Just One Marathon

Thankful

It’s been over two months since I’ve felt really good on a run. I had a great outing at the Ottawa Army Half in September and it’s been all downhill from there – and not in a good way. Nothing’s really wrong. I’ve just felt weak, sluggish and out of breath (and the phlegm, my God, the phlegm).

There are probably a lot of reasons: too many skipped runs, not enough sleep, poor nutrition, inadequate hydration. Whatever. All I knew is that the strong, speedy runner I was last summer seemed to have disappeared, only to be replaced by an even-more-reluctant-than-usual athlete.

I vowed to turn things around with my long run last Sunday morning, but things didn’t seem to be going my way. At 4:30 a.m., my neighbour (the crazy one – doesn’t everyone have at least one?) let her dog out and it barked and howled constantly until 7:30, when another neighbour (the assertive one – fortunately, there’s one of them in every neighbourhood, too) banged on her door and told her to call him in. What with all the drama, I didn’t fall back to sleep until 8 a.m. and woke up at 9:30, already behind on my morning running schedule.

Still, I did my best. I ate a healthy oatmeal/raisin/walnut breakfast-of-champions, drank tons of water, loaded up my iPod with new tunes and headed out. It was cold but sunny and dry – about minus 12C (or 10 degrees Fahrenheit). Perfect running weather, if you’re dressed for it.

At first, it seemed like I was in for my now-typical slow and crappy run. Then I got the 5K bump, and this time it didn’t fade away by 6K. I was running my favourite route along a stretch of green space near my home and was really enjoying peacefulness the big open spaces.

The end of this running route includes three hills: a Mamma hill, a Baby hill and then a big, bad Pappa hill. Usually, Mamma’s a sweetheart, the Baby is a little cranky and Pappa is a brute that kills my pace and sends me home with my tail between my legs. However, just as I approached the hills on this day, the sun came out from behind a cloud and revealed a deer, standing on the opposite side of the road, not 100 metres away. She carefully picked her way across the deserted road and stood looking back. A few moments later, a second deer appeared and made her way across as well. When they reunited on the opposite side, one resting its neck across the other’s in the deer-equivalent of a two-cheek kiss. Then they glanced back at the crazy two-legged creature barrelling towards them in a bright red running jacket and headed for the trees.

Watching the whole drama, I barely realized I was already half-way up Mamma. A feeling of well-being propelled me over the crest of the hill. Suddenly, everything looked beautiful: the brown and gold fields, a glittering stream winding its way down Baby in the trees beside the road, the big blue sky. I felt happy, strong and above all, thankful to the universe for putting me in that place at that moment.

I won’t say Pappa was any less harsh than usual, but I managed to marshal my energy and make my way up the hill without diminishing my speed significantly. More importantly, I didn’t feel completely wiped out at the top of the hill, so I was able to pour on a little extra steam for the last few hundred metres of my run. And that gave me something else to be thankful for – a faster pace:

Last Sunday’s pace (13K): 6:16/K

This Sunday’s pace (13K): 5:56/K

Goal pace for my next half: 5:27/K (still a ways to go)

Thanks to The Runner’s Lounge for the inspiration for the post. This week’s “Take It And Run” Thursday theme is “Thank goodness for running”.

 

Ten Big Ones

Oh, happy day: I am finished hill training! I did my final hill run on Friday morning – 12K and ten hills. And yet, I still huff and puff when I climb stairs. What’s with that?

Here are the haikus:

Ten hills all alone

I could just run five, or six

Now, you’ll never know

Done now. If I face

One more hill, I’ll stamp my feet

Until it’s removed

Grit, dust and hot sun

Time stands still while I count down

To that long last climb

Next week, we’re on to training activities with funny names, starting with the fartlek.

My Internal Speedometer

In my head, I have an idea of how fast I can run. Sometimes I wonder if I’m simply afraid to try to run faster. I’m not sure what I think will happen if I run “too fast”: that I’ll run out of energy, or hurt myself, or start to flail my arms around like a maniac and look silly.

Anyways, I was running the last of nine hills on Thursday at what is, for me, a comfortable but challenging pace. Two of my speedier running buddies, no doubt giddy with joy at being almost finished, raced up behind me, grabbed my arms, and started to pull me up. We laughed and I said, “Okay, fine, I’ll run as fast as you, then.” Then I proceeded to keep pace with them, for a few metres anyways. At the top of the hill, I looked at my Garmin and was surprised to notice that I had actually shaved two seconds off my average pace over nine hills. That means that for that last half-a-hill, I must have been burning up the road (relatively speaking, that is). Can it be that I’m capable of more?

Here’s the experience in 5-7-5:

That wasn’t so hard

Starting on a gentle slope

Oh wait! Yes it is

Briefly, they pull me

Up the last long hill. We laugh

Then I run faster

One more week of hills training to go! But still a long road ahead until the marathon, and it seems longer after my discouraging 32K run this morning. I’ll post more on that shortly.

Six Hills

For some reason, only the fast runners showed up for hill training last night. The fast runners … and me. My running clinic pals zipped up and down those hills like they were nothing, while my body protested every elevated inch.

Having said that, it wasn’t so bad. I put on some tunes, high-fived people on the way up and down and got home in time to watch Lost.

Here’s this week’s haiku action:

From warm restaurants

The tempting smell of hot meals

While I chew on hills

The cold biting wind

Makes the hills a frozen slope

But still whispers, spring

On Sunday – 19K (12 miles) – a little island of low mileage in a sea of big, long runs that I plan to thoroughly enjoy (The island that is, not the sea).

A Slice of Heaven -- Medium Fat

I postponed hill training this week. Our family visited Montreal with my sister-in-law, husband and their two kids for a couple of days. I’ve got to hand it to myself: I don’t think I could have consumed more calories in a thirty-six hour period. If it wasn’t a personal record, then it was pretty damned close.

Our family’s favourite place to visit in Montreal is a Schwartzs' Deli on St. Laurent. Their smoked meat sandwiches, pickles and French fries are legendary – worth lining up in the snow, cramming in at communal Formica-topped tables, and throwing dietary caution to the wind. We paid our respects on the way out of town yesterday.

However, I didn’t like the idea of tomorrow’s 26K run on five days rest and a gut-full of medium-fat-on-rye, so I had to get those hills in. To generate a little motivation, I asked my husband to join me. He is one of those maddening people who never skips a run. This morning, I used his envy-inspiring self-discipline to my advantage. When I dragged myself out of bed, he had already made my tea and pre-run breakfast oatmeal and walnuts. That put an end to the little plan forming in the back of my head to just forget the run and read the entire newspaper from cover to cover. 

This week’s haiku interval workout: 2 x 17 syllables.

Can’t do hills this week

Gotta shop in Montreal

Hurray for March Break!

Fifteen years, two kids

Makes running five slushy hills

Together: a date

Tomorrow is 26K (16 miles). And I will probably have to make my own breakfast.

Hill-ku

I have seven Thursdays of hell to look forward to. Yup, hill training started last night. It goes like this: warm up with a run to a hill, run up and down the hill a specified number of times, run back again.

Last night’s hill training run was a 7.5K (or 4.5 mile) experience – about 2K each way, plus four hills. Each week we will add a little distance and one more hill. We will peak (sorry, bad hill pun) on April 17, when we do a 12K run which includes 10 hills.

I’ve decided to mark each week of hill training with a haiku (or two). With their 5-7-5 syllable structure, haikus are kind of like little hills. That’s about all the rationalization I’m going to offer for this bit of self-indulgence.

Here are this week’s offerings:

#1

Roads narrowed by snow

If a car knocks me in it

At least I can rest.

#2

Uphill, they pass me

But on the icy road down

I kick their asses.

Stealing is such an ugly word. Let’s just say I was inspired to blog in haiku by the incomparable J-Money, who regularly composes haiku about the Dr. Phil show – something you really must read for yourself to understand.