SJRNRHM Week 1 of 14: run in tahoe, try not to faint

Oof. This training cycle is not starting out the way I'd hoped! My plan was to race an awesome 5K on 6/17, then spend a couple of weeks building easy mileage back up to the ~40 range, then start workouts & gradually build to training mileage. Alas, that calf strain or whatever it was during the 5K really threw a wrench into that plan. Instead of easing pretty much right back into easy miles, I had to take an entire week completely off, so obviously the week after THAT I was not going to immediately jump back to 40+ weeks & speed/tempo workouts.

Instead, the story of this first week of SJ Half Training has been let's-try-to-get-maybe-some-nonzero-amount-of-miles-in-without-re-injuring-the-calf. By now I've learned my lesson about trying to do too much too soon after even a minor injury, so my only goal was just to take it day by day & see how things felt.

And, it was not a bad week. We ended up going to Tahoe Friday through Monday so that Don could ski (yes, there is still skiing in Tahoe because #california) and I could spend a few glorious free days working, reading, running, & lounging by the many many swimming pools. (We had to Hotwire a swanky resort because we waited too long to book anything reasonable. It was not cheap but at least we did get a pretty huge discount on the normal price, and I gotta say, man, sometimes I totally see why people go to resorts.)

Skiing in July!

You didn't know there was a swimming pool & a hot tub at the top of Squaw, did you?

Tahoe adventures included kinda sorta pretending to (briefly) be a trail runner, seeing a real live bear way too close for comfort, & nearly passing out on a run. (Heat! Hills! Altitude! They do not screw around.)

Anticipation Fatigue: It's A Thing.

This Tuesday's track session was a not-insignificant 2 mile warm-up + drills/dynamic stretches, 10 x 1K / 200m jog, 2 mile cool down. The target for the 1K's was pace was 4:34 (7:21 pace), just a bit slower than I ran my 10K in a few weeks back.

This is what Kezar Stadium looks like at 4pm. By 6pm there are approximately 700 people on it.

Something I've noticed in both long, hard workouts as well as races is this phenomenon I've started calling "anticipation fatigue." With anticipation fatigue, you are preparing to do something sort of frighteningly hard like run a scary pace for longer than you feel confident about, or do a freaking shit-tonne of hard intervals, or something of that nature. And regardless of how easy or hard this feat *actually* is, the thought of it kind of terrifies you, and for some nonzero portion of it, you are absolutely 100% sure it's going to end up being a PW or otherwise completely awful.

Interestingly, I don't think I would have ever noticed this phenomenon except that I've written so, so many race reports that start with me thinking, "This is impossible, I feel so awful, what if I can't even finish," and then by halfway or two thirds through, thinking, "THIS IS AWESOME AND I AM AWESOME AND PHBBBBTTT THIS ISN'T EVEN HARD." And the only conclusion I can arrive at is that a not-insigifnicant part of the perceived effort involved with distance running is mental, and when our confidence is not in the stratosphere, it is possible to mistake mental exertion (race tactics, managing pace, balancing how you feel now with how you think you might feel x miles from now) for physical exertion.

(I remember experiencing a version of this at Race to the End of Summer, my first all-out race in quite some time. In mile 2-3ish, I found myself thinking, "Man, this is hard." But when I really pushed myself to think about it--"But is it actually, physically that bad now?"--I realized that "Actually...no." It was just the mental work of maintaining the pace and managing scary thoughts about how many minutes were left. To be honest, the actual physical discomfort & pain didn't kick in until the last mile or so.)

Looking at Tuesday's track workout on paper beforehand, my reaction was pretty much, "Well this is going to be balls," because 1) in the past when I've done "K" track workouts I've made the mistake of thinking a kilometer is super short (probably because 5Ks are "short" and 1K is only 20% of that) and then partway through realizing that oops, no, a K is actually pretty significant in terms of speed work, and 2) I ran 4 x 1600m on the treadmill at the same pace a week ago, which was also balls, and while 1000m is significantly shorter than 1600m, 10 is MORE THAN DOUBLE 4. #mathmajor.

Add to this the fact that I was still not sure how my battered knee would respond to speed work on the track, and yeah, I was more than a little nervous about this 11.5 mile workout. Like nausea-and-cold-sweat nervous.

SCARED WHO'S SCARED

The first intervals did not feel good. My legs felt tired and just generally non-responsive. There was a lot of cold sweat and I feel like my heart rate was probably a lot higher than necessary, which of course made everything feel harder than it should have. Two intervals in and "EIGHT MORE OF THESE ARE YOU SERIOUS????"

Generally at the track I run by feel and easily beat the targets without working too hard but this time I was 100% going out of my way to run exactly the pace prescribed and no faster. Mentally I kept trying to tell myself, "7:21 isn't even fast. 7:21 isn't even fast. 7:21 isn't even fast," but my legs didn't care. It wasn't that I felt I was working that hard; it was just my legs being like "Yeah; don't wanna. #sorrynotsorry."

And then, as I found I actually was able to run K after K between 4:31 and 4:34 with no problem and no pain from my knee, something in my mind or body or both kind of flipped, and they really did start to feel not that fast and also not that hard. Like, I actually found myself zoning out & sometimes losing track of which interval I was even on. "Oh, this interval is over? I almost forgot we were running one!"

I finished all 11.5 miles feeling hungry and kind of low blood sugar but otherwise fine. Knee pain was maybe .6 out of 10 -- I could feel that it wasn't 100% normal, but it was more just weird pressure from time to time, not really pain.

(And, definitely worse running in the "correct" counter-clockwise direction. Kezar is generally too busy for fast intervals in lane 1 in the "wrong" direction to feel safe, but I did my warm-up & cool down in the clockwise direction, which was definitely a little easier on the knee.)

Am I crazy? Does anyone else get "anticipation fatigue" early in a race or hard workout and then end up crushing it? please say yes

I go to PT, again.

I was super happy that UCSF was able to book me with the therapist I was seeing back when I had all my hip problems in 2013. He's the head of the department so sees fewer patients & is harder to schedule, but he also happens to be the guy that knows about running, so my doctor wanted me to see him specifically.

We started out as usual with all the basic mobility assessments where he watched me walk, run, squat, balance/hop on one leg, etc., then did some strength testing where he pushed and pulled on my legs in various ways while I tried to resist. The good news is that he said overall my strength is good and my movement/mobility is improved from 2013.

The bad news is that basically my entire left side is clearly significantly weaker than the right--hamstrings, hips, glutes, and wrapping around to my right lats. (Apparently it's kind of like how the left side of your brain controls the right eye & vice versa--the upper body muscles that help stabilize the pelvis/upper leg are on the opposite side. Like if you push off & back with your left leg, it's your right lats/upper core that resists the rotation & helps you balance.) Sometimes those imbalance things are a little tricky to tease out and determine, but this was just so immediately obvious in every strength test he did, even to me.

Before we started I told him about my theory regarding my left foot & how striking wrong & not engaging my arch might be causing all sorts of other problems up and down the line, and the article from AT, and how taping my left foot seemed to work magic, which he acknowledged was not entire ridiculous. (I call that a victory.) After doing all the strength testing & determining my left leg was clearly weaker, he explained how it it could be that weakness further up that's making it hard for me to use my left foot properly. So step 1 is definitely to do some targeted strength work on that left side for a couple of months & see if that helps.

In a way, this is the kind of bad news that's actually good news, in a way--He found a clear, unambiguous problem that *could* realistically be connected to the injuries I've had in my lower left and upper right legs over the last couple of years. It's when I see a medical professional and they just kind of look at me and shrug and say I'm perfectly normal as far as they can tell that it gets frustrating.

As it tends to go with PT, the exercises he gave me for my left hamstring and hip muscles are pretty simple but also incredibly difficult (which is a good sign I need to do them). He also recommended that I go back to doing some single-leg eccentric glute stuff, which I've been neglecting lately. Finally, he suggested that because my left heel and arch are definitely visibly collapsing a bit, even just when I walk, I should stick a Superfeet insert in my left shoe as a short-term solution while we work on strengthening the muscles. So hopefully that will give me some immediate relief.

On the plus side, he did not do this to me again:

I found this picture the other day and it was so cringe-inducing that I felt like it was worth sharing again. You're welcome. :)

Mystery Suck-Run Theater + an actual kinda-sorta (ish?) long run

It's funny how individual patterns tend to emerge with runners. For example, I remember reading a while back about an elite marathon runner (can't remember who) who invariably had her worst workout of the season on the Tuesday before going on to have a fantastic "A" race on Sunday. She would feel awful, her stride would feel off, everything would feel super hard, she wouldn't hit her paces, the works. The first couple of times this happened she had a total freakout (as one might), but a few marathons into her career, she & her coach just accepted that this was a thing that happened, completely unrelated to anything they could control (sleep/nutrition/hydration/rest days/etc.), and that it didn't predict how Sunday's race would go. Eventually they were just like, "Well, it's Terrible Tuesday, let's get it over with & move on."

I noticed this happening this summer when I started running on most Wednesdays for the first time in a while. Generally in the past I haven't run on Mondays or Wednesdays because a) there isn't generally time before karate unless I leave work early, and b) it can be tough sometimes to do an honest run and then go do a solid, cadiovascularly-demanding martial arts workout as well. (I can do it, but the quality of my karate tends to not be as good, which as an instructor, I feel self-conscious about.)

Never miss a chance to throw down with your significant other. (I am wearing one glove because at that point we thought my finger might be broken.)

But I wanted to experiment with a six-days-per-week training schedule, so I decided to make the sacrifice while training for Santa Rosa & try to leave a little early on Wednesdays to get in a short, easy run before class.

And OH MY LORD those runs universally sucked. I think I maybe had one good one all summer. The rest of the time I felt exhausted and inevitably had to deal with some kind of not-that-insignificant pain. (It could be foot cramps, tight Achilles/calves, shin splints, back/shoulder pain, sore quads or hamstrings, etc., things that almost never happened on any other day of the week.) Sometimes it got better a couple miles in; sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I'd push through the entire assigned mileage; sometimes I'd claw & crawl my way to four slow, achey miles & call it quits.) Thursday would be better, Friday better still, & inevitably I'd have my best runs of the week on Saturday & Sunday. After taking Monday off, my Tuesday track workouts were generally fine-to-good, and then Wednesday we were back to the ninth circle of hell.

It was kind of liberating to just accept that it was a thing that happened. At least I could mentally prepare myself for it. But I always felt like there had to be some explanation. Like, maybe Sunday long run + Monday strength & karate + Tuesday track + Wednesday morning strength work was just the wrong combination, even though I took Monday off from running. Maybe I needed to sleep more on Tuesday nights. Eat better. Something. But I never did find that smoking gun.

I am not marathon training now (except in the largest-scale terms) and feel no need to run six days a week while I base-build, so in general I'm back to taking Monday & Wednesday off from running. Schedules get funky sometimes, though, and this week, it's just worked out that running on Sunday and Tuesday was not going to happen. So instead, I've worked a little more on other days, left early on Monday & Wednesday, & shoe-horned in my usual easy six miles before class. And honestly, until Wednesday, I had not thought once about those horrific ninth-circle-of-hell runs from this summer.

But holy hell. Precisely .1 miles out my door on Wednesday, I was already having my worst run in months.

My feet hurt. My Achilles tendons felt like they were going to snap. I felt utterly drained. Heart-rate wise, I've been mostly staying in the 140s on these easy runs, but even running in the 10:00-10:30 range, it felt so hard and my heart rate was up around 160.

Wednesdays!!!! I shake my fist at you.

Oh, you guys. It was so, so hard. When I hit one mile, I couldn't remember what my life had been like before I started that run. At that point I had already turned around and started heading back home. To do what, I didn't know. Quit? Maybe. Sit in the floor for a while? Not sure. But as I was running back (so slowly. So, soooo slowly), it hit me that the shoes were not helping. They felt too squishy, too sloppy, were obscuring the ground too much for me to get a good feel of it. And suddenly I desperately wanted nothing more than to get out of them & back into my good ol' Kinvara 5's.

Which is a little bizarre, because the shoes I was wearing are ones I've been running in all summer. I don't absolutely *LURV* everything about them, but they have their good points, particularly on days when my feet are feeling a bit sore from a lot of pounding. (In fact, I've had a review sitting in my 'drafts' folder, 99% done, for months now, which I should just freaking publish already so I don't have to look at it anymore.) It wasn't that I thought the entire problem was the shoes, but man, I just felt so sure they weren't helping and putting on the Kinvaras would feel so much better.

And, it did. Once home, I wiped my sweaty face off with a cold towel, switched my shoes, took a few deep breaths, & headed back out the door, just to see if there was any chance of getting anymore running done. I stayed close to home, and though I still didn't feel great at first, my feet and legs felt better, and gradually I settled in to a reasonably comfortable groove (though even the slightest incline still felt considerably more difficult than it should have). I finished my planned six miles, at a slightly lower pace & heart rate than I have been, in fact, so that was something. (But seriously, I would not have blamed myself nor anyone else for just throwing in the towel, with how absolutely awful I felt in the beginning.) On the other hand, there goes my theory about how this summer's Woeful Wednesdays were the fault of a long run on Sunday & a track session on Tuesday, since in the five days prior to this run I'd had four rest days & one easy six miler, on the heels of two pretty low mileage weeks.

So yeah. Running is weird & bodies are weird & they do weird stuff together, sometimes in patterns, for no good reason at all.

* * *

Originally I was kind of following an actual schedule, but like I mentioned, life has been wacky lately, so more and more I've kind of just been running *about* the number of miles on my schedule whenever I have time, because who knows when time I'd planned to spend running will suddenly disappear without advance notice. This week worked out better than my last two, thankfully, and in addition to shoe-horning in all the mid-week runs, I got my long run in as well.

Doing the low heart rate stuff makes long runs kind of confusing. Mentally, I don't usually think of a run as properly "long" until it's at least 14 or 15 miles. Because I'm running so much slower now, though, the time it takes me to run 12 miles is the same time in which I'd normally run about 15 miles I think, so it definitely feels long time-wise.

WEEK OF 10/20-10/26

Grand Total: 36 miles

* 24 easy
* 12 long
* 3 x 45:00 strength workouts

Monday: a.m. strength work / afternoon 6 easy / p.m. karate

Since I didn't get my Sunday long run in the day before, I started the week off with an extra run on what is usually my non-running day. I'm not sure why (since I was coming off of three days of basically complete rest), but halfway through this run, I started having some of the old familiar pain in my right leg. As usual, most of the pain was in my adductor and wrapping around my quad from my outer hip to my inner knee. It was very mild, but continued in to karate, to the point that I had to bow out of some of my basics because I could barely lift my right leg without a lot of pain. Thankfully, I spent maybe half an hour just working with students & not physically doing much, & that seemed to take care of things, because I was able to pull out a set of actually pretty awesome-feeling kata in the last half hour or so of class. Still, it makes me nervous any time I feel even the faintest hint of that upper right leg stuff.

Tuesday: Rest

We spent the evening interviewing realtors again, which kind of precluded any running. Which was fine, actually, because for some reason my quads were TRASHED. Currently I'm blaming it on my first triple in god knows how many weeks/months.

Wednesday: a.m. strength work / afternoon 6 easy / p.m. karate

GOD that run sucked. It got better, but it still sucked.

Thursday: 6 easy

Much better than Wednesday, but for some reason the narrow toe box & snugness of the Kinvara 4's started bugging me on this run, almost to the point of causing my feet to cramp up. Maybe because I've been running in the wider 5's so much lately.

Friday: a.m. strength work / p.m. 6 easy

A lovely, cool, breezy run. I tried out the Newtons that I've been wearing less and less and less over the last few months; eventually they were semi-okay, I guess, but much like with the K4's the day before, they felt kind of tight and crampy on my feet for the first few miles. They also felt really stiff, & honestly, every time I wear them, I see the point of the lugs less and less. (Honestly, it kind of makes me feel a little like I'm running in those clip-in cycling shoes.)

Saturday: Rest/football

All my week day runs had worked out as planned and we had a football game in the middle of the day, so it seemed like it made sense to take Saturday off before Sunday's long run.

When we left Stanford, it was warm and sunny. Twenty minutes later halfway back to the city, not so much. :-/ At this point, though, hey, we'll take any rain we can get.

Honestly, for most of this day, I actually really felt like I wanted to go for a run, and almost did! I tweaked my right hamstring on Friday and it was still a bit sore, though, so I forced myself to channel all that enthusiasm into Sunday's long run.

Sunday: 12 long

I did the first four miles of this run in a new pair of shoes, then switched into my trusty Kinvara 5's for the rest. This was my longest run both distance- and time-wise since Santa Rosa, and it felt great, so that's encouraging.

One more week of all super-easy miles, after which I'm planning to start doing some marathon pace / effort (?) runs on Tuesdays, which, given that I haven't seen a split faster than 9:40 in nearly two months, should be ummmmmmmmm interesting.

The Pre-Marathon Crazies

With four weeks still to go, it does seem a wee bit early for that, doesn't it? (Well, I guess technically less than four at this point. I have been writing this post in 10 minute spurts for several days now, but it was still four when I started on Sunday.)

One of the things I've been talking with people in karate about lately is how our perceptions of how much we know & understand about something change as we learn more. As a blue belt (so say ~2-3 years into karate), I considered myself fairly knowledgeable and experienced in the martial arts. Sure, I was aware that there was a lot that I didn't know, but still felt like I'd learned TONS. A couple of years later as a green belt, I still recognized that I'd learned a lot, but had become significantly more aware of how much there was that I didn't yet know or understand. By the time I was a brown belt, and more knowledgable than my blue belt self by an order of magnitude, I was pretty much floored by the vastness of everything I had left to learn. Now, as a black belt, I feel like I've just barely got the basics out of the way. My current knowledge & skill is a grain of sand on the beach.

It's kind of the same way with running. After my first year or two of training for longer distances & running road races, I felt like I pretty much knew what I was doing training-wise. Several years later, I feel like I only really have a good understanding of the most basic principles, and there are a million more complex, involved pieces that completely mystify me.

That's what I've been thinking about since my long run this past Sunday. When I checked my schedule last week, my Sunday assignment was 16 miles, which made sense to me since the previous long run was my first 20-miler of the cycle. Later in the week, though, I saw that the distance for that run had been increased to 17-18. I don't know why that made me more nervous than 16, but it did. Just a little.

Circumstances going into this run could've been better. I didn't sleep well Saturday night, woke up early Sunday morning & couldn't get back to sleep, then came home after brunch with friends and crashed. I kinda-sorta woke up at 3:45 pm, didn't really want to get up, but started doing the math in my head & knew that if a long run was going to happen, it needed to happen NOW. (Thankfully it's late April & not November -- I *hate* finishing a long run in the dark.)

When I read blogs, I often get the sense that the "normal" thing is to hate speed work & adore long runs. Not me; not even close. In fact if I could magically eliminate one piece from distance training, it would be long runs. (The irony of this is not lost on me.) On Sunday it was worse than usual. Getting dressed, sun screening myself, & digging out gels kind of felt like walking to the gallows. There may or may not have been some quiet weeping. I felt tired & slightly ill as I started out, and even a few miles in, I wasn't convinced things were going to get much better. I could not have been less concerned with pace--my only goal was to maintain my usual easy effort & get the damn thing over with.

So I was kind of surprised to see that my 3rd mile, uphill & into the wind through the Panhandle, was sub-8:30, because I didn't feel like I was running all that fast & at an easy effort I usually do that section in the 8:40s or so. "Eh, I should probably try to rein it in a little," I thought to myself, considering how much farther I had to go; I have never in my life failed to negative split a long run & I was not about to start now.

A mile later, cruising through Golden Gate Park at a slightly easier, more relaxed pace, an 8:02 split popped up on my watch. For a second I was sure I must be reading it wrong. "Casual / easy" for me usually falls into the 8:30-8:50 range, maybe a little faster going downhill or with a tailwind. I still felt kind of sleepy & ill, but certainly not like I was pushing very hard. Nevertheless I knew that this was not an appropriate long run pace in any way, so I tried again to breathe deep and relax and sloooooow it down.

Mile 5: 8:10 ("Whut")

Mile 6: 8:22 ("Ok that's slightly more like it.")

Mile 7: 8:08 ({blink blink})

Mile 8: 8:10 ({face palm})

Mile 9, uphill: 7:59 ("OK SERIOUSLY???)

Don't get me wrong; I'd love to think that low eights are a responsible, sustainable long run pace for me. I would. That would be just awesome. But they aren't. 7:50-8:10 is basically my marathon goal range. My long runs should really *never* be averaging faster than 8:30ish. If I'd been consistently hitting 8:2x's at an easy pace, I would've been thinking, "Wow, this is a ridiculously fast long run!" These felt absurd, though, & had me slightly panicked.

I know there is a school of thought that says significant chunks of long runs should be done at race pace, but with one exception every person I have ever asked about it who works with competitive runners for a living has kind of given me that "Really, this again?" look & been pretty clear that they consider it a rookie mistake. A few miles here & there at race pace during your long run, fine. The last 20-25% on occasion, even--probably okay. But otherwise the consensus seems to be that the purpose of long runs is to get time on your feet & teach your body to fuel itself aerobically for longer and longer periods of time, not work on race pace. That doing all or most of long runs at race pace, although it boosts our confidence to prove to ourselves we can do it, is essentially putting your body through near-race effort every week or so & making it impossible to get the most out of the rest of your training because you just can't recover fast enough.

I wonder about this from time to time when I think back to when I was training for CIM '12. Yes, there are many reasons why I didn't have a stellar race, but I have a hunch that a too-fast 21 miler three weeks beforehand played a role in both my feeling exhausted from the very beginning and also pushing my injured foot from mildly-annoying-but-bearable into potential DNF territory. I mean, seriously -- you would never race a fast marathon, then three weeks later expect to be able to do it again even remotely as well, and that's really not all that far off from what I did.

All that in mind, I kept trying to slow it down to a pace that felt both easy effort-wise and comfortable on my body. I tried and tried and tried, but the 8:30-40ish pace that normally feels both comfortable and nicely efficient felt impossibly slow, like I was taking plodding, mincing little strides. When I didn't think about it & just tried to run at a nice, easy, comfortable pace, the numbers magically gravitated back to that way-too-fast marathon pace zone.

I'll probably slow down on the uphills, I thought. Nope.

I'll probably start to get tired towards the end & slow down a little, I thought later. I did get tired, but it didn't seem to have any noticeable effect on my pace. Usually on an easy run, even if I get going a little faster than normal, I slow down again once I get back into my neighborhood & have to deal with lights, pedestrians, dogs, etc. But even that last mile was faster than I think I've ever run it (with the exception of a couple of ill-advised tempo runs. Don't ever try to do tempo miles in the Mission / Castro / Noe Valley).

Yes, I was tired after. But I'm tired after even a slow long run; that's just how long runs work. In addition to feeling tired, though, I also finished feeling strong, which is rare for me post-long run. I could feel my legs. My feet weren't throbbing. My form felt good. Usually I have jello-legs & just want to go sit in an ice bath with a beer.

Before I discovered regular-people running blogs, I used to read Coach Jenny's blog at Runners World fairly frequently, where I learned a lot of the basic principles of distance training. In response to the recent spike in interest in the Boston Marathon, she wrote a post last week entitled "How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon." There's probably not much on it that would surprise most folks who have been doing this a while, but one quote in particular stuck out for me:

"American 50K record holder Josh Cox said it best when I asked him how he trained to break the 50K world record: 'It takes years of training to race at your peak. The marathon itself takes years and years of training to perform your best. You’re not racing off the last six months of preparation. You’re racing on the foundation that was built over many years of training. It’s the cumulative effect that allows me to continue to perform stronger for longer.' "

I'd never thought about it before, but it makes total sense. My three marathon cycles have started more or less from the same spot fitness-wise and included about the same amount and type of training, but with each successive one I've found myself magically able to run longer, stronger, and faster when it comes to long runs, and feeling less and less like death after. Clearly something cumulative is going on, even without dramatically changing my training, or starting the cycle off in particularly better shape.

Or I was just hopelessly out of touch with my effort level & running way too fast.

Or I've peaked 4 weeks early, ran too fast on Sunday, & it's all down here from here.

Or I've made some kind of insane quantum leap of fitness and/or genetic make-up in the space of a couple of weeks & should obviously shoot for a 7:40 pace on race day.

Orrrrr the night before the marathon I should clearly stay up late, barely sleep, & have a giant brunch right before the race.

Yep. Probably that.

See what I mean about feeling completely clueless?

Obviously I'm hoping it's the first. I know I'm approaching the most critical part of marathon training -- that period where there isn't a ton you can do to get faster, but there is still AMPLE time and opportunity to screw things up by overtraining or getting hurt.

Or go crazy worrying about it.

Always professional.

The Part Where I Wish I Was an Exercise Physiologist

I've been pulled in so many different directions since my last half that poor Santa Rosa has become sort of the redheaded stepchild of this year's races. I even hesitate to refer to the running that has happened as "training."

So, as with Summer Breeze 10K, my expectations are pretty low. Where I once had aspirations of going sub-1:40 again & getting a PR, I think I will have to be pleased with myself if I manage sub 1:45. That's not to say I think the original goal is impossible (I mean, hey, look at PrideRun & Summer Breeze); just that the odds are not great.

It's times like these that I lament my lack of deeper knowledge about how conditioning and de-conditioning really work. I mean duh, running more generally makes you faster and running way less will eventually make you slower. But how quickly? And how much less counts as "less"? How long is the lag between a drop off in workouts and the inevitable resultant drop off in performance? How much can I back off and still maintain my current level of fitness, even if I'm not getting faster?

Questions, questions, questions.

I ran 10 miles last Thursday with 7 at HM pace, and though they weren't as effortless as the ones I'd run a couple of weeks before (ie, pre-vacation), they were reasonably comfortable at the pace I'd like to be running. On the other hand, I haven't run more than 10 miles at once since July, and my runs this week have been somewhat dubious. The six on Tuesday (2 wu + 6 rounds of 400m at 10K pace / 400m easy + 1 cd) left my calf muscles super achey & on the verge of cramping, and the six on Thursday (2 wu + 3 @ HM pace + 1 cd) felt disturbingly tough. Seriously -- during the first HM mile when I was fighting for a 7:45 pace, I'd half decided not to run at all. The next two miles were easier and faster, though, so ultimately I got over it.

It hit me later on that people don't go from PR 10Ks and amazing tempo runs to walruses with emphysema in the space of three weeks, even if they cut way back on training. Lose the edge a bit? Sure. But realistically, I should still be pretty fit.

And that holds up. Once I got warmed up into the faster paces, I was cardiovascularly fine on those runs, and didn't feel afterward as if I'd worked all that hard. I think the real issue is actually the toughness of some of my smaller muscle / connective tissue groups, particularly those between my knees and feet. That's were I've been sore, and I know from experience that any kind of weakness there (and I think I do tend to be weak there in general) tends to work its way up the kinetic chain and cause me to run less efficiently. Which makes it feel harder, even if I haven't lost much fitness cardiovascular-wise.

So I don't really know what will happen Sunday. I very well may find myself running 1:4x, and if that's the best I can do, that's fine. There will be other halfs. However, I can tell you that I am not planning to pre-emptively set myself up for a 1:4x. I'm planning to run this race as if I have a legitimate shot at sub-1:40 for as long as I can.

If I were a bookie, I'd give myself good odds of staying in the 7:35-7:40 range for the first 10 miles. The truth of this race, I think, will be in the last 5K. I doubt I'm in good enough shape to pull a Windsor Green & floor it for 3 miles at that point; the question is probably whether I'm strong enough to hold a 7:40ish pace all the way through or not.

My guess is no. But whatever. If nothing else, it'll give me a sense of how much work I have to do before Healdsburg Half in October. And YAY for being done with the traveling & driving & getting settled in my new office! It's looking like I might even have the time to actually train for it. :)

Believe, Part 2

On Friday I had the most magical of runs.

The day before, I had 9 miles scheduled: 2 warm up, 6 x HM pace, 1 cool down. Unfortunately life/work/the universe got in the way of that and no running happened. But Friday I was determined to get it in, so after a long week and an exhausting day down at The Farm, I headed back up to SF, changed into my running clothes and headed out the door before my body had a chance to develop too much inertia and perhaps sink into a couch somewhere, never to emerge.

For reasons I've mentioned before, these HM pace runs make me nervous. The rational part of my brain knows that I can run sub-8's, even 7:45s & 7:40s, for a good while. The more animalistic, neurotic, emotional part worries that I can't (or won't be able to). If the target pace is 7:40, for example, that part wants to compensate out of fear. It has no problem with me working too hard to run ten seconds under pace but has an absolute freak out if I'm ten seconds over at any point. This is the part I have to control and contain and channel appropriately in training runs and races alike. It's fantastic at pushing me through that last agonizing 10-20% of a race but can cause real trouble if it's not kept in check early-on.

Having averaged right around 7:50/mile in Oakland with no problem, I've now raised the bar a bit when I run HM miles and started pushing myself to average 7:40 as much as possible, as long as the effort level feels right. That's actually probably been the biggest benefit of doing progressively longer and longer HM runs -- I've gotten WAAAAAY better at knowing what that effort level should feel like, which has slowly but surely begun to free me from the tyranny of Mr. Garmin.

My last HM run was four miles, which went fine, but it felt like a big jump to six. I used this same seven-week program training for Oakland, but coming off a month of no running, I hadn't really been in shape to do every workout exactly as written. I'd run 2 x 2 miles at HM pace instead of 4 in a row, then 2 x 2.5 instead of 5, then 3 x 2 instead of six, then eventually 2 x 3. (Which is not to say I couldn't run six miles at 7:40 pace; I just couldn't do it at HM effort level.) Post-Oakland, I'm definitely in better shape, so I figured I'd just go as far as I could at ~7:40 until it started to take more than HM effort, and if I needed to take a little breather before finishing up, so be it.

Warming up, I felt great. Some days I'm surprised at how fast that nice, comfortable warm-up pace actually is, but today was not one of those days. These were respectable but nothing remarkable. As I mentioned last time, my first non-warm-up mile usually takes me west through the Panhandle towards Golden Gate Park, which is deceptively but decidedly uphill. There's always a danger of the emotional runner brain taking over here and attempting to run it by numbers instead of effort. I was a bit erratic, ratcheting back and forth between 7:30 and 8:15, but ultimately when that first mile clicked off I was pleased to see that I'd averaged 7:53. Perfect.

Getting into the park, I wanted to try to run by effort as much as possible rather than stalking my watch. I think of HM pace as brisk but manageable, as pushing just about two notches beyond what is really comfortable, so when I felt like I was hitting that I tried to just settle into the pace and stay there.

The weird thing was, I kept seeing mid to low 7:30s on my watch, and occasionally high 7:20s. That in & of itself was not totally shocking; sometimes it takes a few miles before HM pace really starts to feel like work, so every time I saw numbers that low I forced myself to take a deep breath and let my pace drift back up to the 7:40 range. The second mile clicked off in 7:39. Number-wise, it was right on target, but I couldn't get over how effortless it had felt. Ah, just wait for it, I reminded myself, thinking back to how it had really taken until my 4th 7:45-50ish mile in Oakland to start feeling the burn.

The third mile passed in more or less the same way -- me floating along at what felt like the perfect pace, spotting 7:2x on my watch and forcing myself to ease up. Cruise along. Check watch. See 7:2x. Ease up. Wash / rinse / repeat. Mile three done in 7:35, and me feeling like I was barely working.

This part must be more downhill than I remember, I thought. It'll probably balance out on the way back. Plus the last three miles will definitely be tougher.

In my last half mile westward, there was a notable hill. I kept bracing for the burn, reminding myself not to try to charge up it. Then I noticed I was halfway up said hill and had barely felt a thing.

Halfway through mile four was my turnaround. I must be heading uphill now, I thought. These last miles will surely balance out these silly 7:3x's. But mile four felt much like the last, except faster. Cruise along, feeling great. Check watch. See 7:2x. Ease up. Cruise. Check watch. 7:1x (!). Ease up. Wash / rinse / repeat. Mile 4 = 7:24. My reaction: "Whose body is this, and how did I get into it?"

Mile 5 was mostly the Panhandle in reverse, a just-noticeable downhill. Now this, you can REALLY just cruise, I reminded myself. I still felt great, so my only real goal was to keep up the same level of brisk-but-totally-manageable effort and not let myself get out of control.

Cruise. Check watch. See 7:1x. Ease up. Cruise. Check watch. 7:0x (!). Ease up. Feel completely baffled regarding the level of effort this is NOT taking. Mile 5 = 7:18. (I mean, yes, it's downhill. But it's not THAT downhill.)

I totally could've sprinted the last mile and been none worse for the wear, but the point was to practice HM effort level so I tried to stick to that. At that point, I really did feel like I could've run at that pace forever. It was just unthinkable to me how I was already nearly 8 miles into my 9 mile run and I had no idea where the time or the miles had gone. Before I knew it mile six clicked off in 7:28.

7:33 average. Minimal effort. And again with the body-swapping theories.

I ran the last mile "easy," or what felt easy, including taking the hillier, steeper route back to my house (because I still felt as if I'd barely had a workout), and even that was at quite a good clip. (This was mostly because I really needed to pee.) If I'd had to, I could've run that mile at the same pace as the previous one, no problem.

I wish I could explain to you what sort of magic I did, physically or mentally, before this run. That I had some magical lunch, or happened upon God's foam roller, or did the Dynamic Stretches of Destiny. If I knew, I would do it before every single run and every single race. I would start a business. I would monetize the hell out of that shit. But I have no freaking clue. I just went by feel, and those were the numbers that just sort of happened. I just kept running, completely in awe of what my body was letting me do. I thought back to all those HM pace runs I did last fall while training for Clarksburg, how I had to fight so hard for those 7:40s and how so completely not confident I was (in spite of vociferous assertions to the contrary) that I'd actually be able to pull it off. I kept waiting for these miles to feel at least a little hard, but they never did. Or, more accurately, it was sort of hard, but a completely tolerable level of hard that I felt like I could have handled for a good long while.

If I can handle it for seven more miles, even five seconds slower per mile, I'll get my 1:39:xx.

Update: Great Mysteries of the Universe Edition

The universe is a vast and mysterious place.

Since the dawn of time, man has asked questions, and sought to understand these great mysteries. Questions like, "Why do two socks go into the laundry, and only one comes out?" and "If 7-eleven is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, why are there locks on the doors?" and "If it was only a three hour tour, why did Gilligan & the gang have all that stuff?" And, most recently, "Why, when I stop running for a few days to let an injury heal, do I wind up with even more injuries?"

Questions, my friends.

Originally, the problem was in my right calf, going down a little into my right Achilles tendon & heel, with a little twinge in my hamstring. When I went for a short run on Wednesday, there was new pain in my right quad & worse pain in the hamstring. While walking to work on Friday, I was struck by a searing, cramping pain in my right hip flexor area, and since Saturday morning I have had an aching, throbbing pain right smack-dab in the middle of my right Achilles tendon area that doesn't ever go away, even when I'm just sitting around (though walking makes it much worse).

I swear I have done nothing--not a damn thing--to bring these tribulations upon myself. Since Wednesday, the most active thing I've done is some gentle stretching and some ab work. I don't even trust my muscles to handle my usual strength exercises without something else imploding.

So, given that it's Saturday, my total mileage for the week so far stands at a whopping six miles, and I can't even sit on the couch without something hurting, it looks like Oakland may be more about having a good time and getting in a long(ish) run than attempting anything like a PR. At this point I'm just hoping I'll feel good enough to run the whole thing.

Add to the great mysteries of the universe, "Why can't I ever sign up for a half marathon without having a mini-disaster at the last minute?" I haven't had a solid 13.1 attempt since my current PR race in February of 2010. And I wasn't even training then.

Things to ponder.