Training Limbo

Being between race training plans is always sort of an odd time. Ever since I finished my most recent 5K in mid-June, I haven’t been following any kind of structured schedule with running. I’ve been aiming to get in a couple runs per week, but that’s about it. After the Swarthmore race, I ended up having some non-running related projects come up, plus a couple of pleasantly distracting visits from dear friends where catching up took priority over squeezing in a few miles, so overall, I’ve been happy to take a short break.

Besides allowing me the time to focus on other life priorities, I also really enjoy periodic running breaks because I almost always find I come back from them feeling well-rested and stronger. In my most extreme case, I actually dropped about 2 minutes from my previous 5K time after not running for about a year. Yet even for short breaks like this past week, I still find that my running noticeably improves afterwards.

Case in point: Recently I’ve noticed that part of what slows me down is actually my arm movement, so I’ve consciously been working on that, especially towards the end of a run when I might be getting tired. I have a huge tendency in running (and really in day-to-day life in general) to hike up my shoulders when I get tense and/or fatigued, which of course is a complete waste of energy. Along with that, if my upper body is tense, my arm swing constricts and/or my arms start crossing over the midline, and either way, it slows down my stride considerably…I really noticed this at the end of the 8K last week. If I’m able to keep my shoulders relaxed and my arm swing natural, I can easily maintain a much faster pace than if I don’t.

Fast forward to today. Got home from work and decided to do a quick 3-3.5 miles, no watch, no pressure. Although the temperature still hovered in the 80s, I felt great the entire time. A cool breeze blew in from the lake, and the few times my arms and shoulders felt like they were creeping up, I quickly adjusted. My stride felt smooth and easy nearly the entire time. It’s like something clicked for me during my days off, and now I feel ready to build the intensity back up again.

This upcoming week, I start training in earnest for my next big race, the Chicago Half Marathon in late September. I’ll possibly have a few shorter races between then and now (including a new state if all goes well!), but will mostly be focusing on getting ready to tackle 13.1 miles for the second time. I’m excited to be getting out of training limbo and into a more structured regimen again, and after having a couple of weeks to relax, I feel ready, both physically and mentally, for the challenge ahead.

Summer Cooking: Kale Tabbouleh

I suppose you could say my love for running and my love for food go hand-in-hand. I started getting into cooking right around the time I started running in my early 20s. Sure, takeout Chinese food and midnight pizzas were delicious, and I had no qualms about indulging on a fairly regular basis, especially during half-marathon training! For my day-to-day life as a runner, though, I felt infinitely more energetic if I ate mostly homemade, veggie-based food. I was by no means a master chef when I first started, but got surprisingly far on assorted combinations of rice/various grains, beans/legumes, leafy green veggies, and cheese.

Then and now, I almost exclusively cook vegetarian meals at home, partially in an effort to be more environmentally friendly, but also because I am completely squicked out by the texture of raw meat. That’s not to say I never eat meat; I do occasionally (mostly if someone else makes it for me), but it’s not a huge part of my diet at all. Hooray, flexitarianism!

Summer has always been a little challenging for me in the kitchen, though. Most of my go-to recipes are soups and stews, and who wants to stand over a hot stove in the middle of July? Salads are a good option, but as a runner, they sometimes don’t feel substantial enough and I end up hungry again an hour later. As a result, at this time of year, I’m constantly on the lookout for creative ideas for filling, protein-packed, mostly cold dishes to try. Lo and behold, a friend recently sent along this New York Times Cooking recipe for a kale tabbouleh, and it has quickly earned a top slot in my summer meal rotation. It’s relatively simple, it will fill you up, and there are a LOT of possible variations. My adjusted version of the NYT recipe with my own added commentary (in parentheses):

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup fine bulgur, dry (you can also substitute quinoa…both are good cold)
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 shallot, finely chopped (red onion would work as a substitute, too)
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• ~1 teaspoon fine salt (adjust depending on your taste)
• ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 bunch kale (~5 cups), stems removed, leaves chopped (or torn) into 1-2 in. pieces
• 2 large ripe tomatoes, diced, ~2 cups (you can sub sun-dried tomatoes for a slightly different flavor)
• ½ cup torn mint leaves
• ½ cup diced radish*
• 1 can garbanzo beans, drained, or ~1 cup dried garbanzo beans, cooked and drained*
• 6-8 oz. feta cheese*

*=Optional additions, do as many or as few as you want

PREPARATION

1. Prep veggies. Cook bulgur (and garbanzo beans, if desired) according to package instructions.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together lemon juice, shallot, cumin and salt. Whisk in olive oil.
3. In a large bowl, toss together kale, tomatoes, mint and radish. Once the bulgur (and optional garbanzo beans) are cooked, stir those in. You can let the hot ingredients cool first, but I like how they help tenderize the kale if they are thrown in right off the stove. Toss in dressing. If you want to add feta, toss it in just before serving.

Enjoy, and be sure to leave your favorite variations in the comments!

Pennsylvania: The Shady Streets of Swarthmore

Greetings and Happy Fourth of July from just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, birth city of today’s holiday! The last few days have been an absolute blast as I’ve been having a long-overdue catch up session with my immediate and extended family. We have been passing the time with lots of games, lots of laughs, and most importantly, lots of food! I am fairly certain that over the last 4 days we all have managed to eat our collective weight in Rita’s Italian Ice, cheese dip, burgers, macaroni and cheese, cheese steaks, pizza, and other greasy, salty deliciousness far outside my usual veggie-heavy fare. Worth it? Absolutely. And even after all that debauchery, I still managed to get a Pennsylvania race in the books, finishing my very first 8K last night at the annual Swarthmore Lions Independence Eve 8K.

Swarthmore (locally pronounced “SWAHTH-more,” as I found out when I attempted to pronounce the town name as it appears on paper, like a noob) is a picturesque, rolling, tree-lined borough of Delaware County, to the southwest of Philadelphia proper. Its claim to fame is Swarthmore College, the esteemed liberal arts school situated at the top of it all.

Park Ave., the main drag where the race started and ended, backlit and hazy from the July sun.

The Independence Eve 8K, a small community affair of around 100 runners, by far the smallest race I’ve run in at least 3 years, starts in the town center, winds its way up through the scenic Swarthmore College campus for the first mile or so, then comes back down and passes through the shady streets of Swarthmore for the remainder of the race.

Pre-race shot of the front of the Swarthmore Town Center, well-stocked with tables of water bottles for the post-race victory bash. 

I arrived at the Swarthmore Town Center for packet pick up about an hour before start time, because I get nervous like that. I had in tow a good portion of my family as a cheering section (they are all really wonderful sports to put up with my hobbies the way they do). As you can see from the screenshot of my weather app, the temperature was still hovering around 90 degrees in the half hour leading up to the 7 pm start time, with roughly 70% humidity.

My weather app reading 90 degrees and partly sunny at 6:32 pm. Yikes.

I believe the only scientific way to describe how the ambient temperature felt to this Chicago runner would be something akin to “the sixth circle of Hell,” with the seventh circle being reserved only for truly awful, Death Valley-esque heat. Normally I avoid running at all in such weather, which is easy enough to do when you live in a place where the daytime temperature only cracks 90 a handful of days per year. Turns out though that avoidance maybe isn’t the best plan if you plan to run races anywhere south of the Great Lakes. Womp! Live and learn, I guess.

Due to the heat and hills, not to mention my deplorable diet over the last few days, I knew from the starting airhorn blast that I wasn’t going to be running anything close to my usual race pace (or even tempo pace), so I had already made peace with that reality. Instead, armed with 12 oz. of Gatorade in my trusty old Amphipod handheld bottle, I decided to make the race into a learning experience, a mini-assessment of how well I could run a course quite a bit outside my comfort zone.

Turns out, by that measure it wasn’t so bad. I survived the winding, uphill climb during mile 1 and still felt reasonably strong heading back into town. My sister even caught a picture of me between miles 2 and 3, still going steady if a little slower than usual.

Me, the blue t-shirt-clad speck in the distance, getting some relief on a downhill stretch.

Mentally, the hardest part was the stretch between miles 3 and 4. Despite steadily sipping on Gatorade and the fact that most of the course was actually pretty shady, by then I could really feel the heat and humidity dragging down my speed. I was getting passed constantly, which I try not to care about, but still find somewhat demoralizing as a naturally competitive person…yeah, gotta work on that. 

Fortunately at this point in the race, a few spectators stood outside their houses with garden hoses at the ready, misting us runners as we passed by. Whoever you all were, you have my eternal, undying love and gratitude! My favorite “aid station” of this type was definitely the small army of children around mile 4, armed with Super Soaker water guns. “Hands up if you want to get sprayed!” a mom (I’m assuming?) called out to us about 30 feet ahead of the awaiting ambush. Didn’t have to tell me twice! My hands went up and a gaggle of gleeful kids took aim, completely soaking me from head to toe and giving me just the relief I needed going into the final mile.

At last, the finish line clock glowed in the distance, and I had just enough energy left to kick it up a notch for the final stretch. My family went bananas as I crossed the finish line (they really are the best), and I got to cheer on the remainder of the runners who came in behind me. With my first 8K behind me, we headed home to gorge ourselves on celebratory pizza, cheesesteaks, and cheesy broccoli bites from Cocco’s Pizza, an old family favorite. It may not have been the fastest race I’ve ever run, but sometimes, the victory is in finishing a challenging course upright, without walking, and still smiling.