Four on the Fourth Race Report

So, that whole "posting the whole month of June" thing kinda fell apart at the end there, huh? I hope you can forgive me. I got wrapped up in traveling and visiting people and then June was just over. If it's any comfort, I have a race to tell you about now!

I've been reading a lot of The Athena Diaries, which is a blog written by an Athena runner and triathlete. 'Athena,' I've come to learn, is a competition category for women who weigh more than 150 lbs. They don't have it in every race, though, and in fact I've yet to find a race in my area that does have it. Anyway Misty, the author of the blog, usually writes 'race reports' after she does a race, and it seems to be, like, a thing that runners do. And since I have recently declared myself a runner, I too shall write a race report.

There's a series of three summer-to-fall races put on by a running club out here, and the first one is a 4-mile race on the 4th of July. It is the aptly named 'Four on the Fourth.' Because my running buddy H and I long ago hit the 4-mile mark in our training, and because we're trying to gain experience at running races in general, we signed up for this one. (Also, I hear if you do all three races - including a 10k in October and an 8k in November - you get a jacket!)

The night before the race H stayed at my place, since I live really close to the course. Unfortunately, we were both up pretty late because she had to babysit until around midnight and I had to wait up for her. Our 6:30 wake-up call came really early, which reminds me that I need to start practicing getting up and running in the early morning. The half marathon does start at 7am, after all. Temperatures in the week preceding the holiday weekend had been inching toward infernal, so imagine my delight when I checked weather.com and found out that it was a refreshing 65 degrees outside! It appears that there is a Santa Claus, and he's in the business of granting 4th-of-July wishes you didn't even realize you'd made.

I ate most of an English muffin and gave H the good news about the weather, and then we headed over to the race. When we got there, there were Runners, with a capital 'R,' doing freaking warm-up drills and shit. My mind was blown. To cope, I started trying to pick out normal-looking people that I thought I could take. They were mostly people over 40. I made the mistake of mentioning this to H and she made me feel guilty about it, but what was I supposed to do? There were 80-pound bird-people running sprints within my field of vision, and I needed to maintain a winner's outlook.

Unlike the Susan G. Komen race, this one was much smaller and a little more informal. The course was a mostly flat and shady loop around town that started and ended at a middle school and stayed in residential areas. The first tenth of a mile was on a major-ish road which apparently could only be blocked off for a short period of time, so all the runners had to wait until the last minute before lining up on the starting line. About 10 minutes before the start, we all herded from the school parking lot down to the starting line, and H and I dutifully took our places at the back of the pack. While she was setting up her ipod and I was nervously babbling about something-or-other, we suddenly heard the loud POP! of the starting gun. "Oh shit, was that it??" "I guess so, let's go!" We half-jogged across the start and for the first few yards while H got everything situated. (Someone later told me that they heard the guy yell "15 seconds!" before shooting off the gun, but I guess we were too far away back in Slowburg to hear him. He couldn't have rented a megaphone? I ask you.)

I'm still not used to racing, but I know enough to know that adrenaline can get the better of you and cause you to accidentally run way too fast at the beginning and wear yourself out, so I kept my eye on my fancypants watch to make sure we weren't going too quickly. I also wanted to help H pace herself because she was really disappointed with how she did at the Komen race and I hoped this would be a better experience for her. As a result, the first mile or so was a continuous loop of this conversation: "How fast are we going?" "Too fast, we've got to slow down." "Ok." It just felt so good outside and it was so pretty and there were so many people moving around us that it was hard not to get carried away.

As we tried to rein it in to a reasonable pace, I reassured H that all the people ahead of us were the fools that would have to stop and walk later, allowing us to pass them and be the ultimate champions. She looked over her shoulder and reported that there were only a handful of people behind us. We were passed by a man and his 6-year-old son. But no matter! We didn't come to beat anyone but ourselves.

H tends to take more walk breaks than I do, and also doesn't have a great time with hills, so when we got halfway up our second hill (at about mile 1.3), she stopped to walk and waved me on. And so I was off on my own. I maintained a pretty consistent pace (about 12:00, which was faster than I expected) throughout the race, trying to balance my desire to let loose and go flying down the course, and my fear that at any moment I would hit a wall and have to stop and walk. Ultimately, I felt good enough at the end that I think I probably could have done it a bit faster, but I figure it was better to be safe than sorry, and I'm glad I ended in good shape.

Although I don't consider myself to be particularly competitive, I found that I could not stop myself from passing people. It's just that there were a lot of people, going about the same pace as me, spread out every few feet in front of me. I'd be coming up on one and think, "oh, I can definitely pass her, and after that, I'll slow down a little." But as soon as I passed that person I'd be within range to pass another. It went on like that from the time I left H to about the 2.5 mile mark, at which point I had passed everyone that was easily passable. The next closest people were a pair of women about 50 feet ahead of me, and I was too afraid of wearing myself out to risk speeding up and going after them. When I realized I had passed everyone I could, I thought with some satisfaction, "This is it. I am officially the fastest of the slowest." My place as President and Benevolent Dictator of the Slow Motion Running Club has been validated. Stick with me, kids, and you too can be marginally faster than the slowest 10% of runners out there.

I'd like to pause here for a word about pace. If you are not a runner, you may not have much perspective on this, so I thought I'd fill you in. People who consider themselves to be Runners with a capital 'R' (the ones inexplicably doing the warm-up sprints before the race) would probably tell you that a 7:00 (that's minutes per mile) pace is respectable. At my fastest, I probably manage about a 10:00 pace, although I hope to get a bit faster in the future. For the half marathon, I'm thinking that the best-case scenario will be about a 13:00 pace, which is where I had set the bar for Four on the Fourth (and which is admittedly a pretty low bar, but that's how I like it). Thus, I was quite satisfied that I ran the race with a consistent 12:00 pace, but it's worth noting that in the Wide World of Sports this is really pretty slow. You'll see what I mean when I get to the part about the awards ceremony.

Anyway, back to the race! The best part about passing all of those people and assuming my rightful place as Queen of Slowburg was that there was one last decent-sized hill to climb as we closed in on the final mile, and eventually I was even able to pass the two women that had previously seemed untouchable. Take that, MediumPaceVille! Slowburg is out to annex you!

The end of the race was three-quarters of a lap around the school's track, which was just awesome. Almost as awesome as running into the school's parking lot and passing a volunteer who said, "Good job, you're almost there! Great stride!" He probably says that to all of the sweaty and disheveled novice runners, but he sounded like he really meant it when he said it to me. I was going to stop and hug him, but you know; I was running a race, and all. Once you get to the track, you have no choice but to continue running, because who stops and walks on the track?? No. You must come into the finish like you mean it, which I did. And then I gratefully stopped and guzzled some water.

My finish, however, was nothing compared to my pal H's. I was anxiously awaiting her arrival, concerned about whether her race had gone well this time, or if it had been as painful as the Komen race. A few minutes after I finished, though, I saw her come breezing onto the track. When she reached the straightaway leading up to the finish line, homegirl started SPRINTING. It was beautiful. I yelled her name as she streaked across the finish line, and then she collapsed onto the grass and didn't speak for awhile.

In the end, I finished in about 48:00, right on track with my steady pace. H finished around 53:00, I think. My enthusiasm over having beaten my goal faded a bit when the awards ceremony started and I realized that I would have to quite literally cut my time in half if I ever want to win anything. Well, that's not entirely true. I think the winner of the female 70+ age group finished in about 46:00. So it's either cut my time in half, or continue training for the next 50 years and bide my time until my competitors slow down enough that I can overtake them. I don't mind, I'm patient. In this decade, though, I placed 638 out of 686 overall (in your face, 50 people slower than me) (except you, H, sorry) and 40 out of 51 in females ages 25-29. And I'm pretty damn pleased about it.

In addition to the glory of being the fastest of the slow, we also got these commemorative race socks:


And then we (H and I and our biggest cheerleader E) went to see fireworks and eat a picnic dinner and drink juicebox wine.

I'm Still Hoping to Get a Doctor's Note Validating This as a Legitimate Medical Condition

Although I am now officially 25 years old, I continue to have the sleeping habits of an unsupervised 12-year-old on summer vacation. I routinely stay up past midnight for no apparent reason, and often take hours-long naps as soon as I get home in the evenings. Most of the people close to me are aware of these habits, and they all think it is HAHA HILARIOUS to joke about how I can't get anywhere on time in the morning, which is not even true, thankyouverymuch. If you want me to arrive on time, you just have to plan your event after 10 am. Otherwise, you should be aware that there is about a 75% chance that I'm going to be late.

Anyway, I've been thinking about it, and I've come up with a few potential explanations for why my sleep schedule is so erratic. It could be any one of these things, but I suspect that it's probably a combination of all three of them...

Reason #1: I just like to be up late at night. To me, there's something mystical about being up late at night, and I've liked it ever since I was a little kid. Even though it scared me a little, I used stay up well into the night reading, the only person awake in my house. I liked to imagine that my bed, ensconced in lamplight, was an island adrift in a sea of peace and solitude and darkness. Being awake late at night, when most other people are asleep, makes me feel both completely independent from and inextricably connected to everyone else in the world. Our differences are greatly attenuated when we're unconscious, and unconscious people can't exert their will upon each other. There's freedom and unity in the dead of night.

Reason #2: I simply don't understand the connection between the time I go to bed at night and the time I'll have to get up the next morning. This is related to the fantastical way I have of thinking about the nighttime. While intellectually I understand that one day blends into the next and that getting up early means I should go to bed early, I think that somewhere deep down I really believe that the amount of sleep I get is somehow a constant, and that whatever I do late at night doesn't really count as yesterday or tomorrow. I have been proven wrong on this point repeatedly, most recently last night when I stayed up until 3 am reading, even though I had to get up at 7:30 and go to work. And yet I persist behaving as though the time after the sun goes down is actually time spent in the Twilight Zone, completely unrelated to how I spend daylight hours.

Reason #3: Procrastination. I firmly believe that the best possible way to accomplish anything is to put it off for as long as possible. I think that my poor sleeping habits might be a natural extension of my tendency toward procrastination. It starts with procrastinating homework, then procrastinating running and phone calls and showering, and suddenly you're procrastinating the start of an entire day. Because part of me believes that if I don't sleep, tomorrow won't come, and thus staying up late is a way to prevent tomorrow from ever arriving. If late-night is timeless, I don't have any responsibilities, and if tomorrow doesn't come, I'll NEVER have any responsibilities. It's clearly a win-win.

... At least, it seems like a brilliant strategy while I'm reading and playing video games until 4 am. But 3 hours later when my alarm is going off and I'm forced to trudge to work and write a grant proposal with only the vaguest remaining grasp of the English language, suddenly it doesn't seem so smart. But what can I do? Twelve hours later the sun goes down, and I'm whisked off into responsibility-free solitude, once again.

Staring Blankly at the Screen

Over the weekend I completely blew my all-month posting schedule, because I went and stayed in my hometown so I could go to an engagement party for an old friend from high school. Apparently having my mind blown by the passage of time makes me forget to write on my blog.

Unfortunately, I don't have anything particularly brilliant today to make up for the lapse. I came home this afternoon and took a 4-hour long nap instead of doing anything useful. Things I could have done instead of that nap include: eating dinner, making lunch to take to work tomorrow, reading a book, running 2 miles like I was supposed to, working on revisions to my journal submission, writing something interesting for my blog, answering the phone when my friend called, being a useful human being.

As you can see, I'm feeling a little guilty about the whole thing. I love naps, but sometimes I feel so awful and ashamed when I wake up from them that I wonder if they're worth it. Plus now I have a headache and I'm vaguely confused about life and I'm really hungry but I don't have the focus to cook anything.

I just realized that this is basically just 4 paragraphs of whining, so I think I'm going to go ahead and end it here. Just know that if I had the good sense to say anything interesting right now, you guys would be the first to hear it.

Grumbling

Even though I'm not supposed to work on Fridays, I had to go to work today because the people who foolishly hired me to be an integral part of their research team are currently scrambling to get a grant proposal finished.

Then I came home and immediately had to go out and run 6 miles. I wisely chose to run a new route so that I wouldn't be bored by the tedium inherent in running the same old trail for an hour. I didn't really assess the route before I started it, but I guess you could say it was quite pleasant, as long as you don't count the part at the end of the route where it suddenly turned into TWO STRAIGHT MILES OF NONSTOP MISERY HILLS. In other words, I didn't break any records today. Unless there are records for "Most Sweat-Soaked Shirt" or "Slowest Limp Up a Mountain" or "Running Face That Looks Most Like a Stroke In Progress." Or how about "Most Labored Breathing While Walking"?

I could come up with these for days, people.

AND THEN I got home and the whole apartment smelled like the hot wet litter box of Satan's own cat-beast, who is probably named "Buttsplosion," after his digestive problems. The reason the apartment smelled like that because Charlie, who I've recently renamed "Feces Factory" because I want everyone to be put off their meals just as I am every day, actually does have a litter box that sits in our dining room, the smell of which somehow expands to fill every inch of space in our unfortunately quite open floor plan. Since something had to be done to make the smell stop I pulled out the litter box liner and its contents, but then somehow the smell impossibly got EVEN WORSE, for reasons that are too disgusting to explain. And then I valiantly struggled my way out the door and across the parking lot with the Bag of Olfactory Nightmares, because it was WAY too heavy because someone - who is not me - put too much litter in it when they cleaned the box last time. So I, breathing through my mouth the entire time (and still tired from running 6 miles up and down the hills of woe and sadness), had to take a few steps, set the bag down, take a few steps, and set the bag down, all the way to the dumpster which obviously already has it in for me. And then I had to heave the bag in through that terrible small shoulder-level hole and pray with all my heart that it would go IN and not somehow tumble OUT and on to me, forcing me to burn myself alive just to be free of the smell.

Which thankfully did not happen. But the threat was very real.

In conclusion, it's been an exhausting day, so I could not possibly write you a blog post. Please forgive me.

Tapped Out

This evening I'm particularly exhausted and unimaginative, so once again I'm going to fall back on someone else's genius. This post at Hyperbole and a Half is a pretty good description of my own efforts to be responsible. And this one probably explains why sometimes I just HATE EVERYONE ON THE BUS WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE for no particular reason.

But really, it's all good, so I recommend poking around there tonight while I'm being a bum. Tra-la-la!

Data Whore

Ever the dedicated social scientist, I've found that one of the most rewarding parts of running is the sweet, sweet data it produces. I have a fancy-pants sports watch that lets me keep track of my pace and my time and my time for each mile, and more than once I have managed to work up the motivation to get out the door and run simply by thinking about the satisfaction I'd feel when I got home and entered the data into my spreadsheet.

It's OK, I'll wait while you chuckle at my insanity. Is my spreadsheet any less ridiculous if I say that I only keep track of the ones that are over 5 miles? No? Alright then.

This is the kind of illness that could hypothetically lead someone to make an Excel spreadsheet to track how they're spending their time at work, in order to determine how guilty they ought to feel about their shameless internet addiction. (The answer, hypothetically? Very guilty.) (Also, if someone has a problem with procrastination at work, maybe their first response shouldn't be to make a completely un-work-related spreadsheet. But I digress.)

My compulsion to analyze everything for patterns and meaning extends to just about everything, to the extent that I often find myself mentally composing poetic meditations on the similarities between autumn leaves and adolescence, or whatever. Sometimes the "meaning" behind things is obvious to the point of being cliche, while on the other hand sometimes a thing just is what it is. But what really drives me crazy is when something seems like it must hold a deeper meaning that I just can't put into words.

For instance. I've been running off and on for a long time, and usually when I start back up again I get really bad blood blisters, which are gross and I'm sorry I brought it up. But blisters, when left alone, heal up and turn into calluses over time, and eventually my feet don't hurt nearly as much because they're protected by the calluses. Of course, after awhile the calluses start to wear away and then eventually I'm back down to unblemished, unprotected, youthful skin. And generally the cycle starts again. Since today was the day that I reached that point - the clean skin starting-over point - and I was scheduled to run 5 miles, I thought about this blister-callus-recovery cycle all day long. I really feel like it must be a metaphor for something, but I can't figure out what, and it's driving me a little crazy, like a word on the tip of my tongue, or a familiar fact abruptly forgotten. And then this afternoon, a new wrinkle: I finished my run and I gingerly removed my socks to find... no new blisters. Skin that was sore and red, and a little blistery in places, but not nearly the disaster I expected.

So I just don't know. I feel like I should be able to spin this pattern into a great metaphor for some aspect of life, but it's not coming to me. Either I'm losing my touch, or sometimes a foot is just a foot, even for an analytical Excel wizard.

Oh, Just Shut Up and Say Thank You

I've been in a little bit of a funk for the past few days, and I think it has to do with my birthday last week. It's not because I'm having some kind of existential crisis about aging, though. I know I'm still young, and even if I weren't I think it's a little silly to get all worked up about the process of aging. You might as well cry when the sun sets every day. (Although we'll see how serene I am about it when I turn 30... or 40... or 50...) No, what I have is an existential crisis about something else.

I had a really great birthday week, I'd say. It revealed a virtual embarrassment of riches, in both material gifts and in the form of people that love me. The problem I'm having is that, to me, it is also a literal embarrassment of riches. When you're faced like that, all at once, with an overflow of pitch-perfect kindnesses and love, it's a lot of pressure. I'm suddenly conscious of my great luck, my privilege, my blessedness, to be loved by these people, and fearful that I don't deserve it.

I don't always receive gifts and compliments well, is what I'm trying to say. It makes me anxious and melancholy. What if I don't deserve it? What if this poor person's affection is misplaced? How will I ever thank them adequately? What if I disappoint them, and then they rue the day they were ever kind to me? All of this good fortune can't possibly be a good thing. It might as well be frogs raining from the heavens or blood filling my bathtub, so certain are the terrible consequences that will follow.

You have no idea how much work it is, finding a way to twist a blessing into a curse. I'd make a joke about Jewish guilt, but I'm not Jewish (or Catholic) and thus have no cultural stereotype to fall back on.

Ultimately I suppose I'm just as deserving of a great birthday as anyone else is, and it's not very gracious of me to go around questioning the wisdom of those who care about me. So, just to be polite, I'm trying to accept it gratefully and without skepticism.

Dear Diary: Last week was my birthday and it was awesome. I am a very lucky girl, and there's nothing wrong with that. So there.

And This is What You Hum, You Hum...

Since my last post about running music garnered some positive feedback (in real life) (shut up, yes it did), I thought I would post some more stuff that gets me pumped when I run. These are both on the album Keasbey Nights, which I have listened to for a many a run.

(Note: If loud and fast isn't your taste, you might want to skip this one and go read a book instead.)





Speaking of many a run, my current music is getting a little stale. If anyone has any recommendations for power songs, let me know. You can tell it's a good song if
a) it would work as the soundtrack to an 80s sports movie training montage, or
b) it might inspire a music video about misfits stickin it to the man.

Happy Father's Day

When I was 15 and my heart got broken, I climbed onto my Dad's lap and cried on his shoulder while he rubbed my back and offered to kill my ex-boyfriend. Even though I was way too big to be sitting in his lap, I'll never be too big for him to tell me everything's OK.

Thanks to my Dad, and all the other Dads out there whose love is unchanged, even as their kids grow up.

This Post Brought to You By Lowe's Home Improvement*

For whatever reason, this weekend finds me positively brimming with energy to get things done. I've scheduled appointments, gotten my hair cut and my license renewed, done laundry and dishes, and hung pictures that I've been meaning to hang for months.

The picture-hanging thing is interesting because it's one of those little "if only I had the time" kind of projects that seems so unbearably tedious to think about. I kept thinking, in a whiny sort of way, I'd like to do it but then I'll have to pick out pictures to print and then go to the store and plus I've got to buy frames and what if I hang them crooked? And then I would lie down, overwhelmed with the pressure of it all. Of course, when it came down to it, it was actually kind of enjoyable picking out the pictures and getting them printed, and the picture-hanging itself didn't take more than 20 minutes. It all required relatively little effort, considering the satisfaction I get every time I glance at my handiwork.

It's really kind of alarming how easy and pleasant it was, and it makes me wonder what other things I've missed out on just because I've built them up to be some impossibly complicated task. Here's a small sample of other things that I'd like to do, but haven't done because it seems like too much work:

1) Paint my raggedy Goodwill desk a delightful shade of lime green
2) Finally hang the adorable hanging lamp I got from Ikea (if I told you how long ago I bought it, I'd have to kill you)
3) Sell last year's textbooks online for a hefty profit of one meeeellion dollars

Maybe I can ride the wave of picture-hanging success right into another project. It's all about momentum, baby.

So what about you guys? Anyone want to share what fantasy project they'd tackle if they suddenly woke up with buckets of energy and motivation?

*Not really.

OW MY LEGS, Plus Deep Thoughts

I know you're probably sick of hearing about running, but I just ran 6 miles (for the first time ever!) and it's the most impressive thing I've accomplished today, so I have no choice but to tell you about it. Although I don't exactly recommend it, it wasn't nearly as miserable as it could have been. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "merely exhausted" and 10 being "this is a fate worse than death," I finished up at about a 6.5, which is roughly equivalent to "I'd like to sit down now and never stand up again, please."

I generally do my longer runs on this really nice flat, paved trail not too far away. The trail is about 6 miles long (supposedly, I haven't covered it all yet) and it's marked every quarter-mile so you get the satisfaction of seeing your distance tick by as you go. The best part about the trail, in my opinion, is that when I reach the marker for one quarter-mile from the finish line, I can actually SEE the next marker, the one where I get to stop and walk and never run again, amen. I cannot overemphasize the rush I get from being able to see the finish while I run that last miserable quarter-mile. It's like the difference between lifting a car because a guy in a bar dared you to, and lifting a car because your baby IS TRAPPED UNDER THE REAR WHEEL OMG SAVE HIM NOW!

Even though I didn't drop dead this time, I really needed that extra push today, because things started to get kind of hazy during the last mile and a half. I could tell I was really getting tired when I realized that in addition to being sore and out of breath, even my thoughts were incoherent. It was like the kind of stuff you think about right before you fall asleep, like you're riding a camel backward through the desert while reading an old copy of Esquire when suddenly a flamingo flags you down and asks for a ride and zzzzzz..... Except I didn't have the pleasure of falling asleep, I just waited to see whether my feet would keep moving even if I happened to completely lose touch with reality. The good news is that life started making sense again when I finally stopped.

I think the best thing I've gotten from this whole experience so far is a much broader idea of what I can withstand. I stopped and walked a couple times today, for 3 or 4 minutes at a time, and if I had given myself the choice I probably would have walked the last mile or two. But every time I forced my feet to start again, and found that somehow I had the ability to keep going for a little while longer. When I put it that way, it makes it sound kind of like I have some kind of amazing willpower, but I really don't. Anyone who's ever seen my behavior in the presence of Oreos knows this.

In reality, I think it's just one example of what any person can do, and it applies to much more than running. In almost any situation where we think we're at our limit, we can make the decision to bear it for one more step, one more moment, one more breath. And if we make it through that one, we can do it again.

There's this thing that happens occasionally where I think I'm as tired as I can possibly be but I keep running anyway, and then suddenly my whole body starts to tingle. The feeling itself isn't really pleasant or unpleasant, and the first time it happened I was vaguely unsettled, waiting to see if a light were about to appear to guide me home. I have no idea what the scientific explanation for it is; in all likelihood it's the feeling of three years being taken off the end of my life. Nevertheless, I like to think of it as my brain just throwing up its hands and resolving to just stop registering pain altogether, since I seem to be hellbent on ignoring it anyway. I'm beginning to believe that you can short-circuit your brain like that in any situation that seems unbearable. Maybe by choosing to accept it and keep going anyway, you adapt, and suddenly your mind justs stop protesting.

So. In your face, brain! Now who's in charge??

Blurgh

I am exceptionally out of it today, so here's a series of loosely related thoughts...

I overslept by A LOT this morning due to a combination of a misbehaving alarm clock and a bad case of insomnia. As late as I slept, the only reason I woke up when I did was because the maintenance guys were pounding on my door so they could come in and change my air filter. If they hadn't come by, I might still be asleep now.

We had pizza at work today in honor of my upcoming birthday, and that was lovely. It also nicely counterbalanced the jokes that my officemate kept making about how I was going to be fired due to tardiness.

I bought a new alarm clock that will also play my ipod, so that's cool.

I enjoyed the song "I Kissed a Girl" when it was first released, and that was fun while it lasted, but I think it's about time that Katy Perry be stopped.

Did I mention that the first thing I did when I woke up was send my officemate an email, subject line: "ACK!" ?

According to my former boss / co-author, the response we got back on that paper yesterday is no big deal and should be easy to respond to. Somewhere, in an alternate universe, there is a version of me that accepts criticism with grace and aplomb.

Does anybody have any tips on what kind of face you're supposed to make when people are singing happy birthday to you? Also, what do you do with your hands? Is there a way to prevent people from singing to you altogether? It's too late to avoid it this year, but I'd like to start preparing for next time.

First Draft of a Letter

To the reviewers responsible for rejecting my article:

Thank you for taking the time to carefully review the very first article for which I have been the lead author. I appreciate the care and consideration that you each put into criticizing every element of the paper, down to my choice of words in the third paragraph on page 20. I have to admit that I was apprehensive about the experience of having my article "peer-reviewed." I see now however that I was woefully unprepared. Rest assured that you all have the distinction of being without peer. That is, I can say with certainty that you have no peer in the department where I work. I haven't checked the pre-kindergarten down the road, however; perhaps your peers can be found there.

Nevertheless, your comments have been very useful to me and my co-authors. As I continue my career in academia, it will be useful to keep in mind how a well-written article may be received by readers with only the barest grasp of reading comprehension. For instance, although we state very clearly in our methods section that our sample size is roughly 200 participants, your comments repeatedly refer to a sample of 500. My co-authors and I obviously made a grave error when we assumed that our peers would understand the difference between these two numbers. Perhaps if we had compared the number 200 to something more concrete, like "nearly four times the number of crayons in a big box of Crayolas"? We will consider this approach as we begin work on our next draft.

Other things that we will keep in mind in for the next draft, per your suggestions: the importance of incorporating variables that have nothing to do with our research questions, the necessity of using entirely different statistical methods, and the need for repeatedly repeating again the many things that we already said once but which somehow escaped your attention. We will submit this revised draft to you as quickly as time allows. If the same group of reviewers is unavailable to provide feedback on the new draft, feel free to send it to a group of untrained monkeys. I feel certain that their response will be consistent with yours.

Regards,
A colleague.

I'm thinking that perhaps I should write a second draft, now that I've got that off my chest. I want to assure you all that there's no need to feel bad for me, though. Most articles don't get published the first time they're submitted. We'll just take their suggestions, revise it, and submit it again, no big deal. Obviously I just need to grow a thicker skin and get more accustomed to the process. But even when this article is finally published, don't think I'll forget the infinite ineptitude of this group of reviewers. Oh no. I'll NEVER FORGET.

Plan Your Dream Vacation!

Due to several long and involved phone conversations with loved ones this evening, I have no time to post anything of substance for you. However, have you heard of wikitravel.org? It's exactly what it sounds like: travel guides to a variety of destinations, written by random people with internet access. Personally, I love reading travel guides because they remind me of all the time I spent poring over them when I studied abroad. Since I found this website, I've planned imaginary trips to New Zealand (sparked by a night of youtube-ing clips of Flight of the Conchords), San Diego, and Austin. So, if you get a chance, go there and search for your dream destination. If you like, you can come back and tell me about it! (Bonus points if you imply that you'll be taking me with you when you go.)

Crankyblogger is Cranky, RAAAARRR

While a shift in hormone levels certainly doesn't affect my judgment or my ability to function in society, I will acknowledge that it can sometimes cause me to have a little bit of a... bad attitude, we'll say. When such a bad attitude arises, I find that it's best to sublimate my feelings of rage into more productive pursuits, like entertaining people on the internet. With that in mind, allow me to present to you...

Ranty Passive-Aggressive Notes I've Written In My Head This Week

1) Do you like clean silverware? I sure do. It's a proven fact that silverware gets much cleaner when it's evenly distributed throughout all of the silverware squares in the dishwasher, rather than all crammed into just the two squares at the front. Why don't you want clean silverware? Have you no interest in fine living?

2) No no, after YOU. I just wanted to shop for groceries, but I see that this urgent phone conversation requires your attention immediately, even if that means you must stop in the middle of the aisle and lean on your shopping cart like a big ol' human boulder set in my path. Perhaps the gods have sent you here to test my fortitude. Thank you, thank you so much.

3) We all get tired after working out, I know. That's why I totally understand why you couldn't take your dirty socks back to your room and were thus forced to leave them on the living room floor. After all, it's difficult enough moving just your body around when you're that tired. If you had tried to lift and carry that extra half-ounce of cotton material, you might have collapsed. There there, rest now. We'll pick up those socks sometime next week.

4) An abbreviated guide to positioning yourself on public transportation, for men: If your tightly-swaddled crotch is thrust directly into the face of a seated patron, consider turning 90 degrees to the right or left and preserving the dignity of all involved.

5) The tiny people in the television can't hear you. I know you think they need your help, but I've got great news! They're not real! Feel free to adjust your behavior (and volume level) accordingly.

6) ATTENTION: If you spill wine often enough to have perfected your drunken upholstery-cleaning technique, it's time to either a) stop drinking or b) start drinking from a sippy cup. Make your choice, before I make it for you.

Don't worry, deep down I'm still the bright ray of sunshine I've always been. I'll get back to spewing rainbows and cupcake sprinkles as soon as possible.

Things I Hope Not to Do If/When I'm Married

Here lately I've been paying a lot of attention to all the couples around me. I've also probably been reading a little too much of this website. And, as luck would have it, I'm currently channel-surfing and I seem to have stumbled upon the season premiere of Bridezillas. In response to all this input, I've been putting together a mental list of things I hope I never do when I'm married (or really, in the context of any relationship). Here's what we've got so far:

Things I Hope Never to Do

1) Refer to my spouse as "hubs," "hubby," "hubster," or any variation thereof
2) Refer to myself as "wifey"
3) Write weird blog posts/facebook statuses/text messages/whatever listing all of the housework and cooking I've done that day and what an awesome wife that makes me
4) Have a joint facebook account with my significant other
5) Refer to my significant other by a cutesy pet name in public (in private, however, I'll call Widdle Pookie Honey Lovebuns whatever I like)
6) Call my significant other and harass him a million times a day
7) Forget the importance of occasionally leaving my significant other at home while I socialize on my own
8) (And I hope I don't forget that he'll probably want to do the same sometimes)

Of course, this is all just about my personal preferences. If you do any of those things, I still love you anyway. And if you'd like to submit your own list of things you'll never do, feel free!

Damn Ladies, You Awesome

Although it would make a much better story, I didn't throw up or cry or drop dead at the race this morning. As a matter of fact, I think it went quite well. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night because I stayed with my running buddy H (who is also running the half marathon with me) and at least two of her neighbors decided to have loud, outdoor parties to mark the occasion. I would have been tired this morning anyway because we had to get up at 6am, but I don't think the less than 4 hours of sleep I got helped the situation any.

Once we got out to race site, though, excitement took over and I perked up. If you're not aware, the Susan G. Komen races raise money for breast cancer research and prevention. There were women everywhere wearing fancy pink shirts that said things like "The Cureinators: Hasta la Vista, Cancer!" and women who had written "ta" on the back of each calf so that when they ran it flashed "ta-ta" over and over again. Breast cancer survivors got to wear special hot pink shirts, and whenever one crossed the finish line her name would be announced. It was fantastic.

There were three separate 5k runs this morning, and we ran in the women's-only recreational race, thinking it would be empowering to our inner Wonder Women. It totally was, and I got choked up countless times. From the personalized shirts, to the "In memory of" and "In celebration of" placards that people were wearing, to the volunteers on the sidelines holding signs saying things like "Fight like a girl" and "You're almost, almost there." One lady who lived along the route was on her porch with a stereo blaring "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and dancing along. There were several churches along the route, too, and outside one of them was a whole damn ladies' choir singing "We Are Family." Every time we passed people cheering for us I would pick up the pace (even if it was just briefly), so that they'd know they weren't cheering in vain. I didn't stop running once, even though coming up the hill toward the end I seriously wanted to. I highly recommend the experience to any one, even if you just walk. It was the best thing I've done with a Saturday morning in months.

Once we were all done (and had a nap), we went out to lunch and window-shopped around town a little bit. We visited the running store because we were high on our accomplishment and we wanted to show people what real champions look like. To celebrate my new life as someone who does nothing but run and spend money, I bought this:


That, in case you can't tell, is a hot pink, skull-and-crossbones-themed headband. It symbolizes that I am both fashionable and the finest slow-motion runner on the high seas.

So, to wrap up: Remember your breast health, ladies! Monthly self-exams, yearly exams by your doctor, and regular mammograms starting when you're 40 years old. Engage in these preventative measures, and I promise that tomorrow I'll do my best to talk about something other than running.

This Life of Mine is Getting Out of Hand

So far I've managed to watch 5 episodes of True Blood Season 2, and I just have one question: Am I the only person that wants to punch herself in the face every time Sookie and Bill have a conversation? I just can't stop thinking about the picture Sweetney posted on her site awhile back. (Seriously, follow that link, it makes me giggle so much.)

At any rate, I was up late last night watching so much vampire smut that I slept in... um... quite a lot today. And now I have to head over to stay at my friend's house so we can get up early in the morning and run in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. I've never run in a legit race before, so this is a test. It's only a 5k so it's not a real big deal, but if I have a panic attack and fall to the ground in the fetal position due to all the excitement, there's still time to drop out of the half marathon!

I'll let you know how it goes.

A Japanese Vampire Party, Just As God Intended

This evening, I ran farther than I've ever run in my life! Five miles! I'm sure that sometime during the next 3 months of training the novelty of setting new records will wear off, but for now I think it's cause for celebration.

How am I celebrating? Well I'm glad you asked!



So to recap: run 5 miles, spend $50. I think maybe after I finish running the race, I'll buy a car.

Fat and Fitness, Love and Hate

You know how sometimes you stumble upon something interesting on the internet, and it links to something else interesting, which links to something else... and then 2 hours later you come to your senses and now you're an expert on some completely unexpected topic? Of course you do. And as one of the distinguished few who holds a black belt in Time-Wasting, it happens to me all the time. The most recent journey I took along the well-worn side paths of the internet is one I been thinking about a lot, so I wanted to share it with you.

It all started with a post by Black Hockey Jesus, who has run at least a mile every day since January 1st of this year. At the risk of oversimplifying, the gist of his post was that if a person is overweight or obese, they shouldn't waste their time trying to achieve "fat acceptance." Instead, he or she should muster the "courage to change," because no one will ever be proud to weigh 300 lbs, nor should they be. BHJ believes that his disgust with himself is what motivated him to change his life, and his post seemed to suggest that others should also try to harness the energy of their self-hate and use it to power an ambitious fitness regimen.

While I don't fully agree with that standpoint, I found that in the comments on the post, many people did. Some even commended him for having the courage to state the unpleasant truth. Someone speculated that if a woman had written the same post, it would have resulted in a much more vitriolic free-for-all. BHJ agreed and referred to this post, which was written by a female fitness blogger named Kristen, who I had never read before. That post (the second stop on my tour of the internet) didn't say quite the same thing as BHJ's. Kristen did say, however, that she didn't buy the argument that anyone was genetically predisposed to being a certain size. She seems to feel that anyone can be fit provided they put in the work, and anyone that isn't putting in the work is just making excuses not to do something that they unquestionably ought to be doing.

From that post I bounced to this one by Swistle (who was also new to me), in which she "came out" as a plus-size woman. Swistle's post itself was, in my opinion, kind of uplifting. But once someone in the comments started criticizing Sundry (perhaps my favorite blogger) for joining the "religion of fitness," it all devolved into the same old genetics versus laziness debate.

Finally, at the end of my journey, I found Shapely Prose, which is a very well-written blog about feminism and fat acceptance, among other things. The stance at SP is that genetics do play a part in determining a person's size, that diets don't work, that exercise (not weight) determines one's health and fitness level, and that people should practice an approach to diet and exercise that emphasizes Health at Every Size.

So, now that you know what I know (and have been subjected to more links than you could possibly get through in a month), allow me to share my take on all this. From where I'm sitting, the subtext of a lot of this back and forth is that the people on the side of fat acceptance are saying, "This is just who I am" while the people on the side of concentrated fitness efforts are saying "It's hard, but I did it and so can you. If you're not fit it's because you don't want it badly enough to work as hard as I do." The fitness people are offended that fat people are discounting all of their hard work and chalking the results up to genetics; the fat people are offended that the fitness people judge them as lazy and unambitious. As far as I can tell, people on both sides are pissed because they feel as though they're being judged by people who really don't know anything about them.

What's interesting is that a lot of these arguments, when not read carefully, can lead the reader to think in terms of a false dichotomy, wherein you either a) love yourself and accept your imperfections and are therefore doomed to languish in mediocrity and obesity, or b) hate yourself for your imperfections and use that self-hate as motivation to work really REALLY hard for self-improvement.

I simply don't believe that these are our only options. For instance, the worst case scenarios are the people who truly do hate themselves because of their alleged faults, but don't find this hate to be a source of motivation for self-improvement. For some, self-hate isn't motivating at all; it's a reason to give up entirely. On the other hand, it's also possible to truly love yourself while simultaneously working to better yourself. I think that ultimately, the sincere belief that you are a valuable person who deserves good things in life can be a far more powerful impetus for change than any amount of self-loathing.

I want to point out, too, that when I say "better yourself," I'm not necessarily talking about losing weight. In my opinion, this isn't just about fat or fitness or obesity or health or however you choose to refer to it. In fact, it almost seems laughable that so many people are yelling at each other on the internet about calories and exercise, when the ways of thinking I've outlined here are really related to everything we do.

Instead of focusing exclusively on fat acceptance, as if the only people that need to worry about acceptance are fat people who've tried everything else, I think it would be far more useful if everyone focused on simple acceptance, period. Acceptance of ourselves as we are, and acceptance of others as they are. I think that rather than dooming you to mediocrity, self-acceptance makes it possible for you to work with what you've been given and make something beautiful from it. If you love yourself for who you are now, you're working for happiness now, as opposed to working tirelessly toward some abstract future in which you'll be thin/successful/awesome enough to deserve love.

And as for accepting others? I think it's really our only option. After all, is there any way you could ever truly understand the factors contributing to someone else's decisions? And whether someone chooses to work out 7 days a week or weigh 300lbs or live somewhere in between, do their personal choices really affect you at all?