Yay for Kori!

So I have to give a shout out to Kori who finally finished her first marathon! I hope she'll write a race report, but for now I just wanted to brag for her!

Kori and I began our distance running adventure together back in March 2005 when we trained for the Dam to Dam 20k with a city running group. We both had to give up on the Chicago marathon that year because of injury, although I didn't even make it to race day, while Kori made it halfway through the race. Last year, she signed up for Chicago again and was all good until her first 20-miler and had to call it quits.

So this year we signed up for the Twin Cities marathon. My stupid foot kept me from doing it, but Kori made it through all the way to race day and on Sunday finally finished! And she had a brutal day - it was 85 degrees and humid. We had a friend hoping to get a 3:10 to BQ who finished in over four hours and another friend who was hoping for a 3:30 who finished in 4:45. (Okay, at least she didn't pick Chicago again - the odds of finishing there would not have been good).

I went up with Laurie and Kimberly to cheer her on (along with the others from our running group). Since I paid for the race, I totally bandited it with my race number and jumped on the course with her at mile 20. She was walking by then, but man she was hauling ass. We walked 6 15 minute miles and can I tell you how sore I am still? I think it is easier to run 12 minute miles than walk 15 minute miles (athough not at the end of a marathon). They closed the course after 6 hours and Kori was really worried about that, but we came in with 20 minutes to spare.

When we crossed the finish line, I managed to duck the medal person, but dammit, I paid $90 so that wicking finishers shirt is mine.

I am totally breaking t-shirt etiquette.

54% of the BAA 1/2 marathon racers are women...

...so why are they only giving out men's shirts?

I raced in 8 races in the last two months. One race t-shirt (GRR) is a women's shirt.

This bothers me...especially as I'm getting dressed and am looking for a casual, long-sleeve shirt to wear under my jacket and none of the huge men's shirts fit under my women's jacket. AWESOME that 7 of my race t-shirts are useless. They make expensive dusting rags.

Do any race directors read this? Is there an insurmountable obstacle to ordering women's clothing? I registered for the BAA 1/2 many many months ago (maybe July?) and Timberman 10 months pre-race.

I love REI. And running.

The course was gorgeous-through the "Emerald Necklace" of Boston (ie. all the parks and zoo)- but I just did not feel good. The temps were cool, but it was humid and my legs felt tired. I'm glad I did it though b/c it was a reminder to me "to suck it up buttercup." The races aren't all going to be PR's, especially now that I've been running for a few years. And, I'm not a professional athlete. I run for other reasons than to be a wonderful stupendous runner.

Just for posterity sake, I looked up all of my 1/2 marathon times:

2001 Quantico 1/2 marathon 1:51:35

2002 Quantico 1/2 marathon 2:10:47 [took the previous two weeks off with a foot injury that had me in one of those blue wooden shoes and had a bone scan. was ecstatic beyond belief to be able to run this race and finish marathon training]

2004 Austin 1/2 marathon 1:46:49 [cool temps and downhill]

2007 BAA 1/2 marathon 1:51:32

After the race was fun. Some people from my running club met up in REI (one guy wanted to buy a coat) and we were like kids in a candy store. [in case people don't know, REI is an AWESOME sporting goods store]. I bought an EXCELLENT bright yellow tapered reflective biking/running windbreaker. I'm in love. Then we went to brunch.

One interesting moment is me standing in the 8:00 min. coral and some guy coming up behind me and hugging me from behind. I catch a glimpse of him and start discreetly pointing at the guy and silently mouthing to my friend from school who was next to us, "That's him!!!" It was my recent ex. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. We made small talk for about 5 minutes while I'm thinking, why are you talking to and hugging me? Then he left to go a few rows back in the coral with some other people he knows and then went on to beat me by 20 minutes.

I actually had a pretty good day despite coming face to face with the fact that being a triathlete is slowing me down....or, by keeping me injury-free, perhaps it's allowing me to make it to race day...hmmmm. Hard to say...

Calculating

I'm not sure how I feel about race predictor calculators. I love them b/c according to them I have the potential to get some PRs. For example, based on my 5K and 10K times I should theoretically be able to cut 55 minutes off of my marathon time and easily qualify for Boston with a 3:30 (a HUGE goal of mine that I've had for many many years). But I also think people have an optimal distance, and mine is not the marathon. I decompensate. I get injured training. I can never get my mileage up high enough to actually train for a marathon (except for my first one). It's all about survival. I haven't really raced enough (especially at 10 miles or the 1/2 marathon) to say what my optimal distance is, but I think it may be around 5K/10K.

I also think the calculator is wrong b/c it says, based on my recent 5K time, that I shouldn't be able to run a 10K as fast as my PR is-but I feel fitter, and less hung over, than when I ran my PR and I think I could smash what the calculator predicts. Also, I am pretty sure I could run a mile faster than what the calculator says.

I'm thinking about this b/c based on my 5K time last week I should be able to get a PR in a half marathon tomorrow by a few minutes. But what if it's hot out? What if it's hilly? What if I haven't (and I haven't) done enough long runs. How can the calculator be valuable when all of the courses and conditions and training for each event are different? It's ridiculous.

What do people think? Are those race predictor calculators accurate? How are they supposed to work?

Repurposing my aerobars

I have a flat on my hybrid that I am too lazy to change so I am commuting on my road bike. One unforeseen advantage to this is that aerobars are a really good place to carry stuff:
Really! They are quite awesome for takeout that comes in containers that may leak!

In running news, I actually ran like 5 times last week. I am sticking to short distances (3-4 miles) but things have been okay! Although my foot randomly hurts a lot today - perhaps it is because I apparently took my night splint off while I was sleeping - no recollection of doing this, whatsoever!

And Kori is two days away from the Twin Cities Marathon! Agony of DaFeet teammate Kimberly and I are driving up on Sunday to cheer her on. Both of us were registered and can't run. Kimberly, who never gets overuse injuries, twisted her ankle on a walnut on a bike path on her second 20-miler, three weeks ago. I can't even begin to complain about my foot, when I got shut down when I was up to only 9 milers. She totally put in the work and now is out of commission. Talk about major suckitude!

Oh and just because this picture was also on my camera when I downloaded the one above - I heart Ithaca! This is from a bridge in the middle of the Cornell campus. This is also a nerdy picture because the old hydraulics lab can be seen under the bridge from back in the day when they used to use the elevation from the falls to drive the flow through the flumes in the lab. How cool would it be to have a lab in the bottom of a gorge? To continue this nerdy exposition, a lab that still uses the elevation from a waterfall is Saint Anthony Falls Lab at the University of Minnesota (it's right on the Mississippi and is also a pretty cool lab). Note that my lab is currently in the basement with a big broken flume and I fight constant turf wars with professors and grad students who think that part of the lab would be a great place for storage of their old crap that they will never use again. I returned to my alma mater for the wedding of a fellow fluid dynamicist -a good part of the cocktail hour was spent stratifying fluids with other fluids nerds. Let me tell you that red wine on top of sprite is quite striking!

I'm not slow-just hot

Wooooohooooo! 22:32 (7:16 min/mile). This is my second fastest 5K ever. (My PR being 21:42).

I'm actually increasing my mileage right now, I raced last weekend, and I went biking yesterday so there was no sort of taper. Just a...ooh crap, I overslept for my triathlon. Let me do some laundry, swiffering, dusting, dishes...Hey, isn't there a 5K a couple of miles away this morning? Google. Get on bike. Go to race.

There were cooler temps. It felt...ahhhhhhh. I was the third woman. The second place woman was 22:17. There were no mile markers, I never run hard so I had no idea of pace, and I was super afraid of bonking (my usual since I typically go out too fast). But I wasn't even hurting at the end. I wish I had gone after #2!!!!!

I also beat by 4 minutes the 57 y/o woman who beat me in the 90 degree 5 miler a couple of weeks ago. I think the heat affects me more than other people. I disintegrate.

I am so relieved to be running in the realm of fit. This is the longest stretch of running (since January) without injury I've had since ~2002. I wonder how fast I could go if I trained for this distance?

Finally, I also learned (again) not to predict how fast people are and get psyched out by what people look like. There were women in running clothes lining up near the front-and I passed them after 50 feet. Lesson learned-until the next time a skinny, barely wearing clothing runner out-psychs me.

And congrats Al (check out his race reports below!).

Another Race!

Because my roommate was running the Fall Into Fitness 5k today in the northwest-side neighborhood of Portage Park, I decided to go along and run it too, figuring that a larger race with chip timing would probably have an accurate course, so I could actually have some idea of how fast I was. Looking at past years' results it seemed that every year someone ran faster than I would be able to (16:30 to 16:45) and everyone else ran slower (over 17 minutes), so I predicted a second-place finish. The neighborhood has a large Polish community, and most of the past years' top finishers had Polish-looking names, or even listed their hometown as "Poland".

And given that I got no sleep because I was blowing my nose all night, was dehydrated, was racing for the second day straight, and that I didn't warm up very well because they called to line us up 15 minutes before the race started (and I actually listened, unlike the other fast people), I did OK. If the mile markers were accurate (I think they were, though the half-mile ones were off a bit) then my splits were really badly positive: 5:10 -> 5:25 (10:35) -> 5:38 (16:13), then 44 seconds for the last 160m to finish 16:57. All of those seem possible except for the 44-second last 160m; there's no way I slowed down to well over 6-minute pace for the final sprint. So maybe the third mile was even worse than 5:38. I finished second, as I predicted, behind a 40 year-old dude wearing a Poland jersey. Maybe under better circumstances I'm 7 seconds faster today, hard to say. But I still won my age division and got a $20 gift certificate to Fleet Feet, which covered the race entry fee. When you add that to the schwag from the race bag (including a $10 coupon and a 10%-off coupon to Fleet Feet), I scored pretty good profits from both of my races this weekend. Of course, the funds I got out are less liquid than those I put in, but I'm not going to complain about that. So I have a month to cut 37 seconds from my 5k to make 16:20. It will be hard, but possible. Maybe I should put some of my prize money towards racing flats. Or a Poland jersey.

Racing Short for Fun and Profit

Today my procrastination in finding a gym/pool thing to join paid off big-time. But first, some workout stories. I don't run many races, but I frequently have fun and eventful workouts. First, on Thursday I took a quick tempo run along the lake between getting home from work and going to a concert. And as I ran by a couple of twentysomething women, one of them took out a camera and followed me by with it. And probably took an unauthorized photograph of me! She'll be hearing from my agent! So if you see a picture of me running in a RAGBRAI bike jersey and magenta Big Sur Half Marathon cap, know that it was not taken by an Al Dimond (tm) Authorized Photographer.

Then yesterday, because of the race today, I ran one of my favorite pre-race workouts from high school: 3x400 with 3-minute interval. The idea is to start fast and get faster; in high school my goal was always 66-64-62, but I never made it. Yesterday I thought I might be able to run 68-66-64. So I jogged over to the track, did some strides, got loose, stood at the line, took off, finished: 68.9. Acceptable. Just have to get a little faster on the next one. Rested, got loose, toed the line, took off. Tried to run the same first half as the last one but kick it in to the finish. Obviously failed in one of those: 68.9. Gah. Rested, got loose again. Toed the line. Then it came to me: the advice my high school's sprint coach always gave on how to run fast. "Lead with your arms," he said, "If you run at any speed and accelerate with your arms, your legs have to follow, no matter how tired they are." Like magnetic and electric fields inducing eachother to make light. I had forgotten this for four and a half years and it came back to me just before starting this last quarter. So I resolved to go out hard with my arms leading. And I felt it. I felt it along the backstretch as I really accelerated and picked up my turnover. On the second curve I held it together better than usual. And the final straight, well, it wasn't exactly glorious but I didn't fall apart too badly, just pumping those arms. I thought, "Surely, this must have been faster. I felt so fast! Just like when I ran 55.7 on that relay split in high school!" Looked down at the watch, and it was indeed faster. THREE WHOLE #@*(-ING TENTHS OF A SECOND FASTER. 68.6! AAAAAAAARGH! "Screw the 5k, and all this speedwork," I thought, "I want to run marathons."

So today my race was only a 2-miler: the North Park River Run, put on by North Park University. My roommate had sent me a link to it while trying to send me a link to the race he was running, and I thought at the time that 2 miles would be a good distance. I was a bit sick, and didn't know what the competition was going to be like; I figured that with competition I could run 10:30. I also figured that lots of good 5k runners might appreciate an opportunity to race at a shorter distance, just like me. Some of the guys running warmups looked good. But when we stepped up to the line my hopes dropped: I was the only person that stepped all the way up to the line, while everyone else held back, as if to let the real runners through. I knew then I was going to have to lead wire-to-wire. So the race was totally uneventful; the pace cyclist led me through the course and I finished in 9:56. Which means the course was short. Because there's no way I ran just 4 seconds off of the best race of my life (senior year of high school, on a track, in spikes, with good competition, after a whole season of intense training focused for the 2-mile) today (mixed-surface race, in trainers, nobody within a minute of me, two weeks into the interval-work phase of 5k training). I probably would have run closer to 10:40 on a real 2-mile course, but that's a total guess, because I didn't see the 1-mile mark and didn't really trust the 1.5-mile mark, which had me at 7:50.

Oh, well. I guess I'll just have to give in and run big races if I actually want to have times. So anyway, they were giving out awards at this block party over by the university after the race, so I went over there, grabbed some lunch and waited for them. Then my nose started bleeding. Fortunately I had pocket-packs of Kleenex because I was sick... I went through 5 tissues and got blood all over my face, hands, clothes, backpack, and the sidewalk. Boo. So of course they wanted a picture of the winners after the awards, and I looked like I'd just come from a war zone. But the procrastination-paying-off thing: the prize for winning the race was a year membership at a health club! So by not going out and finding one, I now avoid duplication. It's about four miles west of me, which means biking over could be a nice warm-up. If they have a pool I can learn to swim now! Plus I won a Fleet Feet gift certificate so I can get one running shoe for free. And another running duffel bag. Woo.

Ode to Danielle's Foot

I have a friend names Danielle
who has entered running hell
she has fasciatis of the foot
and can't get at the root
of what is causing the problem
I'm at home full of phlem
from this cold that I have
and it makes me very sad
that she can't run the marathon with me

Y

Yippee! Yikes! Yea! Yeah! Yippee! YeeHaw! Yaw! Yowsers!

Why do all the good exclamation words start with a Y. After the alphabet was created, did people feel like Y didn't get enough use, so they came up with all these great Y words? Then why didn't they do that with z?

And, Y is both a consonant and a vowel. The only letter like that.

And, Y is the only letter that is both a letter and when you say the name of the letter it is also a word "why".

Oh. . . that's not true - then there is J as in "Jay" but that normally has blue jay or something like that in front of it instead of just jay.

These are the things I ponder when I mix my nighttime cold medicine with mountain dew.