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My bike is currently out of commission. I hope it's not too expensive to repair, but we'll see. I rode it partway home last night and then had McKenzie pick me up as he was passing through the basic area and I didn't have the time or energy to ride all the way home. We put the bike on the rack and started driving home, then hit a speedbump and the whole apparatus popped off, breaking the rack and fucking up the bike tires. Hopefully replacing the tires is all it'll take, but it may turn out to be more costly than that. When I went in to Performance last week to have it tuned up after months in the garage, the guy there warned me that they were way understaffed and if I needed anything major done that it'd be a few weeks. So I hope they can squeeze me in sometime before never and I get to ride some more soon. Because it's really beautiful out and I want to ride. And I'm sad and frustrated with this situation. Meh.

I have my first therapy session tonight with a new psychologist. I'm actually really looking forward to it. I know that's a weird thing to be psyched about (heh, no pun intended), but therapy has always been really good for me and I have missed it. So yay.

The Relay, in detail

I wrote this as a sample piece for a fitness blog I may write for one day, so I might as well post it here:



Having just completed my first half marathon, I was filled with a false sense of fitness capabilities. And also a false sense of I-don’t-need-to-run-for-a-while-because-13.1-miles! So when my first relay race came up a month later, I was pretty much completely unprepared, mentally or physically. Turns out that was something of a problem.


All of my stress for the six months leading up to my half marathon went into preparing myself to run 13.1 miles. When I completed that bucket list item, I was out of energy for worrying -- which felt nice until I was at the starting point of my first leg in Napa this Saturday. I hadn’t worried about it because each of my three legs was just about 6 miles -- totally doable! I just brushed off the fact that it would be three runs in a span of 24 hours, and also by far the hilliest course I’d ever run. And that I’d get no sleep. Details.


My first run was at 2pm on Saturday, a 6.2-mile leg through beautiful wine country in 97-degree heat with an uphill slant. Oof. By the 2nd mile, I wasn’t sure I’d make it through the weekend. Somewhere around mile 4, I ran through skunk spray. When I mercifully made it back to my team van at the end of my leg, I was having the worst allergy attack of the year, complete with a breakout of hives. Great start! This set the tone for me to completely freak out about the remaining work I’d have to do on this relay. On no sleep. Oh, fiddlesticks. (I used a different f-word at the time.)


It wasn’t all misery on the first leg. It was still early in the race, and so lots of teams were at the same point I was. Whenever I dragged myself past another team’s van, they would cheer me on and offer me water, snacks, and refreshing cool mists. The camaraderie from the other teams on the course kept my spirits up. I chatted with other runners at my pace and made a few new friends. Each time I passed my own team waiting along the course with support, I found a fresh bounce in my step. And even though it was hotter than hell and uphill and smelled like skunk, wine country makes for a pretty scenic racecourse. The pain of the experience eventually fades. Those gorgeous landscapes stick in my memory.


I was glad to be the second runner out of six in our van. That meant I didn’t have to wait around for all of my teammates to run while psyching myself out. Once my part was done, I could chill in the van and cheer on my teammates for the rest of our van’s shift. I definitely don’t think I could have handled being the last runner on our team. (Mad respect, Max!)


Our team made two critical mistakes in planning that contributed to our misery during the race. Luckily, these are easy fixes, and knowing what I know now, I won’t make these mistakes again. The first problem was that our vans were not full-sized. In a mini-van, six teammates don’t have room to stretch and relax, especially with all our crap crammed in there. A large van would have allowed space for more rest while not running. Mistake number two was that we didn’t plan our down time very well. In a relay, you have two team vans, with only one van actively racing at a time. The six members in the other van should be using that time to sleep. In our case, though, we were using most of that time to drive back and forth from the team headquarters, because we hadn’t planned a hotel room or a campsite or other crash space. We wasted about half of our down time driving back and forth from the course to a team member’s apartment, when we could have gotten several hours more sleep with better planning. We’ll get that right next time.


My second leg of the race came at about 1am, just outside of downtown San Francisco. The course guide showed that I’d have a 5.9-mile run with a 600-foot elevation gain. 100 feet per mile? No biggie. About that...it was a NET gain of 100 feet per mile. But this is San Francisco, home of the steepest slopes that physics will allow. It was sharply up and sharply down about four times over that stretch. I averaged a 12:30 pace on those six miles. And if you think running up a steep hill is torture, try running down a steep slope while having to use the bathroom. That was just about the most uncomfortable I’d ever been in my life. You know, except for the previous leg when I was running uphill in 97-degree heat and skunk spray.


When I got back in the team van around 2am, I texted my husband and best friend and told them both to NEVER LET ME DO THIS AGAIN. A stream of expletives and WHAT WAS I THINKING?! followed, and I tried unsuccessfully to doze off in my seat in the minivan. I was a tad cranky.


When our van handed off to the other van around 5am, we drove back to team HQ and got another 2 hours of sleep before heading out for our final leg. Many of the festively-decorated vans had phrases written on them along the lines of “My third leg is the hardest!” Heh, heh. Basically everyone in our van was pretty sleep-deprived, achy, and grumpy at this point, but there was a lot of humor in the conversations that happened in this barely-lucid state. Despite all the discomfort, we all laughed a lot throughout.


My last leg was an “easy” 4.7-mile downhill run at 10am. I honestly felt like there was no way my feet would carry me to the end of it, but thanks to gravity and inertia, I actually made it. My GPS watch undersold me on the distance, and so I thought I still had a half mile to go when the finish line came in sight. That was such a welcome surprise that I was able to turn on the jets and sprint the last 100 yards or so. I actually averaged an 8:30 mile for this leg, which is faster than my 5K PR pace. I’m sure the downhill had a lot to do with that.


Once I was done, our team still had four runners to go, but I immediately started feeling better. No longer stressing about how difficult my next leg would be or if I’d find myself feeling nature’s call somewhere in the middle of it, I was able to relax and just enjoy cheerleading my teammates. I even found the energy to run the last 500 yards with my team at the very end of the course. And I immediately texted my husband and best friend back to say “disregard my previous message. I can’t wait to do this again!”

Seriously, it was kind of awful in the moment...the 31-hour moment. But most of the things that made it awful are things I can manage better next time. Actually train. Actually sleep. Familiarize myself with the course. Get an awesome costume. I couldn’t do this every weekend, but I really am looking forward to my next one!