10k Gold

Well, I did it.

Last Sunday, at 8:32am, I crossed the 10k finish line. I clocked a pokey 10:08 pace, but I ran the whole thing at a steady cadence, I never stopped to walk or rest, and I passed more women than passed me. I wound up somewhere near the middle of the pack of nearly 1400 runners, and I finished 72^nd…in my age group. And no, I don’t know how many women were in my age group. Seventy-three? Nine hundred? Four? It remains a mystery.

I ran with Maria the Spectacular and her daughter, who brought along 2 friends from work. I moved away from them soon after the starting gun, in part out of nerves, and in part because I’m a lone runner. I enjoy my time alongside Howard when we go together, but for all purposes, I fly solo when on foot. I wanted to be alone with myself as I logged the miles and took in the scenery.

Choosing an all-woman race as a first-time event was smart: women chatted all through the race, talking to each other about parties, picnics, work, and, of course, their men. I saw very few hard core racers (certainly there were none at the back of the pack, where I started), and I didn’t get elbowed out of someone’s way or shoved off the path because I was clogging up the “lane”. A few non-racers crossed our paths, dodging through with their dog or darting around us on cycles, but for the most part, we had north Lincoln Park to ourselves. The sun was bright but mild, the lake was calm, and the humidity stayed out in the suburbs. It was pretty cool.

I resisted the urge to sprint off the line at the start, and again near the end. I couldn’t see the finish line until I was 100 feet from it, and so I dared not notch it up, not knowing whether it was 500 yards or 1.75 miles before I hit the Finish mat. God forbid I run 5.5 of a 6.2 mile race and then collapse a few feet before the end because I miscalculated the finish line and my own ability to run at full speed when I’d run most of the race like a normal person.

I had lots left in the tank when I stopped, and though I crashed when we got home, sleeping nearly 7 hours on Sunday afternoon and leaving Howard to fend for himself the day before he traveled (DS slept with me in solidarity), I was fine. I had a bit of soreness the next day, but since I’d been running 7-ish miles per workout for 2 or 3 weeks, this was a Sunday Morning Run, and not much else.

I’m glad I did it, but I’m not sure I’ll repeat the race experience. Running is one of a rare few things in my life where I’m not competitive. I don’t carry the timer with me anymore, I don’t try to run until I hurl, and I stop to walk if I get winded or the humidity suffocates my legs. It’s my pleasure, purely and easily and I alone own every sweaty, huffing moment of it. Somehow the idea of picking at my pace, or of running more hills or intervals for the sake of the sport just dogs me. I don’t want to do anything but run. Given how infrequently I can do something for its own sake, rather than as a gnawing crawl for the Championship of the Universe, I think it’s best to leave it alone.

Especially since I may have to give it up.

I’m so worried that it’s true, and that I’ll have to give this up when I’m still a fledgling. I’ve been having a burning sensation in the tops of my knees for the past couple of weeks, and sometimes it lasts for 2 days after my workout. I don’t feel it while I’m running, but the burning starts immediately after I stop and intensifies for a full day afterward. I keep to low-heeled shoes at work and I make sure my form is textbook, but the ache has persisted. I suspect I’ve done a bit of overtraining—it probably is too much to ask a newbie runner’s body to log 21 miles a week in only 3 sessions. But I love it, and I have to say, I’m pretty stressed about the idea of stopping. If it doesn’t abate soon, I may have to seek help, and all the running books say to stay away from doctors—their favorite advice to runners with knee pain is “Stop running.” Oh, and of course, “That’ll be $150, since this was not covered by your insurance.”

I took most of this week off, opting not to work out at all until Thursday, in hopes that the burning would go away. I went to the Y, deciding that maybe I could keep my fitness level up if I did 2 stationery workouts a week and reduced my running to 2 times (from 3 or 4). I mounted the elliptical and ran it as fast as I could for 30 minutes. I’d planned for 40, but the treadmills were Right There, and I just had to hop on. I haven’t been on a treadmill in months, and I wanted to see, just for a minute, how it would be.

Let me tell you, after criss-crossing the DuPage county Forest Preserve, running on a treadmill is like watching other people ride a roller coaster. You get some idea of the thrill, but it’s so unbearably monotonous that all you wind up getting is dizzy and bored. I made it a mile before I gave up. I hadn’t prepared to run and so was having some issues (details withheld for modesty’s sake), and eventually I had to step off. I wanted to go back today, but the burning has returned, quieter than usual, but then again, I only ran 1 mile instead of 7. I am going out tomorrow though. I’m taking my old shoes too, since now everything is suspect. Maybe it’s the miles. Maybe it’s the trail. MAYBE it’s the shoes, and the fact that this allegedly awesome running store didn’t watch me run when the sold me the shoes. And maybe, if I change enough things, the burning will go away and I can get back to running injury-free.

The Mommy Marathoner at work suggested that I don’t have enough musculature in my legs to support me, and so the work is falling to my joints—literally. I like this idea best, since it’s fixable, and fixable with more exercise (and exercise I’ve been meaning to add for months now). So my new plan is to run 2 days a week and do the Y 2 days (or 3). I’ll run for an hour outside, but on Y days, I’ll do 30 mins of zero-impact aerobics (YAWN!) and 30 minutes of weights. I’m a hard core lifter from way back and I know how to work my whole body in 30 minutes, especially at the beginning. Eventually I’ll have to alternate days and body parts, but for now I can beef up my legs and get back to the business of hoofing on the limestone.

In the mean time, I’m still hungry all the time, and it got way worse when Howard started traveling again last week. I started thinking about why my brain went so haywire as soon as Howard’s limo left the driveway. Eventually, I remembered an old news article that made a connection between some chemical in chocolate and some receptor in the brain that gets all fuzzy when you’re in love. I wanted chocolate because I missed my man. It helped to know that, intellectually, but I still had to leave through the shipping dock every night this week, to avoid the basket of goodies that a woman at work (a triathelete, I might add) now keeps at her desk.

I really hate skinny people sometimes.

Someone at WW said last week that the part of my brain craving bad foods is a part of my physiology, and will never go away. Hats and horns, my pain is chronic! It’s just like alcoholism-a disease, terrible and progressive, with no known cure. I’d get one of those ribbons to stick to my minivan, but I fear it would remind me of an Auntie Anne’s pretzel and make things worse. Oh, cinnamon sugar darling, come comfort me while I mourn my self-destructive gene pool….

Howard is home this week, and while I logged a record low 147.25 pounds on Monday, it was only because I slept all day and ate nothing and I knew it wouldn’t last. I’m still hovering in the 150 area, but I figure that adding resistance training will build muscle and encourage me to eat more protein. Maybe the Fat Lady will be so busy digesting branch chain amino acids that she won’t notice that I’m cocoa-deficient.

Fat chance. Hmmm. Maybe next week’s goal is to figure out how to turn that into a no-fat chance. I’ll think about it on my next run.

A the T(en K)

PS-Yeah, ok. It was pretty cool to run the race. I finished a 10k. Me, the ex-Fat Lady, who couldn’t slam the car door a year ago without taking an extra breath. I ran 6.2 miles without stopping, and sort of felt cheated that there wasn’t more to do. Maybe I’ll look up that ten-miler race in October….Stay tuned.