Miles 246-247.5: I Joined the Club

The club of runners that have GPS-enabled watches, that is.

I was too antsy to let it charge fully, so I took it out for a test run. I'm pretty pleased with the results.

More later - now I must tend to a hungry James and the pasta we are making. 

Miles 240-245: Company Mill Trail, Visit 2

Yesterday afternoon, James and I headed back to Umstead State Park to get some hill action.

With the Bix 7 just 5 weeks away, getting hill action is becoming a requirement.

Check out this doozy of a course.  I've run it once before as a training run with my mother-in-law Cathy last year. It's insane.

Dorothy Beal on Training Runs

I've alluded to Dorothy Beal previously, she of three children, seemingly unfailing sunny disposition, and pixie figure. While I feel we are worlds apart with our running, I found this nugget on her site today:

Tip: It is very important that if one of your goals is to get faster that you do not do all of your runs in your 'comfort zone'

This zone is usually too slow for your fast workouts and too fast for your slow workouts. If you want to improve each training cycle and get faster, than you need to make sure that your slow workouts are slow and your fast workouts are fast. This allows your body to make the appropriate training adaptations that are supposed to happen over the course of a training cycle.

It takes patience and courage to be a runner.

Have the courage, to have the patience to run the appropriate pace, even if that pace at times may feel painfully slow/insanely fast to you.

Miles 237-239: Treadmill quickies

Forest fire in Pender County that started on Monday:

Source: www.wnct.com

Translates into funky fog wafting across all of Eastern NC:

Not unlike that experienced by Winnie the Pooh and his friends:

Though smelling worse and posing questionable health risks.

Rather than gamble with my lungs, I've avoided being outside since Tuesday as much as possible; yesterday I went to the gym to do some weight training as well as dash out a couple miles on the treadmill.

I started with one mile at a 8:30 minute pace, followed by a half-mile at a 3.5% grade; after a round of exercises working my upper body and abs, I went back to the treadmill and pounded out another mile at an 8:00 minute pace.

I always feel incredibly silly and awkward on the treadmill, focusing more on keeping my feet from wandering off the conveyer belt and worrying about stress on my shin, and so am doubly surprised at how easily these miles go by.

Miles 237-239: Strictly business.

Miles 233-236: Beach run

For the first time since last August, I got to run on the beach - as in, shoes on sand.

It's definitely a weird sensation, what with the surface shifting with each step. It's definitely hot. It's definitely windy.

But it's lovely.

For the 45 minutes I ran, I was completely in the flow. Maybe because I didn't have a watch, maybe because I didn't really know how far I was running. I ran into the wind down the beach, passing under the pier, and turning around when I reached the first condo building that came into sight. On the outgoing run it was so windy that I couldn't really hear anything; conversely, on the incoming run, I could hear everything.

The walking women chatting and gesticulating; the children squealing - in particular, on little boy who had the joyful yip of a small dog, so bedazzled was he by the incoming waves; the waves crashing into the shore; the seagulls laughing.

Miles 233-236: Active sun goddess worship.

Miles 229-232: After-Dinner Run

Last night, for the first time in a very long time indeed, I decided to run after dinner.


As mentioned on Tuesday, North Carolina has been granted a brief break from the blistering summer heat. Weather forecasts indicate that this sweet respite will be drawing to a close, so despite desires to open another Stella, I changed into my (freshly washed and dried!) running gear and headed out.

Only two unpleasant things about this run: 1) the post-yoga pain in my shoulder and 2) the fire in my stomach from the spicy stir-fry I made for dinner.

But everything else was lovely. Everyone spilled into the streets, enjoying the perfect weather. Two middle-aged women, perched atop their bikes, chatting at the corner; two twin boys tearing around their fenced-in yard - "Hi!" "Hi, lady!" - with their multiple dogs on their heels; so many houses smelling of grilled pork.

Miles 229-232: sunset run, neighborhood living at its finest.

Sweet Bliss: My hamstrings love Moon Salutations

We interrupt your regularly scheduled running program to bring you an episode on yoga.

(I guess I can't really write that because there is absolutely nothing regular about my running program.)

At any rate, North Carolina is presently beautiful. Bea-u-ti-ful. 80° with very low humidity. Partly sunny. I bolt from work, ready to hit the not-so-hot pavement. And somewhere between James telling me we have no food and me realizing I need to do laundry, I managed to put all of my running clothes (yes, all) in the washer at the same time.

I am not above wearing stinky clothes. But soaking wet ones kind of present an issue.

So, I decided to revisit my most favorite online resource, My Yoga Online.

Seriously, this site is awesome; especially for folks like me living too far away from normally scheduled yoga classes.

And no matter how you look at it, $9.95 a month for unlimited access to the whole host of videos, blogs, and community pages on healthy living and thinking and, of course, yoga is a steal.

My love affair with yoga, like my love affair with running, is on-again/off-again. This fact alone is significant; the mental part of both activities I understand and embrace, it's the physical dedication and discipline that both call for to excel that I struggle to maintain.

Today, I took Clara Roberts-Oss's Moon Saluation class. I've practiced it before, but I didn't appreciate just how much a runner could benefit from this vinyasa sequence, focusing on loosing hamstrings, hips, and back.

It was, simply put, delicious. The yin to my running yang.

Luckily for me, tomorrow's high is only 83°, and the clothes will be dry.

Miles 225-228: Stubborn woman running in stupidly hot weather

Readers, I am a stubborn, stubborn woman.

This trait of mine is a bit of a sore spot with me, as it can be so polarizing in my relationships. I have worked hard to not be so stubborn, especially regarding things which I have tried-and-tested information about.

Wednesday, I failed.

Wednesday, I tried to go running with James. At 5:45 in the afternoon. When it was 93.7 °F.

Yet again, as with before, my first two miles were great given the conditions - 8:55, 9:20 - and then mile 3 came along and kicked me solidly in the ass.

Strangely enough, my brain was alert and aware - not fogged in the heat haze - but my body just would not respond. I panted uncontrollably and my tongue became a cotton ball. My legs refused to move faster than an 11 minute pace. The heat wafting up from the pavement was baking my shoes and running on the bone-dry grass was sadly no different.

Just before mile 3 was up, I acquiesced and shooed James - sweat sluicing off him, but nimble as ever - home. And I walked.

Miles 225-228: 42ish minute lesson that the heat will always beat me if I refuse to change my game-plan.

Miles 217-224: Running with Glenna

After yesterday's breakthrough run, today's long distance run was like a homecoming.

After yesterday's race, Glenna, who has recently committed to running her first half-marathon, asked if I was up for running 7-8 miles this morning, as her normal running partner and trainer was out of town.  I was hesitant, of course, having not run in several days, but ultimately, I agreed. I figured that running at a slower pace should allow for any concerns about riding too far after just getting back in the saddle.

We agreed that, given the recent onset of summer and rising temperatures, we needed to hit the road by no later than 7:30 to beat the heat. When I woke at 6:30 and felt my muscles groaning after yesterday's 5K, I figured I was in for a doozy. Thankfully, I had a lovely surprise waiting for me.

Glenna told me that she has been running between 11 and 11:30 minute miles. After letting our considerably faster husbands (her David being much like my James) take off for their conversational 9 minute/mile pace, we started under overcast skies and a blanket of humidity. The first few miles, we chatted about the passing houses and running and how fabulous she looked (having lost 30+ pounds in 8 months of running and all around healthy living) and then slowly stopped talking. The sun came out and the humidity rose. An hour slipped by and we rounded into the last stretch of the 7 mile route we had planned.

After sprinting to fetch a forgotten water bottle, I gasped, "Do you want to go for eight?" And Glenna said, "Yes, but let's slow down."

Rounding the last lap - so familiar to me at this point - in my neighborhood was extremely pleasurable to me. The speed didn't matter, because I knew what she was doing - she was running farther than she had ever run before - and was so proud to be a part of that moment.

Rounding a curve in my neighborhood, she evenly stated, "I'm done." I didn't argue.

And with that, she had finished 7.89 miles, without stopping.

We walked back to the house, letting our breathing even and our sweat cool, and I gave her a high-five.

"You did it, lady."

Miles 217-224: 90 minutes, 11:24 minute/mile, running with a friend.

Miles 214-216: I'm Back - Let's Book It 5K

This morning, I returned to running after a one-day-shy-of-two-weeks hiatus. 

First thought upon writing that sentence: if I've lamented being behind on my plans to run 1111 miles in 2011 already twice before, taking off two weeks doesn't exactly suggest that my either of my previous renewed commitments are worth much at all. Yes, readers, there is guilt.

It's funny. Physically-speaking, I recovered beautifully after running in Williamsburg. By day two, all traces of soreness were gone and by all accounts, I should have been ready to go.

Ah, but there was the heat. 95-degree blistering heat. My reliable (and convenient) excuse for falling off from running for the third summer in a row.

But this time around, it really is an excuse. An excuse I've been telling myself for the past few weeks to cover up what's really rolling around in my head.

The passing of my grandmother has touched me in places I did not know existed; it has raised questions I thought I already had answers to; it has humbled me enormously. And it was a beautiful passing - it could have been far more sudden, traumatic, and painful. And yet, though I am beyond grateful for so many things surrounding this event, I feel lost.

Not because of her actual passing. That would be melodramatic of me - who has been living away from home for ten years now - to assert. I am terrifically happy and at peace with the idea of her body returned to the earth, her spirit even more with me now.

I have been both blessed and cursed to have those I consider closest to me with me for so long. Confronting mortality in this direct sense for the first time at 28 is unnerving. Unsettling. Uprooting.

And I have been wallowing in it.

A few weeks ago, my friend Glenna, a teacher, asked me to participate in a 5K that one of her students was putting together to raise money for his local library as one of his final Eagle Scout projects. If she reads this, she will learn that while I planned to donate to his cause, I originally never intended to run.

But sweet Glenna also invited both Renee and me, last minute, to join in a Friday Ladies Bunco Night that she and some friends have been hosting for nearly ten years now and drawn by the idea of female fellowship, I went.

Gathered in those rooms last night, mindlessly throwing dice for the first time with eleven other women - some who I knew not at all - I felt myself part of a tradition much bigger than myself and glimpsed what so many people find wonderful about a Catholic mass.

And I remembered why I run.

I run because I am alive, because I can, because - whether you are religious, spiritual, scientific, or flat out atheist - you can't deny that the mechanics of the human body are beautiful, and putting those mechanics to use makes a thoughtless sense.

So I got up this morning and James came with me and on a beautiful, hot - but not too hot - day, I ran. And when I finished, I watched as the small gathering of people cheered louder for the sixty or so participants in this community event than at any professionally organized event I've been to. I watched as a group of teenagers ran to meet their grandmother - the last participant- and cross the chalked finish line with her.

Miles 214-216: 26 minutes and 39 seconds under the beautiful North Carolina sun.