On Being a Hockey Mom…And A Runner

I’ve been trying to keep up with my blog, honest, I have, but it’s been a long couple of weeks in the Loud Redhead household.  Let me add that I know that my hockey-mom problems are really insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time, when you’re in the thick of it all, it feels pretty overwhelming.

I had mentioned in my last post that Jamie was in the middle of tryouts for spring.  He’d had two tryouts in one day (one for the “new” version of his old team, one for a brand-new start-up team), and then the next day, he ran a 10k and then had a hockey tryout (again for the “new old” team).  Meanwhile, JJ also had two tryouts (for the team he’d been on all last season).  The following day, Monday, we got a call from both coaches: neither of my sons made the cut on their respective teams.

I know it isn’t the end of the world, and as far as Jamie was concerned, I was pretty well prepared for it; though I knew he wanted to make that new team, I realized that his chances weren’t great, based on the team’s new direction and Jamie’s abilities.  Because my husband works nights, I got to be the lucky person to take the first phone call, but I believe I handled it pretty well.  Like I said, I had a feeling, and I was okay with it all.

So then I began to wonder about JJ, the younger son.  For the record, JJ was actually “skating up” on that team, and based on what I had witnessed during the year, I had been somewhat prepared for bad news.  However, as the day wore on and there were no “bad news” calls, I thought that we were just going to get the “congratulations, you made the team again” email that night.  Then, about 10 minutes before the email was supposed to go out, the call came.  I held it together pretty well for the call (the coach is a nice guy and I could tell he hated having to make that call), but when I hung up, I totally lost it.  I told my husband (sobbing), “I just can’t handle this twice in one day!!” Yes, I am a bit melodramatic on occasion. 😉 But the truth is, no matter how well you say you’re prepared for it and okay with it…it’s hard to experience your babies being rejected!

So, instead of a week off from hockey before the spring season began, we found ourselves with a week full of hockey.  Some nights the kids were doubled up, with Jamie at one rink and JJ at the other!  It was hard on us, and hard on the kids, too.

Besides the hockey, there were other issues.  I had a problem at work with the system that I administer, and it really threw me for a loop…I rarely have problems at work, and never any of this magnitude!  I was at work until well after 6pm Thursday night, and spent most of Friday working on (and worrying about) it.  I also had the fun of family conflict because I was hosting a party for my father-in-law and Jamie’s birthday on Saturday night, but my mom decided to throw a spontaneous birthday party for her fiancé that same night. :S

And then, on top of all that…I had a 20-mile run scheduled on Saturday.  😛

For anyone who is familiar with the Hal Higdon marathon training program, you know that the longest run of the training is a twenty-miler, three weeks before the actual marathon.  I not only have my training plan printed out on my fridge, I also have every training run plugged into my Google calendar.  The date of Saturday March 22^nd has been etched into my brain for over 3 months…that was the day. The day I would find out if I was really able to complete a twenty-mile run and thus, be truly prepared to run a marathon.

And yet, by the time last Friday came around, with all the other stress, I was really kind of over the fact that I had to run 20 miles the next day.  I didn’t even plot my route until Friday at 3pm, and I only did it then (as opposed to, say, Friday at 10pm) because a hockey-mom friend offered to run part of it with me, and I needed to give her a time I’d show up at her house.

Friday night, I slept horribly, with lots of bad dreams.  Usually my pre-run bad dreams revolve around the run itself, but this time, because we were still in the midst of tryouts, all my dreams revolved around hockey. 🙁

I’d planned to meet my friend Ann and her friend Toddra (both of whom did the Paczki Run with JJ and me) at 8:15. When I got up at 6am, I was grateful for a warmer temperature for a change, but it looked like I was in for another fun, windy day.

Yikes.  Gusts of 23 miles an hour or more, coming from the north-northwest. Since I was running an out and back and then another out and back, that’s a lot of running into the wind. My only saving grace was that I was running with a tailwind for most of the last third.

The run up to Ann’s house from where I parked was pretty rough with all that wind. It was 5 miles from my start point to her house, and four of those miles were directly into the wind.

There’s a lot of water around, what with all the snow finally melting, and the creek was high.

I don’t know where all this snowmelt is going to go eventually!

I met Ann and her friend Toddra a little over an hour after I started. I went inside and took a pitstop and gratefully took the water and gave me, and then we started up again.

Ann is quite a fast runner, and Toddra is pretty close to what I would normally be when I’m not training for marathon (10 to 11 minute miles). Since my long runs are really slow these days (somewhere between 11 and 12 minutes a mile), and since I had  also just run 5 miles into the wind, it was a bit challenging keeping up with them. They told me they would run at my pace, but when you’re running with faster people, you really don’t want to slow them down. So I did my best to try to maintain a decent pace. I could see that Ann wasn’t feeling very challenged, but Toddra seem to be doing okay. We ran 3 miles through the neighborhoods, due south, and I think I did a pretty good job, considering I had just run 5 miles.

All bets are off and we turned around to go back, though. By that time, I was getting tired, and the running into the wind again didn’t help much. So that 3 miles back was not nearly as impressive. 😛

Still, I was glad that I ran with them, because it kept me from dwelling on the fact that I was running 20 miles that day. We talked quite a bit, especially about kids and hockey, since Ann and I both had sons on Jamie’s team last season, both of whom were cut from the new team.  It was a really fun run, and the best part was that, when we were done, I only had 9 miles to go!

That’s us posing for our post-run shot before I started up again to finish the last 9 miles.

My next stop was at my mom’s house, which was only about a mile from Ann’s house, but I added in another mile and a half to give me more distance. By the time I got to my mom’s, I was at almost exactly 13.1 miles. I really wanted it to be a half-marathon when I stopped there, but I got tired of running back-and-forth in front of her house, so eventually I gave up at 13.08. (That’s why my splits look odd.) When I got to my moms, she also had a nice cold bottle of water waiting for me, and a little puppy love, too.

That’s my mom’s dog, Murphy. You might remember him from my 14-mile run from one hockey rink to another. He loves to have his picture taken with me. Mostly, I think he just loves attention. 😉

After that break, which was longer than I had really planned (but it would be kind of rude to just go to my mom’s house, use the bathroom, and leave again), I started up for the last 7 miles. I was surprised to see a hockey friend when I got almost to mile 14. She pulled into a parking lot as I ran by, and waved and cheered for me. That was pretty cool!

When I got to mile 14, I had to stop for the light, so that was a good break. Once I started going again, I found myself really tired. I told myself I would stop at 16 and take some more Gu. As I was getting close to mile 16, my left arm started getting these weird shooting, tingly feelings. That was kind of scary. :/ I just kept shaking it, and trying to stretch it a little bit, and after I stopped, it didn’t go away.

By the time I got to mile 16, I was really tired, even though I had been running with a tailwind ever since my mom’s. I also had to go to the bathroom. The nearest gas station was at least half a mile away, but there was a salon almost right there at the corner. I took a chance and walked inside, sweaty and gross as I was, and I very nicely explained to the lady near the front that I was a runner, on mile 16 of 20, and I really had to use the bathroom, and I asked if I could use the restroom.   She was quite beautiful (like it seems all the salon people are, ha ha!), and she was so gracious. She happily steered me in the direction of the bathroom, and told me that it was no problem at all.  That was nice!

Once I got back to the road where I had stopped, I started my Garmin again and went south. I was really getting tired by this time, and it took a lot of strength, both mentally and physically, for me to get to the next stopping point, which I decided would be 18 miles. Most of it was going south, but it was still hard. The last half a mile of that stretch was back into the wind going west, and let me tell you, when I got to that 18 mile point, I was ready to be done.  I stopped and actually sat on the ground because I was so tired. The thought of running two more miles just seemed impossible, but I knew that if I didn’t get up quickly, it wouldn’t happen. So after about a minute on the ground, and a couple of drinks of water, I got back up and made the last trek to my car. I was grateful that I had managed to plot my route out so that I would stop before my car, and not after. I hate that feeling of having to run past your car, when it always seems like when you get to your car, that should be the end!

I honestly don’t know how I did that last quarter-mile; it seemed so impossible when I was doing it. And yet, when I was done, all of a sudden it didn’t seem so bad.

Don’t get me wrong, I was exhausted, but I didn’t feel like I was going to die, which is how I felt when I was running that last half-mile or so.  Maybe it was just the fact that I could actually see that I had really run 20 miles that made me feel better.

It was a pretty awesome feeling, I have to admit. And the calorie burn was pretty sweet too.

My overall pace was not that great.  When you include the stops, it was over a 13-minute mile.  Not even close to cutting it if I want to maintain a sub-5-hour marathon. 🙁  I texted with my friend Katie about it later, and she pointed out to me that I may want to readjust my goals just to keep me from feeling discouraged and nervous.  I’ve decided that she’s right…I’m still going to have the 5-hour cut-off as my “A” goal, but I plan to have a back-up goal (5:15), as well as a back-up to the back-up goal 😉 (5:30), as well.  We’ll see what April 12 brings!

Once that run was done, it was back to real life.  We had a party for Jamie with my inlaws that afternoon (I ran 20 miles and then made a cake!!).  It was fun, though I was tired.

After the party ended at 9:30, because I’m a good daughter, I head out to the bar to help my mom’s fiance celebrate his 70th birthday.  My mom snapped this shot of me while I was there.

Unwashed hair.  Ew. 😉

It was back to hockey on Sunday, with two more tryouts.  Poor Jamie skated (hard) nine times in ten days—with a 10k race thrown in there just for fun! 😛 He took it all in stride though, bless his soul, and stayed positive throughout.  Even when he didn’t make the cut for the next team, he shook it off and told me he had a plan to make sure he’d make the final team.  Aww.  Made me proud and sad at the same time.

JJ skated quite a bit last week, too, but not as much as Jamie.   He had four tryouts from Thursday to Sunday.  We got a call from the first team Sunday night with the same sad news…he didn’t make the cut.  This was disconcerting, because the second team’s tryouts had ended Saturday and we still hadn’t heard anything.

By Monday morning (9 days after tryouts had begun), my husband and I were so stressed we were nearly at the breaking point.   We got a call just before we left for Jamies last tryout from the coach for JJ’s last tryout, and we were happy to be informed that JJ made that team.  Jamie skated very hard on Monday night, and I’m happy to say that he made that team, which we all think will be a good fit for him.

So, after nearly two weeks of hockey stress and a 20-mile run, I’m happy to say that, while we aren’t relaxing or anything (hockey practice began on Tuesday!), we are all a little less on edge in our house.  And the good news is…I’m now officially in “taper” mode.  That means less miles for me–hooray!!

Thanks for reading this long, drawn-out post.  I appreciate your interest, and I’ll keep you up to date as the hockey progresses on, and as I get closer to my marathon, which is just two weeks from Saturday!