Reflections...
On Saturday I felt something that I'd been painstakingly staving off for a good few months now.
I set my alarm for 6 am, woke up at 8 am and found that it was already 90 degrees out. I stumbled, still exhausted and bleary feeling out of bed and the only thought in my head was how much I did not want to run. It wasn't just occasional morning inertia, and it wasn't entirely about the heat, this was big picture training angst and by now I know exactly what the symptoms look like.
For the past few months, I've been getting through it, trying to encourage myself with the small unsatisfying improvements, trying to keep talking positive even though deep down I knew it was a sham. Nobody told me it was going to be so damn hard. It's hard to train when you don't trust your own body, it's harder to train without hope. Between foot tendonitis that flares somewhat unpredictably, weird asthma symptoms, shots twice a week and a lot of still unexplained fatigue and insomnia, training's just not what it used to be. I didn't realize that sometimes you can't keep expecting a breakthrough around the next corner because then you may be disappointed indefinitely. I felt like I would have to dig deep to get through this, and slogging through another sub-par run in the suffocating heat was not going to give me the inspiration that I so desperately needed.
So, I dusted off my beautiful Bianchi and headed off into the summer dusk, to ride until I found what I was looking for. There were all sorts of folks out there at the RB on that unlikely hot evening. A big football looking guy who bravely made it through about 3 laps at a good pace, but clearly struggling towards the end... a girl who roller-bladed alongside her runner boyfriend, a lean, athletic looking guy doing striders, technical work and a strange stint of backwards running, a happy old couple. I wondered at what each of their stories were...
In the end, a whole lot of thinking lead a whole lot of nowhere, but that's alright I suppose. At about 8 pm I ran out of water and daylight simultaneously and so it was time to go home. So home I went and felt content. It was a nice ride on a nice summer evening, and then I realized... you've got to WANT to run. Deep down inside, you've got to want to do each day of training. When it gets about just getting through what's on the training plan, thats when it gets to be no good. I think I've needed an extra day off for a while now, and now that I've taken it, I felt again that I wanted to run.
Sunday 06/22: 1:24:30, JPL adventure run. Longest long run yet. Instead of going to the waterfall, I went the way the signs pointed to Switzer/Brown Mtn. Unfortunately, I didn't have a whole lot of minutes left on the clock in which to explore, but found a nice extended scramble up a steep Bailey-esque narrow trail, that descended into a completely differently vegetated valley. Turned back at the next river crossing but really wanted to know how this linked up to all of these other trails. Was really nice, woke up 1 hour too late at 6 am, but it was unnaturally cooler in the forest and the temperature was just fine.
Took a short nap upon my return and went to hang out with John and Chris, who unfortunately confirmed my suspicion that the majority of the vegetation along that JPL trail was in fact poison oak. Gah, felt like my legs were itchy all day after that. We saw Get Smart, ate Pinkberry and discovered some cool new trails at the end of Lake Ave. Got in workout #2 of the day which involved running up as many giant dirt stairs as possible to get to the top of the mountain before we ran out of daylight. Didn't quite get to see what was at the top, but it was fantastic anyways. Kind of scary coming back down, but we made it!
Monday 06/23: Off. Shots. A really crummy day. Both of my arms swelled up alarmingly after my shots today. No idea why, things have been quiet on the shots end for a while now. There's too much work, and the reason I dislike delegating is that most of the time it doesn't get done the way I want it. Fortunately, I think I still have enough happy left from the weekend to avoid becoming completely irate.
Tuesday 06/24: 44:48, Monterrey to Bridge loop. Legs still a bit tight from Sunday's adventures, so I figured I'd give it an extra day before the tempo. From the slow pace, I'm going to guess it was the right decision. Still really struggling with insomnia during the night and inability to get up in the morning. It wasn't as hot as it's been, but generally the runs on the days I can't get up early enough just don't feel as good. Also bad--my arms are STILL swollen and sore from the damn reaction to the shots yesterday....
Wednesday 06/25: 54:48, warm up, 3 mile steady state, cool down. Especially bad today on waking up.... dragged my lazy ass out of bed a full 90 minutes after I was supposed to, and as a consequence was BOTH uncomfortably warm AND late for work... I had had a good feeling about this workout, but it turned out to be a complete disappointment. 21:31 for 3 miles (7:04, 7:14, 7:13) The worst part is that after the first mile, I felt like I had made a breakthrough, but then after 1.5 miles it quickly became apparent that the same pace was not going to be manageable at this "tempo" amount of effort. I would have been happy with 7:05's... 10 seconds per mile is noticeable improvement, but as it is, this is tantamount to NO improvement. I also felt renewed disgruntlement at the fact that I felt so much more left in my legs but that they are chained to this piece of crap cardiovascular system... which is why I seem to be permanently doomed to be running 7:15's.
Thursday 06/26: 42:32, Huntington/Virginia, started real easy, gradually sped up. My weekly 1 pavement run. On the bright side, I think my feet are kinda getting used to it... though on second thought almost half of this run is actually grass. Oh, well. Did ~half an hour worth of a medley of technical stuff afterwards at the track, high knees, butt kicks, striders and 2 x 200m accelerations. I think I've got a lot of disgruntled energy... bc I normally do not feel enthused to do striders, but today I felt like doing lots of them. Unfortunately also got exposed to a lot of freshly cut grass... so now my throat is raw, been coughing all day and breathing shallow. Damn piece of crap respiratory system/allergies.
Friday 06/27: Off. Shots. Meetings. They cut my dose on the shots bc of Monday's disaster, which is nice bc it didn't swell at all... but not nice in that it prolongs the number of weeks before I can get them just ONCE a week. I also have this hunch that my current work ratio of 25% analysis : 75% difficult person management is here to stay...
Saturday 06/28: 2:05:42, Epic Brown Mountain Half Marathon Adventure, ~1800 ft elevation gain. Ummm, what can I say... Ooops? If there was a sign on my forehead that displayed "X days since last poor training decision", X = 0 as of today. For what it's worth, it was glorious.
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2030086
Let's just pretend that I mapped the return route, which is the same way that I came. Went the same way as the Millard Camp Ground route, except instead of descending to the campground, I took the left fork at the intersection to climb a little bit more up to the end of Brown Mountain Upper Mountainway. There were these beautiful narrow trails at the end of the fire road at the top... but since I had already grossly over-extended my "non foot aggravating running minutes" bank account, I had to squelch my curiosity and turn back.
As it turns out, it was kind of a long way home. I also made an unplanned detour and ended up at somebody's farm, which mapped conveniently to 0.8 miles, for a grand total of 13.1 miles. Felt good the whole way climbing up, the descending got old pretty quick, but all in all didn't feel like 2 hours, was definitely ready to be done by the time I got to my car, but it didn't feel like I was going to die or anything. I guess since I'm used to the Mt. Wilson trails, the fireroad felt friendly and not steep.
Training this week: 5:52:20... holy shit.
Goals: To not be driven crazy by work.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Week of 06/15/2008 - 06/21/2008 (Base Week 14)
Where do bad runs go when they die?
They don't go to heaven where the angels fly... The question is though, do they actually end up in the Long Term Fitness Bank as debits or credits? I feel like we're conditioned to believe that the more pain you put in, the more speed you get out... but lately, I'm really not so sure.
Conventional wisdom says that you just have to maintain X amount of effort for Y number of minutes and it deposits into some long term fitness reserve... regardless of the speed at which that particular day's workout occurred, but the problem I have is that there are days that just don't fit that mold. There are days where no amount of slow makes it feel any less like dying... or no amount of effort makes the tempo run any faster, or where you simply don't even think your weary sleep deprived body will make it Y number of minutes at ANY effort level.
These sorts of scenarios didn't used to occur very frequently, but in my present state, they seem to occur alarmingly often... and so I find myself facing this question over and over again lately. I am the Queen of Long and Grueling, so if one day in the future, it will help me, then I'm willing to get through the bad runs, whatever it takes. The thing is, sometimes I wonder if you only dig your hole deeper. What if "getting through it" is what steadily creates a fatigue accumulation from which it takes longer and longer for your body to recover? Maybe there's an opportunity cost to obstinacy. I wish that some day I'll know when to suck it up and absorb the extra day off, or the one missed workout here and there such that I don't suddenly crash and require entire weeks worth of crappy slow runs just to get back to normal.
Sunday 06/15: 1:16:56, RB perimeter starting from California. Argh. Tired and hot. Hips, hamstrings sore, felt marginally better towards the end. About 10 minutes in, I distinctly felt that 1) I was really really thirsty and 2) I couldn't really imagine how I was going to get through the rest of this run. Then about 30 minutes in, R Plantar Fascia began to complain increasingly loudly. Sucked. Too exhausted to do anything else.
Monday 06/16: Off, shots. Insomnia continues. Exhausted, mentally.
Tuesday 06/17: 54:54, warm up, 4 x 800m with 1 lap jog rest, cool down. Kind of a "blah" workout, not horrible, but on the worse end of what I expected. I guess if the goal was to keep the 20 x 200m pace, I told myself I'd be okay with anything in the 3:20 range (assuming we stick to the base model of 50 s 200s) but I guess to be quite honest, what I primarily felt about the result was disappointment: 3:18 (96, 102), 3:20 (100, 100), 3:19 (100, 99), 3:19 (100, 99).
I guess that's kind of the trouble with setting time goals at all. 0:50/200m was an artificial construct to begin with, something that I backed out of the fact that the only guidance I got for this workout was that it was supposed to teach me to run tempo pace again, so I said, say 13:20 is a halfway decent 3 x 2 mile pace, which is the bulk of my upper threshold training, so 13:20/16 = 0:50. The problem is that it's really easy to run a little under 50's... a bit harder to run a little under 3:20, probably even harder to run a little under 6:40... and frankly right now, 13:20 for 2 miles is probably my all-out, dying pace. But the point is, that once you set a precedent of "beating" the goal times, its not very satisfying to run the goal times.
The other thing is that one could fundamentally question whether it was even fair of me to set this as "goal pace". 6:45 was once my tempo pace, but that was after 2 years of hard work and much more intense training than what I'm doing now. I guess if I'm honest with myself, even while knowing that the point of it is to practice running 100 second laps, I didn't WANT that. What I wanted was some indication that 100 second laps would start to feel like a pedestrian pace sometime SOONER rather than later, and needless to say, I didn't get that. Logically, I'm not even sure why I expected to get that.
I'm reminded now about a blog that Sara Hall wrote about the value of being able to have a short term memory. Sometimes, you need a short term memory in order to have mental health, and you need mental health in order to be the best you can be in the future. I know that the bulk of the disgruntlement that I feel about my training these days is because every step of the way from here until "where I used to be" feels excruciatingly like remedial math. No one WANTS to be in remedial math, when their classmates are in Calculus. Unfortunately, it's still not easy to cheerfully accept remedial math, even if you know its good for you.
Wednesday 06/18: 45:19, Monterrey to bridge. Sleeping problems continue, part of it is that it's still hot at night, part of it is that my mental state basically resembles a jungle and a quagmire... woke up late this morning and it was hot and I was massively dehydrated. I've learned better how to manage such situations, but I've concluded that I still don't enjoy them. Drank 3 glasses of water afterwards and still didn't feel quite right. Was also vaguely troubled by the fact that I used to be absolutely horrified that this run took 44 minutes when I was tired... but lately 45 and 46 minute performances have crept up... I almost want to gmaps it to know once and for all how bad the damage is. But must think short term memory, short term memory, short term memory.
Thursday 06/19: 45:22, Huntington/Virginia disaster. This is a run that might have been a good run, but one in which circumstances, unfortunately had other plans. Insomnia continues, resulting in waking up late, which pushed this run over into the evening (which I dislike to begin with). Add to that the fact that the thermometer was still having trouble dipping under 90, and having consumed about the greasiest cheesiest lunch one could imagine. I was already feeling sick after lunch, and running in the heat after that... I simply can't remember any other run that I've done where I was trying to shove down the violent urge to hurl every step of the way. Given that, I really just wanted to be done with this ASAP, so I thought that I was hurrying the best I could, and was honestly bowled over to see the time... it did NOT feel like I was going THAT slow, goodness gracious. Skipped the striders because I was absolutely sure I would hurl if I tried. Just wanted to be invisible, it was so awful. Screw all of this positive thinking crap. It just sucked.
Friday 06/20: Off, shots. Still feeling generally irate today. It's a combination of the sleeping problems and life problems. Oh, and it being 105 degrees every damn day. Argh.
Saturday 06/21: 2:04:20, 32.8 miles on the bike. Heat wave and sleep deprivation continue. Did not feel like running at all. Instead, had a nice breakfast of french toast with Cupcake and talked a lot about math. By 5 pm I felt inspired to ride, and so I did. Initially figured I would do an hour or so, just to get the legs moving, but ended up staying out there for 2 hours, trying to find my peace. 8 laps around the RB, pretty slow ~16 mph, but really enjoyed it. Forgot how different the bike is. It felt like the polar opposite of running, my legs were burning with the unfamiliar exhaustion, but no matter how hard I pushed, I didn't breathe hard at all, it was so strange, I had to sing along to my ipod bc I didn't know what to do with all of this breath. Legs were thoroughly, thoroughly worn out by the end, but I think it did my soul some good.
Goals: Judging from Sunday's run, I don't really think my body found last week very restful. Argh. This week will have to be played by ear.
They don't go to heaven where the angels fly... The question is though, do they actually end up in the Long Term Fitness Bank as debits or credits? I feel like we're conditioned to believe that the more pain you put in, the more speed you get out... but lately, I'm really not so sure.
Conventional wisdom says that you just have to maintain X amount of effort for Y number of minutes and it deposits into some long term fitness reserve... regardless of the speed at which that particular day's workout occurred, but the problem I have is that there are days that just don't fit that mold. There are days where no amount of slow makes it feel any less like dying... or no amount of effort makes the tempo run any faster, or where you simply don't even think your weary sleep deprived body will make it Y number of minutes at ANY effort level.
These sorts of scenarios didn't used to occur very frequently, but in my present state, they seem to occur alarmingly often... and so I find myself facing this question over and over again lately. I am the Queen of Long and Grueling, so if one day in the future, it will help me, then I'm willing to get through the bad runs, whatever it takes. The thing is, sometimes I wonder if you only dig your hole deeper. What if "getting through it" is what steadily creates a fatigue accumulation from which it takes longer and longer for your body to recover? Maybe there's an opportunity cost to obstinacy. I wish that some day I'll know when to suck it up and absorb the extra day off, or the one missed workout here and there such that I don't suddenly crash and require entire weeks worth of crappy slow runs just to get back to normal.
Sunday 06/15: 1:16:56, RB perimeter starting from California. Argh. Tired and hot. Hips, hamstrings sore, felt marginally better towards the end. About 10 minutes in, I distinctly felt that 1) I was really really thirsty and 2) I couldn't really imagine how I was going to get through the rest of this run. Then about 30 minutes in, R Plantar Fascia began to complain increasingly loudly. Sucked. Too exhausted to do anything else.
Monday 06/16: Off, shots. Insomnia continues. Exhausted, mentally.
Tuesday 06/17: 54:54, warm up, 4 x 800m with 1 lap jog rest, cool down. Kind of a "blah" workout, not horrible, but on the worse end of what I expected. I guess if the goal was to keep the 20 x 200m pace, I told myself I'd be okay with anything in the 3:20 range (assuming we stick to the base model of 50 s 200s) but I guess to be quite honest, what I primarily felt about the result was disappointment: 3:18 (96, 102), 3:20 (100, 100), 3:19 (100, 99), 3:19 (100, 99).
I guess that's kind of the trouble with setting time goals at all. 0:50/200m was an artificial construct to begin with, something that I backed out of the fact that the only guidance I got for this workout was that it was supposed to teach me to run tempo pace again, so I said, say 13:20 is a halfway decent 3 x 2 mile pace, which is the bulk of my upper threshold training, so 13:20/16 = 0:50. The problem is that it's really easy to run a little under 50's... a bit harder to run a little under 3:20, probably even harder to run a little under 6:40... and frankly right now, 13:20 for 2 miles is probably my all-out, dying pace. But the point is, that once you set a precedent of "beating" the goal times, its not very satisfying to run the goal times.
The other thing is that one could fundamentally question whether it was even fair of me to set this as "goal pace". 6:45 was once my tempo pace, but that was after 2 years of hard work and much more intense training than what I'm doing now. I guess if I'm honest with myself, even while knowing that the point of it is to practice running 100 second laps, I didn't WANT that. What I wanted was some indication that 100 second laps would start to feel like a pedestrian pace sometime SOONER rather than later, and needless to say, I didn't get that. Logically, I'm not even sure why I expected to get that.
I'm reminded now about a blog that Sara Hall wrote about the value of being able to have a short term memory. Sometimes, you need a short term memory in order to have mental health, and you need mental health in order to be the best you can be in the future. I know that the bulk of the disgruntlement that I feel about my training these days is because every step of the way from here until "where I used to be" feels excruciatingly like remedial math. No one WANTS to be in remedial math, when their classmates are in Calculus. Unfortunately, it's still not easy to cheerfully accept remedial math, even if you know its good for you.
Wednesday 06/18: 45:19, Monterrey to bridge. Sleeping problems continue, part of it is that it's still hot at night, part of it is that my mental state basically resembles a jungle and a quagmire... woke up late this morning and it was hot and I was massively dehydrated. I've learned better how to manage such situations, but I've concluded that I still don't enjoy them. Drank 3 glasses of water afterwards and still didn't feel quite right. Was also vaguely troubled by the fact that I used to be absolutely horrified that this run took 44 minutes when I was tired... but lately 45 and 46 minute performances have crept up... I almost want to gmaps it to know once and for all how bad the damage is. But must think short term memory, short term memory, short term memory.
Thursday 06/19: 45:22, Huntington/Virginia disaster. This is a run that might have been a good run, but one in which circumstances, unfortunately had other plans. Insomnia continues, resulting in waking up late, which pushed this run over into the evening (which I dislike to begin with). Add to that the fact that the thermometer was still having trouble dipping under 90, and having consumed about the greasiest cheesiest lunch one could imagine. I was already feeling sick after lunch, and running in the heat after that... I simply can't remember any other run that I've done where I was trying to shove down the violent urge to hurl every step of the way. Given that, I really just wanted to be done with this ASAP, so I thought that I was hurrying the best I could, and was honestly bowled over to see the time... it did NOT feel like I was going THAT slow, goodness gracious. Skipped the striders because I was absolutely sure I would hurl if I tried. Just wanted to be invisible, it was so awful. Screw all of this positive thinking crap. It just sucked.
Friday 06/20: Off, shots. Still feeling generally irate today. It's a combination of the sleeping problems and life problems. Oh, and it being 105 degrees every damn day. Argh.
Saturday 06/21: 2:04:20, 32.8 miles on the bike. Heat wave and sleep deprivation continue. Did not feel like running at all. Instead, had a nice breakfast of french toast with Cupcake and talked a lot about math. By 5 pm I felt inspired to ride, and so I did. Initially figured I would do an hour or so, just to get the legs moving, but ended up staying out there for 2 hours, trying to find my peace. 8 laps around the RB, pretty slow ~16 mph, but really enjoyed it. Forgot how different the bike is. It felt like the polar opposite of running, my legs were burning with the unfamiliar exhaustion, but no matter how hard I pushed, I didn't breathe hard at all, it was so strange, I had to sing along to my ipod bc I didn't know what to do with all of this breath. Legs were thoroughly, thoroughly worn out by the end, but I think it did my soul some good.
Goals: Judging from Sunday's run, I don't really think my body found last week very restful. Argh. This week will have to be played by ear.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Week of 06/08/2008 - 06/14/2008 (Base Week 13)
OLD!
Yesterday when I was at tech to start my run, there were just old people everywhere and not a parking space to be found! Perplexed, I finally located the source of the commotion: "CA Senior Track and Field Championships" were apparently being contested at the Caltech track. Interesting. Most of the old folks looked jolly and happy to be there, but there were a few... the very, very serious, ones... determined and frowning....
I guess this is what happens after Masters racing. I couldn't help but wonder... do I really want this? Is this what's going to happen to me if I don't get my shit together and deal with some running demons now. I kinda, actually I really want to be retired from competitive racing by the time I'm 75. Racing to me is an incredible emotional commitment more than anything else. You do to some degree push away other emotional commitments in order to be the best you can be. I don't know if that's what I want for the rest of my life. When I'm all old and wrinkly, I want to just run whenever I want and do other things whenever I want--play with grand kids, water the plants, cook for the family, go on a trip ... not trundling day in and day out on my walker so that I can beat so and so for the 90-95 age bracket world record in the 400m hobble.
Sunday 06/08: 1:08:21, Monterrey to RB. Thus the down week begins. A slow run, but an enjoyable shortened long day. Basically, I woke up today at 12:59 pm (after getting home from a wedding at 2 am, after a whole week of sleep deprivation) just in time to mash enough buttons on the TV for it to display the Prefontaine Classic. Of course they didn't bother to tell us anything about what happened with the Bekele/Defar world record attempts, but anyways... somehow I was still so tired that I was falling asleep during the commercials. I dunno, I guess this is what happens when you get old. This wasn't even like Caltech sleep deprivation, just a steady stream of late nights and 5-6 hours of sleep, but my body was totally trashed by today. I woke up and my legs were completely sore and stiff, despite very slow running or no running for the past 3 days. Shoulders were tight, general headachey, body-achey awfulness.
For this reason, my goal for this down week's long run was just to run as slow as I needed to feel good and loosen up all of the things that were complaining, which I did, and felt a lot better and stronger by the end. A cute little girl in a pink dress took a shine to me as well, and ran up the little hill at the far end of the Arroyo Tempo Loop with me. She said her name was Gabriella, and her parents were excited that she was already running. I hope she grows up to be a runner some day.
Monday 06/09: Off, shots. Argh, massive gastrointestinal issues, food poisoning (?) couldn't sleep, felt barfy all day. Didn't really eat much of anything. Horrible.
Tuesday 06/10: 46:24, Monterrey to bridge. Still felt a little bit barfy, but mostly just weak. Maybe bc of the not eating. Crawled through this short run, no hope of doing the scheduled Tuesday tempo workout.
Wednesday 06/11: 48:09, warm up, 2 mile steady state, cool down. In retrospect I wish that I had pushed this off until tomorrow... but what it really comes down to is that I wish that I had a better understanding of my body and more control over my emotional state to be able to make good decisions for where I currently am. In this case, the benefit of being more recovered from food poisoning should have been more than the benefit of having the extra day between tempo day and the longer harder runs that I tend to want to do on the weekends... but I chose wrong, because I like to believe I can do more on any given day than I really can, and it greatly irked me to have to potentially push back some of the other workouts I'd planned.
In observance of the down week, but more bc I still felt crappy, shrank down the planned 3 miles to 2 miles: 7:10,7:15, except worse feeling than the 3 mile steady state that I did a while back. So much for improvement. I am also disgruntled about the fact that my threshold pace appears to be still 30 seconds/mile slower than what I would like it to be. That just feels like a really big gap to fill... meh.
Thursday 06/12: 44:30, Monterrey to bridge again. Crappy but some improvement. Basically, how hard it is to get out of bed is probably the best indicator of when runs won't go well. It was still really hard today, but at least it didn't feel quite as much like I was going to die as some other days. I guess this is another data point to support that "what's wrong" with me is systemic, instead of weak legs, diminished lung capacity, etc. I actually do feel like those things have made a lot of progress, progress that isn't always reflected in my workouts, which is frustrating.
Friday 06/13: Off, shots. Friday the 13th! Nothing too scary, save for the amount of food that I consumed today. Felt sick. Argh.
Saturday 06/14: 43:06, Huntington/Virginia at about noon, 85 and sunny. Not my favorite conditions, but took it real easy and the heat didn't bother me at all, surprisingly. A good chunk of technical stuff that I've been neglecting lately afterwards, plus 2 x 200m accelerations, focusing on turnover. Learned something that might have been of use to me 5 years ago in my brief sprinting career: apparently one's go-fast muscles are in your butt. That's what started cramping when I tried to kick up the turnover. It's a little bit scary to think that I don't really recall using these muscles ever before.
Training this week: 4:10:30
Goals: To sleep and recover to be able to go into this next weekend strong.
Yesterday when I was at tech to start my run, there were just old people everywhere and not a parking space to be found! Perplexed, I finally located the source of the commotion: "CA Senior Track and Field Championships" were apparently being contested at the Caltech track. Interesting. Most of the old folks looked jolly and happy to be there, but there were a few... the very, very serious, ones... determined and frowning....
I guess this is what happens after Masters racing. I couldn't help but wonder... do I really want this? Is this what's going to happen to me if I don't get my shit together and deal with some running demons now. I kinda, actually I really want to be retired from competitive racing by the time I'm 75. Racing to me is an incredible emotional commitment more than anything else. You do to some degree push away other emotional commitments in order to be the best you can be. I don't know if that's what I want for the rest of my life. When I'm all old and wrinkly, I want to just run whenever I want and do other things whenever I want--play with grand kids, water the plants, cook for the family, go on a trip ... not trundling day in and day out on my walker so that I can beat so and so for the 90-95 age bracket world record in the 400m hobble.
Sunday 06/08: 1:08:21, Monterrey to RB. Thus the down week begins. A slow run, but an enjoyable shortened long day. Basically, I woke up today at 12:59 pm (after getting home from a wedding at 2 am, after a whole week of sleep deprivation) just in time to mash enough buttons on the TV for it to display the Prefontaine Classic. Of course they didn't bother to tell us anything about what happened with the Bekele/Defar world record attempts, but anyways... somehow I was still so tired that I was falling asleep during the commercials. I dunno, I guess this is what happens when you get old. This wasn't even like Caltech sleep deprivation, just a steady stream of late nights and 5-6 hours of sleep, but my body was totally trashed by today. I woke up and my legs were completely sore and stiff, despite very slow running or no running for the past 3 days. Shoulders were tight, general headachey, body-achey awfulness.
For this reason, my goal for this down week's long run was just to run as slow as I needed to feel good and loosen up all of the things that were complaining, which I did, and felt a lot better and stronger by the end. A cute little girl in a pink dress took a shine to me as well, and ran up the little hill at the far end of the Arroyo Tempo Loop with me. She said her name was Gabriella, and her parents were excited that she was already running. I hope she grows up to be a runner some day.
Monday 06/09: Off, shots. Argh, massive gastrointestinal issues, food poisoning (?) couldn't sleep, felt barfy all day. Didn't really eat much of anything. Horrible.
Tuesday 06/10: 46:24, Monterrey to bridge. Still felt a little bit barfy, but mostly just weak. Maybe bc of the not eating. Crawled through this short run, no hope of doing the scheduled Tuesday tempo workout.
Wednesday 06/11: 48:09, warm up, 2 mile steady state, cool down. In retrospect I wish that I had pushed this off until tomorrow... but what it really comes down to is that I wish that I had a better understanding of my body and more control over my emotional state to be able to make good decisions for where I currently am. In this case, the benefit of being more recovered from food poisoning should have been more than the benefit of having the extra day between tempo day and the longer harder runs that I tend to want to do on the weekends... but I chose wrong, because I like to believe I can do more on any given day than I really can, and it greatly irked me to have to potentially push back some of the other workouts I'd planned.
In observance of the down week, but more bc I still felt crappy, shrank down the planned 3 miles to 2 miles: 7:10,7:15, except worse feeling than the 3 mile steady state that I did a while back. So much for improvement. I am also disgruntled about the fact that my threshold pace appears to be still 30 seconds/mile slower than what I would like it to be. That just feels like a really big gap to fill... meh.
Thursday 06/12: 44:30, Monterrey to bridge again. Crappy but some improvement. Basically, how hard it is to get out of bed is probably the best indicator of when runs won't go well. It was still really hard today, but at least it didn't feel quite as much like I was going to die as some other days. I guess this is another data point to support that "what's wrong" with me is systemic, instead of weak legs, diminished lung capacity, etc. I actually do feel like those things have made a lot of progress, progress that isn't always reflected in my workouts, which is frustrating.
Friday 06/13: Off, shots. Friday the 13th! Nothing too scary, save for the amount of food that I consumed today. Felt sick. Argh.
Saturday 06/14: 43:06, Huntington/Virginia at about noon, 85 and sunny. Not my favorite conditions, but took it real easy and the heat didn't bother me at all, surprisingly. A good chunk of technical stuff that I've been neglecting lately afterwards, plus 2 x 200m accelerations, focusing on turnover. Learned something that might have been of use to me 5 years ago in my brief sprinting career: apparently one's go-fast muscles are in your butt. That's what started cramping when I tried to kick up the turnover. It's a little bit scary to think that I don't really recall using these muscles ever before.
Training this week: 4:10:30
Goals: To sleep and recover to be able to go into this next weekend strong.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Week of 06/01/2008 - 06/07/2008 (Base Week 12)
Getting there...
Things are improving (knock on wood!). I really tried, and its hard for a obsessively competitive person--to take Markkimarkkonnen's advice that every run should be its own reward to heart. I think last week's breakthrough, other than the increase in training minutes, is that I'm rediscovering the joy of running, feeling a little bit more of that "what's behind the next bend" intrigue of trying new routes and just enjoying the steps I take, instead of constantly hashing and rehashing what this means to The Plan, and how I'm doing that day.
Coincidentally or not, I'm also feeling a lot stronger. I feel like the runs that turn out the best are the ones that I really feel like doing. Within certain parameters, maybe sometimes it is good to listen to my moods and the runs I'd like to do that day. I was a bit worried after the unplanned Saturday longer run, how that would affect my Sunday long run, but surprisingly, I felt great. I'm really encouraged to know that I can do back to back solid runs now!
Sunday 06/01: 1:11:43, California around RB and back. I can usually tell within the first 10 minutes of a run, what kind of a run it's going to be, and I could tell early on that this was going to be a good one. Felt easy and coordinated for a change, legs strong, upper body relaxed, no breathing troubles, it seems like the yellow flowers are starting to subside a little bit. It just felt so very fantastic to feel like running was a natural, non taxing activity, that my legs just moved effortlessly over the terrain. Coming back on the other side of the RB, you can see the runners down below on the pavement, and my competitive instinct kicked in there, evidence that my spirit is actually not completely broken. I was pleasantly surprised that I could smoothly accelerate and pass them one by one, chasing them until I got back to the fields and the entrance to the Arroyo. It felt good, and it didn't seem to strain my breathing at all. Went pretty easy the rest of the way. A good run.
Monday 06/02: Off, shots. Tai Chi in the morning with Intern. It was great! It requires balance and coordination, which I lack in abundance. I think I will try to make a habit of doing this on shot days. Hamstrings oddly sore in the PM, wonder if it has to do with trying to hold all of those leg kicks and etc.
Tuesday 06/03: 1:14:56, warm up, 20 x 200m with 200m jog rest, cool down. This was both harder and easier than I thought it would be. In retrospect, I guess I was a little bit more tired for this than I would have liked, but overall, I think I got what I wanted out of it. Getting through the 7 warm up laps on the grass took a lot longer than usual, and it was really tough to control the pacing on the first 5 (I thought about them in 4 sets of 5 even though there was no break in between sets), so I was actually pretty concerned at that point. If this is what 5 feels like, how will I feel on 20? If this is what 200m feels like, how will I complete my 800's (next session)... yikes. I settled down after 5 though and it turned out alright:
46, 51, 49, 50, 49, 48, 48, 47, 47, 47, 47, 48, 47, 47, 48, 48, 47, 48, 48, 43.5 on an average of 2:02-3 lap cycles for 40:46 for 20 laps. I'm actually really pleased that I was able to remember these 20 numbers (GRE here I come!). I wanted consistency on the tempo parts, and to really just keep on moving through the jog parts and I think I got that. 6-19 were all about the same in terms of pace, lap time and how they felt, which is exactly what I wanted. On the last one, I was kind of just curious to see what I had left, since even at my best I am She-Who-Has-No-Kick (aka the opposite of KB). Ran the turn like the other ones, and accelerated into the straightaway for probably the best 100m I've ever run in my life. Apparently I do have a significantly faster gear, and it felt smooth, easy and fantastic. I think the breakthrough was about thinking "faster turnover" instead of "more effort", and the speed comes more easily, and the everything else feels more controlled.
Wednesday 06/04: 42:04, Monterrey to bridge loop in the PM. Had to go shadow a principal for the day, which meant leaving the house at 6:30 AM, which meant, no morning run. Run was very chill, pleasant, though I guess the advantage of the morning is that there aren't little kids and horses and other stuff that blocks the trail out there. Definitely aware that my legs feel a little bit beat up, but was pleased that the runtime was still on the better end of the spectrum of previous results. Even so, I've had a lot of volume in the past few weeks, I think I'll go easy through end of this week, and try to do a chill but longer run on Sunday so I can not be exhausted for whatever Tuesday is... maybe steady-state since I don't quite feel mentally prepared for 800's, even if its just at threshold pace.
Thursday 06/05: 53:10, California to Salvia Canyon. Yikes. I have to say, since the past week or so has been pretty encouraging, at the back of my mind, I've been wondering when the other shoe was going to fall... and fall it did today. Was falling asleep at the wheel yesterday and just had a lot of trouble waking up today, already bad indications... just felt really systemically tired this morning. Legs felt okay, just the whole system wouldn't move. Felt better during the second half, but I guess it didn't really make up for running the first half at like 10 minute miles...
Friday 06/06: Off, shots. Stressed and sleep deprived, argh!
Saturday 06/07: 45:34, Huntington/Virginia disaster. Body feeling kind of beat up from all of the stress, lack of sleep and etc. these days, so decided to start my down week one day early by cutting this run down from planned Huntington/Oak Knoll. Good thing too, bc I started off feeling barfy and then got this side stitch that wouldn't work itself out and it was pretty miserable and slow. Not that I was feeling particularly great before the side stitch, it felt a lot warmer than I would have preferred. I also saw Rachael Martin of CMS running on the Sierra Madre median, she had a look of vague recognition when she saw me, but I didn't want to freak her out by saying "hi Rachael". I guess I'm also weary of running into competitive runners (vs. exercise runners) if I'm having a particularly ugly day, which today definitely was.
Training this week: 4:47:27, 3 pretty heavy weeks in a row... definitely need a down week.
Goals: Not to go crazy and overdo it, now that I'm feeling better.
Things are improving (knock on wood!). I really tried, and its hard for a obsessively competitive person--to take Markkimarkkonnen's advice that every run should be its own reward to heart. I think last week's breakthrough, other than the increase in training minutes, is that I'm rediscovering the joy of running, feeling a little bit more of that "what's behind the next bend" intrigue of trying new routes and just enjoying the steps I take, instead of constantly hashing and rehashing what this means to The Plan, and how I'm doing that day.
Coincidentally or not, I'm also feeling a lot stronger. I feel like the runs that turn out the best are the ones that I really feel like doing. Within certain parameters, maybe sometimes it is good to listen to my moods and the runs I'd like to do that day. I was a bit worried after the unplanned Saturday longer run, how that would affect my Sunday long run, but surprisingly, I felt great. I'm really encouraged to know that I can do back to back solid runs now!
Sunday 06/01: 1:11:43, California around RB and back. I can usually tell within the first 10 minutes of a run, what kind of a run it's going to be, and I could tell early on that this was going to be a good one. Felt easy and coordinated for a change, legs strong, upper body relaxed, no breathing troubles, it seems like the yellow flowers are starting to subside a little bit. It just felt so very fantastic to feel like running was a natural, non taxing activity, that my legs just moved effortlessly over the terrain. Coming back on the other side of the RB, you can see the runners down below on the pavement, and my competitive instinct kicked in there, evidence that my spirit is actually not completely broken. I was pleasantly surprised that I could smoothly accelerate and pass them one by one, chasing them until I got back to the fields and the entrance to the Arroyo. It felt good, and it didn't seem to strain my breathing at all. Went pretty easy the rest of the way. A good run.
Monday 06/02: Off, shots. Tai Chi in the morning with Intern. It was great! It requires balance and coordination, which I lack in abundance. I think I will try to make a habit of doing this on shot days. Hamstrings oddly sore in the PM, wonder if it has to do with trying to hold all of those leg kicks and etc.
Tuesday 06/03: 1:14:56, warm up, 20 x 200m with 200m jog rest, cool down. This was both harder and easier than I thought it would be. In retrospect, I guess I was a little bit more tired for this than I would have liked, but overall, I think I got what I wanted out of it. Getting through the 7 warm up laps on the grass took a lot longer than usual, and it was really tough to control the pacing on the first 5 (I thought about them in 4 sets of 5 even though there was no break in between sets), so I was actually pretty concerned at that point. If this is what 5 feels like, how will I feel on 20? If this is what 200m feels like, how will I complete my 800's (next session)... yikes. I settled down after 5 though and it turned out alright:
46, 51, 49, 50, 49, 48, 48, 47, 47, 47, 47, 48, 47, 47, 48, 48, 47, 48, 48, 43.5 on an average of 2:02-3 lap cycles for 40:46 for 20 laps. I'm actually really pleased that I was able to remember these 20 numbers (GRE here I come!). I wanted consistency on the tempo parts, and to really just keep on moving through the jog parts and I think I got that. 6-19 were all about the same in terms of pace, lap time and how they felt, which is exactly what I wanted. On the last one, I was kind of just curious to see what I had left, since even at my best I am She-Who-Has-No-Kick (aka the opposite of KB). Ran the turn like the other ones, and accelerated into the straightaway for probably the best 100m I've ever run in my life. Apparently I do have a significantly faster gear, and it felt smooth, easy and fantastic. I think the breakthrough was about thinking "faster turnover" instead of "more effort", and the speed comes more easily, and the everything else feels more controlled.
Wednesday 06/04: 42:04, Monterrey to bridge loop in the PM. Had to go shadow a principal for the day, which meant leaving the house at 6:30 AM, which meant, no morning run. Run was very chill, pleasant, though I guess the advantage of the morning is that there aren't little kids and horses and other stuff that blocks the trail out there. Definitely aware that my legs feel a little bit beat up, but was pleased that the runtime was still on the better end of the spectrum of previous results. Even so, I've had a lot of volume in the past few weeks, I think I'll go easy through end of this week, and try to do a chill but longer run on Sunday so I can not be exhausted for whatever Tuesday is... maybe steady-state since I don't quite feel mentally prepared for 800's, even if its just at threshold pace.
Thursday 06/05: 53:10, California to Salvia Canyon. Yikes. I have to say, since the past week or so has been pretty encouraging, at the back of my mind, I've been wondering when the other shoe was going to fall... and fall it did today. Was falling asleep at the wheel yesterday and just had a lot of trouble waking up today, already bad indications... just felt really systemically tired this morning. Legs felt okay, just the whole system wouldn't move. Felt better during the second half, but I guess it didn't really make up for running the first half at like 10 minute miles...
Friday 06/06: Off, shots. Stressed and sleep deprived, argh!
Saturday 06/07: 45:34, Huntington/Virginia disaster. Body feeling kind of beat up from all of the stress, lack of sleep and etc. these days, so decided to start my down week one day early by cutting this run down from planned Huntington/Oak Knoll. Good thing too, bc I started off feeling barfy and then got this side stitch that wouldn't work itself out and it was pretty miserable and slow. Not that I was feeling particularly great before the side stitch, it felt a lot warmer than I would have preferred. I also saw Rachael Martin of CMS running on the Sierra Madre median, she had a look of vague recognition when she saw me, but I didn't want to freak her out by saying "hi Rachael". I guess I'm also weary of running into competitive runners (vs. exercise runners) if I'm having a particularly ugly day, which today definitely was.
Training this week: 4:47:27, 3 pretty heavy weeks in a row... definitely need a down week.
Goals: Not to go crazy and overdo it, now that I'm feeling better.
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