Brookings Half Training Week 10

Week of April 24-30

Monday Planned: Lactate Threshold 9 miles with 38 at LT
Monday Actual: A super warm and thigh chafing success of a run! Because I had the worst long run (or run in general, for that matter) the day before, I was worried all day long that my legs would be dead again for this run and I'd have to call it early. From the first few strides, I knew that wouldn't be the case. We did 3 miles warm up around 4.25 miles of lactate threshold and then a miserable crawl (or so it felt) of a cool down for the remainder of 1.75 miles in which I had run out of water and my skin had chafed within an inch of my life. YAY RUNNING!

Tuesday Planned: Sanford POWER
Tuesday Actual: 60 minutes of Sanford POWER. Felt so good after taking a week off. I missed it. Reminder to self: don't miss POWER!

Wednesday Planned: Endurance 10 Miles
Wednesday Actual: Endurance 8 miles. We got a slightly late start which is problematic when I have to be back at the store to teach at 7pm. Coupled with a late lunch that sat in my chest the whole run, I thought I was one inhale/exhale away from seeing it a second time. While I felt like crap, my legs felt awesome and springy, and we managed a sub 10:30 pace for the run despite feeling like I was dying. Weird.

Thursday Planned: 3 miles recovery
Thursday Actual: Rest. Kyle was heading out of town for a fishing tournament, so I went home to hang out with him for a bit and took a rest day with lots of foam rolling + sticking + myofascial release balls.

Friday Planned: Long Run Progression 12 miles, increase pace last 2 miles at LT
Friday Actual: An AWESOME 12 mile long run with 2 miles at half marathon goal pace. The miles flewwwwww by and felt awesome, and we were able to talk the whole time (and even sing in some parts). Oops. My legs felt great, and I felt like I was holding back the whole run. Great set up heading in to the half. Our overall pace was just 8 sec/mile slower than my half in January. #progress

Saturday Planned: Rest
Saturday Actual: Rest!

Sunday Planned: 3 miles recovery
Sunday Actual: Rest. It was a torrential downpour all of the minutes I wasn't at work. It was not worth it to run for some recovery miles. Woof.

Total Mileage Planned: 38 miles

Total Mileage Actual:  29.1 miles

Training Book Review: Faster Road Racing

This fall I was debating my upcoming running plans and knew I needed a challenge. Typically a challenge translates to marathon training for me, but when I stumbled on Faster Road Racing: 5K to Half Marathon I thought maybe I had found my challenge. I added it to my Christmas list from my in-laws, and on Christmas day I received the book, registration fee to my spring goal half, a new pair of running shoes, and resistance bands. IT'S A VERY MERRY RUNNER CHRISTMAS OVER HERE!! Thanks lovely inlaws.

I was excited to dive in. I had done variations of the Pfitz full training plan in the past (Danielle gifted it to me when we were working hard at our marathons, thanks Danielle <3). I ran my half marathon PR (still to this day) in the midst of full marathon training, and I also got injured doing this plan while training for the Bemidji Marathon.

There are some repetitive sections from this book to Advanced Marathoning, but it is such an essential book to have for road racers! I took my time reading through it while working through the eight week base building program. Many of my injuries in the past have come from adding speedwork when I don't have a strong enough base, or while I'm still adding mileage. I think I've now learned that's a recipe for disaster. I somehow got through the 8 weeks without thinking about having another 12 weeks on tap for my actual training which now makes it seem like I'm training for FIVE MONTHS for 13.1 miles, but whatever. If I can train for, and run the race healthy, it'll be worth it!

The book goes into detail about elements of training, recovery, strength training/plyos/yoga!, diet, masters runner info (which I earmarked for 7 years from now), and tapering.

The training section of the book has a breakdown of the schedules, several base building plans, training programs for 5k, 8k/10k, 15k/10 mile, half, and multiple race distances. These training programs start around 30 miles per week and some peak at 90-100 miles per week. Woof. Pfitz's training cycles are unique because he breaks down his training into mini cycles that have different focuses to improve your fitness. I like this because it keeps things fresh from week to week.

All of the training go off of heart rate training, which might not be for everybody but it should! I firmly believe in heart rate training.

I'm excited to see what I can do this spring with some lots of Pfitz miles under my belt!

My Week in Running + Turkey Chase

Today wraps up week two of training for the Madison Marathon following the Pfitz training program.  Week one went well, and after a nap this afternoon, I'll go ahead and say that week two went well also.  Due to some extreme heat and my class schedule, I ended up doing a Tuesday-Monday week for both of these weeks (and looking at the schedule for this coming week, and not planning on running at ALL while I'm in Vegas through Wednesday, I may be doing it again).  So since my week is all wonky, I managed to run one of my highest mileage weeks ever at 42 miles.  Dang.  Although I'm only considering it 36, since Mondays run was still last week.

Speaking of Monday's run, I've started (out of necessity) to be a morning runner again.  After the first week of it sucking, majorly, I'm actually ok with it now.  Kyle and I went out on the porch last night to look at the sunset because it was gorg, and I joked that it was the first time all week I was awake while the sun was setting.  Life of the party, over here!  But I am trying to do EVERYTHING in my power to ensure that I stay injury free, and quality rest is up there on the list.  So if I'm waking up at 4:30 or 5 am, you best believe that I'm going to bed at 9pm.

Ok, so back to Monday's run.  I had a recovery run on the schedule, so I planned to run some out and back paths near my apartment because it's fairly flat near my place (just HILLS every direction that's 1/2 mile or farther away...neat).  So I started running out towards the outskirts of town.  This road that I run recovery runs on turns in to gravel after a mile or so, and is surrounded by corn fields, if that gives you an idea of how "out of town" this outskirts of town is.  As I was running I see a large black figure near the side of the road.  I assume it's a dog and keep running.  As i get closer, I realize it's a LARGE wild turkey.  It's probably up to my waist in height, and it's legs come up to my knees.  I've seen this turkey before in this same vicinity, but it's usually quite a distance away from the road.

But not Monday morning.

As I run by, I tell the turkey, "good morning turkey!" as I typically do to wild animals, to let them know that I'm friend and not foe, and continued on my run.  After a few moments I start to hear a "tick tick tick" sound.  I wasn't listening to music, so I start to look at my surroundings, and after glancing over my shoulder, THE TURKEY IS FOLLOWING ME.  I've been chased by birds many times on runs.  Our bike trails are FULL of geese.  Usually they'll run a few steps at you, hissing, and then you run by them and they're over it.  I assumed the same would happen with the turkey.

Nope.

I continued at my recovery pace, because I refused to run too fast on my recovery run because of a g.d. turkey, but I continued to glance casually over my shoulder to see if it was gaining on me, or if it looked like it was going to attack me.  It honestly looked like it just wanted to come along for my run!  (Sidenote:  after telling this to Kyle and my co-worker who hunt wild turkey, they assured me he was NOT casually joining me on my run.  Apparently they're super aggressive birds, and have a fierce bite. I'm glad I didn't have this information while running, or I would've freaked out.)  I started to get nervous after it was following me even longer, but I had to remind myself that I have meaty endurance runner legs, and this bird had skinny little toothpick legs.  CLEARLY I should be able to outrun it (unless it decided to just catapult itself at my head, because that would drop me like a sack of potatoes, easily).  After 1/3 of a mile, I no longer heard the ticking and realized that I had outrun the bird.  I continued on my run, and crossed the road when I got back near that area (I feel like there should be a "why'd the runner cross the road?" joke here, but I can't come up with one.  Leave me a comment if you have something clever) the bird was still there, but didn't pay attention to me.

So I survived the great turkey chase of 2013.

Saturday I walked out of my apartment to go grab a latte from Panera, and what should be outside of our apartment building.  THE FREAKIN' TURKEY.  IT'S STALKING ME.

Start packing, Kyle.  It's time to move.

Marathon Training: Day 1

Rest.

Nailing it.

Today marks day 1 of the Pfitz 18/55 training program.  And it's a rest day, whoop!  Currently rocking a PR in resting.  NBD.

I think today is the 3rd? time I've started the Pfitz program, and have failed to execute it once.  But that isn't an ominous statement, no worries.

Last week marked the last FIRST day of class of my masters, whoop!  Monday and Wednesday nights I'll be sitting in class from 6-10:15pm (whoof!) for the rest of this month, hence why I finagled my schedule to have rest days on Monday/Wednesday.  BUT because it's absolutely disgusting out, I'm making myself become a morning runner once again!  I needed to make the switch two weeks ago, but I have to have a schedule.  It's too hard for me to get up at 5 for days that I run, and then sleep in until 7 on rest days; all or nothing, party of 1!

Well the good/bad news is that I have so much freakin' reading to do for my class (see this pile, then add five more YA novels that have yet to be assigned, and then imagine my panicky face) that I can easily get up at 5am on non-running days to do more schoolwork.  So day #1 of that is in the bag too!  I guess I'll get back to you after tomorrow morning's tempo run.  Eeks.

1 day down 125 to go.  ;)

P.S.  Thank God today was a rest day, because it's currently a heat index of 97, and the air is so thick with humidity that I lost my breath walking up the parking ramp stairs and my HR got waaaaaaay above my happy recovery rate, fo sho.  Heat acclimation?  Hasn't occurred yet.

Training Recap

I've done some thinking over the last year about this blog, and whether I wanted to continue with it once grad school was over.  For the last year, school has been so crazy that my running/training has been abysmal at best, and when you have a running blog with lackluster running, um... what's the point?

Right now I'm in the midst of a five week break from school.  Five.  Glorious.  Weeks.  Granted I'm still working full time, but other than that 40 hours a week, I have 128 hours that *I* get to decide what I do with.  I have approximately 15 books sitting on the end table in my living room, so that should give you some idea of what my plans are.  But I've also been RUNNING.

**Cue the confetti and celebratory high fives**

Spring in the midwest (albeit wildly unpredictable) is the BEST time to run.  Granted, we only get three weeks of spring, and fall for that matter, but it is a glorious three weeks.  It snowed on May 1st, so I'm hoping that we might get a smidge more good weather in early June before hot as hades hits.  I am incredibly slow right now.  Yes, running is all relative.  My slow could be your race pace (it's probably not), but it's slow for me, and I feel slow, and I don't like to be slow.  But it is what it is.

Before my long run last Saturday, I procrastinated by going through my training log from the last year.  The fact that I was able to go through it in a short amount of time should give you an idea of how little I've trained over the last year.  My last solid training effort was in March 2012.  I ran a semi decent race in Brookings in May 2012, and since then I've basically been setting PWs, or not racing.  Which is fine, you get out of running what you put in to it.  I don't deserve fast times.

However, my highest level of frustration with running has been over the last year.  I would get in to a groove of a couple of weeks of successful running.  Moderate amount of weekly mileage.  A long run for good measure, and I would end up hurt.  Repeat, 20,000 times (or so it feels).  I've never felt like quitting running more than I have over the last year.

This spring I picked up Chi Marathon.  I've implemented some of the running form suggestions, and it's making a world of difference **knocks on wood**.  If you're reading this, please also knock on wood for me, mmmk?  I've known for years that there is something wrong with my running form, because I always end up injured either after a hard race effort, or a higher mileage training cycle.  THIS IS NOT NORMAL.  I had pinpointed either heel striking or muscle weakness as the culprit (or both).  After looking at some of the "good" and "bad" running form pictures, it was pretty clear which category I fell into.  Hint:  bad.

When I run, and settle in to auto-pilot mode, I sit back on my heels and bop along.  This leads to over-striding, and when you're overs-triding, it's impossible to NOT heel strike.  Seriously.  Try it.  Not only was I heel striking, but I was also doing so with a completely straight leg.  Looking at race pictures makes me cringe.  When landing with that much force, you're essentially putting the brakes on, with every stride, not to mention forcing your joints (knees, hips) to take the shock of each step, via your IT band.  Seeing a pattern here?  Me too.

Examples?  Sure:

The trick that has helped me the most is the forward lean.  Immediately it shortens your stride, and helps to land your foot underneath you instead of way out in front of you.  I have to concentrate the ENTIRE RUN to make sure I'm leaning, landing with my knees slightly bent, foot directly underneath me.  Hopefully with time, it'll become second nature, because I miss my autopilot runs.

My pace is super slow because a) I'm out of shape and b) I'm using muscles that have never been used (or just rarely) before!  My calves are incredibly tight after each run.  Whenever people would complain about tight calves, I kind of always thought they were crazy.  :/  I did a speed workout this week, and my hammies were sore the whole next day.  Hammies are used for running??  Who knew??  And a muscle higher up in my quad is getting definition like I've never seen before.  So there's that too, I guess.

I'm slowly building up my mileage right now, doing the HR training thang, in hopes that I'm somewhere back to normal-ish paces by the time marathon training starts ~2 months.  I have a couple of 10ks, and possibly a 5k thrown in there as well to keep me motivated, and then I'm going to attempt Pfitz 18/55 yet again in mid-July.

So stick with me, I guess.  This may just turn in to a fully functioning running blog yet again!