Deva by Definition

Let's Get Our Run On: The Relay

2013-05-10T22:48:59-04:00

When we last left off, I was talking about my sleepless night before the race. After sleeping a mere two hours before the race, I woke up very sleepy and very unsure of my ability to run. We had a four am wake-up to be at our buses no later than six. We had about a mile to walk to get to the buses and wanted to allow plenty of time to get there and get situated. If any of us missed our final bus, we were in big trouble.

After suiting up, downing some breakfast, and gathering up our exchange-point bags, we set out to our buses. Sheena made her way to the starting line, and The Boy and I stood and chatted for a few minutes after Erica left for her starting point, and then we split up, got on our buses, and went our respective ways. I knew that we would have a while to wait - I was the third leg and he was fourth, so I settled in at the exchange point to trouble shoot my Garmin and check the weather. Rain was in the forecast and I wanted to see how long we had before getting soaked.

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

Not long after reaching my exchange point, the race began, and the people around me and I started talking about the leader, who was averaging around a five-minute-mile pace. We expected to see him right around when I expected Sheena to reach Erica at the first exchange point, so we were eagerly following updates on the leaders from Twitter, Facebook, and various local news sources. I ate a few orange slices, not wanting to overwhelm my stomach (I do not have an iron stomach and before runs can typically only tolerate some jelly beans or gu), but knowing I had about two hours from race start until my leg would take off.

Not long after we saw the leader pass us by, I got a text from Sheena. Erica had reached her exchange point and was on her way. It was chilly and humid, and I was texting The Boy about the possibility of running in my fleece hoodie, knowing very well that in the humidity this would be a bad idea. The excitement in the crowd around me was palpable, as the first relay runner came in not long after the first marathon runner reached our exchange point. Every runner was announced by bib number, and the excitement as timing chips were passed from runner to runner was great. I was grinning, cheering people on, and eagerly awaiting Erica's arrival. I couldn't wait to be off and running through Mt. Lookout and Mariemont.

When I thought Erica was about a half an hour out, I started getting ready - situating myself in my mini pigpen (which were ordered by bib numbers). I did a lot of jogging in place to warm up, stuffed my hoodie into our exchange-point bag, and had some gu. My exchange point was right at mile twelve of the marathon, so when Erica texted me from mile eleven, I was able to tell her exactly where I would be, and I immediately kept my eyes peeled, scanning the massive crowds of runners for her. Not long after, I saw her running toward me in the distance. Rather than wait for the announcers to let me know she was here, I started waving - and she waved back. We both were grinning ear-to-ear - we were almost halfway done!

Before I knew it, I was being passed the timing chip. I handed over the exchange bag and took off at a 10:30 pace, knowing based on our training that I could only sustain at that pace for so long. I ran into Hyde Park down a very long hill - misleading, as I knew my portion of the course was both long and hilly, though the elevation chart didn't look it. My first mile went by quickly, and I was shocked when I reached the first water station and timing clock at mile thirteen just over ten minutes after I left.

The next few miles went quickly. I had no plans to stop for water or gatorade until I was about three miles into my seven-miler. The humidity was making me very warm, and I almost regretted my choice of a long-sleeved tech tee and capris for the run. The course itself was gorgeous, and since I love running hills, I really enjoyed the ups-and-downs my part of the relay took me through.

Around my fifth mile, I developed a sharp stomach cramp. I was also in the heart of Mariemont, where countless people had come out to cheer the marathoners on as they ran through the square. The motivation was fantastic, and I knew that I didn't want to walk - I wanted to do my best and didn't want to let my team mates down. I did my best to run through it, but struggled, and ended up pausing and walking through the next two water stops, in hope that a few sips of gatorade would help. Fortunately for me, it did, and I was off and running a slow and steady pace in no time. I knew that I wasn't going to make up lost time, so I kept at it, running down onto wooster pike just over an hour after I started my run. As soon as I reached the marker for mile nineteen it started to rain. I pulled my phone out long enough to text The Boy that I was almost to the exchange point and he needed to be ready, and then I started to book it into Linwood and to the third and final exchange.

As soon as I saw the signs pointing toward the exchange point, I started getting ready for the hand off. I was shocked that I was almost done - it seemed like I had just started my run! The rain wasn't steady yet, but was about to be. I pulled off and reset the Garmin for The Boy to use, and readied myself with the timing chip in hand, ready to be passed off. Eventually the corrals came into view and the moment I saw The Boy I had to resist the urge to sprint! I was so happy to see him and so excited to be able to send him off for leg four. Our exchange was smooth and fast, and soon, I was on the bus to the finish line, eagerly awaiting updates from The Boy while I watched the rain fall steadily outside.

Getting back to the finish line was a bit of a challenge, and when The Boy texted that he had made it to mile three, a mere 28 minutes after the exchange, I was worried I would miss him cross the finish line. Fortunately, that was not the case. I made it to the finish with time to spare (though not much). I had enough time to grab some water, my medal, and mylar blanket before setting up in an area where I could see The Boy and get photos of him finishing the race. One hour and seven minutes after he started, and four hours, forty-two minutes after the race start, we were finished, happy, and soaked. We did it! We are still thrilled with our accomplishments and are eagerly refreshing the page at MarathonFoto awaiting our race course photos.

The crazy part? We were both incredibly sore on Monday, and I was done with running - at least then. Now? We're discussing a half marathon in the fall. We will see!

The Road to the Relay

2013-05-07T10:34:35-04:00

A year ago, I ran a half marathon on a humid and hot May day. I struggled to finish in three hours, and didn't come close to making my time goal. Crazily enough, I thought I might like to run the very same half marathon again this year - making training, nutrition, speedwork, and sleep priorities. All of this would be done while planning my wedding, and the race? Twenty days before my wedding. Friends both encouraged me and called me crazy for wanting to set aside twelve weeks for training, complete with long runs, cross-training, and, if possible, speed work.

Internally, though, I was hemming and hawing. Last year I registered for the half marathon in November. Of 2011. For the 2012 race. I was excited, right up until I got achy, came dangerously close to having a stress fracture, and got sick enough to have to miss a full week of training. I was waiting to register for the half marathon, until a friend said she'd run it with me. Then, a conversation on a trip home from the grocery store happened, and The Boy said he would run in the relay with me, if we could get a team together. In this, an idea and a relay team was born. The Boy, me, and two of my bridesmaids would run the relay in the Flying Pig, and we would do our hardest to finish in under 4:45.

From the get-go

The Boy, having only run up to 5k distance before, wanted a training plan that would be doable for him. Me, wanting to support him in his efforts, agreed to do the same plan, and we opted for Hal Higdon's novice 15k training plan to get us going. It combined three days of cross-training with three days of running, was balanced, and looked to be the best plan for us. I hadn't run more than a 10k since the RedLegs 10k in June of last year, and I was worried about stamina. After our training fell apart at the end of last year's training cycle, I wanted something I would stay committed to. This plan was easy to commit to, broke down nicely, and kept our evenings full of exercise.

Not surprisingly, we both lost a little weight training. Our eating habits straightened up - more fruits and veggies, fewer sweets, and more water were key to keeping us energized for our daily workouts. We had some struggles in the beginning - our long runs were hard, when previously for me, four and five miles had been easy. Two new pairs of shoes (one for me and one for him) later, we were out and running easily and comfortably.

From the beginning, training was easy. I am a person who commits easily to a goal and will do everything I can healthily do to accomplish my goals. For this, it was to hopefully finish running just under eight miles in about ninety minutes. After running the 7k in September, I knew it was a possibility, but I didn't want to push myself to injury. I knew that the other folks on our team were working hard to accomplish their goals, and being part of a team was an even bigger motivator than I could ever had thought. None of us wanted to be a weak link, and we were all having fun training up to reach our pace goals.

Dealing with Injury

Right up to our eight-week mark, things were looking good. Our training plan was ten weeks long, with the final week ending in the race. Week eight was a seven-miler, and we set out in the late afternoon after my bachelorette party weekend ended, planning to go strong. Four miles in, The Boy started having some severe IT band pain. What started out as a strong and easy run ended in a slow walk home. This wasn't anyone's fault, but we worried that this meant bad things come race day. A week later, we had the same issue when trying to run seven miles again. This time, we stopped at our local running shop and asked for advice. They were able to offer concrete examples for stretches to do, and we decided that all we could do was our best to get The Boy's leg healed enough to run or walk his leg of the race. My IT band was acting up at this point in time, so rather than push it, we both decided to take a good long week off from running.

Making it to race weekend

After a week off from running (well, I decided to run three miles one evening as a way to relax), we both felt strong going into race weekend. Saturday we were up earlier than we might otherwise be, to finish straightening up the house for guests and to be ready to go to the race Expo. As soon as our friends arrived, we headed into downtown and the Duke center to pick up our packets, explore what there was to get at the expo, and figure out our race-day strategy.

At the expo, the energy was incredible. Erica stopped to buy a Boston Strong tee-shirt while The Boy and I explored the Asics booth. I looked for a 13.1 finisher's hat and browsed the other booths. We looked at other races, the corral maps and relay exchange maps, all while discussing the best means of carrying and passing our timing chip - which was the relay baton, so to speak. None of us have ever run a relay before, so this was all new to us. On an impulse, I bought an ArmPocket at one of the expo booths - My iPhone's armband was no longer any good, and we all wanted to carry our phones to keep in touch and to be able to find one another quickly at the end of the race. It was another way to keep track of each other while running, so we could be ready at the relay points.

Saturday night we made our way back home, with plans to meet up by 4:30 the next morning to be on buses on time. After enjoying a pasta and garlic bread dinner, we all headed to bed early, bellies full, adrenaline starting to race, ready to get our run on Sunday morning. My night was pretty sleepless, and when I woke up on Sunday morning after only getting two hours of sleep, I worried if I would be able to finish.

To be continued...

Virtual Coffee Date

2013-05-01T23:25:37-04:00

If we were having coffee today, I would say that this month is shaping up to be busy. We have a lot of company coming in over the next few weeks, and it’s a bit crazy.

I would tell you that I am as ready for the relay as I can be. Sheena comes in on Saturday and Sunday morning we have a very early wake-up call. The forecast calls for rain currently, and I am hoping very hard that it doesn’t.

I would also say that I am eager to see my friends this weekend, and to see more of our friends next week. The Boy’s bachelor party is in just over a week and we are going to have a house full of guys. I plan to hole up with movies and books for a good portion of the weekend, in addition to visiting.

I would tell you that the zoo babies are at the zoo this month, and I am excited to try to go to see them. I love seeing all the new baby animals in their habitats, even as I wonder if they want more space than their enclosures allow.

I would tell you that as busy as this month is shaping up to be, it’s exciting. Even with some heavy stuff happening in addition to the happy stuff, it’s shaping up to be a pretty decent month.

What’s going on in your life lately?

Is it the Final Countdown?

2013-04-30T12:36:29-04:00

It's not QUITE the final countdown, but it's pretty close. As of today, we're 26 days out from our wedding. Twenty six. There is so much and so little left to do, and I cannot decide if it's overwhelming, exciting, or just is. Most of what we have left is the little stuff: decorating the venue, getting together props for the photo booth, setting up seating arrangements and putting together the favor bags and the centerpieces.

To say that things are a bit surreal is an understatement. I'm less than a month away from being a married woman. It's a title change and a status change, though I'm still processing both. Everything is together, and I'm pretty sure I've reached the "I just don't care" part of planning. If we don't have it together already, we probably aren't going to, and that's okay. What we have is enough. The people coming are who we need to be there. The rest is details and is out of my hands.

We went into planning our wedding with me saying that it didn't matter what the details were, as long as we were married in the end. I wish I could say that was the case throughout the process, that there wasn't anxiety about the process and that I didn't care about the details at all. The reality is, there was anxiety about the process, at least on my part. I often cared more about the details than what the day was intended for: us to be married.

This caused some (very minor) tiffs, fights, whatever you want to call them. I wanted tiers of cake instead of cupcakes, which I originally wanted. I wanted something big, much bigger than our budget would allow. I, in short, fell victim to the wedding industry. This isn't to say that the wedding industry is all bad, just that it can be overwhelming to flip through all of the bridal magazines and see weddings that look like they were perfect. What those magazines don't tell you is that you may forget your shoes when you go to your final dress fitting, or that the bride had a filling crack (true story) three weeks before her wedding.

I eventually came back to my senses and to myself. To the wedding we want, not the wedding the bridal magazines say we should have. We stopped fighting about little things (though our fights only totaled two). I stopped getting anxious about the things that I probably won't remember or care about in the days immediately following my wedding. Our wedding. Our invitations went out and the RSVPs began rolling in almost immediately.

What I realized about the wedding is that all that truly matters at the end of our wedding day is that we are married. That is what we are having this big celebration for: to be wed. We will be surrounded by seventy of our closest friends and family members as we say our vows. There will be tasty food, playlists that were very fun to assemble, and even more fun to listen to in the car while driving to work (and even more fun to have living room dance parties to). There will be love.

Our officiant, who is also a close friend spoke with us over the weekend to confirm a few things about the ceremony. We are working on getting the vows down. For me, at least, the ceremony is the most important part of the day - because in it, we will go from being engaged to being married, to becoming an "us." The party that comes after is to celebrate the union we are entering into in front of our friends and family. As we were talking about wants and needs, he commented that what we are coming together that day to celebrate is love. I agreed at the time, but the more I think about it, the more and more I agree. We are coming together on our wedding day, in twenty-five fast-moving days, to celebrate love. To be joined together in love. For me, that is what will make our wedding part of a long-standing tradition of marriage, and at the same time, uniquely ours.

Picture from our engagement session with the fabulous Sarah Warda Photography

Being Random

2013-04-24T12:59:45-04:00

So, in about a month. Actually one month and one day, I'll be getting ready to get married. Which means we have a lot going on. There is a good deal of last-minute details to get together for the wedding: wrapping up the dance-floor playlists (we are self-djing our wedding), getting centerpieces together, starting seating charts (assigned tables, not seats), and finishing up day-of timelines.

All of this means that I'm feeling things are a bit frantic. In the coming weeks we have The Boy's bachelor party (my bachelorette was over the weekend), a party to celebrate a friend's wedding, and the relay, in addition to our normal, every-day stuff.

While I have some bigger posts in the works, and more thoughts about weddings, getting married, and being a wife, today, I just wanted to share a few things I am loving lately.

1. Baseball. If you've been reading this blog for a while, it's no secret that I am a baseball fan (albeit a new one). Lately I've been hard-pressed to be found anywhere other than watching televised Reds games when the sun goes down, and with the many extra-innings games happening lately? It's been fun! We went to our first game of the year Saturday, had great seats and got to see bonus baseball. It was a great kick-off to the upcoming month.

2. Philosophy's Cherry On Top Lip Gloss. I got this as a gift from my best friend before my party on Saturday and already love it. It's lightly tinted, smooth, and lasts a LONG time. It reminds me of when I was in college and obsessed with Juicy Tubes. The tint is just enough to make me look "finished" when I wear makeup, but isn't over-the-top. Bonus: it smells like maraschino cherries.

3. Herbal Essences Shampoo. I loved it when I went to buy a new bottle of shampoo and I found the old style of Herbal Essences on the shelf. I immediately bought a bottle. I used the herbal-scented shampoo right up until they stopped selling it, and then switched to the new formulas. The green-capped bottle brought back a lot of nostalgia for me (it's what I used from age ten on), and I love how it makes my hair look and feel.

4. This post about love and fear on A Practical Wedding. This post I love for many reasons. First, it's written by one of my favorite bloggers, and second, it applies to so much in my life. I deal a lot with anxiety, and reframing how I think about what scares me is so important to my relationship.

5. Fun Nail Polish. I am still loving doing my nails in fun colors. Lately I have been very into blue on my fingers, as well as my favorite teal polish from last summer. I'm starting to think about what my wedding-day nails will be and I can't make up my mind: I want something subtle but fun. I know my toenails will be neutral, but fingernails? I have no idea!

What are you into lately?