My Sister, The Artist

Suzanne has always had a knack for drawing. She also has a front row seat to my depths of taper madness. She drew me this. It is a thing of true beauty.

Brain Freezer Pictures, Finally!

Remember when I ran that disgusting 5K last summer and found out just how fast I could run a 5K that included eating a pint of ice cream in the middle? Pictures are finally available! To make it even better, I am somehow the cover photo for the race Facebook page. It’s hard being famous…

I was still under the impression that a spoon would be efficient…

Epic action shot. It took me at least 30 seconds to swallow that last bit…

I’m Telling You, It’s Purple Wax!

Coaching is one of my favorite things in the world. You get to participate in a sport you love and influence athletes at a time when ability finally matches enthusiasm. I always feel that the absolute best part of coaching is believing in an athlete long enough that they begin to believe in themselves.

The other great part about coaching, however, are the other coaches with whom you work and compete against. I’m lucky to coach with three great guys whose knowledge of sport and of coaching principles push me daily to be a better coach. When you coach with someone, you know a lot about them. You know their stressors, you know how they take their coffee and you know what situations to let them handle and what situations they will walk away from for you to handle. In Nordic, Al, Barker and I spend a lot of time together by virtue of far away races, the training requirements of a sport with two disciplines and of course, wax science. That’s why the picture below made me laugh out loud. It’s from States on Tuesday, early morning as we were deciding on wax. I don’t know if we’re actually arguing about a decision or mocking ourselves, but it’s a perfect encapsulation of the season. While I’m happy to have the training time back, I already miss getting to spend 3 hours a day with these guys.

(Treadmill) Running is Hazardous to Your Health

It’s that time of year where weather makes running outside seem unpalatable. Freezing temps, wind and slippery sidewalks can force the faint of heart inside. Inside is apparently no safer, however, as this link demonstrates. While I’ve logged my share of miles on the treadmill (including a 16 miler), I almost always opt for the outdoor option. As for treadmill fails, I’ve only had one significant one; I was running on a treadmill in my college gym when we had a power outage and flew backwards along with everyone else running on the treadmills at the time, a coordinated fail if you will. Too bad we didn’t have YouTube. My sister, however, had a treadmill fail that resulted in a large hole in my aunt’s living room wall.

Anyone have a good treadmill fail story to add?

Brain Freezer 5K Race Report

I’ve been waiting for pictures because what’s a 5K that includes me eating a pint of ice cream with my bare hands without pictures? They are being slow on the upload, however, so I’ll write the race report instead.

Saturday morning was humid, reminiscent of my years in North Carolina, elephant on your chest humid. I ran a few miles to warm up (and make room) and was drenched enough to have to change my shirt before the start. Because it was the inaugural year, the start was about 15 minutes late and my warm-up didn’t exactly match up with the start time but I opted not to worry, since it was just a mile and a half before the break.

The course was interesting; the start screamed down Battery Hill, then back up Maple. The other issue was that the course wasn’t closed to cars or marked, leading to some interesting tangents and none of the leaders running exactly the same course. I opted to run the same course as the girl right ahead of me and we both escaped unscathed save for a traffic light in the second half of the race.

The start was absurd. A big group of runners lined up at the front despite not being likely front runners, leading to some unexpected hurdling and dodging. I managed to avoid a collision or fall as we jumped up curbs and stairs and barreled down Battery Street. Climbing Maple Street, I was reminded once again how insane a climb that road is. I focused on a hard, but controlled pace and reached the ice cream stop in a little over 9 minutes.

I intended to bring my own spoon, but we were assured that wooden spoons would be provided, so I arrived barehanded (well, with gloves on because of my Raynaud’s) and grabbed Cherry Garcia. Upon perusing the flavors, Cherry Garcia seems to have the fewest sharp edges to jam down or up as the case might have been. I attempted to use the plastic spoon but gave up after two tries as it was fruitless. Looking around, I realized that everyone else was ripping open the sides of their pints and using their bare hands, so I joined in. I was literally knuckle deep in ice cream and just shoving it into my face. At some point, I realized that a friend was video taping us and growled at her, “if this ends up on Facebook…” Somehow I managed to eat my pint in 3 minutes and 45 seconds and take off just after the first female.

Initially I didn’t feel too bad, although I was sticky and disgusting. I ran by a friend who was policing an intersection and all he could say was, “Waterman, you look disgusting.” I’m sure I did. From there, I spent most of my energy figuring out the course and closing in on the lead female. By the time we reached Battery Park again, I had contact but a kick seemed like a guaranteed ticket to vomiting, so I swallowed my pride and let her beat me by 4 seconds. I came in at 23:55.

It was fun to do something out of the ordinary and still get a workout in, but I don’t see myself signing up for the event again. I felt too awful for too many days after, even for charity. My next fun event is the Pirate 5K next weekend, where I’ll don an eye patch and a temporary tattoo and race around the waterfront. And yes, I’ll share pictures from the ice cream adventure when they become available.

Freaky Friday

Today in weird running and fitness news…

• If running isn’t slimming down your toes, you can always consider plastic surgery for them.
• Scratch that. If you don’t want to run at all, just buy one of these belts and watch the fat melt away.
• A school in Louisiana is looking to ban toe shoes. No real reason, but they suspect they might be dangerous. Apparently they are not concerned about the findings in this article.

You can’t make this stuff up. Happy weekend everyone. Get out there and move the old-fashioned way.

Heyyyy Girl

Lianne and I developed a game last summer called “Haiii Boy.” The rules are simple. We see an attractive guy, we say “heyyy boy, looking pretty gooo-od.” And then see what happens.

So imagine my absolute delight at this new tumblr.

For this week, this is my favorite.  Followed by this. This one actually happened to me recently, and I swooned accordingly.

#truth

Running will ruin your knees. I have bad knees, so I can’t run. Don’t you know that marathons cause heart attacks? Oh, I tried to run once, but it was too hard. I don’t have time. You’re so thin!!

Rebuttal: THIS.

FINALLY

While I’m generally obsessed with the entire series of What Should We Call Me from the brilliant original  to the school specific and career specific ones, my new favorite version is the running version. It’s a little track focused so I don’t find it as funny as if someone did a cross one, but it’s still pretty spot on.

My current favorites? Teamcest.  Toenails. Ice Bath. 

Sorry for sharing the ultimate distraction, but this is one of my favorite things from the past few weeks. Enjoy!

My Tough Mudding Hero

My friend Emmy is a great runner and always up to try anything once. That said, I was blown away when she intentionally signed up for a Tough Mudder in Vermont. This is the same girl who once nearly died in a 10 mile trail run and came out covered in forest. Nonetheless, she’s been working hard to get ready for the run (and just did a marathon a few weeks ago) so I headed down to Mount Snow to see her.

In full disclosure, I assumed that the course would be sort of showy, but not really that hard. Wrong. It took me 30 seconds to realize that they were not messing around when I saw this particular section of the course:

In case you can’t quite tell, people are marching up a snowy, muddy mountain. While being sprayed with firehoses. At Mile 8.

Just before that was this delightful puddle of mud:

Although it was hard to tell people apart after the first few minutes as everyone was wet and muddy, I did finally get to see Emmy and the rest of her team around mile 7, then stuck with them over the next few obstacles before running to the finish to see them get electrocuted and finally earn their orange headbands.

While it’s not my cup of tea (nor would I be able to live through it), it was a blast to watch and a totally different experience from many races. Whereas at a road race, it’s each person to themselves, Tough Mudder required teamwork and general decency from perfect strangers racing next to you. It also gave me some perspective going into taper/VCM. No matter how much I hurt, at least I’m not jumping into ice cold water or getting electrocuted 10 feet from the finish line. So there’s that…