Archive for December, 2008

Just got back from my 9-mile unintentional (wind-assisted) progression run (9:13 to 8:15, avg. 8:46/mi) and my legs are pooped, so I’m hereby correcting the post below to say that tomorrow is a day off, I’m done for the year with 2036 miles.  I was going to run tomorrow solely to get a few more miles in but that’s just dumb.

Also, I wanted to give a shout-out to whoever high-fived me on Sunday’s run.  I didn’t recognize you and then after you passed, I shouted back “who are you?” but you didn’t hear.  Then I got really embarrassed thinking it was Todd (a fabu reader of this blog who has high-fived me before) and that I didn’t recognize him.  So I emailed Todd telling him I’m sorry I didn’t realize it was him and it was great to see him out there and he tells me he was in Canada so it wasn’t him after all.

So anyway…hey.

My new-found zoominess was back on the shelf yesterday for a slowish 8-miler.  I could feel my legs were kinda tired so I kept to a normal (9:03) easy pace.  Funny how our bodies know exactly when to wrangle in our wild ways.

Even though I’m not involved in any Mileage Challenge going on at the forums, I’m still aware that I have a few days to get those last yearly miles in, so after I write this, I’m out into the world for a 9-miler, then tomorrow probably 8.  I’m already at 2027 miles for the year and that’s with getting sick for a couple weeks and taking off for my ankle after Broad St.

Nevertheless, I’ll still refrain from making a total mileage goal for 2009 and just stick to my weekly goal of high 40s-50s/week.  Whatever it adds up to in the end is whatever it is -  after all, it’s the journey, not the destination.

Meanwhile, I’m getting more serious about losing those few pounds, so four days ago I finally signed up at The Daily Plate to track my food intake.  I really like it, it’s much better than Fitday, which I used a few years ago.  The database is much larger so it’s easier to find food items.  I even made a meatloaf the other day from Allrecipes.com and the exact recipe was in there.

The whole weight issue is very low-pressure though, since there’s no time-frame involved.  Like last night we went to a friend’s for dinner and I had no problem scarfing down 4 shots of sambuca during some card-playing, along with a couple cookies (and wine with dinner).  I would have done it anyway, now I’m just more cognizant of it.  Today’s back to being good, of course.

And this ends my Looking For Something To Write About post.  Have a good day friends, and a fine run if you haven’t been out already.

I hope you all had a great holiday week with as little family irritation as possible.

We escaped from the world for a few days with the most romantic, non-angst-ridden holiday I can remember.  The B&B we stayed at was empty, even the owners were gone, so we had the place completely to ourselves. Christmas day we went to the “Grand Canyon of PA”  (that cracks me up every time I type it), hiked in the snow a little and happily froze our asses off because it was so beautiful and serene.   I was this close to having a 3-day non-running vacation, but ended up doing a 4-miler yesterday morning before we left, just to add Wellsboro, PA to my list of places I’ve run.

Back to Philly and running life, something strange has been going on with my running this last week.  I suppose it’s the culmination of those weeks of speedwork and tempos in conjunction with races (can’t beat 5Ks for speedwork) because all of a sudden, my “normal” easy pace has taken a dive.

I did that 5K last Saturday, then the next day I ran 9 miles, avg pace 8:29.  Tuesday I ran 12, avg pace 8:31.  Today I ran 13, avg pace 8:29.  And each of these runs started the first couple miles with 8:40s, the bulk of the runs averaged around 8:15/mi.  They felt comfortable, not strenuous at all, so I’ve been doing quite a few double-takes looking at my wrist.  If I hadn’t been running  my usual measured route, I’d think my Garmin had gone batty.

But there’s more to these runs than a new pacing, I had actual bouts of Runner’s High on Tuesday and today.  It occurred to me that maybe the high is due to getting faster (big wad of happiness right there) but it’s more than that, it’s an amazing feeling, like dancing all out or fucking, for that matter.

It’d probably be a good idea to wear the HR monitor on tomorrow’s 9-miler, but on the other hand, what makes it special is how it feels and monitoring my HR will surely put a damper on it (because of course, it must be too fast…McMillan’s finger is probably cramped from wagging it at me).  Then again, the monitor and McMillan are all about “proper aerobic conditioning”.  Must every second of running be the best possible science?

OK, so I hereby declare that my Christmas present to myself is to leave the rulebook at home until mid-January when the new training cycle begins.  Just run because it feels good, whatever that may be.  Belated, as far as gifts go, but perfect for someone who likes to get high.

I was bored last night, so I stuck my Spring goal race into this little date calculator to see when I need to start training  and wowza!  January 11 will be 16 weeks from the Lehigh Valley Half.   Time to start thinking about it.

So then I’m looking at all my books, wondering what training plan I want to follow and not getting excited by any.  Most of them are shy on the quality work, when I know I can handle two a week and Daniels doesn’t even have a dedicated Half schedule, he says you can use the Marathon one, but I wasn’t thrilled with the idea.

Just as I was making the decision to roll my own, swiping a few workouts from this plan and that, I took a second look at my new book, Brad Hudson’s Run Faster from the 5K to the Marathon, recommended by a few people I respect on the Marathon Training forum.

I had only glanced at the plans, but now that I was giving it my full attention, the more I liked what I saw.  Hudson’s plans have quite a bit more work in them than Pfitzinger, Glover and the rest.  All the long runs are progression runs, he’s big on hill reps as a strengthener and injury prevention, there’s fartlek sprinkled throughout (which I thought was lame when I first looked at it, but now looks appetizing enough)…

In a nutshell, it has lots of variety, looks like it would bring some substantial rewards speed-wise and most importantly, looks fun!

It’s a cool book in general, he espouses adaptive training;  instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, you use what works for you and drop what doesn’t.  He also recommends changing your training from season to season to keep the training effect fresh.  The focus is in making you an effective, intuitive self-coach.

What I find super attractive in the plan are those progression Long Runs.  You know I loved Pfitzinger and appreciated that he got me safely to the start line in October, but it wasn’t much a of a push for me, I became used to putting the brakes on for LRs, avoiding a great opportunity for extra improvement.  The way Brad Hudson says “if you can add some quality into your easy runs, why not do it?” makes a lot of sense to me.  I’d been under the assumption that easy must be easy, hard must be hard, but Hudson gives you a middle layer, too.

So I’m in!  Two and a half weeks of freeform ahead and then the new plan begins.

As for the present, the holidays are about to finally do their thing and tomorrow morning, we’ll be leaving for a couple days.  While I’m gone, I may pretend to not have internet access in an attempt to act mentally healthy and be all woodsy-natural, but that’s like trying to keep Amy Winehouse away from the crack pipe, so I’m not confident about it.  Especially since we’re bringing a pipe (laptop) with us.

I leave you with a twisted holiday medley from Straight No Chaser.  I read about them yesterday on CNN.  They formed at Indiana University, disbanded after school, then last year one of them put a 1998 video of themselves on YouTube, that instantly went viral.  Now they’ve got a record deal.  I love stories like that.  Enjoy!

Merry Xmas, Chappy Chanukah and Krazy Kool Kwanzaa to you all!

Funny thing happened on the way to Saturday’s race that I neglected to mention:  While we were driving there, still in Philly, we passed an older Asian couple on the sidewalk chasing a duck.  The poor duck looked totally confused -  the man and woman were making menacing noises and threatening to throw a blanket over it until it wandered back inside their place of business.  Hilarious – until I read the sign over the door: Poultry Supplier.

On a less morbid food note, I’ve mentioned my latest evening snack is cereal, dry or with a little yogurt.  A few days ago I bought a box of Kashi Go Lean Crunch – great stuff, like grown-up people’s Sugar Smacks.  That evening, however…I started farting.  And farting.  And farting.  And not just any fart, the stinkiest most noxious farts you’ve ever smelled.  It wouldn’t end.  Nick told me I farted in my sleep for hours that night, leaving a cloud in the bedroom.

The next night, not yet connecting the farts to the cereal, I once again enjoyed the crunchy goodness of Kashi Go Lean.  Yum.  Two hours later, farts, farts and more farts.

I began to suspect it was indeed the Kashi, so I did a search on Google for kashi go lean farts and sure enough, pages of fart-infested stories about Kashi turned up.  For the next hour or so, Nick and I laughed hysterically reading some of these websites.  Our favorite is this one. Not only is the initial post entertaining, but the comments are hilarious.  Everyone’s so relieved it’s not just them spewing poison outta their asses.

On another website I found the perfect description of  the Kashi fart scent: “Smells like a mixture of raw sewage, rotting corpse, and lacquer thinner.”   Until reading that, I hadn’t been able to put my finger on it, but yes, that’s exactly what it smells like.  Too bad it’s so damn tasty.

So I won’t be eating it any more.  However, I am saving the rest of the box for whenever Nick pisses me off.  Now that we’ve established I can sleep through my farts.

Alas, no PR today (22:31), but it was a good race and my hopes of having fun were fulfilled.  Nick was such a huge sweetie/supporter, insisting on driving me there, then happily sitting in the car and reading Rolling Stone for most of it, until the end when he got some finishing shots.

All last night and this morning, I kept going back and forth over what to wear because it was going to be cold (final temp: 29, wind chill 22), so I wore two jackets in the car and even brought a third (indecisive much?) leaving a myriad of outerwear options at my disposal.

Despite carrying this closet with me, I decided after my warmup to wear no jacket at all, just my half-zip top, tights, gloves and a hat.  I was strangely warm at the start while all around me people were bouncing for heat and aside from one big wind gust mid-race, I was comfy throughout.

This race was in the same town as the Turkey Trot and as soon as we parked, I saw my nemesis from that race (and several local races) doing her warmup.  After the gun went off, I kept my eye on her jacket for as long as I could, and though I lost her eventually, the fact that I had her in sight as long as I did told me I was doing ok.

I had my Garmin auto-lap on because when I emailed to ask if there were any clocks on the course, the person who replied told me no, just start and finish.  Turns out there were clocks at miles 1 and 2, as well.  The weird thing about that area of Jersey, though, is that my Garmin consistently measures shorter there, rather than longer, as in Philly.  But this was a certified course, so I had no problem ignoring Garmin and relying on the clocks for pacing info instead.

The course was not as flat as the Trot, but not hugely hilly either, just rolling.  While in the midst of it, there was a funny guy who tried to chat some, but in a 5K all I can get out is “I. can’t. talk”, so that’s all he got from me until afterwards when we exchanged a few words.  Also, in the last mile, a woman in a white jacket (tiny thing) slips past me, zooming ahead and I had a feeling she was in my age-group, so that wasn’t very happy-making.

The course ends after an uphill, yet I managed a strong kick, passed a couple people before the finish and arrived just 1 second behind white jacket woman.  She ended up winning third, so no AG award for me.

But the high point of the race was meeting the Turkey Trot nemesis.  I should mention that she is actually not my nemesis and won’t be for a while because she’s a 20:xx runner, but I like calling her my nemesis, anyway.

She has a couple girls that usually race with her (and place all the time, too) but today she was alone, so while we were waiting around I introduced myself and told her she’s my nemesis.  She couldn’t have been cooler.  We ended up chatting for about 40 minutes and when she got her first place award, I was really happy for her and not wanting to trip her, unlike that sneaky white jacket woman (I keed, I keed).

So, I left with a solid race behind me and a new friend.  Also, I have concluded that losing a little weight is definitely in order.  The one thing all the faster women have in common (besides being faster than me) is they are thinner than I am, and I can afford to lose a few pounds.  To emphasize my point, I leave you with a parting shot to compare white-jacket’s chicken thigh with my own, far meatier sample.  Don’t worry, no aspirations to be as tiny as her, but it is interesting to note that two of her legs equal one of mine.