6 miler – Take 2

Ran in Atlanta today.

I love running in new places. It usually makes the run much less painful. Familiar trails are great, too. But, after that craptacular run from last week, I needed to do my 6 miler in a different place.

Plus, we got to come home and jump in the pool. Marvelous!

Along the way, we ran through the parking lot of a Baptist Church. Or rather…Baptist Compound. I keep forgetting that everyone in the south smokes and goes to church on Sunday. Though, the size of this church was a little bit scary. NEVER seen so many cars or such a big building in my life! I managed to run the heck outta there before being struck down for being a heathen.

Welcome Back

First time back at NYRR in a year.

Mission: The ever-hated, ever-dreaded East River run. With a bonus of running across the footbridge. Awesome. In impending rain. Awesomer.

Goal: Don’t be last (and I chose to run in the last group since Im lame these days).

Result: Achieved (finish time of 10 min mile pace both ways)

Likeness: Using the stairs to wade into a cold pool instead of being thrown in.

Class lesson: Run tall and running downhill
Personal lesson: Buy new running shoes ASAP!

Things I missed:

• Stretching on the dusty gym floor.
• The rhythmic and unexpectedly soothing cantor of Shelly calling out stretches – point and flex and point and flex and point and flex, twice more, last time
• Listening to people’s random conversations during the warm-up and cool-down
• The coaches (Laurel – Doug sends his love!)
• Laurel, my fellow runner complainer. Who am I supposed to complain to about annoying people?! (see section below)
• Other people with ridiculous and awkward strides like me. These are my people!
• Picking off just…one…more…person…before the finish line

Things I didn’t miss:
Annoying people (new this year: aviator sunglasses girl, ya know? girl, and people who don’t understand how much space they take up in the world or their trajectory and cut you off)

All in all it was not too bad of a day. Im not commenting on how Im running with the slow group. It’s just a temporary glitch and systems will be back online shortly. Or in a month. Or two

Haiku

Six mile run done
Heavy miserableness
Nothing more to say

Getting a Grip

I am in the process of getting a grip. I was on vacation a mere 4 days ago and you would never know. Im sure most of my poor attitude and general malaise is due to work – blah. But, Eldar and I were chatting about all of the stuff we have going on in the coming weeks and I had a bit of a meltdown.

I need structure in my life. Of course, I have some…wake up. commute, work, commute, do stuff, bed. But, I am training for a half marathon in August and a marathon in November. And all the travelling and running around we have planned just does not go. I don’t do the fly by the seat of my pants thing while training for a race.

When I did my 2007 marathon, my Friday/Saturday schedule was leave work, go to Trader Joe’s and do grocery shopping for the week, home by 6:15/6:30, cook and eat dinner (usually some variation of pasta with veggies and soy sausage), watch As Time Goes By on PBS while having a cup of hot tea with cinnamon graham crakers, bed at 10pm, wake up 5:30am, breakfast, exercise, run at 7am, shower, eat a ginormous salad.

Seriously. Down to the food I ate! That’s just my Friday/Saturday schedule.

But I find the structure soothing when Im tackling something as overwhelming as a marathon can be. You need to be disciplined and for me to do it and not be overwhelmed, I need the structure.

So, we had a nice chat about how we can train for these races by buckling down, but not raining on his parade (which tends to be much more relaxed, beautiful, and free than mine! Bless him for loving me and my neuroses).

So, Im feeling much better about the running stuff. Time to buckle down and do this thing. Yippee!! What the heck to do about work and that part of my life can be dealt with another day.

Loved this blog post from Kristen Armstrong:
http://milemarkers.runnersworld.com/2009/05/getting-a-grip.html

I Love Jon Baker

I am having a great morning. Despite sleeping for crap (there is a large umbrella in a stand on my landlord’s deck – which is what’s above my bedroom. In the gusty arctic winds, the stand wobbles back and forth. It makes barely a sound from topside as I discovered when exploring the environment at midnight while trying not to look like a prowler. But from below decks, sounds like someone is rolling a bowling ball around above my head.) and getting up at 5:45 am to venture into the tundra (ok…minor exaggeration), I am feeling energized (check in with me around 2pm) and inspired.

Because I love Jon Baker.

Jon Baker (I like to call him by either his whole name, or just Baker) is my personal trainer at the gym. And this morning I told him “I am so glad you were the one who answered the phone that day when I called!” Because, for the first time in MONTHS I feel inspired. And have the utmost confidence that I will get to a place where I feel strong again.

Baker told me to believe that I can achieve much more than I think I can, and not to have anxiety about the outcome. Just think of the gym as a room in my home that I just rennovated, painted and decorated. Just show up and enjoy.

We also talk about the biomechanics of things. Which I won’t go into detail about now. But, he gets that my knee bugs me because he has been there. He understands exactly what I need to work on, and more importantly, in what order I need to work on them. He listens to me when I tell him what I have already been through and what I want to acheive. And he explains why we do certain things and how they help prepare us for where we want to go.

He is also 36 or 37 and skateboards to work every day. How sweet is that?

Sometimes you meet just the right person at exactly the right time when you are finally ready to make the committment (it sounds like Im talking about a romantic relationship here, which Im not…though, similar ideas do apply). My birthday let me reflect on my both frustrating (no running) and completely awesome (I love Eldar the MOST!) year. And I have a pretty new Garmin GPS watch to track the journey to marathon 2009. Yay, toys!

I trained for and ran a marathon last year (in a pretty respectable time frame, too!). I can pretty much do anything. So, it’s time to buckle down and make the time.

I am finding that once AT the gym, I enjoy my time there. Jon Baker gives me really cool stuff to work on and it’s actually, dare I say, fun. It’s just getting myself there that I need to make happen. One day at a time.

In the meantime, I plan to text him when I can’t get up from my desk tomorrow due to the super cool sliding lunges we did today.

Only in NYC/Brooklyn

I love NY. Some days I hate it, of course. Like the incessant sirens. Yes, I realize that this is an extraordinarily large city and has a proportional amount of “incidents”. But do that many more people actually set things on fire or have emergency medical situations than in other places? Why is there always, ALWAYS a siren? It could be that they follow me around. Like yesterday. There must have been a siren in a 5 block radius of me for at least an hour. What are these people doing on a lazy Sunday afternoon? I was dramatically explaining to Eldar that in the 2 1/2 weeks I was in Germany/Austria I heard a grand total of 1 sires. ONE. Munich is abnormally silent after a certain hour and we joked that any emergency must wait until a respectable hour to be addressed. And never on Sunday, of course. Shhhhh! The house is on fire!

What was I saying? Oh, yes…that I love NYC.

Only in NYC do W. 4th and W. 13th streets interesect with each other. Really? This shouldn’t even be possible. But there it is.

I was also walking down a random block (15th street, maybe) and spied some folks peering in to a basement apartment. I proceeed to do the same (because, of course, you would too), and there was a pool. A friggin’ swimming pool in a non descript building on 15th street in Chelsea. Only in NYC.

Finally, I was picking my way across the cobblestone street in the Meatpacking District in my flip flops having just come from a pedicure. When it hit me. I live in NYC. And I just had a pedi and am meeting my friend for dinner in the meatpacking district. Really? So awesome. And Im not even one of the cool kids.

Also in NYC is the ever-present fedora. This trend is not exclusive to Brooklyn as I once thought. On my lunch hour walk alone I saw at least 5. Are they breeding? Is there an outbreak I should be seeking a vaccine for? I kind of dug it at first, but now it is so rampant that I have to roll my eyes. Yes, I have felt the uncontrollable need to accessorize since moving to Brooklyn, but my jaunty cap is where I draw the line. If you see me in a fedora, please shake some sense in to me.

Bonding with Brooklyn was a huge success. I really like my ‘hood. Especially from Court Street going west. THAT is where I feel really at home. Highlights: To/from the Promenade is the perfect light jog or afternoon stroll. Also many fun things to see/do/eat (!) on Atlantic Avenue, and Brooklyn Flea is a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Next time: mix the watermelon juice with the lemonade. How much do you want to bet that it will be awesome?!

Plus, I made the most delicious nectarine/plum crumble from local fruit this weekend. Which is really not NYC specific, but you’ll get over it.

Self-portrait taken on Bergen Street near 5th Ave. There was a stack of mirrors propped against the gate of a brownstone under renovation. Kind of a Hall of Mirrors on the sidewalks of NY.

Bergen Street, Brooklyn

Seeking…

Runner Girls

Laurel and I had our final run before the big move. We trotted. We whined. It sucked (aka – was terrific). (It was also humid as balls outside.)

And Im bummed, of course. So excited for her new opportunity, but so sad she is leaving. Thank goodness for email and iChat. Yay iPhone!

My craigslist post for a new running buddy:
Runner girl seeking new running buddy. Must meet the following requirements:

1. Female.
2. Named Laurel.
3. Run approx 10 min mile pace over long distance. Faster pace over short distance.
4. Actively train for 10k, half-marathons, and marathons.
5. Have a life.
6. Have insane friends/co-workers with even more insane experiences so I can be entertained with stories during running excursions.
7. Be a quality complainer. If you don’t know what this means, you are not the one for me.
8. Be willing to ditch running every now and then to meet for drinks intead. Wine drinkers preferred.
9. Wear pink shorts.
10. Love Target running sales.
11. Always be looking out for Chad.

If you meet all of these requirements, contact me immediately.

What can I say? I have high standards.

Half-Marathon

Favorite phrase of the day:
Eldar – Let’s do it again!
Katherine – F@$* you.

I was kidding, of course. Sort of.

Next time, we will have cheesy matching T-Shirts.
Katherine – I make ‘em.
Eldar – I eat ‘em.
The back of both will read: powered by yumzibars

I won’t bore you with details of the race. There were 13.1 miles. We ran them in 2:20. ‘Nuff said.

But, our journey to the starting line was rather amusing.

Leave at 4:45 am and Jill (the GPS navigator, not my boss…) directs us to Battery City via the tunnel. However, apparently, the entrance to the tunnel from Brooklyn is closed at this ungodly hour of the morning. So, we randomly drive around the block…Jill recalculates…we are off. This time via Brooklyn Bridge.

Then there is an incident with a car in our blind spot which I won’t even revisit.

We arrive at the pre-determined parking deck with the cheapest rate and just a few blocks from the subway station. Gate is down. No one is sitting at the booth. Eldar gets up to see if there is a doorbell or something. Just as we are about to drive to the backup parking deck, the guy pops up. From where he had been sleeping under his desk! Awesome.

We park, trot to the subway (among a few other downtown dwelling runners) and just make the subway. We made the early train, too, having calculated our arrival to catch one of two #4 trains.

Arrive on the UES to some drizzle, but have a nice breakfast of hard-boiled eggs and granola bars under the construction scaffolding at The Guggenheim Museum. Rain is one of the only times you will hear me say “Thank god for construction.”

Long story short – it stopped raining. We ran. Then ate cheeseburgers. Then took a nap. It was a good day.

And just a random unrelated note: The girls upstairs are doing god knows what and sound like they are about to come crashing through my ceiling. Christ, this is why I have lived on the top floor for so long.

Cupcake Don’t

My favorite post on Chowhound.

http://www.chowhound.com/topics/481174

I Hate Running

Laurel – I missed you. Guess who led the stretching and was on the subway with me to Bleeker Street?

5 mile cross country run tonight. Which sounds great, in theory. But, in practice was really hard and I was cursing by the end as Shelley took us over yet another friggin’ hill. Though, to her credit, she did get us to the clock at the Central Park Zoo just in time to hear the music and watch the glokenschpiel.

That said…I hate running. Really. Or, Im starting to. OK, perhaps hate is a strong word, but you know that I am prone to melodrama.

But, Im really starting to resent putting on my running shoes. Im inclined to think that Im just holding myself to a standard I set for myself last year and am not cutting myself any slack. But, whatever. Point is, the thought of training for the marathon makes me want to go to bed and stay there. That is not how I want to feel.

And I certainly don’t have to feel that way since the marathon is a voluntary activity!

I am seriously considering deferment of my entry for a year and just spending the rest of the year doing a couple of half-marathons to stay in shape. Making myself really strong at that distance and taking the pressure off.

We shall see how I feel tomorrow. Good thing I don’t have ice cream in my freezer right now!