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July 24, 2007

7x Wilke

For the past month I’ve done Wilke repeats on Tuesday, adding one each week to get to seven this week. This morning the thought of adding another one next week was already causing me bouts of anxiety. I’d like to continue going to Wilke each week, but I’m not sure I’ll add any more repeats. I think seven may be just … fine. Or maybe I’ll just hang here until I feel ready to add more.

Also causing me anxiety this morning was the repeated sinking of my socks into my shoes. You know how hard it is to dig your socks out of your shoes when you can hardly breathe standing straight up? Good grief. And later the shock of the shower on the little shoe burns on my ankles was pretty cruel, too.

Posted by jenandmats at 9:28 PM | Comments (1)

July 21, 2007

Paces, and oh I forgot to mention ...

that I'm running the half that accompanies the San Francisco Marathon a week from tomorrow! How weird. We've had it on the calendar for so long while I've been out of shape I just never really took it seriously. But as of now I'd like to give it a good shot, unless my dad and brother really want my company for 13.1 miles (Dad's shooting for 2hrs.) When I signed up I was so far out of shape I couldn't imagine being in shape by now, so I put myself with the 1:45 - 2 hr finish wave. That's still probably not ridiculously slow for me right now. McMillan predicts a 1:40 half based on my 3-mile from two weeks ago, and I think this course (the first half, over the Golden Gate Bridge and back) won't be an easy one.

Speaking of slow, I'm finding it amusing that people don't believe me when I tell them how slow I do my recovery runs and how slow I start all of my runs. I'm a 9-minute miler! And my first mile is generally between 9:30 and 10:00! To be honest, I don't really find it "amusing." I find it annoying. What's wrong with 9:00 miles?! Seriously. Why do people care how fast they run their first mile or their recovery runs? We were all happily running along on Wednesday at the beginning of our mid-week long-ish effort when I called out that we were running 9-min pace. The pace picked up shortly after that. I'm sorry. That's what's comfortable for me - it's nothing to be ashamed of. And I actually think most people find that pace comfortable; there's just a stigma about it ...

Also speaking of slow, I did do a progression run on Friday morning. We broke it into thirds, with 9:00 for the first three, 8:15 or so for the middle 3, and then finishing up hard on the last three with ... with ... 7:45! Awesome. I'm not kicking myself too much because I have a slew of excuses - the trail is slow, it was raining and my shoes were wet - but mostly I'm not kicking myself because the effort was exactly as it was supposed to be. I just hope in a few months it's a lot faster!

15 miles tomorrow. It's been raining cats and dogs here for WEEKS. It's been cooler, which is nice, but even with two pairs of shoes in rotation I find it hard to have a dry pair each day to run in!

Posted by jenandmats at 9:33 PM | Comments (3)

July 19, 2007

Neighborhood surprise

We've lived in this neighborhood for over seven years now. We both love this neighborhood. I hate my commute, and I hate the amount of driving we do into town. A few months ago I came to feel very strongly that we should move into town, and one morning last winter during an off-the-beaten path long run that started at a friend's house, I had found the neighborhood we should move into. It's very close to Barton Springs Pool and the running trail. It's expensive, of course, but we still thought we could find something older and smaller that we could live with.

Since that run, however, we have become more and more frustrated with the nerve of sellers in that neighborhood with what they're asking for their houses, we've decided we absolutely don't want to renovate something ourselves, my commute has been a breeze during the summer, and with work being much less hectic I'm spending more time in my current neighborhood and rediscovering how much I like it out here.

Tonight on my recovery run I ran nearly exclusively through neighborhood to a new hike and bike trail that runs around a new retail development. I only ran a half mile on the trail before I had to turn around, but it was nice to run on a soft surface, and the portion I ran on was lined with trees, so that most of the development you were running around was obscured. There were trash cans and benches along the trail; if there are water fountains out there that I didn't see, it's going to be a pretty nice place to run out here. What's more, one of the neighborhoods I ran through to get there was a really nice surprise. It's an older neighborhood with wide streets and large lots, and my route took me right by the swimming pool, which has a water fountain. It had a really nice vibe.

So who knows. Maybe we'll never ever leave here and I'll be commuting until retirement.

So far Pfitzinger Week 1 (PW1, that is) has been manageable. I had company for my hill repeats on Tuesday and for the longer run on Wednesday. Tomorrow he has 9 scheduled, and I'm planning to do something with it; most likely some kind of progression run.

Posted by jenandmats at 10:00 PM

July 15, 2007

Me? Stubborn?

I had a friend ask me my thoughts on my Garmin this afternoon. Despite its glitches on marathon day, I really gushed about it this afternoon in response to his question. I have really, really enjoyed having it. There's a certain liberation in not having to know exactly how far your route is before you set out. I just try to make sure I under-shoot and then add on on the trail when I get back to home base (although there's a mini-thrill in nailing a distance without having to add on .37 miles when you get back to the car.)

Also, the gps helps eliminate one of my running pet peeves: running more than I have scheduled. I have, on occasion, stopped at the beep of my desired mileage and walked back to my starting point. Done! And this morning, when I had a sneaking suspicion that my running mates were conspiring to sucker me into running the 12 miles they had planned when I only wanted to run 10, I foiled their plans and turned back early. I think I actually said "uh-UHHH" as I turned around. In my pre-gps days I would have deferred to their "judgment" of our distance and trusted that they wouldn't lead me further than I wanted to go. Boy did I show them as I ran back to the starting point. All by myself.

Of course, Andy took the thing on a 35-mile bike ride with neighbors who had a cat-eye (which he says is more accurate, even though I really don't know what it is), and the Garmin came in two miles off from their measurement. So it may not be the most accurate thing in the world. But as long as it's inaccurate in a consistent way, I'm going to continue to train with it, and mark my progress relatively.

So, tomorrow starts my Pfitzinger-type training program (with a rest day. Awesome.) How totally exciting. Maybe it'll be the starting point of my REN-dezvous with DES-tiny.

Posted by jenandmats at 9:03 PM | Comments (2)

July 13, 2007

Evil Plans

I ran a tempo run in my neighborhood tonight after MG went to bed. I’m still struggling with scheduling my meals around these runs, but it’s a nice alternative to doing every run at 5:30 a.m. This time of year, running in the middle of the day is not an alternative.

I’m quite a bit slower than where I’ve been in summers past, but not completely out of the realm of where I’ve been before. Of course, where I want to be in the fall/winter is even farther away since I want to be faster than where I ended up all those falls ago, so being “in the realm” isn’t all that comforting. In my buildup to my p.r. in the winter of 2003, the summer before (FIVE years ago, holy moly) I was doing 3-mile tempo runs at about 7 minute pace on a treadmill. Tonight I was at 7:21 pace on the pavement. And I did do just under 7-minute pace on the track a week ago, which is probably a little closer to what I could do on a treadmill. Three years ago, in my buildup to my woulda coulda p.r. I’m certain I was much faster, but I never timed anything because my mileage was so high, so I really can’t directly compare.

This week has been and will continue through Sunday to be a cutback week. I still did Wilke hill repeats on Tuesday, a longer run on Wednesday, and a tempo tonight, but overall the mileage will be much less and I’ll have had three days off. And then I’m supposed to make a decision about what to do next.

I’m still kicking around the idea of a fall marathon, even though it’ll roll around so quickly. I’m thinking maybe that might be better anyway. Usually I start mileage buildup in the summer for a February marathon, and somewhere along the line I get hurt and have to take time off and then build up again. Maybe if I just get to it and don’t drag things out I won’t break down before the actual marathon gets here! For Boston 2004 I went from stress fracture recovery to pretty damn good shape (don’t really know how good because that was the 86-degree year, but I placed pretty high there, which is a good indicator!) in 18 weeks.

So on Monday I think I’ll start following a Pfitzinger-type 18 week program. And maybe I don’t have to p.r. at the fall marathon but use it as a test. Then again, marathons hurt an awful lot to just “use them as a test.”

We’ll see …

Posted by jenandmats at 11:30 PM

July 7, 2007

Getting back into it

So many runs to blog about! This week my mileage will be high-40s, and I’m starting to feel a little more like a runner again. And I mean my legs feel like they’re ready to do some work and running feels more natural; not that it takes a certain number of miles per week per se to make me feel legitimate as a runner. I always *am* a runner – out of shape or not – but when I’m out of shape running feels much more forced and awkward. And HARD.

The (relative) highlights of this week’s running were more Wilke hill repeats on Tuesday, ten miles on Independence Day, a white-knuckled sprint in the middle of an easy run back to the house for a potty break on Thursday (how do you plan eating around an 8pm run, anyway?), an aborted track meet last night, and a makeup 5K (minus .1) this morning on my own.

Last night 3 stories racing put on another Friday night event, a track meet with a much larger turnout than last week’s cross-country race. I knew more people there than I thought I would. It’s funny how I tend to classify most runners I know as marathoners since that’s my world and that’s the context in which I know them, even though many of these people had track and field lives before I ever knew them. Still, most of their more recent lives have been as endurance athletes – some even ultra-marathoners - so it’s funny to see them blazing out in a 400 and dying on the last 100.

My participation was to be limited to the 5K, although I did offer to fill an empty space in a friend’s sprint relay if needed. I also offered support to friends and my dad, who ran the 100 (and who was absolutely last in getting off the line and barely gets his feet of the ground when he runs and still would have handily beaten me if I’d been in the race.) He was also scheduled to run the 200, but as they were splitting everyone up into heats they had to call a rain / lightning delay which eventually turned into a cancellation of the meet when the storm didn’t let up.

So I decided to do a make-up run this morning. By myself. On a humid, humid, warm morning. Fortunately, when I finally got out there (after an extended procrastination period after the warm-up) another friend and his training partner were out on the track doing the exact same make-up run. It was the first time I really thought about how many times I would have been lapped last night. Perhaps I was spared some serious embarrassment by the cancellation.

It was hard. I contemplated quitting as early as a mile into it, and I thought about it for several laps. I bargained with myself by letting myself cut off the last .1 and do 3 miles even. And I was steady. Starting off with a 1:47 quarter, I followed up with a string of 1:45 and a few1:44s, and finished with a 1:37. The geekometer said 6:56 pace for the 3 miles. It was precisely what I wanted to do (ok, well, other than just completely blowing away my expectations, which would have been even bettah.)

The quest to choose a training group hit a setback this week, but in a good way. I had company for my hill repeats (suckas) and then last night at the track meet I had someone offer to do longer sustained efforts with me once I was ready for that. And *that* my friends, is critical. I can actually get myself to do the hill repeats alone, but I haven’t been nearly as successful with getting started on the longer hard efforts when I’m by myself. So we’ll see how this works out!

Posted by jenandmats at 1:19 PM | Comments (2)