finish the drill

I had a sweet 20 mile run this morning with Katie and Denise. I woke up a little after 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so after playing with the puppy for a while (he didn’t mind waking up) and eating breakfast, I was more than on time to meet them on campus at 5am. Since I was early, I trotted across the parking lot to my building to use the bathroom there, armed with my banana-covered pepper spray. Our building is full of too many freaky noises at night.

We headed out a little after five and cruised out College Station to a gas station on Lexington Road where we bought some water at 6.33 miles. The guy running the gas station was like, “walking, huh?” Sir, if you think I sweat this much from walking…I chowed my Shot Bloks and was glad to not have to carry them anymore. We followed the same route back, which is a little more forgiving since you are running more down than up on College Station, and Denise peeled off around mile 11 so she would get back to Dawson Hall at 12 miles. KP was going to run 12 as well, but is either a good friend or just plain nutty because she continued with me for the remaining eight miles. They’re both running a marathon in California in two or three weeks, but I am not sure…I listen, but usually half of what I think about while running blanks out afterward. I know it has something to do with wine (the marathon, not my memory). It’ll be Katie’s second and Denise’s third. We hit my fave Golden Pantry at 12.66 miles for water and the bathroom. I took a Hammer gel here and drank Gatorade.

We continued with a pretty uneventful loop past Bishop Park and returned down Milledge. I felt good today; there were many times I thought I was about to be feeling it pretty hard, but it more or less held off until mile 17 and by that point, there just wasn’t that far to go anyway. The second ten miles was a bit faster than the first. I would say most talking had ceased around 16 miles and it was just time to get it done. I was glad to have Katie as a little rabbit to keep up with. I thought a lot about how hard it is in races to keep going when I am tired and just want a little walk break or whatever which will invariably turn into many slowdown breaks or walk breaks if you let it and it’s better to just keep moving and shut up about it. My two longest runs this time around have been with them, so it is going to be difficult to do another 20 by myself.

Since my thesis defense date was set for the week following Ridge to Bridge, most of my concerns for the race have taken a back seat to how I am going to finish my data analysis and write my thesis and defend in essentially the same time period. I have put the work in to finish the marathon well, even if not as well as I’d like, but I still have a lot to do on my thesis and it’s not as simple as taking a few hours a week to do something I enjoy doing. I think it will mostly come down to my “mental toughness” on race day, anyway. Like I said, the hardest part for me is pushing to do more than I feel like I can do comfortably, especially in the last hour or so on the course. It’s a couple of hours you just have to deal with being uncomfortable and being uncomfortable is okay, so.

To me, finishing a marathon is fine, but it is the culmination of all the hard work you’ve put in over 6+ months to get there that is the real accomplishment. If you didn’t do the work, well, congrats on spending a few hours running on one day, but I’m so impressed with people who put in the time to do it right and I feel like I’ve put a lot of time into this one, even if I don’t end up finishing as fast as I might’ve thought a few months ago. I hope to run Ridge to Bridge as stress-free as possible and then hopefully run Thunder Road again with a little more ambition when the weight is off my back.

run softly and carry a big stick

It was a quiet week, kept pretty busy with school/work stuff and managed to overshoot my goal miles by about five. That is what happens when you’re practicing work avoidance, I guess. I felt pretty good after my long run on Monday and was going to take Tuesday off, but I have this class Tuesday night that starts less than fifteen minutes after my afternoon class ends. It’s right at 5pm, so traffic is horrendous and makes taking the bus difficult. There are three of us who are in both classes and we split up, one by bicycle, one by bus, and me by sneakers. I am proud to say that I won the race to class with about five minutes to spare, with bicycle coming in second and bus a distant third. We weren’t actually racing, but it kind of felt like it as I sprinted from south campus through north campus and downtown carrying my notebook. I felt like a huge nerd, but luckily did not see anyone I was too worried about impressing on my short trek. I wasn’t wearing my Garmin since it was not planned (but I do keep extra clothes/shoes in my car to limit excuse-making), so I used Google Maps and good old fashioned wall clocks to estimate my speed/distance.

Everything else has been more or less standard. The weather is improving and I’m feeling good about having stuck it out in the heat all summer. Almost got eaten by a Newfoundland with about 20-30 pounds on me, but what else is new. This week coming up is another peak week (55) so we’ll see how that goes.

sunday 8/22 – PM 4.01 miles, 35:51 (avg 8:57) + 2.09 miles w/ dog 20:23 (avg 9:46)
monday 8/23 – AM 17.01 miles, 2:50:04 (avg 9:59)
tuesday 8/24 – PM 1.2 to class/1.2 back, ~19:00 total (guesstimate)
wednesday 8/25 – 7.12 miles, 1:06:11 (9:18 avg)
thursday 8/26 – AM 3.10 miles, 28:20 (9:09 avg), PM 4.30 miles, 39:15 (9:08 avg)
friday 8/27 – PM 9.12 miles, 1:26:33 (9:30 avg)
saturday 8/28 – no run. skated 10.22 miles at SE clarke, 1:10:38

total miles run: 49.15
total run time: 7:45:37
total cardio time: 8:56:15

tear it up

It’s been a week of ups and downs across the board (school, sleep, running). It’s a cutback week and my goal mileage is 38.5, leaving me with about ten miles left to do in the morning (2@ E pace, I think 4-6 X 5-6 minutes T pace + 1 min recovery – or something like that, and 2@ E pace). It doesn’t add up, but you know. I should have done it this morning, but I didn’t wake up early enough and ended up running on campus at 10am after I got some things done over there…it was surprisingly not awful, but I was feeling it towards four miles and stopped to get a water about a mile from my office. The guy in front of me was soaked with sweat and buying a 22 ounce bottle of Busch Light. Nice. I only had two dollars, so. Just kidding, two dollars is probably enough for that.

I would feel nice doing a long run in the morning and was thinking about it, but realized that’s dumb going into a peak mileage week – save the unbridled enthusiasm for a few days from now when I need it. It might be an ugly week since I am supposed to have a couple of morning appointments and both are far enough away that I can’t run before them and get there in time.

On Wednesday, I was brilliant and decided to go down by the river at 4:30 in the afternoon. Holy crap. If I take a walk break, it’s rarely more than .05 or possibly .10 of a mile, but I can safely say I walked at least 1/3 to 1/2 of the seven miles my feet moved. My average pace was 11:45/mile. It was hot, humid, the air was generally stagnant as hell, and I thought I was going to throw up almost the entire time. Not sure what I was thinking, but wow, walking sucks. It takes twice as long to get anywhere and you’re way hot from moving so slow. Bummer. Worse than my own personal ineptitude, the water in the creek was still blue from a chemical spill last week that dumped toilet bowl cleaner, among other things, into the water after an industrial fire. It smelled like bathroom cleaner…sad.

up and at it

Last night I bumped back the ol’ alarm clock from the sixes to the fives. I hit snooze twice and managed to get out of bed at 5:30am, fumble around, and drive over to the park to start running a little after 6:30am just after the sun came up. Getting started 30 or 45 minutes earlier made a huge difference in my run compared to last week. It was still really hot – just shy of 80 when I began – but the sun wasn’t fully up and burning off the cloud cover until I had gotten through about 11 miles. I ran a stem and loop starting at Bishop Park, going about two miles over to Milledge Ave, down Milledge to East Campus, and back up Prince. I repeated the Milledge to Prince loop twice at about six miles each, which is a good distance to repeat since you don’t have to do it enough for it to bore you and it’s not long enough to be daunting. The 2.5 or so on East Campus is the hilly part and once that’s over, you can autopilot. When I finished the second loop, I ran the 2+ miles back to Bishop Park for a total of 16 miles (16.01…I was a little shy of 16 so I added a trip around the parking lot) in 2:36:36.

This run was so much better than last week when I did a little under 13 miles in about 2:11, I think. I walked four times during the run, twice because of a short spot where there was no sidewalk/bike lane and I didn’t want to run on the side of a hill that was muddy…of course, the second time there was a lady in front of me running up it and I felt like a pansy. The other two were just because I was lazy in the last mile and walked about .05 mile each time (I planned to do 15 so I didn’t feel that bad about slacking after that), but I felt pretty decent the whole time whereas last week I was just hot as hell and really tired.

I drank water+Gatorade at 8.3 miles and Gatorade at 13.3 miles. Usually I wouldn’t think to drink two Gatorades, but I think I am lacking in the sodium during these really hot runs. I have been drinking some Heed, but I hate the taste and it doesn’t have nearly the amount of sodium that Gatorade Perform (basically the one they now mostly sell at gas stations) does. A single pack of Heed, which they recommend mixing with 16 to 24 ounces of water, has 100 calories and 39.3 mg of sodium whereas a full 20 ounce (the smallest one they sell) bottle of Gatorade has 130 calories and 270 mg of sodium. I’m not pointing out the calories for weight loss purposes, just what you’re getting for carbs/energy in each (25g and 34g, respectively), but even as a pretty small person who is not burning tons of calories per mile, this is pretty economical and not an excessive energy intake (two sports drinks, two gels) for a couple of hours worth of exercise. I prefer drinking water, but I feel I can drink it endlessly without some kind of sodium added and it’s not safe to run for a really long time without replacing the sodium you are sweating out (and I got really sick after the last half I ran because I did not re-up afterward – it was horrible and I do not recommend it). With Heed and water, I was still getting thirsty, feeling super sloshy and full, but then I can’t pee because I haven’t replaced the salt I’ve sweated out. I think switching it up helped a lot, as well as just plain getting it done earlier in the morning.

I feel good to have a 16 mile run out of the way after doing tons of 12-13 mile runs on this training go-round. It feels like the first real long run; long runs are relative to what you are doing, but with marathon training anything less than 15 is kind of eh (and even 15 pales next to 18, 20, 22). Plus, it’s encouraging to feel pretty peppy after 16 miles after feeling like crap after 13s. I felt like I could have gone longer today, not that I wanted to, but I wasn’t completely spent by the time I finished. I was, however, completely soaked. Pretty sure I was drenching any people I passed on the sidewalk. Highlight of the run, by far, was coming through downtown on my first loop and deciding to run by Brian’s work to see if I could catch him going in (it was a little before 8am). My impeccable timing brought me to the top of the hill just as he was walking up. I’m sure he was very happy to see his girlfriend sweating profusely like a crazy person in front of his building.

You might be pretty sweaty if your lame camera phone actually picks up the droplets of sweat all over you.

Not my car, not my license plate, not a Gamecock or “Roll Tide” or whatever alumni they are.

My purple shorts are my favorites – a little kickier than black ones and lots of pockets.

watch the jib boom

7/11 sunday – off
7/12 monday – AM 2.0 miles, 18:45 (not feeling it) – PM re-do 5.10 miles, 45:59 (better)
7/13 tuesday – 4.02 miles, 36:01
7/14 wednesday – 8.16 miles, 1:16:59
7/15 thursday – 6.6 miles, 57:40 (Q2 workout – 1000m @ I pace, 5 minute recovery @ 9:30-ish x 4 plus warm up/cool down)
7/16 friday – off
7/17 saturday – AM 13.0 miles, 2:04:04 (9:33/mile), PM skated 8.18 miles, 57:14

total miles run: 38.88
total run time: 5:59:28 (avg pace 9:14)
total cardio time: 6:56:42

Another week down and 15 to go! It was a good week to cut back a little bit and I have to say I’m a little daunted by the next two weeks calling for about 50 miles each. I need to get in some early runs or it isn’t going to happen. My long run this week was two miles at E pace, five at T pace, and then an hour at E pace. My pacing was pretty bad. I began at 7am, but it was already 75 and mega humid (70 something percent) so I was hurting while trying to pick up the pace there for a minute. Same story, different day! I was glad to see my average pace picked back up a little bit this week.

I have a few days off from working on my research project (data collection anyway; need to spend this time on completing my literature review) and so I’m going to try and do my long run midweek instead of waiting until the weekend like I usually need to do. When it gets to be the last day of the week and I haven’t done it yet, I feel so stressed about getting it done. Conversely, I usually don’t do them in the middle of the week because I have other stuff to do that doesn’t allow for it, but also because I can put it off until later in the week. Tricky. If all goes according to my diabolical plan, I won’t have too many morning commitments in the fall semester so I might be able to do my long runs midweek.

just another saturday night

I picked up a copy of Daniels’ Running Formula a few weeks (months?) ago off of Amazon and have been kind of vaguely perusing it since without really delving into it. I love to read, but when it comes to things like running books I get distracted fairly easily and have to take them in small, digestible pieces. A lot of people have mentioned having success following his plans, so I figured I would give his marathon training plan a go this time. In the past, I’ve used plans from Hal Higdon and Runner’s World, though only as general guides and I usually don’t follow each workout to a T, though I will give it the old college try this time.

I finally looked at the DRF training plan A and panicked a little when I realized it’s 24 weeks long, meaning that I would need to start…tomorrow. That is like telling a kid that summer vacation is over and they are getting on the big yellow bus bright and early in the morning. I wanted to do a longer than 16 week plan, but geez. Happily, I was relieved when I began looking it at it more closely and the first three weeks of phase 1 are pretty much base building; seven days of at least 30 minutes running at your E (for easy) pace, more than 30 minutes if you’ve already established your base. “Sike, school doesn’t start for three more weeks.”

For DRF, your paces are based on your past performances using your VDOT. My times are consistent with a 38/39 through the half marathon, so I will begin with using paces based on a 38. So according to him, my easy (E) pace should be 10:35 (!), marathon (M) pace should be 9:08, threshold (T) pace 8:33, 400m interval (I) pace 1:56, and repetition (R) pace 1:50. Not sure I will actually be posting the deets on my runs as all of these come into play, but we’ll see. Anyone have experience using Daniels’ Running Formula? I find the possessive (Daniels’) to be awkward in this case; personally I already have an apostrophe in my last name, so I figure that it will be best if I never own or discover something major lest someone’s tongue fall out trying to pronounce it. It just looks like a typo.

Here are my gloriously uncomplicated runs from the past week.

5/9 sunday – 3.0 miles, 25:38
5/10 monday – off (8 hours of driving…probably can’t count those 400+ miles, huh?)
5/11 tuesday – 9.0 miles, 79:21
5/12 wednesday – 7.05 miles, 62:01
5/13 thursday – 5.0 miles, 43:21
5/14 friday – 9.31 miles, 87:27
5/15 saturday – 8.51 miles, 75:00

total miles run: 41.87
total run time: 6:12:48
total cardio time: 6:12:48 (another week of feeling lackluster about cross training)

I think I’m on track to meet my goal for the month of same (or more) mileage, less time running (or faster average pace). In April, I ran 161.27 in 24:37:23 – so my average pace for the month was 9:09/mile. If I could do that in a single day instead of over the whole month, I’d be right on Scott Jurek’s record setting vegan heels. So far this month, I’ve run a bit over 80 miles; my pace for the first full week was 9:07 and second week 8:54.