I pushed onwards and hoped for the best.

As I made the last turn towards home, I was surprised again.  7:08 pm.   I had reached two goals I didn’t think possible on a day like today.  It’s amazing what happens when you make up your mind to do something…..

(to be continued)

Think It’s Easier for Those 7 Min Pacers? Think again…

One of my favorite runs with my club is Tamarack 800s.  We have a street in town that not only is exactly 800 meters, but is shaped like a semi-circle, so it is around 400 meters to get back to the start.  Perfect to do repeat 800 meter intervals.  We do them in winter, at night, so it’s often dark and chilly and snowy.  Of course, the street is a mile from a bar, so that’s our warmup and cool down.

There was a blizzard south of Chicago a few weeks ago, so a lot of people were expecting bad weather and decided not to show up.  As usual, that meant that I was the slowest runner who did. 

For a lot of people who can’t easily do a sub-10 min mile, watching someone who can run a mile under 6 minutes cruise by can feel discouraging.  On the Tamarack run, I’m often lapped by our faster runners, since my full speed is slower than their easy jog pace.  It’s not discouraging to me, however, because I can see they are working just as hard as I am, and it’s the effort, not the pace, that makes us a “real runner.”

One of the first lessons I learned in running is:  “fast” and “slow” are relative.  My first year of high school cross country, our top runner qualified for state.  My junior year, the top seven qualified for state.  I was nowhere near qualifying for state, but I had a different focus:  my personal best.  It’s something that has carried me through many, many tough workouts, getting lost, and being lapped.  I compete against the clock and my Strava account, not what everyone else is doing. 

It didn’t matter that I was slower than everyone else.  A couple of people decided to skip the speedwork and run Tamarack Street backwards, so I never felt alone or unsafe.  I enjoyed the beauty of the evening and the comradery of everyone pushing themselves to their limits.  I had fun!  When I came back to the bar, I was treated like a runner, not a has-been.  But….going out and running, regardless of pace, is going to make me faster than sitting at home.

So don’t feel discouraged if you aren’t super-fast.  You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.  Runners are welcoming and generous and encouraging.  We’ve all had those runs where we’ve gotten lost, where it’s taken much longer than we expected, where our heads are faster than our legs.  We admire the runners who take 6, 7, or 17 hours to finish a marathon just as much as we admire the ones who can do it in less than 3 hours.  Focus on your own improvement, train hard, and have fun.