Resolution Completed

I am pro at starting things, but I am not such a pro at always seeing them to fruition. I get bored easily, so to do something for an entire year is a big step. My New Year’s resolution for 2011 was to run at least one race per month. The races didn’t have to be running races only. They could be triathlons or adventure races that included running, too. In some months I ran more than one race, and on two occasions I nearly didn’t get the race in until the last weekend of the month. Below is the rundown of the 12 races I did in order as part of my resolution, and accompanying each race is one word to describe my impression of the race. The accompanying photo is of my favorite medal from the year. The medal is from the Moses Lake triathlon and is made from stamped pottery--loved the creativity of it for sure. 

Here are the races:

First Run: Tradition

Run for Chocolate: Snowy

Shamrock Run: Beer

Wahine Half Marathon: Hawaii!

Hippie Chick: Crowded
Moses Lake Triathlon: Homey

Great Northwest Mountain Run: Steep

Hood to Coast: Blast

Pints to Pasta: Mediocre

Hybrid Adventure Games: Potential

West Linn Turkey Trot: Hung-over

Ho Ho 5K: Next???

Hood to Coast 2012

It's official. Welcome Back Trotters (and the sweaty hogs) will be running Hood to Coast this year. This year's team is made up of teachers from the high school I teach at and two teachers from a middle school in our district. I am more excited this year than last since I know what to expect, and I know that in order to a better job this time around I'm going to need to keep my training consistent. Luckily, I have some partners in crime to help me along the way. 

Three friends from work and I have started the Schadenfreude Running Club so we can revel in the misery of one another. Our plan is to run twice a week and do core work once a week. So far. So good. Stay tuned.

Hood to Coast Time

Tomorrow is my first foray into the phenomenon known as Hood to Coast. I think I should be far more worried about the 30 hours the organizers believe it will take for my team to finish the 200 miles than I am. I have heard many stories of how miserable the vans are, how impossible it is to sleep until you cross the finish line, how smelly your seat mate will be by leg two, the seven miles at 1 a.m. in the middle of nowhere complete with strange animal sounds emerging from the bushes, how sore I’ll be once I feel the sand under my feet in Seaside—you get the idea. Even through all these tales of HTC horror, I sit here in my curriculum design class tonight reminded of the feeling I used to get the night before my first day of school, but the difference is this time I am excited for the adventure tomorrow opposed to dreading the next 180 days.

While I should have trained more (okay, a hell of a lot more, but let’s not dwell on those things we cannot change) I think I am partially ready to run my 17 miles. It is estimated I will start my first leg around 10:30 a.m. running downhill Rhododendron; my second leg at 8:45 p.m. along a long, boring, and very busy highway 30; and my last leg at 7 a.m. out of Jewell. In my mind I picture my run out of Jewell being a peaceful scene with a mist suspended just above green pastures filled with sleepy horses munching on dewy grass. The horses will raise their heads to watch me gracefully trot past them, quietly The reality, I imagine, will be a tired, gnarled, and peeved Heather bribing people with money and the hopes of sainthood to run my last leg. Regardless, I am looking forward to a cold beer and icing my tired legs in the Pacific Ocean around 4 p.m. on Saturday.

Wish me luck.

Isn't it Ironic?

Or, much like Alanis Morissette's hit from my college days Ironic, is it just bad luck and not irony at all?

The day after I decide to try wearing less in the running shoe department I put a gnarly gash in my right foot from my bike trainer, and then today I jam the big toe on the other foot playing kickball. It may be a day or two before I get to try this whole new minimalist running thing after all. Meh.

Team Doubt and Minimalist Running

While watching some crazy show on Sasquatch hunters the other night on the Discovery Channel, it dawned on me I am a natural born skeptic. Granted, Big Foot hunting isn't really the yard stick by which to measure how skeptical one is, but it was this show that made me realize what a doubter I really am.

When I was in high school a few friends and I dubbed ourselves Team Doubt. I think that was because our friend Keith was such a pessimist, think Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, his pessimism was so tragic it bordered on the hysterical. If you ever saw Rachel Dratch's Debbie Downer skits on Saturday Night Live you have an idea of the depth his defeatism. Now the name seems quite appropriate as I look back on my innate need to question everything I read, see, or hear. Going against my nature I have started to consider something many other people doubt. 


Minimalist running. 


Like many other runners, and people who have a solid sense of fashion and a desire to not make a fool of themselves, I have pooh-poohed the Vibram Five Fingers shoes many minimalist runners have taken a shine to. Anything that gets me one step closer to a Sleestak Halloween costume is something I can say "no" to quite easily. I have also silently mocked these folks as we pass on the trail, and not so silently mocked them as Jim was passed by a barefoot runner on the marathon portion of Ironman Louisville. I believe the exact words I screamed were, "you can't let a dude running barefoot beat you." I have also mocked our friend Marc who I thought drank the minimalist Kool-Aid from the running world's version of Jim Jones, Christopher McDougall the author of Born to Run. The idea of tossing my $125 Mizunos out the window made me shudder. How on earth could I run without the high tech advancements to keep me from pronating, or run without all that marshmallow cushioning I believed was keeping my knee pain at bay.

Unfortunately, as I finish the book Born to Run my skepticism is fading when it comes to the idea of barefoot or minimalist running. In fact, it is starting to make a lot of sense. It hurts me greatly to write that. The funny part is what made me start to consider this wasn't such a bad idea wasn't the orthopedists or centuries old Tarahumara tribe who'd run barefoot all their lives. It was the analogy of the foot arch being a perfect shock absorber just as the Romans figured the arch was the best way to eliminate stresses in their structures. When we begin to rely on over-engineered shoes that begin to push up on the arch instead of letting it do what it was created to do, that is when injury and pain takes over. The Romans never would have thought about bracing an arch with a stick jammed right up the middle of it, so what makes us think it works for our arch? That makes sense to me. As a kid I hated to wear shoes, and I don't much like wearing them now as an adult. I am thinking I was on to something.

None of this goes without saying I have no idea if any of this will work for our bodies that are used to over-engineered shoes, and I am in no way ready or willing to go running barefoot. However, I am willing to give the minimalist idea a try. I like the idea of less-is-more in nearly everything--except food and wine.

So today I thought I'd try it out. This morning I went for a two mile run in my Nike Free shoes I had bought just to kick around in. I loved it. My heels never touched the ground, my back was straight, my feet struck the pavement right beneath my hips, and the bounce I had become accustomed to was nearly non-existent. My pace was quicker, my heart rate lower, my knees pain free. 

This is just an experiment at this point; more action research than an empirical study. I am going to take it slow letting my feet get used to this and see if they like it. For now, my long runs will still have to be in my much loved Mizunos, but I will work toward consistently running in the minimalist footwear. I will keep an open mind, and commit to a more structured training schedule to alleviate the chances of a stress fracture or other injury. Additionally, I will keep this blog up to date on my progress. If you have any ideas or suggestions I am all ears. 

Pass the Kool-Aid Marc.  

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

Emerson wrote "how much of human life is lost in waiting", he must have known how long today would be for me. You see today is the day Nike Women's Marathon randomly draws 12,000 names from an eager pool of 30,000+ people (mostly women who hate to wait) to gain entry into this year's race. According to the NWM Facebook page people were being notified at 4:30 this morning that they were in. It also said they were still drawing names.

It's 6 p.m. and I've heard nothing. Meh.

This is the October race I am hoping to have lined up for my race-a-month and it's looking like I may have to hunt down another. We put together a group of several women, one a friend from college and some of her family, a friend from work, and a new running buddy. It's not just Karla and my heart's on the line here, there's a village counting on this!

It was also another destination race to get me out of Portland and hang with Karla. I think we've decided if this doesn't come through we may do the Diva Half Marathon in Puerto Rico. It is in November, in Puerto Rico, obviously. By mid November I may be ready for some sun, surf, fruity cocktails and running, of course. Karla and I are emailing back and forth tonight looking for new information from the other.

So, for tonight I'll be on this couch doing the last assignment for my EDRES 563 class and refreshing my email every five seconds. Don't send me any emails tonight unless you are Karla, are giving me thousands of dollars or have great news like our group is running the NWM in October.

How are these the same: My Training Schedule and Soutwest Airlines Maintenance

I leave for Hawaii next Thursday.
I leave for Hawaii next Thursday to run the Diva half marathon.
I leave for Hawaii next Thursday and I have kept to my planned training schedule like Southwest Airlines keeps up with plane maintenance.

This is how I see my Hawaii trip: It is a chance for me to get together with one of my dearest friends and celebrate our 20 year anniversary from when we went to Hawaii together when we were seniors in high school--and run/walk/skip 13.1 miles on a Sunday.

In other words, it's a goodbye to my youth. Or so that is how it seems when I say it was 20 years ago that I was a senior in high school.

Seeing as how I could not keep myself to my own schedule I went ahead and signed up with Fit Right NW's Get Fit Live Fit half marathon training program. I missed the first meeting on Monday (had class). I am hoping this will help keep me on a schedule since everything else is so busy. There is only three weeks of class left and I will have all spring to not have to worry about getting my work done before I can get my workout done.

Gotta get it done. I am up-to-date on my one race a month New Year's resolution, so that is one thing I am keeping up with, so that's nice.

I want to be Charlie Sheen...

Seriously, I do. Without the hookers and porn stars, of course--and the blow.

Who wouldn't like to say the craziest things you ever thought possible. The things your parents warned you not to say. The things you think, but bite your tongue before you speak. Jesus. I want to be Charlie Sheen, if even for just one day.

But for today I have to stick with me, and God knows I often say what I'm thinking when I should bite my tongue. So here goes.

I am watching The Biggest Loser, something I've not done for an extended period of time before, but after reading an article in Runner's World I thought I'd check out a full episode. Let me just say this is some crazy shit. The Olympic wrestler Rulon just said he lost 108 pounds in eight weeks. How is that possible? How is that healthy?

I'm not sure how I feel about this show. On one hand it's amazing that these people are given the opportunity to learn healthy habits, healthy eating especially (calories in/calories out), and to loose weight. Weight that, if kept on, would clearly kill them. On the other hand, how healthy is it to overtrain for six hours a day, eight hours in some cases it appears from the Runner's World article.

Also, that troll trainer Jillian just scares the hell out of me. I just shudder when she squats her 70 pound frame on the treadmill cage and begins yelling to a contestant that they can either pass out, puke, and die, or continue. I might choose death in that moment if it meant she'd shut up. But, it seems to work for a lot of them.

So I'm curious if my dislike for parts of this show are because I don't posses the same kind of passion to do something that these contestants do, or because I find the premise so unrealistic and impossible to maintain as a lifestyle. 

Where's Charlie Sheen when I need to borrow his brain to figure this one out.

Is that the sun?

I can see the sun shining behind me as I sit in my classroom grading senior finals on 1984.  It seems like forever since I've had the sun glare make it impossible to see my computer screen.

Winter has had its grasp on me pretty hard this year. I've had little, to no, desire to get up and get to the gym in the morning, go out and run in the pouring Portland rain, let alone sit on my bike trainer for an hour. In December one of my best friends planted the seed of running a half marathon in Hawaii in April. It didn't take long for that seed to grow, get registered for the race, make plane and hotel reservations, and call in her personal days. It was this seed that got my ass off the couch and back out on the pavement.

Of course, my knee is still bothering me, but the ASTEM I'm getting from my PT seems to be helping loads. I just have to remember to keep using that torture device known as the foam roller so my IT band doesn't get wonky again. I bought the Trigger Point roller when we were in Louisville for the Ironman, dare I say that is 10 times more painful than the regular foam roller. I keep telling myself, in between sobs, that if I keep rolling my IT band I will not have to return to PT ever again. Ever.

So, as soon as this last final is graded, I'm off to Oaks Bottom to go run. When will I win the lottery so all I can do is get up and work out?