Month: August 2005

I know I haven’t posted a running schedule for this week. I’m basically following the same schedule I posted last week, except my long run is going to be 7 miles.

Which means, tonight I was scheduled to do speedwork on the elliptical trainer at the gym. And, I did.

I ran my warmup at a very brisk pace; I set the machine for a 9:32 pace, then around .4 miles, I increased it to 9:22, then pushed it to 9:15… yeah, I just kept pushing the pace faster and faster every .1 mile or so. Had a lot of frustration to wear down. Didn’t work, but, hey. Oh, and I ended up doing 1.25 miles, instead of just 1 mile. Go figure.

Then, on the elliptical trainer, in spite of the left footpad being loose and making a “clunk” noise every so often, I did my normal 30 minutes, with 8 x 0:30 “sprints” and 1:30 of “normal” pace in-between. And I increased the distance I went in my 30 minutes, up from 2.72 miles last week, to 2.8 miles this week, an increase in overall average pace from 10:59 last week, to 10:43 this week. I guess if my pace on the elliptical trainer ever reaches my 5K race pace (best pace 9:27) I’ll know I need a new speed workout.

Finished with 1 mile of fast-but-not-as-fast-as-my-warmup running on the treadmill, and a quarter-mile of walking to cooldown from my cooldown. Yay.

Side note: warming up, I was directly behind this very cute girl with an amazing dragonfly tattoo on her back, between her shoulder blades. Kept telling myself I should at least compliment her on it. But the timing of my workout and hers never gave me the opportunity to catch her when we both weren’t in the middle of a workout. Oh, well.

From Thursday evening to Saturday afternoon, I ran a total of 15.5 miles.

Which is almost as much as the average Hood to Coast runner did between Friday morning and Saturday evening (196 total miles, divided by 12 runners on a team, equals an average of 16.3 miles per runner).

So, in a small way, my weekend was almost as grueling as running in the Hood to Coast.

OK, not really. I didn’t have to sleep in a van with 5 other sweaty runners and eat nothing but energy bars and Diet Rock Star and not shower or shave for two days, along with all the rest.

But it gave me a small idea of what it might be like. I think I might be ready for HTC next year.

UPDATE: Since I’m able to get up or down stairs easily, unlike several HTC entrants I know right now, I’m going to say I definitely haven’t pushed myself as hard as I would in the HTC.

Turns out I was wildly optimistic (next-to-last paragraph) about my 6.5 mile run. I finished the route in 1:13:31, for a pace of 11:15.5 or so.

Full disclosure: I had to stop the clock just before the 5.5 mile mark, and use the bathroom in Sellwood Park, which gave me a break of about 10 minutes or so. But my intestines would have burst if I hadn’t…

Ugh. Hard to breathe, had to stop and walk quite a bit. It wasn’t overly warm. I mean, it was warm (in the high 80s when I started out around 6:15 PM) but not like Texas heat or anything. Stupid allergies.

After I crossed over the Bybee Bridge, I discovered that my route coincided with a section of the Hood-to-Coast relay (specifically Leg 12), so for a couple of miles I was running with company. There were volunteers along the way, and they would clap and give me encouragement just like the runners in the race. I didn’t tell them that I wasn’t an entrant, even though, technically, they should have noticed that I didn’t have a bib number on, but maybe it just didn’t matter. I was a runner and they were encouraging me.

I was worried that the lady volunteer at the spot where my route split from the race route was going to yell at me for not following directions, but she just gave me a glare and let me be.

I passed a friend on my way to the gym today. He asked me, mock-seriously, “You aren’t running outside?”

He got a flat “No.” in reply and we both laughed.

It was over 90 degrees today. Bleah.

But the best part is, I ran like a rock star!

I had planned 4 miles, and, truly, with a 6.5 mile run planned for tomorrow (it’s supposed to be cooler but not much), I probably shouldn’t have pushed myself. But I really wanted to see what I could do. My last run in the gym for distance, on Monday, I did pretty well, but not spectacular. I felt I slowed down too much at the end, I got off the treadmill thinking “I could have gone faster.”

Could I have? The question nagged at me. Tuesday night was my speedwork, and I felt a little faster, and since I’ve been doing the regular speedwork and focussing on keeping my breathing regular and in rhythm with my running, I feel just that much better. And with those thoughts in my head, I decided to try to push myself tonight.

Modeling my strategy on Monday’s performance, I aimed for ~9:40 pace for the first two miles, then figured a 9:30 pace for a mile would leave me enough energy for a 9:20 pace for the last mile. That would average just over a 9:32 pace, which would be pretty good for that distance for me.

But as I approached the half-way mark, I felt pretty good, and ran the speed up to about an 8:30 pace for a brief sprint, bringing it down to 9:20 or so. I thought I’d run out of breath and have to slow down further, but I just stared straight ahead, focused on my breathing, and concentrated on my overall form, and zoned out to the music and my mental counting. And before I knew it, I was approaching the last mile.

So, again, I tried a brief burst of speed to push past the 3 mile mark, running at what felt like 85% of my flat-out running speed for a full minute, before reducing the treadmill’s speed back to a 9:20 pace. I was breathing hard, but it felt good, and again I regulated my breathing, picturing the oxygen spreading to all the limbs in my body, feeling my diaphragm filling my lungs with air… listening to the music… and as I approached the 3.5 mile mark, I realized that I could finish at this pace.

The last tenth of a mile was again passed in a hard run, not quite a sprint but a good hard effort. The clock said 37:51 as the odometer read 4.0 miles. I slowed the treadmill to a walk to cool down, and mentally calculated my average pace at 9:27.something – that was the closest I could do in my head as tired as I was.

But, y’know… I think I could have kept going if I hadn’t done that sprint… the voice in the back of my head, normally so negative and full of discouragement, was, for once, urging me on to try harder, to push myself more. I did great, and I could do even greater.

My theory has been that I should push myself when I’m on the treadmill, considering the advantages it gives me; lots of cushioning, forces me to keep a regular pace, air-conditioned comfort, no traffic, no red lights, no hills, no sunlight in my eyes, no pollen attacks (I have allergies). So my pace on a treadmill is going to be better than my pace on the street. I still don’t have much idea how much better, though. It’s all guess work at this point. Of course, a year ago, I had no idea how to pace myself for any distance at all. Time and effort has given me some experience in those things, and I’m only going to get better at gauging all of the variables.

I do think the speedwork has really been helping, and so has increasing the distance. Tomorrow I will see what I can do on a 6.5 mile loop, in the heat, on asphalt and on mainly city streets. If I can do a 9:40 overall pace, that would be pretty good, I think, under those conditions.

I’m looking forward to it…