Back to Micro-Blogging...

Hello friends!

Lately I've been starting blog posts and never finding time to finish them. Hopefully I *will* at some point, but in the mean time, just a quick update so that you don't think I've died.

• Running! A thing I am doing! After eight weeks completely off after Boston 2 Big Sur, I'm now wrapping up my 4th week of getting back to running. It's all easy miles right now, with 12.5 miles the first week, 22 miles in week 2, 34 in week 3, and now 40 miles this past week.

  I'm doing my best to stick to my tried-&-true base training protocol, ie, all easy miles & keeping my heart rate between 140 & 150 bpm (which sometimes means walking!). I had sort of assumed that when I ran the numbers (because, data nerd) that two months off would probably result in being in worse shape than at the beginning of previous cycles when I haven't had so much (or any) time off, but this first month of runs has looked pretty similar to previous cycles, so perhaps this is just where I bottom out.

Time to Step Back (and some pictures, because, pictures)

You may (or may not) have noticed that I haven't had much to say here lately, and that's kind of a combination of a bunch of factors. 1) I've been stretched super thin with precious free time for rambling on the internet (ie, it's taken me like two weeks working in fits and starts to scrape this post together), 2) the same thin-stretching has, sadly, resulted in less actual/interesting running to write *about*, and, well, 3) running has kind of just sucked lately.

Things I've been doing instead of running: I was supposed to race a 10K this weekend but said ehhhhh screw it & we went skiing instead.

View from our hotel room.

This place is pretty hard to beat.

There were poke cones for dinner, and good wine.

I mentioned this in my Victory 10K race report a bit, how from the start of the year even just lacing up my shoes has been a struggle, how everything hurts, how sometimes I get home from work and running is just about the absolute last thing I feel like doing, which is just really weird after six months of "WEEEEE RUN ALLLLL THE MILES & FEEL (mostly) GREAT!!!11!1" I had this goal of taking my post-CIM marathon fitness, which was no question the best it's ever been in my life, and stacking 10 weeks of half marathon-specific training on top of that with the hopes of running if not a PR at Shamrock'n Half at least my first sub-1:40 in 4.5 years.

OTHER NON-RUNNING STUFF: That time I put on non-running clothes for Valentine's Day.

But it's like the universe is just completely dead set against it. First I was sick. Then running sucked. Then I was super busy with work and renovations and traveling all the time. Then I started having asthma problems from all the dust. Then I pulled a hamstring last week. (It was getting better, then this week I tripped & re-pulled it.) Then I got food poisoning this past weekend. So instead revving up for a super sick half, I've spent most of 2017 with my Shamrock training feeling like the BBQ piglet from season 7 of The Simpsons.

"It's just a little malaise! It's still good! It's still good!" "It's just a little undertraining! It's still good! It's still good!" "It's just a little hypoxia! It's still good! It's still good!"

Then this weekend happened and when I was finally not feeling like I was going to puke every half hour or so, I looked down the barrel of the work that's left to be done for our renovations, much of which must be done very soon and can be done only on weekends, and finally had to admit, "Nope; nope, it's gone."

What our downstairs looked like a month ago:

What it looks like now:

If the race was here in town and I didn't have to drive 2 hours there and back and pay for a hotel and give up half my Saturday as well as half my Sunday, I'd probably still run it since I've paid for, but even then I don't think I'd try to race. My workouts have been few and far between, I haven't run double digits since January, and I've only run the full race distance or more once this year. I don't know, maybe I could still coast my way on all that marathon training to a pretty decent half, but the truth is I just AM.NOT.FEELING IT. (And I'm definitely not feeling like giving up so much of one of my only free weekends between now and May and paying for a hotel room.)

Before the food poisoning, hanging out with my mom & sisters in Ft. Worth. (I randomly happened to be there for a conference this past weekend.)

Me & my tall sisters.

So, Wednesday morning I finally emailed my RunCoach coaches and ask them to suspend my account for a couple of months. They both agreed that there was nothing wrong with taking a bit of a break after CIM, especially during a busy time and especially when my motivation for real "training" is completely MIA. I can't tell you what a relief it was to finally, officially make that decision (which I think is how you know it's the right one).

There is decent running in Ft. Worth! Trinity Park (30+ miles of paved & dirt trails) is just two miles outsie of downtown.

Running across the Trinity River towards the park, then along the river for 4 miles out & back. (I don't know the area well enough to do loops, but one could, in theory.)

As for the new plan, here's what I've got:

• Keep running as much as I'm able and feel up to. So, I dunno, maybe ~30 mpw or so, but I'm not planning to set any real number goals. I just don't want to be dreading it all day.
• Forget about workouts for the next two months. Getting to the track adds a solid 30-40 minutes to my run, plus it's that much harder to muster the mental focus for fast running when you feel crappy and also guilty about all the other stuff you should be doing instead. (Besides, a good chunk of easy base training never hurts!)
• Finish building my damn house. Or, y'know, making final decisions about tile and engineered wood and appliances so the wonderful wonderful guys we're paying can finish building our damn house. I didn't realize how much I'd been stressed out by thoughts like "How am I going to visit the tile store AND get in my run?" and "How am I going to go look at fridges all morning plus all the usual weekend chores AND get in my run?" until I said, "Fuck it, the house has to be the top priority right now" and it was such a weight off my chest.
• Go to Hawaii in May. Because I need a damn vacation. (I have completely forgotten what it feels like to get on a plane out of something other than a sense of obligation.)
• Train for PrideRun 5K on June 24. In the best of worlds, I will get in lots and lots of good base training, six weeks of solid speed work, and crush it; in more mediocre ones, I will do almost nothing and pay $30 to jog three comfortable miles for charity 20 minutes from my house, which will also be fine. Most likely it will be something in between, and that's fine too. :)

Ft. Worth also has cool water gardens. (Yes, the water recirculates.)

So, there you go. That's what I've been up to. What's new with you?

SRM WEEK 3 OF 20: Lights!! + Back to Fast Finishes

On Saturday, we finally put up some light fixtures!

Things involving electricity are, um, exciting when you live in a 115 year old Victorian. First there is the excitement of guessing which of the switches in the fuse box (see? I don't even know if that's the right name for it) turns off what.

Then there's pulling off the old fixture housings & attempting to decode the ancient rat's nest of wire & asbestos that is your electrical system.

That is, in fact, the terminus of the old gas pipe, from back in the days when all lights were gas lights.

Thankfully we didn't die or explode anything, and now we have real, actual light fixtures that are not the bland, boring IKEA ones the house-dresser went with in order to sell it.

I swear I helped. Mostly by passing tools/screws/bulbs/etc. up the ladder.

Next up, I think, is replacing the nasty, cheap old washer & dryer that make the most ungodly squealing noises & leave nasty lint & crap all over our clothes. (Our house was a rental for a long time, & I have a feeling the owners just went with the cheapest functional appliances they could get. On the other hand, the fact that the place needs some work in places & has a bunch of cheap appliances is probably a big part of why we were able to afford it.)

RUNNING!

This week was one of those ones where there are no crises or surprises and everything goes more or less according to plan. I got all of my runs in, and most of them were even reasonably not-awful.

This is remarkable because I haven't had a lot of great runs lately. I'm not generally the type of person to get on the internet at the first sign of trouble and bawl into the void; sometimes things just don't feel right for a day or two for whatever reason, and over the years I've learned that most of the time they take care of themselves in a few days.

But these last few weeks, though. MAN. I won't bore you with all the details but even though I haven't been running all that much or that far & only recently started adding in a few super-gentle hill/speed workouts, it kind of seemed like it was just one thing after another. As a result a lot of my runs have felt unbalanced and awkward and uncomfortable and I've even cut them short here & there. I was actively limping after last Sunday's 12 miler and seriously thinking about just taking a bunch of rest days because I really *really* didn't want to get hurt again.

On Friday I got in with the massage therapist to try to get some of this jankiness worked out. I told him about my skiing fall & how my pelvis & hips had felt kind of messed up & moderately painful ever since. He went to work on me & was like, "Wow, you really made a mess of things, didn't you?" He did a bunch of excruciating (as per usual) work on both hip flexors/psoases (sp?) & SI joints & my right adductor/hamstring, then told me to give it a few days & if it didn't feel normal yet to come back for another, because I had definitely effed up the suspension & he was not surprised that running felt like poo.

Thankfully, the difference was pretty clear and immediate. Friday afternoon I was still sore from all the massage work, but I no longer felt like I was running with a peg leg and broken glass in my back, so winning.

On Sunday I ran 14 miles & decided I was recovered enough to try a "fast finish" & see how it felt. It's been a while, so I didn't want to push things too hard; on the other hand, I'm planning on running a half marathon this Saturday at 8:00 pace & kind of wanted to try out a few miles in that ballpark before then. (Jogging along in the 9:30-10:00 range these days, it always seems absurd to me that I'll be able to crank the pace down by 1.5-2 minutes without utterly sucking wind.) I ran the first 9 easy, then ran 3 at a comfortably fast pace, shooting for around 8:00 or slightly faster.

After a couple of minutes I'd settled into a pace that felt about right, so I was kind of surprised to glance at my watch & see the numbers knocking around between 7:20 & 7:40 (basically HM race pace when I'm in good shape for it). My three fast splits ended up being 7:41, 7:42, & 7:33 (the last mile was a gentle downhill), which was entirely unexpected and dumbfounded me a little. I'd been trying to run as fast as possible without feeling uncomfortable & just settle into that sweet "cruising" feeling that is really my favorite speed to run, and during the last couple of months before NVM that had always amounted to the 7:50-8:10 neighborhood. I haven't done any tempo/threshold training yet & only a tiny bit of strides/hill intervals, so I don't know if that's just continued aerobic improvement, evidence that a tiny bit of speed work goes farther than I think, or just entirely random.

Either way, I'll take it! Like I said, I'm planning on running 8:00 miles at Parkway Half on Saturday (the farthest I've tried to go at that pace since last August), and it would be pretty awesome if it ended up feeling a little easier than I'd been expecting.

~*~*~SRM WEEK 3 OF 20~*~*~

Grand Total: 37 miles

* 21.2 easy
* ~1.8 hill intervals
* 14 long
* 1 strength workout :-/

Monday: Rest. Too much work for karate + kind of not feeling it.

Tuesday: 8 easy. OMG, *such* a relief to have a decent-feeling run for a change!

Wednesday: a.m. strength work / p.m. karate

Thursday: 3.4 warm-up, 9 x .11 hill intervals w/ .11 downhill recovery jogs, 1.6 cool down = 7 total. Ugh. These are still an absolute and total bitch. I meant to write a post about this workout but didn't get around to it. To be honest, though, I don't really have much more to say about it than that.

Friday: a.m. massage therapist / p.m. 8 easy. Sore where he worked on me, but still much improved.

Saturday: Rest.

Sunday: 14 long