Archive for December, 2009

• Now it feels like I'm training for a marathon

  Date: 2009.12.31 | Category: running, Uncategorized | Response: View Comments

  Hi!  I just moved from http://chasingambulances.blogspot.com to this site.  The content before today’s post is formatted funky.  I may or may not go back and fix that.

  The first 3 weeks of marathon training have not felt too tough.  Today, however, I felt a real challenge.  It was an interval run that lasted almost a full hour.  I did 10-20 w/u, 12 X 400 (@8:15) (1:30 RI), 10 c/d.*  Twelve repeats was a real pain to keep track of, even on the treadmill.  I use the penny system (after each interval, I take a penny from my pot of 12 pennies and throw it on the ground), and it was still a pain.  This is partly because the treadmill I use is old and the viewer loops between pace, time, distance, calories burned — so I’d reach 4.38 miles, and at that point my 400 meters would be over, but I’d have to wait to see what the time was and then do math in my head — calculating how much time I spent in limbo not knowing what time it was that I ended my interval, and subtract that from the RI time, and then add that to the current time.  I don’t like adding or math in general, and especially not when running so I’m looking forward to the rest of the week’s runs.

  * w/u = warm up, c/d = cool down, RI = recovery interval

  Not only was the run mentally hard, it was physically tough too.  At the end of the last interval, my heart rate was up to 180 bpm.  I was the lucky recipient of a Polar F6 heart monitor for Christmas, and so I used it for the first time during a run to figure out how many calories I was burning.  They say ignorance is bliss, so I wonder how you cultivate ignorance?  (I suppose it’s not doing things like this.)  For an hour of running (pretty hard running, too (for me)) I burned 439 calories.  439 CALORIES!  Insane!  That was a lot less than I expected/hoped.  I guess that explains why eating 6 cookies at night is not, unfortunately, refueling in my case.

  Last week I was disappointed by the amount of snow that had fallen the morning of my planned 10 miler.  It is the first run I missed, and I was sad to end my streak.  I went out for a run a couple of days before the missed 10 miler and made the mistake of going on a trail that was (unbeknownst to me) covered in irregular frozen foottracks in a good 5-6″ of snow.  I nearly sprained my ankle 8 times and took over 13 minutes to run one mile!  Luckily I turned back and the opposite direction was clear but for a light half inch of snow.  I knew that there was no chance it would have been cleared over night when I skipped my ten mile run in favor of a 6.4 mile one on the treadmill – and probably saved myself from injury.  Which is the most important thing anyway.

• Texting and intervals

  Date: 2009.12.09 | Category: running, Uncategorized | Response: View Comments

  This is story I’m about to tell is not running related, but it’s pretty funny (or so I like to think) so I thought I’d share. At least once a week I get a voicemail or text that is obviously not intended for me. I rectified (I hope) the voicemail situation by finally leaving a message that indicates that it’s me — not Carol or Becky — whose phone the dialer has reached. Nevertheless, I am still getting bizarre text messages. Today I got one that started,

  
  
  ur boyfriend is hot. how serious are you?
  
  
  Me: Ha ha. Is this Kathy? [I don't have a friend named Kathy, but I was trying to figure out if the person would tell me who they were.]
  
  
  Them: no. this is your sister silly. [I don't have a sister]
  
  
  Me: Weird. I don’t remember seeing you at the wedding 2 months ago
  
  
  Them: omg. that’s why you were in vegas?
  
  
  Me: Vegas was the bachelorette. Sorry but I forgot to invite you
  
  
  Them: whatever. c if u can keep this guy from turning gay…unlike the last guy.
  
  
  I’m counting on the fact that this person will soon discover her sister’s real phone number soon and that she won’t start harassing me once she finds out I was messing with her. Perhaps it is stuff like this that causes me to go over my text message limit (sorry, honey!).
  
  
  Anyway, I did an interval run today. The very first on the marathon plan — and it went a little like this:
  10 minute warm up, 6 X (1 min @ 8:15, 3 min EZ), 10 minute cool down.
  
  
  Looking at the Key Run #1s on the FIRST training plan, they are speed workouts, and
  some of them get pretty complicated, and I don’t really like to spend my runs doing math. For
  example:
  10-20 minute warm-up

  1 mile (400m RI), 2 miles (800m

  RI), 2 x 800 (400m RI)

  10 minute cool down

  
  

  So, in addition to thinking about miles and how many I’ve done, I’ll need to think about

  converting my miles to kilometers. Yes, I know this is fairly simple. 400m is 1/4 mile;

  800 is about half a mile. It is adding and simple division, but math is not my strong point

  and oddly I notice that whether I calculate whatever I’m doing before the run or during it,

  I am constantly re-doing the math in my head like a crazy person.

  
  

  The whole point of me talking about this is that I was worried I would lose track of the 6

  intervals I was supposed to do in my run today. To stop that from happening, I got six

  pennies, and after each interval was completed, I threw it on the floor (I was on my treadmill

  at home). It worked great, and I think that if I was outside (heaven forbid I just toss money

  aside) I could transfer the pennies from one pocket to another. Or if I had no pockets, I could

  use rubber bands on my wrists. And, it struck me as a great way to count laps if I was swimming

  – I think I could easily lose track of that. Not that I swim really, but just in case I ever do.

  In conclusion, I learned something today and I got to mess with someone’s head. A great day, all

  things considered.

• Tetris style

  Date: 2009.12.05 | Category: running, Uncategorized | Response: View Comments

  It has been yet another long absence. Lots of stuff happened. I got married. Went on a honeymoon. Ran the Lewis & Clark Half (PW’d by the way). Decided to sign up for the St. Louis Go! Marathon on April 11, 2010. Got a brand new shiny laptop. So, the blogging comes back a little bit like a tetris game. It just fits in the spot.

  I have wussed out of running the full marathon before, but this time I’m going in with a plan. I’m using the FIRST Plan, which you can read about in detail here. Basically, the plan uses your last 10k to determine your Planned Marathon Pace (PMP), speedwork pace, and tempo pace. There are only 3 key runs in the schedule per week. This is a good thing, because it allows me to crosstrain, and to not run on consecutive days if my knee acts up. The book Run Less, Run Faster has a more in depth discussion of the benefits of training three times per week using the FIRST plan.
  As far as the knees go, I still get a little tenderness now and then in my IT band. I have noticed that one stretch in particular is really helpful. This guy. And of course, I use my foam roller when I feel tight.
  And if you are wanting more reading on running, I would recommend Kristin Armstrong’s Mile Markers blog on the Runners World website here. Sometimes there is a little too much touchy feely stuff but it is well-written. Mainly, I’m kind of fascinated with her and the whole Lance Armstrong thing. The way she moved on and reinvented herself after all that happened is pretty dope.