Vacation Running

I'm such a pessimist. I didn't think any vacation with the kids could actually be relaxing. Happy thing to be wrong! Happy thing, in fact, that this was one of the best vacations I've ever taken.

I'll let the pictures do the talking:

We stayed in this cabin, which had no bathroom or showers (there was an outhouse and, up at the main ranch complex, showers; I like camping, but for a full week I want regular showers):

Elevation around 8,000 feet

 The night before we arrived we camped at Great Sand Dunes National Park:

That's me channeling Lawrence of Arabia. Actually I was chasing down Will, who had no fear of the pathless dunes.

I had a wonderful run on the park road paralleling the Dunes before we left.

Once at the cabin, we settled right in. In the morning, I had another wonderful run and then cooled off in the La Plata River, which was literal feet from the cabin's front door.

A river runs through it (it being my bottom): I took an ice bath just like this after all of my runs at the cabin.

The scenery was gorgeous. I wish I had a ranch to run on all the time, like Christy. I didn't have to leave the property to run at all, and in fact did so only once, when I went to the Durango Recreation Center so I could do some weights, too. Here's some of the scenery from my runs, which included my first 60-minuter since March:

Wonderful soft dirt and gravel surfaces, some in shade, some in sun.

Lakes and meadows to run around. I was careful, but Dan managed to turn his ankle on one of his runs in a high pasture.

This was the view to the north.

In addition to running, we were lazy for two complete days, letting the kids get muddy and play in the river while we read books, and on two other days we rode the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad and visited Mesa Verde.

Ruthie and I climb out of a kiva at one of Mesa Verde's cliff dwellings.

Pretty sure God made the Great Sand Dunes for kids. And walking on them is good for grown-up calves too. No way did I run on them, though.

I had forgotten how a good vacation leaves you refreshed. That's the point, right?

The Olympics and Summer Vacation

This morning Dan and I got up early to watch the women's Olympic Marathon. We don't have cable or any kind of DVR/Tivo set-up, so watching it live was the only option. I've watched every Olympic Marathon since Deena and Meb took medals in 2004 (how awesome was that??), and I wasn't going to start missing them this year.

I didn't regret getting up (especially because Dan let me go back to sleep afterwards and I slept until 9:40 a.m., a post-kids record!). I also really enjoyed watching the men's 10,000 yesterday. My favorite feature of both races? Seeing the bonds between training partners.

Good friends who ran hard and supported each other to the end. Credit: NBC Olympics

"...one is silver and the other's gold." Credit: USA Today

When the floodlights go down, win or lose, these athletes will always have running and their friendships. I think it's fantastic! It makes me grateful for all of my running friends, and all of my friends, period.

Yesterday I ran for 50 minutes. I had to stop for a bathroom break, but even that made me happy, because it meant that I am once again running long enough that I need to worry about my diet the day before. Time to resume some old habits! I can't wait until Darren lets me run for an hour, and I think when I'm allowed to go 90 minutes I'll actually feel I can say those magic words, "I'm back."

I'm in the middle of reading Matt Fitzgerald's Run: The Mind-Body Method of Running By Feel. I will review it when I'm finished, but I wanted to put in a plug right away for the chapter on injury. He describes injuries as a gift because you come back from them both grateful for your running and hungry for your goals. This has certainly been my experience so far.

My family and I are going on vacation in southwest Colorado this week, so I'll be taking a blogging hiatus. When I come back, I'll be grateful for fall running, for my coaching situation, for my big kids who are starting kindergarten, for my husband, Dan, who rigged up an antenna and then a connection to the BBC so we could watch the Olympics (no cable in my house), for my extended family and all my friends. This has turned out to be a great summer, though not in the way I expected it to.

Here's the cabin near Durango where we'll be staying. Ahhh!!

Love Letter to the Ponds (July Recap)

It was one of those "I don't want to get out of bed" mornings. But my little 40-minute run with five 90-second pick-ups turned that around.

When I arrived at the park where I'm doing most of my outdoor running right now, I barely noticed its beauties. It consists of three man-made fishing ponds with a parking lot, picnic shelters and bathrooms on one side and the St. Vrain River on the other. The river side is especially pretty, the tumbling little river snaking through cottonwoods and falling over an old dam, and the ponds themselves are full of waterfowl (the egrets and blue herons are my favorites). It takes about 15 minutes at my warm-up pace to get all the way around the gravel loop. It's flat the whole time, perfect for someone coming back from an injury.

But this morning at 6 a.m. I was still half-asleep. Dan and I went down to Denver last night with some friends to see my beloved St. Louis Cardinals lose to the Colorado Rockies. I was all hyped up from the fun of seeing a baseball game--my first live one since my kids were born!--and didn't fall asleep until 11:30.

A loud splash brought me out of my reverie. I don't know what kind of animal I startled on my initial warm-up amble, but it woke me up. I began my jog, firing up the Casio. (I haven't used a Garmin since I began running again--Dan is pretty sure he lost ours. I don't know when I'm going to have to deal with that, but it's probably going to be soon.)

Gradually, awareness of my surroundings began seeping in. A rooster crowed. The full moon, sinking above the mountains in the west, faded from its initial snowy white to a pale cream color that blended with the morning sky. Ducks waddled awkwardly on land, plunging into the water where they became grace itself. My steps strengthened. I said hi to a couple of other regulars. Before I knew it, I was around the circuit once.

The second circuit brought five 90-second pick-ups. I had been too tired to worry about how I'd feel on them, a good thing since they felt great. Once thing I've noticed about the fartleks I've been assigned in the last three weeks or so is that I'm much less of a clock watcher with them than I have been with this kind of thing in the past. You know what I mean? When you think you must be almost done with the interval, and then you look at your timepiece and realize, oh, I'm only 1/4 of the way through? That doesn't happen to me much for now. It probably means I'm not going as fast as I used to, but I think it also means I'm doing them right.

Today, as I skimmed along, feeling more awake and alive with each step, I thought only about how great it was that I was in the shade for this pick-up, or on a nice straight-away for that one. When the run was over, I realized I'd gone further around the ponds than I have to this point. It was only seven and a half minutes of fast running, but it did the trick.

Four hours later, I'm feeling a little sleepy again, but also that I have the energy for the things I need to do today (including shopping for school supplies for kindergarten).

I'm eager to test myself on asphalt again, and hilly trails, and the track. I'm eager to run further. But I love my course around the ponds. It made for a July that, though I have no miles to tally and no races to report, was my best month since January and the Houston Marathon. So far it's making for a great August, too.

Weight Training with Colleen!

I either will or won't qualify for the Boston Marathon in December, but regardless I'm sure having fun with the coaching that's leading up to the race.

This morning I met with Colleen De Reuck (Olympic marathoner and wife of my coach, Darren) for a one-on-one weight-training session. I've taken weight training classes and followed weight-training circuits from books many times, and I know my way around a weight room, but I've never had a one-on-one session like this--and certainly never with someone as knowledgeable about runners' bodies as she is.

I was a little nervous, not only because she's a celebrity (four times at the Games, winner of the Berlin Marathon, I could go on and on) and runs at a level for which I'll always be just a spectator, but also because I don't like talking about myself and my first-world problems and I feel I've been doing a lot of that lately. Back blah blah blah.....body fat blah blah blah.....steroid shot blah blah blah.....How could it not bore other people?

Moreover, I know from my own experience occasionally at my job that just because you're paid to help others doesn't mean it's always an enjoyable task. Don't get me wrong--most of the time my job is very gratifying, and I like helping most of our library patrons--but some days and some people just....get to you. I'm sure this is true in any job with a customer service component, be it taking orders at McDonalds, answering library research questions or giving weight-training advice to amateurs.

Turns out none of this was a problem. She was as nice as could be, and working with her was interesting and enjoyable enough that I completely lost track of time and made myself late for a much-anticipated lunch date with Cynthia (thanks again for being so understanding, Cynthia!). In the end, I came away with a series of 14 exercises to be done twice a week, and instructions on how to do them with proper form and so as not to hurt my back or anything else. She also gave me a great idea for a long run course in Boulder that will mimic that of the California International Marathon. Nothing like local advice!

I had almost an hour and a half with her. Half a day later, my back has protested not at all, something that hasn't been the case for me with strength training in a long time, barring my excellent Pilates sessions with Patty. I'm so ready for lunges, planks, hamstring curls, lat work and the like.

I'm a born-again strength trainee!