So I ran Squamish

It wasn’t the big one, it was sadder, shorter version for people that want the Squamish 50 feel without the near death experience. 23k was is roughly 14.2 miles with 2,000 feet of climbing. I got the medal, and the too small shirt because the the lady passing out the swag bags totally ignored me when I asked for men’s medium (being over six feet tall gives me shoulders wider than normal women) so she stuffed a medium WOMAN’S shirt and I sadly didn’t find this out until I pulled it out of the bag two days after the race.

 I have mixed emotions about it. I can’t say I felt very accomplished. It took me over 4 hours but I spent a good deal of time sitting along side the trail towards the end until I came down to sea level where I found a behind primitive bathroom in a park where I spent even more time finally able to assuage my stomach pains for a short enough time to get to the finish line.

 I was so slow that there were no cool pics of me running through the woods, just one embarrassing photo of me crossing the finish line. I looked bigger than I realized and the sad misery of why I was so damn slow sunk in like a knife.

 I had had a whole year to prepare for that and I crossed the finish line heavier than I had ever been in my life, even bigger than both of my pregnancies. I felt like crap, I looked like crap, I knew it was time to stop with the denial and just stop stuffing my face.

 I walked through Whistler Village for the rest of the week. Carefully tracking the calories I shoved in my face with the My Fitness Pal app as closely as I could, at least, and now three and a half months later I am down 20 pounds. I’ve already taken two minutes off my mile, and trust me even with those two minutes my time still isn’t anything impressive, and I am aiming for a total 40 pound loss by my 40th birthday which is two months from now. Okay, maybe it sounds a little ambitious but 40 before 40 had a good ring to it.

 I have tried losing weight a million different times, mostly when I didn’t need to lose now that I am looking back at it, because really the only time I have been legitimately overweight is from the three years I spent in Montana, gaining by the week, no matter how much exercising I was doing. It was a good lesson to learn that you can’t outwork crappy eating. It’s about calories, and the whole “I run because I like to eat” only really seems to apply to people that are running a hundred miles a week and even those runners eat way better than I ever did. Whole 30, keto, plant based, vegan. It really only works if you are eating in a calorie deficit. You can’t stuff your face just because it’s a magical type of food. I proved this to myself as we vacationed and ate crap food on the road and I STILL managed to lose weight because I added the calories up carefully and didn’t go over 1800. I ate buns with my burgers and drank a soda if I had the calories to spare and yep, still lost.

 So we’ll see where this goes, if I will get myself back in a condition that I want to cross a finish line again and actually order the picture, or maybe be faster enough for the photographer to find me in the woods.

A goal! Yes, I finally have a race!

So I finally bit the bullet and chose a race. I told my husband I was going to make the depressing assumption that we were still going to be here this summer and his response was something along the lines of "I hope not but you might want to prepare yourself for the fact that we may be." So I found a race far away from the flat, color of dirt, landscape that we live in and selected the
St. Regis Trail Rail Run in June in St. Regis, Montana.

 Since it is about a four drive, I felt like driving all that way I should at least make it a worthwhile run and with four full months to prepare, the 30k seemed attainable. I was, after all, able to drag my sad self over the finish line of a half marathon. What's six more miles?

 I printed out the Hal Higdon Novice marathon training plan and tweaked it a bit with the mileage. I absolutely don't want to repeat how I trained for the half marathon in August by not running the race distance before the actual race. The farthest distance on the half marathon plan was ten miles and the last 3 were a killer, so this time around I plan on running 18 miles before the actual race.

 Week one called for three days of 3 mile runs with a jump to 6 miles on the long run day. Yeah, I told myself, probably not happening. I haven't run 6 miles in two or three months. My son had swim team practice the day of my long run so I had to run on the treadmill. I told myself I could probably make it to 5 miles, and that would be a stretch but once I hit 5 I surprisingly felt pretty good and managed the last mile. Week one of my 30k training was complete!

Trying to get my mojo back

 I am watching big snow flakes come down right now, after a warm sunny day yesterday, a twenty degree drop in just an hour; welcome to Montana! Blah!

 One of my issues with keeping up with running back in Washington was the rain and I know here it will be the wind and snow. I don't know how dedicated I can be to the treadmill, it's just so boring!

  Since September 10th, the half marathon, the farthest I have run is five miles. Mainly out of boredom, I know this. I need some mental training along with physical, something beyond just kicking my butt. I need a mental kick, too! Finding a running partner would be ideal, but the husband nor the kids are interested. I don't have an addictive personality, unless you count coffee, so that's against me in the must not stop running department. I follow lots of trail runners on Instagram for inspiration but they are always posting awesome adventures in beautiful places, which inspires me to someday go and run these places but being that I am on the prairie right now, and at least a three hour drive from any great trails to run safely, that kind of negates the inspiration NOW that I was hoping for. The running groups in town seem to mainly consist of diehard runners that run 6 and 7 minute miles and require me to make a third trip into town anyway, so that's off the table for the time being.

 Until I get inspired again, I need to just run my short three and a half mile runs, just so I am at least doing something, this much I have figured out. Just keep on moving and doing!

 

 

When women run alone, an uncomfortable topic

The murder of three women that had been out on runs just a few weeks ago seems to have created a flurry of discussions on the subject. There are so many different opinions on it and no matter what stance you have, you will have a large group of people strongly disagreeing with you so please realize this is MY opinion based on my own personal experiences and I don't in any way want to upset someone or tell another woman how they should go forward with their running, this is simply my view.

 Sadly, women being murdered while out running is not something unheard of. Just follow the news around the country and you will hear of it, maybe not often, but often enough for me. When I was nine years old, I was very close to being kidnapped while out riding my bike, with a friend, in broad daylight, in a highly populated neighborhood. Had I not had the good sense to listen to the voice within me that told me I was not going to make it to my apartment building and instead ran into a random person's yard and onto their front porch, I feel pretty certain that I would be dead.

  I basically blocked this from my memory for many years, my mom not taking me all that seriously when I told her the story once I got home and I think my child's mind just accepted my mom's theory and I shut it out. It wasn't until I was significantly older and replayed it that I saw how very close I was to being gone.

 I don't remember exactly what age I was when catcalling and whistling began if I was walking home from the school bus, or out jogging, but it basically became something that I accepted as a way of life. I would roll my eyes and avoid eye contact with whomever did it, I really didn't care. It wasn't something that made me fearful and I figured they thought they were complimenting me so whatever.

  When I ran in highly populated areas, I would occasionally have men run alongside me and try to chat. One came right out and told me he would meet me there at the same place the following day to run with me. No "hi, how you doing?" Just sort of a command.

 I gave him an "are you nuts?" expression and moved along. Oh, I guess I failed to mention that several of these incidents, including the last mentioned one, I was newly married so sporting a wedding ring quite clearly on my left hand.

 It wasn't until I had had two kids, and was still being hollered at whenever my husband wasn't running with me, that I became angry about it.

 One particular day when I was running with my husband and pushing both of my boys in the jogging stroller, my husband sprinted ahead for the last stretch of our run while I just jogged slowly along, when a van pulled up alongside of me and my boys, a teenage boy jumped out, another sat in the back with a video camera, while a third teen was driving. "wanna race?" the boy shouted as he ran alongside of me, apparently to capture this on video. I looked towards my husband, who was quite a ways of ahead of us but had just turned around and the teens saw him at that very moment. "Get in the van!" the driver shouted, seeing that there was a man in the vicinity, and off they took.

 Yes, it was harmless, but it was disconcerting to me, a mom that just wanted to push her kids in a stroller along the beach and had that been my boys, I would have been furious. The fact that they thought it was fine to harass me, until they caught sight of my husband and realized he was with us, also made me upset. If I am with my sons, now that they are older, or my husband, nothing. If my husband and sons are outrunning me, a car passes them without a word and I get hollered at.

 I have been followed out of my neighborhood on the one and only nearly dark run I ever went on alone and had a man expose himself to me on a long desolate stretch of road. Several people, mostly women oddly enough, thought it was funny. I wasn't one of them, and to this day I will not run in the dark alone again.

  I don't dress in an appealing fashion in any way shape or form, not even in tank tops. I think there are just men out there looking for an opportunity when it comes to situations like the flasher or the teenagers. Maybe also the catcallers. I think the only people ever saying that a female is asking for the attention because of the way she dresses are the actual perpetrators. No one in their right mind blames the woman and I do not believe we live in a world of "rape culture," the new buzz word, in this country What we do live in is a world where there are mentally ill and evil people out there and that is why I choose to run safe. Which for me means in well travelled areas when I am alone, out in the open where cars will be going by on a regular basis and never at night. I know that no matter what I wear, if there happens to be a sick individual out there, I am quite possibly a prime target based on the fact that I am female and he has an opportunity.

 I do teach my boys that catcalling and leering, hollering at a woman, is just completely unacceptable. It's harassment and disrespectful and all I can do is hope other parents choose to do the same but there will unfortunately always be mentally ill or just out right evil people living amongst us and we just never know when they will strike. I don't consider this living in fear, I just consider it living in (an unfortunate) reality.

Week Five, just barely

Some mom friends and I hiked trails at Glacier and I wasn't quite sure of what to expect physically. I WAY overpacked and wished I had taken pretty much nothing but my toothbrush and a change of underwear about mile three because all I really wanted to do was run.

  The views were lovely, the food was great once we got up there and it was a much faster 3 hour and 15 minute hike down as opposed to the six hour hike UP the day before. I knew hiking would be good cross training on my half marathon journey but I didn't plan on the soreness for two days after getting home. I think the walk down was what killed me, my calves were screaming after any moments of inactivity. My running got pushed to the side for a couple days but by that Sunday I was able to complete my 5 mile run so I felt that I successfully accomplished the week despite my missed runs that week.

 

Just coming out of the woods on our hike at Glacier.

 After Scott Jurek's book, I read "Older, Faster, Stronger," by Margaret Webb. It was definitely an encouraging read as I struggle with the thought of "getting old" as I stare down 40 in a few years. My husband and I just don't have people in our families to look to for inspiration when it comes to aging. The unfortunate thing is many of them seem to just be waiting to die. I know this sounds like a horrible thing to say but when you sit in your chair for the last 20 years of your life, complaining of "old age," I just can't seem to see it any other way. I don't want to be this way, and I don't want our boys to see us doing this. I want to hike to beautiful places and run trails as long as I can. I realize, of course, that good health isn't always guaranteed, but I can do my best to do what I can to stay as healthy as possible.

I really, really wanted to run this trail!

 I really enjoy reading inspiring books and articles written by people that feel the same as I do. I don't particularly care whether it is written by a woman or not, I pay more attention to the fact that they are beating the odds, male or female, and enjoying a healthy, active life. I came across a great article today about Laird Hamilton and his outlook on aging and staying active. He made an awesome point when he said "I think what happens is that we decide we’re old and we just stop, and everything stops working. There’s so much stigma and weirdness around being older." I just want to pull my hair out every time my grandma tells me one of her ailments is "just getting old." I try to encourage her to eat better and get out and walk but I think he mind is already made up that this is old age and this is how she will be. It makes me sad. Imagine if our society worked on changing this mindset with seniors and they found out there was another way? Unfortunately, I think, much like cancer, there is way too much money involved in the elderly, from specialty centers, to prescription drugs and the doctors that care for them. What incentive is there to encourage people to exercise and eat well? We have to decide that on our own and not look for a doctor to tell us these things. I hope to encourage others like so many have been encouraging to me, especially to my own family.

 But enough of that depressing talk! So I now on week six, having run SIX miles! last Sunday. The longest I have ever run in my life. It is hard to imagine that I can run 13 miles, but I keep putting along, checking off the days on my Hal Higdon schedule. This week has been the most difficult so far, even on my days of just 3.5 miles. It has been hot and I have been staying up too late (like I am doing now!) so I get up around 7:30 and it is already hot. There is nowhere to run in my area that has shade, I miss the heavily treed parks of my home in Washington. One day this week I decided to run my four miles on the treadmill at the gym, which was probably worse than running outside because for one it's mind numbingly boring, and two, the darn gym seems to have no air conditioning and while there was a line of fans along the wall, not one of them was on and I couldn't seem to see how to turn them on. I made a mental not to avoid the gym for running until the miserable arctic winds returned to the prairie this winter. I managed to run my four miles this morning in the 80 degree heat and reminded myself that next run day, which will be another 6 mile run on Sunday, I better get my rear end out of bed at 5:30!

A Mountain Goat enjoying the view with me, while my Lunas let my toes breathe.




 

My Luna Sandals, finally!!

A few years ago, the barefoot running movement was afoot (ha, like how I did that?) So much so that even non runners were aware of, which at the time was me. I saw people in those goofy toe shoes that reminded me of the toe socks of the 80's. Then for the ones not wearing the toe shoes were the ones running totally barefoot. I couldn't imagine how this was possible down any sort of terrain beyond grass.
 I had forgotten about the toe shoes but was reminded of them reading Born To Run. It all made sense of course, we weren't born with shoes on our feet, after all, and growing up in Hawaii I recalled as a child how spent most of my days either barefoot or in flimsy rubber sandals we called "slippers." Shoes were only worn at school and sporting events and we were able to do this year round thanks to the weather. I remember how tough my feet were as a kid, but now, I'm lucky if I can walk across the unwatered grass.

 So fast forward to three months ago and a book called "Born To Run" which everyone that runs and their spouse that doesn't, has read. I was intrigued by the science behind barefoot running, it only makes sense, right? Our feet are made to get us from point A to B, all without anything strapped to it. Humans like to interfere, just look at horses! And what do we get for it? Injuries and feet that can't make it across the lawn without a man made shoe strapped to it.
 So why not? I would give this quasi barefoot lifestyle a try. There are several minimalist sandals out there, but only Barefoot Ted was in the book I just read and he WAS based out of Seattle, so the Luna sandal was what I wanted. Yeah, I have a weird way of selecting my future purchases.
 I did a search on the store locator and of course, no local stores carried the Lunas. They did carry them at my favorite running store back in Bellingham, of course.
  I had to wait until until we went on our family vacation down to Texas and tried out a pair in Austin.
The saleswoman warned me to take it slow and give myself about a year before really running in them but after wearing them for the rest of my vacation I went on a two mile run with them once we got back to Montana.
 Running with them definitely gets you to land on the front of your foot rather than heel first. If you do land heel first you can feel the jarring all the way into your jaw. My calves were screaming so
I would switch back and forth, trying to land as soft as possible when running heel first. Other than muscle soreness in my calves I felt fine from running in them, the downside to them is that try as I might, I can't seem to adjust them so the buckle doesn't rub in the top of my foot, creating a sore spot.
First it was just one foot but by the second run is was both feet. I put band aids on both feet and that seemed to help significantly.
 Another down side is the rocks that get stuck in between your foot and the shoe, I have to stop
more than once to remove a small rock but that's what you get when you are stuck running gravel roads, and the rocks you kick up and hit your toes on rare occasions are killers.
 I pretty much wear them everywhere and enjoy letting my feet be free and unrestricted. I don't think I'll be running my half marathon in September in them but maybe next summer.