Category Archives: Running

The hills are alive (with the sound of labored wheezing)

03 Thursday Jan 2013

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I’m a New England girl. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t lived in New England since I was 18, that I’m a resident of Illinois, or that I spent a year living in California, I’ll always be a New England girl. My friends roll their eyes when I bring it up, but I can trace my family tree all the way back to the Mayflower.

I’m a New England girl… but I’m a Midwestern runner.

Over Christmas I was excited to spend a week and a half in Massachusetts with my family, partially because I was excited to explore new running routes. I had forgotten, in my absence, about the hills. Oh, the hills. Hills that I used to walk up and down on my way home from school, hills that I would breeze down on my bike on long summer days became giant, terrible, STUPID mountains when I was faced with running up them on the second half of a long run.

I was used to the lovely, straight Sheridan road, with no bumps and very few curves—just one long stretch of pavement beckoning me forward. I was not used to running up two hills, down two hills, turning around and running up and down them again.

I would lie to encourage myself to keep going. “This is your first hill,” I would say, “you can walk the whole way home once you crest this one,” I told myself. But I’ve never been a good liar, and the thing about lying to yourself is that you know it’s a lie, so when you do crest that hill and you start to walk you know that you can’t walk the entire way home, and you have to start running again once you reach that doctor’s office because that’s what you promised you would do.

Running by yourself involves a lot of self-bribery, self-deceit, and motivational self-abuse—army general style. Sometimes all you can do is tell yourself you’re being a lazy bum and start running again. I ran three times during my week and a half-long stay in Massachusetts, twice alone and once with Zach and Elspeth (which involved much less self-deceit and self-bribery, but roughly the same amount of motivational self-abuse).

In the end I was happy to return home and reunite with the wonderful, flat, hill-free urban prairie that is Chicago.

Small Victories

01 Saturday Dec 2012

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I am
a series of
small victories
and large defeats
and I am as
amazed
as any other
that
I have gotten
from there to
here.”

—Charles Bukowski, “The People Look Like Flowers At Last

When you’re depressed, sometimes small victories matter as much as the big ones, because they take so much effort to achieve. To a (quote-unquote) normal adult, something like doing all your dishes or throwing out that carton of milk in your fridge that has been slowly curdling for two weeks is easy, but for me, depending on how my week has gone and how much serotonin my brain has produced, it can be incredibly difficult.

So I’ve started to measure my running accomplishments in small victories, like how I’ve gone running two or three days a week for the past two months. Or how I went from running for 1 1/2 minute stretches to 6 to 10 minute stretches, or how I’ve gone at least five runs without getting a lung cramp, which means I’ve been regulating my breathing more consistently.

Elspeth and I started running with an app called C25K, which is… a good app, really it is. It ramps up its expectations each day, which is good because it presents a challenge and doesn’t allow you to plateau. However, it also kind of sucks because this means it’s anti-small victory. The app works by ramping up and up and up until SURPRISE! You can run a 5 k! Big victory!

I hated it. I hated running. It was hard and it kept getting harder. Every day it wanted me to run further for longer and longer. All I could think is “I ran for five minutes without stopping yesterday and now you want me to run for 12? I’m not Wonder Woman, you demon.”

So Elspeth (wise trainer that she is), altered our training schedule. Instead of ramping up and suddenly running 20 minutes at once, we’re running 3 six minute stretches with 1 minute walking intervals.

And yesterday something amazing happened. I enjoyed my entire run. Not just the first half, while my legs were fresh and my lungs were full. The entire run.

Tomorrow I’m going on my first run alone. And (don’t tell Elspeth) I’m considering trying to lengthen a couple running intervals.

Maybe 8-6-8.

Or 6-8-6.

I don’t want to get too crazy.

Training: Week 1 (also known as “I hate my legs and my legs hate me”)

21 Sunday Oct 2012

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Up until now, I wasn’t really a “runner.” I had the idea, I had the shoes, but I hadn’t actually been for a run in about nine years (not since my ill-fated season playing softball my freshman year of high school).

Now I’m officially a runner. It still feels wrong to call myself a runner (runners are tall, remember? And svelte. And probably blonde, let’s be honest). I’m afraid to say “I’m a runner” and watch someone look me up and down, cataloguing my round, non-aerodynamic body and laugh. I’ve decided to phrase it as “I’m training for a half marathon.” It seems to manage everyones expectations nicely.

Elspeth and I are following a Couch to 5k program (with a free app from App Store!), which is designed for people like me, who want to start running but don’t have the endurance to follow a more rigorous training program.

It’s simple, but it’s not quite as easy as I thought. We run three days a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the ungodly hour of six in  the morning), for 30 minutes a day. We alternate walking for 60 seconds and running for 90 seconds, with a warm up and cool down period at the start and finish of the entire workout. Then we stretch in our respective apartments.

Day one was not as bad as I thought it would be. I got a cramp in my lungs, but Elspeth helped me stretch it out and regulate  my breathing. We ran down to the lake, which was gorgeous and still and wonderful.

Day two was a little more difficult. I got a lung cramp again (curse you, uneven breathing!) and a blister that was forming on my heel was starting to really bother me. I soldiered through, but I would run for short bursts and then (oh sweet relief!) drop to a leisurely walk when the friendly female voice told me to start walking. Elspeth let that slide, but on day three, she was having none of it.

Day three was, ironically, the worst day this week. Fridays are difficult for me anyway, because by Thursday evening my poor, introverted self is wiped out from 32 hours of activity from work (and maybe 3-5 hours of activity with friends), and I still have to slog through 8 more hours before I’m free for the weekend.

I was sore, I was tired, my  feet hurt, it was six am, I didn’t want to go to work, and I had foolishly sliced the pad of my hand open a couple days ago on a nailhead sticking out of my wall. In short, I was ornery, and I didn’t want to push my body any more than I had already been pushing it. Much to my chagrin, Elspeth picked Friday to turn into a boot camp leader worthy of our former roommate (and fitness instructor) Victoria.

Instead of matching my pace when I dropped down to a walk, Elspeth started walking briskly. I lagged behind a bit, until she (gently, because she’s a gentle person) said “you should walk a little faster so your heart rate won’t drop”

She was right. I knew she was right. I didn’t like that she was right.

I tried, I really did, but I was feeling like a grouch, so I started whining. Whining about my heel, about the cut on my hand, about how I hate Fridays and I was tired. Elspeth listened calmly, and told me that when she and her husband Zach took a boot camp class with Victoria (as a wedding present a couple months before they were married), Victoria told Elspeth that she could say anything–anything she wanted–to Victoria, except “I quit.” Elspeth said that she cursed Victoria out (which is something I have a hard time picturing, as I’ve known Elspeth for 14 years and think I’ve heard her say about 10 swear words in that entire time).

I felt horrible, because those two evil little words had been poking into my mind: “I quit.” I may have spent $150 bucks on shoes, I may have told nearly everyone I know that I was training for a half marathon, but that Friday I wanted to quit… until Elspeth told me that she would refuse to accept that.

I knew running would be hard. I knew it would require sacrifices of my time, money, and habits. What I didn’t realize was how many people I have rooting for me–people who are proud that I’m training for a race, people who won’t just quietly accept “I quit.” People who love me.

I think it’s that, more than the cost of my shoes, that will keep me going.

The Wide World of Running Shoes

15 Monday Oct 2012

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I’m gonna be honest: I kind of assumed that shopping for running shoes would be, well, kind of straightforward. Go to the Nike store, find a pair of size 8 shoes with good arch support, pay a ridiculous amount of money for them, go home.

Wow, was I ever wrong.

With Elspeth’s guidance, we went to Fleet Feet in Old Town, where I had the most thorough shoe buying experience of my life. The sales dude pulled out one of those foot measurement tool things I haven’t seen since I was six years old and my mom took me to get those sneakers with the lights in the sole.

The sales dude (Cole) had me stand on one foot, bounce on one leg, run on a treadmill and walk up and down a hallway, all to gage how I walk and run.

I learned that I’m a midfoot striker (which is apparently very efficient) and my ankles stay straight when I hit the ground instead of over supinating (or over pronating), which means I don’t need a shoe that supports my ankles.

Cole brought out three shoe types, and I dutifully tried them on, but only one felt like it was made for me: the Newton Distance.

Look at them. Aren’t they beautiful? (They only came in one color)

They have lugs on the bottom for shock support, the squared-off toes have space for my toes, the fabric is breathable and they make me feel like I’m floating.

As a curvy runner, I need all the gravity-boosting help I can get.

How to Become a Runner—Step 1: Run.

13 Saturday Oct 2012

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So here’s the thing. If you asked me 10 years ago (or five years ago or three months ago) if I would ever consider running, I would have laughed. A lot. I’m out of shape, I’m overweight, and I have a hard enough time finding bras that fit my busty form for everyday wear, let alone something that would hold up against a three mile run (or even a marathon!). Runners are six feet tall and svelte, not 5’3″ and curvy (on a good day) or rotund (on a bad one).

I never even considered the possibility that running is about training.
Running is about persevering.
Running is about persistence.

In a way, it was all my best friend Elspeth’s fault. She started training for the Chicago Marathon last January (and finished the marathon a week ago!) to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Elspeth has always been an athletic person, but I never thought of her as athletic, because we never did athletic things together, because the extent of my athleticism was playing softball for one season my freshman year of high school.

Seeing this person I had known since I was nine years old transform herself into someone who could run 26.2 miles (without collapsing like poor Pheidippides) was unreal and really, really cool.

All of a sudden, I wanted to do it too.

I chose the name “curvaceous runner” because of something Elspeth said: that even when I lose weight (as I’m planning to do while running), I’ll always be curvy.

Because let’s face it: runners aren’t all six feet tall and svelte.