March 2022 Reads!

In my twenties, I was very much a Type A, capital-S Striver. Everything was goals and plans and accomplishments. I have always loved books and stories and reading but let me tell you, for a while there I had a very unhealthy kind of Type A relationship with GoodReads. "You mean I can get likes and kudos and gold stars by PUBLICLY TALLYING the books I read and broadcasting them as ACCOMPLISHMENTS?? Say no more."

Eventually, though, that gets old. I still loved to read but I realized that there were times I was forcing myself to read and sometimes finish books just to watch my yearly count go up, and not because I was always enjoying it. Then came the thirties, and with them, permission to read when I felt like it and just sit on the couch and watch TV or scroll the internet if I didn't. Part of me felt so scandalized. "You can do this? It's allowed??" Something about it felt so wrong and lazy and I 100% embraced it.

And then (thank GOD) came the forties, and with it, The Great Panini (boo, no thanks). No one felt like doing anything they didn't absolutely have to. We as a society were constantly reassuring each other that we were going through a collective slow-motion trauma together, your job is to survive right now, no really, if ever there were a time it was completely acceptable to not improve oneself and do literally whatever you have to to avoid crippling depression and/or anxiety, it is now.

Training Log: New Shoes & "New Shoes" + 1 Week to San Jose (40)8K!

Friends it has been a week of unboxing new shoes here at Chez Road Warrior. For a while I was on a running-shoe-buying hiatus, and I am still being pretty choosy about it as I still have a few brand-new pairs of Saucony Kinvaras and Brooks Launch tucked away in the closet. That said I've definitely been wearing through plenty of pairs over the course of the panini and cutting down on the number in the active rotation.

I realized a few weeks ago that I was starting to have some weird foot pain that may or may not be my old friend PF rearing its ugly head, and I also tweaked a calf muscle last week which put the fear of god into me for a few days. I was ruminating on what in the world could be causing these things, and then also realized that I had at least three pairs of shoes that I had continued to run in even as they were worn down to the midsole (or worse!) because "they still feel good."

Sigh. Like many runners, especially those that run enough miles to be buying several pairs of shoes a year, I have definitely always erred on the side of squeezing every mile possible out of a shoe--a couple months on long run duty (up to say 200 miles), a few months in the easy run rotation (until they start to show serious wear), and then maybe a few months ferrying me to the gym and back. Basically, I will keep wearing them for *something* until they start to feel actively bad.

But like....look at this.

Training Log: (Super) Dead Super Shoes + Crisis Averted!

Before we get into this week's training log, a moment of silence please for this amazing (in some respects) pair of New Balance RC Elites that I super enjoyed running in for a little over a year. As you can see I really pushed the envelope in this these things but I think April 3's SacTown 10 was destined to be their last hurrah, and we're calling it at a whopping 216.27 miles according to my nerdy little spreadsheet. I am pretty sure when you can actually see and touch the actual carbon plate that you should not be running in a pair of shoes anymore regardless of how much they cost.

These shoes were a pandemic-era Christmas gift from my mom but I am pretty sure they cost $225 which puts us at about $1.04 per mile. I have never calculated this ratio for a running shoe before but once you get up into the > $200 super shoe category, it really just becomes irresistible.

I've had opportunities this last year to run in a few different carbon plate distance shoes (not the Nike ones, I absolutely refuse on principle) and I have a lot to say about them, so look for a future blog post going into more detail. But for now, just know that I loved these shoes *so much* in terms of feel and performance but was also super bummed at how non-durable they turned out to be (lesson learned).

ANYHOO, let us move on to this week's training log.

Race Report: SacTown 10 Miles 2022 (+ USATF Masters 10 Mile National Champs!)

Why did I sign up to run this race?

Originally I had been thinking I would stick to PA short course races for the spring as I was getting back into the swing of things, but then I actually really enjoyed Kaiser Half in February and started to feel like, hey, maybe the long stuff could be fun too?? My "official" 10 mile PR was an incredibly soft 1:20:xx (about 8:00-8:05 pace) from one time that I'd run a 10 mile race as a marathon pace workout, so I thought odds were good I could probably better that a bit.

Later I found out that, not only was SacTown a PA race this year, it would also be the USATF 10 Mile Masters Championship race. There were three other 40-44 ladies on the team planning to run, so I really just couldn't pass up the experience.

And then what happened?

Then I ran my fastest half marathon in nine years at Oakland on March 20! Including a 10-mile split of 1:16:44 (~7:40 pace), utterly demolishing my old PR. Coach A asked me if I had any goals for SacTown and I kind of just arbitrarily said let's shoot for 1:15 (7:30 pace)??? I didn't feel like I'd run all-out at the half marathon so it seemed like it wasn't completely unreasonable.

Training Log: SACTOWN 10 Race Week!

Kind of a weirdly high mileage week for going into a race, but intensity-wise it wasn't too over the top. The highlight (other than the race) was probably the 4 x 1Ks. Coach A had suggested 4:08-4:20 for each K (~6:40-7:00 pace) as a place to start & then we could see how that felt. I really have not done a ton of speed work like this lately and immediately thought "Ooooh that's fast, going to have to really hammer those!" I started the first one and thought, "Ok, this might be about right." Then I looked down and saw 5:53 pace on my watch. OOPS!

I managed to slow them down a bit but I think I still ran them faster than I needed to. (4:04, 4:06, 3:56, 4:10) So, hey! Whattaya know, I actually do have some leg speed!

~*~*~ SacTown 10 Race Week!~*~*~

Training Log: Two Weeks to SACTOWN 10 Miles

 Hey, I survived Oakland Half Marathon! Better than survived it!

Running last week was pretty boring as I was mostly just trying to recover from the race, so maybe it's a good time to mention how *weird* that race/recovery process was compared to my memory of past half marathons. Like I said in my race report, I didn't feel like I ran the race all that hard -- for the first seven miles I was running in total comfort, and I didn't really try to run hard until the last 5K. That said, I ran hard enough at the end that I was VERY happy to be done, but I also felt pretty normal pretty quickly after (ie, no wandering around in a daze/looking for a place to throw up) and drove home feeling peppy and spry.

That evening and the next couple days, though? Oh ho ho! A different story!