10/5/08
Marathon #8 Twin Cities Marathon, Minneapolis
4:13:12
It has been awhile since my last Marathon (April). In May I had my first experience with the Madison to Chicago 200 mile relay. This took place the weekend before CARA marathon summer training season started. While it was not a marathon, I ran a total of 24.2 miles in 30 hours. It was a new kind of challenge, to run at all hours of the day/night, little rest and sleep deprivation. We had two vans, 10 people, and lots of fabreeze trying to cover up the stench from all our sweaty clothes and bodies trapped in the vans. What a great experience- I’m ready to do it all over again next year, but only 6 people to cover over 30 each in the 30 hour time span.
As summer training started, other things came to an end, leaving me broken hearted. I was not as ‘peppy’ of a pace leader – at least starting off. My heart wasn’t all there, but at the same time, if I didn’t have pace leading, I probably would have been even more lost.
For the first time, running didn’t make me feel better. Usually anything that was upsetting me was solved with a run. But with this, once I was done running, I would be back to being sad. And sometimes, the sadness didn’t go away while running and I’d have to run faster to fight the tears. I took two months off of yoga after I finally l let the tears come out, right there in class. While I am social and almost an open book, if you don’t know me, I’m not about to let the one thing you know about me be the sadness in my life. The people who see my tears are far and few in between. While Rachel A. is one who would see my tears, a whole yoga class around us wasn’t. So I figured I better get my emotions under control before I go back into that yoga room.
So, here I am: My heart not fully into pace leading, running starting to feel like a task, and no yoga to counter balance the running. This could make for a tough 43 remaining states if I never snapped out of it. But, life is life, broken hearts happen. I’m not experienced in them (my experience is the broken ego) so I just needed time. It’s surely nothing that will ruin the Love for the next 43 states.
So, how did the 18 weeks of training turn out?
The CARA Saturday 6am start 9:30 training group takes on a 2008 team name, The 9:Thirsties:
I did my best to keep busy, which equates to a lot of happy hours. On shorter ‘long’ runs I tended to be hungover. If running off a hangover doesn’t make you a stronger runner, I don’t know what does. For my birthday, I decided to put my drunken running ability to the test: Run the Nike Human Race 10k Drunk. That was pretty fun with Jenna, Laura K. and Laura B running with me- singing Happy Birthday every mile (at first at least. I will also never forget Kathleen’s shock, as she and Chanthana passed us, when she drank my ‘Gatorade’ yelling, “That’s not Gatorade!”. *You knew I was running that sucker drunk, what did you think, I’d let the run kill my buzz? ;) *
Now don’t think just because I was a lush this summer, this is the only reason why our group was fit for the 9:thirsty name. Alison’s June and early July consisted of trying to balance a social life and training for the Ironman. As Alison inspires me in many ways, she also was the inspiration to the name, shortened from 9:thirsty Thursdays to the 9:thirsties. Also, our group had plenty of happy hours to earn the name.
Injury: We had a lot of long run rain runs. I enjoyed the rain runs at first. I didn’t care the rain would weigh down my shoes. If rain symbolizes sadness, then I tended to be happy in the rain because as my mom always says, misery loves company.
All that puddle jumping might have been the cause to my injury (otherwise it was the walking home from work in sandals once a week). This really sucked; I am still working on a cure for this. I had tendon issues that shot pains up my leg right after my runs. With injury, comes less running and for me that’s difficult to do. So I got back into spin classes. After taking out a long run and having a horrible first 20 mile run (it got cut short at mile 15 to run walking the last 3 – a total of 18, not 20). I got those super feet inserts in my shoes which solved the problem, but on longer runs my ankles cramp up. By my second 20 miler (in the rain), I was able to fight the cramps with a little stretching.
New Friends: Thank goodness for my new 9:thirsty pace leaders. They weren’t new to pace leading, they just moved from Mark’s perfect 10s to the 9:30 group. Rachel (Johnson) kept us in order with the weekly e-mails, ordering our shirts and so much more. Kevin would keep me on track, when I wanted to speed up our 9:30 pace; he’d bring me back down. Alexis and I merged our ready-2-run 20 miler groups and together we had a great 20-mile run, not to mention became ‘friends’ with Bernie, from the Biggest Loser (I’m not mentioning here that after any I distance of running, Alexis always looks perfect, as if she didn’t run!). And Wendy was the one to successfully lecture me, reminding me that I’m not invincible and I finally accepted and surrendered to my injury. And, though Gil cut out from pace leading early on, he was always there in spirit- when I ran hungover, whoo-whoo-ed under bridges and jumped around like a crazy person, in my mind I could hear Gil saying “I love this Girl, isn’t she great?”
Maybe not in the first few weeks, but as I started to “heal” my peppy/motivational self came back. I had to show up, cheerlead, motivate and lead our group; Thanks to the new leaders, the rest was on cruise control.
Old Friends: The end of summer training season is here. I am not as sad to see it end as I was last year. I think it’s because I learned, though summer training is over, the friendships gained on the journey are here to stay. I won’t list all of your names- but you know who you are and I love you all!
Re-inspired: Alison, Michelle, Kristin and Heath ran the Ironman and as I watched them achieve their goal, it was that weekend where all my love and joy for running came back. If you didn’t get my mass e-mail mid-September, yes – those crazy four have inspired me to start training for tri-athalons. One day, I too will become an Ironman (Right now that’s scheduled for November 2010 – Florida).
Race Time: Choosing to run the Twin Cities Marathon was not a difficult thing to do in some respects, after all, my brother (and my adorable niece and nephew) live there. However, my college roommate of four years, Sarah, was getting married the same weekend. My initial thought was to run a different race and save Twin Cities for another year. But then my Uncle told me I inspired him to run the Twin Cities Marathon and asked if I planned to run it. The Marathon turned into an opportunity to have a family reunion (we haven’t all been together since my Grandmother’s 80th birthday celebration in February 2007). So, with my apologies to Sarah, I decided I should run the Marathon with my Uncle.
The week before the marathon, as taper time attracts illness, I got the flu. Unlike 2 years ago, I was not able to sleep most of it off with a sick day and feel 100% the day of the Marathon. When I got up to my brother’s place on Thursday night I wasn’t able to sleep that night. Friday night I took two doses of Nyquil and sleepy time tea. This got me to sleep a good 12-13 hours, but I woke up more congested and the sore throat was worse. Then Saturday night, I took Nyquil but a single dose and sleepy time tea. Unfortunately I woke up an hour after falling asleep, and tossed and turned for about 3 hours as my throat hurt and my head was all congested and I couldn’t breath.
I probably got a total of 3 hours of sleep which is the least I’ve ever gotten the night of a marathon. I woke up and my dad took me to the start. We picked Rachel Johnson up and so Rachel and I arrived to the metro dome together. With me sick, and Rachel injured I figured we’d be a great pair of gimps running together.
On Friday night my family ate at Buca’s. As we were leaving I noticed Melissa’s husband- and then saw Melissa! She ended up inviting me to meet her, Tiffany and their friends before the race. I ran my first Marathon with Tiffany and Melissa! We journeyed to San Francisco together just after College to run the Nike Women’s Marathon so I was happy to see them.
My Uncle met all of us at the metro dome and we headed out to the start. Rachel Johnson, my Uncle and I all started together. The race started and off we went. A few miles into the run it started to rain (as expected). Rachel is from the Minneapolis area so she was able to be our tour guide on the run. I was familiar with the first few miles thanks to our Badger trip up to Minneapolis last year, and Nick’s tour of the city two winters ago, but all roads and lakes looked pretty much the same, so I don’t know if I was on new ground or on ground I had travelled before.
As the rain got heavier, Rachel slowed down to tie her shoe, and me loving the rain decided to pick up the pace, so Rachel and I parted ways around mile 8 or 9? That left me with my Uncle. I have never run with someone on the full 26.2 miles (or as my watch read, 26.59), and I never imagined we would run the whole distance together.
Around mile 10 my Uncle asked me how I was feeling, and when I said fine, he suggested we try to slowly catch up to the 4:15 pace balloons. So we did and we passed them at one point, but at mile 16, my urge to have to go to the bathroom was still there (being sick I had drank more than the usual the night before and that morning) so when I saw a porta potty I told him I’d run ahead and use it quickly.
I had to wait in line for a minute or two but after that we were back on track (though the 4:15s must have passed us because we re-passed them later on).
I was getting tired and fearful of a hill Rachel talked about – remembering it from when she ran the 10-miler. As we climbed up a hill to get on a bridge up and over the Mississippi, I remember thinking how the crowd support (even in the rain) here was almost as great as New York. Because of the crowd support and having my Uncle with me, I wasn’t missing my ipod (they enforce the no music rule, so this is my first ipod-less marathon). As we ran to mile 20 my Uncle noted that we were at least in the right city (St. Paul). At the 20-miler (though my watch was reading 20.2, which really got to me), they had a ‘wall’ for us to run through, it was pretty neat. As we ran ‘through’ it, like an idiot, I punched at the air like I was punching through the wall.
Around this time, my Uncle said he couldn’t believe we were still running together, and if we have made it this far, we might as well finish together. I didn’t say anything, but I had my doubts. I like to be the pace leader…not the leadee and if I started to cramp up to a point of walking, I usually don’t take motivational cheers well and don’t like to hold people back.
The rain had stopped; I threw my tyvek jacket to the side and held onto my gloves and hat to give to my family. I couldn’t remember where I would see my family, I was thinking 21-22. They ended up being close to the 23 mile marker. I really couldn’t stop at that point, as my legs wanted to keep moving. So I quickly gave my gloves and hat to them, my brother handed me a plastic baggy with my phone (I left that in my dad’s car), kissed my mom, dad and nephew (missed Alexia) and kept running – still with my uncle.
And that’s when it got real hard. The legs started to cramp. We had our last ‘big’ hill. Breathing was difficult as I was trying but not successful at coughing up my congestion. Somehow, my Uncle coached me through it (I also kept thinking, run your heart out Tara!). I regained my energy and composure for the last 2 miles as he started to cramp up. Though I wanted to ‘kick it’ at the end, my Uncle was not up for that. This became our race when he coached me through the wall (that mile was a 10:20 pace) so we stuck together. There was a wonderful downhill near the finish. I ‘played’ with the crowd and we did speed up some. Then there was Libby yelling “DAD! DAD!” Her, My Aunt, Mandy and Sean were all there at the finish, cheering us on.
My Uncle and I grabbed hands held them high and smiled as we crossed the finish together. My thoughts as we crossed were, are we really done?!? We were. It was a great run – where though I was sick and rain probably wasn’t the best thing for me, I enjoyed it.
At the finish, we all came together. Alexia loved the run, she asked if she could run with me – so one day when she’s a big girl, maybe her and I will run a marathon together (I’ll start her on a 5K ;) ) We all headed back to my brother’s where my uncle and I showered, and then I got my happy Kreuser/Gauger reunion lunch and family picture. Throughout the day I was receiving texts from my friends checking up on me – so much support. The 18 weeks of training started with a broken heart, but it ended with my heart filled with Love from my Family and Friends – maybe the Love from the Family and Friends was there at the beginning, but I still had to kiss the rain.
Marathon #8 Twin Cities Marathon, Minneapolis
4:13:12
It has been awhile since my last Marathon (April). In May I had my first experience with the Madison to Chicago 200 mile relay. This took place the weekend before CARA marathon summer training season started. While it was not a marathon, I ran a total of 24.2 miles in 30 hours. It was a new kind of challenge, to run at all hours of the day/night, little rest and sleep deprivation. We had two vans, 10 people, and lots of fabreeze trying to cover up the stench from all our sweaty clothes and bodies trapped in the vans. What a great experience- I’m ready to do it all over again next year, but only 6 people to cover over 30 each in the 30 hour time span.
As summer training started, other things came to an end, leaving me broken hearted. I was not as ‘peppy’ of a pace leader – at least starting off. My heart wasn’t all there, but at the same time, if I didn’t have pace leading, I probably would have been even more lost.
For the first time, running didn’t make me feel better. Usually anything that was upsetting me was solved with a run. But with this, once I was done running, I would be back to being sad. And sometimes, the sadness didn’t go away while running and I’d have to run faster to fight the tears. I took two months off of yoga after I finally l let the tears come out, right there in class. While I am social and almost an open book, if you don’t know me, I’m not about to let the one thing you know about me be the sadness in my life. The people who see my tears are far and few in between. While Rachel A. is one who would see my tears, a whole yoga class around us wasn’t. So I figured I better get my emotions under control before I go back into that yoga room.
So, here I am: My heart not fully into pace leading, running starting to feel like a task, and no yoga to counter balance the running. This could make for a tough 43 remaining states if I never snapped out of it. But, life is life, broken hearts happen. I’m not experienced in them (my experience is the broken ego) so I just needed time. It’s surely nothing that will ruin the Love for the next 43 states.
So, how did the 18 weeks of training turn out?
The CARA Saturday 6am start 9:30 training group takes on a 2008 team name, The 9:Thirsties:
I did my best to keep busy, which equates to a lot of happy hours. On shorter ‘long’ runs I tended to be hungover. If running off a hangover doesn’t make you a stronger runner, I don’t know what does. For my birthday, I decided to put my drunken running ability to the test: Run the Nike Human Race 10k Drunk. That was pretty fun with Jenna, Laura K. and Laura B running with me- singing Happy Birthday every mile (at first at least. I will also never forget Kathleen’s shock, as she and Chanthana passed us, when she drank my ‘Gatorade’ yelling, “That’s not Gatorade!”. *You knew I was running that sucker drunk, what did you think, I’d let the run kill my buzz? ;) *
Now don’t think just because I was a lush this summer, this is the only reason why our group was fit for the 9:thirsty name. Alison’s June and early July consisted of trying to balance a social life and training for the Ironman. As Alison inspires me in many ways, she also was the inspiration to the name, shortened from 9:thirsty Thursdays to the 9:thirsties. Also, our group had plenty of happy hours to earn the name.
Injury: We had a lot of long run rain runs. I enjoyed the rain runs at first. I didn’t care the rain would weigh down my shoes. If rain symbolizes sadness, then I tended to be happy in the rain because as my mom always says, misery loves company.
All that puddle jumping might have been the cause to my injury (otherwise it was the walking home from work in sandals once a week). This really sucked; I am still working on a cure for this. I had tendon issues that shot pains up my leg right after my runs. With injury, comes less running and for me that’s difficult to do. So I got back into spin classes. After taking out a long run and having a horrible first 20 mile run (it got cut short at mile 15 to run walking the last 3 – a total of 18, not 20). I got those super feet inserts in my shoes which solved the problem, but on longer runs my ankles cramp up. By my second 20 miler (in the rain), I was able to fight the cramps with a little stretching.
New Friends: Thank goodness for my new 9:thirsty pace leaders. They weren’t new to pace leading, they just moved from Mark’s perfect 10s to the 9:30 group. Rachel (Johnson) kept us in order with the weekly e-mails, ordering our shirts and so much more. Kevin would keep me on track, when I wanted to speed up our 9:30 pace; he’d bring me back down. Alexis and I merged our ready-2-run 20 miler groups and together we had a great 20-mile run, not to mention became ‘friends’ with Bernie, from the Biggest Loser (I’m not mentioning here that after any I distance of running, Alexis always looks perfect, as if she didn’t run!). And Wendy was the one to successfully lecture me, reminding me that I’m not invincible and I finally accepted and surrendered to my injury. And, though Gil cut out from pace leading early on, he was always there in spirit- when I ran hungover, whoo-whoo-ed under bridges and jumped around like a crazy person, in my mind I could hear Gil saying “I love this Girl, isn’t she great?”
Maybe not in the first few weeks, but as I started to “heal” my peppy/motivational self came back. I had to show up, cheerlead, motivate and lead our group; Thanks to the new leaders, the rest was on cruise control.
Old Friends: The end of summer training season is here. I am not as sad to see it end as I was last year. I think it’s because I learned, though summer training is over, the friendships gained on the journey are here to stay. I won’t list all of your names- but you know who you are and I love you all!
Re-inspired: Alison, Michelle, Kristin and Heath ran the Ironman and as I watched them achieve their goal, it was that weekend where all my love and joy for running came back. If you didn’t get my mass e-mail mid-September, yes – those crazy four have inspired me to start training for tri-athalons. One day, I too will become an Ironman (Right now that’s scheduled for November 2010 – Florida).
Race Time: Choosing to run the Twin Cities Marathon was not a difficult thing to do in some respects, after all, my brother (and my adorable niece and nephew) live there. However, my college roommate of four years, Sarah, was getting married the same weekend. My initial thought was to run a different race and save Twin Cities for another year. But then my Uncle told me I inspired him to run the Twin Cities Marathon and asked if I planned to run it. The Marathon turned into an opportunity to have a family reunion (we haven’t all been together since my Grandmother’s 80th birthday celebration in February 2007). So, with my apologies to Sarah, I decided I should run the Marathon with my Uncle.
The week before the marathon, as taper time attracts illness, I got the flu. Unlike 2 years ago, I was not able to sleep most of it off with a sick day and feel 100% the day of the Marathon. When I got up to my brother’s place on Thursday night I wasn’t able to sleep that night. Friday night I took two doses of Nyquil and sleepy time tea. This got me to sleep a good 12-13 hours, but I woke up more congested and the sore throat was worse. Then Saturday night, I took Nyquil but a single dose and sleepy time tea. Unfortunately I woke up an hour after falling asleep, and tossed and turned for about 3 hours as my throat hurt and my head was all congested and I couldn’t breath.
I probably got a total of 3 hours of sleep which is the least I’ve ever gotten the night of a marathon. I woke up and my dad took me to the start. We picked Rachel Johnson up and so Rachel and I arrived to the metro dome together. With me sick, and Rachel injured I figured we’d be a great pair of gimps running together.
On Friday night my family ate at Buca’s. As we were leaving I noticed Melissa’s husband- and then saw Melissa! She ended up inviting me to meet her, Tiffany and their friends before the race. I ran my first Marathon with Tiffany and Melissa! We journeyed to San Francisco together just after College to run the Nike Women’s Marathon so I was happy to see them.
My Uncle met all of us at the metro dome and we headed out to the start. Rachel Johnson, my Uncle and I all started together. The race started and off we went. A few miles into the run it started to rain (as expected). Rachel is from the Minneapolis area so she was able to be our tour guide on the run. I was familiar with the first few miles thanks to our Badger trip up to Minneapolis last year, and Nick’s tour of the city two winters ago, but all roads and lakes looked pretty much the same, so I don’t know if I was on new ground or on ground I had travelled before.
As the rain got heavier, Rachel slowed down to tie her shoe, and me loving the rain decided to pick up the pace, so Rachel and I parted ways around mile 8 or 9? That left me with my Uncle. I have never run with someone on the full 26.2 miles (or as my watch read, 26.59), and I never imagined we would run the whole distance together.
Around mile 10 my Uncle asked me how I was feeling, and when I said fine, he suggested we try to slowly catch up to the 4:15 pace balloons. So we did and we passed them at one point, but at mile 16, my urge to have to go to the bathroom was still there (being sick I had drank more than the usual the night before and that morning) so when I saw a porta potty I told him I’d run ahead and use it quickly.
I had to wait in line for a minute or two but after that we were back on track (though the 4:15s must have passed us because we re-passed them later on).
I was getting tired and fearful of a hill Rachel talked about – remembering it from when she ran the 10-miler. As we climbed up a hill to get on a bridge up and over the Mississippi, I remember thinking how the crowd support (even in the rain) here was almost as great as New York. Because of the crowd support and having my Uncle with me, I wasn’t missing my ipod (they enforce the no music rule, so this is my first ipod-less marathon). As we ran to mile 20 my Uncle noted that we were at least in the right city (St. Paul). At the 20-miler (though my watch was reading 20.2, which really got to me), they had a ‘wall’ for us to run through, it was pretty neat. As we ran ‘through’ it, like an idiot, I punched at the air like I was punching through the wall.
Around this time, my Uncle said he couldn’t believe we were still running together, and if we have made it this far, we might as well finish together. I didn’t say anything, but I had my doubts. I like to be the pace leader…not the leadee and if I started to cramp up to a point of walking, I usually don’t take motivational cheers well and don’t like to hold people back.
The rain had stopped; I threw my tyvek jacket to the side and held onto my gloves and hat to give to my family. I couldn’t remember where I would see my family, I was thinking 21-22. They ended up being close to the 23 mile marker. I really couldn’t stop at that point, as my legs wanted to keep moving. So I quickly gave my gloves and hat to them, my brother handed me a plastic baggy with my phone (I left that in my dad’s car), kissed my mom, dad and nephew (missed Alexia) and kept running – still with my uncle.
And that’s when it got real hard. The legs started to cramp. We had our last ‘big’ hill. Breathing was difficult as I was trying but not successful at coughing up my congestion. Somehow, my Uncle coached me through it (I also kept thinking, run your heart out Tara!). I regained my energy and composure for the last 2 miles as he started to cramp up. Though I wanted to ‘kick it’ at the end, my Uncle was not up for that. This became our race when he coached me through the wall (that mile was a 10:20 pace) so we stuck together. There was a wonderful downhill near the finish. I ‘played’ with the crowd and we did speed up some. Then there was Libby yelling “DAD! DAD!” Her, My Aunt, Mandy and Sean were all there at the finish, cheering us on.
My Uncle and I grabbed hands held them high and smiled as we crossed the finish together. My thoughts as we crossed were, are we really done?!? We were. It was a great run – where though I was sick and rain probably wasn’t the best thing for me, I enjoyed it.
At the finish, we all came together. Alexia loved the run, she asked if she could run with me – so one day when she’s a big girl, maybe her and I will run a marathon together (I’ll start her on a 5K ;) ) We all headed back to my brother’s where my uncle and I showered, and then I got my happy Kreuser/Gauger reunion lunch and family picture. Throughout the day I was receiving texts from my friends checking up on me – so much support. The 18 weeks of training started with a broken heart, but it ended with my heart filled with Love from my Family and Friends – maybe the Love from the Family and Friends was there at the beginning, but I still had to kiss the rain.
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