Archive for April, 2009

I have been so nervous about this race all week because it’s my big tune-up for Lehigh Valley.  With all my improvements over the last 4 months, I was starting to get scared about where I was really at, thinking I was getting greedy now and overreaching.  So between yesterday and this morning, I gave myself a pass.   I decided that if this race showed I was capable of 1:37 for the Half (as opposed to the, gulp, 1:35:30 I’m currently targeting), then so be it, it’d still be eons better than the 1:43 I wrote on the Half application when I signed up last Fall.

I get to the race, which starts, as most do around here, at the Museum.  It was a huge affair with a 5K, a 10K and a walk, so there was a band and tents all over the place.   The 10k started at 10:20.

The one great thing about this race is that it was chip-timed, which I haven’t had since November at the Bridge race, so I was feeling good about that.  Also, all my races in March were between 25 and 39 degrees, so to wear shorts and a tank was fabu.  Weather was 61 degrees, wind 8mpw, gusts to 13.

So we line up and some idiot kids from some school team line up at the very front, and of course, within a couple minutes out, all of them would end up dying and dropping off.  Also, as we’re lining up, I see one woman who looks extremely fit and my age (damn!), she lines up right behind the kids, I’m a few rows back but I’m already “eh, she’ll beat me.”  And when the gun went off, she took such a lead, I was hoping she’d fade eventually but was happy to stick with my game plan (even splits, 6:56s if I could swing it) and let her go.

The first couple miles were so much better than my 10k on March 1.  That day, my legs got tired early on and it was a struggle to keep on pace.  Today, I was feeling pretty steady, not too much hurtin’ at this point, which I was so happy about, though not taking anything for granted.

I was surprised how few people were in front of me and two girls ahead of me who looked strong fell back before mile 3.  Once I hit the turnaround, I realized I was closing the gap between the fit woman.  It was at this point someone passed me going the other way and yelled out “You’re third woman, woohoo!”  which I thought was just so cool.

The next section was me on the tail of Fit Woman, closing the gap.  I was feeling the race at this point so I knew I couldn’t start trying to overtake her till the end or I’d be screwed, though with 1 mile to go, I did get next to her but she wasn’t having any of it.  At the end, I tried to outkick her but ended up right behind till the bitter end.  My time?  42:40.   Couldn’t believe it.

We hugged each other and thanked one another for a great race.  Afterwards, the other two girls who had dropped off earlier chatted with me for a while, as did a guy I’ve seen at a lot at races around here.   Then I finally met this cool female runner I always see in the park; 68 years old and 8 months out of open heart surgery, so we sat on the museum steps talking until the awards were called.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  I forgot about the whole chip-timing thing, so when the award ceremony finally happened, I was shocked to find out I was actually 2nd Female OA, not third!  (16th finisher out of 406)  Turns out I beat Fit Woman by 1 second!  I just looked her up on Athlinks and she’s someone I never would have thought I’d be able to beat, so this is me all flabbergasted.

Back to the ceremony, I got my 1st in AG medal (alas, no OA awards other than first man/woman) and was told to pose with Heart Man (a person in a Heart suit who was actually a woman), so hopefully I’ll have a goofy picture to post later.  Other than that, I got more than my allotment of no-name granola bars and a free chapstick.   A bountiful day and then some.

So Wednesday was hilarious in a very stressful, painful way.  It seems that even though I have a calendar on my computer desktop and am very aware of race dates coming up, I somehow managed to miss the fact that it was April 15th, Tax Day.

I’ve no idea how this happened considering Nick had his taxes done a couple weeks earlier and we’ve been laughing over the ‘Tea-bagging” parties.  Anyway, I got really mad at myself, because it was more unneeded proof of how running has taken over my life to where day-to-day things hold little interest.  Thank god I don’t have dependents, they’d be starved on the side of the road.

In my favor, I’ve been doing taxes with Taxcut for so long now, I managed to download the program and get them done before the day was out, though not without some major stress and brow wiping.  I finally got out to run at 5:30.

Meanwhile, I’m a little freaked at how I’ve let some things lag to the side this past year, thanks to my running obsession.   My t-shirt shops (one of which, Fish Pie, I’ve had since 1998) I’ve let wither and live on their existing designs for way too many months so that’s been weighing heavily on my mind.   Needless to say, sales starts petering out when you don’t add new designs, but my creativity is in such a dormant period these days, I just can’t find the interest to be clever again.   I’ll likely start designing again soon because I have such incredible guilt over ignoring it all.

On a happier note, time for a shout-out for my fabulous lady friends from the Women’s BQ Thread in the RW’s Marathon Race Training forum, who are about to strut their stuff in Boston: HikerGirl, BBQ, Betaboo and Michigan Mama.

That ever-growing thread was started almost a year ago by our own Doggie girl, and so many of us have been participating since it’s inception.  The whole point was to share and have support in our journey for a BQ and wow, has it been effective – 19 of us have BQ’d!

While most of us are waiting for 2010 to finally meet each other and run this historic race, the Fab Four above are merely days away from completing what must be their most memorable marathon, ever.  So good luck, my sweets, rest up this weekend and may Monday bring a wonderful day of fun, excitement and amazing race reports!  Woohoo, BQ Gals!!!

I’m in need of a nap, so this’ll be a short one.

Rainy interval session today – 5x1000m@5k pace w/90sec. rec’s.  It went like this:  4:11, 4:05, 4:08, 4:12, 4:09 (avg. pace 6:40).

I did the same workout on Feb. 10th, averaging 6:50s, with longer recoveries (2:00 as opposed to 1:30) and actually had to (gasp) walk the last two recoveries that day.  No walking today and my HR was 2% lower for the Avg and Max than it was in February, so more happy goodness all ’round.

Now it’s a week of easy runs (woohoo!) with some strides here and there because I have a 10K coming up on Sunday.  Goal?  The low side of 43:xx.   We’ll see.

Oh, I found another great plugin for Sporttracks, Training Load.  It works with your HR data, lets you put in a race date and tells you your training fatigue and fitness level as the day approaches.  Great fun for those of us who like to waste time with numbers.

How appropriate that on Easter, my Garmin came back to life.  I guess it was the rain that temporarily did it in yesterday, water must have entered the housing.  But I was not accepting of this fate, so last night I kept turning it on and messing with it.  Eventually the buttons started working again and the screen stopped scrolling as madly, then this morning, all was peaceful with the world again.  Garmin lives.

So Garmin and I enjoyed a fantastic long run today, you could tell we were deeply in love by the numbers it gave and by the adoring glances I couldn’t help bestowing upon it.  16 miles @ 8:07 avg. pace and since Hudson called for the “last 15min Hard” the last couple miles netted me 7:16s.

Couldn’t believe how easy the whole run was, which I believe may be linked with the wrapping up of my Lady Time – looking back on my logs I see a trend in the hormonal department.  Whatever the reason, one thing is sure: I really, really liked it.

Zippy run in the rain today – my Hydrolite jacket came through in a big way, really made it an enjoyable run.  Seven miles @ 8:14.

About an hour after I got home, though, I’m in the kitchen and I hear a sound like some tiny alarm coming from my office, and realize it’s my Garmin beeping non-stop.  The screen was also flashing frenetically, switching datascreens back and forth like it was having a seizure.  I took it off the cradle, turned it off and on again, then the buttons wouldn’t work.  I can only turn it off now with a soft reset (mode+Lap).  Hard reset doesn’t work either.  Oh, my sweet Garmin, what have I done to you?

I have to send it back and possibly receive a refurbished one in return.  That would be so very sad, as much as we’ve been through together.  In the meantime, I have a 205 (bought as backup when the 405 was released and 205s went cheap) so I’m fine pacewise, but my recent addiction to HR data must be shelved temporarily.  Probably a healthy thing in a way.

Tomorrow, I’d planned to do 17 but am now just sticking with 16, because that’ll give me 72 miles for the week, a new mileage PR, so I’m happy to cap it there.  It’s funny how I used to think 70mpw would be this huge, hard thing, something I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to do, but once you start adding a few here and a few there, it just grows on you.

The best part about it is, I was feeling a few twinges after March’s races, a couple of times I had to get out the foam roller, but then between last week’s 68 and this week’s 72 I feel great!  My legs are silent.    Last time I had a day off was March 2nd, so things couldn’t be better (knock on wood).

So I’m thinking about after the Lehigh Valley Half, how I should handle the months before marathon training begins in August.  I put a few potential races on the calendar for June and one for July, so that’ll keep me peppy.  I’m not sure how I’m going to portion out fast and easy runs at this point but I did want to cultivate 70mpw, and at this point, it looks like it’ll be no problem.

Four days of spontaneous index finger twitching was beginning to worry me.  As it turns out, the day I blogged about it, I started my period (sorry guys) and with it,  all twitching ceased.  It seems that in my late stage of decrepitude, I have found yet a new symptom of PMS.

“Muscle spasm” they call it.  Who knew?   I didn’t have any symptoms except for that this month; no zits, no bloating and I wasn’t even super bitchy to Nick  for no reason.  What a waste.  Anyway, it’s not Parkinsons, a brain tumor or overtraining, so that’s a relief.