Change of Pace

As much as I've been stressing about my slow recovery from Grandma's way back in June, I have been really hoping that my slow and steady building up of weekly mileage was doing me some good. My cranky calf isn't going away, but hopefully my body as a whole is getting stronger. So today's beautiful half marathon in the park gave me a nice boost in confidence that my current training routine actually is paying off. 1:29:35 A ways off from that supernatural 1:25 back in May, but certainly a huge improvement over my snarky 1:38 a month ago. I certainly wouldn't say that the race felt effortless, but I felt healthy and strong and my splits were for the most part pretty steady.

With about three miles left to go in the race, I was really starting to feel the effort and was falling a bit off the pace when I got passed by a woman a little younger than me. I hadn't really seen very many women around me at all during the course of the race, so I was a little surprised to see her pop by me, but didn't feel like I had it in me to stick with her. Then, about two miles later I caught up to her on a down hill and she gave me a very gracious "good job!" Suddenly I felt a little guilty about feeling competitive with her. I glanced at my watch and told her that I thought we could break 1:30 if we worked together, so off we went. I'd been slipping into the 7:10 range before that, but having someone to work with now really made me bring out my A game. That and the fact that the finish line was practically in sight. For the last mile, every time I was tempted to just back off and coast in the rest of the way, I glanced over at her, keeping up the intensity and thought okay, we can do this. And we did! So for the record...Jennifer from the Flyers, thank you. In the end, I beat her to the finish by one second, but her chip time was exactly one second faster than mine, so I would say that for all practical purposes we were pretty damn even.

There's all sorts of talk re:steroids and doping lately, especially as we plunge into baseball playoff season, but it does beg the questions, what substances are still okay for us to be using as athletes? I personally wouldn't want to give up my pre and post-run hits of Ibuprofen, but is that really a natural additive? They've already banned some of the ingredients that are in over-the-counter cold medicines, what happens to us poor marathoners when they decide to ban Advil? I'm not really sure that they don't already limit how much caffeine NCAA athletes are allowed to have in their systems, but the runners I know have no qualms about loading up on the stuff before races, not to mention the double-caffeinated power gels that we slurp down during the race. Lately I've been a little worried about the pathetic state of my diet, so I've started to take a daily multi-vitamin to take up the slack a little bit. Everything in it is obtainable by eating the right foods, but it does seem a little bit like cheating to just pop a pill and call the job done.

There's a bit of conventional wisdom in New York that you're allowed to have a great apartment, a loving relationship and a satisfying career...but never all three at once. For us runners, there's even one more category to throw into the mix. So now that I own a cute studio, have a devoted hunk of a boyfriend and am seeing some encouraging results from my training, is it just greedy to expect my job to be a source of happiness as well?

It's only a matter of time though before I finally make the break and jump this ship. It's a scary thought, but far more frightening is the idea of staying here for even one more year!

My career may not be doing the trick for me, but I have found something else very exciting that gives me good reason to get through every day. If you have not tried the new Coffee Kit Kat, you just simply must. I know, I know...not everyone is mad about mocha, but really...this shit is primo.

I know you people are out there reading this thing, but it's the weirdest thing to suddenly run into one of you in "real" life. I sent a distraught e-mail to the Associated Press begging for help in resolving a discrepancy in some statistics I was collecting for my show's broadcast. A very helpful woman wrote back to me outlining how their organization deals with the figures in question and sympathizing with my predicament. Then she wrote back to add that she was a regular reader of my blog and thanked me for my candy recommendation! (Coffee KitKats, Limited Edition, you NEED to try them before they disappear) It was actually just what I needed at that moment, since I've been so stressed trying to do all the research on the show by myself and come up with reasonable answers to a non-stop slew of unreasonable requests. Having her surprise me like that just made me smile and reminded me to keep it all in perspective since I do have another life.

At any rate, I suppose it was just a matter of time before I randomly ran into someone who knew me from online. I make so many phone calls and send out so many e-mails in a given day and the scope of my job is so broad, who knows when I might need to find out some bit of information from someone at say, the South Florida Water Management District or the Health Sciences department at the University of Oregon. So whether you work for the National Park Service, the National Archives or the Museum of Natural history, whether you're an auditor at a New York consulting firm, a banker in Ohio, a teacher at a high school in California or a chocoholic retail developer in Texas, even if you work for Goldman Sachs or you're that consumer researcher who's been skimming a ton of my archived posts lately...you never know when I might need to call you to clarify a fact in a news story and somewhere in the middle of the conversation, you might suddenly realize who I am and ask..."Hey, is there any chance you keep a running blog?" I know you're out there.

I was so looking forward to yesterday's baseball game and the start of the Yankees do-or-die two game winning streak against the Angels, but the day's maelstrom put off that showdown until tonight. My beloved team fought a valiant battle in the rainy Bronx on Friday, but when nine innings were done, they were on the wrong side of things. For the moment, I'm just glad they didn't get swept like some teams.

Many congrats to Yvonne for PRing in Chicago today with a 3:30...perhaps we'll both be running Boston come April. And Dianna of Orange Hat fame competed in the open water swimming race formerly known as the Hartford Marathon yesterday, and broke four hours for a PR. You go, girl!

And continuing with the theme of "sports in the rain", I jumped into the official NYRRC long marathon training run bright and early yesterday morning and clocked a soggy 15 miles to finish my first fifty mile week since June. I have a renewed appreciation for the value of products such as BodyGlide and SlickStick though, as my running top bestowed me its own unpleasant and painful version of "ring around the collar". Today was a rest day, but I'll be trying to squeeze in another fifty miles this coming week in just five days to allow myself a run-free camping weekend in the Catskills.

After that I guess I need to start thinking about December and the 10K that awaits me there. I channelled the spirit of Runner's World and their penchant for headlines like 6 WEEKS TO YOUR BEST 10K EVER and came up with the following flight plan:

In the world of marathoning, there is an ongoing and lively debate on the subject of pacing. As this link to a letsrun.com forum demonstrates, the conversation mostly centers upon whether it is fair for the top female competitors to be paced (and coached and blocked from the wind) by men. The men essentially play the same role that domestiques fill on cycling teams, protecting and aiding the teammates that have the best chance of winning the race. When it comes down to it, Deena Kastor still has to run every step of the 26.2 miles on her own two feet, but it's difficult to guage the beneficial effect of an encouraging word at the end of the race or how much energy is conserved by allowing someone else to fetch your energy drink from the side of the course. If runner chick #1 has this sort of help and runner chick #2 does not, clearly there is an unfair advantage. In this case, it doesn't seem exactly a question of whether pacing is fair or not, but instead, how much should pacers be allowed to do for their runners?

Now, for the most part, this debate is over whether the top women should be allowed to be paced by men in races. But what about us peons...does anyone care if the middle of the packers are out there pacing eachother? My boyfriend is signed up to run Philadelphia next month and I offered to run the last ten miles with him. I can't imagine I'll be much use at all as a windblocker, but I fully intend to do whatever I can to help him qualify for Boston. Is this unethical? I personally don't think it's unfair, but perhaps the guy who finishes 76th in his age group instead of 75th might disagree.

I guess the bigger issue for race organizers would have more to do with the fact that I'm not planning on registering for the race. I don't think it will be all that crowded at the 3:10ish pace at that point in the race and I really don't take up that much physical space, but the fact remains that they plan for a certain number of runners and I still represent +1. I figure that the worst thing they can do is tell me to get off the course and if that happens, I will.

I should keep in mind though, that I'm making the somewhat arrogant assumption that I'll even be useful as a pacer. The last time I tried to pace a friend in a race was for a four-miler and I ended up encouraging him to go faster for the first two miles than he was really prepared to run, with disasterous consequences for his final time. Obviously, that is not what I am aiming to do in Philly!

So the plan was to run 9 miles each day last week and 14 on Friday to get me to 50 for the week. With a Pocono camping trip planned for the weekend, I thought that was going to be the only way I'd be able to squeeze the miles in. So every rainy day last week, I was up extra early and out there in the park, dutifully running my miles. Friday morning however, proved to be too much. I didn't make it out of the apartment until after noon, and aside from 14 minutes of jogging around the Upper West Side looking for the car rental place (which I'm going to go ahead and call a mile and a half), I just plain ran out of time to do my run.

As it turned out, I needn't have worried. The site of the camping trip/Russian music festival was right on the banks of the Susquehanna River and once the weather cleared up, which it did exactly upon our arrival, the area was an ideal setting for a gorgeous run on peaceful country roads, complete with a picture-perfect red covered bridge.

I was bone tired upon returning to the city last night, but I still made it out to the cold and windy park for those last five miles to fifty. My coach likes to punctuate a sentence like that with the mantra, "DISCIPLINE", but probably closer to the truth is the fact that I just like round numbers. This week I'll aim for another slow 50 and starting next Monday, I begin my sub-40 10K training plan.

La-di-diddle-dee-dummm...let's see what came in the mail today....bills, bills, bills. Hum, New York Road Runners? This must be my registration card for the marathon. Ohh, I might as well hold on to it and go check out the marathon expo. And I paid my hundred bucks, so why not go get the t-shirt too? Then, all of a sudden, my eyes zeroed in on the race number, and the room went silent.


What is it about a low race number? Is it just me that looks on in awe as all those single-digit speedsters fly by? What would it feel like to stand on the line with that big "F1" on your chest? Now F240 isn't anywhere near that impressive, but still, in a huge race full of four and five digit race number, it would be pretty damn cool to be out there with a low three-digit pinned to my "delusions of grandeur" filled self. It actually made me think again about running the thing next month, even though I've been totally at peace with my decision to hold off on the marathon thing and focus on running a respectable 10K. My boyfriend pointed out that maybe it would be worth using my number to justify running if I'd gotten 262 (of course, I'd have to draw in the decimal point on that one). But this is my 240th post according to blogger.com. Could that be a sign? Oh, wait, no...this post brings the count to 241, no sign there after all.

In the beginning, there were a few little road races, but this whole business of really defining myself as a runner started in the fall of 1983 when I decided to join the cross country team. I actually chickened out that first day, letting myself be confused by some muffled middle school loud speaker announcement and riding the bus home instead of going to the locker rooms to change. Upon arriving home, my mother challenged me...."I thought you were going to see if the running team looked like fun?" And so she drove me back to Robious Middle School and, nervous even to begin with, I showed up late to my very first cross country practice.

Fast forward twenty-two years and a couple of months...and there was me this morning, shivering and bouncing to stay warm, crowded together with a bunch of other cold, scrawny bodies just behind a faint white line on a field of wet, muddy grass. I could have been twelve again, aside from the fact that none of us reeked of Ben-Gay. (I've always wondered what exactly the 80's obsession was with that stuff, but I still get sentimental when its distinctive aroma makes an appearance on a start line.)

Cold air, mildewing leaves and autumn allergens. It's always a joy to really push yourself physically while your lungs are threatening to implode. I threw a few 2 minute on/1 minute off repeats in to my easy seven mile jog this morning and was rewarded with a chestful of fluid and a lovely rattling noise with each deep inhale. It's nothing that's not normal for this time of year, but that doesn't mean I like it. I feel fine now and I can take a deep breath without the accompaniment of any unpleasant sound effects, so that's a good thing. The next assignment in my 10K training regiment is hill repeats, so I'm looking forward to more fun lung noises tomorrow. I suppose I should try and dig up my albuterol inhaler, but I hate that little gizmo with a passion.

To analyze yesterday's cross country race a little further, I had been planning on running that same course three weeks from now as park of my 10K training plan. I told one of my friends that I'd probably aim for 21:00, since it's a very hilly, challenging course, but that was factoring in the fact that I would have three weeks of tempo runs and track work under my belt. Yesterday I ran the course in an unofficial time of 21:06, just working off a diet of LSD and a solid three-month base of 40-50 mile weeks. Obviously I'm going to have to reevaluate my goals for the November 13th race.

I started the race a little too fast yesterday, trying to take advantage of the flat first section, and hit the mile in about 6:20. I felt I went into oxygen debt way too easily, but this is hopefully where the track work will do me some good. I'd like to aim for just a tiny bit under that split next time, but with significantly less fatigue. Once I hit the hills on the back loop of the course, I really felt out of breath, but was still able to keep up a fairly steady effort. I think a few hill repeat workouts will make a big difference on my ability to really keep my focus through this middle section.

This section of the course from the mile mark through the back hill loop is a real rollercoaster though and not just about the uphills. I'm already a great downhill runner and was pleased with my ability to use gravity without eating dirt. There were a few times on the steepest grades where I felt a twinge in my left ankle as I flew around the corners, but it just costs too much time to be overcautious on those. I did the race yesterday with a friend who is running New York and it would have been stupid for her to risk an ankle sprain at this point, but if your racing Vanny for time, it pays to be a bit of a daredevil.

By the time I came out of the woods and hit the flats yesterday, I really had very little left. Some high school coach saw me glance at my watch and yelled at me for it, screaming that I needed to be "running scared". When I got to the last hundred yards and heard footsteps behind me, I did manage to muster up a little panic sprint, but that last half mile is another place where three weeks of interval training might really pay off.

So, ballpark, what can I buy with three weeks of conditioning?

• :05 on the flat first mile
• @ :03 per uphill....so maybe :15?
• 10 seconds+ on the last half mile, without question

I made two mistakes today, but fortunately the first cancels out the second so it's not such a terrible thing.

The hill workout that I was scheduled to do this morning was a huge flop. I started out into the rain too late to leave time to finish the entire run and it took entirely too long for me to even get to the hill I was planning to run up. Hill repeats are tough enough a prospect; it doesn't make sense for me to pick a hill that takes me 25 minutes of running just to get to it. So, I ran it once hard in 2:25 and now at least, I know about how long a hill it is. I do eventually want to try and get a few training sessions in there because the 10K course runs up that same hill, but today was not the day. Besides that, it probably isn't really steep enough of a hill to give me the benefits I need for the Van Cortland 5K race. I've decided that for that, I should probably be running flights of stairs instead of actual hills. There's a great place to do that in Riverside Park and it won't take me 25 minutes to get there! I also have a new appreciation for my man's 5th floor walk up now. At least until this 5K is over, I won't complain about that last exhausting flight...it's all for the cause of getting me up those hills just a little bit faster.

As for the second mistake that makes my missed hill workout not mattter...my sub-40 10K attempt is actually seven weeks away, not six. I got the date wrong. I wonder if Runner's World has published any "Seven Weeks to Your Best 10K" articles....

Oh, I've got excuses. It's the easiest thing in the world to make up excuses and I swear they're all valid, but it's just too easy to not run one day and then not run the next and then you're already behind in mileage, so why not just call it a rest week?

But that's not what I'm going to do. I was worn out yesterday morning from an exhausting all night conversation (also known as an argument, but thankfully not a serious one) and then this morning I just lost track of time which is no excuse at all. I'm going to make up for it with a night-time run as soon as I get out of work though and with any luck, and early bedtime will give me the energy to go back out there tomorrow morning. I'm just glad that daylight savings is right around the corner. That extra hour of light upon waking is a motivational godsend for the morning runner.