Sundays with Stretchy Pants

I run very beginnerly. I think that sounds better than saying I run like a beginner because that sounds like running like a beginner is a bad thing, like how “you throw like a girl” is always an insult.

I’ve been running for almost 4 years now, so I thought I should try to improve myself. I worked on my speed over the summer and I didn’t get to where I thought I’d magically be able to get, but I did manage to shave some seconds off of my time and then I decided I was done doing that. I’m training for my 3rd 1/2 marathon, so I thought maybe I should do the intermediate training program instead of the beginner one. And then I decided I was done doing that and switched back to the beginner one. I like to have 2 days off and I don’t like to run an intermediate amount of miles per week. Don’t wanna. Ain’t gonna. I want to get back to enjoying the run and enjoying the races.

Here’s what I love about races: t-shirts, pre-race camaraderie, post-race food, post-race talking about the race and how good it felt.

Here’s what I hate about racing: setting goals and trying to meet them.

Here’s what happens in my head during a race when I’ve set a goal:

*looks at watch and sees she’s way off her goal* “Ok, dig deep, you can do it!” (Those are not words that come naturally to me, but I’ve heard them spoken in these types of situations, so I think they must have some kind of power).

*runs just a little bit faster until it starts to feel bad* “Nah, why you gotta do that? Just finish. Who gives a shit?” (Those are words that come quite naturally to me).

*starts to feel bad about being a giver-upper* “You set a goal, let’s go! There is no reason why you can’t do this. You breastfed premie twins who had all kinds of issues and you did it! You had a homebirth VBAC with 28 hours of labor. You did that! You are a badass motherfucker just like your wallet says, and you do badass shit all the time!”

*looks at watch again* “Yeah, but I don’t wanna.”

And then I feel bad about myself for not being able to make it important enough to work super hard. So the whole rest of the race I do this: “This is bullshit. I’m never racing again. I can’t take the mind-fuck. So dumb. I’m just gonna run with my audiobook and my NPR on the pretty trail all by my damn self. Stupid race, I hate you and I wish I could punch you in the face.”…”I hope they have asiago cheese bagels. If they do, I’m taking 6 of them home. How many bagels would I need to take in order to come out even with the entry fee?”

It never used to be like that. When my goal was just to finish without dying, I was happy the whole time as long as I was alive and there were Panera bagels at the finish. I’m going back to that mindset and embracing my beginnerlyness. I don’t like to strive for it and I don’t like to be in pain after. It’s not in my nature to strive. If the apocalypse happens, I will be the one begging for a cyanide pill instead of learning how to hunt. And, if you know me, you know I loooove to read books and studies that already confirm my own beliefs. That’s why John Bingham is my new best friend. His book No Need for Speed has brought running joy back. And now that I’ve embraced this philosophy instead of fighting it, I feel like a real runner.

I used to have a “runner girl” sticker on my van, but then I took it off because I didn’t feel like a real runner. Now I feel like a real runner, but my own kind of runner so I uploaded my header image to Cafe Press and now I have this sticker on my van:

Liberty drew that picture for me 3 years ago and now the “Liberty!” means so much more. It means “Suck it, races, I can do what I want!”

I have several fears* related to running, none of which have to do with goals and pace and whatnot. Here they are in order of intensity:

1. Dying of hunger. (Yes, this is my number 1 fear. It could happen. To be fair, it’s not just a running fear. I’m always thinking about my next meal, so running just kind of exacerbates that tendency.)

2. Dying of thirst. (I don’t like to be thirsty. If I run more than 6 miles, I bring my water bottle. Yesterday, though, I ran 6 miles so I didn’t have my bottle with me, which was a mistake because I was listening to Life of Pi on my iPod and when he started whining about thirst when he was stuck in the lifeboat and hadn’t found the water yet, I really thought my tongue swelled up and I was dying with him. That was lame.)

3. Unleashed butt-sniffing dogs.

4. Running out of audio books/This American Life/The Moth or whatever I’m listening to. (I’m back to listening to words ever since the Podrunner podcasts got me used to how it feels to run at a decent for me pace.)

And, as of today, I have a brand-new fear:

5. Throwing up in my mouth.

Damn Fridays with their leisurely ways. All I have to do today is run, get groceries, and get the kids to breakdancing on time. Maybe I should clean the house up a bit since potluck is here tonight, but I probably won’t. Because it’s FRIDAY! I usually have single cup of coffee, eat a banana, coffee works (or doesn’t, the mystery of my bowels can not be solved) and then I run. Today, because it’s FRIDAY! I was feeling leisurely. It’s not hot out, so I don’t have to hurry up and run, so I had 2 cups of coffee. And right in the middle of my run, out of nowhere, I threw up a little in my mouth. I had 3 miles to go with puke taste in my mouth and no water bottle. That was gross. And now I fear it. The end.

*I don’t fear stupid rapists on the trail because, well, good luck getting my anti-chafing shorts off. These suckers are tight. Just because I’m a runner doesn’t mean I don’t have to do everything I can to make sure my thighs don’t try to start a fire down there. I can barely peel them off when I’m motivated by an intense need to pee, so there’s no way some weak-ass chump rapist is going to get them off of me. Not before I kick him in the face a million times like that Looney Tunes kangaroo.

It was just a matter of time. I didn’t actually take a stick to the eye, but I was momentarily blinded while concentrating on running. It’s a dangerous sport. There was a low-hanging branch on the trail and I was keeping the beat (RIGHT,left,RIGHT,left,RIGHT,left) and really focused on not dying my startling athleticism when the branch hit the bill of my orange Detroit Tigers hat, forcing the bill down over my eyes and knocking my head back a little bit.

It’s clear by my illustrations that the hat saved my life. My sister bought it for me, so thanks for that, Tracey.

It’s time to flip my morning routine around. I can’t run in the 9:30am heat. I usually put laundry in the washer, drink my coffee, eat my breakfast, check my email, let the coffee go to work *cough*, then hang the laundry on the line, then at least 1 or 2 kids are up, so I feed them, and then I run. But now it’s hot and on today’s run, my fingers swelled up to look like 10 portly thumbs, and I was really thirsty and around mile 4 I felt chilly and I thought, “Huh, that doesn’t seem right.” And the heat melted my Vaseline barrier that I always make in order to keep the rivers of sweat out of my eyes. So rivers of sweat ran in my eyes. And have you ever tried to dry your eyes with a tech shirt? It doesn’t work. That material might be made for wicking sweat away from my body, but it isn’t made to mop up the buckets of stinging sweat that my head produces, thus the Vaseline barrier. It usually works like a charm, as you can see by this rough sketch:

See how the sweat runs into the barrier and goes around and down without stinging my eyes? It’s lovely. See my big smile?

But today, The Heat wanted to punish me so this happened:

See my frown? That means I was sad. The Heat made me sad when it tried to kill me.

I’ve been trying to work on my running speed without much progress. Every weekend a group of menopausal women passes me going super fast. I know they’re menopausal because I can hear them laughing and chatting about vaginal dryness and hot flashes from the time they’re a quarter mile behind me until they’re a quarter mile ahead of me. They zoom past, yukking it up and they’re not even short of breath. And they’re old. I want to be like that when I’m old so I’m working on it. I could just run later in the day on the weekends so I won’t run into them anymore, but it’s getting kind of hot out now and sometimes I think the heat might make me die. My goal is to at least quicken my pace to the point where it takes them longer to pass me and I keep them in my line of vision for longer before they disappear on the horizon. It’s a lofty goal, believe me.

I do well on my “speed work” days, but then on  my regular runs, I go back to slow. I don’t know how to get the feel of a certain pace, so I just go at a pace that doesn’t hurt very badly. When I started running a few years ago, I used to listen to music, but then I found that once I listened to certain music while running, it was impossible for me to listen to it in real life. It made me feel weird so I started listening to a combination of audio books, “This American Life,” “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” “The Moth,” and “RadioLab.”  And my speed has suffered. I really get into the stories and I find myself pretty much just shuffling my feet with my mouth hanging open from time to time. It’s a wonder that I don’t veer off the trail and run into a tree every now and then.

But Dawn introduced me to these podcasts that are organized by beats per minute, so all I had to do is figure out what BPM will keep me at the pace I want. And it’s all house music or club music or whatever the kids are calling it these days. I don’t listen to that in real life, so it doesn’t ruin any music for me! And it doesn’t have words, so I don’t get caught up in the story! I do sometimes get distracted, “Is that a cat yelling? I wonder if that’s a foley artist effect or if it’s somebody’s cat? What did they do to get the cat to make that sound? I wonder if they gave it some kind of designer club drug. I wonder what the new designer club drugs are called these days. ‘Ecstasy’ was just about the best drug name ever. If I hadn’t been afraid of man-made drugs, I totally would have taken something called ‘ecstasy.’ That’s just good marketing.” And sometimes,, because it’s club music, I think about Bryan’s former co-worker in Michigan who showed up to work one day with a tether bracelet on her ankle. Bryan asked her what she did to deserve that and, with complete nonchalance, she said, “Shot up a club.” (He didn’t press for details. Can you believe that?) And then I snap out of it and find myself off beat (I like to keep the beat with my right foot), so then I do a little stutter step to get back on beat, which means one day I will probably fall down and take a stick to the eye, but for now it’s working.