Running Mom's Motivation

Maybe we will get there one day. Maybe we will be one of those active families. I don't ever expect to be a thin family, but maybe, just maybe my plan is going to work. David is starting to get out and walk/run more frequently. And Grace is showing quite a bit of interest herself. We have started logging her miles for the Martian Kids Marathon that will finish in April of next year.

Yesterday I went with Grace and bought her some new shoes. Talk about a bad mom, I felt horrible after we got them. I realized that she has been wearing shoes that are too small for her and are falling apart while running. But now armed with her pretty pink running shoes she is all set. So far she has logged 2 miles...only 23 more to go before the big day. She does seem to be having a good time. I don't want to push her. I want her to want to do this on her own. And if she doesn't end up liking it, at least she tried.

Grace was so darn cute running yesterday. And, Rachel was not about to sit in that stroller while her sister ran. Grace would run up ahead of us, wait for us, and then her and Rachel would hug each other when we caught up. At the end I had Grace running short distances like she was sprinting in a race. She really loved it. And I think Rachel did somewhere between 1/2 mile and 3/4.

So I don't want to get my hopes up too much, but maybe we will be a family of runners. I will just be happy if my kids are active and healthy!

Total Miles Yesterday = 3 (one with Grace) Approximate Miles Since Beginning = 523

Posted in: on Friday, September 28, 2007 at at 4:17 PM 1 comments  

Last night's run sucked!!! But I am still glad I went. The dog kept stopping and acting like he had to pee when he didn't and my butt was dragging. Maria is so sweet. She always tries to blame it on the heat instead of my laziness.

So it was three miles of huffing and puffing in the heat. I can't wait for the cool weather to return.

Total Miles Last Night = 3 Approximate Miles Since Beginning = 511

Posted in: on Thursday, September 20, 2007 at at 7:50 AM 0 comments  

I am still running. I haven't been as good about blogging. My husband and I are trying to cut back on our Internet time. We are both finding it hard to blog and limit our time online.

I am loving the cooler weather. I can't believe how much easier it makes running. Last week Maria and I went for an easy three mile run. It was so nice. And the effort was nothing compared to usual. I was amazed to find that I had run it in a time similar to my race paces. It felt so good, I just assumed it had to be slow.

I have been experimenting with different was to take in energy while on my longer runs. A couple weeks ago I tried Clif Shots Gel. It is a thick Gel consistency that has 100 calories and some electrolytes in it. I hated the stuff. I barely gagged it down. But it did give me the pick me up I needed in the middle of the 12 mile run I did a few weeks ago. When I talked to Maria about it, she was pretty sure that it was just the brand that I was using that tasted so bad. She assured me that Gu would be better and it was her favorite. She dropped a couple samples in my drawer at work for me to try.

Last Sunday I decided to do a ten mile run. I was having some trouble with it and things just weren't going as smoothly as I would hope. I know that I will have some down days, so I didn't worry about it too much. But since I felt like I was dragging butt, I decided to try the Gu about half way through the run. It tasted slightly better, but I still had a hard time choking it down. I am not really sure if it helped me on my run, but didn't seem to hinder it either. I felt good when I ended the run, but then started getting extremely nauseous. I continued to retch for an hour after the run and had to go lie down at home because I felt sick moving around. When I finally felt better, I was starving and ate a huge dinner. But even though I felt better, I would still gag and feel nauseated every time I thought of the Gu. I am pretty sure that it just doesn't set in my stomach well. So I have concluded I am not a Gu girl.

Total Miles Last Week = 21 Approximate Miles Since Beginning = 508

Posted in: on Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at at 5:15 PM 1 comments  

This is my race report that I posted on the Runner's World Website...

What an awesome day for racing yesterday was. It got a little hot in the middle of the day, but since we were in the woods for most of it, it wasn't too bad. For those that don't know what DWD is, there is a 50k ultra, a 50mile ultra, and a 5 man 100k relay. This is all through the trails of Hell and Pinckney, MI.

Most people, including me, think of Southeast MI as being pretty flat. But the hills in Hell are something to talk about. Each leg of the race has a special name. There are 15 legs in the relay. Names include "Where's the F'ing Bridge?", "This Sucks", "Purgatory", and "The Stripper Pole." Each leg is rated on hills, water, and mud factors so that you can decide ahead of time whom should run which legs.

This was my first year doing the race, so I didn't really know what to expect. As we were pulling into town around 7am we started noticing all sorts of people in the road with head lamps on. They kind of came out of nowhere, so I am glad we didn't hit one of them. I had forgotten that the ultras started at 6am. When we pulled into the initial parking area I was in awe with all the people. It looked like one heck of a party going on at 7am.

Soon enough it was time to start and our first man took off with a huge wave of people dressed in everything from normal running clothes to women's underwear. Each leg of the race was unique and I can't tell you about all of them because it would take forever and thank goodness I didn't get to see all of them!

I had the third leg of the race. It about 3.5 miles. It was called the Rave Run. It was a nice run. The runner from the leg right before me got lost for a while, so I was really hyped up and ready to go when she got into the exchange point. I took off like a flash (at least for me) and quickly realized that I was running way too fast for my abilities. I slowed way down for the rest of the run. I had to walk a few hills, but I ran most of this leg. It was a good hard trail run, but not anything too over the top. I think it and one other leg were the only legs that didn't have something really hard. I fell right on my butt coming up to a road crossing as my feet slipped right out from under me on the wet grass. After I landed, I took inventory and noted that nothing felt injured, so I got up and finished shortly there after.

It was awesome coming into the exchanges because there were so many people standing around cheering and waiting for the next runner to come in. On some of the legs you needed to cheat and send out the next runner before the last one came in so that you didn't finish too late in the day. Even at these exchanges people were yelling and cheering. There were many people who passed me on the trails and were very encouraging. The volunteers were also a great help reminding us which markers to follow and giving encouragement along the way. This race was awesome because so many of the people were demonstrating what many of us have come to find in other runners...it is a great bunch of people.

My second leg was called Swoosh. I thought I was going to puke when I started because I had a headache all day and it was at its worse at the beginning of this leg. It was supposed to be any easy 4 miler with a low hill rating. THEY LIED! The hills on this leg were big. There were none like the Stripper Pole, but there were just so many of them and quite a few large ones. It was quite rocky and there were a lot of trees down along the trails. This was the leg where I could have easily gotten lost. We would be running along a perfectly nice, groomed trail heading out straight in front of us and suddenly the markers would just turn off the path and go down into the woods where there was no trail. The people that map out these trails are sadists! This leg had a little poison ivy. There was one small area of black mud that it looked like a lot of people had run through. But after my experience getting stuck up to my hips a couple weeks ago, I decided to go around. As a side note, when people got to the mud on the Where's the F'ing Bridge leg, there were ropes to help people get out and our team mate said there was no way someone as short as me could have made it through there on my own.

So the major thing about Swoosh was the hills. The good news was that my headache disappeared about half way through this leg. It took me an hour and 5 minutes to run just over 4 miles. When I got back my team was there again screaming and cheering me on. They are all much better runners than I am, so it was great having their support and them letting me take part in this event with them. When I got back, I yelled "those hills were a B*@ch." My team enjoyed hearing about my pain.

After getting back to the exchange (where my teammate had already left on the next leg) it was off again in the car to the next exchange. So that is pretty much the way the rest of the day went, moving from one exchange to the next. I was continually in awe of the Ultra runners that we saw throughout the day. At the finish, when our last man was coming in, the rest of us met up with him and crossed the finish line together. We all got medals and t-shirts that have the section of the release form where it mentions our possible injury or death printed across the backs. We had beer waiting at the finish and each team got a couple pizzas. There was a band playing as the final teams were coming in and the announcements for different prizes were being made.

It was an incredible day and I still can't believe that I was there to do it. I was filling in for another person on the team, so I don't think I will be able to do it again next year. As a runner that hasn't even been running a year yet, I was so thankful that my team included me and I got a little teary eyed thinking about it as I sat and watched the other teams finish. Our final time was 12hours and 2minutes.


Total Miles Yesterday = 7.5 Approximate Miles Since Starting = 487

Posted in: on Sunday, September 9, 2007 at at 7:39 PM 4 comments  

Check out my husbands blog. It is at davewithbighands.blogspot.com.

Posted in: on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 at at 8:34 AM 1 comments  

If there is anyone out there besides my darling husband keeping track of this blog you'll have noticed that it has been a long time (over a week) since my last post. There is a simple reason for this. I finished the Crim, and I crashed. I felt awesome after I finished that race and for some reason my body or my mind or both didn't want to run again.

Don't get me wrong, I have been running. I just haven't been enjoying it too much. When I started I didn't enjoy it much either. Sometimes you have to do things because you know you need to not because it feels good. There are many examples of this in life, childbirth is one. Even though I continued to run, I couldn't think about much to write. Of course I could have written "this sucks, I hate this, why the h@*# am I doing this, when will this end, " etc. But I don't think those thoughts are really good for anyone, so I will just keep them to myself.

I took two days off after my race. Maria thinks I should have taken more. Of course Hussam (my neighbor) thinks I take too much time off, but he is a teenager and I swear he has ADHD, so he doesn't believe in rest except when he is sleeping in past noon. I ran Monday, partially on Tuesday, and Wednesday last week. Each run was difficult and I walked a lot. Finally on Saturday I wanted to run and I was instructed by Maria that it was the last day before DWD that I could do a hard workout. So Hussam and I went for a long run.

We were planning on running 14-15 miles, but at the last minute decided to run on MSU's campus. We didn't have a route planned, so we decided to run for a certain amount of time. It was a good run, but a little interesting. It would take less time than I expected to run to a specific spot, so then we would have to loop back. That campus seems big until you have to run on it for over two hours. We also had the problem of having to find bathrooms and places to get water multiple time. So, we pretty much ended up running a crazy route with no rhyme or reason to it. I am glad no one needed to follow us. But it was a really nice run and we were able to go through the gardens on campus. It is absolutely beautiful there. It was nice to get back to the point of wanting to run. When we mapped out our run online it ended up being about 11.5 miles.

Yesterday Hussam and I went for a short easy run. I think I have finally convinced him that he needs to run by himself more. He tends to only run when I go. Since I am much slower than him he isn't making the kind of improvement that he should be. His distance has definitely increased, but I don't think his speed has. At the end of the run yesterday He decided to take off and run the rest of the way home to push himself. He told me later that it "started to hurt " in the end. I think he meant that in a good way. Then he said " I guess when I run with you I'm not doing anything......in comparison to what I should." Boy he knows how to make a woman twice his age feel good.

So this is a just a post to remind all of you that there will be good days and there will be bad days. Whatever your form of exercise, you aren't going to always want to do it. Some days you just need rest and some you need to get out there and do it despite how you feel. When you are at the bottom of the barrel, you have nowhere to go but up!

Total Miles Last Night = 3.6 Total Miles Since Beginning = 476

Posted in: on at at 8:02 AM 4 comments