Category: Training

Wobbly Wednesday

That was hard.

With having so many halves close together, I have big hopes for one of them. The marathon gave me a little (giant) kick in the ass. With that being said, I need to get said ass in gear and that means training. Training means speed work. So I busted out my Nike’s and waded into the shallow end tonight.

I headed to the lake path after work, I can’t even remember the last time I ran there. I know I am still feeling a little sluggish and with mountains of smoke in the air, I knew it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. I still have all my Hanson’s workouts saved in my watch so I figured I would just use the one for 400 repeats. I knew there was no way I was doing 12 of them like programmed but that’s what the lap button’s for right? I was hoping for between 4-8 repeats.

It was my first time wearing my Nike’s since May, I stopped doing speed work once my shins went to hell. I kept my warm up of 1.25 miles nice and easy, plenty of walking. 😛 Now, I haven’t raced a 5K since September 2015 so I have no idea what an accurate pace should be so I was optimistically aiming for an 8:45 average for the repeats.

#1- woah, this awkward, my legs are confused. How do you run this fast? How the hell long is 400m anyways? Oh good, the watch buzzed. Recovery time.

Full disclosure- I walked all the recoveries. My lungs were a little pissed I was making them work this hard with all the smoke in the air. My watch buzzed for my next run and wait what? It said cool down mile and repeated 12 times. WTH? So I stopped my watch and started a new run. From there on I ran by watching my watch and trying not to fall on my face at the same time.

#2- all right, feeling pretty good, maybe I can do 8

#3- Ok, this is getting harder, that last thought was a pipe dream. Can I quit now?

#4- Yeah, smoke sucks. Damn my legs are tired, how long is 400m again? This is my last one. Let’s not go crazy right?

All in all, 3.76 miles. And the intervals?

Distance	Elapsed Time	Average Pace
.25	2:04	8:23
.25	2:10	8:48
.25	2:01	8:01
.25	2:03	8:07

I think I am more surprised that I kept the last 3 intervals at .25. How did I do that? And the intervals are too fast which might explain why I was huffing and puffing so much. Also, I don’t get the variance in pace between interval 1 and 4. They are only 1 second different. Is my watch crazy?

It wasn’t a lot but it felt pretty good. Now hopefully I can move on Thursday. 😛

And the county is on fire, the air is full of smoke, the lake is almost dry and yet I rounded a curve to see more green than I have in months. What gives?

Is my watch crazy?

How is your weather?

Recovery Week/ Goodbye July

Is that what you call it?

This week was odd. It was the first week since February that I didn’t have the marathon looming in the back of my mind. It was partially relaxing and partially nerve inducing. You know that feeling when you feel like you are forgetting something? That’s kind of how I felt all week.

There are so many theories online about marathon recovery, it’s easy to get lost. Plus, I had no idea how I was going to be feeling post race- would I even want to run after that?

Monday- Rest I had a few vacation days, so I turned off all alarms and just slept in. It was kind of awesome. Even better was that I had actually unpacked, put everything away and done laundry Sunday evening after getting home from San Francisco. I must be crazy. While relaxing, I finished up Lost. Still not sure about it. My legs felt pretty good. The only time I felt sore was when I moved from a sitting to a standing position.

Tuesday- Rest Another vacation day. I actually thought about running. I didn’t do it but I thought about running. Pretty much all my soreness was gone. That’s not normal right? I kept waiting for other shoe to drop so to speak.

Wednesday- Rest Back to work, boo. I took my running gear to work with me but that’s as far as it got. I once again was easy prey to my family and numerous emoji’s of pizza being texted. 😛

Thursday- 3.1 miles I ran!!!! It was slow, like epic-ally slow, but I ran!!! I also walked a lot of that but whatever- I was moving forward! My calves were a little tight and my right hip was yelling at me. Not yelling at me in a painful way, more of “girl, you’ve lost your mind but I’ll try to get on board” way. I felt like I had a crazy grin on my face the whole run. I could have done with less smoke in the air but it was great to be out there. I made sure to foam roll well that night and slept in compression socks.

Friday- Rest Well, hell. I woke up with a charlie horse around 3am. Grrr. I rolled with the stick before going to work. But the day turned around with an email- race pictures!!!!

Saturday- Rest I had to work so I headed that way in the morning. Talk about smokey! I work in a town much closer to Big Sur on Saturday’s and the smoke in the air from the fire was intense. I then headed home with the intention of doing a bunch of chores and errands but really only accomplished getting my tires rotated and doing laundry.

Sunday- 4 miles I had my company bbq at the beach in the morning. I am so awkward at these things. I stayed the minimum amount of required time before heading home. To where it was nearly 100. Fun. I headed out for a slow run in the evening but let’s be real, it was a walk. Still moving forward right?

So, 7 miles is totally recovery right? I am hoping to add another day and more miles in this week. I have another post in the works about some new post marathon plans. Stay tuned.

Oh and I never did a Goodbye July post- my third hundred mile month!

How was your week?

How do you recover post race?

Do you go to your company picnics?

The SF Marathon Week 18 Recap

Race week, no, marathon week- holy crap.

I feel like it just last week that I was writing the post about signing up for the marathon. In some ways time flew and in some ways, I wish that I had had more time. I don’t think you ever really feel prepared for a race let alone your first marathon but I felt like a wreck.

Monday- Rest With my last longish run of 9 miles the day before, I knew I wasn’t running today. It was another day of flats at work and trying not to freak out.

Tuesday- 3.1 miles With the race so close, I knew I wanted to run but also didn’t want to go crazy with the miles. Especially since week 17 was such a small one. I thought abut running in work town to expose myself to more humidity but decided that was silly. I thought it would be akin to trying to run ALL the miles right before a race. So instead I headed to home town and temps of 93 degrees. Why not dry out the lungs? 😛 My calves were so tight. They might have gotten better if I had run more but as it was a short run, they never loosened up. It stressed me out and I headed home for a date with my foam roller.

Wednesday- Rest Not only did I think 2 days in a row would be silly, this was also the day I dropped a FULL 5 gallon water jug on my left foot. Son of a monkey. I later found a bruise where it hit my stomach on the way down too.

Thursday- Rest Yeah. I fell off my chair this day and re-bruised the same foot. Like fall on the ground, legs splayed in a dress. What the hell?!

Friday- 2.21 miles Last run before race day. I had the day off work and I forced myself to stay in bed until 9. Once up, I headed out for a very short run. Figured the heat wouldn’t be too bad as I was only running for 2 miles. I didn’t take the fires into account. Oops. The smoke from the Sobraones fire has been burning for over a week and the smoke coming our way made for a severe air quality warning last week. My legs felt ok but I was disgustingly sweaty and gasping for air after a slow 2 miles. I had taken a 24 oz bottle with Ultima in it and I drank the whole damn thing. It was only 2 miles!

Then I headed home to pack for San Francisco and to try to not stress. I watched a lot of Lost. 😛

Saturday- Expo day!! Ashley picked me up and we headed north. We made good time and checked into our hotel before heading for the expo. Seriously, roads and traffic in San Francisco are a giant cluster f***. Who designed that crap? It took the Uber driver 20 minutes to go less than 2 miles! It’s not even the time that made it stressful- that actually happens in Paso all the time but in apparently in SF red lights mean nothing and everyone loves their horn. Grrr.

I won’t lie- the second we got out of the car at the expo, my heart rate spiked. My Fitbit says it hit 105. Ha! We wandered around the expo a bit and picked up our bibs. I caved and bought a San Francisco marathon 3/4 zip. I hadn’t wanted to buy anything until after the race since I wasn’t even sure I was capable of finishing but they were selling out too fast. From there it was back to the hotel after picking up a pizza for me. I piled up my clothes for Sunday, tried not to panic and was in bed by 9. Once we had linens for the pull out bed that is. I think we frustrated room service that night. 😛 Surprisingly, I slept a decent amount of time. But race morning arrived all too quickly.

Sunday- Race day!! To be continued…

Anyone as accident prone as me?

Do you ever buy race themed apparel?

Share something!

The SF Marathon Week 17 Training Recap

17 down, 1 to go. I’m trying not to dwell on that.

This was the first week that I fully embraced the taper. Some might say I took it too far. 😛 I guess there really is a way to run less when training. I didn’t mean to have such an ummm- “relaxed” week it just kind of happened.

The week started off rough. I got little to no sleep on Sunday night and almost called in. good thing I didn’t as my boss wasn’t feeling well either and didn’t make it in. Then when I finally did make it into work, I was greeted by the news that my fish had died. Can you be done with the week by 8:20 on a Monday? Work was crazy from that point forward all week.

Monday- Rest. After 13 miles on Sunday and crap sleep, I was fried. Throw in the work day from hell and I was done.

Tuesday- Rest. I thought about running, I really did but I was still feeling kind of foggy. Besides, I had plenty of time during the rest of the week right?

Wednesday- ~~Run~~– Fall Out Boy!!!!! Running was the plan but when you are given the opportunity to see one of your favorite bands for the cost of only 2 drinks- you take it! So I made my trip to the fair a little sooner than planned. Both the funnel cake and the concert were amazing. 😃😃 They played all the songs I wanted them too and a few more.

Thursday- Rest. I took my gym bag to work. Even though I was still super tired I was planning on running. I really was but once again I allowed my family to text-coerce me into going to dinner with them. Yum.

Friday- 4 miles. Holy crap, I ran on a Friday! I didn’t get home until 7 but I was out the door fairly quick. After 4 days off, I was kind of worried my legs wouldn’t remember what to do. They did! It was slow and still very warm but it was nice to get moving.

Saturday- Rest. Damn, I’m really good at this rest thing aren’t I? I wasn’t completely sloth like though. I headed down to SLO and did a bit of shopping. That counts as moving the legs, right?

Sunday- 9 miles. I headed out around 8 but I should have headed out sooner. It was way hotter than I would have liked. I packed my Camelbak with more supplies than I needed and filled it with water. I knew I didn’t need all of it but I wanted to practice carrying the weight. The run was hot and slow and my neck was a little sore after it. I was a nasty, sweaty mess. Whose idea was it to train in the summer?

Shouldn’t I be feeling at least a little more fit these days? Every run just seems so damn hard. The smallest thing seems to trigger my asthma and I am freaking out. But let’s save all the drama for another post, ok?

How was your week?

Seen any good concerts lately?

Tell me something shiny!

The SF Marathon Week 16 Training

I just had to look up what week I was in, it’s all starting to blur. 😛

The head games have multiplied…the race is so close and unfortunately my last few weeks of running have not been confidence building. More like the exact opposite. I felt pretty damn good after my 20 miler a few weeks ago. I haven’t since. I’m trying to tell myself that it’s all part of training but I hurt and I am tired and I just… I don’t know.

Monday- Rest. I had a few vacation days from work and it was so nice to have no alarm to set. I really wanted to sleep in but I woke up a little before 8. Grr. However, I must have slept soundly- I woke up with a dead arm. Guess I hadn’t moved from the first position I fell asleep in.

Tuesday- 7.12 miles. Birthday miles!!! Another day off too. I was torn what to run today. I know some people like to run their birthday but let’s be real, there was no way I was running 35 miles or kilometers. 35 minutes seemed too short and 3.5 miles seemed like a cop out. So instead I ran the day. It slow and hot but it was fun. I ran to the high school where my mother was having tennis practice. I then dragged her along to a local burger place to get my free burger!!! The little things excite me.

Wednesday- Rest. Back to work. They bought me donuts!

Thursday- 3.75 miles. Talk about slow! I think all the over indulging of the past few days caught up with me, I did not feel well. Plus, I decided that until the marathon, I should probably wear flats. I forgot how sore that would make me. Ouch!

Friday- Rest. I still felt off, I think I found my sugar intake limit. Rough. A new toy came in the mail though.

Saturday- Rest. Sensing a pattern here? After feeling poorly for 2 days, I chose sleep over running. After a few errands, I just had a low key evening. Plus, I was sucked into streaming Stranger Things on Netflix. So good.

Sunday- 13.1 miles. Dress rehearsal. My last long run of training. Plan ( what plan) called for 12, I wanted 16. Yes, I know that’s stupid. I was also testing a few things out this run. When I was shopping in Santa Barbara last weekend, I picked up a new Lululemon skirt for race day. I also recently ordered a new hydration vest as well. I’ve never been a huge fan of them but I need to be able to carry more water than just my handheld. So this long run was a test of all that.

Good lord, it was rough. It took my legs 4.5 miles to warm up. My lungs wanted no part in running. I probably should have tested the hose on the hydration pack before running. I choked twice. My new skirt rode up in very uncomfortable ways and yet also migrated down. That shouldn’t be possible?! I just kept moving forward. I hit 13.1 and called it for the day. Called my mom for a pick up as I was 4 miles from home and went for Chipotle. I really need to stop eating when I’m stressed.

24 miles for the week. Bring on taper. Even though part of me is excited for no long run next week, I feel like I haven’t done enough to prepare. The voices in my head are getting louder. But, this is the best week to quiet them. It’s fair time!!!!! It’s time for my yearly indulgence in a funnel cake. Hopefully, I’ve detoxed enough from birthday cake/ donuts to enjoy it. I look forward to a funnel cake and pretzel all year long until fair time. 😛

So here’s to week 17- another week in flats, even fewer miles and a funnel cake at the end.

How was your week? Do anything fun?

Do you have a dress rehearsal run?

What’s your favorite fair food?