Posts Tagged ‘tempo runs’

A gal who makes an entire video wearing a shithead wig and discussing the wiley ways of The Bear has no business running out of dessert on a Wednesday evening and eating a mammoth bowl of frosted shredded wheat as a poor substitute.  Especially if that gal goes on a tempo run the next morning without doing her, er…business, beforehand.

Backtracking, Tuesday was quite a good run – hill reps day -  so 10mi w/5 x.25mi repeats.  When I did these 3 weeks ago, I was pretty satisfied with the workout though if you remember, once home and looking at my logs, realized I’d lost quite a chunk of fitness since last Fall’s buildup.  So this Tuesday was great because it was 10sec faster per rep, had an additional rep than the last time and a lower heart rate, to boot. Plus, they were all into the wind.  A needed confidence booster.

Wednesday was an 8mi recovery, then yesterday, a not-so-hot tempo.  It was 13mi. w/4tempo and I struggled to keep the tempo miles at anything approaching a good pace, they veered from 7:20s to 7:25, which really super sucks but honestly, I was ok with it!

Having Tuesday’s good workout was like, “Ok, this was just an off day, there’s still good things going on beyond this one run.”   I rarely do morning runs in the winter anyway, so maybe I wasn’t all there, but also…the bear! My last tempo mile was crazy fighting that gnarly wooly creature off.  Thankfully, the tempo portion ended just in front of the restrooms.   I guess you need to be careful of what you talk about, or else it might come round to bite you in the ass.  Literally.

Today is a day off, but well spent.  I made a narration demo!  I love Mike and Deb, the studio owners.  They’re a blast to hang with and she makes a mean chicken casserole.  Here are the fruits of our labor.  (warning: it’s not at all thrilling but since I’m such a media whore these days, may as well post it).

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Other than that, I’ve become enamored with Facebook this week. Last night I made a Fan Page for Gifted Runner and it’s already got 50 fans.  Half are my friends while the other half are people I don’t even know and they’re actually going to the website, so this is a very cool development. Didn’t realize just how useful it could be, so if you have a site, I highly recommend making a Page for it. And once you get 25 Fans, you can go to www.facebook.com/username to get a pretty URL for it, so I’ve got www.facebook.com/giftedrunner. Niiice.

There’s very little on the page right now but one thing I posted is a promise of new designs by February 9th. How’s that for a publicly self-imposed kick in the ass? Anyway, if you’d like to become a Fan of Gifted Runner, please do. And while I’m in beggar mode, if you want to add me to your friend pile, I’m game: www.facebook.com/flo.karp (you can get a nice URL for your personal page, too).

And with that, I’m going to enjoy the rest of this frigid day off by doing absolutely nothing and not eating shredded wheat because I have 10 w/8MP tomorrow. Just wish it wasn’t going to be 14 degrees. Winter bites.

When you have a car like mine (‘95 Saturn with 140,000 miles on it, the clear coat’s  peeled off and rust is starting to form, plus scratches, dented areas and all-round ugliness), you’d think it’d be immune to any criminal intent, right?  Nope.  Check out the license plate.

Some asshole took metal shears and cut the first letter of my plate off, along with what he really wanted, the registration sticker. SO annoying.  I don’t drive it much and it was parked on the street for a few days, then I went shopping just now and discovered it.  On the upside, I got to call 911 which was exciting.  (I called my precinct first and they told me to do it, it really wasn’t my idea).   Now I have to go through the rigmarole of getting it all squared away.

Workout wise, I had a good one today, 13 miles with 4×10min@HP w 4min recoveries.  The fast bit averaged out to 7:03 pace and my HR was back to where it should be.  Unbelievable how a bit of water (ok, lots of water) can make such a difference.

I’m going to stop here because I’m simply stewing over this license plate thing.  I need to grumble and pout heavily and if I write more, I might get distracted and end up in a great mood which would ruin everything.  So big love, signing off…rasmfrasm!@#$!@#$.

Yesterday was a good LT session, same as last week: 10 miles w/6 from MP to HP.  After the 2nd LT mile, my Garmin lost satellites so I didn’t know how fast I was going, though I pressed the Lap button at the mile markers so I could figure it out later.  Came out alright – 7:30, 7:26, 7:27, 7:07, 7:03, 7:02…avg 7:16.

I did a hard reset on my Garmin today which seemed to solve the recent satellite problem.  I also did  a body reset when I realized that the likely culprit for my high HR lately is I haven’t been drinking enough water.  I’d surreptitiously gone  back to diet soda in the past few weeks and had stopped drinking water like I used to.  I could see my pee hadn’t been clear in awhile (TMI? not for a runner) but I was just ignoring it.  So stupid.

It was this article on Active.com that got me thinking about it, because I don’t fit any of the overtraining symptoms (except for high HR) so it has to be something else.   If you look at the table near the bottom, only one lb. of fluid loss, which is equal to a 16oz glass of water (yes, 16 liquid oz of water actually does weigh a pound…cool factoid for you) can give a 6-7 beat difference.  Bingo.

So today I drank water like it was my job and on my 14 miler today (9:03 pace) my AHR was just a couple beats faster than my recent recovery runs at 9:57.   I’ll be curious to see how/if my resting HR changes in the next day or so.

On the mice front, as I mentioned in a comment to the last post, the second I turned the light out and went into the bedroom that night, I heard SNAP! and the life of a little mouse ended behind my refrigerator.  Happy to say, nothing has touched the remaining traps and no more turdettes have been found, though I always heard where there’s one mouse, there’s 100, here’s hoping this was one wayward soul.

I love rain but 4 days straight of it was a little excessive.  The first day, Thursday, I did 14 @ 8:47 in an unending onslaught of rain, with the promise that by doing 14, I’d get to take the next day off.   I was smiling like a loon for most of it,  just because I knew I looked like a kook out there, but I had my trusty rain jacket and cap, so aside from some chilly hands at the end, all went well.

Friday was off (first day off in a month, so I loved it), then Saturday was another damp run, 16@8:13 (last 6 miles were a little under 8:00) and then Sunday, 10@8:35.  So even with the day off, I still racked up 70.18 miles for the week.

Yesterday was 8@8:22 w/10 hill sprints.  Then today, there wasn’t anything interesting on the menu because I was supposed to have done a race or time trial on Sunday as per Hudson, so he figured I was still recovering today.  So I took next Tuesday’s workout which looked kind of fun, and did that today.  The workout was 10 miles w/6miles from MP accelerating to HMP.  Gorgeous day for it, too.  Everything went as planned, started the fast bit with 7:30 finishing with a 7:05, avg. 7:17.  Pace for the entire run – 7:50.

This is going to be my first 80 mile week!  Got a couple of these, then one 90 mile week and then taper time.  Can’t believe it’s already closing in already.  The rest of the week has a couple easys (one of which I’m taking to Smile hill because I want to get some hills in each week for the next few weeks).  Then Friday has a dense little speed/LT session, 10 with 10×1k@HP/10k pace w/1min recoveries, short easy on Saturday and then 24 on Sunday.

I remember at Steamtown when I passed the 22 mile point thinking, “ok, this is as far as I’ve ever gone, let’s see what happens now.”  Of course, my feet were pulp by this time, so I also interjected Ow and Fuck into those thoughts, but the gist of it was finally realizing the unknown.  So I’m happy to be doing 24 this time round.  Not that I see it being any different from the 22s, but still, it’s good.

On other news, they found Nick’s car!  The bad news is, it was at a chop shop so it’s ruined.  The good news is, they caught the asshole who did it!  The bad news is, Nick had to sit in court for 3 hours today so he could stand up and swear to the fact that it was his car and he had locked it.  I’m thrilled that they caught the creep since so often this type of crime ends up with no one to take the blame so at least there’s that.  Hopefully the insurance company will give Nick something good to work with as far as compensation.

And that’s it for today, my lovelies.  I’m off to Trader Joe’s for some of my new favorites frozen foods.  I’m loving their little individual quiches (I’m always up for a crust fix) and their frozen Chicken Tikka Masala is very close to restaurant quality (add a piece of their garlic naan and I’m in heaven).

I lied.  I said I was only going to do one quality session/week for the next few months, but I have a 5K next weekend that is set to be my first sub21 (woohoo!), so I figured I might as well milk what I can out of training till then, so I stuck a tempo in on Friday.

It was a 9-mile run with 3 @ tempo targeting 6:52s.  It was 77 and humid and I started the first mile darting around meandering teenagers competing in yet another rowing event (graduate already!) so I ended up averaging 6:58s.  Eh, it was an “extra credit” tempo anyway, so I was happy with it, regardless.

Today’s run needed no excuses though, it was a super swell 12-miler, capping off a 66-mile week.  After a week of humid days in the mid/upper 70s, today’s 61 and cloudy was heaven, reaping me a 8:01 pace with a nice low avg. HR of 68% HRR.  My resting, btw, hit a new low this morning of 43, a welcome contrast to the entire month preceding my Half, when it remained elevated at 48, 49.

Back to movie gab, we saw Spellbound last night, about kids competing in the National Spelling Bee.  Kazz, you were right, it’s great – I laughed, I cried, I totally loved it.  Word Wars (the Scrabble one) is coming soon, though not before Bigger Stronger Faster which looks like huge fun – it’s a documentary about steroid freaks.  I can’t wait!

Woohoo!  I went for a 6-mile tempo, not anything Hudson advised, but because 3 weeks ago I did a similar tempo and wanted to collect new HR data on it for comparison.  Of course, I could have skipped this thing entirely because, according to McMillan, the 10K on Sunday gives me a 7:15 Half pace and I find McMillan pretty accurate – but it was nice to have the extra shot of confidence and confirmation this tempo provided.

My HR was high in general (64 degrees, Noon run)  but I’m not worried, especially after seeing how high my HR got at the 10K.  The main thing is the last few miles stayed steady and didn’t rise much, which bodes well for sustainability.  I averaged 7:14/mi which comes out to a 1:34:45 Half.  I really hadn’t planned on attempting to crack 1:35, but maybe I need to just go for it.  We’ll see.

Before I sign off, I want to give a shoutout to Jim, my trusty blog commenter, online racing buddy and friend. He’s doing a tough marathon this Sunday, Big Sur, so here’s to a great race and enjoy the view.    Go, Jim, go!