Filed Under: running

Want to get Up and Running?

February 27, 2011 at 4:06 pm

I’ve gotten a lot of emails asking me how I started running, and my response leaves a lot to be desired. I kinda did it the idiot’s way without any training, proper shoes, or injury prevention techniques.

If you want to become a runner (and not a running fool), you might be interested in the new Up and Running online running course that is the brain child of Shauna “DietGirl” Reid and “Mistress” Julia Jones, runner extraordinaire. If you listen to the Two Fit Chicks podcast you’ve probably heard Julia on a few episodes. Their first program is a 5K Beginner’s Course that runs for 8-weeks and only costs £35 GBP per person (approx. $56 USD). You can read the FAQ and then register here.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been helping them set up their web site and Shauna is my friend, so I am not completely unbiased. But I think the class is a great idea even if I hadn’t coded a line of HTML!

Happy runners

February 7, 2011 at 1:35 pm

Runner

Photo by Riccardo Bandiera / by CC BY-NC 2.0

I have been hating runners lately. As I’ve mentioned, the weather is lovely and idyllic around here, so I see them bouncing up and down the sidewalks all they time. They’re wearing their fancy running shoes and their cute running shorts and DAMMIT! I want to be one of them, but my stupid right foot has been hurting, so I’ve had to forgo any aerobic exercise for the time being.

My neurologist and I have found a magical mix of medications and behavioral habits that have been keeping my headache locked in a closet lately with only some occasional mumbles and door rattling. I’m at a 1 out of 5 on the pain scale most days, so I’ve had more energy and I want to get back into the running game. Yet, once again, my body is not on board with me. So I have to wait for my foot to heal, and I have to read people tweeting about their marathon training and how many miles they’ve run that day and it is turning me into a green-faced envy monster.

But I shall be patient, and I’ll wait for the stupid foot to get better. And then, THEN, finally I hope I can become a runner once again.

PastaQueen meets Jared, The Subway Guy, in a wacky weight-loss crossover!

April 6, 2010 at 8:24 am

I woke up at 7:30am last Friday, by choice, and not because I had a flight to catch. What could lure me out of bed at that hour?

Jennette and Jared

Why, it’s Jared the Subway Guy, national sandwich-chain spokesperson and Indianapolis resident! While a photo op with Jared was a good lure, the free breakfast and coffee they served had a strong appeal too. I attended the Subway Fun Run at the Broad Ripple location of the sandwich store last Friday, and as I learned in college, if you feed them, they will come:

Feed them and they will come

Of course, on first try, the photo came out more like this:

PQ's crappy camera strikes again

Yes, PastaQueen’s crappy camera strikes again. I shouldn’t bitch though. My Canon Powershot had a near-death experience last month when I dropped it on a wooden patio. I thought it was a goner, but after I whacked the lens (almost) back into alignment, I found that I’m able to take photos again (as long as I don’t try to zoom over 3X). Thankfully the PR people at the event had a better camera and I got a clear shot.

I was given an opportunity to interview Jared, but I honestly didn’t know what to ask him, and I didn’t want to be the eleventy-billionth person to ask him, “What’s your favorite sandwich?” So, I decided to just take the photo and leave the man be. Afterwards, when I was looking at the photo, my first thought was, “Do I look fat?” Because if you’re standing next to a weight-loss wonder, I suppose that’s one of the first things to come to mind. The one thing I would like to say about Jared is that he’s tall.

Jared is tall!

Ok, yes, everyone looks tall next to a pack of grade-schoolers. But I am 5’9″ and Jared clearly towers over me in our photo, so the guy’s got to be about 6’4″.

The fun run was held to bring attention to Subway’s new breakfast menu. Stores will now begin opening at 7:30am weekdays and serving breakfast items. I sampled the Western Egg & Cheese and it was decent.

The run was pretty nice, particularly because I got to walk on the Monon Trail, which I used to run on all the time when I lived in my old apartment. I really do miss that trail. It’s also been awhile since I’ve gone to an official running events, and it was nice to get back into that atmosphere where not everyone is an athletic jock, but we’ve got our running shoes and our paper numbers and, gosh darn it, we’re going to give it our best!

As part of the event, the PR people gave me three $5.00 gift cards to Subway to give away. As your reward for reading to the end of the entry, you can enter by commenting with a question you would have asked Jared if you’d had the opportunity. Winner will be drawn randomly. Submissions will be open until 11:59pm on Wednesday, April 7, 2010.

Visualizing vampires to run faster

October 14, 2009 at 9:08 am

When I am running, I try not to think about the fact that I’m running. That is because running sucks. Anyone who tells you running doesn’t suck is a liar. Have you ever seen the runners at the end of the Boston Marathon? They are thrilled to cross the finish line because it means they don’t have to run any farther. Even the fast people are exhausted at the end of the race.

I love running too, even though it sucks. I love the happy chemicals it releases in my body. I get a great feeling of accomplishment after I survive a race. Sometimes, I even feel like a graceful, yet powerful gazelle, jaunting across the Sahara, even though I probably look more like a chubby housecat sprinting for a bag of Friskies. Still, running is uncomfortable. It makes me breathe hard and leaves me very sweaty and sticky and stinky.

This is why I try to ignore the fact that I am running while I am running. I didn’t quite realize that I was doing, until I started reading one of the latest bestselling social science books, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children. I don’t have kids, but it’s fascinating to learn about why humans are the way they are, be they kids or not. Chapter Eight is about self-control, and it mentions a Russian study from the 1950’s where they asked kids to stand still as long as they could. The kids lasted two minutes. Then they asked another group of kids to pretend they were guards who had to stand still at their posts. These kids lasts eleven minutes.

When I run, sometimes I pretend that I am somewhere other than a boring gray fitness room. Sometimes I am in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, chasing down vampires. Other times I am trying to escape a building before a bomb explodes. I have even been known to pretend I am a spy trying to outrun pursuers after I have stolen secret data that is stored in the disk partition of my MP3 player. All of this is quite silly of course, but it keeps my mind off of the running and even makes running a kind of game. It’s not work, it’s play! If I’m exhausted, I can pretend it’s only 2:47 minutes to the border! I can’t stop now! Try it sometime and working out might be more like play.

Can Carolyn lose 100 lbs. in a year? Find out at 1940sExperiment.com, where one woman is living one year on wartime rations to lose 100 lbs.

It’s a small Runner’s World

October 10, 2009 at 10:11 am

I finally got my hands on a copy of the November edition of Runner’s World, so now I can scan page 80 and tell you all how and grateful and honored I am to be in it (though I’d be just a teensy bit more grateful if they’d mentioned my book or my blog). I was interviewed for the “How it Feels…” article back in July to tell people what it feels like to run off half your weight. I am pretty much over myself, so I don’t usually mention these things, but I’m really flattered to be included in the same article as people who have run in outer space, broken world records, and run dressed as a Porta Potty. (There’s an idea for my Run Like Hell costume.) Does this mean I’m real runner? I must be! I was in Runner’s World! (The full article can be seen after the jump, at the bottom of this post, by clicking “Continue reading” below.)

When the copy editors were fact checking the article, they sent me some information to review that was written all in the second person. It was sort of creepy because it made me feel like they were trying to brainwash me into being myself. “Your name is Jennette Fulda. You’ve noticed that since you’ve lost weight, people are more willing to make small talk. You run right after you come home from work on a trail by your house.”

Runner’s World must ship copies of its magazines to subscribers over a week before they hit stores, because at least two or three of you (plus my cousin) wrote me about it before I was able to purchase a copy. Neither Borders nor Barnes & Noble, nor even my local running store, had a copy until yesterday. That was all right though, because part of the fun was waiting for the article to come out, like waiting to open presents on Christmas Day. Oh, sweet anticipation! Now that’s over with and thanks again to Runner’s World for including me.

Filed Under: running

As Seen In