Start time: 8/2/03, 6:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Activity: Running
Distance: 18 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 2:2 (mostly)

Phew! I’ve been trying to climb back up to speed this week, and while it was a tough journey, I think it was well worth it. After having a couple of weeks off, last Saturday’s run was a lot tougher than it should have been, so I knew I had to stop slacking off. I got some good solo runs in on Tuesday and Thursday, so I figured I was ready for this Saturday’s 18-mile run.

The farthest I’d gone this year was just 14 miles, and one of those miles had been walked in, so I was already mentally prepared for the idea of just maybe doing 17 miles, but I’d play it by ear. One great boost of encouragement this morning was that my parents were going to be water volunteers! That meant that they were helping man a water stop at the Vienna Community Center where they’d be pouring water and Gatorade for runners, offering pretzels, and generally keeping us from collapsing into a heap. It really meant a lot to me for them to be out there that early in the morning; trust me, it was very much appreciated! (If you’re interested in helping out this way and live in the DC area, let me know!)

There were only six of us this week—so much for that huge group of people we started with in our pace group back in May! Hopefully we’ll have some of our missing in action members back before too long! We set off at a reduced running pace (starting with the 16-miler they slow us all down a little more so we don’t burn ourselves out before the marathon itself!); Lindsay and Scott were going to run the full 18 miles, Madelyn and Beth were planning on just 17 miles, and Julie and I were both playing it by ear. The first 7-mile stretch went really well, running from the edge of Arlington all the way through Vienna. (Although we did watch one group miss the turn-around and keep running. We hollered at them that they were going too far but they said they couldn’t hear us. Oh well.) So naturally, things got tougher on the way back.

It was probably nine miles in that we lost Madelyn and Beth; Madelyn has always been pretty vocal about her lack of ability to run through the heat, and today was no exception. We turned around and the two of them had slowed down a bit, so we waved to them for good luck and kept pushing forward. By the time we got back to home base (14 miles in) we were a little tired but so far, so good. It wasn’t until soon after the 16-mile point that I finally started to really drag; nothing was hurting badly, but I was just feeling exhausted. It’s no small wonder, since I was already three miles into brand-new distance! I told the rest of the group that when we hit the next water stop, I was going to adjust my running pace and slow down a little bit, and Julie thought that sounded like a good idea. Lindsay and Scott headed off, almost leaving a dust cloud in their wake.

The good news is that the rest of the run went really well; we didn’t get in that long after Lindsay and Scott, and Madelyn and Beth made it in soon after that with 17 miles under their belts. This was a really important run for me because it pushed me back up to where I should be in terms of progress. It’s always tough to catch up when you’re behind, but I’m feeling good about being back up to speed now. Next week is just a 9-mile recovery run… piece of cake!

Start time: 7/26/03, 7:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Activity: Running
Distance: 8 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 3:1

Well, it’s been two weeks since the last report, and you’d think I’d have a lot to say. Nope, not really. Went to San Diego, probably walked about 40 miles (minimum) in the five days I was there, but didn’t do a lick of running. Nor when I got home. So it had been two weeks since I’d gone running (a 7-mile recovery run) when I got up this morning for the 8-miler.

We had a pretty small group; Julie was there but just water volunteering to let her knee rest from last week, and a bunch of other group members were also MIA (Madelyn, Michelle, Asha, Dave, John… you get the idea). So it was just six of us that headed out for this week’s run. The temperature was pretty hot, but not unbearably so. We went down to five members pretty quickly since one group member was still getting back up to speed from an IT-band injury, and Mary decided to drop back to a slightly slower group for the rest of the run.

The remaining five of us hoofed it pretty well, though. After about half of the run one of my leg muscles felt a little stiff (from non-use) so I made sure I didn’t push it too hard. I happily Scott and Beth take the lead and they blazed a good trail for me, Lisa, and Lindsay to follow. By the last quarter mile I was feeling beat enough that the final hill was too daunting to run up, so I walked it instead, but other than that had a strong-enough finish for my books considering I’d been a real slacker.

Next week will be concentrating on getting back up to speed (where has my drive gone this year?) and preparing for the 18-miler. Woohoo! In the meantime, check out the newly-updated pictures section of the website and enjoy!

Start time: 7/12/03, 7:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Activity: Running
Distance: 7 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 3:2

Another recovery run, another short week to report—aside from big thanks to Derek Barnes for helping support my fundraising this year!

After my uncomfortable 14-miler last week I took it pretty easy this week. I was watching my parents’s dog all of this week, so he was at least going for a very short walk every day, but otherwise I have to admit it was spent with me sitting on my butt a lot. The run site on Saturday was pretty deserted; I think some people are taking these short “recovery” runs for granted. We only had five people in our group, but Julie and I were the only ones in good shape. John was recovering from his fall two weeks ago, Lindsay just had some soreness issues that were being worked out, and visiting from another group was Lisa who is having what’s called IT Band Syndrome. I think our group should’ve been renamed “walking wounded” this week!

We ended up going a little slower in deference to the rest of the group, but John and Lindsay decided that discretion is the better part of valor (which it is) and after the first three miles decided they would just walk another two miles and call it a day. Julie and Lisa and I pushed on, and while a coach recommended that Lisa call it quits early, she pushed her way through with us.

Next Saturday I’ll be out of town (in the first three weeks of July I will actually have been at home for all of five days!); I’m tenatively going to try and make up the missed 16-miler that following Tuesday, but a lot will depend on how I’m feeling that morning. (If I do try and make it up, I’ll be doing half in the morning and half in the evening, which my coach last year swore works just fine.) If not, I’ll play it by ear. I’m good at that.

Start time: 7/5/03, 6:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Activity: Running
Distance: 14 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 3:1 (and then 3:2, and then 2:2. Yeesh!)
Average pace: hahahahahahahahaha

Big thanks this week go out to S.L. Viehl, who is my latest sponsor. Thank you so much!

Welcome to Washington DC, home of the world of humidity and heat. That’s perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but it doesn’t feel like much of one. This weekend has been unbearably hot; which made me look forward to being able to start at 6am this Saturday for our 14-mile run.

Except, of course, even at 6am it was still really hot. I have to remind myself that the actual day of the marathon (at the end of October) will be much cooler and more pleasant to run in, because otherwise the thought of doing it would be discouraging at best. We had a small group this week, what with yesterday being Independence Day and all, so just five of us headed out to have a practice run that would be just over half a marathon.

The first six miles went pretty well, but it was right around then that we lost all of our shade and things started heating up in more ways than one. Some of us were dragging more than others, and around the 8.5 mile point, we’d already shifted our running pace down a bit in an effort to keep from going splat. We lost Madelyn about three quarters of a mile later, though, who decided that she was going to catch a group behind us and come in at a slower pace. I’m wondering if I should have done the same, because by the time we hit our second turn around (10 miles in), I was starting to really drag. Nothing was hurting, thank goodness; I was just feeling extraordinarily tired. I kept pushing for two more miles, and then we changed our running ratio again, which kept me going for another mile. With one mile to go, I told my group to just go on and I was going to walk it in.

I’ve heard more stories about “hitting the wall” than I can count, but I don’t think I’d ever actually done so until today. I’ve had a handful of bad running experiences where I felt run-down and needed to slow down a bit, but this was different; this was “I’m going to walk because I can’t run”. So that’s what I did. I stuck my face in a water fountain about half a mile into that last stretch, and it felt absolutely heavenly. Towards the very end of that final mile, I even ran a small stretch just to try and boost my spirits up, because they were pretty low. But all in all, it was a pretty downbeat experience.

In two weeks I’m going to be missing the 16-miler due to being out of town, but hadn’t planned on making it up. Now I’m trying to come up with alternate plans to do so because after such a dreadful 14-miler, the last thing I want to do is have a bad 18-miler as well. Ugh.

Oh well. The last time I had a running session this bad, the next long run went perfectly, so here’s hoping history repeats itself! (And cooler weather, while we’re at it. That would be nice.)

Start time: 6/28/03, 6:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Activity: Running
Distance: 6 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 3:1
Average pace: 14:00min/mile

Not too terribly much to report this week! The rain momentarily let up this week, and after some hot days earlier in the week the temperature dropped just in time for this Saturday’s run. It’s just a six mile run this week, to let people recover from last week’s 12-miler and not injure themselves.

Of course, sometimes fate has other ideas. We were about three-quarters of the way through when John tripped on a bridge (the boards bounce up a little bit when we run over them, and his toe caught the board on an upwards bounce) and went flying. The poor guy landed right on one of his knees, and he ended up having to walk the last mile and a half back in. We’d all been thinking about what a great run this week was, and how well everyone was doing, so that will teach us to all get a little too secure!

Still, otherwise, a nice jaunt out and back, and perfectly on pace. (And as an added bonus, a pace group below us that’s been running too fast and passing us these last two weeks got lectured by the coach about going the correct pace. Not that it will stop them, I’m sure, but I’m glad they were told. It can be discouraging when a group that’s supposed to be slower keeps passing you!)

Start time: 6/21/03, 7:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Activity: running
Distance: 12 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 3:1
Average pace: 14:00min/mile

Woohoo! What a great week this was. I got some donations from the following fabulous people: lioncub (who even as I type this is participating in the Tour de Friends bike ride from North Carolina to Washington DC to raise money for people with AIDS!), West and Jim Flanagan, and Monica and Jim McGrath. All heroes!

Then, I actually got off my butt and ran both of my maintenance runs during the week (instead of just one of them like I’ve been doing as of late). On Tuesday this meant running through the rain, while on Thursday it was outrunning a storm front that was rolling in (hey, at least there were nice cool breezes!), but the miles were under my belt and I was ready for Saturday.

Saturday morning started without a cloud in the sky, but still nice and cool; a couple pace group members were actually shivering! It’s great running weather, though, and after last week’s really hot temperatures this was a real relief. The majority of our run actually went without incident, unless you count me stepping off the trail and twisting my ankle around Mile 4 to be an incident. I shouted “Ouch!” or perhaps a less-pleasant word, but everything seemed to be fine so we pushed on.

Ultimately, though, it was a world of difference from last week. Everyone felt strong, we kept hitting the times we should have, and while we sort of split into two groups for the last mile or so (sometimes it just happens, there was about 100 feet distance between the groups so it wasn’t that far) we all finished really strong. In short, a near-perfect run.

Why couldn’t they all be this easy?

Start time: 6/14/03, 7:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Activity: Running
Distance: 10 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 3:1, mostly
Average pace: probably closer to 14:20min/mile

So, last week I ended my journal entry with the comment, “Here’s hoping for a slightly dryer next Saturday!” Well, apparently I don’t know what I have until it’s gone, because this came back around and smacked me pretty good this Saturday.

The leading up to Saturday wasn’t bad; I only ended up doing one of my two maintenance runs (bad Greg!) but I also pushed it back up to my old distance of 3 miles instead of just 2.5 miles, so that was a good thing overall. Most of the week was full of thunderstorms, though, and I was more than a little hesitant about just what kind of weather we would have on Saturday morning. The answer? A bright, sunny, extremely humid day.

Now by this time the last two years, we’d had a lot of experience running in the heat. That wasn’t the case this time, though, since we’ve been either drizzles or torrential downpours each Saturday. The end result was… a little tougher for some of us than others. We only had eight people in our group today, but that quickly dropped down to seven thanks to a group member’s knee problems. We were doing good for the first five miles, though, until several group members wanted to slow down the pace. It was really warm and a combination of the temperature and the humidity was dragging everyone down a bit. We ended up splitting in two, with Madelyn taking two other team members on a slightly slower pace while four of us charged on ahead. We were pushing ahead pretty well until two of the four people in the group decided to use a porta-potty.

Now when I’m having a good running day, stopping for three or four minutes is doable. When I’m having a bad running day, though, it’s near-disastrous. I just couldn’t pick any momentum back up when they were done; since my furthest distance at this pace was only eight miles as well, that wasn’t helping matters. Since Madelyn’s other group had caught us during the potty break, I decided to step back and join them. The last two miles were pretty brutal; very little shade (next week I’m bringing my hat if it’s like this!), and I was feeling a little queasy thanks to breakfast not sitting well. The best part of the experience was sticking my face into a water fountain near the fire station. We all decided that it felt like jumping into a pool.

When we finally finished, I was actually a little relieved to hear that other groups had been having similar problems. It’s always discouraging to find yourself slowing down, even though that’s the smartest thing you can do in bad heat. And by the time I’d gone home and taken a cold shower (that felt remarkably good, honest), I didn’t feel that bad about today’s run. We pushed on as best we could, almost everyone finished the distance, and next week is going to be much better.

Well, I hope!

Start time: 6/7/03, 7:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Activity: Running
Distance: 8 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 3:1
Average pace: 14:00min/mile

Well, with week four, it’s hard to believe it’s been a month since Julie and I took the plunge again. It’s also hard to believe it’s almost summer with all this rain we’ve been getting in DC. Argh! One big ray of sunshine, though, came in the form of donations from my parents, Felicity Kusinitz, and Trina Short. Thank you all so much!

This weather is more than just annoying, I might add—it makes running really dreary and distinctly not fun. I ended up skipping one of my weekday runs entirely, doing the second one on Thursday when the sun decided to come out and taunt us. When the sun was still hanging around on Friday I thought that maybe… just maybe… nope. Saturday morning brought us rain, rain, and more rain.

I have to say that today’s training run was probably one of the five most miserable ones I’ve ever experienced. We’ve had some scorching hot runs (although I missed the infamous run of death last summer… oh darn) but this was a completely different kind of yuck. Despite having a baseball cap on my glasses were covered with water so I could barely see, my waterproof jacket had clearly overloaded and was clinging to me in a not at all pleasant way, and all I could think about was how wonderful it must be to wear dry clothing. I don’t know if it was the weather or just being tired, but I was dragging all through the second half to boot; nothing was hurting, just a general desire to find a nice warm bed and curl up for a little nap.

When we had about a quarter mile left to go, Julie started cracking up and pointed at the front of my legs. Apparently the rinse cycle of my laundry machine left trace amounts of soap in my shorts, and after almost two hours of pounding rain, they’d started to foam up and then drip the soap all down my legs. We decided that I was so eager to go home and take a shower that I’d already started to lather up. (Of course, then we noticed that Julie’s new shorts had dripped black ink down into her socks, so turnabout is fair play.)

Here’s hoping for a slightly dryer next Saturday!

Start time: 5/31/03, 7:00am

Location: W&OD Trail

Activity: Running

Distance: 7 miles

Run:Walk ratio: 3:1

Average pace: 14:00min/mile

Another week, another progress report… big thanks this week to my grandmother Ruth Spinelli, who became my latest donor while I was up visiting her in Pennsylvania over the weekend. Thanks so very much!

It’s amazing how a bad week can radically change someone’s attitude. If you’d asked me how I was feeling about this year’s training yesterday, the truth is that I wasn’t feeling terribly positive about it. After last Saturday’s run, sitting in a car for four hours was not one of the best things I could’ve done for my legs. By the time we arrived in Pennsylvania my calves were feeling stiff and sore, something they shouldn’t have been doing after just a six-miler. Even worse, I wasn’t able to shake the soreness; I went running on Monday evening after I got back home, and I had to quit halfway through because it felt like I hadn’t run in years.

All week long, I was trying to loosen up my legs and get back up to speed, with both crosstraining and just plain old walking. Add in strange shifting weather patterns and my joints were hurting on and off with no rhyme or reason. (Bizarrely, so were Julie’s, making us decide that it was the fault of the weather.) Even as late as Friday night, though, I wasn’t feeling good about it all. I was quietly thinking to myself that if this kept up, I’d have to seriously re-evaluate my decision to do the marathon this year.

So this morning when the alarm went off at 5am, I was not in the most pleasant of moods. I hauled myself to the run site, we split into two smaller groups, and headed out into the (thankfully not very hot) humidity… and a funny thing happened. Everything seemed to finally snap back into place. I didn’t have any problems at all with my legs or any body part. Maybe all I needed was a nice long run to finally get back to speed, but the seven-miler flew by really quickly, and our group (me, Julie, Asha, Lindsay, and Mary) did a great job of hitting all of our time goals.

Needless to say, I’ve made sure to keep everything moving today since then, and so far so good. Sometimes, it seems, all you have to do is not give up and it’ll all work out in the end.

Start time: 5/24/03, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Activity: Running
Distance: 6 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 3:1
Average pace: 14:00min/mile

Well, it’s only been a week and it’s still hard to believe I’m doing this again! Big thanks to my first donors for this year, Esther Friesner and Julie Babyak, both who sent donations in before I’d even gotten my butt in gear to start soliciting any! Wow!

I was feeling a little sore after last week’s run (a lethargic winter will do that to you) so I took it easy this week; the near-continual rain and gloom may have had something to do with that as well. Before I knew it, though, it was already Saturday morning and time to head back onto the running trail!

Our group was pretty large this early on in the game, so the staff asked us to at least temporarily split into two groups. Madelyn took one group, while I ended up taking the other. It felt like old times to have a nice small group again, although I suspect we won’t stay split for too long. People always drop out of the program, or shift to different pace groups early on. For now, though, this split should work pretty well.

Our last 8am start time until October (yikes) greeted us with cool temperatures and cloudy weather; it kept threatening to rain, but never actually did so. Probably because I brought a hat. Our group did pretty well with staying on pace, something that’s often tough to do this early on! It seems like a really nice group of people.

And now, I’m off to Western Pennsylvania to visit relatives over Memorial Day weekend. I hope everyone else enjoys the day off (if they get one)…