My First Half Marathon and Runners are Cool People

WHY DOES TIME GO SO FAST?! It’s been over a week since I got home and I had been fully planning on writing this right away. Now it’s literally 9 days later, and I am a joke. Work’s been definitely busy, and last weekend started a string of travelling weekends that goes until mid-February. Being a person who would never intentionally fill every waking moment, this is a lot for me. Not to say I fill every waking moment- or many moments at all for that matter- productively.  In addition, I drove to North Jersey (actually NYC as I missed my exit and had to loop into NYC and back… EZ Pass bill for days), several places in Jersey, and home all in a matter of three days. For those who haven’t had the pleasure of witnessing my highway driving firsthand, this trip was an incredible act of bravery on my part. Am I making excuses for not writing this post earlier? I don’t even remember the point of this anymore. Well anyway, I got to see lots of friends in New York and escaped right before Snowmageddon aka the Great Dusting of 2015. Seriously, I woke up this morning and there wasn’t even a layer on the road. So much for a snow day! Although I am headed to Boston tomorrow night and they got slammed, so hopefully my plane can land. On the phone with my Grandma last night she told me “Don’t even bother going. If you’re up in a plane and they can’t land, you have no chance. You’ll never make it down.” So if no one hears from me in a couple days I’m probably living out my last days in the skies above Boston, because that’s how it works.

Anywho, the Sunday before last my dad and I went to Phoenix to run the Rock’n’Roll half marathon and 10k! I took lots of pictures, so you can have a respite from my usual giant block of text. You are welcome. We landed Friday night, and got a full day of awesomeness on Saturday. It was 65-70 degrees, sunny, 0% humidity. Why does anyone live anywhere else?

Dad and I got up early and headed to the race expo in downtown Phoenix. AWESOME expo- they even had a little sign making station for people who would be cheering runners on to make signs. I saw some funny signs during the race. I liked “Blisters are braille for awesome” and the classic race sign “Run? I thought they said Rum!” Another one that made me smile was “hurry up! My legs are tired of standing here.” Also there were several versions of “smile if you have to poop.” Which obviously I’d smile because it was funny… but you see the conundrum. I didn’t want to get escorted to the nearest port-a-potty by a concerned citizen.

Speaking of, they had a port-a-potty CITY there. Call me weird but it was impressive…check out that pano!

I also got this shirt, which I love:

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And a few free packets of this stuff:

I’ve written about my selectively sensitive stomach, and nothing exacerbates that like running a lot.  Never used this powder before and praise the lord I did not have to…but it made me feel better to know it was with me during the race.

After the expo, we mapped out our entire entrance and exit strategy, since we had to book it to the car and straight to the airport right after the race (yep, no showers. Oops sorry plane neighbor). After realizing we were probably going to commit to a two mile walk from the finish line to car (which it did indeed end up being… and the finish line wasn’t where we thought it was so all our planning was semi-in vain anyway), we headed to Pinnacle Peak to hike our favorite little mountain. We go to AZ every year as a family and Pinnacle is practically in our backyard, so it was great to get a bonus visit in this year.  We wrapped up that day with some pool time and dinner.

We also took a brief shopping trip for throwaway sweats. Basically, we didn’t think about the fact that while it would be 60s for most of the race (which I ran in shorts and a tank), but about 45 when we left at 5:30 am. So off we went with the goal to find sweats under 10 dollars. This was actually quite a fun mission and we hit the jackpot at Kohl’s where we got matching navy sweatshirts and I got some weird harem pants. The tragic part was once we were back at the hotel that night we put them on…and fell in love. We were literally sitting in the hotel room in our matching sweatshirts trying to plot a way to recover them after the race. There was a group that came around and picked up the sweats from the course and donated them, so it wasn’t a total waste of money…and we were very happy to have those sweats on from the 5-8 am hours pre-race. But man it hurt my heart a little to take off those weird pants and toss them away…I still miss them. I wish I was kidding.

OK- RACE TIME! 5 am wakeup call, and in the car by 5:30. I drank a small coffee, a water bottle and ate a banana and pb all before 6:30 which was perfect I think. Go me. We parked and walked to the starting line. We then still had like an hour and a half to kill so we pretty much just walked around and planned how to contact each other after the race for our quick escape, since he didn’t want to run with a phone. The genius solution was that dad wrote my number on a dollar bill he had on him and then borrowed random people’s phones to call me as I ran and leave voicemails detailing his most recent location. We started at the same time, and he did the 10K while I did the half, so he was waiting around for a while at the finish.  Here’s us wandering pre-race in the world’s greatest sweatshirts:

Since it’s the Rock’n’Roll marathon, there was live music throughout the course. They were little dinky bandstands with local bands, but it was a fun element that kept it interesting. What weird performance will I see next?! Side note: my playlist crushed it. I needed music for the miles between bands, and that playlist saved me a few times. The course was perfect: flat and you could see mountains. A few parts were kind of desolate desert with no motivating crowds (or signs), but that was okay. I did the first few miles kind of slow getting in my stride, then picked it up in the middle and slowed down at the end (felt like I did, anyway). Having never run more than 10 miles at once before, I will say those last 3.1 are not easy. Mostly because after mile 11 they quit marking the miles (unless my eyes had stopped functioning which I won’t rule out) so you were just kind of in limbo until you could see the finish line. I ended with a 1:45, which I was happy with for my first half marathon. I felt pretty good and strong for most of it too! I will say getting on a plane right after made for some seriously stiff hips. I was straight up waddling the next day. Dad and I agreed that next year we’d take Monday off and have ourselves a nice pool day after the race instead. There’s also a big concert after-party, which we had to skip. Luckily I did NOT skip the post-race free food section, which was abundant with chocolate milk and fruit cups. Not necessarily what I was looking for, but who am I to turn up my nose at free snackage? Here’s us afterwards, and my super cool finish line picture…listening to my dad’s voice mail. Botched that one:

One thing I kept thinking about the whole weekend, surrounded by runners at the expo and at the race, was how great runners are. I know a lot of people hate distance running (and 13 miles for me is major distance, so I’m still a total noob), and I’ll be the first to say it’s not that good for you, but there’s something really special about races and the running community. It’s such a battle of mind over matter, and there’s a lot of strength that comes with making your body do things it doesn’t want to do. Sure, many runners have thin bodies, but many don’t. In a crowd of runners, you get a total mixed bag, but there’s such an air of confidence around everyone. No matter what they look like, every runner chick I saw was working her shorts or her crazy color spandex because honestly…they were about to run somewhere between 13 and 27 miles. There’s something so powerful about knowing what your body can do that totally overpowers societal body image expectations. Why should you have to look like a model in spans, when your legs can run for 4 hours? I just really, really was loving the vibe of the whole thing. I completely believe that there are more effective and efficient ways to get in better shape than running could ever get you in… but I could never give up this race scene, however infrequently I do it. I don’t really count myself as a runner…more of a person who runs. There is, in fact, a difference. But it really is worthwhile to experience, I think. Runners have a physical and a mental strength that is unique, and there’s something special in the collective struggle of a long(ish) race.

Speaking of long races, I thought about turning around at the end of my race and doing it again (aka, a full marathon) and almost vomited. There are no marathons in my foreseeable future.

Anyway, that’s all. Pray for me as I enter the treacherous Boston airspace tomorrow.

I’m basically Million Dollar Baby now

Ok, I gotta be honest. I revived the blog more because of this post than the previous one. I wrote that post about self-experimenting a long time ago, because it took some research and it’s fun to write, even if I don’t publish it. Which I fully intend to do henceforth, so I can subject the internet to my every thought! Anyway, I just really wanted to share my first boxing experience, because it soundly kicked my butt.

So on Tuesday my alarm went off at 5:30 AM and found myself velcroing on some boxing gloves by 6. I try to avoid the five oclock hour, as a rule, but this was totally worth it.

A new kickboxing gym opened near my house, and was offering a free trial week. So my friend Kaleigh (Also known as the previously mentioned 5 am running friend. Also dance class friend. Why do I hang out with her? She keeps waking me up!) suggested we go try it out at the earliest possible class offered. It was just us and one other woman, being taught by a woman. Six am girl power!

So it was basically a circuit, with every bag as a station. You went around the room completing a minute at each bag, for about 45 minutes. Warm up and cool down included, it took an hour. Some were punching and kicking the bag in various combos, some were abs, jump squats, you name it. One station was those big heavy ropes that are anchored to something and you whip them up and down…know what I’m talking about? I always see people doing that on The Biggest Loser (love that show…weird, I know) and always kind of thought I’d be good at it. No, I was not. First ten seconds in I was thinking “heck yeah, I’m so strong!” Twenty seconds later, my arms were on fire and the rope was just sort of limply wiggling despite my best efforts.

It was seriously an awesome workout, and I really liked it. Also, it set the stage for a fabulous nap later that day. It was when Kaleigh and I went back the next day that the real struggle set in. It was taught by a young guy, and we spent A LOT more time on the bags. I mean I tried to pump some hand soap today, and that hurt my shoulders, so that’s where I’m at. He had us do walking pushups back and forth across the room between sets of combos on the bag, and through my sweat and tears I was thinking about how funny that had to look. It just three people again: myself, Kaleigh, and another girl in her 20s. Once none of us could manage a correct pushup anymore, we moved to our knees. So basically this guy is standing there watching three red-faced, panting girls crawling across the floor at him. It was like the Grudge gone wrong.

I kind of love workouts like that though- swiftly redefines your concept of “I’m in shape.”

Hope everyone had a great New Year’s Eve! Mine was pretty low key- hung out at a neighbor’s with some friends and played a great game of fishbowl. If you haven’t played, learn, because it’s that fun. I had been planning on going to the Mummer’s Day Parade in Philly for New Year’s Day, but bailed last minute to hang out with another friend who I haven’t seen in a while. We’re doing a half marathon together, so we got in a solid training run then watched The Babadook. Um, what? Anyone seen this? It’s like a Sundance horror film that got 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. Super creepy but SUPER bizarre ending. We both kind of walked away scratching our heads, so I don’t know if I can even recommend it or not. Well that was a useless paragraph, sorry about that.

Have a great weekend!

And finally…us dying post class. Super attractive, I know. I said “make a struggling face” and she started strangling herself…