Tag Archives: running

When I lost my job in March, I knew above all else that I need­ed to start run­ning again. Not only did I need to get my arms around my car­dio­vas­cu­lar fit­ness after 8 straight years of being glued to a screen, I need­ed to get some time to reflect on my pri­or­i­ties now that I was­n’t star­ing into the gap­ing maw of the Internet.

But if you’re friends with me or have spo­rad­i­cal­ly read this blog, you know my track record. I had­n’t suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a train­ing cycle since 2009! I have so many shirts and so few fin­ish­es to show for it. How could I break that pat­tern and not suf­fer anoth­er demor­al­iz­ing injury? 

Well, for the first time ever, I lis­tened to my body. I stuck to the plan I out­lined here. I let myself rest. I did­n’t obsess over splits. I laughed at the idea of speed work. What I need­ed was time on my feet, which trans­lat­ed into the time to reflect and time to rebuild my spir­it. And even though I broke a car­di­nal rule and signed up for a race, I nev­er once thought about a hard and fast time as a goal. I set my sights on just fin­ish­ing. And it worked!

After a chal­leng­ing month of trav­el and tem­per­a­tures in August that knocked me off my usu­al train­ing reg­i­men, I toed the line at Run Wood­stock wor­ried that maybe I’d some­how under­trained after months of 50+ mile weeks. That was silly. 

The race was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence. I ran a sol­id first loop that start­ed in the pre-dawn hours and end­ed with me dis­cov­er­ing that I’d worn mis­matched shoes! I met my pac­er and she guid­ed me through a chal­leng­ing sec­ond loop on very tired legs and an increas­ing­ly fuzzy mind. 

The fin­ish felt tri­umphant as I sprint­ed to the line. I fin­ished just out of the top five in my age group and in the top 25% over­all. But after break­ing my leg in 2016, just being able to com­pete and fin­ish is all I needed.

None of this would have hap­pened with­out the fan­tas­tic com­mu­ni­ty of run­ners sup­port­ing me, both local­ly and online. The Grosse Pointe Run­ners group has been invalu­able. My friends Britt and Jesse back in Philly have been great coach­es, reas­sur­ing me that I’d put in the work. Last­ly, the ultra­run­ning com­mu­ni­ty online, rang­ing from elite ath­letes over­com­ing their own per­son­al chal­lenges to the run­ners doc­u­ment­ing the scene, espe­cial­ly Gin­ger Run­ner.

After a decade of false starts it feels great to be back, but it feels even bet­ter to be in con­trol, mak­ing deci­sions that are mak­ing my life bet­ter in ways I’d hard­ly imag­ined. Get­ting to the start healthy was one goal; get­ting to the fin­ish healthy opens the door to adventure.

I last wrote about run­ning on this blog in Novem­ber 2013. Look­ing back at ear­li­er posts, it’s hard to believe how chal­leng­ing it was to run after Char­lie arrived. I’m remind­ed that my run­ning bud­dy for my first Philly Dis­tance Run, Mark Gat­ti, promised his wife that he’d take a break from run­ning until his son turned five, a sto­ry he told Jen A. Miller for the Inquir­er back in ’08.

Con­sid­er­ing how many sleep­less nights and impos­si­bly ear­ly morn­ings I had with Char­lie from ’09 to ’11, I could­n’t find the ener­gy to get out and run and when I did, I over­did it and injured myself repeat­ed­ly, cul­mi­nat­ing in a pret­ty seri­ous adduc­tor strain in 2012.

I’ve peri­od­i­cal­ly got­ten out for runs since rehab­bing, but those were very short stints. I imag­ined mov­ing to Jer­sey would trans­late into fan­tas­tic runs along the Coop­er Riv­er, but I still could­n’t find the time.

Now that we’re in Michi­gan and have set­tled in our new home, I’ve start­ed get­ting back after it. I start­ed out in late March with the idea that I’d ease back into shape and not make the sort of com­mit­ments that have end­ed in injury and inac­tiv­i­ty. Welp. I don’t think it was May before I signed up for the Freep Marathon in October.

Unlike what hap­pened in 2012, I’ve man­aged to baby myself just enough to get into decent shape. My goal is to qual­i­fy for Boston, just as it was 8 years ago. I’ve set an ambi­tious goal to get as close to that 3 hour thresh­old, but if I come in under 3:10, I’ll be thrilled. Hope­ful­ly this will be my last couch-to-marathon training!

It’s been a while since I called myself a run­ner. After run­ning con­sec­u­tive marathons in ’08 and ’09, I took a long hia­tus. Turns out being awake all hours with a sleep­less infant isn’t con­ducive to dis­tance run­ning. I tried com­ing back in clas­sic couch-to-marathon style last year, only to injure myself about halfway through train­ing. After months of phys­i­cal ther­a­py, I still did­n’t feel quite right, but that did­n’t stop me from try­ing again this year, only to meet the same end. It’s been frus­trat­ing since I still want to run that Boston qual­i­fi­er I just missed in freez­ing temps in ’08.
A few weeks ago I start­ed run­ning again. Just three miles, five times a week. No goal but mileage. It’s tak­ing me back to a time before I had a Garmin watch, before I micro­man­aged every step I took on a run. I’m just out there in the cool fall air putting one foot in front of the oth­er. I’m feel­ing bet­ter than I have in years. Turns out run­ning with­out a race in sight is help­ing me build the base I need to get back on track.
Well, that’s not entire­ly true. I signed up for a half marathon at the end of March. I could­n’t help myself. I need a rea­son to stay moti­vat­ed dur­ing these long, dark win­ter months run­ning along­side the Coop­er Riv­er. In the mean­time, I’ll be log­ging miles at a snail’s pace until I feel good enough to push toward my real goal of qual­i­fy­ing for Boston.