Running hurts. My knee hurts, my ankle hurts, my feet hurt and surprisingly my shoulder likes to hurt too.  The original excitement that accompanied most prior workouts seems to have vanished.  I must have hit some sort of plateau – no longer does my cardiovascular system seem to improve by leaps and bounds with every run, no longer do I look at my watch and see entire minutes shaved off my mile pace, no longer do I finish and think- wow I can’t believe I did that! Nope.  Now I overhear myself saying to a friend, “I can tell my ability to run through the pain is getting better…”

Running isn’t pretty. Even my toe nails are annoyed.  One of them keeps threatening to come off. After each run I take off my shoe and talk to it nicely. I cajole, charm, administer first aid, and tell it you musn’t leave me because it’s springtime…it’s time for cute toes in cute sandals and sassy flip flops. Please toenail puhleeeease. I beg.

AND don’t even get me started on the changes to my bathroom habits.  Oh yessss.

Speaking of bellies,  mine is getting bigger. I call it my “runner’s belly”. It comes around the corner first and then you see me…trying to catch up.  Run 10 miles and Lose weight? Oh noooo. My jeans now fit Tighter around my thighs… I can only hope it is some extra muscle pushing all the fat farther out. Fabulous. Just what a girl was hoping for.

Running is not for rebels.  For the last month or so us women on the team have been advised Not to wear high heels.  I believed them after going dancing for 5 hours wearing stilettos.  ”Beauty is pain” I like to say but running on numb toes is not easy. They were numb for two weeks. Every. time. I. ran.  One would think this minor annoyance wouldn’t really register on the list of things to be noticed while running… alas it’s the small things that make you want to lose…your…mind.  So for the next month I faithfully wore flats and sneakers and thick soled shoes. Until Easter.  I decided that the new ounce of muscle on my calf was meant for a skirt and heels as I got ready for church on Easter Sunday.  Thinking, “how bad could it be?” Church is about sitting for an hour.  I waltz in on my little heels with my little skirt and am promptly ushered to the back. Standing room only.  I had to laugh at the universe punishing my vanity, as I kicked off my heels and stood for the length of the service.

Running is hard to improve.  To improve at running one has to do things like speed drills or ‘fartleks’ which is swedish for…speed drills.  My coach likes to laugh maniacally as he shouts out “fartleks!” during our weekly runs.  Basically you are supposed to sprint for one minute then run at a normal pace to recover, then sprint again, over and over until… well until you want to vomit or cry.  I usually recognize my limit when the thought crosses my mind, “if I vomit I bet they would let me stop.”

Running makes me whine.  My coach calls me the official team whiner.  Other team mates when pushed hard say “I am channeling Kate” and then proceed to whine about it.  I say that someone has to fill that role and just like nature abhors a vacuum, a team of stoic achievers needs a whiner.  I gladly take one for the team.

But then one day I found myself running 12 miles.

Running might be crazy wonderful.  That Saturday morning I was nervous as it was going to be my first 10 mile day.  Double digits. HOLY cow. Cajoled by the marathon team into running 12 with them, we set out.  At about 8 miles we took a quick bathroom break and started off again- our muscles angry at the brief respite.  By mile 9 I started to pull away and by mile 10 I thought, “if my  knee didn’t hurt I wonder how far I could really go?”  It felt like I could run forever. There was this powerful rush of love for my body as I fell in love with my crazy wonderful machine that only four months ago would have stopped at mile two. I have not felt that before, or since. But I know it is there.

Running makes me strong.  Some days the runs are hard.  It feels like I am alone slogging through the cement for one hour… or two.  Then I find I am not.  The lone runner heading the opposite way on the path passes me and gives me a thumbs up, the voices of people who are now friends soothe the hurt as we share our stories, and if I do happen to hit the trail alone- I have discovered the mental drill Sargent in my head.  She lives there, and waits.  She waits for times like these. I never knew she existed before.  Man she says the most amazing things…and I find myself believing her.  The cement is still cement and the slog is still a slog, but it passes and I am better for it.

Running is about today And what we can do tomorrow. When answering the question, “how far did you run today?” I hear myself say, “Only seven miles,”  or only five or only… the number does not matter, it matters that it is “only.” I run with people who run 15… or 18… or 20 miles.  My numbers seem small when compared.  One of my coaches is a two time iron man finisher. He did it once and then went back for more.  I don’t even know what to say to that. It sure impresses the hell out of me.  I brag about him to friends and family when the conversation winds its way back to my running and training… “yeah my coach has done an iron man..twice. yep.” As if that fact will rub off on me in some way. That there is Some magic out there that will make me better just by being around people who can do things like that. Im pretty sure there is and it does. At least that’s what my mental drill sargent says, and you know what? I believe her.

Five days till race day. 13.1 [check it out] 

Just click and print!

Thank you everyone. I truly couldn’t do this without your support.

Everything Pretzel Crisps

My advice: Listen to Christina Perri’s ‘Jar of Hearts’ over and over again while eating a bag of pretzel crisps. Don’t worry, an entire bag has only 770 calories and 3.5 grams of fat. It’s a win win.  Bonus: the link will send you to a site where you can buy bags of 3. Cheers!

Folks I am so close to my goal for Ave of the Giants Half Marathon! 83%!  Thank you to everyone, I still cannot believe I got here so fast.  To get me to that brass ring, my last $370, I am creating a wee competition. Wee because as you will soon see… the prize is kinda lame. BUT I know love conquers all, even lame prizes. Oh yes it does.

The last two people whose donation pushes me over or reaches my goal amount will win their very own purple TEAM bracelet!  Also if you cajole, beg, finagle someone Else to donate and Their donation pushes me over my goal amount- you too will win a bracelet!

Go TEAM!

We run our first 10 miler on March 12th. I’ve managed 8.5 but there’s something bout those double digits. It be a pretty big breakthrough. Any guesses how long it will take me?

Second:

Check out my new category- Bon Mot. Inspired by my 5th grade teacher Mrs. Finney.  Every so often I’ll post something that is currently making an impression on me and my life.

Third:

Garth Brooks in Vegas. Go people. Go.

4 rows from the spit and the sweat

I can feel myself shake my head as something makes me turn onto the onramp and not continue on, but pull over as far as possible on the left shoulder. I hit my hazards. Hunkered down in the ice plant, I hit the button and my window rolls down, I watch the kitten, the kitten watches me.  Something makes me get out of my car.

I look up the steep embankment at him.  It is cold. I look around thinking, “I have nothing to put a cat in, I don’t even have a blanket. I have no idea what I am doing.” I decide to try and approach him, if he runs toward the freeway I’ll back off and consider it unwise to push him further toward what would most likely be his demise. As I walk up the iceplant the kitten doesn’t move. He blinks at me.

I am one foot away. I can touch him if I reached out.  Do I take off my hoody to grab and wrap him up?  ”nooo,”  I think as I zip it up further, “it’s too cold.” Deciding instead to pull the wrist cuffs down over my hand, minimal protection against claws, at best.  I reach out toward him.  ”cat scratch fever, cat scratch fever…Cat Scratch Fever!” my dad’s voice reverberates in my head. I reach out once…twice…three times. He turns and looks at my hand but doesn’t move.  Now the sick feeling Im going to grab him and he will be a bloody mess, badly injured.  I can only see his head.

I almost laugh at the absurd mess I find myself in.  Something tells me, “now or never, just do it Kate!” With this rallying cry I grab him and pull him to my chest.  He grabs on and I feel his body vibrate with his purrs. I look down the embankment I now have to make my way down.  This time with no hands to hold the fence as both are clasping a cat to me. I’ll be damned if I let him go.  Tense, I carefully pick my way with each step.  Something gets me down the slippery steep ice plant with out incident.

Car door open, toss the cat in, grab keys, start car, roll up window before cat escapes! I turn to look at him perched expectantly on my center console watching my hurried motions. He is bones. Skin and bones and purrs.

The vet insists on a name for him… I don’t want to name him I persist… Please don’t make me name him. I can’t keep him. I have a cat.  I have a very small house. Don’t make me name him…Well gosh don’t call him kitty, that’s dumb.  I don’t want to call him kitty.  Stop calling him kitty.

Something tells me his name is Simon.

By day three I couldn’t stop myself from forming the word “Simon” every time I saw him. It was eerie.  Two weeks sequestered in my bathroom…my only bathroom.  I had a 4 pound, hungry and messy roommate.  Loud roommate.  Who lived in my bathroom.

Simon talks. To everything and everyone.  He has an imaginary friend.

When he plays with crumpled up paper he growls and chirps and looks around and plays… with somebody. Not me. Not my other cat. Not my dog. He is alone. It is the craziest thing to watch.  The tiny noises he makes scare the bejesus outta my big scary dog.

Simon’s eyes tear constantly. I think he cries.  Yet he trusts.  I can hold him any which way and he just flops in my arms.  I sit and hope he is not someone’s beloved pet… Something tells me it was meant to be.

And then there were three.

Simon

So I am officially on my way to 13.1, half marathon nirvana here I come.  As I was bopping down the trail today I was thinking: So in a marathon they say there is the “dreaded mile 20″ where, from what I can gather, your body basically stops functioning and you want to lay down and die. Literally. “The Wall” marathoner’s call it.  As I ponder what this might feel like, since running just a few miles  makes me sorta feel kinda similar, I wonder on the enormity of that.

My first thought is relief as I am not of the sort that wishes to run anything close to 26.2 miles unless say being chased by zombies during end of times scenario. However first thought is quickly followed by thought #2: is there A Wall in a half marathon?! and if so Where?!  Anyone? Maybe this is something no one Tells you, but everyone already Knows.

All cowardly instincts aside I am actually running for cancer.  I joined Team in Training: Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in November. They train people to run or walk or jog or whatever combo we so choose, and successfully complete races all the while raising money for a fantastic cause. Curing blood cancers.

I originally hoped to compete in the triathlon event but I went and hurt my shoulder so I thought, “Well. I can run.”

This idea has been on my list for awhile and then mom passed away.  I sat in that first group meeting hearing people talk about how cancer has touched their lives.  A few told stories of their children who met leukemia.  All were stories of triumph, even if it took a life, a great battle was fought. It was fought because we ran for miles and begged for money and sent it to scientists who searched for cures.

I cannot tell you how right it felt to sit in that room with that group of people.  I am running for mom. But just maybe along the way I can help someone else too.

So please all of you who are kind enough to read my words check out my training webpage: Kate\’s Training and if you have a minute please consider a donation to the cause.  It would be for me, for my mom… and for my astounded knee, because well… I can run.

Mom & my baby cousin

This happened on my block the other day actually.  Not ideas spewing forth, but real water. They were supposed to notify us of water shutoffs due to installing fancy new water meters. To which I say great. Now they will really know when I forget to shut off my backyard sprinkler and leave it running for 8 hours through the night. Anywho, so I came home one day to find my water shut off inappropriately with no notice- the gall! I go marching down the street to the nearest poor sap sitting in one of their vehicles and demand to know why. “we broke a water main” Fan-tas-tic. Well I sputter on about notification etc, and he looks at me sorta bemused. “It was an E-mer-gen-cy.” Oh yeah. Right. Kinda hard to argue with that logic. So the water man got the best of me in one four letter sentence. I walked away head held high, attempting to look as if I was a reasonable person and not one they would tell jokes about later over beers.

Moving on.  I am currently in the midst of a “trim project”. Meaning taking off my old painted trim around the door jambs, baseboards, etc and replacing it with new stained beautiful trim. This project has lasted slightly longer than God. Yes, years. Yet I am proud to announce that I am almost done! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, however at times the end of the tunnel seems to get further away and not closer.

One of the reasons being I decided to take all my doors off and repaint them. Paint the jambs to match the new doors and then put up all that pretty stained trim around newly painted doors.  Picture this with me: I have the door sitting on saw horses, waiting for its second coat of paint. I go to pour the paint into my little tray and proceed to tip over and spill about half of the half gallon of paint all over me and the patio concrete. I scream and run over to rinse off my arm. I then run over, grab newspaper and attempt to scrap up gallons of paint off the concrete, realizing this isn’t working and Im only making a bigger puddle I run cursing over to the hose and start spraying it down. I now realize that I am not cleaning up the paint but actually making.more.paint. It has now turned into a tsunami of barely diluted paint moving across my patio toward furniture, tools, the dog.  I toss the hose down and it lands in such a way it depresses the handle thingy which then shoots water into the air- into the roof of the patio cover actually – where it comes crashing back down like a water fall on to, yes, the newly painted door. I run back over now screaming And cursing, fight through the wall of water to grab the hose. Run in to the garage grab towels and start sopping up the now newly painted, wet, ruined door. Towels are tossed on the tsumani of paint in an attempt to stem the tide. I then manage to not cry at the absurdity that has become my life as I realize I must forge ahead with the dilution of the paint and send it into the lawn where hopefully my grass will survive.

Door is still unpainted by the way. Handyman told me I need 16 more pieces of stained trim. 18 actually just in case he makes a mistake. More trim. More stain. Im guessing this project might not be finished for … oh… about 5 years. That’s an estimate.

After all that, I am feeling rather grateful today and I’ll tell you why. Cleaning out the garage to make room for aforementioned “a buttload of new trim to stain” project, I decided to test if my dog likes to use his rather expensive comfy crate. I crawl right in and make myself at home. Its dirty, but Im wearing my “i paint and move garage items” clothing so I could care less. I coax and coax, cajole and bribe. Which only ends up with Dog outside crate barking at me, Kate laying down inside dirty dusty crate talking back to dog.

Finally I look around and just about two little inches from my sometimes cute nose cruises a black widow spider. Mind you Im not outside looking at this spider with many escape routes handy. oh no. I am laying down inside.a.dog.crate. I exit crate rather quickly. And then i exit most layers of my clothing rather quickly as well in an attempt to find the black widow that has no doubt crawled inside my hoodie, or my hair, or up my pant leg, while I was busy laying in a dirty dusty crate trying to persuade my dog that he should want to be in there with me!

So this is what I have learned: 1)dogs are smarter than humans. 2)if I had a gratitude journal it would say: i am grateful i didn’t kill myself or my dog today by poisonous black widow spider bite.  3)painting doors is stupid. AND 4) if i could write my novel like i babble in my blog i would be home free.

goodnight and goodluck

Me and my Skyhawk at Franklin Field.

We blew two fuses today during my flight lesson.  We noticed this, because we are genuises, when our radios when out. Then our entire electrical panel. It sorta did this blinky on and off static-y kind of thing. I didn’t notice too much because I was busy trying to fly the plane, other than I couldn’t hear through my headset my instructor tell me things like how to really fly the plane.   Apparently you can push the fuses back in…Once. One time only. That’s all you get. So he did that quickly and radios were back! My instructor is magical like a wizard. Seriously. Then all went out again. SO that was our shot.

We landed…actually I tried to land. I really gotta wonder what my “landings” look like if there was a casual observer standing about. Im guessing somewhere between comical “omg who is flying that plane?” and horrific “omg that plane is going to crash!” Luckily we landed at tiny Franklin Field aka ghost town where students go to practice so they can only accidentally kill themselves.

My first thought “Cool! Let’s try landing at our towered airfield with no radios!” See they have to do a special signaling with a light-gun and its pretty rare.  But no dice. Instructor was worried this possible electrical short could cause a fire while we were in the air if we tried to fly. See, Instructors are useful for this kind of information.

So we drove.

This has been one of those weeks. Where nothing goes right and it feels like nothing will go right ever again. Im sitting here drinking Limoncello, I don’t even like Limoncello, but it reminds me of good meals and good company in Italy and sometimes that is enough.

This week I discovered a new song called “This Woman’s Work” by an artist that I cannot say her name because it sounds vulgar especially coming from me. So I will leave it to you to google it and laugh.  Anyway, Greg Laswell also does a really great cover of this song.  So I listen to this sad song and cry.  I made a stew you see. A really fantastic chicken stew. It serves 8. At least. It looks like it might serve 12. But its just me and my dog here and I wonder sometimes if I will ever have a reason to cook a stew that serves 8 and actually need it to. I listen to the song and drink Limoncello and contemplate this.

I fly tomorrow. Its getting kinda real, meaning this is no bullshit stuff this learning how to fly a plane. I asked my instructor the other day, “how many times have I almost killed us?” I took his long laughter as a heartening sign.

Im supposed to be learning on my computer at home the ground school portion of this new skill.  I procrastinated. Finally discovered I needed Windows to run the program. As a Mac girl this was annoying to say the least. With some help and advice I researched how I run windows on my Mac. I bought my upgrade OS- twice. It never showed up in the mail so I had to go buy it…after calling DHL and discussing with the nice lady how “ships in 24 hours” cannot possibly mean 4 days.  Gave up and attempted to load the pilot training on my hp netbook- it has windows. After a lengthy conversation with a nice man from India, its not the right Windows software to run my new program.  I thought- ok I will just READ the book. Go old school. Nice try. My lovely cat Mackenzie vomited. all.over.the massive pilot training book. Needless to say it has taken a few days to wash and dry out.  So after 1 week and 3 days of trying to figure out how to learn how to fly at home I am currently at the same spot I was 10 days ago.  The lesson here? I have no idea.  So I sit here and drink Limoncello.

I did something working out at the gym. Something to my shoulder or scapula or some such part on my back. When I lift my right arm my back looks deformed, only on the right side. I blame the guy who made me rush. He obviously wanted to work out on the same machine. AND because I remember I had been mean to him in the past, yessss I can be grumpy at the gym, I decided to be NICE and hurry up. Well now I can’t lift my right arm with any degree of control, and With a fair amount of pain involved.  Im hoping this is fixable.  I fly tomorrow and my right arm is the only arm that controls the throttle, which is probably the most important part of flying…I’d venture to guess. But I haven’t read the book yet due to the vomit situation so what do I know? Really. So its been one of those weeks.

It is late. Im going to go eat some stew and contemplate writing a novel. Maybe listen to that song again. I don’t even like Limoncello.

The hurdle. There always is one you know. I am actually color blind. I have a red/green deficiency. It is rare and even rarer in women only .5% of the population having this genetic condition. This precludes me from many career choices such as law enforcement as well as, you guessed it, being a pilot. All I have to do is pass the color test, with more than half right and I will be fit for a class 3 medical able to fly with no restrictions- private pilot that is. My instructor did some research and found out some information about it all. It was a good refresh of what I already knew and also some new details on the testing process for pilots. I was armed with information.

I arrive for my FAA medical oddly nervous about something that I cannot change. No amount of studying or preparation could get me an “A” on this test. Yet how I wished it could be different. I thought, “maybe all this time my eyes aren’t as bad as I thought!” “Maybe those green cars that look black actually were black! Maybe I failed that stupid biology lab- where we had to correctly identify colors of the fly eye’s- for a different reason!”

Not so fast. I missed 12 out of 14. Yep. The doctor was very nice as he dashed my hopes into the ground. However all was not lost! I was restricted to daytime flying only, and if I could demonstrate in the field that I could see the colors of different landing lights appropriately then I could be cleared from any restriction.

So flight number four September 6th. Im not looking forward to practicing stalls…