Sandy Runs

Only one week after my nasty knee skinning during a training trail run, I headed to Providence, Rhode Island to run the Rock 'n' Roll Providence Half Marathon .  This was a warm-up of sorts, as my jump back into full marathons starts next weekend in West Virginia.  Before the Providence race, my most recent big race was Grandma's Marathon in June.  I spent the interim months working on improving my speed and doing some strength training on a more or less (umm...well, mostly less) consistent basis.  But it paid off!  I set a new PR in Providence and bested my June half marathon PR by almost 3 minutes! My weekend started out with a Friday evening flight to Hartford, Connecticut to hook up with my childhood friend Sherri and her friend (well, now MY friend too) Joan.  We drove to Providence on Saturday and had much fun posing for silly photos at the expo.  The plural of Elvis is Elvi, right?  That's Joan, Sherri and me hamming it up at the Provid...

I got busy, I got distracted, I realized I couldn't keep up with everything I was doing this past spring, so I let my blog slip.  But I'm back.  I still have so many races to catch up on, and many new ones scheduled for this fall and winter.  So, this is just a quick note to let everyone know what I've been up to since my last blog post in...gulp...April.  Wow!  It really has been a while!  I plan to add more details about some of these races as I go, so here are just some highlights. My last race report was the April 7th Hollywood Half Marathon.  Then I went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to run the Flying Pirate Challenge : a 5K on Saturday, and a half marathon on Sunday.  But that wasn't enough.  I also teamed up with Marathon Maniac #5182 Scot Barco as "Team Sand-Bar" to run the Storm the Beach 5K, an obstacle course on the beach.  Running in sand is hard without obstacles, and even harder with them, but it was fun....

I have a home in an asylum.  Well, two homes really.  Am I crazy?  You decide: I am a Double Agent, a member of both the Marathon Maniacs and the Half Fanatics .  Our club is called The Asylum because you really do need to be a little crazy to belong.  But why wouldn't I want to join The Asylum?  It's become a community of runners to me.  I meet new members at different races, make friends, share couches when traveling to races, and keep in touch between races through Facebook. What's this all about, you ask?  These clubs are comprised of thousands of members who have run, and most likely continue to run, multiple races in short periods of time. Marathon Maniacs is for people who run full marathons (26.2 miles), and the Half Fanatics are characterized by running half marathons (13.1 miles).  I am Maniac #4436 and currently only at the Bronze or one star level.  I earned that rank by running 2 marathons in a 16 day period.  I did ...

It was my first trip to Hollywood and I was up at the crack of dawn on Saturday, April 7, 2012.   No, I wasn’t returning from a club or a late-night party.   I was getting ready to run the inaugural Hollywood Half Marathon !  This race was a class act, as you can see from the sparkly, bling-y medal. Love the inaugural Hollywood Half medal!  I decided months ago to run this race even though it meant traveling cross-country and searching for airfare on a holiday (Easter) weekend.  Yes, I was drawn by the medal, the glitz, the opportunity to run through a town I'd never visited.  But even more, I could tell early on that this event was special.  Race director Ken Nwadike Jr. and his wife Sabrina and their team planned every detail, added many special touches, and maintained great communication with the runners in the months, weeks, days, even hours leading up to the race.  And the race benefitted Covenant House California , a charity near and ...

After finishing four marathons and one half marathon (and a handful of shorter distance races), I stopped running at the end of 2006.   My plantar fasciitis was so bad that I didn’t run much for the next two years.   I did a few local 5Ks, but that was pretty much it.   I stretched, iced, took physical therapy, and tried other things to heal the plantar fasciitis.   But every time I started running again, back it came.   Foot x-ray taken when I had plantar fasciitis Finally, I was able to run more regularly and by 2009 I was running short distances.   And then I had a bad year of tension headaches (pretty much the pain of a migraine without the other symptoms), and they were so frequent that I felt like at all times I either had a headache, was recovering from a headache, or was trying to take care of things that I missed because of a headache.   So, my running was very sporadic for another couple years, as I just couldn’t dedicate myself. Then Sp...

All right, here it is…my first running blog entry.  Everyone has a running blog, so what makes mine different?  Absolutely nothing, actually.  You’re probably just reading this because you know me.  If not, maybe you should know a little about me before we get started.  I’m just a regular person, not a superstar athlete, not particularly competitive, more interested in books and travel and entertainment than sports.  But to date I have run 7 full marathons (26.2 miles) and 7 half marathons (13.1), and numerous other races (5K, 10K, 8K, 15K, 4 miler, 5 miler and 10 miler distances) since I started running in 2004.  That will seem like a lot of races to some of you, but not so many to others.  I was a reluctant runner.  I did a mile on the treadmill only when I had to (read: when a trainer made me do it).  But in the summer of 2004 I found that I had a little more time on my hands, and I received a mailing from a charity marathon training ...