Monument Marathon Race Recap

 As those of you who read this blog know, I ran the Monument Half-Marathon last year and decided to come back this year for the full.  Though I knew from the half that the course would be challenging and that I should manage my expectations when it came to time goals, as the days approached, I found myself printing a 4:30:00 pace bracelet off the Internet just in case. I had a 4:35:00 pace bracelet the day that I set my PR of 4:30:54 at Grandma's Marathon in 2022, and it helped to be able to just glance down and see where I was at in terms of time.  (Pace bracelets tell you not just what your pace per mile should be, but what time you should be at each mile, so you don't have to try to do math in your head in the middle of everything).  I figured the bracelet would just give me something to shoot for in terms of time, and if I didn't make it, fine, but at least I had a goal pace in mind.

On the Thursday before the race, I sent Carrie N. a Facebook message that said, "Now is the time pre-marathon where I start overanalyzing stats and having thoughts like, 'This race will be about the same temp as Grandma's, but it will be hillier.  But there will be no humidity.  But...'" This only got worse in the next couple of days.  I am prone to anxiety dreams, and the night before the race, I had one about work, of all things.  When I woke up, the first thing I thought was, "Oh! You weren't feeling well at Grandma's this year! You thought you were catching a cold!  You're feeling better today!"  I kept finding reasons to be optimistic.

My parents dropped me off at Five Rocks Ampitheatre on race morning to catch the shuttle to the Wildcat Hills.  It was really foggy, and as we approached our destination, the shuttle driver said something like, "Thank you for coming! I hope the fog lifts and you get to experience some of our natural beauty out here!"  When we got off the bus, volunteers were there to greet us with a table all set up with water and food.  They welcomed us and told us we could go inside, where we would find bathrooms and places to sit down.  In line for the restroom, I struck up a conversation with a woman wearing a Grandma's Marathon sweatshirt.  Then several of us went upstairs to an open room with chairs all around the perimeter.  Someone joked, "Are we the elites, or what?!" I saw another woman with an Indianapolis Monumental Marathon cap, and I went over to tell her I'd done that one, too.  "I used to live in Evansville!" I added.  She gave me a blank look at the mention of Evansville. It turned out that she was from California and trying to run a marathon in all fifty states; Nebraska was actually her last.  I realized that though it was a small race (I later learned that around eighty people had started the Full, with seventy-six finishing), a lot of people were from out of state.  Some were from neighboring states like Colorado and Wyoming, but I also talked to people from, or overheard people mention, Pennsylvania, New York, and Montana.  Some, like the woman from California, were working towards all fifty states and using this as their Nebraska race.

We went outside to line up.  The race benefits Western Nebraska Community College scholarships, and  members of the basketball team were lined up with pace signs to show us where to line up.  Someone jokingly said to one of them, "You're going to be pacing us, right?" The basketball player gave him a look of utter panic and horror.  The guy asking laughed, all, "You're like, 'I was just told I would be holding a sign."

We took off.  I'd been warned beforehand not to go too fast down the hill.  I did okay.  I was a little faster than goal pace, but not terribly so.  One lane of the four-lane road was closed for us runners.  The basketball players passed us in their cars, cheering.  For the first ten-eleven miles, there were a few runners that I went back and forth with consistently, including an older man who was run-walking.  I would pass him when he walked, and he would pass me when he ran.  My parents were at a few different stations cheering me on.  By the halfway point, I was a little off of my 4:30:00 goal pace, but not bad.

Though elevation started to gradually climb at mile twelve.  Miles fourteen-sixteen had the steepest elevation gain.  I'd had to go to the bathroom for awhile at that point, and I kept bribing myself, like, "After you get up the hill, you can stop at a port-a-potty.  No, after you pass these two people, you can stop at a port-a-potty."  This resulted in me accidentally, almost comically bursting out of the port-a-potty just as the two people I'd previously passed came by.  I left them behind for good at mile eighteen or nineteen, I think, just after we entered the dirt road to the back side of the Monument.

The next stretch was rough.  Though last year, running the half, I was amazed at how beautiful it was behind the Monument, coming up so late in the race, I couldn't really appreciate it.  It was also at that point that us runners really spread out.  After I passed the two people at the backside of the Monument, I I swear to God, I passed no one else, and no one else passed me.  I had slowed down way off goal pace at that point, and it didn't really help that there was no one close to catch, or who was close enough to catch me.  That part was really mentally hard.  

Not long before the end of the stretch behind the Monument, there was a great Barbie-themed aid station.  They called it the Mojo Dojo Casa Aid Station, and everyone was wearing costumes and calling out things like, "Great job, Barbie!" That perked me up a little.  Finally, I reached the part of the race where I was back in town.  With all of the runners spread out like we were, the people at the aid stations would get really excited when one of us approached.  Some girls made a tunnel for me to run through at one point.  My parents showed up at two more aid stations.

So I'll do these little mental tricks when I run, like, at mile 23, instead of saying to myself, "You only have a little more than three miles to go!," I will say, "You've got less than four miles to go!," so that way it seems like a treat when it's actually MUCH less than four miles.  This caused me to momentarily panic, however, because I had a moment where I thought that to myself, then calculated how long it would take to finish and thought, "OH MY GOD, AM I NOT EVEN GOING TO FINISH IN UNDER FIVE HOURS?!" Then I realized, "Oh, yeah, you don't actually have a full four miles to go, you should be fine."

Heading towards the finish line, you go down a paved path through/past the cemetery, then you get on gravel again to head back to Five Rocks Ampitheatre.  There, there was a steep downhill with a sign warning to beware of loose gravel, and a volunteer warning to be careful.  I had another little freak-out moment where I thought, "OH MY GOD, AM I EVEN IN CONTROL OF MY LEGS AT THIS POINT?! WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN?!" But I was fine.  Then you have to take a steep uphill back up, which I was not cool with at that point, but again, I was fine.

I finished in 4:55:13, far off of the lofty 4:30:00 goal, but better than my worst time of 4:56:32.

thoughts on the Barbie movie (some spoilers)

 

My mom, last weekend on the phone when I mentioned that I had plans to see the Barbie movie: You know, I still have an old Barbie in my hope chest.

Me: You used to let me play with some of your old Barbies.

Her: I let you play with all of them, except her.  I didn't want her sitting in a mud hole in the yard with the rest of the Barbies and GI Joes.

Me: Oh, yeah.  We used to make a swimming pool for them.  And then you would wash them in the sink.  We probably called that "going in the hot tub."

Her: Yep.  They got the full experience.

I open with this story because one of my favorite parts of the lead-up to the Barbie movie has been reminiscing about Barbies, which I played with with varying degrees of regularity from the time I was three until I was about eleven.  Some common things that have come up include that MANY of my friends my age also had Great Shape Barbie (my favorite), who wore a unitard and cool rainbow legwarmers (though I'm pretty sure I lost the legwarmers nearly immediately); it was pretty normal to give your Barbies other names, like Joanne and Shelley, in my case; most everyone had far fewer Kens; and we liked it when we had a Barbie that looked different in some way, like had a different hair color, which was less common in the 1980s than I imagine it is now.

One of my other favorite parts of the lead-up to the Barbie movie is that there has been a lead-up.  I used to go to the movies all the time pre-pandemic; since the pandemic, I have been probably fewer than ten times, and when I fell asleep during House of Gucci whenever that came out, I remember thinking to myself, "Maybe I just don't like going to the movies anymore."  It's been fun to look forward to going to the movies again.  Today, when my friends and I were walking down the hall to the theater, one said, "Just follow the pink!" The theater was packed; probably 98% of the people there were women and girls, and probably 90% of those women and girls were wearing at least some pink.  It's fun to have a movie feel like an event that you get your friends together for and even plan what you're going to wear.

I'm not sure if I have anything profound to say about the movie that hasn't been said already, and I won't give a full plot summary since that's also been covered elsewhere. Instead, here are just some random things I liked, in no particular order:

1) Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), who is the way she is because she was played with too hard; they show a little girl cutting her hair and drawing on her face with a marker.  Yes.  I did not do anything like that on purpose, but inevitably, weird stuff just happened.  For example, the aforementioned Great Shape Barbie that I liked so much?  Well, you know how Barbies had a little ball on the top of their neck that held their head on and made it so that their heads moved?  Okay, well, that ball broke off of Great Shape Barbie at some point, after which I had to just shove her head down on her neck, meaning she basically had no visible neck and was shorter than all the other Barbies.  I had another one whose leg was constantly coming off and often just got played with with a missing leg.  The point is: Weird Barbie was a great idea.  I'm sure everyone had at least one Weird Barbie, whether they wanted one or not.

2) Where do I even start with Ryan Gosling as Ken? So, his storyline is that in Barbieland, his job is Beach (not surfer, not lifeguard, just Beach), and he spends most of his time trying to get Barbie's (Margot Robbie's) attention; Barbie seems to like him okay but doesn't take that much of an interest in him.  I read an article that said that on average, girls had one Ken for every seven Barbies they owned, and that you may have had a Ken but probably didn't ask for one, which-- yeah.  One of my three Kens was a hand-me-down from my mom, and my grandma gave me the other two.  It's pretty funny that the movie works that dynamic in.  After accompanying Barbie to the Real World, Ken learns about the patriarchy.  He likes the part where people respect him just because he's a guy, but doesn't like that "you have to have all these things like 'medical degrees' and 'swimming lessons'."  (I don't know if I'm getting that line right verbatim, but Gosling's delivery is SO FUNNY-- I don't think he actually does air quotes, but they are definitely there in his voice).  So he goes back to Barbieland and sets up a ridiculous version of the patriarchy.  At one point, all of the Kens sing "Push" by Matchbox Twenty.  There's a war that devolves into a choreographed dance number.  I said afterwards, "I feel like Ryan Gosling has been training his whole life to play this part."  He was great.

3) Though I laughed a lot during this movie, I also got teary-eyed a couple of times. The first was during America Ferrerra's speech about all the contradictions inherent in being a woman that everyone has been quoting, and which she delivers even better than I imagined.  The second is when Barbie decides she wants to be human and live in the Real World, and Barbie's creator Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman) takes her hand.  Barbie sees flashes of moments of joy from real women's lives, where women are doing things like playing with kids and graduating, but also, for example, getting a strike in bowling and being cheered on by her friends.  I don't feel like I can adequately describe how or why it is so moving, but it is.

4) The movie is really well-paced.  It has to cover a lot of ground, from establishing what life is like in Barbieland to Barbie and Ken's trip to the Real World to Ken messing up Barbieland with the patriarchy (which, he admits, he pretty much lost interest in once he realized that it wasn't all about horses), and so on.  It moves right along; it never really drags, but also never feels rushed.

Anyway: fun summer movie.  Go see it with some friends.

Grandma's Marathon Race Reflection: 2023

Here's the thing about me: I am not the fastest runner, but I am consistent.  Every single road half-marathon I've raced, over the course of eleven years of racing and twenty-six half-marathons, has been run at an average pace somewhere between 8:40 and 9:45 per mile, which has resulted in a best time of 1:53:37 and a worst time of 2:07:55.  Times have started to skew a little toward the slower end over the years, but conditions like temperature, whether the course is hilly or flat, etc., have also played a role, and keeping them all that close (with most of them falling between 1:55 and 2:05) is something I'm pretty proud of.

With full marathons, I haven't had as much experience, but I have run five now, with a PR of 4:30:54 at Grandma's in 2022 and a worst time of 4:56:24 at Chicago in 2021, and, guess what? The overall time gap is bigger than with the half since I'm running twice as far, and the overall pace is a bit slower, but the pace difference (within about a minute per mile, around 10:20-11:20 in this case) is about the same.  So, when the temperatures started to climb and I started falling off goal pace at Grandma's this year, and when I crossed the finish line at 4:40:24, I was disappointed, first, to not PR, and second, not to at least get sub-4:40.  However, by the time I talked to Carrie N. on the phone on my way home from the race the next day, I had put it in the perspective of, "I think I found my range.  4:30:54 is what I can do when conditions are perfect, and 4:56:24 is what I can do when conditions are terrible, and the rest will fall somewhere in between.  And the good thing about Chicago sucking so hard is that I can always say, 'At least it wasn't as bad as Chicago!'"  I do hope that I have not peaked and that I can still hit a sub-4:30 someday, but prior to Saturday, I had PRed at every full marathon EXCEPT Chicago, and it's probably not realistic to expect that every time.  Train for it, go for it, but manage expectations and don't make it the end of the world if it doesn't happen, I think is the lesson.

Also: I was not hating my life this race.  At any distance, there have been races where I have gotten MAD, and not in the good, "My competitive spirit is revved up!" kind of way, but in the "I hate everyone and everything!" type of way.  At Chicago, for example, I remember crossing the 18-mile mark and thinking, "Eight more miles of this? REALLY?!" At the Lincoln Half this year, which was one of my worst at 2:06:16, I was ready to fling my slick-with-humidity water bottle to the side of the road, and a completely innocuous conversation between a couple of other runners made me think, "Shut UP!" I was straight-up not having a good time.  This race was not like that.  At mile 20, knowing that I had fallen off pace and not quite having it in me to pick it up, but also not feeling terrible, I thought to myself, fairly calmly, "It's just a 10K left.  You can do a 10K."  Also, though I did slow down in the second half, I don't feel like I "bonked," as I did in my first two Indianapolis marathons; I feel like I slowed down slightly and naturally as the temperature rose, which I can't say was a strategy, but I think was pretty normal.  

Other things from the race weekend as a whole that I will remember:

1) I spent the night in Minneapolis on the way so I could get to the marathon expo early enough to see Olympic marathoner Kara Goucher, who was signing her new book at the expo on Friday.  At my hotel in Minneapolis were a bunch of middle-school girls who were in town for a volleyball tournament.  I had been told there would be cookies in the lobby at 10 p.m., and since I was still up, I went down to get one.  Those middle school girls descended on those cookies like a swarm and had them gone in like thirty seconds.  There were more cookies where that came from, it turned out, but it was a pretty funny thing to watch.

2) I got to add to my collection of photos of me with famous lady marathoners, which prior to this included Kathrine Switzer, Deena Kastor, and Shalane Flanagan.  This one was the most personally significant, however, because I read Kara Goucher's book on running for women early in my running career and used to constantly talk about what "Olympic marathoner Kara Goucher" had to say about this or that.  I managed not to go on and on about that and to just say normal things like "Hi" and "Thank you" as she signed my book and took a picture with me.

3) I got to hang out with my friend Julia at her first full marathon, which she crushed! So glad we got to ride the shuttle together and hang out after the race!

I actually have ZERO races in July and August!  But I'm doing the Monument Marathon in Scottsbluff in September and the GOATz 50K in October, so training starts on July 10th.  I'm trying a different training plan geared toward the 50K which includes hill repeats, so we'll see how that goes!  The plan is to run pretty minimally this week, then take it relatively easy the two weeks after with long-ish runs at 6-8 miles.  I think a three-week training break will be about the right amount, because I had like three MONTHS after the fall racing season last year, and while it was nice to not have to follow a training plan when it was so cold, I did feel like I lost some fitness (though I was still doing some running).

Okay! Spring racing season 2023 in the books! Onward and upward!

Unpacking Daisy Jones and the Six: Daisy and Billy and Camila (Spoilers)

Billy Dunne has this version of himself that he wants to be, which is the version that stays clean and sober and is a good husband to Camila and a good father to Julia.  Then Daisy Jones enters his life, first to sing harmony on one song and then as an official member of the band, and she brings out a lot of his insecurities and challenges him in ways that he isn’t used to being challenged.  He expects her to just sing that first song, “Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)” as written.  She rewrites it, and he hates, and has a hard time admitting, that it’s better her way.  At her first live performance with the band, he tells her they’re singing the song fourth; she comes out after the first song, they do the song second, she never leaves the stage, and he hates that the fans don’t want her to.  Basically, he hates, and has a hard time admitting, that he needs her more than she needs him professionally.  There’s one point where he tries to threaten her that unless she does this or that, she’s not coming on tour, and she says, “There IS no tour without me, you stupid son of a bitch.”  He really has a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that he’s not in control with her.

He also has it in his head that as long as he never actually crosses the line of sleeping with her, he’s not doing anything wrong as far as his marriage to Camila is concerned, even though Camila literally tells him otherwise right to his face.  Literally.  She straight up tells him, “I don’t have to know everything, but if you love her—” He interrupts her to tell her he doesn’t.  She says that if he ever does, they’re over.  Yet, when Camila is upset after seeing Billy and Daisy having what is clearly an intimate conversation, he is very insistent that all they’ve done is kiss once.  He can’t get it through his head that she doesn’t care about that.  With both Daisy and Camila, he has these clear ideas about how things are going to be without it ever even occurring to him that they never agreed to those terms or that they might have their own ideas about what they want and what is important to them.

This becomes clearest when, after leaving messages for Camila begging her to give him another chance and come to the fateful Soldier Field show that winds up being their last, a fan buys him a shot, and he takes it.  He is drunk and high at the show that night, and he is different with Daisy than he ever has been before, joining her at her microphone, coming so close their lips almost touch and, at one point, putting his arms around her from behind as they sing.  When they go backstage before the encore, he begins kissing her, and she responds at first.  But she realizes he isn’t being himself and that he’s just reacting to Camila leaving him; he tells her this is who he is: broken. “Let’s be broken together,” he says.  Essentially: I couldn’t live up to Camila, so I might as well live down to you.  To Daisy’s credit, she doesn’t accept this for herself, and firmly tells him, “I don’t want to be broken.”  Daisy told him early on, when they were writing songs for the album together, that he writes from the perspective of who he wants to be, not who he really is.  Billy both loves and hates that Daisy sees who he really is, and loves, hates, and is scared of who he is with her.

Bottom line, he puts A LOT on both of the women in his life.  But Camila isn’t perfect, and Daisy isn’t “broken.”  They’re both real, human people with strengths and weaknesses, and I am really impressed that the show lets them both be that, even if Billy can’t always see them as anything but projections of what he does or doesn’t want to be.  I think it’s a huge departure from a lot of music films.  I love Walk the Line, for example, but in the context of that movie, June was there to save Johnny Cash, and his first wife, Vivian, was there to hold him back; that made sense in the context of that story, which was told from John’s perspective, and very well may have been how he saw things.  Things get more complex when you start showing events from multiple people’s perspectives, though, which we get in Daisy Jones and the Six, where there are no heroes or villains, just a bunch of flawed people trying, and sometimes failing, to do their best; sometimes bringing out the best in each other, and sometimes bringing out the worst.