Thursday, February 23, 2012

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Miles Run this Week: 8.0
Days Until Burlington: 94

Under 100 days to go! This morning I dragged myself out of bed to run hills. Surprisingly, I effing hate hills. A deep-seeded hatred. So, obviously, I picked the most notorious hill in all of Boston: Summit Ave. With a climb of about 240 ft, I turned the corner of Beacon, and it kind of looked like this:



(In comparison, the infamous "Heartbreak Hill" on the Boston Marathon route is only a climb of 88 ft. It just happens at the worst possible time, ever.)

My marathon training guide recommended I "spring" up the hill, meaning I focus on high knees, and landing on the balls of my feet rather than trying to drive into the hill with my legs (which ultimately kills your calves and can lead to plantar fasciitis). My pace was about 10:40's when I got to Summit...and then dropped to 12:44s as I "sprung" up it. But as a sprinter in high school...this form is how you run...everything. So I took tiny steps and drove my knees, and looked back a couple times to show myself how far I went.

There is nothing that makes you feel like a total beast (in a good way) at 7 AM than conquering Summit Ave. I promise you that.

This was also my 2nd run in my NEW SNEAKERS! I went to Marathon Sports on Sunday to get refit, since the edition of my shoes have been retired (but I've found that sometimes, a redesign happens between numbers, and then life sucks).

I tried a pair of Asics, but on the test jog, my knees immediately started to hurt. I tried a pair of Sauconys, and I felt the hollow space where the arch support was missing. Then, I was brought a pair of Nikes. I recoiled.

Back in 2008, when I knew nothing about running, I wandered into Niketown. I told them that I was training for the Boston Marathon, and needed sneakers. So, without looking at my feet, without asking if I had any nagging injuries, without any considerations at all, the girl pointed to a shoe, and told me it was what I needed. Without knowing that feet swell when distance running (compounded by the fact that Nike runs small), I got a size 10, instead of an 11.

I lost 4 toenails after Boston '09. I had knee pain (probably from my weak hip, which wasn't supported in these shoes) and I've been trying to prehab/rehab ever since. I decided that Nike, the godfather of running sneakers, had gotten too big, too focused on all the other sports, and I would never, ever buy a pair of Nike running sneakers.

Turns out, my anger was misdirected. It's not the sneakers that killed me. It was the misinformation. The Nikes that were brought out on Sunday are like running on clouds. Check out these puppies:

Nike Zoom Structure Triax+ 15


Bonus: they look super cute with my hyper-colored socks!

This week is also my longest mileage week since 2010. Week 2 closed down with 17 miles, which I combined with a lot of strength training, so they were a tough 17. This week is 20 miles, with my long run at 9 miles. The weather for Saturday looks like there's another awesomely windy day ahead. Just need to keep cranking! 



Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Rest Day = Best Day

Miles Run This Week: 3
Days Until Burlington: 102

New layout! Twitters! Links! Races! Other blogs I dig! Teknologeeez!

Before the blogeekout, Monday I had what should have been an easy 3-mile run. I strength trained beforehand, which will make my awkward arm jiggle eventually go away, but is particularly exhausting ( Dom focuses on keeping our heart rate up). Since I calculated out what my pace should be (to compensate for the 0.16 discrepancy on my MapMyRun app), I can't just cruise at whatever speed and figure that's enough. About 1.75 miles in, hitting that 10:58 pace was hard. And this was in base building mode.

My hope is that running these at a slow pace tired will lead to stronger runs in the future (good); but it could actually lead to me hurting myself (not good). So I am proceeding with extreme caution.

Tuesday was my much needed (and earned) rest day. My off day can pretty much be summed up in two actions: sitting on the couch and eating EVERYTHING in sight. Yesterday was no exception. And it was delicious.

Usually when I go into human-vacuum mode, I start to panic. How am I going to burn all these off? Usually while I'm eating an entire sleeve of cookies, I can justify it with the "I'm going for a run tonight" (which is easily the only reason I run anymore...so I can eat), but I've realized that my body knows what's up. I've been training long enough now that it knows I get 1 day a week to go bananapants (and eat those) and I just pack it in.

Luckily, last night "packing it in" consisted of omega-3 rich salmon and nutrient-rich sweet potatoes, so that helped calm the guilt factor down. (The Reese's hearts, however, did not.)

One of the fringe benefits of getting up early to make the breakfast burrito is I now have an extra 5-ish minutes in my morning to foam roll. While I'm already in a deep, loving relationship with my foam roller, it's also kind of on a booty-call level: I typically only go to it when I need something. This 2-AM-approach only helps the surface knot, and is short term at best (if that). I've heard that you should foam roll daily - but who the hell has time for that? But in an effort to reduce the "owowowowow", I'm borderline proposing to my roller.
Also - the hotel for Burlington has been booked! Now I have to go!

Monday, February 13, 2012

Week 1: Done-zo

Miles Run This Week: 0
Days Until Burlington: 104

Well, week 1 of 16 is in the books! Part of me feels a little pathetic that I'm celebrating the first week of training, but this is the only time I can remember doing the following things while training:

(a) Starting my schedule on time
(b) Actually running the distance on the schedule
(c) Not living in unbearable pain while trying to accomplish (b)

So these are 3 steps in the right direction. I ran a total of 15 miles last week (which is my highest since the beginning of January), and I swapped a couple days here and there (because of the cold in Wisconsin). I ended up running 6 miles on Saturday and running 2 yesterday (instead of 3 on Friday and 5 on Saturday), and today I feel 100% fine. Totally not my usual marathon-training gig.

This week I have 17 miles total, with a 7 mile run on Saturday. Totally doable. I'm trying for 6 weeks of solid cross-training to make sure that when my mileage volume increases, I have a strong athletic base to draw from. This means 2 or 3 days a week of strength training, a day of spinning, and a day on the elliptical until my half marathon in March. I also figure I can trick myself out of fatigue by making it seem like I'm cutting back on activities (rather than noticing the 27-36 miles a week I'm running instead).

My 6 miler was in a snow shower. Well - as "snowy" as it has been here this winter (not complaining!). With the new revelation that my GPS is off by 0.16 miles, I had to compensate and run 6.16 miles, which was kind of annoying. I was supposed to be hitting 11:15s all week, but I hammered out this run at 10:51s. Not the greatest idea, but 6 miles for me right now is kind of my baseline - I've raced it, I've run a couple miles over it, and I've been running it consistently enough since Novemberish that it's really not going to wreak havoc on my legs. I'll have to much more careful when I get to 9+ miles, since I haven't seen those distances since summer 2010.

My stride suffered a little bit, too. I did a strength session with my trainer (and co-worker) Dom, and he toasts me every time. My glutes were SCREAMING the whole 6 miles. I better have the cutest-but-in-a-swimsuit this side of hell come summer time!

Today I start week 2 with 3 miles at an 11:15 pace. I'm also torturing myself with another session with Dom - but I'll be cutting back to twice-a-month, since his workouts take me out of commission for 48+ hours.

I've also started to focus on what I'm eating a bit more, and making an effort to eat fresher, less processed foods. My BFF/running buddy Val gave me a recipe for a breakfast burrito that she swears by. It has a balance of "healthier" fats (which, growing up in the 90s, is inconceivable. Fat needs to be avoided at all costs!), protein and fiber, to leave you fuller longer. I tweaked it a bit (because it called for cheese, and I already have 2 dairy servings a day, and sun dried tomatoes, which I can't get myself to like. Bleck.):

1 whole wheat tortilla
1 egg, scrambled (I added fresh ground pepper to it, too)
1/4 cup sprouts
1/4 of an avocado
2 pieces of deli-sliced turkey

It comes out at 305 calories, 14g of fat (mostly the avocado), 23g protein, 15g of fiber (because I got tortillas that had 12g in them).

I ate at my normal time (9ish) and wasn't hungry again until around 12:30 (as opposed to 10:15). I'm moved my yogurt-fruit-oatmeal eating until the afternoon and cut out the frozen lunch - mostly because of the high sodium. Day 1 is going pretty well, and the money I spent on the fresh ingredients was saved on not buying those frozen meals - those bad boys are expensive!

The one struggle I see is I'm missing my daily calorie count by about 200, and that's enough to send my body into starvation mode (theoretically. Does your body think you're starving it if it's not hungry, though?). Deprivation while training at the level I want to train at won't totally fly (although, I think that's what happened when I was training for my tri last year). Guess I'll have to eat a couple cookies to balance it out :)

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Burlington Kickoff!


Miles Run This Week: 3.0

Days until Burlington: 110

Monday morning I (officially) kicked off my training for the marathon! It was an easy 3-miler at a 11:15 pace – more like a recovery run than anything.

Sunday I ran the Super Sunday 5 miler, and PRed with a finish of 47:49 (a 9:34 pace). My last 5 miler I ran at a 9:58 pace, so I was pretty happy about the results. It was about 30 at gun time (seem to be the trend for my races this season – train in mild temps, race when it’s tits cold) and the first mile was BRUTAL. My fingers lost feeling and my feet started to get numb, which made it feel like I had bricks at the end of my legs – but I tore out of the start with an 8:36 mile – I think it was my body trying to warm me up, and had nothing to do with actual running (fight or flight!). The course was nice and straight forward – down to Harvard(ish) and come back down Cambridge Street to Kendall. 

I noticed that the GPS on my MapMyRun had that same weird discrepancy as the St. Pete’s Beach 10K – 0.16 miles. Seriously, I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but it threw off all my paces and dashed some hopes and dreams to run the whole thing in sub-9s (OK, my legs actually dashed that dream, but let’s blame the technology instead).  Looks like I’m going to have to start subtracting 0.16 from all my distance runs, and recalculating my pace from there, which in theory, defeats the whole purpose of running with the GPS and pacing on my phone.

The good news is that the same thing also happened in this race as St. Pete’s Beach: I passed more people at the end than people passed me. This is kind of a big moment for me – I’ve been working for almost 3 years to learn how to race; to pace and to finish strong rather than burn out with a half mile or mile to go.  I saw a few girls in front of me the first couple miles, and the pride in my head started nagging, “They shouldn’t be beating you. Look at how big her ass is. She shouldn’t be beating you. Is that girl wearing Sketchers? She definitely shouldn’t be beating you.” But I told it to shut up; this is my last “fun run” for the next 16 weeks, I wasn’t going to get hung up on proving something to…nobody. Who knows? Maybe those girls work a hell of a lot harder than I do, and deserve to be in front of me. One thing I’ve learned in running is that it doesn’t matter what it looks like while you’re running – you get out of it what you put into it. If you do tons of work and still have a big ass – maybe you’re running 8:30s and have a big ass. Maybe you’re thin and can only run 10:45s. Doesn’t matter in the end; running is still just for you.

So I passed the 5K mark and registered a 29ish “split” (which is about my 5K PR in October). So I started focus on my cadence and breathing. And then, on a hill, I caught the girl with the big ass. We ran next to each other for a little bit; I could tell she did not want me to pass her. This game is essential to racing and pushing yourself. So she played tag with me for about half a mile, but eventually she dropped off and I didn’t see her again. My other target had bright pink Under Armour and had shoulders like a linebacker. I didn’t speed up – that’s always my fatal mistake. I figured if I catch her, I catch her. If I don’t, at least I ran hard to chase her. I caught her at the water stop at 4 – she didn’t even stand a chance. With about 0.8 to go, I saw the girl with the Sketchers and she had a Brady jersey on. At the turn to go back to Kendall, me and my Giants shirt smoked her. SMOKED.

And then I started to crank. I started chanting “turnover turnover turnover” to focus on my legs. At the last turn to get to the finish, I started sprinting. Sprinting! I usually want to puke by that time. I passed 5 more people – FIVE!  - and only had one girl come of nowhere to pass me right before the finish mats.
It was a great race to run right before I start focusing everything towards Burlington.  Even though I didn’t really want to get out of bed Monday morning, I’m glad I did. I debated – with the ole “Well I’ll run after work tonight” – but even I knew I was bullshitting. So I logged 3 miles on the treadmill while I watched all the sad Patriots fans whining about how Tom Brady should be able to glue the ball into wide receivers’ hands.

This week, I’m supposed to run 15 miles, with my long run at 5 miles. Last week, I ran 11.8 miles, with my 5 mile race as my long run. I am getting so excited thinking about how prepared I am to start training, and how all the preparation – dating back to April 2011 – is going to translate into a marathon time that will reflect all this hard work!