Just chillin'

Sights on the way to work.

The sun has got its hat on

The sun has come out but it's not going to be enough to melt the snow. I have to go to work at 1pm and I don't have any wellies. This is going to be interesting...

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

We don't have a fire, but if we did, it would be delightful. It is cold and the furnaces are up full-blast. Tomorrow is looking to be a snow day too. I wonder how long our pantry will hold up to us being holed-up?

Baby it's cold outside!

Norman is shut down. There is no school. There is no university. Ice is falling from the sky and the meteorologists are very excited. Apparently the library never closes though so I could be called in. This seems daft though, it's cold outside.

Route 66 Half Marathon - 19/11/06 - PR 2:19:13

I rocked Route 66. I got my kicks and I smashed my target of 2:20:40. Not by much, admittedly, but by enough to make me a very proud young lady. And look, here I am after the race still standing and still smiling!

It went really well, it was a very cold but sunny start but as you can see from the picture it was sunny by the end. I positioned myself in with the 4:45 marathon pacers and I figured that they would get me started on about the right pace though of course as soon as the big gun went off.



Of course that plan didn't work and I got over excited and perhaps took off a little too quick off the mark.

I was feeling strong though and sticking with it. I was actually on target for around a 2:15 despite the hills and motorway on-ramps that they had neglected to tell me about when I signed up (Oklahoma is supposed to be flat and I've had no hills to practice on.) Unfortunately though about 4 miles out from the finish my hip started giving me jip and I had to stop and stretch which took me 2 minutes off pace. Magically though the stretching worked and the last two miles I must have done in a 8-9 minute pace which is insane as I usually run at 12 minutes per mile! I guess the signs along the course about "Digging deep and aiming high" and "Pain is fleeting, a PR is for life" must have struck a chord!

I'm very content, the stretching seems to have worked and my hip is no longer giving me any jip (though I think that might be in store for me tomorrow) I'm going to take ibuprofen for any possible swelling and maybe ice a few joints. Anyway now we are home and I'm about to check my bank account to see if I have the available funds to sign up for the Oklahoma City Marathon in April. If there's a bug, I believe I've caught it!

Faulty Blogging

Ok, so something went wrong with the clever blog plan. As you can see it was working until I actually tried to blog about something interesting but let me assure you that the photos were fabulous and very, very interesting. Maybe one day the blogosphere will be kind enough to let you see them. Maybe not. Who can tell? Anyway, fortunately we were not entirely reliant on the mobile blogging devices (which has in it the photos but without the magic of mobile blogging I don't know how to get the photos into the computer - must buy bluetooth USB thingamy) we also took photos with the digital camera...

I got my kicks

2h20m right on target

This is just the beginning!

It's cool but not too cold, a gorgeous morning. I'm so excited I can't stop going to the bathroom...

All dressed up with somewhere to go

Nearly time to leave and stand in the street in cold, dark Tulsa.

Vaseline, my friend

It's 6am and I've been up for about an hour and a half forcing down coffee and porridge. I'm showered and dressed and have administered vaseline to the possible chafe spots. Just an hour left to pace before I get in the corral...

Penelope, prepared.

All chipped up and ready to go

We've arrived in Tulsa and I have my bib and chip - a magical thing that will automatically log my time. The chip is on the shoe and I'm ready to go. 14 hours to go though. How will I contain myself?

Power lunch for a power run

It's fuel. Honest.

Less than 24 hours from Tulsa

And we're off. 22h35m to the race, about 2h to Tulsa. Am I ready? I hope so!

The excitement begins...

I have made a list and I'll be checking it twice. Mustn't forget the special dual-layer socks or electrolyte containing jellybeans! I've nearly packed ready for the off in the morning and could just burst with excitement!

What I found in the library today...

I have been doing dramatic readings in an old cow poke voice all evenin'. I also learnt a southern word for skewiff: 'cattywampus'. How awesome is that?! Cowboy up dudes and gals!

The Roving Reporter

I just wanted to quickly note that I am now a blogger on the go. Through the power of joining the 21st century and having my very own mobile phone with a camera I can now send pictures and messages from anywhere I have reception. I can't wait until next Sunday. Mobile, instant race reports will be mine...

Go Sooners!

This is the level to which Sooner madness has gone on the OU campus. Every soap dispenser on campus comes with this tiny, but heartfelt exclamation.

Running against the wind

This must be a record but it's Saturday morning and I had to get up at 6 am (which I'm thinking there should be a law against) and even though it's 9 am now I don't seem to have found my brain enough to do anything very productive. So I thought I would blog some more...

As I might have mentioned (once or twice) I've been running like a fiend. I have two weeks left to go until my half-marathon in Tulsa and I've been running like a running thing on running tablets. A half-marathon is 13.1 miles and 8 months ago I couldn't even run 1. I've had a lot of work to do. I've been following a plan and building up to it slowly and on Tuesday I reached my training peak at 11.27 miles (distance courtesy of Gmaps). I've been trying to prepare for the race-day starting line-up at 6 am by running at that time and fortunately for me with the "Fall back" it is now light enough to do so. So up I got at 4 am, stuffed myself with porridge and then went back to bed (what else was I going to do for two hours?) At 6am up I got again and slid into my running gear. Unfortunately my running gear consists of shorts and a t-shirt and 6 am on the last day of October wasn't all that warm. I convinced myself though that it would be fine once I got going, so I pulled on a cap and some gloves and off I went. I knew it was cold. I knew the wind was strong. I knew it was fairly chilly but I did not realise that the first mile of this run would be heading straight into the wind. I steeled myself. I'm tough, right? I've run in London in January, how hard could this be? Pretty tough. I had to pull my cap down several times. The goose-pimples on my arms did not disappear as I "warmed up", in fact they started to go numb. Bah humbug! I'm far too stubborn to let this get to me. Fortunately my course then took me in the opposite direction. I was flying! Heck, I even took my gloves off. But alas, my course is circular and eventually after mile 6 (when I really could have done with the wind behind me) there I was, running against the wind again. Running against Oklahoma wind isn't all that fun. Oklahoma is flat which means there are no hills to break the wind up and running against it is a bit of a mission. The gloves went back on and my face fixed into a determined glare such has never before been seen. I began to notice that I couldn't really feel my arms and that they were perhaps a little redder than their usual complexion and that perhaps my thighs were a little chilly to the point of numbness. Only 3 more miles to go. I'd be fine. I was fine. Cold and tired but fine. Later in the shower, after the itch of cold-skin getting suddenly warm had subsided, I noticed a darker complexion on my legs and arms, wind-burn I suppose. I don't think I've ever had wind-burn before, it's quite the novelty. I think I might buy some winter running gear today though, I'm not sure how much novelty I can take...

From now on it's taper time. Tomorrow I'll cut back to just 9-10 miles and next weekend I'll only do 5. I love being able to talk about the distances for my runs as "only" or "just" something I never dreamt I'd be able to run. I remember back in April whooping as I made it around Walpole Park for the first time (0.8 miles) and later almost bursting into tears with joy at my first mile, now a mile is too easy even for an easy day. I feel great, strong and powerful. I imagine myself on race day crossing the finishing line without even once having had to break into a walk. I could go nuts over the next couple of weeks having to cut back on my mileage though. I'm not sure Amanda's looking forward to it...

Rah Oklahoma!

OK. So as you may (or may not) have guessed from my "Boomer Sooner" post, on the 23rd of September I went to my very first OU football game. Unfortunately due to general incompetence and busyness on my part I never actually got to post the full write-up of the event and now it's all a little foggy but I will try my very best.

First of all I need to say that I don't really understand American football. The playing time is an hour but a game lasts four hours with all the breaks for adverts and huddles in which the players are given instructions for their next play. I know that what you most want is a touch-down and then you want to convert it by kicking the ball through the posts which apparently is very exciting and calls for a little celebration (more on this later). I know that each team has a certain number of attempts to move the ball 10 yards in their direction (3 I think) before the other teams gets to have a go at doing the same thing. I know that each "team" has two entirely separate teams depending on which direction they're moving in - the offensive team and the defensive team. I also know that the players make very few decisions about their plays (if any) and that the coach does all the strategy stuff and they just act out the directions. I know this because Amanda's brother gets to pass the instructions from the coach to the players on the team that he is currently training with. I think it involves wild gesticulation but I'm not really clear on the logistics.

Right. Now that's all said and done I also want to make clear that all of that stuff is not the exciting part of an OU football game. Remember I mentioned earlier about the "little celebration"? Well that was possibly down-playing it a bit but let's start at the very beginning, it is the very best place to start you know...

Before the game and before you even enter the stadium Norman is descended upon by thousands of people. So many people in fact that the population of Norman automatically doubles in size on a game day. These people set up in car parks all around town and do this thing called tail-gating which seems to involve drinking beer out of actual fridges and eating burgers which they cook on their giant gas-powered barbecues whilst sitting on their chairs under their gazebo. This also often seems to involve watching the pre-game commentary on their satellite TVs (satellite included) and usually some father-son bonding involving a ball being thrown around and narrowly missing innocent passers by. Then a couple of hours before the game along comes The Pride. They march down the streets of Norman and into the stadium playing endless renditions of Boomer Sooner and other marching band classics including (or course) "Oklahoma!" Eventually they reach their destination and so do we, climbing the seemingly hundreds of steps to our seats and we're only half way up the bleachers! The stadium is full of people looking full of cheer, sporting the crimson and cream (red and white as was helpfully translated in my international student orientation) colours of the Sooners. I'm ready too, Amanda and I popped to Walmart and bought me a hooded jumper with OKLAHOMA in the big collegiate letters on the front. The game is on!

Actually the game is not on... yet. There is more spectacle to be had before any playing can occur. The players have to stretch for what seems like hours in some sort of chessboard formation while the many, many coaches check that they're doing them right. Eventually they get up from the floor and throw a ball about for a bit and do some other inexplicable warm-ups that I have never read about in any of my running-related sporting research. I suppose they must be "football specific" or something, I'll give the coaches the benefit of the doubt. They are paid enough. Middle Tennessee are warming up too, they're looking a bit haphazard despite their snazzy kit. I begin to hope that this will not be a car-crash for them. Eventually the players leave the pitch and from here the order of things gets confused.

It could be the band that comes first or it might be the cheerleaders though it could just as easily be the Rough Necks. It's all bit of sensory overload and with so much time passed I'm not sure I'm capable of untangling it. Let's go with the band for argument's sake. They march into the stadium do some fancy marching in formation, play Boomer Sooner yet again and take to their spot on the bleachers. Then the Rough Necks take to the field. I'm not really sure who or what the Rough Necks are apart from being college boys in little red and white uniforms with giant paddles in their back pockets. They are in charge of the Schooner which rides around the field at the opening of the game as well as inexplicably beating the goal-post with the aforementioned paddle. The Schooner is one of those old-style covered wagons which you see in movies involving trails, plains and Native Americans and it is pulled by two horses called Boomer and Sooner (well what did you expect them to be called?) A Rough Neck rides this thing around the field with the Rough Neck Queen sitting up front, all dressed up and twirling a paddle while whooping with pride (or something). Out of the back is another Rough Neck dangling out of the back waving a flag with yet another holding his legs. Whilst this is going on the rest of the Rough Necks who are not involved in the schooner spectacle are inexplicably beating the goal post with their paddles. I can't help but wander what else they beat with their paddles, which are the size of a child's cricket bat, when there isn't a game on...
Then of course there are the cheerleaders. Middle Tennessee hasn't even bothered to bring their cheer-squad or their band so we only have 3 squads tonight who rotate around each quarter and of course Boomer and Sooner II, people in furry horse costumes who manage to do magical things such as backflips from within their suits. There's the pom squad who do fancy dancing and a couple of more acrobatic teams that do all that fancy pyramid stuff with cheermen at the bottom doing the throwing. I wonder who these men are and what is their motivation... Anyway, the cheersquads form a corridor of cheer and through this on come the footballers. They all take their places and now the game really is on.

I don't remember much about the actual game except for the endless pauses for ad breaks and time outs and so on and so forth. I remember that it was indeed the car crash that I'd feared for Middle Tennessee - OU won 59-0. So the game was perhaps not as exciting as it might have otherwise been. Half-time was fabulous though with more marching and bandness. I really wanted the band to spell out "Oklahoma" or draw a schooner but alas that seems to have gone out of favour and now it's all about asymmetrical patterns across the playing field. The baton twirler had her solo moment though which is probably the important thing though I do worry for her once she's all grown up. What do baton twirlers do once the world of college football is over for them? Maybe she can be a baton twirling coach or something, I don't think pro-teams have twirlers... The band did the rounds and stood in various aisles (including ours) to rouse cheer amongst the crowd. We shouted "OU" a lot and held our arms above our heads in O and U shapes. We sang "Boomer Sooner" often and went "ooh" and "ahh" and cheered whole-heartedly. OU scored so often though that the score celebrators began to get a bit tired of back flipping in the end-zone and poor Boomer and Sooner and the Rough Neck Queen were quite exhausted with all that whipping around the pitch every 15 minutes and put in rather half-arsed performances towards the end of the game.

Eventually when it was clear that OU had won we went home full of cheer and university pride (as well as good intentions of posting a blog quicksmart) and wondering if Heythrop could ever get quite such a large crowd out for its intercollegiate football matches against UCL...

Boomer Sooner

Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner;
Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner;
Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner;
Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner.
x2

I'm Sooner born and Sooner bred,
And when I die I'll be Sooner dead!

Rah Oklahoma,
Rah Oklahoma,
Rah Oklahomaaaaa
O.K.U!



Sung with much spirit to this tune.

Nasty Little Blighters

This is a zebra mosquito. It also has a fancy Latin name but what really matters is that it is evil and dishes out the most evil of mosquito bites that ever were dished out. OK. So maybe I don't have malaria. I don't even have the West Nile virus that these little blighters have a penchant for infecting their victims with. Heck, I don't even have Dengue Fever (or break-bone fever to old school mosquito-borne-disease watchers) but goodness me I itch!

Look! Just look at the state of my pegs!

These Oklahoma mosquitoes are mean. I thought that Portugal had it all as far as really itchy insect bites go (minus the diseases). I thought I'd experienced the pain of itchy bites at their full-force... but no! These bugs are the meanest of the mean and this photo of my legs wasn't even taken with the bites at the height of their purpliness. One friend even thought I had ring-worm and I can't even shave my legs for fear of nicking a bite and dying a terrible death like Lord Carnarvon of Tutankhamen curse fame...

Frankly my legs look a fright which is largely easily avoided by covering up. However when I'm in my running get-up I'm afraid that, rather than a marching band, my run may soon be accompanied by the sound of a small child screaming and running in the opposite direction. I'm trying to be tough and put on the facade of super-tough running girl who runs despite horrible infestation but it's tough. The itching is driving me up the wall and I don't think my constant wriggling is doing much for Amanda's sleep either so I have a solution. Mosquitoes of Norman listen up: I know I am a tasty morsel but I think perhaps you will find Amanda to be exceedingly tasty too. Why don't you pick on her instead?!

Keep on Running

So, for those of you who have been present for my long rants about the wonders of running (those of you that haven't are missing out on great conversation!) will be relieved to find out that I am indeed still running. I am actually even training to run (notice the word "run" and not "race") a half-marathon in November along (a very little bit of) Route 66. This week my training regime, courtesy of runnersworld.com has had me running an "easy" run for 2 miles, a tempo run for 5 and tomorrow it's decreed a 7 mile long run. Up until the last couple of weeks my runs have either had to be at the break of dawn or inside due to the ridiculous heat of Oklahoma. Oklahoma Summers are HOT they don't call 40C a heatwave, it's just Summer and at night 21C is cool. Coming from London, where at 30C the tubes stop and air-conditioning in cinemas breaks down, I was in for a bit of a shock and there was no way I could fall out of bed at 10am and hope to run anywhere without dying of heatdisease*. Still, gradually I managed to work out a regime involving the university's incredibly fancy gym and daybreak. Now it's cooler 530am starts are no longer necessary and I don't have to resort to the gym for afternoon runs.

Last Tuesday I went for a post-class run at the previously inconceivable time of 7pm around the campus taking in OU's 82,112 seater football stadium, the 2,700 capacity baseball stadium, the enormous multi-sport training facility at Griffin Park and the crazy aircraft hangar known as "Everest Training Center" which is an indoor football field rumored to be able to recreate many weather conditions. Sport is big here at OU and as if all the buildings weren't enough to dwarf my achievements, on the last leg of my run (which at this stage of sporting prowess is starting to feel a bit lame and I'm hot and tired and want to be at home) I pass by a field where the percussion section of the Pride is practicing for Saturday's game. The drumming cheered me on a little and I'm sure if I'd actually been taking my split-times would have propelled me into a 9 minute mile great! Which made me wonder again about the lack of cheer in British schools. Maybe if we'd have had a band in my extremely nonchalant high school I might have been a bit more encouraged to take up a sport and participate in school life a bit more and I would never have made it to 25, fat and wheezing at a 100 meter lope and having to train my body for the first to time to cope with a raised heartrate. Even if I hadn't been part of the sports team I bet I would have been part of the band. Have you seen their outfits?! They get hats and sometimes even capes and the geeks of the school get to participate in the life of the school rather than skulking in the recesses. Either way I don't think participating can be bad and making a place for everyone in sports, be it on the team (which between the offense and the defense of a American football team can be 50+), the cheersquads, the band or just being part of the crowd, wearing your school colours and screaming for all it's worth can possibly be a bad thing and British schools could learn a lot. If we had a bit more cheer in our highschools maybe we'd have a few more spectators and support for our inter-university clashes. Maybe we'd even need to build stadiums, or at least borrow them.

As for me, I'll just keep on running. My goal for the half-marathon is just to finish it without walking (except maybe to pee or drink) then who knows? I fancy the New York Marathon in 2007 and thankfully I have my own one-woman cheer squad. She's even promised to take care of the foil blanket and jelly babies.



*Heatdisease is (I think) an overdramatic term for Heatstroke used in a running book I read one afternoon in a Borders Books where Amanda and I sought refuge and air-conditioning on a particularly hot day.

More of a Short Red Rally

So much for the Big Red Rally. My classes are all in the evenings and this unfortunately clashed with the 630 pm start of aforementioned Rally. I did think that, what with the rally being "Big" it would go on for more than half an hour. I guess that no matter how Big and Red the Rally is Sooners just don't have the stamina to be perky for more than half an hour, or at least not without some sort of competitive sporting action...

Bureaucracy

Just a quick note to reassure you all that bureaucracy is alive and well in US universities in much the same way as it is in British universities. I'm finding it somewhat reassuring to discover that this is universal. I am currently trying to battle my way out of a cocoon of red-tape. Hopefully I will make it out in time to attend The Big Red Rally on Friday so I'll have something to report on that's peculiar to OU...