Filed Under: fitness

IrishFest 5K, Part Deux: Revenge of the Bagpipes

September 21, 2009 at 9:19 am

Bagpipes in 2009

Unlike my first running of the IrishFest 5K, I didn’t witness an unofficial “Escape The Cops 5K” on my way to the starting line. This year’s race also wasn’t at night like the one two years ago was, so they did not hand out any glow sticks :( But by God, there were bagpipes!

I sat on a folding chair waiting for the race to start, when a thirty-something man in a grey shirt and square-frame glasses came up and said, “Excuse me, but do you know what pace you plan on running?”

“I have no idea,” I told him honestly. I haven’t been tracking the distance I’ve been running while training, just the amount of time I spend running. “Maybe a 12-minute mile pace?” I said optimistically recalling my average pace a year and a half ago.

“Do you mind if I pace off of you? I haven’t run a 5K for almost two years and it would help a lot if I could pace myself with somebody.”

“Sure,” I told him.

“I just thought I’d ask you…because you still have a jacket on,” he said, though I wondered if he really meant, “because you’re heavier than most of the other freakishly lean and well-muscled people here.” It was about 60 degrees out, yet many of the hardcore athletes were only wearing their running shorts and t-shirts. Either way, it made for the second time someone has propositioned me to be their running buddy because I’m a slow runner; the other person was a woman on the nature trail about 2 or 3 years ago.

So that is how J1m H0gan and I ran the IrishFest 5K together, though I have obscured his name in case one day an employer Googles him and decides they simply cannot hire a slow runner for a job. For the first 25 minutes, we did intervals of 4 minutes of running and 1 minute of walking. Then for the rest of the race we did intervals of 2 minutes of walking and 3 minutes of running, finishing in 44:12, which is over three minutes faster than my last run, which goes to show I perform much better when it’s not hot and humid with no water stations in sight. I brought my own water bottle this time too, and the cool weather was much more pleasant for a three-mile run. I wasn’t sure if I’d like running with someone, but it made me accountable to stick to the intervals I’d set. Otherwise, I might have chipped 20 or 30 seconds off the running intervals because no one would have known one way or the other.

My best 5K time ever was 31:17, and I remember at the time thinking it was still rather slow because the fastest runners could finish in about 15 minutes. Comparing it to my current time of 44:12, it looks downright speedy, and I finally understood my aunt who once commented on how good that time was. I suppose it’s like how I used to look at old photos of myself from high school, a time when I felt HUGE, and realized I hadn’t been that fat at all.

I improved on my last time, which was my goal, and ultimately I’m only competing with myself. After the 5K I went online and signed up for another race scheduled in about a month called Run Like Hell. It’s held at night on the day before Halloween and the participants are encouraged to dress up for the occasion. Looking at last year’s photos of people dressed as everything from a school bus to the three little pigs, it appears to be a hell of a lark. Anyone got an idea for a costume that might win me a prize, but that I can also run comfortably in?

Technically it should be “Loveseat to 5K”

June 8, 2009 at 7:59 am

Wow, I finished a half-marathon once!

I used to exercise because I knew it was the only thing keeping the world from exploding. I would dash onto the trail immediately after work so I would have enough day light to complete my runs. I would lift weights as I watched Good Morning America. I did Pilates so much I found myself able to roll backwards and then leap up off the mat. I did this for months and months after I got my horrible, awful, no-good headache. I did it because I knew if I didn’t the universe would collapse and we would all die, because it was only the force of me exercising five times a week that was preventing total world annihilation.

But after about 8 months of the pain and the pathetic push-ups, I stopped. The running shoes stayed in the closet and my Pilates mat stayed in the corner and my weights just stayed put, period. And the world did not explode. The universe did not end. This was a very bad thing to discover. I needed to believe exercise was non-negotiable, but when it wasn’t, I started negotiating. I began to do what I wanted to do instead of what I needed to do. This usually involved ice cream and prime time television.

I’ve been feeling a lot better now and I’ve been walking regularly, but I am no where near as fit as I used to be. I have known I need to work on working out more, but I’ve lacked the spark I had during my running years to make it happen. Even my behavioral psychologist at the headache clinic has been on me about it, listing all the benefits of regular aerobic exercise, and making me giggle inside my head that someone is giving me weight-loss tips.

Then Kelly emailed me. You might remember Kelly from page 8 of my book, where she appears as Karen, my abs-crunching college roommate. I didn’t know how to contact her for permission, so I changed her name in the book to protect her identity (though I doubt anyone would be embarrassed to appear as the health conscious roommate in a weight-loss memoir). Kelly would work out in our dorm room and I would watch while I ate Twinkies. Like everybody and my father, Kelly is on Facebook, which is where we found each other again and decided that we’d enter the Midsummer Night’s Run, a 5K race held in Lexington, KY on August 15, 2009. Kelly’s wanted to run it for years and I need a clearly defined and measurable fitness goal to work towards, so we have submitted our money and are registered.

The race is 10 weeks away, which gives me enough time to complete the Couch to 5K running program. Developed by the Cool Running web site, Couch to 5K gets you from the couch to a 5K in nine weeks, though in my case it should be “Loveseat to 5K” because I don’t own a full couch. Many people have raved about this program, but I never got to try it because I’d already started running regularly before I’d heard about. Now I can test it for quality assurance!

I downloaded some podcasts linked from this Couch to 5K resource page, loaded up my MP3 player, and completed the first run on Saturday. To my surprise, I didn’t have to scrape my lung off the pavement like dog doody! It was actually…easy. I am not as out of shape as I thought I was! Woot! I was tempted to push harder and longer, but the program specifically tells you not to do that, so I was a good little girl and eased off. I’ve got 10 weeks to go and there’s no sense in burning out or injuring myself.

It felt surprisingly good to run again, making me feel more connected to the planet and to my body and myself. When I was at my most fit, I knew that I could get up and run a 5K whenever I wanted to. Just knowing that made me feel, well, kinda’ badass, oddly enough. Yet I know that at this moment I would not be able to run a 5K, though I could walk one. I’m looking forward to getting back to that level of fitness, and to keeping the world from exploding.

My body doesn’t have a warranty

March 25, 2009 at 8:26 am

I was 21 years old when I looked in the mirror in the computer science building’s bathroom and saw the first grey hairs growing out of my scalp. It was that same year that I started to see small grey flecks of dust in my vision when I looked up at a clear blue sky or at a white wall. My eye doctor told me these were floaters, little blobs of protein that develop in the fluid in your eyeball. Near-sighted people like me get them quite frequently.

A couple years later I woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to scoop my gallbladder out with a spoon. The surgeon did it with a scalpel and a tiny camera instead, and I was only 24. Then my knees started to hurt when I climbed up the stairs. By this point I’d also lost track of how many cavities I’d had filled, caused by too much Mountain Dew and too little dental floss.

A friend my age told me over dinner she is fighting acid reflux disease and takes medication for a slight thyroid imbalance. Another friend was just diagnosed with pernicious anemia and has to get shots of B12. We are not old. We are in out late 20’s and early 30’s.

No one told me my body was going to break down so fast. No one warned me that after 21 years I’d start needing repairs. I cannot trade myself in for a newer model. So if you are young and your body is working, enjoy it for me. It won’t be long until you’ll need a fix-up and wish you’d invested in more dental floss as a child.

Bop to the Top

January 26, 2009 at 7:07 am

On Saturday I climbed 37 stories of the One America building with a Flip Camera in my left hand to capture all the coughing and hyperventilating. You can view my video blog about the race above. If you have dial-up or can’t discreetly watch videos at work, I will spoil the ending for you: I got to the top without keeling over. We were also one of the top 4 fundraisers for the event, an honor for which I won a mug. Instead of dividing it into 50 little pieces and mailing it to all my sponsors, I will let you have a sip from it if we ever run into each other.

You can view pictures of the event taken by The Indianapolis Star here. I’m not sure what my official time was because, quite frankly, the official race site sucks giant donkey balls. (Yes, that is my professional opinion.) I think I got in at just under 14 minutes. The fastest people did it in just under 4 minutes, which make me wonder if we should let genetically engineered people like that compete against us flabbier mortals.

Thank you to everyone who sponsored me. You really “stepped up.”(Har, har, har.) Below is a list of some of my sponsors’ web pages. I hope you’ll take the time to check them out. I’ve done my best to compile this list without error, but there were A LOT of links. (It took me longer to put this post together than it took to climb to the 37th story.) If your link is missing, broken or miscategorized, email me and I’ll fix it ASAP.

$65.00

Wild Rumpusing

$50.00

My Weight Watchers Journey: 50 lbs to lose at 50!

$40.00

WhimsyWraps Candy Wrappers

$25.00

$20.00

$15.00

$10.00

The Amazing Adventures of DietGirl

Knit, Run, Repeat

Distracted By Something Shiny

$5.37

Confessions of the Guy at Weight Watchers

$5.00

Losing to Find Myself

Finding Radiance

Morfit

Fat Bridesmaid

Searching for my Inner Thinner Self

A Woman’s Right to Lose

$3.00-$1.00

The Hungry Little Caterpillar

Do run, run…or, um, don’t

December 30, 2008 at 8:42 am

Shiny medal

When I look at the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon finisher’s medal that is hanging on my bulletin board, I fondly remember the race, particularly the part where I got to stop running. While I enjoyed the cinnamon crunch bagels and the thrill of accomplishment, I’ve decided not to run the race again this year. I wiffled and waffled for awhile, but I knew if I ran it again it would just be for show since my heart is not in it. Been there, done that, got the medal.

I greatly admire people who take up long distance running, but it is not necessary to run half-marathons to stay in shape, nor is it the best possible way to lose pounds. I actually gained weight when I was training last year. Right now I’d rather focus on maintaining my current weight and perhaps losing another 10-20 pounds, so half-marathon training is not consistent with those goals. I know some people do lose weight when training, but I’m not one of them.

Instead, my personal health goal for this year is to maintain a level of fitness so I could go out and run a 5K at any time. I just hate it when I’m at the office and they say, “Let’s run a 5K after lunch!” and I have to turn them down. At my running speed, that goal would mean being able to run for about 35 minutes constantly, which is doable.

In memory of my past running achievements, here’s a slideshow of me crossing the finish line at the Training Series 10K last year, captured by the official documentarian of my life, my mother. Thanks, Mom!