I’m in my start corral!

We provide our estimated finishing times when we register for the race, which groups us with similar-paced runners into lettered starting corrals. The corrals for this race are lettered A through H for Afastest to Hslowest. I’m F for Fnoteveninthetophalf:

I haven’t heard a total runner number, but the group in front of me just in my starting corral is ENORMOUS:

Cool surprise: Jeff Galloway is on the stage chatting with the pre-race announcers as I type this. His Galloway Training Method propelled me through all four AIDS Marathons I ran in Chicago. And they introduced him by saying he’s run all 25 Disney marathons. Plus they just introduced some people who’ve run 100+ Disney races. The vibe here is SO COOL.

Except ... it just started raining. We have our work cut out for us.

The starting-line fireworks are in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

We've run out of summer

1. Last training run of the season!
2. My second and last half marathon is in eight days.
3. And no, I won’t be training any more for it.
4. Because after my summer of chronic injuries and my aborted NewBo half marathon, I’ve kind of given up.
5. But I’ll start next weekend’s half marathon with optimism and see what happens.
6. I’ll also start with a super-cute outfit.
7. So there’s that.
8. Rob and Scott joined me this morning for our last hurrah of 2018.
9. They’ve been awesome running buddies and all-around friends all summer.
10. Now that training season is over, I’m sure we’ll revert to our usual state of evil, backstabbing nemesises.
11. Those poopyheads.
12. See? It’s already started.
13. It’s impossible to say nemesises without sounding gay.
14. Same with cilantro citrus salad.
15. Sssssssssssssss.
16. Chicago David was in town so he also ran with us.
17. But he’s either an overachiever or a showoff because he kept running when we stopped so he could do more miles.
18. So he didn’t get to be in the selfie.
19. The poopyhead.
20. Nemesises.
21. I’m sweaty.
22. And sleepy.
23. And sworn to secrecy about my cilantro citrus salad recipe.
24. So shhhhhhhhhh!
25. I saw a show long ago that took place on a gay ship named the SS Sibilant S.
26. I don’t remember where I saw it, but it was silly.
27. Anyway.
28. We chose a pretty tree as the background for our final selfie today.
29. Which is so low-concept that it forced me to wander off on a whistley-lisp tangent here.
30. Whistley lisp.
31. Cilantro Nemesis and the Whistley Lisps.
32. I’ll take Polka-Punk Bands I Would Never Listen To for ssssssix hundred, Alex.
33. Sssssssso sssssssleepy.
34. My knee injury is apparently NOT as healed as it had led me to believe.
35. I don’t see it causing me any problems for the Disney races, but it will certainly make its presence known.
36. I may have a goofknee, but at least I don’t have a plutoe.
37. I just made that up.
38. You owe me sssseven dollars if you found it amusing.
39. Good jokes don’t write themselves.
40. And a GOOD joke would cost you a whole lot more.
41. Mom made a peach pie while we were out running.
42. I bought my folks some fancy pie fillings when I was in Galena.
43. And my dad’s birthday is Tuesday.
44. Which is more than enough reason to spontaneously bake a pie.
45. So is the fact that the jars of pie filling were still sitting on the counter where they couldn’t be ignored.
46. Since he’s blind, we’re getting him an Alexa (or one of her smart-speaker sisteren, I forget which) in the hopes that she’ll make it easier for him to listen to the news or play music or bake a pie or whatever else it is that those things do.
47. Since he’s blind, he also can’t read Facebook so I can say what his gift is here and he’ll never know.
48. AND YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BLAB TO HIM.
49. Because Alexa will find out and hunt you down and make you listen to Polka Punk.
50. Smart speaker sisteren.
51. You thought I was gonna let that one slide, didn’t you?
52. Ssssslide.
53. To review:
54. Nemesises.
55. Cilantro citrus salad.
56. Sweaty.
57. Sleepy.
58. Sworn to secrecy.
59. Cilantro citrus salad recipe.
60. SS Sibilant S.
61. Silly.
62. Whistley lisp.
63. Cilantro Nemesis and the Whistley Lisps.
64. Smart-speaker sisteren.
65. Ssssslide.
66. Sixty-six.
67. Well THAT was a surprising coincidence.
68. Surprising coincidence.
69. Sssssssso sssssssleepy.
70. See ya!

I’ve been super-duper-stupid-bad about training for my half marathon three weeks from now

Partly because I was defeated by my knee injury that killed my last half marathon. Partly because it got cold and I hate running in the cold. Partly because I’ve found myself burned out on running after this intensive summer. Partly because I’m really good at coming up with excuses to stay in bed in the mornings. Partly because it’s been so long since I’ve run that my running watch was dead this morning and needed to be charged. (Is that enough partlys? Partly.)

Anyway, none of this stops the looming half marathon from crushing my knees anew, so run I must. Plus if I’m going to run in yellow Mickey Mouse shoes, I need to do some trial runs in the three (yes, three. because I have a shoe-shopping problem. shut up.) pair of yellow running shoes I’ve bought over the years because they were yellow and not because they were good running shoes for my gait and stride.

And these shoes have a splash of pink at the heel, which offers a tantalizing hint-or-not-hint-I’m-not-telling about my questionable sexuality. Hmmm ....

So off I run!

12! MILES! WITH! OUT! STOP! PI! N! G!

(That’s my poetic way of showing you that I got slower and slower as the miles piled up.)

In my post-run delirium, I decided that taking our post-run selfie against a plain background would be an awesomely clever context for telling everyone our own, probably not-plain ethnic backgrounds.

The boys looked skeptical when I proposed it—I’M RUNNING OUT OF IDEAS PEOPLE SO CUT ME SOME DAMN SLACK—but I’m the one taking the selfie so we’re doing it my way.

So ...

I’m mostly Norwegian and a bit of Swedish with for some unexplained reason a kraut last name.

Scott is ... a Northern European mutt. As are many people. I don’t judge.

Rob is ... a pan-European mutt. He described this concept in alarming, less-than-polite language. I was completely scandalized. So I DO judge.

But wasn’t this clever and fun? Yes. Yes it was.

On a final note: As I stretched in my warm-down, I stood up from a squatting position too fast and had a four-alarm grayout. I have grayouts 10 times a day, but rarely this overwhelming. And no doubt alarming. But I squatted back down until it passed as Scott and Rob looked at me in what I assume was bewildered alarm. But it finally passed, I stood up again ... and another four-alarm one hit me. I squatted again, this second one passed ... and guess what happened a third time when I stood up. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s THREE epic grayouts in a row. Poor Scott and Rob didn’t know what to do, but I assured them I was OK and I just needed to get seated in my car and I’d be totally fine to drive. So they got in their cars, Rob cautiously drove away, and Scott VERY CONSPICUOUSLY I SAW YOU SO DON’T PRETEND YOU DIDN’T pretended to play on his phone until he saw me finally get myself seated, seatbelted, cooled by my AC and on my way. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS DO SO THANK YOU.

But I’m so exhausted that my eyes are crossing as I type this and I just hallucinated someone sitting in my dad’s chair reading a newspaper. Don’t be alarmed by that; it happens after long runs. But it’s my sign that I need a nap.

This Mickey shirt has been the Virgil to my Dante on three Disney half marathons and more long training runs than I can count

And today is our longest run before the NewBo half in two weeks. I have one Gu for each four miles, so that adds up to lordhelpustwelve miles on yet another morning of perfect running weather.

M-I-C ...

1. I finally ran the Elveløpet 15K

2. But not really.

3. There were probably 100 15K runners overall.
4. I was clearly dead last of the runners by mile 4.
5. Seriously. Just me and the very lonely road.
6. And the nagging worry that I’d end up running the wrong direction for miles and miles without knowing it.
7. In writing, we call this foreshadowing.
8. So there are lots of hills in Decorah.
9. OH MY ODIN THERE ARE HILLS.
10. But they’re nothing compared to the all-but-literal MOUNTAIN that started about mile 5 1/2.
11. MOU. NTAN.
12. Just hills and hills and trees and the road and me.
13. And at one point two startled deer.
14. Plus my irrational worry that I’d encounter a marauding band of feral gnomes who’d abduct me and I’d never be seen again except for occasional sightings of me in a chin beard and gnomey hat under a bridge.
15. Irrational.
16. Except it WAS Nordic Fest so the gnomes might have been emboldened and hungry.
17. But let’s not think about that.
18. Because there’s no such marauding bands of feral gnomes, right?
19. Anyway ...
20. The mountain kept going up and up and up.
21. And then you’d go around a bend and there’d be even more up.
22. But finally there was a plateau.
23. With a rough-hewn rock that had been mowed around in a figure 8.
24. Again: foreshadowing.
25. So the road started going downhill.
26. Finally.
27. FINALLY.
28. The road eventually came to a fork.
29. The official Elveløpet directional arrow sign that had been stuck in the ground at this fork CLEARLY said to go left.
30. Which felt wrong, but I was so turned around that I had no faith in my sense of direction.
31. Foreshadowing.
32. There’s that word again.
33. So I went left.
34. And the road started getting uphilly again.
35. Let me interrupt this gripping narrative to mention that I’d been maintaining an 11:30 pace through my entire Alpine adventure to this point.
36. I’d expected to run a 12:00 pace, so 11:30 was both an awesome surprise and a genuine motivator to maintain my sprightly clip.
37. Though it was clearly epically slower than the collective pace of the other 99 Elveløpet 15K runners.
38. Because they were so far ahead of me that I was ALL ALONE on this winding, forest-of-trees mountain.
39. That was surely crawling with marauding bands of feral gnomes.
40. But back to our story ...
41. So I’m going up and up the mountain of hills, thinking it’s awfully odd that I’ve run a good two miles almost entirely uphill and it’s already mile 7 and I’d better get downhill soon so I can get all the way back to the finish line, which doesn’t seem at all like it’s only 2 miles away.
42. Oh, yay! I seem to finally reached a plateau.
43. Look at that interesting rough-hewn rock that’s been mowed around in a figure 8.
44. Hey—wait a minute ...
45. FUCK.
46. Yup.
47. That left-pointing arrow just sent me on mile-and-a-half repeat loop.
48. So I am no longer running the 15K course that had been mapped out.
49. So I am officially no longer running the race.
50. And now I’m so behind that the finish line may be dismantled and abandoned by the time I get there.
51. Again with the damn foreshadowing.
52. But at least it’s new and different foreshadowing.
53. In the mean time, I have no other option but to keep running and hoping I circle back to that FUCKING WRONG left arrow and see what happens if I go right.
54. Which I did.
55. Still having no clue if it would get me back on course or get me totally lost.
56. In the land of marauding bands of feral gnomes.
57. It’s amazing what a volatile mix frustration, uncertainty and mounting anger can be when you need extra power to fuel a long run.
58. Long story short: Turning right got me back on track.
59. For a whole mile.
60. Then the arrows just disappeared entirely.
61. But I had no way of knowing that.
62. Until a dude on a bike saw me and told me I’d run way past the turn to the finish line.
63. I had to trudge through a hay field to get to the trail I needed to be on to get back on track.
64. A FUCKING HAY FIELD.
65. By then I’d on-good-faith run 10.3 miles of a 9.3-mile race.
66. I was exhausted.
67. And hot.
68. Because I was finally out in the sun.
69. And pissed.
70. Because through no fault of my own I technically hadn’t run the race I’d been dreaming about running for 20+ years.
71. So FUCK IT.
72. I walked the rest of the way back.
73. Which ended up being a whopping 1.5 miles.
74. Which almost adds up to a 12-mile journey.
75. Remember that foreshadowing about the finish line?
76. Well, it hadn’t been dismantled and abandoned, as I worried it would have been.
77. But it HAD been pulled off the street onto the grass so the street could be reopened to traffic.
78. Some dude was fucking still standing there with a fucking bullhorn and he fucking announced to fucking NOBODY that I crossed the finish line.
79. At this point I was furious.
80. Plus I was far enough from the long-abandoned starting line that I had no idea where I was.
81. But after I finished my Gatorade—I always run with a Gatorade in my hand—and found a bathroom, I calmed down a bit.
82. Because my half-marathon training schedule had me supposed to be running 10 miles this weekend.
83. Which I totally did in today’s 9.3-mile race.
84. And by the transitive power of holy shit when will these hills ever end, that number is more like 13.1.
85. Which—coincidentally—is the exact distance of a half marathon.
86. So I’m totally on track for rocking the half I’m running over Labor Day.
87. Eyes. On. The. Prize.
88. So I’ve decided to look at all of this as I ran the Elveløpet ... plus a lot more.
89. I’m sorry I don’t have an actual finishing time.
90. Because this race was ROUGH and BRUTAL and OTHER ROUGH AND BRUTAL WORDS so it’s totally a one-and-done.
91. But the shirts are awesome.
92. And I know I conquered some killer terrain at a better-than-expected pace for a good 7 miles.
93. Which I’m really thrilled about.
94. And also a little proud of.
95. Plus I rewarded myself with gluttonous amounts of sweet rømmegrøt pudding afterward, which was my only other goal of the trip.
96. Plus the Nordic Fest parade was more delightful and fun and even stirring than I had any idea it would be.
97. I love my cool-fun-proud-and-sometimes-goofy Norwegian heritage.
98. Except for its inability to point simple arrow signs in the right direction.
99. And ALL THOSE HILLS.
100. And it goes without saying its penchant for stirring up marauding bands of feral gnomes.

You know how in Singin’ in the Rain when Don Lockwood tells his adoring fans at the premiere of The Royal Rascal that his entire career has been driven by the motto “Dignity. Always dignity.”?

Yeah. We don’t have that.

Scott might look like he has dignity in our running selfies, but I think I heard him say a swear under his breath once. What a butthead. Rob comes the closest to having dignity, but he once wore running shorts that didn’t quite go with his new running shoes. Freak. I’m probably the least dignified, but it’s none of your damn business why. Jerks.

I ran my three miles at an 11:09 pace this morning though, which is pretty dignified given the slow ramp-up of my pace after my stupid hip injury cost me a month of training.

But we’re all still total embarrassments to ourselves. So shut up.

Say it with me ...

Rob is off frolicking on some far-off, Iowa’s-apparently-not-good-enough California coast today so Scott parked in Rob The Snob’s usual spot before this morning’s run because THAT’S WHAT FAITHFUL RUNNING BUDDIES DO ROB SO PUT *THAT* ON YOUR AVOCADO TOAST AND WASH IT DOWN WITH YOUR LOCALLY SOURCED ARTESIAN VEGAN WATER.

In other capitalized news, BOY HOWDY IS IT MOIST OUT TODAY. MOIST MOIST MOIST. AND HUMID.

But: Three miles. Exactly 11:00 pace, which felt rushed so I still have some cardio-catch-up to do now that my hip is better. My groin is a little sore but I’m telling you this just so I can say groin and not because I think I’ve injured myself. So groin. Groin groin groin. And moist.

NINE! MILES!

We ran south on the magnificent Cedar River Trail, which is graded and paved and manicured and shady and gorgeous and an absolute treasure for Cedar Rapids. I forget which neighborhood we started in, though. I’ll have to Czech and get back to you.

Mile 6: Two Views

We'll always care

We finally got Scott to be the Deena to our Effie and Lorell! But I think that’s MORE than enough of this Scott-in-the-middle stuff, and we’ll relegate him to the back where he belongs post-haste.

This morning’s three miles were muggy (which I just learned is a mostly Midwestern word that’s our polite way of saying moist), though we felt the illusion of cooling breezes once we were moving through the air. But boy, once we finished running we sure were sweaty and moist. The only real problem we faced on this morning’s run was multiple near-grisly-death experiences; there was apparently a 6:30-am-flash-mob-except-instead-of-the-high-school-drama-department-dancing-to-“Thriller”-in-a-mall-it-was-cars-dispatched-to-encounter-and-almost-not-see-us-at-nearly-every-intersection pride parade. I always give a little thank-you wave to every car that stops for us, but I also always worry that the drivers think I’m self-entitledly hand-yelling at them to STOP YOU SELFISHLY UNSAFE IDIOT BECAUSE WE HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY and they’ll get to work and talk smack about us to the steno pool. (Dear every driver who ever encounters me at an intersection: I’m pretty sure that I do indeed have the right of way, but you have the giant vehicular-manslaughter machine that would totally win in a game of Intersection Smackdown! against my rippable flesh and brittle bones so I ALWAYS defer to whatever you want to do.)

But where was I? Let’s see: Dreamgirls reference ... moist ... moist again ... gratuitously long compound adjective ... Michael Jackson reference ... talk of grisly death ... gratuitous use of all caps ... antiquated euphemism for a group of secretaries ... parenthetical side note that was not meant for you and you were rude to read it ... what did I forget? Oh, yes: a contextless mention of Rob so he gets included in this rambling post that somehow never got around to mentioning him organically. Because it’s more than Scott. It’s more than me. Whatever miles we run, we are a family.

One of us is not about to run six miles

One of us is fondling a lion.

The last appearance from a representative of my bountiful wardrobe of clearance-rack patriotic attire

The first weekday training run since my hip grew back. Here’s hoping it takes me a full three miles!

#HowToTurn50 #AndNeverLoseHope

#WellMaybe #ButJustALittle

It’s my first time running on my damn crippled hip in nine days

and it’s my whatever-mileage-doesn’t-hurt test run for tomorrow’s 8K. Observant readers will notice my patriotically appropriate attire. GIVE ME LIGAMENTS OR GIVE ME DEATH!

I forgot to take a perfunctory selfie after Scott's first run with us last weekend

so I obsessively planned this one during all 3.33 miles of today’s run, where Scott and Rob ran a little too fast for my aging hips to keep up at the end but we all (well, probably just I) still clocked in at a respectable 10:43 pace. We tried to take our selfie in front of Rob’s midlife-crisis car—which I think is a Chevy Pinto, but I don’t know shit about cars so there’s a slight chance I may have that wrong—but the sun and shadows weren’t cooperating so we resorted to our default garage-door background where we all still look dashingly sporty and brutally handsome:

Fun fact: If you randomly, cruelly get the Village People’s “You Can’t Stop the Music” stuck in your head during a run because its tempo and beat perfectly fit your pace, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because you literally CAN’T. STOP. THE. (DAMN.) MUSIC.

#HowToTurn50

It! Finally! Arrived!

It was six hours too late for me to wear it in this morning’s 5K, but I’ll look totes adorbs in it for the rest of this summer’s races.

#HowToTurn50

We struggled through a ROUGH 3.33 miles this morning

... which my running buddy and I finally admitted—albeit cautiously, so as not to plant the idea of struggling in each others’ heads but mostly just to not look weak and devoid of toxic masculinity—to each other around mile 1.75. But we had beautiful weather and we slogged through our struggles and surprised ourselves with a final pace of 11:12, which is actually a tad faster than where we’ve been clocking in. Then we (masculinely) bro-hugged (again, masculinely) goodbye and parted ways without taking a commemorative photo ... and now I can’t stop sweating and I’m waterfalling so much that I don’t want to go in the house yet so I’m waiting out the deluge on a charming wrought-iron chair by the front door with nothing to do but swat gnats, take selfies and blather on about our rough-but-victorious run on Facebook. Plus use waterfall as a gerund.

#HowToTurn50

Most runners run with music

Rock ‘n’ roll, maybe. Or (I’ll deny this if you say anything) disco. Or (nobody’d believe me if I tried to deny this so I won’t even waste my time) show tunes.

But me? Noooo.

I’m about to spend 3.22 miles listening to the pulsing, motivating beat of my own voice, hopefully driving my lines for Fuddy Meers deep in my head:

You’ll know if it worked when you come see the show.

My nefarious plan was to stay in bed all morning, and I would have gotten away with it too ...

3.66 miles!

(That frown is supposed to be an accomplished, triumphant smile in my clever accommodation for all this upsidedownness.)