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misadventures in the marathon

(I just found this photo from Chicago marathon in '02, back when I had a need for speed as opposed to a need for just-finishing-the-race. I love it because check out my wave, I am managing to have a little jaunty twist to my hand, ha!)

On October 31, I’ll be toeing the line at the Marine Corps marathon in D.C. It will be my fifteenth, but don’t let my experience fool you into thinking I know what I’m doing. Learn from my missteps if you have 26.2 penned into your race calendar this month:

DO your long runs. True story: While riding on the shuttle bus to the start line of the Austin marathon in 2005, I realized something startling: I hadn’t run more than, oh, 10 miles in years. I had done my speedwork and hills, but between illness and travel, my long runs got swept aside. “Well, this should be interesting!” I laughed as the bus kept rolling for what seemed like forever. During the race, I managed to hold on for 13 miles before my pace slowed from 7:30-minute-miles to well over 11-minute-miles toward the finish line.
Lesson learned: muscle memory only gets you so far. Do the long runs.

DON'T let lack of shoes fluster you. When unpacking for the 2001 Gorge half-marathon in Hood River (it’s only a half, but go with it), I noticed something conspicuously missing: shoes. Not to be rattled, I waltzed into the nearest superstore, plunked down fifteen dollars, and—as my friends made bets on whether the shoes would last the distance—I ran my best time in a half-marathon yet. Or at least I think it’s my best time, I always forget to keep track.
Lesson learned: never let them see you sweat.

DO test your gear before the race. At my last marathon (Grandma’s marathon two years ago), I was excited to try the new Nike Plus system. Once the marathon started, I pushed a button and set off on my merry way. And pushed a button again. Wait, was I supposed to push it for three seconds now or just one second, and which button again? And if it's flashing, is that a good thing? I spent the first mile trying to figure it out. Lesson learned: read the fine print before your run.

DON'T be afraid to hug the trees. During the Avenue of the Giants marathon in '07, my Unlucky 13th, I was hurting big-time by mile 15. Just when I was starting to feel sorry for myself, I turned my attention to my surroundings. That’s when the Redwood trees lining the race course became my silent supporters. They served as a sturdy calf-stretching post, they shaded my route, and their branches waved me on (cut me some slack, I was feeling delirious by then). I usually prefer crowd-lined routes—and cowbell, lots of cowbell—but there was something peaceful about those trees watching me limp along.
Lesson learned: take comfort wherever you can get it.

DO remember to dance through aid stations, high-five the supporters, joke with your fellow runners, thank the volunteers.
Lesson learned: Having fun during a marathon is a sign of success.

misadventures at relay races

(Taken at the finish line of my first Hood to Coast back in '98 before I moved here, that's me in the background with a relieved expression on my face!)

There's something about relay races that spark drama. Stuff six people into a minivan for 24 hours, add a lack of sleep plus endorphins, stir, and everyone usually ends up a little loopy by the finish line. This month, I’m heading to New Hampshire to run the Reach the Beach relay, where what I lack in speed, I hope to make up for in entertainment value. It’s what I do. If you have a relay on your race schedule soon, heed my words of wisdom first, learned from my last Hood to Coast experience:


Don't wear new shoes the night before. Pre-race, I took my boyfriend, Eric, (a Hood to Coast first-timer) on a blister-prevention shopping spree as he prepared for his race, including bandages and special blister-proof socks. For him. I didn't bother buying anything for myself -- I had made it through 15 blister-free marathons, so I figured I would cruise through H2C without a prob. That, however, was before I decided to wear -- and walk a couple miles in -- new shoes to a pre-race dinner. High-heeled shoes. The next morning, two huge blisters adorned my pinky toes. A quick rummage through my bathroom revealed that I didn't even own a bandage. Luckily, I found a medical tent along the course (they were impressed I had amassed huge blisters before I ran).
Lesson: BYOB (buy your own bandages).


Do let your food digest. The hardest part of relays is that delicate balance of food-and-water intake combined with running three times in a 24-hour period. When we stopped for pizza before our first run, I was alternately stuffing my face and looking at my watch. Math isn't my strong suit. A mere two hours later, as I waited to start running, the pizza sat in my stomach like a rock.
Lesson: When in doubt, skip that third slice.

Don't fall. The relay bracelet snapped in place, I took off down the six-mile course, concentrating on getting my legs into a comfortable rhythm. The next part is hazy: Somehow, during the very first mile of my very first leg, I twisted my left ankle and landed on my right elbow and right knee, and ended up sprawled on the road for all to see -- including all 11 team members in the team vans.
Lesson: If you have to face-plant, at least have the dignity to wait until after your van has passed by.

Do keep your lunch. After my first leg, my ankle started hurting. I iced with the best of them, popped some pills and crossed my fingers. Luckily, adrenaline was on my side, and I felt no pain while running my second leg. Afterward was a different story. Driving to a rest area, I started battling nausea. One minute I was chatting in the van amiably. The next, I lurched out of the van wordlessly and was soon on my hands and knees in an open field losing my midnight snack. When I climbed back into the van, they were silent. My teammate Ben finally spoke up. "Want a mint?"


Lesson: More ibuprofen isn't better. Pace yourself.

misadventures in whitewater

I should have paid better attention at the rental desk. Armed with paddles and inflatable kayaks, my boyfriend Eric and I hurriedly signed our lives away as the store owner mumbled something about “scouting the rapids at Boxcar.” Slight prob: When you’re on the water, you often don’t realize a rapid is coming until it’s too late. So the next time you take a trip down what I now like to call "the deadly Deschutes," (hey, at least it's for a reason--there were record drownings the year we went!) take my advice:


DON’T go solo if you’re a whitewater novice. My whitewater excursions thus far had tallied a total of two—and both times, I was in a guided raft. But when Eric and I decided to raft the Deschutes on a hot July day, we thought it would be more fun to each get our own inflatable kayak than be packed in with strangers. Bad idea.
Lesson learned: There’s a huge difference between navigating the rapids in a big boat with an experienced guide versus your own tippy little vessel.

DO pay attention to rubberneckers. After getting into the river’s rhythm, we entered our first big rapid, Boxcar. I had just enough time to wonder “what is everyone looking at?” before realizing that the people gathered on the nearby rocks were there to witness rapids mayhem. I was about to be the main attraction, as I quickly overturned dramatically. Between the shock of the cold water and the panic of being dumped in whitewater for my first time, I was in short supply of breath—and common sense. In short, I freaked. I flailed my arms. I tried to grab rocks that whizzed by. “I! Really! Don’t! Like! This!” I announced to my spectators.
Lesson learned: When an audience has formed on the rocks, that’s your cue to scout things out before you hit the rapids.

DON’T become a yard sale. Since we hadn’t anticipated being dumped into the water, we cluelessly didn’t think to secure our belongings with a rope. After we lost my hat and Eric’s shoe, we battened down the hatches.
Lesson learned: Be prepared to offer up anything to the water gods that aren’t firmly attached to your person. And bring a knife while you’re at it in case you get caught in the rope.

DO stop while you’re ahead. After dumping three times, and getting relatively used to it (I even managed a couple “woo hoo!”s with paddle raised), we came upon our biggest rapid yet, Oak Springs. One minute Eric was paddling along in front of me, and the next I just saw the bottom of his boat before he disappeared altogether (turns out, there was about a 6-foot drop). Eric managed to sail over the rapids intact, but was now frantically trying to find me, hoping I hadn’t followed him. Instead, I had taken his disappearing act as a cue to pull to shore, and was safely talking to water rescue guys with ropes, as one fellow calmly explained that this rapid creates a hole that sucks people underneath the water. Oh, he also let me know that this was a special day, because rescue teams were upriver trying to recover the body of that girl who drowned last week. Alrighty then. After that, every small ripple looked like a hole existing only to pin me beneath the waves. It was time to hang up my paddle.
Lesson learned: Don’t talk to guys with ropes if you want to enter the water again.

misadventures in adventure racing

[This picture was taken in Maui, where our group was ready to bomb down the side of the 10,000-foot volcano...happy to report NO tears shed on this trip!]

In my first mountain-biking race, I got miserably lost. My second racing attempt was as part of Team Lamprey, a three-person adventure-racing team. There, I learned the hard way that what goes up, well, keeps going up…and up…here, the do’s and don’ts of adventure-racing.

DO choose your battles. It had gotten to the point of no return. It happens in every race, whether it’s a 5K or 5-hour adventure race: tears. Happy, sad, angry, frustrated, euphoric—and usually a combination thereof—it doesn’t matter why, I can usually find any excuse to tear up. My point in this particular race was, after inching up and up and up on one of those subtle “is it just my imagination, or are we going uphill?” fire-lane road, we navigated a wrong turn, and had to backtrack—straight up again. Now, I’d kept a stiff upper lip for hours of hiking through brush and kayaking, but every girl has her breaking point. After we returned to the fire lane of hell, I knew I’d have to make a tough decision: cry or cycle? I couldn’t do both. Think about it—when you’re already struggling to breathe, adding some sniffling to the mix is not what you need.
Lesson learned: In the sob-or-cycle battle, something simply has to give. Cycle now, cry later.

DON’T memorize the course: Sometimes, it helps to be clueless about your course, because if I had really known what I was in for (which was a nifty 2,000-foot mountain-bike climb), I wouldn’t have been able to stop the tear-shedding. In the end, you see, it’s really better for everyone if you don’t dwell on petty little to-do items like how much further is it holymotherofpearl I can’t go on like this for the love of God. Instead, it’s a good time to practice your Zen and Be Here Now rather than “when am I going to get this over with”.
Lesson Learned: Channel your inner Buddha when facing an insane-in the-membrane race course.

DO pick your teammates wisely. Team Lamprey consisted of two buddies in the form of Pete and Kev. They were a perfect combo—Pete always appeared magically at my side when I was struggling but didn’t make it seem like he was doing it on purpose, whereas Kev plowed ahead and set the pace so we wouldn’t slack. Kev is the type of guy who never lets anyone see him sweat (I’ve told him before that I’m not entirely sure he’s human), so imagine my surprise to hear in the distance, up one more turn as Pete and I snaked our way up the mountain…. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!” Yesss, every man has his breaking point, and the course had found his.
Lesson learned: If you survived a course hard enough for typically tight-lipped dudes to feel the pain, you’ve earned bragging rights.

misadventures in mountain bike racing

Mountain biking is a sport I took to immediately. The combo of strength, adventure, and balance—hey, those years of practicing mediocre balance-beam routines actually worked!—was right up my alley.
In the 14 years since, it’s all been downhill. Take my first mountain-biking race, which I entered during my first Portland summer in 2001. Fresh from NYC, it was a way to christen myself as the outdoorsy chick I wanted to be. Armed with my new green Gary Fischer, I entered an off-road duathlon…and emerged relatively unscathed but with lessons learned:
DO follow the right course. All I know: One minute I was whizzing along, happy as a clam in mid-pack position. The next minute, I was beginning to wonder why have I not seen anyone in a long, long time? My fatal flaw: I had taken a wrong turn, and—still following course ribbons—was now somehow following the 5-mile run course (don’t ask).
Lesson learned: “Follow the crowd” racing technique doesn’t work in mountain biking races, no matter how much of a midpacker you are.
DON’T act like anything is wrong. I continue whizzing down this hill, clueless to my plight, when I come across a small water crossing. I splash my bike in and jump into the waist-height water. When I start pulling myself up the muddy slope on the other side, with the help of blackberry bushes (thank you, mountain-biking gloves!), I notice I’m not alone. “Are you still…racing?” asks a man camping nearby who is now peering down at me, while his child looks bug-eyed at the muddy monster crawling in the dirt. “We thought the race was already over!” “Nope!” I calmly reply, hopping back in the saddle with a wave and pedaling off.
Lesson learned: When you have absolutely no clue what you’re doing but you have witnesses, act cool as a cuke.
DO aim to entertain. After a panicky period known as “overthinking” my direction, I heard human voices. It was my friend Ryan cleaning up the course…one sight of me and he stopped in his tracks. “Hey, I wondered where you were—what are you doing out here?” I proceed to have a meltdown, while he calmly points behind me. Turns out, the finish line was just one mile down a fire lane.
Lesson learned: Befriend the people cleaning up the course so when you throw a mid-forest tantrum at least you’re among friends.
When I finally roll in, three hours after I began, the awards ceremony is over, and everyone is gathered for a barbecue. As a beer appears in my right hand, a towel in my left, I realize this: It may not have been the grand outdoors entrance I’d imagined, but I’d rather have a good misadventure than do well in a race. I mean, where’s the fun in following the crowd, anyway?

misadventures in triathlon

I’ve never been what one would call a water person (unlike my dog Luey, pictured here). I was the type of kid who was afraid to take a bath after watching Jaws (yes, you may cackle openly at this fun fact, I don’t mind). Needless to say, then, triathlon just isn’t my thing, because you have to do that S word: swimming. But that hasn’t stopped me from trying some tris, and—because most adventures with me end in misadventure—getting in over my head. So if you’re not a swimming superstar, and you’re thinking of testing the waters with your first triathlon soon, learn from my mistakes before taking the plunge yourself.

DON’T stay in the pool. Training for my first triathlon in 1996, I dutifully dipped my toes into a lap pool several times a week. I trailed along behind a master’s swim team practice. I got form advice. I was dedicated. All of that training went out the window, though, when I first put my goggled face in the river water on race day. And discovered to my horror that I couldn’t see an inch in front of my face.
Lesson learned: Lap pools and murky brown rivers are very different creatures.
DO take your time. The starting gun went off, and I dashed into the water with all my fellow age-groupers. Which is really stupid, if you think about it. I mean, all that sprinting for 10 seconds did for me was make me out of breath—as soon as we started swimming, everyone promptly passed me anyway.
Lesson learned: Sprinting and then swimming is not a smart combo.
DON’T ignore the course. While desperately trying to a. catch my breath and b. not put my face in the water, I arrived at a brilliant solution: the backstroke! I flipped over, calm as a cuke, and started swimming on my back. I was in my own element when out of the corner of my eye I saw a kayak bobbing next to me. “You’re going the wrong way!” the race marshal pointed downstream at all my fellow yellow-capped swimmers, who were most definitely going a different direction than I was. (I was the lone swimmer who was attempting to cross the river rather than swim the length of it, you see.)
Lesson learned: The backstroke is an excellent cure for pesky problems such as breathing and seeing, but you still need to watch where you’re going.
As my fellow yellow cappers got further and further ahead of me, and pink caps from the wave behind us started coming in strong, I got a newfound determination. Operation Get Me the Hell Out of This Water. With a combination of doggie paddling and breast-stroking (both superior forms to see, catch your breath, and see where you’re going), I managed to finish the ½-mile swim.
I’d like to say that I learned from my mistakes and got smarter, faster, and braver in future triathlons, but I didn’t. In fact, I regressed. My next tri was held in Central Park (where the swim portion was in an outdoor pool that was so shallow, you could run the swim portion, much to my spectating sister’s amusement). My third, and last, was held indoors at my NYC gym. I hung up my goggles shortly thereafter, and haven’t set foot in a lap pool since. Sometimes, it’s best to stick with what you know—and for me, that means any sport where land is firmly underneath my feet.