Author: Alyssa Godesky

>Dear Ironman,

Please stop making more events.
Fix the entry process instead.
Exclusivity = awesomeness.

xoxo,

Alyssa

>I have no idea what that means but it’s on the cover of the German Runner’s World.

This month, Ultrarunning magazine did its 2008 review which includes the male and female runner of the year (Jorge Pacheco and Kami Semick), as well as many other race stats – the largest race, the fastest race, significant course records, finishes by location, and then the top times (male and female) for 100 miles, 100K, 50 miles and 50K races throughout the year. They also publish the names of those ultrarunners who had 4 or more wins through the year. I think that’s pretty sweet, so I may have to go for that one next year. In the meantime, I am happy to settle for my name being on the list for the top 50 mile times. I am #48 (listed goes to 100) with my 8:05 from JFK. I think I was #49 last year with 8:07, so that makes sense. When I achieve my goal of a 7:45, that would put me in the top 25.

More interesting, for those of you who may question the validity of that list, is that they do a separate listing for “graded” performances of each race. This year I made the list for the 50 mile, at #24 (they only list the top 25). A graded performance takes the winning time and divides it by the median finishing time. They acknowledge that this too is slightly imperfect as it assumes that all fields are of equal strength, and gives some advantage to winners of events with generous cut-off times that attract a higher number of slower runners. Nonetheless, it’s a bit more accurate than just publishing a list of the fastest times which merely highlights those who have chosen fast courses in good weather. Last year I didn’t make the list, so it was pretty cool to see myself there this time

My 100K time was not even close to making the list, although the races from the times that did make the list are considerably easier. It will fun to see where I stand in the 100’s after WS this year….

>2008 Rockville Twilight 8K vs. 2000 Celtic Solstice

but don’t worry, I’m still pretty awes.

>I may or may not have told you about my infatuation with this internet site before: www.postcardsfromyomomma.com

In a nutshell, its a blog type page where people can submit e-mail, IM or text convos they have with their mom. If you do any of the 3 with your mom, then you probably realize how awesome it can be. My mom made me promise never to submit anything she sends to it, but this is too good I at least have to put it up here:

(via text)
mom: how r u? how is tv?
me: I’m at arjuns, tv is great
mom: has he seen tv?
me: not yet, but now it will feel like we are in The Wire!
mom: oh you mean because poor people have bling tv’s?

>So I walk into the Canton Merritt last night for my usual Thursday workout, and I go to do some pushups and situps before spin class, and I notice a little posse of dudes hanging out. Hmmm…
I do a little more investigation, look around, and who is in the downward dog posish right near me? The governor himself. (okay not really about the downward dog, but he was right there) Sweet. I love politics.

THEN I go up to spinning, and who walks in and grabs the bike in the front row next to me? The Mayor! She was pretty legit, even had her own spinning shoes and whatnot. She made some joke about being the oldest person in the class. I was like oh no, of course n…as I turn and look around at who is in the class and notice there is an abundance of young blonde shorties…ot? The class ran a little late and she peaced right before 7. I imagine she was in a hurry as she was off to go do some sweet shopping with stolen gift cards (haha, sorry for the low blow, I do like her!).

Just another night in Baltimore.

*Additional info: for those of you who may not frequent the gossip columns, perezhilton, gawker, or the superficial on a regular basis, Page 6 is the gossip column of the NY Post. The idea for Page 4.5, comes from a convo with Ryan. After realizing that we always know so much about what other people are doing, I suggested writed a Baltimore gossip column…like Page 6, but not because obvi that’s taken. Hence, the birth of Page 4.5.

>So I’m getting pretty excited. I have finally moved to my new apartment which is awes even though I am still sleeping on a mattress on the floor. What does this mean? No distractions, and best of all, no more excuses. I can no longer put off a morning workout because DB Dan is taking an hour long shower at 530 in the morning. I can no longer say that I didn’t get enough sleep and can’t workout hard because Carson and her boyfriend were banging above me and causing a rucus. And best of all, I have an entire kitchen…all…to…myself! The way I see it, phase one of this year is complete. The 50K’s are behind me and from now on out it’s more miles and more competition. A month ago, I was having my doubts about the year. I was having trouble finding the motivation for the long runs and swims, wondering if it would all really pay off in the end. Luckily, this is no more. I am itching for some long weekends out in the mountains, and I’ve gotten my confidence back that this is really what I want to be doing. No doubt about it, the weather plays its part in me wanting to be outside more, and I figure if I’m outside I may as well be training.

What have the past 2.5 months told me? I have a solid base. Ryan confirms my idea that in endurance sports, its all about the base. You can’t simply “get through” a race like an Ironman or a 100 mile. My plan looking ahead is to do 3 big weekends in April, 4 big weekends in May (Big weekends == 25-30 miles running Saturday (or a race), 20 miles Sunday and/or a long run on Saturday and a long ride on Sunday), and then start to fine tune things for June (which includes the TAYLOR SWIFT extravaganza…woop woop). Then it will be all the time on the bike and in the water I can manage through July and August, including Providence. After the IM it will be rest and rebuild time. Depending on how my tri’s go, I may or may not be making plans for October. If not, then I’m hopefully going to put together a Rim2Rim2Rim run in the Grand Canyon as a little vaca. Follow that up with JFK and possibly Hellgate 100K in Dec, and my year is over. Boy how time flies when you look at a race schedule…

Some changes to my training:
-Previously a lot of my doubles included 2 running sessions. Now I will combine those to one longer one, and double it with the bike or swimming.
-Strength training: I am not very good at lifting, nor do I enjoy it or want to learn how to do it. I’ll put in 50 pushups a day and 150 situps a day (subject to increase incrementally weekly) to improve my strength and core.
-Goodbye binging. This includes food and bevs.
-HILLS. Lots of them. More of them. I will heart hills by June.

>Spring has finally sprung, and I kicked off the first weekend of good weather with a pretty dece race. I headed out to bling bling Silver Spring on Friday afternoon after work to meet Arjun and Melissa, my awesome race companions for the next day. Mel made a super awes pre-race dinner, and after lasting about 45 minutes through Australia I decided to call it a night. We got up in the morn and headed out to the starting line of the race. It was pretty fun to do the pre-race routine with friends and get to see the ultra world through a new set of eyes. Suddenly the people wearing the tutus and all the other wacky characters didn’t seem so normal…usually I wouldn’t have even thought twice about them. That, and the fact that ultrarunners probably have calves twice the size of the normal population were two of the many observations Arjun made that morning. There were some familiar faces in the crowd as Melissa and I started the run, heading down a pretty good hill for the first mile or so. As usual, I tried to keep to the back of the front pack to ensure a good spot on the trail and get my legs warmed up. Unfortunately I also noticed right from the start that I wasn’t feeling up to par – just an overall sense of heaviness and slugishness in the legs. I was hopeful that it would pass though. Melissa helped me keep a pretty good pace for the first section, and we hit mile 7.5 in about 58 minutes…a little fast, but most of that part was downhill or flat so not a huge concern. My legs still didn’t feel great though, and I warned Arjun of that as him and Melissa switch places. I honestly wasn’t sure how the day would end up, and I was wondering if I should even push through if I still felt so shitty at the halfway point. I decided to slow it down a little bit, and really make sure to stick to my nutrition plan. The day was heating up fast, and I knew that if I bonked from dehydration on top of tired legs, the day would be a bust. Around this time I fell into 2nd place…not a huge concern this early in the race, but still had me wondering how many women were at my heels.

A mile or so later Arjun and I came upon a friend of mine, Greg Loomis (you can read his writeup of the race here). Greg fell into step with us, and from that point we ran pretty consistant 9 minute miles. We paid close attention to maintain breaks for nutrition/hydration, which was most likely the best decision we made that day as the course got tougher at the end and we were passing people who had let the heat take its toll on them. The race has a pretty neat setup in that halfway through the 50K runners do an extra loop around a lake, then join back up to the marathon course. This makes for some easier running in the middle as you can catch some of the marathoners to keep yourself occupied.

Around mile 22, I caught back up to the first place woman and felt strong as I passed her. The three of us continued on to the last aide station at mile 28ish, where Arjun’s long run came to an end (already a few miles too long….oops), and Greg and I went on to finish the race in 5:19, 16th and 17th place overall!

Overall, I couldn’t be happier with a win at this time in the year. Now I can put that goal out of my head and focus on the real tasks at hand in the next 6 months. However, I am a little nervous looking back at how I performed. I didn’t rest at all in the week leading up to the race, and I certainly felt the difference in effort between Holiday Lake and this weekend. I have no idea how I was able to run 20+ minutes faster a month ago, on courses I would say are relatively comprable. Hopefully it’s just because training is picking up and my legs are simply more tired, and I think the heat played its part in it as well. I felt as if I was giving twice the effort yesterday than at HL, and not getting the same results at all. Greg brought me up to speed a little bit on the BRR50 course though, and said it is similar to the Seneca Greenway trail. With some solid workouts in the next few weeks, and a well planned mini-taper, I will hopefully be in good shape to make some moves at that race!

>Kelly to friends (text): still at work. got chubbies later tonight though.
Me: got chubbies?
Kelly: damnit. translation = hot bitches.

Colleen to me: do you want to come tp Hooters with me and Ro?
Me: Yes, obvi….but why are we doing this?
Colleen: You know, food, bevs, whatever.
Me: haha ohh go to Hooters. I thought you wanted us to go toilet paper the joint.

>Entry for many ultras and ironmans are filling up in days, even minutes. It seems like every kid on the block (even the new ones….haha) are getting into endurance sports and consider themselves awesome because of it. I don’t agree with this. Although one of the many TWSS mottos is DBAP, let’s be honest – some people in this world HAVE to be a pussy for the sake of maintaining the proper hierarchy of the athletic world. I firmly stand by that. I don’t really know how to handle the fact that my sports are becoming trendy. So what did I do? I decided I needed to find a new sweet sport to do that no one else does. I googled “most extreme sports ever” and found this website. As I looked through these 11 sports, I decided that they would not only be more fun with at least one other person, but for safety’s sake I’d need to have a friend to partake in them with me. So, here’s my pick of extreme sports teammates. The number of your name (if you’re so lucky to be chosen) corresponds with that number sport from the article.

1. Brennan is the obvious choice for this. He’s fast, efficient, a mid-westerner, and most definitely irons a mean dress shirt.
2. Claire. I’m pretty sure you could stand up in one of those little balls, so that’s gotta be an advantage.
3. Melissa. When I saw the outfits those people had on in the pics, you just popped into my mind wearing the same thing.
4. Fun Jen Koshy. Skinny and agile, but fast and fierce. What a combination.
5. Kris. Even though there are certain elements of your genetic makeup that make me doubt your swimming abilities, I have faith that you could construct us some sort of fishing pole that gives us an obvious advantage. And we’ll just wear life jackets.
6. Ben. Bull riding has obvious advantages for The Ass Man.
7. Arjun. I’d make sure you did the calculations beforehand to make sure I don’t die.
8. Kip. You’re pretty lightweight so I think that this may actually work when you do it.
9. Emily. Your Marine Biology experience would be a huge asset when I come face to face with a giant shark.
10. Ryan. Mostly because we watched that ep of AR where the teams had to get the cheese down the big hill, and after discussing strategies with you I trust your ability to win this.
11. Carson. I feel like anyone who does this sport is bound to get seriously hurt….I’ll tell her to go first.

>As my training is starting to pick up and my nurition plan is in gear, I found myself looking back through some old pics of my time at USNA and reminiscing about the shape I was in then. This brought back some memories of sub-six minute miles (okay, just once, and it was a 5:57), of a time when I could do 50+ push ups in a row, and a time when I’d do over 120 situps in 2 minutes without tiring. Even though my times in ultras have improved since, my strength to weight ratio was optimal during those years. Thus, I am reinstituting some Navy tidbits into my training henceforth. My running will not get that quick anytime soon, but the philosophy of strength training via situps, pushups, squats, lunges and pullups can certainly be implemented. I’m also going to treat myself to some new workout gear from TRX Training because I’ve realised I don’t really have any equipment for strength training. As much as bodyweight exercises work, sometimes I want to push myself further. Another thing I realized is that no matter how active I am now, I am not nearly as active as I was then. I’m not sure how to include chopping* into my everyday lifestyle in Baltimore, but the principle of it can be. Riding my bike, walking, and running to places instead of driving is a big part of that. Hopefully the weather will turn around soon and allow me to capitalize on that. Anyway, I found a few good pics to share with the masses. I will entitle this photo montage “No really, I was actually in the Navy”:
The amount of space you see in this pic is the total amount of space I was allowed to live in for a month on a ship. Ignore my fake-smile. I was miserable. Do note my sweet bed-making skills.

This is sort of like Where’s Waldo except I’ll give you a hint – I’m the large and awkward girl in the middle picking a wedgie.

3 weeks on a 44-ft sailboat in the Atlantic makes Alyssa very very unhappy.

*Chopping: the manner in which plebes (freshman) have to move about the hallways of Bancroft Hall (the dorm) at all times. It consists of short, double-time steps (about 160-180 steps per minute).