The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials: The Cross-Over

July 30, 2008

The Cross-Over

Today I was trying to look something up on the NYC Triathlon website when something caught my eye. You can watch video of yourself finishing the race! Well of course I couldn't pass that up. I immediately dialed up my video and watched.

Watched in horror that is.

I always knew I crossed my arms over my body when I ran but WOW was it bad. More appropriately - it was down right UGLY! Yikes! I never want to see that again! (mental note - no more watching myself on video! :) Coaches through the years have tried to correct me of it but to some extent I think running form is running form and that's it. I've been running for a long time, I'm not sure how much is going to change now.

Regardless, I was feeling a little down about this. That is until I read Rachel's blog and realized she too is an arm-crosser! And Bri too!

Now that's some seriously good and FAST company. Maybe there is something to the arm cross over?! :)

Anyway - quick, funny story. When I was a junior in college the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional Cross Country Championships were at Lehigh University. Because Lehigh is only a few hours from Penn State, O (yes, we've been together for a longggg time) went up to watch. In our regional was then (and still) powerhouse Villanova. Not so much recently but in the late 80s all the way up to the mid to late 90s, Villanova DOMINATED NCAA women's cross country. Well Villanova and Penn State uniforms used to be very similar - navy bottoms with plain white singlet. Singlet had navy writing on it - Villanova for them, Penn State for us (duh!).

Anyway, the race starts and O, who is standing about 1/4 to 1/2 mile up the course spots the lead runner wearing none other than navy bottoms and white singlet and with a HUGE arm cross-over deduces that it must be me! He thinks I'm leading the NCAA regional race!!

Not so fast my friend!! As we got closer he realized that it was really Carmen Douma (multiple NCAA All-American who is now a pro runner) of Villanova leading. Opps!!! But to this day he still reminds me that I look like Carmen. Um yeah...now if only I could get on running that 4 minute 1500 meters... :) By the way, Carmen did win that cross country race and I was a good 90 seconds behind her. :)

Anyway - that ended up being a longer story than I thought.

Regardless, today I had a great training day. Given the pool situation I had to move my training around and so I did a short easy run this morning and then when it finally got light (around 6 am) I did my ride. I almost NEVER ride in the morning because it's too hard to get rides in before work. But I had no choice this morning so out I went (and a little later into work than usual...but all is well :).

My ride was awesome! I felt so good and it was just SO nice to be out in the cool morning (albeit extremely humid) air. I was so sad I only had 90 minutes! Today was one of those days I could have ridden forever. But alas, my taper was calling and so was getting into work!

After work I made the long trek to one of Pitt's pools for a swim. As I neared the building I could see a sign on the door that said POOL CLOSED. NOOOOOO!!! Not another pool closed! Luckily it's closing TOMORROW so I still got my swim in today but my pool options are being drastically reduced one by one! Oh well, what can you do? I will get all my swim workouts in - some of them just might be in my bathtub. :)

And so it goes. Off to Steelhead tomorrow! I am soooo, soooo, soooo excited! I really love this race and the area where it's at. And I'm excited to do a half after all Oly/sprints this season! By the way - thanks so everyone for their good lucks. I will need it! :)

Posted by beth at July 30, 2008 9:13 PM

Comments

Beth,

Best of luck this weekend. I'm sure I'm the only moron who didn't realize that you were racing a half ironman this weekend! We will have hours of time to think about each other racing! Just kidding, but gooood luck this weekend!

Meghan

Posted by: Meghan at July 31, 2008 12:04 AM

Good luck at Steelhead! You will do awesome.

Posted by: maija at July 31, 2008 4:48 AM

GOOD LUCK AT Steelhead, Beth! Have a super race!

Posted by: Jennifer Harrison at July 31, 2008 11:55 AM

Great race in NYC Beth! remember this..... no two people walk the same, so no two people will run the same. There's not good scientific evidence that says cross over is bad (but there's a lot of good advertising based advice!!!!!) SHould we all try to mold into the running style that fits people like Lisa Bentley? Porbbaly not, your style is your style! Look at some of the ugly runners out there.... Hilary Biscay comes to mind! Ugly but damn fast and she's injury free! So you keep crossing and keep running fast and let your style be YOURS!

:-) mary

Posted by: mary at July 31, 2008 1:33 PM

:-) mary

Posted by: mary at July 31, 2008 1:33 PM

I came so close to heading to Steelhead, and now I'm kind of sorry I'm not because so many cool people are going to be there! Good Luck!! And don't worry about that arm thing... sounds like whatever you're doing is working!!

Posted by: kellye at July 31, 2008 1:59 PM

Beth! I am going to check out your finish now... can it really be that bad? My run is UGLY, so is my swim stroke, come to think of it Karyln PN has an ugly swim stroke too but is one of fastest non-Olympians in the world and has all the masters records! And talk about ugly run forms, I won't name names, but I know of one friend that runs a 2:40 marathon with her funny looking run! Own that run of yours, it is working right??!! BEST to ya this weekend!

Posted by: breewee at August 1, 2008 2:57 AM

July 30, 2008

The Cross-Over

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