Pre-training Training!

What a weekend in upstate NY! Temps hovered in the 60's, the sun was shining, and it was a perfect weekend to be outdoors!

We started the weekend with a little music, and caught the Bryan Thomas/ Julia Brown show at the Bread & Jam cafe in Cohoes. Check Bryan out. He's immensely talented. Writes and plays and photographs and kicks ass! The show put me in a great mood. I felt creative and motivated...

...until the alarm rang Saturday morning at 6am. Time to wake up and go to my first TNT training run in Niskayuna!! Oy.

A little background - The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society not only does amazing work for cancer patients and their familes, but if you agree to raise a certain amount of money for them, they will provide you with training and support for your event. They assign you a mentor (my mentor for the Lake Placid Half Marathon is Carrie. Hi Carrie!), they give you coaches and training schedules, and they set weekly group runs. This is what's know as Team In Training (or TNT). It's a fabulous program. The support is incredible. The team camaraderie is really motivating. Our team meets every Saturday at Niskayuna's Lions Park at 7am, right on the Mohawk river and bike trail. This week, the Lake Placid runners were assigned 4 miles.

Technically speaking, my training program doesn't start til Sunday, but hey - let's jump right in, shall we?

So, back to the clanging alarm. Oy oy oy. I am NOT a morning person. Not in the least. I shut the alarm off, turned over, and contemplated sleeping in for about 3 seconds. Then I got annoyed with myself, got out of bed, scraped my hair into a ponytail, stumbled to the bathroom and tried to cram contacts into my sleep-swollen eyes, then got dressed and out the door.

Having been denied my morning coffee, and being confused about the Exit 6 construction on the Northway, I decided to be a smartypants and take I-90 to I-890 to Niskayuna. Couple that stupidity with the attention span (and memory capacity) of a gnat, and you get a groggy Deirdre arriving at Blatnick Park (not Lions Park) at 6:50am. Follow that with one facepalm and several heavy sighs later, and I pull into the parking lot at Lions Park, just as the pack was taking off. Not having had time to stretch, I walked the first mile and jogged the rest of the 4 miles.


Good morning, Niskayuna! Pretty place to run, isn't it?

I ended the run feeling energized and happy and proud of myself for ignoring my inner sloth (and slightly stupid about my geo-retardation, but whatever). And the exercise didn't end there! I got home, and took the dog for a 3 mile walk/waddle/sniff/stare (she likes to stare, not bark, at other dogs). So that brought my mileage for the day up to 7 miles! I think that's a great start!

Introducing Dina

Hey folks!
From time to time, you'll see posts here by Dina Strasser. Dina is Frank Strasser's daughter, and a very dear friend. Frank was an inspiration, and Dina is the one who can best tell you how much he meant to so many people. Dina is an amazing writer, teacher, mother and friend, and I'm humbled that she and her mom are letting me honor Frank's memory.

All clear!!

I'm back from the doctor, and I have the medical all clear to train (yeah, I probably should have gotten the all-clear BEFORE I started training, but whatevs). My blood pressure is awesomely low (104/64 - I might be a zombie), and my cholesterol is good. Well, my "good" cholesterol is a little low (about 30, it should be 40), but my "bad" cholesterol isn't high. It's normal. It's likely that the cholesterol numbers that need to improve (the "good" one) will improve dramatically at the end of this race!

I am RARING to go. I've got my diet plan all researched. I'm going to walk to stuff in town that I would normally drive to - like choir rehearsal, the drug store, etc. Yeah, church is 3 miles away, and the drugstore is 3.5, but that's a nice brisk hour walk, right? Right!

The only thing I have to keep an eye on is my bum arthritic knee, and my messed up back. But careful stretching, icing and heat will go a long way to minimizing the negative impact of those two. Did I ever tell you the story of my back? It's a fun one. A few years ago, I was having agonizing pain in my lower back, so I went to see an orthopedist who ordered an MRI. The MRI showed that two of my lumbar vertebrae (L4 and L5)were oddly disintegrating ("bony erosions"), only on the right side. I was tested for every auto-immune disease in the book, and all the tests came back negative. This 1st ortho sort of threw up his hands, said, "You've got some unknown degenerative disease. Here's a prescription for anti-inflammatories. Call me when you have nerve pain - I'll fuse your spine - what's left of it."

I didn't really like the idea of having some unknown degenerative disease, so I went to a second ortho, who spent 45 minutes staring at my films. I mean staring. As in not really blinking. After those 45 minutes were up, he turned to me and said, "what were you doing when you were 9, or 10?"

"Ummmm - playing with my Barbies?"

He asked if I had had any trauma - any falls, any bike crashes, any sledding.....SLEDDING ACCIDENTS!! I HAD!! When I was 9, I had a massive wipeout on Micare's Suicide Hill, where I careened off a jump, slammed into a tree, and bounced into a frozen-over creek. I was taken to the hospital, got my lip stitched up, was cursorily examined and told to go home and don't be stupid and go sledding again.

I remember EVERYTHING hurting for two weeks after that. Every single bone. Every muscle. But I got better. Life went on.

Flash forward to my staring ortho. He zoomed in on the L4 and L5 vertebrae. He pointed at what seemed to be a fuzzy line on each vertebrae, and said, "do you see how those edges don't line up? You broke your back. You broke your back, the bones knit back together badly, and these things that they are calling "bony erosions" is actually arthitis setting into your old trauma site."

Wow.

I broke my back!! And I walked it off!! I RULE!! Well, except that I have to take cox-2 inhibitors for the pain, but whatever. I walked off a broken back! I had no idea I was such a badass little kid!

Things have been good since then, for the most part. Like I said, I've got medicine (I love you Celebrex!) that reduces the arthritic inflammation in both the knee and the back, and now I'm good to go!

See it wiggle...

Training doesn't officially start until Sunday the 21st, when I get to....wait, let me check the training calendar to see what I have to do...oh look! On Sunday I am resting. I'd better psyche myself up for that, huh?

I figure I have a few days to ease myself out of the off-season. To clock in a few runs. To meet my TNT team members out in Niskayuna for our Saturday run - you know, that sort of thing.

So, last night, I went out for a walk/jog. Actually, it was more of a walk/jiggle. As in Jell-o. Each pound of the pavement sent reverberating ripples through the wobbly parts. Not an entirely pleasant sensation. I half expected Bill Cosby to jump out from behind a tree and start screaming at me about pudding pops.

Luckily, the wobbly sensation will pass as I get more runs under my belt. I'm looking forward to getting back in stride!

I'm like a bad penny....

....I keep turning up! I'm back! I signed up to run the Lake Placid Half Marathon on June 13th for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. For those of you keeping track at home, here's some random stats:

1 = races I've run for the LLS
1000 = bucks I raised for the LLS by running
countless = friends I've gained by participating in this process
3 = steps I run before I go "ow, this hurts!"

Kidding. It's only 2 steps.

As I've stated before on this blog, I'm not a natural athlete. I'm a big fan of walking the dog, running to catch the elevator door, pulling weeds, alphabetizing things and folding laundry. That's about as crazy as I get on an average day. I know the benefits of regular exercise. I know how important it is to get out there and get moving. And for the most part, I do, but not usually in a manner that makes my knees hurt and my wobbly bits fly around.

But I'm throwing caution (and the wobbly bits) to the wind yet again, to support the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and the incredible work they do to support patients with blood cancers, and to support research that will find a cure.

I'm running this race in memory of two dear friends who passed away from lymphoma, Doug Moak and Frank Strasser. If you've read this blog before, you know a little bit about Doug. And I want to share the joy that was Frank Strasser - Frank was a NYS Trooper, opera lover, a noted authority and champion rose grower, and a dear friend. Frank's curiosity and interests were boundless. Frank had a kind word and an outlandish anecdote for everyone. Frank passed away last year, but his irrepressible spirit lives on. I'll tell you more about these inspirational men in future blog posts.

I hope you can support me on this journey. As I did with the Freihofer Run for Women last year, I'm going to blog every day about my training. It won't be all deadly recits of stats and mileage. I'll throw some fun stuff in too. Please check back often. Daily, in fact. Knowing that there's someone out there keeping an eye on me will help me not to slack off!

If you can, please consider donating on my fundraising page. There are incentives there, to help you feel connected to the race and to the training.

Thanks again for your support!!!