ECUADOR!

I may have failed to mention this, but I just moved to Ecuador on Tuesday. I plan on staying here for 3 to 4 months, and I am volunteering in a clinic in Quito.

I have yet to go running here, but hopefully I will figure that out this weekend. I have a travel blog that I´ve been writing in since September 2007, and the address is: http://marisabroad.blogspot.com

Spring or Fall Marathon?

This week I went for two runs in my new sneaks. I ran in the Lehigh Parkway (where my high school cross team practiced), and ran two different circuits. Both days I ran it was bout 85 degrees and sunny...HOT. One run was 3.8 miles and the other was 4.3...both runs that I have done literally hundreds of times in my life, and yet I struggled to complete them without taking breaks for water or to catch my breath.

In HS cross-country, we had to run "tours" of the Parkway, which is a 6.2 mile loop of the park. One of my teammates donated to my Boston Marathon fundraising, and added a note "it's only 4.34 tours!"....which made me feel really pathetic that I couldn't even finish one!


I attribute part of this to the fact that I haven't been running a lot, and partially to the fact that I haven't run in hot weather for 2 years (due to traveling I had no spring/summer since 07), and once the weather got nice in Boston I was recovering from the Marathon and not running. I was laughing while I was running in my sports bra thinking about how "Sports Bra Days" used to be such a big deal in high school, and they were reserved pretty much for >95 degree days. And then I ran past a girl from my high school team...she was wearing a shirt. Whooops.

While I was running this week, I was thinking about how I swore I would never again train for a Spring marathon. It meant running 10 miles through ankle deep snow and practically ice skating half-marathons, which were fun in hindsight, but in not so pleasant in the moment. Then I was thinking about one of my friends who is training for Chicago, and is doing long runs in this summer heat. Also not so pleasant. I guess that no one ever said training for a marathon would be pleasant though!

IT Band update: I pushed my little brother in the pool after he told me he would jump in with me and didn't. He was mad at me then, and jumped on me, crashing his heel right into my injured IT Band. OWwieeee.

NEW SHOES!

I have a love/hate relationship with new running shoes.

LOVE: Usually by the time I get new running shoes I have run the maximum 3-400 miles in my old kicks, and am starting to get aches and pains associated with old shoes. I like the cheap thrill of sharpie-ing the date onto the heels of the shoes so that I can remember when I got them.

HATE: I feel like such a dork with brand spankin' new clean running shoes.

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I understand why running shoes are so expensive, but it also pains me to shell out >$100 3 times a year for a new pair. Soo, I was totally psyched when I called my running store and asked if they had last year's model of my shoes, the Brooks Defyance, and they did! The Brooks Defyance 2 retails somewhere around $99, and they had 3 pairs of the Brooks Defyance 1 left marked down to only $59, and one was in my size! Such a score! Love 'em.

Trail Runs!

Apart from a one-time affair with a trail run in Sedona, AZ (110 degree heat with the sun beating down at 10 AM...), I have never really gone on a trail run. I suppose there aren't many opportunities to do that in Boston...

This past week I was up in Vermont on vacation with my family. We have a place at Smuggler's Notch where we have been going for the past 10 years. I've been up every year to ski in the winter, but I hadn't been up in the summertime since before I went to college!

In addition to the various hikes I did this week, I went on two trail runs. One I did at the end of a hike, and one I did just as a run.

1. I played disc golf with my dad and cousins in the morning, and realized that the cross-country ski trails that the disc golf course follows would be great to run on. I set out with no real course in mind, blasted Lady Gaga, and set out on the trails. I loved that I had no way of monitoring how far I was going, and that I had to focus more on where I was putting each foot, rather than how I felt. There were a lot of long uphills, though, which made me think that cross-country skiing must be really hard. Whatever - the long uphills meant long downhills on the way back. I raced a golfcart up the hill back to our condo...I won :D

2. After a hike, my brother and I did a mini-trail run back to our car to go pick the rest of my family up. This was way more trail-like with ups and downs and roots and rivers. It was cool. I don't think I could ONLY trail run, but I hope to move somewhere that I can mix it in with my normal city runs!

IT Band...STILL.

When the orthopedic doctor at school warned me that the cortisone shot I got before the Boston Marathon could have a negative impact on me, I wasn't too worried. At that point, I was beyond nervous that I wasn't going to be able to run/complete the Marathon, which I had been training so hard for that anything was worth it!

Now is a different story. It was definitely worth it to get the cortisone shot before the Marathon. I don't think I could have run it (or had such a great time running it!) without it. Unfortunately now I am back to an endemic level of enormous amount of IT band pain. I need to get new running shoes, and I have been running on country roads (which are super crowned) every day...bad combination for the IT band.

I was in NYC this weekend, and had a hard time walking around. Unlike being at school, I don't have a gym membership here in Pennsylvania, and it is not worth getting one because I am only here for about 10 more days, so I have nowhere to cross-train. Boo-hoo. Back to ibuprofen and icing!

Throwback Runs

Since the Boston Marathon, I have had a hard time running over 2 or 3 miles. The thought of that seems absurd, seeing as for a few months there running anything under 8 miles was a joke. I don't know whether it is some sort of mental barrier, the idea that I'm not training for a specific race, the fact that I know that I need new shoes, or I know how terrible the crowned roads out here in the country are for my IT band, but for some reason I am having a hard time running.

I went for a run in the Lehigh Parkway one of my first days back in Pennsylvania after graduating. The Lehigh Parkway is where my high school cross-country team ran, and the site that I envisioned I was running at when in reality I was running block after block down Mass. Ave in Cambridge, or some other boring place to run in Boston. It was an interesting experience running in this place that I so often picture during my training runs. I must have been lost deep in that thought because I jumped nervously when I heard gunshots as I ran up the hill on my way to the covered bridge (AKA "Red"). This is a sound that I would have never thought twice of when I ran in the Parkway in high school. There is a police training academy in the Parkway that has a firing range...seems as though I forgot that for a brief second.

I had some of my proudest and toughest moments in the Parkway in high school, but despite the memories of tough practices or bad races, it is a soothing place to run. I think that is probably because I have logged more miles there than anywhere else in the world. I'm glad that I have a place like that to envision when I run elsewhere.


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Today I had to take my little brother to get a haircut, and figured that I would sneak in a quick run in Coopersburg rather than flipping through dumb magazines at the salon. I was right near my elementary school - the place where I consciously decided to BECOME A RUNNER - so I decided to run past it. I haven't been there since I switched schools in 4th grade, and it was 100% different! So wild!

The story of why Liberty Bell Elementary is where/when I decided to become a runner:

It was Field Day in 4th grade (until 3rd grade you have Play Day or Fun Day or something non-competitive), and I somehow got signed up for the 1/4 mile run, and WON! I remember thinking it was soo far and so hard, but somehow I won the event! I got a shiny blue 1st place ribbon, and from that moment on I decided that I was going to start training so that I could win again next year.

Little did I know I was switching schools in 5th grade, and my new school didn't have the 1/4 mile run as a Field Day event. They did, however, have cross-country. So I started that instead.

Running the Boston Marathon!

Okay, so this is long overdue. Unacceptable. Luckily, I am a much better student than I am blogger, and my 20 pg paper (due 5/4/09 11AM), 15 pg paper worth 100% of my grade (due 5/4/09 5PM), and final exam (5/4/09 3:30PM) are all DONE! And I am done with college...bittersweet?

So, after much ado, my experience running the Boston Marathon:

Pre-Race
We boarded the Tufts buses at 6:15 AM, greeted by our enthusiastic university President, Larry Bacow and coach Don Megerle. As Bacow spoke excitedly and hugged each of us, it was evident that he was a little bit jealous that he wasn't going to be running today (this is is first year not running). Don looked like a proud father as he sent our buses off to Boston.

On the bus, I finished my coffee and ate a specialK bar. My mind was spinning with thoughts like: "shorts or tights?" "long-sleeves or short sleeves?" "what if it starts raining?" "what if i can't go to the bathroom before i run?" "what if my IT band starts hurting?"so I turned on my iPod to tune out the questions without answers. M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" made me think about how strong I felt running the first 3 Newton Hills during my 20-mile run, and calmed my nerves.

We arrived at the Boston Common to board the official BAA buses that would bring us to Hopkinton. Lines of runners snaked around the park, and I chuckled to myself thinking of all the days I walked from my internship to the State House through the Common, and now I was here in running clothes about to run the Boston Marathon. What am I doing? My roommate Jen, my friend Casey, and I stuck together, as was the plan for the race. After about 25 minutes, we boarded a bus that would take us to Hopkinton. The bus was so overwhelming. All I could hear was "which race did you use to qualify?" "oh, the 15 other marathons I've run in my life" etc etc etc. Because I had been training with the Tufts team, it never really registered to me that the vast majority of people running Boston had qualified, not raised money in exchange for a bib number. I once again turned on my iPod to tune out the nervous energy around me. I fell asleep on the hour-long drive out to Hopkinton.

Wait, that bus ride took an hour? To drive? What am I doing? We arrived at the Athlete's Village, which looked like a perverse twist on some sort of fair. There was a giant tent with bagels and water, but the only thing at this fair was portapotties. With massively long lines. Walking around the Athlete's Village I learned a lot about what to bring to my next marathon: something to sit and a blanket (disposable). We waited in line for about 45 minutes for the bathroom, and got advice about what to wear. I polled the women in line behind me (one from Alaska, one from Ireland...what?!) who were both wearing shorts, so I decided that I would wear shorts, too.

When the man on the loudspeaker instructed us to line up, we proceeded to walk the 0.7 miles to the starting corrals. It was already past the Wave 2 start time (10:30), but our times wouldn't be recorded until we crossed the start line. I shed my sweatpants (freshmen year of high school track sweatpants!) and my sweatshirt (CCHS cross-country "Chicks Out For A Good Time"), and tried to get my nervous energy out.

Crossing the starting line was exciting - like the beginning of an adventure. The first mile is a huge downhill, and we were cautioned to take it slow. It was so crowded, that trying to weave in and out to get ahead of the crowd would have been pointless anyway.

So basically, I had a blast. I had a giant smile spread across my face the entire race. I never hit the wall, I was never in extreme amounts of pain, I never had to dig deep to convince myself to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Since 26.2 miles is a lot to detail, here are some of the highlights:


Mile 9: Seeing the Tufts fan group, my parents, my brother Luke and sister Jessica, President Bacow, Don...Jess ran the next mile with us, which was so fun!


Mile 13: WELLESLEY COLLEGE. So everyone says that the Wellesley tunnel is the best part of the Boston Marathon, and it was definitely one of my favorite places. You could hear the screams long before reaching Wellesley. All of the Wellesley girls wear "Free Kisses" t-shirts and scream at the top of their lungs. Very inspiring, haha.


Mile 14-15: Running through Wellesley Hills remembering my training run there running through shin deep snow. Smiling, and feeling soo happy that it was great weather.

Mile 16.8: We met up with Katrine! In her purple spandex! She ended up running soo many miles with us!

HEART BREAKAH: OKay, so, beasted those Newton Hills. At the crest of Heartbreak my IT band started to hurt, and I was desperately wishing I had ibuprofen. I figured that someone watching might have some, and just yelled as I ran by, and a woman had some! She saved me!

Mile 21: Seeing my friends! My friends had huge signs and were waiting on the backside of Heartbreak for us! Soo fun. Derek, Andy, and Ryan ended up running with us for awhile.

BC: Running through BC was awesome. Soo many college kids, and so many more of my friends! Over the course of the run I saw 7 out of 8 of my Wilderness freshmen, which meant so so much to me, in addition to all the other friends I saw.

Seeing the Citgo sign: 1.4 miles to go. For the first time in the entire process of training for and running the Boston Marathon, I realized that running a marathon is kind of crazy. It is SO MANY MILES. Why why why?

Turning off of Comm Ave: This is where I should have started sprinting, but my legs were just so heavy. I did what I could. I made the mistake of thinking about my last cross-country race of high school at Lehigh University - it is a long straightaway (similar to Boylston St) and my friends were yelling "No regrets!"

Crossing the finish line was exhilarating. I was a little disappointed that I wasn't overcome with emotions (read: I thought I was going to burst into tears). I got a huge hug from both Bacow and Don after I crossed the finish line (with my arms in the air in victory!) I saw my family, traded in my chip for a medal, got a shiny heatsheet blanket, some food, and my bag. I was astonished at how incredibly organized it was. I guess after 113 runnings of this race they've got their system down.


I took the bus back with my family, and proceeded to get really sick. After all of my long training runs my digestive system decided to shut down for the day, but after the Marathon it decided to cease to function for closer to 48 hours. I felt like there was DrainO in my stomach, or like I had been poisoned. Not pleasant to say the least.

All in all, it was an amazing experience. I was incredibly disappointed the next day when I was hardly sore at all (and felt really sick). I kind of felt like I hadn't given it my all, and that I could have run faster or pushed myself further. It stinks because it was such a great experience, and I was so happy the entire time except for the last kick.

After a few days I remembered that it wasn't really about the time, it was about the process and the accomplishment. So yay. Life goal achieved. I ran the Boston Marathon.