I am THRILLED for so many people this past weekend, many who were chasing down big goals and/or completing hefty distances for the first time and hot damn. So proud of and inspired by so many!! No wonder I decided to carve out some time on a Sunday eve to write about running on the little blog. (Christmas cards, I got ya… tomorrow…).
At the end of my Berkeley recap, I somewhat hastily mentioned that I took my autumnal postpartum racing/non-racing feedback into account, heed and hawed, and eventually registered for the Modesto Marathon, on 3/20. That puts me at just about 15-16 weeks out, which means that I kinda sorta officially began training this past week (you can see the runs via the Strava or DM widgets on my sidebar, if you’re so inclined). I didn’t elaborate much more on my decision-making process and thought I’d post it here, in the off-chance it might be of interest or benefit to someone else and for when I will certainly be questioning my decision-making process later down the line.
I’ve harped on this point in too many posts to link to by now, but I’ll reiterate again that I feel like I’ve been pretty intentional and conservative in my PP running thus far, giving myself lots of time to build strength and endurance. I was cleared to run at 3 weeks PP and had a couple surgeries before 3 months PP time, but otherwise, thankfully, the PP period has been smooth. Most of my PP LRs have been with my friend Saurabh, who was training for a trail 50 miler (he did it!!), which meant that a) our LRs were on trails and b) as such, involved a mix of walking-with-a-purpose (“hiking”) and running. This might warrant its own separate post, since many of the earliest LRs I did pregnant were also on trails, and I absolutely think that if you can do so, pregnant runners should run trails for as long as possible and again during their PP periods. That type of running strengthens you in ways that I don’t think you can get quite so easily from pavement/flats and in the process, I think also makes you less susceptible to injury — which is key for all the obvious reasons and especially when you’re coming back from some time off and when you’re transitioning to running while pregnant. Anyway… oh, and c) trail running can often take a long time, so the time-on-my-feet factor has been high (3:30 for an 18-miler!), though the distance not necessarily.
switchbackin’ on Thanksgiving! [pc: S]Two of the three races I’ve done postpartum — the 510 (a 10k) and the Sirena 10 (a 10 miler) — I ran on not-fresh legs. Fuck, the 10k was a couple days after my surprise appendectomy/IUD removal, and the 10 miler was the day after a LR with a couple ks of gain. I knew that I wasn’t going to break any PRs or anything like that at either of those races, but I was honestly surprised at how I felt during each race. Only at the Berkeley Half did I go into the race with fresh-ish legs, and I ran there pretty much in line with how I fared at the other two races, after taking into account the race topography (BHM is not flat, nor was the 10 miler in SF). At all these races, I was expecting the worst, and the reality was that things weren’t really so terrible.
One of the biggest reasons that pushed me over to registering for Modesto was that I want some structure to my running again. In 2014, after racing SF and pacing at SRM, I trained through the autumn for my 50k and mostly focused on time on my feet, eliminating any semblance of speed work. When I learned I was pregnant just a few days after the 50k, again my focus shifted from following a schedule to running exclusively by feel (and again, without any speed). I ran long or short when I felt well or when I wanted to: that was my training during pregnancy. It is wonderfully liberating to run however and whenever you’d like — and believe me, I’ve had a lot of fun doing so for the past year — but I’m ready and eager to follow a plan and to see what’s been brewing in the legs (or probably more accurately, what I need to harvest… and then cultivate… and then brew? maybe? not a coffee drinker, so this coffee bean metaphor is probably not as good as I thought it sounded in my head…).
Besides the feedback I got from the races this fall, I feel comfortable in my ability to train for a marathon right now because I’ve posted running volume that I’ve been happy with in the past 4 months PP. I’ve selectively focused more on volume than I have on speed stuff in these immediate PP months, and here’s how it has shaken out:
August: 36.20 (had Spike 8/8)
September: 50.76 (surgery #1 in early Sept; took a week off thereafter)
October: 123.02 (surgery #2 in late Oct; took a day off thereafter)
November: 140.34
The other big reason that pushed me to Modesto is simply why the hell not. I’m a stay-at-home-mom to two young children, including an almost- four month-old whom I’m breastfeeding exclusively, so while training for a marathon probably isn’t the most logical or easiest thing for me to be doing with my time, I think I am making it work. Without going into the logistics of my training and life schedule, I have to do some shuffling with runs and workouts during the workweek to accommodate my family’s schedule, but after doing it for a week, I think I’ve figured out a method that’ll make it all work and — most importantly — will allow my running to be minimally intrusive to our family life. That’s key for me.
the faster I can get home to this crew in the mornings, the better. and yes, this is absolutely our Christmas card picture.
I’m really excited to see how this training will unfold for me over the next ~15 weeks. It’s much too early to talk goals and such, but if nothing else, I’m going into this cycle feeling really revved up, healthy, strong, and optimistic. The running community is a wonderful one to belong to, and I’m really stoked to be able to answer that I’m not only training for “life” these days.
A week and change ago, along with a few thousand other runners, I ran the Berkeley Half Marathon through the mean streets and hills of Berkeley and the Cal (UC-Berkeley) campus. The same company that manages the BHM also manages the SF Marathon, and I was fortunate to be a social media ambassador for both races this year (and have my races comped — thank you!). My family and I have lived in the Bay Area now for nearly two years, but I’ve spent virtually no time in Berkeley (and hadn’t run there at all), so I was excited about the opportunity to run the “not flat” course, using it as yet another fitness/endurance assessment of how my running was faring at about 3.5 months postpartum. A big bonus was that Chicago-turned-Berkeley galpal Meredith lives a block-ish from the race’s starting/finishing area, and Portlander Austin (whom I somehow had managed to not see in over a year) would be in town that weekend as well. I had also learned that SF buddy Travis would be running, so we made arrangements to rendezvous pre-race at Meredith’s with Austin, Meredith, Travis, and Jen. Big Sis was also along for the ride on race morning, since she’d be hanging with everyone not running, so while there were a lot of moving parts, it was bound to be a good (albeit complicated) morning.
I wanted to get a decent idea of how my fitness and endurance were coming along, so while I didn’t actually train for this race as I properly should for a half marathon — I’m talking about both HM specific intensity (speed) and distance — I knew that the mileage and time on my feet I put in, a la long runs on the weekends, would more than likely cover me. Truth be told, I’ve never actually properly trained for a HM and have only run them during marathon training cycles, so without consulting with some experts, I wouldn’t know how to train for one … anyway. Tangential.
My goals for the race were two-fold: a) to finish the thing (always) and b) to post a 1:4x, probably somewhere in the 1:42+ range. I based that number mostly on whimsy but also somewhat on some very unscientific intuition and reflection. My thinking was this: my first half post-baby in 2011 was about 5 months postpartum and was a 1:44 on a very flat Chicago course, with a very different training/speed/volume history leading up to it (and with much more time off during pregnancy and postpartum). The BHM would be a tougher (hillier) course, no doubt, and I wouldn’t be as far along PP (about 3.5 months versus 5 months+), but my running training/speed/volume since 2011 looks virtually nothing like it did pre-2011. It’s not to say that I thought a 1:42 was in the bag (because newsflash, it never is), but my educated guess was that it would be doable, barring catastrophe.
what I was getting myself into
On race morning, A and I arrived to Meredith’s shortly after 6:30 and chilled with everyone before Travis and I left for a warm-up. I was so excited to be running and racing again, and while I did my usual pre-run/pre-race song and dance and ate/drank my usual stuff, my body was still throwing me all sorts of the pre-race nerves, like making me think I had to pee or poop 1000 more times (negative) or that I wasn’t physically ready to run (nope) or that my milk was going to come in and make me all engorged for a couple hours (nada – fed the baby in the wee hours and pumped before the warm-up). Minorly annoying, kinda funny, but also strangely satisfying to have these feelings again before a race for the first time in a long time. You know what I’m talking about.
Travis and I had similar time goals, so we decided to start the race together, though we soon got separated after about mile 1 or 2. The “not flat” course posts most of the its hills in the first 5 miles (and many seemingly right out of the gate). The first few miles also weaves you through downtown Berkeley (I think … or a downtown that’s very near the Cal campus) before taking you through campus and some neighborhoods. It’s all hilly, but in late November, especially through some of the ‘hoods, it’s also quite beautiful with some probably hella expensive homes, the tree cover, and the foliage’s changing colors.
free race pics FTW. I don’t know where this is on course, but here’s a pretty picture of a tree with pretty leaves.
As I do for probably more worse than better, I rarely looked at my watch and instead just took everything on effort, especially during the first five-ish miles when it seemed like we were climbing hill after hill, with very few flats in between. I kinda vowed to catch back up with everyone who was flying past me on the few flats between each ascent, though I don’t think my vows actually materialized. More than anything, I felt in control, ascending wasn’t all that gruelling, and I was having a blast. Sometimes when I run in a new-to-me location, I feel disoriented because I don’t know where I am, nor do I know where I’m going, and even though I had no sense of direction or orientation during the BHM, I felt strangely liberated by it. (Sidenote: sometimes I wonder if I fare better at races where I don’t know where I am. Does anyone else feel this way??).
again, not sure where this is (maybe Cal, judging from the building in the background?), but I am obvs stupidly happy to be there. (sidenote: sandal dude behind me!)
I took a few gels around 4, 7, and maybe 10 — I had written the mile markers/aid station stops on my hand so I’d remember when to take them — and felt pretty solid. I had begun catching up to people through the back half of the course and, from what I could tell, was ahead of more people than were people ahead of me (if that makes any sense). I knew I wasn’t going at what was once my usual HM speed, but I wasn’t dwelling on it or comparing how I was doing now versus how I did before. I was fine with where I was and told myself, at the risk of sounding kinda silly, that I belonged in the race and belonged at the paces I was posting. Fun and gross fact: in basically all of my HMs I raced (or attempted to race) in 2014, my stomach threw a veritable shit storm and relegated me to port-a-potties or bushes mid-race with wonderful bouts of diarrhea (you’re welcome, and sorry). I got nothing to say for it except that running can sometimes hurt like hell. Fortunately, throughout the BHM, my stomach wasn’t throwing me any Code Browns, so as far as I was concerned, I was winning the thing. Feeling in control, having fun, not feeling the imminent need to go defecate in public somewhere — what more could I ask for.
and not choking on a gel mid-race also makes me happy
Around mile 10, on the out-and-back portion, I first saw Travis (and successfully side-5ed, wohoo!) and later, many folks in my RunningAddicts group who were there pacing. I kept feeling like my body was trying to surge and saw that I had dropped something around a 7:11 pace for mile 10, but I knew I couldn’t sustain that for the final 3 miles and kept trying to reign things in a bit. Though we had finished most of the climbs, there were still a little bit left, something like only 200′ over the last 3 miles — not much, for sure, but enough to make you feel it after running 10+ miles and climbing some in the first 5 miles.
For whatever reason, probably since I first learned my multiplication tables, I always tend to think that 8*4 is 36. I know it’s not, but for some reason, I always think that it is — I think everyone has a thing like this, be it with math or spelling — and around mile 10, when I started to feebly do some mental math, I initially got incredibly dismayed because I didn’t think it’d be physically possible for me to break 1:40, a goal that I had somewhat kept to myself because I thought it was completely unrealistic, if not irresponsible, for the training I’ve done lately. However, once I remembered the actual product to that 8*4 bugger, I damn near rejoiced because I thought that it was actually feasible — barring catastrophe — though I’d have to be very careful and intentional over the final few.
Those final couple hundred feet of climbing felt monstrous, though I was catching up to and passing people right and left (giving myself a huge confidence boost in the process), and ultimately, as I was coming down the finish chute (and after hearing Austin’s booming voice on my right) and saw Travis on the other side, I kicked with anything that I had left and came up with a 1:40:11 (fuck) for 13.17 miles — just missing breaking 1:40 and running almost-perfect tangents. Damn, how quickly I forget the feeling of “really happy but just a tad miffed.” Racing, how wonderful and tough you are, you sly minx. (Garmin stuff here).
Austin got this great one of Travis just steps from finishing 13.1
looks like my hair is on fire. final: 317/3575 OA; 42/1722 women; 11/539 AG (30-39)
As I suspected, it ended up being a really fun morning. Once I finished, I quickly connected with Travis and Jen, Meredith, Austin, and A, and grabbed A and walked with her and Travis through all the post-race vendor stuff. Travis and I each earned a special TSFM/Berkeley Challenge medal (for completing each race), which was neat, and before long, we all met up again and reconvened at Meredith’s before parting ways. While Travis and I were racing, apparently A and Austin, Jen, and Meredith were busy having a blast at some of the playgrounds nearby. Good morning for all 🙂
PC: Austin
I’d definitely recommend the BHM. I had a really positive experience, and it definitely gave me the feedback I needed to figure out how things are coming along for me postpartum. Seeing friends always sweetens the experience, of course, and being able to bring Big Sis along also made the morning more fun. Thanks for the opportunity, BHM gang.
And with the feedback from the BHM (and the other races I’ve run this autumn as fitness/endurance assessments) in mind, and after a few more days of hemming and hawing (or heeing and hawing, because that makes me think of cowboys, which makes me laugh for no good reason) this eventually happened:
here we gooooooooooo!
Thanks again to the fine folks at the Berkeley Half Marathon for allowing me to be a social media ambassador for your fine race in 2015. It was a blast, and if you find yourself in the Bay Area in the future during the BHM weekend, definitely look into the race. It’s a good one.
