Gears for Days + Race Week!

Sorry for the delay, things have been so busy in the last couple of weeks! When I've had the time to update the blog I haven't been able to find the energy, and when I've had the energy somehow I just couldn't find the time. But I am home recovering from a routine medical procedure today & taking the opportunity to get a couple of new posts up!

My Giant Race 10K race report is up! My race was not great and also the race *itself* was not great, so if you want to go read about all the hilarious reasons why, be my guest!

In the mean time, let us review my last training week before that race and how it went down.

Race Report: The Giant Race 10K 2022

Why did I sign up for this race?

The Giant Race is a mainstay of the San Francisco road racing scene, historically offering a pretty flat & fast (not to mention scenic!) 5K, 10K, and half over two days (though this year there was no half), but for one reason or another I've never run it. Actually I know one reason I've never run it and that's because of the price. The 10K cost me $90 and the 5K was $75, and those were the early bird prices before service fees, optional bib mailing, if you want the swank VIP package, etc. 💸💸💸

Especially when I first moved to SF 14 years ago, that was farrrr to rich for my blood. This year I was willing to swing it for a few reasons:

• I wanted to get in a mid-distance race this summer but my dates were pretty constrained due to dumb amount of travel over the summer & early fall & a bunch of weekends already booked up with stuff, so my options for local races, especially in the 10K range, were pretty sparse.
  
• The start/finish is a very quick and easy BART ride or a very reasonable 3-mile warm-up jog from my house. No driving or getting up butt early required!
• Related, no hotel needed, making this one actually *cheaper* than two of the four races I ran this past spring. (These two reasons alone pretty much clinched it for me.)
  
• The course has historically been pretty flat & fast.
• In terms of favorable August weather conditions, SF is about as dependable as it gets.

 

And then what happened?

Road Warrior Kitchen: Tacos Edition + One Week to Giant Race!

Just one more week until The Giant Race 10K!

This week was once again a little odd because we spend the weekend camping with a *different* group of friends. Why? Frankly, because we both love camping and are really terrible at actually planning it, so our strategy is mostly to sidle up to other friends we know like camping and are better at planning, talk about how much we like camping, and then glom on to the group camping trips that *they* plan. It's working out pretty well tbh, so I've got no real plans to do anything differently.

Each couple/family on this particular trip took on one meal to prepare for the group, so we made build-your-own tacos for Saturday night. We made everything except the guac at home in advance so that the only thing we had to do at the campsite was heat up the ingredients & set them out.

Too busy having fun to take photos during the camping trip it so please enjoy this documentation of me crushing an entire head of garlic to make carnitas for Saturday night camp dinner

Camping in Big Sur + I'm not really into goal setting, BUUUUUUTTT........

Hello! I am just back from a lovely weekend camping with friends in Big Sur, which I solidly recommend. Ask me anything about how to do it.

Enough frivolous joy & natural beauty, on to running stuff.

My strength coach (who is not a runner, but very knowledgeable about strength training in general, and has been very enthusiastic in learning more about running and coaching runners' strength work) occasionally asks me about what my goals are for upcoming races. 

And back in the day I used to get super into that stuff, setting "A" goals and "B" goals and so on down the alphabet, investing each with certain levels of meaning and import and in some sense kind of judging the whole endeavor by how far up the alphabet I managed to pull off on one random morning. 

But to be honest I've kind of been dodging that question every time he asks, tossing out noncommittal responses like, "Oh, you never know what will happen, I'm just going to try to run my best," or "It doesn't really matter, I just want to feel like I ran an honest race." 

Which isn't untrue; I've definitely accepted the reality that there are a LOT of things on race day that you can't control, and you can definitely work hard and do everything "right" and still not have the day you want.

I'm also more apt now to think in terms of process goals rather than outcome goals; you may not be able to control every variable on race day, but you CAN set process goals that you have a lot more control over. Time goals for me have really been out the window since before the pandemic, but I have been all over some serious process goals in the last say year or so, including but not limited to:

Home Again, Home Again + Dissociating is Underrated

Friends, I am here today to preach the good news of completely dissociating while running. Okay, maybe not completely dissociating. But largely. And not 100% of the time but, y'know, a lot of the time.

People will be like, "You gotta be fully engaged in the run! You gotta FEEL IT in ur BODY, get ur MIND all INTO IT!" And you know what, if that works for you, great. Get it. Feel your body or whatever. Some of us, though, only have so much mental "in-it-ness" or whatever you want to call it, and we have to be careful about where we spend it. 

I've always had a sense that, at least for me, running "hard" (whether that's racing, speed work, tempo runs, or some other workout where you're trying to hit a particular pace) doesn't only take physical effort; it's mentally taxing as well, in the same way that playing a complex and stressful game or taking a timed and detail-oriented entrance exam can be. (Think Chess tournaments, LSAT/MCAT/bar exam, etc.) In addition to being physically rested and recovered, you also need a certain "mental freshness" to do it well. I wasn't sure whether this was just me or a real thing until I read something Shalane Flanagan said about racing marathons:

Spain Photo Dump + 4 Weeks to Giant Race 10K!

Hello, all! I'm back from my conference in Spain & catching up on training logs such as they are. Not a ton of running got done over these 12 days, but it wasn't zero running, and on the plus side, I took some cool photos.

*~*~The Giant Race 10K Week 4 of 9~*~*~

Grand Total: 22 miles

* 20 easy
* 2 speed

Monday 7/11: Rest

Tuesday 7/12: 1 hour strength + 8 easy errand run. My trainer was out so no strength on Tuesday, just a very draining "easy" eight miles that I tried to use to run some errands (mostly grocery shopping) because I had too much to do & not enough time to do it. 🙈 GODDD I was tired!

Wednesday 7/13: 2 warm up, 10 x 1:00 hill repeats/recovery jogs, 2 cool down = 8 total. I have no good hills for this sort of thing even remotely close to home. Sigh.

Thursday 7/14: 6 easy. I was kind of nuts getting ready to leave & just couldn't make this one happen.

Friday 7/15: On a plane! No running.

Saturday 7/16: 6 easy if jet-lagged miles around Parque El Retiro in Madrid. Madrid was triple digits the entire time I was there but the nice thing about jet-lag is that you're usually wide-awake by 5am. Okay 7am. In any case by 9:30 I was out the door and it was still relatively pleasant out, so I used the opportunity to jog around the park and stop for photos. The heat didn't get too bad but MAN I got so thirsty and spent so much of this run looking for water fountains & sprinklers to drink out of and/or run through.

Back to Spain + 7 Weeks to Giant Race!

Howdy partners! Week 3 of Giant Race 10K is in the books and it was a pretty good one, though I definitely had some moments of fatigue as I stacked two 40+ weeks together for the first time in a while. 

Iberia is once again calling my name, so I'll be flying back to Spain this coming Thursday for about 12 days or so. Actually it is a work conference that is calling my name. But if you have to go to a work conference, Spain is not the worst destination I can think of.

I am hoping to get in as much regular training while I'm there as possible; Coach has given me some dialed-back workouts and easy runs for most of the trip, so I'm planning to just do what I can, whenever I can. I do love combination running/sightseeing but considering it will be triple-digit highs, we'll have to see how feasible that is. 

The Road Warrior is Back + 9 weeks to Giant Race 10K!

 ...And weekly training journals are back!

I returned from vacation in the middle of the week so in addition to Week 1 of Giant Race training, I'm also including a **bonus** Week 0 training journal AT NO ADDITIONAL COST so that you know you're not missing A SINGLE MOMENT of my 9 (& a half) week journey to The Giant 10K. See how mama takes care of you.

Now friends, I'm sure you all know the struggle of returning to Regular Life after a long-ish vacation. I'm not gonna lie; those first few days were a bit rough. It's not that we were completely sedentary on our trip; we actually did quite a lot of walking, and even some pretty vertical hiking. That said, it was a specifically wine-and-food focused trip, and there was still a good deal of sitting on various planes, trains, and automobiles, and unlike on November's Portugal trip, I did not go running even once.

The day after we got home, I put on running clothes & went out for a nice, slow, easy, four-mile amble, just to flush out the legs and gently reintroduce to them the idea of moving at a pace faster than a brisk walk. We made it through okay but I'm not joking when I tell you I was actually sore the next day!

Not too sore to get in another four easy miles, though. I thought Coach would ease me back into training pretty gently, and, wellll sort of??? But not that gently! 🤣🤣

~*~*~ The Giant Race 10K Week 0 of 9 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 25 miles

* 22 easy
* 3.5 speed
* 5 tempo/threshold

Wednesday 6/15: 4 easy. Just easing back into things with a little jet lagged jog!

Thursday 6/16: 4 more easy.

Friday 6/17: Coach said "Alright enough of this, 7 easy, get after it!"

Saturday 6/18: Rest. OMG you guys. I had the option of three easy miles this day but I was legit sore from *all that running* after three weeks of vacay. So rest. I regret nothing.

Sunday 6/19: Coach said "Alright enough resting, 10-12 miles including 5 x 3 min baby tempo intervals with 2 min jog recoveries." I did 10 and that was PLENTY. It was hot AF and not gonna lie, I was still kind of sore. BUT BUT BUT! I can still run mid-to-low 7:xx's without too much trouble, which, after vacation, feels like a win.

~*~*~ The Giant Race 10K Week 1 of 9 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 38 miles

* 17.6 easy
* 3.4 speed
* 5 tempo/threshold
* 12 long

Monday 6/20: Rest

Tuesday 6/21: 1 hour strength + 6 easy in the shockingly hot sun 🥵. Friends I am not used to it being ninety-frickin-three in San Francisco at 11:00am. Just rude.

Wednesday 6/22: 3 warm up, 3 x (4 x 200m/200m)/2:00 min jog, 3 cool down 8 mile progression run. The track was closed for a soccer game (it's that time of year again!) so I improvised by switching today's workout with Friday's. I have to say I was pretty shocked at how comfortable low 8:xx/high 7:xx was feeling, which is not always the case! I finished miles 6 & 7 in the 7:30s and when I think back to how devastatingly impossible that pace felt in late 2020/early 2021, it makes me so grateful for how good I am feeling these days when I try to run fast (y'know, for me).

Thursday 6/23: Massage + 3 easy Post-vacation my right hip/lower back definitely needed some attention!

Friday 6/24: Chiro session + 3 warm up, 3 x (4 x 200m/200m)/2:00 min jog, 2.6 cool down = 9 total. Definitely not feeling the lightness pop in my legs that one likes to feel on track day, but Og didn't give a shit. My left hamstring was feeling a bit tight so Og was like, "Just not hammer so hard, focus on leg speed & turnover, interval times not matter so much." As usual, Og, you are completely correct. (For the record, the times were completely respectable, especially for not hammering them particularly hard and coming off of three weeks of no running.)

Saturday 6/25: Rest

Sunday 6/26: 12 long. The Road Warrior is officially #roadwarrioring again -- I had to catch a flight to Palm Springs in the early afternoon, which meant getting up a bit early Sunday to get my long run in before finishing up my packing and heading to the airport. The last time I ran 12 miles was May 8, and I could definitely feel it in my legs! Also my body is just really not a fan of hopping right out of bed and out the door and I started off feeling like I'd already run 15 miles. 😱 I honestly was not sure how I was going to get through twelve entire miles but just kept grinding away at one more mile until the thing was done.

~ * ~ * ~

I'm going to attempt to train through all my various upcoming work travel to the extent that I can, but we'll see how it goes. I have three runs to do over the next four days of work travel, so fingers crossed that I'll be able to balance it all with the work stuff. 🤞🤞🤞

Summer Planzzzzzz....

 Hello friends!

I'm back from an amazing Iberian vacation (photos coming soon) and ready to run-ble (see what I did there? Sorry not sorry). Also please enjoy this photo I got from Stow Lake Stampede:

I have some I don't want to say *big* plans in the works, but let's just say, big-ger plans than I've been willing to entertain in a while. Why?