Like a Hurricane

Yesterday morning, when the DC area was feeling the wrath of tropical storm Hanna and while most of you were probably cozy in your beds as the ran drops pelted your windows, I was out at Hains Point at 7:45 am, getting ready for a six mile run. Jim and Colin (the coaches) had emailed us at 5:30pm on Friday with the subject line "TRAINING IS ON FOR SEPTEMBER 6th" in those huge, screaming capital letters. So, when the alarm on my cell phone went off at 7:00 am on Saturday morning, I left my comfy bed, changed reluctantly into spandex running pants, a technical tee (that's supposed to wick water like sweat away from your body) and laced up my running shoes.

By the time Turk and I got out there, the rain and the wind hadn't picked up speed yet, so the warm up lap wasn't terrible. However, by mile 4, the wind and the rain were in an unforgiving mood and we were both soaked. My clothes were heavier and my sneakers squished with every step and at times my right foot went numb but I made it. And the rain, while annoying at times, did help keep me cool.

When we were about half a mile away from our goal, Turk decided she wanted to pick up the pace and sprinted ahead of me (with my blessing). I would like to point out her comments on this blog about it being okay for me to leave HER when I want to sprint ahead. HAH. Despite her doubts, it turns out that she is the fast one :)

As soon as we got to the car, I realized I hadn't brought any towels so we had no choice but to just plop ourselves onto my bare seats, which helped soak up some of the rain. This was fine, except I forgot about my wet seats when I headed out in my jeans later that night and ended up walking around Georgetown with a wet behind.

I'm sure there are a lot of things in life that feel great but terrible at the same time but I don't think anything felt as bad (yet as good) as peeling off my soaking wet, sweaty running pants, the running shirt, my shoes and socks and worst of all (but best of all) the two sports bras I had on.

As cheesy as this sounds, I was thinking of two things that kept me going any time I wanted to stop:
1) John McCain and all his POW buddies and the torture they experienced (this is NOT an endorsement, though)
2) The cancer patients and their friends and family as they go through chemo treatments. It SUCKS and I'm sure any of them would much rather run 6 miles through the rain than deal with months and years of cancer. In fact, I am CERTAIN that if you ask anyone who has watched a family member or a friend battle leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, Hodgkins or ANY form of cancer, they would much rather get up at 5AM any day of the week, under any circumstances, to run 6 miles if it meant that their loved one didn't have to go through the pain of cancer treatments.

Thanks to everyone's donations, I'm just under $300, which leaves me with $3,433 left to go! If you want to contribute, now is a great time!

Also, and this is very important - if you know anyone who you think would want to donate to this great cause, please forward along my emails, the link to my blog or even just the fund raising site. When I was fundraising last year, MANY of my donations came from people who weren't on my email list - friends and family members of my friends and coworkers who have been affected by blood cancer.

My fundraising site: http://pages.teamintraining.org/nca/wdw09/adin

Thanks for all your love and support everyone - thanks for the donations and the text messages asking about training and the emails that you send! It really means a lot!

My Second Donor (and crazy teammate)

My second donation comes from my running buddy, Turk! Turk completed her first triathlon a couple months ago and mentioned she might be interested in doing a full marathon. Well, once I signed up for Team in Training, I decided to recruit her to join with me via gchat. The conversation started at 1:13pm and by 1:22pm she was ready to sign up. It started like this:

Andrea: did you need something?

Me: do you still want to train for a marathon?

Andrea: maybe a half marathon

baby steps


And within minutes, I had convinced her to do the full marathon! Baby steps, shmaby steps. We just did our first team run together on Saturday and like I said in a previous post, it was a success - meaning she didn't want to kill me after waking up ridiculously early on a Saturday or getting lost several times in that godforsaken state known as Virginia.

So, Turk is my hero. Not only for making a donation but for going through all of this with me, step by step!

First Team Run

This morning, we had our first (of many) team runs. I had to be up at 6:45AM in order to be ready in time for Turk to pick me up.

Side Note: I convinced my friend Turk (Andrea) to run the marathon with me. It took about 3 minutes and she said yes and filled out the paperwork. I was amazed. I'm always trying to convince people to do things with me (go to a Cowboys game in Dallas, go skydiving, watch Buffy) and it's never been this easy! In about a couple months when we're logging long miles, she will most likely want to kill me.

So, trying to be a responsible adult, I went to bed early on Friday night. I set the alarm on my cell phone and set it on my nightstand right near my head and fell asleep to the movie, Enchanted as it played in the background. At 3:07 AM, my phone went off, alerting me to a text message. At first, I thought it was already 6:45 and time to wake up. Very soon after, I realized it was a text. Who would be texting me at 3:00 in the morning? I immediately assumed it was a drunk text from my friend, Heather. I checked the message before calling to yell at her only to find that it was Barack Obama (or his campaign but I would like to think Barack was texting me himself) informing me that he had chosen Joe Biden to be his running mate. UGH. So, not only was I awake but Obama chose the one person I was hoping he wouldn't.

So, obviously, not a great start to my morning. Add that to the fact that I had dropped a beam from my cubicle on my foot the day before (don't ask) and I was NOT ready for a run. Luckily, the first day of training was a light day. We just did 30 minutes on a track at Washington and Lee High School in Arlington and then spent the rest of the morning learning about hydration, common injuries and other running equipment.

All in all it was a success. Turk still seems happy that she decided to take this on and my foot did not fall off. Yeay!

Also, there's been a skirt movement in the running world over the last couple of years. I heard about it last year while I was training and scoffed at the idea of doing anything athletic in a mini skirt (never mind the fact that I played field hockey in high school). However, I think I might give it a shot. I mean, I was blessed with nice legs for a reason, right? Might as well show 'em off any chance I get :)

I will report on the benefits (or drawbacks) of running in a skirt as soon as I do a test run.

Also, if you've made it to the end of this post and you want to donate, you can do it here: http://pages.teamintraining.org/nca/wdw09/adin

My First Donor

So, before I sent out a mass email to everyone, I included a link on my gmail as well as on my Facebook page asking someone to be my first donor. It ended up being Mr. Juan Garcia - my hero for the day!!

I met Juan while we were both working at for the DC government (I still do) and we bonded over many early morning meetings, our love of the mac & cheese from Noodles & Co. and a couple fun car rides. Ever since then, he's been my on-again, off-again gay boyfriend. We usually break up (by post-it notes) when he insults my driving skills.

here I go again...

So, it’s been over a year since I completed my first marathon in San Diego, California. After months and months of waking up at the crack of dawn in freezing cold weather, feeling aches and pains in muscles I didn’t even know I had, having my sports bras slice through my body numerous times and losing a few toe nails, I decided I was ready to do it again.

I received an email from Colin and Jim, saying that they were going to be coaching again for the winter season. Colin and Jim, who are crazier than I am because they both just finished the Ironman triathlon in Lake Placid (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, 26.2 mile run in one day), are in just one word: awesome. I wouldn’t have made it across the finish line if it wasn’t for their encouragement, their support, and for Colin holding his cell phone up to my ear and running beside me while it blasted Bon Jovi’s “Livin on a Prayer” during mile 20 of the marathon. So, their email planted a seed in my mind. About 3 days later, I woke up on a Sunday morning and within 2 minutes had talked myself into signing up again.

Now, I haven’t really been running much. Ok, I haven’t been running at all. So this whole endeavor should be interesting. And it seems that a lot of the knowledge I gained the first time around fell out of my head, along with some of my common sense. I say this because yesterday was my first day of training. We were supposed to run 3 miles on our own to get ready for a longer run at the end of the week. I couldn’t wake up early to run before work (which would have been the smart thing to do) so I decided to go after work. In 87 degree heat. With nothing but 2 diet cokes in my system. In really old running shoes that I should have replaced after the last marathon. Through a heavily wooded, isolated trail, by myself.

I think I ran about 1 mile before I started to feel like everything I ate that day was about to come right back up. I started walking because I wanted to find the trail I had planned on running to, just to find out where it is. The trail is called the Glover-Archibold trail that goes from Van Ness to the banks of the Potomac River. I found the unmarked trail and followed it into the woods. The trodden path was narrow and slightly muddy, covered over by dry, fallen leaves. Large tree roots crossed over, jutting out unexpectedly at every other step. I was barely a quarter of a mile in when I decided that it would not be the best idea to run this alone, without a cell phone when it seemed like my body was near dehydration. Defeated, I turned around and walked/ran back to my apartment. I kept trying to motivate myself to keep running; when my iPod started playing Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” I tried to imagine that every time he said “Go on, girl” he was encouraging me to run. Needless to say, it wasn’t very helpful. Even thinking about the fact that Oprah ran her marathon over an hour faster than I ran mine didn’t motivate me.

It’s going to be a loooooong season.

There is a website for everything!

I have always loved the coupling of the colors teal and brown. Now that I have the chance to redecorate my bedroom, I'm finally able to use these colors as a base.

As I was searching for various duvet covers online, I came across a website devoted to all things brown and blue!!

The Chocolate Blues has a great listing of things from comforters and duvet covers to plates and dishes to furniture.

What I really, really want is this but it can only be found in a twin size :(

Alas, the search continues....

My December

The list of CDs that I can listen to the whole way through is a very short one. I’m not talking about “greatest hits” or “best of” CDs either – I’m talking about studio albums. For years, the list did not change. It consisted of “Janet” by Janet Jackson, “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, and “Nevermind” by Nirvana.

While these were amazing albums and I still listen to them, I could never really relate to them. “Thriller” and “Janet” both came out when I was young and while I enjoyed the music and understood the content, I could never really relate to most of the songs. I remember blushing and almost cringing when I would hear “Any time, Any Place!”
And when “Nevermind” came out, I was 9 years old. I was 12 when I actually started listening to it and while I enjoyed the music, couldn’t really understand the angst.

It’s been a while since I’ve come across an album by an artist that is truly an album – a collection of songs related to one another. And, with the advent of applications like Napster and iTunes it’s possible for people to purchase single songs. We can now pick and choose which pieces of an album we want. For the most part, this has been very convenient since most mainstream albums that come out today are a loose collection of songs, most of which are meant to be radio hits.

However, I’ve recently discovered two albums by the same artist that I can listen to the whole way through and for the first time, they are albums that I can completely relate to.

Back in 2004, Kelly Clarkson released “Breakaway.” I was able to relate to most, if not all of the songs on that CD. I had just experienced a terrible breakup, had just graduated from college and was on my own for the first time – trying to figure out what my niche was in the world. I remember loading that CD up onto my iPod and listening to every song, over and over again on the metro and while I was running. I remember thinking “oh my God! She knows exactly how I feel!”

And now, Ms. Clarkson has once again produced an album of music that I can relate to. Unlike “Breakaway” her new album, “My December” was completely written by her. And most of the songs, while ridden with anger and sadness (she’s writing about a boy who broke her heart) are ones that I can completely relate to. Almost every single feeling she describes in the lyrics are feelings that I am experiencing now.

There is something very comforting about hearing my very thoughts expressed by someone else – knowing that while I feel completely alone, my experience is a shared one and that things WILL get better.