The Long Run

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

Our Vices

Candy seems to be a much written upon topic on all of the eliterunning.com blogs. I'm pretty sure that my obsession with the sweet stuff is part of what contributes to yesterday's unhappiness with getting on the scale. Anyhow, in the fall, it's candy corn. All year long it is hard candy. At Easter, it's Peeps. Now, Peeps are available at nearly every holiday, but at Easter they are most abundant. We stopped doing Easter baskets years ago, but Peeps are always sought out in the first few days after Easter when they go to 75% off. Peeps are OK fresh, but the last few in the package are the best-when they are slightly stale. Tonight I am at the end of a package and the Peep that I had tonight was at the perfection of staleness. Starting tomorrow, that same self-control will go into the Mike & Ikes that are all over the office. I'm putting a limit on how many I am permitted per day. Right now, ten sounds like a good number.

This morning was one of those mornings that when I woke up, I really did not want to drag myself out of bed. I still felt tired (still do) but pretty much knew that if I went back to sleep, I would sleep so late into the day that there would be no way that I could get to bed at a decent hour tonight. Basically, I woke up right at that time that it was late enough to constitute sleeping but early enough that it wasn't that late. If I went back to sleep, it would have meant sleeping until an obscenely late hour.

As warned, my right calf was tender today. In fact, there is also a bruise on it where the knot is/was. I'm pretty sure that the know is still somewhat there, although nowhere near the proportions of yesterday.

Eventually, I got moving and headed over to the trail to run. I definitely started out gingerly since my body has been so beat up lately. I ended up feeling pretty decent, but didn't really do anything other than add a little bit extra on at the end. When I started out, there was a woman who was running towards me who appeared to by flying, although I'm not necessarily a good judge of what other people are actually doing. I'm one who is known to see someone and think they are running so fast, when in reality they are only running something like 9 minute pace. This is only of note because she was not a familiar face. In the end, I ran for an hour and didn't feel too bad. There were periods where I felt really hungry, but for the most part I felt fine. That's the price I pay for running before eating, but it is better than the alternative.

I ended up with 64 miles for the week. If I'd known that I was a mile away from an even number for the week, I may have run another mile somewhere in the week. Starting this week, my weekly mileage is going to plummet. On top of that, I'm going to start racing. A lot. One of my key races is next weekend, so this week is a taper sort of week. I'm looking for some races with lots of competition to go to. If I'm going to travel, I need to figure out where I'm going soon to make the reservations. Race season will be for the next month and then I'm going to shut it down. One of the races I really want to key in on for the fall is early, so that means that the summer is going to be rough.

Hope that everyone has a great week!

A Bit of a Wake Up Call

This isn't something that I try to write about on a regular basis, although the topic has crept in occasionally. Distance runners and weight have a bad reputation. Personally, I have gone through periods that may be on the other side of that fine line. One of the problems with that fine line is that when you are right there, that is when performances tend to be the best. The solution that has worked for me is to simply avoid the scale. Today, I gave into temptation-I weighed myself. The outcome was not what I would have liked. The scale I was on does tend to weigh a bit on the heavy side, but it was still several pounds over what I consider to be my prime weight. I know what my downfall is and need to work on the willpower issue, but I have not been all that happy today as a result of this discovery.

One of the nice things about race season, is that my long run isn't nearly as long. I do enjoy doing really long runs, but it gets lonely when nobody else is going as long as you are. This morning was supposed to be anywhere from 10-13 miles. I had arbitrarily decided that it should be 90 minutes, although my "directions" were to run with whoever was there and then add on some if necessary. We ended up having a nice sized group and perfect conditions. We did a museum/estate loop, something I haven't done since December. All of the flowers were in bloom and it was absolutely beautiful. The pace felt quick, but I though that was because my legs were absolutely trashed. M and G confirmed my suspicion that the pace was fast, which made me feel much better. It turns out that they did the same loop last weekend, only it was four to five minutes slower. When we got back, it was only 67 minutes, so I added some on in a nearby development. This extra loop confirmed that the pace had been fast the entire time since when I did it as a push it took 14 minutes and it took less than that today.

I only ended up running for 81 minutes, so it was short of my agenda. I kind of made the decision that my legs have felt like absolute garbage for a week and that ten extra minutes really would not do anything good for me. I could just see myself getting into a big hole and not be able to climb out of it. Since one of my biggest races of the season is next weekend, there really is no point to doing any extra running at this point. This really is more of a taper week.

After my run, I went to the gym and lifted. My arms are still on the sore side and I didn't have much time, so it was another quick lift. It is really sad that doing those arm circles completely threw my shoulders into a tizzy.

I had a much needed massage this afternoon. My calves had been feeling on the tight side all week. This is rather normal since I tend to do a bit of toe-running. Anyhow, I was brought to tears as she worked on my right calf. There was a knot the size of a golf ball in it that would not come out. My massages are painful in the first place, but this had me beyond the typical yelp. My therapist reminded me to drink plenty of water today and gave me warning that it could be quite sore tomorrow. She also reminded me to work on my right foot because it is tight and we don't want that to turn into something else. It's funny since it had felt tight last week, but I thought it had gotten better. Reminder to self-must do more stretching.

Well, my glass of water is empty...need to refill it to work out all of that crap that got flushed out of my legs today.

An Ending and A Beginning

Today marks the end of my doubling up for the spring season. This morning was my last morning run for several weeks. It was quite brisk this morning, but pleasant for running. I'm sure that I looked kind of funny out there wearing shorts, long sleeves, a hat and gloves. I just could not bring myself to wear tights in late April, although it really was long pants weather. My legs felt quite trashed this morning, so I tried to run easier, but it was the same time that it always seems to be. It is amazing how my body has become conditioned to 7:30 being an easy pace.

Since it is the end of the mileage phase of training, that means that it is the beginning of the speed and sharpening phase. This was making me nervous all day since my legs still felt trashed all day, especially my calves. The agenda tonight was to do 4 x 1000 and work on speed. The recoveries on Thursday are getting slower, but Monday is still push and cruise. Tonight's recovery was to be slower than a cruise, but faster than complete recovery. The 1000s were supposed to be quick, in other words, now we're working on getting my legs moving. They went well. There was a nice size group of us working together which always makes it easier. We started at 3:40, then hit 3:36, 3:35, and 3:36. Most of them we started out easy and brought the pace down. The third one started faster which is reflected in the time.

My arms are so sore. It can't be only from lifting yesterday because they were already sore before I did that. It must be from all of the arm circles and movements that R put me through on Tuesday. Putting my arms up over my head today was painful, I hope that it goes away soon.

There seems to be a little track meet going on this weekend up the road. I ought to be there right now, but instead I'm sitting at home. The last time I went up was the year that I ran Boston and didn't have to do a workout tonight. That isn't really an excuse, it is free and it is close. We considered entering it this year, but it just didn't seem like it was worth it. Racing a 10K on the track after 10 in the evening just didn't sound like it was going to bring a fast time. It might be fun, but this year didn't seem to be the year to do it. I've never run a 10K on the track and Penn might not be the place to make that debut. Plus, doing it after my bedtime ruins 2 days of work.

My legs and body are greatly looking forward to my day off from running tomorrow. Almost as much as they are looking forward to their massage coming soon!

Ugly Run

Way back when Alison first moved to Medford, she wrote about the difficulty of finding new routes. One of her routes in particular, she described as one where she'd know where to bury a body if she ever needed to. My run today made me think the same things, although hiding a body where I was would have been really hard. I guess I thought that since it was just an ugly run and some of it was in a not so great area.

I had to go back to the lab today for them to run some tests. They were taking some kind of reading (I don't know what) and wanted to do it with the bra dry and the bra sweaty. After getting the dry reading, they set me up on the treadmill. After about five minutes, one of the guys came in and said that I might as well do my normal run. They weren't trying to get heartrate data at different intensities, they just needed me to sweat some, so they suggested going outside.

This was fine with me, but their office is in a not very nice area. It is very close to some nice areas, but it's actual location is the kind of place where you can be afraid of being shot. Besides that, it is on a pretty busy road with no shoulder. Once I got off that road, I was on a four lane highway, in the shoulder for a mile. Basically the first two miles out were ugly and not so safe. From there, I was close to where we start our Saturday morning run. I ran the opposite direction from there and went down to the track where we do our workouts and did a loop around the top of the park. I greatly underestimated how long this was going to take and it ended up taking longer than planned. The total run took just under 51 minutes instead of the 45 I had planned. In addition to the five minutes on the treadmill before I went out, I got 56 minutes in.

I have no clue how long this run was and it won't be easy to plot since part of it was on a bicycle path. My host from England wrote to me about how well his race went in London. He said that he didn't keep a training log at all, so he didn't really stress about the race. It was impossible to care about workouts that were missed because they weren't recorded, all he could do was remember the ones that were done. Of course, he also didn't drink at all. I think maybe that's the ticket to a 2:48! Anyhow, this is getting at that maybe I just need to do what I have always tried to do with running-go out and have fun.

So, I also lifted today. I really dislike lifting, but right now I think that my arms are looking pudgy. When this happens, I want to lift more to tone them up. Yes, it is shallow, but tank top season is coming and I want arms that look good exposed. My arms were sore from some of the exercises from yesterday, so I didn't lift that much. It doesn't make sense to push myself lifting when I'm already in a broken down state.

Yet Another Disgusting Experience

Since the mileage phase of my season is wrapping up, it must mean that getting up and running is getting easier. It isn't all that hard to get out of bed and get out on the road in 13 minutes anymore. The main problem with getting out the door so quickly is, um, well, some things just have not worked themselves out that quickly.

That was the case this morning, as it is on three quarters of my morning runs. It was really nice running weather this morning. It seemed that there were more cars out for the same time of day than usual. I know that I was under a minute later than normal since I made a last minute decision that it was sunny enough to merit sunglasses, so that required running back into the house to get them. It took a bit longer than normal to cross the major road to get to the development that is the course for my morning route. In all, it felt smoother than last night. Morning running is much easier when it is an hour that the human body is supposed to be awake. Since the above mentioned problem was present, no extra loop was added on this morning.

This afternoon was more treadmill running. They had to collect nine data points-three different levels of wetness at three different levels of exertion. It actually ended up being 18 data points, since we did those nine with just the bra and with extra compression. It ended up being quite a bit of treadmill running, most of it pretty fast. The first set was 2 by 10 minutes broken down into six minutes at 7:30 pace, 2 minutes at 6:40 pace, and 2 minutes at 6:00 pace. After that it was 4 by 6 minutes broken into two minutes at each of those paces. They commented about how sweaty I was after the first set of six minute collections. Of course you're going to be sweaty when you're running fast on a treadmill in a room that is set at a temperature that is supposed to be comfortable for work, not for working out.

Since that wasn't as much running as I had planned, I drove about a mile down the road to a better area to finish my run. I had orginially thought that I would take some of J's runners on a distance run, but they have Penn Relays this week and weren't doing a long run. It worked out just fine since I was later than normal and they were a good way through practice by the time I showed up. I went out on the same loop that we've been taking the kids on, but it was much faster than with the kids. It usually takes about 16:30 to get to the top of the development with the kids, but without them it only took 14 minutes. As the run went along, I must have gotten faster, since it only took 13 minutes to get back. This is where some obsessiveness kicked in, 31 minutes gave me a total of 75 minutes this afternoon, so that extra minute was necessary.

Before leaving the office/lab, I met one of the other guys working on this product. I was introduced as "the one with the heart". Apparently they are quite impressed with my data. Something about where my heart rate is at certain paces and how quickly it drops when activity stops. They are also extremely impressed by my resting heart rate. I guess this is supposed to be complimentary, but it is kind of funny being known as the one with the heart.