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.

NOT DEAD YET (Part 3)

Welcome back, friends. If you missed Part 1 & Part 2 of this little update, you might want to take a skim before continuing on. :)

Last we left off, I was dealing with a wild-out-of-left-field knee injury that took me out of running for five weeks, and had started dealing with it via as much elliptical, spin bike, & swimming as I could psychologically stand. (Which was still only a moderate amount, don't @ me.)

SEPTEMBER
Little by little, my knee did start to heal. I was able to run half a mile, then a whole one, then four in a row. I felt like I was walking such a fine line, trying to balance rest days and cross training with ever-so-gradually inching up the mileage to see if I could even get close to 7.5 and have a hope of finishing 12K. On Monday September 11, I ran seven miles; it gave me just the TEENSIEST little twinge in my knee and so I immediately pulled back, & did only cross training until we got to new Jersey that Friday.

Friends, I ran the race! And you know what? While it wasn't fast (of course I knew it couldn't possibly have been fast), I am still actually really proud of the way I ran it, in that I ran totally by feel, without looking at pace. And given how I felt at the end (ie LIKE DEATH), I feel like I actually nailed the effort releative to my current fitness.

Thankfully we had three other masters women running who (again) ran much, MUCH faster than me and brought home another 3rd place National Champs medal for the team. I ran 8.5 miles total for the day (7.5 race + 1 mile warm up) & had not a single peep from my knee at any point. Friends, I will take that!

NOT DEAD YET (Part 2)

Heyyyyy you came back! Always a good sign.

If you missed Part 1 of this little update, you can find it here.

Onward, shall we?

JUNE, CONT'D
When we left off, I had just run one of my slowest 5Ks ever despite not terrible training. The next race on my docket was Tracksmith Twilight 5000m on the track at Kezar Stadium on July 19th. We had a vacation scheduled for early July, so I thought, "Maybe Stow Lake was just a bad day, let me get a bit of rest and some solid speed workouts in, and then I'll run one more 5K before we leave & see where I'm at." I picked the Stars & Strides 5K in San Jose since it was July 1st & we were leaving the next day. 

Not much else of note happened in June, BUT I did make this delicious cherry clafoutis!

O hai, perhaps you want some running-related content...

Who wants to date themselves by explaining the photo? Go on, I dare you. 🤣

Lately this has been more of a book blog than a running blog, but to be honest there hasn't been much of note to write about running-wise, unless you include one running-related injury after another "content."

So, yeah. It's been quite the month, with at least three distinctly different injuries, and I can't say I've had a single week in all of November that's felt like it warranted its own training journal. But perhaps a quick round of highlights (and lowlights) to catch us up to the present day??

 

 

 

Saturday 11/5: 14 miles at Indiana Monumental Half Marathon! This was my last running-related post. You can read the race report if you want, but the tl;dr is that I went ahead and went, though I was not even remotely fit and was still getting over a bad cold. People kept going on and on about the weather in dramatic fashion and how horrible it was, but friends. I was at CIM 2012. I was at Boston 2018. Both were much, MUCH worse. The only issue at Indy was some rain and some admittedly forceful wind in hours 3/4/5 (so, I feel a lot worse for the marathoners than the half marathoners). But the rain was more a drizzle than a downpour, and it wasn't even cold. Now, was it perfect PR weather? No, so I felt much less bad than I would have about the fact that I had an asthma attack around mile 6 and had to run the rest of the race a mile to a half-mile at a time with lots of breaks.

Declaring Blog Post Draft Bankruptcy

Hello friends! Long time no post!

One of the reasons I stopped blogging in Fall of 2019 was because I was REALLY GOOD at starting new blog posts and also REALLY BAD at finishing them & getting them up. Turns out, the more things change, the more they they stay the same, sigh.

But also a lot has happened since my last post, sooooo in the interest of trying to not completely disappear into the void again, I'm going to try to just post *some* kind of update, even if it is short and incomplete. So here ya go, a lightening recap of the last, oh, six weeks or so:

Mid-Jan Kaiser Half Update

Hello friends. I hope you are still safe and healthy as we all ride out this stupid omicron wave. Not much happening lately that's super photo worthy so please enjoy this shot from last August when I went to Seattle for work and took the opportunity to bust out 10 carefree miles around Lake Union.

I am over here getting a GREAT start on 2022 Injury Bingo. Just two weeks into the year (not even!) and I've already been struck down by tendonitis in my left foot/ankle. As man know if it isn't one thing then it's something else.

Of course, this has meant scaling back on running just as I was starting to get into the swing of it again. Several great-feeling 3-5 mile runs during the first week of the year! Then, waking up Saturday morning 1/8 unable to put weight on my left foot. It felt a little better Sunday morning so I gave my scheduled seven-mile run a shot and knew two miles in it wasn't happening. So, four it was, and the tendonitis a little bit worse as a nice bonus. (The next time you hear someone say, "It can't hurt to try!," punch them in the neck for me.)

I took Monday 1/10 through Wednesday 1/12 off running but did my Monday morning weight training as usual. Thursday 1/13 it was feeling much better so I decided to test it out by running to the gym (about 1.25 miles), thinking worst case I could just walk. While it's clearly not 100%, it felt MUCH better, just a little discomfort still. All in all I ran to the gym plus a bit more, then back home after for a total of three miles. The next day (Friday 1/14) I ran another 3 miles; I had a tiny bit of discomfort after but was totally pain-free the next morning (Saturday 1/15) so I went for 5 miles. And, success!

PRESENTS + Kaiser Permanente Half Update

Hello friends! I hope you and your loved ones are having a joyous, fulfilling holiday season and staying covid-free.

Just a quick update on my goal to complete the Kaiser Permanente Half Marathon at literally any pace. I had been starting to build back up after getting back from vacation at the end of November in hopes that my right hip/hamstring would cooperate. And, woo-hoo, it really had been! I slowly worked my way up to ~5 or so days a week of short runs and a "long" run of 6 miles. And then one day, 3.5 miles into a six-miler, my left calf seized up to the point of cramping. I tried walking it off and seeing if I could jog a block here and there (seeing as I was now 2.5 miles from home) but it only got worse. I tried again after a full week off, but I didn't even make it two miles before my calf was seizing up again.

A visit to my sports chiro revealed some weakness in my lower legs and ankles on both sides, which isn't a smoking gun exactly (it seems to me there rarely is), but it certainly isn't helping, so I've been diligently doing my calf/ankle/foot strengthening exercises over the the holiday break. And in each of the past two days, friends, I have been rewarded with a painless three-mile run through my neighborhood! (Well; three one-mile loops so as to never have to walk back more than half a mile should something feel off.)

LOOK I'M TRYING OK?

OK, so. Attempting to revive the blog is definitely reminding me of some of the reasons why I gave up a couple years ago! I've probably started five or six posts since the last one, but I have so little time for it that by the time I next sit down to write, my most recent draft feels woefully outdated. Then there is the fact that we went on A FOR-REAL, ACTUAL VACATION for these last three weeks, so obviously there wasn't much happening in the way of running or blogging. We actually booked this vacation two years ago, before it was rescheduled twice. Things were not looking good in Portugal in the spring, but then by late summer the Portuguese government managed to work some kind of miracle, and by the time we left for our trip the country was ~90% vaccinated.

[Related: AMA regarding international travel in These Unprecedented Times^TM.]

Sunset in Sintra, Portugal

'A' Race Time Predictions!!

If you've been following the drama the last few months you might recall that I've been having some annoying issues with my left side, from my lower back/SI joint, through my hamstring, all the way down to the plantar fasciitis (which is chronic) in my foot. It was sort of at its worst a week before OktobeRun but a week off magically healed me enough to get through the race at a pretty okay pace, though the hamstring was pretty unhappy after.

I had some forced rest (thanks, travel & weather!) after that, which probably ended up being for the best because in spite of basically no training between OktobeRun and Oakland Turkey Trot, I had a significantly faster race.

Riding the high of that race, I told myself, OK but for real now! Three & a half weeks til Santa Run! That is totally enough time to get serious about this shite & shave a few more seconds off this beezie.

And, I DID have a couple of good weeks. But then this past week/weekend I got called to NY at the last minute, & if there is anything that will eff with my training plans, it's these short coast-to-coast trips where the time zone gremlins just completely destroy whatever free time/decent sleep you thought you had happening in your life. I won't even bother doing a training log for that week, since "training" consisted of

1) Tuesday 12/4 => 3.5 warm up, 6 x 200m / 200m jog, 2 miles @ aerobic threshold, 6 x 200m / 200m jog, 3.5 cool down = 12 total

2) Thursday 12/6 => spend the whole day flying/sitting in NYC traffic & arrive in so much winter boot-induced foot pain that the 7 easy on the schedule was never going to happen even IF I'd arrived at a decent hour.

3) Friday 12/7 => Work a full day on 3 hours of sleep, come back to hotel & crash

4) Saturday 12/8 => Work another full day on maybe 4 hours of sleep, just barely rally for 2 warm up, 3 x 1 mile @ HM pace, 2 cool down = 7.2 total.

5) Sunday 12/9 => Get up at 4:30am Eastern/1:30am Pacific to catch a 7:00am plane home, land at 10am Pacific, & immediately come home & bake cookies for a party. (Again, I could barely walk this day, so there was no running; just 21 straight hours of mostly regrettable consciousness.)

It was really this last run on Saturday that was the turning point for me.

Fall Speedfest, Weeks 8 & 9 of 18: Hot Mess Edition

As in, I am one. Seriously; in the last two and a half weeks I have just about completely and totally fallen apart.

You might have already read about my 'meh' race in San Jose. (tl;dr - My heart was never really in it, I woke up not really wanting to run, & managed to hold a decent half marathon pace for the first few miles before it became obvious that whether for lack of fitness, heat, or just plain lack of enthusiasm, that was all I had. I jogged the rest at an easy pace for a 1:51:30 finish.)

The worse part, though, was the aftermath on the left side of my body. I've had chronic plantar fasciitis in my left foot for years; it comes and goes in terms of the severity but for whatever reason a few hours after the race I could barely walk on it. I'd like to tell you the week got better, but...well...

Boston Marathon Week 13 of 18: Some running was involved.

Man, you guys, I couldn't even call week 13 a mixed bag. It started out with a glimmer of hope but went downhill very very quickly for all kinds of reasons both physical and general life-related until on Sunday night I lay in a hotel bed in Texas, fuming over what a waste most of the week and weekend had been and over the fact that I could barely walk comfortably and also had to get on a plane back to SF in like five hours.

Boston Marathon Week 10 of 18: "altitude training" + should I run a birthday 10K?

Hello from snowy Park City, UT where our ski group is having our yearly (er...sort of) ski trip! This is the first year I've been able to go since 2013, so I'm pretty excited to get some skiing in.

I'm also trying to get a few solid runs in. It's probably no surprise that this has not turned into the victorious beast-mode Boston Marathon training cycle I'd hoped for, which is disappointing, but there are silver linings here & there. I'd been a little worried about how I was going to work in a 50+ mile week over the ski trip, but with my hip just recovering, it's nice to not have the pressure of trying to hit that much mileage, and when the slopes and hot tub are calling, it's that much easier to hold myself back from pushing too far.

For example, this weekend was supposed to be my first 20 miler of this cycle, but given that my longest run since all this hip drama started has been 8 miles, I wasn't holding out a whole lot of hope that that would happen. If I felt fine and had no pain in my hip, I was totally open to going for the whole thing, but I also didn't want to do anything stupid.

I'd mapped myself out a nice little 10 mile out-and-back with a loop at the end, and as it worked out, I started feeling just a bit of an ache right as I hit about eight miles. I wasn't worried about finishing the run back to the house, but I didn't try to go any further. As you all know, it's hard, because as distance runners our core competency is putting up with discomfort and pushing through, and part of me was definitely yelling, "JUST A COUPLE MORE MILES OUT AND BACK, YOU CAN DO IT!" And I just kept having to remind myself, "Well yes, obviously, I COULD do it. But let's maybe quit while the pain is 1-2 out of 10 & not eff up the possibility of running for the rest of the trip. Also hot tub is waiting."

We'll be in Utah until Wednesday, then it's back home for a few days before heading to Southern California for work. Friday (2/23) will be my 37th birthday, & I'm toying with the idea of running the Victory 10K the next day in Richmond. Before all the hip drama I felt like I was in pretty darn good shape, plus I'll be coming off of a week at altitude*. (I don't know if it really makes a difference, but I ran my second fastest ever half after a week in Breckenridge, CA on a hot day feeling like I didn't even try that hard, so true or not, I now feel like a pre-race week at altitude is good juju.)

*But also, can we talk about how altitude sucks? You're constantly dehydrated even if you're chugging water, you feel hungover the first few mornings even if you weren't drinking, and you can't do any workouts (or rather, there's no *point* in doing workouts) until you fully acclimate which apparently takes like 2-4 weeks. Damn my pansy-ass sea level system.

Partly, I want to race because I was super excited about Kaiser, and since that didn't work out, I feel like I am owed at least one good hard effort before Boston. The only reason not to would be whether I should be pushing my hip that hard, so that's the main thing I'll have to pay attention to and see what happens.

And, let's be honest, the other thing holding me back is remembering just how much it hurts to run an honest 10K. I wasn't in great shape for Victory 10K last year, but I ran it hard under the circumstances, and I still can't shake that feeling of getting to the halfway point and thinking "Sweet Jesus I don't think I have three more miles of this in me." Because, real talk, if you get to the halfway point of a 10K and you don't feel like you want to die, you're leaving something on the table.

~*~*~ Boston Marathon: Week 10 of 18 ~*~*~
Grand Total: 23 miles

* 21.45 easy
* 1.55 speed

Monday 2/12: Karate. This was the day of my PT appointment. (If you missed that post & are into pictures of nasty PT-inflicted bruises, that one's for you.) If it hadn't been for that appointment I probably would have tried to get in a few easy miles, but I was super thankful to get the PT appointment that soon.

Tuesday 2/13: 2.75 warm up, 2 x (3 x 300m / 100m jog) / 300m jog, 2.7 = 7 total.

My hip felt 100% fine (other than the bruising), and since the PT had given me the clear to run as long as it was pain-free, I decided to attempt this workout and see how it went. The intervals were short and few, and it's easier to tap out of an interval at the track than anywhere else. I jogged 2.75 easy miles there for a warm up, did my drills, then took off on the first interval. The target time was 1:10 per 300m, but all I was thinking was "Let me not worry about the pace and just coast through these and see how the hip feels at a higher cadence," and lo and behold, I finished it 1:04, so, cool???

Not 100% out of the woods yet, but I can't tell you how excited I was to finish the whole workout plus the 2.7 miles back home with no pain in my hip. Pretty encouraging!

Wednesday 2/14: Karate + hip exercises

Thursday 2/15: 6 easy.

This was a long travel day for us so I had to get up early to get it done. It was 8-10 on the plan but I just was not getting up any earlier.

Friday 2/16: Ski!

Don and I arrived a couple of days before the rest our ski trip group, so we used the extra time to get in a day at Snowbird just outside of Salt Lake City. Pretty good day of skiing and no hip pain! Though towards the end of the day some douche bag did smash a metal lift bar down onto my knee (repeatedly, because he didn't get why it wouldn't come all the way down), leaving me with a nicely swollen and bruised right knee. :-/

Gorgeous day at Snowbird!

Saturday 2/17: 10 easy + hip exercises. Not the 20 that was on the schedule, but THAT IS OKAY.

Sunday 2/18: Ski!

I'm only a kind of-sort of-okay skiier, so it usually takes me a day or so of skiing nice friendly blues to remember how to do it & get up the nerve to get onto some black runs. This was my last black run on Sunday at Canyons in Park City.

Working up the nerve to hurl myself down the mountain in a blizzard.

I'm hoping to get at least one more run in this week in Park City. My hip still gets sore after longer runs but it also seems to go back to normal a day or two later, so if I have to only train every other day for the rest of the cycle, that'll be okay as long as I can get the long runs in. Right now, being able to complete the distance in terms of my hip is my biggest concern. If I have to run Boston a lot slower than I'd hoped and just finish, I am 100% okay doing that, but it means that at some point very soon I'm going to have to be able to do some for-real long runs.

But in the mean time...more skiing. ;)

====

Boston Marathon Week 1 of 18: On your mark, Get set...

Boston Marathon Week 2 of 18: speed, snow, & vertical

Boston Marathon Week 3 of 18: Foiled By Weather & Travel

Boston Marathon Week 4 of 18: There's "hills" and then there's HILLLZZ

Boston Marathon Week 5 of 18: Not the greatest of weeks...

Boston Marathon Week 6 of 18: Winter Running: Take 2

Boston Marathon Week 9 of 18: Grumpy Hip is Grumpy

Boston Marathon Week 9 of 18: Grumpy Hip is Grumpy

So, I have fallen way behind in these weekly updates, which has partly to do with screwing up my hip and, y'know, not having much to update about. It also has to do with having just been legitimately busy in the past couple of weeks. When I'm super busy but there's cool stuff to blog about, I seem to somehow carve out the time, but busy-ness + injury depression/lack of much to talk about tends to equal blogging fail.

Thankfully, things seem to be coming back together now (FINGERS CROSSED), so what the heck, have a little update!

In my KP Half race report (such as it was), I mentioned that I've been having this hip issue lately. For context, here's the timeline:

• Tuesday 1/9: Track workout; I'd had a very very minor ache in my hip, but somewhere around the middle of this workout there was a sudden, sharp WHOAH WTF WAS THAT kind of pain. It went away, but my hip still hurt after. (This was the day of my car accident, but I really do not see how that could be related.)

• Wednesday 1/10: Threw my back out & couldn't really walk comfortably for the next two days. (This very well could have been related to the accident.)

• Friday 1/12: Everything feeling fine, 10 mile tempo run w/ no problem.

• Saturday 1/13: Hip super sore with moderate+ pain if I tried to run. Skipped running.

• Sunday 1/14: 16 miles with no pain

• Monday 1/15: Super sore hip, but it was a rest day so ok.

• Tuesday 1/16-Sunday 1/21: Normal 50 mile week, completely fine with no pain.

• Tuesday 1/23: The hip thing came roaring back with a vengeance during a hotel treadmill speed workout.

• Wednesday 1/24-Saturday 1/27: Have the flu/feel awful/don't run

• Sunday 1/28: 6 easy miles, can feel the hip but not awful

• Monday 1/29: Minor soreness, not that bad

• Tuesday 1/30: Quit track workout 2 miles in with another sharp, sudden WTF pain

• Wednesday 1/31-Saturday 2/3: Don't run, hope for miracle

Pretty much as soon as the hip started feeling funny, I was back in the Church of Strength Work desperately trying to invoke the runner's version of absolution for cross training laziness (squats, lunges, clam shells, etc.). When my hip did not magically heal itself in time for KP Half in spite of five days of zero running, I decided to haul out the big guns & make a PT appointment.

The good news: My insurance doesn't require getting a dr. referral in order to see a PT. Woohoo!

The bad news: Only some places are in network (read: covered by insurance) and the ones that are have openings in mid-March at the earliest. (One place: "We could schedule you on May 16, how does that work for you?")

So. I sucked it up & went to the cheapest of the places that could see me right away & just paid the out-of-pocket rate. Good thing this is the Year of No Shopping so I've got all that extra phat cash lying around!!

(Lololol *cry*. Tell me more about how running is the cheapest exercise there is and all I need is a pair of shoes.)

I saw a new-to-me PT in San Francisco this past Monday who I like so far, and his assessment was pretty much that I'd minorly strained a hip flexor/adductor somehow & not really noticed, then made it a lot worse with the repeated motion of running until I finally started to feel it. He thought the original minor strain was probably a result of the muscle being super tight and, yes, my getting lazy about strength work through the holidays (knowing that at certain points in the past hip muscles have been my kryptonite). He spent the next hour and a half grinding the ever loving shizzle out of it with an elbow and some Graston tools, then stuck me on an e-stim machine with ice for 10 minutes.

Post-Graston. From my PT with love.

I know what you're thinking; super hot, right?

He gave me some supplementary exercises to strengthen the hip muscle and suggested I come back in as often as my wallet will allow I can to get it Graston'ed a bunch more and in the mean time continue to roll the ever loving shizzle out of it with a lacrosse ball.

There is more good news, though. I've been able to do several short-to-medium distance runs this past week (up to 8 miles) with no pain, and the PT said that as long as I continued to have no pain, I could keep running and very conservatively bump up the distance and speed. I happen to have a pretty short, easy speed workout (6 x 300m's) on the calendar yesterday so went ahead and tried it, thinking there is nowhere easier than the track to tap out of an interval should things start to feel off, but I finished the whole thing with no pain whatsoever (and bonus, no trouble hitting the paces) so we'll call that a win for now.

On Thursday we're off to Utah to ski for a week, where I may or may not be doing much skiing, and expect the footing may be a bit too treacherous for anything more than easy miles. I also obviously expect to be the envy of everyone in the apres-ski hot tub (see above). For now it just feels bruised and tender (wonder why), and hopefully it will continue to heal pain-free as I (very gradually) ramp up the mileage.

Will report back soon................

~*~*~ Boston Marathon: Week 9 of 18 ~*~*~
Grand Total: 17 miles, all easy

Monday 2/5: Rest

Tuesday 2/6: 1 hour strength work

8 sets seated row @ 55 lb. alternated w/ 8 sets push-ups (2 x 15, 2 x 12, 2 x 10, 2 x 8 for both), 8 sets weighted step-ups w/ two 15 lb dumbbells alternated w/ 8 sets prone jack knifes on the physio ball (same as above), clam shell series both legs (4 x 12 each side), + 20:00 elliptical because a girl's got to do something resembling cardio. SEE ME BEING GOOD AND DOING MY STRENGTH WORK??????

Wednesday 2/7: 1.5 hours karate

Thursday 2/8: 6 easy. No pain??????

Friday 2/9: 40:00 strength work + 3 easy to the gym & back

3 x 15 deadlifts @ 85 lb, 10 x pike reverse leg lifts w/ straight legs (btw: even just 10 of these are enough to reduce my transverse abs to jello right now), clam shell series both legs (4 x 12 each side), 4 x 15 dumbbell thrusters w/ two 15 lb dumbbells, 4 x 15 weighted static lunges w/ two 15 lb dumbbells.

Saturday 2/10: 8 easy, beautiful miles through Golden Gate Park in gorgeous weather (see: the photo at the top of this post). Also no pain!!!! Though, hoo boy, did my legs feel like jello halfway through.

Sunday 2/11: Rest

Next week: Pray I don't have any ill-fated encounters with ice. D:

====

Boston Marathon Week 1 of 18: On your mark, Get set...

Boston Marathon Week 2 of 18: speed, snow, & vertical

Boston Marathon Week 3 of 18: Foiled By Weather & Travel

Boston Marathon Week 4 of 18: There's "hills" and then there's HILLLZZ

Boston Marathon Week 5 of 18: Not the greatest of weeks...

Boston Marathon Week 6 of 18: Winter Running: Take 2

Race Report: Kaiser Permanente Half Marathon

I'm probably doing all this in the wrong order, posting-wise, but oh well! You get a post! And a post is better than no post. Right? Let's go with that.

Kaiser Permanente Half is one of the iconic San Francisco races, right up there with SFM and Bay 2 Breakers. In fact, in spite of the fact that SFM and B2B are flashier & marketed way more heavily, I would probably still consider Kaiser Half my "hometown" race over either of those, for a few reasons.

1) There are a lot of fun, well-done races in San Francisco that offer their own unique experiences, but most of them also tend to be a bit of a spectacle and cater more to tourists and fun runners looking for an "event" or "experience" than local runners just looking for a good, fast race.

2) If you're hoping for a half PR, Kaiser is 100% your best bet in SF. The course is 90%+ flat or downhill, doesn't have too many turns, and takes place in early February where the biggest weather risk is heavy rain or wind (and a light breeze and/or drizzle is much more likely).

3) $$$. The first time I ran KP half, I think it cost less than $50. It was up to $60 when I registered at the early bird price in July (plus transaction fee, bah), but that's still over $100 less (!) than some other half marathons in the city that offer a different experience.

Boston Marathon Week 5 of 18: Not the greatest of weeks...

The one advantage of evening long runs through Golden Gate Park:
Seeing the Conservatory of Flowers lit up for the Summer of Love

Not a great week for me, guys. I had a couple of solid workouts but that's pretty much all I can say. Things were going just fine until Tuesday morning when I was rear-ended on the way to work. I was driving in the far left lane at normal freeway speed when some dude slammed into me at what must have been 90-100mph without even trying to stop. My car skidded all over the road and I was just lucky I was able to keep it from slamming into the freeway divider or careening into the other lane & getting hit again.

STAND BACK: I'm going to try MICRO-BLOGGING

Seriously, guys. I've started about 10 posts since my last one and just never can seem to find the time to finish even one of them. I'll think, "Well this will just be a short catch-up post..." and then 20 paragraphs later I feel like I've barely scratched the surface.

So. While I'm scraping the bottom of the free-time bucket, I'm going to try micro-blogging, wherein I sit down and complete a post & hit 'Publish' in 10 minutes or less. HERE WE GO!!

Race Report: Tamalpa Runners Track Meet 5K

BACKGROUND:

To summarize some semi-relevant stuff I've posted in the past, I've only really ever run one 5K in my adult life where I was healthy and in good shape & training kinda-sorta heavily (to the extent that I ever train "heavily"), which is where I set my current PR (20:44/6:40 pace) in May 2012. It was so much faster than nearly every other 5K I've ever run that after a while it didn't really feel real, like "WHO ME RUN MULTIPLE 6:40 MILES IN A ROW? Phhhbbbt, that's not a thing that actually happened." Well, after massively PRing the marathon in December, I figured, what the hey? Let's take a crack at thing and see just how sturdy that dusty old PR is.

So, I registered for PrideMeet on June 17. (ProTip: If you want to run a fast, accurate 5K, do it on the track. Just don't weave too much.) I was in 60/40 not bad shape going into it in early May, then spent about 6-7 weeks adding some serious speed workouts. The workouts were tough but made a nice change from marathon training, and other than a sketch right calf muscle, I felt good going into the meet.

One sentence race recap: I ran a 6:52 mile which felt weirdly easy, then a 6:41 mile and still felt good, then proceeded to pull my calf so badly I couldn't put weight on it for several days. {Shakes fist at sky} Sure, I was bummed and frustrated, but another part of me could not believe I had run those splits and felt so good doing it. Sure, the plan had been to run this one 5K and then get serious about San Jose half training (10/8), but somehow I just could not let it go. What if I let the calf heal and run another?? Could that seemingly-untouchable PR seriously be about to fall??

And you know where this leads.

Tuesday, July 18 was soon circled on my calendar.

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.)

Race Report: SF Track & Field Club Pride Meet

Photo credit: SF Track & Field Club

TL;DR - I was having a GREAT race until pretty much right at mile 2 when something in my calf felt like it just popped and I nearly fell over due to the ice pick-like stab of pain that went screaming through my gastrocnemius. It was an instant race ender, which is super disappointing, but there's also some pretty amazing silver lining.

THE LONGER VERSION:

I'd been excited about this race for a couple of months now. I've wanted to dip my toe back into the world of track racing for a while now, but the timing has never worked out -- I've either always been injured, recovering, traveling, or aiming for some other big race that conflicted with the Bay Area track meets I knew about. This was finally the year!