Archive for January, 2008

What’s a gal to do? When I started this blog, I had it in my mind to fill it with observational running stuff, more along the lines of humorous essay writing. I’ve enjoyed doing that, but I end up with quite long entries and it’s not something I can sustain on a day-to-day basis.

Looking around at other running blogs, I wonder if I should change the format to more of a daily running diary. Guess I’ll just play it by ear, but if any of you guys and gals have a preference, leave me a comment to let me know.

And on that note, I’ll make this one follow the latter style…

Just returned from a beautiful 9-miler on a stunningly sunny, but windy day. Kept a comfortable 8:44 pace with negative splits (always a good sign since my last mile is uphill).

Also, I apparently have a new construction worker boyfriend, though my main construction BF is still on the job and says something whenever I see him, this new guy I passed today yelled out to me, “how many miles you run a day…30?” I answered, “a bunch” but I must say, 30 sounds so much better. So yeah, I went 30 today.

Hemmed and hawed today before getting out the door – my usual M.O. this winter.

In the summer, I’d set the alarm to get up at 6:30 or 7:00 so it’d be bearable by the time I got out the door, but now I have the whole day to figure out the “best” time to go for my run. Today it was, “do I go out before the rain/snow hits or will the extra warmth of a later-in-the-day temperature make up for it?”

Weighing slightly on me was that today called for a tempo run and I didn’t want to get discouraged by wind slowing me down, so I also told myself I could do hills instead if it was too windy. Happily, Nick decided to go for a bike ride, motivating me out the door sooner rather than later, and I went for the tempo. Glad I did…

Six miles total w/4 tempo @ 7:49. Felt strong! I have good feelings about this training cycle, it’s going to be a rockin’ one.

Goofy day. Went to a gym for the first time since the 80s. My friend, Lara, gave me a 7-day pass to her gym and since today was windy and cold, it was the perfect time to try it out.

On the way there, I had a brush with anti-greatness; I saw Danny Bonaduce. He and a pretty girl crossed the street in front of my car as I was stopped at a stop sign. They were looking at historic stuff along the block. I had him in my sights long enough to call Nick and tell him, “I can see Danny Bonaduce in my rear view mirror.” He thought I was nuts. Anyway, seeing him ranks up there with the time I waited tables on Tiny Tim, or saw Liberace in concert or Pia Zadora belting her guts out at Radio City Music Hall. Something about loony-tune pop icons, they’re so invigorating and life-affirming. Sigh.

So I was all ramped up by the time I got to the gym. They gave me the little tour and then I made my way to the treadmills. Having recently read a forumite’s post of joining a gym where she mentioned the treadmills have personal TVs now (how Jetsons!), I was uber excited to enjoy this bit of luxury for myself. Two seconds later, I’m all, “Wow, I’m running and I’m watching TV! This is cool!” then about a minute later, when I’m feeling quite unsteady and disgusted with myself for watching Inside Weekend Edition because running is one time in my life where I can assure myself I’m NOT ingesting crap, I turn off the TV. Three minutes have gone by.

Then I innocently start playing with things that hang off the treadmill, this thing that looks like a blood pressure thing, and I see there’s a slot for heartrate, so this thing must read my heartrate, but…wtf? why am I stopping, what did I do? Then I press the Pause/reset button one two many times, so the treadmill goes back to zero, instantly negating the half mile I miserably completed.

Because I am miserable. I am just standing in one place, running. I can’t keep my eye away from the Distance readout, as if watching it will turn the numbers faster. Finally I get a respite – some crazy guy hops on two treadmills down from mine. He must be carrying lead in his sneakers, because each footstep is punctuated with Bam! Bam! Bam! Which would be OK, if he didn’t start singing aloud with his ipod. And not proper words and tune, just random guttural notes that sounded like a seal being slaughtered.

Thankfully, half way through the hour, my friend Lara meets me and steps on the treadmill between me and the seal, which seems to calm him down. And for the next ½ hour, Lara and I chat while I stare woefully at the distance readout some more, wanting it to please, just be over. I end up doing some tempo miles so I can finish faster.

Now I’m home and feeling great that I got some miles in on this cold day, thanks to Lara – my only runner friend (non forum related, that is), the one who just about held my hand at my first 5K, and ran with me when I was slower than dirt. Thank you, Lara, for helping me to see that fancy little TVs do not make the run, and thank you for getting between me and the dying seal. Love you, girl.

Tennis Balls. I’m sitting on one right now and I feel fine. Or rather, my ass cheek does. I think I had a piriformis thing this week so I did some stretches and went tennis ball shopping yesterday. I read that sitting on one is a great way to give yourself a deep massage, and it works! I didn’t feel a thing on today’s 12.

I’m still kicking myself for buying Wilson balls instead of generic ones, though.  Did I think a no-name brand would implode against my butt cheek? Damn right, I did.

So I saw a shitty movie the other day. No, not Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (which is, in fact, a quality film), but The Long Run. It’s the story of a running coach in South Africa, an untrained female runner and the adversity they face to get her to the Comrades Marathon (a 55.9 mile Ultra, which of course, she wins). It was plodding, badly acted, but wasn’t a total loss, since it gave me so much to laugh at.

Picture this; We’re at the race. Our heroine, Christine (who has such obviously sucky running form) is accompanied by the coach’s ragamuffin running team of 4 men. One by one, the race proves too much for these guys (who’ve been running zillions of miles before she ever came on the scene). They start dropping out because they aren’t as tough as our speedy heroine. But when I say “drop out”, I mean literally drop, as in fall down in the middle of the road. I guess moving a foot to the side of the road would be too agonizing or something.

Finally, every teammate from our Coach’s rapscallion group has toppled to his feet except one remaining guy, who happens to have the absolute fattest thighs I’ve ever seen on a recreational jogger, much less an Ultra runner. Show me a hardcore long-distance runner with such big fat, chunky monkey legs and I’ll eat those disgusting soy bars from last season’s goody bags.

But the main reason I’m bringing this movie up, is that throughout the flick, our gruffy, grey-haired coach-with-a-heart-of-gold, constantly shouts at our heroine, “Faster, Christine, Faster” as she travels over endless dusty South African roads. Forget recovery runs, easy runs, long runs, just “Faster, Christine, Faster” every damn day.

When I saw this bit of idiocy, I knew it was my sign to start doing the opposite, to slow down some of my runs. I’ve read enough books and contributions from Daniels, Lydiard, Pfitzinger, Noakes, McMillan and the like, to know that in order to do your quality runs properly, you gotta respect the slower paces. And with Steamtown in my sites, my aim is to do things as “right” as possible.

So, yesterday, for the first time in months, I strapped on my HRM for a mid-long of 9.5 miles, and ran a slower run than usual – 9:32. I was happily surprised to find a huge improvement in my average heart rate (67%), the lowest I’ve measured on a continuous run, as a matter of fact. And this slower run couldn’t have been better timed, since it came at the heels of the previous day’s 6-mile tempo run which, including warmup and cooldown, averaged 8:09/mi. Yin and Yang, baby.

Yeah, maybe Christine needs to go “faster, faster” every single run so she can win the Comrades in movieland. As for me, I’m gonna concentrate on taking it easy when I’m supposed to so I can pounce when the time is right. And with that, comes my new running motto for 2008: “Slower, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”

Meow.

Shameless afternoon edit: I just returned from an easy 8, wearing the HRM, guessing that to keep at 75% (suggested HR for easy runs), I’d need to keep the pace around 9:10.  Uh, no! It seems I’ve been doing just fine all along… avg pace today 8:40, HR 74% – with negative splits! Once again, I’ve created drama where there is none. Carry on.

OK, so I mildly regret saying I’d post my workout sheets in the last post, not because I’m afraid of revealing my spreadsheet mania, but because I must attempt to explain this in the most non-boringest way possible. I’m not sure if it can be done.

Anyway, I’ve made one big “Running” Excel spreadsheet that houses each of the sheets I’m about to show you, plus this nifty Daniels Training Tables sheet (which I highly recommend downloading…it has many cool features).

If you must know, this spreadsheet has become such a wonderful training tool and motivator that I print hard copies of the Race Pace and Training Pace pages below, so I can admire their numeric beauty even when away from my computer. The better to think my way faster, lol.

Starting with my planning calendar: this is a free Excel calendar template I downloaded from the Microsoft site and tweaked for my nefarious purposes. I added a column to the right that adds the daily mileage for the week on the fly, so I can play around with adding, moving and subtracting mileage and get instant feedback. I fill it out a week in advance and during the week I’ll switch stuff around depending on the weather or how I’m feeling, so my planning is always fluid. I also added note sections above the days so I can enter the proposed workout as well.

What you don’t see are two more columns to the right that were very useful as I built my mileage, but not too much anymore. One of the columns takes the weekly total and automatically adds 10%, the other column adds 15%. Together, they gave me a great way to figure out the next week’s mileage goal, depending on how aggressive I wanted to be.

The next sheet is my McMillan race-pace compilation sheet (sorry, I cut it in half so you could see the whole page length). It’s composed of McMillan calculator race times based on 5Ks, diminishing in 15 second increments. Look on the top right and see my equivalent 5K after September’s Half was 24:16, then the next one down is 24:00, 23:45, etc.

Each sheet has 6 of these race calculations and I’m on the home stretch with this current one, just one or two sections to go! Then the next sheet starts with 22:45 and culminates in 21:30 (gulp), which I would jump for joy to make by the end of 2008. But I digress…

The point of this sheet is to be able to see the progression I’m working towards on one page, visualize the paces as well as give me an easy reference and comparison as I improve. Also, when I’m getting ready for a race, I can look at, say, three of those sections and figure out a “best” goal, “would be happy with” goal and “if worse comes to worse” goal.

The third sheet is my McMillan training pace compilation. In conjunction with the sheet above, this one has 6 blocks per page based on the same race times, but I’m only showing the bottom 4 blocks to keep file-size down.

The first bit in white has 5K, Half and Marathon times and their respective paces in brackets. The part in blue starts with the corresponding McMillan pace ranges (eg. “9:10 to 10:10”). Next to each of these ranges is the average of that range, the better to see where I actually am in SmartCoach as I improve (which only has one pace listed for each workout, not the fabulous span of times McMillan gives us).

And below the McMillan’s pace ranges are the interval times which again, help me keep tabs on the single paces SmartCoach spouts and shows me what to expect next.

I hope all that didn’t sound like gobbledygook to you guys – it was a lot harder explaining the sheets than making them. I swear, this is about the 15th 16th edit. I’m done now.

And that’s your crazy cool peek into my spreadsheet drawers. I can only hope it makes you as hot as it does me .