“It’s the morning of your weekly long run… what do you eat and why?”, that is the question Jill is asking the members of the Runners’ Lounge on this beautiful Thursday morning in late August (we are experiencing a heat wave! Did I tell you I LOVE heat?! Yeah!!!).

But I digress (which is easy to do when the sun is shining so bright).

During my many years of running I have had my fair share of trials and tribulations when it comes to finding appropriate nourishment. When I first started out I really did not pay any attention to the pre run fuel at all. None! I have never been a breakfast person and running on an empty stomach suited me just fine, especially as I never really ventured out of my comfort zone.

Then I became serious. And the first thing I had to learn was how to fuel my body enough for the long weekend run. For someone who usually does not eat anything until noon o’clock, this was one of the hardest lessons to learn. My coach, who was horrified when he learned that I had come to the first long run on an empty stomach recommended plain old toast to start out with. I whined, I argued, I stomped my feet but the morning of the next long run I tried it. Plain toast with a bit of butter. It was OK, meaning I did not want to barf three miles into the run, but it also sat in the bottom of my tummy like a rock, a bouncing rock. I gave up toast and moved on to the rice cereal bars my Celiac diseased friend swore by. They were OK too. No stuffed feeling but they just did not taste all that good at six in the morning and I had a hard time getting them down, even with water and/or gatorade. But for a while I stuck with them.

Most people I have run with either eat bagels with peanut butter (pictures of boulders came to mind), oatmeal (great on cold, damp winter nights, but certainly not a texture I want to feel slide down my throat at the crack of dawn), cold cereal, and or bananas with yoghurt. Since I have issues with digesting lactose (ahem!) I stay away from anything dairy and never really wanted to find out how I would fare on a pre run meal of yoghurt and bananas, even if it was soy based yoghurt.

In the end I gave dry cereal – frosted Mini Wheats, Puffins, Honey Cheerios, chased by a spoonful of unsalted, organic peanut butter, washed down by a cool glass of water or gatorade a try. BINGO! And to this day I have stuck with this combination of pre run nutrition. On marathon morning I also eat a banana Powerbar half an hour before the start. These foods are also easy to carry if I have to travel to a race.

One lesson I have learned from the experience of finding the right food groups: breakfast is your friend! Before long runs!

Today’s Running Tip: Fuel before a long run! DUH!

For easy digestible, fast fuel try eating a snack that is high in carbohydrates and low in fiber(!!!) 30 to 60 minutes before your run. Low fiber foods break down faster in your stomach than high fiber ones which will be easier on your digestion during the run.

Edward Moore Kennedy ~ February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009

The more our feelings diverge, the more deeply felt they are, the greater is our obligation to grant the sincerity and essential decency of our fellow citizens on the other side. . . .

In short, I hope for an America where neither “fundamentalist” nor “humanist” will be a dirty word, but a fair description of the different ways in which people of good will look at life and into their own souls.

I hope for an America where no president, no public official, no individual will ever be deemed a greater or lesser American because of religious doubt — or religious belief.

I hope for an America where the power of faith will always burn brightly, but where no modern inquisition of any kind will ever light the fires of fear, coercion, or angry division.

I hope for an America where we can all contend freely and vigorously, but where we will treasure and guard those standards of civility which alone make this nation safe for both democracy and diversity.

~ Speech on "Truth and Tolerance in America", Oct 3, 1983, Lynchberg, VA

Today’s Running Tip: There will be no tip today!

Heidi Montag-Pratt – A Tragedy in Three Acts

Act I – Coming to Jesus in the face of tragic label loss

Act II – We are just like the Obamas

Act III – My body language tells me I can neither sing nor dance

Today’s Running Tip: Anyone can run!
Even if you do not think you can, anyone can become a runner. You might not break records but you can still enjoy all the benefits of running!

When did I know I had become a runner? That is the question Marlene posted in the Runners’ Lounge today.

I thought about this on my 8 miler this morning and have to admit that I honestly have no idea. Which indicates that it was obviously not a profound event but rather a gradual progression.

I know I definitely did not consider myself a runner when I ran in high school or even when I first started out running on a regular basis way back then in Chester Springs, running from mailbox to mailbox. Because, let’s face it: lacing up my shoes during  those cold, gray, damp Pennsylvania fall mornings was not exactly what I considered “pleasure”. It hurt! And sucked on occasion! But for some reason I stuck with it.

At first I did not run every day, not even every other day, I was not a runner, I was a jogger. Then one day, after coming back home from my jog I realized that I felt completely different from when I started out. I was calm, collected, and the thought of facing the rest of my day did not leave me yearning for curling up under the blanket or taking the next flight home.

By the time we moved to the Bay Area three months after that fateful morning in the outskirts of the City of Brotherly Love when I first laced up my tennis, yes tennis!!!, shoes I was definitely running jogging on a regular basis. And by regular I mean three times a week give or take.

And then, I found myself in California. The Land of Fruits and Nuts! With a host mother that became increasingly more pregnant with her second child and therefore increasingly more irrational hormonal. I started running jogging every day. And at first only to keep my sanity. I never really put any thought into whether I was enjoying myself or not. I just did it. And it helped getting me through the day. It was that one period of the day that was just for me. No one making demands, no one crying for attention, no one flinging a list of tasks in my direction. It was Me Time! Had I become a runner? I don’t know. The dictionary defines a runner as “a person, animal, thing that runs”, but leaves out the details. What if you only run once? I would not consider you to be a runner. Not even if you ran a race. If you only run one race and never run again, you are not a runner.

Maybe back then, during those early days in the Golden State I was still a jogger, just trotting along, never running for time or distance, never really changing my routine. A routine that carried me through another year in California, four years in Munich, and a move back to land my heart belongs to.

Then I entered my first race. But racing I did not! I finished the 10k in just under one hour… And that finish time just proves that I continued to be a jogger. I did not even try to run faster nor did I care about the finish time. I just wanted to be in the race.

Shortly after that first race a friend talked me into joining Team in Training. She was not a runner and wanted to do the Tahoe Century, a 100 mile bike ride around Lake Tahoe. Since my stepdaughter had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma a few months before we thought this was a good motivation and cause and signed up. I put my running shoes away and clipped my new bike shoes into the pedals. In my 22 years of jogging and later running this was the only time I took a real break from running. And it did not stick. After two Tahoe Centuries in two consecutive years I climbed back into my running shoes and never looked back. Biking was fun, definitely less hard on your body, but it was not my passion.

Maybe that’s when I became a runner because after my biking period I definitely stepped it up a notch. I started to vary my routine, read running magazines and signed up for my first marathon. I knew I did not want to jog it, I wanted to run it. Yes, there is a difference*!!! No, I am not a snob about it! Running takes effort, following a training plan takes discipline, finishing a marathon running takes determination! Jogging does not make you a runner just as taking half a day to walk 26.2 miles does not make you a marathoner!

A runner is someone who will give up just about anything to get his training in. Get up before dawn on a snowy, windy morning so he can still be at work on time. Forgo Friday night bar hopping with friends because a long run is scheduled for early Saturday morning. Leave the favorite burrito untouched in order to eat something that will not mess with his/her insides the next day.

Joggers fit in their run whenever they can, runners adjust their daily schedule around their run. Joggers lace up their shoes when it is convenient. Runners lace up their shoes no matter what. Joggers have all sorts of things on their minds, things that take priority over their workout. Runners mainly have running on their mind and everything that involves splits, finish times, mileage, the next race, goal pace, nutrition, and hydration, and they can talk about those incessantly, which is the reason they feel most at ease amongst other runners who can appreciate their obsession passion.

So, coming back to the original question of when I realized that I was a runner. As you see from my story above it was not one specific moment that made me realize I was a runner. Rather it was a gradual progression marked by my venturing into the long distance arena. One thing is for sure though, “if you are not sure whether you are running or jogging, go faster” ~ Pearl Izumi

*my most favorite ads!!!

Today’s Running Tip: Find out if you are a runner!

You can consider yourself a runner if you don’t want to escape the fact that you are running!

Sunshine -

21 years ago today you were born and I remember this day as if it was yesterday. You came into this world just shortly after 9am and when I saw you for the first time that same afternoon you were the tiniest person I had ever met. I held you for hours while your mother made sure that your big sister did not feel left out, setting a trend that has continued throughout the years.

Having dealt with your sister from the time she was two months old I only expected that you would follow in her footsteps of screaming down the house, not to mention the neighborhood. But to everyone’s surprise you showed us that babies can be happy and content. From the moment you came home you were nothing but smiles and full of joy, only crying when you were hungry. A new, but very much welcomed concept for all involved.

From a very early age on you were just content with being by yourself and once you became old enough you happily played with your toys for hours on end.

As a toddler you had the most beautiful blonde curls (that your father refused to cut off for the longest time) and since your general happiness showed all over your face people were drawn to you wherever we went, other kids wanted to be friends with you. There was just something about you that made loving you so easy. You were easily pleased and the smallest gifts made you happy, if only you could be home. Home was your favorite place and every time we took a trip you would ask us at the second street light when we would go back to the house or you would inform us that we were “really far away from home now!” To this day change remains one of your biggest challenges.

The biggest change in your young life came when your parents separated. You were only five at the time and the blow was so significant it almost broke you. The world as you knew it had shattered and you had a very hard time dealing with the consequences of your dad no longer living in the same house as you. We tried our best to ease the pain but we could not overlook the impact it had on your young soul. Those first couple of years after you had to deal with two homes and going back and forth were definitely not easy and it certainly did not help that you started school at the same time.

And school turned out to be an issue from day one, a place where you had to follow in your sister’s footsteps, a straight A student only a grade ahead of you. The teachers all remembered her when you entered their classroom. In 1st Grade it was even said with a factitious chuckle in one of the parent teacher conferences “And you thought you had another Boardman on your hands!”… But it wasn’t a simple hand off. You were never a teacher’s pet and paid the price. In a school that prided itself as being a “blue ribbon” school. I couldn’t stand it! I remember walking into your 2nd Grade classroom to pick you up one day only to observe your teacher yelling at you and telling you that you would never amount to anything. YOU WERE IN 2ND GRADE!!! It broke my heart and I was only happy to find out when in 3rd Grade you finally had a different teacher than the one your sister had and for the first time you started to thrive.

But you never did like school and who can blame you for this after the experience you had in 1st and 2nd Grade. It is unfortunate and appalling that this set you up for a constant struggle with school and caused endless and countless hours of aggravation over the years. It also made me lose all respect for the school system in this country.

But when I look back on your childhood I mostly remember all the good times we had and there were plenty of those. One of my fondest memories was the year that your sister decided we were not worthy her visitation and you came to stay with us by yourself. We spent a lot of one-on-one time together especially during your summer break. You only went to camp for a few hours in the morning and every afternoon I took you to the YMCA for swim camp and watched you take the pool like a duck to water. We always cooked your favorite meals each night and talked about the great day we had. This was also the first summer you walked home from camp by yourself, although I did meet you half way and you made a friend across the street which opened up your world of playing outside in their vast backyard and exploring the neighborhood, doing what boys do.

When your dad got a job offer in Santa Barbara we wanted you to move with us and even though you were torn for a while in the end such a drastic change was just too much for you to handle and you decided to stay with your mother, sister and stepdad. Looking back I often wonder if we should have pushed harder, it might have changed your whole future but hindsight is always 20-20 and we did not want to tear you away from your familiar surroundings.

We saw you as often as we could while we lived in Santa Barbara but by that time your sister’s illness had fully taken hold and consumed most of your family life. When you finally did move to Santa Barbara a few years later the lack of attention that had been part of that life was more than apparent. Your dad and I made it our mission to make up for lost time and although it seemed to have an effect at first it became clear very quickly that it was just not enough and that you would always seek the attention that you could never get.  I am not lying, that year was hard. Hard on you and hard on us. It was almost as if you could not handle being the center of attention and having us try to help you move on from the past few years was more than you could handle. Instead you kept going back to it and trying to reverse the path. I often found myself at work during that year not wanting to go home. I recognized myself less and less and was turning into a person I did not like.

In the end it became so painful you decided (with the help of a more than willing instigator) your only way out was to just leave our house literally overnight and move back in with your mother without telling us. You had never been good at covering things up and the warning signs had been there for a while. Your move did not come as a surprise but that did not make it less painful. We had invested so much in that year you lived with us only to be pushed aside by pure selfishness. A selfishness you are paying the price for to this day.

I told you back then: only those you love can hurt you! But in the end I got over the mess you had left behind and moved on only looking forward. For you this decision, which looked so brilliant at the time, marked a turning point and your remaining high school years ended up in a downward spiral of getting in trouble at school and at home. As always you found out that chasing the past was an impossible fantasy, the past could not be recovered nor would there be any change for your future. Life was just what it had been all along before you moved in with us.

And then you came back. And although we welcomed you with open arms I had my reservations. I tend to learn from mistakes and this just looked like the past could repeat itself very easily. But I wanted to give you a chance, I wanted to see you have that chance. It was not to be. What started out again as a promising set up turned into absolute emotional turmoil and home wrecking chaos which in the end, after 13 months of utter frustration, forced us to do something I never though I was capable of doing: kicking you out. By that time you had not been home overnight for six weeks, had ignored your father’s calls, had decided not to take the help your dad had offered of setting you up with your own apartment and after trying just about everything to have you respond to us we were literally at the end of our rope.  I can say without hesitation that the day we kicked you out was one of the hardest, if not the hardest, days of my life. I know we had reached a point of no return, but it was by no means easy to follow through with what we had decided was the only thing we could do. We were about to move to the desert full time and this day would have come sooner or later anyway. I had envisioned it differently but you left us no choice. It broke my heart!

It has been over two years since that fateful July 4th and looking back we did make the right decision. You still live in Santa Barbara and made it through the rough part of moving out on your own and making it.

Over the years I often looked back to your childhood and how much I adored you, how much I loved spending time with you and one of the hardest things has been watching you struggle in your later years. At times that little boy was still visible, allowing me a glimpse of what could have been. I realize you did not get a fair shake in life, not even close but you had always been your dad’s and my first priority, something that was unfortunately not enough in the end. We did love and care for you to the best of our ability but did not live up to your expectations of what life should be like, something that is impossible to live up to. I wish it could have been different, I wish you could have found what you so desperately sought, I wish all the grown ups in your life could have seen you the way I saw you, as someone who literally brought sunshine into a room!

I love you and I only hope that the future will treat you better than the past!

Today’s Running Tip: Dealing with Anxiety

Feeling anxious before a race? Try to only focus on yourself not the other runners. It is all about your run not the run of all the other racers. The saying “you run every race by yourself” rings true!