NOOOO FEARRRRRRRRRRR! Am I right?

First off, a round of applause for our good friend Showtime, who finished her first 10-K in last Sunday’s Marine Corps 10-K.  It was a pleasure to text her at 6 AM from my start line to hers, telling her the basics of making sure she was prepped for the race (“Don’t forget to poop first.”).

So how did it go for me?

<sigh>

It did not.  Or rather, it went, for about 8.5 miles.

And then the calf balled up into a giant mass of evil nonfunctioning concrete, and the Ace Ventura leg and I hobbled to the med tent.

There was a little bitter weeping as well.

Anyway, Marine Corps Marathon didn’t go that great, and JFK isn’t going to happen for me.  Altogether, the relatively constant injury roller coaster is killing me.  So. No more running for a while, and definitely no more races until probably Boston in April.

Which means that I hereby declare the end of The Running Log.

You see, I had been considering keeping the magic happening until after JFK, but since that’s not happening, I suppose we just subject the blog to a good old-fashioned mercy-killing.

I suppose I’m being a bit dramatic and Debbie-Downer, fine, OK.  But it’s essentially a break-up after two years with the blog.  As for running, we’re “taking a break from each other” after more than a decade of constant togetherness.  I get sick of it hurting me.  It’s sick of me leaving hair on the soap and making that gross phlegm noise every morning.

It was a long time in coming, needless to say.

Anyway, before I bid farewell, I ask you to join me in looking back at the good times, which is only respectful at such a time as this.  We’ve been through other injuries.  We’ve written a romance novel (and have subjected my parents to the uncomfortable fact that I can, in fact, write a sex scene).  We’ve written a cookbook.  We’ve learned how to take a good race photo.

These, friends, are valuable lessons, all.

And so I bid you, dear readers, farewell by refusing to end this blog on a low note.  Instead, I shall end it by treating you to one final lesson:

How to deal with disappointment.

Sometimes races don’t go your way.  Sometimes they only have Powerade at the aid stations, and you spend half of your marathon experience with a heavily acidic stomach throwing tantrums inside your abdominal cavity and sending you into every single portapotty along the racecourse, and a few shrubberies as well.  Sometimes your clothing chafes a good half-pound of skin from your body and you are sweating and bleeding and in brain-twisting PAIN for hours on end.

Sometimes you’re just slow.

Sometimes you don’t finish.

This is part of the bargain.

Say it with me:

This is part of the bargain.

Welcome, friend, to the land of affirmations.  Find yourself a reassuring statement or a dozen, and say it over and over.

This is what you signed up for.

And this is true.  When you sign up to be an incredible high-caliber athlete like yourself (yes, YOU, sweetheart), you also sign up to have incredible high-caliber failures.

Part of being superkickass is having problems superkickyourass.

Totally true.  Buck up.

Listen up, self: if you were awesome all the time, running wouldn’t be a challenge.

Again, totally true.  Yeah, you could perhaps just casually toss off 3:20 marathons, but it would hardly be fun anymore.  It would just be like taking out the trash or sorting socks or breathing.

Don’t get me wrong; being awesome all the time really IS like breathing for me.

Well, duh.  Agreed.

But seriously: if you constantly kicked ass, people wouldn’t even believe you were real.  They’d think you were an android or the liquid guy from Terminator 2, and they would therefore run in terror when they saw you or try to drop you in a vat of liquid nitrogen, or maybe the government would come after you and try to find the Secret Of The Hardcore Head-Exploding Awesome and kidnap you and bring you to a trailer in New Mexico, where a team of helper monkeys would subject you to a battery of humiliating and grueling tests while government scientists behind a two-way mirror stroke their chins and say things like, “OK, turn it up to 11,” or “This time with more peanut butter,” or “The subject has truly kickin’ gams.”

That is an excellent but awfully long mantra.  Maybe try shortening it a bit.

Pain is temporary.  Glory is forever.

OK, now you’re just phoning it in.

Runners are guaranteed a place in heaven; they live their hell on earth.

I just vomited in my mouth a little.  Plus I think you got that from a No Fear t-shirt, circa 1995.

There have been other races, and there will be other races.

Now that — that is true.

My dear injured running friend (and I by now recognize I’m essentially talking to myself in this post and you readers are all just along for the ride), before I sign off for good, here is the thing:

Things will all work out, as they always have, ever since that first hamstring pull at the eighth-grade conference track meet.

You will again feel the thrum of your massive quads as you power up Macarthur Avenue, past Glen Echo, on a magical, foggy Saturday morning 30-mile run.

You will again power past the Reston Runners on an ultramarathon course somewhere, and you will do the “suckit!” gesture at them as you spray gravel all over their day-glo yellow shirts.

You will again run so much that your metabolism ‘splodes and you find yourself putting your face in a pan of peanut-butter-and-bacon-and-cream-cheese enchiladas every night.

You will rebuild the nasty-looking, knobby calluses on the backs of your heels.

My dear, beautiful animal, my final instructions to you are simply this: keep your chin up and your elbows in and your knees pointing forward and your strike on your midfoot and your stride with minimal bounce.  Find someone you can stand running with for hours at a time.  If you get tired, pull over.

Drink some beers.

Get lots of sleep.

Ice often.

Get fitted for good shoes.

Start slow.

Don’t forget to poop first.

Running. Ace Ventura. Two closely related concepts.

WEATHER: Snowing.  I shit you not.

MILES: 0.

MILES THIS WEEK: Too few.

WHERE TO: O God.

MOOD: O God O God.

TODAY’S RUNNING SONG: <vomits and dies>

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

Where have I been for 2 weeks?  I have been nursing the strangest and scariest injury ever, which I can only call “The Clubfoot.”  The Clubfoot struck one night at a hot and sweaty yoga class.  I was busily leaking all of the moisture from my body, most of it coming out of my facial region, and also (likely due less to my warm, limber muscles, and more to the lubrication provided by having every limb of my body coated in a mixture of sweat and whatever bacteria resided on my rented mat) putting my right knee up over my shoulder, when suddenly…

“<blank>,” said my right leg.

“Huh,” I said.

“<blank>,” said my right leg again.

I extricated myself from my knot, and realized that from the knee down, my right leg was…well…

<blank>

Gone.  No feeling, no power.  Useless.  And so I did what any intelligent person would do: I raised my hand, politely told the teacher that I had a minor but pressing issue, and that I had to duck out, and I’m very sorry, but this class was wonderful!  Thank you!

BAhahahahahahaha.  No.  What I did was let my pride RAGE for 15 more minutes as I lamely attempted to fake it through the rest of the class.  Remember that scene in Ace Ventura 2 (which I know you have, like me, seen two dozen times) when Jim Carrey gets hit with all the poison darts, and he is forced to scamper through the forest, with his limbs dangling uselessly from his body?  That’s something like what I was going through.

“Warrior 2!” yelled the teacher.

I picked up my right leg with both hands, said a quick prayer, and heaved it forward.

“Blond girl!  The one hemorrhaging sweat from her ponytail!  You have to twist into it!” said the teacher, turning my torso around and positioning my left elbow on the outside of my right knee. “We do have a ‘restorative’ class, you know. It’s pretty much 45 minutes of naptime,” she whispered as she eased my chakras open gleefully rent my achilles tendon.

“You have defeated me,” I said. “I salute you, evil merciless yoga harpie. Now release me from your spell and smear me with Ben-Gay.”

After a visit to urgent care (“It’s plantar fasciitis,” said idiotic-and-frazzled doctor #1.  “Are you sure?” I said.  “It’s plantar fasciitis,” said idiotic-and-frazzled doctor #2, sprinting into the room and reading the index card of lines carefully prepared for him by #1.) and a visit to an irritatingly-chipper-given-the-circumstances podiatrist (“It’s not plantar fasciitis!” she said, grinning from ear to ear. “It’s…interesting,” she chuckled. “I’m just befuddled!” she added, laughing and slapping her knee good-naturedly.), I decided to just wait it out while knitting my fingers and biting my lip and rocking and muttering.

Which brings me to today. The day before the Marine Corps Marathon.

The pins-and-needles are out of my foot.  I can get up onto my right toes.  Which are both key indicators that one is able and ready to run a marathon.

So I think all I can do tomorrow morning is slamajam a thermos of coffee and a banana, slug down 3 ibuprofen with a shot of gin, get a fellow metro-riding-runner to massage my calf, and wrap my body powerfully around a Kenyan at the start line (“TAKEMEWITHYOU!”).

So.  Let me reiterate: O God.  Here goes nothing.

My waist must be skinnier and my boobs must be pointier! POINTIER, I SAY!

WEATHER: Pretty!

MILES: 0

MILES THIS WEEK: 25ish

WHERE TO: Nowhere.

MOOD: Uneasy.

TODAY’S RUNNING SONG: Bluegrass makes running better.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

This ultra training thing is all a lot harder than I remember it being last year, and not just because my Achilles tendons have turned against me.  Somewhere in the middle of my second long run of every weekend, I find myself questioning whether this is a hobby I truly enjoy…whether a benevolent and loving God truly exists…what my purpose in life is…all of which comes out in the form of water fountain rage, a phenomenon in which a tour bus full of thirsty tourists pulls up JUST AS I shuffle, dehydrated and nearly defeated, up to the Jefferson Memorial water fountain, and I run at the tourists, limbs flailing, threatening to slime them with my body’s generous coating of salt, sunblock, sweat, and dead gnats.  “JFICIEU$I#(@UDHVJD!” they say, in their foreign languages, which I take to mean, “This woman truly should get to drink for 10 minutes as we watch, disgusted!”  Which usually happens.

Anyway, today we tackle the complicated topic of body image for the runner.  A particularly touchy subject for us ladies, because we all grew up thinking that if we were virtuous and hardworking and perma-hungry enough, we, too, would eventually develop ample bosoms, slender and well-defined waists, and asses just bigger than “flat” but just shy of “curved,” which TOTALLY can be achieved, dammit!, we swore to ourselves.  KEEP ME AWAY FROM THE BUFFET AND I SWEAR I CAN DO IT!

And then we all discovered the Vagina Monologues and bell hooks and beer and decided that whatever, man.  Pshhhh.  This is MY body and if I feel FINE in it, then you can’t TOUCH me with your insults about my spare tire and your insinuations that maybe 8 beers in 3 hours isn’t good for me.  MY BODY IS A BEAUTIFUL INSTRUMENT, NOT AN ORNAMENT, YOU FASCIST.

But if you’re a runner, the complicated thing is this — if you’re not a sinewed, finely honed machine of running amazingness, and if you do enjoy a few (dozen) beers every so often, losing a couple of pounds very well could make you faster.  But choosing to drop said pounds can also make you bazonkers.  Just as looking around the starting line and listening to runners psych each other out can make you want to tape Kate Moss herself to your fridge for thinspiration.  “I live on nothing but steamed celery,” say the creepy-stringy female runners at the start line.  “MAYBE some broccoli when I’m feeling naughty.  And 2 tablespoons of vodka on my birthday of course.  Because a girl’s gotta LIVE, am I right?”

(I might add that Runner’s World‘s continuing obsession with greased abs on every cover does not help any of this.)

Anyway.  It’s a messy, stupid culture we live in, and so as a runner, here is how you can maybe find a shred of sanity.

STEP 1: Stop fixating on your weight.

Instead, let’s focus first on health.  And yeah, weaning yourself off of this type of thinking is really hard, so one way of overcoming it is to find another, more reasonable number to fixate on.  Why not instead become obsessed with…

BMI: Baaaaaahahahahahaha.  I’m just messing with you. BMI is just another way for the military-industrial-weight loss complex to make you obsess over the number on the scale.  The difference being that BMI actually has to be calculated using metric figures, so it all seems so scientific.  Whereas your doctor might once have said, “Um, you are too heavy for your height,” now he can pull out a slide rule and a whiteboard of equations with differentials and limits and parabolas and asymptotes.  And he will look at his calculations and look at you and say, “Um, you are too heavy for your height.”  And you will be too confused to counter-argue.  Stupid American school system, never teaching me enough about asymptotes.  Thanks for nothing.

Like I said before — don’t obsess all that much over how much gravity is pulling on you, sweetie.  I mean, look at your legs, hot stuff.  They’re, like, “bumpin’,” as the kids say.  They’re “JACKED.”  They “got it going on.”  I want to “wrap my body around one and squeeze real hard.”

Anyway, they’re all muscle, which means that one of your glorious gams probably weighs the same as the leg of some Green Bay Packers linebacker who mostly exercises by reaching for another drum of Cheez Puffs while watching Patch Adams for the 348th time.  Why Patch Adams?  BECAUSE.

OK, so perhaps instead, focus on…

Blood pressure: This one is actually kind of fun, because you see results in all sorts of fun ways, like

• Lower blood pressure numbers.  Duh.  But seriously, the results can be pretty dramatic.  I mean, everyone says that exercise reduces stress, and I swear, sometimes you can just feel your bloodstream itself chilling out a bit, just humming along, biding its time, rolling through your veins, buying a nickel bag, ain’t no thang, just another dull day in low-BP land.  If you were to look at a drop of my blood under a microscope, even on a day in which all hell is breaking loose and I am sure that I am about to singlehandedly bring down journalism and have thus stress-eaten 2 packages of bacon myself in my office while whimpering and rocking, I imagine you’d see a few blood cells and platelets getting together on a ratty old couch, settling in with a pizza and a DVD.  “Hey, man, stick around.  We’re doing that Dark Side of the Moon Wizard of Oz thing.”  Right on, bros.
• Terrified looks from nurses.  You go in for a doctor appointment.  The nurse checks your BP.  He checks the reading.  “Oh, this must be broken,” he says, undoing the cuff and glaring at the machine, perhaps punching and kicking it a few times while muttering about HMOs.  Rewrapping the cuff extra tight this time, he redoes the test. He looks at the readout.  He looks at you.  “Huh.  If you would excuse me,” says the nurse, leaving the room.  This is when you want to lock the door behind Mr. Nurse, because he is coming back with a fire axe, for he believes that you are one of the walking undead and that he must lop off your head to save the human race.
• Head rushes.  Given enough running and enough BP-lowering, you’re going to have a nasty case of the head-fuzzes every time you try to stand.  I personally can barely get up from my desk chair without everything looking a little gray.  This is also why you want to lock that door behind the nurse, because just try jumping off the exam table to fight.  “NOT SO FAST!  DROP THE…oh shit I’m going down,” and you hit the floor.  Then again, this might be good, because any nurse worth her/his salt knows: zombies don’t faint.

STEP 2: Maybe stop obsessing about food as well.

Another case of finding a better number to focus on.  For example, there are few traps as insidious as:

Counting calories: It’s like in the late ’90s when you first learned about the internet and downloaded Weatherbug onto your computer and thus had a constant real-time ticker of the weather outside your window.  Suddenly Hampsterdance.com and your flying toaster screensaver and Eudora e-mail ran way, way, way slower.  Why?  Because even though everything was fine on the surface, Weatherbug was using up all sorts of RAM and ROM and cache and God-knows-what-else on your rural-Iowa dial-up modem-that-kicked-you-off-whenever-someone-called-the-house.

Likewise, calorie-counting will very quickly eat up precious brain activity that could be used elsewhere.  Trust me.  I went through this calorie-obsessive phase when I was 13, and my quality of life suffered greatly because of it.

Cute boy at lunch: Hey, can I sit here?

Me: Uh, sure.

My brain: O God O God O God.  Why do they not post the calories in the food at this godforsaken middle school?

Cute boy: Ugh.  I hate mashed potatoes.  Peanut butter sandwich again for me.

Me: NOT FAIR he gets to eat peanut butter (whichhas95caloriespertablespoon) because boys can eat WHATEVER THEY WANT and OH MY GOD how many calories are in these $#$^$%$#$#*(()! potatoes that’s ALL I WANT TO KNOW and I’ve already eaten FOUR HUNDRED today so oh God I can’t breathe.

Cute boy: I was gonna go get a soda.  Do you want one?

My brain: There are 170 calories in a can of Mountain Dew and the machine is constantly out of Diet Coke because Mrs. Williamson that selfish whore keeps drinking it all and I want to bite her in the face.

I have, of course, taken some liberties here.  I.e., boys at my middle school wouldn’t be caught dead talking to us ladies.  <Also, insert sad-clown joke here about how cute boys still don’t buy me drinks.  Wawawaawaaaaaaaaa.>

But the fact remains: I could have been thinking all sorts of higher-level thoughts, understanding even at that age that gender is a societal construct and that obsession with body image is all a part of a patriarchal ploy to keep the female sex powerless and chasing ill-defined and unreachable standards of beauty.

On the other hand, I got really, really good at doing addition in my head.  When I didn’t have one of my like 5 bouts of superflu that year.  Yeesh.

Moving on.  Instead of calorie-counting, maybe focus just on eating healthfully.  Like counting grams of fiber or how much riboflavin you’ve consumed.  But that also involves obsessive label-reading.  So how about:

How many celery sticks you can fit in your mouth before you hate hate hate it and never want to eat it again: My record is 1.  Go ahead and try beating me.

3) Focus on body parts that are less affected by weight.

You may never have a six-pack.  So loofah your elbows and rub some sunblock on your hair-part and trim your cuticles (BUTNOTTOOMUCH!) and massage your knuckles and exfoliate your forehead, because girlfriend, you are BEAUTIFUL in all sorts of other ways.

Or you can say f*ck it to trying to improve your self esteem through your looks and instead

3) Go run a race.  Really really fast.

Beat the boys while you do it.

It's coming. Grab some beers and pickles and girly mags and get into the cellar.

WEATHER: Cold and windy and rainy and a little demoralizing.

MILES: 25?  Many of which involved stomach-clutching awfulness.

MILES THIS WEEK: 25?  Many of which involved stomach-clutching awfulness.

WHERE TO: Crescent Trail, Bethesda, Wisc Ave., back to the trailhead, down the Mall, several detours to several (CLOSED!  YOU BASTARDS!) restrooms, home.

MOOD: Foul.

TODAY’S RUNNING SONG: http://youtu.be/YUtHjOvPKT0 (Yes, I hate the video as much as you do, but the song puts me in coke-addled 2-minute-mile territory, I swear.)

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

So I’ve been in a foul mood (and not posting) for a while, largely because of a nasty bout with what I imagine to be tendinitis in my right foot/Achilles tendon.  And as loyal readers know, injuries — even minor ones — turn me into a drooling hellbitch who goes on Netflix-and-enchilada benders.  Granted, I can still run on it, but not without a bit of pain.  Hmph.  Today I found myself actually asking myself:

Whose pants are these in my apartment?

Jury’s still out on that.  Will keep you posted.

But then I also asked: “How long do I keep this up?”

The ultramarathon-ing, yes, but also the writing about it.  Though this blog has most certainly launched me into the stratosphere of running blogdom (<cough> I get 30 hits per year), where sponsors supply me with endless Gu packets, loose men, and flattering apparel (<cough> a salesman at Pacers once let me keep a dirty pair of “trying-shoes-on” socks, and even then only if I agreed to stop the creepy-hitting-on-him thing I was doing, which involved scootching forward on the shoe-trying-on bench and waving my newly shod foot in his direction and saying, “Would you want to lace me up?” in a voice that I imagined to be sexy but that I know understand to have mostly sounded phlegm-y), and where people turn to me for real solutions for real problems (“No, seriously.  Could you stop leering at our clerks?  Sincerely, Pacers.”).

So anyway, I’ve been slacking lately.  Partially because of injury, but partially because my GOD, you people.  I’m not a machine.  All of which brings me to my next point:

Like all good things, even this blog must come to an end.  So come the JFK 50 Miler, I think it will be time to shut ‘er down.  Which gives me about a month and a half to crank out PURE GOLD and blog about all those things I have thus far avoided:

• Exactly what I think of all you people.
• What I still don’t understand about how guys and all their <cough> equipment run together (I may have to seek outside assistance for this one) (Wait, no.  I think it will be funnier if I just sort of guess how it all…uh…happens.).
• The problem of equitable distribution of wealth, and how it is an impossible, utopian dream.  How much boob-chafing really hurts.
• An honest-to-God, not-tap-dancing-around-it discussion of GI problems and how clearly they signify that God hates all runners.
• OK, guys, seriously — are there, like, harnesses and pulleys and pre-wrap and duct tape involved?
• And given all that extra <cough> baggage on dudes, WHY aren’t women bitch-slapping men clean out of the water in every race ever?
• Body image issues (Subtitle: “Would you say my legs look ‘phenomenal’ or ‘life-changing’?”)

Do YOU have ideas?  I am not surprised.

Let the glorious countdown begin!

Let's see...carry the 4...oh holy God. I only have like 2 toenails left.

WEATHER: Cool and autumnal and fantastic.

MILES: 0

MILES THIS WEEK: Enough.

WHERE TO: Nowhere!

MOOD: SO EXCITED!

TODAY’S RUNNING SONG: Today we have TWO, as an all-out tribute to Usher, who is the fuel that gets me through many a run.

News item #1: I AM IN FOR THE BOSTON MARATHON!  Eat it, stupid people for whom the website didn’t crash during registration last year.  EAT IT.  I am going to find you and slap you with a sweaty running singlet.  And you will love it.

News item #2: OK, so are you like me, and have you been running with gels in the sports bra, between the boobs?  And it causes discomfort and paper foil cuts?  And it sucks?  PROBLEM SOLVED: carry them in the side-boobal area.  No kidding.  I discovered this last weekend.  You’re welcome.

So we’re hitting the insane-mileage portion of the ultra training schedule, which means I’m full of aches and pains. Long story short, the more my Achilles tendons feel like snapping, the more I feel like snapping.  (People who deal with me: I am so sorry.)

Seeing me limping around, unable to really bend my ankle joints, a friend of mine whom I shall refer to as Ginger asked me, “Uh, why do you keep running?”  Now, you see, whenever someone asks me something in the “worried voice,” I usually smile perkily and say something to the effect of “Don’t worry!  The moment running starts altering the rest of my life is the moment I stop!  Sunshine daisies glitter hummingbirds bullshit! Kablammo!”

And because I sometimes reach with my analogies, I decided that this was the perfect segue into economics and running.

Because duh.  Let’s not be naive.  If you’re training seriously for anything, it most certainly is altering the rest of your life, as it is taking time away from something else.  You could be sleeping less.  You could be watching less Ally McBeal on Netflix Instant View (YOU GUYS. I can barely leave the house anymore because of this.).  There are trade-offs, and this is one of the basic principles of economics.  Let’s look at a production possibility frontier to explain, shall we?

This PPF illustrates the production possibilities in a very simple economy that produces only two goods: guns and butter. Economists like to use the ol’ guns-vs.-butter PPF, because economists apparently come from a land where you stand around all day but then occasionally pull out your Smith & Wesson to shoot at passing deer.  Once you do hit one, you calmly pull a stick of Land O’Lakes out of your knapsack and meditatively gnaw on it, because there’s really nothing else to do in this godforsaken country except die of a coronary.  Or shoot at sticks of butter.

Anyway. The blue curve illustrates full production capacity, and also illustrates the fact that if you make more guns, you make less butter.  If the economy is anywhere inside the curve — say, at point 1 — it is operating inefficiently and not at full capacity.  If it’s at point 2, it’s rocking away at full capacity.

Simple enough.  OK.  So let’s look at how this applies to running:

OK.  So the goal of running, as I see it, is to keep on the blue line.  As the diagram clearly shows, if you train for a 5-K, you have more time for “everything else” because you’re not running a lot.  But you’re doing great!  Productivity in other areas!  Congratulations!  Likewise, if you’re training for a marathon, you have less time for drinking and carousing and fornicating reading your Bible.  And likewise again, if you’re training for an ultra, for example, you have less time for sleep and not-eating-Gu.

On the other hand, getting off of the blue line is much worse. If you stay in for hours/days/years with your face stuck in a fantasy novel, for example, you suddenly produce nothing, aside from flatulence and violent desires to inhabit a world of elves and dwarves and gnomes, because by God the fairy princess will understand you, even if that cute barista at the coffee shop considers your body odor off-putting. Likewise, various substances can send you out past the blue line and into the stratosphere of “wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEE!”  Which is all fun and games until your head explodes or, in the case of Four Loko, you grab a cop’s nightstick and start air-guitar-ing with it.  No fun for anyone.

So the choice then is to pick a spot on that blue line, and that’s when the tough part comes in.  I mean, full productivity is great, but if a lot of what you’re producing is mileage — which is awesome — then you’re not producing, say, a bestselling novel.  Or that Ikea bookshelf whose box has been sitting in your living room for weeks.  Or a social life.  And sometimes that’s tough to cope with.  Because what — are you going to make friends on the trail?  Is that really a plan?  Are you going to meet that special someone out on the C&O next weekend?  How is that going to work?  Oh God WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE, YOU MAGNIFICENT-THIGHED OUTCAST?

OK, so here is where we take a deep breath and grab a bottle of wine.  It’s all fine.  Things work out for kind, fantastic, hard-working people like you.  You love running, and you will find that superhottie.  You can have it all.  Let’s drink a few more glasses and draw what that will look like:

I feel more hopeful already.

The sky is falling. Everybody panic. But run 10 miles first. (Image source: InlandPolitics.com)

WEATHER: Delightfully cool and drizzly and fall-like!

MILES: 10.5

MILES THIS WEEK: Disturbing.

WHERE TO: A destination a little up the road from the habitations of the towns we know.

MOOD: Complacent.

TODAY’S RUNNING SONG: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ-NGNCRFmY (h/t: the illustrious C.)

THIS GUY IS BADASS: http://iantorrence.blogspot.com/

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

I apologize for having been absent for a week and a half. As you may have guessed from the last post, I have been in emotion-land. By which I mean minorly-but-chronically-sort-of-feeling-like-ass land, due to living in a flood-prone, mushroom-and-fly-infested hole. I don’t know about you, but in the Republic of DJ, emotions make a girl stop blogging, yes, but also stop applying for freelance positions, socializing, and wanting to do anything other than having Arrested-Development-fest 2011 on her bed, which is still up on bricks (the bed), along with all of her other furniture, due to Hurricane Irene preparations.

But there’s one thing that emotions don’t get in the way of: hating on the hipsters at this coffee shop? Well yes (barista, your glasses are ugly in every ironic-and-non-ironic way). But also: the nonstop-rocking runningfest that is my life. The Olympics are coming, and we’re getting pumped. If you take a look at the 2012 Olympics official website, you will see that the ultramarathon IS NOT EVEN LISTED. Which just makes me more pumped, because kids, the people at London 2012 are clearly so excited about the unstoppable awesomeness that is the Olympic ultramarathon that they can’t even publicize it, for fear that people’s faces will melt because of the sheer force of superpumpedness.

Anyway, if living in America has taught me one thing over the last few months, it’s that the political system is hopelessly broken and the sky is falling and we should all start fashioning some flattering burlap-sack dresses.

OK, but if it has taught me another thing, it’s that all anyone cares about is the economy.  Think about it, readers: at no other point in your lives (unless you’re a nonagenarian) have you been able to respond to any declarative sentence by shrieking, “IN THIS ECONOMY???” and sound reasonably sane — possibly even wise.

How does this relate to running?  In two ways: (1) if you use the word “jobs” or “economy” or — even better — “how <political leader X> and Lindsay Lohan are ruining the economy” in any story or blog post headline, you will get hits up the wazoo from Drudge AND Perez.  Score!  And (2) basic economic principles can help you solve some of your most pressing running problems.  Doubt me?  As the French say, “Au contraire!  Poisson fromage sacre bleu!”

Here goes:

Running Problem #1: Should I get a gym membership?

You want to go to the gym, eh?  IN THIS ECONOMY?

Haha, just messing with you.  Well, let’s do a cost-benefit analysis of going to the gym versus just running on your own in the happy happy sun.  And we’ll start both of these off by assuming you have the requisite equipment: shoes, workout clothes, and the gonads to get your candy-ass up off the futon.  HOO-WAH!

The Costs of Going to the Gym:

Gym membership: $75/month

Assortment of little travel-sized shampoo/conditioner/body wash/lotion/gel/hairspray bottles that fit easily into your gym bag: $15

Keeping eyes glued to floor pre- and post-shower so random nudie super-in-shape sinewy women don’t think you’re gawking at them and their freak-calves, which you totally aren’t: $0

Ramming face into corner of gym locker as a result of keeping eyes glued to floor, getting 7 stitches in temple: $25 copay

So this could cost you a minimum of $115 in just one month.  And that’s if you’re insured.  So yeah.  Be insured if you go to the gym.  When you rack yourself doing “jumps” in spinning class you’ll thank me.  Or maybe you’ll just scream, “$&$#&#@*$%&#!!!  MY GONADS!  MY BEAUTIFUL GONADS!”

——-

The Cost of Running:

(And here I’m talking about running a little more than a daily 30-minute 2-mile lollygag around the reservoir, creampuff.  Let’s just go big.  Let’s say you’re running like a g.d. rock star.)

Gels (30 per month): $36

Band-Aids, Peroxide, Vaseline, BodyGlide, Duct Tape, Rosaries, Mayonnaise, and other blister-/chafing-related first aid: $50

Two extra grocery trips per week to accommodate your newfound hunger for pain, but also for industrial-sized quantities of peanut butter and red meat and pickles and ice cream and Ding-Dongs and really, anything that isn’t linoleum, and even that might be a stretch: $150

Speaking of stretching, one weekly yoga class per week to oooopen up your hips and feel the oooooopening in your hamstrings and let your lotus flower blossom, which is most certainly does not do at mile 25: $40

Total: Huh.  Bigger than $115.

Well, whatever.  Running is way better than any elliptical machine or rowing machine or nudie locker room.  And just so we can all feel better about ourselves, let’s look at triathletes:

The Cost of Doing Triathlons:

Special swimsuit: $200

Special bike: $5 bajillion

Special bike shoes: $100

Special race registration: $500

Feeling extra-special: Priceless

Telling runners/gym-goers how extra-special you are: I mean, seriously, what pricetag can we put on your soul?

Total cost: more than $5 bajillion.  I rest my case.

——-

Still to come in this series:

• How many miles can I run? (a.k.a. The Post in which I Gratuitously Work in both Ryan Gosling and a Production Possibility Frontier)
• How many calories should I eat? (In which we discuss budgeting and what happens when your legs hit the calorie ceiling but continue to try to run, and your motor cortex refuses to raise said calorie ceiling before your metabolic system defaults and soon you’re in a downward metabolic deflationary spiral, by which I mean vomming on the side of the C&O Towpath)
• Should I invest in a running skirt?  (For the love of God, no.)

Strong displays of emotion make me break out in hives, you know.

WEATHER: A bit humid, but cooler.

MILES: 10?

MILES THIS WEEK: Counting is hard.

WHERE TO: National Cathedral, other places.

MOOD: Overwhelmed.

TODAY’S RUNNING SONG: See below.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

Alright, bitches.  Cue music.

Even when you’re a kickass ultrarunner (if only in your own booze-and-peanut-butter-puffins-addled mind) and superpumped about your Olympic prospects, sometimes you feel like you’re having one of those days.  And then sometimes you feel like you’re having several of “those days” all at once.  And then sometimes you feel like several years’ worth of “those days” have been squished together into a tiny, superdense ball of time, which then ‘SPLODES into a giant supernova and then your life is just this flaming-out celestial event, complete with black holes and wormholes and burning and pain and Stephen Hawking and a landlord who decides to be a real sore asshole to you about the fact that he is clearly morally opposed to following DC building code when renovating your apartment, as is evidenced by the fluctuating water content of your bedroom.

OK, let’s leave Stephen Hawking out of this, because he seems like a very nice person.  Also, I bet he could renovate an apartment right.

This was where I was last weekend — in a very dark, angry place, from which I wrote many stern, lawyerly e-mails to my landlord filled with lawyerly words like “uninhabitable” and “recourse” and “tort” and “briefcase.”

Why do I mention this on my running blog, besides making you listen to me vent?  Because I had two GLORIOUS long runs last weekend.  Strong, fatigue-free, anger-fueled runs.  Which brings me to today’s topic:

RUNNING WITH VARIOUS EMOTIONS

Feelings are beautiful parts of life, providing spice and richness and fullness to our daily experiences and making us cry every time we watch Lars and the Real Girl, even though it’s not even really that sad.

Anyway.  Emotions can also give us fuel during our runs.  Fuel that no coffee-chia seed-peanut butter-Gu concoction can ever match.  Here is how your various emotions can help your running.

Anger (Fuel grade: A)

Anger is powerful stuff. It can take what would otherwise be a hum-drum, la-dee-da morning 5-mile jog and turn it into training-fest 3000, complete with sprint intervals, push-ups, splits, and break-dancing.  “You don’t want to promote me, boss?/call me back, attractive man on whom I dumped a beer?/spoon me at night, roommate?” says your brain.  “FINE.  Time for 35 miles!”  Yes, anger can make you overdo it a bit, but at the time, it will feel juuuust right.

–

Happiness (Fuel grade: B)

Happy runs are — duh — happy.  The only problem is that happiness makes one want to do all sorts of things other than running.  When you get the news that your sister is getting married/your best friend is preggers/Ryan Gosling has like 5 movies coming out, you want to make 50 phone calls and tell the world and have a cigar and some scotch.  Anything but running.

That said, if you do get around to going for a spin, it’s just as good as an anger-run, with an extra dose of “WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

–

Sad (Fuel grade: C-)

Tough to say, since sad bleeds into anger so easily, at least for this lady.  After all, if you’re upset enough to be sad about something, you sure as hell can usually find someone to blame for your sadness.  Which leads naturally to anger.

But sometimes that just chain reaction doesn’t quite work, and you get stuck in the saddypants place.  And does running work when your dog dies/your hottie leaves you/your LAST PACKET of Easy Mac boils over? Negative side: running while crying a little makes you look absolutely batshit crazy.  Plus side: no one catcalls/harasses the running-crying-crazy girl.

–

Hungry (D-)

Oy.  One of the worst running emotions.  Running will only make this worse.

–

Hot and Bothered (F)

I said being hungry was ONE of the worst.  Being hungry for the lovin’ is THE worst.  Sorry, kids.  This one is no fun, either.  Put some Al Green on your iPod, hope for the best, and for the love of God, when you run past the Georgetown cross country team, just close your eyes and hum really loud.  Lalala, they’re not there, you are in your own little one-person world.  Lalala.

–

Hope for a Better Tomorrow (???)

Sometimes you look around at the world and say, “What the hell happened to the world?  These kids with their pants around their knees and their hippity hoppity music.”  And then the clouds break and the sun comes through, and for a brief moment you feel God’s light on your face.  Then a car drives by and hits a puppy and you start to tear up, but then you think to yourself, “I could really go for a Chipotle burrito right now.  With extra sour cream.”  Then the Georgetown men’s cross country team runs by.  Maybe there’s some good in the world, you think.

Whoa.  This is, like, every emotion at once.  I can’t even begin.  Better go run like 20 miles just to get it out of your system.

WHO'S READY?

WEATHER: A bit humid, warm.

MILES: 10.5

MILES THIS WEEK: Lots.

WHERE TO: Your face.

MOOD: Good enough.

TODAY’S RUNNING SONG: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM1RChZk1EU

So I had said I was going to blog every day, and I have failed in that quest.  Though in my defense, I’ve been busily cross-training in the last few days, and my forearms and wrists have been very tired.  Yoga?  No.  Weight-lifting?  Nope.  Madly bailing out my flooded apartment twice in the same weekend, using many buckets and sopping up the excess with every bath towel I own, then wringing out said towels and repeating this process seven billion times?  Yes!  How did you ever guess?  Combine that with many heated phone conversations with the landlord, and you have quite the workout.  Go ahead — call your landlord and yell, “THIS IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE LIVING SITUATION!” several dozen times.  You’ll feel great, yes, but spent.

Oy.  So anyway, mileage is ramping up, and we’re still on the training horse.  And since I’m tired and it’s been more than a week, it’s time for yet another installation of:

THIS WEEK IN RUNNING NEWS!

Blog of the week: This time around it’s Remain Running, a delightful blog that bills itself as “the average runners blog.”  A lovely, straightforward, informative blog from someone who’s just working to stay motivated.  Also, he linked to me.  Attaboy!

Does cross-training really do you any good?  NYT’s Personal Best blog says no.

…Are you SURE it doesn’t help?  Runner’s World gives the lukewarmest, mushiest response ever to NYT’s article.  Way to take a stand, respectable running publication.  You just got served by the Grey Lady.

I’m still not good at running clubs.  Tuesday night I gave the Logan Circle Pacers running club a try.  Lovely group of people, varied range of paces.  “What a great way to make friends and train alongside some fellow runners!” I thought.  “I wonder if any of them are training for- BLAAAAAAAGH I MUST DESTROY THEM!” I continued, entering scary-competitive mode.  “NO ONE PASSES ME WITHOUT JUMPING ABOARD THE PAIN TRAIN!”  Which is a lie, because several did pass me.  And they looked like they were not aboard the pain train.  Not at all.

Rick Perry packs heat while he runs.  My first response: “Those crazy Texans.  They do love them some guns.”  Then I read this passage: “Most gun-and-run enthusiasts in Internet chat rooms, however, seem more concerned about attacks by humans than by wild animals. The Explainer is unaware of any statistical analysis of attacks against runners, but sexual assaults and other crimes against female runners appear to be depressingly common.”  My revised response: “This is the sanest idea I have ever heard in my life.”

Too many long runs?  SACRILEGE, I say.  But apparently there is such a thing (for sissies).

Olympic Trials training continues. Sometimes I like to run down the Crescent Trail, just singing this at the top of my lungs.  I actually called the U.S. Olympic headquarters this week, just to let them know that they can reserve one of their super-intense-training-camp dorm rooms for me.  “What sport, now?” said the receptionist.

“ULTRAMARATHONNNN!” I yelled.

“Wait, what?” she said.  “Is that even a-”

“BUMMMMM, BUMMMMM, DUH-DUH,…<etc.>” I said, bursting into song again, just to make sure she understood my patriotism and dedication.

London, here I come.

Bonsaiiiiiiii POW!

Zero miles today.

Trees shed their leaves in winter.

Is your name Wanda?

Everybody! Kerri wants you to succeed! (Source: http://toptodaynews.com/)

WEATHER: Beautiful.  Warm but not humid, and sunny and beautiful and beautiful.

MILES: 11

MILES THIS WEEK: 41ish.

WHERE TO: All of it.

MOOD: Glowing.

TODAY’S RUNNING SONG: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkHp_JLtxck

For those of you scoring at home (or for those home alone) <rim shot>, I have just over three months to get myself in prime condition to qualify for the Olympic ultramarathon trials.  So it’s time to get crackin’!  I hear that Alberto Salazar trained for a whole 4 months before he ran in the Olympics, so I have some time to make up if I want to achieve my dream. And as it turns out, if you don’t know how to accomplish any particular goal, there is a wealth of information out there telling you exactly how to do anything–anything–you set your mind to.  And so, using one of the shortest checklists that I could find for how to accomplish a goal, I give you:

THE OFFICIAL ACTION PLAN.

1) You need to deeply desire the goal or resolution.

OK, sounds fine.  I, DJ, deeply desire to qualify for the ultramarathon Olympic Trials with every fiber of my being, including my hair and my bum and my hoo-hoos and my contact lenses.

OK, done.  NEXT!

2) Visualize yourself achieving the goal.

Oh, boy.  I do this on a daily basis, I tell you what.  It goes something like this: I’m running down the home stretch, through the streets of Williamsport, Maryland, with happy people clapping happily for the happy runners as they run by. I close my eyes and let my feet carry me across the finish line, and for a moment, the world is in slow motion, and i gracefully fling my arms wide as my head drops back with exhaustion and break the tape, with only a glisten of sweat on my brow and hair artfully mussed but still looking rather fetching.

The clouds part and Dick Vitale puts the microphone in my face.  “Bay-bee!” he yells.  “Diaper dandy!  Awesome!  Bay-bee!”

“You did it!  You qualified!” says Joan Benoit-Samuelson, putting a foil blanket over my shoulders.

“You’ll do great at the trials!” says Carl Lewis.

“Make America proud!” says Kerri Strug.

“Let me massage your feet and brush your hair!” says Michael Phelps.

“U.S.A.!  U.S.A.!” says Gandalf, hoisting me into a firemen’s carry and flying me to the nearest Chipotle, where I proceed to put my face in a trough of burritos while Mikey P. recounts his favorite parts of the race.

3) Make a plan for the path you need to follow to accomplish the goal.

The plan has been found.  The gels have been bought.  Though maybe I should purchase myself a new hairbrush.  The one I have right now has like dried hair gel gunk on it and maybe some marinara sauce.

4) Commit to achieving the goal by writing down the goal.

Done and done, obvi, ad nauseum.

5) Establish times for checking your progress in your calendar system.

Every day, kids.  Same time, same place.  Well, ok, same place.  Time will vary depending on my work/running/feeding/socializing/drinking/man-izing/knitting schedule.

6) Review your overall progress regularly.

<removes computer from lap, looks at legs>

They seem fine.  Feet seem fine.

To be honest, I sure feel faster than I did this morning, not least because I woke up this morning with an enchilada hangover like you wouldn’t believe.

“Guhhhhh,” I said, shuffling to the kitchen for a glass of water.

“There, there,” said Gandalf, getting off the kitchen barstool and putting down his PBR.  “We all may live to see such dark times,” he added, reaching out to rub my belly.  Which seemed creepy but was actually sort of nice of him.

Anyway, I feel fantastic right now.  Progress!  We are that much closer to success!

OK, time for bed.