Catching Up, Part 2: Lessons Learned

Hello again friends. Welcome to Part 2 of our latest catch up, en route to, yes you heard right, a ✨👟marathon race report👟✨ (by which, just to be clear, I mean a race report about a marathon, not just, like, a **really long** race report).

Catching Up: Part 1 (icymi)

Where were we? Oh yes! End of July 2025; missing out on Tracksmith SF 5000; recovering from a horrific back strain. Let us move on to late summer.

In general, the plan was:

• Mid August ➡️ train for & run a one-mile time trial on the track
• Late August ➡️ Tahoe vacation with family
• September ➡️ Start training for CIM

AUGUST

In which the future was still so bright (in many ways). My back continued to feel fine; I continued to rip fast workouts on the track without worrying too much about building overall mileage. Having run a 6:28 mile on the roads in May with, like, two weeks of mile-specific training, I was very curious what I could manage on the track in spikes having spent the summer doing honest-to-gods speed work. 6:20? 6:15? Faster?? I tried getting a group together for a time trial day (mostly for my own selfish rabbiting purposes) but at that point people were mostly busy getting ready for other things so I ended up going it alone. On a weirdly humid August 17 I drove to the track, did a little warm-up and some strides, put my spikes on, and did my best to flog myself to one all-out mile, with not-terrible results: 

Catching Up, Yet Again: Part 1

Heyyyyy friends 👋👋👋 Long time no post. Such is life; things take crazy turns and suddenly writing about one's hobbies on the internet no longer falls into the top ten most critical tasks to be spending ostensible free time on. However, I HAVE JUST RUN A MARATHON and I feel that needs to be immortalized in these digital pages one way or another, so I'm making time.

But first, we need some context. This series of catch-up posts ends in a race report, but it's a race report that won't make a ton of sense without quickly (well, relatively quickly) buzzing back through the last seven months. So, without further ado......

Where We Left Off

Last we spoke, I had just run a pretty solid track 5K in Oakland (June 19), with plans to spend four weeks getting even faster, then run another track 5K in San Francisco on July 19.  Things went okay for a couple of weeks, and then, in retrospect, I started getting a bunch of messages from my body that ** Hey we are not okay, maybe take a few days off here **, but none of them were ever, like, BRIGHT BLINKING RED and/or I was just so distracted by everything else going on in life that it never really hit me all at once the way it should have.

Race Report: Oakland Twilight 5000m 2024

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

No joke, I have been trying to get a track race in since 2017! I tried twice that summer to run a track 5K and both times had to pull up short with a sudden calf strain. Since then I'd mostly been focused on other things, but a few years back, Tracksmith started their Twilight 5000 summer series, in which the company hosts a series of multi-heat 5000m track races around the country. When you sign up, you enter an estimated finish time, and then based on those times, they organize everyone into heats of ~40 people or so. (Estimated finish times range from 45:00 to sub-15:00 and there's also a kids' 500m heat, so definitely a heat for juuuuust about everyone who cares to run.)

Last year (2023), I signed up to run the San Francisco edition, but then--no joke--strained a calf muscle during a track workout a week before. 🤬 It had improved somewhat by race day but not even close enough to consider racing, so instead I cheered on my teammates and took photos. Having missed out, this year I signed up (as did many others) for both the Oakland and San Francisco iterations.

A couple of shots from SF Twilight 2023 last July

And then what happened?

Race Report: Impala Stampede 5K 2024

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

This race has I think been a Pacific Association race & part of the Road Short Course Grand Prix since its inception. Up until this year it had been called the Stow Lake Stampede, but with the renaming of Stow Lake (for very good reasons), the race needed a new moniker as well. Since "Blue Heron Lake Stampede" doesn't quite roll off the tongue in the same way, the race ended up taking the name of its sponsoring team. Because it's a PA race and starts literally three miles from my house, I signed up for it a long time ago because it's an easy way to help meet my team obligation of running eight PA races per year.

And then what happened?

Race Report: Mile of Truth 2024

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

This race has often been a Pacific Association race & part of the Road Short Course Grand Prix. (This year it was also the USATF Masters Road Mile Championship, which means some REALLY FAST masters were out there competing for an individual national title.) I ran it last year more as a warm body than anything else because we needed three masters women and no one else was available. 

To refresh your memory, I had a rough spring of running & racing in 2023. I'd been fighting with various injuries on and off for months and because of that really struggling to run more than 6-7 miles at a stretch, let alone get in anything resembling a workout. I ran an absolute dumpster fire of a 10-miler in early April, then had a bunch of travel over the next two weeks that culminated in getting Covid about a week and a half before the Masters 10K National Team Championships in Dedham, Massachusetts. There were only three of us going at all, and it was really a race against time in terms of testing negative so I could get on the plane in good conscience. (If you've never raced a 10K the week after having Covid, I do not recommend it!) The Mile of Truth was just six days later and I was really, really hoping someone else would end up available, but a couple days out it became clear it was just my two teammates and me.

Because there was no one else, I showed up, definitely not fully recovered from Covid and definitely DEFINITELY not recovered from racing a hilly 10K in the rain while *barely* not sick with Covid. I told the ladies I would do it but just, it would be a gd miracle if I managed to run even *one* sub-seven mile. They said all I had to do was show up and do my best, so that's what I did.

Mile of Truth 2023. My official time was 6:58, so. Who delivers for you, babe? 

Now. I am not nor have I ever *really* been a miler, so I wasn't personally invested in my time in this race at all. Though I have sometimes been curious about what kind of time I could run in an all-out mile if I really trained for it and had a good day. A funny thing happened after running this race in 2023, though, which was that I suddenly became really really curious about that, especially given that I knew circumstances were so especially bad for me on THAT day. I resolved there and then to run the race again in 2024 and to be in at least better-than-passable shape for it, even if I didn't specifically train for the mile.

And then what happened?

Race Report: Eugene Half Marathon 2024

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

The truth is, I got peer pressured by teammates. 🤣 I had a few shorter races on the schedule for the year but nothing that felt "big-ish," so when a group was planning to make a trip to Eugene with various members running the half or full, I decided to jump in for the half.

And then what happened?

I had a pretty solid February and March, but April was a bit catch-as-catch-can with all my various work and personal travel. By the end of the month I was feeling a bit run-down and struggling to recover super well from hard runs, but I was still excited for the trip to Eugene and to see how all my work over the spring would translate into the race.

Pre-race:

Eugene Half Taper Pt 2 (Eugene Half Week 8 of 8) Apr 22-28

OMG you guys. Work and life. They've been absurd lately. YES I am still out here running and racing but have not had the spare time or bandwidth to write about it. 😂 So here is the *final* installment of my Eugene Half training cycle and maybe one of these weeks I'll actually get the race report published too.

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4
Eugene Half Week 5
Eugene Half Week 6
Eugene Half Week 7

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 8 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 33.07 miles

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Eugene Half Taper Pt 1 (Eugene Half Week 7 of 8) Apr 15-21

ICYMI, on April 13, I made an arguably (smart? stupid?) choice to spend one of my days in Philadelphia driving 2+ hours to a local community 15K so I could get one more race experience in before Eugene. (Originally I was going to run the Prospect Park 10 Mile in Brooklyn on Sunday April 14, but my conference talk got moved and when I knew I wouldn't be able to make it back in time, I had to shift to a Saturday race.)

While the race itself was generally a good experience, the drive back was not kind to my knee. By the time I finished running, it was a bit stiff and achey, and then after three hours sitting in the car driving back, it was a bit swollen and not too happy with me putting weight on it. I had planned to run seven easy miles that Sunday the day after the race, but when I got up that morning I knew it was absolutely NOT happening.

Thus, the theme of week 7 became, "For the love of god, Angela, don't wreck your knee again." Thankfully, being just two weeks out from the race, all the work was already done, and as we recently learned, extra rest is almost always only going to help you.

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4
Eugene Half Week 5
Eugene Half Week 6

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 7 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 16 miles

🐌 Easy: 12.25 miles
🐎 Fast: 3.75 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 76.6% vs. 23.4%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Race Report: Ninja 15K (Apr 13 2024)

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

I wanted to run one more race before Eugene, ideally something longer than 10K (so I could treat it as kind of a Eugene dress rehearsal/long tempo) but less than another half marathon (because I didn't want to risk getting over-excited and blowing Eugene by all-out racing two weeks before). 

One of the main reasons I wanted to do this was because back when I ran NorCal Redding 10-miler in March, I did not run a good race tactically. I knew I'd had a rough week and was not fully recovered and epically misjudged my initial effort level, and when that happened and I suddenly started to feel really really bad, I sort of had a little mini-panic attack. I spent the whole race really unhappy and desperate to quit and also watching my pace creep up and up and up no matter what I tried to do. It got a little better in the last two miles but I *really* wanted another chance to practice the mental & strategic side of things, and bonus if it was a day when circumstances are not 100% perfect (as is usually the case, if we're honest).

Originally I was going to do this 10-miler in Brooklyn on Sunday since my talk was scheduled for Saturday, but then just a few days before the talk got moved to Sunday and there was absolutely no way I was going to make it back in time. So, I poked around a bit and found this little community race about two hours from Philly put on by this group offering a 1-mile, 5K, 10K, 15K, and half marathon (!) and signed up for the 15K (which is ~9.3 of The King's miles for those keeping score at home).

And then what happened?

Eclipse! + Far too many time zones for one week (Eugene Half Week 6 of 8)

OK, so. Last weekend, I had to give a paper at a conference in Philadelphia, and being two weeks out from Eugene and really wanting one more chance to get on a starting line before then, I'd planned to Amtrak into Brooklyn on Sunday morning to run this 10 miler in Prospect Park.

Buttttt then the talk was changed from Saturday to Sunday at 1:15pm, and there was just no feasible way to run a 9:15am 10 mile race and get back to Philly in time for this talk. So.

What do we do?

We turn to the internet to see what else is around. And what do we find?

This cheeky little 15K race (that's ~9.3 miles according to The King's Mathematics) in central Pennsylvania on Saturday morning. 

Is it glamorous? No. But did I care about that? Also no! I really just needed to run a *sorta* long-ish tune-up race where I could practice HM effort and using all the mental stuff I've been working on in a situation that feels more formal than weekend long runs on my own in Golden Gate Park.

Race report coming soon!

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4
Eugene Half Week 5

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 6 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 30.85 miles

🐌 Easy: 20.35 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 9.3 miles
🐎 Fast: 1.2 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 66% vs. 34%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Fatigue is piling up but so is fitness (Eugene Half Week 5 of 8)

Oof geez I am so behind with all the work / running travel lately! I have a lot of these to get through so let's just get to it.

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 5 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 38.6 miles

🐌 Easy: 30.85 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 6 miles
🐎 Fast: 1.75 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 79.9% vs. 20.1%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Big Miles + Radical Rest (Eugene Half Week 4 of 8)

Like most weeks, lately, this one was stressful and exhausting. Maybe not as much as some weeks. But still, I spent so much of the time feeling tired, both in terms of feeling fatigued (runs are hard, hard to motivate off the couch to accomplish basic tasks such as feeding myself) and sleepy (not always getting enough sleep, fighting off daytime naps).

By the time I finished Friday's 7-mile easy run, I was already thinking forward to Sunday's nontrivial long run workout (15 miles including 3 x 2 mile reps at half marathon effort) and strategizing about how I was going to make sure I got the most out of it. Thankfully, this past weekend was one of those rare and beautiful ones where I had absolutely no concrete commitments beyond keeping myself & the cats alive and doing the bare minimum necessary to keep our living space some basic level of functional/not gross.

The strategy I settled on was radical rest, which included the following pillars:

• After running on Friday evening, feed & hydrate self/cats ➡️ sit on couch & watch TV ➡️ go to bed early.
• Saturday ➡️ sleep in as much as possible ➡️ feed & hydrate self/cats ➡️ mostly sit on couch, feed/hydrate as necessary / carb load like a mother ➡️ go to bed early.
• Saturday ➡️ sleep in as much as possible ➡️ hydrate/consume moar carbs (& feed cats) ➡️ coffee ➡️ friggin' *crush* this long run workout.

Now, this *mostly* went to plan, though I cannot honestly say there were *no* deviations:

How Quickly Do We Lose Fitness? (Eugene Half Week 3 of 8)

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2

One of my favorite running podcasts as I've mentioned before is Pro Running News with Dave Lipman and Matt Fox; recently Matt Fox has also started doing his own separate podcast in addition to PRN called Sweat Elite (after his training/coaching company of the same name). 

In general Sweat Elite doesn't speak to me in quite the same way as PRN, but every now and then there is an episode or two that piques my interest. Recently Matt has been doing a series called "Training Talk" which is more focused on the nuts and bolts and fiddly details of designing good training and how a well-designed training plan creates the physiological adaptations (ie., "fitness") that make for strong performance. This week I listened to episode six in the series, entitled How Fast Do You Lose Fitness?, in which Matt interviewed Max Frankel, one of the Sweat Elite coaches and in fact the coach who has actually been designing Matt Fox's own marathon training. (Historically, Matt was/is a pretty high level middle distance runner who I believe even ran for some Australian national teams in his younger days.) 

Originally the episode was supposed to focus on a different topic but thanks to various Life Things, Matt had recently taken some unplanned days off from training, so instead they pivoted to discussing the role and impact of such unscheduled rest days. Ergo: How Fast Do You Lose Fitness?

Spring is Busting Out All Over! (Eugene Half Week 2 of 8)

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 3

You guys it's like the time changed and suddenly it's summer 🌞🌞🌞😎😎😎💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻. Or at least some semblance of spring. How lovely to procrastinate one's afternoon run until 5:30 or 6:00pm and not have to worry about the light. Simply marvelous.

AND AND AND it's been kinda sorta warm-ish here??? Or like 65ºF-ish at least??? Honestly when it's 65ºF and full sun, we call it summer and live it up.

The view from Tuesday's run through Golden Gate Park

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 2 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43 miles

🐌 Easy: 38.5 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 0 miles
🐎 Fast: 4.5 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 89.5% vs. 10.5%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

A Belated Look at Eugene Half Marathon Week 1 of 8

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3

Eek, getting behind on these! Just about six weeks left until Eugene. If you cast back into your memory, you might recall that this was the week right after NorCal John Frank Memorial 10 Miler. The race was Saturday March 2 and I took the Sunday completely off for some much needed rest. Then on Monday, it was back to work!

(Also, look, sorry, no photos this week, it turns out when you're strapped for time & just living your life, you don't really remember to take a lot of photos. Sorry. 😬)

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 1 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43 miles

🐌 Easy: 37.625 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 5 miles? (Counting anything 9:00 or faster at altitude as "moderate")
🐎 Fast: 0.375 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 87.5% vs. 12.5%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

A Hectic Race Week! (John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 4 of 4)

Well, race week has come and gone! If you want to know the deets, race report here. As for the week itself, it was kind of a stressful one with a short-but-intense work trip and some unfortunate travel woes. That plus a bit of insomnia earlier in the week (no real reason, just run-of-the-mill "HI HELLO THIS IS YOUR BRAIN LET US SPIN WILDLY THROUGH ALL THE THOUGHTS UNTIL THE WEE HOURS" brain stuff) meant that I unfortunately spent a lot of it exhausted and sleep-deprived, and checked off the first unintended zero day of the year (fortunately, just an easy four miles, nothing that tragic).

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 4 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 28.5 miles

🐌 Easy: 17.25 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 10 miles
🐎 Fast: 1.25 miles
(🏅 Race: 10 miles)

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Race Report: NorCal John Frank Memorial 10 Miler 2024

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

NorCal JFM10 is a PA race and when I'm able I'm trying to run as many of those as I can to support my team. (We get reimbursed for PA races as long as we run 8 per year.) Also, there was nothing else I was super excited to run this time of year instead and we had a pretty good size group going, so it just kind of made sense.

And then what happened?

From a training/staying healthy perspective, things actually went mostly according to plan. (I know, 🤯.) I had kind of accepted that my training might fall off a bit during my December travels, which did in fact happen (and also, I got a nasty respiratory virus which did not help, plus holidays, which, y'know, holidays). 

But after that I was able to pretty much jump back in! I believe the only run I skipped leading up to this race was the four easy miles I was supposed to do the Thursday before the race (due to travel woes). THIS NEVER HAPPENS! It helps that I had minimal work travel and the only weekend I had to be out of town was the weekend I spent in Tahoe (where getting the running done is usually pretty easy). Of course I was supposed to run Kaiser SF Half on Feb 4, which didn't happen due to weather, which meant a down week without a hard effort. Since then, though, I've been able to get right back at it without any interruptions which is always nice.

On the other hand, the week leading up to the race was rather stressful and I found myself constantly crunched for time, and had pretty poor sleep in the three nights leading up to the race. So while my fitness was pretty decent, I think, I did not arrive at the starting line feeling super rested and ready to go.

This is 43! (John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 3 of 4)

Hello! Here we are just a few days from the Johnny 10 and I am feeling particularly wise and sophisticated, having just completed my 43rd circuit around the sun. I spent the first part of the week frantically trying to meet work deadlines & then the last part chilling in Tahoe and blessing folk there with my hard-earned wisdom and life experience. Too busy skiing to take pictures so please enjoy these shots from a year ago:

Different year, same lake

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 3 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 38.85 miles

🐌 Easy: 25.51 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 9 miles
🐎 Fast: 4.34 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 65.7% vs. 34.3%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Two Weeks Till Johnny (John Frank 10 Miler Week 2 of 4)

Two weeks to go until we drive up to Redding and play in the hilllllzzz! Nothing too bananas to report this week, just chipping away. Some days feel better than others but over all I am feeling good and generally getting the training done more or less in the right vein. There is always the temptation to tack on a couple miles here & there, but sitting right in the low 40s has been working well for me for the last few weeks and I don't see a good reason to get greedy at this point.

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 2 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43.1 miles

🐌 Easy: 34.1 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 6 miles
🐎 Fast: 3 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 79.1% vs. 20.9%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Back to Work (John Frank 10 Miler Week 1 of 4)

...And we're back at it. Next up on the schedule is John Frank Memorial 10 Miler in Redding in March 2, with the longer-term goal being the Eugene Half on April 28. (Did I mention I signed up for the Eugene Half? I signed up for the Eugene Half! #peerpressure). 

JFM10 is a PA race so I'm mostly doing that as a club thing. The course is a bit hilly so I think a PR (sub 1:16:45) is unlikely, but even if it's not particularly fast, it'll still be a good workout and a good chance to race double digits before Eugene.

This week was mostly about just getting back in the swing of things, plus a 48-hour work trip to Orlando:

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler 1 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 42 miles

🐌 Easy: 33 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 4 miles
🐎 Fast: 5 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 78.6% vs. 21.4%. 

Guess which day was my first full day of jet lag.