Erin Go Run

Mile 26   split: 7:42   marathon time: 3:20:31

This last mile, while you think it would go quickly, actually somewhat drags on. The finish is at the recruiting depot, but you have to run through it first..ugh. And not only that, but you are weaving through its mini streets while, again, torturing your legs and making you ruin a smooth stride. Excited to finish to really see if this time was real, I saw a girl ahead of me looking of the same age division as I, and contemplated passing her. With ¾ of a mile left, I could have passed her, but who knows what kind of kick she could have produced at the end to still beat me. I thought about my options, but finally said, E, just finish… run your own race, and have the time of your life.

Mile 26.2   split: 1:21  marathon time: 3:22:05

Running past the finish line crowd, my last bit of cockiness came out as I wondered if co-worker/ friend George was there to greet us (Gaia was also running the race today). Annnnd for the cockiness: he might not even be here yet. I went on to cross the finish line in my fastest time to date…

…and that, ladies and gentlemen, was the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon from the perspective of this slightly awkward and slightly cocky runner.

Mile 7   split: 7:48    marathon time: 54:21

With the 3:30 pacer in front of me, I began making it a target. I was slowly approaching the large group of inexperienced runners with some natural talent, and before I knew it I was passing them. Still a little bit nervous as to whether I was going too quickly, I pushed on ahead and made my way to the embarcadero; one of my favorite places to run in San Diego. As energetic and fast-paced as I felt, I knew that I most definitely would not last for the entire race, so I whipped out one of my power gels and took it down, slightly choking on it because they aren’t as good as you would think.

Mile 8   split: 7:52   marathon time: 1:02:13

Running through the embarcadero is one of my favorite runs to do. Besides the one downfall, tourists, it is a very picturesque run that shows off some of the better parts of San Diego. Many people tend to take San Diego for granted. But on foot running through, it forces the unappreciative to look around and see why so many people visit. Tall buildings of downtown rise above, creating shadows onto the waters of the harbor. Looking across the harbor, you catch a glimpse of the quaint and little town of Coronado. Seaport Village has many of the little shops that parents love, but kids dread on summer vacations (save for the candy and magic shop). Along the path, different artworks are present every few yards. They reflect a more edgy side of San Diego, create something unique and eye-catching. For a runner, they give you something to pace off of, in addition to being something that distracts you. There are famous pirate ships and of course the famous aircraft carrier museum, the Midway. With nothing but a cool breeze, it is difficult not to just let yourself go and run through such enjoyment. 

Mile 9   split: 7:42   marathon time: 1:09:56

Several weeks ago, a few friends of mine and I participated in the La Jolla Half Marathon. Most of us struggled through the race, finishing better and worse than expected. One of us, on pace to run the race of his life, didn’t finish. At about mile 9, we found out, Bryan had passed out on the side of the race course where he was hosed off and then rushed to the hospital. Later it turned out to be low blood sugar and dehydration.

It was through this mile that I feared the worst… that I was going to pull a Bryan. Drinking the day before a marathon is the worst thing you can do for your hydration and blood sugar levels. And while Bryan didn’t drink the day before the race, I scared myself even more because not only did I drink, but I was running twice as far!! Constant daydreams ran through my head in mile 9 of dropping to the ground, hitting my head on the curb, etc. After all, I was on pace for the race of my life.

I stumbled upon this funny blog post on the natural enemies of runners. They are not only funny because they are true, they are just funny. Check out the great post!

Little snippet:

“2. Your Ipod Shuffle

Few things will torpedo your run faster than a bad song coming up on your Shuffle. You’re clicking along at a nice pace feeling good and suddenly “Brick” by Ben Folds Five comes on. Before you can frantically stab at the skip button your gait has slowed, you’re feeling melancholy as hell and you just went to step out into traffic.” (taken from website)

The ambiguity of this blog is set up for a reason. Please be advised and when you see “…” please whisper to yourself that’s what she said… On that note:

The first time is always awkward. And of course, you are never prepared. Everyone knows how it’s going to turn out, and what stories can possibly develop from it. You just want to get in, get out… and see ya later.

I was a little sweaty; mostly hot and bothered though. I had my change of clothes with me; I was here for business- no pleasure. I didn’t exactly pack anything else; I figured it would all work itself out…

When I walked in with my bag, I had to figure out a place to put my stuff. I looked around with my bag, timid and shy, almost giggling to myself to break the silence. I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to place my bag. It’s strategic. Too far away, you have a long time and distance to walk embarrassed back to your stuff. Too close, it gets in the way. You have to be prepared to gather your things if you somehow get walked in on, but it needs to be far enough away that nothing gets “soiled” in the process. I set my bag down, and seriously contemplated if I was even going to go through with this. I felt pretty dirty, but was I that dirty?

I had cold feet, I will admit. Just the thought of my nakedness being so close to my work environment; how would you feel? It is hard to deal with the lack of eye contact you don’t make once back in the office, the constant blushing, the anxiety that you are being talked about at the water cooler when you re not there. It’s hell, and it could be avoided. But, oh the sweat…

First things first, you have to check for cobwebs. You don’t know the last time it was ever used. There could be things crawling around that you forgot about. (When I finished, I found spiders… I know; exacerbates the awkwardness). OK, back to the beginning though. Foreplay. You gotta make sure its set up just right. Bottles are handy, testing the waters to make sure it’s just right…. It won’t be, you know that, right?

Trying to heat things up is NOT a smooth move the first time. It’s all cold and gives you the chills, so you barely want to get wet. You fiddle with the valves but damn it, still cold. You stand there naked, halfway in because it’s not hot enough yet, eff, it’s not even getting warm. Fiddle this, fiddle that… bam! holey moley!! Burn! Somehow the pressure hit just the right spot and yikes! Now it’s too hot. Oh well, it will have to suffice; remember, its business.

Keeping this as clean as possible, I will yadda yadda over some stuff…

The worst part is when you are finished with everything and you think you are gradually cooling down again, lowering the pressure. But remember how it went straight from freezing cold to scalding with no warning? Well, just like that, the cooling off has the same effect, except when you escape the scalding, you get the last bit of pressure released right into your face as you are reaching to turn everything off. You don’t expect it because you are not thinking about it, but one word of advice- close your eyes!
I didn’t have a towel afterwards, so the wetness had to be endured on my body so uncomfortably as I scrambled to find any old thing to wipe off the excess. Then, covering what I could with what I had, I managed to get all my clothes on in record time, as if everyone in the office was watching me. I had no makeup, no brush; it was going to be like the walk of shame all over again. At least this time I could spend the walk back drying off instead of remembering what happened. I had nothing to hide this time. People would see my ruffled hair and smeared makeup… it was going to be talked about. So I packed all my stuff back up, took one last look around to make sure it was as I had come in (save for the cobwebs) and I snuck out; closing the door as gently as I could so as not to disturb anyone. Walking back, I ran my fingers through my hair, thinking it would cover up the evidence. But, it didn’t work with my mom, it wouldn’t work here. I had left my shoes on the entire time and they were all I had, so it made me uncomfortable for the rest of the day having to remember the experience every time I took a step. Next time there won’t be any surprises.

A conversation that took place  in the office today: 

“No running today, runner?”

 ”She ran.”

“The End.”

…Fade to black…

I might finally be sponsored. I applied. Waiting for the reponse. That is all….

Typically I do not eat acidic food before I run; it causes running that just doesn’t fly with me (if anyone knows me well enough, they’ll understand). In fact, normally all I eat before my daily run is whatever I can fish out of my freezer in the morning. Then I will have coffee when I get to work. That not only opens my eyes for a fun-filled day of writing, but it also helps me get down to racing weight with enough time to try and get a couple of co-workers to run with me.

On this particular day, I woke up with a different feeling. Somehow the world seemed to be rotating differently, I woke up already knowing what I was going to wear, and there was enough hot water in my shower that I didn’t have to curse out anybody in the house under my breath.

I got to work that morning and almost before I could get my lunch into the fridge, a co-worker was asking me to whore out my running blog. What the….!? Geez, can’t a girl even say good morning to someone anymore without her goods being offered out for the world to just use? I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to tie a hot sauce whore blog into my running expertise blogs. Look, I am not a whore. And my running isn’t either.

But alas, I at least tried the hot sauce. I am young, adventurous. I didn’t get many opportunities to experiment in high school, so I have to take advantage when I can. The sauce wasn’t bad. I got a little bit nervous eating it before running…. You know.

So then it came down to run time. And damned if I didn’t run the sh** out of that run! No joke. I was unstoppable. Maybe it was fate, maybe it was the hot sauce. But it let me run before running out of me.

Dear Pink Eye,

We weren’t meant to be. You and I don’t belong. And now that you are gone, I can sleep at night knowing that I will wake up with both of my eyes, and it will no longer be a struggle to open that eye only to see you staring right back at me. It’s not you; it’s me. I can’t bear to go through one more day with a hat on trying to hide the fact that we were intimately related for that brief time. It was hard enough hiding you from my co-workers and other significant people in my life. No one could stand looking at me, with you staring right back and making them cringe. It was bad enough that they could not look at me, but even looking at you made me cringe and turn away in disappointment. i felt shunned, poisoned, inapproachable. We wouldn’t have lasted. If we are to meet again, I hope it is on one of my high school enemies that I have sworn revenge on. It was a hell of an adventure, but I must move on. Please understand.

Sincerely,

Erin

What were you all doing on thanksgiving morning? Probably hung over or dreaming of the big dinner you were going to have later that day. Not me. I was thinking about my first race I was about to run since being back from Europe. It was just over three weeks since my marathon, and only 3 days since my first run. Here I was lining up at the start line of yet another race. My biggest fear was how my legs would hold up. I knew that my lungs would have been fine, but my legs. They were going to torture me, I knew it. So here is a recap of the race:

Mile 1

Ha! Just kidding. This was only a 5K, a 20 minute run. It went by too quickly for me to think about documenting it over three days worth of blogs. Plus, the whole time I was thinking about how my legs really didn’t hurt that bad. I managed to hold up a pretty good pace throughout the race. My legs weren’t torturing me at all, my confidence was. Here is the lesson for the day: running is about 90% mental. Because I was so afraid of my legs holding me back from a good race, I let myself talk them into not going any faster than I was comfortable doing. And being my first race back, I didn’t feel comfortable going very fast at all.

I finished in an average time, for me, 21:53. I placed in the top 50 for women, and in the top 200 of total runners. Not bad for the first race back, but secretly (not anymore) I had hoped to surprise myself.

The first run back after a marathon is like… well, like your first run. I remember my first cross country practice. I came to practice in some Fila tennis shoes, thinking they were good enough running shoes because they were the sportiest shoes I had. I was doing the short run, which was about a 10 minute warm-up, stretch, and then a 10 minute run back to school. I didn’t “know” how to run, so I put one foot in front of the other, stared down at my shadow, and curled my arms up in fear that I might look like I don’t know how to run. I couldn’t quite get a steady rhythm. My legs were running a muck and my breathing, oh man, I felt like I was blowing out candles but had to do it only breathing out my nose. I thought that if I had to breathe in and out of my mouth that people would know that I didn’t know ho to run. About 2 minutes into the run, I was breathing heavily, dragging my feet, and wanting to give up. That seems like just yesterday.

Wait, it was. I ran for the first time this week, and felt like I didn’t know what I was doing. I tried to run faster than my last few miles of the marathon, but who knows if I really was. Probably not. I ran, did the usual run stuff. I even timed it! But it was awkward and ended up being a rude awakening. It was gonna take time until I got back into it.