The verdict is.......still out.

After accumulating stress fractures in BOTH feet, I find myself reluctant to run. The pain, like a sharp nail being driven through the center of my foot with a sledge hammer, is simply not worth cranking out 3 miles on the treadmill. The marathon is over. And honestly, I'm a little burnt out on the whole running thing right now.

But oh, wait. Tri season is officially here. And I did register for a few of those.

So, like most hobby-level triathletes, I find myself desperately trying to log laps in the pool and miles on the bike. And I yell at my feet a lot, too. "Heal, already! Seriously! The race is in 3 weeks!"

So if my feet are not up challenge, I will simply downgrade to the aqua-bike option and cheer for my friends and Hubby while they do the whole triathlon.

But if they ARE up to the challenge.........is it too much to hope for a new Olympic-Tri PR?

So you want to start running, eh?

I get asked this question all of the time: I want to get back into running (or start running) but I just can't get motivated. Do you have any suggestions?

Suggestions? Me? You bet I do!

I think most people desire to run, or even used to run, but for whatever reason now find themselves out of running shape. Even though I've run competitively since I was in middle school, after I had my first and second child I struggled to start running again. I didn't exercise much through either pregnancy, mostly just walking and occasional lifting. Then, when I found myself with two babies under two, I found it extremely difficult to fit in any form of exercise altogether, let alone running. I had a double jogger, but my kids were uncooperative when restrained, especially when restrained next to each other.

It wasn't until my oldest was two, that I finally committed to getting back into competitive shape. We switched our gym membership over to the YMCA, where they include two hours of free child care with a family membership. I found myself slowly eeking back into shape. I signed up for a 10K and loved every second of it. Fast forward five years, and here I am today absolutely in love with running and racing.

So how do you get from, I kind-of-hate-but-tolerate running, to loving, even craving, to run?

Here's a few tips:

1) AVOID ROOKIE MISTAKES

Most people, when they first get started, think they're back in PE running the mile for time. They take off crazy fast, poop out after one lap, and pull over on the sidelines keeled over and coughing like a lifetime smoker. Then they walk away discouraged, hating running, and not motivated to try again the next day.

*START SLOW! Run at a pace where you're in control, able to hold a conversation, and not about to die.

*STAY POSITIVE! Don't tell yourself you're“not a runner” or that you’re “going to feel bad” during a run.

* DON'T DO TOO MUCH, TOO SOON! Don't try to run 5 days/week when you first start, aim for 2 or 3 instead. Increase ONE run/week by about 1 mile or 10 minutes, keeping the others the same.

*EAT! About 2-2 1/2 hours before you run, consume a banana, or bagel, or SOMETHING. Get used to eating before you run now, because when you start running longer distances (6+ miles) your body will rely on those calories.

*RIGHT FORM! Keep your arms at a 90 degree angle, chest open, head up, torso leaning slightly forward.

*RIGHT SHOES! You can't dig those $20 sneakers from college out of the closet and expect to run well and without injury. Invest in some new, good running shoes. And get some cool new running short or tights while you're at it. Sometimes looking like a runner will give you the confidence to be a runner.

2) REGISTER FOR A RACE

Seriously. You can talk all you want about finally doing a 5K, but until you actually pay the money and put it on your calendar, it's easy to back out. Depending on your current fitness level, pick something that's 8-16 weeks away. May I suggest The Justice Run on September 25th in Littleton? We have a 5K option, perfect for those runner's who are just starting out and a 10K option, for those who are ready to up the distance and challenge themselves a little more. Check out www.thejusticerun.org. I'll even be posting some beginner and intermediate training plans there in the near future. Oh! And ALL the money raised goes to help human trafficking victims through the Justice Project.

Still not convinced to sign up for a race? Running to just run can get boring. Doing a race gives you an endpoint, something to work toward. And doing races is fun and addictive: the atmosphere, crossing the finish line, the satisfaction of a well earned beer (oh, and accomplishing a goal, too!).



3) COME UP WITH A STRATEGY

I know we’re all super busy, especially with small kids, jobs, commitments. It's important to find a training schedule that's flexible and attainable.

Answer these questions:
When can you train?
Morning, nights, naptime?

Where will I train?
Treadmill at home, at the gym, or outside?

And if you're really starting from scratch, start with a walking plan first:

Start by walking for 25-30 minutes a day, as many days a week as you can, until it feels easy.
Then increase your pace, walking briskly for those 30 minutes each day. When this gets easy, start inserting a few jogs, of about 100 yards or so, during your 30 minute walk. Then continue to run/walk, increasing your run time each day.

Tricks for a Run/Walk Plan:
Use IPOD with # of songs. Run for 1 song, walk 1 song. Keep increasing.
Distance: Run to tree, walk. Run to school, walk.
Time: Run 4 minutes, walk 1 minute. Run 5 minutes, walk 1 minute.
Commercials: watch a show (like Biggest Loser) walk during the show, run during the commercials.

How I train:

My husband works crazy hours & I homeschool my children so they are with me ALL of the time. Most days I go to the gym. Sometimes I switch off with my friend (or husband): I watch the kids while she/he/ runs, she/he watches them while I run. You can always figure out a way to make it work!

Plus, you already signed up for a race, right? So you pretty much HAVE to figure out a way to make it work!

Don't hesitate to ask me any questions.......or for a training schedule:)

Runners on Your Mark, Get Set, Go!

3:50 am: Alarm goes off. I hop in the shower, heat up some coffee, and eat my traditional pre-race breakfast: a bagel, peanut butter, and banana slices. I dress in long sleeves, pants, jacket, gloves, and headband. It's FREEZING outside, only 34 degrees!

4:20 am: My hubby drives me to catch the race bus. All 1,000 marathoners are required to ride the bus to the start line, 16 miles up Poudre Canyon in Ft. Collins. I chat with the gal next to me, who is also running her first marathon. I tell her I haven't run in almost two weeks because of my broken foot. "Really? You broke your foot and you're still going to do this thing?" she asks. My response, "Everyone one of us is going to be in some sort of pain during the marathon, I'm just lucky that I know exactly where it's gonna hurt."

5:45 am: Buses arrive at the start line with only 30 minutes to spare. I do the same thing the other 999 runners do- get in line for the port-o-potties. The line is CRAZY long, snaking back and forth at least six different times. I chat with the people around me.

6:10 am: Still in line for bathroom. Race starts in 5 minutes, so I get desperate- I run off into the woods, take care of business, and make it back to the starting area barely in time for the National Anthem. Others still wait for the bathroom.

6:15 am: Starting gun goes off! This is it. This is what I've trained for since January. I start my Garmin, start my IPOD, and weave past runners working my way up to those with a similar pace.

7:20 am: I'm about 8 miles in and my foot starts hurting. I took three tylenol(only type of pain killers I can take) when I first woke up, and I take two more now. The pain isn't bad, dulled by the medicine, and nothing I can't handle for the time being.

8:11 am: Halfway mark: 1:56. I'm on perfect pace, holding steady at 8:51/mile. I feel great! The canyon is absolutely beautiful; cliffs on both sides, a river snaking below the road.

8:15 am: FINALLY! A port-o-potty that doesn't have a line! Since the start of the race, every bathroom has had 2 or 3 runner's standing outside of it waiting to get inside. I've seen men and women both, darting in to the woods, behind trees, on the side of signs, all trying to do some quick-relieving without losing too many valuable seconds.

8:38 am: We are finally out of the canyon! 16 miles down, 10 miles to go. By now it is getting hot and my jacket is making me sweat. I take it off, tie it around my waist, and get ready to drop it to the Hubby as soon as I see him. I eat an entire Cliff Bloks bar, hoping I've taken in enough calories so far. You're supposed to eat somewhere around 200 calories/hour during prolonged activity, careful not to deplete your glycogen stores. I've never been able to eat that much mid-race, but I'm extra cautious today, taking in about 150 calories/hour.

8:47 am: Mile 17 is the first place along the course where spectators can see the runners. For the last 167 minutes, it's been just me, the other runners, an occasional passing car, and the aid station volunteers. But now, as I run up the slight incline to where two main highways intersect, I see the course is lined with cheering fans, holding awesome signs. I see, "Chafe now, brag forever" and "Every step is one step closer to beer". Oh, and my personal favorite, "Chuck Norris can't run a marathon". There's my Hubby and friend Kristen running toward me. Jeremiah takes my jacket, offers a gel packet and some more tylenol, as well as some encouraging words, "You're doing great and looking strong!"

9:10 am: My awesome friend Kristen drove all the way up to Ft. Collins to help me run the last 7 miles, the hardest miles by far, of the marathon. She meets me right before mile 19 at the bottom of "Bagel Hill", the biggest hill on the course. We work our way up to the top, and I start to feel it. The heavy-leg, lactic acid soaked muscle feeling. Up until this point, I had no problem holding a sub 9 minute/mile pace. But now.....things are starting to really hurt....my mental resolve is chunking away piece by piece.....and my shoes feel like they're filled with Quik-set cement.

9:20 am: Less than an hour left to go (I hope!) and only 5 and a half miles. I see my Husband cheering for the last time until the finish line. We jump on to a winding bike path that promises to take us to the finish. I have no idea what's coming as this is the only part of the course I wasn't able to see before the race; a mistake I will not make again. And I am so thirsty! I'm honestly on the verge of tears looking for the next aid station. I opted to not carry my own water fearing the extra weight it would put on my broken foot. Early dehydration is setting in.

9:30 am: Kristen is smiling, encouraging me that we're getting close to the finish. She's also giving pep talks to other runners who, I'm sure, look about as miserable as I look right now.

9:52 am: 3 miles to go. Under normal circumstances, 3 miles feels like nothing to me. When you're doing 10 mile tempo runs & 20 mile long runs, 3 miles feels like eating dessert and taking a nap. But not today. I want to lie down on the side of the trail and cry.

10:18 am: We turn off the trail onto a road. There in the not-to-far distance is what I've been waiting for- the Finish Line! Kristen says, "There it is Jenny! Run it home, you're almost finished!" and drops off the course to watch the finish with the spectators.

10:20 am: I cross the finish line, arms raised, elated to have finished and to have finished well. I gulp down an entire bottle of water, take my awesome medal and commemorative poster, and look for my husband. 4:05, final time.

Broken foot, Broken dreams.....

Runner's are not strangers to pain. In fact, I'd go so far as to say, that on most runs, most days, most runners feel some sort of pain in their body. But running, as my coaches always said, is 90% mental. So we train our brains to run through the pain, ignore the pain, or frankly, to just deal with it. But occasionally something hurts in a different way and a little alert in our brains goes off. That's what happened to me last Monday.

I was on what was supposed to be an easy 10 mile run. The trail was dirt, mostly downhill, and I was enjoying the thought that this run would only take an hour and a half (not the 3+ hours I had been trudging through as of late). However, around mile 5, I felt a pain, a shock of pain, that radiated through my foot with each step. I stopped for a moment, then started running again- still there. I walked for a while, tried running again- still there. That's when I called my Hubby to come pick me up.

Turns out my foot is fractured, likely the result of high arches mixed with concrete trails and lots of mileage. My podiatrist seems to think I can still run this marathon (which is, as I write, only 8 days away) as long as I wear the boot, don't run until race day, and take lots of pain killers. He's confident the foot will heal (enough) by race morning. In fact, he never even suggested not running the marathon. Regardless, I feel like my mental resolve and pre-race focusing is completely shot. Instead I'm constantly wondering if I will be able to run, how horrible the pain will be, or if I'll have to take the dreaded DNF next to my name. Only time will tell. But for now, I'm trying to stay positive.....and spending lots of time on the elliptical.....oh, and lugging this boot around everywhere I go.

Half Marathon and Half Way There

On Sunday I did the Platte River Half Marathon for the second time ever. With only three weeks left until the marathon, I hoped to get a good, confidence boosting race under my feet. My husband ran, too- his first half-marathon ever, and my third.

The week before the race, Weather.com kept messing with me: rainy and 30 degrees one minute, sunny and 50 the next. Their trickery explains why, on race morning, I was incredibly indecisive: what should I wear? Is it going to rain? Snow? Should I carry hydration or just use the aid stations?

As the announcer gave the two-minute warning over the loud-speaker, I made a last minute decision to ditch the coat and gloves and made my way to the start line.

The race started in three random waves. Wave 1 was "those who think they can win" and wave 2 and 3 were determined by projected pace. I went off with about 1,000 other runners in wave #2, quickly weaving through downtown Littleton.

I saw Grandma and my three kiddos cheering as I passed. My two youngest were adorable in a green wagon with sun hats on, while my oldest daughter reached out her hand to high-five any willing runners as they passed.

I started strong, about an 8:15 mile, and settled in with a group of "running buddies" who likely did not even notice I was there. I, however, felt a comraderie with my like-pacers and even took to giving them nicknames. There were the "Two Doctors", very tall and skinny 50-something men who seemed to hold a 8:15 pace so consistently and assuredly. There was "Marathon Cankle" who earned the name from the Hawaii Marathon tech shirt she donned, and the giant size of her calf muscles that were, honestly, quite cankle-ish. And my last buddy, "Polka-dot" a late twenty-something female that was wearing a very cute turquoise polka-dot running skirt.

I held the pace quite easily for the first 7 or 8 miles. One Doctor and Marathon Cankles fell behind me around the 4 mile aid station when they chose the walk-while-I-drink-my-cup-of-water method, while I opted for the drink-half-spill-half-down-my-shirt-while-still-running-method. Around the half-way point, Doctor #2 lengthened his stride and ditched our group for a faster (but not cooler) sub 8 mile crew.

Around the 8 mile mark or so, I could feel the lactic acid adding pounds to my legs. I slowed considerably and wondered why I had started out so fast. Polka-dot slowed, too, so we plodded along together through the hardest miles of the half marathon.

The Kansas-like head-wind was starting to make me cranky around mile 10. I was making my way up a long, gradual hill with my head down when the guy next to me took his earphone out and signaled for me to do the same.

"Is this the 'Big Hill'?" he asked.

I laughed, "Nope. Not even close."

"Dang. I was really hoping this was it and my friends were just wimpy when they complained about the 'scary, big hill at the end."

"I wish," I said while putting my earbud back in. "It's not 'til after the mile 12 marker, and you seriously can't miss it."

The "big hill", is a long viaduct you have to run up, across, and down to the finish line on the other side. I knew to hit my goal of a 1:49 I'd have to hit mile 12 at 1:38, so when I hit it at 1:41, it was obvious my goal wasn't going to happen today. I was, however, 2 minutes ahead of my PR so I knew as long as I could maintain for this last mile, I'd still walk away with a new best.

I clicked to my money-song on my IPod, motored up the hill, and did everything I could to just keep my feet moving. Both legs were solid cement at this point, and at least 10 pounds heavier than they were 12.5 miles ago. When I started coming down the other side, I could see the finish-line. Hallelujah. I gave what I had left, and crossed at 1:52:20 (about a 8:35/mile pace)and over two minutes faster than my previous best. I put my foot up on the gate to get my chip clipped-off, downed two(yes,two)bottles of water, and turned to watch my friends and Hubby come in.

We drank some beer, ate some food, and shared our war-stories. I welcomed my Hubby to the half-marathon club and congratulated my friends on great finishes. I walked away with some confidence for the upcoming marathon, as well as a fearful thought: I would half to race TWICE as far as I did today...twice as far.....

Top 10 List: Things I Learned Running 20 Miles

1) If you're tummy is hurting before the run, take your Hubby's advice and find a bathroom. Squatting on the side of the trail leads to nothing but embarassing, and maybe messy, memories.

2) Don't break your sunglasses trying to dig toilet paper out of your running pack (see #1). Especially if the run is, say, 3 hours. Not fun.

3) Cutting your hand on your camelback clip will cause bleeding. Oh, and there are NO bandaids or first aid stations on running trails.

4) Nothing else can lift your spirits from a bad start (see #1-3) like your kiddos. Talk about God's timing- I was crossing a street about 5 miles into my run just in time to see my mom and the kiddos driving to school. Cheered me right up.

5) The value of knowing restroom locations on trails is absolutely priceless. 20 miles, 4 potty breaks, and only 1 trail squat (again, see #1). I'd say that's a pretty good day. Thanks, Alison, for sharing your wisdom with me ;)

6) Runners, aka pedestrians, ALWAYS have the right of way. Seriously. Stop next time you see someone crossing the road, dummy.

7) The best running songs ever: Where is the Love. Raise Your Glass. Poker Face.
Sure, sure they're overplayed, but they all have a great running beat

8) Worst running songs ever: Down by the Bay. The Books of the Bible. The More We Get Together.

Not sure why I had all the kids' music on my IPhone......?

9) Always try to finish your run at or before your final destination, even if it means circling around a bit somewhere along the way. There is nothing worse than approaching your stopping point, realizing you still have half a mile left, and having to run past your house, car, or gym to finish the run. Trust me, folks. I made this mistake on my 18 mile run, learned from it, and did things the right way today.

10) Never underestimate the value of a friend running the last few (or in this case, eight) miles with you. There is only so much time you can spend with yourself, only so much music you can listen to, and only so long you can keep your feet moving without the aid of distraction.

Thanks, Kristen, for telling me the story behind the "Friday" song, what it was like to cover the crime beat at a W. Virginia newspaper, and only the positive things about the Colorado Marathon.

20 miles- check!

One...Two...Three Trips to the Chiropractor

I carried Lily into the house last Wednesday, like a do a least a half dozen times a day. Except this time, when I set her and my purse and my gym bag down, something in my back tweaked. Bad.

I'd planned on getting in a speed workout before the kiddos swimming lessons that night, but instead made a beeline down Broadway to my Chiropractor.

"Oh......this is pretty bad" he said as I lay down on the table. "What'd you do?"

"Nothing" I said, "Seriously, just the normal, everyday stuff."

After two more visits, he determined my spine was fine and the muscle was only sprained, not torn.

"Optimistically, you could be running in the morning. However, my guess is you'll need several days, maybe even a week for the muscle to repair itself," he said.

"Just great," I thought. I already missed my speed workout, I had a 10 mile run with a friend planned for the morning, and a 20 miler scheduled in for Sunday. And the marathon is only six weeks away.

I took three solid days off. I was less focused on missing all my training runs and more focused on the beautiful day when I would be pain free again. When I'd be able to play with the kids, pick Lily up when her newly mobile feet failed her, and maneuver the stairs without cringing.

By Saturday I was 75% normal. By Sunday I was 90%. And just in time for Monday, I was well enough to tackle the 20-miler.

So what did I learn from all of this?

Injuries happen. A few days off will not ruin months of training. And ice + wine + catching up on the DVR = a happy mommy.