Archive for March, 2008

An uneventful weekend, so I’ll just do a quickie here for your skimming pleasure.

Saturday was a 5-mile recovery run, which I’m learning to appreciate more these days, now that my quality runs are more purposeful.

Yesterday was 16 on a perfectly beautiful afternoon. Still thinking I have a shoe issue, since my legs, feet or knees begin to feel creaky after about 10, yet said niggles disappear after the run is over. So my mission this week is to find which of the running stores in my area do a full evaluation with a treadmill. When I went to Philadelphia Runners, there was no gait analysis and the salesman was a little unenthusiastic and not very insightful.

As for today, it’s a day of rest, then hopefully a tempo tomorrow, though it’s supposed to be windy – my absolute favorite condition for a hard effort. cough.

Looking ahead to this Sunday is my first mile time-trial, ever. I need to remain ambivalent about it as a barometer of fitness or speed, classifying it only as an amusing thing to do, since a few of my forum buddies will be there. But the chance of it making me all frowny is a definite possibility, despite my good intentions.

I’ve never tried to run a mile my fastest, and have a feeling I’ll be all over the place, too fast, slowing down, speeding up, slowing down. Plus, I’m not doing myself any favors by running a tempo on Tuesday and a speed session on Thursday, but seeing as how my goal 5K is on April 15th and Broad St. is right behind it, I can’t afford to change my schedule for a one-mile jaunt.

Hmmm, come to think of it, if it wasn’t for the forumite get-together, I’d bag it.

Do you hear that Matt? Do we really have to do it?
Signed: Your Attempting-To-Weasel-Out-Of-It Friend,

Flo
(who knows it’s ridiculous to worry about something that’ll take less than 7 minutes out of my life, but here I am doing it) Ambivalent, my ass.

Feeling drunk on it today! It appears my workouts are working.

Got out on this dark, rainy afternoon for a set of 6×880s. Happy to report, I am showing progress, not only in the speed of my intervals, but I also cut 30 seconds off my recoveries and even jogged them a tad faster than before.

Splits were 3:36, 3:39, 3:35, 3:40, 3:38, 3:35. And this includes some indigestion on the run for having eaten left-over Indian food about an hour before departing…because I’m stupid like that.

How satisfying to look upon my calendar and see I have 5 more quality days (3 tempos and 2 intervals or vice versa) until the Clean Air 5K. Add to that two 16-milers, a one-mile time-trial plus a handful of easy days and it all comes out to a useful block of development time before the big day.

And with that, my dear readers, I am on my way to the bathroom where a box of brown hair dye awaits. Yes, after 9 months of being various shades and stripes of blonde, I am going back to the old familiar color scheme. I dreamt about it last night and have been looking at old pictures, getting a little sentimental about that brunette I used to know.

So out with the new, back in with the old. Here I go for my extreme makeover. (Oh, Preference 5A Medium Brown, please don’t leave me looking like a big old bore…)

Twas one of those great running afternoons. It was tempo day today and since the last two I did were 5-milers, I thought instead of going up again, I’d do a faster 4-miler just for fun.

Before I went out, I reread portions of Daniels’ Running Formula online (thanks to the ole Electronic Resources my library offers). The first thing I wanted to check on was warmups, since I am forever stuck in the beginning runner’s head of “if I do too much warmup, won’t that steal from my remaining energy and make me tired sooner?” but as I read the pages on warming up, I started to see the light. Especially when he asks (paraphrasing here) that when you do intervals, don’t you usually feel better after the 2nd or third one? Why yes, Jack Daniels, I do!

So today, instead of doing my usual one-mile warmup for tempo and then bing, jumping into tempo pace, I did a two mile warmup with the last mile gradually speeding up, so the tempo pace was less of a shock to the system. Very good, I liked it.

Tempo over and it’s time to implement another Daniels suggestion, adding in strides during cooldown.

Now, reading that I thought, “What the?? I’m going to be too pooped to do strides, not to mention I’ll have done that extra warmup mile so I’ll probably be super-pooped right there”, but no – ole Dr. Daniels knows his stuff. The strides actually “woke me up” during the cooldown, gave my legs a little energy back. Seems totally antithetical but there you have it.

So I’m feeling happy and strong right now, so much so that I finally ordered Daniels’ Running Formula from Amazon because it’s really the last important running book missing from my library and nothing beats a hard copy. I also ordered Running Within, less life and death but worthy of owning and more importantly, it qualified me for free shipping.

Next on the agenda? Taking a stroll to Whole Foods to buy some good rolls…we’re grilling hamburgers tonight. Spring is in the air!

Devoid of religion as I am, this year I celebrated Easter the best way I know how: stuffing my face with Robins Eggs, Whoppers (because the Robin’s Eggs coating seem mildly toxic, an opinion I established after eating the entire bag), Reese’s Pieces and to cap a wonderful Saturday date-night with Nick, we stopped at our local diner for a slab o’ German Chocolate Cake.

A thoroughly satisfying holiday.

Friday night was happy hour with our friend Yvonne and the groupette of the week (she’s our resident event planner, always creating a party out of her huge list of friends). We went to a hipster bar where a couple of Jameson Whiskey girls wasted a couple hours of their lives going around the room offering shots and letting the patrons roll dice for a prize. I won some Jameson branded breath-strips. Seriously.

Saturday was a 5-mile recovery run after Friday’s intervals, then later the fabulous Date Night occurred. We’ve decided to make more of an effort to have them, because we really do have a good time out with each other – dressing up a little, talking about the people around us, eating good food and then going home for some drunken antics.

The latter bit caused me to tweak my hip a tad, though (why do I get all my injuries this way?) so yesterday’s long run was interesting. It was a 14-miler that I decided to do as a progression run.

I started the run at 9:15 pace and finished at 8:28. Felt really good about it, despite my niggling hip. Additionally, I came to the conclusion that my 2130s are not the fab shoes I want them to be – my suspicions were confirmed when my right arch started smarting, as it usually does after about 10 miles. I’ve tried lacing them tighter or looser but alas, it’s the way they are (or my foot is).

Luckily, I have 3 other pairs of shoes with varying degrees of mileage so I can use my 2120s for long runs, but I need to get fitted for a different shoe soon since a couple pairs are nearing the 400 mile mark.

But what was interesting about this run was that belly breathing thing I keep yammering on about. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the first half of the run, but when I started speeding up, my hip and arch were beginning to really irritate so I moved my attention to breathing which turned out to be a smart move.

I felt myself straighten up, get less tired of all things, and it wasn’t long until I did a body check and realized my arch and hip weren’t hurting anymore! I’m cynical enough to know that it wasn’t the magic of breathing per se, more likely the simple distraction of thinking about something else, but that’s cool! Whatever it takes.

I finished the run on a high note and today, even though I don’t feel my hip at all, I’m taking the day off before tomorrow’s tempo run. I want to be more prudent with rest so that my quality runs are full-on qualitastic from here on in. No tired legs for me.

So that’s the weekend in a nutshell. Hope you guys had a good one, too!

Just a quickie. Speedwork today in gusting wind by the river, 6×880s. Fastest intervals so far, I didn’t walk once during recoveries, and the whole time I ran, I made a point to talk nicely to myself. I told myself I was fluid, relaxed, like water flowing through the wind and you know what? It made a huge difference in my attitude and physicality.

I’m sold.

I had such a great run today, an easy 9 after an 8 w/5@tempo yesterday. I didn’t think it was going to be such a fun run, considering that the wind is unrelenting today and that is always cause for alarm to me. Not sure why, it’s not like wind physically hurts me but I seem to fear it as if it will.

So what was different? Well, this morning I partook of my local Library’s electronic resources and read a cool book online, “Running Within” by Jerry Lynch and Warren Scott. It’s about the mental aspects of running, stuff that usually has me rolling my eyes this way and that, because I suck at visualization and affirmation-type stuff, cynical wench that I am.

But this book had some points that grabbed me immediately, especially since I’ve been honing my skills at negative self-talk for a while now; during races, on training runs, pretty much wherever I can practice a hit of demoralization, I have been.

Apparently though, I have the power to stop it, and today, I did. Using one of the suggestions in the book, to write all the crappy stuff you say to yourself and turn it around into a positive affirmation using the present tense, I saw in black and white what I’ve been saying to myself…sheesh!

So, taking one of my bon mots, “I’ve stopped improving”, I wrote down this affirmation, “I’m a baby in this sport and have years of dropping times ahead of me.” Another one was “My posture sucks” which I responded with, “My form is strong and beautiful.”

No, I didn’t rhyme the affirmations the way the author suggests, because there’s a limit to my sense of irony, but what I came up with feels like something I can work with.

I must say, the book is extremely uplifting and makes you realize the dirt you tell yourself is just that, dirt. So today I was going to be running in my most hated weather, heavy wind. That in mind, I traded the message, “I hate the wind” with “I cut through wind like a knife.” And you know what? I did! OK, so maybe a 118 lb. butter knife, but it felt good, all the same.

Sure, it’s all mental, but isn’t that a gazillion percentage of running anyway? And as I was being pushed backwards on one stretch by the river today, I had a smile that would not stop. I felt strong and healthy and despite the hold the wind had on me, I knew it was a gust that would end and I’d be forward bound in no time. Not only did that hold true, but I had a really fast time for the run overall!

Here’s another happy thing that went on during today’s run: I’m an allergy sufferer and have been using Flonase (not because of it’s ultra-fabu name, but because my doctor recommended it). I’ve been bad with it, and not using it regularly because it seemed to lose it’s magic.

Then I saw an ad for a free trial of Veramyst which is kind of the same thing, but not exactly. This stuff rocks! I actually ran for a lot of my run today breathing through my nose, just because I could. So if you’re an allergy sufferer, go to the Veramyst site, they’ll send you a coupon for your first prescription for free (full-size even – $73 worth!).

One more deal; if any of you have Comcast and have had it for a while, call them and tell them Direct TV has been sending you offers that make you want to switch. Nick did it yesterday and within one minute, he got a “customer retention” deal that gives us Showtime, Encore, Starz and whatever else is left (we already had HBO) for $40 less than he was paying. Brain rot, here we come…