I did it! I ran a half-marathon!

Well, on Sunday, November 7, 2010, in Hamilton, ON, I ran a half-marathon! Actually, according to my GPS watch, I actually ran 13.43 miles, which is almost 1/3 of a mile longer than an exact half-marathon (a 1/3 of a mile that make a whole lot of difference when you're in the last mile trying to figure out where the heck the finish line is because your legs hurt so much you're not sure they will keep moving).

I finished in 2:34:01, which makes my per mile time 11:28! This is not fast for most distance runners (my friends who run half marathons run them in between about 2hr and 2hrs 15 min), but it is fast for me! My fastest long run in training was my 10 mile (or 16km) run (which was my second to longest training run). I ran that 10 miles in 2hrs flat, making my per mile time 12 minutes. I figured that if I ran really well in the race, I might be able to stretch that 12 min/mile pace over the extra three miles given the adenaline and all that. But I actually ran over 30 seconds per mile faster even over the longer distance (which was almost 2 miles farther than my longest training run of 11.5 miles).

It was cold at the 8:30 am start of the race (not super cold--above freezing but not by much) but I'd learned in training that I warm up fast, so I decided to go with just my long spandex pants (which you can see from the photo I pulled up to the knee not too long into the race), a moisture-wicking undershirt, and my Dare t-shirt. I also had lightweight gloves for the first mile or two.

About 20 minutes into the run, I realized I was running pretty consistently with a group of three women who were also doing the run 10 minutes and walk 1 minute thing that I now swear by. So I joined up with them. It was fantastic because I've never run with people before. Running with them helped me keep my pace up, even as it got really tough. (It wasn't unusual for me to be running 11:30 miles early on, but I've never come close to keeping it up!).

I owe a million thanks to my amazing friend Jules who came out to support me in the cold. She took the photos, encouraged me, welcomed me to the finish, and made sure I put the shiny tinfoil thing on to stay warm!

I tweeted during several of my walk minutes. The tweets tell a bit of story, so I'll retype them here:

7:44 am
Run day! At the school where the race starts. Have my bib and timing chip. 40 min til half-marathon starts. #dare2010

8:29am
About to start the half marathon. Excited! Nervous!

8:53am
3k. Feeloing ok. Have warmed up. #dare2010 go dare half marathon

9:15am
6k in. Found a group to run with. Doing run ten and waljk one

9:37am
9.5 km. Running quicker than usual

9:59am
This pace is toguh but good. 7.65 miles

10:21am

9.5 miles. This is hard! Go #dare2010.

10:32am
Woohoo 2 hours!!

10:32am
Still have 2.6miles
[turned out to be closer to 3!]

11:11am
Finished my half!! 2hr34min16sec. An 11:29 avg mile and I wanted to beat a 12 min mile!! #dare2010
[I later learned that it was actually 2:34:01; i stopped my watch a little late]

And, finally, here are my mile times:
1: 11:29
2: 11:14
3: 11:26
4: 11:21
5: 11:25
6: 11:21
7: 11:39
8: 11:37
9. 11:51 (probably had two walk minutes within this mile or maybe this was the mile with the hill . . .)
10. 11:46
11. 11:40
12. 11:28
13. 11:05 (yes, my fastest mile was my last one when I thought I was going to stop moving at any second!)
14 (the pace for the last .43) 11:11

Yay!

Winnipeg Running

I can now add Winnipeg to the list of cities I've run in. I've obviously run in Toronto and I've also run in Chicago and Montreal during my half-marathon training. This morning I ran 5k in Winnipeg.

I'm here with the AfriGrand Caravan and we're having a great time hanging out and relaxing before a busy week of events hits next week.

I just ran on the streets around the house where I'm staying. Once again I used the run 10/ walk 1 system. Because I was almost finished by the end of my second run 10, I kept running for another minute to finish it out. (in other words I only did two walk periods).

My 5k time was 33 minutes! That's 1.5 minutes fast than last week's 5k. That's a 10:38 average mile! I can hardly believe it. :)

4 weeks til my half marathon!

10 miles! 1 month left! 12 min/mile

This morning I got up at 5am to go for my 10 mile run. The lake was beautiful--first I got to watch the stars and then the sunrise! I'm super tired now, but it was worth it to see the city like that. And to get 10 miles in.

I love this run 10, walk 1 thing. Today I picked up the pace even more than last week. I averaged 12 minutes per mile, which is 3/4 minute per mile faster than last week and over a minute per mile faster than two weeks ago.

I ran 10 miles in just under 2 hours (despite my exhaustion, I picked up the pace for the last 50 meters so that I could just barely make it in under 2 hours).

I ran without my ipod on for the first 8.5 miles. When I started it was way too dark out to listen to the scary suspense novel I've been listening to on my long runs. And then when it got light enough, I was really enjoying the weather, the run, and the surroundings, so I went without it. I put it on for the last 1.5 miles because I was getting really tired and needed the distraction of it.

Tomorrow I'm off to Winnipeg with the AfriGrand Caravan!

Digging the Run 10 Walk 1 (or My First Run in Tights)

I did a 5k run today using my new run 10 walk 1 thing. It was my fastest 5k time yet! I think that's pretty cool, especially since at 5k pace, my walking compared to running speed is a lot more significant than at my distance pace. So I had to run that much faster during the run times to make up for it.

I ran 34:35, which is an 11:09/mile average. I ran the first mile in 10:37 (I decided to run the last bit of the mile and start my 1 minute walk after that so that I could see what my mile time would be). Because I was running harder, I got a side stitch for a big portion of the second mile, but it was manageable in part because of knowing that I would get to walk for a minute when I made it through 10 minutes.

I know that running is a lot mental and I know that I have a lot of mental blocks to overcome with running, but I'm still impressed by how much of a difference the run10/walk1 makes for me psychologically!

Oh, I should mention that it's decided to get cold in Toronto. And this morning it was cold when I went for my run. But this weekend, I bought running tights at Mountain Equipment Co-op, so I felt pretty good. And there's nothing that says runner like running tights! :)

9 miles!!

This morning I got up at 6 am and drove down to the lakefront and jogged 9 miles. It was a beautiful morning for a run and the scenery was awesome.

My lets are hurting now, though! Especially after basketball on Monday night (which was definitely my speed workout for the week).

I've heard from several people now that swear by "run 10, walk 1". You run for 10 minutes and then walk quickly for 1 minute. The idea is that you can run enough faster during those 10 minutes to more than make up for the 1 minute of walking. Also, for the long runs it really breaks up the monotony of it because you're thinking in 10 minute chunks instead of 9 miles chunks. Each time you start jogging, you only have to be able to make it for 10 min.

So, I was resistant to this run/walk combo when I first heard about it because it felt like cheating to me. I figured that if you're going to run a half-marathon, you should actually run the whole thing (or at least do everything you can to). But then my co-worker told me that she took the Running Room's half-marathon class and they were taught the 10/1 run/walk combo, did it on their training runs, and were encouraged to use it in their half-marathons!

I decided to give it a try today. It was great! Knowing that at any given time I only had to run slowly enough to make it for 10 minutes (instead of another 8, 7, 6, etc. miles) made huge difference both mentally and physically. When I was in Chicago and ran 8 miles, I averaged about 13:09 per mile. Today, when I ran 9 miles, I averaged 12:46 per mile (and that's including the walking times). So I improved my average speed by 23 seconds (that's actually really significant) even while adding a mile!

So, I'm a convert! This is actually a real running strategy (at least in my book) rather than just a way to make the running easier. I'm psyched!

Running on the road

So, as you'll see in my last post about the AfriGrand Caravan, I've been on the road a bunch recently. I did my 8 miles in Chicago on Saturday, then flew back to Toronto on Sunday, and took an early morning train to Kingston on Monday.
Now I'm in Montreal.

On Monday, I ran on the treadmill in the fitness center at the hotel that our local hosts had arranged to get for free for us. It was a low ceilinged room and so when I was on the relatively tall treadmill, my head would graze the ceiling if I bounced in the my stride at all. (I was thankful that it was one of those ceilings with the square panels that you can push up, so there was good give any time I grazed it.

Today I'm in Montreal and was going to go for a pre-breakfast run at the fitness center in this hotel, but neither of the treadmills was working. So, I decided I would just run outside but I didn't bring outdoor workout clothes. I ended up in my running shorts, a t-shirt, and the sweater I wore last night since it was way too cold to go out in just a t-shirt, but i didn't have a windbreaker or long sleeved t-shirt with me . . . I also didn't bring my gps watch (I was assuming I'd use the treadmill) and with the failed attempt at the fitness center and having to find outdoors clothes, I was now running short on time to get a run and shower before the free breakfast at the hotel ended. So I just decided I'd got out and run for about 30 minutes and that would be better than nothing--less than three miles but probably at least 2.5 miles. I ended up running for 33 minutes at what I think was a pretty good pace (for me), so I'm guessing I got up close to 3 miles in.

I've gotta find a time to do my long run (9 miles!!) but my first basketball game is Monday night, so I can't do the run on Monday. If I don't kill myself Monday, I'll do my long run on Tuesday.

Some Reflections from the AfriGrand Caravan

I got to spend a few days with the AfriGrand Caravan as it traveled through central/southern Ontario. I wrote this reflection a few days ago and thought I'd include it here for anyone who wants more context for why I'm doing my Dare.


I spent last weekend in Chicago and then I flew back to Toronto Sunday night so that I could get up early Monday morning and take the train to Kingston, ON, where I joined up with the AfriGrand Caravan. The AfriGrand Caravan is a cross-country speaking tour that the Stephen Lewis Foundation is organizing. The keynote speakers on the tour are an African grandmother who cares for her orphaned grandchildren (or grandnieces/nephews) and a young woman who has been orphaned by AIDS. Because the tour goes to 40 cities over the course of two months, there are three different pairs of women speaking on the tour.

The first leg of the tour, which we're on now, features two women from Pretoria, South Africa. Regina is a nurse, is a grandmother of four who cares for her HIV-positive niece and her niece's children, and is the executive director of Tateni Home Care Nursing Services in Mamelodi, South Africa. Nkulie is a 17-year-old young woman who lost her mother this year to AIDS and takes part in Tateni's after-school and drop-in programs for teenagers. I got to hear Nkulie and Regina speak at stops in three cities in Ontario. I spent significant time with them outside of the formal tour events, since we were all staying in the same homes, traveling in the van together, etc.

In the formal speeches, I heard their stories about the work that Tateni does in its community to provide home-based care to people living with HIV, TB, and other diseases and the work it does to take a comprehensive approach to health that involves providing adequate nutrition and psychosocial services as well as providing nursing and medication. Tateni, for instance, organizes quarterly birthday parties for the children in the community (both the orphans and other children made vulnerable by life circumstances, parental health) so that all of the children can experience this taken-for-granted part of growing up that, otherwise, they would miss out on. This is just one example of what it means for Tateni to take a comprehensive approach to dealing with AIDS and with the children orphaned by the pandemic. Another is the role that home care workers play in making sure that all of Tateni's clients have their basic needs met in addition to their medications and their sponge baths. Tateni, for instance, will provide food to families in need and then the home care workers will make sure that there is actually the fuel in the home that is needed to prepare the food and that the roofs aren't in too desperate need of repair (thus leaving the clients even more vulnerable to illness). Perhaps these seem like relatively simple things, but they're the types of things that, so often, an organization like Tateni would be unable to fund if it only received funding from more traditional sources and might be interested in funding only food aid or only school uniforms or only TB treatment without providing the funding for the organization to respond to the actual needs of the community. (Also, very few organizations/foundations/etc. will provide funding for salaries because they want to be able to claim that they provided treatment or food for a certain number of people and salaries don't formally help with those numbers, although they're clearly essential to it. The Stephen Lewis Foundation, however, does provide Tateni funding to use to pay its home-based care workers. The stipend they get is barely a salary, but since these workers all have families to support, it is absolutely necessary both to Tateni's effective work in the community and to increasing the overall employment in the community.)

Outside of the formal speeches, I learned that Regina is busily preparing for her organization's Annual General Meeting (and this is no small feat, since Tateni is a pretty large organizations that employs 72 people!). So, when she's not busy speaking at the tour stops or charming the pants off the event organizers and our hosts in each city, she is sending emails and writing reports. Nkulie is missing her uncle's wedding and also having to study for her grade 12 exams while in Canada, but she decided to come on the tour, despite these inconveniences, because of her gratitude for the role Tateni has played in her life and because of her desire to build further solidarity between North Americans and Africans and to see more projects in sub-Saharan Africa receive the funding they need to provide the type of services that Tateni provides .

Nkulie plans to go to law school when she finishes high school and then wants to go into politics; she was reading A Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela's autobiography, on the van rides between cities. Tateni has helped her to stay in school throughout her mother's illness and since her mother's death and has helped her deal with her anger and grief at her mother's passing.

In some of our downtime on Tuesday, Nkulie and I went swimming in the very cold outdoor pool at the house where we were staying. Afterwards, Regina explained to me that kids in her community have no real experiences of swimming since they are hours from the ocean and near no large bodies of water. She told me that one of her goals is to organize a trip for 15-20 of the older children to take an overnight train trip to the sea, spend the day at the sea, and then take an overnight train trip back. These types of excursions, she explained, may seem like a luxury in the face of so many unmet basic needs. But they are exactly the type of things that help the kids keep on in the face of everything. Being able to escape for a day to a completely different environment gives the kids something to hold on to and dream about.

I could go on and on about Regina and Nkulie, but I will end here.

I'm currently back in Toronto (well, this weekend I'm in Montreal) and the Caravan has moved on with another staff person in my place. But I will be joining up with the Caravan again in Winnipeg in two weeks (although this time, the speakers will both be from Malawi and will have new stories to tell).

I've always believed in the work that the Stephen Lewis Foundation funds, but getting to meet and hear from Regina and Nkulie has helped me to understand even more clearly just how much this work is needed and just how much is possible when grassroots organizations like Tateni receive the funding that they need to save lives and restore hope in their communities.