Trail Running

Mac 50K (Yup… That’s not a typo.)

~ betsyhartley392 ~ Leave a comment
Ana Lu and I in the finisher's chute. Photo credit to Josh Gum.
Ana Lu and I closing in on the finish line. Photo credit,  Josh Gum.

2015 Mac 50K is in the books. (31 miles, also called an Ultra). Mac is run on scenic, stunning trails in a gorgeous forest.

This was my second 50K. Even factoring in the first 10K I walked with Hannah when I weighed 280 pounds, this race was by far the hardest physical thing I have ever done.

Climbing over hills, jumping over logs/creeks and roots, steep ascents/descents, amazing scenery, great camaraderie with other runners and amazing volunteers.

Here are a few moments from Saturday that made me smile, lifted my heart…

  • Friends I was NOT expecting to see, standing in the middle of the forest cheering all of us on.
  • Taryn and Laura with the mid-run assist of a much needed banana and hugs.
  • Patrick riding beside me as I walked up a lonely stretch of sun-exposed road.  Gently reminding me to get fuel in my belly for the miles ahead.
  • Carlos helping me load salt tabs in my pack at the aid station because my hands weren’t functioning very well.
  • Ana Lu telling me (as I was whimpering with each step up a gentle slope) that she was ‘getting me to the finish line’.
  • The high school volunteer who kindly put ice cubes in my nasty/sweaty/filthy hydration pack while it was still on my back.

Snapshots.

Happy and meaningful snapshots for my heart from a damn fine day.

I love this sport, race day or any day, because it tests the individual. And yet in a strange way it’s almost like a team sport.  We all genuinely want everyone else to win their personal race.  NO matter how they define it.  If they’re fighting their heart and guts out – we’re rooting for them. Period.

When someone was stopped on the side of the trail around mile 17 or so, all you could hear were echoes through the forest of other runners asking ‘you OK?’ as they paused on their way past.  Or you come across someone struggling and you just buddy up with them (or they with you!), distract each other and encourage each other as best you can while you happen to be on the same stretch of trail. We generously share supplies when we have what someone else needs (salt tabs anyone?).

For Mac, I put into motion the training that Spencer and I have been working on for the past 6 months. Actually we’ve really been working on foundation building for Mac for a solid year.  It all came together on Saturday.

I did encounter some serious cramping in my shins, calves and feet. It was possibly from fatigue, heat/electrolyte imbalance, my lack of experience navigating super-steep terrain or even all of the above…  It just made things a bit tougher than planned.

I finished my race in 8:04.

And even with the stupid shin cramping agony; that is a WIN for me!

Racing these long events, my biggest issue is my head.  I start to question what I’m doing and it gets more insistent as my body starts to hurt and push to the edges of my training. My head starts to battle for control.  And the control it wants is clear and absolute; it wants to shut down my body and make everything comfortable and easy and safe.  Immediately.

From about mile 20 to the finish, I was really battling my brain. Even with friends running with me and trying to distract me; my head was going for the mental ‘sore spots’.

Everyone has them.  I am NOT alone.

Spencer and I have had tons of conversations about how part of the training we do for endurance events is specifically FOR the mental battles we face.

So for every negative thought, I would conjure up a positive.

  • Focus on my breathing. I WAS very alive and totally breathing.
  • I was running and moving. There are people, some I know and love, who do not/no longer have that option.
  • Marveling that my body could work so DANGED hard for so long and WILL be able to do even more with training and time.
  • Every single step was taking me closer to the finish line, to other goals, to becoming a stronger woman.
  • Pizza. 🙂 (Not gonna lie. I think about pizza a lot when I run.)

I finished the race and was greeted by friends.

Lots of friends. Old and new. Hugs and congrats and encouragement for everyone.

We were all verbally stepping all over each other trying to inquire about others that we had lost track of during the race. Was everyone back and OK? How was everyone feeling? Loud and happy chatter!

In the interest of full disclosure; I had one mercifully brief breakdown just after crossing the finish line. I realized I had DONE it, I was physically and mentally exhausted and it was the eve of Mother’s day.  My mom has been gone for 5 years and she would be so, totally, insanely proud of me.  She was wheel-chair bound and I just happened to glimpse a wheelchair with someone’s loved one waiting at the finish line.  It was JUST enough of a trigger… I suddenly felt heartbroken and totally lost without my mom for a few moments. MAN would she have loved what my life has become and the people in it… A legitimate feeling of sadness and loss that was perched at the surface bubbled over.  I was emotionally raw and depleted anyway.  Why not just give in to it?  I grabbed a hug from my friend Jeff and maybe, just maybe, cried on him a little bit…

Dried my tear(s).  (I’m not normally a crier. And I was dehydrated anyway. 🙂 )

Grabbed some more water and some orange slices.

Went to search for more friends.

Took pictures. Hugged anyone and everyone who wanted a hug. And some who didn’t. 🙂 Even though we ALL smelled like yeti’s.

Spent some time just reveling in a sport that is as much about a new-found, welcoming family and a team environment as it is about the amazing individuals  and characters who embrace it.

I love this sport more every time I lace up my shoes.

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Close to mile 6. Photo credit goes to Jeff Sherman who sprinted ahead, laid down on the ground and let us ran at/hurdle over him as he snapped the shot. Hannah, Josh, me, Ana Lu and Kristie.

Taper.

~ betsyhartley392 ~ 1 Comment
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18 events in 2012. Most were walking events, and I was beginning to experiment a little with running. My first trail event. A 45 mile bike ride. 🙂 I knew NOTHING about being coached or running or tapering.

I’m getting close to a big race.

One of the final parts of getting ready for a race is called tapering.  (Those who have tapered are groaning in sympathy right now…)

You train, work hard, plan, focus, learn, grow for months…

Then you SHUT IT ALL DOWN.

You back things off for the week or so before the race.  (It only feels like a month or two… #tapertantrum)

OK.  That’s not true.

I haven’t shut it all down.

I’m still doing core work, running a little, stretching. And I am still trying to learn to swim… But my coach, Spencer, has me on a seriously scaled back running plan from what I would normally be doing if we were in an active training period.  (Uh… Appetite does NOT scale back accordingly just for the record.  It seems to have missed the tapering memo.)

In the past the tapering period has been a quasi-nightmare for me.  I spent the ‘down time’ convinced that I was gaining weight and losing ALL of my fitness and knew there was no-way-in-hell I would be ready for race day when I spent the days leading up being ‘lazy’…

I mean, you take the girl who fought for more than two years to learn to love to run and worked hard to make exercising an iron-clad lifestyle habit and you ask her to stop…

Stop the routines I worked so hard to develop.  Stop working hard every time I put on my running shoes.  Stop being focused on food intake and energy outputs for a short period of time. Stop doing the thing that I know was almost single-handedly responsible for my ability to get off of insulin and reverse Type 2 Diabetes?

Yikes.

I’ve heard people describe the tapering period as ‘vacation’. No way.  For someone STILL trying to cement all of these notions, habits and practices into my head and life, it was more than a little daunting and scary.

Stopping and scaling things way back just seems wrong.

So tapering normally meant I was cranky and testy and started questioning all of my training and driving my friends and coach crazy with questions laced with self-doubt…

‘How’s the taper going? Have you killed anyone yet?’  — text from a friend

Yeah.  I was a peach while tapering.

So why taper if it drives me so nuts?  First, my coach says so.  Second, I’ve done it enough times now that I KNOW it works and that it’s an important part of the training process.

Quite simply? Tapering pays off on race day.

I understand now that what you’re really doing during the taper is bottling up energy and letting your body and mind repair and rest so that you can be totally ready to RUN your heart out.

When I was tapering for the North Face 50K back in November/December, I realized what a mental battle tapering really was for me. I took really good notes on the process and captured my thoughts and feelings along the way. I noted multiple times that I was feeling sincere anxiety at the inactivity.  I feared that I would enjoy the break from running so totally and completely that I would just decide I was never, ever going to run again.  I talked a LOT about being afraid of gaining weight and thought about how I would manage food if exercise was totally taken out of the equation. I thought maybe I would forget how to run.  I was worried that by sitting ‘idle’ all of my fitness was slipping away.

My brain was taking up the slack for the decreased physical activity.  And not in a good way.

Then race day came.  I ran well. Felt great.  Loved every minute of it. KNEW the morning of the race, before I ever got near the start line; tapering had worked exactly as it should have.

I finished the race and still wanted to run again. I was eager to get back to training. My weight is ALWAYS going to fluctuate. My fitness for race day was perfectly intact and ready to go to work.

So this time around I focused on NOT allowing that mental chess game to begin. I’ve focused on just enjoying it as part of the whole training process.

This is a local event.  LOTS of friends running it. It’s the ground, trails, mountains that I have fallen in love with.  It’s where I practice.  When Spencer and I talked about goals at the beginning of this year I told him that for this race, I not only wanted to do well, I wanted to enjoy every piece of the process.  Taper included.

Race day arrives in 5 days…  I will get to see my friends and people I only see at races and I will meet new friends.  I’ll lace up my Brooks and pin on my number and slip on my hydration pack. AND I will know that all the training I did is about to be turned loose and tested and used. 🙂

And the dreaded taper is officially OVER…

And I’ll run. 🙂

#runhappy

Waterfalls and perspective.

~ betsyhartley392 ~ 5 Comments
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Jeff, Wade and Bets. Silver Falls.

Perspective is a good and necessary thing.

Asserting that, knowing that and even reminding our college-aged student leaders of the importance of perspective ALL THE TIME…

It’s still something I fight.

(Note to current OSU students; you are not allowed to throw this little tidbit back in my face the next time I remind you about keeping things in perspective…)

My coaching conversation with Spencer this week wound up being about perspective.  I was expressing frustration and concern that I’d had two really rough runs this past weekend. My legs were tired so I was moving sllloooowwww.

BUT tired legs wasn’t the worst of it; the worst part was fighting with my head.

My brain was DONE running for the week and trying to check out with EACH freaking step.  I mean that quite literally. I had two long runs — so it was HOURS of fighting with my head. Brutal stuff.

I was really frustrated with myself. I was also questioning whether I had genuinely given things 100% effort. I didn’t feel like I had finished the 3-week training cycle strong; which is what I always aim for… Had I wasted an opportunity somehow? Had I screwed things up?

Spencer listened. Then reminded me that the only way the training time would have been ‘wasted/lost’ would have been if I had quit, given up.

I had NOT quit.

With a little time and hindsight, they may have been ugly runs; but I can admit that I really did gut out each run as best I could.

Mental training is very, very much a part of what we’re working on.  I know this.

Spencer reassured me that this weekend I WON the battle with my head. Not quitting was very much a win.

The moment I’m in might be crappy, but on the whole, I am making progress and learning and growing.

Spencer asks ‘Could you have done any of this a year ago?’ I answer ‘No. No way.’

Perspective.

It can be a sort of magic at times if I let it creep in. It can elbow doubt or fear or stress to the side….  Perspective, for me at least, reminds me what the balance of life is all about.  To be clear we are NOT talking about the negative-emotional-sinkhole of COMPARISON.

But perspective. 

A dose of perspective – whether I find it on my own or someone lovingly/gently/bluntly hands it to me – usually brings me some welcomed concoction of balance, a sense of growth and peace of mind.

My friends Wade and Jeff went for a run with me on Sunday.

It was a BIG DEAL for me.

Big.

Why?

Because the three of us have never run together before. I’ve known both of them for about 9 years.  They both were students at OSU.

But more importantly they knew me at my heaviest and know how hard I have worked to get healthy. 

Wade was my student worker. He saw the daily struggles of my life as an obese woman first-hand, well before I ever dreamed of embarking on this journey to reclaim my life.  He has been a constant support and isn’t afraid to be honest with me – even about the tough stuff.  I talk to/text him almost daily.

Jeff is not only my colleague currently, but one of my closest friends and stalwart running companions.  Jeff’s  job is to bail us out when I accidentally lead us headfirst into trouble. He’s had a lot of practice. 🙂

Both of these dudes are very important in my life. And they’re good friends as well.

We finally got organized and left the car and took off down a narrow path to grab the loop around Silver Falls State Park.

We first chatted about Wade’s genuine fear of heights as we were hugging a rock cliff and holding a wobbly fence railing over the ravine to get down to the falls.  It wasn’t so much chatting as Wade loudly reminding me ‘I DO NOT LIKE HEIGHTS BETSY HARTLEY’. 🙂

But then we got to some rolling single-track near the water…

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After some perfunctory and good-natured harassing of each others outfits, habits, and skills…

Wade says…

“I remember when you used to walk into your office from your car in the morning and you would flop down in the bean bag chair and say ‘I’m exhausted already!'”

Wade then asks me if I remember that…

Yes.

I do.

Clearly.

It’s really embarrassing to look back on the habits of the ‘old me’.

The sweaty, hot, lazy, exhausted, sick me… Especially in those days where I knew I had a problem and was unwilling to do anything about it.

I could try to deny it or hide it from most folks, but I can’t really be embarrassed about the ‘old me’ with these two; they’ve seen the entire journey…

From 392 pounds to now.

They’ve trained for events with me. They have both gotten endless calls and texts about food/weight/running/crazy-ass ideas/mental exhaustion/goal setting/setbacks/successes/doctor reports/triumphs.

They’ve both stuck with me through the whole thing.

And here we were…

RUNNING together!

So about 3 miles in on the run I couldn’t seem to settle down and enjoy the run, but I finally decided to wrap my brain around and embrace some positive perspective.

I was in some of the most beautiful country around.

I was running BEHIND incredible waterfalls in green, lush forests.

I was no longer a T2 diabetic.

I was at a healthy weight and holding it steady for over a year.

I have friends willing to get up at crack o’ dawn and go run on dirt/mud with me.

I was with two great friends who know my story and my struggles and LOVE me anyway.

NONE of us ever really thought we might all be able to run together… But we were.

Perspective.

It’s all about perspective.

#Lifeisgood

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Don’t let the picture fool you. At this point I think we were talking about how much coffee each of needed so we could poop before we run… Glamor. Sophistication. Class. That’s us… 🙂

Trigger point

~ betsyhartley392 ~ 5 Comments
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…all kinds of great paths have opened up for me… 🙂

I often get asked what the trigger point was for my lifestyle overhaul.

I always stumble around for a good answer. I never quite know what to say because the truth is…  Well, it’s just messy.

I did reach a point (July 2010) where I knew I was DONE with the way I was living my life. I wanted to be on a new path. No matter what it took. I felt that shift physically.

My gut and heart were finally ready to follow my mind.

But there were life-long cascading events that led up to that actual moment in July 2010…

I was fat. Not fitting in chairs. Special clothes. Exceeding weight limits. Routinely being the largest person in a room.

Unhealthy. Fatty liver. Cholesterol levels that were sketchy. High blood pressure. A category I’ll politely label ‘female issues’.

Diabetic, Type 2.  Daily injections for blood glucose control. Finger sticks. Drugs to help with complications. Swinging highs/lows that made me oh-so-much-fun to be around.

I had grown used to all of this.

It was all manageable.

But there was a single, big event that changed my world…

My world stopped on 3/10/10 just after 9 in the morning when my mom died.

We had been fighting, all-out, to save her for months.

She died of MRSA.

MRSA is a drug resistant staph. A ‘super bug’.  For my mom, it was a massive, systemic staph infection that could not be controlled. As time went by, NONE of the drugs available in the US worked, not even the experimental drugs, combinations.

My mom had a seriously compromised immune system. She had Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) from when she was 32. Complications from RA, for her, were diabetes and kidney failure. She was in renal failure when MRSA grabbed hold. She was a desperately difficult case for OHSU (Oregon’s teaching hospital) to work on. We were told routinely how dire and complicated things were.

The infection and complications overwhelmed her body 6 days after her 66th birthday.

I grieved. Hard. For more than a year I was secluded, closed-off and wounded. Hell, I’m still grieving 5 years later.  My mom was one of my best friends. She shouldn’t have died. But her health was so complicated and compromised that her body couldn’t help her fight off the infection.

After she died I began to realize a few things…

I hurt my back 4 months before she died. Bulged 2 discs in my lower back.  I tripped and fell. The doctor told me the weight of my belly is likely what pulled my back apart, the fall shouldn’t have done it. I was drugged into oblivion for pain management. I was crippled to the point that I couldn’t bend over my moms ICU bed and kiss her cheek as she was dying…

I will never get over that. Not even going to try. Being fat had finally caught up with me.

This was the first time I ever remember feeling resentment, remorse, disgust, regret (not sure of the right word….) at having let myself get so fat and unhealthy.

And I saw some incredible things in our time at the hospital. I realized that a good long-term strategy for survival is to NOT NEED healthcare/hospitals. I was, at 42, a surgical candidate for a back injury related to my weight, taking 3 shots a day for type 2 diabetes, 6-7 other meds. I was dependent on lots of doctors to keep me healthy.

Do you see where this is all leading…??!

Eventually I did too.

It took about 16 months for me to piece it all together and decide that it time to act.

One other note…  (I said this was messy!)

Grieving changes you. Fundamentally. It scars you. It tears you to shreds.  You literally feel like your heart is bleeding. You are in a blinding mental fog. And oddly, it makes you stronger than you ever thought possible. All of the sudden you are fiercely protective of loved ones and friends; protecting others is the only emotional outlet for the shit storm that is your mind and heart. Grief makes you so weak and vulnerable you sit passively, even in public, with tears streaming down your face because you don’t even have the energy to properly cry…

If you’ve grieved — you know what I’m talking about. You have your own definitions and examples for what it does to your life, your mind and your heart.

Having said that…

I began to realize that my mom would be so, so disappointed in me if I kept living my life as the walking dead. What kind of tribute was that to my mom?!  She was INCREDIBLE and loved life and cherished people and enjoyed every moment she was given — until the very end.

I had to do that same… I had to live a FULL life.  Not a half life of adapting and getting by.

I began to understand that the biggest tribute I could possibly pay to my mom (and dad!) is to show people that I CHOOSE to live life, love people and enjoy each moment I am given.

Things had to change.

The best visual I have come up with is that things were piling up.

Instead of them piling up on top of me and being suffocated by them – like I had always done in the past, this time; I stood on them.

They piled up.  And I just kept blindly and stubbornly scrambling and climbing over them and standing on them.

I didn’t want to be suffocated.  Or squished.  Or buried. Anymore.

I wanted to LIVE.

But… WHY this time?  I had learned to live life as a fat woman.  I was managing my diabetes. I was getting by just fine.

Was my trigger point all really tied to my mom’s death? Was it the little things piling up? Was it just that I finally found a spark of bravery and determination that I had never felt/found/noticed before…

I really don’t know.

I think it was more likely a perfect storm and I was finally ready.

Perhaps too simple an answer to satisfy folks who are looking to be motivated for their own life change… But I really do think it was the right things at the right time and I had just enough guts to make a run for it – and quickly found the right people and tools and encouragement.

It’s still a daily fight to stay in control of food. I keep an eagle eye on my weight and work hard to keep it stable. I still hit snooze sometimes before getting my butt out of bed to go run. 🙂  I won’t lie to you. I understand that I will have daily battles the rest of my life to keep the good habits in the forefront.

Game on.

My mom was proud of me. She made sure I KNEW that every single day of my life. And I know she would be just as proud of me now.

I am a very lucky girl to be so well loved.

I also know that if she was still alive she would be begging my dad to create a wheelchair with all-terrain wheels and a seat belt so I could push her into the hills on trail runs and she would be my running partner…  🙂

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Mom. Fishing Diamond Lake. She is pointing the biggest fish to let everyone know that’s the one she caught… 🙂

I HATE running. So, how did you learn to love running?!

~ betsyhartley392 ~ 8 Comments
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Jeff and I, North Face, December 2014.  Those smiles? Genuine.

‘I HATE running. So, how did you learn to love running?!’

I get asked this question a bunch. As we near the end of January — resolutions being put to the test — I get asked with increasing urgency.

I answer their statement/question with a question.

‘Why do you want to love running?’

I really want to know WHY they think they have to love running specifically.

The truth is maybe they won’t love running.  It is not for everyone. And that’s OK.

The REAL issue is not running anyway.

Let’s be honest.

The key to healthy, sustainable success is to fall in love with SOME physical activity that you will consistently make time in your day to do. Something active, fun, rewarding and friend-based or solitude-giving. You may love swimming or hiking or cycling or walking or Zumba.

It does not have to be running. It just has to be something. 🙂 THAT is the secret.

Being active is what I fell in love with and what really changed my life. 

It just happens to be an activity called running. 🙂

Sometimes people really do want to know how to learn to love running specifically.

I can tell you how I got started. And we have to start with my mindset.

Run when chased.

Even then, only RUN if I didn’t stand a fighting chance.

One day about 3 years ago I realized that I would quickly and flippantly tell everyone that I hated running. Someone eventually challenged me about exactly WHY I hated it.  What specifically did I not enjoy?

The truth that grudgingly emerged was that I had NEVER, ever actually tried running.

I then had some honest conversations with myself about how I could hate something I actually knew nothing about and had no experience with…

This was my reasoning:

I’ve been overweight my entire life.

Overweight people don’t run.

Overweight people who try to run get made fun of (brutally so. Google it if you doubt me) and they look pathetically ridiculous.

I am not just ‘overweight’, I am morbidly obese. I am fat.

Therefore… I hate running.

With a passion.

And if I tell people I hate running — they’ll assume I have tried it and I am just choosing not to run.

They’ll never, ever guess that I’m saying I hate it because I’m fat and scared and know that it is beyond any fitness level I have ever had in my entire life.  It is beyond any amount of work or fitness I can possibly even begin to imagine…

Huh.

So I had few weeks of struggling with the topic and then finally had to admit to myself that I was deeply AFRAID of something I had never really bothered to try…

It’s a rough process to realize and acknowledge something really ugly, weak about yourself.

But this time I was NOT going to run from my fears. (Pun intended. Or is this irony?!) 🙂

It was time to put on my big girl panties and deal with things.  (Note: Like a lot of my female running friends, I don’t wear underwear with my running tights. ‘Big girl panties’ is just a figure of speech.) 🙂

Running for me sucked at the start.  Let’s just get that out of the way. It was physically painful. Mentally exhausting.  I was 230 pounds or so.

But I promised myself that this time I would give it a really solid effort and at least get PAST the fear to a personally informed opinion.

I pulled a beginners running plan off the internet, wore the best compression gear I could afford, made time for running each day, set mini-goals, told some friends.

I wholeheartedly, honestly tried running.

It was SLOW and painful at the start.  In an earlier blog I detailed how I literally started by running across a driveway on my daily walk.  That’s all I could handle.  I kept working to build distance and time.

I struggled.  Not gonna lie.

I would sweat so heavily – any time of year – I was drenched. My face would turn an alarming beet red and people would ask if I was OK. I would be red-faced and sweating for HOURS after working out.  My feet, legs and hips would hurt for days after an attempt. There were mean catcalls made out of car windows. My appetite went through the roof and I had to REALLY watch my food consumption to keep the scale creeping downward. I had to invest in better shoes, bras and specialty compression gear.

But the problem was…

After a few weeks of really, truly trying to run…

I kind of fell for it.

I loved the challenge. I loved feeling the accomplishment. I loved the people I was meeting who were unabashedly supportive. I loved how my blood sugars would swoop low and STAY there.  I loved how I felt a fierce sense of pride in my body and what I was asking her to do.  I loved that my body was working harder then ever and yet I knew she could do even more…

I kept trying.  And learning.  And meeting great people. And running further.

My ‘love’ for running was obviously NOT a love at first sight kind of thing.

It was a 2+ year process of stubbornly not giving up.

So the key to learning to ‘love’ running, as far as I am concerned???

Deciding I wanted something MORE than I was afraid of it AND just  NOT giving up. 🙂

There are legit physical issues that prevent people from running.  I get that.  I’m not here to ask you to do something you physically should not be doing.

But I am going to ask a much bigger question.  The question I had to ask myself.

What are you afraid of?

For me running was something I feared. That’s why I thought I hated it.

I didn’t hate running.  I was scared of being made fun of.  I was afraid I would look dumb.  I was paralyzed by where/how to even start.  I was terrified that people would pity me or mock me or be disgusted by me.

I was afraid of something I had never tried.

Once I tried it — really, truly gave it an honest effort — it began to change my life.

That first step is ALWAYS the hardest… But it was so, so worth braving it.

Running has changed my life.  And there is no doubt that it is part of what saved my life.

That is HOW I learned to love running. 🙂

#runhappy #lifeisgood

(The crap in the middle.)

~ betsyhartley392 ~ Leave a comment
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Wendie, Bets. June 2014, Timothy Lake/Mt. Hood 50 Miler.  We were crewing for Josh as he ran 50 miles. 🙂

My friend Wendie and I were having coffee last week. Chattering excitedly about the EPIC plans all of our friends have for 2015.

And getting pedicures. 🙂

I asked her for some honest feedback on this whole adventure of blogging.

‘You have been writing about the fun stuff, the happiness, the A-Z success, the highlights.

You really need to talk about the ugly, hard stuff, the sad stuff, the things that make people quit and give up.

People need to know they are not alone.

They need to know about the crap in the middle.’

She said I should consider talk about the stuff NO ONE WANTS to really talk about…  Not even just the embarrassing stuff, which usually makes for at least a great story or laugh at some point.

She said to tackle the DAILY GRIND. The things that easily erode away confidence. Or stop you in your tracks if you have to battle it too many times. The things that fatigue you or plant nagging self-doubt.

Steep learning curves when all you want is SOMETHING to be familiar and NOT so damned hard…

You with me?

The stuff that sucks.

This is the stuff that I battled intently, intensely and consistently this time around.

This is also the exact listing of where I was derailed in EVERY past attempt I made on a ‘diet’ or exercise regime.

This is the crap that was in the middle of my journey…

  1. I was NOT going to talk about my fat rolls and bulk and weight and the problems they were causing when I tried to exercise, with anyone. Chafing, motion control, infections, back strains. I suffered in embarrassed and humiliated silence for a VERY long time. Shame. Deep shame.
  2. Life felt unfair. Going to bed hungry, feeling overwhelmed and alone. Usually a little pissed off that ‘normal people’ could eat whatever they wanted. Meanwhile I was a freaking air fern that could gain weight by SMELLING cookies baking.
  3. Type 2 Diabetes. TRYING to get off of insulin. Having to add more back in. Endless finger sticks. Lows that made me an unbearable, cranky, bratty turd. Trying to eat the right thing at the right time and not be over calories for the day.
  4. Being so sore from exercising that I literally thought something was broken or ruined.
  5. Going to social events and choosing NOT to eat what everyone else was eating. And then trying HARD not to look awkward or sad or out of sorts.
  6. Chronic food pushers/saboteurs.
  7. Not seeing results. Restricting calories and the scale not moving for days and weeks. Walking further and not finding it any easier. Doing the same things as my friends and they were having success. Me…? Not at all…
  8. Wanting to quit. Feeling overwhelmed. Knowing there was NO END IN SIGHT. Ever. These habits had to be ‘for life’.
  9. Food was spot on. Measured and counted everything. Exercised every single day. Drank water. Good blood sugars.  I did everything I was supposed to be doing.  Scale said I was UP.  *Insert scream of rage/despair here*.
  10. Scale dictating my mood and my feelings of success. I would become a thundercloud of despair because I was up half or a full pound on any given day.
  11. Revert to comfortable habits when the rest of life was out of control. Cheat on my OWN rules. And then face frustration or panic because I KNEW this was not behavior that would lead me anywhere but BACKWARD…

I know I am NOT alone in my listing  of ‘sucky’ things…  I’ve talked to too many people.

Please… Tell me what’s missing from my list that is on your list?  What is the crap in the middle of your journey?

And once we know what were facing and struggling against…  How do we fight back and WIN?

I have to be honest and admit that I still struggle with most of these on some level. I am not an expert. BUT, I am an extrovert, with some sass and a few personal experiences that I am not too embarrassed to share.  So I will share. 🙂

I promised Wendie that we would get conversations started about battling the crap in the middle.

Stay tuned.

Everyday is a new day. You have to start over every single day. No matter how effing hard it is, you fight through it and you start fresh the next day.    — Wendie

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Out kicking it on a run… Don’t remember when or where. But we were moving. And sweating And smiling. Who cares about the details? 🙂

Coach to 50K

~ betsyhartley392 ~ 2 Comments
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Spencer and I after The North Face Endurance Challenge, CA 12/2014.

You’ve heard of couch to 5K, the running/training app?

How about heart-monitor to 50K in 18 months?

No?

You haven’t heard of it?!?

Well, then let me tell you a story…

I met Spencer when I was super focused and quite a ways into my lifestyle re-vamp. I was down to 200 pounds and off insulin. I was working to get off all other meds and wanted to lose 40 more pounds. I was falling in LOVE with being able to MOVE; running specifically had captured my heart.

I was loving the active life I was building! 

We were introduced randomly at work. ‘Hey you both run. You know each other right?’ 

(Me at 200 pounds and teaching myself to begin to run, being introduced to a tall, thin, fit, very obviously a runner-looking dude…)

Spencer said ‘You run!’

I stuttered back something intelligent and confident like ‘UH… I’m NOT THAT kind of runner… Not like you can obviously run. I’m really, really slow. I just wanna be able to run a mile without walking…’

Spencer said “It’s cool you run! Let’s grab coffee and talk about running.’

So we did.

I explained how I had gotten to the point of wanting to become a runner; mega weight loss, getting off insulin. Lifestyle changes, NOT diet.

I confessed I couldn’t run more than a mile or two. But I still told him my heart’s desire; I wanted to run an ultra someday. Did he even know what the heck I was talking about? Spencer, with a grin, said ‘Yeah. I’ve heard of them.’  ‘Do you really think someone like me could run an ultra?’  ‘Absolutely.’

Heard of them? Geez. Turns out he had RUN them!

The ultra world isn’t very big. With DUMB luck I had just stumbled into someone who KNEW about them. More importantly to me? He was only the second or third person to greet my ‘ultra’ goal with a POSITIVE response and not the now-standard ‘YOU are crazy.’

He asked me what I was doing to train. I told him; LOTS. I was running and biking and hiking and weight lifting and doing boot camp classes.  If a little is good, a lot is better. Right?!

Spencer said ‘You’re doing a lot. Be careful and maybe look at some structure to keep from getting hurt’.

My brain shut down at his words of caution… 

I was SO, so, so tired of everyone preaching caution AT ME on this journey. Diabetes was trying to KILL me. Caution seemed stupid. Couldn’t people see I was ACTUALLY going to win this war against diabetes if everyone would just get THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY?!!!

Turns out that I was JUST about to reach a very real breaking point…

June 2013 I literally hit the ground. I passed out in Safeway. An off-duty fireman walking toward me saw the impending train wreck and broke my fall…

I wound up in the ER.

Exhaustion and potassium depletion was what they finally told me. ‘Hang up your running shoes for a few weeks and give your body a break..’

I met Spencer for coffee again a few days after my visit to the ER — wearing a portable EKG/heart monitor. I was defeated, scared to death I was going to lose my foothold on this new lifestyle.

I was ready to LISTEN.

I needed help.

I really wanted to be a runner.

Blacking-out scared the crap out of me. I clearly did NOT know what in the hell I was doing. At all. I asked Spencer about structure. And preventing this from happening again. And coaching.

Spencer was not coaching anyone at that point. He was insistent about it.

After some additional conversations; I flat-out begged him to consider working with me. Some more conversations? He agreed we could give coaching a try for a short period of time.

Fast forward 18 months.

Spencer is still my coach. 🙂

There has been lots of cussing and learning and sassy moments as I struggled to be OK with trusting someone else to help me on this journey.

I had to learn to accept that Spencer really was on my side.

Please understand; that statement is NOT a judgement on Spencer. THIS whole journey of changing your entire lifestyle..?  It can be lonely and hard. You get used to doing a lot of this stuff on your own, without crowd approval or understanding or support from anyone beyond a small handful of trusted friends.

To invite Spencer into this journey and then give him some portion of involvement and control was a very BIG step for me.

I ditched the heart monitor after a TON of tests. I got a totally clean bill of health after a period of serious rest. I had permission to start back to exercising and running – slowly and cautiously.

I started back from my ‘crash’ working with Spencer as my coach. Our goal? He was going to help me re-build in a healthy, sustainable, safe way.

The trial period worked out.

He hasn’t fired me. (Yet.)

And… I ran my first 50K this past weekend.

That is my heart-monitor to 50K program in 18 months story.

Or as I have been calling it this week..?!?

‘Coach to 50K’. 🙂

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Thanks for not firing me Spencer… 🙂

Ultra

~ betsyhartley392 ~ 3 Comments
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2014 North Face Endurance Challenge. Spencer (my coach) and I at the finish line. 50K in the books!

I just finished an ultra.

Running an ultra is something I have been thinking about for 3 years. My friend Josh Gum planted the idea in my head. ‘You do NOT have to run fast — you just have to run far.’ I am never going to be speedy. But stubbornly refusing to give up once I set my mind on something? Yeah that’s right up my alley. 🙂

I have been focused on training for this event for most of this year. I picked the North Face Endurance Challenge in San Francisco.  It was a 50K, which is a 31 mile trail run. There were some pretty good hills and a TON of mud. It was perfect.

I had the BEST day!

This was an AMAZING day!

Yes… I am a little sore. And little hungry. And totally ready to do another one!

It feel so good to have been focused on a big goal for a long time, done all the hard work, put in the time to make it happen and to finally see it come to life right before your eyes.

I ran the entire race with my friend Jeff Sherman.  (The one I talk into anything?  Yeah… That guy!)  BOTH of us — this was our first ultra.

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Jeff and I at mile 6.2 Jeff’s first ever 10K DURING the 50K. Yup. He’d never done a 10K – and were just starting a 50K.

My coach Spencer was there at the finish line.

Spencer helped me get here.

This is NO small feat. We have been working together for the past 18 months. He has seen the good, the bad, the ugly, the temper tantrums, the success and the progress. He has built me into a runner.  And I got to test all of our hard work on the hills north of San Francisco this weekend.

It was FANTASTIC!

And to top it all off? I was surrounded by a group of people who have been part of this dream and adventure from the start. We were all together.

I finally GOT to run an ultra.

Now I have to figure out what I GET to do next… 🙂