Salem Lake

So this is late...surprise!

A couple of weeks ago, I ran the Salem Lake 30k for the third time.  I want to say upfront that there are some legitimate issues with this race (they unfailingly run out of food and gatorade and sometimes water at the finish line, and they make the winners wait over 2 hrs for the awards ceremony while they wait for the last person to finish), but it is generally a very well-coordinated race with great volunteers.   It's a mostly flat, 2/3 unpaved course with aid stations - seemingly perfect for a good long run before a fall marathon.  This is where I begin to vent (with apologies to the race director).  I detest this race. I detest it way more than is warranted by the relatively minor issues noted above. Why do I detest this race, you might ask?  Let me count the ways:

The first year I ran, it was fine.  No major complaints except for the part where you start being able to see the finish line about 5 miles before you get to the finish line.  Oh look!  I can see it!  I must be getting close!  No wait - I have to run around this crazy finger-shaped piece of lake...  Okay.  I see it again!  Oh wait - another little finger-shaped piece of lake.  There are approximately 1500 little finger-shaped pieces of lake that turn what appears to be a short run along the banks of the lake to the finish into a colossal mind f*&k.  Did I mention that the course takes you all the way around this crazy paramecium-shaped lake, to within approximately 400 yards of the finish line, where you then do a random out and back on a paved bike path, get within approximately 400 yards of the finish line AGAIN, only to run BACK around the god-forsaken lake?  That was fine, though - it was still a nice, flat course in preparation for my second ever marathon.  Good times.

The next time I ran, a year or two later, I was in MUCH better shape - I was training for Chicago with the aim of qualifying for Boston.  I had scouted the finishing results for the past several years and, with the pace I had been training at, I was pretty sure an age group award would be mine.  SO I ran and had a great race.  Surpassed all my expectations pace-wise.  "Awesome," I thought "I'm in great shape AND I bet I age grouped."  SO I hung out for the approximately 2 hrs till the awards ceremony (growing increasingly hungry and thirsty because of the perennial lack of food and drink) only to discover that a local college XC team or alumni team or something had been out and had won all the awards for my age group.  In fact, despite the fact that I had taken approximately 20 min off my time, I actually finished one place WORSE in my age group than the previous year!  Not the race directors' fault, per se, but it would have been nice to post results so I didn't have to wait around 2 hrs to find this out.  ...and did I mention I completely fell apart at Chicago?  I can't say for sure whether this was a result of running too fast at Salem Lake, but I can't help but think it may have played a role...  Oh - and the course still made me want to stab myself in the eyeball over and over again.

So here we are, something like 5 years later and I'm training for the Des Moines marathon with some vague hope of perhaps semi-accidentally earning a spot in Boston (despite running exactly ZERO road marathons in the past 4 years and being completely and utterly inept at pacing - more to come on both of these things later).  I had been dutifully training on the track and doing all my long runs on the single track at Umstead, when a well-meaning owner of a local running store suggested that this may not be the ideal training program for a flat-ish road marathon.  What?  I showed him my grumpy face at the idea of doing some flat training miles on the ATT instead of my friendly group run at Umstead.  He seemed unconvinced of the brilliance of my plan.  I continued to to project grumpiness in response to his seemingly logical arguments.  I left the store seemingly resolute with the brilliance of my training program, but he had planted a seed.  Ronnie later nourished the seed when he noted that Salem Lake was a flat course and was exactly 3 weeks out from the marathon - great for pacing!  Stupid seed.  Stupid Ronnie.  SO we registered.  The night before the race, we stayed up late, me working, him installing a ceiling fan.  In fact, we were so busy with our respective tasks that we didn't eat dinner till 10PM.  What great pre-race dinner did we select?  Spaghetti with meatballs?  Macaroni and cheese? Pizza? Hamburgers? No?  A bowl of Lucky Charms.  One bowl of cereal. Hm.  We then got ourselves put together and headed off to bed... around midnight.  The cats got up at 3.  I moved to the other bedroom.  The alarm went off at 4:30.  Oh dear.

SO we arrived at the race, got our numbers, greeted the people we knew, and I yawned my way to the starting line, feeling like I had been not only awake for 86 consecutive hours, but also like I had been hit by a school bus.  Neat.

After a few minutes of the race director thanking people and whatnot, we set off and I have to admit the first mile went great.  Despite some jostling for position and some slower folks up front as we made our way onto the trail, I was on pace.  Ditto for the second mile.  Same for the third, though I was still yawning uncontrollably and not really enjoying myself.  I tried to play that off as my having a bad attitude, though.  By the fourth mile, I knew that whatever the reason, I was not going to be able to run all 18.6 at pace and began to bargain with myself about how far I had to make it before I could just turn this mess into a long run.  I also began to be very irritated at getting talked into doing this stupid race.  Regardless, 10 miles was the goal.  So I did it.  At pace. But it hurt.  A lot.  ...and I apparently got a bit dehydrated in the process.  ...and it was unseasonably hot and humid that day (which was normal for this year, but my physiology still staged a protest).  So then I walked a mile and drained my water bottle.  After that, I felt much better and began jogging back toward the start/finish, thinking about various things like "is this a bad sign for Des Moines?  Why did I bonk?  Is this the result of bad pre-race preparation or is it indicative of a distinct lack of training/ability? Can I rebound in three weeks?  How might I do that?  How far should I run next weekend?  Did I forget to grade something at work?  What should I add to next Wednesday's lecture?  What's for dinner? Why am I now lying on the ground?  Why does my elbow really hurt?"  Yes, somewhere around mile 12, my thoughts were interrupted by a visit between my toe and a root, followed almost immediately by a visit between some rocks and various other parts of my body.  This was one of those falls that you thought you could save, which probably only made the situation worse.  In the end, I think it looked like I was sliding into third, but the basepath was paved with pointy rocks. A brief survey of my situation revealed a nice gash on my elbow that was bleeding not profusely, but had unleashed a pretty healthy trickle of blood down my arm, a pretty solid raspberry on my calf, a good bruise on my hip and a hole in the heel of my left hand (not as bad as the elbow, though).  "Well hell," I thought, "nobody's going to come get me, so I guess I have to truck myself the remaining 6.5 miles back."  This triggered a minor and short-lived internal temper tantrum and a sense of righteous indignation (I KNEW we shouldn't have done this stupid race!  This PROVES it!).  As I jogged back, I came across the official race emergency gator broken down across the path and thought "At least I'm not the only one having a bad day...."  From there, the story ends about like you'd figure - I shuffled in at 50k pace and got some help rinsing my elbow, which, as it turns out, had suffered what appeared to be severe tire damage in the fall (two rather deep parallel gashes).  I knew I was going to catch some serious ridicule from my usual Monday buddies, so I hammed it up a bit for the camera before running into my friend Tom, who had managed to not only also fall, but to hit his chin in the process.  In fact, there was a rather sizeable amount of trail carnage walking around when I looked at it.  Despite this, I knew I would be catching some serious ridicule from my usual Monday running buddies for falling at what can barely be called a trail race (though, as I reminded them, I have also tripped over a speed bump, so the rigor of the trail is no predictor of my potential for injury.  I figure it's really only a matter of time before I trip over the bump in lane 1 of the UNC track). So, in the end, I did NOT age group (though this go-round, preliminary results were actually posted before the ceremony), but I did finish within a minute of my first Salem Lake time, so that was amusing.

When I got home, I dug the remaining rocks out of my elbow (amused because all I could think was 'my descending pain modulation system is active right now'), updated my facebook status, and vowed never to do this stupid race again....again.

As an afterword, I would like to note that not everyone hates this race - plenty of people really like it.  Shannon and Anthony had great runs out there and seemed to enjoy themselves, and there are plenty of people who do the race every year.  My hatred of this race is totally undeserved and I will freely admit it.  But that doesn't mean I have to run it again.

Mountains-to-Sea 12 Mile

First, I want to send much love to Kim and Jason for their super awesome inaugural race. You should all run it next year. That being said, I have a couple of tips for those who want to run this race (i.e., don't be dumb like me):

1) The race starts with a little loop around a parking lot before diving into the woods. Really. It's a little loop. If you want to put yourself in a decent position for hitting the woods, you should *not* spend the final pre-race minutes standing at the back of the pack gabbing. This won't kill you, but you will spend a lot of time passing people and running through fallen leaves and brush.

2) Follow trail, not trail shoes. My streak of going off course is intact. This was was especially special as the group I was with saw a couple of people floundering down by the lake and called to them that we were on the 'real' trail... until our trail petered out, too. So what did we do, you ask? We went back to their WRONG trail before noticing that there was a steady stream of runners about 100 ft above us making a fairly well-marked left turn. Sigh. I then re-passed the folks I had already passed due to #1 above.

3) Brooks Cascadia shoe laces are the devil. They don't stay tied. I've had this problem before, but usually in races of the ultra variety (where a 30 second shoe-tying break a) doesn't really matter, and b) is sometimes a nice break). Today, the malicious laces came undone at mile 11 of 12. I briefly considered running with an untied shoe for the last mile, but with my history of falling down, I figured I should stop. This allowed a very nice lady running her first trail run to pass me. I didn't figure this would be a big deal, but it turns out we were racing for 3rd place overall (and the commensurate pair of free Montrails). Yarg. Now to be fair, said nice lady was coming on pretty strong, so she may have gotten me in the end, anyway, but once I got on trail after the shoe break, she didn't put any more distance on me. ...but then again, I did get a short break while tying my shoe.... Since I have no real way of knowing what would have happened, I am going to blame my shoelace for losing me some free shoes (while, of course, still congratulating Nice Lady for running a great race... really! This was a pretty technical run and she did awesome for a first-timer! ...but free shoes would have been nice, too :-P )

So yes - definitely a successful race, but there are still some lessons to be learned... which is great because now I don't have to look around for that 'something new' we reportedly learn every day.

Two years gone by... musings on today's run and stride length

So... I apparently got busy and/or boring and completely stopped communicating with those of you out there in the blogland (aren't I cute? I think people might read this!)

SO rather than try and summarize two years here and still end up with pages upon pages of drivel that no one cares about, I'll just jump right in to my thoughts now...which will probably still be pages upon pages of drivel that no one cares about.

Today I went for a long run from my mom's house - I learned many new things (like where Kent Denver is... though I only know how to get there via trail, so I don't know how useful this find is). I also learned that if you leave a jagged spot on your big toenail, it will rip a hole in your fancy new drymax socks over the course of 20 miles... Much sadness came from this discovery. On the upside, they still did their job and protected my precious tootsies from blisters. On the downside, it appears that the mud they had picked up at the super awesome 2009 Run at the Rock Slip n' Slide Mudfest was not entirely eradicated by 1) a good rinse in the shower, 2) hosing off, and 3) a trip through the washing machine. Poor little socks. I'm very proud of them for being such troopers and doing their job despite their state of disrepair. I have resolved to try and fix their little toe hole so they can accompany me on many more running adventures (and to buy them some friends).

I also happen to be reading Born to Run at the moment, where they talk about barefoot running (which I have been doing on and off since the late '90s... mostly due to not having running shoes available when the urge strikes) and how your stride changes when you wear shoes. What's funny is that the stride everyone describes seeing when folks run barefoot is pretty close to my natural stride in shoes (knees bent to absorb shock upon landing, footstrike on the outer heel, moving inward as the arch collapses to absorb the shock, then moving outward again to toe-off). As a result, when I put on my little Vibram Five Fingers (to ward off the agony of hitting itty bitty pebbles while running barefoot), I have no problem launching into a 4+ mile run despite the dire warnings of other newbie barefoot runners. It also means I generally look goofy in race pictures because I almost never reach full stride extension in long races (and I pretty much don't run short races) and they always seem to catch me when I am in shock absorption phase, so my legs look like they are about to buckle, leaving me in a crumpled heap. For years I tried to overcome this and open my stride to achieve that majestic, long stride for which my gangly legs appear, at first glance, to be built, but this resulted in a series of stupid, nagging injuries and my essentially having to learn how to run again.

Any time I think about running styles, I am reminded of a conversation I overheard between two friends on a run about 7 years ago - the one put forth that there were two kinds of runners out there - the floaters and the grinders. He was definitely a floater, bounding from rock to rock, patch of dirt to patch of dirt, whereas the other friend and I definitely identified with the grinders: each step an intimate, lasting, solid connection with whatever our foot landed on. No bounding, just gears powering and grinding our way through the trails. Not terribly romantic, huh? Grinders also don't tend to be good on the downhills as our long-term relationship with the ground on each footstrike means that should the ground be less stable than we expect or contain a root or rock that we didn't notice, we have already committed our full being to that spot and we are thus more likely than floaters (who have probably already flitted to the next location by the time the ground tries to betray them) to cultivate a new relationship with the ground - this time between our face and our earthen companion.

So where does this all fit in to barefoot running revelations? Well, you see, around this same time, I was also blessed to associate with a number of top notch triathletes who I overheard talking about downshifting to 'granny gear' when riding uphills. While I have never mastered proper gearing on a bicycle, I reasoned that I should be able to do the same thing running: itty bitty quick strides to pull me up the hill with minimal effort exerted per stride. There are very few hills you can't run with this strategy. As a result, I tend to run way more hills than your standard ultra runner. Its not pretty, mind you (I have the race photos to prove it!), but I motor my little self up the hill with my itty bitty strides considerably faster than I would walk and I don't feel any worse for the wear when I get to the top. The problem is I am naturally one of biggest downhill trailrunning pansies in the world, which made me a super annoying freak at races at this point. I would pass people uphill, they would pass me downhill. I never actually got to run WITH anyone because most people excel in the opposite pattern and on top of that, we all ended up mildly (stress on the mildly as trail runners are a good-natured, friendly bunch) annoyed at having to pass every 10 min by dodging each other on narrow single-track trails to pass without falling off whatever mountain/ridge/bank we happened to be running along.

One day, though, I received a revelation. I was running a lovely little "50k" (if you know David Horton, you know what this means) and came upon a rather steep downhill portion of the course. As I began to pick my way down, expecting to see all the people I had passed on the preceding uphill (as was my routine), a gangly mountain man-looking person came flying by me. The thing I noticed about him was that he was not bounding down the hill like others I had seen pass; instead, he appeared to be almost skiing down the hill. It was like a beautiful lightbulb went off in my head: my lack of propensity for bounding from rock to rock like a gazelle did not preclude me from short footstrikes and the glory of blazing down a hill. In fact, this skiing actually might be more energy efficient as it didn't involve much in the way of quad-pounding landings. I viewed the whole thing like more of a conveyor belt - feet just rotating around and around rolling me down the hill. Now mind you, one ill-placed root or rock could still result in a face-to-ground mating ritual, but I reasoned that my wildly flailing arms might prevent too much actual damage to my beautiful mug (ha!) So power granny was born and adapted to up and down hills, with moderate success.

The state of my career

I've been working toward my PhD for a very long time now. I submitted a paper, they asked for some additional experiments, I did them, and came up with an unexpected result that will require me to largely rewrite the paper. It kind of weakens the original point, but makes for a more complete story. However, I've been having a lot of trouble getting a couple of other experiments to work, so I went back to try and figure out what might have caused my unexpected result. Basically, my protein is synthesized much slower than a closely related protein, indicating a different RNA structure... Understanding how all this works is not necessary, however, as I think the picture is really worth 1000 words:


My career has been reduced to a picture of a phallus.

(As a sidenote, if you tilt your head to the right, it looks like a snowman with a big gun...or a huge erection...you know, whatever.)

The reason for the slower synthesis is likely the little antenna between the shaft and the left testicle. Sigh. I'm going to have to do a lot of practicing so I can present this with a straight face.

stupid rant of the day

I am not a short person. I will readily admit that, at some times in my life, my pants have been pushing the limit of socially acceptable length. I've never been asked if I'm expecting a flood or anything, but it's hard to find pants that fit when you're a female but are the height of an average male (look it up - average American male is 5' 9.5"). I am forever grateful the people in the fashion industry who finally realized that there are tall women out there who live on a budget and, as a result, started selling pants in "long" sizes at stores where I can afford to shop. I really do appreciate that. Really.

What I can't understand is short people whose pants are too short. 99% of pants made for adults in this world would be too long, if anything - how is it that YOU managed to find the one pair of pants anywhere that doesn't even touch the top of your shoes? ...or are you just mocking those of us who have done a better job of overcoming gravity?

Marge Simpson is a sage

So I managed to catch the Simpson's re-runs on TV last night and it was as if fate had plunked me down in front of the TV... You see, Lisa won tickets to an indy flick on NPR and dragged the whole family to see a movie called "Kosovo Autumn" or something to that effect and as the family is leaving the theater, the following conversation took place:

Bart: [after they watch a foreign film] I was so bored I cut the pony tail off the guy in front of us.

[holds pony tail to his head]

Bart: Look at me, I'm a grad student. I'm 30 years old and I made $600 last year.

Marge: Bart, don't make fun of grad students. They've just made a terrible life choice.

So true, Marge, so true....

warning: attactus - it looks harmless enough...

I was innocently trying close the blinds today when, out of nowhere, I was mauled by a vicious attactus. It looks like a harmless little houseplant, sitting innocently next to the window, but beware - a small brush against the plant with an unwary digit will result in an index finger full of little hairlike needles. Even worse, though, is that the afflicted appendage will sting for hours afterward.

I was just trying to help...it was getting dark...I didn't want the little plants getting cold next to the window in this frigid (HA!) North Carolina winter evening weather. Apparently I had overstepped my bounds.

As an aside, I would like to point out that it is supposed to rain here tomorrow...nothing says Merry Chistmas like a nice, gray, rainy day!

Happy holidays to all (except my new sworn enemy, the attactus)!