I am obsessive. It is one of my positive qualities, although for some strange and somewhat unexplainable reason my friends and family often find it a negative. I use my blog to obsess about running. But not today! This morning I put my OCD to better use.

Last night I got it in my head that it would be fun to find the people from my past who had made an impact on my life. After hours of Google time, I found Sheryl Fulton. Back in the late 80s in high school I was the co-editor of the yearbook, and Mrs. Fulton was the advisor. She is one of the people who made me who I am today (in a good way...not the OCD stuff). So if you're reading this Mrs. Fulton...THANK YOU! I'm so happy to have you in my life again.

I also sent emails to some of my friends from college, who I haven't spoken with since graduation. I haven't heard back from them yet, but I'm hoping they'll write me so I can get reacquainted with them as well.

It is so exciting to talk (or in this case email) someone who you haven't seen in so many years. I guess there are things out there that are as satisfying as running. And, as long as I'm on the subject (of running that is), I tried to run today. I did three miles, and every step hurt. I guess the 1/2 marathon last weekend really did beat me up. Now I know why you're not supposed to run a race before a marathon. My left quad is killing me. My calves still ache. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do my 20-miler on Thursday. I may have to put it off until Saturday, and have Rob watch the kids. I'll see how it goes.

Of course if I can't run on Thursday, I'll have to find something else to obsess about. I wonder if I can find my pre-school friends? You gotta love the Internet!

Today I ran the 2006 Boulder Backroads 1/2 Marathon. But before I tell you how I did, let me start from the beginning. When I decided to run the NY Marathon sometime last year, I had what I considered to be a big goal. I wanted to finish in under four hours, knocking about 19 minutes off my marathon PR back in 2000. I knew it would be tough, but I was up for the challenge.

I started training in July. About a week later, I hired a trainer to give me some pointers. She told me to aim a little higher. She said that I should have a secondary goal of qualifying for Boston. This would mean a 3:45 marathon (an 8:30 pace). This seemed totally unachievable to me. I thought the nine minute pace was going to be a stretch.

I started training like I had never trained before: with a purpose. I was running mile repeats (a lot of them) at a 7:30 pace. I was doing long tempo runs at a 7:45 pace, both things I could never imagine doing just a few weeks before.

I scheduled the Boulder Backroads 1/2 marathon into my training plan. I thought it would be a decent indicator of whether I could actually achieve the 3:45 time goal. I had been training well.

Last week I did a 20 mile run at a 9:30 pace. The first 15 miles went well, but I felt terrible the last five. I started to think, "how could I ever achieve this goal, if I feel this bad after a 20 miler at a 9:30 pace?" I was starting to get really concerned about the 1/2 marathon which was only a week and three days away at that point.

I ran 10 1/2 mile hill repeats last Sunday. They went well and I felt pretty good. I spent the rest of the week tapering. I ran an easy five on Tuesday, and ran in the pool hard for about an hour on Thursday. I took Friday and Saturday completely off.

The weekend of the race I was more nervous than I have ever been before an event. I realized that I had made a critical mistake. I had done plenty of running at a fast pace, and plenty of running at a slow pace, but NO runs at race pace. Plus, I didn't even know what my 1/2 marathon pace should be. Until Friday before the 1/2 I was planning on attempting 8:30s. I had no idea what an 8:30 pace felt like, not to mention the fact that I had no idea whether I could hold that pace over 13 miles.

Saturday before the race (yesterday) I started looking at pace calculators on line. Most of them say that to get an accurate marathon time, you can multiply your 1/2 mary time by two and add ten minutes. This would mean I'd have to run between an 8:00 and 8:10 pace during the 1/2. Was this even possible?

My nerves were caused by a lack of preparation. Sure I had trained a lot, but I didn't know what race pace would feel like. People kept telling me to follow my plan. What plan?

I decided to set three goals so I wouldn't be disappointed. My first was to finish in under two hours, pretty doable. My second was to finish in 1:51, an 8:30 pace. My third was to finish around 1:46, about an 8:05 pace. I knew this one was a stretch, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Race morning was great. At the 8:00 a.m. start it was probably around 40 degrees, and sunny. The race guy yelled "go" and I was off. The race wasn't chipped timed, so I started near the front. It took me 13 seconds to cross the start line. I was caught up in the crowd, so I couldn't take off like a rocket (a good thing). I did my first mile in 8:28. I was feeling pretty good. I did the next few miles at right around 8:00. I couldn't believe it. I was feeling great. I even did one mile at 7:38, which is blazing for me. The whole time I was running I kept thinking to myself, "I can't believe it. The training actually worked. All of the tempo runs and repeats have made me fit enough to do this." I felt great the entire 13.1 miles. I finished in 1:45:49, an 8:05 pace. I came in 28th in my age group out of 273, and 272nd overall out of 2024 finishers.

I am psyched! Maybe this whole 3:45 marathon is achievable afterall. By the formula (double my 1/2 time and add ten minutes) I will finish in 3:42. That gives me three minutes pad to qualify for Boston. Will I qualify? Who knows. A lot depends on the weather that day, and of course the rest of my training. I could get injured between now and then. But will I try to qualify? Definitely.

There's a danger with having a time goal that is potentially out of reach. If you run too hard in a marathon, you can fizzle out at mile 20 and be stuck running the last 6.2 miles at a 16 minute pace, which obviously kills your time. This is my biggest worry. If I bite off more than I can chew, I could end up without a Boston qualifying time, and without a four hour marathon. This would be pretty depressing. But, if I don't try, I'll never know.

When I had that really bad 20 miler last week, I thought to myself, "I don't even want to qualify for Boston because that means I have to run another marathon." A week and three days later I'm over it. I'm going to go for it. I might not make it, but at least I can say I tried!

One bad thing happened during the race. I wore my Fuel Belt hydration pack thinking it would help me stay hydrated, and I earned this nasty bruise. I don't even want to think what my hips are going to look like after 26.2, but I really need the water, so I'm going to wear it anyway. We'll see how I feel after Thursdays 20 miler. OUCH!

Wednesday, September 13th is my birthday (if you're wondering what to get me - please make a donation to Team for Kids in my name - just click on the link to the right).

My husband, Rob, always lets me pick out my own gift. Last month I decided I wanted a new heart rate monitor. If you read my blog about six weeks ago you know that I fried my old heart rate monitor while pool running. I spent the last month researching the different choices. I finally decided on the Polar F11. When I read about it I was dazzled by all of the cool tricks it could perform, and I LOVED that I could get the watch in red.

The F11 arrived the Friday before my birthday. Rob was kind enough to let me open it early. It was just as beautiful as it looked in the picture. The fabric Wearlink chest strap was more comfortable than any monitor I had ever worn. I was in heart rate heaven. I started to read the manual. Yep...it had all of the cool doodads that I was expecting. It even had a fit test, a function that could potentially confirm the fact that I was indeed the fittest woman in all the world (hey, we can all dream can't we?).

It wasn't until I was about half way through the manual that I realized that my dream monitor did not have a stopwatch. WHAT? No stopwatch? What kind of runner buys a monitor without a stopwatch? It had something called an exercise timer instead, which meant that you could start it and stop it, but that was it. No lap timer, no interval timer, nothing. This is fine if you're just using it for the stair climber or the elliptical trainer, but it's horrible if you're using it to get mile splits or do an interval workout. I immediately ran to the computer and looked it up. I had bought a fitness hr monitor, not a running one. I was so blinded by its beauty and it's gadgets that I didn't make sure it had the most important function, a stopwatch. Rob saw me checking out other monitors on the computer, and immediately realized something had gone horribly wrong. I finally told him the story. But instead of getting mad, he told me not to worry about it. He said to get online and pick out a new one, and told me we'd sell the F11 on EBay (which is where it sits now...waiting for a a bidder...in case you're interested).

Here's the picture of my new NEW heart rate monitor, the Polar S210. I know...it's not as cute as the F11, and it isn't red, but it has a stopwatch and that's the most important part.

Yesterday I did my hardest workout to date. It consisted of eight one mile repeats at a 7:40 pace, pretty fast for me. I'm getting geared up for the Boulder Backroads 1/2 marathon on Sunday, September 24th. I watched "Without Limits," the biography of runner Steve Prefontaine during my workout. That made the pain much easier to take.

It's interesting how both my mind and body respond to interval workouts. While I'm doing the one mile repeats, my mind is telling me to quit. Then it says "there is no way I can do six more of these." But when I finish the repeat, and start the three minute recovery jog, both my mind and body get a new attitude. Two minutes into the recovery and my mind starts saying "oh I can do more, I can finish this, it's not a problem," and my body starts to say "ok, whatever you say." I know this is how the whole thing is supposed to work, but I'm always amazed each time it actually does.

I know I'm getting a little bit faster and a little bit stronger with each interval workout that I do. The goal is to make it so that my 8:30 marathon pace feels comfortable during the race. The funny thing is that I don't actually know what an 8:30 pace feels like. All of my runs are either much faster or much slower. I know exactly what a 7:30 pace feels like, and exactly what a 10:00 pace feels like. I guess I'll find out exactly what an 8:30 feels like in two weeks at the 1/2 marathon.

Just a quick update on Rush and his broken leg...
He's doing much better. He actually started to walk in the cast, just like the doctor said he would. We call him Peggy because he walks like he has a peg leg. It's kind of cute. Only 10 more days and the cast comes off. I can't wait...and I'm sure Rush can't wait either. More later.

Is it starting to seem like all I do is complain in this blog? Well...this week I have an excuse. My sweet little 15-month-old, Rush, broke his leg. Doesn't he look sad? He was trying to climb up on Mac's loft bed when he fell off the ladder. I was there when it happened. I have to admit it didn't look like much, but when he wouldn't stop crying and refused to put any weight on it, I had a bad feeling it was broken (Mac broke his arm last year and he wouldn't stop crying either). I took him to the hospital, and sure enough, SNAP. They called it a tib/fib, meaning both the tibia and fibula were fractured. It sounds awful, but the doc said it should heal fine. The good news is that he only needs to be in a cast for three weeks. It's going to be three weeks of hell. When your 15-months-old, your entire life revolves around the fact that you can now get around on your own. When this is suddenly taken away from you, you're pretty peeved. Runners know how frustrating it is when they get an injury and can't run. Imagine explaining to a 15-month-old why he can no longer walk. He spent the first two days throwing himself down on the ground and crying.

But enough about Rush. Now let's talk about how this whole thing effected me. Rush was supposed to start his one day of daycare this Thursday so I could do my long run. Because he broke his leg on Tuesday he couldn't go, which meant I couldn't run. My husband Rob took the morning off on Friday so I could get my 18-miler in. To save a couple of hours, I decided to do the run in Evergreen instead of going down the hill to do it on a flat and easy course in Denver. My 15-miler at Elk Meadow went well two weeks ago, so I figured adding on an extra three miles wouldn't be that difficult. WRONGO! Two weeks ago it was only 50 degrees. Today it was in the 70s, but it felt much hotter in the blazing sun. I did four laps -- a 4.5 mile loop with a 600 foot elevation gain each time around. The toughest lap was the second, because all I could think about was the fact that I had to do the whole thing two more times. I felt ok for the third lap, knowing I just had one more to go after that. The final lap was killer. My legs were shot. The whole run took me 26 minutes longer than I had planned, and by the time I was done every part of my body ached. It is probably the worst I've ever felt after a training run. The good news is that I'm positive this run was harder than the marathon will be in November.

Speaking of the marathon, I only need a few more donations to reach my fundraising committment to Team for Kids. If you haven't donated yet, just click on the link on the right side of this page.


While most of the week S--KED, one really good thing happened. Mac turned four on August 31, and he started school. He's such a big boy now and I'm so proud of him!

Now if I can just keep my family safe and free of all broken bones over the next few months I'll be happy. Please help me out Mac and Rush, and put all climbing on hiatus until after November 5th!