Getting Better: My 2nd 5K Race!!

This Sunday, I ran my 2nd-ever competitive 5K. I ran the "Elf Run," which is the 2nd of 6 races in the GLM Winter Race Series (no, I'm not running all 6. I am running 4 of them; this was my first one).

In the days leading up to Sunday, I started feeling nervous. The high for Sunday was only 24 degrees! It's been a cold November, so it's not like I haven't run in cold weather yet. But never THIS cold! I wondered if it would have an adverse affect on my running that I couldn't forsee.

I was also nervous about how this race would compare to my last one. I did really well in my last 5K and got a much better time than I imagined. So, even though I made sure to not let that get to my head and to keep my expectations in check, it was tempting to just assume that this race would be even better. I keep trying to remember Pablo Coehlo's timeless novel The Alchemist, in which the protagonist at one point receives a warning about "beginner's luck": bascially, that it is an illusion that doesn't last and that he who isn't prepared for the difficulties that follow the initial beginner's luck is doomed to fail and give up. I had to remember that starting out really well doesn't mean all my races will be that way. Still, I really wanted to beat my old time, and I was afraid of feeling the disappointment of a "sophomore slump."

Well, Sunday morning was just as frigid as expected. Although clear and sunny, it was a bitter 19 degrees out. After going to the wrong building (that's what I get for assuming the SUV full of racers in front of us knew where they were going better than my directions did!), we arrived at the Expo center and picked up my sweet race bib and tshirt. I wasn't really nervous as we waited around with the crowds in the expo center, or as I bobbed up and down trying to keep my legs warm with all the other 5K runners who were crowded into the starting chute in the minutes before the race. I just kept reminding myself not to start off too quickly, to harness the energy of all the runners around me but also not to get fazed by them. And then, we were off! Finally!

The course was pretty boring - it just weaved through a corporate park area. Music is allowed in these races, so I took full advantage of that and let my running playlist pump me up. U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" came on in the middle of my race, which has to be one of the best running songs ever.

I pushed myself HARD for that last mile. They had timers at each mile, and I remember the surge of empowerment I felt as I neared the finish line and saw myself cross it at 20 seconds earlier than my time to beat. I had done it!!

And that was just the gun time. After waiting in the freezing cold line to get my results, I was stunned to see that my net time was 28:22 - a whole minute better than my last 5K time! And that I got a whopping 17th place in my age group - out of 50 people!

Minute by minute, I'm nearing my goal of medaling in one of the GLM Winter Series races. The races in this series give medals to the top 10 finishers of each gender age group, so realistically, this is my best shot to medal in a race that doesn't give medals just for finishing. I didn't expect one at this race, and I doubt I'll be able to medal in the next one - a 5K on New Year's Eve. But my last two races in this series will be 10Ks, not 5Ks, and I really hope to medal in at least one of them. Not as many people run 10Ks so I'm hoping if I stay on top of my training this will increase my chances of medaling in one of them. Fingers crossed!

Anyway, to sum it up: WOO HOO!! It's such a great feeling that my training is paying off and I can see myself improving. I'm slowly getting better, faster, and more competitive. 17/50 is SO not bad!! If only all my days could feel as good as race days :-)

Why I Run

Ah - the classic "why I run" piece. I can honestly say I never thought I'd write one of these. First of all, I didn't even think I had any overarching reason for running. Most of the "why I run" things I read sound like they could be on a Nike commercial or a Pinterest board full of inspirational quotes. I really didn't relate to any of those because I didn't think any of my reasons for running are buried that deep, honestly. I just want to do it, I like the challenge, I like the attainable goals and the regular exercise (and, of course, the runner's high).

But this weekend, it struck me that maybe I do have a deeper reason than bragging rights and stamina improvement - something that's been motivating me all along and I never knew.

This weekend was one of those times when I was thinking about a bunch of things that are stressful at work, and it made me feel like a goldfish in a bowl: all I could think of was escape. Instead of trying to deal with the stress I just started thinking of how I can't wait until I move up in the world and have a job where I don't have to deal with what I do now. Instead of keeping myself in the present, I daydream of the future and start wondering how the heck I'm gonna get there. It was easier when I was in AmeriCorps, or working part-time, or in college, because whenever things got stressful with my job or living situation I could comfort myself with "it's only temporary, I only have X more months and then I can move on and never look back." But now that I have a full-time job and a place in this community, I can't think like that. I'm here, and I'm committed to my job and my life. I can't just check out whenever things get stressful and unpleasant, and I can't escape my adult responsibilities. So instead, I've started to channel that fight-or-flight urge into running. Instead of figuratively trying to run away, well...I do it literally instead.

Running gives me a way to set my sights higher, break down barriers, and continually achieve greater things - even when I feel like I have no clue how to do that in my professional life. All of us feel like our daily stresses get the better of us sometimes, and it's easy to feel like they're the end of the world even if our head tries to tell us they're not. But running isn't like that. There is no run I can't conquer, and I know that. No matter how exhausted I get mid-run, I know that I can push through and keep going and be rewarded at the end with the sweet triumph of getting it done.

So, I guess that's why I run. Running is always there for me whenever my adult life responsibilities have me thinking "I WANT OUT!" In all those goals and all of those workouts, I can channel both the frustration of feeling overwhelmed by adult life stresses, and the desire to burst out of my life and into something better. Whatever's going on at work, it can't touch me when I'm running. In running I can regain the confidence in myself when it feels like everything else is out of control.

That, and it'll be pretty sweet to get some medals.

Running and Time Management

It's been almost 2 months since I last posted here - yikes! I do feel really bad about that, but life has been a little crazy as I try to adjust to being busier with volunteer work and social stuff and taking on new projects.

You'll also note that I've rebranded and renamed the blog. Now that I like running and am setting all these goals for myself, I don't really identify with the "anti-runner" like I used to.

But the important thing is - I HAVE been running still! Don't worry everyone, I did not give up! Quite the opposite: I ran my first "real" 5K on Sunday, October 13th in my hometown of Cedar Rapids, IA. It was a beautiful, chilly day and I stunned myself by running it in 29:38!! I know that that doesn't sound like a competitive time to any other runner out there, but this is huge for me for my first ever timed 5K! I am lucky to get 2.5 miles in 25 minutes on my normal runs, so to finish a 5K in under 30 minutes was incredible!

I've been keeping up with my running since then, but today I want to talk about a big problem I'm having with training and time management. The problem? Well...it's hard. This fall, as I've joined new organizations and taken on more volunteer work, I've had weeks that are so busy I'm lucky if I can squeeze a run in during the work week (I run in the evenings). Last week I only ran ONCE in seven days (I was not pleased with myself!) because I had something going on every evening except Friday and by then I was too burned out.

This is starting to frustrate me. On the one hand, being busy and doing things in the community is important to me. It was a goal of mine to meet new people and become involved in the community instead of sitting at home and staying in my shell, and I've really worked hard and put myself out there to make that happen. But now that it is happening, I'm starting to see that it's no picnic. But the thing is, being this busy means sacrificing running time. And while my social life is important, running is ALSO important to me. And as I get closer to my half in May, it's going to be less acceptable to skip runs during the week. I want to be more focused on my training, but in order to do that I'd have to give up some of my activities, and that's hard for me. So, many weeks I feel like I'm between a rock and a hard place.

So, I'm trying to kick into problem-solver mode to see how I can reconcile these two things that compete for my time and energy. I could cut back on some of my extra curriculars. But the thing is, I already don't do much more than the essentials: meetings, important events, book club every so often. It's just busy right now and hopefully it will die down a bit after the holidays and I can focus more on training in the early months of 2014.

Another option is for me to do my running at a different time, aka, in the morning. This is possible and I often consider it, but it's problematic for a number of reasons. One: I can't get up early. I just can't. I've tried to make myself get up earlier so many times and I can never stick with it. Two: I don't want to give up evening running, because I like it. After a long day of sitting at work, I look forward to that "release" I get from running. It's theraputic and refreshing. Three: The inverse to Reason 2 - I don't like exercising before work. I don't know why, I just don't. When I run or workout, I like to reward myself by knowing that once I get through it, I have free time. Working out before I have to go to work all day just makes the workout feel like a chore instead of something that adds to my day. I just don't like having a great workout only to have to follow it up by sitting at work for 9 hours. Yeah, maybe I haven't given it enough of a chance, but even if I did, that leads into reason Four: it would make my days (and thus, weeks), longer and more tiring. Some weeks I can barely get through as it is, but having a morning workout would mean a run and possibly an event/late meeting all in the same day and just thinking about that makes me exhausted.

So anyway, that's where I'm at. I'll continue to problem-solve about my time management and try, while I'm at it, to be better at updating my blog too. Happy Friday!

Good Run, Bad Run

I feel bad that I haven't written in this blog in a while. It's hard to make the case that "I AM SRS BLOGGR" when I rarely ever write. But, fear not - I have been running, and that's what's most important!

I want to talk about two runs I did this weekend. On Friday after work I did a 20-minute run. The weather was great and as I was into the home stretch, I found myself thinking: something is different this time. This run, it's....it's.....not as hard as usual. In fact, right now, it's not hard at all. Normally by this point in my runs, my legs are tired, I'm running slow, and I'm just trying to get to the end. But I realized that at that moment, I wasn't tired, and I was actually running a little bit faster than normal. Well, hot damn, I thought, I'm making progress! I'm getting better! I can actually feel my runs getting a little bit easier! I'm finally seeing results!

My next run was my "long run" on Sunday morning (okay, to be fair, since I'm so new to running and can't run very far or fast yet, at this point in my training the "long run" isn't really that much longer than my 20 minute runs). I was riding high from that great run on Friday evening. Invigorated by how much easier that run had been than normal, I burst out onto the road on Sunday morning, expecting this run to be just as successful as the Friday night run.

But it wasn't, and I knew it within minutes of starting. Before I even made it out of the neighborhood my legs were tired. The uptick in pace that I felt on Friday evening was not going to be happening today - I was back to running really slow, and even then, I spent most of the run waiting for it to be over. There were times, around that dreaded midway point, where I honestly wondered how I'd get through the last half without stopping. It wasn't a terrible run, and no, I never stopped to walk - but it felt like I'd gone back in time to when I just started training, and all the progress I felt like I'd made was just some sort of illusion. What??

I understand that training is not a perfectly linear progress and that every once in a while, I will have bad days and setbacks. But sometimes I can't help but wonder: is this just a routine setback that happens to all runners, or am I just not going to get better? Maybe I am just not good at this.

And I also wonder, what could I be doing wrong in my training? There's advice everywhere for the best ways to do things, but it's starting to make me feel like I'm on information overload. What to eat, what to wear, when to run, where to run, when to focus on speed and distance, etc etc. There's no possible way I can know what works best for me until I try it out, but I don't want to find a schedule or technique that works well for me only to learn it was actually working against me in my training. Sometimes I'm just like, "arrrggg, I thought running was supposed to be simpler than other forms of exercise??"

When I think about it, there are explanations for why Friday's run was an unexpected success and why Sunday morning's fell flat. When I ran on Friday, it was in the evening, so I had eaten two meals already that day. On Sunday I hadn't eaten anything yet. Also, on Friday, I had that boost of energy from knowing my week was over and I had the whole weekend ahead of me.

I don't know exactly why some runs go well and some don't. But, at the end of the day, I guess all I can do is continue to navigate my training: enjoy those unexpected good runs, and don't get beaten up by the bad ones.

The Cleanse

As a former anti-runner, who believed that I just wasn't cut out for running and that it just wasn't the right form of exercise for me, a big part of my journey is shedding those misconceptions by not only learning to enjoy running, but also letting it open doors for me in ways I couldn't have imagined before. You should be seeing many of those on this blog as I continue to immerse myself in running.

One of the things I now love about running is that feeling of the cleanse. Adult life is full of so much clutter - material clutter, mental clutter, emotional clutter, information clutter. Sorting through all of it to find a way to be happy and figure out where you're going is a daunting task for all of us. But when I'm running, I feel a lot of that clutter melt away. I feel like I'm taking a shower and watching the metaphorical dirt pour off of me. Running, to me, is a great way to cut through all of the life clutter and take a short cut to the happier, simpler simpler sense of being I crave every day. The endorphin high can combat all of the noise, all the pressures and influences telling me that the way to happiness is by buying better clothes or spending more time on social media or joining more activities or redecorating my house or going through some other herculean effort to "reinvent" myself. Exercise - especially running, where I have so much to work for and accomplish - makes me realize that I don't need all of that. It makes me see everything so much more clearly.

When I'm running everything comes into focus and I realize that this is the way: making myself healthier and stronger. I may get sweatier, but inside I am cleaner. And I can tell, each time I run, that as long as I keep doing this, other things will fall into place. I'll get healthier, my diet will improve, my life will fall into more of a routine, and I'll be more productive and feel more revitalized. I look forward to my runs because they make everything come into focus and they give me that positive boost that no amount of money, information, or anything else can.

So, this is one of the reasons I've found to stick with running. The first was the sense of accomplishment and working toward a goal; my newest one is this, the sense of being cleansed.

From Point A to Point B

I know this will seem like a long time coming to all of my runner friends, but my run on Saturday was the first time I ever did a "destination run", aka, running from one place to another. Normally my runs are just for X minutes or Y miles, and I'm either running randomly around park trails, or in the future when it's too cold to run outside, running laps on a track, or (please! don't judge!) on the treadmill on the gym.

I never realized how much different the experience is when you're actually running to get to a specific place.

This weekend, the number of miles I wanted to run happened to coincide perfectly with the distance to our neighborhood Farmer's Market, which I wanted to peruse that morning. Great - I could run to the market and kill two birds with one stone!

And, I did it! I didn't run fast but I ran the entire way. I didn't stop to walk. And when I finally got to the park and was rewarded with a stunning view of the morning sun over the lake dotted with sailboats, I was shocked that it was over already. It had seemed like it would be sooo much farther and I was amazed how quickly I got there.

Even though this wasn't my fastest or most intense run, it was the most rewarding so far. It transformed running from something that felt like a chore, a task to be checked off a to-do list, into something empowering. Pretty much everywhere seems too far away to run the whole way there, like a big wall in between what's possible and what I can achieve. But I managed to knock one brick out of the wall and now, for the first time, it seems like I can eventually kick the whole thing down. I knew I could bike to the market, or drive there, or even walk there even though it would take forever. I never imagined I could run the whole way there but now, I know I can.

Running from Point A to Point B is a great way to run. It helps you get those miles in without constantly looking down at your watch/app/whatever, and it gives you a bonus feeling of accomplishment in addition to the one you already get from getting a good run in: I didn't just run, I got myself somewhere.

Just some Tuesday Night Tidbits!

Hi friends.

I know it's been a while since I've blogged. I have to admit that August has been pretty sluggish in terms of my running (and, to be fair, it's not just the running that's been sluggish).

Tonight I went for a short easy run even though it's like 90 degrees out. I was taking my cool shower, still feeling those workout endorphins, thinking - this is why people do it. That post-workout feeling of being so refreshed, recharged, alive. It makes me feel so far away from the same person who, on other nights, just comes home and does nothing. Who IS that girl, and why would she ever be lazy when she could go for a run and feel like this?

I know people say it's best to work out in the morning, and I'm sure I'll see why once I start making myself do just that. But, I have to say, I am on Team Evening Workout. I like it a lot. It is the perfect pick-me-up after a long day of sitting in front of a computer screen, which leaves me feeling so drained every day. I'm actually eager to work out a lot of days after leaving the office. A quick workout at the end of the day gives me a burst of energy to be productive for the rest of the evening, and helps me sleep better that night.

Also, I just purchased a little running inspiration! I found out about this Etsy shop called "Running on the Wall," and once I checked it out I fell in love with this:

....and now, a few bucks later, it's on it's way! It's a cute wall decoration AND a great way to save race bibs while keeping them organized. Plus, looking at that empty medal rack every day will just motivate me to go out there and FILL IT! Maybe money can't buy happiness, but it can buy inspiration!

You know how I found out about this shop? Kimmy Gibler from Full House is actually a big runner in real life these days. I was reading her Twitter and she had a pic of this that she has in her own room, brimming with medals and race bibs. Alright, Gibbler!

Well, that's all for now. Just wanted to shoot off an entry since I haven't posted in a while. I hope you all are doing well!