bad days aren’t allowed

Coming off three excellent runs in a row, today I ran into the proverbial wall.  Runner’s like to talk about “The Wall” — a mythical, legendary beast, a spot where the flesh and spirit become weak, where all you want to do is curl up into a ball and go to sleep.  Upon meeting the wall, your spirit, motivation, and will all drip out of you and form a puddle of discouragement at your feet.

Usually you meet The Wall in a marathon; today I met it running considerably shorter than that.  I was out for a 14-mile run.  The day was fairly raw (mid-30s), quite windy (SSE 19MPH), and it was overcast.  Not ideal running conditions, but certainly not terrible ones either.

It wasn’t a good run from the get-go.  I woke up and felt tired.  My stomach ached a little.  And I just didn’t really feel all that much like running.  Still I put on my shoes and went out the door.

About half way through, my stomach started cramping and I felt kind of short of breath.

The shortness of breath thing always concerns me.  I truly think my first symptom of Hodgkin’s Disease was a decrease in exercise tolerance.  So even the slightest problems with my runs makes me get extremely nervous, even though I know rationally that there will always be bad days, even for healthy people.  But for me …  Bad days aren’t allowed anymore.

I finished the run, but I felt mad for stopping a few times because I felt tired and a little winded.  I’ve spent the entire day trying to convince myself that I just had a bad day, that I’m fine, that I’ll be running normally tomorrow.  After all, I had three excellent runs prior to this bad one.

Fingers crossed for a good run tomorrow.

something worse than cold rain

I have found something I like even less than running in cold rain.

Ice pellets.

I went for a run this morning wearing shorts, a fleece-lined longsleeve shirt, hat, and gloves.  The Weather Channel claimed it was 37 degrees.  A quarter mile into the run, it began to pour rain.  The wind was luckily at that point not in my face because I was heading due south and it was coming out of the west-northwest.  Half a mile in I started to get pelleted by ice.  Little pellets of frozen water.  They hurt.  By the time I got to the point where I turn to run west (slightly southwest to be precise), it had stopped precipitating.   I turned to run north and the wind wasn’t as bad I had feared (the Weather Channel claimed it was gusting up to 23 MPH).  By the time I turned again, this time heading east towards home, it had started to hail again.  The only good thing was the pellets were very small.  Had they been larger, I would have probably come home covered in ugly welts.

The weather has been very strange today — it will suddenly turn very dark (like a thunderstorm sky), then the sun will come out and everything takes on a sort of strange and eerie back lit appearance.  Then it will pour rain.  I can sometimes hear the ice pellets against my window.  And now the wind is gusting strongly.

Supposedly it is going to snow tonight.  We’ll see.  I don’t think any will stick because the ground is still too warm.  Hopefully it won’t snow because most of the trees here are still holding their leaves and as a result it would be a huge mess if you added heavy snow on top of them.

As much as I hate running in snow and slipping on the ice in the winter, I think I’d take some nice soft snowflakes over these ice pellets …

Finally - A Winter Run

In Cleveland, no one is talking about Global Warming any more. Nope. Winter is back and its here with a vegenance.On Tuesday morning the Lake Erie “Snow Machine” turned on.

And it was a day more fit to be one of these cute little guys …
<p align=”center”><a href=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/Penguins.JPG”><img width=”300″ alt=”Penguins” title=”Penguins” src=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/Penguins.JPG” /></a></p>
<p align=”left”>… instead of a runner.</p>
<p align=”left”>But we Cleveland, Ohio runners are made of sterner stuff. A little bit of snow and cold can only make us stronger, right?!?</p>
<p align=”left”>This is the scene that greeted me on Friday morning …</p>

<p align=”center”><a href=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/view1.JPG”><img width=”300″ alt=”Winter” title=”Winter” src=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/view1.JPG” /></a> <a href=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/view2.JPG”><img width=”300″ alt=”winter 2″ title=”winter 2″ src=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/view2.JPG” /></a>
Just lovely, eh? It was 25 degrees. Wind chill of 8. I don’t care where you live, that’s cold. (Unless you are an Emperor Penguin. Or an Alaskan. Or a Husky.)

Of course, extreme conditions call for extreme measures. That’s why I broke out my running snow tires.
</p><p align=”center”><a href=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/snowtires.JPG”><img width=”300″ alt=”stabilicers” title=”stabilicers” src=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/snowtires.JPG” /></a></p>
Stabilicers. Snow chains for the feet. (No, I didn’t run in shorts. When I turned on the Weather Channel and saw just exactly how cold it was, I beat a hasty retreat for more sensible wind pants.)

These babies worked awesome by the way. No more fear of slipping. But they are a bit heavy and do go click, clack when you run over dry pavement. A small price to pay for good traction.

The run featured white out conditions typical of Lake Effect snow. Lake Effect is weird. It comes in bands. One minute its white out (I had several of those on my run), the next minute the sun can be out and shining. This is what it looked like when I was done:
<p align=”center”><a href=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/view3.JPG”><img width=”300″ src=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/view3.JPG” /></a></p>
And this is what I looked like:

<p align=”center”><a href=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/IceWatch.JPG”><img width=”300″ src=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/IceWatch.JPG” /></a> <a href=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/SnowyJenny.JPG”><img width=”300″ src=”http://www.learnedfoot.goellnitz.org/photos/SnowyJenny.JPG” /></a>
Hope you enjoyed this virtual winter run!</p>

cold run

A cold run today. Actually it wasn’t that cold — it was in the 20s — but for some reason it FELT cold. Maybe because the wind was blowing, or maybe because it was cloudy and there was no sun. Anyway either way it felt COLD today. I did 5.25 miles in 49 minutes — not bad.My run was remarkably good for obtaining very little sleep last night. My bottom left wisdom tooth continues to be a problem. I run a low grade fever at night and its hard to sleep. Yes, I’ve been down this road before . . .

Tomorrow its on to Gettysburg. Which means travel. In the winter / bad weather. It will probably snow like crazy tonight and tomorrow … just for me.

cold AND rain

I have to say — I feel caught in the movie Groundhog Day.

I woke up this morning and you can guess what … Again, its VERY dark, its POURING (maybe worse than yesterday), and its COLD! Plus, now the wind is blowing at about 25MPH. Ew squared.

What’s a runner to do? Every time you roll over and go back to sleep without a really good excuse (i.e. you’re sick or injured or you really DO need the rest day), it makes it easier to just keep doing that. I don’t have a human hamster wheel to run on, so if running is going to get done today, its getting done outside. In the cold, rain, and wind. Ew.

So. I get up. Dress same as yesterday: tights, longsleeve tech shirt, hat, gloves, and my shell jacket. My Wave Riders are still a bit damp, but it doesn’t matter since they are going to get soaked again anyway. I decide to run in the park; I figure the walls of the valley and the trees may reduce some of the wind.

I again go through the difficult process of convincing myself to get out of the car. There’s almost no one at all out today. The wind is whipping, and as I get out of the car, the big oak behind me drops an acorn on my head as if to say “silly girl, get back in your car and go home.” I then promptly get covered with several HUGE wet maple leaves from the oak’s neighbor. These leaves were bigger than the palm of my hand.

I really don’t want to run at this point. But I walk up the short hill out of the parking lot, walk a couple yards to where 6.5 miles is painted on the asphalt path, and then I click start on my watch and start running.

I’m cold. Its pouring. By the time I reach mile marker 7, my feet are already damp and cold and my shell is soaking wet. I keep going. I run under the freeway bridge — ahhh, three or four seconds of dry — and notice my legs are really tired, dead, and stiff. Lovely. Nothing is hurting, they are just being sensible and rebelling against two days in a row of this nonsense.

The only good thing at this point is the walls of the valley and the trees are keeping the wind mainly at bay. Mile marker 8 is missing, but it should be located near another big bridge that spans the valley. My feet are cold and wet. There is a thick layer of leaves in many places on the path and they are making footing a bit slick. I give my Riders credit though — they are doing a good job in this slop.

The marker for mile 8.5 also is missing on this path, though I think I also know where it is approximately. Haven’t looked at my watch; don’t care much about the time. The path winds back away from the road again, and I finally see a couple other runners out running on the bridle trail.

At this point I want to stop running. Usually every run my brain and I go through one heated (generally somewhere between .5 and 1.5 miles) where I want to quit. I remember reading a passage in “Lore of Running” about the feeling of wanting to quit only coming on once and if you can manage to get through it, then you’re good to go. Well, that USUALLY holds true for me. Not today though. Four or five times (mostly in the first half of the run) I went through the “I don’t want to do this” debate with my brain.

I’m coming up on mile marker 9 now — that’s where I turn around for my 5-mile run. The path here is very winding. As I come around one of the last winds in the path before a straight section that leads up to where the mile marker is, I see a white tailed deer right on the edge of the path. Its a doe. Behind her, a very handsome buck. The buck quickly bolts, but the doe stands frozen, staring at me. She seems to be debating whether she needs to move for this person slowly running towards her. I get within about five feet and she decides to move: she bounds gracefully into the brush, white tail raised like a flag behind her. I hit mile marker nine, turn around, and think “now I get to do this again.” I look at my watch and its 22:27. That’s the fastest I’ve ever done that 2.5 mile stretch.

Seeing the deer refreshed me a bit, but I’m still struggling. My legs have loosened up a bit and I’m running at maybe a touch faster than conversational pace so I’m not hurting cardiovascularly, but despite the deer sighting this has not been a fun run.

Back past about about where the three mile point should be and the watch reads 27:17. Decide I’m tired of my gloves so I take them off and stuff them in my jacket pockets. My nose is running like crazy and water is running down my hat.

The run back under the two bridges is uneventful except I almost do a face plant from a few acorns. Have to be careful of those. I pass an elderly fellow walking with an umbrella. He must think I am crazy. My nose is running, my jacket is absolutely soaked, my tights are soaked, my hat is soaked, and my face is red.

I keep going. I do that awkward little sidestep dance where you try and go one way and the other person goes the same way with a chipmunk. I hit the 4.5 mile marker in 40:22. Whoo hoo. Half mile to go. Pick up the pace a bit. The path now comes of the woods out into a very large field. And straight into that nasty head wind. Ewww. The wind is blowing strong enough that I have to turn my head sideways. Its a miserable half mile and I have to exert myself more to maintain my same pace. But finally I hit the 6.5 mile marker again. And maybe the most miserable 44:18 run of my life is done. And if you read this far, I commend you. :^O You must be bored, too. If you were here, I’d share my giant post-run chocolate chip cookie with you. (uhh that is if there was anything left of my giant post-run cookie hahaha)