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Hey Motivation, You Can Run, but You Can’t Hide

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I don’t know if it’s from

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the dark mornings (sunrise after 7am, really??) or knowing that my training is coming to an end (Chicago here I come!) or voodoo, but I have had a heck of a time getting motivated to get up in the mornings to go run. Now to be fair, getting up at 6am (or earlier, much to the disapproval of Ev) is never easy. But it has become a habit for the last who-knows-how-long, so I’m used to getting up. It’s really the motivation that has been on vacation. Even on my long run this past Saturday I considered (for just a nano second) not running ::gasp:: ::scream:: ::zoinks::

Rather than give in to the Motivation-Sponge, I sought external devices. We’re not talking performance enhancing drugs or a stunt double running for me, no how! Instead, I got all technological up in Motivation’s face. Yes, we are in the Digital Age people (as opposed to the Analog Age*). To combat the shady tactics used against me, I fell back into the grips of none other than my iPod Shuffle. You may laugh, scoff, even shake your head for any number of disapproving emotions, but for me, I haven’t run with earbuds crammed just inches from my brain for quite some time (the reasons will perhaps be explained in a future post). For fear that music alone would not suffice, I upped the ante and loaded up a podcast. A PTI** podcast to be exact.

The beauty of a podcast is that I can multitask! Tackle a hill while catching up on the sports world. Sprint a mile while updating my tech-knowledge. To be honest, it beats the alternative. Here’s a little secret: to pass the time on boring runs, when the Motivation Witch zaps the energy out of me, I multiply. Get your mind out of the gutter, I practice mental math. Probably not the juicy secret you were hoping for, but I literally go through 2×2, 3×3, … , 29×29.. I usually get stuck in the mid thirties. Anyway, my newfound interest in podcasts has made multiplication a thing of the past. Sorry Archimedes.

I’m excited at the prospects of all the information I can absorb while running in circles. I’ve run for more than 167 hours this year alone (a little more than 1200 miles). Think of how much time that is! Sorry, Destroyer of Motivation, your time has expired. For now, I have an Internets-worth of information to take in. Once I finish, perhaps we’ll meet again.

The Details:

8 Miles with 3 x 1-mile Intervals:

Route

Distance: 8.04 miles
Time: 1:02:55
Pace: 7:49 min/mile
Average HR: 158 bpm (181 bpm max)

*Thanks Ev 🙂

**PTI is short for Pardon the Interruption, a sports talkshow on ESPN where two old guys yell at each other about the latest sports news.

A Modest Proposal

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So, a little background:

a) IF you know who Evelyn and/or I am, go ahead and skip this paragraph. Evelyn and I met in our 10th grade English class. As the story goes, we went to junior and senior proms together, went to separate colleges (and stayed together), and met back up after graduation in DC. In total, we’ve been dating a bit over 7 years, so I may have glossed over just a bit.

b) IF you know what a Garmin Forerunner is, skip this paragraph. I have this fancy watch. I wear it when I run and it keeps track of how fast I go, my heart rate, and even a map of where I’ve been. Every few seconds it records where I am using GPS. As the dots connect, it shows where I went. Super cool! I’ll give you a moment gather yourself… I can then hook it up to my computer to look at all the data. Information overload: check.

Anyway, the morning of Evelyn’s birthday, I went for a run (much to her disappointment, I’m sure). But not any old run. No sir/ma’am! I had big plans for this one. I headed down to The Mall to find a big area to use as my canvas. I would be my paintbrush. It was all the more amazing doing this in the shadow of the Washington Monument.

I bet I looked like a crazy person running in the dark (I started at 6am) in zig zags (totaling about 2 miles). I retraced my steps, crossed the street a few times in the same place, dropped my water bottle to mark where I need to run back to, maneuvered through trees…it was chaotic to an outsider (aka everyone).

I got home before Ev returned from the gym, blew up some balloons (lightheaded: check.), and uploaded the running route

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to my computer. She got back, showered, and then sat at the computer. Here begins the awkward endearing short story I tried to get out to explain why I needed to show her this run. Something along the lines of “Hey Ev, so I was running today, and it felt strange how I was running back and forth in the same places, but I just went with it. I didn’t think anything of it, but then I put it on the computer and here’s what it looked like. And I have something for you that I found on my run.” That’s when I showed her the map and while she looked a little puzzled, I got down on one knee and asked her if she’d marry me! And, I wouldn’t have written this otherwise, but just in case, she said yes!

She admitted that she didn’t quite get it that I actually ran the path on the screen, so I had to explain it real quick, but then all was good. Also, she thought I brought her back like a rock from my run (not too far from the truth!). We made a quick decision that we wouldn’t tell anyone until we told our families in person, who were coming to visit 10 days later. Thus, no one could know! Sorry to everyone who was duped, deceived, or misled. Don’t take it personally! And here is what the map of where I run looked like:

Proposal

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p>For you skeptics, I didn’t follow a path or map this ahead of time. I just followed my heart (awww. swoon. love. yay. puppies.)

The Maine Event

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Fear not!   I was not attacked by a bear or a giant lobster.  However, I saw both (kind of… check out the pictures.  The bears (and moose) are made of solid chocolate, but keep in mind: a chocolate bear is still a bear…).  Anyway, I went for a 17 mile run while in Maine.  The weather was, well, perfect.  58 degrees, 2% humidity (based on my internal humiditometer), and not a cloud in the hemisphere.  It was supposed to be 18 miles with 14 at Marathon Pace (~8 min/mile).  Based on the route I chose, 17 is what it came out to be.  An exact 8.5 miles out and 8.5 miles back.

Lighthouse

Maine-ly (see what I did there?) because of the amazing weather, wide bike lane, and awesome scenery, everything about this run felt good.  As the sun was rising during the first mile I started to pick up the pace to get to the 8:00 min/mile mark.  My plan was to run miles 2 through 15 at that speed and use the other miles as warm-up and cool-down.  Well, when everything falls into place like it did, I actually found it difficult to go slow enough.  After a bit, I stopped fighting it.  Other than the first mile (8:15 min/mile), every mile was under 8 minutes.  Actually, there were several late in the run in the 7:30s that felt amazing.  It seemed like I always had another gear to get up the next hill, so instead of slowing down, I pushed a little harder and not because I thought I was being chased by a giant lobster.

The halfway point was the end of Cape Elizabeth in Two Lights State Park.  The picture above was taken later in the trip when Ev was looking for rocks.  (Side story: Ev and I went to Cape Elizabeth so I could show her the lighthouse and great view I saw on my run.  There were lots of people there, most of whom were staring at the ground and picking up rocks.  It turns out they were looking for sea glass*.  Well, without a moment’s hesitation, Ev started looking for sea glass.  She was quite good at it too.  If it were a game, I think she would have won.  You can see her dominating the children competition in the picture.  End side story)

Without going into too much more detail, the entire run was amazing.  Perhaps the Maine Marathon will find its way onto the schedule, but that’s for another post.  Definitely in the top 5 best runs ever.

The Details:

Portland’s 17 Mile Long Run:

Route

Distance: 17 miles
Time: 2:12:24
Pace: 7:47 min/mile
Average HR: 159 bpm (174 bpm max)

*Sea glass, for those who don’t know, is just glass that gets eroded in the ocean and washed on shore.  Typically from beer bottles and the like, it finds its way onto the sand in a very smooth condition.  That is your sea glass lesson for this blog post.  Questions can be directed to http://tinyurl.com/q6edza

Bored of *not* Running

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Last night while getting caught up on some (debatably) quality TV, I realized that I was getting bored of not running.  In reality I think I’m just getting antsy from stored up energy while still “recovering” from the race, but I got that urge like I had to go run “right now!”.  I didn’t, of course, because it was 10 at night and thoroughly enjoying The Office and sitting on the couch drinking wine with Ev.  Tough to beat.

To runners, this sounds like a good problem to have.  Who doesn’t want to be motivated, right?  To non-runners, I should be committed.  Who wants to run when you can sleep in or watch TV… or not run?

Well, just as the sun rises (both literally and figuratively), I predictably hopped the fence into the non-runners camp when my alarm went off at 6am.  The bed can be very convincing when you voluntarily decide to make an early departure.  It took some doing, but I pulled myself out of that heavenly cocoon of endless warmth and security and got out there.  I wanted this run to be really easy, like a walk in the park (only running.. in the park).  It was ok, but not as easy as I hoped.  I think I’m still getting over that non-swine-flu cold I mentioned last time.  My heart rate was a little higher than I would have liked, just wasn’t feeling it.  But I got to run and release some of that antsy-ness (not to be confused with ants in the pants, which I still have plenty of).

Who knows, maybe after a few more early mornings I’ll be over running and ready to sleep in.  But for now I’m looking forward to the next one…

 

Details:

Distance: 5.32 miles
Time: 44:46
Pace: 8:25 min/mile
Average Heart Rate: 157 bpm
Route