March 2014

Molly (grey) and I (Vizi-Coral) on recent run with a backdrop of beautiful downtown Portland and the Willamette River.

Friday night, I cooked a new pasta dish. It was tasty—bursting with bits of artichoke and tomato–yet slightly bitter. The recipe called for adding a bit of honey at the end if the sauce tasted too tart, yet I was in such a hurry to serve my ravenous gang, I skimmed right past that end note. With every bite, I kept thinking the dish was good, but it lacked something. I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

Looking back a few years, I now can see my running was like that Pasta Rafael recipe: enjoyable, but missing something. I realize it was a regular running partner.

When my kids were little, I’d occasionally run with my good friend Ellison: The miles passed by in an engaging blur of books read and childhood memories shared. But it takes 25 minutes to run to E’s house—too far to go for an early morning weekday run. Training for the 2010 Portland Marathon, Sheila and I joined running forces and swapped tales of our like-aged kids. But, again, she lives about two miles away.

My appetite for solo running was keen, though: Episodes of “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me” and playlists populated by Lady Antebellum and Eddie Vedder kept me company. With earbuds jammed in my ears, I couldn’t hear what I was missing. Turns out it was the voice—and laughter—of Molly.

It’s no wonder we have laugh lines: Molly and I crack each other up.

Molly, a mother of three like me who lives a mere six short blocks from my house. While we usually meet between our houses, I know from the few times she’s had to make one more poopstop, I mean, pitstop before heading out the door to meet me, that it takes a mere four minutes to get from my backdoor to her front one.

Molly, a woman who wasn’t a runner when we met through elementary school carpool. I’d pull up in front of her house and as her daughters clamored into my Honda Odyssey, Molly and I would shoot the breeze. More often than not, my hair was still damp from a post-workout shower, so the conversation often veered toward where I’d run or how many miles I’d cover. The look on Molly’s face conveyed wonderment, disbelief, envy, and a smidge of disdain. By the time my older daughter was in first grade, envy had won out, and Molly started run-walking on her lunch breaks as a veterinarian.

Molly, a newly minted mother runner who quickly progressed through her first half-marathon, an injury-riddled, aborted marathon attempt, then her successful 26.2 victory lap in 2011. While I vividly remember running by her side for the final miles of that Portland Marathon on a misty morning, I can’t pinpoint when we started running together on a regular basis.

One of the greatest presents ever: Molly made this absolutely adorable bookmark for me. It’s us as rabbits (I’m lighter one who is still standing, according to Molly) in our lane at the track.

It started out with weekend long runs done more often together than solo. Over the course of a year or thereabouts, we added on hill repeats on Mondays. Next came track sessions on Wednesday, as we started training for a marathon together. All at Molly’s suggestions, not mine, as I recall.

Usually in a relationship, I’m the bossy one. But Molly, in a manner as subtle and sly as her humor, steered our running partnership. It never would have occurred to me to ask Molly to share the pain of 800-meter repeats on the refurbished high school track. Yet once we fell into silent step, one behind the other, it made perfect sense. I played a race playlist on my iPhone in my pocket—the 21^st century equivalent of a boombox, we joked—and she usually lead the way.

Never once have we run out of conversation, whether the talk is of Molly’s latest sewing project; my most recent AMR trip; my kids’ basketball and soccer games; her older daughter’s journey through the college admission gauntlet; my parents’ health; our shared love of pioneer history; or neighborhood goings-on. And jokes: lots and lots of quips, barbs, and comical yarns.

Like a great episode of VEEP or Parks and Recreation, lines uttered on our runs make me laugh uproariously—yet as soon as it’s over, I can’t remember a single joke. (Well, except this recent one that I imprinted to memory just so I could share it here. Scene: We pass a woman standing solo with a dog on a leash. Woman is having a lively one-sided conversation. Me to Molly: “I trust she was talking on the phone with a bluetooth and not to her dog.” Molly: “Me, too—because her dog didn’t seem too interested in what she was saying.”)

These days, as Molly and I head into training for the Victoria Marathon in October, we run side-by-side on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Sundays. Molly often has to work on Saturdays or my kids have morning sports match-ups, so I run solo. Now, as I fumble with earbuds and trying to decide whether I feel like talk or tunes, it feels so odd to know no one is running to meet me. Like that Pasta Rafael dish, my runs always benefit from some honey—in the form of my BRF, Molly.

Tulip tree + two mother runners

A (mostly) clear track: thumbs up!

In this edition of Martini Fridays, Adrienne Martini, training for the Pittsburgh Half-Marathon using the Train Like a Mother: Finish It Half-Marathon plan, celebrates some spring-like—or definitely not winter still—weather.

Saturday’s “only 8 mile” run felt like 20 miles, which makes me think that I needed the step-back week more than I’d thought. It was one of those Godzilla-stompin- on-Tokyo runs, where I felt as graceful and swift as a giant and clumsy lizard or, more accurately, a dude in a hot and heavy foam costume.

Working in my favor was our recent less-cold snap—I categorically refuse to call 45 degrees warn—earlier in the week. My favorite track is finally dry enough to use. I love going long on the track because I can just zone out without too much worry about traffic. If a car finds its way down there, so many other catastrophic things will have occurred that the car will be the least of my worries. Also, the hamster-on-a-wheel tedium of a track run is vastly outweighed by the forgiving surface that I love.

Even though the calendar claims it’s spring, the weather here hasn’t gotten with the program. The wind made my plan of 12-minute miles nearly impossible. Adding to that irritation was the fact that I can’t seem to slather on lip balm before I leave the house. I probably have a dozen tubes of the stuff in various pockets but never think to stick my hand in any of those pockets before taking my mouth-breathing self on a run.

But, it should be noted, I got it done—even if my lips needed a good sanding by the end. Little victories count.

My lower leg complained for the first half-mile, then didn’t utter a peep until I stretched afterward. The ache has migrated from the meaty muscles in the back of my leg (my gastrocnemius and soleus, to be precise) to the wiry one at the front, the tibialis anterior.

WebMD explains the muscles Adrienne already has memorized.

True story (short version): after series of life disappointments when we were living in Austin, Texas, I spent six months in massage therapy school, stopping just short of testing for my license because I had the sudden realization that I didn’t want to spend my days touching naked strangers. The anatomy lessons are still in my head, however, and have made it much easier to enumerate exactly where I hurt.

It’s perfectly normal to worry about every last little twinge in the run up to your first half, right? Because I’m getting a little a) obsessed and b) fatalistic. While I’m 90 percent certain that the ache is nothing to worry to much about, I’m 10 percent convinced that it’s a sign of something catastrophic. The idea of having to stop two-thirds of the way through training for this race fills me with buckets of sadness, which then leaves me convinced that pushing through the pain to make it to a race is how I’ll do myself a permanent injury. Then I’m convinced that I’m going to wind up with plantar fasciitis or stress fracture and then I’ll just never run again and be miserable and … and…. and.

I’m not alone here, right? These sorts of thoughts will only increase as May 4 gets closer, yes? For the record, I’m pretty sure it’s just a strained muscle that just needs extra stretching and foam rolling and pain plasters. (Unless it isn’t.)

Tests and more tests. And an indeterminate animal (lamb? dog? turtle with no shell?) supervising.

Adding to the crazies is my day job. It’s mid-term time at my college and I’ve been spending lots of quality time sitting on my bottom surrounded by stacks of paper. All I do lately is grade, schlep my stacks to another location, then grade some more. Sometimes, I make coffee, then grade even more. My eyeballs hurt more than my calf does right now. And I’m increasingly convinced that it’s time for bifocals. Hooray?

Two things that I’ve been meaning to mention but haven’t:

Thing one: In an earlier blog, I wrote about my struggle with postpartum depression and my plan to use my first half-marathon as a fund-raiser for Postpartum Progress. I’ve set up a Go Fund Me page for those who’d be willing to shove a couple of bucks their way. Any amount will help further their mission, which is to help moms who are struggling with psychiatric disorders.

Thing two: The lovely Dimity hooked me up with the equally lovely Christine Hinton, who wrote the Train Like a Mother Training plans. We talked about my extra week dilemma and she worked up week 10.5 for me. It consists of a couple of short, easy runs and 9 miles on Saturday. So that’s how long I’ll be going then, as long as I can still see and my right calf doesn’t fall off. If only one of those fates befalls me, I’ll still give the run a whirl.

How much do you fret before a big race you’ve trained hard for? And how far in advance, exactly, does the fretting start?