Rock N’ Roll USA Half Race Report – Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Falling Short of my PR

     A few weeks ago I read an article where a professional runner said that come race day, they could tell if they were going to make their goal in the first mile. I wondered at that idea as I read it. Questioned if it were true, then wondered what it would be like to know your own body to such a degree.

     I’ve been training with a running coach for about a year. When I was training for the North Face 50k last year I had a moment a few months prior to the race where I realized that I had no idea how to train myself for that kind of distance, so I enlisted her help. After successfully completing that race, I realized that I really liked working with her, so I kept her on.

     After the ultra I decided to work on my real challenge, speed. I can run all day. I like to run long distances, but I can’t do any of it very quickly. Since last summer I’ve PRed a 10k, and unofficially, the 5k though I still need to do it in a timed race. I’ve run faster times consistently and hit my 10k PR time more than once during training runs. I have made progress, happily tracked by my trusty Garmin, so I can go back and see those times after a not so great run.

     This weekend was my most recent PR attempt. I’ve been working very hard to PR the half marathon and beat a time I set in a race I ran last spring just for fun. In the first mile, I knew I wasn’t going to meet my goal that day. The article I read a few weeks ago popped into my head as I compared how I felt this past Saturday in the first mile of the Rock n’ Roll USA half as compared to how I felt in the Iron Girl half last April – I felt slow, I felt tired, I felt like I was already working hard in the first three miles. Something just felt off. During the Iron Girl race, I felt light, my feet felt like they were hardly working – I knew I was going to PR.

     So I spent the Rock n’ Roll half toughing it out and finding joy where I could. We ran across my favorite bridge in DC which leads to the Women’s Military Service memorial. I paced off of a guy in a kilt for several miles. I appreciated the fact that I did not have to pee the whole race. I enjoyed the animal costumes (a cow beat me by at least 45 seconds). I appreciated the fact that I did not walk the whole race, not even through water stops, or up the hills miles 6-8, even though I wanted nothing more. I was not going to beat myself in this race, but I did not let the race beat me either.

     I also had two free hours during the race to think about running. To think about why I love it even when I don’t. As I was pondering my relationship to running I passed a man holding a sign that said “Run with Gratitude” and that pretty much summed up the thoughts swirling around in my head. When I am running, the gratitude comes without me even trying to be grateful or think about being grateful. With every, often slow step, I know that it is a gift just to be able to do it. To be physically capable of running, of propelling myself forward under my own power.

     This race gave me a new respect for the distance. I’ve gone farther, but that doesn’t make 13.1 miles any less difficult. It gave me a new respect too, for my fellow runners. You never know what a distance means to someone. What they’ve overcome to get to the finish line. A 5k can mean more to one person than 50 miles means to another. I think this is something that I’ve lost sight of over time, believing that running further means more in general, and that is simply a fallacy.

     I am reminded as I propel myself down stairs, hovering one foot over the step below me and then pitching myself forward, hoping I land on the step below, or decide to just stand for a bit instead of sitting because my quads are still sore from missing my goal, that sometimes the best thing for you is to be humbled by something you thought would be easy.

Wild Flag Review …and thoughts on feminist music of the 90s

Last night, though my desire for a post-work cat nap could not be quelled, I made it to the Wild Flag show at the Black Cat. Wild Flag is a relatively new effort by four women, two of which are ex-members of the iconic riot grrl band Sleater-Kinney, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss. The other two band members, Mary Timony and Rebecca Cole have been involved with their own awesome bands such as Helium and The Minders, respectively. Despite the fact that they have yet to release an album and in their own words, are touring right now to kind of figure things out before hitting the studio for a full length release, the show sold out. The band did not disappoint. The openers, Yellowfever and The Aquarium, were pretty mellow and seemed tame in comparison to the melodic noisefest that followed. It has been a long time since I saw a stage full of women look so completely comfortable in their own skin. Watching four seasoned performers work the stage, the crowd, and each other was a genuine treat. 

It was interesting to watch the band as a whole. Wild Flag is it’s own entity, however it’s almost impossible not to see or hear them without waxing nostalgic for S-K. While everyone was singing in Sleater-Kinney, Corin Tucker was really the main front person.  For Wild Flag, Brownstein seemed to have the lead on vocals in addition to rocking the guitar. Her voice is unmistakable and last night ranged from that low, kind of almost bored tone that I associate with Northwestern music from the 90s to a wild, all out scream. It was great to hear her live again. Janet Weiss is one of my two favorite drummers to watch (the other being Samantha Maloney who I managed to catch back in the day with Shift before she played for the likes of Hole and Motely Crue) and she was all over the place, hair flying, sticks a blur. At one point I think Rebecca Cole was literally punching keys with her fists moving up and down the keyboard. The highlight of the night had to be when the band jammed out, maybe 3/4 of the way through the show. DC native, Mary Timony raised her guitar over her head to catch feedback repeatedly, fighting her guitar strap and the cords to her amp. The sound was amazing. The action was at once sensual and needy and defiant. At that moment she was visibly, 100% invested in the sound and led the crowd in with her. Together the band, the crowd, the bartenders, everybody was swaddled in the reverberations of four women rocking the fuck out.

Recently I have heard more than one of my friends wax nostalgic for the 90s – for grunge and riot grrrls, and well, angst. Sure, part of it is probably just a desire to relive that portion of our lives when we were younger and there seemed to be more possibility. But more than that, this music for me was part of a movement; It was overly feminist. I remember watching Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder on MTV, flailing around the stage, writing Pro-Life on his arm as he jumped from a chair. The riot grrrls movement was a big, musical fuck you to all of society. No pasty-white all male hardcore band of the same era had half as much of an excuse to scream angrily on stage as the ladies. They sang songs about friends who had been assaulted, about reproductive politics, about not taking anybody’s shit. There was an inherent confidence about the music I was listing to in the 90s. Even when it was overtly personal, there was power in the sharing of emotion.

Despite the fact that I’m a feminist, and pretty much surround myself with feminists in my personal life, I miss having almost an entire genre of music that touts feminist ideals.  Am I removed from it because I’m old and out of the loop? Is there a new crop of feminist music and art to carry today’s generation of girls into adulthood?