Race Report: Run Your Can Off

Saturday morning was literally the perfect day to be a runner.  Although it was 30 degrees at the start, it quickly warmed up to the mid 40s with sun and clear skies. About 50 of us showed up, filled a truck with donated food and prepared to run anywhere from 1.25 to 35 miles.

From the time I woke up on Saturday, I was aware of how different the morning of an ultramarathon felt compared to a regular marathon.  I didn't have to worry about halting drinking so that I could use the porto-potty at the perfect time before the start; there was a porto-potty every 1.25 miles.  I didn't have to eat a huge bowl of oatmeal to carbo-load; I had fuel every 1.25 miles. I didn't have to pick the perfect layers; as some of the other runners can attest, I lost a layer of clothing every lap for the first few miles, leading me to ask if this was Run Your Clothes Off. Even the atmosphere was different.  Instead of thousands of anxious runners shoving each other in a corral, checking pace bands and planning strategy, we stood around drinking coffee and introducing ourselves. As Queen of race nerves, this was a welcome change.

The race went off around 9:15 and I started slowly as planned.  Really slowly.  I'm not kidding when I say that some of the kids who were running with us beat me through the first lap.  The first few laps were painless as my fingers and toes warmed up.  By about 5 miles in, I had stripped off my tights and was comfortably in shorts and a tee shirt.  For the first couple of hours, I ran in 4 lap (5 mile) chunks, stopping after every 4 to fuel, stretch and do a systems check. Per usual for me, I didn't feel warmed up until about 8 miles in and cruised through mile 15.  After the 12th lap, I started doing 3 lap chunks and definitely started to feel the distance.  After my 17th lap, I announced that I was only had 24 laps (30 miles) in me for the day. From that point on, I did two laps at a time and just tried to keep one foot in front of the other.

Miles 22 to 26 were tough.  I was tired, sore and disoriented from running a loop trail covered in leaves. By the time I reached 26, however, I was elated.  Every step was one longer than I'd ever run before and I was excited to see how far I could go.  I was also thrilled to note that although I was tired, my form wasn't falling apart.  I was moving slowly, but not compensating, so I plugged on.  On my 24th lap, Greg, the race organizer, kindly joined me to celebrate.  It was a good thing, as I was tired enough that bidding adieu to every tree, stump, log and squirrel seemed normal.  I finished, with minimal fanfare, but have never been more proud of myself.  The race medal, a crushed can, may become my favorite bling from any race.

After the race, I begrudgingly got myself into an ice bath, foam rolled and refueled.  My friends can attest that I even wore small heels on Saturday night (although they will also share that I was moving so slowly, it could barely be considered forward progress).  I am sore today, but much less so than I anticipated. Stairs are not my friend and although I feel like a rockstar, I look like a pirate. 

So what did this race mean to me?  First, it was part of my continued effort to be a more patient racer. I knew that if I wanted to survive, I needed to go out and stay slow.  In past races (please see Vegas 2009), going out too fast crushed my opportunity for a good race. Second, I verified that endurance remains a strong point for me.  When I am exhausted at mile 20 of Boston, I can think back to Saturday, and be grateful for only 6 miles left and confident that I have it in me.  Finally, I had fun. Running has always been my release valve, but my competitive drive sometimes overrides that and sucks the joy right out of it. During this recovery, I've done some fun events that I hope recalibrate me.

I said I'd never...

run an ultramarathon. But here we are and I'm signed up to run a lot of miles tomorrow, under the auspices of charity.  Run Your Can Off (http://runyourcanoff.blogspot.com/) is tomorrow morning, and I have up to 6 hours to fill with running.  I pledged to run a lap (1.25 miles) for every can/good donated.  I like doing good things almost as much as I like running, so I have a lot to donate and therefore a lot of laps to run.  As with all long runs, I'm approaching this one in a relaxed manner.  I'm not ready to race or even push it, so tomorrow is an another exercise in patience.  I'm going to take it one lap at a time, stretch when I need to and call it if things start to feel bad.  After all, the finish line is at most a mile away.

I'd like to do at least 15 laps, but my real goal is somewhere between 25 and 30 slow laps.  The mental exercise of pressing on and managing boredom will help me late in the marathon, when I often find myself alone and battling my inner "stop" demons. Running 30 miles will also be my last very long run for a while; on Monday, I start my gear up for Boston, the first 6 weeks of which are focused on speed and strength.  Endurance is not a limiting factor for me, but speed certainly is.  My best 5k time, for example, is only about 30 seconds faster per mile than my marathon pace. Focusing on speed necessitates that I drop my volume and over the next few weeks (detailed training plan to be revealed soon...), my runs will be short and intense.

I'm excited to get out there tomorrow for a good cause, meet up with some local runners and run trails for the better part of the day.  Being honest, I'm also excited to eat poptarts, which are my guilty pleasure long run food.  I'm also excited to take some pictures and add to my collection of running pictures in which I don't look terrible!  I'll post one or two here.

Have a great weekend of running all. This is the perfect time of year to be a runner!

Patience, Grasshopper

It has been a really great couple weeks of running. My miles are building, my leg has behaved and I can picture myself toeing the line at Boston for more than just a qualifying 3:40.  Tomorrow, I will do my first speed workout post-surgery, with 4 miles at a 7:30 pace. It's funny to think that my pace will be slower than the pace at which I ran my last marathon.  My test will not be whether I can run that fast, but whether I can be patient enough to let a 7:30 be enough.

Patience has never been a virtue.  My mom recently retold the story of me going to sleep away camp a full year before I was technically eligible.  Somehow, I convinced the camp to let me attend, despite being 7 when I needed to be 8.  In fact, I came into the world impatiently, arriving a full two months before I was due. That's why it is a bit of a surprise to me (and to my loved ones, I'm sure), that I've been patient with my recovery. When I went into surgery, I expected to be running in 6 weeks, training hard by the end of the summer.  Instead, it's November. As I start to feel strong, I find myself pushing too hard in workouts and tacking on extra miles. My brain knows that this is the easiest way to end up on the injured reserve, but my competitive side wants to make up for all the lost time.

Patience in the context of a marathon is an interesting thing.  Those who are successful in the marathon must have at least some level of it, as the distance punishes the hare and rewards the tortoise. Perhaps the strongest warning we offer to novice marathoners is that "there are no shortcuts."  Why, then, is it so hard to remember this for myself?  When I run with friends or give advice to new runners,  I always caution against too much too soon, about taking easy runs easy.  It seems that with most advice, it's easy to dole it out, but not as easy to observe.

As I wind on down the road this weekend, I'll be working on waking up my fast twitch muscles again, but also on practicing patience.  It's a long road to Boston.

Spooky Time of Year

(When I set out to write my post for this week, I had grand plans of writing about my experience registering for Boston. Other ideas included talking about volunteering at a marathon last weekend and cherishing the connection with other runners.  As life goes, however, my run on Wednesday night changed my plans for this week’s entry. )

Typically bucolic Burlington has been disrupted by a violent event in the North End, where a woman was found dead in her home.  Details continue to emerge, but the event unsettled me. The extent to which was not clear until my run on Wednesday night.  

I was running along the bike path when a bike slowed behind me.  Normally, I wouldn’t have paid any mind.  On Wednesday, however, I spun around, spooked. It was a commuter, slowing to turn off the bike path onto his street.  He apologized and was clearly surprised to have upset me. I spent the rest of the run on edge, jumping at the rustling of leaves and mile markers.  As it got too dark to see, I needed my headlamp, plunging myself into the isolation of a single beam of light.  By the last two miles, I was whistling “Camptown Races” as loudly as I could, as though that would dissuade any attackers.  

On my nth rendition of the song, I got mad.  I’ve been running alone for fifteen years in places much more dangerous than Burlington.  I survived four years in Albany and ran through post-Katrina Biloxi.  Now, in my safe little haven, I’ve been rudely reminded of my vulnerability as a woman runner.  As someone constantly competing with the boys, it pisses me off that while they run on, I’m risking ankle sprains from jumping off a path when a branch brushes my arm.

In a few weeks, the salience of this will fade and I’ll be back to being a creature of the night, running before the rest of the world rouses. Until then, I’m begging friends to run with me (fruitless), considering a new dog (crazy) and re-scheduling my life to allow me to run in the daylight (impractical).

The Diva's Half Marathon

Despite a rocky start (sitting in traffic for over an hour, missing the race start because they didn't hold the race for the 2000 people in traffic etc), my girls and I had a fabulous time in the Diva's half marathon.  For Lindsey, it was her first (and allegedly only) half marathon.  For me, it was a completely different perspective on a race.  A normal race morning for me finds me a bundle of nerves, reviewing strategy until the gun goes off.  When the gun went off last Sunday, we were facing the wrong direction and not even in the corral.  While I'll admit to being perturbed, it waned when I realized that my start (nor my middle, nor my finish) didn't matter.  We were here to run with Lindsey and enjoy the ride.

Enjoy it we did.  I have never been part of the pack.  Even in Las Vegas, the pack thinned quickly and I spent miles 10 through 26 essentially alone. Last weekend, however, we were surrounded.  We chatted up other groups, inevitably curious about our costumes, danced when there was music around and stopped to take pictures mid-race.  I took a bathroom break, walked through water stops and hurdled the occasional pylon.  I had a blast. The picture below is from the Mile 12 tiara and boa stop.  As you can tell, I'm taking things very seriously. (The song was Vogue.)

So what do I take away from the experience?  Anyone who has been around me on race day knows that I am legitimately no fun.  If I talk at all, it's harsh and I am so nervous I often vomit. Delightful, I know. Did this race change all of that?  Of course not.  What it did remind me is that running should be fun and that there are always other races.  It also helped me realize that I want to be racing again and that I have a lot of work to do this fall. 

Other lessons?  Don't run with a boa.  They smell terrible and are hard to breathe through.

Absence makes the heart grow...

Fonder?  Nah, I've just been too busy to post.  Luckily, a lot of that busy comes from getting back into running.  I am fresh off my first 30 mile week, including 30 miles in two days last weekend.  Yes, folks, I'm almost like a real live runner again.  I successfully pulled off 15 on Saturday, followed by a half marathon on Sunday where I paced a dear friend through her very first half marathon. Granted, both of those runs were incredibly slow, but I'm grateful to have survived with no symptoms and to be running this week without any residual pain.

So how did I get here?  As those around me can attest, I have been fastidious about routine and willing to try almost any rumored way to speed healing, encourage the regeneration of nerves and reduce scar tissue.  This has translated into a number of new things:

First, I am actually taking my vitamins every day, which include a multivitamin, Vitamin D (I'm in the North, we are low on sunshine) and a Fish Oil.  All of this comes from my mom, who also doubles as my RD.  She reads a lot more of the nutritional research than I do, and while I can't provide support beyond the anecdotal, I'm reticent to change the routine because it isn't hurting me and I know, like many of us, I don't always eat as well as I should. 

Second, I warm up and cool down.  No longer can I run from my front door.  Now, I warm up on a foam roller, then walk for a few minutes, then transition to a run.  After my run, I stretch carefully and foam roll again.  This adds a good 20 minutes to every run, but I'd do 40 if it meant running comfortably and avoiding additional surgeries.

Third, I am consistently working on flexibility.  Much like taking my vitamins, I know I should, but that doesn't mean I want to.  If I have an extra hour in my day, I am just not someone who would opt for yoga.  I'd watch TV, go for a run, organize my bathroom, floss my teeth.  Anything but yoga.  I have to admit, though, that a regular practice has allowed me to be better aware of where my left foot is in space and for that, I'll om with the best of them.

It's hard to know whether these things are making a difference or if I'm just finally reaching the end of this road to recovery.  Since none of them are likely to have a negative effect, I'll keep doing them (probably until I run out of time or forget all the lessons I've learned). 

The next challenge is to not succumb to "too much, too soon."  With registration for the Boston Marathon fast approaching, I find myself eager to start following a stringent plan.  I know, however, that I still have a lot of base building to do and I fear that a strict plan will be discouraging.  For the remainder of 2010, I am going to keep working towards a normal base for me, which is somewhere between 50 and 60 miles per week.  This will come from a longer weekend runs and a handful of midweek runs.  In a month or so, I'll begin to add tempo work back in.  By January 2011, I should be ready to gear up for a true training cycle.

Stay tuned for a picture or two from the half marathon on Sunday.  The event itself was poorly executed, but we had a ton of fun and it gave me a whole different perspective on running, which I will share along with those pictures.

Step by Step

As with most things, no news is good news.  Things haven't miraculously improved, but they haven't gotten worse either.  I'm still running five days a week, with my mileage hovering around 20 miles a week.  My long runs are pushing past an hour and my pace is dropping down towards normal.  For days after a hard run, however, I'm sore and exhausted.  Recovery certainly is a slow road.

I met with Dr. Charlson recently and we evaluated the situation and my choices.  His take, based on the EMG and exam, is that I have nerves that get compressed in my left leg, at the fibular head and down by the incision at my ankle.  I notice is more while running because I'm moving faster and need more feedback from the ground to ambulate safely and efficiently. My complaint of a "missing" foot is a sensory issue resulting from damage from surgery (known risk before surgery) and from the continued compression of this nerves.  My choices are to wait longer and see if I improve, have surgery to release the nerves or do nothing.  For now, I've opted for Choice 1.  I am going to continue to build/maintain, run the half in October then reevaluate.  Boston registration is October 18th (I was wrong in an earlier post) and that is currently my goal return race.  If I feel like things are improving, I'll just keep plugging.  If, however, I feel like the sensory issues are the same or worse, Dr. Charlson and I will discuss another surgery. The good news is that he doesn't feel that running is causing damage, so I'm free to continue running as much as I'm comfortable.

Right now, I'm keeping a loose schedule, trying to run most days, some hard and some easy.  I am focusing on building up my long runs, as those are the core of most schedules, and on improving my fitness.  It's hard not to start pressuring myself to get back into shape faster or to run bigger miles, but I am trying to be patient.  I want to come back strong and uninjured, and rushing is an easy way to mess that up.

I also had my DVT blood panel drawn and analyzed last week.  The great news is that I don't have a clotting disorder.  Most likely, it was the combination of surgery (provoked cause) and taking oral contraceptives.  For future surgeries, I will need to be take prophylactic Lovenox and probably be on a blood thinner through surgery.  There are also some precautions for both pregnancy and post-partum periods that I'll need to take when I reach that point in my life.


Note to other CECS-ers: Jenn, Erin, Leah etc...how are you all doing with recovery?  I've been missing from both here and Runner's World and am curious how your recoveries are going as well.