See Sarah Run

I never really managed to publish training logs here. Partly I have no idea if anyone is interested or not. But – my not-so-secret alter ego over at Salty Running is now publishing them every week. So I figured I might as well share them here as well. This turned out to be a fabulous week to start! After struggling a bit last week, this week things totally turned around. We got some genuine winter weather, but every run went really well. This week just has me smiling and smiling.

Monday, 12/11, School Bus Crew – Swim 1700 yards

Swimming with Snarky Girl and a new swim friend. I started the week getting an article rejected so I was pissed off from the get-go. But these Monday swims somehow serve as a re-set and I felt much better when we were done.

Tuesday, 12/12, Early Morning Crew – 6 miles, speed intervals

2 miles warm up, 6×400, 2 miles cool down. I have not run 400s in over a year. It turned out my glorious return-to-the-track was hindered by the six inches of snow on the ground. Teacher Runner joined me though and we ran on a flat straight path near the track. I ran 1:44, 1:43, 1:46, 1:42, 1:46, 1:42, which I was thrilled about! Ended up smiling all day long after this one.

Wednesday, 12/13, Lunch Time Crew – 4 easy miles (9:21 pace), plus strength training

Today was so cold and windy that I almost moved this run to the treadmill. But I am loving this route from the gym so I just bundled up and did it outside. Then I came inside for a complete wardrobe change and many squats. Oof.

Thursday, 12/14, School Bus Crew – 9 miles, tempo intervals

2 miles warm up, three x 2 miles with two minute walk recovery, 1 mile cool down. Each 2 mile segment a tad faster than the previous one. This is the first workout this training cycle where when I saw it I thought, can I do that? The weather has also been uncooperative this week. We had more snow and I had to wait for the plows to come through. I like to do tempo runs on a long stretch of road across town with almost no intersections and great views. (See the horses!) I drove over there and the workout went great! I ran the two mile segments with paces of 8:53, 8:40, and 8:29. Woot!

Friday, 12/15, Early Morning Crew – 5.5 easy miles, no trails

The trails are also covered in fresh snow and we just didn’t feel like dealing with cold wet feet with a temperature of 11 degrees. I almost pushed this off until noon, but the company at 6am was so appealing that I got up and ran early. I’m so glad I did. My Friday morning gang is a small group of really accomplished runners and I love spending time with them.

Saturday, 12/16, Late Morning Crew – strength training

I squeezed this in between daughter’s horseback riding lesson and family Christmas shopping. The holidays are so busy and it’s starting to be a challenge to fit everything in.

Sunday, 12/17, Afternoon Crew – 16 miles, last 4 at marathon pace (9:45 pace)

I ran this alone because there was no company to be had on a Sunday afternoon in December. Except for getting a little bored, I didn’t mind too much. I’ve been listening to musicals for solo long runs and today was Dear Evan Hansen, which I really enjoyed. I had feared it might be depressing and I’d end up sobbing by the side of the road somewhere, but the music was perfect for just cruising along to. I nailed the last four miles too, a great end to a great week!

Total: 40.5 miles

Finding beauty in winter running

Manchester. I have run this race more than any other. I’ve run it the last eight years consecutively. But on all those Thanksgiving mornings, I’ve never raced it. Manchester 2010 was my second race ever and at the time, I had never run more than four miles. I’ve run it pretty often with Aidan and a couple times in costume. This year I ran it for time.

Sub30 Friends!

Manchester is a huge race. It’s one of the oldest and largest “turkey trots” in the country and as such, I always feel weird calling it that. The race is 4.748 miles long and follows a loop through town. The strange distance is dictated by the course – it’s just where the race’s founders wanted it to be and back then, no one cared much about standardizing distances. It also contains a pretty big hill, right up the second mile, though most of the rest of the race is downhill. Manchester draws huge crowds of runners and spectators but also an incredible field of elites. In 2017 that group included Des Linden, Molly Huddle, Bernard Lagat and Paul Chelimo. Pretty impressive for a town of just under 60,000 residents.

I did not even see any of those super fast elites, but the Incredible Mervus got some great pictures of them!

Because I’ve never raced Manchester before, I’ve never bothered with seeding, but this year I was eligible for the Under-42 minutes corral and I went ahead and registered for it. With such a massive number of people starting on a fairly small street, if you’re not seeded, it’s about a 10 minute wait after the gun goes off before you move at all. Then you spend the first couple of miles tangled up with other runners. If you’re with a kid or wearing a leprechaun outfit, who cares, but this year I wanted to race so I got the seeding. Life in the U42 corral was much more spacious. And we could actually hear the gun go off! It only took me about 30 seconds to cross the starting line, a dramatic difference.

I really had little idea what to expect in terms of time. It’s a funny distance and it’s got that huge hill on the course. Figuring that it’s longer than a 5K and shorter than a 10K, I thought I might split the difference between my paces for those distances, more or less. I thought I could probably run 42 minutes at Manchester and maybe not a lot faster than 40 minutes, so somewhere in there. I’ve still got my watch set up so I can’t see pace, but I thought maybe I’d look at my mile splits, just out of curiosity. Here’s how it went, mile-by-mile.

Mile 1 [9:11 split]: The first mile is pretty flat, straight out and a turn to the left. Despite being in the U42 corral, there was a TON of traffic and nothing much I could do about this pace either way. I had guessed we were running a bit slower than I wanted to partly because I was still pretty cold. I kind of figured this meant I wouldn’t even get under 42 minutes, but whatever. It’s still a ton of fun. I saw Safety Man, a Manchester institution, and got passed by a tiny kid in a minion suit. Lovely. He was really fast, what can I say!

Mile 2 [9:07 split]: Before the race, I kept asking the Retiree exactly where the hill was because even though he assured me it was from mile 1 to mile 2, that just didn’t seem correct. He was right, though, of course. I suspect it seemed like the hill must be later to me because I’ve so often run this with Aidan when he was pretty little or with other runners who were having a hard time. I’ve stopped on the hill a lot to adjust someone’s clothing or bib or whatever. It’s a doozy of a hill and there were still a ton of people when I got there so this was also not even close to whatever I had been imagining a reasonable target pace might be. At the top of the hill I figured, 42 minutes was out the window, but at least I was less cold and I knew the next mile was a big downhill with my family at the 3-mile marker.

Mile 3 [no pace check – but it was 7:59]: You can really fly down that hill and traffic finally cleared out so I could move. I also felt like I’d finally warmed up a bit. There are loads of bands on the course and so many people and costumes – it’s just an awful lot of fun and there’s a lot going on. At the end of mile 3, I spotted my family, waved my arms like crazy to get their attention, and stopped to give Rose a nice hug. I haven’t hugged her mid-race in ages and it was lovely. She wanted me to stay longer but I told her I had to go and moved along. My watch beeped mid-hug. I’m so incredibly glad I stopped – she said later this was her favorite part of the race and I think it was mine as well.

Mile 4 [7:55 pace]: With 1.8 miles to go, more or less, I thought, let’s at least do a little bit of work here today! I had finally warmed up and the course was clear enough to run so I focused on trying to go a bit faster. I thought about the hill workout from earlier in the week, the weights and the somewhat overly-enthusiastic four miler from the day before and felt like, yeah, this is work now. But when my watch beeped with a 7:55 split, well, dang! That’s an unexpected and pleasant surprise!

Last .748 [7:30 pace]: The last mile marker is right before you get to the church and turn left for the long straight stretch to the finish. This is also downhill and you pass under the enormous flag where the photographer is so this is the place to wave. I think my watch said I was about 34 minutes into the race at the 4 mile mark so that was easy math. .8 miles to go in 8 minutes is a 10 minute mile and I knew I’d have to trip not to manage that and make the 42 minute goal. It also meant I’d have to run pretty damn fast to get under 40 and that probably wasn’t happening, but what the heck, I thought, let’s find out! So I powered through the end of that race like a crazy woman! The finish at Manchester is really fun!

I crossed the line and hit stop on the watch and took a look: 40:02. DANG! SO close! That hug with Rose was definitely more than 2 seconds, but I didn’t regret it for an instant. It had been so fun to see her! I found the Retiree and the gang and we walked back to the Retiree’s house. They all had great races and I was especially happy for the Retiree who has been dealing with an injury. I have to say – jogging along with these three guys – all of whom ran between 32 and 34 minutes – I was sort of like, what am I doing here?? But they are so nice and I ran a solid race, so it was really fine.

Once we arrived back at the house, I hugged and thanked my family and had some snacks. Then I checked my actual time: 39:59! Dang again! In no way did I imagine I would go under 40 minutes, even by a second, so I was mighty pleased! Also, hmmm, what would have happened if I had been less bogged down at the start? I love this race and it was a blast to actually race it for once. Now, for next year, I have to figure out a way to get into that Under 38 corral…

I used to think gratitude journals were bullshit. Gratitude journals are a practice, recommended by Oprah among others, for women to find ways to appreciate things in their lives. As far as I understand it, the basic idea is that life is hard and it’s easy to overlook all the wonderful things we have going for us and get lost in the stress and jealousy of modern life. Blah, blah, blah. I am sure that Oprah (and others who recommend gratitude journals) would have no problem with men keeping them as well, but let’s be real. This is a practice primarily followed by women.

Yet women in the United States are seriously overworked and underpaid. Women still get paid 80 cents for every dollar men earn. American women spend, on average, two hours a day on household chores, compared to 82 minutes for men. Women don’t need to be grateful for this situation. We need rebellion, not gratitude. Now, revolution journals, there’s an idea I could get behind.

[Requisite caveats – I’ve linked to popular source material, available for free. The scholarly literature is more nuanced, but doesn’t really come to a different conclusion. In my own household, things are pretty balanced. But, anyone who thinks women are getting a fair shake is closing their eyes to reality.]

My Gratitude Project began to take on some rules. The first was that I couldn’t simply post about running all the time. That would have been hard to do anyway because I wasn’t feeling terribly grateful in that area of life. But I could be grateful about flowers in the yard or birds at the pond. I was often genuinely grateful for something Rose did and she became a frequent muse.

As I figured out how to use Instagram, another rule was to try to use a new hashtag a few times a week. Initially I didn’t really understand how the hashtags work – I may still not totally get this. But they more or less help people in the internet-world find other people who might be interested in the same thing. Post #runner and other runners will discover you, like your post, and maybe follow you. Post #fencing and you’ll discover the existence of groups like #instafencing. Whisky, ponds, birds, food, cities, orthotics. Instagram has people excited about all of these things who will look at your images if you direct them there. If you want to see Instagram go truly bananas, post a picture of your cat. Those two rules – not just running and #trynewhashtags – led me to discover and be discovered by Instagrammers (is that what they’re called?) with a huge range of passions.

Another side effect of Project Gratitude has been an increasing interest in images on my part. I am definitely one to snap a ton of pictures of stuff without really thinking about “composing a shot”. I started seeing the world differently. I began contemplating how to capture an event visually and I started following some photographers.

The most important result of Project Gratitude is that it did exactly what it was supposed to do. Even on really dark days, I went into the world seeking something to be grateful for, and it turns out, I was grateful for a lot.

I could still work out, even with the boot:

We live next to a lovely and fascinating pond:

Of course, this guy:

Family vacations:

Good things to eat and drink:

Church:

Whisky:

Friends:

And finally, returning to running:

I have a lot to be grateful for and this crazy Gratitude Project helped me realize that. It was important to narrow my commitment to looking rather than finding. A promise to find gratitude every day would have been more than I could manage. But looking, just looking, that seemed feasible even when life was pretty sucky. The very act of looking cracked my heart open enough to let some darkness out and some light in. Damn gratitude journals might work after all.

Now that I am well on the way to recovery, I could post about something I am grateful for related to running every day and I have posted a lot of that. I think it’s ok to celebrate the gifts running brings me and I suspect it will be a long time before I take those things for granted. It turns out, though, that I like the balance it brings to find some other things to be grateful for as well. Remembering the many good things in my life helps me be less panicky if something goes wrong.

I also thought about stopping the Gratitude Project entirely and I have not been posting every single day. My foot is basically better now so maybe it’s served its purpose. But Oprah appears to have been right again because living with a more grateful heart, as incredibly cheesy as that sounds, just turns out to be a healthier and happier way to live. It’s not that I’ve given up interest in the Rebellion Project and maybe I should start #lookingforfeministrevolution. But I don’t think these things are incompatible anymore. Being grateful doesn’t mean being complacent or accepting your lot in life. Maybe somehow appreciating what you have can give you enough strength and courage to push the world in the right direction for everyone.

My feelings about this race ran the gamut from excited expectation to business-like execution to serendipitous joy. The Ghost Train Half Marathon is a small local race put on by the Parks and Rec Department of the towns of East Hampton, Colchester, and Hebron, CT. Five years ago, I introduced Snarky Girl and Fast Friend at this race and they ended up running the whole thing together. It was the start of our teaming up for lots of shared running adventures. I had initially been looking forward to meeting up with the two of them, but then Fast Friend pulled her back and couldn’t run. For me, it was also only three weeks post-Hartford and in the days leading up to the race, my original excitement shifted to a case of the blahs.

While texting Coach Mick on Thursday, he threw in the word “relentless”. He doesn’t know it but that word has been something of a touchstone for me this year. Something to focus on when getting up to go swim or ride the video bike last winter. “Relentless pursuit” – of getting healthy, of running faster, of figuring out how to live and run on my own terms. My daughter Rose can be incredibly relentless – not always a lovable attribute in a child – but maybe she got that from me.

Friday before the race was a good day. I did some solid writing for work. I met Rashi for coffee. It was all fine, but I felt like I was checking off boxes mentally. My main goal for the race seemed to be: Don’t screw up, which felt less than inspiring. I told Coach Mick and he texted back: Try Not To Suck (Joe Maddon – Cubs manager). I wondered if the Cubs were a great source of inspiration but of course, that was their motto for 2016, the year they won the world series. That puts a whole different twist on it.

Trying Not To Suck in my mind means no major mistakes. It means things like, eat the pre-race breakfast that works, get to the race on time for a proper warm-up. Line up appropriately. Don’t go out too fast. Remember to fuel and hydrate. Do a cool down and for me, take care of my foot. This is sort of basic stuff in some ways, but it’s surprisingly easy to goof it up. It is a little like checking off boxes though and for the first time in my life I thought – is this what people mean when they say running started to feel like a job? Is remembering to pack Gu sort of the equivalent of getting your PowerPoint presentation in order? Is this “professionalization” of race routine the thing that sucks joy out of running for so many people? Then I thought, nah, at least not for me. I still love running and come to think of it, I like my job pretty well too. It’s ok to want to do both of those things well and Trying Not To Suck is for sure a part of that.

Trying Not To Suck came together as a five point plan for this race. 1) Get to the race on time and do the planned warm-up. 2) Stay on top of fueling and hydration. Particularly because this race supposedly only had 3 water stops and because not looking at my watch has left me a little disconnected from fueling. 3) Start slow to finish fast – i.e., don’t go out too fast. 4) Stay strong at the end – relentless pursuit. 5) Do a cool down and post-run foot routine.

Race day morning prep was solo this time and I missed Corgi Speedster’s excellent spirit! But the Incredible Mervus left out a fun note for me.

I wanted to balance “Relentless” and “Try Not To Suck” so I took them both with me.

Snarky Girl and I drove together and arrived on time for the very first shuttle to the start. So far so good in terms of Operation Try Not To Suck. We got our bibs and the very nice race shirts and hung out with Fast Friend’s husband in the school gym. Eventually I said I wanted to warm up and Snarky Girl moaned and groaned a bit but came with me, as she always does. We found a little dirt track, did a little running and some drills, all perfectly timed for the start of the race. Yeah!

Then I went back into the school for one last chance to pee. Uh oh. Earlier there had been no one but now the line was HUGE. Oops. It was 8:50 with a 9am start time and there were a bunch of women ahead of me. No waiting for the men’s room, though, so I started agitating with another woman that we should just go ahead. The men coming out said “You don’t want to go in there. The smell is terrible. Place is a mess.” Hmmmm. I said I can stand a little smell in order to make it to the start on time and my fellow agitator made her move. I followed. The smell was fine. We had to be careful where we looked because – well, not everyone in a men’s room pees in a stall. But we were done quickly and we weren’t the only women invading that “male space” that day.

Out at the starting line, I found my friends getting ready to line up. They had an actual chalk line on the street for the starting line completing the Beardy Guy nature of the race. I am not even sure they had a gun because we didn’t hear anything so maybe someone up at the front just said Go! And off we went.

I ran 1:55:39 at Hartford three weeks prior to this race in hotter weather on a hillier course. I was hoping to go a bit faster at the Ghost Train run but I was pretty sure I was not close to PR territory of 1:52:44. Part of the reason for the feeling of box-checking was surely that I felt pretty confident I could beat my Hartford time and equally confident that I was not in shape to PR. Where’s the excitement in that?

Then, just a minute or two after we started, Ghostie popped up next to me. Ghostie is a friend of the Retiree’s who I have met on a few occasions, most recently pre- and post-Hartford. He asked me what I was running and I said sub-1:55. He said something or other about pace and I said I was running without looking at my watch. Then he made an interesting move and covered his own watch. We agreed to run together for awhile, as long as it worked out.

The first mile was definitely too fast, but of course, the start is exciting and the weather was perfect and this race starts downhill. Ghostie asked how I was feeling and I said, this is too fast. I had planned to check my watch after the first mile because I had done that at Hartford and I liked being able to calibrate how things were feeling. 8:20. Yup, too fast. But it wasn’t just the number on the watch – it felt too fast. For the next mile or so, I worked to get back to the pace where I wanted to be. Snarky Girl passed us. A girls’ cross country team passed us. Some other folks passed us. Let them go, I thought. Better to start slow. Try Not To Suck stage 3.

Then Ghostie and I fell into a fantastic groove. We were running at a decent clip. Fast enough that I knew we weren’t too slow, but slow enough that we could chat. We filled each other in on our various friends who were racing that day. We discussed the Hartford race again. We talked a bit about running and racing without a watch. We went over how many times we had each done the Ghost Run. It was absolutely downright delightful.

Unlike Hartford where I felt very dialed in on my breathing and focused on maintaining the right effort level, here I had an actual conversation partner so it was much easier to tell my pace in terms of “sentences”. The whole first three miles were a tad faster than I would have wanted them to be, but we settled into a good pace and I figured I did not need to speed up much after mile three. Ghostie sometimes pulled ahead a little when someone passed us or at water stations and I just let him go. He slowed a bit and waited for me. We passed a lot of happy miles that way with his occasionally checking on my effort level and my occasionally holding him back a tad. At one point I did see my watch by mistake and caught sight of an 8:42 split. Perfect.

This race is billed as flat and by Connecticut standards, it is flat, but Strava shows that you actually run downhill for the first 8 miles and then uphill for the last 5. We got to the uphill portion and it certainly felt like more work. Ghostie again asked how I was doing and I said something about wishing we didn’t have quite as far to go. Miles 8-10 were the hardest of the race for me and that shows in the splits. I caught a glimpse of the 9:07 mile by mistake and thought, urg, let’s get going here.

By mile 10 I remembered the plan of trying to pick up the pace, if possible. I wondered about the wisdom of the somewhat-quicker-than-planned start again, but heck, it was only a 5K to go at that point and I found a little bit of gas left in the tank, even going uphill. Ghostie and I were so tuned in to each other by now that he felt this too, of course, and I said, it’s ok, this is part of the plan. Conversation had dwindled on my part by now. But then we saw Snarky Girl ahead of us and we were reeling her in. Passing Snarky Girl in a race is not something I have a lot of experience with (by which I mean, zero experience) and I admit to enjoying it even though she was running with a slower friend. Then we saw that girls’ cross country team ahead of us and I said oh, let’s get those girls too. I threw in a bit of a surge and we sailed by. Fun!

Then it was pedal to the medal until the end. I know this stretch of trail pretty well and I flashed back to a training run with Fast Friend and Snarky Girl when I was running so hard I was almost hallucinating and they were chugging along having some conversation about a TV show about cats. That was three years ago! Funny how certain stretches of ground can trigger a particular memory.

By now we were almost done. I tripped on a rock and almost went down, which would have taken the race right into boy-did-that-suck territory, but luckily I stayed upright. Finally we rounded the last corner and ran into the school parking lot to cross the finish line. Ghostie and I high fived each other like crazy. 1:54:24! Running with him was SO much fun! I had said not looking at your watch meant you get your splits as a surprise at the end so we took a peek. Very happy with the results! This is my second race without looking at my watch and mostly we were right on track. The start was a little fast and I had one slower mile when the hill at the end got into my head, but otherwise good. I’m completely shocked at how fast I’ve acclimated to running #nowatchme and how much I like it.

Fast Friend met us at the finish line with her adorable daughter, Mini-J. I continued with stage five of Try Not To Suck and managed a short cool down, but I was pretty darn done. Instead I mostly enjoyed the post-race chili, chatted with friends, and played a bit on the playground with Mini-J. Third in my age group really Did Not Suck though I know that’s mostly about who shows up on race day.

Snarky Girl and I stopped for donuts and coffee on the way home and I did my post-run foot routine at home because they didn’t have ice at the race. I also went out to dinner with the family to our favorite race-day restaurant. These are also boxes to get checked off, in a sense. I feel really good about how this race went, both in terms of results and the process. I did not suck. Combined with Hartford, the two races give me a good sense of where my fitness is and also show me that I didn’t forget how to do this race thing. Maybe most importantly, I got two chances to do what I love and I still love it even after that big break. Bring on marathon training.

If you missed my earlier posts on plantar fasciitis, you can find the Opening Gambit here and the Front Line Assault Measures here. Now, onward to Specialized Weaponry a.k.a. Toys.

One of the worst things about plantar fasciitis is how incredibly frustrating it is. It makes you want to tear your hair out about your body’s incredible slowness in getting better. This frustration can make you vulnerable because you’re so ready to get rid of the PF that you’ll do just about anything – or buy just about anything – in case it might work. And different techniques do work for different people so maybe this latest gadget will be the cure! I tried to keep my gadget budget under about $25 per thing-a-ma-bob and I still ended up spending too much money on this stuff. Luckily the Maestro talked me out of the $140 “cure-your-plantar-fasciitis” flip flops that somehow ended up in my amazon shopping cart. I talked myself out of the $100 contraption that basically holds a Thera-band on your ankle. Here are some of the toys I did buy along with my thoughts on whether they worked or not.

Straussburg sock ($40 from amazon, available in white or oh-so-sexy black). I almost filed this one under front line assault measures. The Straussburg sock is one of the few toys that is frequently really helpful. I credit this contraption with keeping several of my short-term PF flare-ups under control. Whenever someone asks me what to do about PF, I tell them to get one of these socks and wear it every night. I would often wake up and take it off in my sleep because it’s really not comfortable, but I could tell the next day if I had managed to keep it on because my foot would feel better. The Straussburg sock is the only toy that I consider non-optional. I now often travel with mine, just in case.

Stick Foot Wheel Massager ($20 from amazon). Someone in one of my running groups recommended this foot wheel and I ordered it immediately. Rolling my foot on this generally makes it feel great. When the PF was really bad, this thing was too much. It also tends to skitter across the floor so sometimes I use it on a towel. How much did I like this thing? I carried it in my purse so I could use it at work. Highly recommended.

Yogabody Toe spreaders ($17 from amazon). Amazon has pages and pages of these on offer. I got some that come in two different sizes and come with a nifty wooden storage box. They fit inside my shoes and they felt great until they would suddenly start feeling horrible and I would have to take them off immediately. Stretching out your feet is supposed to help with PF. Did they work? I don’t really think so. But they felt good enough that I am tempted to try wearing them again just to test them out.

Cupping Therapy Set (about $15-45 on amazon). Cupping is an ancient Chinese therapy approach made popular by Michael Phelps and the weird red marks on his skin at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The idea is that you create suction under the cup (historically with heat but now more commonly with a vacuum pump). Cupping promotes blood flow and lack of blood flow is one reason PF is so darn slow to heal. It also might help pull apart the “fibers” of the fascia and generally help loosen things up in your foot. I found a massage therapist who did cupping and she said she had cured lots of people with 1-3 sessions. I liked it enough that I bought my own set of cups and it did provide some short-term relief. It didn’t prove a permanent fix for me, but I think it’s one of those therapies that is for sure worth trying. If you can’t find a local therapist to do this for you, it’s not at all complicated to do it yourself with a set from amazon.

Plantar fasciitis compression socks/foot sleeves (about $15 on amazon). Again, there are a million versions of these and they all seem basically the same. The idea is that the pressure from the compression somehow feels good. These socks get absolutely rave reviews on amazon but they did practically nothing at all for me. For $15, these might be worth a try, just in case they work for you.

Supplements: These aren’t exactly “toys” but I wasn’t sure how to categorize them. Some people swear by this approach. I plopped down over $50 at the natural food store on a collection of supplements that included flax oil, Glutamine, and magnesium and I took this stuff religiously for a few weeks. Apparent effect? Zero, nada, zip. I don’t even think the magnesium helped me sleep any better.

Someone should really start a plantar fasciitis toy library where you could check these things out to see which of them, if any, are effective for you. Trying a bunch of this stuff at least keeps you occupied while you wait and wait and wait for your foot to get better.

I hope before you work your way through this entire list, you decide to call in some outside assistance. Next post – bring in the cavalry.

What a difference a year makes! Last year’s Hartford Half resulted in a PR, but also the realization that I was a bit of a mess, physically, mentally, spiritually. It’s been a long road back, but I am definitely getting there. No PR this year, but a totally solid race at 1:55:39 with no foot pain and a completely different attitude about life and running.

The Friday before the race, I was distracted because I had to do some race prep (I was hosting a post-race party) but I also had to give a talk on the German radical right and attend the post-talk dinner. This was a seriously compartmentalized day. I got up early, finished writing the talk, did my two mile shake out run, and checked the mailbox, like I always do. But today I had a surprise waiting for me!

Rashi and I have re-connected and we’ve even been able to find some time to run together. She sent me the best possible pre-race card in the mail!

I’ve run Hartford a bunch of times and I always end up rushing through the expo because it’s always on Friday when I am also working. This was no different. I got my bib and shirt and made sure to get my sticker for Corral B. I love having a seeded start for this race. Feels so elite! It was pretty easy to find the Sub-30 crew doing the same thing.

Sub-30 takes on Hartford!

Once we gathered everyone up, we headed out for Thai food. Nothing like a big gang of marathoners and half marathoners looking for carbs. Lunch was delicious food and lots of tales of races past and plans for the next day. The Retiree led a little course tour but I had to scoot back home to go grocery shopping and then get ready for my talk.

The Retiree, Hoop, Corgi Speedster, moi, and North Shore Strider!

This was such a day of ticking off tasks that it felt a bit like “experience pre-race anxiety” was simply an item on a to-do list. After lunch, but before the talk, my brain cleverly reserved one little pocket of time to worry. Some questions had been lurking in the back of my head all week and they pushed their way forward Friday afternoon. What if my foot started hurting? What if I started way too slowly? Starting too fast hasn’t usually been much of an issue to me, but my longest training run was 10 miles. What if I died at the end of the race? I sent these off to Coach Mick in a flurry of texts, more or less while grocery shopping, and luckily he always responds quickly: What if your foot is fine? What if you start at the right pace? What if not looking at your watch helps you run faster but not too fast? Ok, fair enough, and with the pre-race anxiety box checked, I went and spoke about the radical right in Germany and enjoyed dinner with colleagues and students. Corgi Speedster came to my talk (!) but then went home to make her single lady risotto. We chatted for a bit when I got home and then headed off to bed.

Race morning Corgi Speedster and I got up and did our pre-race routines. I was so lucky to have her staying with me! I haven’t raced a half marathon in a year. A year! Maybe it’s like riding a bike and you don’t forget how, but it sure was nice to have some company. I had my oatmeal and my coffee. I packed up everything on my check list and we headed out into the dark.

We should have left earlier because we hit serious traffic once we got in the vicinity of the race. I started getting pretty antsy looking for parking and kept telling myself to shut up because Corgi Speedster sure didn’t need my pre-race nerves getting her jittery. We eventually just parked semi-legally behind “Johnnie’s Auto Repair” or some such establishment. The Retiree was pacing the half so we met at the pacer group and got an early morning pre-race Sub-30 photo!

Ready to race!

We couldn’t find North Shore Strider and she and I had really wanted to start together. But it was getting late so Corgi Speedster and I did a little mile warm-up jog. I had planned to do some drills but then realized I had totally forgotten to do the lunge matrix I’ve been doing before every run. Now it was only 10 minutes to start time so I just did the lunges and called it good. Oops. That’s what being out of practice looks like. Show up a bit late, struggle with parking, short-change the warm-up. That’s all right. It’s coming back to me. Then while I was standing in the corral, I spotted North Shore Strider on the sidelines. We could start together after all! I was so happy! She squeezed in next to me and off we went.

The full and the half start together at Hartford and it’s a bit of a disaster. Too many people in too small a space. Last year they seemed to have corrected this issue with the seeded starting corrals but way more people were in the corrals this year. North Shore Strider and I had a chance to check in and wish each other luck and just run together for that first mile. She is someone I text with every day and I would be so overjoyed if we could run together more often, but I will take any mile I can get at her side.

I think I had a few things to try out with this race. Certainly one big one was racing without looking at my watch. Tina Muir’s group, Running for Real, is hugely enthusiastic about this approach. I am philosophically agnostic about it. That is to say, I am really keen to run fast and if not looking at my watch helps with that project, I am all for it. On the other hand, I’ve run pretty well looking at my watch. But that 5K back in August when I didn’t look was compelling evidence that I should at least try it. The idea is to tune into your body and run by effort rather than try to hit a particular pace. There are all kinds of reasons to do this. Sometimes the watches aren’t that accurate. If it’s hot or windy, you might need to run slower. The pace function on GPS watches also tends to jump around so you might see a big range of numbers. Some people get freaked out and think they can’t run as fast as the watch says they are running. Or they get freaked out in the other direction and give up hope if the watch says they are running too slowly. I’ve pretty much had all of that happen to me.

On the other hand, in distance running, part of the key to success is not going too fast at the beginning and going fast enough at the end. A watch can be a great tool for helping you figure out how to do that. Maybe you push yourself faster when you need to because of what the watch says. Or maybe you hold back even though you are excited because the pace on the watch reminds you to keep it in check.

I’ve argued this both ways in the last few months (because, any argument, either side, right?). But I’m really interested in this training by effort idea and like I said – that 5K from August was pretty compelling. I would have run that way slower if I had paid attention to my watch. A half marathon is more complicated than a 5K but if I eventually want to run a marathon without looking at my watch, I sure need some practice doing a half that way. Anyway, I had promised myself I wasn’t going to look.

Despite the best of intentions though, at the end of that first mile, North Shore Strider looked at her watch and I looked at mine. 9:03. I actually sort of wanted one peek just to calibrate. I mean, if I had been running 9:40 at that point, maybe I wanted to know. Coach Mick and I generally talk about speed in terms of effort rather than pace. So instead of running 8:50-9:00 pace, I might get instructions to run at a pace at which I can talk for 2-3 sentences. That was indeed how I was planning to start the Hartford half and this felt about right. North Shore Strider peeled off for the full at that point and I continued with the half.

For the first three miles, I was supposed to stick to 2-3 sentences effort level and I think I pretty much did. My pace got a lot quicker in mile 2, but there’s a big downhill there. The weather had been looking warm and humid and I kept reminding myself of a new friend who ran Chicago very successfully by starting slowly. I also went ahead and dumped water on my head at every water stop. It’s much easier to stay cool than it is to cool off, if you’re already too warm.

The watch still buzzed at me for the mile markers because I left the auto lap function on, but I’ve had the pace function turned off for weeks so “#nowatchme” was much less weird than expected. In addition to that first mile, I peeked and saw 8:40 at mile four by mistake. That led me into a mix of feelings. Damn, I looked. Whew, I am not still running 9s. Shoot, is that too fast or too slow and will I just spend the rest of the race fretting about this? But then I got very Zen about it and just let all that go.

Running #nowatchme is incredibly yogic somehow. When I started to fret about whether I was at the appropriate pace, I would just check in with my breathing and get it to where it was supposed to be and that was that. It was also much less different from running with a watch than I expected. My brain tends to be busy when I’m running. That internal chatter used to focus around pace: “I’m supposed to be at 8:40 now but watch says 8:35. Do I need to slow down or is that just watch bounce? Now it says 8:50 but this is definitely a hill, so that’s ok.” Etc. I guess for a lot of runners, this chatter is accompanied by anxiety, but for me, mostly it hasn’t been. I wanted to race well – I still do – and that used to mean being in tune with the watch. Now it means being in tune with my body but it’s still an ongoing conversation.

For miles 4-10, I was supposed to move to effort at around 1.5-2 sentences. During training runs, I have invariably checked my effort level by pretending to talk to Snarky Girl, but I tell her stuff. While racing, I literally talked about sentence length. Instead of the internal brain chatter about the watch, I now had external chatter about effort level: “Is this one sentence or two sentences?” “Am I still at 1.5 sentences?” “How long are these sentences supposed to be anyway?” Yes, out loud. Don’t race near me if you don’t enjoy this astonishingly boring conversation topic, I guess. In any case, I felt really good, especially around miles 6-9. I was so happy to be running again. I thought about North Shore Strider and Corgi Speedster running the full. I thought about Mervus and Southern Rock and Coach Mick and my girl-gang getting my splits. Every time I crossed the timing mats I thought, well now they know. And they can see I’m having a pretty good day!

Somewhere around mile 8, I started to get impatient. Like, what the hell. Let’s just get to the faster part of this race already. This is also the section of the course that goes through Elizabeth Park. It’s the prettiest section and now that Aidan goes to school in Hartford, I know this neighborhood better. I had one of those runner high moments when we ran by the UConn soccer fields. Hey, my kid plays there! My kid is so amazing! He’s going to this cool magnet school! He’s going to grow up to do amazing things! I love Hartford! Yeah, running can do weird things to your brain. Still, I’ll take happy thoughts over sad ones any time.

During those joyful miles, Let It Go came on the shuffle. I know it’s a bit cheesy. I know the song has been played a million times and some people are sick of it, but I’m not. It felt like everything I wanted at that moment. The chance to let go of the last year. Let go of being injured and sad. Let go of the pre-running Sarah, who used to be so shy and nervous and wall-flowery. I listened to that song two or three times and loved every minute of running free with a heart full of joy.

Happy Runner!

Finally around mile 10, it was time to speed up a bit. I was running near a couple of classic Old Guys. These guys were certainly in their 60s, possibly 70s. Running together with their matching short grey hair and neon t-shirts and beautiful upright posture. They just radiated Old Running Friends and they were so calm that I knew they would hold a good pace. I thought, oh good, I’ll just tuck in behind these Old Guys. I’ll finish with them. We’ll have a big hug at the finish line and thank each other for pushing each other. It will be lovely. But after a few minutes I thought, huh, I am faster than these particular Old Guys. I need to go ahead and pass them and we’ll see if they come with me. So I did. And they didn’t. Which was also ok, but if someday that is me and Snarky Girl, flying down the streets of Hartford at a good clip with grey ponytails streaming out behind us? I can think of a lot of worse things in life.

In the last mile, the Retiree popped up to run me in as he had said he might. He asked how I was doing and I wasn’t really talking much at that point so I guess I had achieved the effort level of “words” which was the goal. He asked how I was feeling and I think I just gave him a grunt and a thumbs-up. He asked about my foot and I said it was fine. Which was true! I had completely forgotten about my foot until around mile 9, when it was clearly ok. We ran on together like that for a bit and then he turned to go and called out “Fuck Plantar Fasciitis!” and I almost lost it. I thought, damn you, I have 400 meters to go, I can NOT start crying now, though I really wanted to.

Thank you Retiree!

Instead of crying, I ran on towards the finishing chute. Now I could see the finishing time and it was around 1:55, which is just what I would have predicted, if I had had to bet on it. Finish time: 1:55:39. Would I race #nowatchme again? You bet. With a grand total of two races sans watch under my belt, I can hardly imagine going back. It’s not that I don’t care about my time because I certainly do. Focusing internally instead of externally just feels better, more appropriate somehow. Running a marathon like this will be an even bigger challenge, but it’s one I am looking forward to.

One seriously happy lady

I got my water, medal and food and found my way to the post-race “banquet”. I’ve never eaten the race food at Hartford before and I’ve no idea whether it is actually any good or not, but it tasted like the best soup of my life. After plopping on the ground for awhile, I called the Incredible Mervus and chatted for a few minutes. I texted everyone I could think of. Then I collected myself and did a cool down mile on the way to the car to get changed. Back at the finish line I watched Corgi Speedster finish with a massive BQ! I also saw North Shore Strider come in with a HUGE PR, but no BQ, so that was bittersweet.

All of us PR’d the post-race celebrating this year. We hung out at the race for a bit. We got massages, ahhhh. We headed to a brew pub for pizza and amazing beer. Later, a gang came over to my place for cocktails and soup. Clearly there should have been pictures but we were busy having fun. It was about the most perfect comeback race day I could wish for.

My summer of travel is starting to draw to an end, now that it’s October. I feel like I should draw some lessons about travel and running, but I think that’s for a separate post. For today, two glorious runs, three dear friends and a shout-out to the running community that brings us together.

I arrived in Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon and went right to the hotel gym for 52 very boring minutes on the stationary bike. Why? Because I’m still really careful about how many miles I put on my foot and I wasn’t about to throw an extra four to five miles at it just because the damn bike is super boring. Plus, it was 85 degrees outside so, blech.

Thursday morning, though, I made my way to Piedmont Park and the Active Oval. Huge cheers for Uber/Lyft which I used interchangeably to get around the city. I’m careful about running before dawn in places I don’t know but numerous google searches (“Is Piedmont Park safe to run in when it’s dark?”) plus confirmation from FauxRunner assured me it was fine. In fact, when I arrived at 6:45am, the park was packed and I felt late because most people seemed to be wrapping up their workouts! I ran around the Active Oval watching dawn arrive on Atlanta’s skyline as crazy fast runners from SCAD zoomed past me in the darkness. SCAD stands for Savannah College of Art and Design – and apparently also very fast running – and their very coachy-looking coach stood by with his cap, clipboard and stopwatch, completing the experience. It was glorious and kept me going through the six straight hours of the German Studies Association Executive Board meeting.

Friday morning I had seven miles on deck (longest mid-week run post-injury!) with four of them somewhat faster than easy. With the Hartford Half approaching, I wanted to take this run more seriously and not have to stop every three minutes because of intersections. Google plus FauxRunner came to the rescue again with the suggestion of a route at Cochran Shoals Trail along the Chattahoochee River. I arrived around 8am and once again, the serious locals were finishing up, emerging from the wooded path while they stripped off their shirts and head lamps. This destination was worth the hassle of the longer Lyft ride, with a flat out-and-back route partially on a gravel path and partially on a road with almost no traffic.

I took the first two warm-up miles pretty easy, stopping for a couple of pictures and then it was time to work a little, but not too much. I’m experimenting with training by feel not pace. My instructions were four miles at “two to three sentences” pace, meaning that’s how much I should be able to talk without gasping for breath. If I’m alone, I talk to Snarky Girl to check on effort level so I have to remember she hasn’t actually heard these conversations. I’m still getting the feel of training by feel (ha ha) and the space in between easy running and tempo pace feels kind of vast and murky. Coach Mick assured me that, although there are probably three gears to be found in that space, hitting a particular one wasn’t important for this run and I was definitely in there somewhere. I’m planning to run the Hartford Half without looking at my watch, though even as I write this I think – yeah, you’re putting that in the blog as an insurance policy that you do it because you are soooo ready to revert to that watch.

The rest of the day was completely delightful. Southern Rock picked me up at the hotel and we drove out to Star Provisions where we were meeting FauxRunner for lunch. Sometimes these online connections happen suddenly and solidly and Southern Rock is someone whose friendship and support I’ve enjoyed since running the NYC marathon three years ago. His quiet gentle spirit and beautiful photos have sustained me more than he knows. Spending the day together was even better than I expected and I had some pretty high expectations. FauxRunner joined us for lunch. She’s someone who always makes me smile and the words-per-minute rate was pretty darn high once the two of us got going. Plus, she’s basically FAMOUS having won a spot on one of the first Another Mother Runner relay teams and having run the London marathon for charity.

Eventually FauxRunner had to leave and after Southern Rock and I basically shut down Star Provisions, we headed back downtown to meet Hot’lanta Mom for some tacos and margaritas. Hot’lanta Mom and I met through a first-time moms group on babycenter.com way back in March 2008. That group has been together ever since and when she and Tiny Dynamo started running, it’s what got me off the couch. Tiny Dynamo might secretly be the energizer bunny, but Hot’lanta Mom? She is pretty much just like me. A busy mom with a full-time job, two kids, no time, no history as a runner. When she started the Couch to 5K program, I thought, wow, if she can do it, I can do it. She’s probably more responsible than any other person in the world for my starting to run and I am forever grateful for the inspiration. It seems impossible that we had never met in person before, but we hadn’t. Still, post-work margaritas with Hot’lanta Mom was pretty much just like it would be with one of my in-town girlfriends. A flurry of chatter about work and kids and husbands and the current running struggles. Perfection.

All too soon, it was time to go back to being a professor again and I had to say good bye to these lovely friends. I know there’s a lot of ink spilled about how special the running community is. I can only say – it’s all true and more so. FauxRunner and Hot’lanta Mom took time out of their busy-crazy lives to come say hello. Southern Rock drove two hours to spend the day with me. The saddest thing is not being able to see them again this weekend. The most wonderful thing is that we found each other at all. I cannot claim to understand it, but there’s a little bit of magic in this running thing.

If you missed the Opening Gambit, you can find it here. That gives the basics of plantar fasciitis and also explains how I got into the disaster zone of the last year.

If you’re reading this because you also have the dreaded plantar fasciitis and you’d like to know what to do about it, let me first say, I am so sorry you are dealing with this. It’s not fun. I’m going to tell you what I’ve tried and what I think worked. But I still think the most important things are patience and persistence. What worked for me or for your cousin/friend/boss’s nephew might or might not work for you. It’s probably worth trying because you never know. The most important thing is not to give up.

It’s also worth remembering that I managed to get a partial tear of the plantar fasciia so my case was well above average in horribleness. There is a decent chance that things will go better for you. I certainly hope so!

Today I’m going to talk about what I think of as Front Line Assault Measures. One really difficult thing and a collection of easy things that you should do right now (remember – this is all my opinion – I am bossy when it comes to getting rid of PF).

The Number One Most Helpful Thing You Can Do

Let’s start here because it’s the worst thing on the list. Stop running. Yes, STOP RUNNING. I know that idea sucks. Believe me. I know if you are reading this because you have plantar fasciitis that your heart just dropped into your stomach. I know that your brain is fighting even reading these words. I know that you are going to say, I can’t stop running because A) I have an important race to train for and B) I will get depressed if I can’t run, no I mean, really, like clinically depressed, and C) running is how I see my friends and D) if I stop running, I will not meet goal X (X miles per week/month/year or X days in a row of a running streak or whatever else X is) and also E) if I stop running, I will get fat. I really do know all of that because all of that applied to me as well. Still – Stop Running. The sooner you stop, the less damage you will do and the quicker this horrible chapter will be behind you.

Stopping running is awful. But recovering is really good. Running without pain is marvelous. Keep that in mind the next time that foot is hurting.

I also know, lots of people will not listen to this advice and in fact, some people run through a bout of plantar fasciitis and recover. But my favorite line from my favorite source on this topic bears repeating. “Who is stubborn? The plantar fasciitis or the runner?” You can return to this horrible not-running-situation when the other stuff doesn’t work.

Front Line Assault Techniques

These are things that are easy to do and that you can and should implement immediately.

1. Don’t go barefoot. At all. Always wear supportive shoes. All of those cute Italian boots with the thin soles? Put them in the back of the closet. The summer flip flops without arch support? Just throw those away. The ballerina flats? No. Different people have different levels of success with shoes like clogs. I pretty much lived in running shoes for several months. Chaco’s sandals also worked for me and I bought a pair of Oofos flip flops. Even though I am a devoted Chaco’s girl, if you have PF, you owe it to yourself to get a pair of Oofos. Once you beat the PF, some of those shoes can maybe make a reappearance, depending on how risky you want to be and how cute the shoes are. Here are some gorgeous ones I did not buy in the hazardous city of Berlin. Sigh.

2. Ice your foot. A lot. A frozen water bottle is a good way to go here, and if that works, great. If not, advance to freezing Dixie cups full of water and then using these frozen blobs for ice massage. This technique has the advantage of feeling fantastic. There is basically no such thing as too much icing.
3. Bumpy balls (Rubz), foot rollers, golf balls. I’ll talk about other toys worth trying in the next post, but you want something to roll your foot out with. Do this a lot. You can also get someone to massage your feet, if you are very lucky.
4. Calf stretching. Stand on a step and drop your heels off it. Downward facing dog. Lean into the wall and stretch your calf with straight and bent knee. All of that is good unless it hurts your foot, in which case, don’t do it. How much stretching is too much? This is like ice – there’s really no such thing as too much, unless it hurts.

Sometimes a little rest [I.e., NO RUNNING – and actually, just stay off your feet as much as possible] plus front line assault measures can get plantar fasciitis under control. Between 2009 and 2016, I probably had four or five flare-ups of PF that I managed to get back in line in a week or so using only these front line assault measures. Sometimes the basics work and they are certainly worth doing. If not, it’s time to move on to Specialized Weaponry, i.e., Toys. That’s the topic for the next post.

It’s election season so I’m spending a lot of time writing, speaking, and traveling to talk about German politics. Last week I was in State College, PA, to give a talk at Penn State. State College reminded me SO much of Ann Arbor with its downtown full of cute shops and restaurants and the massive stadium and the many signs directing football traffic for the coming weekend. Every single person I met was also so nice that I knew I was solidly in the Midwest.

After the talk, a woman approached me and said “I am supposed to take you out for breakfast, but I hear you want to go for a run.” Word spreads quickly in small towns apparently – I had mentioned that to my hosts at dinner. It turns out my potential breakfast companion was also a runner and before I knew it, I had agreed to meet her at 6am for a short run the following morning.

This arrangement meant that after an evening talk followed by drinks, I was doing the lunge matrix in front of the Nittany Lion Inn at 5:45am and at 6am I was meeting a group of women runners in the parking lot for the Berkey Creamery. Too bad they weren’t open! This group meets every day at 6am in the same place so they never have to coordinate. They generally run 4-5 miles, different routes and paces, decided based on who shows up. Last week there were six of us and we ran together through a moon-lit golf course at dawn. A couple of fasties eventually peeled away, while four of us finished together and then I did some strides on the way back to the hotel.

This group was so much like my Middletown gang. A mix of academics and townies, one woman taught Kindergarten like Teacher Runner. One had attended Trinity College like Rooster. One had grown up in Ann Arbor, like me. We had no problem finding a common pace and common ground. Conversation ranged from various work-related issues, to which teachers kids had in school, to home improvement projects. Nearly identical to our running talk back home. It made me wonder, just how many other groups like this exist across the country? How many women meet each other at dawn, sometimes with headlamps, to run through the streets together before starting their days? It must be tens, maybe hundreds of thousands.

When my dad heard about this run, he speculated that running for women might serve the same purpose as golf for men, but I don’t really think so, though I’ve never golfed and I’m not a man. My stereotype of those golfing men is that they are out there doing business on the course. They are networking and lining up deals. We might do a bit of networking on the side, but my sense is these female-only dawn runs are about something different. The rest of my day is filled with kids wanting things, work wanting things, a messy house and dirty laundry demanding my attention. My sole sisters want nothing at all from me beyond my presence. We can each share a little slice of our own personal crazy and somehow finish the run a bit more able to manage the rest of the day. We might talk endlessly about kids and schools and home improvements (a surprisingly frequent topic), but the darker side of life can be hashed out on these runs as well: aging parents and struggling children, bastard bosses, irritating spouses, child care woes. My family has had a couple of trips to the emergency room in the past year and it’s been my sole sisters who said yes, we can take your children, immediately and indefinitely. Just go, and they will be cared for until you come back. These dawn runs weave the fabric that supports us when the shit inevitably hits the fan. I like the thought of that tapestry spreading across the country as the sun rises.

No visit to Penn State is complete without stopping by The Shrine!