In This Mad Season

Oh what to see in these days. I've been silent for a while and not for any good reason. I think that some of it is laziness and finding that I had the same blah-blah to post. Some of it was that not much had happened other than one race (see below) and trying to heal injuries and entering 2020. Then... well last week happened as it did to everyone in the US and things aren't what they used to be. So, I thought as I have some time to reflect, perhaps I'd jump back onto this page and just tinker around and update. More for myself than anyone else which is okay. There's a lot of "just yourself" moments these days so what is one more? Let's start with the end of 2019. Per some previous post, I'd been dealing with a hamstring/back/Achilles/who-knows-what injury after the Surftown half. I did run the Cambridge half even though I had convince myself it was a a bad idea. It turned out to be a new PR and, overall, not the worst of ideas. I don't think it hampered my recovery and didn't cause further injury that I knew of. Plus, as I said, new PR which is pretty cool (now a 1:42:20). What it did do, though, was cause me skip/miss the Turkey Trot this year. After the half, I decided to try and take two weeks off entirely minus elliptical and bike at the gym. I went back to running and never really felt much better as the hamstring still fairly constantly hurt. But, whether this is accurate or not, my husband and I got a Peloton in December and... now things are vastly different. Although I still have twinges here and there, the constant discomfort has pretty much vanished. I was getting really down and, in some ways, worried about how I felt towards the end of 2019 and wondering what I would need to do including seeing a doctor. But the spinning on the Peloton has seemed to assist in recovery by, I'm assuming, building strengthen where I was lacking and helping with the balance of my body. I am not sure if that is entirely true, but honesty... I don't really care. I know that there were no other changes other than that and so I don't feel as if something else magically healed me and my issues. So, sufficient to say, 2020 was starting off pretty good. There was a collective decision to skip Hyannis and run Easterns States and PRovidenceand so training has been focused on that. I haven't really picked up on speed work, hoping that my run club tempos and Orangetheory will give me a boost. I decided that I didn't ahve the energy, mentally or physically, to take on another hard speed day and I've come to terms with that being okay. So maybe I'll not qualify for Boston... that doesn't take away form who I am as a person or a runner. But now... March happened and things have changed. The ES is off and OT is closed. The world is temporarily on hiatus in many ways and everything is just different. And off. And anxiety-filled. I try to keep up-beat and try to release my anxieties but it is not easy. This is not forever, but there is something about it that has that feel at present. Worrying about things like a marathon seem both less and so much more important right now. It's rather crazy when you stop and think which is all anyone can do these days. So what I'll do is keep running and working out. I'll try to no panic and think that I am sick. I will try to keep up with my friends and loved ones and hope that, before we know it, this too will have passed.

The Winter's Cold*

So... where have I been? Oh, around with a fairly consistent routine in my running life. I ran a half that I just missed a PR and a 5K where I won for the women (gift card, cha-ching!). In all honesty, it was a fairly disappointing summer and early fall. I think 2018 with its multiple PRs set me up for thinking that anytime I hit a race if I wanted to PR I would. Turns out that's not true. Go figure. But I've plodded along and still had a good season of running. To end the year I have a last minute half and my Turkey Trot. Not sure what the goal of the half is but my Trot I hope to place. I haven't done a ton of speed work but I have moved my Tuesdays to be a speed workout which seems to be going okay so far (two weeks in). I that that is the easiest way to reach my speed workout for the week since, doing OT and a speed workout on top of Tuesdays (which tend to be faster than I like) is a bit much for my body. Which brings me to why this post is happening now. I've decided that I'm going to try and have winter be the winter of ME. Not to say it isn't always that way, but what I really mean is to focus on not just running but the PT, stretching, strength, sleep and mental health to enter into 2020 fully ready and focused. I think that I do a good job of ME TIME, but I could use it better and more positively. I want to try and enter into marathon training with all my focus and be eager to train hard. I've already started PT and want to try and keep up the tasks that they give me. I want to feel good when I run not just because of the accomplishment but because it feels good and doesn't carry sore consequences unless I want it to. If I can start to make good habits now, I hope that they will just be a part of what I do when I start to run more. I always have to remember that they will be lax days and there should be but if I have a nice focus about these things they won't see like a chore and just part of my routine. *But the snow still settles light on the trees

Walkin' on Sunshine

I had the long run, and maybe a week of running, that I had known I needed but didn't focus on trying to get. First off my speed work went really well and I hit my marks which is always good. There are shorter than my marathon training ones were (for obvious reasons) and so feel manageable. The time commitment to them is also something that is manageable with life. It's one of the reasons, but not the only reason, why I didn't feel ready for a marathon this fall. You have to have a type of focus to get through the workouts that I've had for a while (and really always tend to have) but I wasn't sure if I could find it in me to push as much as I needed to. SO, taking a step back while working hard is good for me. Not a break, but still... a break. And the second thing I needed was my long run today. I had been going to a trail that was modestly uphill, but still up hill, for the first 2.75 miles and then hits some BIG hills. I went there three times because I wanted to try and crush hills especially due to my last few races that I was disappointed in. So, while I brought all of those runs on myself, between the hills and the summer heat, I was not enjoying those runs. Today I went back to the tried-and-true Rutland rail trail and it was grand. Granted there were WAY TO MANY bugs but some random person gave me bug spray which definitely helped. But the run was just good. I kept a solid pace, I didn't have any issues and I felt like I could keep going. It was just a nice solid performance and, especially based on the last run I did there (UGHUGHUGH) it was just a nice thing to have today. As always days and weeks like this bring me back to why I run and I look forward to the next week. It also makes me think what I can conquer next. But sometimes you just need to hold steady. I also have to remember that next week could turn out difficult. Running can sure be fickle.

Ain't No Moutain High Enough

I've been in a little of a running rut. Not so much in terms of getting out there, but it terms of results. And, well, a little mental as summer is coming and it is warming up faster than I like and faster than my body will tolerate so I'm entering that stage of feeling burned out (literally?) with this season. But in terms of results, I've done three little races recently and in all three there were hills that conquered me and I walked at. I should say one was a race up Wachusetts so that one is to be expected, but the other two were road races and I just couldn't keep it together or push myself to run those hills. The results weren't terrible, but I didn't place in my age group and I didn't have a PR which I went into these hoping for at least one if not both of those things to happen. What I'm trying to take away from it is two things. 1) If you want the have the result you need to do the work. I've done some work but it's not enough for the result that I'm hoping for. I need to focus on those hills and focus on some speed. 2) Don't make excuses or feel sorry for yourself. Even if the performance was subpar in my mind, I was there and I can use it as a learning and growing experience. I had a year of good PRs and it's like I expected that to continue. So I'm aiming to use my workout betters. Don't half-ass OT - work on getting the speeds up even if they aren't what I can do on an open road I can still use that time to better myself. Start doing some outside speed-work as the weather and body allow. Find hills. Get back on those suckers even though they suck. And focus on nutrition and caring for my body. I can't do good work if I don't have a good base.

I'm Not Givin' Up*

Two events this week have caused me to do a lot of thinking about running and my relationship with it. The first is that I signed up for the Vanessa Marcotte Memorial 5K run. Vanessa was a runner who was murdered a Sunday afternoon in Princeton, Mass. Living in this area, her death had a big impact on the local runners, especially females. I remember how we had an influx of female runners at our store, looking for company because they were afraid to run alone. I remember hearing so many discussions of if they should carry pepper spray, when they should run, maybe they wouldn't run and so on. I have a previous post that talks about how I've taken these attacks on female runners and refuse to let it dictate how I will be as a runner, but it's hard at times. I decided to run this 5K because it is important 5K. It matters. Getting out there and showing that we won't be deterred and, until this stops, we will fight it, is an amazing reason to run. The other event was the passing of Gabe Grunewald. There have been many posts about her over the week since she'd died and I won't even try to put anything more out there, other than to say sometimes life isn't fair. It is a tragedy that she was lost (as it is that MANY are lost) but it is so inspiring to read how she lived and ran. I can only hope to be a margin of a runner and have an ounce of that determination if life ever throws at me what it did her. Which leads me to a last bit about my running this week. The 5K was not my best (although time wise not terrible). I walked which I haven't in a race in forever, not even my halfs and marathons, because I felt sorry for myself and everything hurt. As I write this, and even when I was done, I knew that was not what I should have done. I knew I should have fought and pushed, even if slower, than walk. When I think of Vanessa and Gabe, when I think of so many other people, who were forced to stop, I am now disappointed in myself. Yes, it IS just a 5K and there will be others and this is not reflective of me as a person, but it is a little bit. I want a do-over in that race because I want to show that, while I did not face their tragedies, perhaps I can face what I am thrown with a little more resilience and strength. And so, I am taking time to focus and heal, because I think I'm a little beat up. I am making the decision to skip a fall marathon and run smaller, shorter races. I am going to try and win wwere I can because why now? I am going to appreciate the fact that I can be out there day after day, running and being me. I don't want to neglect this gift that I'm given nor simply push through it. I want to embrace and enjoy. *No, not yet Even when I'm down to my last breath Even when they say there's nothin' left So don't give up on

Holding Out for a Hero

As tends to be the case, when I don't have a set plan I find myself wandering around a bit in my training. I am following my RunPlan that I have but it's not really geared towards anything so I'm at about 25-29 miles a week with a long run of ten miles. I have dialed back to only three runs a week because I tend to log two runs also at OT which are anywhere from 1.5-3.1 miles so can add up. I'm climbing a bit more, still only once a week, but I'm seeing some improvement so that's kind of fun. Not sure what I'll ever do with that, but it's a nice time to share with the husband. I do have a 5K tomorrow and I'm slightly wondering if I will be able to potentially when the women or, at least, my age group. It's funny because aside from an Arizona run I did and the Shrewsbury Turkey Trot, running has never something that I go into think I can win unlike some frisbee tournaments or skating competitions. So when I have a race that I think I can actually make "a name" for myself (as much of a name as that may be in a little 5K race) I find it's fun and exciting. I love competition. Always have and I probably always so it's fun to me when there is something more to a race than just the internal competition. The other thing that I like, though, is that I'm not expected to so anything so if I don't do what I think I can do, it doesn't matter. Unlike my other events, specifically skating, there was an expectation which made it stressful. Frisbee had a team component which made it stressful in another way (you had to rely on other people and people relied on you not to mess up). Here this is just me and, really, no one knows my thoughts about what I want to accomplish. In addition to just trucking along with no plan, is that thought that I don't know what I want to do next. After Providence I was so positive about running. I still am, but when I run as the heat and humidity have started to come back, I find myself feeling that exhaustion that I had last summer creep in. I don't know if I WANT to push myself through long runs in the summer or speed workouts after work in the heat. There is something so draining about this weather that is actually a bit of the opposite from what most people think about running. I sometimes just cannot handle this weather and it makes me super frustrated and disappointed in myself so I find summer running to also be harder than winter in the mental sense. So I don't know what I'm up to this training season. I think I may try to run some shorter races and also really try to PR in a half. I'll keep up my distances, but I'm not sure if there's a fall marathon in my future this year. I may lay-low and look to tackle Providence or another spring marathon with a little more vigor than I did this year.

For the First Time in a Long Time

I just wanted to share a few more thoughts post providence Marathon because I feel like they are a little bit different than my post Baystate Marathon. After both of my Baystate marathons I had a sense of accomplishment but also a cloud of disappointment. The second one was especially a hard time for me afterwards. It was a hard fought training program, one that had many ups and many downs, and the race itself was the same way. I truly thought I was on the right track and in many ways I was but just a little bit short. During that race I came close to tears when I realize I just couldn’t pull through and upon finishing realizing how close I was and yet how far away I was I thought my heart sing. I wondered where I lost my time and if I could have made it up and settled on the fact that I am not sure where I could have made it up but I am certain that I could have made it up. I was proud of the improvement in my time but super disappointed in the result. And it took a long time to get over that and in many ways I still haven’t gotten over it since I still need to keep running if I ever want to qualify for Boston. After Providence though I have a happier outlook. I think that race took a lot of grits as I explained earlier that I didn’t really focus on before hand. But now upon finishing and thinking back on it and thinking about my time and how I feel couple days after words I am proud of what I did this past Sunday. I think that it was a better showing in many ways in the previous two marathons. I didn’t put in the training but I still had a result that I can be proud of and having run in that weather and just doing what needed to be done now that it has settled in a bit more I’m happy with the experience and how I finish the race. Also unlike after Baystate in which I wondered if I would decide to do a marathon again this was a positive experience in which I am actually looking forward to running a marathon again and looking forward to potentially pushing myself and trying once more for that elusive goal. It makes me look forward to training hard because I see the result of what I consider to be so so training and there is that thought of what could I actually do if I got myself back out there and really focused it’s made me want to focus on other things which I always have on the back burner including but not limited to better nutrition meditation better food etc. As always. Better stretching. So all in all I’m like how my previous post after last year were filled with a better death and a sadness and some regret I don’t feel at this time I feel a sense of accomplishment in a sense of pride which is something that I greatly enjoyed as many people would look forward to the next chapter and just seeing what I decide to do.