My new secret weapon

This week was the launch of the New Claire. This New Claire is going to become a runner.

runner - [RUNner] n, 1. a person or animal who runs, especially races
2. one who runs for fun
3. a person capable of completing a 5k in 21 minutes or less, a 10K in 45 minutes or less, a half marathon in 1:45 or less, and a marathon in 3:40 or age-graded Boston Marathon qualifying time; antonyms – jogger, Claire

Since The New Claire has decided that becoming an ultrarunner is the stupidest idea she's ever had, The New Claire will have way more time and energy to spend concentrating on getting fast.

(By the way, the New Claire, once she has achieved this goal, is going to go right back to being the Old Claire and begin a training program that is about 75% cycling, because running is stupid.)

And the New Claire has a secret weapon. Just two doors down, in a big, beige house that looks much like Speedy Labs (only with more children's toys in the front yard), lives the most dangerous weapon known to women ages 25-29. In that house you will find the key to my future success: MICHELLE!

Dun, dun, DUUUUN!!!
(Yes, in dire circumstances I have been know to cavort with women in pink... and believe me, my running is in a state of emergency. I would dress in pink if I thought it would make me faster.)

And how does this very dangerous Michelle work? Well I'll tell you... But you'll have to go find a michelle of your own, because this one's taken!

First, Michelle is older than me. So much older than me that we'll never be in the same age group, and therefore never in direct competition.  Therefore, she doesn't mind (much) if I start running faster.  She is so much older than me, that there is no reason why she should be able to run so much faster than me. In pink. Michelle knows that making me mad is a good way to make me go faster. Michelle knows EXACTLY how to make me mad. She knows that the active ingredients of that potion are the color pink, skorts that you run in, and a "we're all winners here!" attitude. Michelle has all those ingredients in endless supply.

Second, Michelle has way more experience running than I do. She's... you know... old and all, but she also has a coach. So while I'm gasping for air and she is still breathing free and easy, I get to mooch all kinds of free running advice off of her.

But here's the secret ingredient that will be the key to my success, and makes my Michelle better than any michelle you could ever find: Michelle is the worst pacer in the world. Okay, maybe the second worst pacer. I'm the worst.

And this will make me faster.

How? I'll tell you.

Tuesday I was going to run 5x1M@7:50 on 10:00. I was going to do it on the treadmill so that I could go an even pace and get the work in. I love the treadmill because I can't go out too fast, and all I have to concentrate on is not falling off the back. But Michelle wanted to run on the road. "Don't you worry," she said. "I'll take care of the pacing, all you have to do is follow me, it'll be fun!"

And I trusted her. You always trust a woman in pink. Pink evokes trust... and it stimulates the gag reflex.

I should have known that I was fucked when, as a warm-up for our 7:50 mile repeats, Michelle set the warm-up pace at 8:00 miles. You will never find a michelle cruel enough to do that to you. Only my Michelle, created in a top-secret facility in southern Ohio, is specially calibrated to fuck with your lactate threshold that early in a workout.

We got to the lake, and to my relief, Michelle needed to stop for a minute to calibrate her specialized precision pacing monitor: she hit reset on her Garmin. What?! That's it?! THIS is how she's going to keep our pace?! I thought. Then Michelle was off like a shot.

Before I disclose the details of how Michelle is going to improve my performance more than any drug, let me tell you a little story about pacing from a Garmin. A few months ago, back when I was at a job I liked and life was good, I got an e-mail from Angry saying something like, "I just ran 4.xx miles, average pace 8:04. Beat that!"
"Okay, I will!" I said. This exchange would ultimately nearly end our friendship, but this story is not about our friendship. It is about my running. But you have to PROMISE not to tell Angry, cuz he still doesn't know this.

Promise? Okay.

So the very next day I went down to the track determined to run 4.5 miles averaging 8:03 pace. I have a GPS, I thought, this'll be easy! I set it to beep if I went slower than 8:03 pace and started running. When I first looked down at my watch after a second or two, it said I was going roughly 9:58 pace. Oh no! This will not do! I thought, and sped up. Then I hit about 9:15 pace. Oh no! This will not do! I thought, and sped up. After about two hundred meters I look down and suddenly I'm running about 6:50 pace, breathing like a fat girl, and snotting all over myself. What I discovered is that there is AT LEAST a 5 second delay on that damned thing. Five seconds is a really long time when you're running about 40 seconds per mile faster than your threshhold.

Long story short, after about 2.5 miles I needed to stop or I was going to puke or shit my pants or both. But I couldn't walk, because that would fuck up my time. I already had my garmin set to autopause when I was stopped, so what did I do? I stopped dead in my tracks. Just went from a 7:20 min/mi to standing stock still in one step. I didn't even move my wrist for fear of the satellite thinking I was moving. I felt woozy for a couple of seconds, but I didn't move, and I stood still until I felt like I could run again, and then I SPRINTED back down the track so that it wouldn't register me as having actually stopped. I had to repeat this little stunt about 2 more times, but I DID finish the 4.5 miles on about 7:50 pace. Not counting rests.

(At the moment that I write this, Angry and I are still friends. Who knows if that'll be true if he finds out what really happened on the track that day).

The ironic thing is, that as I was running home from the track, I actually SAW Michelle and we had a good laugh about it, because Michelle probably already knew it's impossible to pace off a Garmin Forerunner!

Back to the lake, Michelle resets her timer and then is off like a shot. I take off after her like the fat little bunny in Disney's Robin Hood that's always yelling, "Wait for me, Mama! Wait for me!" I finally caught her, and when I get a chance to look down at my watch after about 100 meters, we're going at like a 6:10 mile. "SLOW DOWN, MICHELLE!" I gasped.
"Oh, sorry!" she giggled.

We ran that first mile in 7:29. That is the fastest continuous mile I have ever run in my life. It was so fast, that I involuntarily peed my pants for the first time in a non-cough-related incident. When I asked a friend (who will remain nameless) about how to run fast, she confided that at one point she would run 5 and 10K's so hard that she would lose control of her bladder at the end. When I read that, I hadn't the faintest idea of how that could happen. Now I know. There were people that I went to high school with walking around this pond right now, and I'd wet my pants. Great!

Do you remember in 7th grade science class how you did the experiment where you stuck only a corner of a paper towel in water and watched the water rise through the paper due to capillary action? I insist that that's the reason I continued to pee my pants on the rest of the mile repeats.

You may find a michelle, but your michelle wouldn't make you run so hard you pee your pants. Only my Michelle can do that.

"Michelle, next time we have GOT to run slower!" I said. I already hadn't been feeling well, and had debated whether running was a good idea at all.
"Alright, this one will be slower, I promise!" she said.

And we DID hold an average of 7:50, on the hilly end of the course, which meant spending a good half of the time in the 7:10 range. "Do you remember when we started?" Michelle asked, as I was going into cardiac arrest.
"No! That was supposed to be your job! You're the pacer!" I gasped.
So instead of trying to figure it out, Michelle, who is not only a superb pacer but also an accurate judge of distances said, "I say... riiiiight... here!" It turned out to be only .8 miles, which was just fine by me, because I felt like I was about to puke.

Finally, on the third one we hit 7:48, but at this point my legs were so fried I thought I was going to die right then and there. "Michelle, I can't do another one!" I said.
"Aw, come on, just one more!" she said, and took off again. I had no choice but to run after her again. Wait for me, mama!  Wait for me!

On this one we managed to average 7:49 pace, but on the hilly end of the course. Michelle was pulling away. At .75 miles I did the only thing I knew how to do in such situations. I stopped dead in my tracks, stood stock still, and yelled after her, "I'm not running with you anymore!" My crotch was soaked, I had that stabbing pain above my right pelvic bone in the back again, and I was pretty sure I was about to shit my pants (nothing would have surprised me at this point).

And when I had given up and wanted to run easy the short way home, what did Michelle do? She made me keep running. Any generic copycat michelle would have taken mercy on your soul, but not my Michelle. She was determined to kill me. Not only did we take the long way back around the lake (tacking on about 2 miles), but we also took the long way home, tacking on another couple of little (huge) hills. And did we go slow?! Of COURSE we didn't go slow! We went only slightly slower.

On top of everything else, what was supposed to be an 8-mile run, was over 9. At one point in time we had actually hit 5:32 min/miles. When you say, "I want to qualify for Boston or die trying," most people wouldn't take that literally. Not my Michelle. And that's why Michelle is the most dangerous thing to ever happen to the female 25-29 age group. Because Michelle is going to turn me into the baddest assest mofo on 2 legs by making me survive workouts that make me wet my pants until I just curl up and die at the side of the road.

We went for a tempo run on Thursday morning. The pace got out of control again (this time it was my fault), and this time I was quite sure I was going to shit my pants. But for the first time I'm putting up average speeds (for the whole workout, including warm-up and cool-down) that are in the mid-8-minute range! I have no idea what I'll do when Michelle's rest week is over and she gets back to the REAL running. I'm thinking of tying a bungee cord to her waist and just coming along for the ride.

And the best part?! She's maybe, probably, I'm pretty sure, possibly, I don't want to make any promises but..., thinking (very seriously) about running Disney with me in January.

By the way, Michelle reads this blog. So everyone, be nice to her. But go get your own, this one's taken!

But how do you KNOW?!

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Can't say I blame them

I just read this article about gay athletes in the Olympics.  Men's gymnasts and divers?  Women shotputters, basketball players, and weight lifters? And they only find 10 homos?  Yeah right!

But at the same time, I never bought in to the pressure to "out" oneself to absolutely everyone.  There are certainly realms of one's life where sexual preference has no bearing whatsoever.  When famous people come out, the pink triangle crowd idolizes them, but the rest of the world never sees them the same again.

I can't say that in their position I would do any differently.  I may not lie about it, but I'm not about to go around in a rainbow skinsuit either.

(Feel free to respond anonymously if you'd prefer).

D.N.F means Did. Not. Finish

(Note: if you see a big, grey box in the middle of this post, I don't know how to get rid of it. Try opening this page with a different browser.)
Until today, I had never dropped out of a race. Once I had not made a cutoff, and I had several Did Not Starts to my credit, but I had never quit in a race. Until today. But let's start at the beginning.

It all begins on my couch where I have spent every free minute of the past 9 days. I come home from my new job which I loathe every day, plop down on the couch, and turn on the Olympics. When something lame like volleyball is on, I watch the events that I TeVoed. When mom finally goes to bed, I turn out the lights and go to sleep on the couch, because my insomnia has been so bad lately that I haven't been able to sleep in my own bed. I wake up late, leave the couch to go to work, and can't wait to come back home 11 hours later to sit on the couch again.

Can you think of any worse programming to watch when you're burned out and supposed to be resting than the Olympics?

It's hard enough for me to sit still and take some time off when the biggest sporting event in 4 years ISN'T happening. It makes me want to drink. See, burnout and inspiration are a pretty fucked up mix. You want to get out there and tear it up and train like an animal, but at the same time you can't even seem to scrape yourself off the couch for long enough to change into pajamas, let alone go for a run, or wake up at 4:30 to go swimming.

So even though you're SUPPOSED to be resting, and this is what you've PLANNED to do, you feel guilty about it, because Dara Torres is 15 years older than you, and she still looks SO much better than you do.

... And sooner or later you are going to come to the conclusion that you are a total loser.

In fact, it feels a lot like being hung over: there are all these things that need to get done, but instead you're sitting on your couch watching TV all day eating pizza and feeling depressed. You SWEAR that this is the last time, tomorrow will be different. But tomorrow is NEVER different. So if you're going to feel this shitty anyway, why not drink?

Don't worry, I haven't. I feel shitty enough as it is, I don't need booze fucking up my life even further. And anyways, I used to feel like this before I really started hitting the bottle hard anyway. Back before I drank, I used to slash my wrists up when I felt like this. Because, yes, I really am crazy. Just, when I'm training, I tend to hide it better. And training makes me feel much more comfortable in a tank top than the alternative. Training is the only thing that makes the Crazy Claire go away.

But I can't seem to drag my ass off the couch.

So I was able to assuage my guilt a little bit, knowing that on Sunday, August 17 (today), I would go back to training. I could be as lazy and fat a blob as I wanted before then, because on August 17, IT'S ON!

Last night I watched the women's marathon. For each event Mom and I decide which athlete we are so that we have someone to rout for. I called Dina Castor. I dropped out of the marathon after only about 2 miles. Mom was Paula Radcliffe (her second choice, it turns out that Frank Shorter wasn't running the women's marathon this year). At least she finished, in what was arguably the most inspiring finish of the race: sticking it out through what was obviously a painful injury, just to prove to the British press that she wasn't a quitter. I watched Constantina Tomescu-Dita run almost twice as fast as I run a marathon, then I watched Dara Torres swim across a 50 meter pool faster than I can swim across a 25 yard pool. Then I went to bed (not the couch), and tossed and turned for hours. I got less than 4 hours' sleep before I got up at 4:00 to drive to the upper left-hand corner of Massachusetts to run a 20 mile trail race. Hopefully this would snap me out of my funk. I was tired.


... This had better work...

I saw Gadfly Thom before the race and he explained that it was a new course. They were doing 2 10-mile loops this year, rather than 1 20-mile out and back to cut down on the need for volunteers. Oh yeah, and on top of the course being very hilly and covered in roots, he'd heard that today it was muddy.

... And something about river crossings?...

We started running and the first mile went well. Before the second mile was halfway done, though, my shoes were soaked. I'd managed to prance around the outside of the giant mud pits for the first mile, but eventually I aimed for a solid-looking spot, landed, and was ankle deep in shoe-sucking mud.

Crappy cameraphone. Trust me, that's all shoe-sucking mud.

And it happened again, and again, and again. I was slipping all over the course. Everyone was. With mud caked all over our shoes, and some of the rockiest, rootiest, most technical trails I have ever run on, we were taking the slippery mud to places that were not covered in slippery mud before.

And that was when you could FIND the trail. A dozen of us went off course in the second mile. Around the 6th mile we went off course again and climbed a mountain that did not need climbing. The single-track trail was extremely overgrown in many places (the few places not covered in shoe-sucking mud pits), and even if you could distinguish the trail from the rest of the underbrush, you couldn't always see what kind of terrain was under it. I would be surprised if there was a whole minute that went by where I didn't trip or slip. The winner of the race said that he fell down a total of 7 times. We must have had to climb over 100 fallen trees in the 10-mile loop. I knew it was just a matter of time before my toe caught on one of them and I bit it.

There was a 4-mile race going on at the same time, and when we reached the turn-off sometime in the third mile and I considered taking a left rather than a right, I knew that I was not going to finish this race. I did eventually take the left to follow the long course, but I already knew my heart wasn't in it.

"Godforsaken" was a word that one man used to describe the course. But it wasn't really anything too, too bad. It's not like it was impossible. Very hard, but finishable. My heart just wasn't in it. I knew I could finish, if I wanted to. I just really, really, really didn't want to.

Luckily, since everyone kept getting lost, the field never had a chance to spread out much. I always had people around me. I mentioned that I planned to drop out to a couple of the guys slipping through a mud pit with me, and they tried to convince me otherwise. "No, really, you don't understand," I said. "I just really, really DON'T WANT to finish."

Have you ever felt a nagging injury and known that this time, if you push through it, you'll be out for the season? That's how my brain felt. It was time to call it quits. Problem was, I still had about 7 miles to go.

At about mile 7 an invisible trail lead up a mountain. At first it was steep, then it became a wall. There were a couple of times when I stood next to a course marker tied to a branch looking in all directions trying to figure out where in this vertical rock face they really expected me to go?! There was a point near the top when I was scrambling up the rock on all fours that I actually started to get dizzy. I hadn't eaten anything since I got out of the car, and hadn't really paid much attention to my hydration. For whatever reason, I felt bad and for a moment I thought of just sitting down where I was. Someone else could figure out how to get me off this damned mountain, but I wasn't moving another step.

But I kept going, and the view was worth it.

I just didn't feel like I had to see it again on a second loop.

As I was running down the hill (once I COULD run again, still swinging around tree trunks to steady myself whenever possible), I heard someone crashing through the woods behind me. "Just let me know when you want to come around," I yelled.
"Alright," he said in an Indian accent. I knew exactly who it was. It's not like there were dozens of Indian guys lined up at the start. When he came around, I don't know what possessed me to follow him and start up a conversation. He was running much faster than I was, and up until now I hadn't much felt like talking to anyone.

I'm a bit hard of hearing, and with him in front of me and speaking with an accent, I only caught about half of what was said, but I ran after him anyways. Fast. The truth is, I felt okay and was probably running better than I had at any other point in the race. I just really, REALLY didn't want to do a second loop of this bullshit. I told him as much. He said that he was quitting after the first loop too. Maybe that's why I decided to talk to him, because he wasn't trying to urge me on. Some people need to mind their own business.

Somehow we got to talking about cycling. I told him about the time I rode in the Adirondacks and it was so hilly I wound up crying by the time I got back to my car. "Your endurance must be really good to ride over 100 miles," he said.
"It's a heck of a lot easier than running a marathon," I said. Then we talked about running, about how I hate running, about how he loves running.
"So what kind of distances do you run?" he asked. "Do you run trail or road more?"
I didn't know how to answer him. "I guess I usually run on road," I said. "But I'm trying to become an ultrarunner this fall... and learn how to run fast at the same time." Then a lightbulb went off. "I don't know why I do it," I said. "I hate running. I really do. And I'm no good at it at all. I just can't seem to get any better. But cycling I like. And I'm good at it."
"Well, you can always become a better runner if you really work at it," he said. I've heard that one before, I thought.
At that moment it dawned on me that maybe I really didn't care enough to work at it. Why bother, if I hate it so much? I mean, really, who did I think I was fooling?

We pulled up on another group of runners. Sri (which was his name) dashed on ahead, but I was too lazy to keep up the effort to keep up with him. We were in another muddy patch, and I preferred to pick my footing more carefully.
"How you doing?" asked a woman who had heard me talk about pulling out before.
"You know... running," I said.
"How you feeling?"
"Fine, I guess," I said.
"Why don't you come along for the second loop?"
"Not a chance," I said.
"Aw, come on, you can do it!" said a chick that I had long ago decided was the hottest chick on the trail.
"I know I can. Just because you CAN do something, doesn't always mean you should."
"You can walk it. Come on, don't quit. Keep going with us!" I have done much stranger things to talk to a girl than simply running an extra 10 miles through the mud. But not today.
"You know, I really don't feel bad about it. I know I could keep going, I just really, really don't want to. I'd rather quit this race today than keep going and burn out so badly I quit running altogether." I didn't know if that last sentence was true or not.

When I got to the end I went up to the men with the bulletin board full of numbers and I said, "I'm done."
"You're not going to run anymore?"
"Nope."
"Why don't you just sit here for a little while and have a snack and see if in a little while..."
"Nope, I'm done. I don't want to run anymore. I'm not going to change my mind."
"Is everything okay?" They looked concerned. I have a feeling a lot of runners had been complaining about the course.
"Yeah. I'm fine. I just am not really in the mood to run today. If the course were just difficult, or if it were just the mud, I'd be all in. Today's just not the day."
"Okay then," they said. And they let me be.

My shoes looked much worse than this before, but we ran through a knee-deep river shortly before the finish, so they were cleaned off a bit.
Not the greatest picture my shitty camera phone has ever taken. Apparently the back of my shirt looked pretty bad too, but I didn't want to see what my butt ACTUALLY looks like in a pair of skin-tight shorts, so I asked him to just take a picture of my legs.

I still got to eat the food, though, and as I sat there eating my orzo salad and corn on the cob (trail races DO have the best food and the best hospitality), I noticed that I was in good company. There were 2 Western States veterans who had also gone for the "10-mile option". If it was good enough for them, it was good enough for me. Before I left, the winner came in in about 3 hours and 20 minutes. I finished Eastern States (road) 20 miler in 3 hours and 13 minutes! I am many things, but a fast runner I am not. Even the winners seemed pretty miffed at the difficulty of the course. I didn't regret my decision.

In the car on the way home I had 3 hours to think. To say that I regretted my decision would be false, but I did beat up on myself quite a bit for quitting ANYTHING that I set out to do, even if it turns out that I didn't want to do it. The thought of doing about ten more long trail races this fall made me even more upset. What was I thinking?

Why am I even TRYING to run 50 miles? I hate running, and I suck at it. Riding my bike, on the other hand, I LOVE doing that. And after nearly 10 straight days of watching the best athletes in the world, all I could think about was, Why am I wasting time doing something that I hate, that I'm no good at, when I've found something that I love, and I AM good at? I can be a shitty runner when I'm older, why don't I just concentrate on what I'm good at now?

When I thought about it really hard, I decided that I was NOT in the best cycling shape I felt like I could be in, because I'd been concentrating so hard on trying to not be such a shitty runner. Then a thought that had been cooking in the back of my mind for awhile bubbled to the surface:

Why don't you quit this triathlon bullshit already, and just do what you love?

The jury's still out on the answer to that question.

I have disallowed comments because within 12 hours of posting I already had 2 comments that fit into the categories below. I don't want to hear the following:
A) Don't be so hard on yourself. You need time to recover. Take more time off than just 2 weeks. (Screw you, I need this).
B) Noooooo! This is your dream. Don't get discouraged! You can do it! (If you say this, maybe you need to check yourself. Is it MY dream or YOURS? When exactly have you heard me say it was my dream?)
C) Don't worry. We all have bad days. (While you're REALLY thinking, Weakling! I TOTALLY would have finished that race!)
D) You are NOT a shitty runner! And something else to the tune of "Group hugs all around!"
E) No suggestions that I will someday beat Karen Smyers at the time trial. YOU people made that up, not me!

Do I really LOOK like that?!

I almost called this post "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", but the way I see it, you're only allowed to use that title once in your life (and even once is pushing the corn-o-meter), so I'll refrain. One thing I'll say is the only thing more humbling than the marathon at the end of an ironman, is seeing what you LOOKED like that whole time. Why didn't anyone TELL me?!

What is that? A bumble bee?! No, it's Claire primping herself for the cameras.
Alternate caption: "Take me to your leader!"
This chick is not me. This chick doesn't even look like me, but her picture is in with mine. Her wetsuit: Zoot. Mine: Orca. Hers: long-sleeved. Mine: Sleeveless. Her eyes: Creapy blue. Mine: Brown. Although, looking at the goggles in her hand, I remember swimming next to her, until I sprinted away from her at the end. Haha!

Is that a face I make?! Really?! It looks like I'm saying, "ROAR, I'm coming to eat your babies!"

I was having helmet issues. The braids stuck out too much at the bottom forcing my helmet down on my forehead. I didn't know I looked like THAT much of a dork though! That's it. Next year I'm getting a "pointy helmet"!

Finally! A crosswise picture of me on the bike! I was hoping my arms would look WAY more ripped than that! And why do they always, ALWAYS get you with the leg closest to the camera bent?! You ALWAYS look fatter that way! (And yes, I know my bike looks silly with such large wheels, but I used to have more proportionate wheels and went MUCH slower).

Camera side bent leg AGAIN! Helmet issues AGAIN! I have yet to see a picture of me on the bike that I like!

No wonder my shoulders get sore! How can I even see out from under that thing?! Note: Camera side leg bent AGAIN!

And of course the most pictures were taken on the run. What kind of sadists are these people?!

Proof that my feet do, in fact, leave the ground sometimes when I run. My shadow is short, so this must have been really early in the run. This picture also shows that I can get "cold runner syndrome" even when it's nearly 100* out! This one is my favorite because I have a smudge of something on my leg that makes it look like I have a muscle.

First loop. I think I'm such hot shit. I can still pick my feet up... a little.

Would you look at how much air I was getting in that stride?! Whew! I could be in a running shoe ad, I'm tellin' ya! Must be later on: long shadows.

Is that... an Adam's apple?!

What is going through my head at this moment: 'I hate my life, I hate my life!'

The awful Lap 2. My legs felt heavier than at any other point in the race. Funny how they look fatter in this picture than any other picture too. Look at that face: THAT is the face of suffering.

Low speed chase. The secret to my superhuman speed is the superior length of my stride. I strode a full 3 centimeters on every step of that final loop!

Digging deep to keep up my blistering 12-and-a-half-minute-mile pace.

Well I sure taught HIM a lesson! I don't think HE'll be back!
Note: Look at all the salt on my ass! Also, not how it looks like my upper body is running, but my legs appear to be even, indicating I MUST be standing still.

I finish an ironman and THAT's the face I make?! (Note: my time is 10 minutes behind the clock time.) I find it ironic that this is the ONE picture where I have both feet off the ground.

I swear the arms in the air thing was not out of triumph at the time. It was because I thought I was going to get caught in the tape. I look like I'm about to fall over in this picture.