Happy Birthday to Me

My husband and I had agreed that the title of this blog post would be "Suck it 35", but as I get more readers who know me in my professional life, I'm just putting it out there that I KNOW that isn't a very ladylike title. So I changed it. But there is an edge of compromise in telling you, and many of you know how I feel about this birthday in particular.

My birthday celebration of choice this year was to sign up for the Veteran's Day 10K. I registered a couple of months ago and managed to get my friend and my sister (who is by the way a very, very good friend of mine thankfully) to register as well. I've been excited about setting new goals for myself, and for a long time the event was a single line on an otherwise empty weekend on the calendar.

And then Phil asked if I wanted to go rowing again that same day but later in the afternoon. My thoughts were that #1 - heck yeah, I absolutely wanted to go rowing again, and #2 - it would be no problem because there were hours between the run and the row, and the row was going to be a "leisurely row" that culminated in a family picnic for rowers from his boat club. So my calendar had two events.

Last Tuesday my husband came home from work and told me that we'd been invited to the Cystic Fibrosis Gala, which just happened to be the night before my race. Thoughts about that were #1 - it would be fun to go out for a nice evening with my husband and #2 - we would just come home at a reasonable hour and both keep in mind that I had a race in the morning. So I desperately called babysitters (*Thank you Kaitlin!*), and we added that event as well.

Here is a photo of us as we were getting a loving send off and responsibly leaving the house at 6pm:

And here's a photo of us well past midnight after I convinced myself that the race was only a portion of my birthday celebration, that an evening of dressing up and dancing was too good to pass up by being overly responsible:

And then came Sunday morning...

I've been nervous about the race for a while now, but it really wasn't too bad. Some great advice from my friend Josh helped get me through the self-talk challenge, and I was able to keep putting one foot in front of the other until we finally crossed the finish line. Josh suggested that I purposely take it slowly in the beginning and after finishing the first 5K to try and mentally set it aside as though it hadn't happened, so that I could run the second with a clearer mind and attitude. It worked well - my second 5K was a few minutes faster than the first, and overall I finished with a time of 65:28 (10:33/mi). Could I have been faster if I hadn't gone out Saturday night? Possibly. Might I not have wanted to curl up on the side of the road for a nap between miles 4-6? Probably. Would I do it again the same way? Absolutely.

Here's a post-race shot of the three of us:

I had just enough time at home to get cleaned up and bake cornbread for the picnic. Coincidentally, our row was also a 10K distance and was a lot of fun. As we set out, Phil asked if I wanted to take it easy for the first half and then try and row for a time on the way back. It was impossible not to think of Josh's advice and smile. Sure thing. Who wants leisurely on a weekend like this?!

Suck it 35! Happy Birthday to ME!

Go Slow to Go Fast

I am feeling so much better thankfully, and yesterday I went out for my longest run so far. According to MapMyRun, I managed 6.1 miles. They were not fast miles, but they were my miles - I am claiming them. For the first time at a longer distance, I wasn't mentally trying to hurl each mile away from myself. Instead of internally kicking around "@#$#$% 3 miles", I actually kept increasing my time and distance just because I could. These miles were like my friends.

How might you ask????

Uh, by running at the pace of my neighbor kid's tricycle.

After registering for the half-marathon in March, I spent the week in panic mode trying to figure out what I need to do between now and then. Many, many thanks to ALL of you that have given me such great advice. Between your words of wisdom and the articles I've found, I am feeling so much better about my registration. The highlights?

1. Watch heart rate. This of course irritates me to no end because everything I read is telling me to keep my heart rate under 155 if I want to be able to keep running for very long. I don't even know if that is possible. I compromised yesterday and tried to keep my HR under 170. Generally for these 5K distances and when I run on the treadmill, it's around 183, so just believe me when I say I'm trying.

2. Long Slow Distance. Check. Husband approved the plan to schedule a long-distance run every Saturday or Sunday until the race in March. He'll either gym with the babysitting option or trade places with me at some other point in the weekend. I have 17 more LSD runs between now and the official race on St. Patty's, AND my brand-new-super-cool-very-manly-looking Garmin Forerunner just showed up Saturday afternoon, so now I'll know exactly how far I've gone and how quickly.

3. Run hills. Yuck. It's true though. When my personal advisers (ahem.... Luke :-) AND the running articles all say the same thing, I am forced to believe that the best thing for me to do will be to basically torture myself over and over on a weekly basis. Maybe bi-weekly.... monthly....?

I tell the girls at practice that they need to go slow to go fast as a way of encouraging them to find their own pace and not be pressured by others to run more quickly than they can maintain. It is such easy advice to give - just go slowly enough that you can keep running. It's sort of hard to do though. As I came across other runners, I confess that there was an embarrassed part of me that wished I was running faster. Maybe one day I'll be more zippy, but for now, with my 170 compromise, slow and tricycle-like is just where I am. And, if slow and tricycle-like manages to get me across a finish line 13.1 miles away from where I initially started, that will be just fine.

Just Breathe

Two weeks ago I started feeling sick - typical sinus infection that after a week rolled into a chest cold. If there wasn't always something to do - at home, at work, etc., I would have tried to go to the doctor earlier. The thing is, there is a formula for going to the doctor. It's basically making the appointment when I've been sick for a minimum of five days but fewer than ten. Fewer than five and it may be a virus, but once I've gotten to ten, the logical response from the doctor is that I've almost kicked it, so why bother with antibiotics? In any event, my fault for being busy. I didn't go in the magic window and started to believe that I was kicking it myself.

But now, about 16 days in, I'm having a hard time. Last Wednesday I got off the treadmill two miles in after realizing that I was struggling for air - not just gasping for air, which I'm totally used to - but actually struggling and using a great deal of energy to try and suck oxygen into my lungs. It was like I was using a straw and just couldn't get enough. So I got off, went to stretch, used the free weights, and went home. I've taken things easy and haven't tried to exercise much since, with the exception of a 5K run Sunday morning. Two miles into the run, I had the same experience. I actually walked for about twenty seconds - just long enough to try and inflate. My time was still good for me. I did it in 30:45 and so averaged a 9:54/mi, but it wasn't a pretty, full-of-light skipping run. It was a bit more like an elephant being chased by a taser. Thump thump wheeze. Thump thump wheeze. After the race, I felt much better and went out for breakfast with friends. Only later that afternoon, the lack of air feeling came back, and I struggled with it throughout the night.

Monday morning I called the doctor the minute they opened. She confirmed that it was asthma with a dose of upper respiratory infection. Crap. She gave me prescriptions for a new inhaler and antibiotics. I'm pretty sure I'd be happier with pneumonia or some other diagnosis that could just go away with the right meds. Asthma sucks. I came home and registered for a half-marathon in March. This is the way I handle frustration. Knee jerk denial mixed with utter lunacy.

So the bottom line is that I'm excessively grumpy about my lack of ability to breathe. I took the day off today to stay home with my son, who is coincidentally sick right now of some post-Halloween middle-of-the-night fever and lethargy, and I was able to take a nap during his. I dreamed that the road I was driving on was gradually submerging into the ocean, and I was trying to keep to the surface, and I got out of the car so that I could, but I kept getting pulled down.

The worst part is that the Pollyanna in me just keeps thinking of people who experience this all the time. Asthma, cystic fibrosis, ALS.... I can't even feel cranky without heaping on guilt about it. I really do have it so good.