After placing our order, the waitress asked if we had any plans for New Year’s Eve. Ben explained he was going to Miami for the weekend. She looked at me. “You don’t mind him going alone?”
Uhhhhh. No? Should I?
When she left, Ben looked at me. “Do you want to come to Miami and hang out with my friends and go see four nights of Phish?”
I laughed. “No. I want to go to bed early tonight and go run my 5K in the morning.”
He nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
He gets it, that whole dating a runner part of our relationship.
While I love Halloween, I’m kind of meh on New Year’s Eve. I mean, I get it. Resolutions. Clean slate. It’s like an annual celebration of Scarlett O’Hara’s “Tomorrow is another day” mantra. Even though, technically speaking, any day can be a new day, there is something poetic and satisfactory in turning the calendar to January.
Except, see, the thing about New Year’s Eve is that it doesn’t really start until midnight, which is way past my bedtime. Cinderella turning into a pumpkin and all that.
So I usually just stay home on December 31. Sometimes that’s been a result of really horrible weather and not wanting to risk a car accident just to get drunk at a party. Other times it’s because I had gotten the latest Sex and the City season on DVD for Christmas and, y’know, PRIORITIES.
Even when I do go out, I’m the New Year’s Eve guest who is asleep on my friend’s couch by 10 p.m. Real crazy partier here, let me tell you.
Right, so, the Life Time Fitness gym where this race was held was about half an hour away, so I needed to add that commute into my early morning routine. The forecast didn’t predict snow, but it was January and still cold outside so I layered up.
Once I got to the gym, I parked my car and headed inside. At the information desk, the clerk pointed me in the direction of the race registration. Bib numbers weren’t pre-assigned, and they were simply being handed out as runners showed up. I was Lucky Number Thirteen. On the bib was a spot for me to write my name and also a line where I could write my commitment.
As I carefully wrote out Complete one race per month in 2015, I smiled to myself, knowing I had picked the perfect race to start my running goal.
After pinning the bib to the front of my jacket, I wandered into the gymnasium where all of the other runners were waiting and keeping warm before the gun went off. Hanging on the wall near the exit doors to the outside was a map of the course. I went over to study it, just to kind of get a feel for where I’d be running. (Not that I actually remembered any of it once I got out there but at least I was trying to pay more attention to course maps.)
Like the Bernie Shuffle 5K, this was a very low-key race. Other Commitment Day races at other Life Time Fitness facilities have timing chips and all of that jazz, but 2015 seemed to be the first year for this particular location and they were taking a more minimal approach. There was a clock that would be posted at the finish line, but the group running was small enough that I wasn’t worried about any sort of lag time that comes with larger races.
At the designated time, the organizers opened the side doors and let us outside. After lining us up on the sidewalk, off we went.
The course took advantage of the sidewalks in and around the gym and the nearby neighborhood. After running through the parking lot down to the road, I turned along the sidewalk and found myself running parallel to the main road.
As I’ve said before, the past couple months I had been experimenting with walking intervals. Some of the time these were structured intervals, like when I ran the Cleveland Half Marathon the previous May. Other times, I ran until I was tired, then I walked until I wasn’t tired anymore, and then I started running again.
One of the unfortunate side effects of regaining some of my weight wasn’t just that the extra body mass slowed me down, but that running itself wasn’t as easy. I had lost some of my endurance and was constantly struggling to regain it. Before, running three miles had been pretty easy. That is, running the whole of three miles. Now, I had to have more walking breaks. When I trained for my first half this happened but that was at longer distances.
This particular race was an event where I discovered something interesting: people don’t like being passed by a fat girl.
I’ve had it happen since, but this was my first time experiencing it. I’d watch people ahead of me keep a pretty steady and consistent pace, be it walking or running, for a good long while. They were in their groove. But as soon as I passed them and was now ahead of them, suddenly their pace picked up and they’d get in the lead again. Then they’d settle back into that same consistent pace until I passed them again.
LOL. I’m sorry that my fabulously fat runner’s body makes you self-conscious and all but if you want to make this some kind of game or whatever you best know who you’re playing against because I will make you work for that lead.
In and out of the nearby neighborhood we went, around the quiet homes still sleeping in after celebrating the coming of 2015. Back up the sidewalk and through the gym’s parking lot. The course took us around the back of the building to come around to the other side, where there was an inflatable arch and the finish line.
A gym employee stood right near the finish holding an iPad with a clock on it. I watched the seconds creep up. 49 minutes and 30 seconds. 49 minutes and 31 seconds.
With my eyes trained steadily on that clock, I picked up my feet and forced myself to go as fast as I could. Just finish in under 50 minutes. Just finish in under 50 minutes. Just finish in under 50 minutes.
As I crossed beneath the arch, the clock flipped over to 49 minutes and 40 seconds. I was right under 16-minute miles, 15:59 to be exact, but under 16 minutes was under 16 minutes.
I bent over at the waist to catch my breath from that final push, then gathered myself up and went into the gymnasium where they had tables with water, bananas, and chocolate milk set up. So far, my 2015 was off to a fantastic start.
When I ran my first 5K back in 2012, I had no idea what to do with my racing bibs. Throw it away? Hang it on the wall? Shove it in a drawer and forget about it until the next time I Marie Kondo the shit out of my apartment?
I didn’t know if I would ever run another race after that so I didn’t want to get rid of the bib, but I just was at a loss as to what to do with it. At the suggestion of another racing friend, I started a scrapbook. Each race gets its own page which includes the bib, any photos, and all the relevant information like race name, date, time, and all of that. Of course, all of that on its own would be boring so there are also lots of appropriately themed stickers which means I have a built-in excuse to visit my local craft store on a regular basis and spend a ridiculous amount of money. I may even buy stickers for races I’m only considering running. Like the ability to use said stickers on a scrapbook page is enough of a carrot to get me to sign up because OOOOH. SHINY. HOW CUTE ARE THOSE?!
For the Commitment Day 5K, this meant New Year’s stickers but for that page I also added a slip of paper where I could keep track of all of the races I’d run that year. As I wrote the name of that morning’s race on the line for January, I beamed.
One race down. Eleven more to go.
13
Walk the Talk
My friend Staci likes to call me a warrior woman.
This started several years ago when I accidentally walked six miles one afternoon. It really was an accident, as it wasn’t planned, but it also wasn’t a situation where I got lost. It was more like I had an errand to run and I unintentionally took the scenic route to reach my destination. And I just happened to do it on foot.
It was late summer, early fall: roughly sometime shortly before mid-September, and, with my mom’s birthday coming up, my sister and I had decided that we’d treat her, and in turn my dad, to a date night by buying her a gift certificate to a local restaurant, as well as one to the independent movie theater chain here in Cleveland. My apartment in downtown Cleveland was situated roug
hly halfway between two of the theater locations, about a mile and a half in either direction. Given my personal preference for one location over the other, that’s the theater I headed to in brand-spanking-new, comfy flip-flops that I had found on a trip to Target.
At the time I was working a job where my weekend consisted of one week day. On the one hand, this was great because it meant I could do things like go run errands at Target and not worry about all the usual crowds. On the other hand, this meant that sometimes I forgot that some small places of business operate on a slightly different schedule than their national counterparts. Like, say, a certain local independent movie theater that not only doesn’t offer morning matinees, they don’t even open until after noon on Fridays.
Which, of course, I didn’t realize until I was knocking on a locked door at 11:30 a.m.
I could see someone in there at the register and so I get out my iPhone and look up the phone number. When they answer I explain that I’m not here for a movie, but I’d just walked a mile and a half, and I only need a gift card. Is there any way they can help?
Unfortunately not, she explains, because they don’t have the computers booted up or anything like that.
Well, alrighty then.
So, I do the only thing I can do, which is turn around and head back in the direction of the mile and a half it will take me to get back to my apartment.
Halfway there I realize that while this particular location wasn’t open this early, another theater, one that’s a mile and a half away from my apartment but in the opposite direction, would be open. So, instead of making the turn that would take me back to my apartment, I just keep walking. I keep walking all the way to that other theater, buy the gift certificate for my mom, then walk back home.
Apartment to Theater A: one and a half miles. Theater A to Theater B: three miles. Theater B to Apartment: one and a half miles.
Six miles.
Later that evening I was in the Tremont neighborhood at a party celebrating the one-year anniversary of my friend Lauren’s local business. A party that was headlined by my friend, Maura’s, alt-folk and Americana band, Maura Rogers & the Bellows. It was there, standing in the streets of Cleveland on an evening that whispered of the arrival of autumn, the sounds of Americana lighting the night afire, that my friend Staci casually asked what I did that morning.
“Oh, I accidentally walked six miles.”
She slowly turned her head, a look of incredulity on her face. “What?”
With a sigh, I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “I needed a gift certificate and since it was a nice day, I decided to walk to the Capitol Theatre but they were closed so then I decided to walk to Tower City Cinemas and then I walked home. It was super annoying.”
Staci continued to stare at me in disbelief.
I grinned. “In flip-flops, no less.”
Thus, the warrior woman nickname was born.
When it comes to walking, though, I really am kind of a warrior. This is evidenced, of course, by my refusal to run the mile in school, even though I happily walked it and would have happily walked a second mile.
Walking comes naturally to me as it does most people, I’m sure. It’s how the majority of us, those who are able-bodied, navigate the world.
Walking when it comes to running did not come quite as easily.
When I first started running I used a structured program that utilized intervals. I would run for a period of time then walk for a period of time then run again. Rinse and repeat. As the program progressed, the running times would get longer as the walking times got shorter and eventually I was only running. Once I crossed that threshold any and all walking as related to running felt like cheating. It felt like a failure.
How could I call myself a runner if I walked?
I’d break it out, too. Break it down. Dissect the data. My first half marathon required long runs in the middle of high summer and there were times when it was just too hot to keep up a running pace. Hell, sometimes it was too hot to keep up a moderate walking pace. After, I’d come home and post on Facebook about how I completed ten miles, but I only “really” did seven or eight.
It took me a few years and several races to accept that it’s okay to walk sometimes, to accept that it’s really okay that I don’t run entire distances or races. Whatever combination of running, walking, crawling, skipping (okay, maybe not that one) which gets me to the finish is all that matter. Ten miles is ten fucking miles regardless of the method used.
I’m not the only person who thinks that walking is legit. Race walking is an Olympic sport and has been a major Track and Field event since the late nineteenth century. Even fast runners have to walk sometimes: between Miles Twenty and Twenty-One of the Boston Marathon is Heartbreak Hill, a notorious 600-meter ascent that is challenging to even the most well-trained participants. Once I learned that Boston Marathon runners sometimes have to walk, I stopped believing that walking during a race of any distance made me any less of an athlete.
Of course, when I started, I didn’t have someone like me to pass on these words of wisdom and encouragement. I didn’t know anything about intervals other than that it was used as a means to an end during my Couch to 5K training. The name Jeff Galloway meant absolutely nothing to me. I didn’t know that taking walking breaks during long-distance running can actually be beneficial and that runners, the fast people I think of as quote, un-quote “real” runners, often take advantage of said breaks throughout a race.
When I started running, I only walked when I absolutely needed to. Which meant I only walked when my body was basically on the verge of collapse. I have literally hobbled across finish lines because my legs and feet couldn’t take it anymore. By that point, when I’m exhausted to the point of less-walking, more-shuffling, it was pretty much too late for any benefit that would come from the active recovery portion of a walking break.
Because when I get right down to it, that’s really what those walking breaks are: active recovery. It’s a chance for my body to recover while moving at a lower intensity, but still keeping my heart rate up and being active. Make no mistake, walking breaks and intervals are not leisurely Sunday strolls through the park. It should still be a bit of a workout, it’s just less of a workout than full-on running.
It was my Uncle Don who first introduced me to the idea of walking breaks, although I didn’t know that at the time it happened. We were standing at the start line of the ConocoPhillips 10K in Houston and working on a game plan for the next 6.2 miles. He’s a hard-core runner, far more athletic than I am, so I was a little surprised when he first suggested we walk up hills and through water stations. At the time, I thought he was only saying that for my benefit, knowing that this was my first 10K and that my athletic abilities were slightly behind his. Now, though, I think he was saying that because he sees the value in taking walking breaks in a race.
The 2014 Cleveland Half Marathon was the first time I really started to experiment with walking breaks, running for about 12 minutes, then walking for 3. I really was experimenting, too. That duration of interval was something I just kind of made up, and while the end for that particular race didn’t finish as strongly as I would have liked, up until Mile Nine I was doing well with the intervals.
As I continued to run more races with walking breaks added in, and as my own endurance for running started to decline thanks to changes in my body composition (fine, whatever, I gained weight), I decided at the start of 2015 to be both more accepting of my need to sometimes walk during races and also make a concerted effort to build such walks into my runs and races. Not just walk when I felt tired, but have a specific routine that I followed.
Having also committed to running one race per month for all of 2015, I needed to start making a plan and schedule. Finding races in the warmer months was easy—I wasn’t even limited to staying directly in Cleveland. Northeast Ohio has a substantial racing community, so every weekend in the spring, summer, and fall had several races I could choose from. The
challenging part was locating said races that would fulfill my needs when it was less than ideal running conditions. January had been easy since there had been a race designed specifically around setting goals for the New Year, but February was going to be a bit more difficult.
My second race of the year, the SnoBall 5K is held annually in late February in Bay Village, Ohio, a small western suburb located about fifteen miles away from downtown Cleveland. As a community, Bay Village hosts multiple races throughout the year; this would be my second one there. Like the previous race in which I had competed, the course started and ended at the Bay Village High School. The only difference this time around was that when I ran the Bay Days 5 Mile on July 4, 2013, I only had to contend with heat. Now, though, since it was February, I had to deal with the exact opposite and I spent all week watching the forecast.
The weather had been freezing cold all week so I was excited to see that it was going to be slightly warmer the weekend of the race. Of course, by “warmer” I mean temps in the 30s versus the 20s, but I’ll take what I can get. What I wasn’t looking forward to was the snow they were predicting. Lots and lots of snow.
Trust me, I know the irony of complaining about snow while living in Northeast Ohio seeing as how it, literally, comes with the territory, but whatever.
Maybe it’s because I’ve had the fortunate well-rounded running experience of racing and training in weather of all varieties, but it would take a lot to make me even consider dropping out of a race. Granted, I don’t know if all runners would call having the experience of running in snow and slush a good thing, but it’s certainly made me an adaptable runner with a tough skin. Even when I briefly thought about skipping the Bernie Shuffle 5K three months before, it wasn’t the weather that made me regret signing up; it was knowing I’d be running on a severe lack of sleep. Almost exactly two years before, at the 2013 St. Malachi, I had to deal with temperatures so frosty that by the time I got to the water station at the halfway mark, the waxy paper cups they used had fully formed ice crystals around the rims. Snow. Sleet. Slush. That race had it all, so when I woke up on a morning in late February 2015 and looked out my window to see a white winter wonderland of several feet, the idea of not going to the SnoBall 5K didn’t even occur to me.
Running with a Police Escort Page 17