20 Ways To Celebrate Boston Marathon Week.

This weekend was busy. B.U.S.Y. And it's only the beginning - Mike recently brought to my attention that we have not a single weekend free between now and the big day, Lake Placid July 22nd. Not a one. Fortunately for us, however, busy is how we happily roll.

And so in busy-ness, I apologize for the day late-ness of this post. One whole day of the second best holiday week of the year has already passed. But no worries...there is still plenty of time to celebrate...

Boston Marathon Week!

Runner or not I highly encourage you to join in the festivities. For your optimal Boston Marathon week enjoyment, I have developed a list of celebratory activities. Feel free to participate in any, but do not feel pressured to hit them all. After all, they've been running this race for 116 years, so the odds are heavily in the favor of a hundred and seventeenth running.

1. Throw back a Sam Adams.

2. Eat a Boston creme donut.

3. Read chapters 6 - 8 of Kathrine Switzer's "Marathon Woman"

4. Buy your gas from a Citgo. 

5. Watch a youtube clip of Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley's "Duel in the Sun"

6. Throw back a Sam Adams.

7. Watch the movie Saint Ralph.

7. b. Cry.

7. c. Download all of the songs from the soundtrack.

8. Listen to the Saint Ralph soundtrack.

8. b. Cry.

9. Throw back a Sam Adams.

10. Cheer for the Red Sox.

11. Create a scream tunnel with friends. As local runners come by, cheer loudly for them and offer them kisses on signs.

12. Pull a Rosie. (eg - enter a local 5K, start, duck behind bushes, and finish as the leader having not broken a sweat. Later, refuse to give back your winnings. Assure local race directors you were simply celebrating Boston Marathon week. What's the biggie?)

13. Wear oversized, cheap or old clothing over your outfit for the day. Just as your day begins, throw the oversized clothes off and leave them where they land.

14. Throw back a Sam Adams.

15. Find a hill in your town. Run up it yelling "heartbreak".

16. Drink Poland Spring bottled water.

17. Throw back a Sam Adams.

18. Eat a full days worth of calories of nothing but sample size portions of gu, shot blocks, power bars, honey stingers, etc.

19. Pour over the weather forecast, paying special attention to wind direction.

20. Use a porta jon a minimum of ten times.

And finally... Get training!...the 2013 qualifier is 5 minutes faster for every age group, but right on Hereford, left on Boylston is calling your name!

Happy Boston Marathon week everyone! And please remember to celebrate responsibly...if you participate in items 1, 6, 9, 14, and 17 (especially all in one day) - take the T.

P.S. - Wondering what the best holiday week of the year is? Troy Fair, sillies! Written in my marriage vows..."to love, honor, cherish, and hold sacred the Troy Fair..."

Marathons suck.

...again, written yesterday and not posted until today...so actually two weeks from now I'll be home from school, limping around, sporting my Boston shirt...anyway, I plan to blog lots between now and April 16th...let the two week countdown begin! Oh, and btw - I let Mike title the blog...this next will be his 6th Boston and 13th marathon and he's feeling a bit cranky toward the distance:)

Boston is two weeks from today. Actually, two weeks from this very moment I should be (assuming all goes according to plan) headed home, all cramped up in the car becoming increasingly stiffer and sorer by the minute. Ah yes, nothing screams "reward" for those months of hard work and dedication quite like the inability to sit on a toilet seat, inability to pull on your own pant leg, six hour drive home, throbbing headache, loss of appetite, and intestinal distress that so often accompany the finish of a marathon. Congratulations, here's a medal and a little silver blanket, your family should be somewhere about a mile that way sweetie, now you go on and find 'em.

It's funny why we do what we do. During our last Boston long run yesterday morning, Chuck and Emily and I were composing a pre-marathon motivational speech. All we could come up with was "what the hell is wrong with you all", "welcome all of you who have also obviously lost it", "warning, this is going to suck a lot", as well as a few tips on controlling your bodily functions. Three runners with nearly 30 marathons combined completed and this is all the motivation we have to offer. And yet, there we were, pounding out one last 24 miler before our next marathon adventure.

It's that punch drunk long run conversation, and so many others like it, that make up a huge part of the reward - the why in doing it. Boston won't actually happen for another two weeks, but I've already reaped the vast majority of the rewards. The long runs, the post run coffee, the french toast and waffles, the bonding, the joking, the lost socks, the angry Sunday morning drivers encountered and then giggled about. No matter how many times it's done, the feeling of accomplishment after running 20 miles or more on a weekend morning never becomes any less satisfying, and there's no better sound than the clomp clomping of numerous sets of feet all setting out on a long run together.

And so, in some small way, the big to-do has already passed. The long runs are banked, the last post run breakfast was shared, and all that's left is tapering, overpriced adidas garb, large crowds, and THE 26.2. Don't get me wrong - what's left of the experience is enjoyable. There will still be bonding, still be group meals, still be more to giggle about, and no other long run offers the screaming tunnel of love at mile 12 like the girls of Wellesley College in Boston does. It's exciting, but I've come to realize that it's not the prize, and definitely not the point. The prize is being able to come home to start the whole process over again, and knowing great and crazy people to share the process with.

Like a two wheeled Subaru

Mike's laying on the couch across the room from me lamenting loudly that his pictures from the weekend have yet to be blogged. I've been engrossed in a project for a crochet class my mom and I are taking (a baby cardigan - it's so cute and I'm elated that I've read the pattern and created it *almost* all by myself), but after having to tear out a bazillion rows because I missed a "chain 2" an hour ago, I'm frustrated enough with crafting for the night that Mike wins.

Unlike my cute pink 18 mo cardigan, my Specialized tricross comp bike has yet to be aggravating since we brought it home one week and two days ago. If it is possible for a bike to serve as chiropractor, marriage counselor, and mood enhancing drug, this is the one.

With the natural gas boom in our podunk county, the main roads, which were already far from ideal for bike riding, have become entrenched in large truck traffic. Stone truck after stone truck after water truck after water truck after large equipment trailer. There are days that traveling the roads by car is unsettling, much less trying to run or bike.

Lucky we are though to be surrounded by rural dirt roads. SURROUNDED. Mike has spent the unseasonably warm and snowless winter touring the back roads on his tricross bike. He pulls out of the driveway and comes back hours later covered and mud and grinning ear to ear. When I run after dark, he escorts me with his bright helmet light. He rides up the dirt roads to family dinners at my mom's house. He rides all the places around here ideal for riding - all the places the gas traffic and the tri and road bikes can't go.

Chenango Cycles in Binghamton had the exact same bike Mike bought two years ago, only in my size and on phenomenal sale. Being a 2010 model they no doubt really wanted to get rid of it. I've been eyeing it for a couple of months. Last Saturday after the St. Pat's 4 miler, we pulled the trigger and brought it home.

I've never enjoyed riding a bicycle so much, and never felt so comfortable on a bike. We're on grit and gravel and stone and mud and climbing and descending and climbing and climbing, but riding this bike is like driving a Subaru with two wheels - no matter what the condition of the road under your wheels, you're safe and it won't let you down.

Four hours on the bike Saturday morning loosened up the nagging pain in my right leg from a pestery bulging disc that acts up when my mileage goes up, and my run later that day felt the best any had all week. Those four hours were also the first Mike and I were ever able to be on bikes together and not argue - we have a strained road biking history to the extent that we refer to tandem road bikes as divorces with wheels. Not only did we not argue, we got along famously, even after I had a minor meltdown regarding large rocks the gas company has spread over a few miles of Warren Center back roads and an incident with a German shepherd. If you don't know, I'm terrified of dogs. There were tears. But the stones and dog were nothing fig newtons at the LeRaysville Dandy couldn't fix, and I pulled back into our driveway happier than I've ever been after a bike ride.

We went out for another ride Sunday afternoon after our long run, and tonight I got my first chance to escort Mike on his run in the dark and drizzle. Mike did all of the picture taking this weekend, so I apologize in advance that this is a bit of a photo collage of myself - but if you look past the cyclist in the pictures, you'll see some of the beautiful places we're able to ride...in tshirts in March no less!

Swimmer? Okay, maybe not. But closer.

I wrote this Wednesday night and never posted. Update: in last night's swim I was able swim further without breaks in my new swim "style". That said, old habits die hard, and I feel like all I do while swimming is think...I think about my arms and my hips go back to their sway, I think about my hips and stroke is sloppy again. I wish it were more natural for me, but I'm working at it slow and steady, and I suppose that given my swimming status I should just feel grateful that I haven't required lifeguard assistance yet! Next post will be up soon - we've adopted another two wheeled family member, and spent four hours touring the back roads of our gas infested stomping ground together today. It was almost a complete win.

When I say I "learned to swim" this past July, I really mean that I attempted and succeeded putting my face in the water, breathing to the side, swinging my arms and kicking my legs. I have since called it swimming.

It gets me from one end of a pool to the other over and over and over, and it got me through (heavily wetsuit aided) the Syracuse 70.3. It just gets me these places very slowly. Swim workout after swim workout, I go to what I know...face in the water, breathe to the side, swing my arms, and kick my legs. And move painfully slowly.

Now I know I'm biased here, but Mike's middle name may as well be Phelps. He's a swimmer extraordinaire. Or at least was "back in the day" and is still very good. He's been patiently giving me little swimming tips whenever we swim together. I felt as though as I was a lost cause though when last Saturday's only "tip" was "I think you just have very little upper body strength". And I had become resigned to calling anything under the two hour and twenty minute cut off time in the ironman a win for the day.

Tonight in the Elk Lake pool, Mike's faith in me must have been renewed, and he started offering all kinds of advice. Advice on stroke. I'd work on it for 100. Advice on kicking. Work on it. And then he did something magical - he mocked me. He swam for me the way he sees me swim. I look ridiculous. I asked if I REALLY moved my hips that much, and he said yes, and so I asked why he never told me to stop, and he assured me that he's told me plenty of times, but that he assumed I just couldn't stop because I hadn't.

So I stopped. No more thrashing my hips about. I swam the next 25 yards in literally 1/3 of the time I have ever swam the length of a pool before. Keeping everything straight and long, I swam another and another and another. And Mike said "I can't believe it...you look like a swimmer." I could've cried.

Now mind you - I still suck. A lot. Swimming that way was hard work. I had to rest between every 50. And I have a lot of work I need to commit to doing just to successfully get through the swim at Lake Placid regardless of time. But for today, my Mike Phelps called me a "swimmer".

Forty-three days

Where on earth does the time go?

The Boston Marathon will be run in forty-three days...twenty-six miles, three hundred and eighty five yards from Hopkinton to Boston will be run six weeks from tomorrow, ready or not. Oy vey.

April 16th will be my fourth Boston, but while the race route and date (Patriot's Day in Massachusetts) stays the same every year, the preparation is, as always, unique.

Last year at this time I had run the MV 20 miler at 7:09 pace, was running midweek tempo runs up to 16 miles total w/ as many as 10 miles at 7min flat pace, and logged seven 20+ mile runs before the big day. I was a woman possessed with hopes of a marathon PR. I was also a woman possessed with horrific back pain who was miserable.

I didn't run a PR last year in Boston. I ran over 2 minutes slower than my PR, but I've never felt quite so satisfied finishing a race. Like someone had pulled a 300lb monkey off my back. Regardless of the time on the clock, it was over. I'd been racing my own shadow for months and it was exhausting. I could relax. I could take a deep breath. I could demand I felt physically well before I pushed myself to run again.

It's funny how differently a person can react to similar life situations. Before that day, every race I'd ever finished had left me with a desire to be better. That race just left me with a desire to smile, laugh, eat, nap, and most of all to take the "must run faster, farther" blinders off and enjoy other aspects of life. I also looked forward to a break helping me to enjoy running again.

Ten months later, I can definitely say that I've smiled, laughed, and eaten (oh my have I eaten). I've enjoyed things I didn't make time for before. I learned to swim, I learned to ride a bike down on aero bars, I tackled my first triathlon, and I nurtured and maintained a garden that for all of Mike's picking on my green thumb skills or lack there of, we are still eating the bounties of out of the freezer. I've read books and crocheted hats and scarves. And I LOVE to run.

However happier, I am (ironically) sadly slower. Sigh. In the last month's attempts at track work and tempo runs I'm hard pressed to be convinced I share legs and lungs with the girl in last year's running log. Deciding that happy running is just too important to me to let my times get me blue, this week, like a Greek mother with a bundt cake, I FIXED IT!

The fix? Watch and track be damned.

I know many will judge, but I just don't see why I need to look it in the face. I need to DO it (run fast), but do I need to KNOW how much slower my running fast is happening? I think no. Not right in this moment at least.

And so, instead of my tempo run this week with the constant eye on the pace on the Garmin - it was five miles out, five miles back my favorite route from school. Two miles easy, push for five, three miles easy. I know where the mile marks are on that run, I've heard the Garmin beeps enough times to know well. And I know what a tempo feels like. Tough, uncomfortable, but sustainable.

Instead of my planned 6 x 800 - I chose "shuffle on my ipod" (ironman training playlist). I left home with my tunes in, ran two songs easy and then the third song - fast. Fourth easy, fifth fast, etc...until I had run 6 songs total at a pace that felt just like the pace I run on the track for 800 repeats. I know that feeling well too. You feel good for about 200, and then somewhere in the next 200 your guts start to feel funny, and then toward the end you start to choke on your spit a little bit. At least that's how mine feel, and so that's what I went with. The best part of that workout was the Russian roulette of the random shuffle. 800 repeats will always be 3:00 - 3:15. Letting a song determine how long you have to run hard can mean committing to upwards of 4 minutes. Pray to the shuffle gods you don't get Free Bird.

And then there's the crucial long run. Last year's seven 20+er's culminated with a "practice" marathon at Ocean Drive in Cape May the last Sunday in March. I remember most of my long runs leaving me hobbling last year, but this run was the straw that broke the camel's back. I went from feeling fast and strong with tolerable pain to rendered nearly unable to run. I ran no more than 30 miles a week the whole month of April. I remember calling it my super taper. In reality it was my "oh my, I hope I can do this".

This morning's 20 miler was, like the rest of this week's training, a breath of fresh air. It was the end of what turned out to be my first 70+ mile week, and was faster than I had any business running at this point. I ran with a group of six for the first five miles and then my friend Chuck for the last fifteen, and while I struggled a bit toward the end, the company, as always, made the run not only bearable, but really fly by. And a little part of me would like to believe that the pace of this morning's run may have been made possible in part by the non traditional workouts working out. The good news however, is that for as mentally and physically challenging as parts of that twenty miles was - parts of all 71 miles this week actually - not one step of them was miserable.

Two years and twenty more miles...

Again a post written and not published for over a week. So please pardon the date discrepancies. Happy March!

Two years of marital bliss were celebrated last week with the annual trek to Martha's Vineyard to relax, eat, shop, and of course, run the MV 20 miler, the world's greatest race. Yes, I said it. WORLD'S GREATEST, as declared by me, this 22nd day of February 2012. They may now put it on the shirt if they'd like. Maybe it'll replace the very obviously missing no weenies stamp? Even freshly miffed over the boys and girls club royal f up of disregarding the no weenies emblem on finishers shirts (what were they thinking?!) you can't take the shirt out on the race, and that 20 miles is the best. EVER.

I took quite a few pictures on our trip (a milestone as I'm terrible about capturing memories), and so I'll keep my chat brief, and let the pictures do the talking for this post. In short, what I found this weekend was that I not only love, but really really like my husband a lot, that I'm blessed with great friends, that if bright painted fish speak to you then you should bring them home (my kitchen walls are crying that I didn't buy them), and that no number of miles run can counteract the food damage that island's insanely terrific fare inspires. And the race? Mike did us proud, 9th overall. My race was more choppy stride and survivor shuffle than a feat of graceful athleticism, but it was a 20 miler in the bank and I still enjoyed myself enough to pick up a pretty sea souvenir somewhere between miles seven and eight (pictured below).

I feel a little awkwardly smug posting such a gushing "ahh, isn't my life just so perfect! I just love my life!" post, so sorry about that. Life's also heavily reliant on perspective, and though I ran literally 40 whole seconds a mile slower for 20 whole miles (that comes out to 14 minutes for those of you keeping track), and spent minutes of our trip being upset about my run, I had to let it go and realize that at least my bad long run happened in beautiful surroundings. Nothing's ever perfect of course, but our time together on that island every year is pretty close.

We caught the ferry in daylight this year, and so got a sunset run in on the island....

Race morning...Mike and I were bibs #2 and #1, and Julie and I (both in blue if you can pick us out) both made the Martha's Vineyard Times Sunday morning in the race start photo.

A mile 7 souvenir...it was prettier before I broke the bottom trying to cram it into the little pocket in the back of my running shorts around mile 12...but once I'd carried it for 13 miles I became attached. This could be why we have so many cats?...

Our MV 20 miler weekend crew...

And the view that's so hard to say goodbye to every year...

Until 2013...may the MV Boys and Girls Club come to their senses....VIVA LA "NO WEENIES"!

Using hand dryer as hair dryer: faux pas?

I actually wrote this two, almost three now:/, weeks ago, but never proofread and posted, and then got sidetracked. Happy reading, spandex flaunting, and inappropriate rest room using my fellow runners!

I remember the days (they weren't all too long ago) when my curly hair and I dreaded swimming events and humidity. When I wouldn't have imagined leaving the house in lounging clothes, or without makeup. The days when the only lounge clothes I owned was a pair of sweats I'd bought from a school basketball fundraiser, two pair of cotton gym shorts, and a pile of marching band tshirts.

I knew people in those days who tromped around in their scruffy lounge clothes, and I envied them. I envied even more the people with the trendy lounge clothes; cute jogging pants and hoodies, hair in a pony. For me, even after laboring over clothes and crazy frizzy hair and face paint for far too long, I would still feel self conscious out and about. Which is, no doubt, why I not only noticed what others were out in, but envied their confidence in themselves.

And then one August day, there I was. Dressed in cotton shorts, a marching band tshirt, the only pair of sneakers I owned (that really weren't running appropriate and left horrific blisters on my achilles) drenched in my own sweat. I had on no makeup, or if I had at some point that day it had long since melted off and run down. And what was worse - I was standing next to the cutest boy I'd ever met. It was my high school nightmare. It was my 26 year old "content to be a cat lady band teacher but at least I'm going to be a thin and fit one lost my ability to give a hoot" happy reality.

The cute boy stuck around, (and has told me since that he hates make up and doesn't understand why women 'paint their faces'), and so did my happy reality. And I gained confidence. Rare is the day I feel those all too familiar from the past pangs of self consciousness, and the feeling of contentedness in self and life is bliss.

But will I know when I've crossed the line? The line that separates a secure sense of self from total lack of regard for others' opinion of you. The filter that screams "self confidence!" vs "socially unacceptable!"

Because I think I may have. This past Sunday. In a public restroom.

Due to snow, the county band concert I had to attend with students and direct during was rescheduled from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. Refusing to miss my Sunday long run with the Triple Cities group, I set out my winter long run clothes and packed up my dress clothes and toiletries on Saturday night without giving the whole situation a second thought.

I got in 19 with "the group" though really Emily and I ran alone for all but literally a couple of tenths of a mile early on. The temperature never reached double digits, and some of our miles were, we realized, the slowest the two of us have ever run together, but it was another great run in the bank, and I enjoyed every step.

After the run, I ate my breakfast and then made a break for the public restroom where I proceeded to change into my concert outfit in a stall, and then wash my face and hair in the sink, mousse my hair, dry my hair under the hand dryer (I had my blow dryer but there were no outlets), spray and pin my hair, and lightly paint my face. In the swinging door sweaty, salty and just minutes post frost beard, back out the swinging door in less than 10 minutes ready to direct a band and greet parents and students.

Oh the looks those 10 minutes held.

Now, Wegman's is the upper echelon of grocers in the area, but I didn't get the sense the clientele giving me looks was being snobby. Just genuinely aghast at the woman with her head stuck under the hand dryer.

Fleeting pang of that old insecurity and self doubt. Fleeting, but enough to get me thinking about how many borderline socially inappropriate things I do in my runner life.

I wear spandex everywhere in the winter. On my run and then into the grocery store, the post office, through the halls of my high school (where little to none of my running wardrobe meets the dress code).

I think nothing of spitting or snot rockets regardless of who I'm running with or who I'm running by.

I've given up makeup but for the lightest bit, and it seems unfathomable to me that I was ever self conscious about my hair, with whose out of control-ness I've fallen in love. The way I figure it, you really can't mess up what's going on up there unless you try too hard.

The thing is, I remember how exhausting those self conscious, hair straightening, makeup applying, fashion fussing days were. And how unhappy they often were. And so, while running may have led me to using that hand dryer as a hair dryer, it also led me to yet another wonderfully fulfilling and happy Sunday, and I'll take those at the cost of a few funny looks any day.