that is to say: i ran 6.5 miles today in an hour. that's not so slow! and it was stupid humid! and i was brave and wore my garmin, so i know that the first two miles were really easy and warm-uppy pace (9:45/mile) and then i ran four between 9:00 and 9:20/miles.
this means that i ran 4 times in the last 7 days, and i'm feeling good.
the plan for this coming week (during which i am traveling 6 days) is to run three times, with at least one run longer than an hour. also i will be in st john's newfoundland, so i plan to run looking at the ocean. good. there might even be pictures!... ok, let's not kid ourselves. i can never be bothered to get pictures off my iphone. but: i will maybe describe stuff to you.
Saturday, June 20, 2015
stupidity, tree roots, and peanut butter stealth
yesterday was a complete jackass of a day, in which among other things i got my period literally as i walked out the door to go swimming (so, not doing that apparently) and then real estate frustrations that i won't get into here prevented me from driving to the hour-away evening race i wanted to attend.
so, instead drove to this lake and ran in the woods for 30 minutes. it was great in that the woods were lovely and i wasn't too hot. it was terrible in that i ran 5k and it took me 30 minutes. it wasn't actually terrible in that those woods have a lot of hills and turns and my legs mysteriously already hurt and that's probably a respectable pace. it was however actually terrible when at one point i thought i had more energy and i sped up and caught my foot on a tree root and went flying and landed hard on my hands and knees and i have scrapes! ... ok, only terrible for 15 seconds. but also i only had time for 30 minutes and that wasn't enough.
so, today i am going to go for a longer run, at least an hour but i hope for more. to this end, i did not have oatmeal as my first meal of the day as marathon training eventually taught me that oatmeal + long run before evening = gastrodisastro. which means that i had toast and a thing i like putting on toast in peanut butter.
... and this caused the following problem: in our household, 95% of the peanut butter is consumed by the dog. so applying peanut butter to human food requires stealth and planning -- otherwise the dog decides either that she is being prevented from having dessert, despite the incongruous hour, or that she is about to be locked up while the humans are away for some hours, left cruelly behind with only peanut butter to console her, despite the lack of any other signs to that effect.
anyway, i quickly hid the PB under banana, and gave the dog a pill she wasn't due for an hour, and we were both content enough. now it is time to brace myself and pull up my big girl socks (quite literally) and charge my garmin and then run. wish me luck.
so, instead drove to this lake and ran in the woods for 30 minutes. it was great in that the woods were lovely and i wasn't too hot. it was terrible in that i ran 5k and it took me 30 minutes. it wasn't actually terrible in that those woods have a lot of hills and turns and my legs mysteriously already hurt and that's probably a respectable pace. it was however actually terrible when at one point i thought i had more energy and i sped up and caught my foot on a tree root and went flying and landed hard on my hands and knees and i have scrapes! ... ok, only terrible for 15 seconds. but also i only had time for 30 minutes and that wasn't enough.
so, today i am going to go for a longer run, at least an hour but i hope for more. to this end, i did not have oatmeal as my first meal of the day as marathon training eventually taught me that oatmeal + long run before evening = gastrodisastro. which means that i had toast and a thing i like putting on toast in peanut butter.
... and this caused the following problem: in our household, 95% of the peanut butter is consumed by the dog. so applying peanut butter to human food requires stealth and planning -- otherwise the dog decides either that she is being prevented from having dessert, despite the incongruous hour, or that she is about to be locked up while the humans are away for some hours, left cruelly behind with only peanut butter to console her, despite the lack of any other signs to that effect.
anyway, i quickly hid the PB under banana, and gave the dog a pill she wasn't due for an hour, and we were both content enough. now it is time to brace myself and pull up my big girl socks (quite literally) and charge my garmin and then run. wish me luck.
Monday, June 15, 2015
acclimatizing
just to say: i ran in the humid humidity yesterday. it was humid. it was mostly very flat, on campus and environs. it was humid. part of the time it was raining, occasionally it was pouring, mostly it was just like pawing through a wall of moisture. it was not easy. in fact, it was hard. have i mentioned that it was humid? i literally looked at mile 1 like i had jumped in a pond. IT WAS HUMID.
but i ran 4.3 miles in like 38 minutes. i pushed myself more than a little, and i made myself talk out loud to keep breathing, and i carried a water bottle full of ice. zero soreness today. this is good! and humid.
as i ran i told myself i would run a little further next time it's so humid, and the acclimatization process will continue.
also: going to run an 8k this friday evening. there's a national strawberry festival in this little town an hour away? anyway, i'm going to go run and then strawberries. and evening is my best running time, soo i am pumped.
and i hope it is LESS FUCKING HUMID.
but i ran 4.3 miles in like 38 minutes. i pushed myself more than a little, and i made myself talk out loud to keep breathing, and i carried a water bottle full of ice. zero soreness today. this is good! and humid.
as i ran i told myself i would run a little further next time it's so humid, and the acclimatization process will continue.
also: going to run an 8k this friday evening. there's a national strawberry festival in this little town an hour away? anyway, i'm going to go run and then strawberries. and evening is my best running time, soo i am pumped.
and i hope it is LESS FUCKING HUMID.
Friday, June 12, 2015
5 month running recap (not as long as that sounds)
and, it's june. hi there.
the tl;dr version of this post is: i ran. then i got sick. then i ran a half and was slow but didn't die much at all. then it was now and i'm cross-training a lot and running HTC at the end of august.
maybe you want slightly more? well, slightly more is gonna happen.
continuing in the vein of last december, i ran three days a week and logged every run for all of january, february, march and half of april. those logs show that i was consistent, that i wasn't fast, that i was dodging ice a lot of the time, that i could run a 5k pretty well on the treadmill, and that runs longer than an hour were really rare. foreshadowing: half marathons take more than an hour.
the second half of april and first half of may threw a month long wrench into my running works (wait, ow, that sounds terrible)... in the form of a weird-ass never-gonna-kill-me ear/throatache flu, which left me with way less energy than normal. it was pretty low-level brutal, actually, and it meant i ran slow, and not much, and sometimes just walked. actually that last part was fairly demoralizing: on two separate occasions during that time, i went for a walk in the river valley that was longer than a half marathon! ... but i just couldn't make myself run, and i couldn't tell if it was that it would have been physically really unpleasant or (more scary) if i just couldn't will myself to care enough. ugh. unsettling.
by mid-may i was moving again, but by now i had only two weeks to reboot before... running a half-marathon in Toronto! which i had agreed to run with hardly-ever-seen friends, and two of us were coming from different countries/time zones, and it was a whole get-together production and i wasn't going to just NOT do it even though my brain was quietly screaming um, why don't you not do it? ... i would like to say that i have been running long enough that i knew deep down i *did* have the base stamina for it, even if the backhalf was going to suck, but then again i thought that a year before when i ran that april half marathon and then it turned out the race was so hard because i was coming down with, er, mono.
SO. no illusions -- i thought i could probably do it, but maybe it would all end horrifically. oh, and i bought new shoes a week before because all my good racing shoes got too old at the same moment? yeah, it was a great lead-up.
anyway: the race was way hotter than it had been, and so i ran even slower than i might have, and i actually walked for enough seconds to send a text to my friends at the finish TWICE! ... with 2km and 1km to go... so this tells you much my head was in the game by then. however, i made it that far, and i didn't completely blow it, and my time was 2:05 exactly. given that the course was quite flat, that's pretty close to PW for me, but it wasn't a complete rout. observing how i felt during the race, and that the day after i was walking 90% normally, i think it's fair to conclude that my winter base training from before the death illness had equipped me to run a 15k race just fine, and those last 6k were really just run on willpower -- some of which i had, and some of which i didn't.
not my finest hour, but far from my ...least fine. what the hell is the opposite of finest hour. my thickest hour? moving on.
in the couple weeks since then, i've been running maybe twice a week, but also getting back into some serious cross-training. i have been struggling on and off with a cranky ankle that i can't really understand -- it seems to be exacerbated by lateral movements of various sorts, so actually running at least on the road is not bad, but there's been a fair bit of dicking around regarding whether i can run, should run, might run, etc... so. in the meantime, swimming and gymming and so on.
my last two runs were ankle-tentative but successes. both were about 4 miles; the first one very cautious and on the treadmill, the second one starting out cautious and then increasingly less cautious as the rain became a downpour complete with thunder, lightning and wrath of weathergod... but the ankle is still fine. i should ice it before i go to bed, though, right? and in the morning i hope to run for a full hour, and i hope it will be good.
right now my next race is Hood to Coast at the end of August. that seems... rather sooner than you'd think? but i'm pretty sure as long as i keep this ankle in line that i'll be fine. i *think* i could probably run it tomorrow and survive. ... anyway, let's not try that.
one other thing? 2015 has also been the year where i start doing all the yoga. at least: all the yoga videos. tons of them! in particular all the videos on a particular youtube channel, and ... yeah, you'd think they would have done more for me? i don't know; in the moment i feel like they are good stretches and strengtheners, and it's not like i don't sweat, but i don't really see my flexibility or relevant strength improving. so, hmm, not clear.
... aaaand, we're up to speed.
i guess i shouldn't say i want to start runblogging again? but the thing is, i want to start runblogging again. so, well, that might happen. here, the new yogi in me (#yeahnonotreally) will 'set an intention' on this point: the plan for the next week will be to run three times, and wear my garmin at least one time to see how i'm doing wrt pace and consistency. let's see if i can manage that and report back.
the tl;dr version of this post is: i ran. then i got sick. then i ran a half and was slow but didn't die much at all. then it was now and i'm cross-training a lot and running HTC at the end of august.
maybe you want slightly more? well, slightly more is gonna happen.
continuing in the vein of last december, i ran three days a week and logged every run for all of january, february, march and half of april. those logs show that i was consistent, that i wasn't fast, that i was dodging ice a lot of the time, that i could run a 5k pretty well on the treadmill, and that runs longer than an hour were really rare. foreshadowing: half marathons take more than an hour.
the second half of april and first half of may threw a month long wrench into my running works (wait, ow, that sounds terrible)... in the form of a weird-ass never-gonna-kill-me ear/throatache flu, which left me with way less energy than normal. it was pretty low-level brutal, actually, and it meant i ran slow, and not much, and sometimes just walked. actually that last part was fairly demoralizing: on two separate occasions during that time, i went for a walk in the river valley that was longer than a half marathon! ... but i just couldn't make myself run, and i couldn't tell if it was that it would have been physically really unpleasant or (more scary) if i just couldn't will myself to care enough. ugh. unsettling.
by mid-may i was moving again, but by now i had only two weeks to reboot before... running a half-marathon in Toronto! which i had agreed to run with hardly-ever-seen friends, and two of us were coming from different countries/time zones, and it was a whole get-together production and i wasn't going to just NOT do it even though my brain was quietly screaming um, why don't you not do it? ... i would like to say that i have been running long enough that i knew deep down i *did* have the base stamina for it, even if the backhalf was going to suck, but then again i thought that a year before when i ran that april half marathon and then it turned out the race was so hard because i was coming down with, er, mono.
SO. no illusions -- i thought i could probably do it, but maybe it would all end horrifically. oh, and i bought new shoes a week before because all my good racing shoes got too old at the same moment? yeah, it was a great lead-up.
anyway: the race was way hotter than it had been, and so i ran even slower than i might have, and i actually walked for enough seconds to send a text to my friends at the finish TWICE! ... with 2km and 1km to go... so this tells you much my head was in the game by then. however, i made it that far, and i didn't completely blow it, and my time was 2:05 exactly. given that the course was quite flat, that's pretty close to PW for me, but it wasn't a complete rout. observing how i felt during the race, and that the day after i was walking 90% normally, i think it's fair to conclude that my winter base training from before the death illness had equipped me to run a 15k race just fine, and those last 6k were really just run on willpower -- some of which i had, and some of which i didn't.
not my finest hour, but far from my ...least fine. what the hell is the opposite of finest hour. my thickest hour? moving on.
in the couple weeks since then, i've been running maybe twice a week, but also getting back into some serious cross-training. i have been struggling on and off with a cranky ankle that i can't really understand -- it seems to be exacerbated by lateral movements of various sorts, so actually running at least on the road is not bad, but there's been a fair bit of dicking around regarding whether i can run, should run, might run, etc... so. in the meantime, swimming and gymming and so on.
my last two runs were ankle-tentative but successes. both were about 4 miles; the first one very cautious and on the treadmill, the second one starting out cautious and then increasingly less cautious as the rain became a downpour complete with thunder, lightning and wrath of weathergod... but the ankle is still fine. i should ice it before i go to bed, though, right? and in the morning i hope to run for a full hour, and i hope it will be good.
right now my next race is Hood to Coast at the end of August. that seems... rather sooner than you'd think? but i'm pretty sure as long as i keep this ankle in line that i'll be fine. i *think* i could probably run it tomorrow and survive. ... anyway, let's not try that.
one other thing? 2015 has also been the year where i start doing all the yoga. at least: all the yoga videos. tons of them! in particular all the videos on a particular youtube channel, and ... yeah, you'd think they would have done more for me? i don't know; in the moment i feel like they are good stretches and strengtheners, and it's not like i don't sweat, but i don't really see my flexibility or relevant strength improving. so, hmm, not clear.
... aaaand, we're up to speed.
i guess i shouldn't say i want to start runblogging again? but the thing is, i want to start runblogging again. so, well, that might happen. here, the new yogi in me (#yeahnonotreally) will 'set an intention' on this point: the plan for the next week will be to run three times, and wear my garmin at least one time to see how i'm doing wrt pace and consistency. let's see if i can manage that and report back.
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