The marathon: Trust not control

My theory on marathons:
       Going into my second trail marathon I have decided the way to go is to trust not control. Out on the trail there is no control of your environment. With the blazes, ribbons, aid stations and gear you may think you have some control of the journey not to mention the outcome. But anything can happen out there. No matter what you do, what you carry with you, how much training you have there can still be that rock that trips you, that nice weather that suddenly changes for the worse or the steep hill you end up sliding down rather than walking/running. Depending on the time of year and the recent weather you can have water crossings that are daunting, muddy pits you must push through,overwhelming heat, ice, snow, bugs, poison ivy, big logs to climb over and a hundred other little things.
    I have trained for this. I have been working towards this pretty much since my first marathon was over in August. I feel confident I have the gear I need, good shoes, have hydrated enough, carb loaded enough, gotten enough rest this week. But even with all that I will have to trust the process because I do not know what will happen out on that trial tomorrow. I simply need to know in my heart that I will be enough to carry on to the finish, that I am tough enough to withstand any issues or problems, that I have the mental stamina to keep myself pushing on when all I want to do is just sit down.
   I look forward to it because I believe in myself. I have accomplished plenty of scary things in the last year or so and I believe I can face more without caving in. Especially when I have so many friends out there doing it with me and can look forward to friendly faces out on the course and at the finish line.

My Top 10 List for the Trail Marathon:

1. Don't think of how far you have to go but how far you have already traveled

2. Take the distance in little bites....."I will run to the next aid station", "I will go to the top of the next hill", "I only have a 10K left".

3. Remember to look a bit ahead as well as down so you are prepared for what is next

4. Walk up all the big, steep hills. It will save your legs for the long distance instead of wasting it all running up a hill you probably can walk up just as fast.

5. When tired try to think of the quiet of the woods, distract by listening to the birds sing, the wind in the trees, the sound of water trickling down a creek bed.

6. When you need to rest, rest. Do not stop but slow down, have a snack, get a few deep breaths and then continue on.

7. Do NOT focus on time. There is just no way to have a perfect pace on a trail so just focus on keeping going, passing the next obstacle, keeping up your energy, stamina and positive thoughts.

8. Do what you have to do to get through it and do not think or worry about the other racers.

9. Near the end I start thinking about all the food I am going to get to eat when I finish, how it is going to be so great to celebrate with my friends, how pretty the medal will be, how proud my family will be, how I can hold my head up higher through accomplishing this.

10. Finish as strong as you can. Even if you are dead tired, just push a tiny bit more at the finish line and be filled with pride you did this hard thing and carried it through.

 

GO FOR IT!

Hazler-Victor Birthday Palooza

The Hazler-Victor b-day party at the Leftover Turkey Trail Run. WOW! Look at all these people coming to their party? Boy are we popular!!

 

 So for their B-day weekend the Hazler-Victor duo decided to go up to the Leftover Turkey Trail Run at Eagle Creek State Park. Cue marathon flashbacks....GO!  

We came armed with warm clothes, snacks, cameras, picture phones, garmins, etc.....just a little jaunt through the woods! And at the end we got beer. I decided to forgo the running part and just skip right to the party...after taking pictures and cheering for my friends! Go go go!

 Erin is laughing about the yellow gloves that Debbie brought...putting on the peer pressure to leave them behind. Poor Debbie was FREEZING! Ah though..peer pressure won. They were some pretty awesomely huge yellow gloves though. :-)

OH and for those of you worried..she had another pair of gloves to wear. Debbie always comes prepped for the cold!

 Here are many pictures of my poor freezing friends pre-race. I was happy to be dressed in my regular clothes and jacket yesterday. It was really cold. I was hoping this was not a pre-curser to Tecumseh weather. If it was I was coming to the race with a heater on my back.

 Debbie doing her calisthenics while waiting for the race to start. Rachel and Eugene waiting too. I loved Rachel's candy cane striped socks!

 IS THE RACE STARTING?? IS IT? IS IT? DO WE GET TO RUN NOW AND WARM UP?

...never mind.....false alarm.......

come on come on come on~

 YAY they are heading to the start line! I am following them trying to get a few pictures of them. I had unfortunately not brought good replacement batteries for the camera so oooooops. I tried to put the "new" batteries in it and it died. BUMMER.

But I got a few good pictures and the rest was absconded from Christy Victor's lot. Thanks Christy!!
 


 It was time to start....almost...first the 1 mile group runners had to start then five minutes after that the 5K and 10K runners got to start. Matthew from Planet Adventure made his announcements and talked about the course. Matthew is a dear...he always gives me a nice hug and it is fun because when I go to Planet Adventure events they know me so it is cool to have people say "Hi Heather" on the microphone and stuff. :-) 

 I got one picture of Gino running up this massive hill. Unfortunately by the time I got ready to take the pictures of the ladies my camera ran out of batteries RIGHT THEN.....such luck eh?

 Here was Aaron Victor coming up the hill too. This was actually a good place for me to sit as the runners coming up this hill needed encouragement so I would clap and yell and say Hey Runners!! Doing a great job! And some of them said "You are just what we need here!"  I love encouraging people especially on gnarly hills like this. IT is great to look up and see someone cheering you on up the hill. Even though I didn't get a picture of the girls at least I got to cheer them up the hill.

The ladies are coming through into our power arch. SCREW the AWARDS...it was time to show props to our tired runners. 

They came through with their usual flair. GREAT JOB! Not bad time for how hard the course was. Cue more marathon flashbacks......

ha ha just kidding.

MAN look at Debbie flying through that finish line! She looks as good at the end of the race as she looked at the beginning.

SO I was happy to be there to celebrate with my friends and encourage them into the finish line. And beer...fun...awesomeness...and a chance to burn off some of our holiday calories. Well THEY did. I just added some to mine. At least I ran that morning!  And today. JUST LOVE MY FRIENDS! They are awesomeness in a package of more awesomeness tied with a ribbon of awe......you know what I mean.

Tecumseh Run Part Two

 Today could be summed up in two phrases:

Just because I am paranoid about roots doesn't mean they are NOT out to get me.

also....there is just NO bad time to take a picture...as long as you are not racing .

 My friend Melanie and I, along with the speedy Craig Kinney, went out to do the last training run before the Tecumseh Marathon next Saturday. We started at the Yellowwood forest office and took off down the path with the folks from Indiana Trail Runners--ITR--who are a great bunch of folks who are really into fun on trails all over Indiana. You can find them at indianatrailrunning.com. Terry, our big brother and guide, was concerned we stay together since he *knew* we would probably take awhile. I told Melanie that we would stick together and we did. And it was great! We found this pond and asked this other runner, Ted, to take a picture of us. The other runners were kind of amused by our "touristy" thing but how often do we get to run in the woods on a beautiful day? We have to commemorate it! Of course next Saturday all bets are off and I am going to go as fast and steady as I can. No pictures then!           IT did seem at first like every.single.root.in.the.world was out to trip me up. I had to say to myself the mantra (pick up your feet, pick up your feet, pick up your feet. Then it was better and I was able to make progress.            

This is me doing some kind of supergirl pose...ha ha...i think I was feeling pretty confident here. Probably because I had NOT gone head over heels like I thought I was going to do. This was at mile 11 of the 13ish run. We got to know some new people including one girl from Fishers and a guy from Avon. (I wanted to tell him about the cancelled DINO race there...see if he had been bummed out about it. Maybe finally get the question answered. WHY??)

 The guy I am with here at the finish of the run is Terry Fletcher who organizes the ITR runs. He is such a nice guy and very good at keeping everyone together and marking the course. He always has really good snacks at the end too!

Tecumseh is coming up in a week. I am feeling more confident now and getting excited about my second marathon EVER. It is going to be an epic run I can already tell. LOVE racing!! LOVE trails! Love my friends!.....hate roots who trip me.

John Denver - Looking For Space

Here is a song that I think about a lot when I am running out in the woods. John Denver to me means woods, trails, wilderness. He was the first guy I knew as a kid who was just "the outdoors". And when my family took an amazing trip to Oregon when I was 12 we listened to his tape over and over. So that typifies a very important trip to me that played an integral part in my childhood.

First Look at Tecumseh

 Today was my first time out on the actual course of the Tecumseh marathon which will be my second marathon of my life. I had been a little nervous because I had not been on the trail much at all. Before my first trail marathon I had already been out to that trail on at least two occasions: for a nighttime half-marathon and a 15K trail race with DINO--do indiana off road.

 So we were able to meet the ITR group (which stand for Indiana Trail Runners) which are a GREAT group of people and we got to piggyback on their training run. I am so glad I went too because we got lost twice so I now know a couple of tricky places to look out for. Of course during the race it will be clearly marked--DINO is good about that. I got to meet a new friend from the run who is a member of ITR and I invited her to attend one of the BARA group runs. Hopefully she will show up. She was very nice.

 The woods were lovely! Although it was cold it was sunny and that is a very nice thing for a long run out in the woods. KC and I ran together for most of the run. I had lost everyone else when we got lost the first time. So this is how we got lost the first time: We were distracted by our first hunter spotting that we totally missed the turn and kept going down this big long stretch of leaf covered path. We noticed after a bit NO WHITE RECTANGLES so we stopped, looked at the map and turned around.

 Soooo.....getting back to the hunters:
It turns out this was the first day that deer hunters were allowed to have firearms so they were out there in force. That was a very bizarre thing to me. I had no experience with hunting. I had been a city girl most of my life whether Kansas City or Chicago and I did not understand hunting at all. I knew people did it and it involved things like camouflage and big rifles but other than that I was clueless. So I was told to wear orange and everyone at BARA said WEAR ORANGE so that is what I did. Oh thank you thank you thank you good friends for making sure i did not look like a deer because being in those woods today with guys with rifles and BOOM BOOM all around me was a new experience. And mostly not a pleasant one. It doesn't mean I will not do trails at that time again but, like everything, I have learned about it now and will definitely respect the rules! And probably go out and get some very bright orange shirt from the running store.

 These white rectangles were the blazes that I followed while I ran through the woods. I never knew the meaning of a "trail-blazer" for real but now I know. It is someone who goes ahead and marks the trail. I guess that is why they say that when someone leads some venture in a new direction they are a trail blazer. Ahhh....learn something new every day!

 I loved coming upon this little bridge. It was so pretty and unexpected in the middle of the woods. I could imagine it to be very lovely with some frost on it. Today with the sunshine on it I just had to take a picture even though I was running behind on time.




I realized about halfway through the run though that I better not do this kind of thing after a 30+ mile week of running. So from now until the actual marathon I am going to do one more long run and then try to truly taper. Rest, rest, rest. And probably a bit of cross-training while I do it.

Sailing in Leaves
A wonder watching the trees like masts 
of wooden ships sailing through
these vast golden oceans of leaves.
They plot the course; move with the stars; guide the way through sweet smelling-leaf smelling-cold blooming flowers of red,yellow, tan, golden waves.
The last gasp of the woods 
before all is white, grey, cold like marble
and the ground sleeps and dreams of spring.

H.Rose 

 Here was a little bridge of what looked like railroad ties.

Here was this weird little bridge that went straight DOWN and UP. All I could think of that if it is a bit slippery I am going to go down on the leaves because that will be a slippy slide to injury land.  So this adventure in the woods was good for me. It helped me see the trail in a more realistic way. I got to see the great Indian Hill. WOW!!!! and..at the end of it all we got beer, ham sandwiches, brownies, peanut brittle.....YUM!  As I told my friends around mile 12 or 13 of a long trail run all I can think of is food..and coffee...and food...and coffee and my couch.







Successful day! Beautiful day! Go go Adventure!!!
Ready to take the day!

 And so now here comes the big question. How to add a little mark to my 26.2 tattoo to show I have done more than ONE marathon?? I am thinking little trees.......




or little birds............HERE WE GO TECUMSEH!!!!!!!

50K Training

      So I made out my schedule for my two 50K's I am doing in 2013 and then I stopped after I printed them out and said WHY? am I doing two 50K's in one year? I haven't even finished two marathons in one year and I am already doing ultra training? I am sure hoping that this is not a very big mistake. But at least I am doing this with some other friends so it is not just me out there all by myself. That would be even more overwhelming.
     

So I start to think this is not that bad. I have run one 26.2 trail race and a couple of 13.1 trail races so I can do 31 miles right? right? Then I see quotes like this and go Oh My God.

"It hurts up to a point and then..it doesn't get any worse." Doesn't get any worse? That mean that it also doesn't get any better. That's the logic to THAT. But also I have learned something since I started distance running and that is that you do it for the challenge. Whether that challenge is physical, mental, emotional....that is what makes it special. Because when you are able to meet and pass the challenge then you can hold your head up a little higher and can feel like you can meet more challenges and go from there.








So according to this training schedule I have made out I have two months off in the next year where I am NOT training...January and June. So one month in the winter I have no training schedule to follow and one month in the summer I have no training schedule to follow. I think I feel more secure when I have some kind of a schedule. It feels like if I follow this I can do it. Otherwise I am not as sure. But this is a new frontier for me and I have other people to take the trip with me so I am not alone. Never truly alone.

So here is the profile of elevation for the Flatrock race. It proves without a doubt that not ALL of Kansas is flat. There are hills and rocks and stuff and it is probably going to be the hardest thing I have ever done but also the most rewarding thing I have ever done.

Paynetown in November

 I went for a terrific run this morning out at Paynetown along Pate Hollow trail. There were all my wonderful friends there too having a "trailgate" party with pancakes, hash browns, eggs, ham, sweets and more! Evan and Claire Mickey even brought out a griddle to make fresh food. Melanie brought on honest-to-god HAM even! I brought strawberries and cinnamon swirl bread. There were bananas too and hot coffee from SOMA. I could go on and on. See what I was thinking about while I ran?? food food food food food. So...to distract myself from food i decided to take a few pictures.

 Above is Lake Monroe as seen from the trail. The water looks so lovely. I'll bet it's cold! I was pretty sore at this time as well. I had been running a lot this week including a 15K trail race yesterday with a tough course. So this first lap I walked some, jogged some, stopped to take pictures. In general just tried to chill while I warmed up  my muscles and got that synovial fluid flowing. To the right is some interesting moss i found that was shaped like stars. Thought it was neat.

 I love capturing the sun in the trees. It was such a pretty day today out there. Perfect temperature, sunshine....just lovely. Here is unfortunately when I started to get lost however. I turned left when I should have gone right and followed a road a little further than I should have and ended up at some little power station with a dumpy old shed overlooking the highway. So I turned around and found the trail again. It added on about a mile to my length.

Some more sun in trees picture

 The lake was so pretty!

Here is where I started to occupy my mind with stand up comedy routines, specifically Louis C.K. who I think is HILARIOUS! He is one of the stand up comics I use on my runs when I am flagging. It gets me to laughing and distracts me from draggy legs.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it's queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year

He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there's been some mistake
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake

The woods are lovely dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.

Louis C.K. - Being Broke

http://youtu.be/J0rSXjVuJVg

Last DINO of the season

Chris and Winski the wonder dog at the finish line

  Today was our last DINO 15K of the series. We ran at McCormick's Creek State Park which is one of our "local" parks so it was nice for once not to have to truck up to Indy or farther. It was an amazing day weather-wise. You could not ASK for better weather to run through the woods.
   There were a pretty good amount of people in attendance. I had at least 3 women come up to me saying "Weren't you at Knobstone?" I said yes. One of the said "man you just flew by us at the race and we never saw you again."  Another woman had seen me at many DINO events. It is so great to get to know more and more runners/racers around the state. It's a neat feeling when you are recognized by someone who lives in Carmel or Fishers or Fort Wayne. Because we all leave our towns to be in the woods!

 The woods were beautiful. Here is obviously an earlier picture of the McCormick's Creek woods but accept for the loss of green leaves it about sums it up. Lots of good trail, some good rocky parts.

Oh and these stairs........have I mentioned the stairs?? Well these are the 150 approx. count staircases which we had to go up not once but twice. AND also go down not once but twice. OY that last time up those stairs was like a death march. But at the top of the first time we went up were Erin Hazler and Chris Banul cheering and urging us on. YAY!!!   

                
       Here is our post-race food at the Qdoba DINO races! Oh man how great it is when you finish a race through the woods and get back to rice, beans, meat and chips. And cheese! MMMMMMMMM.  It's so far hands down the best race food...unless you count the PA Potatoes from Planet Adventure races then those are mighty awesome too.

The trail was nice, the weather was great, the food was fantastic, the cheering section was amazing and all the runners I met during the race and afterwards were in great moods and happy to take part. I had three friends take awards today:  Miranda Addonizio took 3rd in her age group, Alicia Rich took 3rd female overall and Christy Victor got the overall age group win and got a plaque.                                                                                         

Here are the happy campers with our medals being cute. Christy Victor is a great photographer she can even make me look good!!

So here are Christy and me with our cool plaques..hers for age group winner and me for 3rd place overall female. I also got a cool singlet that says 2012 Champion. I will try not to let it go to my head. Ha!


The Mercury guy I mentioned in an earlier blog post was there again and we found out his name is Lucas. He always wears the same yellow singlet. Must be  his lucky shirt or something. I am beginning to see a lot of people I know as I run/race more. It is kind of like a big extended family. All in all a fantastic end to a fantastic series!!
      The only bittersweet thing is that our dear friend Rebecca Petrush was not able to share the experience with us but I sure had her in mind when I was cruising the trails and remembering October 6th when Rebecca came out with 5 of us to McCreek at the last minute because the DINO at Avon was cancelled and we forded the streams up to our knees, laughed and had a great time. You are with us definitely in spirit Rebecca!! You and trail running just go together like peanut butter and jelly. Hope we get a chance to run with you again sometime. :-)

Also here are the Hazlers and their absolutely-not-spoiled puppies Winski and Buddy. AWWW!!! It was so awesome of them to come out just to be with us and cheer us on and take photos of us and generally enjoy the day....like singing Macho Man with me at the finish line like a halftime show.