Flurries still flying

Today's whirlwind:

• great run in the morning on one of my favorite loops with two of my favorite running buddies (Joe and AndyE): up South Boulder Creek trail and down Bluestem - spring flowers galore, blue sky, vivid mountains, and a whole bunch of cows to meander our way past.
• a second run in the afternoon to get postcard stamps....there should postcards from all across the heartland arriving in mailboxes this summer!
• got our bedroom closet cleaned out. That was not on the list, but finding one particular piece of running equipment was on the list and it was being very elusive. Found it! Along with binoculars, a belt, and a beret that had all gone missing over the past, oh, decade...
• located our noodle (a tubular thing people play with in swimming pools) - all cobweb covered on our back porch, hosed it off, and will cut it down and use it as a foam roller to keep my IT band and back in check this summer.
• Got all the cold weather running gear washed and stacked and ready to be packed.
• wrote a generic press release to have available whenever anyone asks for one (so far, just one person in Wisconsin has asked - but now I'll have it!)
  

Kendall was busy as well as he:

• got our permanent license plates for the motorhome (somethingorother "OWL" - I like that owl bit),
  
• bought reams of printer paper so I can print out copies of the daily maps (one for the motorhome, one for me on the run (one page at a time), and one for my mom so she can keep track of me as she fidgets away in Petoskey
• and, perhaps most importantly, he found where the fuel goes into our motorhome - neither one of us could spot it and he actually had to resort to the manual. He even offered me a dollar if I could find it - but no luck for the buck.
  

I'd say it's time to relax a bit. I think I'll spend the evening (or maybe five minutes of the evening) counting the money I've been collecting for the trip. All the change I've found while running has been going into a can along with birthday money, money from odd jobs, and coins that charities sent my folks and that mom then sent to me. It's time to count it all up! Maybe I'll be able to afford my coffee habit as I cross the country!

A flurry of activity

No doubt about it - it's pre-launch busy-ness time. But I must say, when I heard my sister-in-law talking tonight about the system conversion she is going through, with a launch date of June 1, I was oh-so-glad to be launching The Run to Petoskey rather than another system application. Three cheers for retirement!

Lots has been going on. It's rather entertaining to see the range of activities and issues swirling around in just the past couple of days:

• Household items ranging from dead car to busted pipe to remembering to pay the property taxes before we leave.
• Devon's graduation details ranging from which vehicle to drive to Knox, to changing our hotel reservations from 3 rooms to 2 (including dealing with a busy signal for 6 hours and finally calling Devon and asking him to walk over to the hotel to verify and modify the reservation).
• Run-related communications with folks along the route including: a gang of runners from work who want to run the first couple of miles with me, the editor of the Brush (Colorado) News-Tribune, the South Platte second grade teacher in Big Springs, Nebraska who just sent a book written by their second graders in response to our Creekside second graders' book, a former co-worker who lives near Red Wing, Minnesota who has offered us a place to stay when we pass through her neighborhood, a friend of my running buddy who has offered his front yard for our RV when we come through Mondovi, Wisconsin, a high school friend who called to say she wants to write a story about me. Mind boggling.
• Check-it-off-the-list activity - everything from buying the flags for the bicycles, to letting my relatives know the trip is on, to picking out which towels to put in the motorhome, to updating the gosh-darned lists
• actual running stuff: going over the taper plan details with Mark ("rest - everything" - Mark says I should be "oozing" energy by the time the run starts), to running with various running buddies one last time (and, I must confess, this taper seems to be working - I had the smoothest, most relaxed, but quickest, 11 mile run I've had in a very long time today)
• and actual non-running stuff (yes, there is a life outside of running): volunteering in the Creekside Library, volunteering at the Creekside fun run (ok - that is running-related, but I wasn't running - instead all the grades came out and cheered eachother on as they took their turn running around the field, wearing official race bibs, pouring water over their heads at the aid stations and picking up their goodie bags at the end - very fun stuff), and celebrating my brother's birthday this evening.

There are still lots of details to wrap up - but I do believe the checked-off items are starting to outnumber the waiting-to-be-checked-off items. And I'm almost to the point of saying as long as I've got my shoes and the maps, we're good to go; tough noogies on the rest of it, we'll just wing it.

Breath deep

Interesting times...

• We had to have our old van towed into the shop. This could be it for Old Reliable.
  
• There's a pipe leaking in our basement. The plumber has been called.
• Lots of packages arrived:
  ...my new hat!
  ..."Meditations from the Breakdown Lane" by James Shapiro, 1980 solo transcontinental runner
  ...a new cell phone battery to replace my fading battery
• And I just finished up the daily maps: a document for each state (ranging from 12 pages for 138-mile Iowa to 26 pages for 374.5-mile Nebraska). Lots of hyperventilating as I put in the route details for the final day on the road.

Petoskey's Little Traverse Bay, June 2006 - Picture used on cover page for Michigan Daily Maps

Believe

This morning as I putzed around and eventually went on my morning run, my predominant emotion was "scared sh*tless." Thirty miles a day. Weeks and weeks of thirty miles a day. A week just to the northeast corner of Colorado, alllll the way across Nebraska, into Iowa, miles and miles of Minnesota, weaving through Wisconsin, up and up into the UP....and I expect to make it to Petoskey?!?!?!

But then the jitters began to settle down. First there were the calming hands (and voice and psyche) of magic fingers Beggsy, massage therapist extraordinaire. Massage was followed by an easy trot home, snack, and soothing warm shower, then it was out the door for coffee and a chat with an old work buddy - who, for some reason, exudes supreme confidence in my ability to do this. While coffee klatching, more former co-workers drifted in - cheerleaders one and all.

After coffee, I walked from campus to downtown. A downhill walk; a smooth, strong downhill walk. Hmmm, maybe this training has worked. Maybe this taper is working.

Downtown shopping: a father's day present for Kendall; a birthday present for my brother; a graduation present for my son. A joy to shop for something other than The Supply List!

Home again where a spurt of computer time knocked a couple of things off the To Do List. (Yes, there are lots of lists.)

Talked to Deb - the queen of logistics and keeping Paula calm. We drifted to topics other than The Run and I responded to something she said with "I'll see it when I believe it." When I went to correct myself, she said I had it right the first time. Bringing it back to The Run, she's absolutely right. I've always seen this run. It's gonna happen.

Can you hear me now?

This morning Kendall walked in one direction, I ran in a different direction, and we both carried our new talkabouts. They almost worked!

Kendall set off before I did and I tried hailing him just as I was leaving. No response.
He tried hailing me from the furthest point on his route. No response.
I tried hailing him when I got up on a highway overpass and could point myself toward where I thought he might be. Fuzzy response. I was at least able to recognize his voice!
He tried hailing me just as I was reaching the top of another overpass and we could understand at least half of what the other person said.
He hailed me again when we were about a mile apart and everything was loud and clear. (When he asked me where I was I replied with "on Eutaw or Lipan or one of those streets" and someone from somewhere hollered out "Lipan" - those talkabout beeps get everyone's attention!)

We met up and walked together for a bit then I took off running while he went back to the house. He tried hailing me from within the house when I was less than a mile away and it didn't work very well at all - but we played with our settings (me with both cell phone and talkabout in hand as we worked out the adjustments - running is not supposed to be so gadgety) and got so we could sort of tell what the other person was saying (he heard me pretty well, I had a harder time but was dealing with a lot of traffic noise at the time).

I figure that
a) with experience, we'll get the settings right for the distances we're dealing with
and
b) where the talkabouts don't work (lots of buildings), the cell phones will work, and where the cell phones don't work (countryside, farmland, ...) the talkabouts will work.

And if neither work - I got myself the world's loudest whistle today. I tried it out as we were driving home. Note to self: never ever blow that whistle inside any sort of enclosure. Yow!

One more step towards The Run

Today was my last long run before The Big Run...22 miles, excruciatingly slow. Not a spare drop of energy to be found. I think it mostly had to do with lack of sleep...staying up late to get things ready, getting up early to get my runs in, waking up during the night due to a busy brain or because of noisy neighbors (we have a rental house next door and what with CU's semester finishing up last week, there's a lot of partying going on). But! Now is the time to refill those energy reservoirs, work out all the aches and pains, top off the nutrient tanks, dot the i's and cross the t's, and get ready for some runnin'!

And I do believe progress is being made in that regard. I actually had quite a good run yesterday, which tells me the taper isn't totally destroying me. Joe and I went out to a .7 mile loop that we use for tempo running, intervals, and/or pace running. Yesterday was a pace run, practicing our planned Bolder Boulder pace. We rather blew it as every .7 was too quick. But we both felt pretty good while on the loop (actually talking most of the time) and afterward. Progress is also being made in the non-running arena: bikes are in the shop getting new tires, tuned up, and accessorized; we got our RV-specific supplies today (like that special toilet paper you're supposed to use); support and running rendezvous plans with various folks across the country are being firmed up; the list of household stuff that needs to be taken care of before we leave for the summer is getting shorter; and we know just what supplies we need to shop for tomorrow and where to shop for them. There's actually a chance everything will have come together before we leave for Devon's graduation! I hope so, since there is but one itsy bitsy day between the time we get home from Dev's graduation and the day I start running!

Tightly wound

When I back off, everything shuts down.
My body gets cranky, my energy drains away, my mind frazzles.
This is an 80-mile week...the beginning of my taper. This is also a get-everything-done week. So, in addition to very little running, I'm spending hours in front of the computer. Put the two together and I feel like, well, not like some finely-tuned athlete who expects to run 30 miles a day for 55 days. Then I look at the calendar and I see that there is one day less than three weeks to go.
Nervous doesn't even begin to describe it.

The curiosity of second graders

The second graders at our neighborhood elementary school (where my husband is the library media specialist) created a book about their school that we have sent off to some schools along our route. We included a blank book for the along-the-route schools to use to write about their schools then send back to us. Today I had a most enjoyable time visiting with our second graders about my run. I did almost no lecturing, and just threw out the occasional comment or question to get the students to ask me questions. It didn't take much to get the questions flying. For example:

• Is this your job? (Sort of. I do spend about 4-6 hours a day running. ...that got a lot of wow's.)
• Do you ever get tired of running? (Well, sometimes I get tired while I'm on a run - so then I just slow down. But I always want to go for a run when I wake up the next day.)
• How did your shoes get so dirty? (Ah! A perfect lead-in. When I asked them back about different kinds of running, they went more in the direction of "fast" and "slow" - but eventually we got around to roads and trails and I showed them where I'll be running on trails through the various states on the way to Michigan.)
• Will you have TV crews following you during the run? (I had a hard time keeping from laughing on that one.)
  
• How many seconds will you be running? (It works out to about 1,287,000)
• How will you get across the water? (in reference to crossing from the Upper to Lower Peninsula of Michigan. When I told them about taking the ferry to Mackinac Island from the UP, running around the island, then taking the ferry to the Lower Peninsula, one of the students proudly declared that he had been to Mackinac Island and had ridden a bike around the island...on the very road I'll be running!) (Note: during my answer to that question, Kendall was making swimming motions - and, of course, one of the students immediately thought Kendall was going to swim across.)
• Will you run at night? (Probably not - the plan is to run early in the morning and later in the afternoon. I asked them why I picked those times of days. There are some smart second graders: "so cars can see you better," "because there aren't as many cars," "because the sun is the most dangerous at noon."
  
• Will you take pictures of us while we're running with you? (Kendall had to inform the heartbroken fellow that they wouldn't actually be running with us.)
  
• How old are you? (That question was asked by both classes - and both times, when I answered "55" the whole class said "wow" in awe struck voices... Then one class asked my husband how old he is and when he said he wouldn't be 55 until June, one student piped up with "You look so much older than your wife." Of course I had to respond with "Mr Kendall doesn't run as much as I do; running must keep you young!")
• When did you start running? The 1800s? 1900s? (Answer...as I was starting to feel quite antiquated: around 1957 - but then I asked how many of them had gone for a run. When all raised their hands, I pointed out I was just like them, running since I was little.)
  
• Kendall asked how long I had been keeping a running log - and that has been since about 1978 or 1979. One of the students then asked how many miles I had run since I kept a log. (About 49,500...just a few hundred more and I'll have run the equivalent of twice around the equator. Some eyes got very big at that.)
• Will you keep running when you're finished with your trip? (Absolutely!)
  
• Kendall then asked the million dollar question: "You've set a very big goal for yourself. Are you a little bit scared?" "Yep."
  

Zipping through the list

Those of you who have worked with me when I was a project manager and/or those of you who are project managers probably have a darned good idea of the size and volume of lists I've got going right now. And, with a mere three weeks and one day left until The Run starts, I'm zipping through these lists at full speed. Yesterday I checked off

• making a post-run/pre-return-to-school dental appointment for Paul (younger son who is part of our support crew)
• ordering prescriptions
• writing to runmichigan.com about the run
• follow-up email to the Missouri River Runners about when I plan to arrive in Sioux City
  
• follow-up email to Running Times about the run
• writing to Minnesota contacts about schedule and route details
• writing to a Michigan friend about publicity possibilities
• getting info for an emergency medical kit
• completing the day-by-day route guide for Minnesota (now only Wisconsin and Michigan are left to do)

And today I just ordered what looks like a doozy of a hat from Sun Precautions - great sun protection and well-ventilated. Nifty, eh?!

Taper ready

Generally tired, bored with my running routes, uninspired, anxious about getting everything ready.
At this point, there's nothing more I can do for training - and all kinds of ways I can screw up.

It's taper time!

80 miles this week, 60 next week, 30 the week after, then GULP! time to run!