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.

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!

Brookings Marathon Training

According to Einstein, the definition of insanity is performing the same act and expecting different results.

FYI:  I had this poster on my wall through high school and most of college.  I kind of love it.

In regards to the marathon, I have now completed 4 marathons with roughly the same results.  All 4 attempts have had similar training programs.  Short, 10-14 weeks, because I have serious training A.D.D. and my body has a tendency to break down and most of them have been constructed from the Runners World training programs.  I dabbled with the Pfitz program for Philadelphia, but only the last 5 weeks of it.

For the Brookings Marathon, I'm throwing myself in to it headfirst.  18 weeks of training seems like a long g.d. time to train for one event that'll last less than 240 minutes.  However, I know that my main weakness, other than my ability to stay healthy, is my endurance, so I can use all the concentrated help I can get.

The Pfitz training program breaks the training up in to 4 mesocycles leading up to race day.  Endurance building is a huge focus of the training,  and a majority of the workouts are based on heart rate.  I'll also be putting in a good chunk of miles.  Usually more miles = more broken Jeri, but I'm hoping I've got that under control.  Miles make champions, I think the famous Angry Runner once said.  And while I'll never be a champion at 26.2 i wouldn't mind feeling like one with a monster PR.  I just tallied up the planned miles from today to May 12th, and I have 801.2 miles on deck.  Uff da.  It's go time!

18 weeks starts TODAY!

Advanced Marathoning + It Only Hurts When I Breathe

I've been running for...awhile now, but I still consider myself a newbie runner, especially when it comes to 26.2.  There is just so much about the marathon that I don't yet understand, and that's probably why I keep coming back for more.  I'm that kid who would work on a story problem without coming up for air until it was solved, all nice and tidy like.

Luckily for me, I also like to read, so there is no shortage of information out there for me to learn by.  I'm also blessed to have some fasty fast friends who are much smarter when it comes to training for the 26.2 (and really just in training in general).

At the start of the year, I had skimmed through Pete Pfitzinger's Advanced Marathoning as an option for Fargo training.  I was intrigued but mostly scared, and moved along to some other marathon books.  A few weekends ago, I was riding a running high, and since I couldn't go on another run (yes, I was literally having one of those days, hate me if you wish) I decided to tuck in to my book.  Danielle had sent it to me when I was originally toying with the idea of a fall marathon.  Uh hi... that marathon is like in 8 weeks.  Shhhhhhhh don't tell my brain that.

Anywhosits, I felt like I was back in school all over again, which is great, since uh... I am! ..... taking notes, marking up the book!  (Sidenote:  I had such a hard time highlighting things in textbooks when I first started college.  "A marked up book is a sad book," my grandma used to tell me.)

I found some interesting gems that I thought I'd share.  Since everyone and their dog has probably read the book, you can probably skim over this, but it doesn't hurt to re-read and re-learn info.  :)

I love all the information about heart rate zones.  After Fargo, I got a heart rate monitor (from the insanely nice Tara, thanks again!) and have been paying attention to the zones I should be in based on the types of runs I was completing.  It was interesting to realize that without paying much attention to the HRM, I tended to be right in the middle of my range for my easy runs and long runs.  I also learned at the end of an interval workout that my puke threshold matches up pretty darn closely with my max heart rate.  Good to know!

One thing I am confused/intrigued by is the long run pace.  Pfitz states that your long runs should be 10-20% slower than your goal marathon pace.  Based on a marathon goal pace of 9ish, I should be running a pace of 9:50-10:40 on my long runs.  He also says that your heart rate should be 74-84% of max.  While my heart rate is within the appropriate range, my pace doesn't fall within that range.  Does that mean I get to be a faster marathon runner?!?!?  Ok then... done.

Another note in regards to heart rate is your range for the actual marathon.  While Pfitz says 79-88% of your max heart rate, I'm guessing this is skewed towards someone who is faster than I am.  What would be a better goal/range/estimate for someone in the 3:45-4 hour range?

Overall I don't feel there was a whole lot of new information (other than HR, since I know very little about that) but was nice to reaffirm some information I learned the hard way, such as don't run your long runs at marathon goal pace!  I did this, and struggled in my first marathon after the 3 hour point because that's as long as I spent on my feet during my longest long runs.  Also, reaffirmed the statement, "you have to run slow to run fast."  Which I always thought was a bunch of hoopla.  :P

You can make a lot of mistakes in training for a half marathon and shorter distances, and still do great.  The marathon seems to be a very precocious beast that I have yet to master... maybe some of this info will help!

Any other great running/racing/marathoning books that I should read?
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This weekend I was convinced I was dying.  I went for an easy paced run Friday after work, and I thought my lungs were going to explode.  It felt like I was gasping for air and that my lungs were the size of an unblown up balloon.  Luckily after the first 25-30 minutes it let up and I was able to continue without dying.  But I still didn't feel great.

Saturday I woke up and struggled to breathe and was convinced I was sick with some sort of allergies.  I rested and missed out on seeing KK in a penguin suit at a wedding, :(  but I was determined to be healthy and ready to take on my 8-10 mile run on Sunday with 6 at tempo.  Within the first couple of miles I knew something was up.  I was doing my warm up (roughly the 9:50s) and my heart rate was hovering around 175.  To give you an idea of where my heart rate should be, I usually try to keep it below 155 for easy runs/long runs.  During my 5k RACE two weekends ago, it maxed at 177.  Uh...yeah.  That's not normal.

I decided to head for home and struggled to keep from having my heart explode (or so it felt).  I was getting light-headed and nauseous from not taking in enough oxygen.  I took a few walk breaks and brought my pace down suuuuuuuper low.

When I woke up this morning, I finally noticed a pain in between my shoulder blades.  My breathing was still messed up, so I decided to suck it up and head to the chiro.  Nothing against chiros, but my health insurance suckkkkkks so a 10 minute session is $90.  Uff.  Turns out breathing is worth $90, especially when you have a goal race in 13 days.  She checked my alignment and immediately noticed that one hip is higher than the other.  Oh hai hip/piriformis/IT band/runner's knee issues!  Next she set to putting my back in to alignment.  She flipped me over and started pressing on my ribs, and it felt like she was poking me with a burning nail.  Apparently that means your ribs are out of place.  Three ribs later and I could breathe.  EEEEEEEEE! 

As soon as I got home I threw on my running clothes and headed out for a 6 mile run.  I was even able to do some 4x100 m pick ups at the end of the run.  I did 6 miles in 55:52 for a 9:19 pace.  4x100 m. 6:59, 7:03, 6:58, 6:55.  I randomly met up with another chica who was running my pace and had company for a mile.  She's running the Sioux Falls HM too and is looking to break 2 hours.  So fun!

And a random funny quip, I bought Kyle a sweet Alabama shirt when I was down south, and without realizing it, I bought myself the inverse of it.  When I realized my mistake, naturally I told him the shirts would be our "christmas card picture outfits!"  JK I don't do Xmas cards, but now I want to start.  After not seeing Kyle all weekend, he showed up at my apartment to take me out on a date, and **you've guessed it** TWINSIES!!!  I was the stubborn one, and made him change into a shirt that was in the back of his truck, man I'm bossy.  (he would agree).