Want to See My Medal?

I completed my first half marathon on March 22. That’s 13.1 miles.

We had an hour-long drive after the race and I'd ask the kids periodically, "Do you want to see my medal?" We'd stop at a gas station and I'd wonder aloud if the checkout clerk, or the person walking out of the store or the guy pumping gas would like to see my medal. As we drove along I'd announce, "Maybe those people in the car next to us would like to see my medal."

My family was very patient.

I started on this adventure more than six months ago. Jen, Katherine and I decided to run the Shamrock Half Marathon in Virgina Beach, Va. As Katherine said, we had plenty of time to train. Plenty. No problem.

And that's how I treated it for a while. For months, I ran three or four miles most days and finally looked into a training program in January. Then I got scared. The program involved running three or four times during the week, some speed-work and hill-work and then one "long" run on the weekend. The mileage increased with each week. I remember looking at the schedule, seeing that I had to eventually run 12 miles and thinking, "Who does this?!" I was having enough trouble doing three miles.

I followed the program with some modifications. When the mileage seemed too high for the week or my body was suffering, I'd dial it back in distance and intensity. If I felt stronger, I turned it up. Sometimes I did speedwork; most times I didn't. Ditto on strength training. I trained during some very cold months so it was a combo of treadmill training and long lonely (and cranky) outdoor runs in lots of layers.

Then Friday, March 20, I got on a plane with my family, then in a rental car and there I was in Virginia Beach with my friends Jen and Katherine.

Everything about the weekend was exceptional. We talked about running, our gear, our fears, our families. Jen and I obsessed over what we were going to wear race-day (and pretty much everything else) while the veteran runner Katherine reminded us that we had done the work and that we were ready for the race no matter what.

We cheered my parents, Artie, Teresa and Monte on Saturday during a very cold and breezy 8K. Then we hit the race expo, had a late lunch and obsessed some more.

Sunday morning finally arrived and we were at the starting line with nearly 6,000 other runners. It was 35 degrees (COLD!) but no wind. The sun was just beginning to come up. My husband (I could write a book on how wonderful he was during the weekend!) snapped one final shot of the three of us when the gun went off.

Jen and I ran together for the first few minutes then took off on our respective races with a "See you at the finish!" The crowd was great with their cheers and cowbells.

I knew from the start it was going to be a good race because I didn't feel tight or sore or tired. (This makes me see why rest is vital before a big race.) The first two miles were a breeze. I did intervals of 2 minutes of running with one minute of walking and I remembered what Tammy implored, "Take it easy on those first two miles and conserve your energy!" People full of excitement and energy were passing me left and right and the urge to go faster was strong but I stuck with my plan. My goal was to conserve my energy, gradually increase my speed as the race went along and finish strong and not feel completely spent.

Miles three through six were a little tough simply because the sun was blocked by trees. It was bitter cold, the water stop near mile 5 was not-to-be since the water had frozen in the tank. Likewise, my hands were frozen and I was lamenting how I had given my gloves to Mark at the start. This is when I saw people stopping to stretch, to bathroom break it in the woods, or to retie shoes and in one case, to retch.

But then we turned a corner and there was the sun, the ocean and a beautiful lighthouse - and a water stop where I could take my first Gu Gel. From that point on, the race turned from something to get through to something to enjoy. At mile seven I thought, "I am doing this and I am not tired!" This is when I slowly began to pass more and more people.

Miles seven through nine were pleasant. I wasn't tired, my legs felt strong. As I approached mile ten I thought, "Okay, this is when you start falling apart during your training runs." Usually, my legs get tired, my focus wanes and it becomes a battle of mind vs. body. Just after the ninth mile, I took my second and final Gu Gel.

Mile 10 was surprisingly easy. By that point, I was doing intervals of 4 or 5 minutes of running with one minute of walking. I was amazed that I felt so good and started to get emotional. I knew the finish was within my grasp. I was almost there! The crowd was back and since our names were displayed on our bibs, there were lots of people cheering, "You can do it Beverly!" and "Way to go, Beverly!" How often do you hear someone cheering your name?

At mile 11, I really started to pass a lot of people. I decided to run the final two miles with no walk breaks. There were points where there were so many competitors walking that I had to snake around them. I couldn't believe how great I felt, although I was ready for the race to be over.

At mile 12, I saw Katherine with her mylar blanket wrapped around her. She had already finished and was headed back to the hotel! We screamed at each other and it was the adrenaline push I needed to work a little harder to get to the finish.

I turned the final corner onto the boardwalk right along the ocean and saw the finish line. It seemed so far yet it was less than a half-mile away. The crowd was along the boardwalk cheering us along that final stretch. I could hear the announcer. I wanted this to be over, so I pushed it a little more.

I picked up my pace and was amazed at how natural it felt. Nothing hurt but I wanted to get to the finish line.

And then it was there. The finish line, the balloons, the music, the announcer, the cheering crowd, my husband, my parents, friends, Artie, Jen, Katherine, the months of training; everybody and everything was all there. I put my hands up in the air and yelled, "I did it!" I cannot begin to describe what an incredible feeling that was. I picked up my medal from the volunteers and promptly put it on. It was heavy, it was big and gaudy and IT FELT GOOD!

I made my way over to our post-race meeting spot and my husband gave me a big hug. He was truly proud and kept saying, "You did awesome!" My friend Artie gave me a big hug. Then we saw my parents who were so proud they could burst. And then I saw Jen and we hugged and cried and celebrated and kissed our medals. Then we met Katherine back at the hotel and celebrated some more.

I finished my first half-marathon in 2:39. It's not fast but I learned that this race wasn't about speed. (Perhaps that’s what the next one on September 20 will be about.) I think Jen put it best recently. It was about tenacity. For me, it was the ability to stick with a plan, modify it when needed and to finish strong. It was about meeting Jen and Katherine who virtually trained along with me. It was about celebrating my parents, friends and my Virginia roots. It was about each of us doing our own race but being able to celebrate our achievements together.

Want to see my medal?

I Bleed Therefore I am a Runner

In January 2008, I had a Forrest Gump-like epiphany. I put on a pair of running shoes, got on my treadmill and ran for 30 seconds. That's exactly how long it took me to realize I was a toad and that I needed to revise my fitness goals. (Forrest Gump had clearly put in some training miles before he stepped from his front door.)

I needed a realistic goal and a plan to get me there.

I signed up for a 5K and began working toward being able to run 3.1 miles. Over the months, I ran for a couple of minutes, walked for more than a couple of minutes and by April I was able to run for a half-hour without wishing the treadmill would spontaneously disintegrate or that a sudden May blizzard would cause the race to be canceled.

On a chilly May morning, I completed my first 5K in 35:56, a pretty respectable time for me.

For some insane reason (there goes Forrest Gump again) I next decided to set my sights on a half-marathon, 13.1 miles. From 3.1 to 13.1 miles in ten months? No problem. This was a different endeavor but not impossible, right? I'd had two babies; I knew what pain was. I knew what endurance meant. And more importantly, I had lots and lots of time to train for it.

This is what I've been telling myself for months now. "I've got lots and lots of time." As each month has passed I've been slowly adding miles and saying to myself, "I have lots and lots of time." Since I'm too scared to run with a group, I've been solo in my training efforts but diligently putting in the miles and comforting myself with the "I've got lots and lots of time" mantra. So far so good.

But today marks a new level in my training. With just 24 days until the half-marathon, I took my shoes off after my run this morning and one of my socks was red and bloody. Cool! I didn't fall. I didn't reopen an old wound. I spontaneously BLED!

I wanted to share my good news with somebody. This is when being part of a running group would have been of benefit since Daisy-the-Devil-Dog wanted to eat the sock and I had no idea whether I should be concerned about a painless bleeding toe.

But forget all that, I just completed a 30-mile week and the one really cool thing about it is that I had a bloody sock.

I am a runner.

I opened my email this morning to this bit of intriguing news. . .

"Sister Madonna Buder, 78, a Roman Catholic nun who resides in Spokane, WA will be this year's official starter and will also run the event. She began running at the age of 48 and throughout her career, she has completed over 200 triathlons and 13 Ironman Triathlons. At the 2006 Hawaii Ironman at the age of 76, she became the oldest woman to ever complete the race."

Last week I signed up for a 15K to take place this Saturday, February 7. I didn't think it through, just did it because I am training for a half-marathon and am due for a 9 miler this weekend. Shortly after I hit the final "submit" button, the doubts began to creep in one by one.

My first fear was freezing to death (I am a slow runner with southern-rooted DNA). My second was falling on an icy street and having a frozen body part like an ear, finger or foot break off. My third fear was crossing the finish line in last place long after everybody had packed up and gone home.

I went through all the therapy-ish self-talk, "What's the worst that can happen?" and "Is it likely to happen?" In the end, I concluded that I would be fine. I could handle last place.

But now I have a fourth fear: I am going to get my butt beat by a 78 year-old Roman Catholic nun, the official starter for my 15K on Saturday. Instant karma's gonna get me.

It doesn't matter how many times I take the adult high road and resolve to view Sister Madonna Buder as a role model. It doesn't matter that she is a woman of profound faith or that she clearly holds her health in high regard and wants to share her good news with others. It doesn't matter how many triathalons she's participated in or the fact that she started all this nonsense when she was 48 when I'm only 43. The object lessons are endless on this one!

What matters to me is that she's a nun, she's 78 and she's going to beat my butt. And now my good news is that - right or wrong - I think I have found the motivation to move up to second-to-last place.

Pray for me.

Baby, It's COLD Out There!

I grew up in southeastern Virginia. I remember a few significant snowfalls, one when my brother and I built an igloo with the neighborhood kids and another when we went sledding down the neighbor's hill into a semi-frozen Lucas Creek (don't tell my parents). Snow was an anomaly, not an expectation. It was a very rare and welcome respite from school that involved hot chocolate and snow cream. Those were the days.

Now I live in the Midwest where snow is a fact of life. From December until March (which often feels like December to December), snow covers the ground. It covers the ground because it's never warm enough to melt. Hence, winter on "the frozen tundra" becomes about boots and layers and endless car washes and - for me - where to go for spring break.

So in keeping with my annual February whine-fest, here's my list of things I find frightening about winter on the Frozen Tundra.

1. In spite of an annual snowfall of 50" (we'll double that this year), snow days are so rare here that kids wear their pajamas inside out and backwards in the hopes that they'll have at least one day off of school. It can snow 6" in 30 minutes and the plows have the roads cleared and salted by minute 31. (What is in that salt anyway?)

2. The meteorologists name the winter storms. They are given identities. In fact, here's this year's list: 1. Andrew 2. Brooke 3. Carter 4. Dawn 5. Eli 6. Faith 7. George 8. Hannah 9. Ian 10. Julia 11. Kyle 12. Lily. Lucky us, it looks like Hannah's headed our way next.

3. It can get so cold that it's not the snow that's the problem, it's the windchill (or rather, the possibility that one might lose a body part in less than four minutes because of the windchill.) This is the one and only way for kids to get a day off of school. We've already had two "windchill" days this year.

4. The push broom's sole purpose is to remove melted snow, salt and ice from the garage. This twice-weekly exercise is a big part of my upper body strength training program. I recently added an ice chipper to my strength repertoire.

5. My DNA does not belong here. I've been in the Midwest for 18 years and every January my mother sends me a photo of her first crocus. I cry.

6. See the above photo. The plows build a hill tall enough on our crescent that our house is not fully visible from the road. Hello, that's the second floor you're looking at!

7. Life goes on. People here love winter and don't tolerate whiners. The truth is that hill has provided countless hours of inspiration in the form of snow ball fights and fort and slide construction. So while I do hate the cold and yearn for somewhere warm and sunny, I am lucky my roots are where snow is viewed as a treasure. Every time it snows, I get a little excited about the prospect of hot chocolate, snow cream and a day off of school (even if it's never a reality).

What Goes Up Must Come Down

I live in the Midwest. I've been here for 18 years. It's my husband's fault.

Tuesday, something happened that has never happened before in the history of our marriage and it was down-right sobering.

The automatic garage door broke.

Mark came home, zipped into the driveway with the music blaring, pressed the magic button and - nothing. He tried again. Nothing. He turned the music down and pressed the button. Nothing. Press. Press. Press. Press. Nothing. Doh!

I was in the house and heard the motor attempting to engage the garage door a gazillion times. So I headed to our mudroom (a Midwest fixture where all manner of ice, snow and melting snow from The Frozen Tundra is managed.) Sizing up the situation, I opened the door to the garage and stuck my head out. Each time Mark pressed the button, the door went up two measly inches only to crash back down. It was the little garage door engine that couldn't. Bummer.

Mark burst through the front door in complete disgust. I rarely see Mark walk through the front door (and rarely see him disgusted); it was a bit disconcerting. He grumbled a few choice words and pushed past me to the garage. He pressed the button in the garage a gazillion more times. Then he manually lifted the garage door, moved my car to the driveway and pulled the garage door behind him.

He came through the front door once again, ushered me into the garage and said, "I need to show you something."

"Geez, don't show me anything; just fix it," I thought.

Being the fine and focused engineer that he is, Mark pointed to the top of the garage door and said, "See those two springs? The one on the left is broken and that's why the door isn't working; it's not able to engage the mechanism to lift the door."

Okey dokey. Just fix it.

"I'll call the garage door people tomorrow," he said.

What? You're not going to fix it?

"What time will you be home?" he asked.

What? You're not going to fix it?

"Hopefully they can fix it in a few days," he added.

What? You're not going to fix it?

"What time are you going to be home?" he asked again.

I guess he's not going to fix it. Bummer.

We've been married 18 years. For the first 16, we lived in garage-free homes. We were used to it. It rained; we sprinted from the car to the house with the groceries and babies in tow. It snowed; we dug ourselves out and invested in remote car starters. We were used to it.

Then we moved to Wisconsin and to a home with a garage. From the moment we first drove into our garage, I knew I was going to love it. I envisioned dry grocery bags in the spring, snow-free vehicles in the winter and the perfect way to make people wonder all year long, "Are they home? Are they not home?" I was smitten with our garage. Now it was broken. Both cars were in the driveway in full view of everybody. Anything could happen. It could snow any minute!

Luckily, the garage door people came out Thursday and installed two shiny new springs. I press the magic button and the door goes up. I press it again and it goes down. Life is good. My groceries are safe and I am back to keeping people guessing as to whether anybody's home or not.

Yet, I'm still somewhat unsettled.

I know what happens when cars are parked outside the garage. They STAY there. That's what happened to our cars when I was growing up. Dad had an MG and various parts of it were spread throughout the garage. Then there were sailboat parts and paraphernalia. Dad would probably argue that technically, there was a car in the garage. It just didn't run (an "electrical problem" which is another story).

Lately, my son and husband have been looking at "project" cars. They want to buy some cheap pile of junk and turn it into America's Next Top (Car) Model. They pour over ads and spend hours on the internet looking for the "it" factor. So when the garage door broke, I couldn't help but wonder if it was part of some bigger plan to remove me and my vehicle from the garage. After all, we had spent 16 years without one; it wouldn't take long for me to get used to it again.

So Mark and Soren, if you're reading this: I AM NOT MOVING OUT OF THE GARAGE. I WILL NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT.

Road Kill

I started running in January. Since there was a foot of snow on the ground, I began running on my treadmill. I had my IPod and a reasonably cool basement. Life was good.

When spring finally broke, I decided it was time to take my feet to the pavement. I wanted to run a 5K in May and needed to maybe-kind-of-sort-of run on - um - a road - since not many 5Ks take place on a treadmill.

Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared for a lot of things (like how I clomped like a Clydesdale, or how my joints ached, or how my lungs felt as if they were going to explode rocket-like out of my chest). I wasn't prepared for how difficult the transition from treadmill to pavement would be.

Hence over the last six months I've worked on building my cardio capacity through intervals, stretching before and after runs and buying a cushy pair of running shoes (which still haven't helped with the clomping, unfortunately).

But there's one thing that still freaks me out about running on pavement and it is this: road kill.

Birds, chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, turkeys, frogs, turtles, fish (yes, fish) and really really big bugs have all made an appearance during my runs. With birds, chipmunks and squirrels, my reaction is usually, "Oh, poor mushed thing. I hope it didn't suffer," while smashed frogs and turtles make me just plain sad.

However, when it comes to raccoons, turkeys and really, really big bugs, my fight or flight response kicks in. Actually it's just the flight response. Those dead things require a very very W I D E berth.

Last week I saw a lumpy "thing" in the distance and the anxiety instantly creeped in. "Oh geez, don't tell me that's a dead animal. It's just garbage, right? Please, please, please don't be dead animal. No. No. No. Doh!" As I got closer, it was apparent that a rather large raccoon had mets its maker at the end of someone's driveway. It was tiped on one side with its front legs outstretched toward me. "Gah!"

I slowed down, looked over my shoulder (because I didn't want to be road kill) and then moved to the other side of the street just in case the raccoon suddenly came back to life, grew ten times its normal size, raised up on its hind legs and decided to chase me. While I have made progress in my running; I haven't made enough to outrun a rabid zombie raccoon (or deal with my insecurities).

Road kill kills my running times.

This summer we went to Michigan to visit friends. My son wanted to jump off a jetty in Frankfort because a group of older kids were doing it. As a parent my concern wasn't the sharp pointy rocks just below the surface or how high the jetty was from the water or that he might break his neck in spite of both those things. My concern was the huge ugly DEAD carp that was floating next to the ladder that my son needed to use to get back onto the jetty. "Gah!"

He jumped, headed toward the ladder and the fish didn't come back to life, turn into Jaws and eat him. But you can see where the dead fish (yes, a fish) I recently ran across (well, around) on the road led me.

You'd think that I'd be old enough now to NOT be scared by road kill. But something primal kicks in every time. It ain't pretty. And it's ruining my running times.

But alas, the snow will soon fly. I can already hear the happy hum of my treadmill.

Men are Dogs and Women are Cats

My friend remarked on Sunday how cats are the women of the domesticated animal world. Does that mean dogs are the men? Are men dogs and women cats?

Our cat runs the house. He always has. He's managed to terrify into submission every animal we've brought into our household during the past 13 years. Fish, guinae pigs, hamsters, other cats - they've all quickly learned to be very. afraid. of. the. cat. The cat doesn't hiss or let the claws fly. No, that would be too easy. Instead, he simply narrows his eyes and somehow manages to put the entire animal kingdom on notice with "the look."

When the cat discovered that he could tame the furry and finned ones, he figured he could take over the unfurry ones too. Most of our friends are now afraid of "the psycho cat." We don't help the situation because we are always saying, "He's really nice but watch it, he can turn on a dime." He can. And he does. Not many friends have seen the inside of our house.

The cat is no dummy. He's a perfect gentleman to the one who feeds him and who keeps his litter box clean and who lets him in and out and in and out and in and out and in and out.

We got our dog, Daisy, in 2004. She is the consummate black lab. She does everything at full speed. There's nothing subtle about her. That alone was reason enough for "pyscho cat" to pick her as his new terror-toy.

I think part of it is because the cat is completely overwhelmed by the dog. After all, she is big and bumbling and like a burst in that she's everywhere at once. That's so uncool. Clearly, the dog has to be stopped.

Meanwhile, Daisy tries everything within her little dog pea-brain to make friends with the cat. Much to the cat's dismay, "the look" does nothing to derail the dog. Daisy trots up to the cat with a toy, only to experience the usual charge, swipe, hiss. She tries to nuzzle the cat and it's charge, swipe, hiss. She walks in a room and it's charge, swipe, hiss. Poor Daisy.

So, are cats the women of the domesticated animal world? And are dogs the men? I'm not sayin'.