feel the fear... and blog it anyway

There's a great book I have on my shelf called "Feel the fear...and do it anyway". I think I picked it up at a used bookstore in Scotland, or borrowed it off a friend's shelf there, I can't remember anymore. They don't really do self help books there, so this one was virtually unused when I acquired it.

Oddly, I've never fully read the book, I think I've cherry-picked a couple of chapters. I love the title. For me, the title is enough of a reminder of the point of the book that I don't need to read it. I get it. I see that title staring at me on the shelf when I need it, when I'm there and I need a reminder.

I'm there right now, actually. I'm feeling the fear.

I'm signed up for my first 50K run, and it's breathing down my neck. I can practically hear it coming. The race is this Saturday. This is a big deal.

Training for this thing has temporarily sucked the fun right out of training. I've been running, running and running. I often joke that my spouse trains for triathlon by running, running, and running (since he dislikes the bike and the swim, but loves to run), and for the past few months, that's been me too. To be fair, I've done some swimming and biking to break up the running, but my mileage on Beginner Triathlete, where there's the little bar graph off to the side, shows large blocks of single color (running) with smaller other-colored blocks of other stuff. It's as if the cycling and swimming have become some sort of a hobby. It is the off season, so that's fair. It's OK for my overall mileage to be low. I'm OK with that.

Anyway. Back to my whining.

I like running (which is good - because I'm about to do a whole lot of it at once) but I've never run like this before. Coach has been throwing me two-a-days, and long runs on back to back days. The winter weather here has been iffy at times, and sometimes I throw a small princess-like tantrum and don't want to run in the cold. As a result, some of my two-a-days have been outside morning followed by treadmill evening. I have found that doing the second run of the day on a dreadmill, when I'm already physically taxed from running earlier, can be quite suck-tastic.

I've been running a whole bunch lately, and even so, I feel like I'm walking into this thing a bit undertrained. So I am resigned to having a long day outside. Long. And it's going to hurt. The more I look at the course profile, and listen carefully to my friends who've done it before, the more I realize this thing is serious. That "rocky terrain" thing? They're not kidding. It will be long, it will be difficult. The runs I've done on similar terrain here have been fantastically difficult - I know I'm facing slow miles.

so I'm worried. as I should be. I've convinced myself that it's just a marathon with a 10K tacked on the end, but somehow that doesn't help.

Perhaps it's the combination of some of the suck-tastic runs of late combined with the fact that I know how I will feel doing even half of this hard thing is filling me with a sense of dread.

It didn't help when my brand new hydration pack (which I heart) sprung a leak last Sunday. Brand new - I've only had this thing for a couple of months, and it's awesome. But leaking? That is Not. On. Nathan: you are on notice!

It also didn't help when the shoe that I've been running in for the past 2 years - the one that I've finally trusted to get through my ITB issues, has been discontinued - GONE! How could they? - forcing me to find a new shoe to try out to bring for this race.

And I've been panicking about, oh a bajillion other little details - like what to pack, nutritional needs, the weather, what to wear, will it rain (apparently that's not out of the question), what to leave in the drop bag, what will I do if my ITB crops up (it probably will).

Spouse, who is also doing the 50K, has become a gear whore for this race as well. Normally, he's Mr. Minimalist. Where I might wear a couple layers to go outside, he scoffs and says "bah. Not that cold" and dons shorts and short sleeves. While he's not the pre-race worry-wart I am, he is similarly concerned about conditions - and has quietly stocked up on additional gear, like rain jackets and better trail shoes. His strongly worded concerns have only focussed my anxiety: If my all-powerful all-running spouse is worried, I definitely need to pay attention.

I've also tried to de-wuss myself over the last couple of weeks and HTFU on the weather thing. The weather is such an unknown - so I've forced myself outside when it's on the schedule: wind, rain, snow, whatever, I went out and faced it. It was never as sucky as I thought it would be.

I have, by necessity, formed a plan. I have to stop hyperpventilating and start going - me and my paper bag have finally parted ways. I've had to re-organize my head and get into this thing. People do these things all the time, they have fun, they enjoy it.

What will I do?

I'll run the runnable parts.
I'll be significantly lower than I am now, so I'll enjoy all that extra oxygen.
I'll power hike the hills
I'll eat
I'll run
I'll walk
I'll run some more
I'll go
I'll do

I'll feel the fear. And I'll run anyway.

crap crap crap

Way way off in the not-too-distant future, I have signed up for a little thing called the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic. It's really creeping up fast...

Here is the cue sheet describing the elevation profile:

Iron Horse CueSheet // Approximate Distances and Elevations

Leg Mileage Elevation Gain (Feet) Leg Description 11 300 Iron Horse Inn to Bakers Bridge 6 1300 Bakers Bridge to Haviland Lake 11 800 Haviland Lake to Cascade 6 1800 Cascade to Coal Bank Pass (steep) 3 -800 Coal Bank to Lime Creek 4 1000 Lime Creek to Molas Pass 6 -1600 Molas Divide to Silverton 47 Total

Here is the elevation profile - except the ride ends in Silverton, not Ouray:

Make no mistake, I'm absolutely crapping myself about this. This is due in part to the number of people I run into who tell me their horror stories. Like,

"Oh are you training for that? Cool! You're training for it, right?" (uh, no - I was kinda hoping this would be my training for Buffalo Springs)...
"Oh yeah, I did that one year, and I didn't finish." didn't finish? "yeah, I gave up and got beer. we tried Coal Bank the next day, it was too hard."
"I did it a couple years ago, it will be the hardest thing you've ever done."

*ulp*

Oh Crap.

I have other friends who are more comforting. Friends with a lot of experience and excellent athletic ability. Friends who say yeah, it'll be hard, but you can do it. Sure you can do it.

Another friend says I can do it in a pretty decent time (has he seen me climb? does he know? I think he overestimates my ability).

(All of these friends, of course, could potentially read my blog and know that I'm talking about them)

So I'm trying to break it down into things I know and have done.

The steepest climb, Coal Bank, is an 1800ft climb. That's about 300ft gain per mile for 6 miles. I have done a 300ft per mile climb, so I know it'll probably be about like the hardest part of Jemez Dam, which looks like this.

The steepest part of Jemez Dam has only 1 mile of that, and I know it's painful, but I know I can do it.

Much of it will probably not be as bad as the Crest Climb. I haven't done the Sandia Crest Climb- I hear it's not quite as bad as that. I think I'll have to do it once before I go out to Colorado.

I've also done 9-mile hill, which is even more of the same.


There are others I've done I can't even find the profiles for.

Here's the thing: I've done all these climbs, but I've never done them back-to-back in one 47 mile long day, in possible snow. Snow is a deal-breaker by the way. If there is snow on the ground, I will walk to Silverton...

If I subtract all the screamin' fast downhills, that's a whole 9 miles I'll get for free, so that leaves only 38 miles of climbing. And there's some flat - I'd estimate about 15 miles based on my knowledge of the road, so that leaves 23 miles of climbing.

23 miles of hard. serious. up hill. eyes bleeding.

My hope is if I just slow down, sit, settle into it, I can do it. It may not be pretty. It will probably not be fast. I want to find a slow climbing pace and just do it.

I just hope I'm not delusional.

Overly personal moment of insane vanity, with lots of sweary words. Look away now.

About once a month I have a freak-out. It usually coincides with PMS. My coach is aware of it (because I call him once a month about something and say it's time for my monthly freak-out), but I often have to remind my husband why I'm so irritable for that period of time.

Internally I have a freak-out about my weight every month. As in, why do I have this uncontrollable craving for carbs (which I indulge), followed by feeling like a bloated old goat, followed by...Ohhhh, that's why. And the next week I'm OK. The weight freak-out happens pretty much like clockwork. You'd have to wonder why I haven't figured it out yet, but I still freak out and feel like a bloated goat once a month.

I'm resigned to feeling fat this month, so that freak-out hasn't happened. I did, however, take a look at my butt and decide I was done with the cellulite. And I'm done with the belly flab. These bits have followed me since I had the girls, and no amount of working out will ever get rid of them, I've decided. Though it has gotten better, the offending parts are still with me. Stuck for good. Unless I starve myself. And considering how much I like to work out? That would be a really bad idea.

I actually for a minute considered having the offending fat sucked off.

No that thought hasn't left me yet.

Nobody else notices or cares, or they're all just really nice, I've decided. Every chick I know has some part we're not happy with. I think if I had it done, it might make me happier - and then I could move on to obsessing about something else...

And then I think, it seems stupid to want such perfection, it's not as if I want to get a job as a pole dancer. So I talk myself out of it.

Part of the problem is that I look like shit in white - and I'm a rather dazzling shade of blue-white these days. I think I won't feel quite so freaked out about it all once I can start training in less clothes - then maybe Mr. Sun will help me look a little better.

And wrinklier.

I haven't been able to lift as much as I used to, because I've devoted my life to mostly cardio training. Triathlon doesn't require the amount of muscle mass I used to carry, so I have probably lost some. So I feel a bit deflated about that too.

But this isn't the topic of freak-out-du-jour...

No, this month's freak out is about distance. As in, I went for a 50 mile ride today (at not exactly a rocket pace) and then fell into a coma. How on earth am I going to do that AFTER a 1.25 mi swim AND THEN go do a half marathon?

How?

I know it's possible, I've seen people do it. But me? It's not feeling too possible right now.

Today's ride was with my husband - a known abuser of speed limits. I knew he'd leave me far, far in the dust, and I was OK with that. We had an awesome ride north and I felt like Superman for a whole 25 miles. At the stoplight he said to me, "boy I'm feeling really really fast." Our average speed had been in the low 20's. It was a beautiful day. I said, "yeah, me too - we must have a tail wind, because sadly, that's the only way I am fast."

Yup, it was a tailwind, which turned into headwind when we turned around.

Average speed on the way back was in the 15's. Kind of a slog...

I got home and again - everything hurt, so I ate everything and took a nap.

How am I supposed to put this with a run?

I'm totally freaking out...I feel like a white, flabby, fat, non-muscular old lady triathlete who is going to fail horribly in a half-iron attempt...this isn't some little carb craving freak out, this is a big one.

And now I've embarrassed myself by writing it all down.

Lordy.