Running recovery + mini book review: The Hunger Pains

Today I’m wearing my Tinkerbell Half Marathon shirt so I figured I may as well make an update about it. I almost had a good race. Almost. Everything was fine and dandy except for one little thing. I found my knee area in pain 1/4 of the way through the course. It started off pain-free until I passed the 5K mark and then knee pain caused me to limp with each step forward. At the 10K mark I was thinking. “Ugh, I’ve gotta run this distance again to finish??” Knowing that I really had to run about a mile more than that distance again to finish.

I wasn’t even halfway and my knee hurt each time I bent my leg to run. I walked for a bit until it felt a little better. When running again it hurt again so I “speed-walked” mile 7. I attempted to run again in mile 8 and it wasn’t too bad! Until it was.

Mile 9 was my favorite. Still in pain while hobbling, but they had Clif Shots at that station and I was handed two: citrus and mocha. I ignored the world and focused on emptying my citrus-flavored shot and what do you know? I was at Mile 10! That one was long and when I saw that medical tent at mile 11, I contemplated stopping and ending my race.

But did I really want to quit at 11 out of 13 miles when I could continue and be done in about “20″ more minutes? Longer than that really, but my base pace with no knee injury is a sub-ten minute mile. I pushed through and was able to run for another mile or so. I saw my friend from high school and chatted with her for a minute as we ran. I think I told her that I was in severe pain so not to let me slow her down. Then watched her zoom away as I slowed to a walk again and saw the people. All those lovely people who had woken up early to come and cheer us on.

The last part of mile 12 was full of well-meaning volunteers but it was so disappointing because they were incorrectly telling runners that the finish line was “just around the corner.” It wasn’t. It wasn’t even around the next corner. It was around the corner, down the street, around the next corner then into a driveway that went slightly uphill and around another curve. I kid you not. I didn’t care about the cameras or the people, or about racing runners just ahead of me to the finish line when I realized I was within sight of the finish. I wanted the race to be over. As I crossed the mat I didn’t try to finish strong when each step was so painful. Total Running Time (TRT) – 2:38. Watching a video later I was surprised to see that I had jogged at least the last few steps. That was the last time I moved that fast for days.

I was likely moving that fast only because I was focused on getting over to the med tent and sitting down. After a 20 minute stint on a bench with ice on my knee and then a long walk– let’s say, a mile, back to my car, I began the healing process. No idea why we were directed to park so far away. Somehow I was able to figure out a way to get out of my car to my bed with another ice pack. When I got home it was only about 10:30 in the morning. I had the rest of my day to sit, immobile.

That was weeks ago. Physically I’m almost 100% better. Mentally I’m still in a place where I am wary of signing up for any more long-distance foot races until I am sure that I will be able to do so without going reintroducing this painful knee issue again. I can’t know that I will be fine running another 13.1 miles anytime soon and I have mixed feelings about signing up for another half marathon even if 6 months away. I am leaning more toward sitting the next one out and focusing on something else. I know that I’ll never know what I’ll be able to accomplish until I try it, so I don’t know why I should let this thought stop me now. Besides, there is just over a week until the Nautica Malibu Triathlon registration opens…

Mini book review: The Hunger Pains

The Hunger Pains: A Parody by The Harvard Lampoon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cheesy and hilarious, this story incorporates most of the plot points of “The Hunger Games” and a few of the ones from other books in the trilogy with blatant storyline commentary from the protagonist. It reminds me of the lighthearted spoof movies by the Wayans Bros., like “Scary Movie”, “Epic Movie”, “Date Movie”, etc.

Yes, many people think those movies are more stupid than funny, but I have to tell you that I don’t laugh out loud in real life from reading books that often, considering one of my favorite genres is dystopian youth fiction. I found myself guffawing several times while reading this.

View all my reviews

Tinker Bell Half Marathon weekend!

Women Lead at Disney’s Inaugural Tinker Bell Half Marathon

I’m heading to the expo @ the Disneyland Hotel to pick up my reg pack in a bit. I have been doing training runs with a group for the last few months and in the last month or so I’ve noticed an acute pain in my leg on runs longer than 5K. I can feel my IT Band ache on the outside of my left knee while walking around today so I know I will have to run/walk the 13.1 mile race instead of running the whole time like I’d wanted.

It’s kind of a disappointment that I know I won’t beat my time from the Disneyland Half back in September, but I do get to greet the sunrise as I run through both Disneyland and Disney California Adventure. It’s all good.

–edited to add–

If you want to track my race progress sign up here to get updates.

If you missed the boat on this half marathon there is still time to sign up for the Disneyland Half Marathon in September. Hurry though. Even as it’s 6 months away the registration is already over halfway filled!

Last Post of the Year

I know many of you are already done welcoming in the new year. Here in LA it’s still mere minutes away. I want to take the time to make my last post of 2011, but not the last post of this blog if all goes well in 2012. What does go well mean? Better than this year.

Some things I’ve accomplished include:

Winning February Album Writing Month. I’ve got at least one song revised to the point where it’s “finished” and only needs to be rehearsed and recorded.

Becoming an Imagineer. I’ve talked about attaining this goal since I was in college. I never imagined it happening so soon and the way it did, but I am happy and thankful that one worked out.

Completing the official entire Nautica Malibu Triathlon and within my goal time. Thanks to lots of team, friend, and family support!

Completing my first half marathon within my goal time. I still don’t think of myself as a runner. It’s just something I do a couple times a week now.

Winning National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWrimo).

Almost finishing the Goodreads Challenge with 28.75 out of 36 30 books read. It’s way more than I would have read had I not been counting so I consider it a win. And now I cannot wait for The Hunger Games movie to come out in March! The trilogy was fantastic.

Finally finishing a crochet project I’d started over 5 years ago.

Better than 2011 is going to be a challenge to beat but I’ve got an inkling that life will find a new way to manage to surprise me– in a good way. I also know better than to set any expectations beyond any hope of attainment (again), at least when it comes to estimating how much spare time I’ll have to read. Anything else is fair game for a learning experience.

Christmas Creativity

This time of year often finds me in a pensive mode. I often set myself up in my room working on one creative project or another. This year was no different. I think I made some good progress but I’m a bit worn down from using parts of my brain I don’t exercise as much as I’d like. I worked on a digital painting which came out pretty rough, as I was repeatedly interrupted and my hands weren’t steady enough to draw lines straight enough with the mouse for my liking.

We don’t have a tree this year due to there being absolutely no room in the house for a sizable one, and also it’s a hazard for both an 18 month old baby with age-appropriate but low spatial navigation skills, and a 7 month old puppy who loves to jump up on things– and people when given the opportunity. We do have multicolored lights up now which I can tell are on by looking at the space between the bottom of my door and the floor.

I spent most of today attempting to read while listening to a bunch of podcasts and music. I got through about 20 pages and realized I wasn’t absorbing anything so I put that down and crocheted a scarf that I started over five years ago. In five years I managed to crochet about 7 or 8 inches of it. As of 9:30PM tonight it’s a full-fledged, wearable scarf in a deep crimson monochrome color. I plan to give it to a family member for Christmas. I hope it’s well received. It definitely looks homemade in places.

Anyway, enough about my corner of the world. Go be good to each other.

Merry Christmas!

Writing Humor + Christmas Lights and Art

Writing Humor

Last time I shared a few writing apps. I’m back, now, with some funny grammar. I got these from NaNoWriMo users “hockeygoon” and “amaranth” on that site forum.

1. A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

2. A dangling modifier walks into a bar. After finishing a drink, the bartender asks it to leave.

3. A question mark walks into a bar?

4. Two quotation marks “walk into” a bar.

5. A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to drink.

6. The bar was walked into by the passive voice.

7. Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They drink. They leave.

8. A split infinitive began to confidently walk into the bar.

9. A run on sentence walked into a bar, and, spotting a likely looking verb or two, ordered a round of drinks for the house, paid the bartender, chose a song on the jukebox, danced for a measure or two before sitting down and drinking, hoping all the while that his cool had been firmly cemented in the minds of all around him.

10. As the sentence fragment walked into the bar.

Christmas Lights and Art

For LA locals, if you’re not too busy shopping, cooking, eating or volunteering, here are a couple of other fun things to do in town.

Christmas Tree Lane - A bit of a drive for me, but maybe you live closer to Altadena?

Pacific Standard Time - Getty initiative of LA art exhibits from 1945 – 1980 showcased around town.

LA mag’s list of PST showcases – This is a little more informative for specific exhibits than the link above.

Post-NaNo recap: TGIO, writing apps, and how I did

Thank Goodness It’s Over (TGIO)

This weekend I carpooled to Santa Monica for the NaNo LA region’s TGIO party. That was a fun event where the LA region’s Municipal Liaisons (A.k.a. MLs) hosted and congratulated all who showed up for participating. I chatted with others, ate Japanese fast food, and took a group photo. To boot, I even won a nice prize from a raffle. One dark and white chocolate later I was officially ready to start my December, by reading.

The raffle prize I picked up was Wake Up Your Muse: 1001 Story Starters for Fiction Writers by Jan Christiansen. It’s a short read of 1001 first line prompts of stories you can write. I’ve already noted a few starters that will make for fantastic prompts for me and I can’t wait to use them.

A few gems from the book:
“I didn’t know I had an uncle until I read the obituary.”
“They arrested every girl who had attended the slumber party.”
“She took one look at the handsome doctor and vowed never to eat apples again.”

Writing apps

I have discovered a few apps to help you keep writing. If you use them, may they lead you to lots of productive movement of your progress meters for whatever you choose to write:

750 words - Write a daily quota of 750 words to keep that ingrained habit of writing consistently. Fortunately this is far less than the 1667 words a day required of NaNo’s effort.
Instant Boss - This is meant to micromanage your time spent writing.
OmmWriter - This one uses pretty colors and sounds in the background while you write. Oh, boy!
Mac Freedom - All the cool writers use this one, apparently.
Write or Die - A place to write to a predetermined goal or else…
Written? Kitten! - A kinder version of Write Or Die, but with KITTEHS!

How did I do?

I accomplished the challenge itself, but as for my personal goal to do this by writing consistently… Well,  I knew from my previous efforts that I could write relatively quickly– over 2K words per hour when in the zone. Just look at the beautiful exponential curve of effort there toward the end on my author page. Those stats don’t lie.

I’m a pantser, meaning that I intended to write this with no outline. This year I decided on a whim to download a writing tool promoted in the NaNo forums called Storyist. This tool made it easy to outline my story’s setting and create a background for each of my characters so I did just that. It helped a bit to know in advance how my characters would act or react in certain situations. Unfortunately, I somehow changed a page layout setting in the program using a keyboard shortcut that I couldn’t figure out how to undo. I finally managed to undo the changed layout setting using the tool menu after about a week. The program was otherwise easy to use and I felt like I was creating a publishable manuscript which was cool.

Leave it to a looming NaNoWriMo deadline for me to get more sleep each night and have cleaner dwelling than I have in all the other months of the year. I knew I wouldn’t let myself get to the point of non-progress where I couldn’t possibly catch up, though mentally, I was much more hare than tortoise.  And like the fable it’s true that it wasn’t much fun being anywhere near the point of getting too far behind. Just knowing that I had to write so much quickly just to “catch up” to the daily word count made it harder to get started each day. Fortunately I knew from previous years to expect that feeling and I did not let it stop me from starting.

I learned several other things about my writing over the last month which I may detail later but today I’m gearing up for a trip to my local museum row for a relaxing day away from my computer screen.

December’s blustery beginning

Last Week’s Wacky Windy Weather

See that road sign? Blame the wind.

I cannot believe it’s already well into December. I must have gotten distracted from the start of the month by the hurricane-level winds in LA last week and the post-novel sprinting haze of not having to write thousands of words each day. Now that I have gotten some rest and I have slightly more time– only slightly– I can explore some of the NaNoWriMo forums and catch up on other conversations that I missed while I was writing last month.

The Santa Anas are usually fairly-pleasant warm winds, notable for unseasonably warm night air with a bit of dryness. We had some Santa Ana action last week and it was NOTHING like that. The wind got all kinds of crazy and intense for a couple days. Simply driving on the freeway was challenging, especially on Wednesday evening. There were leaves, leaves, trash, and more leaves blowing all over the lanes. The next day I saw a lot of tree debris and found out that all school districts in the Pasadena area were closed that day due to the danger that goes along with power outages; things falling on people, exposed wires, and also the hazards all over the roads.

Click the photo and check my Flickr page for a couple more photos of  ’fallen tree across the offramp’ action. These are just a couple of my sightings, but there are loads of photos and stories of the damage by legit reporting sources with warnings of more more windy days to come.

Fortunately, by Saturday– the day of the post-NaNo celebration–  the weather was fine again. More on that to come this week. If you don’t want to miss it just click the “follow” button at the top of this page or enter your email to subscribe in the upper right area to stay current. LA locals, watch out for those fallen trees and wires and stay safe out there.

NaNoWriMo 2011 winner + green apple pie

That's me!

In November I wrote the first draft of a 50,093 word novel. That’s 206 pages (double-spaced). Untitled most of the month, now it’s called The Daily Middle School Chronicles. The synopsis goes like this. A spoonful of comedy and a pinch of tragedy make for an unmistakeable dose of middle school in epic, end-of-the-world, life-ruining proportions. This story is about three friends just trying to survive the eighth grade, and each other.

I had a fun journey through the word count madness, by getting out of the house and writing with people. I want to send a big shout out to my G+ circle– not sure how so many of you posted so often and finished writing your novel– and weekend write-in crew at Panera Breads at the South Bay Pavilion. You all did fantastic jobs of writing, motivating me to write, and plain old being good company in between all those word sprints. I feel the need to mention that I was one of the lucky few to witness the brilliant sheen of two thousand (2000) stickers meant to reward our progress at a write-in. Lots of these stickers featured dinosaurs (a definite bonus).

Aside from being declared a NaNoWriMo winner, this week was also awesome because I had apple pie, which I’d been craving all month long. I had such a big craving that when I randomly spotted some apple pie-flavored gum I bought that, which actually tasted just like apple pie. The real apple pie was better though. Check it out.

Homemade Granny Smith Apple Pie. It was as tasty as it looks. mmm...pie.

Coming up: There’s my local “NaNoWriMo: Thank Goodness It’s Over” party this weekend to look forward to, as well as going to bed early slightly earlier because I don’t need to stay up as late to write a novel. Next time I’ll post what I learned from NaNo 2011.

One smoked Thanksgiving turkey, well-rested

One smoked turkey, well-rested = one me, well-fed. That is one good-looking turkey, eh? It was quite tasty too. Here’s my plate of the Thanksgiving meal.

From left to right Going clockwise starting with the turkey with asparagus on top with gravy on top of that, there’s some mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, stuffing completely hidden under the mashed potatoes, greens, cranberry relish (with orange), and a roll with butter.

Admittedly, this was plate 1 of 2. On the health-conscious side, I didn’t have any dessert AND I got up this morning and ran 3+ miles which I made me feel energetic enough to reach the daily recommended NaNo word count goal by noon.

A writer friend of mine posted 100 things she’s grateful for and I want to do something similar, but I’ll just post 5, because I need to get back to writing other things.

Aside from my family and basic needs being met (food, health, shelter, decent weather, etc) I’m also thankful for:

1. My friends. Each very important to me in a very special way. Some of them know this, but others, may not be as aware. I tend not to express this as much as I’d like but I really feel grateful for the true friends I have in my life. I feel like I can reach out to them anytime and they’ll be there to listen, encourage, and make me jealous of the way they’re living out their dreams and aspirations. I feel very blessed to know you.

2. My job. I am glad to be employed at this time of year, but more so because I’ve been able to be a part of so many groups, activities, and events that my company offers, such as the triathlon team and the volunteer opportunities around LA. This past weekend I was able to help out at the LA Regional Food Bank with a group of nearly 150 other volunteers from work, plus their family and friends. It was very cool to see how a few hours of effort could make a difference in the lives of many hungry families in need.

3. Pie. Every time I have a slice it makes my week. Any kind of apple, peach, lemon meringue, key lime… do fruit tarts count as pie? They deliver the same feeling, so those too.

4. My car. The poor thing is 12+ years old now but it’s always been super reliable and for that I’m so grateful, as I save up my pennies here and there, just in case. I’m not one for vehicular complacency.

5. Access to high-speed internet 24/7. Because of this I have the ability to gather so much information for anything I can think of. I’ve learned so much over the last year that I would have otherwise not known, if not for the data connection.

I hope all my fellow Americans who celebrate this day in a spirit of thanks and gratitude have a wonderful Thanksgiving and amazing start to the holiday season!

Now to catch up on the word count for the days of writing I’ve missed. The goal is at least 8k by tomorrow evening.

NaNoWriMo progress update + more pumpkin poetry

NaNo update!

I’m at my usual pace around this time of year. In need-to-get-the-lead-out mode. Trying to pass 10k within the next 24 hours or so.
I’m amused at all of the writers in my G+ NaNoWriMo circle who are stressed out about being a couple thousand words behind. Try being about 10-13k behind! It’s really not the end of the world. Having done this event a few times I have the perspective of it being okay if I get to 50k and it being okay if I don’t, though I plan to finish this challenge. I can probably edit a decent story out of this year’s effort.

Because I want to post this poem before the end of the month, I’ll not hinge it on being current on the linear word count guidelines. Instead I’ll set a goal to make my minimum count needed to not fall behind any further today (about 700 more words for the night) and post the rest of Picking Pumpkins including the first stanza again. Enjoy!

Picking Pumpkins

For rows and rows they stretch
Round in shape, some tall and lean
All shades of orange hues
Anticipating Halloween
Wedged between husks of corn
Listing from side to side
A chilly breeze whips ’round
A truck bed fit for a hay ride

The lanes go around a small cluster
Of dried-up scarecrows
With straw hands and shiny buttons
Guarding the patch and its rows
With benevolent eyes and crafty smiles
They make a fine bunch of bumpkins
Pointing to and lighting the way
To the surrounding pumpkins

Visitors kick hay as they walk
Marking the aisles with their forays
A sign at the entrance reads “Which way?”
Mere steps from a giant corn maze
In a lot corner two people are deciding
Between the big one or the small
“Which to choose? Which to choose?
We cannot take them all.”

They determine the medium-sized ones
Don’t deserve much of their attention
They pass them by with no second thought
Growing hungrier for selection
The first person watches the second
The second one paces around
The best one for their journey home
Is one just right and just round.

The second one passes by
The right one and then it’s time
To hold it up to the light
And free the orange skin of its grime
It is a bigger pumpkin
With a slightly lighter hue
Of orange, enough to be reflective
She says, “Oh, this one will do!”

She pulls a device from her pocket
and opens the camera app
Aims it at the large round orb
And carefully takes a snap
She glances at the other
And shows her still-frame catch
They look at the photo feeling quite pleased
Grabbing hands, they leave the patch

What they both know is
A secret you can’t deny
For the real pumpkin is
The one you choose to let lie
Whatever you take away,
One may surmise
Could become a jack o’lantern or
A couple of spiced, warm pies.

Or it could become a forgotten gift
That may be left to rot
On the doorstep, in a front yard
The one that time forgot
Back to the earth, the squashy flesh
Will fade into rows of pine
And the crowds will come back to seize
A tree from a fake-flocked line.

Next time you find yourself in a patch
Take a photo, take a few
To capture the true essence of autumn
Any hue will do
Be sure to wander to the corners
And around all the bends
Once you decide, leave all as they lie
Now, you’re picking pumpkins.