Michael Dunleavy 5K Run and Walk Race Report/New Poll

This is a post I've been sitting on for a couple of weeks. The race in question was actually on April 6. Sorry...

I say "race" report, but it wasn't really a "race". Not for me anyway. See, it all started on a slow day at work when my (one and only local) friend, Tessa (aka Tetas) told me she'd just run outside in shorts and a tank top. Tessa started running a couple of months ago on a treadmill at work, and has been slowly working her way up to 3, and now sometimes 5 miles. "When am I going to get you out for a 5K?" I asked her. Then she asked when the next one was that I was doing. 5K? Claires do not do 5Ks. You have to run FAST in a 5K. Claires do not run fast. Figuring that it was a rest weekend anyway, and that it didn't really matter if I did a 5k on my "long run" day, I sent her a list of about a dozen 5Ks happening in Massachusetts that weekend.
"Haha, I think it's funny that there's a race in Winchester," (where we both grew up and I still live) Tetas said. Winchester? There's a RACE, in WINCHESTER?! Winchester where the local paper ridiculed the decorating tastes of a man building his dream house so severely that he never moved in? Winchester that fought a new Burker King opening in town because they didn't want to attract motorists from other towns? THAT Winchester is going to let them close down 3 miles of road for an hour to have a race?! No way! Well, that settled it. We were going to do a "race" in Winchester. Well, that is, if Tetas wasn't too hung over that morning...

Later that day she did more scouring of the site, “Experienced runners will find the mix of flat runs intermingled with moderate hills and turns to be challenging and enjoyable”
Nevermind, question answered. she said. I am not an experienced runner, and I will not find the challenge enjoyable. Once I promised her that it was okay if we walked/ran it, and it would be a party (in fact, we could tie balloons to her hair and that way she'd be lighter and springier), we were back on... If she wasn't too hung over that morning...

Well Sunday morning rolls around and Tetas is NOT too hung over, but she IS late as usual, so both she and her sister, Bethan (who also joined us) were stressed out the whole way there. Tessa's family does not deal well with pressure. Tessa yelled at her dad, Bethan yelled at her grandmother, then they yelled at each other in the car on the way over. Not the mean kind of yell, the spastic kind of "okay, okay, I'm going!" kind of yell of someone who's stressed out. Oh crap, what had I gotten us into?

To our surprise, the place was PACKED, and there were all kinds of children and yuppies of assorted shapes and sizes crammed into the tiny elementary school gym. I would guess that 2/3 of the race's participants were not old enough to sign their own release form, and most of THOSE weren't old enough to earn the $15 entry fee by themselves. Oh good! I thought, this way I'll still get to beat a lot of people. So what if they were 4 feet tall? They had numbers, didn't they? I'm often beaten by people who are taller than me by a much bigger margin.

As usual, there was bathroom drama. They only had one bathroom open to runners (is this the like a hazing joke in the Race Officials' Handbook?), and the line was at least 30 people deep. Bethan had to pee, and since she was still freaked out about being late, the line seemed like pretty much the end of the world. Lots of women were going into the men's room, and Bethan was considering doing the same, when an annoying lady (who will heretoforth be called "Annoying Bathroom Lady") got all uppity and told her she couldn't, what if men wanted to use it? So with every woman cutting Bethan in like to go to the boy's room Bethan would threatten again to follow their lead and Annoying Bathroom Lady would get more uppity and the situation escalated. Then the line stopped moving (probably there were multiple public poopers), and the situation escalated further. It was the kind of passive-aggressive bitch-off that only women can pull off.

Finally they got to the bathroom and the three of us went out to the start on time after all. Tetas and Bethan were telling me that I could go ahead if I wanted, and I insisted we run the whole thing together. I didn't want to go run the whole thing by myself, only to have them come in right behind me anyway. Or worse, they could beat me. I had to save face, so I promised them that I would run with them. Nobody has to know just how slow I really am.

"Hey, hey Claire," Bethan whispered. "There's Annoying Bathroom Lady in the blue jacket and headband. You have to beat Annoying Bathroom Lady and sprint past her at the end."
"Okay, sure, whatever," I said. I was already setting my sights on an 8-year-old with pink stars on her stretch pants that I was going to show who was boss once that starting gun went off. Little bitch probably thought those stretch pants were the hottest thing since Hannah Montana. Well I didn't think she was so hot, and I was going to show her what I thought of her out there on the course.

But the starting gun didn't go off. 1:00 came and went, and we were still standing there. "Ugh, I hate it when they don't start on time!" bitched Bethan. "Now I'm cold. Let's go back to the car where it's warm and get some nice, hot Starbucks."

Finally, finally at 1:11, we started running. There were little kids swarming all around us. "Jimmy, come ON!" A petulent-looking 9-year-old girl growled, yanking on her 7-year-old brother's arm. Jimmy was already bawling and cried even harder as he shuffled to keep up with his arm she was dragging him by. When we got to the first corner, a bunch of 12-year-olds cut the corner. "They're cheating! Oh my god, they're cheating!" squealed Tetas, pointing her finger.
"Let's go catch them and tell them that we're going to tell their parents," I said. We didn't of course, but we caught them anyway when they started walking. Little shits think they're so hot, I thought. Well your pacing strategy didn't work out so well for ya, did it? You pre-pubescent little shit bags!
As we ran down a hill we fell into stride with a couple switching off pushing a stroller. "Are we going to see the WHOLE world?" the toddler asked. "The WHOLE world?!"
"Can you answer him? I can't hear a word he's saying," grumbled an the exasperated mom (who was pushing) to her husband.

"What I like to do," said Bethan, who has done a bunch of 5Ks before, "is pick out people in front of me and pass them one by one." Then as an afterthought, "Does that make me a bitch?"
"No," I said. "I think everyone does that. That makes you a competitor." It was meant to be a compliment.
"Awww, and I thought it was my great original idea!" said Bethan. We kept running, and we were slowly picking people off, adults as well as kids alike, in Bethan's totally original, patented fashion. Then, inexplicably Bethan broke away from us and strode away. It was puzzling. We'd been together for a mile and a half, there was no reason to run off now... Then she started pumping her fist in the air. What the...? And then we noticed: there, to her right, was Annoying Bathroom Lady. "Goooooooo Bethan!" Tessa and I cheered, as she pumped her arm in the air for the full minute it took her to pull ahead of Annoying Bathroom Lady. Tessa and I weren't far behind.

About half a mile from the end the road took a steep pitch upwards and Tessa took her first walking break and took off her super cool sweatshirt (it doubled as a painting sweatshirt and was a million colors and the collar had been totally worn off) before we started running again. (Bethan was already wearing the race t-shirt and I bit my tongue hard so I wouldn't ruin the day by being a running geek all stuck on stupid running convention). With about .1 miles to go to the parking lot Tessa said, "Do you want to sprint it?"
"Sure!" I said, and we took off, with middle schoolers in soccer shorts falling away behind us. As we approached the parking lot Tessa was doing a kind of whistling heave, the kind of heave the fat man makes in a movie when he's running away from something, right before he drops dead of a heart attack. "You know we've got to run all the way across the parking lot, right?" I asked.
"Oh no!" Tetas gasped. Well, if she could talk, she was going to be fine. We kept sprinting, which by now was more like running really, really fast than sprinting. There were several annoying-looking freshmen girls finishing as we came up to the line and I was tempted to push them out of the way so that Tessa and I could come through with all of the style and coolness life affords you when you're old enough to drive your own ass around. Instead I dropped back a little bit so I could cross with Tetas. We crossed in 28:13, just good enough for about a 9:14 mile pace. Bethan was right on our heels.

Once finished, we walked around the parking lot a bit so that no one would puked and snagged some free water from the kiddie swimming pools filled with ice and bottles. Bethan and Tessa gushed about how fun that had been, and I tried to hold my tongue about encouraging them to do longer and longer races with me every weekend. Then we went inside for free pizza. Tessa and Bethan, hailing from a family that never passes up free food, grabbed a couple of pieces of pizza and a banana each, Tessa grabbed the world's most enormous muffin, and Bethan grabbed an M&M cookie. "I don't like to eat anything that big," said Bethan, pointing to Tessa's softball-sized muffin. "It makes me think that it's on steroids."
"What? They're spraying the muffin vines with steroids?" I asked. Well, duh.

The gym was filling with more and more filthy, spoiled children with no consideration for the world around them. Now that we had our free food, there was no reason to stick around. As we were walking out Bethan pointed to a little girl wearing a race t-shirt over her pink hoodie. "I did that race too," said she said, ever the 5k veteran.
"What? You mean the one we just did?" I asked. "You're wearing the same shirt as she is right now."

When we got home I printed out the graphs and charts from Sport Tracks for Tessa and she was so impressed with them and herself. "Ooooooh! I did a 5K! I ran 9:13-minute miles," she said. "I'm going to hang these up on my fridge!" It was so exciting! I knew exactly how she felt, it's the same way I feel every weekend when I sit at the dinner table just waiting for mom and dad to ask, "How was your race?" And I want to gush about how fun it was and all the cool things that happen, but they just kind of give me blank stares. I was so glad that Tetas got that excitement from her first 5K. She was already talking about next time.

~~~

But while we're on the subject of t-shirts, it's time for a new poll. The Boston Marathon is this weekend, and as we've discussed before, I'm running it as a bandit. Believe what you want about bandits, I'm going to do it anyway. But as you may also know, I'm a total t-shirt whore. As we were chomping on our free pizza and people watching at the race, I pointed out a guy wearing a Boston Marathon jacket. "Look at him... he thinks he's so hot in that Boston Marathon jacket. Where does he think he is? This isn't a REAL race," I hissed. Bethan pointed out that I was all decked out in Under Armour and running tights myself. "Yeah, well there's absolutely no reason to be flaunting a Boston jacket here," I sulked. I wanted one so bad I could have gone and wrestled it off his back right then. Those jackets are hot, and everyone who wears them (and they DO wear them – ALL THE TIME) thinks they're SO cool because THEY're wearing a BOSTON jacket. Well they're not so hot, and I want one!

So here's the question of the week. When I go to the expo, what am I allowed to buy?
A) Don't buy so much as a key ring you underhanded, crooked cheat. You'd just look like a poseur wearing the gear if you can't back it up with a qualification. You should run the race and then slink back under the rock that you came from.
B) If you do the distance, you can wear the shirt. Heck, people who do it for charity or get in because they're famous don't have to qualify and THEY get t-shirts, don't they? Don't worry about it. You'll look totally hot in that jacket.
C) You can buy something that says Boston Marathon on it, but you have to wear some kind of bandit patch. For example, you have to write across the logo, "Mindy Thinks I Have Questionable Morals" in permanent marker. (If you pick C, please leave a suggestion for what the bandit scarlet letter should look like or say.)
D) Don't buy anything that says Boston Marathon on it, but anything that just says Boston Athletics Association is fair game.

DON'T FORGET TO VOTE ON THE SIDEBAR
(upper left-hand corner of the page)

No Claires were harmed in this experiment

So when we left off I'd just read The Thrive Diet (Brendan Brazier) and decided to try it out. Rocketpants has pointed that, as a vegetarian, I should be against animal testing. Well duh, I'm going to be the guinea pig.

The Eating Side of Things

As someone who hasn't always had the healthiest relationship with food, I have to be really careful when I make drastic changes in my eating. I can't restrict foods, or else I go way overboard and everything suffers. So I decided that instead of "not eating processed foods" I would try to "eat more whole grains, raw fruits and vegetables, etc." I went down to my local neighborhood Whole Foods and spent $100 on $6 loaves of "sprouted 7-grain bread" to take the place of my Pepridge Farm "multigrain" (white flour dyed brown) bread. I bought a tub of foul-smelling green powder containing chlorella, spirulina, wheat grass and açaí extract (among other things) to put in my smoothies. I bought about a million grains from the bulk bins that I promptly forgot the names of when I got home. I bought ground flax seed for protein and omega 3's, nutritional yeast for B vitamins, maca for whatever that does, nori and umeboshi plums to make brown rice balls, miso paste to use instead of salt, dates to make my own energy bars, coconut oil for god knows what, and some other things I can't remember.

I'm not even going to pretend that I followed the diet to the letter during my 2 week experiment. If it was too much effort to eat "the Thrive way", then I ate bread or cheese or sugar or whatever I had around. Another thing I'm not allowed to do is spend all day obsessing about what I'm going to eat at my next meal. My diet on a normal day looked something like this (new additions in bold):
4:45 AM: a banana and a handful of almonds
7:00 AM: omelet (one whole egg, one white) on sprouted multigrain bread, a berry smoothee (with whey powder, ground flax seed, maca, and green foods), green tea
10:30 AM: trail mix of raisins (it used to be craisins, but I got rid of them to cut the sugar), and soaked almonds. More green tea.
1:00 PM: soup with some kind of whole grain and lentils cooked at a low temperature with miso paste
5:00 PM: whatever I can find in the kitchen that I won't puke up during my workout
8:00 PM: whatever dinner Dad makes. No one's allowed in the kitchen while he's cooking, so what Daddy makes, I eat. Spoiled, I know, but I'm not going to go imposing my weird experimental recipes on him.

To tell the truth, my diet really wasn’t all that bad to begin with, and so my little experiment really just meant tweaking a couple of details... if I felt like it. For example, I didn’t nix the sports drink, but I did try to mix papaya chunks in with my shot blocks (which was good because they didn’t stick to my teeth, but bad because they also had some undesirable side effects), I had white pasta when that’s what Dad had prepared, but if it was a rice dish, I made some brown rice on the side (as long as Dad didn’t have to take responsibility if it “came out wrong”)...

... And I tried to cook...

I’m not a bad cook when I know someone else is going to try to choke down whatever I prepare, but I’m not nearly as attentive for my own palette. I don't mind if it tastes like sand just as long as it's good for me, and when my food tastes like poo I don't tend to overeat. Being a shitty cook is my way of avoiding obsessing about food. When I cook I’ll just put in whatever ingredients I can find lying around and hope it turns out okay. Most of the time, it doesn't.

My first cooking experiment: The rice ball incident
They would have turned out unappetizing at worst if I hadn’t tried putting the umeboshi pickled plums in the middle. These barf-magnets are pink and squishy and come in a vacuum-sealed container that makes them look like fetus balls and costs $11.99. They have the texture of something organic (in the chemistry sense) that’s been rotting at the bottom of the trash can for about 6 months, and taste like nothing but brine. I’m not a big fan of nori either. It took me several tries to get the “ball” part right, and most of what I came up with looked more like dark green “rice burgers”. Let me tell you, I’ve never been as relieved as the day that I finished my rice balls and knew I wouldn’t have to pretend they weren’t that bad anymore.

My second cooking experiment: Not cooking
Another morning I came home late from the gym and didn’t have time to prepare my grain of the day (barley) and lentils. Well, that’s okay. If you leave rice in warm water for long enough, it’ll cook anyway, right? At least that’s what one of my hippie housemates told me (trying to get me to discourage war, one stirfry at a time). So I put the barley and lentils in a tupperware with some warm water, then I threw in some nori for extra credit and trotted off to work. Let me tell you one thing about nori: if you put it back in water, it turns back into kelp and smells like a bad day at the beach. Let me tell you something else, most office kitchens, like mine, do not have strainers. So here I am with something that resembles a tide pool sitting on my desk all morning, periodically going off to the kitchen to change the water, and leaving an ungodly mess in the sink. My boss told me that I had definitely "out-grossed" Diane, who can eat unseasoned brown rice and steamed broccoli and call it a delicious meal. When it came time to eat it, I could barely stand to look at it. I scraped most of the seaweed into the trash, mashed in as much avocado as I could to mask the taste, and gulped down the crunchy lentils and grains. Diane stood at the door to my cube laughing at me as I choked down the first bites. Entirely disgusting.

My third cooking experiment: The mystery of the gloppy grain
As I mentioned, when I bought my buckets of grains from the bulk bins, I didn't really take much notice of what they were or what they were supposed to come out like. So when I cooked an interesting, gravely-looking grain for the better part of an hour I was pretty disappointed that it turned into a gloppy, gooey, slimy porridge-like mush with flecks of pond scum in it (spinach, actually). But it was too late to find another lunch now, so I blasted it with water hoping to wash the slimy excess starch away. It didn't go away. The colander just held the water there. There was nothing to do but dump the disgusting mess into a tupperware with some hot pepper (to try to mask the taste) and dash off to work. When I took it out to eat it at lunchtime, it had taken on a kind of grey tinge that looked like the gruel from Oliver! with some healthy green mold for good measure. I ate it, again with Diane laughing at my misery.

The Training End of the Deal

Week 1: Totals from Sunday, March 16 - Saturday, March 22
4 Runs: Total distance 51.6 miles (15.76, 8 [speed work], 18.34, and 9.52 [brick] miles)
3 Bike Sessions: Total time 5:46:28 (actually less than usual)
4 Swim Sessions: Total distance 13,000 yards
15 Workouts overall: 21:21:30 (one near-half-ironman simulation)

Week 2: Totals for Monday, March 24 - Sunday, March 30 (Easter off)
3 Runs: Total distance 38.2 miles (10.25 [hill repeats], 7.84 [brick], 20.14 miles)
3 Bike Sessions: Total time 7:34:57
3 Swims: Total distance 7,800 yards
13 Workouts overall: 20:09:55
(for more information you can check out my training log)

So I basically did at least 2-a-day workouts 4 days a week, with long workouts on weekends and one rest day with only 1 workout, for 2 weeks. Plus Easter off. Most of the emphasis was on running, since weather insists on breaking my heart as far as cycling goes.

The Results

The positives: Most importantly, I didn't die. Although I was tired and beginning to fade at the end, especially in the swimming, I was able to pull a 20 miler out of my ass the last day averaging about 15 seconds per mile faster than my 2 long runs the week before. It should also be noted that although I was tight, I didn't feel the hint of an injury.
~My first indicator of overtraining is always insomnia, but I was able to sleep soundly almost every night and wake up feeling alive (if not "energized") every morning.
~Almost immediately I started to feel leaner and it took just a little bit less imagination to see definition in my abs (if I stood just so in just the right light). My data on this is sketchy since I bought a scale half way through the experiment, but I did lose about half a percentage point of body fat in about a week (about half a pound). It's nothing major, but I have mentioned before that I feel sexier when I eat more vegetables. I definitely felt sexier.
~Thursday (of the rest week after the fact) on the run of a brick workout I EASILY held under 9 minute miles on an EASY 3 mile run. Four weeks ago on a run under similar conditions I held a similar average pace, but including fartlek bursts of speed. Running faster was definitely easier.

The negatives: I did have to take an extra evening of rest after Easter (which I took totally off). However, after sleeping 9 hours, the next day I woke up feeling like a million bucks and ran 10 miles of hill repeats. In my training log that day I wrote, "I'm SO glad I put this workout off yesterday so that I did it while well rested! It was GREAT!"
~I was feeling blah by the end and was definitely burnt out on racing. Though now, at the end of my rest week, I feel ready to take on the world again and am climbing up the walls a bit.
~I'm a horrible cook. Luckily, I'm not a picky eater if I know it's good for me.
~I refuse to go in public restrooms. I have a very regular schedule: without fail I go over breakfast or wait till tomorrow. Uncharacteristically, there were a couple of days at work where I had to break Claire's #1 Rule of Public Pooping: Don't. And there was the papaya incident in the last 3 miles of the 20 miler.

Things to take into account
~I had never done volume like that (the previous training cycle I averaged only about 15 hours a week), so who's to say I couldn't have done that anyway, without changing my diet?
~My feelings were totally subjective. I have no way to quantify the results other than DEAD/ALIVE, INJURED/HEALTHY. I am alive and healthy.
~I did take a full day off for Easter smack in the middle of the 2 weeks, something that I almost never do. Maybe a full day's rest is just what I needed to get recharged, and not $100 worth of powders and potions.

Conclusion

I can't say for sure if the diet helped, or it was just the placebo effect carrying me through something I didn't know my body was already capable of. In any case, I figure that it can't hurt. And if 2 weeks of these changes were enough to carry me through 89.8 miles of running, 11:20:42 of biking, 20,800 yards of swimming, and 41.5 hours of training in 15 days (on top of a full time job), then who knows what the longer term effects will be.

In the poll, two thirds of you (6 out of 9) agreed with Trihardist who said, A month ago, I would have said that I would totally do it if it meant I could compete at the highest levels of sport for ten years. But that would have been before I tried to eat an all-raw diet, in hopes that it would give me more energy (and quicker recovery). I made it about a week and a half before I said "Fuck this! I'm gonna go eat a loaf of bread!" So bring on the pizza and beer, baby! And post-race nachos! I understand her point of view, but I just don't feel like pizza and nachos could ever be as dear to me as, say, a gold medal.
I am more on board with Gretchen, who said, Claire, ...your blog never ceases to entertain, inspire and make me think [why, thank you, Gretchen; the check's in the mail]... [Y]ou are totally right on about why I compete. And on that note, I can't believe the number of folks who said they wouldn't give up tastey food to kick ass on a world level.(That's some suffering, but not that much!) Either they are totally full of shit, or they just don't know what they are missing. I don't mean to be a total bitch, because I too run more for the adventure than to win, but that's mostly because winning is just not really an option. I ran competatively in college though and had my share of wins. I can honestly say that for me there isn't a longer lasting high out there than kicking some ass, toeing the line knowing that you are faster than everyone else, feeling confident, and as you put it, like a badass mofo. I don't get that so much these days, and I would happily give up 10 years of tastiness for that high. Don't get me wrong, I know that there is so much more than winning (otherwise why would I bother??) and trail running and ultras are strong on the adventuring/suffering factor which, as you note, are apparently big reasons why we are out there. But from someone who truly loves the community feel and non-competative aspects of ultra running, there is still nothing like kicking some ass.

In other words, I'm totally at peace with whatever my result as long as I'm doing my best. That said, there is not a day that goes by that I don't wish my best were among the best of the best. And even if I will never be the best of the best, I would still like to do everything I can to do MY best in anything that is important to me, be it athletic competition, my job, my writing, etc. So the final verdict is that, without going overboard, I'm going to continue to slowly cut processed foods out of my diet and work in more "superfoods" or "power foods" or whatever you want to call them. Within reason anyway... And who can resist the anti-aging properties! There's no reason to do the vegan thing (I did that for a year and a half, it sucked), or insist that I NEVER eat the "bad" stuff. But still, I think the evidence was compelling enough. I'm not going to discount my diet as another way to get the best out of my body.

PS One person answered that they would give up tasty food for a decade, but not for the reasons I'm talking about. I would be interested to find out exactly WHAT those reasons were for this mystery person.

To answer my own question... / New poll

I've been thinking a lot about how to answer my own question, "Why the hell do I do triathlons?". I mean, I can't even stand the name. I hate it when people call it "a tri", or even worse, when they use the verb "to tri" (I'm not even going to get into the cute plays on words and double entendres that this new verb furnishes to millions of recreational triathletes and ammature writers everywhere). One would think that I would get out of the sport just so I don't have to use that word when I talk about it. I mean, no offense or anything... But no, wait, I didn't mean to open this post with a rant that would offend some 70% of my readers. I mean to talk about why I "tri" (* retches quietly *).

After my tête-à-tête 2 weeks ago with the King of the Bike Shop, I've been giving a lot of thought to what the hell I think I'm doing. Why, if I told someone who's just started reading here in the last 6 months that I hate to run, they wouldn't believe me. The other day my dad asked me, "Do you actually like working out?" The first answer that came to mind was, "no". Working out, for me, means intervals, sets, treadmill sessions, and the sound of weights clanking together. What I like are the days when I get out there and push some boundary that's never been pushed before. That's not a workout, that's fun. I like the days when I suffer. Wait... what?! I LIKE suffering? That's a fucked-up thing to enjoy. It looks like all the people around me are right, I really am crazy! I train to be able to suffer new, and more challenging tortures every week, the longer and more painful, the better.

I guess there are as many reasons to "tri" (* retches again *) as there are triathletes. Two of my readers do all 3 because they suck equally at all of them, so while the sweep van would be drafting behind them in any one event, triathlon gives them a chance to suck a little less at putting them together. I definitely fall into this camp. And in trihardest's case, she does all three because she is a top-competitor in transitions. Two people are actually good at all three. Well that does sound like fun. Too bad I couldn't even get a callback for that team. Two people said they get too bored doing just one sport. I agree with this one too. And, like me, 3 people just kind of forget why they do it. It's like smoking, you do it every now and then because all your friends are doing it, and next thing you know you're paying hundreds of dollars a week and going outside on cold, rainy days by yourself to support your habit, while all the sane people stay inside and give you dirty looks for smelling bad when you get back.

And me? Well, I guess the main reason I do it is because it makes me SO happy, all the time! As trigreyhound says, "Life is recess, go play." That sentence is so dead-on I wish I'd thought of it myself. When I think about what I used to do for fun when I was a kid, I realize I was born to do this sport. I was always picked last for dodgeball, but I was so competitive and intense, and I would never give up. If someone ever told me I couldn't do something, I just became more determined to do it. My conversations sounded something like this:
Mini-me: "When I get home I'm going to drink 50 glasses of water."
Molly: "Bet you can't!"
Mini-mie: "Yes, I can! Just you wait and see!"
I didn't make it to 50, but I sure tried.

One summer me and my 2 best friends had a competition to see who could lose the most weight over the course of the summer. We would run laps around the high school chanting, "Pump it, pump it, steam it, work it away," over and over. God knows where we came up with it. To cool down we would do laps in the pool, taking turns inventing strokes and seeing how close we could get to 100 before it was time to go home. We were 9. At the end of the summer the scale was broken, so we never found out who won.

Another summer we had a crab apple eating contest. We all ate bitter crab apples until we got diarrhea. The mothers wouldn't let us pick crab apples for the rest of the summer.

We used to go hiking in the woods, making up names for the different areas we discovered. We were always trying to find the legendary bike path that the older boys told us was on the other side. One day Alexis got a bee sting and ditched me in the woods. I was lost for about 3 hours before one of the older boys found me and brought me home. I'd had fun, but the babysitter was PISSED.

One summer on Cape Cod our rental house was on a different lake than in past years. This one was a little bigger, but I wanted to swim across it anyway. Dad and my little brother came with me, but when my pussy little brother got too tired, I left him in the middle of the lake floating on a boogie board and finished the trip by myself. Then I swam back. Dad had to tow the little cry baby all the way back to shore, floating on his boogie board.

My favorite game to play when I was by myself was that I was a slave or working in a sweat shop. I would shut my door and give myself tasks, and in my head I would yell insults at myself insisting that I work faster. Is that fucked up or what?!

The endurance, neurotic training, and competitive spirit necessary for competitive endurance sports are exactly what I need to feel fulfilled. It's like being a kid forever. In fact, that legendary argument about who was a better athlete that started triathlon sounds more like a pissing contest between three 10-year-olds on a playground than an adult conversation. But why do three sports? Certainly running, cycling, and swimming each have enough challenges on their own to keep me satisfied. But how many times can you run along a lake without thinking, "you know, it would be a lot shorter if I could just swim across." How many times can you bike a certain distance before you wonder, "Do you think I could do this without the bike?"

I could go into more detail about the "challenge", about how "rewarding" it is, about the "confidence" that comes with knowing that "I can", but that kind of talk makes me want to retch more than cute "tri" double-entendres. This post is sentimental and hackneyed enough as it is. In short, I do this sport because (and I've said this before) it makes me feel like a badass mofo.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

This week's question is leading into a post that I will publish later. I'm sure you've all heard of that study several years ago where they asked Olympic athletes, "If you could take a drug that would guarantee you a gold medal, and you wouldn't be caught, but you would die in 10 years, would you take it?" And of course an overwhelming number of athletes said yes. Well here's a question for the ordinary mortal:

If you could eat a diet that would mean that you could compete at a world-class level for the next 10 years, but you found the food tasteless and disgusting, would you eat it for 10 years? No cheating, no deciding it tastes good when you get used to it, no alcohol or ice cream. You're basically eating something that tastes like sand for 10 years, but in those 10 years you get to train at a level that means you can compete with the best of the best. Would you do it?
A) No way. Pizza and I are soulmates.
B) Yes! Without a doubt!
C) Yes, but not so I could be a professional athlete, I just want to lose weight.

A Dangerous Proposition

I finally figured out why my tires kept going flat on my trainer: I had a tear in my tire that had grown bigger over the winter, and was now big enough to pinch the tube when it went over the magnetic roller (I'm very proud to have figured this out all by myself). Something told me that the Target receipt I'd crammed in the tire wasn't going to hold up forever. So yesterday morning I used my first free Saturday since I came down with the flu to go to the bike shop and buy some new tires.

I, like many of you, should not be allowed to walk into a bike shop any more than I should be allowed to walk into a bar on Ladies' Night with a paycheck in my pocket. I picked out the cheapest tires I could find for my smaller-than-standard-sized wheels, knowing that these probably wouldn't be the tires that would be seeing the most competition this year. The bike geek guy easily upsold me several sets of tubes, since I'd gone through about 4 in the past week. And then, as he was ringing me up, I uttered the famous last words, "DO YOU THINK YOU COULD SHOW ME SOME OF YOUR ROAD BIKES?" I would not walk out of the store for another hour and a half.

Actually, to be honest, I really do need a new bike. It really isn't about want. My bike is a Decathalon brand hunk of steel that cost me 350 euros (about $500 at the time), and was worth every penny, but not a cent more. My bike, quite frankly, is the crappiest of entry-level bikes. It is, however, a step up from the too-big 1970's Pugeot that I got for free from someone's back yard that I rode for my first season. (I was given it for free, I didn't steal it.) It doesn't have the shifters on the frame like the Pugeot did, but the gears are pretty finicky and often don't work right. The wheels are smaller than a standard size, which means that I get less distance for each pedal stroke, and the downfork is too short to accommodate a bigger wheel. It weighs in excess of 25lb, which is pretty heavy for such a tiny little thing. And worst of all, where most people's bikes say Trek, Cervélo, Specialized, Bianchi or other such known and respected names, mine says DECATHLON. No, no, I don't want a new bike, I NEED one.

Once I had managed to establish that I wasn't a newbie, and I wasn't going to waste a perfectly good bike if he sold one to me, we really got to talking. I won't bother to bore you with what he told me about carbon fiber, crank sets, frame size vs. fore and aft positioning of the saddle, and other interesting tidbits. Homeboy sure knew how to talk, and every question I asked, I got a 10-minute answer to. I mentioned that I wasn't too worried about minute weight differences, since it was much easier to lose off the engine than off the bike. "And anyway," I said, "I'm so tiny, I'm much lighter than most people anyway." I'd always drawn some solace out of that point, athletically pretty much the only thing I have going for me... or so I thought.
"You should worry about it more than anyone else," he said. I looked at him, dumbfounded. Was he trying to steal my money selling me something I didn't need? "Think about it, you weigh, what? 100 lb?"
Oh pssssshhh. This guy was definitely trying to take advantage of me, but still, that one always works. "More like 130," I said.
"No way. Can't be." I'm wearing loose-fitting jeans and a winter jacket, how can you tell? I thought. "Anyway, think about it, I weigh 175 lb. If I have to push a 25-lb bike, it's only 1/7 of my body weight, but for you, it's a quarter." He had a point, even if for me it was really more like 1/5. "If you lose the weight off your body, then you're going to be dragging an even larger proportion of your body weight, even if your strength-to-weight ratio goes up without the bike." Oh crap, now I'm going to have to have an anorexic bike. Fabulous.

Although it was all interesting, it wasn't really answering my questions about the bottom line. "Well then, how much should I spend on a bike for my ability, my body, and what I want?" I asked. My criterion were:
1) Is it a bike that I'm still going to love in 2 years, when it's no longer new and we're used to each other? I don't love bikes that constantly need parts being replaced.
2) Is it a road bike that I can trick out for time trialing, but can still bring with me up into the mountains? My favorite kind of riding is NOT triathlon-style riding, and I don't want to have to buy two crappy bikes instead of one nice one to fit my needs.
3) Will it look cool? I don't want people to take one look at my bike and think I don't know how to ride anymore.

"Well, where do you want to go in the sport?" he asked.
What? What kind of question was that? I don't know how to answer that. I want to win Kona, no, I want to finish 50 ironmans, no, I want to have fun... I don't know. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, you don't want a tri bike. You said cycling was your strongest event. So why do you do triathlon and not cycling?"
These questions are making me uncomfortable. I don't like it when people ask me questions I don't know how to answer! I know why I'm not just a cyclist:
~I get bored with one sport.
~cycling is really high-maintenance and expensive.
~it's too time consuming. You can't really do an effective 50-minute cycling workout like you can swimming or running.
~it's dangerous. I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket in a sport where your equipment fails you so often.
But there sure are things I don't like about triathlon:
~races are such a big deal. You have to show up to every event with a suitcase full of gear, you have more costume changes than a 3-act play, and there's so much to think about all at once.
~it is fucking expensive, like cycling and then some.
~sharks, and the possibility of sharks. I'm afraid of open water. Plus that water is damn cold.
~running. I really do hate running sometimes. After a bike ride happens to be one of those times.
Why do I do triathlons? I don't actually like triathlons so much, but I'd have trouble deciding which of the three is my favorite sport. I wouldn't want to give one of them up, I just don't like putting them all together. I like that the challenge keeps me honest and makes me get out there and do/see things I wouldn't normally do or see, but rowing, hang gliding, bobsledding, and dog shows could do that.

"You know, USA Cycling is always looking for women pros," he said. "All the new blood in the sport goes over to triathlon. No one wants to do just cycling anymore. But I've never known a young triathlete who loved the sport so much that he traveled the country living out of a VW bus so he could ride every day in a new place." Well of course not, a triathlete needs a pool. But he had a point. "You know, you don't have to be a genetic freak in women's cycling to be a pro. Really, I bet you could do it. So, why triathlon? Where do you want to go in the sport?" I was still stumped. I wasn't really considering pursuing a career as a pro cyclist, although I was flattered he would suggest it.

The subject came back to the bike, and what my budget should be. "Well," he asked, "are you a competitive person?" Am I a competitive person? There are no words to describe how competitive I am. "And yet you say you're not a very good swimmer or runner," he pointed out. Again, he had a point. Sometimes I get so angry. I suck at running, I really do. For the amount of work I put into it, I really should be going faster. This has been the case since high school when we had to do speed work and I couldn't make the intervals that even the slowest girls on the team were making. I will never, ever run one 7:00 mile in my life, let alone several of them back-to-back. And it just doesn't seem fair that there are people that can just roll out of bed and run at a pace that puts my best race pace to shame. And don't try to tell me it's not true. It is.

We settled on a rough number and I promised I'd come back for some of the store rides, even if it did have to be on my crappy bike. As I was paying for my tires, tubes, and some accelerade, a gearhead that had been hanging around the shop while they fixed his pedals asked me, "So, did you buy a bike?"
"Nah, I was just seeing what was out there so I would know how much to save up," I said.
"What? You didn't tell her about the financing options?" he asked the shop guy. There are financing options?! Now that I know I can run up a tab I'm in some real trouble, this guy certainly does know how to make a sell.

When it comes time, PLEASE remind me that I DON'T NEED a professional-grade road bike.

Epilogue

I'm putting up a poll about your motivations for doing triathlon. For those of you who don't tend to favor one sport, what keeps you from pursuing the one that you're best at? Why do you do three sports instead of just one?
A) I suck at all three, but there's always someone that sucks more than me in each, so I usually come out ahead of someone.
B) I get bored concentrating on just one sport.
C) I just really, really love it because I'm good at it.
D) I don't know, because someone conned me into it a long time ago? It could have just as easily been fly fishing.
E) I don't have athletic ADD. I only do one sport.

As usual, you can vote more than once.

This week's poll

Last week's poll on new year's resolutions barely warents mentioning. Seven people voted. Of those seven people, one wanted only to lose weight, one wanted only to compete in a certain event, and the rest of us wanted to do both. There was one vote for quitting something, and since that one person was me, and I actually quit that something almost 4 months ago, it hardly counts. Bleh. Let's see if I can spark a little more controversy and feedback this week.

Since last week we learned we all share the same goals of trimming down and getting faster in 2008, this post is about fitness "myths" (myths in quotation marks, because I'm sure that some of you will have my head on a platter for questioning some of the following Fitness Facts). But first, a little bit of an anecdote to get us all warmed up.

I haven't had a scale since I left Spain, and even then weight was measured in kilograms, so I haven't had an accurate idea of how much I weigh in years. Ever since the freshman 15, though (which I gained my freshman year in high school), I've been pretty much the same weight: 130. When I'm working out, I'm a trimmer 130. When I'm being a lazy slob, I'm a softer, flabbier 130. I could be standing on the moon and I'd weigh 130 lb. But since I've been home I've been training a lot and really watching what I eat. I thought for sure that after 3 1/2 months of this I would have lost at least 5 pounds. Probably more like 10. Heck, as long as we're pulling numbers out of our ass, I'd lost 20 whole pounds running around in the cold. Anyway, my point is, I know I'm skinnier. After a crappy day at work today I put on some workout clothes and a jacket I haven't worn in awhile and started to pack up to go work off my anger in the weight room. "Wow, in that outfit you can really tell how much weight you've lost," said my mom. Keep in mind that in my absence, even if it's only 2 hours, my mom always thinks I weigh 40 lb more than I do. (That's 170 lb., if you haven't done the math in your head.) I would come home from college at the fat 130 and she would say I looked like I lost weight. The clothes she buys me fit me like a tent. Anyway, mom thinks I'm so skinny. I tried to ignore the fact that my mom was staring at my ass and drove to the gym where I went straight to the weight room. I mean the real weight room, the one with the barbells and collars and scary muscle men, not the room with all the slick weight machines. I worked every muscle between my shoulders and my butt (plus some extra posterior chain work). It was the first time I've lifted weights since Thanksgiving, and the time before that might have been in 2005. That done, I go down to the locker room, already starting to feel sore, and what do I see sitting there innocently in the corner, but a scale. Nothing would make me feel better after a really shitty day at work than to find out that I suddenly weigh 110 lb. So I take a pee, strip down, and step on the scale, confident and feeling more light-hearted than I have ever felt stepping on a scale in my life. I looked down and saw...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
... a zero. Okay, I'd done it wrong. I re-tared the scale and stepped back on. It did that jumping around thing it does 120 (oh please, oh please!), 134 (oh god no!), 122 (go back down!), 128 (please tell me you're not done going back down yet!). When the numbers had stopped blinking and finally settled on a number, I couldn't believe my eyes. It showed...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
One Hundred and Twenty Nine Point Eight Pounds! You've gotta be fucking kidding me! I have lost a grand total of .2 pounds since I came home. That's like the weight of a baby carrot. And don't give me any of that bullshit about it being the end of the day and water weight and bowel movements and wearing my 10-lb underwear. I know about all that stuff, I am the QUEEN of rounding down on scales. I'm pretty sure I didn't have to take a 10-lb crap, and I'd left my 10-lb underwear at home today, so that was actually some kind of body mass.

So this week's poll question is: Which is the biggest crock of shit:
A) (said in the high-pitched voice of a peppy female friend named Kimmy) "Don't worry, you really are getting thinner. It's just that muscle weighs more than fat. You look great!"
B) (said in the voice of a wiry strung-out distance freak named Ben) "Dude, a triathlete has no place in the weight room. That shit'll slow you down. Makes you bulky. Go do some intervals."
C) (said in the squeaky, whiny voice of a Paris Hilton protégée named Chrissy) "OMG! Carbs are like soooooooooo bad for you. They like make you hella fat like hella quick. I'll never touch another carb as long as I live. BFF!" (You may insert a similar speech by Kimmy about protein or fats and vote for option C as well).
D) (said in the voice of an eighties aerobics instructor named Tammy with leg warmers and a terrycloth headband) "Cardio is the way to lose weight. You want to always stay at under 70% of your maximum heart rate, or what is called your fat burning zone. If you go any faster you'll just build big, ugly, bulky muscle. Ben from option B can tell you about how bad muscles are."

As usual, you can vote more than once.

See You at the Races / This Week's Poll

I don't know if it was fear, inspiration, or insanity, but I went on a race sign-up spree yesterday. I am now signed up for 5 races that are 10 miles or more in the next 3 months. Many of the events were chosen expressly to stalk random New England readers (and you thought nobody read your sidebars), so I am desperately hoping to round up some more troops to keep me company.

On January 27 I'll be doing the Boston Prep 16 Miler in Derry, New Hampshire. My participation in this race is due almost entirely to Gadfly Thom (formerly New-Friend-Thom) and his e-nagging (which is not nearly as bad as I make it out to be, don't worry). Cranky, this means I was lying about coming down to do the half in Manhattan. Do you have any better suggestions for races worth making the trip down for?

On February 2 I will be going up to Portland to run the Maine Running Company's 10-Mile Mid-Winter Classic. The original plan was to meet Nitsirk there, but now she says she might chicken out. So, be sure to click on the link and heckle/coax her out. Maine is a mighty cold place to go to run 10 miles all by yourself.

Then I have a couple of weeks off before the Hyannis Half Marathon on February 24. I picked this race specifically for two reasons: 1. because I'm stalking Mindy, who had this up on her sidebar, and 2. because Hyannis always sounds to me like High Anus and the 8-year-old in me (which is about 95% of me) thinks that's really funny. I want a t-shirt that says High Anus.

Next up is Stu's 30k on March 2, an 18.64 mile romp through Clinton, MA which has apple picking about one month out of the year, and god knows what they do the other 11. On March 2nd I'll find out.

Finally, on March 30 I'll be rocking up for the Eastern States 20 Miler from Kittery, Maine through New Hampshire, and back into the Commonwealth in Salisbury (hooray for small states, we don't have to run 100 miles to cover 3 states up here, thank god). I don't know where I came up with this idea, I'm sure I got it from somewhere. If it was from your sidebar, I hope to see you there... ummm, whoever you are.

So, come out and join me. Please?

Now, back to the poll. I'm sorry I've been a bit lax on keeping up with it. It's been a busy few weeks, and I've had a lot to talk about. Anyway, here are the results for the most baddest assest blogger out there:
Our runner up, with 3 votes, was Leana, our crazy Cannuck (spelling?) who ran three ten-mile runs in a 19-hour period.
In a tie for first, with 5 votes each were Bree Wee for being an all-around rockstar, and Rocketpants for having the coolest blogger nickname and profile photo there is.
And finally, there were 2 votes for "someone else": Bill, who nominated himself (I don't care how badass you think you are, that's pretty lame, Bill), and Spence, nominated by Rocketpants.
I got NO votes. You guys stink.

This week the question is obvious. We all have New Year's resolutions. What was yours?
A) To lose weight, FINALLY. Whether your plan includes running lots, 1-800-Jenny-20 or both, you are going to trim down this year... just as soon as all those Christmas cookies are finally gone.
B) To give something up, be it smoking, drinking, processed foods, yelling at your kids, kicking pigeons, peeing in the shower, biting your nails, your significant other... no more in 2008. Well, by the END of 2008 you will have given it up anyway.
C) An event. Whether it's earning the right to toe the line at Kona or Boston, or winning a medal at the Podunkville 5k and Doughnut Chomp your finisher's metal or trophy is going to say 2008 and have your name on it.
D) Take better care of your teeth. You wouldn't think this is a big one, but every year I meet someone who has high expectations for their dental routine in the coming year.
E) I had a resolution, but I already broke it, so who cares?

(Remember, you can vote more than once)