2006 has brought a bevy of cool new training stuff, as well as its share of challenges thus far. I’ve stumbled upon some by chance (a good marathon training guide at the Salvation Army in Lancaster, South Carolina for 49 cents), some seem to have fallen into my lap (hel-lo, new Mizuno Wave trainers! God, I love those shoes!), and some have hit me hard when I’ve least expected it.
Enter Dondi, six weeks ago. One day I was healthy, happy and running 1.5 to 7 miles daily, doing leg lifts and other knee-strengthening exercises, and rocking the strength training whenever I had the opportunity, and the energy. Out of nowhere, my voice went from its usual resonant timbre (ha ha) to the in-between squeak of an adolescent boy. Except unlike adolescent boys I had no way to regulate it, at all, no matter what, and after a matter of days it had settled into the realm of the whisper. After a week I couldn’t force any tone from my throat. I became the ghost in my office; answering my desk phone was absolute torture. After suffering through my second interview for the promotion I was recently awarded apologizing for every harsh, whisperized pseudo-growl I managed to summon from the depths of my overworked vocal cords and finding that I couldn’t suck enough cough drops or steam my throat enough to resolve the laryngitis, I made an appointment with my doctor. After a week and a half of disturbingly worsening loss of voice, I was also developing a hacking cough and various body aches and pains. I woke in the morning at least twice during that period bathed in sweat from head to toe, feverish and chilled. It was time to go see someone. Usually I’ll get laryngitis and that’s it—I’m unencumbered by other symptoms and capable of laughing at off as some higher power’s way of telling me to shut up and listen more often instead of babbling constantly. This was getting scary.
Little did I know, the trip to the doctor’s office would be even scarier. Dr. Granston, one of my favorite physicians (because he’s kind of a nut like me who’ll spend his lunch breaks running or cycling rather than eating lunch) diagnosed me with, of all things, Chlamydia pneumonia. After summoning the strength to ask him about the etymology of its name and wondering who the hell was the asshole who gave me Chlamydia, I was starting to croak out my question when the good doctor took one look at my shocked expression and quickly digressed, explaining that the name was a reference to the type of bacteria, not an STD. My heart resumed its normal function and I was sent home with a prescription for heavy-duty antibiotics and cough syrup. I couldn’t have been more miserable and relieved at the same time. At least it was treatable.
Treatable though it was, the pneumonia benched me for nearly three weeks during the height of my training plan. A sub-60:00 Bolder Boulder was definitely out for me. This was further exacerbated by an impromptu emergency trip to South Carolina to see my father, during which I didn’t get as much training as I’d have liked to, although good old Dad was prodding me daily about my running and why wasn’t I out there and all that stuff. Thanks to him I managed to train for about half the time I was there. Anyone else’s father whose failing health prompted such a visit would not be shoving them out the door in shorts and running shoes. My dad would push me out, then a few minutes later whiz by me in his car on an “errand”, or possibly just an excuse to cheer his daughter on, yelling at the top of his lungs so I’d for sure hear him over the music being pumped into my brain by my MP3 player. What a pleasure running in South Carolina was.
What a defeatist tactic to return to Boulder. I suppose that since it is home I’d have to return eventually, but when you regularly train at 5000+ feet, sea level training boasts miracles that just don’t happen as easily at home. In SC, I could run forever. Forever. In Boulder it was a good day if I cleared a mile without dropping to a walk, especially after my lungs, plagued now with the foul task of dumping all of the crap the antibiotics were cleaning out of my system, out for good. I’ve spat out more disgusting green globs in the past month than I care to ever deal with again.
Regardless, the Bolder Boulder loomed, though I had a sudden surge of motivation near the end when I found out that my friend Zoya wanted to do the run with me. We ran together once and managed to register for the same wave. Hardly ready as a team, we were still both eager for the race. Since I lived close to the start, she’d come over to my place and we’d scoot out from there. She was going to come over around 7:30 on race day, giving us plenty of time to clear our 8:11 start time. The Bolder Boulder is run in waves with 800 people to a wave. It’s so huge that a good part of the race is often spent dodging other people and weaving around fellow runners and walkers. The number of finishers regularly closes in around 50,000, and Boulder literally swells by a good 10 to 20,000 in population just to accommodate the amount of people who fly in for this one race. It’s huge, it’s a blast, and it’s one of the biggest 10ks in the country. It’s really amazing to take part in.
May 29, 2006—Race Day—7:25 a.m.
I am scurrying around my apartment, haphazardly applying sunscreen, pounding electrolyte drink, water, and Driven, a substance I can only describe as a performance enhancer, because it’s designed to dump a surge of energy into you when you “hit the wall”. Or so they say. I wasn’t planning on any wall-hitting, but I’ve done my share of poorly-planned runs so no taking chances on race day. I am also cramming as much of a Luna bar and a package of Clif Shot Blox down my throat as my stomach will hold without too much protest.
May 29, 2006—Race Day—7:45 a.m.
I am still scurrying about haphazardly applying, eating, and drinking, trying to decide whether or not to wear a t-shirt, and trying to block the image of my friend sacked out in bed out of my head, when she calls. “I’m not asleep,” she says, “but I am stuck in traffic. I’ll be there in about ten minutes…is that okay?” For my race partner—anything. I say I’ll see her soon and try to block the idea of starting late—again—out of my head. Starting late last years left me with an actual finish time of around 65 minutes, but a recorded time of about an hour and a half. This year, with everything that had happened, I was aiming for 75:00 and I’d be happy to hit that goal.
May 29, 2006—Race Day—7:51 a.m.
Zoya walked in full of apology and explanation, which I really wasn’t worried about. I was so happy my running partner made it! Race day traffic is notoriously bad and the downside of living near the start is that you have to navigate around the start to get to my home. I’d already forced her down an alleyway and a few weird little sidestreets to get her there; I wasn’t worried about her being late. Five minutes later we took off on our brisk walk to the start.
May 29, 2006—Race Day—8:07 a.m.
We squeezed into our wave at almost the last possible second, all grins and high hopes. Race security checked us about four times to make sure we were all wearing bibs. The announcer kept us pepped up and excited. Finally, the thirty-second trumpet sounded, and then the gun.
May 29, 2006—Race Day—8:11 a.m. to about 9:26 a.m.
As usual, my body wanted to quit about two minutes in. I held out as long as I could, due at least in part to Zoya’s hilarious commentary on fellow runners, spectators, and bands stationed along the route. There were abandoned coffeepots in some yards, left on tables by spectators who’d gotten up to cheer us on, that we both would glance towards longingly. We stopped for a totally mandatory (for me) bathroom break near mile 4. Then it was uphill, then slightly down, up, then down again, and on the last slightly downward slope, we smelled the viciously tantalizing aroma of bacon sizzling. Gotta love Boulder…someone had setup a bacon aid station. We forgoed stopping there (because I wouldn’t have left) and started to make out way up the last hill. All along the route there were myriad bands, people with their stereos cranked to full and speakers blasting out their front room windows, belly dancers and Elvis impersonators on Folsom, the Blues Brothers within the first half-mile of the start along 30th Street, and everywhere, crowds of people lined up to cheer us on. Race marshals and security would call out bib numbers, encouraging runners along, people would stand outside with sprinklers and hoses, happy to douse the crowds with a blast of cold water, and Boulderites of every age all along the route lined up to cheer for, mostly, total strangers, clapping and yelling until their hands hurt and their voices were hoarse. It was an awesome experience.
The best part for me, though, was running with my friend. Rarely do I meet someone who has the patience to put up with me, a slow starter who only really gets going after the fourth or fifth mile and so is virtually worthless in a 10k. I will get better…especially considering the conditions under which I entered the race…pretty pitiful for a runner who six weeks ago wanted to do sub-60:00, since I was dropping to walk within the first mile and that was only the first of several…or many…walk stops…but Zoya totally kept me going, walked with me when I needed to, kept me laughing and chatting, and forced me to run pretty much the last mile, all the way up the hill to Folsom Stadium. Outside of the stadium we got a nice surprise: our boys showed up to cheer us through the finish. I heard Gary’s “Go, Dondi!” just as Zoya turned her head to her husband calling her name. They were standing together, even…we couldn’t believe it. We forced ourselves thru the finish line or rather, Zoya dragged my slow ass thru the chutes at the end.
The end of the Bolder Boulder is surreal. I don’t care how many 10ks you’ve done; if you’ve yet to run this one, the end is the icing on the cake. You enter the University of Colorado’s football stadium and are immediately engulfed in the crowds of cheering spectators. You run around the inside of the stadium, then thru the chutes at the end for the finish, and all the while you feel like an Olympic contender with the noise of the full stadium and throngs of cheering spectators, race officials, marshals and security. You know it’s a good race when the cops are cheering for random runners as much as they are attending to miscellaneous mischief. I hit my stopwatch just before exiting the chute: we came in at 75:49. Just over my very-modified goal. My first reaction was to grab Zoya and hug her like crazy but, as much as I really like this girl, I’ve only known her for about a month, so I don’t want to scare her away too quickly. She definitely is the reason I came in anywhere near my goal, and while she could’ve done the race without walking or slowing at all, and probably come in around 60—or much better!—herself, that she was such a good friend to stick with me meant the world to me. We were quickly shuttled thru the Field House to grab our snack bags and beers, and popped the tops on the cans of Michelob Ultra Light Low Carb beer (in a town dominated by amazing microbreweries such as the Mountain Sun and Boulder Beer, this should be a sacrilege of sorts. They should be serving Mountain Sun’s Belgian Dip or something equally decadent at the end.) while using my cell phone to locate our significant others. We’d made it. We were through.
Thinking back over the race, the running seems to be just something you do to move along the course, at least to me. I know plenty of people who are a lot more serious about their time than I am, and that’s great too…I just don’t know if I’ll ever want to set myself at a pace that would take anything away from the experience of the race itself. Getting high-fives from total strangers, seeing my running buddy get doused with sprinklers all along the route (hey, she asked for it!) and delighted at it, running down the street to all kinds of great rock and alternative music, seeing all the other runners, some in crazy costumes, others in high-tech running gear, others with their kids and babies in backpacks, watching the spectators cheering us on, shouting out our bib numbers and cheering for us when we look like we’re going to drop (okay, that may have just been me, but it was wholly appreciated!), and, coming into the stadium, realizing that I really didn’t care about the time or the quality of my running—as long as I wasn’t hurting, I was fine, and that was good enough for me—but that all I was thinking about was the quality of the experience. Running the whole time with my friend by my side, keeping my spirits high and making me laugh, seeing our guys cheering us on at the finish, even drinking absolutely awful beer at the end, totally made the run for me. It made me love where I live, all over again, like it did every year that I’ve watched it since I’ve lived here, and last year when I ran it for the first time. The experience was all that mattered to me.
May 29, 2006—Postrace—9:30ish on…
Well we finally found our guys and got together long enough to take a few quick photos at the end, learned that, much to our surprise, they had no idea they were standing basically right next to each other, a coincidence that we definitely didn’t expect. Eventually, we made our way out of the stadium and went home. I found out that Gregory did the run and was, in fact, meeting up with his friends at the other side of the stadium, so we didn’t see each other then, but I was stoked to hear he came in around 52 minutes, an excellent 10k finish for a guy who does 10ks as warm-ups (before a lengthy bike ride ) or simply, the next phase to transition to (and 10k is too short, more like twice that at minimum). More reasons why I’ll never be a triathlete…but that’s another blog post altogether. The race was great, the finish felt good, the nap afterwards felt even better, and I love being a Boulderite…all over again. My heartfelt thanks to Zoya for pulling me thru it all…I couldn’t have done it without her.
Enter Dondi, six weeks ago. One day I was healthy, happy and running 1.5 to 7 miles daily, doing leg lifts and other knee-strengthening exercises, and rocking the strength training whenever I had the opportunity, and the energy. Out of nowhere, my voice went from its usual resonant timbre (ha ha) to the in-between squeak of an adolescent boy. Except unlike adolescent boys I had no way to regulate it, at all, no matter what, and after a matter of days it had settled into the realm of the whisper. After a week I couldn’t force any tone from my throat. I became the ghost in my office; answering my desk phone was absolute torture. After suffering through my second interview for the promotion I was recently awarded apologizing for every harsh, whisperized pseudo-growl I managed to summon from the depths of my overworked vocal cords and finding that I couldn’t suck enough cough drops or steam my throat enough to resolve the laryngitis, I made an appointment with my doctor. After a week and a half of disturbingly worsening loss of voice, I was also developing a hacking cough and various body aches and pains. I woke in the morning at least twice during that period bathed in sweat from head to toe, feverish and chilled. It was time to go see someone. Usually I’ll get laryngitis and that’s it—I’m unencumbered by other symptoms and capable of laughing at off as some higher power’s way of telling me to shut up and listen more often instead of babbling constantly. This was getting scary.
Little did I know, the trip to the doctor’s office would be even scarier. Dr. Granston, one of my favorite physicians (because he’s kind of a nut like me who’ll spend his lunch breaks running or cycling rather than eating lunch) diagnosed me with, of all things, Chlamydia pneumonia. After summoning the strength to ask him about the etymology of its name and wondering who the hell was the asshole who gave me Chlamydia, I was starting to croak out my question when the good doctor took one look at my shocked expression and quickly digressed, explaining that the name was a reference to the type of bacteria, not an STD. My heart resumed its normal function and I was sent home with a prescription for heavy-duty antibiotics and cough syrup. I couldn’t have been more miserable and relieved at the same time. At least it was treatable.
Treatable though it was, the pneumonia benched me for nearly three weeks during the height of my training plan. A sub-60:00 Bolder Boulder was definitely out for me. This was further exacerbated by an impromptu emergency trip to South Carolina to see my father, during which I didn’t get as much training as I’d have liked to, although good old Dad was prodding me daily about my running and why wasn’t I out there and all that stuff. Thanks to him I managed to train for about half the time I was there. Anyone else’s father whose failing health prompted such a visit would not be shoving them out the door in shorts and running shoes. My dad would push me out, then a few minutes later whiz by me in his car on an “errand”, or possibly just an excuse to cheer his daughter on, yelling at the top of his lungs so I’d for sure hear him over the music being pumped into my brain by my MP3 player. What a pleasure running in South Carolina was.
What a defeatist tactic to return to Boulder. I suppose that since it is home I’d have to return eventually, but when you regularly train at 5000+ feet, sea level training boasts miracles that just don’t happen as easily at home. In SC, I could run forever. Forever. In Boulder it was a good day if I cleared a mile without dropping to a walk, especially after my lungs, plagued now with the foul task of dumping all of the crap the antibiotics were cleaning out of my system, out for good. I’ve spat out more disgusting green globs in the past month than I care to ever deal with again.
Regardless, the Bolder Boulder loomed, though I had a sudden surge of motivation near the end when I found out that my friend Zoya wanted to do the run with me. We ran together once and managed to register for the same wave. Hardly ready as a team, we were still both eager for the race. Since I lived close to the start, she’d come over to my place and we’d scoot out from there. She was going to come over around 7:30 on race day, giving us plenty of time to clear our 8:11 start time. The Bolder Boulder is run in waves with 800 people to a wave. It’s so huge that a good part of the race is often spent dodging other people and weaving around fellow runners and walkers. The number of finishers regularly closes in around 50,000, and Boulder literally swells by a good 10 to 20,000 in population just to accommodate the amount of people who fly in for this one race. It’s huge, it’s a blast, and it’s one of the biggest 10ks in the country. It’s really amazing to take part in.
May 29, 2006—Race Day—7:25 a.m.
I am scurrying around my apartment, haphazardly applying sunscreen, pounding electrolyte drink, water, and Driven, a substance I can only describe as a performance enhancer, because it’s designed to dump a surge of energy into you when you “hit the wall”. Or so they say. I wasn’t planning on any wall-hitting, but I’ve done my share of poorly-planned runs so no taking chances on race day. I am also cramming as much of a Luna bar and a package of Clif Shot Blox down my throat as my stomach will hold without too much protest.
May 29, 2006—Race Day—7:45 a.m.
I am still scurrying about haphazardly applying, eating, and drinking, trying to decide whether or not to wear a t-shirt, and trying to block the image of my friend sacked out in bed out of my head, when she calls. “I’m not asleep,” she says, “but I am stuck in traffic. I’ll be there in about ten minutes…is that okay?” For my race partner—anything. I say I’ll see her soon and try to block the idea of starting late—again—out of my head. Starting late last years left me with an actual finish time of around 65 minutes, but a recorded time of about an hour and a half. This year, with everything that had happened, I was aiming for 75:00 and I’d be happy to hit that goal.
May 29, 2006—Race Day—7:51 a.m.
Zoya walked in full of apology and explanation, which I really wasn’t worried about. I was so happy my running partner made it! Race day traffic is notoriously bad and the downside of living near the start is that you have to navigate around the start to get to my home. I’d already forced her down an alleyway and a few weird little sidestreets to get her there; I wasn’t worried about her being late. Five minutes later we took off on our brisk walk to the start.
May 29, 2006—Race Day—8:07 a.m.
We squeezed into our wave at almost the last possible second, all grins and high hopes. Race security checked us about four times to make sure we were all wearing bibs. The announcer kept us pepped up and excited. Finally, the thirty-second trumpet sounded, and then the gun.
May 29, 2006—Race Day—8:11 a.m. to about 9:26 a.m.
As usual, my body wanted to quit about two minutes in. I held out as long as I could, due at least in part to Zoya’s hilarious commentary on fellow runners, spectators, and bands stationed along the route. There were abandoned coffeepots in some yards, left on tables by spectators who’d gotten up to cheer us on, that we both would glance towards longingly. We stopped for a totally mandatory (for me) bathroom break near mile 4. Then it was uphill, then slightly down, up, then down again, and on the last slightly downward slope, we smelled the viciously tantalizing aroma of bacon sizzling. Gotta love Boulder…someone had setup a bacon aid station. We forgoed stopping there (because I wouldn’t have left) and started to make out way up the last hill. All along the route there were myriad bands, people with their stereos cranked to full and speakers blasting out their front room windows, belly dancers and Elvis impersonators on Folsom, the Blues Brothers within the first half-mile of the start along 30th Street, and everywhere, crowds of people lined up to cheer us on. Race marshals and security would call out bib numbers, encouraging runners along, people would stand outside with sprinklers and hoses, happy to douse the crowds with a blast of cold water, and Boulderites of every age all along the route lined up to cheer for, mostly, total strangers, clapping and yelling until their hands hurt and their voices were hoarse. It was an awesome experience.
The best part for me, though, was running with my friend. Rarely do I meet someone who has the patience to put up with me, a slow starter who only really gets going after the fourth or fifth mile and so is virtually worthless in a 10k. I will get better…especially considering the conditions under which I entered the race…pretty pitiful for a runner who six weeks ago wanted to do sub-60:00, since I was dropping to walk within the first mile and that was only the first of several…or many…walk stops…but Zoya totally kept me going, walked with me when I needed to, kept me laughing and chatting, and forced me to run pretty much the last mile, all the way up the hill to Folsom Stadium. Outside of the stadium we got a nice surprise: our boys showed up to cheer us through the finish. I heard Gary’s “Go, Dondi!” just as Zoya turned her head to her husband calling her name. They were standing together, even…we couldn’t believe it. We forced ourselves thru the finish line or rather, Zoya dragged my slow ass thru the chutes at the end.
The end of the Bolder Boulder is surreal. I don’t care how many 10ks you’ve done; if you’ve yet to run this one, the end is the icing on the cake. You enter the University of Colorado’s football stadium and are immediately engulfed in the crowds of cheering spectators. You run around the inside of the stadium, then thru the chutes at the end for the finish, and all the while you feel like an Olympic contender with the noise of the full stadium and throngs of cheering spectators, race officials, marshals and security. You know it’s a good race when the cops are cheering for random runners as much as they are attending to miscellaneous mischief. I hit my stopwatch just before exiting the chute: we came in at 75:49. Just over my very-modified goal. My first reaction was to grab Zoya and hug her like crazy but, as much as I really like this girl, I’ve only known her for about a month, so I don’t want to scare her away too quickly. She definitely is the reason I came in anywhere near my goal, and while she could’ve done the race without walking or slowing at all, and probably come in around 60—or much better!—herself, that she was such a good friend to stick with me meant the world to me. We were quickly shuttled thru the Field House to grab our snack bags and beers, and popped the tops on the cans of Michelob Ultra Light Low Carb beer (in a town dominated by amazing microbreweries such as the Mountain Sun and Boulder Beer, this should be a sacrilege of sorts. They should be serving Mountain Sun’s Belgian Dip or something equally decadent at the end.) while using my cell phone to locate our significant others. We’d made it. We were through.
Thinking back over the race, the running seems to be just something you do to move along the course, at least to me. I know plenty of people who are a lot more serious about their time than I am, and that’s great too…I just don’t know if I’ll ever want to set myself at a pace that would take anything away from the experience of the race itself. Getting high-fives from total strangers, seeing my running buddy get doused with sprinklers all along the route (hey, she asked for it!) and delighted at it, running down the street to all kinds of great rock and alternative music, seeing all the other runners, some in crazy costumes, others in high-tech running gear, others with their kids and babies in backpacks, watching the spectators cheering us on, shouting out our bib numbers and cheering for us when we look like we’re going to drop (okay, that may have just been me, but it was wholly appreciated!), and, coming into the stadium, realizing that I really didn’t care about the time or the quality of my running—as long as I wasn’t hurting, I was fine, and that was good enough for me—but that all I was thinking about was the quality of the experience. Running the whole time with my friend by my side, keeping my spirits high and making me laugh, seeing our guys cheering us on at the finish, even drinking absolutely awful beer at the end, totally made the run for me. It made me love where I live, all over again, like it did every year that I’ve watched it since I’ve lived here, and last year when I ran it for the first time. The experience was all that mattered to me.
May 29, 2006—Postrace—9:30ish on…
Well we finally found our guys and got together long enough to take a few quick photos at the end, learned that, much to our surprise, they had no idea they were standing basically right next to each other, a coincidence that we definitely didn’t expect. Eventually, we made our way out of the stadium and went home. I found out that Gregory did the run and was, in fact, meeting up with his friends at the other side of the stadium, so we didn’t see each other then, but I was stoked to hear he came in around 52 minutes, an excellent 10k finish for a guy who does 10ks as warm-ups (before a lengthy bike ride ) or simply, the next phase to transition to (and 10k is too short, more like twice that at minimum). More reasons why I’ll never be a triathlete…but that’s another blog post altogether. The race was great, the finish felt good, the nap afterwards felt even better, and I love being a Boulderite…all over again. My heartfelt thanks to Zoya for pulling me thru it all…I couldn’t have done it without her.
