CIM WEEK 8 of 18: Knee Troubles :(

I am always superstitious about filling out my weekly logs before the runs are actually done, like it's somehow going to jinx me & cause me to get sick or hurt or some kind of emergency to come up. But this week I had some extra time early in the week & just thought, "Eh, that's stupid, let me just get this stuff typed up now while I have time." Three days later, I kid you not, I could barely walk.

Here's how the week went down:

Monday 9/19: a.m. strength work / p.m. karate.

This was the day after my 19.5 miles in Half Moon Bay, and I felt totally fine. No knee pain. Now, I was quite tired so pushed strength work to Tuesday, but throughout karate I was completely fine--no hint whatsoever that anything was wrong.

Tuesday 9/20: a.m. strength work / p.m. 2 warm-up, 6 x 200m / 200m jog, 4 miles marathon pace, 6 x 200m / 200m jog, 2 cool down = 11 total

Good solid track workout; again, not a twinge anywhere. I finished it thinking how weird it felt to have these double-digit track workouts starting to feel normal.

Wednesday 9/21: Rest

I had planned a short, easy run as long as I felt good, but in the grand tradition of WTF Wednesdays, I felt awful and exhausted and spent most of the evening sleeping, rising only to devour Shalane's recovery salad & a slice of marathon lasagna.

Book Review: "Run Fast Eat Slow"

Like many other runners I know (particularly those who are obsessed with food), I recently caved & purchased Shalane Flanagan's new cookbook, Run Fast Eat Slow, co-authored with her former cross-country teammate & now professional chef, Elyse Kopecky.

I have a whole other post sitting in the drafts about how my eating/cooking habits have changed in the last three months, but long story short I've gone from eating out/getting takeout 5-7 nights a week & almost never cooking to cooking (or eating leftovers) most nights, eating out maybe once a week, & getting takeout only when the cooking is truly unfeasible.

Things I have cooked in my actual kitchen this summer:

Homemade chili verde pork with heirloom tomatoes, red cabbage, avocado, & cilantro

Grilled tuna with piperinata & tapenade

Chicken & sausage jambalaya

Grilled salmon with a soy-ginger glaze

I've really enjoyed going back to regular cooking from scratch and it's made a huge difference in my quality of life lately. There are a lot of days in the week, though, so now I'm always on the lookout for tasty, healthy recipes to try. Run Fast Eat Slow, then, was kind of a no-brainer.

It isn't really fair to call this post a book review since I've only skimmed most of it, selecting a few of the recipes to read word-for-word and only actually made maybe 3-4 so far. However, the ones I have tried have been fantastic, so I felt inspired to put a little plug out there.

First, I am obsessed with this kale & quinoa recovery salad. We try to have a salad with dinner every night as much as possible, but a lot of times that means I end up making the same old basic thing over and over again & I was interested to try something new.

And OMG, I was not disappointed. Seriously, I think I could eat this salad every night of my life. Basically it's kale, quinoa, red bells, red onion, jalapeno, black beans, cilantro, green olives, feta (or cotija) cheese, avocado, EVOO, & lime juice. It's practically a meal all on its own! Now, it is not a quick salad as there is quite a lot of chopping involved, but the first time I made it I did all the chopping on the weekend & then quickly assembled it the next night.

Pre-chopped veggies

Bad light in our kitchen...Sorry. :(

We did not love the prescribed quinoa-to-veggies ratio & probably only included about half the quinoa, but the nice thing is that you can adjust that to taste. Also if I'm having it as a side with something else that's already got plenty of carbs, I just skip the quinoa altogether & it's still absolutely delicious.

Literally eating this as I type.

Our other favorite is the "Marathon Lasagna," which is like most other lasagna recipes except it swaps the usual ground beef or sausage for ground turkey and adds in egg, sweet potatoes, and spinach. So good! A lot of times I don't love ground turkey because it comes across as sweet to me, but the seasoning you do with it beforehand makes a big difference. Don was also a big fan & encouraged me to make it more often.

Baking the sweet potatoes

Egg-ricotta slurry

Seasoning the turkey

Final assemblage

ENTIRE BAG OF SPINACH YAAAASSSS

Final product (in bad light, sorry)

Again, this is not a *quick* recipe (I think it took about 3 hours start to finish, though some of it you could prep in advance), but it makes a giant pan-full that you can go back to for a week or more. (I imagine it would also freeze just fine as well.) The story is that this is what Shalane traditionally eats the night before the Boston Marathon, though I think it's probably too rich & acidic & dairy-filled for me to try that. (You could probably easily make it vegetarian by just leaving out the meat or replacing with your vegetable protein of choice.)

My favorite thing about this book is how the focus is on nutrition, not on weight loss or calorie-counting. In fact, there is no calorie information included at all, but the dish descriptions do go into the various nutrients in the ingredients and why they're beneficial for athletes. (Which....is why about a third of the recipes involve beets. I'll be skipping those.) There are no calls for low-fat/non-fat cheese or artificial sweeteners; in fact, there is a decided emphasis on eating plenty of healthy fats (including full-fat dairy). Basically the central message of the book is to try to cook with a variety of fresh, whole, nutrient-rich foods as much as possible and avoid processed things whenever you can. (Shalane credits this approach with finally stabilizing her weight & allowing her to stop counting calories and end a 15-year battle with amenorrhea.)

(Seriously, the lasagna is NOT diet foot. But it's packed with nutrients and sooooo tasty! It's been great for post-speed or tempo run with a big salad.)

Looking forward to trying more recipes in the future!

'Race' Report: Half Moon Bay International Marathon (Half)

Back in June my friend L signed up for the HMBIM Half, which would be her first half marathon. Thus far she had not been able to pressgang anyone else into running it with her, & since I knew I had to run a gajillion miles that day anyway & am always looking for excuses to run them on a different loop, I signed up as well. (I've been curious about this race for a while now so I also figured it was a good opportunity to scout the course & see if it was maybe worth for-real racing sometime in the future.)

Half Moon Bay is a kind of surfer's paradise on the ocean side of the SF peninsula, right off of Highway 1. If you've heard of the Mavericks surfing competition, it's where that happens. (In fact, the staging area for this race was the actual harbor where it happens.) It is utterly gorgeous and I was really looking forward to a nice, easy jog along the seaside without any pressure to hit a certain pace or pick off the runners in front of me.

Complicating all this was the fact that the day before we had a football game at 5pm. This meant we didn't get home until around 10 & it was nearly 11 by the time I got around to throwing race things in a bag & then finally got in bed--not great considering my alarm was set for 4:30am. (Have I mentioned in the past that I am not a morning runner? I am NOT a morning runner.) It turns out that in mid-September you can get up at 4:30am, get yourself ready to go, drive for forty minutes, park, futz around with your gear, finally start running and STILL not see the sun.

CIM WEEK 7 of 18: Big week & feelin' fine!

This week I started my weekend off with 13 miles on Friday afternoon: 2 warm up, 70:00 @ marathon pace, 2.25 cool down. #gobig

Much like Tuesday's track workout, this one had been out there looming in my mind, definitely the longest race pace training run (short of racing a half, which I don't really count) I've ever done during a marathon cycle. 70:00 worked out to ~8.75 miles, & I think in the past I've usually capped those race pace runs at around 6 miles, or sometimes two-mile chunks on and off during a long run. I also can't even remember the last time I did a training run this far that was not a long run. Maybe never. So, you can maybe see why, after Tuesday's shin-buster and two days of exhausting travel, I was shall we say curious to see how it would go.

Peak Speed Work

On Tuesday morning I got up early to do this monster of a track workout before heading to the airport:

• 2 miles warm up
• Drills/dynamic stretches
• 3 x 800m @ 5K pace / 200m jog
• 40:00 @ marathon pace
• 3 x 800m @ 5K pace / 200m jog
• 2 miles cool down

At 12.5 miles, this is the longest speed session on my training plan, & I'll do it once more in November about a month out from CIM (though there are many more only a mile or so shorter). I wasn't worried about it, per se, but after my long run on Sunday it was always there in the back of my mind, sort of looming and monolithic. Like. That is a lot of miles to run at not-easy pace.

CIM WEEK 6 of 18: french toast, trail shoes, & a little race fatigue...

There's a big orange bridge in there somewhere....

Grand Total:

48 miles + 3:00:00 strength

* 30 easy
* 18 long

Since I raced hard on Sunday 9/4, this week was just a bunch of easy running. It's so funny how I felt fine after the race, mostly fine for the rest of the day, kind of tired on Monday, and then by Tuesday & Wednesday I finally felt the full effect of all-out race exhaustion in my legs.

CIM WEEK 5 of 18: That cutback feeling

Blogger land leads me to believe that this is the part where I say "Ohhhh, it was so WEIRD to have a cut-back week after all these 45+ WEEKS, I felt like I BARELY RAN, I was going STIR CRAZY doing normal-people things instead of running a BAJILLION miles" but eff that noise, you guys. Other than the race (which, yeah, was awesome), this week sucked balls and I am not too proud to tell you about it.

Race Report: Race to the End of Summer 10K

In my opinion 10Ks are too short and fast for wearing headphones, but warming up for a hard effort 10K is a great time for getting yourself into the zone, so I spent Saturday evening putting together a little pump up playlist to get me amped & ready to throw down on Coyote Creek Trail the next morning.

Somewhere during this process I fell head-over-heels giddy in love with this track, which in short order became Angela's Official Theme Song for Race to the End of Summer 10K 2016:

Seriously. So great.

Race Preview: Race to the End of Summer 10K

You guys, I am feeling so jittery and nervous and just plain EXCITED about this race.

It has been so long since I've run a 10K where I actually thought I had a chance at a good race. I mean, it will not be a PR race; after all I've only got 3 weeks of speed work in the legs and won't really be tapering. BUT, I've been lifting a LOT (which I feel like makes a big difference for me at the 5K-10K distance) and I feel like I've built up a pretty strong base. So I'm feeling fairly confident that I've got a solid 6.2 miles in these legs. (As RunnersConnect reminded me recently, the 10K is still 90% aerobic, so there's that.)

The main thing I'm trying to make sure I have a handle on is the mental piece. I ran my first 10K post-stress fracture last February knowing that I wasn't going to set any records, but I still thought I could probably pull out a fairly respectable race. Instead my legs felt like lead and I proceeded to completely lose it mentally within the first mile, spent most of the rest of the race alternating between panic and grumbling to myself, & finished just fast enough to tie my personal worst.

In retrospect I think I went into that race afraid to truly run hard and suffer. It's true that I didn't have the fitness to run a great time no matter what, but I think if I'd gone into it more mentally prepared and braced for it, I wouldn't have fallen apart so easily. To quote triathlon legend Chris McCormack, "The common theme in every battle with pain I have ever won was my mind-set. It was only those times when I allowed the fear of the moment to manifest big enough in my own head—-when I didn’t think I could fully beat the problem with my self-talk and my checklist—-that the battle was lost."

So, here's the mental pep talk I'm giving myself for this weekend:

• Running fast is so, so, so much fun. Through all the marathon training & base training over the last few months, I have really, really missed the heart-pounding excitement of short, hard races. Yes, marathons hold a certain appeal for me, but there's nothing that makes me feel like a runner, like a competitive athlete, than going hard start to finish. I'm trying hard to hold onto my excitement about that.
• Running fast also hurts. A lot. Chris McCormack again: "As I began to think about it more, I realized that no matter how much I loved racing or how hard I trained, at some point a race is going to really suck. It is how I reacted to this moment that determined everything." (In case it isn't clear, I love that article.) The pain isn't your enemy; it's an indicator that you're pushing yourself hard and getting closer to your goal. "Pain is my friend, and I treat it that way. As it presents itself, I smile and say things like 'OK, here you are. I have been waiting for you.'"
• BUT, you're pretty good at coping with it. I really think that the last six or so miles at the Eugene Marathon helped me get my head back on straight about this. Those miles truly, truly sucked, but I had decided ahead of time that a) I was not going to back away from the pain and b) I was not going to let myself get into a negativity spiral about how awful it was or how slow I was going. Instead, I just kept reminding myself that "Baddasses embrace the suck. Are you a baddass or a weenie?" Afterward, I remember thinking, "Wow, that was truly, epically awful & you handled it fine," which was exactly what I needed.

According to the forecast it will probably be around 60° during the race (8:00am) & full sun, so I am mentally preparing for an uncomfortably warm race (not because I think 60° is hot, but in my experience that's the number where my performance starts to actively go downhill & full sun makes everything 10x worse, especially on pavement).

(Update, they're now saying partly cloudy/high 50°s, WOO-HOO!!)

On the other hand, it is a pretty flat course with almost no real turns, so--**provided I can get some good sleep & rest up sufficiently between now & then**--it should be a decent indicator of where my current fitness is.

So yeah--we'll see how it goes! :)