**UPDATE**
Here, finally, is my picture for Day 5.
It represents the sunset of the O's season, but since they actually made it into the Playoffs, I had to hold off on posting this to ensure I didn't jinx them.
Friday, October 12, 2012
October Photo Challenge, Day 5: Sunset
I have a picture for Day 5, but I will not be posting it until later, lest I jinx something about which I very much care.
**UPDATE**
Here, finally, is my picture for Day 5.
It represents the sunset of the O's season, but since they actually made it into the Playoffs, I had to hold off on posting this to ensure I didn't jinx them.
**UPDATE**
Here, finally, is my picture for Day 5.
It represents the sunset of the O's season, but since they actually made it into the Playoffs, I had to hold off on posting this to ensure I didn't jinx them.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
October Photo Challenge, Day 4: Love
I love my bestie Kelsey, and I love our girl dates. This was a breakfast-and-gossip date at Panera.
October Photo Challenge, Day 3: Home
Home is where the kitties live. This is through our front door; the beautiful-wonderful-fabulous Halloween wreath was a housewarming present (at my first apartment) handmade by my mommy. If you're wondering, the bass cab (aka "bass guitar amp cabinet") is our entryway table, since it didn't fit anywhere else.
October Photo Challenge, Day 2: Fashion
I know I could've screen-shotted this one, but it just looked too crisp. When I hear the word "fashion," the first thing that springs to mind is Action Action's first album, released by Victory in 2004. Popped it into iTunes (disclaimer: I HATE Apple products, but I won't take the time to learn another music-filing program) and found out that I have 35 items that match my search for fashion. Never say I'm not fashionable!
October Photo Challenge, Day 1: Self-Portrait
My mom linked me to Our Wired Lives' October Photo Challenge, where a photo prompt is given each day in October. I got started a couple days late (we're already a week into October! Where does the time go?!), so here's a backlog of the first prompts.
(Post-script: It took me about half an hour to get this photo uploaded correctly. Blogger would upload the first half--from the top to the middle--correctly, but the bottom half would come in all squirrely and negative-y every single time. Then, when I uploaded it to Flickr and tried to link it through the URL, Blogger kept saying that they couldn't find a picture at that URL. It was public and everything, too. Anyone else had that issue?)
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
My Training Plan, or: Tory Digresses About A Clockwork Orange and Spiked Hot Chocolate
As the title said, this post is going to discuss my TRAINING PLAN, so if you're uninterested in such things, feel free to bug out. I promise not to track you down and clockwork-orange you until you read the whole post.
Okay, so maybe I make up definitions sometimes. A Clockwork Orange sidebar: DID YOU KNOW that two editions of the book were published? There was a British edition and an American edition. The movie is based on the American version (Stanley Kubrick claimed he actually didn't know that there was a difference, and hadn't come across the Brit edit. [I'm rhyming those two words; "edit" as in, short for "edition"] until the screenplay was written), which caused Anthony Burgess to hate the movie. Why, you ask? Well, because the American edition was published without the redeeming last chapter to be found in copies back in Jolly Old England. The American version, and therefore the movie, ends on a depressing note (spoiler alert! Dystopian novels rarely have happy endings!), whereas the Brits were treated to a more hopeful glance into the future of our good old malchick Alex. (Here's the final chapter, if anyone cares to viddy.) American editions have since been published with the final chapter.
Now, what were we talking about again? Oh, that's right, running. First off, I am not my own best friend. Geez, who is?! I tend to judge myself really harshly. To wit: A couple weeks ago, a girlfriend of mine started running. Unbeknownst to me, she had been a runner in high school, but had lapsed over her college years, only to pick it up again early this summer. She is also crazy-athletic and a swimmer. I didn't know any of that. All I knew was, suddenly this chick was running and like, winning races and crap. Her first 5K (that I was aware of, at least) time was almost FOUR WHOLE MINUTES faster than my ABSOLUTELY FASTEST 5K. I won't say I was jealous, but...yeah, totally jealous, and also kinda resentful. I'll admit it. I was ticked at her, for being so awesome right off the bat [or so it seemed to me], and ticked at myself, for still [in my mind] sucking hardXcore even though I've been running pretty dang consistently for eight months.
I am one to consistently dwell on the negatives. (Again, who doesn't?!) Even though I'd run two half-marathons, I obviously still couldn't run. Even though I could run SIX MILES at a whack, without stopping to walk--at my typical speed, that's over an hour straight--I definitely still didn't have any endurance. Even though I had steadily improved my times with pretty much every run, I positively still inched along like a zombie snail on tranquilizers (very very slowly is what I'm trying to convey here). The positive thing was, I FINALLY REALIZED THIS. I realized that I had never decided which was more important to me: improving my speed or improving my endurance. If I went for a short run, I would be disappointed that I hadn't gone farther. If I went for a long run, I would be disappointed that I hadn't gone faster.
Enter my training plan. One of the issues I'd had, I came to recognise, was that I never planned my runs ahead of time. I'd just go. The problem here was that if I ended up doing a shorter run, I probably wouldn't have done it very quickly, because I didn't know if I needed to save some energy in case the run ended up longer. This would also keep me from even running in the first place: I'd wake up, it'd be early morning, I'd be all "blehhhh I don't wanna go run for an hour," instead of thinking "eh, even fifteen minutes is better than nothing." This kind of indecisiveness is very much like me. I cannot make a decision to save my life. In fact, if you ask me to choose a restaurant, we will most likely starve to death before I make up my mind. (Right now, though: FAZOLI'S.) Anyway, I figured that a regular training plan would help me with my indecisiveness--and help it did!
I have several days during the week where I have to be at work relatively early: Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays. On those days, I decided that I would do a speed workout. My speed workout is very, very simple: run a mile up the bike trail (which is conveniently located just five feet from our apartment's parking lot), then run the mile back. This takes me a grand total of right around 18 minutes. I can always drag myself out of bed for EIGHTEEN MINUTES. All else fails, I can come home, take a shower, and go back to bed for at least a little while. The best part is, I'm usually awake enough then that I don't want to go back to bed. I want to get up and get my day going! Because then I can have a mug of hot chocolate! Or hot chaicolate, or my newest and best/worst invention ever, RumChacolate. This is a mug of hot chocolate spiked with a splash of RumChata. For those of you who are still oblivious to the wondrousness of RumChata, it's basically an alcoholic Horchata. For those of you who don't know what Horchata is...sighhhh. There are a lot of different variants, but what we in the States drink (courtesy of our southern neighbors) is usually a rice-based milky drink that includes vanilla and cinnamon. RumChata tastes almost exactly like Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and is absolutely delicious when mixed with hot chocolate. Word to the wise: some of you might think "Yum! I bet RumChata would taste delicious when frozen! Alcoholic ice cream ftw!" Let me spare you the anguish: IT ISN'T. IT IS YUCKY. DON'T DO IT. However, I have not yet tried using RumChata as the milk in a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
On Wednesdays and Fridays, I don't have to work until the afternoon. This means that Wednesdays and Fridays are my distance days. The routine thus far has been to run from home to the Campus Rec Center (a distance of 5.86 miles, according to MapMyRun), work out with my girl Kelsey, usually grab a coffee with her, then run back home (or more often, get a ride back home, since an hour of running plus an hour or two of working out = major exhaustion). I'm gonna have to shake up that routine here pretty soon, since six miles seems a bit wanting when compared to the 13.1 I'm going to have to run in seven weeks. Maybe take a different route to the Rec? Eh, I'll keep you posted.
Finally, Tuesdays and Saturdays are kinda free days. I don't have to work until 10 a.m., so I could do distance or speed if I wanted, or I can just take it easy. So far, I haven't really taken those days very easy. I did have to take the majority of last week off, though; I had a minor calf strain and biceps femoris (big muscle on the back of your thigh) soreness and needed to let them heal up for a race last weekend.
In my mind, good habits and a good routine are like the Beastie Boys: playing basketball with Bigfoot. Or, wait, wrong song. I meant: you can't, and you won't, and you don't stop! I find it a whole lot easier to keep up a positive schedule if I don't take time off, especially when it comes to being active. One day leads to two, two leads to a week, and a week...leads to suffering. (More bonus points if you get that reference, too.) Plus, Ben Franklin sure was right about the whole "early to bed, early to rise" thing. If you go to bed early, it's easier to get up early. I don't know about the rest of the quotation. Lemme know if it's worked for you.
Peace out, playas!
 |
| clockwork-orange verb to hold a person's eyelids open in order to force them to view unpleasurable things: "Malcolm McDowell is being clockwork-oranged in the above picture." |
Okay, so maybe I make up definitions sometimes. A Clockwork Orange sidebar: DID YOU KNOW that two editions of the book were published? There was a British edition and an American edition. The movie is based on the American version (Stanley Kubrick claimed he actually didn't know that there was a difference, and hadn't come across the Brit edit. [I'm rhyming those two words; "edit" as in, short for "edition"] until the screenplay was written), which caused Anthony Burgess to hate the movie. Why, you ask? Well, because the American edition was published without the redeeming last chapter to be found in copies back in Jolly Old England. The American version, and therefore the movie, ends on a depressing note (spoiler alert! Dystopian novels rarely have happy endings!), whereas the Brits were treated to a more hopeful glance into the future of our good old malchick Alex. (Here's the final chapter, if anyone cares to viddy.) American editions have since been published with the final chapter.
Now, what were we talking about again? Oh, that's right, running. First off, I am not my own best friend. Geez, who is?! I tend to judge myself really harshly. To wit: A couple weeks ago, a girlfriend of mine started running. Unbeknownst to me, she had been a runner in high school, but had lapsed over her college years, only to pick it up again early this summer. She is also crazy-athletic and a swimmer. I didn't know any of that. All I knew was, suddenly this chick was running and like, winning races and crap. Her first 5K (that I was aware of, at least) time was almost FOUR WHOLE MINUTES faster than my ABSOLUTELY FASTEST 5K. I won't say I was jealous, but...yeah, totally jealous, and also kinda resentful. I'll admit it. I was ticked at her, for being so awesome right off the bat [or so it seemed to me], and ticked at myself, for still [in my mind] sucking hardXcore even though I've been running pretty dang consistently for eight months.
I am one to consistently dwell on the negatives. (Again, who doesn't?!) Even though I'd run two half-marathons, I obviously still couldn't run. Even though I could run SIX MILES at a whack, without stopping to walk--at my typical speed, that's over an hour straight--I definitely still didn't have any endurance. Even though I had steadily improved my times with pretty much every run, I positively still inched along like a zombie snail on tranquilizers (very very slowly is what I'm trying to convey here). The positive thing was, I FINALLY REALIZED THIS. I realized that I had never decided which was more important to me: improving my speed or improving my endurance. If I went for a short run, I would be disappointed that I hadn't gone farther. If I went for a long run, I would be disappointed that I hadn't gone faster.
 |
| Artist's representation. |
Enter my training plan. One of the issues I'd had, I came to recognise, was that I never planned my runs ahead of time. I'd just go. The problem here was that if I ended up doing a shorter run, I probably wouldn't have done it very quickly, because I didn't know if I needed to save some energy in case the run ended up longer. This would also keep me from even running in the first place: I'd wake up, it'd be early morning, I'd be all "blehhhh I don't wanna go run for an hour," instead of thinking "eh, even fifteen minutes is better than nothing." This kind of indecisiveness is very much like me. I cannot make a decision to save my life. In fact, if you ask me to choose a restaurant, we will most likely starve to death before I make up my mind. (Right now, though: FAZOLI'S.) Anyway, I figured that a regular training plan would help me with my indecisiveness--and help it did!
I have several days during the week where I have to be at work relatively early: Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays. On those days, I decided that I would do a speed workout. My speed workout is very, very simple: run a mile up the bike trail (which is conveniently located just five feet from our apartment's parking lot), then run the mile back. This takes me a grand total of right around 18 minutes. I can always drag myself out of bed for EIGHTEEN MINUTES. All else fails, I can come home, take a shower, and go back to bed for at least a little while. The best part is, I'm usually awake enough then that I don't want to go back to bed. I want to get up and get my day going! Because then I can have a mug of hot chocolate! Or hot chaicolate, or my newest and best/worst invention ever, RumChacolate. This is a mug of hot chocolate spiked with a splash of RumChata. For those of you who are still oblivious to the wondrousness of RumChata, it's basically an alcoholic Horchata. For those of you who don't know what Horchata is...sighhhh. There are a lot of different variants, but what we in the States drink (courtesy of our southern neighbors) is usually a rice-based milky drink that includes vanilla and cinnamon. RumChata tastes almost exactly like Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and is absolutely delicious when mixed with hot chocolate. Word to the wise: some of you might think "Yum! I bet RumChata would taste delicious when frozen! Alcoholic ice cream ftw!" Let me spare you the anguish: IT ISN'T. IT IS YUCKY. DON'T DO IT. However, I have not yet tried using RumChata as the milk in a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
 |
| I made this. You're welcome. Plus, the screen-grab is particularly apt if you're cool enough to know in which episode it appears. Bonus points for you. |
On Wednesdays and Fridays, I don't have to work until the afternoon. This means that Wednesdays and Fridays are my distance days. The routine thus far has been to run from home to the Campus Rec Center (a distance of 5.86 miles, according to MapMyRun), work out with my girl Kelsey, usually grab a coffee with her, then run back home (or more often, get a ride back home, since an hour of running plus an hour or two of working out = major exhaustion). I'm gonna have to shake up that routine here pretty soon, since six miles seems a bit wanting when compared to the 13.1 I'm going to have to run in seven weeks. Maybe take a different route to the Rec? Eh, I'll keep you posted.
Finally, Tuesdays and Saturdays are kinda free days. I don't have to work until 10 a.m., so I could do distance or speed if I wanted, or I can just take it easy. So far, I haven't really taken those days very easy. I did have to take the majority of last week off, though; I had a minor calf strain and biceps femoris (big muscle on the back of your thigh) soreness and needed to let them heal up for a race last weekend.
In my mind, good habits and a good routine are like the Beastie Boys: playing basketball with Bigfoot. Or, wait, wrong song. I meant: you can't, and you won't, and you don't stop! I find it a whole lot easier to keep up a positive schedule if I don't take time off, especially when it comes to being active. One day leads to two, two leads to a week, and a week...leads to suffering. (More bonus points if you get that reference, too.) Plus, Ben Franklin sure was right about the whole "early to bed, early to rise" thing. If you go to bed early, it's easier to get up early. I don't know about the rest of the quotation. Lemme know if it's worked for you.
 |
| Pictured: WTF. Also, a "deviled egg." Also, Bigfoot is dressed up as a cowboy. Just because, I assume. |
Peace out, playas!
Sunday, September 23, 2012
My Running Story (Pt III): the Final Chapter
Thank you for sticking with this through to the end! For the first part of my running journey, start here; for part II, here.
We've now made it through my not running at all, to being forced to run in ROTC, to not running at all again, to hashing, to training for my very first half-marathon. This is where our story continues and comes to its eventual end (FINALLY!). Oh, and side note: if you just read Part I, you'll remember where, when running for ROTC, I absolutely couldn't breathe? And my superiors were all like "BLAH YOU SUCK KEEP RUNNING, NOT BREATHING IS NO EXCUSE!"? Well, as I went through my semester of my marathon-training class, I was diagnosed with slight asthma. SO THERE, stupid POCs. It wasn't just me being out-of-shape: I honestly COULD. NOT. BREATHE. (I still feel vindicated by this fact.)
The Lincoln Half took place on Sunday, May 6th, 2012: the day after I'd graduated from college. Needless to say, that was an incredibly busy, incredibly stressful weekend. My whole family, plus Colorado Mommy Jeanne and Devil/Ninja Fred (mentioned in Part I), plus our good friends the Murthas, had all signed up for the Half. On that Saturday (Graduation Day), everyone convened at the Johnson Guest House (my mom is way big on VRBOs) for a graduation party-slash-pasta feed. We had crockpot upon crockpot of marinara, meatballs, alfredo, meat sauce, and pesto to top our pasta, and my absolute favorite for the sides: two huge pans of Fazoli's buttery, garlicky, salty breadsticks. (Cute story about the crockpots: Mom pulled me aside as we were setting up and said, "Hey honey, we don't have enough crockpots to go around--can I borrow yours for one of the sauces?" I didn't own a crockpot, and I started to tell her so--until it dawned on me. SHE GOT ME MY VERY OWN CROCKPOT FOR A GRADUATION PRESENT, because she is the best mommy ever--and it's RED for the Huskers. Um yeah, go ahead and be jealous of my awsm mom.) We also had a keg of Boulevard Pale Ale, since my family has much better taste in beers than all y'all*. Although, since most of the people reading this blog are my friends/family, maybe we don't have better taste than all Y'ALL, but rather, compared to the average American populace.
*I know that for someone like me, who is absolutely crazy about grammar and punctuation, it must seem very strange for me to be using the word "y'all." Let me explain my stance. In German, there are words for "you" AND "you guys" (in both informal and formal constructions: "du" and "euch," informally; "Sie" and ...well, "Sie," formally). It Just. Makes. Sense. "Y'all" may be considered really tacky and lowbrow, but IT. MAKES. SENSE. It's a pain in the butt to say "you all" or "all of you people," or "youse guys" if you're from Brooklyn, when "y'all" works just as well. So there. As for "all y'all"--well, it means exactly what I need it to mean. Would you rather me say "All of you people who happen to be reading my blog," or "all y'all"? ...Well, at this point, the former would have actually saved you from reading a paragraph of rambling discourse on the topic of "to y'all or not to y'all," so...nevermind.
The day of the Lincoln National Guard Marathon dawned...terribly. There was a HUGE mf-er of a storm: lightning, thunder, torrential rain--the whole nine yards--all night long, which kept waking me from my already-restless slumber. In said slumber, I was dreaming about the half-marathon itself, including that they had cancelled it due to the storm. When I kept waking up and realizing that it hadn't been cancelled, I was just that much more peeved, exhausted, and anxious. When the magic hour of way-too-fking-early arrived (also known in the military as "Oh-Dark-Hundred" [a reference to the 24-hour time system, where 7:00, for instance, is written as 0700 and said aloud as "oh-seven-hundred"--you're welcome]), I heaved myself out of bed and had a breakfast sammich and bandaged up my feet to avoid blisters (a futile attempt). The storm had stopped by this time, but it was still a tad drizzly and overcast. My carpool of Mom, Dad, Spud (little brother), and I think Colorado Mommy arrived and I clambered into the backseat. When we arrived at the drop-off zone, I suddenly realized that while I had remembered my hairband, my iPod, my bib, and my sunglasses, I'd forgotten my earband--essential, as my ears are super-sensitive to cold and will have me in tears in no time if left unprotected. I had a mini panic attack and Mom (who'd decided to sit the run out, due to injuries) told me to chill the heck out--she'd go get it for me. We walked a couple blocks across campus to the Port-a-Potty Plaza and stretched for a while (Mom returning in the interim with my earband) before convening at the starting line (or, y'know, the starting half-mile-of-solid-crowd). Dad was wayyy up near the front, and Spud and I around the 2:15 finish time pacer group. (Side note: Robin, my little brother, is known as "Spud" simply because when he was a baby, he looked like a potato. His other nickname, bestowed upon him by my uncles on my dad's side--the Clowers are less than sentimental--was "Chuck," as in "up." He has always been known as either "Spud" or "The Boy," with diminutives such as "Spudlet" or "Spudster" used as well. Since my phone recognizes him by his Facebook profile information, I have to pause pretty much any time I text him--"Crap, he's not Spud in here. What's his real name again? Derrrrrp." Love you, dorkpants.)
When the crowd started moving forward, I hit "play" on my iPod. For the past month, I'd been listening to Unbroken, the absolutely astounding story of Louie Zamperini (recommended by longtime friend Suzy--many thanks). For those of you unfamiliar with Zamperini, he was an Olympic track star who, as a bombardier in WWII, was shot down, stranded at sea--in shark-infested waters, no less--for over a month, and then captured and held in a series of brutal Japanese POW camps for years. I'd found that listening to audiobooks while running held my attention better than music did, and with a book as compelling as Unbroken, I was motivated to run even farther in order to hear what happened next. This book had the added benefit of making my running seem like a cakewalk compared to what Zamperini and his friends endured.
Tory: "Whiiiine, my feet hurt."
Narrator: "Zamperini had been held in a painfully small cell for such a long time that he was unable to walk. Since he had once come within sight of running a four-minute mile, it was a crushing blow for this once-Olympic athlete. He was also starved down to double-digits and used as a tool for Japanese propaganda, due to his celebrity. There were lots of other terrible things too, like cholera and working as slave labor and having batshit-insane guards with dangerous delusions of grandeur, and his family was told that he was dead even though he wasn't. Etc." [Roughly paraphrased.]
Tory: "....FIIIIINE, OKAYYYYYY, I guess I could maybe run a little more and it wouldn't kill me."
The very first thing that made me smile during the half-marathon was the sight of a little girl, no more than seven or so, holding a sign about half-a-mile up the street: "Do it for the mimosas." I LOVE YOU, LITTLE GIRL. Spud and I stayed together up until about Mile 5, where he then took off ahead and I slowed back, enjoying the strains of The Boss playing through a sound system on Sheridan Boulevard. Can you guess what song it was? Lemme give you a hint; it goes like this: "Huhhheh, we wuhhh buhhh uhhh ruhhhhhhhh!" ("Born to Run." I'm not a huge Springsteen fan.) I managed to run those first five entire miles without stopping--new personal best! (Remember, only six months earlier, I hadn't been able to run a single mile without stopping to walk!)
Mom met me around the Mile 6 marker with a gel-pack, which I slurped gratefully and continued on my "meh"-rry way. One of the cool things about the Lincoln Marathon is their pacing strategy: rather than having pacers who run every single mile at 10:20, for instance, the pacers instead plan to finish with a time of 2:15, which averages out to 10:20min/mile over the entire course of the race. This means that they may go faster on a long, open stretch, and a bit slower on an uphill climb. Makes it more tolerable. I was doing my best to stick around in between the 2:20 and 2:25 pacers. Boyfriend Spencer caught up with me around Mile 9 with another gel-pack, and my friends Amy and Jesse were waiting with a sign for me somewhere around Mile 10 or 11. (I was so tired at this point that I had a moment of "GAWWWD, why do they have to be here?! Now I have to expend energy by acknowledging their presence! I don't have the extra energy to wave and smile, geeeeeeeez!" Thanks though, guys.)
From about Mile 11 on, I would have a couple of seconds every few minutes where I'd think "ohmigawd, I might actually finish this, I'm running a half-marathon and I'm almost done," and I'd tear up and almost break down. I kept pounding it back down inside and telling myself, "you can bawl when you're done. Just FINISH and you can have a crying fit, but not until then."
As I came around the last straight-away heading into Memorial Stadium, where the run ends on the 50-yard line, I passed the 2:25 pacer and sprinted across the field. I bounded past three or four people and pulled across the finish line for a bib time of 2:27:00.
I instantly started sobbing. I was crying so hard I could hardly breathe (although this might have had something to do with the fact that I'd just sprinted the last 50 yards of a 13.1-mile race). I grabbed the medal that was being held out to me and staggered into the receiving area, where I grabbed a bottle of water and a bagel, then went to find the rest of my group. By the time I saw them ("them" being Dad, Spencer, Amy, and Jesse), I had calmed down; the second I reached them I started bawling anew and collapsed against Spencer. Dad asked tentatively, "It was that bad?"
I responded between sobs, "I can't believe I did it!"
"PHEW! I thought you were crying because you hated it, and I was upset because I'd hoped you'd enjoy yourself!"
The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. Took a nap, ate leftover breadsticks and pasta, drank more beer. I was still overwhelmed and in a state of disbelief: in two days, I'd graduated college (with honors, just sayin') and ran a half-marathon. Beat that!
Epilogue:
It caught me. I was a victim of running fever. Only a month later, I ran the Deadwood/Mickelson Trail Half-Marathon in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where I improved my "farthest-distance-without-stopping-to-walk": six straight miles; I'm currently training for my third (the Williams Route 66 Half-Marathon in Tulsa, taking place this November).
I'll have a future post about my current training plan, but I'll leave you with this: three years ago, I was 164 pounds and a size 10. I was unable to run even 100 yards. Now, I'm in the 130s, a size 6, and running anywhere from 5 to 25 miles a week. I've accrued a total of 235 miles run since the beginning of May (when I started tracking on MapMyRun), and I've gone through about six audiobooks in that time. I'm proud of myself, my hard work, and my accomplishments; needless to say, I'm thrilled that I finally inherited my dad's genetics for running. (I'm less-than-thrilled that I also inherited his propensity to sweat by the gallon.)
Thanks so much for sticking with me this whole time. I hope you enjoyed the story, and I dare to hope that maybe someone will be motivated by this. And always remember:
See ya later!
We've now made it through my not running at all, to being forced to run in ROTC, to not running at all again, to hashing, to training for my very first half-marathon. This is where our story continues and comes to its eventual end (FINALLY!). Oh, and side note: if you just read Part I, you'll remember where, when running for ROTC, I absolutely couldn't breathe? And my superiors were all like "BLAH YOU SUCK KEEP RUNNING, NOT BREATHING IS NO EXCUSE!"? Well, as I went through my semester of my marathon-training class, I was diagnosed with slight asthma. SO THERE, stupid POCs. It wasn't just me being out-of-shape: I honestly COULD. NOT. BREATHE. (I still feel vindicated by this fact.)
The Lincoln Half took place on Sunday, May 6th, 2012: the day after I'd graduated from college. Needless to say, that was an incredibly busy, incredibly stressful weekend. My whole family, plus Colorado Mommy Jeanne and Devil/Ninja Fred (mentioned in Part I), plus our good friends the Murthas, had all signed up for the Half. On that Saturday (Graduation Day), everyone convened at the Johnson Guest House (my mom is way big on VRBOs) for a graduation party-slash-pasta feed. We had crockpot upon crockpot of marinara, meatballs, alfredo, meat sauce, and pesto to top our pasta, and my absolute favorite for the sides: two huge pans of Fazoli's buttery, garlicky, salty breadsticks. (Cute story about the crockpots: Mom pulled me aside as we were setting up and said, "Hey honey, we don't have enough crockpots to go around--can I borrow yours for one of the sauces?" I didn't own a crockpot, and I started to tell her so--until it dawned on me. SHE GOT ME MY VERY OWN CROCKPOT FOR A GRADUATION PRESENT, because she is the best mommy ever--and it's RED for the Huskers. Um yeah, go ahead and be jealous of my awsm mom.) We also had a keg of Boulevard Pale Ale, since my family has much better taste in beers than all y'all*. Although, since most of the people reading this blog are my friends/family, maybe we don't have better taste than all Y'ALL, but rather, compared to the average American populace.
*I know that for someone like me, who is absolutely crazy about grammar and punctuation, it must seem very strange for me to be using the word "y'all." Let me explain my stance. In German, there are words for "you" AND "you guys" (in both informal and formal constructions: "du" and "euch," informally; "Sie" and ...well, "Sie," formally). It Just. Makes. Sense. "Y'all" may be considered really tacky and lowbrow, but IT. MAKES. SENSE. It's a pain in the butt to say "you all" or "all of you people," or "youse guys" if you're from Brooklyn, when "y'all" works just as well. So there. As for "all y'all"--well, it means exactly what I need it to mean. Would you rather me say "All of you people who happen to be reading my blog," or "all y'all"? ...Well, at this point, the former would have actually saved you from reading a paragraph of rambling discourse on the topic of "to y'all or not to y'all," so...nevermind.
The day of the Lincoln National Guard Marathon dawned...terribly. There was a HUGE mf-er of a storm: lightning, thunder, torrential rain--the whole nine yards--all night long, which kept waking me from my already-restless slumber. In said slumber, I was dreaming about the half-marathon itself, including that they had cancelled it due to the storm. When I kept waking up and realizing that it hadn't been cancelled, I was just that much more peeved, exhausted, and anxious. When the magic hour of way-too-fking-early arrived (also known in the military as "Oh-Dark-Hundred" [a reference to the 24-hour time system, where 7:00, for instance, is written as 0700 and said aloud as "oh-seven-hundred"--you're welcome]), I heaved myself out of bed and had a breakfast sammich and bandaged up my feet to avoid blisters (a futile attempt). The storm had stopped by this time, but it was still a tad drizzly and overcast. My carpool of Mom, Dad, Spud (little brother), and I think Colorado Mommy arrived and I clambered into the backseat. When we arrived at the drop-off zone, I suddenly realized that while I had remembered my hairband, my iPod, my bib, and my sunglasses, I'd forgotten my earband--essential, as my ears are super-sensitive to cold and will have me in tears in no time if left unprotected. I had a mini panic attack and Mom (who'd decided to sit the run out, due to injuries) told me to chill the heck out--she'd go get it for me. We walked a couple blocks across campus to the Port-a-Potty Plaza and stretched for a while (Mom returning in the interim with my earband) before convening at the starting line (or, y'know, the starting half-mile-of-solid-crowd). Dad was wayyy up near the front, and Spud and I around the 2:15 finish time pacer group. (Side note: Robin, my little brother, is known as "Spud" simply because when he was a baby, he looked like a potato. His other nickname, bestowed upon him by my uncles on my dad's side--the Clowers are less than sentimental--was "Chuck," as in "up." He has always been known as either "Spud" or "The Boy," with diminutives such as "Spudlet" or "Spudster" used as well. Since my phone recognizes him by his Facebook profile information, I have to pause pretty much any time I text him--"Crap, he's not Spud in here. What's his real name again? Derrrrrp." Love you, dorkpants.)
When the crowd started moving forward, I hit "play" on my iPod. For the past month, I'd been listening to Unbroken, the absolutely astounding story of Louie Zamperini (recommended by longtime friend Suzy--many thanks). For those of you unfamiliar with Zamperini, he was an Olympic track star who, as a bombardier in WWII, was shot down, stranded at sea--in shark-infested waters, no less--for over a month, and then captured and held in a series of brutal Japanese POW camps for years. I'd found that listening to audiobooks while running held my attention better than music did, and with a book as compelling as Unbroken, I was motivated to run even farther in order to hear what happened next. This book had the added benefit of making my running seem like a cakewalk compared to what Zamperini and his friends endured.
Tory: "Whiiiine, my feet hurt."
Narrator: "Zamperini had been held in a painfully small cell for such a long time that he was unable to walk. Since he had once come within sight of running a four-minute mile, it was a crushing blow for this once-Olympic athlete. He was also starved down to double-digits and used as a tool for Japanese propaganda, due to his celebrity. There were lots of other terrible things too, like cholera and working as slave labor and having batshit-insane guards with dangerous delusions of grandeur, and his family was told that he was dead even though he wasn't. Etc." [Roughly paraphrased.]
Tory: "....FIIIIINE, OKAYYYYYY, I guess I could maybe run a little more and it wouldn't kill me."
The very first thing that made me smile during the half-marathon was the sight of a little girl, no more than seven or so, holding a sign about half-a-mile up the street: "Do it for the mimosas." I LOVE YOU, LITTLE GIRL. Spud and I stayed together up until about Mile 5, where he then took off ahead and I slowed back, enjoying the strains of The Boss playing through a sound system on Sheridan Boulevard. Can you guess what song it was? Lemme give you a hint; it goes like this: "Huhhheh, we wuhhh buhhh uhhh ruhhhhhhhh!" ("Born to Run." I'm not a huge Springsteen fan.) I managed to run those first five entire miles without stopping--new personal best! (Remember, only six months earlier, I hadn't been able to run a single mile without stopping to walk!)
Mom met me around the Mile 6 marker with a gel-pack, which I slurped gratefully and continued on my "meh"-rry way. One of the cool things about the Lincoln Marathon is their pacing strategy: rather than having pacers who run every single mile at 10:20, for instance, the pacers instead plan to finish with a time of 2:15, which averages out to 10:20min/mile over the entire course of the race. This means that they may go faster on a long, open stretch, and a bit slower on an uphill climb. Makes it more tolerable. I was doing my best to stick around in between the 2:20 and 2:25 pacers. Boyfriend Spencer caught up with me around Mile 9 with another gel-pack, and my friends Amy and Jesse were waiting with a sign for me somewhere around Mile 10 or 11. (I was so tired at this point that I had a moment of "GAWWWD, why do they have to be here?! Now I have to expend energy by acknowledging their presence! I don't have the extra energy to wave and smile, geeeeeeeez!" Thanks though, guys.)
From about Mile 11 on, I would have a couple of seconds every few minutes where I'd think "ohmigawd, I might actually finish this, I'm running a half-marathon and I'm almost done," and I'd tear up and almost break down. I kept pounding it back down inside and telling myself, "you can bawl when you're done. Just FINISH and you can have a crying fit, but not until then."
As I came around the last straight-away heading into Memorial Stadium, where the run ends on the 50-yard line, I passed the 2:25 pacer and sprinted across the field. I bounded past three or four people and pulled across the finish line for a bib time of 2:27:00.
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| I almost look like an athlete here! |
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| You may recognize this as my profile picture. |
I instantly started sobbing. I was crying so hard I could hardly breathe (although this might have had something to do with the fact that I'd just sprinted the last 50 yards of a 13.1-mile race). I grabbed the medal that was being held out to me and staggered into the receiving area, where I grabbed a bottle of water and a bagel, then went to find the rest of my group. By the time I saw them ("them" being Dad, Spencer, Amy, and Jesse), I had calmed down; the second I reached them I started bawling anew and collapsed against Spencer. Dad asked tentatively, "It was that bad?"
I responded between sobs, "I can't believe I did it!"
"PHEW! I thought you were crying because you hated it, and I was upset because I'd hoped you'd enjoy yourself!"
The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. Took a nap, ate leftover breadsticks and pasta, drank more beer. I was still overwhelmed and in a state of disbelief: in two days, I'd graduated college (with honors, just sayin') and ran a half-marathon. Beat that!
Epilogue:
It caught me. I was a victim of running fever. Only a month later, I ran the Deadwood/Mickelson Trail Half-Marathon in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where I improved my "farthest-distance-without-stopping-to-walk": six straight miles; I'm currently training for my third (the Williams Route 66 Half-Marathon in Tulsa, taking place this November).
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| I did my best to wear all-clashing shades of blue. Success! |
I'll have a future post about my current training plan, but I'll leave you with this: three years ago, I was 164 pounds and a size 10. I was unable to run even 100 yards. Now, I'm in the 130s, a size 6, and running anywhere from 5 to 25 miles a week. I've accrued a total of 235 miles run since the beginning of May (when I started tracking on MapMyRun), and I've gone through about six audiobooks in that time. I'm proud of myself, my hard work, and my accomplishments; needless to say, I'm thrilled that I finally inherited my dad's genetics for running. (I'm less-than-thrilled that I also inherited his propensity to sweat by the gallon.)
Thanks so much for sticking with me this whole time. I hope you enjoyed the story, and I dare to hope that maybe someone will be motivated by this. And always remember:
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| Source: unknown. If you know, tell me so I can credit it. |
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