Dear Diary,
This is Olga, and I wish I had this on a poster.
Olga cannot jump further than me or run faster than me, unlike most...
she cannot throw a shotput or discus further than me.
Yet, she is still considered one of the finest athletes in the world, because she consistently sets records in her age group in the long jump and other events.
This year, she will be 94. Not surprisingly, scientists are studying her.
You can read more about Olga here.
Dear Diary,
During June I got two new marathon states. We did a marathon double: Marathon to Marathon in Iowa on Saturday, and then South Dakota on Sunday. This is my belated race report for those races.
When we go to places like Iowa in June, that are green and moist and lush we are often struck with the notion of what it would be lie to live in a place like that. That lasts about a day, diminishing somewhat when I have to start propping myself up with a cocktail of antihistamines, sudoephedrine, and nasal spray. I'm incredibly allergic to many green things and some black things. I'm talking about grass and mold. These are the reasons I live in New Mexico.
In any case the Marathon to Marathon is a lovely run. It's a nice course. The weather was lovely, and given that I live and train at an altitude of 6000 feet, I felt like I was swimming in oxygen. I made record time in the fist quarter of the race. But that's when things took, literally, a turn for the worse. About mile 8 or so we turned north, and for the next 15 miles we were subjected to the smell of money that was so powerful it stayed in my nostrils until mile 23.
The "smell of money," for the uninformed, is the smell associated with a large-scale hog operation. The hogs are confined in large warehouses, and their waste flows out into "lagoons" next to the buildings. And these lagoons do not have palm trees and girls in hula skirts.
Hog shit smells a lot like people shit. So basically, a solid shit smell for 15 miles of slow running. The last three or four miles, thankfully, it began raining and rained continually. The wind blew the rain from a different direction so that I was thankfully upwind for the rest of race. I finished, in Marathon, Iowa, and went down into an old school basement to shower, and it was the Best. Shower. Ever.
We had a nice post race meal during which I was subjected to karaoke. I will tell you that you have never heard the musical embodiment of the white race until you've heard Macy Gray's "I Try" sung by a farmwife in Iowa.
We got into our rental and drove to Volin, South Dakota. This is where I lived while I was in college and the first of my many graduate schools, from 1991 to 1999. I have an old friend there, Nancy, who gave us a nice room to stay in, cooked for us, and We caught up.
An aside, which you can skip if you like:
The swan lake marathon had a special meaning for me. I lived not far away when my children were small and I was in college. There was a time in my life, pre-Baboo, when I found myself heartbroken and devastated. I had just gone through another divorce, quite unexpectedly, and my mother was dying. I was looking into checking myself into a hermitage owned by the church I attended at the time, but I needed someone to watch my kids. I asked a friend of mine, who said, "i've got a fishing shack up at Swan Lake. You can go any time you want."
So, every friday morning I would pack up the kids and a case of wine coolers and some trashy novels and head up there. No phone. No internet. No radios. no video games or TV. The kids were forbidden to take off their life jackets but could otherwise have as much fun as they wanted, within line of sight. I dragged an old aluminum chase lounge down into the water, eschewed sunblock, and read and drank wine coolers most of the day.After the kids went to bed each night, I sat out on the dock, thought about my mother, and end of yet another marriage, and grieved. I didn't eat. It was the best. diet. ever. i carefully scheduled this mini-breakdown to end when school started, and when I returned to my final semester of grad school, I was golden, thin, and at peace.
Eventually, I got better.
We all do.
But anyway.
I packed clothing for a warm run because, after all, this was the forecast: warm, sunny, dry. Turns out, not. So. Much.
The next day it was pouring. We ran through the rain in the dark to find packet pickup, and ran through the rain in the dark to the start line. I opted for the early start, and I ran through the rain, the dark, wearing a trashbag, for about an hour. On muddy dirt roads. The really fucked up part was that I had sunglasses on. So, I had a choice: run in the pre-dawn darkness without glasses and not see a thing, or run with dark, rain smeared glasses in the pre-dawn darkness and not see a thing. The rain let up, for a little while, and I ran down a well-traveled road, wondering why everyone was running on the other side until a semi loaded with hay blew by me and nearly blew me off the road. Around mile 10, and I was running down another muddy road, and it started raining again. At mile twelvish, I was miserable. I was tired, undertrained, and I had just run a marathon the day before.
I stopped at an intersection where i could run right, and finish a half marathon.
Done.
i'd be done.
Or, I coukd turn left, and do another thirteen miles. I stood there, in the rain, thinking...thinking. Then I decided: okay. I'm going to turn around and look back down the road behind me. If Sweet Baboo is right there, I will finish the marathon. If he's not, I'll take the coward's way out and we'll just have to come back to South Dakota another time.
I took a breath.
I turned around.
Mother. Fucker.
He was right there, running toward me. At first he didn't see me, because I was jacketed and hatted and standing in the rain, so I called out to him. He listened to me whine and complain about how tired I was, how wet I was, like he has patiently for the past thirteen years. Then he finished the marathon with me. As he has many times.
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| I just realized I forgot to fill in Nebraska. Damn. |
Then we flew home.
The end.
...
Dear Diary,
I've discovered that serious strength and conditioning coaches, when you tell them (proudly) that you finished your workout in less time than they thought, take that as a challenge. Then, they give you more. On the other hand, you can't whine either. You have to strike this balance between a grudging respectful struggle and a grunting stoicism. It's a guy thing. You wouldn't understand.
I have also learned that men are, at times, really frightened of having said the wrong thing to a woman. I find that interesting, I haven't decided what to do about it yet. But I will. I'm not cruel, but I can't ever pass up a chance to have some fun. Just a simple, "now, why would you say that?" causes a sharp intake of breath, furrowed brow, and confusion. It's fun. Try it.
Coach Juaquine, (pronounced "Wah KEEN" for the gringos out there) for instance, was trying every verbal means to correct my form one day until it finally dawned on me what he wanted me to do, and I said, "oh, stick my butt out more. Why didn't you say so?" There was an awkward pause, and then he wandered away.
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| Garmin printout of my Santa Fe Mountains half marathon |
I can do a handstand now. I'm working on handstand pushups.
Last weekend, I did a little half marathon in the Santa Fe Mountains. It involved stopping a lot and taking pictures, so it was slow. I was going to make it an even sixteen miles, but the flash of lightening and nearly simultaneous crack of thunder changed my mind. Of course, toward the end, I was mutering about how this was never going to end. Ever.
The lesson I learned from that hike is that I need to learn to take better pictures of myself.
I was asked by a coworker recently why I run, and I referred him to this post, by The Oatmeal.
Then I was asked by another coworker why I like lifting weights, and it took me a while to articulate the reasons why. So here is why.
When I was around 30, one day I was out chasing my kids around and I hopped down off a retaining wall.
It wasn't a high wall, maybe about five feet or so, but when I landed, instead of what I recalled from younger days, something else happened. When I was younger, I felt spry. I felt nimble. I hopped and tumbled and did cartwheels and handsprings. but on this day, this particular day, a full forty pounds more than I had been when I graduated from high school (yet twenty less than I do now), when I jumped, I landed like a sack of wet cement. I think the sound I made was:
Unnhhhhhkk.
Around about the same time i got a full length mirror for the first time in several years, and I was surveying myself, naked, turning this way and that, and well....oh, my.
When did my ass fall all the way down there?
Both of these thongs, of course, I accepted with a certain amount of resignation, which is sad, when you think of it...a thirty-year-old woman saying quietly to herself, well, this is what getting older is, I guess.
Jane, aka DreadPirate, has for years been trying to get me to lift weights. She isn't nearly as persuasive as Sweet Baboo, though. He pays for a membership, ushers me into the car when I say, sure, I'll try it, and I chatter and watch out the window like a four-year-old while he carries me to our various adventures, including the weightlifting gym owned by Juaquine. Since I started working out with Coach Juaquine, I've been doing a shit-ton of weighted squats, weighted lunges, and leaping up and down holding weights. For an hour, twice per week, i do cleans, and snatches, and deadlifts. I work the big muscles. Gluteus, hamstrings, and quads.
The result is that I feel stronger. i feel nimble and spry. I can toss around grocery bags. I hop up onto curbs. I feel young. And, my ass is a bit higher than it used to be. For the past couple years I'd really started feeling my age. This seems to have cured that, for now.
The Oatmeal says he runs for food. So do I. But I lift weights for vanity.
...
I don't really feel like a forty-something. The other forty-somethings I see from time to time are from another world. Even Baboo said "they" seemed different. Even a lot of the thirty-somethings I see seem to have given up on doing, or being, interesting. I definitely don't feel fifty-something.
I suppose I should be happy approaching 50, looking at the AARP discount and buying a nice, fat, wallet for pictures of my grandchildren. I should be old, and wisened, and young people should come to me. I should be harassing my children about settling down and giving me grandchildren. No more of this silliness. Running and such. Time to just stop, and to Be.
Right?
I guess not.
...
Dear Diary,
This week I decided to start working on making up for lost time. Meanwhile, I though I'd posted this, but I forgot to push the button.
13. I have regretted not participating in athletics when I was in school. I was fast when I was young, but then I got older and I was too cool to run. "Too late," I'd say to myself, "you can't go back." But you can, actually. As Goethe said, it's never too late to be what you might have been.
12. Last week Sweet Baboo and I went to the first annual meet of the New Mexico track club, I saw women and men of various levels of fitness and ages sprinting, pole-vaulting, jumping hurdles, and long-jumping. I was inspired.
11. Tuesday, I went to a workout of the New Mexico Track Club. In terms of self-flagellation, nothing quite beats hanging out and doing intervals workouts with tiny, hyperactive people who weigh 75% of what I weigh. (Which means I weigh 33% more than they do. Do the math.) The workout was to run 400, jog 400, repeat, run 200 jog 200, run 600, 600 jog. Then repeat the whole thing, and by "run" I mean to run at your mile pace, which for me is theoretically around 9 minutes a mile. Eventually I was jogging and then shuffling, and occasionally I was walking and breathing real hard. I'm getting over what appears to be shin splints, and so I'm off road running for a while. All of the workout was in fairly thick grass on a defunct track.
10. As parts the track workout involved running back and forth I would ran past people who were far ahead of me and receive the Supported Pity Applause, given generously to the last, slow runner. I am not stranger to its iterations.
Hey, Misty! Good job!
Way. To. Hang!
Allright! You're really staying the distance!
Good job, Misty!
You're really hanging with it!
Way to go the distance, girl!
Etc.
9. at the track workout, Coach Dave took me aside and made many suggestions and comments designed, I suspect, to motivate. One of them was to do box jumps, starting low like, maybe, on a piece of paper, I think. Then work my way up.
Another comment he made was about how it was all genetic anyway, so no matter how hard you try and train, you can't overcome them if you don't have them. But anyway:, he continued, do lots of plyometrics.
In any case along with the running it should be fun. The track club is talking about putting together some "throwing" workouts. And, we moved our Olympic weigh-lifting but in a different gym in a rather interesting part of town.
8. I'm trying to have fun again. Treating working out more like play time instead of "now I gotta do it" time. This morning I ran in the foothills--i'm off roads for the time being until my shins heal--near our house is a long trail down, down, down into an indentation in the side of the mountains that we call "the dish"
7. I can think of no better way to celebrate independence day than by running the trails. So that's what I did. Then DreadPirate, Sweet Baboo and I went for a bike ride. Yes, on a bike. I am still on the fence about doing another Ironman but leaning towards doing one in 2014.
6. I decided that I am kind of interested in crossfit, but I'm not interested in the herd mentality, the diet, or the crazy high price. (Sweet Baboo and I belong to one of the best gyms in the city and it costs about half what crossfit does, I shit you not. So I'm looking at ideas for doing this shit at home. Sweet Baboo is going to lift Mondays, tuesdays, Thursday and Fridays but I only want to lift twice a week so on another day while he's lifting I'll play with this crossfit thing.
5. for box jumps, one suggestion was a sprinkler valve box. But I don't know...Sure, it looks sturdy, but is it zeftig Athena Diaries sturdy? Will it stand up to my unsteady jumps after I've gotten tired? Will it get tippy when I do? Plus, I need to start low and work my way up. Then I went out and walked around my back yard et voila:
A place to do jumps!
4. I have a treadmill and live close to a place where I can run trails or do hill repeats. We already have one kettle bell, and a few dumb bells. I do not have any rings, nor at this point do I want any. I figure this is a good start.
3. I cannot do the following: pushups or any of their permutations; or pull-ups of any kind. So, I'll have to work my way up, I guess. My first goal is to eventually be able to do one of these. Or maybe more than one.
2. I have noticed some I portant changes since I started weight-training. First, I've had a bad shoulder problem since 2012. It's going away, slowly, but there's a huge difference already. Second, I have had a middle back pain since around 9th grade. When I tried to sit without back support, it was an awful, burning pain. It's almost completely gone. Third, I have spindly old lady wrists. They hurt like hell when I try to open jars, do pushups, or ride my bike. They're getting stronger.
1. But ooh, hauling 170 lbs around the trails is tough. I've gotten several comments about "ignoring the scale" but I think I've made two things clear: first, I do pay attention to how my clothes fit. And right now, they are tight. That's not muscle cutting me in half. Second, the scale reflects how much weight I'm carrying around, given that my size indicates that most of that weight is NOT working tissue, yeah, it kinda matters. But thanks for the comments, just the same. My goal, if I must weigh 170 lbs, is to 25% bodyfat or lower. Right now, it's above thirty. Except on Sundays, when Tanita magically insists that it's 23.
...
Dear Diary,
I have spent most of the second quarter of 2013 hating myself. Getting bigger. Trying different diets. Nothing was working. When I get this heavy (I'm back up to 170+) running is painful. Nothing fits. Clothes hurt...so I had to buy bigger ones, which for me is a size 12. I know that isn't that big, but in my quest to be fast, it's a hindrance..
At a race I was kvetching to a woman I know, Tove, lamenting my return going to a size 12. She shrugged. "Well, girls like us, we yo-yo. That's what we do." Then she grinned, shrugged again, this 60-year-old Athena I have long admired...and then came in 7th female out of 20 in a tough duathlon, beating most of the women decades younger than she.
13. have long felt bad about my weight. I supposedly weigh 173 today, and when I look around, I see women way bigger than me who say they weigh less. I figure they are either full of air, or they are lying. In any case, with the advent of the new Olympic weighlifting classes, we bought a new toy: The Tanita some number plus. 1000, I think. Eventually, it gives you data showing your progress, so that although your weight is staying the same your bodyfat is dropping.
This is quite useful because on the second week I got onto the scale and it flashed at me
176
Which, of course, resulted in this:
12. In my lifelong quest to become waif-ish, or willowy, I have accepted the fact that I'm built like a sprinter
not like a long-distance runner.
I have also discovered:
11. Left to my own devices, I probably eat well enough. I have a craptastic binge, followed closely by a couple days of eating nothing but vegetables. This doesn't really match any known diet out there. It's just Misty's Craptastic Binge/Fast/Eat Healthy Way. Generally low fat, high protein with lots of vegetables most of the time, and the occasional bag of chips. But, I must, must must exercise, or I'll blow up like a balloon. And
10. Speaking of which, if you're like me and you forget how to spell "balloon," someone once told me to remember that the two Os are balloons, and the lls are the strings. Each balloon needs a string, ergo, two lls.
9. During June, I did two marathons and a duathlon. I will write race reports about those soon.
8. In preparing for the duathlon, which was supposed to be a triathlon but the lake was too low AND DON'T THINK I WASN'T PISSED ABOUT THAT LACK OF SWIM I pulled my bike out of the garage where it has sadly hung for the past two years. Then Baboo and went for a ride. 1-2 miles into the ride I flatted out, tried to make a sharp turn, and went over onto my elbow. I hate cycling. Did I mention how much? ANyway, it turns out that there are many, many helpful cyclists out there wanting to help a damsel in distress even when that damsel is screaming, "MOTHERFUCKER I HATE CYCLING!!" I had an egg-size swelling on my arm.
7. Did you know, on average, that you nudge things with your elbow about sixty times per day? Me neither, until I brused the sh!t out of it. About sixty times a day I nudge something OW!! and then I swear. More than usual.
6. After years of lusting after a t-shirt that says SHARKFEST 2014 I am now signed up. Baboo and I are doing SHARKFEST, 2014. My coworkers were concerned. But as I told them, I don't have to outswim the shark. I just have to outswim several other tasty swimmers.
5. THe day after the SHARKFEST 2014 I am hoping to do a run called the Big Basin 50K. I hope, I hope.
4. I am seriously on the fence about Ironman Boulder. I have worried that since it's been 5 years since my last Ironman that my tattoo might expire. But man, did I mention I hate cycling? Still, I'm leaning closer...and closer...
3. About three weeks ago Sweet Baboo told me excitedly that he had ordered himself a practice shotput and discus. We had started talking about the senior Olympics, which I'll be able to try to enter in 2015. And, as he excitedly shared, he bought one for me, too
Uhhhhh....
wait. What?
I tried to get excited about it. I really did. But the fantasy me is a gazelle, not a large, burly thrower. I just couldn't feel it.
Then they arrived, the discus and the shotput, and he took me out to the field at the high school near our house,
And, well...
I had fun! I think I might have a penchant for the discus. The shotput, well, we'll see.
2. As you can see, throwers are not willowy. They are strong.
1. Like me.
...
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