What I gained from quitting was some renewed motivation on the work front and the end of guilt for having a habit.  Both results are satisfying, though it’s amusing how small the payoff actually ended up being.  Oh well, it’s good to be untethered.

Status Update
Yesterday capped a sweet running week of 49 no-pressure miles with one day off due to a sore throat/snotty cold.  The cherry on the sundae was an overnight visit from one of my 3:20 thread pals, Ultra running queen Amy and her cool cage-fighter hubby, Bryan.  We had a blast filling our guts, jabbering away and enjoying a lovely 10-miler on Sunday morning.

This week’ll be more easy running with maybe something faster near the end of the week just to keep steady.  I don’t feel a big hurry to push ahead but I don’t want to lose what I have, whatever that may be (talk about your giant question mark).

I got my appointments for the medical tests: breathing thing is on Oct. 4th and stress test Oct. 28th, so it’s part of the background for now.  I’m not thinking about it, I just want to enjoy the coming Fall temps while letting my body steer the pace.

My Complicated Head
The day after those race photos and the video came out, I had some really dark thoughts along the lines of “What am I doing this for?”  You know, you spend serious time and thought working on your body to get it as racing-able as possible, solid months working on form and posture to make yourself more efficient and then it all goes to shit when you see yourself folded over at the waist looking like something from Night Of The Living Dead.

And while you know it isn’t warranted, you can’t help but feel a sense of revulsion, particularly when it’s not the first time.  I see that video (btw, $70 for a Half and all they can afford to photograph is the finish line?  RNR are assholes) and I can’t help but think it’s something I did wrong, like pacing so far outside of my fitness level like a naive beginner.  That’s the suck.  The self-blaming.  It never really leaves, even though I’m going for tests and stuff, I’ll always have that shadow in my mind that it was something I chose to do incorrectly.  You’ve no idea how much I hate that.

But that’s when I feel like dwelling on it, which I don’t.  Right now, my thoughts are focused on continuing what I’ve started.  That this can’t interfere with the concentration I’ve done on my body, form and fitness, that I am simply moving forward from where I was on Saturday, Sept. 18th when I was confident, hopeful and pleased with what I had achieved so far.   Because that’s the fun!

And honestly, every day that I’ve been out on the road this week, it’s as if nothing bad happened.  I start running and I’m right back in the beautiful place again, the one where I know what I’m doing and have utter control of each step.  Where I feel graceful and pretty.  That’s the me I know.

New Headband Styles!
An armload of new headband goodies for you gals.

1. Brown Happy Flowers
2. Psycho Lady Red and Psycho Lady Black
3. Japanese Gold (gorgeous fabric, looks like hand-painted gold on black)
4. Warm Paisley Delight
5. Red Polka-Dots (so you can compete with that Minnie Mouse guy) and Black Polka-Dots
6. Sequins!  In turquoise, pink or silvery-white hologram

Check out the New Stuff page to see ‘em in all available widths.

When you read about or explain the Billats, it’s human nature to want to compare it to something recognizable, so you think it must be like strides or fartleks.  It’s neither.  It’s an ocean wave of running. 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, 20 times.

The difference between Billats and strides/fartlek is that the latter give you true recovery.  With Billats, 30 seconds goes by in a flash, so while the work portions are fast, the recovery portions are seemingly over even faster.  You literally do not recover, however, you get enough of a break that you can complete another surge.

But enough talk, here’s the dirt:

This is a 5×1000 workout I did in October (I’m using this to compare because I’ve only done 800s this cycle and they compare even less favorably than this one).  My HR for the workout portion averaged 177 and hit 187 Max.  I spent 12:33 at 183.  It was 20:10 of hard running.

Here are today’s Billats (30sec on,30sec off)x20.  I started them at mile 6.75 of an 11-miler.  My HR for the workout portion averaged 181, hit 188Max and I spent 14:48 at 183.  It was 10 minutes of hard running.  Do you see?  I spent more time “in the zone” for 1/2 the amount of hard running as regular intervals! Wow.

Funny thing was, I had a preconceived notion that it couldn’t be as good a workout since 10 minutes sounds so paltry.  Truth is, the recoveries end up being included in the total time since your HR doesn’t have a chance to go down much. Who’d a thunk it?

Oh, and before anyone comments on how hard it’d be to keep track of that many intervals, it’s a simple matter of programming 30/30 or just 30 seconds into your Garmin or Ironman-type watch and setting it to repeat 20 or 40 times.  Easy schmeasy.

Before I close, I wanted to update you on my resting HR after the whole quitting-pot-heart-rate-escalation phenomena.  About a week and half ago, over 4 months since I quit, it finally, finally hit my old normal HR again.  I’m really shocked at how long it was affected but utterly relieved that it’s back to good ole 48, flirting on 47.  Took long enough.

I was looking at the calendar and figuring out when the disparity started.  It was soon after my last Half, the PDR.  OK, so did I blow a heart fuse in that race?  No.  Did I start taking a new supplement?  A new allergy drug?  No.  What I did was, on Sept. 27th, one week after that race, I quit smoking pot.

Spending some quality time with my good friend Google tonight, I learned that right after smoking  pot, your HR becomes elevated for the next couple hours or so, that’s commonly known.  But what isn’t so commonly known is that if you’re a chronic user, which I’m embarrassed to say I was, it has the opposite effect.  It lowers your HR, not right after smoking but all the time.

Presented with excerpts from books and medical studies that finally answered my question Why, I’m finally able to put the overtraining fear to bed, that wasn’t it at all.  This study in particular focuses on marijuana users after a month of monitored abstinence and has this to say in the Results section (I’ll make it green in honor of weed):

“Heart rate for the marijuana subjects tested at 28 to 30 days after admission was significantly greater than the values obtained within 72 hours of admission.“

The average rise in resting HR after a month of being clean was 10 beats (8 for the Light users, 12 for the Heavys).  That’s a lot! And it explains everything.

While I’m being honest here – because what the hell, maybe somebody else can benefit – aside from one two-month break, I’ve been a pothead the whole time I’ve been running.  I should qualify that because I never actually ran stoned (well, I did once and didn’t like it), but it was an evening activity that I enjoyed for a long, long time.  I would say I qualify as a chronic user because I did it most every night, though using that study, I’d have been considered a “light” user by the quantity I took.

The funny thing is, I had made a jokey mention of it to my Sub3:20 friends a few weeks ago, thinking that getting off pot could have contributed to the HR weirdness, but I only meant it in the psychological way that not having a stress outlet might make me more anxiety-ridden, not that there would be a real physiological thing going on.

I only wish I’d have been into HR stuff last year when I was prepping for Steamtown.  I took a pot break back then too but only wore my monitor once throughout that whole cycle, so there’s no data to compare, maybe I would have figured it out sooner. No matter, I won’t have to do this again.  I want to be a the best runner I can be and smoking will never help, so I’m off the stuff for good.  OK, maybe an occasional party toke, but no more pothead Flo. Tense Flo is where it’s at from now on! Just kidding. No I’m not.  I hope I am, this tense shit is for the birds.