So Near, Yet So Far

The three of us are all in different states entirely right now for Thanksgiving break. It's lonely having to run without my friends to push me along. Luckily for me, I am at the lowest altitude so it felt a little bit easier to run today. At the same time though, I was a bit dehydrated and running off of only a few hours of sleep, because I spent twelve hours in the car yesterday, driving late into the night.

Before I hit the road I went to two classes. I was wearing my marathon t-shirt that I made a couple weeks ago. One of my teachers noticed it and asked if I had run one. I told him that I was training for one with a couple of friends. He looked so excited and his whole face lit up so I asked if he had run one before. He smiled and nodded and held up all five fingers from one hand. "You've run five?" I asked. He nodded again. I think he is my hero. He said the feeling you get when you finish is unlike anything you've ever experienced. I think talking to him made me at least six times more excited than I was before to run a marathon.

Last night I talked to Kal and suggested we make our four-mile run a race the following day. We would base it off of our times since we were all different places and couldn't physically run together. I needed a reason to push myself. It's harder to keep up a steady pace when you run by yourself, at least for me. I told Meesh about it and she said she was pretty sure she would lose, but she was willing to do it. Her course was a little over 4 miles so I said to get her mile pace and we would judge off of that. I was sure Kal would beat me, because years of cross country taught me how hard it is to beat a boy at running.

This morning when I woke up, I was excited to see that it was pouring rain. That is a typical Seattle day in the winter for you. I love running in rainstorms. There is something about the droplets running down my face and having my hair and shirt soaked through to the skin to the point that it sticks to you. It feels amazing. I geared up to go run with a bright yellow, water-repellant jacket and my Brooks running shoes. It didn't take long for me to get soaked, but I was flying up and down hills as I ran. The rain couldn't keep up with me. The front of me was soaked and my back was dry.

When I got back I texted Kal and Meesh. Meesh's mile pace was 9.33, Kal finished his four miles at 32.04, and I finished mine in 31.19 which is a mile pace of 7.48. I was so excited that I won the race! I don't know if I would have won at the altitude level we usually run at, but I was still proud of myself.

The second I walked in the door of my house, my sister said, "Did you get my text?" I hadn't had my phone with me. She explained that my dad was taking my mom to the ER. She had gone running at the same time as me and slipped while she was gone. When trying to avoid sinking her foot into a deep puddle, she stepped on the wet grass and took a fall onto her right elbow. It was dislocated. Later, my dad asked her if the pain was worse than child birth, and she said, "Actually, from what I remember, yes." She has to wear a cast for four to six weeks. I remember several times during my run looking at the wet leaves on the sidewalk and thinking, "Hmm, I really hope I don't slip on that stuff." Now I am REALLY glad I didn't slip on it.

Service and Safety

People started leaving for Thanksgiving break today. Kal left this morning so he couldn't run with us this afternoon. When I got out of class I came home to meet Meesh and change into running clothes. I warned her that I had a food-baby in my stomach, because I didn't want to run too hard and throw up. It had been an hour since I ate, but I was still super full. Luckily the temperature was up to the high twenties today and I was able to run without a sweatshirt. We started out slow, but I kept picking up the pace. My stomach felt like it was about to cramp, but I kept my breaths deep and it slowly went away. The pace slowly got faster and faster. Meesh and I were hauling. I felt so amazing and made a mental note to eat a huge meal an hour before my run everyday.

When we were passing Porter park I looked around and some movement caught my eye. Across the street an old woman in an orange sweatshirt was waving to us. It took me a second to realize that she was trying to get us to come over to her and she was yelling, "Excuse me! Can you help me?" I tapped Meesh and took my headphones out. She followed me. The woman told us she had been waiting for someone to come by to help her for a while. She pointed to the overhang of the roof. "I need to put this," she held up an electronic thermometer, "up there, but I can't reach it." I took it from her with a smile and climbed up the ladder to clip it onto the roof. Meesh and I lifted the ladder over the little garden fence for her and were on our way with smiles on our faces. She told us thank you over and over again for helping her.

The one downside to this was that I forgot to stop the stopwatch so we automatically had about a minute added to our time. When we were finishing up our run we got yelled at by a security cop for not stopping and looking both ways before we crossed the street. What are we, in third grade again? If she was a runner she would have known that we were looking for cars long before we reached the street so that we wouldn't have to stop running.

Despite stopping to help the old lady by the park, Meesh and I got a personal Record today (a PR) of 25.33! I can feel myself getting stronger everyday. Kal sent me a text to tell me that he went running when he got home. By the sounds of it he ran a whole lot of uphill. I told him about the lady we stopped to help, and he said we got blessings for giving service and that's why we ran faster today.

Roads That Remind Me of Home

Today Meesh, Kal, and I ran 6.15 miles. It was incredible. I don't know how to describe what I was feeling. All the time I hear people say they can't even run a mile. That is the biggest bologna I have ever heard. The reason people think they can't run is because they haven't tried to run more than a mile or two at a time. Personally I think the hardest part of running is the first two miles. Sometimes even the first three. After you push past that point you sort of transform. It's as if your mind is running alongside your body rather than remainging inside of your head, and it's pushing you to keep going.

I told Meesh that the first couple miles are the hardest and after that it gets easier, because we started out with almost an entire mile of only uphill road. As I listened to her breathing I realized that she was gasping for air. All of us were breathing pretty hard because of the hill, but hers was loud and it worried me a bit, because everyone has bad days of running and I didn't want her to keel over. Like I promised, after a couple miles her breathing evened out and we all pressed on. I was able to talk her through a little bit of the struggle. I told her to breath from deep in her belly rather than from her chest. I directed her on when we were going to pick up pace and when we were getting close to a downhill or the finish.

I'm not sure any of it helped, but it made me feel good. It brought back memories of running cross country as a team. We had those few people that ran almost our same pace. When one of us was having a bad day we would push them to keep up with us. We had a signal we used when they started drifting behind. It was as simple as bringing your hand behind your back and wiggling your fingers. It was our way of saying, "Hey you! Come up here and run beside me. Don't fall behind. You can do it." Sometimes it's hard to say all that when you are short of breath.

There were a few highlights of this run. First of all, when we were running along the side of the road Kal came up behind me and nudged my shoulder. "Slugbug!" I turned around to look for it. "Where? I don't see it--" I looked around just in time to see that I was about to step on a good-sized bird that was squished on the side of the road. I saw it just in time to jump over it. Anyone who knows me knows how much I am in love with my running shoes and would not appreciate dead bird gutts on them.

Another funny thing was during the last mile of the run. I kept wanting to pick up the pace, but the sun had just gone down and everything was freezing over. We had to keep on our toes because of all the black ice on the sidewalks. I came close to falling a couple times when I felt the ground slipping under me, but luckily none of us fell. Meesh was throwing mini-tantrums about the ice. At one point I heard her shriek behind me. My heart leapt and I whipped around thinking she had fallen only to discover that she was just yelling at the ice. I have to admit it was pretty funny hearing her fuss over it. She is a trooper, running with us through this weather. Hopefully it isn't this icey every day. I don't look forward to the day we have to do our long runs on the indoor track. It takes five and a half laps to run one mile. Running eight miles on the indoor track is 44 laps. I think I threw up a little just imagining it.

Sliding Around Rexburg

Since it snowed over the weekend, there are still patches of ice everywhere. It hasn't warmed up enough to melt everything away. Before Kal and I ran tonight I asked, "Is it cold outside?" He told me it was pretty chilly, so I grabbed an extra layer of clothing before we left. Then he told me that it was down to nine degrees this morning when he left for classes. Holy cold weather! I felt very lucky that I hadn't left the apartment until almost noon. "It must have been up to a whole 25 degrees by then!" Kal said sarcastically. You know when you should take a vacation to somewhere warm when you get excited about weather above 2o degrees.

Speaking of vacations, I am privileged to have a ride home for Thanksgiving break! It's about 800 miles away. That's more than 30 marathons all in one ride! It might be hard to motivate myself to go running over the break, because I will have to run by myself, and so many people back home have already asked if I have time to do something. I'm only going home for three or four days. If only I could freeze time to make it last longer.

There are advantages to running in my hometown opposed to Rexburg. For one thing, the altitude is much lower. I'll be going from an over-4,000 foot elevation to an elevation of less than 100 feet above sea level. Running there should feel like a breeze.

Second of all, there will be no ice. I had the misfortune of slipping on the ice twice in the same day, both times in front of Kal. I fell all the way to the ground both times. He has a lot of fun teasing me everytime we walk or run anywhere now. "Watch out for that patch of ice, Ash." It's a good thing I have a sense of humor.

I was a little worried before we went running tonight. The sun had already gone down a while ago, and I hadn't noticed how much ice was still on the roads or sidewalks. Luckily, I didn't take a dive during our four miles. I found myself thinking during the run, "wow, look at me. I haven't even fallen." I never said it aloud, though, so as not to jinx myself. This was the second time running that course and we improved our time by a bout a minute. I felt pretty good about that considering I still had some energy left at the end.

A couple of days ago I talked to my dad and he told me to look at my sister-in-law's facebook status. It said she was running a marathon this coming summer too! I was so excited. We will definitely be talking "marathon-talk" when we are all together for Christmas. So far everything is going well. I am getting so psyched for this marathon, I even designed and created a t-shirt. The front and back are posted here:

11-11-11 It Must Be a Good Day

Guess what time we ran this morning? Five-flipping-thirty in the morning! Anyone who knows me is aware of how much I am not a morning person. Usually getting up at 7:30 is an accomplishment. Meesh is a morning person and gets up at that time every day, so you can imagine my surprise when I got up out of my bed and moving before she did. To be fair, she woke up at 3am and went back to sleep again, so she had to be incredibly tired.

Kal came to pick us up and we were off on our longest run since training has started. Our mileage is up to 5 miles on fridays (our long-run day). It felt pretty dang good up until about the last mile, because I had that familiar feeling I experienced on many occations in cross country; that feeling in the pit of your gut. I had to use a restroom and soon. I didn't say anything to the other two, because I didn't want an excuse for slowing down. I felt that it would be better just to pray. It sounded a little bit like, "Please don't let me go in my pants, or I may die of embarrassment and that would be one of the top nastiest moments of my entire life." The feeling faded just enough for me not to be in pain, but the second we crossed the finish line it returned in full force. Kal told me I was limping when we were walking back to the apartment. I couldn't tell that I was, because it was about 20 degrees outside and my whole body was numb, but I think I might have been limping because of how much I had to go to the bathroom.

Kal went home and Meesh and I stretched together. I told her that there was almost no cross country runner who hasn't puked, wet themselves, or pooped themselves while running at some point in their running career. "What about you, Ash?" She asked.

I grinned at her and said, "Yeah, all three. Not all the way, but I have come pretty close." Then I started telling her about how our high school cross country team was well-known by certain restraunts, stores, and gas stations, because we ducked in there so often to use their bathrooms in the middle of our runs. She was laughing so hard I thought I should stop telling stories so she would be able to breathe again. Then with a little concern she asked if there would be places to go during the marathon. I figure they will have one every mile or two.

We are feeling pretty proud of ourselves right now, because we finished 5.22 miles in a time of 45.25 today. I think that is around an 8.45 minute mile-pace. Since this is only the end of our second week of training I'm excited to see what we can do by week five or six!

Pains of Training (It's not ALL fun)

We are now kicking off week two of marathon training. So far Kal, Meesh, and I haven't missed a day of training. Shazaam hurt her IT band so I told her to lay off it for a few days. Then there is the fact that she has the heaviest homework load of any of us, so she may have to start back down on week one at the end of the semester. In the middle of last week I noticed that Meesh posted her running log on the wall in our bedroom. I took a peek at it and couldn't help but laugh out loud. Under the "Where you ran" column she wrote "dumb treadmill," and in the comments box she wrote "I hate treadmills." I have avoided running on those awful machines for a very long time and hopefully won't have to run on one at all for training, but it's getting colder and we got some snow over the weekend. I am trying to think warm thoughts.

Tonight was the first run of week two. I decided it would be nice to run somewhere different, so I looked up a new route on mapmyrun.com. It was almost exactly a three mile run. Since yesterday we all turned our clocks back for daylight savings it was already dark at 5:45pm. I complained to Kal about the lack of lighting on the streets in Rexburg. I couldn't see the ground in front of me. He told me it was more fun running in the dark anyways, but I think my point was proven about poor lighting when I stepped on a rock and twisted my ankel. There was no immediate sign of permanant damage so I kept running. "I'll just run off the pain," I said. It was only a little sore after all. I ran a little less than a mile more on it before getting back to my apartment and I threw some ice on it pretty quick. There are no signs of swelling or bruising so I don't consider it injured to the point of slacking in training. Tomorrow is a rest day anyways.

Despite twisting my ankel, we still ran faster than we did last week. Our time was just under 28 minutes. Meesh dropped two minutes off of her three mile time this morning too! It's incredible that we are already improving.

Working out is not turning out to be the real struggle though. The hardest part is the diet change. It is so hard in college not to eat a ton of junk food with all the birthdays and activities going on. Even if I don't buy it myself it's placed under my nose every day at some point or another. I have done horribly at this new diet the last couple of days. Hopefully I'll be able to control my self a bit better this week. I have a feeling that running on Wednesday won't feel as good as it did today, after what I ate at my friend's birthday party.