Form-ation

It's amazing what a complete disregard for speed is doing for my running. Working only on increasing distance, which I am doing very slowly, has allowed me to focus on other things while I log my target miles for the day. Like my form, for example.

When I first started running a year or so ago, I wanted to be one of those gazelle-like runners with long, powerful strides -- legs reaching out strong in front of me and stretching long behind me. Well, a couple of shinsplints and a jacked-up knee put the kibosh on that pretty quickly. My injuries forced me to do some actual research and I found out that I was going about it all wrong -- my stride was way too long and I was landing on my heel, which apparently is a no-no, especially for old broads with creaky joints. Like me.

I've been trying to pay more attention to my form ever since, but as anyone who knows me will tell you, I am not a multitasker. Like, at all. If I'm trying to focus on distance and speed and interval times and whatever all at the same time, I am not only completely failing to do that, I also don't have any brain juice left for anything else.

So during my runs so far this month/year, with nothing to worry about but logging a set number of miles on any given day, I've really been trying to focus on my form -- taking shorter, lighter steps, and landing on my mid-foot instead of my heel. And I'm trying to watch my posture as well -- I tend to lean forward, tense my neck and shoulders, and sink too low in the hips when I'm tired or really trying to push. Fortunately the simple act of taking shorter steps and landing mid-foot seems to have corrected a lot of this already -- I've noticed that my back stays straighter and more upright and I don't swing my hips as much when I'm paying attention to what my feet are doing. As long as I remember to relax my upper body, I'm good to go!

I'm noticing a couple of benefits from doing this. One is that, as I had hoped, I'm not getting as much hip/knee/shin pain post-run as I was when my form was all sloppy and weird. The other is that I'm finding it much easier to get into the "zen" of running once I'm in the correct form. Maybe it's like that yoga thing where you pay attention to your breathing? I don't know, but when I'm taking those shorter, lighter steps and my back is straight and my shoulders are down where they belong instead of up around my ears, I kind of feel in the zone. I forget that I'm running and my mind just wanders, or I enjoy whatever music I'm listening to, and I don't think about how fast I'm running or how far I still have to go or what my time is.

Yes, that's right. When my form is correct, I am One with the Treadmill. Nirvana can't be far behind, right?

Thankful

All of the conditions were right on Thanksgiving for me to have a fibromyalgia flare. I'd spent a lot of time standing in one place doing repetitive motions like peeling potatoes and chopping vegetables, I'd been hauling around heavy roasting pans and pots of gravy and whatnot, I'd over-indulged in rich food, and to top it off a massive cold front roared through at midday, dropping temperatures by more than 20 degrees in 20 minutes. If that's not a recipe for flare, I don't know what is!

But somehow, miraculously, I managed to avoid one. I'm not sure how it happened, but I am immensely grateful. (Maybe it was all the tryptophan? I ate a lot of turkey. Hmm.)

At any rate, I didn't run on Thursday but I had a couple of great (treadmill) runs Friday and Saturday! I did a mile on Friday and a mile and a half on Saturday, running hard both times because that's what my body wanted to do. I was completely exhausted by the end of each run and my hips were really feeling it, but in every other respect it felt great to just go all-out and work up a sweat.

I'm taking today off but already thinking about tomorrow's run! I'd like to work in a distance run sometime this week (for me, distance = anything over 2 miles). With no upcoming race to train for, I'll just have to see whether my legs feel like running hard or running easy!

Race report: Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, Austin 2010

Well, I did it! I ran my very first 5K! And I survived!

I was so nervous and excited about the race last night that I had a little bit of trouble sleeping. I guess it's a good thing I was only running a 5K instead of a marathon or something, eh? Fortunately I did remember to set my clock back by one hour last night, but when my alarm went off at 6:00 it still seemed awfully early to be getting up on a weekend. I downed some green tea, a couple of eggs and some whole-grain toast and then my husband and I hit the road at 7:00, leaving our sleeping teenagers and dog behind.

We ended up parking near the finish line and walking past it just as the first of the timed 5K runners were coming in. It was in the 40s (I was wearing the outfit you see below, complete with hat and gloves) but they were all absolutely dripping with sweat. That's when I started to get a little nervous and to wonder if I should have layered a little better, but then I reminded myself that these guys were finishing in approximately a third of the time it was going to take me to finish and were working a lot harder!

For the untimed racers there was a rolling start over a two-hour period, which was nice, except that there were a LOT of walkers and they were all over the road instead of staying to the right. I started out jogging kind of slow but I had to move up into the weeds several times to get around people. I felt pretty good about my start, though -- I wasn't getting too winded or feeling too sore.

At around the one-mile mark there was a company handing out ice cream! That was pretty cool. I didn't get any, though. I'm lactose intolerant so that wouldn't have been a good thing, especially with two-thirds of the race still left to go!

Somewhere before we hit the two-mile mark I started feeling it. My lower back, right hip and right sacroiliac joint had been kind of tweaky for the past couple of days; I did some yoga yesterday to try and work the kinks out, and it helped some, but not a lot. By mile two my right hip was feeling pretty crunchy and I knew I was going to have to walk more than run for the rest of the race. There were a lot of hills on this course and I don't do incline work at all when I'm on the treadmill (because it hurts my hips! oh, the irony) so I wasn't really prepared for them.

The two-mile mark is also where I took my first water break. Not long after that a group of guys wearing pink shorts and sparkly women's tops passed me carrying a boombox that was blaring Van Halen's "Panama". That made me laugh and gave me a little bit of a second wind, but I still tried to save my hip for the homestretch.

At around 2.5 miles, I started getting a little emotional for some reason. There were so many people walking and running around me that had the names of loved ones they had lost to breast cancer on their shirts. I started thinking about my mother-in-law, who lost her battle with the disease just a few months after my husband and I were married, and about the void her death left in the family. And I thought about my sister-in-law and how afraid we all were when she was diagnosed, and how she kicked cancer's butt, proving herself once again to be one of the strongest people I know. There was a radio station truck at that point along the course playing some sort of inspirational pop music, like the kind you hear on The Biggest Loser when everyone is crying, and that didn't help! So I slowed down a bit and took a little moment there, but then I kept trudging uphill toward the finish. And right after that some guy with a tiny little Pomeranian on a leash passed me, calling back to his dog that there was only half a mile left to go. Again, it kind of cracked me up and I started walking a little faster.

I had known from when we were walking past the finish that there was a turn in the course just before the three-mile mark. When I reached it I picked up my pace so I could jog it in across the finish line. There were so many people standing alongside the course, cheering us in. I spotted my husband but he didn't see me and didn't have the camera ready, so I had to work my way over to the edge of the pack and wave to get his attention. He ended up chasing me down with the camera to get some shots of me finishing. I was so happy to be crossing that finish line!

After the race I grabbed a bottle of water and a banana from the post-race tents and then my husband and I made our way back to our car. My right hip was hurting bad enough that I was limping by that point, but luckily he had some ibuprofin in the truck so I took a few of those on our way to our favorite breakfast spot. A lot of other people from our end of town must have run this race, because there were race shirts galore at the restaurant even though it was pretty far from the actual site of the race. After a couple of cups of decaf, some chicken-fried bacon and a big skillet breakfast I was feeling very little pain. But no shower has ever felt as good as the shower I took when we got home!

So that was it -- my first 5K! I'm so glad I was able to run this race. I was hoping to finish in 45 minutes and that was pretty much my exact time, so I am super happy about that. It was so inspiring to be around so many people whose lives had been touched by breast cancer. There were a lot of survivors walking and running the race and my hat is off to them.

I ran this race for my mother-in-law Phyllis, my sister-in-law Sue, my friend Jenny and my mom's friend Virginia. But I also ran it for me. If you had told me a few years ago, when I was first diagnosed with fibromyalgia and was in so much pain that I couldn't even walk to the mailbox without limping back, that someday I'd be running a 5K I would have laughed in your face. But today I did! I walked about two-thirds of it and ran about a third, and I finished in the time I was hoping for. Five whole kilometers! Me!

Thanks so much again to everyone who donated money and helped me blow right past my fundraising goal for this race, and to everyone who sent good wishes and words of encouragement. Special thanks to my husband for getting up early on his day off to serve as my chauffeur, photographer and pack mule, and to my parents for always encouraging me in everything I have ever wanted to do. There was a time when I never would have believed I could do something like this, and I couldn't have done it without you all!

Here I am jogging it in and laughing at my husband because he had to run to get ahead of me.