Catching Up, Part 2: Lessons Learned

Hello again friends. Welcome to Part 2 of our latest catch up, en route to, yes you heard right, a ✨👟marathon race report👟✨ (by which, just to be clear, I mean a race report about a marathon, not just, like, a **really long** race report).

Catching Up: Part 1 (icymi)

Where were we? Oh yes! End of July 2025; missing out on Tracksmith SF 5000; recovering from a horrific back strain. Let us move on to late summer.

In general, the plan was:

• Mid August ➡️ train for & run a one-mile time trial on the track
• Late August ➡️ Tahoe vacation with family
• September ➡️ Start training for CIM

AUGUST

In which the future was still so bright (in many ways). My back continued to feel fine; I continued to rip fast workouts on the track without worrying too much about building overall mileage. Having run a 6:28 mile on the roads in May with, like, two weeks of mile-specific training, I was very curious what I could manage on the track in spikes having spent the summer doing honest-to-gods speed work. 6:20? 6:15? Faster?? I tried getting a group together for a time trial day (mostly for my own selfish rabbiting purposes) but at that point people were mostly busy getting ready for other things so I ended up going it alone. On a weirdly humid August 17 I drove to the track, did a little warm-up and some strides, put my spikes on, and did my best to flog myself to one all-out mile, with not-terrible results: 

Catching Up, Yet Again: Part 1

Heyyyyy friends 👋👋👋 Long time no post. Such is life; things take crazy turns and suddenly writing about one's hobbies on the internet no longer falls into the top ten most critical tasks to be spending ostensible free time on. However, I HAVE JUST RUN A MARATHON and I feel that needs to be immortalized in these digital pages one way or another, so I'm making time.

But first, we need some context. This series of catch-up posts ends in a race report, but it's a race report that won't make a ton of sense without quickly (well, relatively quickly) buzzing back through the last seven months. So, without further ado......

Where We Left Off

Last we spoke, I had just run a pretty solid track 5K in Oakland (June 19), with plans to spend four weeks getting even faster, then run another track 5K in San Francisco on July 19.  Things went okay for a couple of weeks, and then, in retrospect, I started getting a bunch of messages from my body that ** Hey we are not okay, maybe take a few days off here **, but none of them were ever, like, BRIGHT BLINKING RED and/or I was just so distracted by everything else going on in life that it never really hit me all at once the way it should have.

Mental Health Talk: Less Thinking, More Running (1 Week to Stow Lake 5K)

Someone created this to help kids handle their anxious feelings better but spoiler, it's occasionally useful for certain 41-year-olds as well

***CONTENT WARNING***, mental health talk ahead.

So, some years ago I started getting treatment for anxiety, not like horrific life-altering can't-function-in-the-world-on-a-daily-basis anxiety but a kind of constant, low-grade-but-sometimes-*less*-low-grade anxiety that, when I stopped to think about it, I had really suffered from for basically my entire teenage & adult life.

There were some ways in which it manifested in running, mostly around perfectionism and catastrophizing about races and psyching myself out, then super beating myself up if things didn't go at least acceptably okay. (Not productive, do not recommend.)

And then there was a period of time (~2017ish to ~2019sih?) where I started to have some weird issues every time I'd go to the track, which historically had always been my favorite workout of the week. I was telling my therapist about this once incidentally, how sometimes I would be warming up and not even doing anything hard yet and my heart rate would shoot up really high and I'd have this ringing in my ears and a sensation like ice water running through my veins, and my hands would shake a little and suddenly I'd feel lightheaded and have a hard time catching my breath. Weird, huh? So yeah, anyway!

And my therapist was like, "Uhhhh back up there chief, do you think maybe you were maybe having a little panic attack?"

And I just scoffed like, "What? Now that is ridiculous. Of course I wasn't having a panic attack. I think I'd know if I was having a panic attack."

And she was like, "Uhhhhh are you sure about that because I am a therapist whose job it is to know these things and tbh it kind of sounds like a little mini panic attack."

And I was like, "Madam. Please. WHY on EARTH would I be having a PANIC ATTACK before my track workout?"

And she was like, "EXCELLENT QUESTION MY FRIEND, PERHAPS YOU WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT, PERHAPS TO SOMEONE LIKE I DUNNO ME, UR LITERAL THEREAPIST????"

Announcing: Goals, MF

It always feels a bit scary to put a goal out there when you are still in the midst of a comeback and not entire sure it's going to take, but what is the point of having a blog (er, sort of?) if you aren't going to share what you're doing and what's on your mind.

So, what is on my mind, you might ask? Nothing earth-shattering; just the Kaiser Permanente Half Marathon, one of the big local SF races that takes place every Superbowl Sunday (Sunday, February 6 this year).

KP was my second-ever half-marathon & typically features a half marathon, 10K, and 5K. I've run all three distances at least once at one time or another, but for the last few years I've most often signed up for the 10K because "I won't be ready to run a half yet," or signed up for the half and then dropped down to the 10K a few days or weeks out because "I'm not ready to run a half yet."

And by "I'm not ready to run a half yet," what I meant was "I'm not ready to run a half in a time I find acceptable," where "acceptable" was probably somewhere in the 1:37-1:43 range. I've never had much interest in running races at an easy pace just to finish, except in situations where I thought it would be helpful to do a supported long run or long tempo workout. Plus, if you looked at a heat map of my long runs, you'd see probably 90% overlap with the KP half marathon course, and paying money to run a casual long run on the same route I'd probably run anyway just felt kind of....not worth it.

The last fast half marathon, 1:41:07 - October 2017. A wonderful day that I did not appreciate nearly enough at the time.

Life Lately + The New Agreement

So, fleshing out a bit more of something I mentioned in my recent race report.

First is just the simple fact that work (and work travel) has been taking over my life lately. A couple of my work projects are legitimately high stakes right now (like, people's jobs on the line if I can't make some things work out) so I've been under a lot of pressure. Those things really do have to be my A-#1 priority right now. Unfortunately, the rest of my work hasn't conveniently shrunk to allow me to spend a greater portion of my day on the high stakes stuff, so I've had a lot of very long days. Working a 6-8 hour day in the office and then coming home to work *another* 4-6 hour day in the late afternoon/evening has, sadly, become a thing, as has working on the weekend (sometimes in airports and on planes).

I suspect it's probably not unrelated, but I've also started to feel really burnt out on running. No one is super excited about every run and workout all the time (I don't think??), but usually my bad days are limited to feeling super tired and unmotivated when I get home, forcing myself to put on my shoes and get out the door, and almost always feeling better. Lately it's been so much worse--lots of days when I'll think about the fact that I have a run on my schedule and want to burst into tears. Or I feel tired and sour about going on a run and then it never gets any better. Sometimes getting ready for a track workout and feeling like I'm about to have a panic attack, except it doesn't go away once I've gotten started.

The Life-Changing Magic of Bottoming Out

As you might imagine, after we got home from Big Sur on April 30th, I took a week completely off all physical activity (except going to work, which is to say, I went to work *at least* three days of five). Recently, though, I've gotten back to a basic level of activity. Very, very basic.

Some things I've been up to post-Boston/Big Sur:

Karate. I've been treating my class like my red headed step child these last few months & was starting to wonder if our students would even remember who I was. I still can't do any kicks properly but at least I can move around okay.

The Myth of Balance

A perennial lifestyle meme/debate/whatever you want to call it that bugs the crap out of me has to do with the question of if and how one can "have it all," usually specifically whether women can "have it all." And e'rrrrbody's got an opinion.

Why does it bug the crap out of me? Well, for one, because the phrase "having it all" does NOT in fact refer to having "it all"; it's almost always used as short-hand for having a very specific subset of things: A high-powered successful career, a healthy social life, a reasonably functional relationship (if you feel like it), and of course, the absolutely non-negotiable pièce de résistance, children, because what normal woman could ever *possibly* hope to have a happy, fulfilling life without squirting some crotch spawn out into the world. (Mostly, though, "it all" seems to refer to a super successful career & kids.) Yes, I get that a lot of women do want those things and are sad if they can only have some of them, but those things by no means constitute "all" there is to have in life. It bugs me that society acts like they are. A woman could have all of those things and still feel frustrated and unfulfilled.

Process Goals & New Year's Resolutions

Hi, hello, if you have posted a blog entry recently, I have not seen it yet because I have been too busy managing the category 5 hurricane of love and togetherness and holiday madhouse magic that is the last weeks of December.

I was looking forward to reporting that we had emerged unscathed but was then laid low by some sort of nasty upper respiratory nonsense that is currently making it kind of hard to make my life go. This week was supposed to be the week of getting back to FINISHING ALL THE WORK and RUNNING ALL THE MILES and LIFTING ALL THE WEIGHTS and COOKING ALL THE MEALS and generally adulting the shit out of my life but it has instead been the week of finishing some of the work and feeding myself however I can, when I even feel like eating, and desperately snatching at any extra hours of sleep I can eek out of the day. Thankfully, when I can manage virtually nothing else, I can almost always lace up my shoes & get out the door so at least the miles are still happening.

("Wait, you're running when you're sick??" Yes, I use the neck rule, and also the less-easily-quantified-but-perhaps-more-legit 'Do I feel like it or not' rule, and they have never steered me wrong. Running almost always makes me feel better as long as I want to do it.)

All this has put me behind in many aspects of life, including writing scintillating blog posts for my millions of adoring readers, which is why you're getting this one now instead of a week ago. So, sorry. Hopefully it's not too late as to be completely useless (or, at least not any more useless than usual).

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO...

It is the New Year, which of course means lots of people making resolutions to change and hopefully improve things about their lives. To be honest, the New Year's Resolution has never called to me, mostly because the timing seems a little arbitrary. I'm all about committing to Do The Thing to make one's life more generally awesome; I'm just not the type of person who can wait for a particular day to start. But I do understand, I think, the appeal of all the numbers changing at once & having a kind of temporal blank slate. If that timing works for you, rock on with your bad self.

On the other hand, there is something that's always bothered me about the way people make NYRs and the types of resolutions that are most popular, and thinking more in terms of process goals than outcomes lately has I think clarified for me exactly what it is. And that's that, although resolutions come in a range of shapes and sizes, it seems like many of them revolve around perceived shortcomings, around shame and guilt, around not being good enough in some way or another.

This saddens me. In a way, it reminds me a lot of the Scott Adams quote I shared in the Process Goals post:

"If your goal is to [accomplish x], you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary."

Ie, if your New Year's Resolution is to lose 10 pounds, there's often an implicit assumption that your current weight isn't good enough, that you're not skinny enough or small enough or don't look enough like someone else, but once you lose those 10 pounds then you finally will be good/skinny/attractive enough and live happily in your body ever after.

Or if your resolution is to achieve y professional goal or level or what have you, the implication that your current accomplishments or position or whatever isn't good enough, but if you can finally do y, you will finally be happy in your job.

Or if your resolution is to run a sub-xx:xx whatever, the implication that you're not fast enough but once you can run that time, then you will be fast enough and impressive enough and all will finally be well in your running life.

Basically, it feels like the starting condition is "failure" or at best inadequacy, and the resolution is set up such that you remain a failure unless and until you achieve it.

I think this can be damaging because a) this type of goal setting (and, by extension, resolution setting) rarely works, and b) it all kind of leads back to "who and what I am right now is Not Good Enough and doing x will fix that." Like, if you can finally manage The Thing, then you will finally shed the yucky crusty skin of the Old You and unveil a shiny, fancy, New-And-Improved You, the real you that you were always meant to be, and life will finally--FINALLY--reach the levels of awesome you always knew were out there waiting for you.

But here's the thing.

They're not.

The awesome and the peace and the true happiness is not out there waiting for you once you finally Do The Thing.

If I had more time right now, I would google up some references for you, but this is a real thing people have studied--the idea that once you accomplish x, you'll finally be happy--and it just isn't true. Yes, finally achieving something you've been fixated on or striving toward for a while often gives a short-term boost in happiness or life satisfaction, but it almost never lasts, and people tend to return to baseline levels of happiness and satisfaction pretty quickly. So a lot of times, this type of goal setting or resolution ends in

a) not accomplishing The Thing, thereby remaining in a state of failure, or

b) finally accomplishing The Thing, feeling happy/satisfied/at peace for a while, and then returning to the same baseline feeling as before. ("Well, losing 10 pounds / finally running that sub-4 marathon / buying a house didn't completely change my life the way I thought it would, BUT I bet if I lose 5 more pounds / run a sub-3:50 marathon / have a kid, THEN I'll be happy/satisfied/at peace.")

Guess what.

Whatever the discomfort or feeling of not being enough is, it is not going away through Achieving Things. No, not even healthy, good, positive, productive things. There is no shiny, fancy, New-And-Improved You out there just waiting to be unveiled by Achieving The Thing. There's just you, with all your goodness and badness and human-ness, and s/he is JUST. FINE. AS. IS.

The awesome and the peace and the happiness? You can have it. But it's not going to come from finally Doing The Thing. No; you can have it just as you already are. Really.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying people should never have goals or dreams or stuff they want to accomplish or that having those things is somehow categorically bad. And I'm not saying it's necessarily bad to think, "You know, x area has always been a challenge for me & I think I'd like to work on that a bit." And I'm definitely not suggesting we all settle or be fine with mediocrity or never strive to improve and achieve amazing things. (After all, that's kind of one of the greatest thrills of being human.)

Just, maybe think really hard about why you want to accomplish a thing and what you hope to get out of it, and be really honest with yourself about whether it's coming from a place of "You know, I'd like to improve at x / Hey, x would be super cool!" vs. a place of "x thing about me is wrong/lacking/broken/not good enough/needs fixing and I won't really feel okay with myself until things are different." There's a difference between wanting something, and feeling like you need it in order to be okay with yourself.

(I know about this. I did this to myself, about running and so many other things, over and over again, for a long time. In some ways, it's an ongoing battle.)

So, what if for New Year's Resolutions we maybe stopped with thinking about how we're not good enough and all the ways we need fixing and improving and all the stuff we maybe feel ashamed and guilty about and instead said, "I and my life are not perfect but still actually pretty great already, what would make my life even BIGGER and RICHER and FULLER?"

Perhaps taking a fun class and learning something new? Not because "I am lonely and isolated and socially broken and that needs fixing" but because it will add richness and depth to your life?

Perhaps trying a new fruit or vegetable every week or month or whatever, not because "I am an unhealthy bad eater and that is shameful and needs fixing" but because trying new things and discovering new things to like and enjoy is good times?

Perhaps convincing a friend to join you once a week or whatever for a fun physical activity, not because "I am not active/skinny/fit enough and that needs fixing," but because it's nice to hang out with a friend you maybe wouldn't see otherwise and because it feels good to move your body in the world?

Or maybe, "Yes, jerkbrain, I hear all the stuff about me that you think is bad and shameful and not good enough, but maybe we ignore all that this year and try to make life more awesome in one of these other ways that is completely not related to that stuff at all"?

Of course, sometimes people do make New Year's Resolutions to address serious health concerns like addiction, substance abuse, managing chronic health conditions, etc. because those are things that DO legitimately need fixing, ideally sooner rather than later, because the consequences of not fixing them can be so disastrous. And come to it, I think in those situations you have to do whatever works for you. But I also know that there is quite a long history in the world of 1) outcome-based goals (say, quitting smoking) not really working unless there is some serious planning and ongoing support in place, and 2) shame and guilt rarely being productive emotions. So sometimes when I hear of people making NYRs like "quit smoking" or "actually follow x diet my doctor has put me on for a diagnosed condition," I can't help wondering if a New Year's Resolution is really the right caliber tool for that particular job. {shrug}

Yes. So. TO SUMMARIZE:

You're probably not perfect but prooobbbably still pretty great.

You don't need 'fixing.'

You won't magically be happy/satisfied/at peace with yourself when you finally do the Big Thing you for some reason feel you need to do.

Go forth in 2017 and do something that makes your awesome life/self that much more awesome.

:)

Evolution of a Distance Runner: Running & Privilege

I wouldn't blame you if you cringed a little when you read that title. Privilege is a hot, touchy subject these days. Seeing as it plays an important role around a lot of the work I do re: access and equity in math education, though, it's hard for me to ever completely abandon that lens.

I actually started writing this post over a year ago for a variety of reasons and have worked on it on and off, because it's a tricky one and I want to get it as close to right as possible (though I'm kind of just accepting that it won't be perfect and please let me know if I miss or screw up something important). Unfortunately it feels a bit timely right now, so while that wasn't intended, perhaps it's fortuitous in some ways.

In a (really oversimplified) nutshell, privilege just means anything about your appearance, background, experience, etc. that makes it so that certain situations are a little easier for you to navigate than they would be otherwise. I'm white so people are less likely to assume I'm doing something criminal and more likely to assume I'm educated, so that's a certain kind of privilege. If I'm feeling lazy I can grab takeout for dinner and not really worry about how it costs like 3x as much as it would cost to buy groceries & cook, so that's another type of privilege. I grew up in an environment where people told me, "Of course you are smart and will go to college and be successful," so that is another type of privilege. I've sat in any number of classes or meetings where a dude repeated the same idea I just said and instead of ignoring it people would tell him how smart he was and what a great idea he'd come up with, so that is a kind of not-privilege.

Basically, it just means that some of us get to play the video game of life on harder or easier settings because of things we didn't choose, like race, gender identity, who our parents are, where we were born, how our bodies are made, etc. You can still win the game if your settings are harder; you just have to work a whole lot harder than someone playing on the easiest settings.

Some people really, truly don't believe privilege exists, and that if you got something good in life, it's either random good luck or because you worked hard and earned and/or deserved it, and if something turned out shitty for you, it's either because you didn't work hard enough or are just super unlucky. (This idea is called meritocracy.) And, I get it; it's really comforting to think that we all get exactly what we work for and deserve, and scary to think that there are parts of that that are completely out of our control. And if you've never been exposed to anything different, your own privilege very well may be completely invisible to you. Alas, privilege is extremely real and has been scientifically documented over and over and over.

(If you are interested in learning more about privilege in general and how it works, I really like these two posts:

• Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is
• A short comic gives the simplest, most perfect explanation of privilege I've ever seen)

Something I've thought a lot about in recent years is how different types of privilege play into what I think of as "recreational fitness," ie, spending more time and effort on athletic- or fitness-oriented than is strictly necessary for making your living and/or maintaining reasonably good health & wellness. For example, if you do endurance sports or other athletic/fitness related things and spend time on the internet, this will probably not be the first time you've seen memes like these:

Like I've said before, I understand that most of the time pithy sound bites like this are intended more to motivate than to describe philosophical positions or literal beliefs. And as long as people get that, it isn't really the end of the world. But I have read enough blog posts and talked to enough overly zealous athletes/fitness buffs to know that, for an unsettling number of people, that is not the case.

These folks comprise what I have started to think of as the fitness meritocracy. (Again meritocracy is the idea that people get what they've earned, and have earned what they've gotten.) So, I call these folks the fitness meritocracy because they seem to believe that if your body or physical fitness or abilities are not to your liking, it is mostly because of your own actions and choices and if you want things to be different, all you have to do is make different choices; and likewise, that people who are strong and fit and have nice bodies (read: bodies that fit a certain rather narrowly defined stereotype) got that way mostly from their own hard work, sacrifice, perseverance, etc.

Again, it's a nice idea. It's comforting and lets us feel in control. Like social meritocracy, however, "fitness meritocracy" just doesn't pass muster.

Do people's actions and choices play important roles in how their lives and situations turn out? Are there things we can do sometimes, in certain situations, to make changes? Undoubtedly, YES. I'm certainly not saying that our lives are pre-determined and we're all just adrift in the universe, at the complete mercy of our circumstances. We all get choices and we all have to live with the consequences.

Are people's actions and choices the sole determinants of those things? Do we have the sole power to make and re-make our lives and bodies and situations in any way we like, if we just work hard enough? Unfortunately, NO. There are a lot of things we can control, but there are also plenty of things we can't, and sometimes those things are way, way bigger than we are.

I think about this in my own running. Obviously my goal is to get stronger and faster, and there are a lot of things I can control around that:

• I can do my runs, even when I'm tired or the weather is crappy or there's something else I would rather be doing.
• I can go to bed on time so that I'm not dragging myself through workouts, even though I'd rather stay up into the wee hours reading the internet great works of literature.
• I can eat nutritious foods in reasonable portions at the right times, even though life would be so much more awesome if I just had half a pizza & three glasses of wine every night.
• I can think through my week ahead of time and plan and move things around and negotiate and whatever else I need to do to make sure I get, if not all my running in, as much of it as possible.
• I can be consistent about my strength work and massages to help me avoid injury, and see appropriate doctors/PTs/etc. if I get injured anyway.
• I can stretch and roll and do all the good recovery things, even though it sucks and I'd rather sit on the couch drinking wine & watching Netflix & playing 2048.

But, it's worth thinking about why I'm able to control these things:

• I can do my runs *at all, ever* because I am able-bodied and (by and large) free of major health problems and have the expendable income for serviceable running shoes & clothes.
• I can exercise in public without fear of body shaming or mistreatment because by and large I 'fit the mold' of what society thinks of when they think about ladies doing exercise (fairly average size & body shape, cis, etc.).
• I can do my runs in my own neighborhood because I live in a safe, clean neighborhood with serviceable sidewalks, and even if I didn't, I could drive my car to safe, clean trails or to the gym that I pay for with my expendable income.
• I am able to control the minor health issues I do have thanks to the health insurance (that I have thanks to my full-time job with benefits) that lets me see doctors and get prescription medications at affordable prices.
• I can sleep eight hours a night because I only have to work one full-time job and have no dependents to care for.
• I can choose nutritious foods because my paycheck and lack of crushing debt means I can afford to buy and eat pretty much whatever I want. Also I can afford to live not in a food desert, and have a car, and access to easy public transit, which means it is fairly easy (parking non-withstanding) to get to any number of stores that sell fresh, nutritious foods. (Hell, I can even get a fancy take-out salad at about fifty restaurants within a three block radius, because San Francisco.)
• I can get quality massages and strength coaching because 1) job 2) no dependents/crushing debt 3) free time (one job, fairly flexible, no dependents) 4) car.
• Yes, I've worked very hard to get into the schools I've attended and earn the degrees I needed to get the jobs I've had and to be successful in those jobs. But that stuff was made at the very least more probable in part thanks to growing up in a white, suburban, working/middle-class family near reasonably good schools that prioritized education and supported me however they could. Privilege often has a domino effect that way (as does lack of privilege).

Not everyone has those things, which is why fitness memes & articles that offer advice like, "All you need is a pair of running shoes!" "Running is free, just go outside!" "Just start with 30 minutes!" etc. are a bit problematic. I understand that this intended to encourage people and make getting started feel less intimidating, but often it misses some critical challenges and makes some serious assumptions about fitness privilege.

A pair of running shoes is really not all you need, and even if it were, not everyone has that. (For a while I helped "coach"--which mostly meant organize and cheerlead--a small running group at the high school where I taught. We found out through a series of conversation that one rather unlikely boy kind of wanted to join & run the 5K that the group had targeted for later in the year but never came because he felt ashamed that he didn't have running shoes and his family couldn't afford them. The faculty took up a collection & we took him to RoadRunner Sports & got him a pair. He came to every run after that and eventually ran the 5K and it kind of changed his life, at least for that year.)

Not everyone can "just go outside" (many of my students lived in an area where it was literally not safe to be outside your house beyond going to and from the car/bus/etc.) and not everyone has 30 free minutes a day or even each week (many of the adults at the community college where I taught briefly managed school on top of multiple jobs, single parenting multiple kids, and other responsibilities, like the woman who cried in my office about how she never slept enough because she was up most nights caring for her father who was dying of stomach cancer).

Not everyone can shop for, pay for, and prepare a kale-quinoa-beetroot post-run recovery salad.

Is this post meant to make you feel guilty about getting your hours of running/riding in in your lovely safe neighborhood and/or using your expendable income and/or somewhat flexible schedule to eat well and/or get to the gym/that group fitness class/run a million races a year?

Not at all! I think one of the most pervasive myths surrounding the idea of privilege is that we should all feel guilty for the privilege that we have and apologize for it and/or not use it. No one is saying that. Certainly not me, who pays a coach and has a gym membership & shops at the ridiculously overpriced local organic market half a mile from my house and spends 10 hours a week running.

However, at the bare minimum, I do think it's important for those of us with certain kinds of privilege to a) recognize that that we are privileged in those ways, and b) appreciate everything that privilege allows us to do. I think it's important for us to realize that not 100% of our success in the health/fitness/endurance sports world is due to our own efforts, and not to jump to making judgments about the decisions other people make around health/fitness/etc. and assume that they *could* do x but are just *choosing* y because they're lazy/undisciplined/lack work ethic/don't really care/whatever.

I also think that, ideally, with great privilege comes great responsibility--that we have an obligation to use at least some of our privilege to improve the lives of those with less privilege in whatever way we can, whether that means volunteering or donating or mentoring or helping out someone in need without any expectation of getting something in return. Your privilege is a wonderful thing when it is put to good use to help out those around you! (Full disclosure -- Personally, I can't claim a *stellar* track record around this, but in light of recent events, it's something I'm planning to work harder at in the near future.)

I have more to say on this topic in the future, but I felt like I needed to get my general position out there with a little explanation first. Hopefully it was useful or informative!

What's a blog good for anyway?

Well, so much for not injuring myself early-on.

On my long run last Sunday, I felt a tiny twinge in my left calf/Achilles area. Nothing major; just one of those niggly little pains that shows up sometimes for no good reason and disappears quickly enough. Otherwise I'd had a great run so I barely thought anything of it.

On Tuesday, I had an easy 10 on the schedule. The first bit was fine, but then after two or three miles, I started to feel something in that same calf. You know how it is; I waffled & wavered about whether it was really there, and how bad it was, and whether I was being smart or paranoid by considering cutting the run short.

Mile 4: "Mmmm, yeah, that kinda hurts."

Mile 5: "Yep, still hurts, and now I am five miles from home."

Mile 6: "Yep! Pain! Ow ow ow pain!"

I had my phone so I could have called a cab but to be honest I'm pretty sure no one would have let me in their car at that point. Also, it would definitely feel worse after stopping for a traffic light, but then kind of-sort of feel a little better after a few minutes of running, and I'd find myself thinking, "Ugh, this sucks, but it's not that bad, just ____ more to go." But then every now and then I'd feel a very sharp pain in my Achilles tendon and panic a little. After a while I also noticed that my right knee was starting to hurt (and I don't generally have knee pain).

The bad news is, by the time I got home, I was actively limping. The good news, on the other hand, is that at least after an hour or two of walking around barefoot, it felt about ten times better (but still hurt pretty badly if I tried to stand on the ball of my left foot).

For all but the most charmed of runners, this (some injury that seems to appear out of nowhere) is a thing that sometimes happens. It has certainly happened to me more than once!

And here's the other good news: I have gotten waaaaaay better about how I handle it.

• Angela handling a sudden, debilitating running injury ca.2008: "INJURED WHO'S INJURED LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
• Angela handling same, ca.2011: "But, like, injury's just a state of mind, man. All that matters is whether I feel like I can run 10 miles safely."
• Angela handling same, ca.2014: "I am definitely, definitely injured and cannot even THINK of running and this SUCKS and I hate my body, running, life, the universe, and EVERYTHING. If anyone needs me I will be sobbing under the covers with a bottle of cote d'rhone."

The nice part about becoming older and wiser is that you remember going down all those paths, and also how much they sucked and also did not fix the situation. When all this happened Tuesday night I could sense how easy it would be to let myself fall into the Pit of Despair that running injuries have been for me in the past, especially since this was supposed to be my "peak" week of base training, 50 easy miles before cutting back to add speed & tempo & prep for a September 10K.

But, thankfully, I caught myself falling into that trap & instead tried to react to it the way I know I should react in a race that has taken a crappy turn: "Well, look, this is happening, and throwing a tantrum about it isn't going to make it NOT happen. So let's just accept it and start from there."

I think just getting into that state of mind let me think more rationally and come up with some objective, non-emotionally charged facts, like:

• It isn't even mid-August and my 'A' race isn't until December.
• Trying to run on it every day or every other day "just to see" is almost guaranteed to drag the healing process out even longer.
• A few days or a week or even two weeks of not running will suck a lot psychologically, but it is unlikely to have a huge effect on my race day fitness this far out.

The other thing that's helped, honestly, is having this blog, where I've recorded just about everything that's happened to me running-wise for the last five years. When this first happened, I remember thinking, "Didn't something like this happen to me two years ago in Vancouver? Also, I have a vague memory of something similar happening like five years ago too during the summer. Or was it the other leg?"

Nope; it was the same leg, both times. Not surprising, considering this is the leg my PT was always raising his eyebrows about & constantly cupping & grinding on with various tools, and also the leg where I've had the plantar fasciitis (mostly caused by tight calf muscles, it turns out).

And guess what also definitely happened the first time? The weird right knee pain, which I'd completely forgotten about until I went back and read that blog post. (I'm pretty sure it's some kind of stride/compensation thing.)

The icing on the rational, objective, non-melodramatic cake? Being able to look back at exactly how long each had taken to heal. Both times it seemed like the end of the world (or at least my 'A' race), but in June 2011, the injury apparently happened on a Tuesday & I was back to 6 easy miles the following Monday, and in 2014, the worst of it happened on a Thursday & the following Tuesday I was healthy enough to run a 10 mile track workout.

So. Self, I know you won't like it, but can you handle 4-6 days of taking it easy/cross training?

Answer: Yes. Yes, I can. (Thanks, blog!)

(Update: I wrote this a few days ago and I think it's mostly fine now.)

Your yearly reminder that quitting is an important life skill.

So here we are, a month into the new year, up to 20+ miles a week & 8+ miles at once; my legs are feeling good, I haven't had the slightest hint of pain or discomfort, and the spot where I had the stress fracture feels completely normal. Given all that, I decided to wanted to give some faster running on the ground a try this week. On Tuesday I had some mile repeats on the schedule, and I thought those were probably a good choice for a first workout (as opposed to say, 200m's).

As I come back from this injury and start training again, I'm trying to be realistic, both in terms of 1) not pushing my body so hard so soon that I get re-injured and 2) remembering that it's now a good six months since I was in reasonably good shape. This attitude is a little bit at odds with my usual impulse to DO ALL THE WORKOUTS and MAKE ALL THE PACES, no matter what, no excuses, so it seemed like a good time to remind myself of the many virtues of quitting.

Quick recap: Never quitting sounds really good in theory, but think about it. What if you never quit anything? Never quit a relationship you'd outgrown? A job that wasn't working? A bad habit? A club that or hobby that's become more of a chore than a good time? An argument where you realize you're wrong? Something that seemed like a good idea at the time but now is clearly really, really not?

Quitting gets a bad rap, but in truth, it's a key life skill that all adults should master. To go all metaphorical on you, quitting is like weeding the garden. It keeps the soil fresh and tilled and creates room for things that are working to grow and blossom as well as space for fresh, new things to take root. The impulse to quit can also serve as a safety valve to keep us from doing ourselves serious harm.

Of course, sticking with things and seeing commitments through is an equally important skill; the wisdom (as it seems to be with many things) is in learning to tell the difference. Sticking with something because it just has to get done or you gave your word or because it'll be worth it in the end is one thing; refusing to quit things purely on principle is just stupid. Your time and resources are worth more than that!

My workout was supposed to be five mile repeats at 7:25 pace with 1:30 jogs in between. Now, first off, it does not make me feel great to see that pace on my schedule for mile repeats, but such is life when your ass has been parked on the elliptical for the better part of six months. Second, doing the whole workout including a warm-up and cool-down would have been a 9-10 mile run, and given that my longest run so far has only been 8 miles, I wasn't crazy enough to attempt the whole thing anyway. But I thought, "Eh, I'll do three and then do two more 7:25s on the elliptical at the same effort level." Given that I ran a sub-22 5K in December when I wasn't training and now I've had about four weeks of some training, you really wouldn't think (or at least I did not think) that 7:25s would be all that big of a deal. Like, effort required, yes, but not like hard hard.

Har har har.

You guys. 'Humbling' doesn't even begin to cover it.

I gave myself some time to get up to speed & when I thought, "This feels about right," glanced at my watch. And then I kind of wanted to cry when it said 8:30.

Sigh. Fine, I thought, and revved the engines a little more.

Now I did run three mile repeats at more or less the right pace (7:21, 7:26, 7:22), but finishing every single one of them felt like the end of a 5K, and that was with stopping at red lights. (Side note: I may have uttered a "Dear sweet lord Jesus, thank you" at every one.) It was not pretty. More than once I wanted to shout to the universe, "I RAN THREE BACK-TO-BACK 7:00ISH MILES IN DECEMBER UNTRAINED, WHAT THE HELL!"

There were two interesting things worth noting.

1) Once I started running fast, I had a very hard time getting my heart rate up. At that pace it should be *at least* 180 and it took almost the entire first mile--during which I felt like I was dying--to get above 165. (Normally for me 165 = running casually up a steepish hill.) Even in the last one, I only *averaged* 180. That is really, really weird.

2) I did forget that the first mile was uphill, so 7:21 when I was shooting for 7:25 really was probably WAY too fast. Like maybe that mile should have been closer to 7:40ish.

At this point I was so. So. Done. Maybe a little part of me had been thinking, "Eh, if I do 3 and they go pretty well, *maybe* I'll just go ahead and knock off the last two so I can say I did the whole workout." But that was so not happening, both because I felt half dead and also because I could feel how hard running even just that much faster had been on my poor legs which are NOT used to this right now. It just seemed like the worst idea ever. And, to be honest, I'm not sure even just doing two more time/effort wise on the elliptical would have been smart, having just experienced what that effort level apparently was today.

So, I quit. I still logged 7.3 miles for the day and logged my first successful speed workout since July (if you don't count the December 5K), and honestly, that really did feel like enough for where I am right now. I do not feel bad about it.

Things that are and are not the main thing.

Recently I finished reading Matt Fitzgerald’s latest, How Bad Do You Want It?, because Matt Fitzgerald and duh. To vastly oversimplify things, the book is about the psychological aspect of endurance sports, and how the more we learn about optimizing training and performance, the larger a role those mental and emotional pieces seem to play (for better or worse).

I have this feeling that what this book will mean to an endurance athlete & what they get out of it probably has a lot to do with where they are in their “career”/”journey”/whatever you want to call it as such. (As an extremely non-professional athlete, neither of those words feel right to me, but I can’t come up with anything better.) I think if I had read this book say five years ago, it wouldn’t have meant as much. Like, I might have just shrugged & been like, “Cool story, bro.” But reading it in January 2016, it resonated with me at some critical frequency. I think I read it in two days which is fast even for me.

Sometime soon (whatever that means) I really want to sit down and give it a proper review, but for the time being I’m still letting my thoughts marinate. I bring it up because some of the big ideas Fitzgerald touches on seemed connected to a fantastic blog post I read this morning courtesy of Mario Fraioli. (If you don’t get The Morning Shakeout, you should! Or you should at least check it out to see if you should.)

The post, The Art of Keeping the Main Thing The Main Thing, was penned by elite runner Phoebe Wright. Have you ever had a moment where something’s been bothering you for a while and you couldn’t put your finger on it, and then someone comes along and perfectly sums it up with exactly the right words and you go YES! YES, THAT! THANK YOU!

This was one of those moments.

During the time I’ve been reading and writing blog posts about running, there is a certain genre of post that is obsessive about little details and their effect on race day outcomes.

• "My race was almost ruined because I forgot my extra special never-fail breakfast and we had to drive all over x city in order to find it. DISASTER AVERTED."
• "In order to run my best I know it is critical for me to do y warm-up, exactly, and god help the fool that gets in my way."
• "I was awake with nerves most of the night so I knew from the start that my race was doomed."
• "Here are my extremely detailed taper nutrition/hot yoga plans, I have done exactly this for every race and this is obviously why I have PR’d every time."

And yes; I have definitely authored my share.

Something about it always bothered me, though; something I couldn’t quite get my head around.

Because the details are important, right? Aren't the details what separates a good race from a great one? Find out what works for you and then do exactly that every time, right?

Just a couple of paragraphs into Phoebe’s blog post, it hit me:

”We’ve all heard the advice: “It’s about the little things,” they say, “Do the 1%” they say.

Well, this is kind of misleading advice. There, I said it. Because focusing on the 99% is probably going to get you farther than focusing on the 1%. That’s math. Or common sense? Sometimes, we get too zoomed in and can’t see the forest through the trees. This is a problem. It is good to take care of the little things, as long as the little things don’t become the main things.

*nailed it*

”Let’s talk for a second about the things that aren’t the main things:
What you ate pre-race.
If you got a cup of coffee.
If you got a massage.
What spikes [or whatever] you are wearing.
How you felt in your pre race workout
What your weight is.
What the pace is supposed to be.
Doing too many strides.
Doing too little strides.
Doing too fast strides.
How much you hydrated.
Talking about all the race plans.
How much you were on your feet yesterday.
How much you slept last night.
The workout your competitor tweeted about.
How fast you did your warm up.

Is she looking directly at me? I think she might be looking directly at me.

I’m a detail person. I LOVE details. Especially details that involve numbers! I love love love obsessing and quantifying and organizing and analyzing. Give me a good data set and you may not see me again for days. A data set drawn from my own obsessive, overly competitive hobby? I’m lucky if I remember to feed myself.

(OH GOD HOW MANY GRAMS OF PROTEIN AM I BEHIND NOW????)

Part of this is just my personality (data analysis just makes me happy), but I felt like there was something else going on with the running part, particularly when it comes to what does or doesn’t happen on race day. Cue Phoebe:

”Reasons why the details are easy to focus on:

1. Details help you take the pressure off. It’s like a defense mechanism. It resolves you from responsibility of your race. If you don’t race well, it is a nice excuse to fall back on. “Well, I would have raced well, except…”

It’s really scary to try and lose and have to be like, “Well. I’m not as fit as I’d like.” Or “I didn’t try as hard as I wanted to.” That makes you feel bad on the inside. Where if you raced badly because of that Chicken Phad Thai spicy level 4 stomach issue, then it’s not really your fault!"

Ah! Right in the gut. HOW DID SHE KNOW??

"2. Details allow you to zoom in so much that you don’t have to think about the race or the outcome. It is scary to line up and have no clue if you are going to win. It is stressful."

Truth. Keeping your head in the game when you really care is uncomfortable and stressful, so any excuse to take one’s head OUT of the game (while still pretending to be in it—‘Oh, whether I’m going to have a gel every 20 minutes or 25 minutes is CRITICAL TO MY RACE and obviously a VERY IMPORTANT THING to focus on right now’) can seem super attractive.

"3. Details allow you to feel like the race result is predetermined. If you take care of all the details, then it is the universe’s way of saying, “Don’t worry, Phe, all the evidence suggests that you have already won this race.”

I think another way of describing this last one is “bargaining.” Okay, so maybe you didn’t do as many long runs as you should have and cut a few speed workouts short, but you carb-loaded, slept well, and wore the right shoes, so OBVIOUSLY you SHOULD PR.

(Or, alternatively, you ate like crap all week, barely slept, and probably picked the wrong shoes, so no need to stress yourself out trying too hard since a personal worst is pretty much guaranteed.)

”Let’s talk about the main things that are the main things:

1. The work you put in over the last few months.
2. Your mindset.

THAT’S IT.”

On the one hand, it sounds liberatingly simple. Work hard, and get your mind right. That’s it.

But the simplicity of it is precisely what makes it so scary. It frees you of obsessing over details, but it also takes any excuses off the table. It bans the distractions that keep you from having to keep your head in the game.

Now, don’t get me/Phoebe wrong (because now I’m kind of going to speak for her a little). We shouldn’t completely ignore details. We should definitely do everything we can to have our best possible race, including eating what works for us, wearing the gear we’re comfortable with, doing our best to be rested and fresh, warming up however works best for us, etc. But we should never fall into the trap of thinking that those things are going to make or break our race (except in the most extreme situations we have no control over anyway) if we’ve done the work.

I’m hoping I’ll be able to keep this in the front of my mind as I start actually, like, running real races this year. Definitely book marking the page to come back to….

SRM WEEK 16 OF 20: Yellow Flags...

Greeting from the Inland Empire! Try not to be jealous that my life is all glamour, all the time.

Also, MAN, things got weird and/or real this week.

Weird-ness and/or Real-ness Factor #1: Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was like, "La la la, this training cycle is SOOOO easy, what are people even complaining about all the time???" Well; let the record show that this week was marked by a couple of days when I Just Could Not, from the first couple of miles in. (I mean, I'm not saying I Didn't in all cases; just that I reallllly didn't want to.) Not because I was doing anything hard, even; my body just felt like I was starting every run at the 15 mile mark. I'm calling this one "bad news and good news;" bad news because it sucks, but good news because I'm pretty sure that it's mostly due to the fact that I've run over 40 miles for the last 4 weeks in a row and I literally cannot remember the last time that happened.

Weird-ness and/or Real-ness Factor #2: I've had this weird sensation on some of my harder runs lately where my body is exhausted, and I can feel it's exhausted, and I soooo very badly want to not be running, and yet...physically it kinda just doesn't seem that bad? The legs just kind of keep chugging, even though I feel like I should be slogging? I feel like this is maybe the flip side of #1, so again, I'm calling it bad news & good news.

Weird-ness and/or Real-ness Factor #3: For the first time this training cycle (!), I didn't get all my weekly mileage in. And while that sucks, I am still pretty darn happy with the fact that I managed to go 15 weeks before it happened. I didn't miss any runs (I've still only missed one this entire cycle), and when I cut things short this week, I did it for good reasons.

One of the reasons is slightly more concerning than the other. For the last couple of weeks, I've had this tender little lump on my left tibia, and I know it's a result of putting more stress on that part of my leg since I've been working on using my left arch correctly. What I can tell you for sure is that it's NOT a stress fracture (something I learned when I had one last year was that once you've had one, you never mistake something else for it ever again), but it's definitely a spot I've been paying attention to because I very very much want it to not BECOME one.

On Sunday I was supposed to run 16 miles (a cut-back long run), and for the first time, that spot kinda-sorta hurt enough that I thought very hard about how important it was to finish that run. I went back & forth about how far I was willing to go on it, and then the pain would go away for a while but come back after stopping at a light, then go away again, then come back. And eventually I settled on two thoughts:

1) I kept flashing back to fall 2013 when I was training for NVM the first time around, and had some mild pain in my calf, and kept pushing through it, and it got worse, and I kept pushing through it, and then by Christmas I DID have a stress fracture & couldn't run again for 2 months.

2) I could not help but think back to exactly one year ago to the day, training for the same race, & running 18 miles on a sketchy not-totally-healed hip because I was having panic attacks about not getting in every single mile of every single run. Afterward I got on a plane for the same work trip, and by the time I got off I couldn't put weight on that leg and couldn't run for that entire week.

So yeah; those two thoughts together were enough for me to declare those 16 miles just Not That Important relative to a thing that is hurting a month out from your goal race. I keep reminding myself that Coach Tom has said my training plan is designed with the assumption that I will do 90% of it, and if one is going to fall short by a few miles so that certain bones can fully recover, the week in between two big long runs seems like a pretty good time to do it.

~*~*~SRM WEEK 16 OF 20~*~*~

Grand Total: 33 miles

* 24.75 easy
* 7.5 speed/tempo

Monday: Rest

Man, déjà vu all over again. Busted feet first thing in the morning, work insanity, & no karate. :(

Tuesday: 1.75 warm up, 5 x 800 alternating 5K pace & marathon pace, 1 cool down = 5.25 total

Speed work at Kezar with SF Track Club. The assigned workouts are usually shorter than what RunCoach has me doing on a regular basis, so I've been trying to arrive ~20 minutes early & stay a little later to get in some extra mileage. No time for that today, so this one ended up being on the short side.

When Coach Tom explained this workout, it sounded kind of hard to me, especially given that my legs were still feeling heavy after Sunday's 21 miler & my warm-up had been in the 10:30 pace range. The idea of running even one 7:15 800m just did not sound like something my legs were up to. And although 8:15 is certainly more comfortable than 7:15, it's not what I usually think of as "recovery pace." So, I had told my training partner (who was watching our pace) that he was free to give me a verbal kick in the ass if at any point I started to lag.

But then a funny thing happened. We started our first fast 800m & my legs just kind of took over. I mean yes, there was effort, but it really did not feel that hard, & we actually finished every fast interval in more like the 6:58 range than 7:15. And the 8:15 "slow" intervals that I had been worried about feeling hard (which were more like 7:45's, I think) felt weirdly comfortable. The whole thing was over before I knew it & I finished feeling like I could have gone a few more rounds with no problem.

So, like. Not sure what's up with that.

Wednesday: 5 easy / karate

Feeling very antsy & uneasy with Tuesday's short workout so got in a few easy miles before karate. I think the mileage was fine but the timing maybe was not, because...

Thursday: 10 6 easy

OMG. I can't remember the last time a run felt this bad. Not painful, but like I had lead in my shoes--just dragging myself through every step. And also kind of lightheaded. And just exhausted. (See: #1 above.) When I just feel "Ugh," I almost always push through whatever I had planned, but this just felt on a whole other level. I mean, I still *could* have dragged myself through the entire 10 miles without killing myself, but I had a big interval workout the next day & I kind of felt like I was in a situation where I had to make a choice between the two. In the end I decided to cut this one short (which was still REALLY hard) in hopes of not being a wreck for the intervals.

I doubt this was PURELY because of running 5 miles the day before when it's usually a rest day, but between that & two weeks of several bigger, longer runs, I think the cumulative effect just hit me particularly hard that day.

Friday: 2 warm up, 6 x 1 mile @ 10K pace / 1:30 jog, 2 cool down = 10.75.

I would have preferred to do this one at the track so it would be easier to hit the right pace consistently, but the logistics of the day dictated otherwise. Womp womp. So, I got to do these on rolling hills while dealing with pedestrians & a good bit of wind. As a result my pace was all over the place between 7:15 & 7:35. I tried to stick to the right level of effort, though, & was (thankfully!) able to finish the whole workout with no problem. (Though MAN did it wipe me out. See #2 above.)

Saturday: Rest

I am not too proud to admit I toyed with the idea of getting in some easy miles to make up for the lost ones on Thursday, but was then reminded by my achey legs not to be a frickin dumbass.

Sunday: 16 long 6 easy

See #3 above. Uggggghhhh this was frustrating. I had a 2:30 flight so was feeling smug about how I'd gotten up at 8:00 on a weekend to get the run done beforehand. Things started out pretty schlubby (I think my first mile was almost 11:00; see #1 above) which kind of seemed like par for the course this week. But, over time, even though my body still felt exhausted, I got into a rhythm & weirdly felt like I could run comfortably for a long time. (See #2 above) So yeah. It was super frustrating to feel like I needed to stop when I was otherwise totally capable of getting it done, but I'm trying to be mature about it.

SRM WEEK 5 OF 20: DFL > DNF > DNS & Other Lies

We have, of course, talked before about how pithy motivational sayings are sometimes big, fat lies that might inspire you to work harder but also might inspire you to make really dumb decisions that do more harm than good.

Case in point:

I don't know about you but this one is up there with "Pain is
temporary, pride is forever" on my eye-roll-o-meter.

As with all the pithy motivational memes, I understand the point people are trying to make. We're trying to remind people that finishing is an accomplishment, and you should be proud of it even if you're DFL, because lots of people DON'T finish. And, if it turns out you don't finish for some reason, then, hey, at least you put in the effort to start and give it a try, because the vast majority of people don't.

I get that. I do. But can we also agree that there are many, many circumstances where it's just not true? Because *man* I am regretting running that half marathon last Saturday. I regret getting up at 4 a.m. on a Saturday. I regret losing the sleep. I regret spending five hours in my car & using 200 miles worth of gas.

Now, all of that would have been worth it if I'd been able to do what I'd planned (13 comfortable miles at marathon pace). But the weather didn't cooperate, and in a desperate attempt to get *something* out of it, I ended running a lot harder than I'd planned, and that's thrown a bit of a monkey wrench into my plans this week.

Having finished my 4 weeks of hill prep, I was supposed to start the 4 weeks of speed prep on Tuesday, but it turns out that I ran too hard on Saturday for that to really be an option. I've felt like poop all week and my always-questionable, injury-prone right leg has been nagging me non-stop. I got in two short, easy runs, but even that, I think, was probably too much. Also, I'm planning to run Bay to Breakers 12K & pace a friend to a sub-one-hour finish this next Sunday, and the fact that I'm still limping a little is making me kind of nervous about that.

Ohhhhh so very, very false.

So yeah; in all honesty, I wish I hadn't even gone, and barring that, I wish in mile 3 once I realized how miserable things were going to be that I had just called it a day. It's not like just finishing a half is any sort of real accomplishment for me at this point, and I certainly didn't need another medal.

You know those internet campaigns where people tweet-o-gram or insta-face or whatever pictures or descriptions of them doing "uncool" or taboo things, like not wearing make-up or telling their salary history, and there's some sort of clever hash tag? Part of me kind of wants to do this for DNF-ing / DNS-ing races. BREAK THE SILENCE!! RAISE AWARENESS!! DESTROY THE STIGMA!! #yesallquitters #talkdnf

Because, really. There are good reasons to push through discomfort in races and keep going, but there are also many very good reasons to quit, and if I had a nickel for everyone I ever met or talked to who pushed through the pain and didn't quit and ended up injured or sacrificing a bunch of recovery time for lackluster results or just plain feeling blah about the experience and like it wasn't really worth it, I'd at least be able to, like, I dunno, buy some ice cream or something.

(On a related note, I ran across this post the other day. Clearly the author is my people. :) )

~*~*~SRM WEEK 5 OF 20~*~*~

Grand Total: 10 miles, all easy + 3 strength workouts

Monday: a.m. strength / p.m. karate

Tuesday: 4 easy.

Originally scheduled for this day was an 8 mile progression run finishing in the 7:30 range, but I could tell as soon as I started running that nothing faster than ~9:30 miles was even remotely on the table. I felt completely worn out after two miles so decided not to push it any further.

Wednesday: a.m. strength / p.m. karate.

Soooo thanks to some hideous Bay Area traffic and an attempt at running some errands on the way home to save time, it took me 3 hours to get home from work. Don came home feeling sick & so decided not to go to class, and there was just. No. Way. I was getting back in a car during rush hour. So instead we went to get Indian food.

Thursday: a.m. strength / 6 easy.

The original plan called for 8 miles with 12-15 x 1:00/1:00. I suspected I probably would not be up for the full 8 miles yet but hoped I'd at least be able to give some of the fartleks a shot. But, running still felt tough even at easy paces, and when I started having pain in my right hip/hamstring/adductor (the sketchy one), I knew it was a bad idea. I should have turned around at 2 miles but then decided I should "tough it out" one more mile (so really two), and regretted it as soon as I got home because I putting weight on my right leg was incredibly painful. I tried rolling it out some, but since rollers can't magically repair damaged tissue, that ship had pretty much sailed.

Friday: Rest. I hoped if I gave my leg a day to heal I could do a short run on Saturday & a long run as scheduled on Sunday.

Saturday: Rest. Still limping & wanted to see if one more day off would save the long run.

Sunday: Rest. It still hurt enough that I knew running on it for any amount of time would make it worse, and I actually think I made it worse by doing a lot of standing & not moving at a birthday party & then a concert.

At first I was thinking "Meh, last week will just end up being a recovery week, I'll start the speed stuff this week." But, I kind of don't want to push my leg too hard this week and also want to make sure I'm fresher than usual for Bay 2 Breakers, so I think I'll probably just take it easy this week & try to get in some solid, pain-free miles rather than get overly ambitious with the speed work.

The week wasn't all bad, though! We had a lovely dinner party with friends Saturday night (not running gave me time to clean my house), met another at our local Beer Garden for birthday drinks Sunday afternoon, & then saw They Might Be Giants at the Fillmore on Sunday!

As Don put it, Nerd Rock FTW.

Every sold out show in The Fillmore's nearly 100 year history has its own poster hanging on the walls, and they give out the posters for free after the show.

The Art of Quitting

Quitting is a life skill. Just like changing a tire, boiling pasta, or treating a stain, knowing how and when to just give it up is something all grown-ass adults need to learn to do. Of course, not quitting is a critical life skill as well, but as the flashier, more dramatic of the two, not quitting gets plenty of attention without even trying. In the world of life skills, not quitting is the perky, gregarious blond with big boobs & a short skirt. Everyone wants to get with not quitting.

Quitting, on the other hand, often gets a bad rap. Quitting is the cool-quiet-brunette-in-the-corner-with-her-nose-in-a-book of adult life skills. A lot of the time people think she's lame & dorky & generally give her a wide berth, but once they find themselves in a situation where they end up getting to know her a little better, they usually realize she's got a lot more to offer than they'd first assumed.

Seriously. I don't know why we romanticize not quitting so much. How awful would your life be if you never stopped eating during a meal? Or never stopped drinking at a social event? Or refused to leave a job you hated? Or stayed in a horrible unhealthy relationship long past its expiration date? A well-adjusted adult has GOT to learn when to give it up & move on, and I'm sure we all have unfortunate stories about friends & loved ones who just never mastered the art of throwing in the towel.

From The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick),
by Seth Godin, which should really be required reading for all grown-ups.

Having said that, I must in the spirit of full disclosure admit that there are certain situations in which I have a better track record of appropriate & timely quitting than others. Back in the day I was pretty universally awful at knowing when to quit when it came to athletic pursuits. Witness the number of times I walked out of the gym as a teenager missing skin on my hands / came home from polo with bruises the size of citrus fruits / ended up in the doctor's office with a running injury. "BUT I AM NOT A QUITTER!" I insisted. "NOT QUITTING IS WHY I AM AWESOME!" Yes; look how awesome you are, sitting there on the sidelines doing nothing but regrowing skin/soft tissue/bones/blood vessels. Well done.

I am not perfect but these days I am considerably better at timely & appropriate quitting than I used to be, which is important because I spent most of Thursday debating whether I was going to try to run at all or not. Wednesday's run pretty much sucked due to generally just being tired & also running into an insane headwind for half the way, which I'm pretty sure led to less-than-stellar form, which then led to a right thigh (quads, adductor, & hamstring) that felt utterly trashed by the time I got to karate, and as of Thursday everything was still quite sore.

It wasn't an impending injury-type-hurt, but given my history with that right thigh/hip, I am not too keen on taking lots of risks with pain there. So by the time I got home, I'd settled on trying a little a running & seeing how it felt, but quitting at the first sign of more than the mildest of discomfort in that inner quad/hamstring/adductor region.

And therein lies the trouble.

It's all very well & good to say you'll quit in x scenario under y circumstances or what have you, but sometimes, even on a training run, it can be hard to make that decision, particularly when the main underlying principle of what you're training yourself to do is keep going in the face of incredible discomfort. The rational part of your brain understands the difference, but there are other parts that are like, "Wait, but...but you said...wait what?"

So I knew the smart thing to do would be to set up this run so that it would be easy to quit if I needed to. Instead of setting out on my usual six-mile route & hoping for the best (being 3 miles from home when the pain hits is not conducive to quitting), I decided to do a loop in my neighborhood that circles several city blocks & works out to about ~1.15 miles per lap. Yes, it meant more stop lights, but since I needed to keep careful tabs on how my leg was doing, that didn't seem like the worst thing ever. More importantly, it meant that worst case I'd never be much more than half a mile from home. I could walk it easily, and even if I shouldn't run it but lost that battle to the part of my brain that's still enamored with the busty blond, I'd be unlikely to do too much damage.

Thankfully running didn't seem to aggravate the soreness; in fact running was actually more comfortable than walking. For the first couple of laps I did have to stop every couple of blocks to shake out the tightness in my Achilles & deal with some cramping in my feet (which has been a thing lately), but after that most of the discomfort disappeared (or at least went back to a 1-2 out of 10 kind of intensity).

I almost always only run loops like this if I'm doing a really short run (say, under 4 miles) because the repetitiveness makes me crazy, and if I had really thought I would end up running the full six miles that way, I probably couldn't have faced it. I never felt great on this run, but every time I jogged past my house & check in with how I was feeling, I'd find myself thinking, "Eh, I can run one more lap." So I did, and one more, and one more, and one more, until my watch eventually (and rather anticlimactically) ticked off six miles. Sure, it was my slowest six-miler in literally years, but if I hadn't known I could quit at any time without needing to call a ride or walk some stupid distance home, I'm not sure I even would have attempted it.

So yeah. I encourage everyone to cultivate a healthy relationship with quitting. Don't be afraid of it. Don't turn your nose up at it. Develop your ability to keep going & not quit, absolutely; just be careful not to do it at the expense of making smart choices for the long term.

Three Cursed Marathons

So, once upon a time, I decided to quit rolling my eyes at full marathons & give it a shot, giving myself full permission to hate everything about both the preparation and the event itself, and never do it again if it turned out to just not be my bag (which I highly suspected it would not). Then and now, I felt like there was too much emphasis in the recreational running community on marathons (particularly running as many/as frequently as possible, regardless of quality) and not enough emphasis on just running better in general. But after twenty years of 5Ks, 10Ks, and half marathons, I just felt like it was something I should do once so I could speak with some small measure of authority on the subject.

("Oh, you're a distance runner!"
"Yep!"
"Neat! How many marathons have you done?"
{Mental face palm.}
I cannot even tell you how many conversations I have had with non-runners that went exactly like this. Cannot. Even. Tell you.)

And thus I came to Marathon #1: Cal International Marathon, in December 2011. Based on my long runs & other workouts, I felt confident I could run a ~8:00 pace comfortably, but since I was completely new to the distance, I wasn't all that attached to a particular finishing time--I just wanted to finish strong, feel good, & be able to say, "Yes, I have run that freakish, outsized, monstrosity of a novelty distance they call a marathon."

Then about 3 weeks before the race, I came down with an upper respiratory infection that made a lot of important activities (running, sleeping, breathing, etc.) incredibly difficult. I spent the week of Thanksgiving in bed at my mom's, sucking on my inhaler every hour or so & basically just trying to keep myself out of the emergency room. A week later I was doing a lot better, but still having asthma problems & using my inhaler quite a bit, and had been able to run maybe twice in the three weeks since I'd gotten sick. I thought very seriously about DNSing but then decided "Hey, maybe I'll be fine! And if not I can always quit."

Well, I did start. And immediately had an asthma attack. And I suck at quitting things. So I wheezed my way through an otherwise perfect race, sucking on my inhaler every two miles and trying not to black out, & finished in 3:47, which under the circumstances I felt was pretty respectable.

And weirdly, instead of walking away from that race as I'd planned going, "Ugh, that sucked, glad I don't ever have to do it again," I left with this nagging unsatisfied feeling. I knew I'd done the best I could under the circumstances, but I also knew I could do so much better if I had a shot at it healthy. Maybe just one more, I found myself thinking. Just to see.

So I spent the first part of the year running shorter races, & then in the summer signed up for round 2.

Marathon #2: Cal International Marathon, December 2012

I actually ran fewer miles in preparation for this race than for CIM 2011 but was finishing all my workouts much stronger and racing WAY faster at shorter distances. I'd had more and longer long runs and was finishing them more strongly and really felt like ~8:00 / mile should be a cake walk. Then 3 weeks before the race on my last long run, I finished completely unable to put any weight on my right foot. I limped home, called my sports medicine doctor & was instructed to ice & rest it & stay completely off of it until there was no pain whatsoever, and maybe I'd be able to run.

It did get better, but very slowly and very-two-steps-forward-one-step-back, so just like the year before, I ended up getting in maybe 2-3 short runs in those last three weeks. Going into race weekend the pain was totally gone; on the other hand, the forecast called for Sacramento to be pummeled by a freaking monsoon on Sunday between the hours of 6am-9am, and Jesus Christ did it ever deliver. For a second year in a row I seriously considered not running (though I wasn't alone this time), but once again decided that "Maybe it'll be fine! And if not I can always quit."

Long story short, the wind, rain, & standing water on the course made it a tough race as it was (we had 20mph headwinds in some places, I think), and by mile 11 I could barely put weight on my right foot again, which made me compensate with other muscles that eventually began shutting down in their turn. This was the closest I've ever come to quitting a race, and there was a LOT of stopping / limping in those last 12 miles. My gun time was ~3:55; I didn't even get a chip time because apparently the section of the starting mat I crossed shorted out thanks to the three or so inches of standing water at the start.

From the Sac bee

I still love this shot of Giraffy's, because it
just captures the entire experience so exquisitely.

Thankfully the pain in my foot turned out to be really bad tendinitis & not a stress fracture, but I was still in an air cast & not allowed to run for a month after.

Obviously, I could not let this be the last marathon I ever ran. So in January 2013, I started all over again.

Marathon #3: Mountains 2 Beach Marathon, May 2013

Why no, not hobbling across the finish with a torn muscle at all, what are you talking about

This cycle was definitely the best marathon training I've ever done, up until I started having problems with my right hip flexor ~4 weeks before the race. Once again, instead of running, I spent that last month desperately trying to fix a health issue & was barely cleared to run before I got on the plane for Ventura.

This was definitely the closest I've come to having the race I felt like I'd trained for. Up until mile 20 I averaged 8:06 / mile (including a 1-2 minute stop to deal with my foot going numb) at a pretty comfortable level of effort. But after that my hip was done, and between that & the heat it was all I could do to walk/jog/hobble my way through the last four miles & try to stay upright. (Later I'd learn that I'd torn ~40% of the tissue in my previously-strained hip flexor.) I finished in 3:36, an 11 minute PR, but still very far from the race I wanted & felt like I'd trained for up until that last month.

Going Forward...

So yeah. I doubt I will ever be a marathon junky, but if I could just get one good one under my belt, one solid race where there are no injuries or illnesses or acts of god to make running 26 miles at the absolute edge of my ability any more difficult than it already is, I think I could get over it for a while & go back to my core competencies. But right now, I'm still after that one.

One thing I know for sure is that I am through with the "Maybe it'll be fine/I can always quit!" mentality. I think it is quite clear by now that in a target race situation where I'm still physically capable of moving forward, I can't trust myself to make the smart decision & walk off the course. I've had enough of "giving it a shot" only to blow my training on a lackluster/disastrous race. Peak marathon fitness is too valuable, too hard-won for that. Yes, I had $300+ in reg fees, hotel, & rental car invested M2B, but in the 10 months since then I've spent over $1000 on doctor visits & physical therapy & another ~$170 on three races I couldn't run, so you do the math.

So that's my new resolution. If circumstances (health, weather, etc.) aren't reasonably close to ideal, marathon = not happening. I am extremely fortunate and thankful to be in a position where I can write off a couple hundred dollars now and then without sweating it (especially since that has definitely not always been the case); given that, it just makes a lot more sense to me to skip a race I paid for than "Give it a shot!" under sketchy circumstances and end up either too injured or burned out to run another one any time soon.

Marathon #4

I don't know how soon I'll have the fitness to run another marathon, but I think August is as soon as it's likely to be, so right now I have my eye on the Santa Rosa Marathon (8/24). It's close, the fee is reasonable, ($125 before April 30), and I've run the half before & so I know it's a well-organized race. In previous the years the course has been two monotonous loops along the gravelly-in-places Santa Rosa Greenway, but this year it's been changed to a single loop around town / local roads, so gravel should be minimal. While I'm not an elevation diva, I can't say I'm exactly *crushed* by the flatness of the course, and the 6 a.m. start means you stand a chance of decent temperatures. (We are talking August in wine country, after all.)

I think I have a good shot at being ready to run Santa Rosa if everything goes perfectly for the next few months--no injuries, no last-minute travel plans, etc. My plan is to continue building up my easy mileage & keep up my strength work & cross-training, ease back while we're in Italy (though I'll probably have to do some running there, just for maintenance), then jump into actual training with Coach Tom (no way I'm doing this alone) in mid-May. That leaves me ~15 weeks, which, if I can get to ~25-30 miles a week by then, is completely respectable in terms of a marathon cycle.

And if I get to May & August just isn't looking reasonable, there is certainly no dearth of sweet fall marathons; Wineglass, Steamtown, and Fox Valley have been on my radar for a while, and there's a handful of less flashy local options as well.

Lessons From The Gym

A stock photo is the only place anyone ever smiles on a cardio machine.

Greetings from Gym Land!

I'm not a native here, but lately it kind of feels like it. I'm getting used to the sweaty-human-cleaning-fluid aroma, and I've been racking up the cardio machine miles like nobody's business. Which reminds me of a brilliant idea I came up with on the spin bike the other day (because what else are you doing while you're on the spin bike?): cardio machines should totally give you rewards points for your miles. I feel certain I could have earned at least a decent set of steak knives by now.

It hasn't been all moaning & whining (though there has been a goodly amount). While I wouldn't have chosen to get my weekly mileage for the last two months by parking myself on the spin bike / elliptical once or twice a day, I can't deny that I have learned some important lessons from my time as a gym rat.

1. I am capable of running in the morning. For the most part, this is not something I have done just to get the miles in since there stopped being someone telling me I had to run in the morning. (Races don't count as the abject misery of morning running is overshadowed by excitement/adrenaline. Planned runs with friends are also a totally different thing.) Over the years I have had short-lived flirtations with morning runs, which have tended to peter out once I've done enough of them to remember why I don't do them.

But, it turns out that maybe I just don't like running outside in the morning, at least by myself. Outside there is cold and wind and darkness and other unpleasantness that, all else being equal, I'd rather just avoid. Sure, the treadmill has its own unique brand of suckage and one does have to adjust to that special parfum d'sweat et Windex, but for some reason I can bear that much more easily than I can the thought of running outside by myself before 6 am. (You can keep your pine-scented single track & fancy pants foothill sunrise. Judge me if you will. I can take it.)

Meh.

2. I can handle doubles. At least mentally & emotionally, & let's be real, what you can handle mentally & emotionally is *at least* as relevant in terms of endurance training as what you can handle physically. Lately "doubles" for me have meant 45 minutes of elliptical before work & 45 minutes of spin bike after work or vice versa, which is obviously physically easier on the body than two running workouts because of the lack of impact, but finding that it's something I've been able to make time for & work out logistically & tolerate well mentally makes me optimistic about eventually working up to running doubles if/when I need/want to.

3. Bitches be chatty in the locker room. OMG. What is it about a bunch of women naked in close quarters that inspires them to interrogate strangers? TOO EARLY. I'm not here to make friends. Especially not naked ones. If you really want to know how my day is going, you must put pants on first. Corollary: Never start a casual conversation with a pantsless stranger. I think Emily Post said that.

Basically, yes.

4. Doing cardio you don't enjoy is a special kind of hell. Oh, those poor, poor souls who haven't yet found a physically demanding activity they love but dutifully slog through the minutes anyway for the sake of their health. Oh, my heart aches for you, because I have been that person lately. I've tolerated the elliptical & spin bike fairly well, but only because I know that it's temporary, & putting up with it now will make it much easier to eventually go back to doing what I love. Do you have any idea how many games I've made up for counting backward from 45 or 60 minutes? How many mental tricks I've developed for keeping my goddamn feet glued to the goddamn pedals when my brain is absolutely liquifying with boredom? How much my already exceptional math skills have improved from staring at the minutes & miles display & desperately counting significant progress any way I can? Minutes left, miles left, percentage done or left, fraction done or left, miles per hour, minutes per mile, you name it; I don't even have to try to consciously calculate them anymore. It's just automatic.

Cardio machine queens & kings, I feel for you. I beg you, try a sport. Any sport. Your life will be so much richer. Also, I'm pretty sure those LED numbers are sucking your soul away. (Unless that's just your thing? Which I guess is technically possible?)

5. Shorts are out. I think I mentioned this already. Ladies wear tights at the gym, apparently. I hope no one is offended by my leg hair because #thingsthatarenotchanging.

6. Routine is everything. Oh man. It's so true, all those things people say about making & breaking habits. You just have to do it, over and over and over, and eventually you just lose the power not to do it. One day last week when my alarm went off, I thought to myself, "Bed is warm. Maybe I'll just stay here." And no sooner had I had the thought than I suddenly found myself kind of repulsed by it. Not go fight the cardio demons? Of course I was going to go fight the cardio demons! It's just what I do now; I don't even think about it.

***IN REAL ACTUAL RUNNING NEWS***, I ran three-minute intervals yesterday for the first time -- 5 x 3:00 w/ 2:00 walk breaks for a total of 2.25 miles. It was super easy, felt great, and I was able to keep good form for the entire run. Ohhhh I could have stayed on that treadmill forever. Not really.