Setback

Feeling Old & Crusty
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

So, I'm bagging the half-marathon tomorrow.

I've spent the last two weeks going back and forth over it.

Should I run?
I should run.
No, I shouldn't run.
Well, maybe I should run.
Should I run?
I should run.
No, I shouldn't run.

Ah, the circles. I grow dizzy. (Probably shouldn't run.)

At this point, it may be more my brain than my body, but either way, it's probably the right thing to do. Or rather, the decision to run it would probably be for all the wrong reasons.

Two weeks ago, I did the last scheduled long run before the race. The longest I've run since the last time I trained for this race 3 years ago. 15 miles. It wasn't too bad through the first 10*, but I got clobbered by a particularly nasty patch of annoyingly steep paths in Weston (alongside a more tamely graded road). I managed to recover a bit during some flatter sections, but I was pretty spent, and the last 2 miles were a real struggle. I probably should have stopped at that point and walked the rest of the way, but I was working on my "mental toughness." (This is also know as "being stupid.")

End of run. Spent. Crusty. (the photo doesn't do it justice -- there were lines of salts all down my face, around my eyes and in my hair.) Feeling old.

...and feeling broken.

My lower back on the left side, which actually turned out to be my upper butt once palpated (gluteus maximus attachment into the iliac crest) didn't feel so awesome after that. I skipped Sunday (although we did some work in the garden), and when it still bothered me during my frisbee game Monday night, I got a little concerned. The right hamstring thing that's been bothering me all year wasn't feeling so great either, so I put myself on the DL, hoping some time off would take care of things.

Things felt a bit better that Thursday -- I ran 3 miles and then went to practice. But the weekend "long run" (8 miles, which turned out to be only 7.5) didn't show much sign of improvement. The soreness persisted (started to notice it as early as mile 2), even with a new hydration pack.

Anyway, all this week, it was evaluation. How's it feeling today? Better? Worse? Hamstring? Ok. Gluts -- better... no, still the same. And on and on and on.

And then I looked into the start time of the race: 9am, registration at 7. No problem. And a quick check of the directions... and somehow I had forgotten that it was a 2 hour drive to the race.

Um, whoops?

I forgot that we stayed with a friend in Portsmouth, so we only had to drive half the distance. So now I had to get up even more wicked early, drive 2 hours, pick up my registration stuff, then run the race that I wasn't sure I was ready to run. That, or get a hotel room and deal with registrations, and check-ins and check-outs...

And then there was the threat of rain. It actually looks like it'll be pretty good racing conditions tomorrow, but looking at it earlier this week, it looked like a pretty good chance of rain along with the wind in the mid-40s at race time. And I remember being so cold from the rain and wind the last time I ran this race, that at the finish I couldn't untie my shoelace to get the timing chip off my shoe.

Yes, I'm psyching myself out.

I actually felt alright yesterday. People were asking about the race. I got some encouragement. I felt pretty good after my run and during the subsequent frisbee game last night.

I was still on the fence.

Until around 1:30am, when I still hadn't fallen asleep.

So no race tomorrow.

I'm still going to run tomorrow morning. But I'll do it around here, after a good night's sleep. Or after more sleep, at least. And we'll have some time to do some more work in the garden. I'll get a massage. Watch the Celtics game. Get ready for the Tri on Sunday. (I'm volunteering, giving post-race massages.)

And I'll heal up, and hopefully still be on track to run one of those marathons in October.

* part of that distance is sketchy, since there seems to be some sort of Lincoln Mystery Spot where the GPS gets all wonky. The GPS tells me one thing, but GoogleMaps and, more importantly, my feets tell me different. I'm not a great judge of pace, but I'm pretty confident that I can tell when I'm running sub 6-minute-miles and over 15-minute-miles, and I didn't hit either of those paces, irregardless of what that little piece of technology strapped to my wrist was telling me.

Run! Don't Run! No, Run!

I'm resisting the urge to turn this into a marathon training blog. For one thing, I barely have time (read: I don't have time; I haven't had time) to post some of the other things that have been on my mind these days. (read: because I'm so lame that I'm usually in bed before 11pm these days. We went to bed at 9:30pm last night.) But, here I am, wanting to talk about how the training is going.

And how it's going is that it seems like it's going ok, all things considered.

Tuesday felt great. I did a hill workout, and I felt pretty good, aided I'm sure by the mild temperature (51°F) and the unexpected sunshine.

3 miles on the dreadmill on Wednesday to stay out of the rain. Fine.

The run yesterday kind of sucked. I went 7-1/2 miles, and I totally ran out of gas halfway through it. It was also back to the below-freezing mark again (I think it stay around 31°F the whole time), which certainly took some of the potential pleasantry out of it as well. (I can't fathom the guy I saw running in shorts and a T-shirt, or the other guy picking up stuff in his yard in his boxers or the middle school girls in miniskirts and/or single layer tops with the plunging necklines -- I guess I'll just chock up my incomprehension to being a pussy from southern California.)

Then there are the long runs. The long runs are about building endurance. When I eventually get into the thick of the actual marathon training this summer, these runs are going to be around 20 miles and take over 3 hours. (Technically, I'm only training for a half-marathon in May right now -- the plan is to use that to build up my base and then start in on a 4-5 month training schedule for the marathon in October.)

The long runs are on the weekends. Except that I ended up running this week's long run today because tomorrow is supposed to be all rain, all the time -- Wunderground says "definite rain" and a friend of mine told me that she heard "soaking rain." Neither was particularly appealing. I considered running on Sunday, but that forecast indicated greater peril -- it was supposed to be clear, but cold; dropping below freezing sometime in the wee hours of the morning, just after the rain stopped. Meaning: ice.

Ice bad.

So I was planning on just sucking it up and running on Saturday in the rain, until I heard over the radio about the potential flooding. I was ready to get soaked, but the idea of 12 miles of waterlogged shoes put me over the edge. The run went ok -- just a little colder than expected because of a steady easterly wind. The only downside was that I didn't get a rest day between the 7-1/2 and the 12 today; in my head, I'm pretending that I got some benefit out of running in the afternoon rather than in the morning, giving myself a few hours of extra "rest," not that it was actually rest or anything.

It does make me wonder whether somebody is trying to tell me something. Sometimes when you decide to do something, it couldn't be easier. It's like it was meant to be -- path of least resistance, easy like Sunday morning. (so long you're not getting up early Sunday morning to run in the cold for 2 hours.) And then there are times when it's... hard. It's not easy. Hurdles are getting dropped in your path. (that's ok, I ran hurdles in high school...) Challenges. Difficulties.

The weird ankle thing isn't bothering me so much this week, but my hamstring has been acting up a bit. (did a little research, gonna try to add some strengthening to the training plan.)

And JEEZ, the weekend weather has just SUCKED the last few weeks. I've been running almost daily since the beginning of February and started following a relatively formal training for about 3 weeks now. The first long run two weeks ago (8.2 miles), we had a blizzard that Friday -- I had to shovel to get to the road. And while the roads were well plowed, in places when I couldn't run on the road, the sidewalks weren't so great. (how many of you would wake up at 7am to shovel your sidewalk, just in case some dumbass might have decided to do his training runs in the early morning after a blizzard?) Last week, it pretty much snowed DURING the entire run. (11.5 miles -- it was supposed to be 10 but I took a wrong turn. Whoops.) And of course, maybe an hour after I finished the run, it stopped snowing, and was actually sunny. And of course this weekend was going to suck, so I took measures, as it were.

So, is somebody trying to tell me to stop? To end the madness!? (I've already had one friend tell me that it was a bad idea.)

Or are they just helping me fight my insecurity about being a quitter and giving me the opportunity to struggle a little and feel like I've accomplished something? Or at least give me something to whine about.

I tell ya, I have the hardest time telling them apart.

Big Lake

Just finished the Big Lake half-marathon in Alton, New Hamster, by Lake Winnipesauke.

Run observations:

• After being in the low 60s and at least partly sunny for most of the past week, on race day it's in the low 40s, rainy and windy. F'ing wet and cold. At the end of the race, I couldn't untie my shoelace to remove the timing chip because my fingers had gone completely numb.

• I found it amusing to see the stream of runners (slowly working up the first of the big inclines) passing the "SPEED LIMIT 50" sign. I realize that this is probably only amusing to me.

• The race sponsors a "Big Lake Battle" where there's a competition between the Water stations for the group that is the most spirited. Rain kept most of the fiddlers, banjo and acoustic guitar players playing out of the back of their trucks, which sadly made them hard to hear until you were just passing them.
  Most memorable: scary clown woman juggling to the macarena (and earlier, that weird techno version of Cotton-Eye Joe).
  Most enjoyable: barbershop quartet, around mile 8, singing in the light rain on a quiet stretch of road.

• Speaking of music, for practically the entire race, I had the "horns" from the Ben Folds' song Army going through my head:
  

  Baaaaaahhhh---- ba ba bah-baaah---- ba ba bah-baaah---- bah-ba BAH
  Ba ba baaaaahhhh---- bah-bah ba ba ba bah-- ba da bah-bah ba ba ba-da-dah
  (in concert, the entire crowd will sing the two parts)

  The whole race. Much less annoying than you might expect.
  Actually, kinda cool. Certainly, better than the macarena.
  Although I did try to do the macarena as I passed the scary clown woman.

• Thankful that I bought new shoes before this race. There were a few nasty downhills that would have totally wrecked my knees, I think.

• Despite the hilly course, and the crappy weather, and being stressed with school and the new job, I still finished with a better time than the Boston race. (although I was getting sick at the time.) Chip time: 1:40:33

Ok, now I have to go and write a stupid paper for class.