Freaking out!

I'm travelling to Boston for the marathon in exactly 7 days. As it has been getting closer, more people have been asking me, "Are you ready?" Based on all the training and miles that I put in, I'm definitely ready, but the more I think about the race the more nervous I am.

I've done plenty of races so you would think that I wouldn't be all that nervous, but I'm more nervous for this race than any other race I have ever done....EVER. This is THE Boston Marathon! The one that so many people strive to make it to, the most prestigious marathon in the world....and I'm going to be running in it in 10 days at the nice young age of 22!

The things I'm most nervous about are:

• Not reaching my goal that I've set for myself
• Getting eaten up by the crowd of runners
• Getting run over
• Forgetting something

My first and second fears kind of go together. I'll be starting the race with people who have similar qualifying times, but I want to go much faster than the time I qualified with. For my age group (18 - 34), to qualify for the Boston Marathon, I had to run a 3:40:00. (The qualifying times will be changing for the 2012 Boston Marathon, just FYI). For my first marathon, I didn't train properly and my only goal was to qualify. I ran my marathon in 3:37:32 to qualify.

I've been training hard for Boston, and I'm pretty confident I could run a 3:18:00. That's almost 20 minutes faster! Since I'll be starting the race with people who had qualifying times similar to 3:37:00, I'm afraid I'm going to get eaten up by the crowd of runners at the start and that I won't be able to run a 3:18:00.

Another thing is that Boston is by far the largest race I will have ever taken part in. There are over 25 THOUSAND people participating in Boston this year!! The biggest race I've ever run in was maybe 1 thousand participants.

I don't like big crowds, I usually tend to stay away from them, but I'm going to be smack in the middle. There's going to be a 3 wave start for Boston this year. Wave 1 starts at 10am, Wave 2 starts at 10:20am, and Wave 3 starts at 10:40am. I am in wave 2. I will literally be in the middle of the giant crowd of runners.

The reason I stay away from crowds is because I'm small. I'm only 5 ft tall and I weigh about 100lbs. Every time I get stuck in a crowd of people, I get stepped on, pushed, bumped into, etc. I don't like it. I just hope that I won't get run over by the mob of runners at Boston.

The race is super organized, and I'm really afraid that I'm going to forget something. Whether I forget socks or something like that I doubt it, but there are a million other things to remember. There are shuttles that take the runners to the start. The shuttles have specific times, and depending on what wave your in depends on what time you can get a shuttle to the start. At the start, there are buses for baggage check so that you can have your stuff at the finish line. There are certain buses for baggage check, in different locations in the "athlete's village" depending on your wave. (The "athlete's village" is just a place for the runners to hang out until they make their way to the starting line, and only the runners are allowed in). Also, within each wave there are corrals that you're assigned to. The corrals are based on your Bib #. I'm in wave 2, corral 6. Depending on the corral your in within your wave depends on when you go to the starting line......OK. You get the point. There's a ton of stuff to remember.

I'm so nervous. I feel like I should wear a sticker saying "Be nice to me this is my 1st Boston." Similar to the ones they give out at blood drives...

In planning and training for this race, it felt so far away, but now it's actually here. It's only 10 days away, and I'm kind of freaking out a little. Has anybody done a big race before? Anybody have any advice for me or something that will help calm my nerves??

Secrets of slim people...whatever

When I'm bored at work, I read the different "news" stories that Yahoo posts on their main page. Ever so often, there is an article about the "secrets of skinny people" or something along those lines. I always read it just to see what they say. Here's  the one they had posted today.

I am a slim person. I have been the same size and pretty much the same weight since my sophomore year of high school.

freshman yr of college

this year

As you can see, not much difference in my size (sorry, didn't have any pictures from high school). The tips and secrets they give in the articles pretty much never change. I don't do or follow most of the "secrets" listed in the articles, and it always makes me wonder who the heck they talked to.

The "secrets" listed in today's article are:

1. Drinking tea high in antioxidants
2. Working out before breakfast
3. Eating breakfast
4. Taking your time to eat your food (savoring it)
5. Eating at the same time every day
6. Drinking a few cups of water before eating a meal
7. Weighing yourself weekly

Out of the 7 "secrets," I only do like 3 of them.

• I do eat breakfast every day. If I don't, I'm a huge grump and it's not pretty.
• I do eat at about the same time every day, mainly because I get hungry around the same time every day, not because I plan it that way.
• I do weigh myself weekly, but that's because it gives me a reason to leave the office (the scale is in the weight room the floor below me) and I don't want to be losing weight especially with the big miles I've been running lately.

Here are some things that I do that I think have helped me maintain my slender figure.

• I try to eat a balanced diet. I LOVE fruits, veggies, carbs, and protein! I always try to eat a variety of different produce and just food in general. Variety is important!

• Sleep is important. I LOVE sleep. I get between 7 - 10 hrs every night. Sleep helps your body recover from the day, so not getting enough sleep can hurt you and weaken your immune system.
• I don't eat BIG meals, I snack throughout the day, and I don't eat out very often. My snacks are usually fruit, granola bars, yogurt, or something like that. If I do eat out or eat a BIG meal, I tend to not snack as much.
• And of course, I run. Physcial activity is important, but it doesn't have to be running. My mom walks every day.

If you really want to hear tips about staying slender, you should talk to my mom. She can still wear clothes she wore in high school, and she's going to be 50 in June! How do you do it Mom?

me & my mom

I think it's important to find what works for you because everyone is different. This is another reason I think the articles they post about the "secrets of staying skinny" are poop. Find what works for you, and don't pay too much attention to what the health articles say. What are some things that work for you?

2 weeks!!

That's it! 2 more weeks until Boston!! My training is officially done!! All that's left is taper time.

What's tapering? Tapering is when you cut back on your training leading up to a race, depending on the distance of the race depends on the length of the taper. For marathon training, the usual taper time is 2 weeks. It's important to taper leading up to a marathon in order for your body to recover from the hard training and to have fresh legs.

I'm definitely ready to taper. I've been training hard for the marathon for 12 weeks and I'm ready for a break. Even though tapering isn't a real break, I'll be cutting my weekly mileage by a lot. I plan to do about half of the mileage I did in my longest week, and that is break enough for my body.

I got to do my longest run with Josh this weekend! Whenever we do long runs in Baltimore, he always tells me that my routes are the toughest. Well, I'll be more prepared for Boston then!

Watch out Boston, here we come!

It's taper time! I can't wait to go to Boston!

uphill battle

This past week was a crazy week. A complete emotional roller coaster. I have been training so hard for the Boston Marathon for months, and my work told me that I couldn't take the days off in order to participate in it. I was floored. Ever since I qualified for Boston in January 2010, I've been planning on running in it. When they said I couldn't run in it, I was completely crushed.

The day they told me I couldn't take the days off to run in the marathon, it was a cold, rainy, stormy day. I was so upset by the news, I didn't care that it was barely 40 degrees outside, raining, and already dark. I went out and did an emotionally cleansing hill workout. The hill is about a mile from where I live, and it's a little over 1/4 mile long. I call it my own personal heart-break hill.

I went out to this hill, and I ran up and down it 10 times. It was the most emotional workout I have ever done. Each time I ran the hill, I thought about how much running the Boston Marathon meant to me. I thought about my grandparents from SD who planned to come see me run at Boston, the months and months of training I had already put in, and all of my other family and everyone else who are supporting me. Boston is kind of a big deal.

When I got back home from my run, I was completely soaked, shivering cold, and felt better and more confident than I had all week. When something happens to someone else and they say, "It'll all work out." It's hard to actually believe that it will. After my hill workout, I was confident and knew that whatever happened it would work out.

this shirt totally describes my Boston training

Training for Boston has really been quite an uphill battle, but it will all be worth it. Good news: they gave me the days off. Has anything like this ever happened to you before? not getting days off from work to do something really important to you? or had a break-through, emotional workout?

new running buddy

Since moving to Baltimore, I pretty much just run by myself or with my boyfriend whenever he visits.

My bf and I after a run

Well, now I have a new running partner who can join me on runs whenever Josh isn't here!!! Her name is Seren (like serendipidity).

me and my new running partner!

She isn't my own. She belongs to one of the athletes on the tennis team who said I could run with her. She's a mix, and they don't really know of what. She'll only join me my shorter runs, but that's totally ok with me!!

I took her out on our first run together on Monday and I had to run slower than normal, but I was absolutely loving every minute of it (even when I had to pick up her poop in a baggy)!! No more doggy envy for me!! I've got my own 4-legged running buddy and I couldn't be more happy about it!!

In other news, the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A. - the people who put on the Boston marathon) have posted entrant bib #s. I'll be bib number 14740 at the Boston Marathon!! Just 2 more weeks of hard training, and 4 more weeks before the race!!

work, work, work

March is Athletic Training Awareness Month!!!

I am an atletic trainer, and I really like what I do. I love being able to care for athletes from the moment they get injured to getting them back to full-participation. Seeing them progress through their rehab and then succeeding in competition and knowing that you helped them get there is extremely satisfying.

Where I work, I'm pretty much responsible for the most number of athletes compared to the other athletic trainers on staff. I'm the athletic trainer for the most number of teams, and one of them is the biggest team. I work with volleyball, crew (rowing), swimming/diving, and tennis. The swimming/diving team is the largest team at this school, having about 80 people on their roster.

I'm gonna let you in on my longest day of work so far, which was Tuesday. I went into work at 10am and didn't get home until 2am. I performed all my regular duties of cleaning, rehabs, taping, making Dr's appointments, etc during the day. Then, at 2pm I went out to cover a tennis match. Volleyball was still practicing when I got back inside, so I went upstairs to the gym to see how it was going. As soon as I walked through the doors the coach said, "We've got one for you." One of the girls was sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth and just did not look well. I evaluated her and determined that the best thing would be to take her to the ER. So that's where we went. It was an adventure.

I didn't get back to my house until about 2am, so I pretty much worked 16 hrs on Tuesday. Talk about a long day at work. Through the whole situation of the paperwork, to all the different doctors, to the IVs and everything at the ER, just knowing I was able to be there for her when her parents couldn't be and keeping her company through it all made it all worth it. The good news is that my athlete is feeling much better, and her parents were extremely appreciative of everything I did for their daughter.

I'm gonna blurb realy quick about something about this whole ordeal that really upset me. When taking an athlete to the ER, there are several people I have to contact including the head athletic trainer and my supervising athletic trainer (so they knew I was at the ER). The next day I was supposed to come in at 9am and work until 7pm (That's 10 hrs). Having not gone to bed until after 2am, I slept through my alarm and got into work an hour late. When I was updating my supervisor about everything that happened and everyone I had contacted, instead of saying something like, "Well, you handled the situation appropriately," all he could say was, "Well, you were supposed to come in at 9 this morning." That's all he said to me about the whole thing!!! I was so unbelievably upset because pretty much anywhere else, they would look past me coming in late after having been in the ER all night.

Well, anyway, I'm just really glad that my athlete is doing better. I love all of my athletes, they're a lot of fun. Since, this is Athletic Training Awareness Month, if you know any athletic trainers, let them know that you appreciate everything that they do and maybe even bring them some yummy treats!!!

missing home

I enjoy living in Baltimore, but I miss home A LOT. What I miss most about home is being close to my family, my friends, running on the back country roads, and of course my boyfriend.

I'm going to take some time right now to give a shoutout to my brothers! To Matt for getting a jobby-job as a medical assistant, and to Mikey for taking responsibility, making mature decisions, and stuff! I'm so proud of you guys and I miss you!

Mikey, Mom, Me, and Matt

I miss my friends a lot. The only people I know here in Baltimore are the athletes I work with and my coworkers. It's against the rules to hang out with my athletes, so the only people I hang out with are my coworkers and housemates (who also happen to be some of my coworkers). I miss the random fun and the companionship from my friends from back home. I also feel like I'm missing out on everything with them too, considering that several of them have gotten engaged recently (Congrats!!!) and some are training for new things like a triatholon and even a full marathon (I wish I could train with them)!

Running in Baltimore is crazy. I never liked city running, but now I'm forced to do it just about every day. I miss the back country roads a lot where the only things you have to worry about are dogs and homeowners with shot guns (I've never experienced the people with shot guns, but I know people who have). I miss the freedom of being able to just go out and run pretty much wherever I wanted to run and not have to worry too much about it. There have been runs that I didn't plan, I got lost on purpose, and it was totally OK (those have been some of my favorite runs too). Now, I have to plan my runs to make sure that there's sidewalk, make sure it's in a good neighborhood, and watch out for the crazy Baltimore drivers. I've planned some runs here in Bmore where there ended up being no sidewalk for a section of it, and I was completely terrified that I was going to hit by a car. I've learned my lesson.

I miss this

And of course, I miss my boyfriend.

Here's to missing home, and looking forward to the next time I get to go home!