Archive for February, 2009

I’m in.  http://hundredpushups.com

A few folks on the RW forums are doing this and it sounds like the perfect excuse to finally do some upper body work.  I hate my flabby upperarms, don’t care for dumbbell workouts (or any non-running workout for that matter), my posture is still in need of a major fix, and at my age especially, I need to do something to increase muscle mass, so this challenge suits me to a T.

One thing I love about it is it’s basically a C25K-type program for your upper body.   I don’t even give a crap how many pushups I’ll be able to do at the end, just the fact that I have a schedule to follow is major motivation.   And it only takes 10 minutes 3 days a week  on a little piece of floor! I’ve no excuse not to do it.

On other news, I’ve been researching headband-wearing tips because they’re such a great way to keep your hair back when running, but they always slide right off my head.  Even those Stay-Put bands by Goody with the little gripper things are useless to me.  So when I read a tip to put hairspray on your hair where the band goes, then spray the inside of the band to give it some sticking power, I was on that advice like white on rice. I tried it today for my run and it worked! I couldn’t believe it.  Didn’t budge one millimeter till I took it off.  No more crazy Einstein hair for me, headbands rule!

In actual running news…it’s official, I’ve thrown my hat into the sub 1:40 ring for my Half in May.  There’s a great little ongoing thread in the RW forums for just this thing, so I made my introductions and now plan on soaking up whatever knowledge and camaraderie I can get from it. I’m pretty excited at the idea, now to make it a reality.

Towards that end, I have an interval session tomorrow, 5 x 1000 w/2 min. recoveries.  As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t trust my Garmin for interval work, it’s almost always off by differing amounts, thus my love of the markers in my park.  However, they’re at every 1/4 mile, so for the last few months, my intervals have been comprised of multiples of .25 miles.    That works up to a point, but in reality, I miss 600s and 1000s, so today I tried to find a landmark that matches up with last night’s Google Earth investigation of that extra 200m, so I’d know where exactly to stop the dang interval.  Of course, it’s somewhere between two trees, so no fabulously glaring landmark, but still I suppose it’s better than trusting the Garmin.  Yeah, I know…anal.  But it’s entertainment.

Just got back from 14 on a gloriously beautiful day, 60 degrees!!  It’s been months since we had that.  After yesterday’s tempo, my legs were a little pooped, so I tried to keep it slow.  Semi-successful at 8:51 avg.  It was my longest run since the marathon in Oct. (been consistently doing 12s and 13s for my LR ) so that was cool.

People were out in droves today, even the trail was busy, which was fun since I enjoy people-watching so much.  I did notice a lot of smiling on my way back and I was sure that they were admiring my uncomparable runnerly body silently slicing through the sunny Sunday air.

Until I got home, passed a mirror in the hallway and realized I was sporting two perfectly circular dark sweat spots, each centered squarely over a boob.  Look at me!  Look at me! How mortifying.  Stupid UA faux cotton shirts.

Aliens have officially taken over my body.  I just had the fastest tempo run ever.

1.5 miles warmup, then 7:25,7:17,7:20,7:16 for an avg. of 7:19.  Then on the final 2.5 mile cooldown, I look at my watch in the midst of it to find I’m running 8:05s!  Huh?  At that point, I realize I’ve been passing all these young guys and gals on their Saturday run and I’m just doing my cooldown. Average for the whole 8 miles, 7:54.

I could get used to this.

For 3 runs this week, I had some quad pain in my right leg so I’ve been taking it easy, pacewise.  The weather helped with that, a big mush of snow came down one day and then it was just plain friggin’ cold for the others, so I’ve had no problem keeping it calm.   I also foam rollered the crap out of it which worked wonderfully, drawing out that exquisite pain that no amount of Stick or hand manipulation can replicate.

Yesterday I was back to my resilient self, not a twinge to be had, so today I’ve got 9 with some strides on tap, then tomorrow, along with a blessedly warmer day they’re promising,  I’ll do a tempo run, which I haven’t done since December!

I’d been so good doing both a tempo and interval session weekly during my 5K cycle but in this “between” period it morphed into one interval/fartlek/steady state or progression a week.  I have no regrets about this, I firmly believe that there is a time and place to put the pedal to the metal and between cycles isn’t it.  In fact, considering I started on this 7-day/week running at the top of January, I guess we can officially call this period basebuilding.

Funny to think that back in November, I declared I’d be aiming for 45-50 mi/week, though in my heart of hearts, I figured I’d be closer to 45 than 50.  Now I’m looking at 60 for my average and it doesn’t feel like I’ve even increased the load.

I’m embracing the idea of keeping mileage at a level where, when I go into marathon training again, there’s nothing to have to build beforehand, just make the long runs longer and add specificity to the quality work.  I suppose it does take out one of the potential growth elements, but at the same token, removes one of the potential injury elements, so I think it’s a valid plan.

Quasi-basebuilding aside, next week marks 12 weeks to my goal Half, so it’s time to get back into serious work mode.   I still have no idea what pace I’ll be shooting for, so it’s all a big fat question mark.

Speaking of fat, my weightloss slowed down for a while there, which I believe was a result of not eating enough.  I’m now targeting 2000 calories/day which seems to have kicked the weight-loss back into gear.   I’m loving the results so far, I’ve lost 7.5 pounds so far and my body looks better than it ever has.  No lie.

I’ve settled on 114 lbs. as my final goal – Glover’s magic number for my height and one I think will suit my small frame quite well.   That means I’ve got 5 lbs. left to go, which seems like no biggie but it’s weird, because I never planned on losing 12.5 lbs. and if I thought of it that way, would have been freaked out at the prospect. Now, it’s like having a huge unopened Xmas present waiting for my hot little hands to unwrap.  What will the final speed gains be?

The anticipation is heavenly.

Had a crappy weekend.  Nick and I were battling each other (now back to peaceful smoochiness) which ultimately resulted in a hazelnut coffee covered iBook keyboard (Nick’s).  Alas, there was no repairing the drowned bugger, so this morning I ordered a replacement.

Runs since my last post were Thurs: 9, Fri: 9 progression, Sat: 8, Sun: 12 and today another 9.   Saturday’s 8 was happily punctuated by running into my speedy friend Joe, so we ran a little ways together while catching up on life.

Yesterday’s run sucked big ones.  I was in a sour mood which totally defied the beautiful weather gracing Philly.  I had my new little water bottle (juuuuust right) and even took a gel which I’ve not bothered to bring on a run in months.

I left quite late and the sun was already going down by the time I got to mile 6.  That, coupled with my bad attitude made whittling the 13 to 12 an easy decision.  Despite my stellar hydration and nutrition, about 3 miles from home, I ran out of steam, eventually stopping cold for a couple minutes for no real reason except to embrace feeling like shit, until I regrouped and restarted.

I’ve had so few crappy runs in all this time, that I was ok with the idea of this one sucking.  And even with the pause, I was able to pick it back up as I neared home, so it sucked but not hugely (8:42 avg).

Today is another day, Nick and I are back to lovey dovey “I’ll buy the keyboard” “No, I’ll buy the keyboard” with mucho kisses and apologies to spare.   The weather is amazing, 53 beautiful degrees, so I pulled out shorts and shortsleeves for the first time in forever and motored down the road.

Earlier this morning, Nick went on a bike ride.  He hasn’t been riding steadily thanks to the bad weather, so he called me mid-ride to say hi and that he was feeling out of shape.  I told him it was understandable he felt beat and that he shouldn’t feel the need to race himself (which he always likes to do)…advice I used a few hours later on my own outing.

Since I’ve been running faster across the board lately, I think I’ve become too pace-aware, loving those faster numbers I see.  Recovery runs are a rarity and even they aren’t that slow.  Yesterday’s draggy run told me I should back off today.

So I purposely didn’t look at my watch once, went by effort only.  It was healthy as can be.  I told myself if I end up in the 9:30s, that’s cool, it’s what my body wants, use your limbs and lungs to dictate the pace.

Irony of ironies, it turns out I ran my usual new easy pace anyway, avg. 8:33 with a couple 8:16s in there.  So much for good intentions, but it felt great and that’s what I was aiming for.  I’m going to do a few more watch ignoring runs this week to see how (if) they vary.

The rest of the week is up in the air as far as workouts.  I’m still pre-Half plan, but I need to do something fast this week, tempo or intervals, we’ll see as the days progress.  Snow is expected tonight and tomorrow so I might not get to it till the end of the week.  As always, count on me to keep you posted with the outcome. Later, my dears.