Karen's Journey

Yes, my butt is in this photo that was in published on the newspaper's website.  Oh yay. It's possible that T is one of the yellow/gold shirts near the top of the hill. Like so many other small towns in America, ours has an annual Memorial Day parade, with the usual assortment of local dignitaries,  Scout troops, firetrucks, youth sports teams, old cars, piping corps, and candy being tossed to the youngsters lining the parade route, and of course, veterans marching -- or being driven -- grouped by war in which they fought. The loudest cheers are reserved for those who served. The Gold Star parents float is a sober reminder of those who made the ultimate sacrifice and the loved ones they left behind. Bringing up the rear of the parade is the top high school marching band in the country, the perfect grand finale. There is never a year that they are anything less than awesome. And the years the alumni band marches -- even better. They still have chops --...

Training for my triathlons through the crappy weather that was this summer, I trained for any race day weather eventuality. Biking through car wash-like downpours. Arriving home from a run just ahead of a microburst that took our power out for 11 hours. Getting to a group training venue only to have it cancelled due to thunderstorms. Cycling through rain that was being blown so hard it felt like sleet. Open water swimming through choppy water that challenged one's ability to take a breath before the next wave slapped one's face. When you're training for a triathlon, you don't really have the option to wait for nice weather. Plus if you train in bad weather, you're prepared to race in bad weather. Not that it will be fun, but you know you can do it. As it turned out, I had beautiful conditions for both races. My take away is: train for bad weather and you'll trick Mother Nature into giving you a rare surprisingly good day. Utilizing that strategy, I'v...

T -- who set eight boys' seven-and-under age group records with our local track club this year -- has decided to become an anti-runner. I think there are two components -- the opposite of "you have to be in it to win it" being "you can't lose if you're not in it,"-- and knowing that I like to watch him run. I'm very careful to avoid overemphasizing the competitive aspect and praising him for "winning," but instead telling him that I enjoy watching him run and seeing him work hard to do his best. But still. Anything Mommy likes is the opposite of what T likes. That's the way it goes these days. I wrote yesterday about our skiing escapades and how it was not the greatest family outing ever. After I thought about it, I realized there's been a recent success story. Involving running. And I should not just vent here in the blogosphere; I should share success stories. I've signed up for another triathlon. Two actually. And I h...

What's a Tofurkey Day race without a little -- or a lot -- of snow? I ran a 10km race on Thanksgiving morning. Actually it was billed as a 10km, and then sometime after registration but before packet pickup, changed to a "10K-plus." Ten kilometers is approximately equivalent to 6.2 U.S. miles. This one would be closer to 6.5 miles we were told, due to a change in the location of the start line. Great. I'd been running six miles in my training runs, knowing that if I could get through six miles, the final point-two would be an adrenaline-filled surge to the finish line. Now that was going to turn into two full laps of an outdoor track. For athletes other than Olympic marathoners, that is a long way to kick. I sucked it up and set off with 450 other runners in a blinding snowstorm and temperatures in the teens. At least the wind wasn't blowing -- the weather forecast had predicted near zero wind chills. In comparison, 17 degrees felt absolutely balmy. My ...

As a runner, I've had this weird ability to set a desired pace per lap/kilometer/mile -- whatever event I'm running, whether in training or a race -- in my mind and nail it. Back in my competitive days, when I was doing regular interval training with the guys, they loved it when it was my turn to lead the next 200 or 400 or 800 or 1000, because they knew I'd come through the splits within one second of target time. Just call me a human stopwatch. I'm no longer competitive, and we now run on a weird excuse for a track -- a certain university with a regularly losing football team decided to rip up a world class indoor track in order to give the football team an 80-yard practice field. It's maybe 257.7 meters per lap -- who knows -- it doesn't matter since whatever the distance it is, it's not something you can put into a pace calculator and figure out what your times need to be, and there's no checking at the first 100 meter mark to make sure you're ...

A bit blurry, but he was moving . Two years ago, Hubs paced T to a single-year age course record of 40:18 for male, age five in our community's Festival of Races 5km men's race. That was actually three minutes slower than what he'd run on the Cape over the summer, but he ran it in a monsoon and while fighting a cold. Last year he was poised to set the record for male, age six, but was diagnosed with pneumonia five days before race day, and the doctor said a 100 meter race would be okay, but not 3.1 miles. So Josh A. got to retain his record, which is a respectable one. This year, T was adamant that he did not want to run this race. So I signed myself up. I'm trying to retain some amount of triathlon fitness, and regular racing is going to be an incentive to get myself out the door twice a week to run. Training with him along has not gone well. He crabs, moans, complains, drags his feet, tries to outdo me by walking fast -- an incentive for me to move fast...

This is my swim wave. I'm the short one in the center to the right of the tall woman  with her hands on her hips. The horn is in the air, poised to sound  the start of our race.  We left off with me standing in a lake waiting for the start of my swim wave in my sprint triathlon. This is what I knew standing there: If I make it to the run, I'm golden. My legs know what to do. "My legs are fine/after all, they are mine."  That quote comes from a song I heard on the radio every time I was going to or coming from a workout:  Carry On  by Fun.  (watch the video here) Eventually, the lyrics started sinking in and I realized this was my triathlon theme song. Call me crazy, but I think it might have a bit of an Ethiopian beat to it, once it gets past the intro. " If you're lost and alone (bike ride) Or you're sinking like a stone (the swim) Carry on May the past that you've found Be your feet upon the ground (the run) Car...

When I was about 10 years old, I heard my mother tell a friend of hers, "Oldest Daughter is the athletic one." As the middle daughter, I've spent the rest of my life trying to prove her wrong. Okay, so it took me two years to get out of the beginner's group in swim lessons and I never did pass advanced swimmers, and Big Sis was indeed bigger and stronger than me -- she actually made it through advanced life saving and worked as a life guard and swim instructor. And she could beat up the boys who picked on me -- that was handy. She actually made one cry once. Score. Even though I felt a little sorry for him. But still. To be pigeon-holed as "not athletic." That kind of irked me. Which is probably how I ended up standing nearly hip deep in Oneida Lake in upstate New York on a chilly Sunday morning in early August waiting for the horn to signal the start of my 600 meter swim, followed by a 30 kilometer bike ride, followed by a five kilometer run. I'm ...

I should be writing a post about Trayvon Martin or about how people tell me I should stop seeing the color of my child's skin or maybe about the relative who freely admits to using the N-word, claiming it can't possibly hurt anyone because it's just a word and words are that whole sticks and stones thing. But I'm kind of busy right now. I'm training for another triathlon. A sprint triathlon, but it's got an 18-mile bike ride in it, and that stretches the boundaries of "sprint" in my opinion. I know someone doing a middle distance tri, and that bike ride is only six miles longer. I did a triathlon two years ago, then couldn't last summer because of my knee injuries -- took out both knees by gardening -- that's how it goes post-50. And I think when I signed up for this tri, there was some amnesia about the amount of time that goes into training for one of these things. Baby Sis and me sporting our finisher medals two years ago.   I...

Sandy Hook hit me hard. T was six -- almost seven -- on that day, in first grade -- just like the children who were mowed down there. The idea that I could send my child off to school and never see him -- or any of his classmates -- again just rocked me to the core. I struggled with my own internal aftermath for months. At party after party of children turning seven, I would look around and think, "This could have been them. Someone could have walked into their classroom, looked into these innocent eyes, and just callously blown them away." I just kept seeing the innocence turning to terror in the eyes of the Newtown children as they watched the hail of bullets coming their way. I realized on April 14th that I have been going to birthday parties recently and not thinking those thoughts. I've been coming out of the woods on that one. And then came April 15th's running of the Boston Marathon. I am a runner. I  have never run a marathon because my body has failed m...

My Facebook status today is about how T can't run the annual Shamrock Run ( see my post from last year ) because he's got a whopper of a cold and a heck of a cough. And that he missed the Festival of Races last fall due to pneumonia. And for a kid who was born to run, he sure misses a lot of races where he would shine. And that I was disappointed that I'm not running due to injury, but more disappointed for him. I lied. I'm beyond disappointed that I'm not running right now. Hubs is 45 and running competitively better than he has in years. Of course, a new age group will do that for you. But when I was 45, we would pull up to the grocery store -- I got dropped off at the door so I didn't have to make the trek in from the parking lot -- and I would sit for several seconds psyching myself up for the pain to follow before opening the car door to get out. By the time we got to the cash register, I would be almost hopping, my foot hurt so badly, and that was even ...

One of the most fun little -- but competitive -- 5km races I know of takes place annually in Harwich, Massachusetts on the last Saturday of June. This year was its third year. We 've run it the past two years -- last year out of "oh, this looks interesting what-the-heckness," and this year because it was such a great experience last time. Last year we debated what to do with T while we all ran the 3.1 mile distance. I was afraid that was too far for his five-year-old legs. We were on the Cape without a babysitter available, so he came with. He ran with my niece, who coaxed him along with bribes of soda and ice cream to a third place finish in his age group, in a time of 37:52. They were ahead of me most of the race, but I caught up with about 400 meters to go. That gave him a bit of an incentive to pick up the pace and he stayed with me until we turned the corner for the final 100 meters to the finish line, when I told him, "NOW! Run as fast as you can NOW!...

I swear this is not turning into a running blog. I swear. Cross my heart. But... Sister S and me post-race.  She took six minutes off her time from last year.   Saturday was the annual Freihofer's Run for Women. It's a huge race, sponsored by a company known for their chocolate chip cookies -- a box of which are included in every race packet -- with about 5,000 participants ranging from elite, world-class runners to first-timers who take more than an hour to work their way around the 3.1 mile course. I love it. It's absolutely one of my favorite races. First of all, it starts uphill. Once I learned how to run uphill, I learned to love the uphills, except when the race ends on an uphill. That just takes the kick right out of a finish. Fortuitously, since this race starts on an uphill and is a loop, it means that it ends...downhill. It's the best race for a finish kick I know of. Hit the traffic light at the top of the hill and fly. No matter how tired you are...