sunburns and tequila

Summing my day up this way makes it sound way more exciting than it was, but it was pretty sweet. I woke up this morning and bummed around for a while before picking up my buddy Lisa (aka Interceptor 600HP) and Ashley (Thrashley 6, though I will always remember her old school at 666) and going skating at Sandy Creek Park. Ashley still plays derby, but Lisa and I have been indulging what I suspect is a long drawn out derby withdrawal period by hanging out and skating and talking about how we miss derby and how we are so glad we don’t play anymore. Yeah, both of those.

Sandy Creek has a main loop that’s about .75 mile. We skated a bunch of the main loop and a side road a few times for a little shy of eight miles in a bit over an hour. It’s an uphill on one side and downhill on the other, but we were pretty liberal with the slalom and I’d guess we might have been slower on some of the downhills than the uphills. It was slower than last week, but last week was definitely flatter. I uploaded my Garmin and saw my fastest speed was 3:xx or something (when I switched the activity to skating, it reconfigured to 18 mph) and knew it was on this first section where I started slaloming way too late and thought I was going to eat dirt and lose a few teeth. The bonus of skating is generating your own breeze and being on wheels (duh), but this is more or less made up for by having a helmet on and kneepads/gaskets/etc which make you super hot. Also, Lisa and Ashley are both somewhere in the upper range of five foot something, whereas I am definitively in the lower range at 5’3″ and thus my short legs were busting moves to keep up with their casual gangly strides on uphills.

After apparently becoming sufficiently red, we changed and went to “the beach” aka the lake, which was full of little kids and warm spots, if you catch my drift. It was part awesome and part gross. Lisa and I moved on to the Taco Stand for food and margaritas; I would venture to say there were a few “warm spots” of humanity there as well. The day drinking is too much for me, even though it was one drink. I thought I could power through and get some stuff done at home, but caved to a one hour nap before working for a couple of hours and doing an evening run. I’m ready for a new week! Please let it be a good one.

tough love

Here’s to making it another day with no complaints or injuries. Well, I could probably think of some complaints (if you know me, you’re probably rolling your eyes at the idea of me not having something to say). But definitely no injuries yet. I think there was an article in Runner’s World (or one of those mailings Active.com sends out constantly and I don’t unsubscribe from for some reason – my bad) about people having thresholds for how much they can run per week and above that threshold, they’re probably going to develop some kind of injury or sideline themselves in some way.

I’m basically making this up based on a months-off memory of reading this article because I remember thinking how I start feeling a lot of aches and pains if I go much over 40 miles a week and maybe that’s just where I’m supposed to stop. It’s kind of depressing to think that way and a little counter intuitive to improving yourself. You don’t necessarily have to run more miles to run them faster or more efficiently. I ran my fastest marathons on relatively low mileage compared to my slower ones. But I’m not a fan of thinking that because something isn’t easy means it’s not worth doing. I’ve been incorporating some faster paced runs in the last couple of weeks; some days it’s enjoyable and other days I hate it. When we’d have new skaters or just slower skaters in derby, I would always say the only way to skate faster is to skate faster and I’m pretty sure the same is true for running, whether I like it or not. I’m not saying there’s nothing else to it, but it’s a pretty basic concept that if you don’t hurdle some effort into your training, you’re not going to see any payoff from just showing up and phoning it in. Just because you’re present doesn’t mean you’re working hard and you can’t really fool your body. Here’s an older article on increasing mileage/quality from Runner’s World.

All of that is to say that, huzzah, April is over and I met my goal of 160 miles for the month. Sure, it was a bit of a squeaker at 161.27, but pretty solid for also being one of my busier months of grad school. I had a lot of pretty nice runs this month, some average, and some crapsters. Looking back to where I was last year, I’ve done a pretty similar amount of running (within 5-6 miles for the year so far), but I’m sure I’ve spent a good bit less time doing it, which is nice. This is probably the point where I should make a goal for May, but I’m not sure what it should be other than something indicating a little more quality to my workouts. I’d like to run the same monthly mileage, but spend less time to do it.

I’m still trying to decide if I can hang with a September marathon. I’ve been thinking about running the Tupelo Marathon on Labor Day weekend. Please, shield your eyes before clicking the link. The website is brutal yet amazing. So, it would be a very toasty warm race and I can’t decide if I am being honest with myself that I will do enough running in full on heat to be prepared for the weather at that time of year. It starts at 5am, but it’s going to be muggy and hot all morning. I don’t want to run it if I’m going to be unprepared for weather and take five+ hours because it’s hot and humid, but I don’t know if I will “woman up” and make myself do long runs in daytime summer temperatures, either. Good idea/bad idea?

terrapin 5k plus one more mile

Somehow I ended up with a run-only week. School was kind of hectic and made going to the gym/spin classes not very practical. Tomorrow is another of those days, but I have my proposal defense on Wednesday (where you present your proposed thesis project to your department and people comment/critique) and after that there’s only a few more weeks in the semester. Having my last presentation done will be a big weight off, but I’m not finished editing it yet.

Yesterday I ran the Terrapin Beer 5k plus one more mile. I ran it last year; I think I need to branch out because I tend to like just doing something I know I’m going to like already. It was a bit of a sad day as I’d learned on Friday that Will Chamberlain, of Classic Race Services had passed away in his sleep overnight. Will was the race director for most of the local Northeast Georgia races and just a super nice guy. I didn’t know him personally (though I felt like I did), just through his races where he was always going out of his way to be friendly and encouraging to everyone. The race at Terrapin would have been his race and he always starts with his trademark, “have a good race and have a safe race,” which someone had written on a sign at the starting line. It was also a little sad to finish since he wasn’t standing at the finish line cheering people in while recording their finishing time. The race itself was pretty uneventful. It’s in the afternoon, so it was hot (though not as bad as last year when it was in the 90s, I think). There was a much bigger crowd this year as well. I finished in 35:35, slightly faster than last year.

I had a half of a half (that would be a quarter) of a Pumpkinfest and gave the rest of my beer tickets away so I could go watch roller derby/tailgate (and drink beer…). Mega tired today, maybe going to do a short run when the sun goes down.

4/4 sunday – off
4/5 monday – 7.0 miles, 63:21
4/6 tuesday – 3.03 miles, 26:15
4/7 wednesday – 8.02 miles, 73:11
4/8 thursday – 9.25 miles, 85:00
4/9 friday – 10.16, 90:54
4/10 saturday – 4.18 miles, 35:35

total miles run: 41.64
total time run: 6:14:16
total cardio: 6:14:16

week in review

I am wiped the heck out after five hours on my feet, but the Festival for Life fundraiser for AIDS Athens seemed to be a raging success – lots of happy people, hopefully lots of happy dollars being donated. While driving home, I thought about how tired I was and how I could have run a marathon in the time I was there. It’s always good when you are equating things like that. In most of my races, I spend some amount of time thinking about things that would be worse than running for four hours or so, such as taking a biochemistry exam (this is my go-to mood booster – I could be sitting in a biochem exam, but I’m not), most trips to the mall, staying awake all night, riding in an airplane. It’s been so long since I’ve had a job that required me to stand for hours (probably about five years) that I forgot how much it hurts when you aren’t used to it.

Here’s what I did this past week. I decided to forgo the long run this week in favor of a longer spin class yesterday. That was pretty brutal and felt like a fair trade, even if not serving the same purpose. My run today was pretty awful; I sweated like a beast and my HR felt out of control until I slowed down to 9:30-ish miles. It was one of those runs that is less about fitness and more about a series of intense personal negotiations with yourself to keep moving. In the first mile or so I could feel the blister on my left foot expanding a little with each foot strike. The good news is, I won and kept going instead of quitting after a few miles like I really, really wanted to. Sometimes keeping track of miles is what keeps me from backing out early; I’m like, man, I do not want to write down another 3-4 mile run this week! My feet are even more jacked up, so I performed some minor surgical procedures in my car and picked up some tape to hopefully cover up the blisters for next time.

2/21 sunday – off
2/22 monday – 7 miles, 62:31
2/23 tuesday – 6.5 miles, 58:00 minutes – skated for 30-45 minutes (counted it up as 30 since it was just slow skating and interrupted for “green lightening” a couple of times) – in continuing mechanical failures of transportation news, I saw a train derailed on East Campus during this run.
2/24 wednesday – 3.02 miles, 27:53 – 45:00 spin class
2/25 thursday – 7.0 miles, 63:xx
2/26 friday – 5 miles, 45:35, 58:00 spin class
2/27 saturday – 10.14 miles, 1:35:00

total miles run: 38.66
run time: 5:51:59
total cardio time: 8:04:59

I doubt I’ll run tomorrow, so my mileage total for February is 159.94. A solid improvement over January’s 137.71 and bringing me to 297.65 for the year.

injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere

Happy MLK Jr. Day! I hope you were lucky enough to have a three day weekend (not the point of the holiday, I guess, but still a nice ray of sunshine post-winter holidays if you do). I had the morning off from school and spent it sleeping in and being pretty lazy after getting home and eating dinner around one AM last night after the roller zombies filming. It was a long day and a late night for this homebody. Getting back on skates is never as difficult as I think it might be, but it makes my back really sore afterward, mostly in my shoulders. What a weird area to hurt. I have one self-inflicted bruise. All in all, it was a lot of sitting around and not so much skating. I was thinking I was going to be really active for at least a couple of hours, but I think it would be pushing it to say it was more than 30 or so minutes of really scrimmaging/faux scrimmaging. It should be a cute movie. Want to see my zombie make up?

The red stripe was my “bout” makeup and the rest was when I got zombie-fied.

Everyone kept telling me I had a booger and I was like, IT’S LATEX! Sorry that the color is weird in the second one; I auto-adjusted to see what would happen since I took the picture with no flash and I guess it saved it because I couldn’t find the original with more normal color.

Okay, that is enough of the giant close ups of my face. I went to spin class this evening, hoping it might be less crowded if people were off work or out of town (and because my back hurts). No such luck. It took about as much time to land a spot in the class (5 minutes or so in line before they opened the sign up list, 15 until the previous class got out and I could snag a bike I wanted) as the class itself (45 minutes). Before the class started, a girl was asking me about my shirt (from the Atlanta half) and I tried to impart some feeble wisdom on ING Georgia, which she was planning to run as her first full in March (mostly to be ready for those three uphill miles around 17-20 or whatever it is and accept that it will eventually be over and she will finish). Happily, it was a really good class today and I left pretty beat. I ran an even four miles in 37:05 and called it a night so I could come home and study/eat the delicious burrito Brian brought for me; I believe it was his counter-strike to the whole wheat pizza I made for lunch this afternoon (spinach, olive, broccoli, and the dreaded red pepper, to his disappointment). Our fridge is starting to look pretty sad and it’s time for some low budget grocery shopping soon. Brains, anyone?

big weekend

Not much to report from me. I’ve taken to wearing shoes all of the time, from the minute I get out of bed until I get back into bed, and it seems like it’s helping to get rid of my foot pain. The second my foot goes into a pair of Vans to check the mail, though, it’s back. I ran about 33-34 miles last week, averaging slightly shorter runs than usual.

On Saturday, I ran the Marigold 10K. 10K is a weird distance; not a long run, sure, but not short enough to feel very, you know, short. It definitely did not feel short on Saturday. In the interest of full disclosure, I stayed up until about 12:30am the night before and drank two glasses of wine (with ice – hydration!). When I woke up ten minutes before the alarm went off, I actually felt pretty good and made it over to Winterville to register with plenty of time to spare. It was cool, a little breezy, nice. And then as the clock clicked from 7:59am to 8:00am, it was humid, muggy, and hot as heck. That’s a small exaggeration, but I definitely got there early enough to go from reasonable morning weather to typical Georgia weather. I ended up with a time of 56:24, almost three and a half minutes slower than my last 10K which was run on a much hillier course. A couple of things could be to blame. Let’s start with the reasonable:

- Staying up late.
- Drinking alcohol.
- Not running as much as I was a month or two ago.

And move on to the plausible:

- Course was flat. Yes, that is super, but usually when I run outside, I run on some hills. I’m not terribly slow running up hills unless they’re particularly long or daunting (say I from the comfort of my couch and air conditioned house), so I don’t think I lose a lot of speed there. But I do like to charge downhills and it never really bothers my legs, so maybe I am used to picking up some speed on the downhills to make up for an overall slower pace on flats and uphills. I’m using the terms “slow,” “speed,” and “charge” in a relative manner, by the way.
- Water. I drink a freaking ton of water on outdoor runs and should probably have carried some with me since I’m used to drinking regularly. Drinking out of the paper cup doesn’t do it for me and I usually just chuck most of it for fear of chugging and cramping. I think drinking water also gives me another distraction to think about. And distraction is important to me.

There’s probably a “not freaking likely” list of factors to blame, but a couple of days out of the race and I can’t remember them. I went home, worked, tried to nap, and then headed to Atlanta to play some derb in a bout benefiting the Shriners. It was fun and my team won. Technically, I should reverse that order and say that my team won, so it was fun. Not going to lie, I was going to be pretty bummed about losing after feeling like I bombed once already that morning. I was game MVP for my team, as chosen by the opposing team, and that’s always a really nice compliment.

Yesterday, we “kayaked” the Broad River all day. Kayaking is in quotes because it’s more like floating and drinking beer, but the water level was low (26″) so we had to expend a little more effort than usual to avoid getting stuck on rocks, sand, etc. I wore sunscreen and reapplied, but still ended up with a gnarly sunburn on my back, legs, and feet. Brian got it really badly, too, and he used two kinds of sunscreen. Neither too effective, apparently. We spent the rest of the evening laying on the couch trying to recover from that. I haven’t been brave enough yet to try to get into some running clothes without causing major physical harm to myself, but I should probably get on that. Next up, Peachtree Road Race this Saturday. I’m not a big fan of crowds, so this one will be a little nutty.