Woods Wanderings

Lots of time spent in the woods here lately.  Someone asked me how I spend my time, and I said watching baseball, working, and running in the woods.  And that's actually a pretty fair assessment, with a few side excursions now and then.  And some Pilates.

It's that time of year when Biltmore gets beautiful again.  And this isn't even the acres of flowers and towering castle - even random river banks are beautiful!

Turkey Pen.  Kelly and I have memorized Bent Creek so we've decided to venture out for Adventure Tuesdays.  In which we. . . you know, try to find some adventure.  If you consider wading across a freezing cold yet beautiful river adventurous then Turkey Pen fits the bill.  

Baseball player.

The baseball player and his elder have somewhat surprisingly turned into fishermen here lately.  Yes they have waders and everything.  Which is fortunate because mountain rivers in the spring = really cold.  Sam can state that with certainly, having fallen in a few times last weekend.

Who me, fall in?

Pack o' Boys in the creek.  The essence of youth.  If you're lucky.

Cattail Creek.

My main running buddy.  Unbeknownst to me, poodles are kick ass trail runners.

Mountain to Sea trail near Craven Gap.  A lot of rocks, not so much actual running.  But lots of fun.

If you look carefully you will see my friend's son's Flat Stanley enjoying the view.

Flat Stanley's legs are short.  He sometimes needs a ride.

Random parkway panorama.

Mountain to Sea trail at the Haw Creek overlook rock.

HRV - The Truth Teller

Continuing with recent trends, yesterday was a run in the snow.  If you can call what I've been doing with the MAF Training running (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't), and if you can call what was on the ground snow.  It was more like a mud run with lovely scenery.

The MAF training, though, is pretty fascinating, and the HRV analysis is even more interesting.  Basically, to analyze HRV (and thus how recovered your body is), you strap on a heart rate monitor every morning and use an iPhone app to give you a reading.  So far I've decided to do whatever it says - train more - yes!  Take it easy - whatever you say.  And what's kind of interesting is that it's always right, and I often wouldn't have figured it out on my own.  I kind of always feel like crap in the morning - I'm not a morning person!  So when I stumble out of bed with the intention of running first thing in the morning, I'm not all that good at analyzing whether I'm ready to go run.  Instead it's more like - of course I feel terrible, it's morning!  But the HRV has said not to go and then I've ended up feeling like a zombie all day, thus proving it right.  And it's said to go when I really wanted to just curl up and read trashy novels all day, and it was right again and I had a good run.  So, as I told Kelly, I'm now outsourcing all decision making.  My new training plan is no training plan.  If the HRV says go, then I go, and if it says don't then I don't.

This is not very much like me, but then the things that are very much like me haven't actually served me all that well over the years, so I've decided to embrace it.  And. . . I feel better than I have in months. Nothing hurts. At all.  Which is big news.

The tiny white blob up the trail - that's Moose, my training partner. 

 I think the best thing about the HRV app is that it forces me to prioritize and make some choices.  Left to my own devices, I'll do Chisel twice a week, and a tempo run, and a track workout, and meet friends to hammer on the bike.  But with HRV telling the truth about what's going on, I know that I have to pick and choose - because if I go hard too often then I'm going to keep getting a big red NO, and have to do nothing for a few days.  Basically, I'm learning the lesson in my sporting life that I learned in my real life a long time ago:  You can do anything you want, but you can't do everything at the same time.  41 years later, I'm still taking this in.

Time to Slow Down. Literally.

Today was one of those days where Sam was SO HOPING for no school - but alas only got a 2 hour delay, which is sort of funny since the roads were completely dry.  It is freezing, though (8 degrees, which for around here is COLD), so probably that alone was worth a 2 hour delay - otherwise there would have been kidcicles at the bus stops.

The 2 hour delay always gets my morning off to a wonky start - this morning I was going to swim Masters at the Y at 5:30, but I have a rule (learned the hard way), that I don't set my alarm for 5am if there's a chance of snow and ice in the forecast - because getting up at 5 to discover the roads are bad or the pool is closed is a quick recipe to bitterness and resentment.  Strong emotions, yes, but 5 is an early and cranky hour.

The timing was also good because I'm doing a bit of evaluating on the training front (exercise front?  I'm not sure what I've been doing lately could actually be called training.)  Last year, coming of a 2 year  (2 YEAR) foot injury, I eased myself back into it, and then started doing the FIRST training - and I will say it seemed to be working well for a while.  But I've had a few niggles here and there, and then in November I cramped up my calf in a track workout, and just haven't seemed able to get over it.  No doubt aided by the fact that when my leg didn't want to run I just rode my uni, and rode my uni and rode my uni - and when it got sort of boring I went to the woods with the uni, which for me means a lot of off and on, and I mount the uni off of my left leg (the one with the bum calf.)  The mount didn't seem to hurt the calf at all, so I didn't think much of it, but now the my whole lower left leg seems kind of tired and strained.  Bummer.  Which made me think, maybe what I really need to do is take a big step back and start at the beginning.  I like training hard, so that's what I gravitate towards - but I think I keep doing the stuff that should be the icing on the cake, when I have no cake.  I think the solution should probably be to take a big step back and build a base - which is something, in truth, I've probably *never* had.  Speed and strength have never been my limiter - I mean, I went to college running hurdles for heaven's sake, which is pretty much the most speed + strength event out there.  But I have no endurance base at all - which is evident in lots of ways, most particularly  my struggle with nutrition/reliance on a million gels in longer rides/runs, and my ability to hold a crazy high heart rate for a long time - which probably, if I was aerobically efficient, wouldn't really be so necessary.


Sooooo, I think I'm about to take a big step back and commit to MAF training for a block -MAF being a system in which you calculate your ideal aerobic heart rate and stay under it, no matter what.  According to the formula, and my recent injury status, my heart range will be 125-135.  I foresee a lot of walking on hills.  But what the hell, I've tried most everything else with frustrating results.  Of course, I finally found my heart rate monitor strap today and discovered that it's dead - not even a new battery revived it.  I'm trying not to take that as an omen.

Turkey Day Turkey Trot

We decided to carry on a family tradition - the Thanksgiving Morning Turkey Trot.  One, two or all of us have run it every year for the last 10 years.  This year I was pretty sure I was going to be honest-to-God runnable for the first time in a long time.  The torn plantar fascia of 2011 hung on for a really long time (pro-tip:  when your foot REALLY hurts, don't just keep running on it.)  But finally I'm over that hurdle, and everything was actually going quite swimmingly, until I was doing a track workout a few weeks ago and my left calf cramped up.  REALLY cramped up.  And ever since I've been doing the dance with it - a few days off, a few days on, a few days off, a few days on.  Which leads us to the Turkey Trot.

We woke up and it was 20 degrees.  Perfect for a cranky calf, right?  But  I was feeling really committed to making this happen so I could run with Sam.  So I got up early, took a hot bath to heat up the leg, slathered it in stinky Chinese-medicine liniment, and then stuck a hand warmer inside a compression sleeve just to make sure it got the message that I was paying *very careful attention* to it.  Never say I leave a stone unturned.

So here we are at the start.  It was freaking freezing.

But still really fun. The gun went off, and Sam took off.  I love kids.  We watched him disappear into the crowd, and Clark and I leisurely jogged along.  I thought the calf might cooperate enough to cover the 3 miles, but I had no illusions that it was going to do so quickly.  And Clark generally couldn't care less if he runs fast or slow, so he was happy to jog along with me.

After a mile or so we spotted Sam again - still running quite strong, despite the fact that the sum total of his athletic endeavors for the past several months involves hitting a baseball.  Now he hits a baseball a LOT, but it still doesn't seem like great 5K prep.  By 2 miles he was starting to come back to us a bit so we all settled in companionably together.  At the top of Hillside we turned left onto Liberty and still kept going uphill - at which point Sam finally admitted that a small walk might not be a bad idea.  But he picked it back up again after a couple of minutes and off we went.  By the time we hit mile 3 back at the start, I could tell the calf was beginning to feel unhappy at being expected to function in 20 degree weather, so I walked off to the side and ambled my way through the parking deck to get to the finish line at Pack Square Park.  I was a little disappointed not to run through the finish with Sam and Clark, but figured adding a 32 minute 5K to my resume wasn't going to make much difference - and really effing up this leg would make a big difference, so a casual walk to the finish was probably the best idea.

Among the other frozen participants were several members of Team Prestige Subaru/Asheville Women's Cycling Team.  Was super fun to see them out there, and fun to finally wear my team singlet - even if mine has not so far experienced actual race pace.

Are those my run legs I hear??

I have, in fact, been running a bit. In a rather casual fashion where I head out to Bent Creek and run around as much as seems appealing/appropriate, and then head home until another window of opportunity presents itself. Which is usually 2 or 3 days later. So you can see I have not exactly been on anything that anyone could even vaguely call a plan.

 My meandering runs have made it up to about an hour in length, but they have not been fast. At all. They have, however, sometimes been quite steep. I figure that has to count for something, right?? Surely if your heart feels like you're running mile repeats, then maybe some other parts of your body actually think you're running mile repeats too?

 Except then I met up with Kelly a couple of weeks ago, and we were jogging along on the dead flat path by the creek, and I was thinking "wow, this is a lot faster than I've been running, this feels like a bit of effort", so I dared to ask her how fast her Garmin thought we were going. The answer was... 8:46. Yikes. Because I was definitely putting forth a little too much effort for 8:46 on a flat road.  Not that I'm jet propelled, but in October, before I finally admitted that my foot was no longer operational, I really thought I was in shape to flirt with breaking 20 minutes for the 5K.  Which is a fair ways off from 8:46 pace.

So then today I met up with Kelly for another run, and we did the 6 mile Hard Times loop, where you (more or less) run up, up, up for about 3miles, and then down a steepish hill for about a mile, and then back along the creek on the flat path for a couple of miles.  It was definitely feeling easier than it did a couple of weeks ago, so when were back on the flat around mile 5, I finally dared to ask - ok, how fast are we going.  And the answer was - 7:40!  Hallelujah!  Maybe the run legs aren't completely in hibernation.  Maybe running 3 or 4 days a week with two dogs and no watch isn't such a bad idea.  It's not like we were flying, but it just felt so much easier than the 8:46 of two weeks ago that I was, quite frankly, happy.  I should also point out that it's not like we were running 7:40 the whole time.  We started at a warm-the-foot-up jog, and then slogged up the hill, before picking it up on the way back.  And after reveling in the 7:40 for about another minute I finally had the sense to say that it was fun while it lasted but I really ought to slow down.  But for a while there - we were chatting and running sub-8 minutes, and it felt good.

My foot - it's kind of sore.  It wasn't all that happy for the legs to have come back, and I think it much prefers the two dogs/no watch approach to running.  So two dogs/no watch is what I'm going to stick with for the time being, but still, the tease of really running was enough to keep me happy for the foreseeable future.

Hot Chocolate 10-K - From the Other Side This Time

The Hot Chocolate 10-K is the biggest fundraiser for Sam's school.  It's  grown to about 1200 runners, and it's a lot of fun.  Last year (due entirely to my own lack of figuring out where exactly the finish line was) it was also the site of my most spectacular racing meltdown of the year.

Now, let me clearly state that the end of the race last year was entirely my fault.  I should have figured out where the finish was - that's kind of a baseline requirement for racing.  But still, I saw this giant graphic on the website and it made me laugh:

Seriously, that's what it says on the website.  And the crazy part is - it's true!!!  But kind of mainly in a technical sense, as in the middle 4 1/2 miles are totally flat - but the beginning and the end are a different kettle of fish.  Here's  the elevation profile:

So, you see that, while technically true, it should also come with a warning that it's the flattest race, with the steepest finish, in town.

This year, due to the cranky foot, I decided we'd volunteer instead.  Note that *I* decided *we* would volunteer.  Clark loved that one.  Especially when we were put on the parking crew, and were told to be there at 6 in the morning.  That included Sam - normally I might have let him con a sleepover with a grandparent, but there weren't any readily available, and besides that I told him it was his school after all - if any of us were going to be there it ought to be him.  So we got up at 5:15 and slogged over to the Chamber to direct parking.  At which point Sam taped two parking signs to himself in a sandwich board, plugged in his iPod, and commenced dancing like a much younger, much whiter Usher.  The kid never fails to surprise.  And people definitely noticed the entrance to the parking.

Turns out parking duty is pretty fun.  Although my favorite are the people who arrive 25 minutes before the start of a 1200 person race and are shocked to find out the closest parking is full.  "What?  It's full?!?" Um, yeah.  It's full.

At any rate, the heavens opened with a major league cloudburst just as we were finishing, and I'll admit some soft, weak part deep inside me thought "I'm so glad I'm not running today!!!"  And what the hell, it's not like I was going to run anyway, so I took that soft, weak part home and fed it bacon and sausage.  Live a little.

January Run

I went running in Bent Creek yesterday morning - 6 miles (more or less), with the first half pretty much up hill, and the last half pretty much downhill.  That's the beauty of Bent Creek - you kind of get fit in a hurry.

It turned out the weather was amazing.  Cold but not freezing, with the bluest sky I've seen in days.  So I tried to commemorate it - but the sun was so bright, and the leaf-less trees so not-really-appealing, that I wasn't all that successful.  As you'll note:

In fact the best pictures were no doubt of my running partners:

 They are the best.  I swear Moose grins at me the whole time, and Eli is on constant alert. (True story - he scared the beejezus out of a pit bull mix that was chasing Moose, and ran the pit back to his owner.  And Eli is the little one.  Except he's a terrier, and thus the normal rules of canine size don't apply to him.)

I also added the obligatory self portrait, although turns out self portraits taken after running in the cold for a half hour are not the most flattering option.  But still, I'm sure you can tell how much fun I was having.  And I'll keep telling myself that's the point of the running self-portrait.

But, the biggest point of this post, and I'm playing it cool so I waited until the end to really point it out, is that I RAN 6 MILES YESTERDAY!!  And my foot was pretty cooperative.  Couldn't be happier about that.  (ok, I could be happier - I could be happier if I hadn't thought my heart was going to explode going up that first climb on Ingles Field Gap - but that's the part about Bent Creek getting you fit in a hurry, and also that small wrinkle did not overshadow my general very-happiness to be running.)

Not the Shoes

So - it's actually not about the shoes.  Unfortunately.  As you might recall, I was hopeful some new running shoes would clear things right up with my foot.  But - as is often the case - my foot has other ideas.  I tried Nike Frees, and Saucony Kinvarras, and New Balance Minimuses (Minimusi?), and the foot is not having it.  (Fortunately all of the shoes can go back, so I'm not out a chunk of money to figure this out.)

To date, I've also tried:  chiropractic, acupuncture, ART, massage, taping, icing, and anti-inflammatories.  I also currently have appointments pending with a rolfer and a physical therapist who specializes in runners.  Let it never be said I leave a stone unturned!  Of course the one thing I haven't actually tried is a lot of rest.  It's such a bummer.  But - as I walked home through Montford today on my aching foot, I came to terms with the fact that it's probably time to get back on the bike for a while and let the foot have a break.  And also probably time to stop trying new iterations of shoe, tape, no tape, orthotic, no orthotic, etc.  And just leave the dang thing alone.  I'm pretty sure that's what it has decided is its heart's desire.

So, so as not to fall into the injury doldrums, today I was on the Swank website seeing if the race was full yet.  True, I have barely ridden my mountain bike since 6 Hours of Warrior Creek in April, but I still have a month to get ready!  Don't worry, I'm not that crazy.  Yet.

It's the Shoes, Man

At least I hope it is.  My running had been going rather well.  Of course, since it was during my blog hiatus, no one knew (and let's face, probably no one cared.)  But it had - right up until the Firecracker 5K in Weaverville on July 4.  Here's the report I sent to the coach that wrote my training plan:

Hi Vince - here's another race report, from the Firecracker 5K this morning. This was a much hillier course than the MSF 5K that I ran in 20:52 a few weeks ago, and you had my target pace at 6:33. Turns out my pace was. . . 6:33. Ask and ye shall receive. :)


Here were the splits:
mile 1: 6:37
mile 2: 6:40 (hillier than mile 1)
mile 3: 6:28 (long grind up for the 1st half mile, in which I really wanted to walk and/or die, long downhill for the 2nd half mile, in which I sucked it up and caught the girl in front of me)
last .12: 0:38


For 20:24 total, good for 2nd place woman (thanks to a decent kick that beat 3rd place by 4 seconds). Considering that the girl that placed 3rd beat me by 20 seconds at MSF, I was really happy with this result.

 So, all sweetness, light and happiness, right??  That was a PR, and I was happy with it. I really did mean it when I said I wanted to walk and/or die during the first half of the last mile.  I celebrated my finish by chatting with a fellow finisher until I said "excuse me, I'm so sorry", and then turned and dry heaved my guts out under a bush while Clark poured water on me and Sam looked on in horror.  (As an aside, Sam does a stellar interpretation of me post-race, complete with dramatic staggering and awesome retching noises.)  So - I was pretty sure I had gotten about all that I had to give out of myself for that day, and I was looking forward to hitting another training block with a new plan.  The elusive sub-20 minute 5K is drawing ever closer.

But. . .  I noticed my arches hurt the next day.  Let's face it, everything hurt.  But I remember thinking as I was running down to the finish that I was going pretty hard down hill - which I don't usually do - and I hoped everything held together - in particular my feet.   Weird, right, to have such great foreshadowing?  I know I ran the first half of that last mile (the uphill part) at well over 7 minute pace (the garmin kept spitefully telling me so), and I ended up averaging 6:28 pace, so I guess I was running sub-6 minute pace down the hill - which, for me, is hauling ass.  So the feet hurt a bit, but I ran a bit, and then I went mountain biking for the first time in ages, and then I hung my right foot on a root and just about busted it out running - and somehow all of these things converged and I ended up with a right foot that wasn't all that happy.  

It wasn't terribly unhappy - with a little babying it was happy to run 10 miles up Sunset and Patton Mountain and back down.  But it wasn't at all happy to do speed work - which sucks, because if you spend much time running up and down Sunset and Patton Mountain then you'll end up feeling rather fast on the track, and thus it's a little bit of a downer to have a foot that doesn't want to cooperate. (Although maybe it's better than the opposite - foot that totally cooperates with your slow, plodding, miserable attempt at speedwork.  Been there.) 

At any rate I've now thrown off the blinders of denial and have a plan.  Step 1 - yogapalooza.  I'm a dumbass and didn't do much yoga over the summer - too much fun at the pool with Sam.  And now my whole right side is considerably more tight than the left.  Oops.  Step 2 - get a chiropractor to put me back on the straight and narrow - check.  Step 3 - find a massage guy to rub the crap out of the leg - turns out there's a small muscle on the front of my lower leg that when rubbed forcefully by a rather large man makes my whole foot first feel electrified, and then feel better.  No wonder fixing an injury is such a crapshoot - how am I supposed to figure that out???  And now Step 4 - find some new shoes.  It's always the shoes, right?  Maybe not, but I'm having fun with the experiment.  So far I can report - Nike Frees:  feel pretty good.  New Balance Minimus:  weirdly made me feel very pronated, and I'm not much of a pronator.  Were also way too big, which probably didn't help.  Saucony Kinvarra:  in the mail.  Fingers crossed.

I guess I'm on Step 6 now - take a week off from running (which might explain my return to the blog.)  While still playing with Step 5 - I'm currently wearing a rather fetching combination of skirt and Nike Frees.  Clark was perplexed.  Hopefully though, through some combination of the plan and the shoes, I'll be back on the track in the near future.  Right?  

Back in the Saddle

So, turns out I don't have to bankrupt myself to the ART practitioner after all.  Because that was my plan B in case my hip flexor didn't ever decide to flex again.  But it appears to have decided to rejoin the party, and so I'm back at it. (Well, if you can consider jogging aimlessly around Montford being back at it.)  But today I'm going to attempt to run an actual workout.  Fingers crossed.

Biggest news of the week (month?? year??) - Sam learned to ride a bike yesterday!!!  He had sort-of, somewhat attempted to ride a couple of times over the last couple of years, but it just never really seemed to take.  He'd crash, scare himself a little, and decide that was the most ridiculous activity he'd ever heard of.  But - he got a fire in his belly this week and decided he was ready.  So I got his old bike (now ridiculously small for him - which is perfect for learning on), and we headed to the Greenway.  And - he figured it out.  It was sooo fun to watch.  I had a cheek ache from smiling so much.  And at one point he turned around and yelled "this is the most amazing feeling in the world!!!!!", and I knew *exactly* how he felt.  It was this great moment of kinship and accord.  So we're going back for more today, and now I'm looking at the budget to see where a new bike fits in.  And - I have the *most adorable* video of him on his first day of biking, and I'm *dying* to post it, but since the video ends with him yelling "and don't put this on youtube!!!", I'm guessing that should also apply to my blog.  But it's really adorable.


Edited to Add:  The hip flexor really did decide to flex!  7 miles around N. Asheville in an hour (more or less), including 2x200, 2x400, 2x200 on the UNCA track.  The track intervals were supposed to be at 5k race pace, and I really did mean to be good, but for a person who once actually ran the 400, doing those intervals at 5k pace seems realllllly silly.  So I was faster than I was supposed to be, but not by too much, and - Happy Dance! - the legs seemed to be up for it.

Wrecked

I was planning on the Hot Chocolate 10-K being a blip on my screen - one hard fun day that slipped seamlessly into my training plan.  Except that's not exactly how it's turning out so far.  Because I'm *still* not quite right.  (If you ride horses, you'll understand when I say I'm NQR.)  I was so sore I could barely walk through Tuesday (Sam had to slow down in the grocery store so I could keep up), and I was semi-mobile by Wednesday, but mysterious aches and pains keep cropping up as the soreness recedes.  First a weird low back/backside thing that felt strange and buzzy like a pinched nerve, then it migrated around to my hip, and has now settled rather painfully into my hip flexor.  Does that make any sense?  Not really.  And my left calf is still reallllly sore/painful.  So I think it was maybe a blessing in disguise that my new pup has been up most of the night every night this week with an upset stomach - because I've been too sleep-deprived to care all that much that I wasn't getting my workouts in.  (Seriously, I'm grasping for silver linings here.)

Obligatory pictures of cute new pup:

But today I went out for a bit of a jog, and things were definitely not ready to run again. The hip hurt running downhill, and the calf hurt running uphill, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say the big hill did me in.  Which is bizarre, because yes it's a big hill, but I thought I was in decent shape, and I run a fair number of hills.  But - I guess that's the thing about the human body, I find it's often somewhat hard to predict.  So I suppose I'll take it easy for a few more days and see how things are feeling.  I'm hoping it doesn't take too much longer to feel better, because I'm reallly hoping to run the Myrtle Beach Half-Marathon on Feb. 19.  We'll see.

In other unrelated-but-still-athletic news, I'm now on the Board of the Asheville Triathlon Club.  I'm co-chair of the events committee, so if anyone has any ideas let me know.  We're definitely putting on some tried-and-true favorites, like the Indoor Tri and a transition clinic, but I'd be interested to hear any new ideas.  Check out the Tri Club blog to see the current cast of characters.

The Hot Chocolate 10K - Or, How Not to Pace Your Race

So, this ended up being kind of a funny race for me. (And, as it turns out, a really long race report.)  The cold wasn't really too bad - I think it was probably around 25 at the start, and I had run to the school from our house so I was pretty warmed up.  Instead, the real problem was the big hill leading away from the school - the one you run down-down-down at the start and up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up at the finish.  (Did I mention the up?)

I'm usually a negative split kind of person.  Not that I'm Debbie Downer, but that I do best when I run the second half of races faster than the first half.  Thus - the negative split.  And knowing that as I do, you wouldn't really think I'd get sucked into the giant downhill at the start and run off like a banshee, and pass the first mile marker listening to them call out "6:27, 6:28, 6:29."  Except that's exactly what I did. And I started a ways back in the pack, so it was more like 6:20 when I went by.   And I can't run 6:20s for a 10-K.  In fact, my stretch goal was to be in the 7:00 pace range.  Oops.  And honestly, I just never recovered from the insanely fast start.  Because I didn't even slow down right at the first mile - oh no, I did kind of think I was going too fast, but I still rolled along for a ways until it finally hit me that this was just really not going to work.   But by then it was a little late.

So, I just hung on for the last half, and then for the finish you run up the hill from River Road up Hill Street, and then take a quick left into the bottom Dickson entrance, and about 50 feet later there's the finish.  So you only go up about half of the giant hill that you come down at the start.  So I pushed hard up Hill Street, saw the turn, thought "ok, just go hard to the turn and then you're done."  And I went hard, made the turn - and no f@&*ng finish line was to be seen.   Seriously.  They had moved the start a bit, which I knew, but I didn't think it looked much shorter - but apparently they had compensated by moving the finish allllllll the way back up to the top of the hill.  And I hadn't bothered to figure this out before the race.  Oops.

It seemed like some sort of alternate reality at that point - honestly, I had already gone way too hard, but had mustered up some sort of finishing kick effort only to discover - no finish.  So I just kept slogging along, and slogging along, and I was really beginning to wonder if I was going to make it to the finish - but then finally - FINALLY - I staggered across.  And then I staggered around for a second and finally just stretched out on the sidewalk for a couple of minutes.  I pretty much never do that.  And even as I was desperately trying to catch my breath I was thinking "this is a really bad idea, your IT band is not going to like this" - and I still totally didn't care.  And even when a few people wandered over to see if I was ok - still totally didn't care.  So, in summation, that hill totally kicked my a$$.

I ended up at 45:14, for 7:18 pace and 4th in my age group.  So when I died at the end I really died.  But - while I'm not too happy with race execution, I am pretty happy with race effort.  Even when things were getting particularly grim at the end, I still kept pushing, which I'm happy about.  Although, let's face it, I'd probably be happier if I hadn't acted like a total goober at the beginning, and instead had run a nice string of 7:00 miles.  I might not have been able to string them all together, but at least I'd have a better idea of where my fitness stands.  Oh well - live and learn.  Better to figure it out now than at the Half-Marathon in February.  Note to self - don't act like a dumba$$.

One last funny note - I ran with my Garmin (which, incidentally, insisted that the race was 6.3 miles long rather than 6.2 - I knew we shouldn't have run so far up that hill!!) - but also it records heart rate.  And it recorded my heart rate at the finish as 244.  244!!!!   Technically I think my heart should have just exploded around 220.  So now I feel totally justified in collapsing on the sidewalk at the end.  It was probably a medical necessity.

C-c-c-cold Racing

Tomorrow's the Hot Chocolate 10-K.  I love this race - it supports Sam's school, it's a great fund raiser, it's the flattest race in town, and everyone I know does it.  But. . . it's going to be freezing tomorrow.  I don't really mind freezing in general, but I was hoping to actually race this one, as opposing to more moderately running about, and see what the run legs are looking like for January.  Which is not nearly as appetizing a thought in 20 degree weather.  In my experience, run legs don't necessarily show up when it gets that cold.  Jog legs - yes.  Run legs - maybe.  But. . . be that as may, we'll be out there, so I might as well make the best of it.  Full report to follow - fast or frozen??

I'm a Border Collie

So. . . this weather.  It's not bad exactly.  It's actually fun, in a different sort of way.  A way that, if I had unlimited supplies of cash and nothing to do with it, I'd totally go learn to snow board and buy a four wheel drive vehicle and a season pass to the nearest quasi-ski resort ("quasi", because this is WNC and I don't think we have any real ones), and spend my winter pretending to be Shaun White.  Because he's cooler than Kelly Clark.  They both have gold medals, but he also has a private half-pipe that Red Bull built for him, while she has a snowboard with Jesus painted on it.  I go to church and all, but I do not want Jesus painted on my snowboard.  And frankly, I doubt He'd care much if his name was on there anyway.  But, I digress.  And I don't have unlimited cash and thus no engaging new hobby to distract me.


What I do have, is that crazy-eyed feeling that a Border Collie gets if it hasn't run sufficient laps every day. And yes, this is an allusion to Modern Family.  In which Phil and his wife had the following exchange:

Phil: She has to run everyday or she goes crazy,
 she's like a Border Collie.
Claire: Did you just compare me to a dog?!?

Phil: The smartest in the world!

I'm so Claire these days.  And not because I feel like the smartest dog in the world. But because I feel like if I don't go run outside in the very near future I'm going to effing kill somebody. Which is odd, because I've run a lot on a treadmill (at the Y:  while watching snarky passive aggressive power plays for the best treadmills, at the Rush:  while my retinas were forever burned with the neon orange accents and the giant silvery word "LADYZ" that signifies the women's dressing room.)  And I've ridden my bike trainer like a woman possessed, only to discover that I'm still IN THE LIVING ROOM.  All that effort and sweat and  heart rate monitoring, and I'm still in the same damn place.  So. . . I've got to get outside.  Soon.  As soon as Clark walks in the door for lunch I'm strapping on the yaktrax and I'm out of here.  Running wild and free, like the Border Collie I'm apparently meant to be.

Once a Runner

Just got back from running around North Asheville. And eureka - I'm kind of feeling like a runner again. Hooray! I'm tired of faking it like a quasi-swimmer, or almost-biker. I mean, I'll keep faking it at those things, but it's nice to feel like I'm kind of getting my legs back (from the never-ending, really-painful plantar fasciitis episode of the last year.) Of course I'm still only running about 9 miles a week, so take that for what it's worth.

Also - I totally stole the title of this post. From the quintessential runner book of the same name - check it out. It's being reissued with a new cover so it looks all shiny and new, but I read it in high school and I don't think it was exactly new then. But I did read it again fairly recently, and I still love it.

Had the best meeting at Greenlife this morning - seems like Spotted Dog Farm botanical beeswax candles (and a few lanterns!) will soon be appearing on a shelf near you. (as long as you are near Chestnut St. and Merrimon, that is.) Soooo excited! Will report more later, when they're actually on the shelf - which will take me a few days to accomplish.

Off to eat vegan take out. Cause that's how we roll around here.

I Will Not be Thwarted

This weather. Seriously - slushy icy crap falling from the sky. I suppose I'm glad it's not really snow, since that tends to shut everything down for days at a time (at least if you live in a place that doesn't get enough snow to warrant dedicating a whole lot of equipment to the removal of it.) So this slushy funky mess is at least drivable. But still not great.

So I woke up this morning knowing school was canceled (because that's how we do it here - I don't think we've had a full week of school since Christmas break.) And I needed to get a run in this morning because it didn't happen yesterday afternoon since I was waiting for the furnace repairman instead (that's a whole 'nother interesting story.) And I have a 2 hour trainer ride on the schedule for later today. So I lazed about in bed thinking it wasn't my fault that I couldn't get to the Y - it was sleeting and snowing! A full on Act of God!! But then I heard cars zooming by on Chestnut in what sounded like a whole lot of water. So I sucked it up and went to the Y and got my run in and felt like Wonder Woman. This weather can try its best, but I won't be thwarted!! So now I'm all excited to ride my bike this afternoon (I still have 2 hours of unwatched X Games on my tivo), and I've got wax melting to make candles, and a couple of festival applications ready to be sent. So. . . this weather can try its best, but I will not be thwarted!

(oh wait - now I feel a little unsure about voicing that quite so loudly. Hubris just invites bad things to happen. Perhaps I should say, This weather can continue on just as it is now, and I will make the best of it!)

Decade in Review

I was thinking about the last decade - kind of a lot going on in the last ten years. You'd think things might be fairly much the same from the ages of 27 to 37, but in this case, not so much. So since I was thinking about it (and since I've read some other bloggers that reviewed their previous decade and it entertained me), here's the very abridged version of the last ten years:

2000 - We celebrated the New Year at the Outer Banks in a beach house with Clark's brothers and their wives and a bunch of our friends. We had a great time, although I'll confess to being slightly disappointed that all of the computers in the world didn't grind to a cataclysmic halt and end technology as we know it. I mean, I'm not really advocating for the end of days here, but still, there was a lot of build up for not much of a result.

In 2000 we were working in Charlotte, childless, and had just moved to an old farm house in Chester, South Carolina so that we could consolidate our horses and our lives in one place (in other words, I had gotten tired of commuting to a barn 40 minutes from our house to ride a horse in the middle of the night (since that was the only time I had to ride my horse given my job), and Clark had gotten really tired of never seeing his wife.) So we decided we'd put everything in one place - which was a great idea, except that the only place we could afford to do that was Chester, South Carolina. Which is about an hour from where we worked, and we were the epitome of "you're not from around here, are you?" Everyone we met was so nice, but we had *nothing* in common with any of them. My vet introduced himself by wanting to know if we had found a church yet, and assuring me his was a "god-fearing, bible-believing congregation." Umm. . . we actually do go to church on occasion, but I'm pretty sure my kind of church and his kind of church were not the same thing, and really, I just wanted him to look at my lame horse. And while we were in Chester it was made famous for dog-fighting, cock-fighting, and a boy his killed both of his grandparents. Seriously.

2001- still in Chester, still riding horses, still driving a really long way to work. Wondering if maybe we might one day be brave enough to reproduce. About 10 minutes after we wondered that, I was pregnant. Turns out my paranoia about birth control for all of those years was not paranoia at all. Fertility's a fickle mistress - you just never know which way she's going to turn.

2002 - yep, still in Chester. Around April, when I was 7 months pregnant, I decided that there is no way in hell I'm going to keep doing my current job. I was Senior Counsel at a telecom company, and while I liked a few of the people I worked with, that was the only redeeming feature of that job. Seriously, the only one. Except maybe for the giant Harris Teeter I could walk to. And now that I think about it, when proximity to a grocery store is a shining light of your employment situation, that job totally sucks. Decided I'd quit, and job search after Sam was born. Turns out that's the last law job I've ever had.

June 19, 2002, Sam Duncan is born. He's a doll. As long as I'm holding him at all times. Parenting gurus would say we were very attached. And we were - very, very attached, usually literally - the kid ate all the time. He was the sweetest thing I've ever seen, and I felt a primal urge that said if anyone messed with this kid I was going to rip the flesh from their bones. In fact, I still pretty much feel that way, so if you're considering messing with Sam Duncan, consider yourself warned. Motherhood's a powerful force, and I've got a bit of a temper.

By late summer it was clear that Chester was not the place for us any longer (my big outing of the week was to head to the Wal-Mart in Rock Hill with the baby - kill me now), and it was time to head back to Asheville. I grew up in Asheville, and all of my family is here, and we'd always thought that one day we'd move back. One day just happened to turn into that day. So we put our house on the market and Clark started looking for a job. But finding a job in Asheville and selling a white elephant in Chester aren't easy tasks, so that was also how we ended 2002.

2003 - In April it all came together - our house sold, and Clark got a job. Hooray! We're on our way to Asheville! We stayed with my parents while we were house hunting - talk about incentive to find a house. All three of us were staying in my high-school bedroom. Tight fit. A month after we got here we were closing on our house - thankfully our rush didn't impede our judgment - we love our house, it's walking distance to downtown and we have a ton of good friends in the neighborhood.

This year I also was running again for the first time since my ill-fated collegiate running career. Since there's no call for middle-aged hurdlers, I started running a little distance. It all started with Sam in his baby jogger the previous fall, and then I kind of just kept seeing if I could run a little farther and a little farther. It culminated with the Citizen-Times Half Marathon in September, where I ran a 1:39:21 over a super hilly course, and was 6th in my age group. Not too bad, I'll take it. So then I ran the first Dupont Forest Trail Marathon. Oh my. Talk about a hard day at the office - I had a pretty bad day, [ok, probably the worst I have ever felt at a sporting event], and still ended up 3rd in my age group even though I ran well over 4 hours. That's when you know the whole thing was a long hard slog. Unfortunately I also tweaked my IT Band in that race, and it was a long time before I was running again.

2004 - Clark and I were sort of running, but I wasn't having much luck with the IT Band. Although this was when I found yoga, and discovered it's pretty much the cure-all for anything that ails you. We did manage to get to the Kiawah Half Marathon, and had a great time. I ran a 1:39:30, which just goes to show how flat Kiawah is - I wasn't in anything close to the same kind of shape as the year before.

2005 - IT Band was still kind of a mess, and I had been sort of riding the horses off and on while Sam was slowly growing up, so I turned my attention back to the horses. Hooked up with a really good trainer - Amy Barrington - in Landrum, and was having a blast.

2006 - doing a lot of riding, and raising Sam (who by this time was in pre-school a few mornings a week thank god), and having fun with Clark. Loving being in Asheville.

2007 - the year of the horse (for this decade anyway). Was taking Fred to a lot of events, and had Finn started, and was generally having a great time. But in August Sam started kindergarten, and Clark and I had our 10th wedding anniversary, and I barely remember either one - because I was in the trauma unit at Mission Hospital after a very unfortunate landing from a pretty easy fall off of Fred. Oops. He stopped at a jump and I went over his head and landed on a jump pole, and broke 4 ribs and punctured a lung and ended up with a chest tube and was in the hospital for 11 days. Clark was amazing - held everything together even though I was in a drug-induced haze for the better part of a month. It's kind of like the lost month for me - I was fairly blissed out and unconcerned from the opiates. I really think Clark got the worst end of the deal. Although the opiates had to go in fairly short order - turns out you don't poop when you're taking opiates. Like, at all. Dear god, how those Hollywood stars all get addicted to Vicodin is completely beyond me. So I ditched the drugs fairly quickly, and was actually back on a horse 6 weeks later. Took Finn out to his first events and had a great time.

2008 - Was planning on another big horse year, but in January Finn was 3 legged lame, and we thought he had chipped his stifle. This is really, really bad news for an event horse. Turns out he didn't (although we never actually figured out what he had done, even after a trip to the vet hospital at NCSU), but he did need a few months off in the field. Around this same time Clark was changing jobs and with Sam starting kindergarten it was time for to be a productive member of the family. But the law jobs weren't looking so appealing so I decided I'd start growing flowers. And that was the beginning of Spotted Dog Farm. Around September, after no riding and no running, I discovered my skirts no longer buttoned. Huh. So started running again.

2009 - Was going to try to run a marathon in the spring, but of course started running too much and ended up injured. (Seriously, I seem to have no self-control when it comes to this. If I ever win the lottery I'm hiring a coach immediately.) So I decided to try a few triathlons, since it would be like mandatory cross-training - and LOVED them. I remember thinking halfway through the ride at my first one, "I think I've found my new sport." And it was pretty successful - I was 3rd in my age group at the first one (Enka Lake), 2d in my age group at the second one (Asheville Tri) and won my age group at the last one (Lake Logan Sprint - but it should be noted that most of the really fast people did the Olympic distance the day before at this one.) So it turned out that triathlon was a pretty compelling new pastime, and somehow I just didn't manage to put Finn back to work this year. I figure he's certainly happy enough hanging out in the pasture with his buddy, and I'm feeling very entertained trying to figure out triathlon. Revelations for the year - I can actually sort of swim (if I have a coach and apply a LOT of effort to the project), it's possible to run a decent (though not great) 5K off of 6 miles a week of running if you're also swimming and biking, and I need to ride my bike more. Also in the middle of this year I decided that in addition to growing flowers I was going to make beeswax candles with pressed flowers in them. Did I decide this because of my exhaustive experience with candle making and pressed flowers? No. I just decided it. So thereafter ensued a period in which our whole house was covered with melted wax and really ugly candles. But I'm pretty sure perseverance trumps inspiration most every time, so I just kept making slightly less crazy looking candles for months and months - until I actually had something I liked. And it turns out lots of other people like it too - so 2009 was the year of the candle.

At the end of the decade I suppose I've got a few resolutions - although I'm not really one for concrete things like "floss my teeth." Instead I'm more in the mind of keeping on having a great time with my family, keep enjoying the new things I'm learning, and make sure Sam keeps having the best possible life. Pretty good goals all in all.

Dodged the Bullet

Looks like we dodged the frost bullet - everything was looking perky and happy by the time I got over there yesterday. So I cut a bunch of flowers, planted a few more, had a little communing time with the crazy terrier in the flower garden, and headed home. Pretty good day.

Total change of subject - here's my latest favorite gizmo. (well, not really, that would be an iphone, which I am having major envy issues over (and think how much better this blog would be! Pictures all the time!) but that's a gizmo who's time is coming in 11 months when my T Mobile contract is over, so back to our regularly scheduled program.) Ahem - my second favorite latest gizmo - is runningahead.com. I think it does a bunch of different things, but my favorite part is the route mapper. You can sit in the comfort of your own home and map out a running or biking route and it'll tell you exactly how far your route is. So if you want to do a 6 mile loop you could do it on time if you have a good guesstimate of your pace, or you could decide you're too anal rententive for that and need to know exactly and then set out in your car tracking it on your odometer only to realize 5 1/2 miles into it that you needed to pick up more distance somewhere back around mile 2, and start all over, cursing this stupid process the whole way, and throwing in an extra tenth here and there for the places where the sidewalk looks like it's covering more distance than the road (seriously, some of those sidewalks take very wide turns.) Or you could just sit at your computer and map it all out ahead of time in a couple of minutes and then save all of those routes so that six months from now you aren't trying to remember exactly what street in Montford you're supposed to cut down for that one 4 mile loop. And that, my friends, is where Running Ahead comes in.

The Bike is Here!

First things first - a few days ago I lost my mind and bought a road bike. It arrived today. yippee! It looks beautiful, and brand new, which really is a testament to how little that guy's girlfriend wanted to ride a bike. It also looked like it was in several pieces, since it's hard to ship a fully assembled bicycle. And Geoffrey was at work, so I was left to my own devices. I now have it at least looking like an actual, all in one piece, bicycle. But I'm definitely not going to set off on it until someone far more qualified than me has a good look at it.

Before the bike arrived - ran 5 miles with Clark. Great fun.

Then had a special swimming pool appearance at the Y with Sam. Also great fun. Except the alleged warm pool was freezing. The poor kid's teeth were chattering the whole time. He hasn't exactly got a lot of meat on his bones for insulation.

In actual farm news, I'm beginning to tire of lazing about all day (although it's only been 2 weeks since our last day at market), and have started creating spreadsheets of last year to track everything. Note to self: Do a Decent Inventory!!!! You can tell the weeks I was hot and tired or cold and cranky, and the inventory on those weeks leaves a little to be desired. Doing a little bit of fanciful recreation to allocate revenue. I'm pretty accurate but I'm also pretty sure I wouldn't get through business school like this.

Holiday Weekend Recap

Have made it through the holiday weekend. Have had 5 separate major family holiday meals in the last 5 days - not kidding. That's what happens when you and your spouse have a lot of family in the area, and siblings coming in and out on different days. So despite the sodium coma I thought I was going to lapse into after my mom's super-processed-casserole extravaganza, I actually managed to still work out. Here's the recap:

Friday - 30 minutes on the stationary bike, 30 minutes veeeery slowly running on the flat treadmill to try out the achilles, and then 30 minutes swimming. All in all a big success! Achilles felt great and I got one of those "The Stick" massager things to try to keep the calves slightly less knotted up. That ought to help the achilles some. It's a cranky s.o.b. Total mileage, using my totally non-scientific way of figuring this out, would be 7.5 for the 90 minutes of exercise.

Saturday - was a beautiful day, so scrapped the plan to head back to the Y and instead Clark and I went to Carrier Park (the only flat place I know to run in Asheville) and ran 3 rather easy miles - again achilles felt fine. Also officially signed us up for our races - We're going to run the Potomac River Run in DC on May 4 - Clark's doing the half and I'm doing the full.Woohoo!

Sunday - back to the Y, since I didn't want to push my luck, and did 30 minutes on elliptical and 30 minutes swimming. Was rather fun - Clark went with me and confirmed that at least I do actually have something resembling a real freestyle stroke. This isn't all that impressive to him since he was on the swim team from ages 6 through 18, but he does agree it's progress. I also lost my mind and bought a road bike sight-unseen from Craig's List. It's basically the exact same bike the local shop was trying to convince me to buy, except this one is a last year's model that a guy bought his girlfriend hoping she'd decide to ride - she didn't, so after one ride and then sitting in his hall for a year, he's selling it for $450 off current retail. You know I'm a bargain shopper - couldn't pass it up.