Elizabeth Frost
Asheville, NC
Bib: 24433

• Chip Time: 2:05:56
• Gun Time: 2:08:00
• Split Times

• Division: Females 25-29
• Place within division: 152 out of 762
• Place within gender: 840 out of 4843
• Place overall: 2350 out of 8425

• Pasta dinner is essential.
• I was pretty good about staying off my feet the day before the race, and the short 2 miler was a nice way to keep my muscles fresh and happy. I took it so easy, I didn’t want to strain anything or hurt myself, so the jog actually felt great and made me feel better about the race the next day.
• Getting good sleep 2 nights before the event helped. The night before is important, but for me, Friday night’s rest was more important than Saturday’s. By the time Sunday rolls around, it seems to me that enough sleep the night before is fine, but if you’re running on fumes anyway, a few extra hours the night before won’t help. That’s why I usually try to get a good night’s sleep two nights before a big event: travel, triathlon, undergraduate thesis defense, etc. Most of the time it works…
• I was curiously calm the day/evening before the race and even on race morning. I can attribute it to just being happy about whatever my results would be, about being prepared with all possible clothing/food combinations I might want, about having some fans who were so positive around the whole thing.
• Getting to the race with plenty of time was a good idea. I really dislike being late, so it was good to be early… but there’s a fine line between getting there TOO early and getting there with enough time. I think we did well.
• I ate three GUs during the race, though I wasn’t quite sure I needed them. During training, I usually only ate 1 GU during my 2 hour runs, but on the race I took 3. I’m not sure if that was a good idea or not. I imagine it didn’t hurt me, but I just don’t know if it was necessary. I’ll have to play with that a little more as I train for the next race.
• I didn’t stop to have water (and didn’t carry any with me) until the 6 mile marker: I didn’t feel I needed it and certainly trained on longer runs without any water at all. So from mile 6 on, I slowed to a fast walk at each water station and just drank 2 cup of water. I messed up at the 2nd to last station and got a cup of Gatorade, which I wasn’t expecting. I think I had an espresso GU and lemon-lime Gatorade. YUCK.
• The walking at the stations helped. It gave me time to get my bearings, feel my body at a slower speed, get some water in my system, etc. It felt very strange to go from run to walk, but starting back to running was easy: I just leaned!
• My right calf at the beginning of the race was a little bothersome. Just a little bit. Right in the middle of my calf, the mild pain was running vertically along the muscle. It started to creep down into my ankle and I think by mile 4 it was gone. All I did was focus on not using my lower legs: i pretended my feet were just like dog ears or something that were just floppy as could be. No tension, no stress, no strength. I think it worked because it was gone from about mile 4 till now. Hasn’t bothered me since.
• Miles 9-11 were difficult for me. I ran the race in my newer pair of 790′s, which I’d not had for a week. (Bad, I know.) I think they just hadn’t melded to my feet yet and were still a bit ‘stiff’. I use that term lightly because these shoes are nice and flexible, but you know what I mean. In any event, the sides of each of my feet at various alternating times. It was sort of strange, but I just really thought about my column and tried to lean enough that I wasn’t using my calf muscles, and lean enough that I could keep my feet hitting at the bottom of my column, behind my hips.
• My knees started to ache about mile 9 and that was a little alarming to me. In the past when I run about 9 miles, that’s when my knees start to ache. I did the same focus as I did with my feet, just trying to keep my column straight, my core engaged, and my feet hitting behind my center of mass.
• As you’ll see in these pictures, sometimes I had a great lean and foot strike and then other times (Sigh) I was just totally heel striking. Strange!
• I sent these pictures to my parents, who have watched my play sports since I was very young. Dad called this morning to say, ‘You know, Elizabeth, you look more relaxed in these pictures than you ever have while exercising. Your face isn’t even red!”
• The crowds were amazing. Truly amazing. Between tootsie rolls, Kleenex, blaring boomboxes and supportive shouts, I was a smiling fool. There’s a really funny picture at the finish line from the event photographers’ site (above) where I am crossing the finish line and my head is up towards the sun, eyes more or less closed and a huge grin spread across my face. I think it’s hilarious.
• The finish was truly incredible. Really, I thought the crowd was cheering for me! For the group I was running with! Oh yeah, these people love this stuff! WOW… and then I just started to realize that it couldn’t possibly be me that they were cheering for… Maybe it was a person coming full tilt behind me? Maybe it was a special needs coming to a blazing fast finish? Maybe it was… OH my GOSH! it was the MARATHON winner, Deriba Merga blazing past me in the adjacent lane, taking his last turn before his 20-year-record-breaking finish of 2:07:52. That’s so fast! Anyway, he was running past us and I just started screaming along with the crowd and got all sorts of excited and finished the last 200 yards or so in a full out 4th gear, at least in a 4th gear that I had left in me.
• The last 1.5 miles felt SO LONG. I thought it would go fast, but really it seemed to take forever. When I saw the sign saying ‘Only 1.5 to go!’ I was like, “Oh, I’m gonna run this so fast!” but it felt like it took forever. Probably it was my fastest pace, but that’s just the way the brain works, doesn’t it?
• When I was finished and walking back inside to be showered with ‘Congratulations!’ and the medal stuff by the volunteers, I was in a daze. I didn’t feel particularly tired, and I think at one point I actually thought, ‘Well that wasn’t so bad after all.’

I never thought the day would come that I can honestly say I can’t wait till the next race…

Stay tuned… I’ll keep posting here, with all sorts of new breakthroughs and lessons.

Thanks again to everyone’s support for making it possible.

This worked, for sure.

Pre-event dinner with cheerers and runners together!

I think the morning was early for all of us…

Pre race smiles!

Something was funny. Or maybe it was just nervous energy…?

Go Kristin Go!

Bringing up the rear… Richard and Liz

Post exodus…

And now for the wake up juice…

1 hour 57 minutes later… Kristin rocks the finish

So happy

And 8 minutes after that… I am all smiles (2 hours 5 minutes)

Check out that lean and heel lift!

And 12 minutes later… Richard makes his PR of 2:17. Way to go, Richard!

Success

Check out that dentistry work

The TRUE juice

Thanks Ivan and Edgar for taking pictures, and to you both and Jean for being there to support. I think we all know we couldn’t have done it without your support.

Richard, Kristin and I all completed the race, with smiles on our faces. Kristin kicked butt and ran in under two hours, Richard beat his PR by a great margin, and I ran in 2:05. ! I was expecting 2:15 or longer. How thrilling!

—

We all woke up about 4 am on Sunday, after preparing our things on Saturday night… I had laid out my clothes, already pinned my bib to my shirt, had all my possible layers in the Expo Bag, plus water, Gu x3, Sharkies, chapstick, etc. etc.

I woke up feeling very mellow and excited. I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t worried, I was just calm, spent a great deal of the car ride over visualizing a great race, a run somewhere in the 2 hour range, envisioning great form and a smile on my face.

I will write more details when we get home tonight, but I just want you all to know that I had a smile on my face the entire time, my form felt great, although I had a few twinges I managed to work through them… Also, my first mile was about a 10.50 pace and apparently I averaged a 9.36 pace over the course of the race, so I picked it up somewhere (especially the end!) and had so much fun.

It was so great at the end with the large incredible amounts of screaming fans (I thought they were for me and the group I was in, but in fact, the roar of the crowd was for the marathon finisher who came in at the same time, breaking his own PR and a 20 year-old race record.) Nevertheless, the cheers were extra motivating and a finish line has never been so wonderful!

I’ll be sure to post pictures and to share the more ‘internal’ details, but I just wanted to inform all of my devoted readers the most recent update.

With all my gratitude and thanks, THANK YOU! I couldn’t have done it without all your support.

More later…

I’d never tried this before, but I knew it was entirely possible because a reader had written me an enthusiastic email about something that had happened to him on a winter run in Wisconsin.  It seems he had been out trying to keep his footing on some refrozen slush in the road, when he spotted a lake full of ice fishermen. The ice looked clear and smooth (and much more appealing than the crap he was trying to negotiate on the road) so he jumped the fence and headed out onto the ice. He had been practicing his ChiRunning focuses that morning and working on not pushing off with his legs, so the first thing he did when he got onto the ice was just pick up his feet and lean forward a little. To his great relief, he began to run across the frozen lake like it was a parking lot… accompanied by a very distinct feeling of what it means to run with a true midfoot strike. The only thing he had to do was pick up his feet as he fell forward. He told me that it was the biggest “aha!” moment of his life and from that day on, whenever he felt that he was overusing his legs, all he had to do was run as if he were running on an icy lake and all of his leg effort would instantly disappear.

I don’t know how many of you ever get the chance to run on ice in your street shoes, but I highly recommend it for learning how to not use your legs for propulsion when you run. If you live in a warm climate and have a local ice rink, you might try bribing the manager to let you give it a shot. When you do it right, it’s all gain and no pain.

Danny

I hope the comments and thoughts here will help other runners who are beginning a running program or beginning with ChiRunning: I have no doubt that without ChiRunning I couldn’t have come this far with such success and no pain.

I plan to run another 1 or 2 races in 2009, so if you want to keep reading, I’ll be here, chronicling the process along the way.

Much much thanks to you all. Hope you’re having a great weekend!

I am happy to report that my 20 minute run today went well. I can feel my body well and only felt a minor twinge in my right lower calf. It’s similar to how it felt after the 5K in Orlando, and I’m just trying to remember how it felt and what I was doing incorrectly to try to prevent anything big and bad from happening during the race tomorrow.

I really went out this morning with an easy pace and no expectations. I just wanted to listen to my body and feel clear about listening to what it was saying. The only thing I heard was: “Remember to really go slowly at the beginning, don’t get caught up in the big rush at the Start Line” and also “Relax the lower legs, don’t push off and don’t dorsiflex.”

I was surprised to recognize that I was dorsiflexing a little bit today, and I think it’s because my heel lift isn’t quite as high as it should be. I am going to try to brush my inside heel across my opposite calf muscle tomorrow if my legs start to scuff to keep that circular rotation going and to keep myself from dorsiflexing.

I am going to smile, stay positive, keep leaning, keep my core engaged, keep tall, keep quick turnover without efforting, and enjoy every moment, even the chilly standing around at the start line.

I hope to post a picture tomorrow after the race, so stay posted!

I am happy to report that I ran on Thursday evening after work: it was a chilly 25 degrees all day, so by the time I ran as the sun went down, it was getting colder.

I ran 3.64 miles in 35 minutes: I am still nothing if not consistent… I think it’s good news that my pace still seems to hover around 10 minutes/mile.

It was cold and I was dressed up warmly enough so that I think a few drivers thought I was a bank robber

One guy was in a car and almost hit me, crossing perpindicular to the way I was running. It was dusk and he wasn’t paying attention. It freaked me out and I thought, ‘Look, man, I’ve been training for this race for months. Not now, please…’

I focused on keeping a steady breath, good arm swing, small steps and legs swinging to the rear. I was able to warm up fairly quickly once I got going and it made me realize that I can probably wear less clothing during the race.

The run made me feel better about my potential for Sunday, since the long run on Wednesday didn’t help my ego any…

My breath felt good, my muscles felt good and I didn’t feel any weird twinges. That was a relief.

Off to Houston this evening… and a quick run tomorrow to keep my body awake…

I felt great until mile 5. It was all uphill for the first 3.5 miles (and I mean uphill!) and then it was downhill until about mile 6.5. I guess it was probably close to mile 6 that my knees started to talk so I did the last obvious downhill by weaving down the hill instead of going straight down.

The last 3 miles were HARD. I did it, I just took one step ata time and tried to back off of my ego and just let my body do what it needed to. As Danny suggested, I did 8+ miles and I did it easy. I guess it wasn’t all that smart to change two variables (terrain AND distance AND time) but I just did it. It’s really almost impossible to run on the flats here, but I liked doing the hills, oddly, especially the uphills. Call me a masochist, but I really felt the best on the uphills.

Here are the things I focused on/felt:

• Comfortable temperature. It was chilly, but I had long sleeves and long pants and a ball cap. Sleeves were long enough to wipe my nose and keep my hands covered, so that worked great.
• The uphill and most of the downhill (look at the elevation map on the link above) was really good, and nice terrain, little traffic.
• Even though I took a map, I got a little lost (I get so annoyed) and I am sure that added a bit to my slowing factor, but I was just trying to keep going as much as possible, not stopping too long to figure out the map issues.
• On the uphills I was really trying to think ‘no legs, all arms’ and really focusing on breathing out longer and breathing in faster.
• I was focused on keeping my column straight as possible, on all terrains and all fatigue levels. I hope my core muscles are the only sore ones later today.
• When I started to feel tired, I thought about getting really long and skinny and tall and took smaller steps. I tried to lean more without efforting and miraculously, (esp at the end) my legs seemed to suck less oxygen and weren’t freaking out so much.
• I tried to smile and look around with my eyes, not with my head. I wanted to make sure that I was keeping in form but still taking in all the surroundings.
• I imagined what the race day will be like and felt better: it will be flat, lower elevation, a fun environment, lots of support and my first 1/2 marathon! I’ve got nothing to fear but fear itself, as a friend gently reminded me. Thanks Alan.

I did a leg drain and quick stretch when I got back to the office. I’ll make sure to take a hot shower when I get home and use my new Stick to rub out some of my muscles. I will be able to report tomorrow how I feel. I am trying to remember to keep smiling and really enjoy myself all along this journey. It’s all about the path, not the end. Don’t let me forget that!

Anyway, after my last post, I left the next day for Orlando, where Danny and I traveled for the Disneyworld Marathon Expo, three days of unadulterated hard work and fun. The long hours and lack of internet in the hotel room kept me from writing, but I’ll tell you in brief:

Friday I ran the 5K in 29.38, which I was really surprised and happy with. I started the first and second miles with a 10+ min/mile so I really caught up some time in the last mile, and I am proud to report no soreness anywhere in my body except my core muscles… I think that’s a great sign!

Then on Saturday/Sunday mornings I ran about 45-50 minutes each day in/around Disneyworld grounds near where we were staying. It was kind of rough and I had a hard time enjoying it. I don’t know why, but I suspect it’s because: a) I had spent 2-3 full days on my feet talking non-stop and b) hadn’t really been running and beat myself up about how I felt.

I can tell that my aerobic fitness has dropped remarkably fast after not having exercised truly while we were in South America, so I have learned a valuable lesson through that.

Because my peak fitness isn’t where I wanted it to be, I am trying to follow Gradual Progress principles and not beat myself for not being in perfect shape. I’m only human, right? I can’t do everything perfectly…

In any event, tomorrow is an 8+ miler day for me, and the weather is kind of cold, so I plan to run in the late afternoon. I am going to take it easy, just get the miles in and not walk. I haven’t decided yet where I am going to run, but I’ll figure it out before I leave and make sure it’s at least 8 miles. No classic taper week for me!

I promise to give a full report of tomorrow’s run, either tomorrow night or Thursday morning.

I am really looking forward to the run to see where I am and gague what to expect for Sunday’s race. I thought that perhaps I could run the race in 2 hours, but now I am thinking probably 2.15 is more reasonable. Either way, my goal for this race is to have a smile on my face at the end and not be injured. It’s only a race, after all!

I have been listening to the new CD set that Danny recorded last summer, and it’s great stuff. I hope to take my iPod with me on the run and listen to one of the guided runs and Danny’s voice as he discusses the ideas behind ChiRunning. Listening to it tonight was rather calming and made me realize that I need to get out of my head and back into my body between now and Sunday. Really need to take a moment to give myself permission to just feel what I feel and Body Sense what is really going on with my body and respond appropriately. I know I can finish the race, it’s just that fine line between body/mind or mind/body. It’s all about balance and I think my new goal for this week (instead of beating myself up) is to listen to my body as best I can and let it tell me what it wants/is ready for and to do a lot of visualizations about how I want the race to go on Sunday.

Any pre-race advice is much appreciated and as always, thank you all for reading and giving your wonderful support along the way. I don’t plan to cease existence (in the blogosphere) after the race, but rather keep you updated on my training for the next race I choose!

But before I get ahead of myself, let’s get through this week first…