You Run Like a Girl

"There are a lot of girls out there who chase after boys. But only a few can outrun them"


I take a look around me during cross country practice one day and realize that today I'm the only one wearing pink. Scratch that. I'm the only one in my pack wearing a shirt. I'm also falling behind the pack that I'm running with. And they're NOT going to wait for me.

The reason I'm the only one wearing a shirt, the only one with a ponytail, the only one without any facial hair is because I'm the only girl.  My training group is comprised of 8 guys that, over the past few years have each become like a brother to me.

It's hard to get used to at first. Boys, for instance, always smell on your long runs. There's no catching a whiff of someone's perfume or hairspray. You can't pretend you don't smell them. You do. And they're proud of it. You don't talk about relationships or feelings. Instead, there's video games and joking around and telling stories. Though I make no claims that girls are less of a competitor than boys, boys do tend to show it more. There's definite bumping and elbowing for position during speed workouts and an air of competition that is seldom found so intensely in a group of girls running together.

There's always the one who doesn't like that a girl is running with them and gets (if possible) more competitive because I am a girl (and well....no one wants to get beat by a girl of course). But as a general rule they're really good about the fact that I'm always tagging along on their runs. They've taught me how to play rock band and video games and to run faster.

They're all my training partners yes, but through that they've become my best friends as well. I know that they have my back, but I also know they aren't afraid to yell at me if I start pushing the pace too much in practice or not doing the workout correctly. We've worked together through the hardest workouts of my life. We've pushed each other through those tough runs that you don't think you're going to be able to finish. And we've worked together during practice to accomplish things we never thought we could.

While I wish our races were combined so that we could race together, like we do in practice it's nice when you get to hear an entire crowd of your training partners cheering for you. Or if you're lucky, painting their bodies green and running around NCAA nationals for you...

Random Fact Friday

"Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it."
-Oprah Winfrey


1. School starts monday. AH!

2. I have an obsession with buying running clothes I can not walk into a running store and not buy something.

3. My biggest fear is not that I won't be a good runner this season, but that I won't be a good captain.

4. Though I'm extremely talkative I'm incredibly shy when it comes to anything personal.

5. My favorite color is green but I most frequently wear pink.

6. When I sweat a lot during a workout I don't feel clean until a couple showers down the road.

7. I'm really naive and trusting of the world around me. I assume that people wouldn't steal from me. This is probably stupid.

8. I've always secretly wanted to be an interior designer.

9. I can't have "almost-empty" jars of anything in my apartment. A new jar must be opened and then the old jar is added to the new jar.

10. I have disgustingly sensitive skin. EVERYTHING makes me itch during the fall.

11. I have switched my brand of running shoe 3 times in the past 6 years. Each time was within the past 3 months.

12. I always put mini marshmallows in my coffee.

13. I lose my phone about 10 times per day.

14. The class I'm most nervous about this semester: Spanish 101. (Yes I'm a senior in college and I've never taken a language.)

Great Expectations

"Bite the bullet, old man, and don't let them think you're afraid"   -Rudyard Kipling

I've been dreading this week all summer if I'm being honest. I didn't want it to come and I didn't want to think about it. All I did all summer was be afraid of being too slow, of undertraining, of getting my butt kicked by the first week of cross country.

Then I got here. I don't know how, but by some miracle my biking, my swimming, my love of running, has pulled me through thus far. I ran nine 300m long hills on Tuesday..my fastest one being a 58. I ran a fast 55 minute training run with the guys team this morning...all the while feeling somehow perfectly fine. There is no pain in my knees. In fact there's no pain anywhere. It's difficult for me to believe.

So the good stuff: There is no pain. I get to do what I love. I'm so lucky. And don't get me wrong I'm still so thankful. 


But that said, I'm also a little bit afraid. I've gotten over the pressure put on me by my own doing. I'm not afraid of getting injured anymore. What I am still afraid of though, is what everyone else is going to think. Isn't that what we're all afraid of? No one wants to go running down the street and have someone drive past in a car and think "woa...that person is really slow".  No one wants to enter a race if they think they aren't fast enough to run it. It's the competitive nature of a runner that follows each one of us. The pace itself doesn't matter. All that matters is that whatever pace it happens to be is fast. It is for this same reason that the guys on my team are competitive all the way through what should be an "easy" 35 minute run. It's how we are. We're runners. We're competitive.

I had put my competitive nature on hold for a bit these past couple weeks. I had a lot more to concentrate on: learning to love running again and be thankful for everything that I've been given through it. *sigh* Too bad the rest of the world can't have such an outlook on running.

I read this: flotrack article yesterday and it all but threw me into full on panic mode. (To save yourself the time reading through that whole thing skip down to #5 on the women's list. ) I wish I could edit this article and add in that my track times weren't stellar due to how badly my knee hurt during the entirety of the outdoor season.

Don't get me wrong, it's exciting and flattering. I wasn't aware that people even knew who I was. But what I'm saying is that at the same time it also makes me nervous. I don't want to let down anyone because I might not be back to where I was last season.

I didn't go into last season expecting to go to Nationals. I'm not expecting to go this season. Will I be working my butt off the entire time? Absolutely. But I'm afraid of the expectations that people that I don't even know have of me.

For now, I'm still just going to concentrate on that special love of running that I have, and how thankful that I am that I'm able to go out and run for an hour pain-free. I have to remember that over and over. As runners we all need to remember that It's not about the expectations of others, but the discovery of what lies within ourselves and surpassing our own exceptions, not those of the people passing us in our cars, our training partners, our teammates, or the entire nation if you will.

The Last Day

Overlooking Rose Lake

Not bad for a last run eh? Today was my last run in my hometown before I move back to college.  I ran on the trails around Rose Lake today. Otherwise known as Dorothy Carnes Park. Yes I ran there yesterday too. But I can't get over how much I love it there. I always feel like I could run for hours and hours. Today in particular I got there and watched a storm roll in for the entire hour and 4 minutes of my run. Right as I left it began to downpour.

I'm all the more thankful for running when I look around places like this and realize how lucky I am that I can run around for hours. My last day running in my beautiful town, and I'm going to miss it a heck of a lot. I don't want to go back to the concrete jungle that is Milwaukee. I don't know how I'm going to survive without my peaceful, awe-inspiring runs at places like this.

So here's to the summer where I never thought I'd run again, but at the end rediscovered all the reasons why I truly love to run. Happy Trails :)

Clouds rolling in at Rose lake

"This part of my life... this little part.. is called "happiness" 
                                                           ~ Pursuit of Happiness

Cross Roads

"Running to him was real, the way he did it the realist thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as diamond; it made him weary beyond comprehension. But it also made him free."
-Once a Runner

 

This is one of those semi-sentimental posts about how much I love running. And how thankful that I am that I get to do it. Hopefully it's not getting too repetitive.

I move back to school this Sunday. I guess I'm a little anxious as most students are. But I'm double anxious for cross country. I mean, I've been hurt off and on (but mostly on) ever since Nationals last cross country season. Right now my biggest worry is getting hurt again. I've put a lot of work in with physical therapy this summer and I don't want that to go to waste.

However, on that note: I can't thank my physical therapist enough for everything that he did for me this summer. When I walked into his clinic 3 months ago and begged to use his Alter-G just so that I could run again I didn't think that I would be able to run normally for months. On day one he asked me how many miles a week I minimally needed to be up to in order to feel prepared for the season. I said 40. By Saturday I will be at 42 miles, 47 miles of biking and 1 hour of swimming and 1 Pilates class this week.

This morning I ran alone. No music. No civilization. On the outskirts of my town there's a park with a few miles of trails that I like to run at. And just because I was feeling great I ran the last 10 minutes completely barefoot.  I ran for an hour and 2 minutes. I could have run for 2 hours. Or maybe forever.

Somehow my knees and IT bands are miraculously better. Maybe. Just maybe this is the end. Maybe just maybe I'll be back to where I was at the end of last cross country season.

Though, I will admit that these worries completely disappear the second I start running. So now here I am at a cross roads of sort between being injured and being able to move on. Yes, I'm worried that I won't be able to get past it. I don't want to spend the entire season worried about getting injured. I have to learn now, to trust myself, to trust my legs, and to trust in that love of running.

In the Long Run

"You won't realize the distance you've run until you take a look around & realize how far you've been."

First long run back. So I'm going about 50 minutes today. As I head onto a pathway in the woods, with my music blaring I suddenly see a set of eyes staring out at me from the trees. Of course my immediate, irrational thought was "bear". (in Wisconsin? Come on, Katie). But as I stopped and paused my music what it really was, was a huge horse. Now, I love horses, so obviously I'm not afraid of them. Still though, it was 6 in the morning and I was alone and the last thing I expected to see on a path in rural Wisconsin was a horse. So what did I do? Jump on it and ride bareback into town? No, I turned and ran the opposite way. Chicken.

Second long run back. It's been hot all week and by 2 minutes in I'm soaking wet. I don't think I'll ever run in anything but a sportsbra again its SO hot. My ipod is broken. On this run today however, I realize that I don't need an ipod. Sometimes there's just something about running in silence. I listen to the rhythm of my feet and my breath and somewhere along the road I make up my own song to run to. It was only a few days before that I hadn't run with a watch or music. I mean I am starting over. I might as well start from square one. No music, no time, just me and the sound of my feet.

My runs are getting longer. So now I'm actually starting to get tired on them. I'm up to an hour. My next one I head back to my old high school bike trail and crank out the run. To my own surprise I actually start out at sub-7 minute pace. At the 2.5 mile mark I'm able to stop and gather myself and pull the reins a bit. But overall I'm sweaty and exhausted and I just covered about 7.5 miles in 55 minutes.

And finally yesterday was the best one. I did the first 3 miles relatively relaxed. Once I reached mile 4 I was still feeling really good and was going a bit to fast. So I decided to tempo it instead. Each mile I even brought my pace lower and lower until by the end I ran the last 7-8 minutes at about 6min/mile pace.

By some miracle it seems like I'm running healthy again. I never expected that I would get better so fast. Interestingly enough, once I gave up on being bitter about running so little and forgot about running to win and because I "had to" was when I started getting better. Coincidence? I'd like to think not. My leg couldn't heal until my mind was. Once I started appreciating running and loving it for what it is, my leg slowly followed my heart on this path of recovery. I never would have believed it those weeks ago when I was doing 1 minute on/1 minute off barefoot around a high school football field. But still, here I am.

It's been a long journey for me this summer, back into running. But one, I think that I had to take in order to get where I am now. I love it now more than ever. All I have to remember is that we run because we love it and for no other reason.

RFF

Little by little, one travels far. ~ J.R.R Tolkien

1. Usually I start working on my RFFs on Monday so that by Friday I'm almost done. This week I procrastinated horridly.

2. I signed up for the GRE this week.

3. I also studied for the GRE this week and realized that I was in a coma all the way through geometry in high school.

4. I really really want a tatoo for almost a year and a half now. But I haven't gone because I'm afraid I'll chicken out

5.  This week: Tuesday 7.5 miles in 55 minutes. Wednesday 34 mile bike ride=2 hours. Thursday 8 miles in 60 minutes. My legs are toast!

6. I want to run a marathon so badly. But I have to finish collegiate running.

7. My room at my parent's house is painted like a cross country course. It has a blue ceiling with clouds and the walls are green with hills.

8. My ipod broke last weekend so I sporatically went out and bought a new one. I'm extremely frugal and cheap so this is really unlike me.

9. My knee still doesn't hurt but we're not talking about that in case it jinxes my recovery.

10. I have to deliver pizzas for 8 hours on the last day of my summer vacation.

11. I have a rather large collection of really really big sunglasses.

12. My current boyfriend and I met through cross country. We started talking because we both qualified for Nationals last season. And no, I did not go to nationals with the intention of picking up a guy.

13. This morning at the pool they blared Justin Beiber songs. Thank you high school girl's swim team.

14. I tend to judge my fitness level solely on the appearance of my abs.

15. I have asthma. It used to be really really bad when I was in  high school but it's a bit more under control now. Still though, for some reason people are always shocked when I tell them this.

Random Fact Friday

Running is the ultimate faith healer, restoring belief not only in oneself but life’s possibilities

1.  I'm not looking forward to how much I'm going to miss biking when cross country season starts.My physical therapist didn't let me bike this week because I'm running Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Considering how much I hated biking at the beginning of the summer I really miss it now.

2. You don't need a watch to do a speed workout :)

3. When I deliver pizzas I often run between the person's house and my car....extra mileage you know.

4.When I'm stressed I organize. Compulsively.

5. I used to get really nervous before races and throw-up.

6. I still get nervous but I try never to show it.

7. Whenever I do a really hard/long workout I go to the gas station and buy one of those giant 1 liter bottles of Power-aid.

8. Even though I run/swim/bike every day I still feel really out of shape.

9. I can't wait to graduate from college

10. I feel more tired when I get 8+ hours of sleep than when I get 5-6.

11. I don't drink very much. I'd like to think that I'm a fun person to go drinking with but the truth is, alcohol just makes me sleepy. If you really want to see me acting strange give me soda.

12. I am almost always cold. For me to not be cold it has to be about 85. For me to be hot it has to be 95. And I have to be running.

13. My roommate and I have been best friends since 8th grade. She's the best and oldest friend I have.

14. I live in Wisconsin, but I want to go to graduate school in California.

15.  I don't sleep in my bed. I sleep on top of it wrapped up in a giant pink blanket. The reason? I never have to make my bed in the morning. Plus I sleep better this way.

16.  For moving back to college, I'm trying to bring as little as possible so I'm weeding things out. But it's hard, because I have a strange emotional attachment to anything anyone has ever given me.

17. My boyfriend has a twin sister. This really excites me because I've always always wanted a twin sister. This is the closest I think I'm ever going to get to having my own. I feel like I've found some sort of loophole to the rule that says that to have a twin you must be born with one.

18. I'm going to run 7 miles today :)

19. I have really frustrating hair. It's neither curly nor straight and always does the opposite of what I want it to. I think it just hates me for how much I swim.

20.  I love thunderstorms. Whenever there is one I sit next to a window and watch it until it's over.

Happy weekend everyone :)

Watch Your Speed

"There are thousands who run to hear the leaves, and listen to the rain, and look to the day when it is suddenly as easy as a bird in flight."
                                                                             -George Sheehan 


What is it about us runners where we feel the need to time everything, to dissect the splits, to know our averages? Yes, it is to our advantage to know these things sometimes but tell me-where is the fun in knowing everything about running? It eliminates, for me at least some of the freedom and the mystery. Knowing how fast you're going doesn't make you faster.

Fartlek -Speed Play

At this point I'd rather not know my speed anyways . Yesterday, was my first experimentation with a speed workout since oh well....track season. After work I stopped at an old bike trail in Lake Mills, WI. To me, this wasn't just a  random trail to run on. When I was in high school this is where I ran every day. It was here that I dealt with high school drama and stress and boys. But most importantly it was here where I first really learned to run. It was nice to go back to where it all started.

 I started out easy the first 5 minutes or so but it was hard to hold back.  What I ended up doing was a form of interval training known to runners as a fartlek. You spend your entire run playing with different speeds going faster and slower at certain times or in certain intervals or if you're me-entirely dependant on how you feel.

The heat index was 102. yuck. After the initial warm-up I played around doing some segments simply by feel and some by counting the minutes in my head. Because of the heat my run was a combination of sprint-run-jog for the middle 2-3 miles. The weather, though hard to deal with ended up being a good thing so that my first experimentation with speed was controlled.

The thing about running fast is that miraculously it helps you forget your pain. Normally I spend my entire run thinking about my knee, my IT band and whatever else I can worry about going wrong with my leg. But when I'm drenched in sweat and worried about how fast I'm going or trying to hold my pace all of that goes out the window. Could it be? That going faster makes my legs feel better?

It was nice to go by feel, and it helped  for once to just run freely without the restrictions of a watch or paces or even the tempo of the song on my ipod.

Halfway through I passed a man and a woman running on the same trail as I was. They were both wearing one of those belts with water bottles in it. Yes, I was really temped to ask for a sip. But I feel like that may have been overstepping my bounds a bit. There IS such a thing as proper running conduct. Anyways I pulled up next to this guy for a bit and we talked about the weather briefly. He asked how far I had gone down the trail and then said "nice pace" before I sped on. I know, I know, he was probably just being nice. But it was good to hear on my first speed workout back no matter what the reason.

By this time I was pretty much melting. I don't recall the last time I produced this much sweat. I wished I had water. I wished I hadn't sprinted 3 miles ago when I was feeling awesome. In the worst case scenario, though they were now a solid 5 minutes behind me, if I were to pass out the nice man and woman would find me eventually and perhaps drop some of their water down my throat. Of course I eventually made it back to my car. For next time  though when there happens to be a heat advisory out running is probably not in my best interest.

So what IS it about running today where everyone feels they need a GPS, an ipod, a watch. It it really that beneficial to know the exact .001 miles you ran? The exact millisecond when you stopped? I just found that a "successful" workout can be completed without all the fancy gadgets (and water hah). I think there is something to doing  a free run every once in awhile so you can properly learn to listen to your body. So that you can remember why you love running. Not for the times or the distance but the feeling you get somewhere in the middle.


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Running Barefoot, Minimalist, and Such

"Free your feet, and your mind will follow"   

I first heard about barefoot running when Nike came out with their "frees" years ago. In high school my coach used to have us do striders barefoot as well at the end of runs. I put it out of my mind however, and thought of it as something minorly helpful but overall useless in the concrete jungle that we live in.  Recently however, I came across an article in which the author claimed that their IT band pain was cured forever by barefoot running. Go on.......I'm listening...

On the homepage of the Barefoot Runner's Society they claim to be "Changing the running world one odd look at a time." They have articles on everything from minimalist running shoes to how people's lives and legs were changed through barefoot running, to ripping on companies like Asics and Nike for "ruining" our feet. I started sorting my way through websites and articles, reading about the different theories behind running barefoot.


Ironically 3 days after my attention had been caught by these articles I was reading Born To Run. And I stumbled upon the well-known "barefoot chapter" which has inspired hundreds of runners across the U.S. to ditch their "foot pillows" (cushioned shoes). Now remember I was already reading the various blogs that claimed barefoot running could cure my chronic injurys for life. So then I read something like this: "Shoes block pain not impact" and quotes such as "...when runner's train barefoot, they run faster and suffer fewer injuries." There's almost 20 pages dedicated to why people such as myself will be able to kick their chronic runners knee/IT band syndrome/plantar fasciitis/whatever. I'm not 100% sold on this...and neither is most of the running community. However, I also think it's worth a shot.

 Even Harvard University...you know THE authority on everything has an entire research project dedicated to the art of running barefoot. And you know what? They think its a good idea too! "But some runners get repetitive stress injuries each year (estimates vary from 30-75%) and one hypothesis is that heel striking contributes to some of these injuries. We emphasize though, that no study has shown that heel striking contributes more to injury than forefoot striking" (Lieberman)

 At the beginning I wanted to dive right in, because I thought that it would be a cure-all for me. However, this isn't healthy for anyone....especially not someone as injury-prone as myself. So what I did, was I went out and bought 2 pairs of shoes. I got a pair of Brooks Ghosts, which I trust with my life, but more importantly, with my IT bands. However, I also decided to grab a pair of transitional shoes, the Saucony Kinvara. I have read a lot about the Kinvara over the past six months or so and had been drooling over them for about as long.

So far I really love the Kinvaras. In fact, they're even lighter than my road racing flats! My legs have felt really good running in them, though when I do wear them I wear them on days that I'm doing mainly off-road running. At first it was weird. Because the rise is so low (a.k.a. there isn't much difference in height between the heel and the forefoot) you don't heel/toe run like you do in most shoes. Instead, you land midfoot as nature intended.

Here's the thing about barefoot running that I don't think people realize: running barefoot does NOT make you a faster runner. And it does NOT magically take away your injuries. The reason the runners in Born the Run are so good is because they run as a part of their life. Running has a huge role in their culture, their name meaning "The Running People". They're not fast because they run barefoot. They're fast because they run constantly.

Barefoot running and minimalism does have it's place in Western Society as well. Go easy-start off right with a minimalist shoe. Make your transition slowly, and then reap the benefits of running barefoot every once in awhile. When done correctly bare- footing can improve your running. Start off with running in minimalist shoes  on soft ground a couple times a week. Then graduate to full time....if all is well take a look at some truly "barefoot" shoes such as Vibrams.

So my take? I love the feeling of barefooting. I love being that much closer to the ground when I run. When done correctly it can have a great impact on your training. But please, watch out for sharp,pointy objects.

{Photo Cred :http://www.columbian.com/news/2011/jun/05/running-shoeless/ }