AR 50–Rabbit Report

“Here comes P with her cotton tail…  Hoppin’ down the AR50 trail…” 

Technically, my title was pacer, but what with the cute song, the tie-in with Easter and the fact that this was a totally “hare-brained” idea, I’m going with a rabbit theme here.  Work with me.

IronHubs decided last year – somewhere in the middle of IMAZ training, when he was incredibly tired of all that swimming – that he was going to tackle a 50-miler this year.  So he signed up for the American River 50, a local race that is the second largest 50 mile race in America.  It sounded like a tough course, but what did I care?  All I had to do was spectate!

Training went really well, he adapted to the back-to-back long run schedule and he was getting excited about the race.  Then about a month or so ago, he asked me if I’d be willing to pace him for part of the race.  There are three checkpoints where you can pick up a pacer on the course, so you could actually have three different pacers. One pacing section is about five miles long and the other two are around nine miles each.  “Sure, why not?” I bravely volunteered, picturing a couple of miles near the end where I could heroically bolster his flagging spirits for a brilliant finish.

Not so much.  At first, IronHubs thought I could do that first five mile part and then the last nine mile part.  Then a few days later, he wondered if maybe I could just do the two nine mile parts.  Then, a week or so later…well, would I be willing to run the whole 23 with him?

Ummmm, okay.

Race day started for us at 3 am, which is actually still the middle of the night.  We drank coffee, gathered gear, made sure all the support crew supplies were where they needed to be and headed off to the start around 4:30.

Two coolers, a duffel bag and a backpack full of stuff later, I think we’re ready to go!

“Wait a second…I’m going to run how far?”

All smiles and heel strikes at the start.  To be fair, I think he was still walking at this point, since he started in the way, way back and nobody was really rushing the start.

Looking strong six miles in.  The first 27 miles were mostly on the American River Bike Trail, which is a nice, wide paved path where we do a lot of our biking and running.

Woo hoo!  22 miles down!

A little more than a marathon into his day.  On a side note – there were a lot of guys wearing green, like the guy right next to IronHubs here.  There were also a lot of guys wearing blue, red, orange and yellow, so none of those colors would have helped IronHubs stand out more.  Really, it all came down to the calf sleeves, because that’s how I could always tell it was him.

My race day logistics were, in a word, crazy, and required several checklists, an Excel spreadsheet and three maps.  I got up with IronHubs at 3, got him to the starting line, skedaddled to what I thought was the 3 mile mark (only to discover that it was the SIX mile mark…thank goodness, otherwise IronHubs was moving really, really freaking slow!) to cheer, which put me 30 minutes behind schedule, busted a move back home to pick up Little Boy and get him to his karate class, made sure Big Boy was safe with my mom and checked in with my in-laws who were on their way to cheer, busted another move to make it to the cheering point at Mile 22, hitched a ride with my in-laws to my Pacer Pick-Up point at Mile 27 and THEN I got to run 23 miles!  *whew*

Since I know you’re going to ask me about my bowels – why wouldn’t you?  That’s not creepy or weird at all – yes, things were all clear on the poop deck, as they say in the Navy.*

* I doubt that they actually say that in the Navy.

IronHubs came flying into the Aid Station at Mile 27, looking remarkably strong.  He changed his socks and switched over from the backpack to handheld hydration while I filled the pack with my Gatorade and put my keys, phone and Honey Stingers in the pocket.  It was no NASCAR pit crew, but we were on our way pretty quickly.

I was fired up and ready to run.  Let’s do this thing!  We made it all the way to the other side of the parking lot before IronHubs decided that he really ought to stop and use the bathroom.  So we stopped, which was a good thing because I already had to catch my breath.  Holy crap, even after already running farther than a marathon and even at his “I’m running 50 miles today” pace, he was faster than me.  Yikes.

When we headed out again, IronHubs had me set the GymBoss for a 3:1 run-walk.  He had been running 4:1 since the beginning, conserving energy for such a long day.  On our first or maybe second walking break, I had him get the camera out of the backpack and then ended up holding it in my hand the entire rest of the way, which was nice because I got a lot of surprisingly great pictures of our day.

We left the aid station at Mile 26.5 and hit the trails.  They were nice and wide here with hard-packed dirt, like fire roads.  You can see how the trail winds around and heads up into the first (for me) of many, many, many hills.  BTW, IronHubs was eating something when I took this picture, in case you were wondering about that expression.

We walked the uphills.

All smiles!  We joked with the guy behind us about photobombing.

IronHubs started out in front of me, for no good reason as far as I could tell, other than to show off that he still had plenty of energy.  We chatted a little and he told me about the first half of the race and some of the runners he had met.  The hills were rolling, the scenery was lovely and the trail was wide enough that people could pass us if they wanted to.  The only snag, really, was my hydration backpack.  We recently bought a new one because the bite valve on our old one was aggressively bitten off by IronHubs broke.  Even though we got the exact same model, apparently they’ve changed the valve in the last two years from a pull-out kind to a twisty kind, which was a lot harder for me to use.  With the pull-out kind, you can just grab onto it with your teeth to open it (oh, hey, maybe that’s how it broke!), but the twisty one really requires the use of both hands.  Or at least it does for me, because I’m not all that coordinated.  In any event, after the first couple of sips, I stopped closing the valve because every time I concentrated on closing the valve, I turned my ankle on the increasingly rocky trail.  Did I mention that I’m not very coordinated?  So the valve slowly leaked Gatorade on me all day and splurted out on my hands every time I grabbed it to take a drink.  I was a sticky orange mess within just a few miles.  Attractive, no?

A few miles into my day, the trail got more technical, with the roots and the rocks and whatnot.

Some of the aid stations were very organized, with tents and tables of beautifully arranged supplies, and some of them had stuff set up on rocks.  Either way, the volunteers were AMAZING - friendly, cheerful and helpful.  This one was around Mile 34 (Mile 7 for me).

IronHubs had been running for about 7 hours at this point and I’d been with him for about two hours.  We were definitely starting to get tired.

As the miles piled on, the terrain got rougher and the hills got climbier and I started to wonder what the hell I had been thinking, agreeing to run with IronHubs.  I am not a trail runner.  We live in the middle of suburbia in the flattest part of the whole state of California and I am the sort of runner who likes to just open my front door and go, so my exposure to this sort of running is extremely limited.  Trail running is hard.  Like “check your ego at the door because you are not going to recognize the numbers on your Garmin” hard.  I was stunningly underprepared for the amount of concentration trail running takes.  There’s no freedom to get lost in your thoughts or – in my case, at least – enjoy the sight of anything but the trail in front of you, lest you misstep and fall into a ravine.

I intentionally took the lead from IronHubs so he could relax a little while I navigated the trail.  I would call out for rocks or roots that loomed threateningly in the path and tried to find the driest way through the many, many watery and muddy sections.  Several times, we were able to tuck in with a group of other runners and just follow them.  There was one nice guy with rainbow colored socks who kept a perfect pace, walking the uphills and taking the downhills at a conservative trot.  I was sad when he pulled away from us, but the fact is, lots of people passed us.  I was just that slow.

About 11 miles into my day, I could feel that I was way too low on energy and figured I’d better get out one of my Honey Stingers at the next aid station.  But when I went digging through my backpack, I couldn’t find them.  I remembered getting them out to put in the backpack and I remembered laying them down while trying to jam my phone in the pocket, but apparently they never actually made it into my pack.  Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!  IronHubs kept telling me I was fine, I was fine, this was fine, but I just wanted to cry.  What could I do, though, but soldier on?

Our extended cheering/support crew was set to meet us near Mile 41 (14 for me) and they had expected us a LOT earlier than when we eventually got there.  IronHubs had put together a nifty little Excel spreadsheet with his expected times, but he really didn’t account for the terrain and the non-stop climbing in this second half (and let’s go ahead and put “me” in that debits column as well).  They were very relieved to see us and lemme tell ya, the feeling was mutual, especially because they had my Honey Stingers!

All smiles post-Honey Stinger.  Of course, I somehow managed to spill some on myself.  I wasn’t really holding onto the camera anymore so much as it was just stuck to my hand.

The flat was sure nice, but this was around 1:30 and it felt like we were baking in the sun.  Even though it meant more climbing, I was happy to get back into the trees.  Plus, these little bushes were super pokey.  I don’t know what they were, but IronHubs informed me that in Skyrim they would be Tundra Cotton.  Because we live in a video game.

I took a picture of this tree because that red shiny bark was so pretty and I had no idea what sort of a tree it was.  My father-in-law – who is an experienced hiker and probably could have kicked this trail’s ass – told me it’s a manzanita.  Good to know.

Finally, a plant I know!  This is a poppy, the California state flower.  And yes, I took a picture of it just so I could post it on my blog and tell you that I identified ONE flower over the course of 23 miles.  Nature Girl I am not.

I don’t know about you, but for me there comes a point in every really long run where I get a little (or sometimes a lot) delirious.  Thankfully, I captured it on video this time!

Honestly, I don’t remember very many details about miles 41 – 46 (14 – 19 for me).  There were a lot of hills, the trails were treacherous, I stepped in dozens of mud puddles and we just kept on moving forward.  IronHubs swore up and down that he would never do another 50-miler, but I didn’t believe him (good thing – he rescinded that promise less than 20 hours after making it and is already planning #2).  I do remember thinking at one point that there was just no way the hills could get worse.  Yes, I had seen the course profile and of course I remembered those terrible hills from the World’s Toughest Half, but this had to be as hard as it was going to get, right?  Right?

No.  Not right.  In fact, I was terribly, horribly wrong.

IronHubs and I had turned the GymBoss off many miles ago when the terrain got too awful to run even two minutes at a time, but we were still trying to pick up the pace during the runnable parts.  We stopped calling it running, though, because our pace was slower than I would normally walk my dog.  We referred to it as “hustling.”  Let’s give it a little hustle, shall we?  So there we were, hustling along at the end of Mile 46 and a guy comes running past us and says something unintelligible.  I asked IronHubs what he said and he told me the guy said, “And now the fun begins.”  I was puzzling that out when we turned a corner, and… oh, shit.

Those aren’t real smiles anymore.

Pictures never do a hill justice, but this one gives you a taste.

It was brutal and insane and never-ending.  I couldn’t breathe.  I couldn’t stand up straight for fear of falling backwards.  I had to look at my feet because every time I looked up there was just more hill.  Nobody was running at this point, we were all just trudging.

Finally, a mile marker!  Though it was hardly as encouraging as it wanted to be – you mean we still have three more miles of this hill???

It’s hard to see, but the teeny tiny white speck in the road in the middle of this photo is the 3 Miles to Go sign.  We were standing at the 2 Miles to Go sign, and it had taken us well over 20 minutes to travel that mile.

Easily my favorite photo of the day, and probably in my top five of IronHubs ever.  He’s at Mile 49 and still smiling – what a guy!

Dude.

The last mile…well, it didn’t level out exactly, but it went from a 20% grade down to something in single digits, so we started running again.  Hustling.  Whatever.  We picked up our feet and swung our arms more vigorously and it only took us a little over 12 minutes to make that last mile.  We could hear the finish line for a really long time before we could see it and there was one last, short but cruelly steep hill before we got there.  But we got there!

He earned a finisher’s jacket and a new name:  henceforth he shall be known as UltraIronHubs.

Official Finishing Time – 10:32:23

My Garmin stats, for those of us who love crunching numbers – 23.47 miles, 6:12:03 (avg. pace 15’51”).

What a day!  What an accomplishment!  I’m so insanely proud of UltraIronHubs!  Watching him complete crazy stuff like this makes me want to do a 50-miler, too!  But I think I’m going to pick a little flatter course.

Modesto Marathon Race Report

**WARNING!**  If you are squeamish reading about bodily functions, you are going to want to skip this post!  Or, at the very least, scroll down to the very end where I cross the finish line with a smile on my face.  Your choice.  But don’t say you haven’t been warned.

I’m gonna gloss over my complete and absolute lack of training leading up to this race, because you’ve heard it before.  Injury, then rehab, not really ready to run a marathon, blah blah blah.  I had pretty much discounted running this thing at all several weeks ago, because it was obvious to me that I couldn’t complete my training for it.  Fast forward to about three days ago when IronHubs asked me really, really nicely if I would pretty please run this race with him anyway.  You see, the plan all along was to serve as a pacer for IronHubs’ last big training run before the AR50.  And by that I mean that it was my job to slow him down and not let him run this thing too fast.  Ha!  Mission accomplished!

Signing up to run a marathon at the expo seems a little last minute, doesn’t it?

I ran the inaugural Modesto Marathon two years ago and had a very, very bad day.  Barf-a-palooza from Mile 18 on.  So on the one hand, I was ready to give this course a good spanking, but on the other hand, I worried, “What if it happens again?”  I tried not to psych myself out and kept reminding myself that I was just going to run with IronHubs and enjoy the day.  We weren’t racing, we were just running.  Stay calm.

Unfortunately, I think I stayed a little too calm, if there can be such a thing.  I wasn’t nervous about the race at all, which meant that I missed a few very important pre-race details.  One, I didn’t hydrate the day before… um, at all.  Complete fail on the water-drinking front.  And two, the lack of nerves meant no “nervous stomach,” which meant…  You know what?  There’s no polite way to say this:  I didn’t poop enough.  One mediocre effort at the Portos 30 minutes before race start does not a great race make.

I tried not to worry about it, because that certainly wouldn’t make things better.  We lined up, stretched a little, took some pictures and were very, very grateful that it wasn’t raining (weather reports leading up to the race included a 70% chance of rain and winds up to 15 mph – neither one of those things appeared, thank goodness!)

Ready to go!  More or less.

Mistake number three of the day appeared within seconds of the start – I hate wearing a hydration belt!  Hate it!  I own two and neither one of them fits me well.  The problem is that my waist is a lot smaller than my hips (yes, I know, this is a tragedy.  And you could totally hate me for it if I had the boobage to make it into an hourglass figure, but since I struggle to even fill out an A-cup and most closely resemble a giant pear wearing glasses, I am going to continue my rant), so they don’t stay put.  I tried to run holding onto the belt so it wouldn’t bounce so much, which lasted like a nano-second before it irritated the crap out of me.  Then I tried to cinch it around my waist tighter, which sort of worked, but meant that the belt was A.) squeezing the heck out of my not entirely empty guts, and B.) held together by less than an inch of Velcro.  It fell completely off me somewhere around Mile 3, so I continued to run while holding onto it.

Somehow, in spite of starting at the back of the pack, paying diligent attention to our one minute walking breaks every five minutes and my hydration belt debacle, we still managed to go out a little fast.  There’s just something about race starts, I guess.  We were cruising along, enjoying the day and weaving around the half marathoners and all of a sudden, we were at Mile 6!  Seriously, it was that quick!  It was crazy to me that we had already covered so many miles.

Around Mile 7, IronHubs decided that he really needed to stop at the next portopotties.  No problem, we could see two coming up and there were only two people in line, so we stopped.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  Holy smokes, everyone seemed to be having some GI distress today!  We were in line SIX MINUTES before IronHubs’ turn!!  I had been thinking of using the porto as well, but after standing around so long, I just wanted to get moving again.

I tried not to complain about it, but the hydration belt was killing me.  And by “tried not to complain,” what I mean is that I whined constantly.  I couldn’t seem to help myself.  I felt bad about being such a wimp, but I was so uncomfortable.  All that squeezing around my middle was making it hard for me to take in enough hydration and I knew that at some point in the very near future the Gatorade I was drinking was going to make a speedy exit from my body at one end or the other.  Blech!

At Mile 8, we spotted another porto with no lines and I stopped to take my turn.  Oh, man, it felt so good to take off the hydration belt!  Now, I don’t know about you, but I never have to go to the bathroom in the middle of a race.  Usually, I get all my business taken care of before I run and then I’m good to go.  Not so yesterday.  I was glad – for several reasons – that nobody was waiting in line after me, because my stop was not quick.

After lightening my load, we set off again and I felt a lot better.  The day was nicely cloudy and not too cold, but around Mile 10 or 11, the wind started to pick up.  Thankfully, we only had a full-on headwind for a few miles, but it was the miles right before the turnaround.  You know those miles, where all you want to do is be heading for the finish line, but you’re still running away from it?  Yeah, those miles took forever.

At Mile 13, IronHubs offered to put the hydration belt in his backpack, bless his heart.  He was such a champion in the face of my whining.  At that point, though, the damage was done.  I felt like crap and my stomach was revolting.  We soldiered on with our 5:1 run to walk ratio until just before Mile 19 when I couldn’t do it anymore and burst into tears.  I felt so bad, like I had ruined IronHubs’ day.  He’s been training so hard for his 50 mile race and could have been done with the whole marathon in the time it took me to slump my way through 2/3s of it.  I felt like a loser and a bad wife and a stupid, foolhardy runner, trying to take on a marathon when I wasn’t fully trained for it.  I cried and felt sorry for myself and focused on not puking, but we kept moving forward.  I told IronHubs to go on ahead, but he wouldn’t hear of it.  He kept telling me I was doing fine and that he was just happy to be with me.  Have I ever mentioned that I married the best man in the whole wide world?

We walked for about a mile and I grabbed some pretzels at an aid station just to try and get something salty in me.  My stomach started to feel a little better, so I suggested that we reset the Gymboss for a 1:1 ratio.  I felt that I could run for a minute and I really wanted to get moving faster.  Easier said than done, for sure!  Our muscles had really started to stiffen up during the long walking break and it was SO hard to pick it back up to a run!!  But run we did and bam! that minute went fast.

We kept going with one minute of running to one minute of walking and my stomach behaved itself.  Once again, the miles started flying by and before I knew it, we were at Mile 22!  For whatever reason, Mile 22 felt like a huge accomplishment, like we were really close to the end, and my mood shifted back to something resembling excitement.

The Modesto Marathon course is probably one of the most boring I have ever run.  I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true.  It’s almost completely flat and there are long, long stretches of straightaway with nothing around you but orchards.  The crowd support is pretty sparse, though thankfully there were lots of high school bands at what would have otherwise been very quiet points.  I was incredibly grateful for their energy!  I know the race director planned the course with a thought to the expense and inconvenience of road closures, but I personally prefer a more urban race, or at least a race with more spectators.

Finally, finally we were on the home stretch and IronHubs and I decided that we could run it in with no more walking breaks after Mile 25.5.  Next time, I might negotiate for one more walking break.  There was no such thing as a final kick, to be sure, but I did have a HUGE smile on my face as we rounded that last corner and saw the finish line!

We were attempting to take a selfie when this random guy swooped over, grabbed my camera and took this photo of us.  I couldn’t help but laugh! 

Marathon #6 official finish time – 5:04:31

337th place out of 476 finishers.  Not my best by far, but also not a PW.  Yay!  Also, the medals this year were huge!  A girl’s got her priorities, you know.

Here are the things I learned from this race:

1. It is much better to go to the bathroom before a race than during it.
2. Train for the distance.  Really.
3. Running with my husband is one of the most awesome things ever.
4. I really need to go shopping – I wear this yellow shirt all the freakin’ time.

Next time, I promise I’m going to do this marathon thing the right way.  For reals!  But don’t quote me on that.

It’s Complicated…

Once upon a time, running and I had an easy relationship.  I woke up in the morning, threw on a pair of cotton sweatpants, laced up my $20 Champion shoes from Payless ShoeSource and hit the road.  Sometimes I could even run for two whole miles!  We were so happy together.  I wanted to run more and more, I never wanted to stop running!

Eventually, inevitably I suppose, we had our first big fight:  I sprained my ankle at mile 4 of a half-marathon.  I spent two weeks on crutches and feared that I would never run again.  I fretted constantly.  We’d only been together a few months, what if our relationship was so tenuous that it could be taken away, just like – snap! – that?  Venturing back into the street after our separation, I was flooded with relief.  Running still loved me.  We were meant to be together.

We kept spending more and more time together.  I bought wicking shirts, cute skirts and fancy, cushioned shoes.  I studied up on training plans and fueling strategies.  I ran a marathon.  I bought books about running and more shoes.  I wanted to be the very best runner I could be, so I did everything I could to bring running even closer to me.

That first fight, though, was followed by others – IT pain, tendonitis, sciatica and stress fractures.  My trust in running wasn’t broken, but I was starting to feel a niggling doubt in the back of my mind that hadn’t been there before.  Every injury meant more time away from running and more fear that maybe we weren’t meant to be together after all.  Slowly, I morphed from the exciting, carefree girl who was always ready to run into a woman desperately clinging to an increasingly troublesome relationship.

I felt the problem must be with me, so I made changes.  I ran more.  I ran less.  I cross-trained more.  I ran slower.  I ran faster.  I bought more shoes.  I stopped wearing shoes.  None of these changes brought any real relief, and I’ve actually begun to wonder if they’ve made things worse. 

My current yearlong foray into barefoot running has brought just as many injuries as all those heel-striking years.  At first, my midfoot strike was too exaggerated and I kept having to reduce mileage because of top of the foot pain. Eventually, I gave myself a nice little metatarsal stress fracture and it was back to the drawing board.  It’s safe to say that natural running didn’t come *ahem* naturally to me.

Determined to make barefooting work, I built my mileage slowly (again) and concentrated on my form (even more than before).  Like a bad penny that keeps turning up, though, there was a run-stopping pain as soon as I got to double digits, this time tendonitis on the outside of my ankle near the heel.  An odd spot, for sure, but a clear indication that I am still doing something wrong.  *sigh*

What’s a girl in love supposed to do?  I’ve had that ring on my finger for six years now and I want it all – marriage, kids, and a house with a white picket fence!  What I really, really, really want is to go back to those giddy early days, when running and I were destined for happily ever after.   But I think maybe running just wants to be friends.

What’s your relationship with running?

Balance and Single Leg Strength Workout

One of the things I notice as a runner is that when I’m doing strength training, I tend to focus more on upper-body exercises because I know that (comparatively, at least) my lower body is pretty strong from running.  And while it’s true that I’m an upper-body wimp, it’s pretty silly to think that I don’t need to do any lower body work.  Specifically, single-leg strength work.  If you think about it, running is just balancing on one foot, over and over again, really fast.  So doing single leg balancing work is perfect practice for running.

Here is the strength workout I did this morning, presented by my favorite guest model, IronHubs!!

1.  Cook Hip Lift – named for the Physical Therapist who created it, the Cook Hip Lift really targets the glutes and hamstrings, without letting you cheat by using your back muscles.

Lie on your back and bring one knee to your chest.  Pull in your abdominal muscles, activate your glutes and lift your hips off the ground.  If you’ve done back bridges before, you might be surprised at how little you can get your butt off the ground!  It’s okay, your glutes will thank you for doing this one properly.  Hold for 5 seconds, do two sets of ten on each leg.

2.  100s – this one is a barefoot running exercise, but even shod runners can benefit from it. 

         This is a deceptively simple exercise:  stand with the balls of your feet on a line (maybe where the carpet meets the tile, or the tile grout line, or the seam where your hardwood planks meet), pick up one foot and put it down in the exact same spot, then pick up the other foot and put it down in the exact same spot.  This works best barefoot because you can feel your foot landing on the line (or not, as the case may be).  Go as quickly as you can and land on each foot 100 times.  It’s harder than you think.

3. Single Leg Hop and Stick – the “stick” in the title does not refer to my sticky floors, thankyouverymuch, but rather to the fact that you “stick” the landing and stabilize yourself between hops.

              Stand on one foot, hop forward and land on the same foot.  Stabilize for a few seconds, then hop again on the same foot.  Do 2 sets of 20 hops on each leg.

4.  Bent-Knee Hip Abduction (aka “The Clamshell”)

Lie on your side with your knees bent.  (This happens to be the perfect position to notice how atrocious your pits smell and how much dog hair is on the carpet.  FYI.)

Keep your feet together and open up your knees.

The trick is to keep your back completely straight and not roll over while opening your knees.  Holding your abs in helps.  Do 2 sets of 10 on each side.

5. Straight-Leg Abduction – once you’re on the ground, you might as well stay there and do some more glute work, ya know?

Straighten your body into a long line, with the toes of the top foot pointed slightly down.  Raise and lower the top leg without rolling your back.  Do 2 sets of 10 raises on each leg.

6.  Ball Push-Up Bridge – okay, time for some stabilizer/core work before our legs turn into jelly!  But don’t worry, there’s more leg work coming up.

This one looks so easy in a photograph, maybe I should have taken a video of the shaking arms!  Hold the push-up position for 30 seconds, twice.

7. Shoulder Ball Bridge

Similar to the previous exercise, but this time your toes are on the ball.  Hold for 30 seconds, twice.

8.  Back Ball Bridge

I found this one to be the “easiest” of the three ball bridges, and it doubles as a really nice chest stretch.  Hold for 30 seconds, twice.

9.  One-Leg Straight Leg Deadlift – you probably saw the two-leg version of this in last month’s Runner’s World.  The straight-leg deadlift (SLDL) is big for CrossFitters, but the single-leg version is a little more accessible for us regular folk.

With a heavy dumbbell in your right hand (this isn’t an arm exercise, so it’s okay to go heavy on this one – the weight acts as a ballast for your back leg and actually helps balance you), stand on your left foot.  Keeping your back and your back leg as straight as possible, bend slowly forward until your hand almost reaches the floor.  Use your glutes to bring yourself back upright.  Do 2 sets of 10 on each leg.

10.  Split Squat – are your legs feeling like noodles yet?  Good, this is the last one!

                    Start in a lunge position, with your hands up on your head.  Bend the back leg until both knees are at a 90 degree angle.  Focus on moving straight up and down, rather than forward and back.  Do 2 sets of 10 squats on each leg.

Finish up the workout with a good stretch, making sure to get your hammies and inner thighs!

Have you ever done single-leg strength work before? 

How often do you work on your balance?

CIM–Love Letter, Race Report and Dire Warning all in One!

Consider yourself warned:  This is a tale of triumph, certainly, but I exhibit so much stupidity, stubbornness and downright foolhardiness on the way to said triumph that you are likely to find yourself quite frustrated with this post!

Dear California International Marathon,

I love you.  I’ve run your beautiful tree-lined course three years in a row now and the day registration opens for the 2012 race, you can bet I’ll be on Active.com with my credit card in hand.  You’ve done a great job keeping that hometown feel while getting bigger every year (though please, please, PLEASE don’t get too big – nobody likes wave starts!), and this year you really stepped up to the big time with a cute shirt and big honkin’ medal.  Thank you for that.  I’ve now run my three fastest marathons on your spectator-filled streets, and next year I promise to actually train for you.

Love and kisses,

P

So, about that lack of training.  Remember way back in early September when I was full of bright and shiny dreams about this year’s CIM?  (No?  Me neither, I had to go back and look it up.)  Things sort of fell apart right after that.  I was still running for a while, but my heart wasn’t in it.  Then, after a long run in early October I had a lot of pain in my foot that may have been tendonitis or possibly a stress fracture.  I never had it officially diagnosed (remember, you’ve been warned about the idiocy I demonstrate in this post!) because I couldn’t face a boot on top of everything else.  I was a good girl, though, and I stayed off my feet.  No running!  I became good friends with the elliptical trainer and the Stairmaster at my gym and I did A LOT of core work and strength training.  I wiped all thoughts of the CIM out of my mind and just focused on getting healthy.

After six weeks (let me do the math for you here – injury eight weeks ago minus healing for six weeks equals feeling better two weeks ago), my foot felt great and I was ready to get back to hitting the road.  I went out for very short, very easy-paced runs and felt terrific.  Then last weekend a terrible thing happened:  I thought about the CIM.  I thought about how much I love to run that race.  I thought about how I had already paid for it.  I thought about how long distance runs are more mental than physical and how I knew I could gut it out.  I thought about how it was the only marathon on my calendar this year and how much I would hate to miss out on running at least one.  To be fair, I also thought about how utterly ridiculous it would be to attempt a marathon after a “long run” of seven miles, but since this is, indeed, a race report, you already know how much credence I gave that last thought.  As Bugs Bunny would say, “What a maroon!”

I tried to be realistic about the whole running-an-untrained-marathon thing.  Obviously, I wouldn’t actually be running the whole thing!   I told myself repeatedly that what I would be doing was completing a marathon.  I decided to do a run-walk, starting with five minutes of “running” at a comfortable easy pace to one minute of walking and then making adjustments during the race as I fatigued.  Funny side story about this decision:  months and months ago, I had entered to win a Gymboss from Julie over at Adventure is Out There, but didn’t win.  I didn’t really think about it again, but I was on Amazon looking for a Christmas gift for IronHubs last Monday, when what should appear in my suggestions but a Gymboss?!?  Well, there’s no such thing as coincidence, so I ordered myself a hot pink one on the spot.  Here’s a little spoiler for the race report – that Gymboss is my new favorite thing!!  It was awesome and I love it and I am probably going to marry it!

Let’s get on to the actual race report, shall we?

The expo seemed much better than usual this year, but I think that’s because I went at a very uncrowded time.  Plus I randomly ran into a friend from high school and scored a pair of Zoot compression knickers for ten bucks.  Sweet!

Trying to pretend like I wasn’t nervous, but who am I kidding?  I was a wreck, just like always!  You can see the Gymboss peeking out from under my bib.

Lining up at the start, I stayed in the way back.  The way, way, waaaaaaaay back.  I didn’t have a time goal, other than hopefully finishing before the six hour cutoff, so I didn’t want to get suckered into going out fast.  Ha!

So I went out fast.  Thankfully, I had the Gymboss beeping at me, reminding me to take a little break.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a walking break just FIVE MINUTES into a marathon??  But like the Pavlovian dog I am, every time the Gymboss beeped, I did what I was supposed to do and that meant walking breaks.  Side note:  the Gymboss lasted about ten seconds on my waistband, but not because it was uncomfortable.  Have you ever listened to 9,000 people running a marathon?  There is a whole lot of beeping going on!!  Some people had cadence beepers, others were fueling alerts, many were mileage markers and lots of runners had run/walk alarms like me.  I couldn’t tell which one was mine, so I kept the Gymboss in my hand so I could hear it better and look at it occasionally.  Well, not really “occasionally,” more like every 30 seconds.  But whatever.

The CIM bills itself as “net downhill,” which cracks me up.  Yes, technically that’s true:  the finish line is 400 feet of elevation lower than the starting line, but there’s nothing but hill after hill on the way there!

Elevation chart from my Garmin.

With the scheduled walking breaks, I ended up walking a lot of the downhills, which I thought was sort of funny since everyone else around me seemed to be walking the uphills.  I couldn’t believe all the complaining I heard about the hills!  Seriously, didn’t these people look at the course profile at all?

In spite of the hills (which didn’t seem all that hard, thank you Stairmaster!) and the walking breaks, the miles just flew by me.  I felt great!  It was a mere 32 degrees at the start, but when the sun came up it warmed up very nicely without ever getting hot.  I kept my pace easy and enjoyed the scenery and the cheering spectators.  One of my favorite signs said, “You are all AWESOME!  crazy… but AWESOME!”  I also saw a group of people with “Occupy CIM” signs that made me laugh.  There was one family that I saw no fewer than a dozen times with “Go, Mom, GO!” signs.  I never figured out exactly who they were cheering for, but she must have been running just a little bit behind me the whole time.  They were very loud and much appreciated in the later miles!

Around Mile 5, I realized I was gaining on the 4:25 pace group ahead of me.  I couldn’t believe it!  I’ve already admitted to so much lunacy already that I’m not going to tell you how seeing them totally made me competitive and I’m not going to mention that passing them at Mile 6 was one of the high points of the race for me.  Even though it totally was.

Before I knew it, I was nearing the halfway point!  I was expecting to see my cheering squad somewhere around there, but I wasn’t sure where they would be.  IronHubs captured this totally funny sequence of photos as I found them:

Seeing my support crew at Mile 13 was a huge morale booster, even though I didn’t actually need it yet.  I was still feeling great until about Mile 16, when my legs started asking me why the heck we were still running.  Or walking.  Or, really, still moving at all.  Couldn’t we sit down for awhile, please?

You know, people talk about hitting the wall at Mile 20 and having to let adrenaline carry them through the final six miles, but personally, I find Miles 17 – 23 to be the hardest of a marathon.  You’ve run a really long way, but still seem to have an awfully long way to go.  By Mile 23, though, there’s an energy in the air.  You can smell the finish line getting closer.

Around Mile 17, the 4:25 pace group passed me up. I kept them in sight until about Mile 19, but there was absolutely no thought in my head of keeping up with them. It was never my intention to run this thing fast, so I focused all my energy on just moving forward at all times.  This is when I truly fell in love with the Gymboss.  All I had to do, all I needed to think about, was running for five minutes.  Then I got to walk for one minute.  Then I only had to run for five minutes - anybody can run for five minutes!  - then I got to walk for another minute.

I got an unexpected and much needed boost at Mile 21 when I heard my mom and my sister clapping and cheering and hollering for me.  I wasn’t expecting to see them there, so thank goodness they called out my name or I probably would have stumbled right past them.  What a lovely thing it is to see a friendly face at Mile 21!  They lied and told me I looked wonderful and reminded me I only had six miles left (they thought they were at Mile 20, it was sort of funny).  Their energy got me through the last of the cruel miles and pushed me toward the finish line.

By Mile 24, I was digging as deep as I had.  I was counting how many more times I would be able to walk and yet dreading both the walking break and the picking-it-back-up-to-a-run.  My muscles wanted nothing to do with changing speeds.  Slowing down was almost as awful as speeding up, but I kept doing it every single time the Gymboss told me to.  I thought a lot about changing the intervals and walking more, but I was so close to the end.  I kept telling myself that I had made it this far, I could go a little farther.

Lookit all those perfectly even intervals.  You can see where I stopped to hug my cheering fans at Miles 13 and 21.  I have no recollection of slowing down so much at what must have been Mile 24, but I think I was delirious by then.

My very last walking break should have been at Mile 25.5, but at that point on the course, the spectators are three deep on the sidewalks, screaming their heads off for you and waving signs that say things like “Only 8 blocks left!”  So I ran it all the way in.  I’m using the word “ran” very loosely here, you understand.

I was so freakin’ happy to see that Finish Line!!

Since I started in the way back, I get to subtract four minutes from the clock.  Official finish time – 4:35:16, my second fastest marathon to date!!

Ahhh, sweet marathon glory! 

Ok, now for the dire warning:  DON’T EVER DO THIS!  Seriously, I’m an idiot.  Nobody should run a marathon without training for it and believe me, my quads and hamstrings have been reminding me of that fact all day long today.  Respect the distance!