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…but sometimes I sleep

Posted in training, tagged running, sleep, training on April 28, 2011| 7 Comments »

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When the alarm went off at 4:15AM this morning I rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom to change in the dark. 2 days of predawn running and my body had already fallen back into the routine.

I wasn’t awake yet really.

My eyes were half-closed, my consciousness stuck somewhere in a fog. As I slipped into my shorts, somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered why I hadn’t snapped to alert yet. Usually by the time I’m walking out the bathroom and heading downstairs for some pre-run coffee, I am wide awake.

And then it hit me. Last night was the third or fourth night in a row of getting just under 4 hours of sleep.

I like getting 6 hours of sleep a night. In reality, I usually get 5 hours a night, which seems to work just fine. But 4 hours a night? Maybe for a couple of days, maybe even 3 nights a week, but not coming off of a vacation where I had gotten used to sleeping over 8 hour a night.

Sleep is an important part of any athlete’s regimen. It is when our bodies heal and strengthen themselves. It’s when we do most of our recovering, when our brains sort out the events and workouts of the day. Without it, our bodies (and minds) would eventually break down.

And so, at that moment, I turned around, changed back into my sleeping attire, and caught another 75 minutes of sleep.

Fortunately, today was a scheduled off day anyway.

Why do you run?

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I Train While You Sleep

Posted in motivation, training, tagged BQ, disappointment, running, training on April 26, 2011| 10 Comments »

'Nuff Said

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So after taking a week off from running, the alarm went off at 4:30AM this morning, telling me it was time to run again. Time to dust off the shoes, slip on the shorts, put in some miles.

Honestly, I’ve had to force myself NOT to run since Boston. It hasn’t been easy, but I think my body (and my mind and spirit for that matter) needed the time off.

Still, when the alarm went off this morning, a part of me just wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. I had gotten used to not waking up so early just to pound out some miles. As I’ve said many times, I am NOT a morning person. I really am not.

But then I thought of a picture I saw (above) on someone’s dailymile page. That was me, all winter. Waking up between 4AM and 4:30AM, running between 5 to 20 miles. And as much as I am not a morning person, I loved the feeling I would have for the rest of the day when I’d managed to drench myself in sweat before most people were waking up.

Now that school vacation is over, the days are going to get busy again – which made me think of this:

If I’m going to be good, I have to work around the busy-ness.

And it’s not about the competition with others…it’s about the competition within.

It’s about the desire to do better, last longer, run faster.

I leave you with a quote from a comment my friend M left me:

DISAPPOINTMENT IS THE HIGH WATER MARK OF EXPECTATION.

Why do you run?

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Boston 2011 – Lemonade

Posted in boston marathon, race recap, Uncategorized, tagged Boston Marathon 2011, race recap, running on April 24, 2011| 38 Comments »

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As I bolted out of the porta-potty, I thought, this is it! this is the moment! THIS is where all of the training kicks in!!! I looked up at the first of the Newton Hills almost with a smile.

You. Are. Mine. I thought.

I had been running along at a decent clip, averaging in the low 7 minute per mile range for 17 miles. My only trouble had been the urge to pee since before the start. I finally gave in to using a porta-potty when I saw one at the bottom of the first Newton Hill. I figured that this was just another star aligning to get me to my 3:10. I would have 20 – 40 seconds to relieve myself while simultaneously recovering for 20 – 40 seconds before tackling the hardest part of the course. Perfect!

So this was it! All I had to do was get through the next 2.5 miles and I would be cruising home-free on the other side of Heartbreak Hill.

I kicked it into overdrive. This was going to be cake…maybe not a tasty cake, but cake nonetheless. I had run these hills dozens of times. Not only had I run them often, I had run them late in long runs (17 miles late to be exact!). My plan was to attack the hills with speed and relax on the back sides. It had worked every time in training. EVERY TIME!

As I hit the base of the hill I shortened my stride and quickened my cadence.

Oh yeah! Showtime!

I got three, maybe five steps in, and then it happened.

I don’t know what asthma feels like. I don’t have it. I have never had a problem with it. But three, maybe five steps up that first Newton Hill, after running like the wind, after looking up at Newton “knowing” this was going to be my day, after having run those hills countless times, my lungs simply said “no”. This is what I have always imagined asthma feels like.

For the life of me, I couldn’t inhale. Whether you’re a car or a plane or a pair of legs, if you can’t take in oxygen, there IS no combustion. Every time I tried to take a breath, my airway felt blocked. I could force enough in to make an awful sound, but that was it.

No, my lungs said, We are not going to cooperate with you in this insane business you call marathon running. No, we will not assist you in achieving you goal. No, we will not let you run fast. We are done breathing.

And that was it. In one moment my day went from spectacular to miserable in the flick of a switch. My legs had felt good. My will was strong. My desire was burning. But my airways constricted and all hopes of a 3:10 or a 3:15 or even a PR (currently a 3:19:19) went out the window.

My bolt out of the porta-potty turned into a walk. A walk? Really? I mean REALLY!?! I was walking up this hill?

Every hundred yards or so I would try to start running again. At first I would start slowly and then try to build up speed. Every time I would get to what I perceived to be about an 8:00 to 8:30 per mile pace, my lungs would collapse on me again and I would be left simply trying to inhale, struggling to do what we all take for granted. I would make a sickening weeze for about 30 – 40 second as I staggered along before my breathing would become normal again. I’m surprised that I did get picked up by medical. Maybe I’m just lucky that they didn’t spot me at my worst.

For the next mile I kept thinking that it would pass. If I could just get through the next 5 minutes or so, maybe everything will reset! It didn’t pass. I struggled to 18 or 19 where I saw the medical tent. I staggered towards it. I sighed.

DNF (Did Not Finish)? Am I going to have to fucking DNF?

As I raised my foot to take another step toward medical, I thought of my little Brooke. No, I wasn’t running this race for Autism Speaks or any autism charity for that matter, but Brooke and kids like her are a source of strength for me.

My foot wavered.

Then I thought of my older daughter, Katie. I had made a promise to her when I put her, Brooke and Jess on a plane the Friday before the marathon. They were going away to Florida ahead of me and I was going to join them Monday night after the marathon. I had promised Katie that I would wear my 2011 Boston Marathon Medal on the plane and would have it around my neck when I woke her up with a kiss when I got to our hotel. How could I break that promise? If I checked into medical, there would be no medal. In addition, I wouldn’t be able to wear the commemorative jacket I had bought days earlier.

And so, I stumbled back on to the course, weezing, trying to catch my breath.

I was scared.

I wanted to cry.

I wanted to quit – I wanted to quit more than I have ever wanted to quit in a marathon.

I wanted to scream and yell.

But I trudged on.

This was going to be the dreaded “Death March”.

By the time I reached mile 20, I was in a pretty dark place, and I still had Heartbreak Hill ahead of me. My lungs continued to rebel and now my feet were beginning to hurt. And that’s when I saw my dear friend Alett. She spotted me and began to cheer. I shook my head. As I staggered over to her, she said some words of encouragement, but I told her, today was not going to be my day. The running gods had given me a lemon of a marathon.

It was at that moment though when my whole attitude changed. After 2+ miles of grumbling and wallowing in self-pity, I realized that I had a choice. I could do the death march thing to the end of the race OR I could embrace what had been given me and take advantage of the fact that I still had many friends on the course waiting to see me and cheer me on. I could stumble by them in misery or take this opportunity to celebrate that I was running Boston this year and a god-damned qualifier!!!

I decided to go with the latter and started snapping pictures with every friend I could find. Click —>HERE<— to see the pics I took over the last 6 miles.

As painful as it was to keep going, and despite having bursts where I tried to finish strong only to be slapped down again by my lungs, it was a joy spotting friends and taking a minute or two to yuk it up. My only disappointment in those last few miles was that I was unable to spot a couple of friends I knew were out there and that I was unable to keep up with my friend Ty who came up behind me with less than a mile to go and tried to pull me along (I tried Ty!) – Nic, Deb, Amelia, Hadar, Yigal, Ramana, TK and Mary, despite missing you, it helped knowing you were out there!

Looking back on my splits, I’m pretty psyched I was able to stop and chat, take pictures AND keep those last miles in the 8:45 – 11:15 range.

***
So I guess the question becomes, what happened? More specifically, what caused my lungs to go asthmatic on me? I don’t know. I’ll have to do some research on that one. Maybe I was taking in too much fluid? I had been training on about 10 – 15 oz. of Gatorade per 20 miles all winter and I’m pretty sure I drank much more than that over the course of the first 17 miles. Maybe I just sucked down some liquid down the wrong pipe? I don’t know. All I know is Monday, April 18th wasn’t my day. Maybe, if I can get in, April 17th will be.

***

There are a lot of titles that went through my mind as I contemplated writing this race report:

Opportunity Lost or Falling Short (it was all there), Breathless (for obvious reasons), Karma (was there a debt to be paid for leaving a man behind at Smuttynose?), Hubris or Foolish or Greedy (was 3:10 a realistic goal? should I have been content with gunning for 3:15? would I have lost my lungs had I been running 7:24’s?)

It was, to say the least, a rough day. A day of disappointment. A day where my goal of a 3:10 marathon seemed well within my grasp. A day where I watched that goal simply disappear with a single breath.

It didn’t start out that way. In fact, when I woke up on Monday morning, I felt great. I mean, I REALLY felt great. My training had been pretty much without incident. My times had been spot on. I was ready. The weather looked like it was going to cooperate too – 50° – 60°. We were even going to have a tailwind. In addition, RaceMenu chief Alain found me right before the start and said that he was shooting for a 3:10 just like me – I thought “perfect! Someone to run with, just like Smuttynose!”

Yes, everything was lining up for an A+ effort on Monday. 3:10 was a real possibility, with a 3:15 all but in the bag! Though my morning was a bundle of nervous energy, I did manage to stay relatively relaxed on the surface. I found my dailymile friends in the Athletes’ Village, and the group of us kept each other loose with small talk and funny stories.

I was so sure that I could feel the natural speed of this group. We were almost all qualifiers, and those that were charity runners were gunning for PR’s.

Speed was in the air.

Some days you have it. Some days you don’t. Some days, like last Monday, you have it and then you lose it. I’m just glad I had the where with all to make lemonade out of lemons. And have no doubt, YOU were the sugar that made the lemonade so sweet!

The turn on to Hereford (2nd to last turn) - trying to keep it light

the turn on to Boylston - the finish line is only a few hundred meters away

Stopping to chat with 150 meters to go...

...and snap a picture! -courtesy of CAUTION:Redhead Running

less than 100 meters to go

All done - 3:37:00 - my worst finish other than Manchester. Aside from my BQ, quite possibly my most enjoyable final 6.2 miles.

Why do you run?

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Different

Posted in boston marathon, motivation, tagged boston marathon, different, evolution, running, what a difference a year makes on April 12, 2011| 13 Comments »

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A year ago this week I wrote a series of blog posts leading up to the 2010 Boston Marathon. Those posts were about Doubt, Belief, Faith and Hope. Each one was written to keep me focused on the upcoming marathon with the effect hopefully being that I would BQ at Boston. Looking back, I realize that it is what I needed at the time to justify my presence.

To a degree, I had no business being there – my bib had practically fallen out of the heavens. I was neither a charity runner nor a qualifier. In retrospect, my training had been haphazard at best. I wanted to believe I was capable of running a 3:20 in that race, but I knew it was unlikely.

In the end, the last 10K of the marathon was able to hold me down long enough to dash my BQ hopes. I finished with a respectable 3:32 – a 22-minute PR. I was happy and disappointed.

***

This year is different.

I earned my spot through qualifying back in October. My training for this cycle has been disciplined. I have run more miles in the last 4 months than in any other 4 month stretch in my life. I have no doubt that given good conditions, I will re-qualify (3:20) with room to spare, and may vastly improve my position in the rolling registration process for next year by taking a shot at 3:10. I have a burning desire to finish strong and fast, but like I said, this year is different. I don’t have the doubt. I don’t have the worry. If the weather doesn’t cooperate and the temperatures shoot up to 80°, I am not going to run in despair. I will still run hard, but I will also know that I won’t run a 3:10 or a 3:15 or maybe even a 3:20. But that’s okay. I know what I am capable of if the conditions are right.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not resting on my laurels of qualifying. The truth is, if I don’t improve on my time from October, the likelihood is that I will be shut out of the marathon in 2012 because of the new registration process. My desire, my strong burning desire is to run Boston every year, but I know that if I don’t make it back in 2012, I will in 2013 or 2014 or 2015.

I don’t have to convince myself this year that I belong. I know I do.

What a difference a year makes.

***

No matter the conditions, I will run hard. No matter the time, I will take satisfaction in knowing I did so. In the end, isn’t that all we can ask of and expect of ourselves?

Did you run hard?

Did you leave it all on the course?

If I can answer yes to both of those questions, no matter what happens, I will be happy.

Best of luck to my fellow 2o11 Boston Marathoners.

May you run hard.

Why do you run?

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Cracks

Posted in health, other, tagged autism, autism awareness month, dam, running, running angry, tears on April 5, 2011| 37 Comments »

Every once in a while I wonder –

what will her life be like?

who will she call friends?

how many of them actually will be?

will she be able to live independently?

who will watch after her?

will her older sister feel burdened?

will she be…happy?

Autism Awareness Month is a double-edged sword.

I am thankful that so many out there, including many of you, are so supportive and even pro-active. I’ve witnessed the beginnings of a DOAM-Tree; I’ve seen light bulbs go off in peoples heads and on on their porches; I’ve read the President proclaim the official national observance of Autism Awareness Day.

But I’ve also had the harsh reminder that my daughter has autism – more severe than some, not nearly as severe as others; I am constantly reminded that her life will not follow the path of her friends, her cousins or her sister; I’ve watched as she struggles to initiate social interaction and keep up with those that are moving too fast to slow down, even at her own birthday party; I’ve watched as the events of a day simply prove too much, leading to an evening of uncontrollable crying; I’ve impotently stood by, knowing there is nothing I can do other than to just be there with her.

And that is when the cracks come.

I do a pretty good job of holding it together most of the time. My wife is the cryer – she likes to say she and her side of the family have leaky eyes. It’s not a negative or positive thing – it is just who they are. In part because of that though, I have built a wall to keep my tears on the inside. It would do our family no good if we both ended up in puddles of tears. I will and do cry, sob, thrash, scream, lash, break down – but it is always inward, never, if rarely on the outside.

Running has helped with that. Much of the raw emotional energy that comes from the pain of watching my child struggle has been channeled into 4AM runs – I try my best not to run angry, but sometimes I have no choice.

But you can’t run away from pain. You can’t run away from hurt. I can’t run away from autism. I won’t run away from my Brooke.

And so the cracks come, and the eyes begin to leak.

As quickly as they come though, a finger is put in the dam and the leak is stopped…for now.

what will her life be like?

who will she call friends?

how many of them actually will be?

will she be able to live independently?

who will watch after her?

will her older sister feel burdened?

will she be…happy?

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Why do you run?

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The View

Posted in motivation, Physics, training, tagged Energy, Long Term, Meta-Physics, running, Short Term, The View on April 1, 2011| 6 Comments »

No, not that View

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When I first met my wife, one of the things she talked a lot about was long-term gain versus short-term gain. It was a philosophy of hers that applied not just to the financial aspects of her life but to life in general.

The long and short of it is that most of the time, the value of long-term gains almost always outweigh that of the short-term. Generally speaking, if you sacrifice the long-term for the short-term, in all likelihood you’ll end up paying for it later, usually negating any gains made in the short-term.

It’s not an easy philosophy to stick to. In this day and age of immediate gratification, we, as a society seem to have lost our ability to see down the road any further than our next meal, paycheck, trip to the mall. It’s easy to give into the flash and dazzle of getting it/doing it/buying it/watching it/eating it now, forgetting that a few hours later, that sensation will, at best, be a dull, forgettable feeling, and, at worst, a feeling of regret and, at times, literal pain. But memory can be short.

The long-view is hard. Patience is hard. It can be full of doubt and even despair.

And that is part of the reason why it is so rewarding.

Marathon training has taught me that.

***

After a long day of work or a night with too little sleep, most of us just want a little decompression time. A little “me” time. Time to veg, turn our brains off and put ourselves back together.

For many of us, that “me” time is usually spent in front of a screen, our mouths full of scooby-snacks.

I want to redefine what “me” time, or “veg” time is.

***

For me, whether it’s morning, noon or night, when it’s time to run, there is always, ALWAYS an internal struggle:

Do I run or go back to bed?
Do I run or do I chill out on the couch?
Do I run or go to bed at a decent hour?

Sometimes the balance leans toward the run, others it leans towards potatoing. I’ve reached the point, however, where I know I will be much happier in the long run if I go for the run. Choosing the bed or the couch may feel good in the here and now, but eventually I get restless, antsy, and sometimes downright grumpy.

Most people view running as an exertion, a time where you spend energy instead of re-charging, and on the surface they are right. You can’t argue with physics (not in this universe anyway), and the laws of physics clearly state that to move an object you must use energy. Even if you are able to overcome the inertial gravity of the couch or bed and get yourself in motion, you’re still fighting air resistance and gravity.

It takes work to run.

But sometimes, on a meta-physical level, 1 – 1 ≠ 0; sometimes 1 – 1 = 2. And that’s where running as the new “vegging out” time comes into play. After a good run, I can be physically spent, but my mind is refreshed and alert. A good run can wash away the imaginary burdens of the day and help you work through the real ones. The blood coursing through your body and the endorphins firing off in your brain allows your mind to work on problems in the background while your consciousness only has to work on the simple task of putting one leg in front of the other.

You can get some of the same effects from sleep (and believe me, sleep is an integral part of overall health – a topic for another time), but you certainly cannot get them from potatoing on the couch with a bag full of Cheetos.

At the end of the run you get the added bonus of knowing you improved your health just a little more, buying yourself another day, another week, another month with your family on our little planet.

In the end, is waiting an hour for the satisfaction of a good run that much longer to wait that plopping yourself on the couch? One of the benefits of marathon running has been a new ability to mentally speed up or slow down an hour depending on the situation. Besides, the couch will still be there at the end of the day. If you run first, you’ll smile knowing you got to take advantage of the best of both worlds.

Then you can curl up on the couch and watch a little trashy TV, you know, like the View!

Why do you run?

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Chicken or Egg

Posted in motivation, training, tagged Chicken, Egg, marathon, running, training on March 29, 2011| 9 Comments »

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Over 15 weeks down, less than 3 weeks to go. I’ve been diligent. I’ve stuck to the program. Whatever Pfitz has told me to do, I’ve pretty much done it.

And you know what? I feel pretty good. Over 700 miles into this training cycle and I’m feeling pretty damned good. Not that I was expecting not to, but after logging more miles in the last 4 month than I ever have in any given 4 month stretch, I wasn’t completely sure that my body was going to hold up. But, knock on wood, it has.

I love my training. I love training for the marathon.

But I wonder, am I training for the marathon or am I running the marathon for the training?

***

I started running two and a half years ago in support of my wife. She had signed up for the Hyannis Half-Marathon, and I just couldn’t let her run it alone. I had never run more than 4 or 5 miles at a time and I knew that 13.1 miles was going to be a long distance (especially in the middle of the winter on the Cape).

In this particular case I was training for the event. I knew that I needed to get in shape to be able to complete that distance. Despite not having a plan, I quickly went from running “0” miles per week to 30. With the half-marathon on the horizon, I kept pushing my distance just little bit with each subsequent run until I finally hit the 10 mile mark in a single run.

That’s when something clicked and I went from being someone who ran every now and then to a runner.

Though someday I would like to, I never did end up running the Hyannis Half. What I did take away from that stretch of time though was having a goal race on the calendar helped keep me motivated to get up and run every day. A few weeks before Hyannis, I ran my first 10K. A few months later I finally ran my first half-marathon. I immediately set my sites on a full and signed up for a fall marathon. The following year, 2010, was filled with almost a race per month. With each of these races I found motivation to keep putting in miles even when neither my body nor my mind wanted to.

As exhausting as the training could be, my soul was happy…full.

My training reached a high point last summer when I became hyper-focused on doing well at the Inaugural Smuttynose Marathon in New Hampshire. It was BQ or bust.

Even though my ultimate goal was to run a BQ at Smutty, I look back and wonder, was I training for the marathon? or had I signed up for the marathon so I would train hard?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter, right? The end result is the same. Whether you sign up for an event as motivation or are motivated to do well at an event, the goal is to do the best you can.

This winter I’m back at it. Training with a vengeance – looking to improve on my time at Boston. Still, I’m not sure whether it’s the goal or the training that’s driving me.

Do you train for marathons? Or do you run marathons for the training?

Why do you run?

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Hamlet

Posted in boston marathon, training, tagged GU, Hamlet, marathon, marathon training, running, to GU or not to GU on March 28, 2011| 11 Comments »

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To GU or not to GU, that is the question…
Whether ’tis nobler to hit the wall
or take on possible stomach issues

That is the thought that ran through my mind for nearly 13 miles of my run on Sunday. I have been a little gun-shy of ingesting anything other than liquid refreshment during my runs since my stomach disaster in New York back in November. That experience, though mildly triumphant, was physical misery.

I knew I was going to have to make a few adjustments for Boston.

The first adjustment I made coming out of New York was to give in to Gatorade. It was not my preference, but I knew that if I didn’t want to carry anything (i.e. a water bottle) at Boston, that meant I would have to take what they were serving. That transition went easily enough. I have to say, as much as it pains me to admit it, I have grown to actually like Gatorade.

But how many calories am I really going to be able to replace with a sip or two of Gatorade every mile? Sure, I’ll be fine with the hydration aspect of the race, but if I don’t replace the carbs at a higher rate (8oz. of Gatorade has only 50 calories), it will be sooner rather than later that I hit the wall.

And yet, I put off incorporating any kind of gel or gu or semi-solid substance into my long runs.

I have been training hard this cycle. I’ve seen improvement and am feeling confident. Unfortunately, that confidence has been feeding into pushing off my GU dilemma. With each successive long run, I was finding that I was running faster, drinking less and feeling better and less fatigued at the end of each. I tried to convince myself that maybe I could just run Boston without any help. All of my runs of 17 – 20 miles have me ahead of pace, and for almost all of them, I’ve felt strong at the end. In one recent 18 miler, I drank a total of maybe 3 or 4 oz of Gatorade and that was it – and I felt great at the end.

I almost convinced myself. Almost.

What happens if I hit the wall at 23 or 24 or 25? Once you hit the wall, you’re done. Oh, you can still finish the race (see my marathon debut), but if you truly hit the Wall, it’s a death march the rest of the way, even if you do take something afterward. After the Wall, you aren’t gonna hit your target time.

And that thought haunts me.

How pissed would I be if I were cruising along to a 3:15, or dare I say it, a 3:10, and my body ran out of fuel somewhere in the last 10K?

So yesterday, with just over 3 weeks to go, I decided I would suck it up and re-introduce GU into my running.

Truth be told, I almost left them in the car, for fear of getting stomach cramps 10 miles away, but I thought better of it.

Now it became a question of when. Most gel-makers recommend taking one 15 minutes before race time and then once every 45-60 minutes thereafter.

***

I didn’t take one before my run.

***

When I hit 6 miles 45 minutes later, I didn’t take one.

***

When I hit 12 miles at 1:32 I still didn’t take one. I kept thinking, what if I get nauseous?

***

I realized that New York was playing with my mind.

I just had to do it.

So at mile 13, a full 1:39 after starting my run, I finally downed a Lemon-Lime GU.

And you know what? It wasn’t so bad – I’ll just have to make sure that I time it with a hydration station during the actual race – and maybe the GU had something to do with being able to rip off a 6 minute mile for mile 20.

So now I have to figure out just how many GU’s I will need. I’m leaning toward only bringing 2 with me – one for mile 10, and one for mile 20.

Any words of advice?

Why do you run?

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Brad Pitt

Posted in boston marathon, Odd Ball, other, training, tagged boston marathon, Brad Pitt, running, training on March 23, 2011| 17 Comments »

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It’s less than 4 weeks away. It looms larger and larger with each passing day. The Boston Marathon will be here before we know it, and to be honest, I’m starting to get the butterflies.

But I’ve been training hard. Once or twice a week I’ve taken to running parts of the Boston Marathon course. The hills coming into Newton, especially after 17 miles, can be brutal whether in the race or on a training run. But I’ve stuck to what I said back in November – I have been trying to live by the mantra – Train for the Terrain. Hills have been part of my training.

What the hell does this have to do with Brad Pitt?

I want you to look at something:

What do you see?

Yes, yes, it’s Brad Pitt. Yes, it’s Brad Pitt with his past girlfriends. But take a closer look. In each of these pictures, you will see that Pitt has adapted himself to take on the look of his main squeeze of the moment.

Uh, right Luau. Been reading a little too much US Magazine lately? What the frak does this have to do with running and the Boston Marathon???

Well, it has less to do with the Boston Marathon specifically and more to do with Marathon Training in general, as in training for the terrain – adapting to the current situation. My hope is that I have managed to “Brad Pitt” my training and will be perfectly matched up for Boston – downhills early, uphills late, more downhill near the end.

My stated goal at the beginning of the cycle was 3:15 or better. That still remains the goal, though I’m gonna take a long, hard look at 3:10.

How’s your Spring Marathon training going? Have you Brad Pitted it? I wonder if you can work the verb “Brad Pitt” into a conversation today?

I guess the burning question now is – Is the Boston Marathon Juliette, Gwyneth, Jennifer or Angelina?

Why do you run?

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Names

Posted in motivation, other, tagged name calling, running, support on March 22, 2011| 9 Comments »

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Last week my friend, E, who I find to be pretty awesome, went out for a run. She hadn’t run in a while. She was pumped. She had found renewed energy and focus. She was happy to be out on the streets, putting one foot in front of the other. She was just finding her groove, battling a hill, when some jackass yelled out and called her a name.

It doesn’t matter what the name was – suffice it to say, it was hurtful and demoralizing. By the end of her run, my friend was alternating between tears and anger.

When I read what had happened I was furious.

On the micro-level, I was furious that someone would belittle my friend, a woman who was working hard to better herself.

But there was a whole other macro-level of furious that boiled up in me. As the parent of a girl with autism, I know that I have become overly-sensitive to the concept of name calling. Words like “retard” make me want to grab the speaker by the shoulders, shake them and then pop ’em in the kisser with a left-cross (and my left-cross is pretty good). I usually take a deep breath, take stock of the situation. If it is the only time I have ever heard this person say it, then I usually let it go, but if it becomes a regular thing, that’s when I kindly ask them to stop. The wife actually wrote a very good post on the topic. You can read it —>HERE<—.

But I digress.

I know in this day and age, it ain’t cool to be PC, and quite honestly, I tend to think that as a society, we tend to over-think things a lot. There are a lot of PC concepts that I just can’t get behind (everybody wins all the time? does that teach anybody anything?). But the truth is, words hurt; words scar. And if you are particularly insecure about certain things, certain words can cut even deeper and leave scars that take a long time to go away.

So when I heard this story, my heart went out to E.

She wrote that it might be a while before she gets out there again with running shoes on. My hope is that she can find her inner duck and let the name calling roll off her back. When she runs, she inspires more people than she knows. She may not be fast – in fact, I think she would be the first person to admit that – but she runs, and through her running and her humor she brings smiles to faces and gets people thinking about health and fitness.

I hope she will Tai Chi the crap out of the hurtful words, turning its energy against itself, turning it into something positive. I hope she gets angry instead of demoralized. I hope she decides to take the power away from the jackass and make it her own. I hope she remembers that running is cleansing and can wash away the dirt people throw at us.

I hope to see you out there running soon E.

You can check out Miss E at – http://fromfat2fab2009.blogspot.com/

Why do you run?