Honor thy off day

Today is my off day.

Given the fact that my long run kicked my butt across town yesterday, you'd think I'd be overjoyed about this. But I'm a runner, so time off fills me with a strange mix of guilt, impatience and anxiety rather than relief.

At regular intervals throughout the day, I found myself plotting quick running getaways: During lunch? After my 3 p.m. phone interview?

I repeated to myself the advice of Jacksonville, Fla., running coach Keith Brantly, a 1996 Olympian marathoner and former University of Florida cross country runner who I spoke with about training plans for Gainesville's Five Points of Life Marathon: "Repeat after me: Rest is training, rest is training." Check out more of Brantly's very good advice about resting and tapering here.

Also check out Rest Easy, a Runner's World story about the benefits of taking at least one day off – no squats, no push-ups, no nothing — each week.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch bad movies and fall asleep. Let's hope my eagerness to run continues into tomorrow morning, when it's time to hit the road again.

Tough love from Bono on a tough run

All week, I've planned to squeeze in my long run during my lunch break today. All week, I've been excited about exploring Montgomery County further by trying a new route.

The piles of slush on every street corner thanks to this week's snow storm, coupled with a major work deadline that's been looming, left me thinking today wasn't the best day to make this happen. I idly wished I could find a new route that left from my front door and that promised a reprieve from the patches of ice, and started thinking about running later this week, instead.

Then, I got an e-mail from the leader of our running group at Pacers, outlining tonight's route, which she said "seems to be salted and well-lit." It goes right by my front door. We'll miss the group run tonight because of a scheduling conflict, but that left me pretty much out of excuses for lunchtime. I left around noon to tackle the 5.1-mile out-and-back course twice.

Let's just say that this wasn't my finest long run. The route was unbelievably slush-free, but that didn't stop my shoes from soaking through after the first mile. And I realized mid-run that I'm in desperate need of some new tunes. There are some serious hills on this route, and as I cycled through my iPod looking for a good pump-up song, I felt like I was looking through my closet before a night out: Tons of choices, but somehow, nothing that quite fits my needs.

Whatever the reason, the tunes or my shoes, I ran around Silver Spring ... OK, I'll leave the Whos out of this. I was just tired today, no two ways about it. My ankle, which I twisted a month ago running in Rock Creek Park, throbbed. The hills just about killed my lungs and thighs — I actually stopped to catch my breath on two of them. And I just felt fatigued in a way that made me want to talk back to the singers on my iPod (To Ice Cube: Life is neither a track meet nor a marathon, but a stupid hill loop I don't want to finish. To Eminem: Maybe YOU can go 'til you collapse, but I need to stretch.)

But in running, as in life, sometimes you get a break just when you really need one. The route goes right by Rock Creek Park, and after staring straight at the ground for five minutes or so while shuffling up one particularly taxing hill, I looked up to find myself on top, with a wide swath of snowy woods beside me. At the same time, U2's "Beautiful Day" came on my iPod. It's one thing to talk back to Eminem and Ice Cube. But Bono? I quit my whining, did the route twice despite going right by my house at the halfway point, and remembered that it was, in fact, a beautiful (if slushy) day.

Anyone have tunes to suggest? I'd be forever indebted if you'd post suggestions below.

Learning that less is more

I've long appreciated that the three-day-a-week training plan by the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training I'm following to train for the half marathon in March will prevent me from injuring myself while training for the half marathon in March. Until today, I didn't really appreciate that the plan prevents me from burnout, too.

I take an all-or-nothing mentality in training and in life — once I've committed myself to some task, I'm in 100 percent. This is great, until it's not. I'm the type of person who plays a new song on repeat til it makes me want to scream, eat a new recipe meal after meal until I can no longer stomach any of the ingredients and run as many miles as my body can take. Note to self: Just because there's a plan that says I should run 50 to 60 miles a week leading up to a marathon doesn't mean that's what I NEED to do to train effectively.

Having a plan that limits me to three running days, with intensive cross-training the other days, gives me built-in motivation to kick butt on my running days, and leaves me excited to run again when I'm cross-training. If I'd been following a traditional training plan, I'd be a little bit dreading my run today after what felt like a super-human effort in my treadmill speed workout yesterday.

Instead, I had an awesome swim with Steve today, and I'm already looking forward to running tomorrow.

Running some errands

I woke up this morning with conflicting desires: to run outside in the falling snow and to accomplish a long to-do list of quick little errands.

To satisfy both needs, I employed one of my favorite strategies: I literally ran errands.

I grabbed my backpack and set out to mail a package, return a movie to Blockbuster, pick up pizza dough for tomorrow's dinner from Whole Foods and grab some other groceries from Giant. Seeing everyone bundled up and smiling at the first real accumulation of the year put me in a great mood, and I burned through my first two stops.

It was nearly lunchtime when I hit Whole Foods. Even when I'm not hungry, this store is a black hole of temptation for me. I could spend hours -- and entire paychecks -- shopping for yummy little dips and fresh, tastefully arranged produce. Today's stop was especially dangerous, as I was tempted to use my run to justify impulse purchases ("But I deserve the roasted chipotle salsa! I ran here!"). I'm proud to report that I left with nothing more than pizza dough and some frozen vegetables to try a recipe posted by my friend Chris on his foodie blog, where you can find all sorts of yummy, healthy post-run treats.

I clocked a total of 25 minutes running -- OK, plodding -- through the snow while erranding, which was a little less than I'd hoped for. I decided to squeeze in my speed workout for the week on the treadmill when I got back.

I'm delighted to report that I actually walked away from the prospect of spiced Indian-style vegetables and went downstairs to the little gym instead, knocking out three 1-mile repeats at somewhere between 7 and 7:30-minute mile pace. It just about killed me (both the pace and the restraint in holding off on lunch), but man! Did those veggies ever taste good after a hard workout! Check out the recipe here.

Think snow ... and agility workouts

If you read this blog regularly, you're familiar with my efforts to cross-train to avoid overtraining injuries from running. During the week, this mostly means swimming and some cycling on the stationary bike.

Every other weekend, Steve and I partake in an activity that blows biking and swimming out of the water.

We volunteer at Whitetail Mountain Resort as Mountain Safety Team members, which we've determined to be the best deal in the history of deals. We help open and close the mountain, offer assistance to people who fall or otherwise need help and do what we can to make ski patrollers' jobs easier. We also investigate and document crashes for the resort.

But, as our fellow safety teamer, Dave, put it when we first started: "Mostly, we just sort of ski around." In exchange, we get a season pass, making this the best job either Steve or I have ever had.

This weekend, we had a surprise from an old friend: moguls, which hadn't made an appearance at Whitetail two weeks ago but are now out in force on Exhibition, an expert run right under the lift (hence the name).

Like anything that kicks my ass, I love moguls and I hate them. It's a Tina-Ike relationship in which I'm always, always Tina. For a run or two, the bumps will be so sweet, lulling me into complacency with an easy line or forgiving snow. Then, the temperature will drop, causing the snow to harden, or I'll ski down a different portion of the run, and bam! I'm getting beat up again.

Suffice it to say that at the end of the day today, watching me ski the bumps was less like watching someone ski and more like watching someone try to ride a mechanical bull at a bar while very, very drunk. I didn't so much stumble as I got bucked off.

But I've resolved to get back on the bull. My plan is to work on my agility. My quads are plenty strong, but my legs don't move so quickly or smoothly.

I haven't found a good ski-specific agility workout, but I'll post it here as soon as I do. In the meantime, any suggestions? Post 'em below if so.

Floridiots on the run

Anyone who's run road races on a regular basis and seen the same names weekend after weekend knows the running community is very small indeed.

Tonight, I was struck by just what a small world it is while running with a few new friends at Pacers.

Steve and I headed out in our own pace group (regular blog readers will know that this might be for the best), but ended up running with a nice dude named Pete who claimed to be just as bad at pacing as we are and a girl who wore headphones. I chatted with Pete for a while before realizing we'd both recently moved back to the area. He'd spent time in Colorado (so did we!), and in Florida (no ... freaking ... way!), so we spent a good portion of the run touting the benefits of living in a cultural mecca that has seasons after a few years in the tropics. We talked about how nice it is to be living in what feels like the center of the world these days, and about how crappy it is readjusting to winter weather (though it was a downright balmy 40-odd degrees today ... how quickly we Floridiots forget what real winter weather is like!).

Our headphoned friend got into the conversation near the end of the run. She was relatively new to Pacers, she said, and just moved back to the area.

"Where from?" Pete asked.

"Fort Myers," she said. "How about you?"

A small world indeed.

Getting over my fear of commitment

I've got serious commitment issues.

I choose which races I'll run months ahead of time, circling race ads in the back of Runner's World like a normal woman might earmark wish-list items from a J. Crew catalog. I print out training schedules and follow them to the letter. This time, I'm even blogging about my training for the National Half Marathon on March 21.

The one thing I don't do: actually sign up for the race.

This is a thing with me. Unless I have reason to fear that the race will fill up quickly, I postpone, and postpone, and postpone, often waiting until race day to officially throw my hat in the ring. Sometimes, I even wait so long I miss the race entirely, which happened with the Philadelphia Half Marathon in November. This was especially rough, as I'd done most of my long runs for the race by the time I realized registration had closed.

I tell myself waiting to sign up is a smart move to avoid losing a bunch of money on a race that I may injure myself before, or that I may ... you know ... be unable to run for some other reason. I know it's actually more of a stupid defense mechanism to avoid committing myself wholly to a race.

Not this time. I'm proud to announce that I've finally signed up for the race I've been publicly training for and blogging about for weeks.

This is a big step for me. Maybe it's just because I'm usually too tired to sprint at the end of a race, but I like to think of the simple act of committing myself to a race as gutsy, if we're using George Sheehan's definition: "Some think guts is sprinting at the end of a race. But guts is what got you there to begin with. Guts start in the back hills with six miles to go and you're thinking of how you can get out of this race without anyone noticing."

Looking for motivation? Read about Sheehan, a cardiologist, runner and writer from my home county in New Jersey.

Yes we can run to the inauguration!

For weeks, Washington officials have warned residents that roads and bridges into the city would be closed and Metro trains and buses would be packed. They said those wanting to travel into the city to see Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th president of the United States should be prepared for gridlock, long security lines and a lot of hassle.

But we only live about seven miles from the Capitol, giving us no excuse not to find SOME way to get downtown.

Our preferred mode of transportation? Running, of course.

We met our group from Pacers, which usually gathers at 7 p.m. for a Tuesday night run, at 10 a.m. in Silver Spring for the 7.1-run to the Capitol. Inaugural excitement was palpable before our group of ten even left Silver Spring. Throngs of people wearing Obama buttons, hats and T-shirts filed into the Silver Spring Metro station. American flags fluttered from front porches. On Georgia Avenue, we saw a dude dressed like Uncle Sam.

The fun continued after we crossed the Maryland-D.C. line on 16th Street. Inaugural banners hung from homes and businesses (including the puzzling "Labradoodles for Obama." Really?). We started to see others walking and biking into the city, and we exchanged waves. We ran up and down some rolling hills on 16th Street, yapping as usual about work, the weather and similarly momentous topics.

Suddenly, it seemed, we were at K Street, and the real fun began. Streets were closed to all vehicles but buses and taxis. Armed guards in camouflage uniforms guarded street corners, and armed military vehicles rolled by from time to time. Streetside vendors hawked all manner of Obama souveniers, from hats to framed photos.

Thousands of people flooded toward the Capitol, where security lines were exactly as long as predicted. We saw mothers pushing babies in carriages covered in fleece blankets (Washington saw a high of 30 degrees today). We saw members of a local church offering freezing visitors free hot coffee, and a spot indoors to warm up and watch the ceremonies. We saw a high-school marching band in bright blue jogging suits carrying signs that said "HOPE FOR PEACE."

Our goal in running to the Capitol wasn't to see the speech firsthand, or even to get close to it. With 1 to 3 million people expected to crowd the Mall, we had no expectation of being front-and-center. We were like tailgaters without tickets to the game, who set up shop outside a college football stadium to soak in the cheers, the team colors and the festive atmosphere. We wanted to be part of the community of runners trekking downtown, of Washington residents celebrating their city, of Americans celebrating their new president -- and their country.

Our running group broke up when we got to the security checkpoints near the White House. Some stayed to try to get closer, while Steve and I headed home on the Metro to watch the ceremonies on TV back home. As the train zoomed by, we saw familiar buildings adorned with new graffiti -- images of the new president's face.

How did you celebrate the inauguration? Let me know by posting a comment below.

Bad medicine

I should have done lunges today.

I wasn't lazy -- I did the stationary bike for 45 minutes at an intensity I usually save for intervals. But somehow, I couldn't make myself do any kind of strength work. This is despite knowing, after three months of physical therapy, how good -- no, essential -- strength training is for runners.

I'm possibly one of the only people on earth to have a solely positive experience with physical therapy. Each appointment with Jason, who patiently solved the weird mystery of why I couldn't run, was like a session with a personal trainer who just happened to be certified to mess around with my hip joint to put it back in its proper place. And at the end of the three months, I could run again -- bonus!

At the end of my stint with Jason, I asked him which of the exercises in my routine I could drop if I got lazy.

"Um," he said, "they're all pretty basic. I would pretty much make sure you do them all."

A year later, I still faithfully perform the fun ones (shuffling around with a resistance band makes me feel like a linebacker) and the awful ones (leg lifts are the bane of my existence) a few times a week. I'd rather be running, but along with cross-training, this is the preventative medicine that KEEPS me running.

I'll get my butt into gear later this week on the lunges, leg presses, etc., and knock out a set of the dreaded leg-lifts tonight. In the meantime, I'll share my physical therapy workout here. It's a great preventative measure for uninjured runners, as the single-leg business doesn't allow you to rely on your stronger leg (yes, you have one) to get through the reps.

3 X 25 walking lunges
3 X 25 single-leg presses
3X 25 single-leg squats
Hamstring curls
Side shuffle with resistance band
Leg lifts with weights (I do these on each side, on my stomach and on my back. Here's a how-to for the side-lying lifts.)
Clamshells (shown here, along with lots of other interesting-looking running-specific exercises)

Best laid plans turn to ice

I had hoped to run six miles on Sligo Creek Trail today, and to write here about how invigorating it was to run in the cold.

I'm happy to report that I did, at least, run. None of the other plans worked out quite so well.

According to the National Weather Service, whose Web site has been a regular haunt of mine since it's been so frigid here, said it got to 37 degrees in Silver Spring today.

My response: Say WHAT?

I offer this hard evidence that it was not anywhere near 37 degrees: at 11 a.m., when I blew my nose on my glove, it froze in the air, leaving me with a horrible littlesnotsickle on my finger. This was about the point at which I first thought about cutting the run short.

Then, there was the matter of the orange fence between Wheaton Regional Park and Sligo Creek Trail, my intended destination. I've run parts of Sligo Creek Trail before, but I'd never started from Wheaton Regional Park. I tried to pick up the trail from the park this time, but instead, ended up running around the park again and again, thwarted by a fence marking some sort of trail construction. Rather than a simple out-and-back run, I ended up on a weird hill loop through a bunch of botanical gardens.

The good news: The park is really cool! The rolling hills and placid (OK, icy) ponds in the botanical gardens were pretty enough to run by three or four times. And the playground made me want to quit the whole running thing and just zoom down one of the biggest, baddest slides I've ever seen. It also provided some spectacular people-watching, from the guy on a unicycle on my way in to the family of little girls in pink coats playing tag through the gardens.

I'll definitely be back to Sligo Creek Trail for a long run when the weather's warmer. If Wheaton Regional Park doesn't provide enough entertainment, the trail apparently winds through a total of nine parks in Montgomery County.

Hustle and flow

I had planned to try a new running route today, and was so excited about hitting the road, I actually laid out both my route and my toastiest running clothes the night before.

A combination of looming work deadlines and hearing that this morning was the coldest in the past five years in Washington left me indoors for a quick, warm treadmill workout instead.

I've already moaned and groaned about how I don't like working out inside, so I'll move right on to coping mechanisms. I get past the boredom of treadmill time by doing speedwork. My typical workout is three 1-mile repeats at 8-minute mile pace. I usually get through this with a kick-butt playlist of six or seven songs (the best thing about a speed workout, in my mind, is the fact that it's over pretty quickly).

The get-through-it nature of treadmilling makes it a perfect place to try to get into that elusive happy place known as flow. Endurance athlete Christopher Bergland, author of "The Athlete's Way: Sweat and the Biology of Bliss," says this is "a key to making exercise a pleasurable experience, because it allows you to lose yourself in the moment--time flies, and you are totally engaged." Some call it meditation in motion. Former Washington Post writer Walt Harrington writes beautifully about finding flow while hunting with his father-in-law in The Everlasting Stream. And today, on a treadmill that may or may not have been properly calibrated, I found it, too.

This is no easy task for me. My brain is, as Elizabeth Gilbert would put it, a "big, spazzy free-for-all," where thoughts swing from tree to tree like so many monkeys. More often than not, it operates like a never-ending to-do list, always leaping to the next task
before I'm done with my current one.

So I started running to my typical gangsta-rap playlist. But after one Wutang Clan song, I moved on to a more meditative mix. I was sweating like a pig and panting like a dog, but inside, I was chill as I burned through three miles at 7:30-minute mile pace. I felt so good, I even turned it into a tempo run, nixing the jogs in between mile repeats (usually, when the mile is up, I all but punch the "stop" button on the treadmill to get a breather).

I can't say for sure that the treadmill wasn't calibrated incorrectly, like a pair of size-4 jeans you know should really be a size 6. I don't care -- for 21 minutes of the day, I was completely present and grounded, which is more difficult for me than any 7:30-minute mile.

Here's the playlist that helped me find my flow. I especially recommend the last one on the list -- let it wash over you while you're running fast, and see if you don't find energy you didn't know you had.

Wutang Clan, Protect Your Neck
Dear Sergio, Catch 22
Two Step, Dave Matthews Band, Live at Red Rocks
Halleluja, Jeff Buckley
Moving to New York, The Wombats
How it Ends, DeVotchka

Baby, it's cold outside

I have a love-hate relationship with the gym.

It's not working out I dislike. It's the cardio machines. They represent the opposite of one of my favorite things about running, summed up by this Jesse Owens quote: "I always loved running. It was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs.”

Today, the "blustery" 20-degree weather forecasted earlier this week came to pass (blustery is actually a pretty great adjective to describe today -- nice job, National Weather Service!). After losing the feeling in my fingers during a short bike ride to do some errands, I was driven inside, to the stationary bike in the little fake gym inside our building.

I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that working out on an electrical machine is basically the opposite of exercising by yourself, under your own power. It isn't seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and courage of your lungs so much as burying your nose in a book to forget the fact that you are, in fact, going nowhere on a piece of electrical machinery. UGH.

But here's the positive part of this blog post (I promise there is one!): I did 45 minutes on the bike, and while I didn't get quite the warm fuzzies I do after a good run, I felt doubly proud of myself for doing something healthy when I desperately didn't feel like it. As I got warmed up, I reminded myself that biking today would a) save my joints and muscles from two days of pounding in a row, b) strengthen muscles running doesn't, and c) make some bike ride down the road easier because I trained today. It also let me finish one book I've been working on for a while and start another that will probably end up being the subject of another blog post on another day. It's "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. The theme: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Brilliant advice for us runners, who are easily wooed by Gatorade G2 and Power Gels (not that I'm giving these up during long runs ... I'm just saying.)

Here's how I powered through a stationary bike workout I didn't wanna do: I did a 45-minute interval workout based on a playlist that alternated Bob Marley songs with hip-hop party anthems. During the Bob Marley songs, I turned the resistance on the bike down to 12 and read my book(s). During the fast songs, I put the book down and cranked the resistance to 14. Despite all the bitching about not wanting to bike inside, I was honestly surprised so much time had passed when I checked the bike's digital readout.

Tomorrow's a swimming day,which I'm looking forward to immensely. Another thing I'm looking forward to immensely: Warmer weather!

Pacing (or failing to pace) with Pacers

As promised yesterday, last night's workout was a 5.1-miler with our running group at Pacers, the super-cool running store near our house. Typically, the party gets started around 7 p.m. by a store employee breaking people up into pace groups. The 6-to-7-minute milers head out the door, then the 8-minute milers, then the 9-minute milers, and so on, with several intervals in between.

Week after week, we watch runners of all speeds declare a pace, then proceed to run exactly that pace. To me, it's like watching people correctly predict tomorrow's lottery numbers.

See, I can't pace correctly for my life. My husband and current running buddy, Steve, isn't much better. We're great at "pacing ourselves" -- i.e., running at a level of difficulty that we can sustain for however long we're planning to run. It's not that we're sprinting out the door and crapping out a mile later. What mystifies us is how people can casually say, "I'm going to do 8:15-minute miles tonight," then proceed to do exactly that. I set time goals for races, but if I'm being honest, when I see the big digital clocks at the mile markers, my time is always kind of a surprise.

When we first started running with Pacers, a store employee asked what pace we typically run. Steve and I were both silent, waiting for the other person to talk. "Somewhere in the 9-ish range," I said. "Nine or, you know, 10-ish." I looked at Steve. "Right?" I said. "Yeah," he said. "Nine-ish, or 8-ish. Or 10-ish. More like 9-ish." It took us a few runs in a row of making people sprint through what they'd hoped would be easy workouts, or slowing down people who were banking on hard workouts, before we found our people. As it turns out, the definition of "our people" is each other, and anyone else willing to put up with our crazy, sporadic asses.We usually end up tailing people a bit faster than us and hanging on for dear life (yet another motivator: Running with someone faster than you, then having to stick with them because you don't know the way home).

We got to Pacers a couple minutes late last night, taking the pace declaration out of the equation. It was a great run, though. We did a new route, and it was pretty fabulous. The goes from Pacers in downtown Silver Spring, down quiet, residential Seminary Road and then past the looming craziness of the National Park Seminary, a complex that includes a Japanese pagoda, an English castle and the remains of a resort hotel. It's being refurbished and turned into apartments and condos. For now, it's a nice, if bizarre, diversion at the halfway point of the run. The run also provides a glimpse of the Mormon Temple, my friend from my Rock Creek Trail adventure last week.

Hopefully, Laura Cloher, who devises the Pacers fun-run routes, won't mind me sharing the Seminary Road route here. Enjoy it -- it's a great run at any pace.

Partners in crime, part deux

According to the National Weather Service, tonight will be 20 degrees and "blustery." I feel silly bitching about this since I spent four years bitching about running in the sticky, swampy heat in Florida (in the summer, it's like trying to breathe through a hot, wet washcloth), but this is NOT my preferred running weather. I have a few resources to help me cope, and I'll share them here.

First, check out an awesome compilation of Runner's World stories and tips for cold weather running here. The stories have all been incredibly helpful. The best tip I've culled so far: Draw a hot bath before you leave for a short run. It provides double motivation: You'll look forward to the hot, steamy bath waiting for you at home, and you'll wanna run quickly to avoid that hot, steamy bath turning lukewarm.

Another tip: Mizuno Breath Thermo gloves, made from some fancy material that actually heats up when you sweat. If you're a sweaty little dude like me, the effect is truly magical. Our friends at Pacers, our local running store, recommended them a month or so ago, and I've been borderline obsessed with them ever since.

Which brings me to my third secret weapon in fighting the cold: Pacers' "fun runs" on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 p.m. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I get an e-mail with a brand-new running route in the Silver Spring area. We then meet half a dozen (or more in warmer weather) or so runners at the Pacers in downtown Silver Spring, and head out for a great big group run.

In the past, I've talked myself out of running with partners because I'm afraid I'll either slow down my training buddy or vice versa. This is partially because I'm totally spoiled from running with my best friend, Jen, in high school. We were almost exactly the same pace, which was awesome. More importantly, we had run together for so long, we could communicate solely by grunting and spitting (we try to only do this when we run -- it can really make things awkward at the dinner table). My only real running partner since then has been my husband. He's faster than me, which makes even casual runs kind of like tempo runs for me. The key is, I can make him slow down without guilt or shame on account of the fact of us being married.

Pacers has been great in breaking me of my fear of running with new people. We break up into pace groups ranging from the insane 6-7-ish minute miles all the way to 10-11 minute miles. Steve and I usually fall somewhere in between. We've met some great people doing it, and it takes SO much of the guesswork out of running. Where should I run? When? With whom? These questions are all answered for me. And since it's in the evening, I have something to look forward to all day long.

What's motivating you to get out and train in the cold? Share your tips by posting a comment below.

A partner in crime

In half-marathon-training and in life, it helps to have a partner who shares your goals. It's even more helpful if that partner is more experienced and more ambitious than you are.

For me, that's my friend Whitney, who's training for the National Marathon (note that the "Half" is missing — she's going for the full 26.2). She is both experienced (this is her fifth marathon) and down-to-earth, a rare and awesome combination I'll be counting on frequently throughout my training.

Best of all, you can rely on her expertise and support, too, 'cause she's gonna be blogging, too! I'll be hosting her blog on my Web site. Check back often for progress updates from both of us.

Swim workout suggestion

Just a quick post today sharing the swim workout I did this morning. Full disclosure: The way I train makes no sense (more on this later), but it works for me, and occasionally, I stumble opon what seems like a good workout. I did what was a long workout for me to make up for a total lack of activity yesterday. You can adjust the total workout length by messing around with how many repeats you do in the main set.

1,650-yard warmup

1 x 100 butterfly
1 x 400 freestyle
repeat five times ... or however many times works for you

350 cooldown

4,500 total, unless my math is worse than I ever imagined.

Misadventures on Rock Creek Trail

Here is a thing about me: I am lost more often than not.

The phrase "couldn’t find her way out of a paper bag" could have been invented for me. Except the paper bag is unnecessary: A good pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey spin, and I have completely lost my bearings.

This became important yesterday, on what I never intended to be a long run.

I was trying out a route around the Mormon Temple in Kensington suggested by Montgomery County Road Runners Club Coach Mike Broderick. Check out an extended version of the run here. The portion of the route I did starts at Meadowbrook Stables in Rock Creek Regional Park, follows Rock Creek Trail for about two miles, then spits runners out at the intersection of Beach Drive and Stoneybrook Drive, where Stoneybrook Drive provides a killer hill workout before taking runners back to the stables on Rock Creek Trail.

This runner decided to go the other way on Rock Creek Trail instead.

Let me be clear here: This was in no way a confusing route. There are only two ways to go on the trail after the hill loop, and while the trail is not clearly marked, it IS pretty obvious that you go back the way you came. I should have known: I had to forge a washed-out section of the trail with a makeshift bridge of two long sticks, which I definitely did not have to do on the way out. But as previously discussed, I have good reason not to trust my directional instincts.

Plus, I kept recognizing things. I’d rejoice when I passed “my” meadow, “my” playground, “my” bridge. Problem is, Rock Creek Trail kind of looks alike in both directions. Until you get up to Rockville Pike, that is (those of you in the Washington area can confirm that this is really, really far from Meadowbrook Stables in Chevy Chase).

When I finally saw another human walking on the trail, I stopped her and her miniature Schnauzer.Panting and desperate, I asked her if I was heading the right way to get back to the Meadowbrook Stables. She surveyed the sweaty-mud spattered runner in front of her.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, wincing. “You’re really, really far away.”

I whimpered to myself as I turned around, knowing I had added at least three or four miles to my run at a time when I am trying hard not to overtrain. I tried yoga-like deep-breathing and mantras, which are helpful when you are calm already, but not so helpful in times of crisis.

And this was a crisis. So I turned to old-school gangster rap. Biggie, Public Enemy and Dr. Dre carried me back home. And my iPod, which had been running on reserve battery power since mile 2, miraculously kept on going.

I got back to Meadowbrook Stables an hour and 40 minutes after I left – at least 10 miles, by my estimate. This was my longest since before I injured my hip. It also happens to be the longest run on my beginner half-marathon training schedule, so I guess it's nice to know I'm ahead of the training game.

And the route really is awesome. Rock Creek Trail winds through playgrounds, meadows and dense thickets of mature trees, providing great views of the creek along the way. Even the starting point is pretty — when I got back to the quaint, lovely stables, with the horses milling about and neighing, it almost made me forget how much of an, ahem, donkey I felt like.

Need motivation for a tough workout? Try the gangsta-rap playlist that fueled my extended run:
Til I Collapse - Eminem
Scenario - Tribe Called Quest
M-E-T-H-O-D Man - Wu Tang Clan
You Can Do it - Ice Cube
Sure Shot - Beastie Boys
The Watcher - Dr. Dre
What’s the Difference - Dr. Dre
Fight the Power - Public Enemy
Fugeela - The Fugees
Kick in the Door - The Notorious B.I.G.

Putting it out there

Motivation has many sources, and everyone finds it in different places.

As far as I can tell, the thing that drives me is shame.

This is the story of my training for the National Half Marathon on March 21 in Washington, my new home city. I have run one full marathon and two half marathons previously. One half ended with a stupid hip injury that continues to trip me up more than a year later and a stupid time I would rather forget. The other half ended with jubilation, mostly thanks to -- you guessed it. Shame.

It was the Five Points of Life Half Marathon in Gainesville, Fla., in 2007, and it was my first distance race. My friends Jessica and Adam promised to come cheer me on, and warned that they would appear on the race course when I least expected it. During every rough patch, I thought of how horrified I would be if I was limping, clutching my cramped-up sides and groaning when I finally came upon them. So I pushed on, running longer and harder than I ever had before.

Turns out, Jessica and Adam had run out of gas on the way to the race, so they never made it to the course. But my fear of embarrassment helped me I post a time I never thought I could as a solid middle-of-the-pack runner, Jessica and Adam took me to a fabulous post-race brunch, and I discovered a powerful motivator.

It is in that spirit of motivational shame that I share my plans to run this race. I figure the more people I tell, the more embarrassing it will be if I get lazy and drop out.

My plan is to follow a combination of a Hal Higdon half-marathon plan, and a neato three-day training plan I read about recently in Runner’s World. I’m going for the less-is-more approach to avoid more of the aforementioned stupid injuries, and will be supplementing my running schedule with swimming days. Keeping me motivated to swim is the 1-mile Bay Bridge Challenge, an open-water swim in the Chesapeake Bay in June I recently plunked down 60 bucks to sign up for (another great motivator: the threat of financial loss).

Check back here a few times a week for workouts, running routes, playlists, training advice, injury-prevention tools and other cool stuff I find helpful while training. I may even post some non-shame-related motivational material while I'm at it.

I’m putting it out there. Now, I guess I actually have to do it.