Anyway, if you are here and reading, welcome! You are great and I love you.
I'm finding that I sometimes go through the following cycle:
I feel super, super lucky to have only had a mild case, but BOY that shit a) super wrecked my attempt to get even a tiny bit fitter by 10K champs, b) torpedoed a Paso Robles wine trip with friends I'd been looking forward to, and c) very nearly torpedoed the 10K race as well! Not because I was still feeling bad, but because even a week after I was back to feeling completely normal, I was still testing positive and I just did not feel right about getting on a plane like that, even with a mask (which I *always* wear in airports & on planes now, even when I'm perfectly healthy). This would have been particularly problematic since there were only three of us making the trip, the minimum number for a scoring team.
(1) Blog semi-consistently for a while
(2) Get super-duper-hella busy & overwhelmed with life & work
(3) Realize that in some ways blogging gives my life & thoughts a certain kind of structure that I start to miss after a few months
(4) Sheepishly slink back to Blogger & write an awkward/apologetic "Heeeyyyyy it's me again????" post
I heard keeping readers on their toes like that is great for getting those clicks and growing readership. Everyone love a little "will-she-won't-she" tension, amirite? Now you know my secret.
Anyway, I have also heard the kids saying no one reads blogs anymore and it's all about the tik toks and the substacks. But frankly I am afraid of tik toks and the thought of starting a substack gives me heart palpitations from the pressure. What's a substack anyway though except a blog that shows up in your inbox. I don't get all the fuss.
Shall we catch up a bit??? Perhaps an epistle in three parts so you don't die of boredom before you finish reading even one blog post.
Behold, Part the First!
APRIL
When we left off, I had just run SacTown 10-Miler (USATF Masters 10 Mile Championships) even though I'd been fighting with various injuries for a while & hadn't run more than 6-7 miles at a stretch in the previous month or so. I was not even going to bother but then it wasn't clear we were going to have a masters squad without me, so I signed up. Ultimately several more of the 40+ ladies joined us so no one had to rely on me or my time, but since I was already registered, I decided what the heck, let's see what happens.
Friends, it was ROUGH out there, as you can see from my time as compared to 2022:
2022:
2023:
Thankfully my teammates ran much faster and we were able to snag 3rd place in the 40+ women's masters champs race.
At that point we were just a few weeks away from the James Joyce Ramble 10K (USATF Masters 10K Championships) in Dedham, Massachusetts. (When does it make sense to make a cross-country trip for a 10K? When you have work in a neighboring state just two days later and work is paying for the flight.)
While I knew I wouldn't be all *that* much fitter than I was at SacTown, I wanted to make an earnest effort to make whatever gains I possibly could by then (possibly by running more than 6-7 miles at a stretch and/or doing *some* semblance of speed or tempo work??? 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️)
Then we went to Washington for a wine tasting trip. I did my best to get some running in there when I could, but it wasn't huge. The wine, however, was fabulous!
Also, cherry blossom season!
Mid-April was all about a work trip to Chicago for a conference. I networked, I conferenced, I ran nearly every day (including a 12-miler!), I....ended up with Covid the week after. 😬 Yes I wore a KN-95 mask most of the time, but clearly not often enough.
On the plus side, the weather was AMAZING!
Deep dish on the first night is obviously a requirement.
If there's not at least one raw, moody day did you even visit Chicago? Of course, I'm glad I saved my 12-mile long run for this day.
Alinea isn't required but it's a nice perk. Especially when you paid for it three years ago right before Covid shut everything down. If you've forgotten the emotional sensation of paying for something expensive, it's basically free.
Thankfully, with just hours to go, I had a negative test and could get on a plane with a clear conscience.
If you've never raced a 10K the week after having Covid, I do not recommend it! I ran like 50:xx something and absolutely felt like I was going to die for the last couple of miles. But again my two teammates ran significantly faster & we were able to walk away with another 3rd place finish.
Also, lobstah rolls. 🦞
MAY
Originally, with The Ramble on April 30 and Stow Lake Stampede 5K on June 3, I hadn't planned on racing in May. With the East Coast work trip & 10K in the books, I was looking forward to a nice stretch of uninterrupted training time at home. However, there was another PA short course race on May 7 (just a week after The Ramble if you're counting), the Mile of Truth in Danville, which seemed to be a terrible date for most of the masters women. So, I let myself be roped into reuniting with the Dedham crew as the 3rd masters runner. I was in even less good shape to race a mile than I'd been to race a 10K, but sometimes it's just about showing up.
#painface. I told the ladies it would be a gd miracle if I could run even one sub-7:00 mile given recent events and my official time was 6:58, so. Who delivers for you, babe?
Fun fact, one of our masters trio took 3rd in the 40-45 age group! (Not me, obv)
In spite of the fact that I was still feeling pretty out of shape, just a week past covid, & had not done ANY mile-specific prep AT ALL, I actually enjoyed the experience of running this race. I haven't raced the mile since high school and never on the roads so it was fun to just let loose and see what my body could do under the circumstances. I am actually pretty excited to run this race again in 2024 (hopefully better trained and healthier all-around!) and it also got me excited about maybe doing a track mile time trial sometime. Some of the other ladies also thought that might be fun so maybe we'll make it happen in the not-too-dim-and-misty future.
This left me four weeks to try to make *some* progress before Stow Lake Stampede 5K on June 3. On the one hand, I got a reasonable number of miles in (nearly 150 as opposed to April's 113), but on the other hand, I started to really really struggle with running from an energy perspective, which has never happened to me before. Like, I'd have these days where I wouldn't feel tired or anything, but then I'd go out to run and within a mile would feel like I literally could not put one foot in front of the other anymore. I'd try to run 6-8 miles and find myself needing walk breaks every block or two. I'd try to do track workouts and feel like I simply could not turn my legs over at more than a shuffle. One day doing 300m repeats (where even a year ago I'd be shooting for ~1:10 / 6:15 pace per rep & was now shooting for more like 1:18-1:20 / 7:00 pace per rep) I could barely manage 8:00 pace & eventually reached the point where I couldn't finish even a single rep.
Like, there is poor fitness, and there is....something else. I had rebounded from Covid pretty easily, so this didn't feel related to that. I wasn't having any kind of health issues and was sleeping and eating perfectly well. Feeling desperate, I had a giant panel of like 36 different blood tests done, which came back with a few things to improve (apparently in spite of being an omnivore I was borderline deficient in B12, and in spite of taking a vitamin D supplement and spending lots of time outside, I was borderline deficient in that too) but nothing my doctor felt explained just *how* extremely wrecked I'd been feeling. For so much of my running life my motto has been "If I'm not injured and not traveling too much, I can nail this stuff," but it's like my body just said, "Oh yeah? You think so? SUCK ON THIS, MF."
So, while I ran a reasonable number of miles that month, a lot of them were not great quality and the workouts I did kind of felt more like "workouts" because I honestly just could not get my legs to turnover in a way that resembled anything in the same *ballpark* as fast. Like, at all. I tried to be optimistic about Stow Lake 5K but, in spite of putting in a *decent* amount of training, I started this race feeling exhausted and like I simply could not move my legs, and it only got worse over the course of the race.
As with SacTown 10, my 2022 vs. 2023 efforts were A Tale of Two Very Very Different Races:
(Okay I know we're into June now but it's kind of a bookend so let's just go with it.)
STILL WITH ME? If so, feel free to click over to Part 2 whenever you feel so inclined.
And remember,
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