Archive for October, 2008

Just got back from the dentist for a teeth cleaning where something disturbing happened.  As soon as the hygienist looked into my mouth and said, “Not much plaque this time.  You’ve been keeping up!” I elatedly replied by touching her shoulder and saying, “Praise be.”

Praise Be? WTF?? I’m an athiest Jew. I mean, I was really relieved to have a good checkup (it’s only recently that I started accepting floss into my life) but still, no matter how happy I am with a dental visit, that was just wrong.  If all it takes is a lack of plaque to make me see the light, my next question is, what am I?  Amish? Church of Christ?  I’m so confused. I mean, Praise Be could even mean I’m a polygamist, don’t those people use that phrase a lot?

But let’s stop this devil talk and get back to running.

Call me a n00b or a dweeb, but I purchased a race photo from Steamtown, just got it in the mail yesterday.  I really love the picture and it wasn’t too expensive, since I bought the 5×7 and scanned it (instead of paying crazy money for the digital version).  If you’ve seen my avatar at Runners World, you’ve seen the photo, but if not, here I am in about as ecstatic a running moment as I’m ever going to have.

Pure Happiness.

No comments on the gait, I’ll probably never get my feet under me, but as long as I’ve no injuries, I can’t complain.

Back to the present, I’ve had a fun week running without a schedule, did 8 yesterday in the chilly wind and will do 7 w/strides after I’m done writing this, then tomorrow I pick up my race packet and go for a short run, Saturday’s off and then on Sunday, while my BQ girls are running the NY Marathon (go Audra, Jana, Ela, Hooliganette and MirRunner at Indy!), I’ll be having fun with my 10K on the Ben Frankin Bridge.

Beyond that, I was looking at Pfitzinger’s 5K plan from Road Racing because at the end of the month I have a Turkey Trot I want to shine in, so I’m going to do the last 4 weeks of Pete’s 5K plan.  It works out perfectly because, according to the plan, this week would have been a 10K tune-up, so it couldn’t be more convenient.

Yes, I’ve been loving these couple of freeform running weeks, but truth be told, I’m a true sucker for following plans.  Probably more so because I’m self-employed and my time is my own, so it’s entertaining to have some structure to follow.

Let me leave you with one more bit of happiness in Flo World…the results of my blood/pee tests from last week (the ones to make sure the dehydration weirdness was finally back to normal) are perfectly fine.  I’m back to being a confidently healthy old coot with many miles ahead.  Praise Be!

Another S title.  This one is due to the strange workout I just did.

With the Bridge Challenge 10K coming up this weekend, I had mentioned last week I wanted to do a fast workout in prep for it but was in a quandary due to having just done a marathon.  I waffled for a bit and finally decided I would play it safe, be lazy and just do strides this week.

Now we all know I’m a Pfitzinger Pfan since he got me to the marathon safely and confidently with his book Advanced Marathoning.  I also own his Road Racing for Serious Runners which has plans for all distances of races, though not as scheduled as the other book, this one gives you the workouts you need to do, you have to figure out the days.

Anyway, I opened it up to the 10K plan and checked out the last week.  It has the requisite easy, short LRs (oxymoron, but after marathon training, anything shorter than 17 isn’t really Long anymore), nothing in the VO2 column, but in the Basic Speed column sits 5 x 300m.  Hmmm…  Basic Speed for Pfitz is always strides, most commonly 100s, in this 10K plan he also has a couple 200m sessions, but 300m was a new one on me.  I even went to RunningTimes.com to see if he’d written anything about a 300m stride session but didn’t find anything.

Not exactly an interval workout, a little faster actually since strides end up being quite a bit faster than 5k pace, though stride recoveries are whatever it takes to get your HR back to normal which keeps it from being a VO2max exercise.  Interesting.  I thought about it and was thinking it seemed a waste to go 300m since it’s not really helping VO2, and is maybe harder than a stride session needs to be, but on the other hand…what the hell?  It only adds up to a mile of fast, so why not give it a go?  Besides, Pete’s The Man, so if he thinks it’s a good idea, it must be.

So that’s what I did today, I ran 7 and near the end did 5×300.  I enjoyed it!  Much easier than an interval session, while feeling like I was doing something good for my legs and body.  I didn’t pay attention to my watch during them, but now that I’m home, I see they got progressively faster without thinking about it, starting with 7:08 pace, ending with 6:47.

Yeah, I know, not supposed to think about speed with strides, it’s for legs and form but the fact that they were 300s coupled with the way I run my strides (like intervals – I don’t accelerate, peak, then slow down before it’s over…I just run the things) makes it fun to see in retrospect.

And that, blog friends, was my entertainment for the day, running in spurts and making up new words to go with them.  Now it’s time to shower, return some almost overdue library books and figure out what we’re eating tonight, a subject that annoyingly comes up 365 time a year.  “What do you want to eat tonight?”  ” I dunno, what do you feel like?” “I dunno”  Then I go shopping for I Dunno, can’t find it and settle on a chicken.

Last night Nick and I went to a friend’s house for Game Night: a semi-regular fall/winter gathering where a group of us get drunk, smoke things, play board games, eat like pigs and have a great time.

The fun continued today when I went on a run with Audra, my Steamtown marathon buddy who’s in town for the weekend with her girlfriend.  Audra’s doing the NY Marathon next week (to get that BQ she so deserves!) so today was a recovery for her – 4 easy miles on this gorgeous Fall afternoon day.  It’s such a pleasure to hang with her, seems like we’ve known each other forever and her girlfriend is just as cool so it was mucho fun.

After we parted, I continued on and ran into my local forum friend Joe, who is the nicest, speediest cute guy (going for sub-3:00 in Philly this month!) and was doing 22-23 today, but stopped long enough to give me a hug and some sugar which put me in an even better mood.

Then I ran into Kev, who heads the Philly Runners Club – and while I haven’t run with the club, I ran a mile trial he put on in April and have seen him at other races, so I know him enough to get a nice high-5 from him and some funny words that kept me chuckling as I ran on.

After all was said I done, I got in 8.75 miles plus a natural trip to Happy Land thanks to all the chats, smiles and friendliness along the way.  Talk about a great way to end the week.

to my toenail.  But let us not dwell in a place of sadness or fear.  No, let us rejoice in its passage, joyous in the understanding that this was not the death of innocent beauty.  Nay, it was but a gnarly nail that, in leaving this mortal foot, opens the door to new growth and less filing in future.  Moment of silence, please.

It was gross though, I’d never seen a removed nail in it’s entirety and because there’s something enticing about grossness to me, I kept pulling it out of the trash to marvel at it, shudder, then throw it back in the trash.

I could absolutely not write a post about my toenail with at least including one link to a toenail necklace.  Don’t click this if you’re easily squicked.  The guy who made this apparently takes donations, so I could offer mine up, but I eventually threw it far down in the trash so I’d never be tempted to look at it again – and I’m leaving it there.

Had another fantastic run today.  This is one of the few runs where I wear shortsleeves.  Seems like my running apparel as the temps go from high to low is running bra–>sleeveless–>long sleeves.  Short sleeves get about 5 runs the whole season.

So anyway, today is low 50s and sunny outside, and I did 7 w/8 strides.  Avg pace for the run – 8:46.  I love strides not only for the leg-waking properties, but it’s also the only time I get to consistently see 6:something pace on my watch.  Mucho fun.

Another stellar thing about today’s run is that I’ve had ouchys from a blister on the bottom of my pinky toe from Steamtown and it’s been hurting ever since.  Today was the first day where I had no inkling of it, so no on-the-go disassociation needed.  Note to self: downhill racing = tie shoes tighter.

I finally signed up for the Ben Frankin Bridge 10K, so I’m all happy about starting to make a race schedule.  I’m planning on a PR because it’s been a while since my last 10K, but I haven’t decided on a goal time yet.  After much indecision, I’m going to forgo any speedwork and maybe get 2 measly tempo miles in on Monday at 10k pace, just so I can see how it feels.  The main thing is I want to have fun without a huge pressure to get xx:xx.  C’mon legs…surprise me!

Running looks to be fun this week, easy short jaunts in the newly cooled down weather.

Real life though, is peppered with annoying things I gotta do.  Yesterday it was give a final blood test and pee in a cup to see if the slight weirdness shown in my last tests are still slightly weird or normal.  Done.

Today is a thorough house cleaning because Nick’s half-brother is visiting from Spain tomorrow and staying a few days.  It takes company coming for me to really clean our abode.  I can run for several hours straight, but ask me to spritz Windex for a few minutes and I get completely freaked out, finding all sorts of ways to put it off.  Look, I’m doing that right now by writing this.

Tomorrow is the annual Scam Of The Century revisit – getting my car inspected.  They always find hundreds of dollars of crap I need to replace, so this time, Nick and I are carting Nick’s 92-year-old dad to this particular Russian inspection place (Nick and his dad are Ukrainian, but his dad can speak Russian when it counts) because they saved his dad buckets of dough.  We have to take the old man because 1. we don’t know where it is and 2. he’s our secret password to get in.

I actually fixed parts of my car myself last year when it had been stalling (cleaned/unstuck the EGR valve, replaced a faulty coolant sensor and a couple other things) and after doing this, thought I was golden for the inspection.  Nah, my local place managed to find stuff that a human can’t repair without lifting the car off the ground and charging $500, the bastards.  Here’s hoping the Old World gas station guy takes pity on me and all I have to pay for is the inspection (what a wild concept!).

Tonight has some fun in store, we’re going to a beer-tasting event with our friends Jeff and Lara, where the restaurant owners are generously letting it be a wine-tasting for me, since I’m not a beer gal.   Should be fun.  May I just say how lovely it is to drink and do whatever without worrying about it adversely effecting my run the next morning.  Yay, vices! (in moderation, of course)

OK, enough putting off the inevitable. Time to spritz, wipe, vacuum, mop, launder…sigh.  I’d rather fix a car.

I ran tomorrow’s run this afternoon because I’m going to a bicycle race tomorrow.

Looking at my logs, the last time I ran in the afternoon was way back in May, so that made it a novel run right there.  It was incredibly beautiful; the setting sun on the river along with a cool breeze put me at peace with the world.  Of course, being at peace doesn’t preclude my usual cynical pondering of why so many people run in sweatshirts, pants and multi-layers when it’s 59 degrees, meanwhile I’m sweating in my sleeveless tank, but that’s one of the mysteries of life, I guess.

Anyway, it was truly a special run, I felt strong and lithe, going 5 miles @ 8:49 avg.  I can’t believe how good I feel less than 7 days from the marathon so I’m doing that 10K on Nov. 2nd for sure.  Going to post a question to the Training forum, see if it’s worth it to stick a tempo or interval session in before the race or not push anything.  I’m sure that just because I feel recovered doesn’t mean I am and they say speed sessions don’t “show” until 10 days after, so we’ll see what the general consensus is.

But now it’s time to shower and then pig out with Nick on Indian food, my fave.  Life doesn’t get any better than this.