Author: martha

 

Turkey Chase, Bethesda, MD November 24, 2011

 

 

In past years the Bethesda Rotary Turkey Chase has gone like this: Martha runs her guts out in an always drizzly/cold 10k along the miserable routes of Rockville Pike and Old Georgetown Road, going just fast enough to finish in the money but never fast enough to bring home the turkey, and then meets up with the munchkins (my cousins’ kids, pictured left) and old folks (my parents, also pictured left) after they finish the 2 mile Fun Run.  The kiddies express great disappointment when I don’t win the race, I try to explain that 10ks are a bit tough on legs trained for a fall marathon, but Failure Martha is still allowed to eat some pie and turkey.  And a nice fat check always arrives a few weeks later.

 

But in 2011 Things Would be Different.

 

Team Martha was going to kick some 2-mile Fun Run arse.  We had ex-Duke-field-hockey-now-I-scoop-horse-poop Sarah Wright.

We had can-also-work-a-camera-in-the-other-direction Scwartzbard.

And of course we had Rosie & sneaky Mike.  This was Rosie’s first road race, ever.  But she would not be daunted.  Rosie actually ended up being the sneaky one here, sprinting ahead of Mike at the very end to cross the line first.  For some real sneakiness, check out this clip.

The kiddies could only look on in awe.

Aaron and I decided that the 2 mile Fun Run could become a tradition.  It was a heckuva lot more fun to run with Rosie & Mike than to kill ourselves in the 10k.  Granted, we only opted for the shorter distance because Aaron’s Achilles flared up and I have a bizarre inflamed foot tendon (right under the ankle bone).  As much as being injured is a drag, it’s been an excuse to learn new tricks.  Marching around the woods taking pictures isn’t half bad.  I’m still pretty psyched about catching the squirrel scratching:

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Fire on the Mountain 50k

Flintstone, MD

November 6, 2011

http://www.phdispatch.com/FOTM_2011_results.html

 

WUS represent!  All 3 wussies (Aaron Schwartzbard, Martha Nelson, Selena Smart) make the post-race headline.

 

A race sponsored by SHEETZ!  How could a wussie pass up??  They had Sheetz shirts, Sheetz bags, they even had a little Sheetz truck at the finish line serving free Sheetz smoothies, coffees, hot chocolate, and other goodies.  Where the heck was Andrish??  Honestly, Seanie would have LOVED this course and this race.  The terrain was rocky and full of deep stream crossings (the race director said he stopped counting them after 30 or so).  It’s not trivial to negotiate those rocks in completely numb feet (continually re-numbed by the icy waters), and Selena and I both have black toenails to show for — not so much fun to kick rocks with numb toes.  (For those who don’t know, Selena Smart is my former high school track & XC coach who is now a mother of 3 crazy boys in Van Ness but is still running and technically a wussie, having done a WUS with Keith, Dave Rees, and myself back one summer eve.  Back in the day I thought Selena was a tyrant bent on destroying teenage runnergirls)

This race was all Selena’s idea.  She emailed me that she was doing this race about a month or so ago.  I was torn because it was scheduled for the same day as Marine Corps Marathon and I had planned to be happy, cheery race support for Aaron and spend the day with his parents, who live 1/2 a block from the MCM course in Arlington.  But given that Selena and I weren’t running MountainBack together (Selena had to back out when the race was moved this year from Sat to Sun) and I wasn’t running any other races this fall, I decided to join in.

But the day before the race the course got hit with 6-8″ of snow and had to be canceled because the school buses couldn’t navigate the mountain roads in the snow (FOTM is a point-to-point).  So it was delayed one week and I got to watch AarBear run his Marine Corps Marathon AND make him come run FOTM with Selena and myself.  Double score!

The plan was to drive Selena’s 3 boys and dog to her parents’ farm outside Winchester, dispose of them, have some homecooked dinner, and then have a peaceful pre-race night sleep at America’s Best Value Inn in Hancock, MD.  So we all piled into Selena’s minivan: Selena, Aaron, 3 hyper boys, a Belgian Malinois with bad breath, and myself.

The Smart family homestead was a dream home, situated ~20 southeast of Winchester near the Shenandoah River and Appalachian Trail, 80 acres of rolling farmland with cattle, horses, and three buildings constructed by Mr. Smart himself: the main house, the garage (with apartment above), and a barn that was so sparkling I’m convinced Andrish would try to secure himself a stall of his own if he could.  I, of course, was obsessed with the horses.  Aaron and I have an open invitation to return some day to stay in the apartment over the garage and ride horses and hang out.  We will be taking the Smarts up on that offer.

We had a big meal of chicken & dumplings (we found some mac ‘n’ cheese in the cupboard for Aaron) and made our way to America’s Best Value Inn, which was not America’s Best Quality Inn.  We had a choice: we could get woken up by the heater when it kicked into gear every 20 minutes or so.  Or we could turn the heater off and freeze.  We opted for the latter, piling all the blankets on from the second bed (apparently Selena did the same).  After a sporadic sleep the kicker was when our 5am wakeup call came at 4am because they neglected to account for the end of Daylight’s Savings time.  For breakfast we introduced Selena to the glory of Sheetz, providing edible foods and beverages in a town that otherwise had…..nothing.

The race was great fun, a beautiful course, surprisingly technical, a good mix of terrains, friendly and low-key.  Nothing beats a crisp fall day with blue sky and sun.  I had a lot of concerns coming into the race: (1) my hamstring was still griping about that poor decision to stand on the sidelines at Marine Corps, freeze to the bone, and then jump in with Aaron at 6-minute pace for a few miles (hence my wearing the butt-ugly spandex); (2) I had taken a bad spill at WUS that week and had badly bruised up my right knee and hip and it still was bothering me; (3) and of course my plantar fasciitis was still acting up that had plagued me since Cascade Crest.  Fortunately, none of concerns 1-3 was much of a problem on race day.  Instead, my gastrointestinal system flared up.

I’m not going to go into detail on my gastrointestinal adventures.  As I’ve said many a time before, this is an area I’m going to have to figure out before I can become an ultra runner.  I can get away with it for the shorter races you don’t have to eat during but 5+ hours does me in.  But it says a heckuva lot about this race how much I enjoyed it despite the stomach ails.  It was a really fun course, never a dull moment.  Aaron almost fell off a cliff into the creek; the guy running behind me fell every 10 minutes or so; Selena was not so into the technicality of the trail; I smashed my foot up and my leg looks like an army of rabid cats got to it.  Good times!

I can’t resist including this photo.  I’m not sure what I’m doing at this moment, but I’ve discovered that Aaron is the most photogenic runner and I am the least:

 

 

Tussey MountainBack 50-mile relay

State College, PA

Sunday October 23, 2011

 

I was impossibly nice to the cashier at Trader Joes in Bethesda last night.  I gave my mom an unusually long hug last night after our Monday night Old Lady Aerobics + dinner tradition.  I spent all morning cleaning my apartment, scrubbing parts of my toilet and under furniture that have never been cleaned since I moved in, because I knew sitting at a computer and trying to do phylogenetic analysis simply wouldn’t work today.  I’ve had a somewhat delayed reaction to Ed’s tragic death on Leg 8 of the Tussey MountainBack 50-mile relay.  Maybe it’s because our van was ahead of the event and really didn’t grasp the severity of the situation until Marty broke the news just as I was saying my last goodbyes before driving back to DC.  So I never had a chance to share my grief with other NVRC runners, departing for DC before the sadness really set in.  For the few minutes between learning the news from Marty and departing I was caught in a bizarre state of shock combined with lingering post-race high (I must confess, with a tinge of guilt, that our team had a great time, as we were largely spared from the terrible shadows of the day until the very end when we were departing).

I may have to return to State College for the memorial run in two weeks.  I can’t think of any way to cope with the sadness other than to be with my Nittany Valley Running Club (NVRC)  family as we collectively grieve along the trail of Ed’s last steps.

It may seem inappropriate to speak of this year’s MountainBack experience in light of Ed’s tragedy, given that up until the very end my experience was so overwhelmingly positive, while it was so traumatic for others.  But MountainBack is something sacred for me, and even this darkest cloud does not diminish its standing as the most exceptional race there is — the only race where when my friend Tany asked me to be a bridesmaid in the wedding she held two weeks ago, I told her (to a bit of her chagrin) that I had to check my calendar first to make sure it didn’t conflict with Tussey (I’m sorry, MtBk comes first!).  It meant so much to be able to give Aaron a taste of why this little relay is so special.

Maybe next year I’ll write more details about what Tussey MountainBack is all about — how the Draft Relay Challenge (DCR) works with its captains and bios and picks and such.  How our dear Commish John Sheakoski thwarts my plans every year to bend the rules so that I can have the people I want on my team (poor Aaron had to chug up Legs 4 and 10 with me since John deemed him too fast to replace Selena).  Or to explain why the race is the greatest running party in the world, a simultaneous celebration of gut-busting effort and the social bonds that seem to naturally germinate within and among the teams as the race goes on.

For now you’re just going to have to take my word that there is no running group as tight-knit as the NVRC, no relay scheme as ingenious as the DCR, and no race that so captures the spirit of running as the Tussey MountainBack.  Ed’s tragedy — and the way our group has responded to it — has only intensified these convictions.

 

With only one day to go before the WUS Donut Run of Champions (DROC), it seemed that the WUSsies were living up to their name.  Robin & Kirsten had shown donut spirit, but no male freely dared to challenge Neal Gorman’s feats of sugary domination from last April: we assumed Adam didn’t have a choice, Sean was moaning about excess patent work, Doug was infatuated by his Ben & Jerry’s, and Keith was leading a rival run to promote sugary temperance.

But on race day the WUS responded to Neal’s call to arms (http://www.twitvid.com/61YZT). Jon L-D had run DROC’s sister run, UROC, just days before, and was nursing a bruised foot. It was not until the middle of the afternoon that he confirmed his participation in DROC. Sean was able to put aside the drill bit reviews for an evening of running and junk food consumption (which, truth be told, is a fairly standard evening for Sean). The ringer of the run, though, was Matt W, having had several weeks to recover from his dominating performance at the 100k world championship race.

Several donut run groupies gathered at the fountain in Dupont Circle, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the first runner. Martha, Aaron, Ryon and Tom were joined by Kerry, who brought a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, so Doug could take the ice cream option for the run, and several more pints in case anyone else chose to do the same (Keith & Mario swung by during their WUS Normale to dip into Kerry’s ice cream).

The first runners to arrive were Jon L-D and Neal, neck and neck.  JLD got an early jump on the donut eating, but Neal’s strategic use of the Semen Collection Cup helped his later donuts go down extra smooth and he left the Circle first.  However, the donut bitsies churned up some activity in Neal’s intestines on R Street and someone’s yard got a little present there, allowing JLD to pass and finish victorious in a new record of 47 minutes.

We had considered Matty Woods to be a strong contender, but he forgot his light and tagged along with Sean, whose decades of junk food consumption should have poised him to seriously challenge Neal & JLD (apparently some long nights in the patent office during the end of the fiscal year set him back a notch or two).  Matty recommended that we up the donut intake to 8 at least — 6 was trivial.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adam was a gentleman and waited for his fiance Robin, who stole the ladies championship, redeeming last April’s beer mile spewfest.

Doug found his pint of Ben & Jerry’s to be considerably more difficult to scarf than he’d imagined.

Since Seanie hadn’t RSVPed and we hadn’t bought him donuts, we had to make an emergency return trip to Krispy Kreme to get Kirstin donuts, although this turned out to be fortuitous because Jeff Reed also late-showed and needed 6 sugary goodnesses as well.

Here is JLD during the post-race sugar high: http://www.twitvid.com/XMBL5 and Neal Gorman’s post-mortem, continuing to enjoy his beverage container of choice http://www.twitvid.com/MLHI2.