Massages are for Winners!
Wednesday, April 04, 2007

That's what my "Chief of Stuff" told me yesterday when I said that I'd always thought massages were indulgences for special occasions, the rich, or wusses -- that when it comes to sports and athletics, the tough get chiropractic work done, or none at all. (Where do I get these ideas???)

After yesterday, I couldn't agree more.

I am not usually one for papering. I don't have the patience (or raw material to work with, being an ex-nail biter) for manicures. I do the yearly pedicure solely out of a belief that one has the responsibility to get one's toes presentable for sandal weather and nothing more, often encouraging the pedicurist to skip the froufrou foot/leg massage and lotions. I haven't gotten my hair cut/colored since December -- not because I've made the conscious choice to grow it out (although now at this point, I might as well), but because I just don't want to spend the time -- or have the time to spend -- on doing that right now (One thing that training three to five hours a day for an Ironman will do is make you evaluate must-do, should-do, and can-do items on your to-do list -- the last two categories often just get dropped altogether).

Naturally, I lumped massages into the papering category. All the candles, soothing music, scented oils. I had only had a massage two other times -- one this past winter at a place that is truly heaven on earth (seriously, if you live near Madison, try it. Even if you don't, fly in and try it...you won't regret it for a second), and the other in grad school because a friend of a friend of a friend was a new masseuse (read: not all that good) and in trying to establish a clientele, was offering massages for $25.

The day before yesterday (Monday) I had an intense soreness in my back that started below my shoulder blades and radiated up to the base of my skull. It was sort of like my back needed to crack but was stuck. As one might imagine, four hours on a bike that night didn't help matters at all, and by the time I crawled into bed, I was in serious pain. Sleep came in spurts, as the only position where I didn't hurt was lying on my back and I can never, ever sleep like that.

Enter Kate, the masseuse. After 30 minutes of Kate kneading and stretching my upper back and neck I was -- although not completely healed -- markedly improved. I could turn my neck without also turning my whole body, my headache was gone, and I was able to get my bike, run, and swim workouts in after work last night virtually pain-free.

I am now a true believer. And I'm going back for more. As often as my bank account will allow.

In "Beautiful Girls," one of the main characters, Paul, says, "A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you've been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it's going to be okay. The supermodels, Willy? That's all they are. Bottled promise. Scenes from a brand new day. Hope dancing in stiletto heels." (gawd I love that movie!)

After yesterday, that's how I feel about massages -- promise of a better day, a greater hope. They are nothing short of miraculous, and I'm now an addict, plain and simple. Paul can take his models . . . I'll take my massages. Each to his own.

Posted by Erin 7:38 AM 0 comments

Move to the Music
Thursday, March 29, 2007

With my computer now in working order (thanks, Dean!), and after a nearly eight-month hiatus, I'm ready to update my Ipod -- especially my running mixes. And I know that oftentimes, a song you like while driving in the car doesn't necessarily translate into a good running song, or vice versa (Example? An elite marathoner in Runner's World recently said that his secret go-to song was Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough.") So, I'm looking for suggestions on good running songs -- your all-time favorites -- so I can steal them.

The more, the better. This girl has a lot of workout hours to go until September 9th, so be a sport and help me out! And for anyone leaving comments, this is a no-judging zone -- running musical selections know no boundaries of taste (see Michael Jackson example above). If a song works, it works...and I think all of us recognize that running music is not always a true reflection of someone's actual musical taste.

And in the spirit of fair play, here are some of my standards:

Nelly -- Ride Whit Me, In My Life

Jagged Edge -- Where da Party At?

Green Day -- Minority, Holiday, BasketCase

Ja Rule -- anything

Sean Paul -- anything

Shakira -- Hips Don't Lie

RHCP -- Snow, Parallel Universe, Otherside

Black Eyed Peas -- Hey Mama

The Who -- Teenage Wasteland

Fall Out Boy -- Sugar We're Going Down

O.A.R. -- Love and Memories

Hole -- Celebrity Skin (album)

The Killers -- Mr. Brightside, Somebody Told Me, When You Were Young

Posted by Erin 2:42 PM 2 comments

When the Going Gets Tough
Tuesday, March 27, 2007

On Sunday I headed out for what I expected to be a really fun and enjoyable 12-miler. The sun was shining, and I was just back from a week-long tropical vacation where I did little else but sun myself, read, and drink. Even though I managed to fit a couple of workouts in during vacation, they were by no means strenuous and I was looking forward to doing my first long run of the year on fresh legs.

My 12-mile route -- from my condo, up East Washington, around the Capitol square, down West Wash, around the Arb, and back -- is also one of my favorites. I have fond memories associated with it ...one particular one was knocking off a comfortable, and fast, run after work and before going out for drinks on a Wednesday night about this time last year. I was looking forward to the same feeling on Sunday: cruising along on auto-pilot, no fatigue, easy-breezy.

My Sunday run was anything but. From the first hill to the last, I felt as though I could barely catch my breath. My legs wouldn't find a rhythm. I was struggling with a 9:30-10:00 pace...badly. And then -- then! -- I started to overheat. Goosebumps, chills, woozy-ness. Ugh. Double-ugh.

This was not supposed to happen. I had fresh legs. I was excited about this run. And for the love of all that is holy, how can you overheat in MARCH?!?

I've had trouble with the heat before. And if by "before" you're guessing my entire life, you'd be correct. I don't sweat as much as a normal person, and as a result, I seem to get a lot hotter a lot faster. From horse shows to road races to track meets, it's always been a bit of an Achilles heel for me. To this day, I have no idea how I survived -- much less finished (and finished in time) -- last year's Mad City Marathon.

So it shouldn't have been much of a surprise to me on Sunday when I started feeling overheated. But I just couldn't rectify the fact that it was still March with the fact that I was having trouble with the heat.

I kept apologizing to my two running compadres because, frankly, all I wanted to do was walk. All I could conceive of doing was walking. "It's not even that hot out," I kept saying. "I don't know what's wrong with me. It's not even that hot."

It was embarrassing, frustrating, and by the time we finished, miserable. I had a splitting headache, chills, and nausea.

As I lay on the floor of my condo, stretching and icing my knees -- and trying not to throw up -- I was vindicated, just a little, but the nightly news. Turns out that the high on Sunday was close to 80 degrees -- an all-time high for that day in Madison's weather history. I guess it was that hot.

Even so, the frustration lingers still. I've yet to have a feel-good long run this year. Maybe it's due to the gruelling Saturday workouts (usually a long -- 3 to 4 hour -- bike ride and swim) and Sunday-morning barn chores that leave my legs feeling like they're encased in concrete. Maybe it's because my long runs of 2006 never really felt as good as I remember them in hindsight. Maybe it's both.

So, I'm trying to adjust expectations. But it's both hard and scary. What if I'm not training enough? What if I'm overtraining? And fear of all fears -- the one that I've now started to have nightmares about -- what if I miss the cutoff times on September 9th? Gulp.

Panicking about my preparedness, I've decided, will get me nowhere, though. So I've been doing some (up to this point not-very-effective) self-talk: I'm a strong athlete. I'm working as hard as I can. I'm allowed to have off-days, and the fact that I do doesn't make me a wimp. And, my favorite -- I still have an entire five months to devote to training and preparing.

Stuart Smalley-esque? Perhaps a bit. But when the going gets tough, the tough get desperate. Here's to hoping self-affirmations do the trick...

Posted by Erin 10:17 AM 0 comments

My New Favorite Thing
Monday, March 12, 2007

This little gizmo is going to change my life.

No more suction-induced headaches that last for hours post-swim and result from ill-fitting goggles and having to tighten them so much that they cut off the blood supply to the orbits of my eyes.

This is a seriously exciting find.

And where did I find it? Why, my new favorite place in Madison. I feel like I'm cheating a bit on my other favorite place, but really, Endurance House is just so darn cool...and has everything one would want triathlon-wise. I even got some great chlorine-be-gone shampoo and conditioner so I don't have to smell the pool on my hair for days afterwards.

The other day, I caught myself saying that, these days, I'm perfectly content to shop away at either of these two stores and others like them -- and that I have no desire to wander through Banana Republic or Ann Taylor or White House Black Market.

Those who know me well know the significance of that statement. If I can pay money for things like this or this that can either make the pain of Ironman training and racing either a) less severe or b) go by faster, then sign me up!

Posted by Erin 1:28 PM 1 comments

The Thing About Swimming (or, Hitting the Bonk)
Wednesday, March 07, 2007

An off-day of running for me consists of slogging along at a slower pace than normal, and is sometimes interspersed with shooting pains in my sides, as happened last weekend after a tough, second-to-last night of Mel-A-Palooza paloozaing.

The 12-miler I had scheduled for that past Saturday was anything but enjoyable, as I'm sure my running partner could attest to. I shuffled along like a 90-year-old without a walker, complaining the entire time about the sideaches that shuttled from one side of my abdomen to the other, the numbness in my feet, the cold, my frozen cliff bar and slushy Gatorade, the icy sidewalks that we had to pick our way over, and my general dissatisfaction with having to be out running, period. I was really tired, slightly hungover, and most likely a little dehydrated. But throughout the complaining, I kept slogging (slow+jogging=slogging), and I got it done. 12 whole, miserable miles.

And it's the same on the bike. If I'm tired, if I haven't eaten well enough -- or enough at all -- I reach a specific point where my legs turn to lead. Where I can't seem to get the pedal around with any sort of coordination. Where I can't imagine having to do two minutes more on the bike, much less two more hours.

That, my friends, is called bonking.

Anyone who has experienced it can attest that there is no worse feeling in a workout or race, save for a torn muscle. You know you can run/bike faster, and you know you should. But every single muscle in your body Just. Won't. Move. Like you've suddenly gained 200 lbs. Like you've been sitting sedentary on a couch for years and decided to do a 10k on a whim. It's frustrating and it's painful.

If you're doing a swim workout, it's downright dangerous.

I used to not be able to eat before I worked out. In high school, I'd sip on a water or have a bagel during lunch out of a healthy fear of that afternoon's track practice. In college and grad school, my ideal time of day to run was right around 3 p.m. -- far enough away from breakfast and close enough to dinner that I could eat right afterwards. It wasn't until I started trying to run father and faster that I discovered the joys of adequate nutritional fuel: GU and Cliff Bars -- and how just one little GU break could carry me through an extra five to eight miles that I didn't think I had in me.

And it wasn't until an incident last week that I discovered how essential it was to eat before a swim workout...old wives's tales to the contrary be damned.

Because, unlike running or biking where you just go slow down, if you hit the bonk swimming, you darn near drown.

In retrospect, I should've known better. But I got going late, Leonard took his sweet time on his morning walk, and by the time I got to the pool, I had just a little over 1.5 hours until I had to be at my first meeting of the morning.

The first five to ten minutes went well. I pulled, glided, and pulled in perfect rhythm. I swiveled my hips from side to side as if on a rail, just like all of the books say to do. I was one with the water. Any fish would've been jealous.

And then.

Without warning, I couldn't get my limbs to coordinate. It felt like there was a cement brick resting on my back. I started taking on water. I coughed and sputtered and sputtered and coughed my way through the last 25 meters in a pitiful breaststroke, and then held on to the end of the pool for dear life. I looked at the 50 meters stretched out before me, and for the first time that I could remember, felt scared of the water.

After catching my breath and reasoning with myself, I placed both feet against the pool wall and pushed off for another length. Not even a handful of strokes in, though, and the same problems resurfaced. It was like swimming with a dumbbell in each hand.

In the end, I conceded defeat. Not more than 20 minutes into the workout, and I climbed out of the pool and hit the showers.

Normally, in my training, I won't shy away from working out when I'm tired or feeling sub-par, because, I figure, come mile 100 of the bike on September 9th, or mile 20 of the run, I will surely learn a completely new definition of how tired really feels. I will learn what it truly means to "not feel well."

But there is a reason that the Ironman, and all triathlons, are ordered the way they are: swim first, then bike and run. It's because you can fight a lot of things -- exhaustion, hunger, pain, weather -- but you shouldn't ever try to fight water. If you do, in the end, every time, you'll lose.

Now, no matter what, I eat before I swim now. And lest I forget, there's a cliff bar that stays in my pool bag. Rookie mistake, and one I won't make again.

Posted by Erin 7:56 AM 0 comments

COLD
Friday, February 02, 2007

When I moved here after four years in Marquette, Michigan, I scoffed at Madisonians' reports of winter weather.

Snow? Marquette gets more than ten feet a year on average (It's the second-most "snowiest city" in the country). It starts coming down in October and still dots the beaches in May (I wasn't at all surprised one warm spring day to see sunbathers in bikinis sharing a beach with snowbanks). One winter, I had to have my car towed (read: unstuck) six different times. Three were right in my own driveway.

Cold? Marquette is the fourth-coldest city in the country. January averages have been known to hover right around five degrees. In Marquette, you huddle under over sized wool sweaters, wear boots, and try your damnedest to score an apartment with a fireplace, not because any of these things are cute or trendy, but because otherwise, you'll literally freeze your ass off.

Despite all of this, people in Marquette are among the most active -- year round -- whom I've ever seen. They snowshoe, cross-country and downhill ski, skijor, and run...no matter what the weather is like.

It was there that I learned the value of good (read: weather appropriate) running clothes and developed a true love of snowshoeing and winter running.

Strange, but true. The worse the winter weather is, the more I seem to want to be out in it. There's just something about running past houses where people are huddled safe and warm inside. It's a braving-the-elements sort of thing. One that delivers a punch of accomplishment and sticktuitiveness. On days like that, there's nothing like a look from a passing motorist cast in your direction that says, "You crazy, crazy fool. What are you doing outside in this?" and at the same time, "I could/would never do that."

But today in Madison, it's a special kind of cold out -- the kind that makes your nostrils freeze together. The kind that makes your teeth ache and your legs go numb lest they're covered in Carhart. The kind of cold that the winds whipping off Lake Superior dish out to Marquette only once in a while.

It's hard to remember, on days like today, how the sun could possibly feel too hot on your skin. It's hard to look out over Lake Monona and believe that just four months from now, the frozen sheet of ice covering it and the mini-city of bundled-up men with their shanties and poles will give way to warm, lapping water, swimmers, and boaters. It's hard to imagine running in a tank top and shorts.

Such is the miracle of midwest living. Four true seasons. Weather ranging from the unbearably cold to the excrutiatingly hot, and all of the sublime days that fall in between.

Proust said that "A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves." For me, spring begets hope in the purest possible sense. Summer's warmth makes every day feel like vacation. Fall invokes the need for family and hunkering down. And frigid winter days build character. Much like brussell sprouts or a 20-mile run, these cold days are not something you look forward to or wish for. After the fact, though, you survive and you are proud.

And if you're anything like me, not too proud to hop on the treadmill.

Posted by Erin 8:30 AM 1 comments

No Excuses
Thursday, February 01, 2007

As months go, January and February top the list as the hardest. Nothing much happens during these months. There are no holidays to mark the time, no holiday parties to pass the longer nights. More often than not, the days are frigid and snowy. And these two months seem about as far away from the warm, scent-heavy days of spring as you can get -- both in calendar pages and mental health.

Especially in the Midwest. Especially when you're training for an Ironman.

In the last two cases, it's easy to feel down. It's easy to feel uninspired and unmotivated. It's even easier to make excuses.

Too icy to run outside. Too much to do at work. Too much to do after work -- grocery store, exercising the dog, exercising the horse, meetings upon meetings. To borrow a phrase I heard someone say lately, "Too much too much."

A skipped workout here or there won't hurt. It's the middle of the winter, after all. Your life is busy. One can only do so much.

And then you hear about someone like Dick Hoyt, and you're exposed for what you are: a whiner and a wuss.

Dick Hoyt's son Rick has had Cerebral Palsy since he was born, but that hasn't stopped either of them from completing 64 marathons, 206 triathlons (six of them Ironmans), 78 half-marathons, and a slew of other races -- 911 in all. Lest you think that isn't enough of an accomplishment, the pair also biked and ran across the country (3,735 miles) in 45 consecutive days; biked the states of Connecticut,Rhode Island, Massachusetts with "Axa World Ride '95;" and biked from Pittsburgh to Washington DC with "Axa World Ride 95 ."

The remarkable thing is not just the races. It's the training, too. All of the training hours logged for each one of those races. All of the miles Dick Hoyt runs, bikes, and swims -- not only by himself, but with his son. Pushing, pulling, and pedalling his son.

When Dick runs, Rick is in a wheelchair that Dick is pushing. When Dick cycles, Rick is in the seat-pod from his wheelchair, attached to the front of the bike. When Dick swims, Rick is in a small but heavy, firmly-stabilized boat being pulled by his dad.

And I think my training is "much too much" at times? As Rick Reilly from Sports Illustrated says, "Compared to Dick Hoyt, I suck."

Take the time to read the story and watch the short video of this amazing duo here.

Meanwhile -- despite the cold, despite having to entertain a justifiably-bored Vizsla and exercise a cooped-up horse, and despite having to figure out what to do about dinner -- I'm going to get my workout in tonight.

No more excuses.

Posted by Erin 2:08 PM 0 comments