Vicarious Blogging
Thursday, May 03, 2007

Here are two tidbits from my friend Melanie, who has requested the opportunity to "blog vicariously" every now and again. After taking a hiatus from running after high school (where she was a record-setting speedster on the Grafton cross-country team), Mel jumped back in with both feet this past January, and is going to run the Green Bay Cellcom Marathon on May 20th with me and my sister.

Item #1 -- from the "Crazier than the Ironman" and "I hope Erin Doesn't Attempt This" files: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=600579 (after, check out reporter/blogger Tom Held's account of running a few miles with the driven Jason Dorgan, "Running with Jason" on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's "Off the Couch" blog).

Item #2 -- from an email a friend of ours sent her, attempting words of encouragement: "With a few more weeks of training you should be able to hold off on getting sick for a couple more miles. I’ll have a barf bag ready at Mile 22."

Posted by Erin 12:14 PM 1 comments

This makes the Ironman look like a 5k
Wednesday, May 02, 2007

It's called the Barkley. Check out the incredibly well-done Washington Post article -- then read the comments after and the author's online chat transcript.

I'm still shaking my head.

Posted by Erin 9:19 AM 0 comments

"Oh.my.God.Ouch.Terrible." (Or, 20 is never easy)
Tuesday, May 01, 2007

That's what Lance Armstrong texted to his ex-wife, Kristin, after he finished the 2006 New York marathon. It was also an incredibly fitting description of my long run this weekend.

Really, I couldn't have asked for better conditions. I made the trek up to Green Bay, location of the actual marathon, on Friday night. My sister cooked a killer meal of Italian chicken and pasta, and then we all went to bed early. Saturday morning broke sunny and in the high 50's (and would rise to the low-60's by that afternoon), and we were at the Festival Foods parking lot for the organized training run, sponsored by the local running club, at 7 a.m.

I'm sure they have these kinds of runs in other places, but was I ever impressed! A couple hundred people turned out for the run, which featured little guide-cards for the runners that described the route and hung on little clips that you could attach to your shorts or wherever, Gatorade and water stands every two miles, and bagels afterwards (I heard there were cookies, too, although those were totally gone after the 1/2 marathoners had their way with them)....oh, and even a motivational speech to kick the whole thing off (Which was, admittedly, a little weird. Something about what you must do when you find yourself in the darkest of places, etc., etc., etc. But, whatever. Each to their own.)

We headed out as a group after that. My plan was to run with my sister for at least half the run. She is great at pacing -- always has been. She's admittedly not the fastest runner, but a slow-but-steady-wins-the-race type. As anyone who's run a marathon can attest to, that's exactly the kind of runner you want to be for the first half (and quite possibly, the entire thing).

But, I was feeling good. Really, really good. I let myself run ahead. And, egged on by a stellar playlist (if I do say so myself) that I had constructed on the drive down to GB on Friday, I ran really well (for me) for the next 12 miles or so (I didn't have my new garmin on, but figure it was about a 9:30-ish average given rough calculations).

And then I tanked. Hard.

My legs were screaming-sore. My left ankle was aggravated as hell. My right lower back was whimpering. I had chub-rub under my arms and bra strap, and on my thighs. Even my toenails were hurting. I told myself to suck it up -- that everyone hurts at this distance, and that I'd hurt a lot worse at this same point after doing a 2+ mile swim and a 100+ mile bike ride before the run. This worked a bit. I started running more than walking.

During those four miles, though, I was in a pretty dark place (should've listened to the motivational pre-run speaker). I reasoned that it would be perfectly okay to not do the full marathon, and just do the half in a few weeks. I questioned why I didn't have the mental toughness to keep pushing my body even though it hurt, like so many others (most of whom were, at that time, running past me) do. And I seriously doubted my ability to undertake an Ironman if I couldn't even muster a measly 20-miler on fresh legs.

Then something happened. In the last two miles, I got a second wind. And while I didn't feel great, I inched my pace back up toward where it originally had been and finished strong.

The rest of that day, I hurt. I hurt the kind of hurt where you can't even really describe what hurts, because all the painful areas of your body meld together into one, big, hurtful glob. But by late that afternoon it was was gone, and so was the notion to skip the full marathon. May 20th, here we come!

Posted by Erin 8:42 AM 1 comments

Tangent
Monday, April 30, 2007

Ok, so this post is not in the least Ironman-related....but, I just found out that I won a contest! This is a big deal in that I never win anything. (Seriously. I'm still scarred from the horrible losses I suffered in the cakewalk contests in grade school. Or spelling bees. Or bingo. Nothing. Ever. Until now.)

I submitted a piece I've been working on for a while to Harriet Brown's Mr. Wrong contest...and was one of two winners. It is not a big deal in terms of what I win (publicaiton on her site, a signed copy of the book, and a t-shirt), but as they say at the Oscars, it's nice just to be recognized. So, check it out if you'd like, with the told-you-so warning that it's pretty lengthy: http://harrietbrown.blogspot.com/2007/04/mr-wrong-again.html.

Posted by Erin 2:32 PM 2 comments

What I Have to Look Forward To
Tuesday, April 24, 2007

On the back of a book I stumbled accross, Becoming an Ironman -- accounts from regular Joes about their first Ironman experiences -- were the following quotes. I have mixed feeling about them, so I'll let them just speak for themselves.

"Ironman is similar to having your first baby -- being in labor that long and dealing with all the pain." ~ Susie Burgess

"I saw the marker for mile twenty five. What a beautiful sign. Nothing could stop me. If every muscle in my legs cramped I could still drag myself on my elbows for 1.2 miles." ~ Jane Fratesi

"All these people, with all these dreams, laying on the side of the road, moaning. I could feel their pain too and there was nothing I could do about it. I saw someone vomiting and thought, that could be me in half an hour, or five minutes." ~ Rick Olson

"I began to cry the last five hundred meters. The end was so overwhelming -- the feelings that have been numbed by training and racing catch up with you." ~ Katja Mayer

"One of the things an athlete must do before Ironman is to strengthen the body core. This won't take a membership to the gym. You can't get it in the weight room. I'm talking body core. You've got to get right with God because you're going to pray out there." ~ Elizabeth Johnson

"I was sure I was in Hell. All I needed was for someone to drip water drops on my head and shine a bright light in my eyes. It was no fun." ~ T.J. Murphy

"To tell the truth, it was not the exultant finish or peak experience I had hoped for. It felt more akin to being beaten and left for dead, but somehow having survived, and not knowing if it was for better or worse." ~ Dakin Ferris

"When I finished it became very clear to me, right away, that I needed to go back. There was more to explore." ~ Lyn Brooks

"At one point I could look -- as far as I could see -- not a soul, not a car, not a cyclist, not an aid station, not one damn sign of life and I turned around and looked back, and it was the same thing. I thought, 'How barren and desolate is this experience?'." ~ Scott Tinley

Posted by Erin 9:41 AM 1 comments

On the Road Again
Monday, April 23, 2007

Yesterday, the weather was finally nice enough to take my bike outdoors. Until now, I've been stuck on my trainer in front of the TV. Thanks to the suggestions from a few devoted fans of the show, I started watching LOST on my long, long weekend bike sessions and am now totally and completely addicted (and if by addicted you guess that I'm watching it before and after work, before I go to bed, and any other chance I get to be in front of the TV, and that I was kind of actually hoping that yesterday's thunderstorm warnings were for the afternoon so I wouldn't have to bike outside and could watch LOST instead, you'd be correct).

In any case, the first obstacle to biking outside was figuring out all of my gear. Unfortunately, the only piece of equipment that I bought last fall that came with any sort of instructions at all was my helmet. Yes, seriously. Bike computer? Nope. Air pump? Nada (They likely thought that a hand pump isn't that hard to operate and wouldn't need instructions. They were severely mistaken). Bike? Not a chance.

Now, just for the record, I've biked before. But I don't kid myself about being mechanically-inclined in the least. That's why, in the past, anything at all that needed doing with my bike (changing pedals, putting air in the tires, changing a tire, etc.), the handy people at the bike store took care of. For one easy payment of $35.99, I could have my bike once-overed and it would be ready to go.

The Ironman, however, has thrown a bit of a wrench in that practice on two different levels. First, on the course on race day, you are not allowed to accept any kind of outside help. You have to be completely self-sufficient and at one with your machine. If you blow a tire or drop a chain at mile 87, you better be ready to fix it, and have everything on you that's required to do so. Second, on weekend bike rides of 5, 6, or 7 hours that inch toward 100 miles, you cover a lot of ground. To put it simply, you're usually a hell of a long ways out of town, and away from anyone who might be able to help you. On a long stretch of farm road in Verona that sees more bikes than cars, it will help immensely if I can simply attend to whatever malfunction my bike is having and not have to interrupt my workout (which would require rescheduling the workout -- almost impossible to do when you think about the available time slots one has each week of 5+ continuous hours in daylight). All in all, it's just best that my bike and I get to know one another really, really, really well.

And that, as I mentioned before the above tangent, started in earnest yesterday.

We headed out on one of the city's myriad of bike paths starting at Machinery Row Bicycles and headed toward John Nolan and out toward the Wingra Creek path. It was beautiful out -- almost 80 and sunny -- but almost unbearably windy. This was a frightful combo for someone with, at best, rusty bike handling skills. Gobs and gobs of little kids with metallic ribbons streaming off their handlebars weaving all over the trail like drunken midgets...their moms or dads pulling those kid-trailers behind the bike and barely crawling along...and me, stuck behind them and almost getting blown over because I was almost at a standstill.

Before I knew it, though, I was out of Madison and headed into the country via Seminole Highway. Talk about a bike path! Freshly-paved road as far as you can see, wide shoulders, relatively flat. The only problem was that the wind seemed to increase in intensity and velocity out there. I was in a gear I normally only reserve for hills, and could barely make a go of it. I started to obsess about how maybe I wasn't in good enough shape, and maybe I hadn't prepared well enough on the trainer, and now how was I ever going to finish an Ironman? -- and that obsessing grew worse when a fellow biker with calves the size of my neck zoomed past me like I was standing still (which, really, I almost was).

Slightly depressed about my performance, I eventually turned around, only to find that with the wind at my back, I had no problems whatsoever. I clipped along on the big chain ring, and by the end of the ride, was even spending a fair amount of time in my aerobars (until, of course, I hit the city bike trails teeming with the drunken midgets again).

I never before understood biking, and why/how people could love it oh-so-much. Even at the start of this little Ironman undertaking, I told myself that learning to bike would be great for my knees as I grow older. I never expected to become a real, honest-to-god biker, but I think I might be on the edge of a conversion. Running is freeing in a gritty, painful, make-your-body-suffer-to-free-your-mind sort of way. Biking is pure adrenaline...similar to ski racing, but more fulfilling. Clipping along, seeing the scenery move past you, knowing that your own two legs are powering the trip. It's a great feeling. Even better, I discovered yesterday, is going downhill in aero position. Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

After I returned home -- 3 hours after I had left -- I switched to my runners, donned a hat and my Ipod, picked up Leonard, and hit the road for what was supposed to be an easy 2-miler (which felt like anything but at the onset)...wishing all the while I was still on the bike.

Posted by Erin 9:19 AM 4 comments

There's No "I" in Team

The other morning, I was rubbing my eyes awake when I felt something that's never, ever there: eyebrow stubble.

It shocked me to find, looking in the mirror, little stubs of hair coming in where they shouldn't. Shocked me to discover that my eyebrows looked like poorly-trimmed hedges. It shocked me because I am a fastidious plucker. Plucking my eyebrows is a part of my daily routine, like brushing my teeth or shaving my legs (which I do daily, or sometimes if warranted, twice daily). It relaxes me. Gives me a sense of self-satisfaction. I like doing it so much, in fact, that I haven't had my brows waxed in years. How many, I'm not sure. It's been that long.

So how to explain that I've let my eyebrows go to this point? Easy. It's the circus that is the Ironman. Or, more accurately, the circus that is my life because of the Ironman.

I have no time to go to the grocery store, no time to clean my apartment, and no time to do laundry. I rarely have time to talk on the phone, and conversations are either a) short, b) en route to swimming or back, or c) while I'm logging 4+ hour bike rides in my living room. I barely have time to work, what with all the working-out. Meeting up with people for drinks or seeing a movie is so far down the list of things I don't have time to do that I can't even see them.

I always knew this would be the most miserable part of it all. It's nearly impossible to have a life when you're working on becoming an Ironman. It's all part of the hard-ness of the experience, I think. Ironman, after all, isn't just about race day. It's about all of the sacrifices that are made each hour, each day, each week, and each month leading up to race day.

But these aren't just my sacrifices.

There's a reason why, when you watch an Ironman competition, that you see group after group of families and friends lined up in all sorts of weather, cheering on their Ironman-to-be with a mix of smiles and tears on their faces. It's why you see that same mix on the faces of the competitors. The smiles come from a sense of community and spirit, the tears from pride at what is being accomplished...together.

The thing is, no one does Ironman alone. It's impossible to do so. I always watched fathers and mothers running across the finish line at IM Wisconsin with their brood of kids in tow, wondering how in the world they did it all -- being a parent, being married, working, and training?!? What I didn't know was that it was because of their little clan -- not in spite of -- that they were able to accomplish all they did.

I'm not married. I have no brood. But I do have my own team that helps me keep on keeping on.

There's my "Chief of Stuff" who has all but taken responsibility for my life by doing the following at times:

• Grocery shopping;
• Cooking;
• Laundry;
• Doing long runs and sprint workouts with me;
• Keeping Leonard company and entertained;
• Helping me with barn chores so I can finish and start my Sunday long runs sooner;
• Letting me listen to his Ipod on long runs when mine quits because I forgot to charge it;
• Massaging my feet when they hurt so badly after post-weekend workouts that I contemplate taking Vicodin to curb the pain;
• Buying my favorite flavors of Cliff Bars or Gatorade when available;
• Bringing me food I can eat on my bike (namely, quesadillas), when my workout spans dinner;
• Planning social outings around my schedule and (the best part) planning them for me; and
• Never once complaining about the time this endeavor takes up and how bone-tired it makes me all the time.

I also have many Deputy Chiefs of Stuff -- my sister, brother-in-law, mom, dad, aunts, uncles, friends, and bosses/co-workers -- who, even though they aren't in close enough proximity to assist in the day-to-day operations of my life have been indispensable on this journey so far. They have provided and continue to provide support, encouragement, kind words, and an unyielding patience with my schedule. They worry about me. They watch my buddy, Leonard, and make sure he's happy. They send me articles or tips they've heard that might be useful, and hook me up with others who have undertaken this crazy race. They come and visit me, or are understanding when I can't make a proposed trip, because they know I just can't finagle any visits for the foreseeable future. They tell me they are proud.

Yesterday I was finishing up a run after a 3+ hr bike ride (a workout that was cut short from what it was supposed to be) while my Chief of Stuff was at the grocery store stocking up on food for a cookout that night -- a cookout we were having so I could pretend I had a bit of a social life...food that would already be prepared by the time I was out of the shower and the first guests were rolling in.

That this undertaking is a selfish one is not lost on me. I think about it often. Every single day, I am humbled by the patience of the people around me, by the sacrifices that they've made on my behalf. I am humbled and I am grateful.

Only a bit over four months to go on this journey. So far it has been difficult, but manageable and good -- and for that, I have my team to thank.

Posted by Erin 7:38 AM 0 comments