Posts Tagged ‘mental aspect of running’

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt truly confident in my running, close to 2 years actually.  Though I’ve had some ups along with the downs during that time, I’ve never fully trusted any of them, expecting nothing since nothing was standard fare.  But last Friday’s MP run was like a gently fallen seed of confidence that, instead of brushing away as I tend to do, I let sit.  And this week it began to grow.

A couple days after Friday’s run, I started piecing things together, going from “I think this is working” to “This shit is working”.  That might seem silly, since my reports have pointed to progress since I raised the mileage, but as long as there were still holes where my faster paces were supposed to be and heart rates that wouldn’t budge, I wasn’t completely convinced.  The pervading thought I’ve had through all this has been “I’m really good at running easy pace…now what about the rest?”

It took me a day or two to realize that Friday’s run was the most indicative sign of progress I’ve had so far because there was no way I could ever have run an MP section like that before.  No way.  And in humidity/heat?  Double no way.  But now that I’ve digested that and am trusting that it is indeed the real deal, my attitude is changing.

My speed session yesterday, for example.  Speed days always freak me out, ever since the plateau started and throughout its duration, I’ve always done them with a tinge of dread, as in “how much is this one gonna suck?”  But the way I felt preceding yesterday’s session was the way I remember feeling when I was on my growth roll, back in 2009: calm with a tinge of excitement, because I knew it’d be better than last week, though last week didn’t even suck, I am finally able to expect progress, at least for a little while.  That’s huge.

The workout was an exact repeat of last week: 9 miles w/ 9x(3min on/1min off @ 10k pace).  The 3min on’s were 6sec faster than last week though the dewpoint was worse.  Even the last couple cooldown miles were peppy @8:02s, leaving me with an average pace of 7:42 for the whole she-bang.

My heart-rates are getting to where they should be, too.  Each week’s speed session brings my Max HR for the workout one beat higher (yesterday, I hit 183 at the end of the last one), so I’m breaking through that wall slowly.  For reference, when I wore my HR monitor in a 10k (my PR 10k, actually) I averaged 182, maxed at 188 and that was on a cool day.  It’ll be interesting to see where my heart rates go from here and if they ever match the old ones again, though it doesn’t really matter as long as the paces are doing what they should.  But back to the running…

Today was a 15-miler that, by all rights, could have been quite sloggerly after yesterday’s hard effort.  I would have been fine with that, btw, since I’m now totally focused on quality  days; whatever pace the peripheral runs end up at is immaterial, I just want to be recovered enough to do the workouts.  Anyway, I started with a creaky 8:50 and didn’t feel so great until about mile 5, then I picked it up nicely, ending up with 15@8:16.

Tomorrow is an 11 which I’ll take real easy, tacking drills/strides on at the end, the better to be loose and ready for Friday’s major tempo run:  12 or 13 miles with 6.5 miles of tempo, the first 5mi@7:05 and the last 1.5mi @6:55.

It’ll be a challenge but one thing in my favor is that Friday is supposed to be mid-to-upper 60s with a dewpoint in the 50s, the best weather we’ve had in months.  That should really help.  Aside from that, there’s one other thing I think is going to help out on that run: my beautiful new training companion…a little confidence.

Writing a blog is such a narcissistic endeavor, a constant collection of me me me and this blog is probably worse than most (see? I just made myself even more special by calling myself more irritating).

Sometimes I embarrass myself with what I write but enough of you come back that I like to think it strikes a chord or two beyond the me-ness.  I always hope that whatever I jabber on about has some value to someone somewhere, whether applicable to your own experiences or for a “well at least I’m not as crazy as she is.”

I’ve written a lot of posts on the emotional side of running, though many never get as far as the Publish button because sometimes I think I’m just rehashing the same worries and wonders.  If this post seems like that to you, I’m sorry, it probably is.  But I’m putting it online anyway because it feels as though something new is happening and I want to document what I’m going through.

It actually came from a really fun day, yesterday, where I spent hours on the internet reading articles and forum archives on mileage-building success stories to threads about training without interval work (a fantastic thread, btw!) to all kinds of testimonials proving how different our training needs might be while at the same time, noting the universal threads that tie us together.  And what struck me over and over again is how people keep getting faster for years, even decades into the sport – that it’s a given, really.  It was extremely motivating.

So here’s the deal…
Something is happening to me in the improvement department. I’ve alluded to it in a few posts and even though I’ve only just sidled up to the gate of higher mileage, I’m pretty sure what I’m seeing is not a figment of my imagination.

But while I have quicker paces and heart rate data to back it up, I’m so used to thinking I suck that it’s requiring a real mental shift to accommodate the idea of becoming faster. I mean, it’s exciting to imagine and brings to mind those first couple years when I kept printouts of McMillan’s calculations by my bedside, dreaming of working my way down to who knows where.  But it also makes me sad that I’m having to convince myself of hope.  Negating is easier than believing.

Because over the past year and a half, I’ve seen tons of Facebook and forum friends get faster, many in a seemingly endless straight line.  It’s like everyone was zooming into new territory while I’ve been standing there, feet glued to the ground, sucking in the fumes of everyone else’s motion trail.

I think it’s safe to say that with my negative incidences within the sport, both medical and the long plateau, I’ve had something akin to depression when it comes to the racing side of running, and it’s lasted a good year and a half.  Through it all, I kept asking myself “is this about my age?” and “why am I so different from everyone else?” and “what am I doing wrong or is this even within my power to change?”.  It never made sense to me that in the relatively short time I’ve been a runner, I could have already sucked the well dry, yet I was 3/4 of the way resigned to that being the truth.

I’m sure this sounds overly-dramatic and slightly insane to some of you who might not be as mentally invested but I bet a lot of you probably get it.  Even though most of us aren’t even high-end amateurs, within our various levels of skill, so many of us share a genuine passion to see what we can accomplish in the sport, how far we can go.  There aren’t many things in life so simple, that test you as a person and offer so much experimentation to get right…or better, at least.  So it matters.  That’s part of the joy of it: the mattering.

Anyway, here I am – the data says I’m getting faster, my legs and lungs say I’m getting faster, I’m on the cusp of building a sturdier aerobic engine than I’ve ever had, yet I still manage to find myself smothered in reasons why I’m fooling myself:  it’s because I’m not racing so it doesn’t count, it’s because I haven’t been doing quality work so my legs are unnaturally fresh, it’s because the weather is good, it’s because…  STOP!

It’s time.  It’s time to start believing that what I’m experiencing is positive and real, to have confidence and trust that I’m not different from anybody else, it’s just taken me some time to find that elusive key, is all.  The key we each require to become our best.  To think otherwise is bullshit.  It’s time to believe.

My runs.  They’re improving.  Why?  I think it’s a mixture of
1. Taking that 2-week break
2. Removing quality runs, thus taking all the pressure off and
3. Getting laid on a regular basis

OK, well maybe not that last one, but it sure has lifted my general mood.  As for the break, soon after I was back on the roads, I thought “That was very nice, but didn’t really do anything for my running”  but now I’m thinking it might be the catalyst for what’s going on.

Perhaps it’s like running higher mileage, that you see the fruits of it appear a couple cycles down the road.  Who’s to say the effects of a break wouldn’t be slightly delayed as well?  Might be totally bogus and have nothing directly to do with my current progress, but if nothing else, it gave me permission to do #2 on that list without fear of regressing.

Another interesting and positive thing is that I weigh 119, as I have for the last couple months.  The whole appetite-quashing experiment started because I wanted to get back to 115 (my weight over the winter) to eek out as much speed as I could but I was getting hungry at night while not wanting to count calories or be strict about dieting.

But if I’m getting faster at this heavier weight and it doesn’t give me the evening munchies, then screw it!  I’ll save 115 for its original and proper purpose: racing.  All I ever cared about with the weight thing was making progress and since it appears I now am (and can still fit in my tight jeans) it’s all good.

Now For The Runs…
As mentioned in last week’s post, my average pace that week was 8:10, something I hadn’t previously clocked without quality runs in the mix.  Also if you remember, I wore my HR monitor once to make sure I wasn’t racing my runs, which showed 77% HRR on an 8:03 run, perfectly respectable aerobic pacing.  Well…it was even better this week.

First off, here are the last 7 days:
Mon: Off
Tues: 9@8:14
Wed: 8@8:05
Thur: 9@8:20
Fri:  9@8:00
Sat:  14@8:09
Sun: 11@8:00
Total: 60 miles (avg pace 8:08)

Btw, when you don’t have any quality workouts, you don’t need recovery runs so if you look at these last couple weeks and wonder “where are the slow runs?” I just didn’t need any.  Trust me, if I need one I’ll do it but I won’t add one in unwarranted – the rest day has been providing adequate recovery.

Now lets talk about my last 3 runs, all of them notable:

Friday
What’s weird about Friday is that it was the warmest day of the year so far (72 degrees) and that’s usually a performance hit for me right off the bat.  I pared down to a sports bra and shorts, but because I’m a little shy about the first shirtless run of the year (because there are only a few other chicks out there who wear sports bras)  I ran faster from the get-go.  It’s a silly thought pattern that goes “If I’m gonna run nekkid, I better look the part”  So miles 2-4 averaged 7:41.  That was great until…

I got dehydrated during mile 4.  The fountains haven’t been installed yet so I knew I was somewhat screwed.  I made myself slow down and turned around early to make it a 9 instead of the planned 10.  As I was coming back, I felt like I was seriously trudging, like 8:30s, plus I was running into a headwind, so when I glanced at my Garmin and saw I was going 8:00 to 8:05s, it was genuinely freaky.  I stopped at the bathrooms (one mile from my house), drank from the sink and resumed, the last mile my slowest.

Saturday
Since Saturday is date night which always continues through the following afternoon (happy sigh) I’ve started doing my LRs on Saturday so I have less miles to fit in on Sunday.  I had planned to do 13 but it was so beautiful (mid-50s again) that I added an extra mile making it the longest run I’ve done since January.  I began at a conservative pace (first 3 miles averaged 8:40s) thinking this would indeed be the week’s slow run, but as I warmed up, it became an unexpected progression run, getting down to a couple miles at 7:30.  I really didn’t know where that came from.

Sunday – Another Effort Check
After Friday’s weird fast run and Saturday’s progression surprise, I needed to again check that I wasn’t perceiving myself as running easy but in actuality working too hard, so I wore the Heart Rate monitor.  Um…wow.  11 miles averaging 8:00/mi, HR was 159 (74% HRR), even better than the previous week’s test.  This means that whatever’s happening under my skin isn’t a fakeout and I’m not racing my runs at all – it’s the real deal.  Exciting!

The Racing Situation
With all this happy running going on, I had a really weird thought the other day. What if I don’t race again till next Fall?

My plans were to do a 5K in April and the Broad St. 10-miler in May.  The latter would be a huge PR no matter what since I haven’t run a 10-mile race in a couple years.  BUT, I’m also thinking why ruin this time of delight and peaceful running by getting myself worked up with performance angst?  I want to be hungry to race, not do it because I think I should or to get a PR by default.

So I haven’t made a decision yet but it’s a real possibility.  I’m considering continuing this no-training way through the summer, keeping the mileage between 60-70mpw, sharpening in the Fall and then have a coming-out party with the (previously named) Philadelphia Distance Run in September.

Whatever happens, I’m having one of my most satisfying running periods right now.  No day is a bad day. Can’t beat that with a stick.

First off, thank you many times over for all the great blog/facebook/forum comments and emails.  From stories of similar situations with successful endings to those currently adrift in the same boat as me, I’m blessed to have such support.  Twas a busy post, too: 323 unique visitors on Tuesday, a usual day is around 220.  Something about life sucking gets a lot of eyeballs.

I suppose what I really sought from that post was permission to lay off a bit.  I know that sounds ludicrous, I’m a big girl with a working brain, but somehow the idea of  “you can chill some, it’s ok” was not meshing with my inner prejudiced “man-up” “don’t be such a wuss” voices.

In a strange coincidence, the same day I posted that last entry, an article was published on Running Competitor addressing my worries in a freakily specific way (he must have known someone was going through runnerpause that day).  Check it out: Feeling Fried? Enjoy Your Training & Avoid Burnout by Matt Fitzgerald.

“…whereas runners typically focus on training for improvement and simply trust that they will enjoy their training if they train properly, new research on the role of the brain in exercise suggests that we may be better off doing the opposite: prioritizing enjoyment and trusting that the more fun we have in training, the fitter we will become.”

So with the help of your comments and this article as the cherry on the sundae, here’s my training plan for the time being:  Week 1 – Week Whenever: Enjoy

I did manage to get those progression miles in yesterday on an 8-miler just because it was bugging me how much I didn’t want to do it since, of all things, progressions are the simplest and most laid back.  It wasn’t fabulous or surprising (got down to Half pace) but it didn’t suck.  I’m cool with that.

GIM Headbands At The Endrance Sports Expo!
My pal Lara and her man Jeff own GoCycling.com with the coolest bike jerseys and accessories around, really neat designs with city skylines or craft breweries on them. (pssst…”Like” their Facebook page to win a free t-shirt!)

One of my favorites from their collection

Anyway, they’re super cool people and they’ve done a few Expos or events recently where they sell my headbands as a sideline to their own stuff, which is great because I don’t have to be there or make a trillion zillion headbands as I would if I was doing an Expo on my own.  This weekend it’s a huge one, the Endurance Sports Expo at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, PA.

So I’m stopping by on Sunday with my new man, Fran (yes, he has a name and it is Fran) for a first “these are my friends” and “this is my new man” introduction (oooh scary).  While we’re there, we’ll go to one of the free seminars offered.

Interestingly enough, Matt Fitzgerald is going to be one of the speakers that day, but I’m going to pass since he’s talking about his Racing Weight book and there’s nothing new I care about on that score.  Instead, I’ll be dragging Fran with me into Torbjørn Sindballe’s seminar Developing Champion Mentality which sounds right up my alley.

Back to headbands, I’ll have a HUGE array of new styles next week, about 15 new patterns and they are so cute! I’ll keep you posted when they’re up on GIMheadbands.

I’m In The Spotlight Today
I was asked by a very sweet blogger, Jodi from runjodirun, if I would be this week’s featured runner on her blog.  She sent a list of questions and asked for a few photos so check it out when you get a moment.

Kinvara Jackpot
I got my shoes yesterday and they fit me to a T!  All this time I’ve been modifying the Women’s version and hating on the colors when I should have followed my friend Heather’s lead months ago with the Men’s version.  I thought there’d be more difference between them but all I can tell is it’s a tad wider and the tongue is a bit longer [insert dirty joke here].   3 pairs at $36 each…Win!

OK, I’m coming clean…that last post was a fight to write.  I had some mental crap I was avoiding and did a pretty good job of talking myself out of it.  Sometimes it’s like that when you write a blog post, you reread what you just wrote and think “this is too much of a downer, let me look at it from a different view.”  Sometimes this actually works and you can end up feeling upbeat about the situation, but sometimes, it’s just a distraction.

So here’s the deal:  My running break did what it was supposed to do, repair a tired body.  But I also had this hope that I’d want to start training again for real (as in, woohoo intervals and tempo workouts!!) but I don’t.  Silly when you think of it, 2 weeks is basically a blip, why would I expect anything but the same mental game I had when I left off?

What I think I’d like to do (because I’m really unsure of myself right now) is spend the next few weeks running about 50-60mpw and just play it be ear, add occasional strides or faster portions when I feel like it, but for the most part, easy running.  This would seem to be a simple decision (hell, just shut up and run then) but I don’t want to get slower!  If doing weekly intervals and tempos gave me a tad over maintenance, what will “just running” do to me?

There are potentially 2 options:
A. I slide backwards (the likely scenario).  The question is how much?  And do I really want to chance this?!?
B. I maintain because maybe my mental game is what fucks me up and without the pressure, I’d be ok.

There is also a 3rd option but it belongs in Dreamland:
C. I get faster because my mental crap was so debilitating that running like a pretty pony with nary a care in the world was all I really needed.

Actually, my incredibly fast friend Meredith did C (minus the debilitating mental crap), stopped formal training for a year and “just ran”  ending up with great speed gains, but she’s gifted, so that doesn’t really count.  Then my friend Amy, another fasty, reminded me of her lack of speedwork last year, that for whatever reason she didn’t feel like doing it even though she knew she was leaving some speed on the table, but now she’s hitting some really hard workouts which she attributes partly to that break.

As for the coming months, I still have a 5k I’d love to do in April plus the Broad St. 10-miler in May so it’s not like I’m eschewing everything and becoming 100% hobby jogger, I’ll have to do something in preparation for those races, but it’ll be small (and I’m not going to do the Adrenaline 5k in March, another favorite race).

So bottom line, I’m considering becoming a 75-80% hobby jogger until I feel the hunger again.  I want to want to run hard and to test myself but at this moment in time, I don’t.

Peaks And Valleys
I said this a few posts back, but I refuse to believe that at 4 years running (the last year being a plateau, so 3 years of progress) I could have reached my running peak yet.  So if you at home are thinking, “Get used to the end of PRs, it happens to everyone”, I don’t believe it happens to anyone this quickly.  But we all have different routes and timelines to reaching our best, many folks have stops and starts, which is another reason I think laying off for a tad might not be so bad, like a larger shell for what my 2-week break started. Micro to Macro.

BUT! There is something that might be messing with me and contributing to a cap in my gains, whether physiologically or mentally (well, definitely mentally but maybe physically as well) and that is my history of medical racing mishaps.  I’ve had 3 of them now which is 3 more than most people will ever have.

It’s put a sizeable dent in my mental racing game but what I hadn’t ever thought about was potential physical fallout from it.  My friend Ewen posted something interesting on his blog about seeing his friend “get the staggers” in a race.  What gave me pause were a couple comments that mentioned Noakes (an authority on science and running) saying that crossing that line too often can hinder your running life permanently…shorten it.

So it’s conceivable that I may be on a different schedule for having been zapped a few times, maybe I could be cooked earlier than most.  There’s not really any way to tell though so I’m going to carry on as if I didn’t read that.

The Blog
I was getting all weird yesterday out on my run, thinking about this stuff and the blog, too.  I was noticing how much less I posted while on break and even now, coming back, I realize that without something to strive for running-wise, I become a lame  writer (not in the disdainful sense of the word, but the handicapped one).  That without running goals and plans and workouts, I don’t have a whole lot to say.  I don’t talk a lot in real life anyway – not that I’m a mute, but I’m not much of a chit-chatter either.

So I had this weird thought that if I don’t “train” for a while, maybe I should temporarily pause the blog.  Not just for lack of material, but to stop being accountable for a while, because some days it really does get old to report the same tired “I’m not improving” shit.  Sometimes you just want to not be embarrassed by a sucky workout or that you posted for the thousandth time what the temperature was because, even though you think it’s relevant to the workout or race, it just sounds excuse-y. Then again, if I’m not training in the real sense, there’ll likely be nothing disappointing to report for a while.  That would be fresh and new, huh?

Anyway, today, I’m in a better headspace and will make a real effort to fight the “what if’s” as they arise and try to stay in the Here and Now because really, that’s all there is.

Which ends this not-that-cheerful post but I’m going to click the Publish button anyway and put this mess online.  I want to get it out because it’s the truth but at the same time, I’m rolling my eyes at myself for being such an emotional goof.  I just wish I was getting my period so I’d have an excuse for it.

A few weeks ago, Coach A muse/Adam asked when was the last time I had 2 weeks off from running.  I took a glance through my logs and the answer was…never.  Almost 4 years of running and the most I’ve taken off is a couple one-week breaks: May 2008 to tend to an ankle injury and this last June after the collapse/hospital stay.

This has positive implications; I’ve been able keep at it thanks to my body behaving admirably – a lucky thing for such a late-starting couch potato.  But when Adam said he thought I should take a few weeks off after Carlsbad, a feeling of nervousness came over me and I dismissed the idea entirely.  A few weeks?  Such a long time!  I’m not a cross-training gal – I’ll lose all my fitness and turn into a fat pig.

That said, I’ve been mulling it over this last week.  It does seem slightly twisted that I’ve been in training cycles almost non-stop since 2007.  What’s a couple weeks in the scheme of things?  When I came back from the week off in June, I felt no difference at all, so two weeks off can’t be that drastically different.

Then a few days ago, I read this cool thread in LetsRun, which asks What was the most important thing you did in training before a big breakthrough?  A couple people spoke of taking time off (more than 2 weeks, one took 10) and coming back faster than ever.  I bookmarked the thread.

Today, checking in with Adam, he again brought up taking time off and said he couldn’t think of too many serious runners who didn’t take real breaks, saying “Paul Tergat was adamant about it”.   So I told him yes, I’d do it.  I asked if I could do some short runs during this time (because it’s scary to go into this uncharted territory) and he said he didn’t see the point.

As if I needed more confirmation (I don’t, Adam is the voice of reason) I just opened Jack Daniels’ Running Formula to read the section on Planned Breaks which says “Runners should take a few weeks off occasionally as scheduled breaks from training” and “Although runners are often reluctant to take breaks, most breaks are beneficial in terms of overall development.  A break gives both the body and the mind some time to regroup.”  “Sometimes, a couple of two-week breaks fit into an annual schedule quite well, but eventually a more prolonged break (four to six weeks) is probably a good idea.”

Obviously, I could use some regrouping, probably more in my head than body, but both will surely benefit. So this should be interesting, a new experience in this running adventure which turns out to be Not Running.  I won’t be doing any real aerobic activity though I might pull out some pilates and yoga DVDs, maybe take some walks by the river, keep a few push-ups and a little core work to keep the guilt away.  It’ll be good for me, no matter what.

Btw, Joe sent out an email to a few of us last week for ideas on the next Runners Round Table podcast.  Since this has been on my mind, I said I’d like to hear about it in an episode and much to my delight, that’ll be it: Rest, recovery, and aging.  It’s on for this Wednesday at 8pm.  I’m not participating in it, btw, since this is something I don’t have experience in, but am looking forward to hearing more seasoned runners discuss the subject.