another one bites the dust

Another week in Florence down. The time here is passing a little quicker than I expected, so far. Take that with a grain of salt considering the holiday this week and snow days last week, but I’ll still take it.

Let’s see. Running is going…okay. I ran at the YMCA twice this week, my first time on a treadmill since last summer. Horrible! Boring, oddly tiring, and my headphones kept falling out. It was more enjoyable when I just took off the headphones and stared into space. I used to like it, but am not accustomed to it yet (and have gotten a lot slower since I used to run on the TM regularly…for all the complaints about them, I think they are massively helpful for increasing speed). I supplemented the three or so miles I eked out each day with spin class one day and weights the next. Last night, I went to a “cardio max” class with my roommate. This class consisted of STEP AEROBICS and circuit training. Holy crap. The class started out with a 70-something looking woman doubting my choice to use two risers on my step, never having done a step class before (I don’t feel I should be ashamed of that, either). She thought I couldn’t hang, but I got the last laugh when she used no risers and then left the class after 25 minutes while I continued bumbling along about five beats behind everybody else. My lack of moves were apparent…they have actual routines for these things and I could not follow it to save my life. I don’t think I’m uncoordinated, but I am not good at mimicking or following steps. Thank g-d the step part ended after 30 minutes and we moved into a circuit of jumping jacks, shoulder presses, mountain climbers, etc for the rest of the hour. I almost died, for real.

I ran four miles yesterday before going to that class. I knew waiting and running at the Y would lead to certain disaster (aka quitting after 10 minutes). Weather was perfect and it repeated again this morning for another short run. Next week, I vow to find better places to run than where I am going now. I’m going to my parents’ house later today. It’s massively hilly over there compared to pancake flat Florence, hopefully I can drag myself up a hill or two over the weekend. I am always a little sad when I visit their house without my red dog.

for the birds

I am trying to quiet my rage against this little spawn of Satan, who destroyed one of our living room chairs in the less than two minutes he was left unsupervised by me or our adult dogs, who are admittedly not wonderful influences anyway.

Ollie has a knack for detecting items that are expensive and/or have not been previously owned by someone else (rare in our house) and attempting to ruin them. Needless to say, he’s spending some QT in his crate this afternoon. I also looked up how much a replacement chair costs and am wondering what crack we smoked to pay almost $300 for the one we have. Surely that did not happen.

I finished out May with 162.43 miles and 24:07:27 of running, meeting my goal of increasing my overall speed from April (161.27 in 24:37:23). My average pace was 8:54 compared to 9:09. Boom, victory. I’m going to throw mileage goals out the window for June since I will start following my training plan in a more structured manner (read: at all) and will probably have to start sucking it up and doing some long slow runs.

Things will stay light today and tomorrow, when I am leaving for Hickory, NC to run the Charity Chase Half Marathon on Saturday morning courtesy of Richard at Old-Runner. I’m pretty sure I haven’t run 13 miles since somewhere during training for ING Georgia several months ago (I think the most I’ve done is 10 in the past month or two) so hopefully I don’t embarrass myself. My knees are feeling creaky today after a pretty difficult spin class and run yesterday. I started off with my lead legs and willing myself to stay on the treadmill for 30 minutes, then 45 minutes. My arms are killing me because I forgot I had done weights before class, so I’m kind of a sad sack today.

why, pollen, why?

Allergies have been beating down whatever shred of mojo I can muster for the past couple of days. I have tried everything I can think of – Claritin, generic Zyrtec, Benedryl. Last week, it was itchy eyes and headaches. This week, it’s headaches, sore throat, and sour stomach from whatever is in my throat. My tonsils and lymph nodes in my neck are huge. It’s bad enough that I skipped coffee this morning, which is usually reserved for the crappiest of crap feelings. I guess if this is my biggest problem, I am doing alright.

I’m crossing my fingers that I pull it together enough for an evening run or maybe spin class since I still have been too busy to go this week. My professor gave us our statistics exams back and I got an A, though not quite as high as my first one. But I’ll take it. I defended my thesis proposal on Wednesday. The prospect of a roomful of people from my department staring blankly at me is no longer an immediate concern. I don’t love speaking in front of people, but I don’t especially mind it. One problem I have is not explaining things that I think are clear because I’ve thought about them for months on end. Doing transcription has made me more conscious of saying uh, ah, like, et cetera – but I still do it and managed to say “you guys” in the first minute. I am a little nervous to get my evals back. I’ve never had one say anything groundbreakingly bad or embarrassing, but the potential is there.

This weekend my major task is to work on cleaning up my analysis tool so it can be submitted to IRBs. It will be nice to have a slow weekend. Next weekend is Athens Twilight Criterium, which ranks high up there on the list of best things that happen in Athens. I’m volunteering on Thursday night and doing the 5k run/50k ride on Saturday morning. The men’s and women’s races are Saturday night…might need a nap to make it through.

the luck of the…

I have been super wiped out for the past week. School is busy and just as I got settled into some new work, my old work picked up a little again. It beats having nothing to do, that is for sure. I’ve also slept through the night multiple nights in a row for the first time in at least six months. I still wake up in the middle of the night, but I go back to sleep instead of waking up at 1:40am every single morning. My brain feels empty and sleepy already, so I am just going to check in with my last two weeks of running.

Also, I never win stuff online, but in one week I won a giveaway from Vanessa at Vanessa Runs, a Run Happy shirt from Brooks via the Brooks Running Club on Facebook, and Bondi Bands in week one of the Racevine winter giveaway (it just occurred to me that it’s not really winter anymore). Brooks usually gives away t-shirts on Fridays and the Racevine contest is on for a couple more weeks, so go submit reviews if you want to win. I need to win some free marathon entries, but I might need a little more contest mojo for that to happen.

Starting with pre-ING, what apparently was a mega taper week. What the heck did I do all week? Not sure.

3/14 sunday – off
3/15 monday – 3.25 miles, 29:00
3/16 tuesday – off
3/17 wednesday – 2.11 miles – 20:00, 45:00 spin class
3/18 thursday – 3.25 miles, 30:00
3/19 friday – 45:00 spin class
3/20 saturday – off

total miles run: 8.61 (!)
total run time: 1:19:00
total cardio: 2:49:00

And moving into marathon week…

3/21 sunday – ING Georgia – 26.36 miles (they were on my Garmin, I ran them, and I will take the extra .16) – 4:30:49
3/22 monday – off
3/23 tuesday – off
3/24 wednesday – 4.31 miles, 40:00
3/25 thursday – 3.22 miles, 28:01
3/26 friday – 1:00 spin class, 3.0 miles – 26:17
3/27 saturday – 3.15 miles, 28:28

total miles run: 40.04
total run time: 6:33:35
total cardio: 7:33:35

I have to mention that I played keg kickball for a couple of hours on Saturday and was in more pain than I’ve been in after any race (marathon pain is gone within two days, this was still lurking on Tuesday). Somehow I don’t think I can count this as exercise since beer was involved, even if it was mostly spilled all over myself.

I’ve run 16 miles so far this week, putting me at a somewhat weak 120.86 miles for March (down from 159.94 in February), but I can chalk that up to a pretty generous taper week (about 25-30 miles less than a regular week) plus missing a few days being sick at the beginning of the month. I’m going to shoot for 160 in April; no big races, just some fun shorties like the Terrapin 5k plus one and the Twilight 5k. I ordered and received a copy of the [Jack] Daniels Running Formula, so I need to open it with my hot little hands and figure out what torture to impose on my body to get some faster times.

think fast go slow

Nice week of relaxing/recovering while still having a delusion of high mileage since the race was on Sunday. I took Monday and Tuesday to feel creaky and sleep a little extra. Brian brought new puppy home Saturday night and I have to say that sleeping puppy = best excuse for a nap ever. I took a three hour nap on Monday (oh yes, the life of a marginally employed graduate student which affords such luxury) laying on the couch with the puppy snuggled into my neck. It was gross and soothing at once. I have opposed the addition of another dog to our household, but I guess if I’m stuck taking it outside to pee every twenty minutes and having it bite my feet constantly, I might as well embrace the benefits, like naps and general cuteness. Jumped back in with a 40 minute run Wednesday (four and change), three slightly faster miles yesterday, and three before my spin class this evening. I slept for twelve hours last night. Time for making new goals; fall seems like a long time away.

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.

meat feet

Things that apparently become a big deal within a month of a goal race: people within 20 feet of you coughing or sneezing, blisters, and a couple of extra pounds. Brian was sick last week. I did some daytime sleeping over the weekend and avoided catching whatever he had. I hate to say it and want to knock on wood when I do, but I pretty rarely get sick. I didn’t have as much as a cold from February 2004 until May 2007 when I had shingles (and didn’t realize it until it was almost gone). I’ve only had one or two sinus/cold type things since then, but otherwise I am pretty lucky.

That brings me to blisters and my new shoes. Maybe change is not a good thing. I thought I was doing a little baby step by getting an updated version of my same shoe, but now I’ve got some updated tiny but mighty blisters on my right big toe and left ball of my foot, under the callous instead of on top of the skin. Oh, blast. Please go away and do not make me overnight a pair of my old shoes from Zappos.com. I’m pretty sure my big toe is also growing laterally, but I have very weird looking feet so I might have just not noticed before.

And then the pounds. I still haven’t dropped weight I gained over the holidays and it’s almost March, so that is kind of pathetic. I’m a pretty bad night eater, especially if I can’t sleep and I stay up doing something (as opposed to laying in bed trying to fall asleep). So, I have been trying to get ready to sleep a little earlier to avoid being up late. I had to weigh myself in kinesiology this afternoon and it wasn’t too bad, but I could still drop some kgs. It strikes me as supremely lame to complain about my weight because I am well within a healthy range and I also just feel like it’s not something you should do if you are a “nutrition professional” or grad student in my case. It does not generally come across well and seems a little judge-y. I am happy to be healthy and fit. I’m not thinking I am in the best or worst shape, but I have been in better shape so I guess I feel a little guilty that I am lacking in the motivation department lately. It is hard when you spend a huge amount of your time on food, health, body weight, etc. Not just thinking about it in a ho-hum way, but doing research, writing papers, meetings, seminars, classes all the time. Sometimes, enough is enough and I don’t want to wax poetic on it if I don’t have to, though I’ve kind of painted myself into a corner with my two favorite hobbies being running and baking. This all combined with not having a full time job is making me kind of depressed, which I finally admitted to myself the other morning and is pretty fair. I miss having a solid routine, even if I didn’t always like it, and finishing the day feeling like I did something (okay, maybe I am romanticizing work here). So, in some ways I feel like since I am not doing so hot in the financial department, I should be picking it up everywhere else by doing really well in school, stepping up my marathon training, keeping my house in order. Not sure what I can really do to fix this; I’ve been pursuing other work, but nothing is panning out. I am simultaneously underwhelmed and overwhelmed.

Anyway, sorry for the Debby Downer there. Not sure where that came from. This has been a good week. Nothing standout. I’m at 23 miles or so and had a really good spin class yesterday – which actually lasted the full 45 minutes. It never fails that I complain about something and then I feel bad about it. My long run this week is uncertain. I am thinking about skipping it/doing something shorter tomorrow because my feet are killing me, but I’ve been wearing some old shoes around the house for better support (instead of slippers or flops) and hopefully the blisters will calm down. This afternoon, I ran seven on the treadmill and my feet felt like they’d been pounded by a mallet when I was done, so doing 18 or 20 on the road sounds scary – but I really want to get two more long runs in (this week and next) before doing a decent taper. This Saturday is a big fundraiser for AIDS Athens and helping to setup/cleanup the event will probably take up the majority of the day/night.

it’s what you’re doing now

Having a Saturday without a run = awesome. I slept until 11am (more like got up, putzed around, went back to sleep twice). My sleep pattern is terrible as I’ve mentioned before, so getting catch up sleep is great even though I woke up twice in the night and twice in the morning. I actually slept deeply enough to have a DREAM. Woah. Then I sat around and ate some oatmeal and didn’t really do anything until going to my spin class. My gym got new spin bikes this week; no more getting stuck on the bike that is either free spinning or hellacious resistance, at least until these bikes get all jacked up. They are pretty dope. Then I visited Brian while he was doing a sweet Fantastic Mr. Fox tattoo, came home, and made a new double batch of whole wheat pizza dough – one for calzones tonight (mine has been eaten), three for the freezer.

My mom was planning to come down to see me run in March. She came to the Marine Corps Marathon and got a kick out of walking around and seeing everything. She’s retired and generally up for doing whatever; anything with my mom is usually a small adventure of some sort. A couple of weeks ago, I suggested that she could walk the half marathon. It seemed like it would be up her alley and be fun for her. She’s done the 10k at the Turkey Trot in Pinehurst twice and walks regularly when the weather is decent. She thought about it for a while and was kind of nervous about it, but I signed her up this week after she did her first two hour walk and felt good afterward (I think it was eight miles and change). I talked to her tonight and yesterday she walked 6.2 miles in 1:25 (13:24 pace or something). Does that even qualify as walking?! Apparently she ran into some hardcore walker lady in her neighborhood and had to turn on the rockets for a couple of miles. She’s getting pretty into it. I think she will have a really good time doing the race.

Here’s what I did this week. I know that I meant to lay off, but I’m kind of wincing as I add these up. Now I’m going to resume my evening schedule of sitting on my butt watching Olympic athletes do crazy things in spandex and playing “Ali in the Jungle” on my iTunes (the Nike commercial song – “everybody gets knocked down, how quick are you gonna get up?” Hello, marathon playlist.). When the 1996 Olympics were in Atlanta, we went downtown to watch the marathoners run past the old Macy’s building on Peachtree Street. The gold medalist won by only three seconds!

Sunday 2/14 – off
Monday 2/15 – 5.0 miles – 47:16, 35:00 swim
Tuesday 2/16 – 7.0 miles – 61:xx
Wednesday 2/17 – 4.0 miles – 35:15
Thursday 2/18 – off
Friday 2/19 – 18.06 miles – 2:49:43, avg 9:24
Saturday 2/20 – 50:00 spin class*

miles run: 34.06
total run time: 5:13:14
total cardio: 6:38:14

*The class was a new one (Group Ride). It’s 55 minutes with sort of a cool down period in the middle. It’s hard to say how difficult it is since the impetus is on you to make it challenging. The cool down/recovery track felt way too long. I kept my tension fairly high and kept going at the cadence of the instructors, but wasn’t as tired as usual. I was also under the world’s most powerful ceiling fan which might have kept me from sweating as much. The class is segmented into eight parts and I think has it’s own soundtrack of kind of off-brand music mixes. It ended up only being 50 minutes, which is something I find kind of frustrating about the classes at my gym. They are almost always at least five minutes shorter than they are supposed to be. I can understand being a little off if you’re using your own MP3 player since you’re going along with certain tracks on a workout, but if you’re using a CD that comes with a 55 minute program, why is the class short?

weekly round up

Wednesday night was the first night of my swim classes. I didn’t get demoted to the beginner group on the other side of the pool, so I considered it to be a raging success. We mostly did freestyle laps back and forth, working on something different each time (being streamlined at the start, holding our arms the right way, breathing, kicking from the knee). I never really learned how to breathe while swimming freestyle (with other strokes, it’s pretty intuitive) and so that was the hardest thing for me. I’ve worn contact lenses since I was eight years old, which I think has something to do with being so lackluster in the water because I try to avoid going under no matter what since I can’t open my eyes under there. Obviously for the class, I’m wearing goggles, but I didn’t go to the pool with goggles as a kid so I’d just shut my eyes/try to stay above water. My eyesight is somewhat horrendous and I wouldn’t be able to see enough to swim without contacts/glasses. Anyway, so I would swim from one side to the other and be all winded from trying to breathe minimally, but I think I was getting better by the end. The next class is Monday, so I need to get my gumption up to go practice over the weekend; I might go with school buddies.

This morning I went to a senior center near Monticello with one of my friends from school, who was giving them a nutrition/physical activity lesson. There were a bunch of cool “older adults” (the preferred term in gerontology; elderly is not really used) there. I like how the ladies are usually kind of sassy and the men just are quiet and smile. My favorite lady was tiny and wearing a black beret with a lavender sweatsuit. We did a little bit of exercise using resistance bands and they were all like, “OH! WHEW!” afterward in a really funny way. The drive there and back was twice as long as the actual time spent at the senior center, but Katie is an RD as well as very speedy marathoner, so it was pretty easy to fill up the time talking about food and running (two topics I have a hard time shutting up about).

When I got home from my afternoon run (8 miles), I saw a little brown box at the front door. Excitement. I usually approach the door mentally willing the package to be addressed to me and not be something Brian didn’t tell me he was expecting. Selfish, right? My super cool brother and sister-in-law sent me a pair of cycling shoes – so awesome! Now I will be all, click-click-click in spin class. They are Specialized Motodivas. I’m excited to see how much of a difference it will make to clip in versus wearing sneaks. They said it made a big difference for them when they switched.

I registered for the ING Georgia Marathon today. It might be a little early for it, but advance props for having an XS shirt option for the smallies. I’ll probably get there and be handed an XL.

Finally, thank you to the person who found my blog by searching “blueberry muffin marathon.” I can’t think of a single thing more pleasant sounding than “blueberry muffin marathon” and actually searched it myself to see if some such wondrous thing might exist and if I might pay $$$ to participate. When it didn’t, I cried and then I made a batch and a half of delicious blueberry muffins and have been eating them for days. Thank you for undermining my exercise efforts with the slightest mention of one of my favorite carbohydrate-rich breakfast treats.

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?