Marathon Training: Occasionally, I'm dumb.

This marathon training cycle is….interesting.

a)      It’s 6 weeks long

b)      It’s a modification of the Pfitz 55 plan (I’m usually a VERY loyal Runners World training program for 26.2)

c)       It’s not a ZOMG I MUST PR effort

d)      And my Tuesdays and Thursdays are pretty much maxed out for time

With all these variables factored in, it was pretty interesting and challenging to create my marathon training program.  First attempt  I threw in Pfitz training runs around my 5k and 10k races I had scheduled for October and called it good.  My co-worker took one look at it, (I had a 5k on Saturday and 18 miler on Sunday, then the following week a 10k on Saturday and a 20 miler on Sunday) and said, “I thought your goal for this training cycle was to NOT get injured???”  Uh… oh.  Ooops!  But I’ll run the long runs sloooooooooooooooow, I promise.

I then forwarded my training program to Jason.  The all knowing runner buddy/coach/friend.  He usually can edit my training program to minimize my odds of getting hurt, AND  I get my way.  Sadly, this time…. Was a no go.  He didn’t outright call me an idiot, but he could’ve, and I wouldn’t have been mad.  So sadly I scrapped my races for October.  Sniffle.  There are so few 10ks around here when it’s not a bazillion degrees and eleventy million percent humidity.  I had a single tear.  L

With past training schedules, I like to have a rest day before my long runs and after.  But I’m not allowed as much “freedom” with my training with grad school thrown in.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays I work from 8am-5pm, hustle booty home, and have class from 6-9pm.  I could run SUPER early before work, or late after work, but they’d need to be on the treadmill for safety.  And I’m banking all my treadmill runs for the arctic tundra weather.  So I’ve included 2-4 mile “sanity runs” for those days, or just opted for a rest day.

Of course, this means that my Mondays and Wednesdays have the bulk of my mileage.  Like this past Monday.  Approximately 48 hours after doing my 16 mile, I had an 11 mile on my schedule.  Uff.  Since this training program is SHORT, I thought some mid-long runs would be key to help me build up my endurance (which is, admittedly, my weakness).  I figured as long as I kept the pace and the heart rate slow and low, I would be a-ok.

And slow I did (for me, nothing wrong with a 10mm, for the record).  The first 5 miles were right around a ten minute pace.  And my heart rate was in the higher range of where it should be for my mid and long runs.  Magically (or what felt like magically) at about 4.5/5 miles my legs started to feel great, and my heart rate dropped (by a good 15-20 beats).  And with that my pace dropped easily in to the 9:20s and lower.  I smile-ran the last 6 miles like you had just treated me with a big bowl of my favorite ice cream and told me it was lactose free.  It didn’t hurt that it was chilly (aka my favorite running weather) at 41 degrees.  Also, there's something very b.a. about running a double digit run before work on a weekday.

I ended up with 11 miles in 1:45:42 for a pace of 9:36.  Average HR: 155.

And on the injury front, I feel like I am making significant strides (heh…. Running joke….. heh… punny) towards staying injury free.  Kyle is officially jealous of the quality time I’m spending with Frank (my foam roller) and I am constantly focusing on my form during my training runs.  With the exception of speed workouts when the only thought I can entertain is “OMG please don’t die.  This hurts.  Heart, don’t explode!”  But yeah, other than that…. Totally concentrating on my form.

And I think it’s working/helping.  After my long run, I had some soreness in my IT bands and quads, but a teeny tiny fraction in comparison to previous long runs.  And my hamstrings and calves seem to be tired, which I’m deeming a good thing, as apparently I never really used those muscles previously for running.  Uh… ooops.

To solidify my already stellar day, I got a package from a giveaway I won from Kimi!  Naturally I had to wear it as soon as I got done with work.  And a photo shoot had to take place.  Mostly because Kyle thought it was funny to pretend to take pictures of the tv rather than me.  Too bad he didn't get a shot of the death glare I was giving him 75% of the time. 

**I knocked on wood while writing this post, please do me a favor and knock on wood while/after reading as well.  Thanks. **

Winnah Winnah!

And the winner of my 100 followers giveaway is...... [drum roll please].......


J from Morning Runner!!!

J send me an email at jerbearshares [at] gmail [dot] com so I can get your address for stalking purposes to mail out your loot!

100 followers giveaway!

A few months ago I emailed some companies to see if they would be willing to donate items for my 100th follower giveaway.  And now we are finally there....100 followers!!  Eeeeeeeee!  There are a number of items up for grabs in this giveaway, and I would be ecstatic to win it myself (however, I'm sure it states somewhere that I'm not eligible for my own giveaway.  Hey wait! It's my giveaway I write the rules.... anyway.... I digress... I will not award myself the loot, even though I want to.)

Moving on.  The items included in the giveaway are:

• A Road ID (check my review here)
• A pair of Oxysox Compression socks (check my review here)
• A pair of Ryders Sunglasses 
• A variety pack of GU energy gels, GU water bottle, and socks

In order to be eligible for the giveaway you must:

Be a follower of Jerbear Shares....woot woot!  

And leave a comment with the one running "must have" that I need to add to my list.  

(Please leave a separate comment for each.)

Additional entries:

• Tweet tweet tweeeeeeeeeeeet about the giveaway (including @jerilee40 somewhere in the tweet)
• Post a link on your blog
• If you've purchased a scarf to support Scarves for PRs you get +2 points (plus my undying love and title of favorite blog readers... just sayin'.....)

You will have until January 5th at noon (CST) to enter the giveaway, so get crack-a-lackin'!

I guess I should buy a lotto ticket

Saturday night I headed out for my very first roller derby experience.  Random note:  I was going to try out for the local roller derby team about two years ago.  Had contacted the captains, priced skates, pads, etc. and then I found out the mandatory orientation/newbie meeting was when I was to be in Portland visting my BFFF.  I was sooooo bummed.  Luckily I got back in to running about 6 months later.  :)

Friday I won tickets to the Roller Dollz double header bout for Saturday night and I was so excited to go.  During the warm up, I started to get "the itch" again.....uh oh... I wanna be a roller doll!  Oh well, running first.  I've already decided that if I ever retire from running, I will hang up my running shoes for some skates.  The bouts were so much fun.  And intense.

Sunday I had an easy 5 miler to attend to.  My legs were sooooo not excited about this run.  I've never felt like I've "waddled" so much during a run.  Wowsers.  I putzed along and was just genuinely happy when the miles were over.  I did the 5 miles in 48:16 for an average pace of 9:40.  This run also put my weekly mileage at another new PR with 43.  Heck ya!  No wonder I've been eating like a horse.  (Wait...do horses eat ice cream?  :P)

Monday I had an easy 9 miler to take care of after work.  Before heading out, I read a couple of blogs.  I found out I won Erica's Pop Chip giveaway and was super excited, and tweeted that I should buy a lottery ticket.  When I got back Sam (P.S. I swear Sam is my office hubby's real-life gf.  She looks sooo much like her!) had responded that I sure as heck better because I ALSO won Bobbi's summer dress giveaway.  Now if you're keeping track this is 3 sweet prizes that I have won in 4 days!!  Craziness.  When I won the roller derby tickets on Friday I was ecstatic and telling all of my co-workers that I never win anything.  Um...not true anymore.  :)

Oh yeah, the run.  It wasn't very fun.  My legs were still very very fatigued/sore/you name it, they weren't loving it.  Within 2 miles in, I made a deal with them that if they could survive the run (at whatever pace they deemed necessary) we'd take Tuesday off.  They must've listened because other than the first 2 miles the rest of the run wasn't all that bad.

One part I didn't enjoy.  The bugs!  Apparently it's spring time here.  Yuck.  During the run, I had a gnat lodge itself in my eye (to stay there until I got home), roughly 10 gnats inhaled, only 4-5 were coughed up, spit out, the rest RIP, and many others snorted up my sniffling nose.  When I got home, I noticed I had a dead gnat stuck in between my front teeth.  GROSS.  I seriously almost threw up.  Also, made me pose a question, "If I were still a vegetarian, would I could this as failing?"  Vegheads?  What are your thoughts on when you inhale bugs?

I did the 9 miles in 1:25:28 for a pace of 9:30.

Brick Workout (Ish) + You've got MAIL!

I had been looking forward to the weather on Wednesday all week. Sunny, warm, a reprieve from the horrendous cold rain. Could it be? My first nice weather day to take out Polly?!?!?! But first, my run. Work before play, ya know? I had to do an easy 4 miles. Since I was planning on taking the bike trail for my bike ride, I decided to do a hilly route for my run. Easy run....hilly run...same difference I suppose. :)

My Garmin started beeping at me at 1.39 that it was LOW BATTERY, all doom and gloom like. Oh garmin, get over yourself. I kept looking down at it, almost as a challenge to see how long it would last before giving up. Up hills, down hills, through hills, wait...what?? That puppy stayed strong through the whole run. Ok, well it did have one minor mishap where it tried to tell me I ran a mile in 4:30, but that sounds pretty legit, right? Luckily it was only the final mile that was messed up, and I know my ending point, so I was actually able to figure out my splits. Good to know that the low battery will go for at least an additional 2.61 miles. Heck ya.

I did 4 miles in 37:37 for a pace of 9:25.

1. 9:31

2. 9:39

3. 9:26

4. 8:59

Next up, the inaugural ride on Miss Polly. If you missed her big unveiling, here she is again.

Swoon. I checked weatherbug and determined that I had approximately 30 minutes to bike before sundown. Plugged in the Garmin for 5 while I found a sweatshirt to put on, switched it to cycling mode and I was off. To be honest, the first couple of blocks were a bit off. I haven't ridden a bike (other than a stationary) in probably 3 years. And since the handlebars aren't straight across I was kind of all over the place. :p After we got used to her, I was off.

Not kidding you, I was literally grinning from ear to ear the entire run. It was so much fun, and she's just so gorgeous. I did have some issues with the back pedaling brakes. I kept reaching for them on my handlebars and coming up with nothing. Hah. Also, there are a couple of hills that made for some trying times on a one speed, haha, but nothing too horrible.

I did 5.02 miles in 30:38 for a pace of 9.8 mph. HAHAHAH! Speed demon on the yellow beauty. I actually was biking VERY slowly especially around tight turns because I was super afraid that another biker would be flying through in the opposite direction and I'd crash, especially since I wasn't used to brakes, etc. Plus, I didn't by the bike for speed, merely fun. One of my good guy friends was making fun of my bike, and was shocked that I didn't get a "serious" bike since I'm such an athlete. I took that as quite the compliment, but know I'll only be biking for fun, and have no need for a spendy serious bike. :) I made it home just before the setting sun.

While wheeling my bike up to my apartment, I saw this growing out of the rocks by my sidewalk. A purple pansy. :)

These were my Grandma's favorite flowers, so whenever I see them I think of her. I took it as a sign that she was saying hello and that she also loved my sweet new ride. :) It is pretty random that it was growing wild, especially in some random rocks, and after 2 nights of frost.

Thursday night I got home from work and was BUMMED that I didn't have any mail. Doesn't it just make you feel unloved? Waah. But when I walked up to my apartment door, I saw this propped up against it.

First of all, I had to laugh because it was in an Asics running shoe box. I never buy boxes to wrap Xmas presents in, because I always have excess shoe boxes laying around. Haha. Too funny. I opened it to find this AWESOME collage made especially for ME. :) A while back I won a contest that Lacey put on through her blog Common Objects & Everyday Events. I was super excited because I never win anything, and I looooooove Lacey's blog. She's such an inspirational Faaaaaaaast runner, and always leaves such thoughtful and insightful comments on my blog. Have I mentioned how much I love the running blog community yet? ;)
Check out all this sweet loot!!! Definitely some really cool stuff in there I've never tried, a way cool magnet (which is already on my fridge for inspiration) and the DVD Running the Sahara, which I'm super excited to watch! Thanks for the giveaway Lacey. It was super fun, and I'm stoked I WON. :) P.S. I totally plan on cutting the sweet collage out of the box and displaying it with some medals/race bibs/etc. :D

Sadly, I've made the decision not to run the 5k I had planned on running tomorrow. :( I'm super bummed, but looking at the hourly forecast it's supposed to be a wind chill of 24 degrees, 17 mph winds, 20% chance of snow/freezing rain, and is supposed to snow tonight. I race for fun, and racing in that weather doesn't sound like too much fun. Which means I'll for sure be doing the 5k on the 24th, and hopefully the 10k on Halloween, because this girl wants to RACE (just not in the snow :p)!

Best of luck to all the bloggies who are racing this weekend. Kick some booty Mica, Morgan, Glenn, Jamie, XCountry2 & ChicRunner aka Danica, and all the others I've forgotten. I'll be patiently awaiting your results and race reports, since I'm a loser and axing my race. :p

Insert Fail Whale Here

Oh hey....well that actually worked. To say that I was nervous about this morning's workout would be an understatement. It's probably the workout that seemed the most "scary" out of all of them when I clicked print back in June. Speedwork: 8 miles (WTF?!?!?!? For serious???) 4 x 1600 @ 7:37, with 800 m recovery and 1 mile warm up, 1 mile cool down.

In my world, 8 miles and speed work do NOT go together. Last night I had am A-MA-ZING meal for fuel for the run. Speaking of, after I was having my glass of Pinot Noir for dessert, I remembered that I had promised pics of my sweet dinner. Whoopsies. Have no fear, I managed to spill most of the glass of wine on the floor after this realization. No use crying over spilled wine!!! Umm...unless it's the last of your wine...and your carpet is white. Then cry. I ate grilled salmon, with a ginormo salad with 1/4 of an avocado and some mango pieces on a huge bed of lettuce. Unfortunately, SOMEONE removed the lid from the dressing, so I ended up with waaaaaaaaaaay too much dressing on my delicious little salad, so I just added more lettuce to even it out. :p

I woke up this morning at 7:45am to get psyched for my run. I twittered, facebooked, checked my email, checked the weather (60 degrees, cool, fabulous) until I finally kicked my butt out the door.

My warm up mile was great! Haha. I felt like I was going much slower than my split showed, but legs felt fairly good, minus some quads pain/tenderness that was still lingering from Tuesday's Speedy Seven. My first "fast" mile was good. Every time I looked at my pace, it was showing slightly over 7 minute miles. I actually thought I was going to come in under my goal pace (I gave myself 7:37-7:47). This is definitely a pace that I don't practice much (or haven't lately) as this is around my 5k pace, and even when I was doing 5k training I was either running much faster than this (400 repeats) or slowerfor long runs/easy runs. Somehow my body must've felt the pace, because I came in right at 7:37. Well look at that. :)

The 1/2 mile recovery jog in between HURT. My quads were sooooooo tight. I got started on Mile repeat #2. It was definitely more difficult to maintain the pace that felt pretty strong the repeat before, but I still managed to come in under time, 7:44. During the last quarter mile of this, I vowed to myself that if I could finish this mile in the goal time, I would be done doing my mile repeats, and I was true to my word.

I decided to switch and do 4 x 800 with 400 jog in between them. I did one and almost died. :( I did the 800 at a 7:53 pace and I hurt. The whole time I was running this 800 I had convinced myself I was going to injure myself by continuing. I pulled my right quad the first indoor track meet of the year in high school my junior year and was out for 8 weeks, basically the whole season. I really freaked myself out and decided just to finish the rest of the 8 miles so I could be on track for my monthly mileage goal (> last months: 130).

I felt like I was crawling, but was still running at a decent clip (????). I guess that will happen when you're running that fast of repeats, but still. I ended up doing another 1.3 mile cooldown (??) before calling it quits, vowing to run my Tuesday easy 6 on Monday to get my miles in. :)

I ended up doing 5.6 miles in 48:28 for a pace of 8:40.

1. Warmup 9:22
2. Interval #1 7:37
.50 Recovery 4:50 (9:50 pace)
3.5 Interval #2 7:44
.28 Recovery (meant to do .25 but forgot to look @ the clock) 2:43 (9:43 pace)
.50 Interval #2 1/2 3:57 (7:54 pace)
4.29-5.6 Cooldown 1 mile--9:22, .31--2:50 (9:09 pace)

Sooo that was confusing to type, so good luck if you're actually trying to understand it.

I think this training run gives me some valuable information to consider when I'm trying to figure out my December 1/2 marathon training plan. If a training session sounds TOO HARD, I will psych myself out of doing it. It should be just challenging enough to get me to fight to conquer it, not cower in the corner and quit. Also, 4 x 1600 speed repeats? Nada. I'm not even sure how this sort of a training run would be relevant for my race. I think 1600 m repeats are good, but 4 is a bit daunting. I think it would've been better if I set out to do 2 x 1600 and 2 x 800. Maybe thrown in some 400 for variety.

I'm also slightly concerned because my mileage had been increasing by about 10% each week, but since I've missed/cut short almost one run a week since the WWR, I'm currently running just shy of 30 miles/week. This week has 38 (now only 35.6 b/c of Quitter McGee). Should I adjust my mileage on some easy runs in the next two weeks so I'm not increasing by that much? If I get hurt in the final two weeks I'm going to be maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. :p

Mock half marathon on Saturday! Super pumped, as I've never ran farther than 12 miles as a training run, and I'm going to run the race route (a race I've ran 4 other times, so I'm fairly familiar with). I might even make Taylor come out to do some mock-cheering practice.

Oh ya, go here http://chicrunner.com/ to get info. on how to win a sweet iFitness belt. Also, if I don't win, this would be an excellent gift for Xmas/Birthday for me. (is anyone else noticing how this blog is becoming a gift wishlist for me? hmmm... :p)