Oct 14-28 : 10,000 Pageviews! Hiking; Spinx Volunteering; Last bit of Philly Training!

Big recap; lots to catch up on.

Before I begin, though, here's a rave for post-long run re-fueling.  Stuff tastes sooo good after long runs.  Sometimes, I get into moods where even though I think my body may be ready for refueling, nothing seems particularly appetizing.  After very long runs, everything seems delightful, and it's like a kid going to Disneyland, deciding what ride to try first.  I did my final 20 miler today, and I finished stronger than I normally do, I think, but I was feeling kinda run down afterwards as I refueled a bit with a pear and 1/2 a protein shake and drove home.  On my way home, though, I remembered that I had pickles, and the anticipation of getting home, having a hot shower, and eating pickles gave me a big buzz.  After my shower and the pickle, I had smoked salmon and garlic on tortilla chips and lentil and onion soup.  Oh man, soooo good.

Ok, going back...

Oct 14th, Sunday:

The day after the iRecycle Half marathon PR.  Still feeling really strong.  Did 9.0 in 1:16:28, 8:30 ave, in the park in 67 degree cloudy weather.  Legs were still feeling like they were recovering, but it felt good.  Just cranked it out, without needing any fuel or water (was a big hungry at mile 2, but could manage fine without fuel).

Oct 15, Monday:
Upper arms are sore, from the race, maybe, but that's good conditioning for the marathon.  I had started on the treadmill and ran 2 minutes, but I was feeling just a bit too bangy, so I biked instead.  I did 45:30, and I would've gone on longer, but the gym closed.  Legs are a bit sore from the past 2 days, but still solid. 

Oct 16, Tuesday:
60 min strength session.

Oct 18, Thursday:
6 on the treadmill in 48:48, 8:08 ave.  It was cardiovascularly tough!!!  Is it because I'm kinda tired?

Oct 19, Friday:
7.5 in 1:03:00.  So tired during the drive to the park and during the run that I was afraid I'd fall asleep while driving or running.  Ok once I got going, though.  The first lap, I was clumsy and stumbled a few times - seems to happen when I'm tired and not paying attention to footing.  Company coming later that night.

Oct 20, Saturday:
Minor hiking (1.4 mi) with family friends on the Blue Ridge Parkway, at the Craggy Pinnacle trail.  One of the friends has a really cute dog who's obsessed with food and spins around to get your attention so that you'll give her food, whenver she sees you eating or opening a package or the fridge.  We carried the dog along the trail in a little basket house.  We also went on walks with the dog.

(Cooked carrot)

(Looking up to the summit of Craggy Pinnacle)

View from the summit (~6K feet of elevation)

View from the summit (~6K feet of elevation)

(LION KIIING!!!  - for all you The Office or Modern Family fans.  Lion King used to be my favorite movie as a kid)

We also went on walks around the city.

(Mice on Main - it was really hard to get Stella interested in the brass mouse - we had to put food on the mouse to get this picture)

 

(Had to dangle turkey jerky for this picture)



Oct 21, Sunday:

Had to do a midnight run because the gym's 1 treadmill was occupied.  Bother.  Fartlek, as usual, for this course.  Wore a light jacket, since it was chilly at 54 degrees.  Got a bit warm later, but I just unzipped halfway down and tolerated it.  4.4 in 32:35, 7:24 ave.

 

Week's recap:

Man, this week, night calls for work mess up my schedule (very tired) and make runs hard to get in.  Just gotta get it done, though.  Home stretch.

 

Oct 22, Monday:

Did a mini marathon-simulator hill workout on the treadmill.  1 mile warmup in 8:22 at 1 degree, then [1.5mi @ 3 degrees (actual will be 1.3 mi of 2.5 degrees); 0.25 mi @ 1 degree recovery; 0.5 mi @ 7 degrees (actual will be 0.3mi); 0.25 @ 1 degree recovery; 1.1 mi @ 3 degrees] @ 7.5mph.  Had to cut that last rep short because the gym closed on me.... bother.

 

Oct 23, Tuesday:

6.4 mi in 52:53, 8:16.  Left knee's been acting up a bit for over a week now.  Landing under my body and not overstriding seems to help.  I think I compensate for it, which isn't good. 

 

Oct 25, Thursday:

60 min strength session.  Performance was very much lacking.  I don't know why I was so sapped today.  I lost strength!  Was it because of lunches I had to skip during the past 2 days b/c work was so busy I had not time even to eat while working?  Was it because of recent races?  The knee thing?  Don't think it was sleep... that's kind of as poor as usual.

 

Oct 27, Friday:

Carefully executed the 5 mi, with 3 @ 8:20 pace that the schedule called for.  My knee is still kind of wacky, and it started at mile 1.5.  Good form still helps, but it's still scary.

 

Oct 28, Saturday:

Because I had my last 20 scheduled for this weekend, and because I wouldn't be able to run in a race without trying to be competitve, I decided it would be a good opportunity to volunteer.  I've never volunteered in a race before, but it's been something I've always wanted to do.  For a long time, I thought that it would be very difficult to volunteer because the whole time, I'd be really wishing that I was running too, but I had good reasons not to this time.  It was good, anyway, because I was in no mood to race that day.  Still feeling a bit banged up; don't know if it's a result of compensations for my left knee.

 

I got to try lots of different race activities, actually, so it was a really well-rounded experience.  I got there at 6:20.  I was actually so excited about getting to volunteer that the night before, I breifly considered camping out at the parking lot, so that I could be there early and soak more of it in.  Anyway, they were going to start me off with starting line activities, since that was what I signed up for.  I like pre-race excitement, with everyone walking around in their gear and getting ramped up. 

 

There was some time before the race starts, so I helped to loop medals around their medal keeper, for easy access later on during distribution.

My job was to check that peoples' bibs were in the front, and if it was on shorts, that it was on the right leg and not the left leg.  Don't know why that's the case.  Don't understand the technology enough.  The readers looked like they were positioned flat overhead... maybe it's the placement of the chip or something on the bib.  Dunno.  I saw off the marathoners at 7:30, the halfers at 8:00, the kids' run (helping to make sure that the kids did a u-turn at the traffic light instead of running loose into the city) at 8:15, then the 5K at 8:30.  

 

(Marathon)

(Half Marathon)

(Kids' Run - the little kids running around in costume were ADORABLE)

(5K)

After that, I helped to hand out bracelets for the 5K finishers.  Before the halfers started coming in, though, I volunteered to help marshall at the last turn, where they had run out of cones and needed people to help point the way. That ended up being my favorite part.  One of my pet peeves during races is marshalls who don't point the way.  They just stand there, and you have no idea where to go, and you have to actually stop or at least slow down to ask them.  Ideally, they point it out even while you're kinda far away, because you want to be able to run tangents, and finding out if you should go left or right when you're 10 feet from the turn is waaay too late.  So, I waved my hands wildly for about 2 hours (fortunately, without back strain), and even recruited my red-socks legs just to make it more interesting.  It was fun to see in the back of the pack of the 5Kers, most of the halfers, and the front of the pack of the marathoners.  I wonder how far my arms ran, if you had put a gps or pedometer on my arms...

As I was leaving, I saw runners who had gotten caught behind a train... ouch.

Oct 28, Sunday:

Time for the last 20!!!  I really wasn't sure if I'd be able to run at all the night before and the day of, with how my left knee was whenever I tried to extend my lower leg.  But, somehow, praise God, I was able to run.  On long runs, you run slowly, and your legs stay more under you instead of over-striding, so it worked out.  I had 1 strawberry Clif Blok at mile 5, another at mile 10, and a Powerbar vanilla gel at mile 15.  I had water + lemon juice + salt at miles 2, 10, 15, and 18ish.  It rained for a couple of miles... way outer bands of Hurrican Sandy, I think.  It was also much windier than normal at times... not too bad, though.  It did get chilly during the rainy/windy part, but the sports bra was good the rest of the time.  So happy just to finish.  I also felt stronger at the end than I normally do.  Main bulk of training, DONE AND DONE.  Thank, you, God.

20.7 in 3:10:45, 9:12 ave.

And that brings us back to the pickles and good food.  The end.

In other exciting news, the stats tracker on Blogger showed exactly 1,000 [10/30/12 update - haha... read it wrong... it's actually 10,000 pageviews. I think it must be counting web crawlers, then] pageviews since whenever they started tracking.  Dunno what counts as a pageview.  Thanks for reading, everyone!  (all 5 of you, haha)

Reflections on Spinx 2010

The event isn't over yet. Physically, I need to take as much care in recovering properly as I had to do in preparing for the race. Mentally, it's time to collect some more goodies from the race, this time in the form of lessons learned.

RECOVERY:
Post-race, I did a little shopping with my mom, which encouraged light walking. I was largely okay... some inflexibiliy, and I think my ankles were a bit tired, but better than I was doing after the CM Half. Perhaps the reason is that I didn't do a cool-down jog after the CM and ended up standing on a wee, narrow ledge for a long time looking for my friends to finish. Being fitter probably also helps, since I was very able to do a strong cool-down jog.

Once home, lots of stretching and rolling.

Ate a turkey sandwich, orange, half a banana post-race. Mixed greens when I got home, plus bread and PB. For dinner, some pork and tofu and sprouts with brown rice. Was hungry at night at a Halloween party where I got to just chill, and had Doritos (an all-natural brand) and salsa.

The next morning, I was more sore... DOMS setting in. I'm of the school that believes that DOMS is caused by the recovery process itself... perhaps the breaking down of the old broken stuff step. Anyway, so I made a milk / whey powder / oatmeal concoction, since protein is best absorbed with some carbs. Then, I chased with my usual fish oil (good for reducing inflammation and good for heart health and brain health and all sorts of things), glucosamine and chondroitin, and half a multivitamin - I do the multi when I have a meal sans veg or fruit.

MENTAL NOTES FOR NEXT TIME:
I had talked about perhaps joining the 3:30 pace group (a 1:45) in my Spinx Half Hype 2, but I had forgotten that the full started 40 minutes before the half, so out of the qustion. However, judging by how I operated during the race, maybe it's better if I don't? Or maybe just keep my eye on them but don't stick right up on them? Because there were people my pace-ish who I kind of fell into a grove with at about mile 2, when I was speeding (although perhaps not really speeding, considering that the pace held pretty well and that that was a downhil). They started pulling away two miles later, and I figured that it was because I was fading and that I was not fit to hang with that pace crowd anyways, so I didn't mind and accepted it as an inevitability. So I just ran my own race and was able to keep eye contact. But at about mile 6, I saw that I was reeling them in. I was glad that I had not expended energy in chasing. Steady effort is the key to PBs. So if I were to join a pace group, if they power up hills when I believe it's better to hold the effort constant, I think I'll let them go. If I happen to be feeling bad, I can take it easy for a bit and let my body get back into its groove. If I'm feeling great and am ready to zoom past... well, perhaps I shouldn't do that, since I have no idea what's in store beyond mile 20 and should conserve whatever I have until then.

My fueling seemed pretty good. I'll probably aim for something every 5-6 miles in the full. And I'll again go Gatorade or water depending on how I feel. Worked at the CM Half and worked at Spinx. Sometimes, you don't want more sweet. You want pure liquid water.

Don't know about using the Kinvaras for the full... it works your ankles and arches more. Maybe if I built up ankle and arch strength, I could. It certainly makes you fast because it's so light. We'll see. I guess I'll try to use them every once and a while in my runs (probably speedwork) to build up my arches and ankles so that I can potentially have the opton of using them.

The Garmin wasn't very useful this time... dead lots of weight. The mileage was a mile off, which makes the "ave pace" indicator by which I determine what overall time I can reach meaningless. Maybe too many turns in this couse. Houston's has many more straights, so it may work better there. And I ended up going by feel during this race so much, and it worked well. By feel and by simply looking at my mile splits. Dunno. I guess I'm familiar with 5k (and perhaps half) effort and can go by feel. Although until yesterday, I had noooooo idea I could do a half so fast... it was holding something only a little slower than 5k pace for 13.1!!! And again, I won't even have run 26.2 before, let alone raced it. TBD.

RACE REPORT: Spinx Half Marathon

WOOOW!!!

Way beyond my expectations... 1:36:01!!!

Temps were ideal (maybe a wee bit cooler would've been super ideal, but this was great), from 41 to 53 during the race. It wasn't too crowded. The hills slow you down, naturally, but that just means that I am capable of even more. The music helped a lot, to keep my mind off of the effort, although it did cause me to not concentrate as much on always taking perfect tangents, but that might've happened anyway due to tiredness. Roads were pretty cambered at times, but you deal with it. The Kinvaras were great -super-light and a sure factor in my speed, although at one point, I could tell that it was perhaps a little too flexible, making my arches have to work harder to stay rigid to push off. I also imagined that I could feel the lugs of the shoes at times, but maybe it was in my mind. My right knee got a little out of wack a couple of times, but nothing as bad as the last half, where I had to limp along slowly for a bit. I took a coffee-flavored Hammer gel at mile 4.5, which was good for the caffine boost and sugar, and it was good to have water at mile 5 to wash it down. I held pace for the first half compared to others around me and was doing some passing in the second half. I thought I had gone out way to fast, which was easy to do considering the goal times I was pursuing (~1:42), but it was okay. Haven't analyzed the splits yet and probably can't do it very well, because the first half was mostly downhill, and the second half was mostly uphill. Very happy with how things went, though. I only got tired in the last mile and maybe didn't push as hard as I could've. I think shaving off another minute would've been possible, but this went better than my wildest expectations. My mom came to watch, and I had given her a minimum time of 1:38, but I was just being overly optimistic, with a reasonable yet still optimistic estimate of 1:42 as the expected expected, and a 1:45 as the upper end, with an acknowledgement that something like 1:48 would also be possible. But man, 1:36. Phew. That's a 7:20 average pace!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wrote out notes on my number, but I ended up not looking at them and didn't really need them, since I had basically memorized the map, with its elevation changes, the mile markers, water stops, roads, and everything.

Splits> 7:05 (see what I mean by too fast of a start?... I was used to racing 5Ks, since I've done 7 of them in the past 8ish months, so I kind of headed out with that effort), 7:17, 7:14, 7:04, 7:30, 7:40, 7:31, 7:22, 7:29, 7:33, 7:18, 7:18, 9:18 for 1.1.

My quads were cramping up a wee bit post-race, but a fairly strong cool-down run of ~1 mi helped. Now stretching. Good post-race food selection : turkey sandwiches on whole wheat :), oranges, bananas, grapes, pineapple, pumpkin bread (did not partake)... all good stuff.

2/72 for the 20-24 age group for women.

13/713 for the women.

69/1304 overall.

Oct 27, plus Spinx Half Hype 2

FIT:
Last pre-race run! 2 rest days ahead. Need some serious recovery b/c I had a high volume week/weekend last week. It's tough to balance the need to continue training for a big goal while wanting to taper for purposes of a medium goal, when tapering maybe wouldn't hurt the big goal that much. Dunno.

My legs felt heavy today. Boo. Volume catching up with me. But at least not injured. I had rolled my right ankle a bit shooting hoops w/ little kids, but it seems okay, since I've rolled that guy so many times now. The shoes hadn't been tight enough and are kind of top-heavy b/c of the raised and unstable heel - it was the Paramount.

Last 5 days: 7.7 / 7.0 / 4.0 intervals / 45 min bike / 60 min strength. And now, 3.2. Very heavy. 2 rest days coming, though.

For my taper leading up to the Coutry Music Half, it was 8.8 + 15 min ulty / 60 min srength / rest / 2.8 / rest / 3.8 / rest / race. That's more like a taper. Aaah.

I should be okay, though. My right TA is a little sore. I may ice after I roll for a bit. The 3.2 was a progression run. Started a bit slower than normal (6.8mph), but ramped it up a lot along the way. Felt better to go faster. Run seemed to drag on for longer than normal, and I wanted to get it over with. Had just woken up from a nap. Not ideal sleep this week/past couple weeks. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow would be the big sleep night... the night before the night before. Mom is visiting. Maybe watch Scared Shrekless then sleep long.

So 3.2 in 25:34, 7:59 ave. Oh, not that fast. Surprised. Okay. I wasn't pushing it, so it's okay. Wanted to keep it sane, to not do pre-race damage. Man, TAs gettin a little sore. Massage and ice are in order.

Splits> 8:41, 8:03, 7:30, (24:57), 1:18 for 0.2.

Listened to a podcast that is really good for race week. It was on mental strategies during the race and also the importance of recovery. What I've been doing with icing and rolling and fueling is good.

Race-day, some strategies I'll employ:
- Landmarks up ahead pulling me.
- Telling myself that I'm strong and light.
It's all about perceived effort... Central Governor Theory all the way.

Other stuff from personal experience:
- Imaging during the last stages that I still have a long ways to go, which allows me to relax and loosen up, saving energy.

Dunno yet if I'll use music. The podcast talked about dissociating, but I tend to be big on associating during races... LRs, dissociation is fine, since I'm a big podcast fan. But I am so zoned into mechanics and how I'm feeling during the race. Since the shuffle is so light, maybe I can bring it anyways.

Right after the nap, I was feeling very very blah... like getting sick or in need of vitamin B, and very tired. Dunno. Work? Training volume? Taper? (no... I have not been tapering like I should)

Felt better after the run, although I need to get these TAs calmed down.

Spinx Half Hype

Not as big of a hype as the CM half, since this is more of a progress check race.

I might've done too much training in the week before the race... not quite a proper taper. However, I still intend to race hard. I have a shot at an age group award, I think. It's hard to tell how I'm doing. I'm probably fitter than I was for the CM half, but I'm sort of training through this race.

REASONS TO BE FASTER:
- Fitter
- Fewer people to weave around... although not too much of an issue at the CM.
- No wear and tear from travel and expo
- Smarter about racing?
- Lighter shoes

REASONS TO BE SLOWER:
- Training through
- Hillier
- Fewer aid stations

SAME:
- Good temps

Ah... I should do alright, then? Maybe my goal will be a 7:50 pace... for 13.1? Sounds crazy fast. With the hills like they are, I'll need to anticipate when I'll naturally be faster and slower, so that I can stay on track. Must go for negative splits, especially with the big hills in the later half.

HILLAGE:
0-2 flat
2-4 fast
4-5 flat
5-6 fast
6-8 flat
8-10 sloooow
10-11 flat
11-12 slow
12-13 flat

AID:
3
5
6.6
8.3
10.5
... although it says that I should only see 4 stations, so maybe one of these isn't real.

Goal pace: 7:50... means time 1:42:37. They go by gun time, so that needs to include getting over the line. Boooooooooooo. For award purposes.

3:20 and 3:30 pace groups (1:40 and 1:45) are available, although they're focused on the full. I wonder if they plan to hit the half at an even split. I could potentilly start with the 3:30 and kick away at the end with a 1:00/mi pace increase for 2-3 miles. Dunno how trustworthy the pacers are. Should be okay. Dunno.

Oh man.

8:40 start... 10:30 finish. Could be a little warmer then. Man, that's late.

With only 4 Gatorade ops, I may bring some fuel. Gels are the easiest to down. Any fuel requires water b/c otherwise, it's sickly sweet. Maybe the 5 or 6.6, whichever one is first/real.

Clothing: Kinvaras... yes. Then, Oxysox. 5-pocket shorts and Pton bra... same as the CM half. Shades. No visor for wind resistance purposes... ah... maybe the shorter-billed, light ViziPro one. Since I'll be in the sun. Okay, we'll say yes visor for now.

That day, right now, temps are 41-67. Boo the late start. I like cold. Maybe if I'm expending lots of energy, I'll need the sun to warm me just as it gets warmer. Maybe it'll work out for the best.

Ooh, excited now. Having talked through all of this, I feel ready. Now to just take cae of myself (I should be sleeping). I'll foam roll myself now... maybe ice... maybe a bit more massaging of the TAs. Yeah. Psyched.