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March 24, 2006
I Am a Rock...
...apparently. The woman who screened my bone density at the More Marathon expo today told me that I was like that comic book character who is a rock (any comic book experts out there?). I had never had a screening before and while I was confident that with my dairy intake and my (at times excessive) weight-bearing activities I probably was at low risk for osteoporosis, there was a very small but vocal bit of doubt running around in my head. When I was in college, because of stress due to overtraining I was amenorrheal for a little over two years. It was an intensity issue rather than a mileage issue (my mileage hovered around 50-65 miles per week, depending on the season), I think -- I just never let up. My "recovery" runs were done at 6:30-6:40 pace, sometimes faster... not all that much slower than my race pace. When I look back on my college cross-country "career," such as it was, I realize that my Sunday long runs were generally tougher, effort-wise, than Saturday races. By my sophomore year I was so run down that I was sick all the time -- any germ that came my way took me down. But I somehow failed to connect anything -- the constant illnesses, the poor race times, the missing periods -- to my frantic training intensity. Finally, my junior year, a coach came along who forced me to actually take easy days, and who refused to let me add intervals to workouts if I felt I hadn't worked hard enough. But I've always worried that those two years would have a detrimental effect on my bone density. Apparently not. Or maybe I would be even further off the chart than I am if not for those years.
Running... I've been a bit under the weather for the last week or so (I think I've had the super-mild version of the 'flu that you get if you've been vaccinated), so my runs have been a pretty draggy business. A little distressing because I was looking forward to getting some good trail runs in while home for spring break. I did a tempo workout yesterday (20 min. T/10 min. E/10 min. T) on cool, dark, silent streets. It's so nice to be able to do a workout outside at 10:30 at night and feel perfectly safe. When after 10 PM you have to get your gatorade from the neighborhood gas station quicki mart through a drawer similar to those at bank drive-thrus from an attendant who shouts to you through thick plexi-glass, it's pretty tough to feel comfortable running the streets (or even the lake path).
Today I did 7 and 1/2 in Central Park with my friend E. The run capped off a fun day of bridesmaid-dress-shopping (E. is getting married this summer), marathon expo-going, and frozen custard-hunting with my two closest friends. Ever since I had some frozen custard last year in the midwest and raved about it, my friend E. has been determined to find some in NYC and try it. Turns out the only place to get frozen custard in NYC is "The Shake Shack" in Madison Square Park (they also were apparently awarded the prize for best burger in New York in 2005 by New York Magazine, a fact I wish I had known before I ate a rather indifferent turkey sandwich for lunch). So, after some dress shopping and lunch, we headed to "The Shake Shack" and E. got her frozen custard. That turned out to be our most successful venture of the day, as we never found a dress we liked, and our projected 10-miler got reduced to 7.5 so we would have time to have dinner with our friend J. before she had to rush off to the opera. So, in all, I guess we accomplished pretty much what we set out to accomplish.
Posted by alweiss at 10:30 PM | Comments (4)
March 13, 2006
A Little Wind
Talk about "in like a lion!" After yet another impressive water and light show late last night, the weather gods were huffing and puffing when I got up this morning. There was actually some warmth and sunshine to go along with the wind when I first ventured outdoors this morning, however I didn't get around to my run until the afternoon, and by that time it was overcast and cooler. Still shorts weather, but cooler. I'm not sure exactly what the wind was doing. It didn't seem to have any kind of plan, other than blowing as hard as it could. I guess it was coming pretty steadily from the west (steadily enough to give me a good ear ache from the constant assault on the back portion of my lake path out-and-back), but otherwise it was swirling around. One second it would seem to be at my back, the next it would stop me cold with a head-on attack. And, of course, there was the steady west-to-east attempt to blow my feet out from under me.
Today was one of those days where I felt pretty awful -- it was a struggle just to get out there. Definitely a day where I would have liked to have company. I was hoping for, at the very least, an easy run, but when the wind is blowing like that even running slowly requires a decent effort. I ended up with a little over 8 in a little under 64, but my pace varied widely -- at some points I felt as if I was running in place.
I felt slightly better about being blown around when I realized while driving later that my car was having a hard time holding its own. My car weighs more than I do. And has a lower center of gravity. Ok, short one because I want to get up early to do some trail running in Wisconsin tomorrow.
Posted by alweiss at 10:51 PM | Comments (1)
March 11, 2006
Channeled Adrenaline
I'm finally all done with exams, thank you very much. More than halfway done with law school, in fact; maybe I'll make it after all. Because I was feeling abnormally fatigued and just a little wonky, as if maybe I was fighting off some bug on Thursday, I decided to postpone my workout until today. I don't know if I was really fighting something or if the apparent fatigue was due to the incredible capacity I develop for sleep in the weeks leading up to exams or big races (perhaps my body's way of making sure it has the extra resources it might need to draw on).
I also have a history of having my best workouts and races following exams; all that adrenaline that had nowhere to go suddenly finds an outlet and I just go. To wit: I ran my high school mile pr in the middle of my AP Chemistry exam (don't ask); I ran what was then a cross-country pr my freshman year of college despite a nasty head cold the afternoon of a calculus exam; I ran my still-standing 3K pr unchallenged in the rain the afternoon I took my GRE; and I ran what is still the hardest track workout I've ever done the evening of my MCAT. Hm. This little retrospective also seems to indicate that I've taken an awful lot of standardized tests.
Anyway, tonight was no different. I hit the pavement in the warm (60+ degrees!), moist darkness, pointed myself toward the skyline, and just let go. My workout was 2x15 min. + 1x 12 min. tempo with 3 mins. jog recovery between. I felt great, only held back at times by the nagging burning in my right quad (reminding me that I really need to start lifting so I can strengthen that quad). And toward the end of my last tempo portion, the heavens let go as well, putting on a water and light show for my enjoyment. The rains came late enough in the run to refresh but not make my shoes squelchy.
The workout wasn't as steadily-paced as I could have hoped -- I probably ran anywhere between 6:30 and 7:00 pace during the tempo intervals, depending on what my quad was doing at any given stretch. But it was nice to put in some quality, and to get outside and just channel all that pent-up adrenaline.
Now I have two weeks free and clear to mend my wicked ways (i.e. the terrible eating and sleeping habits I fell into the past couple of weeks in preparing for exams).
Posted by alweiss at 08:55 PM | Comments (2)
March 09, 2006
Dark and Stormy Night
One thing I will miss about the Midwest is the storms. They are so much more visually dramatic than storms in the Northeast. I think it's because the landscape is so flat and stark they get to play against a blank canvas. There's no better show than that I attend sitting in my high-rise perch watching the lightning make jagged electric blue-white cutouts against the black sky. At night I can't see the lake, but I can almost feel it throwing itself against the wall, and further out against the sky. The power and suddenness of the storms here is awesome, as is the variety of weapons they employ. One second I'll be running along in a light rain, the next second I'll find myself pelted by marble-sized hailstones. On one memorable run last year, I had to stop and take shelter under a tree to get away from the hail. There was also lightning criss-crossing the sky, but I decided that my chances of being hit by lightning while huddled under the tree were probably smaller than my chances of being knocked out by a hail stone. I returned from the run with a bunch of little bruises, but completely exhilerated (yes, I'm nuts).
No stormy run for me tonight, though. I'm just sitting here, post-run, enjoying the show. I came home from my Tax exam starving, so I ate and then passed out on my couch for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I had no energy and a lot to do, so I decided to bag any workout or run. But around 11:30 I started feeling bad about that so I dragged myself downstairs to the gym to do 8 miles. It ended up being 2 miles + 3 miles + 3 miles because my stomach was acting up. A treadmill plus factor is that you can stop your run at any point and there's a bathroom right there. So, I got in 8 easy around my trips to the facilities. Right now I plan to do a workout tomorrow.
For some reason I was feeling annoyed at the presence of others in the gym tonight. As people came in, I would think to myself, "Who are these crazy people who are coming to the gym when it's practically midnight?" Toward the end of my run, when it was pushing 12:30, I realized that I finally had the gym to myself. Only then did it occur to me that that probably made me the craziest of the bunch.
Posted by alweiss at 12:41 AM | Comments (3)
March 07, 2006
Real Easy
8 today at 8:00 pace + the treadmill cheat (didn't put it on an incline). My hamstring was none to happy with me after yesterday's unwise stretch-out. But it'll be fine, and how can I regret it when it felt so good? But I felt I needed to appease the running gods with an easy one today, since I want to do a tough workout tomorrow after my Tax exam.
I've been struggling a lot with motivation of late. As much as I've always said that I run for myself, if I'm going to be completely honest I'm going to have to acknowledge that that's total hooey. I started running on the track team in middle school for college admissions counselors (my mom: "You're going to need to do a sport if you want to get into a good college"). Then I ran because it made people notice me. I was completely invisible in high school until I started winning races. Then, suddenly, all these people who hadn't known I existed wanted to be my friends. For the first time, I felt included and valuable, rather than someone standing on the fringes and observing. For the first time, I had something valuable to contribute: whatever points I could win, whatever I could contribute to the team. Contributing to the team, not disappionting other peoples' expectations, and attracting the attention of particular individuals (usually of the opposite sex... I'll admit it) continued to be my main sources of motivation throughout high school and college. I enjoyed winning races and improving my times, but a large part of my pleasure in my victories and improvements was derived from the fact that other people valued these things. When I ran my marathon PR, in October of 2004, my thoughts as I passed the half marathon mark were, "I can't implode because E. (my brother) is following me online and he's going to see my projected finish time and be all excited, then be disappointed if I don't finish within a reasonable proximity of it." As it turned out the online splits were for some reason way off so E. in fact thought I had decided to run the marathon as a workout (an option I had been considering). My dad was super-impressed by my second half "1:12," though.
Now, I have no team to contribute to, no one to impress, and no one with any expectations. So, I guess this is part of my problem in motivating myself to put in the work to run fast -- it's so much harder to do it for myself than it is to do it for other people. I enjoy running, and I enjoy being in shape to run fast; it feels so much better than galumphing along at a pedestrian pace. However, to a certain extent my racing well has only been valuable to me insofar as it was valuable to other people. I've always depended on motivation from without, and in its absence I have to find motivation from within and that has been my struggle of late.
I am, however, motivated to at least get myself into decent enough shape that I can comfortably pace my friend E. through her goal marathon time. She has run the highest mileage of her life the past two weeks and though she often expresses frustration at the way her workouts go, her fitness continues to improve. Her impressive long/MP run this past weekend has lit a fire under me -- I'm beginning to think that rather than pacing her I might end up struggling to keep up with her. I think she'd enjoy that. I think I'd enjoy that.
Posted by alweiss at 11:18 PM | Comments (1)
Wimps
From today's NY Times Metro Diary:
Dear Diary:
Over dinner at our favorite local restaurant, my wife and I recently celebrated our 26th anniversary.
"You know, Barb," I said, "not many couples make it this long." Looking me dead in the eye, she said, "Wimps."
Dan Barron
Perfect. My parents recently celebrated their 39th wedding anniversary. If you had asked me when I was 10 I wouldn't have bet on their still being together today. It was impossible for me at the time to appreciate the deep commitment and affection that lay underneath their constant arguments. My parents come from different backgrounds and have widely divergent points of view (my mom being your standard NY liberal -- which I've been told means she's extremely liberal -- and my dad often being found nodding along with Rush Limbaugh). I'm sure they could have each chosen to marry someone with more similar background and sympathies to their own and perhaps have had an easier time of it, but they chose one another. And it works. They continually challenge one another, each making the other question and explore more deeply his/her convictions and opinions; this lends a vitality to their relationship that is probably lacking in many. It also lends a contentiousness to the relationship that sometimes masks to outsiders the depth of their feelings for one another; a contentiousness that were those feelings more shallow might have caused them to abandon the relationship well before the 39 year mark. I feel extremely lucky to have been the product of their relationship.
Growing up with two such dissenting points of view meant that I always had to consider carefully what I believed; no one told me to think one way or the other. Well, to be more precise, two people whom I respected equally told me to think exactly opposite things. It meant that I couldn't slip easily into my parents' belief system like a hand-me-down coat. I had to actually define my own belief system, from a pretty young age. It also meant that it was really difficult to see issues as black and white -- I tended to see the two poles represented by my parents and everything in between. Today, it means that some of my beliefs are a little schizophrenic but I know what they are and why I believe them, and at the same time I can also appreciate why others might believe something different.
What does that have to do with running? Absolutely nothing. Just something I was thinking about (because of the Metro Diary bit) while I was cruising along on the 'mill this evening. I was planning to do 8 easy (7:30 treadmill pace), but I felt as if I needed to keep moving after the 8, felt like stretching out. So I restarted the treadmill (it shuts off after an hour... or, rather, goes into extremely slow cool-down mode for 5 mins., then shuts off... I just press stop when it slows down) and did another 4 at 7:00 pace. It felt really good. Probably somewhere between Marathon and Tempo pace right now. Even though I'm not in shape to be doing my recovery runs at 7:00 pace, it always feels better to run at that pace than at a slower one; it's just more natural: my stride smooths out and everything just flows better.
Ok. Need to hit the hay.
Posted by alweiss at 12:08 AM | Comments (1)
March 01, 2006
Gotta Fly
I just (finally) made my reservations to fly home for spring break. Every so often I get it into my head that I absolutely need to do something slightly crazy (only slightly crazy, because I'm perfectly sane). I'm not sure where the compulsions come from, but once they appear, I can't shake them. Capitulating, however, has led to some of the most rewarding experiences of my life -- 6 weeks in the Himalayas, running marathons, etc. The latest must-do on my agenda is hang-gliding. With a little research, I found a school a couple of hours from my parents' house in NY (I think it's in the Catskills region), so I'm planning on spending a couple of days over my spring break taking lessons (and getting some good runs in in the mountains) and hopefully by the end of the summer I'll be able to qualify for my certification. I'm so excited to... fly!
Speaking of flying, my run today... just kidding. No pedestrian flying for me just yet. I decided to put off my run until the evening because I was fasting for Ash Wednesday and I didn't want to do anything early in the day that would get my metabolism cooking. I felt a little wimpy thinking about how Hicham El Guerrouj set a world record a couple of years ago in the 1000M (?) during Ramadan. But, on the other hand, I have a secret belief that people who run at that level are to a certain extent super-human. By that I mean just stronger in mind and body than the rest of us (or than me, anyway).
I kind of outsmarted myself: knowing that it was going to be tough to get myself to go on the treadmill tonight, I made plans with one of my classmates to meet at the gym at 9:30 for a treadmill run. As it turned out, she had a stomach ache (reported by her roommate, another classmate of mine) and so didn't run. But just making the plan got me to the gym. I ended up running and talking to my other classmate, who was walking, until she finished her workout. As much as I hate the treadmill, there are certain advantages: namely that I can run with someone who is walking.
I felt surprisingly good -- didn't feel yesterday's workout at all. I set the treadmill to 7:30 pace and just trundled along. Having V. (my classmate) there made the first 20 minutes fly by. After she left I put my headphones on and zoned out for a while... until, being my klutzy self, I hit the "stop" switch by accident. I do this all the time and it drives me insane. Why? Because it always happens at some strange number like (today) 4.66 miles. So, then I have to start all over again and run 3.34 miles. What am I supposed to do with that? Part of what I occupy myself with on the treadmill is fractions of distance remaining and time remaining. .34 is very hard to play with. At 2.84 miles, fearing with the stopping and everything I wasn't going to fit the whole 8 miles into an hour (yes, the treadmill does seem to bring out certain obsessive tendencies), I dropped the pace to 7:00. Then, since I was feeling good, I dropped down to 6:40 pace for the last 3/4 of a mile. Definitely fit it into an hour.
So, all in all a good day. Back on the path to sanity. :)
Posted by alweiss at 11:36 PM | Comments (1)
Confession
The wheels have come off the cart a little bit the past few days. By that I mean that I've been living a somewhat nocturnal existence, eating trash, and not exercising. At all. Partly because of hamstring tightness but really because when I start feeling overwhelmed I stop doing everything that would help to make me calmer and saner and become singularly unproductive. I just become paralyzed by tasks that seem enormous and I waste time until the situation becomes desperate. So, on Saturday, I turned on the television when I got up in the morning and didn't turn it off until I went to sleep. Meanwhile, I convinced myself that I was going to turn it off and do work and I couldn't possibly take the time to go running because I had already wasted all this time. I did the same thing on Sunday until the early evening. So, by Monday I was not quite successfully treading water in the deep end (think of the lifeguard test where you have to tread water while holding a brick above your head... that was pretty much the situation) and ended up using my usual running time to do reading for classes I had later in the day. Today, I took my usual running time and used it to get some outlining done and actually made progress; then I came home after classes and outlined until I started hitting the wall (around 9:30).
FINALLY, lo and behold, I couldn't stand another running-less second, so I went down to the gym and climbed on the treadmill. I did a workout that shouldn't have been that tough (4x6:00 tempo w/1 min. jog; 5 min. easy; 3x6:00 tempo w/1 min. jog), but I ended up having all kinds of head problems. The fact that I hadn't run since Friday and I'd been eating poorly and not sleeping enough all got into my head and convinced me that I felt worse than I did. I nearly abandoned the workout after the second 6:00 interval, but convinced myself to keep going. Then, a minute into the last interval I thought I'd call it quits and actually slowed the treadmill down to 7:30 pace for about 30 seconds before I convinced myself to just finish the workout. I added an extra minute of tempo to make up for it. That was definitely the weakest I've been mentally on workout in a long time.
Still, I feel so much better for having run. So much better. And I was able to multi-task by reading while I was stretching and foam-rolling my hamstring.
My goals for the next week and a half: 1) make time to run because it keeps me sane; 2) eat healthfully because eating lots of sugar and bad-for-me foods makes my brain feel broken; 3) early-to-bed-early-to-rise; 4) when feeling overwhelmed, do SOMETHING because doing nothing only makes the situation worse.
Posted by alweiss at 12:23 AM | Comments (2)