Amy Reinink

When we learned we’d be moving to Saratoga Springs, I immediately started scoping out local running groups. So for months, I’ve known I would be joining the Saratoga Stryders as soon as we arrived in town. But we’ve been busy every Saturday morning, when the group meets for its laid-back fun run. So last night, despite an insane heat wave making it feel like we never left D.C., we headed down to Saratoga Spa State Park for the group’s weekly speed workout.

The park itself is gorgeous and historic, with a major concert arena (SPAC, or Saratoga Performing Arts Center) and spring-fed mineral baths. Turns out, there are also some beautiful trails. That’s where we did the speed workout, which last night was 5 X 1,000 with 1-minute breaks in between intervals. I only did four, having arrived late. I didn’t get the memo that the group was meeting in a new place—newbie mistake!

As soon as I arrived, a woman I met at last week’s open-water swim greeted me warmly, and told me she was glad I came. Naturally, I latched onto her pace group, which turned out to be running at 8-minute mile pace. The 1,000-meter loop was through a cool, lovely stretch of woods, on a flat trail covered with pine needles. It was about as good as it gets for a speed workout on a hot summer night. Still, the heat made it tough to pace—a tempo that felt just fine in the first minute or two would lead to unbearable overheating by the last minute or two.

After we finished the last rep, everyone stood around talking about how they had to adjust their pace because of the heat, or how they were surprised that they pulled out a fast rep on the last one, or how they were still kind of sore from running in the morning—you know, the stuff runners talk about. I proudly announced that since I couldn’t remember the last time I did a speed workout, I was just happy to have made it through to the end without vomiting on myself. One woman in my pace group high-fived me, but noted that “vomiting on yourself mid-run would actually earn you points in a group of runners.”

Aaand, I’ve found my people.

After calling Saratoga Springs home for about a week and a half now, I can officially say on the record that this place is AWESOME.

I’ve already posted a few photos of our Adirondack hiking adventures. I’m happy to share that this place is also the bee’s knees for lovers of local produce. Twice a week, I drive (it’s close enough to bike to, but I need to space to haul stuff home) down to the Saratoga Farmers Market to pick up fresh tomatoes, greens, cheese, eggs and whatever else I can fit in the Prius. Our local you-pick blueberry farm, Winney’s, grows several varieties of blueberries. Several varieties of blueberries, people! Who even knew there WERE several varieties of blueberries? My favorites so far are the big, fat, sweet Dukes.

I can stop eating them anytime I want.

Also, in addition to the great hiking, the lake swimming here is simply heavenly, as I discovered last week on my first open-water swim workout in the area. The Saratoga Triathlon Club hosts a swim every Thursday evening at Moreau Lake State Park, setting up a few buoys in the middle of the lake and running a workout just like an open-water swim race, with waves of swimmers circling the buoys for about an hour. I hung out with the swimmers making three laps for a total of about 3,000 yards. Can I tell you how amazing it was to see green mountain ridges every time I took a breath?

The workout last Thursday was the seventh swim of the season, with a total of 13. Suffice it to say I plan to attend many, many more.

So, there’s this:

Luckily, there’s also this:

First, I’m sorry I went missing without explanation. When you’ve got major change brewing and it’s not time to talk about it yet, it’s hard to talk about anything else without feeling like a phony.

So here’s what’s been brewing: We are moving to Upstate New York this week. Steve has gotten a great job with a big company that will allow him to pursue a new path that we believe will lead to greater career fulfillment for him. We’ll be living just south of the Adirondacks in Saratoga Springs, in a beautiful little two-bedroom house built in 1896 located a quick walk away from downtown. It has its original floors and brand-new windows (which is how you want things to go in a house built in 1896). It also has a large porch out front and a garden and a hot tub in the back. It seems like it’ll be a beautiful place to start our next chapter.

Obviously, we feel heartbroken that we’ll no longer be in the D.C. area full-time. But I will continue to split my time between New York and Silver Spring in order to retain some of my local clients, which lets me keep a foothold in this area we love so much.

At the same time, I’m excited to explore a new outdoor playground, with bigger mountains to hike and ski on and lovely lakes to paddle and swim in. I feel lucky as a runner and swimmer and skier that I mostly know where my new friends will come from. We’ll be joining a local running group, affiliating with a local ski patrol and practicing with a master’s swim team. I know from our past moves that it takes a while to figure out which friends will become your new soul mates and which ones will remain “activity friends,” but it makes me happy to know that we’ll be able to immediately surround ourselves with like-minded people.

So farewell for now, D.C. My memories here are all infused with the landscape: long runs in Rock Creek Park; swimming across the Chesapeake Bay; skiing at Whitetail; paddling on the C&O Canal and biking on the towpath. I’ll hold them close to my heart when I go.

Photo courtesy of RobAquatics.com.

As soon as the eddy sucked me forward and toward the wave, I was off my board and falling into the chute again.

I grabbed my paddle, yanked on the leash attached to my stand-up paddleboard and swam back to the eddy, out of breath and deflated.

“We’re not leaving here until you get it,” said one of the kayakers lined up in the eddy, waiting for his own turn.

By “get it,” he meant “surf the wave at Virginia chute on a stand-up paddleboard,” which is what I found myself trying to do a week ago Sunday. This is a thing that people do, both on stand-up paddleboards and in kayaks—they paddle up to the wave, let it suck them in (“suck them in” is definitely the technical term), then surf it like they would a wave on the ocean.

My friend Buck, who got me into stand-up paddleboarding to begin with, brought me out there, and assured me I was ready for this challenge. He also warned me that I’d be “wrecked” after spending an afternoon on the river. After ferrying across our first current, I saw what he meant. Ferrying, or moving across a current by pointing your board or kayak at an angle to avoid being swept downriver, requires paddling your heart out and leaning on the downriver side of your board until you’ve made it across. It is heart-stopping and terrifying and exhilarating, and feels a little bit like running hills—if there were a chance you’d fall off the hill and hit a rock if your running form gave out. We did that a few times, then reached the Virginia chute.

I didn’t count how many times I fell before I got into the wave. And when I got it, I was on my knees, and lasted in the wave for about seven seconds before my board and I got sucked back out the other side. Still, it was revelatory—my body rewarded me for meeting the challenge with a steady stream of endorphins that seemed to last all day. And when I got back to “regular” life, I felt a little more strong and a little less scared than I was before.

A few revelations:

• The river is different than anything else I’ve experienced. I say this as someone who grew up swimming in the ocean, and who recently swam across the shipping channel in the Chesapeake Bay. There are eddies and boils and wave trains and all sorts of other mechanisms I don’t understand. Therefore, I’m fascinated, and want to learn everything there is to know.
• We are stronger than we can possibly imagine.
• Challenge is healthy—maybe even necessary.
• You can do a lot of cool stuff on a stand-up paddleboard. Surfing, I had kind of imagined. Yoga? That was something different. And though that’s another story altogether, I want to share some of these awesome photos now. Interested in trying it? Potomac Paddlesports is offering a class.

A couple weeks ago, a runner-friend passed along an email from the Howard County Striders about an upcoming race, the 4.09 Run on Sunday, June 2.

The race, which started and finished at a high school in Columbia, aimed to benefit and honor Nicole and Michael Gross and Erika Brannock, three Howard County locals who were injured at the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15. According to the Howard County Striders, Nicole suffered two breaks in her left leg, a nearly severed right Achilles tendon, and some hearing loss.; her husband, Michael, suffered burns; and her sister, Erika lost her left leg above the knee. They had traveled to Boston to cheer on their mom.

Photo credit: Mike Fleming, courtesy of Howard County Striders.

I’m not in anything that remotely resembles racing mode right now. Running has felt good lately, but I can feel that I’m still pretty slow in the big scheme of things, so I haven’t felt the need to test myself by examining my pace too closely. But I figured that this race, which benefited the family via the Be Strong Stay Strong fund, would be all about healing and community and celebrating the ability to run on two strong, healthy legs. So on Sunday, I met two other runner-friends in Columbia to take part in the tribute.

It was one of those awesome, low-key races in which you arrive 30 minutes before the start, hand over your registration fee to a volunteer, then head to the starting line with a couple hundred other runners. There were no T-shirts at the start, and no bananas and bagels at the finish—decisions that aimed to cut down on overhead and direct more funding toward the family.

The race was 4.09 miles—the distance echoed the time of the blast, at 4 hours and nine minutes into the marathon—and consisted of two loops around the high school. The morning was hot, making the rolling hills on the course feel long and steep, but the friendly, grateful vibe that permeated the event helped the miles fly by.

Without mile markers or my Garmin (which I haven’t worn in months), I had no idea what to expect from my time. I was pleased to find that my medium-hard pace ended up being around 9-minute miles. And actually, since the race was 4.09 miles, my time of 36:43 actually works out to be 8:58-minute mile pace: sub-9 (technicality, schmecticality!)!

Photo credit: Mike Fleming, courtesy of Howard County Striders.

But the real victory came when the victims’ family members crossed the finish line holding hands. It felt like a victory for all of us—over chaos and over grief, and over whatever minor and major challenges we faced in our own lives.

Last week, on a day when I’d been planning to swim, Steve asked if I wanted to do a TRX workout with him instead. I shrugged and said that yes, sure, that sounded good. He asked if he had talked me out of swimming. I shrugged again.

“I’m not really training for anything, which means I can kinda do whatever I want,” I said. As I said it, I grinned, and felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my chest (there’s a pun in there somewhere … ).

There are some times in life when I need a Big Event to motivate me to get moving. There are other times when I relish the flexibility of simply moving my body in a pleasurable way at least once a day. Here’s what’s motivating me in that latter phase:

SUP

I was sold on stand-up paddleboarding the first time I headed out on the river with my ski-patrol friend Buck. But when Steve and I went to Hawaii and got the chance to paddle in heavy winds, 5-foot swells and other interesting and challenging conditions, I truly became addicted. There’s something meditative about the quick, even strokes, and something peaceful about balancing on the board. I’ve been hitting the water at least once a week since I’ve gotten home, and am focusing on learning new strokes, like the nose draw and cross-nose draw, to turn. It’s not only a relaxing and peaceful way to get a workout; it bends my brain in ways it’s not used to moving. Plus, is there a better way to decompress after a long day than floating down a river?

My transverse plane

When I started gearing my workouts toward getting ready for the ski season last year, a great trainer we worked with in Virginia Beach introduced us to rotational jump squats, which are pretty much what they sound like: You start in a squat, jump into the air, and rotate 180 degrees to land facing the opposite direction. They are absolute murder, and the fitness gains I made almost immediately made me realize that I rarely work out my transverse plane, or the plane that deals with rotation (think swinging a golf club versus doing a sit-up or push-up).

I’m convinced that adding rotational and lateral exercises to my repertoire made my legs stronger and springier, which has motivated me to do add more such exercises: —side squats, skater hops, lateral box jumps and the like. Try working a few sets of the above exercises into your own lifting workouts. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

Running what I want, when I want

I’m not in half-marathon shape or anything, but I’m back to being able to run five or six miles easily and happily. I’m not drawn to do anything except for set out on peaceful runs along Sligo Creek Trail every other day.

Farmers market season

Well, hello springtime! There is no better reward for a hard workout than stopping at the farmers market or at my beloved Norman’s Farm Market for fresh strawberries or sugar snap peas.

OK, maybe there are a few better rewards. Like a chilled glass of rosé at Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard after a lovely birthday hike last week.

What’s motivating you this week?

“I wasn’t even supposed to be here today.” —Dante, Clerks (spotted on a motivational sign along New Jersey Marathon/Long Branch Half-Marathon course on Sunday, May 5)

I spotted this quote from Clerks, that quintessential Monmouth County, N.J., movie, near the end of my 6.9-mile leg of the Long Branch Half-Marathon Relay on Sunday, May 5. I almost laughed out loud, thinking about how I almost didn’t run the race, and about what a mistake that would have been.

I went into the race with no expectations, hoping to feel strong and steady but prepared to feel shaky and pukey. I ran it because my mom was there to cheer me on, and because Steve was there to run the relay with me.

I ran so I could exchange hugs and good-luck wishes with my lovely friend Alexis, running her second half-marathon, at the start line.

And I ran so I could surprise myself, which I did.

It was a perfect day to run, in the 50s and overcast. It was a perfect course, pancake-flat and scenic, filled with bridge-crossings and spectators. And it was an incredibly well-organized event, with the perfect amount of time between corrals, well-spaced aid tables and seamless parking/expo plans.

My leg of the relay was over before I knew it—in part because I ran much faster than I could have imagined, but mostly because I was just having so much fun. As Steve and I hugged and chatted at the transition point, I kept thinking: I could run more! In my mind, that’s the best way to feel upon finishing a race: hungry for more, and eager for the next challenge.

I hadn’t even planned to check our results. You can imagine my surprise when Steve told me that we finished pretty well, 11 out of 65 teams in the mixed-open category. Isn’t it nice when results are just the icing on the race cake?

11 20287 Steve Is My Llama                   MIXED OPEN       1:55:43

“People would say to me in the grocery store, like, ‘You must feel cursed,’ and I would just be like a) ‘That’s not helpful,’ and b) ‘So are you, if you think about the fact that you’re a human being and you never know when chaos will find you.’ So it made me just realize how deeply phobic we are of this idea that chaos is really a reality in this world. It is the thing that can touch and will touch us sometime in our life, and that doesn’t mean that we’re bad people or we deserve bad luck or that we’re even unlucky. It just means that that’s what happened.” — Emily Rapp, author of ‘The Still Point of the Turning World‘: A Meditation On Mothering A Dying Child.

If you are a runner (or a human, really), you have followed the news in Boston for the past two weeks, and you have struggled to make sense of what happened there.

In the hours and days after the bombing, I kept thinking: Chaos, man. Total, utter chaos. If there is something about me that has changed since losing three parents/parents-in-law over the past couple years, and since sustaining more than one weird, random injuries, it is the understanding that we are not even guaranteed the rest of today. It is the understanding that anyone, no matter what that person has already endured, can, at any moment in time, face the kind of unbelievable heartache and chaos that changes everything in an instant.

We all know this logically, and we all grow to understand this on a personal level at some point in our lives. Still, it’s never easy to accept when we see it manifested in the world, especially when the chaos is as brutal and random and wide-reaching as it was in Boston.

The only thing I know is that we can look fear and doubt in the face and run anyway.  We can’t overcome or go around the chaos, but we can run through it to get to the other side.

Recently, my broken elbow—an absurdly minor trauma, by comparison—has served as a visual and visceral reminder of the fact that chaos can strike at any moment, even when you’re doing nothing more than walking from your front door to your car. So it was only fitting that I started to move through, and past, the chaos by returning to the activity that makes me feel most alive: skiing, after my doctor declared me totally healed at my last appointment April 12. That’s why, at the last minute, I crashed Steve’s trip to see his brother and our sister-in-law in Colorado, moving my life and my deadlines to Colorado for a few days for the chance to make just a few more turns this season.

Did I mention that I purchased new ski boots for the trip? It makes perfect sense. I promise.

The first run felt awkward. But slowly, I eased into feeling normal again. By the end of the day, I was racing downhill with glee to catch one last chair up.

Forgive me runners, for I have sinned.

It’s been three weeks since my last real run, a five-miler with Steve and a dear runner-friend in California on March 24. I managed one easy downhill jog on our last full day in Hawaii on April 8 (it was so short, we didn’t even time it) and one 30-minute slog around Travis Air Force Base while waiting for a flight back to D.C. on Wednesday night. All told, I went two and a half weeks without running.

I would like to blame it all on the fact that an early-trip, post-beach-day hike led to the most insane blood blisters I’ve ever experienced on both feet, making running prohibitively painful (public health announcement: be really, really certain you’ve wiped all the sand off your feet before lacing up your hiking boots).

But the truth is, I’ve been worshipping other gods, those of cross-training. I did not let the blisters prevent me from donning hiking boots again to journey through a volcanic crater in Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park, or along the unpopulated tip of the North Shore of Oahu, or to the remote green-sand beach at the southernmost point of the United States, or on a number of other incredible hikes we did.

The blisters also didn’t stop me from squeezing my feet into flippers to snorkel in Hanouma Bay Wildlife Preserve, or from wearing sand-filled water shoes for hours on end to SUP in Waikiki, Pulilau, Bellows and pretty much everywhere else we went. (I might be a little obsessed with stand-up paddleboarding now.)

As you can see, I wasn’t exactly laying around—just not running.

I swam, unafraid to be the only cap-and-goggle-wearing geek at posh, tourist-filled Waikiki (and believe me: I was definitely the only cap-and-goggle-wearing geek at Waikiki).

I paddled, skipping a potential blister-free run day early in the trip trying to keep up with a canoe full of Marines who invited us along on their Polynesian-style paddling journey around Kaneohe Bay.

I surfed, catching a few waves in the shadow of Diamond Head.

And I spent a lot of time staring at the water, letting the 25-foot waves on Oahu’s North Shore and the gentle swells on the island’s leeward side lull me into a deep, meditative state. I could spend the rest of my life watching waves pound against volcanic rock on the Big Island, shown below.

Was I subconsciously trying to sabotage my training for the New Jersey Half Marathon on May 5, which I’ve been cramming for thanks to my broken-elbow-rehab hiatus in February? Maybe. I still haven’t given up on the idea of the race, and think I’ll at least commit to running it until the 6.5-mile point, the relay changeup point (does it still count as a relay leg if I don’t pass the baton to anybody else?).

Or maybe I was subconsciously trying to boost my elbow rehab. All that stand-up paddleboarding and swimming had a completely amazing effect on my elbow—though it felt incredibly sore and swollen immediately after each workout, I woke up each day with more strength and mobility. As of today, my last post-op doctor appointment, I’m happy to say that my mobility is back to 100 percent, with my strength not far behind.

Or maybe I was just giving my heart what it needed: A period of calm to rebound from the pain and chaos of the past few months (or past few years, for that matter). In that sense, the trip was a big, beautiful success.

If you have the chance to go to Hawaii, go. Before this trip, I understood its Technicolor beauty and aloha spirit only in the most cartoonish form. Now that I know how gorgeous and rugged the islands are, and how kind and loving its residents are, and how amazingly delicious the pineapple, coffee, chocolate and fresh fish are, I’m amazed I found the willpower to actually get on a plane to head home.

But here I am. I’m ready to get back to regular showers (did I mention that we camped on the beach for large parts of the trip?) and working at desks rather than C-17s (did I mention that we took advantage of the military’s Space-A flights to get there and back?). I’m ready to start again.