Highs and Lows

Well this blog has not turned out to be as consistent as I might have planned.
But today I just need to write.

Today, I wished I had never started running.

Running has hurt me more than any person ever could. It has broken my heart countless times; today was one of the days I felt that heartbreak.
Last night, my high school teammate broke the indoor school record that I had set last year. She only beat it by half a second, and she didn’t even win her race, but imagining my name as number 2 on the “Top Ten” lists for the 1600 meter run hurts me anyway. Of course there was nothing I could do. I never have another chance to better my own records. I gave it everything I could last year and that was all I could do. I never thought that the perhaps the happiest moment of my high school career – winning the state championship in 5:03 – would come back to cause me so much pain only a year later.

Running has hurt me. I have given my whole heart to running, and I got sucked into my relationship with running way too quickly. I lost myself in running. It was probably comparable to an unhealthy romantic infatuation. Now that running is letting me down, I don’t even know who I am without being number one.

I probably can’t just blame running though. I know I’ve brought some of this upon myself; I lost sight of who I was with or without running.

Running has hurt me. Running has brought me to the lowest of lows. But I am trying to bear in mind that this pain will end. The sting will fade; the reminders of my incompetence will stop haunting me. And then someday running will take me to the highest highs of my life. The times that I have been the happiest have come from running – a great workout, a perfect race – nothing makes me feel the way that running has. Right now it is a distant memory that I only get glimpses of after workouts that just feel “on”, but those glimpses keep me hanging on and hoping that running will someday make up for all this pain.

Just love this line:

Follow the freeway
Break the routine
Cause everything is second to your dreams

“More Than Alive” by The Ready Set

Um….deer don’t eat meat.

Here’s how the post-practice convo with my coach went today:

Coach: So, someone gonna take you out to Applebee’s Friday night so you can eat a steak like you promised?

Me: What?! Okay, I never promised that…

Coach: Being a vegetarian is a red flag you know. [addressing anyone willing to listen now] The Florida State coach, she won’t recruit vegetarians. First question she asks is “Are you a vegetarian?” If the answer is yes, you won’t get another call. A girl who doesn’t eat red meat, that’s a red flag.

Me: Yeah, but everyone has some sort of red flag…

Coach: It’s not like animals have feelings anyway.

[Brief debate on whether or not animals have feelings ensues. Conclusion: they do.]

Coach: Look at cheetahs and leopards and deer. Fastest animals out there. You don’t see them worrying about if they’re eating other animals. They eat whatever’s out there.

Me: Um…deer don’t eat meat. They’re herbivores.

Coach: They don’t? Well they don’t have any endurance anyway.

Me: Lots of ultramarathoners are vegetarians.

Coach: Yeah well they don’t have any power.

Me: Carl Lewis (the Olympic sprinter) was a vegetarian!

Coach: Alright, there are always some exceptions.

[I'm not sure if either of us really won that debate, but I think I at least made an impact with my stubbornness. ]

“This is what indoor track is all about.”

Hill repeats. In the snow.

First, let me give you a little background info on me and hills:

It was probably during my junior year of high school that I decided I was not a hill runner. I decided that any time you put a hill in front of me and any other runner, the other runner would always reach the top before I did. I decided that hill running just wasn’t a talent I was blessed with, and I should stick to excelling on the track and the occasional flat cross-country course. Throw a hill in the mix, and you might as well count me out of the competition. See, junior year was my second season of cross country, but my first real season of cross country.  I was just starting to define myself as a talented, three-season runner (cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track). And then came the state championship – on the hilliest course in the state (and, rumor has it,  the toughest course on the East coast). And after I had been the top runner for my team for the entire season, my teammate beat me at states.

The same thing happened at the state meet my senior year.

I blamed the hills.

So, when I go into a workout like today’s, I still have that mental block. A little voice inside my head says, You’re not a hill runner. Why do you even try to keep up with these girls? In reality, I have the perfect stride for running hills. It’s the mindset that I lack.

But I am pleased to announce that today, I ran my first good hill workout here at college. We did a light jog in the morning, and my legs were feeling kinda rough. And come 3:45 pm, I was starting to get a litttttle nervous about the hills. Me + hills has rarely ended well.

As the snow was falling harder and harder (it was “first-kiss snow” in the poetic words of my teammate), we embarked on 3×500 meter hill repeats, getting progressively faster, followed by 300 meters of whatever you had left. We jogged down to the base of the hill, and the captains started our team cheer.  There was so much energy – so much camaraderie as we all knew we were about to suffer the same pain and put forth the same effort. Despite my nervousness about the workout, I couldn’t help but smile as I was surrounded by fifteen or so other girls who love running the way that I do.

So we did the first 500, at the pace of a “trot” – I felt like there was no way I could go any faster for the next two. Uh-oh. But on the second one, I improved my time by 8 seconds. The last 500 was still looming over my head – could I really get faster yet again?! About halfway through, I found myself passing people. Passing people on a hill! Me! And the weird part is that I wasn’t even consciously telling myself to push harder and pass them. It’s like my body was possessed by some other force for a moment – a force that knew that I was capable of more than I consciously thought. And my time was 2 seconds faster than my second 500 had been. Yeah, only two seconds. But it’s the first time I got faster every time! And I’m proud of that.

The 300 was not my most shining display of strength, but I did what I could. In all honesty, I was still glowing from my 3×500 hill success; the 300 was a minor detail to me. I mean my coach even gave me a high-five after today’s workout! (Believe me, this is really rare).

As we stood at the top of the hill, hands on our knees, catching our breath, Coach said, “This is what indoor track is all about”.

let it snow!

After the longest, hottest shower I’ve taken in a while, and a typical dinner in the cafeteria, my teammate and I headed back to our dorms. As we walked in the glow of the streetlights, and the “first-kiss snow”, we sang a nice harmonized version of “Oh Holy Night”, danced around while we belted out “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid, and of course threw in a rendition of “Let It Snow”. And although it was a small moment that we were outside in the cold, singing (sounding quite horrendous on my part), it was one of those moments that make you  happy to be alive. One of those moments that is so simple, but you think, Wow, I’m going to remember this. For no reason in particular! It was just a fleeting moment in my college career, that I shared with a teammate.

I think today really was what indoor track is all about.

P.S. I considered eating steak tonight at dinner for about two seconds. Then I decided I’d rather eat fake chicken. Not quite ready to give in yet.

A Weekly Steak?

I just met with my coach….and all he ever tells me is to stop being a vegetarian. After all, there are no successful Division I runners who are vegetarians.  Or so he says. I decided to do a little research of my own. While I couldn’t find any specific vegetarian college runners, I did find quite a few renowned athletes:

1. Scott Jurek, ultramarathoner (actually a vegan!)
2. Paavo Nurmi, winner of 9 Olympic gold medals in races ranging from 1,500-10,000 meters
3. Carl Lewis, track Olympian (sprints)
4. Edwin Moses, two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 400m hurdles
5. Jane Wetzel, U.S. national marathon champion
6. Ruth Heidrich, six-time Ironwoman and USA track and field Masters champion
7. Jeffrey Eggleston, runner-up in the 2010 U.S. marathon
8. Leroy Burrell, set the world record for the 100 m dash twice
9. Tim VanOrden, USATF Masters 2010 Runner of the Year
10. Brendan Brazier, Ironman and ultramarathoner

Okay, so by the end of that list I realized I was going to have trouble finding ten names. But I did love one quote I came across, said by Carl Lewis: ”most athletes have the worst diet in the world, and they compete in spite of it.” Um yes! I agree with this quote wholeheartedly.  I look around at the food my teammates eat on a daily basis and sometimes it makes me sick.  How can you put that kind of stuff in your body and still expect it to run at its best? Yes, we are young, we have fast metabolisms, etc. But doesn’t it make sense that your body will still be most efficient when given proper fuel? You wouldn’t put salt water in your car and expect it to run – clearly it needs gasoline.  So when you put saturated fats and excess oils in your body, why would you expect it to run as smoothly as if you consumed the proper nutrients? I remember earlier this year at breakfast we were discussing pre-meet food choices, and I mentioned that sprinters eat whatever they want; the best sprinter on my high school team would eat McDonald’s for breakfast the day of his race and still win, and everyone knows McDonald’s isn’t runner food. “What do you mean, runner food?” my friend asked. I replied, “Oh, I mean most distance runners wouldn’t eat it the day of a race!” That’s not what I meant though. What I meant was, I can’t imagine someone who cares about his athletic performance putting that crap into his body.

My friends view food as fun. Meals are social; eating is an experience. I hate that. Food is fuel. That’s all it is to me. Sure, I still have my favorite foods – but they’re usually the ones that make me feel the best when I’m running.  I’ve been known to eat some pretty undesirable foods just for the sake of health (crackers that taste like cardboard, powdery protein drinks, plain Greek yogurt that I had to eat as quickly as possible to avoid instantly throwing up).  I feel so much better after a healthy meal – mentally, I know I am making the right choices for my body, and physically, my body reacts positively to those choices. And one of those choices is to abstain from eating meat.  I get my protein through meat-substitutes (yum) and beans.

My coach wants me to go to Applebee’s once a week and get a steak. Let’s see, the healthiest steak option that Applebee’s offers has ten grams of fat – and three of those grams are saturated. Yuck! I’m not sure I’m ready to make that kind of sacrifice for my running yet…after all, I don’t think clogged arteries will make me much faster.

I like my diet the way it is. I’ll add an extra Boca burger a day or something if I’m lacking protein. There’s no such thing as a competitive vegetarian Division I runner? Well as Walter Bagehot says in one of my favorite quotes:

The greatest pleasure in life is in doing what other people say you cannot do.

You say I can’t be a vegetarian and still have running success at the collegiate level? Challenge accepted.

40-55 Minutes Easy + Sprint Drills… + Sarah Palin

It’s day one of blogging, so I’m not counting on this to get a lot of views. But just for fun let’s take a poll:

That’s what we talked about today on our easy 40-55 minute recovery run.  Allow me to demonstrate how politically uninformed I am.

1. It takes me a long time to remember the name of our vice president. Biden? I always did get him mixed up with Palin anyway. The names practically rhyme.
2. Even if my life depended on it, there is a good chance I would not be able to tell you if Obama is a Democrat or a Republican. The only reason I would have a chance of survival in that scenario is that either way there is a fifty-fifty chance I’d be right.
3. I’ve given up on asking Which is the liberal one, Democratic or Republican? At this point I’ve nearly deemed my memorization of this fact as utterly hopeless.

That’s only three of the many, many reasons. But clearly I don’t keep up with the political news of the world (or any of the news of the world for that matter…woops!)

Anyway, needless to say, I wasn’t a huge contributor to this mid-run discussion. But as I listened, I found myself actually somewhat interested in what my teammates were talking about! I was shocked to have any interest in matters of our government and nation.

And that is when it hit me – it is our nation. My nation. When one of my friends put in her two cents – that our nation is going to ruins, slowly but surely – I realized that this government stuff affects me more personally than I had thought. I don’t want my children growing up in a nation where the president shoots moose and puts her daughter on “Dancing with the Stars” and has a reality TV show about Alaska (just a few of the tidbits on Palin I picked up today), or where the debate over immigration leads to attempted assassinations and people being killed (news story I also got informed of on the run). Honestly, are these issues so serious that it has to result in death? That someone with a viewpoint that differs from yours deserves to die? I understand that immigration is a big deal. But I promise that that representative is not the only woman in the country who feels the way she does about it.  Getting rid of her won’t get rid of the problem – and it won’t even lead us closer to a solution.

Maybe it’s because I don’t know much about politics, but I don’t understand why violence stems from these issues. The violence isn’t going to end the debates. But – as my teammate pointed out – it could get out of hand, and end the order and foundation of  our country. That’s a scary thought even if you don’t know exactly what a Democrat is.

40-55 Minutes Easy + Sprint Drills

Today during my run, I thought several times, Wow, this feels great.  Granted, this is a thought that used to cross my mind every day. But lately it’s been a rare occurrence, so thinking it more than one time during a run? That’s truly a blessing.

It was just an easy run, but we have two days of hard workouts/two-a-days coming up, so it was gladly welcomed by all. And most people embraced the low-end of the mileage range, running a solid forty minutes.

When we returned to the fieldhouse after about thirty-nine minutes, I asked if anyone wanted to add on some mileage to make it a fifty-five minute run. There were no takers. So off I went, jogging around the soccer fields alone. Literally going the extra mile. Fifteen minutes extra – I’m gonna say that’s my little victory for the day.

(Matt Nathanson, “Little Victories”)

I'm giving all I've got, even in the little ways

Sometimes, that’s what you need to gain confidence – knowing you did all you could; earning a little victory as a benchmark along the way. And goodness knows I’m low on confidence at this point. One bad workout after another takes a toll on a runner’s ego! So running an extra fifteen minutes? Well, now I think I’m fifteen minutes stronger than any other girl on the team. That could seem silly, but it adds up. They were afraid to go longer, because of the hard workouts we have coming up. Sometimes you have to take risks though, otherwise you’ll never get where you want to go. I don’t think that extra fifteen minutes will make me more tired for tomorrow’s workout. And if it does? Well, I’ll work through that fatigue and just come out as a better runner because of it.