I was sad to wake up and hear the news of the terror attacks in Brussels. I feel like I should mention this, as I sit down to blog about fun things that I’ve been doing. My blog seems frivolous at times, and yet, I feel so incredibly lucky to have the experiences I do, to be able to share them, to live where I do, to have had the parents I did, and I could go on. Sometimes I get angry at how unfair life is, and how much I work and yet still things are so hard, but today I think, I am lucky, life is good for me, I am very lucky for this.  I won’t pretend to have any answers in life and how to solve these horrible problems we have in the world, but I think the first step is to look around, admit how lucky some of us are and to look on everybody with love and compassion.

And…let’s segue into the luck of the Irish. Ha! Terrible pun, but I never told you about the 5 mile St Patrick’s Day Race I ran with April the other weekend. I took the Metrolink downtown with her (I drove to her house which is very near a stop—the Metrolink is very convenient for her and very inconvenient for me, but since she has a pass, it was cheaper for the two of us than driving downtown and parking. For what it’s worth, if she had had to buy a ticket it would have been cheaper to drive, but I digress.)

I got a free entry in exchange for doing a little publicity (Thanks Clare!) and April and I decided we would stay together the whole race. Our friendship really blossomed during a race a few years ago (we were both in drastically different places in our lives then than we are now, but I think…both much better off and happier!) so we thought it would be another excellent bonding activity. We were correct! Anyway, April has had a few injuries and her knee started bugging her, so we did a fair amount of walking, and I am just really slow when I am running, so whatever on the whole RACING bit, but the run is just so much fun—people in costume, people with kegs, people all wearing green and shamrocks and whatnot. It was a wonderful way to spend 1:11:21 or so.

We stopped near the finish line to try to get that picture. Not our best, but not our worst!

Anyway, I realize this seems like a half-hearted post, but I wanted to write about it 

I’m back to work after Louie and I took a little trip to Chicago for a few days. Today I dropped Chloe off at the vet to get her eye checked up on—it’s still looking weird so we wanted to get it looked at. Mackenzie is a little tired, probably from allergy meds, but she sees a specialist next week, and we will hopefully get to the bottom of her issues (hopeful, I’m hopeful for her). It’s hard to transition from vacation to home, but it’s not so bad. Chicago was great and deserves it’s own post, so I’ll tell you about it soon! One thing is that we really mastered the public transportation…well, at least, we used both buses and trains and only ended up in a rough neighborhood on the Southside one time (where a bus driver pulled up and asked us, what are you doing here?). We ate some good food, saw art and stuffed animals in museums (that’s dead, stuffed animals…) and overall had a great time.

I’m off to lunch and then teaching. Not overly busy this week but lots to get done.

My second half marathon in as many weeks! This morning was the Rock and Roll Half Marathon in St Louis. (Last week was the Go! Halloween Half Marathon.)

I ran a race the other year with a slight cold, but this morning I ran a race with MORE of a cold. I was nervous about it, and barely slept the night before, but when the clock read around 5 am I decided just to get up and start getting ready. I naturally got to the race too early but I listened to the news in the car and drank a little more coffee…and it’s always better to be early than late, in my opinion.

First off, it was really cold. Much colder than I’d hoped for, and luckily the night before I added a long sleeve jacket thing to my outfit. (I wore a hooded thick shirt sort of garment. I don’t even know how to describe it, because it’s not a jacket, but not a shirt either…) My car had FROST on it! I guess fall is finally here…

Pretty chilly temperatures. Well, better cold than hot (I’m all about comparisons in this post, evidently) for running!

Rock and Roll races are well organized, in my experience. We had a corral start, which meant that they held each group back for 1-2 minutes to let the field ahead clear out a bit. It’s nice to be able to start running right away, and it only took around 20 minutes to cross the start line (I was in Corral 13).

I look like a tired Rudolph. But it’s not a proper recap without showing numerous pictures, and not all selfies are created equal.

I swear these shoes are blue. I did decided to wear my new running shoes and I have no regrets. But they are BLUE not white! It’s like “the dress” back a few months ago. Rock and Roll does their timing through a shoe thing—that’s the orange thing you see.

Anyway, I’m not going to go into extreme detail about the race. It was pretty tough…I was exhausted and my nose was running pretty steadily…(LOTS of snot rockets because I couldn’t have carried enough tissue to deal with it…gross I know but what can you do? I always looked around first…which slowed me down a bit.) I set my timer to 5/1 intervals and kept to them all the way except the first walk interval I skipped and then again skipped all walk breaks after mile 12.

It took awhile to warm up—my feet and hands and legs were cold! But after a couple of miles I started feeling good, and then after another couple I started hurting, but I pushed on. The course was a lot more fun than the week before and I enjoyed all the neighborhoods. It was a loop rather than more of an out-and-back which is easier mentally for me. The course was decently crowded throughout, which was nice except at the later water station where nearly everybody seemed to stop and walk and then keep walking. The end was the same—once I saw mile 12 I decided to keep running no matter how lousy I felt. Most of the people around me were just walking which made me almost feel silly as I passed everybody and pushed as fast as I could towards the finish.

My goal was to beat last week’s time, but I didn’t. My second goal was to be under 3 hours and I’m glad I pushed at the end because I made it! I started the race slow because I didn’t know how I’d feel (both from being sick and from running last weekend). Maybe I left too much in the tank, but I think overall my pacing worked for where I am in my running. I was spent by the time I crossed the finish line, and had trouble getting some of the snacks. I did miss having a roll or bagel after the race—it was all pretzels/chips/bars/bananas, and I just love a nice soft roll or pretzel or bagel.

2:59:13! Oddly my 5k and 10k times didn’t register, so I can’t truly tell how my pacing was…(runkeeper is too inaccurate to help, does anybody else have that problem? seriously, it’s terribly inaccurate) but I definitely stepped up my pace from the 10 mile pace to the end. I’d love to see how many people I passed in the last mile!  Anyway.

I took my after race pictures in the parking lot…I just kept walking after I finished because I was worried if I stopped to set things down (water, snacks) that I wouldn’t want to start walking again! We will see how sore I feel tomorrow, but I feel pretty good right now, only a little achy, and I definitely think the new shoes helped.

Did you run the race? Do you use runkeeper? Or were you reading this hoping I’d be writing about cats instead? Don’t worry, watch this space!

When we left off a few days ago, I was trying to decide whether to run the 10K or the Half Marathon. I decided that since my reasons for not running the Half were mostly being scared of being last place, that was lame. I’d done the training and I was ready.

Warning: if you aren’t into running the following might not be terribly interesting to you.

A few years ago I was really into running, and had run a sub-30 5k, and a 2:25 half marathon. For me, those were really fast. Then when everything fell apart in my life (well, at least my marriage) running became more difficult than ever, and I found myself having a hard time getting out there, and I found myself slogging along at a 13/14 minute mile pace, even when I was running, or more often, having a hard time running for more than 1 or 2 minutes at a time without walk breaks. I’ve been spending the past 6-12 months working my way back. I’ve been pushing myself to just DO the runs, to not worry about speed, but just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To set a run/walk interval (for most of my training it was either 2/1 or 3/1) and STICK WITH IT. And I started feeling stronger and more capable. My runs started to feel easier, and I would finish feeling like I had energy and could have gone farther rather than finishing feeling like I wanted to die, having cut the whole thing short to begin with.

What’s more is that I started feeling like I could push myself more. The night before the race I was visualizing the route in my head and how I would feel. I decided to push myself on my interval and set my timer for 4:30/1 (meaning 4 minutes 30 seconds of running, 1 minute walking, repeat).

So, I woke up early Sunday morning, too early, in fact, as I was ready to leave the house by 6:00 or so and I didn’t need to leave for another 30 minutes. I had no problem finding street parking for the race and just hung out in the car listening to the radio for awhile.

It was on the chilly side but in a good way—meaning, it was a little chilly walking to the race area in a tank top and shorts but I knew once I started running I would feel just right. I hit up the porta-potties and then just milled about.

Does this picture show my socks? I decided to wear all black with purple/black striped socks with spiders on them as my “costume.” I saw a student of mine, Karen, at the start line so I went over and chatted with her and her friend for a bit. What I forgot to do or, perhaps, felt awkward doing, was ask somebody to take a pre-race picture of me. Bad blogger!

The 10K and Half Marathon started at the same time, and shared most of the course, until the 10K finished and the Half split off. I ran through my first walking interval and was just taking it nice and easy. I felt like the first few miles flew by and decided that I was going to start trying to push myself on the running intervals—to run faster. I started running as fast as I felt I could maintain for a long time. Let’s not kid ourselves, this was still pretty slow, but since I was basically running “blind” other than knowing when to run and when to walk (I use Run Keeper to set this up, and while it keeps track of my times and distance, I find their GPS generally overestimates by up to 10 percent. At the end of the race it told me that I ran over 15 miles) so I was only guessing. I knew that usually in races miles 6 through 8 are my hardest, so I wanted to make sure I could make it through those miles feeling good.

Before Mile 6 we got to the split between the 10K and the Half—suddenly I found myself alone on the course. It was a little scary (this was exactly what I was afraid of—I knew there were plenty of people behind me, though, but I was the only person around!) and I started panicking that I would miss a turn. After making a turn, which, for the record, was clearly marked and there were people at the turn watching also, I saw some people running in the distance ahead. I decided I would slowly have to catch up with them. I also don’t mind running alone, generally,—I did all of my training alone, and I enjoy the time to think and just do my thing. Though some of the course went through areas of town that I wasn’t actually that comfortable running by myself, but I figured it was still part of an organized race so it was likely just fine…but I definitely would have felt better with a few more runners closer by.

The next few miles were me pushing myself the best I could. I wanted to make it to mile 10 feeling good enough, but I also wanted to pass people, and since I felt better than I thought I would, I knew I needed to go faster. And I’m pretty sure I did. I moved up about 40 places from the 5k split to the end of the race. Once I passed mile 10 I knew I’d make it through no matter what, and once I passed mile 12 I wouldn’t let myself walk again or slow down. I passed a bunch of folks at the last turn—we saw the finish line, then had to turn right for a few blocks, left, and left again. I just kept pushing myself—I know that a lot of times I’ve been hurting too much or haven’t had the strength to keep going, but this time, THIS TIME I was strong. I went as fast as I could for the last .2 miles, and crossed the finish line in 2:54:13. Fast by most people’s standards, no. By my old standards, no. But this was the fastest race I’d run in years—I trained well, I pushed myself to the limit, and I couldn’t have been happier. I faced my fears and succeeded. And the medal was really cute.

One thing I kept thinking about was how much fun I’d had. I’d thought my running days were over, or that I never enjoyed it in the first place, or was just running from something, or who knows what. But I don’t think that’s true. I think running is something that I am going to continue to improve on, and continue to do, and that I do enjoy, mostly! I feel great, I feel happy, and we’ll see how I feel by next Sunday running the Rock and Roll Half Marathon! I will either do better or worse—I might TRY to do better and possibly fail, but I think I’ll try to start a little faster still, unless my body still hurts from this race, in which case I will just take it easy trying not to injure myself. Time will tell. I’ll likely spend the week obsessing over my strategy.

PS the best thing to do after a race is to take a nap in your NEW BED.