Race Report: Brooklyn

I DID IT!!!!!! :)  :)  :)  Not only did I cross the finish line, but I had unofficially wanted to hit 2:30 as a time goal.  I knew I should run with a goal of just finishing, but I really thought that 2 hours 30 minutes of running should be just about enough for one day. :)  There was more than once in the last few weeks where I didn't think that was going to happen, but when the official time posted today it was 2:29:50! 

I was having a lot of mental doubts the last few weeks.  Once I got back from Phoenix and started having so many chaotic things going on with my life, my training hadn't felt as strong as it had beforehand.  Then I started travelign to Raleigh and I was lucky if I was getting in a couple of runs but wasn't doing my yoga or pilates or spin or kettlebells and my runs weren't feeling good.  So I was getting nervous that this was going to be an unmitigated disaster.  Then I ran the 10k last Saturday.  I was still feeling tired from flight delays, we were running a whole loop around Central Park which I hadn't done and I was generally feeling nervous.  Than that race started, and I felt good.  I did the whole 6.2 miles in just over an hour (1:05:19) and my legs felt good.  My lungs felt good until I decided I could kick up the pace for the last mile.  :)  It was exactly the mental boost I needed to feel like I could get through the half even if it wasn't what it could've been had life not gotten in the way. 

So once again I was in Raleigh this week through Thursday night.  In some ways that probably helped my nerves this week, because I honestly didn't spend too much time thinking about the race and I think if I'd been here where it was happening it would have been a bigger presence.  I got my race number and t-shirt last night.  The shirt is nice a corally orange color tech shirt and I'm trying to figure out if I can wear it everyday for the next few weeks. ;) 

Anyway, this morning I got up at 4:15am (yes entirely too freaking early) to begin my journey.  I was at the PATH station by 5:15 and hit Prospect Park in Brooklyn around 6:10am.  The very ironic thing that happened right there is that I saw a boot camp class getting ready to start that was led by the guy who I took boot camp from in NYC for a few weeks last April/May.  As if this race wasn't already to a testament to how far I've come physically, the universe was just giving me a little reminder. 

So the race officially started at 7am, I probably started around 7:10am based on the time difference between the clocks and my heartrate monitor timer.  I had decided to actually do the race with my iPod which I normally don't do.  I find it annoying in crowds when people have headphones in and don't pay attention to what's happening around them, but I knew that during the middle miles I was going to need an extra push.  So my first mile was to the Black Eyed Pea's "Let's Get It Started", I mean its only fitting right?  The song even has the lyrics "running, running" in it.  The first mile was feeling good and we were just a bit into the second when I heard a lot of whistles and shouting for us to get over to the left right before 6 cyclists zoomed by us.  I thought they were just kind of rude cyclists and then everybody around me started cheering.  I was like what in the world is going on.  Then I realized that those were the pace cyclists who were leading the people whose goal wasn't just to finish but to win.  The course required two loops around Propsect Park, I wasn't even to the second mile and these guys were on the second lap already!  I actually said to myself, they might be faster but they're not going to be out here for two and a half hours like I am.  Around mile 3 or so, the cheers started again and I realized it was because the lead woman was passing us.  I thought it was pretty cool that everybody cheered for her too.

So Propsect Park is pretty hilly, but I have to say that while I don't really like uphills, I've come to appreciate running on hills because whether you're going up or down you have something aiding your momentum a bit.  When we hit the flat miles, it was actually much more annoying because every step was me and me alone.  There were also a lot of spectators in the park which makes it fun.  Lots of people cheering and some really fun signs like "Run Fast the Rapture is Coming" and "Chuck Norris never ran a marathon."  The only bad thing about the first 7 miles was that I did have to stop for 2 minutes for the Port-a-Potties, my bladder is not sufficiently trained for distance running yet.  I kind of wish the race had been a 7 mile race because I left the park feeling really good and happy.  Of course the miles that were most mentally difficult were coming up.

I actually was physically and mentally ok until somewhere in mile 8.  My legs started feeling really heavy about then and I walked for about a block to help get the muscles to loosen up a bit.  Having done that, I ran the next mile and a half or so until I hit mile 10.  Miles 10 and 11 were actually the most mentally draining.  I had been asked recently how you can mentally tackle a half marathon and I said I guess I'd find out.  The way I did it today was to focus on 1 mile, 12 minutes.  At mile 8, I was at a time of just under 1:30 and I said to myself if you do 5-12 minute miles you make the 2:30 mark.  So even when I was feeling tired and cranky, I just had to do the mile in 12 minutes.  And think about how fast 12 minutes goes by when you're running late or sitting at a stop light or watching TV, suprisingly for me they actually went that way in the race.  If I wanted to stop and walk, I'd look at my watch and say surely you can last another x minutes until the mile marker.  I'd then walk through the aid station and at mile 10 a few more blocks past and then I'd pick it up again.  The walking actually really helped me to get the bounce back in my running step, but by foucusing on the 12 minute thing I also made sure that my walking was pretty fast because I knew I didn't have it in my legs to run any faster than my normal 10-10:30/mile pace.

When I hit mile 12, I knew I was in the home stretch.  I did walk a block past the aid station just to get my legs loose again and then I ran the rest of the race.  I didn't realize that around mile 12.7 we'd be running up a ramp to the boardwalk but I had amazingly good spring in my step up it.  I also realized that having Daughtry's Home be the last song on my iPod and ending about 2 minutes before the race finished was perfect.    The reason Daughtry's home was perfect comes down to two different lyrics... "the miles are getting longer in seems" and "this pain is a different kind of pain".  I then grabbed the head phones out of my ears just in time to reach the speakers.  When I hit mile marker 13 and knew I only had .1 miles to go and that I was within reach of 2:30 I poured what little I had left in to it.  I was suprised that I actually cried a little after I crossed the finish line.

One of the quotes I've used to guide my attempts to get healthier is that "Life is not about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself".  I have been working hard to create myself as an athlete.  There are ways to get in shape like Zumba and kickboxing that don't really make you an athlete but someone who works out, I really and truly want to be an athlete.  But somewhere in mile 8, I also had to find myself because when you're tired and you're pretty sure you have 8 blisters forming on your feet (none actually exist but I was sure they were there then!) you have to push yourself through it.  I don't necessarily love running, but I do love the inventory it makes you take of yourself, the fact that deep down you have to find the inspiration in you to make it to the end.  Our bodies are amazing, amazing machines that can be trained to do incredible things.  We can also abuse our bodies in many, many ways, but when we stop abusing them and start embracing them our bodies are capable of great things.

So, now its been about 9 hours since race time and my body is feeling suprisingly okay.  I'm definitely tired even after taking a nap and my legs feel worn out, but not in pain.  I'm sure tomorrow will be the real test. 

So in closing, I'll leave you with a quote from the Penguin John Bingham ""The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start."

Exercise IS Hard

In late January, I volunteered at the Manhattan half-marathon handing out Gatorade on the coldest day of the year to runners as they crossed the finish line. This was an interesting experience on many levels, but the one I'm going to focus on today was watching people cross the finish line. Runner's had 3 hours to cross the finish line, but the winner crossed it a little after an hour in to the race. This 17 year old kid had just run 13.1 miles in a little over an hour and was hardly out of breath. And this trend seemed to continue through the elite runners, it wasn't until we crossed the 2 hour threshold that people really and truly looked tired. And considering I look spent about 5 minutes into a run this hardly seemed fair. :)

However, watching this actually has been the start of me noticing a huge mental hangup that I've had going on. When I started exercising even though I'd already lost about 40 pounds, I was still about 60 pounds away from a healthy weight and I was very out of shape. I have been out of shape most of my life. It has been a constant state of being in my life. There are a lot of reasons for that but that's not today's topic. :) Today's topic is about the feeling that I've never crossed a threshold from out of shape to in shape.

It will run kind of long so feel free to break up the reading. :)

I got a Groupon about this time last year for a boot camp in NYC that met 3 days/week for 3 weeks. It said all the nice things about how it was for all fitness levels and that everybody worked to their own ability. I got on the train to the city to get to boot camp having to get on the train back to get ready for work and then come back to the city for work. The very first day was about the hardest thing I can remember physically doing. Between the push ups and the running and the bear crawls, I had never felt as low as I did at the end of that first session. And for all the various fitness level propaganda on the website, the vast majority of people in that group were very fit and doing this as cross training for other athletic endeavors. The true pain of it set in the next day when my cat Buddha jumped on my shoulder right before my alarm went off. Every pain receptor in my body went off, and then I tried to turn my alarm clock off and couldn't get my arm to reach over between the soreness and stiffness. I some how made it to work and some how had enough determination to make in through the entire 3 weeks.

I then joined JCF Boot camp because it was in Jersey City so no extra commuting necessary, was much more affordable and the pictures on the website actually had women of all shapes and sizes on it. It turned out to be a much better fit for me, but it wasn't by any means easy. I actually signed up to go to it 5 days/week! I couldn't complete warm up runs without walking and I remember when the instructor had to take a picture of me attempting to do a push up to explain all the things I was doing wrong. And I slowly got better. By September, I was feeling how far I'd come and was now running multiple laps at the park and doing push ups and squats at least a little bit more correctly.

However, I still haven't been thinking of myself as in shape. I have a mental hang up that if I'm in shape, exercise will get easy. I seem to have it in my head that because I still breath hard, I still sweat, and my muscles still burn when I do things that its because I'm still out of shape. I feel like I should look like that 17 year old kid, cool as a cucumber after having run a whole lot of really fast miles. I have worked out at least 5 days/week often more since last May; when I got asked the other day if I exercise regularly I had to say hell yes! But am I "in shape"?

I joined a brand new gym in November. My gym is awesome in that it offers lots of fitness classes including a ton of Group Cycling (aka Spin) classes and even has a pool. I was afraid to try a cycling class until very recently because I have always associated them with the super fit. It wasn't a good fit for somebody trying to get in shape I've told myself, it would be too hard, I would embarrass myself etc. Similar thoughts go through my mind each time I do a race. Even though I know there are walkers who do the races and that all ages and shapes do races, I feel certain that someone will call me out as a fraud for being there. I am sure that I will be last and it will be embarrassing. None of this has ever happened and yet I still feel this way minutes before every race starts.

But the good news, I have started having mini breakthroughs and if you're reading this and nodding along at some of the feelings I hope you can too! I have now gone to 6 spin classes at my gym and been the only person in class twice. I can do it, but it IS hard! However, today during class I wore a heart rate monitor. During a particularly intense time I looked down to see that my heart rate was about 181, that is above 90% of my max heart rate. I had news for myself in that moment, doing something that got me to 90% of my max heart rate is going to be hard! My heart is going to be working hard, and I will be out of breath. Its okay that my muscles hurt! They won't get stronger if they don't! And the effort I was having to put into getting my heart rate that high was much higher than it would have been 9-10 months ago. Heck even 3 months ago. Not that long ago, doing the warm up would have gotten my heart rate that high and I wouldn't have made it to the 45th minute of class hitting each rpm target before I took my heart rate to that level.

Stepping away from boot camp has actually greatly helped me with the realization that I can be in shape and still find exercise hard. I have got to boot camp twice this week, a far step down from the 5 days/week I have been doing. I have never felt so good at boot camp! I feel like I can work harder and stronger because I'm doing other things and not pounding my muscles in a similar way each day. I started boot camp when I was fat and out of shape, but I can't continue to associate the fat Francesca with boot camp. Being sore is not because I'm out of shape, its because I worked hard! I have to start associating the fit Francesca with all things I take on!

And while exercise is hard, being fit is the reward! I walk up the escalators/stairs at the train stations around the city with ease now. I walk to/from the train much faster, I know you're jealous I've found a way to cut down my commute time! :) I can keep up with just about anyone now. In fact this morning after spin I honestly thought that I can't wait to take my 8-year old second cousin out on the paddle boats again because after all these spin lessons, I'm going to have her going crazy fast!

So if you're reason for not exercising is that it's hard, you're right! But the rewards are worth it and I've actually come to look forward to exercising. (and I haven't even talked about how great my clothes fit!) It will take more effort to make it hard as you get more fit, but I am making my peace with the fact that it should never get easy.