almost over

the mile repeats. are. almost. over.

three more left - two next tuesday and one on wednesday. and i was about to say i hope its a cold day in hell before i ever have to do them again when i realize that a majority of my repeats have been just that: a cold day in hell. today's being the most recent. i looked at weather.com to see what i should wear to mile repeat street and upon seeing that the temp was "feels like 4", i seriously considered going back to bed. but then i thought about all i had to do today & realized that there was no other time the workout was going to get done. so there i was. another cold day in hell on mile repeat street. today's thrill ride included running into another headwind for the first 800 meters and getting tangled up in tree branches and debris from last nights' storm.

i have hated these mile repeats since the first day i was out there. and it's this hatred of them that made me think; hmm, maybe that's my problem, i hate them. thats why they aren't going as well as i'd like. so i would try to embrace them. feel the love. be one with the repeat. chant good mantras. none of it seemed to work. i'd head out the door every tuesday and wednesday, my head filled with good, loving mile repeat thougts. i'd think, today could be the day. today is the day it is going to go well (i.e; faster). but then i would get up to that yellow line and all good karma thoughts were gone, and it would take everything i had to just start. and then everything i had to do another one. and another one. and another. and just one more.

because i was training for a hilly marathon, i was convinced that my schedule would be filled with hill repeats - and i was looking forward to it, beacuse i love them. so i almost died when i saw instead two back to back days of mile repeats. and i almost feel like i never quite got over the shock of the schedule. i hated being up there and would just long for the sunday long runs when i could just run. there was a point a while back when i got a bit more comfortable with the suckiness of the repeats in that i could do them and not feel like i wanted to cry, die, puke or quit in the middle of the workout. while becoming more comortable in the hell that was a mile repeat was an improvement, they still never got better - both in attitude and performance.

mile repeats are fun things when you actually get faster. when you see a progressive improvement and the numbers keep getting lower and lower. i know this cause they were sort of fun last fall. i'd go out there and wonder how fast i could go. what will my watch say? and there was complete elation upon seeing the numbers - they just kept going down.

i naively expected the same this time around. but i didn't factor in the fact that i had them two days in a row. but lap after lap and week after week the time on my watch was almost, freakishly, the same exact time. every time. i never got faster. and this worried me. i worried that i had just wasted my time out there. so i do what i do when i worry about my running and i wrote to coach, thinking that maybe i had blown it because i hadn't gotten faster. he explained that getting faster wasn't the point (thank god). the point was to get comfortable with running faster than race pace and training my body to be able to repeat the workload over and over. effort, recover, effort, recover.

i think half the effort some days was simply to stop standing at the yellow line contemplating running and to actually start running. there was effort required on some days to not curl up in front of the line and go to sleep at some point between the umpteen repeats. there was effort in trying to maintain some semblance of a respectable pace against headwinds. there was effort required to stay upright on the ice and slush last week. there was effort to just get out the door on tuesdays and wednesdays and get myself to that damn yellow line.

but its almost over. i did them. and in 10 days, i will be more than happy to line up at another kind of line and hope that all the mental & physical efforts of mile repeats line up with the rest of my ducks and translate into a very happy, third times' the charm of a plan b marathon.

the land of oatmeal

soon after my nutritional overhaul began a few months' ago, and my kids started to notice what i was eating, i had the following conversation with my youngest daughter in the supermarket as i was looking for the oatmeal:

she: mom, you eat a lot of oatmeal.
me: i know. its my favorite breakfast.
she: lilah eats a lot of oatmeal too.
me: how do you know?
she: she brings it to school for lunch.
me: wow, what a great thing to put in a lunchbox.
she: yeah, lilah comes from the land of oatmeal.

the land of oatmeal.
where everyone is well fueled and can run for hours.
and i guess its good for getting through a day of first grade too.

lost

if its thursday, then it is big dog run day. and if it is big dog run day it is highly likely that i will be sucking wind, living for the water stop and watching my heartrate to make sure i'm not gonna die soon. but one thing that is not likely though is getting lost. until today.

so i'm running. i'm running. and i'm even chatting. making small talk. and i am not good at small talk and especially not good while running; cause its hard to make small talk when you are sucking wind. chatting can really only take place in the first 15 minutes, and if i'm lucky - the full first half; but after that, i cross the threshold into wayoutofconversation zone and all bets are off. but i digress. i'm running. i'm running. then, without warning, the group gets shot out of a cannon. without me. and i'm off the back. and its early in the run. and i'm usually disappointed in myself when i am off the back like this, especially within the first 30 minutes; but i know the water stop is not far and i'll catch them there & be able to regroup. i peer into the park as i come up to it. and i am mentally & physically slowing down a bit. i'm looking for them around the water fountain. i'm not wearing my glasses, but i am pretty sure those bushes are not them. oh god. they did not stop for water.

i am so conditioned on these runs to expect a water stop 30 minutes in, that if we don't stop it messes with my mojo. i mean, that's what we do. we stop. for water. its my favorite part of the run. the actual stopping of the shitfast wind sucking running. for just a minute. that way, i can look at these runs like two shitfast 30 minute runs rather than one long agonizing hour one. and its like getting to take an instant mulligan. if the first 30 didn't go so well, i get to rest for 1 minute and try again.

they didn't stop. and now my physical slow down upon nearing the fountain meant i was even farther behind the group. so far behind that i could no longer see anyone. ok. no big deal. just keep running. but the thing about these thursday runs is the fact that the singular focus to just keep up, coupled with the oxygen deprivation doesn't leave room for paying attention to where i actually am. and so, i got lost. while i had a general idea of where i was, meaning that i knew what neighborhood i was in; i really didn't know exactly where in that neighborhood or in which direction the main road or the park where we begin the runs was located. lets just say i had gotten a little turned around and there was a point at which i was running through a neighborhood and just had to stop and take stock. wait a minute! where am i?!?

i got my bearings and zigzagged my way to the main road, whereupon i looked at my watch and realized i'd be at the finish right around the same time as everyone else. like i didn't even fall off the back or get lost. love it when it all just works out.

snow & repeats

snow and repeats do not jive well together. now, i have sung the praises of running in the snow many times here. i adore everything about it, the crunch, the smell and the way it all looks & feels. i woke up this morning to a light blanket over everything, and while i couldn't wait to get out and run in it; school was delayed, so i let myself sleep in a bit. but i have now discovered the one thing that i do not like about running in the snow. and that would be running mile repeats in it.

on the first lap, i found myself watching cars as they approached the stop sign at the intersection and wondering if they would actually stop in time or skid into my path. i'm always amused by the white knuckled drivers, hunched over their steering wheels, terrified of the half inch of snow on the ground. they never quite know what to do. the first lap was slow. crazy slow for a mile repeat. the best surface for running wasn't always right in front of me, just moving under my feet as always; i constantly needed to weave and bob to seek it out, it changed every block. the slush was too slippery, as was the packed snow. the fresh snow was best, but was so far off to the side of the road, that i would run on it & not be able to see the tiny ditch in the road where it ended and met the grass. i had to save myself from falling more than once. and when a car did indeed skid right through a stop sign in front of me, and i could feel my toes slipping every time i picked my foot up, i knew it was all just a recipe for a twisted ankle. and 18 days before my plan b marathon, it all felt just a little too risky. so in an unprecedented move, after just two laps, i just scrapped the whole workout and resolved to finish later, knowing that any sort of snow and slush on the streets don't last very long around here. so i ran home trying to stay on the fresh and undisturbed snow that offered a bit more traction. and when you aren't trying to go blazes fast, and when you are the first one to make tracks in it running on snow is still bliss. trying to run fast on it? not so much.

top billing

this week marks one year of blogging. what better way to celebrate than to announce that seezannerun now has top billing on the google search page for boobs a mile long. really, its every girls' dream come true. so instead of reflecting on this past years' accomplishments and getting all verklempt about how i was reluctant to start this blogging thing but am now so glad that i have; i have instead still been thinking about who the hell googles boobs a mile long? i mean, i never would have blinked an eye if searches for, where did my boobs go? or, can running make your boobs disappear? led to my site. that would make perfect sense. i mean, cause that shit happens. but now i am officially weirded out by all the random long boob searches that bring people here. perhaps i need to bring the subject matter up a notch. how about some intelligent posts on the following:

• what to wear on a long run when it is 11 degrees out?
• how to stuff a fuel belt with as much food as possible.
• what to do when your ass is frozen and you feel like it may fall off.
• energy gels: friend or foe?
• long runs in the worst weather ever. ask the expert.
• how to get your ducks to line up.
• sugar - bad. real food - good.
• when toenails fall off
• hitting the wall: how bad is it?
• getting out of the ambulance and finishing anyway.

and so begins the taper. plenty of time and energy to spend on nonsensical posts. not that any of them really made any sense in the first place. its all just a little look inside my head. and i can't believe y'all keep coming back for more, but you have no idea how happy i am that you do. there's really nowhere else this yankee girl can say y'all and be okay with it. and there is nowhere else i can talk so incessantly about running.

when i noticed a year ago that if i talked about running anymore, my friends' eyes would start to glaze over in that ohmygodhereshegoesagain way, i knew i was in dire need of another outlet. that, or risk losing my friends or being locked in a rubber room. i really liked my friends and didn't want to lose them to the minutiae of my every running thought. plus, i was driving my husband crazy. so i took my obsession here. and for months, i was a closet blogger. i'm out of the bloggy closet now and those same friends i was trying to spare from my madness now read the blog and while they may still roll their eyes at me and say ohmygodhereshegoesagain, i just can't see it. it has been a wild ride of a year. so thanks to everyone who stops by to share in the adventure; and offer friendship, humor, support, advice and enough hits to get me the number one spot on googles' boobs a mile long. not quite sure how that gets topped next year, but my husband just renewed the domain name for another year - so i'll keep running and blogging and hope that you just keep coming back, cause you all rock.

last long run

i waited till mother nature warmed things up a bit & headed out for my last long run in 11 degree weather. not so warm in the grand scheme of things. but when you wake up and its 7 out, its all relative. after the first three miles of thinking my fingers would freeze and fall off, along with my vaseline covered face; it wasn't so bad. i left the house smiling, grinning from ear to ear. the sun was shining and that makes everything better and i just had that feeling it was going to be a good run. so there was that general feeling of run-goodness, and then stepping out the door just as plan b theme song comes on tiny shuffle doesn't hurt. i ran by a little gym at one point and saw everyone on the treadmills, i wanted to say - bundle up, come outside. its not so bad. bundling up was definitely the key to happiness. as far as food and fueling, i brought two clementines with me, but threw one into a bush at mile 2 when i realized i needed to be able to stretch my hands and wiggle my fingers to make sure they were still there. and while i've been able to peel and eat on the run every other time, i had to stop in a coffee shop at mile 4 to have my first - and now only, clementine. i couldn't bear the thought of taking my gloves off to eat a cold, wet piece of fruit. my husband met me at the park at mile 9 1/2 with a banana. he usually throws fruit out the car window at a pre-arranged spot, but he said he'd wait for me to make sure i hadn't succumbed to any hypothermia. and by that point, i had actually gotten hot and peeled some layers off for him to take home. there was a point though, with about 2 miles to go that the happiness was gone. my ass had gotten so cold i wondered how i was even moving forward. my legs felt like blocks of ice. but it was like being on auto pilot. i just kept going forward. cause forward meant home. pancakes. coffee. hot shower. fireplace. and having the plan b theme song miraculously come on again 16 miles later as i crossed the street at our neighborhood coffee shop to kick it in for the last 3 blocks home was the perfect way to end my last long run.

so that's it. my last long run of plan b. there's two more sunday runs. three weeks from today i'll be in birmingham, ready for 26.2. my ducks are lined up. the food and fueling experiments have been conducted. the squares in the schedule are getting crossed off. the shit hard ass-kicking schedule didn't kill me. i'm still here. while i was dissapointed at never having gotten faster on the mile repeats, i felt much better when i was told that wasn't the point. i've never had back to back mile repeats and i've never trained for back to back marathons either. i think i came through okay.

20 days and counting.
almost there.

long run warm up

i wonder
if getting out of bed
and walking across the room
a kabillion times
to hit snooze
counts as a warm up?

cause i know its still about
7 degrees out
i just want to give mother nature
a little more time to warm
up to at least double digits.

i'm going to need all
the warm up i can get.

mile long boobs

ok. i'll admit it. i really love checking the stats of my blog. i love to see where everyone is from, i love to see which things get the most hits. but mostly? mostly i love seeing the keywords that bring people to the blog. i always wonder if people found what they were looking for. and i find myself wishing i could answer their question in some way. so, what better way to spend a training day off than doing just that and combining it with some shameless self promotion in the form of links to some oldies but goodies?

• i need to pee badly - yes, i often need to pee really badly during a run. mostly in a race. the short, fast 5k kind. or during mile repeats (thank god for those bushes at the finish line). or, during a field test. this is the result of giving birth to three children but it also has the added benefit of being a very effective maximum effort gauge. if i peed, then i gave it my all. this is the top search. i don't get it. there must be a lot of people out there who need to pee really badly.
• red button pushing games - there are games?
• treadmill how many miles? - none. go outside. i'm amazed at all the variations on this theme - people googling how many miles to run on a treadmill, and they wind up here. listen, people - you aren't going to find the answer here. bundle up. go outside.
• funny picture of exhausted runner - whoever came here looking for this must have been disappointed. my exhausted running look is not funny. and it is not a good look for me. i'd have to be really drunk to post it.
• runner down - it can't be good if you are googling 'runner down'. unless of course you want to learn how to not ever have those words apply to you. if that's the information you were looking for you came to the right place. it is indeed a sad ocurrance. but it was the impetus for getting my ducks in a row, which coincidentally is another popluar search that brings people to seezannerun:
• getting my ducks in a row - people google this. and that makes me feel better.
• boobs a mile long - this is my all time favorite, thus the post title. anyone who knows me knows i don't have boobs a mile long. hell, i don't even have boobs. but most importantly, who googles 'boobs a mile long'? the icing on the cake of mile long boobs? i'm on page 1.
• best gels for long run - i'm sure whoever googled this was looking for an intelligent comparison of gels for a long run. i have no doubts they were disappointed to have arrived here. i think i said they are vile. now, if they want to come back and talk clementines or bananas, or how much food can be stuffed into the back pocket of a fuel belt, i have conducted many experiments. they came to the right place.
• big button secret - there is no secret. just push it. its big. its red.
• feverish nausea - oh. someone was trying to self diagnose and they came to my site. whoever you are, i'm so sorry. but - if ever you feel feverish & nauseous and it is day 3 of three digit temps and you are running a lot; training for a marathon for example, it is highly likely you are dehydrated. drink more water.
• leo's babershop harlan - completley perplexed by this one. i got nuthin'
• mice in stove insulation - strange for a running blog, yes. there were mice living in the insulation in our stove (unbeknowst to me - until after, the um, incident) and i cooked them all. it was a veritable mouse waco. it somehow kept me from getting my run done the next day. must have had something to do with all the wine i drank over the hilarity of it all. that's how i tied it all in to the running theme. i can relate almost anything to running. and to me. its a talent.
• running in the wind - just in case i wasn't clear enough in whatever post this landed on - it sucks. and apparently, it is also a song.
• snot runners - i just think this is funny. who googles snot runners? what are snot runners? i wonder if they ever found out.
• happy runner girl - ok, love that this is on page 1. i love that someone googled it. and right under it? a treadmill for dogs. good god. its a dog. bundle it up. send it outside.
• wardrobe malfunction - janet. justin. and me. bringing sexy back.
• training to run 12 miles in 12 minutes - seriously. someone googled this? a minute mile? and they got to my site?
• what is a mile repeat? - pure hell, my googly friend. pure hell.

snow

i finally got to run in the weather that i have been dying to run in all winter. it was thirty five degrees and snowing when i walked out my front door at 4:45 this morning. and the first sound i heard as i stepped out the door, my feet crunching on the snow, is one of my most favorite sounds. since i left the snowy northeast winters ten years ago, it is not a sound i get to hear often. and so obviously, running in snow is not something i get to do often either.

i love the snow. everything about it. the crunch of it, the feel of it falling on my face, the stillness of it, the way the world looks in it. pure bliss. and running in it is all zen and perfect and dreamy. and if its dark out, it just adds to the allure. all the days of running in blistering cold, torrential rain and howling winds - this was the weather i had been longing for. so even though i was on a big dog run, and i started it feeling less than inspired, and spent most of it feeling slightly defeated and wondering whether they had kicked it into warp speed or i had slowed down, and even though i was trying to stay focused and keep my crazy breathing under some semblance of control, and even though it was tough; there were a few fleeting moments of snowy zen. and zen moments don't usually appear on big dog runs. but i am glad that i recognized them and enjoyed them before the moment was gone. the snow falling on my face, the stillness of everything around us, our reflections in the wet road and the occasional crunch of snow under our feet. i was actually grateful for the earliness of the big dog run, cause it was all gone just a few hours later - and i would have been running on just another grey, dreary day.

bend it like my new best friend

i don't know what it is about the last few weeks leading up to a marathon, but i start having crazy, vivid dreams. not your usual, late to the race and oh my god i forgot my sneakers dreams. a dream like that would actually make sense. although i do remember a dream right before my first marathon where the race was like a crazy fun house of an obstacle course. that one sort of made sense to me in that i was in a race and one could argue that my life is sort of like a crazy fun house of an obstacle course. so i got that one. no dream interpretation needed.

but the last marathon go around resulted in dreams like going to a bakery with p. diddy and ordering cookies and cakes and wanting to eat all the frosting off of everything. and that was before the sugar purge.

last nights' crazy dream? it was me and david beckham. and we were tight. like best friends tight. we took our kids to the park. we went shopping together. we frolicked through central park. and of course, we kicked a soccer ball around. it was like a watching a trailer for a really cheesy movie musical. i don't get it. i don't play soccer. never did. i don't frolick through grassy fields. and david beckham is not even on my wheel.

but i still have 21 days to go.
that's plenty of time for lenny kravitz to stop by in one of my dreams.

i've said it before

i'll say it again.
i love the easy week.
whoever invented the easy week is genius.
just when you think you are going to break,
just when you think the schedule may actually kill you,
that it is too hard, and all your runs are sucking
and none of them feel good -
just when you think your goose is cooked,
and you are composing emails in your head to coach
about how you don't think you can hack it anymore -
along comes an easy week.
and a run in the sun with no wind, rain or blistering cold -
a slow run, but it feels good
cause that's what your body wants to do.
just run.
thank god for the easy weeks
and good, slow, easy
runs in the sun.

wind. sucks.

running into wind
i yell, you are killing me!
wind doesn't listen

spring fever

a little odd for january, but hard to resist in the weather we had today. it must have hit 70. the kids are still home, they don't go back until tomorrow. and i blatantly skipped my swim workout in favor of recovering a little more from yesterdays' 21.

there were good tunes throughout the house all day.
kids playing outside like it was summer.
a little housecleaning, a little rearranging.
cleaned out, fresh backpacks.
open windows.

it all made for a very nice recovery day. a little mental health day so to speak. i hate it when panic and doubt come to visit. i honestly didn't think they'd stop by this time around. and its worse when they come along on a run. those runs where even as you tell yourself, just run, just run; you think you cannot do this. its no fun to be out on that ledge & need to be talked back in. but all it takes is a little day off, self-imposed or scheduled; to feel back on track, to realize you just had a shitty run, nothing more - to feel like you can do it. and to actually look forward to lining up at the mile repeat yellow line tomorrow morning.

just run.
don't worry.

ugh.

i tried to come up with a more inspired title. but right now, post 21 miles, that one sums it up best. i have conducted every long run since the columbus marathon as a little experiment. an experiment in food & fueling. there could be no more crash landings on any sidewalks. i had to learn exactly what worked and didn't work while on the run. so while today's 21 miler was fairly miserable; i have learned what does and doesn't work. real food works. energy gels do not. and so i think these long run food and fueling experiemnts have been a success in that i know exactly what works now.

i got rid of sugar, i got my gi system back on track. i've since re-introduced sugar in small bits, and even dairy in small bits. the next step was to re-introduce energy gels and drinks on the run. we were waiting until longest run to start. since i wanted more than one shot at it, so there could be some comparison, we started last week. sadly, they don't go down so well. last week, all the sugar in the gels contributed to some extreme post-run soreness. this week, about four miles after the gel, my intestines announced their existence. my intestines have not made their presence known on a run in a long time; and really, they are not invited on my runs. i do not want to know they exist. today, they reminded me.

and so for the middle 7 miles i tried to work through the stomach pain. and i haven't had to do this in a long time. i was bummed. i was pissed. and i was miserable. i had some pretzels that i had packed helped to settle things down. once i got to mile 14, things were looking up. my stomach had settled and i was feeling a bit better. but around mile 16, my lower back decided it didn't want to run anymore, and so the last 5 miles of the 21 vascillated between moments of feeling fairly good and working through the back pain.

i think the hope here was that once i got all cleaned up, i could better tolerate things on the run - have a stomach of steel so to speak; able to take anything they handed out at a marathon. i don't think i'm here. maybe i will be someday, i just don't want to sacrifice another run to experimenting with it. two sacraficial runs are enough. i'm going to stick to my tried and true: clementines, bananas, pretzels and HEED. these were the things that fueled the happy runs. and even though i was running through miserable conditions on almost every long run, physically, i felt good. this was the food. real food. real food fuels happy runs.

so my husband will have to keep driving around town after i've left on a run to throw fruit out the car window onto the lawns of friends and complete strangers. and he assured me today as i sat in an ice bath and needed to be talked off the ledge; that he would deliver anything i needed to me on the run in birmingham. why can't they pass out bananas and clementines at races? it would make life so easy.

i'm a smart girl. really, i am. i know that all the runs can't be good. its hard. it was really hard today. hard is ok. but still. i hate the runs that make you think you can't do this. i'm blaming it on the gel. have to blame it on something. it would have been a fine run had it not been for that vile stuff. well, it would have been fine at least until my back started screaming at me. massage girl has her work cut out for her tomorrow.

ugh. i didn't want to be here. i didn't want to need to be talked off the ledge. twice. coach called too, after i emailed a cry for help. shit. i thought i was past this shit.

secret swimmy goal

i've had a secret swimmy goal in my head since i had 30 minute monday swims put on my schedule. i know how to swim, but i have never been a swimmer, so i wasn't quite sure what to do when presented with the officialness of swimming on my schedule. so i've just been getting in the pool and swimming. it was a nice change of pace from my usual routine of being a slave to my watch and my running pace. swim times had no meaning to me. i could just swim and not care how i did. but dammit, i like to measure things - to know how i am doing. and then one day i noticed the sign on the wall of the pool club that stated how many lengths equaled a mile. i didn't fully understand the lengths vs. laps. i had to ask the lifeguard to explain the difference between the two. i went home and plugged my lengths into a calculator, and then into my favorite workout log. and now i had a new goal. you know, in addition to that BQ. swim 1 mile in my allotted 30 minutes by the time this marathon training was over. and so i swam today and got out of the pool fairly elated, thinking i had done it. i swam a mile. but when i got home and plugged my lengths into my log, i realized i didn't. i was two lengths short. almost there.

feels like four

four mile repeats.
four degrees.

well, truth be told, it wasn't actually four degrees, that was merely the "feels like" temp during my mile repeats today. the regular temp was a balmy 16. i felt like i was gearing up to hit the slopes instead of the pavement, but running over to mile repeat street, i figured i had geared up right, because it didn't really feel that cold. clearly, the cold had already gotten to my better senses and messed with them. that shining sun can be very deceiving. but once at the start, running in the opposite direction from where i came, this is where i found that "feels like 4" temp. i was running headfirst into it. i turn the corner, get hit with an even colder blast for about a half block, turn the corner again, the winds are gone and suddenly the 16 degrees feels downright hot. and so it went like this three more times. running into blistering, painful cold and turning the corner to suddenly feel hot and want to peel off extra layers. my legs were so cold on the first 1/2 mile stretch into that wind i don't think they knew what to do. or maybe they did, i just couldn't really feel them doing it. even though the homestretch half mile felt downright balmy in comparison, 16 degress is just insane. it may take a while for my ass to thaw out.

happy new year

riding a bike in 28 degree weather - 18 with the wind chill: crazy.

getting hall pass from coach - no mile repeats today: blissful.

starting out the new year - riding with good friends: perfect.

a crazy, cold, fun ride with the best of friends. a mini-blizzard on main street. headwinds. tailwinds. frozen toes and fingers. it's been a long time since i have enjoyed being on the bike. and despite the blistering cold, i enjoyed being on the bike today. it was the perfect way with the perfect people to start the new year. that, and getting to skip mile repeats ain't a bad way to start new year either!

happy new year everyone!
hope 2008 brings you good fast runs, good rides, good times.