#312: Live from Ogden, Utah: Expert Taper Tips
Sarah is joined by a coterie of co-hosts—Dimity McDowell, Adrienne Martini, and Maggie Palmer—in this recorded-in-front-of-a-live-audience episode. Adrienne shares the story of her 6-minute “accidental” PR in a recent half-marathon. Laugh over Maggie’s tale of her 3-year-old son and his valiant maneuver to protect his grandmother. Then Adrienne and Maggie bow out to make room for Coach Amanda and Dr. Justin Ross, who talk about the physical (Amanda) and mental (Justin) side of tapering. Three “real” mother runners tell their taper tales and get advice from the experts. Justin shines on a light on his spotlight theory.
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A Very Good Mother’s Day (Half-Marathon)
Guess what, Friends! I won Mother’s Day!
But it wasn’t easy. I almost puked!
Flashback to last year: On May 14, 2017, I wrote, “Note to self: Next year plan a better Mother’s Day!”
On Mother’s Day last year, my daughter was sick, I was grumpily awaiting certain bad news, and I ruined the day with a less-than-enthusiastic response to Nina’s last-minute pitch to make triple-chocolate chocolatey chocolate-chip cupcakes.
WHAT KIND OF AWFUL MOM AM I, ANYWAY?
(The kind who doesn’t like cleaning up the kitchen after baking projects that yield dozens of triple-chocolate chocolatey chocolate-chip cupcakes. For a household of two.)
Remember the arts-and-crafts Mother’s Day years? This goes back to 2014. Sniff!
Nina spent last year’s Mother’s Day sulking on the couch watching TV; I made dinner. No one was happy. I vowed to Do Better this year.
Flash forward to March 2018: I realized this was the first spring in many years in which I did not have a Major Race on the calendar (like Boston or Two Oceans or the Philadelphia Love Run Half). Huh.
I’d been running enough to finish a half-marathon, so I scrolled around for a race within driving distance on a weekend not already booked with a swim meet, recital, or congregational obligation. That’s tricky calculus.
I found a half-marathon in Brooklyn on Mother’s Day.
“I can’t do that,” I thought. “That’s Mother’s Day.”
And then, “Wait a minute! It’s Mother’s Day! I can do a half-marathon if I want to.”
The Brooklyn Half-Marathon, you say? Isn’t that the largest half-marathon in the country, with some 27,000 finishers in 2017? Didn’t that sell out in like two seconds once registration opened?
Well NO. And YES.
The former Airbnb Brooklyn Half-Marathon IS the largest in the country. It has been renamed—I am not joking—the Popular Brooklyn Half-Marathon. It is on Saturday, May 19, and you can’t register for it at the last minute unless you can run a 1:15 half-marathon. (FALL OVER LAUGHING.)
The Brooklyn Mother’s Day Half Marathon, by contrast, had fewer than 350 participants. Someone mean might be tempted to call it the Unpopular Half-Marathon. But it was perfect for my needs.
At a small race in Brooklyn, you can pose under the finish line. Where are all the other runners? Not here! :)
Getting Nina, now 13, on board was easy: the promise of a post-race visit to Smorgasburg, an artisanal open-air foodie market conveniently open on Sundays in Prospect Park, where the race was held.
My friend Rick proved what a good man he is by not only paying for my race entry but agreeing to give up his day to drive to Brooklyn, get to the race 1.5 hours early (who me, obsessive?), stand with Nina in the cold drizzle for two-ish hours it would take me to run, and then wait around after for the post-race age-group award ceremony.
Because guess what? If you get old and you show up and you pick a tiny race the week before a Popular race and the day is rainy and cold and Normal People are sensibly celebrating the holiday indoors with brunch, YOU MIGHT WIN YOUR AGE GROUP!
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I didn’t see many older women here,” Rick said. “I think you might have won your age group.”
We stood in full-on-rain afterward at Smorgasburg eating hand-cut French fries with curry ketchup, hand-made pork dumplings with scallions, barbecue chicken banh buns, chocolate-nib chocolate-frosted doughnut (NINA not ME), and drinking beer (Rick) and to-die-for “dirty” chai tea-espresso latte. (I drove home). Yum. Hungry yet?
I am going to brag about my time here because it was a Major Accomplishment, and also, I know you’re nice, and you’ll forgive me.
When I ran the 2017 Philadelphia Half in 1:56, I learned that if I could get under 1:54, I could nab a “guaranteed entry” to the New York City Marathon. I suspected I was in good enough running shape to break 2 hours, but 1:54 was going to be tight, if not impossible.
I ran as hard as I could sustain. I kept my eye on the watch every mile. I tried to stay Deena Kastor positive (possibly my hardest task). I nearly lost my cookies at the finish! No joke! I staggered across with my hand over my mouth. But I did it! 1:53:13. True to my historic form, I squeaked in!
I WON MOTHER’S DAY! Or okay, my age group in a half-marathon. And delicious food with the people I love.
Rick bought the bib number, Nina tolerated the wait. Thank you!
But just so we don’t fall into a rosy FB-fiction trap: After the race, I came home, let the dogs out, closed myself in a carpeted closet so I could call my mother, who is 90 and can’t hear very well, TO SHOUT ON THE PHONE. Pardon? Pardon? And then I came downstairs. And you know those rug tiles I spent all Saturday taking outside, vacuuming, powerwashing, and cleaning the wood floors beneath before replacing? The dogs had peed and pooped on them. That, my friends, is what we call Real Life.
Our athletic superpower is a stubborn determination to keep showing up: My mother, age 89 at the time, taking a silver medal in the Senior Games 5K.
This year was a very good Mother’s Day. I hope you had some measure of happiness in yours, too.
#311: 2018 Olympic Champion—and #Motherrunner—Kikkan Randall
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Dry Martini: BAMRs Take Seneca 7
Here are the basic stats on the Seneca 7, a relay race that six other BAMRs and I ran on April 29:
- Seneca is one of the Central New York Finger Lakes.
- It is 77.7 miles around.
- The start is in Geneva, the midpoint is Watkins Glen, the end is in Geneva.
- As long as the lake is on your left, you are going the right way.
- Each runner runs three legs of varying lengths and elevation.
- The last runner needs to start her last leg by 7:57 p.m.
- This year there were 348 teams.
- The April weather in this neck of the woods can be …. unpredictable.
- It is more fun than a barrel of puppies — but about as stinky.
- Come along with us (there will be one f-bomb, btw) and be thankful there is no scratch-and-sniff component.
The whole adventure started last year, when I asked five mother runners I know if they wanted to do something foolish. All five women said yes. Marianne recruited Amy H., who is an AMR devotee but not technically a mother-to-humans. We made plans. And when the day arrived, we all descended from points east, south, and west on a Holiday Inn Express in Geneva.
For the previous six runnings, the race caught decent spring weather. Lucky number seven did not.
All of our plans for cute race day outfits went out the window. On went the layers.
Promptly at 6:07 Sunday morning, we trooped out to the van to drop Carol (runner 1) and Marianne (runner 2) at the start. Because I packed poorly, we were missing a crucial item: our van sign that would let us park at the exchanges. Back to the hotel we went and, since we had some time, we also grabbed a cinnamon roll or two.
This is not a Chrysler Pacficia.
Thus fortified, we drove off to Exchange 2 and the race really began. It took us a leg or two to sort out how all of the maps worked (totally not the fault of the maps) and get our bearings. But then we were a finely tuned machine. Ish.
Because of the hard time cut-off and the need for a 10:30/mile average, we were just a little bit concerned about finishing the race. Most of Team BAMRs’ runners — especially the zippy quick Heather and Amy H — were unconcerned. Lisa, Marianne, Carol, and Amy B. felt they could get close to that. The driver (and runner #7), which would be me, was silently freaking out. There is no way I could hit that. And, yet, because I had the good sense to surround myself with fasties, we made it.
Still, at one point during the first legs, in this van full of experienced runners, the phrase “clearly we need to bank some time” was uttered. I blame the sugar rush from the cinnamon rolls.
The lake! Shortly before this, I nearly left one of our runners behind at the exchange. OOPS.
We made it to the halfway point in decent time, despite the snow that turned into sleet that turned into freezing rain. By Watkins Glen, the precipitation had mostly stopped, which was nice. The wind really picked up, which wasn’t so nice.
Thanks to the Watkins Glen Burger King kids meal, our van acquired a mascot.
Apart from Amy H, who is planning to run an ultra soon and picked the longest leg, the rest of us chose more or less at random. I took the last leg, since I was the ringleader who has super-good ideas. Amy B. wound up with the steepest bit.
When we passed her in the van when she was three-quarters of a mile in, while we cowbelled our little hearts out, she turned to give us a double-bird salute with some swearing aimed in our general direction. Totally fair. She killed the leg, btw.
The we rewarded her with a local brew while Amy H. finished up her leg.
It never got any warmer, by the way, but it was nice to not be pushing through slush. My one note to myself is to remember to grab two pairs of shoes: one for running and one for driving. Wet kicks are no fun.
You don’t want to know what happened in there.
We ran on. We foam rolled. We snacked. We stared off into space. We passed around some Advil, NUUN, and a Gu or two.
Then it was my last leg, which took the team to the lakefront park near the start.
When I rounded the corner to the finish line, the other six met me and we crossed the finish together. It was glorious.
It was also hard and exhausting and exhilarating and freaking cold. I would do it all again in a heartbeat — and just might next year, if I can remember register during the three-minute window registration is open.
We ran around that!
The entire race this year was won by Red Newt Racing, an all-women team, who finished in 7:54:26. The closest all-male team, the Liar, Liar, Feet On Fire came in at 7:55:42. Team BAMR: We Get The Run Done took 305 th place, with a time of 13:19:03. We took first place for fun, however.
