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meditation in motion

I have about a month until the Philadelphia Marathon, and I am making good progress towards my goal of being able to finish. Of course, descending into the running community quickly makes you want to finish marathons faster and more often, and I have to keep reminding myself what my goal is here. This last week was a down week for me, a week where I do less miles to give my body a chance to heal, but the week before that I did a long run of 19 miles. I felt slow and out of it, maybe because I had been increasing mileage for a few weeks, but I was able to get through that. This weekend I will go 21 miles, then 23 the next weekend, and then taper for two long runs before the big day on November 23rd. They closed registration for the Philadelphia Marathon recently, which means they hit their cap of 16,000 runners. Wow.

My mom got me a subscription to Runner's World, and I joined runners here, because it's inspiring and helpful to read about running and other people's experiences and goals. I found out a lot of weird stuff I didn't know, though. So here is a list of strange things about distance running I bet you didn't know.

1. Like sex, distance running is a repetitive motion that can cause serious chafing. There is body lubricant for runners, for your thighs, armpits, or anywhere else that gets rubbed too much (I think the most popular brand is BodyGlide.) What's more alarming to me, though, and is a subset of this problem: bleeding nipples. Yeah, that's right. Do a google image search if you don't believe me. Men running their first marathon apparently often discover that shirts, especially cotton shirts, can chafe their nipples raw after 26.2 miles. Wearing synethetic shirts and putting vaseline on your nipples can prevent this. For women, sports bras make this not an issue......

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