Seven Days and Counting...

I have really been pushing hard these past couple of weeks, which is my poor excuse for not blogging about my training.

My schedule for the past couple of weeks has been slight variations on this:
Monday -- bike or swim
Tuesday -- run
Wednesday -- swim or bike
Thursday -- run
Friday -- off
Saturday -- long run
Sunday -- long bike + swim

And best of all, I have REACHED MY FUNDRAISING GOAL FOR THE TRIATHLON, with a grand total of
$5023

Of course, I am still looking for donations for the marathon, so if you want to help me honor the memory of Prince Liam the Brave by making a donation to the Aubrey Fund for Pediatric Cancer Research, just click here!

Swimwise, things are going really well.  Everyone who's done the event tells me not to worry, it's the easiest swim ever.  That's good to hear, but one person's easy is another person's flaily-drowny.  However, last week in the pool, I came to a realization, and maybe this will be helpful to any of you that are swimmers.  I was doing a drill where I had one of those kidney floaties between my legs, so I was only using my arms to propel myself across the pool, and I was cranking out the laps like nobody's beeswax.  No breathing problems, no exhaustion, nothing. 

So I lose the floatie and start a regular crawl stroke.  Sure enough, two laps, and my breathing is messed up and I'm exhausted.

Lightbulb -- must be something I'm doing with my legs!  And that something was kicking like a crazy person, as fast and hard as I could.  Instead of propelling me forward, it was only exhausting me. 

I don't know much about swimming, but I feel that I do most of the work with my arms, with the legs providing just a small amount of propulsion.  I'm not saying that that's how it's supposed to be -- I honestly don't know -- but that's how I feel I swim.  So why am I knocking myself silly trying to get my legs to work harder, when they're not my main source of propulsion?

So instead of kicking hard, I relaxed my legs and kicked gently, and what do you know, I did ten laps easy.

Good thing I figured this out now!  Can you imagine what my swim would be like had I got it earlier?  Oh, well.  The swim will be fine.

Bike will be okay.  I am mainly worried about things like the hairpin turns at the turnarounds, and literally just getting onto the West Side Highway (up a steep hill almost immediately after getting on the bike.)  Two of my Teammates told me the hardest part of the bike course is avoiding bottles and crap that fall off people's bikes.  So I feel that with my training in Central Park, navigating around annoying tourists, I should be okay there, too.

And the run is, well, the run.  It's only a 10K, but it should be interesting after the bike ride, and, of course, it's uphill for the first two miles. 

Two Saturdays ago was the first NYRR Long Training Run.  The LTR is an untimed run, with pace groups heading out for distances of 6-20 miles (a loop of 6, two loops of 5, and a loop of 4.)  Do as many or as few loops as your training requires.  It's a great way to pace yourself and see where you're at.  

It was also the last day of a heatwave that sent temps soaring into the triple digits through most of the week.  The night before, it only dipped down to 85.  Despite NYRR's taking extra precautions -- extra water stations, adding Gatorade to the stations, slowing the pace groups, adding three misting stations and having cold sponges on the transverse -- Coach Ann and Jeff instructed the Team to do six miles instead of our scheduled 14, and go home.  Better to scrap one long run then to knock yourself out to the point where your training for the rest of the week is affected.

Teammate Jonathan and I went out with a 9:30 group.  He's a faster runner but is coming back from injury, and I'm, well, not a faster runner.  The 9:30 group should have been running at a 10-minute pace.  I'm not really a chatty runner, and neither is he, but we would thumbs-up each other every once in a while, and it was nice to have that companionship.  Another good thing that they did for this run was to have the pace group leaders walk the water stations, which they sometimes don't do on these runs, and that means I lose the pace group. 

My only quibble with the run was that all the extra water stations were on the east side of the Park.  It seemed like there was one water station on the west side, and then one every 45 feet on the east side.  Yes, I exaggerate, but the group did wonder where these mythical extra water stations were as we trundled down the west side.

Jonathan broke away on mile 4 and finished ahead of me.  He told me afterwards that the pace group was actually going at a 9:20 pace, and he was feeling good, so if he was only doing 6, he was going to do it as his pace.   So I'm happy, because I felt pretty comfortable with that pace.  I don't think I could have sustained it for 14 miles, but it was fine for 6.  And I feel that I could have done maybe another 5 in that heat, but I was starting to cramp up, and it has taken me a long time to learn to listen to what the coaches tell me.

We also had our first speed and hill workouts over the past two weeks (I have to do the step workouts on my own, alas.) Our first speed workout at Riverbank was one mile warm-up, 5 x two laps hard, one lap easy, then 3 laps cooldown.  This was during the heatwave, so it was really exhausting.  I had to hit the snackbar for some salt so I could keep going, because all the Gatorade in the world wasn't helping.   I really tried not to slack on the hard ones, so my easy laps involved some walking.  That's okay.  If you don't push, you don't improve the way you want.  I thought of sweet Liam every time I started to flag, and I swear to God, every time I thought of him, a breeze would come up and cool me off. 

And lookit what we did -- the next day, Riverbank's sewage plant cought fire, sending millions of gallons of sewage into the Hudson a/k/a my swim course next Sunday.  All because of the heat we generated on the track!

Same thing holds for the Cat Hill workout.  We did a warm-up of the lower loop, then 2 sets of four hill repeats -- easy effort, easy, medium, hard.  Break between set 1 and 2. 

It's so tempting to hold back on the medium and the hard of the first set, because you're thinking you have another set of four to go.  It's almost frightening to commit to doing what the coaches ask, because you wonder -- do you have it in you?  And if you don't, what does that say about you?  Ultimately, what you have to do is push until you can't push it anymore, whether you have completed the task or not.  If you bonk, you bonk, but at least you do it in training, not on the day.  The year I had a 30-minute improvement in my marathon was the year I did everything the coaches told me.  And I would not be honoring Liam properly by slacking.  Set 1, I felt I pushed the last repeat to maybe 90 percent.  Sort of disappointed in myself.  Set 2, I felt myself falling back in the last repeat, regrouped, and pushed to 100 percent up the second part of the hill all the way to the end, running full out the last 100 feet or so.  Had to walk most of the way back down the hill, and could barely complete the cooldown.

This past Saturday was the infamous Great Hill run -- 10 loops of the wretched thing, for 15 miles.  The first time we did this workout, we did it as a Tuesday night workout.  Jeff didn't take the length of the transverse into account, and by the time we finished, it was pitch black outside.  Sounds stupid, but I've been in love with this workout ever since.  Last time I did this workout two years ago, I could not do the full ten, and I was crushed.  So I was both anticipating it and dreading it.

Jeff and David told me to take it easy and cut it short, because apparently I get to have a little bit of a taper this week for the marathon!  Hooray!  Who doesn't love a taper?   So instead of ten loops, I did eight -- and I definitely could have done the full ten, and done them strong.  So now I'm back to loving this workout again.

Today was a nice 12-miler on the bike -- and completed in under 50 minutes -- followed by a really positive swim session.

Holy crap, I think I'm ready to do this triathlon!!

Liam's home, My Week of Running, and FIRST CONTEST!!

Check out this face!!

Liam had his surgery last Thursday. Eight-plus hours on the table, including an inter-operative radiation treatment, a procedure developed and perfected at MSKCC. Went into the ICU recovery, woke up, and immediately pulled out his respirator tube. A day and a half later, returned to MSKCC (his surgery was at MSKCC, his ICU recovery was across the street at Cornell.) Two and a half days after that -- home. Can you believe the will of this kid? Is it any wonder why so many people love him? And why I'm such a fan? You can become a fan of Liam's on Facebook. Look for "Prince Liam the Brave." Or read his mom's blog, also called "Prince Liam the Brave."

Speaking of which, the latest members of the Liam Witt fan club, also known as the FRED'S TEAM HONOR ROLL:

SARA SOTO
and
GREG COHEN

bringing the total going to the Aubrey Fund for Pediatric Cancer Research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Liam's honor to an amazing

$2,492

Who's going to bring me to $3,000? A prize to the person who does!! A prize, I say!! Who doesn't like a prize? Simply click here to be taken to my Fred's Team donation page, or click the link to the side and bottom of the page. As you can see by the smile on Liam's face, the money is put to very good use.

Speaking of prizes, there will be a CONTEST again for this post! It's an easy one, and anyone can enter. It's at the bottom of the post.

Lots of stuff going on, or gone on, over the past week.

First off, in the non-running news, I advanced a production of "Smokey Joe's Cafe" for the Cape Playhouse. Basically, I rehearse the show for two weeks, bring it up to the theater, train the crew, help the stage manager, and leave. Don't get to actually call the show, which for you non-theater people means calling all the cues for the lights and sound and set shifts and anything technical that happens during the course of a show. Calling a musical is a lot of fun. Ah, well. Anyway, the show was a breeze to rehearse -- the actors couldn't have been nicer, or more talented, and the director, Mark Martino, was even nicer and more talented. Plus which -- I only had 5 suitcases and a boa for props. Heavenly!! The tech was not without its moments, but I am continually amazed at the Cape Playhouse crew, who manage to drive through every tech with a positive attitude, and achieve miracles in 48 hours.

Anyway, it was strange to be back in the stage management saddle, and have a 9 to 5 schedule again (actually, 8 to 6). It was kind of refreshing. Plus, I was able to get in my favorite run while at the Cape (which is in Dennis, on Cape Cod) -- a run to Chapin Beach, and also up Setucket Road. I needed to get 16 miles in. There's a little backstory to that, which I'll get to in a minute. Anyways, I have waxed poetic over Chapin Beach in past posts, so I will refrain here. I started my run from the Briarcliffe to Chapin Beach, to say goodbye to the beach (sigh.) Then I headed off down 6A to Rte 134, and then to Setucket Road. I like Setucket Road for three reasons -- one, it's kind of hilly, so it's a good mimic for the Park. Two, there's lots of good house porn. I love looking at those gorgeous houses and fantasizing about owning one. Third, it's the ONLY SIDEWALK IN ALL OF CAPE COD, at least as far as I can tell. No wonder people are getting so fat, there's no place for them to walk safely.

It was also the weekend for the Pan-Mass Challenge, a bike ride across Massachusetts to raise money for the Jimmy Fund at the Dana Farber Cancer Center. A cause after my own heart. The riders go down Setucket Road, so I wanted to see the riders and cheer them on. Let me tell you, it is not easy to clap as you run, but I had a lot of fun on that section of the route. Most of them ride in teams, and each team puts something different on their helmet. One team had stuffed Kermit dolls.

Here's something I notice about running in Dennis -- I'm the only one with water and Gatorade. Hmm....

Backstory -- Reader's Digest version. I had a long talk with Coach Jeff about my crappy long runs. He gave me a lot of good advice. The first is to get more sleep. That's true, I am not sleeping enough. Second, he told me to relax, and not be so hard on myself. With a career change, things are on a different level, and I have to recognize that. He recommended for my long run, don't worry about miles or anything, just run for about as long as I thought 16 miles should be. Don't worry about the clock. Just run and enjoy it. I did have a time limit, because I needed to shower and get to the theater by 9:15am, but other than that, I made sure to run my favorite route, and really took Jeff's advice. I didn't worry about the pace, I just tried to find the fun in the run. And I did.

We started Tuesday and Thursday workouts, and we've had a hill workout, a couple of track workouts, and steps! The hill workout last Tuesday was a typical Tuesday during marathon training season, as Cat Hill was super-crowded. Plus which, those damn pedicabs were loitering right at the bottom of the hill, getting in everyone's way. The workout -- three sets of two repeats. First set easy, second set medium, third set hard. Bonus -- Dr. Mark was there, my running buddy. I always have a good run when he's around. he ran with me, as I had a watch. First two, we ran a 2:20 up average. Second set, 2:10, and the third -- 2:00 even, both repeats. After each of the hard repeats, I had to take a breather at the top of the hill, because I thought I was going to hurl. It was pretty humid out. Those were better times than I was expecting. Thanks, Dr. Mark! He cracked me up after the first hard repeat by telling me that in med school he was known for being the best person at handling vomit. You know, some people brag about making really good chocolate chip cookies. Doctors -- I don't get it.

Last Thursday was Coach's Choice. We were at the Riverside steps. Ann led the workout, which meant we were in for it. Ann looks so sweet and innocent, and her workouts are cruel. An iron fist in a velvet glove. She puts a lot of running into the step workouts, and most of that running is uphill. I had run a couple of miles beforehand to warm up. Between the heat and the constant uphill, my legs were wobbly. Also, my knee was paining again.

Went to the PT on Friday. Diagnosis -- I'm a mess. Seriously, folks, it's the right hip. It sits funny, and it makes my knee not track properly. So Ed Mancini. PT extraordinaire (it was he who introduced me to Miri Ingwer, PT goddess) really worked out my hip and knee and gave me some exercises to do.

Sunday was the aforementioned long run at the Cape.

Tuesday was a track workout, again led by Ann. One mile warm-up, then 8 repeats of one fast lap, one slow lap. Two lap cool-down. 5 1/2 total miles. I brought the little doodad Ann gave me last year to help correct my form, and got down to business.

The track was supercrowded. Zogsports was there, all of their teams playing soccer, plus the usual batch of children, other soccer players, and various other folks walking and running the track. In fact, I got hit not once, but twice, by soccer balls during one lap. A record!

Warm-up lap was 10:45. Then here are my fast laps -- 2:16, 2:11. 2:07, 2:10, 2:05, 2:08, 2:01, 2:04. That's not bad at all for me. Bonus, I think I finally "got" the arm placement. Let's see if it sticks.

PS: NO IPOD.

Thursday was a step workout at our old stomping grounds, the steps at the Bethesda Fountain. Again, super-crowded. Jeff led this workout, which consisted of sets of 3 and 6 repeats of variations of going up the stairs one at a time, two at a time (easier than one step at a time) and three at a time (not for the short of limb) and the infamous "in the bucket" where you squat, jump up two steps, land and squat, etc. etc. Turns your quads to jelly. I don't do the hopping up the stairs, it's too hard on my hips. The whole idea of a step workout is to train your hip flexors for the pounding, but I discovered after my first Fred's Team year that hopping up the stairs knocks both my hips out of alignment right quick. With the other exercises, my hips have a fighting chance.

So I signed up for swimming lessons starting in September, which means I need a bathing suit. Yup, don't own one. Yuck. I hate the way I look in a bathing suit. My giant pasty white thighs will shock you. But they don't let you swim in jeans, so I went to Modell's and tried on a few. Now, pasty white thighs aside, I am not a hefty woman. However, the way this suit was cut, with a really low back and sides (it goes down all the way to the butt) made all the flub from the top half of my body pop out the back of the suit, giving me love handles all the way around my back. Exceedingly unattractive, and emotionally devastating.

Quick tangent -- I worked a show once where one of the stars had, over the course of the first part of the run, had lost a great deal of weight. Once the show started to tank, she started to put the weight back on. However, she kept asking the costumers to bring IN her costumes, to corset her up. I had stopped working on the show, but came back one night as a sub. It was her number, and she was out there in an outfit where the top half had a low back. Well, all the flub was pushed out the back of the shirt, making it look like she had a second set of boobs attached to her back. Horrifying.

Anyways, that's what I flashed on when I saw the horror that was my back. On the one hand, nobody's going to be looking at my legs if I wear that thing. On the other hand, er, no. See, that's why I don't swim!!!!!

Tomorrow, we're going to participate in the Summer Streets program, where they close down Park Avenue from 72nd Street to the Brooklyn Bridge. We're going to run the whole shebang and back, for 13 miles. Then I head out to Camptown, PA for a summer camp reunion, which I will tell you all about next week.

And thus comes...
THE CONTEST

It's an easy one:

How many official water stops will there be on Park Avenue during the Summer Streets program?

E-mail your answer to mgcontest@earthlink.net by August 13.

One person, picked at random, will win something.

Have a good weekend!

Liam Update, and My Cr*ppy Long Runs

Liam update:



On Thursday, Liam goes in for his surgery. It is going to be a very invasive procedure. His dad, Larry, goes into more detail in the family's blog, Prince Liam the Brave, which I suggest you all read. I will pull out this one excerpt, because it sums up all of what makes me -- and everyone who meets him -- fall in love with this exceptional little champ, and why I will run for Fred's Team as long as I can run:

"He is an amazing little boy and has taken all that has been thrown at him in perfect stride, never complaining, and always full of love and kindness. He has every right to throw things, scream, yell, cry, and to be miserable but then we would not be talking about Prince Liam. Liam is in for a very rough couple of weeks. Our hearts ache for our precious son who deserves none of the pain and suffering he has been chosen to endure (no child does). He has had more than his fair share and what lies ahead for him over the coming month weakens my knees. I would take it all for him if it was at all possible. Take his cancer away and give it to me....As his father and his mother one of the most painful aspects of this journey for us has been the inability to protect our son from further harm. To protect him from the cancer that keeps trying to take him from us all, the toxic treatments required to keep him with us but that we know are harming him in other ways, and the uncertainty of what tomorrow holds for him...We are tired, saddened, weak, and working to muster the strength to get through the next few weeks to be strong for Liam when he will need us most. Your prayers, good thoughts, and random acts of kindness have given us added strength in the past and why I felt the need to bring everyone up to date on Liam regardless of how difficult it is to share the news above. He needs us all once again to cheer him on and to focus all of our positive energy in his direction. "

Any amount you can donate to the Aubrey Fund, which has paid for all of Liam's treatments, is amazing. If everyone who read this just gave $5, think of how much money could be raised to help fight pediatric cancer. And your money means more than a dollar sign -- it's hope for Liam, and all the children being treated at MSKCC, that there will be a day that they will not just imagine a world without cancer, but live in it as well.

So far, I have been able to raise, thanks to amazing people like you, and like the latest members of the FRED'S TEAM HONOR ROLL:
RUSSELL TREYZ
and
HOWARD SHIAU
a grand total so far of
$1892
but there's a long way to go.

Regardless of whether or not you can donate, please offer up your prayers, thoughts, good wishes, white light -- whatever positive energy you can send Liam's way, as he and his family undergo the next portion of their journey.

Thoughts of Liam have kept me going through some pretty -- there's no nice way to say it -- crappy runs. I don't know what it is, but I have lost everything, all my stamina, my strength and most distressingly, my speed. Where did it go?? I want it back!!

I had some pretty good midweek runs, so imagine my surprise when, at last Saturday's team long run (14 miles) I totally bombed. I had to do a few miles beforehand, to make to a 10:30 rehearsal, so I already had 2 1/2 miles down by the time I met the Team at 7am. The course was a simple one, and one of my faves -- from 97th Street up to the GW Bridge, then down the West Side to 40th Street, then back up to 97th. Scenic and flat, a great combo.

The trouble began almost immediately. I had to go to the bathroom. Of course, I had to go from the moment I left my house, but the park bathrooms don't open until 7am. Sigh. So I chugged along until we got to the first possible bathroom by the uptown tennis courts and there was a guy just opening them up. Teammates Ernie and V had also veered off, and we took a brief pause.

The rest stop, though needed, disrupted what little flow I had. I started falling further behind, and soon, I was dead last. Last. What the hey? I know it's not a race, but I've never ever been this slow. It was getting hotter and more humid. I kept fluids with me, because there's only one water fountain between 97th and the GW Bridge, but they weren't helping. My breathing was fine, again, it was my legs. They felt like lead. I couldn't turn them over. Worse, I started getting a shooting pain in my right knee that I couldn't shake, and I kept having to stop and rub it out. By the time I got to 97th Street (mile 8, or in my case, mile 10 1/2) I was in pain, I was dehydrated, and I was PISSED. Coach Jeff gave me a few words of encouragement, advised me to see a doctor (which yes, I am doing next Friday) and sent me on my way. I hobbled off. Just get through it. Just get through it. Got to 40th Street, turned around, came back up to 59th Street and -- as planned, because I was shorting the course, having run some beforehand -- turned off and went home. No time for an ice bath, had just enough time to shower and head over to watch the final rehearsal of the Cape show, before helping them load out and retaping the floor for my show. No nap for me...

Took Sunday and Monday off, trying to really refresh my legs. I did the first Team track workout on Tuesday. We were up at Riverbank, as always, and there was a light rain throughout the majority of the workout, which made things feel better, but didn't cool it down much.

The workout -- a one mile warmup, and five repeats of one fast lap, one slow lap. Finish up with 3 extra slow laps cooldown. Four miles total. The fast laps were meant to be about a minute over your normal pace, so if your normal pace is a 9:00 mile, push the lap for an 8:00 minute mile. Before the workout, Coach Ann pulled me aside and told me that she noticed my form was shot. She had really helped me last year getting my arms in the right position, but now they were even worse than last year. I wouldn't doubt it. That's probably part of the reason I'm running so badly. She also said that the one things that would help me a lot is ... getting rid of the iPod. For a number of reasons, it is bad for you, and I know this, but I use it for motivation and rhythm. She said that ditching it would help my form. So I agreed to give it up (sniff), and really concentrate on my arms. I think by the end of the workout, I was getting the hang of it. I could feel what Ann was talking about in both my arms and my hips, and it was, I dare say, helpful to hear my own breathing through the fast laps. It helped me get in a good rhythm, as demonstrated by my times for the fast laps, in order: 2:14, 2:15, 2:13, 2:08 and 2:05.

Took Wednesday off, to finish some transcripts.

Thursday was supposed to be a step workout, but because it was raining heavily, Jeff cancelled it. Did I go to the gym and work out instead? No. I thought, why don't I just do my long run on Friday morning instead, before rehearsal. My thinking was this -- I had taken Wednesday off already. Why not take the rest of Thursday off and do the long run on Friday, with somewhat fresher legs? Even though I had mentally blocked out Thursday night as Team time, I could use that time to finish up the rest of my transcripts instead -- so in theory, it made sense. Otherwise, I'd either have to drag myself to the gym on Thursday night in the rain, or do something on Friday, which I didn't want to do prior to the 15-miler. And since I was ready for bed by 8pm, it seemed the logical choice.

So at 5:30am Friday morning, I set out for a 15-miler. Decided to keep it in Central Park, where I felt safer -- yes, there are a LOT of people in the Park then, and it was already getting light out. The plan was a 6-mile loop, a 5-mile loop, and breaking up the five-mile loop by getting two loops of the Rez (1.7ish miles a pop) in, heading down the west side towards home, and then crossing the transverse at 72nd Street and heading down the east side for the extra half mile.

First six miles felt pretty good. I must say, and I'm going to hold to this, that I do pretty well on hills. That being said, I was debating two 6-mile loops, with the Rez loops in there, and ixnayed it after I hit Cat Hill the second time. Didn't feel like testing that theory with a second loop of the Great Hill.

Had the iPod (sorry, Ann!) but spent a lot of time really concentrating on my arms, and I figured out a couple of things. First off, I realized that when my arms were in what I believe to be correct form, I felt lighter, like weight had shifted off my hips. I also realized that having my arms in correct form pulled my back up into correct alignment (you can slouch when you run.)

So while it was not 100 percent there the whole run, I finally became aware of the difference between proper and improper form, and every time I felt myself falling out of form I would snap myself back in. And even though my time wasn't great -- averaged just over 10 minute miles for the 15 -- I physically felt better about the run. A couple of times I was tempted to short the course, just run down the west side instead of cutting over the transverse, but I thought about Liam, and as corny as it sounds, it gave me the strength to keep going.

Of course, spending the rest of the day in rehearsal, aching and desperate for a nap wasn't pretty. Oh, well. I'm in rehearsal right now for SMOKEY JOE'S CAFE, and we work on Saturday, so I'd be saying the same thing if I waited until Saturday.