Happy Triathlon Year!

The snow has melted, so we are back to our regular training schedule. I did manage to get to the gym last week while it was still snowy. Our schedule had us doing a 30-minute run on Christmas Day. So, being the perfectionist that I am, I went for a run. In the slush. And the 30-degree weather. And the alternate snow and rain. We had a leisurely morning of waffles, bacon, and presents, and then I went for my run. Wiley gave me a very nice Columbia jacket which is waterproof on the outside and has a fleece lining. So how could I not go running after that? Here I am on my way out (in said new jacket):



It was really pretty nasty outside. I went down to the bike path and ran through the slush. I decided it was good practice for running in the sand (the last 1/2 mile or so of the run is on the beach). I alternately thought about Hawaii and pretended I was Rocky. I only saw one other person walking on the sidewalk above the path. She looked at me, not in a camraderous way, but as if to say you are insane. Why are you running??

A lot of people talk about being addicted to exercise, and I've never been able to relate to that feeling. But I think now I am getting a bit addicted. I just plain feel better and have a better day if I've exercised. I don't have to go for very long or very far. But I do need to do something pretty much every day now.

I guess that attitude will come in handy over the next week or so. On Saturday (after a team bike ride) I am headed to Whidbey Island, near Seattle, for ten days. I'll be attending a writing workshop, part of an MFA program I am checking out. One of the big logistics I've had to figure out is where and when to exercise in my busy school schedule. It turns out that a lot of gyms (at least on Whidbey Island) allow you to pay a daily use fee even if you don't have a membership. So I have spinning class schedules and lap swim times at various gyms printed out and in my stack of stuff. I'm going to attempt to go to a spinning class at 6:30AM, which should be an interesting endurance test. I doubt I can do all of the exercising I am supposed to be doing that week, but that's okay. I'll do the best that I can (without, you know, cutting class).

I don't think I'll be blogging while I'm gone, so you can just visualize me running alongside a dark, wintry ocean while imagining I'm running on the beach in Hawaii. Whatever keeps me running, right?

Snow Daze

We are still enjoying the aftermath of a snowstorm -- a rarity here in Seattle. It turns out that the week before Christmas is the perfect week for a foot of snow to fall here. Life grinds to a halt when there is this much snow, so everyone got an early vacation. Things have taken a downright wholesome turn in our neighborhood. The hill outside our house is the sledding hill for our section of the neighborhood. Our across the street neighbors, an ever-rotating group of twenty-somethings, spent about 5 hours the first day of the storm building an enormous snowman. Other neighbors contributed coal, a top hat, a carrot for the nose (us). It is the marvel of the neighborhood. Here is Caleb with the first version:


With the next batch of snow they built two more smaller snowmen and two snow dogs. It's drawn quite a crowd.

Needless to say, with all of the snow, training has been quite sporadic. The snowstorm corresponded nicely with my cold, which now seems to be drawing to a close. I'm hoping to get to the gym a few days this week. We did have a very fun time yesterday morning going cross-country skiing in our neighborhood.


That's a once-in-a-blue-moon treat here (we were skking down the middle of the street!) and, though it may not have been the best workout (hard to get a rhythm going with all of the urban obstacles), it was a lot of fun. I'm glad we did it yesterday, because the snow is hard and crusty now.

Because of the weather, last Saturday's practice got changed to a three-part clinic. First we learned about nutrition and what to eat while you are training/racing. It was very helpful. Part two was a sports medicine guy coming to talk to us about injury prevention. Also very helpful. One thing I learned that surprised me was that hot tubs, saunas, etc after exercise aren't a good idea. The best way to recover form a big workout is to do an ice bath of some kind -- fill your tub with ice and sit in in for 30 minutes, or go for a dip in a lake. I'm not sure I have the fortitude to do that in the wintertime, but it's worth knowing.

Part 3 of the clinic was learning how to change a bike tire. It was harder than I thought (my tires are really stiff), but I'm really glad to know how to do it. I should get some sort of booby prize, I guess. When I got home my tire was totally soft. It turned out that I punctured the tube with my tire lever while putting it back on. That's right: I gave myself a flat tire while learning how to change a tire. I guess I'll get more practice changing it again...

Happy Holidays to you all!

Training on Vacation

We just returned from a five-day trip to New York City to visit my family and have an early Christmas celebration with them. We had a great time seeing my family and showing Caleb some of the sights of New York City (Central Park, the tree at Rockefeller Center, the windows on 5th Ave).

This was my first of 3 trips during my training regimen. Since it was a short trip there wasn't too much re-working of the schedule to do, and with some slight adjustments I was able to have 1 run and 1 swim on the trip and still keep up with the schedule. The run was along the Hudson River on a clear and cold day. It was really windy along the river, but still pretty and fun to run in another city.

The swim was a family outing to the 14th Street YMCA, which is something my sister and her family often do on Sundays. The pool is 1/3 family swim area, 2/3 lap lanes. So I could swim laps while everyone else played in the pool, something we can't do at our own gym's pool. It was fun to look over and see everyone splashing around while I did my drills.

Now we are home and Caleb and I both have ANOTHER cold. Blech. This one hit me pretty quickly. Yesterday I had a scratchy throat but still felt good enough to go for a run. This morning I woke up and couldn't breathe through my nose. So no training for a little while. Hopefully this one will go away faster than the last one. There is snow in the forecast for today, so some practices might get canceled anyway. Stay tuned...

It's the Cancer, Stupid

A few weeks ago we learned that one of our teammates lost her brother to blood cancer earlier that week. At Monday's run practice I found out that it was one of my tribemates, a very nice woman whom I've talked to at a few of the practices. She was back at practice and I am really impressed that she is still doing this event despite the enormous loss for her and her family. Hopefully it is helpful for her and her family both to be doing this event in memory of him.

At most of our practices we have a "mission moment" at the beginning where someone gets up and talks about why they do team in training, and usually involves a story of someone they know with some kind of cancer. It's a nice way to focus on the greater purpose of what we are doing and avoid feeling bad about a difficult workout, sore limbs, cold weather, etc. It has also made me think very differently about why I am doing this race with Team in Training. The original motivation -- to get/stay in good shape and do something challenging, is still very much a presence. But the fact that it's for LLS and that people with cancer will benefit from my doing the race has a lot of meaning to me now. It's become a much more profound experience already than any other physical challenge I've done in my life. While there is of course a lot of sadness around cancer, it also feels really good to be doing something that makes a difference in this way.

So, the title of my post, as you probably know, is adapted from the sign on the wall at the Clinton Campaign office "it's the economy, stupid." It's to help remind me what the larger purpose is. Not that I won't continue to talk about the training on this, my training blog. And it won't stop me from complaining on occasion. But I will try to always remember that my struggles in this are nothing compared to what many patients and their families go through.

I Live in a Fit City

On the drying rack behind me right now are the following items:

• a pair of bike shorts
• a long-sleeved bike shirt
• a sports bra
• a long-sleeved running shirt
• my team in training t-shirt
• the pad from caleb's travel diaper kit

With the exception of the last item, pretty jock-y, no? The thing that i've noticed lately is that I feel more of a sense of camraderie than I did before with the people I see running and biking around the city. And I get to have that feeling a lot, because there are a lot of runners and cyclists here! this isn't news to me, but I notice it much more now. When I lived in Nepal, my friend Penny and I went jogging a few times. People stared openly at us -- these freaks who would run for exercise. (and I see why no one else did it -- the smog in Kathmandu alone can kill even the strongest running spirit).

But here, everyone is running nda cycling, it seems. Though it may not be such an oddity, I do often have an "in the club" feeling when I'm on the Burke Gilman trail. I'll catch someone's eye running or biking past in the oppostite direction, and we'll exchange the faintest of nods and smiles. Look at us. Aren't we such jocks? Particularly so if I am pushing Caleb in the jogging stroller. (Though most of those looks are just at him because he's so darn cute).

Good news: our very crowded swim practice is now going to be less crowded. They've added a second swim practice for the half-ironman team on a different night. Last night I got frustrated by how crowded my lane was, so I'm looking forward to a less crowded pool.

I did today's bike practice yesterday morning by attending a studio cycling class at my gym. It was hard, and my legs are a bit sore today. That's the approved indoor cycling training method, and i can see why. there's no way I would push myself that hard on just a stationary bike out in the gym. I actually need someone at the front of the room playing awful music and telling me "push it! work it!" It reminds me of the Jane Fonda workout tape I used to do in middle school. "Feel the burn" was her personal refrain. Oh, I feel it Jane. I feel it.

I'm Back, Baby

I'm finally over my cold, and back on the exercise plan after a week of no exercise. My first post-cold exercise was a Thanksgiving Day run with Wiley and Caleb. Running along the path by our house we almost looked...athletic. It was strange!

There was no group training this weekend b/c of the holiday, so I did a swim and a bike ride on my own. Last night we had running practice, and I tried out a heart rate monitor my friend Laura lent to me. I had some technical difficulties with it, and I don't have my "data" from my running test, so I had to guess at my target heart rate. Still, I found it helpful to have, and I think I will get one myself.

For practice we did some relay-type drills where we ran back and forth in different styles (grapevine, run with your knees up high, run and bend your leg back far so that you are kicking yourself in the butt). Then we did a "3 and 2" drill where we ran hard for 5 minutes, walked for 2 minutes and repeated that 3 times. It was tiring! It was misting lightly, but I didn't really get wet. So I don't know if that counts as our first practice in the rain or not. It wasn't a hard rain, though, so not too bad. We also practiced running with "light feet" which it turns out I don't do naturally. this initially more tiring when you are learning it, but ends up being more efficient and less taxing on your body. Even with running, which I thought there wasn't much to, there are places to improve my form. Who knew?

Not very many people at practice last night, and I suspect it will be that way most of December with people out of town for the holidays and so forth. Maybe it will be a good time to get some individual coaching for me.

Cardio After Dark

Had two more nighttime workouts this week. On Tuesday I went for a bike ride after Wiley got home from work. This was an opportunity to use my new bike lights for the first time. It probably wasn't the best workout, since I rode on the bike path near my house with all of the UW students and people on their way home from work. Also, once I got past campus the trail got really...dark. My lights make me very visible to others, but don't light my own way very well, so at that point I decided to turn around. Still, it was a really nice ride. it was another warm, dry night. I am normally a morning exerciser, but there is something nice about decompressing and letting my mind unwind a bit at the end of the day. I rode all the way back up the hill to our house (which I've done maybe once before). It was so nice to come home to a warm house, two happy boys, and dinner ready!

Wednesday was swim practice, my first. No matter what your age or how confident you are, there is something about standing around in your bathinguit with a bunch of practical strangers that feels so...vulnerable. I felt like I did on the first day of PE class in high school -- avoiding eye contact with the boys and trying to cover as much of myself as I could with my towel. But then someone announced that one of our team members had lost her brother to leukemia on Monday, and another guy said his cousin died Monday too, and none of that mattered. As Coach Cathy said, that gave us two good reasons to do the workout.

So in the water we went. I chose Lane 3, one of the two "moderate" speed lanes. We were in the water for about an hour, doing drills most of the time. The workout was posted at the end of the lane, and information got passed down the line about what we were doing. In addition to Coach Cathy, there were one or two mentors (who clearly had a swimming background) doing some coaching.

I'm a pretty strong swimmer, and I think my form is pretty decent. But for the life of me I cannot turn my head to the left to take a breath. This "bilateral" breathing isn't required to do the triathlon, but it helps. What the drills do are break you out of your usual way of swimming by taking away some aspect of the "normal" form. (swim 25 yards using only your right arm, then 25 yards using only your left. do six kicks follwed by one stroke. swim with your hands balled into fists. etc.) I have never done swim drills of any kind. i just swim freestyle for an allotted time, and then I get out. So this was a stretch for me. I found the drills simultaneously boring and making the time pass more quickly. Afterwards I was exhausted, and I collapsed into bed as soon as I got home.

Now that I've had at least 1 of each type of practice, I feel more relaxed about the training. I know it will be tiring, and I also know it is doable. And I'd say it's a nice blend of team camraderie and not much of a competitive feeling. Having never been much for team sports, this is a big relief to me.

My cold is still lingering, so I am taking a break from training until I am all better. We have fewer team practices next week because of Thanksgiving, so I may not post much. (Though I will be going for a run Thanksgiving morning!)

Finally, one week into my fundraising I have already received over $2000 in contributions! You all are amazing.

Hope everyone has safe travels and a Happy Thanksgiving!

Better

We had our 2nd running practice last night, which went much better for me than the first one. I still have my cold, but it seems to be worst in the morning, so I felt well enough to go. It was a warm, dry evening, which was a nice gift. Most of the people there did the regular practice, which involved working on form and technique.

I think there was only one other woman, Rayma, who was re-doing the timing test. We happened to be chatting before practice started, so when we each realized we were doing the test, we agreed to run together. She had a heart-rate monitor, and I had a stopwatch (which I now know how to use!), so we made a good team. She helped me go slower than I would've otherwise, which was a good thing, b/c it kept my heart rate where it should've been (and left me lots of room to improve my time).

I am having a debate about whether or not to get a heart rate monitor. The main reason why I haven't is that I think I would be obsessive about where my heart rate was all of the time, and perhaps make me feel more competitive/time obesessive than I want to be. On the other hand, since I am doing this whole training program, and we are being asked for our heart rate for certain things, it's a lot handier than taking my pulse all the time. Recording your heart rate is optional, but since I seem to want to do it, I might as well do it more accurately and easily. Also, I thought it was a thing that went around your whole trunk, but most people seem to have the kind that's like a wristwatch. So I'll wear two wristwatches to the practices. Too bad they're not Swatch watches, so that I could look '80s retro trendy. (though how stuff on your wrist could offset the overall geek/jock look of running tights or bike-pants-over-bike-shorts, I'm not sure).

I now own a "theraband" for doing the strength training exercises from home, so off i go to do that...20 feet from where i am now sitting. And in my pajamas.

Phew (and Achoo)!

The practice I was most dreading, biking, turned out to be the best one of the week. The bike section is definitely the one I feel least confident about -- I think I've not biked farther than maybe 15 miles in one chunk. For our practice, I envisioned a group of seasoned cyclists waiting while I lagged behind. But it wasn't like that at all. After a brief talk Coach Cathy sent us on our way while she stayed in the parking lot with people who had been off a bike for many years and needed reminders of things like "this is how you brake." (I guess even with biking people need refreshers).

For the rest of us, she said "ride north on the trail for 20 or 30 minutes, and then turn around and come back." Pretty easy, and, best of all, we could go at our own pace. The woman I carpool with and I rode together the whole time. it was a gorgeous morning, with fog on the fields we rode by and the sun slowly burning it off. A lovely fall day. We rode on a rail-trail called the Lake Sammamish river trail. Our launch point was from the Red Hook Brewery in Woodinville, about 30 minutes from my house. This trail connects to the Burke-Gilman trail which runs along lake washington near our house, so if I went on a really long ride I could've gone home. this part of the trail is much quieter than our section, though, and with less street crossings, so you could get up a good speed.

Wiley has an extra set of "clipless" pedals that I am going to use, and I have new bike shoes. but the pedals aren't on my bike yet, so those technical aspects will be mastered on another day. Having your bike shoe attached to the pedal that way is supposed to help you get the most out of your pedaling motion, and will hopefully help improve my pace a bit (which is a goal of mine for the bike portion). Anyway, it was nice to have an easy, dry practice for our first saturday bike practice.

In other news, I have a cold, which seems to result in my exercising every other day instead of every day. i hope it doesn't get too bad or go on too long. Depending on how I feel tomorrow, I may or may not go to running practice. I hope I feel well enough to go, though, as those of us with bad results for the timing are re-doing our timing, and I want to get that done this week if I can. (which means I need to learn some basic functions on my fancy watch tonight).

Finally, I am just floored by how much money I have already raised -- $1300 in just 4 days! I'm humbled by everyone's generosity, as well as buoyed up by the good wishes from everyone. Keep it all coming, and i will try my best to keep up at my end as well.

My first donations!

Since fundraising is a huge part of my job for the next five months, I will talk about that on this blog as well. Last night I sent out my first request for donations and within an hour I already had two! I've also already gotten several very supportive emails from people saying how impressed they are that i am doing this and even offering to babysit, etc to help out (thanks Angie & Ryan!)

I have to say that these words of encouragement really do boost my confidence. This is a big undertaking, and at this early stage there have already been several instances where I've thought to myself "you know what would be a lot easier than doing this? Not doing it." But I am also reminded constantly of how important it is that I am doing it, and how much I want to. I've also decided that I really have no place to complain about how much time this is taking, etc. Every person doing this is making a big sacrifice, and most have their time and family lives much more impacted than I do. At our pizza dinner on Monday I sat next to two women who live in Olympia, about an hour south of Seattle. They came all the way here to go to our running practice. and both have kids and full-time jobs. the woman sitting across from me lives in Mukilteo, which is about 25 miles north of Seattle. As we were headed to our cars at 10PM, she told me that she had to get up at 4:30 the next morning to open the gym where she works as a trainer. On Veteran's Day. (Oh, and she's a veteran). So, no complaining from me!

I guess you're wondering why I'm not talking about training on this, my training blog. Our first swim practice was last night. Yesterday we got an email from Coach Cathy saying we could skip the practice if we were "accomplished swimmers." I am unusual in that the swim is my strongest sport. (Most people are really intimidated by the swim, and especially freaked out by the thought of swimming in clear ocean water where you can see all of the fish. But that sounds so cool!)

Anyway, I'm sure I will get my butt kicked once I actually get into the pool for team practice. But I decided I was accomplished enough to skip the first practice. I did my own swim workout at my gym yesterday instead. today is supposed to be a running day, but I'm not running. I seem to have tweaked my knee yesterday afternoon. Not doing anything sporty, mind you, just crouching down to pick up Caleb's toy. It's certainly not my first Mom Injury, but it is my first training injury. Four days in! Yeesh. Hopefully by the time I get on my bike Saturday morning it will feel better.

Our Honored Teammate

Each team has an honored teammate - a blood cancer survivor or patient that we are all racing in honor of. My honored teammate is Jonelle Horn. She spoke at the Team in Training launch party a few weeks ago, and I was really impressed with how composed she was when speaking about her illness, even adding in some humor. Here, in her own words, is her story:

In November of 2000 I returned to my hometown to visit my parents at their house in Seattle, Washington for Thanksgiving break. It was my senior year at Santa Clara University and I had been tackling my senior thesis for my Major in Religious Studies. I had a cough and cold and slept straight through for the first two days of the week. My family and I thought nothing of it. If you have ever witnessed a college kid home for break the first thing they usually do is crash. I got over the cold that week but the cough remained. So, after multiple trips to multiple doctors I returned to college where my doctor at the campus health center finally threw up her hands and ordered the fated chest x-rays.

Skip to Friday, January 26th, 4pm: My doctor comes into the exam room with a face I had never seen on her before. She sits down on one of those brown, wheelie, stools (that all doctors have) and told me that I had a ”very large mass” in my chest. From the look on her face I knew I would have to press her for more information. “What kind of mass are we talking about?” “ Lymphoma” . . . was my response. Now, I knew that couldn’t be good because anything ending in “oma” never is. I looked at my doctor and said “that’s cancer of the lymph system isn’t it?”

My parents flew in from Seattle that Sunday morning (my sister was a grad student at Santa Clara as well) and I was on the biopsy carving table that following Friday. After saving my life by draining almost 2 liters of fluid from my right lung and confirming that my mass was about the size of a small watermelon, the surgeon handed me over to my Oncologist at Stanford. Diagnosis: Hodgkins Disease – Stage 2b non-sclerosing Bulky tumor. That was the day I learned that “Bulky” actually is a technical, medical word.

The funny part of this story is that at the moment when my Oncologist told me what I had there was an audible sigh of relief from my family and I. We had finally found out why I had been so sick. From that point on all the news was good. I had the “good” type of cancer; I was in the best hospital in the world for my disease being taken care of by the best doctors medical training has to offer. My chemotherapy and radiation regime was relatively short, my survival rate was a whopping 89%, my university bent over backwards to help me with school, and my angel of a mother flew down from Seattle every week for my treatment. More shocking then the news of the cancer was the immediate outpouring of support and love that I felt. I never knew so many people cared so much about me. It was the most humbling experience of my life. Every day the letters poured into my mailbox and every day people stopped by to visit or to bring my class notes. My Professors “went to bat” for me on all my assignments and my family became Superheroes. It was a circus for a while, but it was a circus of angels.

What I had yet to learn was that I owed a large part of my survival to people like you. Team in Training helped aid the research for most of the medications that kept me alive as well as paying for the research the doctor’s needed to come up with my Chemo treatment. I didn’t discover this until the summer of 2002 when I joined the run team with TNT for my first marathon, making it across the finish line of the Maui Marathon in 7 hours 19 minutes. I have since run the Mardi Gras Half Marathon in New Orleans, the Home Depot Half in San Francisco and the Maui Half. I am honored to be a part of this team (even if I don’t look like it after a hard work out). Thank you for taking the risk to be here and run with us, it means more then you will ever know.
GO TEAM! ~ Jonelle

Gotta Run

I am not what scientists would refer to as "a runner." I often ran for exercise in college, but pretty much stopped after that (out of boredom and sore feet in equal parts). After Caleb came along I decided to give running another chance. It's one of the only aerobic activities I can do with him, and we already had a jogging stroller. It seemed like someone should actually do some jogging. So I did this program I found in a running magazine where you build up very slowly to running 3 miles. it worked well and I've continued to run 2-3 miles a couple of days a week. So I run, but not very far and not very fast. And though I occasionally enjoy the running itself, I mostly enjoy having been for a run.

Last night was dry (yay!) for our first practice. In this first practice we were timing ourselves and establishing our pace. So much for not obsessing about time! One thing that would've helped me would be to actually have read the manual that came with the cool stopwatch Wiley gave me for Christmas last year.

Another helpful thing would've been if our coach (who seems great) hadn't mixed up "lap" and "mile" when she was giving the instructions. (we're at a track, so a lap is 1/4 mile). I was among several people who misunderstood what to do. What we were supposed to do: run 1 mile at an "easy"' pace, 1 at a "moderate" pace, 1 at a "hard" pace. What I did: ran 1 lap at an easy pace, 1 at a moderate, 2 at a hard pace. I gave the person my time, and she told me to run at a mile at a moderate pace. It wasn't until I finished that mile that we figured out my mistake. So then I ran a 3rd "hard" mile, which ended up being the same overall time as my first "mixed-up" mile. Hopefully they can figure out what to do with me, skewed data and all.

So it wasn't the most awesome beginning. I'm looking forward to meeting more people and finding people at my pace to run with. 'Cause running in the dark around a track? Kinda boring. The good news is that I have an option of training there with another group on the weeks that my group trains at a track very far from my house.

The highlight of the evening for me (this shouldn't surprise anyone) was going out to pizza afterward with some people from my tribe. (Let me interrupt this already long post to explain the complicated hierarchy.)

Team in Training - about 200-300 people in the Puget Sound area, training for several different races (marathons, triathlons, a cross-country ski race).

Lavaman Team - about 55 people, all doing the Lavaman Triathlon
these are the people at the group practices. We also train sometimes with a team of (crazy) people doing a half-ironman triathlon in June. There is a captain for each of these teams (the Lavaman captain is Ande), and one coach (Cathy) for both teams. There is also an LLS/Team in Training staffperson (Megan) who seems to come to all of our practices (and maybe races with us too?).

Lanakila Team (or Tribe) - 11 people. we are one of several "tribes" within the Lavaman team. Lanakila is Hawaiian for "victory." The tribes are lead by mentors (mine are Joyce and Steve) who have done the race before and are there to help us with fundraising and generally cheer us on. They'll do the race too.

So, there's lots of support. And everyone is really nice and encouraging.

I got home late and had a bad night of sleep, most of which I blame on eating lots of pizza at 9:30PM. (I'd make a terrible European). But now I'm okay and headed to the gym for my strength training workout.

(And yes, this really is Janet doing this. An alien has not taken over my body. Yet.)

And So it Begins

My first official team practice with Team in Training starts tomorrow. We'll have 3 group practices a week. On Mondays we run at 7PM. On Wednesdays we swim from 7:50-9:00PM. On Saturdays we run or bike (or sometimes both!) from 8-10AM.

Running happens either at a track 5 minutes from my house or a track 45 minutes from my house. Swimming is in a pool about 20 minutes away. (Were you worried I was going to have to swim in Lake Washington all winter? I was!). Saturday trainings are all over Seattle and the suburbs. So we'll be putting in some miles in the car as well!

On the other 4 days of the week, we are training on our own. So that's 7 days a week of training, 5 of it cardio-related. Yikes!

Right now I am obsessed with the time surrounding this whole thing. The hours of training I have to put in. How much time I have to be away from Caleb. How much time I am asking Wiley to take care of Caleb on his own. The time it will take to fundraise. And, not insignificantly, how very slow I am at all 3 of these sports! While my main goal is to finish the race, I'd be lying if I said I didn't care about my time. I expect to finish among the last in my age group, maybe even the last of the race. I just don't want to be the VERY last.

Having just written all of that, I've decided my goal for this first week is to stop obsessing about time! Slow and steady is my method (as anyone who has had to wait for me to get ready to leave the house knows). I don't need to worry about how slow I am or how many people are ahead of me. The only person who cares about my speed is me. Right now, slow and steady sounds like the right way to be.