So I snuck this one by you guys, first time I’ve done a race without mentioning it here beforehand.

I did this one thanks to Lynn on the Women’s BQ thread.  She’s a great gal and when she mentioned this race, I was all “ooooh, I dunno”.   After Philly, I’ve been scared to race again (though I know I needed to) plus I’ve been slower this cycle and this race is hillier than any race I’ve ever done.

I read a great term on the Marathon Race Training forum for the first race of the season, “Rust Buster” and that’s exactly the way I thought of this one.  Just get it out of the way so the more important race, my Half in March, isn’t such a shock.  Even so, yesterday I required hand-holding from my Sub3:20 thread friends because I was more worried about what people would think with my result, since I knew it would not be indicative of a good marathon for April.

I know this is stupid, btw, to be concerned with what people think but I’m telling you this because I know it’s a common feeling even if you don’t have a blog, since our race results are there on Athlinks for anyone to see.  And I do have a blog. :-)  Anyway, my pals on the thread were, as usual, amazing, cool, sweet and so positive that I wish I could hug them all.  Luckily, I’ll be able to attack a good many of them in Boston.

Last Night

I’ve been keeping late hours these days, going to bed at 2am, getting up at 8:30 or 9:00, so I took a melatonin around 10pm to get to sleep at 11 which worked a treat, though I had a bit of tossing and turning.

Before I took “my meds” (that term cracks me up, how it’s in the common vernacular these days), I pulled out Matt Fitzgerald’s Brain Training For Runners because there’s a really great section on pain and suffering within racing and I needed to reread it.  After Philly, that’s one of the things that scares me, the discomfort, but Matt basically says expect and invite the pain, which helped me be “bring it on!” today instead of worrying about the hills.

This Morning’s Weigh In

I told myself last night not to get on the scale.  I knew it would fuck with my head because I’m heavier lately so I told myself not to weigh myself and when I wake up, pretend I’m 117.5 (so not true since I haven’t been that since early November).

I took a lot of Ibuprofen yesterday because I have a quad that’s been tight and I haven’t been good about tending to it but for the last couple days I’ve been rolling it so now it’s more tender than before.  Unfortunately, ibuprofen makes me retain water, so when I got on the scale this morning (what, you thought I’d obey myself?) and saw 122.5, it was more confirmation that the race would not be my best.  I was pretty much ok with it by now though, so in a good mood, though scared.

The Race

I see Lynn and her hubby when I get there which was a stroke of luck because there were tons of runners.  It’s a bigger race than I thought.  I get my bib and was very happy that it was chip-timed because I didn’t want to line up near the front this time.

I was in the bathroom line to the very last minute so I didn’t get a warmup though I found a little swath of parking lot next to the start and did a few circles there.  The temperature was 34 degrees but windy at times, so I guess “real feel” upper 20s.

I never have much recollection of my races, though what I do remember was a guy dressed in a penguin suit who was the pacer for 35:00 (surprised there were pacers…there was also another penguin for 40:00).  He passed me at the beginning and I wasn’t one bit tempted to try to keep up.  With the hills in mind, all I wanted to do was finish this race in one piece.

There was another guy running near me who obviously did this race many times, so he’d announce, “a hill coming up after this turn” which was helpful but also annoying because he wasn’t one bit out of breath, so I was jealous.

One thing I remember clearly was in the midst of it, all the worry about what kind of time I’d get or what people would think of me became laughable.  I was a strong woman again.  As I made my way up those rollers (they were genuine hills to me but I’m sure others would be “oh yeah, gentle rollers”) I was once again alongside and passing men much younger than me and damn, if that isn’t always a gift to the psyche.  I’m sorry guys, I know it’s petty, but to hang with your kind is one of the thrills of racing for me.  I love men and while being surrounded by them is fabulous, passing them is downright delicious.

Splits were 7:15,7:16,7:10,7:05,6:58.  My clock time was 35:53 (chip time’s not up yet), 1st place in my AG.  Sure, it’d suck if I was predicting a marathon from it but I’m not and in fact, I’m pretty chuffed with the result.  I managed this on a new and hilly course and 5lbs heavier than my usual (honestly, 7lbs over my best race weight from the Spring).  I will lose the weight before my Half and when the weather improves, running should be easier so today was a good Rust Buster.

That said, maybe I should be thinking 3:30 – 3:25 for April 19th but really…who gives a fuck?   If that’s what it’ll need to be, that’s what it’ll be.  Seriously, I want to feel like I did today, strong and capable.  You can’t buy that feeling.

I’ll do this race again next year, the Masters winner came in at 33:xx and I’ve got my eye set on that.  I’m just waiting for this marathon rigmarole to be overwith so I can find Fast Flo again.  She’s here alright, just waiting for an opening.

Miscellaneous

I totally forgot to eat anything this morning, but never felt as though my energy was compromised.  So last night’s pasta was enough to keep me happy throughout, good to know for the future.  And I didn’t even notice my quad.

Shoutout to Lynn and Joanna, it was super fun hanging with you guys afterwards and thanks again Lynn for talking me into it, I owe you one.

My Running Anniversary

Today marks 3 years from the day I ventured outside for the my first taste of the Couch-to-5K running plan.  I never in my wildest dreams would have thought I’d still be running now, much less enmeshed in it as thoroughly as this.  Life unfolds in the most wonderful, unforeseen ways.

New Video – Running Jackets!

This was a fun one to do (or rather, to edit).  In the spirit of America’s Next Top Model, I tried my best to be Fierce and there’s no question I rocked it bigtime.  I hope you enjoy the tips offered as well as the high quality fashion show.  Featured are the Sugoi Hydrolite rain jacket, and my winter running jackets, a Gap fleece and the Asics Storm Shelter jacket.

It’s snowing outside again as I type this. Philly is very close to a record for most snow ever, so this is getting old.  Still, I have to thank the snow for some new found energy pumped into my running.

New route = a great find

I’ve mentioned how amazing the Parks dept is about clearing off the bike path so usually snow is not an obstacle, but after last weeks deluge, they surprisingly left it for a couple days so I was forced to change my usual route. No major complaints because they did clear off part of the river path going in the opposite direction so I still got my river fix, but it was a bit repetitive since I had a 2.75 mile loop to work with. I did this for 11 on Thursday and 8 on Friday.

Now, the good that came of it was that in order to get that loop, I ran on areas I’ve ignored in the past, one of which is a ramp that goes up to the museum. It’s about .07mi and Sporttracks tells me it’s 6.5% grade (with the elevation correction plugin since Garmin is an idiot when it comes to calculating elevation), so it’s short but quite sweet as far as adding in some convenient hillishness to my run.

Saturday was a 12-miler and most of the path had been cleared off so I was back to my usual route, though the icy sections made it more like a trail run in places, so again, I was quite pleased about the added difficulty.

Bits of gold in Runners World

That night, I finally cracked open the Runners World I bought. I never read that magazine though their forums are my online hangout, I rarely even look at what’s going on in the rest of their website. But I bought this issue because people were saying great things about the cover article on Kara Goucher. And my, oh my, it really is a wonderful article and I recommend everyone get their hands on it.

To find a world-class athlete has the same mental crap roaming around her brain as us regular runners was truly eye-opening and it hit me like a big fat hug from the Running Gods. Honestly, it gave me a new perspective on races, time and the future.

Another thing in the magazine that caught my eye was a speed workout article about developing a finishing kick. One of the workouts for marathoners consisted of 8-20 200m repeats at 5K pace. Now, that got me thinking about Jim who’s been doing Billats this cycle and seeing real progress with it. If you don’t know about Billats, read this article and this, it’s fascinating stuff. What it boils down to is that by doing short repeats with short recoveries, you actually stay in VO2max longer than if you did a longer workout.

Yesterday I played hooky

I felt enormously guilty about it but it was yet another cold, windy day and I was feeling cold in the apartment and frankly, just didn’t want to brave the elements. I appeased myself by realizing that my supposed cutback week had not really been a cutback at all, it turned out to be 58 miles and since I’m doing low 60s, that doesn’t qualify.  Blowing off yesterday’s 15 (I wouldn’t have blown off a 17-20) gave me 49.75 miles for the week…so a proper cutback.  Nothing lost though I still gave myself crap about it all day.

Today’s Workout, 11.75mi w/26 30-sec hill reps (Hillats)

I am so glad I took yesterday off! Seriously, I had a renewed energy and was rarin’ to run.  Since it’s going to be snowy tomorrow and my planned hill workout will be questionable I decided to do a modified Billat workout on that newly discovered ramp. I was pretty excited about trying something new and the fact that it’s only 30 seconds per rep is low-pressure plus it fits in perfectly with the ramp distance.

I did 7.25mi before hitting the reps (30-30s x 20, though the recoveries were 36-38secs to return to the bottom of the ramp).  When I got to the 19th rep I thought, “oh yay, just one more” but the idea is to do these till exhaustion and my pace was still steady, so I didn’t stop till 26. This means I should have done them faster but it’s hard to gauge that when it’s your first time and there’s uphill included.  Bottom line is I feel great about the workout, it was fun and I ended up with more hard running than if I’d done tomorrow’s scheduled 6 x.25mi hill reps.

Part of me is all “this is really not conventional marathon training” but the other part says “you hate the long slogging, so screw what “should be” and do what’s fun and gets you working hard.”  So I plan on doing proper Billats and these Hillats for the duration of the cycle.  I’m thinking it’ll fight off the slower turnover I inevitably get during marathon training.  As long as I have the tempos,  marathon paced workouts and LRs, it’s all good.

So that’s the latest dirt, sorry this is sooooo long!  I just couldn’t help it. :-)

Today will be a double-hit media blitz for some of you hapless creatures.  Not only is there a new video, but I’m sending out the first edition of my newsletter this afternoon.

The Video

I was going to do a jacket video but figured I may as well start from the inside out, so today’s video is on my favorite winter base layer.  Coming next will be the jacket video and then one on winter accessories, but for now, top and tights is the focus.

Like last time, this’ll send you to YouTube in hopes you can give me a few ratings and/or comments.

If you want one of the mocks, you can find the largest selection of colors at Eastbay: mens or womens.  Btw, a couple folks have asked what size I wear in those, which is a good question.  UA runs small so while I wear Small in every other manufacturer, I buy my UA tops in Medium.  So keep that in mind.

The Adidas Supernova Brushed Tights are last year’s model so they’re getting hard to find, though Holabird has them on closeout for men for only $39.95 in all sizes.  Even without the exact items, you get an idea of what to wear out there in the elements.  Also, for the record, I don’t wear those 2 pieces only or I’d be pretty damn stinky.  I own duplicates of both items and various other tights and half-zips, but these particular pieces are my favorite combo of all.

The Newsletter

Oooh, scary, sending my first one out today.  Just wanted to give you subscribers a heads-up that I’ve changed the email it’s coming from to the new URL (girlinmotion.com without the dashes) so if, when you signed up, you found the confirmation email in your spam folder and had to mark it as “not junk”, you’ll likely need to do it again with this new address.  Sorry about that.

OK, hope you don’t get sick of so much Floness in one day.  Later, kids!

Yesterday’s run was entertaining; the first time I ever stopped on a run to take photos.  Thanks again for responding so well to the What would you like? thread, this was one of the suggestions and a fun one at that.  You’re about to see how spoiled I am and why I love running.

This is one of many bridges on my route

Look on the path near the bottom of this photo, notice a number with a line going across the path? It’s our 1/4 mile markers, they follow the 8.5 mi. loop around the museum. I ran the loop for a whole year without realizing they where there.  This is one of two spots where I do my interval sessions.

Coming back towards the city, a bit of skyline.

The back of the museum, about 3/4 mi from home.

Me, happy.

Getting Realistic

Good thoughts today, borne of a slow speed session.

First off, that remark I made about pacing someone in the previous post? Forget it, I just wanted an excuse to run slower.  Can’t blame me for trying.

Today I’m doing my speedwork (10.5mi with 6×1/2mi at 5K pace and 2min rec’s) and I couldn’t get moving fast, maybe due to lack of sleep, I could only manage 3:27s (6:55 pace) and though I felt I was working hard, my HR averaged 83%HRR on the fast parts and only maxed to 89% on one, so it was more like 10k effort.  When a workout goes like that, you have two choices: A. berate yourself or B. accept it was your best on that day and be happy with it.  I chose B.

I tend to get very philosophical while in the midst of a hard workout, though I think about the way my body’s moving and my form and footfall, I’ll also have bursts where I look for meaning in running and how I fit in.  It’s a helpful distraction from “how much longer” “where’s the end?” “almost half way” “shit, too slow” “where’s the end?!?”

Today’s thought was how we’re all unique within this sport.  We each have something about us that makes our running adventure special, unlike anyone else’s and when we’re stalled or questioning ourselves, it’s worth taking the time to remember those things.

I’m always comparing myself to my faster online friends, many of whom are enjoying continued speediness, while I seem to be on the two steps forward, one step back plan.  Why do I conveniently manage to forget that I’m a 48 year old woman?  I’ve got no right to ever feel sorry for myself.  To that end, I punched my Half PR in an age-grade calculator to see what it’d be for a 35 year-old man…1:16.  I have nothing to complain about.

Let The Goal Appear

I’ve been trying to fit numbers into a goal, but really, that’s ass-backwards.  The goal needs to come from the numbers.  I’m slower than last cycle, and while I’ve been boo-hooing about it, if I could manage to be objective and enjoy what I have instead of thinking wistfully of what I don’t, it’d make for a better 10 weeks coming up.

You know what a mental case I am, well I have a 5-mile race next week and a Half in March and I was fretting over what sort of times I can expect – especially from the 5-miler since I haven’t raced in months.   But after my speed session today and a dose of logical thinking, I thought, what will happen if I come back with a bad result?  Does that make me stupid?  A bad runner?  Not a good person?  I don’t think so.  Interesting how much crap from the universe we can subconsciously attach to a race time.

Tomorrow

We’re expecting 10 to 20″ of snow tomorrow with high winds, so I’ll likely take the day off – no loss, it was a recovery run anyway.  In the morning I’ll be adding 10 new designs to The Gifted Runner, woohoo!

OK, have a good Wednesday and cheers to my snow buddies across the Eastern seaboard. Stay safe and warm, everyone.

Look up at your browser’s address bar.  Notice anything different?  No?  How about some missing hyphens in the URL.  Yessiree Bob, I finally got the domain name without dashes, woohoo!  That might be why, if you read this thing from a Reader, it looked like I had a million new posts over the weekend, the switchover meant changing everything from the old domain to the new.

The story of the name of this blog and the dashed domain is that I started posting on the Runners World Beginner Forum the same time I started learning to run in Feb 2007, picking Girl In Motion as my username.  So in November, when I started the blog, it made sense to use that name.  Wouldn’t you know, girlinmotion.com was already taken by a porno site, as I’m sure many of you discovered when trying to find this one.

Cut to about 2 months ago, I get a couple emails saying “girlinmotion.com is for sale for $1200″ to which my reply was “fuck you”.  I didn’t actually write it but it was mentally written the way my replies to spammers always are.

Then on Friday as I was coming home from my run (they’ve been hotbeds of ideas lately) and feeling wistful that I didn’t have that non-dashed name since I was starting all this action on the site and the dashes do leave a level of difficulty when saying the name “girl dash in dash motion dot com” and also, for searchers to find it naturally, those dashes are a hindrance.

Since a couple months had gone by since the coercion emails, I gave it a shot and put it into Godaddy to see if it was available.  YES!!!  Plus, I had a coupon, so I got two years of my brand new domain for $15 vs one year at $1200.  Happiness.

Bikini Ski

One of my readers is doing something pretty cool for charity.  Her sister-in-law suffers from Crohns Disease so to raise some dough, she’s going to ski in her bikini.  If she raises $1000, she’ll do two bikini ski runs.  Very clever and an entertaining way to help someone close to her.  So if you have a few bucks to spare, visit her blog Pedestrianrunner and throw a couple bucks her way.  Help her freeze her tush off for a great cause.

Friday’s MP Run

I finally did that 10w/8MP rearranged from last week.  It was a successful run, hit my paces without too much ado (MP miles 7:34, total avg 7:49) but I had a strange Boston thought on the cooldown mile home, that maybe I should pace someone instead of taking a chance on blowing up again.  Here’s what I posted to my friends in the sub 3:20 thread:

If the 3:20 doesn’t work (and there’s every chance that it won’t) I probably won’t be that far off my miserably gotten 3:33 so I won’t be too proud of the result anyway.  And if I make my goal easier by going for a 3:25 to begin with, again, not far enough off that crap 3:33 to matter and if that planned 3:25 goes awry, that’ll be really depressing.

So that’s what I’m thinking right now, not deciding either way but wanted to let you know what’s going on in this silly mind of mine.

A Snowy Sunday Long Run

Saturday was crazy, Philly got the 2nd biggest snowfall in its history (bumping December’s storm out) with 28.5″.  Here’s the photo I posted on Facebook, taken in the morning so there were still a few more inches to come.Yesterday was a 17 miler and while it was a bit treacherous getting to the park, they did a good enough job of clearing the paths so I was able to run without too much hopping around.  It was cold though, 22 with windchill so I wasn’t exactly feeling spry on the way home.  I think the cold keeps your muscles and tendons from being as pliable as they would be at normal temps, at least I know it’s true for tendons since that was a warning when I researched my ITBS, that it’s worse in the cold because it remains tighter so it must be so for all tendons.

And that’s it for Monday’s blahblah.   Have a great running week everybody and here’s a few smoochies for the road.