When Tragedy Strikes and Fear Creeps In

One Thursday back in June, I met a friend in downtown Shreveport for drinks around 9:00 pm. I'd had a pretty long week at work and was vacillating between staying home that night and letting myself go out to socialize. The socializing won, and we ended up wandering to different locations downtown until nearly 2:00 am. When we climbed in my car and started to leave, I heard what I thought was the sound of my entire vehicle falling apart.

Turns out it was a flat tire.

Despite flat tires being a thing that happen to people every day, I lost it. Some kind person appeared out of the darkness and helped change my tire as I sobbed hysterically over what is, by most accounts, not a big deal. At a time when I was exhausted and wanted to go home and sleep, this bump in the road seemed insurmountable.

When I made it home in the middle of the night and climbed into bed, I recounted the events of the evening to Richard and cried, "Why does anyone even bother to leave their house?" (Sometimes I have a flair for the dramatic.)

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Before I fell asleep Sunday night, my brain was already looking ahead to this Sunday, October 8. That's the day I'll be running the Chicago Marathon, something I have looked forward to and trained for since early this year. Pre-race jitters are experienced by most runners, I think, especially the night before a big race, but with hopes for a PR at the front of my mind, I guess the jitters started early.

Shortly after I awoke on Monday, however, I began seeing headlines about the shooting in Las Vegas. Whenever these tragedies strike, I never know what to say. I especially don't know what to say when it keeps happening. Among posts about gun control and re-shares of an article from The Onion entitled "'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens," a friend of mine who frequently attends concerts posted on Facebook, "When it's at a concert, it hits a little too close to home." Among the compelling, convincing posts I read, it was this short post that I found particularly poignant. I started to think about how I would feel if an event close to me was threatened by such a terrible act before I quickly remembered that the marathon has already been impacted, just a few years ago.

In 2013, when the Boston Marathon was bombed, I was just a few months into training for the Chicago Marathon, my first marathon. Someone somewhere posted on Tumblr that if people were looking to crush spirits, marathoners were not the ones to mess with. I reblogged that post because I believed it to be true. Now that I am among the marathoners, I know it is true. So much of being a runner, especially a marathoner, requires persevering and refusing to give in to the negative influences on our thoughts. Sometimes those are internal, and sometimes they're external. No matter what, though, I never let the fear win.

As I prepare to return to Chicago, to once more run the city that made me a marathoner, I would be lying if I said I am not scared. I find myself asking the same thing I asked Richard a few months ago: why does anyone even bother to leave their house? Is this marathon worth taking two separate planes to run in an unfamiliar city where people might try to hurt me just because they know there will be a large number of people gathered together for what is supposed to be a happy, triumphant event? I know there is plenty of good in the world and even more to appreciate about life--I am often the one who points out the positive aspects of life when other people are down--but I guess everyone is discouraged sometimes.

Since I run to honor my dad, I thought about what he might say if I could call him. At this point, I would not miss this marathon, but I feel confident that my dad would also want me to keep the plans I made. He would not want me to let fear win.

Now that my pre-race jitters have shifted to fear, I pray this week for the strength and determination of a marathoner. I'll probably also throw something in there about swift feet, but most importantly, I pray for our country and our leaders as we can maybe, finally, find a way to stop these tragedies that lead us into a state of fear. Meanwhile, may we all have the unconquerable spirit of the marathoners.

Krispy Kreme Challenge - Training Run 2

As my husband's patients would say, "It's been a minute." Turns out training for a marathon, having a full-time job (especially one that is particularly busy at this time of year), studying for a standardized test, and trying to do regular life stuff (like drink water and eat real food) typically rank higher on the priority scale than training for the Krispy Kreme Challenge, but I'm still hanging in there, and some of the other running stuff I'm doing is helpful for KKC training.

Perhaps my most exciting development this week was that I went to a one mile time trial on Wednesday morning (more on Wednesday Morning Track another day) and ran my mile in 9:11. I am not sure I have ever run a mile that fast in my life; initially, I thought, "This is probably my fastest mile since those Presidential Physical Fitness Test runs in elementary school!" but I specifically remember my mom writing a note for me so I didn't have to do the mile in 6th grade. I really hadn't been feeling well, but considering the condition in which I run multiple miles now, I was in good enough shape to do the mile on that fateful day in 2000. I don't remember how I did on the mile in 5th grade. Nevertheless, I ran my fastest mile in a while on Wednesday, so that was cool. If I can get up to running five miles with 9:11 as my per-mile pace, I'll have a whopping fourteen minutes to eat my donuts during the Krispy Kreme Challenge.

Today, Tim and I met for our second KKC training run. (Lauren was missed!) I was up before the sun, taking my preventative Imodium and picking up donuts so we could start our run at 6:00 am. This time, we kicked up the mileage by one mile, and I doubled the donut intake to four donuts. Here's how we did according to my watch (which was a little more generous than Tim's was--he had us right at 6 miles):

1st run - ran 3.06 mi in 45:07 (14:45 pace)
Donut/transition: 6-8 minute (I need to start actually timing transition)
2nd run - ran 3.04 mi in 45:06 (14:50 pace)
Total time: 1:37-ish

Once more, nobody puked or died. I have to wonder if someone will eventually puke, though.

Training hard

Our overall pace dropped a bit today, but we were consistent across the miles, which is important. I think I'd prefer to run the miles evenly if I can, but I still also hope to be fast enough to have some time banked for the second half in case life happens on race day.

I'll be honest, doubling the donut intake from two to four was a little more challenging than I thought it would be. I went out and socialized on Friday night, including eating a pretty substantial Peruvian meal at 10:00 pm, so perhaps I was still a little full from that (though what I remember about the timeline of digestive process tells me that's probably not actually the case). Eating that last donut was not a piece of cake (it was a donut!), but I think I could have eaten up to six donuts and still run the second loop.

I'm slightly overwhelmed by the thought of eventually eating triple the amount of donuts that I ate today. Today, when I ate four donuts, I reflected upon lessons in economics class about diminishing returns. My professors used beer and Krystal burgers as their examples, but I think donuts are a similar case -- if this is how #4 feels, how will #9 feel? When those dark thoughts creep in, however, I remind myself of other training achievements that overwhelmed me and are now regular occurrences, like running six miles. I'm continually impressed by the things my body can do, and I fully trust in my ability to train up to eating a dozen donuts. (Did I really just write that sentence?)

Overall, training is going pretty well. I'm getting faster and eating more donuts. I haven't yet combined the faster pace with donut consumption, but it's still early. Today, I'm especially grateful for the support of friends in this training journey. Plus, who wants to binge on donuts alone?

Tim wonders why he agreed to this.

Krispy Kreme Challenge Training Begins

Something I've learned about running is that there are a few ways to do more with a running routine. Many people choose to go faster, while others prefer to run longer. Quite a few marathoners set their sights on qualifying for the Boston Marathon. Heck, I'd like to be there someday, but right now I'm not putting enough focus on the whole "running faster" thing, so I might not qualify until I'm at least 70 years old. That's fine. I'm nothing if not persistent when it comes to this running stuff.

A few years ago, I found myself going down an internet rabbit hole when I saw some friends doing a 5K where they had to eat a donut every mile. I thought that sounded disgusting, yet I was intrigued. What I ended up landing on was this Wikipedia page about the Krispy Kreme Challenge. Involving more mileage and more donuts than the 5K my friends were running, the Krispy Kreme Challenge was the kind of ridiculousness I can get behind: 2.5 miles, 12 donuts, and 2.5 miles back--in an hour or less. The fact that it takes place at NC State, the school which has held my athletic support longer than any other institution, is just glaze on the doughnut. Why run 3.1 miles and eat 3 donuts when you can run 5 miles and eat 12 donuts? The Krispy Kreme Challenge would be my new way to do more with my running, and it's a pretty sweet (pun intended) option between where I am now and someday qualifying for Boston.

Most Saturdays, I have a morning running date with my friends Tim and Lauren. We talk about lots of things, including our hopes and dreams, and on August 5, I shared with them that a shorter term goal I've set for myself is completing the Krispy Kreme Challenge in February 2019. Their initial reaction was the same combination of disgust and intrigue that I experienced when I was first exposed to the KKC, but less than a mile later, they were on board to help me train. We decided that today would be our first training run, and I said I'd pick up a dozen doughnuts for us to split. They talked me down to a half dozen, and we decided we'd run 2, eat 2, and run 2.  Then yesterday, we decided we'd cover the full 5 miles of the KKC. Here's how we did:

1st run - ran 2.8 miles in 37:52 (13:28 pace)
Donut/transition: 9-ish minutes
2nd run - ran/walked 2.2 miles in 33:51 (15:21 pace)
Total time: 1:21-ish

Bonus: nobody puked or died.

I have run 5 miles in under an hour, and I have eaten four doughnuts in a sitting. I've never combined the running with doughnuts other than a donut around mile 8 of the Louisiana Marathon this year, and I think I threw half of that out. So, I need to get faster, and I need to eat more doughnuts. And I need to get faster at eating doughnuts.

My target race date is around February 2019. I'll need to bank time in the first 2.5 miles to possibly run the second half at a slower pace. I also have to eat more doughnuts than I've ever eaten in one sitting, and I need to eat them quickly. Training is going to be brutal at times, but what an honor it will be to fulfill this dream. I'm excited to share more training reports as we progress. I think our next one won't be for a few weeks, as I'm pretty far into training for Chicago Marathon on October 8, but we're going to step up to three doughnuts. I might even go for four. I also intend to do a better job tracking our time in transition. Stay tuned!