Spin or sleep in?

So this is my dilemma: Should I take Sunday off, sleep in as late as my kids will let me, laze around bed with the newspaper and then treat myself to a crispy-around-the edges, gooey-inside spinach feta omlette? Or should I get up at 7 am, throw on some Spandex, speed to the gym and elbow my way to the front of the reception desk at the YMCA to get my spin bracelet, and then sprint up the steps in time to claim one of the bikes that isn't broken?

I know, it's a tough call. The spin class sounds so tempting, doesn't it?

My Team in Training marathon training schedule suggests I work out 5 days a week, not 6. (I used to do 7--until someone told me that never taking a day of rest was a clinical symptom of insanity.) It also suggests I cross train. Unfortunately, cross training with my schedule is really hard (well, maybe my logic's a bit warped: running 6 days in a row=easy; driving to a gym 3 miles away from my house to do a less grueling workout=hard). So I thought I'd skip the second day of rest and make it a cross-training day instead by sweating it out with hard-core spinning Sue, who is the West Broward YMCA's answer to Jillian Michaels.

But I have to say...the past week, I've pretty much been following Team in Training's suggestions instead of just running myself into the ground, and I feel pretty good. I ran between 3-4 miles on the weekdays instead of 5-6 and did the team long run (6 miles) in 55 minutes. Right now, nothing aside from a few toe blisters hurts and I'm not starving, exhausted or hallucinating due to dehydration.

Which makes me think maybe I should let someone else elbow their way to the front of the line to claim the unbroken bike.

The fact is, I don't need Jillian Michael's help to run this marathon, as I am not, contrary to how I bloated might feel when the occasional bad case of PMS strikes, a contestant on "The Biggest Loser." The friendly cancer-fundraising mentors at Team in Training have been doing this for years, and they seem to know what they're doing.

So maybe I will sleep in tomorrow. True, I'll miss Sue screaming, "If your quads aren't on fire you're not working hard enough!" but seeing my kids standing bright-eyed in their PJs by the side of my bed does seem like a nicer way to spend a Sunday.

You know you’ve become addicted to running when…

1. You bought nine different varieties of moisture-wick socks before finding a pair that worked for your feet—and then bought a big lot of them on Ebay because you cleaned out your local Sports Authority’s supply of them.


2. You can’t listen to songs from your running playlist without your heart rate becoming slightly elevated.

3. You keep wondering why everyone in the mall walks so slow, why you managed to amass a huge collection of "tummy control body slimmers" over the years, and why you ever needed your husband's help to open a jar of spaghetti sauce--and then it dawns on you: you're faster, leaner and stronger than you've ever been in your life.

4. Instead of worrying about calories or even taste, you worry about whether the item you’re considering eating will make tomorrow’s run a zippy or a sluggish one—and what, if any, bathroom implications there might be.

5. You’re not a wimp anymore. Once you’ve had to pop a blood-filled blister with a needle or slipped on a puddle of your own sweat, standing up to bullies suddenly becomes a lot easier—maybe even natural.

6. You’re more excited about the day of your long run than your day of rest.

7. If you’re being really honest with yourself, you might admit that used to be a little bit envious of The Beautiful People, with their white teeth and expensive hair extensions and their Louis Vuitton purses. Now you don’t want all that. You just want a Bodybugg. And a faster mile.

Confessions of a Type A runner

As a runner, my biggest accomplishment thus far was having the sense to stop running after completing 8.5 miles today; I'd planned to do 10.

I stopped not because I had to stop--I am sure I could have dragged my madly protesting body another 1.5 miles and made it to my front door step (my makeshift finishline) before collapsing in a sweaty, dehydrated heap in my foyer. I stopped because feeling miserable didn't seem like much of an accomplishment after 1:30 minutes of hard work.

Being the intense, Type A runner that I've become, this decision was incredibly hard to make. "What are you doing??" my will power screamed in disbelief. "Fifteen more minutes of running is nothing--hup! hup!"

But I did not hup! hup!  From stores of wisdom and balance I had no idea I even possessed, I had the sense to stop when I began to feel weak and nauseated--feelings I really haven't experienced thus far in my running adventures, because thus far my body has generally cooperated with the goals I've set for myself.

It was a long 1.5 mile walk/trot back to my house, but it was no walk of shame. The next time I try for 10, in about a month when it's much less humid here, I'm going to do it with my Team in Training teammates by my side and my running mentor cheering me on then.

Until then, while running alone I'm going to stick with long runs I can do enjoyably--7, 8 miles max--so I don't burn out or overtrain, as one of the mentors had warned me.  She told me she ignored her exhaustion and ran anyway once, only to collapse and fall and badly injure herself, delaying her running for almost a week. Another mentor had warned me that she'd once been hospitalized for dehydration from running in the heat.

Both of these mentors assured me that if I just followed their marathon training schedule (we're supposed to be up to 5 miles by this point, not 10), I could easily do 26.2. I think I'm finally at the point where I trust their advice--and trust in myself.

Which, being the type of intense, determined but occasionally unwise runner that I am, is quite an accomplishment indeed.

I'm no expert, but I do know this...

Considering how little I knew about running before I just jumped into my sneakers one day and took off, I think it's kind of funny that people actually ask me--me!--for running advice. I'm definitely still in the novice phase myself.

But I do have a few words of wisdom that might be helpful to anyone who actually knows less about running than me:

1. If you can't breathe, slow down. Your lungs are sore, you're out of breath, you just want to stop running and lie down on a couch? That means you're going wayyyy too fast. Go a lot slower. You might not win a race or outrun a tiger, but if your goal is to be able to run for more than 10 minutes, you need to find a comfortable pace and stick with it. You can worry about increasing your speed later--and the more you run, the faster you'll get. Eventually.

2. Don't eat rabbit food or junk food. If you aren't getting in enough calories, you won't have the energy to run. If you eat a giant Big Mac, all that fat is going to be jostling around your stomach with every step you take. Think sturdy combinations of carbs and lean proteins. The good news is that you don't need to eat rabbit food if you run regularly; the average person burns about 100 calories per mile. The bad news is you can't eat whatever you want, either; the average person, again, burns about 100 calories per mile. (Not 1,000.)

3. Don't bring out all your new goodies from Runner's Depot during one run. So you stocked up. You might be excited to try out your new Body Glide, sneakers, orthodics, Fuel Belt and running gels--just don't try them all out in one day. I have a funny story about making that mistake myself.

4. Listen to yourself. I can't even tell you how much advice people have been generous enough to offer me, much of it unsolicited--on everything from weight loss tips ("You should have gone on a diet before you began running; your calves wouldn't be so bulky if you began running when you were thinner") to what to think about while in motion ("Think about your form only, not what errands you have to run or about your aches and pains"--yeah, that'll work for five minutes, not five miles). In the end, I had to figure out what worked best for me.

So with that in mind, feel free to disregard items #1, #2, #3.

In case you didn't notice...

Psst...I've changed the header on my blog from, "Follow my quirky column as I train for my first half-marathon" to "Follow my quirky column as I train for my first marathon."

Before you declare me crazy, delusional or just plain stupid, let me offer the following explanations:

1. Runners have been telling me for months, "If you can run 10 miles, you can run a marathon." Well, I can run 10 miles.

2. The people I pace with at my Team in Training meetings are all training for the full marathon. It would be fun to complete the race with them.

3. If I can't complete all 26.2 miles--even if I can't complete 13.1--it's not like the Marathon Police would throw me in jail. There's no negative consequence awaiting people who don't run the full thing. In fact, plenty of people walk/run it, and I think that is a terrific accomplishment.

4. I've decided that I don't look miserable enough in my current race photos (see my Run for Row 5k glamour shot above) and figure that after a 4+ hour run, I'll finally perfect the "miserable grimace nausea" look.

5. Miserable looks aside, I simply love to run.

In addition to increasing my mileage goal, I've increased my fundraising goal. To read about WHY I'm running and WHO I am running for, please visit my fundraising page by clicking here.

My Great White Hope

The Nike Lunar Glide: Be still my heart.

Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of toads before you find your prince, and I think that after countless painful, blistering make out sessions with shoes I was told I should have loved, but instead rubbed me the wrong way (literally), I've finally found The Ones. At the very least, my new Nike Lunar Glides have given me the gift of several long, delightful, injury-free runs. (Even with my foot taped up from last week's injuries, I felt good in them.) The shoe is light, springy--and yet it cares about my shin splints, too. Running in them makes the road below feel like marshmallows instead of asphalt.

It's early to say whether these newfangled Nikes (with the tagline: "It really is rocket science") will be the white horse I'll ride all the way to the finishline of the Miami ING. But I've got every finger and toe crossed that we make it to there together.

You can find all the hype about Nike's hot new running shoe here, and in case you were wondering, I really am not a paid reviewer--I'm just a grateful runner. I'm just a grateful, accident and injury prone flat-footed runner whose insteps have been used and abused by nearly every running shoe out there. All of that changed, I think (I hope!) last week when I spotted the Nike Lunar Glides from across a crowded room at The Sports Authority.

That's actually not quite true: I guess you could say my first love was the Nike Air Zoom Road Explosion IIs, which also felt marshmallow-light and spared my insteps of blisters. But our love burned out fast: given their flimsy construction, they had to be replaced every 100 miles (quite a feat given that they were discontinued in 2008) and did nothing to protect my shin splints.

Plus, I took a lot of flak for my Nike Road Explosions from real runners and shoe fitting experts, who couldn't believe I'd racked up as much mileage as I had with so little protection. Honestly, after about 50 miles it wasn't much better than running barefoot.

Nevertheless, the feeling of running barefoot is still a lot better than the feeling of running in overbearing, thick, clumsy Brooks Dyads with ill-fitting orthotics. The Foot Solutions people did reconfigure my orthodics (for free!) so they supposedly will no longer cause blisters--though I was again told to wear them around the house for two weeks before attempting a run in them. And quite honestly, given that the last time I ran in my Brooks with their orthodics, I ended up with blisters that took more than 8 days to heal and forced me to take off two days of my training, I'm in no rush to give them another shot.

Also, the Brooks are so heavy and boxy and...okay, I'll say it: unsexy. They remind me of the kind of clunky, multiple-clasped and wired bras that elderly women call "brassieres." I'm more of a "bra" kind of girl.

And I guess I'm a Nike kind of girl, too.

"Just do it" sure works for the kind of person who became a runner just like that, one day on the Carnival Imagination cruise, when she just got an a treadmill after eating too much at the buffet and ran for an hour and 12 minutes until the gym personnel told her it was time for them to close. It had been more than a decade since I'd last run, and just like that, I just did it.

Again, I have to emphasize I'm not a Nike shill. Really, they are not paying me anything (though if they'd like to, they can pay me in free products.) I'm just a little bit infatuated right now. Jorie and Nike sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

But the last time I was really and truly in the throes of infatuation, I did end up marrying the guy, and eight years and two kids later, I have to say my instincts were right.

I just hope my sneakers and I do end up running off into the sunset together. (With my husband and two kids cheering me on from the sidelines of course.)

Is there a way to run comfortably with blisters?

This is probably a stupid question, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

My poor, poor insteps. It took four weeks for my last set of blisters--from my orthodics ordeal--to harden and turn into scars, and now I've got fresh ones on top of them that have the exact same punctured-grape appearance.

The shoes I've been wearing all along, my Nike Air Zoom Road Explosion IIs, have never hurt me but don't offer my shins or flat feet any support, which has become a problem as I've increased my mileage.

So this weekend I went to Runner's Depot and bought a pair of "real" running shoes--the Brooks Dyad--and wore them around the house with the orthodics to try to break them in, as the Foot Solutions people had suggested. After a few days of indoors-only, around-the-house orthodics wearing, I laced up the new shoes for a quick, 3 mile jog...and has happened before, 1.5 miles into it, I realized what a mistake I'd made.

So I'll be stopping by Foot Solutions this week to bleed all over their carpet--or at least get my custom orthodics re-customized; the owner of the store, who is very nice, actually called me up when the company's PR folks web-crawled my blog to see how he could help, and I'll definitely be taking him up on his offer.

But in the meantime, my feet are a mess. I hear runners complain all the time of bad hips and knees; try running when your feet are the problem part of your body!

So is there anything I can do, until I'm all healed? Run with my feet wrapped in Ace bandages? Inject my insteps with a local anesthetic? Do I need to page Dr. Scholls? Any suggestions would be appreciated. As it is, I'm sliding around in my shoes since I've embalmed my feet in Neosporin.

That being said, is it crazy that I'm still looking forward to tomorrow's run?