Nobody Knows Anything

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu
Chinese philosopher (604 BC – 531 BC)

I Googled this quotation to make sure I had it right, and I discovered a translation even more interesting underneath the popular understanding.

Although this is the popular form of this quotation, a more correct translation from the original Chinese would be “The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.” Rather than emphasizing the first step, Lau Tzu regarded action as something that arises naturally from stillness. Another potential phrasing would be “Even the longest journey must begin where you stand.” [note by Michael Moncur, September 01, 2004]

In other words: Begin where you are. Get the feet moving.

I did, in fact, make my goal of running 1000 miles in 2009. In fact, I made it to 1001.5, as the running watch flies. It was not easy, because while I was way ahead of the game by the end of June (when I ran the marathon), I slacked off immediately thereafter. By October, I realized I was well behind where I needed to be to get to 1000. I really had to start ramping up the mileage in November, which wasn’t easy, given that we were spending a week in Michigan, and I had to do 120 miles in December. The most I’d run all year was 130, and that was when I was training for a marathon.

(As it turned out, I could have run in Michigan: while it was colder than it was here, it wasn’t that much colder than the coldest days I’ve run in this area. No snow, only a little rain. Lesson #1: bring your damn running stuff with you.)

I ran the 120 miles in December, even though I had to give up weight training to do it. I’ve definitely found that once I get to about 90 miles for the month, doing any other sort of exercise along with the running becomes impossible. I keep expecting my body is going to adjust upwards, but no: over 90, and running is all you get.

The question becomes, of course: Why on Earth did I pursue this goal?

And the answer is: To see if I could do it.

When I signed up for the challenge (at 3fatchicks.com, best site on the Web for weight loss support!), I thought, This is insane. Then I thought: I wonder how far I’ll get. The idea attracted me strongly, so I put “Run 1000 miles” on my list of goals for the year, and every time I went running I added the total to a spreadsheet I’d made to keep track. Once I made it a goal, I think my mind started figuring out how I could do it.

I’ve found that making a list of 10 goals for the year is really valuable, if I really sit down and think about what I want to accomplish. Not what I think I should do, but what I want to do. The process outlined in Your Best Year Ever! by Jinny Ditzler has helped me a lot to make goal lists for the year. Making lists of goals I should do is a complete waste of time, and I’ve never made a New Year’s Resolution in my life. But seriously considering things I would like to accomplish during a year, writing it down, and posting it somewhere where I can see: that has been a powerful and useful practice, one I highly recommend.

(Another recommendation for a yearly practice I highly encourage: finding your Word of the Year, which I got from Christine Kane. It really sets your mood for the whole year, particularly if you keep reminding yourself of it at various times. It’s a shorthand way of reminding yourself what kind of experience you want to have, without beating yourself over the head about doing this, that, or the other.)

Doing 1000 miles reminded me that I can take a crazy, outsized goal and actually achieve it. That when I think of something I want to do and immediately react with, “Oh no, I could never do that,” I can remind myself, “You did one thousand miles, babe. You can do this.”

One really important part of making 1000 miles was that I told myself I could do it, over and over again, reminding myself of the goal, seeing myself finishing. It was a goal far outside my comfort zone—I run somewhere between 9 and 11 minutes a mile, depending on terrain and my exhaustion level, so 1000 miles is a hell of time investment, not to mention the physical costs. And yet it was really exhilarating (even while it was exhausting) to keep racking up the miles.

(By the way, if at any time my body had hurt (beyond the simple aches of making it move), I would have stopped. These people who run through crippling pain? I am not that person.)

I’m not sure I would even think about doing it again, except my running bud Nina wants to run 1000 miles this year, and I am duty-bound to get her there! I don’t know if it can really count as a yearly goal this time around though.

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I’ve started working on a couple of side projects—one of them that I’m willing to share with the world right now is Let The Freak Flag Fly, a blog dedicated to people being who they gotta be. I find stories about people who find out who they really are and live large as a result to be very inspiring, mostly as I am trying to find my own identity for this period in my life.

If you have any suggestions for topics or want to suggest URLs or even want to write an entry about how you let the freak flag fly, please drop me a line at diane -at- let-the-freak-flag-fly-.-com (please to remove all dashes and spaces and replace the at with an at-sign…you know the drill).

In case you’re looking for interesting things around the Web this New Year’s (and who, of course, is not?).

• The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, who also has a new book by that name (which I haven’t read but sounds very interesting and very much the sort of thing I’ve started doing on my own anyhow right now). A regular gal—albeit one who clerked for a Supreme Court justice—decides to investigate the various bits of advice she’s found hither and yon on what makes for happiness and actually does them to see how well they work.

• Tiny Buddha by assorted authors. Yes, we’re back onto the happiness/zen/meditation track here, but hey: that’s what I’m interested in these days! Nice articles about the little things you can do in your every day life to improve your experience and the experiences of those around you.

• The Great Fitness Experiment by Charlotte Hilton Andersen. Ever read some fitness magazine’s recommended workout and thought, I wonder if that really works? Well, Charlotte doesn’t just wonder; she goes ahead and does it. One experiment per month, undertaken with hilarious and awe-inspiring intensity. She’s a witty, fun writer whose explorations into all things health and fitness will knock you upside the head. Also: she just had a baby. Ever wonder how to get your groove back after having a baby? Imagine you’re on the newest of four young tots. Yeah. It’s good stuff.

• Cookie Madness by Anna. Seriously, do I need to explain this one? Pictures + recipes + descriptions of COOKIES (and other tasty baked treats) = love. It’s Cookies. It’s Madness. Go.

• Bakerella by Bakerella (who’s probably a baker named Ella, natch). Usually when I think “crafty,” I think “manipulative and evil, and can you teach me how to do that?” When Bakerella does crafty, I think “gorgeous, amazing, and tasty, and can you teach me how to do that?” Oh, I want to be able to create the sorts of treasures you find here.

• Copenhagenize by Mikael. Mikael would like us to Copenhagenize the planet—that is, put everyone on a bicycle and get us out of our cars. They did it in Copenhagen (a city once devoted to its cars), so let’s get out there, folks! Since I feel this is an admirable goal (even as I still drive around in my 8 year old, 100k mile Honda Odyssey), I think everyone should read the inspiring tales of moving to better transportation.

• The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs by Fake Steve (or Real Dan Lyons). I know, Fake Steve’s been around for years, with a prolonged hiatus during Real Steve’s medical issues. Now he’s back and when Fake Steve is on, he’s on. The whole crusade against AT&T’s annoyingly sucky service? Excellent, Smithers. His series of slams on Tiger Woods? Evil but hilarious. Whenever I see terrible retail layout (I’m looking at you, Borders) or seriously tacky bling (that would be you, teenagers), I hear Fake Steve’s snarky voice in my head.

  Darin, surprisingly, does not find Fake Steve as hilarious I do. I can’t imagine why.

I mentioned in a previous entry that I would put an update here on how my meditation practice was going. I have continued to meditate about five days out of seven, usually twenty minutes at a time, but a few times doing thirty. I do the usual shtick: I sit on a zafu cushion, close my eyes, listen to a calming background noise via the Brain Wave app on my iPhone, and try to think of nothing until the program turns off. I have three ways of doing this:

1) Breathe in for a count of four, and then breathe out for a count of four.

2) Do a chakra meditation. I can’t remember where I read about this, but you imagine light (or energy, or the universe, or whatever) pouring into your body, and it lights up your first chakra, which is red and sits at the root of your spine, then the second chakra, which is orange and is roughly where your internal genitals are, then the third… There are seven spots, not hard to learn them, and they follow the colors of the rainbow.

3) Do a verbal chant, such as “Ooooooommmmmm” on the out breath.

Why do I do these funky (and quite frankly, extremely Californian) meditations?

Because they allow me to empty my mind and only focus on that one thing. It’s almost impossible for my mind to wander if I’m fixated on visualizing lights of various colors lighting up through my body. I don’t actually feel any different when I visualize an area lighting up with energy, but I sure can’t think about anything else. (I have a very strong visualization muscle–I really “see” things when I imagine.) And if I spend time focusing on my body, I will relax the various areas as I go through them.

With the “Om” I don’t believe it’s really the sound from the birth of the universe, or whatever it’s supposed to be. (Sorry: am card-carrying atheist.) Chanting that sound just massages my body from the inside, being both soothing and tingly at the same time. Seriously, take a moment right now (possibly in your bathroom or your closet or something where no one will hear you) and say “Oooooommmmmm” a couple of times, really letting it reverberate through you. Doesn’t that feel wonderful? Now imagine it saying it for twenty minutes straight. You’ll feel like you got a tummy massage.

Our brains don’t want to calm down. Meditation is you learning how to take control of your mind. When your mind wanders onto thoughts of what you should be doing or your shopping list, a great technique to deal with it is just say “Thoughts, thoughts” and dismiss them. Or, if like me, your mind wanders to fantasies about what you should have said to the rude salesclerk or what life would be like living in a fabulous Paris apartment, say “Fantasy, fantasy” and get back to the whole breath-counting thing. I can fantasize any time (and if you know me, you know I probably am). There’s plenty of time during the day to fantasize about my Parisian castle while standing in line at a store to buy that thing I didn’t buy from the rude salesclerk.

What’s the point of all this sitting in place and counting breaths and quieting the mind?

I have no idea.

But it feels awesome.

On days when I don’t meditate, I can feel it. I start feeling antsy. I crave those minutes of just sitting there and doing nothing.

I don’t think it’s improved me as a person yet: I haven’t had any spiritual experiences, I haven’t heard a small internal voice telling me what I should do with my life, and I’m not noticeably calmer during the day (I think). But that twenty or thirty minutes of sitting with myself has really helped me say, “You know, taking a little time just for myself and quieting my mind is worthwhile.”

So, of late I’ve become a big proselytizer for taking up a meditation practice. I guess I should put up some links here for places you can check out for more info, but frankly, all you need is ten minutes and a willingness to give it a shot. Honestly, it’s really as wonderful as all the propaganda has made it out to be.

When you’re training for a marathon, it feels like the hardest thing in the world. And it is hard, no question. You do a lot of long runs, you wonder why in the hell you’re doing this, and then the day comes and you run the marathon and you’re done and you think, “I just ran a marathon! Now what?”

That “Now what?” turns out to be the actual hardest thing. Because once you’ve reached that goal, there’s the inevitable letdown. Now what in the hell do I do?

In the months leading up to the marathon—April, May, and June—I ran 108, 135, and 116.7 miles. (Subtract 26.2 from June’s total for the actual training miles). In July, August, and September I ran 50, 50.5, and 53.5. That’s me slacking off a lot. I’ve gained about four pounds since the marathon, which isn’t too bad, but you have to nip that sort of thing in the bud quickly, before four turns into fifteen. (I have continued working out with weights, and I still weigh myself every morning, although I’m not as manic about it as I was a year ago.)

I looked at my 2009 mileage total and discovered that I need to run 23.2 miles a week from here on out to get to 1000 for the year. I’m currently at 764.7, in case anyone wants to check my math. I’ll be out of commission for at least one week (that I know of right now), so that 23.2 miles total bumps up to about 25 or 26.

26 miles a week from here to the end of December.

Hey, that’s like a goal. A goal gives me something to aim for. 26 miles a week. A long weekend run of 10-12, then two midweek runs of 6 and 8. If I ever do a longer run, I bank that many more miles toward 1000. (It doesn’t mean I get to slack off on planned runs. That way leads to sleeping in!)

Now I have a plan, an incentive to get my butt out the door and do some of those longer runs. I’m actually kind of excited about getting on the road again

(Nina tells all on her blog here. Also, she has pictures and I don’t. Check out the arms on the chick she was running with!)

I did it! I did a marathon in almost 5 hours exactly, which was my prediction. I ran 26.2 miles/42 km and I ran the whole way! (Not that I have ANYTHING against doing a walk/run combo–that totally works as a strategy. But I knew for me that if I started walking…I wouldn’t start again.) We did the Inaugural Seattle Rock and Roll Marathon!

Leading up to the race, my two biggest fears were that I wouldn’t get any sleep at all…and that I’d sleep right through my alarm. So I set 3 different ones. Last night I told kids they had to turn off tv and lights at 10. I said, “You can stay up all night every night the rest of the trip. Tonight you need to go to bed now.” You would have thought I said, “By the way, it’s time to go work the coal mines of Numidia.” However, they were asleep in seconds.

Then, at 11, the world’s loudest motorcycles went by, blasting Michael Jackson–the rarely seen Double Fail.

I woke up before any of my alarms and set about getting ready: went to get a bucket of ice, mixed the Cytomax, set up my Camelbak, took my preventative 4 ibuprofen (I would eat 4 more during the race), got my running number ready, grabbed my iPhone, and headed out to meet Nina at the Westin Hotel, where shuttles were taking runners out to Tukwila, the starting point for the race. I was surprised when I left the hotel, shortly before 5am, because while it was cold, it wasn’t that cold. I said, “This is going to be a nice run.”

We got out to Tukwila, where it became rapidly evident that, yes, a town’s worth of people were about to run a race. It definitely felt like the Bay to Breakers, because it was just a sea of people. (And when we were lined up, ready to be let loose, it really felt like the B2B, because of the sea of humanity.) The weird thing is that, as the sun started to come up, the temperature kept getting colder. Nina and I were huddling together, unwilling to take off our outer layers until the very last moment.

Nina and I were far enough back in the sea of runners (Corral 25) that we didn’t cross the start line until 40 minutes after the first runners, or in layman’s terms “right around when somebody was probably winning the damn thing.”

(Right as we passed the start line, my Polar watch went kablooey—the screen fizzed out, it lost all of its settings, and it basically went haywire. I spent the first mile trying to reset everything on the run (rimshot). I have no idea if it just picked the worst time in the world to do that, whether all the other Polar watches interfered, or there was something about the load of electronics at the start that made it go nuts.)

The marathon was run really well. There were Cytomax/water stations every 1.5 or 2 miles, with tons of people handing runners cups as we went by, and 3 Gu stations. (Gu is a thick sugar food supplement—not unlike cake frosting, actually—that runners and other athletes use to get fast, easily digestible calories.) Lots of people came out to cheer the runners on, with massive enthusiasm. Certainly more enthusiasm than I’d show for someone else’s marathon. The bands were probably pretty good, but we only got to hear every band for 20-45 seconds as we ran by, so I can’t tell you which one was my favorite. It was nice hearing bone-rattling music as we passed by though.

And we could not have asked for better weather. Perfect temperatures, clear skies, no breeze. Exactly what we wanted when we signed up to run in Seattle.

The first 10 miles were great, running through Tukwila (which was kinda boring, sorry, Tukwila), but ending up in residential neighborhoods and parks overlooking the lake.

At about mile 10 the half-marathoners split off from the marathoners, and we ran over the floating bridge, which allowed us to do such things as gaze at Mt. Rainier. Then we rejoined the half-marathoners for a long run through a freeway tunnel, which was unpleasant on so many levels: smells, light level, sound level, claustrophobia induction. (We ended up running through two more tunnels as well, which was really not very much fun. You ever read The Stand? Yeah. It was like that.)

Nina and I disagreed about who was driving whom: she kept saying I was making her run faster, and I kept wondering who in the hell was the one who kept speeding up into hills because they felt so good on her legs. (No, seriously, I run with a woman who speeds up into hills. I can’t decide which one of us is crazier.) On hills I found myself mentally chanting either “I know I can, I know I can,” or “I can run faster than Nina can,” which never made me run faster than her but did seem to work at keeping me within a few meters of her at all times.

At mile 13.1 we stopped to eat energy bars. “I’m sore,” I said, “but I’m not hating life.” I felt pretty good, in fact. I knew the tough part was going to be mile 20 and beyond, since the longest run I’d done was one mile.

We ran down a freeway into Seattle City Center, which was pretty cool: this mass of people descending on Seattle. We split up from the half-marathoners again, this time at Qwest Field (because they had to “cross the finish line”), and we began what I would have to describe as the long, hard, unpleasant section, not only because it was the final 12 miles, but because it was all concrete. (See below.) The medical teams started giving out packets of salt, which Nina started hoovering up due to cramping she started getting in one leg. I started having aches in the muscles that connect the hips to the, uh, gluteus, which make it really, really tough to keep lifting those feet.

It was also during this stretch (miles 18-22, let’s say) that I realized all I had eaten that day was 2 protein bars, about 6 packets of Gu, and all the Cytomax I could swim in. All I’d had was sugar, and my body passed along word that if I so much as thought about eating or drinking anything else with sugar in it, I would probably vomit. I felt like if I didn’t get some actual food into my stomach soon, I was going to pass out. I don’t know how I would solve that in the future—drink less Cytomax, more water?—because I can’t eat a lot of heavy, solid food before I run. And especially not before a long run.

At mile 23, we passed the incoming finishers, which meant we had another loop ahead of us with a turnaround. Someone on our side asked people on the other side, “Mile 24?” And they said, “25.” Which meant we had another two miles to go on this open concrete stretch. We’d been running for 4.5 hours, we were both exhausted, we both felt sick from the constant sugar, and I had started having trouble keeping up with Nina.

That was the point I said, “I’ve started hating life.”

Nina did not dignify that with a response.

We discovered later that at about Mile 24 I was on the verge of saying, “I’m going to walk, you go on ahead”… and Nina was thinking of saying much the same thing to me. Which is hilarious, because Nina kept pulling ahead of me, and all of my inner monologues that had previously worked to keep me abreast of Nina stopped working. I was wondering where in the hell she was getting all the damned energy at that point.

The last bit was a downhill approach to Qwest, which rocked, because no matter how tired you were at that point, you knew the marathon finish was not that far away and you could get a little bit more out of your legs with gravity’s help. So we took off down that ramp like two bats out of hell, and the whole time I was wondering, “Are Darin and the kids here? And will I be able to pick them out of the crowd?” As it turned out, the answer to both questions was Yes! and I waved madly at them. (Nina managed to spot her husband too, surprisingly enough.) We crossed the finish line at exactly 5:06:00, which was hilarious and gratifying, given that I’d predicted a 5 hour finish.

We kept walking—you have to keep walking after a long run, or else your muscles seize up—and I made us both eat bananas, because despite the obvious sugar they contain, they have stuff like potassium and carbohydrates too. I told the woman who handed us ice-cold bottles of water that I loved her. I put my medal on and refused to take it off.

When we found Darin and the kids we discovered that he had bought a dozen doughnuts for me as a congratulations! Which was my fault, because I’d told him to, but man, did the idea of sugar really turn our stomachs at that point. This lack of marathoner/doughnut interest was okay with both my kids and the kids of my Seattle friend Mary, who was also there at the finish to see me. The kids sampled every doughnut type.

Nina and her husband took off, and Darin and our family and Mary and her family headed out to get some lunch. I didn’t care what I ate, so long as it was salty and filled with lots of starchy carbohydrates. We went to a pan-Asian food court somewhere near Chinatown, which was okay, but I discovered that I couldn’t make myself eat! I’d thought I was intensely hungry, but something about the run completely shut my system down and I could barely eat anything. I figured my system would adjust as soon as it figured out I didn’t have to eat pasty Gu any more.

Mary took my kids with her while Darin walked me back to the hotel. In hindsight: despite the benefits of walking after a long run, the walk was really too much for me and we should have just taken the free bus service. I limped terribly at the end, mostly because of my sore hips (and I’ve been limping all day since). Darin left me in the room and rejoined Mary and the kids. I bathed (to try to soothe my legs a little), showered (because I’d just run 26.2 miles), and sacked out for an hour. You’d think that, having woken up at 4am and done some strenuous exercise, my body might want to put me down for, I dunno, at least 1.5 hours, but you’d be wrong.

I got up, rejoined the gang, and we all had a fabulous picnic lakeside, with the kids frolicking in the water! Turned out I’d run by this beach earlier in the day, though I had to admit I didn’t actually remember it.

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Bests and Worsts of the Marathon

Worst marathon preparation failure (almost): I forgot to pack a sports bra (but thankfully discovered this yesterday). Turns out Niketown doesn’t carry them. However, there is always Nordstrom, which has everything you could ever need. A marathon is not really the day you want to break in a new piece of athletic gear, especially not one that’s so, uh, close to your heart. Only thing worse would have been forgetting my shoes.

Worst marathon preparation failure (actual): I forgot to apply sunscreen. I was in such a hurry this morning, I just forgot. This turned out to be a perfect way to stripe my body in red and white. You can tell exactly where the edges of my shorts were. Oh yes, and: OW.

Worst marathon result (possibly unpreventable): I developed a perfectly round dime-sized blister on my right big toe. One of the things I’ve learned with long-distance running: how to drain blisters. You need a needle, rubbing alcohol (to sterilize the needle), and the fortitude to stick the needle through healthy skin to get to the blister. Yay. In addition, the nail my right second toe feels weirdly numb, like it got bruised or something. It looks fine now, but it still feels like hell.

Best sighting: An American bald eagle, in a tree, watching us run by. I said, “This marathon’s organizers went all out in getting attractions for us.”

Best conversation during the run:

“I’m sorry, this is going to mess up our time, but the next time we see a porta-potty I have to stop.”

“Time? You think I care about our time? At this point all I care about is pain management.”

Weirdest conversation during the run: When Nina and I both admitted we were working on our blog entries in our heads.

Worst company name: The porta-potty vendor was named “Honey Bucket.”

Worst snafu: I’d signed up for Darin to get texts informing him of my progress. Worked great for 9 miles…then nothing. Finally they sent a text telling him they were having issues—which he’d kind of guessed, given that I had already finished. (Their website, however, worked fine at informing him of my progress, so it was a good thing he knew my runner number.)

Best inspirational sign: “NO BAILOUT FOR YOU! Keep running.”

Worst runner habit: Seriously, people, have you never heard of “Runners left, walkers right?” if people continuously run around both sides of you, move to the RIGHT.

Weirdest runner habit: A woman was running with her hands down by her sides, without moving them back and forth. Try it. You’ll probably fall over.

Best t-shirt: Worn by the two young women who were wearing t-shirts that read

Non-refundable wedding deposit: $6000

Non-refundable wedding dress deposit: $1500

Cost of entering Seattle Rock and Roll Marathon: $150

Celebrating the “ex” in front of fiancé: priceless

Worst place to put a band (tie): 1) Inside one of the freeway tunnels; 2) Right across the freeway from another, louder band.

Best music: Let’s see, I have 25 bands to choose from, so I’m going to go with… DJ Steveboy of Podrunner! DJ Steveboy has basically made our running regimen possible with his mixes at various beats per minute—I’m convinced he’s a major part of why I’ve graduated from 12 minutes per mile to 9-10 minutes per mile. (Yes, the marathon turned out to be about 11 minutes per mile, but we stopped for porta-potties and stuff.) If you do any running at all, use Podrunner. It is Teh Awesum.

Meanest marathon course trick: We ran to Qwest Field…and then veered away again for another 10-12 miles before returning to finish. So mean!

Why I’d do this marathon again: Very well-run, lots of enthusiastic participants and supporters, extremely scenic.

Why I wouldn’t do this marathon again: The last 10 miles or so were on concrete. I think my Seattle friends called this stretch “the Embarcadero,” if that tells you were it is: it’s the freeway that runs along the shipping areas. The order of surfaces you want to run on are 1) dirt, 2) asphalt, 3) concrete. Concrete has absolutely no give to it, so it’s just hell on the joints, and I think it’s a big part of the hurt I have now. (The other part being, of course, I just ran 26 miles.)

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I am utterly thrilled I’ve actually done it! After so much time spent thinking about doing one—and having gotten horribly sick the last time I was supposed to do one, thereby missing out—I am just psyched that I’ve actually accomplished it!

A couple of months ago I wrote about clothing sizes and how it’s not vanity sizing, it’s how manufacturers deal with their target market. It’s all true, I stand by everything I said. It’s not vanity! There’s no such thing as an archetypal size 8! It’s all based on the market and the sizes of the customer!

But still. These sizes. It’s crazy.

I recently measured myself and I’m basically the same size I was at 22. Yeah, I know: Go Team Diane! But finding clothes is getting hard. I bought a pair of size 4 Gap Long and Lean jeans on Mother’s Days, and they’re somewhat loose now. This body, 20 years ago, I was a size 8, maybe a size 6 with these legs—how in the hell can I be a size 4? Size 4 is for skinny people! And no matter what my running bud Nina says, I don’t feel especially twig-like. It’s not me, it’s the clothes, which is to say, it’s the population.

(What we learn from this is: Anyone who’s kept the same pants size for a decade or two? Hasn’t, if you know what I mean.)

What’s ridiculous is, a size 6 skirt I bought shortly before I got pregnant with Sophia (that would be 10 years ago! gack!) is still tight. And that Calvin Klein skirt (also size 6) I was so looking forward to wearing again? Yeah, it just looks kinda silly on me now—I’m guessing my parts are not quite shaped the way they were, even if they measure the same. Apparently clothing sizes have been adjusted downwards a lot in just the past 10 years. Alas, I am going to have to let the CK go, because I just don’t feel comfortable in it. Wah wah wah.

(And just in case you’re wondering, I have almost the exact same measurements as Marilyn Monroe did, according to this page, except my waist is 29, not 22. I can’t quite fathom a 22 inch waist, frankly. Your envy of Darin’s good fortune may commence now.)

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Nina and I did a 15 mile run today, and at mile 13 she said, “Are you tired?”

“Hell yes, I’m tired. I’m still waiting for my runner’s body to show up and this won’t hurt anymore.”

“I know, I’m wondering where mine is too.”

It’s just not fair that we’re doing all this running and all this training and it’s still hard. A six-mile run feels pretty normal these days; a 15-mile run feels like someone whapped me hard with a tire iron. And over the past several weekends I’ve done: 15 miles, 17 miles, 15 miles, 20 miles, and 15 miles. You’d think I’d have adjusted by now. But no: 15 miles still feels killer.

I’ve got to remember to bring ibuprofen for the marathon, because I need to be proactive on the pain.

In no particular order:

• Much to my own amazement, since my decision not to drink alcohol because it’s interfering with my exercise plan, I have not in fact had any alcohol. There was one night I actually wanted to have a cocktail, but we didn’t have a lot of time and I did have to work out the next day, so I passed. Saying no to margaritas at La Fiesta is pretty goshdarned hard, though. They make a very tasty, and very deadly, margarita.

• I know I need to post some pix of My! Amazing! Transformation!™. I need to get batteries for my camera. How lame of an excuse is that? And yet: oh so true.

• My guilty pleasure these days: SecretTweet. I have no idea if these are real or not, but unless they start mentioning space aliens or something, they could be. This is the kind of thing that makes me appreciate my own life more.

• Movies we’ve seen recently:
  • Sin Nombre: I don’t know the provenance behind this movie. I was looking for something to see and I used the Rotten Tomatoes score to come up with one. It’s a film in Spanish with subtitles about a family trying to get to US from Honduras, and a boy who’s part of a violent, territorial Mexican gang, how they meet, and what happens. The simplicity of the storylines and the tightness of the focus on the story I think shows it’s clearly a first film by a young writer/director, but he’s a very talented writer/director who is interested in issues that have no easy and clean solutions.

  • Adventureland: It’s a very sweet look at summer 1987 after a kid graduates from college before he starts grad school. I’m kind of disturbed that 1987 = historical flick though. I liked it, but it was a small movie. I’m also kind of tired of movies in which everyone’s shared experience is one that I have nothing in common with. At least it’s not as bad as when I watch a high school movie and might as well be watching an artifact from a lost African culture for all I have in common with it.

  • Sunshine Cleaning: An interesting indie film that suffered from one too few passes on the script. Yes, the scriptwriter is saying this. There was some really good material in here, but it needed…I don’t know. Some kind of oomph. And less randomness.

  • I Love You Man: Paul Rudd is every girl’s fantasy boyfriend—the fantasy boyfriend you could bring home to mother. (You save the other fantasy boyfriend for…well…you know.) It was definitely an enjoyable flick, and I remember very, very little about it, other than they didn’t do the obvious (and so overdone) thing of having Rudd’s character end up in a fracas with another woman, leading his girlfriend to draw the wrong conclusions! which I was definitely expecting.

  • Monsters vs. Aliens: Jesus, does Pixar make it look easy, and then everyone else makes it look so hard. I don’t even remember that much about MvA, other than I was impressed that Hugh Laurie can do yet another accent that isn’t his normal voice. Such a great title though. Man, such a great title.

• There are simply no words to describe how much “Lost” has rocked since they, in the words of Entertainment Weekly, decided to “let the freak flag fly.” You know none of the actors signed up to be part of a sci-fi/ancient Egyptians/ghosts/assassins/time travel/comedy/romance/action/adventure spectacular, and you know just as hard that the writers/creators could give a flying fuck what the actors signed up for. They have an end date! They don’t have to spin this out forever! Let’s ROCK this town!

• Darin says the official “Lost” podcast by Damon and Carleton is Teh Awesum, so you should listen to that. (I have zero time to listen to anything, I’m finding, so I have not added it to any of my iPods, but I laugh like a hyena when Darin recounts the latest one.)

• And, as always: Actors, there are no small parts, only small actors. Michael Emerson signed for two or maybe three episodes. And he took over the entire damn series. You can do it, folks.

• I thought “The Unusuals,” a new cop show on ABC, was going to be about a precinct of detectives in NYC who have very strange, minor superpowers. I like my idea for the show much better than theirs: It turns out to be a very boring police procedural about a bunch of cops Who Are Quirky. We took it off the list of stuff to be recorded during the first half hour.

• I was mostly satisfied by the “Battlestar Galactica” finale—so long as they ended without Galactica, say, plunging into a nearby sun with everyone on board I was going to be okay. (The show was so dark for the last half season I honestly didn’t know what they were going to do.) As Ted Tally says, you have to give your audience a little glimmer of hope at the end. Just a tad. I think the BSG guys didn’t have as tight a grip on their stuff as the Lost guys do, but there was still so much wonderful stuff in there over 4 years I don’t care. (For example: if you’re going to start every episode with the statement that the Cylons have a plan, get a kilo of cocaine, lock all the writers in a room for the weekend, and figure out that damn plan before you go Season 2, okay? Remember that for next time.)

I went out with a friend last night to celebrate her birthday. Her birthday is actually March 17—one year we went to the big CB Hannegan’s St. Patrick’s Day bash, but in general March 17 is a day you want to avoid going out, if possible. (The technical term, in the original Gaelic, is “Amateur Hour.”)

Generally I have two or three drinks a week—on date night, and Saturday night. I have cocktails (I’m particularly fond of the French martini), because a year or so ago I decided, “You know what? I don’t like dry red wine, even if I don’t have the allergic reaction. I don’t even want to drink dry white wines. Sweet whites are all right, but if I’m at sweet whites, I might as well head on over to cocktails.” I had my drinks at Alexander’s Steakhouse the other night—

(Apropos of nothing: if you go to Alexander’s, don’t bother with the steak. Seriously. Their fish and seafood dishes, all of them small plates, are so much better than any of the straightforward steak things that getting anything other than that is pointless. FYI.)

—then last night I had two margaritas with my friend (who drank considerably more). I drank at least 4 times as much water as I did margaritas, and I was still a little buzzed at the end of the evening. Then I had trouble getting to sleep (as I usually do after drinking), and I woke up early (as I often do). I went running, and while the run went well, I felt logy and dehydrated doing it.

I’m supposed to be training for a marathon. I can’t do a lot of running feeling logy and dehydrated. I’m currently exercising six to seven days a week, I’m always doing something, I can’t spend too much time like this.

So today, as I was chugging yet another pint of water, I thought: “That’s it then: No more alcohol. No more drinking until the marathon.”

Doing this marathon is clearly that important to me. It was kind of a surprise when it hit me. I like having a cocktail once in a while, but I can’t afford it any more.

When I give up chocolate, you’ll know I’m really hardcore.

As I keep tweeting about, I’ve been clothes shopping recently. While nothing explains the recent fetish for expensive high heels, the need for clothes is easy: nothing that I owned in August still fits me. That is because since August I have worked my ass off to lose 30 pounds. I was wearing size 12 (which was getting a little tight), and now I’m wearing mostly size 6 or 8.

Although I did pick up a size 4 skirt from J. Crew yesterday. I think J. Crew is my new best friend. I am so happy they’re opening a store in my town.

(Anthropologie hates me. It wants me to wear size 10. I’m not going to shop there for a few more pounds.)

I refuse to say simply “I lost weight.” Sorry, it didn’t just slip off somehow. I have worked very, very hard on this. I write down everything I eat and I work out 5 to 6 days a week: 3 days of weights, 2-3 days of aerobic exercise. I’m entering the penultimate hard part now—the last 10 pounds.

The ultimate hard part, of course, is maintenance. As everyone on 3fatchicks.com says, you treat maintenance exactly like you do losing weight, except you don’t get the fun of seeing the scale move. So I’m going to write down what I eat and what I weigh and do some kind of exercise every day from here on out.

Better than having to buy another wardrobe in double-digit sizes, that’s for sure.

Since August I have lost 2-3 minutes per mile off of my running time, which is one of the greatest incentives I’ve ever had to keep going with my exercise program. I want to lose that next 10-15 pounds to see if I can’t get another minute off. One of my big goals this year to run a single 8:00 mile. Doing more than one would be totally amazing. And may even be doable.

§

Sometime last summer—I can’t remember exactly when—I said, “This is not my body.” It wasn’t a mean thought or something I was using to castigate myself. It was like waking up and realizing I was in someone else’s body. For most of my twenties I was a 6 or 8. Then I went to grad school, gained weight, did the liquid diet, and went back to being a 6 or 8, which I was until I had Sophia. It took a long time after having Sophia to understand that I really, really, really was a size 12 and I needed to go shop on the Large rack rather than the Medium rack.

I looked back at the last time I lost weight, two years ago, when I thought it was due to the thyroid medications I’d started taking. I honestly didn’t think I had much to do with the weight loss at that time. What I discovered when I looked back at my records (I’m, shall we say, rather particular about keeping copious workout records) was that I hadn’t lost weight nearly as fast as I thought I had. I’d had the memory that it had just come off crazy fast, but in fact, it hadn’t. What else had I been doing two years ago? I was lifting weights all the time.

Hmmm. “I could do that again,” I thought.

I started in August, after the vacations and going to Chicago for my father-in-law’s birthday party. And I discovered pretty quickly that I couldn’t jump right into weights, at least not to the same degree I had before, because of my shoulder surgery in April. My favorite weightlifting exercise is doing squats, and I could barely raise my left arm to touch my fingertips to the bar, let alone grasp the bar for balance. I had to do the bar alone, with no weights on it, because it was all I could handle. The squat rack bar is 45 pounds but still.

After a couple of months, I had my hard firmly grasped on the bar, and I had 90 extra pounds on there. So in addition to improving my muscles, my arm was getting better in a hurry.

Weightlifting: best shoulder recovery tool EVER.

My original weights program, as it was a few years ago, was Body For Life. I’m not a huge proponent of BFL, mostly because it’s so heavy on the cult experience, as well as the supplements marketing, and I’m not a joiner by nature. But the program—do 5 sets for one body part, followed by a different exercise for the same body part—really is an excellent way to build up endurance and work those muscles. (Get the book from the library.) After several months of doing weights on my own I had improved my endurance and ability somewhat:

				8/4					11/20
Squats		0, 5, 7.5				60, 70, 80
Leg Curls		25, 30, 35				50, 55, 60
Chest			8, 10, 12				60, 65, 70
Lats			15, 20, 22.5			75, 80, 85

I hired a Personal Trainer at Club Swanky. It’s expensive, but he is in fact kicking my ass.

(Actually, those squat numbers are somewhat misleading: after trying to do the squat rack for a week, I finally gave up and moved to the squat machine for a couple of months. After I felt strong enough to give it another try, I returned to the squat rack.)

I also kept up the running with my buds, even though I was often lagging far behind them. (One time I remember quite clearly getting dusted by them, stopping, and turning around to go home, because there was no way in hell I’d be able to keep up with them.) At the end of October I realized something had really changed, when we did the Silicon Valley Half Marathon. I realize now that probably what happened to me was the first and only time I’ve experienced “the runner’s high.” But that feeling of being able to go! go! go! was quite intoxicating. “Oooo,” I thought, “I wanna do this a lot.”

I’ve never had a run like that since, but I keep on trying. 3fatchicks has a “1000 miles in 2009″ challenge, and I did 77 in January. If the weather were a little warmer, I’d definitely be doing more.

§

I really like wearing single digit pants. I want to wear more of them. At lower digits.

Of course, I had to learn about low-rise and mid-rise jeans, courtesy of my running bud Nina. I missed that whole development in jeans and was still wearing my high-rise “mom jeans.” Which I’ve always worn because I have such a long damn waist. However, now that I have moved into Gap Long and Lean jeans, I now understand a)people’s obsession with muffin top and b)the need for a belt. Because these things do not stay up without help. (At least, not with my figure they don’t.)

For those of you who might also have missed this development in jeans technology, please to consult “Are you wearing mom jeans?” for your edification.

An unbelievable amount of time ago, my friend Marilee said, “Hey, our little running club should do the Silicon Valley Half Marathon.” She ran the marathon last year, and Rob and Nina showed up to run half of it with her (unofficially, just for support). This year, since we haven’t been running nearly as much, she thought maybe the half might be more doable. One at a time we all signed up with her.

Well, um, okay.

This did not inspire us to run as much as it should have—man, have we slacked off from the hardcore bunch we were a couple of years ago. But a few Sundays ago Rob and I managed 10 miles and felt pretty good about it. And I’ve been working out 5-6 days a week for the past 2 months—lifting weights 3 days a week, doing cardio (usually running) 2-3 days—so I figured I wouldn’t kill myself. We all filled our iPods with the appropriate Podrunner mixes and headed out early this morning.

A while ago—probably back when I subscribed to Sports Illustrated and read things like The Year’s Best Sports Writing—I remember reading a story in which the writer recounts a run he had where a huge hulking Swede or German or Russian or something came up behind him and said, “We go faster, yes?” Because runners are crazy that way, the writer’s pace increased, trying to keep up with this guy. Periodically the Swede would say, “We go faster, yes?” And once again the writer would go faster, trying to keep up with this guy.

Today? Today, I was the Swede.

I have no idea how this happened. It certainly was not evident in any of the recent runs we’ve done together. A few weeks ago Rob and Nina completely dusted me on our usual morning run, to the point where I turned around early and went home, because I could not keep up with them. But today, for whatever reason, I kept going faster. I kept at a constant speed, instead of grossly slacking off like I usually do. In fact, I kept wanting to go faster, but my friends were like, Uh…Diane…slow it down.

Mind you, my idea of a temperate pace is probably somewhat slower than yours. Several people finished the marathon before my friends and I finished the half. But today my general speed was easily two minutes faster than my normal speed, and it would have been faster had I not kept slowing down to match everyone else’s speed. I didn’t once want to slow down, or walk, or feel like I was straining my legs at all.

This is definitely the most serious evidence I’ve had yet that my exercise regime has changed my body. Yes, there are the smaller jeans, but the feeling that I could, in fact, run at about 10 minute miles (I TOLD YOU I AM SLOW) with no ill effects was amazing.

Man, I can’t wait to get to the gym tomorrow.

Except I’m doing lower body weights tomorrow. Oh, THAT’S going to be fun.