New Veginnings

I've been busy. Not running, mostly, and writing lots, but not this blog.

What you missed:

1. Muscle atrophy. Running in the cold is awful, so mostly I say I will, then don't.
   
   
2. Love handles. See above. I began eating dairy again, too, which lead to an excess in cinnamon roll and pizza consumption.
   
   
3. When I acquired a suspected case of H1N1 a couple weeks before the Spokane Marathon, Luke and I switched to the half. It was a gorgeous day and I beat my previous two half marathon times -- a decent consolation prize for having wimped out on the full marathon.

Moving on from that Dark Era... This morning, I woke up to yoga and a (short) run. I've vegun again with vegan-ing, which immediately improved my energy level and made me want to go for a run and take over the world. Surprise, surprise: it's all or nothing with me.

Amnesia, plz?

One week until the Spokane Marathon. 'Bout time for an update, eh?

I suddenly became ridiculously busy a month ago. Consequently, I've been eating un-veganly (i.e. getting fatter, though not fat, thankyouverymuch), sleeping less and smoking lots of cigarettes. My mother is going to read this and kill me.

Cross-training is a distant memory -- it must've been August when I last rode my bike anywhere but work. (And I haven't been doing that much, either.) I have, to my credit, managed to fit in most of my training runs.

Grand prize for abusing my body is that, just in time for the race, I've caught whatever floating-germ disease is circulating among my friends.

Since running is 90% mental, please join me in pretending the aforementioned things are not true from now until Sunday.

Hildegaard Goes to School

Luke and I meet downtown on Tuesday. Plan is: a warm-up ride to the North Side, then speed work on the Whitworth track.

A *warm*-up ride. But I look down to figure out where the hell my shoe clips into my pedal and, by the time I look up, Recumbent Man has screeched across "Go" and left me in the dust.

It's a couple miles before we hit a light and I catch up, gasping.

"So you think my bike is nerdy, eh?" he says. He has evidently had a chance to read my most recent post -- the one in which I may or may not have good-naturedly insulted his non-motorized vehicle and gloated about "giving Lukester a run for his money" now that I have clip-in pedals.

When being schooled, it's imperative to maintain a veneer of cockiness.

"I believe 'nerd-*mobile*' was the terminology used," I say.

"Well," he replies, with a new, very special kind of smirk on his face, "Let's see how fast this *nerd-mobile* can go" and speeds through the changing light.

No more Mr. Nice Luke.

The worst eight miles of my life later, we make it to Whitworth, me blind from sweating in my eyeballs. Speed training is awesome; I run my first 6:45 mile since my prepubescent cross-country glory days. I plop down on the grass, soaking in the awesomeness of being awesome.

But Mr. No More Mr. Nice Luke is not done with me -- none of that resting garbage will be tolerated.

It is time to familiarize me with the "route" (also known as "death march") he takes home from work each day. It runs up the South Hill at about an 89% angle at a point where the South Hill is seven or eight times longer than it is anywhere else.

I am being punished.

Each time I think the granny-gear misery must be through, we round the corner to encounter yet another, even steeper, stretch of hobbly brick roadway.

I try my best, first burning through all the muscle juice I have and then through the scant remains of my pride. But all the determination I can muster just can't get me a single brick past 9th Street.

Yes. The rumors you've heard are true: the illustrious Erika "Is-That-All-You've-Got" Prins was briefly (but only briefly, mind you) reduced to getting off her bike and walking.

And so, although I maintain my allegations of nerd-mobile-iness, I am left with no choice but to humbly retract the implication of, at any point, having given runs for money.

The Day Hildegaard Grew Wings

Both Roomate and Luke have recently been sidelined by foot issues. The faint-of-will might shrug and take a week or two off, but not us.

We are faint-of-faintness. Not faint at all. We biked instead.

Luke, also known as Speedy Recumbent Man, barely broke a sweat leaving me in the dust of his nerdmobile of a sit-down bike. I pedaled my heart out trying, yet failing, to keep up.

You may not know this about me, but I really, really, really like to be good at things. Preferably better than you. "Failed" is the only f-word in my vocabulary.

So I pedaled my (very sore, at this point) ass to the bike shop and begged them to make me faster. They jimmied my gears into shifting better. They deemed my hybrid's tires sufficiently road-friendly.

They sold me pedal clips.

Suddenly, Hildegaard the Bike was a fucking rock star. Three minutes practicing (clip in. clip out. clip in. clip out.) in the parking lot and I was ready to jam, finally giving the Lukester a run for his money.

A few miles along on the Centennial Trail, he waved me over to stop at the loo. I skidded to a halt all pro-like and went to hop off my bike. But my feet. Wouldn't. Move.

My oversight became clear to me one epic moment too late, right about when I began to keel over in slo-mo.

Oh, the humiliation! But karmic retribution was not done with me. Only the most thorough of squelching could level my pride, and we all know what a dirty whore that karma can be. As I struggled to myself free from this clipped in, capsized state, I looked up to see a dashing cyclist passing me, downright guffawing at the squirming pile of metal, rubber and bloody knees.

3 lb.

At mile 24, I made myself a deal. If I would just power through the last 2.2, dietary discipline would be tossed to the wayside for seven days.

It worked; my legs kept revolving toward a mirage of milkshakes and chicken strips. But my week of gluttony, combined with rest from most physical activity, has taken its toll. The scale whimpered when I stepped onto it this morning.

In other news: even though we had decided to take a week of rest, Luke and I declared three days long enough on Tuesday night.

This is what running felt like Wednesday morning:

Gummi bears + secrets.

Marathon #2 was infinitely less awful/more f*cking awesome than marathon #1.

• No injuries. Not one.
• Perfect, perfect, perfect weather.
• We had a whole bunch of friends & family cheering us on/paparazzi-ing the whole way.
• They had gummi bears at mile 23. Horse hooves or not, that sh*t is magic.
  
• My mile time improved by almost a minute and a quarter.
• There was food after.

Roommate's family pretty much rocks; they hosted two barbecues in our honor, gave us places to sleep and drove from point to point to cheer us on. Her brother came through with totally rockin' race shirts with our names on the front (so strangers could also cheer for us by name...and they did)! He also printed bright blue shirts for the fam so we could spot them far off in the distance every few miles, cameras in hand and SUPER excited for us. This may sound like a bit much, but these things go a long way after a few hours of pounding the pavement.

We also had a bike gang comprised of The Boyfriend, Tom and Carey, who woke up at 3 am Washington time to see us off at the start line. (Race started at 6 am Missoula time, which is 5 am here.) They bicycled the 26 miles alongside the course to be our second cheer squad and make extra sure every millisecond of the experience was documented in video and photo form.

It should also be noted that Carey bought me a Dairy Queen Butterfinger Blizzard on the way home from the race.

I finished in 3:49:41, a half-hour improvement over my first attempt. My ranking was 176/596 and 2/26 for my age group. Even thought it doesn't mean a thing in terms of objective performance, I'm pretty thrilled to have come in 2nd for my age. Just 'cuz I'm needlessly competitive like that.

I think all athlete-types have two sets of goals: those that we admit to people and the slightly unrealistic ones we're actually shooting for.

Both Luke and I were secretly aiming for times around 3:30, even though our official goal was to finish in under four hours. So even though officially speaking, I totally met my goal, there's a twinge of disappointment that I didn't make it in under 3:40, which would have qualified me to run in the next Boston Marathon. I don't even really care about running that particular race, but it seems to be some sort of marathoner badge of honor to get there.

As such, we have set our eyes on the Portland Marathon in October -- and on a speedwork-focused training regimen. My official goal for this one is to qualify for Boston, which requires me to shave about ten minutes off my time. This is totally possible. My half-marathon split was 1:49:06, which would have worked out to under 3:40 if I'd kept it up.

My secret over-ambitious goal shall remain, as it should be, secret.

Coundown: 14 days to marathon!

Lots of things have happened since we talked last.

1. Roommate and I went for a wicked-long run that resulted in much abdominal fury and a trip to the doctor's office. Doctor WebMD'ed my ailment and told me everything I had found on the internet myself. Swell.

2. Thanks to a strict diet of candy and fast food, I've lost a couple of pounds. I apparently can only lose weight by not thinking about it at all -- the minute I make a concerted effort, I fail miserably at the hands my obsessive tendencies.

3. I got faster.

Once last year I averaged an 8:49 mile in a half marathon. That was mind-blowingly fast compared to my usual pace. But training for this marathon, I've finished most runs feeling like I could have pushed the pace either a little or a lot (and like widening my stride might help improve my efficiency).

So finally, I did. It started with Luke mapping out a run of we did together and discovering we had totally rocked it.

You don't come this far in the distance running world without also becoming masochistically competitive against yourself, so I resolved to keep up with Luke on our runs and instructed him not to slow down for me.

Luke is fast. And he runs faster uphill, the bastard.

Although I have generally done well at this, last Wednesday I was dragging. I couldn't keep pace with the man to save my life and felt like garbage on wheels.

Per our routine, Luke mapped our run afterward and emailed me the breakdown. We had run an 8:09 mile for 8 miles -- no wonder I felt like hell! We'd previously been stoked to break nine.

Again, a distance runner can't just give herself a pat on the back leave it at that. Our reflex was to set a new goal: sub-eight miles on our next run. I again struggled to keep up with Speedy Gonzales on Thursday, but we ran 6.75 miles at about 7:40 per mile. Yee-haw!

4. Roommate's brother found us a sponsor for the marathon (which, by the way, is in two weeks): The Boys and Girls Club in Missoula.

It works like this: roomie-bro is raising funds on our behalf, getting race shirts printed with the club logo, and whatever remains after covering our race costs will benefit the club.

He is a policeman in Missoula and apparently loves doing this sort of thing, so he's going to town with getting people to donate money and all that. I like this arrangement because I don't have to do anything but will look super badass in my B&GC race shirt.

5. Roommate and I volunteered for IronMan and I am in love. We were there in the evening, so the badasses to whom we were handing out snacks & water had been out there for over 11 hours by the time we got there, 17 hours by the time the last guy reached the finish line.

6. I have become that person who can't talk about anything but running.

Unlike things I am characteristically passionate about -- social issues, politics, journalism, etc. -- running is pure soul food for me. Nothing about it is for anyone else, which is purely glorious in a life of obsessive people-pleasing and fretting about issues I can only make a tiny dent in improving.

If you're one of the numerous victims of my endless "Omg have I told you I'm super fast? Do you want to feel my super buff thighs?" monologue, know that it'll probably simmer down once I get over the ridiculous fabulousness of doing something healthy for myself. In the meantime, I suggest you feel my super buff thighs, because they really are quite impressive.