May 14, 2006
Klutziness
For as much of a klutz as I am, I have managed to avoid really hurting myself. I've been known to walk into walls. In my own house. A house that I had lived in for my entire life at the one time that I'm thinking of in particular. I've fallen on my face and not affected my teeth. The only bones that I've ever broken have been fingers. See, I may be a klutz, but I never really hurt myself. For the past few days my right knee has been bothering me. I could not think of anything that caused it. Yesterday afternoon, I looked closely at it. It's swollen on the outside, just above the kneecap area. Kind of like when I've sprained an ankle. It doesn't hurt when I run, but it gets stiff afterwards. My thought is that I twisted it funny on Tuesday when I was on the treadmill. At one point, they had me walking and I decided to step on the stationary side panel instead of the belt. This resulted in a stumble. The knee started to hurt some on Wednesday, so this makes sense. I've been icing it since I noticed the swelling. I had it elevated earlier and now I have it compressed. I've pretty much followed RICE, except for the R part. This may require some days off from running this week. We'll see how it looks every day and take it one day at a time.
In being stubborn, I did run today. It probably would have been best to take today off, but I'm stubborn like that. I went to a park that is relatively large, but there really aren't that many places to run in it. I selected this park since it is almost completely flat. I actually felt pretty good this morning. It felt cool when I left and it was humid. The coolness was because the air was so moist. After about forty minutes, I was feeling really warm. My OCD kicked in when I got back to where I parked. It was 53 minutes, so I decided to do two more minutes to hit 55, but when I looked at my watch it was almost 56, so I ran until I hit 56 minutes. It was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 7.5 to 7.75 miles.
I think that my weekly mileage was right around 50 this week, where it will hover for the next few weeks. My body is starting to feel a bit better at the lower mileage. It always feels strange the first few weeks of cutting back and I actually feel more tired. After a few weeks, my body realizes that it is rested and it's time to race and I feel sharper and faster. Hopefully this is true since I have a full plate of races lined up in the next few weeks.
Posted by Blondie at 06:47 PM | Comments (3)
May 13, 2006
Celebrating
Thank you to everyone who expressed birthday wishes. It was a great day, all day long. I only had one real present from my parents, something that I picked out months ago. I wanted a digital camera since I have been living in the dark ages with my camera. I didn't get a fancy camera like Alison has, with a huge zoom lens. I don't need that much, it isn't what I do for a living, or even a hobby. I simply need a camera for snapshots.
Thursday night was tons of fun as well, fun that was paid for yesterday morning. I learned that in my older age I can't party like it's 1999 anymore. In 1999, I could party like it was 1999! Three hours of sleep just does not cut it when you have to work. I don't regret the night/morning and there was no "I'm never drinking again feeling", only "I'm not staying up until the time I used to wake up in the morning!".
So, onto running...Thursday night was a track workout. The forecast was for the possibility of showers in the evening. From what I understand, Boston has been soaked recently, but the mid-Atlantic seems to have a very strong high front that has caused every storm to fall apart and we are in drought like conditions. It was chilly and windy and the sky looked threatening. The workout was 5 x 800 with a 400 jog. J advised me to take it easy during the workout and just do the 800s kind of relaxed. I felt good and didn't push it, doing my 800s in 3:05, 3:07, 3:07, 3:07, and 3:02. The pacing on these was kind of off, some of them had a fast first lap and then we would adjust and others had a slow first lap that we would have to work the second lap. The quarter recovery was pretty quick, about 1:46. Doing the intervals a little bit slower makes it possible to do the recovery fast, so it's more of a tempo kind of effort. Sure enough, as we're about to head out on the warm-down, the skies opened up and it absolutely poured. Apparently, we got about an inch of rain in only a few hours.
Thank goodness yesterday was my regular day off. There was no way that I would have been able to run given how exhausted I was. Even getting in bed early last night didn't help matters all that much since I was having trouble staying awake when I got out of bed this morning. I wasn't sure what I was going to do this morning. I had been saying that I wasn't going to run for over an hour for the rest of the summer, but that drastic of step really isn't necessary. I went with a group that was going a little bit longer and did a loop that is somewhere around 11.5 miles. It rolls a lot early on and in the last two miles it has a terrible hill that just keeps going up. I felt stronger at the end of the run and actually felt relatively strong on the hill. Before the run, it started to rain for a bit, so I put my cap on. When we started the rain stopped but I kept the cap on. I hate running with a cap unless it's raining. I was happy that I had it on since it started to really rain sometime in the last fifteen minutes of the run.
After running, I went to the gym for the first time in ages. I rode the bike for 30 minutes and once again found some classic issues of Runner's World. There was one from 1987 and one from 1988. This time I took them home with me. I guess that it is technically stealing, but the magazines are nearly 20 years old. It isn't like there are recent race results or recent findings in the articles. I stretched some, but it didn't seem to help much. My right IT has been extremely tight recently. My massage therapist has noticed it for a few months, but it is just starting to bother me. My entire right leg is out of whack. I lifted some, but it isn't something that I enjoy.
Thursday was also the one year anniversary of my mom ending her chemotherapy. She had to go in on Tuesday for a mamogram since she must go every six months. Apparently there are some spots that they might want to take a closer look at again in her right breast. In November, there were two spots on the right side that required biopsies. She isn't sure if they are concerned about the same area or not. The radiologist she saw seems to have a very poor bedside manner and wasn't very helpful. She was actually argumentative when my mom told her that she had two spots biopsied in Novemeber. The doc didn't think that she had them, but I think that I would remember if somebody did a biopsy on me. Her appointment with the surgeon to go over the films is in another week and a half, so she'll find out what he wants to do then. He did call and didn't seem to think that it was too bad from the report he heard, but he still needs to see the films.
Posted by Blondie at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2006
Another One in the Books
Yesterday was a hot seven miles. 51:30, which seems to be the standard time for this course on an easy day. I realized that I had not run from home at all for three weeks, so I sort of missed my course. Nothing was too eventful about it.
Today's my birthday. Last night was the family celebration-dinner, gourmet pizza-yum! Tonight, I'll be heading out with friends. Hopefully it won't be anything that I regret tomorrow morning!
Posted by Blondie at 01:05 PM | Comments (10)
May 09, 2006
Guilt
Right now I have an overwhelming sense of guilt. An ex-boyfriend used to call this his Catholic Guilt, but I'm not Catholic, so that name doesn't refer to me. There really isn't anything to feel guilty about, but I still do. There is absolutely no reason to feel guilty for saying no to something you really don't want to do. The thing is, I feel like I hurt that person's feelings; but saying yes, and then saying no later would make me feel even more guilty. Saying yes would have started something that would probably lead me down a long road that I would continue to feel guilty about saying no at some point.
So this afternoon was a treadmill run. It was a little bit different in that I was hooked up to the computer by leads. There were some problems with "noise", so they went to fix that. Instead of standing around while they worked on the problem, I ran. Like yesterday, I felt better as my body warmed up. It ended up being seven miles on the treadmill, very easy. For, oh, about a nanosecond, I thought about going out to run some more. Then I thought better of it. My body definitely needs to recover and running longer today would only delay that. Right now I'm at a point that feels about normal, going out to do more would just put me in a hole.
I was going to take tomorrow off from running and swim instead, but since my body is feeling better, I think that I will run. It has to be in the morning since we have family dinner plans tomorrow night. Going first thing in the morning will be fine since it has to be very easy since my body isn't awake yet and it gives me 36 hours between running and Thursday's workout.
Posted by Blondie at 06:42 PM | Comments (3)
May 08, 2006
Re-Arranged Week
This week is going to be way off schedule. Not just in the sense that workouts are going to be on different days than normal. My work schedule is going to be way out of whack since I have to go into the lab earlier than normal tomorrow. This means that I'm going into work obscenely early so that I can leave early and then going back to work later. My dad and I didn't really get to work on our royally messed up task today, so tomorrow night after dinner we'll be working on it.
After a long discussion with J today, we determined that taking an extra day off from running this week will probably be beneficial. It isn't something that I would normally do, but I think that my legs are really beat up at the moment and the extra day off from running will be better for me. At the moment, we're on the brink of overtraining, so anything extra isn't such a good thing. This isn't to say that I won't do anything at all that day, I think that I'm going to swim that day.
Tonight was just shake out striders on the track. My quads were quite beat up today. I'm a fairly good downhill runner and downhills don't usually bother me too much, but I guess this has something to do with having to work so hard while falling apart. The warm-up felt pretty quick. Those of us who raced yesterday just did 100 meter strides on the back side of the track. Tonight was one of those nights that I felt better and smoother the more I ran. I did 12 strides, so I ended up with 8 miles this evening.
My quads are still tender and my calves are a bit tight. I need to get out the foam roller tonight and try to work out the gunk. I meant to bring The Stick with me to work so that I could massage my quads a few times during the day, but I forgot it. My legs also let me know that I forgot it. I tried to rub the muscles out some with my hands, but it just wasn't as effective.
Posted by Blondie at 08:12 PM | Comments (1)
May 07, 2006
Close, But No Cigar
The first thing that I want to do is to thank every single person who left comments wishing me luck and giving me confidence. It's really amazing how people who I've never met in person can be so incredibly supportive. It is a really cool thing that the Internet has brought together so many people with common interests and goals.
This morning had an early start. Part of this was the concern about oversleeping since getting to the race required getting up earlier than usual. In reality, this wasn't a problem due to drinking so much water yesterday that I woke up four times in the middle of the night to pee. No question, I was well hydrated. I had to pack my bag this morning since I got home later than I wanted yesterday and didn't feel like doing it before bed. It was surprisingly chilly when I left to meet up with the group of us who were carpooling to the stadium together. In fact, it was so nippy that I decided that I needed two long sleeve shirts. Although it isn't as long of wait as Boston is, waiting outside in a football field is part of the deal. We got up there with time to spare and took the subway ride to the start. Most years I have been able to sit down on the subway, but today I had to stand for the ride.
The football stadium was chaotic as always. In fact, it was worse this year because we've become an Ipod nation. Everyone was walking around with their headphones on and completely oblivious to their surroundings. The race information clearly states that there are no headphones allowed, but there isn't any kind of enforcement to that rule. OK, big pet peeve of mine. I managed to do a mile on the dirt track. About 300 meters of it weren't too bad, but the curve along the gate was a battle of dodging people walking in and out.
We timed it so that we really didn't have much time hanging out at the school, fine by me. As long as I have time to get my bearings it's OK. I retrieved my bag, fought my way out of the stadium and headed to the baggage buses. I changed my shoes, put on my number and shoved all my extra clothes into the bag. Once again, I had to fight my way against the masses to get to the starting area. Well, I was in the starting area, but needed to get up to the front area. I know from experience that you need to line up well in front of the pace you expect to run or else you're stuck way in the back. I accidentally went up too far and ended up in the front line, so I moved a few rows back and lined up towards the back of the seeded runner area.
My plan was to run aggressively because that is something that I need to do to race well. My main goal was to simply run a PR, with a certain time in mind but not necessarily the goal. The first few miles were on pace but the effort felt harder, my legs didn't feel great. I was on pace to run low/mid 61 through at least seven miles, maybe even eight miles. I kept stumbling over my own feet, something that I'm beginning to realize is a sign of something being wrong. There are lots of signals that I have that things aren't right, my shoulders get really tight and high and I make awful faces. This is one that might not be as obvious to people watching me run, but I know because it leads to almost falling.
Around 8 miles I completely fell apart. There isn't another race that I can remember falling apart this badly. I kept thinking about stopping and walking for a minute, but it's too hard to start to run again after walking. Then I jogged very, very slowly for a little bit and then yelled at myself to get back into it. I fought for a while longer and then had another jogging episode followed by yelling at myself some more. There are some dirty liars who put up a sign that says there is a quarter mile to go, if it is 400 meters, it is the longest 400 meters in the world. Some guy passed me with about 150 to go and told me to go with him, but there was nothing there to go. My chip time was 62:05. It was pretty devastating to see the clock change over from 61 to 62. The last two miles were an utter death march. The one thing I can say is that I went down fighting.
I can think of a few things that were against me today. My first thought, and fear, is that I'm on the wrong side of peaking right now. We have learned in the past that I can get in great shape very quickly, not nearly as long as the average person. I think some of it could also be nutritional since I didn't get to eat as well as I would have liked last night due to getting in later than expected. My theory to salvage the next month is to basically cut out all long runs and everything except track workouts are truly easy. Also, to race, race, race. J and I are going to talk about this later on, we only had a few minutes to talk immediately after the race because we passed the phone around.
Otherwise, the rest of my day was spent working. The beginning of every month is extremely stressful for me because of one of the duties of my job. This responsibillity is always stressful and this month has some major problems. My dad and I spent two hours working on it and have realized the problem is not our fault and we need to address it with the other institution. My personal life might not like working on weekends, but my bank account certainly does!
Posted by Blondie at 07:07 PM | Comments (4)
May 06, 2006
Short Easy Day
There really isn't much to write about as far as today's running goes. An easy four mile shake out in the neighborhoods. Since tomorrow morning requires getting up early to go to the race, sleeping in wasn't such good idea. I didn't want to get up as early as running with the group. Anyhow, if I go out there, I'll do way more than is good for me. My solution was to get up about an hour after I would to run with the group and go on my own. It was really nice out, maybe a touch on the warm side, but it's supposed to be cooler tomorrow. I kept trying to slow down becuase I felt like I was running harder than I should have. Of course, my allergies weren't too fond of all the freshly cut grass, but that should not be a problem at all tomorrow since there is very little grass along the course.
Tomorrow will be the sixth time that I've run Broad Street. It's funny, I've run it five times before but haven't really cared too much about it most of those years. Here's my history of the race:
2001
The first time I ran it. I'd never done a 10 mile race before and didn't really know what to expect. My main goal was to run faster than my 10 mile split from the half-marathon that I'd run in March. This was a pretty easy goal since the ten mile mark in that course is after about five miles of running uphill. My secondary goal was to get under 70 minutes. Well, I ended up PR'ing for five miles in the first half of the race and then went on to break that PR on the second half. My final time was 67:45, a lot faster than I thought that I could run.
2002
This year, I knew what I was doing, but had run a marathon in March instead of a half marathon. I also went with the girl with whom I'd been training for almost a year. The weather was perfect for racing; in the fifties, sunny, maybe a slight tailwind. We ran together most of the way and had started further back than we should have. Once again, I PR'd on both halves of the course and finished in 62:53. That race was really one of my breakthrough races. After that race, I was informed that taking another five minutes off my time was going to be very hard, duh.
2003
I wasn't going to race this year. I'd done Boston 13 days earlier, but had walked nearly half of the course. It was truly a last minute decision becuase a lot of my running friends were doing it. I had no expectations and just went to do it. The weather was even better than the year before and I didn't care at all, just went out and ran. I guess that I felt like I was owed a good race since Boston had gone so poorly and I was in the best shape of my life. That raced ended up being my PR that I'm still looking to break, 61:47.
2004
This year Broad Street was meant to be a tune up for the half marathon that I was running six weeks later. The conditions were horrendous; hot and humid with a headwind. The start got delayed and we had to stand on the starting line for twenty minutes waiting for the course to be cleared. Since I was in the midst of my build up, I didn't really know what would come of the race since my legs were dead. I was fairly happy finishing in 63:09 since hardly anyone ran close to their best times.
2005
Last year Broad Street was going to be a goal race, then the week before it I decided to run a marathon two weeks later. Clearly, tapering for this race wasn't my priority anymore. There was some taper, but I didn't have enough long runs under my belt for the marathon and didn't want to blow it completely. The original goal had been to go for a big PR, but now finishing feeling strong and not wiped out was my agenda. The conditions seemed like they could have been terrible since it rained until we got up to the start. The road was slick which made me apprehensive since I'm prone to slipping. My 62:21 made me fairly happy since it was close to my PR and it didn't kill me. I didn't feel great since I didn't cut back as much as I could have leading into it.
What does tomorrow hold? Don't know yet. I want to go out and have fun. Hopefully things go well, but there are lots of other things out there that are more important than running a fast race.
Posted by Blondie at 11:24 AM | Comments (7)
May 04, 2006
Sticking With the Plan
This week I have been very good about sticking to my taper plan. My body always feels weird when I taper. Some of it is probably mental-I think that if I feel this crappy doing something short and easy, how am I possibly going to feel good in the race. Race day probaby does it to me, I love to race and thrive on it.
Yesterday was an easy off road day. I was apprehensive about doing this since I have such a tendency to twist my right ankle. I sprained it badly two years ago before the Philly Distance Run, made it through the race, and then never recovered. Because of that, I was especially cautious. The first mile felt awful and then my stride started to flow and things felt normal. It usually takes a mile to start to feel good, two miles to really feel normal. The total run ended up being 35:30. I went to one of the parks that it really flat but not very big. This park is fine when the plan only calls for a short run, but any time I need to run close to an hour, it's a real pain because of all the doubling back it entails.
Tonight was the track workout. I considered doing mile repeats with everyone, but decided against it. Just kidding. I knew going in that I was only going to do striders. It was really warm and a bit breezy. I find it interesting and confusing that anytime I have an easy workout, it just feels so hard. Again, it must be a mental thing-going into it I think that it should be cake, but it still involves some hard running, so it isn't that easy.
I'm looking forward to my day off tomorrow. It is part of what will make me feel more ready to race on Sunday. The bruise on my calf is now greenish and not as tender. My friends can not believe that I paid to have that done to my legs.
Posted by Blondie at 07:56 PM | Comments (3)
May 02, 2006
Second Guessing
All of us go through the second guessing phase of a taper. The thoughts of losing fitness are there becuase you simply are not doing anything. I'm terrible at tapering, it is most definitely a downfall of mine. I always thing that not doing much during the week leading into a big race is going to hurt me, when I really know that it can. Nothing done in the week leading into a race that you truly care about is going to help you. I was looking back at what I did this time last year, forgetting that I knew the super-dooper big secret that Broad wasn't my big race, the biggie was still another two weeks out. That means last year's taper really wasn't a taper, so I would have to look at another year. Frankly, when I did that, I realized I have never really had this as one of my main races. Sure, there have been years when I ran very well here, but it was always an afterthought. Last year it was supposed to be one of the main races, and then I had some crazy idea about jumping into a marathon. I wouldn't give up what I did, but I wouldn't do that again, either.
Today, when J and I gossiped, we came to this conclusion-take whatever I think that I should do and do half of it. The poor man has not been able to work for three months, so we end up talking most days since he is so bored. He finally has a diagnosis and someone who says that he will be able to go back to work shortly.
Today I was supposed to run on the treadmill in the lab. I was so excited that I wasn't going to have to go out after it to get the total time for the day when things didn't go as planned. They were having a lot of trouble with what we were supposed to be doing. It had something to do with connecting myself to a computer to read my heartbeat, but they were getting a great deal of "noise". The grand total of running time on the treadmill was 3 minutes. This wouldn't cut it, there is a difference between cutting back and doing nothing at all. I went down to the school where J holds his track practice hoping against hope that some of his kids were going to be doing a distance run. This was an absurd thought since they are also in their sharpening phase, so they aren't going out to do their long runs anymore. To top everything off, he needed a watch, so he took my watch.
Not having a watch was probably a good thing for today, but I felt naked without it. It isn't a problem when I'm running an known route, but when the route is unknown, it can be a bit worrying. I did the route that I did last Tuesday, plus a two-loop segment that is just about a mile, completely untimed. My guess is that it is about five and a half miles, but I'm not going to even measure it. I was quite hungry by the time I got to run, so it wasn't the best feeling run I've ever done.
Right now I'm without my car since it's check engine light decided to make it's annual appearance. It needs a part that has to be ordered, so it's staying at the mechanic. Since I'm driving one of the 'rent's cars, it feels like I'm a high school kid again. Not that that is a bad thing. According to a "dating expert" on the Today show this morning, whenever you feel in an awkward position on a date, you should talk about something in high school since most people have good memories of that time period. I can't say that I have great memories of high school, but I do of periods of college.
I have pretty solid plans for the rest of the week as far as running is concerned and I plan to stick to them, no matter what!
Posted by Blondie at 08:45 PM | Comments (2)
May 01, 2006
Good but not Great
Tonight's workout was good but not great. It wasn't the huge workout that I was hoping for to be the last workout before racing on Sunday. As I was doing it, I was definitely happy that we decided to not do the extra bit that we had talked about during the day. Rationally, it didn't make sense to do any extra since it was the first week of this and I haven't been doing the 400s to really gain a sense of pace. That is my own fault since I raced some on Sundays so that I couldn't do the Monday night workouts.
Tonight was one of my bread and butter race season workouts. If you're on, this workout is great. If you're off, it can be extremely painful. Tonight was an in between night. My sense of pace is slightly off, but the main problem was my allergies. The workout was 16 x 300 with a 100 jog. The idea is to float through the 100, so the 300 can't be too fast. G pulled us too fast on the first 300 and I always run my recoveries fast, so I started out faster than intended. Eventually the pollen count got to me and I just could not breathe at all. It truly bothers me that I've had to stop the past few weeks during workouts for various reasons. None of the stops have been all that long, but it still bothers me. Tonight there was no way that I could have kept running at that point. I started back up less than a minute later, but still. I have not had an allergy/asthma issue this bad since college when I was swimming. Then it was because of all the chemicals in the pool area. Tonight my allergies went into overdrive and pushed me over. The total was still the fastest that I've ever done for the 300s, but it just was not what I wanted it to be.
This was it for the week. The rest of the week consists of cutting mileage and taking it easy. My initial goal for this weekend is sort of out the window. I don't think that it is possible right now. My objective now is just to PR, instead of the huge PR I was looking to do. I have found that my best races have come when I have no expectations, including my PR in this race. There is simply something to be said for just going out there and doing it without thinking about it.
Posted by Blondie at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)