Kickapoo. The toughest 100k in the Midwest

What if I told you that for my birthday, I wanted to do a bike race? Would you like me less? Would you give up on my blog? Does it mean I'm less committed to running?

I have a confession to make: I love cycling and The Kickapoo Kicker was one of the best racing experiences of my life!


SR and I took off with one of the many start waves from the Viroqua, WI high school and we actually cycled the beginning together (and took a major wrong turn together). It was so fun to be in a race where I could keep up with SR at the start. He eventually pulled away in a faster group, but I found another group to ride with. I met people from Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin and it is amazing how easy it is to hold a conversation in a bike race (as  compared to running). Not surprising, though.

Here is the altitude profile from fellow cyclist, Greg Padden. Sorry the scale is missing.

The reason this is called the toughest bike ride in the Midwest is in the 71 miles (which they call "100 km") there is 6,230 feet of elevation change- and these are seriously steep hills, on which half of the field was clicking out of their pedals and walking their bikes. There are also some sections over loose gravel- and this can be scary on a thin-tired road bike. I walked one of these loose gravel sections because it was also a steep downhill. It was gorgeous country- basically a large swath of land that is almost exlusively organic farms in the southwest corner of Wisconsin: "the driftless area" that the glaciers missed. Here Wisconsin is incredibly bucolic and picturesque (and of course I have no pictures).

I raced without a Garmin or watch and took my time at the three very well-stocked aid stations, really enjoyed myself, but also really pushed myself. I began to realize the competitive side of it, though, when a couple riding together would not allow me to draft behind them, even briefly! The final stretch was brutal- a 24% grade hill!!  When I reached the finish, I learned that I had actually beaten the female course record from last year!! I had no clue what time it was or what place I was in because of all of the different waves starting at different times. I guess I finished in just over 5 hours. I still don't know the final results of this year since they haven't been posted yet.

We didn't stick around long. We were both so excited and happy on the way home. What a way to see such incredible scenery! What fun!

That evening we went hiking at Perrot State Park with my parents, Natti, her step-sister Cora, Christian and Mattias. It was a gorgeous night to see the Mississippi River. No clouds and no wind. There was such a jovial mood. We ate dinner at the Trempealeau Hotel. At one point, after downing an entire glass of New Glarus Fat Squirrel beer (on tap), I lay in the grass playing with Mattias, watching the river with the bluffs in the background, listening to a talented live singer and guitarist playing Gram Parsons covers and suddenly it occurred to me: this was the best birthday I could remember. I am so incredibly blessed.

Grandma's Marathon & The Doping Effects of Pregnancy

Courtesy of Grandma's Marathon- The Aerial Lift Bridge on the horizon marks the finish

About a month ago, I convinced SR to let me run Grandma's Marathon in Duluth. Since January, I had suspected I could run a PR marathon. But then my ITB injury left me unable to train for 16 weeks. Common wisdom would say this much time off would ruin my chances of a PR, but I wasn't so sure.

Mid June is also a bad time to try to run a fast marathon in the US. But, Alaska aside, Duluth may be the coolest option.

 This marathon is a huge deal for the city of Duluth. In fact, two years ago when we were staying at a bed and breakfast there (when I had my miscarriage), the owner said Grandma's Marathon was the biggest event of the year in the city.

And just to give you an idea of how big and competitive it is, the women's marathon was won by Everlyne Lagat of Kenya in 2:33:14 and the half marathon by Kara Goucher in 1:09:46 (It should be noted that Duluth is Kara's hometown). In order for me to have placed in the top 10 in my age group, I would have had to run in under 2:52.

Truth be told, the running conditions were nearly perfect. Slight tail wind, predicted high of 69 F. The humidity was nearly 100%, but the runners wouldn't realize until the end how important this was, when many were vomiting due to dehydration (it was quite lovely, actually).

I was not exactly feeling perfect to begin with. I fell asleep at about 2am and had to wake up at 4am to take the train with Divesh, Alicia Hudelson's husband, to the start. The train took 1 hour and 15 minutes to go the approximately 24 miles. Granted, it is a beautiful 24 miles along Lake Superior. There was no driving to the start allowed. The other thing that was not allowed at the start was urination. The lines were eternal for the port-a-pottys, which is expected, but there were also men on ATV's patrolling the bushes! So I started the race having to pee (good thing my shorts were black, as usual).

I lined up with Divesh, Alicia Hudelson's husband, and another friend Tom, just behind the 3:15 pacing group. The last time I started out at a sub 3:20 pace was The Copenhagen Marathon 2 years ago. At that time, I had trained exactly according to the book (intervals, tempos and long runs with rest days in between for over 6 months). But I "hit the wall" at mile 16 of that race. Now in 2012, all of my training had been "wrong". I was taking a big chance starting out this fast. Yet I suspected it wasn't too fast. And I knew something this time that I didn't know then: EAT AND DRINK CONSTANTLY WHILE RUNNING A FAST MARATHON. And this is what I did. I never felt great, but I felt okay. The whole thing felt a little too much like a productive day at the office (with gorgeous views).

 I ran the first half marathon in 1:38:46.

Nearing the finish. Both feet off the ground and no belly!

When I saw SR at 22 miles with Christian and Mattias, running along side me in the baby jogger, I got a bit of a boost, but I was so nauseated that when Christian started yelling he was hungry, I had to ask to run alone (which I felt awful about later - it's amazing how terrible you can feel while doing what you love!).

 My pace slowed slightly and I finished in 3:18:38, just under a 6 minute PR.

So, why, desipte just being injured for 16 weeks, was I able to run a sub 3:20 marathon yesterday when I couldn't two years ago when I had trained exactly "right"?? (I should also note, I only had a two day taper this time, but didn't run for 8 days prior to the Copenhagen Marathon)  


I have three theories: 


 1. Fuel: again, I ate constantly during the race yesterday, well, 2 gels and 6 large pieces of chocolate. Every time I ate, my energy returned almost fully. I also stopped at every single aid station to drink and they were every two miles. Finally, I ate a ton the two days leading up to the race, and healthy food. 


 2. Knowledge of The Marathon: I simply am more familiar with what it is like to run a marathon (this can't be the only explanation considering lots of people slow down despite running many). 


 3. The Doping Effect of Pregnancy: 


 Most of you are probably already thinking it's too late for this, but let me explain. In the small amount of literature written about the doping effect of pregnancy, young women athletes in Eastern Germany during the 1970's are mentioned ("abortion doping"). Supposedly these women got pregnant simply to induce red blood cell production and then would abort the baby and get a boost in their training similar to what one would get with epo (imagine training in an environment like this!). This effect should not last more than 3 months, given the life of a red blood cell. 


But time and again, I have witnessed and heard of women who have gone on to set personal records in running of all sorts of distances after (an entire) pregnancy, though not within the first three months post-partum. So there must be a more long-lasting form of "doping" and I think the answer must lie in muscle memory. The body simply adjusts to all of that extra weight and when that weight is suddenly gone, the mother's body is much more efficient at running. I do not know how long this lasts, but suspect it is between 1 and 2 years and is likely more pronounced the more you run while pregnant. And of course, if you continue to train, you can extend the benefits out for many years. 


 Or, 4. as Danni mentioned to me earlier today, maybe I ran a PR because I gave up diet soda :).


I am glad I got the PR out of the way so I can enjoy the fun trail races, bike races and triathlons of the summer. 


Update: 
Four days later and the city of Duluth is under water: the worst flood it has exerienced in 40 years.

This is the corner SR, Christian and Mattias cheered me on from during the race. Now you need a Sundolphin to access it.

I don't mean to make light of this: but does this guy think he's going shopping?

Diet soda experiment conclusion & Got Energy? Tri

Every time I try to sit down to write a blog post, things like an entire set of drawers topple over on top of El Guapo (yes, Mom, that just happened and he is relatively unscathed; they were the plastic ones). How is it that moms with two kids have time to blog, again? I promised a graph of the effect of giving up diet soda on my belly and waist size. Let's just say I stopped the measuring early because I looked so much better (less pregnant) that I didn't feel the need to keep measuring, though I am not going back to diet soda! Especially now that I have found a diet soda substitute called Zevia, which is carbonated water sweetened with stevia plant extract and natural flavors. I have been drinking the Zevia since the day after I gave up the diet root beer, so clearly it's not just the carbonation that made the difference.  I didn't measure on Saturday because I was helping set up for the Got Energy Triathlon and forgot.
Each measurement should be marked as a point and not with a continuous line (since I wasn't continuously measuring myself, but I used the kid program Make a Graph, which doesn't have that option :)).

 Speaking of that triathlon, I got an over 14 minute PR in the Olympic distance with a 2:38:17. The distances are 1.5 km swim (plus run up a large hill barefoot), 40k bike ride and 10k run. Unfortunately I have had bad bursitis in my left shoulder from carrying Mattias, so my swim didn't improve much. Plus some guy kept swimming into me. See if you can find me (my initials are the first two letters of "the") Times are swim, transition, bike, transition, run, total and places in each are listed before the times. Miles per hour is listed after the times for swim, bike and run. Confused?
A few photos from the triathlon taken by my dad. SR did really well, by the way, but that story will perhaps one day be found on his blog. Outfit of the race: Bob's.   I don't think he swam in these- and considering the lack of bikes on the racks, it took him a while to change (the belt might have slowed him down ever so slightly)

Chester Woods USATF 10 miler and An Experiment

After age 28, it is harder and harder to get faster at short distances. This is at least my understanding of the biology of aging. For this very reason, I need to force myself to keep running tempos and intervals so I can improve at and continue to enjoy longer races.

In terms of heart health, it is the short, hard bursts of exercise that really improve the hearts of those with ischemic heart disease, and this is perhaps a lesson we could all learn from. So, I ran a tempo run at a race today. It was a training run, in that no tapering was involved, no Garmin and I didn't want to go so hard that my running would be affected in two days.

I drove to Eyota, MN this morning, an hour from our house, and if that town doesn't sound small, what town does? They have a 50k, 10 mile, and 5k with staggered starts in the gorgeous Chester Woods. The 10 mile race is part of the USATF Minnesotal trail and ultra series. Here is the Chester Woods Trail Run website.

The race started out very deceivingly on a road followed by a short stint on a bike path, but then turned into mostly dirt & grass and some sand trails, at times techincal and the hills just kept coming, each one seeming to be steeper than the last.

There were about 200 runners and the runner in second place after the first mile was a woman. I could not imagine she didn't start too fast. I was the next woman after her, though there were about 10 men between us or more. There were also at least two women right behind me, but by mile 5, after it had started getting more technical, I dropped the women and passed a few guys. It was grueling - but the guy I ran the last 4 miles with did it barefoot! I gave him kudos, but turns out it wasn't on purpose "I intended to wear my Vibrams (he pronounced them VEEbrums), but I brought two left shoes. Literally ouch. He really slowed on the patches of gravel but managed to beat me.

I finished second female out of ??? in 1:13:20. It was an age group course record, so I get on the website! The first place female ran apparently in 1:08 something, shattering the old course record of 1:11:38. I guess her name was Jenny somehting, but I am eagerly awaiting the results to learn more. Isn't this a nice hat that all participants got? (that's a lake behind me down that hill in Chester Woods (CW)).

The Belly Mystery Solved (?)

My ophthalmologist friend, Andrew Doane, posted a link on Facebook today about diet soda and one thing I learned about in the  article  was "The Diet Soda Belly", that compared to controls, people who drank diet soda had a 70% increase in waist circumference (this is a study from the University of Texas Health Science Center where they monitored 475 adults for 10 years and it was presented at the 2011 ADA meeting) . For a woman who must (but hates to) admit she drinks 2-7 cans of diet soda a day, I have to suspect this may be contributing to my belly. I have officially given up diet soda- for two weeks.

In the name of science, I am going to buy a tape measure today and then begin recording my waist circumference, hip circumference and weight each day (the latter two as controls) to see if eliminating diet soda helps my problem and how much. At the end, you can expect a pretty graph (if not a pretty belly). 

Here is Christian, with his best friend, Soren, on the last day of school at the Three Rivers Waldorf School. (We love that place!)

Visit to the Ob-Gyn

At least I've gotten over that whole leaned back running style.

Ha ha. Just kidding, of course. No wonder my neck hurt at the end of the 13.1 miles last weekend.

And you wouldn't understand from this photo why I went to visit the Ob-Gyn on Tuesday.

My chief complaint: enlarged abdomen

As I have mentioned before, about every other day, someone asks me how far I am along or says that I look so cute pregnant. Thus, I becamse worried I had ovarian cancer causing bloating, or some sort of elarged uterus. Diastasis recti has aslo been mentioned here as a possible explantion. He examined my abdomen and laughed at my self-diagnosis of diastasis recti. "No way that's the explantion" he said confidently.

Move onto the internal exam and he says my ovaries were like two little walnuts (doctors love food analogies). Then he made a small cup with one hand and said my uterus could fit in it. I imagined my uterus being the size of a little, curled up mouse. So, I left with no explanation, but most importantly the reassurance that nothing was terribly wrong.

The next morning, the pilates instructor greeted me with "your belly is growing so nicely!" Can you blame me for not wanting to go out in public again? ...

 Well, so much for that thought. There is a race tomorrow that will be run by the author of this blog and you will have to check back to find out what it is.

Med City Half Marathon minus the Med

If you are a Wisconsinite, your chances of signing up for a marathon that isn't cancelled are currently very low:

La Crosse
Green Bay
Madison (added to the list today)

We happened to choose the Med City Half today (Rochester, MN), where they gladly accepted transfers from the Madison Marathon and announced there would be "no cap" on the number of runners allowed. (perhaps this was a way of the Mayo Clinic saying they could handle the emergencies?!)

Anyway, with nearly 3000 runners, there was a very frantic scene at the busses in Rochester this morning when they suddenly realized we needed to pack into the busses in a highly illegal and sweaty way in order to tranport all the runners to the start in Byron Minnesota, 13 miles to the west, by 7 am. It looked like everyone made it.

This race would be tough. Very strong headwinds (how often do winds come out of the east, seriously?) and a high projected in the 90's. It is a hilly course on roads with a net downhill. I lined up with  Jen, from the blog Marathon Mom, very nice, cool girl even in real life. I had to point out this woman to her at the startline, whose physique, I couldn't help but admire.

Maybe you can't tell how tall and thin she is in the photo, but she just looks like someone who will take charge of a race and she did. She took first for the women and 5th overall in 1:22. Her name is Laura Brostolon and she is from Connecticut.

She was only 4 minutes behind this guy, who ran in 1:18:20. He had a good race, though is probably in 1:14 shape minus the headwind. Here he is holding a big sponge.

My race was unremarkable, other than my attempts to draft off of men around me like a big, prickly burr on their back. I think they liked it.

I ran a pretty even-tempo'd race and came in with the 1:35 pacer to take 4th for the women (out of 509 women).... (actually the pacer, Kelly, let me finish ahead for her and then she showed up as taking 4th in the official results because of her chiptime- how naive of me to think that pacers didn't get a placement!) I think this could be considered a relative PR, since my current PR is 1:33. SR and the leading men estimated one could take at least 4 minutes from the finish time if there weren't a headwind and high temps. That would land me at about a 1:31, which is a lot faster than I thought I could run right now.

I didn't even think I could run a 1:35 today, especially given my ITB, which amazingly, didn't bother me during the race. Let's just say I'm getting excited for the full marathon at Grandma's June 16th.


Another thing that went well for me this race was I had no stomach issues! I made the big decision on Tuesday to go off the PPI (stomach acid blocking med) that I have been on since I was 19 years old! I got acupuncture to help prevent the pain of the rebound acid on Thursday. And now it seems that it was all of that inadequately digested food being sent from my stomach to my intestines that was causing a lot of my distress. Plus now I actually get heartburn when I eat things I shouldn't - and that might be a good thing!

There are no pictures of me posted yet, so I will leave you with the guy who I aspire to be like when I am 60:

The men's 3rd place winner, David Kallmes, who ran in 1:21:12

Recommended in Rochester: Fiksdal Hotel &
Goonie's Comedy Club - try the bean burger with peanut butter!

short article - advice needed!

Dear Friends and Anonymi:

 After a somewhat unusual sequence of events, I have been asked by the head editor at the journal American Family Physician to write a brief (250 words or less) synopsis of my experience with pregnant marathon running. This has not been easy to summarize in 250 words! But since I have this blog, I have the luxury of showing it to some people who know a thing or two about this subject. I would be so grateful for feedback. Being harsh is preferable to pretending you like it when you don't. Thank you.

It wasn’t like me to be so winded going uphill or have to stop to walk as I neared the marathon finish line. It was a relief (and a thrill) when the pregnancy test came back positive. 


 This was the first of six marathons I would run during my pregnancy. I had no chance of beating Ingrid Christiansen’s pregnant marathon record of 2:33, set when three months pregnant in 1982. I ran mine at a comfortable pace, with friends by my side, in times of 4:34, 4:19, 4:18 and 4:56 between 10 and 27 weeks of pregnancy. 


When I was 30 weeks pregnant, my midwife agreed I could run The Copenhagen Marathon. Spectators screamed from street corners and hung out of windows to catch a glimpse of my belly. Around mile 16, I started getting Braxton Hicks contractions, though they eventually became less pronounced and I made it across the finish line in 4:54. 


 My recovery from that marathon was long, but I was glowing for weeks. I was overwhelmed by the positive feedback I received, including that of multiple women who had already run or went on to run their own pregnant marathons. I felt I had played a small part in a movement empowering women to continue running, even long distances, while pregnant. 

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 After 39 weeks, our beautiful, little son was born. And even today, I can’t help looking at him and thinking, “you were there with me, all of those wonderful miles.”