Author: shestherun

Quasi-neurotic runner with addiction to coffee and cookies. I occasionally stop moving long enough to do a craft project or read a book.

Return to Racing

Watching the runners in the Chevron Houston Marathon last weekend was the final treasure in a cache of inspiration I’ve been filling to motivate my running game for 2017. I didn’t race at all in 2016, not counting the Ragnar I did. I don’t know if I just didn’t feel like I had anything to prove, which is a good thing, or that maybe that I wasn’t going to run well anyways because I wasn’t training the way I used to, which would be bad, but I lost interest in keeping track of my running performance. By the end of the year, though, I missed having benchmarks to learn from and work towards, some and I decided to race at least once a month this year. Since then I’ve had a good amount of conditions and circumstances that are breathing life into my running goals and workouts, so I think I’m on the right track.

 

The last run I went on wasn’t planned to be anything special, but it felt kind of amazing and I had to stop myself from tacking on more mileage. I had been nursing a knee injury, and with it gone, so I wanted to see where I was at with my endurance. I was happily surprised with the outcome. The workout was pretty simple- five minute warmup jog, straight into 10 x 1 min hard run with 2 mins recovery jog. I didn’t target any particular pace for the hard run before I started, but I figured if I could hit between 8:15 and 8:30 I’d be satisfied, as long as I didn’t walk during the recovery phase.

 

Boy, was I off. Way off. My fast intervals started out in the mid to low 8 minute pace, but quickly dropped to sub 7’s, while I was maintaining the ability to jog for recovery. The thing was, I felt great. Not dying, not just ok, but great. I was working hard, I mean, I felt it, but everything that was supposed to be kicking in physically and mentally to keep me running fast was there. It was awesome, and I wasn’t expecting this quality of run when I really haven’t been putting in consistent mileage in the previous weeks. After I finished the interval run and a cool down, I had run a total of 4.5 miles and with energy to spare. That was the night before the Houston marathon, and the confidence boost from the workout woke up my competitive streak as I watched the race, reinvigorating my spirit for being in the field.

 

A few changes to my lifestyle and strength training have put me in a good place to start competing again as well. For one thing, I’m getting stronger. At the end of October I cut a bunch of crap out of my diet, using the Whole30 eating plan as a guideline to start. I quickly lost weight- thirteen pounds in six weeks. Yes, this is a big achievement, particularly on my frame, but I was concerned, if not disappointed, with what that weight loss looked like on me. I was fooling myself about what lay underneath the layer of excess fat I had shed- I did not look as muscular as I thought I would. I’d been working out the entire time, but it was obvious to me that I had been slacking on it, or as I am learning now, was maybe just not doing the right kinds of workouts for the results I wanted- while generally underestimating my own strength and abilities.

 

Around the same time I find myself perusing Instagram and checking out my friend’s rockin’ bod, which she attributed partly to lifting to heavier weight (Check out ThisFitBlond). I thought to myself- I should probably be doing that now, too. I had been actively avoiding heavier stuff because I didn’t want to get big. I’m that girl, or at least I was. I’d been focusing on HIIT workouts that utilized bodyweight for the most part. I like those workouts, they’re fun to me and I give them credit as cross training for running. I was getting bored with them though, and realized my training had hit a plateau. The most telling evidence of this to me was the realization that though I used to loath bear crawls, they now didn’t seem that difficult.

 

Additionally, I was motivated to come at strength with more tenacity because I was signed up to start schooling to become a certified personal trainer with the National Personal Training Institute (NPTI) at the beginning of the year. The classes include a gym session and I didn’t want to be too far below the curve. So, I started lifting heavier weights. The result: 5 more pounds of weight loss and a wee little showing of my abdominal muscles in a place they hadn’t been before. Now I’m in the third week with NPTI, killing it with the weights even more. (For anyone curious about NPTI, I can say at this point the course is thorough, I feel that I’m learning a lot and gaining valuable experience).

 

A benefit of having NPTI structure my strength training 4 days a week is that it leaves my brain free to focus and figure out the running component. That one little run last weekend left me feeling exhilarated for speed again, and has me itching to find a track to use. As I write this, Houston is underwater and expecting more rain, so I might have to use a treadmill till the weather clears up. The thing is, I’m not dreading that dull machine as much as usual because the goals I’m forming make the boredom worth it.

 

My first race of 2017 is this weekend, The Horseshoe Trail Run in Hitchcock, Texas, just south of Houston. I found it on the website for Trail Racing Over Texas, or TROT, an organization that puts on a number of trail races each year. As it is a trail race my time won’t be a super accurate measure of my overall performance, especially as I expect the course to be a muddy mess after this weather. I’m going to be more curious to see how my mental game flows. The last few races I ran before breaking my ankle in 2015 were pretty stellar in that area. I was able to override pain signals and push through discomfort, past my preconceived pace limits for a 10k and half marathon, and I hope I can recall that skill. In any case, I’m happy to be getting back into the pack, and looking forward to working towards the front of it!

Running away from Nihilism

I spent considerable brain power last year trying to find “THE MEANING OF LIFE”. Lofty, I know. I found no universal answer to share here, but I found an answer for myself, and thus emerged from a quarter life crisis which had stagnated my whole being in apathy for quite some time. At the end of the summer I read Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”. An insightful friend recommended I look into it after listening to me describe some of the things about life that left me feeling uninvolved with it, to put it mildly. A more descriptive account is that I was terrified that nothing meant anything, and it didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do, because the world would be the same regardless. I was accepting of being insignificant, but that acceptance became a larger belief that probably nothing else mattered either. Life would simply progress until it burned itself out, for me and for the rest of us.

 

As for the book, Frankl was a psychotherapist, and his book covers two main subjects- his experience as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, and the mode of therapy he subsequently developed upon his release, that sought to help patients find meaning in their lives. One poignant thing he points out about living in the camp is that it was evident when a fellow gave up trying to survive, and that the people who did make it typically had something to live for, to keep them interested in their own survival. That spoke to me- I wasn’t feeling meaning myself, purpose is another word that works, and I wasn’t super thrilled about spending more time living with the feeling I described above. So I realized that I had this problem, too, that I had lost a sense of purpose in my life and maybe finding one would pull me out of my angst and despondency.

 

I thought for a while that my ego was the problem, because maybe I was craving attention or recognition, some outward indication about the significance of my existence as I was not finding validation internally. However, my behaviors did not signal attention-seeking behavior. In the same span of time that I was pondering and self searching while trying to come up with a new life plan, I was deleting my Facebook account, posting less and less on Instagram, and letting the blog go. When I did post I’d leave off the slew of hashtags that used to accompany every picture. I didn’t care about the quantity of likes I received. I was beyond caring if people “liked” my life, because I certainly didn’t. The only approval I was looking for was self-approval. For my life, it is at least a boon to discover that I have finally shed the restriction of peer approval when it comes to my choosing my actions and behavior. I’m not looking to go full-tilt sociopath and turn away from all social signaling, but I can live a little more authentically because in most cases, my opinion is the one that is going to drive me.

 

So, looking for clues to what gives me a feeling of purpose, I examined some aspects of my life, including my hobbies and interests, my career past and present (right now I’m studying to be a personal trainer), how I spend my free time, and how I participate in relationships- family, friends, and romantic. I decided to put a particular focus on my running life, because it is such a big part of who I am and what I do, and of all the parts of my life, that held the most information over the longest period of time. When you land on the handle “shestherun” for social media, you might find yourself asking what else you are.

 

Even before reading Frankl’s book I had a sense that running made my life feel more substantial. I felt it before I ran, as in a general push from the universe to do it, while I was running, like I was exactly where I should be, and after the fact, as I looked to see where I had made progress and where I needed work. I didn’t know if running actually made me feel purposeful, but the fact that I kept at it and would come back to it after many set backs seemed significant. It showed I did have perseverance, even in the face of hardship or difficulty. What I found was just acknowledging that characteristic of perseverance, could energize me into creating a life more meaningful as a whole.

 

I think by now most of us recognize, either thorough experience or through some saccharine quote that makes its way onto our Facebook feeds, that the process of working towards a goal is rewarding in itself. I’ve experienced this in my running life, and not always because of some obvious accomplishments, as in finishing a marathon or placing in a race. Sometimes just showing up for a workout when I know I was on the verge of bailing makes me feel like a pretty super human being. The opportunity and ability to experience progress is what makes running so fulfilling to me, and I can absolutely apply that concept to other areas of my life to create more meaning.

 

What I took from realizing this is that there if I want to progress, I have to do the progressing. I think since running came so easily to me, I didn’t concern myself with much else. As I plateaued in athletic ability, and didn’t add some variety to the mix, either in the form of new challenges or new activities altogether, I became bored. Boredom turned into apathy, and apathy turned into depression. I DO NOT want to go back there. I also don’t want to pursue goals just because they make someone else’s life more exciting. I haven’t found that to be very fruitful. For example, I used to think I’d like to be a good cook, and now I realize that I am perfectly happy making simple meals for myself, and leaving the gourmet cooking to someone more passionate about it. I do want to write, not just this blog, but literature as well, but by the end of the 2016 I couldn’t bring myself to sit and do it for five minutes because of that “pointless” feeling. But the pointless feeling disappears when the goal becomes to challenge myself. If I say the goal is to get published, and I’m not even sitting down to make an outline, then progress in that scenario would be to sit and write for a period of time daily. I don’t know if anyone can identify with this, but I now believe what I thought was apathy was actually fear, that since other things weren’t coming to me as easily as running was, I wasn’t supposed to be doing them. If I tried, and failed, then I’d really be in a lurch because that fear would be founded, I would be as one-dimensional as I previously believed.

 

Running had such a central position in my life, which did serve a purpose and still does. When everything else seemed to be going awry, if it was going anywhere, here was this one thing, that no matter how difficult or arduous, that always revealed a reason why I had picked up my feet in the first place. Nothing else made sense, but running gave me the opportunity to experience progress, even when it was just in circles around the track. So now the challenge to myself in 2017 is to keep that idea of progress in mind, to find new ways to add layers to my life, because the meaning I was looking for seems to be just to create a better version of myself.

Homerun

Hello! It’s been awhile since my last post, and some things in my life have changed…

About a month ago I moved back to my hometown of Houston, Texas. It was a decision spurred by economic and emotional reasons. The former was easy- it’s much cheaper to live here than Los Angeles (many places are). The second reason, well, it’s complicated. After graduating from USC, I stayed in LA for one primary reason- a relationship. After that relationship ended in divorce, I tried to make the city work for a number of years, not wanting to leave my friends and community there, not to mention the weather! In the end, I found myself becoming disenchanted with my life there despite the positive aspects. I arrived at the idea to move back to Houston after doing some soul-searching and considering a few options. Towards the end summer I visited Houston, nailed down a place to live there, and packed up my place in LA. For the first time in a really long time I felt very solid about a major life decision, so off I went and here I am.

 

There is a saying that goes something like “When the pain of staying the same becomes more than the pain of change, we change.” I’ve found this to be attributed to more than one author, so lets just leave it that I didn’t come up with it for now. I’ve slowly realized that the most uncomfortable part of change is that limbo of between the idea of change and change itself. Post-change has never been as bad as my idea of what might follow. One of my reasons to move was to have less of my means go to a high cost of living, so I could travel more without draining my bank account. I loved running around Scotland, but its not sustainable if I’m throwing money into an apartment in one of the most expensive cities in the United States. Even with many upsides to moving back to Houston, such as being close to lifelong friends and of course, family, in addition to the budgeting aspect, I still felt this hesitancy to move. Specifically, I felt like I was “giving up” on something, and in effect, wasting all the time I had spent in LA since separating from my ex-husband. A simplification of the idea that kept me from moving is “If I do leave, then I will have been a failure (at living in LA)”. The logic is a little maddening, now that I think about it- if it was possible my time in Southern California was wasted unless some unnamed and un-promised reward for it happened, why would I stay another minute? When I realized this, I had the energy to make haste and dive into the change before I could scarcely believe I was doing it.

 

The above has everything and nothing to do with running. As everything- I’ve realized that my passions for running and traveling are closely linked, when I go somewhere new, I look for how to make it runnable, and when my running gets stale, I run somewhere new. This can be on a large scale- such as my trip to Scotland, but it can also happen locally. For now I’ve just been excited to get to know running in Houston as it is now.

 

I spent my entire childhood in this city, so I learned to run here. I got into distance running towards the end of high school, before mapmyrun.com and the like existed. Using a Keymap (remember those?), ruler, and graph paper, I charted out routes in my neighborhood of various mileages and stuck them in order of distance them all on a poster board, hung in my room. Memorial, the suburban neighborhood where I grew up, was great for running. You could run for miles without having to deal with traffic lights, drivers were respectful of pedestrians, and the sidewalks were dependable. When I wasn’t training with my cross-country or track team, I also loved to drive to a nearby jogging trail, in Memorial Park, to do the three-mile gravel covered loop there. This was before I got into trail running, though I realize now that for the most part, our meets were actually trail runs. Of course, I think I didn’t associate running in the woods as “fun” back then because it happened mostly at meets, and in high school I did not associate maxing out physically as an enjoyable experience. Looking back, I do recall a time I found I liked trail running before arriving in Southern California- towards the end of our junior season our coach took the team to some local trails to do a moderate workout – the Ho Chi Minh trails (also in Memorial Park). They are some winding single track through the woods that were mostly used by bikers. I remember it being fun, and a new experience of being able to enjoy the surroundings instead of focusing on who was in front of and behind me.

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Part of the Buffalo Bayou Hike & Bike Trail

When I started thinking about this entry, I wanted to write a comical diatribe at the various reasons Houston streets make a poor running environment. My new neighborhood in Houston is classifiably dangerous for street running, no doubt. I came within 4 feet of being hit by a car recently and it was neither an isolated or unavoidable encounter. Sidewalks are magic here- they just disappear into thin air! That being true, as I looked at my list of complaints I grew bored reading my own comments- it turns out at least in this case, whining is whining no matter how you dress it up. I deleted all of it. Instead, here’s the silver lining I had already arrived at- I’m going to get to know more of the natural, off the beaten path areas that I ignored when I was younger. I’m looking forward to searching out new trails in the Greater Houston area and just outside it. I bought a book, 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Houston, which is more than enough to work with. At a glance, the largest net elevation change I will be hovers around 300 feet, which is lovely. That’s what it took to reach the end of my street in Southern California. I love running trails when they’re flat- not because they’re less physically demanding, but because I often find they are in really enchanting environments, and usually a bit more winding. If there’s no view “at the top”, then it has got to be the whole way, it would seem! In any case, near or far, I’m going to get my running adventures underway again.

Kind of like trail running, with these sidewalks.
Quiet suburban streets around my place are good for running- this one had been recently paved with asphalt though, and was a bit sticky still. Resistance training! Woo!
Definitely missed the sky in Houston. The clouds here do wonderful things.