Grab a beverage, honey. We've got some catching up to do! There's a lot to cover, but I'll do my best to keep it short and sweet. (Yeah, good luck with that, Gingah...)
Remember when we were kids? We played outside every chance we got, often coming inside only when Mom called us in to dinner. I always liked playing outside, particularly splashing around in puddles during a heavy rainstorm, but somewhere along the journey to adulthood, I became an “indoor” girl. I’ve tried in the last few years to embrace my inner outdoor adventuress, but it’s in my adult nature to consider “roughing it” to consist of being without a blowdryer, or being further than a five-mile radius from Starbucks. I would be perfectly fine with camping, as long as there are walls and indoor plumbing, preferably none of which smells like mildew or is reminiscent of Deliverance. The absolute worst conditions for me, though, are the ultra-miserable double-whammy: cold and wet. Outdoor humor writer Patrick McManus notably described his myriad outdoor misadventures as “a fine and pleasant misery.” While his hilarious descriptions have often left me doubled over in convulsive laughter, trying desperately not to cause bladder leakage, I have always been thankful to be viewing his adventures from the sofa. Survivalists will tell you that “cold hurts, but wet can kill”...well, cold AND wet, even when it’s not bad enough to kill you, might just make you wish you were dead.
April’s Lake George 5k didn't improve my opinion of the cold-and-wet combo. As I’ve mentioned (ad nauseam) previously, winter has a nasty tendency to overstay its welcome here in the Great Northeast, and spring (especially this spring) seems the have some kind of passive-aggressive complex. (For the record, summers can be unbearably hot and humid, while autumn is what makes this area ideal. Sadly, autumn seems to be the shortest season of all.) Welcome to New York State, where experiencing all four seasons within a single 24-hour period is not entirely unheard of.
For all the trials and tribulations involved with the Lake George 5k, it still managed to involve a prime number: 73 runners (and I, of course, finished 73rd, crossing the finish line in just under 44 and a half minutes). Since I was running on a recently incurred, slowly-beginning-to-recover acute proximal hamstring strain, my goal for this race was just to run some of it; the fact that I managed to run all but one minute of this hilly race course--despite the cold and the rain and the sleet pelting my face and what seemed to be the entire volume of Lake George's supply of dihydrogen monoxide in my Mizunos—was in itself a victory. If I can run with all of those obstacles in my way, I can do damn near anything.
Keep in mind that I managed to get rather spoiled by the occasional favorable whims of Northeast weather with some of my earlier road races of 2011: It was in the low 50s and sunny for the Lowell First Run 5k on January 1st, and started out similarly (before turning overcast and a tad windy) for the Rás na hÉireann USA 5k in Somerville, MA, the weekend preceding St. Patrick's Day. I and two friends (Mic and Stasia, whom I’d met at the Lowell First Run) joined over 6,000 other runners trotting along the streets (cleverly disguised as rolling hills) of Somerville; the majority of the runners were significantly younger than I and, according to their attire, impromptu Sharpie tattoos and behavioral indicators, running primarily for the free beer. Thanks to Mic’s energetic pace, I got through the first mile at nearly PR pace, which was particularly surprising, considering that most of the first mile was uphill. Unfortunately, there would be many of these “rolling” hills in the race, but since a speed bump looks like a hill to me, those rollers certainly seemed more than sufficiently challenging to my legs and lungs. My goal was to run the whole distance, which I accomplished, but even a bottleneck at the finish line (which cost me at least half a minute) enabled me to finish about a minute and half shy of a PR. I picked up my finisher’s medal and met Mic and Stasia for some victory ribs. One benefit of not chasing the free beer is that you wait in much shorter lines for your post-race fare.
The weekend before the Rás na hÉireann, I'd actually managed to run my first-ever five-mile long run, filling me with tremendous hope for the Run to Home Base 9k coming up on May 22nd in Boston. That long run had come on four days’ rest, which helped dispell my concerns about losing my base. But then most of the training runs after that were all junk. Welcome to the life of a runner: some days are damn near miraculous, while others are, sorry, pure shit. Some days you just cling to the fact that you actually got out there and ran. Even junk miles are better than no miles. There’s no shame in run/walking a race, but try telling me that sometimes. My frustration threshold, especially with myself, is notoriously shallow. If I'd wanted patience, I'd have become a doctor. ;)
I experienced a new venue at the Schenectady Firefighters’ Run for Your Life 5k, held at Central Park in Schenectady (my hometown). The cold was reminiscent of last Thanksgiving’s Turkey Trot in Saratoga Springs, and with almost as many hills (though, thankfully, not nearly as steep). My friend Chandra came out that morning to run with me (a warm-up for her). She was dressed like a runner in the cold; I was bundled up like I expected to be hanging out with the Sherpas at the Mt. Everest base camp. I ended up needing to peel off a couple of layers by the time I got to the finish line nearly 40 minutes (and a few walking breaks) after we started.
During most of these runs and a lot of training sessions, a nagging achiness in my right hip had been gradually creeping in for a several weeks, leading to sciatica-like symptoms. (The jury’s still out on whether it’s sciatica per se or piriformis syndrome, whose symptoms closely resemble sciatica and also involve the compression of the sciatic nerve.) It finally came to a head the day before I was scheduled to run the St. Peter's Keys 5k in Saratoga Spa State Park. I tripped on the sidewalk (doing something as banal as walking the dogs) and landed on all fours, straining the proximal (top) end of my left hamstring in the process. The good news was that said nagging achiness in my right hip was gone immediately; the bad news was that it was quickly replaced with acute pain in my left hip. The official diagnosis of a proximal hamstring strain gave me the information I needed to address the problem, but the fact that strains like this can take months to heal fully suggested that my notoriously small supply of patience would be taxed heavily. The injury required me to DNR the St. Peter's Keys 5k, only the second DNR of my running career.
In the midst of all this, I was rehearsing two stage productions: playing “big, beefy” landlady/upstairs neighbor Eunice in Confetti Stage’s production of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” which opened on April 1st (no foolin’!); and the Gym Teacher/Matron in Capital Area Productions’ staging of “Hairspray,” in mid-May. Just as running back-to-back 5k’s last year taught me the folly of my ways, so did being in two shows at once. As a result, my stage performances will need to be put on hold until the fall. Despite some extremely tempting audition notices (including a local production of George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” which I would have feckin’ RAWKED), I vowed that I would not get involved with any shows that begin rehearsals before mid-September. I have a 9k, a 10k and a mini-triathlon to take care of before I tread the boards again.
So I started with one of my more recent races, and I’ll conclude with the most recent race, the Sean’s Run 5k in Chatham, which was held on a picture-perfect spring day. I couldn’t have asked for better running conditions, even though it meant I had to learn the hard way that fair-skinned redheads must wear sunscreen. I hoped my performance in Sean’s Run would be at least as successful as the Lake George 5k, but even with a more favorable course and vastly better weather, my hammie insisted on keeping me extremely humble. Still, I managed to finish that race—running/walking after the first mile—at just under a :15 pace, which is the pace I will need to maintain for my next race, the Run to Home Base 9k on May 22nd, in order to be able to cross home plate at Fenway Park.
So now we’re all caught up. I’m looking forward to blogging about the R2HB and my weekend in Boston! Stay tuned!
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