Not So Bad, for a Bad Brain Day

Spring made a brief appearance this afternoon, but it's not going to hang out for long. Looks like we're in for more typical Colorado April weather, cold, snow, and wind. The leaves are about to break out any day now, and I can see more green and wilted flowers that froze in the cold snap we had the other day. It was 12 degrees yesterday morning! Today it was windy but closer to 60 degrees when the sun finally came out.

I am very excited about the apricot trees I am growing from seed. I planted the seedlings last week, and they are starting to grow leaves in their pots on the kitchen table. As soon as the weather warms up, I will plant them, in places safe from Buffaloes. We are going to let our grass go over the summer, since we're on water restrictions anyway, and put in some raised beds and grow veggies. And we will xeriscape the front yard eventually.

This morning I met with a film crew in south Fort Collins, they were shooting some footage of me running in a field with the foothills behind us, for the upcoming Spring Benefit for the Cancer Center. I am one of 6 people they will be featuring in the video, 3 are cancer survivors and 3 are donors. I was honored to be included as one of the donors in this year's video. It was fun, they asked me questions about my running and why I support the cancer center, how cancer has affected people in my life, and so on.

It was freezing out there, I had to keep running around to stay warm. I had my jacket and wind tights on, but standing there it was cold. After we were done, I went home to a freezing house. Our furnace died overnight and I scheduled a service person to come out and check it out at 1 pm. Turned out it was the safety limit switch (whatever that is) and about an hour and $200 and change later it was fixed. We have heat again.

Having hot flashes makes heat seem relatively less important, but it was cold in the house this morning, 48 degrees! I know we will both appreciate having warmth tonight. I slept through the night once this week, but then last night I woke up a lot. It's killing my brain, I am worthless and unable to think clearly after a night like that.

I have been distracted, with yesterday's brain fog of a work hangover day, and today between the filming and the furnace, I haven't been able to get much done. But tomorrow I have to start packing for Ohio. The weather forecast looks gruesome at this point, 48 degrees, rain and wind. Ugh. But it's still 10 days away and a lot can change before then. I have a plan, and that's what's important.

I went out and ran about 6 miles today and felt okay. I also ran with the girls. My legs were still sore until yesterday. I don't plan on doing much all week, probably 8 to 10 miles at the most each day. I sat in the hot tub this afternoon, trying to get the girls to stop fence fighting with the neighbor dogs, and other than that brief chaos, zoning out. I have a book review to write and some other things to do around the house this weekend, but my brain wasn't ready to tackle any of it today.

It was nice to not HAVE to do anything today, between being hot, and cold, not sleeping, tapering, and my schedule being off, I feel sluggish and out of sorts. I'm really lucky to have the time to chill. I think I'll go hang out with my girls.

Work Hangover Wednesday: WTF Winter?

We were supposed to get hit with the big spring blizzard of the year, the schools were called off the day before, everyone was canceling appointments and bracing themselves for the big dig-out.

When we woke up this morning I looked out the window and said to Dennis, "Better get your boots on, we'll be digging out for a couple of days."

It was barely even a dusting, but it was cold and windy as hell!

Two long days of work, with an unusually high proportion of crazies, Darwin Award candidates and just plain oddballs. It's not even a full moon, so I'm not sure what brought the creepy crawlers out.

All I know is that by the end of the day all I wanted to do was drink. My job has that effect on me sometimes. Not to mention that I've had very little sleep the past few nights.

I stopped off on my way home and got an Arrogant Bastard, and Dennis made catfish tacos with mango and pineapple salsa. Perfect. I didn't have to cook, all I had to do was relax.

Now I'm home for the rest of the week, with a gazillion things to get done and start packing for Ohio. I'm ready to get out of here, to get away from the daily onslaught of things turned upside down. How many times a day can you say, "you have got to be kidding me"? I'm due for a good rant, but I don't have the energy right now. Short, easy runs are all I'm allowed to do this week, so there could be some rants coming soon.

No Turning Back!

It's really spring now!

In the last day or two, the green leaves have started to break out and it doesn't matter anymore that there's a forecast of 7 inches of snow on Tuesday, it's spring and that's all we know, that's all that matters! We're moving forward.



Yesterday I did an easy ten miles at the lakes, I needed some time to be alone in my thoughts, and an easy run where there was no one to push me.

It didn't really look like spring yet at the lakes, nothing was very green, and there was fresh snow on Longs Peak and the Mummy Range.



This morning, I met Wheaties Boy at the cemetery to do a 15 mile tempo run. I started off a little stiff and sore after the past few days of trail running and a hard mile on the bike path on Thursday. But after a few laps, my pace came down into the 8s and even though I was pushing it, I wasn't hurting too bad. My legs were more sore than tired.

We wrapped up 15 miles in 2:10, a nice 8:40 average talking pace on the dirt surface of the cemetery, with my final mile in 7:52, without working too hard. When you feel refreshed but not dead after a workout, you know it's a good one.

I've needed some kind of confidence booster lately, as I've been struggling so hard since Delano. Now I feel like a two week taper with a lot of good, solid rest is all I need. I got a total of 75.8 miles this past week which didn't kill me. Anything I do from here on out isn't going to help me get fitter, and doing too much can only hurt me. So I'm done, just easy jogging, keep the legs fresh, from now until Ohio, and avoid the dreaded taperworm.

I have a plan for North Coast, and I'm going to stick to it. It starts out SUPER CONSERVATIVE. I'm actually going to look like I'm dragging ass out there for the first 6 hours. But I'm pretty sure if I take the opposite approach of what I took at Delano, I'll have a successful performance. And I'm very excited to be wearing my Team PI gear for the first time in a race!


Plus today Wheaties Boy let me try one of the chocolate cherry Clif Shots with mega caffeine and I thought it was the best tasting gel ever. I'm going to use those during North Coast instead of relying solely on my usual Starbucks doubleshot espresso, because I usually end up needing a trip to the bathroom soon after the doubleshots, I'm slightly lactose intolerant.



The leaves are coming, flowers are blooming, and typical of Colorado, it's supposed to snow in the next 24 to 48 hours. Spring. Bring it on!

An April Memorial

I should say, speaking for myself, another April memorial. April seems to be the month, at least in my experience, where a lot of deaths occur, or are commemorated, for people, creatures, and ideals important to me, including some that I've clung to, of which I needed to let go.

I never thought March, April, or anytime in the spring would be a good time to die, everything is coming to life. But maybe that's how it needs to be, to make room for something else. I always thought November would be a better month to end an existence, at least in this hemisphere.

This April's memorial is something different. Very different. There ISN'T something else. Some spirits have no successors.

Some spirits are so unique, that when they leave, the remaining world won't ever be the same. There's no void left, instead there's a solid, immovable presence, that can only be figuratively climbed by a few. To scale the presence of this rock face is to appreciate and understand where it came from, and why it was there. And so it is with Kevin.

This April the trees are barely leafing out, the bulbs are pushing up flowers, and there's a faint greening and blooming every day.

The world needed Kevin, but it didn't deserve Kevin. That might seem like an odd thing to say, but Kevin was so smart, sharp, talented, and deep that he existed on a level parallel with most other people's existences. People spoke about him at his memorial this morning, and had conversations among themselves.

The common theme I heard in those who spoke of him was how he impressed them, touched their lives, created a special place in their memories, so much that they shared a reverence for him. This included teachers, people in the community, fellow climbers, friends, family, and people who had known him just a short time.

I would have to count myself among the latter category, in my own version of reverence.

I think, but I'll never know for sure, that Kevin and I were cut from similar molds. Very different upbringings, interests, ways of embarking on each of our life journeys. We shared some interests, namely writing, painting, loving the mountains, flowers, and running, other interests were worlds apart.

Being different, being your own person, living a uniquely focused life takes a lot of courage. Bucking convention, doing what you need to do to cut through the loads of crap life creates and places in front of you from day one on this planet, sometimes before you're even born, is not an easy task.

People are a powerful influence when they impose their beliefs, values, and perceptions on you. Following your own compass requires constant vigilance, frequent focusing, and repeatedly comtemplating your purpose.

This is how I've always lived my life. Not that I haven't made mistakes, trying to conform, trying to fit in, trying to be like a "normal" person. It's never, ever worked, and I've never, ever been happy when I tried to take that route that wasn't meant for me.

As a result, I could relate to Kevin, he wanted a simple life, and so do I. It's been complicated at many stages but I've tried to resist convention and stick to my principles, I've sacrificed a lot of comfort and acceptance.

Rarely have I met a person who impacts my own life like Kevin did, in the short time I knew him, he was a reminder of my priorities, and a validation that I am on the right path, even though I still question it more often than I ever should. Kevin was half my age, but he was wise and possessed a spirituality and an intellect.

Rarely seen.

In people.

Of any age.

He knew, despite growing up in a world that offers so much distraction, that there was a greater purpose, and could focus on it. Living life fully was his focus. Climbing, the mountains were his passion, but coffee, good books, writing and painting were important too. He lived fully with his cancer, in his cancer, despite the torture.

Cancer was simply another climb for him, the way he faced it, not at all in the environment he wished for, but he faced it like a technical challenge and gave it everything he had.

Cancer was the climb that defeated him physically, but not spiritually.

Listening to the stories of those who knew him well, there were a lot of quotes...one that appealed to me was a Prefontaine quote, since Kevin used to run trails, too, it was "To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift."

Cancer isn't fair, and neither is life.

Even in the unfairness, it is possible to live fully, a satisfying and personally rewarding existence, even though to those on the outside, they think you're insane, foolish, lazy, selfish, or detached from reality.

Two of my favorite quotes happened to be on Kevin's memorial program:

"And those seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music"-Friedrich Nietzsche

"Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel"-Horace Walpole

Being in what appeared to be a roomful of people who mostly understood, I wanted to comfort some of them, especially the younger ones with tears in their eyes, who are at the age where cancer and death are far from an imagined possibility, maybe this is their first brush with the finality of death, or even the presence of cancer, in someone their age.

But I can only comfort myself, knowing that the path I've chosen for my existence and the experience and richness it's brought to my life is right for me, and I'm going to go right on doing it. Life is something that you have to discover and do, you can't go through it with someone holding your hand.

Afterwards I decompressed with a two hour trail run up at Horsetooth at a relaxed pace with Cat, and then I stopped by the neighborhood liquor store to buy the latest New Belgium seasonal creation: Rolle Bolle Ale. Which tastes good VERY cold, and is similar to a subdued IPA with fruity undertones. Not that I would want to sound like a beer snob, or anything like that. It's good, a little different, but far from my favorite.


Actually this weekend is the release of Odell Imperial Peach IPA and I'm looking forward to that even more.

I have 50 miles in the bank so far this week, with Saturday's easy ten and Sunday's moderate effort I will get another 25-30 miles, which should round out my week nicely.

Today I did start looking at the race info for North Coast and my travel plans. I need to get another pair of shoes broken in fast, and figure out where everything that I'll need is located when I get to Cleveland, so I don't have to deal with too much city crap.

One of my patients gave me this advice about Cleveland: "Just shoot and walk away."


Another adventure in the works...

What Goes With Gray Hair?

Turquoise!

The best color for gray hair, as far as I'm concerned. And wouldn't you know it, Pearl Izumi has come up with a racing outfit that goes great with my gray hair! Any company that would support a runner my age already wins extra points. But this stuff is nice.

Yes it is my job to market the Pearl Izumi brand, but I have to say that every article of Pearl Izumi gear I have ever owned has been my favorite. I currently own 3 pairs of PI tights, a jacket, a vest, and half an ancient pair of PI socks that were my all-time favorites until the dryer ate one. And that's stuff I bought before I started this Team PI Colorado gig.

It's comfortable, you can't help but notice the colors, and functional.

I wish I had the shoes to show you, I switched out the ones they had for me because I needed to get the right fit, so I'm just waiting a few more days for the M3 shoes in my size and I'll have matching shoes, too! I'll write more about the PI products and the shoes as soon as I have something to show pictures of.

Last night after work I drove down to Louisville, to Pearl Izumi headquarters. The sunset was impressive over the Front Range, big clouds, big sky, and fresh snow visible on the mountains.

There was a meeting of everyone on Team PI, the grassroots team that has been organized to help promote the product. Along with pizza, salad, and beer, we got some pointers on the products, looked at the shoes, and received our racing outfits. Nice stuff.

Nick Clark, my buddy from the Fort Collins Running Club and my pacer extraordinaire from Badwater 2008, was there. Nick's made quite the name for himself in his performances in ultrarunning over the past 5 years. He's one of the few athletes sponsored by Pearl Izumi. Out of the grassroots team, I knew a few runners, met a few more, and there were some familiar faces there, but I'll eventually get to know them.

If your local running store doesn't carry PI gear, let me know and I will pass the word along...



Can't wait to race in this stuff! We also got some black racing shorts, really nice, comfortable material with a nice wide mesh pocket in the back for carrying gels, keys, etc. As soon as I put this stuff on for my first race in it, I'll get pictures and post them on the blog.





Today I did 11 miles on the Power Trail with some strides and a fast mile with some little rolling sections thrown in, to see what I could do. My legs are still pretty toasty, and that mile was a struggle in 6:42. Whatever.

I'm resigned to the end of my season and anything I do now isn't going to help me at NorthCoast, what I have is what I have. I think for 24 hours, the more rest I can get over the next two weeks, the better off I'll be.

I'm looking forward to getting into racing the short stuff this summer, though, once I take a break after North Coast.

The other thing I did today was put in for the lottery for the St. George Marathon. I've never run that marathon, and I figured I'd give it a shot. If I don't get in, I'll keep trying until they let me in. If it doesn't happen this year, then I'll get to run it after I turn 50. That might even be better.



I'll finish out the week and then the next two weeks I am going to do lower mileage, and start packing and planning for Ohio. I can't believe it's already April. Every day it looks more like spring. Summer will be here in a few weeks...any day the leaves will be bursting out.


Nap time, then out the door for more miles this evening...

Spring: Everywhere But The Legs

It might be spring outside everywhere, but there is no spring in my legs, they are as stale as an old Peep.

Each week since I got back from Delano, I have made plans to run a certain number of miles and have ended up falling short, except for last week when I planned to do only 30 and that is exactly what I did.

I got out today and ran 11 after yesterday's 15. Yesterday morning I got excited, it was my work hangover day but I still felt pretty decent on my morning pre-nap run. My legs actually had a little energy in them. I was so pumped I texted Wheaties Boy to tell him. Not so fast. In my afternoon run, they were dead meat again.

This morning I took the girls running, it was just barely spitting raindrops. I finished out 6 miles on my own and then did some errands before meeting my friend Cat for an easy 5 mile lunchtime run. It rained pretty hard right before we started running, and then went back to light rain. It was good to catch up with her, we do our own types of races and rarely get to run together these days. We are planning an easy trail run later this week.

I must be feeling courageous to plan a trail run, since I haven't been on trails more than twice all winter and certainly haven't done anything resembling a hill. I'm thinking someone gave me a frontal lobotomy during the night and I wasn't aware of it. If a lobotomy would stop my hot flashes I probably would agree to it.

My new name could be "The Flasher". I have been constantly hot and cold all night, waking up in a sweat, and during the day, same thing. I'll be standing there at work and all of a sudden I am pouring sweat inside my scrubs. Fortunately they dry fast!

If I could do something about it, I would. There isn't much I feel comfortable doing. I don't need to take any more pharmaceutical products...and most of the herbal remedies out there are full of dangers to your liver function and who knows what else they do to your brain and kidneys and other organs.

I won't do hormones due to my sister's breast cancer history, and I'd rather have hot flashes than cancer, but this really is annoying. It's the lack of sleep that is hardest. If it didn't interrupt my sleep a gazillion times a night, I could be okay with it.

I've tried not drinking alcohol, and that doesn't help. Avoiding spicy foods doesn't help. Afternoon naps help, only because they help me make up for the sleep I lost during the night, they don't solve the thermoregulation issue. Everyone says that eventually it gets better, but for the several years while I have to endure this "personal summer" as my coworker Connie calls it, I'm going to be a B.I.T.C.H!

On the positive side, the anxiety attacks I was having a month or so ago seem to have left me alone lately. I don't know why that is, nothing has changed. But I'll take it.





Along the way on my run with the girls this morning, someone had lost a pack of cigarettes out in the street. I always like to think that came from someone who decided to quit smoking and threw their last pack of cigarettes out the window.




Another sign of spring: pesticide warning flags on front yards. Which reminds me, this summer we will be under watering restrictions in Fort Collins due to the drought, something that should have been implemented years ago, but hasn't been until now. It's kind of silly to expect to keep your lawn green, and I always hate seeing that people have applied pesticides to their yards, but at least the warning flags help me keep the girls away.


Xeriscaping would be a better way to go. We plan to slowly convert our yard to xeriscape over the next few years. Except I refuse to put in gravel like we had in Arizona. I hated those pink rocks all over the yard. I prefer something like wood chips, boulders, and wildflowers.

I am so looking forward to taking a break after Ohio. This was not a good idea, the way I stretched out this season to last so long. But I will give my best effort in Ohio and shoot for as many miles as possible. I have a strategy that I am going to try out, that worked well last year on the track in Iowa.

I'm modifying it based on the course, but it still calls for about 75% running, 25% walking in the first 12 hours. It will give me plenty of slack time for eating, drinking, using the bathroom, or whatever else I need to do. The second 12 hours plan will be modified to include less running but to stay on a strict pattern of long stretches of running, then some walking.

I find that once I start running, even when my legs are dead, it's easier to keep running than to try to do too many run/walk shift changes. It helps to talk to another runner who is running and keep my mind off my discomfort in the later hours.

I go back to work for a short 8 hour shift tomorrow, then afterwards is the Team PI party in Louisville. More about that, with pictures of all the cool gear, later this week!

No Headlamps!

Finally, a run where I'm not wearing six layers. Tonight it was 63 degrees when I left the house to run with Wheaties Boy. It was cooling off fast, so I wasn't brave enough for shorts, I wore my capri tights, but I did start out in a t-shirt.

We had a decent run tonight, about 11 miles, it didn't even get dark enough to use a headlamp until 8 pm. I managed 8:45 pace average, which isn't bad considering my prolonged state of recovery. I've been feeling like I'm in a hole, my legs feel tired and stale, and I'm not sure what's going on.

We ran 21 miles hard on Sunday, it was a faster pace than I realized during the stretches where we weren't on ice, and my legs hurt for two days after that. The sleep thing has really been annoying, waking up several times a night in a sweat. I need to make sure I get my afternoon naps on the days when I'm not working, to make up for it. Otherwise I'll be impossible to live with.

Yesterday was a surprisingly pleasant day at work. We were busy, but not the running your pants off crazy busy kind of day. It was a long day and I was tired when I got home.

Tomorrow it's supposed to be warm again, possibly up to 70 degrees. I'll be out running, soaking up the sunshine while we have it. All the snow in the yard melted today, which means it will take another day of warm weather to dry out the latest collection of dog poop. I'll be getting my bending over cross training tomorrow when I pick it all up. Then I work through the weekend.

Next week will be my last full week of running before I start to back off before NorthCoast. I'm hoping my legs will feel better, because this past week has been pathetic in terms of mileage. I'll be busy next week, too. The restaurant where I have my paintings was sold, so I need to go talk to the new owners about continuing to display my art there.

What I'm most excited about is that we have a Team PI party on Wednesday, which will be fun. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone and going to Pearl Izumi headquarters. We'll be getting our shoes and running outfits, too! More about that soon!