in which i take a week off - gerlinda

well, ok, so, i didn't take a WHOLE week off, but at 15 miles total, it was the easiest running week i've had in a while. it was a "step back" week, so of course i went overboard and just stepped out entirely...

i forgive myself because i was on vacation in NYC! and, it's not like i didn't run at all. i got in a 3 miler at the gym before i left for the big apple. and i did 2 6+-mile runs on vacation. (ok, well, the first was a 3+ interrupted by a cup of coffee at starbucks and then 3+ back.) my 2nd 6+ miler was a good hour's jog in central park, which i loved. the weather was perfect; all the runners, bikers, walkers, roller bladers, and tourists were out & about. the city was gorgeous as usual, through a thicket of leafless winter trees. i ran past hot dog stands, cigarette smokers and balloon men.

fantastic.
now, back to the grind. i have to somehow run 20 miles this weekend... plus another 20 split up through the week... 40 miles in one week; that's intense.

tofurkey day 12 -- by abby

actually, it wasn't tofurkey day, it was the saturday after, and there was no tofurkey this year, for the record. those things are gross. anyway, in a moment of clarity (they are rare and precious these days) on saturday morning, i had this thought that maybe my long runs of late have been so tough because i've been under-dressed and have therefore used up a lot of energy just trying to stay warm. so i decided to test this theory. i put on the usual long tights and long-sleeved shirt, but added a windproof vest and warmer gloves. it seems to've worked. this run was the best i've had in a few weeks, and i don't think it's just because it was shorter, since it was better than the wednesday 7s and 8s as well. i settled in earlier, felt strong and not grouchy, and ran the course in 1:51 something. i also let myself stop to walk a few times, and ate a bite of powerbar at the half-way point.

anyway, i deduce that more clothes = a good thing. this week's 18-miler has me all anxious and twitchy, but i'll knock it out somehow!

16+ in which i hallucinate death & ospreys -- by abby

well. on saturday, i ran from my house to the conoco in manhattan (15+) and then turned around and ran back until my ride showed up. actually, i waved my ride on to the next mile marker. so it was 16-ish let's say 16.5 just for fun. time was 2:32. i don't know what that equals in min per mi.

it was a crappy run. my 4-miler thursday was so crappy that i made it a 3-miler, and the weight workout sucked that day too. i dunno if i was fighting something off or didn't eat right or what. it's too much working -- that's what it is.

i spent the first half of the run saturday trying to stay warm. there is this tricky cold here where it's warm when the sun's out even if it's only 15 degrees, but as soon as a cloud comes by or any wind comes up, then it's cold. so it's difficult to dress properly. my hands were cold. and then they were hot. and then they were cold again. and then there was a rock in my shoe. and then the cable going from my ipod to my headphones was all wonked and basically Everything Was Annoying. this makes for a very crabby abby, emphasis on the very. and then my hands were hot/cold/hot again again again.

plus, i'd cleaned out the bladder of my camelback with a bleach/water mix because it was getting all mungy, and even though i rinsed rinsed rinsed it and rinsed it again, i was totally paranoid that i was ingesting bleach the entire run, and therefore slowly dying from the inside. i had my histrionic collapse all played out in my head .... me, staggering and gagging until i'm an orange lump on the side of the road, barfing up black junk a la madame bovary only in tights instead of all those hoops and whatnot, all balled up and dead out on a country road with no one to find me for hours and hours. what is WRONG with me? honestly.

also, i hallucinated two ospreys onto a phone pole around mile 13. i thought "no way" and then "way" and then "No Way" and then "WAY!" and then ... oh. it's just black knobs and white things and wires and Whatever. (in my defense, i hallucinated the same ospreys onto the same phone pole in a car ride the next morning, so obvs there's something going on there ... some osprey raptor hawk trick ju-ju thing.)

anyway. i'm looking forward to a step-back week. i've taken the rest of the week off *real* work because this morning i lost all ability to deal. except, there's still this gianormous freelance project. ah. so back to proofing that ...

18 ?!?! - gerlinda

last week was full of weird running ju-ju. on tuesday's 4 miler, it got dark after the first 1/2 hour and i got kind of lost and ended up running for 50 minutues before i could get reoriented.

wednesday's 8 miler just ... didn't happen. i meant to do it, but then i overslept and there was no time to fit it in.

i was going to make it up on thursday...but then i overslept and ended up just having to do 4 miles at the gym during lunch - AND, i forgot my sports bra, so i had to run the whole time bouncing and popping out of my lacy victoria secret bra. perhaps you're smiling, reading that, but I WASN'T.

then, i found out my trusty LSD running partners had come down with colds and were going to have to bail on our 18-miler. this send me inexplicably into a tailspin. saturday, i was a royal beeeyatch - slamming stuff around, cleaning my house like a maniac. finally, i realized i was just TERRIFIED about doing the 18 miles...

i mean, 18 miles is A LONG FREAKING WAY.

once i realized why i was so veclempt, i calmed down a little. sunday, i got up and knocked out the run in 2:50 - a 9:27 pace. a friend came along on her bike and "crewed" for me, so i didn't have to ration out one bottle of Gatorade over the 18 miles. i ate 1/2 a Zone bar & stretched at the midway point. i let myself take 30-45 sec. walk breaks every 3 miles or so. i listened to music for the first 10 miles, then abadoned my iPod shuffle and ran to the sound of my own footsteps and breathing.

it wasn't easy. i had a calf cramp that took the first 3 or so miles to work out. my knees felt good, but my hip sockets (not the muscles, but the actual, like sockets) were hurting the last couple miles. but - thanks to my "Crew," i honestly felt more fueled and less rubbery than normal. i still had a couple of en route hallucinations - like the little field mouse i saw 4-up-and-hard on the side of the trail, which turned out to be a dried up leaf... but that can happen to anyone, right?

i'm proud of myself, but still very intimidated by the marathon distance... still totally unsure how i'll *ever* run 26.2 miles... still waiting to hit the wall and crap out... still waiting to not be able to keep the pace (which is fine - i'm running way faster than i ever imagined, and i would be happy to just finish in under 5 hours...or honestly, to just finish, period.) wish me luck!! the training is getting very difficult, very intimidating mentally, and very demanding in terms of the sheer amount of time and preparation it's taking. at this point, i'm just really looking forward to running the race.

ouch my lungs -- by abby

i would just like to post for the record that 10º F is almost too cold for running. and breathing. though, then again, i would rather run in 10º temps than 90º temps. in fact, this morning i considered the possibility of a lifestyle that would allow me to live in a fallish/winterish climate all the time: oct-may in bozeman and june-sep in ushuaia, argentina .... i mean, a girl can dream. oh yeah, and what about the antarctica marathon? fantastic!

my 8-mile run early this morning can be summed up by the following bruce cockburn lyrics:

nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
gotta kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight

16 miles + last week - gerlinda

so...
i ran 16 miles on friday?!?!! that freaks me out! and i was FAST too! i did it in 2:30 (give or take...i was using my cell phone to time myself.) in fact, i was so fast, i don't trust it. the "mile markers" on the silver comet trail have been spray painted on by someone. (there are official pylons with markers as well, but these occur at irregular intervals - like 4.2 miles, or whatever.) someone has gone through and marked the trail off with spraypaint in what i assume are quarter miles. every so often there will be a line with a dot over it, or a line with two or three dots over it. and then every so often there will be a line with a number over it. after puzzling over these a few times, i realized one dot is followed by two dots, and that is followed by three dots, and then comes the number... so, i think it's logical to assume these markings indicate quarter miles. BUT ANYWAY - i ran out to spray painted #8, and back, in 2:30. freaky.

as for the rest of the week, i stuck to the schedule but changed up my running days - due to work stuff. so, this week went:
4-7-16-3.5

i feel good about it.
this week i'm going to try 18. i'm deviating from the schedule b/c i want to work my way up to 23-24 miles, vs. the 20 mile pinnacle with which my training schedule ends. we'll see how it goes. 16 miles felt ok. really, really tough. but my body felt ok. i need to make sure i have meals planned out afterwards, though... i followed my 16 mile run with a 5 hour car ride, several small bottles of water, a few handfuls of trail mix, a chicken sandwich from wendys on the road - i thought that should be enough food, but i swear, i wasn't right until after i ate a proper dinner at 7pm that night. i was really dragging, quiet, and perhaps a little delirious...

a Very Windy 15+ -- by abby

since my dog frida wakes me up at about 5:30 every morning regardless of what day of the week it is, there's really no such thing as sleeping in. so i was up early saturday, but had to wait for it to get light enough to run. i hit the road at about 7am and ran from my house to the conoco station in manhattan (the littlest apple!) – which is just over 15 miles – in about 2:25 or so.

it was a good run. i was nervous about it! it took me awhile to settle in – i didn't really relax until about mile 7, but after that i was fine. it was ridiculously windy, especially on the highline and in the flood plain just before manhattan. i actually stopped to walk about 1/4 mile between miles 10 and 11 because it was so windy; it seemed like a waste of energy to try to run when i wasn't getting anywhere. after that the road curved and i had the wind at my back so i got blown forward for a couple miles. i heard later that we had sustained winds of 45mph with gusts up to 65mph. yeesh.

so that's the long run of the year so far, and hopefully i won't be as nervous for the 16+ next week. i found out that i'll be running my 20-miler in denver ... which will be interesting because it'll be a course i don't know. which i guess is good practice for the marathon.

10 & a sigh of relief - gerlinda

i got my bootie up early saturday morning & ran 10 miles on the freedom parkway trail. it was cold! i wore a long sleeved shirt & hat for the first time - and i wish i'd had gloves! but, thank goodness, it was a great run. i was pretty fast too...i ran it in 1:32 and i'm pretty sure i did the whole 10 miles...i was within a 10th or so, at least. i like running in the cold. and i like seeing the sun come up.

the training is starting to get pretty intense now...my schedule this coming week is 4-7-4-16 (the long run is actually 15, but i'm going to try and go longer b/c i want to work up to at least 23-24 miles before the actual event, even though the schedule only goes up to 20...)

i've realized, in order to make it work, i'm really going to have to focus on the running - the way i focused on boot camp back in the day. i'm going to have to force myself out of bed early, eat right, sleep enough, moderate... so, wish me luck on that!

wormhole -- by abby

saturday i got up early and did a relatively easy 10.4 miles in 1:36 or so. it was cold and clammy out, and my breath froze in little clouds that took a long time to disappear. i imagined them like thought bubbles hanging in space as i ran through it.

speaking of running through space ... there is this one mile that i swear is a wormhole. it's the same stretch of road -- sometimes it's mile 6 or mile 8 or mile 10 depending on how far i run and the route -- from the dairy farm to river road heading east. anyway, i call it The Longest Mile, because it seems like it takes forever to run it. even though it's only a mile like every other mile, and even though i run it in the same amount of time that i run all the other miles .... it just feels like it takes ages to get from one end of it to the other, and time seems to stop and i can never remember what songs were on the ipod and i can never remember what i thought about or how the road was or if any cars passed. it's like i just end up at river road, and can't remember how i got there, but can remember that it seemed to've taken a very long time. and then once i'm there everything's back to normal and the miles seem right again and my mind's back in my head and i realize i am breathing.

see: wormhole. or else: aliens?

------- squared - by gerlinda

this week sux....

my busy life has finally overtaken me; i officially do not have enough time. abby & i emailed yesterday & she said running is her refuge, the one thing she puts above everything else, the one thing she always makes time for. she even said she does longer-than-scheduled mid-week runs just to have more of that quiet space for herself.

er. not me.
i ran my required 3 miles at the gym on tuesday. wedensday, i was supposed to run 7 miles but i only managed 45 minutes after work through the beautiful emory campus before night descended...its not that i couldn't have continued in the dark, but (whinewhinewhine) i didn't wanna! yesterday, i had 1,000 errands to do after work & didn't get my booty up to run before work and thus, didn't run at all. today may well be the same...

i could try and blame it on daylights savings time - but abby is proof that you make time for the things that are important. this marathon is important to me. but the truth is, i get sick of running sometimes. i'd like to just sit and read a book, you know? so - i need to give myself a swift kick in the ass and get back on track next week. my long run this weekend is going to be crammed into the early morning hours of saturday, before i have to hop in the car and head to a friend's cabin for the weekend... it's "only a 10-miler" but still - - -

i need an attitude adjustment.

----- by abby

gerlinda, wow, that's awesome that you ran farther faster. and, the church of optimism sounds nice.


i ran 13.2 or so in 2:02 or so on sunday. i spent part of the day saturday moving hay, and i know better than to do something like that before a long run, but i did it anyway because it needed doing and the weather was okay. so i was a little sore starting out sunday. but it was a beautiful day -- sunny and in the 50s -- and i had a decent run. i savored the sunshine -- seems like there's not much of it these days -- it was really really windy and my lips are so chapped beyond repair, there is not enough carmex in the world, i swear.