Revvin' that marathon engine

Whew, okay, so now you know I've got a marathon in the chamber! And we can start labeling training logs appropriately. 

After that shit show of a (not-) 10K, I was pretty excited to move on to marathon training. I was looking forward to having a nice strong 10K time to boost my confidence, but alas we can't always get what we want. I am happy to report that Week 1 was a pretty solid first week of training, with 42+ miles and the longest run I've done since Big Sur Marathon in May 2018.

 

 ~*~*~ CIM Week 1 of  15 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 42.3 miles

* 17.9 easy
* 8.4 tempo/threshold
* 16 long

Of Marathons & Qualifying Times (Here Be An Announcement)

Remember those days when bloggers would, like, *announce* that they would be *making an announcement* like they were some kind of celebrity and everyone was just waiting around on tenterhooks to hear about what was happening next in their lives? It always made me think that maybe the announcement was something so terrible, so horrific, so shocking that we all needed to collectively prepare ourselves and brace for impact. 

And then after days upon days of Twitter-stalking or hitting refresh on their blog, the "huge announcement" would be, "Hey, I'm an ambassador for this race!" or even just "I'm running this race!" or "I am running a *different kind of race* than I usually run!" or even "Some random brand gave me some socks to give away" or something.

Like Jesus, Stacy. I thought you were giving birth to octuplets or starring in your own limited-run HBO mini-series. Don't toy with my emotions like this.

Which is all to say, sorry if I am taking you off guard, just MAKING AN ANNOUNCEMENT all WILLY NILLY like this without warning you first and giving you time to prepare your smelling salts and fainting couch.

So, like. Here is the announcement:

2022 Goals + Spring 2022 Races!

Now that that half marathon monkey is off my back and I'm no longer haunted by the idea that I will never finish 13.1 miles ever again, I've been having fun thinking about spring races. I have another Spain/Portugal trip coming up in the first half of June, which creates a kind of natural running season + break over the next few months. I've also been ruminating about what other goals I want to take on over the course of next year. Very little set in stone, but here is a bit of an update at least!

Oakland Running Festival 10K (Sunday 3/20). This is a Pacific Association race that some of the other masters women on my team are planning to run, so I'm jumping in! I was originally signed up for the half (deferred from 2020) but I'm dropping down to the 10K to help the team score. My expectations are low -- I ran couple of 10Ks last summer just to kind of see what I could do, but they were both quite slow, in the 50:00 range, so even just under that would be progress. Right before the pandemic I ran a 46:23 on fairly moderate training, so I'd expect that to be about the lower limit of what I could do in Oakland if everything went perfectly.

On my way to 46:23 in February 2020, my last pre-pandemic race (No idea how I ended up completely alone in this picture, I remember being surrounded for most of the race!)

Announcing: Goals, MF

It always feels a bit scary to put a goal out there when you are still in the midst of a comeback and not entire sure it's going to take, but what is the point of having a blog (er, sort of?) if you aren't going to share what you're doing and what's on your mind.

So, what is on my mind, you might ask? Nothing earth-shattering; just the Kaiser Permanente Half Marathon, one of the big local SF races that takes place every Superbowl Sunday (Sunday, February 6 this year).

KP was my second-ever half-marathon & typically features a half marathon, 10K, and 5K. I've run all three distances at least once at one time or another, but for the last few years I've most often signed up for the 10K because "I won't be ready to run a half yet," or signed up for the half and then dropped down to the 10K a few days or weeks out because "I'm not ready to run a half yet."

And by "I'm not ready to run a half yet," what I meant was "I'm not ready to run a half in a time I find acceptable," where "acceptable" was probably somewhere in the 1:37-1:43 range. I've never had much interest in running races at an easy pace just to finish, except in situations where I thought it would be helpful to do a supported long run or long tempo workout. Plus, if you looked at a heat map of my long runs, you'd see probably 90% overlap with the KP half marathon course, and paying money to run a casual long run on the same route I'd probably run anyway just felt kind of....not worth it.

The last fast half marathon, 1:41:07 - October 2017. A wonderful day that I did not appreciate nearly enough at the time.

Fall Speedfest, Week 1 of 18: Let the Fall Season Commence!

Well, I went back to the track for the first time in four months this evening, so I suppose that means my fall season is underway!

When the Itch Comes Back

No, this is not a TMI post about some kind of dermatological problem; rest assured I am rash- and pest-free and have not been going barefoot in the gym shower.

Believe it or not, we're talking about the itch to run.

Like I kind of mentioned in this post, since I started training "seriously" (whatever that means) about nine years ago, I've never *really* given myself permission to take an extended break from running. If you don't count serious injuries, I think the longest amount of time I've gone without running since 2009 was about a month, after my first marathon in 2011. Other than that, I don't think I've ever taken off more than a week, maybe two but maybe not, when I've been completely healthy and physically able to run.

After B2B, though, I needed to. Like obviously I needed some physical recovery time but I also felt like I just needed some time mentally away not just from training but any kind of running at all. It was almost like having a little bit of a running hangover; I didn't even want to jog across the street to make a light.

I wanted to come home from work and go work on my house, or read a book, or work on a grant proposal, or just freaking sit on the couch and watch an episode of Quantico. (Do not watch that show, btw, it is awful. It's too late for me but there may be hope still for you.)

I wanted to run errands and grocery shop and cook without constantly looking at the clock.

I wanted to go out to eat or to a BBQ or have friends over and not overthink every bite and sip that went into my mouth.

I wanted to go to karate and not be exhausted, to have my legs feel light and snappy and like I could spar full speed with other black belts and not endanger myself.

So I did. And it has been So. Great. If you've generally been in the habit of jumping from training cycle to training cycle, never taking more than a week or two off either because of fear of losing fitness or gaining weight or FOMO or peer pressure or just plain suppressing any inkling of desire to take an extended break from running, I highly *highly* recommend it.

I kind of felt like I wanted to start training mid-June-ish for my September 10K and October half, but I never put a hard and fast timeline on it. Something I definitely did NOT want to do was try to start training again if it was going to feel like a chore. Basically, every morning I'd wake up and ask myself, "Do I feel like running today? Even just 2-3 miles, maybe?"

And every day, the answer was, "Nope! Not even a little. 100% into chores/errands/renovations work/Netflix & wine." I've even (mostly) kept up with my blog reading, which in the past has sometimes made me want to go register for all the things. But this time my response was more, "WOO GO SO-N-SO!!" {as I sit back & turn on HBO & refill my glass of pinot.}

This past weekend, though, I have to say there was just a glimmer of an itch. My painful toenail finally fell off. My massage therapist has very nearly turned my steel cable (her words) adductors back into flesh & blood. Being semi-sedentary is starting to lose just a *bit* of its glamor.

I'm not saying I want to go smash something at the track. I'm not saying I want to go run 20 miles, or even 10. Some little aches & pains that I assumed were running related have not yet fully healed or gone away, and I haven't spent quite as much time in the gym or doing mobility work as I'd planned to this month.

Still. I was reading a blog post on Saturday about someone reaching a half marathon milestone time goal by less than 30 seconds and how amazing it felt, and for just a second I thought, "I WANT TO DO THAT! (Maybe, sort of? Semi-soonish?)"

So, yeah. I finally dug back into the running bag I never completely unpacked after Big Sur. I plugged in my watch (completely dead, of course) and fished out my road ID. There's technically a training plan for my 10K & half loaded into RunCoach but I'm a long way from ready to jump into it, so maybe sometime this week I'll head out to one of the local trails on the way home from work and set my watch to show nothing but time of day & heart rate & see how it feels to jog two or three nice easy miles. Just a little something to get the legs moving, and then we'll go from there.

By the time you read this.......

By the time you read this, I'll most likely have made my way from Hopkinton to Copley Square, God willing & the crick don't rise. And honestly, crick-rising is a legitimate concern at this point, since we're supposed to get hit with a big, wet, windy storm sometime in the next few hours. Did I mention the wind is projected to be within 10 degrees of a direct headwind for 73% of the course? ~12mph or so at the start, and a healthy 28mph by the finish? GOOD TIMES!! :D

Is it disappointing to have such shitty weather? Sure. It's not like I was planning on a PR race, but I was hoping the trip would be at least mildly pleasant. But honestly, I don't feel as disappointed as it seems like I should. No one is ever entitled to perfect--or even not-awful--race day weather; you hope for the best, but you show up and run whatever kind of race day Mother Nature has seen fit to provide. I still feel super privileged to be here and am very cognizant of the fact that it very well could be my one and only shot. Everyone says Boston is magic regardless of the weather, that the camaraderie & adrenaline carries you through unlike in any other marathon, so that's the attitude I'm going into it with.

I also keep thinking back to CIM 2012, that god-awful, god-forsaken train wreck of a race year when everything was headwinds and sideways rain and timing mats shorting out under water & police rerouting the course around downed power lines. How at the time I swore that was the hardest run of my life, how I fought and fought and fought for the finish and felt like I'd been robbed of a PR by the weather. In retrospect, I'm kind of grateful for that race; all around me here in Boston and online people are freaking out about the weather and endlessly debating what to wear, and I'm feeling oddly calm about it. Like. How bad can it be? Worse than CIM 2012? Worse than Oakland three weeks ago when mile 8 felt like mile 20? I doubt it.

And, hey, if it is, I'll have a new war story. I'll run into other people who also ran Boston 2018, and we'll shake our heads and share war stories like it was so awful but inside feel sort of proud that we were there & made it through.

I'll write a more detailed post sometime soon, but in the mean time, please enjoy some shots of our first two days in Boston.

Catch you on the flip side of this beezie. Wish me luck and warm fingers!!

4 More Sleeps: The Race Plan

You can thank Sara at Middle Aged Runner for this little gem.

Well, here we are. Tomorrow I get on a plane to Boston & things start Happening.

It has not been the training cycle I'd hoped for--not even close. I've been so busy and stressed with the remodel, and traveling too much, and injured badly enough to lose a week of training on three separate occasions. My plantar fasciitis has come roaring back in the past few months, making running (and walking) excruciatingly painful at times, and for the last month on my runs I've felt completely, utterly exhausted, like I'm wearing lead boots all. The. Time. (We did solve that one--I am apparently badly iron deficient, and while I've started downing iron pills & red meat like it's going out of style, almost everything I've heard or read suggests that it really takes a good two months before it makes a noticeable difference.)

Which is all to say, I'm trying to be excited about the experience, but I am not betting on having a particularly fast race. In fact, I'll settle for finishing and mile 8 not feeling like mile 20. I had a massage therapist work on my foot and calf on Tuesday, which helped, and hopefully taper will have revitalized me a bit. (I keep reminding myself that for CIM 2016, I felt pretty bad and exhausted all the way up until the day before the race, so there's still hope!)

Still, in any case, I AM planning to go out there & run the best, fastest race that I can, so I think it's still worth thinking through the course & coming up with a race plan.

It's Getting Real in 2018 (+ a discount code)

Hey hey friends! If you're reading this, then I assume you've successfully navigated the maze of Christmas carols and awkward gifts exchanges and cheese plates and champagne toasts that is The Holidays and arrived safely on the other side in good ol' 2018.

We spent Christmas in Spokane with Don's family, then celebrated New Year's by getting the heck out of the city and up to Bodega Bay for a few days with friends. I did my best to keep on my regular training plan through all the craziness and *mostly* succeeded, though there were a couple of snafus. Now that things are back to normal, I'm in the thick of week four, cranking out mile repeats & 2Ks at HM pace & whatever else RunCoach throws my way.

In January 2017, I started the year with a nearly empty race calendar, just a March half marathon (which I flaked out on) and a September 10K because of a cheap re-run offer from the year before. After CIM 2016, I felt a bit exhausted and extremely unmotivated to seriously train for anything. By early fall I finally pulled it together long enough to race a pretty decent half, but by & large it was a fairly lightweight year in terms of training & racing.

Not so this year! I'm not sure when it happened, exactly, but at some point my 2018 running year got super booked up. I'm even (gasp!) a race ambassador for something this year. (For which race?? You'll have to read on to find out!)

HERE WE GO.........

Well, here we are.

As I said previously, it's been quite a ride, and no matter what happens on Sunday, I couldn't be happier with how this training cycle has gone. (I mean. I could have done without the knee drama in weeks 8 & 9. But still.) I feel like I've trained well & am prepared for a solid race, and the time will be whatever it will be.

However. I *do* have to make some decisions about pacing ahead of time, and I have to base that on *something*. (I'm not experienced enough at marathons to run them by feel.) My original thought was that as long as I was healthy and feeling reasonably good and the weather isn't doing anything ridiculous, it wasn't TOO audacious for me to go out with the 3:35 pace group (8:12/mile) and see how it feels. But, that was before I learned that apparently there is no longer a 3:35 pace group, only a 3:38 group & a 3:33 group, presumably to give people a shot at actually *getting in* to Boston should they qualify. SO NOW WHAT???

Eh, whatever. I'll probably start with the 3:38 group & then see how I feel & maybe work my way up (er, hopefully that's how it will work). My recent 10K and half marathon times back up a time somewhere in there, and my training has been simply head and shoulders stronger than the year I ran 3:36. There is definitely something kind of freeing about being able to look back on this training cycle and say, In this training cycle, I ran 35% more miles than ever before. I hit 50 miles or more in twice as many weeks. I did twice times as many runs of 16 miles or more. I did three times as many runs of 12 miles or more. I did longer and harder speed and tempo workouts than I've ever done before in my life. I did multiple workouts that scared the pants off of me.

Still, since I have never run faster than 3:36, I think it's probably smart to be a little conservative and plan to run no faster than 3:35 pace for at least the first half. If I'm feeling absolutely amazing, then maybe I can think about pushing just a tiny bit harder after that, and around 20-22 basically run as fast as I think I can manage.

But, I'm also completely prepared for 8:12 to feel just barely manageable start to finish. And also for it to feel too hard. I know I should be feeling pretty happy & comfortable for the first 13-18 miles, & if that's not what 3:35 pace brings on Sunday, I'm more than willing to back off a bit in the interest of running a negative split.

So, we'll see. At this point I've done all there is to do, training wise; all that's left is to remember to pack everything & not oversleep. D:

(BUT SERIOUSLY IF YOU HAVE ANY PACING SUGGESTIONS OR ADVICE I AM TOTALLY TAKING THEM.)

See you on the flip side of this thing!