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August 31, 2007

Hey, you! Guess what? I did 21!

Despite having run 16 marathons I still get giddy about finishing a 20-miler. As I’m running those last few miles, especially if I’m on the trail, I feel like telling everyone I see, “I’m going to finish 20 this morning!” This morning I finished 21, with my last miles faster than my first and middle. I did it all before work (going in a little late), starting at 5 a.m. I was inspired in the last few miles by running through the high schoolers warming up for a cross-country meet and running through our newest city park. The weather was warm but bearable. I swam in Barton Springs afterward. I did not fall asleep at my desk this afternoon. I consider it a success.

Tonight is the Zilker Relays down where I ran this morning. I’ve run it most years; the first year I ran it I gimped my way around the two loops before admitting the next morning that I really did have a problem. The following week I was diagnosed with a stress fracture. Andy and I are usually some of the last ones to leave the party afterward. I hate missing out, especially now that they’re finished with the running part and have moved on to the party!

M.G. is lying in her crib, listening to her music, and kicking the daylights out of the wall. It sounds like there’s a moose in there!

Posted by jenandmats at 7:39 PM | Comments (3)

August 29, 2007

Tuesday Tempo

Last week: 4mi at 7:24 pace. This week: 5mi at 7:08 pace.

Progress. I think. It was a little cooler and it was a different route. And I had company this week. Still not where I was or where I'd like to be, but yay anyway. So now all I have to do is stretch that pace another 21.2 miles and we'll have a p.r. on our hands. Which is what I'm after, after all. That's all I have to do!

And on that positive note, I signed up for Philly. It's official (as if running 20 miles in August weren't official enough.) I settled on Philly because we have a decent-sized group of fun friends heading up there and because part of the marathon is run on the same path on which my 5K p.r. was set five years ago - my only dip under 20:00. Hopefully it will continue to be lucky for me. Plus, how great will it be to be DONE with marathon training during the holidays? The only freebie Thanksgiving and Christmas I've had in the past ten years or so has been when I was pregnant. Not really a freebie if you ask me.

Posted by jenandmats at 8:52 PM | Comments (4)

August 26, 2007

Don't pet the kitty

That was the advice I received this morning as we navigated around some roadkill.

This morning was somewhat of a milestone since I managed under 8-minute pace for the whole run. I don’t generally do that. But we picked up the pace a little earlier than normal, so by the time we got to our penultimate stop I had 8:00 flat pace, and all I could think was “oooh. Don’t blow that.” It’s really not that noteworthy, though, in light of the 8:10 pace I averaged on the pretty hilly 18-miler two weeks ago.

This week will be pretty big, with a 10, 14, 5, 11, 8, and 21 for 69 miles. I’m tired thinking about it.

Posted by jenandmats at 9:06 PM | Comments (1)

August 24, 2007

Vacation prep / "MGP"

In order to get in all my miles the week before we go on vacation I’d need to run 21 miles before we leave on Sunday morning. Our flight is at 10:10 a.m. I can’t figure out how else to do it and I’d like to get in everything that week if possible, since I’ll likely take a few breaks the week we’re actually on vacation. It wouldn’t be very fair to Andy, though, since I’d be exhausted for the flight with the toddler. Plus I’d probably get really really stiff sitting so still after running so long.

I know I’d be crazy to consider it. I guess I’m crazier than I thought.

I’m pretty pooped this evening. This week I ran in the mornings at 5:00, 5:15, and 5:30. The other mornings I slept until after 7. I can’t really tell how much of the sleepiness is from running and getting up early and how much is from the allergies that have been causing me sneezing fits intermittently throughout the day.

We have a marathon goal pace run coming up shortly, and I’m dreading it. Not because it’s going to be a tough effort, but because I feel really stupid calling whatever pace I can handle for that distance right now a “goal.” My true goal is to run as fast as I can on race day. More to the point, I kind of feel like deciding on a pace for that run that’s in line with what I have been doing lately and calling that my “goal pace” is the first step to giving in and accepting that I *am* this slow (I can’t say that I’m “out of shape” when I’ve been running as much as I have for as long as I have) and admitting that 3:30 (or even 3:20 or 3:15) is the best I can hope for at the end of this training cycle. How totally depressing. Maybe I’ll insist that we all call it something else, like “turnip pace run” or “Shirley.”

Posted by jenandmats at 8:16 PM | Comments (2)

August 22, 2007

Party at 5:30 a.m.

We had ten people on our run this morning. The “early 5 a.m. group” had only four, but when we came back to the starting point a half hour later as promised we picked up a whole slew of people! And they all ran very fast. At least, it felt very fast. It was really only 8 minute pace according to the gps. But I wasn’t the only one who thought it was fast, which is nice, I guess. I’m not the biggest weenie ever.

I love the fact that I get to be social and exercise and work toward a goal all at the same time. How efficient am I? (Too bad the rest of my life is so totally inefficient!)

Afterward we swam in Barton Springs and hung out for a little while. And then when we were finished it was only a little after 7. I still missed seeing M.G. wake up; she was already having her bagel and yogurt when I walked in. Timing my entrance back into the house can be tricky. If she’s awake but still in her crib she can see me from her crib when I walk in the door, and she gets upset if I didn’t pick her up right away. Every morning when she first sees me, her whole body tenses up and she breaks into a huge grin as she reaches out for me. It’s hard for me to not pick her up. But … she understandably hates it when I pick her up when I’m fresh from the pool after the run. I’m cold and wet and my hair is dripping. In the past she’s started to cry when she realized the state I was in. How disappointing to think you’re about to get your first squeezie from your mom in the morning and then when she picks you up she’s (and inevitably you’re) all gross!

We bought a potty this morning. Oh geez.

Posted by jenandmats at 8:45 PM | Comments (2)

August 19, 2007

20 miles in mid-August

Thursday night I wrote a decent-length blog entry about how things had been going this week; mainly about how I used to gripe about summer marathon training but now I think it's easier to deal with the heat and humidity (slow down!) than it is to deal with all of the difficulties that winter training throws at you in the form of darkness and coldness. Getting up at 4:45 sucks no matter what time of year it is, but it sucks a LOT worse when it's freezing outside. Summer outfits are easier to put together and my hands are never in PAIN or become completely useless during the summer. And I can go to breakfast without my body plunging into a post-run hypothermic state in the summer. Blabbity Blah Blah. It was a riveting post. And then my computer froze up and I just went to bed rather than recreate it.

So today was 20 miles. It wasn't nearly as easy as the 18 last week, although some of that was due to a mental state due to circumstance - feeling like I was running somebody else's pace the whole time. It was also harder because I just couldn't seem to get in enough fluids. I was so thirsty the entire time. So I stopped several times to drink a lot of water or buy some gatorade, and getting started again was always hard. And I was alone for a lot of it. Early on I made the decision to run with people who were only three quarters of what I was doing, and I second- guessed it nearly the entire time I ran with them, feeling like they were going too fast for what I wanted to do. So I made the decision to go a really hilly route so that they'd go a different way and I could go alone! So I was alone but unstressed.

It was the end of another long Pfitzinger week, and we get a real cutback week this week. I'm going to enjoy it!

Posted by jenandmats at 9:01 PM

August 15, 2007

If it were you ...

If you had confidence in your endurance and not a whole lot of confidence in your speed, would you break from an endurance-building phase of a marathon training program to focus on your weakness? 18 miles on Sunday was really no biggie, but my tempo pace yesterday was disappointing. I think I’ll wait to really ponder the question until after this weekend’s 20-miler. The 18 was after a recovery week; the 20 will be at the end of a relatively high-mileage week.

I was actually a bigger mess after this morning’s 14-miler than I was after the 18 on Sunday! The main tag in my new shorts rubbed a big chafe mark on my back; another tag gave me a burn on the top of my left bun cheek. And I got a blister! And I’ve been getting nauseous after my longer runs. Like way after. Like when I’m sitting at my desk at work. Which is a pain.

This morning during our 14 miles (starting at 5a.m.!) we discussed Dick Cheney’s inconsistencies, Britney Spears’s ethics, celebrity ethics in general, whether pro athletes should be paid as much as they are, and the extent to which toll tag records should remain private. Among other things. It went by fast. Which is good, of course, since these midweek longer runs can become pretty tedious.

Yesterday’s tempo was … fine. I was having a hard time in the dark reading my splits since I was running SO FAST, and during one of the harder miles I thought I saw a 6:53. So I announced at the end that I thought I was under 7 minute pace overall. Not hardly. When I got home I figured it was 7:24. Which, according to the McMillan calculator, is exactly where a 1:40 half-marathoner should run her tempo runs. So at least I’m consistent and ran at the right effort. I keep thinking, though, that any one of these mornings I’m going to wake up and run a timed effort and things will magically be back to the way they used to be just last summer, when three miles at 6:40 pace was a strong but not killer effort. Or at the very least, each time I run a timed effort I hope that I’ll run something faster than what McMillan predicts for a 1:40 half-marathoner!

Meghan says I just need to be patient. But then Meghan admits that patience isn’t her thing, either. (And besides, is patience what I really need, or would a few track sessions be more practical? Hmmm?)

Posted by jenandmats at 8:29 PM | Comments (2)

August 12, 2007

Somebody please return my haul-ass.

Pfitz's 18-week, 70mpw program starts out with five weeks of increased mileage before he gives you a break. So I decided to give myself an early one - a somewhat awkwardly-timed one that spanned two training weeks, cutting the long run short at the end of last week and the weekly mileage during this week. I definitely needed it: last week morale was low and I had aches and pains that needed tending to. I'm very much a fan of the three weeks up and one week down schedule. This rest week does throw a slight wrench into the plan, though, since Pfitz has another rest week scheduled the week after next. Oh BOO HOO I'll have to take two rest weeks close together ...

And tonight I feel fine, despite having run a pretty hilly 18 this morning with a group of guys who are considerably faster than I am. I had no idea when we were planning this run that the group was going to turn out like it did, but when we started I just decided to hang on as long as I could. I didn't actually run with the pack; I seemed to have a designated babysitter for nearly the entire run - one or two of the guys would hang back and run with me. I don't think they felt they had to; running with me was kind of an opportunity to take a little break. It worked out well for me. I could see the group for almost the entire run and would manage to catch them at water stops, and I maintained a pace that felt strong but not too hard. There was none of the mental baggage that can come from being the constant caboose since the group was really out of my league and because I was running so much faster than I had in previous weeks (and for a longer run), so it was easy to stay positive. I had been averaging about 8:30s for my longer runs; this morning was 8:10.

I can't believe we're already running 20 next week, though.

I want to do some speeeeeeeed. I wanted to haul-ass into the finish this morning, but I have no haul-ass anymore. And I don't think trying to add some for the first time after an 18-miler is a great idea. Perhaps after the real cutback week.

Posted by jenandmats at 9:06 PM | Comments (2)

August 3, 2007

A less emotional account of my half marathon

The half on Sunday will probably be one I'll remember for a long time despite my crappy time. In fact, I probably won't remember that I ran a crappy time in a few ... years.

The race is unique in the realm of races I've run with its wave starts based on predicted finish time. Cap 10K is a wave start, but the waves are "'timed" and "not timed." Even with the waves the start was crowded, although I wonder if I'd seeded myself in the wave ahead of the one I started with if it'd been more spacious. I was in the 1:45-2:00 wave, which the announcer at the starting line declared one of the largest waves.

The wave start was necessary because, like everything else in S.F., they're trying to cram the greatest number of people possible in a very small space. It was mildly surreal to be running a major-city marathon on a bike path! We started by running down Embarcadero (which I ran to from my hotel, which was muy nice) through Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf (all at SEA LEVEL), then past the marina and then up one serious hill to Chrissy Field (sp?) which is built on top of the bulldozed rubble of the 1906 earthquake. From there we worked our way over to the Golden Gate Bridge, which was somewhat demoralizing, since you could see it for quite a ways and you knew that you would continue to run UP to the bridge.

Somewhere in Crissy Field I started running behind a Decker Challenge t-shirt and I started talking to its wearer, Sergio, who currently lives in Austin but who will soon be relocating to San Francisco. It was nice to socialize for a while, but I lost him at the water stop and was on my own for the rest of the race.

The bridge was, not surprisingly, the best part of the race. It was an out-and-back, too, so you could check everyone out as they ran by. I even saw a guy I used to do workouts with back in the day and yelled at him. The fog made it even more surreal, but I think I'd rather have had the glorious views they had last year with the clear weather. Heading into the Marin Headlands at the northern end of the bridge was pretty windy. And I was wearing split shorts (which no one can convince me are not the most comfortable and awesome type of running short ever) which tended to blow around and show off my totally white ass. Awesome.

The turnaround in Marin was ... weird. Again, weird to be running a major city marathon in a parking lot, with almost everyone running on the sidewalk to make it a tighter turn. Seemed like we should have been staying on the asphalt, ya know? Then we headed back over the bridge against traffic, where I saw my brother's friends, who cheered for me, and my brother and dad ("oh there she is" my brother said to my dad in a conversational tone which I heard as clear as a bell even through all that commotion.)

And this is where is gets frustrating. We've made the climb, and I'm ready to open up and run. But we're in the Presidio and we're still going up, dammit. Turn a corner and ... more UP? you're kidding me! Turn another corner ... more up! I realized I was in a stretch that Andy and I had done when I was a few months pregnant with MG. I had taken it nice and easy then, and now I was supposed to be racing up it. Oy. Finally we headed down for quite a while, but we were making it all up at once, which I hate. Gradual downhill I love with all my heart. Steep downhill I just don't do very well. But then ... more UP! and some down. And then more UP! This SUCKS! Just shoot me.

Somewhere between the Presidio and the park I got a little surprise (which wouldn't have been a surprise if I'da read the race info, but seriously, who reads the race info?) We'd been heading up one of those damn hills when some volunteers started closing off the downhill in front of us and directing us to run off to the left. My first reaction was to just do what I was told, and then I got annoyed by the whole thing, wondering if this was a difference between the half and the full marathon, and I yelled out "who's supposed to turn?!" There was a chorus of self-righteous "I-read-the-race-info" yelling around me, telling me to shut up and do what I was told, so I did. One nice guy pitied me and confided that the same thing had happened to him last year when they barricaded the street behind him, so he was prepared for this year. I couldn't help but think, though, "what kind of race has a wave start AND different courses for different participants?" Seems more like a time trial if ya know what I mean.

Even as we turned into the park the course kept going UP. I had lost any kind of desire to finish with a bang at this point. Andy, standing at a turn at about 12.5 miles (a turn that revealed even more uphill) heard a guy mutter "f*ck the hills." The last quarter mile or so was a nice gradual downhill, but seriously, what can you do with that? Nothing. Plus, my GPS had registered 13.1 about .15 miles before the finish, so my head was REALLY out of the game.

As I came close to the finish line they announced some name with a Podunk, CA hometown, and I thought "AUSTIN, TEXAS, ASSHOLE!" Even if he can't get my name right I at least want some props for my badass hometown, please. I grew up in Podunk, CA, and it aint' nothing to brag about, even if those who live there think it is.

The park was pretty empty when I finished, which made me think "well, my time sucked, but maybe I still finished pretty well and the time isn't indicative of my fitness" (see "unnecessary performance-based report" at the end of this post.) I grabbed a banana and a tropical smoothie-thing (I'd completely forgotten my Clif Shot) and headed back on the course to finish out my scheduled 17 miles (one mile warmup I didn't mention) and find my amigos.

I found Andy -spectating - first. I gave him a quick recap ("I think the whole entire thing was uphill.") and had him open my Cytomax for me (I'd never had Cytomax and it wasn't bad.) and then headed back to where the two different courses split to find my brother's friends and my dad and brother. The split alternated between two streets at different intervals, so it was impossible to know which one they'd have to take. I went down one a little ways and then back to the split and then up the other way and didn't see them, so I headed back to just before the finish line and walked into the crowd and headed back up the street, which was when I'd found my dad and brother, and we cruised into the finish line together.

And then they lost my bag and I had no warm clothes to change into. So for the walk back to my brother's house near the Haight I wore Andy's only warm sweatshirt and my dad's space blanket. The walk back was good for me I think, until I realized that I'd only thought through the race and not breakfast and had not brought any clothes to change into. Fortunately, once we got back to the house the coffee was warm and my not-too-tall brother lent me some warm clothes that weren't too ridiculously big, so I was a-ok. And breakfast was good and the company was excellent.

***unnecessary performance-based report****
There's no way to get around that a 1:40 for me just sucks. I don't think I've run that slow since maybe my first year or so of running. And yes the course was hilly, but I'm admitting right here and now that I googled the people around me for race results and their times aren't totally out of line with a 1:40 half.

I can say with all honesty, though, that I never really pushed myself like I know how to in a race. I was not totally comfortable during the race, but I wasn't pushing like a race, either. I'm worried that I've ... matured ... away from that. Which I don't necessarily consider a good thing ...

Posted by jenandmats at 9:27 PM | Comments (1)

August 1, 2007

San Francisco Half Marathon

Let's just say about this race ... that I got no indication that I had gotten back into training at all. And then let's say no more about it. I have already written and deleted a horrible, sad post questioning all the time and effort I'm putting into my running at the expense of my sleep, my vacations, and possibly pissing off my family. I had tried for days to put a not-unhappy face on my feelings about how I did on Sunday, and I just can't do it anymore. So I'm just not going to think about it anymore. I'll just continue following my (apparently futile) marathon training and hope for the best!!!! :) :) :) !!!! :) :) :)!!!

Ugh.

Training is good, aside from an aborted nine-miler on Friday after our flight. A combination of things contributed to my giving up on it - most significant of which was the several-hour flight, but also significant were the ever-present wind along the embarcadero and the impenetrable wall of tourists down near Pier 39. But I got in the other runs I needed to, including a total of 17 on Sunday, a nine-miler with tempo yesterday morning before everyone woke up, and 13 this morning at 5:15 after getting home at about 8 last night.

Posted by jenandmats at 11:10 AM