The Hills

I love hills!  I love hills!  I love..  Ok – I don't love hills.  I don't even like hills. In fact, I don't even have unresolved feelings about hills.  My feet don't like them.  My calves don't like them.  My lungs really hate them and even my shoulders are thinking of joining the movement. 

The mentors are trying really hard to teach me to appreciate the benefits of actively resisting the additional pull of gravity that hills add to the whole running mix.   Hills give you a better workout in a shorter distance!  Hills help your largest muscles develop and power the rest of your run!  Once you have learned to appreciate hills, you'll understand how wonderful they are!  

Really?  Do you promise?  Because right now I am not feeling it.  Right now my left calf is reminding me that I probably should have broken my shoes in a little more before I ran in them.   Right now my lower back is carefully telling me that I needed to stretch so much more.   Right now, I'm thinking that I might have to take another hot bath…maybe with wine.  Ok – that might not be run-related. 

I might have embraced the concept of the hill as a positive if I hadn't been in pain while I was running.  The pain started in early, traveling from foot to ankle to calf and eventually up to my hip.  I had "foot bone connected to the ankle bone" playing on my mental soundtrack as I jogged into the parking lot.  I bypassed the whole party tent to head over the physical therapists.  They may have been there to talk about the race and pacing, but I was desperate for relief and information.   

After patiently listening to me explain my complicated situation – my leg hurts, please make it stop – the experts had me walk, stand, and balance on one leg.  Then I balanced on the other leg.  Then I balanced on the first leg again while shifting my weight in various directions.  I learned two things.  First, I managed to get out primary school without learning left from right.  "Move your hip to the left. No, the other left."  Secondly, body mechanics are much more complicated than I ever understood.  It turns out that my leg pain is related to how my weight is shifting as I run.  Apparently, I'm asking my calf muscles to compensate for my lack of strength in other muscles and they are a little ticked off.    

My new running plan will involve extra stretching, strengthening exercises for my slacker muscles and probably, some more hills.  After all, I may not like what the mentors are asking me to do, but they have never steered me wrong.  Someday maybe I'll even really….not dislike hills quite so intensely!

A new kind of courage

"The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start."  John Bingham

I could feel my heart beating as we walked out of the parking lot on Saturday morning.  This is the thing I haven't gotten quite used to yet.  Each time I start out of the parking lot, there is that moment where I think I can't do it.  I think that this will be the day that I'm somehow unable to get from the beginning of the loop to the end.  It's just a quick hiccup, a momentary hesitation, but it doesn't go away.

I'm told that this is a normal reaction.   Running, according to the many many people who know better than I, is a largely mental act.   My aching calves may disagree, but the hardest part for many would-be runners is the idea of running.  Describe the process out loud at some point – perhaps while alone so you don't alarm your friends.  Left foot. Right Foot.  Faster.  Left foot. Right foot.  Faster.  Uphill.  Around the corner.  Try not to slow down too much.   Left foot. Right foot. Repeat.   Seriously, the thought that you will get up and voluntarily put one foot in front of the other – rapidly or not so rapidly – for some determined length of time with no destination sounds very strange.  If you add in the part about doing it early in morning, occasionally in bad weather while wearing unflattering clothing, you can perhaps understand why non-runners have been known to view runners as fundamentally differently wired.

This is why running has become a weekly exercise in trust for me.  I have to believe that my body is better than my mind might think.   The very first time out, I wanted to cry.  The chorus of negativity in my head was so loud that I think the cars driving by probably had to turn up their radios.  My first trail run made me think that I could only run on roads since I was so slow and clumsy as we single-tracked through the woods.   When I stood at the starting line for my race and could already feel the breathlessness reaching in towards me, my logical brain was trying to remind that I didn't HAVE to do this.  I could stop, sit down, relax.   I could stop.  I can stop. 

So why don't I?  I don't honestly always know. Sometimes, I'm just stubborn.  I channel my inner three year who is not going to nap.  I make bargains with myself involving chocolate, coffee, hot baths and new books.   Occasionally I have to promise one from each of those categories before I can tie my shoes.   It helps to have NOBO friends that I only get to see if I run.   NOBO swag is always a draw because I'm kind of a cheap date.    Sometimes it the silliness factor that gets me moving.  I never expected to run in a Halloween costume in my forties.  

Back in the Dark ages when I was in high school, we had an outdoor education program that included a ropes course.  At the end of the ropes course, you had to climb a tree, get onto a platform and leap out into space to catch a trapeze hanging ten feet away.   We were all connected to safety lines, so we weren't in any danger.  However, our brains, in an effort to protect us, pointed out that leaping into space fifty feet up in the air can have unpleasant consequences.  It took enormous faith to make that leap.  Each time I circle the route we are running, fast or slow, running or walking, in pain or flying high, I believe that I am capable.  I leap out and catch the trapeze.  I learn over and over that I can do more than I might think possible. 

You had me at 30 more seconds

I have a confession to make.  I'm in love my mentors.  

I didn't see this coming.  I remember – distinctly – the first time that one of the mentors said, "You can do it."   I didn't feel encouraged.  I felt annoyed.  I could not do it.  Did this woman not notice that my legs had become pistons of pain that weighed roughly twice what an elephant eats each day?  I had been doing this for a week – a week!  No, I could not do it.  In fact, I was at that point wondering what would happen if I just sat on the ground and waited until someone brought me something cold to drink and a replacement for the lungs that I clearly had misplaced somewhere back around the first interval.

"I know you don't believe me, because I didn't believe my mentors either, but when you are doing intervals where you run for four minutes, you'll remember this and be surprised that two minutes felt like a long time.  I promise."

At least, that is what I thought she said.  I didn't really hear much after "run for four minutes". I was too busy wondering why teleportation hadn't been invented.  I would have thought that breaking the laws of physics was a piece of cake compared to this whole running thing.

Six weeks later, I ran my first four minute interval.  My mentor, Felicia, was beside me. 

"How are you doing?" she asked. 

"I might be dying" I answered.

"No you're not.  You look great."

And she was right.  I actually did look pretty good and I felt even better.  The four minute interval, while making me question my general sanity sometimes, made everything else seem a little easier.   My knees didn't hurt so much when we started out.  I had learned that if I stuck with it, mile two was often easier than mile one.   Felicia was right.  I didn't tell her that, of course but I think she knew.

Now that I'm in my second NOBO, I follow the mentors around like a first grader looking for extra stickers from the teacher.  I ask them questions and have been known to smile when they tell me to push a little harder.   I've learned who will keep me on track and who lets me slide a little bit.  Each one of the mentors has made their own journey to this place.  There are trail runners who have secret names and seem to revel in really bad weather.   There are distance runners who hang with us NOBOers because they remember how it started.    There are runners who are only a NOBO session ahead of us and know on a visceral level how hard we are working.

Wednesday night's run was a challenging push through a hilly, twisty course that put me back into my pain zone.  I watched as Neena ran ahead to check on the group and then back to check on us at the back, easily doubling our distance.  She sang songs to make us laugh and somehow managed to time the course so we were always running as the hills came up.  She asked about individual pains from sore feet to wobbly knees and urged us to notice how much better we were doing.  

"You can do it" she said. 

You know what?  She was right.  I can.

Hubris

Have you ever mailed a letter, sent an email, left a phone message and then had that sinking feeling that you just put something out into the universe that is going to come back and bite you?   Wednesday's workout blog was my inadvertent "reply to all" in the workout world.   I was so impressed with myself for moving to the longer intervals that I convinced myself that it was because I was so ready to move on that forward motion was inevitable.

You can hear it, can't you?  The universal chuckling has been echoing my head since Saturday's extremely effective lesson in humility.   Saturday was a beautiful morning, sunny and clear.  Despite the predictions for warmer weather, it felt chilly so I put on my trusty turquoise and headed over to group 3, my five and one compatriots.   I felt a small tickle of unease when I realized our route for the day because it contained lots of hills.  Still, hadn't I been magnificent on Wednesday?  How much trouble could a couple of hills throw at me?  I have no problem walking when I need to, so I'd walk more.  How bad could it be?  

I think the voice in my head was trying to kill me.  Every time I hesitated, it whispered, "You can do this.  C'mon.  It's just running…  It's just a hill….  It's just a little cramp…."

Natalie, the NOBO coach, had been very clear in our early meetings.  "Listen to your bodies, people.  Learn what the signals mean."

Listening to my body is a critical skill for me.  Running with Dysautonomia sometimes feels like running with a time bomb sitting in my chest.  Because my body is often unable to regulate it's response to physical stress, minute changes in circumstance can have enormous implications.  Mild dehydration can start a chain reaction that sends me to the hospital.  The famous twenty degree temperature change runners dress for when they head out can be the difference between functionality and collapse for me.  Even being overtired can make it difficult for my muscles to move as expected. 

However, because I knew that I was Wednesday night superwoman, I overdressed and tried to run up the hills.   Interval one wasn't bad.  Of course, it was also flat.  I'm a big fan of flat.  By interval two, it was warming up and I was slowing down.   Interval three hit at the same time the first big hill hit.  I could say that I walked it but let's be honest.  There was trudging going on.   I had faded from group three to group two.  By interval four, group two was way ahead in the distance looking like an irritatingly perky mirage.   

I gave up on intervals. I stopped paying any attention to groups.   I jogged whenever I could muster a little more energy and then walked again. I took ridiculous comfort in long stop lights that required me to stand semi-still.  I took comfort in the fact that there were a number of people walking near me. Of course, I think that some of them may have just been taking their dogs to the park.  

Sometime in the last half mile of the loop, my breathing slowed and my brain rebooted.  It occurred to me to take off the extra layer of insulation.  The difference was amazing.  I remembered that Felicia had suggested breathing in a pattern when I struggling because that would help me focus on the path instead of the struggle. 

I didn't run into the parking lot in triumph at the end of the workout but I didn't sit down and give up either.  I walked a lot of that two and a half mile loop, but I jogged some of it too.  The shakiness that stayed with me much of the day on Saturday was a reminder that this is a process.   I still plan to try and run with the more challenging group on Wednesday night, but I'll pay attention to the tickle of unease when I feel it and step back if I need it.  After all, I've provided the universe with enough amusement this week.

Magic Intervals

My calves are screaming.  I kept waiting for someone on the street to notice their little voices as I walked my usual fifteen minutes from the car to the office this morning.   I increased my intervals on Wednesday.   I ran for five minutes and walked for one minute.   It doesn't sound like much does it?  Five minutes of jogging doesn't sound like a lot.  It's less than two songs on Itunes.  It's shorter than the coffee line at Foster's in the morning.

Guess what?

 It's a really long time when I'm running.  I had no idea that running would allow me to escape the laws of time and space.  For example, I am sure that time stood still on Wednesday.  I was halfway down Franklin and had been jogging for at least three minutes when time stopped.  I know this because there is no way that it was only two more minutes until the whistle blew.  In that time, I travelled two blocks, waited for a traffic light, counted the number of steps I took (a million, I'm sure of it), noticed that my feet hurt, noticed that my glasses were sliding down my nose, counted some steps (half a million, I swear), wondered how bad it would look if I tackled the pizza delivery car and ate every slice in the warming bag, took off my jacket, and counted steps ( ok, maybe only 250,000).  Two minutes?  I don't think so.  

In fact, this was the longest steady interval I'd ever run.  During my last NOBO, we moved from road to trail near the end of the program to prepare us for the race.  Since we were running in the woods, we abandoned intervals in favor of running in packs so we didn't get lost.   OK – I nearly got a little lost.  But, it meant that the last time I was timing my intervals, I was running four and walking one.   Wednesday  night, I ran five and ones for two and quarter miles.   

The second amazing proof that time stops when I run?  It has to speed up when I walk to keep everything in balance.   I realized that time was speeding up because I couldn't complete two sentences in the space of one walking break.   Now, others may attribute that to the fact that panting and talking are often incompatible, but I know the truth.  Time moves faster so that when I've finished running, everything is back the way it was before I stepped out of the parking lot. 

It's actually kind of amazing to see how time bends around running.  In the space of an hour, I'm able to reset my mood, justify my new shoes, reclaim some connection to my youth and make lots of people feel really good about themselves as they watch me stumble by.    And the next day, when my calves are screaming?  I think about my power over time and space and I smile.

In Praise of Synthetic Fabrics

The sound of the rain woke me this morning.  It wasn't the subtle sound of romantic poetry and bad 80s love ballads.  This was loud ticked off rain, banging into the side of the house with attitude.   I'm going to run in this, I thought.  I'm going to get up, get dressed and go outside in this and start running.  I'll probably be trying to run home.  I'll probably spend the entire workout thinking of ways to avoid doing the thing that I'm already in the middle of completing.   My mind works like that.

The first peal of thunder didn't hit until I was finished with the morning paper and planning my clothing strategy.  This was after a discussion with my son, who was not joining me, and my daughter, who was. 

"Do we do this when it's thundering?"  she asked.

"We do." I answered

"Are we crazy?" she asked.

"Maybe a little." I answered.

So, we layered up.  Long pants, thick socks, sneakers that we didn't care about, two shirts and a jacket.  Baseball hats. Spy wear belt. Reflector patch.  

Here's the thing.  I don't look good in running clothes.  Spandex was not made for people of my dimensions.   I go to my workouts in outfits vaguely reminiscent of sausage casings, but in teal and hot pink.  With the exception of the time I met one of department heads unexpectedly at the run, I don't really care.  I know that I will spend my run counting steps, wishing that oxygen came in a chewable form and thinking that I really wish the time slow-downs would happen on the walking portions rather than the jogging ones.   Five steps out of the parking lot, my clothing is the last thing on my mind.

Until today.  Today, I spent most of my run thinking about the wonders of textile engineering.  As I slogged through very cold rain, I marveled at how comfortable I was within my turquoise tourniquet.   It only took five minutes for my various layers to be soaked through but I stayed warm and comfortable.   The leggings and shirt seemed to absorb the water without holding on to it.  I didn't finish the run with four extra pounds of fabric, a fate my co-runners in sweats seemed to suffer. 

It was still raining when we finished the two and a quarter mile loop.  It was still raining when I got home, peeled off the layers of synthetic magnificence and hopped into the shower.   I was so cold that the hot water felt like ice on my bright red hands.   It was still raining two hours, four pancakes and a cup of coffee later.

In fact, rain was still angrily pelting down at lunchtime when I looked across the table at my daughter and smiled.   We had gotten up at the crack of dawn, layered ourselves up and gone for a run – a little bit crazy but together.

Maybe next time I'll let her borrow some of my spandex.

The first step

There are moments in your life when you realize that something has fundamentally changed.  Saturday morning, I had one of those moments.   I was running.  Up hill.  By choice.  And jogging along beside me was Cheryl Treworgy, world record setting marathon runner.   Granted, she was in her gardening clothes and carrying her winter coat while I was counting steps and promising things I didn't even have to gods I don't believe in so I could reach the top.  But I was there, running.

Such is the power of NOBO, a beginners training program that promises to help you complete a 5K race by the end of ten weeks.  They don't promise you'll run it. They don't promise you'll love it.  They promise that, following the program, you can complete it.  The running it and loving it part comes later.

This is my second NOBO.  I joined in the fall because after several years of being very ill, I got cranky.  I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and wanted to try something different.   Running was the definition of what I could not do.  It involved muscles that were damaged and body systems that didn't always function well.   It was genuinely scary.    But, I decided that if I even got through the workouts, I would have accomplished something.  

So, I went to the informational meeting and met Natalie.  Natalie is the planet's gift to coaching.  She seemed to intuitively understand how large a leap some of us were taking – and she promised us we wouldn't be alone.   She outlined the program structure and general plans.  She introduced us to the mentors.  They told their own stories of running and struggle and success.  I listened and I tried really hard to believe all of them, right up until they talked about loving running.   Surviving running?  Using running as a tool?  Absolutely.  Loving running?   Only real runners love running.  

The first few weeks were, honestly, kind of awful.  I don't know if it was my body or my brain, but I couldn't seem to find anything but failure.  I couldn't last through the intervals.  I was the last one back to the parking lot, week after week.   Most weeks, I'd have a mentor hanging back with me while I sucked air and apologized for holding them up.   To a person, they told me to hang on and it would get better.   Lots of very bad words went through my head at these points.  It Was Not Getting Better. 

Week four was a horrible week.  It was cold and rainy on the day we met at 6pm.  Winter was approaching, so it was dark.  We were running a route we'd run twice before.  I'd yet to make it through the intervals.   I don't know what happened.   Somehow, on that very cold night with the rain in my eyes, I had fun.   Oh, I didn't make all the intervals but I didn't have quite as much trouble.  I was still the last one back, but I came in with a group.   I was soaking wet and cold and shaky and somehow, it was more fun than I'd had in a long time.

Weeks six through ten were more of the same, struggle and challenge mixed in with the occasional burst of fun.   I found some people to laugh with and some mentors who seemed to be able to get into my head and get me out of my ruts.   I found that I was looking forward to the workouts and viewing those crazy morning runners with new eyes.  

The day of the race was bitterly cold.  I'd learned enough to know that once I got moving, I'd need to get rid of any extra layers, so I dressed lightly.  It made the 45 minute wait to start feel like hours.    The course was hard, with more hills than I expected.   I walked a lot of it.   Still, in the last quarter mile, I ran.  I ran around the corner and saw my husband waving.  I saw my son waiting by the finish line.  One of the group mentors ran beside me towards the finish line.

It took me forty three minutes to run/walk 3.1 miles.   Guess what?  It was my personal best, my PR as the real runners say.  

After that, deciding to enlist for another round of NOBO was easy.   I know it will be very hard.  I know I'll wonder what I was thinking when the easy interval is suddenly, inexplicably harder.   But, I'll remember Saturday, when I got to run uphill next to one of the most impressive athletes of my era and I'll smile.