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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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!

approaching recommitment....

So, it turns out the Race for the Roses season is super short... only 11 weeks total. Right now we have about 7 weeks left. I'll catch you up on what's happened so far!

First off, Val and Britteny ended up dropping TNT. Britteny is moving to Alaska, and Val was a little overwhelmed with the rest of her life, wasn't able to put in the time and effort into TNT that she would have liked to.

This brings me down to 9 mentees.
* Frank and Kim - an adorable married couple who are TOTally gung-ho about TNT. They seem to be having a great time with it too. Their fundraising is going really well, and they are really good about their training.

* Amy - she has turned out to be very sweet, and also quite good at fundraising. She is 3/4th to her goal as of today. She met Gabrielle on her own at one of the group runs, and the two of them have started running together. Both are really cool people actually.

* Gabrielle - younger, works nights in a bar in SW Portand (called the Bucket Brigade?). She is a first time runner, but seems to be doing really well. Also is at the half-way point for fund-raising, so she's doing really well.

* Sheryl - my alumni star. She's DONE with her fundraising, and has also been doing the experienced marathoner training, and been having no trouble at all. She makes my life easier. :)

* Teresa - she's also half-way done with her fund-raising right now, and doing slightly longer runs on the group run days since she is an experienced marathoner. things seem to be going well for her, and I think she's enjoying the social aspect of TNT above all her other marathon experiences in the past.

* Tonya - she is very sweet, but a little behind. There was a death in her family, and she had to miss a couple weeks ineffect. Now she's working to catch up in both the training and the fundraising... but things seem to be going well. She's very optimistic.

* Tami - she unfortunately works on Saturdays, but has been training on her own on Sundays, and trying to make the Thursday track sessions. I have very little contact with her, so I hope everything is going well. I really should call her this week to touch base. She doesn't seem to be very tech-savvy, as she doesn't really check email, and told me she was having trouble downloading the training schedules off of the emails Coach Joe sends out. Ineffect, she doesn't have a fund-raising webpage up, and hasn't seemed to be making any progress on her fund-raising. I'm a little worried about her truth be told.

* Rebecca - I STILL have yet to meet Rebecca in person, but it seems alright, cause I'm not sure she wants to meet me. She is doing her training, is kinda sorta slow on the fund-raising, but not so slow as to be a point of worry (she's raised around $200 right now). She seems to want me to leave her alone for the most part, so I have been. She's totally unenthusiastic about the incentives (like socks for getting your letter done and shown to our TNT staffer, or a mousepad for the website setup, or a TNT water bottle for the $300 raised by the end of this month). Also we started doing these journey bead things, and she really just didn't want one. I can't say I entirely blame her, I'm not so sure what use they are, or what exactly I should do with them... but yeah.

As far as my own training goes... I had trouble 2 weeks ago on the 4 mile run. I had to stop at 3 miles cause my old knee injury started acting up again. I was totally bummed over this. So this last weekend I wrapped my knee with the same ace bandage I used for the portland marathon season, and I seemed fine. I was able to complete the 5 mile run around NW portland (thank god!). It was such a great run this last weekend.

The weather for our group runs started out cold, wet, SNOWING, and dark. It was kinda miserable, but we were out there, bundled up, doing it. It was an interesting thing. The runs always feel good, and I can't help but notice in a group it's always easier to run distances. The last 2 weekends we got some warmer weather and SUNSHINE! It's been great!

I've decided to run the Shamrock Run on March 16 in place of our March 15 group run, so that'll be fun. I registered for the Shamrock Run 2 nights ago.

That's pretty much where things are. As far as other mentors go:
Heidi and Deanne (the soccer mom types) have mellowed out a good deal, and are actually quite nice.
Tracy is REALLY cool too, always very friendly, so that's nice.
Greg is kinda quiet, but a really good runner. He goes the extra mile (quite literally, running the course back and forth) to accompany our participants on their runs. If I was more fit I'd probably try that too, but um. I'm not as in-shape as he is.

We have only 1.5 weeks till our mentees are supposed to have $300 raised... and 2.5 weeks until recommitment. Rough!

Oh, and yesterday Lindsay had us order out race day jerseys. I've opted for a T-shirt this time inplace of the tank top I chose for the Portland Marathon (and it ended up being WAY too cold for a tank top). I figure: I already HAVE a TNT race day tank top. If I really want to wear it on race day I have it available to me. Better to have more options.

Tomorrow I'm going to a screening of The Spirit of the Marathon movie. I've invited all of TNT, but so far I don't know of anyone else going. Ah well. I'm looking forward to it, already have my ticket! Then on Saturday I'm celebrating my birthday, and I've invited all of TNT to that as well. Several of my mentees, and Captain Karl are planning on going, so that should be fun!

did I say 8 mentees?

... make that 11 now. heh. 3 signed up at the kick-off party.

(9 & 10) Kim and Frank. I don't know much about them yet, but they are married and both seem like neat people who will do well with the TNT program.

(11) VAL!!!! Yes, my running partner for the portland marathon is now one of my mentees! Ok, perhaps that's cheating a touch, but I don't care... I'm stoked having her in my numbers.

AND, I just had to fill out my first mentore report of the season (I guess I have to submit one every monday). Seems my mentees have already raised $1050 for LLS. Pretty good for our first weekend of the season! I'm gonna have fun watching that number grow... partly cause it's a metric of my success as a mentor, and partly cause I'm not having to fund-raise myself this season.

So, let me back track and talk about the Kick-off and our first training.

Kick-Off Party!!
It was fun. I realized that roses are quite easy to come by due to Valentine's Day looming on the horizon. I got a couple bundles of "Garden Roses" which means they aren't long stem, but rather have several blossoms per stem. Still quite pretty, and frankly, cheaper.

Showed up, found rock star street (free) parking, and went and decorated tables. I helped put up posters, and then began mingling with the new participants. I found several of my mentees, snapped photos and exchanged pleasantries with Tami, Gabrielle, Sheryl, Tonya, and Amy. Teresa and Becca didn't show up to the event though.

I ate some funny-tasting finger sandwiches (I opted for the white mystery meat flavor). Then we watched the info video and all the staff, coaches, captains, and mentors were introduced. For some weird reason, my name was called first out of the mentors. This made no sense to me. Why? I've got the least amount of running experience for one thing out of the mentors, and I don't come first alphabetically in ANY sorting of the mentors... still rather confused about this. I suppose it could be innocent, but I dunno. it's weird. Went up and got my mentor training jersey. It says MENTOR across it in large letters. heh.

After the big meeting, the running peeps met in another room to talk about running. I made a bit of a fool out of myself here... by cheering for Vancouver. Coach Joe stopped and looked at me and said he's never seen ANYONE show that kind of enthusiasm for the couv before. People laughed. I stood my ground and said I was making the couv awesome again. so there.

It was a good meeting, and I walked away pretty pumped. I probably should have gone and collected my roses afterwards, but oh well. They would have just slowly died and gathered dust in my house. They were really pretty tho. Maybe I'll actually get flowers from SOMEONE ELSE for V-day though... who? who knows... but a girl can hope, eh?

First Training
Showed up with coffee in hand and with Val in the car. I tried desperately to find Becca, Teresa, Kim, and Frank before we began. Only succeeded in finding Kim & Frank. It was nice saying hi to them in person atleast. We began by learning about the weekly workout sched, learned good stretching techniques, and then met the other runners in a quick social exercise. After this, it was time to run.

Coach Joe wanted the mentors to be stationed ALONG the running course instead of running themselves... cheering on the participants. All well and good, except it was freezing and beginning to rain. Yay.

I got stationed at the bottom of a large hill on the 6mi course. Instead of standing still, I insisted on running the block back and forth. I would escort some runners to the end of the block, and then run back to the other end and look for more runners to escort. It was nice. While running with various participants I was able to chat with them a little. I think it worked well.

Then, eventually, the runners started coming back (it was an out and back course), and so I did the same thing in the other direction. How far did I go? who knows!?! I was pacing that block at various speeds for a while atleast. 45 minutes? eh. I think I ran atleast 3 miles, which works fine for me.

The rain was coming down fairly hard by the time the practice was over. A group of us ended up going out for breakfast at the cadillac cafe on East Broadway following the run, which totally hit the spot.

The group seems like a GREAT group of runners. Lots of really nice, enthusiastic people. Looking forward to the season now!

Kick-off night!

Here we are at the kick-off party night tonight. I'll be taking my camera to capture my mentees hopefully.

I now have 8!! yay!

Nicki moved over to the Anchorage Marathon event, so she is no longer my mentee. No worries... now besides Teresa and Sheryl I have:

(3) Gabrielle... I know little to nothing about her besides the fact that we've been playing phone tag with eachother since she signed up 3 weeks ago.

(4) Tonya... also, I know nothing about her at this time.

(5) Amy... Now HERE is someone I've introduced myself to over the phone. She is running this half in honor of her brother Dave, who was diagnosed last year with hodgkins lymphoma at 54. He went through 6 chemo sessions, and as of Oct was declared cancer free! Yay! She is self-described as an extremely tall middle-aged woman, so it shouldn't be hard to spot her. She was really easy to talk to on the phone, so I think I'm going to enjoy getting to know her.

(6) Britteny... left her a message, but still haven't talked with her.

(7) Rebecca (Becky)... she seems worried I think she's crazy. The phone conversation was a tad awkward, but I think she'll warm up to me when she realizes I just want to be her friend. It'll be easier to talk to her in person I bet. She's done a half marathon before, the Run Like Hell half on Halloween. I always thought that one sounded fun. She's pretty confident she can raise all $1200 by letter-writing alone... which very well may be the case, but I think I'll watch her fundraising amounts closely just in case her friends/family/coworkers aren't as ready to give her money as she was hoping.

(8) Tami (Tamara)... yet another mentee I haven't chatted with yet.

So, in conclusion, tonight at the kick-off party I'm definitely going to have to hunt down Gabrielle, Tonya, Britteny, and Tami and ask them how they like to be contacted (phone or email).

All that aside, I've got to show up early tonight to help decorate the tables. Since I have no previous Race for the Roses shirts, medals, race bibs, or anything else relating to this particular race (Portland Marathon stuff work? no? dang) I'm going to try to hunt down a couple of bouquets of roses to scatter around the tables. Hopefully I won't be paying too much... especially since roses aren't exactly in season right now :P

See, we got this email from the walker mentors (told you they don't mingle with us.. same event but we are totally segregated) that they had discussed their table decorations and decided on the above as our decorating theme... and they didn't know what us Run mentors had decided on, but that's what they were doing. Heidi, a super-mom run mentor, responded in a group email that us run mentors had discussed it and decided to match their decorations (we have!?! I wasn't part of this discussion... by we does she mean she??). Oh well, I don't really care since I have no better ideas. Let Heidi be the roses run spokesperson... it makes it easier to be critical about her behind her back. Tis the burden of those who lead afterall!

Well, I'm off to look for roses in january!!

3 mentees(!) + a new honored teammate

I now have 3 mentees:

(1) Teresa... a sweet sounding mom. She's been running since high school and makes sure to run a marathon every year (yeah, ok, WAY more experienced runner than me). Thought she'd be interested in trying something new and doing a half with TNT. She was already working on her letter and website when I called her a day after she registered. I think she's going to have no problem with TNT, and will really enjoy herself.

(2) Nicki... another mom. She is not an experienced runner, but was actually thinking about maybe doing the Anchorage marathon instead of Roses. She'll decide for sure later. She knows several people who have done TNT in the past and have been motivated by them. She's also brainstorming having a poker tournament or garage sale to help her fund raise. I like how she's thinking.

(3) Sheryl. Now, not only is she a TNT alum, but she actually ACCOMPANIED ME on the last 4 or so miles of the 2007 Portland Marathon when SHE was a mentor and I was a participant. She has registered for the Race for the Roses as a participant this time, and requested me as her mentor. coolness.


Also, today we got the email introducing us to our honored teammate: Joan Griffith.

She has a blog outlining her cancer experience at joangriffith.blogspot.com.

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Her story is amazing, so I have no doubt she'll help inspire and motivate our participants for our event to work towards their fund raising goals and work to conquer their own personal challenges in training.

Other than that... I need to think of some activity I can do with my mentees in a group (we were told that the program would like us to do a social kind of thing with our own group once during the season... so I need to brainstorm on this).

Any ideas?

I'll have a group of (hopefully) 8-10 mentees by the time we're done recruiting too...

and it still continues....

Hi all!

I thought I'd pick up where I left off... for those curious enough or bored enough to still be checking this blog. I'd still like to recall my marathon experience for posterity (even tho some of the details are admittedly a touch muddy now)... but that can wait a bit.

I've taken a small break from running since the marathon. I tried running regularly following the marathon conclusion, but the bad weather and my lackadaisical motivation made it less than happen. I went on a 7 mile run, then a 3 mile run, then 2 weeks off, then a 5.5 mile run, then a 13.1 mile walk, and since then... nothing. Oof, bad me.

BUT, it's not all over. Before Thanksgiving I applied with Team in Training to be a running mentor for their summer season, and they accepted my application in early Dec! I'll be a running mentor for the Race for the Roses run on April 6. It's a half marathon event in Portland.

And, don't be weary of me. I'm a non-fundraising mentor. I won't be sending out letters or baking more pie for now.

So... life goes on. Everything around mentoring begins this week too. TNT is recruiting right now for their summer season (which for the running team involves not only Roses, but the Rock and Roll marathon in San Diego in June or July or something. The other endurance events for the summer season include a century ride around Tahoe, and a tri out in Sunriver, OR).

We had our "mentor orientation" meeting on Dec 15, where we met the other mentors for the summer season. Apparently they are revamping the mentor program, and making the mentor's roles more involved, and also trying to make participating in TNT more fun and rewarding. So, it's kinda starting to feel like being a camp counselor all over again, but for a camp of "active adults."

Interesting.

As I was saying earlier today: it's been a long looong time since I've heard the pro and con aspects of puffy paint discussed seriously. Gah!

A couple of observations from the orientation...
(1) Race for the Roses was the biggest "event" of the summer season with 10 mentors (half walk half run), even tho we have the smallest fundraising minimum per participant and the shortest training period.
(2) the walk mentors and run mentors really didn't inter-mingle. V. segregated.
(3) of the 4 Roses run mentors present, there were two very... um... super-mom looking ladies with flawless hair and makeup, and very outgoing attitudes, and then there was Greg and me. You know, single, younger, more interested in running and the social aspect of group training than the other parts of the TNT mission. I mean, I think it's WONDERFUL to be active in an organization that works to cure cancer... but that's admittedly not my own personal drive for being there. I want to be a part of it, I'm proud I'm helping... but I don't have my own experience or personal hero. I can't write a captivating story about cancer to help motivate others.

Anyway, enough musing on how unsentimental my reasons are.

Recruiting for the summer season begins this week.

January 3, 2008 - 6:30PM Summer Season Informational Meeting Northwest Natural Headquarters One Pacific Square - 4th floor 220 NW 2nd Ave
January 5, 2008 - Noon Summer Season Informational Meeting Lucky Lab Beer Hall 1945 NW Quimby St.
January 8, 2008 - 6:30PM Summer Season Informational Meeting REI 1405 NW Johnson St.
January 9, 2008 - 6:30PM Summer Season Informational Meeting Lucky Labrador Brew Pub 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
January 12, 2008 - Noon Summer Season Informational Meeting Lucky Lab Beer Hall 1945 NW Quimby St.

I have to attend some of these. Basically we'll be looking to tell people about TNT's mission and possibly give some personal testimony about how amazing the experience is... and maybe sign new recruits up!

After these sessions, hopefully I'll be saddled with my own gaggle of 8-12 mentees that I get to mold in my own image... or rather communicate regularly with and encourage and monitor their progress. I'm supposed to do some fun team-building stuff to help make them feel special and "looked after" as it were, so I'm still brainstorming on the subject.

... I suppose pet rocks are a bad idea.

But, that's the news from this neck of the woods! Hope everyone had a great holiday season!!