One Bite At A Time.

First things first: I knew you'd all want to know that in a recent study on active vs. sedentary lifestyles, most marathoners fell into what is basically the "active couch potato" category, ie they were moderately active for maybe an hour or so per day on average due to training & lightly active for maybe another hour or so (cooking dinner, taking out trash, etc.), but spent most of their other waking hours sitting, which is apparently the worst thing it is possible for a human to do on planet earth.

Apparently this was not surprising as there is incredibly high overlap between distance runners and people who do white collar/computer-type desk jobs. I feel like I'm not quite as bad as that thanks to strength work, karate, the occasional bit of biking, & having a standing desk (which I use maybe 50% of the time) but now I'm wondering if I should get one of those little office treadmills you use to turn your standing desk into a walking desk so I can maybe not die of high blood pressure / overproductive pancreas / herniated disc / etc.

Like Great America in your office, OMG so funnnnnn!!!!!!!!

Anyway.

It is a long road yet to SRM, but as June came to a close, I had to let myself take a moment to look back over the month with a little bit of pride and a lot of relief.

155.2 miles

21 hours & change + another ~20 hours of strength/karate/cross-training.

(In case you're wondering, the color coding is for tracking shoe mileage.)

No, it's not tons and tons by any objective standard; it's not even enough to reach the 2,000 miles-a-year club if I did it consistently. But it's still nearly double anything I've done in the last year. Although numbers like these wouldn't have phased me 14 months ago, I've learned that right now I just cannot look at a given month or week of training & go "Check, I am totally going to run 40/46/50/150/200/whatever miles this week/month." I can't even think about what I'm supposed to do tomorrow. It's utterly panic inducing.

What I can do is think, "6 mile track workout today? I can do that." "8 mile easy run today? I can probably do that." "13 mile long run today? I will try to do that." And if I keep saying that to myself every day, somehow, at the end of the week or month, things just magically add up.

Yes, on a couple of days I've had to say "Nope, tried, can't do it" or "Maybe I could do it, but probably not smart." But most of the time putting the big scary numbers out of my mind & just focused on one day at a time has kept me from feeling too overwhelmed. The only way to eat an elephant (and marathon training still does feel like a big, scary elephant) is one bite at a time.

Dibs on the short loin.

In a certain amount of theory, I am supposed to run some 230+ miles in July. I suspect I won't quite get there because I've already fallen a little behind the weekly increases (for very good reasons that I don't feel bad about at all), but if I could get up to around 200ish, that would be plenty.

The main challenge with July is that my research team & I will be in Vancouver the third week of the month presenting a paper & in then in LA (well; Covina) the last week of the month. My days will be packed but I should have most of my evenings free, so if I can find some good local routes (17 miles on a hotel treadmill is a thing that is #nothappening), I should be able to get by.

So yeah. Anyone know any good local run clubs in Vancover or Covina? :D

The Thick of It.

So what does Coach do on the heels of my highest mileage week & longest run (excepting Berkeley Half) in over a year?

Why, naturally, he assigns an 11 mile tempo run. (Ish. 2 warm up, 5 x 2K @ LT threshold / 1:15 recoveries, 2 cool down.)

I spent most of Tuesday dreading and/or fretting about this. I'd just run 13 miles two days before, done a realistically-harder-than-tempo-effort-slash-race the day before that, and last week my long run was 11 miles. Plus, although most of the time that LT/half marathon/"comfortably hard" range is totally my bag, I haven't done much running in that range post-stress fracture and 6.2 miles of it sounded like kind of a lot.

Blessedly, my warm-up went well & I didn't feel sore or overly tired or have the super-tight Achilles/lower calves to deal with that I've had on the track just about every Tuesday. Running in the mid-eights felt comfortable but not super easy, so I was still kind of nervous about trying to crank it down to the 7:25 range.

Ultimately, I'm pretty sure I kind of botched this workout. I was so up in my head and freaking out about struggling with the paces that I ended up focusing too much on the pace & not enough on my effort level, which, since most of these intervals were either uphill or into a vicious headwind or both, means that I absolutely ran some of them too hard.

I actually did 1.25's instead of 2K's because the stupid
Garmin 220 will only auto lap at multiples of .05 miles. Arrrrrgh.

Also I hate constantly looking at my watch during recovery intervals so I usually just count in my head, and apparently my counting was kind of off (though actually not quite as off as it looks, because I totally en-long-ened some of the recovery intervals slightly on purpose in order to not start the hard interval in a stupid spot or at a stupid not-nice distance mark like 5.77). Also I was running in the Park so there were water & traffic light pauses as well.

BUT! It was still a stupid long threshold run on tired legs, I still hit all the paces (actually, beat, slightly, on average) even with all the hills & ridiculous wind, and finished the run with no pain or discomfort anywhere & feeling, if anything, fresher & stronger than when I'd started. (??????!?!!!?????!?)

So I'm putting this one, if not in the WIN column, at the very least in the WIN*(?) column.

Running is weird.

SRM WEEK 7: In Which A Long Run Does Not Suck. Also Memes.

For whatever reason, my 13 mile long run on Sunday felt like kinda no big whoop, which is remarkable because usually for me getting ready for a long run is epic melodrama that progresses more or less along the following trajectory:

• Denial. "Long run? What long run? LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!1!"
• Anger. "Stupid MARATHON TRAINING with its stupid LONG RUNS & stupid GELS and SUNSCREEN and BODY GLIDE and goddammit whose goddam effing stupid-ass idea was this whole thing anyway."
• Bargaining. "Maybe it'll seem less awful if I wait another hour. Maybe I'll prefer the long run to stabbing myself in the face if I have a little cheese first. Maybe if I wear new shoes it will distract me from wanting to hurl at the very idea of running for 2+ hours."
• Depression. *Weeps quietly while putting on running clothes, gathering gels, & applying sunscreen.*
• Acceptance. "Let's just effing get this shite OVER WITH already."

Every damn Sunday.

This is one of the many reasons why I doubt I will ever really be a marathon junkie. My interest in ever running for more than two hours straight is pretty darn low.

But no; on Sunday I just got dressed, watched some World Cup while I slathered myself in sunscreen & body glide & figured out where on my person to stash my gels, cued up some RadioLab on the ol' headphones, & headed out. Honestly it never really felt very hard (okay, maybe the last .75 miles or so) & the whole thing was over before I knew it. Keeping good form all the way to the end felt easier than usual, and nothing hurt (except for a twinge in the arch of my right foot towards the end, which is new). So....progress?

Nike Dri-Fit Racer tank & Brooks running cap.

Since there is the potential for the latter part of Santa Rosa to be sunny and warm-ish, I've been reading up on strategies for running a hot marathon (something I clearly did not do before M2BM last summer & was definitely regretting by mile 20). No, it's not like it'll be 90° & 90% humidity or anything, but since most people's performance in long endurance events tends to go downhill pretty rapidly once temps get above 60°, especially in full sun, it seems kind of dumb not to do everything I can to keep as cool as possible. (Within reason, obviously; I will not, for example, be purchasing a $200 cooling vest to wear until the last possible moment before the start.)

I took advantage of the 80° midday temps on Sunday to try out a tip from the insanely speedy Camille Heron & did my run in a super-thin, light, white singlet & white cap. Originally I'd been thinking I'd just run Santa Rosa in as little clothing as possible (ie a light-colored sports bra & thin shorts) in order to stay cool, but having tried a few different combinations at different distances, Camille has actually had the best results at the marathon distance in a singlet. She's found that the singlet keeps her cooler because it retains the sweat, as compared to just letting most of it evaporate (which is what happens if you're shirtless/sports bra only).

I tried to stay in direct sun as much as possible in order to see how it worked for me, and though the run obviously felt a little harder than usual because of the heat (particularly going uphill), I actually felt pretty comfortable the whole time. There was a light breeze, which compounded the cooling effect of the sweaty singlet and felt GREAT in the sun.

I took one gel before the run & five more during, about one every 20 minutes of running (so every ~25 minutes of real time accounting for traffic lights & water stops), which works out to about 40g of CHO per hour. My stomach seemed just fine with that, so next week I'll try taking them even closer together. If I can tolerate ~60g per hour by Santa Rosa, I'll be happy; I'll just have to work out where on my person I'm going to stash that many gels...

* * * WEEK 7 * * *
(8 to go)

I will not insult you by quoting that Bon Jovi song. (I'm sure you know the one I mean.)

Grand Total: 40 miles

* 2.4 speed
* 3.1 race/tempo
* 13 long
* 21.5 easy

Plus:

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

The nice thing about this past week was that my easy runs have finally topped out. The long runs will obviously continue getting longer & the track & tempo/threshold runs occasionally get up to 10-11 miles, but the easy maintenance runs pretty much hit eight miles & stay there.

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

Tuesday: 6 speed (2 wu, 6x400m @ ~6:30 w/ 1:30 jog recoveries, 1.6 cd)

Once again, any hypothetical Tuesday a.m. biking I might have done was thwarted by morning work stuff. BUT, I did get in a *lovely* track workout with Kimra, so in the end this day can only go in the win column.

Wednesday: a.m. strength work / afternoon 5 easy / p.m. SEE NEIL GAIMAN AT THE WARFIELD

So back in January or something, Neil Gaiman (one of our favorite authors) announced a show in San Francisco where he'd read his newest short story "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains" accompanied by the Australian string quartet Fourplay & with artwork projected on a screen. I remember emailing Don & being like, "WE SHOULD TOTALLY GO TO THIS!!!" I think he emailed back something amused & non-committal, & then I forgot about this entire conversation for six months. The show came up again maybe a week ago & I was like, "Ah, we should have gotten tickets to that. I totally forgot. I'm sure they sold out months ago." Don just looked at me like I was crazy & was like, "We have tickets." "OMG are you serious?!?!" "Um, yes. I got them the day you emailed me." Well okay then.


I was over the moon excited about this. In practice, it meant that I only had about 1.5 hours between getting home from work & when I needed to meet Don downtown, which, with stop lights & showering & public transit, meant I only had time for 5 miles & not the prescribed 8. Not that it much mattered; those 5 miles kicked the shit out of me & there is absolutely no way in hell I could have gotten to 8 anyway, hungry cannibals nonwithstanding.

Thursday: a.m. massage / p.m. 8 easy

My massage therapist says that my really tight spots (mostly right calf, hip, & adductor) are starting to loosen up more quickly than they did at first, which is promising. I am still supposed to do as much rolling as I can at home, the idea being that the really intense work he does will make my rolling at home easier & more effective.

I ran my 8 easy miles that evening but OMG they were so. Freaking. Hard. I'm sure it's just the cumulative fatigue setting in, but after a couple of miles I just couldn't get my hamstrings & glutes to fire properly, & as a result I am sure I ended up overusing other muscles in ways I should not be doing. I've had sore shins on & off for the last few weeks, but it kind of freaked me out that Thursday evening there was one small spot on my right shin that was particularly painful, and whereas the pain usually goes away maybe a half hour or so after I finish running, this lingered well into the evening. I iced it all night, which helped some, but there is definitely part of me that felt like I was getting a yellow flag that an extra rest day was in order.

Friday:

I did not do strength work Friday morning. Instead, I got an extra hour of sleep. I know that I don't sleep enough in general & that sleep quantity & quality affects healing, so this seemed like a smart trade off. The painful part on my shin actually felt fine on Friday, but I was freaked out enough by it that I decided to ride the spin bike that afternoon instead of risking irritating it with a run.

On the subject of biking--When you're doing the same thing every day (running) and don't really have much day-to-day sense of progress being made, it's easy to get kind of blase about the idea that anything is really changing in your body. Blah blah x miles in x * 8.3 minutes blah blah tired blah blah x miles in x * 8.3 minutes blah blah hard etc. etc.

Consider this, though: From January to March, I improved from riding like 14 miles in an hour at level 9-11ish (whatever that means) to riding about 17 miles an hour at the same level with the same level of effort/exertion. On Friday, I rode 22 miles in an hour at level 12-13ish and seriously felt like maybe I should have been working harder.



The hell you say.

Saturday 8 tempo-ish (3.65 warm-up, 3.14 "race," 1.21 cool down)

On Saturday I wanted to run SF Pride Run 5K, not really as a RACE-race, but more for fun & a few tempo miles. I showed up early enough to run an easy, protracted warm-up, then ran the 5K (not all-out but still probably a little harder than I'd planned), then did enough of a cool down to get me to 8 miles for the day. Although I rolled my ankle on the wet pavement warming up, my legs gradually loosened up & by the time the race started actually felt pretty good. Even better, the super painful spot on my right shin that was bothering me so much on Thursday seemed to have completely disappeared.


Yay for running into old friends!

I don't know if it's just mental or what, but this was absolutely the easiest 8 miles I've run so far this training cycle and I felt great afterward & not *at all* like I'd just run 8 miles with 3 of them fairly hard. Maybe I should do little local races for my tempo runs more often. :)

Sunday: 13 long

There are 55 miles on my schedule next week, but since I've only just made it to 40, I'll be perfectly happy if I end up in the mid 40's.

HALLELUJAH A Decent Track Workout + Impending Races.

On Tuesday I met Kimra at Kezar Track for an evening speed workout. Given last week's suck-tastic track session and how concerningly sore & exhausted my Sunday 11 miler left me (particularly in the hips/hip flexors), I'd been stressing about this workout for days. What if it sucked? What if the stress fracture place hurt? What if I couldn't hold the pace? What if those ass-hats started stretching in lane 4 again???

All this was compounded by the fact that the Garmin 310XT I got (for 40%!) last fall suffered a crack in the housing this last weekend that made it so that the strap wouldn't stay attached to the watch part, which meant that I had to go exchange it at REI. And this is why you buy your GPS watch at REI, btw; if anything happens to it within a year--seriously, ANYTHING--you get a free replacement. Unless they don't carry that item anymore, in which case you get the amount you paid for the item as a credit towards a similar item.

Since they don't carry the 310XT anymore, I ended up paying the $87 difference for a Forerunner 220 because it was the closest thing they had (that wasn't $450), and as of Tuesday track time, I had yet to figure out exactly how to use it.

Garmin Forerunner 220

Except for the fact that it's not a multi-sport, the 220 is supposed to be pretty comparable to the 305 & 310? I guess? I'll give it points for being thinner & lighter, but I do not like the display or the way navigating through the different options & settings works. I've only had it for two days, though, so it may just be that the 305/310 interface is burned into my brain at this point & it's just going to take some time to get used to something else.

Like last week my Achilles/lower calves were a bit tight & I did stop a couple of times during my warm-up to stretch & shake them out, but everything else felt great. Kimra & I briefly kvetched to one another about the evils of sports bras & heart rate monitors & then took off on our intervals. (I'd insert a picture here but we were kinda busy, y'know, marathon training or whatever.)

My plan called for six 400m repeats at 6:40 pace (so ~1:40 each) with 90 seconds jog recovery. I couldn't remember for sure off the top of my head but 6:40 sounded slower than I usually do these, but honestly I'd already resolved to run them by effort, so I wasn't too concerned about the numbers.

Curse you, repeat #5! I was *this* close to perfect negative splits!!

All six intervals definitely required not-insignificant effort, but counting to 90 in my head between each one (apparently faster and faster) was plenty of time to recover in between, and I finished the set feeling like I could have easily run more if I'd had to. So yeah; GIANT win in terms of track workouts that feel the way they're supposed to, without making you feel like you want to die.

I did look back in my RunningAhead log to see how fast I've run this workout in the past, but it turns out that the last time was Nov. 12, 2013, otherwise known as the Day that Will Live in Infamy, ie the day that after repeat #4 of 6 I discovered my duffel bag had been stolen. So I only got to four 400m's that day, but I was apparently doing them in the 6:00-6:10 pace range & I don't recall them being that hard. Then again I wasn't running all that much at that point, so the difference between then & now is probably partly attributable to fitness but also partly attributable to working much harder now than I was then.

(Oh, and the group with zero track etiquette only expanded their circle to lane three today, so I was able to avoid getting almost-kicked by people swinging their legs around in the middle of the track. Small victories.)

IMPENDING RACES:

I am registered as a sub-seed in the San Francisco Marathon 2nd Half on July 27, for the second time in as many years. Unfortunately last year I couldn't run it since I was busy regrowing a muscle & learning to walk up stairs, so I am super pumped to finally do it this year. I was registered for it way before Santa Rosa, so it made me happy to learn that a solid four weeks lies between the two races.

Being sub-seeded kinda-sorta makes me feel like I should actually RACE-race, but since a) I haven't been training for a half and b) I care a lot more about Santa Rosa, I'll most likely end up running it in the just-fast-enough-to-have-fun range rather than balls-to-the-wall-effing-kill-it range. I'm supposed to do a 16 miler that day, so depending on logistics I'll either do a 1.5 mile warm up & a 1.5 mile cool down, or jog an easy 3 miles to the start & BART home from the finish.

Also, this week is Pride Week in San Francisco, & I've run the SF FrontRunners Pride Run 5K or 10K every year since I've lived in SF except for last year (see above-mentioned regrowing of muscle/regaining of basic motor skills), so I would really like to run it this Saturday as well. I need to run 7-8 miles that day, so I think if I ran it I'd end up doing an easy run on Friday instead of a tempo/threshold, then running a 4-4.5 mile warm-up before the race & then running the 5K at just-fast-enough-to-have-fun pace.

And....I got another pair of shoes. (I KNOW SHUT UP.) They came on the recommendation of a couple of different friends, cost me $40 on giant super clearance, and they are black. (I have never owned a pair of black running shoes before & it feels very strange.) I've only run in them twice, but so far they feel pretty good, so things are off to a promising start.

SRM WEEK 6: 39 & Holding

My plan called for 45-ish miles this week, but after tough runs on both Tuesday and Wednesday and waking up with sore, tender shins that continued to give me grief (in the form of sharp, stabbing pains) for the rest of the day, taking a rest day on Thursday & giving my legs some extra time to heal seemed like a better plan than trying to slog through seven easy miles & potentially re-aggravate something. I think I actually could have biked this day instead & been fine, but biking requires planning ahead & bringing biking clothes to work, which I had not done. So yeah; last Thursday was the first day since we've been back from Italy that I haven't sweated for athletic reasons. I think this is okay.

So, instead of 45-46ish, I ended up with 39 & change, which is basically the same as last week, and that's fine. After my tough Friday tempo run, I was mentally preparing myself to take Saturday off as well if my legs felt as bad as they did on Thursday, because if it came down to it I'd rather skip an easy 7 on Saturday & be able to do my long run Sunday than vice versa. But everything felt fine on both days, so in the end I did them both.

I now present you with Notes from my Long Run.

• Sunday morning I carb-loaded like a pro.
  
  (Probably not like an actual pro. I seem to recall reading something about Ryan hall eating plain oatmeal with splenda before a long run which kind of made me want to cry & then go throw up.)

• Because Santa Rosa is likely to be in the 50's at the start & 70's by the finish, I've been trying to ease myself into some heat acclimation training, starting by wearing a long sleeve shirt & shorts when I would normally wear a tank & shorts. What I failed to realize was that on Sunday afternoon an arctic vortex had apparently descended upon Golden Gate Park.

  Now you might think that wearing a long sleeve shirt instead of a tank was a great stroke of luck under the circumstances. Nope; wrong. All it meant was that there was more ice-cold sweat-soaked fabric in contact with my skin for the last 9 miles of my 11 mile run than there would have been otherwise. I am not kidding that it was like 45F with ~15mph winds. (Except down by the beach, where it was probably like 20-25mph winds.)

  
  "Let's run to the beach!" they said. "It'll be fun!" they said.

  (You'll have to use your imagination to see the sand blowing around everywhere.)

  My teeth were pretty much chattering the entire way. I don't really understand how it's possible to be shivering & sweating like a pig at the same time, but I do know that once your clothes are soaked it is OVER.

• 90 minutes seemed like a long enough run to reasonably start practicing fueling, so I had an Accel Gel before I started, another 30 minutes later, then a third 30 minutes after that, which was all fine. (Not surprising since that's basically what I've done in the past.) Accel Gels have 20g of CHO each, so two per hour is ~40g per hour. 30g / hour is the smallest dose of CHO that's been shown to make any difference in performance, & above that, being able to consume more generally predicts better performance. So, my plan is to gradually take gels closer and closer together during my long runs & see how close to 60g / hour I can get without my stomach revolting.
  
  I use Accel Gels because they have protein, which, for reasons I think exercise scientists are still trying to fully understand, seems to work better than pure CHO in races over ~20ish miles.

• My shins & calves never hurt while I'm running; only at every other possible time. I get deep aches in the stress fracture spot all the time when I'm just walking around, sitting, lying down, etc., but the bone is not tender at all (ie, I can roll a lacrosse ball right on that spot just fine) and running doesn't bother it, so I guess for now I'm not going to worry about it too much. (?)

* * * WEEK 6 * * *
(9 to go)

Grand Total: 39.25 miles

* 3.75 tempo
* 3.5 speed
* 11 long
* 21 easy

Plus:

* 2.25 hours strength/stretch/roll

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

Tuesday: 7 speed (2 wu, 1600m @ 10K pace / 1:30 jog, 2x800m @ 5K pace / 2:00 jog, 1600m @ 10K pace, 1.5 cd)

Ugh. Just, ugh.

Wednesday: a.m. strength work / afternoon 7 easy / p.m. karate

How much of the suck? ALL OF THE SUCK! But, hey, it's Wednesday, & apparently that's just what Wednesday does in terms of running.

Thursday: 7 easy Rest.

Friday: a.m. strength work / p.m. 7.25 tempo (2 wu, 30 @ marathon pace, 1.5 cd)

Definitely my most traumatic run of the week.

Saturday 7 easy

I squeezed this one in between lunch & last-minute movie plans with a friend. It only takes me about an hour to run 7 miles, but thanks mostly to traffic lights in our neighborhood, door-to-door, a 7 miler usually takes me more like an hour twenty-ish. Our movie was at 6:40; I finished my sandwich at 4:30, left the house at 4:50, & promised to be back by 6:00 & figured I'd just get done whatever I could in that amount of time. Thanks to a bit of jay walking here & there I made it home by 6:00 having run 6.8 miles, but there was no way I was getting that close to 7 & quitting, so it ended up being more like 6:02.

Don: "Wow, you're back right on time!"

Me: "This is not my first rodeo."

Mainly I was just relieved to get one run under my belt this week that did not outright suck.

Sunday: 11 long

I'm still slated for ~49-ish miles next week, but given how hard this past week was, I'm not feeling super great about a ~25% increase, so it is not at all unlikely that something will get cut or shortened somewhere. We'll see!

Pardon me while I get my shit together.

This is pretty much how it's been this week.

Do you ever have one of those days where you realize you're kind of hypnotically watching the entirety of your psychological & emotional faculties careen towards a seemingly inevitable & spectacular train wreck, half-heartedly thinking, "Well, gee. That's too bad." And then something in your brain suddenly snaps out of it, & you're like, "Ooooookay. Back the crazy train up for just a sec." That's pretty much how my Friday run went down.

Tuesday's track workout was sketchy & unsettling. Wednesday's easy seven miles sucked royal ass, as all Wednesday runs seem set on doing. By the end of the run my glutes & hamstrings were barely firing, my shins felt tender & painful all evening, & I was absolutely dead on my feet.

I opted to get some extra sleep Thursday morning instead of biking (let's be real; I can't even remember the last time I biked) in hopes that my legs would heal up, but all day at work I could feel sharp little stabbing pains in my shins, especially the right one, and a dull ache in the area in my left calf where I had the stress fracture. Plus I still felt exhausted. By the time I was on my way home, I was thinking very seriously that this might be a good day to skip my run. It's one thing to run through it when you feel worn out, but my legs seemed to be frantically waving big, giant yellow flags at me, and there is no seven mile run on earth that's worth a serious injury (unless you're being chased by hungry cannibals or something).

And Friday morning my legs felt GREAT. No pain!! No soreness!! All the strength work!! No problem!! Friday's marathon pace run was sooo happening. I spent my drive home congratulating myself on my very smart, very rational decision making the day before and feeling smug about the blog post I would write where I would be all like, "Yes, it was hard to take a day off, but Friday's ***epically amazingly fantastic*** MP run just goes to show that listening to my body was the smart choice." Just kidding, I would never blog about "listening to my body" non-ironically. 2011 called & it wants its running blog humble-brag cliché back.

But no. Friday evening I was back to stopping every three blocks or so during my two-mile warm-up to stretch/shake out my insanely tight & painful Achilles/lower calves. It was so painful at times that I was tearing up & seriously considering taking another day off. I did not see how I was going to get through 30 minutes of marathon pace running like that, but sometimes when I run a little faster it goes away, so I figured I'd give it at least a few minutes of trying to run in the low eight's & see how I felt.

Thankfully, speeding up did seem to take care of the pain in my Achilles. But trying to get up to speed was so, so hard. Most of the time recently even my easy pace has usually been under 8:20, but now I found myself working really hard & still seeing 8:30-8:40 on my watch. Heading into the Panhandle I tried to pick it up and did finally manage to start seeing the numbers I wanted, but the amount of effort required was decidedly NOT what I wanted to be doing in a marathon. And, my shin bones were hurting again.

I never stop between traffic lights in the Panhandle, but this time I couldn't help it. That was the low point, the point where I just felt panicked and confused and like a massive Steamroller of Ruination was rolling right over my confidence and world view and sense of how reality functions and smooshing them into a pathetic, twitching smear of self-pity and desperation. My soul may have ugly cried a bit.

And then--I don't know how or why--something clicked.

Wait a second. Bring the pity train back to the station. Let's think about this rationally for a minute.

I'm running uphill. Into a 20 mph headwind. On tired legs. Going > 00:10/mile faster that I really need to.

^ That.

After that I was a lot less hysterical. I slowed myself down & just tried to get to the top of the hill with marathon effort level & stopped worrying about the pace. Once I was over the hill, I did my best to stick to that: Is this how hard you want to be working in Santa Rosa at mile 10? Mile 20? Mile 24? No? Slow down, then.

Naturally things were MUCH much easier when I turned around & headed back towards home, going downhill with the (kind of ridiculous) wind at my back. (Seriously, at one point I thought I actually felt the wind lift me off the ground a little mid-stride.) My shins still hurt occasionally, but as long as I paid careful attention to how my feet landed, it was manageable. (Still, I did ice the heck out of them when I got home, and they remain a touch unhappy.)

Le splits:

Mile 1 was the uphill-headwind mile, so that was DEFINITELY too fast. Mile 2 didn't need to be that fast, but it was about half downhill-headwind, half uphill-tailwind, so not too egregious. Mile 3 & the last .75 were both downhill with tailwind and felt really easy, so those are probably fine. (I do find it kind of weird that my heart rate was so low on that first super tough mile, and that it was highest on the mile that felt the easiest. My target range for MP runs is ~170-190ish, though, so it's kind of nice to be under that & running a little faster than my rough "goal" pace.)

Speaking of goals, I know I need to manage my expectations about this race. It won't be a massive PR. This will be a short training cycle coming off a bad injury & lots of time off, and though the start is at 6:00 am, it's still Santa Rosa in August so the temps probably won't be ideal. If I can average an 8:10 pace & just BQ, I'll be happy. If I can eek out a little more, say 8:07, & actually have a chance of getting in to Boston, I'll be thrilled. Those paces already feel pretty easy (y'know, when I'm not running uphill & into the wind), so job #1 right now is just increasing my endurance without ending up hurt. I don't need to run every single workout to manage that. I mean, don't get me wrong; I'd like to run them all. But I'd more like to spend August 23-24 in Santa Rosa & not in a PT session/doctor's office.

Who Moved My Cheese

First off, if you somehow missed The Oatmeal's latest genius because you live under a rock or something, you're welcome.

Genius, I tell you.

Secondly -- hoo boy, did the speed work spank me on Tuesday.

Generally, track workouts have always been my favorite of the week. Yes, sometimes it takes a little more functional brain power to gather everything up & drive to the track vs just putting on running clothes & heading out the door, but for the most part I find speed work more interesting and more rewarding than just putting in easy miles.

Tuesday was different, though. I won't say I was dreading my track workout all day Tuesday, but, unusually for me, I was most certainly looking forward to it being over. Partly I think it was because of the distance; my last track workout had 1.5 miles worth of intervals while this one had 3.5. Plus most of my runs lately feel significantly harder than I'm used to. Also I pretty much constantly worry about my calves. (It was during a track workout in December when the stress fracture in my left leg went from "Well this is pretty uncomfortable" to "HOLY JEEBUS someone get me some crutches.")

Usually my favorite place...

My assignment was a 2 mile warm up, one mile in 7:10 / 1:30 jog, two 800m's in 3:26 / 2:00 jog, another mile in 7:10, & a 1.5 mile cool down. As with my previous two speed sessions, I had to break the warm-up into half-mile chunks because long run + karate + 48 hours of no running apparently causes my Achilles/lower calf area to tighten up like shrink wrap. A couple minutes of aggressive stretching & shaking them out seems to do the trick, but as a result my warm-up ends up taking nearly twice as long, which is annoying.

It was a less-than-promising start in other ways as well. It was hot & I was sweating & chafing everywhere like a mofo (even in my nose), and on top of this some running group was doing their circle-of-bffs-and-stretching thing on the track while there were about a billion people running on it (ok like 30).

Seriously. They were taking up four lanes. And they always do this. I nearly got kicked twice by the same dude getting his dynamic stretch on in the middle of lane four. Some shrieking & wild slapping may have occurred. In my defense that is what you get if you stand in the middle of the a track & nearly kick people who are trying to run. There are like infinity other places in that stadium where people can stretch; there's just no excuse for doing it on the track while other people are trying to use it.

Things did not get better once I started running. Since I've been running pretty much all my runs at faster paces than my schedule says completely comfortably, I figured I should probably bump these up a little too. In the past I've interpreted the paces on this workout as 10K pace & 5K pace respectively, so I figured I'd just go by feel & shoot for those levels of effort & try not to kill myself.

And it hurt. God it hurt. Which was weird, because the part of my brain that stores these things in muscle memory was going, "Yep, this is totally how that pace should feel" while the conscious part was going "Really? But it feels sooooo slooooowww" and the emotional part was throwing a little tantrum & going "It huuuuuuuurts, is it oooooover yet??" For a while I wasn't even going to look at my watch during the intervals so that afterward I would have an unbiased idea of what pace those levels of effort correlated with. At least that was the idea; eventually I couldn't resist looking and to my dismay my pace was all over the place. During the first mile alone I think I saw every possible number between 6:20 & 7:20 at one point or another.

I had a hard time jogging the recovery intervals too (though it ended up not mattering because I had to stop in between anyway to stretch out my stupid Achilles & remind myself that no, I wasn't getting a stress fracture again) which made me wonder if I was running the intervals too fast. By the last 1600m I felt like my right glute/hamstring wasn't firing quite right, and I could tell my muscles were getting tired because it was getting harder and harder to stay out of my calves. My rule of thumb is to always finish my last interval feeling as if I could run just one more with no problem, and that was definitely not the case after that last mile. It was all I could do to brow beat myself into doing the cool down (again, stopping for a stretch break every half mile).

If I'd been running these intervals in a vacuum, I'd say those paces were maybe fine, but it was hot, and there was a crazy headwind down the backstretch so realistically they were probably a bit too fast. I mean they didn't kill me, but still. By the time this workout was over I was BEAT.

One of the perks of recording all my track splits is the ability to go back in time & compare what I can do now to what I was doing at a certain point in the past when I have an idea what my fitness was like. It turns out the last time I ran this workout was March 5, 2013, about halfway through my training cycle for Mountains 2 Beach Marathon. At that point I was in pretty good but not amazing shape, & whipped out the following:

I was hoping I'd written something useful about this workout in that week's training journal to put it in context ("Woo, super easy!" "Ugh shoot me.") but apparently all I did was lambast myself for not writing the workout down & gypping myself on a minute of recovery time. Which probably means it was more or less fine & not awful.

Since these numbers aren't drastically lower & it was probably not 75° that day, I'm probably not *that* far off of my fitness at that point. But I am clearly waaaaaay out of practice at running the right paces with some amount of consistency. Though, this being my 3rd track workout of the cycle, I can forgive myself for that.

Still, I'm used to leaving the track feeling relaxed and satisfied and confident, not dragging myself to the car feeling physically like ass and also generally confused and insecure about what just happened (oh and also kind of still wanting to strangle people with no track manners). It's a good thing I have good friends who had a cold glass of white wine waiting for me when I finally got to dinner.