Category: On Running

STILL Trying to Heal

~ Grace ~ 2 Comments

Happy October! A lot of things have changed since my last post, but one thing hasn’t: my heel still hurts. A lot. I’m here to tell you that Plantar Fasciitis is an absolute nightmare.

I got plantar fasciitis in my right foot during the last month of training for Pineland Farms 50K, which you may recall was in May. Five months ago. I ran all 32 miles of that race with plantar fasciitis, and the heel pain mostly faded into the background of the day’s many pains and victories. At a pub run three days after that race I ran my fastest ever 5k according to Strava, which was a speed achievement, yeah, but more importantly a recovery achievement to be able to run so strong so soon after my longest distance yet. In June I ran the Shipyard Old Port Half Marathon in 1:58:59, fulfilling my goal of running a sub two-hour half marathon. For me, a person who clearly remembers a time when hitting a 10:30 mile during a short run was the absolute very best I could do, maintaining below an average of 9:10 minutes per mile FOR 13.1 MILES was a giant victory. I did it with plantar fasciitis. At work the Monday and Tuesday following the race day, my heel hurt like hell, and I decided it was finally time to try giving it a rest.

I’m still #*@$ing resting.

I’m not going to go into all the ups and downs of treatment, cortisone shots, stretches, miracle inserts, etc, etc, etc. Many people have struggled with plantar fasciitis, and everyone has different things that worked for them. On good days, I’m taking everyone’s advice and trying everything. On bad days, I’m feeling too overwhelmed and demotivated to even do 30 seconds of stretching. With running out of the equation, it seemed pretty clear that standing all day in a food service job was actively contributing to my heel pain. So I put in my notice, and a few weeks ago I stopped working at the donut shop. I’ve now returned to office work, starting in a temporary position. A week or so in, my foot still hurts. But I’m trying to make the best decisions I can, and I’m trying to keep my spirits up. Which I keep saying, over and over. The forced deadline helped me make a necessary and exciting career change. I’m going to the gym as often as I can. I’m spending more time reading, and writing, and working on myself. And I am so angry that I’m not able to run.

Running is exercise, but it’s also tied to my identity, my social life, my goal-setting, and my mental health. Without it I am struggling. Seasonal depression is hitting hard because I deal with winter by running in it. Running is something that quiets all those voices that are constantly wondering if I did enough today, if I lived life to the fullest, if I worked hard enough, if I made the right choices and didn’t miss out on anything amazing. When I spend time running outdoors I don’t regret it. Never. Not once. 

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I HAVE been doing fun exercise things! Here’s a photo from an outdoor workout with friends in September.

People ask if I can just switch to a lower-impact exercise for a few months. Yes, I can, but it doesn’t replace running and it doesn’t make me any less sad that I’m missing out on so many group running adventures and solo runs on beautiful fall and summer days. I can still go to the social events around the runs, and I do, but without all the running endorphins it’s not quite the same. I am working my way toward doing more low-impact exercises to replace the running endorphins, but I haven’t spent years building shortcuts in my brain that make it easier to go swimming or biking. There are more mental blocks between the thought and the action: What if all the lanes are full at the pool? Where do I even buy chain grease? Where are my goggles? Biking could at least get me outside, which might help a lot, but it still isn’t running and it’s just. Not. The. Same.

I know that I am very lucky to have so many great things in my life, and I know I will get back to running eventually. Thanks for your patience if I seem a little grumpy in the meantime.

Race Report: My First Ultramarathon

~ Grace ~ 2 Comments

As many of you know from seeing my facebook posts, I did it! 50K. About 32 miles. Ultramarathon. It was really hard. I expected it to be hard, and it was harder than I expected. It also went really, really well. I was capable of running the entire way, and I actually sprinted into the finish line, past so many friends, high fives, and smiling faces. There’s a lot of photos of me in that moment, but I wish I had photos from my perspective. I was out of the woods, done with the fields, heading up the grassy hill towards the finish line—and then I heard my name called out over and over again, and looked up to see an endless line of high fives from my friends gathered at our club cheering tent, and there was my roommate with a hand-drawn sign (which he’d gotten SIGNED by folks from our hashing club and the donut shop), and after seven plus hours out there in the sun my body was capable of running, really actually running, right until the end. It was magical.

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Running until the end is my biggest accomplishment of the day. I know what it feels like to limp into a finish line. On my first marathon (MDI, Oct. 2017) the outsides of both of my knees were in intense pain for about the last eight miles of the race and I was forced to walk. I tried to put on a run for the last few paces and only ended up limping more. My legs wouldn’t go. This pain was due to iliotibial band syndrome, or IT band pain, which is one of the most common injuries for runners. I rested up, but it flared up again on a 10-mile race I hadn’t trained enough for, and then again during training for my 20-mile relay leg of the Riverlands 100 Miler in May 2018. I finally invested in physical therapy (cue $1,000 of medical debt, thankfully paid off by now) but started it too close to race day for it to have a real effect, and I walked about the last 11 miles of that 20-mile leg. (But I finished. And didn’t invalidate the 80 miles my teammates had already run.) Thanks to that experience I almost didn’t put another marathon on my schedule that year, and I wondered if my body just wasn’t cut out for the kind of distance I was asking it to go. But I signed up for Maine Marathon, kept doing my PT and added more strength training, got a coach and stuck to my training schedule, and in September 2018 I was able to run the entire distance of my second marathon—though I did have pretty intense IT band pain on the outside of both knees for about the last 6 miles. It was the same pain, but I’d done enough strengthening and training that my legs kept working just long enough.

At Pinelands 50K on Sunday (May 26, 2019), I didn’t have any IT band pain.

Maybe it was the day, maybe it was the slow speed, maybe it was the trails (though Riverlands was also slow and trails)—but maybe it was all my hard work. It always feels like I’m not doing enough, but maybe bringing my stretch band to the gym every time I go and doing my clamshells and monster walks in the minutes before every circuits class, and maybe all the heavy-lifting I was doing as I was just getting out of my concussion fog and starting to up my miles—maybe it all paid off, and maybe, just maybe, I earned it: A good day. A 7 hour, 22 minute journey with fully functioning knees.

I don’t mean to imply that it was painless. On those other long races I mentioned, I was able to tell myself that things hurt as much as they did because something had gone wrong. On Sunday, I learned how much it hurts when everything goes right. Around mile 17 was when it really set in; an deep ache in my thighs and butt and everywhere. Every step hurt, uphill and down, and a 14-minute mile felt like an 11-minute mile had a few hours before. I asked myself, hang on, why am I doing this again? Why is this fun? What is this for? There was still such a long way to go. The only thing to do was to get on top of the pain. I told myself that this is what I wanted. This is what I’d asked for. And since I was still able to run, I’d better do it. The mental game was easier after mile 20 or so, because with less than 11 miles to go I knew that I’d walked farther in worse shape, and had the perspective to be so grateful that I was still running. And I did walk some, and I stopped at aid stations, and I took my time. Maybe I should have walked more in the beginning—walking every hill is a standard ultra strategy. But I still have more trouble on downhills, and at the end jogging uphill felt better than stopping to walk. I did have a danger spot below my left knee by the end that was already saying no on downhills and probably would have turned into an injury if I’d had to go much farther. For the last few miles I ended up leapfrogging with several different batches of runners. They would pass me as I picked my way down a steep slope, and then I would chug slowly by them while they walked the next hill. I was hoping for a time under 7 hours and came in 22 minutes over, but the course was slightly long and it was a hot, hot day, my training hadn’t included quite enough hills, and I had so many friends out there—it was nice to be able to stop a minute and chat when I saw them. And there’s always next time. Which is not a thing I thought I’d be saying if you’d asked me around mile 17.

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I don’t usually race with my phone but I thought I might want it. I didn’t. I only took this selfie because there was an alarm ringing, and to turn it off I had to take the phone out anyhow. Mile 30ish.

There’s lots more I could say about the race. It was such a big day with so many moments. I’m publishing this alongside a facebook post tagging a lot of people specifically, but I don’t want to close without saying thank you, again, to my friends and my parents and all the people who supported me and cheered me on. You’re the best and I am so lucky to have you on my team.

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Race day swag! Yes, the medal was a cowbell. Yes, it works.

Three Days to Pineland Farms

~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

Time for a race-week blog update. Pinelands 50K is in 3 days! I feel confident about my training, and I feel like I put in the work that I needed to. At my last blog post I had just logged a 46-mile week. I caught a cold two days later, and still finished the week out at 52, my most ever. The next week I hit 60. 60 miles in a week! Starting from concussion week back in January, I went from zero to 60 in just 15 weeks.

My heels had been hurting a little bit this whole training cycle, though. I think part of it was switching to a more minimal shoe in January, the Altra Solstice. Altras are SHAPED LIKE MY FOOT. Having enough room for my big toe is AWESOME and I don’t want to go back. But they’re a little less supportive in the footbed, and the Solstices especially are very light-weight without a lot of cushioning. I think they’re a better choice for shorter road distances than the kind of heavy endurance training I was doing. A few weeks ago I upgraded to Altra Escalantes. The Escalantes cost more and have a little more padding, while still being a very minimal zero-drop shoe. They also have a mesh upper (as did the Solstice) which is a NECESSARY shoe feature for me to avoid aggravating a tailor’s bunion on the outside of my right foot directly beneath my little toe. The Escalantes were immediately very comfy, so comfy I went on a surprise 22-mile long run from the store immediately after buying them, but right after that 60-mile week my little bit of heel pain exploded into a LOT of heel pain—three weeks out from the race. Oh no!

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I am not sponsored or paid by Altra but please let them know I’m available.

If you’ve never trained for an endurance race, here’s how it works: You up your weekly mileage slowly (ideally by no more than 10% per week, but everyone fudges that a little). You do one long run per week, and up the mileage of that run slowly as well. If you’re training for a marathon or ultra distance, you may be doing back-to-back long runs. This helps you get used to running on tired muscles and simulates how you’ll feel at the end of a race. There can be a lot of run math involved in stacking up miles per day, and miles over a 36-hour period. You don’t do a long run equal to your race distance; this would only wear you out and if your goal is to run a certain distance, why do it before you do it? You have to trust that your training will get you there on the day. And three weeks out from the race, it’s time to taper. You ease off your miles slowly, try not to panic, and rest up for race day.

So my heels, mostly the right one, started hurting lots right as it was time to start cutting back miles. I did a slightly more aggressive taper than I meant to, but not by too much—45 miles down from 60 in the first week, 35 in the second. Meanwhile I was trying everything to cut down on the heel pain (plantar fasciitis, to use the technical term). Taping, new inserts for work, stretches, rolling, ice, whatever. On one very rough 20-mile day I got a giant blister on the bottom of my foot from the tape I was using. The next day, due to walking funny in the morning when my heel was killing me, my tailor’s bunion flared up in a VERY PAINFUL way and started hurting when I was just walking around. Yikes. But with more ice, mesh shoes for work, bandaids for my blister, I was able to keep running. And my heel feels better after a 35-mile week than it did after 60. I did up my training pretty quickly, so hopefully I can avoid this next time if I keep up with all the stretches and train a little smarter. I also saw a podiatrist yesterday. He recommended giving my feet some rest when possible for the plantar fasciitis, and to mostly keep doing what I was doing (with the exception of KT tape because I was doing it wrong and in danger of squishing a tendon!). He also gave me a cortisone shot in my tailor’s bunion to cut down on the swelling, and the good news is that if I can keep wearing the right shoes I’m probably not going to need bunion surgery someday. Yay!

Everyone has an ache or pain or worry they panic about during the taper. I talked to a lot of friends yesterday doing the same race, and everyone has a thing. When you cut down your mileage suddenly, your body has a lot of leftover energy, and your brain uses that energy to panic. The mental game is to KNOW that you’re going to panic, accept it as part of the process, and convince yourself that it’s going to be okay. My other big worry this week was support at the race. My parents can only be there for the morning, and I have giant club full of friends who will be there cheering and running their own races…but I don’t know how I’m going to feel after running for 6-8 hours, and I really wanted someone there at the end specifically for me. And then I was pretty stressed (understatement) about being vulnerable enough to ask for that kind of support, and not sure who to ask, as it is a holiday weekend after all and I’m just going to be in the woods for 7 hours. It’s not the most exciting spectator sport. But my roommate, who is a hero and a saint, was able to switch his late shift for an early one (we work at the same shop). He’ll be able to be there when I finish—or very soon after, if I have a really good day—and I won’t have to drive myself home. So with that in place and my feet feeling somewhat better, I’m getting pretty excited to go out there on Sunday and actually do this thing I’ve been working towards for months. Hopefully, knock on wood, if nothing goes wrong, I’ll be a member of the Ultra club when I write my next blog post. Fingers crossed. And to close out: Good luck to all my friends racing this weekend. We’re all gonna crush it.

The Grind

~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

Today I’m writing about training for the Pineland Trail Festival 50K, because I haven’t been doing a whole lot else. I would like to preface any negativity in this post with this: I know I am incredibly lucky to be able to do this stuff. Having the health to push my body this way, the time to fit hours of running into my schedule, and the financial security to purchase shoes, gear, nutrition, etc. are privileges I do not take lightly. Life is good.

So I’m training for a 50K trail race, which equals 31 miles. That’s about 10K more than a marathon, which makes it an Ultramarathon—and it’s only a baby-step into Ultra territory. At the same race where I’m doing my first 50K, some of my friends are doing their first 50-Miler. I know at least seven people who have completed one or more 100-Mile races. I like to chase down a big goal, to do the big thing. That’s why I did my first marathon a few months after my first 10k. I STILL haven’t done a 5K race. So now that I’m training for an Ultra, my brain is doing a thing where a 50K—31 miles—feels like the 5K of Ultramarathons. I have a lot of friends doing the same race as me, which is so awesome and is going to make race day SO MUCH FUN. But as we’re gearing up for it, it also kind of normalizes it. It feels like everyone is doing the thing, so it shouldn’t be this hard or feel like such a big deal. I know the truth is that my friends in this particular run crew are a very small selection of the population that happen to be crazy people. Just, it turns out that hanging out with crazy people messes with your head, and you start to say things like “just” a 50K. So part of my head-game this training cycle is to remind myself that 31 miles is a lot of miles, even if other people are doing more.

Training! It’s actually going really well. Last week I ran 46 miles all together. This week I plan to break 50, which will be the most I’ve ever run in a week (at the height of marathon training last fall I had one week at 47.2). The transition from concussion-recovery to serious training happened pretty quickly. At my last blog post I was just working back to what felt like regular miles, and I’ve continued upping it every week since then. So far my body is handling it. The first week in April was my first week over 30 miles, and that week felt really rough. I was exhausted and just. Couldn’t. Seem. To. get on top of any life responsibilities beyond running and working and social events (and my social events are mostly runs). But the next week I accidentally hit 40 and seemed to be feeling a little better. I’m training differently than I have before because it’s been harder to schedule long runs, so I’m spreading the miles out over more days in the week, and doing multiple runs in the same day rather than one long run. In Maine we’re still working our way towards spring, and when it’s cold and rainy I’m less excited about planning long adventure runs. I find myself circling around trying to hit a certain number of miles on my watch before going to the pub run or whatever thing is next. When I’m feeling low, I joke that my entire week is just a math problem that hurts a lot. And I’m not feeling low all the time—IT’S COOL that I get to do this stuff, and it’s cool that my body keeps handling every increase in training. Watching the miles add up throughout the week is very satisfying. I think it’s just a side effect of being tired, and of being right in the middle of it, that it’s kind of hard to appreciate how hard I’m working. Hopefully it will all pay off on race day—but I am very aware that there’s plenty of time before May 26th to get injured, or for things to stop working. Also, like always, there’s a lot of anxiety about whether I’m doing enough or doing the right things. On a morning trail run last Thursday I tripped and fell a lot, probably just because I was tired from the 12 miles of trails I did the day before, but the next time I was on trails I was more nervous about falling and tripping on roots than I usually am—which, when you’re training for a trail race, is NOT GREAT. But I’m sure it will all come together. Or it won’t, and the miles I put into training will have to be their own reward, which would also be okay.

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This is a screenshot from my training log in Strava, the running app I use.

As a closing note, I really appreciate all the support I’ve received from friends who have asked about my training, put up with me mentioning running in just about every conversation, and worked around my schedule when my response to anything is, “Well, I have to run x-many miles that day.” I do hope the above paragraphs don’t look like complaining—I know I’m taking on big goals and doing a good job. This post is just an honest look at some of the thoughts my brain is having as I’m getting ready for next month. As for today, the sun just came out—maybe there will be nicer weather than I expected for my afternoon/evening run. And I’ve saved my longest run for tomorrow, which should be the warmest, clearest day this week. In conclusion: my feet hurt, but life is good.

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Recovery

~ Grace ~ Leave a comment

Hi! Concussion update: I feel better! But it took quite a bit longer than the 2-3 weeks promised by all my “help I got a concussion” google searches. And by better I mean that I haven’t had a concussion headache for two weeks—I’m still testing things out and increasing my activity so this doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t get another concussion headache if I accidentally hit my limits. We’re currently almost 8 weeks out from concussion, so I had about 5.5 weeks of decreasing but continuing symptoms. I’m putting that out there in case this comes up in anyone else’s panicked googling about what to expect from a concussion. As the weeks went by I worried that I was one of those unlucky folks for whom concussion symptoms last years, and I was making all these calculations about how far to push it. If I get headaches when I run now, is it making the headaches worse if I run through them? Or is this just how running works now and I can run through them as long as I can put up with the pain of having a headache? For the last few weeks, though, I’ve actually felt better and I’m working back up to regular levels of fitness. 15 miles last week is way fewer than I wanted to be running this time of year and this close to a 50k race in May, but it’s the most I’ve run since concussion day on Jan 11th, and I also attended two circuits classes last week. My strength training goal is to hit the gym three times a week—one class and two more run-muscles-focused workouts on my own—so it felt great to make it out to more than one gym day. My message to any concussed people out there is that, if your concussion symptoms are hanging around longer than the expected amount of time, it doesn’t mean you won’t feel better. Rest up, take care of yourself, and give it a few more weeks. Of course I’ll keep this space updated about any lasting effects that have yet to make themselves known!

Blogging about my concussion was pretty helpful while I was having all these brain things going on that I didn’t understand. I did go to work the day after my last post, though, and as soon as I went back to work, work was the only thing I had energy for. Some people advised me to take more time off, and I would have if standing up was still making me queasy, but with my finances the way they are at the moment (I make tips and there is a HUGE difference between summer and winter income) I needed to prioritize working as soon as I was able. I wasn’t at all sure I would make it through the day but I felt pretty safe going into my coffee shop on a sleepy weekday to give it a try. It also helps that my work crew is a good family and I knew 100% that all my coworkers had my back. I needed to do everything very slowly for a few days and I still felt off and weird and headachey but I made it through. God bless my manager for how many times he asked, “How are you feeling, Grace?” that first morning. The answer was always a very tentative, “I think I’m okay.” The HILARIOUS thing is that, while having very few cold symptoms, my voice was getting a little hoarse towards the end of that first day, and I woke up the next day with LARYNGITIS. Nothing hurt, but it sure sounded terrible. My voice was reduced to whispers and occasional squeaks. Once I’d convinced people I wasn’t actually dying and it didn’t hurt to talk as much as it hurt their ears to listen, most people agreed the timing was pretty funny. And thankfully there was enough side work for me to do that I didn’t have to try talking to any customers.

I’ve learned a lot about listening to my body, and getting back to regular activities has been a slow process with several relapses. I received a few sessions of osteopathic treatment from a dear friend who is a DO, and that helped immensely. I’ve also been taking some supplements that are recommended for concussion (arnica, fish oil, homocysteine cardioplex) and I stopped drinking for several weeks after concussion day, right up until my birthday the first week of February. I think not drinking was a really good call, especially when I wasn’t running much. Running helps me maintain my mental health and stay positive during the winter, so I expected my mood to plummet when I wasn’t able to run. I actually felt fairly level and okay (though injured and exhausted) and I think removing alcohol, a depressant, at the same time I removed running helped me stay fairly stable.

Big news in other parts of my life. I purchased an iPad Pro for making digital art, and it is the BEST. Some of you have seen my sketches on Facebook an Instagram. More info and updates on that to come. Oh, and I’ve been working on my gym selfie skills:

Ice, Or, The Story of Why I Didn’t Run Today

~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

As it became clear today that I would not be completing a long run this afternoon, I told myself I would do a blog update as a consolation prize. Why did I not complete a long run this afternoon? WELL LET ME TELL YOU!

Falling on ice is a pretty common occurrence during a Maine Winter, but it all felt fairly dramatic while it was happening. (Mom you can stop reading now I’m fine!) I got a nice early start to the day, did some laundry and tidying up, had all my things together to leave the house and run some errands, was feeling really great. I went down the rear interior staircase from my 2nd floor apartment, opened the outside door, stepped out onto the three exterior steps leading from the door to the driveway…and immediately went down. There had been a drip of water from the roof onto the steps; the ice was wet and perfectly smooth. Zero traction. I’ve never had problems on these steps before and it wasn’t sleeting or anything, so I didn’t think to be careful. Just step and gone, keys and purse and my new vacuum-insulated tumbler flying out of my hands. I landed HARD on my right hip/buttock and my right elbow, and it HURT. I had to lie there on the steps a minute, whimpering slightly, in enough pain to wonder who I could call for help who wasn’t at work at 10:30 am on a Friday. I don’t remember hitting my head; it all happened very quickly and the largest amounts of pain were focused in the hip and elbow areas. When I eventually stood up, however, I found that I needed to crouch back down almost immediately and put my head between my knees like you’re supposed to do if you’re worried you might faint. It felt PRETTY SILLY to be crouched in pain at the bottom of the side steps next to the driveway, though, so with EXTREME CAUTION I eventually made it back up the three outside steps and through the door to the carpeted entry way. Where I felt very nauseous and once again had to sit down, low to the floor, and keep my head very still. In addition to the nausea, some of the arm muscles I was using to support myself were acting all shaky and not behaving precisely as told. But sitting in the shared entryway still felt silly, so after gathering my resolve I got up, shook the container of ice melt LIBERALLY over the offending outdoor steps, and made my way back up the indoor flight of stairs to my second floor apartment. I headed straight to the couch, and balance/walking was pretty tricky for a minute there. I saw the proverbial stars, which in actuality appeared as kind of a moving diamond pattern overlaying my vision. I was also overheating at this point, and struggled to remove hat/scarf/jacket while also lying down and ceasing movement as quickly possible.

And… within a very short amount of time the room stopped spinning and I was able to sit up, and felt fairly normal aside from general shakiness and bruises.

I figure I must have hit my head, although there still isn’t a bruise or specific place on my head that hurts. Once walking felt okay again I went to the bathroom mirror and checked for dilated pupils, and they looked fine. I also never lost consciousness, and I think those two things are some of the signs of a really bad concussion. After giving myself a good few minutes to make sure I stayed feeling fine, I decided to go about my day but take it with a grain of salt. When I stopped by the donut shop to pick up my tips I went for a mocha with whipped cream instead of my usual plain coffee—icy falls call for treat drinks! And I went to the bank and did all the out-and-about things I’d been planning on, feeling fine and capable but just a little sluggish and off. I decided my body would probably be better served if I replaced “doing a long run” with “resting on the couch” this afternoon/evening, and by the last errand on my list I was starting to get a tinge of a back-of-the-head, nauseous kind of headache. So I went home. And I feel okay, but also like “resting on the couch” is a good thing to be doing. And that’s my story!

I’m mad about the miles I’m missing. Due to scheduling conflicts I won’t be able to get a long run in on Sunday, and I’m not going to run tomorrow unless I really feel up to it. I don’t want to mess around with a possible concussion, even a mild one, and getting through work may be quite enough for the day. This might leave me with as few as 10 miles for the week , which is frustrating when I’m shooting for 20 at a minimum and would rather be in the 27-30 range (somehow I couldn’t fit in any extra mileage on top of the pub runs this Wednesday and Thursday either). But one thing I learned after an injury last spring is that sometimes rest is just what you need, so I’m trying not to stress about it. I’ll just try not to look at my Strava mileage for the week (Strava is the run app I use) and hopefully I can make up for it next week. I did a pretty hard workout at my circuit class yesterday and I’ve been leveling up on some of the weights, so it hasn’t exactly been an easy week and it might be an okay time to take a break. Either way it can’t be helped. And at least I hurt myself while walking, in winter boots and street clothes, and can still claim to be pretty darn good at running on ice.

Stay safe out there, and be careful on steps!

Is Running The Best Procrastination Strategy Ever? Discuss

~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

LIFE. It feels like I’m looking into fog or deep water, squinting my eyes and searching for defined edges among so many shifting priorities and goals, all moving in and out of focus at different times. Running has been the clearest priority for a while now. I’m also trying to prioritize simple and practical self-care. I hate to use the term “adulting”…but I tend to go from work to runs to social engagements without a lot of time in between, and I’ll leave the dishes in the sink or the work clothes in the pile because getting to the next thing is more important to me than cleaning up my space. I’m really good at working towards big, flashy goals. Training for a marathon, finishing NaNoWriMo, making everything spotless before a party or event. I’m less good at the daily upkeep that would help me feel less scattered and anxious in my environment. So I’m working on it, because it’s winter and I need every bit of positive energy I can get. I’ve also been watching Netflix’s Queer Eye reboot, and it is HIGHLY MOTIVATIONAL to imagine what the Fab 5 might say if they were looking around my apartment.

RUNNING. I am really proud of how much time I spend running…as anyone who’s talked to me for more than a minute has probably figured out. It’s hard not to mention it because any interesting thing I do in any given week probably has something to do with running or one of my running communities. Part of why I’m so proud is because it’s a GIANT CHANGE that I made in my life, and a change that I STUCK TO. I made this change not long after radically changing my hairstyle, which helps with my strong sense of “before” and “after,” and it’s reassuring to be in the “after” and to know that I’m capable of making giant changes. This is who I am now. And it’s a relief to no longer have the constant anxiety of feeling like I should be exercising regularly, because I do. That aspect of my life is now in place. I have different anxieties about whether I’m training properly or doing enough, but BARE MINIMUM I exercise 4 days a week. And even as I struggle with things I have struggled with for years, like keeping my space tidy, and even as I am sad about the things I am sad about, and mad about the things I am mad about (things that ended suddenly, without much closure), at least I am this person now. I ran 27 miles this week. I ran over 1,000 miles this year. This is who I am now, and that means a lot to me.

But… remember those shifting goals, edges obscure, some so vague you have to squint to see the shape of them? I started this blog to write about writing, and sometimes it seems like constantly crushing the running and physical goals has allowed me to slack off on other goals that are difficult, and that I’ve been working towards longer. I get a large or small sense of accomplishment after every single run, and if I’m feeling accomplished it’s easy to put off working on my book until another day. After all, I am tired. I earned this post-run beer. And my laptop is slow and bug-ridden, and I can no longer use it without a mouse and not plugged into the wall. So much hassle. I might as well just watch something on Netflix, or plan out my long run for the week and think about how accomplished I’ll feel after that.

I don’t really have an answer. Priorities shift and life comes in seasons. I may be failing miserably at my December Sketch Challenge, but several times over the past years I’ve been able to use my art training to design athletic T-shirts for one of my running clubs, which combined my big new running passion with my long-term goal to keep making art. Of course doing any of the art I want to do is hindered by my buggy laptop than can barely run Photoshop anymore and my broken drawing tablet…so the real answer here might be that I need to save enough money to purchase tech that would enable me to do the things I want to do. Which means finding a second or a different job and working more hours, which may be difficult to schedule with all the running and won’t leave much extra time for creative endeavors.

And those are some of the things I am trying to balance! Life is always messy and nothing is perfect. I try to make progress every day. Lately when I find myself sitting on the couch, exhausted from a late bedtime and early wake-up and body aching from my strength class the day before, I ask myself, “What can I do to work towards my goals right now?” Sometimes it’s writing a few cover letters and sending out some resumes—each one is a little easier to do. Sometimes it’s just washing my dinner plate and cup before going to bed, or doing a little foam-rolling and stretching to help my legs feel a little better. Maybe tomorrow it’s opening up my manuscript file and revising a chapter, or even a paragraph. A sentence. Who knows, right? Anything could happen. And this is who I am now. I have made changes, and I can make more.

-GM

Winter Blues and Running Motivation

~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

A good thing about today is that I have a meal in my crockpot bubbling away, and it will be ready when I get home from laundry/gym/library/errands and before I go off to my Thursday run. I haven’t made Butternut Squash Risotto before (another recipe from THIS BOOK that saved my life last winter) but the sage and cumin spice-combo smells delicious.

A bad thing about today is that it’s still November, and winter isn’t going away for MONTHS!

My Seasonal Depression is mild and manageable without medication, which makes me hella lucky! But as the days get colder I still notice myself feeling down more often than usual, and feeling more tired, even though over the summer I was doing more things with more intensity and with…not less fatigue but different, more positive fatigue. I have a pretty full schedule of life-giving events that I never miss, and sometimes over these last few weeks I find myself not wanting to go…even though I KNOW I’ll feel better when I get there. So I go, and I do.

Some of this is to say November hasn’t been a big writing month, even though in my post just two weeks ago I told you about my big November writing goals. I stand by my decision not to do Na-No this year because there just isn’t a new book in me right now, but without that bar graph and relentlessly increasing word count the writing has not been happening. It’s been a little more about survival—making it to the runs and social events, making a plan for tracking my expenses and making a budget, trying to feed myself more healthily and inexpensively. This doesn’t sound like that many things, but sometimes that’s just where you’re at, you know? I work early mornings at a coffee shop, and I LOVE the morning shift because I get out so early in the day—but if you’re not careful about getting enough sleep, a workweek can feel like a bit of a deathmarch, something to get through until that next day you can sleep in. During the summer on Wednesdays, the first day of my weekend, I just slept for hours and then woke up and ran for hours. And I actually miss that long run training schedule, because you feel just a little less pathetic about the week’s worth of dishes piling up in your sink when you ran twenty miles that day.

Running! The ebb and flow of fitness is a weird thing. I started being intentional about running and fitness just about two years ago, which is a very short time in the scheme of things, and I’ve had the luxury of getting fitter and faster for the majority of that time. I did my second marathon this September (2018) and got a Personal Record by 45 minutes. Going into that race I was the fittest and strongest I’ve ever been in my life. This was just a little over a month ago, and I’ve continued running and lifting things, so most of that strength hasn’t gone too far away. My miles dropped off when I stopped doing race-specific long runs, however, and now I’m trying to get them back up and build a stronger base for the winter. It’s demoralizing to feel exhausted after a 20-mile week when just two months ago you crushed a 47-mile week for your highest-mileage week ever. But you can’t always be at your best/most/fastest/highest/farthest ever, though I do think I have an awful lot of personal bests still to come. You have to keep yourself going by trusting the process over the long haul, and trusting that you’ll get there for your next big thing (I’m leveling up for my next race, if all goes well: a 50-kilometer trail race in the spring). And looking at the little things helps too. Last night was the coldest night for running so far this year, and for 3.3 miles I averaged 8:55 minutes per mile. This isn’t fast by a lot of people’s standards, but I remember a similar cold night in November or December of 2016, back at the beginning of this journey, when I ran my absolute hardest for a similar distance. I remember huffing and puffing on my way back to the bar, really putting my heart into it and running until it hurt—and I averaged 10:30 minute miles. And I was proud! And I should have been! But it’s cool to see how far I’ve come, and good to remember the huge difference between now and then, especially when I feel like I haven’t been working as hard as I could been have over the last month. There’s a lot more months ahead, and lot more hard work to go!

And a lot more cold weather before spring. Brr.

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November Goals and Portland Sweat Project

~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

Hey it’s the last day of October!

Tomorrow is November 1st, and I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year (National Novel Writing Month, a thing where you write 50,000 words during November). I have done and won NaNo for the past five years. Five is a nice round number, and I’m proud to have finished and reached my 50,000 word goal every single time I’ve attempted it. As it turns out I already had a pretty strong streak of “Reach the finish line at any cost!” even before I started doing foot races. Back in 2014, my NaNo project was this cool little urban-fantasy book about a lady trucker and a telepathic dragon. I still think it’s a cool little book—though with the current draft at over 100,000 words, it’s not such a little book at all. And every year since 2014, November has meant a brand new project and a whole lot of writing energy… directed away from that cool little book that I’d really like to finish. So I want to write in November, but instead of starting a brand new book that might reach 50,000 words without even figuring out what it wants to be when it grows up (did I mention NaNo 2016 and 2017 were basically plot and theme disasters?) I want to really focus in and move forward on my existing project. I want to do the type of writing and editing and fixing that isn’t easily quantifiable by word count, and I want to finish the ending and create a readable draft. So that’s November goals this year. I also have a few other creative projects that I don’t want to completely abandon for the month, so it makes sense and feels right to keep moving forward on what inspires me right now rather than doing something new just for the sake of doing it. But for all of you out there gearing up for NaNoWriMo 2018, I wish you the very best of luck!

Also, a note on today. The temperature was just below freezing when I woke up around 5:30 am. On a workday I would have already been at work, or at least hurrying in that direction from my all-day parking spot a ten-minute walk away. Today I had the option of curling up into a warm bed and going back to sleep…but instead I got up and #JustShowedUp for the first time ever to a 6:30 am free fitness meetup in a city park. It’s called Portland Sweat Project and it wasn’t as scary as a TOTALLY new thing since I knew most of the crew from my run club, but it was still really early in the morning. I’m generally not a morning exercise person, but within minutes of sprints and squats and pushups and burpees I felt awake and alive and took off my parka because I wasn’t even cold anymore. Then we ran around city hall and played duck-duck-goose (with squats and planks) in the square and took a picture with some pumpkins at the farmer’s market. Winter is bad but I learn over and over again that going outside and moving and sweating and running with your friends is pretty much always the correct choice.

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My newbie photo from PSP! (Photo credit © Mari Balow.)

Blogging. What a Trip.

~ Grace ~ 2 Comments

At post-run drinks the other day, a friend mentioned updating his blog. Then we had a talk about writing our books, about how hard it is to nail the ending, and about how, much, goddamn, TIME you put into something like a novel with no guarantee of that time paying off for you in any tangible way, no guarantee that that book will ever reach an audience other than yourself.

Okay, now I’m depressed about writing again.

But blogging as a topic of conversation in a run space, the runniest of my run spaces, got me a little inspired and thinking that maybe, with a little tending, this blog could be more than a relic of a less active time in my life.

I feel like blogging has an uneasy space in today’s options for communication and self-promotion. If I am looking for attention, for example, I will make a facebook post. This will get me immediate feedback in the form of comments and likes, and will be seen by more people than blog content that requires time to click through to a different website and read a whole post. The immediate feedback feels nice. What a thing to want, though. Feedback. Attention. “Attention-seeker” is a very negative thing to call someone, and if anyone is being bratty, or acting up, or behaving in a way that is over-the-top and destructive to those around them, they are commonly dismissed with the phrase, “Oh, they’re just looking for attention.” So even on Facebook I feel a lot of pressure not to post too much, or too loudly. It can be hard to tell where the line is between sharing and bragging. I often feel annoyed by the relentless positivity of posts that are meant to inspire, often by public figures who have turned their online presence into a brand. I try not to trust this annoyance because perhaps I am cynical or jealous—but I also try to hit a more subdued note, and to not post about accomplishments more than once or twice a week. And yet… I spike my hair up and dye it Rock’n Roll Red (words from the Manic Panic bottle, not mine). I want to be seen.

So blog posts don’t get seen in the instant way a Facebook post would. What’s the point of a blog, then? Is it a diary? My actual diary, for which I use the more sophisticated term journal, is for writing in when I’m mad about boys. I have a series of physical notebooks on predominantly this topic going back to the year 2000. A blog makes a crappy diary because I’m not exactly going to blog publicly about every detail of my life. Sometimes I wish I could—I sure have some witty things to say about it—but I place too much value on my own privacy and the privacy of others to ever use a blog post the way I use my journal.

Maybe a blog is just to have a consistent online presence in a world where things like that matter, or could matter depending on what decisions you make and paths you take. A blog is a place on the internet to hang your hat, ready to mobilize on that future date when you sell your novel or launch your public career as a motivational speaker (Ha!). Or, smaller scale, maybe it’s just to practice saying a few things. To practice writing them down, and to try growing less afraid to share the parts of yourself that are shareable, just in case your sharing might give a moment of pleasure or connection to someone else. Maybe?

This isn’t a big “The Blog is Back” announcement. The future is uncertain and priorities are constantly shifting. But I wanted a to write a post and then I kept wanting to write it, to the point that I’ve actually drafted this on a public library computer while waiting for my replacement laptop charger to arrive in the mail. So maybe I’ll keep wanting to write blog posts. I’m guessing I’ll want to write posts about running, which is why I’ve redesigned the website to feature running in the tagline and header (photo credit Craig Dilger—you can’t see it in the mobile version but yes the tiny runner on the breakwall is me). This might be a temporary redesign—maybe I’ll write another blog post soon about how all my tech is breaking down and it’s making digital art difficult. Maybe not. The future is uncertain. This is a blog post. The end.