running: the dawn

I have been having such a hard time getting myself out to go running.  Mostly its because my runs have been so miserable lately.  Living in a new area with a completely different climate is throwing me all out of whack.  Now, I’ve run my fair share in heat.  I hate heat, but I’ve found ways of coping with it and made my peace.

Humidity, on the other hand?  We are not friends.

Seriously, since I moved here I haven’t been able to complete one run without having to take walking breaks.  I feel my body overheating and my heart racing.  It’s not fun.  So, as I’m sitting in my air conditioned house, I find it very challenging to will myself to go out for a run.

Now, some have suggested that I run earlier.  And that does help temperature wise.  But I have found that the humidity is always higher in the morning which just makes me feel like I am having to cut my way through the tropical air.

I feel like I might have found a way to make it through the next few weeks though.  Today I went running without my garmin.  I wanted to see if not “recording” my run would help give me permission to run slow enough so that I wouldn’t have to stop and walk just so that I don’t pass out or throw up.  It worked!  I just kept telling myself to keep it slow and steady.

With my garmin lately I’ve been super depressed every time I glance down and see in numbers how slowly I’ve been running.  Which always makes me speed up.  Which always makes me overheat and need to stop to walk.  But without that constant feedback, I was freed to run at a sustainable pace and FINALLY finish the 4 mile loop without a walk break.

I’ve been trying to count on both my endurance and speed coming back to me at the same time.  Now, its time to accept that I’ve lost both.  I’m not where I was and I can’t expect to get there over night.  I am going to focus on regaining my endurance–adding on miles.  Then I will reintroduce the garmin.

For now, I just need to not dread running.  That is the goal.

Thats right.  After 6 months of aimless running (also known as “non-running”) I’ve officially signed up for my next marathon.  EEEEEEEEE!  Squeals of delight!  I’m not sure why it makes such a big difference to me, but I already feel different.  My training doesn’t officially begin for a few weeks, but I’m super excited.

My plan is to do a six week base building phase followed by a 12-week training cycle.  The base building is all about getting my groove back.  I need to get used to running frequently and increasing my weekly mileage and the length of my long runs.  This is HUGE especially since right now a five mile run would be considered “long” [blush].

I’m going to be following my FAVORITE plan.  Yes, Mr. Pete Pfitzinger is my go to guy when it comes to focused training.  It is the 12 week, 55 mile max plan from the book Advanced Marathoning.  It got me to my first sub four and my BQ last year at Grand Rapids.

I have NO idea what kind of goal I’m going to be setting for myself.  I’m going to put that off for awhile until I can see how my life shakes out in the next few months.  I have no idea how things are going to go once I get into my new job and all the traveling.  So, for now, my only goal is to hang out with my favorite race distance: the marathon!

~~~in other news~~~

Mr. Dawn and I signed our first “offer” to buy a house today.  Eeep!  I’m pretty sure my life has gone through TOO many changes in such a short time.  We really need to start spacing these things out….or I’m going to pass out!

So, day three of my 5 days of running and I’ve been getting it done.  Just barely.  Today was definitely the hottest of the hot.  I could make it about a mile before I needed to take a little break in the shade.  And I figured since I wasn’t going to get the miles run straight through I’d go ahead and run five.  But it was more like intervals.  Run a mile.  Hide under a tree and pour half my water on my face.  Run another mile.

Since I haven’t shown you my new running digs, check it out:

About a mile from my front door I can be at a nice little bike path.  The only flaw is that it does not have that much shade, so I feel like I’m baking under the sun.  Even in the early mornings.  I will say that I feel much much more safe running on the sidewalks and bike paths here than I did on the country roads without a shoulder up north.  Not sure the trade off for 100+ degrees is really worth it though….

In SAD news.  My Garmin seems to have died.  At the beginning of the summer she was loosing her charge at an alarming rate and I was afraid that she was done for.  So I contacted Garmin Support and they walked me through a reset/software update which temporarily fixed the problem.  But on yesterday’s run she quit after a mile and today (after being fully charged overnight) she beeped her last at 1.5 miles.

So, I’m sending her in.  Its actually a little bit past the one year warranty, but because Garmin is an AWESOME company they are taking care of me and sending me a replacement without charge.  But I am sad.  She has served me so well!

her first day as a part of our family

Getting me to my sub-four hour marathon:

San Diego RnR 2010

Qualifying me for Boston:

Grand Rapids 2010

Running the world’s best race with me:

And now.  She’s gone.

Sure, I’ll get another device.  I’m sure that it will work perfectly.  I may even learn to love the replacement.  But it won’t understand where I’ve been.  It hasn’t been through the fight with me.  I am sad.

Ok, so it’s Monday.  I’ve decide to set a goal for myself for this week.

I want to run five days in a row.  In the morning.  Outside.  A minimum of 3 miles, hopefully more.

That sounds like nothing, right?  Well…

Seriously?  [deep breath] I believe that if I can find a way to run consistently I will have won the battle.  I need to be OK with slogging through some horrible runs.  I need to just get out and make it happen.  Its a choice, right?  My choice.  And I choose to run.  Or at least I did today.  And I hope to choose it again tomorrow….

Hurray!  So, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to start celebrating each little success in my journey back.  And today…I celebrate my run.  I was able to wake up and start my run first thing this morning.  AND, because I ran on my treadmill, I was able to get three loads of laundry done  Huzzah.

The plan: run while watching an episode of Friends.

Hop off to switch out the laundry.  Start a new episode.  Hop back on.

Worked perfectly

I may seem a little late in my embrace of spring, but you have to understand what its like for those of us who live in the north…we don’t trust the spring.  One day it could be sunny and 70 and then in the blink of an eye there’s snow everywhere and the temperatures have plummeted.  I’m never sure when I can let my guard down and truly enjoy the warmer weather.

Well, the sign that I’ve been waiting for is here!

the water pumps are on!!!

That’s right!  The water is back on!!!!  It has been a long winter with no water stops along my route.  And now….I can fill up just a half a mile from my house.  Hurray!  So, I can enjoy it for the next three weeks.  Super.

I did get in an awesome couple of workouts this week.  AND on Tuesday I did my first double in a long time.  I got off work, hurried home to change, strapped on Gigi, and hit the open road.  I set out with the idea to do 10, but with the beautiful blue sky over head and a renewed joy of running I decided to do my favorite 12 mile loop.  Of course Gigi quit about 8 miles into the run and then decided to beep at me for the last 4…which was super fun.  As soon as I was done with the run, I changed clothes and headed to Jazzercise.  Which was awesome because we’re doing a boot-camp inspired month and this week has been focusing on upper torso.  So by the end of the day my legs were nice and sore and my arms felt like jello.  Oh, three hour sweat sessions, how I’ve missed you!!!

Before the garmin malfunction, I was throwing down some pretty fast miles.  Like faster than I’ve run in a while.  Makes me miss my speed a little bit.  Honestly, I do miss the intensity of following a rigorous training plan and pushing myself towards a seemingly impossible goal.  But, for now, I’ve decided no more full marathons this year.  I promised Mr. Dawn that the earliest I would think about running a full would be the Lincoln Marathon next spring.  It was my first full, and I’d love to train really hard and see how different it is to run on a familiar route.

So, that leaves me with a lot of time and space to fill.  It’s the perfect opportunity to run some shorter distances and run for fun.  Starting this weekend!  I’m heading to Kalamazoo to run the Half Marathon with my girls Nicole and Erika on Sunday.  Can’t wait.  It’s seriously been over a year since my last half marathon.  I don’t really know how its going to go.  I know that I won’t be setting any records, but I also kinda wonder what I’ll be able to do….

THEN.  Next weekend.  A 5k.  I know that I thought I was going to run one over Thanksgiving, but it turns out that was a trail race with no actual set distance.  (Strangest race ever.)  This is an actual 5k.  Which will be the first in 4 years (or something close to that).  I’m really looking forward to races that won’t destroy and consume my entire life .

Sigh.

I wish that it had gone better…

Yesterday I realized that this is not just my 5th and final 20 miler for this training cycle, it is the last time I will get to do a long run here.  Next Saturday we’re looking for housing in our new home town.  I’ll be on spring break, which means that we can take our time and look for a place that is going to fit us.  We won’t be back here until the next weekend…and that will be 6 days before we leave for Boston.  CRAZINESS.

So, yeah.  My last long run here.  Instead of enjoying it and soaking it all in… all I could think about was how slow I was running and how much my legs hurt.  I was shocked that my legs didn’t hold up at all.  Sure…I haven’t been running as much lately, so its not necessarily a surprise.  At least it shouldn’t have been.

It was 20 degrees when I started, so instead of the “dress rehearsal” I was hoping for, I ended up having to layer on all of my winter running gear: tights, baselayer, fleece jacket, gloves, earwarmers, and neck gaiter.  I will admit that I did enjoy the first half of the run.  The blue sky.  My audiobook.  The beautiful country side.  I actually warmed up enough to have Mr. Dawn bring me my lighter jacket.

Then I got to the turn around.  And discovered that I had been running WITH the wind the entire time.  All of a sudden there was a severe headwind.  Add to that I was headed right into the hilliest section of the route.  It was pretty demoralizing.  Luckily Mr. Dawn had agreed to meet me just on the other side of the hills, so I pressed on to the promised land of our rendezvous location.  After filling up my water bottle and complaining to him about how brutal the wind was, I set out on my long trek towards home.

I walked.  Several times.  There was no crying, but there was a lot of moaning in pain.  Every so often I had to stop and stretch my legs so that I could keep running.

It’s not the way I wanted my last 20 miler to go down…I really wanted to head into Hopkinton with a great training cycle and all the confidence in the world.  I know that Boston is going to be the greatest race I’ll ever run in and I’m having to accept that it’s not going to be my best performance.  It’s a tough pill to swallow.  Because no matter how many times I say “I’ll just go for the experience,” there is a part of me that wishes I would be in peak condition for this race.

Also, today, I packed my first box for our big move!  Go me!!!  I’m starting to realize that since we’ll be gone for the next three weekends, then we’ll have guests for the two weekends after that (one of which is Mr. Dawn’s graduation weekend)…there isn’t going to be a lot of time to be wrapping, labeling, and putting into well-marked boxes.  So, I’ve got to start.  I guess it would be more correct to say I should start HELPING.  Cause Mr. Dawn is neck deep into the packing.  He’s got almost all of our books organized, separated, cataloged and put into rubbermaids.  Cause he’s that awesome.

Me?  I’ve packed one box.  Its a start…

I am so embarrassed!

I had a 15 miler scheduled for yesterday.  I made it 12 miles.

Here’s the story:

I made plans to run with a new running buddy who had a 12 miler planned.  I was then going to just loop around my neighborhood and finish up the last three miles on my own.  Mr. Woods, I’ll call him, showed up right on time, ready to roll.  We headed out on my favorite 12-mile loop.  By mile four, I was beginning to feel an uncomfortable gurgling in my stomach.  At mile six I had to dash off into the woods.  As my GPS clicked off 8 miles I felt so close to vomiting I had to stop and walk.

I have always prided myself on having an iron stomach.  I can eat almost anything without ever dealing with negative consequences.  In fact, during part of the run Mr. Woods had been asking about my pre-race nutrition plan.  I was laughing about how I can really handle just about anything without a problem when I started feeling the percolating in my belly.

When I stopped to walk, I assured him that I would be fine and encouraged him to head on without me.  He did and I was left to walk until the nausea subsided.  Kicking myself I went through the the meals from Saturday, trying to pinpoint the culprit.  When I couldn’t find any fault with my lunch of lasagna and salad or my dinner of veggie tacos, I turned my attention to earlier that day.  Was it the pancakes?  No, couldn’t be…. the eggs?  Maybe, but I’ve never had problems with that before…

I finally felt decent enough to run the last four miles home.  By the time I got there I had given up all hopes of finishing those last three miles.  I walked into the kitchen and there on the table I found my answer.

I had run some errands in town before going on my run.  In line and Marshalls these jelly beans screamed out to me.  Sugar free?  Sour?  Yes please!  What you can’t read in that picture, and what I didn’t read until after the unfortunate run is the little warning in the lower right hand corner.  It reads, “Consumption may cause stomach discomfort and/or laxative effect.  Individual tolerance will vary; we suggest starting with 8 beans or less.”

Awesome.

But you know what’s MORE awesome than that?  The fact that this EXACT SAME thing has happened to me before.  Not just “oh I accidentally ate something that was a laxative”…NO.  I have eaten this exact bag of beans before.  Right before I drove 11 hours in my car.  And I wondered why my stomach was so upset.  And I found the bag after the fact.  And read the label and had a good laugh at myself.

Last night as I laid in bed there was a full three-ring circus in my abdomen.  Complete with lions roaring, clowns juggling, acrobats flying, and my poor husband trying to sleep next to me.

Note to self: READ!

I just hope I can convince Mr. Woods that I’m not usually one to wimp out on a long run…

So, this entire time, I’ve been under the impression that I have 4 20-milers on my schedule.  That is a HUGE jump for me up from just 2 for my last two cycles.  Well, I’ve been wrong.  Upon further investigation I discovered that I don’t have 4, but rather 5!  Eeep.  Good one Dawn.  Way to be ontop of that whole counting thing…  But I guess now would be the best time for me to find that out…since I just finished my 3rd one yesterday. Its good to know that I’m half way done with my 20′s.

That’s right, 3 20-milers DONE!

This one was probably the easiest.  Mainly because of my s.l.o.w. pace.  I’ve been trying to slow down my long runs because they’ve been wearing me out so much lately.  Its so hard for me to keep my pace controlled when its just me and the open road, so I found a buddy to run with me.  She’s currently training for marathon #2.  Her schedule is all over the place so she doesn’t run all that often.  She had a 9-miler that she needed to do and I figured it would be just the thing to keep my legs in check.

It was chilly, but not super cold when we set out at 10am.  The nine miles pasted fairly easily.  She wanted to walk up all the hills and take it fairly easy.  We ended up with an average pace around 12:00 including all the walking.  We chatted about life and relationships and running and marathons.  You know, the usual .

Then after a quick pit stop at my house I was back out to do the 11 mile loop solo.  It was  uneventful.  I think running the first half so slowly helped me to keep the pace in check.  I did the second part with an average of 9:00 per mile.

That brings me to this:

• 7 weeks til Boston!
• 4 weeks til the taper begins
• 2 more 20-milers
• 3 weeks of taper

Seriously.  When I think about the time as “weeks til taper” I start to get super excited!!!!  I mean, right now I feel like things are going really well.  I feel like I’ve rediscovered my love of running in the past few weeks, especially since I have geared down on my speed goals.  I’ve just been running with joy and spending time with friends.  It’s been awesome.  And the sun has been returning to us here in the gloomy north.  I can feel spring creeping in slowly and I cannot wait!

So, with all my down-er attitude lately, apparently I haven’t been that fun to live with.  This afternoon Mr. Dawn asked, “Are you going to Jazzercise?”  Quickly followed by, “I think you should.”  Implying that I need a little endorphin boost, shaking my groove thing to my favorite songs.  I took the hint, sweated out the grumps and I’m feeling 100% better.

And now I think it’s time that I start focusing on the positive.  A few weeks ago, while running with the Gazelle, we started listing off our favorite things about running in the wintertime.  Here’s what we’ve come up with so far:

1. Less body glide. Yes, I still sweat in the winter, but not NEARLY as much.  So there is far less chafing which leads to a decline in the need for lathering on layer after layer like I do in the summer months.
2. Pockets for storage. I love wearing a jacket and/or tights with little storage compartments already built in.  I don’t have to use my spibelt or ifitness belt but I can still have my ipod, phone, and gels all accessible.
3. Wearing clothes multiple times. Ok, so that might be gross to some, but with less sweating there is less stinking and I can usually get a couple wears out of each item.  And sign me up for less laundry any day!
4. Solid precipitation. In the winter, if something is falling from the sky, its almost always snow.  Snow does not soak into my clothes or make me feel like I’m carrying around 10 extra pounds of water like it does when I run in the rain.  Snow beats rain any day.
5. Frozen gels.  I LOVE cold Gu.  Seriously, it tastes even better when its slightly frozen and a little thicker.  It’s easier to swallow too, without coating every single corner of my mouth.
6. Feeling hardcore. There’s nothing like running through a semi-blizzard while everyone else in bundled up inside to make me feel like a warrior.  Sure, people look at me like I’m completely nuts, but that just adds to the fun of it all.
7. Ice baths don’t feel as miserable. Seriously.  On Sunday, after my miserable run, the ice bath felt just slightly colder than I had been for three hours outside.  I didn’t even flinch getting in.  And really, one might argue that you don’t need an ice bath at all since you basically run in an ice bath the entire time!
8. Hot chocolate recovery drinks.  Ok, so this I tried for the first time this weekend, but I kind of loved it.  I took a dark hot chocolate packet, mixed it with two tablespoons of chocolate rice protein powder and drank that while in my ice bath.  Best. Idea. Ever.
9. Resistance training. Cause running on slippery slushy roads is almost identical to running on sand.  And we all can agree that running on sand is crazy hard.  So, I’m getting double returns on my investment, right?  Don’t answer that.
10. The scenery. I love fresh fallen snow.  I love snow covered trees.  There is seriously nothing more quite and peaceful than running in snow.  The layer of snow dampens the sounds and makes everything feel a little more magical.  Like Narnia.  But without the witch…

There you have it.  My reasons to love running in the winter months.  Do you have any to add to the list?