Just One Marathon

What My Mother Taught Me About Running

“Feet on ground. Heart in hands."-- Jann Arden

When the song "Good Mother" popped up on my iPod, somewhere around kilometre 12 of my 23K run this morning, it got me thinking about my own mother. Though she is not a runner herself, she has taught me a lot about running. For example:

Small steps: My Mom often tells me she named me for Saint Theresa of Lisieux because she is the saint of “the little way”. I have been known to complain to my Mom that it’s not a very inspiring reason to pick your daughter’s name. But I get what she’s saying. For most of us, it’s the cumulative small acts – the daily kindnesses, tiny sacrifices and quiet acceptance – that make us good people. And … I hope this isn’t too shallow … the running life is all about the little decisions you make, too. Forcing yourself out the door when you’d really rather stay inside. Ignoring small aches and pains. Pushing yourself to go just a little faster or a little further. Still, it does make me wonder what kind of runner I’d be if she named me “Flo Jo” …

Keep your eyes on the horizon: My Mom is a life-long, dedicated birder. After years spent on walks with her, I’m attuned to flashes of colour in the forest, interesting bird calls and distinctive flight patterns. Though I’m nowhere near as skilled as she is at identifying birds, I love being outdoors. And seeing a heron fishing by the river, a hawk making precise circles in the sky or a swallow swooping gracefully across down an embankment can give me an enormous lift on even the worst run. I just have to be careful that I don’t lose my footing.

Be grateful. I’ve mentioned this before, but each time I stand at the start line of a race, I am overwhelmed by an enormous sense of thankfulness. For my health. For my family and friends who support me. For my awesome speed (remember, this is the beginning of the race). That comes from my down-to-earth Mom, who often reminds me (especially when I’m tempted to complain about my little problems) that I am a very fortunate person.

My Mom lives in Toronto and I’m missing her today – but I’m not complaining, honest Mom! Happy Mother’s Day to my Mom and all the other great Moms out there, teaching their sons and daughters important lessons about life through their own small, caring acts.

All In But Not All There

I’m a good wife. So when The Runner I Married settled down in front of the television recently to watch his beloved Toronto Blue Jays trounce the Boston Red Sox (he only likes to watch if they win), I joined him. For me, baseball is like a really long episode of “What Not To Wear”. The polyester suits, the questionable facial hair choices, the leather belts (on sports wear, really?) – it’s a highly enjoyable fashion train wreck. Though he has never mentioned it, I’m sure TRIM enjoys my insightful commentary.

Between innings, a new Adidas ad aired, part of their well publicized “All In” campaign. And that gave me a whole new avenue for criticism. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

I’m not sure what you notice about this ad, but I’ll tell you what struck me. Where are the women athletes? Oh sure, there’s lovely Katy Perry doing her thing. And perhaps one female athlete squeezed in there (I had to watch the ad a few times on Youtube to find her).* But all the other athletes in the ad are male – basketball players, skateboarders, boxers, soccer players.**

Here in the real world, I know lots of women. Many of them are athletes, but hardly any of them are famous pop singers. At running events, they are not standing on the sidelines shaking their booty. They are standing at the start line, ready to compete. They buy sports gear, and lots of it. Some of it is probably Adidas. So I have to ask you, Adidas, what world are you living in?

* To be fair, there’s a longer ad that features more women. You can see it here. But the balance is still skewed towards the Y chromosome. And most people would likely see the 30-second ad.

** And one final footnote: Adidas is not alone in more plentiful – and more empowering – portrayals of male athletes versus female athletes. Don’t even get me started on Sports Illustrated and its swimsuit edition.

Resurfacing (And I Don't Mean The Driveway)

“My work self is suffocating my life me.”—Liz Lemon to hallucinatory Oprah on 30 Rock

You’re just going to have to trust me when I tell you that I have composed some incredible blogs in the past couple of months. Quirky and offbeat, yet at the same time, articulate and accessible to the masses. In my fevered imagination, I was the Tina Fey of running blogs.

In real life … not so much.

It all started around March 1, when I woke up very early one morning and realized that over the next 31 days, I would need to finish a paper, write an exam and run a 30K race. Oh, and work. And do all the other stuff most folks do to keep a home and family humming along.

Long story short – I made a plan and executed it. Finished the paper a couple of weeks before the exam. Ran Around the Bay on March 27^th. Wrote my final on March 30^th. None of it went perfectly – but it was all okay. Looking at my speed training results in the weeks leading up to Around the Bay, I let go of the pipe dream of finishing in less than 3 hours, and logged a respectable-but-by-no-means-flashy, mid-pack finish.

Time: 3:06:39

Category place: 243/494

Gender place: 1,460/2,973

I was happy enough with the result – but mostly, I was happy with setting a realistic goal for this race. I took stock of where I was, picked an achievable finish time (3:10) and managed to exceed it. Though the last 10K of the race was certainly harder than the first 10, I felt pretty good in those final kilometres.

My happiness may have been influenced by the fact that it was just a really fun weekend. My middle sister, Kathy, a gifted yoga teacher, came with me to Hamilton and served as support crew. She was an incredible good sport, staying overnight in a lovely B&B in Hamilton and actually volunteering to sleep on the hide-a-bed, even when the owner described it as, “okay, but no hide-a-bed is every really comfortable”. I owe her one.

On race day, Kath saw me off at the start line, and then met me several times on the race course, bringing along, at various points, her husband, her sister-in-law and her father-in-law. The Hamilton family I didn’t realize I had. On top of that, my Dad drove in from Toronto to see the end of the race. So, it’s true then … I AM the centre of the universe!! 

And the exam I wrote 3 days afterwards? I completely blanked out on the first question. Couldn’t remember the five immutable truths of organizational culture. This on a course titled “organizational culture”. Fortunately for me, I did fine on the rest of the exam and on my assignments. In the end, I got an A. I’m not bragging. I’m just sayin’.

Then … another month went by. A month with just one blog post. A house that hasn’t gotten any neater. A rotten cold. And one more course to register for in the university-program-that-never-ends.

Time to set a new goal and generate a little deadline pressure.  Done and … done. My next race is the National Capital Race Weekend Half Marathon. And I’m determined to break two hours, just to prove that the first (and only) time I’ve run a sub-2 hour half wasn’t a complete fluke.

The Frustrating 5K

I’m a bit run down, but I’m okay.

I just feel like calling it a day.

But you send me back to the start.

You drive a hard bargain.

-- Ron Sexsmith, Hard Bargain.

For almost a year now, I’ve been chasing the elusive 25-minute 5K. Unfortunately, I never seem to get any closer. Recently, I looked back on my entire relationship with this short but frustrating distance.

First date: My first run ever was the Cookie Run, a Fall event that was the culmination of the “learn to run” group I joined in 2005. The clinic introduced newbie runners to the sport gradually. The first week, we ran for one minute and walked for one minute, for a total of about 20 minutes exercise. The next week we did “2 and 1s”. The following week, “3 and 1s” and so on, until we had mastered the “10 and 1” method of running that was one of the key components of the running clinic’s philosophy. I remember how endless that extra minute of running seemed, when we added it each week, and how proud I was of my progress. I never thought about how long it took to run each kilometre – I just concentrating on actually making it through each kilometre. On the start line of the Cookie Run, I turned to our clinic leader and asked, “What would be a good time to complete this race?” She told me that somewhere around 30 minutes. My first time? 32:26. Was I disappointed? Nope. Never even occurred to feel let down. I was enthralled by this new person – this runner – I had discovered living inside my own body.

Honeymoon period: Having achieved one 5k race, I now felt like I had “been there, done that”. I moved on to ever-increasing distances – 10K, half-marathon, marathon – hardly looking back. Every once in a while, I’d find myself registered in a 5K run, and I always tried to improve my time just a little bit. However, the 5K always felt like it was not a “serious” distance and my efforts to improve my time were “just for fun”. Often, if I ran a 5K, it was simply because I hadn’t been training hard enough to run anything else. Although my times gradually improved, sometimes, I was just “getting out there”:

2007 “Emilie’s Run” – 28:00

2008 “Emilie’s Run” – 26:46

2009 Fall Colours 5K – 28:56 (a lazy period)

Commitment: Last year, in the midst of a serious effort to improve my marathon time, I started to think of the 5K differently. It became a natural extension of the speed training I had incorporated into my training schedule – a way to measure my progress. I set the goal of a 25-minute 5K – the predictor time for a 4-hour marathon. I have yet to achieve either of these goals, and eventually the 25-minute 5K became a goal in itself. However, my progress towards this goal has felt like one step forward and two steps back:

June 2010 Canada Day Run –  26:14

July 2010 National Capital Run – 27:28 (with as-yet-undiscovered low iron levels0

September 2010 Army Run – 25:39

March 2011 St Pat’s Run – 25:54

Today’s Ottawa Physio Run – 26:34

Recommitment: Today’s run was frustrating. I thought I’d be able to at least match or improve on the 5K time I logged just a month ago. It was the exact same course, and I’ve since run the 30k Around the Bay race, and been training pretty hard. But it was a rainy and windy day, I’ve been fighting a cold, I’m still recovering from logging 30K three weeks ago. I realized only a few minutes after I started the race that I didn’t have it in me today. And I was right. I ran almost a minute slower. In spite of that, I am not ready to give up on my 25-minute goal. Part of me wonders if I’ve plateau-ed. But another part of me thinks that a summer of speed work and a recommitment to my training schedule will allow me to, at least once, see the finish-line clock reading a time that starts with “24” as I pass by it.*

Why does it matter? It doesn’t really. That, and $4.61 will get me a coffee at Starbucks (or, rather, a grande tea latte, half-sweet with skim). But it’s exciting to have a goal. And I have to admit to getting a little kick out of being in the top 20 or so percent of my age category. Today, I actually finished third in my age group. Yeah, it’s cheap thrills because I think most people in 5K races are like me when I started – just in it to feel that sense of accomplishment from being able to run five kilometres. A little part of me still feels like that, too.

And … Ron Sexsmith: He is wonderful. A largely-undiscovered Canadian treasure. Here he is with Elvis Costello, who appreciates him, too:

 

List-less

Sometimes I really question my decision-making skills. Like today, I was trying to decide whether to run at lunch. In my head, I made a list of “reasons to run” and “reasons not to run”. It went something like this.

 

Reasons to Run

• I missed my 30K run yesterday because I was doing the hockey mom thing at an out-of-town tournament
• I am just three weeks away from running Around the Bay
• I actually have the time today
• I remembered all my running gear
• A good run would improve my mood and increase my energy level

Reasons NOT to Run

• I forgot my iPod

Easy decision right? Skip the run! You can’t run on a treadmill without an iPod.

In fact, the only run I made this afternoon was to the store for a candy fix. I’m thinking I need some new decision-making techniques. Here’s a motivator -- photos of me taken during the first half of last fall’s marathon and during the last 10K of the same race.

Here’s how I want to look when I’m running Around the Bay:

 
(Me during the first half of the Wineglass) 

Here’s how I don’t want to look (or feel):

 
(Me just a couple of hundred metres from the end. Kill me now.)

 

Yup, it's working. I'm feelng more motivated already.

Boston: Forget You

And although there's pain in my chest
I still wish you the best with a...
Forget you!

Since the Boston Athletic Association announced its new qualifying rules and times a couple of weeks ago*, I’ve felt a few different emotions, but one feeling has dominated: relief.

Still 17 minutes shy of achieving what’s now the old qualifying time in my category, I had a long road ahead of me to achieve this goal. And I have to be honest. I didn’t know if I had it in me. It’s not that I don’t think I could run a sub-4 hour marathon, if I was willing and able to put in the time and effort. I just didn’t know whether I was willing or able, given the kind of runner I am and living the kind of life I do right now.

And while chasing the brass ring of Boston has been, at moments, fun and invigorating, it has also been, at other times, frustrating and demoralizing. And you know what? I’ve gotten tired of finishing 20K, 30K, 42K distances and feeling like a loser because I wasn’t happy with my pace. (Yeah, I know, boohoo.)

I won’t ever stop trying to be faster, and if Boston ever seems with in reach, you can bet I’ll be chasing pavements again trying to earn a spot at the start line. But for now, I’m going to concentrate on reconnecting with the joy of running just for the hell of it.

Take it away, Cee Lo:

 

* For the record, this runner thinks that changing the qualifying times was absolutely the right thing to do. One of the defining features of the Boston Marathon is that it is run by those who achieve a high standard of excellence among their running peers. The qualifying times and process should ensure that those who have achieved that standard are able to run the race. It’s only fair.

Be Careful What You Wish For

When I first had kids, I thought my primary job would be to guide and shape my children’s character so that I could send them out into the world as happy, productive and caring individuals.

Hah.

Both my boys were born determined to shape their own characters, regardless of any ideas their father and I had. And you know what? They are both doing a good job becoming excellent human beings. Obviously, as a parent, I need to step in from time to time to make sure everyone’s doing their work, staying safe and being nice to one another. But for the most part, they seem to have the most success when I get out of the way and just let them be themselves.

My 16-year old son, Will, is a case in point. Wildly creative and completely immune to any efforts to organize his life or even clean his bedroom, I like to joke that Will was put on this earth to test and disprove all my parenting theories.

I hope that doesn’t sound like I don’t enjoy his company. In fact, Will is fun to be around. He’s charming, funny and full of 16-year-old opinions, which make for great conversations. We enjoyed many of those conversations when we trained together for the Ottawa Race Weekend last spring. We did most of our long runs together. It was precious quality time for a busy working mom and a teenager starting to spend more time out of the house.

Will wasn’t too enthusiastic about running the half. While he’s an incredibly active person, athletics don’t interest him in the least. I got him to run the half by making two promises: I’d make muffuletta sandwiches to eat for dinner after the race, and I’d never make him run another race again.

He did an awesome job – never missed a training run and completed the event with ease. I think he even impressed himself. And the muffuletta? Delicious – I don’t mind saying.

Since Will’s an artist (he attends an arts high school in the visual arts program), I often ask him to draw pictures. Birthday cards. Pictures to post on my bulletin board at work. Posters. He usually complies good-naturedly, but resists any attempt on my part to dictate the subject matter of those pictures. He favours pictures of zombies, pop culture icons like Rick Astley and Jesus Quintana from The Big Lebowski. I’m always saying stuff like, “Grandma likes birds … why don’t you draw her a card with a chickadee?”

This week, he was noodling around on the computer, doing “10-second portraits” of his friends. They were awful and wonderful at the same time. Quickly scrawled, rudimentary and child-like, but with great energy and humour. (Hey, I’m his mom, not an art critic.) He was telling me about the pictures and his friends’ positive reactions to them and then made an offer he’s never made before: “I can draw you.”

 “But they’re not nice pictures,” he said. “They’re quick – not really that good.”

Of course, I didn’t hear any of those warnings. I thought, “My son is going to draw my portrait! Using a cool new medium! His picture will probably reflect his appreciation of the love, wisdom and guidance I’ve given him over the years!” “

“You know, you don’t have to draw me with my glasses,” I told him as I followed his instructions to turn my head to the side for the less-than-30-seconds it took him to complete the drawing. “Nope, I need the glasses,” he told me. I turned back to the computer to see his drawing of me:

 
Yup, that’s me. As seen by my 16-year old son. Would you want this woman as your mother? I wouldn't. She looks mean. “Can’t you at least draw me smiling?” I asked. He rolled his eyes and looked pained – an artist misunderstood by the ignorant masses.

I got my revenge, though. Guess who’s signed up for this year’s half marathon? And you can bet he’ll be making his own damned sandwich.

Snow: I'm Sick of It

Looking back on this blog, I notice that every January or February, I write a post about how sick and tired I am of winter running. Some people might call that repetitive. I call it a tradition. Here is this year's edition:

In Ottawa, it’s not cool to say you don’t like snow. In fact, one way to show your sporty-hipness in this city is to express great joy every time the flakes start to fly, and to be bitterly disappointed if the snow doesn’t amount to much. That’s because much of Ottawa embraces winter sports – skiing, skating, snowshoeing, dog-sledding, and eating beaver tails on the Rideau canal.

Even The Runner I Married has joined the hoards. Last year, he bought a pair of light-weight, aluminium running snowshoes. Yup, you read that right. Running snowshoes. They are billed as an alternative to running on icy pavement and look something like this:

 
Apparently, he turns heads when he comes bounding along a trail wearing them. And they are an incredible cardio workout that is easy on the legs and knees.

I, on the other hand, do not acknowledge the existence of winter sports. Instead, I take what is essentially a spring and fall sport – running – and do it all year long. That means that in August, when I’m sweating it out a long run in 30 degree C weather, I yearn for cold, crisp winter weather. And in the winter, I realize just how stupid that kind of thinking is. Because it sucks to get out of a nice warm bed in a nice warm house to spend time in sub-zero conditions doing an activity that is painful and tiring. Plus, it requires a lot of clothing -- though I'm never sure of the exact right layerage. Too much, and I can feel the sweat running down my face and then freezing on my cheeks. Not enough, and I just get the freezing part. 

But the really, really bad part of running in winter is the snow. Snow makes sidewalks disappear and the small ribbon of remaining curb become dangerously slippery. It gets in your shoes. It causes snow plows to appear, not before your run, but during it. These days, when I reach a clear patch of pavement, I want to kneel down and kiss its salty, gravel-strewn surface. 

Sure, it looks pretty, drifting from the sky and blanketing the trees in white. But to this runner, snow is just not cool.

You Don't Bring Me Flowers

I’m not afraid to say it: lately, I hate my Garmin.

Blame poor design, a failing battery or cold-weather limitations, but when you really come down to it, my Garmin has been letting me down.  And I’ve been making excuses. But it has to stop, because right now, I’m doing all the work in this relationship.

I’ve actually been accommodating my Garmin’s lack of commitment for a while now. For example, when I noticed that the light was no longer working a few weeks ago, I  told myself I had probably imagined that the light function actually exists on the 405 model. Only after going back to check the manual did I realize that while most Garmins have a light, my Garmin had made a personal decision to opt out of that feature. And yet, I forgave it. Heck, I rarely use the light anyways. And if it weren’t for my own refusal to entertain the idea of bifocals, it probably wouldn’t be necessary at all.

Then, last week, the Garmin quit working at kilometre 17.5 of an 18K run. Again, I made excuses. It was really cold outside, and besides, my pace probably wasn’t going to get any better in those last 500 metres. But it’s not the first time the Garmin has abandoned me during a long run. Two years ago, at the beginning of a half-marathon race, it quit just minutes after crossing the start line. I was forced to run 20K with no Garmin – the horror. And at the Wineglass Marathon? Happened again. It gave up at kilometre 36, despite being fully charged the night before. And like the abused runner I am, I blamed myself, reasoning that in my exhausted and addled state, I must have brushed against the bezel.

Now, the twitchy little device has started playing head games. At the 5K mark of yesterday’s 21K outing, it starting spitting out this message before every lap: “Lap history full. Delete older activities.” (Or something like that. I can’t check, because the Garmin and I aren’t speaking right now.) Since I upload (and then pretty much ignore) all my activities to the Garmin website regularly, I didn’t even know I had to delete other activities from the watch. No fair.

Bottom line – Garmin, you’d better shape up. Because I’m still young, and there’s a lot of life in these legs. And it’s not like I don’t have options. I’d like to stay together, though, for the sake of the children. Because they’re the ones who are going to have to teach their mother to use a new electronic device. And at their age, that’s just cruel. 

The View from Square One

If you’ve seen me on my long runs recently, you might have a hard time believing I ran a marathon just three and a half months ago. Afterwards, I slacked off in a major way, often running only once or twice a week and sometimes not running at all. It was awesome. And now I'm paying the price.

I’m back to my regular training schedule, but there are bound to be a few sore muscles as I track down, catch up to and jump back on the running bandwagon. This morning’s 18K was no exception. Run on what I hope will end up being the coldest day of the year (-33C with the wind chill), I logged a sluggish and slippery 6:12/km pace.

My goal race is Around the Bay, a 30K event in Hamilton, Ontario on March 28^th. I did the race once before, in 2009, and ran it in 3:17. But I’ve learned a lot since then, and logged some results that make me think I can do better this time. At this point, I have three possible goals.

Goal 1: Finish and improve my time. Feel healthy afterwards.

Goal 2: Finish in less than 3 hours. Feel healthy and satisfied afterwards.

Goal 3: Finish in 2:51, achieving the 5:42/km pace required to run a 4-hour marathon. Feel healthy and delusionally-optimistic afterwards.

Here’s the thing – I don’t want to run the first half significantly faster than the second half, the way I did in The Marathon That Must Not Be Named. So in a few weeks, I’m going to have a good long talk with myself and set a realistic goal for Around the Bay. I’m going to choose a pace and stick to it. That will require some real discipline on my part, because Around the Bay features some pretty spectacular hills right at the end. I’ll need to moderate my pace in the early miles and push myself at the end, just when it’s getting difficult. Here’s the elevation map, which I … um … “borrowed” from the very enjoyable blog Run by Numbers (thanks!):

 

 

 

 

 

And yes, there’s a guy dressed as the Grim Reaper who stands at the top of the last hill. He attempts to wave exhausted runners into the cemetery conveniently located nearby. With that in mind, I'll add:

Goal 4: Avoid feeling so exhausted that I want to take him up on his offer.