Category Archives: Teaching

100 miles? What do you think??

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Can I just say, the best thing to do after a 50 mile race is to spend a week with your family and boyfriend doing nothing other than eating, sleeping, and relaxing. We spent the week in Minnesota and although it is the land of 10,000 lakes, I really only got to see two of them.

Oh, and this little river called the Mississippi.

We celebrated Tony’s birthday with cake and a ball game. The lady from the bakery must’ve thought Tony was turning 8, and not 28. Tony was delighted with the decorations though.

There is nothing better than floating on a lake sipping beers. They didn’t make the picture, but they were there.

Running over these last two week since the TRT50 has been pretty good. Although I haven’t been sore, I’ve been taking it easy because you never know what little surprises your body has in store for you after 50 miles in the mountains. I’ve done a few short (2-5 miles) runs on the treadmill, a nice and easy 9.5 miler on rolling hills, and a 6 mile, 2,000ft elevation run/hike today which felt great. I don’t want to push it too much, but I am easing back into training again because I’m considering running a 100 miler.

The Rio Del Lago 100 miler is taking place October 6th this year. I’m 50% sure I’m gonna do it. I know, a 100 mile race isn’t something you can go into half-hearted, but I haven’t quite decided if I’ve got the cajones yet. Fortunately, I can keep plodding along with training and see how I feel in a month. If I manage to get some 50K races in and some high mileage weeks, I might just give it a go and see what happens.

Meanwhile, I’m gonna enjoy these last few weeks of freedom before going back to high school. While high school sucked for me the first time, maybe it’ll be easier 10 years later. I just have to make sure I can play the part of mature adult/teacher/authority figure and don’t regress into an insecure teenage girl. Those years are over!

So 100 mile race or not, this fall will sure be interesting.

I will leave you with a picture explaining why I was not sore after the TRT50 and why it took me almost 15 hours.

Can’t think of a more beautiful place to be walking :)

Ok with Good Enough

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If you know me personally, you know that I can be stubborn and impulsive. I have extreme emotions and opinions, and have trouble finding a gray area. There are two problems with this: I am not consistent, and I am not satisfied easily.

My “issues” have affected my life in several ways. One has been my career, or lack thereof. I have always been a smart and hardworking person, but it took me 8 years to graduate college. Not because it was hard, but because I lacked motivation and conviction about what I wanted to study. If I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to major in something, I would take my time until I felt that passion. Even when I settled on pursuing an English degree, it was a struggle to complete because I had moments where I wasn’t completely satisfied with what I was doing.

After I graduated, I cycled through various career options. I reaaaally wanted to be a physical therapist. I new that that was my destiny. But then when I pursued that path tentatively, I found things that didn’t sound so perfect about it after all. The next “perfect” career was a dietitian. And a trainer. And so on and so forth.

As I am approaching this upcoming school year (in which I’ll be pursuing a teaching credential), I’ve questioned several times whether this is the career path for me. And with a lot of soul searching and a lot of guidance from Wise Tony, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s OK if teaching is not My Destiny. It can be a great and challenging job that I may or may not enjoy. But it’ll pay the bills (ha! right), and it is worth following through on something even though it may not be perfect and I may not be 100% satisfied.

What does this have to do with running?

Not much. But as I was on my run today, the 15 miler that turned in to 6, I’ve come to the conclusion that something isn’t vibing with my running lately. And that’s OK. I may not be as prepared as is ideal for my upcoming 50 miler, but what I’ve done is good enough to get me through the race. Maybe ultrarunning is not My Destiny. Or maybe it is my destiny to enjoy it as much as possible, and embrace the bad training days as well as the good.

So I am officially on my taper. It will be a rough race. However it goes, it’ll be an experience to savor and learn from, and it will definitely be an adventure. I don’t think it’ll be the best day of my life, but who knows. I’ll be OK if it’s just good enough.

And you know what? Sometimes I don’t settle for good enough. Sometimes it’s important to hold out for perfect.

 

I love this guy because not only is he perfect in every way, but he sure knows how to handle me and my issues. <3 Plus, he’s cute.

 

Oh, and how can I forget. Some pics from this weekend celebrating my friends’ wedding in Half Moon Bay.

All in all, a fabulous weekend. :)

Running Isn’t Everything

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Running isn’t everything. This is something that I’ve been starting to realize and think about more and more in the last few weeks. Lately, running has pretty much ruled my life. In the fall of last year, I started working at ZombieRunner, a fabulous store that caters to all runners, but mostly trail and ultrarunners. Not long after starting the job, I signed up for my first and second 50 mile races. Kind of extreme, right? I’d never ran more than a marathon and already I was browsing websites to see what would be the perfect first 100 mile race. That’s right, 100 miles. I knew I’d be able to tackle 50 no problem and I was already dreaming of taking the next step to 100 miles before I’d ever ran my first ultra.

In January, I ran my first ultramarathon- Crystal Springs 50K in Woodside, CA. It was beautiful and fun and easy. (It was easy because I ran at an easy pace. I always do. If I were to ever push myself for speed, I might not have as much fun running. So “easy” doesn’t make me a super-athlete, it just means I’m a slacker.) After that, I was hooked.

Since then, I’ve been running 50K’s as training for my 50 milers. Since January I’ve run 4 50K’s and one 50 miler. My next 50 miler will be in July at the Tahoe Rim Trail 50M, and I have 2 50K’s in mind to do before then, as well as a training run at Western States training camp next weekend.

So basically, this is my life in a nutshell:

–Work in a running store. Talk running, ultrarunning, trail running. Browse race/blog/shoe websites when it’s slow.

–Run. Train on treadmills and trails. Speedwork, long runs, strength training for proper form.

–Race or volunteer *almost* every weekend. Race as practice. Volunteer to give back (and to earn a free race entry. It’s a vicious cycle).

And I’m just starting to realize that maybe it’s a bit too much. 

Some runners have friends who are runners. I have friends who like to run, but aren’t as overly-obsessed with running as I am. I’ll read blogs about other ultrarunners who say then went on a nighttime trail run with a bunch of buddies, or had a friend pace them the last 30 miles of a race. I don’t have those kinds of friends. My friend Dan recently asked me to play softball for his team for a game. (I sucked, btw, but that’s neither here nor there.) I, however, don’t think I could ask Dan to pace me the last 30 miles at Rio Del Lago (or whatever 100 I might end up running).

Which is not a bad thing. I think if I surrounded myself with other ultrarunners, I might get a little carried away. True, my running might improve if I had more people to push me and train with me. However, I know there are other things in life that are more important to me that running:

Friends.

Family.

I only began thinking about this whole running-is-taking-over-my-life thing recently because of some things I’ve been missing out on due to running. Stay out late on Saturday? No, I woke up at 6, ran 30 miles, and have to work at the store the next morning. A’s game next weekend? No, I’m volunteering *or* running 30 miles. Again.

I am extremely grateful to be able to do what I’m doing. I am healthy. I have the time. I have the means. Running can be an extremely selfish sport. Tony has had to put up with watching me run more than ever while he’s dealing with multiple knee surgeries. He’s also had to wake up at the butt-crack of dawn to watch my races. Sometimes we miss out on fun things going on with his friends because we’ll be out of town for a race. Poor guy.

All this being said, I’m not getting burnt out. I am enjoying every running-related moment I have. I know come fall, I’ll be back in school, taking graduate classes and teaching middle schoolers how to read, and running will fall on the wayside. I’ll look to the weekends like every other person and enjoy the time to relax and spend with friends and family. Running and ultrarunning will still be in my life, but maybe once a month rather than every.single.week.

Life is all about balance, and hopefully one day I’ll find one.

 

Why I Hated High School (and why I want to go back)

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I decided to do a 12 mile run on the treadmill today because there was a chance of rain. Ok, I actually just wanted to catch up on One Tree Hill episodes which I’ve started watching on Netflix. As I was watching the show, I was thinking for about the 100 billionth time how much I hated high school. Now don’t get me wrong, there were some fun moments. But for me, those fun moments were so rare and always clouded with my insecurity.

These are the least awkward photos I could find! Man, I rocked those wispy bangs.

I didn’t really stand out in high school. I wasn’t super popular or super nerdy-I fell somewhere in between. I was bullied, and sometimes I was the bully. (Sorry Franklin. It was middle school but it still counts. We never should have made you cry for loving Free Willy.) Friendships were never solid. I had friends who weren’t so great but I wanted them to like me. And there were people who wanted to be my friend but I thought I was too cool for them. There were moments of self-hatred. At 5’5″ and 130 lbs, my child-mind thought I was too fat. When I made it to 95 lbs, I was perfect, but a failure because I couldn’t keep it up. (Don’t worry I’m nice and healthy now! :) )In my mind, everything in life was black or white. I wanted to be perfect and loved by everyone, and if I couldn’t have that I was worthless. Reading my high school journals are SO depressing. I never felt like I belonged and I wasn’t strong enough to be OK with that.

The reason I want to become a high school English teacher is so I can go back to high school and be elected the prom queen and be a good role model. I hope to be the coolest teacher ever, but if I’m not then it’s ok. I want to introduce teenagers to the world of literature, so they can see that reading is fun, and maybe have somewhere to escape to when they can’t deal with their lives at the moment. I want to encourage them to be original and creative, and not to be afraid to express themselves. I want to teach them to be kind to each other and themselves, and to be open minded rather than judgmental. I don’t care if I end up being that weird teacher whose hair is always messed up and has no fashion sense and is a little scatterbrained. I just want to help kids get through the day and realize that life isn’t so bad after all.

My boyfriend Tony says high school was AWESOME. He’s still friends with a lot of people he graduated with, and he says he’d go back and do it all again in a heartbeat. I told him we would’ve have never dated in high school…

He's the stud in the middle

But I would’ve definitely dated him in preschool!

Just to be sure to end this post on a happy note, here’s what I had for dinner on Friday:

There's frozen yogurt under there :)