Thursday, May 31, 2007

BolderBoulder 2007

She Warmed Up. She Started. And By God, She Finished.

She also managed to prove that the bigger you are, the harder you fall. As a kid, it would’ve been minor, a skinned knee, a skinned hand, a lot of dramatic sniveling, and then Mommy would kiss it and make it all better.

When you are twenty-five years old, however, and forget that in order to overcome massive obstacles like a crumbling curb, you need to pick up your feet, it’s major. You’ve got that much further to fall! Ooops.

This year’s Bolder Boulder was definitely better than last year in terms of time (I think), quality, feeling in general, etc. Jack came out to cheer me on at the intersection near our apartment complex where the race passes through. I gave him a quick high-five and felt an incredible sense of warmth and love and happiness. That he’d get out of bed at 7:30 in the morning and stand there waiting for me to pass meant the world to me. It so warmed my heart that the permasmile I slap on when I’m running a race, workout, anything, was even bigger than usual. At the advice of one of my favorite triathletes, the 2006 World Long Distance Champion Bella Comerford, I try to remember to “stay tough, and keep smiling”, as she wrote to me in an email before the marathon last year. And so I stayed tough. And kept smiling. Even through the fall.

About a mile or so from where Jack and I had slapped hands (he stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, smirking cutely and shaking his head, then reached his hand out once I extended mine…I later found out he was only semi-conscious; just goes to show how euphoric the runner’s high really is…you can mistake a friend’s expression, which is really brought on by his being in a state of half-awake, half-asleep, for perfectly-placed mischievousness) I was running up 20th Street when my brain apparently lost touch with my basic running skills and I fell. I tripped on a section of crumbling curb and went straight down, solidly skinning both knees and my left hand. The residents gathered in the yard in front of which I fell immediately started towards me, but I sprang up too quickly, brushing myself off and announcing to them, the other spectators, the volunteers, and about 200 of my fellow BolderBoulderites that I was okay, I was fine, no big deal, just a stupid mistake. Every volunteer after that, it seemed, asked if I needed help. My fellow runners expressed concern here and there. Basically, anyone who’d either seen me fall or saw the results of it. Aside from being profusely embarrassed I was constantly reminded of it. But stopping the race? Hell, no! It was a couple of scratches, minor abrading, no big deal. I finished. Legs stretched out mightily from the top of Folsom thru the chutes at the finish, I suddenly realized that a) I was selling myself WAY short on capacity in terms of what I was able to do, and would therefore have to work on improving my cowardly baby steps to becoming faster and faster, and b) now that I was finished, I could probably use some medical assistance. I walked over to a paramedic I saw and asked for a band-aid. He eyed me warily, then nearly jumped when I showed him my knees and hustled me over to the medical tent. Sidenote: I am so grateful that the only time, thus far, knock on wood, that I’ve had to visit the medical tent was for severely abraded knees and a skinned palm, nothing more serious. A woman came up with her daughter and the girl was suffering severe dehydration; she was pale-grey colored and visibly shaking. They were laying her down to rest and giving her water as the paramedic who worked on me finished iodining and bandaging my knees and hand. At that point, I had glanced at my injuries a few times but was more interested in scanning the crowd for signs of my friends and figured I’d let the medic do his job.

When I got home, however, and undressed to shower, it was an entirely different story. My hand was pretty okay, just a couple of nicks, and my right knee was slightly-to-moderately abraded. My left knee, however, which I’m assuming took the brunt of the fall (I barely remember falling, just one second running along fine smiling and the next second feeling the unmistakable sensation of road-and-crumbled-concrete-and-sand-and-gravel against skin, and then jumping to my feet again and starting to run), has a NASTY goose egg on it and a substantial abrasion. Now I know why so many cyclists shave their legs. The cut is not pretty for sure, but it’s the horrible bruising that I’m really worried about. Oooops…

And I will write more later, as I am exhausted and a little cranky. Mostly just tired, but I need some fluid replenishment myself and I want to see what goodies are in my BolderBoulder bag this year…they’ve been getting progressively worse over the last four years, for sure. Sidenote: why is it that the sunscreen companies can create sunscreen that won’t get in your eyes but will invariably get in your mouth? I’ve Listerine’d twice now and still can’t get that detestable taste from my mouth….eeeewwwwww…

Several days later…

Well, my cardiovascular system may have recovered from the 10K but my knees are just starting to mend. Along with nasty scrapes on each one I’ve got some terrific bruising going on, especially on the left one. I found out my time was one hour, twelve minutes and fifty-four seconds…two days after the run, when they collected data from everyone’s electronic shoe tag and posted it all to the website and got it up and running—no pun intended—as 50,000-plus users tried to access it all at once. When Seagate can’t keep a website up…well, just goes to show what happens when you have a few score-thousand people trying to login to it. I exchanged a few entertaining emails with my friend Gregory who’d also run the race with his fiancĂ© and several of their friends, but alas, as much as we cursed and damned the site it didn’t do us any good. Seagate finally got it going yesterday afternoon and I checked my results last night, laughing audibly when they came up and I realized I only did better than last year by about three minutes. Well, a sprinter I’m not, that’s for sure.

The goodies weren’t so bad although “nutritious” would be a stretch…the most nutritious item in the bag was, as usual, the produce item, which instead of an orange or apple was a tiny bag of baby carrots this year. I dug into those immediately. The rest of the bag’s contents remain in the bag, on the floor or my living room. As big a fan of junk food as I am, the words “Breakfast” and “Cookie” just don’t go together in my vocabulary.

So, onward and upward…I’ll start running again in a few days, when it doesn’t re-open the scabs on my knees every time I bend them. I’ve been thinking I should attend a Bikram class but then I start thinking about the postures, there are definitely a few that would hurt my abraded joints like hell. And te sweat pouring into them probably wouldn’t help either. So I’m restlessly resting, eager to get moving again, semi-twitchy with a virus only athletes—or those of us struggling to be athletes—get when we can’t train for a few days, general restlessness. But man, what a race. While I understand why the frenzy surrounding the BolderBoulder every year send the rest of my fellow Boulderites packing for a long weekend anywhere BUT here…I don’t have a car, so traffic isn’t a concern. I don’t have to fly in, drive up, find a place to stay…just take off about half an hour before my start time to the starting line, slap on a smile, and enjoy my run.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Coca-Cola to Buy Vitaminwater...

Among the many disturbing headlines I spotted in the NYT digest I receive in my work mail inbox every day, this was the most terrifying. Not the war in Iraq (I've seen so many "we lost xx number of troops today and xx number were severely wounded and are listed in critical condition" that I've become, sadly, rather desensitized to it), not the fact that our "elected" leader made a buffoon of himself yet again when he stated that Queen Elizabeth was here for our country's bicentennial in 1776, not the record numbers of people being slaughtered, publicly or privately, by military coups, angry ethnic wars or religious strife. The most terrifying was the fact that Coke is buying Vitaminwater.

For those of you who don't know, Vitaminwater is exactly what it says it is: water enhanced with vitamins. It comes in many different varieties and flavors, and is a great alternative to, well, Coke, Pepsi, and other carbonated soft drink beverages. For your information, Odwalla is also owned by Coca - Cola, see the following link for more information on that acquisition.
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=70760

Now, I don't drink Odwalla juices because I prefer Naked. I DO drink Vitaminwater because they provide excellent postworkout refreshment and electrolyte replenishment.

I am also a Coca Cola FIEND. This has tapered off significantly, especially as I've been introduced, through my part-time job at Origins as well as my boyfriend's love for tea, but it's still there. In fact on my desk right now there's a Nalgene of filtered water, a glass of Pom Wonderful's new Lychee White Tea, and a 12-ounce can of Coke. Call me a hypocrite.

The issue I have is with the fact that the manufacturer of a product thst removes rust better than commercial rust remover (the Mythbusters proved this one) is now making all-natural juices and electrolyte replacement beverages (and for the record, I prefer Gatorade to Recharge, though they're both great...I think that's ingrained from when I was in sixth or seventh grade and that was the only option we had for electrolyte replacement). The way I see it, it's only a matter of time because high fructose corn syrup starts sneaking its way into your Mango Tango and Dragon Fruit drinks. I think I'll stick with Naked for now.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

My Love Affair With Lilacs

My boyfriend probably thinks I am crazy, and understandably so. But still...

Every spring since we moved to Colorado in 1995, right around the end of March thru the beginning of May, I waited, captivated by the blooms which, though tiny and furled, would soon open to release the most magical scent, the most beautiful flowers, in colors ranging from pure white to the palest lavender to bright fuchsia and beyond. The blooms would last a month or so, eventually, as all spring flowers do in the arid heat of the Colorado summer, fade, crumple and die. As I sit here writing this today there is a vase full of tiny white lilacs—my favorite; their scent is so sweet. There’s another, larger, vase on the middle of my coffee table. One in the bathroom. Two in my bedroom. I can’t get enough of them. And yes, they droop and die quickly in my vases, no matter how tenderly I try to handle them or how carefully I monitor their fresh water; they very simply need their bushes, the mother plants they were so unkindly snipped from at the giddy greed of my shears.

I don’t remember lilacs in New Jersey, but that’s where Mom remembered them from, and her eyes would grow wide as she told us of these incredible bushes that lie dormant for most of the year and then, for only a short time, burst forth with the most beautifully-scented, heavenly flowers. I was enraptured, and couldn’t wait for the lilacs to start blooming. It was no secret that the relationship between my mother and I was, at best, strained, though while I outwardly maintained my standard-issue adolescent angst, rudeness, brattiness and outright cruelty towards my mother and sister, I inwardly ached for my mother’s approval, my sister’s confidence. The confidence that would grow between Emily and I had to grow from a wary trust, and by the time she began confiding in me I was completely blown away. I was honored and terrified, what do I do now? Oh my God, she actually loves me and respects me and wants my opinion! Oh, shit! But that’s another post, for another day.

My relationship with my mother, on the other hand, was absolutely awful. I cried myself to sleep at night because I couldn’t make her understand where I was coming from, she was totally against me, she always took Emily’s side, she…take your pick of horrible motherly sins, they utterly destroyed me at times. I can’t say for sure because I haven’t asked, but I wonder now, now that I’m an adult—well, more of an adult, anyway—and our relationship has grown into a deeply loving and respectful friendship, if she cried herself to sleep those nights too. Not knowing the answer, I’m still confident it’s probably “yes”.

My mother’s birthday is April 17, prime time for lilac picking. The awesome part about lilac picking is that while many people grow them in their own private lawns and would rather not have them violated by a skinny little teenager with a pair of shears and a heart set on procuring the luscious flowers for her mother’s surprise birthday present, they also grow all over the place, wild. One entire main avenue near our house was nothing but lilac blooms for five or six blocks, and so, on the morning of April 17, I would set my alarm super-early (Mom’s an early riser, so getting anything done before she gets up requires some thoughtful planning in advance) and, by six o’clock in the morning was riding my bicycle along Drake Road in Fort Collins, clipping the beautifully fragrant, silky branches and dropping them into the knapsack I’d brought along for this express purpose. When Mom got up that morning, she was greeted by a sleepy, but smiling, oldest daughter, a gigantic bouquet of lilacs and a Happy Birthday card. She hugged me tight and thanked me and kissed me, and for a moment, everything was okay.

I took advantage of this tactic every year I lived in Fort Collins for Mom’s birthday and then again for Mother’s Day, and she was always delighted, although I’m sure the surprise wore off pretty quickly. And of course they died quickly, drooping and wilting in their vases until they finally had to be discarded, mournfully.

I’m not a typical Boulderite. That is, I ride my bike absolutely everywhere, but it’s because I have no other option, save my feet or the bus (which is absurdly expensive), or maybe a taxi (even more expensive). I eat well because I work for a natural-foods company. I take Bikram yoga classes because I love them…that’s all, pure and simple. But I also love Coca-Cola and junk food and until recently was a smoker and imbibed alcohol on a fairly regular basis (these two habits have been cutoff entirely…smoking for good, drinking for awhile, at least, if not forever). So the conclusion I’m about to draw here digs a bit deep for parallels, so you’ll have to excuse what I see as completely obvious, but will probably come off as sounding like your standard-issue Boulderite fruitcake, yet another resident of the city known as “ten square miles surrounded by reality”. But I don’t really care. It’s my blog, and I get to say whatever I want here, and if you’re reading this, you can form your own opinions. Anyway. At this point in my life I see a unique relationship between the lilacs I would pick for her, and the relationship we struggled through during my teenage years. When removed from its “mother” or the mother plant, the lilac draws its nutrients however it can: a vase filled with water, the ground if it’s been carelessly torn down. But without the mother plant, the thriving organism that gives it life, allows its blooms to unfold and open to the sun, strong, hardy blooms ready to take on the world, or at least, produce magnificent scents and beautiful flowers until they grow dormant again until the next year. This relationship, looking back, was not unlike my relationship with my mother. The further away I got from my mother, the more I wilted, the more I drooped, fell apart, because angry and depressed and enraged and gave up. But the moments that we were connected, the times that I felt our closeness so tangibly it made me cry, were the times I felt the strongest, the most myself, the best about my life and my happiness.

So, call me a crazy Boulderite. I don’t care. My love affair with lilacs will continue for the rest of my life. As will my love for my mother.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

BolderBoulder 2007

Well here it is just 19 days shy of the 29th BolderBoulder, the 10k race that draws thousands of people into Boulder for just one weekend, and then they all leave again. I am starting to wonder given my growing dread of running if I can prep for this race by cycling and yoga alone. Ohyeah, right, it's a 10k RUN. Duh.

I need to get my arse in gear. This is almost embarrassing. The hundred's not going to happen and neither is my humble desire to complete a marathon in each of the months of June, July and August and then do the Boulder Backroads Marathon again in September. I guess we shall see...maybe I'll just run the course in June, July and August in prep for September. That could be cool.

I really need to get on board with training, it's just been wearing on me and I have too much energy and not enough to do with it all. Youth is wasted on the young, I suppose...