The Boulder Backroads Marathon

Just...let...go...

Friendship can be an indomitable force, a totally intangible power not to be messed with. I’ve had few really good friends in my lifetime, and the “breakup” I suffered with a close girlfriend in college scared me off of friendships in general and close friendships in particular. Losing a close friend—especially when you don’t understand why—tears into your heart and soul like the end of a relationship with a significant other, except, somehow, worse. As a result, if you’re like me, friendships are taken lightly and often for granted, with little significance, something to be used when necessary and otherwise put quietly away like canned goods or laundry soap: great when you need ‘em but otherwise left undisturbed.

This probably seems like an odd way to begin a blog post about my most recent accomplishment: my finishing the Boulder Backroads Marathon, but this race has been about friendship in so many ways that to do so otherwise would be a discredit to the importance and friends in a human being’s life. Namely, in mine.

I learned a lot about friendship over the course of training for this event, and over the course of completing it, my friends dominated my thinking, for the better. This happened in myriad ways throughout the race, but are best explained through my relationships with each of these people.

My dear friend Scott, a former collegiate cross-country runner and Nordic skier, was on hand for it all: for the long runs, when he played gear sherpa and hauled my stuff along the way to support me when I needed nutrition beyond what I could carry, is necessarily the first example of friendships that carried me through this race. Scott was on hand throughout the race, at the beginning to take my gear from me when I had to wear warm-ups (it was a cold start) up to the very last minutes before the starting shot, throughout the race taking photos of Kristi and I, and at the end snapping pix, giving hugs and high-fives in congratulations, and after the end, putting together a DVD slideshow of the pictures he snapped of Kristi and I along the way and setting it to the lyrics of Fischerspooner’s “Just Let Go”, one of my favorite bands and favorite songs, to the day after the race when he took me to dinner at an amazing white-tablecloth restaurant in Boulder. Scott has played coach, mentor, shoulder to cry on, photographer, gear sherpa, confidante, therapist and orthopedic specialist to me throughout the course of my training and the race itself. A day or two before the race, knowing full well he intended to ride the course and snap pix along the way, I emailed him telling him that I didn’t want to see him on the course, that he’d be too big a distraction, and that I needed to focus on the race and not on his presence. Aside from the fact that this was an incredibly heartless and selfish email, it was rude at the last moment to change the game plan: Scott was going to be there for the sole purpose of getting photos of Kristi and I along the way. Our weird history came into play with this request or, rather, demand: Scott and I went from attempting to date to attempting to be friends to me virtually shutting him out of my life to finally moving into a precarious friendship, and I wasn’t about to let all of this stuff come up midrace. So I did what I usually did: told him to, basically, go to hell.

Scott rode by me about four or so miles in; I was feeling good and unburdened and when I saw him haul past on his bike, trying to get out of my line of sight as quickly as possible, I called out to him. I told him, in halting speech while jogging, that he was fine doing whatever, that having him there was okay, and that the distraction was no loner an element I was worried about. And truly, it wasn’t. I would see him anyway, so long as he was taking shots of us, and I really didn’t want him scooting back and forth between Kristi and I trying to get pix of both of us and somehow avoid me as well. Somewhere in the midst of an incredibly selfish event, I broke out of my self-centeredness enough to realize how lucky I was to have someone in my life who would go to these lengths to try to make this a great day for me, and to give me something to remember it by. What the fuck was the matter with me, and where did I get off being such a bitch? It made no sense to be rude and bitchy and restrictive, and so I tried my best to let him know everything was okay. He nodded, said I looked great, I looked strong, and told me Kristi was about two miles in before riding off to snap more photos. I kept jogging.

Kristi and I met because I moved over to a cubicle about twenty feet from hers when I assumed my new position at Wild Oats. She was a great, positive, sociable person and we got to chatting about running a few times, culminating in her joining me along a stretch of one of my longer runs. We became fast friends to the point of getting matching tattoos the day before the race after picking up our packets at the race expo. We had a lot in common and we got along well, and she was a boon to my training. Her reports about her runs and asking for my advice was both influential to my motivation and awesome for my ego, which isn’t really fair, but it is true, so I’ll leave it at that. She’s a great person with a huge heart and a tireless spirit, and I love her energy and her attitude. Knowing she was doing the half—fighting her own battles, conquering her own demons, and crossing the finish line triumphantly—was a great motivator for me along my race, and her huge smile and crushing hug at the finish line totally made my day. I’ll never forget seeing her at the finish: my mom and sister were there hugging and kissing me, a bunch of my friends were there, and then she came up to me and said, “Hey, congratulations!” and for a second, I didn’t recognize her. I was truly that out of it. When I came to a moment later I grinned at her and hugged her and she hugged me and it was awesome. It was like having the older sister I never had, the force greater than myself looking at me and smiling and saying, hey, you did it, way to go, this is yours, own it, love it and wear it with pride. It may have been the delirium, but I saw all of that in Krist’s face and felt it in her hug, and it felt so good to have someone there who knew what I had just been through.

My best friend Katie and her fiancé Patrick were there too. Katie (KT) and I became friends because I was her tutor and we spent as much, if not more, time chatting and hanging out as we did doing schoolwork. Now I don’t tutor her as much but we’ve both, in the midst of our mutually-busy lives, made time for each other and have recognized the importance of our friendship. KT is, in many ways, the woman I want to be: she is much better at standing up for herself than I ever have been and she absolutely never backs down from a challenge. Hard-working, driven, motivated and relentlessly loving, she plays as hard as she works when she can and brings to her friendships a ferocity of loyalty that most people never know in their relationships with other people within the span of their lifetimes, much less within three years or so, as long as I’ve known KT. After a two-month long fight threatened to drive us apart permanently, we forged a peace that was sealed, for me, when she came to my birthday party. She and her fiancé were at the finish line, and while I was delirious and adrenaline-rushed and completely exhausted, the magnitude of that moment hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew consciously that she would be there, she’d TOLD me she would be there, but seeing her there, smiling and clapping and hugging me and cheering me on through the chute to the finish line, was indescribably amazing. I haven’t had a girlfriend whose devotion to me has been so strong in the entirety of my life, and I can’t begin to describe how profoundly blessed I felt at that moment.

My friend Mike was there too, an odd friendship also based in potentially dating as well, we’ve become friends through a mutual love and respect for Boulder’s top two sports: cycling and running. He’s the cyclist, I’m the runner. Having Mike there was great, another person cheering and clapping who knew my name and shouted it loud and strong as I crossed the finish line, another person who cared for me enough to take time out of his Sunday afternoon to come see me finish at Backroads.

My mom and sister were, of course, obligatory attendants, living fifty miles away or a decent hour’s drive north of Boulder. Still, seeing them smiling and clapping for me at the finish line gave me the best feeling. I was, again, delirious, exhilarated, exhausted and dehydrated but seeing the two of them there made it a prouder finish. My mother always envisioned me as the runner of the family, so it was awesome to see her so proud of me and so happy for me at the end of this race. Emily is my closest friend and knows me better than almost anyone else in my life, and having her there made me feel so proud and so loved. I am insanely lucky to have such a great family.

I did miss Jack. He’d come to the race but thought he missed me and left about ten minutes before I finished. I was upset and angered but at the same time, rationalized what had happened even while, infuriated, calling him and talking to him about why he wasn’t there. I truly did miss him, though; this is the thing about friendship: nothing can replace it and I think that choosing friends is a thousand times more important as choosing lovers …but while we’re becoming better and better friends, the lovers part is already in place. The truth of it is, nobody’s hug feels like your boyfriend’s or significant other’s or that neighbor’s who you happen to be dating; however you want to put it, nobody’s arms could have felt the same as his at that finish line. For that matter, when I turned up at his door half an hour later, the hug I got did feel pretty great. Having him there would have made the triumph that much sweeter. I did miss him, but my finish wasn’t lacking because of him.

The truest fact of a marathon or anything one has to rely one one’s own self to accomplish is that nothing can detract from its conclusion. You were there. You did the task. You took on the challenge and you completed it, on your own, whether you had nobody to greet you and slap high fives and hug you or whether the whole world showed up to laud your achievement at the end. At the end, you did it. You made it. You have to own it: every step, every aid station, every mile, every ache, every pain, every joint creaking, every hurt. Nothing can detract from that feeling of accomplishment.

A couple of incredible things:

*The volunteers and spectators absolutely made my day along the course. All along the way, every few miles, there was a crowd of people who donated their time and energy to cheering, handing out water and Gatorade, creating general merriment and encouraging runners along the way. I took every opportunity I could to thank them. They absolutely deserve a place in heaven for what they did for me at the marathon.

*Bella was right: “Stay though, and keep smiling”. My favorite Irongirl triathlete and I exchanged a couple of emails a few weeks ago when I was doing the last of my really long runs and she was training in Switzerland (God, the Internet is an amazing thing!). I slapped a smile on my face around mile 2 and the entirety of the race was easier. Thanks, Bella. I hope I get to see you race someday.

*I can’t begin to write down all the stuff that went through my head over the course; it was everything from Bella’s advice to wondering how sunburnt I was getting to what the next aid station would have for snacks (at a marathon the first few aid stations have just water and Gatorade, but they start proliferating their snack offerings after the halfway point and by the end it’s everything from bagel bites and pretzels to Snickers marathon bars and cut-up bananas and apples, as well as the requisite hydration) to how freaking lucky I was to be running this year on this absolutely perfect day (last year it was raining for this event) to cheering on other runners to strange food ideas (Gregory’s 2005 Wildflower run was spent dwelling on dreams of jambalaya; I don’t even remember what I dwelt upon but I know that at a few moments during the race I craved some pretty weird foods suddenly and instantaneously, like a full Thanksgiving dinner and peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cookies) to the usual checklist: how are the legs, how’s the back, how’s my form, how are my footstrikes, what can I do to alleviate this pain in this part of my knee, what do I need to relax more, can I finish can I finish can I finish?, to wondering what my cat was up to to…you name it, it went through my head at one point or another during the marathon. I can honestly say I did not think of the “war on terror” or any other absurd psychotic right-wing ultrapatriotic idiotic notion, although I did think of my friend Matt in Afghanistan and how much I miss him.

*I met a girl named Colleen during the marathon and we ran together for about eight or so miles. She kept me going, really, our pacing was well-matched and I dropped my 12 minutes of running then 2 minutes of walking routine to run with her instead and walk only aid stations. I lost her at a Port-a-potty when she went to the bathroom but passed her just before she reached the turnaround and we slapped five. I posted a quick little post on craigslist’s “missed connections” page, though I doubt she’ll see it, since I missed her after the marathon & we’d become decent buddies & had talked about exchanging email addresses. If I never see her again I still owe her thanks for pushing me out of my little 12:2 running comfort zone because I ran the rest of the race and walked only aid stations and I wouldn’t have done that if it weren’t for her. Thanks Colleen!

*I can’t begin to describe the perfection of the day for this race. It started out co-o-o-l-l-ld but beautiful, the reservoir shrouded in a light layer of mist. As I crossed the starting line in a sea of runners (most much faster than I!) I was hyper-aware of what I was doing and the enormity of the undertaking, so I started out the way I began most of my long runs: by walking. After less than a quarter mile I began to jog and soon fell into a comfortable pace. The serenity of the scene around me got to me a little and I choked up a bit watching the amazing trail of runners stretched out along the roadway in front of me and the crowd of runners behind me…and then I decided to get agitated by the fact that my MP3 player had run out of juice right before the start and I didn’t have batteries, and sulked along the first two miles, getting pissy about people having conversations around me a I tried to wrap my head around one of the songs I had on my MP3 player only to have it fade as another group passed me deep in conversation. I don’t know what the heck it was that pulled me out of my funk, but I finally looked up and around me shortly after the top of the first hill and mentally slapped myself a bit. Dondi, you’re being stupid. Look at this day. Look at what you’re doing. Snap the f*** out of it. And, fortunately, I did. That’s about the time I slapped a smile on my face and kept it there.

*Photographers are a lot more interested in you if you’re a goofball, and too many runners take themselves way too seriously. I called out encouragement to a few hundred runners who passed me and about fifty that I passed on the part of the course that involves a turnaround and kept doing so throughout the end. Some smiled and waved and shouted back, but most kept their grim, determined face set grimly determined and just kept on chugging. Man, what’s the fun in that? Anyway, the photographers loved me; I was grinning and making faces and pumping my arms in the air and flashing peace signs and thumbs-up and hamming it up for all of them and they loved it, I mean really, were cracking up and snapping photos like crazy. I haven’t seen any of the pix from brightroom (the event’s photography sponsor) but I hope they took as many as I think they did, and I hope I get to see them soon. They will be hilarious.

*Inspiration occurs in the oddest places. I passed a group around mile 21 walking and told them they looked great & strong and they yelled back that I was an inspiration to them. That about knocked me over, I felt so good. Then I caught up with a woman who was walking fast but walking, and it was clear that she wanted to be jogging. I started chatting with her, she was in pain and having trouble dealing, and in her forties or so, so really, it amazed the hell out of me that she was there. I mean, if I’m doing a marathon at forty-five, hell, my life is complete, I’ve been doing something right. She was upset, though, that she wouldn’t come in under four hours (I was pacing for 5:30 myself, and came in at 5:42:21, and happily), and after listening to her lament for a minute or two I stopped her, telling her how incredible it was that she was doing this atall and that she needed to stop and consider just how hard she was being on herself and how few people in the world actually do these events and complete them. She was crying a little but pulled it together and thanked me profusely. I left her a few minutes later but told her she needed to find me after the race & I’d give her a big hug. I was on the phone with Jack when she walked up & stupidly I didn’t hug her a bit wrapped up in my own friends and family, but she thanked me again and I congratulated her and told her she’d done an amazing thing & should be proud of herself, and nothing made me happier for that moment than seeing her, with her family around her, at the finish of the Boulder Backroads Marathon. Iw as so happy for her and so inspired by what she’d just accomplished…what we’d just accomplished…all of us.

A marathon is a solidly individual event: whether or not you join a training group, get a coach, join a club, train on your own like me, or whatever, you have to do the time. You have to put in the work and you have to make it happen. You cross the finish line on your own. When my brother and sister-in-law did the Charlotte Marathon they crossed the finish line together, holding hands, as they’d planned. Still, while they were together, BJ had to do his own run, and Kristen had to do hers. As steadfast as they were in their connection, their bond, and their togetherness, they each had to battle their own challenges and take on their own fears and concerns over the course of the race. BJ couldn’t do Kristen’s work, and Kris couldn’t do B’s. You cross the finish line on your own two feet, and after a certain point (for me it was mile 23), you get yourself there through willpower alone.

Adding to that, however, is an element of community that’s intangible, a network of bonds and relationships with people that get you through it all in the long run anyway. I ran the Boulder Backroads Marathon for myself, first and foremost, but it was the intrinsic and complex network of family, friends and acquaintances who got me through the race. I was talking with Scott about this because he has been the most physically influential person to my training, what with being coach/mentor/friend/therapist/sherpa/photographer and all, and I found that I couldn’t tell him that I wouldn’t have been able to do it without him, because I could have. Or could I?

Truth be told, I couldn’t have done it without Scott. I couldn’t have done it without the new shoes he loaned me the money for (no, really, I couldn’t have, my old shoes were the reason I sustained a nasty knee injury three weeks before the race), the indefatigable encouragement, enlightenment, advice from his training days, unyielding enthusiasm, tireless sherpa-ing during my long runs, putting up with my hissy fits and bratting out, and just generally giving me whatever I needed at the time: a hug, a shoulder to cry on, a bottle of sport drink, a packet of Shot Blox, a new pair of socks, a hand up from the side of the road when I over-ate and threw up massive quantities of energy bars, Cytomax and Shot Blox, a ride to and from the course, a steady hand, a smile, a few words of encouragement and a big hug at the start, gloves to keep my hands warm until I moved into starting position, and hands to take my gear bag, warm-ups and jacket so I didn’t have to ditch them along the way like so many other runners did. I also couldn’t have done it without KT and Patrick and their love and support and constant encouragement. I couldn’t have done it without my dad helping me out last season by being my sherpa in his car, hauling gear for me and waiting at every mile to give me whatever I needed: food, water, Gatorade, a hug. I couldn’t have done it without BJ and Kristen and their stories about their marathon, their support and encouragement, their love and their loyalty. I couldn’t have done it without my mom and Emily, without running that 5K with Emily a few weeks ago right after I hurt my knee and when I was really scared of running, doing that 5K with her & her being so strong and so supportive. I couldn’t have done it without my mother, letting me know that it was okay to drop out last year, whose gentle advice and tender support gave me the strength to call Lesley, the race director, from a San Francisco hotel room with tears dripping down my face after I’d injured myself badly just before the race, to let her know that I had to drop out. I probably couldn’t do it without Lesley understanding and appreciating my suffering and letting me carry over my registration to this year. I couldn’t have done it without Mike, who took me out for dinner the night before the race, whose energy and passion for sport both calmed my fears and neuroses and raised my excitement level. I couldn’t have done it without Jack, who gave me plenty of trouble during my training (“Claw, why do you DO this to yourself?” paired with a generous grin and, often, a quick rub for my shoulders, freshly sore from a recent training run) and kept me lighthearted when I was taking myself too seriously, put up with me for the majority of the scary part of training, during the long runs and the short runs and the three-weeks-before-the-race terrifying knee injury, during my freaking-out neuroses about the race, reminded me of the importance I used to place—and began to again—on meditation and writing in my journal, and who stayed with me the night before the race, virtually guaranteeing that between my tossing and turning while I did sleep and waking periods between those fitful bits of rest that he would get an even worse night’s sleep than I did. Not without the myriad spectators and volunteers along the course who admittedly were not there for me, or not just for me, anyway, but who made my race possible by giving me constant boosts with shouts of praise, excitement, encouragement and support. Not without Colleen, whose camaraderie made the miles between about 8 and 16 fly by without even thinking about them, or Marty, the woman I talked to near the end who was so upset with her race, who in letting me lift her spirits, in turn lifted mine. Finally, not without the people who weren’t there at the race but whose support along the way meant the world to me: Tom Grant, our Deli Category Manager at Oats and veteran marathoner, who gave me tons of advice and whose calm voice and steadfast spirit looked me in the eye on the Friday before and told me I could do it, and that he was proud of me; my department’s buyer and my close colleague Robin Hoffman, who not only is responsible for the fact that my bike still runs but whose general trouble-giving about my training, especially in the last few weeks after screwing up my knee fired up the “oh yeah, well screw you, I’m GONNA run that marathon!” spirit in me and who was the second person in my office, after Tom, who I came to show my finisher’s medallion to, my boss Bobby and my director Betsy, who both praised me so effusively I blushed at both occasions, when I saw Bobby early in the day and when Betsy came by my cube later; my cubemate Toni, a constant source of enthusiasm, excitement and praise before and after the race, my friend Gary, an incredible athlete in his own right who will probably never do a marathon due to injuries sustained over his life but who would love to do one and who left me a voicemail that brought tears to my eyes three days before the race and reminded me that I also needed to consider all of the people whose dream it was to run this race but who would never accomplish that dream; as well as all of the rest of my friends at work: my fellow Goats Peter, Betsy, Laurie, Jim, Kelly (ok no longer at Oats but still a Goat and a dear friend!), Jackie Healy, who’s done Backroads and had great advice for me & Kristi a few days before the race, my “never give up” Bolder Boulder buddy Zoya, Todd, Chris D and Chris C in Holistic Health, Ana and Troy, whose little girl I baby-sit, who have become like a second family to me and who have been nothing but wholeheartedly supportive and loving during my training, my cruiser guys Del and Bobalicious, who have lovingly though wholly dubbed me insane but have stood by me, though at a safe distance, I’m sure, Richard, Pat, Denine, Marsha, Erin, Mitchell…this list could go on forever or until e-blogger cuts me off for taking up too much space on the Internet. My most heartfelt and loving thanks go to you all. I truly could not have done it without you.

Last but not least: Gregory Menvielle, whose athleticism and pursuit of triathlon (despite the fact that, if you believe him, has a running form akin to a beached whale being chased by Japanese fishermen) has been an unfailing inspiration to me and whose advice, assistance, encouragement and support have been elementally instrumental in my achievement of this goal over the past year and a half. I cherish and value my friendship with Gregory, and not just because if I ask nicely he brings me wine and soap from France when he goes home. Genuinely, he got me started running again (you can’t date an Ironman triathlete if you have any background in endurance sports and NOT get back into them, as I found) when we started dating and now that we are friends I am incredibly grateful for that. Watch for him to crush the competition, at the very least in the swim, at Ironman Roth in 2007.

“First”…because there’s many more to come. I didn’t mention that at various points along the race up to and including at about mile 25.5 al I could think was, “I can’t wait to recover so I can do this again!”? Well, that’s another blog post altogether.

Happy training…

Motivate!

I really am quite lucky. At the tender young age of 24, I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I am surrounded by natural raw beauty everywhere I go. I am also surrounded by incredibly skilled, talented, hardworking and determined athletes, and I am further blessed to count a few of these people among my friends. There’s nothing like getting advice from a pro: whether or not it ends up benefiting your training or working for you in the end. There’s something about getting advice from somebody who’s not only been where you are, but are so far above and beyond where you are that the issues you’re dealing with aren’t even among their considerations or concerns anymore.

Gregory, for instance, has been training hard to get himself into spectacular shape for his next Ironman triathlon in Roth, Germany in 2007 (God forbid he’d register for a race somewhere in America…where I can actually go see him race!). He’s dropped a ton of weight and despite the demands of running his company, taking on new clients (and keeping the ones he has happy) and having a good amount of his support system in Chicago, California and France, continues to train like a pro. Having recently completed the Horribly Hilly Hundred in Chicago (see http://frogblogging.blogspot.com for more details) he continues to work on his swim-bike-and-run with amazing drive and spirit.

My buyer and close colleague Robin led a team of fellow Oats employees thru one of the crappiest weekend the MS150 has seen in years: cold rain, hail, thunder and lightning storms and the requisite infinite flat tires, wet pavement, mildewy clothing and soggy cycling that comes with the kind of weather they had to battle. In spite of it all the entire Oats team made it thru the entire 150 miles and came back to work in high spirits and with boatloads of great ride stories to share.

My most recent friend Scott is truly a blessing: he has a heart of gold and the most enthusiastic spirit I’ve ever known. Aside from sharing a wealth of common interests outside of sports (Happy Thursday cruiser rides, electronica & dance music, creative expression, teaching, living in Boulder, etc.), we share similar loves for cycling and running. Scott’s a brilliant athlete and a will-be pro cyclist, as in, is working to get his points to turn pro some time in the next year or so.

Scott, as well as other friends of mine who are close to me and know my demanding training schedule, have all voiced concern in regards to my motivation lately. It seems as though my self-deprecating comments and the joking pot shots I take at myself, the athlete are distressing my dear friends, increasing their fears of my attitude towards training and causing undue alarm. So the point of this post, really, is to allay those fears.

When you get to know me well enough you’ll eventually understand that I give myself shit so that I continue to push myself harder. I’ve never been one to respond to sweet talk or spoon-feeding when it comes to motivation or coaching. While I have a great awareness of my body and can fully appreciate the necessity of coddling myself when I am injured or otherwise removed from training (like the past week and a half when I haven’t gotten anything serious done due to the root canal and pain therapy I’ve undergone recently), the rest of the time I pretty much need to be smacked around to get myself really moving. When I was considering taking on the Leadville Trail 100 this August, I asked Gregory to be my support crew because he knew exactly what I would need: to be kicked when I’m down, so to speak. After enough miles on my feet the only thing that keeps me going is anger. I get pissed off at myself, start yelling at myself and ride the adrenaline rush that is triggered by the emotional release. It works well for me.

I am not, however, a generally angry or upset person; my main motivators aren’t fury and rage but much more rational thoughts. I am nowhere near the shape I need to be in to complete the upcoming marathon in September, and while I know this now, I don’t beat myself up much about it. I jokingly do, but realistically I know that I have over two months to prepare and by the time the marathon rolls around I will be in great shape to take on the 26.2 miles. If I stress too much about this I get discouraged, so I don’t. I do have an arsenal of motivators that keep me going, though, and in the interests of assuaging Scott’s fears, along with the concerns of the rest of my friends and family, I’m going to take this opportunity to share them:

1) My main and most important motivator is myself. I feel better when I train. I feel better when I put in the time for myself to run, whether it’s a quick 3.5 mile loop or a weekend distance run of much higher mileage. I feel better when I do my legs lifts in the morning, when I eat to support my training, and when I do my strength training and cross-training workouts. I simply feel better about everything else in my life when I am actively working to be more healthy, active, and fit.
2) I train because I love to run. I really do. After years of rejecting running because of being forced into it as a kid, I run now because I love the feeling of my feet hitting the pavement, my heart rate dancing around its optimum to properly accommodate the activity I am doing, the pace of my steps matching the music on my “Nikepod”, the feeling of sunshine and wind and the air outdoors energizing me.
3) When I run, I usually quite easily slip into “the zone” or “the runner’s high”. For me, it’s more of a zone thing; the runner’s high doesn’t really exist. I say this because I don’t feel high but I truly do feel kind of transported out of the world and onto a different, maybe even a higher, plane of reality, where all of my footfalls, my breathing, my pacing and my movement are coming together to allow me to really enjoy my run. A lot of the time I struggle, but I keep moving because I know that that struggle is going to give way to something greater, to achieve an experience I can’t create and maintain on my own in my day-to-day life otherwise. One moment, you’re really struggling, your breaths are ragged, your pace is all over the charts, your form is floppy and your footfalls are sagging. Then it all comes together, and nothing else matters but the movement of your body and everything in that movement working cohesively to create this amazing experience. It’s otherworldly and unreal.
4) I run because it allows me to experience this beautiful place that I live in. I get a greater appreciation for Boulder and its incredible beauty and idyllic setting when I run. When I run it gives me the opportunity to entirely appreciate this beautiful town, exorbitant rent and all.
5) I run because my family is proud of my running. Unlike some of my less-fortunate friends, my family is supportive of my training, sympathetic to my trials and ecstatic about my achievements. I am grateful for the dogged, relentless and unconditional encouragement of the people I love the most.
6) I run because it keeps me close to people who care about the same things I do. It’s like anything else: the activities you do, the events in which you participate and the lifestyle you live determine the people that surround you. Now that doesn’t mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that I surround myself solely with athletes and endurance runners. My friends are as varied and colorful as the music I listen to; they are an eclectic mix of people from all walks of life. I find that, however, I tend to attract fewer smokers, serious drinkers, partiers, etc. Now, make no mistake, my friends and I know how to party with the best of them. But it’s not really the lifestyle they, for the most part, live. Generally speaking, while my friends range from a conservationist in Kenya working to maintain the population of large predators to a self-made businesswoman in Superior, CO working to achieve her bachelor’s degree in psychology to the food-loving culinary geniuses I work with at Oats, there are a few trends that seem to run deeply within all of us. We all share an enormous respect for and devotion to the environment and generally maintain an approach to our lives which encourages sustainable growth and the development of preservationist mindsets and outlooks. We are, generally speaking, left-leaning and liberally-thinking. We all prioritize healthy, natural living. We also all prioritize fun. My friends and I tend to take a “you only live once” approach to life as much as possible and, while our lives’ restraints don’t generally allow us the kind of extravagance that comes with this mindset, we try to live life to its fullest at all times, as much as possible.
7) I run because it reinforces my three major beliefs in life: 1) everything happens for a reason, 2) never ever ever ever ever ever ever regret, and 3) for all we know, this is our only shot, so we might as well enjoy it as much as possible. Running tends to quietly reinforce these beliefs in myriad applications: I run because I am training for a marathon, but I also run because it supports the more important goals and objectives of my life, to live healthfully, to be happy, to be strong, and to take care of myself. Running “happens” because it fits in perfectly with everything else that is important to me. Running comes with no regrets; how can you possibly look back on a good run and say it shouldn’t have happened? Consequences that occur on bad runs, e.g. nearly getting hit by a car, sustaining an injury, etc., all happen for a reason, and are learning opportunities, so there’s no reason to regret them either. Running is one of the most enjoyable things I do, so it innately becomes a part of living life to its fullest, by being an activity that completely, fully, and perfectly integrates into my life.
8) I run because it is one of my passions. I can’t really explain this much more, except to say that I feel absolutely incredible when running; I am completely and totally and fully happy.
9) I run because it reveals my weaknesses. Physically, of course, running shows me what I need to work on and how I need to accommodate my body’s idiosyncrasies. More importantly, though, running reveals my mental and emotional weaknesses. It shows me what it takes to push me to my limits, to test me, to tear me down, so that I can perform past my limits, pass the tests, and build myself back up.
10) I run because it gives me my “me time”. I never realized how popular I am or what a great circle of friends and social life I have until recently, when I found myself genuinely craving time on my own. Running gives me that time, and nobody and nothing can take it away from me.

Now, motivators for the marathon are a bit different, but they’re all positive too. A quick run-down:

1) I want to run a marathon for myself, so that I can achieve that goal for me. This is first and foremost.
2) I want to run a marathon for the bragging rights. I want to be able to say that I did it, that I accomplished this. I want the finisher medal, the postrace jubilation and the Avery beer pint glass.
3) I want to run a marathon as the basis for the LT100 2007.
4) I want to run a marathon because it’s the next logical step.
5) I want to run a marathon so that I never want to do an Ironman. 
6) I want to run a marathon to prove myself to the naysayers.
7) I want to run a marathon to make my family proud of me.
8) I want to run a marathon so that I can eat loads of carbs in the meantime and work them off in training!
9) I want to run a marathon to be in the best shape of my life.
10) I want to run a marathon so I can say I ran on with Dean Karnazes.
11) I want to run a marathon because it brings me that much closer to my idol, Bella Comerford, and her achievements.
12) I want to run a marathon so that I know what I am capable of achieving. No more “what if” or “if only I could”; instead, “I did” and “I can”.
13) I want to run a marathon for my parents, who can’t, and for my friends who think they can’t. Hey, if I can do it, anyone can!!!

Later on, everybody. Happy training!

On Wet-Road Criteria and Motivational Challenges

Over the course of the past few weeks my training has intensified. I often show up at work or work "events", happy hours and dinners and farewell parties and such, limping, bruised, or otherwise off-kilter due to some training tragedy or another. Nothing too crazy, just a sore ACL here, a jacked-up ITB there. Aching Achilles (yep, just couldn't resist the urge to alliterate there), tender quads...you know, the stuff that requires icing and a bit of rest but not much more than that. I feel a bit pathetic sometimes especially in Boulder, Land of the Endurance Athletes Extraordinaire. Like I have anything to complain about, or be sore about. The injuries I sustain, in comparison to those the pros take on, are nothing but tiny bumps in the road, little scratches. I get discouraged sometimes, not so much by what's been happening to me but rather by my "pansiness", that is, my inability to deal with these traumas effectively, especially in light of the experiences of some of my friends.

My most recent friend and absolute treasure Scott, cyclist extraordinaire on the brink of turning pro, has a huge heart and a spirit whose enthusiasm, charm and raw beauty is very nearly overwhelming. His talent, drive and spirit are balanced in such equal proportion that greater forces at work in the universe seem to take care of him: at his criterium last Saturday, the July 8 North Boulder Park Crit, the wettest race I've ever personally witnessed during the wettest few days I've ever seen in Boulder (seriously, it NEVER rains like it did in the past week), instant karma prevailed in circumstances that, after understanding how they unfolded, further assured me that this man IS truly as incredible a person as I thought. He must be, for the greater forces of the universe to behave the way that they did...

I've only been to one other criterium, at the CSU oval in Fort Collins. A criterium is a fixed-time lap race where competitors try to complete as many laps as possible within a given time. This particular race was 60 minutes and the conditions were less than ideal, to make the understatement of the year. The streets were absolutely sodden; I spent ten minutes before the race start just trying to position my bike and my gear beneath a tree to keep them from getting TOO waterlogged. I have no rain gear whatsoever and Scott, thinking this thru before I even raised the issue, brought several rain coats, an umbrella and a chair for me to sit in to watch the race. Aside from being a kick-ass athlete and amazing cyclist, the man has a heart of gold, truly. At the race start Scott was five or six back from the front of the pack, and I was stoked. Before the race he told me he wanted to position himself near the front because if he did he would stay there for the race instead of having to chase. In a race where the conditions virtually guaranteed a crash, chasing is a nightmare if not impossible.

Despite the rockin' start, somewhere between the second and fourth lap something went terribly wrong and Scott got pushed to the back of the peleton. I immediately felt for him; I knew that this wasn't his plan and was certainly upsetting and frustrating him. As I tried in vain to take a decent shot of him with my new digital camera (let's put it this way: action sports photography will never be a career option for me unless the object is to be homeless within a month!), Scott pushed on lap after lap, maintaining the distance he'd been pushed back to behind the pack but gaining little ground. The slick roads made for treacherous turns and rendered chasing highly improbable at best.

At one point I began chatting with a couple who were cheering for the race leader, a leggy cyclist in a maroon-black-and-white University of Indiana kit. I learned that he was their son and, in the spirit of damp-spectator camaraderie, clapped for the kid as he rounded our corner a couple of times. I was talking to his father, who had his back to the race and was in midsentence when I, watching the race over rhis shoulder, spotted the kid go around the next corner...and then I heard "Fuck!" and a cycle crash. "Exuse me," I interrupted, after noticing that the kind never emerged from the corner, "but I think your son just bailed." The Dad took off immediately and nearly took out the peleton that was passing by at the moment. I mean, really, even if your boy's hurt, you don't jump out into the middle of a crit unless you really WANT to get run over and/or fuck up the whole race. I stood, waited, watched and cheered, and expressed sympathy when I saw Dad and Junior return, Junior bearing some nice road rash that wan't part of his original ensemble and swearing intermittently.

After the race Scott detailed the reason behind his falling back to the end of the pack. As it turned out, the leader literally shoved Scott out of position and jostled him from his spot to gain entry into the line of cycles Scott was in. Basically, he shoved my boy out of place and bullied him out of his spot. Now, in normal cycling circumstances, this is to be expected. Cyclists routinely attack...using elbows, threats, whatever. Under the conditions, however, cyclists--or should I say, smart cyclists who aren't out to take down the entire peleton--don't attack, at least not using the methods this particular asshole did. Other cyclists in the pack even yelled at the guy for it, while my buddy was pushed wayyy back out of the pack and forced to chase for the duration of the race.

Instant karma got him though...whent he kid went down on one of his last laps. While I never wish anyone any ill will, I have to say that in light of what he did to my friend, I was definitely cackling maniacally in my head and thinking, you totally deserved that, you prick.

Despite it not being his best race, Scott was elated to have me there...and I was elated to be there for him. His next race, a time trial up Boulder Canyon, proved to showcase Scott as the cyclist he is: he finished 15th on one of the most brutally hot days of the year. I didn't go this time, citing fear of heatstroke, though I did try to get a friend's car so I could go watch. I look forward to seeing Scott's races as much as possible in the future. If there's any greater motivator than having a pro cyclist as a close friend and watching him race, I don't know what it could be.

Speaking of motivators...oh, well, I think that might be subject for another post...

Near Miss

However that phrase originated, it’s purely wrong. Not that it really bugs me personally, but it does make me crack a smile whenever I hear it, thinking of how accepting we are of twists in our language. It made me smile, that is, until I was almost the victim of one myself today.

This reminds me of the Sedaris essay “I Almost Saw This Girl Get Killed”. This is what I can say now, smiling, joking, and incredibly grateful that my brush with death was only a brush. Boulder is so pedestrian-friendly that sometimes we forget, as pedestrians, that cars can and will hit and kill you. There’s absolutely nothing like seeing someone get hit by a car. It’s absolutely horrifying to witness, especially if your lifestyle depends on waling and cycling everywhere, since it’s an instant reminder of just how vulnerable you are. I saw a cyclist get creamed on Valmont once, right near where I live, and it was absolutely awful. The cyclist was heading towards me, there was a truck coming up behind him, and I was on the other side of the street running. I looked up, gave the cyclist a little wave, he gave me a little wave back, and I returned to my usual practice of looking at the ground about 3-4 feet in front of me. I didn’t look up again until I heard brakes squeal. The driver of the truck was on his cell phone and had swerved into the bike lane without knowing it. The cyclist went flying through the air like a rag doll and hit the asphalt hard; I remember seeing his head bounce and being instantly grateful that he had a good, well-fitting helmet on. I was far enough away that by the time I ran by an ambulance was on the way, but it was heart-wrenching. The driver of the truck was out with a passenger and the cyclist on the road, and they weren’t moving him for fear of damaging him further. The driver and passenger looked stricken, completely devoid of emotion, while the cyclist’s face twisted in agony. I said a silent prayer for all of them and then one for me, to never, ever let that happen.

I run the same route a lot, a 3.5 mile loop around my apartment complex. I love it; it’s my route, and it’s easy to turn it into a five mile, 7 mile, 10 mile, 13 or 14 mile, etc., depending on where you cut off the loop and/or how many laps you do. Got home from work today, threw on my running clothes, and headed out. I was trying out a new sport drink and the combination of “performance enhancers” (no, no EPO or anything too exciting; sorry everyone, more like caffeine and taurine and creatine) in the drink were causing my heart rate to soar unexpectedly and quickly, so I decided to pare down my 3.5 to a 2 mile and chill for the rest of the afternoon. I was scheduled for a rest day; I just felt the need to get out and go when I got home. I didn’t really care that my workout would be cut short; my heart rate was definitely the more important issue at hand. I walked a bit, jogged a bit, and took it easy until I got to the corner of Iris and Folsom, which is (for those of you outside of Boulder and.or unfamiliar with my route!) about ¾ of a mile from my apartment on my usual route. I was watching traffic turning left onto Folsom; while I had the right-of-way, I was running East and it was about 6pm, so the sun was setting behind me. I knew drivers would have a hard time seeing me, so I approached the intersection with caution. The first car turning left turned in front of me, completely oblivious to my presence. The next car was a black coupe, maybe a Mazda 323 or the like, and I swear, that driver made eye contact with me. I swear he totally saw me. I swear he was going to let me go first, and I realized, as I was bringing my left hand up to wave “thanks”, that he had no fucking clue that I was there.

You hear weird things like “it seemed like time slowed down” and “I saw my life flash before my eyes” and I didn’t see any of my life flash but it did seem like Hollywood’s greatest slow-scene production crew was in charge of my life for a minute there. Less than a minute. One moment I was running along, perhaps not gracefully but certainly peacefully, and the next I was face-to-face with a half a ton of metal coming straight towards me. My eyes were popping out of my head; I’m pretty sure my Oakleys were the only thing keeping them in. The driver finally (finally!) saw me and I saw his eyes widen and his hand drop the cell phone he was holding to his ear as he wrenched the wheel and slammed on the brakes. I distinctly heard brakes squealing, smelled the hot, horrible pungency of burnt rubber and stopped in my tracks, a total deer in the headlights. I saw the car turning, twisting, coming towards me, and I was bracing and waiting to feel the impact of the side of the bumper and the front driver’s side quarterpanel shattering my kneecaps when, by some miracle, the car stopped. I was so ready for it to hit me that I had braced myself so that when it did stop, my hands came thudding down on the hot hood. Shaken, I backed away quickly, my steps slipping out from under me as my legs turned to rubber. The music playing on my Nikepod (my word for a Nike PSA, stolen from a man who told his son that that’s what the device I was wearing was, when the kid asked if it was an iPod) seemed to come rushing back all at once, and I blacked out for a few seconds.

I blacked out running though, and although I don’t remember getting through the rest of the intersection and onto the opposite sidewalk, I got there somehow. I do remember falling over on the sidewalk, my legs falling under me and then getting up, feeling stupid and weak, dragging my liquidy legs over to a couple of 4x4s surrounding a tree on the sidewalk, sitting there, the music rushing around my head, completely unable to stop shaking or crying. I finally got it together enough to start home again, and as I started to run again, the familiar pace and footfalls brought me straight back to the near miss. I started to cry again, and the rest of the way home went like that…run a bit, cry, walk, run a bit, cry, walk. I was a mess.

I hope this doesn’t continue to haunt me but it sure scared the hell out of me. That’s all for now; I need to go to bed…

The B360 and the Joy of Cross-Training

Contrary to perhaps popular belief, one doesn't ready herself for a marathon by running all the time. First of all, you increase your chances of injury and second of all, it's about as exciting as watching grass grow, running 6-7 days a week. I try to schedule at least a day of cross-training each week to mix things up a bit and give my body a rest from running, which is a brutally high-impact workout. Today, I decided, after assessing the feelings in my knees and Achilles tendons (which have, oddly, been acting up a bit), would be a good day to go cycling.

Cycling in Boulder. Three little words that fit together rather perfectly. Given the generally mild winters, perfect spring and fall and usually warm-to-hot summer weather, it’s easy to see why the town is Mecca for world-class cyclists and triathletes. Being a commuter whose sole transport is my bicycle, I greatly appreciate this, as well as the fact that, given the town’s general trend towards wholesome, healthy, outdoorsiness, Boulder boasts an incredible network of bike paths, both unpaved and paved, bike lanes in almost every road, and a usually fairly bicycle-friendly vehicular community. People in this town who’ve lived here for more than a few months are quite used to stopping in the middle of the street to allow pedestrians to cross. It’s just what you do.

Sadly, I’ve not been a very good “cyclist” per se. That is, I have been riding my bicycle around this town for years and have stuck mostly to the bike lanes and roadways rather than the paths. I have little idea where these paths are and even less of an idea where they lead to. As I am a person who’s usually—unfortunately—in a hurry to get to where I am going, I don’t generally ride random bikeways to see where they lead to. While I pride myself on my sense of navigation (okay Gregory, I know I’m going to hear about this from you) I know that after a few turns onto connecting paths I’d be hopelessly, utterly lost.

So when I found out about the B360 and B180 bike tours that were to take place today as part of Boulder’s celebration of Bike Month, I figured it’d be a good way to determine where at least some of the trails go. The B360 is a 19-mile (actually, 21-mile, as a newfound friend’s bike computer reported) loop starting and ending at one of the town parks that threads all over Boulder. The B180 is a 14-mile loop that does the same thing. I packed a bag, filled my Camelbak, slathered on sunscreen and took off on my awesome Bianchi cruiser. Upon arriving at the park I registered for the 360 and, shortly thereafter, took off amidst the crowds of families with kids on tandem bikes, attachments, kiddie bikes, cruisers and trailers, and the rest of the cyclists: the real cyclists who are decked out in head-to-toe Pearl Izumi gear, Oakley/Smith/whatever the flavor of the week is sunglasses, helmets and $4000 - $5000 roadbikes; the cruisers (a small contingent of the regular Thursday evening cruiser ride, complete with blaring sound system); and the posers, who were decked out in the same gear as the real cyclists but weren’t in anywhere near as good shape or rode anywhere near as fast as the real cyclists. Wannabes, I guess.

I learned a couple of things on the ride today:

1. Boulder is NOT a cycling democracy. There’s a hierarchy that has been established and carefully guarded here, and you know your place really quickly. At the top are the real cyclists, who don’t care enough about what anyone else is doing; they’re out for their own ride and don’t pay attention to you as long as you stay out of their way. Next are the mountain bikers and cyclist commuters, people who ride daily or often and/or spend significant amounts of their free time seeking out new trails and riding them. Next are the posers, and last are the families. The cruisers round out the bottom but mostly because they are usually inebriated and often, quite loud as well. The posers think they are up with the real cyclists but they haven’t attained the speed, endurance, or shapeliness of calves that the real cyclists have, so they’re just bitter when you pass them. Especially if you’re on a cruiser. I got a lot of dirty looks today, an unexpected and rather surprising occurrence, considering this event was billed as non-competitive and wholesome fun. I wanted to say, hey man, don’t get pissed at me, get your ass out on your bike more often, but by the time I’d have gotten all that out I would be wayyy too far ahead of them for them to hear me.

2. People are just stupid sometimes, and you have to live with that. Despite the fact that this city, for its size, probably boasts a more intelligent, intellectually-based population than other cities, there are a few morons who you just have to put up with. There were the couple on the tandem bike, who after announcing they were passing me and assuming a place in front of me, slowed down considerably, forcing me to pass them only moments later. There was the father of some sizable family, three or four little kids, who decided a good place to stop was the pickup to a path that was only as wide as his bicycle and trailer and therefore, stopped the flow of cycling traffic altogether. There were the students tubing in the creek who thought it best to, instead of lounging on the soft grass under the shady trees along the creek path, stand in the middle of the bike path instead. When my friend Mike clipped a woman who we thought was moving out of the way with his rearview mirror, I was neither surprised nor apologetic (yes, I get apologetic about my friend’s screwups). Rather, I was wondering what on earth they were thinking wandering about the bike path while hundreds of cyclists per hour whizzed by from every direction. And we were going slowly! And, while I greatly appreciate GOBoulder’s organization and support of this event, there was the idiot raffling off prizes who kept putting the tickets that went unclaimed back into the pot, therefore lengthening the raffling process by about fourfold.

3. Life sometimes surprises you nicely, and when you least expect it. I was heading up around 28th Street minding my own business, when a man on another cruiser pulled up beside me. We joked a bit and I eventually pulled off my headphones and stuck them in my bike basket, and we chatted for pretty much the rest of the ride, though he had to slow considerably a few times to allow me to catch up to him. Looking at his legs I immediately discerned why: he sported the cut-muscle calves and perfectly toned thighs of a real cyclist. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out & getting to know each other, and eventually exchanged numbers to get together for a ride or hike sometime. I can’t keep up with him to save my life on a serious ride, but it will be fun to have someone around town to ride or head to the hills with for a good hike or the like. Making new friends is never a bad thing.

4. Boulder…is…so…beautiful. Riding around all of these trails and paths I’d never been on, heading up around Wonderland Lake and down in south Boulder by the Mesa Trail that I run on occasionally, discovering all of these cool little paths and places I want to return to, once again rejuvenated my love for this town. It’s expensive, it’s weird, it’s politically absurd and it’s full of crazy people, but man, do I love this place. What a fantastic day. What a beautiful ride. What an amazing part of the world I live in! I am so blessed!

5. Anytime Glacier sponsors an event, I need to go. Because that means I get Glacier at the event. Especially when it’s free!!!

I did have an awesome ride. I passed a lot of people and managed to maintain a good clip for the whole ride. Mike said something about riding at 23 miles an hour but I think he was either joking or we were downhilling at the time. Regardless, when I started, I was concerned, having gone out at a relatively fast pace, roughly equal to my commuting speed (which I believe hovers between 12 and 18 miles per hour) thinking I maybe overdid it at the start and would therefore have some trouble finishing i.e. come in quite slowly or would end up bonking in the middle and be unable to finish the ride at all. But maintaining a pretty good speed I actually did quite well for nineteen miles (or 21...). Since I don't generally do any lengthy rides it was nice to get out and know I am capable of riding 20 miles, within a relatively short timeframe, maintaining a pretty decent pace. I CANNOT become a cyclist, however. Too expensive, too many snobs and too much weird clothing to have to purchase. I remain fiercely devoted to my 22-lb. Bianchi Milano, the celeste-green "Cafe Racer" and (in my opinion) queen of cruisers everywhere.

So that’s all for now; my hamstrings and quads are tired and my bad knee hurts a bit, but overall an excellent bout of exercise, a good ride, a beautiful day, a new friend, and ice cream at the finish. Life doesn’t get much better than this!

The Bolder Boulder 2006

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.

Update/Bella Poseur!!!

OK today was a nice lil' doubleheader...perfect for a beautiful Sunday in Boulder that got cloudy and stormy and nasty just as I finished. Lucky me. I got a great five-to-six-mile hike in at Flagstaff followed by a very nice six-mile run at the Res. Well, six miles according to the Boulder Backroads race chart, which I hope is right, since it's my big ending race this summer.

Awesome day. Nothing aching, couple of things a little tight, but nothing a decent stretch sesh and some yoga asanas won't fix.

Interesting aside: coming back from the res I saw a female cyclist...on a bright electric-pink bike...and as I rolled down the window to shout something encouraging her way, I looked at heer closely and realized...she wasn't Bella. I don't think so, anyway, unless Bella's grown her hair out and dyed is dark brown. Anyone reading thi blog is familiar with my mild idolization of Bella Comerford, the Triathlete Extraordinair who's a couple of years older than me and is easily spotted by her electric-pink bike whenever she;s out riding. Confused, I went home and checked out Bella's site...and she has a new, black bike instead of the pink one. It'll be harder to spot her around town, and now I'm wondering who the Bella Poseur is...that was not a bike that would be affordable to the common man...or woman...

Anyway, that was my day; I hope it's the catalyst for a training turnaround.

Runner's High

There is a line in one of my favorite movies of all time, "Fight Club", that I love to apply in training. I don't remember how it starts, but it's in the scene where Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are in the car with a couple of other Project Mayhem junkies, and Pitt says to Norton, "[something, something, something]...and just let go!"

I completely, totally forgot. The euphoria of the moment. The absolution of letting go. That cherished time of total freedom, where the world exists between my footfalls on the pavement and the sweat beading on my brow, and nowhere else. The space between steps is a confession, the steps...forgiveness.

This might seem dramatic to those of you who haven't experienced a runner's high. One moment, you're a panting, heaving, sweating mess. One moment, all you can do is try to keep the ragged breaths coming, the air moving in and out, the legs pumping, seeming to slow with each step, muscles cramping, joints starting to ache and buckle, things hurting in places you didn't know existed. And then...all of a sudden...

Total freedom. Complete annihilation of everything else. A clear mind, paired with a focused decision to finish the course. A right to total abandon. It's an almost spiritual experience, especially considering that I haven't been particularly close to any higher power lately.

Instead, I've been feeling the higher power in my legs, my lungs, my ability to give myself entirely to my training. It sounds absurd, and maybe it is. But what I absolutely KNOW is that my love for running is back. And I have never been happier.

A Shift in Priorities

The last time I evaluated my race schedule for 2006 I was hellbent on doing the Leadville Trail 100 as my "A" race. Well, things change sometimes, particularly when your body is telling you there isn't a chance in hell you're going to be biomechanically sound enough for an ultramarathon in five months. It's just not going to happen.

So the race plan now is: Fort Collins Marathon on May 7, Imogene Pass Run on September 9, and Boulder Backroads Marathon on September 24. The fact that I was already registered for Backroads--after having to drop out last year--and that it was a scant month after Leadville was definitely a factor in the decision. Imogene is a psychotic trail run up Imogene Pass averaging about 17-18% grade (take that, Alpe d'Huez!). so I think it'll be good prep for Leadville next year.

Next year...next year...

Top Ten Reasons I Love Living Alone

I was never very good at being alone, until quite recently. I always had a boyfriend or a roommate, sometimes both and sometimes both who are the same thing, but I’ve lived alone for three years now and never been really good at it. Well, scratch that, I let a boyfriend move in, for six months, that was a bad idea. OK anyway, so, I’ve never been good at living alone. Lately though I can’t imagine life with anyone else in it. OK, well, not everyday life, definitely.

So here it is, the big top ten reasons I love living alone:

1) Nobody can complain about my cooking, except for my cat. And she doesn’t.
2) If the place is a mess, it’s my mess. I’ve had an unusual amount of people over to my house recently, which has become cause for some embarrassment, but nothing I’ve been horribly ashamed of (yet).
3) Eating, sleeping, reading, cooking, watching TV, surfing the web, surfing Match, returning emails, writing, relaxing…in a bathrobe, pajamas, or naked. Who’s gonna stop me, huh? (Yes, I keep the shades drawn, much to my neighbors’ relief.)
4) Roo. My little cat, who greets me at the door when I come in with leg rubs and tiny little squeaky meows. Not to mention that my favorite animal to sleep with, spoon with, and hang out with, has been for the last five years, and always will be, my cat.
5) Absolute self-sufficiency. Anything I fuck up, I’m accountable for…but only to myself.
6) My toilet seat remains exactly where it is supposed to…down, with the cover on top of it.
7) This is hard to describe, but the place is entirely mine. Everything here belongs to me, from the painting given to me by one of my college friends to the last stick of furniture to the cheesy “Mocha Latte” relief print I have hung in my kitchen. Everything here speaks something about who I am, even if it’s just stating: “poor former college student still living the impoverished lifestyle”.
8) Singing along with Jimmy Eat World or…anyone I want to…anytime I want to…without worrying about disturbing the peace (I got lucky; my living room backs up to a dead wall).
9) Writing whenever I want, without a guilty complex about the potential for waking my partner.
10) My peanut-butter-and-cheddar-Goldfish habit. I love to get a small plate full of cheddar Goldfish and a tablespoon overloaded with peanut butter and scoop up some peanut butter with one Goldfish and stick it to another and shovel it into my mouth.

My ex hates peanut butter. Go figure.

Two thousand six

Aha. Time for the real training to begin. Single, writing hard enough that I am seriously scared to even let my doctor look at my wrists for fear she'd send me to some specialist lockup where I would be wearing braces for the rest of my life. I'm restless and running is difficult. I feel sometimes trapped, sometimes isolated, and rarely do I know what to do. My brain feels trapped by my heart, which is finally starting to heal a little. In an episode of Sex and the City Miranda asks, "How long until I start to get back to normal?" I'm starting to think I'll never get back to normal. In fact, I'm starting to question what normal entails and why on earth it's so NORMAL to be hurting and crying and aching and at the same time be so grateful for my friends and family, who've let me cry and wail and scream and be pissed off and then be elated, who have gotten me through this nightmare of a breakup and helped me realize I'm going to be okay. These wonderful people have also, in addition to whatever shreds of self-confidence are still left in my brain, have helped me to emerge raw and pained and slowly, slowly becoming real again. In this really fucked-up world, this must be what passes for normalcy. The dream relationship, the dream house, the dream family with the 2.6 kids and the dog, the white picket fence, they're all just what you make of it. Normalcy doesn't really exist. It's just this idea you have that allows you to get by while you're busy living through a life that's less than everything you want it to be.

Tripping Over A Cosmic Inquiry

Sometimes, it's better to just admit defeat. Especially when it's the universe who appears victorious over you, vanquishing your merely mortal form with a flick of a cosmic fingernail.

I was feeling really good training about a week ago. After sustaining various ailments and other unpleasant winter-type experiences (nearly frostbitten a couple of times, dodging SUVs when their drivers, pleasantly sedated by the heat of their vehicle's warm interior and the tryptophan from Thanksgiving leftovers caused them not to notice the jogger at the side of the road, albeit my bobbing headlamp and reflective running pants, pissy hip flexors, difficulty getting warmed up...followed by the greater difficulty of TAYING warm), I was havigna good, relatively solid week of getting back on the road. With Leadville 8 months away and counting at least half of January out due to prior commitments, I really needed to, well, get the lead out, to abuse a pun that's becoming too well-known to me lately.

Unfortunately after a decent warm=up walk/jog on Saturday I was justgetting into my planned 10-20, depending on how good I felt, when my lungs started feelign as though I'd either smoked about four packs of cigarettes immediately prior to heading out OR they'd been napalm'ed. They felt awful, burning wretchedly and aching something crazy. My favorite Frog was kind enough to bring back French goods he knew I'd like (especially since two of the three items he delivered were expressly requested) from Paris, but he was also kind enough to bring back bronchitis, I tihnk just to see if my winter-training immune system was up for it. Any victim of a long-distance relationship can attest to this: when your significant other has been gone for the better part of the past two months, you don't let a little think like bronchitis keep you from physically attaching yourself to them as much as possible when they are around, so of course, a week after he got home, once I figured I was either safely immune or contaminated and combating it beautifully, it hit me where it hurt...in my training. After sidelining me from that run and keeping a steady flow of coughing and wheezing the following day, I submitted to being ill, went to my doctor and received an antibiotic and a bottle of high-octance cough syrup. Yea me.

My cosmic joke wasn't over, though, it had really only just begun. The next day, Tuesday, I decided that, instead of wake up the very Sleeping Frog and get him to drive me to work, I would just haul his bike down from its hanging place in the storage closet in his garage and take it instead (yes, she the bronchially disturbed, brilliantly making this decision. The Universe was just shaking its head, marvelling at my stupidity even at my inclination to DO this). So I headed out, got into the storage shed, and after trying in vain several times to get it down, I examined the situation more closely. The bike hung by its front tire, which is, for those of you who've never been on a bike before (er...yeah, remaining politically correct here), the steering mechanism and therefore, the part of the bike that moves most. Consequently no matter how much I tried to pull it down by its frame I wasn't going to be successful; I had to find some way to maintain the wheel's position and get it over the hook. Now, mind you, it's 8am and I'm not a morning person, I've barely brushed my teeth and hair and I'm still wiping sleep from my eyes and looking forward to the bagel I'll be enjoying in a few minutes once I get the bike down and make my way over to the bagel shop near Gregory's place. I steadied the front wheel with my left hand, the frame with my right, and for one perfect moment got the bike up off the hook and started to bring it down from the sky of the storage compartment. Relishing my victory, I began daydreaming again about the bagel...and my moment was gone.

The Universe, I believe, reached out and tipped the wheel personally. I really do. Why else would the bike's wheel have turned? Well anyway, the front wheel went one way, the frame went another, and in the midst of trying to bring the thing down relatively quietly my shoulder twisted awkwardly. Pain bloomed up like blood in the ocean, like the color of the water after a shark-vs-surfer fight. I could taste it, like old pennies, as I brought the bike down and extracted my arm from its forward element. I am praying that the words that escaped my mouth at that moment weren't very loud, because I'm pretty sure my boyfriend will be evicted on grounds of his potty-mouthed significant other swearing in public view before dawn if anyone heard me.

It was all downhill from there. I still had to get to work and I had an adrenaline high from knowing that and injuring myself, so I locked the storage up, hastily got my bagel and rode to work...carrying a 40 to 50 lb backpack and leaning over the bike's handlebars because the seat was too high for me and wouldn't go down any further, so reaching the pedals required serious utilization of my injured shoulder. I didn't really known how bad it was until I got to work and a few hours later kept blinking at my screen because I was seeing stars. My boss insisted on taking me to the hospital, where I was informed that I probably tore my rotator cuff and God knows what else, was given a sling and a small prescription for painkillers and told to rest it as much as possible. Not easy when your primary form of transport is a bike, your job requires typing all day and you're an active poser---I mean, wannabe endurance athlete. Oy.

So the past few days have been interesting. I've become very good at riding my bike one-handed and holding my arm against me so as to minimize movement of the shoulder. My regular doctor gave me a bigger prescription for painkillers and told me that I hadn't torn it, probably, shot a load of cortisone into the joint to help it move a bit better and told me to rest it for at least a week because I'd at best sprained it badly and needed to, at the very least, take it easy. I wanted to tell him I'd trade him his car for my cruiser but this is a guy who's done the Vermont 100 and rides to work every day so he can jog on his lunch hour. This is what I get for trying to do something nice.

Somewhere, faintly, I can hear the universe laughing at me. It's a big ol' belly laugh too.

Boulderized

There are fairly few days when you can complain about living in Boulder, CO. The weather is almost always fair or just absolutely beautiful, the town itself is quite pretty, and the residents, for the most part, make for excellent eye candy at their worst. Being one of the healthiest places in America definitely has its perks.


It is so beautiful today, I’m sorry Gregory is in Paris (though I’m sure he’s not). A storm is blowing in over the mountains and just barely the edges of the visible foothills are being dusted with snow. Yet the temperature hovers around fifty and the sun is shining, giving the whole effect an absolutely surreal quality. The storm clouds are brown and grey but thin and wisping in slowly from the Western slope, and south of Boulder is where the snow starts. In town, the wind is up but the sun shines brightly, and I saw five cyclists out within a four-block radius of my workplace while out on my lunch break, at least two of whom were pro or pro-quality. I love this town.

Getting Back on the Asphalt

Yeah, the expression is "getting back on the horse". I don't ride horses. I never have. The very few times I have mounted an animal of the equine persuasion, I have been under the guidance of a trail boss or like authority, and I've been riding an animal which, for all intents and purposes, is dead. Its only real reason for existence if it gets to the stage where people like me are riding it is to plod about wearily in a circle.

Getting back on the asphalt, after two weeks of heavy-duty training followed by three weeks of heavy-duty-fighting-a-nasty-infection-swarming-all-over-your-mouth-nose-and-throat, is rather a cumbersome adventure. Instead of showing you just how far you've come, it shows you just how hard you can fall.

Your lungs give in after twenty paces. Your legs move like rubber appendages fighting very dense water. And when it's below freezing it only gets better! Any heat you're generating is going straight from your lungs to your heart where it spasms, mostly poofs away and then tries to move into your outer limbs, which might as well be the outer limits of the solar system in terms of the efficiency of your body heating them. As your fingers begin to resemble Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto, your face begins to resemble Mars: red, puffy, marred on the surface by breaking blood vessels in the seriously cold December morning in Colorado.

Yet, the wannabe ultrarunner prevailed. Yes, she did ten and a half miles in about three hours, which, when translated to marathoning pace gets you disqualified at about mile twenty, but she prevailed nonetheless, running about 30%, walking/joggin about 70%, and trying to just keep going 100%. It's that last part that counts, right?

Somewhere, a Frog is laughing at me.

King Kong

From the San Francisco "Chronicle":
In remaking "King Kong," Peter Jackson added 90 minutes to the running time and nothing to the experience. It doesn't matter that his new film can't take the place of the original -- no one should expect that, and that's not the problem. The problem is that, just on its own terms, the film is overlong, repetitive and lacks impact. Even if this were the first gorilla-in-love movie ever made, audiences would come away vaguely dissatisfied, suspecting there was an intriguing idea buried somewhere in here, but it didn't quite come off.

This was about on par with what I felt about this movie. The problems weren't that Jackson used special effects in creating the feel of a 1930s-ish film, the problems were the gross inaccuracies represented by trying to roll together an action movie, a romance story and a period film all at once. Examples:

-I was absolutely blown away that Naomi Watts was able to be flung about the jungle, tossed around by multiple tyrannosaurus', sprint about the jungle and never get any scratches on her hands, face or feet. She didn't have much more than a couple of jungle-dust smudges on her...I bet Britney, Christina, Jessica and the like would KILL for her secret. I mean, c'mon now. Also, that dress has to be made of the sturdiest material on the planet. Most quick-drying too. I wonder if Peter Jackson would tell me what they used to I can make my next pair of weatherproof pants from it.

-The story didn't QUITE get there. I mean, I haven't seen the original, so maybe that's unfair, but the whole love story between Ann and Kong didn't QUITE make it. And she tried really hard, too, and the production crew went nuts trying to make him appear sad, bummed, humiliated, tormented, etc. And they did a tremendous job. It might be just a little far on the the side of ridiculous psychology for me.

-Jack Black's Carl Denham didn't drop the camera on the tripod while being chased by a stampede of brontosaurus'. Nonsense. Poppycock. I don't care who you are or how into your craft you may be, you will always--ALWAYS--save your life before any and everything else. I also thought it was pretty lucky that he wasn't trampled.

-The gunfights were absurd. 'Nuff said.

-Adrien Brody is an amazing actor; he even did well as an "action hero". They could have used him to flesh out the movie a bit more & make it more interesting as well as believable. A bit of dialogue between he and Ann could've done this; it wouldn't take much. A bit more utilizing his skills period would've been nice.

But I must say this as well: for as insane an actor as Jack Black is, for as much as I adore him as the lunatic music geek in High Fidelity and as much as I love his crazy antics in School of Rock, I thought he showcased very, very well in his role as Carl Denham. He managed to skirt the edge of genius, doofus and madness with exceptional skill and charisma. I look forward to seeing him in more roles that get him out of the typecasted goofy-comedy-actor bit more.

The Wish List

Fa la la la laaaaa...

...la la la la!!

So my Christmas this year is all about family. The ubiquitous flying frog/giant freak (see The Frog Blog for more details) is going back to France for much-needed time with his papa (he got enough time with his mother braving the outback in Australia for a month I'm sure) and some much-needed physician examining of his messed-up shoulder and the pinched nerve in his neck (yes,I have tried to tell him we have physicians here in the States). Anyway, thought I'd post my wish list, will be good for some laughs more than anything:

-A membership to Boulder rec centers. Boy am I sick of paying to swim every time I want to go! Especially when all I want is an indoor hot tub...

-An mp3 player of some sort. It doesn't have to be fancy or have a lot of space (no nanos please), 60-120 songs would be nice but nothing crazier than that; if you DO actually want to get this for me PLEASE don't get me an iPod (a recent adventure to Cherry Creek Mall to get my boyfriend's iMac repaired provided an excellent demonstration as to their flimsiness and if I have to spend anymore time at the Apple store I'll kill myself and take several associates down with me. The bored-teenage-who-will-perpetually-know-more-than-me-about-everything-with-their-gaping-stare look and attitude gets really, REALLY tiresome. Said mp3 player will also need some sort of lasso for an arm or necklace, as I need it primarily to keep me from dying of boredom while running.

-UnderArmour, UnderArmour, UnderArmour, or better yet justa Dick's gift card for UnderArmour. Winter in CO can last thru May; there's no telling when my training will be back into shorts season & one can never, EVER have enough UnderArmour.

-SmartWool socks. One more item you can never have enough of.

-A waterproof, windproof, semi-breathable, light shell for layering over all the UnderArmour.

-Another pair of Mizuno Wave Inspire shoes. Runner's rule: One pair are nice, two pair are better.

-An Amphipod of my own, so when Gregory starts training again we don't have to fight over the water belt.

-French lessons. The Rosetta Stone CD series is fine; I just want to learn so I can speak to Gregory's mom without sounding imbecilic again. AND it'd be cool to be legitimately bilingual.

Ummm...pathetically, that's pretty much it. All I want for Christmas is training gear. GCs to REI, Dick's, The North Face, etc. are always appreciated. Happy training!

Powder!

There's the running, the riding, the swimming. The three keys areas to train for endurance sports, plus a bit of weight- and strength-training as well. This is why so many distance runners turn to the real dark side of endurance sports and become triathletes...you can't run all the time, so you mix in a bit of swimming and cycling for cross-training days and then you figure, hey, I'm already doing so much of this stuff, why not just combine it all? Next thing you know you're camping in the woods of central California to take part in a bizarre event called Wildflower and/or counting ounces of food you consume as you prepare for your first Ironman. This is why, as far as I'm concerned, "triathlete" is just a four letter word with some extra letters tacked on for good measure.

My cross-training hasn't been any different, aside from the fact that when I swim I resemble some sort of interspecies mix between a manatee and a Britney Spears dance remix...so instead I just do kickboard laps back and forth to minimize the pain and suffering I'm inflicting on everyone else with my thoroughly humiliating breast stroke. But for the most part, swimming and cycling make up the activities on those blissful days when I don't have to run, but still have to train. This weekend, however, presented a whole new experiment in cross-training...an old friend's coming into town before shipping out with his detachment to the other side of the world, and his brother and sister-in-law living in Dillon, CO, with immediate access to four major ski resorts, gave me the opportunity to spend Saturday on the slopes.

Matt and I were in several of the same classes in college. We hung out a lot and became fast friends; we've remained close since our graduation and his departure for the Army. Matt's brother, Ryan and sister-in-law, Jill, moved out here shortly before our graduation and hopped from a loft in LoDo to a house in Evergreen to a fixer-upper in Dillon. Ryan's the town barber in Frisco, scant moments away from Dillon and home to the Breckenridge ski resort, and Jill opened up her dental pratice there as well. These are some of the most incredible people I've ever known...honest, sincere, intelligent, attractive, funny, and above all, down-to-earth. I'd met Ryan and Jill when they first moved to Colorado and when Matt asked if I could come up for the weekend to hang out and ski and hack around with these guys, what could I say but yes, absolutely, I will be there. I mean, who couldn't use a mini-break before the holidays?

Matt is as awesome as he always was even if he is reading the latest Oliver North book, and Ryan and Jill are just as much fun as I remember from a few years back. They and their two dogs, Oscar and Lenny, made me feel completely at home when I arrived following a terrifying drive through a freezing blizzard on I-70 that became much less terrfying once I got Gregory's XTerra into 4-wheel drive. We got dinner, had a couple of glasses of wine and then retired, me and Matt on couches in their living room. I ended up sharing the down blanket I was using with Lenny, which was fine as long as you don't mind a midnight facial moisturizer of drool and sloppy kisses.

Matt and I embarked to Copper Mountain the next day, one of four in the immediate vicinity of Dillon. Arapahoe Basin, Keystone, Copper and Breckenridge were all within minutes of the house and it had been snowing steadily since the previous afternoon, guaranteeing at least six inches of fresh powder on the slopes. Passes and skis in hand, we geared up at the bottom of the mountain and headed up.

Poor Matt, the guy used to be a ski instructor and he was stuck with me, the "advanced novice". I've skied enough to know what I'm doing, but not enough to do it well, quickly, or gracefully. I would gaze with envy at other skiers flying by me, looking as if they were floating over the snow, as I painfully attempted to traverse the slope. After the first few runs, I told Matt I'd meet up with him for lunch so he could go enjoy his day as well. He argued for a few minutes, then gave in, gratefully...for both of us. As much as I enjoyed my friend's company and as much as I missed him, this was his vacation too. I really wanted him to enjoy it.

Without watching for Matt ahead of me and feeling horribly self-conscious about my devastating performance, I actually began to improve. The conditions couldn't have been more ideal with a good six-inch base of fresh powder all over and several feet in soem places. If you're unfamiliar with skiing in Colorado or wonder why the heck people fly all the way out here to do it, you haven't experienced powder. In contrast, skiing anywhere else is miserable due to the heavy, sluchy, often icy snow that forms in most places. Colorado's altitude and desert-dry conditions create the lightest, driest, fluffiest snow in the world, to the point where we classify it into more categories...Steamboat Springs, for example, the hardest-to-get-to resort in Colorado, and also the one you really, really don't ever want to leave once you've been there, boasts its "champagne powder" conditions, which is literally the driest snow you can find. While this may sound a bit batty, you can't judge it until you've tried it...and once you've skied in Colorado you will never want to ski anywhere but powder conditions. We get slushy stuff too, but not usually until late in the season. Winter is really just one massive powder party in the high country, setting the bar for top-notch skiing worldwide. By the end of the day even MY turns were much easier and more quickly handled and I began to feel quite comfortable in skis again, in part due to the conditions, in part due to the skis, and in part due to the fact that I'm not incredibly horrendous and, as this was for me, as much about training as it was about having fun, I put my entire focus on making it a successful day. My knees were infuriated and throbbed with the completely different range-of-motion activities they'd had to accommodate but now, one day later, they feel okay...but my calves are killing me, a spot that never bothers me when I'm running. It was really nice to get away from my usual training and hit the slopes in pursuit of some beneficial cross-training that also reminded me of other muscles that needed to be exercised as well...and of course, to hang out with some of the most amazing people I've ever known. Unfortauntely, skiing is an expensive hobby and one I can't afford, but given that the passes and rental was free (thanks to Ryan and Jill; I owe them a really, really big one) AND I had a fabulous place to stay, this weekend it was the ideal retreat.

Now, home to Roo. Thanks for reading!

Bonk, bonk, bonk...

I hate that word. Even as a word, completely disassociated with me, I hate that word. I always preferred "crash" or "hit the wall". "Bonking" just sounds too...playful, too innocent. Too easily confused for something pleasant.

"Yeah, man, I totally bonked back there."
"Really? Was it fun?"

I mean, you know, the first speaker turns and looks at the second as if they're an idiot, and the second is looking back at the first like, hey man, you're the moron who used a word that sounds like a second-grade recess game rather than the shutdown of one or more major necessary systems of your body during a workout or race. Bonk. Bleeeecccchhh!

Anyway, so I bonked today. Badly. It was not at all pleasant, though I do plan to remember what it felt like so that maybe I can get a leg up on it next time. Unfortunately, there was nothing significant about it...one minute I was rolling along, smooth as can be, all systems go, the next minute I was falling onto the sidewalk feeling as though my guts had just been wrenched from their rightful place and the world was doing cartwheels over my head. One minute I was contemplating just how far I'd run along the mesa trail and pondering the feeling I would have if I could do it start to finish and get back to Gregory's house, a full 21 miles, the next minute I was trying not to black out and feigning being fine to concerned motorists who'd pulled over to try to assist me. I eventually scrambled to my feet enough to hobble to the East Boulder Recreation Center, where, once the world stopepd spinning I was able to purchase a bagel from a machine there and sit and eat long enough to get back my legs...and my torso...and my head...and finally, nearly an hour later, was able to walk slowly back to Gregory's house where I found him not out in the car frantically looking for me, not checking his voicemail to hear I was in trouble, not trying to call me on my cell phone, but fast asleep. To his credit, I told him I'd be okay and if I really HAD been in that much trouble and had been unable to get home I would've just called repeatedly until one of the phones woke him (or, better yet, opted for a Yellow Cab), but I was too exhausted and too out of it to even give him too much crap...a few glancing blows from my overtly sarcastic tongue and then I was half-asleep cradled in his arms.

More to his credit, he was the dream boyfriend...ladies, if you're going the endurance sports route make sure that if you don't have a man who's doing them himself, you have one who can be sympathetic or at least, quiet while you're dealing with your shit. I wouldn't have wanted to come back to anyone else for sure...Gregory was concerned, curious, questioning and comforting, everything you need after a nasty workout.

The really lousy part was, it wasn't a nasty workout. It was an awesome workout, until the very end when I crashed and burned...but when that happened, it scared the hell out of me. What if that happens at Leadville? What do I do then?

Well I guess I have a good nine months or so to find out...

The Last Time I Did This...

...was wayy, wayyy back in late July or early August during my preparation for the Boulder Backroads Marathon, which I (sadly) had to skip due to a bum knee. I was in training and did a sixteen-mile run with my dad along as my domestique and then a few weeks later headed out for sixteen at the Res and ended up doing eighteen, not so bad except it pretty much defined where my knee was at...and that was, basically, not in shape to do any sort of endurance race anytime soon. I was so frustrated, especially when I saw Dr. McCarty, my orthopedic doc, and he told me my pronation wasn't so bad and that I just had patellar tendinitis and a bis of ITBS. How could something so little hurt so much? I was wincing walking downstairs, for goodness' sake. I headed into a lengthy and ill-advised bout of self-loathing that more or less culminated in my starting all over again, at least that's how it felt. Gregory gave me some exercises to do, simple leg lifts and things like that, and this weekend, after doing what seemed like a years' worth of leg lifts and short runs (<5mi each time) I set out to attempt something a bit longer.

I was going for twentyish but the wind was SO bad in Boulder I could barely breathe, and since I left late, was planning to meet Gregory at a South Boulder trailhead to finish and, oh yeah, had left the keys to both my place AND his with him, figured I'd probably better cut out a 3.5 mile loop I'd planned and head back to south Boulder, after running clear up to my hosue in north Boulder from, essentially, Gregory's doorstep. I would be down to around sixteen but would rather do a solid sixteen than be hurting on the last six, especially as I'd be running with my Ironman-in-training boyfriend, who with three weeks left before his race has somehow mutated into this superhuman with legs I would kill for and absolutely amazing form. No, really, I would. Anyway, I was stoked to be doing 10:1s by the sixth mile after dealing with straggling lungs for the past few weeks, and even more excited that when my knee hurt, I was able to modify my step to work with it, and most excited of all that it really didn't hurt all that much. Ninety leg lifts four or five times a day for the past few weeks has paid off.

I have also started to pare down my considerable gut with routine ab work and move into a better eating schedule, as well as monitor my water intake because I am the most dehydrated person on the planet. I went for a hike with the Goats today and for some 4.5 miles was really wondering if I could just start running up and down the trail. I just wanted to move. I felt really good, and I haven't felt this in a really long time. I feel more centered, more focused, and more motivated.

Because Gregory is lying in bed behind me right now giving me loads of shit about being really happy for her, I've got to put in massive congrats to Bella Comerford for her third win at IMF. It seems to have been a rough year for her and I'm really stoked that my nonchalant heroine tore it up in Panama City. Way to go Bella!!

Not only did the leg lifts and stretches I'd

The Sore Loser and The Eclipse of Reality

Almost immediately after I ran the Bolder Boulder; that day, in fact, Gregory gave me a login to Pyrasports, an online training tool and workout log program he'd created some time ago to keep track of his workouts. He got me to the login prompt, then placed his laptop in front of me, indicating that I should create my account. I did so, with the username "soreloser". It was a joke then and still is now, but a good reminder whenever I log in that that's exactly who I SHOULDN'T be...a sore loser. I wasn't at the Bolder Boulder and now, with one week of marathon training to go before I stat tapering, I need to keep that in mind more and more. Especially since today's run caused a major reevaluation of present circumstances, as well as a drastic change of plans.

Today was supposed to be a twenty-miler. I got up at five-thirty, had half of a whole wheat bagel, a large glass of Gatorade, and a small Nalgene full of Driven, my latest and greatest discovery: a pre-workout performance cocktail that does for aspiring runners what Long Island iced teas do for aspiring drunks. Anyway, it's great stuff. I was stoked, I was ready, I headed out around seven to the reservoir. First I had to setup my halfway-point rest stop, where I'd be able to refill my bottles. In addition to the 32 fluid ounces of Accelerade and water I was carrying on a hydration pack strapped on my waist, I left another 20 ounces of Accelerade, 20 ounces of water, and another small Nalgene full of Driven packed in bags of ice at the ten-mile point of my run. I felt pretty good, and as I headed back to the starting point, I forced myself to focus in on the task before me.

Focusing on ANYTHING hasn't been easy over the last few days. My life as it was got rudely interrupted by terrible news of a violent crime committed against my sister several days ago, and things haven't been the same since. She's all right, thank God, just badly shaken up and at the time, totally terrified, and the perpetrators of this heinous offense were caught and will have their day in court where, hopefully, they will be sentenced to decades in prison for what they did. However, the incident brought an eclipse over my life that wouldn't have been there otherwise. Reality as I knew it was suddenly blotted out as effectively as the moon overpowering the sun's rays during those incredible events, and I've been operating in a state of relative shock lately, getting little to no sleep, jumping at any noise in the middle of the night, dealing with awful, lengthy, and brutal crying jags that tear out all of my energy and leave me empty. I got to go see my sister today, thankfully, just seeing her and getting to hug her and love her and be close to her will greatly improve things for me, I feel. But it's had an effect on everything.

Including training. Not sleeping much the last few nights as well as the general upset my digestive system has been going through has taken its toll, and I had to leave the start twice to go home and go to the bathroom. Once my bowels and bladder were, I figured, finally empty, I scurried back to the start. It was almost nine-thirty, and very nearly too late to begin a twenty-miler. At best, it would be very, very hot by the time I finished. I gritted my teeth, pulled on my visor, and set off.

After less than a mile my shins began to throb with the splints I've now begun to associate with the patellar tendinitis and ITB syndrome that's been plaguing my left knee lastely and dumped me out of training for a month. Frantically I sped up, slowed down, stretched, tried to sit for a bit, then start going again. Nothing helped. Finally, nearing a rest area behind Boulder Reservoir, I made my decision. I would have to drop out of the marathon.

"Failure is not an option" is a great mantra, especially in endurance sports, but the difference between smart athletes and stupid athletes is that some of us know that that mantra means that true failure is proven by never starting in the first place or becoming so discouraged that you just quit altogether, and some of us only recognize the goal ahead of us. The smart ones modify their training schedules, go see specialists for recurring problems that impede our training and/or our health and, if and when necessary, modify the goal or drop it altogether. The stupid ones continue doggedly until they injure themselves so badly they're looking at months if not years in rehab and physical therapy, surgery, and possibly the outcome that they'll never be able to do their sport again. I've pushed the envelope of being the smart athlete, in part because I'm just a poser, as Gregory likes to say, and in part because I have modified my training schedule, seen a specialist, slowed down, taken time off, and gone as slowly as possible to accommodate my training. I made it eighteen miles last week. That said, I walked ten and ran eight. My knee was nearly shot by the time I finished, and I was gasping in pain whenever I had to take on the slightest downhill incline.

When I reached my decision today, it was a moment of absolute clarity. It made sense. It is what I have to do, so that I can keep training, so that I can keep running, so that I can go for a marathon later this year and then explore the possibility of Leadville further as I increase my training...the smart way. By adding distance gradually and upping intensity carefully. By not overtraining. By listening to my body. And most of all, especially in light of what happened to my family over the last few days, by remembering that there are about a zillion things in this world more important than the completion of a marathon on September 25 or, for that matter, anytime.

I am going to finish this post, log off, and go to my Pyrasports account, where I will modify my set goal. Then I will go to Backroads' website and change my registration to the half marathon. On the plus side, I will get to run with Gregory. He is 99% certain he is going to do the half, so we'll get to do it together. IF he can keep up with me, that is...

After all of that is said and done I am going home to shower and feed the kitty and then to see my sister. It's amazing how important these things seem...until something else happens to make you realize how incredibly stupid your little run is, in the grand scheme of things. In the past four days, I've been given the opportunity to realize my injury is bad enough that I need to bow out of a run of a distance that could cause permanent injury. I've also been given a second chance to be a better sister, and a reminder of just how great an opportunity that is. I would give anything to be able to go back and erase those minutes, those hours that my sister spent terrified and threatened and fearing for her life, and anything to be able to take away the future trauma that's in store because of this. But I can't do that. So the best I can do, the only thing I can do, is try to be the best sister I possibly can be. That's a lot more important than anything else in the world ever could be, and I know that now.