You've Got a (Running) Friend in Me

(Flash and I running the marathon)

There are few things in running that can effect your speed more than your mental state.  Sure, you can get more fit, do more speedwork and have better nutrition. But in any given day, your psychological state is a huge factor in whether you have a great run or bonk. And one of the best things I have found to make you change your psychological state is: running with someone.

I used to hate running with other people. Well, I used to hate running in general. But even when I started to get out there more, I always thought that running with someone else would just be a pain; if you are faster than the other person, then it would feel like you're chomping at the bit, and if they are faster, you'll tire too quickly. And how did people chat while they ran, anyway? I felt like I couldn't breathe as it was.

I have talked about my, shall we say, "main" running buddy, Flash, in my marathon blog. He's a two-time marathoner and 9-time half marathoner, and we have been great running buddies; I definitely gleaned much of my running knowledge from his experience.  He was the one who showed me everything from how to fuel a long run (water, carbs, and shot blocks) to how to pace a 20 miler.  He was my first real running buddy, and I realized how much fun it can be, and how much faster a workout can go by when you are running alongside someone.  I learned how to chat and run at the same time (gasp!) and now I actually have a hard time not chatting while I run.  It really takes your mind off of putting one foot in front of the other, and to be honest, you really shouldn't be running faster than a pace at which you can carry on a conversation, anyway (if you are huffing and puffing the whole way, you need to slow down and build your endurance).  In fact, when I ran a 20 mile race (in which I wasn't pacing with Flash), I fell into step with a few strangers and we chatted the whole three and a half hours or so (yes, really) while jogging through the rolling hills of Virginia.  I would have been bored out of my mind otherwise.

Anyway, apart from Flash, there are other people I run with sometimes.  Each of them is different in their style, and I get something different out of running with each of them.

First of all, there's Ax.  Ax is new to running distance races, but he is very speedy- he ran his first half marathon in a 1:41, or averaging about 7:40s.  My fastest time in a half marathon race so far is 1:53, and I'm hoping for under 1:50 this time (or averaging 8:20s) so I have been working on holding a faster pace.  One really good way to do this is running with Ax, because he is fast, so I run faster! We went on a morning run the other day (starting at 6:30 am) for four miles, running under 8 minute miles pretty much the whole way.  I'm not used to running at that clip, but it was really very exhilarating- we were running on the mall as the sun came up, and it warmed up quickly despite the crisp air.  We live on the Hill, so we always have to truck up that darn hill at the end of a run- and Ax powered up it like there is no tomorrow. I need to work on that.  Then we had some fantastic omelets at his favorite post-run diner on the Hill, Jimmy T's (he goes there so often that the owner knew who he was).

Then there is Lei. Lei is another coworker of mine who has started getting into running lately, but has not really competed in races.  We go on runs together during lunch sometimes, and I really enjoy her company- she is not a run-and-talker (I might try to convert her, eventually).  I always feel more relaxed, though, running with her, because I am less inclined to check my watch all the time to see if I am holding my "ideal" pace, and we actually go at a pretty good clip. But she is actually pretty competitive with herself- she is always trying to bring up her pace, and she speeds up at the end of a run.

Basically, the point is that running with someone else can really make your workout go by much faster, whether it's because you have someone to chat with or someone to suffer in silence with, as the case may be. But it can also hold you more accountable- I am more likely to hit the snooze button and go back to sleep at 6 am if there isn't someone waiting to meet me.  You might find that you are running with someone who is faster or slower than you- and that's ok; in fact, it can be really productive for your growth as a runner.  Increasing your fitness comes from going outside of your comfort zone and trying out different paces and distances than you would normally.  And if nothing else, you might discover something about yourself- you may even find a different gear you didn't know you had.

You'll never know until you TRI

As a lot of you know, I trained for and completed the Marine Corps Marathon last fall.  As I talked about in my other blog, I was never really a "runner"- in fact, I was a competitive swimmer, and I abhorred running. When I had to go for a twenty-minute run for lacrosse practice, I was in pain the whole time ("my achilles hurt!" was my excuse to walk). After college, I really wanted to start doing triathlons, since I already had the swimming part under my belt.  The only problem was: I didn't have a bike. Sure, you can just go buy any old bike and ride it in a race; no one would stop you. But I wanted to save up enough money to buy an actual racing road bike, which is NOT cheap.  So, in the meantime, I figured I might as well develop my "weakest" sport: running.  I began doing my first 8K the fall after I graduated,  then a 10K, up to my first half marathon. I discovered that I could actually like running (astounding), and so even though I finally had enough money to buy a bike after a year, I trained for and completed my first full marathon.

After the marathon, I took a deep breath and started looking at a new horizon: tri's.  I do have a new passion for running, but marathon training can get very monotonous- putting in up to 50 miles in a seven day period can be mentally (let alone physically) exhausting.  To tell the truth, at some points I just wasn't enjoying it anymore, and that's really the point, isn't it?  Now, since I have to balance between running, swimming, and biking, plus fit in strength training, yoga, etc., I feel happy when I get to run, which is a huge psychological shift.

I have signed up for my first triathlon, which is the "Rumpus in Bumpass" (yes. that's what it's called) in Rumpus, Virginia on April 14.  Ok, well, technically it isn't my first; I actually did a sprint triathlon with my dad when I was about 13 or 14.  So I decided to start out with an Olympic/International distance tri.  I'm hoping to do a few Olympics and eventually work my way up to a Half Ironman.  Just for your information, these are the standard distances for triathlons:

Sprint triathlon:

Swim: 0.5 mile (750 meter), Bike: 12.4 miles (20K), Run: 3.1 miles (5K)

International/Olympic triathlon: 

Swim: 0.9 mile (1.5K), Bike: 24.8 miles (40K), Run: 6.2 miles (10K)

Half Ironman:

Swim: 1.2 miles (1.9K), Bike: 56 miles (90K), Run: 13.1 miles (21K)

Ironman:

Swim: 2.4 miles (3.8K), Bike: 112 miles (180K), Run: 26.2 miles (42K)


That's right. An Ironman race consists of swimming two and a half miles in open water, then biking over a hundred miles, and then running a marathon.  Yikes.  Running a marathon in itself was enough (ha).

So anyway, I have already started training for the Olympic distance tri in April at the same time that I am training for a half marathon in March, so I have to balance enough running mileage with getting enough swim and bike workouts.  Since a couple of you have asked me what I do to train, here's a sample of what I do (this is from a couple of weeks ago):

Monday: lunchtime: 45 minute spinning class; after work: swimming 2800 meters (about an hour)

Tuesday: running 5 miles outside; plus abs and pushups

Wednesday: 5:30 am: master's swimming practice 3800 meters; lunchtime: 45 min spinning class

Thursday: 2.5 miles running on the treadmill, then 45 min personal training

Friday: Rest day (these are important!!)

Saturday:  Running 10 miles outside

Sunday: 90 min bike ride outside (about 22 miles)

Obviously, some weeks I don't have as much time as others, and I don't do two-a-day workouts all the time.  It ends up being about once or twice a week, just out of necessity,  so that I get all of the different sports in. But I really love it so far, because I have started to get to a whole new level of fitness- someone told me recently that tri's seem to "agree" with me.  So I hope you'll join me on this new fitness journey!

Chinese Character

When I was in fourth grade, I started taking my first foreign language: French.  I was fascinated by the different sounds, the musicality of the language, and how the intonations were so very different from ours.  Even though it was not as "practical" as Spanish (the only other option at the time), and the fact that my mother used to teach Spanish, it never occurred to me that I shouldn't learn a language I could only use far away.  As the years went on, my love for the language and its culture grew, evidenced by the Sorbonne t-shirt I literally wore to tatters and my "fleur de lis" vanity plate.  I even considered attending the University of Paris for my undergraduate degree (which is still a pipe dream of mine for graduate school).

As I moved on to college, I still took advanced French literature classes, but I wanted to explore more language horizons- so I took up Italian, eventually going to study in the University of Bologna after only taking it for two years.  I realized that not only did I like learning French, I love learning a new language; each has its own texture and taste,  like different spices or even different melodies. French is a bright sound, like a jaunty tune, and Italian is more rounded, luscious, exuberant and gestural.

Post-graduation, similarly to my nostalgia for reading heavy literature, I felt the loss of languages- after all, I had been taking at least one for the last 15 years.  Since I only know romance languages, I had thought about picking up something further east, but I never really had the push to do it.  A couple of weeks ago, however, a friend of mine forwarded me a link to the GLN (the Global Language Network) lottery.  GLN is a non-profit that was actually started by George Washington University students for the sole purpose of offering language classes for free- that's right, FREE. You enter a lottery before each session, and if you are lucky enough to win, you put down a small deposit (which you get back at the end) and take your new language!  I never thought I would win due to the high demand, but I threw my hat in the ring for Beginner Mandarin and Beginner Spanish (why not round out my romance languages, eh?).  To my surprise, I won the lottery for Beginner Mandarin, and the next week I was sitting in class and learning how to introduce myself in Chinese.

Of course, no one would ever say that taking an Asian language would be easy; for one thing, you have to learn a completely different alphabet.  Another aspect that is very difficult for Anglo speakers is thus: there are different tones which change the meaning of a word (four in Mandarin, eight in Cantonese... you get the idea).  This means that you could say the same word four different ways and it could literally have four different meanings- you could repeat the same phrase and it could make sense or could be complete gibberish, depending on the tones. Here are the four different tones:

The Four Tones of Mandarin

Pinyin	Chinese Character	Meaning	Tone
mā	媽	mother	First
má	麻	hemp	Second
mǎ	馬	horse	Third
mà	罵	scold	Fourth

(This is a quiz for trying to identify them- as you can see, it's not easy!)

My background in romance languages gave me no help with this, but for some reason, I have not been completely hopeless so far in identifying the right tone.  I realized, after the last class, that it's probably because I have a background in music.

Once upon a time, I was also trained classically in voice and vocal performance, including opera.  Interestingly enough, aural recall (that is, listening to a phrase and repeating it back) was never my forte (pun intended).  I was able to do it, but I always relied more on my sight reading skills.  But I could tell, based on the foundation classes in Mandarin, that one way to recognize the tones was to compare them to different notes on the scale. In my comparison, the first tone is as if you are singing a straight note, the second as if you are singing a descending scale, the third as if you sing descending then ascending, and the fourth is like an ascending scale.  I'm not saying that Mandarin is going to be a cinch for me because of this- for one thing, it is still pretty difficult for me to replicate the tones when I am speaking myself- but with any luck it will make me a little less hopeless. 

So far I have truly been enjoying class, but we'll see how frustrating the class gets in the end- I have heard that it can be quite daunting to even get a small grasp of Mandarin. But when someone has asked me lately why I am taking it, I just said bluntly, why not?

Friday Fitness Tip

Here's your fitness tip of the week: when you are first starting out with running, don't try to just go out and run three miles (or even one mile).  Not only could you injure yourself,  you most likely will get frustrated and give up, and fall back on an old excuse ("my ankles are too weak" was mine).  Instead, try run/walking- first, for one minute each, then two minutes running, one minute walking, then three minutes running, one minute walking... you get the idea.  Before you know it, you'll be running a 5K, and maybe in a year (like me) you'll be finishing your first marathon!  The bottom line is that you want to get to the point where you feel more comfortable running, and honestly, eventually you will get to the point where running is actually fun! Yes, you heard me right, FUN.  I used to hate running, but one day I just started trying-  I ran about 10 minutes at a time, but it was still better than nothing.  You can do it too!

Gray Area

Since I graduated from college in 2010, I have really missed reading.  Sure, I'll pick up a book now and then, or I read the New Yorker, but I am not required to read several dense volumes per week like I did for my advanced literature and history seminars.  I'm a huge nerd, and during my tenure at college I took courses on Existentialism (reading Camus, Kierkegaard, Nietszche), Transcendentalism (Thoreau and Emerson), and even a seminar on Proust, Joyce and Faulkner.  There were definitely times when I felt like my brain was doing cartwheels- especially reading Kierkegaard or Ulysses- but I also loved it.  I realized recently that I missed that kind of great literature, the kind that you were required to read in school but would not pick up on your own (who just decides one day to read War and Peace... for fun?). 

When I was in a bookstore last year, I was searching for a new bookmark (yes, I am one of the few people who still uses bookmarks... or reads real books, for that matter).  After perusing some bookmarks with famous quotes on them, I found the one you see above, which boasted (daringly) that it listed the "50 books you should read before you die." Intrigued, I decided to research the books everyone should read in their lifetime.  Of course, it is extremely subjective, so I found several different versions of the same list online; but I found a couple of lists that were created by librarians or by well-known news sources like BBC.  I compiled my own list from these, since there was a lot of overlap.  Interestingly, there are several novels which are newer and wouldn't be considered classics, such as The Alchemist, and some books were on one list but not another (like one of my favorites, Tess of the D'Urbervilles).  I then divided my master list into the ones I have already read, those that I have not read, and those which I have read parts of but not in total. I am going to try and make my way through the books I have not read first, and maybe eventually re-read the ones I have already read.  Here are the lists:

The books I have read:

1984 by George Orwell

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling

His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Candide by Voltaire

The books I have not read:

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by Tolkein

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

A Passage to India by  E.M. Forster

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulke

Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald

Winnie the Pooh by AA Mine

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham

The Prophet by Khali Gibran

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Middlemarch by George Eliot

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A Day in the Life of Ivan Densovich by A. Solzenhitsyn

The Bell Jar by Sylvie Plath

Emma by Jane Austen

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

Money by Marin Amis

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

The Beautiful and Damned by Scott Fitzgerald

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

Man Without Woman by Ernest Hemingway

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Divine Comedy by Dante The books I have read parts of:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky

For no reason in particular, I decided to start with The Picture of Dorian Gray.  I have read Wilde a few times, and I have heard references to the book in popular culture.  I have only gotten about a third of the way through, but so far it seems to be a commentary on the destruction of corruptive influence- the power of simple suggestion, and how it can shape our world views, relationships, and the future.  In a way, Dorian Gray's story falls under the category of one of my favorite themes: the loss of innocence.  Interestingly, too, though it was written in the 1890s, Dorian Gray could be transposed into our era almost seamlessly; the themes of the corruption of society and morality could also be applied to today.  Meanwhile, Wilde's descriptions absolutley amaze me in their intricacy, the phrases glittering like woven, gleaming tapestries. 

I'm periodically going to post about my current reading on my blog, so if anyone wants to read these books along with me (and post your own comments) in a sort of online book club, go for it!

Cultivate your garden

Welcome to my new blog, Dashing Through DC! To answer the question some of you have already asked, this is not necessarily a "sequel" to my other blog, the Meatless Marathoner, though I am now training for triathlons; rather, it will be a blog about living and working in DC, recipes, quotes, books, politics- you get the idea.  I included my "running" nickname, Dash, in the title because I will also include training and fitness tips of the week! The theme of the blog, in effect, is "cultivate your garden," after a quote from Candide by Voltaire (cultivez votre jardin).  The phrase can be interpreted a number of ways, but one way is thus: that each of us must make our own path in life, not leaving it up to fate or just going along with the current and never making waves.  We can each make our lives as well-rounded and full in all aspects as we want.  Just as you wouldn't want only one kind of vegetable in your garden, you wouldn't want to develop just one area of your life to excess, would you? Instead of just having nutritious and practical carrots (which, of course, are useful in their own right), you might want some herbs to add spice, some sweet fruit as a treat, and maybe even a flower or two.  Similarly, I realized last summer that at some point my life revolved too much around my marathon training, which was a very rewarding experience, but left a lot of other parts of my life lacking. Voltaire essentially was telling us to live our lives to the fullest and not to place limits on ourselves, whether they be physical, mental or emotional.

So I hope you enjoy my fresh start as much as I will. I'll start us off with another of my favorite quotes: "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." (Kierkegaard)