Facebook ad from Udi's gluten-free, promoting G-free for athletic reasons

I have heard stories in the news about pro-athletes switching to gluten-free diets and how it “helps their training season so much” and how they “feel so much better”.  But I have also heard that some of those same athletes have a free-for-all once their season was over, gorging themselves on gluten-filled products.  That whole philosophy seems counter-intuitive to me.  If you truly do feel that much better without it, then just go without.

For example, I am lactose-intolerant.  As much as the thought of having an ice cream cone sounds like it would be awesome… I’m not going to do it because I know the aftermath is no way near as worth it as the temporary taste of the ice cream.

And a lot of people seem to jump on the gluten-free bandwagon and eliminate it from their diet on their own, which means they can’t get tested for celiac or gluten-intolerance because they’ve already removed it from their diet.  If someone truly suspects the NEED to go off gluten, perhaps they should work with their medical professional to get their diagnosis.
ARTICLE: Gluten-free diet may be a waste of money for some, new research suggests.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

With all that ranting aside… the first chapter is full of good information about inflammation and how diet affects our health.  Some of the things that I found particularly noteworthy:

• Early humans ate a diet that was 65% animal/fish-based, 35% plant-based with no refined wheat or sugar
• Modern humans eat a diet that is 35% animal/fish-based, 65% plant-based with lots of refined wheat and sugar
• Early humans ate about 104 grams of fiber a day, while most modern humans eat only about 15 grams a day!
• A diet high in wheat, sugar, meat and oil but low in fruits/veggies creates an imbalance in pH levels, making us more acidic.
• A more acidic body has more inflammation, which opens the door for disease.
• Acidity robs the body of calcium, magnesium and potassium.
• Citrus is NOT acidic in the body, it’s actually alkaline or neutralizing. (Thus the reason drinking warm lemon water each morning before breakfast is so good.)

The science is pretty interesting!

The book has a chapter on how to start the lifestyle with advice on portion sizes, testing your pH and a sample neutralizing meal plan.  Another chapter focuses on some cooking basics, teaching the reader the differences in different cooking methods, temperatures and food safety, plus an appendix on gluten-free baking principles.

As for the actual cookbook?
The Gluten-Free Good Health Cookbook: The Delicious Way to Strengthen Your Immune System and Neutralize Inflammation

The recipes are pretty straightforward.  They don’t contain a lot of “weird” gluten-free ingredients that would be hard to find.  Even in the dessert chapter, they have souffles and mousses that are built off a tofu base.

The chapters for recipes are:

• Sauces and Gravies
• Soups, Chowders and Chilis
• Vegetables and Side Dishes
• Grains
• Fish and Seafood
• Chicken and Turkey
• Meat
• Desserts

It covers it all!

One of my favorite recipes in the book is for mixed roasted vegetables.  It allows for a lot of flexibility depending on what veggies you have available and isn’t hard.  It calls for a little bit of maple syrup, which I wouldn’t have thought of on my own but it really helps to bring out the vegetables natural sweetness during the carmelization process in roasting.

The book is a simple paperback and doesn’t contain pictures.  I do think the science and health information at the beginning is important.  They point out one of my biggest pet peeves with the medical field and that is the way doctors seem to treat problems instead of a patient as a whole.  I want doctors to figure out WHY something occurred, not just prescribe a pill and send you on your way.

I do think this book would provide those who already know they have Celiac or gluten-intolerance with a wide range of recipes and I think the book would help educate those who are newly diagnosed with some of the info how their diet affects them.  But like I mentioned at the beginning… if someone is really convinced they have issues and want to be certain, don’t cut gluten out before talking with and getting tested by a doctor.  We do have to take our health into our own hands so often, but sometimes playing armchair -(or Google-) physician isn’t the best practice either!

BTW – there wasn’t a chapter specifically on gluten and athletic performance, but a lot of the info in Chapter 1 on inflammation can definitely be applicable to some athletes woes.

There were wonderful comments on my post about running during the first trimester and the general consensus was to do what feels right for me.  So if I make myself some kind of schedule and don’t feel like sticking to it on a certain day, I feel like I would be setting myself up to feel badly about myself.

But I do have a fun plan for this weekend!  I am going to be doing The Color Run here in Vegas.

There are a bunch of my Team Challenge peeps entered into the race and my mom is going to do it with me as well.  The awesome thing is that the event is not timed and there’s no way I would want to wear my Garmin through this course… so I’m just going to have fun and run/jog/walk the whole thing with my mom.

My husband was a little uneasy about the idea of me doing this since I’m pregnant.  Honestly, I didn’t even think anything of it… but I promised I would stay in the low color zone lane.

Truth be told, I hate all the restrictions that are in place for pregnant women.  The books and articles that tell you to “microwave your deli meats” and “don’t eat soft cheese” all start to make me angry.  I feel like saying, “Oh yeah?! Well, I’m going to go scuba diving and follow that up with a meal of bratwurst, soft cheese, and a pint of beer.”  (Which is ridiculous because: a) I don’t like the ocean all that much, b) I wouldn’t eat bratwurst, c) all the soft cheese I would eat is pasteurized and I don’t eat much dairy anyway and d) I don’t drink.  So the little rebellious tirade is really all for naught.)

But seriously?  Why is there so much out there telling pregnant women all the things they can’t do?  Women in other countries where those items are so much a part of their culture probably eat them and have healthy pregnancies… since populations in other countries continue to thrive.  Basically I have pretty much given up on reading articles.  I figure people got through pregnancies for year and years and years without relying on Google to scare them about all the ways they can do it wrong.  I’m already terrified enough!

Why am I talking about pregnancy again?  I swore to myself I wouldn’t let this turn into a pregnancy blog or eventually a mommy blog.  I swear, there is strictly running-related stuff out there too… it’s just that this feels so pressing on my brain and now that I’ve announced it publicly I almost can’t help spewing stuff about it out onto the keyboard!

On December 17 I ran a 5K. [Come Run With Santa 5K]  I was still running pretty regularly at that time.  I had just found out a few days before that race that I was expecting.  I still wasn’t feeling that ill though.  Just a little “wonky,” which is really the only way I can think to describe it.  I didn’t run my fastest, or even what I know I’m typically capable of… but it was okay.  (I even got 3rd in my age group, LOL!)

Shortly after that though I started feeling queasy.  And a few days after that I was struck with a pregnancy-caused UTI.  That was the real start of my downward spiral.

At the end of the Team Challenge season, my goal was to do 3 half-marathons in 6 weeks during January and the beginning of February.  I hadn’t registered, I was going to sign up on the day that I was brought to a screeching halt with that UTI.  I guess it was a good thing, because then I didn’t waste money on half marathons I wouldn’t have the energy to complete.

I tried to keep up with a workout schedule, doing either a strength workout or a run after work on weekdays.  But after each of those workouts I was even more queasy and tired, and by the weekend I was basically worthless.  I could hardly motivate myself to get out of pajamas I was so tired.  I had to give myself permission to rest more.

I ran another 5K during this time, on January 21. [Chefs for Kids 5K] In order to be able to have energy to do that race, I rested all week.  You hear that?  I had to TAPER all week just to have energy to run a 5K!  And the moment I started to run, my breathing felt very labored, like I was having a continual asthma attack throughout the race.  It was a little bit slower than the earlier 5K, but I still came in under 30 minutes which pleased me.  That was one of the first moments that I felt truly hungry in pregnancy… they had pancakes after and I felt like I could have scarfed down about 20.  However, they were running behind because their grills had blown out, so it wouldn’t have been appropriate to eat all of those!  Plus, I started feeling queasy again about 30 minutes after that so I’m glad I didn’t have a gut full of pancakes.

And since that race? I haven’t hardly run at all.  I have been walking regularly.  On a few of those walks with Jade, we’ve run a block and then walked a few, trying to intersperse some running.  I’ve run barefoot on my treadmill a couple of times for a few minutes.  But overall, I’m not running much because I have felt crummy physically.

I had nausea and terrible heartburn. Those don’t really play well with running.  My latest symptom is that my breathing feels labored all the time.  At my appointment yesterday, my midwife said that some women with asthma get better with pregnancy, some stay the same and some get worse… and it looks like I’m in the “worse” camp.

But as of today I am officially in my 2nd trimester.  I’m hoping that my energy increases and that some of the other physical ailments ease up.  Everyone tells me that will happen… I’m hoping that holds true for me.

Also at my appointment yesterday I had an ultrasound, part of their testing for down syndrome.  The ultrasound was kind of cool because it actually looks like a little baby in there.  My first ultrasound just looked like a blob.  This ultrasound showed a clear outline of a face:

and feet:

and thumbsucking:

And those kind of blew my mind a little.

Rules:
1. Post these rules
2. You must post 11 random things about yourself.
3. Answer the questions set for you in their post.
4. Create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
5. Go to their blog and tell them that you’ve tagged them.
6. No stuff in the tagging section about “you are tagged if you are reading this.” You legitimately have to tag 11 people.

11 Random Things About Jill

1. I hate peas. With a passion. I bought a bag of frozen peas once to keep on hand as an ice pack, but I almost felt like some kind of traitor for supporting the pea industry.
2. In high school I had an “Adult Roles” class where we had to carry around a sack of flour to emulate having a baby. I named my flour sack baby “Vernal Equinox” and I kept him under my desk in most classes. The teacher told me I didn’t take the assignment seriously. (Especially considering some girls put hair on their “babies” and carried them around in car seats.)
3. My primary running dream is to get to a point where I can do 1 or 2 marathons a year for the rest of my life. That didn’t happen in recent years due to my eating disorder and that will be on the backburner for a while now due to pregnancy!
4. I kind of consider that I “rescued” Jade The Boxer. True, she was bought as a puppy from a breeder by someone else. But that person decided within a week of having her that she couldn’t handle a rambunctious puppy and Jade was relegated to living in a crate for entire days. So when I took Jade from this woman, she was kind of my “rescue” baby.  And that whole “Who Rescued Who?” saying is totally applicable for us!
5. I don’t think I’m a big fan of board games. Mainly because it seems like there is always someone in the group who gets too eager about things and angry when things don’t go their way.
6. I am not into team sports. I didn’t play any growing up, I don’t care for watching their events much, and I don’t usually care for the crazed way fans can act at these things. It’s ONLY a game!
7. I worked at a public library in high school. I loved Saturdays because I got to work in the children’s library.  I’m a really fast reader, so I usually power-read a couple books in The Baby Sitters Club series while I worked, so I could totally keep up chatter with the little girls about the latest release.
8. I would make an awful public school teacher. I usually guest lecture in a college class each semester, one time a student was texting the whole time and I told him that he could leave and do that since it is technically his choice to come to college but I find it disrespectful to me and everyone else the way he’s behaving. I don’t think that would fly if you told  a middle school kid to get the hell out of the classroom.
9. I hate dry crusty feet. Especially when those feet are out on display.
10. I started to enjoy popular music at a very young age. I cringe to think of all the times I sat there and sang loudly in the shower or along with my headphones in the car. That would be so embarrassing to do now and I must have driven my parents nuts!
11. Telecommuting has been one of the greatest and most awful things in life. It’s nice to have the job security and to retain all those connections, but it’s so hard to be alone all the time. Idle chitchat and “water cooler” discussions may seem like a waste of time, but I think that it helps in brainstorming, camaraderie and general mental health of employees!

11 Questions Answered

1.  What is your greatest strength?
Probably my empathy. It’s also a great weakness.

2.  What’s your best Halloween costume to date?
My mom made my brother and me clown costumes when we were kids. Our photo graced the school hallway for years they were so good!

3.  What’s the best thing that has ever happened to you?
Happened sounds like such chance! I guess meeting the man I’m married to “happened” and I’m really glad for him.

4.  What’s your biggest pet peeve?
People who misspell “voila” online… especially big bloggers who make their sole income off their site. Learn to spell the word, It’s not VIOLA, that’s a musical instrument.
But I do have another pet peeve that has just emerged, people who pin something on Pinterest that just links to a blog archive page or link to another pin so I can’t ever get to the original source.

5.  If you had to choose one word to describe yourself, what would it be?
Overanalyzer

6.  What’s your dream vacation?
Greece… I’ve always wanted to go there. But I’d like to get there without the long plane ride because my hubby hates planes! And without planning it because I find it next to impossible to actually plan a vacation, hence the reason we’ve had so many staycations.

7.  If you could choose one celebrity to play you in a movie, who would it be?
Um… this is tough. I guess maybe Reese Witherspoon?

8.  What is your favorite class you’ve ever taken?
AP Biology. I just have a lot of good memories from that class.

9. Who is your favorite literary character?
This is hard… but maybe a combination of Pippi Longstocking and Nancy Drew.  I so wanted to be like both of them.  I wanted to be adventuresome and carefree like Pippi and I wanted to be grown-up and analytical like Nancy.

10.  If you had 24 hours left to live (and unlimited resources) what would you do?
Probably make my own funeral arrangements so my family didn’t have to deal with it.  Maybe I should write those out so I can stop thinking about it!

11.  What’s the first thing you notice about someone else?
I honestly don’t think I notice the same thing about every person I meet. Each person is so unique, that I’m drawn to something special about them.

11 Random Questions

1. What is your favorite comfort food from your childhood?
2. If you won a huge lottery, what would be the first thing you bought?
3. If you could choose a different career, would you and what would it be?
4. Dog or cat preference?
5. Mac or PC preference?
6. Do you prefer talking on the phone or texting and why?
7. Did you ever have a really rebellious phase?
8. Why do you blog or read blogs?
9. What is your biggest pet peeve about websites? (Curious for personal and professional reasons!)
10. What is the best gift you’ve ever received?
11. How many kids are in your family and what is your place in the birth order?

11 Tags

You can opt out if you’d like, but I tried to choose people I’d like to learn about as well as hopefully people who haven’t already done this!

1. Lindsay at Chasing the Kenyans
2. Emilie at I Came To Run
3. Lara at Saturday Morning Zen
4. Heather at Mile 26 and more
5. Lisa at Mom to Marathon
6. Joey at Fit Vegas Foodie
7. Kristen at Swanky Dietitian
8. ~moe~ at Unequivocally Moe
9. Katie at Marathon Winer
10. Heather at Just a Colorado Girl
11. Erin at See Mom Run Far

The curve ball?
I’m pregnant…

This was not planned, it was a surprise.  I don’t like unplanned things. (Especially things that are going to change my life forever and ever and ever and ever.)

So I’ve been freaking out about this.  Just a wee bit.  (Okay, a HUGE freak out!)

I don’t think I have the worst pregnancy symptoms in the world, but the fatigue/heartburn/nausea/acne are all doing a number on me.  I have no motivation to do anything other than lay on the couch.  For a couple of weeks I tried to do 2 strength workouts and 2 running workouts during the week.  But when combined with working full-time, I was shredded by the weekend and couldn’t function.  I’m usually ready to crawl into bed by 7:00 each night.

But even worse than the physical issues, the emotional and psychological stress has been intense.

I know pregnancy hormones play a role in this.  But the day that I got a positive test, I stopped taking my anti-depressant due to the label on the side of the bottle “Do not take if you are pregnant or under suspicion of pregnancy.”  If I had been planning for this, I probably would have worked with my doctor to wean myself off instead of a cold turkey detox.

The past two months have, quite honestly, been the worst time of my life.

There were times that I thought I wanted to end my life, but I didn’t want to leave chores behind for my family (planning a funeral, cleaning things, etc.) or leave projects at work unfinished… and the pregnancy fatigue left me too tired to figure out how to wrap up those loose ends.

I’ve been angry because I feel like I was denied what the process should be:

Instead I got this:

We’d always assumed that we would have kids in our 30′s.  Well, maybe there was a mis-communication.  Kevin assumed when he was 30 (he’s a couple of years older than me).  I assumed when I was 30 we would consider the idea.  But when I turned 30 and after I ran the San Antonio Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon, I stopped taking the pill.

Stopping the pill taught me a huge lesson… you are far sicker than you ever realized!

I had convinced myself that I had “reversed” my eating disorder on my own.  I had convinced myself that I didn’t have that severe of a problem because I still had a monthly cycle.  But that cycle was purely due to the pills.  When that external influence was gone, my body revealed just how sick it was.  A few short months after that is when I checked into treatment for my ED.

I stopped the pill in December 2008.  Despite gaining weight, scaling back my running (hence, no marathon repeats since) and working hard on my eating habits, my cycle didn’t come back until I was forced to stop running this summer (July 2011) with a stress fracture.

And by this time, I’d actually decided that I didn’t mind if I couldn’t have kids.  That long without a cycle makes you consider the possibility, and I like being a parent to Jade The Boxer.  She’s easy to take care of… goes outside to go to the bathroom, eats her meals on a schedule like a champ, you can leave her behind when you go out to dinner and she’ll just sleep on the couch or play with a toy.  Perfect!

Since July I’d only had a couple of cycles, so nothing was really regular or consistent like it should have been.  So I at least wanted to become “regular” before I considered the upheaval of having a kid.  I wasn’t baby-hungry… babies don’t interest me much anyway.  I can appreciate a cute baby, from across the room, no desire to run over and hold a kid.  I have never felt a mothering instinct that the world has led me to believe I should have.

Yet with those intermittent cycles, I have become pregnant.

I alternate between feelings of:
- I’m WAY TOO YOUNG for this!
and
- I’m too old for this, too set in my ways.

I also feel like I haven’t lived enough! I graduated from college too fast (I was 20) and entered the “real world” immediately.  I got married a couple of years later.   I just kept working.  I didn’t take up running until I was 29.  That changed my life, it gave me goals and dreams that had nothing to do with my job, a job that doesn’t really inspire me to have goals or dreams.  I had so many things I wanted to do.  But that hasn’t panned out and it likely won’t pan out for several years now.  My body is no longer my own, it’s a host to another life… and this life is pretty demanding so far.  It doesn’t want me to feel good!

I’m due August 17.  I will turn 34 six days before that. My life is going to be forever different… and I hope that it is worth it because I can’t just hit “undo!”

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know why it has taken me so long to write up this post. In fact, I wish I had driven home and written it up that same day, since some of my notes are rather cryptic to me and I think I could have made more sense of them if I was prompt.  But I still wanted to include some of the points that I found particularly interesting. (With some of my own little additions included in italics!)

• Without a  base of nutritional health, you can only perform at high level for a short time.
  (This was so true for me. I was able to starve myself (eating disorder) and still managed to do a marathon. But over time my body brought me back to a screeching halt.)
• You want to get high net gain food in your diet, this food takes little energy from you but returns plenty of energy.
• Fruit is easier to digest than grains.  Buckwheat. Quinoa are pseudo grains, thus they’re easier to digest.
• Hormones and stress are intertwined. Emotional, physical, psychological AND nutritional stress all elevate cortisol.  Nutritional stress accounts for 40% of America’s stress.
• Coffee and sugar are stimulants.  The line between awake and asleep is blurring. Remembering your dreams means you are sleeping too lightly.
• Maca can help with sleep, adrenal fatigue, sugar cravings, trouble toning or losing fat.
• Standard American Diet (SAD) is acid forming. Acid pulls calcium from bones. We need alkaline forming foods = GREENS. Inflammation disappears with more alkalinity, muscle tension dissolves.
  (I really wonder if I’m too acidic. I have crazy muscle tension that I blame on working at a computer, but even massage therapists have a hard time breaking up the knots in my back and shoulders.)
• If you experience an ammonia smell when working out, that is “burning dirty”, meaning you don’t have enough carbs.
  (At my lowest weight in my ED, I would go to the gym and spend a long time on the elliptical. Midway through the ammonia smell would start and carry through until I showered.)
• Kombucha relaxes muscles and helps stomach for endurance.
• Maltodextrin is hard to digest, found in some gels.
• ‘Isolate’ means something is isolated, no longer a whole food so it is harder to digest and more acid forming.  See: Whey Protein Isolate and Soy Protein Isolate
• Don’t have to have everything in one meal, it is all cumulative.
  (This is something my dietitian tells me all the time. I used to freak out about making sure I included something from all food groups to be “balanced” – that still haunts me at times because I feel like I need to do that.  But really, what you eat throughout your day, week, month… it’s cumulative.)
• Wheat is not natural, it was created by combining ancient grains. Sprouted is better, easier to digest.
• Processed soy is acidic. Edamame is more neutral. Tempeh is fermented so it is even better.
• SAD needs more water, very dry. Eat more veggies reduces your water needs cause you’re getting water from the veggies.
• Body treats coconut oil a little more like a carb. Saturated fat isn’t necessarily bad. Cook with coconut oil, higher smoke point and it is more filling.
• A plant based diet is very safe and lower toxicity during pregnancy. However, a plant based is more cleansing, so you maybe shouldn’t begin that cleansing during pregnancy or breast feeding.

Brendan Brazier presenting at a Henderson, NV Whole Foods store

Overall it was a fascinating presentation.  Afterward we got to sample some of the products in the Vega Sport line-up, but there were so many tiny shots of liquids, I couldn’t keep everything straight!  Brendan also set-up at a table to sign autographs.  I had taken my copy of Thrive Fitness with me to get signed, but a Whole Foods employee was going through the line asking to see our receipts, to prove that we’d purchased the book there.  She told me I couldn’t wait in the line to talk to Brendan since I had bought my book online a year earlier.  BUMMER!

A gal who was on my Team Challenge team a couple of seasons ago gave me a packet of a chocolate-flavored Vega protein product. I’m not sure what the equivalent of it is now, since they’ve changed their whole line-up.  It might be the same as the All-in-One Nutritional Shake? But I blended it into a morning smoothie with spinach, mango, berries and almond milk and it was AWESOME. Seriously, one of the best plant-based protein powders I’ve tried.  (And I try to keep my protein powders to plant-based ones.  I’ve stumbled on some real duds.)

If you ever have the chance to hear Brendan present, I highly recommend it.  Take good notes and then write-up something on your notes immediately after… so you’re not like me staring at entries like “Lacking complete protein, b12″ and wondering what that moment was!

NOTE: I just learned that Brendan is presenting a free webinar on February 20 via Learn It Live. Sign up for his presentation: Plant-Based Performance Nutrition: How to unlock your mental and physical potential through food - I think I’m going to sign up, just to listen to his insights again and hopefully remember what some of my other notes meant!

I’ve emailed you with details on what you need to do next! Congrats!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

My mom ended up contacting Running Warehouse and returned her shoes because they started falling apart so quickly.  I kind of wonder if there is something slightly wrong with the construction of these shoes.  Or maybe it’s something weird in both of our biomechanics that we break the shoes on both the left and the right sides of the shoes, just where the forefoot bends.

And despite this flaw, I still can’t help but want new pairs of Kinvaras.  I mean… look at these lovely colors available in the Kinvara 2!

And there is the Kinvara 3, set to be released in May.  Taking a look at the photos, the upper looks like it has been reinforced some, so I am curious if the problem would be alleviated.  They’re still pretty attractive!

A few Twitter Responses to this post I’ve received:

@jillwillrun Same thing happened to mine. 200 miles is the most I got out of a pair.

February 2, 2012 2:31 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@matthewln

Matthew Nguyen

1. Don’t eat breakfast and lunch at my desk anymore.

Since I telecommute, I have developed the bad habit of getting up around 5:30 each morning, grabbing my breakfast and taking it into my office. I don’t have to start working until 7:00 AM… but there I am, no later than 6 most days eating oatmeal or cereal at the keyboard.

And then come lunch time, I would put together my food and haul that right back in to my desk.

So I stretched an 8 hour work day into about 10… and if I’m going to do that, I should have just dropped a day I worked each week, huh?

Last week I decided to stop this. And I find I’m more productive and I enter my work day less frazzled when I take the time to eat at the kitchen table.  I can read blogs on my iPad or browse Facebook if I want.  I can even take the time to put a little salt on my hardboiled egg (because who wants to dump salt over an egg when they’re holding it at the keyboard? I don’t need salt in my keyboard!)

Source: incredibleegg.org via Margi on Pinterest

This needs to continue… so no more meals at my desk unless there are extenuating circumstances that require it.  And breakfast shouldn’t ever be required there.

2. Pick a word for the year: Acceptance

Honestly, it pisses me off to no end when things aren’t going “to plan” – whatever my plan may be.  I want to plan every second of my life and I want to know how it’s all going to turn out, when it’s going to happen and I want to know all of this for the next year, 5 years, 10 years, etc.

But I guess that’s not how life works.  There are other people in my life and they all have their own intentions/goals/paths.  Shit happens… you gotta deal with it.

That’s where ACCEPTANCE is going to come in.  My first reaction was to be far more negative and just say “Give up” – meaning face it, you have no control over what happens in your life Jill.  Pretty negative approach.

I mean, I do have a little bit of control over things.  And what I can’t control, I need to learn to accept that’s how life goes and not let it get to me.

Source: google.com via Jill on Pinterest

And this one is really hard for me!

This was a race morning…

I contemplated for a moment bailing on the race.  But I had paid and I kind of felt like I needed the boost from a race.  I knew I wouldn’t run my best race, but just getting out into the environment with other runners is invigorating.

So after eating breakfast, I got myself ready to go.  This nice thing was that the race started at 9:00 AM… that’s totally sleeping in!  I could sleep in, eat breakfast, laze around a bit and still get ready to go to the race! (When you start work at 7 AM each day, I imagine the term “sleeping in” takes on a different meaning than it may to others! Of course, I’ve always been a morning person.)

Instead of a race t-shirt, participants got a chef’s jacket and a paper chef’s hat.

When I picked up my race packet the day before, I was informed that the jackets were $45 each (or something like that.) They’re actually pretty decent. And since the race advertisements were about having a large group of “running chefs” I decided, alright… I’ll wear it. I never wear the race t-shirt in the race… but this seemed different.

In addition to the chef’s apparel, the goodie bag contained a bunch of snack-y items.

I got dressed for the race, putting on my chef’s jacket:

I didn’t wear the hat. No matter what direction I put that thing on my head it was incredibly awkward. And ugly. And it would have blown off in the high winds anyway.  I chose not to wear a cap during the run, since hats with bills always seem to catch in the wind and I didn’t want to have to hold it on my head all race.  But hairspraying the hair around my face didn’t hold it in… I should have worn a headband or something.

I got in my car and drove to the park where the race was held. Then I hung out in my car for about 10 minutes before braving the wind, but the wind wasn’t that bad when I got out of my car. “Okay, I can deal with this.”

As I approached the area where everyone was gathered, they announced that all runners needed to start walking toward the start line. So I just followed the herd. They described the course, told us we were just 5K away from a pancake breakfast, shot the gun and we were off.

Very shortly into the race, the winds kicked into high gear once again and didn’t relent for the rest of the race. Since we were running in loops, that meant we had moments where we ran straight into the wind, times with the wind at our side and times with the wind at our back… then repeat. Which meant that I ran hunched forward to power into the wind, I ran leaning sideways as strong winds were attempting to blow me over and I ran with a pretty good gusto with the wind pushing me forward.

My heart started pounding very quickly into the race and didn’t relax. My breathing felt very labored the whole time too. That’s just part of my life lately… generally feeling like crap! I’m proud of myself for getting out there and doing a race!

There were a few of my past Team Challenge participants out there on the course. Team Vegas represents!

On the course I passed a couple running together.  The guy was holding two bottles of Gatorade.  The woman next to him all the sudden yelled, “DRINK!” He handed her a bottle, she took a swing and then screamed “HOLD IT!” He quietly took the bottle back from her.  I wonder if they did that the whole race.

As I saw the finish line ahead and spotted the clock with a 29:XX on it… I pushed harder. My only goal at this point was to come in under 30 minutes at the point. And I did it!  Not my best 5K performance… not even in-line with my “average” 5K performance… but it still made me happy.

The race was not chip timed, so after crossing the finish line we all kind of shuffled into a line to tear off the bottom of our bib number for the race organizer to put on a big ring. About 10 seconds after I got in the line, a girl walked up behind me and then shoved her bib number tag right in front of me to hand it in and said, “I’m before you.” Then she patted me on the back rather patronizingly and said, “Good race.”

Uh… what was that? Weird.

I made my way over to get some water and then decided that I would eat a pancake. And I have to say, all those chefs flipping pancakes at the griddles, they mangled a good amount of them too. I feel far better about my pancake flipping (lack of) skills now!  They had pancakes with butter (Smart Balance actually) and syrup, oranges, bananas, juice and coffee.

I knew my friend Charlene was at the race, but I never saw her before or during the race. I kept looking around for her, finally I spotted one of her boys. I walked over to him, “Where’s your mom?!” He pointed me out so I finally spotted her. Charlene and I have run together for fun, we chat with each other often… yet this was the first race that we’ve run in together! FINALLY!!! (And it won’t be the last… Mardi Gras, Charlene?)

And Charlene kicked butt, like always. She won the Masters division.

Right after I got back to my car to drive home, rain started coming down harder. I’m glad that held off for the race. It would have been particularly miserable to have the rain in the driving wind.

I had fun, I’ll do this race again next year. It’s for a good cause and it was just enjoyable.