Turn of the Century

I made it. I’ve lost 100.0 pounds.

At 7:50am this morning, I jumped on the scale, and there it was. 151 pounds. In fact, It’s really 150.9 or thereabouts, since the balance marker on the scale is a hair’s breadth below the 151 mark. I am officially down a full century, and I don’t care that pounds aren’t measured that way. Now that I’ve returned to losing weight—even though the reasons remain inexplicable (eating more? Exercising? Mercury went retrograde?), I am celebrating. I am down 100 pounds from my heaviest. I made it through everything and this goal is getting logged with something material. Open your wallet, Octopus-Mistress. Something Honkin’ this way comes!

For months I’ve been salivating about this moment. Usually when I thought about what the goal would be, it came in a small velvet box and cost a lot of money. At first, I dreamed up a sizzling diamond pendant equal in (diamond!) weight to the number of pounds I’d lost. When the number hit 90, and I realized I’d be plunking down several (many!) thousands on a rock, I backed off and pointed instead to a tanzanite ring with some diamond accents. Tasteful, beautiful, and rewarding from every angle. But then, I have my engagement ring and my commitment ring, and so where am I going to wear this (also expensive) bauble? I need to find something else.

But what? I need nothing, I want nothing, and I’m saving for a wedding.

Back when I was stuck at 153 and convincing myself to make goals other than weight loss, I ‘rewarded’ myself for my running by purchasing a pair of elite shoes. I realized as I put the first miles on those awesome sneakers that those shoes meant more to me than the sparklies. Me, who got certified by the Gemological Institute of America all the way back in 1991, just so I would know what I was looking at when I picked up a gem. I love jewelry, and I own a nice collection. I still retain that love, but now it falls more into fascinating beads or big, chunky pieces brought back from cruises by my dear, dear friend and future Mommy-in-law, Grandma Florida. My prized possession right now, apart from my solitaire, is a blingy watch that came back from Morocco. I’d been looking for a watch since 1989, and hadn’t found a thing that even tickled me. But this piece just knocks my face off every time I put it on. It’s a watch, it’s jewelry, it’s from someone I love, and I adore it.

But jewelry, especially gem-quality jewelry, just isn’t me anymore. I’d rather have an elliptical machine, or a weight bench with dial-a-dumbbells, or maybe a GPS watch, so I can venture off the path at the Forest Preserve and go running over the softer ground, and then let my wrist guide me back to the minivan in time to meet Lynda and DS at 6 o’clock.

I have some time to think about it, but not much. Now that I’m at 151, my last goal of 147 is totally in range. Howard is off the road now, and so Reddi-Whip gets returned to its original, more reasonable role of after-dinner, on-top-of-jello food. I’ve extracted the goldfish crackers from my diet and I’m razor-focused on sprinting toward the finish line: my finish line.

I have every reason to believe that I can make it down to my bottom. Four pounds to go, and miles ahead of me to burn those last few fatties off of me. We biked 18 miles today and I’m going for a full 6 mile run tomorrow. Heck, I might even see a size 0 before it’s all over.

No, I can’t count on that, and I really don’t need it. I am content to ignore sizes, sort of, so long as they’re all down on the lower end of the racks. The cut and the fit matter more to me than the number. Especially now that I can fixate on the scales. Just a few more to go, and then the real maintenance starts. And it’ll mean so much more to me, because this is my maintenance, born of my cursing and suffering and now, my joy at having nearly reached it.

One more pound and that big bar is moving off of 150 to rest on 100. I'm moving that bar backwards, and it is never going up again. I’m in a new century now. One free of size “W” clothes and winded walks to the corner and wondering if I could ever surface out from under all that fat. I got one hundred pounds of it off of me, and my sites are aimed square on those last 4. Don’t get comfy in there, fellas. You are goin’ down.

And so am I.

A the C(enturian)

It's a Magic Number

All my life, I’ve had a love affair with the number 3.

In college, Howard quoted some oddball film, where an eccentric scientist spelled his name with a silent “7”, and a whole bunch of ‘Q’s or something. I don’t remember the letter configuration, but I did remember the silent number. I liked the idea so much that I began to spell my last name with a silent “3”.

Eventually, the number ‘3’ came to mean anything impressive enough to merit special attention. Spectacular putt-putt venues got renamed go3lf courses. Restaurants I enjoyed had new, silent characters inserted into their names. Angie’s Pi3zza. TGI Fri3days. Sometimes I got fancy, and simply substituted the ‘3’ for another letter. Taco B3ll. Auntie 3ms. T3d Dr3wes. Yeah, two ‘3’s in that one. That ice cream deserves it.

Once I sent a letter to my brother’s roommate, and for reasons I cannot articulate, I screwed up the whole address. I used the wrong first name, mixed up the street name with one that didn’t exist in that town, spelled the city incorrectly, and botched the zip code. So what should have read:

Mr. John Smith
175 N Cherry Street
Delaware, OH 43015

read instead:
Mr. Jeff Smith
175 N Banana Drive
DelaWHERE?, Ohio 41305.

And, of course, I put a ‘3’ in both my names on the return address.

The Delaware post office delivered the letter. Moreover, it delivered the letter in 3 days. Thereafter, that civil service organization became known as the Delawa3re post office.

School House Rock, the great series of animated music videos from the ‘70s, that delivered more education to me than most of my public schooling, had a little song for the number 3. It was a quiet song, nothing like the awesome rock tunes they did for “Interjections” or “Verb! That’s What’s Happening”. No, the ‘3’ song is a soft little ditty, referencing all form of triad from the collective unconscious. Past, present and future; faith, hope and charity, and a constant reference to 3 being a magic number. The chorus warms me particularly:

A man and a woman had a little baby.
Yes, they did.
They had three in their little family.
They had three; it’s a magic number.

Whenever I thought about being a parent, I always figured I would have only one child. So to me, 3 was the perfect number, the right number for my family. I even built a little needlepoint of that poem for X when we were together, inserting DS’s nickname for ‘baby’ to personalize it. He left it behind when he moved out, and I almost threw it out during one of my Purges. I’m glad I kept it. That family is gone, but now I have my perfect family. We are 3. It’s a magic number.

This week, with my loss edging toward the 100-pound mark (a three-digit number!), I went shopping. I was having my period, and so the Octopus was pressing its head against my pants anyway. Things don’t fit me as well in this week than they will in others. I think that may be part of the reason why I’m always in the dressing room during the First Days of my cycle. I figure if I can squeeze into a new size with a little bit of grunting, then they will surely fit for real once my tummy recedes.

Nothing really fit. The Jones New York got close, and I may go back next week to try again. But the Calvin Klein was way too snug. It surprised me, since I’ve had great luck with ol’ CK so far, but I may have to admit that I’m not going to get below a size 6 in dress clothes. I’m okay with it; in fact, it makes shopping a little easier, since apparently it’s okay to be tall if you’re a 6: at least, moreso than if you’re a 4.

I dumped the suits on the ‘reject’ rack on my way out of the fitting room and pointed my cart toward the junior jeans. I’d scored a pretty pair of shorts in a size 5 the week before, and I was feeling lucky. Besides, if I can find at least 1% lycra, I can get those babies on without lying on the dusty dressing room floor (don’t try this yourself: it’s gross, and only kinda worth it).

I found a pair of size 7s with a nice, faded look to the front of the legs. They also had that trademark 1.5” zipper that girls jeans seem to favor, but I couldn’t find anything else that stood a prayer of containing the octopus. I tried to find a size 5, which really fit me better, but these seemed to be a stand-alone. Looks like a slim shopping day for Mistress Crabs-A-Lot.

I realized once I got them into the dressing room that they were not size 7, but brand name Seven. Well, that made more sense. The word ‘seven’ was plastered all over the tags and the stickers and the jeans, and at first, I thought the maker was just really intent on letting shoppers know what size the jeans were. Comforted, I pulled them off the hanger and stuck my foot into the first leg.

Oooh, wow, these are tight! And they feel like much more than 1% lycra. Remember those woolen tights from kindergarten? The kind that don’t ever really pull up so much as just adhere to your leg? Woe to the little girl who sprouted hair too soon-she was about to get the Juniors Stretchy-Tights Epilady treatment. These jeans were just like that. They didn’t slide up my leg so much as creep, and when I got them to my groin, they sort of stuck to my skin. Tugging didn’t really help, since there wasn’t anything sturdy in the fabric at all.

I did a couple of squats and they oozed up over my hipbones. I thought they were way too small, but then I realized that with a gentle pull, I could paste the two sides of the wee zipper together. They buttoned easily, if alarmingly below my waist and I took a look.

The octopus was doing a cliff hang over the belt line, but a couple of tucks secured it into its denim hammock. The jeans had skinny legs, and I like that, and while the rise was ridiculous, they looked okay. I did a turn and my butt was sort of in 2 sections, but looked appropriately mature-yet-junior, and I decided that any jean willing to crawl over the invertebrate was going home with me.

As I was peeling them off of my legs, I noticed the tag in the back read ‘26’. I twisted the jeans off (eventually just turning them inside-out and kicking them off my feet) and then gave the tag a good eyeball. Sure enough, they were a 26. Twenty-six what? It couldn’t be a waist size-it doesn’t get anywhere near there! Then I saw another, smaller number above it. It was a ‘3’.

I checked the hang tags, and there it was again. Seven Jeans. Compare at, blah, blah, yadda, yadda. Size 26 E (Europe?), 3 USA.

Size 3. I was in Size 3 jeans. No holding my breath, no pretending to be bacon on the floor of the dressing room, and no more than 1% lycra. Size 3. Juniors. Mine, mine, mine.

I almost wore them back to the office, but the octopus registered her distress, and so I demurred. I did wear them the next day, though, and while I had some hip bone distress from the closeness of the fabric to my joints, I also got compliments all day long. Great jeans, you look skinny. Where’d you get those? What size are they?

They are 3. It’s a magic number.

Am3y

Off track

I hate the track.

I’ve hated the track since high school, when I ran with the girls basketball team out of the gym, up the hill to the stadium and around the black cinder track, huffing and panting while Coach Blow-Dry stood around in his sans-a-belt trousers. Loping around in circles, listening to my own labored breath and watching the rocks jump up from the ground and sign leases inside my socks ranks right up there with shampooing the insides of my eyelids. I switched to fencing in college, just so I wouldn’t have to run any more freakin’ laps.

I’m just not built for tracks. I know this, and I remembered it a couple of months ago when I tried to run in ovals around the Wheaton College 400. Dull, awful, and, despite the spongy-looking surface, absolute horror to my joints. That’s why I spend so much time running off-road: it’s prettier, it’s softer on the bones, and it isn’t the track.

I’ve been doing my running lately in the Forest Preserve. I’ve been running around Herrick Lake for the last few weeks, content to circle the one-mile circumference, rather than venture off, alone and winded, into the preserve itself. The area is perfectly pleasant, but I’m just not confident enough to sprint away from a would-be assailant if one appeared on the back end of my run. So I run in circles, varying the direction so that I wear out my ligaments in tandem. The last time I ran the lake, I did 7 full laps. I did the whole thing averaging about 6:50 per lap, and while I’ve done better, I felt okay with it.

Then someone at work told me that her GPS watch clocked the lake trail at 0.83 miles, and not 1.0. Crushed, but doubting that my little $10 Target pedometer could compete with a GPS watch (and determined to get find out how to get one for myself!), I brought Howard into the mix. We took to the Prairie Path on Friday, with Howard cycling beside me. According to the bike’s odometer, I run somewhere between 6mph and 7mph, which equates to approximately 9:15 per mile.

Nine minutes, when I thought I was running at 7. I’m sorry, but that is blisteringly slow. My god, how long will it take me to finish the 10k? An hour! Will the finish line even be up at that point? Will I be running into someone’s picnic because all the racers and their families, and the sponsors, have gone home? I can’t have that. I must run faster. I might not get to the pace I thought I was doing, but I can do better than nine minutes.

I went to the library and got all their books on running. The one that grabbed me was a Hal Higdon, apparently the Gucci of running-by-the-book-coaching. I plucked ‘Run Fast: How to Prepare for a 5k or 10k race’ and carried it home, unsure of the 1980s man on the cover, but hoping that running transcended fashion, and that the advice would still hold.

The book, while interesting, is clearly written for the hard core runner (100 miles per week) who is using 10k races as a speed workout. I find it funny that there are people who use my target race as a warm-up and/or workout in preparation for ‘real’ races. I’m trying to think how this would equate to me, and I guess it would be a book about how to get faster on the dash from the bed to the bathroom when I’ve drunk too much water before bed. Oh well, all things in perspective, I couldn’t walk to the corner last year without losing my breath, and today I can run for 4 miles before I start to make noises when I hit a hill.. Maybe by next year, I’ll be okay to lose a couple of toenails in the San Francisco marathon, because the hills make for good preparation to the flatter Chicago terrain.

Higdon’s book is all about using sprinter’s workouts to make distance runners stronger, and therefore faster. I’m in. I read about interval training, strides, sprints, fartleks (I swear that’s a real word), and using anaerobic drills to create greater aerobic capacity. I skipped over all of Higdon’s advice about postponing speed work until I’d run for a year, did at least 15 miles a week and had a ‘race pace’ based on some portfolio of competitive runs. I need to get faster now. Last Saturday, I packed up my boys, and off we went.

DS paced me for the first warm-up lap, but then his tiny legs gave out and he opted for walking, calling to me, ‘Mommy, you don’t go fast!’ No joke, kiddo! That’s why I’m pumping my arms like pistons around this stupid ellipse. Howard kept pace with DS, but they got ambushed by a pack of co-eds playing Frisbee football on the fake grass, and so they loped around the loop while I chugged and huffed my way through the drills. I did half a lap at nearly-full speed, and then a quarter-loop walking, and then started it all over again. I jogged 2 laps as a warm-up and did a final ‘victory’ half-lap at the end. By then, DS was melting and even Howard looked a little bit over-sunned. I figure I did about 3 miles, far less than a run, but my legs were tired and it felt good to blow the carbon out.

According to Higdon, I ran too fast. I should have been running at race pace, vs. all out. Well, tough. I don’t know what race pace is, and so I just went as fast as I could while still maintaining my form. I’m sore still, but it’s clearly muscular and not joint-related, and so I’m going ahead with my planned run tonight. And then on Thursday, after it cools down, it’s back to intervals at the lake, this time with full knowledge of its 0.83 secret.

Long runs increase endurance, but intervals increase fitness. Starting Thursday, and for the next month until the Fleet Feet gun goes off, I’m working on chipping my time down. I’ll beat the one-hour race time for sure, and maybe, just maybe, the adrenaline of the day and the other racers can lift me to my ‘race pace’, whatever that is. And then I’ll be back at it the very next workout, chiseling time off of that, too.

I have my long runs and my intervals now; things to alternate, each with their gifts, and each with their demands. I can get faster, and fitter, all at once, and so maybe next year when I lose a toenail, I won’t even notice.

That is, unless it happens on the track.

A the D(irt Hiker)

Leaping from the Goldfish Bowl

I discovered last week that I am still the same old fat girl.

Howard is traveling still, this being Week #8 that he’s been out of town full time. Yeah, he comes home on Thursday night, but it isn’t until after 9pm, and we both work on Fridays, so to my mind, he’s gone all week. Plus, Sundays are filled with limo reservations, boarding pass printings and packing, so to me, it feels like he’s only here on Saturdays. It’s not enough, and it’s wearing on all of us.

Howard and I are now to a point where we’ve agreed to have a fight on Friday night, whether we need it or not, which we will. We’re both so wired from being apart that we get cranked up over small things. We spend all week ignoring them, because we have so little time, and that's late at night on the phone, so it's a weak connection at best. We don’t address anything real while he’s on the road, and then the adjustment of him returning home wipes us out so badly that inevitably we blow up at each other. Then we spend hours feeling guilty about fighting on our lone day together, which exhausts us even further.

So, starting this week, instead of doing that, we are now going to catalog the week’s offenses, battle them out on Friday night, cry, make up, have sex, and then spend the rest of our weekend being normal. We’re going to do it anyway, and so we might as well get it done, so we can get on with being our usual happy-family selves.

Howard has been an angel through it all, shouldering the blame, as if there were any, for being out of town. He spends his whole weekend doing things for DS and I to “make up” for his time away, and he manages, somehow, to do some wedding planning while he’s working 10-hour days and having dinner with his power-mongering boss. Plus, as you know, he cooks all day long on Sunday for me, packaging up single-serving meals and making sure there’s enough produce in the house to let me eat WW-friendly all week long. He even makes a few jello cups for me, so I can have a little something sweet and topped with some fat-free Reddi-Whip for dessert. I can eat all week as if he were here, and continue sliding down the scales, as if he’d never left.

Would that it were so. I’m so down by his absence that I can’t bring myself to eat, and at the same time, my emotions beg me to comfort them with all those No Longer On The List foods.

I made it through the first couple of weeks all right. I missed Howard, but it was sort of a romantic longing. Oh, look: at last a lover that I’m sorry to see leave the house. We can do a whole Sara McLachlan thing, where we’re sad, but it’s glorious. That wore out quickly, though, and then the loneliness and the quiet of the house prodded me to comfort myself with the old standbys.

It started small, as it always does with a bad habit. The first bad week, I ate ham instead of Canadian bacon at breakfast, since I didn’t have to cook that, and I doubled up on the yogurt when I discovered it was too much trouble to scramble egg whites. The next week, I had a handful of goldfish crackers before dinner. I skipped my carbs that night, but still, the grease of those evil little crackers laid in my stomach all night, and I know that the nutrition content (read: fat) was no match for the bulgur/brown rice combo that Howard had made for me over the weekend.

Next, I ate a Pop Tart after dinner. That stormed my intestines and had me cramped up for the better part of the evening. I couldn’t believe that I once considered those rectangular demons a Choice Pig Out Selection. They are nasty, and that is super-true when they are stale and when I’m out of practice eating them. By my calculation, they are 4 POINTS apiece-roughly the amount I eat for a light-yet-filling dinner, which would include 4 ounces of chicken breast, 2 salad-plate-sized wraps and a fat free yogurt of my choosing. I knew it, and yet, I ate it anyway.

That next week, I fell through the floor. I only ate a real dinner one night, and I downed a full can of Reddi-Whip each evening. I didn’t even put it on top of anything. I couldn’t do that—I was already eating too many empty calories! It was like too-sweet ice cream, that went down easy and buzzed me just enough that I didn’t miss the regular dinners. That is, until I finished the cup and my stomach demanded something real. No, honey, I can’t do that. But how about a little more fake sweetener to take the edge off? I actually ran an extra day, just to try to keep the pounds off of the scale.

What happened to me? It’s as if all these weeks of training my brain and teaching myself to crave healthy things vanished along with my Food Chaperon. I’m worried now that my success is based on Howard’s proximity, or his eyes on my plate, rather than anything I’ve done on my own. It’s unsettling to think that if he went somewhere overseas and I didn’t see him for 3 or 4 weeks straight that I’d be in bigger clothes and lying around the house like in the old days. I fear that as soon as my just-a-little-bit-snug jeans gets Just A Little Too Tight, that I’ll panic and it’ll all be over. Down the drain (read: stomach) goes all that hard work.

I got it back together last week, and then ran 27 miles. In a stroke of luck I don't dare expect again, I weighed in last Sunday morning and logged an amazing 153.0. I’m still struggling with those last 2 pounds, but at least now it’s a fair fight, rather than me bludgeoning myself with crap and guilt and self-destructive thoughts.

I’m PMSing this week, so the octopus is a little puffier than usual. Somehow though, I’m okay with it. It sort of reminds me that I’m just a chink away from my old self. The Fat Lady lives on. I might have retooled myself, but the re-engineering is going to take a while.

Last Saturday, Maria the Spectacular commented in our meeting that she gives herself a small goal every week. I’m going to start doing it, too. For this week, my goal is to make a real breakfast for myself every morning, including eggs, cooked ham or bacon, and ONE yogurt with flax meal. I’m also going to make a sit-down dinner for both DS and I. Lynda the Nanny-Goddess tends to feed DS when he gets off the school bus, and that makes him harder to commit to dinner, but summer school is in the morning now, and if we do some of our studying or playing for an hour or so beforehand, and I make myself a sensible snack when I get home, we can wait until 7 or 7:30 to eat.

I haven’t figured out how not to miss Howard, but I am committed to caring for myself in his absence. It’s enough that we’re all suffering because of each other-there’s no sense in me stretching that out to myself. Besides, I’ve got a figure-hugging wedding dress to slither into in less than 4 months. That’s an awesome motivator, believe me. I cannot afford to buy another, bigger dress. Just ask my cranky, cheap-o accountant. Oh, wait: that’s me.

Off with the crap. Back to the races. Those last 2 pounds are coming off, and then all the rest of them are staying off. I look good, I feel great, I'm eating right, and I believe I'm becoming thing for life.

A the B(ack on Track)

PS-I wrote this last Monday. This morning, I weighed in at a new low of 151.50. All hail the Panic Attack. More (of course) later.

Your Mileage May Vary

This weekend, I learned one of two things:

(1) The City of Chicago is in on a conspiracy to sabotage my confidence as I prepare for my first footrace, OR

(2) I stink at simple math.

The City of Chicago is on a grid, with 8 blocks to the mile. Has been since State and Madison became the (0,0) point during the engineering layout, continues to be so for all inhabitant and tourist ever since. Streets go north-south or east-west, except for Lincoln, Grand, and Clark, which run on a diagonal. If you want to know how to get somewhere, just look at the address where you’re standing, and start walking. Or, if you’re in a higher-priced neighborhood, hail a cab. Chicago doesn’t do the ‘streets go north-south and avenues go east-west’ like Manhattan, but hey, we’re Midwesterners, and frankly, we’re just not that detail-oriented. From the air, the city streets mimic the largest waffle you’ve ever seen, and, from the ground, no matter where you’re standing, it’s 8 blocks to the mile.

On July 27, I will be running in the Fleet Feet Women’s race, a 10k run that winds around Chicago’s lakefront. I’ll be on a cinders path with up to 3,700 other runners, racing past Belmont Harbor, the Foster Street beach house, and the famous totem pole at Addison Street. In preparation for this, since I am an anal-retentive competition-insane crazy broad, I took Sunday morning off from my Mommy errands, loaded Howard and his Daddy-cycle into the minivan and rode up to Hollywood beach, where Lake Shore Drive begins. I wanted to see the path before I ran it the first time. I wanted to feel how different it would be to run on the breezy lakefront vs. in the more stifled suburban winds (all puns intended). We landed near the Edgewater Beach hotel, found a parking space with alarming ease, and took one last potty break (very important!) before I started shuffling down the path toward the Belmont Harbor.

The actual race course doubles back on itself and the starting point appears to be a random place along Wilson Avenue, so I decided instead that I would mark off 3.1 miles on a southbound course, turn around when I hit the mark and run back. Total mileage: 6.2, with a decent view of the slope, angles, and terrain of the path between the starting spot and the finish line. Bryn Mawr is at 5600 North and Belmont is at 3200. That’s 24 blocks, so according to the Chicago Grid, that’s 3.0 miles. I started at Hollywood beach, which is 2 blocks north of Bryn Mawr, allowing for the extra two-tenths of a mile that I would need to go my full 10k. So off I went, secure in the knowledge that I’d run three 10ks in the last week, and so this run should be textbook. Routine.

Actually, no.

First, thanks to my darling fiancé, I was now the proud owner of a new bicycle—a sleek and snazzy hybrid bike that woos me to ride faster, faster, faster! After we got the bike on Saturday, we cycled out to West Chicago and back, logging about 90 minutes on the bike, and averaging at least 15 mph. Poor Howard. I didn’t tell him ahead of time that for me, bike ride and bike race are interchangeable terms. I’d crank up on my pedals and whoosh ahead, then look back and find this tiny speck of a man, pedaling like a normal person and (likely) wondering why he’d chosen this “bike-o-path” as a mate. To his credit, he never complained, and I did slow down (on occasion) so we could actually ride together. I wasn’t tired when we finished, but 90 minutes on the bike is a full workout, even if it didn’t injure my knees the way that running does/did/will. So my legs were a little less rested on Sunday when I hit the path. I wasn’t hurt or sore, but clearly, something at the cellular level needed a little more break than I’d given them.

Second, it was hot on Sunday. The thermostat in the car read 89 as we were driving in, but I reasoned that it’s always cooler at the lake, and anyway, there’s a delightful breeze that accompanies the water, so even if it stayed near 90, I figured that it wouldn’t feel so hot. As it turns out, I edged off the cinders-based running track almost immediately and wound up on the blacktop cycling path. Blacktop is much, much hotter than dirt, especially when it’s crowded with city folk who are used to the cramped quarters and edge & elbow each other all along the route. I was in the sun most of my run, and the blacktop seeped up through my shoes until my socks threatened to start smoking. And, the temperature was not cooler in the city. In fact, by the time we finished, the odometer on Howard’s bike read 95. Ugh.

Finally, while it may be that there’s 8 blocks to the mile and the trip in a straight line from Hollywood to Belmont is 3.1 miles, that rule does not apply to a winding, double-back style bike & running path that sometimes hugs the lake and other times dances on the lip of the Drive. I now know also that I got caught up in agitation with all the cyclists streaming past me and tried to keep up with them, so I was running much faster than any pace I could sustain for 6 miles in 95-degree heat. I made it about two-thirds of the way down to my turnaround point and had to stop, my breath gulping and my legs yelling at me from above the fire pit in my shoes. Anger, of course, does wonders to fuel the spirit, but very little to motivate a PMS-beleaguered suburban dweller baking in the city sun.

I made it as far as the halfway point before I peeled off, tired and defeated, and angry enough to cause stares as I shouted my self-indignation. Howard attempted soothing words-this is new terrain, it’s full of people, it’s morning, it’s hot, you biked an hour and a half yesterday. Who cares, I told him. I’m here to race. I need to run the full 10k without stopping. This workout is a waste.

I pulled off my pedometer to check my time, certain that this would be the thing that would send me over the edge. Since I hadn’t run the whole of the distance, I was sure that my time was slow. It was. 33:11, or about 11 minutes a mile. When I ran 10k at Herrick Lake on Thursday, I’d run it at a 7:15/mile pace. Good god; even at faster-than-I-can-manage pace, I was dog slow.

Then I looked at the mileage. It should have read 3.1 miles, but instead it read 4.5. What? I looked around me: we were at the Belmont Harbor, and the familiar high-rise apartments of that corner stood over us to the west. I did the math again. Yes, 5800 minus 3200 is 26 blocks. Eight blocks to a mile. 3+ miles. But there was the pedometer, insisting that I’d run 4.5.

Well then.

It still stunk that I couldn’t run the whole thing without stopping, but 4.5 miles of rage was better than 3 miles. And, recalculating the math, I’d run at about a 7:30 pace, including all my walking breaks. Okay, that’s better. Not good, but better. The only thing I had to do now was slow down enough to find a pace where I could run the whole thing back, and then run the whole thing back. If I did the whole trip, that would be 9 miles. Well, nothing to do now but take a drink, find an opening in the trail traffic and get going.

I did the second half in 34:30, so a little bit slower. I really lost my legs in the last mile and had to do it in intervals. It was the strangest thing-I had the aerobics and wasn’t tired that way, but my legs got heavy and demanded I stop. Since I was so far beyond my regular workout, I didn’t mind (as much!), and just ran what I could and rested when I had to. I stopped 3 times on the way back, but I made it at least 2.5 miles before I stopped, which was longer than I made it on the way down. I finished up with a total time just over 1:07, and averaged about an 8-minute mile for the whole thing. I don’t think I can really count that, since I stopped for a full 5 minutes at the halfway point, but two 4.5 mile workouts is better than one, and in the final analysis of it, I ran 9 miles yesterday. Plus, Howard pointed out that I passed a lot of other runners on the way, even at my slower pace, and that I was only passed once (by a runner), and he was sprinting.

Now, 24 hours removed from it, I know that it’s not necessary to run the full 10k; only to finish it. I also know that when I do intervals, I run faster, since I can rest between spurts. My pride-based ego (which is huge) insists that I run the whole thing, and I probably will. My ego will also not allow me to stop during the actual race, and so while I may collapse at (over!) the finish line, I can’t see that I’ll be stopping. I’ll do what the experts say for the first race-start near the back, don’t fret when obvious-marathoners sprint by, stay focused, and leave my headphone at home. Good advice, all. But they also advocate running my regular workout pace, and I don’t think I can do that. I’ll try, but something tells me that I’ll be working hard to keep up with the veterans, and to run the whole thing, so that I can say I did it. Running a 10k is a completely different experience from finishing a 10k. I can do it-I have.

I’m so glad that I went down there on Sunday. I didn’t run the actual race course, but I’ve seen the lakefront, I’ve run on both paths, and now I have 5 weeks to prepare, including at least one more weekend when I can go down and race on the actual trail. I’m through with my anger now, and the only thing that remains is my anger at myself for getting angry in the first place. Who cares if I couldn’t run the whole thing? This is something fun for me, something I love. I should treat it as such. And now that I’ve done this once, I have a goal to beat for the next time.

So that’s the long, and the longer, of it. Thank goodness for the pedometer, otherwise I might have hung up my shoes for good. Well, okay, for the rest of the day. But still, even though I would have gotten back on the path by Tuesday, it would have haunted me to think I couldn’t run the full 10k in the city. Now though, that I know that 10k in Chicago is really more like 15, I’m feeling better about the whole ordeal. I looked at the race map last night after I got back, and I smiled. Yeah, I can do that. I ran 150% of that today alone.

I have a new goal now: to be running 10 miles per workout by the time race day comes. That way, when the “k” gets stretched to “mile and then some”, I’ll be ready. Then too, when I start off way too fast, I’ll be finished before my body gives me the finger and hurls me to the ground in protest. I should get that weight bench soon: Howard is going to need it, so he can carry me all the way back to the van after the race ends.

A the W(aiting for Pedestrian GPS)

Running Down a Dream

Screw my body; I want to keep my brain forever.

Many irritated apologies for not catching you and me up on all that’s happened. I think I may have to go to the ‘write less, but more often’ model, since I’ve begun, mind-melded and lost at least 4 posts since I wrote last, and that does not count all the writing I lost in the 2 weeks between the last post and the one before that. But enough whining. I’m already hopelessly behind.

So let me hit the highlights and then challenge myself to write an under-500 word post, so everyone can keep current without having to devote an entire morning to reading each of my musings. Here goes.

1. My decision on whether I’m finished losing weight, or just stuck on 153 for the rest of my life, or maybe just eating too much Fat Free Reddi-Whip now that Howard is traveling 100% of the time, continues to be a point of daily debate inside the entropy of my mind.

2. Akin to ‘am I done already?’ I ask myself if I should just pretend that I’m always losing, since on the days (okay, hours) that I’ve decided I’m actually on maintenance vs. stuck at 153 pounds, I wind up eyeballing all form of Bad For Me foods. This week, I actually ate a Pop-Tart. I didn’t even really have those when I was fat! They’re not food, there’s nothing of merit in them, and frankly, since I am no longer 9, they don’t taste all that good. I’m up a pound this week, and I’m pretty sure it was the (stale!) Brown Sugar Cinnamon “pastry” that I ate this week, instead of the frozen grilled shrimp that had been left for me by my caring-yet-absent fiancé.

3. Single parenting SUCKS, and is made double-sucky since Howard is actually a participating partner in our lives. DS and I do all right, but we’re basically dormant while he’s gone, and while I stew in guilt about it during the day, I simply cannot bring myself to do anything fun with DS in the evenings. For DS’s part, he seems content to flop on the couch and let me read to him or watch “West Side Story” for the bazillionth time. Seriously, that has to stop. Good film, and the longer scenes don’t affect him the way current television does, but he’s starting to quote some of the movie now, and there are a few epithets that no one should utter, least of all a 5-year old about to enter kindergarten.

4. DS is going to regular, mainstream kindergarten next year. After a long, funky, oddball negotiation with the IEP team, they agreed, with extreme reluctance and prejudice, that, given the unavailability of our first choice (let him go all day, in the self-contained K half day and the mainstream half day), that he really was better suited for mainstream, especially if he had an aide. So, noting item 3 above, I have a lot of social skills training to do with DS prior to the first bell in August.

5. Now that DS has a diagnosis and a placement for next year, I have finally gotten him into a private speech therapy class. He’ll go twice a week, once for 1:1 therapy and once to a small group that emphasizes speech and social skills, and is designed for children like him, with high intelligence and mind blindness. He’s already come so far, and I think this will really catapult him into Me But Typical for next year. I’m trying really hard not to get overenthusiastic about this, especially since he’s been talking so much more lately, and with greater diction and sentence structure. He’s still far behind in social skills, and that’s key in a mainstream situation, so we’ll see how the summer goes.

6. Since my Awesome Boss has ladeled all kinds of new work on me, including a bunch of finance/accounting things about which I know nothing, I have decided that now, 20 years since I graduated with my B.A., is the perfect time to get that advanced degree. I researched programs for a month and finally settled on a place where I’d done a few grad classes back in the 90s (yeah, I’ve been kicking this around for a LONG time). They’re going to give me credit for the work I’ve done, even though it was 9 years ago, and my advisor has encouraged me to CLEP test out of a few prerequisites, so if I get all that done, I will finish my MBA in 2 years. I do find it funny that I’m on board with the CLEP thing, though I admit that is largely because these tests are administered in test centers and not in freezing college cafeterias, where I’d be a caffeine-deprived middle-aged woman in the midst of hung over teens, taking the same dang tests and wondering what the Hock I was doing there. This way, I can humiliate myself in private, study from the comfort of my “crib”, and nobody has to know that I’m taking a college-entrance exam at 42. Well, nobody but me, Howard, and all of you, but hey, what’s a little teen humor between old fogeys?

That’s the big stuff. Now on to the less newsworthy but more Obsession-minded: my running.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve discovered 2 running junkies at the office. Both are women, both have children, and both have run for years, so they have tons of advice for me. The Director is a hard core runner, who even now, years removed from her regular training still clocks a 6:08 mile when she’s (in her terms) ‘laying up’ in a race. The other is 5 months removed from having her second baby and is training for the Chicago Marathon this October. I managed to snag the Momma for lunch last week, and I dragged a ton of ideas out of her. She rattled off speed workout ideas and shoe shopping suggestions, and diagnosed my “I’m gonna retch” sensation by announcing that I was dehydrated and that I had to over-water myself on the day before I run, as well as the day of my workout.

One thing both women talked about at length was the Runner’s High-that moment when you’ve pushed past The Wall and then feel like you could run forever. Momma said that I wasn’t getting it because I was doing interval training-that builds my fitness faster but it keeps me from the endorphin rush, since I stop when it gets hard. She suggested I run just a little on my days off, just to see if I could run a mile without stopping, or half a mile, if that’s all I could do. Determined to get The Rush, I agreed.

Well, I’m a forty-something newbie runner, so the idea of running when I should be resting my gonna-get-arthritis knees worries me. But I got stuck in the house on Monday, and so DS and I loaded up the treadmill and I ran until I had to stop. I did most of it at 6mph (10-min/mile pace), and while I was tired, it felt pretty good. I made it 2 miles (yay!), but I also thought I could do more. I didn’t look at the monitor until I hit 1.4 miles but then I was constantly looking down at it and I’m pretty sure I sabotaged myself.

Wednesday, I decided to try again. I packed my gear and left work a little early. I went to the Herrick Lake preserve by my office and mapped out a route. The path around the lake is exactly 1 mile. I would run it as long as I could, at least 2 miles though, and just stop when I had to.

I got to 3 miles and was so surprised that I stopped, fearful of hurting myself. I walked for about 30 seconds, but my breathing was back, and so off I went. That last mile hurt, and then I got worried that I’d be late getting home, so I left. Final mileage: 4.0, at 27 minutes, or roughly 6:15/mile. (over 9mph). I have NO idea how I ran that fast-I really felt I was running at a comfortable, easy-to-maintain pace.

I spent Thursday and Friday determined to get back to Herrick and see if I could get that 5^th mile in. In the mean time, Maria the Spectacular invited me to join her and her daughter for a 10k race. Ten kilometers is 6.2 miles. I agreed to sign up. And then my Psycho Competitor Brain jumped in and said ‘hey, if you ran those 4 miles so easily and so fast, I’ll bet you could do a whole 10k without stopping. Just take it easy, and I’ll bet you can do it.’

I decided to take an extra day off, to get my body healed completely, so I had no soreness excuses to keep me from running as far as I could. Howard and I loaded up the van, bolted DS’s new tag-along bike to Howard’s gleaming silver streak (father’s day present), and off we went. I was nervous, but determined to try. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t run the whole thing today. The longest I’d run at all was 5 miles, and that was on intervals, and the longest I’d run without stopping was 4 miles, and that was just 2 days before.

I made it.

Ran the whole thing. Six-point-two miles. 10k. Final time: 44:15, or roughly 7 minutes per mile (just over 8mph). I got REALLY tired on mile 4 and insanely tired on mile 5, but I kept going, knowing the runner’s high would kick in and I could go on forever. Somewhere in the middle, I convinced myself that if the high hit late enough, I might run 7 miles. Or 8. Or 10. The half-marathon couldn’t be far behind.

Well, yeah, actually, it is. I made the whole thing, but I was slower than the 4 miles, and I never got the runner’s high. Or maybe I did, but I missed it because I was dodging toddlers and some clown walking his Great Pyrenees across the span of the trail. I was pretty sure at some point I was running slower than I could have walked, but I kept the spring in my step, I kept my head down on the inclines, and I refused to stop, even when my body hinted that Old Ladies new to running shouldn’t be out dong 10k runs without months and months of training and Hal Higdon (running guru-apparently) whispering in their ear.

My brain, though, refused to quit. That last lap was hard-unbelievably tough and seemed to take forever, but I did it, and it was not The End for me. My calves are sore, but I’m not hurt anywhere, and Howard said I looked tired and worked when I finished, but not spent. It’s true. I was tired but I probably could have done more. But that’s enough for today. I’m happy to leave some on the track for next time. After all, I ran a 10k today. All by myself, having never really run more than an occasional sprint to a departing train before this year.

Yay me. But at the same time, there’s still some work to do….somewhere. I think.

I did what I wanted to do and switched my goals from weight loss to fitness. Somehow, though, I remain frustrated. Does it matter that I’m 153 pounds (154 today, grrrr!), even as I’m comfortably in size 2 everything, when at 157 pounds in March I was a 4 or a 6? I know that size loss is all due to this exercise. I even look different since March, even in my face, and that’s unexpected change for a bunch of running.

Will it eat at me forever that I’ve lost 97 pounds or 98 instead of the 100 or even 106 I’d hoped for? I don’t know. I don’t see any extra baggage on my body, but since I didn’t choose a goal, I didn’t really reach it and so I’m not sure whether I should stop. I always said I wanted to lose until my body found it’s ‘set point’ and then I would rest happily there, knowing I found my true and healthy bottom. But it’s so weird to have backed into a goal. No answers, and that’s very frustrating for the control freak/gotta know it all now woman that I am. That didn’t change when I got skinny. In fact, if anything, that broad has more energy now, since she doesn’t have to cart around an extra 100 (98!) pounds any more.

I’m very happy down here, wearing size 5 juniors and knowing that often, I’m the thinnest person in the room. What a change it’s been from last June, when I tipped the scales at 251 pounds and couldn’t cross my arms over my chest when I sat down, and, when sitting, couldn’t tell where my boobs ended and my stomach began. Now I’m a 34DD, and while my waist won’t ever be the teeny teen wasp-thing it was, I can wear low-rise jeans without too much protest from the octopus, and really, these days I actually prefer to have pants sitting on my hip bones, because they then accent the athletic shape that I’ve recently created.

What’s next? I just don’t know. Maybe I’ll figure it out on the track, when my body is too busy counting laps to realize that my brain has worked it all out.

A the T(en-k)

PS-That 500-word post thing goes into effect next time. Maybe. :)