A Race Report, FINALLY!

That's right! Claire is finally, at long, long last back in action. I was going to stage my comeback last Sunday, but the thought of running 9 miles in the cold was feeling a little bit daunting for my inertia level, and when it started pouring floodbuckets as I was driving to the race, I decided that my time would be better spent in a Starbucks somewhere. (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog!) Instead, I ran a rather pathetic two-mile trail run near the house that afternoon and finished absolutely disgusted with myself. I was tight, tired, and out of breath. It seemed to take so much effort just to start moving that to keep moving was too much to ask. I had no idea what my next big event would be, but I decided that I was going to race myself back into shape, starting this week. That's right! I was very motivated to start moving... sometime soon, but not right now.

So comeback 2.0 was planned for the Brazen Racing Nitro Turkey Trot in Pinole, CA. A client would also be doing this race, so there was no chickening out or I'd never save face. As we made the drive over, I was thinking about how this time last year I was on a plane on my way to Mexico, and the two years before I had PRed at the 5 mile distance. Right now all I could hope for was sub-10's.

I knew I would be running a 10K trail run, but other than that, I had no idea what to expect. What was the course like? How many people? What time did it start? I wasn't really sure about any of these things. Scout (formerly Bobberanne, but that nickname is too close to her real name so I feel obliged to change it) and I rolled into the Point Pinole Regional State Park up near the northern tip of the San Francisco Bay a comfortable 45 minutes before the race was supposed to start. But by the time I'd filled out the race day registration, picked up my chip (that's right, CHIP! For a 10K Turkey Trot!), picked up my t-shirt, and used The Smelliest Outhouse I've ever used in my life (no exaggeration), it was already 15 minutes past the projected start time. Luckily, there were so many late arrivals, that the race didn't start until about half an hour after it was supposed to. I wasn't worried. I had a feeling that there would be suffering involved in this, so I wasn't in any particular hurry.

At the Salem Wild Turkey Trot, I had never seen anyone run dressed up. Dressing up is for Halloween runs and charity activists at spectator marathons. Half the people at this race were dressed up as pilgrims, turkeys, or Indians. One woman was wearing a pilgrim's bonnet, one of those frilly bib-like things that the Puritans used to wear, and a full black ass-tight running outfit. She looked like a giant baby missing her diaper. I tried not to judge the idiots who had dressed up as pilgrims or poultry, but I felt free to judge the people dressed up as Indians because they were clearly loser racist bigots who deserved to sprain their ankles and they had better all be behind me, even though I wasn't expecting anyone to be behind me today. Also, since I was signing up the day of the race, I would have to wait for my finisher's medal to be sent in the mail. Really? A finisher's medal for a 5K/10K?

Can I take a moment to go off about finisher's medals? Call me a snob, but I don't believe that any event that the winners complete in under an hour deserves a finisher's medal. We're coddling our children and we're coddling our adults. Half the girls that participate in our girls' running program are overweight. I traded my t-shirt with an 8-year-old because hers was too small and mine was too big. I wear a youth large. She barely fit into an adult small. These girls could probably run a whole mile without stopping, but they know that they'll get the same credit if they walk, and they know that if the workout has a time goal, that there's no more reward for running than walking. Because it's non-competitive. Okay, I see it. Kids can get really upset when they "lose," but you know what? Losing is a part of life. And now we're coddling out adults, increasing the "acceptable" body fat percentages and trying to sugar-coat the fact that the Surgeon General had to increase the daily activity recommendations (60 minutes most days of the week) because we're increasingly sedentary and inactive in our everyday lives. Now a 5K is treated like some huge achievement. In some countries (even some people in cities like San Francisco) you can't get through your day without walking 3.1 miles. And here we are awarding finisher's medals to people finishing a 5K in over an hour?! It's like saying, "Congratulations! You managed to wipe your own ass AND tie your own shoes!"

No, you know what, I take that back. The people who finish a 5K in over an hour DO deserve a finisher's medal, because they are either so old, so young, so fat, or so out of shape that finishing a 5K really is a huge achievement (see the Biggest Loser lady who inspired me to run a marathon). But for the people who are otherwise healthy individuals, whether they run slow or fast, how good their Thanksgiving brunch will taste after the race should be reward enough. Someday I'm going to run an obesity awareness 5K where everybody has to run with a BMI over 30. If you are of a normal weight, then you have to wear a weighted vest that puts you over 30 (so I, as a 5'2" female weighing 125 lb would have to wear an additional 29-lb vest). Anyone whose BMI is over 30 would get a .1 mile advantage for every point that their BMI is above 30. Then I'll give people finisher's medals for a 5K. And the finisher's medals will be galvanized doughnuts. Hmph. Okay, I feel better now.

I was beginning to see where my $45 race fee was going. I wrote "NO MEDAL NECESSARY" on the address line of my registration form and went to pick up my chip.

"What do you mean, your chip?" Scout asked.

"They make you wear this computer chip around your ankle," I explained, pulling the OTT triathlon-style neoprene band out of the envelope. How much extra had I paid for chip timing? In a race where people were running with turkey waddles hanging from their visors and feathers on their heads, did we really need computerized timing? What ever happened to the days of tying it into your shoelaces or tearing the tab off the bottom of your number? I could feel that I was turning into a grouchy old man.

"What? So if you get lost in the woods they can identify you? Like a pet?" Scout asked.

"No! So they know when you started and finished!" It was funny to see her taking it all in. Scout wasn't familiar with the whole running culture. From the looks of it, neither were most of the turkeys (and pilgrims and Indians) here.

Finally we lined up and the race announcer went through an interminable explanation of how not to run off-course. When I saw how non-technical this course was, the explanation seemed even more preposterous. Most preposterous of all, though, was that the announcer was talking to a sea of ears plugged up with earbuds. Packed cheek-to-jowl with a bunch of white people in face paint, I couldn't wait to get started. I thought I would have to sit through a bunch of faux Indians pulling off their headdresses to sing the National Anthem (at which point I would have thrown up), but luckily there was no Star Spangled Banner in this crowd.

The fog horn went off, and we all started running. The first several steps were on some soft grass, and mere seconds into my comeback I felt a burning sensation spreading through my ankle. It didn't last long, though, and in no time I was darting through the sea of walkers and 13-minute-mile runners (with headphones, of course) who hadn't headed the recommendation to stay back if you were slow. I vowed to think of a way to punish these people someday.

My strategy for this race was just to sit back and listen to my body. I knew that I could finish 6 miles, even in my sad state of being, so this would be a question of just not fucking it up by doing anything stupid. Just run, I thought. I felt like a cyclist trying to run. My back and hamstrings were tight, and I felt heavy, not light and bouncy, like I was trying to muscle my way down the path. I felt like I was stuck in the first 5 minutes of a transition run for six miles. My muscles burned and my hips wouldn't move right.

Me hiding behind probably the only other 2 people in the race NOT wearing headphones.

As I thump-thump-thumped down the trail, I was passing more people than were passing me, ESPECIALLY on the "hills." I couldn't believe it. This was no hard-core technical single-track, it was more like "path running" than trail running and you could run at road race pace (not like I have one of those these days). And yet I was still passing people, even in the second half when things had usually sifted out and my too-fast pace usually catches up with me. Weird, huh? I wasn't running a blistering pace, but this pace felt tough. I tried not to look at my watch in fear that a "tough" pace would be 10-minute miles.

I was enjoying my elephant run; plop, plop, plopping down the trail, even kind of enjoying the burning in my lungs and crankiness in my hips and back that told me I was sorely out of shape. I was enjoying being in the woods, out of the city, and stomping over the eucalyptus bark on the trail. But I might as well have been out there by myself. I didn't breathe a word to another soul for the whole race. At first I thought that this was some serious turkey trotting, that people were too busy racing to offer encouragement or holiday wishes to other runners. Then I noticed the headphones. This sure was different from New England running... I wondered if I would ever meet any straight men over 40 in California if they were all wearing headphones. Who would I ever talk to?

Despite feeling like poop, it looks like my form was actually better than in any race photo I've ever seen. Forward lean, no forward footstrike, high knees... But the strangest part indeed is that strange expression I have around my mouth.

Over the last 2 miles I was closing in on a girl. Once we hit the six-mile mark, I decided that I would try to kick it in. She heard me coming and kicked back. Then my stomach kicked back. That's when I remembered my race strategy to not throw up, and let her go. As I crossed the finish line, a guy kicking behind me didn't quite pass me. The camera caught me just as I looked at him with a great feeling of well at least I beat you!

I left the finishing corral, grabbed a glass of water, and walked back to where I'd seen Scout around the 6-mile mark. As I walked, I saw a girl pull over just yards short of the finish line, duck under the line of flags, and puke her guts out. I'd done that before. I remembered the feeling. It's called a hangover. Despite being as out of shape as I was, I was glad that I wasn't that girl.

Much to my surprise, I'd finished in 52:39 for what Garmin called 6.32 miles. (Splits: 8:25, 8:18, 8:46, 7:59, 8:12, 8:27, 7:47). It wasn't the fastest race I'd ever run, but it was far from the nearly 60 minutes I'd been expecting to take. That put me somewhere in the middle of the pack in 70th out of 263 (top 27% of turkeys, giblets, and racing racists), and 9th out of 24 in my age group (38%).

Sure, sure, it wasn't a great result. I've fallen pretty far (back about 2 years to be exact), but at least while I was plodding along I was enjoying being back out there. Who cared that I was running like a bulldog rather than a greyhound? I had a whole, entire day off, I had food in the fridge, and money to sign up for a $45 race. I guess I had something to be thankful for...

I've got more plans and schemes coming up, but I'll save those for another post. Happy (belated) Thanksgiving, everyone!

When your back's up against a wall, fight like hell

My life is still completely unrecognizable from one week to the next, but things are finally stabilizing. For the first time since I moved to San Francisco, I've had a chance to take a look around and see where this crazy four-and-a-half-month ride has taken me. I've finally been laid off for the season at the bike shop, so I have my weekends back. I'm training people anywhere from 12 to 17 hours per week and writing more than I ever wrote when I was unemployed and the freelance gig was my only job. I live outside the city. I am now considered "full time" at work, and spend 12+ hours at or near the studio a day. I'm responsible for the company newsletter. I'm sober without AA and don't even remember to count how long it's been anymore (about 4 months). This week, for the first time since September, I was able to afford a full grocery trip. I had to remind myself not to feel guilty for buying shampoo.

But these past two weeks have been the scariest yet. In one week I reached the tipping point where I could not grow my business anymore without a key to the studio. Also, I would be paying more by giving them 40% of my income than if I just went on "full rent." To get the key, I would have to stop the 40% payment plan and come up with $1300 in a week. On top of that, a $400 debt that I had deemed "unessential" for four months finally asserted itself as "important" by having a collection agency call me and tell me I had 2 weeks to pay it. That day my phone got thrown clear across the room, nearly hitting one of the owners who was perched on a bench. "Here, you dropped this," Ducky (not his real name) said in that tone of voice that men have for avoiding women's temper tantrums.

I took it and flung it into the bathroom. Someone came out of the bathroom a few minutes later and handed me my phone. "Someone left this on the floor in the bathroom," he told me. I threw it in the corner behind some filing cabinets and didn't dig it out until I had made good and sure that it would stay there without ringing and without being returned to me for at least half an hour. To top it all off, because of a clerical error my pet deposit ($290) from Shane's place was returned to the wrong place: to Shane. And he cashed it. In the thick of bill collectors calling me, now I had to call the property management company and use the same threatening language that I had learned from the grouchy bill collectors. I hated this. I missed the days of steady paychecks and benefits packages.

Miserable, I approached Ducky and Evil Kenevil (the owners) looking for a stay of execution on the $1700 I was going to have to pull out of my ass in 2 weeks, most of which was going to them.

"You've got to stay positive," was Ducky's advice. I was kind of hoping for advice that offered the words, "a free month's rent."

"How can I stay positive when I haven't been able to afford groceries for three months and now I'm supposed to come up with 150% of my average monthly income for that period in just 2 weeks???" I asked.

"When you've got your back up against the wall," Evil Kenevil said, "Fight like hell. If you didn't have a fire under your ass like this, you'd get complacent."

The advice was anything but what I'd been hoping to hear, but Ducky and Evil Kenevil had slept in the gym for two years to get it off the ground. Now they had a bank account a million dollars strong. I was here to learn from these guys, and although I sometimes bristled at their pushy big-business talk, I knew that I would never survive in this big, mean world without them.

Despite the long days and the stress, I've been feeling really lucky to have my job lately. I'm no longer "the new kid," and I've had the chance to see other trainers try to break their way in:

"He come in talking about how he was a 'Big Picture Guy,' and then the only business experience he had to tell me about was a gym that folded in the first 2 years!" Ducky said of one perspective trainer that he'd turned down.

"He's just 28 or some shit like that. He's just a young kid. He thinks he knows everything, but he don't know shit!" he said about another. Hey, I'm only 27!

"He comes in looking like a model and says he's some big-shot bodybuilder and I looked him up and he didn't even win that shit!" he said about another. "If you gon' brag about something, you better have fucking won it!" I was beginning to think that maybe Ducky wasn't as unobservant as I'd originally thought. He probably had noticed that I'd never held the title of "trainer" before, (even though I'd worked in gyms for years and been certified twice).

"Ducky, why did you hire me when you didn't hire all those other people with stronger resumes than mine?" I asked.

"For two reasons," he said. "Because you could write and because you came from Boston. None of these lazy motherfuckers that work here would ever pick up and move 'cross the country with nothing and try to build they own business! That takes balls. You're willing to do the things that most people's scared to do. If you come from Boston and you ain't got shit, then we will help you get started because we already know that you're willing to do whatever it takes to get what you want, but if you come from San Francisco and you ain't got shit, you's either stupid or lazy.

"All these people think it's like magic that I built this bu'ness up from the ground in the middle of a recession and now I got motherfuckers comin' in off the street who want to pay $80/hour to train with us. They don't see everything that it took to get there." He started walking, putting one heel carefully in front of the toes of the other foot. "I just started walking while all those other fools were sitting there in their comfortable 24 Hour Fitness jobs, and to those guys who wasn't looking they say, 'How'd you get from here to there? That must be magic!' But they don't see that anything look like magic to those fools who never take a step." Jim Collins calls that the Flywheel Concept, by the way.

A day or two later I asked Ducky if he would train me for a session just to see what his style was like. "I'm about to do a workout right now. Why don't you work in with me?" he asked.

We warmed up and then he asked me how I'd been training lately. "I haven't been doing much of anything to tell you the truth, Ducky," I said. "I haven't been training because I don't want to make myself hungry. When you can't buy food, getting hungry is bad."

"How can you train other people when you ain't training yourself?" he said in disgust and disbelief.

"I don't know... I mean I've been riding, but..."

"You'll see. You get back into training and you'll be on fire for your clients. Your clients will become like your fan club. They love that shit and then the referrals will start rolling in.When you ain't training, the quality of your workouts just sucks. You don't push people because you think everything's hard."

He was right. The workouts I'd been giving had sucked since I started going hungry because I was focused on where my next meal was coming from, not that I loved my job. I made it a point to take an hour out of every day and just train again, just to get back in shape. Can't afford it? Oh well, I'd just Act As If I could afford it. I'd deal with the what I was training for just as soon as training was a habit again. And wouldn't you know, my clients started opening up to me after that. New people started appearing through different avenues.

But now that I'm back to working out, I can't believe how far I've fallen. I'm someone who's staked my whole self-worth for the past seven years on being extremely physically active. Fitness has been my job ever since my publishing job went under in May of 2009. It's humbling to get sore. It's even more humbling to not be able to do things.

The other day I dusted off my sexy bike and went to change the flat tire that I'd noticed when I hung it up almost 2 months ago. But all my spare tubes had valves that were too short for my rims, and I ruined two tubes trying to will the damned things to work. One tube wound up in a tree, and the Tarmac stayed in the garage. I took my new Allez out instead figuring that a bike's a bike if you're not racing, right?

A little bit about where I live: Pacifica is one of those coastal towns that has the beach, a coastal highway, and then mountains all within half a mile of shore. The mountains aren't tall, but they're sure as hell steep. I live near the bottom of a canyon on the back side of one of those hills. To get anywhere, I have to go over the hill.

I set out to find my way 10 miles along the ridges to San Francisco. I came out the driveway, rode a block, and started climbing... at a 20% grade. There is a half-mile climb out of the canyon, but it's an average of about a 15% grade with 2/3 of it being around 20%. My little Allez has two fewer climbing gears than my Tarmac (the smallest gear is a 25, not a 27). And I haven't been seriously training since May. I was a wreck.

I got to the top of that hill without getting off my bike, but people standing in their driveways were turning their heads to watch me pass because they could hear me huffing and puffing from three driveways away. When I got to the top of the hill I thought I was going to throw up. Then I made a left and got half way down the hill when I realized that I was headed back into the canyon. I should have gone right. Damn. Now I had to go back up there! I returned to the top of the hill pretty sure that I was going to die and still less than a mile from the house. Then I rode down to the coast.

By the time I got to sea level, I still hadn't recovered and my insides felt like they were going to rot out of my body. I had hiccups from breathing so hard, and they were so violent that I thought I would rupture something. I. Was. Miserable. I sat on a low wall for about 10 minutes until the Yuck in my body subsided, then I decided that I'd had quite enough and it was time to go home. One problem though: I had to go BACK over the hill. My lungs were sore and I was coughing for the rest of the day.

I was so angry with myself. How could I let myself get to this point? How could I be SO out of shape? Who was I anymore? Moreover, who was I trying to kid? I'd gone less than 9 miles. This was war!

The next day I got out my racing bike and got my new housemate's help in fixing it up. It involved adjusting the cables, bending the derailleur hanger, replacing the chain, and giving the whole thing a healthy dose of lube. Then I went for a ride. I took a less steep way out of the canyon and managed to find my way out to San Francisco all by myself. I took route 35, called "Skyline Blvd," which seemed like a pretty great choice for a challenging ride through the hills and along the coast. What they don't tell you is that Skyline becomes a fucking FREEWAY for a couple of miles. I mean FREEWAY with exits, shit on the shoulder, a 55 mph speed limit, on-ramps and all.

I was riding along, feeling quite pleased with myself and looking forward to the windy descent back into Pacifica over the road that I'd just climbed. I'd just crested the hill and was now in South San Francisco (which is not actually part of San Francisco). I could recognize the big radio tower and a few of the hills of SF up ahead of me. There were trees on my left and right and pine cones on the ground. Suddenly I saw a sign that said "Begin Freeway!" I looked around. There were three lanes of traffic between me and the divider and three more lanes of traffic before the shoulder on the other side. I would have to ride at least half a mile in the wrong direction to get back to the last intersection. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!! I thought. There was a tiny little sign with a bicycle on it that said "Share the Road," and I thought foolishly, Maybe that FREEWAY sign was a mistake!

Then I saw the 55 mph speed limit. Then I saw an exit sign. Then I heard cars behind me that might very well want to get OFF at that exit going 55 miles per hour just as I was crossing it. Then I saw the ON ramp with people coming off the interstate. I was going to have to cross that too, and people coming off the interstate onto another freeway certainly aren't looking for bicycles. I saw a break in the traffic and tried to cut right across the ramp back to the shoulder. A car kept coming. I kept making my intention clear. The car kept coming. Finally I came to a dead stop (on my bicycle, on the freeway) and let him go by. He had moved slightly RIGHT onto the shoulder, which meant that if I hadn't stopped, he would have most certainly hit me. Fuck that!

I found a way back home that was flatter and on frontage roads.

Last week I worked out six out of seven days, and when I walked into the gym in the afternoon Ducky told me that I was looking buff. "Yep, that's all it takes, two sessions," I told him.

So what are YOUR suggestions on what my next goal should be? Weigh in on the poll on the sidebar.