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.

Eugene Half Taper Pt 2 (Eugene Half Week 8 of 8) Apr 22-28

OMG you guys. Work and life. They've been absurd lately. YES I am still out here running and racing but have not had the spare time or bandwidth to write about it. 😂 So here is the *final* installment of my Eugene Half training cycle and maybe one of these weeks I'll actually get the race report published too.

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4
Eugene Half Week 5
Eugene Half Week 6
Eugene Half Week 7

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 8 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 33.07 miles

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Eugene Half Taper Pt 1 (Eugene Half Week 7 of 8) Apr 15-21

ICYMI, on April 13, I made an arguably (smart? stupid?) choice to spend one of my days in Philadelphia driving 2+ hours to a local community 15K so I could get one more race experience in before Eugene. (Originally I was going to run the Prospect Park 10 Mile in Brooklyn on Sunday April 14, but my conference talk got moved and when I knew I wouldn't be able to make it back in time, I had to shift to a Saturday race.)

While the race itself was generally a good experience, the drive back was not kind to my knee. By the time I finished running, it was a bit stiff and achey, and then after three hours sitting in the car driving back, it was a bit swollen and not too happy with me putting weight on it. I had planned to run seven easy miles that Sunday the day after the race, but when I got up that morning I knew it was absolutely NOT happening.

Thus, the theme of week 7 became, "For the love of god, Angela, don't wreck your knee again." Thankfully, being just two weeks out from the race, all the work was already done, and as we recently learned, extra rest is almost always only going to help you.

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4
Eugene Half Week 5
Eugene Half Week 6

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 7 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 16 miles

🐌 Easy: 12.25 miles
🐎 Fast: 3.75 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 76.6% vs. 23.4%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Eclipse! + Far too many time zones for one week (Eugene Half Week 6 of 8)

OK, so. Last weekend, I had to give a paper at a conference in Philadelphia, and being two weeks out from Eugene and really wanting one more chance to get on a starting line before then, I'd planned to Amtrak into Brooklyn on Sunday morning to run this 10 miler in Prospect Park.

Buttttt then the talk was changed from Saturday to Sunday at 1:15pm, and there was just no feasible way to run a 9:15am 10 mile race and get back to Philly in time for this talk. So.

What do we do?

We turn to the internet to see what else is around. And what do we find?

This cheeky little 15K race (that's ~9.3 miles according to The King's Mathematics) in central Pennsylvania on Saturday morning. 

Is it glamorous? No. But did I care about that? Also no! I really just needed to run a *sorta* long-ish tune-up race where I could practice HM effort and using all the mental stuff I've been working on in a situation that feels more formal than weekend long runs on my own in Golden Gate Park.

Race report coming soon!

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4
Eugene Half Week 5

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 6 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 30.85 miles

🐌 Easy: 20.35 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 9.3 miles
🐎 Fast: 1.2 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 66% vs. 34%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Fatigue is piling up but so is fitness (Eugene Half Week 5 of 8)

Oof geez I am so behind with all the work / running travel lately! I have a lot of these to get through so let's just get to it.

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 5 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 38.6 miles

🐌 Easy: 30.85 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 6 miles
🐎 Fast: 1.75 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 79.9% vs. 20.1%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Big Miles + Radical Rest (Eugene Half Week 4 of 8)

Like most weeks, lately, this one was stressful and exhausting. Maybe not as much as some weeks. But still, I spent so much of the time feeling tired, both in terms of feeling fatigued (runs are hard, hard to motivate off the couch to accomplish basic tasks such as feeding myself) and sleepy (not always getting enough sleep, fighting off daytime naps).

By the time I finished Friday's 7-mile easy run, I was already thinking forward to Sunday's nontrivial long run workout (15 miles including 3 x 2 mile reps at half marathon effort) and strategizing about how I was going to make sure I got the most out of it. Thankfully, this past weekend was one of those rare and beautiful ones where I had absolutely no concrete commitments beyond keeping myself & the cats alive and doing the bare minimum necessary to keep our living space some basic level of functional/not gross.

The strategy I settled on was radical rest, which included the following pillars:

• After running on Friday evening, feed & hydrate self/cats ➡️ sit on couch & watch TV ➡️ go to bed early.
• Saturday ➡️ sleep in as much as possible ➡️ feed & hydrate self/cats ➡️ mostly sit on couch, feed/hydrate as necessary / carb load like a mother ➡️ go to bed early.
• Saturday ➡️ sleep in as much as possible ➡️ hydrate/consume moar carbs (& feed cats) ➡️ coffee ➡️ friggin' *crush* this long run workout.

Now, this *mostly* went to plan, though I cannot honestly say there were *no* deviations:

How Quickly Do We Lose Fitness? (Eugene Half Week 3 of 8)

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2

One of my favorite running podcasts as I've mentioned before is Pro Running News with Dave Lipman and Matt Fox; recently Matt Fox has also started doing his own separate podcast in addition to PRN called Sweat Elite (after his training/coaching company of the same name). 

In general Sweat Elite doesn't speak to me in quite the same way as PRN, but every now and then there is an episode or two that piques my interest. Recently Matt has been doing a series called "Training Talk" which is more focused on the nuts and bolts and fiddly details of designing good training and how a well-designed training plan creates the physiological adaptations (ie., "fitness") that make for strong performance. This week I listened to episode six in the series, entitled How Fast Do You Lose Fitness?, in which Matt interviewed Max Frankel, one of the Sweat Elite coaches and in fact the coach who has actually been designing Matt Fox's own marathon training. (Historically, Matt was/is a pretty high level middle distance runner who I believe even ran for some Australian national teams in his younger days.) 

Originally the episode was supposed to focus on a different topic but thanks to various Life Things, Matt had recently taken some unplanned days off from training, so instead they pivoted to discussing the role and impact of such unscheduled rest days. Ergo: How Fast Do You Lose Fitness?

Spring is Busting Out All Over! (Eugene Half Week 2 of 8)

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 3

You guys it's like the time changed and suddenly it's summer 🌞🌞🌞😎😎😎💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻. Or at least some semblance of spring. How lovely to procrastinate one's afternoon run until 5:30 or 6:00pm and not have to worry about the light. Simply marvelous.

AND AND AND it's been kinda sorta warm-ish here??? Or like 65ºF-ish at least??? Honestly when it's 65ºF and full sun, we call it summer and live it up.

The view from Tuesday's run through Golden Gate Park

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 2 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43 miles

🐌 Easy: 38.5 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 0 miles
🐎 Fast: 4.5 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 89.5% vs. 10.5%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

A Belated Look at Eugene Half Marathon Week 1 of 8

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3

Eek, getting behind on these! Just about six weeks left until Eugene. If you cast back into your memory, you might recall that this was the week right after NorCal John Frank Memorial 10 Miler. The race was Saturday March 2 and I took the Sunday completely off for some much needed rest. Then on Monday, it was back to work!

(Also, look, sorry, no photos this week, it turns out when you're strapped for time & just living your life, you don't really remember to take a lot of photos. Sorry. 😬)

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 1 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43 miles

🐌 Easy: 37.625 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 5 miles? (Counting anything 9:00 or faster at altitude as "moderate")
🐎 Fast: 0.375 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 87.5% vs. 12.5%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

A Hectic Race Week! (John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 4 of 4)

Well, race week has come and gone! If you want to know the deets, race report here. As for the week itself, it was kind of a stressful one with a short-but-intense work trip and some unfortunate travel woes. That plus a bit of insomnia earlier in the week (no real reason, just run-of-the-mill "HI HELLO THIS IS YOUR BRAIN LET US SPIN WILDLY THROUGH ALL THE THOUGHTS UNTIL THE WEE HOURS" brain stuff) meant that I unfortunately spent a lot of it exhausted and sleep-deprived, and checked off the first unintended zero day of the year (fortunately, just an easy four miles, nothing that tragic).

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 4 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 28.5 miles

🐌 Easy: 17.25 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 10 miles
🐎 Fast: 1.25 miles
(🏅 Race: 10 miles)

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

This is 43! (John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 3 of 4)

Hello! Here we are just a few days from the Johnny 10 and I am feeling particularly wise and sophisticated, having just completed my 43rd circuit around the sun. I spent the first part of the week frantically trying to meet work deadlines & then the last part chilling in Tahoe and blessing folk there with my hard-earned wisdom and life experience. Too busy skiing to take pictures so please enjoy these shots from a year ago:

Different year, same lake

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 3 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 38.85 miles

🐌 Easy: 25.51 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 9 miles
🐎 Fast: 4.34 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 65.7% vs. 34.3%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Two Weeks Till Johnny (John Frank 10 Miler Week 2 of 4)

Two weeks to go until we drive up to Redding and play in the hilllllzzz! Nothing too bananas to report this week, just chipping away. Some days feel better than others but over all I am feeling good and generally getting the training done more or less in the right vein. There is always the temptation to tack on a couple miles here & there, but sitting right in the low 40s has been working well for me for the last few weeks and I don't see a good reason to get greedy at this point.

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 2 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43.1 miles

🐌 Easy: 34.1 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 6 miles
🐎 Fast: 3 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 79.1% vs. 20.9%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Back to Work (John Frank 10 Miler Week 1 of 4)

...And we're back at it. Next up on the schedule is John Frank Memorial 10 Miler in Redding in March 2, with the longer-term goal being the Eugene Half on April 28. (Did I mention I signed up for the Eugene Half? I signed up for the Eugene Half! #peerpressure). 

JFM10 is a PA race so I'm mostly doing that as a club thing. The course is a bit hilly so I think a PR (sub 1:16:45) is unlikely, but even if it's not particularly fast, it'll still be a good workout and a good chance to race double digits before Eugene.

This week was mostly about just getting back in the swing of things, plus a 48-hour work trip to Orlando:

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler 1 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 42 miles

🐌 Easy: 33 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 4 miles
🐎 Fast: 5 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 78.6% vs. 21.4%. 

Guess which day was my first full day of jet lag.

Womp Womp (Kaiser Half Week 13 of 13)

The big story of this week was definitely the weather. We've been in the path of an atmospheric river here in the Bay Area this week, with one pretty bad storm Wednesday night and another forecasted for--you guessed it! Sunday morning.

Starting around midweek, the group chat was full of discussions about what to wear based on how conditions shook out and the logistics of getting in a warm-up and cool-down but also not dying of hypothermia.

Then Friday afternoon, we got the news that race organizers were changing the course due to concerns from SF Parks & Rec around the possibility of falling tree branches in the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park. Instead all three distances (5K, 10K, half) would start together & run laps up and down the Great Highway.

Obviously this was disappointing, but falling tree branches in big storms have killed and maimed enough people since I've lived here that I completely understand the decision. (Back at cross country team nationals in December 2022, a big branch fell on the course during the race, prompting race organizers to move the race to the Polo Fields. Having witnessed that I'd definitely like to NOT witness something similar again.)

And That's (Mostly) A Wrap! (Kaiser Half Week 12 of 13)

And here we are, just one week to go, all over but the tapering. This month has been a little bit of zero to ninety in some ways, and though it's gone really well and I feel fitter than I have in *quite* some time, I am also very, very tired and SUPER excited for a week of mostly four-mileish runs with non-easy work limited to some short strides here & there. It's that feeling of all the miles starting to pile up, being able to execute longer harder workouts pretty well but then feeling *suuuuuper* super fatigued at most other moments. The overall mileage and workout load of the last few weeks is definitely starting to accumulate and I am feeling it. 😂 

Most of the time when my assignment for the day has a range (ie 4-6 easy or 6-8 easy or 12-14 long), I will opt for the higher number because why not. But when I feel the way I have this week, I am instead doing  e v e r y t h i n g  I can to make easy days as easy as they can possibly be, no shame whatsoever. This week on easy days I have been doing the minimum mileage, and taking things as comfortably as I feel like, regardless of what that means for pace. Because on the big workout / long run days, I want to be able to fully execute and get the full benefit, and if I am out here adding extra easy miles when I'm already tired and pushing the pace because I'm self-conscious about what shows up on Strava, then I might not be able to do that.

On easy days towards the end of a cycle, yes, yes I do

People are always saying "Don't leave your race in a workout" but something people do not say often enough in my opinion is "Don't leave your workouts in easy days." I want to be able to run truly hard on hard days, and the only way I can do that (especially as I round the corner towards 43!) is to take the easy days truly super duper easy.

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 12 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Rain, Soup, & Another 40+ Mile Week (Kaiser Half Week 11 of 13)

It's been a wet one here in the Bay Area! On the other hand the temperature has remained solidly in the mid-50s, so we really cannot complain too much considering what a lot of the rest of the country is going though.

We've also been big into soup-making over the last couple of weeks, which will maybe prompt me to resurrect Road Warrior Kitchen sometime soon. This week's soups of interest included chicken mushroom farro; smoky miso chicken; sausage white bean & spinach; and turkey chili with ayacote morados. There is nothing like making a warm, cozy soup on a rainy day.

I am feeling incredibly grateful to get another 40+ mile week in the books while still feeling pretty good. I know those fitness graphs in Strava aren't everything but I am still pretty happy to see mine trending consistently upward rather than kind of bouncing around all over the place like it did for most of last year.

For reference, the highest number I've ever seen on this little doohicky is like 54 (at CIM 2016). But 26 is the highest I've seen since May 2022, so let's lean into that.

Just two weeks to go!

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 11 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43 miles

🐌 Easy: 37 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 5 miles
🐎 Fast: 1 mile

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 86% vs. 14%. 

So far so good + an achievement unlocked (Kaiser Half Week 10 of 13)

Three weeks to go until Kaiser SF Half! Honestly when I signed up for this race I'd been of the mindset that it would be kind of a rust-buster, just a way to start the year off with some motivation to do some for-real training. But other than the few weeks in December when I was out of commission, I've been pleasantly surprised at the quality and quantity of training I've been able to put in and am honesty feeling pretty curious and excited to see what the race brings. 

As a reminder I ran 1:53:57 at Clarksburg in November, which is a pretty low bar in terms of showing some progress. I think sub-1:50 is extremely realistic unless I have a really bad day or bad pre-race week and around 1:45ish is not unreasonable. Can I beat Clarksburg by a full ten minutes? That would be awesome but who can say! And really anything faster than that would be absolute gravy.

(But also, I am trying not to get *overly* optimistic--all I can do is continue to train smart, then show up and do my best on the day, and if I do those things, then whatever happens will be good enough.)

(But then, at the same time, I have to remind myself that I ran 1:56:05 at Kaiser in 2022, knowing that I was in not-great shape and mostly just trying to finish, and then six weeks later ran 1:40:57 at Oakland Half freaking out of the blue. So hey, sometimes magic happens, folks.)

In other exciting news this week, a multi-year dream was accomplished with the installation of this sweet shoe rack in the garage:

#Levelingup

This is mainly important because it gets stinky running shoes (at least those in the regular daily rotation) out of our indoor living space. 😂 So now I go in and out of the garage for running, and the shoes never have to come inside at all. Living the dream, amirite.

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 10 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 42.3 miles

🐌 Easy: 28 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 9.8 miles
🐎 Fast: 4.5 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 66.2% vs. 33.8%. Definitely an unusually big week for quality miles!

Back to Work! (Kaiser Half Week 9 of 13)

Gradually upping the mileage, & starting to mix in some faster miles here & there with just four weeks left to go until our 2024 season opener! (And, with only the *occasional* monkey wrench thrown in by the universe, one can only assume to keep us on our toes. 🤦🏻‍♀️😬)

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 9 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 34 miles

🐌 Easy: 26 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 8 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 76.5% vs. 23.5%

Holiday Running Update! (Kaiser Half Week 8 of 13)

Hello all, I hope the holidays were kind and you are refreshed and reinvigorated and that your new year is off to a solid start. Mine were a bit chaotic and scrambled. Thanks to work stuff, available venues/facilities, and horrific jet lag (if you've never experienced twelve hours of jet lag or "the full jet-lag monty" as I've been calling it, it is, well, really something), I got absolutely zero running accomplished on my trip to Dubai. I pretty reliably adjust to jet lag at the rate of one hour/time zone per day, so I was there pretty much exactly long enough to acclimate and then get back on a plane and do the whole thing over again. (Again, if you've never been jet lagged for twenty-four full days, it is...really an experience. Not one I recommend, but an experience.)

I arrived back home late the night of Dec. 18th, slept like a log thanks to an absolutely hulking thirty-three-hour travel day, had a great six-mile run on the 19th, then promptly came down with some kind of respiratory virus on the 20th (not Covid, thank Jesus for small blessings). 🤦🏻‍♀️ I always wear masks in airports and on transit now, so I'm going to blame my visit to the Burj Khalifa on Sunday the 17th for whatever I caught. (If I'd been thinking I absolutely would have worn a mask given how crowded/close quarters it is, but for whatever reason it just didn't occur to me, so stupid.) 

Honestly, whoever designed the whole plaza area surrounding the Burj really nailed it. You just cannot take a bad picture here no matter how hard you try.

Anyway, this was absolutely fantastic timing as I was getting back on a plane on the 22nd to fly home to Texas for Christmas. (Again: Insane jet lag? Respiratory/sinus infection/**more** air travel?? An experience! That literally everyone should try to avoid!) Long story short, I spent most of that trip including Christmas sick with something and not at all up to running. So, weeks 6 & 7 were pretty much a bust.

But!! I started feeling better after Christmas, and as of Week 8, started to get kiiiinda sorta back on track. Behold:

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 8 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 29.5 miles

🐌 Easy: 16 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 13.5 miles (at least, if we're going by my heart rate for most of it 🤣)

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 54.2% vs. 45.8% (not ideal but I regret nothing)