A Quarterly Recap

It’s about time for a quarterly update/recap.

This year I’ve been accepted as an ENELL Race Ambassador to promote my favorite athletic gear, and ENELL is sponsoring me in my first Olympic-distance triathlon (happening May 22) and at the Plano Balloon Festival Half Marathon this fall. The Olympic distance means I’ll be swimming a mile in a lake followed immediately by bicycling 25 miles and then running 6.2 miles. I’m definitely nervous about the undertaking, but training is going well so far.

I’m looking forward to a Labor-Day-weekend family reunion (that’s Mom’s mom’s side of the family) in Nebraska and taking a few extra days to visit my best friend in Omaha. I’m still living in Richardson with two housemates and three cats and loving it.

December marked four years working for my company. This year I joined the health and safety committee at work to generate ideas for workplace wellness and safety initiatives. As fond as I am of fitness in my personal life, it’s especially important to me to make sure the company’s ideas are safe, inclusive, accessible, and equitable for everyone interested in participating.

After performing in the DFW Vagina Monologues stage production for two years, I chose to work behind this scenes this year as a producer for the show, submitting promotional information to local publications and helping out with our fundraising events. This year we raised $2,300 for Hope’s Door, a domestic violence shelter and community outreach organization in Plano, Texas, putting our total fundraising in the last three years at over $6k!

            I just went to Galveston this weekend with little brother for a beach getaway. We had a blast at the Moody Gardens ropes course and zipline, got ice cream at the old-fashioned ice cream parlor and confectionary on The Strand (La King’s), swam a bit in the ocean, and visited the Pirates! Museum and its neighboring haunted house. I also got up early Sunday for a long training run along the seawall. There are many more attractions we’d like to see, so I hope we get to go again before summer gets too hot.

How is 2016 treating you so far?

Honored Hero Half Marathon

This is an October 20 post from my fundraising page that I'm just now getting around to cross-posting on Blogger.

Yesterday was the event that this had all been building toward. I met my $2,000 stretch fundraising goal and surpassed it by $81.

I hadn't trained much since the August 31 half marathon, and my longest run since then was only 6.55 miles October 11. The night before the race, I'd unexpectedly seen an abusive ex at an event and so began my morning with lingering grouchiness, misanthropy, and no desire to participate at all. Especially not alone. I couldn't find my mp3 player, and it was going to be a VERY long run.

But I wasn't doing it for me. I was there for the victims, survivors, friends, family, coworkers, and their loved ones.

I set off near the back of the pack at a slow and steady jog, thankful for the cool overcast morning and mostly dirt and gravel trail but still scowling at the photographers I passed. I grumped internally about how much fun the other pairs of runners were probably having and the likelihood that I would never ever get to run a marathon because doing this alone was SO horrible.

Seeing Coach Ginny didn't quite cheer but helpfully distracted me for a while, and she pushed me to run a little faster than I otherwise would have. One of the volunteers passing out water remarked on her surprise at one of the front-runners passing the other way so soon. "I didn't expect him to come from behind." And her friend responded with "That's what she said!" before I could analyze whether it would be appropriate to say it myself. I laughed loudly and and pointed at them in acknowledgment.

Sometime as I approached the turnaround, a Wednesday Addams smile threatened to appear. I was on pace for my 3-hour goal. But from 7.5 miles to about 10, the course was all but empty, and eerily lonely and quiet. The sun came out and I panicked, fearing because there was no tree cover at all, but it disappeared again about 2 miles later.

I met Coach Ginny again and had a good, long trot with her until I had about 2 miles left. But the last 1.5, I was absolutely pooped. I took more frequent walk breaks and struggled mightily against body chafing. I was drinking too much water in an effort to keep my body cool, and I felt like I might puke before I finished.

With a half mile to go, my overuse knee injury from May flared up. My left knee shouted in pain, and I alternated shuffled, jogged, and walked the remaining distance with my eyes brimming with tears. I knew I looked rough and repeated in my head, "Just let me finish," scared that the volunteers might stop me and call for a medic. I managed to ask how much farther at the final aid station, and they pointed and told me the finish was just around the corner. I could see it from there . . . just . . . up . . . one last godforsaken hill.

In addition to the pain, I was physically exhausted and had no energy left mentally to fight the onslaught of emotion as I was SO close to finishing. I grimaced and my breath caught in my throat on the final approach; I couldn't even look up or acknowledge the dozens of volunteers lining the final stretch cheering me on (and I'm tearing up again as I write of it).

I crossed the finish line, accepted a medal and water, and stumbled a few paces out of the way to pause my tracking app. 3 hours, 4 minutes. *frowny face* 13.36 miles?! I was 4 minutes over my vague goal with a quarter-mile too-long course and 6 months of simultaneously fighting injury while training for a first half?! Hell yeah!

Then I had to stumble dangerously down a steep hillside to the ambulance to get my knee wrapped and iced. A beautiful woman in a cow suit checked on me, gave me a shoulder to hobble back to the Team in Training tent, and offered to grab me food if I wanted. In-and-Out was catering the event, but I had no appetite whatsoever.

I sat for about 20 minutes, took a few finisher selfies, briefly panicked about the pain I was in and the drive ahead of me, and finally shuffled back to my car, where I grabbed my yoga mat and stretched my aching butt before driving back to my best friend's house to shower. I was very lucky it was my left knee that hurt.

I'd stayed with my friend in Euless so I wouldn't have to drive from McKinney to Fort Worth, and she treated me to a manicure after lunch. We spent the afternoon together while her husband watched their kiddo, and we had a lot of fun catching up, eating pho, being pampered, and shopping.

And I am SO looking forward to taking it easy this winter and running only for maintenance while pondering my long-term goals. I'll be off from running a few weeks while I wait on my knee to heal and am only planning to participate in a 6k race with coworkers on November 15 and a 15k January 10.

It will be a long time before I consider doing anything like this (the fundraising and distance training) again. 

Go Team!

Disneyland Half Marathon weekend!

This is a September post from my fundraising page that I'm just now getting around to cross-posting on Blogger.

I’m writing today with an update on my training and races. I ran the Disneyland Half Marathon (13.1 miles!) on August 31 with my best friend, and it was AMAZING. We spent two days at Disneyland, ran on the third day, and spent the following day at Disney California Adventure Park.

I’ve been fighting a knee injury since May and suffering mightily while training in the grueling humidity and heat. Kaitlin hadn’t been able to train at all because of work. So after two awesome days on our feet in the park, we mentally prepared for a long, painful race day. We got up at 3:30 a.m. to dress, eat, catch a shuttle to the park, and walk to the starting corrals for the 5:30 a.m. race, not realizing that starting in the last corral meant starting closer to 6:30 a.m.

The weather was glorious, and Kaitlin let me push us through a ‘run two minutes, walk one’ routine. The delayed start, however, meant we soon needed a bathroom break, and we lost at least 7 minutes in line for the porta-potties on the course. When we rejoined the other participants, the cutoff pacers were drawing up just behind us. Bicycling volunteers followed them, warning/encouraging participants to catch up or be pulled from the course for not meeting the minimum pace requirement.

By the 5k mark, we were averaging 17:29 minutes per mile, way behind the required 16min/mi minimum.  At 4 miles, Kaitlin was struggling mightily, and I was the most irritatingly cheerful personal trainer/cheerleader I could possibly be. “Walk fast or jog slow, but we’re not walking slow! You’ve got long legs; you can do this!” I told her I’d push her to 6 miles before letting her quit. We enjoyed running through the parks, briefly picking up speed and smiling for photographers, and bopping our heads to the music played by local marching bands and drumlines along the course. But we didn’t have time to stop and wait in line to take pictures with costumed characters.

At about 5.75 miles, the sun came out, we slathered on some sunblock, and we parted ways. I picked up my pace to try to catch the rear pacers, who’d just fallen out of sight. At the 10k mark, I’d picked up some time and was averaging 16:46 minutes per mile. I hit the 7-mile marker feeling unbelievably strong! The course then wound toward the Angels stadium, through it, and back out the other side. Local high school cheerleaders cheered us and gave high fives and I passed what must have been a mile of classic cars and their owners lining a stretch of otherwise boring street.

I alternated running and walking most of the course as needed, following no set plan or timer. My longest training run had been 10.65 miles about two weeks prior, and I had stopped back at my house for water two times in the middle of it, and yet I found myself feeling strong and exuberant throughout the race itself. I threw my arms in the air in a crazy dance while listening to my iPod and passing many other runners. At the 15k mark, my pace had improved to an average 15:50 minutes per mile.

Running the first half with Kaitlin had helped me pace far better than I could have on my own, and I definitely noticed the low energy of participants around me in the last 4 miles. I was tired, too, but I still had a lot left to give, even in spite of a painful blister. It was approaching 10 a.m. and getting quite warm, so the last mile or two was definitely tough. But I found it in me to sprint the final stretch and cross the finish line with my arms raised in the air. I didn’t have a set time goal but had been hoping for 3:30. My final time was 3:22:04 with an average pace of 15:25 minutes per mile.

Another way to break down the math is that I ran the first 3.1 miles in 54 minutes, 22 seconds; the next 3.1 in 49:49 (16 min/mi); the next 3.1 in 43:24 (14 min/mi); and the last 3.8 in 54:29 (14:20 min/mi). Some pretty impressive gains as the morning wore on!

I met up with Kaitlin at the end, and she told me she’d made it to 7 miles, which was WAY more than she thought she could do! She even got her finisher’s medal, too! We hobbled back to the shuttle and soon drove to a nearby spa to soak and unwind before meeting a local friend for an idyllic picnic dinner on the beach.

But there’s no rest in store for me. I’m looking forward to a gorgeous 10k trail race on October 4, my first duathlon (a 500 m swim + 5k run) on October 14, my next half marathon on October 19, the Spartan Beast 10- to 12-mile obstacle race on November 1, a possible back-to-back half marathon challenge on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, and my first stair climb race, the Big D Climb (1,276 stairs in 58 stories) on January 31. Why? Because I like challenges and new things and just want to be able to say at the end, “I did it!”

Cultural Appropriation in Racing

I rail about the color runs and how they stole a beautiful Hindu cultural tradition for profit and how much it frustrates me that people see this profile photo and ask me about the Color Run when in fact it is from a local Holi festival this year.

But I signed up for Cinco de Miler and Cinco de Muddo without a thought about cultural appropriation. There's a big difference between appropriation and celebration; the short explanation is demonstrating respect versus mocking the culture.

I went to the Cinco de Miler for the celebratory atmosphere, cool t-shirt, and the chance to run a 5-mile race, a race distance I'd never run before. Many participants dressed up in sombreros and luchador masks, and I saw one woman running in a full-body taco costume. I was ignorant. They were mocking. The race claims to celebrate "Mexico's colorful culture," which is NOT what Cinco de Mayo celebrates, and it supported the Ronald McDonald House Charities — Dallas.

No. Just stop.

At Cinco de Muddo, we got free samples of tequila. If there was anything questionable at the event, I didn't see it. The mariachi band and flamenco dancers were gone before I arrived. This event made money off the Cinco de Mayo celebration but/and benefited the Sharkarosa Wildlife Ranch, which houses and rehabilitates rescued wildlife.

The issue of cultural appropriation as related to these events only occurred to me after the fact, so I did some research. Cinco de Mayo is a small Mexican holiday with about as much fanfare as the United States' Flag Day. It commemorates an unlikely victory at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. In the US, we typically celebrate by dressing up in sombreros and mustaches and getting falling-down drunk on the basis that that's how to celebrate Mexican culture. It's mocking, it's rude, and it's wrong. So it's very American:

We completely forget about the true meaning behind the day. Instead, we get giant store displays of beer and tortilla chips stating things like: “Corona de Mayo” and “It’s Cinco, let’s salsa!” Because obviously the only way to engage others in this holiday is through beer and tortilla chips. I always dread the few weeks before Cinco de Mayo because of these stereotyped displays. All they do is trivialize the holiday and push people back into further ignorance about the significance of the day. Cinco de Mayo has come to be known as more of a drinking and partying holiday than anything else, which is wrong.

I mentioned the charities above because other racing events, such as Chicago's Carrera de los Muertos 5k, manage to create a race based on a cultural tradition AND support local charities that benefit the Hispanic community. Unlike the Dallas events that didn't even bother.

I'll think twice about participating next year and see if I can get in touch with the event organizers about my concerns before I do. Cinco de Miler sent out a thorough post-race survey with ample opportunity for me to speak my mind about the event. At least it's something.

It's a process, and every month I learn something new that I ought to look for in future races so I can responsibly vote with my dollars for basic respect of others.

I think have a running problem

I had registered to run the Cinco de Muddo 5k on May 3 because I'd heard such good things about it last year and had room in my schedule this year. Then I got an email about the 5-mile Cinco de Miler race the same day that has a freaking sweet tech tee as part of its race packet.

So I dashed down the hall to ask my coworker exactly what time her wedding is that afternoon: 4:30. Perfect.

The 5-miler is at 8:30 a.m., so I transferred my 9:30 mudder registration to noon to allow me time to eat and drive the hour between races and still have plenty of time to clean up for the wedding and get a nap if I'm lucky.

And then I'm running the 10-12 mile Tough Mudder noon the next day at a site three hours away.