SRM WEEK 4: Dusting Off My Heart Rate Monitor

A few years back I was really into heart rate training. I wore my monitor for every run and race, recorded the data meticulously, and built statistical models to explore how different variables affected my performance. (I am a mathematician and a social scientist, so really, this is pretty normal behavior for me.)

There are a lot of benefits to training with a heart rate monitor. First, ask any professional running coach about the biggest training mistakes recreational runners make, & they will inevitably list somewhere in the top five running "easy" runs too fast / hard. I know I've certainly been guilty of this (though at least I'm aware of it & have definitely gotten better about it). If you know your max heart rate & run with a monitor, it's pretty hard to get away with "But this TOTALLY feels like the pace I should be running!!!" when there is hard evidence to the contrary staring you in the face. They're particularly excellent for keeping tempo / threshold runs at the right effort level regardless of terrain or weather, and it's also cool to watch your average pace improve as your average heart rate gradually drops over weeks or months of training.

But, after a while, I got lazy about it & went to wearing it only for speed & tempo workouts, then only for races, & eventually just abandoned it altogether. I wanted to go back to using it last year to make sure I wasn't running my easy runs too hard as I recovered from my hip injury, but shockingly, the three-year-old battery was dead, & I never got around to replacing it. Which actually worked out for the best, since just a few weeks ago I learned from Page that heart rate monitors generally only last for 2-3 years anyway & after that don't really provide reliable data. So, I took her advice & picked up the Garmin premium heart rate monitor (soft strap) for ~$45 on amazon.

AND, it only took me a week and a half to open the box and figure out how to activate it & pair it up with my Garmin! :D

On Saturday I went for my first run with a HR monitor in three years. Because it's been so long, I wasn't aiming for particular numbers so much as just to see what my heart rate was doing and compare it to what it was doing on average the last time I was using it regularly. It was encouraging to see that for runs of the same distance (5 miles), my heart rate was lower and my pace faster, even though most of the runs for which I have records were in the 45°-50°F range & Saturday in the city was closer to 70°. (Temperature tends to have a dramatic effect on heart rate since your body has to do additional work to keep itself cool.)

If I was being super-rigorous about things, I would probably need to go get my max heart rate tested again. The highest number I have ever personally seen on the monitor was 223 (mid-2011, toward the end of speed work on a hot day) & when I had it tested in a lab in early 2012, we got it up to 211. (It's harder to get up to true all-out effort on a treadmill than, say, running on a track, but it's close enough for science.) That wasn't TOO too long ago, so I feel like somewhere in that range is probably a reasonable number to go by.

(Maybe this is a good time to bust some myths about max heart rate. It is not 220 minus your age or any other formula you read on the internet or on some poster at the gym. Anyone who tells you it is should not be telling anyone anything about their cardiovascular system. Also those little charts that tell you which zone is your "weight loss zone" / "endurance building zone" / etc. are total bullshit. If you want to know your max heart rate, get it tested in a lab or do some speed work with a monitor for a while.)

With that in mind, here's what I'll be aiming for, courtesy of Papa Daniels (who I trust in all things running-related):

• For easy runs, 65-80% MHR, or ~140-172 bpm (I averaged 160 on Saturday & 164 on Sunday, so HELL YEAH!)
• For marathon pace runs, 80-90% MHR, or ~172-193 bpm
• For tempo runs, ~90% MHR, or ~193-194 bpm
• For speed work, 98-100% MHR, or ~210-215ish

* * * WEEK 4 * * *
(11 to go)

Up until Friday, I was sure that the story of week 4 was going to be the story of cumulative fatigue that may or may not end up causing me to skip training days. This has happened to me before in training cycles; more than once I've had around a month of strong, solid, gung-ho training, and then suddenly it would all start catching up to me. My legs would start feeling heavy & leaden on every run, and even after rest days I would start thinking that maybe another one was not the worst idea ever. (And don't get me wrong, sometimes unplanned rest days are *exactly* the way to go.)

But just as in week 3, things started looking up with the weekend. Not because the runs were easy; they were still tough and I absolutely had to work and dig deep to get them done, which called to mind one of my favorite marathon training quotes from Kevin Hanson (of the Brooks-Hanson Hanson Brothers):

"Everyone wanted a regimen that would leave their legs feeling fresh. They wanted to know, 'How can I get that spring in my legs?' That was the wrong question. The question should be: 'How can I train my body so that when the fatigue hits me, I'm still able to respond?'"

And that's exactly what I got towards the end of the week. Not painful, not utterly soul-sucking, not stopping-to-catch-my-breath-every-half-mile exhaustion; just general fatigue, tough but doable, & just challenging enough to finish and go, "Not bad; still glad it's done." It's given me confidence this week to get some runs under my belt that have forced me to practice powering through and maintaining good form and good turnover even when my body felt tired & like it would really rather just lie on the pavement with a beer than run even one more block, plzthnx.

Grand Total: 31 miles

* 1.5 speed
* 2 threshold
* 7.5 long
* 20 easy

Plus:

* 2.25 hours strength/stretch/roll

Monday: afternoon strength work / p.m. karate

I had to drive 40 miles to get to the South Bay butt-early in the morning, which means I had to do my strength work in the afternoon. Guess when I am the least motivated to do strength work? :P

Tuesday: speed work (1.5 warm up, 2 x 1200m @ 5K pace, 1.5 cool down = 4.5 miles total).

In case you missed it:


That pretty well summarizes my feelings about said track workout.

Wednesday: a.m. strength / afternoon 5 easy / p.m. karate

I woke up feeling super tight & kind of fragile all over, & also just generally crappy from not sleeping well, so Wednesday morning definitely involved more rolling & stretching & less actual strength work than usual (but still not an insignificant amount).

With this whole six-day deal I've been working under the assumption that Wednesday runs are just generally going to suck, coming as they do on the heels of speed work. Thus far this assumption seems to be a valid one. I was deeply unexcited about this run & the only way I got through it was by running one-mile laps in my neighborhood & making occasional water stops by the house. I felt slow & sluggish & was quite happy just to get this one in the books.

Thursday: 4 easy

I desperately needed some extra sleep Thursday morning, so I skipped the bike & hoped that would make my run a bit easier than the previous two. No such luck; like Wednesday, this one pretty much sucked from the very beginning. My legs felt exhausted & I was seeing numbers on the watch that I haven't seen since my very first runs back after my hip injury. At least after the first 3 or so miles I did feel ever so *slightly* less like ass. So it only, like, 80% sucked.

Friday: a.m. strength work / p.m. tempo (1.5 wu, 2 @ LT pace, 1.5 cd = 5 miles total)

Thankfully, Friday (once again) brought my streak of sucky runs to an end. Yes, my legs felt heavy starting out, and I was a bit discouraged because of the massive headwind I found myself running into in Golden Gate Park. I loosened up a little but still wasn't feeling confident that I'd be able to ratchet down to (not to mention maintain) a 7:25 pace. And then suddenly it was just happening, with less effort than I expected. I ran the first mile in 7:24, which was fine but realistically probably just a bit fast considering the crazy headwind. I was sure I was seeing things, though, when the second mile clicked off in 7:11. Yes, I had a tailwind going that direction, but it was also net uphill, including two not-insignificant climbs. The good news: I'm fitter now than I thought, apparently. The bad news: still out of practice re: pacing. This is why we have tempo runs!! :D

Saturday 5 easy

The afore-mentioned first HRM run since 2011.

Sunday: 7.5 long

Usually I don't start labeling runs as "long" until they're at least in the double digits, but RunningAhead has had all my Sunday runs pre-designated as long (since they are in fact longer than the rest) & though I've just been switching the category back to "easy" up to now, I forgot to do it Sunday when I recorded this run, & once it was done it seemed kind of silly and pointless to go back and change it.

In less awesome news, I pulled my shoes off post-run & was greeted with this lovely scene:



Which wouldn't be so ironic & annoying except that a) I just randomly mentioned the last time this happened in my recent Kinvara 5 post, and b) I had just clipped my toenails Sunday morning specifically to prevent this kind of thing.

Shoe Review: Kinvara 4 vs. Kinvara 5

For several months now, I've been trying out new shoes, & in spite of several promising candidates, I have yet to find something (that is actually for sale) that ticks all the magical little ticky boxes in my head. I was hoping the PureDrift would be a good option, and there are indeed many things I love about it, but I just think that right now I need a bit more cushioning that it offers to run comfortably on concrete.

Every time I try a new shoe & it doesn't work out, I go back to my trusty Kinvaras, and though they are far from perfect, I can't deny that running in them gives me a feeling like coming home. Sure, it would be nice if it had just a LITTLE less cushion and the toe box were just a BIT wider (something I found myself acutely aware of after a few runs in the Altras & 'Drifts), but in general, I find that when I run in the Kinvaras, whether for three miles or twenty, I don't think about the shoes. They're comfortable, fit my foot really well (except for the toe box thing), and let me keep up good form without too much work, and that's not doing too badly as finding a solid running shoe goes.

So, as terrified as I am of suffering another major injury, it seems like marathon training (particularly when the base is not good) is a great time to stick with what works, even if it's not perfect. Obviously I haven't been going through tons and tons of shoes lately, but I recently I finally got down to two pairs of Kinvaras, one that's getting on in miles & will need to be retired soon, and one with ~150 miles on them, so it seemed like not the worst idea ever to have another couple of fresh pairs on hand.

But what, ho! No sooner had the thought of purchasing more Kinvaras crossed my mind that I received an email from my local running store that the Kinvara 5 had recently been released. Seriously??? I feel like the 4's have barely hit puberty and now they're being closed out at rock-bottom prices to make way for The New Hotness. Kinvara fans, should you stock up on the old model, or embrace the new one and get it over with for another year?

This seemed like a GRAND setup for revisiting last year's Kinvara 3 vs. Kinvara 4 head-to-head challenge. You're welcome.

Here we have two brand-spanking-new pairs of Kinvaras, version 4 on the top and version 5 on the bottom, size 7.5B:

Construction:

As you can see, many aspects of the shoe's construction have remained the same, as they did from the K3 to the K4.

In theory, the stack height & heel drop (22mm heel/18mm forefoot) are the same. (To me, the K4 feels juuuust a touch lower to the ground, the same way it did compared with the K3, but I don't have calipers so I can only go by the specs Saucony provides.)

Although the bottom of the sole is slightly different (see below), by & large the outer sole is built the same way & with the same shape. Both are built on a semi-curved, strobel last (perfect for the neutral supinator, AHEM) and feature a high-abrasion EVA midsole with a pretty traditional thickness, decoupled & beveled (forward-angled) heels, a Memory Foam heel pod (I still don't know what this is) & a material called PowerGrid in the heels.

Kinvara 4 on the left; Kinvara 5 on the right.

There are definitely a few differences as well:

1) As mentioned above, the K5 has additional carbon rubber (which they call XT-900) on the middle outer edge (blue) as well as very slightly more in the toe area:

Kinvara 4

Kinvara 5

2) The tongue and heel collar area have been radically changed. Instead of the FlexFilm™ used on the K3 & K4, the K5 uses a much thicker, plusher material called HydraMAX™.

At first, this change felt a little weird. Because the HydraMAX is so plush, my heels sometimes feel like they don't really settle securely into the heel counter at first. A few minutes into a run, though, I get used to it and it doesn't bother me.

3) Most of the upper is made of a "new, more flexible and durable lightweight mesh material" that feels stiffer/sturdier than the K4. (I have read in a few reviews of the K4 that some folks did not like its upper material & had issues with it cracking and tearing over time. I never had this problem with my K4's & liked it just fine.)

4) Pro-Lock lacing feature. Two small pieces of material with lace holes that are actually connected to the sole itself, not the upper, the idea being that using these holes will cause the shoe to hug your foot more securely.

I agreed with RunBlogger about this feature--if you lace up pretty tightly, you can feel this doing something, but it causes the upper to winkle in weird ways, and honestly, if I tried to run with my shoes laced that tightly, I'd lose circulation.

The specs state that the Kinvara 5 should weigh in at exactly the same as the Kinvara 4, and this is indeed what I found:

BUT. It is worth pointing out that the pair of K4's I used for last summer's K3/K4 comparison--same size & everything--weighed in at 6.4 oz, and a year & many miles later, they still do. (At this point I got worried about the consistency of the scale, but after weighing all the shoes several more times on different surfaces, the numbers never changed. So I don't really know what to tell you about that.) Both pairs of K3's I've weighed (also 7.5B) both consistently also weighed 6.6.

Kinvara 4 on the left; Kinvara 3 on the right.

Fit:

As far as sizing, the K5's seem right in line with the 3's & 4's. I've always worn a 7.5B comfortably, and that size in the 5 feels exactly the same length-wise.

Width-wise....Well, here's where things get a little weird.

Back when I got my first pair of Kinvara 4's & wear tested them against the 3's, I kind of felt like they were just a *touch* wider in the toe box. Not dramatically, but just enough to slightly prefer the 4's. When I read reviews of the 4, though, just about everyone mentioned that the fit seemed a bit snug, particularly in the toe box, and for some people the difference was noticeable enough that it was a deal breaker for them. This was incredibly puzzling for me, because my experience was almost the complete opposite.

I haven't really thought about it much since then until I put one of these new pair of K4's on one foot and one of the K5's on the other. The difference was undeniable, though; the K4 felt narrow, particularly in the toe box, and the K5 felt a little wider.

So obviously, out of curiosity, I had to go back to that pair of K4's I compared the K3's to last summer.

Old Kinvara 4 from last summer on the right foot (your left);
brand-new Kinvara 4 on the left foot (your right).

Old Kinvara 4 on the right foot (your left); Kinvara 5 on the left foot (your right).

Again, the difference was unmistakeable. The old K4 is noticeably more spacious than the new one, particularly in the toe box, and feels about the same as the K5.

And it's clearly not just in my head:

I really don't know what to tell you about this. I might be tempted to say that a couple hundred miles of wear over the course of a year has "punched out" the older K4 a bit, except that I had the same impression of it when I first put it on last summer. If K4s have been feeling a bit snug for you, though, it's probably worth trying on a K5 at the same time, because you might find there's a little more room.

Ride:

With the exception of the width issues described above, the two shoes felt exactly the same on my feet when I first put them on--same level of stiffness, cushion, stability, etc. I first took them out with one on each foot, and with the exception of the width in the toe box, it was difficult to discern any real difference. I thought the K5 might feel different because it just sort of looks like more shoe, but it weighs the same & feels the same, so maybe that's just in my head.

I've since run several times in the K4's, the K5's, and in one of each, and my initial observation holds: it is very, very hard to pinpoint a real difference besides the width. With one on each foot, I was aware for the first few minutes of how the heel collars feel different--the plush HydraMax of the K5 vs the lean, light FlexFilm of the K4--but it didn't take long for even that to fade into the background.

In terms of the stuff that I think of as the "ride" of a shoe--flexibility, cushioning, ground feel--they feel basically the same. The 5's apparently have a material in the midsole called Powerfoam "to create a cushioned and responsive ride," but if it makes a difference, I was unable to detect it.

Conclusion:

So there you go. I wish I could remark on the durability of the two shoes, but since I am a) not running that many miles yet and b) rotate my shoes a lot, it'll probably take a while to get to that point. All I can really say on that point is that I have worn Kinvara 3's into 500+ territory without any trouble. At that point there is definitely a difference in the cushioning that you can detect if you put an old shoe on one foot and a new one on the other, so I generally stop wearing them for long runs after about 300 or so. But 4-6 easy miles around the neighborhood? I can wear a hole in the outsole before they start feeling uncomfortable. And mud stained, blood stained, & faded though they may be, even the uppers are still in perfect working order. So we'll see how far I can take the 4's & 5's.

I hope that helps!

Shoe "Review": Brooks Pure Drift 2

So like I said when I first mentioned that I got these shoes, they were on super hella clearance, which I kind of feel like probably means that there's about to be a new version, so there's maybe less point that usual in actually writing a review. With that in mind, this will be brief.

(No, really. I promise.)

Quick recap:

• I have lots of shoes I like a lot but none I am 100% joint-checking-account-style in love with.
• I basically want a Saucony Kinvara with more room in the toe box & slightly less cushioning.
• My first & only Brooks Pure shoe was the first version of the Connect, which was weird & narrow & gave me foot cramps.
• Internet people have raved about version #2 of the Drift, so I bought a super-discounted pair to try out.

PROS:

• They very well may be the most comfortable running shoes I've ever slipped on. Usually that doesn't really mean anything in terms of how they work for me long-term, but it's still nice.
• Light-weight.
• Nice & flexible.
• Excellent ground feel.
• TONS of room in the toe box, but still comfortably snug around the heel/arch.
• 4mm heel drop with the footbed in it, or remove it for a zero-drop shoe.

CONS:

• Even with the insert, doesn't really feel like a 4mm-drop shoe. I have read in a few places that some people felt like the insert compresses more than, say, the midsole of a more traditional shoe would, so it may actually be more of a 2-3mm shoe in practice. (This won't be a con for everyone, but with my tight calf issues, I'm a little wary of running in anything less than 4mm right now.)
• Just a TAD less cushioning than I'd like. I definitely prefer more ground feel than you get in a traditional shoe, but there was a bit too much of that running-in-bath-slippers feeling for me to feel super comfortable on concrete. (I admit I'm being really picky here; they're both pretty darn close to perfect. But if the Kinvara is the Pappa Bear of cushioning, The PureDrift is Baby Bear. WHERE ARE YOU, MAMA BEAR?!?!?)

BOTTOM LINE:

There are a lot of things I like about this shoe, but I think it is probably a little too far in the other direction in terms of less cushioning/support/drop than it's a great idea for me to go right now. I have a feeling it might make a great track shoe, but I want to be careful with my calf muscles as I'm increasing my mileage (particularly in terms of heel drop), so I'll probably put off trying that until they're in better shape and I'm not marathon training. In the future, I could totally see doing small amounts of running in them here & there & gradually building up to where they're comfortable & not scary.

One of Those "Keeping It Real" Posts

During my time on the internet, I have learned that it is very important to blog readers that bloggers "keep it real," which means maintaining a careful balance of posts expounding on how awesome-sauce/amazing your life is vs. how "real" (ie shitty) it is. With this post I hope I am doing my Bloggerly Duty re: the rainbows-and-unicorns-to-realness ratio.

So. Ahem.

Tuesday was the stupidest day ever. First, I had to drive 40 miles to get to the South Bay butt-early in the morning for the second day in a row (!), which means I couldn't do my a.m. bike ride & there was just no way I was doing that in the afternoon and then going to the track. Then, although it was bright & warm & sunny in my neighborhood, it was cold & windy & dark at Kezar Stadium.

What it was like in the Mission.

What it was like in the Sunset three miles away.

To add insult to injury, the track was closed, which meant I had to do my speed work on the upper concrete track, which I hate with the red-hot passion of a thousand suns. AND THEN, my run totally sucked ass.

Beforehand I was like, "Cool, just 2 hard 1200m's. Easy." But then, although I had been instructed to run them at 7:10 pace, I accidentally ran the first one at 6:55 pace, which meant that I couldn't really do the easy 1:00 recovery jog I was supposed to do in between the two & also (I was pretty sure) that I would totally tank on the second one. I tried to slow it down closer to 7:10 but (even though I thought I was actually going to die) ended up running it just slightly faster than the first one. I am not really sure how this happened.

The worst part was that my cool down utterly, epically sucked. I finished the 1.5 miles, but not without resorting to stopping every quarter-to-a-third of a mile to shake out the burning in my legs. Also that stupid pain in my right calf was back.

So I guess what I'm saying is:

Yeah; that about sums it up.

Keeping it real, yo.

SRM WEEK 3: I Ran A Marathon This Week!

....By which I mean, I ran 26.25 miles over the course of the last seven days. Ha ha ha. No but seriously, this is the most I've run in a week since December and I'm not (re-)injured yet (*knocks on wood*), or even kinda-sorta trending toward injured (*knocks harder*), so it's kind of a big deal.

The story of this week is the story of running six days a week for the first time since high school (WHAT). In the past I've done five days at most, taking off Monday & Wednesday since those are karate days & finding time for a run was tricky (particularly back when I was still teaching high school). It actually worked out well, though, to have a non-running day between my Sunday long run and Tuesday track workout and then another between the track workout & four straight days of running.

Mainly I decided to give the six-day plan a shot this time because I needed to ramp up the distance of each individual run reallllly slowly, but without compromising my overall mileage buildup (since I only have 15 weeks to train for SRM & usually do more like 18ish). Also, five months of doubles (in terms of cross-training) has revealed to me that I have more time each day than I think, even on karate days, so I'm more confident in my ability to fit in a Wednesday run without the rest of my life collapsing around me.

The one remaining question was what my body could deal with. Not to scare any of you young'uns out there, but while 33 is still pretty young in the grand scheme of things, it is *definitely* not the same as 24-25-26 in terms of how quickly your body bounces back from things. Back in the day I could get up at 7am on Sunday to play polo for six hours, go for a run in the afternoon, get the crap kicked out of me at dojo Fight Night from 8-10, & be at work bright-eyed & bushy-tailed & feeling great by 7am Monday morning; trust me, those days are gone & they are not coming back.

Check out that that young, svelte, 24-year-old polo player.

I figured I would give the six-day plan a try, and if I found it was just too much in terms of relentless pounding more or less every 24 hours, I'd replace the Wednesday runs with equivalent time on the bike (which is INFINITELY easier to recover from). I've been mostly worried about my chronically tight calf muscles & doing anything & everything I can to baby them, including but not limited to:

• rocking compression socks or calf sleeves on most runs
• keeping the compression socks on afterward for ~2 hours or so whenever possible
• alllll the calf raises
• stretching them every time I think about it
• instituting an all-flats-all-the-time policy (okay, like 95% of the time)
• getting my post-run protein & antioxidants
• lacrosse ball, lacrosse ball, lacrosse ball.

I doubt if any of these things are a silver bullet but I'm pretty sure none of it can hurt.

So, I'm happy to report that three weeks on, my body in general and my calves in particular seem to be holding up just fine. I have little twinges here & there, but it usually goes away while I'm running and doesn't feel any worse after. This isn't to say that my legs don't need every minute of those 24 hours in between runs, even short ones, to recover; they absolutely do. But right now they seem to need only 24 hours, and then they're ready to go again.

* * * WEEK 3 * * *
(12 to go)

By my reckoning, that puts me 20% through SRM training. Well; time-wise anyway. I've knocked out 3 of 15 weeks, but only 62 of 611 miles, which is just barely more than 10%. I don't know whether to feel relieved or terrified about this.

Grand Total: 26.25 miles

* 1.75 speed
* 24.5 easy

Plus:

* 30 miles bike
* 1.5 hours strength/stretch/roll

Monday:

Memorial Day for me was a much-needed rest day. I did nothing more physical than cooking, cleaning, & doing laundry, & it was absolutely beautiful.

Tuesday: a.m. strength work / p.m. speed work (1.25 warm up, 2x[3x(300m @ 6:15, 100m jog), 300m jog], 1.25 cool down = 4.25 miles total).

Haven't seen this place in a while!



Not my fastest track workout ever, but I survived it + no one pointed & laughed = #winning.

Wednesday: a.m. 15 bike / afternoon 4 easy / p.m. karate

This was without a doubt the hardest run I have done so far this cycle, which, given the heat, hills, and my post-first-speed-session-since-the-Pleistocene-Epoch-legs, I was expecting. I mean, I had kind of *hoped* it wouldn't be that bad, but when I was half a mile in running a minute slower than marathon pace & desperate to stop & catch my breath & stretch my insanely sore Achilleses, I knew it going to be a looooong 4 miles. Perhaps the route with the two giant hills was not the best choice.

In any case, I'm pretty sure I have to give up that particular route. Honestly, I don't mind running up the hills, but coming back down them is a) incredibly hard on my body, and b) frankly, dangerous. It might make sense for me to work on that particular skill if I were in the business of running trail races with steep descents, but since I'm not, it seems smarter not to take the risk.

Nope nope nope nope nope.

Thursday: a.m. strength work / p.m. 4 easy

Every time I approach the Olympic lifting platform & start adding weights, dudes be like


I mean seriously, guys; get over it. I don't even lift that much.

Running-wise, my legs were still tired Thursday, but MUCH improved over Wednesday. I did a little 4-mile jaunt through my neighborhood, kept it nice & easy, & did not feel even a little bad about all the stop lights.

Friday: a.m. 15 bike (15:00 warm up, then 4:00 hard/1:00 easy) / p.m. 4 easy

Tired legs again on the bike Friday morning, but after some warming up going faster actually felt better than slow, so I passed the time with some comfortably hard intervals. Friday's run was still tough, but easier than the previous two. It definitely helped that the city had cooled off some & it was overcast & breezy by the time I headed out.

Saturday 4 easy

I had some sore spots on my shins & was feeling a bit trepidacious given that this was run #5 in a row, but it ended up being my best run of the week so far. For that, I'm going to credit actually getting a solid 8-9 hours of sleep.

Sunday: 6 easy + stretch/roll

I spent Sunday afternoon at Jen's new digs, which meant I got to catch up with her & Cathryn for the first time in ages. After that it was long run time, and although no one training for a marathon should ever bat an eye at six miles and CERTAINLY should not be thinking of it as "long," I was a tad nervous about it, having a) not run that far since December 22, and b) just run five straight days in a row.

Speaking of views I haven't seen in a while, hey there west end of the Panhandle!

But I needn't have worried. The run felt great, my legs felt great, and I even let myself race a few people up the Panhandle at ~half marathon pace, which I know I really should not be doing right now but c'mon; a girl's got to have a little fun. For the first time in so, so long, I had just the faintest glimmer of speed & strength & the runner I was in early 2013. She's still in there somewhere, & it may take me a few months, but I am determined to dig her out.


Hold on to your hot dog carts, Golden Gate Park; I am coming for you.

Next week: Mileage in the low 30's (a 5-month high) & my first threshold run since November. Weeeeeee!

Books Update

In January, I proclaimed that 2014 would be the Year of the Classics & chose a book for each month of the year. Since we are getting on to the halfway point in the year (!!!???), I figured it was time for an update.

January: A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller. Isaac Asimov's Foundation meets Neal Stephenson's Anathem, at a third the page count. I'd call it more spec fiction than sci fi; it takes place in the distant future where the vast majority of science, technology, & culture has been obliterated by nuclear war & reactionary fundamentalist sects, so parts of it feel more medieval than futuristic. Brilliantly & shrewdly written, confronting questions of history, philosophy, theology, ethics, and the cyclic nature of human civilization, without ever getting preachy or didactic. As relevant now as in 1960. Fans of Asimov & the like should love it.

February: Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe. I started this book in February, but keep having to take breaks to read something else. It's easier to read than I thought it would be, but somehow still feels like hard work.

March: Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. This is what I'm currently trying plow through right now. Like Uncle Tom's Cabin, it's been easier going than I was afraid it would be and has a lot of interesting parts, but it's still looooong and slooooow and there are long stretches in which nothing much happens except protracted discussions of early 20th century Russian property laws & farming methods. I've taken a couple of breaks from it to read other things, but I'm hoping I'll be able to finish it by the end of May June.

April: A Room With a View, by E.M. Forster. This book seemed appropriate for the April since that's when we left for Italy. In general, it was a cute, engaging read, and I spent most of the middle of the book surprised & excited about where it seemed to be going. Then, after the last two chapters, I wanted to hurl it across the room. I mean I know it was 1908 & all & ladies still weren't all that far removed from just being property, but still. Beautifully written, but a disappointing ending.

May: Catch-22. This book was sold to me as "a classic that's actually funny" and "like 'The Daily Show' in terms of tone & political poignancy," so I thought it would make a nice break from srsbzns reading. Ha ha ha ha. Not. Yes, there are some funny parts, and the absurdist-satire-"hell is bureaucracy" theme has its moments, but it definitely ranks among the darkest, most depressing and harrowing books I have ever read, because war & stupid people.

Other Stuff I've Been Reading

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt. This is probably the best book I've read so far this year. I'd been kinda-sorta meaning to read this book for a while now & putting it off because I wasn't sure I was up for the all the darkness, but recently a friend was like, "No seriously. Amazeballs," so I took it with me on vacation, and she was absolutely right. On the one hand I kind of think I'd say this is a great read as long as you're not going through dark, nasty stuff at the time, but on the other hand, maybe this is *exactly* the type of book you should read in that case because you might decide that things aren't really all that bad by comparison.

The Long Run, by Matt Long. The next time you start feeling sorry for yourself or like you're going through some hard times and are feeling frustrated & discouraged about how long the road seems, give ol' Matty Long a hundred pages or so. If you still feel the same way after, you are not human. I don't want to spoil the impact of the first few chapters, but the broad strokes are that Long was a Brooklyn firefighter, BQ marathoner, & Iron Man who got run over by a bus (LITERALLY LIKE A BUS DROVE OVER HIM) in December 2005 & suffered a litany of absolutely horrific injuries. The book chronicles is journey from a miserable, barely recognizable, barely functional, physical & mental wreck of a human to, well, the guy on the cover of the book. So yeah. This book basically convinced me I don't get to feel discouraged about anything ever again.

The Sound & The Fury, by William Faulkner. This was a challenging book for me, but I'm glad I read it, and I can totally appreciate why people are still reading & studying it xx years later. BUT, know going in that it is depressing as hell. On the other hand, it's only like 300 pages long. I'd advise getting some background on the story before actually starting it, because some of it can be hard to follow & definitely requires your 100% focus & attention. Don't be ashamed to consult Wikipedia/Cliff's Notes/etc. as you read.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir, by Jenny Lawson (aka, "The Bloggess"). Do yourself a favor & get this one in audio book. Nothing beats The Bloggess herself narrating. I lost count of the number of times I nearly fell off the spin bike I was laughing so hard. The hijinks that girl gets up to!

Dad Is Fat, by Jim Gaffigan. Parents, you'll appreciate this one. Not *quite* up to the quality of his stand-up, but really the book is only maybe half comedy anyway & half about being a parent in general and being the parent of five (7, 5, 3, 1, & newborn) in New York City specifically. Reasonably entertaining overall, with a few absolute laugh-out-loud moments.

The Signal & The Noise, by Nate Silver (of Five Thirty-Eight fame). I loved this book for the same reason that I loved The Predictioneer's Game and Data, A Love Story. All of them lie at the intersection of math/statistics/data/modeling and psychology/sociology. While I still think Nate Silver is brilliant, after reading this book I have a better understanding of just how terrible at modeling and predicting so many other people are (& I'm talking about people who are paid for making predictions) & why it's so easy for him to look that much more brilliant by comparison. What it's really about is the use & abuse of statistics & data--what sorts of things can be predicted (short and/or long term) and which kind of can't, the most common mistakes people make when they try to use data to make predictions, and how living in the age of "big data" actually puts us more at risk for bad predictions.

What's left for me this year....

June: The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz.

July: To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.

August: Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert.

September: One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez.

October: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

November: Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne.

**NOVEMBER BONUS READ**: The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka.

December: The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

**DECEMBER BONUS READ**: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.

This is where I solicit from you other worthwhile reads!! What else is out there that I absolutely must read? Oh also you can be my friend on GoodReads if you want.

I promise not to make that horrible pun about how I am "back on track."

Admit it, a little bit of your soul dies every time someone does that. I kid, I kid.

On Tuesday afternoon I dipped my pinkie toe back into the world of speed work for the first time since last December (when my finished my workout by limping off the track with insane pain in my left calf), and what a gorgeous day for it.

My main goal, really, was just to not collapse and die, and my secondary goals were to maintain structural integrity in the calf regions and not embarrass myself. So winning!

My workout was two sets of 3 x 300m at 6:15 pace (so about 1:09 each) with 100m recoveries. When I'm in decent shape I shoot to do this workout at 6:00 pace (or 1:06ish each), and when I'm in REALLY good shape I can do it in the 5:30-5:40 (1:01-1:03ish) range.

The 6:15 pace was based on my Spring Forward 5K time, so I didn't know how hard or easy it was likely to feel at this point. I do, however, know that I have a bad habit of running intervals too fast, so I decided that I would just try to run them by effort & take it just a tiny bit easier than normal & not try to kill myself trying to hit specific numbers my first time out this year.

Kind of all over the map, but really not too terrible in general! Overall, I was pleased.

I still have a bit of a twinge in my right calf. It hurt a bit while I warmed up, felt totally fine running fast, & gave me just the slightest dull ache during the recoveries and cool down. Nothing too overly concerning so far, but you better believe I am stretching & rolling the heck out of it every night.

Of particular note to SF folks, I also learned from Coach Ken (who coaches a kids' track & field team from the Tenderloin every Tuesday evening) that apparently the city will finally (FINALLY!) be refurbishing the thirty-year-old track at Kezar Stadium later this summer. It will be open through July, then closed for three months while for construction. AND we're getting an extra lane! For me the timing works out fairly well; after July I'll only have 3-4 more speed workouts before Santa Rosa, & it's no big deal to do those somewhere else.