Category Archives: art

With running, those shining races, performances worth remembering and runs where everything clicks are more just a representation of all the crappy runs, slog-fests, and uneventful miles before them. The highlights are always outnumbered by the runs done where no one else is watching, probably wouldn’t even know if you did them or not.

If you checked out my Facebook wall yesterday (and you should definitely ‘like’ me! hehe) you saw a sneak peek of a collage type of project I’m working on. It has various women, different eras and poses but it’s an example of a piece of art that can’t stand alone, it needs all the smaller pieces to work. Right now I’m not done and it’s still needing more artwork clips, just like in running. You’re constantly ‘adding’ to your project with every mile, every workout, each race and all the steps forward.

Running hinges on consistency probably more-so than anything else. Built into that is self-motivation and determination because it takes those two qualities to MAKE yourself consistent. After that is probably fortitude, or maybe more correctly the inability to stop, because the honest to goodness truth is that for the most part running hurts. There, said it, and even on those ‘easy’ runs you have to hurt to a degree because otherwise you’d just be jogging or racewalking, right?

Wow, what a pep-talk, right? But let me finish because I’m still explaining here and the point is that you can’t expect to feel like you’re running on rainbows most of the time; you have to expect and anticipate the fatigue and ‘meh’ days because they will be there. They make you a runner because runners get THROUGH those days and move onto the next workout, be it a slog-fest of one of those workouts where you feel everything clicking and you’re just ON.

Your running is made up of each and every mile, it’s not just the glowing PR’s or the runs where you swear you saw a unicorn shi##ing rainbows and a leprechaun bathing in his gold. (Sorry, sort of an inside joke there…that’s my reference to where everything is ‘perfect’.) Now, there WILL be those days where you spy that unicorn, the runs where you feel like you’re outside watching yourself achieve something you didn’t know your legs were capable and you think, “Am I REALLY running this fast…by gosh, I AM!”

I also wanted to touch on the fact that you can’t let a single run define you. You can’t let a single really heinous race, workout or run get to you so much so that you DEFINE it as yourself or an indicator of your fitness. For these runs here is where it’s really helpful to remember that running is representative of the whole, and that crappy workouts come with the territory; you need them to build mental strength and also take them as learning opportunities. See if there is a REASON why you sucked so hard (sometimes there isn’t a reason either), try and learn, and then shower off and move forward.

Though, those unicorn runs only come BECAUSE of the regular old miles before them, and the miles that will come after them. Get through the slog-fests because they make it all worth it. And to be honest, us sick and twisted little glutton for punishment runners wouldn’t have it any other way.

I get back to the inability to stop…

1) What would you say is the ratio to slog-runs to ‘just regular feeling’ runs then to unicorn and rainbow runs?
I’d say most are just usual runs, the ‘real’ unicorn runs come maybe three or four times total?

2) How do you keep perspective after really bad races or workouts?
Remember the good ones I had, chances are they were right on the heels of your epic fail.

3) Name one of your unicorn and rainbow running experiences…go!

 

 

Etched across your face are the words you choose to define yourself by.


Select them carefully, for while you can change them later, some are harder to rub off than others. Labels may be controversial, are they good, are they bad? Who gave them to you, are you just putting them on for show? Do they fit quite right? All that politically correct jazz.

Though RUNNER isn’t a label that I feel looks bad on anyone. Actually it makes them look better. Feel better. Be better.

I like this word, runner, and while I know I’m much more than just a runner, the word suits me just fine and I don’t mind keeping it around. What about you?

1) What are some words that describe yourself?
quirky, OCD, fast-talker, runner, sister, daughter, friend, sarcastic

2) Have those words changed over time to fit you better?

3) If you picked runner amongst your words, can you narrow it down just a little bit more? (ie: distance lover, need for speedster, anti-fartlek, all about the long run)
Miles Addict.

 

 

When you’re a runner you know it in your bones.


Despite the times of injury, cross-training purgatory, and miles withdrawals, you know in your heart you are a runner.

When the track workouts and intervals gnaw at your fortitude, your stomach and your lactic acid riddled muscles, you know you are a runner. You curse it a little in your mind, your sick attachment to this thing that tests you in such painful ways.

The moments when you wish your long runs lasted forever, the miles ticked off more by feel than numbers, when time hangs and dawdles outside of hours and minutes. You know in your soul you are a runner.

Your friends, faceless companions racing alongside you, strangers you pass running on the street; this community, these are your people, you know you are a runner.

The times when the alarm clock goes off and you dread the first step, yes you actually dread it even though you don’t want to admit it, it happens. You still force foot into shoe and get moving, you are a runner after all and you know it. You also know the crummy runs are worth it too.

Because the moments, the ones that you can only catch if you’re lucky and you can’t really ever perfectly plan them. The ones when you feel like you’re not really running, but are outside yourself watching this body complete this incredibly magical yet totally simplistic action. These runs you wish you could catch in a bottle like fireflies and watch them forever…these are the times when you’re not just a runner but the run is shining through your bones.

You know you’re a runner more-so of how you feel, it’s a sense, and you know it in your bones.

1) When you’re injured or unable to run for whatever reason, you still know you’re a runner on the inside. What’s an example of feeling like a runner through the times you can’t actually run?

2) Even when you dread the workout or run, how do you motivate yourself to get the first step in?

3) How was your last long run? Was it one where the miles seemed to fly by, or craaaaawl by?

4) Who raced this weekend…brag on your fine selves! 🙂