So THIS is Why People Run Races!

In the final weeks of training for Boston, I scheduled two long races:  a ten-miler on home turf (Brooklyn's Prospect Park) last Sunday and the NYC Half today. Here is how they both went down:

1. Some whining and race reluctance the day and hours leading up.
2. Steady, even early miles with very little going on in my brain (which is a good thing, because often my brain would be urging me to stop).
3. Negative splits, with the miles in the second half of the race picking up speed.
4. Strong clear focus toward the end of the race with zero negative thoughts.
5. Last two (ten-miler) and four (half marathon) miles really racing, passing other runners and gaining speed for the final strong kick over the finish line.
6. Ending both races with an enormous smile on my face and so proud that, after six years of running, I'm finally genuinely finding joy in racing.

In the ten-miler, a woman was running with me around mile eight for a few minutes and then she moved ahead of me. As the distance between us began to open up, my reaction in past races would have been to feel defeated and slow my pace and then to end feeling like I didn't give it my all. Instead last Sunday I decided to chase her down. I doubted at first that I would catch her, but played out the scene in my head where I thanked her anyway for giving me a reason to race. And then I passed her while flying around the last quarter mile and kicking it over the finish line. 

Today, at mile ten a woman approached me on my right side and told me she had been riding in my wake for the last three miles. We ran the next 3.1 together, checking in when one lagged behind, encouraging, passing runner after runner. She told me near the end that it was okay for me to go; I told her she was going with me, that there was nothing she couldn't endure from that point until our foot hit the mat. She stayed. I stayed. We soared across the finish together.

In both races, I knew I had raced well. I didn't need outside validation from other runners or my official time. But in both races, several runners approached me after the race to tell me they had been following me and watched me take off and congratulated me on a race well run, a lovely affirmation. For the ten-miler, my time was faster by a minute than the ten-miler I ran several years ago and I finished first in my AG. Today my tracking info was somehow lost in the system. I trust they will find it. Or they won't. But right now I don't care at all.

That Life Altering Moment in Italy

One summer I traveled to Italy with a dear friend. We stayed for two weeks in a house in Tuscany with some of her friends, two European couples both with young children. On our last full day there before heading back to Rome, after a morning out and about, she and I found ourselves alone in the big, beautiful, usually noisy house. 

Being both a little compulsive, we of course started packing and readying for our departure. Then all of a sudden we stopped. What were we doing?! We took a deep breath, smiled at each other, opened a bottle of wine, and made our way to the porch overlooking the Tuscan hills. There we sat and talked and breathed and  took in the day. 

I think of that moment often. I thought of it today as I ran through the snow. It's been a long winter. And believe me, I'm as tired as everyone of jumping slush puddles and shoveling icy sidewalks.  It is so easy to hate the snow, to feel overwhelmed by shovels and boots and coats and lost mittens and on and on. I often forget that the choice is mine and so I should make a good one. Instead I choose to curse the endless winter or whatever it is that I feel is getting in my way that day. 

But if I stop hating it for a second, the snow is so beautiful clinging to the branches and, in NYC, temporarily hiding the grey garbage-covered mounds of ice. 

This morning, instead of being beaten down by yet another snowstorm, I chose to breathe and sit on the porch with a glass of wine and a friend. Well, actually, I chose a snowy, breathtakingly beautiful, five mile run through the serenely quiet Brooklyn park.

Every Magnificent Mile

On Sunday, mid-Chicago Marathon, I learned something unexpected about myself. 

I love to run fast and to place well in races. I know people who are much faster and others who are stronger competitors than I am, and I do sometimes struggle to dig deeply enough in the final miles to feel in the end like I gave it all I had. But I have some natural talent and work hard enough to generally make a good showing. I train, I plan, I prepare, and I can tough it out through a lot of discomfort.

However, while I want to to do well in races—both to feel great and to finish strong—I figured out over the weekend that it is only a small piece of the puzzle I call my life.

Saturday afternoon I was presented with the opportunity to either take the shuttle bus to the Chicago Marathon expo or to, on a glorious blue-skied autumn afternoon, bike ride the seven miles there. While I grappled with the wisdom of riding a bike seven miles the day before running a marathon, I settled on a halfway compromise. But then the day happened. Biking was easy, the path smooth and flat, the weather perfect, and before I knew it I had opted for the full seven mile ride.

My friend and fellow rider asked me several times over the next 24 hours whether I regretted biking and if I had wished I had taken the shuttle to preserve my legs. I didn't have to even think about it. How could I ever regret that ride even, and we will never know, if it cost me precious race minutes?

After the bike ride, I stayed up a little too late talking and eating with wonderful new friends, drank a glass of wine with dinner, and stared out from the 28th floor at the bright moon over the Chicago River. None of which I could ever regret.

While a fast race and well run race is an adventure in and of itself, more adventure may await. Life is big. I can embrace adventure and it is okay—for me—to potentially trade adventure for the planned finish. I do not believe, truly, that my Saturday bike ride altered my Sunday race outcome. But had it, it would be a lesson and an adventure.

Now I need to focus on the flip side of the equation—letting myself off the hook when I run a race more slowly or less well than my goal because I let life step in and sweep away my best focused intentions. The inevitable disappointment that creeps in because I didn't run this marathon better or faster than the last one. Yeah, but I went on a beautiful bike ride and made new friends.

Of course, there is a slippery slope between this and deliberately giving myself excuses for not running well but that's another blog entry... (see this also)

Running is a Lot Like Life: A Lesson in Disregarding Worry

Last night was my daughter's first lesson with a new piano teacher. I reminded her gently throughout the day. Then fifteen minutes before he arrived I reminded her again and brought her into the bathroom to clean her fingernails and brush her hair. I could feel the resistance in her body. She sobbed that she was not ready. I spoke calmly to her, reassuring her that I would be near and that she had talent and knew enough for today. We were trying this new teacher and I wanted her opinion afterwards. I also told her it was my responsibility now to give her the tools to use her wonderful talent. Clinging to me, we met Joe. Genevieve sat on the bench with Joe beside her asking questions and listening to her play familiar songs, gauging what she knew. I stepped out of the room. Thirty minutes later Genevieve was happy.

This morning, Genevieve had a similar outbreak of anxiety over a school field trip. She did not want to go, despite having talked about it and prepared. She clung to me and complained loudly, near tears as we headed out the door. As post-piano, I expect she will be smiling at the end of the day, full of stories of Plumb Beach clean-up, as she climbs down the school bus stairs.

My husband and I listen to our children and do not make light of their concerns. But we continue forward. My belief is that if we allowed mild fear to dictate activities, they would never know the joys of struggling and overcoming. Of learning and mastery. Of unexpected experiences and amazing days.

Running is a lot like life.

I am six days out from my next marathon. Chicago 2014, my seventh. A couple of days ago I began to feel a strong apprehensiveness in the pit of my stomach. The worry is taking a very general form. I'm worried about all of the details of life, not specifically about running 26.2 miles. Although the thought of NOT racing on Sunday has certainly crossed my mind. 

This worry. A ploy. A distraction, much like the mid-race games my head likes to play, inviting me to a more comfortable place. My brain's manufactured worry right now draws me away from my clear-headed focus on next Sunday morning and the one strong and pure thought I need now:  To run an excellent race.

I believe that Genevieve is learning valuable lessons about overriding fear and engaging in life. And I believe that my mother and father and experience itself similarly prepared me well for these moments of apprehension. I haven't figured out how to eliminate the struggle. But, through running, I have learned to breath, disregard and redirect the voice in my head, to show up, and to finish strong.

T minus 6. Chicago here I come.

Derailed by the Common Cold

Entering the final weeks of training for the Chicago Marathon, I'm rendered useless by the common cold. Coughing, sneezing, dizzy, tired. Last weekend i ran a fabulous 20-miler, then a seven-mile tempo run on Tuesday, and an easy seven on Wednesday. A late night work trip to DC for a gala. Then blam! 

And here I am, trying not to be discouraged. Trying to trust in my training and level of fitness and know that a few days on the bench (or couch, or bed) will not ruin three months of training.

My daughter is sick, too. She and I are alone this weekend, the boys off on a camping trip that didn't seem like a good idea for the two patients. 

Throughout my life, my lungs have been my Achilles heel, with colds turning into bronchitis or pneumonia overnight. I ran one marathon a few years back with the lingering remains of a cold settled deep in my bronchial passages. I never want to do that again. 

It has been my experience that continuing to run as illness eases has been the best way to knock it out of my lungs. But after four days, I have not yet dragged myself out the door in my running shoes. My only venturing forth has been the grocery store for soup and juice and, last night for dinner, an adventurous three block trip for our favorite tacos. 

Instead of my 16 miler this morning, I taught Genevieve the secret to decoding Roman Numerals. We've watched "Singing in the Rain" in bed, painted our toenails pink and purple, I've brushed the bed tangles out of her long golden hair, we've eaten comfort foods and soup. This morning I woke and opened a book--a rare luxury! Genevieve and I have shared something and added to our common language. We have together discovered the wonders of tissues saturated with aloe and lotion, our cold medicine bottles are lined up side by side on the back of the sink, and we have both spent much of our days in pajamas.

Those parts inside me that drive me hard enough to train and finish long races also ride me pretty hard when they catch me "slacking."  And slacking is what this feels like. But it also is a joy and a sadly too rare experience to spend these quiet, present, moments with my lovely seven year old daughter.

Summer Running

For one month every summer we move to our family cottage on a lake in the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania. During that month, I usually continue to work—although this year I am taking some much-needed vacation time as well—and the kids run shoeless and wild. In the evenings, we together pick blueberries along the shoreline, kayak and canoe on still waters, roast marshmallows over evening fires, stuff ourselves with fresh tomatoes and herbs and corn and zucchini from the Mennonite farmstand down the road, and, of course, I run.

During the other eleven months, I long for my warm, hilly, sometimes rainy, summer runs. Every year I face off with the four miles straight up of Dutchman's Hill and by the end of the month I have beaten the hill more times than it has beaten me. I watch my pace increase, feel the warm damp green-laden air soothing my Brooklyn lungs, feel my body growing stronger. With the rediscovery after thirty years of a 2nd cousin who, it turns out, is also a crazy distance runner, summer running has taken on even more significance in my life.

These hills of NEPA prepared me, five years ago, for my first marathon. I didn't understand how well they prepared me until I, totally unaware, pulled off a 3:38 fall marathon, at age 45, after less than a year of serious running. Last summer, after logging July miles together, my cousin and I ran 16 or so miles of the Steamtown Marathon here in PA, resulting in a 3:33:33 for me, my fastest marathon yet.

But most important to me right now is not my level of fitness or how I might show up in the 2014 Chicago Marathon. Most important is how, each and every time I run, I find the balance I seek from juggling life, hosting an endless string of wonderful and very welcome visiting friends, raising young children who are not spending their days in school and seem to need me for nearly everything, and trying desperately not to flood the septic tank. And most important is the sheer joy of logging mile after mile in this not-Brooklyn terrain with my summer strong legs and lungs, a like-minded running buddy, a calm focus, and my undying love for this beautiful endeavor.

Reaping Hard Work's Rewards

In the waning days of my 49th year, I am applying myself to running in a way I have never done with anything else before in my life. I talk with my kids frequently about how they will improve at [fill in the blank] if they practice. But impatience, innate talent, and age have made me skeptical about my own ability to improve as a runner. These last weeks and months are making me a believer.

When I state that I have never really fully applied myself, it sounds a bit ridiculous considering that I'm a mom and CEO with a master's degree and lots of interests who has qualified several times for the Boston Marathon.

The difference, though, is one of focus. Running. That's all. For a little over five years I have been putting on my running shoes and heading out the door. For five years I have been training and racing fairly regularly. I'm not doing anything today that is very much different than what I did five years ago. I'm thinking more about it and reading and running with other people and talking, lots of talking. I wear higher tech fabrics than I did my first year and my socks cost more. I have a team and a coach and lots of running friends (mostly so we can talk about running without watching our non-running friends' eyes glaze over). 

But out there on the trails and parks and streets, I'm still just running. And somehow, the repetition has made me a "better runner." I'm not much faster yet. But I am oh so much wiser and my body more often knows just what to do. The found wisdom mostly serves to remind me how much there is still to learn. It also points me in the direction I need to go next. The five years of running and running and running gives me the perspective to never make a decision while on a hill.

In my easy five mile run in the park today I played a game I often do, picking out the runners who have made the full-on running commitment. You can tell by looking at them as they pass. They move with more ease and joy. They are no longer trying to convince their minds and bodies that running is good for them. Running has become a bright spot, a joy in their days.

If I were watching from above, I would identify myself as one of those runners. In the thick of fall marathon training, I feel strong and lean. My lungs, even after I have stopped moving, are bigger, more able to hold the required increase in oxygen. I glide.

One month from today I will turn 50. On my last day of 49 I will run my first trail race, a 10K in Pennsylvania. The next morning I will wake and go for an already planned long run. Not what some would consider celebrating, but to me it is oddly perfect and for that I am thankful.