i went for another run.
i did a moderate amount of exercise last week, nothing big but not too shabby, tired myself out a few times -- but no running. the night after the marathon, my legs ached enough to bother me in my sleep, and the day after i was obviously not a creature fit for stairwells, but by tuesday i was just 'pretty sore', and so on. my right knee has stayed cranky, and i've iced it a few times, and i laid fairly low. it felt pretty good! ... i have started being moderately less hungry too, which is kind of a relief; i thought i might just be hungry forever.
anyway: this morning, i got up and went for a run.
and do you know what? it really sucked.
... jesus crap, it was unpleasant! i ran for 30 minutes, and i ran about 9 minute miles, and i felt like DEATH. nevermind my right knee, which felt iffy in the first 3 or 4 minutes but warmed up quite nicely -- meanwhile, though, my lungs were angry, my arms were crampy, my hamstrings and calves took turns pretending they were broken, my stomach churned. i wanted to puke, pass out, stop running, fall over, and generally go back to bed.
guys, um, i ran 26.2 miles last weekend. i feel like this should not have been a big deal.
... so what happened? hmmph, well.
the stomach thing was due to predictable oatmeal malfunction. where is my brain on this one? i CANNOT EAT OATMEAL BEFORE MORNING RUNS. you see, i say it in all caps like maybe i'll hear it next time, from across the room in the kitchen. honestly, i bet i thought (in my pre-coffee stupor) that it was safe because i was going to the post office between eating and running. yeah, that twelve minute errand fooled no one, least of all my gut, which felt like it was punching me in the rib cage with those oats as soon as i went faster than a jog. please, PLEASE can i remember this next time.
apart from that, i'm not too sure on what the deal was. maybe i'm still in marathon recovery, although really that doesn't feel the case. i went to zuuuuuuuumba last night (shut up, it's a dance party, i need me some dance party sometimes, so i add a lot of extra uuuuuuuuuus for good measure), and i pushed myself to jump around a lot, and i never felt any of that heavylegs-stopjumping-dammitwoman feeling, when you're really tired from previous exertion or not enough sleep. i felt strong! and this morning i felt DOOM.
meh. you know, sometimes you just have a bad run. it's cool. weirdly, it made me feel kind of pumped to sign up for a race; introspection has actually not yet revealed to me what that's about. well: it made me feel kind of pumped to go run again and have it not suck as much, for starters.
so i signed up for an early december 5k. for participating in this race, i am promised a 'Scrooge Santa knit hat', which doesn't make sense in a variety of ways -- for starters Scrooge hats and Santa hats are mutually exclusive, but then it sounds like they actually mean a toque, which is in fact a third kind of hat... but they can mess up the hats all they want because the race starts at 10am! luxury! pinnacle of civilization! true christmas miracle! i will leave the house after sunrise! ... so, yeah, i'm looking forward to it.
i guess this means i will try doing some speedwork in the next month and a bit. and despite today's atrocity of a short tempo run, that also sounds fun. ... my usual non-marathon-training run schedule is 2 times a week, sometimes 3, so i will make sure i do at least 2 runs a week, plus 4 other days of exercise (it's supposed to be something like 2X cardio, 2X strength, and 3X core, plus stretching all the time.) and also i will continue to try not to eat *all* the things, which is going alright in the last several days.
this also means i'll keep blogging here, sometimes? i think i'll keep it up for two kinds of posts:
1. when i want to write a blog post on my talking to friends blog, but then i realize it's all about running and only the people who would read here would conceivably care, and
2. race reports, of whatever sort. before marathon training began, i was vaguely in the habit of running about 10 races a year: a few halfs and the rest 5 or 10ks in the darker months, and some trail stuff over the summer. november is i think going to be race free, but after that i'll try to get back into that cycle.
and you can continue to read or not read, and that's cool. i think i'm fairly happy talking here into the mostly-void, and just knowing that the writing will take some knots of emotion and info in my brain and knead them out into semi-orderly thoughts on the screen is good enough reason to keep talking. and to keep running. good times, folks. till soon!
Monday, October 28, 2013
Sunday, October 20, 2013
The Detroit Free Press Full Marathon. Is A Thing I Ran.
today was one of the more surreal experiences of my life. i suppose i haven't done that many surreal things, so.
the first thing to say is that if you decide you have to run a marathon, i highly encourage you to find a crew member: someone supportive, unquestioning and easygoing who will drive you to detroit, come to dinner with you in ypsilanti (yes! maria! see below why), stay overnight, get up at the insane hour necessary, walk you to the start, hang out on the course for 4+ hours, give you your water bottle at mile 10 when you need it, take it away for you at kilometre 40 when you don't want any other things in your hands ever, and collect you afterwards with a bag of warm socks and many celebratory noises... well, or someone who will provide analogous services. anyway: i chose my dad, and he performed all tasks with aplomb. he also did not make me listen to a single bad country music song on our drive from toronto! so, really i had won before i even began.
right now i feel like i recall the event in great detail, but i suspect they aren't all going to be important details in even a week. so i will try to be brief. and fail.
- i thought it'd be nice to have dinner in ann arbor with my dad the night before, because i lived there for a year and was going to show him around a bit, but just before we left detroit i happened to realize from the internet that there was a University of Michigan football game happening in Ann Arbor? and if you don't know about such things, which would be reasonable, let's just say you don't want to be leaving Ann Arbor on the highway at the same time as the 110,000 other people leaving the stadium do so. (THAT IS NOT AN EXAGGERATED NUMBER. LOOK IT UP.) so instead we drove past some stuff, and then i said... let's ... leave. and so we ate in nearby ypsilanti and it was just great.
- you will recall that every other morning i have run first thing, it's been pretty icky, right? like even friday morning, my very last pre-race run, i got up at the totally not-early-time of 8:30, and i did my 3 miles, and it wasn't till the end that i felt like i was maybe running normally. and i secretly thought: this 7am start time is actually going to be worse than i even advertised. and yet! ... today, i got up at 5:15 (i know), and i ate and coffeed (yes i brought my own kettle and aeropress coffee making system to this event, shut up) and so on, and we walked the 20 minutes to the start, and when we got moving at 7am (i got across the starting line at like 7:12), i had no trouble running at all. it felt totally easy, like i was running at 6pm. i guess adrenaline is a thing? but i didn't feel pumped up. i just felt ... pretty calm and ready, actually.
- as for mental state: i felt really quite shockingly under control for the first 11 miles. mile 11 i thought 'oh my god 15 more miles, surely this will kill me' and then i stuffed that down with ONE MILE AT A TIME, LADY and kept going. mile 13, the half marathoners left us, i had a twinge of WTF AM I DOING, and then got on board again. miles 14-16 i knew would be lonely, and they were (the only part of the course where you feel like you're just running down a street that demonstrates detroit's disaster of a post-apocalypse economy), and i turned on my music which definitely helped, and then miles 16-19 were good again. miles 20-22 felt sloggy, but doable; started wanting to walk but didn't (judicious application of more motivational music.) mile 23 started to feel like i was playing a sick joke on myself, but i knew my dad was waiting at the 40k mark so i told myself i just had to make it to 40k, somewhere between mile 24 and 25, and then it would only be 2k. seeing him my brain said YES DO THE THING, and then i turned the corner where you see the hilariously steep mile up to mile 25, and i told myself BY DO THE THING I MEAN WALK UP THIS HILL and so i walked, and that felt wise but not a defeat, and so when i got the mile 25 sign the hill was not quite over but i started running again, and though my brain really really wanted to, i never walked again. my legs were tired, but honestly they were no more tired at mile 25 then they were at mile 16, so i knew it was my head that wanted to stop and i suggested we just wait a bit. the last half mile, i turned off my music and i ran up this last goddamn hill SERIOUSLY? COULD WE NOT HAVE THIS HILL NOW PLEASE? I WAS LYING ABOUT THE LEGS FROM MILE 16 and i turned left and the finish line was two blocks away and i sped up, just a very little but i did it, and i passed a few people and i WON. ... no, wait, i mean i finished.
about 20 steps from the the finish i thought: huh. wow. i did this. i kind of don't feel anything, but i did it. ... and that felt just fine.
- this marathon seems to me a good compromise: between excited spectators and chill spectators (i kind of like a mix of both, and i liked the sign that said 'hurry! the kenyans are drinking all the beer'; between urban grit, art deco buildings, sunrise from high above the river on the Ambassador Bridge, Belle Island park in the middle of the detroit river, the actually pretty urban detroit waterfront (?!) -- and also the craziness of running through two border crossings meant only for cars, complete with underwater tunnel mile (pro tip: it's humid down there), and the novelty of border guards with megapho nes yelling out support and encouragement to thousands of sweaty people who haven't declared anything. the scenery was really quite varied, and actually i really liked almost all of it. even Windsor! i really liked Windsor! ... it's not a pretty town, i'm sorry to say. but the course was well thought out and the spectators were pretty cool, considering it was like not yet 8am on a sunday morning, and they were out offering orange slices and playing rock and roll on their lawns. meanwhile at miles 16-18, i counted four different houses with people offering us shots of beer, from kegs or bottles. party in the D, they know what they're doing.
- one additionally terrific thing this race does: before every water/gatorade stop, of which there are TONS, they have a sign telling you it's coming up, and on each sign they tell you how far the next one is. i want to hug whoever came up with and followed through with that plan.
- as for my physical state? you know: really, not bad at all . i'm fairly shocked, to tell you the truth. at about mile 23.5 or so, i felt my right knee say: hey, you know, you sometimes have IT band problems, remember? yeah, so, you can't go any faster than this and you might want to actually go slower. i was more careful with form after that, and it mostly stopped hurting in the last two miles due presumably to adrenaline, and now it's definitely sore. there has been ice. but when i crossed the finish line, i didn't cramp, i didn't sob, i just smiled at people and got a medal and a space cape and stuff. and then i walked for ages to get out of the shute crazy area, and then more ages to meet up with my dad (because we were on opposite sides of the runners at this point) and then additional ages back to the hotel ... and i was really ok. eventually we met up with my other half, and i drove us 90 minutes home (other half is coming off a doom migraine) and it was only when we got here that i really wanted to ice my knee. i know i'll be creaky as shit tomorrow, and i would not advise you to look at my right pinky toe if you don't like blisters, but the general effect is not tragic in any way. considering i ran 10k farther than i ever have, this seems faintly absurd.
- oh, i should tell you how i did! you maybe remember my goal was 4:20 or 4:30? nailed it! chip time: 4:25:24. i spent most of the race just ahead or behind of the 10:07/mile pacer, and indeed my overall pace was 10:07 exactly. the internet tells me i came in 99th out of the 310 women aged 30-34, and 1862nd in a field of 6100 or so.
... does that strike you as really quite high in the standings? who are all these 5+hour marathoners? like, more power to them, but i would not have thought i was above average at that pace! at any rate, i feel like i was totally right to be as conservative as i was -- presumably i could have run faster, and hated it way more, instead of only hating some bits of it briefly. also i might have hurt myself in the middle, the worst, or hurt myself but run through it so as to create long lasting injury, the double worst, or i might have made it to the end in one piece and then collapsed, vomited, or experienced whatever other horrible things happen to those people who say they 'leave it all out on the course'. ... i left some of it for myself, which i like because now i can still use it.
- in conclusion. ... are you going to ask me if i'm running another marathon? here's a good idea: don't do that.
it went so well that i can imagine thinking it's a good idea to run another one. BUT I DOUBT IT IS. ... i know myself, and i could easily imagine thinking i should do another one, train better, run it faster... yeah, no, buttercup, bring it down a notch. enough of this for a while. i'm running 15k of a 30k relay in march, and i'll probably run a half in february and/or a hilly 10 miler on boxing day, but right now i am going to focus on eating like a person who doesn't run 16 miles on the weekend, and get back some arm muscles, and stuff like that. i like the idea of running a trail half marathon at the end of next summer (there's a September one in Edmonton where I'll be living again), which i was once signed up for but then had double retinal surgery instead (a surprise lateral move, i think you'll agree).
so! i did it. i have a whacking huge medal, which i could see using as a brass knuckles substitute sometime if ever i'm in a dark alley with my race medals, and a pretty cool shirt, and a bottle of Detroit Mercy Hospital hand sanitizer. and a sore right knee. and a pretty big smile.
it was a pretty good day.
the first thing to say is that if you decide you have to run a marathon, i highly encourage you to find a crew member: someone supportive, unquestioning and easygoing who will drive you to detroit, come to dinner with you in ypsilanti (yes! maria! see below why), stay overnight, get up at the insane hour necessary, walk you to the start, hang out on the course for 4+ hours, give you your water bottle at mile 10 when you need it, take it away for you at kilometre 40 when you don't want any other things in your hands ever, and collect you afterwards with a bag of warm socks and many celebratory noises... well, or someone who will provide analogous services. anyway: i chose my dad, and he performed all tasks with aplomb. he also did not make me listen to a single bad country music song on our drive from toronto! so, really i had won before i even began.
right now i feel like i recall the event in great detail, but i suspect they aren't all going to be important details in even a week. so i will try to be brief. and fail.
- i thought it'd be nice to have dinner in ann arbor with my dad the night before, because i lived there for a year and was going to show him around a bit, but just before we left detroit i happened to realize from the internet that there was a University of Michigan football game happening in Ann Arbor? and if you don't know about such things, which would be reasonable, let's just say you don't want to be leaving Ann Arbor on the highway at the same time as the 110,000 other people leaving the stadium do so. (THAT IS NOT AN EXAGGERATED NUMBER. LOOK IT UP.) so instead we drove past some stuff, and then i said... let's ... leave. and so we ate in nearby ypsilanti and it was just great.
- you will recall that every other morning i have run first thing, it's been pretty icky, right? like even friday morning, my very last pre-race run, i got up at the totally not-early-time of 8:30, and i did my 3 miles, and it wasn't till the end that i felt like i was maybe running normally. and i secretly thought: this 7am start time is actually going to be worse than i even advertised. and yet! ... today, i got up at 5:15 (i know), and i ate and coffeed (yes i brought my own kettle and aeropress coffee making system to this event, shut up) and so on, and we walked the 20 minutes to the start, and when we got moving at 7am (i got across the starting line at like 7:12), i had no trouble running at all. it felt totally easy, like i was running at 6pm. i guess adrenaline is a thing? but i didn't feel pumped up. i just felt ... pretty calm and ready, actually.
- as for mental state: i felt really quite shockingly under control for the first 11 miles. mile 11 i thought 'oh my god 15 more miles, surely this will kill me' and then i stuffed that down with ONE MILE AT A TIME, LADY and kept going. mile 13, the half marathoners left us, i had a twinge of WTF AM I DOING, and then got on board again. miles 14-16 i knew would be lonely, and they were (the only part of the course where you feel like you're just running down a street that demonstrates detroit's disaster of a post-apocalypse economy), and i turned on my music which definitely helped, and then miles 16-19 were good again. miles 20-22 felt sloggy, but doable; started wanting to walk but didn't (judicious application of more motivational music.) mile 23 started to feel like i was playing a sick joke on myself, but i knew my dad was waiting at the 40k mark so i told myself i just had to make it to 40k, somewhere between mile 24 and 25, and then it would only be 2k. seeing him my brain said YES DO THE THING, and then i turned the corner where you see the hilariously steep mile up to mile 25, and i told myself BY DO THE THING I MEAN WALK UP THIS HILL and so i walked, and that felt wise but not a defeat, and so when i got the mile 25 sign the hill was not quite over but i started running again, and though my brain really really wanted to, i never walked again. my legs were tired, but honestly they were no more tired at mile 25 then they were at mile 16, so i knew it was my head that wanted to stop and i suggested we just wait a bit. the last half mile, i turned off my music and i ran up this last goddamn hill SERIOUSLY? COULD WE NOT HAVE THIS HILL NOW PLEASE? I WAS LYING ABOUT THE LEGS FROM MILE 16 and i turned left and the finish line was two blocks away and i sped up, just a very little but i did it, and i passed a few people and i WON. ... no, wait, i mean i finished.
about 20 steps from the the finish i thought: huh. wow. i did this. i kind of don't feel anything, but i did it. ... and that felt just fine.
- this marathon seems to me a good compromise: between excited spectators and chill spectators (i kind of like a mix of both, and i liked the sign that said 'hurry! the kenyans are drinking all the beer'; between urban grit, art deco buildings, sunrise from high above the river on the Ambassador Bridge, Belle Island park in the middle of the detroit river, the actually pretty urban detroit waterfront (?!) -- and also the craziness of running through two border crossings meant only for cars, complete with underwater tunnel mile (pro tip: it's humid down there), and the novelty of border guards with megapho nes yelling out support and encouragement to thousands of sweaty people who haven't declared anything. the scenery was really quite varied, and actually i really liked almost all of it. even Windsor! i really liked Windsor! ... it's not a pretty town, i'm sorry to say. but the course was well thought out and the spectators were pretty cool, considering it was like not yet 8am on a sunday morning, and they were out offering orange slices and playing rock and roll on their lawns. meanwhile at miles 16-18, i counted four different houses with people offering us shots of beer, from kegs or bottles. party in the D, they know what they're doing.
- one additionally terrific thing this race does: before every water/gatorade stop, of which there are TONS, they have a sign telling you it's coming up, and on each sign they tell you how far the next one is. i want to hug whoever came up with and followed through with that plan.
- as for my physical state? you know: really, not bad at all . i'm fairly shocked, to tell you the truth. at about mile 23.5 or so, i felt my right knee say: hey, you know, you sometimes have IT band problems, remember? yeah, so, you can't go any faster than this and you might want to actually go slower. i was more careful with form after that, and it mostly stopped hurting in the last two miles due presumably to adrenaline, and now it's definitely sore. there has been ice. but when i crossed the finish line, i didn't cramp, i didn't sob, i just smiled at people and got a medal and a space cape and stuff. and then i walked for ages to get out of the shute crazy area, and then more ages to meet up with my dad (because we were on opposite sides of the runners at this point) and then additional ages back to the hotel ... and i was really ok. eventually we met up with my other half, and i drove us 90 minutes home (other half is coming off a doom migraine) and it was only when we got here that i really wanted to ice my knee. i know i'll be creaky as shit tomorrow, and i would not advise you to look at my right pinky toe if you don't like blisters, but the general effect is not tragic in any way. considering i ran 10k farther than i ever have, this seems faintly absurd.
- oh, i should tell you how i did! you maybe remember my goal was 4:20 or 4:30? nailed it! chip time: 4:25:24. i spent most of the race just ahead or behind of the 10:07/mile pacer, and indeed my overall pace was 10:07 exactly. the internet tells me i came in 99th out of the 310 women aged 30-34, and 1862nd in a field of 6100 or so.
... does that strike you as really quite high in the standings? who are all these 5+hour marathoners? like, more power to them, but i would not have thought i was above average at that pace! at any rate, i feel like i was totally right to be as conservative as i was -- presumably i could have run faster, and hated it way more, instead of only hating some bits of it briefly. also i might have hurt myself in the middle, the worst, or hurt myself but run through it so as to create long lasting injury, the double worst, or i might have made it to the end in one piece and then collapsed, vomited, or experienced whatever other horrible things happen to those people who say they 'leave it all out on the course'. ... i left some of it for myself, which i like because now i can still use it.
- in conclusion. ... are you going to ask me if i'm running another marathon? here's a good idea: don't do that.
it went so well that i can imagine thinking it's a good idea to run another one. BUT I DOUBT IT IS. ... i know myself, and i could easily imagine thinking i should do another one, train better, run it faster... yeah, no, buttercup, bring it down a notch. enough of this for a while. i'm running 15k of a 30k relay in march, and i'll probably run a half in february and/or a hilly 10 miler on boxing day, but right now i am going to focus on eating like a person who doesn't run 16 miles on the weekend, and get back some arm muscles, and stuff like that. i like the idea of running a trail half marathon at the end of next summer (there's a September one in Edmonton where I'll be living again), which i was once signed up for but then had double retinal surgery instead (a surprise lateral move, i think you'll agree).
so! i did it. i have a whacking huge medal, which i could see using as a brass knuckles substitute sometime if ever i'm in a dark alley with my race medals, and a pretty cool shirt, and a bottle of Detroit Mercy Hospital hand sanitizer. and a sore right knee. and a pretty big smile.
it was a pretty good day.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
one run at a time
after saturday, i was done my last 'long' pre-marathon run.
after this morning, i'm done my second last pre-marathon run.
there are four real days left.
i have one short pre-marathon run on friday morning.
and then it's all a-happening.
so, my saturday morning run was... eventful! 8 miles. at mile 2.5, my hair elastic exploded. spppprong, sweatyhairtail now slicked to my neck. real cute. ... i had to find the elastic on the pavement and tie it back up, like a parcel, with badly behaved string. it wasn't optimal. whatever!
note: extra hair elastic in pocket on race day.
then at mile 6, i had this little 3 foot patch of brambley grass to cover, between sidewalk and street, and i thought: be careful. go slow, just in case you steeeeeee..... and, i fell in a big hole.
actually i fell into a pipe. my foot went straight down, into an open pipe flush with the ground and big enough around to let my whole foot in with minimal twisting, and i just sort of sat down, and my leg went into this pipe, up to my *knee*. seriously. i have a blue and swollen bruise on the inside of my knee, three days later, from the top of the pipe.
i sat there on the grass with slow-motion adrenaline waves washing over me, thinking ... ok, so my whole left lower leg is in a pipe. that was not the goal for today. but... i don't think i'm hurt? i got up, walked gingerly back to the sidewalk, onto the street, and was running before i got to the other side. i felt fine, just shaken. the bruise and swelling didn't really make themselves known to me till the day after -- but they don't affect my running at all.
note: watch for huge lurking open pipes on the marathon course?
also note: have used up ALL POSSIBLE LUCK before race. no tempting any of the gods now.
yesterday i cross-trained in my parents basement, nevermind how, and this morning i did my last 'speedwork'. and i basically did what i was supposed to do, even! i ran the intervals at just about the proscribed pace, six 1/4 miles at about 8 minute miles, and they might have been a little too fast, but no worries. when i was all done and feeling good, turned out i had miscalculated and i was too far from home after cool down, so the run was more like 5 miles than 4. and in that last mile, i was running nice and easy, but there's a bunch of inclines along the way (damn parents, living at the top of a hill in like every direction) and i really didn't feel like running them.
but obviously i did, because of the banking mentally hard miles project, and because i am apparently going to run a marathon on sunday.
kind of excited? i don't know. mostly i am just slightly alarmed at the prospect of getting across the border on saturday despite government shutdown nonsense, and getting to the starting line via a bit of a walk on the morning of, while 18,000 other people do the same thing. well, and also i just realized that my hotel is in between two parts of the course, and so we will have to get our car OUT of there before the race starts, no? because otherwise what happens at the end?! um, logistics are ridiculous.
anyway. i'm maybe ready. tomorrow and thursday are pilates, core, stretching, stuff like that. i'm probably not too freaked out.
just no more surprise foot-wide deathtrap pipes in the ground, please, universe.
after this morning, i'm done my second last pre-marathon run.
there are four real days left.
i have one short pre-marathon run on friday morning.
and then it's all a-happening.
so, my saturday morning run was... eventful! 8 miles. at mile 2.5, my hair elastic exploded. spppprong, sweatyhairtail now slicked to my neck. real cute. ... i had to find the elastic on the pavement and tie it back up, like a parcel, with badly behaved string. it wasn't optimal. whatever!
note: extra hair elastic in pocket on race day.
then at mile 6, i had this little 3 foot patch of brambley grass to cover, between sidewalk and street, and i thought: be careful. go slow, just in case you steeeeeee..... and, i fell in a big hole.
actually i fell into a pipe. my foot went straight down, into an open pipe flush with the ground and big enough around to let my whole foot in with minimal twisting, and i just sort of sat down, and my leg went into this pipe, up to my *knee*. seriously. i have a blue and swollen bruise on the inside of my knee, three days later, from the top of the pipe.
i sat there on the grass with slow-motion adrenaline waves washing over me, thinking ... ok, so my whole left lower leg is in a pipe. that was not the goal for today. but... i don't think i'm hurt? i got up, walked gingerly back to the sidewalk, onto the street, and was running before i got to the other side. i felt fine, just shaken. the bruise and swelling didn't really make themselves known to me till the day after -- but they don't affect my running at all.
note: watch for huge lurking open pipes on the marathon course?
also note: have used up ALL POSSIBLE LUCK before race. no tempting any of the gods now.
yesterday i cross-trained in my parents basement, nevermind how, and this morning i did my last 'speedwork'. and i basically did what i was supposed to do, even! i ran the intervals at just about the proscribed pace, six 1/4 miles at about 8 minute miles, and they might have been a little too fast, but no worries. when i was all done and feeling good, turned out i had miscalculated and i was too far from home after cool down, so the run was more like 5 miles than 4. and in that last mile, i was running nice and easy, but there's a bunch of inclines along the way (damn parents, living at the top of a hill in like every direction) and i really didn't feel like running them.
but obviously i did, because of the banking mentally hard miles project, and because i am apparently going to run a marathon on sunday.
kind of excited? i don't know. mostly i am just slightly alarmed at the prospect of getting across the border on saturday despite government shutdown nonsense, and getting to the starting line via a bit of a walk on the morning of, while 18,000 other people do the same thing. well, and also i just realized that my hotel is in between two parts of the course, and so we will have to get our car OUT of there before the race starts, no? because otherwise what happens at the end?! um, logistics are ridiculous.
anyway. i'm maybe ready. tomorrow and thursday are pilates, core, stretching, stuff like that. i'm probably not too freaked out.
just no more surprise foot-wide deathtrap pipes in the ground, please, universe.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
running before i fly
i woke up at 8am this saturday morning to eat breakfast and have coffee and have time to digest and wake up before my last 'long' run: 8 miles, starting in about 20 minutes.
really, who am i.
the timing is in part by necessity: when i get back, there will be just enough time for personal maintenance and dog reassuring, and then it will be time to drive to the airport and thence fly to toronto. there is canadian thanksgiving and such to be had, and i will be there a week.
and when i am home again, in a week and a day, i will have RUN A MARATHON.
(srsly. who. am i.)
i had this extensive packing list for last night, with all my gear and clothing options and passport and equipment and so on. i got everything packed and so on (lots of it is laundry, you're welcome mum.) and then i remembered -- oh, wait, i can't actually show up to thanksgiving in running clothes? so i had to do a little extra shoving into the bag.
it only now occurs to me that 8 miles is not that short a run. well, ha! apparently i now (nearly literally) eat such mileage for breakfast. thursday's tempo went pretty well: i stayed at or below the targeted pace the whole time, and it felt comfortably hard (it was also a minute per mile faster than i'll be running the marathon, so good.) and today i'll have a good time, i promise myself.
... a friend of mine just had a baby a few days ago, and it sounds like she kind of broke her tailbone as a result? that's a thing that can happen, apparently. (um and maybe happened the last time she gave birth too? so, it heals... eventually. ow.) anyway. i am trying to keep in mind that nothing i do this week is going to be painful like THAT, so it'll probably be ok.
k, gotta run.
really, who am i.
the timing is in part by necessity: when i get back, there will be just enough time for personal maintenance and dog reassuring, and then it will be time to drive to the airport and thence fly to toronto. there is canadian thanksgiving and such to be had, and i will be there a week.
and when i am home again, in a week and a day, i will have RUN A MARATHON.
(srsly. who. am i.)
i had this extensive packing list for last night, with all my gear and clothing options and passport and equipment and so on. i got everything packed and so on (lots of it is laundry, you're welcome mum.) and then i remembered -- oh, wait, i can't actually show up to thanksgiving in running clothes? so i had to do a little extra shoving into the bag.
it only now occurs to me that 8 miles is not that short a run. well, ha! apparently i now (nearly literally) eat such mileage for breakfast. thursday's tempo went pretty well: i stayed at or below the targeted pace the whole time, and it felt comfortably hard (it was also a minute per mile faster than i'll be running the marathon, so good.) and today i'll have a good time, i promise myself.
... a friend of mine just had a baby a few days ago, and it sounds like she kind of broke her tailbone as a result? that's a thing that can happen, apparently. (um and maybe happened the last time she gave birth too? so, it heals... eventually. ow.) anyway. i am trying to keep in mind that nothing i do this week is going to be painful like THAT, so it'll probably be ok.
k, gotta run.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
why can't the marathon be at 6pm?
because that is my awesomest time to run.
today i had my last (always scare-quotes-worthy) 'speed work' run. the plan said i was supposed to run 1km at 8:03/mile pace 5 times, and run 400 metres in between each as 'rest' intervals.
can we talk about how speedwork *distances* are always listed in kilometres, even in the US, but then *speeds* are still all in miles? that doesn't help me and my watch work out what we're doing, ok? especially when thinking is hard due to running hard. this is not a time for math problems about trains leaving different stations headed for cleveland and what colour was the bear, etc.
so. you know i'm a little antsy about the speedwork after the racing injury incident near this blog's inception, right? ok, so i fudge. i almost always do one fewer interval than they say, but i always get the mileage about right. so today i thought: i'll do one mile to warm up. then i'll do .6 miles at something fast, and .3 miles to recover, 4 times. and then a mile to cooldown.
i left the house at 6pm, in a somewhat chilly but slightly humid sunshine. the sky was clear and the sun was dappling shit. anyway, i ran the first mile at 9:20 pace, and i thought: oooh, ok, that's not bad.
and then i started the intervals.
and I KILLED IT.
i didn't time each interval (i am not a garmin ninja) i just have the mile splits, but those miles with speed in them were all sub 8 minute miles. and for .3 of the miles i was not pushing! after the first one, i realized i was a little too close to sprinting, but the last three i was both pushing, and yet not going full-tilt. i talked to myself briefly to make sure i wasn't overestimating my lungs, and while i couldn't have held a conversation, i wasn't gasping. i finished my last interval at mile 4.3, then i backed off to about 9:30 miles, and ran home to make 6 miles total. when i looked at my watch at mile 5, i realized that had i been in a race, i could definitely have run a 50-minute 10k today; my PR is 49:30 on a course that i am SO SURE was short. as it was, i ran 6 miles in 52:30, and i would have happily run another 6 (though not at that speed, granted.)
anyway, the point is that i'm pretty much a champion... when i run at 6pm. now let's just explain to the good people of detroit that they need to move the marathon 11 hours later, and everything will be sweetness and sunshine.
today i had my last (always scare-quotes-worthy) 'speed work' run. the plan said i was supposed to run 1km at 8:03/mile pace 5 times, and run 400 metres in between each as 'rest' intervals.
can we talk about how speedwork *distances* are always listed in kilometres, even in the US, but then *speeds* are still all in miles? that doesn't help me and my watch work out what we're doing, ok? especially when thinking is hard due to running hard. this is not a time for math problems about trains leaving different stations headed for cleveland and what colour was the bear, etc.
so. you know i'm a little antsy about the speedwork after the racing injury incident near this blog's inception, right? ok, so i fudge. i almost always do one fewer interval than they say, but i always get the mileage about right. so today i thought: i'll do one mile to warm up. then i'll do .6 miles at something fast, and .3 miles to recover, 4 times. and then a mile to cooldown.
i left the house at 6pm, in a somewhat chilly but slightly humid sunshine. the sky was clear and the sun was dappling shit. anyway, i ran the first mile at 9:20 pace, and i thought: oooh, ok, that's not bad.
and then i started the intervals.
and I KILLED IT.
i didn't time each interval (i am not a garmin ninja) i just have the mile splits, but those miles with speed in them were all sub 8 minute miles. and for .3 of the miles i was not pushing! after the first one, i realized i was a little too close to sprinting, but the last three i was both pushing, and yet not going full-tilt. i talked to myself briefly to make sure i wasn't overestimating my lungs, and while i couldn't have held a conversation, i wasn't gasping. i finished my last interval at mile 4.3, then i backed off to about 9:30 miles, and ran home to make 6 miles total. when i looked at my watch at mile 5, i realized that had i been in a race, i could definitely have run a 50-minute 10k today; my PR is 49:30 on a course that i am SO SURE was short. as it was, i ran 6 miles in 52:30, and i would have happily run another 6 (though not at that speed, granted.)
anyway, the point is that i'm pretty much a champion... when i run at 6pm. now let's just explain to the good people of detroit that they need to move the marathon 11 hours later, and everything will be sweetness and sunshine.
i have a bib number!
this should not be exciting. but secretly i have been having random thoughts like 'maybe i imagined registering? maybe i'm not really going to be able to run the marathon. i will just have to go to detroit and run around in circles pretending.'
but now i got an email, and then i went to a website, and now i am bib number 6474, so it is REAL.
actually this makes me feel much better. at least if it all goes to hell, i will be there officially.
my last 'speedwork' run tonight.
12 days to go.
doin' it.
but now i got an email, and then i went to a website, and now i am bib number 6474, so it is REAL.
actually this makes me feel much better. at least if it all goes to hell, i will be there officially.
my last 'speedwork' run tonight.
12 days to go.
doin' it.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
two tough ones, but the kids are alright
this was my third-to-last week of training. last weekend i swapped the order of my long run with my speed work for this week's tuesday (somehow that reads as confusingly as possible, so see if you can do something with it then move on)
... and anyway the upshot was i ran long on monday (see previous post) and this meant that i had a 7 mile tempo run to do on thursday, and a 13 miler today. what i in fact ran was 5.5 miles on thursday, and 11.5 miles today.
a B, B- effort, it would seem? but keep reading.
according to my current pace calculation (which i am calculating with reference to my half-marathon 'race' time from a few weeks ago, but shaving two minutes off to account for how i ran it back to back with 7 miles the night before as part of training, so no taper, so let's say that's conservative...) ok, sorry that sentence's centre cannot hold.
according to my current pace calculation, i was supposed to do the tempo 7 miles at 9:15/miles and the 13 today at 9:45/miles. and my overall paces both days were spot on, but actually that's a bit misleading, for one good and one bad reason.
the good one was that both days i had a quite slow first mile, and i need that, that's cool, so the tempo mile splits are like 9:45/9:15/9:02/8:56/8:58... and then the last half mile cool-down, maybe 9:50. but the bad reason from today's run was that after the first really creaky mile, something like 10:20, i never really got into a rhythm, so my pace fluctuated a lot. most of the miles were somewhere around 9:30, and a couple were far too fast, and two were around 9:55-10:00. usually i'm pretty consistent with my pace, and today i was rather more surge-and-fade than usual. there was no consistent downward trend, and if anything i bet i negative split, but it was still weird for me.
so, still maybe now a B+ effort? but keep reading.
early october weather is supposed to be fall, right? leaves are falling off trees here. it's getting into the 40s fahrenheit at night. but no, thursday it was in the 80s with sun and high humidity when i ran mid in the morning, and today it was in the mid 70s but so humid i got back to the car looking like a swimmer. i *rang out* my ponytail from sweat. so this was nonsense, and SURELY detroit is not going to be 80F with 70% humidity at 7am in two weeks time. OKAY RIGHT???
next, there's wednesday crosstraining. i went to this plyometrics class wednesday night? it's pretty great. i didn't push myself really hard; i just got a good work out. yes, but, 14 miles on monday. and i've been training for weeks. and then miles on thursday morning. and so yesterday my legs were sore, sore, sore. not i can't walk sore, but definitely i think twice about sitting quickly sore. and there was stretching and rolling, but obviously this accounted for the creaky first mile today.
and finally, there is serious general fatigue. where did that come from? oh, let me tell you what else happens when there's heat and humidity in this part of the world. night-timethunderstorms. you know who really can't handle thunderstorms? our dog. you know what she does when something happens that she can't handle? she curls up desperately on your face and pants. long story short: i got far less sleep than i wanted or needed both thursday and friday (last) night. and to mitigate this, once the thunderstorms were over, i slept in somewhat, and so there i was at noon out in the humid soup on creaky legs, with 13 miles to run.
thus: i am giving myself A+ GOLD STAR for this week's training.
(thursday morning's 5.5 instead of 7 was partly heat, partly plyo, but also partly the failure to realize that i cannot run comfortably less than 2 hours after eating oatmeal. maybe it used to be different, but lotta things used to be different, sister. so there was an angry, angry stomach for a lot of that time. learned the lesson, for real this time.)
the most important thing about these two runs is that i don't think shortening each one by 1.5 miles reflects a lack of mental fortitude. i definitely wanted to quit at about mile 2 on thursday, and honestly at mile 3 today. if i had just been out running for the fun of it i would have thought eff this! fun is not to be had today! and done something else. but in both cases i reminded myself i'm almost done this training business, and i want a repository of memories wherein it *sucked* and i did it *anyway*. and i'm putting all of thursday and all of today's miles in that memory bank, and they will be there when i need them.
i did a fair amount of evaluating vital signs: i knew that if anything in my legs hurt in the twinge way not the ache-creak-overalltired way, or if i was dehydrating or overheating in a real way, that it would be time to back off, but that didn't happen. at mile 3 today i thought: this is hard, but it's really my head that's finding it hard. and at mile 10, it felt physically no harder. i didn't let myself turn on music until mile 6, which is hardly far into a marathon but felt like SO LONG today, and the beat helped but mostly i just talked to myself about how it's all mental, it's all mental, and i'm getting close now, and i've got it in me, and jesus christ how is it only .02 miles since the last time i looked at my watch? that is not even possible! that's like looking at your phone to check the time and not seeing it and realizing you didn't and then having to check again right away! dammit, i'm listening to Eminem again. ... so, yeah, the self-talk needs a little work. i have some mantras, too, but they are so embarrassing i'm not telling you them. they work, a little, so that's good enough.
two weeks left now. i think that means five more runs before marathon day. aspects of the plan include: being smart. stretching. pilates. easy, careful runs. (supposed to be 10 miles next weekend? we'll see. i won't mind if it's more like 8 or 9.) foam rolling. crosstraining on the elliptical and at home. getting sleep. lots of planks and back strength and other core stuff. a little yoga. not tripping over anything, seriously now. actually that's become hard recently, because after a bunch of running (and i did run 31 miles in the last 6 days, that's kind of a bunch) i apparently lose lateral-type balance? i'm not sure if it's the small ankle muscles or some bigger quad/ham/glute ones that are the culprit, but now is not the time for me to take up tightrope walking. if i start doing multiple things at once, like walking down the sidewalk and texting, i may get ticketed for appearing drunk and disorderly. it's a little ridiculous. anyway, no falling sideways awkwardly into something and spraining my whatever.
oh, and an amusement to end with? today before i had really resigned myself to a hard mental slog, i was running along this kind of pretty rural road at the bottom of campus, and there's big trees in the distance and farmland around me and this series of agricultural research facilities i mentioned before (the poultry research people? then the pork research people?)... and then i'm coming up this winding little bit of road, the sky is blue, the clouds are wispy, and then at the next big intersection with a sort of highway that leads back into campus i see... a gleaming building! it's green and sleek and mysteriously out of place, and it's surrounded by pristine parking lot and it's got this background of autumn trees and what the hell is it... oh, of course. it's the OTHER branch of the glimmering campus Credit Union! remember last time i ran through cornfields to the Credit Union, way on the other side of town? yeah, clearly same architects. the magic is everywhere. so bizarre.
back to life, folks. i have a couple more things to blog about here in the next little while, so i'll be around.
... i got this! probably!
but dinner first.
... and anyway the upshot was i ran long on monday (see previous post) and this meant that i had a 7 mile tempo run to do on thursday, and a 13 miler today. what i in fact ran was 5.5 miles on thursday, and 11.5 miles today.
a B, B- effort, it would seem? but keep reading.
according to my current pace calculation (which i am calculating with reference to my half-marathon 'race' time from a few weeks ago, but shaving two minutes off to account for how i ran it back to back with 7 miles the night before as part of training, so no taper, so let's say that's conservative...) ok, sorry that sentence's centre cannot hold.
according to my current pace calculation, i was supposed to do the tempo 7 miles at 9:15/miles and the 13 today at 9:45/miles. and my overall paces both days were spot on, but actually that's a bit misleading, for one good and one bad reason.
the good one was that both days i had a quite slow first mile, and i need that, that's cool, so the tempo mile splits are like 9:45/9:15/9:02/8:56/8:58... and then the last half mile cool-down, maybe 9:50. but the bad reason from today's run was that after the first really creaky mile, something like 10:20, i never really got into a rhythm, so my pace fluctuated a lot. most of the miles were somewhere around 9:30, and a couple were far too fast, and two were around 9:55-10:00. usually i'm pretty consistent with my pace, and today i was rather more surge-and-fade than usual. there was no consistent downward trend, and if anything i bet i negative split, but it was still weird for me.
so, still maybe now a B+ effort? but keep reading.
early october weather is supposed to be fall, right? leaves are falling off trees here. it's getting into the 40s fahrenheit at night. but no, thursday it was in the 80s with sun and high humidity when i ran mid in the morning, and today it was in the mid 70s but so humid i got back to the car looking like a swimmer. i *rang out* my ponytail from sweat. so this was nonsense, and SURELY detroit is not going to be 80F with 70% humidity at 7am in two weeks time. OKAY RIGHT???
next, there's wednesday crosstraining. i went to this plyometrics class wednesday night? it's pretty great. i didn't push myself really hard; i just got a good work out. yes, but, 14 miles on monday. and i've been training for weeks. and then miles on thursday morning. and so yesterday my legs were sore, sore, sore. not i can't walk sore, but definitely i think twice about sitting quickly sore. and there was stretching and rolling, but obviously this accounted for the creaky first mile today.
and finally, there is serious general fatigue. where did that come from? oh, let me tell you what else happens when there's heat and humidity in this part of the world. night-timethunderstorms. you know who really can't handle thunderstorms? our dog. you know what she does when something happens that she can't handle? she curls up desperately on your face and pants. long story short: i got far less sleep than i wanted or needed both thursday and friday (last) night. and to mitigate this, once the thunderstorms were over, i slept in somewhat, and so there i was at noon out in the humid soup on creaky legs, with 13 miles to run.
thus: i am giving myself A+ GOLD STAR for this week's training.
(thursday morning's 5.5 instead of 7 was partly heat, partly plyo, but also partly the failure to realize that i cannot run comfortably less than 2 hours after eating oatmeal. maybe it used to be different, but lotta things used to be different, sister. so there was an angry, angry stomach for a lot of that time. learned the lesson, for real this time.)
the most important thing about these two runs is that i don't think shortening each one by 1.5 miles reflects a lack of mental fortitude. i definitely wanted to quit at about mile 2 on thursday, and honestly at mile 3 today. if i had just been out running for the fun of it i would have thought eff this! fun is not to be had today! and done something else. but in both cases i reminded myself i'm almost done this training business, and i want a repository of memories wherein it *sucked* and i did it *anyway*. and i'm putting all of thursday and all of today's miles in that memory bank, and they will be there when i need them.
i did a fair amount of evaluating vital signs: i knew that if anything in my legs hurt in the twinge way not the ache-creak-overalltired way, or if i was dehydrating or overheating in a real way, that it would be time to back off, but that didn't happen. at mile 3 today i thought: this is hard, but it's really my head that's finding it hard. and at mile 10, it felt physically no harder. i didn't let myself turn on music until mile 6, which is hardly far into a marathon but felt like SO LONG today, and the beat helped but mostly i just talked to myself about how it's all mental, it's all mental, and i'm getting close now, and i've got it in me, and jesus christ how is it only .02 miles since the last time i looked at my watch? that is not even possible! that's like looking at your phone to check the time and not seeing it and realizing you didn't and then having to check again right away! dammit, i'm listening to Eminem again. ... so, yeah, the self-talk needs a little work. i have some mantras, too, but they are so embarrassing i'm not telling you them. they work, a little, so that's good enough.
two weeks left now. i think that means five more runs before marathon day. aspects of the plan include: being smart. stretching. pilates. easy, careful runs. (supposed to be 10 miles next weekend? we'll see. i won't mind if it's more like 8 or 9.) foam rolling. crosstraining on the elliptical and at home. getting sleep. lots of planks and back strength and other core stuff. a little yoga. not tripping over anything, seriously now. actually that's become hard recently, because after a bunch of running (and i did run 31 miles in the last 6 days, that's kind of a bunch) i apparently lose lateral-type balance? i'm not sure if it's the small ankle muscles or some bigger quad/ham/glute ones that are the culprit, but now is not the time for me to take up tightrope walking. if i start doing multiple things at once, like walking down the sidewalk and texting, i may get ticketed for appearing drunk and disorderly. it's a little ridiculous. anyway, no falling sideways awkwardly into something and spraining my whatever.
oh, and an amusement to end with? today before i had really resigned myself to a hard mental slog, i was running along this kind of pretty rural road at the bottom of campus, and there's big trees in the distance and farmland around me and this series of agricultural research facilities i mentioned before (the poultry research people? then the pork research people?)... and then i'm coming up this winding little bit of road, the sky is blue, the clouds are wispy, and then at the next big intersection with a sort of highway that leads back into campus i see... a gleaming building! it's green and sleek and mysteriously out of place, and it's surrounded by pristine parking lot and it's got this background of autumn trees and what the hell is it... oh, of course. it's the OTHER branch of the glimmering campus Credit Union! remember last time i ran through cornfields to the Credit Union, way on the other side of town? yeah, clearly same architects. the magic is everywhere. so bizarre.
back to life, folks. i have a couple more things to blog about here in the next little while, so i'll be around.
... i got this! probably!
but dinner first.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
last long one done
mm.
weekend running turned out to be very minimal: just 3 easy if hilly miles with a friend conquering her asthma out of town. relaxing! i didn't even think to bring my garmin until hours after we were done! very nice. sunday night i got home from my three days of gallivanting, and i was TIRED, but i crosstrained, and it felt fine, a few calf twinges but nothing worrying.
due to weekend re-arrangements, i decided monday morning would be my last long run -- by long, i meant over 13 miles. and even though i was tired sunday night i have decided my longest runs need to all be first thing in the morning from now on. because my biggest concern about race day is rapidly becoming the irrationally early hour at which i will need to start running, and the ramifications for when i will have to get up, and so on. the body needs practice.
so i went to bed sunday at 1:30, i got up at 7:30. i don't know if that sounds wimpy to you but it was pretty rough in the moment. but: i did it. i had laid everything out the night before, but there is no point in hurrying if your digestive system isn't settled, so, i left when i was ready, at 8:45. this still doesn't really tell me when i need to get up on race morning, because that day once i leave the hotel, i won't be starting to run, i'll be walking a mile to the starting line and presumably then standing around in my corral or a bathroom line for some time... right, so, everything is still unknown. stress is silly.
yesterday, then. i ran 14 miles. i meant to run 15, but i ran slower than i expected, and so i ran out of time (i had a deadline to get home before my other half left for the day.) in fact: i ran faster than my 'plan' pace time, i just forget that i'm running slower than normal. i'm not running half marathon *race pace*, brain -- the goal was to keep the miles at 10 minutes, and instead i ran at a 9:50/mile overall, and while a couple miles were at 10:09, they were in the middle, and the majority of the time i was telling myself to slow down and not screw up early. really the only big obstacles were overall fatigue, and mental boredom. it wasn't easy; i wished i was home many times. but no cramping, no bonking, and no feelings of 'i am a failure at this'. i DID think 'how am i going to do another 12 miles?!'... but that seems like a perfectly sensible question.
so i am counting this as a slow-burn solid success. i ran more than a half marathon when i didn't really feel like i had the energy for a run. good sign, right?
from now out, i'm getting REST. and i'm not going to be drinking much (dad, it's my turn to DD home from (canadian) thanksgiving dinner, and for once it will be no sacrifice.) and i need to just... *not trip on anything* for the next while.
20 days to go. countdown is starting for real.
weekend running turned out to be very minimal: just 3 easy if hilly miles with a friend conquering her asthma out of town. relaxing! i didn't even think to bring my garmin until hours after we were done! very nice. sunday night i got home from my three days of gallivanting, and i was TIRED, but i crosstrained, and it felt fine, a few calf twinges but nothing worrying.
due to weekend re-arrangements, i decided monday morning would be my last long run -- by long, i meant over 13 miles. and even though i was tired sunday night i have decided my longest runs need to all be first thing in the morning from now on. because my biggest concern about race day is rapidly becoming the irrationally early hour at which i will need to start running, and the ramifications for when i will have to get up, and so on. the body needs practice.
so i went to bed sunday at 1:30, i got up at 7:30. i don't know if that sounds wimpy to you but it was pretty rough in the moment. but: i did it. i had laid everything out the night before, but there is no point in hurrying if your digestive system isn't settled, so, i left when i was ready, at 8:45. this still doesn't really tell me when i need to get up on race morning, because that day once i leave the hotel, i won't be starting to run, i'll be walking a mile to the starting line and presumably then standing around in my corral or a bathroom line for some time... right, so, everything is still unknown. stress is silly.
yesterday, then. i ran 14 miles. i meant to run 15, but i ran slower than i expected, and so i ran out of time (i had a deadline to get home before my other half left for the day.) in fact: i ran faster than my 'plan' pace time, i just forget that i'm running slower than normal. i'm not running half marathon *race pace*, brain -- the goal was to keep the miles at 10 minutes, and instead i ran at a 9:50/mile overall, and while a couple miles were at 10:09, they were in the middle, and the majority of the time i was telling myself to slow down and not screw up early. really the only big obstacles were overall fatigue, and mental boredom. it wasn't easy; i wished i was home many times. but no cramping, no bonking, and no feelings of 'i am a failure at this'. i DID think 'how am i going to do another 12 miles?!'... but that seems like a perfectly sensible question.
so i am counting this as a slow-burn solid success. i ran more than a half marathon when i didn't really feel like i had the energy for a run. good sign, right?
from now out, i'm getting REST. and i'm not going to be drinking much (dad, it's my turn to DD home from (canadian) thanksgiving dinner, and for once it will be no sacrifice.) and i need to just... *not trip on anything* for the next while.
20 days to go. countdown is starting for real.
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