Archive for January, 2010

This is not a post about quality booze or friendly ghosts, just good spirits in the happy sense.

Yesterday’s weather was gorgeous, a Spring-like 52 degrees, so I broke out the capris and made it my LR day.  I was being silly about getting out there, though.  With 17 on tap, I just wasn’t wanting to do it at all but I had a chick potluck party to go to and had to be done with the run in time to buy something to bring (because I’m not a cooking contributor in situations like these, too lazy).

Finally got my ass out there with the plan to make it all easy miles, though I took it to the trails so at least there’d be some level of hills and footwork, better than my usual easy jaunt around the river.  But once I got to the trail system (mile 5.5), a really sweet girl I had passed caught up to me while I waited at the street crossing, and said something about “fast” and gave me the thumbs up before running on.  I couldn’t hear it all because I had my headphones on, but I was so surprised by this unexpected niceness that it gave me a sudden shot of energy.

In the trails, I plowed (or ploughed) – either way…I pushed.  It was great fun and I was doing low 8s going uphill, sub 8s down, despite the gravel and ice patches still on the ground.  Even added an extra 1/2 mile to the turnaround to make it an 18-miler.  Once back on the road (mile 12.5), I kept up the pace through mile 16, then slowed back down to normal.  Ended up with 18@8:18 avg.  After 8 easy in a couple hours, I’ll have a 63-mile week.

I won’t lie, between this and last cycle, I’m having a hard time living with my decision to take it easier, though not enough to actually do something about it.  I mean, I’m not exactly sitting on my ass eating bonbons, and maybe it’s because I’m not doing Pfitz, Daniels or Hudson (Marathon Race Training Forum’s favorite sons) that I feel a little off-kilter.  On the other hand, I’m running harder 2 times a week, got my MLR and LR, which is basically what every marathon plan calls for anyway.

I guess it’s my active imagination wondering what I’m going to feel like when I see that Citgo sign in the distance.  Will I be dying?  Will I be surprised that I feel good?  How I can have a better race not busting my butt as hard as last time?  But last time sucked, so is this easier approach the gold?  Man, I sure wish I had a crystal ball.

You guys are going to have to excuse me big time here – I got a new toy to add some variety to this blog and while I’m adept at voice acting, I’ve never done camera work so please bear with me. I’m bound to get better as it goes, but for now I’m just blathering to get one in the books.  One of my life lessons these days is “don’t tweak to perfection, just get it out there” so that’s what this is. Sorry for the crappy resolution, next time I’ll use the right settings.

Also, I just joined Twitter after poo-poohing it since its inception.  My first session of the Marketing webinar taught me how useful it can be for those of us with blogs and websites, so I caved. It’s kind of cool, though I still feel like I don’t know what the hell’s going on when I’m there.  Anyway, my Twitter name is FloInMotion if anyone wants to follow me.  Not sure how exciting it’ll be but one can always hope.

OK, enough stalling…public humiliation for your viewing pleasure.

Yesterday was a run I really enjoyed, even if it was a reality check.   It was 12 miles with Higdon’s 35min Tempo in there (which amounts to a little over 20 minutes actual tempo since he includes 15-20 min warmup).

On this run, I discovered my Half and 10K pace are no longer what they used to be, in fact, I was working hard at 7:20 pace!  The good thing is, I’m totally cool with it.  Why?  I looked back at my log and saw that for the last 8 weeks, I’ve averaged 46mi/week.  This included a taper week and race week.  That’s a 35% reduction in average weekly mileage!  And except for a couple short jabs at speed (a crappy interval session, one fartlek and last week’s 3MP), it was all easy miles.

I have no regrets about taking it easy – I worked so hard the last cycle, the step-back was necessary for my mind as much as my body.  This is all undiscovered territory though, since by this time last year I’d spent a month working on 5Ks and continued that push until the Half in May.  I’ve never taken such a sizable “vacation” so it’ll be interesting to see how fast it comes back.  I don’t suppose it’ll take too long but if it does, no problem, I’ll just change my goal.  It’s lovely having nothing to prove.

On the financial marathon front, after months of working on this one ginormous project (a music t-shirt/gift site) I am finally about two hours away from putting in the last few products – no small feat considering it has over 11,000 items!  If it wasn’t for my new-found determination, I’d have been working on this for the better part of the year, but thanks to Firefox iMacros and some huge dollops of elbow grease, I’ll be done after dinner.

Speaking of the financial marathon and the universe providing blah blah blah, it seems to be continuing in a positive manner.  I lost a voiceover this month because they’ve stopped production on the drug, but the woman in charge recommended me for something else and spent a good deal of time discussing my putting together a medical/narration demo and exactly what she’d like included.  I’ve already done all the characters on assorted jobs (doctor, patient, etc) so I just need to compile it.  My laziness with getting VO work has been utterly stupid because it’s so lucrative and I’m good at it,  yet I truly dislike marketing myself.  But after that conversation, I’ve got no excuse, she basically laid it out on a silver platter.

Also, there’s an Internet Marketing forum I frequent (lurk at actually, because the people there scare me – it’s hard core).  Anyway, a regular there posted an offer for free mentoring of 10 people for 90 days, which includes twice-a-week webinars with question/answers after.  You had to PM him and explain why you should be chosen and I got picked!  I’m thrilled beyond belief because I’ve been dabbling in some of that stuff the last few months but really need guidance to understand some key ideas.  And I’d never have written the guy if it hadn’t been for the financial marathon.

So 2010 looks good so far:

Running-wise, I’m learning more about myself and relieving a great deal of the pressure I created, trusting that this is a long-term process and that it doesn’t have to be one huge tidal wave, that there’ll be ebbs and flows.  Also, the UPS guy just dropped off some Mizuno Inspire 5′s from RunningWarehouse, on sale since the 6s came out, so I got two pairs (ah, excess!).

Work-wise, I’m learning that specific goals and making interim steps to achieve them rocks!  Put it out there and opportunity will come to meet you.

Hygiene-wise, I finally laundered my fleece jacket this morning, which has been on too many runs without a wash.  The geese on the bike-path were becoming offended, now they can breathe.

All is right with the world.

Glad to say, I’m truly happy to be training again.  I’ve been messing with the schedule, tweaking it like mad, but only by adding miles. I like the way the simple workouts look for now, so no edits for those aside from the mileage padding.  That might change as we get closer to the race because 6 or 8×800 (Yasso, hello) would probably be happier morphing into the same distances worth of 1200s or 1000s, but for now…all good.

This is what I’ve tentatively got on tap for the month of January. Here’s the original plan so you can see how it compares. I’ve entered on week 4.

What I've got planned plus what I've done up till Jan. 5th.

I took an extra day off on Sunday because it was 12 degrees windchill with 30mph winds and I was all, “screw this, training starts tomorrow!”  So that was my last day of  vacation.

Today’s run was 4 x 1/4 mi hill repeats, 9.4 miles total.  I had a great time doing them though it was cold and windy (21 windchill, admittedly not quite as bad as many of you have it).  The only crappy part was coming home and seeing the last time I did reps on that hill, I did 7 of them and was 30 seconds faster.  But it was 62 degrees that day and 3 weeks out from Philly.  Plus, I’ve been running easy for the last 6 weeks, so I’m fine with it.

I had a funny mini-freakout after I read Robert’s comment on the last post “Only three 20’s all training period?”  Suddenly, I was scrambling to add another 20, then I realized how silly it was.  There is nothing magical about a 19 vs. a 20 (if we lived in Europe, we’d be doing 30k Long Runs…18.4 miles) so for all intents and purposes, three 20s and a 19 make for 4 proper long runs.  Looks fine to me.  Besides, my lovely 22,22,24 and 20 for Philly didn’t even get put to the test since I started walking at mile 18.

More important to me is putting mid-long runs in there for general endurance.  Though ok, I penciled in a tentative extra 20 in there if the weather’s great and I feel like it, but probably not.

February at this point looks like 52 (cutback),63,69,73, then March will be 60 (cutback), 73, 54 (Shamrock Half), 74 and then April’s first week is 60, then taper.  I’ll still be messing around as it goes, but this gives you an idea of how I’ve modified the mileage.

On the Heart Rate front, it continues to be wonky, but I’ve now accepted it as a permanent part of the picture.  Instead of lamenting and comparing the past, I’m going to wear it but use the current readings as baseline.  As long as it shows natural  improvement with the passing weeks, everything’s A-OK.  The underlying quandary I’ve had has been whether to slow my runs down to make for a “better” HR.  But they’d end up being slower than last January when I was a much slower runner, so I’m using effort as the main guide and the monitor to note  trends.

That’s it for now, I’ll be back for more blather in a few days.  Have some fabulous runs!

It’s no secret, I’ve been in bad attitude land with Marathon training; it’s cold and windy and I haven’t felt like putting forth real effort yet.  But I’ve been working my way back.

One of the things I started yesterday was to add 3 MP miles to my run.  I was severely lacking in race pace miles last time and that’s something  I want to correct this time out.  I figured I’d add a bit each week, next week do 5, the next week do 8, etc.  Seemed a good way to ingrain the pace without any stress.

Meanwhile, the days are ticking by and I needed to get a plan underway, so today I bought Pfitzinger’s second edition of Advanced Marathoning.  I used his first edition for Steamtown and had heard this new one had more MP miles, so I pretty much decided that’s what I’d use.

But when I finally looked at the plan and saw that there were exactly 4 MP runs and the first one should have been last week and was 8 miles at MP (8 MP in week 16?) I wasn’t happy.  Seems like 8 MP so early in the game would be better replaced by a tempo run, since it’s going to feel about as sucky anyway and give more physiological benefit.  But I digress.

More importantly, I don’t want to reserve MP miles for “special”  and with only four of them (3 actually, since I already missed one) it qualifies as that, because for me at this time, that would defeat the purpose of doing them.  I italicize that because I’m sure if I’d have picked up the book 6 months ago, I’d have no quibble with 4 big MP runs (save for the natural dread involved), but at this point they only look like drudge workouts.  Besides, I don’t want to dread MP runs, I want to get used to them so it ain’t no big deal, that’s my whole goal here.

Then I remembered ole Hal Higdon.  I’ve always dismissed his plans for looking too simplistic: they don’t have “cycles”, the mileage is low, the workouts are basically the same thing with more reps each week.  However, one thing I’ve always thought was pretty cool was that he has MP runs almost every Saturday before the LR, which works two-fold, you get your MP miles while at the same time it tuckers you out a bit for Sunday’s LR, the better to give you that marathon feeling.  And he even has some mid-week MP runs as well.  All told, he has 17 MP runs in an 18-week plan!  And they graduate from short to longer, just like I wanted to do.

So I started looking longer at his Advanced Plan II and wonder of wonders…the spark began to return.  His simplicity was suddenly a fantastic thing in my eyes: I could easily add mileage to it, the fact that it alternates tempo, hill and intervals each week while adding an additional short tempo or pace run a couple days later seemed perfect, plus, I’m going to keep some rest days in there.  It was exactly a year ago that I went to 7 days, but marathon training in the winter is going to annoy me double, so having a day off for especially windy/crappy days will be a treat.

And only three 20s instead of 4.  Will I be under prepared?  I don’t think so, those MP runs are going to be a great help.  My pal RedDogRunning from the 3:20 thread just used it (only did two 20s, matter of fact) and had a huge PR last week – said those MP runs made him feel “locked into pace the whole way”.  Music to my ears.

So I feel like training again!  No longer overwhelmed or dreading it, the little thrill was back when I transcribed the numbers and notes into my Excel calendar (and I did this twice today…the Pfitz time wasn’t so joyful).  Thank god, because I was seriously wondering how I was going to get through the next 4 months doing something I didn’t want to do.

Yay.  Just yay.