Happy Holidays!

Even though I had the 23rd (mostly) and 24th off from work, this weekend seemed to fly by. I'm happy to report that among all of the holiday gatherings and travel around the state, I was able to get a 5 mile run in Christmas eve, some cross training yesterday and a 9.7 mile run in today. Very excited to be approaching double digits! If the weather cooperates, I expect to cross that threshold with DFMC teammates next week at the Wellie Ellie community run.

Another $100 on the fundraising front thanks to my future mother-in-law. The total now stands at $700. I hope that will grow quickly in early 2010 as my first big mailing goes out.

I hope everyone had a relaxing and peaceful Christmas holiday and hope you all have blessings in the New Year!

Baby it's cold outside

Yesterday morning it was a balmy 15 degrees as I met up with the DFMC team for the first official group run. By the end of the workout the temps had risen to 18 degrees, but the weather.com feels like temperature dropped from 15 to 12. No wonder I shivered in the car most of the way home! I wore my fuel belt for the first time and had my first encounter with gatorade slush as the bottles started to freeze. Word among the DFMC team was that the Thursday night crossroads run was even more frigid . . .but oddly reading everyones blog reports and listening to the chatter about the run and the fun afterward made me wish I wasn't nursing a gimpy knee and had been able to attend.

The workout was scheduled to be 4-5 miles for the First Timers and 8-10 for the Intermediate / Advanced runners. While I'm far from advanced, I chose to tackle the 8 mile distance after resting for most of this first official week of training in attempt to avoid serious overuse injury in my left knee and ankle. We ran an out and back course, with the out portion being slightly down hill with the wind to our back, so the turnaround with 4 miles in the legs was extra fun with slight uphill and wind. The DFMC team strung out and I ended up running the first half alone but caught up with Ryan just prior to the turnaround and we ran the last half together. Turns out Ryan works for a client of my company and we knew some of the same people. We chatted about possibly doing a team fundraiser at his place of employment since I am there quite often.

All in all it was a good run, my hips and glutes got a little tight toward the end of the run, and I've needed to ice my knee and ankle today but I'm still in one piece. Unfortuantely, along with shivering on the way home I also got a migraine, but I don't think that damage was associated with the run. Looking forward to the next group run following the holidays.

On the fundraising front, 2 more donations this week. . . Thanks to Steve & Ann Long, and Angela & Andy Wilkins.

Ice, Ice, Baby

Ok, so the title of this blog post is entirely corny, and completely dates me, but I’m trying to amuse myself since in the first week of official training per Coach Jack Fultz’s 18 week marathon schedule I’ve found myself injured (or rather hurt by “GI Jane” standards). With an impending training mileage of 550-650 miles over the next 18 weeks, I will not be a movie Navy Seal and work through the hurt. Since I know that resting on a few 3-5 mile run days will likely do far more for my training then cramming them in and injuring myself more.

The pain is in my left knee. It locked up on me yesterday afternoon walking around the office and then was slightly sore thereafter. Driving a standard car in heavy traffic 45 miles west on 90W certainly did not help. I associated the pain from my clumsiness rather than a training injury but sure enough later in the evening at the gym after walking a ¼ mile warm-up on the treadmill and starting to jog, the knee did not cooperate so I shut it down and went home. Based on how the pain was, cross training didn’t make sense either.

So I went home to my resident exercise physiologist, and NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist for an assessment. After putting me through a few tests, Dave determined that he didn’t think I had any structural issues or meniscus issues and while he qualified that patella femoral pain is hard to diagnose he thought that most likely I had inflamed a bursa or had some muscular issues in the knee area from overuse. This diagnosis is entirely plausible since I was surprised by how soon I was able to log 5+ miles runs. I think my cycling cardiovascular fitness allowed my heart and lungs to think my legs could run more miles than they were ready for. So no running for me Tuesday or Wednesday, and likely no Crossroads run Thursday. I’ll be icing and taking ibuprofen. Maybe some XT on Friday to see if that allows me to recover enough to make the Saturday DFMC run my only miles logged this week.

This is not an all dooms day report; there are two positive items. First, I am disappointed that I am unable to train. It was surprising to me to learn when I couldn’t run, how much I was enjoying the running becoming part of my daily routine. I will have to remember this feeling when it is very cold, windy or precipitating this season. Last but not least, fundraising emails have gone out and as of this posting I am $500 toward my $7500 goal. To break it down by mile marker standards I’m 1.75 miles down the 26.2 mile fundraising course. Thanks to Mom & Dad, Courtney Chronley, Dustin Demorest, Nancy & John Martin, and Tim Lenahan!

Movie Star

I'm a movie star . .. a blinky, "um" saying movie-star

Check out my "Why I run" video and those of some of my teammates at the Dana Farber web-site. Once done viewing, you can click the Sponsor a runner link on the right of the page to make a donation.

Thanks & Happy Holidays!

Crossroads

Thursday night I attended my first weekly Crossroads run. I had been working in Westborough in the afternoon and with traffic I was not able to make it to the pub until about 20 minutes after the group had left for various runs. I made a quiet graceful entrance into Crossroads literally falling up the stairs when I misplaced my footing on the first step. Great start to the night, but no injuries.

After dusting myself off, I dropped off my stuff upstairs and I took off for a run around the river and crossed paths with some of the other groups. I seemed to have run my river loop counter to the other groups. It was windy and I wanted to run the 1st half of the loop into the wind and save the tail wind for the run back. I thought this would keep me from running to large of a loop out only to find I couldn’t finish it with the wind. This strategy worked well for me, but I did even up with some wind burn on my face L. I ran the loop from the Mass Ave Bridge to the J.F.K Street bridge and then a few blocks out and back down Beacon St. As I have done all of my training to date on a treadmill, I wasn’t sure how well I was running and I didn’t have a sense of how far I ran.

After arriving back at Crossroads, wary of that first step on the way upstairs, I still managed to stumble a little, but didn’t face plant this time thankfully since there were witnesses this time around (I think the padded carpet does not like me). Upstairs I talked to a few DFMC team mates I had met previously as well as talking to Steph who I had only spoken to previously through our respective blogs. It was great to finally meet in person as Steph is also on her 5th DFMC team but like me had not been much involved with the DFMC group runs / meetings before, so we are experienced rookies in some ways. I enjoyed a beer along with the free pizza provided by the pub. I could certainly get used to this.

Curious about my run, I asked Tyler if he knew off hand how far that river loop was and he had indicated about 6 miles. I was pretty excited about that . . . apparently I wasn’t being as pokey as I thought. I thought the loop was about 4 -4.5 miles. I then repaid Tyler for his information by mistaking his beer for mine when I put them next to eachother . . .whoops my graceful streak of the evening continued. Definitely have to buy his drink next week!

When I got home I wanted to verify my mileage on some of the online Charles River Maps. Tyler was pretty close, the data I saw indicated the loop is 5.6 miles. It took a bit of hard work to figure that out since the Mass Ave bridge is apparently called the Harvard bridge even though it leads to MIT and is several miles from Harvard . . .go figure. With the out and back section I ran along Beacon Street my run totaled 6.5 miles. My longest run of the season . . .not bad for my first Crossroads run! I’m glad I was able to run this far comfortably so early in the training season. It bodes well for when much of the group will start taking the T out to Woodland and running the last 9 miles of the marathon course back to the pub after the winter holidays. Some runners tackled the hills last night, but I’m planning on waiting to reintroduce myself to the “Newton Flats” on January 7th.

Gratitude Attitude

Thanksgiving weekend was a great escape from the daily grind and 10 hour work days. I enjoyed two 5 mile runs between Friday and Sunday separated by a day of rigorous cross training on the Arc Trainer, Spin Bike, and even a little bit of rowing on the Concept 2 trainer. I even had time to take some positive nutritional action to supplement my training by making a turkey vegetable soup with the Thanksgiving leftovers. I'm not normally an adventurous eater but I went a little crazy in the dried bean aisle of the supermarket and added some black beans, kidney beans and peas to the soup to go along with the potatoes and corn that I had at home. The net result was more ingredients than broth but good carbohydrate, and protien fuel for the muscles! Side note to those of you who are novice cooks like me . . . apparently you have to soak dried beans before you cook them, or you can like I did start cooking in the crock pot, see the funny wrinkled beans and then google soup recipies to see where you went a rye. . . luckily putting the crock pot in the fridge overnight and resuming cooking the next evening saved the day. The crock pot is a magical invention!

I was nervous about how I'd fare over the holiday weekend as this is the first holiday season since my younger brother passed. My fear of impending melancholy was also in part to losing a family friend earlier in the week. My Aunt Kathy's brother Jim Bell, succumbed to pancreatic cancer earlier in the week. Attending the wake was difficult as it was my first since my brother's. It was heartbreaking to see the ravage that cancer had done to Jim's body in his final months. Yet despite Jim's loss his family members in the weeks leading up to his passing and following adopted a gratitude attitude in which they daily remarked on what they were thankful for on facebook, or other means. Their resolve to honor Jim in this way was very inspiring to me in the wake of my own recent personal loss. So embracing their perspective, I was reflective during the weekend and appreciative of the opportunity to spend time breaking bread with my future in-laws family. At one point I actually had a quiet moment of reflection sitting at the table where I was able to observe the hustle and bustle of dessert serving, dinner guests pitching in with the dinner clean-up and enjoying good conversation. It's quite refreshing to actively appreciate the seemingly mundane from time to time.

My reflective optimistic outlook was bolstered again last night at the second DFMC runner's meeting. The monthly meetings are great motivation to keep up the hard work on the training and fundraising fronts. Following the meeting many team members gathered at the Boston Beer Works and I met some great team members that I look forward to running with at weekly runs at Crossroads and Group runs on the weekends over the coming weeks and months.

Getting my sea legs

With the second week of training complete I’m happy to report that I don’t feel quite as out of shape this week. On the downside, my training fizzled out as the week wore on again. Need to continue to apply myself and make time!

Fundraising - Worked Veteran's day and was not able to start my letter campaign as planned. Hoping to get the email campaign off and running this weekend.

Also stocked up on an important piece of training gear, a Brooks reflective vest now that it is dark at night.

A summary of training progress 11/7-11/13:

Saturday: Low impact cardio: 60 minute Arc Trainer Workout.

Sunday: Low impact cario with running: 45 minutes on the Arc Trainer and 30 minutes on the treadmill. My work on the treadmill consisted of running only 1.5 miles with the rest of the time being a walking cool down, but at least my legs had some time to adjust to the marathon shuffle.

Monday: Junk cardio: I spent 30 minutes on the Arc Trainer with another 15 on the recumbent bike. I realized when watching the tv on the cardio equipment, my pace slows down quite a bit, but at least I got my heart rate up.

Tuesday: Rest day

Wednesday: 62 minute treadmill work out. Total of almost 5,5 miles, with 5 miles of running consistently at 5.5 MPH/10:54 per mile pace. While still a slow pace for me using my high school XC pace as a bench mark, I’m happy to be able complete this length of a run without stopping so soon in my training regimen. And let’s face it, It’s been 15+ years since I ran a X Country race. On a positive side, a 10:54 per mile pace = a 4:45 marathon which would be a PR for me by 55 minutes so that would be great too! But since I’ve never really had a training regimen for those races, my finish goal this year is somewhere between 4:00 and 4:20 or a 9-10 minute pace.

Thursday: Worked late

Friday: Unmotivated

Out of the blocks . . .

I’m out of the blocks for training. Week 1 was a slow start (kind of like my sprinting prowess). Had a couple of solid workouts on 10/31 and 11/1 on the Arc Trainer of 45 Minutes each. I continued on Sunday with a 15 minute recumbent bike workout to cool down (and hopefully burn off some of that extra Halloween candy!). I took Monday off and then returned to the gym Tuesday, this time to give my running legs a shot. While I was slow, I did get a solid 65 minutes in on the treadmill to gross 5.2 miles. Some of that mileage was a walking warm-up, a walking cool down, and a 3 minute mid-run walk break, but all in all for the first time running in a while I was pleased with the current level of endurance even if it be at a tortoise pace of 11-12 minute miles. Sadly, I never thought I’d look back on my 6:30 – 8 minutes miles in high school track as being fast, as they certainly didn’t put me in the lead pack then but I guess I just needed to get older. The delayed on-set muscle soreness that followed my over ambitious run on Tuesday combined with a crazy work schedule for the rest of the week did not permit any additional training but I did get back in the grove this Saturday. I even got Dave to join my gym, so hopefully that will help the motivation.

No progress on the fundraising front yet. I’m hoping to make great use of some work time off on Veteran’s day Wednesday to get the first batch of letters out the door this week. So for all those out there thinking of noting, one of you can have the special honor of being my first donor if you act fast!

Of note this week, DFMC announced the 2009 Grand Total formally this week: $4,025,688. What an amazing accomplishment for a team of approximately 550! There were 86 runners who raised over $10,000! Way to go 10K team. One day I hope to join your ranks. I was one of 218 runners who raised between $5,000 - $9,999. Thank you to everyone who contributed and helped make this possible. 100% of these fundraising dollars go to funding Cancer research in the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research. We have not yet reached the ultimate finish line of a world without cancer so there is still more work to do. This year’s goal is $4.4 Million dollars. With your support again, we can make this happen, please follow the link in the top right hand corner to donate. Thanks for your support!

A New Horizon

This month I was officially accepted to the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge Team for the 5th consecutive year. While this is my 5th time on the DFMC team, I anticipate it will be a markedly different experience for me.

In my past 4 years on the team I had never attended any of the runner's meetings or weekly group runs. I wish I could say I logged all the training miles on my own but the reality is I never really put too much effort into the training aspect of being on the team and focused more of my energy of fundraising. My fiancé, Dave, a Certified Strength and Conditoning Specialist with the NSCA, and Exercise Physiology PhD student, liked to say I brought lack of preparation to a whole new level. Not exactly a ringing endorsement to my training program, especially from someone so professionally qualified to judge! Inevitably I always paid the price in pain and suffering on Marathon Monday. But despite his critical reviews of my training program, or lack thereof, Dave would always scrape me off the finish line on Boylston Street and make sure I got home in one piece. Despite my less than stellar athletic performance, the week or so of walking funny it was worth it to me for the funds raised for cancer research.

My entire perspective changed on March 28, 2009. On that day, I received a call from my mother that my younger brother, my only sibling, was rushed to South Shore Hospital after collapsing in his apartment on his way to work. Prior to collapsing, he had indicated his chest felt funny. Paramedics were not able to revive him. His death was unexpected; he had not been sick. Months later, even with autopsy results in hand, doctors are not sure what happened. It was some sort of cardiac incident... arrhythmia, myocardial infarction, they won't say for sure.

With a nagging ankle injury and a broken heart, I deferred my marathon entry with the DFMC in 2009 and did not run the marathon. Honestly, through my grief I did not think I would ever elect to run again. Yet marathon Monday came round and I couldn't shake the disappointment of not waking up and heading to St. John's to prepare with the other runners, of watching the marathon online sitting at my desk at work. Yet, I still wasn't sure I'd have the heart to sign up or use my deferral. As the fall came, and with it the DFMC application process and start of the BAA registration process I started thinking about the marathon and whether I would participate.

My brother was always proud of me for running and fundraising. Our mom has Chromic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) and I have participated in DFMC every year since her diagnosis. Because of Barr Investigator's research in genetic abnormalities in a class of proteins that control cell growth in certain cancers, there is now a drug therapy for CML, which was previously a fatal cancer. How could I turn my back on doing something so important? I decided I couldn't and that through participation and fundraising I would continue to do everything I could to make sure another family member is not taken away from me prematurely.

This year I vow my experience will be different. I attended the first runner's meeting on Wednesday October 28^th, the 7-month anniversary of my brother's death, and also his 1st birthday since his passing. I needed something to do to keep me busy that day, and couldn't have picked a better activity to honor his memory. In that 3rd floor room of the Smith Building at Dana Farber and at Boston Beer works following, I was surrounded by a group of optimists. Many of who had experienced similar life-altering losses of loved ones as I had with my brother. We are wounded, but not defeated; united in a common cause to conquer cancer. I'm looking forward to training with and getting to know my team mates better this year. The miles we log have the potential to not only strengthen our hearts physically, but I hope to help them heal as well.