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November 30, 2005
Waste of Time?
I ended up doing my long run on the treadmill again yesterday. I was supposed to go in the middle of the day, but I found a warm spot in the library and sort of settled in and got into a groove. Since I was being productive (and feeling cozy, while out the window the day looked grey and cold), I decided to keep working and do my run when I got home. Which is always a mistake. It took all my willpower to tear myself off my couch around 10 and go down to the treadmill... when all I wanted to do was crawl into bed, turn on my stereo, and drift off to sleep.
I somehow convinced myself that trundling along on the treadmill at 8 min. pace for a couple of hours while listening to music wasn't going to be substantially different from lying in bed listening to music. The 8 min. pace was the deal I struck with myself to actually get myself on to the treadmill. I rationalized it by telling myself that some benefit was going to accrue from simply running the miles, and that I didn't want to be up all night with stomach issues as I was the last time I did my long run on the treadmill.
I still haven't figured out exactly why that happened. A good part of it may have been caused by dehydration. I didn't drink very much water that day and only had a few sips while I was running. But I also think that sometimes I tell myself a pace is easy, so it feels easy, but it really isn't. Sort of the same effect I was describing yesterday with the weather.
So, last night I kept the treadmill at 8 min. pace and made myself drink water every 20 mins., consuming a liter over the course of the run. And suffered no stomach issues. In fact, the only effect of the run was some tightness in my left hamstring which caused me to get out of bed around 3 and spend some time with the foam roller. When I walked to school this morning I had no post-long-run weariness in my legs at all.
So, now I'm feeling guilty for not running harder... and also feeling as if I may have wasted two hours on unproductive running. On the other hand, I have a history of over-training by running too hard on my recovery days. But long runs aren't supposed to be recovery days, at least not when you're training for a marathon. I guess what's done is done, though, so I'll just try to make sure the rest of my runs this week are of higher quality.
Posted by alweiss at 9:51 AM | Comments (4)
November 28, 2005
The Advantages of Being a Woman (among other things)....
So, I called my brother a couple of hours ago to rhapsodize over Manning's 80-yd. td hook-up with Harrison. Here's how the conversation went:
Alweiss: How awesome was that?
E.: What?
Alweiss: Aren't you watching the game?
E.: No, what happened?
Alweiss: Colts' first play from scrimmage, Manning to Harrison 80 yards for the score. It was beautiful.
Alweiss (suspiciously now): What are you doing? [subtext: what on earth could be more interesting than watching this game?]
E.: I'm watching a movie with C. [E.'s fiancee].
Alweiss (moderately impressed with C. and trying to assess the exact level of C.'s impressiveness and the exact degree to which she will be able to ridicule E.): Oh. What movie are you watching?
E.: In Good Company.
Alweiss (gleefully): Wow. Well, I'd say, "enjoy!" but I don't think that's possible.
E. (unconvincingly): No, it's a cute movie. I like it.
Alweiss (gasping through her merriment): Sure. And C.'s sitting right next to you. Well, I don't want to keep you from the movie. Maybe you'll be able to catch the end of the game.
Now, I hate to admit it, but I have actually seen "In Good Company" (and it was, indeed, every bit as awful as it appeared it was going to be from the trailers). However, at the time I had seen every new release that was on the shelf (over the summer I rented pretty much every terrible movie that I hadn't had time to see for the past year) so it was a desperation rental, and it most definitely wasn't at the expense of what promised to be a pretty good Monday Night Football game (and lived up to that promise... for about a quarter). Which brings me to my point: one of the many advantages of being a woman is that chances are very slim indeed that your significant other will want to watch a sappy chick flick instead of a promising Monday Night Football game.
Ok, since this is supposed to be a blog about running, maybe I should talk about running for a while. My quality of life has improved quite a bit since I last blogged: the blister on my heel has finally stopped nagging. It's pretty amazing what a difference such a little thing can make in one's whole running experience. Niggling little pains make running such a chore.
I did 3 miles on the treadmill at 8 min. pace this morning. It was supposed to be a longer run (and my second run a shorter one) but my plan to read a magazine while getting the miles in wasn't working out very well (I discovered a couple of years ago that if I run at 7:45-8:00 pace I can read while on the treadmill... however I think at the time I might have been reading a book with much larger print than that in the magazine I was reading this morning... and I might have been in much better shape than I am at the moment), I was feeling a little ill (perhaps partly because of the dancing words in my magazine), and I heard a weather forecast on the radio claiming it was 60 degrees out.
I did my second run (8 miles) after class and, whaddya know, I didn't get any funny looks for wearing shorts. Someone actually went so far last Thursday as to call me a nut. Me! It was nice and sunny out when I woke up so I decided that it probably wasn't all that cold. Consequently I didn't bother to waste time searching for my running hat and gloves (still packed away for the summer) and set out wearing a long-sleeved wicking shirt and shorts. I was kind of cold on the way out since I was running into the wind, but wasn't feeling too bad on the way back when I encountered this guy... who wished me a happy thanksgiving then added, "You're a nut!" When I got home and heard the weather forecast (that it was supposed reach a high of 22 degrees that day with winds gusting up to 40 miles per hour and a wind chill of minus 5 degrees) I sort of agreed. Had I known how cold it was I'm sure I would have felt colder. Ah, the power of the mind.
Posted by alweiss at 10:15 PM | Comments (4)
November 23, 2005
Random Musings
I only had one class today (the professor of my afternoon class graciously cancelled it to aid us in the weekend getaway) so I went to that then sat in the law school lounge and worked until my computer ran out of juice. There was no place nearby to plug in and I figured that the place I was at when my computer started sending me dire warnings seemed a good place to stop -- I didn't much feel like moving all my stuff and setting up somewhere else. Also, I had to do my 15-miler and I decided it would be nice to run most of it while it was still light out.
Although the snow that had dusted the ground on my way to school in the morning was gone by three when I started my run, it was colder and windier than it had been earlier. I had the good fortune to find myself running into an irritable headwind punctuated by a downright cantankerous crosswind for the first hour of my run (and by irritable and cantankerous, I'm referring more to the state of mind they put me in). A headwind is annoying, especially when you're dealing with it for an hour before you can turn around and let it become a tailwind. But with a crosswind, there is absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel. You can't say to yourself, "well, in a little while it'll be at my back so I might as well just suck it up," because it will continue to thwart you even when you turn around, trying to blow you off course and forcing you to concentrate on running in a straight line.
But I didn't spend the entire time I was out there in fits of self-pity brought on by the lakeshore wind. I actually did enjoy most of the run. I had the path pretty much to myself, aside from the occasional biker or bundled-up jogger who looked at me in my shorts and long-sleeved top as if he was contemplating from exactly which planet I hailed (more on this later). I also found time to entertain fits of self-pity brought on by law school. Kidding. Though I did work up a bit of ire at the whole "open book" exam scam. First quarter, I took the decree that we were allowed to refer to our textbooks and any notes we had taken in class, outlines we had made, etc. at face value and prepared accordingly. It never occurred to me that in order for "open book" to be meaningful, one actually needed to have time to refer to books or notes. If one is lucky, one may have time while taking a 3-hour in-class exam to refer to one's outline a couple of times. But for all intents and purposes, if you don't have the stuff memorized, your books aren't going to help you -- there just isn't time to look things up. The only circumstance in which the "open book" allowance is meaningful is in the case of an 8-hour take-home exam. Although I probably should have figured this out on my own while taking practice exams, I really wish someone had enlightened me first quarter 1L year... so, if anyone reading this is a 1L, you now know.
I was also contemplating how part of adulthood is having unfettered discretion to act like a petulant child because there is no one who will correct your behavior (or, for that matter, make a big fuss about the oozing sore you've had on your heel for the past three weeks which is finally starting to heal). For the most part, I think we all carry our mothers (or fathers, as the case may be) around in our heads to tell us to apologize when we've been mean, or to stop ignoring our little brothers, or to share our toys, or.... But sometimes without someone there compelling me to stop acting like a spoiled child, my stubborness and pride tends to take over, and even though continuing to behave like a child without fail only makes me miserable I find myself so entrenched I can't stop. Frivilous example: my "no tights 'til December" rule. I certainly would have been much happier and more comfortable (and my upper hamstrings might not have tightened up quite so much around 10 miles) had I worn tights today. I HATE being cold, more than anything. There was absolutely no reason for me NOT to wear tights; no one would even have known if I HAD worn tights. And yet the truculent child in me dictated that I would wear shorts... and I'll wear shorts for my run tomorrow morning, cold and windy though it may be. :P
Posted by alweiss at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2005
Quick Update
I did a couple more boring 8-mile runs the past two days (for some reason, that's just the way the math works out... 8 miles, 8 miles, 8 miles, 8 miles, 8 miles, 8 miles, 8 miles... my weekly mileage seems to call for that distance right now... I can't really switch it up without requiring what is bordering on a long run right now, or a double, to balance out a shorter run. I promise that when my mileage increases and my long runs get longer I'll introduce more variety).
My big news is that my college training buddy R. is coming to visit me this weekend. I was trying to figure out when I had last seen him and I realized that it was most likely sometime in 1999. That seemed a bit surprising because we were quite close friends in college, but I guess neither of us are particularly great at keeping in touch with people. At any rate, through all those miles I think we formed the type of friendship that can be picked up seamlessly even after a long gap. I think in training with someone every day you inevitably form a pretty deep bond. You get to know a person on a level that you don't necessarily get to know people you don't train with. In the same way that you can't fake running, it's difficult to fake who you are through miles and miles and workouts and races and.... Eventually, your essential nature will out. And since your essential nature is not something likely to change over time, running friendships are especially easy to pick up after long gaps.
I'm really looking forward to having company on my runs this weekend. R. claims to be "out of shape," but if he's basing that on the definition of "in shape" that applied when we were training together, I haven't been "in shape" in about eight years.
Posted by alweiss at 2:16 PM | Comments (1)
November 16, 2005
It's Snowing!
Unbelievably (considering the balmy conditions we were enjoying last week) it's snowing today! Well, flurrying actually but that counts. If there's no accumulation, will my run today count as the first snow run of the year? I don't think so. The first official snow run of the year is always magical, and its magical quality stems partly from the Christmas card effect of a pristine frosting of sparkly whiteness. I'm looking forward to the run nevertheless.
I'm feeling surprisingly energetic this morning despite the unfortunate aftereffects of my long run last night. Yes, I once again put it off on Monday. I'm not sure why I always do this with long runs. I think it has to do with the time factor: two hours is a sizeable chunk of time to commit to. But commit I finally did... around 10:45 last night I climbed on the treadmill for my longest treadmill run ever. I made it two and a half times through Jimmy Buffett's Greatest Hits (hey, "Cheeseburger in Paradise" never gets old) while doing 8 miles at 7:48 pace, 3 at 7:41 pace, 3 at 7:30 pace, and the last mile at 7:00 pace.
I felt very comfortable for the entire run, which makes the unfortunate aftermath somewhat puzzling. I ended up being up for most of the night with stomach issues, which wasn't an entirely bad thing as it allowed me to peruse my way through several as yet unopened Christmas catalogues and to confirm that despite the fact that I can remember purchasing it on several occasions and can remember using it on zero occasions I have not a single Immodium tablet in my house. Immodium in my hands disappears into the vortex in the mysterious way of socks placed in the dryer.
Sometime around 5 I became convinced that such a prolonged stomach episode couldn't possibly be the result of my run and had to be caused by a virus of some sort. It finally abated around the time my alarm was set to go off (7:20) and I decided that I'd skip my 9:45 class and sleep until I woke up. But my avian roommate, Toby, had other ideas. She threw a well-timed temper tantrum around 9:15 which got me out of bed, into the shower, and off to school. The miraculous appearance of a parking space on the street that runs alongside the law school enabled me to make it to class in the nick of time and offered confirmation that dragging my butt to class was the right thing to do.
Posted by alweiss at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2005
Don't Ask Me Why
After procrastinating all day while hoping that the wind would die down, I ended up doing 8 miles on the treadmill instead of my long run yesterday. My thinking was that since the one class I had today was cancelled I could just as easily do the long run today rather than running into a 30 mph headwind for 7 and 1/2 miles and being ushered along by a 30 mph tailwind for the other 7 and 1/2 miles (I don't have much of a choice as to where to run if I have to do a long run -- long runs are necessarily out-and-backs along the lake path, hence the headwind/tailwind problem).
I chose to amuse myself on the treadmill with Billy Joel's Greatest Hits, Volume II. It's been a long time since I've listened to any Billy Joel and doing so I always get nostalgic (for what, I'm not sure). His music is the soundtrack of my high school years; I unabashedly adored him. What high schooler can't relate to "My Life" and "You May Be Right"? I used to listen to "Songs in the Attic" on the way to every meet and my senior yearbook quote was a line from "Only the Good Die Young" (which a couple of friends and I made a sort of theme song): "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints; the sinners are much more fun." I chose this without any sense of irony, even though at the time I graduated from high school I had never cut a class, kissed a boy, touched a cigarette, taken a sip of alcohol, or committed any more grave sin. I went to church every Sunday, volunteered, and played the violin (and the clarinet... and sang, off-key, in the choir). I got special permission to take an extra class in the period I was supposed to keep free to take a gym class in case I got injured and couldn't run track. I was really quite the rebel. I guess what I get nostalgic for in listening to Billy Joel (since it certainly is NOT high school) is being _able_ to choose that quote without any sense of irony. That and being able to not do any speed work for months, then step on the track and do a set of 400s as if I'd been doing them every other day for weeks.
Posted by alweiss at 11:00 AM | Comments (1)
November 11, 2005
Week Two!
I decided a couple days ago to get a calendar out and calculate when I needed to start my Boston training schedule... turned out that I was already in week two -- whoops! But week two is just 50 miles of easy running and I was on pace to do that this week anyway so it worked out well.
I did another easy 8 yesterday starting and finishing at school. I find that once I get home it's really difficult to motivate myself to get out the door again. Coming home at the end of the day to me means relaxing and unwinding inactively -- getting a snack and curling up on my couch with a book or flipping on the tv. I think this was wired into me when I was growing up: I went from school directly to practice for whatever sport I happened to be into at the time and when I finally got home I was done for the day. So, rather than risk procrastinating until 11 o'clock then going on the treadmill or, worse, bagging the run altogether I've found it's better to just go from school. This is the functional equivalent of running home from work, which I used to do to get my doubles in when I was working. Erg. In not too many weeks I'm going to have to motivate myself to get up early again so I can double to get the miles in.
But no doubles this week. In fact, I have just 6 miles to do today and I've got my 50. I'm gonna enjoy the low mileage while I can.
Posted by alweiss at 9:05 AM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2005
Balance
We're finally getting some November-appropriate weather. Although I've enjoyed the unseasonable warmth we've had for the past couple of weeks, I've found it a little worrisome; it's been difficult to suppress visions of receding glaciers and melting polar ice caps, which in turn get me all worked up over the Bush administration's arrogance with regard to environmental issues (and, well, everything). So, in the end, I've felt a bit guilty for enjoying winter's temporary delay.
I slipped another fine run in yesterday afternoon between classes. I got in a little over an hour which I'm going to call 8 miles. It occurred to me as I was running how effortlessly the run fit into my day. I realized that it had been a while since I had felt as if I was scrambling to get a workout in, or running at the expense of something else I should be doing, or doing something else at the expense of running, or doing something else at the expense of something else, or.... And it hit me: I have somehow managed to achieve that elusive thing called BALANCE. Everything fits; everything works.
This is the first time since I've started law school that I've felt this way. I'm busy without being overwhelmed. I think the key to balance for me is simplification: choose two, or at most three, things that are important and concentrate on doing them well. Seems to be working so far... ask me again once finals roll around. ;)
Posted by alweiss at 8:54 AM | Comments (0)
November 8, 2005
Phone Calls From Afar
I was awakened shortly after 7 this morning by the phone. Going on the theory that answering it would encourage people to call me at that hour (and also because I didn't feel like moving), I let the answering machine pick up. When I heard that it was my friend D. calling from India, I rushed for the phone, but he had hung up by the time I got there. D. comes from a small village called Khati high in the Himalayas. Khati is accessible only by a mule road, about two days' hike from the nearest jeep road (unless you're D., in which case you can do it in a day, probably less) and has no electricity or telephone. D. is, at the moment, living in Goa, running outdoor adventure programs at a couple of the big resorts and working on improving his English because he wants to come to the U.S. to teach courses at one of the big American outdoor schools. Being someone who has been handed easy access to the world by accident of birth, I'm a little in awe of him. I wonder if I had been born in Khati if I would have had the courage and tenacity to wander so far. I think it's good for me to have someone like D. to think of when I'm tempted to do the easy thing with my life.
At any rate, once the phone rang, I was up, my plan to sleep until 8 foiled. I ended up churning away at the treadmill around 11 again last night and didn't make it to bed until 1-ish. I started to run in the late afternoon, but my heel persuaded me to go get something to put on it before running any further. So, I got some blister pads which, according to the box, are supposed to last up to five days. Predictably, when I put one on it lasted not much more than five minutes before it squinched down to disappear somewhere in my sock. I had a decent run, for a treadmill run. I amused myself listening to the Evita soundtrack (my latest weird obsession) while doing 4 miles at 7:30 pace and 4 at 7:00 for a total of 8 miles. Looking down at my foot as I got off the treadmill brought Curt Schilling and his sock circa October 2004 to mind. Not pretty.
Today, however, I managed to craft a dressing that stayed put (it involved a blister pad and lots of athletic tape). I ran for a little over an hour -- outdoors! yay! -- on yet another beautiful, balmy afternoon. The only thing that kept the run from being perfect was some nagging blister pain. But it was one of those things that made me appreciate the run more -- if it had been perfect, I probably would have simply taken it for granted.
Posted by alweiss at 9:41 AM | Comments (3)
November 7, 2005
New Shoes
Once again I managed to wait too long to get new shoes. I'm not sure why I have a tendency to do this. Part of it is that for someone with limited funds, choosing a shoe is a pretty big commitment. The thought that I might be stuck for a few months running in something I'm not entirely in love with, that doesn't feel quite right, is a little terrifying. I try to allay this fear by getting two different pairs of shoes at once and rotating them. But even so, I could get stuck wearing a shoe I don't adore every other day for a few months.
As luck would have it, I think I made pretty good choices this time around. I usually get Mizunos, but I haven't been entirely satisfied with them the last couple of times so I went with a pair of Asics and a pair of Sauconys. I got a big blister on my heel on Friday running in the Asics, but otherwise they feel great.
I tend not to take blisters very seriously, which has led to some... complications... in the past. Continuing this policy, I ignored the blister and climbed on the treadmill last night (I got engrossed in some school work and somehow the entire day slipped away before I realized it) to do 12 miles. I felt a bee-sting pain from my heel for the first few minutes, but it disappeared as I warmed up. I did 9 miles at 8 min. pace, jumping out of my skin, before giving in and doing the next two miles at 7:30 pace and the last at 6:45.
My plan had been to work some then watch the NYC Marathon highlights, on the assumption that doing so would inspire me to go out and have a great run. And I WAS inspired -- what a great finish on the men's side! -- but by then I was really engrossed in what I was doing and was actually making progress, so I decided to just keep going until I stopped being productive. I always have a hard time settling down to do things, or reconciling myself to the fact that I have to do them, but once I get started I tend to proceed with the singlemindedness and tenacity of a mongoose. Which is how it ended up being 11 o'clock before I came up for air and headed down to the treadmill, where I typically ignored my torn heel for 12 miles. I'm paying for it today. But hopefully I can suck it up for 8 more miles this afternoon... then I might buckle and go get some blister stuff tonight. So annoying that something so trivial can cause so much trouble!
Posted by alweiss at 9:52 AM | Comments (2)