Spoiler: I do, most of the time. :)
Look closely, they're there!
These days my headphones of choice are Shokz Aeropex (now listed as Shokz OpenRun), which are bone conduction open-ear headphones specifically designed for running. That means that they don't actually go in your ears, which means you can still actually hear everything going on around you while using them. Yes they're a bit pricey, but I got my current pair on a Labor Day sale in 2021, and given that I use them nearly every single day of my life (not only for running but also a lot of times while working, doing errands on foot, or doing chores around the house), that $141.16 (after tax) amortizes to something like 30 cents a day and dropping, which seems like a pretty good deal. (And also people pay $250+ for freaking AirPods???? 😱 JGDFC.)
I haven't always run with headphones, but back around circa 2014 or 2015, I think, I had the horrifying revelation that there was no way I could possibly read all the books I wanted to read in my puny little lifetime, mainly because traditional reading where you hold something in your hand and scan your eyeballs across the letters doesn't lend itself to multi-tasking. I.e. you can only do that kind of reading when you have time to sit down and do literally nothing else.
That realization led me to audiobooks, which changed my life. The idea that I could download a book onto my phone and listen to someone read it to me while I toodled around the city getting my miles in made me deliriously happy because a) it instantly doubled the number of books I could consume, and b) on days where I was really struggling to get out the door, putting on my headphones and turning on the audio book du jour was like slipping into a nice warm bath, which somehow made it easier to put on running shoes and go outside. Basically, it significantly improved two hobbies I already really enjoyed.Soon after, the Golden Age of Podcasts arrived and suddenly I had all kinds of other things I wanted to listen to in addition to books. These days I still usually listen to books while running, but sometimes if there's a podcast episode I'm excited about or I feel like I need a little break from my current audiobook, I'll listen to podcasts instead.
This week it occurred to me, Perhaps the people want to know what's in your ear buds each week??? Perhaps this is a crucial element of the weekly training log experience that we've been sorely neglecting? So, here you go. We'll try it out & see if it improves all of our lives.
(Also out of idle curiosity, as I begin to add workouts back into my weeks, I decided to actually do the math & see how my easy miles compare to my moderate/fast miles percentage-wise & how close I am to that ideal 80/20 split.)
Grand Total: 37.1 miles
🐌 Easy: 29.6
🏃🏻♀️ Moderate: 4
🐎 Speed: 3.5
⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 79.8% vs 20.2%
🎧In my ears this week:🎧
- The Burning White by Brent Weeks (Lightbringer Book #5). I've been slowly working my way through this amazing epic fantasy series since 2015. Clocking in at nearly 1,000 pages, The Burning White is finally wrapping things up!
- If Books Could Kill (podcast): "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus". I am losing my mind over this new podcast from Michael Hobbs (Maintenance Phase, formerly You're Wrong About) and Peter Shamshiri (Balls & Strikes, 5-4 Pod) where in each episode they discuss, debunk, and mock the dumbest (and most harmful) "airport books" in publishing history. This episode covers the absolutely deranged cult classic Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. The tagline? "In 1992 a yoga instructor with a distance-learning PhD had the courage to ask: 'Are women not getting help around the house because they're using the wrong modal verb?'" Perfection, friends. 🤣
- Nobody Asked Us with Des & Kara. I have to say that as soon as I heard about this new project from Des Linden & Kara Goucher I immediately binged all three currently released episodes. Like many distance runners I've followed the careers & various other exploits of both of these amazing ladies for years but it was interesting to hear that they actually didn't really know each other that well before the podcast and before that had only had like three conversations longer than five minutes. I love that they are both so candid and honest and casual in their conversations and I don't feel like professional athletes always get to interact "publicly" in that way.
Monday 1/23: Rest. Like yes I just had two days off from running BUT I spent them making long late-night drives, staying up late, getting up early, sleeping at altitude, and skiing reasonably hard-ish. So I woke up Monday feeling borderline sick.
Tuesday 1/24: 1 hour strength + 6 easy. Not 100% recovered but definitely feeling better than Monday. I'm often sore from lifting by the time I head out on my Tuesday runs but today the soreness seemed startlingly absent!
On easy runs, I set my watch to see only distance and heart rate so that I can completely ignore pace and just focus in on keeping it super easy and relaxed. These days, that super easy level of effort might translate into anywhere from 9:00 to 10:20 pace, and most of the time I can tell by how I'm feeling whether I'm going to see slightly faster splits or slightly slower ones. However, this was one of those days where the run itself felt so great--smooth, comfortable, just gliding along happily--but was actually pretty slow on average. (Real talk, I was actually kind of happy to see it, since the math says my easy runs should generally be in the ~9:45 range and I get angsty when I feel like I'm running super easy and see a much faster split.)
Wednesday 1/25: 2.25 warm up, 10 x 1:00 HM pace / 1:00 easy, 2.25 cool down = 7 total. OK listen I know it says "half marathon pace," but DAMN for the first couple of intervals I felt like I was running *hecka* fast & then I'd look down at my watch and see like 8:00 pace or something. And then as I got into the swing of things, I definitely found myself overdoing it, sometimes running at closer to 10K or even 5K pace. So while I wouldn't normally call HM pace anything "speed," this definitely felt more like a speed workout than not (and when you haven't been doing ANY kind of speed work (besides the odd 30-second hill sprint), even 1:00 of running "fast-ish" feels hard!).
Thursday 1/26: 5 easy. Just a relaxed recovery toodle, nothing much to see here.
Friday 1/27: 6 easy. Cold and windy!
Saturday 1/28: Rest. I did not want to rest!!! I wanted to run!!! But my body has not seen upwards of 10 miles at once or 35 miles/week in *quite* some time and I didn't want to jeopardize either Sunday's long run OR my long-term plans for this spring. We spent the evening celebrating Lunar New Year and enjoying the recently-opened Dungeness crab season with friends, which was almost as good as running.
Sunday 1/29: 9.1 easy + 4 x (1/2 mile @ MP / 1/2 mile easy) = 13.1 long. (Gotta check off that January Strava half marathon challenge, amirite.) Despite the fact that it was another cold, windy day, this run was one of the easiest and most enjoyable I've had in recent memory. I was targeting around 4:00 each for the 1/2 mile MP intervals but again still super out of practice, so they were more in the 3:48-3:55 range. Definitely ready to try some longer intervals next week, I think!
In Case You Missed It:
Victory Half Week 1 of 8Victory Half Week 2 of 8
Victory Half Week 3 of 8
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