no but wine, music, & realtors are basically the same as running right?

This week was going pretty well until the weekend. Which is not to say the weekend was not awesome; just that I completely failed to think ahead & plan my running around the awesome, so 18 weekday miles + 17 weekend miles turned into 18 miles total & that was all she wrote.

At least the week day miles were good ones. I now have four weeks of base training down (er....sort of. Not sure these last two really count, but hey, you do what you can do), eight more to go. Right now I'm planning on two more weeks of all super easy running, & then beginning to add in some goal marathon pace miles (although early-on I suspect it may be more marathon effort than goal pace) on Tuesdays.

I will now recount for you the Things I Learned This (zero-mileage) Weekend.

• Wine tasting in Napa is hard, even when you pre-plan. This is part of why we never go there & instead stick to Sonoma & Paso Robles. Yes, there are places you can drive right up to without an appointment, but most of them suck and/or are full of dumbass bachelorette parties in monogrammed sequin tank tops & penis hats (which...I suppose still technically sounds as sucking).
  
  One of the only normal-looking pictures we would take all day. We did not take it because we were super excited about taking pictures in the barrel room. We did it because the guy pouring assumed that we *obviously* wanted to take pictures in the barrel room & we did not want to hurt his feelings. (It seemed to make him really happy.)

• Even at the good wineries where you have to make appointments, some jackasses will still do their tasting & then light up a ciggy twenty feet from where the rest of us are just starting. (Don, sarcastically, as we sniffed a lovely merlot: "Hmm...I get hints of smoke & some tobacco notes..." Me: "I mean I know it's French but it's not THAT French." Lovely woman doing our tasting: "Excuse me while I go regulate up in hurrr." Bitches, man.)
• If you're making an appointment at a Napa winery & you don't want the wine n00b song/dance/tour/FiveDimensionalExperience, you should tell them in advance; otherwise they might spend an entire hour explaining to you how wine is made & what it means to be in a wine club & try to impress you with aspects of their winemaking & club that are entirely par for the course.
  
  Charter Oak. They also have some gorgeous art here.

  
  Good wine here but I could have done with less talking / more drinking.

  
  This is my "They-just-made-me-punch-down-the-fermentation-tanks-because-it's-authentic" look.

• Go to The Terraces. You have to make an appointment. They are cool as hell there & won't care if you start taking punchy selfies because you haven't eaten in six hours. Oh, and the wine is excellent as well.
  
  We weren't even drunk. Just punchy as hell.

• Remember that everything takes longer than it's supposed to at fancy appointment-only-Napa wineries & work this into your food planning ahead of time. Originally we'd planned to hit two wineries, stop for lunch, hit the second two, then head home around five, leaving me enough time in the evening to get my run in. As it was, we spent the day sprinting from one appointment after another, inevitably running late, so by the time we left our last stop, we were all desperate for food & just ended up having dinner in Napa.
  
  Dinner time. Still punchy.
• Everything about buying a house is scary & complicated. We officially started interviewing realtors this week, & the Sunday meeting that I assumed would take maybe an hour actually took two. At that point it was only about an hour & a half until the piano fundraiser we were going to, which isn't even enough time for half a long run once you factor in shower / travel time.
• There is this awesome organization in San Francisco called The Center for New Music, founded & run by a musician friend of Don's from college (and whose wife, coincidentally, is a teacher that I worked with a couple of times before I even knew she was connected to Don). You may remember that in a past life, I was a composer/singer/musician, so discovering this place was a huge treat.
  
  Less talking more piano.

  

• Plan your eating plan your eating plan your eating. By the time we left the concert, we were starving again, & after stopping for food, we didn't get home until nine. Weekend running thwarted again.

When I have an imminent race I'm pretty darn good at mercilessly putting a fence around my running time, and God help the man/woman/child/natural disaster that tries to get in my way. I think what I'm finding now is that I've got to start being a little more ruthless in that way, even though I'm not *really* training for anything right now.

WEEK OF 10/13-10/19

* 18 miles, all easy
* 2 x 45:00 strength workouts

Monday: afternoon 5 easy / p.m. karate

Normally Monday is my post-long run rest day, but since there was no long run on Sunday and the intensity of karate workouts has been less reliably lately depending on who is there, I decided to get a few easy miles in before class, just for the sake getting in SOME physical activity. And then, surprise! A pretty decent workout at karate as well.

Tuesday: a.m. strength work / p.m. 7 easy

I love you, fog. Our love is meant to be. I hear that Chicago song in my head every time you're near.

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

Thursday: a.m. massage / p.m. 6 easy

Friday: Rest

Friday was one of those bizarre days where I flew to LA at 8:30am & then back 12 hours later, so not really much time for anything except work.

Saturday: Napa

Sunday: Realtors/concert/near-starvation

I SWEAR I AM ALMOST DONE WITH THE RUNSAFE POST. It's getting posted this week if it kills me.

Desperate Miles, Desperate Measures

It's been a rough couple of weeks.

I've run many (er...several?) 20+ mile training runs in my life, but never when I've been traveling so much for work, dealing with a sketchy leg constantly on the cusp of injury, and sick for much of the week prior. On top of that we've been dealing with a tragic family situation, which has made everything that much harder. Between all that I have barely been holding it together most days. So maybe it is not shocking that for a lot of last week, I didn't really think the 20 miler was going to happen.

I mean I'm a serious optimist here, people, but I just couldn't see it. I double-dog couldn't see it when I woke up at noon Sunday morning with all kinds of aches in my feet and hips and glutes. But still, I kept telling myself it was going to happen, counting it in my mental weekly mileage tally, & even justified making the blueberry crisp I hadn't made the night before because "It'll be good for refueling when I get back from my 20." (Carbs! Antioxidants!)

Under any other circumstances, I don't think I would have done it. I felt like crap. Everything was sore. I was sad and distracted and afraid it would wreck what was left of my leg and honestly just could not muster the least little bit of enthusiasm about running at all. But with all the problems with my hip post-SF2HM/18 mile long run two weeks before, I was on the brink of waving the white flag in terms of Santa Rosa, and I knew I needed to at least try to run those twenty miles in order to see if there was any hope of running twenty-six of them two weeks from now.

Oh hey! Haven't had one of these pics in a while. Aren't you
reassured that I still have feet & don't wear the weird toe shoes?

I have never been big on running with music, mainly for safety reasons but also because I've seen the research about running with music being correlated with dissociative running, which is correlated with higher rates of injury & decreased performance. Even so, I do have a running playlist on my phone which serves as a kind of "in-case-of-emergency-break-glass" type of thing. If I absolutely, positively can't get myself out the door any other way, the playlist is my carrot of last resort. This was the second time in eight years I've had to use it.

The plan was simple. I'd start running, see how my hip felt, & go until I felt too ill/too in pain to continue ("Run Vaguer Run Faster (?)"). No worrying about pace. No feeling bad about stopping at traffic lights and water fountains. Just run with good form, for as long as possible, & find out what the leg can take.

Not exactly what it said in my training plan but close enough.

The only way I got through this run was by not thinking about which mile I was on or how many more were left until 20. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if I'd told myself, "We are running twenty miles today come hell or high water and that is FINAL," I would have given up after three because it just seemed so completely impossible. Instead it was more like, "Good job, you ran some miles & aren't broken yet! Maybe run a few more & see what happens?"

I'd even made a deal with myself that instead of running entire loops of the east side of Golden Gate Park which includes two or three big sucky hills, I could just run back and forth along the part without the sucky hills, but that proved too complicated for my brain to deal with. "NO GOING BACK, ONLY FORWARD," it insisted, so forward we went, big hills and all (and I don't know why but I swear they got easier on every lap, probably because eventually my soul just became too numb to notice or care.)

When I'd run 16 miles and was four miles from home, I knew I'd make it. Because I kind of had to, or face the shame of having to call Don & have him put a towel down in the passenger seat. Let's be clear that if I'd had to run by my house at mile 16 and keep going for another four miles, I am not altogether sure I would not have quit. I was keeping up more or less the same easy pace with no problem, but I can only carry six gels at a time & realistically probably needed nine, & that on top of still being kind of sick led I think to a kind of mild bonking that was more mental than physical.

I really can't describe the relief of getting to this moment without any pain in my right leg, and only very occasional & manageable pain in my feet.

(Not that it makes any difference whatsoever, but I'm pretty sure there were some Garmin hijinks in those last two miles. The first & last two are almost always my slowest because they're back in my neighborhood & inevitably involve more weaving in & out of pedestrians/cautiously approaching intersections/slowing to stop at lights/etc., but I don't remember them feeling particularly worse or harder than the few right before and honestly don't think they were THAT slow.)

On the other hand, apparently this is just a thing that happens now:

I don't even feel it anymore. Hooray for nerve damage!!

In case you're interested in what got me through that run (besides a shitte-tonne of emotional apathy), here's my playlist; analyze away.

Strava & Instagram, I Am On You

Last week I gave in to peer pressure & finally joined Strava.

TA DA!! Also, why has the internet suddenly become
obsessed with circular profile pictures? Lame city.

I put the little "LATEST RUNS!" widget in the right sidebar over there, but so far in spite of my having logged a bunch of runs, it still says, "Angela has not logged any activities yet," which is weird and a bummer & *totally* false. (I will fix it if anyone can tell me how.)

Being pretty new to the whole thing, I don't really "get it" yet & am kind of hoping its many glories will become clear to me in the fullness of time. To be honest I'm a little hesitant to join yet ANOTHER social media platform and ANOTHER place to log my miles. I can't help thinking about how DailyMile was such the new hotness among recreational runner / blogger types 3-4 years back & now it's kind of become the Friendster of online mileage platforms, which makes me wonder if a few years down the road Strava will join it as, I dunno, the MySpace of online mileage platforms, once our mileage / routes / KOMs are uploaded automatically via Google Glass.

But hey. I'll totally try it for a while & see if it moves me. I haven't quit Twitter yet!

What I'm saying is if you want to Strava at me, you can go here. Don't ask me what to do once you're there because I haven't the faintest idea. I've been entering my workouts; the ball, as they say, is in your court.

Oh yeah, & Cathryn also inspired me to resurrect my defunct Instagram account!

Apparently I took one picture last year of a pile of meat
before abandoning this, so.....we'll see how it goes?

Also, I'd like to direct your attention to the fact that even though I never told a soul about this account, I have followers. Thirty-seven of them. Thirty-seven people saw that one picture of a pile of meat & were like, I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE. WTF, internet people??

Anyway, if that's your bag, you can follow me here. I can't promise it won't be all shots of food & booze. But at least they'll look #crappychic? Which I guess people are into now?

* * *

Grand Total: 58.8 miles

* 8.8 running
* 39.5 bike (easy)
* 10.5 bike (speed)

Monday: a.m. strength work / afternoon 13 bike / p.m. karate

What a difference good sleep makes. In spite of waking up at 3:45 and 5:10 worrying that I'd overslept, I woke up with my alarm at 6 a.m. feeling actually not like death & excited about getting to the gym for some strength training.

Okay, maybe not excited, exactly. But again, let me emphasize, not like death.

Tuesday: a.m. 2.8 run / p.m. bike, 2.6 warm up + 5 x (5:00 @ 5K effort, 2:00 easy) = 13.1 speed

Dead legs on the 'mill this morning, so my cadence was maybe not so quick at first, but I warmed up after a few minutes & things gradually got easier. On the other hand, it was encouraging to find that being tired and not really feeling it now results in pretty good/not terrible form, where as pretty-good-not-terrible used to be all I could do at the best of times & "tired/not feeling it" usually meant piss poor form.

Wednesday: a.m. strength work / afternoon 6 bike + 3 run / p.m. karate

Ugh. I don't really know what it was, but when I left work on Wednesday, I just could. NOT. face the thought of getting on the 'mill for 25 minutes & then on the elliptical for 20 (which was my loose plan). So instead I did ~21 minutes of hard-but-not-stupid-hard spinning, then did my 24 minute run when I got home. (I am guessing this does not technically count as a "brick" since I sat in my car for 45 minutes in between.)

It's funny how the more strength work I do and the more targeted and focused it's gotten, the more I can feel it in my form. The leaning forward just gets easier & easier. Which in turn makes it easier to load up my hips & use my glutes & hamstrings well. Which makes it easier to keep up a good cadence. Which is all related to landing softly & quietly on my feet & keeping all my various bones & muscles & various other tissues comfortable & happy. It still takes a lot of effort, but I have to admit it's getting easier every day.

Thursday: 11.8 bike

One of the advantages of keeping a weekly training log in narrative form rather than just the numbers is that over time sometimes patterns emerge that might not be as obvious otherwise. Apparently, Thursday morning rides / runs are just always tough. I'm sure the dead legs & falling asleep on the bike/treadmill is a combination of late-week accumulated sleep debt (though I have been getting better at going to bed early! I swear!) & general physical wear & tear and the fact that it comes on the heels of karate & our inevitably late Wednesday night. (I have no excuse, really, for not getting myself in bed at 10pm on Tuesday & Thursday nights, but on karate nights, we don't even get home until nearly 10, & then still have to eat dinner/clean up/get ready for bed/the next day/etc.) So I've kind of just accepted that Pathetic Thursday (Morning) is a thing & I just shouldn't sweat it too much.

Friday: 3 run + 6 bike.

For whatever reason, I was just so incredibly unmotivated for this workout & wanted so desperately to just go home & pack for Paso Robles. Knowing I wouldn't get any running done in Paso, though, I dutifully marched myself to the gym after work and cracked the glass on my EMERGENCIES ONLY!!! training playlist. (Seriously, I haven't had to resort to music for motivation since 2006. Oy.)

Thanks to a little help from these & others...

...I made it through 25:00 of running & 22:00 of spinning relatively unscathed. And, as per usual, felt a hell of a lot better after than before.

Saturday/Sunday: Rest/drink wine.

This weekend was our twice thrice however-often-we-feel-like-yearly trip to Paso Robles for wine tasting/buying. There might be some lovely places to run down there but I would not know as I am generally too busy drinking wine.

The Future...

You guys, I totally signed up for another 5K this Saturday (Spring Forward in Mountain View). As long as I beat my time from Get Lucky, I'll be happy. There is no beer after, but on the other hand, it's not at 11 a.m. in wine country, so that's something.