DA Race

It has been a week since the marathon and I have had time to settle into post marathon life - which I must say is always a little weird. I suddenly have this free time, and energy, that I don't know what to do with! So now, I will try to expel some of that energy on a blog post about my race! ;)

The days leading up to, and the morning of, the race were all pretty normal and mellow so I will fast-forward to about mile 10. I had started the race right about the pace I wanted and had settled in with a nice pack. We were clipping along just a few seconds slower than goal pace. I was fine with it being a little slow since we were running into a decent head wind and the second half was supposedly going to be a tail wind so I could make up time there. I went through the half at 1:25:28. A little slow, but still not in the danger zone just yet. At mile 16 a few of the girls and I threw down a 6:17 mile. OOPS! We all looked at each other and simultaneously said "Too soon!" Most people (normally that would include me) panic a little having run too fast, too early. I took it as a good sign. Since I started conservative and at this stage in the race I could run a 6:17 mile, I clearly had something left in the tank and that was encouraging and motivating. We backed the pace down slightly, so we thought. We went through mile 17 at 6:35. SERIOUSLY!? I honestly thought we were right around 6:25! By mile 18 I had to make a choice. Go now or for sure miss your goal. So I took a chance and I went.

One of the other girls in the group had  made a move, too, so I used her to pull me. The next couple of miles were 6:19-6:25 ish. Then, around mile 22.5 I went through an aid station and came out with lead for legs. CRAP! I still had 3.5 miles and ZERO room for error. I went through mile 23 & 24 in 6:41 and 6:44. The easy thing to do would have been to tell myself that I fell off pace, that I had no chance of running my goal and to just make it through the last 2.2 miles. But when I hit mile 24, I got mad. I got angry and I got moving.

Earlier in the race I had seen a sign that said 'Do Something Epic,' For whatever reason, that popped in my head and I said "Erin, GET THE F**K MOVING!" I had 2 miles to go. 2 miles, piece of cake! (HA! Right.) I pushed and I pushed and kept telling myself to catch the next guy, and the next guy, and then that ponytail, and then the next guy....
As I brought my pace back down, the crowd was telling me to keep going and keep moving and push harder. The crowd was so loud I could hardly hear my own thoughts - which, let's be honest, the last few miles you don't really want to hear them anyway!

Finally, I turned the corner to head up "Mt, Roosevelt" and I knew I was only a minute and a half from being done. I had stopped checking my watch because time and pace didn't matter anymore; what mattered is that I wasn't giving up. I finished in 2:50:56 - my second half being exactly the same as the first, 1:25:28! I took another 1:40 off my time and I am that much closer to the OT Standard.

After I finished I ripped off my shoe and sock because I had such a bad blister on my left foot the last few miles I couldn't stand to keep my shoe on anymore. I found a friend who was working the finish line and immediately asked how Allison had done. For those of you who don't know, Allison is a teammate I have been training with and who ran a 2:39! When I heard her time I swear I could have screamed as if I had run that fast myself! She was shooting for an OT standard and she got that and then some!

The marathon is full of trials and tribulations and no matter how fast you run it, you are constantly tested. What makes the marathon so great is that the people who finish have overcome those tests. They pushed, they struggled, they hurt, but they finished. They may not have hit their goals, but they didn't use that as a reason to quit.

Going into Chicago I was feeling my strongest and my healthiest. I had excellent coaching from Coach Dad (who ran a 2:59:16 at the age of 51!) and killer strength workouts from The Ranch Athletics. Thanks for making my PR possible!

As Always It's a Runderful Life!

HOOAH!

Recently, my brother and sister were both in town and we decided it would be a good opportunity to do family photos. We all could feel a bit of hurt as we took the photos knowing that we were missing someone. I can't speak for them, but there were definitely a few moments where I was holding back tears thinking of Megan. In one of the photos my mom wore a shirt that said "Some people never meet their heroes, I raised mine." She stood their wearing it with pride as both my brother and sister stood beside her. You see, they are both currently serving in the United States Army.  My brother is a Combat Medic in the 82nd Airborne and my sister is a Patriot Missile Operator in the 69th ADA. I am so incredibly proud of them. Every time I talk to them they have graduated from another school, or collected rank or received an award or become a Team Leader etc, etc. To sum it up, they are pretty much badass!

My mom & dad may have gotten to raise them, but I got to grow up with them. I got to share secrets with them and get in trouble with them and fight with them and grow with them. Like all siblings, there was a time I am sure, that we could not stand to be around each other but we have now out grown that. Losing one of your own makes you forget all the stupid stuff you don't like about your siblings and just appreciate the fact that they ARE your sibling. That they are somebody you have known for your entire life and whether you like it or not, they are part of you. (I just happen to really like mine!)

My brother doesn't like the icky emotional stuff so I always have to fight back my tears when I hug him good bye. When my sister left, I couldn't help but cry. Not only because I was going to miss her, but because she will be deploying over seas for a year tour in Kuwait. Now, I know Kuwait is better than her being sent into Iraq or Afghanistan but she will be only 20 miles from the Iraq border and with those guys, you never really know what they'll do. I wont get to text her funny pictures or call her whenever I want to, but will take what I can get in an email and an occasional Skype session. I know she will most likely return home safe next summer but I can't help but worry a little bit. I have already lost one sister and have no room in my heart to lose another - or my brother for that matter!!

I am writing this just to say how proud I am of both of them. To let them know that I support them and to tell them that I miss them every day.

My beautiful Momma and her Soldiers.

Side by side or miles apart, siblings will always be connected by the heart. 

As always, it's still a Runderful Life!

You Don't Know the Struggle Until...

...Your legs give out on you at mile seven of a marathon. Just kidding, EVERY distance runner knows the struggle because it happens in every distance! It's that point at which you're running great and on pace and then BOOM! Your legs say " Fuck you, we're not doing this today!" and then you are left to finish the rest of the race in pain and agony and repeatedly asking yourself when the hell it will be over.

That pretty much sums up my experience at the Boston Marathon this year. So that's it, thanks for reading!
Just kidding...again.

Well, the day really started off bad when our Bostonian driver didn't take the right exit, leaving us to tell HIM where to go and 2 hours later jumping off the bus and going directly to our corrals - but that's another story. So the National Anthem plays, they introduce all the Elite men and the gun goes off! I start out slow and go through mile one in 6:50. Perfect! The first few miles are downhill so you really have to start this race controlled. I slowly dropped my pace and by mile three or four was right on my PR pace of 6:35. Sounds like the start to a perfect race, and it probably would have been, had I not been injured the last month of training. So let's go back and give you a little history:

 A month out of race day I found myself not being able to run, or even walk, without pain. I couldn't straighten my leg completely without hurting and it was even waking me up at night. I made an appointment to see someone about my leg and decided to take time off until then - 5 days. Ugh. After seeing him I tried to run and made it only one mile. *Insert panic face here* Ok, time to rethink this.  So Coach Dad and I came up with a cross training plan, and I scheduled more appointments to have my leg worked on. I got sick the next day and had to take more time completely off. No big deal, my body needs rest. (That's what I kept telling myself to keep from really freaking out.) Finally, I was able to run after a week and half off. I could get through five miles - still with pain. I did easy runs every other day the last few weeks of training, never getting over 12 miles, and did intervals on the rower to try and keep my aerobic capacity. By race day my leg was good enough that I felt a little more confident that it wouldn't shut me down late in the race.

So back to the race. I wasn't feeling great, but I was holding my pace.I was talking to myself, staying positive and telling myself to just keep clicking the miles off. "You've got this." By the time I hit mile seven, I knew things were getting bad. The self talk turned into  "You'll be OK. You'll be OK. YOU. WILL. BE. OK." I wasn't OK. It was only mile seven and I felt like I had run 18. Still, I was thinking positive thoughts and trying to stay motivated. However, by mile 11 reality had to be accepted that today just wasn't going to happen. It was a hard pill to swallow. I couldn't believe that at mile 11 I felt like this. I mean, I could believe it. I had hardly run the last four weeks.  How the fuck was I going to go through 15 more miles and my legs deteriorating this fast?!? I decided that I had to play with this race and use the crowd and enjoy the experience. If you haven't run Boston, I will tell you that the crowds there are UNBELIEVABLY awesome. Wicked awesome, to be exact! I even debated kissing a Wellesley College girl in the infamous Scream Tunnel. ;) ( I didn't though.) If you don't know what that is CLICK HERE !

 Watching mobs of people going by me - a lot of them women - was hard on my competitive spirit. I kept having to tell myself to let my pride go. By 15 miles I didn't have a choice in the matter. My legs were so bad that I didn't even know if I could make it to the finish line. Now, every runner thinks this at some point in their race because your legs hurt so much and you just want it to stop, however, you know you will finish. This time, I legitimately didn't know if I was going to be able to finish; if my legs would hold out that long. I kept telling myself to just take it one mile at a time, that I would be fine and that I would make it. But even at miles 20 and 23, I still didn't know if it was going to be possible. I hurt SO FUCKING BAD. Want to know just how bad I hurt? I WALKED. Yes, I said it: I WALKED. Never in a race have I ever had to stop and walk but my quads were seizing so bad I could hardly pick up my feet and was tripping over cups in the aid stations. I was desperate. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying anything bad against people who have to walk. I am simply saying that I have never done it before and for me, and for those who know me, you know it means things are BAD. Not only did I walk, I had to do it more than once. I walked through a couple aid stations and a few times in between them. I never stopped for more than 10-20 seconds but to walk in the Boston Marathon, in front of thousands of screaming people, makes it hard not to feel a little embarrassed by it.

When I finally saw the 1K mark (a little over half a mile for the metric illiterate.) I couldn't have been happier. Still, all I could think about was just being done. For the pain to stop. To walk away to my hotel with my tail between my legs. When I finally crossed the line, I had a moment where I felt a little proud of myself. Proud that I pushed through. Proud that even though I wanted to quit - and it was tempting with Med Tents EVERY SINGLE MILE - I didn't. I finished. It may have been 22 minutes slower than my PR ( Now do you see how fucking bad I was!?) but I finished. I didn't quit. I didn't stop moving. I may have walked, but I didn't stop moving.

There is a saying: Never quit in the dark. But I didn't care if it was light or dark, I could not quit. Especially this year. That was what the 2014 Boston Marathon was all about. BOSTON STRONG. Seeing those signs all along the course wouldn't allow me to quit. The fans wouldn't allow me to quit. So I couldn't allow me to quit. It doesn't mean that I didn't go back to my hotel room and proceeded to call my mom and cry my eyes out. (YES! I still call my mommy when I am sad. SO WHAT!?)

I am disappointed to say the least in how the race went. Looking back it would have been smarter to have started back with my Dad and experience the marathon with him. However, I had to try. I am a competitor and I wanted to compete. It didn't work out and that is OK. There are more marathons to run and more chances to improve. I still had an amazing time with my dad and all the friends that were there. It was an incredible atmosphere and there was so much emotion and determination and fight in every single person there - spectators and runners. The 2014 Boston Marathon is an experience that just can not be described and I don't think anybody that was there, will ever forget it.


It's still a Runderful Life.

PROOF I FINISHED! ;)

The Power of Zzzz

It has been a while -OK, a LONG while - since I last posted. I get busy with work, life and training and tend to "forget" about keeping up with this thing. I promise I'll try to be better at it because I know you are all just DYING to know every detail about my life. ;) Sarcasm aside, I have had a lot going on since we last spoke.

Qualifying for the Olympic Trials is something that has somewhat taken over my life. I am not saying this is a bad thing, it has just stirred a lot of change in my training and every day life. While training for CIM I tried a new training program, added weight training, tried a new diet and was forced  to look at a lot of other recurrent issues in the way I recover. On top of all that, I started a new job that really made for a rocky ride -since I decided to still keep my old job, too. I wanted to try running higher mileage this training cycle in which I topped out at 90 miles per week. We also included more true speed work to the plan to try to keep my relative speed up. It made for one tiring - physically and mentally - training cycle. I say 'mentally' with a invisible asterisk next to it. What do I mean by that? Well, the mental fatigue was really due to immense physical fatigue and the hormonal imbalance it was creating. With the new job I was getting up at 5:00 am most mornings to get in a run before work so that I could make it to the gym that evening or do a 2nd run. A typical week looked like this:

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
5:00 am Run	5:00 am Run	5:00 am Run	5:00 am Run	5:00 am Run	Long run	REST!!!!!
Work 8 hrs	Work 8 hrs	Work 8 hrs	Work 8 hrs	Work 8 hrs	Work 8 hrs
5:00 PM WEIGHTS	5:00 pm Intervals	5:00 pm 2nd run or rest	5:00 pm Intervals	5:00 pm Weights

Now, it may not look like a lot in a simple table, but what's not included is the time eating, showering, sitting in traffic and trying to maintain a somewhat "normal" life. I made it a point to be in bed at 9:00 pm every night, eat as much as I could and stay hydrated. It all sounds perfect but the reality was that I couldn't always get to bed by 9:00...which meant I didn't always get out of bed on time.... which caused me to have to rush to work...which meant I usually missed my post-run meal in that critical recovery window (if I got to eat at all.before lunch). This wasn't the case every day but I can definitely say it wasn't rare. I felt like I was high strung ALL the time and the more I stressed the more fatigued I got. I wasn't sleeping through the night - usually waking up around 2-3:00 am- and I was waking up with really achy/painful legs (OK, I know I was training for a marathon but this was a different kind of pain), my emotions were on the wildest roller coaster ever,  my period decided to just come and go as it pleased, I was irritable and craved just being alone. We made adjustments to my training as we went but the problem didn't seem to be going away.. A few weeks out from race day Coach Dad finally put a stop to the morning runs and I backed off the gym a bit so I could get some extra rest. This seemed to help a but I was still not sleeping through the nights and still waking up tired and achy. Race day came and went in which I walked away with a HUGE PR and I can say I ran the best race of my marathon career so far. I ran smarter, pushed harder and fought for every second of that five and a half minutes that put my PR at 2:52.

Clearly, the training worked and the fatigue was all worth it. However, I couldn't just let it go. What could I have run if I hadn't felt so run down? Is this going to happen every time I train for a marathon? I had questions, and I wanted answers. So, I started researching some of my symptoms. It took a while because I had to sift through all the WebMD bullshit that told me rest and take Ibuprofin. I tried searching some of my less common symptoms and was able to nail down what I am 99% sure (hey, I'm no doctor!) was causing my problems. I found a list of symptoms for Adrenal Fatigue that included all of my symptoms - including things I didn't think had anything to do with my fatigue. Again, I am no doctor but at least I had a good starting point to get myself back on track!

Adrenal fatigue is caused by high levels of stress, whether it be physical stress (like marathon training) or mental stress or a combination of the two. Your adrenal glands are stimulated by stress which causes them to release cortisol into your body. Cortisol regulates your "wake cycle" and regulates blood sugar. Hence, the reason I couldn't stay asleep. You can find out more HERE. The lack of deep sleep doesn't allow your body to fully recover from every day life, let alone the extra physical demands of marathon training.

I followed what the article recommended for natural remedies and hit up my local natural food store to create my daily vitamin cocktail. I have also started paying closer attention to my diet, we cut back on the weekly miles but are keeping the intensity up and I quit one job. I have since felt a HUGE turn around in my symptom and I now feel the normal amount of marathon training fatigue as I prepare to run Boston this April.

What did I learn?? Don't overload yourself. I had WAY too much going on and asked for a training program that was not feasible for my work schedule. I need to find ways to better balance life and to take time for myself when I feel I need it.  I am excited to be going back to Boston and I will need all the rest I can get to tackle that beast of a course!