Em oi! #380: The 50k

Just keep running.

My friend Tiffany requested a comic about my 50k experiences. This is more or less accurate.

This is the thing about exercise: It doesn’t exactly get less painful as you do more of it. Well, on a practical level, the delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) can get a bit less, but whatever you’re doing–running, lifting weights, swimming–it will still feel hard. Today I was at the gym and I squatted 125 lbs for reps, which is the most I’ve ever done. I’m nearly at my goal of squatting my body weight. (Ironically, before I got serious about lifting and put on 5 lbs of muscle in my back/shoulders, that was my weight.) And the thing is, it feels really hard to do that. About as hard as it felt when I was just starting to do squats and using just the bar (45 lbs). But now I can do the higher weight and not get broken in half. Running is similar. My feet still hurt like they did when I did my first marathon (or first 5k, I think). But I go farther.

The Mad City 50k, which is the race depicted here, is always a good time. A lot of friends of mine are on the committee that puts it together, but even before I’d met them I’d done the race and learned what a great event it is. And it’s nice to feel like I know a large number of the people I’m running next to and the volunteers who are hanging out.

The race consists of five 10k loops of the Arboritum. My plan was to do the first three loops at a consistent but conservative pace, then try to pick it up for the last two. Instead, I went at a good clip, finishing in just about one hour (9:45 pace) for the first 10k, then 58:27 and 58:39 (9:24 and 9:26 pace) for the next two laps. I kept falling in with the lead woman runner and her pacers, who were at times clocking close to an 8:30 pace. Whoops.

I knew the fourth lap would be the toughest, mentally speaking. This was also when my stomach decided to act up and I started getting all kinds of cramps. Eventually I stopped to use the restroom, which helped a bit but slowed me down some. Eating some potato chips also helped–maybe I needed some salt? I finished the fourth lap in 1:09:42, an 11:13 pace. Ouch.

The talking backward thing, by the way, has its origins here. I think I listened to this song a day or two before the race. SO there you go.

The last lap I tried to push the pace, but my legs were pretty dead. I was talking to random strangers and to myself, anything to make the miles go by faster. Unlike the last time I did the race, I didn’t meet anyone going my way at my pace. That was unfortunate. I really pushed it over the last mile and a half, passing a bunch of people…most of whom were doing the relay, but a couple of whom were in the 50k. I finished the last lap in 1:02:18 (10:01 pace) to complete the race in 5:09:44, good enough for 5th place among women and (I think) 2nd in my age group.

We’ll file this under GV1065.17.U4 L86 2013 for Recreation. Leisure—Sports—Track and field athletics—Foot racing. Running—Distance running—Marathon running—Special topics, A-Z—Ultramarathons.

Pre-race. Photo by Bryan.
Pre-race. Photo by Bryan.
On my way to the finish.
On my way to the finish.
Almost there.
Almost there.
Winner.
Winner.

Em oi! #379: “Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration…”

ET IN ARCADIA EGO
ET IN ARCADIA EGO

Sometimes when I don’t draw for a while, the art comes out looking like I’ve had some kind of weird neurological event. Nothing of the sort here, just lack of ability.

My mom really does say that getting older beats the hell out of the alternatives, by the way, and has for years.

So I turned thirty last week. And, you know, I wondered if I was going to freak out about it. I actually felt like society wanted me to freak out about it. After all, we live during a time in which youth and vitality are valued so highly that there are actresses who haven’t moved their eyebrows in DECADES in an effort to prevent wrinkling. Not being able to look cross or confused is a high price to pay to maintain an unrealistic standard of beauty, isn’t it?

Anyway, I decided after a while that I feel pretty good about myself. Part of it is that, unlike five years ago when the majority of my friends were single twenty-somethings, I now run (literally) with a circle that stretches from twenty-two to mid-sixties. Some of my friends have kids who are my age (or a few years younger, I guess. College age.). That gives one a sense of perspective that isn’t available when all of the people one speaks with have the same anxieties (not finding a job/not getting into grad school, being single forever, dying and getting eaten by wild dogs…). I do see people I know who have kids and just become…I don’t know, the kind of boring grown ups I remember from my childhood, who spend all their time looking stern and shouting and dealing with Serious Things and who have jowls. Ok, basically I am describing the nosy next door neighbor from Bewitched (Gladys was her name?). Poor Gladys, no one would ever believe what she saw going on over at the Steven’s house.

My larger point is that I get to decide who I am and what it means to be the age I am. If I want to keep running marathons when I’m 65, I’m allowed. I don’t have to “act my age,” whatever that means. To paraphrase one of my mother’s other sayings, “I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up.”

File this under PR830.A394 L86 2013 for English literature–History of English literature–Prose–By form–Prose fiction. The novel–Special topics–Other special topics, A-Z–Aging.

I will get to my race reports for the last two races (a 50k and a 20k) plus my discussion of free will a bit later in the week, I hope. Now that I have a job demanding 40 hours/week of my attention, PLUS my thesis, I have a bit less time than I’d like for blogging. But that will get better eventually. I hope.