Monthly Archives: May 2011

“I was pleased with (my race). The first mile felt really comfortable, and I knew it would. But the altitude … it’s just one of those things that it gets progressively harder. Those last 2 miles felt so long. I was like, ‘Just picture yourself at the Boston Marathon finish.’ But I was hurting worse than that.” — Ryan Hall, as quoted in Tuesday morning’s Denver Post

5:30 a.m. Monday: Wake up in the downtown Boulder apartment of my friend Sarah, who was kind enough to let us stay overnight so we could avoid traffic coming into Boulder from Denver. Heat up the oatmeal she lovingly prepared for us the night before, since her wave doesn’t leave until after 9 a.m. (more than 54,000 people ran the race). Chug coffee, and remind self that it ‘s 7:30 a.m. EST, so there’s really no reason to be tired.

6:15 a.m.: Greet our friend’s neighbor, an Irish Ironman triathlete who is full of the kind of energy I’d be lucky to have at noon, on our way out the door. He and his wife are running the race, too, and we all chat briefly about our expectations. “You know the (expletive) rule, right?” he says in a thick Irish brogue. “Go big or go home!” Steve and I hop in the car to drive the two miles to the start; he and his wife leave to run there. *So* Boulder.

7:15 a.m.: My wave inches toward the start line. Between the race’s CU-centric starters, athletic director Mike Bohn and mascot Chip, and the bongo drummers in the background, the scene oozes Boulder’s particular brand of college-town crunchy-granola.

7:17 a.m.: Am passed by seemingly my entire wave, including a speed-walker, as I realize the altitude is going to be a fiercer foe than I’d expected. Settle into an easy 9:30-minute-mile pace as I pass the first of several live bands, two dudes dressed like the Blues Brothers.

7:30 a.m.: Walk through my second water station before I even pass mile 3. I have never needed a water station so badly in my life. I have never felt so physically exhausted in my life. My right knee hurts. My left hip flexor hurts, probably because I’m running funny on my bad knee. My shoulders hurt, and are still tired and sore from my 7K swim late last week. There are supposed to be 31 bands on the course. At 7:30 a.m., there are maybe 10. Unfurl my iPod headphones and press “play” to cue Florence and the Machine’s “Dog Days are Over.” Breathe, and start to run again.

7:40 a.m.: I am made of cement. I would run up this hill much faster if I were not made of cement. My hip and knee are made of some terrible thing that’s worse than cement. Florence and the Machine isn’t doing the trick. Switch to Eminem.

7:45 a.m.: Make the mistake of looking at my Garmin while shuffling uphill. Nearly gasp when I see I’m running at an 11-minute-mile pace. Kiss my secret goal of 9-minute miles goodbye, and start wondering if I’m going to make it to the finish line in Folsom Field within an hour of my start.

7:55 a.m.: Downhill! Whee! Race is totally salvageable. I giggle out loud as I pass porches full of cowbell-ringing, mimosa-drinking spectators. One group of spectators is actually doing kegstands on the front porch of a house I may have once partied in as a college student. A light rain starts to fall, which is kind of perfect, as I’m feeling overheated despite the perfect 60-degree temperature.

8 a.m.: I recognize where we are, and realize how far it is from the stadium. I almost weep. Instead, I breathe, and repeat: “Run the mile you’re in,” an especially fitting mantra considering the fact that it was Ryan Hall who first said it (Hall would race with the elites at 11 a.m.)

8:15 a.m.: The hill up to Folsom wasn’t bad—sort of like the Iwo Jima hill at the end of the Marine Corps Marathon, in that it would be terrible if you weren’t expecting it, but totally manageable if you’re prepared for it. I try to pick up the pace to cross the finish line in less than an hour, and don’t waste much time mourning how slow of a time this will be for me when I realize my legs are moving their absolute fastest. I try to sprint once more I enter Folsom Field, imagining all the wonderful times I had in that stadium as a student. Sprinting, in this moment, means not walking.

8:20 a.m.: Meet Steve and our wonderful friend and support crew, Mike, in the stands, greeting both with sweaty, exhausted hugs. In telling them the story of the race, I decide to be proud of my race stats, which show that I was painfully slow but gutsy, as a race run in honor of someone fighting cancer should be. Plus, I feel weirdly proud of the fact that I managed to average sub-10-minute-mile pace, albeit by only two seconds. Most importantly, we raised $3,000 for the American Cancer Society in Steve’s mom’s honor—the ultimate success.

bib number:

DD341

overall place:

16688

division:

F31

division place:

227 out of 723

gender place:

6272 out of 26860

mile 1:

00:09:33.27

mile 2:

00:09:54.38

mile 3:

00:10:35.22

mile 4:

00:10:20.14

mile 5:

00:09:30.68

mile 6:

00:10:02.62

net time:

01:02:01.59

pace:

09:58 (based on net time)

50: Kilometers swam in the month of May, thanks to the terrific #50KinMay challenge (and the Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim, which gave me a reason to attempt 50K in May).

10,5000: Meters swam in the past 24 hours to achieve #50KinMay before I leave for Colorado to run the Bolder Boulder 10K on Monday. Many thanks to the lovely and speedy Victoria at The District Chocoholic for shepherding me through the final meters. Hint: Finding a swim buddy who writes a blog about chocolate is a good idea. Your swim dates might involve macarons.

1: Flashback to 1998, courtesy of two swim workouts in one day to achieve #50KinMay

1: Number of times I wriggled into a wetsuit in front of strangers, before a group swim in a Chesapeake Bay tributary with friends of Ann at Ann’s Running Commentary. (Yes, it still fit—whew!)

1: Successful open-water swim trials. See above.

7,000: Meters swam without a pull buoy, which had been serving as a sort of security blanket for my knee since ACL-reconstruction surgery in late January

2: New mantras: Your heart is a weapon the size of a fist. And: Stronger every stroke. Read more about mantras, motivational screen-savers and other adventures in sports psychology in my guest post on Katie’s terrific blog, Run This Amazing Day.

2,500: Dollars raised through our American Cancer Society Bolder Boulder 10K fund-raising campaign, through both online and off-line donations. If you’ve donated, or if you’ve offered moral support toward our effort (as important as financial!), I can’t thank you enough. Your support and friendship means the world to me and Steve, and it will fuel us through the tough spots of the race on Monday morning. I’ll be posting updates on my Twitter page the day of the race, and will post briefly here once I can get to a computer. For now, send us your speediest thoughts Monday morning!

I’ve got a lot of brackish water, bridge spans and Boulder (Colo.) running through the slides of my mental imagery this week. A couple of my favorites:

Mid-Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim photo courtesy of RobAquatics.com:

The Bolder Boulder 10K finish line in Folsom Field—the stadium of my alma mater. Look at those Flatirons in the background!

This time next week, I’ll be running a 10K at 5,400 feet.

How’s a little good, old-fashioned anxiety for motivation?

I’m actually not feeling terribly anxious about the Bolder Boulder 10K, which Steve and I are running as a fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society in honor of his mom, who was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. But I do feel the same sense of eager anticipation I do before a much longer race, knowing that this one will stretch my current physical limits.

My goals for the race remain the same: To run strong and steady, and to accept the fact that, thanks to my continuing ACL-reconstruction recovery, this won’t be my fastest race. My aim is to foster the same sort of acceptance about this race that our cancer-survivor friends and family members have fostered about life.

Which brings me to this week’s Bolder Boulder-themed Motivation Monday. Motivating me this week:

• Your generosity. Steve and I have never done a race as a fund-raiser, so when we decided to run the Bolder Boulder to raise money for the American Cancer Society, we didn’t know what to expect. We set our team goal at $500. We had no idea how generous our wonderful friends and family members really were. We have raised almost $2,000, and knowing we have so many friends supporting our goal financially and emotionally has been beyond motivating. If you’d still like to donate, visit our fund-raising page. If you’ve already donated, or have lent us emotional or spiritual support, please know I’m running this race for you, too.

• Eric Cornell’s story. As a University of Colorado graduate, I knew Eric Cornell, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics the same year I graduated, was a phenomenal person. I had no idea how phenomenal until I read the recent Runner’s World profile detailing his struggles with a shoulder amputation. Amazingly, he has not only returned to regular life as a physics rock-star, but has returned to running again, too, and has run the Bolder Boulder almost every year.

• The chance to set some great process-based goals. I have no idea what my goal time should be for this race. This leaves me pondering process-based goals, which are way healthier, anyway. I’m aiming to run an evenly paced race—or a race with negative splits. Run the first mile easy, then gradually increase to a sprint by the end.

• A solid training week. The past week of training was really tough to get through. You may recall that I kind of overbooked myself by signing up for the Bolder Boulder next weekend and the 4.4-mile Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim June 12. Last week, with my first seven-mile run since ACL surgery in January and my first 7,000-meter swim since high school, I was feeling the overload. But now that the week is past, I’m feeling mostly confidence and strength—which is kind of the whole point of doing these races, right?

• The chance to learn. No matter how slow this race is for me, thinking about race strategy for a 10K will be really good for me, as I currently have no idea how to race a 10K. Do you? If so, please leave some guidance in a comment. What do you do during a “taper week” for a 10K? How long before the race do you start laying off the hard workouts? What’s your strategy for the actual race?
  

What’s motivating you this week?

Of course, I’ll do more than just swim 3,100 meters to celebrate my birthday today. But my swim will be part of a day of relaxing, reading, playing outside, eating chocolate and otherwise doing all the stuff I loved to do when I was seven years old, and which I still love to do at 31. I certainly wasn’t swimming 3,100 meters then, but I *was* swimming competitively, and loved practices for the sheer pleasure of them—how cool to be able to propel yourself through the water! How exciting to be able to flip upside down, then swim to the other side! At the pool today, I’m going to relax about pace, and simply enjoy everything I loved about the sport back then.

Today, as a birthday gift to me, I’d like to ask you to give yourself permission to ask what it was you loved to do when you were little, and to channel that love as you move through the world. I promise I won’t judge if I find you sprawled out on the floor with a plate of chicken nuggets and a bunch of plastic fire trucks.

In other news: Make sure to check out my Washington City Paper cover story about style skating, an incredible D.C. subculture I was lucky enough to stumble upon last year. I’ve poured my heart and soul into this story for the past several months (I’ve also poured many hours of sleep into it, having gone to three late-night skate parties). It’s long, but if you care about African-American cultural history—or have ever roller-skated—you may enjoy reading it during your lunch break.

A few weeks ago, I was fitted for a titanium knee brace to keep my knee in check while I resume activity after ACL reconstruction surgery Jan. 28. I’ve worn it while doing a host of crazy, new agility drills in physical therapy, and I’ll wear it when I can finally ski again.

If this knee brace would talk, it would probably tell you off. It’s that hard-core.

This week, I’m finding motivation in my own successes—and, of course, in my friends’ successes. I noticed a “seven” theme, so I’m going with it:

Seven thousand meters—roughly the equivalent of 4.4 miles, or the distance of the Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim. It’s also the distance I swam at the Wilson Aquatic Center on Sunday to prepare for the Bay Bridge Swim on June 12. Swimming to Hemingway’s, a blog dedicated to Bay Bridge Swim training, suggests a workout called “The Hemingway,” which consists of a 1,000 followed by three 2,000s to get to 7K, and that’s roughly what I did on Sunday: 3X2,000 meters, then 2X500. The last two were to prepare me mentally for feeling like I *should* be done at the end of the bridge, but still having to swim several hundred meters to shore. In short, the swim felt great, and brought me to 25K for the month in the  50K in May challenge. I felt so great, in fact, that I didn’t even have to resort to singing Nicki Minaj and Eminem lyrics to myself the last few thousand meters.

Seven miles, or the distance I ran last Thursday—a major post-ACL distance PR, and a major confidence booster ahead of the Bolder Boulder 10K, which Steve and I are running to raise money for the American Cancer Society on behalf of Steve’s mom. I got to seven miles courtesy of reverting to my “normal” Tuesday-Thursday routine of running to Pacers Silver Spring, doing our 5-ish mile group run, then running home. I jogged it with some of my favorite running buddies, and had a lovely, chatty time. It was good for my heart. It was so-so for my knee, which leads me to …

Seventy-million ice packs. I’m so intensely sick of these, and have needed a seemingly endless supply of them since completing the above. That’s all.

Seven pints of blueberries. Long swims, like long runs, do funky things to my metabolism. I’m hungry constantly, and in an effort to make sure my wetsuit still fits in June, I’m filling up on the awesome blueberries on sale at Giant. I tried counting the number of pints I’ve eaten over the past three or four days, and it did, indeed come to seven. (Editor’s note: I actually just stopped counting at seven, which is the same thing, right?). This included cinnamon-berry quinoa, shown below, before my long swim.

70.3, the number of miles Katie at Run This Amazing Day covered in the Kinetic Half Ironman last weekend. I’m way more impressed and motivated by gutsy performances than fast ones (whatever “fast” means), and the fact that Katie trained for this race through injuries and finished the run on fumes is simply astounding to me.

Five to seven weeks: The number of weeks of radiation my best friend Alexis is getting ready to start, now that her chemo is complete. She says chemo left her feeling like she had been hit by a truck. You know what she does as soon as she feels better again? She runs. Read her description of getting back on her feet—literally—here, and remind yourself of it next time you need to infuse your daily run with some gratitude.

What’s motivating you this week?

Less than a month to go until the 4.4-mile Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim on June 12!

(Insert panic attack here).

Actually, I’m not feeling panic so much as excitement and anticipation. I’m in the thick of my training, and am consistently swimming three days per week for a total of about 12,000 weekly meters—a lot for my lazy butt. Of course, that’s supplemented with lots of running and lifting to meet my other goals, such as running the Bolder Boulder 10K and making my quads work again after ACL reconstruction surgery in January. (I interrupt swim stuff briefly to mention that I’m still glowing this morning after my post-ACL distance PR last night: 7 miles total! Knee: Cranky. Heart: Happy.)

Now that the weather’s warming up, and now that my swims are getting longer, it’s getting easier to imagine waking up one morning in June, eating the largest bowl of oatmeal known to man, then jumping in the Bay to swim across it. This makes it a perfect time to share a roundup of resources for the swim—lessons learned from my own experiences at the 1-Mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge Challenge, from this round of training, and from lots of wise people who have swam the full Bay before.

Before the 1-miler in 2008.

Lessons from the 1-miler, which I did in 2008 and 2009:

The “Cuisinart start” is real. Be prepared for combat as hundreds of bodies clamor for space in the water. As a swimmer-friend told me before my first one: You may get kicked in the face. You may kick someone else in the face. Don’t apologize; just keep swimming.

Try PAM. Yep. The cooking spray. Spray it anywhere you don’t want to chafe. Which is to say, just shellack yourself.

Learn to love your wetsuit. Here’s how I learned to stop worrying and love my wetsuit: I learned how to put it on without the dreaded wetsuit dance. Here’s how: Bring a plastic grocery bag to the race. Put the bag over your foot when you put the wetsuit on. Remark about the ease of sliding your leg into what previously felt like double-sided tape on your skin.

Lessons I’ve learned from this training cycle: Is it bad when you can identify things you missed in training before race day even arrives?

Rotator-cuff strengtheners would have been nice to begin six months before starting my long swims. I simply didn’t realize how hard it would be on my shoulders to swim more than 5,000 meters at a time. A month or so into training, my shoulders unleash a symphony of snap-crackle-pops at me every time I stretch them.

Long swims will keep you confident. The more I talk to people who know what they’re doing, the more I think my training plan, which was thrown together based on little more than the race’s total distance and my experience as a high-school swimmer, actually seems pretty legit. I feel especially good about the long swims I’ve been tackling roughly once a week, and have noticed a marked difference in my swimming fitness since starting them.

Great post-race reports from Bay Bridge Swim veterans:

Swimming to Hemingway’s, a blog dedicated to Bay Bridge Swim training, has a helpful post-race report from 2009. Favorite excerpts: The focus on, as the title suggests, swimming to Hemingway’s, the terrific Bayside seafood restaurant at the end of the race. And the appropriately named workout, “The Hemingway,” which consists of a 1,000 followed by three 2,000s to roughly equal the distance of the race.

Rob at RobAquatics.com offers another terrific post-race report from the 2010 swim. Lots of excellent stuff here, including a great anecdote about a guy in a support boat tossing him part of a banana. Also, gorgeous photos that will make you feel like you’re in the Bay NOW.

Mid-race self portrait courtesy of Rob Dumouchel.

Best of all, a wonderful list of tips from someone who’s done the swim more than a dozen times. In addition to some general race-day tips (nothing new on race day, from pre-race meal to goggles), there are some incredible insights into this specific swim, including these excerpts:

The two things that have the greatest influence on the swim are the bay currents and the wind. Watch WBAL, Baltimore, Channel 11 for Bay forecasts. If the wind is from the west (very rare) it will be a great swim for everyone, from the north (very rare) tough on left side breathers and from the east, very bad for everyone.

The race is timed so that slack current occurs during the middle of the race for the vast majority of swimmers. It moves from the north to the south most of the swim.

You can judge where you are just by glancing at the span on the side where you regularly breathe.  If the bridge starts to grow or diminish you might want to take a quick look ahead to make sure that you’re swimming straight down the middle.

The current will increase in a southerly flow at the end of the race. Don’t get too anxious about getting close to the southern span.  You’ll see the pillars on the south side and perhaps the numbers on them.  Ignore the numbers; they will repeat themselves and give you false hope.  ((This tip is especially helpful … like someone telling us that we’ll start seeing 24-mile markers starting at mile 20 of a marathon)).

Keep swimming until you touch the bottom twice. Standing up will be more painful than you might imagine.  Crawling is acceptable.  ((This made my stomach turn a little)).

Have you done the swim, or are you training for it? Share your best advice/resources/lessons learned below!

When Steve wrote the blurb on the front of our American Cancer Society fund-raising page for the Bolder Boulder 10K on May 30, he included this line:

“This race will be a challenge, with Amy recovering from ACL-reconstruction surgery in January and with both of us training at sea level in D.C. for a race at an altitude of almost 5,400 feet.”

When I read it, I thought: Oh. Right. Crap.

In life and in training, we waste so much time thinking about how things should be. In this case, I’ve been clinging to the idea that I should be able to run a 10K easily, and relatively quickly. Instead, I’m coming to grips with the fact that I cannot call in a 10K right now. No matter how slow the pace. And certainly not after less than 48 hours at 5,400 feet. Even when I’m in marathon or half-marathon shape, the first few runs at altitude are exhausting, requiring a few stops to stretch or walk. Or, you know, dry-heave. And anyone who’s read this blog for any amount of time knows I ain’t in no half-marathon shape right now.

So how to formulate a goal worthy of a race run in someone’s honor?

I think it’s a matter of realizing that it’s totally fitting that this race is about formulating goals given what IS, not what “should be.” Steve’s mom wasn’t supposed to get cancer. Neither was my friend Alexis, who recently finished her last course of chemo after a breast-cancer diagnosis that came just days before Steve’s mom got her own bad news (you better believe I’ll be thinking about Lexi on race day, too). Alexis just turned 31. If she and Steve’s mom can let go of what should be and embrace what is in regard to life and recovery, I can certainly do so for a 10K race.

So here’s my best attempt at formulating process-based goals that honor the spirit of this race:

1. I will finish, and embrace that as the victory it is.

2. I will do so as quickly as possible, and I will understand that this may not be my typical definition of “quick.”

3. I will run strong. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that this won’t be my PR. But while I can’t promise to run a certain pace (see above: I’d like to think I can guarantee 10-minute miles, but even that makes me nervous), I can promise to run a strong race, mentally and physically.

4. I will soak in every bit of the race-day atmosphere (there are 31—yes, 31—bands along the 6.2 mile course!) in an act of gratitude for having a body that is healthy and strong enough to do so. I will waste no time that morning focusing on what I can’t do, and give thanks with every step for what I can do. More importantly, I will understand that every step I run that day will make me stronger, meaning I will literally be a stronger person after crossing the finish line than I was before I started.

5. I will commit to a healthy training cycle. In the month leading up to the race—which also happens to be the month and a half leading up to the 4.4-mile Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim on June 12—I will train as hard as my body allows, and no harder. I will also be extra-careful about what I eat and drink. My birthday falls just a week before the race, so I’m not going to swear off alcohol or sugar (no birthday cake=bad luck for the coming year). But I will aim to consume more fruits and veggies and less sugar and booze between now and then. Again, it’s easy to find inspiration for this goal: My aforementioned friend Alexis started drinking tons of veggie juice after her diagnosis, and has cut out most sugar. Certainly, I can lay off that second (fine, THIRD) cupcake.

Thank you so, so much to those who have supported our mission, either in dollars or words of encouragement. I’m grateful for and humbled by every contribution, and truly believe the little we’re able to raise will help support services that mean so much to families like ours.

I’ve got a smorgasbord of motivations to share this week, so I’m going to skip the preamble and jump right in. Motivating me this week:

Visuals of the Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim, thanks to Rob at RobAquatics.com. I stumbled upon his terrific post-race report from the 2010 swim, complete with mid-race photos, last week. Looking at the photo below, I can practically feel the cool, brackish Bay water on my own face, which makes the race seem oh-so-real.

Rob Dumouchel's mid-race self portrait.

 50K in May. I started this swim challenge last week. As the name suggests, it has me swimming 50,000 meters this month, which means actually completing my training minimums for the 4.4-mile Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim. I already feel totally buoyed by my ability to nail my first week, totaling 12,000 meters as of Saturday afternoon, when I completed what felt like a landmark swim. There was nothing special about it, except for the fact that I got in the pool thinking: “Oh! Only a 3,000!” That’s like getting excited over a “short” run of “only” 10 miles during marathon training.

The chance to write a story about a topic I’m passionate about. I’ve spent months trying to find a home for a story about disordered eating— in which a person doesn’t have an eating disorder, but harbors unhealthy thoughts, feelings or behaviors related to food and his or her body—among women runners. I’m thrilled to get the chance to write it for Women’s Running, and am interested in hearing your thoughts on the topic. Have you struggled with disordered eating? Leave a comment below, or e-mail jessica @ womensrunning.com, to share your experience.

And most importantly, training for the Bolder Boulder 10K, with a purpose. In November, we received a piece of news that turned our world upside down: Steve’s mom was diagnosed with small-cell cancer. We can’t cure cancer. But we can run a race to raise money to help the people who *can* cure cancer, and that’s what we’re doing. Steve had the great idea to run the Bolder Boulder 10K, located close to where he grew up in Lakewood, Colo., as a fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society, on behalf of his mom. It’s in the city where I went to school, where Steve and I met, and we’re hoping his mom feels up to coming to the race to watch us cross the finish line in University of Colorado’s Folsom Field.

You can find more details about the above on our fund-raising page. If you’ve already donated, I can’t tell you how grateful and honored I am. If you haven’t, please know I appreciate every penny—or every piece of emotional support you can lend to our mission, as it’s about more than just the fund-raising. Stay tuned for a full post later this week about my goals and motivations for the race.

What’s motivating you this week?