Masakatsu Agatsu

True winning is winning against yourself:  so says my mom's favorite Japanese adage.  Well I won.  Dear Husband and I ran our 5K today - the South Whidbey Chum Run.  It has come at the end of a crazy busy week so it was a marathon just getting there.

We got to the check in and were immediate immersed in a sea of swarming fit people.  Alarmingly fit people, who were all smiling and walked by with bounces in their steps and the songs in their hearts practically pouring from their ears.

Dear Husband and I received our numbers and being a race newbie I ripped off the perforated tag on the bottom.  Noticing that every one of the other bouncy people still had their on their race numbers I shrugged and compounded my error by throwing the tag away.

Everyone lined up and some cheerful young kid from the local track team made everyone do a pre-race dance.  The horror. The horror.   I just wanted to get this going already.  I saw athletic friends who run it every year and grimaced at them.  At last we began and I started my run mix so I could catch my pace.  Holey Moley! we were running across the grass.  It was so bouncy and soft that I could barely run on it.  I just want to run on sweet sweet asphalt.  I fell to the back of the pack right away.

Into the woods we went and immediately started up a hill.  The story of my life.  Still, we were off turf and that was a blessing untold.  Hills oh the hills we kept climbing!  I kept my pace and was beginning to feel the first on set of whinyness.  This is the true runner's wall.  Your neck aches, your side gets a stitch, your mouth goes dry and the inner critic begins.  "Well just like school you're dead last - there goes the chubby girl running."  I remind myself that this is a "fun" run and the point is to finish.  Then the three year old passes me.

I remember the three year old.  He has been looping his mother in long parabolic arcs and then demands to be picked up.  His mother picks him up and manages to run a few steps and then sets him back down and he begins his orbit again.  Yeah - that's passing me.

Keep on trucking.  Look at the tree roots spray painted so you will not trip over them.  Keep running.  Ignore the friction on your inner thighs because you forgot your running tights.  Try to block the mental picture of your blinding white legs shown in all their glory.  Up hill around the tree.  Keep going.  Then the grandmas pass me.

Two grandmas, half running half speed walking, pass me on an incline.  They haven't broke a sweat and are chatting as I labor on.  Onward I go - all that matters is finishing.

I pass grandmas as they walk.  I pass three year old and mom.  I pass frisbee golfers.  Wait - What!?  The run is headed back down towards the park and I cross a party of frisbee golfers irritated that a slow fat (although not as fat as before I began this exercise thing) woman is running into the flight path of hole 6.

I am dressed all in blue and have a mental picture of Violet Beauregard being rolled away by Oompa Loompas.  Focus! Focus!   I see my mom and sister waving.  I am lapped by athletic people on their second loop and headed for the finish line.  1, 2, 3 they thunder past me as I keep at it.  7,8,9  there go some more.  I have not yet been lapped by anyone I know.  This is good.  I turn the corner and a large sign says finish ----> and a larger one says lap 2 --------> . I am cheered until I hit the lap two lane.

Us stragglers need extra cheering.  I think if you are in the last 10 runners in anything you should get your own personal cheering section.  Back to the turf.  Yikes!  Back to the trail.  I am still way far behind but I pass a few people who have not paced themselves and are doing a lot of walking now.

I have a feel for the trail now and am repeating on my running mix.  When I hit the sign that tells me I am 2/3 through I am so happy.  I feel alarmingly flushed but I still have plenty of wind.  The last 1/3 of the race seems to go by quickly.  I enter the finish corridor and run for everything I am worth.  48:32

The race ladies at the very end want me tag and don't even seem flummoxed that I have ripped it off and thrown it away.  I suck down water, and feel good that the three year old and the grannies didn't beat me.  Hooray I did it!

Now if Only I Can Kick the Birthday Cake Habit

According to the Dear Husband door to door was 4K, third fastest time.  Well, third fastest time for him, I think it overall must have been second fastest for me.  I was closer to him in the run than I usually am for longer than I usually am.

It is Sunny and Warm today edging on 70 degrees.  If this is what running in 70 degree weather is like, give me 65 and misting slightly.  I am a creature of dim libraries and early morning doughnuts, running in the warm sunshine is an acquired taste.  Down Jacobs to Rhodie Trail where we transitioned from shade to sun.  The Sun was at out backs and I was just about to the shady dip at the top of the Terry hill when Dear Husband turned around. I cast a longing glance at the shady trees when I turned and face to the sun had to run back the way I came.

Dear Husband and Soul Sister both can run wearing sunglasses, but I need every inch of my skin to sweat freely so I squinted into the glare and ran for the shade as fast as I could.  Sadly, I ran for the shade in my only slightly faster than normal stride.  Once I got out of the sun and felt my cave white flesh bathing in the shade ecstatically, I looked down Jacobs.  It seemed a lot longer going home than running up it.

Expecting my salsa music to carry me along, I instead got Long and Winding Road.

Wait . . wha happen?  Stupid Beatles cover. Long winding road that will never disappear? check.  The bitter tears I am crying? check.  Being left behind by my lover? check. Stupid Song.  Next Song:  Huey Lewis singing Oh Darlin'.  OK, still bitter tears but upbeat music and a nice guitar riff.  Why yes, you can still air guitar when you run, thanks for asking!

fail

blogger ate my post.  grr. more later

Freedom!

I missed posting Monday.  I ran, I gasped, I conquered.  We are now running for distance and time, so it is a slog each day we run.  Typically the midweek evening runs are the hardest and tonight was no exception.  We were about half way in the run when I rolled my ankle.  Not badly but, golly!, it hurts: ankles were not supposed to go sideways.

Still, that is not my big news this time around.  Oh no!  Dear Husband and I had finished our five minute opening walk I had gotten three steps in the actual jog when the girls got loose.  The jogging bra had unzipped itself and whee!  They may take our underwires, but they will never take our FREEDOM!!!

Of course it was really difficult getting the zipper up discretely.  Then I kept checking it all through the run sure that the zipper was sliding down.  It wasn't but I couldn't find a rhythm.  Then I rolled my ankle.  Sigh.

The Same Every Verse

It was not an ideal run tonight.  I couldn't find my windbreaker and I didn't want my red hoodie to get wet from the rain so I bagged it and just went without.  This had the added factor of not having an easy place to squirrel away my extra headphone cordage.  It was bouncing around all the way down the road.  Plus, and I know I am being vain here to think anyone notices or cares, but my arms were out and I was thinking about the extra jiggle out in front of the world. Why anyone would care how toned my arms were after being blinded by the whiteness of my legs, I'm not sure.  Being honest here, it crossed my mind more than once.

The Dear Husband had nearly no enthusiasm for the run tonight either.  This is bad.  I could on his single minded tenacity to pull me out the door and down the road.  I have birthday cake in my fridge still.  It knows my name and calls to me hourly.  I put in my iPod to drown out the sound of birthday cake and the song that most encapsulated this whole running experience played.  It is from the kid music section of my discography.
There is a marvelous composer, Richard Perlmutter, who has added hilarious lyrics to little bits of classical music.  His albums, the Beethoven's Wig series, are so fun.  This time the song he wrote to Edvard Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King seemed apropos.  Here is the music I'm sure you'll recognize it:

Birthday Cake

It was Girl Child Segundus' birthday Saturday and her party on Sunday, and I had not one, but two pieces of birthday cake to run off today.  Birthday cake is my vice.  Oh and coffee.  OK, I read a lot of genre books and very few improving ones. But those three are all complimentary, it's hard to not want to enjoy all three at once.

I have a new accountability partner.   I invited Soul Sister to run on Mondays with Dear Husband.  I assured her that even though she is beginning her couch to 5K, she would be no problem keeping up because I run at a snail's pace.  This turned out to be true.  We began our 5K loop from Jacobs to Terry to Ft. Casey.  Dear Husband took off down the road as he always does; Soul Sister and I motivated down the road at a slower pace.  Finally, she hit a running portion of her program.  She bounded ahead with a long bouncy stride.  Uh oh.  I kept my pokey pace and caught up on her walk portion.  We tortoised and hared it all the way to Ft. Casey.

As we rounded past the Engle Farm the program timed out.  The sound of lowing cows filled the air and the scent of freshly manured fields filled out nostrils.  But hey!  It was sunny and the run was over.  We walked the rest of the way talking and laughing.  How wonderful.

Donde estas, Yolanda?

Que Paso, Yolanda

I gotta put more of Pink Martini's Sympathique in my running mix.  I'm always hunting for a good uptempo song to run to and I remembered this is fun dishwasher dancing music.  You know, the songs that make you dance in your kitchen while you empty the dishwasher - I know I'm not alone in doing this.  It has the added benefit of embarrassing 11 year old boys. If you can't move yourself to rumba music what can you move yourself too?

Te Busque, Yolanda

I found My iPod today!  It had been missing since December and I was using Helen's iPod shuffle this whole time.  I checked a purse I had checked at least 5 times before and lo and behold there it was happy and bemused that I had been looking for it this whole time.  "What me? I am not the iPod you want to take running! I have no clip - you might have to stick me somewhere where I'll get sweaty - no thanks!" I used it. It got sweaty.

Y No Estas, Yolanda

The rest of our program is less about run time as it is distance.  Two more 25 minute sessions then 28 minutes from here on out.  We are now running about 3K although we have done the 5K loop once.  Since I found my "sweet spot",  I thought I'd try and trick my body into thinking I was dropping to a walk but not actually doing it.  I started out with a faster pace and at 10 minutes dropped to my normal running -  slow creep forward - then kicked it up to the faster pace again after 3 minutes.  This worked pretty well into the second half of the run when I spat out my gum thinking that I was done needing it.  I immediate started choking on nothing.  It was a tough recovery after that.  I had Yolanda kick up on the playlist right as I got my rhythm back and finished the last 3 minutes to that rumba beat, complete with hand gestures.  I'd have had the children running away in shamed embarrassment.  As it was the dog gave me funny looks.  Well, I was pretty sure I looked like Carmen Miranda, if Carmen Miranda was overweight and fish belly white legs.