weekly recap and hello november

I think someone took a cheese grater to my leg muscles this weekend…I’m not sure, though. This might be the first time the aftermath of a marathon hurt worse than the actual run.

10/24 sunday – Athens Half Marathon – 13.11, 2:02:50
10/25 monday – off
10/26 tuesday – off
10/27 wednesday – 3.62, 33:53 (9:22 avg)
10/28 thursday – 3.0, 27:14 (9:04 avg) + skated 5 miles w/ lisa, 34:20
10/29 friday – off
10/30 saturday – Ridge to Bridge Marathon – 26.22, 4:12:45

total miles run: 45.95
total run time: 7:16:42 (avg pace 9:30)
total cardio: 7:51:02

October miles: 169.94
October time run: 27:15:28 (avg pace: 9:37 – didn’t really pick it back up like I “planned”)
YTD miles: 1646.87 (surpassed last year’s miles with two months to go…woop woop)

school daze

I have this habit of – I am trying not to say over committing – but basically setting a very high goal to get a ton done in a small period of time, getting halfway through no problem, and then realizing, oh, this is why I am freaking out – because I planned to freak out and be busy for a month or so instead of being kind of lazy for a couple of months. Of course, by that point it’s too late to give up even if I wanted to and nothing is ever really TOO bad. But I think the next several weeks will give me a run for my money on attempting to complete graduate school in as short a time span as humanly possible (short of getting a fake online degree or other non-thesis degree). This is to say, I’m kind of wiped at the moment and am having daydreams of napping. Luckily running makes me feel less homicidal than looking at the computer for 10 hours a day. My advisor recommended I make time for some runs. I don’t think she knows I run marathons…maybe she actually reads the tshirts I wear, I don’t know. Or she noticed that I’m perpetually sweaty. I guess it doesn’t take a psychic.

I owe a September recap and my miles from last week. Last week, most of my runs were in the evening and accompanied by some heartburn-y, stomach bloating thing that wasn’t really doing anything good for me. I am not sure what was going on because I didn’t eat within hours of running, so I am going to go ahead and attribute that to stress or something. No problems with my long run Saturday morning or so far this week. I’ve had a couple of long sleeved runs in the past couple of days…life is good.

september miles run: 175.45
time run: 28:14:50
avg pace: 9:39 (ouch, but not surprising)
YTD miles: 1476.93

Goal for October is pull my average pace back down below 9:30, where it hasn’t been since July. If I could do that in part by running a marathon faster than 9:30/mile, that would be sah-weet. I was going to do another 20 last Saturday, but was informed that was basically dumb planning so I decided to do 16 instead and save the 20 for this week. Oh, goody. I’m stoked to have almost all my long runs in the bag. It’s one less thing to think about. After that, I might do a 10 next week if I’m feeling sassy and then I’m running the Athens, GA Half Marathon the weekend before the Ridge to Bridge Marathon. I am feeling more or less prepared at this point, but I am really hoping that with the change in weather comes a return in some old speed I’ve been missing.

9/26 sunday – off
9/27 monday – 5.28, 47:26
9/28 tuesday – 4.10, 37:54
9/29 wednesday – off
9/30 thursday – 4.84, 33:00 + 3.38, 46:34 (stopped to see Brian along the way, so I reset in the middle)
10/1 friday – 6.02, 58:07
10/2 saturday – 16.28, 2:42:48 (10:00/mile), PM skated w/ Lisa 8.17 miles, 57:14

total miles run: 39.81
total run time: 6:25:49
total cardio: 7:23:03

weekly recap

This week I hit a little bit of a snag with my ankle hurting, but I took off almost three days and felt good on my long run Saturday. Everything else hurt, but not so much ankle pain. This week was different in that I met up with my buddy Katie and her friend (new-to-me friend) Denise at 5am (!!!) on Saturday to run with them. I usually start around 6:30am so it’s still cool, but not pitch black outside since I am alone, so this run was pretty awesome to have about two hours of running in the dark before the sun came up. That and having other people around made the time fly by and it was nice to arrive home around 9am and have the day in front of me. I chose to spend it falling back asleep for 45 minutes, waking up to gnarly cramped up legs from curling up on the couch, and then detangling my hair so I could go see my friend Artee for a hair cut. She took pretty much all of my hair off and straightened it. Here is the picture I took in the car to show Brian:

Then I skated with Lisa for an hour and got all sweaty and ruined it. Typical. I am feeling a little tightness in my calves from yesterday, but ran a few miles tonight and have a light week in front of me running-wise, which is great because I have a ton of things to do for school. I’m running the Locomotive Half Marathon in Kennesaw next Sunday. I had something come up that I need to be in upstate South Carolina that afternoon, so that is going to be a challenge. Maybe it’ll motivate me to run a little faster, you know. I would like to get a long run in midweek, but I am not sure if I will make that happen or not. I turn 28 on Thursday…crazy because I still feel like I am about 12.

9/5 sunday – off
9/6 monday – 6.58 miles, 63:54
9/7 tuesday – AM 5.04, 48:13
9/8 wednesday – off
9/9 thursday – AM 3.10, 27:46
9/10 friday – off
9/11 saturday – AM 19.32, 3:19:18 (avg pace 10:19/mile), PM skated 8.43 miles, 56:46

total miles run: 34:04
total run time: 5:39:11
total cardio time: 6:35:37

boo hoo

Yesterday my Achilles tendon started smarting a little bit out of nowhere, which progressed into some full on pain after sitting down for an hour, more pain after another hour of class, and pain/burning after my three hour class. I call BS on this because it didn’t start hurting until I started sitting around. It didn’t hurt while I biked back to my office from downtown. What strikes me as a bit weird is that for the past month, I’ve been having little twitches in my right Achilles or lower calf when I wake in the morning (not painful, but ticklish almost), but now it’s my left that actually hurts. It is not horrible, just kind of foreboding at this stage in the game. I started taking ibuprofen and putting my foot up with a block of blue ice on it last night, wore my Cascadias all day for a little extra support instead of taking my shoes off at home, and skipped running today.

The last time I had a little mini ache like that, I took two days off and it went away. That is the smart thing to do, but it’s really hard to convince myself to take two days! If I make it through today, I’m halfway there! I was about to do a short run anyway because I got a new sports bra in the mail from Moving Comfort and I wanted to see if it was going to be the best thing to ever happen to me or not, but then I let the dog chase me around the backyard and it didn’t feel so hot on the leg…maybe I will run in the morning, maybe stick it out. I planned to do 20 on Friday, but now I feel pretty up in the air. Play a tiny violin for me.

three day weekend, buddy

We are sleepily finishing up a busy and excellent three day weekend over here. On Saturday, I got up super early to go skate with my pal Lisa. Unfortunately, it was too early and the park we usually skate at wasn’t even open yet, so we went to another football-and-baseball-field type of park. The pavement was really uneven and gravelly, so it got deemed a failure pretty quickly. I went home and ran a boring few miles alone and grabbed Spikey for my last mile. Mostly I was bored of running alone, although I’d love to claim it was for his sheer joy of running. I stopped and gave him the what-for after about half a mile because he was acting like a nut.

After my guilty running time, I joined Brian in painting our front porch. If I haven’t mentioned this a million times before, our house is very old – it was built in 1907. This provides for an endless array of chores to be done to keep it from toppling over. The paint on our porch was peeling, so we power washed the peeling paint off to prep for re-painting it…about a year ago. Yeah, our house has been looking pretty derelict for a while and I formally apologize to the three people in our town who actually bother to keep their houses looking nice. No, your trailer does not count. We followed painting up with a nap and a shower, then drove to our friends’ house in the north Georgia mountains about two hours away. We brought the puppy with us and he was a huge drama queen in the car. He wasn’t bad, just kind of silly and I think his squishy face/loud breathing lends itself to seeming dramatic. It was super chilly up there, I think it was in the 50s/60s in the evening.

Sunday morning came early with Ollie ready to get out of his crate and party in the mountains. He was playing with our friends’ kids and having the best time running all over the house and conquering the stairs. We went to the mountain Walmart where I fulfilled my dream of buying a pair of sweatpants and then wished I had leggings to put under them too. We took a scary mountain drive over to another friend’s house and then all went tubing down the Toccoa for a few hours. The water was freezing, but the weather ended up being perfect.

We came home Sunday night…it is always good to be home, even if you are only gone for a day. I went to school for a few hours today (five, but who is counting?) to catch up on some schoolwork and work on the program for my data. Boring, but I feel ready to start the week without these things looming overhead. I went for a short run that felt harder than it should have been, maybe because it was the hottest part of the day and I was expecting it to be cool again…finished up with a couple of minutes in the pool. I am beat.

Nothing major of note on the running front this week. Our average temperatures are starting to dip, but I’m not sure if it’s a fake-out or not. It should still be pretty hot out for another month or so, but the mornings are really pleasant. I ran 16 last Friday and felt decent the entire time, other than the first few miles, so that was encouraging. My average pace was still slow, but I’m noting that it’s a little faster than my last 55 mile (or 54.93 mile) week several weeks ago. I am hoping to run about 50 this week with a 20 mile long run. I’m trying not to dread the long run. It seems like waking up and getting the first few miles is the worst part and after that, it’s mostly autopilot, but I get stressed about whether I will get it done or not every week anyway. Nothing to it but to do it.

8/29 sunday – 4.0, 35:31 (8:52 avg)
8/30 monday – 8.12, 78:14 (9:38 avg)
8/31 tuesday – AM 4.45, 43:56 (9:52 avg – no idea why, but this run was SO hard) + biked 15:00
9/1 wednesday – AM 10.05, 1:37:50 (9:44 avg)
9/2 thursday – 7.18, 65:54 (9:11 avg)
9/3 friday – AM 16.05, 2:39:10 (9:55 avg)
9/4 saturday – AM skated less than a mile (10:00?) + 4.03, 38:22 (9:31 avg) + with spikey 1.28, 12:52 (10:01 avg)

total miles run: 55.16
total run time: 8:51:49 (avg 9:38)
total cardio time: 9:24:49

August miles run: 192.57
Total run time: 31:30:36 (avg 9:34)
YTD miles: 1301.48

fall races

The weather has been so good this morning that I finally signed up for a couple of races that I had been procrastinating, the Locomotive Half Marathon in Kennesaw on September 18th and the Athens Georgia Half Marathon on October 24th. I have been sitting in my office imagining being outside in cool, breezy weather but I can’t remember the last time I woke up and went outside to temperatures in the low 70s.

I ran Kennesaw last year. It was a bit of a boring course that mostly ran through office parks and shopping centers, but the pickings are slim for local September halves, so. The price is a little higher than last year (which was cheap). It was a toss up between this one and 13.1 Atlanta on October 3rd. I think my long run the week of October 3rd is about 22 miles and it wouldn’t make as much sense to build the long run around the half because I would inevitably at least be taking some break after the race before running the last 9 miles…at least in September I can either do a 19 mile long run another day that week or it won’t be as big a deal if I’m piecing two runs together. I’m also somewhat familiar with the area that the Locomotive is in and I think it would be easier to keep running around there if I opted to do that.

The Athens Half is the week before the Ridge to Bridge Marathon, so it will be my last long training run. My schedule calls for a 1.5 hour run that week and needless to say, I don’t run a 1:30 half so it will just be for fun. There aren’t any big local races and I did not want to miss this one. I’ve also run the course a few times…pretty stoked for this!

I can’t wait for long sleeve and shorts weather!

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.

goody two

I fell off the internet last week. We started our senior testing and I was pretty busy with work, but I am adjusted now. I think I could say a lot of things, but if forced to do so in a paragraph oriented, conversational matter, I won’t. So, I am going with some short thoughts:

- One of the tendons in my left ankle was bothering me pretty well last week. I ran most of the Charity Chase on the far left side of the road and it was a little sloped, which I think is what made my tendon sore. I ran Tuesday and Wednesday under the “well, it only hurts when I walk” logic, then took Thursday off in an effort to ward off lasting pain. I was rewarded with feeling 100 percent back to normal on Friday. Normal as ever, anyway.

- I was going to register for Greenville’s Spinx Run Fest Marathon, but changed my mind when I heard about the Ridge to Bridge Marathon in Morganton, NC. I registered just in time before the race reached the cap of almost 300 runners and I’m pretty stoked about it. It’s held the same day (October 30). One major change is the HUGE downhill for the first half of the course. This initially sounds sweet (and is sweeter than an uphill first half), but I will need to do some major hill running to prepare for a course that’s got so much downhill and no uphill to recover. Not really sure how to deal with training for that. The course looks really pretty and I have been lurking on their message boards where the people seem friendly and odd enough.

- My old phone died a little while ago and I had to get a new one, which was a sad moment. The new phone sends updates from my Google calendar, which was annoying since I hadn’t used Google calendar in about two years. I reset it with a once per week reminder of what training week I’m on (18 to go, 17 to go, etc) because I am always forgetting and doing the wrong thing.

- Working on a mild obsession with Silk Light Chocolate soymilk + frozen banana + vanilla protein powder.

- The other day I ran past a group of middle or high school aged kids and this one boy goes, “I just don’t know how you do it.”

- Heatwave. What’s the perfect time to run when it’s this hot? It’s 9pm and 85F right now, will dip down to a balmy 75F between 4am and 5am, and back to 80F by 7am, maintaining about 84% humidity the entire time. Getting up very early is possible, but I can’t run from home when it’s that dark because a) there’s about 20 feet of sidewalk and b) people are freaks and I don’t want to run in the dark in the country because it scares me. If I go to Athens, I don’t have anywhere to shower afterward unless I go to the gym…and I can go to the gym whenever, so there’s no value to getting up early to go there. I’ve been settling with some daytime gym runs and then shorter evening runs at home, but will probably suck it up and figure something out soon if it stays this hot, which it will.

Here’s what I ran the week before the half marathon.

5/30 sunday – 3.13, 27:18 – it was raining really hard this day and an SUV pulled up to me, not quite stopping but just a very slow roll. The passenger window rolls down and this older woman looks at me and says, “it’s raining.” I was like, “yooooouuuuuuu BISH!” I mean, was she trying to be helpful? I was clearly aware it was raining because I was soaked.
5/31 monday – off
6/1 tuesday – 7 miles, 61:33
6/2 wednesday – 45:00 spin class + 5.0 miles 45:18
6/3 thursday – 7.05 miles, 62:33
6/4 friday – off
6/5 saturday – Charity Chase half marathon – 13.1 miles, 2:09:24

total miles run: 35:28
total time run: 05:26:06 (avg pace 9:14)
total cardio time: 06:11:06

May totals: 162.43 miles run, 24:07:27 time spent running (avg pace 8:54)
YTD miles: 742.21

And then the week after. Pretty boring week; I was both a little tired in general and trying to give my ankle a rest.

6/6 sunday – off
6/7 monday – off
6/8 tuesday – 6.64 miles, 60:00
6/9 wednesday – 6.71 miles, 60:00
6/10 thursday – off
6/11 friday – AM 7.0 miles, 65:20 – PM 3.3 miles, 27:49 (4 yasso 800s)
6/12 saturday – 8.03 miles skating with my buddy Lisa in about 55 minutes, 3.0 miles run afterwards 26:34

total miles run: 26.65
total time run: 3:59:43
total cardio time: 4:54:43

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.