Rocky 50k

I remember back in September, when I saw a link to this article about how far Rocky ran in the training montage scene in Rocky II. I remember sending the article to Brian, because he loves everything Rocky. Of course, the link to ultra-marathons piqued my interest. The author had watched the training montage in Rocky II and noticed something a little interesting. Rocky REALLY gets around! To be exact, when he made a running route that connected all the scenes in order, Rocky ended up running 31 miles. When my December Runner's World came in early November, there was a blurb about a run that someone was organizing that followed Rocky's route - on December 7th. I called Brian from the Dallas airport and told him about it. Commemorating Rocky, on Brian's 39th birthday. It didn't get any better than that.

Of course, I was mostly joking. Brian has been running his daily 6 miles, but nothing longer since Old Pueblo in Tucson in early March. This was much longer, and with less than 1 month, there was not really time to ramp up his miles. Brian was not to be deterred. He was in. His parents were planning on coming out that weekend to celebrate his 40th, er, 39th birthday anyway, so we would make it a little road trip and they could see the sights in Philly while we ran around like crazy people.

The weather in the NE turned in the two weeks leading up to this race, so my biggest worry was freezing our arses off in the cold. Oh, and ice. We had learned that ice is a problem to run in. I think we got really lucky in the end with windchill at a balmy  32F (compared to our recent runs in NYC). The in-laws drove us to the start, where there were many runners standing around with grey sweats and a red sweatband getting ready to do this. Brian and I took a moment to pose in front of Rocky's steps - where the run starts.

We did some practice fighting in front of the steps. Brian really wanted to vault over the railing just like Rocky, but because of my worries of him running 30 miles plus the fact that people actually live there, he had to settle for giving me a big right hook, just like Apollo Creed. Sadie was unimpressed. 

The neighborhood we started in was awesome! This part of Philadelphia was a big old city like NY, but not so over-crowded. It also seemed like they kept a lot more older buildings, which are mostly limited to 4 stories or under. Lots of cute little restaurants, shops. Loved it.

We moved out of this neighborhood and started moving into a more industrial neighborhood. Still beautiful. And mostly deserted, as it was still early on a Saturday morning. 

We planned to drop Sadie at around mile 12. I was worried about her too, because it has been longer than Brian since she's done a long run, and she is somewhere around 80 years old in dog years. Quite the old lady, but she was a fighter. I think she was psyched to be running with others, as she never once stopped pulling ahead on the leash. Now I know that she is faking when she drags behind me on 6 miles. We dropped her off at the hotel with B&D, where she had her breakfast waiting for her. 

Around mile 15, I fell and was really demoralized then. It was cold, and I was tired. I was over 100 miles for the week, and it was showing only in my coordination and a little in my spirit. Right about then, we met up with 2 local girls from Philly who seemed interested in running with us. So the four of us joined up, and not a moment too soon. They helped my flagging spirits, distracted me from my scrapes and bruises and then we went through a REALLY BAD area, where I'm glad we had Brian 'bad ass' Zacher to keep all the questionable bystanders from acting on their comments that they threw our way... 

We ended up running with them until 2 miles from the end. Which was really good. Because the course got a little confusing. And although Brian had done an awesome job so far at reading our course directions, I don't think we would have run the exact route had it not been for Madeline and Olivia.

I think I fell behind on fuel, because the last mile I was seriously flagging in energy. Every store that we passed that had a soda sign made me almost cry. But I knew we were so close and I didn't want B&D&Sadie to wait too long in the cold at the art museum. 

With just enough energy left to run up the steps at the art museum, we finished! We ran an extra bit dropping Sadie off at the hotel, so our total ended up at 31.4 miles. They had 'Gonna Fly Now' and 'Eye of the Tiger' playing on the steps. It was so much fun, and such a neat idea. We took no pictures along the way, but some people did: http://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/12/09/10-great-twitter-photos-inaugural-rocky-50k/

The last couple of miles of the run, the temperatures had been dropping and it was getting overcast. So Brian and I voted to go back to the hotel and clean up and maybe take a nap. In the meantime, B&D went out to see some sights before nightfall. We went out to a really good vegan pizza place that night, but most of the rest of the day Sadie, Brian and I spent sleeping.

What a way to spend a birthday!

My First Broadway Show

My friend Jessica is in NYC to goof off before the Atlantic City Marathon this weekend. So with one day in NY, I asked her the things that she would like to do. The 9/11 memorial and a Broadway show were on her list. So yesterday morning we headed over to the memorial under a very grey sky to visit that.

The memorial is done really well and I would highly recommend it to anyone. The museum doesn't open until this spring, but I'm not sure that it would add anything for me. I think the value of that must come with younger people that weren't old enough on that day to remember the emotions connected to the tragedy. 

After the memorial, we headed up to Times Square for lunch, people-watching and hopefully to find same-day tickets to a show. So in a pizza place, I browsed the web. We wanted to see something light-hearted and fun, but everything selling at same-day (for the limited amount of money that we wanted to pay) were dramas - and depressing at that. Jessica mentioned Book of Mormon, so I looked them up directly. It turns out that they do a lottery every day for really good tickets for $32! Awesome! We went over there to make sure we knew where to be at 4:30. While we were there, some people were trying to get tickets to that evening's show, and we overheard that the only available tickets were $477 each! To make a long, exciting story short, we did not win in the lottery. In the meantime, we discovered that they do standing room tickets and that was first-come, first-served. Those tickets were $27 each. We went back and forth on the wisdom of standing for a performance when we are supposed to run a marathon this Sunday, but in the end couldn't pass up seeing the show for $27. So we bought tickets and were in. They only sell 30 of these tickets, so we got lucky that we were so close to the front of that line.

So I stood and watched The Book of Mormon last night. It was a really good play. A silly, light-hearted musical that pokes fun at just about everyone. Amazing talent, amazing sets, just a great show. It was so entertaining, I didn't really think about how sore my legs and feet were getting, but I have to say that sitting on the subway home really felt great.

Now, I'm on the bus heading to Atlantic City and trying not to stand AT ALL today. We'll pick up our race packets at the expo today or tomorrow and see what AC has to offer. Wish me luck at the race with very tired feet... It was worth it!

Road Trip With Mom & Kathy

My mom just left for home after a very busy two week tour of the Northeast. She and her friend Kathy flew into NYC, stayed with us for a night and then did a whirlwind tour of Philadelphia and Washington D.C. (Luckily, they finished their tour of the capitol a couple of days before the government shutdown, so everything was open for business when they were there.)

When they got back from those two big cities, the three of us took off for another whirlwind tour. This tour was a road trip through the small towns and changing foliage of the Northeast. We were probably a week or two too early for peak foliage season, but none of us were complaining. We saw beautiful scenery, and had awesome "indian summer" weather.

We toured the Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe houses in Hartford, CT. We stayed the night in White River Junction, VT, which is a very cute little town that would be a nice place to spend a weekend. We saw Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park, which I had never heard of before, but was very picturesque. We then toured the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory in Waterbury, VT (where the milk-eating crowd had a sample of the goods). We stayed in North Conway, NH, which is another small town, but not nearly as cute as White River Junction (sorry North Conwayans). We toured the "Castle In The Clouds", which I wouldn't really call a castle, but was interesting to see nonetheless. We then drove back down the Eastern shore, stopping to admire a couple of lighthouses in Maine (Portland Head, Wood Island). We stayed the night in Portsmouth, NH and toured the Strawberry Banke Museum there the next day. The museum is a set of original and restored houses and shops that have been restored to various points of time in the towns long history. The next day we drove down to Newport, RI and toured two of the mansions there - The Breakers and Rosecliff. These mansions are so over the top and so I was surprised at how much I enjoyed touring them. We then drove up to Providence and got to do a quick tour of a textile mill on the river.

Phew! That was all done in 5 days of driving and touring. It was a busy trip for sure. The road trip concluded in Providence, RI. I dropped mom & Kathy off at the Amtrak station for them to do a day walking tour of Boston. Meanwhile, I met up with a friend that I haven't seen for about 16 years that lives in Cranston, RI. I had a great time visiting with her and drove back to NYC, just in time to pick mom & Kathy up at Penn Station that night.

I saw that Providence does a really cool show on the river called WaterFire. It is only on Fridays, so it didn't work out for me to see that. It sounds really interesting and was recommended by my friend. So if you're ever there on a Friday (in season - they stop over the winter), check it out.

There is absolutely no way I'm going to participate in a 3100 mile race.

It's kind of fun to make statements like that, because I usually end up doing everything that I once said that I would NEVER do.

Before we moved here, I had heard of this 3100 mile race that takes place less than 3 miles of our NYC home (http://3100.srichinmoyraces.org/). I was pretty excited about seeing this and a little curious about what it would take to participate. The race started this year on June 16th, just a couple of days after we arrived. Since it takes the winners over a month to complete it, we had a lot of time to go visit the race and see what it was about. The cutoff for all runners is 52 days.

The first problem for me was that it was really hot for about 3 weeks of this race. I wasn't doing a very good job of just staying alive, so I'm really not sure how the participants were running 50-70 miles per day. It was really impressive to think about what they were trying to accomplish, but to watch them, they were definitely struggling with the conditions. 

The biggest problem for me was the absolute time commitment that this race has to take. I'm used to giving up a large portion of my time training for an ultra. It takes a really long time to put in all the miles that make the actual race a pleasant experience. But you can always maneuver the training around the other stuff going on in your life. I'm no stranger to starting runs at 3am so that I can participate in all the fun things that family and friends have planned for normal daylight hours.

This race? First, I don't even know how you train for it. Second, the actual race! Almost two months of running all day, every day. I would think about them while watching a movie with Brian, or standing in line at the grocery store, or eating ice cream on the couch. I don't think that I have the will power to do it, and more importantly, all desire to do it evaporated as I watched the participants. This last thing is the biggie. Each time in the past, when I've thought of doing a seemingly impossible thing, I get extremely excited to watch other people try to attempt it. This time, my excitement faded the more I thought about it. I guess I don't even want to know whether it is possible for me to complete it. I would rather spend that much time doing something else.

I think that my never is safe on this one. I really don't think I will ever participate in the 3100 mile race. 

Bagels!

I know that I already talked about the bagel in a previous post, but I have to give a shout-out to Forest Hills Bagels.

After I told Brian about my bagel there, we had to go have one together. BUT, we assumed that all NYC bagels would be delicious. We were wrong.

One morning this week we stopped at a place that is mostly on his way to work and were dreadfully disappointed. Poor Brian. He hasn't had a little piece of heaven from Forest Hills Bagels yet.

The High Line

First on my list of things to see in NYC was The High Line.

I had read an article on it (in National Geographic?) a couple of years ago and had been thinking about it ever since. I think I was intrigued by renewing a space by working with it instead of the usual clearing out and starting over.

I loved it. I think it's an awesome idea. I kind of wish that the pedestrian bridges in down-town Tucson would have had a larger vision like this. It makes for such a nice pedestrian experience. Of course, I recognize that maintaining landscape is a much more costly endeavour in the desert...

Brian liked The High Line a lot. I knew that he would be positive, but he was surprised with what a great feel the place had.

And now I find that there is a group that is trying to do the same thing in Queens. Too bad they're not farther along. This would be within walking distance of me.

After the park, we had lunch at a fantastic place in the West Village. It's called 'SNice, and their "vegan panini with smoked tofu, basil, pesto & sun-dried tomatoes" have inspired countless sandwich creations from Brian.

And what do I do? Alternately: What the real housewife of Queens does all day.

Jen asked, so here goes. I'll write down what I did yesterday. It's not very exciting. But that fits right in with the name of this blog, right?

8am: Returned from run. Ate, stretched, showered, ate some more.

9am: 'Played' on the computer. This means catching up with people on FB, balance both checkbooks (switching banks when everything is on autopay sucks), worked on ultra training schedule for this fall, looked up how to get to Atlantic City from here, read about snow-shoeing ultras and relays and read the New York Times (I highly recommend the 12 weeks for 99 cents deal they have this summer).

10:45: Took Sadie for a walk around the neighborhood. It was cooler than it has been, so I was trying to give both of us some more time outside.

11:00: Rode my bike to...

      1. The community gym. I wanted to look around and see if it was worth joining. I'm still a little worried about how I'm going to train for an ultra this winter with the amount of rain this place gets. This gym has an indoor track, so I thought maybe I could make that work some days. The track was maybe an eighth of a mile at the most - could you imagine doing 30 miles on that? Although it was crowded, there were some open treadmills. But I've never ran farther than 6 miles on a treadmill. I never found weight machines, and the free weight room was overrun with way too much sweat and testosterone. I got discouraged and left. I'm not sure what I was expecting... a miracle? I'll save signing up for this for the day I actually get desperate.

       2. The Home Depot. Our toilet seat has been really annoying me. We have a round toilet, but some genius put an oval toilet seat on it. This was my big surprise for Brian today. I also got a few other doodads that we've been needing to get our bikes hung over the stairwell. I have one bag that attaches to my bike. It is just big enough to fit a toilet seat in it. I didn't count on this, as I had lots more places to go.

        3. Carmel Grocery. This little place in Forest Hills is a real find. I had found it because Brian couldn't find any place that sold fresh-ground coffee when we first got here. This place has that (and Brian says that the coffee is pretty darn good), but the big thing is their spreads. They make a hummus that is probably one of the best that I've ever had, but even better than that, they make various eggplant dips that are AMAZING. Did you hear that Kurt? YES, I SAID AMAZING. And I mean it. So I got 3 different kinds of coffee for Brian, 2 more eggplant spreads to try and a piece of baklava for lunch dessert. BTW- Their baklava is really good too, just overshadowed by the amazing eggplant spreads.

       4. Walgreens. To pick up my prescription. Which of course, took way longer than it should. It seems they had a problem filling the prescription without insurance paying for it. I told them I don't have insurance, I want to pay cash. So after 10 minutes of typing, I was able to do that. What the heck are they typing in there?

       5. Forest Hills Bagels. OMG. I haven't had a NY bagel yet. Wonderful. I had an everything bagel with veggie tofu cream cheese on it. I should have had it just plain to savor the bagel a little more. It's soft on the inside, but has a tiny little crust almost like a croissant on the outside. It was really good.

       6. Key Foods. This is a 'regular' grocery store. I was out of tortillas, and this store has them much cheaper than our usual grocery store. A word about tortillas here in NY - they're AWFUL. At least, if you buy anything called a tortilla. They have the most horrible ingredient list, and they're mushy and tasteless. However, if you instead look at things that look like tortillas, but are labeled wraps, they are more reasonable. Of course they're not as tasty as tortillas back home, but they're an acceptable substitute. Anyway, I got a few bags because they seem to last a really long time (probably not a good sign, huh?).

2pm: So after this, my bag is overflowing and it weighs about 35 pounds, so I figure I should go home. My bike is highly unstable in this configuration, because the bag attaches on only one side of the bike. So I ride back across the parkway as cautiously as possible. It's also heating up, so I figure I need to get home so that I can lift my bike back up the stairs to our place without suffering heat stroke.

2:30: Crash on the couch to cool off and watch a documentary that I don't think Brian will want to watch.

4pm: Walk to the library to return one book (Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks) and pick up another (Walter Cronkite's letters to his wife during WWII). This took a really long time because I took Sadie, and then when I got there, realized there was no safe place to tie her up. I was trying to figure out whether I had to walk all the way back home or not, when I realized that the kid that was so interested in Sadie could be recruited to hold her for a couple of minutes. This worked out well, and I should have bought him a Slurpee, but I didn't. Next time.

4:45: Put the toilet seat on. I don't want to talk about how long this took. But I did it!

5:45: Read my book.

6:30pm: Brian is home. Eat gazpacho. Taste new eggplant spreads. (Awesome!) Eat watermelon. Watch Prohibition, part 2. Fall asleep on the couch because I'm exhausted from overheating again today.

There's a little glimpse into my totally glamorous life. Today so far is less interesting with mostly research on some software that I've been putting off for a while. This housewife of Queens is a coder :)

So Where Am I?

We've moved to NYC. More specifically, we live in Queens. The post office thinks we live in Flushing. The locals say that we live in Kew Garden Hills. I've never lived in such a geographically complex place. Did you know that New York City is made up of five counties? They are coextensive* of the five boroughs that make up the city, although the county and borough don't always share the same name.

We've been here three weeks now (!), so I think that we have our 'normal' routine established. I'm going to steal liberally from photos on the internet, because I lack the smart phone to take them on the go myself. And, if we want to be frank, I really couldn't take a better picture of most of these places...

In the morning, we wake up (Brian first and then me an hour later), and we go for our run. This is Sadie's favorite part of the day. Her second favorite part is sleeping, which SHE DOES THE ENTIRE REST OF THE DAY. I didn't know this before being unemployed, but it's true. She opens her eyes for a brief period of time in the evening to get fed supper, but it's lights out the rest of the time. No wonder she has so much energy for the run. It's the only freaking thing she does!

But I digress.

We go running in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which is literally across one stoplight, and then it's park paths the whole way. I can't tell you how extremely rare this is in NYC, and of course, a major reason for our particular choice of where to live. Here's a map of a recent run so that you can see what I mean:

This run takes me past some places that maybe you'll recognize, but others that are new to me.

The Unisphere (in two Men In Black movies): This is Brian's favorite landmark. You can expect multiple pictures featuring him with this landmark in upcoming posts.

The Terrace On The Park: Unfortunately, you have to have a big to-do in order to go in here. I'm hoping to meet someone that is getting married here soon so that I can go.

USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center: Home of the US Open - which Brian has tickets to this Aug/Sep. AND, he can play on it anytime, it just takes $30/hr and a reservation. This is very exciting to a tennis player.

The Queens Zoo: I went from running around a park with one zoo (Tucson) to another. Pretty funny. I can't believe that Brian hasn't insisted we visit this place already, as the aviary is a geodesic dome, and he has an obsession with geodesic domes. It's a pretty small zoo, but still. I think it must have elephants, because I'm familiar with that smell from Tucson.

Queens Museum of Art: This is closed for construction until this fall, so I can't tell you much about it. Stay tuned.

New York Hall of Science: Turns out that NYC has only one science museum. Go figure. Brian's trying to figure out how he gets to make exhibits here.

On this run, I just stopped short of crossing the bridge to Citi Field: This is where the Mets play. It replaced Shea Stadium in 2008.

* I just learned this word today, and am super excited by it.

But first... Peru

I wouldn't think that anything could overshadow a trip to Machu Picchu in Peru, but that was before I thought I would quit my job and move across the country.

But, we did in fact make a trip to Peru recently. The reasoning was 3-fold. First, Machu Picchu has been on Brian's pick of places to travel since 2000. I remember hearing about it from him, and thinking "Huh, I guess he'll have to find someone that wants to go hike up the side of a mountain in a politically unstable country with him." Turns out it was me, just 13 years later. Second, our great friend Carolyn brought up the idea late last summer as her response to us announcing that we would be leaving Tucson. It turns out it has been on her bucket list for a very long time, her kids were old enough that she could leave them for a little while with family and, well, we were leaving. It was our last hurrah together. Third, I thought it would be a great way to celebrate the completion of Brian's long arduous journey through graduate school. So last fall, we scheduled the trip for mid-May to fit be squeezed between Brian's graduation and Carolyn's middle child end-of-school-year performance. If I had thought about it for more than a few minutes last fall, I would have realized how busy we would be with selling the house, moving, and Brian's unplanned two weeks in Israel for a chemistry conference. The scheduling was a bit tight, and things were a bit hectic surrounding the trip, but we had a blast anyway.

Brian and I flew out mother's day afternoon. In true Brian and Shelley style, we had already packed our camera and it was on its way to NYC. But we never remember to actually use the camera on vacation anyway, so it doesn't really matter. As soon as Bryce and Carolyn made it to Peru, we had more than enough cameras between the four of us. 

We first flew to Cuzco, which is a beautiful city in the mountains near Machu Picchu. Its elevation is 11,152 ft, so we spent the recommended couple of nights there to acclimate. 

A note about the elevation: I was terrified of altitude sickness. I was sure that even before we left Cuzco, I was going to be so sick that I wouldn't be able to walk, much less climb over the couple of passes over 13,000 ft that we had planned. Luckily, it turned out that I had ZERO problems with the elevation (after the sleepiness and lethargy of the first day in Cuzco had passed). 

It may have been the large volumes of coca tea that I consumed. You really should go read that link, because yes, it's THAT coca tea. The leaves of the tea are the same source for cocaine. The wikipedia page says that it is a stimulant that can be compared with drinking coffee or regular tea. I think that must be true, as I felt zero effect from drinking it. But, all the locals swear by it to prevent altitude sickness, and I am willing to say that it may have played a part in my feeling fine the entire time. 

So let's get to the pictures, shall we? First, the elevation profile of our hike: 

I really can't remember how to tell the difference between an alpaca and a llama. And please don't tell me again, I don't really care. Anyway, here's one of those shaggy creatures (and I don't mean Carolyn; I mean the thing NEXT to Carolyn).

The city of Cuzco from our hotel:

Just a little practice hike the day before the real thing:

Here are our porters (Batman and Robin) drinking chicha on the way to the start of the hike. Brian *really* liked chicha, which is really dangerous because he acts like a goof ball after half of a beer. Our guide told us that this stuff keeps fermenting in your stomach for hours - so you get drunker long after you've stopped drinking it. It was yummy - especially the strawberry flavored one.

It's not a good sign when your guide looks at a map the first thing on the first day of your hike: 

Let the hiking commence (And don't even think that this looks like a lot of water. You just wait.):

Within an hour, we've encountered our first ruins (Yes Carolyn, I had to steal this off of your Facebook because you have still refused to upload your pictures to Dropbox):

Now it's getting wet. But we're near the end of our first day of walking and we've all made it to the first peak at about 13,650 ft. In this photo, you can see our porters, Batman and Robin, wearing the blue and red capes that gave them their name.

Around lunch time on the second day, we stop only for a snack before we tackle our highest climb to Puma Pass (14,698 ft): 

Things got a little hairy on that climb, and I thought we might lose Carolyn. But we took it slow and made it to the top to celebrate. By the way, I am absolutely frozen in this picture. I was worried about overheating with the steep climb and the unbreathing rain poncho, so had taken off my fleece underneath. However, we took our time and neither Brian nor I would leave Carolyn, so all three of us were frozen to the core. 

Nothing that a good hot lunch couldn't cure (these are our appetizers):

And we even let Carolyn use spoons! (Can we all say "brain is low on oxygen"?)

Here's after lunch, and before the slogging began. I remember being here, and I was so happy. I wasn't sick from the altitude, my legs felt great, I had warmed up with lots of hot soup in my belly. Ah, bliss. But we will just not talk about the second half of the second day. At all. Don't ask.

I said that we're not talking about it.

Bryce, I said that we are not talking about it. Sheesh.

Okay, I do have to say a few words about what I have taken to calling the "24 hours from hell". And it's a compliment to Brian. Of course. This guy carried all of our stuff the entire trip in jeans and tennis shoes that were not waterproof. He doesn't get kudos for not having the right gear, but for not complaining a single time.  Even though I complained almost non-stop. You see, he was incredibly busy leading up to this trip what with finishing his dissertation, presenting at a conference in Israel and selling our house, so he made do with what he had on hand. I had been sporting a shoulder injury for the last year, so I didn't even carry a day pack, he simply did it for me. 

Also, he stayed with me the entire time. I'm sure that I was unpleasant at times and probably going much slower than he wanted to go when trying to balance on top of stones to avoid falling into hip-deep mud (and falling into hip-deep mud, but we're not complaining here), but he stuck with me. And he stuck with Carolyn when she needed the extra help. His quiet and modest endurance in trying events like this wins me all over again, every single time.

Anyway, let's skip to the afternoon of the third day. Because that's when this hike turned into what I thought Peru and the area around Machu Picchu looked like. The sun came out, the ponchos were put away. Brian and I took our sweet time enjoying the sights, smells and sounds of the beautiful jungle.

Our reward for speeding it off the mountain in the ridiculous weather? Hot springs. And they were way nicer than anyone could imagine at this point in the trip. 

Here's an unexpected bonus for our trip: zip-lining! I'm sure that Brian was spectacularly excited when our guide announced the possibility. It turned out that Brian, Carolyn AND Bryce have a fear of heights, so I have NO idea why we ended up doing this. But it was fun, everyone's adrenaline got pumping and I attest, everyone did all five zip-lines to get to the bottom. Look at Brian; I think he even enjoyed it a little:

And yes, I zip-lined upside down!

Nothing like a high-risk activity in a third-world country that you payed way too little for to get your blood pumping! Anyway, after that, on to Machu Picchu!

Well, we have to walk there first:

And act silly:

And have a fight on top of a train:

And remember where we were going:

And take a self portrait (which our guide never figured out - he always insisted on taking one of us when he saw us doing this):

And take the worst photo ever:

No, really. Go back and look at each of our faces in that photo. Hee hee. Kills me, every time I look at it.

But then we'll make up for it, almost:

And this picture is here because Carolyn loves it. She calls it "Why you drinking my water". In hindsight, I wonder if I was just beginning to notice how ridiculously pale and thin Brian is looking. 

Yep, you guessed it. Brian is getting sick. Sicker than a dog. I believe now that Bryce got food poisoning the night before we got to Machu Picchu, but that Brian actually got some virus. It took him a month and a half to recover. Although out of order, this is a pic of Brian looking his best on the day of Machu Picchu:

Poor guy. He has wanted to see MP so bad for so many years and he doesn't really remember most of it. 

Here's the first few minutes at MP when we still had Brian with us so we could get a group photo. But soon after the photo, while our guide was droning on about how great the Incas were, Brian sat down and no one was moving him. We left him at one spot while the three of us continued touring. After most of our tour was over, I went back with our guide to pick him up. Poor guy doesn't remember a thing about most of the day. 

MP was amazing. It was beautiful, and some of the engineering feats that they pulled off were stunning. Most of them had to do with water-flow, but also the joints in their masonry look almost air tight. I don't think in this case that words or photos can convey the magnificence of it. 

A New Chapter In Life

Once again, I've let this blog languish. BUT - All that is about to change!!! (Maybe?)

My biggest news of 2013: I've followed my love to NYC. Yes, this desert girl has moved to the big apple. I'm a city girl now. Well, I'm working on it. 

Last fall, Brian started looking around for post-doctoral positions. He expected to graduate in May of this year (and he did - yay Brian!), and needed to secure the next step in his ultimate goal of becoming a professor at a university. He found Dr. Michael Mirkin http://www.cuny.edu/site/energy/faculty-research/mmirkin.html at CUNY Queens College and was extremely interested in some technique that Dr. Mirkin has developed. It was a departure from what his group at UofA focuses on, and that's a large part of why it was interesting to Brian. Anyway, to make a long story short... he accepted a position, we flew out here in January to find a place to live and here I am. In NYC. Wow!

At this time, I don't expect that I will spend the rest of my life here, but we have an amazing opportunity to spend a couple of years here while Brian gets to learn new and interesting things. I hope to use this blog to record some of the once-in-a-lifetime things that I see and do. Everything is so different here, it will be interesting to look back in two years and see how my point of view has changed.

Oh, and one more thing... I know that when I lived in Tucson, I would read news articles about all kinds of neat things to see and do in NYC. So I need your help my friends and family. When you read of such things, pass it on. Post it to my FB wall or put it in a comment here. Send me a message or I'll get you my email address if you don't already have it. But I need your help. There are about 4 billion things to do in Manhattan, and I actually don't have time to do all of them. So please let me know about the thing that you would do if you had the chance to live here. Then maybe you can visit me and we'll do it again, together. 

Wish me luck!

Mind Games

I've been thinking a lot about the power of our minds. We can do some amazing, and also some amazingly stupid things just by thought alone.
I realized this a few weeks back while I was out for a run. I was nursing a tight and sore hamstring and realized that my inner conversation was about talking myself into running longer than I felt like running that day. I was doing this by "phrasing" the mileage in a certain light. For me, this is playing little numbers games like thinking in terms of four five-mile laps instead of ever letting the phrase 20 miles into my head. It seems like a small difference, but it suddenly came clear to me that I had perfected all these little techniques to add up to a lot of mind games.
On the one hand, I was grateful for this adaptation. I think it made it possible for me to run 80 miles around a very small track. I had spent six months teaching my brain to convince itself that the laps were just that, and not to think of the enormity of the larger goal. It worked like a charm for that, and I was able to complete the 80 miles without a trace of doubt during the entire 21+ hours.
However, I think these games became habit, and I didn't even realize I was playing them any more. I think that I kept minimizing the miles in my head, and it lead to me running way too many miles too soon after the 24-hour race. This lead to the aggravation of some foot problems that I was having and probably delayed my return to strong running.
It's a fine line to walk. To effectively play these mind games, you need to convince yourself that what you're doing is much easier than it is. Basically, you want to lose a little perspective. I seem to be really good at that part. As Brian likes to observe, I tend to be an all-or-nothing kind of girl. The harder thing for me is to walk the middle ground. I want to play enough mind games that I can take on and complete challenging events, but at the same time keep my perspective so that I can see (and avoid) injury or burn-out approaching.
So I'm going to continue to play these games, but with a new awareness. An awareness that I'm doing it and a little more caution as to how I'm phrasing things to myself. I'm going to try to allow for the possibility of injury or illness, and let myself feel the feeling of not wanting to do something hard.
It's something for me to work on for the next 70 years anyway.

Across The Years - or almost 24 hours of running...

This race was what all the training in 2011 was about. I don't even remember now how I found this race, or why it aroused such curiosity in me.

But curious was definitely what I was. I checked in on the web pages throughout the spring, because there was a lottery to enter this race. Can you believe that? Too many entrants for the space that they used... they had to restrict to a lottery!

In the meantime, we moved to a new house in the spring, and my running kind of dwindled. I was down to quite a few 20 mile weeks, and even a few 10 mile weeks. I think I had a hard time transitioning to running in "the city". I hadn't realized how nice the washes were for running lots of miles.

As we approached the beginning of the summer, the web page started taunting with statements like "The lottery opens soon. Check back this summer." I kept checking and nothing.

During this time I came upon Aravaipa Running in Phoenix. They put on quite a few distance events, but almost all trail events. I found the Javelina 12-hour run and thought it sounded fun and like a good training run for the 24-hour, if it ever took place. So Brian and I trained and ran the 12-hour race. You can read about that here.

We were a few weeks out from the 12-hour night run when the web page finally announced that financial trouble had put an end to Across The Years with its old sponsor and old location. But lo and behold - Aravaipa Running had picked up the race! Even better, the new location, Camelback Ranch, had more space than the old location, and therefore no more lottery. If you wanted in, you paid your fee and then were in. I quickly found a 100-mile training plan to tack onto the training as soon as the 12-hour race was over and we were off!

I was pretty impressed with how fast I recovered from running 46.2 miles. The weekend after the 12 hour, I ran 10 miles for a long run, and two weeks after, I ran a 28 mile long run. Of course, that 28 hour run should have told me a lot about what my condition was - I just blamed it on being in much colder weather on travel and out of my routine. I think the real truth was that my legs were still pretty beat up, although not reporting it all to my brain very well. I should probably have waited another week or two to attempt that mileage.

I'll try not to bore you with the training details, if you want my training log, you can take a peek at what I was doing here. Suffice it to say that it took a lot longer for the long runs to feel okay, and that the weather turning very cold for last part of November into December did not make it very easy to get up in the morning and knock out the training miles.

Still, I set an ambitious (for me) goal to run 80 miles, and a secondary goal to keep moving for the entire 24 hour period. (Smarter readers than me can probably guess what happens somewhere around mile 75 when you have had your mind set on 80, but I'll get to that.)

Thursday morning before our race day, we watched on the web cam as about 100 runners started on either a 24-hour, 48-hour or 72-hour race! That is absolutely unbelievable. And, pretty boring. There they go, almost slow. It was interesting to check in on them the whole time. The field didn't look crowded at all (I was worried that it would be). And the weather was now beautiful and sunny. Almost too sunny.

We drove up to Phoenix Friday and stopped at 'the ranch' and set up a tent, air mattress and sleeping bags. That way we could check out what the aid station was stocking and fill any specialized cravings at the grocery store. Kudos to Aravaipa Running for running such great events. Even better than the 12-hour race, the aid stations were always fully stocked, and they were continually keeping trash cans empty, porta-potties cleaned, and everything super organized.

Brian's plan was to run 50 miles fast and since the temperature was getting near 80 degrees, he wouldn't start until the evening. Until he started, he was going to be my race crew. The night before I think that I talked him into starting with me. I was worried about the overnight lows being too low for him.

Smiling amid our tent and supply table

So almost too suddenly, it's 9am on Saturday morning, and the race has started.

Just before the start, I'll pass under that banner 77 times

The track is 1.05 miles. 77 times around would be my goal. It's amazing that you can run that track that many times and not get bored. But, as I like to say lately: "If you get bored, then you're a boring person". A human mind is a wonderful thing, and one of the most amazing things is our ability to visualize and introspect. 24 hours of doing one physical action is the most amazing meditation that I know of.

The first 20 miles seemed to pass in a blink. However, it was getting warm! I learned from October's 12-hour race that there is a definite humidity difference between Phoenix and Tucson that I don't notice until I race there. I learned my lesson this time and stayed on top of the hydration issues. As usual, I ate well and timely towards the beginning of the race, but as the miles piled on, I started to resent having to eat. Another lesson learned at the 12-hour came in handy though: Coke has a significant amount of calories and it seems like I can stomach it when nothing else wants to go down. Weird.

I had two pairs of shoes with me and had promised myself that I would switch every 20 miles. Mostly I was doing this to get a chance to clean out my shoes and socks and check in on my feet. I was worried that if I didn't catch the beginnings of blisters, they would then put a stop to the whole thing.

Barb & Dale showed up around mile 35, and mom showed up shortly after. That was a real treat. It made me feel that I was actually still part of the real world. I had a goal to get 40 miles out of the way as fast as I could though, so I motored on a little, just giving hugs, hamming it up for the camera and stopping for water by them each lap.

Hamming it up for Barbara's camera

I finished 40 miles in 8:20 (right at a 12 minute pace). I changed my shoes and socks again, had Brian stretch my legs a little and then headed out to walk a few miles to let my body catch up on food and drink. Brian walked a few miles with me and helped make the clothes transition for the cold weather that was coming fast.

Around 45 miles, I noticed that the bottoms of my feet were burning, and I thought blisters were the culprit. I had read that the medical tent urged runners to check in at the first hint of a problem, as most things are fixable early on. I checked in at the tent and spent a half hour that was well worth it getting my feet taped. I won't go into it here, maybe a future post will explain the magic that Brian and I learned in the medical tent that night...

True to his word, Brian provided support to me for the night. Before going to sleep in the tent, he mixed up a final protein shake for me, charged my Garmin, and loaned me his IPOD to listen to. Even his going to bed was to support me, because I had informed him that there was no way I was going to be able to help pack anything, or drive us home the next morning. I think I convinced him to go to sleep some time before 11pm.

I don't have many memories between when Brian went to bed and when I got to 76 miles and woke him up. I remember the stroke of midnight, because they passed out noise makers to everyone and everyone congregated at the start/finish line to make a ton of noise and sing Auld Lang Syne. That was pretty cool. I remember that I discovered that there was a "real" bathroom at some point, and started using that for the rest of the night instead of the porta-potties. This had the triple-advantage of cleanliness, warmth and I could monitor the color of my pee. That sounds bad, but remember, I had already run for over 12 hours, most of it at 80+ degrees.

When I saw my mileage count had passed 75, I decided I would give Brian warning. My biggest problem at this point was that I was absolutely freezing. I think that I could have done a better job with more layers, but I was so close to being done, and so delerious from sleep-deprivation, that I just wasn't patient enough to change.

Each mile was taking me 25 minutes by this time (including a 5 minute stop in the heated tent to blow heat-cannons into my jackets and mittens). So I would be done in a little over an hour from when I woke him. I told him he had a choice: Either he packed up and was ready to go as soon as I finished, or he needed to put a sleeping bag in the car, and I would be there sleeping whenever he woke up. I'm really glad he chose to be ready to leave, and I think he knew that I preferred that.

I come around for my last lap, and I see Brian at the finish line with my mom's camera. 6:19am, or 21 hours, 19 minutes after I started, I finished 80.85 miles! I was so proud, and so darn frozen. Brian shooed away the guys that were hovering over the monitor, and snapped this picture of me.

Finished! (They later corrected the missing mile problem)

As soon as I stopped moving, my feet and ankles let me know how much pain I was in. Brian and I turned our timing chips into the race organizers and I stood, waiting for them to find our finishing awards (huge beer steins). It was almost comical, me standing there (barely able to without falling over) and them trying to figure out where they put the box of glasses.

So now here we are, a month after the race. The recovery? It's been interesting. The tops of my feet were swollen, and I thought that was the only damage. Two days later, the tops of my feet were fine, and then it was clear that my right quadricep was messed up. Three days later, my quadricep is fine and my left hamstring has the problem. Now I'm back to the tops of my feet being sore. Who knows how many layers of soreness I still have to work through. But I'm back to running, and am already signing up for races again. Not anything longer than a marathon...

...yet.