Running Around at Work

I have to be honest, one excuse reason that I don't update this blog as much as I should is because I spend much of my day pounding away on a computer in an office, and once I get home I don't always have it in me to sit down in front of the keyboard and compose some more.

But I am not complaining -- I have a terrific job. Especially when they have a 5K in the middle of the day.

WHAAA? Oh, yes, a race at lunchtime!

George Mason University hosts an annual Victims' Rights Run and Walk each spring. The proceeds go to the George Mason University Victims of Violence Fund and the Rape Aggression Defense Program. My office has a big group of walkers, and some enthusiastic runners.

Here are some of the people who make it pretty great to
go to work. Plus me, in the front.

The race took place a couple of weeks ago.  It was a beautiful day. About 150 runners lined up, including the Washington Nationals' Racing Presidents.

If you point a camera at the presidents, they come over and pose. They're big.

(If you look carefully in between George and Teddy, you can see George Mason's president, Ángel Cabrera, and the racing president head that was created in his likeness. I quite hope I am never important enough to rate an Anne-head.)

The Mason Patriot poses, too.

It's pretty splendid to have the opportunity to run around at lunch. And trying to keep up with the field of feisty undergraduates pushed me to my fastest 5K time ever.

After the race, we had sandwiches, popcorn, peanuts, plenty of water, and entertainment as the Racing Presidents became the dancing presidents.

Shake it down, Abe.

Stacey, one of those young folks I work with, explained that they are doing the wobble (google it, y'all, it's fun!). I told my teenager that I'm going to teach her grandparents to do that dance for their 4th of July party this year. She pulled out her Teenager Face.

Teenager: "Mom. Have you even HEARD that song?"

Me: "Why -- are the lyrics inappropriate?"

Teenager: (S-I-G-H) "Where would you even hear about the wobble?"

Well, little lady, I guess you don't know everything about your mom (thank you, Stacey). And I hope Jim's mom and dad are reading this and getting their dancing shoes warmed up for late June.

Dressing for Success

This outfit (featured on FitSugar.com) is cuter than anything I wear to run.

I am not too proud to admit that sometimes I think a lot about what I'm going to wear when I run. Mostly based on the weather -- go out too overdressed and you're going to be regretting it soon.

But (and you wouldn't believe this based on any of my race photos) sometimes it's just all about trying to look kind of nice. That's what the whole market for sparkle skirts and running tutus is based on, right?

I need to take a little aside here and talk about running tutus. I have pretty much resigned myself not to invest in one, because please, I'm 46 and you know that Bob Seger line in Rock and Roll Never Forgets? The one that says: "You used to shake 'em down but now you stop and think about your dignity"? Granted, there are some gorgeous running tutus for grown-ups out there and I'm not going to judge you if you like that fun and flouncy look but it's just not for me.

That opinion was cemented during the Cherry Blossom run a few weeks ago. Lots of the women were sporting tutus. They looked super festive. Except it was crazy windy (wicked windy, for the New Englanders), and two runners' tutus not only kind of split in the back to make little windows over their butts, but the wind caused the tutu material in the front to then blow through their legs so it stuck out like a little tuft down there (I tried to draw a picture of what it looked like but I couldn't keep the drawing from looking very, very vulgar). I am almost certain it was not the look they were going for.

Running attire is much more important than you might give it credit for. And you can ask my friend John, who just ran the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach dressed like this:

A couple of weeks prior to the race, he had put up a similar picture on Daily Mile, and I asked him what it was about. He told me that he had made a silent promise to wear a Ravens jersey on all his long runs in return for the team doing well.

And look how that turned out.

He chose #27 not necessarily for Ray Rice, but because it had been his own number in his football and lacrosse playing days. He got lots of love when he wore the jersey on his runs, including one time when a group of college kids got out of their car to high-five him during a twenty miler.

John also wore the jersey during the Outer Banks Half Marathon in November. He did that one with his dad, which is very cool.

John: "One of the water stops had an NFL theme and there were mostly Steelers jerseys (which is a big rivalry with Baltimore). There was one guy in a Ravens jersey who went crazy as we approached and then was running circles around us for a hundred yards yelling back at his water stop friends."

I'll tell you what, I can use all the help I can get. And I think an RG III jersey would make a very nice compliment to my running attire collection this fall. And I've already got a burgundy running skirt.

Running is (Not So) Hard

I was originally going to write today's post about how sometimes running kind of sucks.

Someone had posted a question on the Red Felters Facebook page along the lines of: "Hey. You all are putting some crazy fast times up here. How do us normal people ever hope to train for and run a marathon?"

And the fact is, the Red Felters group started out as a group of people training for the Marine Corps Marathon for the first time, but we have a definite Big Dog element -- people who are out there doing some amazing feats in their track shoes. They are inspiring, and it's fun to read about.

But I think it's less fun to post about those runs that don't go the way you want, so the group page gets a little skewed. And let's be honest: for every run where "Eye of the Tiger" is blasting in your head, there are plenty where they ought to be playing the "Benny Hill" theme instead. So my plan today was to write about some of my own Benny Hill runs.

But then yesterday was the Boston Marathon with all that happened, and my Benny Hill runs got awfully trivial awfully fast.

I don't have any words of wisdom better than some I've seen out there on Facebook or Twitter in the past 12 hours, so let me share some:

So what do we do now? 

We still don’t know who set the bombs. Or why. But we do know this—no marathon can ever be safe. Twenty-six miles. Thousands of runners. Hundreds of thousands of spectators. If every TSA agent in the world had descended on Boston this morning, they couldn’t have prevented it.

Evil is like that. It only takes one twisted mind, one person who thrives on the suffering of others, and suffering will follow.

So what do we do? We pray for the victims and their families. We honor them and the heroes who helped the injured. We hunt down the person or persons responsible. We vow not to let this stop us from pushing ourselves to our limit and experiencing the joy of honest hard-work and achievement.

I could never qualify for Boston, but I do love to run. When my mind gets stuck and I need creativity, or when I’m frustrated and need to pray, or when I just want to drink in all that life has to offer, I’ve always had one sure-fire elixir. I strap on the shoes, set my Garmin, and take off.

The lungs fill, the endorphins flow, the sweat drips, and the world seems right again.

They can’t stop that. They can’t stop us. We will mourn and heal and ask questions for which there are no easy answers, but we’ll be back. They can’t make us stop doing the things that help bring us life.

So what do we do now?

I don’t know about you. But I’m going for a run.

That was written by Randy Singer (a minister/lawyer/runner), and shared by my running friend Robert. Like Randy, I will never be speedy enough to qualify for that wonderful event. It is the Major League Big Show of running. My hat is off to anyone who has done it and to the thousands who will.

But yesterday and this morning, I was touched by people who came up to me and talked about the race just because, I think, I talk (maybe too much) about how I like to run. That simple act of strapping on some ugly shoes and shuffling down the street ties you to a community of runners and volunteers and spectators that includes not just the Big Dogs who set the bar high, but to all of us.

So if you ever think about running or walking, even a little, I hope you do it today. I am right there with you. I'll even hum the Benny Hill theme if you want.

 

Finding Zen with 15,000 Friends

One thing that's

A-W-E-S-O-M-E

about the DC area is that we have cherry blossoms.

This Zen-like image is from tentsocial.com

Along with the blossoms (and the tourists) comes the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10-Mile Run, which has been going on for something like 40 years. Despite having lived here in the area for most of my 40+ years, I got to do the race for the first time today.

I got on the Metro early with my friend Katie (the only one of our Cherry-Blossom-running neighbors who would tolerate my irrational need to get to races extremely early and allow for every possible bathroom break). Katie is an excellent person to accompany to a race -- or pretty much anywhere -- because she's funny as all get out. We were making the people around us on the Metro laugh, too, I'm certain of it, and I'm also sure they appreciated our wit and hilarity all the way in to the city.

Once in the city, we caught up with the Red Felt contingent who was running the race today:

Do we look cold? We were.

And that was awesome because I got to meet a few more of these fine people face to face. Including Darling and Chris, who had come down from New York to be there. I tried to get a picture of the two of them when I ran into them at the Metro station on the way home, but I learned the hard way that you cannot get through a turnstile with less than $2.70 on your farecard (I hope no one tells this to Jim, because he gets all: "How long have you lived here?" when he hears a story like that and really, it's one of his less-attractive qualities).

Soon after that photo we disbursed into our corrals and off we went. Seriously, if you get a chance to run this race, please do. It's wonderful running around the city on a spring morning, before most of the tourists get up and come on down. I had my 80's mix on my iPod, which only added to the splendor of the morning. It felt like a real DC party. Even though the cherry blossoms themselves weren't trying very hard.

I even warmed up enough to shed my sweatshirt and get down to the tank top I had on, though when we got to the waterfront area of East Potomac Park, it's kind of brrr. Three of the last four miles are on that point of land, and half of that felt like it was into the wind. You get to see the planes landing at National Airport, which is pretty cool, but I didn't care so much because I was so cold. I kept myself going by trying to chase down this guy, whom I nicknamed "Curly" because he had curly locks that are hard to see in this picture (having had stick-straight hair all my life, I am not too proud to tell you that I have a not insignificant case of curl envy):

Please note the absence of actual blossoms.

Curly was a fast dude. Somehow I got ahead of him in the last mile, then he came swooping out of nowhere. Go, Curly!

And when I crossed the finish line, my friend Katie was already there! She had a great race. She even met up with her brother by the time I caught up with her:

It's a quality brother who will come see his sister at a race when
he's in town for work and hadn't slept in a number of hours. Just sayin'.

I was very pleased with my time; I got a PR for a ten miler, and beat my previous best time by about 6 minutes. All that cold air will make you run fast. And afterwards, I got to get a pasty with one teenager, and a pedicure with the other, so all in all it was a pretty stellar day.

Running with Leprechauns

I'm a holiday behind. I am writing this the day after Easter, and I want to tell you about the Rock-n-Roll USA half that I did wayyyyy back on March 16.

This was the first distance event I'd done since messing up my foot back in August. I had no expectations, except that there were going to be a lot of people wearing green since it was right before St. Patrick's Day. I had been patiently following a training plan with lots of cross-training, and had been generally taking it easy.

Then, the week before the event, on that Rock Creek Park run with Trish, a funny thing happened. My heel was fine, but my calf started cramping up in a horrible way. Like I'd pulled something.

Panic!

I didn't run all week. I stretched like crazy. I went to the Expo the day before the race and bought compression socks and new shoes (shhhh! Don't tell Jim!). I hit up the shoe guy for lots of advice.

The day of the race, I had to walk a couple of times and had to stop a couple of other times, and that stank, but I finished that sucker and haven't had much trouble since. I think it might have been (a) trying to land my foot funky when I went running in the snow a couple of weeks before the race, (2) not hydrating enough, or (3) I'm 46. Whatever. Here's more interesting stuff.

I got to ride to the race with Aimee V., of the Red Felt crew. She made the Metro ride much more pleasant! Then, I was lucky enough to catch up with these people:

That's me, along with Shawn E, Jeremy, Tammy, Bob, Carrie Ann
Larry and Amy

This represents the Red Felt people who did not have Metro probs (Mynor) or getting-your-bib probs (Aimee). Shawn and I are pretty sassy with that hip thing going on, no?

At the starting corral, I hung out with a very nice woman named Andrea who mentioned that this race was her 36th full marathon in her quest to run a marathon in all 50 states. OW! She had never run in DC, and it was fun to hear her say things like, "Oh! It's the White House!" After a mile or so, she casually suggested that I join her running club. "You don't have to run fast," she encouraged. What's that club? Marathon Maniacs. Oh, no, I've never considered that. Until now . . . .

But I let her roll along when I ran into my LOVELY SISTER WHO CAME OUT TO SHOUT AT ME AND HER FRIEND DANIELLE! That's a kicking sister. She came to yell at us and then got home so her husband could get on the road to run the Shamrock half marathon in another city the next day. That is a support team extraordinaire.

I staggered along as I mentioned earlier, and as I was struggling toward the last couple of miles of the race, I fortunately met up with Zara, a funny and witty woman who was interesting enough to make me forget about how much I was feeling sorry for myself. She was part of a team running to raise awareness of Multiple System Atrophy, which is as awful as it sounds. The mom of one of her friends has it, and they had a whole team out there.

We crossed the finish line, took a selfie, and she was off to catch up with the rest of her team and I was off to wait for an hour to pick up my bag from the bag check.

Here's me and Zara:

Yes, I said I waited an hour for my bag with sweatpants in it. But the GOOD thing about that bag check was that there were really funny people in line behind me, and by the time I got to the end, I ran into my long-run-loving friend Melanie P.! Out of all the 29, 999 other people at the race, what a treat to see this fun familiar face (before the race, she'd been all like, hey, run with me and my friend Kim, but I was all: no, I think this race is going to be pretty bad so I think I'll be miserable all by myself thank you very much).

And after I got home, I had just enough energy to carb up with some Irish soda bread.

So while the race itself wasn't my very favorite, it was still a pretty stellar day. 

Teeny Tiny Race: Big Fun

Howdy!

I haven't been writing about it lately, but wrapping up the end of the winter running season has been a little crazy. We got some wet, mushy snow here in the FFX at the end of February, so I got a chance to do a little winter run.  I took a selfie of me running around in it, but I can't find it now, and maybe that's a good thing because the teenager girl in my house saw it and was horrified.

But that snow went away right in time for a really great 5K in Rock Creek Park in DC.

Now, I'm from Virginia, and therefore I don't get the courage up to go across the river that often. But my friend Trish is cool enough to live over there and she walks in Rock Creek almost every day. One day she happened upon Mike, who runs District Fitness. Mike was holding a 5K that had fitness stops along the way: push-ups, crunches, jumping jacks, squats, and a trivia contest.

He had me at trivia.

That and the opportunity to run with Trish, who I have known longer than I've known anyone I'm not related to. I met her in THIRD GRADE, y'all!

 When we were in sixth grade, we wrote a novel together about our sixth grade class. It was a wild and crazy sixth grade class, and for two kind of quiet book-y girls, writing about it was a good way to collectively shake our heads and take it in (kind of like I'm still doing on this blog here).

Trish does some real writing now as the managing editor of a very cool website, GIMBY.org -- it stands for Government in my Backyard. Check it out -- it's all about how what the federal agencies and executive branch are up to. When she's not doing that or keeping up with her marvelous family, she's playing hockey or walking in Rock Creek Park, which brings me back to this race.

She was all like, oh, Anne, I see you running -- come run this thing. And I was like, yeah.

It was a small race:

It was so exclusive I was #2!

In this very non-professional photo, you can see
Mike at the left and Rita at the far right.

At how many races do you get to meet the organizer? How about the organizer's mom? Mike is not only an accomplished athlete with a dedicated clientele, but he's an extremely enthusiastic, nice guy. And his mom, Rita, came down from New Jersey to help out. She is lovely and I was delighted to meet her, too. There were bagels, along with quality coffee and bananas.

We had a marvelous run, and I wouldn't hesitate to get out with this group and run again. Even if I had to drive into the District (with my GPS, it was a piece of cake, Virginia friends, and I even found parking. Obviously it was meant to be).

And a swag shirt, to boot!

Skirt Fail

Tear it up, Scott! Scott <3 Bondi Bands.

There are a lot of mom-running blogs out there. I was looking at one the other day, in which the author was doing a thing about trying to decide what to wear for a race. She prefaced the article with an apology that she was going to put so many pictures of herself in this particular posting, because I guess she hates to do that.

Clearly, this lady and I don't have a lot in common. For instance, on top of being probably a better mom than me, she has taken part in the Boston Marathon a couple of times, and I would have to shave a lot. of. time. from my PR to get anywhere near that big show.

And one of her concerns was how to represent her sponsors in her marathon attire. I have no sponsors, unless you count my sister-in-law, who buys me running gear for gift-giving occasions.

For which I am very, very grateful! 

Thank you, Kathleen!

But maybe the biggest difference is that I like to put pictures of myself in here.

Here's one:

This is how the teenager amuses herself while watching the other child's tennis match.

So this post you're reading is all about what to wear for an upcoming run that's going to take place close enough to St. Patrick's Day that I can work a theme thing, but I'm not going to apologize for all the Anne you're about to see.

I already have the perfect shirt to wear. It's green and it says, "Run Lucky." It's comfy. But in an effort to change it up from plain old black shorts, I got myself a cute skirt.

My friend Lorenda turned me on to these skirts. They are so great looking. You put them on over bike shorts or similarly snug running attire.

When I ordered mine, I neglected to understand that they are intended for after-running, not during the run. Even though the website was pretty clear on that. I should have paid more attention.

Here's how it was going to look. Minus the cat.

You're supposed to wear it low on your hips. The problem is, it rides up. I had that thing on at the gym for a test run, and I was barely around one little lap on that electronic track they show you on the treadmill before I was tugging that stuff back into place. Very annoying.

Here's how it was supposed to look:

Like a boss. Complete with post-run hair for authenticity.

But then it heads north and it is decidedly not cute.

Cheeky! I hope you're not eating while you read this.

So it's back to the drawing board. I wonder if it's too late to order a Sparkle Skirt? Or maybe I can write that other blogging-running-mom and get a consultation.