Dry Martini: When You Hate the Run
I know that a description of someone else’s dream can be super boring; however, the dream I had last night sums up how the last few days have gone.
Bear with me.
In the dream, I was on a vacation in Costa Rica with the head mother runners. The flight I took to get there was powered by treadmill and we all had to take turns running to keep the plane in the air. Once I got there, SBS and Dimity were ticked off that I’d brought a friend from high school with me — and said friend had decided to spend a year as a housecat, which made traveling with her nearly impossible. When I say “as a housecat,” I don’t mean “pretending to be a tabby.” She was a literal housecat who talked.
There’s just so much to unpack in this dream. Take your pick: there’s anxiety of many flavors (work-related, airplane-related) and an exploration of how I’ve let people down with my choices. Mostly, though, I keep coming back to the “spending a year as a cat” part.
I mean, if given that option, who wouldn’t choose to do that? Just me?
My weird series of days started Saturday. I had ten miles on the plan. While I hadn’t had a run in the double-digits since Cape Cod at the end of October, ten miles isn’t exactly new territory. But it took about a billion times more energy than usual to just get myself out of the door.
I broke out my Dunkin hat from the 2016 New York City marathon for this run. It is my secret weapon because it reminds me that I can do hard things.
Part of my reluctance is easily explained. It was all of 19 degrees here and snowing just enough to be irritating rather than dangerous. Also, the college students have they decided they need to celebrate Santacon, which is an obnoxious tradition where you dress up in festive garb, wander the streets, and binge drink. It’s like St. Patrick’s Day but with ugly sweaters.
(There are perks to living in small town with two colleges, mind you. Seasonal vomit is not one of them.)
Some early Santacon revelers (who refused to share the sidewalk)
About three miles into my ten miles, I started to hate everything and everyone. I hated the snow, which made it feel like I was running on dry sand. I hated the packs of students who wouldn’t clear a path on the sidewalk for an old, grumpy runner lady. I hated the cold and the people who didn’t shovel their walks and December and gray skies. I kept reminding myself that it is a privilege to be able to run but that thought couldn’t find purchase. I came as close as I ever have to calling for a ride at mile four.
In a traditional running narrative, this is where I’d say: it got better and I am a stronger runner for pushing through! It didn’t get better. It didn’t get worse, so I just ran on. When I finished ten and walked through the back door, my husband started to ask how it went. Then he saw my face and muttered something like, “Oh. Not good.”
Usually, even when the run itself is terrible, it feels great to be done. Yeah… not so much. I spent the rest of the day quasi-conscious on the couch, which is what I’d planned to do anyway but the lounging was even more extreme than anticipated. I simultaneously wanted to cry, yell, and sleep.
As the more observant have likely figured out already, I woke up on Sunday sneezing and feverish. While I’m starting to feel slightly better than like a sack of hot garbage, I’m still not ready to even go for a five-minute run. Which is irritating because my brain badly needs the endorphin rush. It is the holiday season and I’m neck-deep in obligations.
Perhaps this is just my body’s way of telling me to chill out and let go of all of the non-essential flotsam that clutters up the month of December. Maybe it’s also just my body’s way of letting me know that my youngest child, who is also sick, is just really terrible at washing his hands. Likely, it’s a combination of both.
Still, if someone can figure out how I can spend a year as a housecat, I’d appreciate it.
Do you have a secret running weapon?
#341: How to Nail a Race PR
Sarah and co-host Tish Hamilton convene with three BAMRs who each nabbed a personal best in Twin Cities races to find out how they got the job done. First up is Kathy Bray, an attorney and mom of two, who bested her Twin Cities 10-Miler from eleven years ago. (Despite sandbagging like a champ to SBS at the expo!) Kathy tells how rediscovering gratitude about being healthy and injury-free pushed her to dig a little deeper on race day. She explains how getting out of her own head helped her power up hills and do the all-important—trust in her training. Find out what soundtrack also drove Kathy up the inclines (hint: She wasn’t throwing away her PR shot!).
Next up: Christina Ashtiani, a mom of three and a real estate agent, shares how she set a 13-minute PR (5:37) in the marathon. Like Kathy, strength training worked wonders for Christina. Laugh along as she describes being “an energy vampire” in the final mile. Hear about her experience with a pace group. The final guest is Kim Truesdell, a writer + fitness instructor as well as a mom of two. While Kim missed her time goal, the 2018 Twin Cities Marathon was the first time she broke the four-hour mark. She shares the mental tricks she used when the going got tough, and find out the apt word printed on her bib. Unlike Christina, Kim relays a less-positive pace-group experience, but she reveals how she went it alone.
In the intro, Tish and SBS share the artistic activities they are enjoying with their respective kids. Tish gives an update on her long-distance love life, including a recent race she and her boyfriend both ran, but definitely not side-by-side. And Sarah talks about her family’s upcoming European vacation. The first of the three PR-nabbing guests joins the conversation at 25:00.
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Training for My First Marathon: The Struggle with Self-Doubt
No self-doubt evident in this fabulous shot!
[Follow—and cheer for—Pam, a #motherrunner of two in Decatur, Georgia, as she trains for her first 26.2. Check out the previous entries.]
One year ago, I completed my first-ever injury-free half marathon training cycle, with the Atlanta Thanksgiving Half Marathon as my victory lap (finish time 3:09). I’d previously trained for two and completed one, and sustained significant injuries both times (an unspecified overuse injury to the left ankle that allowed me to run the Savannah Women’s Half in 2016 in 3:04 after a month of PT, and a fibular stress fracture on the right leg that forced me to bow out of the Nashville Rock ‘N Roll Half in 2017).
Since then, my Garmin tells me, I’ve run 1141 miles, which adds up to nearly 262 hours of running. And that’s not even counting bike rides, swimming, elliptical, or the strength training I’ve done five or six days a week.
About six months ago, I started the practice of intentional mental training in order to build my overall confidence and improve both my self-talk and mental toughness:
I take a moment before setting out to remind myself of the “what” (15-mile long run, slow and steady) and the “why” (build endurance through time on my feet, bolster awareness that I can run farther than I have in the past) of the run.
I do ten air squats to wake my glutes up and remind them that they’re driving the engine.
I press the button to start the workout I’ve programmed into my Garmin, and I go: one foot in front of the other, starting slowly (around a 12:25 pace) for the first mile, then slowly building up to somewhere in the 10:30-11:30 pace range for the duration.
As a result of those miles and hours of training, I’ve pretty much programmed my brain to allow my legs to do the thinking while my brain takes in the latest Serial podcast or how I could have better handled my four-year-old’s meltdown over Macy’s not carrying the sparkly rainbow boots in her size (oh the horrors of having to WAIT for their arrival via UPS!).
I have gleefully anticipated the increasing miles in my long runs for marathon training.
So you can imagine my surprise when I set out for my first “big” long run of 15 miles, the final 3-5 at race pace (9:30), and my brain immediately started taunting: You’re an imposter. There’s no way you can run 15 miles, much less a marathon. I suppose my anticipatory sleeplessness the night before, combined with the nervous pooping, typical of race mornings, not training mornings, should have clued me in that I was maybe a little less sanguine about the run than I’d have liked to admit.
I stepped out onto the street in front of my house as if it were the starting line of a race I hoped to PR. My heart rate, normally somewhere around 85 bpm when I put running shoe to pavement, was 110. I started off at my usual pace of 12:25, jittery, breath rapid, heart rate skyrocketing to 156. Downhill. My family motto is that running is like practicing bleeding. What was I thinking? Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. Ican’tdothisIcan’tdothisIcan’tdothis.
WTF, brain?! Where did THAT come from? I’m better than that, physically and mentally. I have confidence, dammit, and what’s more, I’ve worked really freaking hard to build that confidence. I love to run. I run almost every day. I build my entire schedule around running. I don’t do self-doubt.
Except, of course, it turns out that I do.
Friend and fellow BAMR Susan explains: “Self-doubt is normal. Running through it—literally—is part of what makes the [marathon training] process worth it. You can do hard things, in running and in life.”
At the time, self-doubt did not feel normal. It felt intrusive and downright insulting. And you know what? It made me MAD. I’ve worked my ass off to kick that old family motto to the curb and stomp all over it. Running is NOT like practicing bleeding. Running is like practicing breathing. Breathing. I can breathe. I can do this. If nothing else, I can continue to breathe, and I can continue to move forward. Screw you, self-doubt. I’m going to BREATHE.
And so I breathed. I breathed in for four steps, out for four steps, in for four steps, out for four steps. Those steps turned into more steps, and the steps turned into miles, and somewhere in those miles, my brain let go of the doubt.
As previously planned, I met up with my friend Katy ten miles in to participate in a local 5k race to benefit the local chapter of Autism Speaks. I pinned on my bib in the nick of time, and joined my fellow runners in the corral. If you are nervous about tacking on some race pace miles at the end of a long run, can I just say that rolling a race into your run is kind of the best thing ever? My glutes felt kind of done for, and my mind, having just fought a tough battle to simply move forward, wasn’t exactly on board for some 9:30 miles. But being surrounded by runners who had come to race revved my engine and provided some much-needed pep in my step.
I clocked in each mile of the race at exactly 9:38, which I call good enough.
It’s my understanding that the point of race pace miles is to train both your body and your mind to outrun fatigue. I realize now that it’s also about increasing self-confidence. I not only conquered a longer distance than I ever had, but I ran part of that distance pretty fast. I kept up the race pace for another half-mile, and completed the remaining 1.4 miles as a cooldown.
Michelle Obama observes that “Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.” If you’ve ever completed a Perform Like a Mother seminar with sports psychologist Justin Ross, you will have heard him explain that the antidote to fear is trust. Although I wasn’t conscious of it during that 15-miler, I chose trust over fear with every step: trust in myself and in the accumulation of all the miles and hours I’ve put into training; trust in my coaches; and trust in my community.
I can live with the reality that self-doubt is part of the process, knowing that I have the tools to stop failure in its tracks long before it has a chance to become a result.
Less than a week after the 15-mile fight through self-doubt, I once again ran the Atlanta Thanksgiving Half Marathon, this time as an easy-effort training run. I ran with Katy, whom I’d met up with for the 5k, enjoying every minute with a good friend as I pointed out highlights of my local history (“There’s my current building—I work on the 42nd floor!” “There’s my old work, where I once stood up to a raging bully—and won!”). The race offered free pictures, so we made it our goal to take the best race photos ever, lifting our hands in victory as we ran beneath the Olympic rings, putting on speed and smiles as we crossed the finish line in the Georgia State University Stadium.
I crossed that finish line in 2:36:56, more than 30 minutes faster than last year—and I wasn’t even racing. Take that, self-doubt!
And yet, I know self-doubt is lurking somewhere deep in my training plan. Will it be in next week’s easy 7-miler with some fast-finish miles? Maybe it’s in an upcoming 18-miler. Or a tempo run.
The only thing that’s (although I really, really hate to admit it) certain is that self-doubt will rear its ugly head at some undetermined point in the future—and that I have the tools to conquer it: my breath, my previous miles, those wonderful BAMRs that have almost entirely overtaken my contacts list.
What are your tools + tricks you use to tackle self-doubt?
Running With My Dad: On Miles + Memories
Alana + her dad, Kirk, smile + stride across the TC 10 Mile Finish Line.
Over our repeated trips to the Twin Cities Marathon + 10 Mile, we love meeting so many amazing #motherrunner and hear so many inspirational stories. As we cheered for the marathoners at mile 24 this year, Alana Siebenaler-Ransom, who had just finished the 10 Mile, told me about her running with her dad. I immediately wanted to know more—and am pretty confident you will too. Enjoy!
I do not have the best memory.
To wit: I attended a Cher concert in the late 90s and have no memory of it. I have a college roommate to remind me of the concert and a ticket stub that proves I was there.
No, I was not drunk; I just have a faulty memory.
I do have random childhood memories of my dad, likely because I saw him a lot more than I saw Cher: watching Star Wars in the theatre multiple times (my dad is a sci-fi geek at heart and passed that gene along); barfing in a giant yellow plastic cup in the back of a four-seater airplane while he flew us to Florida; sitting on his shoulders and running up the down escalator at Sears, much to my mother’s chagrin.
Then there is one memory that is burned into my brain as an almost daily occurrence: my dad coming home from the base where he worked, changing his clothes and heading out for a run.
When he turned 30, my dad started running almost daily. It was 1971, the same year I was born. I am the younger of two girls and was certainly not the easiest of babies. I don’t like to think of myself as the catalyst for his running career, although, from the sounds of it, he needed the running to keep his sanity.
Captain Kirk D. Ransom hanging out with his RF-4C Phantom II aircraft.
To understand my father, you need a bit of history: while not a thrill-seeker, Kirk Ransom has lived a life that can only be described as thrilling. He is a retired Air Force pilot (yes, he was Captain Kirk for a period of time) who flew 180 missions in Vietnam, has pulled 8.5 Gs three times, and was an Advance Agent for Air Force One for Presidents Ford and Carter. He has survived blood poisoning twice and was hospitalized with pneumonia for 26 days. He is 77 years old, and he still runs almost daily.
It should be noted that my dad is a runner, not a racer. He has a story about being the last to cross the finish line in a race – complete with the ambulance bringing up the rear – yet pinning on a race bib was never really the point.
My life is less adventurous. I have been threatened by exactly zero medical ailments (knock on wood), and my definition of flying excitement is turbulence over the Rockies with no yellow cup required. I did move to Fairbanks, Alaska having answered a job posting that asked for “someone dynamic enough to make it on a team in the last frontier.” I spent two years as a residence hall director in the most stunning of weather extremes because it sounded like fun.
My personal thrill seeking comes in the form of running marathons. I’ve run six, finished five. The DNF? The 1996 Equinox Marathon in Fairbanks – one of the world’s most challenging marathons that happened to fall on that year’s first day of snow. I was wearing shorts and a long sleeve cotton t-shirt (oh, the 90s). Around mile 12, there was a hill covered in ice. My marathoning cohort and I were tenuously working our way up the hill on hands and knees cursing our lack of ice-climbing equipment. I think this is how it all played out. (See my previous statement about Swiss cheese memory.)
One of many pre-race selfies. (Love the spam hat!)
The miles of my races, however, became a bit more cemented—as did our relationship—when my dad and I started to share running.
At the 2006 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon, my dad was there with his camera, just as he is at all of my races. While I remember only pockets of that day, I will never forget my dad saying, “Wow, Alana. I’m just so impressed with you. And I’m so proud.”
Five years later, he suggested we run the marathon together. My dad was 70; I was 40. Who trains for their first marathon at 70? My dad. He puts the badass in BAFR (that’s BadAss Father Runner for the newbies).
During that training cycle, we talked mileage, injuries, water consumption and commiserated about running in the hot, humid Minnesota summer. We didn’t train together because we’re runners of convenience: I lace up just before or after work; he runs when the spirit moves him. We compared notes every chance we got.
Lining up in our corral, I was equal parts terrified of what might happen and excited to see what he could do. I promised to stick by his side the entire run. At mile 10, I knew he was already in trouble. My dad talks a lot while we run and, at that point, the chatter slowed. He explained that he couldn’t always feel his foot hit the ground and had to trust it wasn’t going to suddenly disappear. By the time we hit mile 12, he made a hard and smart decision to stop at the halfway point. Neither of us can remember if he watched me finish that year (the memory thing runs in the family), but we both fondly remember those first 13 miles.
Ever the persistent runner, my dad gave the Twin Cities Marathon another go the following year, at 71 years young. I was his packhorse and followed him every step of the way on my bike. When he crossed that finish line in 5:48:07, I have never been more proud to be my father’s daughter.
We’ve run a race together every year since. There have been 5K Turkey Trots, a scorching hot 4th of July half marathon, and, my personal favorite father/daughter race: the Medtronic TC 10 Mile which we’ve run together the last two years.
There are a few certainties at every race: my father sports a bright yellow visor (my mom put his name on one so people will cheer for him); he carries a PB + J and the kitchen sink in his waist pack; he tells me about Dr. Kenneth Cooper and the conditioning effect of running for the four hundredth time; we take a pre-race selfie; and I give thanks for another mile together.
Kirk + his best fan after his 2012 Twin Cities marathon; look for another marathon finish pic in 2021!
We don’t plan our race schedule terribly far in advance. I don’t know what 2019 or 2020 hold, but my dad says he has one more marathon planned: the Air Force Marathon in 2021. Why 2021? He’ll be 80; I’ll be 50. Seems fitting, right?
Here’s what I do know: Even if the details of each mile are forgotten, I will always remember the time we have spent together with our running shoes laced up and the finish line up ahead.
Do you—or have you—run with a parent?
The Struggle is Real: On Writing + Paying It Forward
For weeks now, I’ve this amazing post written in my head. It intertwined a bunch of unrelated things—the Dr. Death podcast, my refound affinity for classical music, repeatedly telling myself having all the time I need, rereading the Four Agreements, loving the upright stationary bike at the gym—and ideally ended with this empowering messagea bout finding more quiet and space, both in the world and in my head.
And then I tried to actually write it today, a day when the pumpkin cake balls + generous pours of white wine from last nights holiday’s party were still lingering; our heat crapped out on the second floor (I like a chilly bedroom, but 55 degrees is ambitious); and Ben continued playing this marble maze thing nonstop for about 24 hours (better than a screen, but marbles don’t drop quietly).
So I wasn’t exactly in a calm spot, and two paragraphs—and 50 minutes in—I gave up, pissed that wasn’t as easy as I led myself to believe.
Procrastinating, I slid onto the Stride into the Holidays Facebook page, and remembered that this Sunday was our #payitforward day; each weekly rest day comes with a small task. Could be a nap, could be making a double batch of dinner to freeze for a busy night, or could be putting some kindness out into the world. #Payitforward Sunday comes with this disclaimer: Know that duration does not equate to the level of importance. Swipe a credit card or spend the day cleaning your mom’s attic: It’s all good. This shouldn’t add stress to your load; it should put a smile on your—and somebody else’s—face.
Seeing the good stuff that these ladies were putting into the world made me teary.
While I fully admit I’m PMS’ing (can you tell?), I also love that Terrri’s lottery ticket purchase and Kathy going to hang with a friend who had hit some speed bumps brought me back to a conversation I had last night with my friend Andrea, a generous spirit with a sparkly stud in her nose and two girls: one in 8th grade, one in 5th. She was an avid elementary school volunteer, but, as you likely know, those duties wane in middle + high school. She was talking about potentially becoming a guardian ad litem; and if that didn’t fit, figuring out how she could continue to put herself out in the world, give people in need her smile, energy, love.
As I downed cake balls, I realized we were talking and getting really excited about something beautifully basic: simple goodness.
Sometimes it’s crazy challenging to find more quiet + space—and it’s likely impossible to create a seamless essay that intertwines a doctor who severed people’s spines with the agreement to “Speak Impeccably.” So don’t wait up: That post may never see the light of the blog.
As we enter the month of December, when frantic is the norm, simple, simple good things are the ones that make a day—and a memory. Andrea inspired me to #payitforward; one thing I did do today was (finally) complete my background check for Reading Partners, so I can go do one of my favorite things: read with a student once a week.
Check out how these #motherrunners paid it forward–and if you’re feeling PMS’y, needing some quiet or space, or otherwise challenged, we encourage you to put some simple goodness out in the world this week.
Terri: My dad is in a nursing home and I got him 20 lottery tickets to give out to people. He used to like to do that but today I don’t know if he even understood when I left them. It’s ok, I wanted to empower him to give gifts if he could.
Terri: My dad is in a nursing home and I got him 20 lottery tickets to give out to people. He used to like to do that but today I don’t know if he even understood when I left them. It’s ok, I wanted to empower him to give gifts if he could.
Lisa: Today was my shopping day, for my pay it forward I bought some snacks for a water station and toys, and filled up a bag with gently used clothes for the Millinocket Marathon & Half next Saturday. If you have a chance please read about the race, it has hit me in all the feels.
Colleen: Paid it forward by shopping for groceries with the kids for our church’s Christmas food baskets. (Then hydrated after my run so I can properly cheer on the Steelers!)
Amanda: I felt crappy and had to DNF my marathon. But….I felt good enough to go back and help get my brother to the finish line, which was awesome.
Kathy: A friend has had a tough week. On my way with a hug and a listening ear…and treats.
Lisa: Treated myself to a latte on the way home (from a run I didn’t want to go on–thanks to an accountability partner in Stride!) and treated the car behind me to theirs.
Jan: Sunday is my standing date with the dogs at our local shelter. We walk, run, sniff and poo (they always want to run after they poo 😁), and sometimes just take a break for an ear rub. This is Bo, who was so beat after our run, he flopped onto his bed as soon as we got back!
Sara: A friend of mine was facing the first birthday celebration after her mom died…so I did what good southerners do and brought her a meal! In BAMR style I bought it instead of making it myself…she’ll enjoy it more that way too.
