Life Between the Miles

2011-11-17T10:58:00.001-05:00

sometimes I make pictures

2011-11-15T22:44:00.001-05:00

an oldie

Why Do You Run?

2011-11-08T17:37:00.000-05:00

Keep Grinding

2011-11-07T23:11:00.000-05:00

making time for pie

My days have been stuffed to the gills as of late. Between getting my required mileage in, the “little things”, commuting, work, and trying to feed myself, I rarely have time to breathe. My day-to-day has been one long schedule, with a few empty moments when I can sit and stare at a wall.

It’s not like I’m in medical school, or working a zillion-hour week investment banking job. I’m working a substantial amount of hours at the running store, and trying to pour as much of myself into my training as possible. At the same time, I’m trying to foster my friendships outside of work and keep my social life alive. I’ve realized that over the years, I’ve pushed a lot of friendships and fun things aside for the sake of training. However, I’ve learned recently that a happy Ellen needs to give friendships more attention and really enjoy my 20’s.

That being said, I end my days completely exhausted, eating dinner around 9PM on workdays, trudging straight up to bed and settling into my 3-blanket cocoon for the night(our house currently has no heat…and it’s November).

Saying that I’m a little worn out would be an understatement.

I’m usually tired, but recently, I’ve also been feeling really motivated. There is something so satisfying about completing a tempo run by yourself at the pace you were told to do by your coach. Driving to Valley Green to tempo alone has become surprisingly easy. Waiting in my car for the sun to come up at Valley Forge for my Sunday long runs has been even more satisfying. I feel like I did when I was in high school, putting in the hard work alone, giving me plenty of time to dream big and let my mind wander.

Every day, I’m chipping away and I feel my skin thickening.

Tuesday's Craft Project

2011-08-24T11:05:00.000-04:00


Bad picture quality, sorry!

I love DIY blogs, and I found instructions for this necklace yesterday morning on Eighteenth Century Agrarian Business, which was actually reposted on A Merry Mishap (www.amerrymishapblog.com).

I used to make jewelry as a kid but never really worked with metal. Here's a picture from the ECAB site:

photo credits: http://lh6.ggpht.com/_hkIMCO0qAmY/S9WF1UTPEQI/AAAAAAAABks/obcBxfigC04/s640/braidnecklaceon.jpg

Click here for the tutorial!

Catching Up!

2011-08-23T00:16:00.000-04:00

Wow this is embarrassing! Over a month without a post…

Thing is, I haven’t had THAT much to write about recently…basically just blurbs on Twitter.

Within the past few weeks, a few things have changed here in Ardmore. In short, I got a new job, I quit another job, my training group is going through changes, and my cat isn’t chubby anymore. Sprinkle in a week-long visit from Mike, a road race in New York City, a grand family vacation, and that pretty much gets all of my eight readers up to speed.

Also, I’m writing this from my computer! Turns out my motherboard wasn’t that expensive, so I shelled out some dough, got my motherboard replaced, and then backed up my hard drive. Until I have a really good reason to buy a new computer (ahem, a MACBOOK??), I’ll hang on to this old clunker as long as I can.

Running:

Since I last wrote, nothing has really changed here. I’ve been slowly building up some mileage, but hit a few road blocks here and there throughout the rest of July and August. Nothing serious happened…it seems like every summer something weird crops up, like a touch of low iron or a weird niggle in my foot. This time, I got sick for a few days, went on vacation with my family (I simply got really lazy for a week), and had weird phantom pains in my foot. I don’t have a written-out summer mileage schedule or anything like that. Instead, I’m just going by feel for now until Marcus gives me more specific instructions. If anything, we’ll keep my summer mileage the same as last year since this isn’t the year to mess with what’s worked in the past.

A few weeks back, I ran at the NYRR Club Champs in Central Park. The race didn’t go well for me at all. I finished 10^th on the NYAC team and ran a very slow time for 5 miles. I started getting the chills and goosebumps midway through the race (it was very hot/humid), and dropping out wasn’t an option since I would just end up having to find my way back to wherever we started in the park. All I wanted to do was finish.

A few silly things happened, such as “accidently” tossing a full cup of water on a CPTC girl who kept cutting me off throughout my run, envying the people whizzing by on rollerblades (‘WHY CAN’T I RACE WITH ROLLERBLADES’ was the thought screaming in my head around mile 3-4), and watching my guy friends on NYAC pity clap/laugh while I jogged past.

Team NYAC after the race.

After a delirious jog back to the hotel, I had a delicious brunch at Sarabeth’s on Central Park, then made my way up to the Gin Mill (or Gin Fizz, as Annick likes to call it) for an afternoon/evening of open bar fun.

Looking ahead, I might have different training buddies on workout days starting this fall. Right now, I don’t know who they’ll be, or if I will have anyone at all. I might be flying solo during my intervals/tempo runs, but I’d rather do that than go through any sort of major change during an Olympic year. A lot is up in the air at this point, which leads me to my next topic…

Work:

Because my training schedule isn’t set in stone right now (I’m referring to the time of day I will be doing my workouts, not the workouts themselves), I couldn’t commit to a high school training schedule, so I had to leave my high school coaching job. Because of some things that went down VERY last minute, I had to bail on the program a week before preseason started. I feel bad that I’m THAT coach, but it had to be done. I need flexibility in order to have training partners on interval days, and my coaching job was anything but flexible.

My new job is at Philadelphia Runner. I’m getting tons of hours, love the staff, and am having a great experience working in the city. It’s a cool feeling just taking trains around again, especially when I want to meet up with friends after work or go shopping in the city. Last night, Logan (old college roomie and now coworker at PR) hosted a dinner with some friends (work, school and training buddies) at her place in University City.

It was one of those weird nights where I thought about how when I was younger, trying to picture what I’d be doing as a 20-something, and wondered if I ever would’ve predicted this kind of night.

Being giddy in Logan's apartment

Someday, I will move into a cool apartment in a city and host Taco Night.

ETC:

Mike was around town for almost a week recently. I decided to skip RunningWorks camp this year so I could be with him (camp fell on the exact week Mike was off from school), and I’m really glad I opted out this year. I almost got used to him being around a lot, so it was really hard to drive away from his house in Stroudsburg this past Saturday. We spent the week catching up with friends, visiting family, and Mike finally got to see Toula for the first time since late May (he says she lost weight…hopefully my vet will confirm this at her annual checkup tomorrow!).

Mike and me at Buechel's lake house, just south of Be Easy Island.

In late July, I spent over a week with my family in Niantic, CT for our annual vacation with the Keelers and our great aunt Anne on the beach. As usual, the week was a great success. We ate like kings, got lots of beach time in, got to see Harry Potter with our cousins and then got to see some "Harry Potter" storms (as my mom likes to call them). I barely ran during the week, just swam and relaxed on the beach with my family. Before we knew it, the week was over and the countdown for next year's reunion started.

The Girlfriends.

So now that I am working regularly and that training is going to pick back up again, hopefully I will have more interesting things to write about on a more regular basis.

Next up: Notre Dame football game in September + visit with Mike, a few dinky road races, ??

My computer is still broken :(

2011-07-12T15:38:00.001-04:00

I promised a blog post in the near future...but here I am, still without a computer and will probably be without one for at least another week!

My poor computer wasn't able to tell whether or not it was actually plugged in...meaning it is either an $85 repair or I will have to buy a new machine entirely (if the connection to the motherboard is busted, I mean).

So, this post is coming from my Android.

A brief recap of the past few weeks since my last post:

- I've been traveling. A lot. I've been home now for about a week and was finally able to reorganize my new room in my new house.

- I ran at USA's. I didn't run well, but I finished where I was seeded (2nd to last in the standings...I was very lucky to get in the race).

- I'm not racing in Europe. I don't have the funds and my last two races didn't feel right. Marcus told me to take it easy the rest of this month.

- I'm not working. I don't start my coaching job until late August. Without a computer, getting freelance jobs done has been difficult.

[And the possibility of all my work being lost is just sad. Note to self: BACK UP MY HARD DRIVE BEFORE MY COMPUTER DIES]

My joblessness deserves an entirely different post.

- our family vacation to ct is coming in less than 2 weeks. Whew.

- I got to visit Mike over the 4th and we visited Brian Buechel's lake house. Mike and I will be going over 5 weeks without seeing each other. I miss him.

So, for the time being I'm just running a bit, reading a bunch of books for fun (ranging from the Sarah Silverman autobiography to the Stieg Larsson novels to the Twilight saga), and just basically recharging from the past few weeks.

Fingers crossed that my computer makes it back functional!!

2011-07-06T11:48:00.001-04:00

FYI: my poor computer is out of commission until Thursday, with a blog post ready to go!!!

Update: I tried to change my blog platform

2011-06-22T13:41:00.000-04:00

Hi.

I've been threatening to do this for a while, but I'm testing out a new blog platform on WordPress. Their blogs have better themes and are just aesthetically pleasing.

Here is the link to my (un)finished product:

http://ellenbackpack.wordpress.com/

I'm in a bit of a predicament with this...should I keep my Blogger account going, or use WordPress? Let me know in the comments box!

Catching up (again)

2011-06-17T09:50:00.001-04:00

I've been pretty bad about updating my blog lately. I'm in the process of trying to switch from Blogger to Wordpress, but I'm still trying to decide which is actually better...

Also, FYI, I'm in transit right now, blogging from my phone. This is gonna be short, sweet, and possibly full of grammatical errors.

I'm currently on a bus, leaving Indianapolis, heading to south bend. I had plans to stay here until Saturday night, but after a sub par performance at the American milers club series on Wednesday night, my plans changed. I ran a 4:23 1500 and felt like crap.

To get you up to speed...last weekend I trained up to Boston for the new balance twilight meet where I ran 4:17.18. A small PR for me and also the USA B standard. This is how I wound up in indianapolis, hoping to run under 4:15.55 for an auto qualifier.

I probably should've taken into consideration that I had also moved into a new house last week. Oops.

After a phone call from mike and Marcus, I decided to scratch from this weekends race and go relax with mike at notre dame. This will be the first time I'm seeing him since he first left for business school...so I'm pretty pumped.

I promise I will update this thing again in the near future, once I get settled again.

A little project I'm working on...

2011-05-16T21:35:00.001-04:00

My Penn Relays 2011 Post

2011-05-04T14:07:00.000-04:00


Photo taken by Tony DeSabato

What’s a running-related blog without a recent race report…especially if that race was at the Penn Relays?

Truth is, going to the Penn Relays and not actually running a relay is quite different.

In previous years, Penn Relays was a HUGE deal. Villanovans are groomed to almost peak at Penn Relays, take a few days easy, and then charge back into battle at Big East the following weekend. This year, I’m not in college anymore. I’d signed up to run the Olympic Development Mile, which sounds way more official than it actually is, and it was my first race at Penn as an individual runner. No team to round up with relay cards, one set of bib numbers instead of four, no college coach to guide you through the circus known as the paddock, and having to navigate through the controlled chaos on my own.

My stomach churned for the entire morning and afternoon of my race. I was worried about things I never had to worry about before at Penn, like getting my own bib number, finding a good place to sit and “relax” before my warm-up, where (and who??) to leave my things with while I was off running. These are the little things you take for granted when you’re in college.

For instance, this past fall I ran a road race in Philadelphia by myself. I had to drive into the city myself, park my car, do my warm-up in the neighborhood where I parked my car and leave all of my things there because I had nobody with me to hold them. I ran to the starting line with my bib and flats on (through Fairmount), my car key tied in the laces of my flats, and a bottle of water I planned on tossing before the gun went off. This wasn’t a serious race by any stretch of the imagination, but I was going through a phase where I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to continue racing post-collegiately, and I was getting wigged out over a road race for nothing. I also had to go to work immediately after the race, and a pretty sweet prize package was on the line (free stay at a Four Seasons hotel plus a travel stipend…turns out the package was for the NYC Four Seasons, so I didn’t miss out a whole lot).

Anyway, the point of that ramble was to show how as a non-college runner, you need to really fend for yourself...which can get unnecessarily tricky and can ultimately psych you out before you even start the race. Either that, or you can be blissfully distracted from your pre-race anxieties by getting caught up in little tasks like train times, bib pick-up, finding a good hiding place for your backpack, etc.

Luckily, Villanova had a few relays racing on Saturday, so the coaches were around and let me use their tarp as a home base while I got ready to race.

I was so nervous before the race that I could hear a constant buzzing sound in my head; I could tell I was squinting to see, and felt like I was just in a fog. Penn used to be so important to me in college, especially since so much was riding on my relay legs at the time. It’s different now, but I couldn’t really wrap my head around that before I trudged over to the paddock to race.

Marcus pulled me aside and basically told me to calm down, make sure I’m in the race in the first half, and not let the pack pull away before 800m. Sounds easy enough. There were some more Marcus pearls of wisdom in there, mostly about how I care too much about what everyone else thinks about my racing…but the details are a little fuzzy and I like to keep what Marcus tells me private anyway.

Saturday was one of those days where I really felt the difference between college running and post-collegiate running. Penn Relays falls just before conferences for most colleges, and I was only running my second race of the spring season (technically my first real race). Coaches prepare their athletes to perform at a high level at this meet…and I was training through it. It’s hard to let go of that feeling and especially that sense of urgency to be in tip-top shape for Penn Relays.

I ran my first race of the spring season at Princeton the Friday before Easter. I drove myself (in Mike’s car) to Princeton and wound up in the 3^rd heat of the 800m because I seeded myself at 2:08, thinking I’d be for sure in the first heat. I finished maybe 4^th in my heat in 2:10…not the best finish in the world, and most certainly not the smartest race I’ve ever run. To top it off, my right hamstring has been giving me some trouble and I felt it during that race. I have since seen a massage therapist and plan to go again this week.

Anyway, back to Penn.

I ran a 4:44 full mile and finished somewhere in the middle-back of the pack. Like usual, the mile at Penn was a sit-and-kick race, going out in something around 2:22 for the first 800m. I was with the front pack up until around 300m to go and had some trouble breaking out of the box I was in (I was at least three people deep at this point). I didn’t see the kick start up front and wasn’t able to respond in time. I didn’t expect the race to be particularly fast, since the winning times of most previous years have always hovered around 4:40.

Silver lining: a 4:44 mile is considered a “not great” time for me these days.

After I finished, I left the track, went for a cool down jog, and realized that the Villanova crowds probably didn’t watch me run, and probably weren’t going to stay to watch anything else that day. I wasn’t going to be able to enter the stadium after my race, plop down with the team and watch the races. I caught the subway home after I cooled down, had some dinner, and didn’t join the Villanova team for post-Penn celebrations at UPenn. Things are different now.

Instead, I had a cheesesteak with Mike and some friends at the grossest eatery in the Greater Philadelphia Area, Mama’s Kitchen in Bala Cynwyd. That experience deserves its own post.

I’m glad Penn is over, to be honest. Looking back on the experience, I really got myself wound up for no reason and my performance showed. I wasn’t running at Penn Relays, I happened to be racing during the Penn Relays. There is a difference.

Now, I’m not sure where I’m racing next. May is going to be a very busy month for me, and the biggest thing happening is Mike leaving for Notre Dame around Memorial Day. He will be starting a one year MBA program in June. This will be the first time we’re really apart for long periods of time. I’m nervous for him because the workload sounds hard, but I’m also nervous because of how hard it’s going to be to see him leave at the end of the month. But, of course, this is for the best, and it’s a wonderful opportunity for him that he simply can’t (and shouldn’t) pass up.

Next up, another race somewhere, sometime soon.

Food For Thought

2011-04-21T20:49:00.001-04:00

Just a little taste...

Ever since the fall, I’ve changed a lot of things with my training. Just about every day during the week, I’m up and out the door sometime around 8AM to get my longer run in, and usually meet with teammates for drills/core/hurdles or workouts. I don’t think there’s a day in the week where I just run, besides Sundays, which shouldn’t be categorized as just a run because it’s my long run…and that’s probably one of my most drastic changes this year. My long runs are almost 30 minutes longer than what they used to be. My long runs are just about “time on the legs” (like my friend Jon says), not really speed.

I’ve also been working on my diet, which was pretty haphazard up until around the middle of my junior year at Villanova. Since then, I’ve been making a conscious effort to eat better quantity and quality foods.

My freshman year, I didn’t gain the Freshman 15, but I did develop some pretty unhealthy eating habits. Fending for myself in dining halls wasn’t an easy adjustment. I didn’t know I was such a picky eater. I didn’t eat much meat at all. My parents instilled in me a very healthy fear of undercooked meats, so I didn’t trust the mass-produced meat creations the dining halls had to offer. I was convinced whatever was being served was actually cooked rare and that I would catch E.coli and die. That year, I ate lots of plain pasta, salads, and cold cuts.

The next two years, I decided to try to keep up with the rest of the NCAA and get LEAN and FIT. This involved me eating lots of salads. Salads, trail mixes, essentially bird food. I drank the occasional glass of milk (much to my chagrin because I couldn’t see the milk’s expiration date on the giant milk dispensers in the dining halls. Like Jerry Seinfeld, I have a hard time with expiration dates.). Carbs were evil. Meat was full of fat and probably bacteria. I wound up with low iron for a few months, rebounded by adding ferrous sulfate elixir to my diet (direct result- huge need for Crest Whitestrips due to iron-stained teeth), but didn’t make much of an effort to add more red meats/dark green vegetables to my diet. I just relied on the supplements to get my ferratin number back up, which is just like putting a band-aid on the problem instead of actually fixing it.

The following summer, I wanted to avoid my usual summer weight gain by trying to eat even less. I lived on campus and was enrolled in summer school, so I was on my own. I bought the book Skinny Bitch, which furthered my fear of meats (it’s a vegan book). I lived by Susy Favor Hamilton’s advice, which was to avoid carbs, make lots of protein shakes and pretty much only eat grilled chicken (the book is called Fast Track: Training and Nutrition Secrets From America’s Top Female Runner). I made weird drink mixes out of ground flax seeds, whey protein and a small scoop of Gatorade powder. If it sounds gross, you’re not weird. If you’re into clumpy, goopy mystery drinks that sort of taste like Flintstone vitamins, you would’ve loved my concoctions.

I found myself waking up in the middle of the night, eating peanut butter in my sleep, and leaving an open jar of Jiff with a spoon still stuck in it on my bed post of my dorm bed.

After summer ended, Mike started to live off campus in the fall and he had me over regularly for dinner. He made spaghetti with meat sauce, tested out recipes from the internet, and encouraged me to eat with him. This was probably the best thing that happened to my training in college. Getting out of the dining halls, sitting in a house and being able to make my own meals made me feel way better about what I was eating. These were real, traditional home-cooked meals. I made my way back to a normal person’s diet and a way healthier self.

However, the damage had already been done. In the middle of my junior year at Villanova, I got a stress fracture. I slipped on a patch of ice outside of the Armory during the Big East Champs that winter, turned my ankle funny, then ran two more races that weekend. A few days and an MRI later, it was clear that I had a stress fracture in one of my metatarsals, and developing stress reactions in a few others. The ankle roll was the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

There is a certain sense of frustration watching the skeletons blow past you in races, butt-huggers sagging over their rears, shoulder blades pointy enough to take out your eye (especially me, since so many runners are taller than I am).These college girls are given a pass to cheat--because that's what an eating disorder is. It's not discipline, it's the easy way to get better, at least temporarily. Think about it: cutting back on food intake is way easier than grinding out tough workouts and training runs over long periods of time.

By no means did I have an eating disorder. I was influenced by the girls I was racing against in college, the pros I saw on TV or online, and my own fears about gaining weight. As a Division I runner, I had a huge fear of losing my scholarship. It seems like plenty of competitive runners (and people in general) have similar fears. Some choose to act on them in a way that isn’t healthy, either by restricting diets or sneaking in runs/workouts. Others choose to work hard, get thin and fit as a result of seasons upon seasons of honest work, letting race weights just happen rather than forcing the body into deficiency. The goal is to be a strong runner, looking to improve as you age and preserve your vitality, even while you’re beating yourself up on a daily basis through rigorous training.

I didn’t achieve All-America status in college. I didn’t win any individual championship titles. I tried to get that edge by trimming down, but I’m glad I didn’t fully succumb to disordered eating. I paid a price for my experimenting, but in the grand scheme of things, I could’ve ended up way worse. My metabolism could’ve slowed down to compensate for my lack of calories. I could’ve gone into ketosis, beginning to break down the proteins in my body for energy due to the lack of more common resources. I could’ve let the life of my bones fast-forward to menopausal status, all holey and brittle due to lack of nutrients and estrogen.

So many good things could’ve happened. I probably could’ve been faster, contributed more in cross country, but I wasn’t strong-willed enough to diet. In the end, is it worth it?

When I was coaching a high school girl this summer, this was a topic that came up. We were both at Haverford’s track and watched a rail-thin runner whizz past us. This girl had the chicken-arm look (like my mom says), no muscle definition, just bones. Right away, I said to my girl that the person who just passed is not healthy…and we never want to resort to those habits to get better. You want to nip that kind of thinking in the bud. She was a young girl who just had a big breakthrough and was still new to the running scene…and as a young person, can be easily swayed. If she sees a fast-looking runner who’s too thin, she could think that if she wants to get faster, she needs to be skinny, too. This kid never looks at running websites, FloTrack, Letsrun, Dyestat, things like that…I admire her for that kind of discipline. At her age, I spent WAY too much time on those sites, obsessing over who was running what, how fast/slow I was compared to others, and basically psyching myself out before toeing the line. I made these high school stars gods in my mind…even though they were just kids like me.

I can’t say enough how finding a balance is key to actually enjoying your life. There is life outside of track & field. Once this ride ends, you’ve got to have something else to fall back on. Getting wrapped up in something as silly as what you feed yourself is such a shortsighted way of thinking and a waste of time. I look back on the days where I’d shoot to be under a certain number of calories per day, calculating fats/proteins/carbs necessary for me to simply get by rather than fuel my performance…and I cringe. How self-centered was I to place myself and my eating habits on such a high pedestal! I clearly wasn’t thinking about the other important things in my life, that if running were to suddenly go away, what I would have to rely on and look forward to each day. I’m embarrassed by being close to the brink of a real problem, by letting myself get like that and even entertain the idea of extreme dieting.

Nurture your other talents and interests. Seek joy out of things other than running. Appreciate the days where you go for a run and stop to smell the flowers, run with a friend and share some laughs, because they’re what take up most of your time. You may be called to perform every so often, like a race, but that makes up such a small part of your (my) life.

I’ve been fortunate enough to get as far as I have competitively, staying as healthy as I possibly can, and keeping that balance that took me so long to achieve.

Sorry for being so preachy.

I really like to eat. I still have some trouble staying calm about my weight during the summer months when I’m just logging base miles. I’m a work in progress, but I’ve at least figured out that my body is an engine that needs fuel, plain and simple.

Please check out these awesome recipe websites that helped me remember how much I love good food:

www.simplyrecipes.com

www.allrecipes.com

www.foodnetwork.com – more specifically, Ina Garten, Alton Brown and Giada De Laurentiis

www.vanillasugar.com

www.katheats.com

www.aggieskitchen.com

Whatever and Ever- another week of shoving hay into the barn

2011-03-28T15:21:00.001-04:00

A nice surprise.

Another pretty uneventful week has passed. Even though this past Sunday was the first official day of spring, it sure doesn’t feel like it here in Philadelphia. Temps have been hovering just under 40 degrees most days (or at least when I am outside running), topping out at MAYBE 50 degrees, and then quickly plunging back down to winter-like temperatures for the evening. Winter is having a super hard time letting go.

The training group has just started throwing in some early-season speed work, but nothing worth writing home about just yet. Friday was out first “track” session since mid-February, and it definitely felt like it. After a few weeks of threshold paces, long intervals, tempos and periods of time where my mind would fall asleep during reps, 400’s and 300’s were a small shock to the system. Annick and I got through them with relative ease; however it was a heck of a way to start a Friday morning.

Almost immediately following that workout, I had a marathon shift at my running store job…that continued all the way through Sunday. Working back-to-back-to-back days at a running retail store, especially on a weekend, isn’t easy…especially when you have a track workout AND a long run day thrown in there. Fridays and Sundays at the running store involve me trying to sit down whenever I can. I’m usually successful…and this weekend was no exception. Freezing temps and windy conditions made Manayunk a less than desirable place to “just walk around” this weekend, which is what we rely on for sales/foot traffic. We were busy here and there, but nothing like the big pre-marathon sales or anything like that.

Michael and Bryndle, his Buddah-belly dog

On Saturday, I was slotted to work the entire day (10:30-7:30PM…ouch) because we were having a sale for the store’s first anniversary of being open. Kind of scary to think I’ve been working at that store for a year, no? Our managers anticipated that we’d have a big crowd on Saturday, so he asked for all hands on deck. It didn’t hit me until this week that I’d be working the entire weekend.

Needless to say, I was a little anxious about being in the store for that long, for three days in a row. I spoke with my manager about it, but it kind of blew up in my face. I decided to man up, take the hours, and hope that I’d be able to sit down during those three days.

To top it off, I’d been fighting off a nasty cold the entire previous week…and then some. Working around kids will do that to you. I started to get some sniffles after racing in Haddonfield the previous weekend, but didn’t think much of it. The sniffles turned into a runny nose, which turned into a head/eye ache, which then turned into a body ache. A cough developed somewhere in there, too. To combat this, I decided to sleep A LOT, drink a lot of water, and tear up the roof of my mouth sucking on vitamin drops/Ricola’s. I was starting to feel OK around Thursday, but then ran a workout indoors (which, like I said before, hadn’t happened in a few weeks), so I started feeling a little crummy again due to indoor fumes and dust.

I got through my Friday shift fine. I brought in my tissue box, lunch, snacks, and a big ol’ chap stick to rub on my nose after it got raw from the tissues.

Saturday rolls around. I got to work 20 minutes early in preparation for the masses we were expecting. There were three of us on staff, which is a lot because we usually have two people…sometimes one if it’s really slow. We all sat and found little things to do between the occasional customer appearances.

At around noon, I was in the basement taking inventory of our shoes, which I would then plug into the computer and make pretty signs to tape onto the shelving units that holds said shoes. Kind of a menial task, but it had to be done. When I was just about done, Manager #2 calls me upstairs and says it’s urgent.

Turns out, Mike bought flowers for me. He had them delivered to the store. Tulips and daisies in a vase. He knows tulips are my favorite. Back when I graduated from Villanova in 2009, Mike told his mom that I love tulips…she wanted to send me flowers as congratulations and asked his opinion. Turns out, the address got mixed up, and the flowers were sent to my neighbor (who I didn’t really know) a few doors down. We happened upon this man’s house while running one day, and saw a display of vibrant tulips in his window. Mike stopped and knew they were meant for my house. I guess the order his mom made were for tulips in this exact vase, with this exact bow, and this exact arrangement.

Mike knocked on the door shortly after this run, asked about the tulips in the window (i.e., if they were in fact his, and where he got them from), and was told that they were purchased for the guy’s wife, and he “didn’t remember” where he’d purchased them from.

Long story short, police got involved (!!!), and a cop concluded that it was an obvious case of theft, but he couldn’t prove it because the man had thrown out the flower delivery packaging. D’oh. This was not my intention, nor was it Mike’s, to get police involved. However, flowers (tulips especially) aren’t cheap, and Mike’s parents spent a good bit of money on flowers delivered to some dope down the block.

Basically, I got my tulips in the end, but instead in front of my coworkers, as a surprise, and at a time where I was feeling a little stressed. Good job, Mike!

****

Other than flowers, I had a pretty average week. Training was normal, caught another cold, and worked a few hours in the running store.

Good news- I figured out why I couldn’t get iTunes to work properly on my PC since Thanksgiving 2009. Pretty awesome feeling being able to conquer modern technology.

There may be some big changes on the horizon, so stay tuned.

Haddonfield Adrenaline 5k Wrap-Up & Looking Back on Productive Weeks

2011-03-22T12:39:00.002-04:00

Me racing/playing Where's Waldo. Photo stolen from Marc Pelerin.

On Saturday, I ran another 5k as part of my buildup to spring track. I came to this event a few years ago to watch Mike run/hold his stuff, but haven’t been back since. In college, I was never able to go because the timing wasn’t so good for the collegiate schedule.

This race tends to draw some pretty big names like Carmen Douma-Hussar, Adrian Blincoe, and Erin Donohue. Times are usually pretty quick, and the course is somewhat challenging in spots (i.e. the surprise hill in the middle of the race!). Marcus and I decided somewhat last-minute to have me run the 5k instead of a tempo run at the end of the week. Road races are way better than tempo runs, anyway.

In the days leading up to the race, I really didn’t get much sleep. I helped out at the RunningWorks Day of Distance clinic, requiring me to be up and out the door by around 6AM (and I had to run BEFORE I left, so I was really up and about around 5-5:30AM). I couldn’t turn down dinner with old friends around 9PM the night before the race, either. After needing a few hours to digest the pounds of gnocchi I’d eaten at dinner (my favorite dish at this restaurant- Primavera Pizza Kitchen in Ardmore), I finally got some shut eye.

The morning of the race, I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, so I woke up as late as possible, grabbed a snack, and drove to South Jersey.

"A" is where I needed to be. Please note where I ended up. To my NJ friends- don't make fun!

Somehow, once I crossed the Ben Franklin Bridge and had gone about 10 minutes into New Jersey, I made a wrong turn and wound up North of Haddonfield…somewhere near the Cherry Hill Mall. Mike jokes that there is a strong force in me that drives me to find the nearest mall, wherever I am. This case was no exception.

Race starts at 9AM. I made it to Haddonfield High School by 8:10AM. Whoops again. I grabbed my packet, threw my things down, and ran off to warm up…which after rushing around for so long before, seemed like a leisurely jog. I was able to relax a bit and enjoy the scene.

After the warm up, I met up with some old friends from Villanova, Marc Pelerin and Craig Segal. I’d told them while I was on my way to Haddonfield to start warming up without me. Time flew before the race went off, which is great for me because it means I’m having a good time and that I’m not stressed out about the race itself. To be honest, I wasn’t taking the event TOO seriously because I’m not much of a 5k runner (I keep saying that), but mostly because I was using the 5k as a great workout. If I placed in the top four individual, that’d be a huge plus…but that wasn’t the goal.

I did some strides and skipped around right before the start, mostly goofing off with Marc and Tim Callinan. I kind of forgot that I had to actually LINE UP…so like a big jerk I jumped in the front and waited for Dave Welsh to send us off. Behind the starting line I ran into Katie Van Horn, which was cool. We shared a few laughs before the race while I managed to restart the Garmin I was wearing TWICE.

Gun goes off, and I’m off with the middle aged men. Like usual, they sprinted the first 400m, held on for another 400m (maybe), then hit the collective wall. One high school aged boy seemed to have it out for me…he stuck with me for about 2 miles, elbowing me periodically (especially around the turns) until I finally got fed up with him and surged away.

The funniest part of the race was running alongside Bob Schwelm, the owner of the Bryn Mawr Running Co…and my boss.

Just before the first mile marker, I sensed a tall guy at my side trying to pass me. I look up, and there’s Bob. Before even thinking about it, I blurted out, “GOOO BOB!”. I was so excited to see him there and to be running stride for stride with him at that moment. He looked down and laughed at me, then dropped back a little bit. He wound up passing me back somewhere in the second mile (wherever the big hill was) and beat me to the finish. I haven’t gotten to talk to him about the race, but I’d love to hear his take on things.

The race itself went relatively well for me. I went out a bit too fast (5:15ish I think) and didn’t really know where I was (I didn’t look at a course map), but I was happy that I was able to keep a good pace and finish strong. I underestimated the length of the last straightaway, which was probably something like 800-1000m…so my kick wasn’t as great as it should’ve been. I ended up winning the women’s division in 17:01, though! I definitely didn’t expect to win or run under 17:30…but I did both and technically PR’d by quite a bit (sometime in high school I ran mid-17 for 5k…but like most of my high school times, I don’t remember the specifics!).

Oh and PS- my fellow South Ardmore runner friend Mike McKeeman won the entire race in 14:27!!

Full results HERE

****

Looking Back on a Productive Week (and change):

No, I did not go to New York City.

Instead, I threw myself back into my usual training regimen and spent another week getting my middle school/high school athletes into shape. Sprinkle in some babysitting hours, a visit to the Kerrigans in Stroudsburg, a NEW PHONE, and a haircut.

My training is back to where it was in February, but instead of track workouts, I’m doing the threshold/tempo run weekly combo. Nevertheless, it’s fairly similar mileage-wise and effort-wise. I’m back to my core circuit routine, hurdle drills and lifting sessions (for the most part). My work schedule(s) allow for lots of flexibility, so even though I try to stick to a pretty strict schedule, there’s some wiggle room and I can take my time if need be.

One thing I’m finding is difficult to keep up with out of college is icing/stretching. I had a hard enough time doing this in college…taking time out of the day to visit the training room, especially after workouts when all I wanted to do was go home and stare at a wall.

In order to remind myself to use a foam roller or whatever else I have in my house, I leave them right next to my nightstand. That way, once I trudge upstairs after a run and want to immediately jump in the shower, I see the foam roller and remember Hello, Roller…like how Jerry Seinfeld reluctantly greets Newman. Sometimes it works, and other times it reminds me to do laundry due to its location right next to the dirty clothes basket. Ew.

I guess there’s always room for improvement.

One of my actual jobs is being the head spring track coach at the private school I worked at in the fall, stated in previous posts. The team has their first competition this week…and most of these kids haven’t run track before. Ever. One kid said on Wednesday that he’s never run on a track at all. Attempting to get rid of some confusion, I drew a picture of a track on a white board that day, indicating all of the relay zones, start/finish lines, lane rules, etc. I asked how many laps were in each race (mostly), outlined how the whole thing worked, and watched each of their faces look more worried/confused.

Either way, the meet is only a scrimmage, and hopefully they’ll prove that ignorance is in fact, bliss.

A few other items of note:

I haven’t had a haircut in nearly two years. In the past, while at Villanova I would usually make a trip to King of Prussia and visit whatever hair salon I could find that was under $30. I would end up with exactly what I paid for; a cheap-looking haircut.

Not that I’m Miss Moneybags these days…but now I can afford to spend a little more on a haircut, or at least what the typical market rate is.

I went on Yelp.com and checked out some local places…and I also posted on Facebook asking my friends for advice. After several hilarious responses involving swords, alcohol, and other dangerous ideas, I decided to try Salon 31 in Ardmore. The place is about 1 mile from my house, has great reviews, and is reasonable priced.

Salon 31 ended up being one of those places where you sit in the chair and the stylist tells you what would look good on you. Whenever I get my hair cut, I usually get scolded for my hair habits…i.e. using the hand drier in the locker room to dry my hair (sometimes twice a day), washing my hair a lot, wearing my hair in a pony tail to run (???????), and basically not getting it trimmed enough. Most other places are always trying to get me to dye my hair. Luckily, this place didn’t. I barely had to tell the guy what I wanted done…although he did scold me just a little for wrecking my hair.

As a result, I chopped off 8-10”. Not exactly what I was expecting, but I’m glad it finally got done. I’ll definitely go back again. Check them out online @ Salon 31 Ardmore

And finally, I’ve made a leap into the newest decade by upgrading to a smart phone! I got the HTC Inspire. It’s an Android phone, which made sense to get vs. the iPhone because I DEPEND on my Google apps (calendar, Gmail, etc). I’m learning more about the phone each day and just LOVE how I can pretty much do anything with it.

The first day I got it, I must’ve stared at the little machine for hours. I drained the battery in a day, playing on Twitter, stalking on Facebook, syncing my emails/calendars/life, and doing dumb things like checking the weather. I am also fighting the urge to take a zillion pictures of my cat. So far, my memory card is relatively cat free.

So, a couple of productive weeks have passed and I’m feeling pretty good about what’s ahead. One of the best things that happened during those weeks is that Mike scored a new job at JP Morgan Chase! I’m not exactly sure what his role is, but all I know is that the word “securities” and “operations” are in the title somewhere, and that he seems pretty excited about the job itself. Unlike his Vanguard job, he is working around a lot of young people and he won’t be chained to his desk.

When it rains, it pours…and I mean this in a good way. Since Mike received his job offer at JP Morgan, he has received numerous requests for interviews in boutique financial companies and, more importantly, MAY have a chance at getting into Notre Dame’s MBA program this summer. Since this isn’t Mike’s blog, I can’t go into too much detail about this…but let’s just say that things are really looking up in Mike’s professional life these days.

In the coming weeks, I have lots of threshold workouts to look forward to, a bunch of planning for my spring track campaign, and track meets with my high school team. Some days, I wish I had a normal 9-5 job with no track goals to think about…but on days like this, I’m happy that my life is so different and interesting. I’m looking forward to more days of lacing up my sneakers and the constant change of focus from one job to another.

Next on my agenda: no road races on the horizon…but track is going to be here before I know it!

Salsa, Blues, and HILLS.

2011-03-09T19:52:00.000-05:00

quick shave while checking out my digs at the NYAC

This weekend, I traveled up to New York City for the Coogan’s Salsa, Blues and Shamrock 5K held in Washington Heights, NYC.

SATURDAY:

I took a Megabus up to the city in the afternoon and arrived in NY just in time to hunt for dinner. On the bus, I wound up surrounded by a student group making their way to LaGuardia, flying to Guatemala the next day (I gathered this because they were practically yelling over my headphones). Once in New York and checked into the New York Athletic Club, I settled on getting some prepared food at Whole Foods in Columbus Circle, which is right next to the Club. Everyone was running around that store like their collective hairs were on fire!

I spent the evening watching movies and making a huge mess out of my hotel room. I was there alone, but managed to completely cover the floor with my exploding luggage. I told my mom I felt like Kevin McCallister in Home Alone 2, being in my own room next to Central Park all by myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any tremendous ice cream sundaes.

race time!

SUNDAY (early AM):

I got up relatively early, but was super tired because it sounded like every room around me was hosting a party through the night. There was loud music most certainly playing on the roof into the wee hours of the morning, too. I wasn’t too concerned about getting a lot of sleep before this race, but still…I like my sleep.

Probably around 1AM, I opened the shade to see if Frank Sinatra was in fact singing right outside my window. I found myself sitting on the windowsill looking out at Central Park, Columbus Circle all lit up, and the rest of the city that was still wide awake (most people would be…after all, it was Saturday night!). I’m a pretty lucky duck.

SUNDAY (normal hours):

Getting up and out the door was a breeze. I ate some snacks, packed a bunch of clothes and plastic bags in preparation for the predicted rain that morning, and ventured out into the city.

Lesley and I made plans to take a cab up to the Armory with a few of the NYAC ladies…but I have no concept of how long it takes to get from A to B in New York City by cab. Needless to say, I jumped the gun and hopped in a cab 15 minutes earlier than Lesley suggested (assuming that I would hit monster traffic going less than ten blocks north on a rainy Sunday at 7AM), and wound up at our meeting spot super early. I sat in the cab trying to decipher the cabbie’s botched up English for a few minutes, feeling pretty bad that I misjudged my timing and made the NYAC girls rush to get to our meeting spot.

Once everyone made it in the cab and made fun of me for jumping the gun, we got uptown pretty quickly, even though our driver didn’t understand anything we were saying and almost took us across the George Washington Bridge.

When we were dropped off in Washington Heights, it was evident that this wasn’t an ordinary weekend 5k run. There were literally thousands of people on the streets. THOUSANDS. As we walked through the middle of the New York streets, it was evident that any plans to go through our normal warm up routines went out the window. Since I was just doing this race for fun (mostly), I didn’t mind this so much.

After meeting up with a few more NYAC ladies, we all dumped our stuff along the side of the Armory (literally right next to where the crazy homeless men stand outside of the men’s shelter during Armory races, which is a little unnerving) at baggage claim and took off. Just as we were commenting on how it wasn’t raining, the rain started. Funny how that happens.

I broke most of my pre-race rules on Sunday. For example, I knew that if I kept my sweats on until a few minutes before the start, I’d have nowhere to put them (or I’d see a bum walking past wearing my warm-ups at some point), so I ran around in just my singlet and shorts way before the gun went off. Little things like that didn’t matter too much, and it was literally making me laugh out loud at how silly the whole scene was.

Fast forward to the actual race. At this point, the rain was really coming down, the manhole covers were completely slick on the streets (which I discovered much to my chagrin during my striders several minutes before the start), and I was already soaked. Fun. At least the elite women got a separate starting area so that we wouldn’t get trampled by the weekend warriors and the middle-ages men who ALWAYS sprint to the front at the gun. These are the men we end up passing about 400m into the race, without fail.

The only flat part of the race was the start and finish. Here’s the elevation chart we received as proof:

Coogan's 5k Elevation Chart

I felt like I was running well beyond my abilities almost immediately. Two weeks off from workouts and one week off from running entirely will do that to you, I suppose. Anyway, after hitting “the wall” at about 800m, I maintained an OK pace for the rest of the race, regardless of the undulations of the course. These hills were WAY worse than the ones I encountered during Brian’s Run this past winter.

I finished in about 17:20, good for 5^th place for women. Not too shabby for my first workout back in a while.

I didn’t realize right away how tired I actually was from the race. After getting into some dry clothes inside the Armory (it had stopped raining by then), the NYAC ladies did a group cool down along the river. It was just your typical out-and-back cool down, except the “out” was downhill and the “back” was uphill. In the last mile of the cool down I started getting lightheaded and felt like I needed to take a nap. My legs were like lead and I was dreaming of the brunch that would fill my belly very soon.

Soon enough, the group hopped on the subway down to Café Ronda, a cute restaurant on the Upper West Side (that specializes in baked eggs, apparently) and ate to our heart’s content.

Cafe Ronda's famous baked eggie weggs. From http://picturecake.wordpress.com/

A subway and two trains later, I was back in Philadelphia, ending my millionth trip to NYC in the past three months.

On Monday, I felt the hills from the race big time, especially during my drill session with Carmen and Annick. I also started doubling again for the first time in two weeks…so needless to say, I’ve been pretty pooped the past couple of days…but I’ll snap back into shape in no time. To top it off, I’ll be doing a bunch of threshold workouts/tempo runs for a little bit, building some more strength until I get racing in a month or so.

Next up: Haddonfield Adrenaline 5k (maybe)!

Spring's Almost Here

2011-03-02T13:24:00.000-05:00

One of the zillions of trips I took to the Armory this season. Stolen pic from Tony DeSabato.

Although a bit unplanned, my indoor season ended last weekend at the Armory.

I’m not too bummed out though. Things are different this year, and maybe I needed the rest. It’s easy to forget how long the outdoor season really is, especially since will be my first outdoor season out of college.

So, here’s what happened since November/December:

In November, I got back into “racing” mode by jumping in a few local road races. This is always fun because any race beyond a mile isn’t the easiest for me. I get through them fine, but my strengths are definitely in the middle-distances. For example, it took me all five years at Villanova for me to be able to complete a tempo run correctly. This fall, I was finally able to stick to a pace! Improvement!

I ran the Rothman 8k (Philadelphia Marathon), wound up in 3^rd place due to a side stitch in the beginning of mile 2, but still ran way faster than I did the year before. I felt like crap, but still improved and made a few bucks. Can’t really complain about that. That was also my first race in my NYAC jersey.

By the beginning of December, I started feeling “normal”. I felt like I was getting back into pretty good shape, my threshold workouts were going pretty well, and I was really throwing myself into a new core routine. Annick and I seriously couldn’t walk for a few days after we started our new core circuit routine. Marcus seemed pleased…he laughed at us while we tried to run easy 1000’s at Haverford the day after our first core routine. I had trouble sitting. It was awful, but awesome too. I hadn’t been that sore in years…meaning that whatever I was doing in years past probably was just a waste of time, and that what I was starting to do would make me stronger.

I ran another 8k (weird) before the end of 2010 in West Chester, PA over a very challenging course. The race, Brian’s Run, has been altered over the years several times, but this year they settled on a really tough 8k loop. I finished 2^nd to Frances Koons and really improved compared to my Rothman 8k. Rothman is a very flat course in Philadelphia, whereas the Brian’s Run course runs through hilly (and I mean HILLY) neighborhoods and it was particularly cold/windy on the day of my race.

After that, training started to ramp up a bit leading up to Christmas. I’m still adjusting to the Marcus O’Sullivan school of thought at this point, and at the same time my training group was just starting to nail down a weekly “schedule” for our drills and core sessions.

Home for Christmas: being home is great, but I never want to go out or do ANYTHING when I’m there. I have a pretty big family and a very small house. We just hang around and spend a million hours in each other’s business (and personal bubbles). It’s awesome.

At home, I went through a few days where I was convinced that I was going to quit running. Maybe it was the blizzard (day after Christmas, we got slammed with 2 ft of snow, leaving us stuck inside for almost 2 days…the snow plows couldn’t make it into our neighborhood!), or just simply being home, or realizing that I wouldn’t be able to win money from races as easily. Whatever it was, it went away within a few days, and then I was back to full training mode. It was very weird, like I was in a nightmare that I suddenly woke up from.

Once I got over that brain fart, I ran a few small Armory races in January, got back into track mode and started to get used to being at meets without a coach or a team. Late January, I ran at Millrose (4x800 for NYAC)…it was cool to run on the track, but I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to run the mile (my DREAM)…but I’m glad I was able to get my first experience on “the boards” out of the way in a low-key environment (the 4x800 went off at around 5PM …there were basically less than 50 people in the stands watching, and the competition was pretty easy…definitely a good environment for a first-timer).

I finished out the season with a new 1500m indoor PR (and technically an indoor mile PR), so I’m pretty happy. Something’s working!

In reference to my first sentence of this post: I got sick in the middle of February, and for the week leading up to my last race I was feeling pretty run down. NYU set up a “fast” mile at the Armory, so I signed up hoping to chase a pacer to a new mile PR. Instead, the race went out decently fast (even though the alleged pacer didn’t show up), but I still felt like crap and made a calculated (but quickly calculated. After all, it was only one mile) decision to drop out after 800m. I would rather have NO time than run a really slow time. No thanks.

It was the first time I ever dropped out of a race in my life. As soon as I started veering off to the side of the track, I was screaming “OH NO OH NO!!!” in my head. I almost wanted to keep going, but then I thought that it would look pretty weird if I was just swerving all over the track and then ran a slow time. Had to commit!

I didn’t even cool down after my race. I was glad I didn’t finish, but still felt crummy and was happy to be heading back to Philadelphia.

That was kind of a wishy washy version of my racing thus far, but that’s pretty much it. I had been flying by the seat of my pants for a few months and was just getting the hang of the new training. Now, with outdoors in the near future, I’m starting to get my spring schedule set and I’m getting excited to see where this new training will take me.

And now, the long push to outdoors.

On the agenda for this weekend: Coogan’s Salsa, Blues, and Shamrocks 5K ! Should be a good time!

thoughts on post-collegiate running:

2011-02-27T22:00:00.000-05:00

"My advice to anyone considering extending their competitive career after college is, without
hesitation, go for it. Find a club team and a coach to train with. Seek out equipment sponsors,
talk to local shoe reps or running specialty stores. Work a flexible part-time job. Live at home.
Do odd jobs. Find a way to make it work."
- Magda Lewy-Boulet

A favorite quote of mine that I came across again tonight. It's too long for Twitter (a tweet?), so I guess a blog post works well!

Sometimes in the long winter months, motivation wanes. You, too would question what you're doing with your life if you were broke, working a million jobs, running in dark & icy streets every morning as the sun's coming up. Most sane people would.

It's easy to succumb to those feelings and almost feel sorry for yourself...all those days bundling up, slogging through the slush and breathing in dusty indoor track air.

But then you find a gem of a paragraph like this one...you feel like someone understands, went through it, and came out feeling satisfied with their work (and is running really well, for my non-running friends). We are never alone in anything we're experiencing. There's no reason to feel like a loser, toiling away at something that really isn't paying bills and is just plain tiresome. It's empowering to know that while I'm out running in the morning, freezing my buns off and watching all sorts of people driving to work to sit in their cubes, that I'm doing something I actually like and know I can improve.

I'm doing this while I can.

See the post here.

A Very Short Post...

2011-02-27T11:13:00.000-05:00

...to let you know I'm here.

My down week of running has come to an end. Definitely felt the consequences this morning running up and down the hills of my neighborhood at home.

(for my runner friends: I live on the same coast as Sunken Meadow park...just several miles East. Same hills, just on pavement. Fun!)

I'm heading back this afternoon to Philadelphia, though. My spring track season starts this week at the school I'm coaching at. Keeping my fingers crossed for double-digit numbers this season (the team is co-ed and the school is very tiny) and hopefully getting them psyched to run/jump/throw well this season. The first week is always a killer, though...most kids don't keep in shape after fall sports (I didn't either, actually, until I started running indoor track...which this school doesn't have), so I'm hoping to EASE the kids into shape again. Maybe a few Frisbee games will do the trick.

For me, I will be getting back into the swing of things this week, too. Running-wise, I'm getting back into threshold training (not my favorite!) and I'll be jumping in a road race this Saturday. The NYAC road racing team is getting together to run the Coogan's 5k around the Armory, so a few of us NYAC people based in Philly will be making the trip up. It should be a good time! I'm not much of a 5k runner, but I can keep a decent pace for that distance. It will at least be something different and will give me a chance to hang out with the road racing team. I'm always looking for a good excuse to go to NYC, too. Win-win.

Happy Sunday!

A Really Really Sorry Attempt At Getting Back Up To Speed.

2011-02-22T11:35:00.001-05:00

Julie and something I made. Nose hairs sold separately.

I haven't posted on this blog in a long time. Now I'm one of those guys who makes a blog, updates it regularly for a few months, then BOOM! No posts for a few months.

A quick update:

Since my last update, there hasn't been much "life" between the miles. I've been training a lot with an awesome group in Haverford, meeting nearly every day for drills, weights, core, little things, etc.

I'm usually very tired.

Things are paying off in the running department. Aside from a very recent hiccup at the Armory this weekend (my first time ever dropping out of a race IN MY LIFE), I PR'd in the 1500 indoors last month, got to run in Millrose (in the ladies 4x800, but I'll take it), ran one of the hardest workouts of my life (I couldn't tell if I was going to sneeze or throw up after that one...I know that doesn't make sense, but that's what actually happened!), and ran some solid races in between. My mileage is higher than it was in college (not by much), I get my workouts done before 10AM most days..so everyday around 11AM is brunch/feast!

Downside: so much laundry. SO MUCH. Between running twice a day and having to bundle up for the freezing temps, I am the reason our water bill has gone up this month. Sorry Brian!!!

Other than running-related things, I work. I'm either babysitting or working at the running store. By the end of the day, it's dinner-movies/tv/internet-bed. Insert M&M binges somewhere in there.

OH, but there is something a little different!

I stared an ETSY website around Christmas. For those of you who don't know, Etsy (www.etsy.com) is a website where people buy and sell homemade items all around the world. While reading the InStyle Xmas gift giving guide, they recommended this website for unique gifts. So, I decided to check it out and I think I found my calling (or at least one of my callings...there is so much noise in between my ears).

In my spare time, I've been knitting. More recently, sewing. I'm building a collection of handmade clothes, bags, accessories, and home things.

On my Etsy site, I only have a few knit items at the moment. Instead of loading it up with more knit things, I've been holding off until I have a bigger selection of spring items (besides, after that 65 degree day we had last week, who wants to think about warm & fuzzy knit things?). So, for anyone interested, stay tuned and check my Etsy website!

CLICK HERE to view my Etsy site

I've also been thinking about starting up a wordpress account (seems to be easier to use with pictures...Blogger always has brain farts when I try to change anything). This is very tentative, because I'm not exactly tech savvy, so the idea of importing a bunch of crap on to another website that will probably have all sorts of brain gas is a little daunting.

If anything, the wordpress account will be for my crafty adventures. There are so many blogs out there about sewing/knitting/making things...basically showing how they do it, the creative process, where/how they sell it, and so on.

So, this is where I'm at. Check back in soon for some winter stories and maybe take a look at things I'm making!

Special Lasagna

2010-09-16T12:26:00.000-04:00

bork bork bork!

On my 21^st birthday, Mike surprised me with a delicious lasagna dinner. That summer, I was working a tough internship at a law firm, making a commute into center city Philadelphia every day, all the while trying to build a base for the upcoming cross country season. I was also just getting over a stress fracture in my foot and was woefully out of shape. My birthday happened to fall on a Wednesday during my first week of my internship. I was living in a duplex, my first time living off campus with my own bills to pay. Needless to say, it was a challenging summer.

Mike laid out the ingredients so I could participate in the cooking process, and we cooked a massive lasagna from Giada DeLaurentiis’ recipe collection on the Food Network.

Since then, we’ve used this recipe several times, usually when we’re cooking for a crowd or for something special.

This summer, we put the recipe to the test again…this time with more guests and more important people to please.

The dinner started out as a group of five people- Mike’s uncle lives in nearby Narberth with his wife and daughter, so Mike invited them over for a small dinner on an uneventful Thursday night. This wasn’t a big, planned event; rather it was a casual dinner that Mike thought of at the beginning of that week. He had plans to cook his shrimp scampi, which is great for a group of that size.

So, this was early in the week.

Several days later, Mike discovers that his sister will be in town, so he invites her over for dinner too, bringing the grand total to six people. Not bad.

At this point, Mike is debating what he wants to make, and we both agree that we should cook up the Giada lasagna. Most people seem to like lasagna (unless they’re weird).

Two days before the lasagna dinner rolls around, Mike’s parents figured out that they’ll be in town around dinner time on Thursday night. Mike invites them over, now the total is up to eight people.

Uh oh. The dining room table only seats six.

This is when we decided to make two lasagnas. One with ground beef (which is what Giada calls for in her recipe), and one with sweet Italian sausage (Mike’s idea). One tray of lasagna can feed a small army, so we were hopeful that two trays would be more than enough.

On Thursday, I have a pretty busy day of work. At the time, I only had two jobs (ha!), so I worked at the running store in the morning and was meeting with my private coaching clients in the late afternoon. So, Mike and I decided to make the sauces for the lasagna the night before, chill everything in the fridge overnight, and assemble the lasagna on Thursday.

The recipe itself isn’t much of a challenge, however there are many parts to the dish and each part takes quite a bit of time (i.e., one sauce takes an hour to cook, things need to be cooled to room temperature before they are combined, etc), so the real challenge is finding large blocks of time to cook and get it right. If the timing is off, then the lasagna is off.

Of course, Murphy’s Law took into effect on Wednesday night.

Wednesday, the night before the big dinner. Mike and I went out to Flip & Bailey’s bar for a quick (and cheap) dinner with some of the track kids who were still in town for summer school. On Wednesday nights, Flip’s has a burger, beer and fries special. All three for $5. As a kid on a tight budget, this is definitely up my alley.

[By the way, the service at Flip’s is terrible. Every time we go, they either forget something, mess up our order, take forever, charge us for something extra on the bill, or whatever. Seriously. I don’t know why we go sometimes.]

Long story short, after our dinner the party went their separate ways; the underage kids went out to a BYOB joint for after dinner mischief, while Mike, Carl and I came back to Ardmore to watch movies, hang out, and start the sauces for the lasagna.

At home, Mike broke out a few Blue Moons and turned on a movie. I think was something about Paris. Ha.

I guess the combo of being pretty tired and consuming a few not-light beers between dinner and up to this point made me loopy and impaired my cooking judgments.

The lasagna calls for two sauces, one called a béchamel sauce and the other a regular tomato sauce. The béchamel sauce is pink; it starts out looking like an Alfredo sauce without the cheese, and then a small amount of tomato sauce is added to make it pink. I had to make a roux (a cooked mixture of flour and butter used in creamy sauces), which requires constant stirring and attention so that the butter/flour combo doesn’t burn to the bottom of the pan.

Just before this, I was cooking the traditional tomato sauce so it’d be ready to add to the béchamel. That sauce doesn’t require nearly as much attention, so, thankfully, nothing bad happened.

Once the béchamel was finished cooking (or so I thought), I added a few cups of the tomato sauce, stirred it around and took a taste.

Oops.

I burned it. EXACTLY what I didn’t want to do.

2-3 hours of work, literally down the garbage disposal. Wah.

Since I’d used all of the ingredients up and burned them, I needed to get up extra early on Thursday, go to the store and buy everything all over again, make more tomato sauce because I’d used a bunch in the burned sauce, cook the sauces, cook the pasta noodles, make the ricotta filling, cook the meats, assemble the lasagnas, place them safely in the fridge until Mike could cook them later, and get to work on time.

Whew.

It was a busy morning, but it was kind of funny making two lasagnas first thing in the morning, cup of coffee in hand. It was funnier that I went to the grocery store pretty much as soon as I rolled out of bed. No breakfast, no coffee. Just me in my morning glory, on a mission to not mess up the lasagna twice. I’m pretty sure I brushed my teeth. Just in case, I went through self check out instead of having to interact with the grocery clerks.

Thankfully, Mike was able to finish assembling the lasagnas when he got home from work, get them in the oven and have it ready in time for his family.

Of course, the silliness isn’t over yet.

Late Thursday morning, I get a text from my parents.

They are in town for my sister’s travel softball game. They are spending the night near Lansdale…30 minutes away. They want to do dinner.

HAHAHAHA!

I shot Mike a quick message, telling him what was going on, and he told me to invite them.

10 people. Oh jeez.

So I invited them over for lasagna. At first, they didn’t want to impose, but if my parents are within an hour away, of course I want to see them. I didn’t want to leave Mike alone with this whole big dinner to do by himself, either, so I tried to make a compromise.

Mike had to go into the garage to drag out my dining room table and four extra chairs while I was at work. Our entire dining room was full of tables and chairs!

From here on out, everything went smoothly. Mike got the lasagnas in, chopped up everything for the salad, I was able to get a shower after my coaching job, and I was able to finish making the salad dressing.

It was so impressive that everything came together at the last minute.

This dinner could’ve been a huge disaster on so many levels. There were people who’d never met each other at the dinner, Brian (roommate) has white couches and we were eating food with red sauce, my mom’s allergic to cats (my cat somehow knows what humans are allergic to her and she won’t leave them alone), wine and beer were being served, and of course, something ELSE could’ve been burned in the cooking process just before dinner. ..

However, it was miraculously pulled off, everyone seemed happy and bellies were full.

SUCCESS!

**********

The other afternoon at my running store job, I brought a piece of this lasagna for lunch. Several months later after simply defrosting, it still tasted just as good as that first night and reminded me of that crazy Thursday.

**********

noms.

Want to try the Giada Lasagna recipe? Click the link below!

Giada's Classic Lasagna Recipe

Late Summer Motivation

2010-09-10T10:25:00.001-04:00

One of the many farms around Riverhead...and where I learned to love running. Taken from riverheadlocal.com

Like I’ve said in the past, it’s been really hard for me to get my butt out the door and go running. Even though I wasn’t on the XC roster last year (wasn’t eligible until the spring), I was still committed to the team and had to be at practice. I found that I was getting my butt kicked on a regular basis at practice, but that’s attributed to me not feeling the pressure to be the 7^th man or better on the roster. Had I been on the roster, different story.

This year, it’s a little different. Like I wrote the other day, Mike gave me a talk after another bad tempo run and reminded me that I’m on a different schedule, on a few different levels. Last year, I was still in school, had scheduled practice, and had a much quicker buildup of miles throughout the summer so that I’d be ready for workouts in late August. That was 2009, my final collegiate running year.

Fast forward to 2010. I am no longer on a team. I’m signed on represent NYAC, but I’m not expected to perform until track season. I juggle three part-time jobs. I didn’t ramp up my mileage until mid August. Woof.

So, if I were to compare to my college self, my body thinks it’s sometime in July.

It’s very easy to try and conjure up excuses for why we’re not feeling good. I guess this is what I’m trying to do. But the reality is that I know, deep down somewhere, I want to become a better runner down the road. At the same time, it’s easy to lose sight of that goal, whatever the goal is, when your day-to-day seems monotonous, slow-paced, and different than what you know has worked in the past.

It doesn’t help that little aches and pains creep up, spooking me into thinking that I’m getting hurt. Lack of motivation in September plus the need to stay aerobically fit without actually running is awfully daunting.

This isn’t to say that I’m hurt, but I’m just saying.

A good running friend of mine from home emailed me recently, asking how I stay motivated after college and how I juggle training with work.

My answer:

Run when you can, take the easy days easy, and don’t put too much pressure on yourself. If you are in the working world (or in her case, medical school), it’s hard to keep the competitive fire burning sometimes. Just do what you can, find people to run with like running store groups and local clubs. Enjoy the new social aspect, the fact that these people aren’t always competing against you, and make new friends. Even though I haven’t been doing any of my runs with the club that meets at my running store, getting to meet new people who are trying to train is so rewarding. Everyone has a story, everyone’s reasons for running are different, and it might rekindle that fire again.

My friend was an 800/1500 runner like me in college. She mentioned that she wants to be competitive again, but it’s hard to find that outlet for runners like us. We aren’t exactly suited for competitive marathons (well, at least not immediately), but the road racing scene is probably the most accessible route for the post-collegiate athlete. I found this question hard to answer, because I’m faced with the same debacle. I don’t want to say that I know my limits, because I don’t think I really do, but I guess I can spin it and say I know my strengths.

It’s a bit more positive sounding than the former.

So, I suppose the best way to approach the road racing is to train through it, build strength by getting some great efforts in through racing longer distances, and rekindle the fire.

Simply signing up for road races helps structure your training calendar. So far, I’m signed up for the Rothman 8k around Thanksgiving, and I’m looking into signing up for a few more races towards the end of September. If I’m not ready to race by then, so what. If anything, it’ll show me where I’m at fitness-wise, and give me a definitive starting point. Not to say I’m not expecting a whole lot out of myself, but I’m not putting any added pressure.

Even though I’ve been having a hard time getting into my training the past few weeks, the idea of attempting road races is pretty exciting. Now, the trick is to not let go of that excitement, especially during those tough middle miles of my tempo runs and when my training runs are going less than swimmingly. I’ve done it before, and I survived.

****

The past two days, the temperature has dropped significantly and the wind has picked up. It’s starting to feel like fall. Just like in years past, I think back on the days where I was excited to run almost every day. I think back to high school, to Indian Island Park, to the smell and feel of fall on Long Island, to Riverhead’s homecoming…and I feel at home again.

Bring on the grind.

This Is The Way I Live (this month)

2010-09-09T22:12:00.004-04:00

Aw yeah.

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions from friends and family about my employment status. I usually go into this whole song and dance about how I’m coaching, working in a running store, babysitting, etc.

What I’m doing is actually getting a taste of what a real college student, 20-something dude (or dudette) does in real life. And I have to say…I LOVE IT. It’s almost tempting me to not continue to train.

Who am I kidding. It’s actually tempting.

I’m going out with friends and am a lot more social than I was in college. I’m running myself a bit ragged, but I’ve been the happiest kid!

For instance, last night I went out with a few friends, went to a late bar special, and rode a mechanical bull! I stayed on for 20 seconds, but got rocked at the 21 second mark and performed a triple salchow into the side of the inflatable rink. Then I proceeded to “dance my ass off” (according to Mike’s friend) with some kids from the team until Mike had to drag me off the dance floor.

Today, I woke up and felt like I fell off a bike. AN AWESOME BIKE.

I like my new social self.

So, the more serious side of my day-to-day.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a real set schedule, so basically if I don’t have my planner on me, I’m screwed. I really have no idea what my hours are unless I see them written out, conflicting or not.

For the most part, this is how my ‘professional’ life goes:

I’m usually up sometime around 6AM, and will sometimes finish working around 7:30PM. AH!!!!!

I currently hold three jobs, sometimes four. The bulk of my hours are at the Bryn Mawr Running Company in Manayunk.

Basically, at the running store I talk to runners of all shapes and sizes, figure out what shoes work best for different foot types, and try to SELL, SELL, SELL.

Also, the other day I discovered that I could figure out percentages a lot quicker than I used to.

I mentioned that I’ve been coaching.

I never thought that I would actually be a coach. I’ve worked at camps and things like that, but never thought I’d be in charge of kids and their training on a regular basis. And get paid for it.

I have two coaching jobs. I’m working at a Jewish school in Bryn Mawr as the head cross country coach. The program (and the school itself) is very small, and the team is even smaller. However, once I explained to the kids how XC scoring works, they’ve been on a mission to get the boys roster to total at least five runners. They are like sponges, are very smart and have so many questions about running. The hours are relatively light, leaving me some good chunks of time to dedicate toward my running, my other coaching job and my running store job.

So, the other coaching job.

I’m privately coaching a high school girl from Bryn Mawr. She’s a junior in school and her parents contacted Gina asking for a private coach. Here I am!

This girl reminds me of myself at her age- figuring out the whole competitive running thing, really eager to get better at it, but is sort of lacking direction. At her age, my coaches were soccer and football coaches, so we were all learning about the sport at the same time. My goal is to make sure she avoids some of the mistakes I made at her age (the unnecessary ones, like getting nervous about being nervous, eating tips, etc), and at the same time give her the tools to get in great shape. I’ve been meeting with her the whole summer and will be helping her out throughout the cross country season.

My fourth job is babysitting. As usual, the families take such good care of me and their kids are great. Sometimes, I wish I had a video camera to capture some of the hilarious things the kids say/do. That deserves its own blog post, or category!

With all of my jobs, my newfound sense of freedom and all that, I’ve been finding it somewhat difficult to get motivated to run (even though most of my jobs have to do with running!!!). Some days, it’s a struggle to drag myself out the door and go for a run, or God forbid, a tempo run.

This past Tuesday, I found myself sitting in the parking lot at the Hebrew Academy, chocolate milk in one hand and a huge coffee in the other, wanting to cry. I’d just finished a tempo run around the Haverford trail (2 loops of the nature trail, about 4.5 windy miles), and after some slow calculations, I discovered that there were days that I would do a regular run around my current tempo pace with the Villanova team. How depressing.

I was waiting in the car, having a snack before meeting up with the XC team at the school for their last day of pre-season practice. I called Mike, barely gave him a chance to say hi, and just started spilling my guts about how I was bummed out, how I felt slow, and how I don’t want to compete anymore.

Thankfully, Mike was my voice of reason that morning. Here’s what he said:

- my training schedule is different now, so I can’t expect to be in good shape for a little while yet [i.e. normally at this time of year I’ve been training seriously for 6 more weeks than I have been…so I’m just pushed back a bit].

- I need to change my attitude towards tempo runs. Mike said that I probably don’t take them as seriously as I should…which is true because on that day, I didn’t even bother to change into flats for my tempo.

- The Haverford trail is inherently slow…that’s why Villanova never tempo’d there. Any times I run there can’t be taken entirely seriously.

- Lots of runners feel the same way, especially when they are training alone. Getting out the door and getting things done, especially at 7AM on a hot day, is hard no matter who you are.

That got my head on straight.

As my XC practice went on, my mood really improved. Being around the kids on the team is refreshing, and it helps me remember that deep down, I like what I’m doing.

For now, I need to keep training, not get too high or low, and have lots of fun in between.

Week in review: RunningWorks Edition.

2010-08-29T17:39:00.003-04:00

Killer instincts!

My blog posts have been few and far in between this month. I’ve been doing a lot of traveling, starting to bump up my mileage to full-on base mode, and filling up my calendar with all sorts of jobs and to-do’s.

It’s another excuse for me to purchase a smart phone. I’d have the tools to post anywhere and satisfy my two casual readers.

Like I said in my last post, I’ve been traveling around like a crazy person, and now I’m finally settling into some sort of a routine. I am currently balancing three different part-time jobs, all the while trying to run 60+ miles a week. It definitely helps that all of my jobs are running-related.

In early August, I tagged along with Mike and his family down to Holden Beach, NC.

Jeez, it feels like I went there six months ago or something. It’s been a busy month.

The trip itself down to NC was pretty interesting. Five human passengers, a 150 lb Great Dane with a gas problem, a cat that hates me (and who has literally pooped on my homework this year) and lots of luggage made a 10 hour trip somewhat trying. However, once I got used to Oscar’s (said Great Dane) smells around Richmond, I was OK.

The long drive was definitely worth it. Holden Beach is unlike any other beach I’ve been to, mostly because the water was so warm, the jellyfish weren’t as evil as they are in the Long Island Sound (I guess I would develop menacing tentacles too if I became trapped in a large bay over a period of hundreds of thousands of years), the houses were beachy and gorgeous, and there were palm trees!

I spent the week running with Mike’s brother Tommy in the blistering heat every morning, and then basically spending the remainder of the day in a bathing suit. Can’t complain. Life is good.

I also wore SPF 70 on my body and SPF 100+ (mayonnaise?) on my face. Still got sunburned. Irish.

One of my favorite days was when we all went crabbing in an inlet during the week. Mike has talked about their crabbing escapades before, but I seriously underestimated the amount of work they all put into their crab hunting every summer. Back at home, we used to simply tie some sort of delicious meat to a string a hope for the best. We’d catch one or two little crabs, poke at them a bit and let them go. I’m sure we were catching the same little dude over and over, just providing him with his very own mini Golden Corral.

Holden Beach crabbing involved lobster-pot things, lots of gross chicken parts, and lots of patience. Sarah and I got bored for a while and started smashing rotten oysters and mussels in the street. It basically looked like someone blew snot rockets all over the blacktop.

Even though it was a pretty shallow inlet, the crabs we captured were BIG. There was no question, they were big enough to eat (and MURDER and DESTROY in the Kerrigan’s kitchen sink) and they were blue crabs. We did catch one stone crab (they look like they have boxing mitts on), but couldn’t keep him…not even as a pet.

The five of us spent a good part of the afternoon there, and we were joined by a good family friend of the kids, but more importantly some weirdo old man with his creepy little Boston terrier, aka Yoda with udders. The man oversaw our crabbing operation from afar, only asking me and Sarah for our first names, saying they were “purrdy naymes”, and then called us Yankees.

We caught well over a dozen crabs to keep, and ended up stopping at a fish market to buy a few more in order to make a great pasta dinner. Turns out the crabs we bought were actually smaller than the ones we caught!

All in all, it was an awesome trip and I’m so happy I went. Between our crabbing adventures, hours and hours spent on the beach relaxing, chasing “ghost crabs” at night (and Tommy murdering them), and everything in between, it was definitely one of my more favorite vacations to date.

Beach! Stolen from Mike's Facebook Album

***********
Perhaps the most important aspect of my August was RunningWorks Camp. Anybody out there reading this that has either attended the camp or worked there can probably relate to this.

I first heard about RunningWorks through Mike a few years ago. A couple of the Villanova guys worked as camp counselors every year, and Mike was one of them. Mike was also a camper there as a high schooler.

RunningWorks (www.runningworks.com) is a company that holds coaching clinics, talks, and a week-long cross country camp for high school kids. Camp is held in the third week of August, right before high school kids go back to school. A few years ago, Blair Academy opened up its campus for the first week of August to RunningWorks, so for a good stretch of time there were actually two camps held in August (the original camp has always been held at Camp Canadensis in the Poconos). When I first started working there, I worked both camps, having a week-long break in between camp sessions.

Anyway, the past two years we’ve only had the one original camp at Canadensis. Even though we lost our early August site, camp attendance was stronger than ever the past two years. This year was certainly no exception attendance-wise.

As soon as we got to camp, it poured. We all started to dread the week because last year, it rained a ton, with the end result being lots of BUGS. Thankfully, we really lucked out and the bugs stayed away for the most part this year. This may be due to our intense bug spray preparations prior to each run (OFF Deep Woods, of course). I may or may not end up growing an extra limb due to such intense exposure to chemicals that week.

I ended up running almost 70 miles that week. That’s a lot, at least for me. Usually, it’s hard to count your miles at camp because a lot of the runs are slow. Sometimes, you end up having to walk with a camper, get lost, whatever. Things happen, and as counselors we have to adjust and forgo our usual training regimen in order to keep the kiddies supervised. That being said, I actually didn’t have to worry about my “training” so much because I wasn’t on a specific training schedule and I was assigned Group A. Prior to camp week, my all-time high for the summer was maybe 40 miles per week. Maybe. I was in for a treat.

The first day of camp for us is actually the day before campers arrive. We get to enjoy a day of good running (I ran my first 10-miler of the summer with Ringo, Marc, Dave, etc. at a decent pace), a dinner by ourselves, and a night to catch up with friends. We also don’t have to eat “camp food” until the next day. And my innards rejoiced.

The rest of the week went like this:

6AM wake-up, snacked in bed, stayed under the covers FREEZING (but happily frozen!) until 6:30AM. Met our groups for Run #1 of the day at 7AM, did our thing until it was time for breakfast. Annick and I hosted a Q&A session for our lady campers every day around 10:30, lunchtime rolled around after that, and then it was NAP TIME.

Around 3PM, Run #2 commenced. Dinner wasn’t too much later, and we had a “talk” scheduled for every night. Lights out around 10PM.

Even though I knew the food was bad, every day at every meal, I was excited to eat something. And every day, at every meal, I was disappointed. I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which the Canadensis staff surprisingly messed up. At least I wasn’t the only one unhappy with the food.

This year we had lots of free time sprinkled throughout our days. Even though we had to run twice that day (and in the A group, they were pretty good runs except for the time I got the whole group lost [sorry!]), there was plenty of time to relax and recharge for the next run. It’s a whole day dedicated to running, and I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I think a lot of us need that.

As usual, the kids were great. It’s funny how as a post-collegiate athlete, these kids always get me motivated to really take my training seriously for the upcoming school year. The camp is absolutely for the kids, of course, but it really makes me remember why I run in the first place and why I love the sport so much.

I guess it has something to do with this; walking amongst the common man. As a college athlete, I was surrounded by a different group of people. They were all hard workers, but they were gifted and were exceptional at their craft. They didn’t necessarily have to work that hard to be great, but they did and that made them even better. That kind of group can get a little competitive...anyone who has been a part of any college team knows what I’m talking about. We were all on the same team and wore the same jerseys, but when it comes down to it, running is an individual sport.

As far as the common man reference goes, what I mean is that being around people who are working really hard at what they love, but aren’t quite as talented as the college team I’m used to, is refreshing and definitely a reality check. I found that in college I would get into a groove, which is a good thing most of the time, but I would lose sight of why I was there in the first place. As a young runner in high school, it was so exciting to feel like I was on top most of the time, and that always motivated me. In college, that really wasn’t the case because I had to work really hard to stay afloat. Big fish/little pond to little fish/monster ocean. It took almost all of my years of college to feel like I was one of the top dogs again, but on a whole new level.

At camp and even at my running store, I feel lucky again, and in turn I feel excited/happy again (not that I wasn’t “happy” before, but you know what I mean). I feel like I did in high school; eager, ready to work again, and hungry to be better. I am blessed with a talent. It’d be a shame to waste it, and I’m looking forward to a new kind of grind, this time on my own without having to simply go along with what my team is doing. There is something to be said about people who train on their own, at any level, for anything. It takes work, and I respect them.

The high schoolers I saw that week, my counselor friends, my running store club. They deserve a whole lot of respect. They may not be breaking records, qualifying for this-and-that, but they’re putting in the work every day and working at something they really love. Sometimes it’s great to walk with the giants, but like I said, it’s easy to lose sight of the important things and simply follow along.

Every year, I come out of RunningWorks camp happy, albeit exhausted, but absolutely ready to work hard for something I love.

****
And now, I’m back to the grind. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun being so busy.

Shak addressing the masses. Stolen from runningworks.com

Quick Update

2010-08-14T17:40:00.002-04:00

After a week-long vacation with Mike and his family in Holden Beach, NC I am now getting ready for another week away...this time at RunningWorks camp.

I have been living out of a suitcase since the last week of July.

Third Grade

2010-08-05T10:35:00.002-04:00


A few of the hand-me-downs from my cousins.

It was the fall of 1995. I was turning 9. I had a ridiculous superstition that odd-numbered ages were unlucky and that I’d be doomed for the entire year. 9 was one of them.
I was assigned to Mr. B’s third grade classroom in September going into my 9th year.

Oh God. Not Mr. B.

I’d heard rumors about what went on in his classroom. If you got him mad, Mr. B would flip your desk over. He would berate you for asking to be excused to go to the bathroom (IN FRONT OF EVERYONE…I also had a problem with people knowing that I, in fact, used the bathroom like other humans.). He was the biggest, scariest, meanest man on the planet…and I was going to have to spend the next 9 months in his classroom.

As the smallest 3rd grader in Riley Avenue School, of course Mr. B seemed like a giant of a man. He reminded me of the Grinch in that he had a long face with a wrinkled forehead. Mr. B had tremendous widow’s peaks, which was a phenomenon I’d never experienced before for some reason. Widow’s peaks fascinated me (is he balding or is he just built that way??), and now whenever I see/hear about widow’s peaks, I think of Mr. B. Atop the widow’s peaks he had a head full of white hair and steely blue eyes. He was an intense looking individual and scared the living poop out of me.

I clearly did a lot of paying attention in class as I remember mainly what my teacher looked like and acted like, rather than the rudimentary math skills that I so severely lack today. For example, when we were learning geometry, I distinctly remember that I felt smart because we were drawing diagrams and using “equations”…losing sight to the fact that I’d actually have to remember these things someday and use them.

Ask me to calculate a simple percentage or the tip at a restaurant and my brain self destructs. I attribute this to my vivid imagination taking up most of my brain, leaving room for little else.

I am not suggesting that I’m dumb (or else maybe I’d be whiting wike dis). I just don’t like math as much and would prefer to spend my time on other things!

At first, I was relieved to find out that Mr. B’s fuse seemed to be a lot longer than I had earlier anticipated. He seemed like the “cool” teacher, and he was a man teacher! Most elementary schools are full of lady teachers, but my school boasted TWO man teachers, and both taught 3rd grade. Mr. Cummings was the fun-loving teacher everyone wanted and was across the hall from Mr. B. What a cruel joke.

The closest thing to the anxiety levels I’ve experienced as of late running track in college was the interclass multiplication contests held between Mr. B’s class and Mr. Cummings’ class on a weekly basis (always held in Mr. Cummings’ class). We would get up in a line and would be eliminated, like a spelling bee, until the last two men were standing. My heart flutters just thinking about me frantically trying to remember my 9 times tables (and my name).

Other than math contests, nothing got me more anxious than when Mr. B would butt heads with our resident class clown Brian. The class would be nervous, but mostly excited when Brian got Mr. B mad. We wanted to see heads roll and desks flip, but didn’t want Mr. B to turn his attention to us.

Mr. Bishop was surprisingly quick, almost catlike in the way he’d leap out of his own chair and be standing on top of Brian’s desk following any smart-aleck remark. Sometimes, to mix things up, he’d jump up on Stephen’s desk (who rarely did anything wrong and his desk was just part of the collateral damage), run/jump across the desks (like something you'd see from Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks) until he reached Brian’s at the back of the classroom.

Other times, Mr. Bishop would simply walk over to the desk, and dump out its entire contents, knocking pee-wee Brian over backwards onto the floor. The red in Mr. B’s outraged face heavily contrasted with his white hair.

One time, Brian provoked Mr. Bishop, who seemed to have teleported to Brian’s desk, proceeded to knock over said desk with a single swipe of his left arm, and Brian ultimately sprinted out of the classroom, out the door and into the playground outside. Good thing our classroom window faced the playgrounds so at least we could get in on the action. I don’t remember what happened after that, probably because there were a multitude of events like this and my brain is littered with bits of other useless information.

Mr. Meyers, the custodian, would regularly pop his head into the class to see if any more of Brian’s school papers/debris would need to be swept up that day.

********

I became self-aware as a 9 year old.

My Third-Grade-Self can be described as such: Holy Eyebrows!

But seriously, I was a furry little individual. My neighborhood friends fondly referred to me as “mustache lady”, which is always great for a 9-year-old’s budding self-esteem. “Mustache lady” was occasionally accompanied by a few other compliments such as “clown pants”. One day I decided that a strip of Scotch tape across my face would do the trick. Scotch tape does not compare to Sally Hansen, unfortunately. Crushed with disappointment, I resorted to constantly biting my upper lip, thinking the stretching of my skin just might hide the fact that I had more hairs on me than the boys. I must have looked very pensive most of the time as a pre-teen due to this beauty secret of mine.

Coupled with my au natural look, I refused to wear jeans. They reminded me of my preschool ballet class, which I hated with a burning passion. I hated that I had to wear pants over my stupid dance spandex, and I hated dancing to Madonna. Instead, I wore LEGGINGS. Leggings that were too big at the knees and the crotch came down to mid-thigh. The crotch was usually covered by a giant Earth Day T-shirt or something like that. Thing is, everyone wore ill-fitting leggings in the 90’s. You can ask any 20-something girl these days about them and watch them cringe when they recall this fashion disaster. L.A. Lights were very popular, and I of course was wearing the latest trend, only from K-Mart. I finished off the ensemble with either a shoelace-bow hair clip, tie-dye scrunchie or those little plastic bauble things I still don’t know how to tie properly.

If I was feeling particularly fancy, I’d wear one of my younger cousin’s hand-me-downs from Limited Too.

Not only had I become self aware at this age, but my fear of vomit was very strong during the 3rd grade. It seemed every other day someone threw up for one reason or another. Kaleb threw up on the desk because he ate a cupcake that he was allergic to (or maybe it was the frosting?). Dana threw up for no reason at the cool monkey bars (Riley was on a farm and at the edge of the property were the cool monkey bars, near the neighboring horse stables. Memories of Riley always carry the smell/feel of dry, crunchy grass and sandy dirt). I always had visions of kids vomiting like the girl from the Exorcist, and it made me nervous to be in school, especially in late fall/early winter. Vomit episodes always seemed to occur when we’d have to be stuck in the classroom due to cold weather. How convenient.

Luckily, I got out of Mr. B’s class alive.

Years later, when I was graduating from high school, I was back at Riley Avenue helping my mom disassemble a display case at the end of the year (she helped out with that sort of thing all the time). I ran into Mr. B, and hadn’t really seen him since elementary school.

I was shocked to find that he is about 5’ 8” in real life, was very calm, and that his widow’s peaks were nothing special.

Week[s] In Review: 7/19-7/31

2010-08-04T09:47:00.000-04:00

That John Mayer's got it right.

I’m aware that it’s August. The kid in me keeps remembering that summer is almost over and school’s about to start. However, I am on a perpetual summer vacation as I am not currently enrolled in school myself. I will be working at one, though. Doy.

Anyway, a few tasty highlights from the past 13 days.

I may be employed (even more employed?) starting at the end of the month. Now I can’t collect from the government L . Good news is I’ll be pretty busy this fall, and I like busy!

Bad news is that I might have a touch of low iron AGAIN. I ran around Haverford yesterday and almost had to walk, out of nowhere. Very ti-uwd. I pulled out my sticky bottle of ferrous sulfate elixir from the drawer and it’s now sitting on the counter, annoying my roommates.

I’d better start using whitening strips, or just plain old bleach, the get rid of the iron stains as soon as they appear. TMI, sorry peeps.

The week leading up to the 23rd went surprisingly fast. I was busy with running store work, coaching and running with my HS buddy (who is awesome. No really. She rules and I can’t wait to see how she runs this year.), and patiently waiting for Saturday morning to come.

On Saturday, MY MOM picked me up from my house (this is monumental. I always take public transit to/from anywhere further than Philadelphia…) with Beenie, fresh off of another travel softball tourney. We drove up to Scranton, PA (actually Clarks Summit, but who’s keeping track?) and met up with my dad and Julie at my Grandma’s house. I haven’t been to that house since I was in high school, so it’s been maybe 5-6 years, maybe more.

Friday and early Saturday we hung out at Timmy and Gav’s pool, visited with old friends and family. Beenie, Julie and I were chomping at the bit for 5PM to roll around, though….because….

WE HAD JOHN MAYER TICKETS!!!!

Beenie got 2 tickets to see John Mayer at Montage for her graduation gift, so we all agreed that Julie and Beenie should go together. However, Dad asked Susy (Julie’s godmother and one of my mom’s best friends) if she could find any extra tickets for her car dealership, and turned out she did! So, we had 4 tickets, 2 in a VIP box (which ended up being only 2 rows in front of the original seats. Ha!), and 2 in general seating.

So, Julie and Beenie took the VIP tickets, and I sat in general seating with my mom!

My mom loved Train (opening act). She knew every song, and it was hilarious watching her react as she recognized each song.

The concert was amazing. Train sounded great, just like a CD.

John.Mayer.was.so.good.

[I’ve been wanting to see John Mayer for like 10 years. My wish came true.]

The concert was like one giant daydream, with John Mayer playing your very own personal soundtrack. My mom didn't like what he had to say between songs, but I loved it.

I didn’t want the concert to end. Anything I say about the experience will just sound too clichéd…so I’m going to keep those thoughts to myself and keep singing John Mayer songs in my head.

What a great way to kick off a vacation.

------------

The next day we were on the road again, driving due East to Niantic, CT where my dad’s aunt lives. We go every year to visit with Aunt Ann, her daughter and her family.

We spend a week looking at this:

What a hard life.

We were blessed with beautiful weather each day we were there, so I spent a lot of time reading (No Country For Old Men) and sunning (aka cooking). We had big, delicious dinners every night and barely turned on the TV for the whole week. Life was (and is) good.

My vacation doesn’t stop there, though.

I usually take the train back to Philadelphia at this point, but I didn’t have to work the rest of the weekend…so I went back to Long Island with my family.

It was great being able to just tag along on a trip, not having to worry about anything.

I stayed on Long Island until Monday afternoon. And I didn’t want to leave.

Now I’m back in Ardmore, back to working, running, hanging out with Mike and Toula, with my batteries fully recharged. I’m looking ahead to Saturday morning, where I embark on another beach getaway, this time with Mike and his family to a North Carolina beach.

Life is good.

My Week in Review: 7/11-7/17 (a few days late)

2010-07-23T09:23:00.000-04:00

First things first. I missed Free Slurpee Day on Sunday, 7/11. What a bummer. To think I’d been looking forward to that ALL YEAR after passing the Bryn Mawr 7-11 driving back to Villanova from brutal Haverford track workouts, salivating at the idea of a GIANT Slurpee. Who cares what flavor (except banana, aka disgusting).

Anyway.

So this past week I basically started building up my mileage again. I decided that if I didn’t at least try to get back into good shape again, I’d be an idiot. By mileage, I mean running 6 days (sometimes 5?) straight for more than 25 minutes at a time. I’m not much of a mileage person, especially in the summer. I go from 7min mile pace during the academic year to a BLISTERING, LIGHTNING QUICK 8:30-9min mile pace in July. There is no transition period, my body just says NO. My body realizes that I shouldn’t be running in 90-plus degree heat, no matter what running goals I have.

I have also been using my gym membership. I’m actually really proud of this one! I don’t do anything crazy,

though. I only bench 360 lbs.

Just kidding. I meant 387 lbs.

But seriously, I’m working slowly and it sucks right now, but sometime in the next few weeks I’ll be back in decent enough shape.

Other than that, I’ve been logging some good hours in my running store, really getting to know the odds-n-ends of different shoes…and definitely how to deal with semi-difficult people/questions. I actually really look forward to going into Manayunk for work, working in a running-centered environment, and the smell of running shoes.

I actually really like the smell of new running shoes.

Other than working in the store and running, I avoided the outside world (and the urge to go to the mall to spend money I don’t have) and embarked on a quest to watch the entire Sopranos series. I’m currently on Season 3.

Thank God Mike’s parents lent me seasons 1 and 2 on DVD. Tony looks excellent on Brian’s HD TV. His breathing, however, not so good.

Another big thing of the week was an impromptu trip up to New York City. Mike, Kippy (who was in town the previous night) and I drove up to New York VERY early on Saturday morning so that I could go to a meeting. We were able to see Mike’s good friend Jon, who’s living the dream in Brooklyn.

[Of course, “the dream” is different for everyone. In this case, he’s working, living in the NYC metro area, and running competitively several years out of college.]

After my meeting, Mike remembered that we were in Manhattan and that the Carnegie Deli is ALSO in Manhattan. What a coincidence.

Whenever Mike and I go into the city, he wants to go to this deli, distance be damned. It’s located between the 50’s and 60’s at the Southwest corner of Central Park. Sometimes, he wants to go when it is most inconvenient, like from Penn Station (20 blocks away), or even the Armory (over 100 blocks away). Finally, I couldn’t use the distance/inconvenience excuse on this trip. And Mike rejoiced.

Mike has this fixation with delis, mostly Jewish delis with GIANT sandwiches. He usually gets a corned beef sandwich with cole slaw and Russian dressing on rye. It is usually delicious, and usually giant.

The Carnegie Deli was no exception. However, I didn’t really want to buy into the whole touristy going-to-a-restaurant-only-because-it’s-famous-even-if-the-food-stinks thing. The place was jammed, every square inch of the walls was covered in a “famous” person’s photo with an autograph, and people were sharing tables (I hate that) because it was SO CROWDED. The waiters were jerks, but apparently that’s their shtick.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think paying $23 for a sandwich, bumping elbows with New York tourist strangers, and dealing with wait staff that feels entitled to give you a hard time is that much fun.

Even though I wasn’t a happy camper, some giggle worthy things happened.

First of all, on every table at the Carnegie Deli you are greeted with a bowl of 6 inch long pickles, two different kinds. They were pickles, nothing special. However, I guess Jon hates pickles.

Mike decided to pressure Jon into eating pickles. Mike can be pretty persuasive. Jon tried a few, and decided he still hates pickles. At least we were adults about it…Jon quietly suffered through a pickle and Mike was delighted by Jon’s disgusted facial expressions.

Second, in our section of the sardine can of a restaurant, we decided to look around on the walls to see if we recognized any famous people. We spent a few minutes looking around at D-List movie stars, some sports people, whatever…and then we eventually gave up.

While waiting for our plates of meat to arrive, Mike turned around and looked at the photos directly behind us.

You’ll never guess who we saw.

NO, you really won’t. It was Marcus O’Sullivan, taken probably sometime in the 90’s after Millrose or something. Mike and I were pretty freaked out…like Jon said, Marcus is always watching!

----------------------------

In short, I’ve been hanging around the house, working part-time jobs, going on the occasional adventure and running. I can’t complain.

John Cusack

2010-07-21T09:55:00.001-04:00

I love John Cusack.

A handful of people in my life know that I really like John Cusack. I think it's something about the combination of the late 80’s/early 90’s themes in his best movies, or his dashing good looks...or I don’t know. It’s just a little ridiculous because he’s not particularly good looking or anything. It's something like what he says in High Fidelity. He isn’t outstanding and isn’t really amazing looking. He’s just good…but really good, not just good.

Anyway.

Please enjoy my very best imitation of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity by making lists of things!

Say Anything-

Duh.

If a scene if your movie becomes iconic like his trench coat/boombox scene, need I say more?

Serendipity-

A grown-up John Cusack, a love story that probably would never happen, New York City stuff, and David Gray music! Again, he doesn’t impress too much in the looks category, but you can’t help but wish that John Cusack was actively searching for you in a city of 8 million people (not that that’s creepy or anything).

Can you blame me for opening “Love in the Time of Cholera” hard covers and checking $1 bills for phone numbers?

But seriously, it’s fun to watch a story like that, where people aren’t like typical Hollywood and actually mess up, let things run their course and let what’s meant to be unfold.

Better Off Dead-

80’s!!!!!

Who doesn’t love the 80’s and all of the theatrical gems to come out of that decade? A young John Cusack is a great John Cusack, bad hair and all.

Anastasia (voice)-

So I found out John Cusack’s voice was used in this movie. No wonder I thought it was awesome in elementary school. This is not important.

1408-

Bad movie. Another Stephen King story ruined on the big screen (not the worst, though…Dreamcatcher takes the cake of the worst Stephen King film adaptations…not to mention I saw it on a high school first date [which we all know is bad news if you’re looking to see a good movie]). HOWEVER, John made it somewhat endearing.

He can’t help but be endearing, even when he is stuck in a hotel room engulfed in flames.

Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil-

A great murder-mystery, but campy at the same time. John seems to be the same type of character. The movie would stink without him because all of the Savannah accents would drive me too nuts to pay attention. I also like how he has to deal with crazy Southern people, witch doctors, whatnot. And he wears nice suits.

Con Air-

John Cusack made this movie worth watching to me. Such a ridiculous mishmash of terrible Nicholas Cage-isms. Blech. I think Nicholas Cage had a hard time letting go of the voice he had to use in Peggy Sue Got Married (i.e., the voice that most people assume when imitating Nick Cage), and this movie is no exception. Thankfully, John was there to save the day (in my mind at least).

2012 –

another movie with numbers. I did not see this one. I think it’s stupid, made for stupid Americans who misread the Mayan calendar. THE WORLD IS NOT ENDING IN 2012.

I am not going to give this movie any more respect.

High Fidelity-

This is probably my most favorite movie of all time. It has a lot of great things to say, it's more 90's than anything and like most reasons why people like certain songs/movies it conjures up good memories and feelings. I won’t get wishy-washy about it, but great things were happening in my life the first time I (seriously) watched this movie, so I like to watch it and remember the good times.

If I say more about this one, it will ruin it. I just like it a lot. SO what.

I am patiently waiting for the next High Fidelity to come out.

An Assortment of "Frings"

2010-07-15T09:44:00.000-04:00

So I haven't posted in a while. The heat has been awful. I've literally been hiding out in my house on my days off, so nothing interesting's been happening. I went outside for my run yesterday and got stung by a bee. I'm sure that bee wouldn't have found me had I been running in my air-conditioned gym. Anyway.

I thought it was important for me to share this picture:

So there's that. Beenie <3's Jacob.

I will be making an adventure on Saturday with Mike and friends, so that might end up on here. Big things are happening!

HEAT ADVISORY!!!!!

2010-07-08T13:31:00.000-04:00

Now that I am juggling part-time jobs, there are periods of time where I find myself on the couch, in my PJ’s, watching Regis & Kelly, wasting hours until it’s time to go to work. Today, I find myself doing just that. After a long weekend of travels and unbearable heat (100+ degrees!) I don’t feel so bad.

My roommate just recently installed wooden-slatted blinds. In order to avoid today’s continuation of yesterday’s triple-digit temps, I’m sitting in nearly complete darkness with the blinds down…these blinds keep the house pretty cool and take some of the load off of our ailing air conditioner (I can hear it wheezing from the living room).

Even though I haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to continue running competitively, I’ve still being going for runs, somewhat haphazardly, so that I won’t get fat. Every year, when I stop running spring track, I pack on about 10 pounds relatively quickly, mostly in my tummy and thighs. It happens so fast, I’m surprised I don’t get whiplash. I really need to avoid gaining this much weight this summer just in case I don’t want to run competitively anymore…since I won’t have the grueling track schedule to fall back on as my very own Biggest Loser regimen.

Also, I bought two new bathing suits yesterday. I need to stay in some sort of shape this summer, if anything, for fiscal reasons.

As I hide out in my living room cave, my to-do list is growing, but things are being put off “due to the heat”. Hopefully I’ll get things done so Mike and Brian don’t think I’m a lazy sack of poop (or at least confirm their beliefs).

AND NOW, my not-so-great disappearing act but actually MY BIGGEST PROJECT:

THE SMALL ROOM!!!!!

[the thing that belongs to me but never gets clean and lacks a purpose.]

So with my rent comes the lovely small room. It is a small room. It can pretty much fit a bed and that’s it.

It’s daunting, just like any other mess I’m supposed to clean up in the house. It’s really not a big deal, but in my mind it is monumental.

I stand in the doorway, size-up the multiple dust bunnies hanging around the corners of the room, an empty

Villanova suitcase, my printer that’s out of ink, a closet full of God-knows-what, and decide it’s too hot/too close to when I have to go to work/too much to handle to tackle the mess.

There goes another day of the small room being untouched.

Somewhere, the sheer fact that I’m writing this blog post is making my roommate want to blow his top.

Penn Relays 2010: My Quest To Meet Bill.

2010-07-07T22:16:00.000-04:00

Back in April, Christmas came.

Not actually Christmas, but the Penn Relays always feels like Christmas in a lot of ways. At Villanova, we look forward to it all year (even if you aren’t actually running a relay/race), family and friends come to visit for the long weekend, and you feel so empty after it’s over.

My freshman year, the girls team won the College DMR Championship of America. I was the alternate at the time and REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to run in a “good” relay someday. I had run Penn in high school, but it was a totally different experience entirely. In those days, my team from Riverhead ran in one of the zillions of 4x400m relays (essentially it was an assembly line). Due to political reasons, I never got into the High School Championship Mile race, although my seed time was just fine. I’M NOT BITTER! @#$%^&*().

Anyway, I was on a few relays here and there during college, but last year was the first time we really had a shot at winning a wheel in the 4x1500. Tennessee was pretty dominant in the DMR that year, so we didn’t really expect much…but the 4x1500 seemed to be shaping up nicely. We wound up 4^th/5^th (I forget), but any other year we would’ve broken the Penn Relays record (we were all in the 4:18-4:25 range) and in our eyes, it was a victory.

However, this past year we all had PR’s of 4:18 or better, so we thought THIS COULD BE IT.

Secretly (or not so secretly to some), a big reason for me wanting to win a Penn Relays event was that I really wanted to meet Bill Cosby. The Cos makes an appearance every year, usually greeting the victorious teams after headlining events like the College Championship of America Races (4x400, 4x800, DMR, 4x1500, etc).

I.Needed. To. Meet. Bill.

It was my LAST time that I’d be running at Penn for Villanova. It had to happen.

Since our DMR didn’t go as planned (and we really didn’t expect to win that one, either), Gina really tried to downplay our not-so-great performance on that Thursday night and pumped us up for a showdown with Tennessee and Oregon the next afternoon. She did a great job. After speaking with her, I was ready to kick some butt on Friday afternoon.

That evening, Mike and I went out to dinner (I ate STEAK and mashed taters. Yep.), I was able to wash my uniform and even sleep in my own bed the night before a major race. I was a very happy, albeit nervous, camper. I wasn’t even feeling that sore from my Thursday night effort (DMR, 800m leg in 2:09ish. Not my best showing, but not horrible, either).

Race Day:

12PM-3PM really is the ideal time to race. You can have a good breakfast and really get away with not having to deal with forcing a “lunch” down (my usual turkey+cheese+plain roll/bread…I am currently taking a turkey break until further notice). I was able to have my usual breakfast at home, pack lots of snacks (most importantly a banana [1 hour before warm-up, in case you wanted to know]), and hang out at home until I had to get my butt to Villanova. It’s enough time to get to your race comfortably, but it isn’t SO much time that you’re stuck spending hours idle in a hotel room, counting down the minutes until race time.

We waited around in a building adjacent to the track (actually part of the Palestra), and Gina officially informs me that I’m leading off.

Now, most people would’ve freaked out, but the lead off leg is MY FAVORITE. It makes your relay leg seem more normal, especially in a 4x1500, where you’re starting your leg is weird spots on the track and you can’t rely on looking at your normal cues to make your normal moves (i.e. “at the 600m mark, make this move” or whatever).

Most people are normally freaked out by the zillions of fans, cow bells, and not being able to stick to any sort of normal routine at all. Here are a few examples of “normal” pre-race things you can’t do prior to a daytime Penn Relays race:

Strides- You are running striders on the street outside of the stadium dodging school buses, cars, cops, spectators, etc. If you ask the officials if you’re allowed to run a few strides on the track while you are being held in the paddock, be prepared to have them laugh in your faces. And don’t expect an answer.

Bathrooms- You can’t use a normal bathroom, so if you have to GO when you’re in the paddock, well, “nonsense, poopiepants!”

Having time between events such as check-in time, reporting to the tent to receive lane assignments, and so on- At Penn, you have to guess what time the officials will want you in the paddock. This is almost ALWAYS a guess. You will be yelled at. Your whole team (four relay legs) needs to be there at once in order to enter the track. You will be running around like a chicken with her head cut off until you get to the paddock area, when things will come to a screeching halt.

ANYWAY, so all of this went down before our race, and since I was first, I was able to time things nicely without too much worry.

We wound up 2^nd by the slightest of margins. We were outkicked by Tennessee.

The girls were devastated. We wanted the victory so badly, but we gave it our absolute best shot. We did everything we were supposed to and then some. There was nothing to be ashamed about. Nevertheless, there was a pang of disappointment. It was bittersweet, leaving Franklin Field for the final time in my Villanova uniform.

Just as the disappointment was really sinking in, something amazing, fantastic, and serendipitous happened.

I met Bill Cosby.

It happened so fast. I was staggering off with the girls, and a big man approached us near the finish line, hands outstretched, and said,

“I’m sorry. You did a great job, girls.”

I looked up, froze, and grabbed both of his hands, and sort of said “thanks”…which probably sounded more like “huhuhuhfrankz!!!!!!!”.

I held Bill Cosby’s hands.

My mom witnessed the whole thing. She took the Bolt Bus down to watch me run, and she was seated right at the finish line. My mom says that I was the happiest of the four girls in the relay.

So there you have it. Even though we didn’t win, I was SO HAPPY. I got to run in a competitive relay at Penn, I gave it my best, we ALMOST won, and best of all, I finally got to meet Bill Cosby (even though it was for maybe 3 seconds).