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Wednesday, 23 February 2011 08:24

Written by Leslie Rubinkowski

Before she started training for her first marathon in 2008, Beth Risdon ran maybe 12 miles a year.  Last May she qualified for Boston at the Colorado Marathon with a time of 3:42 while wearing a leopard-print skort (to make her run faster, of course).  Since then Risdon, who turned 44 yesterday, has run with ultrarunner Dean Karnazes (see photo below), became an Athleta-sponsored athlete and got certified to train runners herself.

And since January 2009 she’s documented the whole triumphant crazy trip on her blog Shut Up and Run.  Risdon writes about her life at home (including her husband, Ken, and her two children, 13 and 9), the challenges of training through injuries, and the terrors and joys of her bodily functions.  But when she talked recently over the phone from her home in Longmont, Colo., it was all about running – training, motivation and the power of a mantra delivered by a sleepy little kid.

Q:  When I saw you went from zero to Boston in 20 months, I was like: how did you do that?  You say on your blog it was crack and steroids, but I have a feeling it was something more noble than that.

A:  (laughs) I came to the table with a foundation of fitness.  So while I wasn’t a runner per se, I had always been pretty active.  What happened with me was – and this is kind of how I am in general, my personality – I took a goal.  And the goal was the marathon.  And I was with Team in Training for my first marathon, so I had coaches to tell me what to do.  I had a lot of motivation, because I had a group and I felt really accountable to them.  I just work really hard.  I have to say, I’m a very disciplined person, and I’m very motivated.  If I say I’m going to do something, I typically I’m able to do it.

As far as meeting the Boston qualifying time, I don’t know if that was just because my body is predestined to be able to run, I have some of that in my genes.  There was a lot of hard training – I did have an injury in the middle and had to back out and rest for quite a while.

Q:  What was the injury?

A:  I had a stress fracture in my foot as I was trying to qualify, and I had to take myself out of the running for a while and then come back from that, and then I was able to qualify.  So it wasn’t a straight line by any means, or easy or without some real setbacks, but I just had my eye on the prize and I wouldn’t give it up. (laughs)

Q:  So what made you decide to run?

A:  It wasn’t as much about running as it was about a goal.  When I had my kids I really struggled with focus and direction – especially professionally.  I worked part time, but I struggled with who I was and what I wanted to be.  Everything fell in line for me to have a goal that was measurable.  Because I really needed that at that point in my life.

It was interesting, because I wasn’t a runner.  I never even really liked running the times I had done it.  But to be in an organized group, and to really learn about the sport the right way, and to be smart about training, to realize actually I did like it – that’s when it took off for me, and it became more than: Oh, I have this goal and I met it.  It became: I really love to do this – what am I going to do next?

Q:  What did you love about it?

A:  It’s a physical challenge.  I am a competitive person and I love to know what’s the next thing I’m going to try, so there is that aspect too, but maybe it was the mental/spiritual thing that sucked me in.

Q:  It does seem more mental than it is physical.

A:  It really is amazing.  When you’re injured or for some reason you can’t run, it’s devastating, because I don’t find that in any other form of exercise.  I really don’t.  I’ve tried. (laughs)  It’s not there.  Despite the fact that it is hard on the body, I’ll run as long as I possibly can, for the rest of my life, because it’s been so healthy in so many other respects.

Q:  When you first started, how did you train?

A:  Well, right now I have a hip stress fracture, so I’m still recovering from that so right now I am cross-training every day and I’m running some as I recover.  But in a typical training cycle I run three to four days a week.  And that was pretty true when I trained for the first marathon.  The first marathon all of us were new to running, so the schedules were based on going out and running for time, not running for mileage.  And then after that first marathon and being successful, I started (the training book) “Run Less Run Faster” – that was after I had my (first) stress fracture, so I decided I needed to do something different.  That was incorporating three key quality runs week: a speed run, a tempo run and a long run, and then a lot of cross training and yoga.  I was really successful on that program – that’s how I qualified.  And then I kind of drifted from it and started to come back to exclusively running, and I’m pretty sure that’s why I got injured again.  So lesson learned: My body doesn’t tolerate running only, and higher mileage weeks.  It just doesn’t want to do that.

L:  You already had an athletic background –

B: – but I never viewed myself as an athlete.  My self-perception changed when I started running, and I started meeting goals that I wanted to meet.

I have so many people I know who are just starting out running and they’re so tentative to call themselves runners.  They think to be a runner you have to do a marathon or you have to run this fast.  And it’s just not true.  For me, any time you’re breaking into a run from a walk, you’re running.  It doesn’t matter how fast that is.  So much of it just comes from how we see ourselves.  And it’s at what point you believe you’re strong and capable.

Q:  Was there a certain point when it clicked for you?

A:  It was the marathon.  And even up to that point, the night before the marathon, I was looking at my husband, going, ‘Did I train enough? Did I do enough?’ He’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?’

It wasn’t until I had that success, where I really said: Maybe I am more capable than I’m giving myself credit for being.  And again, I don’t mean capable in terms of running a marathon in a certain amount of time or anything like that.  But just being able to have the goal that is not an easy goal and to achieve it.

Q:  What was your biggest challenge as you were training …

A:  … for that first marathon?  It wasn’t really physical for me.  The biggest challenge was self-doubt.  Because we never ran more than 20 miles in training and it was that confidence issue about really questioning: Can I do that?  Can I go those extra 6.2, and can I even run the full thing?  I really, really wanted to run it all and to not walk.  That was what my goal was, and it was that self-doubt piece, you know? I think it’s always that for me when I come up to a race.

Q:  It’s the mental thing again.

A:  Yeah, it is.  And what I’m learning is that in talking to so many other runners, is that we all do that, underestimate.  And so I’m sort of trying to go the other way a little bit.  Being a little bit cocky: Of course I can! (laughs)  Just that building up, of putting no limitations on myself – ‘Well, why not me?  Of course I could do that.’  Learning that.  And teaching my kids that.  That’s been huge.

Q:  It’s terrific not to know your limitations.  But it’s also excruciating, because you don’t know. There’s that line – you want to push yourself, but at the same time you don’t want to push yourself too far.

A:  There is a line, and there is a balance, and I’m having to continue to learn that.  Because the runner mind, I have found, sometimes wants to take it just a little further – wants to push it a little harder.  There’s a time and a place for that.  But over time if you’re doing that, you’re breaking yourself down.  That’s what these injuries have shown me.

Q:  You’re training for Boston right now, aren’t you?

A:  Yeah, I’m supposed to be.  This has been a really hard process because the stress fracture I had when I was trying to qualify for Boston was in my foot and I followed doctor’s orders and it healed up pretty quickly and I went right back to training in probably about 10 weeks.  This one is different.  It’s a lot trickier, it’s had a lot more of an effect on other parts of my body, it’s got me kind of off-balance.  So it has now been four months, and I’m still really struggling to run.  My doctor is still hopeful for me and Boston, because I’ve kept up my fitness – I go running in the water, which is such a drag, but I do that.  I’ve done that for months now and the bike and yoga and all these other things.  So my fitness is still there, but running is just really hard on my hip – any impact.  So we’re working on it.  I’m still hopeful.

I really haven’t been able to do any true marathon training.  So it’ll be interesting to see.  The bad part is if I don’t go, I have to requalify.  Because of when I qualified, I’m only able to register for this one – I won’t be able to pull it to next year.  So I’ll have to start over.  Which would be a drag.

Q:  Well, you’ve got about three months.

A:  I think it’s going to boil down to: am I willing to do some walking in this race or not (laughs), because I don’t know if I am or not yet.  I don’t know if that’s the way I want to do the Boston Marathon is to walk-run.  And a lot of people think that’s crazy – you made it, just go and have the experience.  But I want to run the Boston Marathon.  The hard thing about the body is unlike a lot of things, where I can will myself through 26 miles of running, it’s harder to just will your body healed.  This is one thing I have not been able to be motivated and disciplined enough to fix.  It’s got to fix on its own time.

Q:  What was the best piece of advice you got when you were running your first marathon?

A:  I think it was going back to that mental thing, about having something to fall back on when it got really hard.  The morning of the marathon, my whole family had traveled to Phoenix.  My kids were sound asleep and I was leaving really early to catch the shuttle to the start.  I went into wake up my son, just to say, ‘Hey I’m leaving, I’ll see you along the course.’ And in that sleepy moment he told me, ‘I love you, Mom, run with your heart.’

And for some reason, that kind of took everything else out of it.  It made it OK to be internal and run based on feel and have confidence and inner strength.  It was that moment – I knew I could do it.  It’s returning to those messages that make you feel like you can continue.  And it’s gotta be pretty deep. (laughs)

L:  What’s the biggest piece of advice you give new runners?

B:  It’s easy to get caught up in, ‘Oh, I’m not as fast,’ or ‘I can’t run as far’ or ‘I’m not as thin.’  From my own training I have to keep always going back to just competing against myself and that being good enough.  Letting that be the journey, and not anybody else’s.

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