Costumed Runners March 13, 2008

Runners wear some weird stuff. At a race, you might see running shoes in Day-Glo colors or shoes that look like they escaped from a Crayola factory. You’ll a great deal of spandex. There will be men in tights with bright checkered prints or stripes or tribal patterns. There might be women in running briefs (ie, spandex underwear), sports bras, and a smile. While all this would be pretty darn weird for a jaunt around the mall, it’s pretty normal for a race – practical, really. It’s the folks who take it to the next level that really make me smile – the ones that run in costume.

As far as I can tell, there are two significant advantages to running in costume.

1. If you’re lucky enough to have someone (or several someones) there to cheer you on, a costume, or at least a funny hat or T-shirt, will help them find you in the herd. See, races are usually pretty crowded events. There can be thousands of people running a course, and once a crowd that size gets together, it starts getting hard to pick out individuals. Your cheering section might be waiting for you to run a couple miles before you get to them. If you’re wearing a Storm Trooper outfit, they’ll probably either be able to see you further off, or they’ll be tipped off by your approach by the cheering of the folks further down the course.

Which brings me to the second advantage…

2. Spectators and volunteers (particularly those at a long running event) have a potentially long wait until the end of the race. In the meantime, all there is to do is cheer for the sweaty people running by. In my admittedly limited experience, people LOVE to pull for the unusual runner on the course. It’s a lot more fun to yell “Yeah! Go, Santa!” than it is to yell “Yeah! Go, guy-in-the-plain-white-tshirt!” It really, really helps a lot to hear someone cheering for you. Even if you’re someone very shy of praise (like me), it’s quite a boost to hear someone rooting for you. You’re putting in a hell of a lot of effort to do something, and someone is noticing and is pulling for you. It’s a great feeling and it helps a lot.

(It’s also nice to entertain the volunteers and spectators – it’s a big deal to put on a race event and the volunteers make or break it. And a race without spectators just wouldn’t be the same. So if it makes them smile on race day, then I’m all for it.)

The only time I’ve seen people cheer louder for someone not in costume was at last year’s Philadelphia Marathon. A woman came around the corner, setting an amazing pace…running on a prosthetic leg. There was a half beat of surprise while we registered what we were seeing (I was a spectator), then the crowd went nuts – “Yeah!!! Wooooo!!!” If it had been a movie or a cartoon, we all would have had handfuls of confetti that we would have thrown in the air. The runner pumped her fists in the air a couple times to acknowledge our appreciation. I’m tearing up remembering it – it was awesome. Anyway, back to costumes…

Some of the costumes and crazy things I’ve seen on courses…

I’ve seen Santa Claus, and a half dozen elves. I’ve seen people juggling as they run a course (running faster than me, while they’re at it). I saw a guy running the JFK 50 Miler in a shark costume. These are all not counting the costumes at the Halloween 5K I attended this past year… those were some fun costumes.

I did a couple quick searches online for fun race-day costumes, but didn’t find as many as I had expected. I’ll have to make sure to get photos of the best costumes at this weekend’s half marathon. It’s St. Patrick’s Day weekend, so there are sure to be some fun St. Patty’s Day themed costumes.

Last Weekend Before the Half March 10, 2008

The weekend started out right on Friday night. Matt and I were watching a movie and heard a strange sound. At first, I thought the cat had something – a bug or a twist-tie or a toy – and was batting it around, but Matt quickly ID’d it. It was the ceiling. It was leaking. There’s a whole second story of house between the roof and the ceiling that was leaking, so despite the fact that it was raining, we immediately knew it was a plumbing problem of some sort. The ceiling was already starting to bubble unpleasantly, so we had to act fast. After some strategic scurrying around the house, we were unable to locate the source of the leak and were forced to shut the water off in an attempt to save the section of ceiling. Buckets were set out, the landlord was called (I left several messages in several voicemail inboxes). Once we had the water off, the leak slowed, and the ceiling didn’t seem like it was about to split open and rain down upon us, so we opted to wait for the landlord to call us back.

We slept late and had a light breakfast of oranges and tangerines. I didn’t want to cook anything because we had a limited amount of water left and because I wouldn’t be able to clean the dishes. The landlord still hadn’t called, and I had to get a 3 miler in, so I packed up my gym bag with the necessary toiletries and trucked on out to the rec center. I brushed my teeth and put my contacts in at the rec center, and tried to pretend this wasn’t unusual. (I had neglected to put my contacts in before I peeled the oranges. I wasn’t sure I could get all the citric acid off of my fingers without washing them properly. Any kind of acid in the eyes is not appealing to me at all, so I waited to put them in until I got to the rec center.) After that, I got my 3 mile run in on the treadmill and hopped on down to the locker room to shower.

The rec center has an incredibly awesome “Leisure Pool.” It has several water slides (one of which actually goes outside the building and comes back in), a lazy river, a jungle gym area, and a big hot tub. It’s packed with happy screaming children on the weekend, which means that the locker room is also packed with happy screaming children. I was lucky enough to find an unoccupied shower stall and got cleaned up. There were people waiting to shower, so I wrapped up in a towel and went to change in the locker room area. Being a shy sort of person, I like to pick a corner to face while getting dressed. I’m kinda glad I did this time. There was a group of little girls behind me somewhere taking group photos of themselves with someone’s cell phone. They were all dressed and everything, thank goodness. I hope my rear end isn’t in any of those photos.

The landlord called when I was on my way out of the rec center. The poor guy had been calling all three of us (Matt, Luke, and me) and had been unable to get any of us. Matt was at work (the reception is terrible there), Luke had been napping and had his cell phone off, and I had been in the bowels of the rec center trying to keep seven year old girls from taking photos that had my butt as a background. Anyhow, he and I were able to arrange to have a plumber come out.

I spent the rest of the day hanging about waiting for the plumber. He finally made it by that evening and was able to fix the problem pretty quickly. (thank goodness!) It turned out to be a leak in a supply pipe to a toilet upstairs.

Thus ended the adventures for the day.

Sunday was my last long training run before the half marathon. It was a beautiful day, but windy and a bit nippy out. I think it got up to the 40s, but it was hard to tell with the wind.

I had a really nice 12 mile route planned out. It took me through two wooded park/trail areas, both with nice little streams to run next to. The only problem was that I took a wrong turn in the first one and added a significant distance to my run before I was able to get back on course. As a result, I have no idea how far the route actually was.

I took the training run very, very easy. In fact, I walked a lot of it. As mentioned, it was a beautiful day…the sun was shining, and despite the cold, there were signs of spring everywhere. It was really nice to cruise along, enjoy the sights, and let my mind wander. I spent a significant amount of time waiting at crosswalks. I also stopped at the library to return a book and use the facilities. When I was about to leave the library, the landlord called again to check in. It was windy out, so I stayed put so we’d be able to hear each other. We had a nice little chat and agreed to arrange for him to come by to check out the damage to the ceiling some time this week. I even stopped a couple times to look at the streams I was going by. It had rained recently, and the extra water had made some interesting changes in places. One spot had been dammed up by leaves and sticks and such before, but a section had been swept away. Basically, it was more of a leisurely hike with occasional stretches of running. Boy, it was nice. Nice, but I won’t mention how long it took me to finally meander to the finish line. A long, long time.

This week is the taper before the half marathon. Oh, sweet, sweet taper, how I’ve looked forward to it. Now that the pressure is off, I feel more like running. Funny how that works, huh? Anyhow, total this week, I’ll run no more than 10 miles before the half marathon. Should be nice to purposefully have a low mileage week.

Running Report : C- March 6, 2008

 

This week’s training has not gone particularly well. I’ve been hammered at work – things have gotten pretty busy. I had a couple nights when I didn’t sleep particularly well, which made it too tough for me to get out of bed in the morning to go train. (I am a weenie about sleep deprivation.) Biology sucker-punched me, too. (I am a weenie in general, actually.) Pretty much all the typical excuses.

On the positive side, I did get a decent run in this morning. While I was at it, I tested out the four potentially good running songs that were the result of last night’s frenzy of measuring beats per minute (bpm). These are the four:

• Vince the Lovable Stoner (Fratellis)
• The Sky is Falling (Queens of the Stone Age)
• Millionaire (Eagles of Death Metal)
• Solid Gold (Eagles of Death Metal)

There were a few from the President’s album that might have worked, but I don’t have them on my hard drive at the moment (Matt is kind enough to share his extremely impressive music collection with me, so I was listening on the shared drive of his iMac).

I had already determined that the last two were good running songs, but I figured that since I had measured the bpm for them I might as well put them on the playlist. The Sky is Falling had the right bpm, but I had my doubts about it. While I wouldn’t have guessed Vince would be a good one without the bpm in front of me, once I listened to it and thought about it, I had hopes.

In short, Vince worked out nicely and the Sky is Falling was workable, but pretty far from great.

 

This bpm thing could really work! I’ll keep measuring songs and building my running playlist and sharing with you here.

While I was at it this morning, I did my weight lifting. I was pleased to find that my upper body strength has improved enough that I can now do a whole 10 girly push-ups at a time! Woo hoo! I guess it pays to weight train like Chuck.

Also on the plus side, illnesses and car accidents have been held to the bare minimum of zero. That is a very good thing.

I’ve also planned out this weekend’s 12 mile run and it promises to be a good one as long as the weather holds. I’ll go through two wooded running trail areas – I think I like running on those trails the best.

Still, because I haven’t gotten enough of my training in this week, so far, I’m grading myself a solid C-.

BPM Counter!! March 6, 2008

I ran a couple searches (literally, two), and browsed my way to a free bpm counter widget from www.flyingcheeseburger.com. While working on some other things, I have started counting beats per minute looking for potential running songs. Here are the albums I checked out tonight and each song’s bpm. I’m setting up a Running Playlist for all the songs that are in the 160-170-ish range to see if they work well as running songs. The logic there is that the Podrunner episode that I find easiest to run to is 166 bpm.

(Couple of notes on the widget… it’s a manual thing, so the bpm probably aren’t 100% accurate. I’m laboring under the presumption that it doesn’t have to be for my purposes. Also, I’m pretty sure it’s just for Macs – sorry, PC users.)

If this works, I’m going to have to learn how to not waste precious O2 singing along. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Fratellis – Costello Music

• Henrietta – 117 bpm
• Flathead – 212
• Cuntry Boys & City Girls – 179
• Whistle for the Choir – 131
• Chelsea Dagger – 154
• For the Girl – 222
• Dogginabag – 122
• Creeping up the Backstairs – 245
• Vince the Lovable Stoner – 168
• Everybody Knows You Cried Last Night – 205
• Baby Fratelli – 125
• Got Ma Nuts From a Hippie – 216
• Ol’ Black N Blue Eyes – 130

Presidents of the United States of America: Love Everybody

• Love Everybody – 183
• Some Postman – 119
• Clean Machine – 136
• Highway Forever – 133/266
• Zero Friction – 140
• Surf’s Down – 166
• Shortwave – 181
• Poke n Destroy – 185
• Munky River – 92
• Droolin at You – 177
• Vestina – 155
• 5,500 Miles – 167
• Shreds of Boa – 118
• Jennifer’s Jacket – 222

22-20s : 22-20s

• Devil In Me – 218
• Such a Fool – 123
• Baby Brings Bad News – 124
• 22 Days – 209
• Friends – 97
• Why Don’t You Do It For Me? – 240
• Shoot Your Gun – 113
• The Things That Lovers Do – 132
• I’m the One – 235
• Hold On – 134
• Baby, You’re Not in Love – 103

Queens of the Stone Age: Songs for the Deaf

• You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar – 156
• No One Knows – 171
• First It Giveth – 210
• Song for the Dead – 206
• The Sky is Fallin – 168
• Six Shooter – 170
• Hangin’ Tree – 211
• Go With the Flow – 159
• Gonna Leave You Now – 142
• Do It Again – 133
• God Is In The Radio – 113
• Another Love Song – 148
• Song for the Deaf – 201
• Mosquito Song – 100

Eagles of Death Metal: Death by Sexy

• I Want You So Hard – 165
• I Got a Feelin’ – 128
• Cherry Cola – 145
• I Like To Move In The Night – 112
• Solid Gold – 169
• Don’t Speak – 135
• Keep Your Head Up – 119
• Ballad of Queen Bee – 121
• Poor Doggie – 96
• Chase the Devil – 227
• Eagles Goth – 133
• Shasta Beast – 136
• Bag O Miracles – 105

11 Miles on a Beautiful Day & Breaking 100 March 3, 2008

Yesterday was a beautiful day for a long run. It was in the upper 40s to mid-50s, clear, breezy, and all-around pretty out.

The route I plotted took me through as many wooded areas as I could manage, so I got to see the crocuses blooming like there’s no tomorrow and I believe I saw some of the trees starting to bud. I even saw plenty of bulbs starting to come up in people’s gardens as I ran by. Spring is trying real hard to get here, and I can’t wait.

Other than the signs of the impending change in season, it was a very uneventful run. I listened to an audiobook instead of music this time. It was my first long run in a couple weeks and I didn’t want to push myself too terribly hard (the right music makes me run harder). I got to see lots of people out walking their dogs or their kids or both, which was cute when they didn’t hog up the running path. I also got to stop at the office about halfway to refill my hydration pack and say hello to Matt who was putting in some extra hours on a project.

My final time for the whole 11 miles was 2 hrs 26 min and 53 seconds. I estimate that I spent about 17 minutes waiting at crosswalks and refilling my hydration pack. Plus, I was carrying a few extra pounds of water and gear in my hydration pack. So, while my time wasn’t as good as I’d like, I’m not too worried about it. I’ll be running lighter during the half marathon and there will be no crosswalks at which I’ll lose time. Both of those will help a lot. Plus, I’ll have eaten better, I’ll be running on race-day nerves, and people will be waiting out in the cold for me – all things that help me go faster. At the moment, my biggest concern is the course itself – I know there are some hills. If they are very significant, I could get in trouble pretty quick. I’ll still finish, but a lot of uphill will likely knock my time back quite a bit. Even so, right this second, I feel pretty good about March 15th!

It’s especially encouraging that I’m not all THAT sore from the run. My calves, abs, and neck are most affected and none are too painful at all. I don’t even feel the need for ibprofen.

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In other news, yesterday’s 11 mile run pushed me over the 100 mile marker! My official mileage is 109.4 for 2008 as of this moment. That feels pretty darn incredible. I ran those 109.4 miles pretty slow, but dammit, I ran them, and I’m gonna run some more!

My official mileage for February was 45.2 with an average pace of 11:37. Could have been better, but could have been a lot worse, too.

Total known mileage on my current running shoes – 217.25 miles. (I say “known mileage” because I had run in them for a while before I started tracking my mileage.

In case you’re curious, I use the Runlicious application on Facebook to track my mileage. I’ll enter information on each run and race, complete with any notes, and it compiles and archives that information for me. It’s pretty handy for me since I’m on Facebook fairly frequently.