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Flying Pig Marathon: In Pictures

9 Jun

Remember how I ran the Flying Pig Marathon?  Here are my pre-race and post-race posts… from over a month ago.  Oops!   I could lie and say I just now downloaded my mile splits and photos, but yeah, that’s not true at all.  It’s been a busy, surprising month, and while I’m working on making a blog comeback (for real!  I pinky-swear-promise!), I want to go back in time for a sec to recap one of the most memorable, grueling, awesome sauce races of my life.

En route to Cincinnati – love flying & love the window seat!

At the Expo with mom!

 

Dad was also with us, being awesome :)

Perfect fortune to get with my Chinese food the night before the race!

Race morning – ready to run!

I was too preoccupied by pre-race nerves to remember to take any Start Line photos before handing over the camera to my support crew, so the next photos I have are 10 miles into the marathon!

  • Mile 1 – 8:51
  • Mile 2 – 8:51
  • Mile 3 – 8:42
  • Mile 4 – 8:36
  • Mile 5 – 8:43
  • Mile 6 – 8:38
  • Mile 7 – 9:27 (uphill)
  • Mile 8 – 9:07 (uphill)
  • Mile 9 – 8:42 (uphill)
  • Mile 10 – 8:30

Ice cold water (with Nuun) hand-off at Mile 10

Sooo happy to see my support crew!

  • Mile 11 – 8:24
  • Mile 12 – 8:34
  • Mile 13 – 8:50
  • Mile 14 – 8:40
  • Mile 15 – 9:00
  • Mile 16 – 9:05
  • Mile 17 – 8:56

Dad jumped in to run with me just before Mile 14

*I just noticed you can see the 4-hour pace group (with the pink & white balloons) chasing us down, so this must’ve been around Mile 18, where we saw Mom & Brother.

Still feeling good – or at least I had enough energy to fake feeling good!

  • Mile 18 – 9:07
  • Mile 19 – 9:02
  • Mile 20 – 9:06
  • Mile 21 – 9:19
  • Mile 22 – 9:01
  • Mile 23 – 9:33
  • Mile 24 – 9:29
  • Mile 25 – 10:02 (darn!)

Only a couple miles to go – I wanted to double over like the dude in red

Dad was an amazing coach – never let me give up on Marathon #15!

With less than a mile to go, Dad veered off and I ran towards the finish line with nothing left in my tank but stubborn determination to finish in under four hours.

  • Mile 26 – 9:25
  • Last 0.54 – 4:35 (8:37/mile pace)

FINALLY ran down a new marathon PR with my coach dad!

Endurance & persistence will be rewarded!

Garmin Finish:  26.54 miles, 3:58:32 (8:59/mile)

Official Finish: 26.2 miles, 3:58:34 (9:06/mile)

And one more, so Sully doesn’t feel left out :)

Happy 30th!

3 Apr

No, it’s not my 30th.  I won’t cross that bridge til next year… or ever.  My sister’s been celebrating the anniversary of her 29th birthday for, well, a while now!  Today is my mom and dad’s 30th wedding anniversary!!!!  They were just here for a visit, but I already miss them…

Given that I’m approaching 30 (and still feel like I turned 21, like, yesterday), there’s that part of me that wants to resist saying this, but really, 30 years is a long time.  30 years is a lot of love.

“The roots of a family tree begin with the love of two hearts.”

Happy 30th Anniversary, Mom & Dad!!!!  I love you!!!!

Running does NOT ruin your knees.

16 Feb

Welcome to the first edition of Chick Named Chuck’s You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

When I talk to non-runners or former-runners about my running endeavors, I almost always get some form of the following:

“Aren’t you worried that all that running will ruin your knees?”

I take a deep breath and smile and breeze by the question, sharing that I’ve never had any issues with my knees (knock on wood… the day that I have any kind of twinge in my knee(s) is the day I disappear Into the Wild like Christopher McCandless.  I’m just kidding, mom).

In my head, I get pretty snarky with the Running-Ruins-Your-Knees Believers, thinking: My knees are fine, but I do struggle with runner’s highs, lower stress, and improved physical and mental health.  It’s brutal.  And I would definitely encourage everyone to stay far, far away from my beloved sport of running.

Mark Remy is a 21-time marathoner with a personal best of 2:46 (that’s fast!) and his knees (miraculously!) have not disintegrated after 20 years of running.  He’s an executive editor and writer over at RunnersWorld.com and blogged:

“I don’t know exactly when or where it started, but for a pretty wide swath of the population, “Running Ruins Your Knees” is less a belief and more a mantra or a slogan — something that’s been intoned and invoked so reflexively, so often, and handed down through so many generations, it’s taken on the aura of eternal truth, of gospel.  Never mind that it isn’t, you know, true.”

If you need to see the research with your own eyes, read: here, here, and here.  The cliff notes:

  • “Recreational running doesn’t increase the risk of arthritis,”
  • AND “increases production of certain proteins in the cartilage that make it stronger.”  Meaning, running actually strengthens joints!

Case in point: My Dad.

A million years ago (back in the 70s), my dad was a runner for his high school cross country team.  He ran and ran and ran and was a badass and all that my-dad-is-my-hero-mushy-gushy stuff.  In his 30s, he started having some arthritis pain in his knees (cue the gasps of horror… Running ruined his knees!).  In my opinion, the real horror is that he gave up running — that’s the stuff my nightmares are made of… Anyhow, he was still my hero, working out on the Nordic Track ski machine in our basement and cranking out workouts on various other low-impact machines at the YMCA.

In 2007, I accidentally fell in love with running and dragged him back over to the dark-side.  We’ve run a handful of races together, ranging from 5K to marathon!  Here we are, crossing the finish line of the Dayton Half Marathon in 2010:

And his knees?  Well, get this: he’s currently training like a maniac for the LA Marathon next month.  He’s running three times per week following the FIRST training program, including a speed workout, tempo run, and long run, and he’s completed three 20 mile long runs in the past five weeks.  Yesterday, my dad excitedly talked my ear off about how well his training is going, then said: “The more I run, the better my knees feel!“

The next time someone tells me running will ruin my knees, I’m giving them my dad’s phone number.

Two of my favorite things: Sully and my running goals

16 Apr
“Project Morning Person” was an epic FAIL and I bet everyone saw that coming.  HOWEVER, I did successfully log 22 miles of running between Tuesday and Friday to bring my 2011 mileage to an even 300 miles!  Radness!  Also pretty amazing is the fact that being on full-time Sully-duty means I’ve picked up at least that many of Sully’s turds…  Oh the joys of dog parenthood.  In case you were wondering, I definitely prefer the running.  And Jared (Sully’s official poop picker-upper) is home-sweet-home!!!!  Life is looking super rosy right now!
Happy Family!  Sully’s thinking he’d be happier if he had a bowlful of peanut butter

*Jared had the camera for the week, so all of these photos are old!

Anyhow, as frustrating as it is that Sully and I don’t gel as running buddies, he’s a pretty amazing buddy in general… aside from the stinky breath and gnarly poo…  

His “birthday” (the day we got him from the shelter) is the day after Christmas.
Giving us kisses before a long run.  I hope it was around Christmas…

Every day, I make our bed (and by “make it,” I mean I take two seconds to pull the comforter up to the pillows).  And every single day, I come home from work to find the comforter, sheets, and pillows in disarray.  If Sully fails to hear my car pull into the driveway and I don’t fumble with my keys like a bumbling idiot, I can bust in on him sprawled out across our bed and he’s usually on his back with his legs straight up in the air like a beetle.  Nine times out of 10, he’s on my side of the bed, with his floppy jowls or stinky tush on my pillow (… I really should change my pillowcase much MUCH more frequently).  I’ve often wondered why he prefers my side, but I just figured it’s because Sully’s madly in love with me.  Like Brian’s in love with Lois on Family Guy…

There he is, snuggled up in blankets on MY side of the bed…

Since Jared was in Chicago for the week and I was having to re-wear my stinky running clothes (TMI?), I dumped out our dirty laundry on the kitchen floor and separated all my stuff from Jared’s.  I figured I could wait and do Jared’s laundry over the weekend… Or maybe I’ll just wait to let my mom do it when she gets here on May 27th…  It melted my heart (and made me laugh out loud) to wake up Wednesday morning and find our sweetie-petey Sully had made himself a nest out of Jared’s dirty clothes and slept there for the night.  I had to take one of Jared’s socks out of his mouth when I let him outside to piddle on a tree.  Cute as heck, dude.

I’m not even joking that the highlight of my day is often when I get home from work to Sully’s frantic tail wagging at the front door.  He sniffs me up and down, lingering at my shoes, then sprints for the back door, where I let him out to relieve his super mega-bladder on a tree since he’s been cooped up inside all day, snoozing all over my side of the bed.  

best Hanukkah/Christmas present EVER

In other news, I am so, so, so super jazzed about all the news/blog coverage of Monday’s Boston Marathon!  Ohmygosh I cannot stop reading this stuff… RunnersWorld.com’s Boston Marathon 101 and MarathonGuide.com’s Boston Marathon Complete Coverage.  Not to mention the bazillion and four Boston blogs I’ve been following religiously for weeks now…

I’m also stoked that it’s FRIDAY and I’ll be eating Chipotle for dinner in about… two hours!!!!  We have ZERO plans tomorrow, except for a race expo = best day ever!!!!  AND we have a half marathon on Sunday.  As if that’s not enough excitement–AND Jared doesn’t know this yet… SURPRISE, BUBS!!!!–we are sooo going to do this One Hundred Pushups Program that I’ve been hearing about all over the place.  We’ve been running our feetsies off for a couple years now.  We need to work on our other pipes!

Having Jared out of town gave me ample opportunity to NOT turn myself into a morning person AND to totally unleash my running obsession.  In my last post I started thinking about my long term running goals and have since gone off the deep end, formulating an extensive list that will inevitably grow and evolve.  I’ll probably revisit this way too often, but too bad…
My long, long, long, long list of Running Goals…

#1) Become a “Marathon Maniac”

#2) Join a running group &/or make more running friends, so I stop boring my non-runner friends/fam to tears all the time…

#3) Own a treadmill.  I’ll give him hugs everyday, just like Janae:

#4) Run 1200 miles in 2011

#5) Run a Boston Qualifying marathon of < 3:35:00 before I turn 30

#6) Run a marathon cross a marathon finish line with my dad

  • I broke this news to my dad before posting this blog and he confessed he doesn’t think he’ll run any more marathons after he runs the Flying Pig in two weeks, which is kinda devastating to me because I so, so, so desperately wish I could be in Cinci to run with him this year.  BUT, I’ll be running the OC Marathon, 2000 miles away, as my dad crosses the Flying Pig finish line and enters “marathon retirement.”  Or so he says…  I have not-so-secret hopes that his retirement will last as long as Haile Gebrselassie’s week-long retirement from running after last year’s NYC Marathon.  BUT I’m also happy with the idea of having my dad swoop in and pace me for the second half of a marathon one day.  Not to mention the fact that we’ll undoubtedly run a bunch more half marathons and fun-size races together. 
    Dad & me crossing the finish of the Dayton RCC Half Marathon
    • On that note, I’d like to run a marathon with each and every friend or family member who wants to run with me!  Call, text, email!  Let’s do this!

    #7) Run an ultramarathon

    #8) Run as many of these marathons as possible:

    #9) Keep running well into my nineties, just like the Gladyator:

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