May 24th, 2011
I’m getting it, it’s coming, in fact I can almost taste it. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?! (nah, I know you don’t)…the urge for fast stuff!
Remember me saying I wasn’t going to add quality workouts until I genuinely wanted to? And that I might go the whole summer without doing any? Well, I signed up for the Philly Half in September and did the little calendar thing, working back to see when I would start a real pre-race training schedule, figuring 8 weeks should be enough while leaving me fresh for a similar buildup before December’s Half (going to Vegas, baby!). This means mid-July is when I’d start traditional interval and tempo workouts.
After I got that squared away, I realized I had about 1½ months in the meantime, so what do I want to do till then? I’ve leveled off the mileage, this being my 3rd week at 90, so I can safely assume my body isn’t going to fall apart now. I could either continue with the easy running or get a head-start and begin adding some little fun stuff in.
Because frankly, I’m getting excited at the thought of progressing! Kinda want to get the ball rolling but on the same token, it’s gotta stay light, casual and fun. Them’s the rules.
This is what I came up with:
Starting next week, I’ll be adding strides to 2 runs a week – that’ll continue indefinitely. Then the following week I’ll begin alternating, in no particular order:
1. Various on/off workouts, ie. 8 x(2min on/1min off)
2. Those 8-9% grade ramps at the museum, 108m long, make for a great short hill rep workout.
3. Cross the street to Lemon Hill and do the loop a few times, it’s a convenient way to get some regular hills going
4. Some tempoish stuff, but laid back, nothing real fast, more steady state, maybe some cruise intervals.
Here is what I will not do: (until proper training starts in July)
No intervals by distance! I am adamant about not wanting to compare hard and fast numbers from week to week or get in a head of “beating my times” in similar workouts. When I do on/offs, I won’t be running back and forth over a specific spot, they’ll be in a continuous direction within my usual run, the better to remain inexact. The whole point is to run hard, out of my comfort zone – how fast it ends up is irrelevant.
If there is one thing that is important above all else this summer, it’s volume – everything else is icing on the cake. But I’m pretty sure, come July, I’ll be chomping at the bit for those “real” workouts to start, because these fun forays, as casual and no-pressure as they are, are going to improve my speed. How could they not? And that’ll be all the motivation I need.
A Running Soap Opera
This was posted on LetsRun the other day and is a pretty entertaining read: She Was Once A Runner. It’s a story about a female collegiate runner and the eating disorders among her teammates as well as, what appears to be unfolding, her own. It’s in blog form, so if you want to read it, go back to the first post and then work your way to the present. There’s a new post daily.
Along with the story itself, the commentary from LetsRun posters (the thread is 17 pages long now!) is pretty entertaining, from guessing which school it is to people who had that same experience. I’m kind of addicted to the thread now, I want to stop reading it but I keep going back.
Speaking of eating
I’ve been craving protein like it’s going out of style. The other night at midnight, when it’s time to wind down for bed, I started thinking about this hard-boiled egg in my fridge. It could have been a Krispy Kreme for how much I was wanting it, imagining biting into it, not to mention the pleasure I felt when I finally consumed the thing. I wonder if this is some byproduct of running more miles since our bodies tend to crave what what we need, maybe it knows protein is good for recovery?
Anyway, I usually buy half-cartons of eggs but in the name of running success (and midnight cravings) I went out the next day and bought a dozen.
Because you can’t mention eggs without a scene from John Water’s Pink Flamingos.
Posted in Running
That looks to be a good plan and I thought it was a little funny when I read the hard boiled egg story, as I was finishing the second bite of a hard boiled egg. : )
Hah! That is funny. I just had some egg salad before sitting down to reply to comments.
Grrrrreat work!!!
I love your site and I love your psyche and I love what you are doing.
We have similar goals so I will be watching and following you.
My mileage is still low. The tarmac is killing my shins and I dont have a soft place to run in though I am trying to use a field near where I live.
I also want to be fast and I know I will have to ramp up my mileage.
Keep it up and all the best girl!
Jacob
Thank you so much, Jacob. I wish you some more comfortable running in your very near future. In the meantime, massage those shins when you’re just sitting around at the computer. When I’ve had shin pain, the foam roller is just a little too painful for me, but a little kneading action (side to side and stroking upwards, towards your heart) really helps.
Btw, I enjoy reading your updates on Facebook. They’re interesting.
Wow- just read She was once a runner. I ran in college, (okay, ages, ago!) but our team wasn’t nearly as bad as that. I do remember feeling overweight compared to the others ( and I’m sure I wasn’t!) but our coach was actually pretty good about making sure we ate enough.
Over the last couple days I’ve been going back through your posts to see how you progressed the mileage from your two weeks off early this year! I would like to do something similar this summer ( except not give up racing, I love racing!) because I really dread long runs during marathon training, but can tell that’s what I really need. So I thought if I built up the mileage slowly, and get to the feeling that a 14 mile run is no big deal, everything would come easier, at least I hope so. As far as I can tell, you really only took one “down” week, right? Did you stick to the 10% increase rule? Thanks for any tips!
Hey Connie, don’t give up racing at all if you love it, that’s for sure! However, when you build up the mileage, it’ll add a little crimp to the build because you’ll need to take it easy after and probably want to taper a tad before, but that’s cool, just something to note.
Now, I really want to say don’t do as I do!! Because I did not take any cutback weeks on purpose, the only one I ended up with was because of my toe debacle. The reason I could do this is because I’ve raised mileage before and knew what to expect and how my body responds. But I would not recommend what I’ve done to anyone else, I’d say be a tad more conservative and sit on the new mileage levels a bit longer…only because I don’t want anyone to get injured following my lead.
That said, having run in college, you probably know your body well and as long as you’re vigilant about any aches and pains, you can proceed at a rate that feels comfortable for you. But keep in mind that I didn’t do a stitch of quality work which I think played a large role in keeping me healthy. The key is grow mileage or grow quality, but don’t do both at the same time. 10% is probably a safe bet, btw, though I didn’t pay attention to that myself, I just did what felt comfortable.
And yes, you will get to the point where your longer runs really don’t seem long anymore, this is a beautiful thing!!
Here’s how it went from after my 2 week break:
32, 43, 51, 51, 57, 60, 66, 70, 76, 71, 85, 48, 81.25, 90, 90 and this week will be another 90.
If you have any questions, just ask, I might make it into a blog post (as the info above should probably go into one, matter of fact).
no intervals by distance? i don’t think the obsessive / competitive person in me could handle that hahahah! good for you. and you’ll be proud of me: after reading your last post about you not going out and running one mile for just because you could, i didn’t compete with myself daily (ie last monday i ran XX so i need to run XX + 1 this monday)…aka you’re a good influence?
I AM proud of you! That is major, knowing when to stop the building game – I know how hard it is. We just have to remember that that one extra mile won’t make us faster runners, it’s just another number.
Not that I’m super mature, I still have to think about it with my paces sometimes, like some days when I’m going slower on a run, I still have a tendency to think “oh, pooh”, but I remind myself that I need slower days, that they’re like the egg, what my body craves, and that releases myself from the pooh factor.
You’ll catch up to the latest post quicker than you know and then you’ll be wishing there was more to read.
Ummmm that’s what I did at work. I WANT MORE hahah
Erm, you know intervals are not time trials, right? Cool on the transition to a bit of quality anyway. I think I read the first page of the LetsRun thread and decided the whole thing was just too nasty. maybe I should take another look. Yup, have some protein.
Time trials? Can’t say I ever thought of them as that. But I’m like most people, get happy if they are faster from one week to the next or one split to the next, disappointed when they’re slower. I’d rather not know either way until race prep starts and goal setting begins. Meanwhile, I lift an egg to your health. Cheers!
Flo! We met in Philly at the Ruby Tuesday dinner before Broad Street. I blog a little about my own running, and I’ve been quietly reading your posts since then.
I just wanted to thank you for alerting me to the SWOAR blog and the LR.com discussion of it. I’m really encouraged by the discussions happening in the newer pages – looks like a lot of positive stuff is coming out of it.
Hey Jess! Nice that you spoke up, it was fun talking to you at that dinner and now I can check out your blog, too.
Yeah, it is a great discussion going on stemming from that blog, it’s interesting hearing coaches speak up, as well. I had no idea how prevalent it was among female runners, though I started to get a clue after reading a Q&A in Lauren Fleshman’s blog about some girl wanting to know what college to run for and one of the bits of advice from Lauren had to do with “look at how thin the girls are” and she went on to expand on that. It boggles my mind that this is something girl runners (and apparently boys, too) have to think about.
Edit: Just saw your contribution to the thread, good comment!
Maybe this is folklore (I’ll investigate), but I heard about a study where psychologists asked a dozen competitive female high school runners who they thought would win a race prior to the start. All of the runners predicted that the thinnest athlete would win. She didn’t. That’s the kind of problem it is.
If you’re lucky enough to go through high school and the best runner on your team is 5’4 and 135, you don’t walk away with the assumption that the thinnest athlete is going to win – you think that your well-built teammate Emily is going to win. But there’s so much evidence to the contrary. When a woman loses a lot of weight really fast, she becomes a faster runner – unless she loses so much weight that she becomes anemic, gets stress fractures, has a heart attack and dies – fun stuff. If that’s your role model, then what do you do? What can you do? There’s so much pressure to prevent something inevitable – puberty. A lot of very talented 12-14 year old female runners do not run as fast once they “fill out.” Some get faster. Check out the elite high school distance runners on Thursday night at Penn Relays (sit behind their coaches at the start/finish, you will make some very disturbing observations) – they fall neatly into two camps, the girls who look like women and the girls who look like middle school boys. But I think that a lot of what separates the girls who get faster when they mature is good coaching. A coach who looks at the big picture and says, “A high school freshman can handle 35mpw, and we will build up to 50mpw when she’s a senior.” A good example of someone who did that is Armando Siqueiros, who coached Jordan Hasay in high school. If the coach’s focus is on winning a state title this year, not four years from now, he may work athletes too hard too soon. I’m not comfortable naming someone who is a bad example, but you can tell when a high school program is turning out bad eggs. Emily and I each ran with graduates of a certain NJ high school, and those girls really had their heads screwed up!
It is such a complicated issue, and I didn’t even get into any of this stuff in my LR comment. I wasn’t even thinking about it. I think the take home message is sensitivity. You have to coach young women differently than you coach young men. You have to make sure that you’re molding young women who feel empowered by their strength and ability, not ones who feel an immense pressure to please their coaches.
Great post! I admit when I read that your speedy friend who at 5’4″ (my height) was 135 then got down to 125, I was really surprised and happy to read it. Even 125 would be considered large (like Erin Donohue size) in competition, much less 135. And a fellow blogger Kristin has said she ran better when she was heavier than at her thinnest (she’s not at all a big girl, but relatively speaking). This is important to hear, if not to say “ok, forget weight, I’ll just run” but to experiment and find out what works for you instead of making the blanket statement “thinner is faster” as I’ve been guilty of thinking. It’s not exactly untrue, but less fat + healthy = faster is more correct.
I wonder what it was like when I was school age, if it was as prevalent. I don’t even think words like “anorexia” and “bulimia” were in the world’s consciousness till I was near 20 or so. I’m sure it existed but I wonder if girl runners were as affected. Crazy stuff.
And your mention of girls looking like women vs middle-school boys is so true (I noticed it on the Footlocker XC championship this year…I’m new to watching girl races) because the ones that look like little kids are likely not menstruating, which means weakened bones, creating a downward spiral for the future.
I’m an idiot… I wrote an entire comment back to you and then I managed to close Firefox and lose it. Ugh. Here’s the hasty version of what was once a thoughtful response:
Emily was definitely well-built, even at 125. But she was 15th best in the state, so who’s to argue? For some people, saying, “Forget weight, I’ll just run” is the healthiest thing – otherwise it becomes a destructive preoccupation. For others, it is a positive tool. Figuring out where you are on that spectrum is going to be what gets you toeing the line at your healthiest. Above all, being healthy is going to be what gets you running your fastest. I was an average runner at 102 lbs/5’2 in high school (tiny but healthy) but I was injured all the time thanks to my crappy feet. I was a steady 112 in college (soft-serve frozen yogurt machine and a new weight-lifting routine), but I was uninjured for the first time and lowered my 5k PR by 90 seconds. I like to think that I could split the difference and run little faster still, but I’m not going to make myself crazy over it.
I’m sure that as long as there have been sports where small stature was advantageous, there have been eating disorders. It just means psychologists hadn’t defined them in their diagnostics manual. I can’t remember if the early-1980s track movie “Personal Best” (about female multi-eventers trying to make the 1980 Olympic Games) had an eating disorder scene or not… I know there was an athlete/coach sexual relationship, an athlete/athlete same-sex relationship, and drugs. C-r-a-z-y movie. Netflix it
LOL, I keep meaning to watch that flick, this weekend sounds like a good time to do it.
Thanks for including your own statistics, I really love hearing that tiniest is not always best, that’s some huge PR improvement!
I’m 5’4 and currently 121 though I consider my best racing weight to be 115. I’ll probably want to get back there for Fall races but right now, I’m perfectly happy “training heavy” as Lauren Fleshman says (second time I’ve referred to her but her blog is a great read).
Btw, if you want to reply again, just pick a post in this little conversation of ours that has a Reply button showing (it’s a formatting thing, don’t ask).
I checked out the She was once a runner – I think I’m addicted now too…
I’ll have to read that when I get a chance. Will remind myself there’s a link from one of your posts in May.
I like the idea of the strides, then minutes on/off speedwork as a way to keep it relaxed, working, no pressure. Also having it within otherwise ‘normal’ runs so if you just do a steady run, that’s fine too.
I wonder if you guys will be interested in that story as much as the ladies. I know a good amount of guys are posting on the Letsrun thread (that’s the majority over there anyway) but I’m not sure I’d like it if I was a guy.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to build my fall/winter marathon training and you reminded me of one key point- we can CHOOSE to run how we like. It is very easy to get into the “compete with Joe Bob” on the workouts, mileage, etc. When it comes to the end of the day, none of us are making a living on this running deal and we should do what pushes us to be the best WE can be, which may or may not be good for someone else.
I will say this- I have been totally against track work since I finished my last college season. I really had some weird brain games going on about running on that thing. I designed a Daniels-like plan for Keith (5K) and he wanted some track work. Well, then he wanted me to unlock the track for him, one thing led to another and I started running the workouts, too. Guess what- I LIKE them a *little* bit now. I’m not going to become a miler or anything, but I do look forward to those workout on occasion. (Or maybe it’s just looking at his butt.) Haha.
Anyhow, I’m glad you are sticking to your guns and making a plan that you really enjoy. I’m going to have to check out that blog now. I’ve had two VERY close girlfriends that are basically recreational runners now (used to be highly competitive) b/c of the eating issues and being constantly underfueled. It’s sometime I would love to learn more about so that I could be a better friend to them.
Um, sorry for the novel. I think I forgot this was your blog and not mine.
I love long comments! I think it’s cool that you’re enjoying the track workouts now, maybe (aside from your cute boyfriend’s ass), it’s also that you’re a fast chica now, so it’s more rewarding to do those hard things when you see what you’re capable of. At least, I know that for myself, that hard stuff is way more fun when you feel pretty good about your results. And girl, with some track work in your pocket, you’re going to build some crazy amounts of extra speed, you’re already super fast.
And puleeze, I’m sure you could not be a better friend to anyone, you’re one of the sweetest pals a person could have. But enjoy the blog anyway.
I saw that film in 1978 and was permanently scarred.
I kinda wanted to see your race results prior to adding any quality – it would be an interesting experiment…
best,
- rovatti
I thought guys loved girl on girl action!
As for race results, I’m sure they’d suck right now. Aside from one day where I did a couple miles near Half pace, the fastest I’ve gone this whole time is closer to MP, so I have no top end at all.
The only fast running I’ve done in months is beating the street light so I don’t get hit by a car. That’s like one stride every couple runs.
I’m curious to see how adding quality affects my normal runs, I suspect I’ll start slowing down on easy days but you never know.
I saw that LetsRun thread but didn’t take a look. I’ve started though.