The Playlist

I was just thinking on my way home tonight about how I've never been much of an athlete. My forte in high school was music. I was in band since 5th grade - marching band, jazz band and orchestra. I joined choir in my senior year, because somehow I figured out I could sing a little.

So, this is yet another side of my half marathon prep. And I can be picky about my music.

I believe this is FINALLY the final version of my playlist for the half marathon on Sunday.

I basically put it together based on songs that have a decent beat (which is why you may find some random choices on here) or songs that motivate me to keep going or that I have an attachment to.

In no particular order (or some random, weird order my iPhone put together):

And We Danced - The Hooters
Barely Breathing - Duncan Sheik
Battle Scars - Lupe Fiasco
Blow Me (One Last Kiss) - P!nk
Breathe - Prodigy
C'mon n' Ride It (The Train) - Quad City DJs
Catch My Breath - Kelly Clarkson
Closer - Tegan and Sara
Cobrastyle - Teddybears feat. Mad Cobra
Cradle of Love - Billy Idol
Cult of Personality - Living Colour
Don't You Worry Child - Swedish House Mafia
The Fighter - Gym Class Heroes
Forever - Chris Brown
Green Hornet Theme - Billy May
Groove is in the Heart - Deee-Lite
Hall of Fame - The Script
Home - Phillip Phillips
How Far We've Come - Matchbox Twenty
How to Be a Heartbreaker - Marina and the Diamonds
It's Time - Imagine Dragons
Keep Your Eyes Open - NEEDTOBREATHE
The Kill - 30 Seconds to Mars
Kings and Queens - 30 Seconds to Mars
Kiss Me Deadly - Lita Ford
Lego House - Ed Sheeran
Love and Memories - O.A.R.
Madness - Muse
Mirrors - Justin Timberlake
Miss Out - Blush
Part of Me - Katy Perry
People Like Us - Kelly Clarkson
Rebel Yell - Billy Idol
Raise Your Glass - P!nk
Red Hands - Walk Off the Earth
Runaway - Love and Theft
Save Me - Remy Zero
Sing - My Chemical Romance
Skyfall - Adele
Smack My Bitch Up - Prodigy
Sometime Around Midnight - Airborne Toxic Event
Stricken - Disturbed
Suit & Tie - Justin Timberlake
Sure Shot - Beastie Boys
Sweet Nothing - Calvin Davis feat. Florence Welch
Thrift Shop - Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Tonight I'm Getting Over You - Carly Rae Jepsen
Wild Ones - Flo Rida
Titanium - David Guetta feat. Sia
Numb - Usher
You and I - Paper Route
25 Miles - Edwin Starr
32 Flavors - Alana Davis
Between You and Me - DC Talk
Breathe - Ryan Star
Can't Hold Us - Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Called Out in the Dark - Snow Patrol
How You Like Me Now - The Heavy
Mama Said Knock You Out - LL Cool J
My Life - 50 Cent feat. Eminem & Adam Levine
Radioactive - Imagine Dragons
Wide Awake - Katy Perry
The Boys of Summer - The Ataris
The Distance - Cake
Sad But True - Metallica
Shattered - O.A.R.
Turn the Page - Metallica
The Fallout - O.A.R.
Flood - Jars of Clay
Liquid - Jars of Clay
Closer to the Edge - 30 Seconds to Mars
Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac
3's and 7's - Queens of the Stone Age
Face Down - Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
Motorcycle Drive By - Third Eye Blind
Let Go - Frou Frou
War Song - O.A.R.

On pink ribbons and fundraising

On my way to the office this morning, I saw that downtown Lansing has been covered in pink ribbons.

I despise the pink ribbons nowadays.

Don’t get me wrong – my aunt died of breast cancer at the age of 38. I was about 7 or 8 years old at the time. What I remember of that time was a big stuffed dog that she had – there’s a picture of me with it somewhere. I also remember a stuffed bunny puppet that she gave me and I still have it today.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  But somehow, April has now been hijacked for breast cancer awareness. I can only guess that’s because the Susan G. Komen Foundation in this area has their big race the last weekend of April.

I wonder - why does our society pay so much attention to breast (female) cancer? Actually, I don’t wonder much. It’s become a multi-million dollar business to make things pink and sell them, and hey, men like boobs, so we must save them!

But there are many other cancers that people suffer from every day and have higher mortality rates. However, I suppose that colon cancer and blood cancers just aren’t that sexy.

Personally, I choose to donate my time and money to organizations like the American Cancer Society and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, to name a few. And that brings me to the fundraising part of this blog.

I’ve written a bit about the running part of my journey for my half marathon. But the part that I was equally freaked out about was the fundraising portion of the task. To race, I committed to raise a minimum of $3200 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

This number seemed daunting when I started. I hadn’t ever raised that amount of money before for one cause. But, bound and determined, I set out to reach my goal and more.

One of the things I learned through this process is that in a lot of cases, you just need to ask. I asked everyone I knew. I posted on Facebook on a daily basis, I invited people to fundraisers, I sent out emails and I sent out written letters. I asked people I wasn’t sure would donate, because you never know until you ask.

I’m sure people got tired of it, especially when I had another fundraising going on for a friend.  But you know what the beauty of being asked for money is?

You get to say NO.

It doesn’t matter why you say no. It doesn’t matter if you just don’t respond, or you let me know that you can’t. But the reason that you’re asked is because someone like me is following all the available paths to reach a goal. We KNOW people will say no, which is why we ask way more people than we need to donate to our cause.

It’s your money and you choose what you do with it. There will always be people asking you for money, and like my choice to donate to other cancer organizations, you get to choose where your money goes, no matter how often you’re asked.

As I write this, I am almost to $3500 raised for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I don’t know who everyone who donated is, but they’ve donated via the website, by bringing in pop cans/bottles to return (and slips) and by coming to the various fundraisers I’ve had during my fundraising period.

Did I mention that if I get to $3500, I’ll be shaving my head? Yeah, that’s happening, I’m sure.

I run my first half marathon on Sunday. I raised more money than I thought I could to begin with. I can also continue raising money until May 28.

YOU have helped me do something that will make a difference to others.

If you feel so compelled to donate to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, you can do so here: http://pages.teamintraining.org/mi/nikewhlf13/angelaclock

For me, this April is a purple month, not a pink one. 

Wisdom (?) for the week

I had a bunch of "things I've learned/realized this week" floating around in my head during my trip to Kroger tonight. So, here they are!

1) I need to eat before running anything more than 4 miles. That was this morning's lesson (and led to skipping the 5K race after doing the 10K race).

2) No matter how much you want ice cream, don't give in the night before a race (but damn, that turtle sundae was good).

3) Priorities are good. Especially when you have to pack your office by Thursday and have a big quarterly meeting you're planning that happens on Friday.

4) It's amazing how much easier it is to clean the refrigerator out when the dog isn't trying to get into the trash bag.

5) It's also amazing how much quieter it seems without said dog around.

6) I apparently hold my arms really high when I run, allowing others to figure out if it's me from a distance.

7) I only have so much tolerance for fake people. And it's not much.

8) #7 can also be applied to most people that comment on news stories online. Though it seems I have less tolerance for them.

9) "No" is a wonderful word. People (including me) should use it more often.

10) Shin splits hurt, but are better than a groin pull.

11) The Lonely Island's "I'm On a Boat" easily gets stuck in my head.

12) My super power is not having to wear gloves while running in below freezing temperatures.

Where the brain goes...

I suppose you could say that this blog is a few days in the making. It's been stirring around in my head since Monday evening, and I'm finally getting around to sitting down to write it.

It was Monday afternoon and I was in the office because I was making sure I spent time packing for our office move at the end of the week. I had eaten lunch and wanted to give it time to settle, but got distracted by preparing for our membership meeting, packing and working on some insurance stuff.

Laura in my office saw it before I did - there had been a bombing at the Boston Marathon.

And in the next few minutes, more information showed up on the news sites. A photo of a gentleman on the ground with policemen in front of him. A video of the finish line when one of the bombs went off. News reports with the same information over and over.

My mind first went to two people that I knew from Team in Training who were running Boston this year. I went to the marathon website and put their names in, seeing that they had both checked in at 40K, but had not finished. They are both ok.

I got angry. Angry that it wasn't even safe to run anymore. I got sad. Sad that people had been injured and died - for what? Sad that runners who may have had one shot at Boston may not have been able to finish, or that their race now had this dark cloud over it.

Eventually, I wasn't sure what to do, and decided to go do my two mile run. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. So I went and ran outside downtown.

At first I wasn't so sure why this seemed to hit me so hard. Then I remembered - I was somewhat a part of this whole running community now. It didn't matter how fast or slow I was - I run. And throughout the week, this incident has been weighing heavily on my mind and I've been watching it closely.

I'm running a huge half marathon event in less than a week. It's an inaugural event in Washington, D.C.

This is the biggest event I've ever run.

This added to all the other emotional stuff attached to this race (raising money to help fight cancer, overcoming a hurdle and do something I NEVER thought I would do). It feels like whoever did this intruded into a part of my life.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit scared in the back of my mind. I'm running this race with thousands of others, in a city I've never been. We had the discussion on our "Everything You Need to Know" call tonight about whether there will be bag drops now (as far as we know, the answer is yes).

Could something happen? Yes. But it can happen anywhere, as the events at the Boston Marathon have reminded us.

Does that mean we should avoid doing things? No. The odds of things like this happening are small. If we don't go out and do things or avoid taking risks, what kind of life would we have?

I know when I run my race next week, my brain will be all over the place. It will be with my legs that will be in pain, it will be with people battling cancer, it will be with my aunt that we lost to cancer. It will drift to a meditative state and it will just listen to my breath. It will be a tourist in D.C. and take photos of various things during the race. My brain will drift to all of you who helped me reach an amazing goal to help others.

And it will no doubt be with Boston, its people, the runners and the heroes.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

There are a number of things that I could write about today, but this one has been rolling around in my head all week, so here goes.

I have this really bad habit of caring too much about what other people think of me. More specifically, regarding acceptance and living up to expectations. Expectations for me have been set high from a very early time in my life (I can't remember NOT having pressure from them).

I've also always wanted to fit in. I was picked on a lot in school for being smart or a band geek or having super long hair (I'm sure there were more things). I never did feel like I fit in anywhere before I went to college.

At UM, I had the opportunity to get lost. I remember friends of mine not understanding why I wanted to go to school so far away and at such a big school. Basically, because I could get lost and start all over. I never did go home much while I was in college.

Anyway, we run across people all the time that, for some reason, they don't like us, don't like something we've done, or are just downright mean. In most cases, you can ignore them, or limit interaction with them to minimize their actions.

But in some cases, it happens to be someone you may respect. And you don't know why, but you can't quite seem to understand what you ever did for them to act they way they do towards you. You just don't know why they don't see that you care, other than you just saw something differently than they did and took a direction they didn't like.

I also have another bad habit - I ruminate about negative stuff all the time. This goes back to expectations. They've always been high for me and when I haven't quite achieved them (say, 2nd chair to a college student in youth symphony) but still did well, it just wasn't good enough.

So, I've been thinking a lot about a person who can't quite seem to grasp that even though I took a completely different route than they did, I still care and contribute.

We always look back on things with more wisdom, because we learned something from a decision or mistake that we made. I think about the decisions I made regarding this issue a lot and regardless of the pain, failures and frustration, I don't think I would do anything differently, because I did what I felt was the right thing for me to do at the time. And I only hope that I've been able to help others because of what I learned.

And it brings me to this quote.

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't." - Eleanor Roosevelt

What I've been learning for a number of years is that we are supposed to be ourselves. And for me, that means doing things because I care and it's the right thing to do. I can only hope that other people see that in me and I will continue to do the right thing.

I'm feeling 32...

Last week was my last week of classes for the semester. It's been a challenging semester taking two classes and working full time, but I survived - and pretty much have crashed afterwards.

Around the same time, I ran across this parody video posted by a friend of mine on Facebook. Hm, I'm 32. Coincidence? I think not.

But, before I go further, I just want to state the following for the record:

1) I have a dog, not a cat.
2) I have not read "50 Shades of Grey". And I have cringed at the portions of it that I have heard. And thank goodness those were being read "dramatically".

In reality, I've been exhausted this week. To the point that I've only run 2 miles this week (on Monday). I have a 10 mile run schedule for Saturday morning and I'm even thinking of moving that to Sunday. I am even considering going to bed by 9pm tonight, because I can't seem to get enough sleep lately.

I'm sure it doesn't help that I haven't been eating the greatest this week, due to a ridiculous amount of stress. I've also been scheduling days/nights where I don't have anything scheduled (nah, it doesn't take that much talent).

I think the big problem here though is that my depression is settling in. Even though I'm scheduling unscheduled time, I end up sleeping for most of it, and not necessarily relaxing. This year has been an unpredictable roller coaster so far, and I'm hoping I can get some better traction on it. It's almost as though nothing has been quite stable so far.

In the meantime, I should probably wash my sweatpants so I can wear them while drinking wine during my recluse time.

25 miles

I'm finally getting around to writing about my run this past Saturday. It was my one and only 13 mile run before my actual half marathon and it didn't come without some stress.

Early in the week last week, I started freaking out about the distance. The most I had run was 10 miles. So each day, I'd have to try to calm myself down and just run what was on the schedule. I think the other part was that even though the Easter Egg Hunt was over, I still had a final exam and final paper due during the week, adding to the stress.

This was actually the first week in awhile that I ran all my scheduled miles. This was my heaviest training week at 25 miles total. And I did it all while in the last week of classes for the semester.

Starting Thursday, I began to carb up with Thai food. On Friday, I had lots of pasta and went to bed fairly early, but not as early as I would have liked. My run began at 8am, so I wanted to make sure I got enough sleep. 

I had decided to get up at 6:30 on Saturday morning, and when my alarm went off, I snoozed it until 6:45, then got up and got dressed. I stressed about what to wear, because for you practice run you're supposed to wear the same thing you'll wear in the race. But, the temperature here that day was very different than it's supposed to be in D.C. So, I went with tights and a couple layers on top.

When I got there, I asked our coach, Bruce, where exactly I was going and mentioned that I just had to remind myself that I was only adding an additional 5K to my longest run. He looked at me and said "you've only run 10 as your longest run?". And then I freaked out again. I said that was what the training schedule had me doing. Apparently, that was a big jump between 10 and 13 miles, but he said he understood the logic. Ok....

Because only one of our coaches was there, I got to run most of the 13 miles on my own. I actually started a little differently on the route than everyone else, doing a mile loop before going out on the normal route. I've gotten pretty used to the route, which is basically a square loop, adding in a jut out into a neighborhood from about mile 2 to 4, and then coming back to an approximate 2 mile loop around the lake. For 13 miles, it was the 1 mile loop then the normal route, with 3 times around the lake. Eek, 3 times?!

All week, I had been running a faster average pace than I had been. My average pace for the entire week was 11:08/mile. I felt crappy the first mile or so, then started to hit my stride. Though, in the neighborhood, it's fairly hilly, so I walked a bit, but not as much as I usually do. As I was coming back to get closer to the lake, Bruce met me there.

He was surprised I had already gotten that far. I'm fairly slow, but I was running faster than I had a month ago. So we got to the lake, and I kept fairly true to my 7 minutes running, 1 minute walking pattern. After the first time around the lake, which we passed two of the 10 mile runners in the group, he went back off to find the 20 mile runner, and I began my second loop around the lake. I ended up taking some sport beans at the aid station, got some water and kept going.

By the time I got close to the end of the second loop, I was around 9 miles. And that is when my phone crashed. And this isn't the first time. It just locked up, and I had to restart it. This caused what I thought was losing the entire progress of the run on Runkeeper. I was so angry, and ended up walking while I was trying to deal with it. I finally got it working again, and then had to restart Runkeeper at zero.

At that point, I had one more time around the lake, then I could get out of the neighborhood and it was straightaways from there on out. I ran those last four miles at a slower pace than the first nine miles. As I got to the end of the last loop around the lake, I started crying. I had been on pace to do really well in my time and beat what I had estimated I would finish at. And then I just lost it when my phone crashed and the wind sort of got sucked out of me. And, I had now reached the further I had ever gone in a run.

But I ended up getting out of the neighborhood, and walked a little more. I probably could have run a little more, but the frustration had caught up with me. So I started looking for small goals along the way, knowing I had less than two miles to go. I stopped at the last aid station, which was about a mile from the end. At that point, I just had to go straight, take a quick right and quick left back to the Memorial Center. So when I got to my turn, I didn't care how far I had run exactly, because I was almost there. Except I looked at my phone and I still needed a couple tenths of a mile more. So I ran in the parking lot to get it and then hit STOP.

I went inside, stretched out and then went home, knowing that I just needed to take a shower, then I could get food and then go get a massage that I so smartly scheduled weeks ago (thanks Jamie, Carrie and Mary Jo!). 

And on my way home, I had already resolved I was getting a new phone ASAP and that I was happy that the rest of the weekend had been scheduled for me to do whatever I wanted (i.e. sleep). In some ways, I don't feel like I actually did 13 miles. It seems a bit surreal. But even though it doesn't show 13 miles on Runkeeper (it shows 8.99 miles and 4 miles in two separate activities), it was 13 miles.

I did it once, so that means I can do it again, right?

I guess we'll find out in 19 days!

Gift of the week

In my fundraising class this semester, our instructor had us do something she called "Gift of the Week". The basic premise is to share something with the class that you did for someone in the previous week, or if you didn't have that, you could share something someone did for you.

One of our classmates and his wife are having a baby next month, and for this last week of class, our gift was to give him a baby shower during class. He was completely overwhelmed and sent pictures to his wife. There were a lot of ducks and baby wipes involved.

As a few of us were helping him load his car after class, an elderly gentleman with a cane approached us, holding out his veteran ID card. As he walked up to us, he kept making sure to mention that he meant no harm, and explained that he and his wife had been living in the nearby shelter, but after reaching the 30 day limit, they had to leave. He was waiting for his disability to go through, and they were trying to make it while that was pending. He was hoping we might be able to help.

And here's where things clicked for me. I rarely EVER have cash on me. But, it just so happened that in a trivia tournament last weekend, I had received $50 in cash, and was down to $28 in my wallet. I had no doubt that I would hand him something, like my classmates did. As I rifled the bills for a second to see what I had, I ended up pulling the $20 out and handed it to him.

He stuck around for a minute more, as we explained we had just had a baby shower, and that it was our classmate's first child. He told us that he had served as a medic in the military, and he hoped that our classmate would enjoy his child as he had enjoyed having his children. He also mentioned how it's getting warmer in the daytime, but the nights were still chilly.

I'm not positive where he went after that, but as I drove home, I hoped that what we gave him could help keep he and his wife warm (he had mentioned they had been using candles) and get them some food and drink. I also had the moment of "well, I either did something I hope is helpful or I did something stupid and got conned."

A friend of mine reminded me that you have to trust the good in people.

Which then brought me to something that happened in conjunction with the Easter Egg Hunt I helped plan last weekend.

I got a phone call from Mike at Meridian Township. He wanted to ask some questions for an older adult with an intellectual disability (and if I've used the wrong term, please let me know) who had participated in their Easter egg hunts and wanted to participate in ours. We talked for a bit and I told him that she was welcome to come and that she just needed to come to the table at the hunt and ask for me.

Well, she showed up, asked for me and I was hunted down and introduced to her. Her name was Holly, and I'm telling you, she was so excited to be able to participate. Then she said she had something for me and handed me two jeweled bobby pins. I'm lucky I didn't lose it.

Luckily, I was able to adjust our volunteers that were out and about and Laura was able to help her around the hunt to make sure she was ok and that we had someone official with her. Laura did a fantastic job with her and we have some suggestions for how to handle something like this for next year, but this is the first year we've provided assistance to an adult that wanted to participate and overall, I think she had a great time. She hadn't even gotten to do the hunt before she was asking if she could come back next year!

So, while this past week was incredibly busy and exhausting, it also provided a few gifts of the week that may seem small, but I would imagine meant a lot to those receiving them. I know I'm grateful for being able to help.