NYC half marathon

Monday, July 28, 2008

Yesterday was the NYC half marathon and I was about as dedicated in training for it as I was in keeping this blog up-to-date. As I mention on my website, www.running-mom.com, the half marathon is the point where I realize just how serious I need to get about training for the marathon (this time around, training for the ING NYC marathon November 2). So look for much consistent blogs from me from now on.

This particular post should come with a warning: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. While I did manage to finish yesterday, I paid dearly for my lack of training. We have 3 hours to run this half marathon, a generous amount of time for those who have done their homework unlike me who shows up on test-day hoping for luck to be on my side.

There are two-pace setters, a man and woman, who actually do run/walk it in 3 hours. (They pretty much power walk it – I tried it with them for a while and that power walking is no joke…wow is it hard on the hips!) They have a sign attached to their back which says, “Last man/woman running. Catch me if you can.” Or something like that. I tried my best to keep up with them. There was actually a handful of us that tried to either stay ahead or at best keep up with them. It was kind of fun…we were a support group for each other.

I pretty much managed to keep up with them until the last 2 miles, then they got away from me. Wow…that’s a lot of pressure, you’ve got the last man and woman running, police honking and shouting, “keep up or stay to the right!” Then there’s two buses waiting to pick the stragglers up and take them to the finish line as well as the ambulance waiting to pick anyone up who’s ready to pass out. And between the pressure and the exhaust from the vehicles, that alone is exhausting. I finished in a whopping 3 hours and 7 minutes…my longest half marathon yet. And just in time too, because by the time I managed to sit down on the stone railing on the side of the Westside Highway, I looked back and they were taking down the finish line and the people handing out medals were gone.

Luckily the weather was bearable – not too hot as it tends to be this time in July and the thunderstorm took a break for the length of the half marathon…kind of funny actually it poured rain and thundered and lightning almost right up to the start of the race and then a few minutes after I finished it began to pour again. But the sky was nice and overcast, so the sun wasn’t bearing down on us and a breeze even blew a couple of times throughout the course.

Afterwards I was so sore, I was useless. I was sore, chafed, exhausted…you name it. Luckily my BD picked me up at the finish line, got me an ice-cold water and a Phili Cheese steak and drove me home where I showered, ouch…that was a painful shower with all the chafing…and climbed right into bed where I pretty much camped out with my baby, the TV and a pizza for the rest of the day.

Oh yeah and this is what made it worse…somewhere around mile 7 of 13.1 miles, my milk came in and OMG, it was painful running with full boobies…first they added about a pound to the weight I was carrying and second they were just straight up painful and uncomfortable for the remainder of the race. All I do was think of my baby waiting to nurse at the finish line and carry on.

Speaking of babies, somewhere around mile 8 or 9, the thought occurred to me: it took me longer to run this half marathon than it took me to push out my baby (and I’m talking first contraction to the time they said, “It’s a boy!”). Now anyone who’s willing to do something that takes more time and effort than pushing out a baby has got to be crazy. And this was only half the run I’m doing in November. You know this is the time I ask myself, why am I doing this!? I’ll let you know when I come up with the answer. ;-)

Meanwhile, here’s some notes from my training…the few days I did manage to get out there and put my feet to the concrete…

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

It’s been a pretty slow past two weeks as far as running is concerned but last night I found out I won entrance into the New York City Nike half marathon and I only have eight weeks to train for it, so its time for some hard core training. This is the third annual and also my third time to run it.

Last year I ran it having trained only twice in the two months leading up to it. Not only that but I was twelve weeks pregnant, I’m talking morning sickness, couldn’t even keep crackers down, and to top it I’d just got off a nine hour flight from visiting my aunt in France the night before. I showed up at that race, tired, sick, hot, nervous, and said hey not gona beat a record, its all about finishing today so may as well have a good time doing it. I hung out most of the time with my friend Michelle who was also struggling and together we trucked it one mile at a time, actually more like one step at a time.

When the patrolmen notified us they were getting ready to shut it down and re-open the highway, we just smiled and kept on going. The pro of coming in the last 30 of 10,000 people was that the roads were empty and we had the photographers all to ourselves. I got about 30 pictures and even got to pose for them. (I’m usually lucky if I get 1-5 good pictures.) I ran through that finish line at three hours and three minutes prouder than the athlete who won it.

The year before last I was hung over. The night before the race I had gone to this place in the Bronx where you can get a concoction of about 90% vodka, 5% ice and 5% 7up in a tall glass for only $5. One of them will do the trick and I’d had two.

So that being said, there’s little to be impressed about this time around. In fact, I’ll probably be in my best shape yet. I’m not drinking because I’m nursing. I’m not flying because I’m broke. And as adorable as my little buddy is, he’s the best birth control there is, so there will be no morning sickness. I’m also itching to get out of the house since I work from home and don’t get out much except to take a walk to the post office to ship off my three shelves of books which I’m selling via Amazon.com in order to buy my little darling another month of baby clothes. And after taking my little man on his first trip in the jogging stroller and realizing how easy it was, I will be training every chance I get…I’ll have to remind myself to take a day off so I don’t over-train (or so I say now).

Yeah so about the jogging stroller, I don’t know if I have a really big baby, or if the manual was just being overly cautious to avoid a law-suit, but whatever the case, he loved it and it was like pushing a feather. I had to keep checking to make sure he was still in there. Also I finally found the right time of day to run, in the evening when there’s a little breeze and the traffic is light and everyone is happy because their home from work so they get out of the way if you ask them nicely rather than glaring at you like who’s road do you think this is.

BTW, it was a little tough finding an 8 week half marathon training schedule. Most of them are at least twelve weeks. But with some advise from my buddy Roxanne, I managed to put one together which you can find on my website: http://www.running-mom.com/RunningTrainingProgram.html

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Ha – it took me a week, but I finally realized what it is that makes it harder to push a jogging stroller. I never realized how much I used my hands to help carry me through the runs. That and its much harder to change your stride in order to get rid of a cramp. You would think being able to hold onto the jogging stroller and the fact that it moves along so gracefully, it would sort of support the running, but not quite.

That being said, the little pocket underneath the jogging stroller already comes in handy holding my bottle of water, and will do wonders carrying all the gels, gues and such. In fact I’m thinking that since I’ll be able to keep quite a large stash of yummies, not just for myself but plenty to go around, I can use this luxury to entice the other runners to stick by me and take turns pushing the jogging stroller during training runs.

This week went well. I found a new bar that is the perfect amount of calories to eat before a run, helps me burn fat instead of muscle so keeps me from getting sore, has plenty of potassium which is very good for runners and I know now you are asking what is the difference between this and any other runners snack. Well, here goes the clincher…it is yummy. I mean really yummy. So yummy I can’t wait ‘till it’s time to run so I can have my little bar. The chocolate mint tastes like those little cookies they sometimes leave on your pillows in really fancy hotels. An the peanut butter fudge really tastes like peanut butter fudge. I mean these bars are so good you think you should feel guilty eating them, but they are only 120 calories. I even eat them for a snack when I’m not running. OK…enough of the sales pitch. Actually, if you want to hear more about these bars and other health items, you can contact me via this website: http://anna.ilovesuccess.net/.

So my runs go something like this:
I nurse my little guy until he is happy and full, then I burp him and put him in the running stroller. It takes me about two minutes to put on my fancy nursing-sports bra found at http://www.fitmaternity.com/maternity-clothes/b2.html. The first couple times it took about five minutes to put on and then it felt very awkward, but now that I’ve gotten the hang of it, it’s the best sports bra I’ve ever tried. It has hook and eyes all the way up the front. But the great thing about it: it fits as tight as a pare of pantyhose and it’s made out of pure polyester so no chafing. The trick is to fasten the two bottom hooks first, then position the breast so that the nipples are just bellow the seam and then fasten the rest of the hook and eyes from the bottom up. (The one I have is the Enell Sports / Nursing Bra – a little pricy, but well worth it!)

Then I cram my diaper bag packed full of necessities and more non-necessities into the bottom of the jogging stroller and we’re out. He usually dozes off somewhere around the first or second mile and stays asleep for a mile or two. Depending on how hot it is and how slow I’m running on a given day, he either wakes up cheerful, hangs out and I barely even know he’s awake or he wakes up screaming and all running must stop abruptly so he can be fed.


Saturday, June 14, 2008

Today I ventured upon the bus with Eman and the jogging stroller for the first time. It actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. The bus was even with the sidewalk going and coming so I was able to roll the stroller right onto the bus, no problem. Of course once I got on the bus, not to my surprise the bus driver was like, “Mis, you gota move that thing.” And then finding a place to put it that wasn’t in everyone’s way was a bit of a hassle, but not really too bad.

During the bus ride, the jogging stroller had a mind of it’s own (funny you would think a $400 stroller would have some kind of break system), so I’m straddling it with my feet while holding the diaper bag with one hand, nursing E-man with the other hand and using my teeth to hold the blanket over us so everyone is not staring at my boobies. E-man is getting more and more curious, which is making the whole covering up for modesty’s sake more and more challenging.

I’m still learning about nursing discretely in public. The first time we went out when E-man was about 2-weeks old, I went and sat in the car each time I had to nurse him. That was not fun or easy to say the least since I was still sore from the whole giving birth thing that had happened only two weeks ago and I think it hadn’t completely sunk in what my body had been through pushing out a baby and all. You know the first time around you don’t follow the rule, you think you need to prove your super woman, not realizing you will have plenty of time for that whether you like it or not. So of course I stayed up the entire three days I was in the hospital and thought I was such a good mommy because unlike the lady in the bed next to me who’d just pushed out her fourth kid, I was such a good mom that I didn’t need the nurses to help me, I kept the baby with me the whole time and took care of him all by myself. You know she was laughing right back at me!

Once I got home from the hospital, in spite of the midwife’s advise that the only thing me and the baby needed to do until I was completely recovered was eat, sleep and shower, I insisted on taking it upon myself to clean the apartment (I never was that into cleaning, I don’t know why I suddenly became obsessed with it), cooking, taking out the trash, going for a walks, emailing pictures out, and all sorts of other unnecessary things. So I wasn’t really recovering. To think that he was only two-weeks old and I was already going stir crazy…lol.

To help regain my sanity, my BD and his friend took me out to our favorite restaurant where everyone know’s our names (actually we’ve got several Cheers-like places in NY…we like to eat out). And finally to get back to the point…it wasn’t much of a social experience for me because I ended up sitting in the car half by myself half the time nursing, not to mention lugging the infant seat back and forth. Well, I quickly learned to breastfeed in public.

But I’m still experimenting with this breastfeeding thing. For example, I got my running buddy Michelle to help me hall the jogging stroller down the likes of about 3 flights of stairs to the bathroom in the park where I could breastfeed more discretely. Of course we were right in the way of everyone coming in and out of the bathroom and there just happened to be a tour group from, what looked to be the entire population of France excluding Paris, walking in and out of the bathroom and some smiling, others glaring at us for being in the way or having the audacity or whatever.

So once we got that over, Michelle decides we are going to run an entire loop, the big hill at the top and everything…personally I was going to be happy with five miles. But we did it. I am so out of shape though. And I haven’t quite gotten the hang of pushing this jogging stroller. They say to lock the front wheel for safety but the wheel is never completely straight, always veers to the right a little bit so it’s a lot of arm work just to keep the stroller going straight and then I was so tired half the run I was using the stroller to lean on as if it were my walker.

Around mile 5 when we had nowhere to go but onwards, E-man completely lost it. Michelle called him our coach at that point because he was screaming so loud, we found energy we didn’t know we had to sprint the last mile. But once we got back I was so starving and I didn’t have energy to pick my butt off the bench, let alone walk the fifteen or so blocks to the bus, lug the jogging stroller onto it and make the slow, painful journey home, with my screaming, tired baby (the bus ride is about 1 hour if it does not make excessive stops and there is not a lot of traffic).

I ended up stopping off at a dinner, and boy I must have looked bad because I never received such quick service. They didn’t even ask me if there was anything else I needed, just handed me the check when I still had half my plate in front of me. The omelet gave me enough fuel for the trek back to the bus and that’s when the bus driver decides to give me a hard time, telling me I couldn’t bring the stroller on unless I folded it first. After going to the MTA sight I found out he was only enforcing the rules, but in my head I was ready to beat him up. In reality, I was ready to plop down right there on the sidewalk and go to sleep. I just glared at him and got on the bus.

Of course he didn’t even wait for me to sit before he put the peddle to the mettle and I went flying across the bus, baby in one hand, stroller in the other, diaper over my shoulder. And the other passengers…they just glared at me. There was a very kind Latin man who got on the bus a few stops after me though and asked me what stop I was getting off at. He then proclaimed that he would get off with me and help me with the stroller. I could have kissed him.

Ah and one more thing, my baby’s cuteness has already done wonders for him and me. I’m walking home at the end of this day, feeling with every step that I am about to either explode into a pool of tears or fall over and faint on the sidewalk and strangers are walking the other way, taking one look at him and giving me a big smile and I swear those smiles are what got me the three thousand or so steps to apartment where we both then knocked out for the rest of the afternoon.

Sunday, June 28, 2008

I’ve only ran one 3 mile run down 34th Avenue since last Saturday. I have got to train more if I am going to survive the half marathon injury free. Although as I’ve mentioned, I’ve done worse. But I know better. And I know I’m only making it harder on myself and risking injury if I don’t train properly. And I do love it once I get out there, its just the getting out there part.  Most of us know, 85% of achieving any goal is showing up every time whether we’re board, sick, discouraged, tired or bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, rearing to go. (In my opinion, another 5% is a good plan to begin with and the remaining 10% is talent…but anyways…)

Well that one run was so easy compared to those six miles in Central Park. Whatever muscle I damaged in that run has more than repaired and now I feel so much stronger. YAY!

Today went much better too, for the most part.

It started with the routine bus ride…Actually a note about my kid. He is really so mellow and tolerant. This morning I was supposed to meet Roxanne to go running in Central Park and he was sleeping and sleeping and it was getting later and later and thus hotter and hotter so I took his cute little sleeping self out of his crib…of course this woke him up…laid him on the changing table and changed his diaper and dressed him, to which he just stared at me groggily, then I put him in the jogging stroller at which point he continued to stare groggily and walked him to the bus stop. I then put him in the carrier so I could fold up the jogging strollers as per the bus rules (huh! Don’t get me started!) at which point he started becoming more fully awake and looking around. For the 45 minute bus ride he just looked around, didn’t talk or fuss.

Speaking of the bus, well it appears that I won the bus lottery that first day, because ever since, I have not seen a bus that is level with the sidewalk again. They all have narrow steps that you must carry the stroller up while the other passengers glare like why are you slowing us down. Of course it does not occur to them that if they helped out, it would go much faster for all.

I can’t complain though. Its early in the morning. People are too sleepy to think of being nice. And you just don’t know what its like ‘till you experience it…I gota say. I’m ashamed to say I hardly ever went out of my way to help anyone carry a stroller up and down the steps. I was one of those cranky passengers who rushed by. Human decency can sometimes be so far from the hurried commute of NYC, and this is way to common place.

Now I help everyone because I know what they’re going through. Actually, with few exceptions, the only people that usually help out are mothers and disabled people. I will be walking into the bank with my stroller and three perfectly healthy looking guys will walk past, swinging the door in my face. Then an elderly woman with a walker will hold the door open for me and then I will do the same for her. Quite a world we live in.

Anyway…the park:

I nursed him before I started running, which he didn’t nurse very much because he was so busy trying to pull the blanket off and expose my breasts to the park-goers so he could look around.

Christine, the TNT running coach (from back when I ran the San Francisco marathon in 2006 to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society), was doing bag-watch and she held him while I ran down to the bathroom and changed from my nursing shirt into my running shirt. He was perfectly happy with her (mind you he has never met her in his so far almost four-month life) but he just smiled and talked to her and of course spit up all over her (which she was very kind about, she has a one-year old herself).

The run itself went much better even though we didn’t make it out ‘till 10 and had to cut our run short because it was stifling in the park. By the last quarter mile or so I was pretty beat, but that’s mostly because the sun was now glaring down at us and I had decided to start sprinting around 4 ½ miles which not only didn’t last more than the equivalent of maybe two blocks (and that’s a generous assessment) but it completely zapped me of the little energy I had left. So I walked to the “finish line” and then collapsed in front of the heaven that was a Philli cheese steak stand in the park with $8 dollar cheese steaks that had about $0.25 worth of meet on it.

After a talk with my BD (he has been opposed to the train, but now that he’s four months old, he’s decided to consent to it) we took the train home. Now the thing about the train is, even though it actually ends up being way more steps than the bus, 1) everything is wider, 2) you don’t have to collapse the stroller, and this stroller is much easier to transport in its non-collapsed form, and 3) all the work is in getting there so that in the hassle of getting on the train, there are no steps and therefore no hoisting on my part, glaring on everyone else’s part and me glaring back like, “You selfish morons!” Of course there is one huge con of the subway: the overwhelmingly fowl odor. But apart from the stench, I prefer the subway.

My baby is so friendly! While we waited for the train, there were these two couples (I presume from Italy) because they were talking about soccer and were very partial to the Italians and mentioned the Latino people they were playing with as if they were the “others,” and E-man kept trying to chime in and join the conversation. He is quite a social boy, my little fellow.

Sunday, July 12, 2008

Today I decided to get really adventurous with the running and take E-man out to the beach. We took the long island railroad (a much more stroller friendly train than the subway!, and better smelling too) out to Long Beach and went running on the boardwalk.

E-man got to see the ocean for the first time, although the sun was so bright I don’t know how much he could see. We ran up and down the boardwalk until he lost it. My silly self somehow managed to put sun-block on him but forgot to put it on myself so now I am looking like a freakin’ lobster.

But it was fun. I can’t complain – my baby is so easy going and up for everything. In fact, he behaves better in public than he does in the house…he just loves going out and socializing, talking to everyone on the train, having a good old time, that’s my little buddy!

Oh and I ran into someone on the boardwalk who had an instep elite jogging stroller and she paid about one-fourth what my BOB cost and the best thing about her stroller…its collapsible so easy to travel with. I’m definitely going to try the Instep next time around…I’ve already looked it up on Target.com and they start at $99.

Sunday, July 19, 2008

Other than a couple 2-miles runs now and then and the afore-mentioned “long runs” which have been a few miles short of what I had intended, I have not been training. I started out thinking I would have plenty of time to train, but motherhood is a little more work than expected, between that and trying to keep the house from looking like it’s been hit by a tornado – that and running a bookkeeping company and two marketing companies in order to pay the bills, I didn’t end up having all this excess time I thought I’d have. And not to make more excuses, but it has been freakin’ hot this summer!!!

That being said, the half marathon is next week and I have not followed the advise I give on my website, www.running-mom.com, which is to NOT be a weekend runner. Anyways, I’ll get out there next week, I’ll be in pain, but I’ll have a good time, then I’ll start getting serious about the training after I recover from that ordeal.