Maybe I'll stash them in a plastic baggie...

Ran at the gym during lunch yesterday, then promptly drank too much that night. We threw a party for a retiring coworker at a local bar. (Hey, only 40 years till I'm there!) Normally I'm pretty good at sticking to one or two, but last night drinks kept appearing in my hand as if by magic. I paid for maybe one drink yet imbibed many more over the course of four hours. When I got home (I wasn't driving, don't worry) I drank a ton of water and had some toast, so this morning I felt fine.

I'm trying to stay positive for tomorrow. It's still supposed to rain all day, so I'm steeling myself. There is no way in h-e-double-hockey-sticks that I'm running 17 miles inside, so outdoors it is. I'm going to wear rain pants over my running tights, and a slicker. I have to admit that in a masochistic way I like running in the rain. Somehow rainy runs seem to go by more quickly, maybe because my brain is too much occupied thinking "what the heck is wrong with me that I’m out here in the rain while other people are huddled in front of the fire drinking coffee?" to notice that time is passing. Plus whenever you come across another runner in the rain there is that treasured nod of acknowledgement for a fellow badass. There is one hands down bummer though – no matter where you stash your tissues, they get damp. You know what I mean. It's wintertime, its cold, you're running, you get the sniffles. In dry or snowy weather you can leave them in your jacket pocket and you'll be okay. But when you're out in the rain for three hours, tissues turn into a limp, soggy mess no matter how well you try to protect them.

Weekend Report - Good News

distance: 5 miles (outdoors)
total program distance: 15 miles
pain level: naught
On Saturday morning I headed to Fit Right NW on 23rd to get some new shoes. The store came very highly recommended, and I wasn't disappointed. The woman who helped was very attentive and professional, and the gait analysis was interesting. My left foot lands almost perfectly neutral (yay!) but my right foot turns out (boo!). She recommended neutral shoes, because its apparently better to undercorrect overpronation than to overcorrect a good landing. I got a pair of Mizuno's – I had never heard of the brand but I gotta say, they feel great. Also, on Friday night I picked up the ChiRunning DVD from the library and watched part of it. Stick with me, there is a point to all this, and that point is that my five-mile run on Saturday felt GREAT! Perhaps even amazing. I kept the pace up, I felt almost no pain or discomfort at all, and right around mile 4 I fell into this awesome groove like I was barely working at all. I almost didn't want to stop at five miles, but we’ve all heard the horror stories of the over-enthusiastic so I reined it in. I was on a total high the rest of the day.

Sunday I lifted weights and went for a walk as my cross-training. It was a gorgeous fall day in Portland, bright blue skies, unusually warm, beautiful foliage. Today is bowling day; beforehand I'm going to ride the stationary bike for a little bit. I've put my mental foot down that Friday is going to be my honest-to-goodness rest day, no planned exercise. It's a struggle for me to take rest days - I think because I'm terrified of falling off the exercise wagon and putting on all the weight I lost. You hear and read all these stories of yo-yo dieters, and how only a small percentage of people manage to lose weight and keep it off. I've kept it off for about…seven years now. At this point I feel confident that I won't gain it back, because I love exercising and how it makes me feel, and I never want to be as uncomfortable with myself as I was when I was heavier. But I still have those concerns in the back of my mind, and they make it very hard to be lazy for even one day.

Digression: So the Red Sox won the World Series last night. As a life-long Yankees fan, I find it interesting how the Sox are being labeled the new Yankees because of their huge payroll and burgeoning dynasty, and more insidiously because the Sox are developing the casual, non-fanatical "fans" who only wear Sox ballcaps and watch Sox games when they get to the playoffs. This is funny to me because I am a born-and-bred New Yorker who has always rooted for the Yankees, and my roommate is a born-and-bred Massachusetts-ian who is a diehard Sox fan (somehow we avoid coming to blows). So I have dealt for years, especially living so far from NY, with the taunts of "Oh, the Yankees, well its easy to root for them, no wonder you're a fan." (What I want to tell these people is that being a true NY fan means I also root for the Jets. THE JETS, people! I've had more than my fair share of heartbreak.) And now she is facing the same sort of thing for her BS cap. I find it amusing. At least I don't have to worry about getting taunted for picking an easy football team to love. The Jets are like...I can't even think of a suitable metaphor. They are like the burnt, deflated souffle in the NFL kitchen.

Week Negative Six

Today is my first structured running day. I have six weeks before the start of Hal Higdon's 18-week program but I wanted to get in the groove sooner than that. I extrapolated his plan backwards to this week with the same scheduled days on and off and slightly reduced mileage. [A little digression on my running background: I first took up running as a senior in high school. I was overweight and I wanted to not be overweight. I also did Tae Bo and used my mom's old exercise bike, but neither seemed to really give me the cardio I thought I needed. So I started running (very, very slowly). I did the whole walk/run combo for a few months (holy painful shin splints Batman!) until I could go for 30 minutes straight. I reached my peak as runner the summer after freshman year of college. I was living at home and working in retail 30 hours a week, leaving me with a lot of time to run. I did 6 miles a day 6 days a week on the trails at the state park. It was awesome, I loved it, and I still love trail running more than anything. I never kept my times or thought about racing; I was running purely for fun & exercise at that point. Sadly, I did not keep running when I went back to school (for a variety of reasons, both mundane and exotic). I stayed in decent shape but not through running. I'd jog a few miles once or twice a month but that was it. End digression.] This summer I eased back into regular running as a way to get out of the gym and enjoy the great weather. I would say that since August I've been running 3-5 miles about 3 times a week, with a lot of hill work thrown in because oh hey, I live on a big hill. My goal for the next six weeks is to build up to a strong, reliable base of about 17 miles per week while starting to extend my long runs on Saturdays. I don't plan on incorporating any speed work until I actually start the program, because I want my base to be rock solid. At the end of six weeks I'd like to be chafing at the bit to increase my intensity. We'll see how it goes of course, in six weeks I may be crying uncle and taking up boxing or something. (In which case I'll field suggestions on renaming this blog. I vote for "My First Concussion.")

I've been wanting to get as many races of any distance under my belt as possible, so that I can get used to the atmosphere and the nerves before a race start (I assume it is slightly different than dragonboat racing). I plan on doing the Pier Park XC race on 11/17 and the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day. I'm already committed to the Ho-Ho 5k on 12/9.

Gear update: I realized that I need to get an HRM. Everything I've read is all "heart rate this" and "heart rate that". Clearly a heart rate monitor is a key training tool and it make a lot of sense to me. But I was really torn between getting a fancy thing like the Forerunner or a simple HRM watch. My problem with the Forerunner is I don't need the GPS capability - I plan on mapping all my runs ahead of time. Plus, based on what the consumer reviewers had to say about the Forerunner's tracking capabilities I'm probably not missing anything. Really I just want an HRM/stopwatch combo, so I got a Timex Ironman watch for seventy bucks from Amazon. Once I've taken it out for a few runs I'll share my thoughts.









(Check out this completely unnecessary photo of my cat! Sweet!)

"Gear" Run down

I put gear in quotes up there because basically, I have none. I have my lovely, wonderful New Balance shoes that I've had for years and which will undoubtedly need replacing if I truly get serious in the coming months. I have some cotton ankle socks, some running shorts (meeeeow!), a pair of cold weather running pants (i.e. my new best friends, thank you PDX weather), some sports bras. I also have an i-pod that is like a fifth limb to me, I seriously cannot leave the house without it, period. (More on that later.) My point is that I don't have a heart-rate monitor, or one of those fancy water belt deals that will turn me into a human camel, or even a stopwatch. I figure I'm going to give myself until the end of November (at which point I'll be up to 8 miles at a time) before I make any gear purchases. No point in spending my hard-earned lucre on things that may, for all I know, end up on the dusty Shelf of Rebecca's Failed Big Ideas along with 3 bolo ties, a pair of wooden clogs, half a home-brewing kit, an assortment of wigs, and 18 connected paper clips. But when some merchant does manage to pry a few crumpled bills from my miserly little claw, I will happily share the news and any opinion I form concerning such gear.



Digression: Writing the title made me think of that movie "The Run Down" with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (love that his real name is Dwayne, btw). Anyone seen that? It's one of those movies that looked bad in the previews and was in fact quite bad and yet...it had its moments. And those moments made forking over two hours of your life not such a rotten deal. Let's just say that watching a drugged out Rock be assaulted by angry jungle monkeys is just as funny as it sounds. Clearly, serious cinephiles should drop everything and flock to Movie Madness. Do it now! They close at 10!!



Okay, just remembered I was going to write about my i-pod. So when I used to trail run in college I didn't listen to music because the trails were rough so you needed to pay really close attention to your footing and music was too distracting. But since I've been running on ASS-phalt I've listen to my Fifth Limb non-stop because I tend to get bored out of my mind. However, as Hal (Higdon) told me wisely, if you are going to be outside running for hours, potentially in the dark and/or poor weather conditions, it's important not to space out and put yourself in danger (from drivers/scary dogs/creepy people). So I'm going to try to wean myself off of it (it's not that I don't love you baby...no don't look at me like that...). We'll see.