Running With Sugars

Author: Elizabeth

  • Harding Hustle 30k – July 2011

     

    No matter how many trail races I run, I still balk and complain about getting up early to drive to the race. I really, truly wish I was an early bird, but it’s just not in my nature, so I always stay up too late the night before and then suffer for it race morning. This was the situation I found myself in before the Harding Hustle, when I got up at the runner-unfriendly hour of 3:45 to get everything together, drive down the Orange County, park in the designated lot, then take a 20-minute shuttle to the start. (The start/finish had no available parking for runners.) It was kind of a production. I arrived about 5:55, a few minutes before the scheduled 6 am shuttle, so I was giving myself giant pats on the back for my excellent time management and driving skills as I settled in to wait for the shortly-arriving shuttle.

    And waited. And waited. The shuttles were supposed to run every 15 minutes, but 6, then 6:15 came and went, without a shuttle in sight. Of course, my first thought is, “I could have slept in until 4:00! That would have been awesome.” But instead, I killed time taking awkward pictures of myself and my fellow runners:

     

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  • A Taste of Things to Come

    Instead of actually blogging about things tonight, I thought instead I would blog about what I will be blogging about in the future. Is that meta? Or just annoying? At any rate, here are a few things that have been going on that will soon make an appearance on this here blog:

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    I made this today! $50 to the first person who guesses what it is.

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  • Treats for the Ear-Holes

    Apparently there are some rare species of runners who survive—and even thrive!—without listening to music when they run. I haven’t seen too many of these in the wild, but I’ve been assured they exist. I myself most emphatically do NOT belong to this group. When I drowned my ipod in a rainstorm earlier this year, it was all I could do to keep running back to the car and not fling myself into the nearest puddle in solidarity.

    Running and music are inextricably linked for me. I first started running when I was living abroad and I had only a cheap walkman (walkman! I’m old) and a half-dozen tapes (tapes!) with me. I just about wore out those tapes running in slow circles around the park. To this day, I get chills when I hear U2’s Elevation album because I so clearly remember those months when I was first teaching myself to run a mile, two miles, three miles, without stopping.

    So even though I respect people who run with just their thoughts and the music of their breaths, I don’t think I could ever be one of them. (In fact, I’ve stopped doing the Death Valley Marathon because they have a strict no-earphones policy and I just can’t get behind that.) One of the things I look forward to the most is putting new music or podcasts on my player, and having uninterrupted time to digest the words or songs on my run.

    Here are a few music podcasts and collections that I’ve been enjoying, ranked in order from least to most embarrassing.

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  • Western States Movie Time

    Argh! Does ANYTHING compare to the agony of writing out a whole blog post, only to have it eaten by computer gremlins before it’s saved or published? Yep, I’m pretty sure lack of auto-saving blog software is the biggest problem facing the world today. You will just have to take my word that I had crafted a beautiful, moving, eloquent blog post all about the upcoming Western States 100 mile race this weekend. There was humor. There was pathos. There were statistics. It was a thing of beauty, and it is lost forever.

    Instead, you get this half-hearted, second-rate babble studded with movie links. It’s at least 35% less satisfying. Either create some auto-saving blog software for me, or deal with it.

    So long story short, the great-granddaddy of hundred mile races, Western States, is this weekend. I haven’t run a hundred miler and I don’t have the itch…yet…but when I do, you can bet WS will be the one I gun for.  Last year’s race was absolutely epic, with the first two finishers both breaking the course record substantially and coming in under 15:30 (and this on a course with 18000 ft elevation gain and 22000 ft loss.)  There’s a movie coming out this fall that captures the showdown last year, and I recently saw the trailer and immediately fell in love:

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  • 2011 Shadow of the Giants 50k Video!

    Here’s the video from the 2011 Shadow of the Giants 50k (or in my case, 35k). Trying to decide whether to watch it? I’ll break it down for you. Pros: relatively short, awesome soundtrack song, cameo by a sassy Australian RD, and serious landscape porn. Cons: shaky camera work, I eat a cookie in a very unladylike fashion, and by the end I have a raspy Marge Simpson voice. The choice is yours.