Miles For Marines 5k Trail Race

Today I ran the Miles For Marines Trail 5k Race. I wanted to do this race last year but for some reason that I can't remember I didn't get to. It's for a really great cause which is a big bonus reason to run other than, "I like trail running." "All proceeds will benefit the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund. The IMSFF works tirelessly to assist injured Marines/Sailors and their families on the road to recovery. We are proud to be a part of their mission. Oorah!"- from the Miles For Marines website.

I had been planning for months to run this race. But, last night I was not feeling the race. Luckily I had already told others I would be there so there was no backing out.

I won't go into the boring details of the prerace nerves and lack of motivation. I'll just jump into the race itself. I checked out the other runners as we ran down the grassy hill into the main trail. I realized there was only one female in front of me. Ruh roh! The pressure was on! A couple of teen aged girls popped in front of me for a tenth of a mile and then fell back and were not seen again by my eyes. So I leap frogged with the other female for the first mile. After mile one she took off, easy breezy. I thought to myself that she had just been leap frogging to wear me out. So I resigned myself to second female. At this point I was already having moments of feeling queasy due to pushing myself like one should in a 5k.

Around mile 2 the bigger hills started. At this point I checked behind me for any other females and there were none so I chose to start walking the larger hills. Each time I'd walk a hill at least two guys would pass me but then I'd get them once it leveled out.

At 3 miles (according to my Garmin) I caught sight of the lead female. She was far enough ahead of me that I thought a miracle would have to happen for me to catch her. By 3.1 miles I had shortened her lead by half of what it had been. "Not too bad, maybe there is hope?" After looking at the distance on my Garmin I decided we couldn't be too far from the finish so I surged and managed to overtake the lead female. "Sweet, not much longer now!" Famous last thoughts. With each turn of the path I kept expecting to see the finish in sight, nope, no such luck. Each time I thought, "How much longer can I keep up the vomit inducing, leg cramping pace?" At that point I had to keep going. I just couldn't let her get me. I wasn't sure how much of a lead I had. I was afraid to look back for fear of tripping myself up. (At this point my Garmin was reading over 3.4 miles) When we finally turned for the finish I let out a groan upon seeing that we would be running back up the grassy hill we started on. I kept up the pace, telling myself the pain would be over soon. People started shouting that the first place female was coming in. Several people with cameras started taking what I'm sure will be very unflattering photos of me. I raised my hands up in victory as I crossed the finish, thrilled to finally have my first overall female win!

Trying to get the tab off my bib in the shoot was torture. I just wanted to fall down and be doused with a tub of ice. It was so tempting to crawl into the baby pools full of ice and water bottles but I refrained from such unbecoming behavior. While shoving ice down my sports bra a local newspaper reporter stopped me and asked for my name! Oh, it's good to be popular. At that point I realized I hadn't stopped my Garmin. Oh well, I'll just have to wait for the online results for a more accurate time.

I got some sweet prizes! I must say I picked an awesome race to finally have an overall female win!

I'm so glad I didn't poop out on this race and not go. The victory was great but I did get to enjoy the company of my friends (who all ran the 15k). All of us walked away with a gift certificate to a local Tri store since everyone else all placed in their age groups. It was a great morning all around! Seems the races I'm least excited about end up being the best sometimes.

Inspired to blog again!

I finally did something recently that is making me feel inspired to blog! Grab your coffee or popcorn! I plan to bore... I mean... intrigue you with all my new inspiration!

As you all know I struggle to keep my IT bands happy. I go through phases where they don't cause trouble for nearly half a year. Then they flair up and beat me down for half a year. I recently tried an experiment with more days of running but shorter and easier. That experiment was an EPIC FAIL! So, once again I came up with a new plan of action to keep me running and sane. The new plan consists of 3 days running, 1-2 days yoga, and 2-3 days swimming. Much more kind to my body than trying to force it to run 5 days a week.

I cut my running back two weeks ago and had already added the yoga in the mix the previous month. I just needed to get back in the pool. Even before getting back in the pool my legs felt tons better even though my runs were on average longer and harder than a few weeks back.

I've been intrigued by the idea of competing in an aquathlon but couldn't find one without an intimidating swim distance that wasn't too far away. My good friend Laura came up with a brilliant plan of us doing a triathlon relay and I could do the swim and run! So exciting! Last week she asked if I wanted to go to an open water swim practice on Saturday. I told her I didn't know since I had no idea what my swim fitness was like. It just seemed crazy to be getting into open water so quickly after starting to swim again.

My plan was to sign up at the YMCA again this past Thursday. Wednesday night Laura sends me a link to the Carolina's Open Water Challenge. It's so tempting because it's a reasonable distance and they have a 5k following the swim! Perfect, except I haven't swam in a year. I tell her I'll have to see how the swim on Thursday goes but I doubt it's a good idea.

My swim on Thursday went surprisingly well. But I still wasn't sure. Laura helped convince me I could do it as long as I took it easy and took breaks from freestyle stroke from time to time. I spent Thursday evening and Friday morning trying to make a final decision. By the end of Friday I had committed to the swim! Yikes, I couldn't believe I was venturing into the unknown world of open water swimming. I was nervous due to hearing other people's accounts of their first open water experiences.

I was nervous on the way to the swim. I kept talking myself into and out of swimming most of the morning. Luckily as we waited around for the swim to start we realized there were lots of newbies there and it was a pretty informal race.

The time came for us to get ready for the swim. Luckily the water was toasty warm and not too murky looking. Laura and I took our places at the back of the group. The signal was given for us to hit the water. A handful of experienced, or brave, swimmers got right to the task ahead of us. The rest of us, at least half the swim field, just looked at each other. We all mulled around hoping more would get in the water ahead of us. Once it was clear nobody else was gung ho, Laura and I slowly made our way in to the deeper water to start our swim.

I finally take the plunge and get to work on my freestyle swim. Not too bad, only a little water got in my goggles and I was feeling calm. After 100 meters or so I notice a swimmer to my left drifting far from the course. I knew, without looking, it had to be Laura. She got back on course and we laughed about our newbie skills. Luckily for me we kept the same pace. I think Laura's wandering helped keep her back with me, otherwise she would have been far ahead. I took several breaks from freestyle and did side stroke. I had to flip to my back a couple times to fix the leaky goggles. I was having a hard time finding a rhythm until we rounded the buoy for home. After that I hit a good rhythm and managed to freestyle most of the way in, just one break for the goggle situation. Every now and then I'd tap Laura on the leg to alert her she was veering left again. I was really worried about getting pummelled by other peoples' arms and legs during the swim. Luckily I only got hit by a stranger once. The rest of the colliding came from my cohort. I actually swam head first into her thigh once. I knew immediately I must be off course if I had hit Laura. And yes, I was off course, again.

I was so thrilled when the shore was in reach. Not just because I was tired, but because I was excited I had just conquered my first open water swim and enjoyed it! I knew I could finally commit to one of the aquathlons with a 1500 meter swim. Once on shore we celebrated our awesomeness!

There was plenty of time between the swim and run to stretch, relax, change, and revel in our awesomeness. The run was really informal, really just a preview run for the tri that will be held there the next weekend. I was excited when I first heard it was trail, but it wasn't lovely single track. It was ankle killing gravel. We picked a comfortably hard, but not race, pace. By 2.5 miles my shoulders were fading fast. Tired shoulders do not make for fun running. I was thrilled when we got to the end of the run. We did the run in just under 30 minutes, which I'm thrilled with since I had done 5 trail miles the day before and was exhausted from the swim and all the excitement.

Look at me! I'm a multi-sport athlete. Complete with a sharpie marked swim cap to prove it!

Today I'm exhausted but inspired. I had a great time yesterday and can't wait to do it again. If you got this far, I thank you for indulging me in my excitement. I hope you all have a great week of feeling inspired on your adventures!

Oh, where to go with things now?

I wish this post was going to be me rejoicing in the fact that I am all better, 100% free of ITband woes. The reality is that after months of physical therapy I still struggle to keep my IT bands happy. I was fine for awhile. I even felt good enough to play with running five days a week. I figured if I kept most of my runs easy, minding a low heart rate, then I could pull it off. I've also only been adding 5% to my mileage each week with a step back week every third week. Sounds reasonable, right?

Wrong! Last week was my 5th week of running 5 days a week, only 18 miles total. I even made it back up to 5 miles for my longest run. But, alas, on Monday I woke up with a tender IT band on both legs! Sigh...

So, it's time again to adjust my goals and have a talk with my ego. My main goal is now just to be able to run any mileage. No more chasing mileage goals. Time to put the blinders on when looking at what my friends and fellow runners are up to. Time to start swimming again so I can sustain running on just 3 days a week instead of 4. I've been fairly successful with 4 but I think 3 with 2-3 days of swimming will be the best for my IT bands. It's clear it's not the intensity or distance that does in my IT band it's the lack of rest between days of running that they need.

It will be a few weeks before I can hit the pool again. But I've got yoga classes I can go to. I checked out the local yoga studio, finally! Only took me 6 months of knowing about it, and driving past it many days each week during errands, to finally check it out. What a find and only 2 miles away! I'm still going to keep my running going but only as much as my IT bands will allow. I'm taking this whole week off except for Saturday. Saturday I'm going to a 5k that is being put on by Laura's multi sport club. Not sure if it will be a race or just a run for me. Guess I'll find out when I get to the line and the gun goes off.

Hopefully next time I stop by I'll have better news. Maybe having better news will make me blog more. For now blogging is so uninspired since my running is questionable these days. Fingers crossed for some inspiration!

Coming Out of Hiding

Since things went south at the end of January I went into hibernation mode. We tried desperately at physical therapy to beat my IT band woes into submission again. It very slowly responded but after almost two months I still had a hot spot on the side of my knee that was keeping me from doing more than 2 miles at a time. We broke down and sent me back to the Sports Med Dr and got a cortisone injection. Ah, sweet relief. I can now run 3 miles pain free! My doc wants me to keep at 3 miles per run this week then I can add about 5% overall per week to build back up. Fingers crossed we have this back under control and PT can start slowly torturing me properly again!

In the past two months lots has happened. I won't pain you with too much written detail but photos are definitely in order.

First the sadness that happened. Not only have I been depressed over not being able to run but I was walloped with the news that my good trail running buddy, Kay, was moving to Seattle. I knew it was going to happen sometime, it just happened at an extra sucky time for me. I'm glad we got in a last 16 mile run together before my knee went kablooey. Even though we couldn't get any more runs in before she left, we got together with our spawn at one of our favorite places to trail run and had a lovely stroll around the lake.

A failed attempt at a group photo:

Thank goodness for the Facebook and the interwebs for keeping me connected to Kay! It's a bit harder to coordinate a chat with the time difference but it is nice to still get my Kay fix once a week on chat and to see pictures of her new life out in the PNW. (I am extremely jealous after just a few weeks of pictures)

The good stuff:

I changed my hair color from pink to blue and love it! I also did my first big Tunisian crochet project with my newly found spare time. Awesome wool wrap:

I also crocheted these cute little guys:

I also taught my first class on Tunisian crochet! It was fun and everyone seemed to have a good time. I didn't earn much but it covered half the cost of my new tattoo!

I joined a team for the Blue Ridge Relay and joined a newly formed running club, Gaston County Runners, that is actually in my town vs having to go into Charlotte for a running club. WOOT!

I have to give a huge CONRATS to my best running buddy, Laura, for becoming a Triathlete last month!

Hopefully as I heal I'll have some actual running adventures to share again. For now I'll just pop in every now and then so everyone knows I'm still alive and, of course, awesome!

Ugh!

It figures that after blogging last week about how great things are going this month I had to finish the month with a thud! This past week was to be an easy week with a shorter long run of 10 miles to give my body a break. What could go wrong?

I spent the week doing easy short runs on the roads. Thursday and Friday were too hectic with birthday party preparation to run. That also means I didn't do any stretching either! Oops! Wait, not just oops, more like DOH! I ran Saturday at the end of the day after all the party guests were gone, just an easy 3 around the hood. Sunday my left IT band felt a hair tight and was a bit worried about that for my planned 10 miles in the afternoon. You'd think this might prompt me to stretch some earlier in the day. Nope. I chose to snuggle on the couch with my jack russell terrier and a book. Really, who can resist a snuggle fest on a Sunday morning? Not me!

I met with the Carolina Trail Runner Meet Up group for two laps around Francis Beatty Park's mountain bike trails in the afternoon. First lap was great. The worry over the left IT band was for naught, felt completely fine. I didn't try to keep up with the fast guys on the first loop but did allow myself to push it a hair and was keeping a nice pace. Then we met back in the parking lot to pick up more members for a second lap. This time there was another runner that would be a back of the packer so I slowed down and stuck with her since I'd already done a lap at a good pace. A little over half way around the second loop I felt tightness in my right IT band. Crud! This is not cool. This trail system isn't the kind that I could hop off the trail easily and get back to my car so I pressed on. I stopped once to stretch and that seemed to make it happy for a bit. But I had to call it quits around 9.75 miles, about half a mile from the end of the loop. It was clear running any more at that point would be detrimental to my IT band. Fortunately the girl I was running with was nice enough to walk it in with me even though I offered for her to leave me. (Gotta love trail runners! Such an awesome bunch.)

Today my IT band feels sore. I've already stretched once and will do so again later. I'm dreading telling my PT tomorrow but I guess it's better that this happen while I still have PT available. (Good news about PT, I found out I have 20 sessions for this year so I'm still covered by insurance. Whew!) I'm guessing I'll need a few days off and may need to re-evaluate my goals.

Luckily I haven't signed up for any half marathons yet. I'm hoping to get my IT band happy again and alternate my long runs to look like this: week 1: 8-9 miles, week 2: 10-12, week 3: 13-14, then back to week one. I just want to stay healthy and be able to run. I need to stop dreaming of long miles. It is clear my body isn't ready for it. It may take another year to get there, if ever. It is better to keep it shorter if that means I get to run. It's so hard not to dream of the glory of long races. It's the ultras that get all the glory and coverage on the trail blogs and in the trail magazines. But I need to make myself immune to the lure and be happy with shorter and faster. It seems in road running it's mostly about the speed, at least it is with my road running friends. But on trails people focus on the distance not speed for glory. Time for me to look into the glory of speed again, but on the trails. I'd still like to pick a few half marathons for the year to do. But, I may look at the shorter local races again to put on my schedule and focus a bit more on speed vs long distance in my training.

I like fast and I like going long too so it's an inner battle I deal with. One of my wise trail buddies said last night when I told her I'd keep my long runs to 14 miles at the most, "14 miles is a good distance. Not too long but long enough to stretch the legs and clear the mind." She is correct and I will still have the energy plus time left to enjoy the day. Once you start to get past 14 miles it starts to eat up your day and energy. It's also depressing to have all the set backs so I may as well stay with what my body is comfortable with to keep my mental health in order as well.

If I start to get cocky and start dreaming of longer distances in the near future I need someone to smack me upside the head with reality! Please help keep me in line!

A Good Month

I've had a great month so far and it isn't even close to over. I've gotten my mileage back up to 16 miles for my long run and my weekly over 25 miles. I'm hoping to have my final physical therapy session tomorrow since my body is holding up so well and also because insurance is no longer covering my visits. PT is an expensive venture when paying out of pocket. There goes our flexible spending account in the first month of the year!

I've been crocheting like a mad woman. I belong to this wonderful website, Ravelry, for knitters, crocheters, and yarnies. You can share your projects with the different forums, you can keep track of your friends' projects, and you can search for patterns. It really has added a lot of fuel to my crochet fire. I have discovered Tunisian crochet and am in love! I'm dying to get some more Tunisian projects started but I'm having to wait for my hooks to show up. The hooks are difficult to find locally so I'm having to order off the web, a few are special order as well. In the mean time I'll just work with what I've got.

One of the more exciting things to happen to me this month is that the local yarn shop has asked to teach a class on a Tunisian crochet neck warmer that I came up with on my own. So now I'm busy working another one up and writing the pattern down and trying to translate what I did so others can understand it. It's exciting and scary! I'm still such a newbie to crochet, especially Tunisian, but I'm pretty sure I can guide others through making my neck warmer. I enjoy teaching others to do things that I have a passion about. I used to love giving riding lessons back when I used to ride horses so, I'm hoping I'll really enjoy teaching others my pattern.

The most exciting thing for this month is yet to come. My little man turns 3 on Saturday! Crazy! I'd say the time has flown by but it really hasn't. His first two plus years were quite challenging but luckily he has outgrown his fussy years and has become a really fun toddler. Just in the past few months we've seen a huge change in his personality. I think a lot of what makes my little man happy is being independent and being able to communicate better. What a relief that his talking is finally starting to catch up a bit. At the ripe age of 3 he is finally starting to string two words together! The one thing I've really enjoyed is when I get dressed to run he finally recognizes what I'm planning on doing. Many times this leads to running warm up laps with him around the living room. Could I have a future trail runner on my hands? I hope so!

Project 333 Update

At the start of October 2010 I started a minimalist wardrobe project called Project 333. I was already minimizing the stuff in my home so, I was intrigued to see if I could use just 33 clothing items, shoes included, for 3 months. I never expected it to be a permanent change but I figured it would help me on my journey to having less stuff in my life. So I made my wardrobe list but changed a few rules to fit my needs. I was worried I wouldn't do well with my limited wardrobe but was excited to find out what would happen.

I really enjoyed participating in the project. It was so much easier to make a decision about what to wear for the day when you have so little to choose from. There were times I wished I could wear a different jacket or shoes but for the most part I was quite content. I learned to dress up plain T-shirts to work for special occasions and dress down nicer things for everyday. So now I know I don't need to have so many just in case type of outfits waiting in the wings taking up space. I also now know that I don't really get bored with my outfit choices and nobody else seems to notice that I wear the some things over and over. Heck, I don't remember what my son or husband wore yesterday so I'm pretty sure that others outside my home can't keep track of what I wear.

The project ended on Dec 31, 2010. On Jan 1st I didn't jump for joy that I had a larger wardrobe again. Though, I did wear a turtle neck and some shoes that weren't on my list that day but, I didn't drag out my stashed away clothing with wild abandon like I thought I would. It's been three days and I still have yet to sort through my wardrobe that is packed away. I'm not really in a hurry to put my wardrobe back together, it just doesn't seem important right now. I did go out and buy a new t-shirt on the 1st. I know it sounds crazy since I'm supposed to be minimizing but the project taught me what really works for me and what doesn't. I kept track of what I wore each day for about two months but let it fall to the wayside during the holidays. It turns out I really like to wear my Mossimo tissue tees and wanted at least one more long sleeve and short sleeve shirt. I only found a long sleeve that I liked so that is all I bought. No more buying unless I know I am going to love it and use it until it is in tatters.

Project 333 is going in for round two but I won't be joining them. I've learned what I needed to from the first round. What a person considers minimal is a personal decision. It can't be dictated by a set number. So I will continue on my minimalist journey on my own again having more knowledge about what works for me. I will be going through my wardrobe sometime this week and weeding out what I no longer need or want. I hope I can keep my wardrobe down to a smaller size, I'm thinking around 50 items, but for now I won't be attaching a set number to what I'm allowed to own. I'll be using the honor system to keep my wardrobe under control.

No longer concentrating solely on my wardrobe might help me to focus on minimizing elsewhere, whether it's reducing knick nacks, kitchen utensils, boxes packed away with memorabilia, junk drawers, computer and internet use I'm not sure yet. I'm excited to keep working towards my goal of buying and having less stuff in my life so I have more room, time, and money for the things that really matter to me in life.

If you're looking for a challenge in the new year this could be the one for you. Give it a try! You'd be surprised what you can learn from having a small wardrobe.

A list of minimal wardrobe projects:

Project 333

The Great American Apparel Diet

The Uniform Project

The article , and blog, that got me started on my minimalist journey.

If you know of any other minimal fashion projects or any type of minimal lifestyle challenge let me know about them, please!