Bedtime & Send-offs...

Sorry it took so long to blog my shamrock run experience. I was waiting for the event photographers to post the photos. I literally was checking their website hourly and when they posted their photos at 3pm on Friday last week, I was online snagging them.

I wanted to post my bedtime regime... just cause.

Every night, when getting ready for bed, I do the normal taking out my contacts, wash my face, brush my teeth.... etc. Btw, I brush my teeth while balancing on one foot (I switch feet between morning and evening tooth brushings) to strengthen my ankles.

Then comes the second stage of getting ready for bed. I put on my jammies, climb onto my bed, and pull out my ankle weight: a pouch thing with slots for up to ten 1 lbs bars that I can add or remove, which velcros snuggly around my ankle. Currently my ankle weight has 3 bars inserted. The unused bars are in an ominous pile in my living room under a table.

I lay down and do my quad-strengthening leg lifts for my knee (for my old patello-femoral syndrome). 10 reps, each holding for 5 seconds, in four different positions. I then move the ankle weight to my other leg and repeat. I listen to the second hand of the clock, count to myself, and just get em done. This takes about 10 minutes.

Then I strap my night splint onto my left leg (for my plantar fasciitis). It's a big honkin plastic boot thing.

Once splinted, I then stretch on my bed, sitting with my legs as far out to either side as I can manage, and leaning forward trying to keep my back straight, my legs straight, my feet flexed, and my toes and knees pointed at the ceiling, and I try to relax all my leg muscles and sink into the stretch. I've tied a strap to my bed frame so that I can pull myself forward with constant pressure to make the stretch more efficient. While I'm doing this stretch, I've taken to reading. I'm currently on book 1 of the Death Gate Cycle. I open the big hard cover book on the bed infront of me and read. I have no idea how long I keep this up for, normally I read about a chapter. It's nice getting a little reading in every night.

This stretch is specifically for my hamstrings (I believe my tight hamstrings were the root cause of my plantar fasciitis). I know keeping my legs straight and in front of me and leaning forward would be a more valuable hamstring stretch, but that stretch has NEVER agreed with my physiology, even when I was a dancer back before puberty. I've decided to work on my hamstring flexibility with a stretch I know that my body can manage. Doing my stretch HAS been able to increased my straight on toe touch flexibility without being terribly uncomfortable, so why not?

Once I feel the stretch has been nice and good and long, I then put the book away and go to sleep. This has been my night routine for the last couple of months. The things we do for fitness, eh? I'm a total freak. It's probably good I don't have a roommate or boyfriend. hee

So, in other news, the Race for the Roses Send-Off Party is tonight.

It's a potluck where we first receive a bag of goodies, including our race day jersey (in trade-marked TNT Purple), tickets to the pre-race pasta party and post-race victory party, and a couple other little useful items like SPF15 chapstick. The coaches, staff, captains, and mentors then go through a list of good-to-know things for preparing for the event in 2 weeks: like get more sleep than normal if you can, and what to expect on race-day morning.

Then we eat. :)

Two of my mentees have let me know they can't make it, so I'll be grabbing their baggies for them.

Oh, and as it turns out, Rebecca DID recommit!!! I left her a voice message asking her, and I wrote a little message to my staffer Lindsay asking her in my mentor report, and since no one got back to me I assumed Rebecca was out... but she was never taken off of the roster, so I asked Lindsay again and she told me that Rebecca DID recommit! OH! I had taken her off my weekly email last week! Ooops, my bad. I added her back in. Still have yet to meet her, but it looks like she miraculously raised $600 for TNT in 1 week, and met her fund-raising minimum JUST in time to not get charged the balance on her credit card.

I suspect a parent bailed her out actually.

Heh, maybe I'll meet Rebecca tonight at the Send-Off party? Who knows?

Oh, and I'm bringing shrimp cocktail as my potluck offering. Mmmmm...

Run like a... shamrock... or something

I told you I’m a slow runner. I’m totally proud I finished the 15K in less than 2 hours, but um... I only really beat 20 runners in my class (female aged 30-34). Yeah, I rock. I know. Here is my official timing chip result:



Woo hoo! 1130th female! Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it! booya!

But, I can honestly say, even tho I was bringing up the rear of the 15K runners, I had a blast running this event.

So, the website says they had 16,000+ participants this year, up from 11,000 last year. Holy crud!



(um, sorry for the photo tag on all these. obviously I’d have to purchase them for those to go away, and who has the $ for that for a blog!?!)

So, yeah. It was pretty crowded.

Also, it being the Shamrock Run... all sorts of folks came out. Some weirder than others...





I showed up, found a spot on the top (8th floor) of a smartpark, and headed out to the waterfront to claim my event T-shirt and meet up with the TNT folks.

Just like how I finished the Portland Marathon, I intended to pace my friend (and mentee) Sheryl.

We watched the 5K runners leave and come back. Man, the 1st place guy was done in like 14 minutes. It was crazy. I went ahead and checked in my track pants and my coat at the clothes check, and then I was ready to go!

Finally at 8:40am, they blew the bullhorn that indicated the 15K was starting. It took a couple minutes to get over the start line, but after no time we were on the course. I started my garmin to track our pace/time.

And... we ran. and ran. I was pretty happy to be running actually. I love events like this...









We ran up and over pill hill. That’s the hill Terwilliger Blvd snakes over that OHSU sits on top of.

Here is the course map...



Yeah, the 15K challenge run was a monster compared to the other run options. heh. Most of the above pictures were actually taken after the big hill, on the second half of the course.

About 1 mile to the finish line there were some people dressed all silly handing the runners free small dixie cups of green beer. My running mates all passed, but I was like, hell! Sure! I can run 1 mile after a shot of bud. Why not? I took a cup and chugged it.... and burped the rest of the run.



And then I spotted the finish line ahead of me... and I started sprinting.

..

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Get your own

Woo! Ok, sure, I was bringing up the rear of the 15Kers (out of maybe 3,000 15K runners, I was ahead of probably only 150-200 or so)... and at the end of the whole shamrock run really (all the other events finished before the 15Kers). But I DID finish somewhere around 10:30am, which kicks butt for how I was hoping to do.

I immediately got into line for the beer garden (I ran with my drivers license on me... oooh yeah). Got into the beer garden, and claimed my free beer (mmm... widmer!) before really thinking about anything else.

Also, it turns out the free chowder we got for participating in the run wasn’t made with bacon, so I went ahead and got my cup of that. It was all soooooo tasty! I found some of the other TNT peeps in the beer garden, and we all congratulated ourselves and found many reasons to click plastic cups together.

Then, eventually, I realized, I was the only one not in warmer clothes. I was starting to get cold. I finished my beer and wandered over to the clothes check area. There were only like a dozen or so bags left unclaimed at that point (11am). I got mine and found a chair and pulled my track pants back on while shivering. I was pretty done for the day at that point.

THE END!

Recommitment & Shamrocks

Well, recommitment was last Friday.

I just found out today who of my mentees are left in the program. I lost 3, but those 3 aren't a surprise.

* Tonya dropped... due to being too far behind in her fundraising. She's also had a few work conflicts with our Saturday runs, so she's been doing the runs on her own. I think she'll be registering for Race for the Roses on her own and running it, just not with us. It's a shame the season didn't work out for her, she seems like a very nice person, and it would have been nice to get to know her better.

* Rebecca seems to have dropped... I'm thinking it's cause she wasn't getting anything out of TNT. She's done a 1/2 marathon before, she didn't need help training, and she clearly wasn't interested in getting to know anyone... so... yeah.

* Tami is an assumed drop. No one has seen her in months, she's done no fund-raising, for all we know she isn't even training.


This leaves 6. heh. out of my original 11. That's not a really good retention rate, is it? Eh. But Britteny and Val weren't really ever "in," so it's more like 6 from 9. That's atleast better. heh. I'll try not to dwell on it.

The good news is, of my 6 who are sticking with it.... all of them are done fund-raising. All of them have surpassed their minimums!! Some of them are still doing fund-raising activities, but it's just because they are amazing philanthropists. I'm left with 6 rock stars. It's kinda cool.

So, that's where the recommitment settled out to.

Coming up this next weekend is the Shamrock Run, and I'll admit to being a little nervous about it. 15K, or 9.32 miles is the course I'm registered for. My runs have been going really well over the past couple of weeks, but that's partly because I've been pacing my newbie runner mentees, Gabrielle and Amy. They aren't very fast, and it makes me feel amazingly in shape... so I never really have any trouble when I pace them, cause I'm not really pushing my limit. They ran the 8 mi run last weekend in a little less than 2 hours, a 14:22 minute mile pace (slower than my marathon pace). I'm hoping to be able to finish the Shamrock run in the same amount of time actually.

I'm a little miffed about the Shamrock Run tho. Part of the appeal was the free beer the runners get at the finish line... but that beer is only being served until 11am, and they aren't letting the 15K runners go until 8:40am. If it takes me 2 hours like I'm hoping, that gives me 15-20 minutes to find and drink my beer! Hmmm...

Also, I already know I'll be finishing AFTER the awards ceremony. If that's not a slap in the face, I dunno what is. Yeah, you're still competing, but we've given out all the ribbons. nice. The awards ceremony is scheduled for 10:15am.

Yes yes, I already know I'm not a contender for an award. I'm not a racer. The point is I'll be out running a 15K that most Portlanders will admit to not being in the shape to go out and do, and would flat out refuse to attempt it. That's cool. I'm automatically cool for running the 15K, and yet, "oh, you're still running? maybe we have some beer left for you..." seems to be the theme of the end of the Shamrock Run. Grrr...

eh, atleast I'll get a T-shirt out of it. I suppose one free beer isn't enough to whine over. heh.

In other news, the run team (lead by Captain Karl) is trying to get an online community going for our purposes. TNT run participants can make profiles, and we can host blogs, have discussions, post our fund-raising events for other people to see, etc. It's admittedly a little late for the Roses season (4 weeks left!!), but the other event participants can benefit from this. Karl told me it's so late cause, as he put it, "someone dropped the ball." He's none too pleased about this. I guess someone else volunteered to put this together, and then did nothing.

So Karl is fooling around with this free online community/project coordination website called fmyi. He put together a site, and invited some of us out there to fool around with it and give him feedback. Frankly, I think the site sucks. It's non-intuitive, and clearly geared more towards running a business than running a group like TNT. I mucked around with it, added some content to get a feel for the functionality, and wrote him feedback. I guess I'm really the only one to do this, as Karl called me up last night, and the two of us were messing around with the site trying to figure things out.

I showed him the stuff that bugged me, and told him the features that would serve us better that the site didn't provide. He's working with the fmyi creator on Thursday to go through my wish list and hopefully improve it. In the mean time Karl granted me administrative permissions to our site, and I can muck with it all I want now. hee!

I'll admit to having logged in a couple times since then... and muck-raking a touch.

Ok, yes, fmyi is kinda dumb, but I think it could be a valuable thing for our team to have our own online community. And, being treated special also massages my ego just enough to make me want to help out more. I butter-up nicely.


I'll let you know how the Shamrock Run goes this weekend!