Archive for January, 2008

I’m getting excited. Maybe it was the blissful weather change (shorts and tanktops in January??) or the calendar moving along, but after 8 weeks of “freeform” running, I’m beginning to get the training plan thrill again.

My very first training plan was a 16-weeker started in May for the Philadelphia Distance Run in September. I loved having a schedule to follow so when the race was over, I was quite blue afterwards with nothing to work towards. A couple days later I signed up for another Half and suddenly I was a happy gal with a plan again.

With only 8 weeks before the second Half, I knew my improvement would be less dramatic, so I signed up for a handful of smaller races in the interim to keep my excitement level high. That turned out to be a smart idea, as it improved my racing chops and confidence, as well as showing me what the local talent had to offer (again with those carrots!).

So my race calendar this Spring has two “goal” races: First is the one-year anniversary of my first race, the Clean Air 5K in April. I can’t wait to revisit the origination of my racing mania and measure the improvement. Incidentally, I have many embarrassing hunched-over pictures from that 5K, it being my first race, my running form sucked big ones. I’ve sequestered them on my computer as great “Before” pictures because they’re too ugly to share, so hopefully if Nick’s there again with camera in hand, I’ll have a great one-year “After” photo that doesn’t resemble Darwin’s Evolution.

My second goal race will be the Broad Street 10-miler in May. This will be my first year doing it and is the focus of my training plan (which I just realized starts next Monday…that’s 16 weeks out, yay!!). I’ll be doing more than these two races this Spring, but I like having my schedule build out from the goal races, the better to fill in the periphery.

As far as the training plans I’ve used and will use this time too, they’re all bastardizations of Runners’ World SmartCoach, in which I add both tempos and speed weekly (instead of alternating) and make a few other small changes. I also use it in conjunction with McMillan’s calculator to get a variety of paces instead of the single paces offered by SmartCoach.

A major substitution I’ll be adding this time will be to alternate hill work for some of the intervals. Turns out I have a phenomenal .9 mile hill loop that is absolutely perfect for improving my shoddy hill performances in 2007. I just have to ignore the occasional strewn condom wrapper on the ground. And speaking of speed work, it’ll also be nice to include some shorter intervals instead of the mile repeats I insisted on doing for the Halfs. I’m thinking I might not hate interval work so much if the intervals aren’t so dang long.

And now, I’m off to begin tweaking my new plan. Maybe next post I’ll upload some pics of the spreadsheet/planning calendar I made in Excel, along with the cool McMillan compilation sheets I fashioned together that, when in training mode, give me hours of time-wasting enjoyment before bedtime. Seriously, I can stare at them for a good hour before going to sleep. What a freak, huh?

Wowie Zowie, I took 4 consecutive days off this week, the most I’ve taken off in the last 8 months and, as it happens, it wasn’t any big deal and I did not automatically quit running forever because of it. Additionally, my idiotic fear that a month full of easy runs might eventually slow me down to a paralytic crawl was also happily off base.

Today I enjoyed a most fabulous 10-miler at HM pace, with an additional treat at mile 7. That’s where I first passed a 20-something chick in a maroon shirt, going the other way. After I made the turnaround at my halfway point, the chick became more than an annoyingly cute girl – she was my prey. When I finally caught up and passed her (making sure to breathe real quiet so she wouldn’t hear me gasping for air) it made me feel so mean and happy at the same time, I loved it.

Which reminds me of my very first tempo run back in May. I was scared to ramp it up for the first time, to see what “comfortably hard” meant. I had a pervading worry that if I went too fast, I’d have to cut the entire run short (fate worse than death), so it was with trepidation I got myself up to a rocking (for me at that time) 9:07 for 3 miles. Twas a huge thrill when it was over and I wasn’t dead.

But a mere one week later, I was attempting my second tempo run, hoping for a few seconds faster at the most, when something amazing happened. Appearing in my view like an apple for picking, or rather, a carrot dangling in front of my face – was a guy in an orange shirt. This was to be my first brush with the human carrot phenomenon.

I didn’t know until that day, that when a lone runner is in front of you, innocently doing his thing, it is possible to catch and pass this unsuspecting creature, rendering him helpless to your omnipotent gargantuan speediness, at least until he gives a shit and passes you back. So I chased the guy and ended up with an 8:49 tempo pace, making the previous week’s perception of “comfortably hard”, more like “uncomfortably comfortable”.

And that, my friends, was a massively important discovery for me. To think, that if I hadn’t been chasing someone, I never would have known I had a whole other set of gears available to me. It was like receiving a gift of a sizable chunk of seconds, all because I was shown it was possible.

It’s such an overused aphorism, but Henry Ford said it perfectly; “whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right”. Once you exceed your expectations, you realize that nothing is as cut and dried as it seems, that there’s always the possibility of more. Thrilling stuff.

So eat your carrots, pounce on them, gnaw, chew, swallow and spit them out till they don’t know what hit them. It’s ok – after all, you’re someone’s carrot, too.

It’s New Years day and I should have made some big symbolic run to mark 2008, but I didn’t. Not because I got drunk out of my gourd last night and have a whopping hangover (I did have fun and get drunk, just no gourd or hangover). I skipped the run because I’ve got a couple grueling voiceover sessions this week and the threat of a head-cold is lurking. Snot is not our friend in the recording studio, so I babied myself indoors today. Annoying though, how I feel guilty for missing the run.

I must say, it’s been a mind-twisting December. Lowell (the coach) said I didn’t need to do any tempo or speedwork before Spring Training, so I’ve been doing mostly easy miles this month. Meanwhile, my psyche’s been a real pain in the ass, teasing me with “go slower still, work on base and don’t sweat it” mixed with “No tempos or speed? You’re doomed!”

Now, I’m not exactly slacking…been keeping a mid-40s base, including strides, fartleks, and even did my first hill repeats the other day, so you’d think I’d be satisfied with myself. But no. I am actually ruining the fact that I don’t have to do tempos or speed right now, by thinking I should be doing them, anyway! So I can’t catch a break, even though I’m the one doling them out. It’s STUPID!

Lol, running is tailor-made for an angst-ridden freak like me. It presents such wild, unchartered avenues in which to nag and worry. From “I’m not doing enough, but will I be able to keep up what I’m doing?” to “when will it stop being fun?” or “how will I deal if I don’t make my goals?” These are some of my time-wasters, anyway. :?

Eh, maybe it’s just too many grey winter days (I miss the sun) or most probably these are the growing pains for my first year of running while I learn how it all works. Either way, I probably won’t relax till I add the hard workouts again and then I’ll be wishing I had it easier. Yes, I’m rambling but it’s my party, so I can.

And now let’s segue from running to my voiceover job from hell. Check out the type of shit I had to read yesterday:

… caused by Staphyloccoccus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes, Escherichia coli, Enterobacter cloacae, Klebsiella oxytoca, Serratia mercescens, Acinetobacter calcoaceticus, Bacteroides fragilis…

120 pages of that crap. I didn’t get to look at the script until I arrived at the session. I get to do it again tomorrow and the next day. Hmmm…by Thursday I’ll be ready to run a hard tempo to Texas.