Archive for December, 2008

Tomorrow’s 5K is gonna be a cold one: wind chill of 20 degrees.   That’ll be only the third time I’ve run in that cold a temp so racing in it should be interesting.  All I want is to have a fun morning (a PR can wait) so it’s a no-pressure race and this, my friends, is huge.  I’m finally beginning to mellow out on that score.  ‘Bout time.

In other streams of thought, the weight loss thread on the Marathon Race Training Forum is becoming huge and inspiring with Before-After photos from fellow bloggers/commenters Kazz, Progman and EatDrinkRunWoman, among others.  What transformations!

Since adding my name to the list, I’ve made better food choices the last few days.  More shocking, it’s now Day 9 without candy and this is a real milestone.  Honest Injun, about every night for the last 10 years I’ve had candy after dinner.  Now, my new dessert is granola cereal with some light yogurt, how’s that for a sensible trade-off?

A shoe moment:  I’ve never really known when to switch shoes, they say when you start getting aches or pains.  Most people get new ones at 300-350 miles, so I was getting rid of my shoes at 350 miles without an actual need to, just because I thought I should.

Nowadays, I don’t feel like throwing away perfectly usable shoes, so I currently have three pairs of Inspires in rotation with mileages of 405, 366 and 257.   I have to laugh at how hard it was, psychologically, to continue using that first pair after they got to 350.  I kept wondering if I was putting myself in danger for injury and would I be able to tell the shoes were fucking me up before they fucked me up?  So far, so good…the old ones don’t feel perceptibly different from my newer ones, so I’ll keep wearing them until I have a reason not to.  Here’s hoping they’re good for 500, if not more.

And that’s it for today, check back here tomorrow for a race report – which better be full of fun, goddamn it!

Yesterday’s light interval session was  6 x .25 mi @ 5k race pace with 1:00 recoveries.   Went a bit faster than race pace, averaging 6:55s, but close enough.

And that workout marked my 7th and final week of shorter fast stuff in prep for the last 5K of 2008.  It was a satisfying period, for sure;  definite progress without a single injury or sore thing.   Knock on wood, as I’m waiting to run in some snow showers that are supposed to come this afternoon while at the same time imagining a slip and fall (count on that fatalistic imagination).

Speaking of speedwork, I found a great piece of writing on intervals the other day and thought I’d share it with you -  first post on this page. It’s one of the best, concise explanations I’ve read on the subject.  Hope you find it useful.

There’s a new weightloss thread in the RW Marathon Training Forum (my favorite forum even though I’m not marathon training now) that, after eyeing all morning, I decided to enter.  Five lbs should do me well.  That’ll put me at 119-120, still  more than “optimal racing weight” for my height (which Glover says is 114) but enough to make a substantial racing difference while keeping some semblance of boobs.  My first contribution to the cause began a few days ago when I ran out of candy (I always eat candy after dinner) and didn’t buy more.  Good habit to break, weightloss or not.

And for my non-running section today…next week is Xmas and  Nick and I will be going to the Grand Canyon for a couple days to hide out.  Lol, not the Grand Canyon, that was last summer’s adventure.  This time it’s the Grand Canyon of PA, bascially a long gorge about 4 hours away from Philly.  We’ve got a B&B lined up so it promises to be a fun, romantic way to get through the holiday.  With our mutual love for all things holiday (cough, strangled cough) any diversion helps.

Aha!  Just looked out the window and saw…snow!  Flurries just starting, yay!  Gonna have me a sweet little 8-miler.  Adios for now.

Before I begin today’s festivities, I have a little tech rave for the Garmin folks, so skip this paragraph if you don’t use one.  SportTracks users: check out this incredible weather plugin, found thanks to a RW poster in the Gear forum.  It gives the weather at the start and end of your run as well as an average.  Ditto with wind (even calculates headwind/tailwind), wind chill and a few other great tidbits to help log your run.

So I took Friday off, did a short 6 with 8 strides Saturday, and then yesterday had a fantastic 9-miler. The weather was gorgeous – 45 degrees, and I guess the day off with the previous day’s strides energized me, because my usual training pace (about 8:50/mi) went on holiday.  I was moving along comfortably at  8:23s, 8:20s, feeling as if it was a normal everyday run.

What makes it even more gratifying is to look back one year ago, to November 18th when I ran the Philly Half Marathon.  My race pace that day was 8:28 and I was sucking air bigtime.   That’s progress.

Backtracking to my last entry,  I have an interesting addition regarding my mention of the supposed “10 days for speedwork to create its adaptions”.  Jim posted a comment questioning it so I started looking for evidence and, save for a passing mention in Glover’s book, couldn’t find anything, just memories of times I’d read it.  So I posed the question in the RW Training forum.

Thanks to one member, whose opinion I respect on all things physiological, I think it just may be an old wives tale, as he said there’s no way to test such a single session and he’s asked numerous sources about the subject.  Well good!  I like doing a light speed session on race week, so now I won’t have to feel guilty about it or think I’m just appeasing my brain…it probably does help!

So today’s the day for said speed session.  I’ll be getting to it in about an hour because it’s going to be stupidly warm today, low 60s, so no time to waste.  I’ll probably be doing 6 x 1/4 mile at 5K pace.  It was between that or Daniels’ race week 4×1200 at threshold pace but in the end, race pace sounds more enticing.

Lastly, on the subject of speed workouts, I wonder if my regularity on doing intervals and tempos weekly for the last few weeks is the reason my thighs are getting bigger.  I haven’t gained any weight, but damn, my jeans are getting pretty tight around that area.  I don’t even mind it really, they look good (and Nick keeps telling me so) but it is interesting that the body keeps changing.  Maybe now I can use them as a weapon, ala Bladerunner.

I’ll close here with a couple songs that contributed to my wonderful run yesterday, one of which is a free download for December.   Keane’s The Lovers Are Losing is gorgeous (as usual, disregard plotless video, enjoy beautiful song) and the freebie is Let It Rain by Living Things – great chorus.  Just right-click the download link to “save as” then go buy a gel with the money you saved.

Yesterday was weird, it was 60 degrees and on the verge of rain, so mucho humid.  I was suddenly transported back to summer and how much harder it is to run when it’s warm…and it was only 60!  You’re not supposed to feel a performance hit till temps go over 60, but I definitely lacked the pep I’ve been feeling these past few weeks.  I guess I”m officially a cold-weather runner.

Too bad I’m not a wet weather runner.  Challenging speed workout today, not only because it was long intervals but because it poured rain the entire time.  I didn’t reschedule because of the oft-quoted wisdom that says it takes 10 days for a speed session to “show” and my race is nine days away.  Plus it’ll be windier tomorrow and between water or wind, gimme water.

Continuing with my ritual that speedwork a week before a race must be something I dislike (read: long intervals…because extra masochism has to give me an edge come race day   )  today’s fun was 3 x mile w/4:00 rests.

It wasn’t a great session – I was suffering and my splits had a big fizzle at the end: 7:16, 7:19 and 7:26 for a 7:20 average.  Probably didn’t help that this is my 8th day running, either.  Regardless, I still feel a big dollop of satisfaction at dropping another coin in the speedbank, so all is good.

And that’s about it.  Sorry I’m so boring lately, hopefully I’ll have an adventure or two to relate soon, but for now…zzzzzz.

I wasn’t feeling like doing anything strenuous today, the windchill was lower 20s and I was cold inside the house, which makes it even harder to get your ass outside.  I thought about doing it tomorrow – it’ll be 10 degrees warmer, but there’s some wind with that, so between the two, the cold day won.  I ended up sticking my running clothes in the dryer for a couple minutes to warm them up.

I was all excited to use my HR strap because I wanted to make sure I was in the right zone with these new faster paces.  Much to my chagrin, as soon as I started the tempo, the HR got wonky, so I spent the first half mile fussing with my jacket, the strap and my MP3 player that unclipped itself while I was busy rearranging.  Finally I gave up.  It did seem to get better after I finished the tempo portion and messed around with it some more.  Might have been too loose.

Anyway, ’twas a good 7 w/3-mile tempo, avg. tempo pace 7:30.  Splits were 7:35 (thanks to HR fussing), 7:29 & 7:26.  No complaints.

Sending super speedy lovin’ vibes today to Jim, Jackie, Barb, Joe, Ilona and Ron.   Between CIM, Tucson and Ron’s charity 40miler to honor his cousin, I want you folks to know I’m super proud of all of you.  Jim, you better be remembering every little thing because I’m going to want full details.  I know I’ll get everybody else’s dirt on the forums.

As for me, I just completed a super windy 6, which brings me to 50 miles for the week.  It’s a good level for me, so here’s hoping 2009 lets it continue, uninterrupted.

Guess it’s time to do something productive because neither Tucson or CIM have tracking.  How’s a girl supposed to concentrate with all this marathon madness going on?  The injustice of it all.

I’ll leave you with my latest fave running song, Sex Is On Fire by Kings of Leon.