We've Moved back to Runner's World site!

Dimity and I are blogging again on Runner's World site, so please check us out there. We appreciate you following us to and fro!
http://marathonmoms.runnersworld.com/

Our first post is about Sarah's mommy-guilt feelings about her half-marathon this weekend. Read why her mind will be on another race instead.

Sarah and Dimity

The Sweet Spot

I recently finished reading Lynne Cox's Swimming to Antarctica, of which I can't speak highly enough. She's not only an amazingly strong and gifted long-distance, open-water swimmer, but she's also is an amazingly smart and entertaining writer (as in, she writes for The New Yorker). I'd hate her if I didn't like her so much.** Anyway, in the first chapter or so, she recounts how she learned she wanted to swim The English Channel. She was maybe all of eight years old. She crossed the sucker at age 15, and the rest is history: she has, with varying degrees of support, been able to devote her life to what makes her body and mind sing.

To say sprint triathlons are my version of Coxe's swimming is a stretch, but I can easily say I found my sweet spot this weekend. The race was, in two words, nearly perfect. The worst part: predictably, the water temperature. In the mid-50's. I rented a full-length wet-suit and wore two caps to minimize the heat escape, but putting your face in water that chilly--chilly for mortals, not Arctic-woman Cox--isn't pleasant no matter how you slice it. (And the wetsuit wasn't that efficient, since I poked a hole in the leg putting it on. Ugh. Over $100 for 500 lousy meters.) The cold water forced me to crank up my kick, and I was in T1 in less than 10 minutes, prying my way out of the damaged wetsuit and layering on clothes for the bike. The rest of the race was sublime: the bike was free of wind and significant hills, and I stayed aero for a good portion, picking off people like I never have before. The run was as flat as I wish my abs were. I put myself on cruise control and grooved on in, finishing in a little over 1 hour, 30 minutes.

I didn't wish away the race. I didn't have thoughts of not finishing. I didn't even want to slow down. I was actually smiling heading out on the run--the photographic proof is above. Which are all new sensations for me, and all very, very welcomed. My bring-it-and-bite-it-off mentality placed me in 3rd (!) for my age group, and 10th (!) woman overall. I'm not sure I can go up from here, since my next race is Olympic distance, twice as long, and I'm sure the ghost of races past is feeling restless and ready to rear her ugly head. Still, I'm going to do my best to savor my sweet, sweet spot.

**I like her just from her writing and attitude. I get to confirm that tonight, when I'm going to see her speak in person. So, so excited.

Me excited to race: are you kidding?

While Sarah's licking her athletic ego, I'm pumping mine up. My first triathlon of the season is on Sunday, and I can't stop thinking about it. I've actually been having random triathlon-inspired dreams for the past few nights, which is really bizarre for me. I was a rower for six solid years, and trained for my last marathon for 6 months, and neither sport ever entered my mind when my head hit the pillow. I don't think I've never been so excited for a race in all of my 35 years.

I usually I dread races, and then exclaim, "I'm just so glad that's over with!" at the end of it and have no desire to work out, let alone sign up for another one for months. But that's usually because it's one long race/slog--a marathon, a half-Ironman--and I've spent months slogging through the training.

This race, though, is my first in a series of at least three over the next three months, in which I hope eliminate any slog. The races are short and, as such, seem so do-able. This one, a 500m swim, a 17- mile bike, and a 5k run, I'm sure I'll be done with in less than two hours. I'll only need one or two Gus. I won't need to refill my water bottles. When I look down at my watch 10 minutes into the run, there will be max 20 minutes left--not at least 4 more hours.

The other reason I'm pumped is that I feel really strong. Like stronger than I did after I trained for the marathon. Ever since my mantra has crystalized as, "I can handle this for now," I've pushed myself more than I usually do. Which is to say, I've pushed myself. I regularly lead my swim lane (even through the what-lap-is-this-again? distance swims, which I despise). I went for a bike ride with a friend last week, and (happily) had to put my pedals on cruise control so she could keep up. At a group run on Tuesday, I jumped in with the middle-speed group (8-10 min. mile pace) and finished a 6.6 mile run in Garden of the Gods (read: hillier than a ski resort) in 56 minutes. Yes, I fell off the back of the group frequently, but that's a blazing pace for me to sustain. During that run, I just kept saying, Five more minutes. You can do five more minutes. My confidence, like my dreams, are so strangely un-me.

More than anything, this race, short on distance and expectations, feels so physically and mentally light. I'm sure I won't feel that way when I'm actually out racing--especially because the water temps are supposed to be in the 50's--but I'm sure that I can handle it. Especially when I take it in five-minute chunks.

I Need to Get A Little Stubborn

I’m fit, but not athletic. Growing up in an erudite family, not an active one, I didn’t play any sports as a child. In part because I was late to the game—any game!--I’ve always considered myself merely an adequate athlete but not a talented one.

Last week I was feeling particularly low on the jock-scale: I got cut from the line-up of my rowing team for a big-time race this weekend. Instead, our coach boated a teammate who is 20 years older and a half-foot shorter than I am. Ouch! Our coach couched his decision with an encouraging message, though, saying I “have a great deal to offer in strength, fitness, and competitiveness, but it needs to be refined in a certain form to make” me the rower he thinks I’m capable of being.

I’ve licked my wounded ego, but I’m left with considerable doubts about whether or not I am athletic enough to fix my rowing technique problems. I feel I am fundamentally lacking the proprioception and kinesthetic awareness (fancy fitness-speak for knowing what my body is doing when it’s in motion!) to make the changes needed to become the kick-butt rower I want to be. (As one of my sympathetic teammates put it, I “will be a force” once I can channel my fitness and strength.)

I believe Part I of the transformation is having faith in my abilities. I recently interviewed a world-champion sculler who is bound for the Olympics. I am trying to ingrain some wisdom she shared with me. “Believing that you can master parts of the stroke that are currently tricky for you is half the battle. That you can change it and make it right. You have to be a little stubborn.”

-Sarah

We All Move Together

I just read The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. Actually, I devoured the book. I started it on Saturday morning and finished it early the next afternoon, despite running 14.3 miles on Sunday morning and being on full-time mommy-duty all weekend. The novel is two alternating story lines: one about The City--a relatively mundane place where the dead exist while they are still remembered by the living—and the other about a woman stranded in Antarctica after a virus has wiped out most of the world population. Turns out the inhabitants of The City are all still there because this one woman has memories of them swirling around her like so many snowflakes. While it sounds somewhat sci-fi, it’s a moving, insightful book.

My mind was whirring after I put down the book. I contemplated how interconnected people are and how much one person can influence the life of another.

Like our nanny, Eva. This week marks her six-year anniversary of caring for our children. She is a beloved member of our family, yet because of the language barrier (she is a native Spanish speaker with limited English, and I stupidly opted for French instead of Spanish in high school), we aren’t as enmeshed in each other’s lives as you might expect. Like I don’t know how she spends her weekends, and she’s is unclear on what my husband does for a job.

But a few months, Eva told me that she was going to 24Hour Fitness every morning before work. I was surprised-- I never thought of Eva as a fitness enthusiast. She and I had once joked—in Spanglish—that she kept from getting gordo (fat) by chasing my younger daughter, Daphne, around her dining room table. (One of Daphne’s favorite games!)

Yesterday I asked Eva if she was still going to the gym. She indicated she’d taken an aerobics class that morning, and that she takes a kickboxing class every Wednesday at 5:30 a.m. I was so proud of her—and I couldn’t help but think my active life had influenced her.

-Sarah

Wheels

Here's what a geeky athletic couple my husband, Grant, and I are: we'd rather go for a bike ride together than see a movie. (We fell in love on wheels, really. When we weren't riding, we'd bond over the fact that we both entertained the idea of being a bike messenger in NYC.) With both of us traveling too much lately, we haven't talked about anything more than who is "brushing" Ben's teeth tonight (read: wrenching his jaw open, then jamming in a toothbrush while he wails) or figuring out how to use our newly-bought composter or responsible for leaving bananas off the grocery list. Compelling stuff, I realize, but not enough to carry a relationship. Desperate for some QT together, I found a babysitter for Saturday morning so we could take our first ride together in over a year.

Buoyed by a low-wind, sunny morning--and the prospect of starting a weekend not with chores, but with each other--we set out, and after we got out of town and traffic, I couldn't slow down. As cheesy as it sounds, my spirit was soaring. Newly fitted into my aerobars, I rested my forearms into them, put my head down and pushed and pushed down the route that was, for these hilly parts, amazingly flat.

I was working hard--I was feeling too strong to just cruise--and as soon as I felt like I couldn't carry the pace, Grant would pull up in front of me and toe the line. I'd hang back in his air pocket for as long as I needed to, then assume the lead again. I wasn't watching my heart rate or my bike computer or anything, really, except his ankles or the road. We leapfrogged like that for nearly two hours, hardly exchanging words, but knowing exactly what the other person needed. If only marriage were that fluid and simple.

Towards the end, I rode up beside him and said, "Now I remember why I fell in love with you."

"Why?" he asked. (Truth be told, I wished he would've yelled something like, "Yes, my sweetness! Bikes!" But he didn't, so I helped him out.)

"We love to ride our bikes together," I said, and he smiled.

Portland’s Newest Trailblazer

I’m very excited--I have a new trail running partner!

The only hitch: She and I can’t start running together for about another 7 years or so. You see, it’s Daphne, my daughter who turns 3 this July.

Daphne has always been an active child, even in utero. While her twin brother, John, was content to sit basically in one spot for the duration of the pregnancy, Daphne kicked and flipped with abandon. While she started walking 7 weeks later than John, she was first to run and take stairs two at a time. (Stadiums, anyone?) Daphne’s legs are substantially more muscular than little John’s are.

Daphne sealed her trailblazing status this morning when our family-fivesome went for a hike in a state park. The twins long ago gave up riding in a stroller, so they both took off the second we hit the trail. But it was Daphne who kept going—and going. Occasionally she’d look back over her shoulder, hair flying, to laugh at me, but otherwise the only time she stopped was when she tripped. Then, a quick hand-wipe, and she was off again! (She's the pink blur in the photo, above.) She easily covered a mile and a half.

Now, like her mother after a long run, Daphne is napping hard. Rest easy, my little trail runner.

-Sarah