I clearly have shirt issues

realrunners2
Not an example of a run with a “unisex” shirt. I just like the goofball selfie attempt.

As awesome as a well-organized run event can be, there’s one little thing that bums me out almost every time. I’ll give you one guess.

No I won’t. It’s the damn t-shirt.

A couple weeks ago, Mike and I ran in an event that was new to the area. We steeled ourselves to be patient. By which I mean we did our normal bitching and moaning getting up and ready, and then sank into silence on the ride to the park, lost in our respective head games until we got to the starting line.

Usually, new events take a couple of years to shake out the kinks. Kinks come with the territory, considering the complexity of organizing a 13.1-mile event that sprawls over congested city streets and public pathways where clever adolescents like to rearrange mile markers and directional signs.

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My running buddies need thick skin

dog_runI learned two things this weekend. Number one: my dog is a traitor.

A couple weeks ago I had drinks with a good friend and a couple of her friends I’ve been getting to know. When we were done talking about anything and everything remotely related to our kids, we talked about running. This is a group that runs together.

“You run?” One woman asked me. “Why didn’t we know that?”

Probably because I run mostly solo, and really, really slowly. Joining any running group might require I step up my game a little bit, or risk holding a whole bunch of moderately capable runners back.

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were going to say it was because you run really fast.”

That’s funny. No. I’m so slow, I make pretty much anyone putting one foot in front of the other for any length of time look good. Your average, garden-variety slug on Quaaludes looks fast next to me.

Persistent, yes. Fast? No.

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First World gripes & phony facial hair

Assorted adhesive mustaches, for the girl who has everything.
Assorted adhesive mustaches, for the girl who has everything.

I received a shiny gadget for Christmas. Well, not so much shiny as nondescript and black and made to be worn on my wrist like a bracelet. It was moderately spendy, so when Mike and I agreed to get them for each other, we decided they would be our only gifts.

Oh, I should say “among our only gifts,” because there was also a tin of assorted adhesive mustaches in my stocking.

So, here we were with these new tracker gadgets – which were bound to have been popular for every uptight, OCD fitness fanatic you know (as well as for a couple of posers like us). They came with a little card, listing a website on which is presumably all the instructions for calibrating our new toys.

If you happen to work for a company that makes gadgets for a particularly uptight, OCD population, and all the functionality of your gadget depends upon your website, you really should (a) make sure your website can support a fairly significant uptick of traffic on Christmas morning, and that (b) the default error reading doesn’t say something about “planned maintenance,” when I’m pretty sure the website’s crashing wasn’t in the plan.

I’m pretty sure this company was actually just experiencing a North Korea kind of morning.

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Tchotchkes and other questionable motives for running

Hooray for medals and other crap.
Hooray for medals and other crap.

I love Runner’s World, the magazine, probably more than any of the other of the publications we collect like hoarders around here. It’s got great recipes, fun gear reviews and good features.

They usually also have tips and programs with reasonable goals for lazy ordinary people like me. Titles like Train for your first marathon in ten minutes a day tend to attract such people with both feet planted firmly in the short-term commitment universe as myself.

And that esteemed publication is not paying me for this, by the way, although I’m all kinds of amenable to that.

This month I had to check out an article on the habits of highly motivated runners. Not to see what kinds of changes to make to my own routine, mind you, but to pat myself on the back for having mastered many of these without even trying.

I was kind of flabbergasted to find I do not, in fact, possess all of these habits right off the bat. But it’s not my fault.

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Things would be different if I were more into cats

scaleI got off the scale the other morning and let everyone know I’m carrying around an extra six pounds.

“That’s like a whole baby,” I said.

“Not one of our babies,” Mike said. “Maybe a good sized house cat.”

If a shoe had been handy, I’d have thrown it at him. I’m not into cats.

I’ve rarely had any kind of problem with my weight, other than that time during my teens where I wished my thighs wouldn’t brush together and bunch up my gym shorts when I ran laps in PE.

Still, around here, I’m the designated person in charge of everybody’s diet and exercise regimen. The boys need regular prodding and reminders to eat properly in order to keep from turning into puddles of goo. Mike’s a total grouch if he doesn’t take care of himself. This ends up being my problem by virtue of my bossiness and the preference I have for not living with crabby slugs.

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About that chicken …

chicken_copyWhen Colin was little he was enthusiastic about chicken drumsticks.

“I lo-o-ove this chicken on a bone,” he’d say.

I should mention he was around four, I think, and fond of asking where his food came from – did corn grow on trees? What about potatoes?

Clearly we are an urban household. One that doesn’t engage in many horticultural activities.

Eventually Colin got around to asking “how’d they get this chicken on the bone anyway?”

We explained, in a fairly straightforward manner, how the chicken meat came to be attached to the chicken bone.

It wasn’t a terribly shocking revelation. The boys spent a great deal of time at Mike’s parents’ place out in the boonies, where there had at various times been plenty of chickens, as well as sheep, pigs, horses and whatever castoff household pets had been dropped on their country road by asshats who no longer want to deal with the cost of Kibbles.

I knew Colin wasn’t apt to get sentimental about eating what had once been scratching at bugs in the dirt, but I also hoped our conversation didn’t inadvertently kick off a new thing to be picky about. I tried to couch the whole subject into a circle-of-life conversation.

Because, you know, four year-olds and their existential tendencies.

I wrapped the whole explanation up with “even grandma’s chickens end up as dinner sometimes.”

Colin looked at me over the top of the drumstick.

“Grandma Sylvia,” he said.

Well, yeah, Grandma Sylvia. Of all the grandmas Colin had, she was the one with the livestock.

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My karmic potty break

Potty copyEvery runner I know has a story about an indelicate moment involving bodily functions. This is mine.

It’s not too terribly gross. Safe enough if you happen to be reading this at work – unless you spit coffee on your laptop minutes before you were supposed to forward some report, and then you’ll be mad at me for blowing your cover as a slacker.

You absolutely may not pin your slackerliness on me.

But if that’s not a problem, read on.

It was raining this weekend when Mike and I set out for our latest half marathon. This one was through wine country on weaving country roads. We had a hard time finding the starting line.

The few other times Mike and I had tried to make our way out to this winery, we’d taken wrong turns and ended up lost in wide open space where they pin down the scenery with a house every couple of miles or so. Those other forays were before GPS. This time we thought we were good.

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More to add to your running glossary

zombies_run copyI was thinking about my blog on running terminology, and realized there are items and events in the sport of running for which there are, as yet, no real words.

With a nod to Rich Hall and the stuff we watched before John Stewart, I have generated the following glossary of more running terminology to help runners, and those who love them (or would like to have a special language with which to make fun of them), convey all that heretofore remained unsaid for no other reason than we lacked the means of expression.

Glidegrief: The realization, well into your run, that you forgot to use the anti-chaffing stick that’s melting in your car right at this moment, and you’re going to be walking funny and screaming in every shower for the next few days as a result.

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ManicMom’s Glossary of Running Terminology

road_kill1 copyMike and I have signed up for another half marathon, which is tomorrow. The event sounded like a really good idea back in, I don’t know, April or something, when we forget it’s Death Valley-type hot here in August.

Following the event, we’re loading up the car and driving a hundred miles across the high desert to a beer festival, for probably no real reason except just so we can say we did that.

Before THAT, and for your reading pleasure, I’m offering up the following glossary of very real and frequently used running terms:

Chip Time – That time after a long run, when I tell myself it’s probably fine to eat a full-sized bag of Fritos, because not only am I so freaking hungry I could chew my own arm off, I am also pretty sure I burned enough fuel anyway to make it a net neutral calorie intake (wrong).

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That’s a long way to run for a poser

realrunnersMike and I are signed up for our next half marathon in two weeks. Then we have another race three weeks after that. Events are a good way for me to keep from flaking out on working out, and make me seem way more badass than I really am.

On Sunday we took our last long run before the event. That’s how this thing works: Train your guts out for months, hope you don’t injure yourself while you build up distance, add in some speed work and hills to make things interesting. Then the last two weeks take things easy, save energy for the event, and pretend you’re all grouchy because you’re consciously avoiding overtaxing yourself.

Since taking up this distance as my thing a few years ago, I’ve found that many of the folks who make up this group are determined, disciplined, sober, and focused. They rarely whine, and never ever smell like body odor, urine, or Bengay.

Then there are those of us outside the pages of Runner’s World.

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