Race Day: A Tale of 13 Miles

Mile 1: I'm leaving these suckers behind. Just because the four of us are the ones who barely trained at all doesn't mean I need to keep pace with these slowpokes...I'm running with the fast people.

Mile 2: Right...um, I can't really keep up with the fast people. Also, bathroom break with a LONG porta-potty line. I knew there was a reason I shouldn't have had that big cup of coffee this morning.

Mile 3: It's Joanne! She's faster than the other slowpokes with her steady 1 minute walking, 1 minute running pace but I'm faster. We run together for about 10 minutes before I'm bored and taking off. "Don't wait for me!" she says. Later, Joanne!

Mile 4 -> 8 or so: This is fun! I am keeping pace with the dudes with backpacks and the lady with "survivor" written on her back and the eight year old with her dad. As long as we're all roughly at the same pace, I feel like I'm running at a good rate. My goal is to reach the finish line under 3 hours (which is a very long time) and I'm starting to think I could make it in less than 2 1/2! I also have stuff like this to entertain me:

- The dude lounging in a lawn chair (I think he may have even been in a bathrobe), with an old school boombox beside him blaring the "Rocky" theme song with his fists silently raised and a big grin on his face.

- All the cute kids holding signs like "You go Daddy!" "My Mom is the Best!", or chanting "Let's go runners, let's go!" and clapping, or best of all, the four year old and his dad with a tray of homemade oatmeal cookies cut into quarters, offering "cookies and high fives!"

- The weird "shouldn't you be at Lovefest right now?" sighting, an older woman in a skimpy costume listening to techno and hulu hooping by the side of the road.

- Maybe seven or eight live bands along the route, mostly singing cover songs. No matter how tired you are, you're going to cheer and sing along to "99 Red Balloons." I loved the one guy in the soul band who shouted "lookin' good...there's donuts and beer at the finish line folks!"

Mile 9 - My knees are KILLING me! I didn't realize that when they talk about endurance, it's not about physical exhaustion...it's about your lower body starting to give out on you. My lungs and brains are all "let's go faster! faster!" but if my legs - really, just my knees - could swing up and kick me in the face to make me stop, they totally would.

Mile 10 - I slow to a walk, stumble on unresponsive legs, and mutter expletives to myself. A nearby policeman on a motorcycle says soothingly "it's okay! you can take a break!" I respond, I kid you not, choking back tears, "it's...just...so...frustrating!" Apparently, by Mile 10 I am ten years old.

Mile 11 -> 12 -> dear God when does this end - my run is now the run of an eighty year old woman getting in her morning jog by the pool at the retirement community. It is a sad, slow, shuffle. First eight year old and her dad, then backpack dudes, then survivor lady leave me in the dust. People are actually walking faster than my run, but walking hurts more.

The cool part of the race though, is just when you start to let yourself get mired in self-pity, a stranger running beside you pats you on the back and says "you're almost there!" or a kid holds up a sign that says "Go Runners Go!" and high fives you. This must be part of why people do long distance runs - being cheered on by so many strangers.

Mile 13 - Someone shouts "just eight stoplights to go!" which, of course, makes me count stoplights and they're so freakin' far apart. Then someone shouts my name - it's Joanne! Her 1 minute run, 1 minute walk has left her cool, collected, and energized for a sprint to the finish line. "Don't wait for me!" I say, and off she goes. Just before the finish line, Coach Robert materializes from thin air (where did he COME from?) and starts jogging along beside me shouting encouragements, and I make it across - in two hours and forty-two minutes.

Thanks so much to everyone who made a contribution to Big Brothers Big Sisters - sure, the strangers cheering me on were great, but even better was the fact that I reached my fundraising goal before I even set foot in San Jose. BBBSBA has raised over $20K from half-marathon participants to support one-to-one mentoring throughout the Bay Area. Seriously, everyone here says thanks for your support.

Will I run another one? Immediately post-race, ice taped to my knees, salt caked on my face, cold beer in my hand, the answer was a definitive "no." But now...maybe! Will you join me?

'Twas the Night Before the Half Marathon...

...and I ate an entire box of Annie's Macaroni and Cheese, felt gross, and THEN read articles like this and this. Oops.

...and I've been wearing a plastic yellow wristband since Friday afternoon's event check-in in San Jose, just so I can get a free beer at the finish line without the hassle of showing ID.

...and I realized at 7 PM I forgot to wash the sand out of my sneakers from a hike a week ago and now am crossing my fingers they dry beforethe GODAWFUL hour of 4:30 AM.

...and I went to bed at 9 PM and am utterly unable to fall asleep even though I have to wake up at said godawful hour.

...and I'm really excited to run this race tomorrow! (no really, I am. It'll be a blast!)

Thanks everyone for your encouragement and support - I reached my fundraising goal for Big Brothers Big Sisters!

We named the DOG Indiana!

Okay, I don't really have much that's new to report. I did two runs through the Mission this weekend but never more than an hour...cause I get bored real fast (besides, I have a big blister on the bottom of my foot! boo hoo)

But I LOVE this guy Lloyd. Apparently he runs marathons with wacky costumes. This one was the London Marathon. The MARATHON! That's dedication.

My roommate Andrew's girlfriend Nicole is working with "Team in Training" to run a real marathon I think in late October (early February? I forget. The memory of a goldfish). Anyway, she's constantly training, and she did a 22 mile run this weekend(!). She says that Team in Training is really supportive, they'll set up mile markers and provide little cups of gatorade and her teammates are all as gung-ho as she is.

I think that might be my problem. Instead, my friends and I support each other in NOT running:
"Did you run this weekend?" "Nope." "Oh good, neither did I!" "We're so silly! Let's run together tomorrow!"
"Do you still want to run tonight?" "Not really, I'm kind of busy." "Oh good, I wasn't planning on it either." "We'll go this weekend." "Sure!"

Now that's supportive!

But let's face it...even if I won't be half as fast or impressive as I might originally have hoped, it'll still be fun, and we've raised thousands of dollars for BBBSBA thus far, which is the important thing and the whole reason I signed up for it in the first place. Maybe I'll still be bit by the marathon bug on Sunday...crazier things have happened (see Lloyd, above...I mean, if he can pull a giant rock for twenty-some miles, I can run a measly 13).

P.S. http://blba.us/i.asp?id=313088-256205804-1 (I'm only $225 from my goal!)

A perfect method for adding drama to life is to wait until the deadline looms large. - A. Cornyn-Selby

It's getting down to the wire folks...while I was living the good life of bacon, booze, and sleeping till noon in Philadelphia last week, Robert sent me the following email:

Hi Danielle, I just want to check in with you to see how your training is going? Did you get in a longer run this last weekend? What is the longest run that you've done and how long did it take to run it? I look forward to hearing from you. Robert

I think we can all read between the lines here..."are you training? give me an example of a longer run to prove that you're actually training. I suspect you're not training and you're going to pass out halfway through..."

I kid, I kid...especially since he sent an inspirational "you're right on the money" email when I explained my last ditch training schedule for the next two weeks.

Expect a flurry of posts between now and Oct 4th as I leap into action. I've always liked operating under a tight deadline anyway...I guess that's why I'm a grantwriter!

Thanks so much to Darius, Kim, and Barbara, all of whom have generously funded my marathon efforts by making a big ol' contribution to Big Brothers Big Sisters.

...and if you haven't yet done the same, now's your chance!:
http://blba.us/i.asp?id=313088-256205804-1

See you at the finish line!

Wait a minute...running IS fun!

Here's me attempting a glorious leap over home plate at Sunday's 5K race. Unfortunately the photographers at this event didn't cooperate and caught me just at the start of the jump. You can sort of see it in my face: best jumping picture ever, here I come! and...

But I have to say, races are fun! Strangers clap and cheer for you...you get a goody bag full of random stuff most of which you eat on BART on the way home...you feel like you accomplished something meaningful and can spend the rest of the day watching True Blood in your pajamas!

Incidentally, included in said goody bag was a San Francisco Bride Magazine. What?! Should all women who wear size small T-shirts and run 5K races be getting married, and furthermore, should be able to afford a $5K dress and a "day of" wedding planner so they "don't have to be the point person on their big day"? Ugh. I bet it wasn't in the men's size XL goody bag. It did make for interesting reading as I ate my third mini clif bar on the BART, though.

Anyway...yay for running!

Why run when you can buy?

So I'm continuing the very wise and forward-thinking trend of, rather than running, buying stuff FOR running, and then it's almost like running...right?

1) I bought a ticket for the Plate to Plate 5K race, which Victoria, my marathon guru, recommended as a good first training race (the assumption being that you've been training for THAT race as well, but that's neither here nor there). This will take place on August 30th so if nothing else, at least we all know that I'll be running five kilometers that day.

2) Yesterday we drove over to the big REI store in Berkeley for Yosemite hiking supplies (I'm going up Half Dome on Saturday...shouldn't that count as a couple miles of running?), and I picked up a fanny pack/water bottle combo so that I don't have to wear a purse while running like I did last time (ahem, the ONLY time...yes, I know).

3) And finally, I just added a cheap Timex sports watch with stopwatch to my Amazon cart, so that I can accurately mark the intervals (two minutes on, two minutes off, that sort of thing) that I am not actually currently running.

I think there's only one word for me...Hasselhoff, take it away:

That's right, that's me. RUNNING!

So I did indeed manage to arrive at Golden Gate Park 7:30AM on a Saturday on a few hours of shuteye and a bottle of energy drink. Unfortunately I wandered around all aimless and aggravated and sleep deprived trying to find our group for the first fifteen minutes or so, so I missed the introductory stuff, meeting the other runners, any stretching activities, etc.
Victoria and I finally found the group just as they were getting started, and off we ran into the cold foggy park, timing our "intervals". See, the idea is that you break up your run into short periods of both running and walking. Yeah, it sounds like the lazy man's running to me too, but Robert insists its the best way to run, and there's a whole article in the NY Times about it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/health/02well.html

So how did it go? Well, we did 2 minutes walking, 2 minutes running for maybe forty minutes tops, followed by twenty minutes of "brisk walking". When we saw the bison in the park, that kind of derailed our focus, so we ended up just heading home to get ready for a wine country trip and Robert called me a few hours later to make sure I wasn't passed out in a corner of the park somewhere. My feet were sore which probably means my shoes aren't the best. It was tiring, but not bikram yoga tiring. I'm a little meh on the whole experience as I didn't really feel like i was accomplishing anything - except finding the bison paddock.

I'm going to try a few morning runs on my own this week now that I've finally started, and we'll see how it goes...

Bison!

Random Waterfall!

Victoria the Marathon Queen (she ran it in just over 2 hours last year)

Who's that on the phone?!

Our group trainer, Robert Mills, just called me...

As soon as she heard me say "Oh HI Robert" Carolyn burst into my office and wrote on a sticky note "He called me I lied & told him I'm doing 6 mile walks"

At first, I was all guilty and apologetic. After all, that big long crazy schedule is now half over and my training consists thus far of buying running shoes.

But after about five minutes of inspirational talk I now know that:
- there's still PLENTY of time!
- if I'm doing lots of yoga, I'm probably in great shape and have nothing to worry about!!
- I SHOULD wake up wicked early Saturday morning because joining a 7:30am group run will in no way interfere with 10am wine country plans!!!

Soon after I hung up the phone thus inspired, Stephanie shouted from her office "he's calling me!" she had decided in no uncertain terms that she was NOT going to run the marathon. It simply wasn't going to fit in her busy October schedule. None of us could convince her otherwise.

Five minutes later...Stephanie announced that she has learned:
- there's still PLENTY of time!
- if she's doing the occasional half hour on the elliptical machine at the Y, she's probably in great shape and has nothing to worry about!!

This man is a MAD MARATHON GENIUS!!!

So how's training going?

The question often asked.  And the answer is, I confess, that it hasn't started yet!  There are many excuses why not (I was traveling...I got sick...I didn't want to find my way to San Jose at 7:30AM on a Saturday) BUT I did take one important step last week...I bought fancy running shoes!

To provide context, here are the sneakers currently in my closet:

From left to right, we have: a) the sketchers sneakers my aunt gave me because they were too small for her, which are also too small for me and make my baby toes fall asleep, but I still wear them b) the "skater" sneakers according to my little brother that I bought for about $10 at Ross maybe 4 -5 years ago c) the "good" sneakers I bought in Montreal nearly 10(!) years ago.  Those sneakers are older than some of the BBBSBA kids!

But behold...

Fancy sneakers I bought at Sports Basement!  Training HAS begun!

And so it begins...

I typically give up on any "let's jog together and get in shape" pact about seven blocks in. It is boring and exhausting and all I can think about every minute of every run is how much I hate it.

BUT...Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Bay Area has a half-marathon team, and I've decided to join (read: been coerced into joining) it. I believe in raising money for a great organization, I live a healthier lifestyle in SF, I go to bikram yoga three or four times a week...it'll be fine, right? We'll see. We'll see on this very blog.

Today we received our information packet and training schedule from our group trainer, Robert Mills. He tells us "I believe you are going to find this to be a truly rewarding and life changing experience." I believe that seeing little "2-4 miles Saturday 7:30 AM" blocks on an 18 week long schedule makes me want to vomit.

Wish me luck!