Girl In Motion

If anything can color a run, it’s the weather, and we had the variety pack this weekend.  Saturday was surprisingly hot and humid, which made my pace about 15-20 seconds slower than usual.  Then yesterday it was chilly and super windy, so I broke out the gloves and tights for the first time this season.  Tomorrow looks to be cold and crappy (snow/rain) so I switched my day off from today to run 7 w/3 tempo this afternoon.  I’m currently killing time as usual.

After today’s run, I’ll have completed a 53.75 mile week, though technically, if we’re talking Mon-Sun, last week was 46.75 and this week looks to be about the same.  Not bad, either way.

Looking ahead to the weekend, the Philly marathon is on Sunday and I’m excited to be a race spectator for the first time in my life.  Saturday, I’m going to lunch with a couple gals on the Women’s BQ thread who are doing the marathon, so that’ll be a treat.  There are also a handful of additional forum pals running the race, so my plan is to crawl out of bed to join everyone at 6am, wish them luck, then go back to bed for a bit, do some tracking, then jump back out for the last hour or so.  This is the luxury of being so close to the start/finish.

I’ve heard fellow runners lament “Watching the race made me really sad I wasn’t running it.”  I am so sure I won’t be feeling this - in fact, I’m truly looking forward to watching from my lazy-ass vantage point.  I remember distinctly, at least 4 times in all my longer races, seeing casual non-racing runners and general spectators, wishing to hell I could trade places with them.  Now’s my chance.

Yesterday was a feel-good 8-miler, 8:47 avg. pace in the late afternoon.  I’m so useless if I wait to run, I end up doing all sorts of things to put if off even later, not because I don’t want to run per se, but procrastinating is such bad girl behavior, it’s its own form of entertainment.  I finally got myself out the door under the threat that it’d be dark if I didn’t get a move on and I’m too chicken to run in the dark by myself.

Today was originally supposed to be intervals, but the weather was not looking good when I checked last night, supposed to rain all day with a touch of wind, so by the time I went to bed, I figured I’d get an easy wet 6 in today and do the intervals Friday, when it would be sunny and still.

Usually in the mornings I need at least an hour to get out the door. I sit there with my cup of hazelnut coffee, read email, check out Huffington Post and CNN.com and put reality off as long as possible.  Even in the heat of summer, when I had to get out there really early to beat the rising temps, I’d always have my quiet hour beforehand.

This morning, after about 2 minutes with the coffee, I look out the window and notice it’s dark and all, but no rain yet.  I can see the trees aren’t moving either, so forget wind, there’s barely a breeze and it’s a perfect 47 degrees.  Wunderground.com says the pressure’s falling, but I figure I’ll take my chances, let’s get this thing over with.  So I throw on some capris, a longsleeve shirt, shoes, Garmin, grab keys and out I go for that interval session.

Ended up being an excellent workout!  7.25 miles total, with 6 x 1/2 mile, 2:00 recoveries.  It was cool relying on clock time and the markers because I could check once at the halfway point and see how I was doing (which was surprisingly consistent) instead of constantly chasing Garmin pace averages that are kind of right, but not exactly.  My average for the intervals was 7:17.  I’m pleased.  And it didn’t start raining until my last block home, so all in all, a perfect morning.

On the consumer front, I bought a couple things online yesterday.  Remember when I asked the UPS guy if I was the worst on the block as far as ordering stuff and he said I was second worst?  Since then, I haven’t ordered anything, not out of shame, but I finally had everything I needed, running gear-wise.

Well, we’ve had a lot of rain in the forecast and yeah, running in the rain can be lovely, but not when it’s a deluge or you’re warm and toasty inside…sometimes you’d rather reschedule the run instead and I want to minimize such thoughts as much as possible.  I already have a great jacket for bad weather, the Asics Storm Shelter, but it’s really too hot for 30s and above.

So I just ordered this goofy looking jacket, the Sugoi Hydrolite.  It reminds me of those transparent folding rain caps your Grandma used to wear, but it’s fancy techno-schmancy, has these holes that close up when water touches it, so it’s actually (drumroll, please) truly breathable and is good for temps in the 40s.  Plus, it’s still $100 everywhere else, so…bargain!  Free shipping, too.

Then I went over to Amazon and ordered Brain Training For Runners which comes highly recommended from some fellow forumites I respect, as well as Run Faster From The 5K To The Marathon, another recommend.  But that’s where life got complicated because I was suddenly in that precarious position…$3.97 away from free shipping, so of course I had to figure what else to buy which took me about an hour because I can never think of anything I want if it’s not on my mind.  Finally, I got a bundle of 14 bars of Dove.  Can’t go wrong with soap.

I had a great Sunday run, 13-miles among that crazy bright palette of Fall leaves - my farthest run since Steamtown.  The funny thing was realizing a few hours afterwards that I hadn’t even thought about bringing a gel, when for months I’d made sure to suck down that sweet snot for anything over 12.  How soon I abandon the old ways.

As for today, I did a radio spot in the morning, got home and stuffed a meatloaf sandwich down my gullet, waited forever for it to digest, then went out for my first tempo run in months.

One of the best things about 5K training is iddy biddy tempo runs.  Seriously, the optimum LT time for this distance is good ole 20-30 minutes.  What a novelty!  In fact, looking at my logs, the last time I did a 3-mile tempo run was Nov. 14, 2007.  It’s almost enough to make a gal feel guilty…almost.  Total workout was 7 miles with 3 tempo, the tempo splits were 7:56 (windy start), 7:52, 7:43 for an avg of 7:50.

I should also mention that I’m using the park markings instead of the Garmin for quality workouts from this point on.  It’s the only smart thing to do because today, for example, the Garmin autolaps consistently came up 4-6 seconds short every mile!  Sheesh.  It’s not always that bad - Sunday was spot on with the markers, but I clearly can’t depend on it. Thus, I won’t be doing my beloved 600s for a while, instead I’ll be doing speed workouts to 1/4 and 1/2 miles - but it’s worth it for accuracy’s sake.

In 5K news, my latest happy development was finding another 5K three weeks after the Turkey Trot, which means I now have 6 weeks to do some damage instead of 3.  “Huh?  What’s that you say?  December…cold?  I can’t hear you, fingers in ears la la la la la.”  I’m living in denial but that’s alright, I figure it’s about time I do some uncomfortable races.

As for training, after all my hemming and hawing about different 5K plans, just when you thought I was going to pfollow Pfitz (sorry, I can’t help myselpf), I made an executive decision to return to the same plan I used last Spring: The Flo Plan (a.k.a. The PFlo Plan).  The Flo Plan consists of 45+ mpw, one tempo, one speed plus the requisite long and easys.  Nothing mysterious (bread and butter as far as plans go) but highly effective and I get to do whatever fun speedwork I choose.  Lovely.

So once again, at least for a while, I’m the Boss of Me.  I hope I like it, though I warn me, I tend to disrepect authority - plus I can tell I’m going to be a bitchy boss already.  Gotta go now, I have to tell me that I’m about to be laid off.  Who hired this whack job, anyway?

This weekend, I had an epiphany, an eye-opener of the widest kind.  But before we get into it, I’ve got some ’splaining to do.

As you all know, I loved marathon training, found it challenging but not difficult using the plan I’d chosen, Pfitzinger’s 18/55.

I admit that during this period, I fully expected to end up faster in other distances simply by dint of “the marathon training process”.  I’d read enough accounts of easy PRs gained, both during and soon after such training periods, that of course I expected it to happen for me.  How unhappy-making then, that my one race in the midst of the plan (a measly 4-miler) ended up with such disappointing results.

To understand just how disappointing is to look back at my Spring PRs: a 5K in April (23:06) and a 10-miler in May (1:19).  Both of these races are in the same ballpark of McMillan’s calculator.  Yet here was this 4-miler in September at 30:48!  I attributed it to the marathon training process, tired legs and the fact that it was a short race when I’d been training to go long.  I played it down.  But in my critically thinking head, I was a bit dismayed.

Fast forward to this last weekend, my 10K race.  Yes, it was a sizeable PR and I’m genuinely satisfied with my performance, but if I compare it to last Spring’s PRs, it was not good.  In fact, as far as McMillan goes, it’s right on par with my shitty 4-miler!  When I realized this (and that my Marathon time also fits in the same McMillan range as well) I had to recognize it as a trend, not a few unrelated blips.

So I began investigating the Big Picture and it quickly became apparent to me what was going on.

#1 Revelation:
My mileage build for the marathon was no great shakes.
Note: These monthly graphs include all training runs, but exclude races.

Or rather, since I was no stranger to 45-50+ mile weeks, it was stupid for me to expect that doing the same thing would give me some kind of bonus.  Sure, I had a peak month, but the surrounding ones don’t look any different than assorted previous months.  The fact that my marathon training mileage was apportioned differently (spread out across 5 days instead of 6) certainly helped my endurance, but the mileage itself wasn’t a stress factor, and stress (or increases) are how envelopes get pushed.

#2 Revelation:
My average pace got slower…much slower.

See anything notable starting in June?  That’s where marathon training began and with it, recovery and much slower long runs.  Quite an obvious difference, huh?  Back in the Spring, I not only ran all my easy and long runs faster, I was also doing both a speed and a tempo workout each week.  For marathon training, I had weekly speed or tempo, never both.  So no dramatic mileage growth and less fast stuff, too.

How silly, then, to think marathon training should have given me a speed boost, why would it?  I didn’t stress either speed or mileage - just longer long runs.  That said, I gained beautiful endurance which was completely the whole point anyway - I never could have run a marathon back in the Spring.  With this in mind, I consider my marathon training 100% successful, I have no regrets or complaints.

The important and freeing thing though is that I now feel totally OK with where I’m at speedwise, even if it seems I’ve regressed a tad, because I understand why.  It’s not because I’m all washed up, that I started too late or used myself up too soon (yeah, I actually was thinking this crap).  No, it’s an obvious reaction to a lack of stimuli.  Duh!

Does this mean I’m abandoning everything I learned during marathon training?  Well, you can see from the last month on graph #2 that I’m still doing some slower stuff, though honestly, it won’t be doing those 10+min recovery runs unless I really need them.  And expect this month’s avg. pace bar to become a lot shorter starting with next week’s dual quality sessions.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll approach the next marathon much differently, either.  I’ll try to increase the mileage, but a main priority for me is keeping training fun and I’m not sure how many miles it’ll take before fun turns into drudgery.  And I love that I was able to avoid injury the whole cycle, so keeping the fast stuff to once a week sounds wise, too.

The main thing is realizing that everything requires it’s own proper attention, that no one training cycle is going to cover all race bases and to keep expectations in line with that training.  I’m only beginning to understand how all this works, how I work.  As they say, “we’re all an experiment of one.”  It sure is fun figuring it out.

Some days you got it, some days you don’t, some days you’re just a big fat whiner.  I had my 5×1000s today which magically morphed into 4×1000s and 2×400s.

It was one of those self-flagellation workouts where I berated my assumption that 7:15 goal pace was a good idea.  After the second one I told myself 7:20s would be fine, but you know when you say that to yourself, it never really is.

After the 4th one, I was going to pack it in because by that time I was soaked with sweat and grouchy as all get out but then I felt incredibly guilty for contemplating quitting, so I went ahead and started the last interval, got almost halfway, decided to bail, then after a few yards of guilty walking, changed my mind to save it - thus, the 2×400.  Slogged home for 6.5 miles total.

All in all, it was still an effective workout despite the whining, and I feel pretty good now.  Depending where I look (SportTracks or Garmin TC), I either averaged 7:17 or 7:20 pace - a worthy deposit in the speed bank.  Saving those pennies…

My, but the week has flown.  At the risk of alienating readers (because someone got really offended and gave me an earful about my Palin derision a couple months back) YAY OBAMA!!!

Back to running news, something I forgot to mention was my second Steamtown toenail fell off last week.  I drew them back in with nail polish and am astounded at how well that stuff adheres to skin - you seriously would never know I am sporting only 8 toenails at this time.  It’s magic.

I’ve had a couple enjoyable runs this week, even if it has been dark and rainy: 8 on Tues and 7 w/ 10 strides yesterday.  I’ll do a short 5 today, then tomorrow it’s 8 or 9 w/5×1000.  The last time I did 1000s was in September and it was 75 degrees out with 83% humidity.  I’m targeting the same interval pace, so it should be quite a bit nicer this go round.

I posted a question on the RW forums because I wanted to know if I would be screwing myself to stretch those long runs to 12s instead of the single-digit LRs in everybody’s 5K plans. Wcrunner (a favorite of mine, very smart wise man who’s been running for decades) figures I’ll be fine to do it, so I’ll go for it this week and next.  I’ll also add a couple tempos to the plan too, since I was doing speed and tempos weekly last Spring to no ill effect.

All this plan comparison has me thinking about making a radical change for next year’s marathon and using The Ultimate Marathon Training plan.  A couple of our gals from the Women’s thread have used or are using it now, plus a well-loved and SPEEDY poster, Sillie Lillie used it for 3 of her marathons with dramatic improvements.  The quality days look much busier (harder) than Pfitzinger’s but they seem like fun workouts.

I’m even considering the Ultimate Half-Marathon plan for my goal Spring race.  Sure, my lazy side likes the idea of doing one hyped-up pace and distance per speed workout (I’ve never been drawn to cutdowns, for instance) and just reading all the different stuff you’re supposed to do on their speed days looks confusing, but I’m sure it’s hugely effective.  As long as you stay on the uninjured list, anyway.  I just wish it was more than a 9-week plan, I like being on a mission for at least a month longer than that, so we’ll see.

Funny how I can waste this much time ruminating about something that isn’t going to happen for months, or in the marathon’s case, more than half a year away.  Oh why not?  The future is exciting!  Change and Hope - it worked for Obama and it works for me.

My running life is about to flip on its head.

As mentioned before, I have a 5k in 4 weeks, my first 5K since last April.  In order to do the best I can for it, I have to change my modus operandi.  The multi-hour runs of marathon training don’t fit in a 5K plan, and even my medium long runs are too long for optimizing this distance.  Last night, I compared Pfitz, Glover & Higdon 5K advanced plans (the last 4 weeks, since that’s where I’m jumping in) and while Pfitz allows a 10-miler this week, the highest he goes for the next three weeks is 9 miles.  Higdon builds to a high of a 90-minute run the week before the race, while Glover would have me do 8, tops.  Wow.

It’s a weird feeling.  When you’re on a steady diet of one long and one medium long, every week for half a year, it becomes the “way you run” and part of how you identify yourself.  You become a marathoner.  How strange now, to let that go. Kind of sad, actually.

What’s even weirder is that I just looked back at my logs and realized I’ve been running long runs (and mediums, as Pfitz would define) since all the way back to June 2007, when I began training for my first Half.  No wonder I’m feeling off-kilter about shelving them, even if it is for a mere 4 weeks.

The Pfitz 5K schedule is a nice frame, skeletal really (he gives you the quality work for the week and you figure out the rest), but I’ve been having tempo run urges lately (yeah, I can’t believe it either) and Pfitz doesn’t include any in the last 4 weeks of his plan.  He does, however, call for a 2-mile race in a couple weeks (oh yeah, there’s always a 2-mile race going on somewhere!) but even if I was to do a 2-mile time trial, that just sounds like a painfully unfun run to me, so I’ll be replacing it with a 4-mile tempo run.

As for weekly mileage, I’m not willing to see it shrink much, even if I am having a temporary 5K flirtation.   To make it work with the shorter runs, I’ll be going back to 6-day running weeks, same as I was doing before marathon training.

So blindly I tread into this new phase, trying not to mourn the loss of long runs or worrying that my endurance is about to die a nasty death.  Instead, I must Trust.  Trust that my inner speed demon will rise to the surface this month and reward me with a shiny new PR for my trouble.

Yet another fun day at the races - huge this year, 2269 finishers, plus about 1000 walkers.  It’s a 10K that goes over and back on the Ben Franklin Bridge, which takes care of the first 5K, then the next 5K goes into Camden, NJ on the waterfront, ending in a stadium.

I park the car and approach the stadium when some guy jogs by me and says, “Flo?”  It was Progman2000 who I know from the forums and this blog.  We had planned to meet afterwards, but it was lucky that we met up first because we ended up missing each other at the finish line, though amazingly, we caught each other again as he was driving out after the race.  Not to mention, we had separated before the race started, then I turn around and there he is at the start line, right behind me!  Think about it, we’ve never met each other, there are literally thousands of people around, yet we hook up three times.  Freaky.  Anyway, he’s a truly great guy, and I felt really happy to hang out with him before the race.  Thanks Progman!!  Oh, and a shout out to ShoreTurtle, Progman’s cool friend who was standing with him at the start.  Talk about a couple of great guys, they kept my mind from going all nervy on me and the waiting time passed in a flash.

As far as the weather goes, I was a little overzealous when I saw the updated weather report, I thought it’d be near 50, so my race outfit was shorts and tank, but it ended up being low-mid 40s and breezy.  Maybe two other guys were dressed as bare as me, so yeah, I was self conscious and chilly, but it ended up being perfect for racing, so no regrets, though I did wait until the nth moment to check my stuff in.

My wishes for the race were #1) a PR, #2) 48:something, #3) everything-goes-right sub-48.

I was looking at my logs from last year when I ran this race and laughed to myself last night, “Hah! Ain’t no way I’m running a first mile at 8:15 this year!”  This ended up to be true…my first mile today was far worse.  There was a big traffic clog at the start and it took me a long time to feel race-ready, plus you’re going up a bridge, so with all that happening sub-48 was outta the question right off the bat.

Now before the race even started, at the line-up, I see my local nemesis standing right across from me.  She’s actually a nice woman and in my last 10K back in April, we were neck and neck for the whole race.  Anyway, we waved to each other before the start but as soon as the gun went off, she ran ahead, so my main focus on the bridge was to keep her in my sights.  That said, my bridge running was atrocious, so when I saw her getting even farther ahead, I said screw it and let her go without a fight.

By the time I got to mile 5 though, she was right in front of me and I was wondering what to do.  Part of me felt like passing her and saying, “C’mon girl, let’s go for it!” but the other, sneaky, lazy part (because why make this harder than it has to be?) won over.  I ran ahead without a word and hoped to god she didn’t notice me in my hot pink shorts and white tank (impossible).

The race goes on several surfaces, gravel, brick, road and grass, so that’s part of the reason my pacing was a bit crazy (the other part was because…I suck), but here are my splits:

8:25 bridge (I suck)
7:59 bridge (I still suck)
7:37 bridge (better)
7:32 (mo better)
8:00 (gravel, turns and traffic clogs, I suck)
7:41 (almost home)
1:25 (7:05 pace for the last bit)

My time for the race was 48:39, 8th in my AG out of 118.  It’s a 44 second PR and I beat my nemesis by 36 seconds.  No complaints…and coming from me, that’s huge.

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.