Genius at work.

Mr. Cheeks keeps pointing to the model in this Runner’s World ad and saying “Mama! Mama!” The model is wearing exactly what I wear when I go running: black leggings, pink windbreaker, black beanie hat.

The institution of higher learning has not yet been created that can accommodate this level of genius.

Well, ok, or he’s just learning early the fine art of buttering up.

The good news is that, having recently started running again, I don’t feel as unfit as I expected. Slow, but not pathetically slow. Was the break good or necessary? To be honest, I don’t think it was necessary. Running didn’t make me run down; lack of sleep and poor stress/anxiety management made me run down. Now with probiotics, multivitamins, and a Cheekmeister theoretically capable of sleeping for 12 hours (as in: he did it twice, thus inspiring unreasonable, easily-dashed hopes for all the other nights) it’s a new year, new start, and all the other cliches.

I’ll be back soon with a cheek update (spoiler: SO CUTE SO MOBILE SO MUCH PERSONALITY) and more running blather. For now the 20 minutes of unfucking are up, so it’s time for a so-well-deserved coffee break.) Happy new year!

Moving on.

I’m up to about 50 km or 31 miles a week, which was my goal at the start of the summer. Yay! I will stay at this level in October, then move up to the next goal: 60km/wk. The extreme slowness of stroller running has been great for my legs. Not so great for my running form, especially the upper body – I seem to have regressed to the old boxing-nun arm form, if my race photos are to be believed – so I try to work on that whenever I can get in a stroller-free run. My main focus is on mileage right now so I haven’t done much in the way of impressive-sounding workouts, but I did do two speed-training sessions in the last two weeks: one hill workout, where I ran uphill for 5 repeats of 2:30 at 5k effort, dodging skateboarders most of the way, and a mini tempo run on the track, 4km in 18 minutes. Who knows if that counts as a tempo run – but it surely did *something*, however minute, for my lactate threshhold.

The closest track is about a mile away, and nestled into the armpit of a highway junction/four-leaf-clover thing, with a huge big-box furniture store on one side and a gasometer on the other. A gym class from a nearby school showed up halfway through my workout: about 20 15-year-old girls, half of them with head scarf and mostly chattering in Turkish. They were adorable, even though they hogged the inside lane on their two-lap warmup whatever (jog? walk? joddle?). In typical high school gym class fashion, guaranteed to spark anyone’s passion for sport, they then sat down on the sidelines and were called out in pairs to sprint 100m. I.e. they warmed up, then sat down in the relatively freezing cold for half an hour, in order to each sprint for 20 or so seconds. Fantastic workout.  Really.

As I rounded the last curve I heard one of them say: “Look! She’s been sprinting by herself the whole time!” (Sprinting! lol.) And the other ones were like “omg why?” I jogged a slow lap, and as I went to collect my jacket and hat from the bleachers, one of the girls called out, “How many laps did you do?” in a tone that suggested honest bewilderment that anyone would do this alone, voluntarily. “Ten,” I said, smiling/grimacing through a waterfall of sweat and trying to hide my internal sobbing at the fact that she used the formal, respectful “you” that kids that age are supposed to use with their elders. “Whoa,” she said. Then the groundskeeper, a white-haired man in a windbreaker who’d been carrying a measuring tape around and marking the infield while I ran, popped his head out the window of his office and said “But she’s an elite athlete!” I had to laugh at that. Ridiculous as it sounded, I still felt like a rock star. A really smelly rock star in compression socks. But still.

I jogged home in the saccharine afterglow of this made-for-tv encounter, easily the friendliest interaction I have ever had with a bunch of random Berliners. (In fact I can’t recall any others that would qualify as “friendly.” At the most I can think of some where people weren’t outright rude in that “yeah I know I’m being rude and I’m proud of it and what are you going to do about it anyway” way that they have here. After 8 years it was bound to happen, I guess.)

So RIP Nirvanas. Thanks for the good times.

Well, that, and also I can’t think of anything more interesting to say right now: I run a lot. Almost every day. Very very slowly, most days, with Cheeks in the Baby Jogger. My legs like it, but – unlike this list of things you previously did not know about me and yet were somehow able to live your life – it doesn’t make for scintillating blog content.

1. Best run ever: Ever? Like, EVER ever? Superlatives come with so much commitment. I remember a few runs that stood out as the best during that particular period of my life, but have never given much thought to why, and I’m not sure I would call them the best in relation to now because everything else around them was so…not the best. College wasn’t my favorite life phase (an understatement – unamerican, I know) but I remember a few early-morning Sunday easy runs with the cross-country team, and alone, on trails in the mountains: that famous tourist-fodder foliage, the quiet, the chill in the air, not having any training goal other than just recovering from a hard week and knowing you had the rest of the day to hang out and do nothing. For once I didn’t beat myself up for being too slow, too fat, too not-good-enough, I just enjoyed it.Those were great. I remember my fastest half-marathon, also on a cold fall morning, six months after I started running seriously again, how easy it felt to pass people and just let my legs do their job unhindered by negative self-talk, feeling good about myself and something I’d accomplished at a time when everything else was crumbling around me. Again, a great run and a great feeling, but against a dreary backdrop. More recently, running has been less an escape or a relief than just part of who I am, and my best recent run was probably the muddy, hilly 12km x-c race I ran 2 weeks ago. It wasn’t fast, but mentally it was awesome: no beating myself up for being slower than the last time I ran the course, just focusing on keeping an even effort on the uphills and working with the downhills, feeling light, SMILING (!!) and looking forward to seeing my supportively gorgeous/gorgeously supportive husband and adorable son at the finish line. Also autumnal, and yet somehow REALLY the best this time…

2. Three words that describe my running: Life-affirming (that’s 2, right?), essential.

3. My go-to running outfit is:  If we had Lucy in Germany, I’m pretty sure the answer to this would be different, but as it is, I love these 4-year-old Adidas Supernova capris which are slowly disintegrating in key coverage areas like the crotch, but which I cannot replace because the newer Supernova capris fit differently, i.e. not at all – and whichever t-shirt doesn’t stink too badly at the moment.

4. Quirky habit while running: Does conversing with an 11-month-old count? Otherwise I am disappointingly unquirky these days. Oh, unless you count imagining myself in the 2016 Olympics. What?  I won’t even be 40 yet!

5. Morning, midday, evening: When I was employed I always ran after work. Now that I am a useless waste of space, I prefer morning. Not too early. Post-coffee. Lately it’s been late afternoon due to baby scheduling issues and my stride is measurably less springy.

6. I won’t run outside when it’s: Icy. See also: Injury, fear of.

7. Worst injury—and how I got over it: Achilles tendonitis in 2009. I am probably lucky that this was my worst injury to date (.hey body, can we please keep it that way?): I stopped running for a month, iced the tendon, massaged and stretched my calves, made sure I had the right shoes, and it went away.

8. I felt most like a badass mother runner when: Hmmm, my running experiences as a mother are limited to the last 9 months, but I think it’s a 3-way tie among the 3 races I’ve run in the last month: waving at my husband and my adorable little son at the start and sometimes even during the race, hugging them at the finish line…and remembering how far my body has come since I started “running” again this past January, one wobbly slow minute at a time.

9. Next race is: A 10k on October 14th.

10. Potential running goal for 2013:

cheezburger.com, obvs. Just to end on the 2008 theme again.

Because, ummm…

yeah…

I’m thinking you might want to consider it.

Alpine trail race: so painful! When can we do it again?

I ran this alpine trail race (the 12km version) in August. It was 85 degrees, no clouds, little shade, and, duh, lots of hills. I felt strangely good for a person running an alpine trail race who hasn’t trained for an alpine trail race, sort of light on my feet and happy to be there, and was super happy with the result, especially considering the nearly 5-hour hike we’d done the day before. Sure, there was that almost-vomiting thing during the first 3.5 km of uphill in blinding sunshine, and the killer migraine that night, but it was all totally worth it. Finished in 1:04:03.

Then there was this:

12km x-c race near Berlin. YAY MUD. And yes, this is the corrected elevation. It really is this hilly. Some of the hills involve stairs.

…a 12km cross-country race near Berlin on 1.9. Muddy! Hilly! Twisty! Turny! STAIRS! (No German x-c race is complete without at least one set of stairs.) This is one of my favorite races for the art installations and music along the course. Again I felt weirdly good, passed a lot of people and finished in just over 59 minutes, good enough for 4th place and just over a minute slower than the last time I ran this race, pre-pregnancy.

And finally, last weekend, this:

10km race at the zoo with free-range pelicans. (That’s not me running – jerks don’t have any photos of me! Photo credit runnersworld.de)

…a flat, though turn-intensive, 10k race at the zoo. Best combination of race and family day out ever invented. Herr G. ran the 5k, I ran the 10k, and all 3 of us  had a great time wandering around looking at the animals. Baby monkeys! OMG! The race itself: also OMG. My 10k started at 2:30 in the afternoon; it was hot, and I’d eaten about 14 tons of pasta for lunch that morphed into a glob of lead in my stomach and was still sitting there shortly before the start. Motivation was awol and did not make an appearance during my super-slow 1km warmup plod. I told myself it would be a good workout regardless of the finish time and lined up in the middle of the pack. After running a difficult 12k in 59 minutes the week before, I figured I’d manage under 50 minutes for this race, maybe even under 49 if it was a really good day. Faster scenarios did not occur to me, slower scenarios were too depressing, so I settled on 49-ish as a goal and decided not to look at my Garmin at all during the race, but to just run by feel.

The feeling, as it turned out, was very much a sub-46-minute kinda vibe. After weaving around the hordes who take the starting gunshot as a sign to gradually mosey along (seriously people, there is a place for you, and it is not in the “10k between 45-50 minutes” corral), I settled into a pace that felt like it was probably too fast, and then talked myself into keeping it up the whole time. At the 5k mark I glanced at my watch and saw 23:00. Panicked briefly, then consoled myself with the thought that I could slow down a LOT and still make it in 49 minutes. Middle of the pack was, as it turned out, probably too far back for this race: I passed, like, everyone, and was passed exactly once, by some dude between km 8 and 9 as I contemplated just lying down and taking a nap next to the zebra enclosure. (km 8-9 is always the “please let me nap” phase of a 10k, I find.)  I developed an aversion to looking at my Garmin – I really didn’t want to know, because I knew the pace was fastish and I’d probably psych myself into slowing down if I knew the exact number – and was totally surprised to round the last curve and see 45:00 on the clock. Holy $%&! Really? Is the clock broken? After a sad attempt at a finishing kick, the final result was 45:26 – good enough for 1st in my age group (by 2 minutes) and 11th woman out of 666 overall. (I could insert a devil’s number joke here, but honestly it’s all I can do to type words in a coherent sequence right now. Feel free to make your own.)

45:26 is a really good time for me, and it came out of nowhere. Apart from the 2 12k races I’d run in the preceding month, I had done no speed training in 2 years and my average training pace is over 10 minutes/mile. Almost every run is a baby jogger run. Run slow, run faster? Well, maybe! What I am most proud of is the mental effort it took to keep running that fast, despite the fear of a crash-and-burn. I’m feeling übermotivated now and really looking forward to my next 10k in mid-October. Just 2.6 seconds per kilometer faster and I’ll make it under 45 minutes. Because you know it’s just that easy…

Not to be deterred in my constant quest for quality content, I decided to share them anyway, just because. Photography lovers, look away now.

So Herr Mini G. and I headed out this morning for a jaunt around Treptower Park with the Cheekmobile. This was notable for two reasons: 1. Morning. Usually I time the run to coincide with the Cheeks’ afternoon nap, but this was a revelation: running in the morning is awesome! I still had pillow creases on my face when we left the house, but whatevs. Cheeks seemed to enjoy it as well. Must do that more often. And 2. Treptower Park used to be one of my weekly running destinations (in fact I posted photos of it once before, here), but I hadn’t been there in a year and a half. Nostalgia! (Click a photo to open a gallery.)

Remember how I said I wasn’t setting any running goals? I’m working on not setting any running goals. I’m trying really, really hard not to set any goals and just be one with running for a while. Zen. Om. What have you. But. A couple of weeks ago as I slogged up the Teufelsberg, Berlin’s only real hill (a heap of WWII rubble, actually) an insidious sequence of words weaseled its way into my conscious mind. Words akin to conveying oneself over 6.2 miles on foot in an expeditious manner. Words rhyming with, I don’t know, last men weigh, or past wen fey.

Words, words, words. I tried to distract myself by recalling the plot of Hamlet, but it didn’t work. Yeah, something’s whatever in the state of Denmark and then everyone dies. Now! Vast Ben-Gay, anchors aweigh (wait, what?), c’mon run another two kilometers it’ll help your mast hen lay!

A ridiculous rhyming mantra now accompanies every run, even pops up when I think about what to do today. Should I go to spin class? Well, will it help us with the vast fen day? y/n?

Lesson: if you have to work really hard at being zen, it might not be for you.

It just seems so seductively simple. Barely a plan, really. Not even worthy of the word goal. You just up your mileage, get your long run up to 10 miles or so, about six weeks before the heretofore unnamed event you add speedwork, and there you have it: a cast den way in under 45 minutes.

So far, so good on the non-goal! The Viscount of Cheekchester and I have been ramping up our weekly mileage consistently since the beginning of May and we’ve gotten pretty darn fast with the baby jogger. So “fast”, in fact, that we can now chick dudes in the park. Which, if you thought a normal chicking was traumatic for some guys, you should see what happens when you pass them while pushing 20 lbs of adorbs uphill in a jogging stroller. Holy sprinting! This guy yesterday, well, let’s just say Uncle DOMS will be paying him a visit this week. Hope he didn’t pull anything.

Anyway, we’re up to 20 miles a week now, which is a big improvement over the 0 miles we logged in April, and our long run is up to 8 miles. We have lofty ambitions to get up to 30 miles a week by the end of the summer, but we realize that that sounds a little like a goal, so you know, like, whatever happens is cool. Especially if it involves running a few non-baby-jogger 10k’s.

Running with the baby jogger might actually be a great thing for the ego-driven (I hear there are people like this out there…) because it keeps the pace down, which is great for mileage-building, but you definitely feel like you’re getting a workout.

The Cheeks are awake and I desperately need more coffee, so just a few random observations before I go:

- someone brought us a People magazine from the US and it contains the usual blather about post-baby bodies. Alyssa Milano: “I carry around 20 lbs all day! It’s a great workout!” Dude, so do I, and you know what? All I have to show for it are completely disproportional shoulder muscles. Please do not insult us by insisting that this is all you do to stay fit. Or at least, you know, MENTION that you also haven’t eaten in a year.

- Things the 8-month-old Cheeks can do include: crawling, standing, “cruising” (walking sideways while holding on to coffee table) and standing in front of the full-length mirror waving at himself. So. So. Cute.