vacation

From east coast to west coast to far east.  Peter and I are headed to Japan!  I think this will be a good week to rest up and heal completely.  I’ve got the feeling that it will be inconvenient to all for me to run every day in Japan, and I’m hoping that a few days off will restore the pep to my legs.  I am actually pretty happy with my endurance, if I can just get back the speed from a few weeks ago, I’ll be in pretty good shape for track in the spring.  Oddly, this is the first time in my life that I feel limited by muscular issues rather than cardiovascular capacity… heal right hamstring, heal!

Sunday 12/25/2011:  Harvard Bridge via Elliot Bridge (11.9 miles), 1:30:42 (7:37 pace).  Merry Christmas!  Golf course jog with Mom, then took my new compression tights out for a spin by going on a “real” long run!  First 90 minute run in years… Actually I thought this run was 10.8 miles, but the extra mile turned out fine.  Did not feel great for the first few miles, but started feeling stronger a little bit before halfway.  Felt a little more tired coming up the last hill than yesterday, but overall the run felt completely manageable.  Was happy to do a run of this length even though it was really slow.

Monday 12/26/2011:  Charles River Loop (5.3 miles), 43:20 (8:11 pace).  Holy moly, this was the most painful and slow run so far in this training cycle.  I really thought I might have to stop and walk coming up the steep side of the hill at the end.  Legs just feel heavy and tired.  I actually felt pretty good this morning, very little soreness from the long run yesterday, but when I actually got moving my legs felt heavy and dead.  My Mom is improving though, the golf course jog took us under 18 minutes today!

Tuesday 12/27/2011:  Off, packing and travel to Japan.  NO SLEEP...

Wednesday 12/28/2011:  Off, I think this day got lost to the time zone change.  Got to Japan in the evening after dark.  So, so full from tons of food on a marvelous business class seat :)

Thursday 12/29/2011:  Japan River Trail Random Loops (7.7 miles), 59:57 (7:47 pace).  Ooof, this run felt horrible.  Maybe its the flight, the jetlag or lack of sleep, I don't know, but just couldn't get rolling on this one.  Also, R hammy still feels super fatigued and bad.  Might need to take a more significant chunk of time off :-/.

Friday 12/30/2011:  Off, a cool little hike in Japan with Peter, my cousin and his friends.  Beautiful sunny day with a nice view of Mt. Fuji.  R hammy seems fine as long as I don't try to run.  Downhill portion on the hike was brutal, though no one else seemed to be tired.  Do I just not have quads anymore?  Hot Springs and Okonomiyaki to round out a fun day.

Saturday 12/31/2011:  Off, hike into the Nagano mountains to see Snow Monkeys!  Legs feel dead.  

Week #9 Total:  24.9 miles, a good long run... not much else.  Why so dead, legs?

the week of stupid

When I first started running, I thought that doing stupid things was kinda awesome.  10 hilly miles with no training? Super!  Back to back 15 milers?  Fantastic!  Throughout the years, it’s become apparent that my body no longer tolerates these indiscretions… but it’s still hard to shake the psychology that pain = gain, and that things have got to hurt once in a while if you’re working appropriate hard.

I was tired going into Patrician last week, then after hopping straight onto a red eye and pulling an all nighter, I felt absolutely destroyed.  But runs had been going so well the past few weeks, I didn’t want to back off.  I also didn’t want to admit defeat on this measly mileage total of 35 miles per week.  So I kept on trucking until I realized mid-week that it hurt to walk, and the muscles in my right hamstring had become so tight that I couldn’t touch my toes without sending sharp pain shooting all the way down to my knee.  Runs had slowed to a crawl… but I kept thinking one more day of jogging and things would feel better!  False, M, false.

After spending a day, sitting on my aching right buttock and contemplating whether or not I had managed to give myself some odd stress fracture of the pelvic structure… I was a little bit freaked out by the fact that I couldn’t really remember exactly when it had gone from good to bad.  Which was the day that put me over the line from acceptable fatigue to “you are headed for a serious injury”?  Looking back at my logs and spreadsheets, I can’t really tell.  I didn’t really start to slow down significantly until this week, but thinking back really honestly, the right hammy wasn’t okay dating back to Napa… I just didn’t really want to deal with it because I was busy and as long as I could crank out those 7:20 miles, it didn’t seem worth worrying too much about.

Anyways, it all goes to show that older is not always wiser.  Making good choices is a constant struggle and not just a one-time lesson.  I started stretching and doing my PT again every day since Wednesday, and my right leg feels tons better.  The weird pain in my L ankle is also stabilizing… I still feel sort of wiped out in general, and runs don’t feel peppy and strong as they did before, but I think I’m headed towards recovery.

Sunday 12/18/2011:  Off, traveling home.  Legs exhausted today, did some light jogging, 3 miles (total) to and from Dad’s apartment to deliver cookies and cakes, but I don’t think I’ll count this as mileage.  Uphill segment I timed at almost exactly 9 minute miles, the downhill segment was probably slower, turns out its slow going trying to run while holding delicious comestibles.

Monday 12/19/2011:  Second Smallest Charles River Loop (6.8 miles), 53:52 (7:55 pace).  Legs still feeling a bit heavy and dull, also mis-timed this run so ended up running the last stretch of crappy trail/pavement in darkness.  The sketchy footing probably made this already slow jog even slower.  Wasn’t super amused.

Tuesday 12/20/2011:  Fresh Pond from House (7 miles), 53:15 (7:36 pace).  This run felt terrible.  I felt like I was huffing and working hard, but in reality my HR was low and I was going really slow.  Though my right hamstring/glut/everything else in there felt like worlds of pain, I thought perhaps I just needed one more day to recover from Patrician…

Wednesday 12/21/2011:  JFK St. via Elliot Bridge (6.5 miles), 49:08 (7:34 pace).  The first thought I had when I woke up today was “gahhhhhh, my hamstring!”  My right upper leg had frozen overnight into a solid, useless block of pain.  In order to get the thing out of bed and moving forwards, I felt like I had to physically lift the whole leg up and then plunk it down slightly in front of where it used to be.  Refer back to the intro as to why I ran today… 

On the plus side, Mom was inspired to run today, so we went on an 18 minute jog around the golf course.  She did great!  I also don’t think I could have gone on my run without this jog to loosen up my R leg.  It was also pleasantly drizzly today.

Thursday 12/22/2011:  River St. via Elliot Bridge (8.0 miles), 1:01:30 (7:41 pace).  Warm up with Mom on golf course, followed by another slow jog.  R leg felt a little better after stretching and PT yesterday, so ofcourse I had to push my luck by going on another run… Less pain but so, so much fatigue.  Felt a little bit better on the uphill leg home.  

Friday 12/23/2011:  Off.  Finally, a good decision. Though to be fair I was contemplating jogging to Harvard Square and back (approximately 5 miles) to meet a friend.  Was saved from this horrible life choice by timing and a ride from Mom.  Got back and did the 18 minute golf course jog with her again (actually the same loop took us 19 minutes today… probably because I was slacking on my pacing duties).  Frankly, this was about as much exercise as I could handle.

Saturday 12/24/2011:  River St. via Elliot Bridge (8.0 miles), 1:00:55 (7:37 pace).  I think this was the first day that I woke up pain free and it didn’t hurt at all to walk, so I was hoping for a faster run, but I guess that might fall under “unreasonable expectations”.  Felt pretty good in the beginning, then deathly tired, then good again.  Weird.  Also day 4 for jogging with Mom, so proud that she's sticking with it!

Week #8 Total:  36.3 miles, all jogging, but still managed to hold training volume while healing the injuries, that’s gotta be worth something!

all i want for christmas is sleep

After an amazing week of running, now a tough one.  Its hard to take one's proverbial foot off of the gas pedal when things appear to be going well, but this week was about survival, not running fast.  The sleep deprivation was already getting pretty bad towards the end of last week, and I did not recuperate properly in Napa (maybe 7-8 hours a night, not enough to undo the damage of all nighters) then I got hit right off the bat with another all nighter upon my return.  Since then its just been touch and go... most days I got two naps instead of any consolidated sleep.  Most runs were done late a night after nap #1.

Needless to say, I am not feeling super well... and that has percolated into my running as well.  That said, I think it was still a win to get in some solid miles this week.  Everything was survived, now hoping to rest, recover, and do plenty of PT and core strengthening over break!

Sunday 12/11/2011:  Rose Villa / San Gabriel / Lombardy / Hill (4.65 miles), 37:43 (8:07 pace).  Did not get a chance to run again in Napa before we left.  Feeling totally wiped out and facing another all nighter, I elected to do a "better than nothing" jog, instead of the intended Sunday Long Run.  This route is rapidly becoming my recovery jog route.  This one was a lot slower than intended, but frankly, I just could not be bothered to go any faster today.

Monday 12/12/2011:  Completely off.  Honestly don't even remember what happened today, other than that I didn't get fired, despite the fact that the all nighter wasn't enough to completely finish my project.  I'm pretty sure I spent the entire day in a fog, and then had to take an emergency nap in the evening.  I think that's how I got started on the 2 naps a day / no consolidated sleep schedule, because then I had to get up and work late again, resulting in another short nap before getting up early in the morning.... wash, rinse, repeat until all deliverables are complete.

Tuesday 12/13/2011:  Rose Villa / Rosemead / California / Hill (7.0 miles), 50:10 (7:11 pace).  This one was really really late at night, so much so that I slightly feared for my safety but it turned out alright.  Feel like I've been hit by a bus.  Tuesday was supposed to be tempo... but kept a relaxing pace for most of it.  Tried to tempo a little bit on the way back and failed.  As in, I was breathing hard, but not going fast.  That's like the opposite of a tempo.  Fail!

Wednesday 12/14/2011: Huntington / Oak Knoll from Chester (7.6 miles), 56:54 (7:30 pace).  An easy late night jog.  Wanted to check out the Huntington median, brought head lamp.  Road debris was much improved... I guess this is a higher priority for San Marino than it is for Pasadena.  Grass section felt good... really made me miss trails, meh.  A nice run.

Thursday 12/15/2011:  Another completely off.  Was intending to go to swim practice, but didn't quite make it in time.  Decided instead to allocate the time to baking cookies for Swim Club Holiday Party tomorrow.  New recipe, woohoo!

Friday 12/16/2011:  2 x Rose Bowl Loop (Non-tempo 10K), 44:17 (7:08 pace).  Had to squeeze this in before the holiday party.  Allergy shots this morning, so I was feeling wheezy all day... but I secretly kinda hoped I could crank out a tempo... er, false, M, false.  Did the first lap pretty easy, feeling good, but was sort of horrified to see the 22:15 5K split and decided that it would not be productive to do a tempo today.  Then, I felt tired the entire second lap.  Its so weird how big of a psychological effect seeing that first lap split is for me.  Last week, I felt crappy, but saw the fast split and suddenly felt energized and awesome.  This week, I felt good, but saw the slow split and then suddenly it felt like lead bricks got added to my feet.  I know that I should just give myself a break.  I still haven't gotten a solid night of sleep, and its really starting to break me down physically... its clear why I can't tempo and why its not productive to try right now... but I can't help but feel like I'm losing fitness by skipping a week!

Saturday 12/17/2011:  Patrician (10 miles), 1:15:30 (7:33 pace).  Hills, hills, hills.  Patrician probably wasn’t the best way to ease into some longer runs, but I wanted to do a 10 miler, and this was the first thing that popped into my mind.  Honestly I had hoped it would be a little bit faster, but in retrospect I think I underestimated those hills.  Garmin says that I was positively crawling on that middle section of Patrician Way.  Legs actually felt decent, but the breathing was pretty choppy on the climbs.  I guess I just haven’t done a lot of hills recently.  But on the plus side, the longer distance felt totally manageable, didn’t feel particularly wiped out at the end.  Finished strong with a 6:40 last mile (slightly downhill, I think).

Week #7 Total:  35.45 miles, a little slow this week but still a solid week of training!

small breakthroughs, some niggles

Woah, this week was unreal.  First week over 30 miles per week in 2-ish years, and I hit it out of the ballpark.  Not that significant week over week increases are a particularly good idea for injury prone runners newly running a mostly pavement diet... but I'm so happy with this week, so happy.

I haven't done an 8 mile run in the same 2 year period, and this week I did THREE (3!).  I also did two runs that I've been wanting to do for a long time, and I did two runs that vastly exceeded expectations pace-wise.  I actually feel like a real runner for the first time in long time, and I'm just so excited to get out for each run.  Its scary though, like I'm walking a very fine line.  It all just seems too good to last.  I feel like an injury or some inexplicable slowdown must just be around the corner...

I've had some niggles develop this week.  My L anterior tibial tendon has been flaring a little bit lately, which makes me favor the L leg, which makes my R hamstring inordinately sore... and all of this could be fixed pretty easily by doing my ankle exercises... but time has been in short supply lately, and like I said... I'm treading a very fine line right now.  Need to really work on this over break and banish the ankle pain!

Sunday 12/04/2011:  Art Center Bike Loop (8.5 miles), 59:25 (7:02 pace).  The crazy apocalypse state of road in Pasadena has provided the push I needed to finally implement this run that I've been wanting to do for years now.  I did the easy Art Center Bike Loop going up Highland and coming back on Berkshire on foot!  Love love loved the uphill parts, felt really good and strong, but the downhills felt really long and onerous.  I was so glad for that last little hill that I hate so much coming back from the AC on the bike.  Felt really good at the end!  I got back to the Rose Bowl where I parked and was blown away that the Garmin said 59:25... starting out, I figured this would be maybe a 64 minute run.  Amazeballs.

Monday 12/05/2011:  Somehow made it to swim practice again for the first time in 2 weeks.  3650 yards, man this one was tough!  Things didn't seem that bad in the beginning, but my arms were completely and utterly dead before we even hit the pulling.  Needless to say that it was ugly.  I was pleased that I didn't feel wheezy and out of breath as per the other times that I've taken some time off from swimming. 

Tuesday 12/06/2011:  10K tempo at the Rose Bowl (2 laps), 42:05 (6:46 pace).  This run falls into the category of 'complete surprises'.  I felt tired... legs felt tired, everything felt tired... and I really really did not want to do a tempo run.  But I knew that I was not likely to get much sleep for the rest of the week, so it seemed prudent to get this out of the way now.  So I headed to the Rose Bowl, again for the reason that it had the least amount of debris so far as I could tell.  (Goodbye for now, Arroyo Tempo Loop!)  When I started, I still wasn't sure whether I really wanted to do tempo today, but I told myself to just do one lap comfortable and see if I could pick it up for the second loop.  Honestly wasn't feeling that great, but I was really encouraged to see 21:32 as a split for the first 5K, so I figured I had it in me to pick it up a little bit.  Second lap felt like a good effort, but still completely under control, a perfect tempo effort.  Felt so good, I threw in a little sprint for the last 400m or so!  Second 5K I guess was 20:33, not too bad at all. 

It felt like a mental breakthrough for me to be able to just get out there and run sub-7 minute miles.  Typically, I've always felt like I needed the flatness and regularity of the track to run these paces.  To balance out the awesome-nesss of this run, apparently the powers that be decided to send my car battery to Car Battery Heaven after this run, which resulted in me being stranded at the Rose Bowl for an hour in rapidly falling temperatures.  Would have completely frozen if not for my compression socks that I love so much!  I guess the universe has this way of returning you to the same places sometimes.  Not sure why transportation issues + Rose Bowl + really really cold is some sort of energy minimum state for me...

Wednesday 12/07/2011:  Rose Villa / San Gabriel / Lombardy / Hill (4.7 miles), 37:30 (7:59 pace).  This run was hard and sort of unpleasant.  My body felt "off" in a way that I haven't felt in a long time but which felt so vaguely familiar... then it hit me:  Oooooohhh, well hello there fatigue, not so nice to run into you again...  This is how I used to feel on days after track workouts and Bailey Canyon climbs.  So nostalgic and yet so unpleasant.  I guess I've already logged some pretty quick runs already this week = body needs a break.

Thursday 12/08/2011:  Cordova / Orange Grove / Mission / Los Robles (8.1 miles), 1:01:48 (7:38 pace).  A really nice super late at night jog around some of the old South Pas routes.  The sleep deprivation is hitting me pretty hard now.  All nighter yesterday... feel like I've been hit by a bus.  Had to take a nap after dinner, woke up discombobulated at 10 pm, but the first thought that popped into my head was that I wanted to go on a run.  So I bundled up and headed out, just nice and easy.  It turned out to be a nice run.  First run over an hour too.

Friday 12/09/2011:  Off, travel to Napa with the gang!  There was no way a run was happening today.  So, so tired and so, so stressed.  Basically only got three 3 hour naps in the past 72 hours.  I honestly don't remember Caltech being this bad.  Good thing I got that tempo run out of the way before this hit.

Saturday 12/10/2011:  KB Cabin to School Building (8.5 miles), 1:02:42 (7:25 pace).  Beautiful run across pleasantly undulating terrain.  Love, love, love.  I had to check the Garmin map and gmaps twice to confirm the distance, because I certainly did not feel like I was going that fast.  This was the first day that I really noticed the anterior tibial tendon issue.  It made it really tough to run on the banked road, and I just couldn't land / push off with full force on the L foot.  R hammy was just insanely insanely sore afterwards as a result.  Amazing dinner in Sonoma and stretching a bit in the hot tub helped.

Week #6 Total:  35.9 miles.  Woah, just woah.  The comeback train is rolling on through!

dude, where's my compression under pants???

I've gotta hand it to people who do sports that require sprinting and coordination... and side-to-side movements.  It's been two days since the run in with 2 hours of tennis, and I am still flat on my back.  It hurts to stand up, it hurts to swing my arms, it hurts to take steps forward.  Yikes.  Its sort of like a whole body smackdown.  But the worst of all for running is the intense pain in my glutes.  I've got on my thigh high compression socks, but geez, where's the compression underpants when you need them???

I think I'm going to turn this week into an "off week".   That wasn't the plan, I had wanted to start off December right with 30 miles of quality training... but you've got to adapt.  There are two jogging days in here, so I'll call that a good down week, even if the mileage is about the same as last week.


Sunday 11/27/2011:  Smallest Charles River Loop from house (5.3 miles), 40:17 (7:36 pace)  I haven't taken two days off in a row since I started, and I wasn't going to start today, ass pain be damned!  All I can say about this run is that I gutted it out.  For about 20 minutes, it felt like being swiftly kicked in the behind with every step I took.  Try to ignore the pain, and keep moving... I told myself.  Eventually it became more of a moderate ache instead of a sharp stabbing pain and then the run was moderately tolerable.  My only goal for this run, other than not keeling over, was not to run any > 8 minute miles.  Against all odds, I succeeded.

Monday 11/28/2011:  Off, some brief core exercises with Mom.  The ass pain is much improved since yesterday, but I still feel pretty rickety even today.

Tuesday 11/29/2011:  Rose Villa / Rosemead / California / Hill (7.0 miles), 50:52 (7:18 pace)  This run was like an amazing and unexpected gift.  I felt horrible, after getting 2 hours of sleep, traveling back on 2 flights and 2 delays, almost missing a Biology quiz, catastrophe at work... but I wanted to just get a short easy run in as a shake out after a long day.  Headed out after dark, not particularly feeling great in the first few miles, but then, it all started to click and I felt so great I decided to extend the run out to Rosemead.  Coming back on the uphill felt unreal.  Just so smooth, easy, fast, powerful.  I don't think I've ever felt so great on a run before.  Got back and was totally not expecting it to be so speedy because I didn't feel like I was working hard at any point.  Wow, like these are the runs that you live for.

Wednesday 11/30/2011:  Off, starting to feel slothful... was trying to get out of lab early enough to run in the Arroyo, but got home pretty close to sundown, and then some work related catastrophes had to be addressed ASAP.  Decided I should just get some errands done and run tomorrow instead.

Thursday 12/01/2011:  A 1 hour jog/walk interspersed with a large proportion of bushwhacking from Monterrey to Rose Bowl... back on surface streets (7.2 miles) ... yikes.  If I had known that this was about to happen, perhaps I might have made a bigger effort to run in the Arroyo yesterday.  This entire city looks like the apocalypse just came through... including a lot of big trees collapsed in the Arroyo.  First bridge is impassable, the stretch between Monterrey and second bridge is particularly bad on both sides.  Sad to see all of the trees :(.  Jogged into a heavy headwind to the RB, then exited on California and headed back on surface streets to avoid repeating the bushwhacking in darkness.  Felt kind of awful in addition to the conditions, Garmin says I was going ~8 minute miles when I was moving, though I didn't bother to stop it while I navigated the obstacles.  Sidewalks weren't great either, hard to gain much momentum with all of the debris.  Swim practice canceled due to the winds.

Friday 12/02/2011:  Off again.  This week has been terrible for exercise.  Also, feeling sleep deprived and awful lately.  Probably should have run at night anyways, but instead elected to eat and get a decent night of sleep for the first time this week.

Saturday 12/03/2011:  Huntington / Oak Knoll (6.1 miles), 48:35 (7:58 pace) Skipped swim practice to sleep in and go on a morning jog with Clara and some folks from the team.  Street debris was manageable, though I could foresee this being bad after dark.  I still wasn't feeling super... not sure why since I felt so awesome on Tuesday.  Perhaps it is the cumulative effects of sleep deprivation. 

Week #5 Total:  25.5 miles, a lot of super duper snailing this week.  Ugh, gotta nip this in the bud!  Next week = time to get serious!

gobble, gobble, here comes trouble

It's that time of year again, when free holiday goodies get left in the workplace kitchen... when family force feeds you delicious feasts... when egg nog and pumpkin pie and holiday cheer abound.  A good time to gain 5 pounds, unless, ofcourse you've already gained them prior to the holidays, well... this is going to be trouble!

I've been struggling with getting my weight down since the last few weeks of the running layoff, and I'm just THIS close to throwing in the towel and embracing the rotundity... but all told, I want to have made SOME progress this year.  On January 1st, 2012, I want to run faster and weigh less than I did on January 1st 2011.  I'm pretty sure there is a zero percent chance that I will swim faster on 1/1/2012, but I think I've come to terms with that already... at the end of the day, you win some, you lose some. 

Sunday 11/20/2011:  Monterrey to Rose Bowl (7.1 miles), 52:34 (7:24 pace), an awesome run in the drizzle then rain!  I never want to run in the rain, but when I get out there, I usually end up enjoying it.  Saw a fair number of other runners out there too, which was cool!  Clothes got very, very, saturated and heavy though... had to keep pulling pants up.  There is no jogging in the rain, you sort of just have to embrace the blurry vision and the soggy shoes and the adversity.  Felt pretty okay, fatigue was minimal.  Glad to see how well I held up on the longest run yet.  Delicious burger and fries afterwards.

Monday 11/21/2011:  3800 yards in the pool.  Holy macaroni the pool was cold today.  It was kind of okay if you kept moving, but between sets and kicking/pulling, it got to be pretty frigid.  Freestyle still feels like death (just super tired), but the other strokes felt like they were improving.  People must think I've gone nuts because I take every opportunity to mix up the strokes, which I usually never, ever do.

Tuesday 11/22/2011:  Rose Villa/San Gabriel/Lombardy/Hill (4.7 miles), 34:55 (7:26 pace), what a busy and odd day.  Swim practice got canceled because of pool temperature.... oh boy.  I guess it turned out okay because I had to work late anyways.  Wanted to do something tempo-ish, but I forgot to stretch on Sunday and ended up with some weird calf soreness/shin splint-like pain that hasn't quite resolved yet.  Instead, went on a nice, leisurely run around the neighborhood to take it easy on the calf.  Felt really really good this run, HR was back down to normal-ish parameters too.  I love running at night and I love running in my Newtons!  Running on pavement still feels like a novelty to me.  Its so much easier than running on the trails...

Wednesday 11/23/2011:  Huntington/Virginia from Chester (6.45 miles), 47:42 (7:24 pace), started my break from swimming a little bit early.  The crazy busy-ness and after dark pavement run continues... Grossly underestimated the mileage on this one, making it my second longest run so far.  Route had a little bit more by the way of hills than the runs I've been doing lately.  Glad to see that the pace was still decent and the legs felt strong, though the breathing left a little to be desired.  HR still pretty low though, which is encouraging.

Thursday 11/24/2011:  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  On the plane almost all day, no exercise.  Non-traditional thanksgiving meal afterwards.  Pretty tasty, did not overeat too much. 

Friday 11/25/2011:  Fresh Pond from Home (7 miles), 51:02 (7:17 pace), this run was hard... perhaps even "unpleasant"... but when I got home and saw 51 minutes on the Garmin, I felt a lot better.  Maybe it was the combination of long flight, big dinner and two cats, but I was just feeling a bit off today.  Then, I fell head first into a giant mud pit on the dirt section of the Fresh Pond path... ugh, that is how you can ruin a $155 pair of shoes... this section of trail was an amazing disaster... I never realized before because its usually frozen over when I am here.  Anyways, this was one of those days where I felt like a rhinoceros having an asthma attack and every segment of road was uphill... but it turns out I was actually keeping a solid 7 minute mile pace until the last extended uphill.  I think I'll count this as my tempo segment for this week even though it was not particularly speedy, because the effort was there.  Then played ~2 hours of tennis with the dad, it was pretty fun but I think this totally did me in.  Completely wiped out from head to toe afterwards.

Saturday 11/26/2011:  Off again, so, so, so sore.  I don't really think I've felt this sore... ever.  In fact, I could not sleep well yesterday because it hurt too much to even turn over in bed.  Whole body hurts, eeeee!  Tried to see if things would loosen up towards the end of the day, but I still felt like I've been hit by a bus.  Figured week #4 was not the time to push the limits.  Ooof.

Week #4 Total:  25.3 miles, hmmmm, looks like I am not doing so great with my goals... but this week is still decent, and I'm keeping a pretty steady pace.

curse you, can of pumpkin puree...!

Arghhhhhh... toe still feels like a truck ran over it, when in reality it was only a can of pumpkin puree.  Perhaps the pumpkin puree is being wrongly maligned, maybe I need to change the title to "curse you, careless Trader Joe's employee who did not stack the pumpkin puree can display properly"...

In other news, I think I'm going to start having "goals" again in some unstructured manner.  For the rest of November, the goal is to get to ~30 miles per week of running, while maintaining quality and one day per week with some tempo-ish component.  The more ambitious goal is to do my core strengthening exercises at least 2 x week.  We'll see how that one turns out.

Sunday 11/13/2011:  Monterrey to Third Bridge (5.2 miles), 39:34 (7:37 pace), snailing.  This run would have been okay except for that I was feeling incredibly, uncomfortably full for the first two miles and slogging painfully along.  Felt a lot better after a minor barfing incident.  Though I have long logged this route as 5.3 miles, the Garmin has persistently been saying 5.2, and since it matches my gmaps distances for all of the other permutations of the "Monterrey to X" routes...  I've decided to concede the point on this one.

Monday 11/14/2011:  Return to swim practice, feeling mentally a little bit better today.  3850 yards, a light day but there was a bunch of butterfly and IM pulling in there.  Eeesh, the toe was killing me though, and it kept throbbing even after I got out of the pool!

Tuesday 11/15/2011:  2 x Arroyo 3-mile Loops, (6 miles), 42:37 (7:06 pace), an unexpectedly encouraging run.  Did the first loop at a comfortable pace (21:57), then picked it up to a tempo-ish effort on the second loop (20:40).  This is the fastest I've run both one and two of these loops, and I felt really strong and good at the end.  Pleasantly surprised!  Honestly felt sort of worn out when I started and was expecting the tempo portion to become a painful slog but it wasn't at all.  4200 yards in the pool afterwards, if I squint and look sideways maybe the snailing is improving a little bit?

Wednesday 11/16/2011:  Both PF a little sore today.  4500 yards in the pool, this started out decently, but good golly I was completely and totally destroyed by the end.  I don't think I've ever swam so slow as during that last set... at least the toe didn't hurt as much today.

Thursday 11/17/2011:  California to Salvia Canyon, (5 miles), 37:27 (7:30 pace), snailing along.  Feeling antsy, legs wanted to pick it up, but the cardiovascular system wasn't having any of it today.  Usually I like to hammer the downhill return leg, but forced myself to chill out instead.  I feel like I'm just in such an odd place with running right now, not really sure how to proceed.  Swim practice had to scrapped in favor of frantically cleaning the apartment for Peter's arrival tomorrow.

Friday 11/18/2011:  Rose Villa/Madre/California/Hill (5.95 miles), 43:50 (7:23 pace), pavement/Newtons day!  Another pleasant after-dark run around the neighborhood.  Felt a little bit tired in the middle, but then energized again on that last stretch coming back on California, which is odd because its slightly uphill.  A lot of the time these days, it just feels like my legs have a mind of their own, and the rest of my body and my poor cardiovascular capacity is just holding them back.

Saturday 11/19/2011:  3800 yards in the pool, on a cold and gloomy morning.  Tired, but glad that I went, because almost all of the old crew showed up today!  Great to swim with these folks again.  Feeling kind of nostalgic about earlier this year, when my swimming was faster and I was more excited about going to practice...

Week #3 Total:  22.15 miles, still going strong!