friday confessional

It's that time again.

Duh - duh - duh.

The high school running edition.

1. I ran track for one year in high school - the 1500m and the 3000m.  I thought the 3000 was the longest race EVER. I ran for 12 minutes, 45 seconds for my best race. That's not very far.  But it probably seemed far since my favorite "workout" was to run out of sight of the coaches, sit down on the curb with my friend, talk for half an hour, and then run back to practice. We thought we were super clever.

2. I owned electric blue spandex running tights. Usually I wore soccer shorts over them.  But once I started running track, I decided to be like the other runners and wear them without any shorts. This was a big deal.

3. There was one reason I ran track. And it wasn't the love of running. It was the love of boys. 'Cause they were cute out there running on the track.

Did you ever go out for an extracurricular activity *only* to catch the attention of someone else? Or did you wear articles of clothing that would now make a sublime costume for a retro party?

we interrupt this gnarly, ugly winter's day to bring you...

...a little interlude in the sun.

Hang in there. We'll be complaining about the heat before you know it.

hood to coast movie

I am floating on air.

I ran through my dreams last night.

Why?

Because I finally got to see the Hood to Coast movie last night.

Hood to Coast is an overnight relay, one that I have had the privilege of being a part of 11 times, both as a runner and a walker.  I was ten years old the first year they ran the Hood to Coast - just six teams making their way from Timberline Lodge to Pacific City.  By the time I was 24 and running my first one, the race had grown to 1,000 teams and finished in Seaside, OR.

In 2011, it will boast 1,250 running teams (up 250 from last year), 400 walking teams and 20 - 30 high school teams.  The fastest teams will chase after the course record - a blistering 4:47 average pace.

The documentary film covers the 2008 running of the relay, following four teams as they journey through training, preparation and the race itself.  One team is dealing with the devastating loss of a young man - husband, son, brother, friend  - who had been registered to run with them that year.  One team features 67 year old Kathy Ryan, returning to the relay after suffering a heart attack on the course a year before.  Team Dead Jocks In A Box captures the story of a veteran team, with all their antics and the growing awareness that they are not as young as they used to be. And finally Team Thunder & Laikaning tells the story of a team woefully underprepared for the event - a story more common than you might think.

More than the individual stories, the film evokes the essence of what the race is truly all about.  I attended with my walking team, and we laughed, cheered and nodded our heads as we recognized ourselves and the experiences we have walked through together over the past 7 years.  I left the theater more excited than ever to run more relays this year.

I have watched a lot of running documentaries, and this one is as good as they come.  Even if you haven't run a relay, you will be caught up by the stories and the energy that you can feel emanating from this race.  If you have run one before, you will see yourself reflected in one of those characters.

The movie will be coming out on DVD, and there may be film distribution in the near future.

My Portland to Coast team from 2010:

Now I have to go train!

so how do you train for 31 miles?

There's one thing about punching in that credit card number to a race site.  It makes you think.

Mostly "oh my gawd, how in the world am I going to run that far?" or "do I need to check myself into a mental institution"...but when the panic stops, reasonable questions remain.

Like how am I supposed to train for this sucker...

What does a 1,500 foot climb in two miles actually look like...

Is there perhaps a 5k option...Okay, I'm a little more committed than that, but the question of how to train does keep me up at night.

Thankfully I have some great running pals that have been helping me out on that front.  Of course, some of their advice looks like this:

There is no right way to train for an ultra. Do what feels good to you. Some run 40 miles a week, some run 100.

(Which, on rereading, is better than how I first read it - which was "some weeks run 40 miles, some run 100." That had me panicking.)

With crystal clear advice like that, how could my training go wrong?

What the advice boils down to is basically this.  Train like you're training for a marathon, but try to do some running on the same type of terrain you'll see on race day.  Or...do back to back long runs that total the mileage you are looking to cover on race day.  Or...do a run of up to 25 miles on one day.

How about a combination of all three?

Here's how I think I'll try and go about this ultra training.  I have two long runs planned - 20 on the trails and then 30 on the trails between now and then.  I also have four back to back runs scheduled, which will build from 23 miles to 34 miles of total distance between now and race day.  I am going to try for one day a week of tempo or interval running to keep the legs moving along, but nothing too far.  And then rest of the miles will be nice and easy, though not as nice and easy as the long stuff.  I'm making sure that I have at least one full day of rest once a week at minimum.

Hope it works.

I'll keep ya posted.

 

the road just got a bit shorter

I signed up for my first official 50k.  That's 31 miles, y'all.

Eek!

But it is in the most spectacular setting ever.  How could I say no?

We start by this:

Go past this:

Even run under this:

Awesome, right?

My ultra days are officially underway. Now I just need to get a training plan together...

the lives you touch

Sometimes I feel really small in the world.

It's easy to look at people around me who are accomplishing big things and think that in the game of life, I'm barely even a player. That I don't really touch many lives. That my daily actions don't matter.

But I was reminded the other day that we do make a difference, no matter how small we think our lives may be.

I live less than a mile from a large grocery store, so I frequent it often, as do the other families in the area.  After living here for 12 years, I've had a lot of contact with the people who run the cash registers in that store.  Chatted with them. Had them help me with my purchases.

One of my favorites was Tony.  Tony always had a smile on his face and a pleasant word to say. Sadly, Tony passed away the day before New Year's, a sudden heart attack claiming his life.  Word has traveled fast through our school community, and we have all expressed our sadness and shock. His fellow employees have shut down his checkstand and placed a memorial in his spot.  We are all affected by his passing. And I would imagine that he touched far more lives than he ever realized.

How many of us would honestly think we were making a difference if we worked as a checker at the local store? Did he find a sense of purpose going in to work each day, or did he believe that his life wasn't making a difference?

Our reaction to his passing reminds me that no matter the size the shadow of our lives creates, we do have the opportunity to touch people every day.  A kind word, a smile, a helping hand - these things do matter.  We can let our light shine no matter what we are doing - whether the action is big or small, for hundreds of people or for only one.

Our lives are only small if we believe them to be.

four women who will make you feel good about growing older

I realized last week that I have gray hair.

And not just one or two strands here or there, but an actual patch of gray at my temples.

Ack.

I'm not ready to be going gray.  I secretly hoped that I had won the genetic jackpot and would never age.  Or that somehow I wasn't really getting older - just my family and friends.  But I can't deny it now.  It's going to happen, whether I like it or not.

But that got me thinking about all the amazing stories I've heard about older athletes pushing boundaries of what is possible. So I decided to find some inspiring folks to help me remind me that the best years still lie ahead:

Helen Klein
No one shows how to grow older and tougher better than Helen Klein.  Klein, who started running right before she turned 60, has done more than her share of amazing runs. At the age of 80, she ran a 4:31 marathon. She holds 75 American and world records in distances from 50k to 6 day road distances. Awesome.

Harriet Anderson
At 75 years of age, Harriet Anderson is still going strong.  She started racing triathlons at age 54, gradually competing at the Ironman distance. She raced a 16:20:30 at Kona this year; last year, she finished the race with a broken clavicle.

Diana Nyad
Last year, at the age of 60, Nyad swam for 24 hours nonstop through the shark-infested waters off of Key West, Florida - with no shark cage.  After that successful warm-up, she's now training to swim 103 miles from Cuba to Florida in the summer of 2011.  As she so eloquently put on her blog, "...the business of life is to live large and you can dream at any age."

Tamae Watanabe
Climbing Everest is hard at any age.  Watanabe is currently the oldest woman to summit to mountain, accomplishing the task at age 63.

Suddenly my gray hair doesn't seem so bad. It's a badge of honor, really.  The future holds all sorts of possibility, no matter your age. Just get out there!

Do you have any "older" heroes who inspire you?