still here, still running, and also speedwork?

so, hello.

in the month since the marathon, i have in fact returned to running. for two and a half weeks i was traveling, so running was really my only good way to exercise, so i ran a lot. boston has a river, so i ran along the river (Boston Marathon Citgo sign in the background). western massachusetts has a lot of hills and bike paths, so i ran them too. and new york has many long bridges and huge parks, so i ran for miles at dusk back and forth between manhattan and brooklyn, and around prospect park (like central park, but smaller, and more brooklyn.)

and so now: what am i doing? yeah, i'm running. that's still a thing. i'm enjoying it, often a lot. i often bring my garmin but often i don't. i confess i've been using my marathon playlist most of the time, which means i get these bursts of emotion and energy and lethargy depending on the songs; as the playlist is on random shuffle it can be kind of a rollercoaster. ... i'm not feeling at my healthiest, but i'm trying to get in a good mind space about that and eat better to combat the ughness, and overall i'm pretty happy to be running.

yesterday while running i realized i'm excited again about the prospect of running goals for 2014. ... at new years 2012, i was focused on running 30k in march. at new years 2013, i was already committed to running the marathon in october. so by new years 2014, i want a new plan; i think the right option will be to pick two goal races, one in the spring and one later. i am pretty sure neither should be a marathon; probably they will be chosen for interesting locations and features? suggestions welcome? i have already received some compelling arguments for running Bay State next fall (compelling as in I was offered a place to stay and substantial amounts of post-race homemade pie.)

so: goals. coming soon.

i'm also running 5k in two weekends, and i think i may try running kind of speedily there, see how that goes. ... speaking of which! a speedy runner of my acquaintance commented on my last post-marathon post, reporting that she has gotten into speedwork (again, but for the first time since either college or highschool?), and asking about my own speed attempts?

so, let's pretend this is the kind of running blog where i know things, and i'll pretend along with you.

my usual approach to speed work is intervals. i am happiest doing something like 800 x 4 with 400m recovery. which is not a normal way to do intervals i realize, in that why is the recovery so long? i guess i probably shouldn't even call them intervals -- but you see i'm in the woods on trails, not on a track, so 400m makes more sense there. when i drop down to something shorter than 600 or 400m per interval, i find i'm no good at regulating my speed for the entire interval -- i go out too fast or too slow. whereas i know what pace i can sustain for half a mile. odd?

meanwhile, when i am on a treadmill, i actually really enjoy ladders! especially when training for the 30k two years ago, which had to include a lot of treadmills due to ice on the roads of michigan, i was doing some thing i either read somewhere or made up, where i pick a fairly easy speed, and a somewhat fast one, and i run slow-fast-slow-fast, in a pyramid like this (in minutes) 1-1-2-1-3-1-4-1-3-1-2-1... and then other times i will stick to 1 minute of each, but on the slow minute, i increase the incline a bit, returning to (near) flat each time i go fast, and making it steeper and steeper on the successive slows... basically when i'm on the treadmill i try to make myself collapse within half an hour. usually effective.

... and does this all make me faster? well. my fastest 10k, which was just some weird damn miracle, came 6 weeks after my 30k race. which makes me think that training for distance makes me much faster on the short stretches. does this make any sense? i feel like the internet told me this is a known phenomenon. we will see what happens at my 5k? i would like to run 5 minute kilometres; this is something i have done in the past but i don't think i've been pulling that off recently. we will see. i think i will try a treadmill run tomorrow.

oooh! one more thing? in a pre-marathon fit of online running shopping, i bought these things that are supposed to be compression tights for winter? but i bought them a size too big, so they aren't really compression, just comfy running tights... BUT with *technical fleece on the inside*. and i ran in them yesterday when it was damp and windy and near freezing and they are GOLDEN. it's like running with pillows of love around both your legs! warm pillows of love. so, that's the best thing ever. ... they are only three quarter length, though, because i think you're supposed to wear them under, like, snowboarding pants, so i need to wear kneehigh socks with them to run, so i was wearing my marathon flaming pink argyle compression socks as well, and my other half suggested i looked really badass from head to knee, and then like a deranged scottish flamingo from there to my shoes, but the fashion will have to suffer in favour of comfort, because i felt AWESOME. they might even make running on the tundra more bearable come the new year.

so. back to running.