Category: exercise

Running update:

I’ve been taking it easy this week, but I’ve still found time to run. Last night after work I was planning on a 6+ mile run, but it was raining, so I hied myself hence to the gym. Because of the time restrictions on using the treadmills (loosely enforced but still important) I ran 3 miles, took a small water-and-bathroom break, then found another machine and did the remaining 3 miles. I managed to repeat my pace from the Pints to Pasta race, albeit with the help of the break.

(Speaking of which, the official results for that race have been posted. I came in 555 out of 787. Yay! It was a good race.)

I also ran on Wednesday,in my neighborhood, and on Tuesday around the waterfront, 3.5 miles and 3 miles respectively, but didn’t keep track of the time. Adding in the Race for the Cure tomorrow, my weekly miles equal 15.6, a nice easy week after training so hard.

Next week I plan on getting back to my 20+ mile weeks, and to add back in my speedwork or hills. I also plan on seeing a doctor about my heel pain, and to get a new pair of shoes. Brooks has updated the Adrenaline model; we’ll see if their being bought by Russell has had any impact on their shoes. I intend to try more than just Brooks, though…

Didn’t want to think about this right off the bat, but during my race yesterday I kept track of (most of) my mile splits. Here they are (with the split plus elapsed time):

1. 09:44.99 (0:09:44.99)
2. 09:38.84 (0:19:23.83)
3. Didn’t see the 3-mile sign…
4. 19:53.20 (0:39:17.03)
5. 09:47.12 (0:49:04.15)
6. 11:24.63 (1:00:28)
7. 1:47:33 (1:02:16)

Up until Mile 5, I managed to keep a 9:48 pace, dammit! I was doing so well. That last full mile killed me… Yeah, I had to stop and walk a bit. Grabbed water at the water station right after the Mile 5 sign, then had to stop as we passed the Marriott… then had to stop again on the long dirt road by the new OHSU buildings that are going up. But dammit, at least I finished strong…

Unofficial time in the Pints to Pasta: 1:02:16, for a 10:01.2 pace, or about 38 seconds per mile faster than I ran the Run Hit Wonder.

Yay for training! Yay for resting!

The best part is, my heel, that’s been bugging me? It didn’t hurt at all during the race nor after. Resting really did help!

And I got to drink two beers (Widmer’s Oktoberfest seasonal, very good) and stayed for some music. A great race and a good way to end my season.

Oh, yeah, running schedule for this week. Um… OK, here:

• Monday: 3.5 miles training (no timing)
• Tuesday: Elliptical trainer intervals 5 miles total.
• Wednesday: Rest day.
• Thursday: 4 miles – run at race pace
• Friday: Rest day
• Saturday: Rest day
• Sunday: Pints to Pasta 10K

Running helps me deal with the sadness and frustration of the twin American disasters. The first, Hurricane Katrina, was natural in cause. The second, ongoing tragedy, however, is the government preparation and response to the first one.

Take note, kids: Republicans. Can’t. Govern. Bush has demonstrated what he’s done to learn from the lessons of 9/11. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

See? I can’t talk about anything without talking about my outrage. I’ll post more later. Remind me to tell you about the National Guard troops stuck in Iraq with families in the affected area. Short version: if their families are confirmed dead or wounded, they can come home. If they’re just missing, or refugees, the troops are shit out of luck. They stay in the sandbox.

Deep breath. Getting a grip.

But for now, I wanted to post my running times. Ran 7 miles tonight, my longest single run ever. It’s part of my preparation and training for the Pints-to-Pasta 10K, which I’ve chosen as my season-ending race. Last year I performed incredibly well, running the race in 59:54.5, for a 9:40 pace. I hope to do at least that well this year. And my plan has been to increase my long run until it was more than 10K and run it several times before the race, to build up my endurance, and to work on my bursts of speed with hill- and speed-work. Yadda yadda, I’ve explained this before.

At any rate, tonight was the stress test of my training. And I think I’ve done quite well. I finished 7.01 miles in 1:13:58.2, for an average pace of 10:33, which I think is very good considering my poor results in the Nike RHW last month, not to mention my horrible time last week. Hell, last week that was practically my time for 6.5 miles.

My time at the 6-mile mark was around 1:02:00 or so, which put me at a 10:25 pace. Keep in mind that I was running on the street, in warm (but not hot) weather, and I did stop several times for water. The P2P course is almost entirely downhill, and I will be pushing myself harder, so I’m really pleased at where my training has brought me. I’ll continue to work on speed for the next couple of days, then taper for at least 2 days and maybe 3 if I can stand it, so I’ll be running on fresh legs for the race.

I’ll also be running in the Race for the Cure co-ed 5K, but because there are so many entrants in that one, and because I might be running with my 13-year-old nephew, I’m not planning on having a great time in that race. I’m going to stick with my partner, and make sure he enjoys the race, and not focus on speed.

I might look for another 5K to run in myself, though. With my great 4-mile times (sustained sub-9:30 pace) lately in training, I might be able to (finally!) post an equally-great “official” race time for the 5K this year.

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…

Oh, almost forgot, running update:

Ran last night, in the gym. 3.5 miles on the treadmill. I pushed for as long as I could, and after the first 3 miles I made a note of the time: 28:41, or about a 9:34 pace. I had to slow down for a bit after that, but still finished the full 3.5 miles in 33:50, or about a 9:40 pace overall.

Also had a weird experience of seeing someone I thought I knew, someone who I would have thought had an, um, unique body shape (incredibly, incredibly thin), but it turned out that it wasn’t my friend, it was a girl who looked enough like her to be her equally-emaciated sister. Strange.