Home Again, Home Again + Dissociating is Underrated

Friends, I am here today to preach the good news of completely dissociating while running. Okay, maybe not completely dissociating. But largely. And not 100% of the time but, y'know, a lot of the time.

People will be like, "You gotta be fully engaged in the run! You gotta FEEL IT in ur BODY, get ur MIND all INTO IT!" And you know what, if that works for you, great. Get it. Feel your body or whatever. Some of us, though, only have so much mental "in-it-ness" or whatever you want to call it, and we have to be careful about where we spend it. 

I've always had a sense that, at least for me, running "hard" (whether that's racing, speed work, tempo runs, or some other workout where you're trying to hit a particular pace) doesn't only take physical effort; it's mentally taxing as well, in the same way that playing a complex and stressful game or taking a timed and detail-oriented entrance exam can be. (Think Chess tournaments, LSAT/MCAT/bar exam, etc.) In addition to being physically rested and recovered, you also need a certain "mental freshness" to do it well. I wasn't sure whether this was just me or a real thing until I read something Shalane Flanagan said about racing marathons:

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????"

The Case for Quitting Workouts

I've seen a lot of conversations lately about the whole #nodaysoff campaign Tracksmith has going on, particularly around whether or not it's maybe an irresponsible message given that so many runners are competitive, super-driven Type A's inclined to git'er done no matter what the cost.

Personally, I don't see it that way; to me, #nodaysoff means not "no days off from running" but "no days off from focusing on your goal," which doesn't always include running, or even cross training. It means making the best decisions for your training every single day, and sometimes the best decision is "You know what, the training plan says xxx, but I'm most likely to get to the starting line healthy if today I sleep in, stretch, & maybe do some PT intead."

Not usually. But sometimes.

I think it's the same with quitting workouts. I've been injured or about to get injured often enough in my running career that it's an extremely familiar mental conversation with myself--"Hmm, that doesn't feel good. Maybe we should quit before something disastrous happens? Eh, I'm probably being dramatic, just freaking get it done. But what if I can't run for the next week as a result?? Won't it feel soooo good to just get it done? I mean, yeah, but how bad can it be to miss the last interval or two just to be safe? I mean??"

Et cetera.

Race Talk: You Have A Right to Your Disappointment

This past weekend was the Cal International Marathon in Sacramento, which when it comes to marathons, we all know is 100% the best in the west. Any number of my good friends were out there, as well as a number of other bloggers or visible social media-type people that I follow, and I've spent the last couple days liking/heart-ing/favoriting my little heart out of dozens of pictures, tweets, and various other types of social media posts.

Far & away one of my favorite parts of big race weekends, whether I'm racing or not, is celebrating the hard-fought victories of friends and others, and last weekend was no exception. From all accounts, the weather was perfect, the temperature was lovely, and PRs, BQs, and OTQs were racked up by the barrel full.

There are always other stories, though. Stories of giving it everything you had and still coming up short of a long-held goal. Of being foiled by some dumb injury. Of training that didn't go as planned, of DNFs and DNSs. Of working and working and working to get back to a certain time and coming nowhere close. Whether you had an amazing day or an abysmal one, it's hard to know what to say sometimes when others around you are in a different place.

SJRNRHM Week 6 of 14: Drama-Free Training

I'm sure you've all seen this meme floating around:

Now I am under no illusions that I'm one of the truly fast kids, but I generally finish in the top 5-20% when I race and have podiumed my share of small local races here & there, & that sometimes seems to give some people the idea that I feel like the lady in the top picture when I'm running.

I find this hilarious. Like. I've been long-distance running since the mid-90s and I can count on maybe two hands all the times when I've felt like the lady in the top picture. On a good day I feel a lot like the kid in the bottom pic; on the tougher days, I feel maybe a little more like this:

And you know what? I'm really 100% fine with that. Not feeling fresh and peppy every day is the reality of cumulative fatigue and actually training hard enough, in terms of quality and/or volume, to improve. Honestly, if I started to feel like the lady in the top picture too often, I'd assume I wasn't training enough & needed to step it up.

I definitely went through a phase (around the time I started doing races more frequently and actually making an effort to get faster, ca. 2008-2011ish) of feeling like the lady in the top photo is what it should feel like, at least once you're in decent shape. The running blog world of that time did not help matters, with all its #blessed this and #humbled that and post-workout pictures featuring peppy smiles and perfect makeup and nary a hair out of place.

Seriously, I could not figure it out. People seemed absolutely brimming with joy and bursting at the seams with #gratitude after every [flawlessly instagrammed] run. This was before it was trendy to #keepitreal, and I remember wondering as I perused the internet if I was doing this training thing wrong somehow because where were all the posts about "Eh, today was a run" or "8 easy miles, fine" or even "Ugh, tired today, really wanted a nap instead."

As it turns out, those make for less heart-able Instagram posts.

At this point I feel pretty comfortable in my own running skin. I know I don't look like a lady in a Nike ad, even on my best days, and I don't expect to feel like one either. My bar for what counts as a "good" run is a lot lower. (Did it get done? Am I not injured? #winning) I've embraced my slow, comfy 10-10:30 easy pace, even though most of the time it feels more like a shuffle than really running (because guess what, results, bitches). These days, for the most part, the thick of training for a goal race feels neither fantastic or awful. It just kind of...is.

I was reading on some coach's blog or newsletter recently (though I can't find it now) about how that's how he knows an athlete's training is going well. Their training log notes aren't filled with breathless raves about how magical a run felt or how #blessed they, nor with angsty rants about how terrible it was; for the most part it's just full of miles and ticked-off workouts and quick notes about how most runs were just kind of fine.

He referred to this steady, unremarkable, sometimes boring ticking off of workouts as drama-free training, which I immediately wanted emblazoned on a T-shirt, because yes! More of that! I don't need scads of effortless tempos that feel like I'm flying or spiritually fulfilling, life-changing runs that I can plaster all over Instagram. All I need is the work, mostly slow and steady, plugging away, unceremoniously depositing workouts into the First Bank of Training, one mile at a time. I don't need to feel like the Nike ad. I just need to get it done.

* * * Rock 'N Roll San Jose Half: Week 6 of 14 * * *

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.

:)

Anticipation Fatigue: It's A Thing.

This Tuesday's track session was a not-insignificant 2 mile warm-up + drills/dynamic stretches, 10 x 1K / 200m jog, 2 mile cool down. The target for the 1K's was pace was 4:34 (7:21 pace), just a bit slower than I ran my 10K in a few weeks back.

This is what Kezar Stadium looks like at 4pm. By 6pm there are approximately 700 people on it.

Something I've noticed in both long, hard workouts as well as races is this phenomenon I've started calling "anticipation fatigue." With anticipation fatigue, you are preparing to do something sort of frighteningly hard like run a scary pace for longer than you feel confident about, or do a freaking shit-tonne of hard intervals, or something of that nature. And regardless of how easy or hard this feat *actually* is, the thought of it kind of terrifies you, and for some nonzero portion of it, you are absolutely 100% sure it's going to end up being a PW or otherwise completely awful.

Interestingly, I don't think I would have ever noticed this phenomenon except that I've written so, so many race reports that start with me thinking, "This is impossible, I feel so awful, what if I can't even finish," and then by halfway or two thirds through, thinking, "THIS IS AWESOME AND I AM AWESOME AND PHBBBBTTT THIS ISN'T EVEN HARD." And the only conclusion I can arrive at is that a not-insigifnicant part of the perceived effort involved with distance running is mental, and when our confidence is not in the stratosphere, it is possible to mistake mental exertion (race tactics, managing pace, balancing how you feel now with how you think you might feel x miles from now) for physical exertion.

(I remember experiencing a version of this at Race to the End of Summer, my first all-out race in quite some time. In mile 2-3ish, I found myself thinking, "Man, this is hard." But when I really pushed myself to think about it--"But is it actually, physically that bad now?"--I realized that "Actually...no." It was just the mental work of maintaining the pace and managing scary thoughts about how many minutes were left. To be honest, the actual physical discomfort & pain didn't kick in until the last mile or so.)

Looking at Tuesday's track workout on paper beforehand, my reaction was pretty much, "Well this is going to be balls," because 1) in the past when I've done "K" track workouts I've made the mistake of thinking a kilometer is super short (probably because 5Ks are "short" and 1K is only 20% of that) and then partway through realizing that oops, no, a K is actually pretty significant in terms of speed work, and 2) I ran 4 x 1600m on the treadmill at the same pace a week ago, which was also balls, and while 1000m is significantly shorter than 1600m, 10 is MORE THAN DOUBLE 4. #mathmajor.

Add to this the fact that I was still not sure how my battered knee would respond to speed work on the track, and yeah, I was more than a little nervous about this 11.5 mile workout. Like nausea-and-cold-sweat nervous.

SCARED WHO'S SCARED

The first intervals did not feel good. My legs felt tired and just generally non-responsive. There was a lot of cold sweat and I feel like my heart rate was probably a lot higher than necessary, which of course made everything feel harder than it should have. Two intervals in and "EIGHT MORE OF THESE ARE YOU SERIOUS????"

Generally at the track I run by feel and easily beat the targets without working too hard but this time I was 100% going out of my way to run exactly the pace prescribed and no faster. Mentally I kept trying to tell myself, "7:21 isn't even fast. 7:21 isn't even fast. 7:21 isn't even fast," but my legs didn't care. It wasn't that I felt I was working that hard; it was just my legs being like "Yeah; don't wanna. #sorrynotsorry."

And then, as I found I actually was able to run K after K between 4:31 and 4:34 with no problem and no pain from my knee, something in my mind or body or both kind of flipped, and they really did start to feel not that fast and also not that hard. Like, I actually found myself zoning out & sometimes losing track of which interval I was even on. "Oh, this interval is over? I almost forgot we were running one!"

I finished all 11.5 miles feeling hungry and kind of low blood sugar but otherwise fine. Knee pain was maybe .6 out of 10 -- I could feel that it wasn't 100% normal, but it was more just weird pressure from time to time, not really pain.

(And, definitely worse running in the "correct" counter-clockwise direction. Kezar is generally too busy for fast intervals in lane 1 in the "wrong" direction to feel safe, but I did my warm-up & cool down in the clockwise direction, which was definitely a little easier on the knee.)

Am I crazy? Does anyone else get "anticipation fatigue" early in a race or hard workout and then end up crushing it? please say yes

CIM WEEK 8 of 18: Knee Troubles :(

I am always superstitious about filling out my weekly logs before the runs are actually done, like it's somehow going to jinx me & cause me to get sick or hurt or some kind of emergency to come up. But this week I had some extra time early in the week & just thought, "Eh, that's stupid, let me just get this stuff typed up now while I have time." Three days later, I kid you not, I could barely walk.

Here's how the week went down:

Monday 9/19: a.m. strength work / p.m. karate.

This was the day after my 19.5 miles in Half Moon Bay, and I felt totally fine. No knee pain. Now, I was quite tired so pushed strength work to Tuesday, but throughout karate I was completely fine--no hint whatsoever that anything was wrong.

Tuesday 9/20: a.m. strength work / p.m. 2 warm-up, 6 x 200m / 200m jog, 4 miles marathon pace, 6 x 200m / 200m jog, 2 cool down = 11 total

Good solid track workout; again, not a twinge anywhere. I finished it thinking how weird it felt to have these double-digit track workouts starting to feel normal.

Wednesday 9/21: Rest

I had planned a short, easy run as long as I felt good, but in the grand tradition of WTF Wednesdays, I felt awful and exhausted and spent most of the evening sleeping, rising only to devour Shalane's recovery salad & a slice of marathon lasagna.

Race Preview: Race to the End of Summer 10K

You guys, I am feeling so jittery and nervous and just plain EXCITED about this race.

It has been so long since I've run a 10K where I actually thought I had a chance at a good race. I mean, it will not be a PR race; after all I've only got 3 weeks of speed work in the legs and won't really be tapering. BUT, I've been lifting a LOT (which I feel like makes a big difference for me at the 5K-10K distance) and I feel like I've built up a pretty strong base. So I'm feeling fairly confident that I've got a solid 6.2 miles in these legs. (As RunnersConnect reminded me recently, the 10K is still 90% aerobic, so there's that.)

The main thing I'm trying to make sure I have a handle on is the mental piece. I ran my first 10K post-stress fracture last February knowing that I wasn't going to set any records, but I still thought I could probably pull out a fairly respectable race. Instead my legs felt like lead and I proceeded to completely lose it mentally within the first mile, spent most of the rest of the race alternating between panic and grumbling to myself, & finished just fast enough to tie my personal worst.

In retrospect I think I went into that race afraid to truly run hard and suffer. It's true that I didn't have the fitness to run a great time no matter what, but I think if I'd gone into it more mentally prepared and braced for it, I wouldn't have fallen apart so easily. To quote triathlon legend Chris McCormack, "The common theme in every battle with pain I have ever won was my mind-set. It was only those times when I allowed the fear of the moment to manifest big enough in my own head—-when I didn’t think I could fully beat the problem with my self-talk and my checklist—-that the battle was lost."

So, here's the mental pep talk I'm giving myself for this weekend:

• Running fast is so, so, so much fun. Through all the marathon training & base training over the last few months, I have really, really missed the heart-pounding excitement of short, hard races. Yes, marathons hold a certain appeal for me, but there's nothing that makes me feel like a runner, like a competitive athlete, than going hard start to finish. I'm trying hard to hold onto my excitement about that.
• Running fast also hurts. A lot. Chris McCormack again: "As I began to think about it more, I realized that no matter how much I loved racing or how hard I trained, at some point a race is going to really suck. It is how I reacted to this moment that determined everything." (In case it isn't clear, I love that article.) The pain isn't your enemy; it's an indicator that you're pushing yourself hard and getting closer to your goal. "Pain is my friend, and I treat it that way. As it presents itself, I smile and say things like 'OK, here you are. I have been waiting for you.'"
• BUT, you're pretty good at coping with it. I really think that the last six or so miles at the Eugene Marathon helped me get my head back on straight about this. Those miles truly, truly sucked, but I had decided ahead of time that a) I was not going to back away from the pain and b) I was not going to let myself get into a negativity spiral about how awful it was or how slow I was going. Instead, I just kept reminding myself that "Baddasses embrace the suck. Are you a baddass or a weenie?" Afterward, I remember thinking, "Wow, that was truly, epically awful & you handled it fine," which was exactly what I needed.

According to the forecast it will probably be around 60° during the race (8:00am) & full sun, so I am mentally preparing for an uncomfortably warm race (not because I think 60° is hot, but in my experience that's the number where my performance starts to actively go downhill & full sun makes everything 10x worse, especially on pavement).

(Update, they're now saying partly cloudy/high 50°s, WOO-HOO!!)

On the other hand, it is a pretty flat course with almost no real turns, so--**provided I can get some good sleep & rest up sufficiently between now & then**--it should be a decent indicator of where my current fitness is.

So yeah--we'll see how it goes! :)

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.)

Race Report: Eugene Marathon (Part 1: My Race)

(This post is about my actual race & how it went. If you're interested in all the nuts & bolts/logistical information, head over to this post!)

When I signed up for Eugene last October, I had every intention of being in PR shape. Sure, I was getting over a stress fracture at the time, but up until then but I'd also had a really strong training cycle targeting the Santa Rosa Marathon in August. So I figured I'd start running again soon, build up to normal mileage by the end of 2015, then BOOM! Hardcore Eugene training January through April.

Of course, the universe loves when you make plans like this. Probably because it likes reminding you what a puny, small, insignificant little human you are and how puny and small and insignificant are all your little dreams, relatively speaking.

So, yeah. Instead I spent most of the rest of 2015 not running, so my Eugene training cycle ended up 1) kind of abbreviated 2) lower mileage than ideal and 3) built on an aerobic base like a wee baby bunny. Add to that the problems I've been having with my left foot and how work basically did nothing but kick my ass for March & April, & it should be obvious to anyone with half a clue that I had zero realistic chance of a PR or even a reasonably fast-for-me race. Yes, I was fit enough to run the whole thing & maaaaaaaybe not PW, but that was about it.

A few years back, knowing this, I probably would have said, "Eh, screw it." My philosophy about marathons then was that they are so hard physically and mentally and require so much prep and recovery time relative to shorter distances that it's only worth it if there's a chance of a PR. I think that was healthy in the sense that it probably kept me from registering for and/or trying to run more marathons that I should. But since then I've relaxed that theory a little; yes, marathons are still super hard & time/energy intensive enough that I don't want to run them too often, but I also think there are a few other good reasons (for me, at least) besides trying to PR.

~[Metaphor Time]~

I don't really have a sense of how nerdy my throngs of blog readers are, but if your personal brand of nerdiness extends much in the Star Trek direction, you're probably familiar with the Kobayashi Maru. For those that aren't or who need a refresher, the Kobayashi Maru was a simulated training exercise given to Starfleet cadets in the command track wherein they had to decide what decisions to make after receiving a distress call from the eponymous civilian freighter.

Ostensibly the goal of the exercise is to rescue the vessel. To save the civilians, the cadet needs to enter the Neutral Zone & violate the treaty, whereas honoring the treaty means leaving the disabled freighter and its occupants at the mercy of the Klingons. Entering the Neutral Zone to save the civilians also results in Klingons attacking and boarding the ship which the cadet is commanding. As we learn in The Wrath of Khan, James T. Kirk was the only cadet in Starfleet history to ever beat the Kobayashi Maru, by reprogramming the simulation so that it was possible to win.

The Kobayashi Maru comes up over and over again in Star Trek movies and books as a metaphor and/or thematic element. In the recent film Into Darkness, young dickish Kirk's reprogrammed test results in a disciplinary hearing. Kirk argues that the test itself is a cheat since it's unwinnable, so cheating is the only solution. Young Spock (a Starfleet instructor at the time) counters that the point of the test is not to win, but to face fear and accept the possibility of death, as Kirk's father did [in the opening scene of the movie]. Basically the whole film is about Kirk's transformation from a cocky, immature, dickish yet brilliant cadet into a competent (slightly less cocky) commander, and the theme of how one deals with a no-win situation as a test of character is woven throughout.

In the weeks leading up to the race, I knew that I would really only be running to finish and maybe not PW, but also that I still really wanted to do it. Why was that? Why did I still want to put myself through it all, knowing that it was 100% "unwinnable"? (Especially when I could instead be sleeping in & having tasty brunch & winez & also not caffeine fasting all week.)

At some point it hit me that Eugene '16 was maybe kind of my Kobayashi Maru. Yes, it was "unwinnable" in the sense of a PR or even a particularly fast-for-me race. (On top of my poor fitness, the forecast called for warm weather and full sun.) But I've had some real struggles lately with the psychological/emotional parts of racing, particularly once I realize it's "unwinnable," so I was kind of thinking of this race as a test of character or mettle or courage or whatever you want to call it, a chance for me to face fear and doubt and pain, knowing it was a no-win situation, and still give it my absolute best effort (AND have a good attitude about it).

~[Le Plan]~

• No expectations. Basically, accept that it's "unwinnable" and don't harbor any secret fantasies of miracles occurring, or even avoiding a personal worst. I wanted to run by effort--relatively comfortable but not lazy for the first 18-20 miles, then push as hard as I could manage for the last 10K. Be satisfied with an honest race and a strong finish.
• Own the experience. This was my personal take on the "trust it will pass" point from the TrainingPeaks article I mentioned in my last post. I think feeling out of control and like the race was something happening to me was a big part of why I felt so panicked and negative at the Oakland Half. This time I decided to keep reminding myself that I chose this no-win situation and I could just as easily un-choose it any time I wanted without losing anything.
• Talk to myself. I cannot tell you how many times in the past I have rolled my eyes at things like race mantras and "power words" because they seemed like such utter woo-woo bullshit. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so I decided ahead of time that whenever I started to feel tired or negative I would start mentally chanting to myself "calm" or "strong" or "smooth" or some other horrible distance running cliche. It can't make things worse, right? Let's go with that!
• Accept what the day brings. I knew it would be a warm, sunny race, and although it was not supposed to be windy and the course is pretty flat, I didn't want to be surprised by anything. So I tried to visualize a hot, sunny, windy race with unexpected hills here and there where also I felt slow and crappy from the beginning. "This will all probably happen," I kept telling myself, "and you'll own it anyway, and be grateful for the experience to even run this freaking race."
• Fake it til you make it (or don't). I was a psych minor so I'm well aware of how actions, even non-genuine ones, can influence our emotions. So I decided that no matter how awful I felt, I would smile at and say think you to every volunteer and high five the hell out of every motherf**er who offered.
• Run with music.I've never raced with headphones before and sometimes have been very vehemently against it. But again, desperate times/desperate measures/etc. I really, truly felt like this would help me tune out some of the stuff that tends to distract me and/or send me into a downward spiral (others trying to talk to me, people who sound like they're about to die, spectators yelling YOU'RE ALMOST THERE!!! anywhere other than at mile 26, anyone soulless enough to carry sports beans, etc.). Since it was a no-win situation to matter what, it seemed like as good a day as any to try it once and see what happened.
• Leave it all out there. The time would be whatever it would be, but I wanted to leave Oregon with no regrets & knowing I'd left everything I had to give out on the course.

In terms of more traditional racing strategy, I just decided to go out by feel, comfortably but faster than la-la pace, settle into it, and not look at my watch for the first few miles. I did want to race and leave it all out there, but I also knew it would be a warm day and didn't want to end up crawling to the finish line.

~*~*~*~*~*~

We left Jacksonville Saturday morning, broke up the 2 hour 40 minute drive to Eugene with a few wine tasting stops in the Umpqua Valley, and arrived at Hayward Field for the expo around 5:30.

It's just a track, you guys.

Afterward, we checked into the Days Inn half a mile away and grabbed a tasty pizza dinner with my friend T (who was running the half) at La Perla (highly recommend!). After dinner I laid out all my race gear, cursed at my dead-and-refusing-to-charge watch for a while (it worked eventually), then spent some time fighting with Spotify and the bluetooth headphones I never use. (WOO LEAVING THINGS TO THE LAST MINUTE!)

I think by the time I actually got to sleep it was close to midnight, but somehow I still woke up at 4:45 awake and alert and ready to go.

My body is ready to not DNF.

Hayward Field & the start were an easy half mile walk from the hotel (probably less, actually). Although the highs would be in the 80s, it was probably 45-50 when I arrived around 6:30--just chilly enough to wish I'd brought pants but not miserable.

I headed over to sweat check around 6:40 & was aghast to see a line a good 100m long. After 10 minutes I was nearing the front, & that was about when they announced for everyone to just drop their bags where they were & head to the start. I did a little jogging around in front of Hayward, pleased that my foot seemed to be feeling okay, then jogged to the start and slipped into the back of Corral B. (Honestly I have no memory of what projected finish time I told them but I didn't want to feel rushed so the back of my assigned corral seemed like a good choice.)

BRING IT EUGENE
(but not too hard tho)

Someone sang the National Anthem, the gun went off, and we started shuffling towards the start. I popped my earbuds in, hit play, & did my best to relax into Jack's Mannequin & The Resolution as I jogged across the start line.

It was crazy how good I felt at that point--not anxious or nervous or really anything but relaxed and excited and pretty much ready for whatever happened. The first few miles were fairly crowded, but ultimately I think that worked in my favor because it kept my optimism in check and helped me settle into a pace that felt comfortable but not lazy.

I didn't look at my watch but I think somewhere around mile 3 or so I realized I was kind of gradually reeling in the 3:45 pacer, which was surprising as I'd been thinking 3:50ish was probably a best case scenario. It was hard not to get excited at that point and start thinking things like "Imagine if I beat my best case prediction!" and "Imagine if I ran a sub-3:47 / my second fastest marathon ever!" It was really all I could do to squash those thoughts as soon as they popped up and remind myself that down that path lay only expectations and the temptation to do something stupid way, WAY too early. Still, sticking with the 3:45 pace group felt pretty comfortable, and it was nice to have something to focus on visually and just sort of zone out and follow. For the most part that seemed to translate into paces between 8:20 & 8:50, which wasn't so fast that it felt unreasonable.

And I ended up staying pretty much right there for a good long while. I tended to slow a bit through the aid stations while the pacer didn't, and every time I kind of thought, "Eh, whatever, it was cool while it lasted." Sooner or later, though, I'd find myself drifting back toward the group. It was a comfortable place to be so I decided to just hang out there for as long as it felt good.

Which ended up being until maybe mile 15ish. I still felt really good, but the sun was coming out as promised, and sticking with the pace group was starting to take a little more effort than I was comfortable with. If it had been a 20 or even a 22 mile race I think I could have stuck it out, but I knew the sun was only going to make things tougher and I didn't want to risk an ugly finish (accept what the day brings). So I just tried to keep my effort level in about the same place and not worry too much about the 3:45 sign.

And I have to say I was pretty proud of myself at that moment for 1) not getting too invested in 3:45, even after so many miles with the group (no expectations), 2) staying positive when I decided to let them go (own the experience), and 3) still sticking with a race-level effort rather than easing up & phoning it in (leave it all out there). Even at mile 17ish, I still felt so happy and positive. I ran by a group of teenagers cheering with bells and tambourines an drums and I swear I actually clapped and "woo'd" and high fived the shit out of every one of them. I'm not exaggerating when I say that at that point I was having such a great time that I kind of didn't want it to end. P!nk was blasting in my headphones and I was soaking in every second of it.

SEE SMILING POSITIVE

As I recall, it was around mile 18 that things started to feel hard, and my splits reflect that. Not hit-the-wall hard, but it was hot and there was less shade and for whatever reason my IT bands were starting to talk to me. I was doing gels every 3 miles from about 5.5 on, so I started thinking "two more gels, then gun it for the finish" (talk to myself). I knew my pace was slowing considerably, but paradoxically I still felt strong and steady (accept what the day brings). I was looking at my splits, but only really out of a kind of dissociated interest, not because I was concerned with what the actual numbers were (no expectations).

I did at that point start using the 3:50 pace group as motivation to keep hustling--they hadn't passed me yet, and I thought I might have banked enough sub-9:00s in the cool earlier part of the race that maybe I could slide in under my best case prediction of 3:50. But I was careful not to let myself get too attached to that thought & be prepared to see them trot past me & into the distance at any moment.

As I approached mile 20, I remembered back in my first marathon reaching mile 20 and thinking "SERIOUSLY 50 MORE MINUTES OF RUNNING EFF THIS SHITE FOREVER." Somehow remembering that I'd had that thought kind of prepared me for it this time around, so when I started thinking about how I had close to an hour of running left ahead of me I was ready to counter it with thoughts like "just don't stop" and "one more mile" (talk to myself). Yes, those were some long, tough miles and I gave it 50/50 odds whether my IT bands would melt or spontaneously combust before I finished, but I stayed positive the whole time, passed way more people than passed me, and kept giving it everything I had. It was hard, incredibly effing hard, but only in that baseline, SN:AFU way that the end of any marathon where you're actually giving 100% is super effing hard (and to be honest I think I mostly got through it by fantasizing about the epic ice bath I was going to take as soon as we got back to the hotel).

But oh man. What a thrill to head back into town at around 25.5 miles. Crowds lined the streets and the cheering was so loud and earnest that for all the pain I was in, I couldn't help smiling. When I spotted Hayward Field I ripped my headphones off and sprinted around the curve of the track for all I was worth.

This picture pretty much sums up my entire race.

For a moment I was very slightly disappointed to see 3:54:xx on the clock. I knew for certain that the 3:50 group had never passed me and I was pretty sure it had only taken me about a minute or so to cross the start mat after the gun, but as soon as that thought surfaced I immediately smothered it. It had been such a fantastic race in so many ways and hell if I was going to let something so stupid and arbitrary spoil it.

I grabbed my medal and chocolate milk and got my picture taken and pretty much spotted Don as soon as I was out of the track area. I remember kind of getting choked up for a minute about what a great race I had had, regardless of the time, and apparently was still grinning like an idiot as I left the chute.

I'm pretty sure his first thought when he saw me was "Oh thank god she's not an emotional wreck."

I'm also pretty sure the first thing I said was "Oh my god that was so hard." And it was--I really do believe that I left it all out there and gave it everything I had under the circumstances.

BLISS. Also pain.

Obligatory post-race Krusteaz pancakes.

FOOTSTEPS OF LEGENDS (or something)

I mentioned to Don about how I'd lost the 3:45 pacer but never saw the 3:50 group, and he told me that the 3:45 group had apparently come in at 3:48 but he hadn't seen the 3:50 group either, so I wondered if maybe that pacer had been slow as well and had been just behind me. Funnily, I found out later that there was no 3:50 pace group--just increments of 15 minutes, so joke's on me. Still, thanks for lighting a fire under me in those last miles, phantom pace group!

Part of me kind of wanted to hang out & soak in the post-race experience, but to be honest, once you'd got your free pancakes there wasn't really much else to do. So we headed back to the hotel, I showered and changed & bandaged up my chafed bloody places as best as I could, & then we met T for post-race beers & a delicious lunch.

~*~*~*~*~*~

So, yeah. I'm not really sure what else to say except that I feel like I acquitted myself well against my personal Kobayashi Maru to the extent that one ever really can & beat the crap out of some psychological demons that have been terrorizing me lately. AND, I really honestly don't feel that shitty about my time. I'd always said 3:50 best case, and while you can never really know for sure what might have been, I kind of think that if the day had been cooler I might have actually managed something in the 3:48-3:49 range. Which tells me that while I am still a long way from the shape I've been in in the past, I'm maybe not *quite* in a giant black hole of un-fitness.

Official: 26.2 miles / 3:53:03 / ~8:54 pace

Overall: 657/1667
Women: 214/814
A/G: 48/157

One More Sleep

(OH MY LORDY it has taken me two weeks to write this post. I have had zero time. So here I am, the night before Eugene, deciding maybe it's best to post *something* some non-zero time before the race rather than nothing.)

We’ve been chilling in Southern Oregon for the past few days, drinking all the wine & beer & sampling all the cheese and chocolate, & it has been lovely. If you’re ever in this neck of the woods, I can definitely recommend some good spots.

And, oh yeah, there is also the matter of this little footrace I am running in the morning.

Physically, I’m not really worried about this race. My left foot is still kind of a mess, but I’ve tried to stay off of it all week, so ultimately, in terms of whether I can finish or not, that will be what it will be. And of course all the itinerant challenges & discomforts of running a marathon (SN:AFU) also will be what they will be.

Mentally, I’ve been a bit worried just because the two races I’ve run this year were just so, so hard from a psychological/emotional perspective. In both cases I got super negative relatively early-on and just fell apart, which isn’t a problem I’ve had in the past. While that sucked a lot, at least I only had to handle it for 45 & 110 minutes respectively; getting stuck in that place for 3.5+ hours, well, I’m not sure I can handle that.

Recently, I ran across this article from TrainingPeaks about strategies for dealing with the pain of endurance racing, and when I thought about those two awful races, the three recommendations really resonated with me. Behold:

Trust it will pass. “Oftentimes, it’s the emotional experience of the pain that convinces you to give up. As humans, we have an innate desire to always try to gain some ground beneath us and feel like we are in control. Trying to gain control is your way of managing your feelings of discomfort, fear, and anxiety. On race day, the quickest way to eliminate those uncomfortable emotions and gain control is to stop moving. In your mind, you need to establish an end that lets you know that you are still in control and this pain won’t last forever.”

In both my 2016 races thus far, I think feeling out of control of the situation led to mild panic, which then led to all kinds of negative feelings & suckage. So for this race I’m keeping in my back pocket a gentle reminder to myself that I absolutely don’t have to maintain a certain pace or effort level or even keep going at all, that this is supposed to be a cool, awesome experience and it’s completely up to me what I do with it. (I know it seems counterintuitive, but this sort of thinking actually makes me less likely to walk/quit/etc. because I don’t feel trapped.)

Talk to yourself. “When you focus on the pain you’re in, it makes you want to stop. When you are at the peak of suffering and it’s taking everything you have to keep moving, sometimes the most effective strategy is to engage in rhythmic cognitive behavior. This pain coping strategy has you repeating something over and over. Doing this occupies your mind constantly with information other than focusing on the pain you are feeling in your body.”

I do a lot of counting down by strides or seconds when I run, even on easy runs (particularly if I’m tired or almost done), but there is a big difference time-wise between “the hard part of a 10K” vs “the hard part of a marathon,” so I’m thinking I probably need to specifically plan the things I’m going to start telling myself if & when those negative thoughts come creeping in. Something along the lines of, “No expectations/Just finish/One more mile.”

Accept What The Day Brings. “Your brain is like a magnet for your expectations. It will pick up on things in your environment that fit the storyline you have already created. It will also cling to and fixate on anything that doesn’t fit into the storyline as well. An example would be thinking, ‘It wasn’t supposed to be this hot/windy/hard/hilly, etc.’ These expectations will influence your perception of pain. The most important thing you can do is be open for whatever race day brings, know that you can handle it, and don’t fight against what is happening. The sooner you accept that the clouds have already rained, i.e. this is happening no matter how badly you want it not to be, the sooner you will recover and make the best of it.”

Man, I failed so much at this not only at my two races this year but also Santa Rosa Marathon 2014. With all three races, in my head I’d already envisioned how the entire thing would go—it would be cool and flat and I would surprise myself with how good and fast I felt. So when it was hot or slightly hilly or I felt sluggish or slower than I thought I should be, I actually felt betrayed by the world, which was the beginning of melting down psychologically. So, I am trying to embrace the idea that this race doesn’t owe me anything—not a pancake flat course nor pleasant weather nor a “fast” (or even “fast under the circumstances”) time.

Get ready for it.

So yeah. I think I'm kind of boiling it down to this:

I’m not necessarily recommending “having no expectations, ever” as an all-encompassing approach to finding happiness in every corner of your life. But in this particular situation, I’m trying to embrace it. My left foot is still kind of a mess and I don’t know how that’s going to shake out. I also know for a fact I’m in far from the best shape of my life right now, but in spite of that, I finished both my races so far this year disappointed and unsatisfied in part because I expected to do better. (Like, I wasn’t expecting fast races but I also wasn’t expecting personal worsts.) So I am doing my best to really, truly let all expectations go so that as long as I finish, I won’t leave Oregon disappointed.

Race Report: Oakland Half Marathon 2016

2016 was my third year running this race. At my first Oakland Half in 2012 I ran a four-minute PR, and at my second in 2013, in warm temps and feeling awful, I somehow pulled out my third sub-1:40. Which is all to say, this race has always smiled on me in its way, so I hoped that this year it would at least be gentle with my out-of-shape, undertrained ass.

LEFT: Such a fun race with this lady in 2012 (who, I should also mention, just ran the freaking Antarctica Marathon a few days ago because she is HARD CORE like that). RIGHT: 2013 post race with Cat & Jen (who know *LOVES* this picture). In retrospect, not the best day for knee socks.

God, was I wrong.

So very, very wrong.

I should say, I think there is a fine line between being realistic & honest with yourself vs. making doom-filled self-fulfilling prophecies, between having giant, hindsight-is-20/20 realizations vs. making excuses after the fact. I hope I'm more on the former side than the latter in both cases, but it's hard to be 100% sure about these things.

First, I should say that I have never--NEVER!--been a pre-race head case, but ever since I started racing again in December, I have been ALLLL of the pre-race head case. Like, the entire week before the race I am obsessing about how much the race is going to hurt and how unpleasant it's going to be and how unprepared I feel. Like feeling sick at my stomach the night before because I'm so anxious and afraid. Like being too wired to sleep the night before and too nauseous to eat the morning of. Like feeling a new wave of panic each time I notice I'm a minute closer to race time. This has never been like me but it has been VERY me these last three races. Other things that have never been like me but are like me lately include dreading fast/hard workouts because they are so mentally difficult and so depressing in terms of the paces, so, I dunno, maybe that's related.

Second, I should say that I was kind of nervous when I saw that my Oakland Half race week workout schedule looked like 1) a 20 mile run on Sunday (the farthest I've run since July), 2) a tough 11.5 mile speed workout two days later (the longest speed workout I've done since July by 3 miles), and 3) the highest weekly mileage (45ish?) I've run since July.

The 20 miler and the tough speed workout were actually some of the better, more confidence-boosting workouts I've had lately, but then two days later (ie, three days before Oakland) when it was time to run an easy 8 miler, I felt like an absolute train wreck. Trust me, I had 70+ minutes to think about it and I actually don't think it's an exaggeration to say that that was *the* toughest, most impossible feeling run I can remember except for maybe the end of Mountains 2 Beach three years ago. I actually almost quit at 2 miles because I was legitimately worried about being able to make it all the way back home. (Why, then, did I keep running anyway? BECAUSE IT SAID 8 ON THE SCHEDULE, DAMMIT! I'm not saying that was the *right* call; I'm just saying that was the reason.)

So yeah. I slogged through that run at 10:00+ pace and then laid on the floor in my living room and didn't move for maybe 10 minutes.

"No biggie," I reasoned. "I have 2.5 days to recover. PLENTY OF TIME!" But I continued feeling like garbage the next day, and Saturday also, so much so that I skipped the scheduled 2-mile shakeout run because I literally kind of thought that I might have 14 miles left in me for the weekend but definitely, definitely not 16. (Again, I'm not saying it was actually true; I'm just saying it's how I felt about things at the time.)

Actually, I had a few hours Saturday night of feeling pretty optimistic after re-reading my Oakland Half 2013 race report, where apparently I felt like poop and/or a train wreck the entire week & had basically all but committed to phoning it in & then somehow magically ran a sub-1:40. Which reminded me of that post of Phoebe Wright's where she was like "Feeling crappy and tired doesn't matter! Only the training matters!" And I was like, "YEAH PHOEBE, YOU TELL 'EM!"

Plus I was sitting on the confidence from that beast of a track workout I'd just done (did I mention it was 11.5 miles, including a bunch of 10K pace mile repeats, and I CRUSHED it? I crushed it), and in comparison to that, seriously, how hard could it be to run, say, ~8:00 miles for 13 miles or so.

(Spoiler: It could be real, REAL hard. Real hard.)

By bed time I was back to feeling nauseous and jittery and scared out of my mind. (At one point I might have actually thought to myself, "Hey, you never know. Maybe I'll get lucky and just die in my sleep.") By the next morning, I was so sick at my stomach I could barely eat, and from that point on I pretty much just devoted my energy to collecting reasons for why this was 100% for sure going to be the worst race of my life:

1) My legs & body in general are trashed from the previous week.
2) I didn't sleep enough.
3) Oh goody, the only viable BART train to the race is late --> +10 to general anxiety.
4) SWEET now I don't have time for a sufficient warm-up.
5) Stripped down to my race clothes, I am not cold --> it is already too warm for a good race.
6) Now that I am finally warming up everything feels terrible.
7) It is 9:07, three minutes till the gun, time to head to the corral, and HOLY JESUS ON JET SKIS THEY JUST STARTED THE RACE AND I AM IN THE 2:30 PACE GROUP!!

Things pretty much went on like that. I spent the first two miles or so playing frogger to try to get out of the 11:00-12:00/mile zone and wanting to punch people who kept stopping dead in their tracks to take selfies. (Which, yeah, I know isn't fair; if you're going to stop every few minutes for pictures, the 2.5-3 hour pace group is where you should be & it's partly my own fault that I was in the wrong place. I was just angry & frustrated.) Then in mile 2 we hit this tiny little bottleneck where hundreds of people were trying to squeeze through a space maybe four people wide. (I'm not kidding that I think I had to actually walk for 1.5-2 minutes. We found out later this was due to a combination of construction & weather & the race organizers thought they'd worked it out.) Finally around mile three I was able to more or less hit the pace I was shooting for, which, although it didn't feel easy, exactly, didn't feel completely like death.

This must be pretty early on still because I don't look nearly pathetic enough.

I know that a mental problem I have in the half sometimes is expecting the pace to feel easier for longer than it should, so I'd decided ahead of time that at no point would I think thoughts like "This feels too hard for x miles left, I better slow down" and instead I would just focus on trying to run one more 8:00 mile, and one more, and one more, and just do that for as long as I could.

Which kind of both did and did not work out. On the one hand, I think it was only mile 4 or 5 before I was having a complete panic attack inside because 8:00 pace felt so much harder than I thought it should and the thought of voluntarily continuing to put myself through it for 8-9 more miles was utterly horrifying. Mentally I completely fell apart at the thought of the distance that was left and honestly wanted to quit right then & there. On the other hand, the part of me that was still rational was able to convince the panicked, irrational part to keep going because "Don't worry, you only have to do this for as long as you can, and then you don't have to anymore," and that was cool with me. (Yes, the logic there leaves something to be desired, but you don't race a half marathon with the mental/emotional capacity you want; you race a half marathon with the mental/emotional capacity you have.)

I think it was around the halfway point that I honestly began losing the pace. But what was unique about this particular losing of the pace was that it didn't feel like I was running too hard and needed to slow down. ie, it wasn't a cardiovascular type of hard. Instead it felt more like I'd run too far. My legs felt dead and numb and just detached from my body in general in a way I much more associate with the last few miles of a marathon than with the halfway point of a 13.1 where I've been too ambitious. For the entire second half of the race, at every point, I felt like I was giving 100% effort and instead of screaming in pain my legs were just like, "Eh. Nope. Sorry, Chief. Outta gas."

True fact, I chew on my tongue when I'm suffering.

And, inevitably, this resulted in #FEELINGS. So, so many moments when I felt so low that all I wanted to do was stop and sit down and have a good, long, self-pitying sob. So many moments of debating what would be worse, the shame of giving up and quitting or how awful it would feel to finish but see what I was sure would be a personal worst on the race clock.

In addition to self-pity, there was also a lot of bitterness. I now started making a new list in my head, entitled "People Who Need Punching in the Neck" which included the following:

• People stopping dead in their tracks to take selfies
• People holding wacky and/or whimsical signs ("Smile! You paid to do this!" "If marathons were easy they'd be called your mom!" FUCK YOU ALL FOREVER)
• People yelling "You look great!!" WE BOTH KNOW YOU'RE LYING & IT DOESN'T HELP.
• The dude running next to me with the sports beans who is matching my pace exactly no matter how many times I try to speed up or slow down to lose him (sports beans and I = MORTAL ENEMIES.)
• The dude at mile 4 telling the woman he's running with, "Don't worry! We're almost halfway there!"
• People yelling "You got this!!" Like, how would you even know that? Based on what? I get that you're trying to be encouraging, but unless you know the person and what they're likely to be experiencing right now and have a very good personal reason to believe they truly do GOT THIS!!, maybe just go with "GO [name on bib]!!" because when someone really, really, really don't "GOT THIS," having someone yell that at you is more demoralizing than I can even explain.
• The woman at mile nine matching my pace while apparently having some kind of very noisy stroke and/or cardiac event (who am I kidding, though? She just sounded how I felt.)
• The volunteer yelling "WATER!" from whom I took a cup and then proceeded to pour Gatorade all over myself (real talk, tho, volunteers get a pass, because volunteers. Seriously, I love you all, even if you did trick me into a Gatorade shower.)
• Everyone at mile 10 yelling "You're almost there!!" WRONG NO VERY BAD 100% PILES OF NO.

In case it's not clear, I'm pretty sure I finished this race on pure spite because honestly, I did not have much else going on in the pycho-emotional realm. By the last 5K I was trying not to collapse in a heap of sobs and barely keeping up sub-10 minute miles, which is only something that should ever happen to me if I have a broken leg. By the last mile, I was pretty much dead inside, which I think you'll agree is pretty obvious based on the shots below.

Working super hard to hold it all in in that last one.

Official: 1:54:53/13.1 miles/8:46 pace
Garmin: 1:54:55/13.35 miles/8:36 pace

Not to sound like an ungrateful oblivious ass, because I know there are plenty of people who would be thrilled with this time, but everything is relative and I have never in my life run so hard for such an abysmal result. (I have run one slower half, my first ever in 2008 which I basically didn't train for.) Thankfully I had friends there after the race to listen to me bitch & moan and remind me that yeah, I was pretty much running on trashed legs, and getting into a negativity spiral never helps anyone. By the end of brunch, I was almost laughing about it.

Almost.

Chillin' in the VIP tent post-race with Three Medal Jen, which was pretty nice when it briefly started pouring. (Photo credit = Jen)

Baked eggs & polenta at Bellanico's with Jen, bt, & Clare.

(I know I said I was getting the French toast, but then Jen ordered these amazing donuts for the table & my sweet tooth was satisfied.) (Photo credit = bt)

On the other hand, I have to figure out how to mentally deal with the fact that I ran a kinda-sorta okay 5K basically detrained in December, and every race I've run since then as I've started training again has been progressively worse and worse. I have to look back at the physical stuff and the mental stuff and somehow untangle how much of each contributed to those results and balance all that with the fact that neither of these last two sucky races were my goal race and going into a race with fresh, tapered legs does indeed make a huge difference. (Later in the week I'd emailed Coach A about something related & we back-and-forthed a bit about how the race went, and honestly I was quite relieved to hear she agreed it was probably mostly those hard workouts the week before & if this had been a goal race it would have played out much differently. Phew.)

On the other other hand, ugh. UUUUGGGGHHH. Someone I'm not paying money to please remind me there's a chance in Hades that I am not actually getting slower by the week.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*LOGISTICAL STUFF~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Location: Oakland, CA

Date: Late March (March 20, 2016 this year)

Price: The Oakland Running Festival includes several different events. From the website:

(For what it's worth, a slight increase in most cases from the last time I ran it.)

Deadlines/sellout factor: This year, there were still spaces in the half and full as of the expo on Saturday. I believe the 5K and relay sold out beforehand. No race day registration.

Field Size: Again, not sure about the caps, but the results page lists the following numbers of finishers:

• Marathon - 682 (significantly down from 2013)
• Half Marathon - 2564 (significantly down from 2013)
• 5K - 2761 (WAY up from 2013)

The Expo:

As in past years that I ran, the expo was at the Marriott City Center right off 12th Street BART in Oakland, which is super convenient, & comprised pretty much what you'd expect -- a few running clothes / gear purveyors, a few health / fitness booths, sign-up booths for other local races, & a few community groups. Roadrunner Sports was there selling lightly used returns for $50/pair, which I thought was pretty sweet. (Alas, nothing I wanted in my size.)

To get your race bib & shirt, you must print out your e-registration card from the link ORF sent you, then bring it to the expo. I don't know if it was the time of day or what (2:30-3:00ish?), but when I got there the place was fairly empty & I was in & out in about ten minutes.

The Course:

I don't think the courses have changed much in recent years. One big hill in the marathon (~475 ft upwards from miles 6-9 & back down from about 11-15) & basically flat the rest of the way. The half course is reasonably flat, with just a few spots with short rolling hills or just-noticeable grade (the worst of it being--where else??--the last .1 miles or so to the finish line).

Aid stations are in general I think more frequent than most half marathons I've run (every mile & a half or so?), which I appreciate. Both courses wind through all different parts of Oakland. There is lots of great crowd support from residents & local community groups, which is fun (though I felt like there was less this year?). There are a lot of turns and it can get a bit warm towards the end if the sun comes out, but like I said earlier, I PR'd at this race in 2012 and ran my second fastest half in 2013 on a hot day, so in general I think it is still a reasonably fast course.

Staging:

The Snow Park staging area is super-convenient to the 19th Street BART (although marathoners should note that trains don't run early enough on Sunday to get you to the race by the 7:30 start).

As long as you're not running too late, it's pretty easy to park for free on the street within a few blocks of the start, or there are a few closer lots and garages that were doing event parking for ~$10 or so. If you're arriving after the earlier races are started, just be sure that you know where the street closures are so that you don't count on trying to get somewhere you can't actually get. (Check the site for updated parking options & road closures.)

Gear check is basically right by the start & BYO bag which I think is great. It can get crowded immediately before the start of each race, but also moves pretty quickly.

Swag:

A nice long-sleeved tech shirt & hefty medal. Instead of a giant bag full of samples & coupons you won't use and fliers for races you won't run, you can log into your "virtual goody bag" online & see if there are any fliers or coupons you're interested in, which I appreciated because it didn't mean a bunch of unnecessary trash & recycling.

(The shirt looks navy blue in this picture but it's actually more of a turquoise.)

Overall Assessment:

Sunday was not my day this year, but I still like this race in general. It's well run for having so many different events to manage, and although it's maybe not *THE* fastest PR course in the Bay Area, I think it's still a pretty solid option for this time of year at a still-reasonable price. It's likely I'll be back.