Random Fact Fridays

"To be yourself in a world where people are trying to be anything but themselves is a great victory"


1. I may have caught the biggest break of my life this week. Two words: job. offer. And no, it's not another bike store. Words can not describe how sad I'll be if I have to leave the BEST JOB EVER for another, potentially better job.


2. I'm still stunned by the fact that I raced on Wednesday. I never actually thought I'd want to again. And now here I am looking for another one.


3. I really really want to go get a tattoo. But I need money first....something I really, really, don't have enough of.


4. I refuse to turn my air conditioning on because I don't want our electricity bill to go up.


5. Scenic nature pictures make me happy. They also make me want to go running.


6. Someday I want to make a ton of money so that I can give it away. (after buying a pony)


7. I love shopping for office supplies -type things. I.E. Receipt holders, planners, etc... When it comes to life organization I have a touch of OCD.


8. I am 22 years old and have consumed three beers in my entire life. Once on a beach in Jamaica, once when I went to a bar with one of my friends and didn't know what else to order, and once when I chugged it immediately after a 5k. (aka last Wednesday.)


9. My favorite books are Eat. Pray. Love. and To Kill a Mockingbird


10. I actually, hope I'm just like my parents when I grow up (shhh don't tell them that)


11. I hate when people leave me voicemails. Just hang up and text dang it.


12.  I never ever ever want to get injured again. I freak out whenever anything twinges and always assume it's a stress fracture. I need someone to follow me on my runs daily and remind me that it's going to be ok and stop me from freaking out. Ever since I bumped my mileage back up it's almost constantly on my mind.


13. I wish I had better abs.


14. Everytime I go on facebook someone I knew in high school either got engaged or married or had a baby.


15. I'm seriously considering a 12 mile run this weekend.

Happy Friday Everyone ! 

So Much Happy

"Take pride in how far you have come, and have faith in how far you can go"


Confidence. Believe. Smile Smile Smile :)

The gun goes off and so does some little mechanism in my brain that's been out of order for some time now. Maybe it was the sound of a starting gun (ok it was actually a horn) or maybe it was that this is exactly what I needed to refocus myself, or maybe I just had to be in this exact moment to remember what I was missing.

What I expected while racing was a lot of things. I expected to be sore. And miserable and slow and tired and scared and frustrated. But once I started running, once the race actually began, the only thought that came into my mind was this: so. much. happy. I was so happy to be running and the feeling of racing and the excitement at the beginning of it all.

I set out this afternoon to the Milwaukee Lakefront to run the Super Run 5k. I picked this race for my first one in which to get over my fear of racing because it seemed small and harmless and hopefully no one I knew would be there. I even entered as "Katherine" instead of "Katie" you know...so  no one would know for sure if it was me or not.

The race takes place on top of a bluff right next to Lake Michigan and includes the hills to get  up and down that bluff. Unfortunately, not even my careful preparation to pick a low-key small-ish road race prepared me for the giant hill that I had to run up right after the first mile marker.

I didn't plan on actually trying until right around a mile and a half. I know what you're thinking "How can you not try in a race?" I know it sounds bad, but please, hear me out. I went into this thing really fearful about how I would react mentally. I mean, considering that the last race I entered I passed out halfway through and broke my foot. I just didn't know if my head would get in the game or not. So I started out super easy as if I was just doing a fast training run. But then I started passing people and I thought maybe this might not be so bad.

I had a couple initial thoughts of dropping out. But I kept trucking along at my not-quite-race-pace-but-still-quick speed. Eventually I heard people calling out places and realized that I might actually win something. This is new territory for me. In college you don't get to win things. They give you t-shirts usually or sometimes medals. In real life they give you stuff. And I wasn't going to let my fear of breaking my foot talk me out of getting stuff. Because....I mean...we all know how poor I am. Seriously.

Long story short I crossed the finishline of this hot, hilly, course in a less than impressive time but still the second woman overall. So they gave me this:

.....Which entitles me to a free pair of shoes. HOORAY!!!! So if you're keeping up with the math:
-$25 entry fee
-$5 in gas
+25 T-shirt (entry fee money)
+$5 (free socks)
+$130 pair of shoes.
+ Unlimited free beer after the race.....

Luckily forking over the original entry fee was worth it because now I don't have to pay for my next pair of shoes.  All in all this was a good day. Not necessarily what I wanted to run for a 5k, but for the heat and the hills I can deal with it.

And finally, after the race the entire field of Milwaukee-natives partied it up as only Wisco runners know how to do. Miller provided unlimited free beer and I saw many a runner beeline straight from the finish to the beer table, skipping over the water. Now....I myself am traditionally a drinking something fruity with an umbrella in it kind of girl but...when in Rome...So I grabbed a beer and downed it with a couple of my friends before I left on my cool down. I can't say for sure, but I had already run 7 miles and was working on my final three. I've never had alcohol in conjunction with running before, but how awesome I felt on my cool down suggests that maybe the two work better together than I thought.

Oh stop it. I only had the one and then it was back to vitamin water zeros and other electrolyte-enhanced beverages.

I may have won free shoes today but I think I won back something even better. I nearly broke down after the race realizing that I can in fact still do  this, still race, still love running. And THAT was the best part of all.

So much beyond happiness

Running Blind

"Always let your faith be bigger than your fear"

Blind Race This kind of running is defined as going into a race completely blind as to how you may do because you haven't done any official training and have no idea how fast you are. 

So I have decided, out of the blue, to do a blind race this coming Wednesday. I'm not really sure what possessed me to sign up for this race when I did. In fact I still wonder every day why exactly I decided to do this when I'm not even sure if I can run three straight miles at one time, much less do it quickly.

There's also the dilemma of the foot. Now, when I signed up for this race, I did it primarily because I knew that the next race that I jumped back into was going to be difficult because....let's face it...I was going to be scared. Scared for my foot, scared to be slow, scared of not finishing...So I figured that it was better to just do the thing and  get it out of my system as soon as possible so i could get back to racing. Right? Right?

So then on Saturday only a few days before said race, my foot starts hurting. Crap. Stress fracture. So spent most of Saturday's 10-miler worrying about my foot. Most of Saturday after the run worrying about my foot. Pretty much spending every second worrying about the foot. That is, of course, when I realized that this was the reason I had to race. Because I knew that as soon as I signed up for one, my  foot would start hurting. And true to form, it did. Once I realized this though? Foot pain-gone.

I decided that I couldn't just do a race completely blind without any sort indication of how terrible it was going to be. I wanted to  do a couple of faster paced intervals just to see how I was doing. So yesterday I devised a speed workout for myself. An easy one, I"ll give you that, but a speed workout nontheless. It went well. I won't bore you with the splits and statistics and how fast I thought I was running, but I will tell you this: I ran the workout faster than I used to run my workouts in college.I got done with the first 400 and stared at my watch...not really sure how in the world I was going be able to keep that up for an entire workout. I took my next one a bit slower but was able to keep the pace relatively well. I did mostly just 400s and 200s. 

 This is not to say that I am faster than I was in college because I'm definitely not. However, I am in relatively good shape.
Today, my calves are sore with the lovely pain from running fast in spikes. And I'm tired. so tired. But it feels good. It feels-victorious in a way. haha. I'm really glad that I forced myself to do a speed workout.

Now, back to that race. I'm still running relatively blind. The speed workout gave me a smidge of confidence but not that much. Though winning, and confidence is not the point of this race. The point is me, getting back out there and proving to myself once and for all that my foot isn't going to break every time that I race.

 I'm excited to blindly run forward and get to experience a race 8 months after I never thought I would run again. Wish me luck!

RFF

1. At the bike store I work at I am already famous amongst my co-workers for having the most muscular legs.

2. I'm considering trying veganism.

3. I have an obsession with black beans and anything made with black beans.

4. I recently read the #1 book on New York Times best seller list 50 Shades of Grey. For a bestseller it was pretty awful. BUT now I'm obsessed and have to read the rest of the series to figure out what happens.

5. I put chia seeds and flaxmeal in prettttty much everything.

6. I write out a monthly budget every month and put the designated amount of cash into the designated envelope.

7. I get a lot of my blog quotes from the inspirational tweeters that I follow.

8. Unlike most people, my hair looks awesome when it's humid.

9. Whenever I'm bored and sitting somewhere I massage the bottom of my foot with a golf ball.

10. I bake oftentimes when I'm upset.

11. I re-organized the tri wall at work and got two new free swim caps for doing it. Well...more like because I was complaining about how fast I ruin swim caps.

12. Living on my own is harder than  I thought it would be. I hate being in charge of my own bills and things like that. It's so complicated.

13. I miss my physical therapist, though I'm glad I'm not in physical therapy anymore.

14. I've been swimming a lot more lately and I've realized that I missed it a lot.

15. SOMEWHERE deep down inside I found the will to race again (more later!)

16. I'm really bad at unlocking doors. It takes me forever to figure out which way to turn the key.

17. I feel like all of my friends are married or engaged and thinking about babies. I  however, continue to patiently wait for the whole "I want a family" gene to kick in. I'll probably end up a crazy cat lady yet.

18. I run faster on trails than on roads.

19. My food tastes have been changing a lot lately.  A lot of the foods I used to love I just don't really care about anymore (raisens, carrots, celery, honey,) Recently all it's been a lot of cereal and apples.

20. During my runs I stop and have random dance parties a lot. Yes of course I make sure no one is watching.

Happy Weekend!

An Accidental Victory

"Never forget that even an ounce of believing in yourself can carry you past a million ounces of doubt"


Sorry, I don't run. I am, after all, training for an ironman. It's not like I have time to run half marathons you know. I am too. cool. to. run. 


Or at least, this is the lie that I kept replaying in my head. This past Saturday my crazy mother and my boyfriend had just signed up for a half-marathon in my old hometown and I grudgingly took off of work at THE BEST JOB EVER in order to go cheer them on, for a race that I wasn't running, that....let me add I was pretty bitter about not running. I've wanted to win this half marathon for the past two years, and both times I've been dealing with a crippling injury that has withheld me from said race. 


Come to think of it...bitter doesn't really even begin to cover it. I didn't want to watch. I wanted to run, and as far as I was concerned the fact that I couldn't run it...I might as well be selling people more $2,000 mountain bikes where, at least I would be more useful. So I decided to do my run during the race and did my best to give off my "I bike too much to care about running" vibe which was not true in the least.

Soon after I started running though the tables turned. Running in Fort Atkinson where I grew up is so much better than Milwaukee. I almost always have good runs regardless of how I'm feeling when I come home to visit my parents. Yesterday was no exception, though I expected it to be. By some happy accident, the more I ran, the further I ran, the better I felt. I ran to different points of the race to meet the runners and cheer for them running the course backwards. By the time I finished my watch read 1:11. In addition I had run to the racecourse from my house. An additional, unaccounted for 7 minutes.

Panic. Panic. Panic. Panic. I didn't mean to run for 1 hour and 18 minutes you know. I only meant to run 50. But...slowly I realized that in fact, my legs felt fine. And more importantly, my foot felt fine. No pain...and slowly the panic subsided and was replaced with this incredulous joy. Even being extremely conservative concerning my pace I had run 11 miles. Maybe 10.5. I haven't run that far in months. I haven't even run that far since before the breaking of the foot. This was my longest run in possibly 9 months. And I didn't even notice.

Turns out that watching that half marathon awoke something in me that's been trying to surface again for months now, something that I've been ignoring. That something is the fact that I don't hate running, that I love it. Oh...and that my foot is not broken. It's time now to stop saying that.

This week I've run:
8 Sunday
8 Monday
Biked 112 Tuesday
8 Wednesday
7 Thursday
11(ish) Saturday.
(plus miscellaneous biking and swimming)

That equals ....WHAT?!? Even as I type it now, I don't believe it. I haven't run that many miles...in forever.  NO WONDER I've been sore and tired. I didn't know I was running that much. I didn't think I could  run that much. And with an 11 at the tail end of it? Friday's off-day was totally worth it as far as I'm concerned. How is it that I'm already running that much?

It's like an accident, like I was just trying to keep the reins on and keep myself under control and try to get better and try to get healed and all of a sudden I found myself back where I was months ago. Somehow I wound up back...maybe even better than when I started.

So thankful for the week, so thankful for my body that bounced back into a 40 mile week without me even realizing it, without me even trying. So thankful that I went kicking and screaming to watch that half-marathon so that some kind of running-loving could re-awake inside of me.  The best is, of course yet to come. :) No more panic, no more pain, no more broken foot.

It seems I have conquered something which I never thought I would- a broken foot along with a broken confidence.

Friday Facts

"Keep on dreamin' even if it breaks your heart"


1. I bought a new lucky sportsbra and new lucky green socks today. Which brought to mind a question: can you purchase things with the intention of them being lucky? Hm...more on this later next week. 


2. I would give up going to graduate school full time if someone offered to sponsor me in triathlons (a girl can dream ok) shhhh don't tell my parents this. lol


3. I sometimes jump into my apartment's pool instead of showering if I don't have enough time. 


4. I don't take flattery very well. I turn all red and stare at the ground. In the same breath I thrive on pleasing people and making them happy. 


5. My best friend grew up on a farm and they raise goats, so when we were in high school I used to spend the night there and get up at 5am with her to feed baby goats, which are by the way, adorable. 


6. Calling people I don't know on the phone makes me really nervous. 


7. I've always wanted to adopt a child. 


8. I signed up for something exciting this week. I'm not telling because I'm a bit nervous that I'm in over my head and don't want to jinx it, but it's over a week away and I already have some serious butterflies going on. It's a good feeling. It may have also been a really, really, poor impulse decision. Oh well, I guess we'll see. 


9. I miss my college friends a lot. Particularly my track teammates. 


10. I want to run a marathon. I'd rather train for a half-iron man though. 


11. Yesterday, I bonked on my run. It was pretty awesome. After Tuesday's 112-miler and Wednesday's 7.5 miles at 6:50 pace I set off to run to work on Thursday. I opened somewhere around 6:20 pace. Legs died. haha. Yessss I'm taking today off.  


12. It makes me really upset when customers/other drivers/strangers who hate bikers/etc yell at me. It ruins my day to think that someone who hasn't even met me could dislike me that much. What is this world coming to?


13.I enjoy a good beer now and again. But I don't like anything too bitter. 


14.  I'm working SO HARD at taking better care of my body with all of this training but it's hard to know what works and what won't. Oh....and I need to drink a heck of a lot more water than I do currently. 


15.  Now that I'm really poor I'm also really cheap. I refuse to spend money on anything if it's not a.) something I NEED to live or b.) something that I NEED for biking/running/swimming. 


16. I eat too much peanut butter. 


17. My sense of humor is outrageously sarcastic and can take some getting used to. 


18. Right now, I have too many goals and not enough lifetimes. 


Have a great weekend everyone!

Brand New Dreams

"If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again"




I began something important yesterday. Obviously I figured that everyone in the universe should know about it, and thus here you go. 


A long time ago I started thinking about doing an Ironman. When I first began this thought process I was in the peak of my running days, with everything to lose and yet nothing to fear. I wasn't sure about that whole swim/bike thing but I was pretty sure that running a marathon would be a piece of cake for me.


Fast forward 1 year and 6 months. That dream didn't go away, it just changed a bit. I realized that swimming a 4k....that's not too bad...it doesn't even take an hour. But the bike? I'll get to that later... the marathon? Oh gosh. 


But back to the biking thing. Yesterday, I got it into my head that I needed to see if I could make it. Not 100 because I've done that already, but the IM distance-112. In the last 22 miles something grabbed hold of me and I realized that this "crazy" thing could actually become a reality sometime in the near future. Turns out that the only thing I didn't think I'd have to worry about is the thing that I'm the least confident about. Twenty-six miles is  quite a bit of running people! And especially after that much swimming and biking. I gave up on running a marathon ever about 9 months ago so this is a scary plan for me to really make a reality. However, today I don't have any sore muscles considering the 112 bike-a bit of chafing, but no sore muscles amazingly enough. Sorry for the rambling but I'm trying to make sense of this plan as I type. 


I'd like to set my sights on IM Wisconsin within the next 3-5 years. I know that it takes about a full year to get used to and train for an Ironman. In addition, training for this is going to require of me a new bike, and oh...yeah the ability to run too. 


But even with all of these obstacles in the way, I do believe that this is the direction I must head. I declared yesterday the official "Iron(wo)man training day 1" and I am holding myself to Ironman WI within the next 5 year (hopefully sooner)


Keep on dreaming my friends, but also realize that even when one dream fails, a better one is soon to follow. 

1000 Miles of Forgiveness

"Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father, run for your children, for your sisters and brothers. Leave all you love and your longing behind, you can't carry them with you if you want to survive"
 -Florence and the Machine, Dog Days are Over


Running, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. My feet pound over and over to this rhythm. Each step is another apology to that which I love, to myself, to everything I almost gave up on. I'm sorry I'm sorry.

Maybe I apologize too much. Maybe not. Either way it's something I feel I must apologize for. To myself anyways. To think that I almost gave up completely that I can not go one day without  thinking about. I'm just thankful every day that I decided at the last second to give it one last try.

It's funny what a turn things have taken. I've progressed rather quickly from how much I used to hate running until now. What flipped the switch exactly I'm not sure. I stayed in my hating running slump for quite some time before I was able to shake it off. Just like during a long run it came somewhere along the 5 mile mark before I relaxed. Once my runs hit 45 minutes I started to feel more confident and less scared. And suddenly I leap that hurdle. I'm now ready to run 8, 10, 15 miles. I'm planning a half marathon in the fall, I'm itching for speed workouts, I want to race.

It's like I'm starting all over again and I have the whole rest of my life to make up for what I almost threw out. It's an amazing feeling to be starting out from scratch again. No one knows me anymore, no one expects anything of me, you won't find my name on the NCAA website predicting my race times. No, what I'm back to is "We'll just have to wait to find out if I am fast or not..." And that's the way I like it. That's when I feel free, and when I feel free is when I run fast. Don't get me wrong, I'm not planning some huge dramatic comeback, but I am excited at the prospect of making a slow but successful comeback. I don't need to be hitting some kind of insane time or getting my pro card. I just want to win a little money here and there to help support my rent  and maybe join a team so I can get discounted shoes.

I'm also excited that these things have a direction again. I'm not just working out for the heck of it. I've started legitimately looking for races to run, and legitimately think about training. It's just a start of course, but it's, I think, a good step from where I'd been.

How? you may ask did I conquer my earnest hatred of running?
1. Run on trails
2. Run at night
4. Run early in the morning
5. Run during a thunderstorm
6. Don't feel that you have to run every day
7. Run strides barefoot through sprinklers
8. Run fast....run slow
9. Stop during the middle of a run and dance to something on your ipod
10. Remember that it's all about loving running

That said I have epic biking adventure #2 today, trying to conquer 110 miles, so for me there won't be any running today.

Random Fact Friday!

"You're going to come across people in life who say all of the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. It's actions, not words that matter"

1. I couldn't do this post (or any other post for that matter) last week because my internet box broke and I had to wait for a new one :(

2. Sometimes after work I have to use de-greaser soap instead of body wash.

3. Having two jobs (bike store and forensic psychology internship) is keeping me balanced and keeping me from getting to sick of either one.

4. I did my first hill workout on a bike yesterday. Almost died. It was the biggest hill I've ever seen in my entire life. I was reduced to 5mph by about the middle of the hill. But that said, I did it three times.

5. My go-to band to listen to is Jack's Mannequin. He has a song applicable to anything and everything I'm going through at any given time. I also really like country music though. It makes me happy.

6. For the very first time in a long time I'm getting and itch to *gasp* run a race. shhh don't tell anyone. But I have been looking into a couple of duathalons around the area, some tris and some 5ks. Oh AND I met a professional triathlete yesterday who wandered into my store to stock up on Gu (we have the same favorite flavor) and she and I actually talked about my potential career....deep breath.

7. My parents think that trying to become a semi-pro triathlete would be a waste of time in comparison to perusing my PsyD. I think both would be nice.

8. I like soda. Diet soda anyways....I wouldn't drink regular. My body would probably die from that much sugar.

9. My roommate and I are contemplating getting a cat. I'm kind of allergic to cats so this should be interesting. But I really want a pet so I don't care haha.

10. Now that I work at a bike store I feel like my mechanical ability should translate into every day life...I feel like I should be able to build/fix things. Oftentimes this is not true. But I try anyways. This week I've been working on fixing up an old desk that my great grandfather built in the 50's or something. I think it looks much better.

11. I have excellent intuition about people.

12. One of my goals for the summer is to read a book a week. The only problem is that books are expensive.

13. I used to think that my biggest fear was failure. However, lately with all of the decisions I've been having to make and all of the things I've been stressed out about I think that my biggest fear is making a mistake with my life. or making a decision that I'll later regret. Instead of doing what I want or what I feel I can't make any decisions without looking a gazillion years in the future and deciding if this moment will make me happy in 50 years. Its an extremely irritating trait.

14. My quads are quite seriously getting out of control. Stupid 100  mile bike rides. :)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Money vs. Speed

Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable. - Clare Boothe Luce

Well, it's happened. I've found something that I don't like about my new BEST JOB EVER. I didn't think that there was anything about working in a bike shop that I didn't love. I loved cleaning the bikes, looking at the bikes, talking about bikes, selling bikes. But the thing that I don't like is the money involved in biking. 


Here's the thing. I'm a relatively simple person. For me, extravagant spending is not getting peanut butter on sale or forgetting my coupons at home or shopping at the mall instead of a thrift store. My bike, while nice wasn't terribly expensive. O.K. let's face it: I'm poor. Graduate school is running me a whopping $31,500 per YEAR. I'm not even poor, I'm broke. 


So unfortunately at the best job ever, my co-workers make fun of people who don't have $150 pedals with $400 biking shoes, full carbon bicycles ($2,000)and GPS watches($499). I...do not have anything close to all of that. I know it's all in jest coming from them and that they do love me despite by $80 biking shoes, and cheap pedals and sale-priced shorts. But it still brings to light something interesting in the sport of bicycling. 


In NO OTHER sport in the world (besides golf maybe) does wealth equal talent. You can't buy your way onto a professional football team with an expensive helmet, you don't get to play soccer in the Olympics if your cleats cost more than 3 months worth of rent, and of course, you don't win marathons by being rich. period. 

However, in bicycling people seem to be under the impression that the more expensive bike/shoes/pedals/carbon/helmet/waterbottle cage they own the better and FASTER they will be. To a point, I suppose all of this is true. A lighter bike with $1200 wheels (I KNOW) will make it easier for you to drag your butt up hills. But you know what? If these people don't spend more miles ON said bike than the dollars they put into it, it's not going to add up to much. 

I have literally seen people who I doubt can ride more than 10 miles at a time drop thousands of dollars on a full carbon bike that is probably going to sit in their garage for a majority of the year. 

Don't you think...that if a person really deserved a $4,000 bicycle that they would be going pro and not in the position to buy it for themselves anyways? Exactly. If you're good enough you don't have to buy your own running shoes, your own football helmet, your own baseball bat. If no one is offering to drop that kind of cash on a bike for you perhaps it means that you are not fast enough to be riding it. 

I don't care if a bike weighs 5lbs less than mine and was 5 times more expensive. I spend 5 more hours a day on mine. 

I'm not necessarily a fast biker or blessed with some sort of bicycling talent. But I will tell you this. What bicycling requires is not thousands of dollars on equipment. What it takes is dedication and admiration of the sport of bicycling. It's far more important to be in tune with your bicycle, how it handles hills and bumps and what gears it likes the best and how the two of you can get over 40mph together. I believe on any given day my bike and I can beat one twice as expensive. 

I don't know what other people are like but I will tell you this. I sleep with my bike in my room. I take care of it as best as I can afford to. I make sure that it'll never get stolen, or broken, or wear out. THAT my friends, is dedication. 

Bicycling should be about happiness. Not money. Biking...should be about being free.