Tag: long run

BibRave, Recap, Run!, Training

Week 36:Upcoming Races-Rock n Roll San Jose Training Week 8

Fallon @ Slacker Runner

Upcoming Races-

  • Rock n Roll San Jose 13.1 (Thank you BibRave!)-10/8
  • City to the Sea 13.1-10/14
  • Rock n Roll Los Angeles 13.1 (Thank you BibRave!)- 10/29
  • Monterey Bay Half Marathon (Thank you BibRave!)- 11/12

Fried.  That’s how I would describe this week.

I knew it was going to be a hectic one and I thought I planned accordingly.   But well, life.

The week was already short due to the holiday and then I was off Friday to chaperone a multi-day tennis trip for my mother’s team.    I tried to cram all I could in at work in 3 short days as well as get in all my workouts before we left.

The plan called for a 6 mile run, 50 minute tempo, 9 mile long run and the last 4 Liift4 workouts.

Monday- 9 miles/ Liift4
Long run on a Monday- say what?? I knew the weekend ahead was going to be super busy so with a Monday off work I thought I would get my long run out of the way.  Yet, I woke up nauseaus again.  I did a crazy Liift4 workout in the morning and debated skipping the run.  I headed out in the late afternoon for what I was sure was going to be a 4 mile slog.   Instead I somehow had the best 9 mile run that I have had in over a year.     Hell, it was the best long run I’ve had in years.  Who knew?

Tuesday- Liift4
This final week of workouts was kicking my ass.  I don’t think I’ve ever sweat this much in my life.

Wednesday- Rest
I meant to do another Liift4 workout but my stomach was being a total asshat.  So instead I picked up some last minute supplies for the weekend trip.

Thursday- 3.75 miles
This was supposed to be longer but my legs weren’t feeling it.   This was actually slower paced than Monday’s long run too.  Way to bring me back down to earth legs.   My right hip was cranky, I really need to start doing my PT exercises again.

Friday/ Saturday- Tennis Road Trip
So tired, the days were long and stressful and so freakin’ hot!   I layered on sunblock, I stayed in the shade as much as possible, I wore a hat and somehow I still ended up with my worst sunburn in years.   It hurt.   By the time we got home on Saturday, I was just mentally done.  Teenagers are hard.

Sunday- Rest
This was not the plan.  I needed another 6 miles and should have completed the leg workout for Liift4.  However… the sunburn.  Owwww!  Everything hurt.  It hurt to the touch, it hurt to move, clothing hurt- there was no way I was putting a sports bra on.  Nope.

12.77 miles for the week.  Stupid sunburn!  Also the Liift4 challenge is complete even if I missed a few and I feel a little adrift.   Oops.

How was your week?

Run!, Slacker, Training

Week 32:Upcoming Races-Rock n Roll San Jose Training Week 6

Fallon @ Slacker Runner

Upcoming Races-

  • SLO ULTRA 5K-9/2
  • Rock n Roll San Jose 13.1 (Thank you BibRave!)-10/8
  • City to the Sea 13.1-10/14
  • Rock n Roll Los Angeles 13.1 (Thank you BibRave!)- 10/29
  • Monterey Bay Half Marathon (Thank you Bibrave!)- 11/12

This was an odd one.

I ran but not enough.  I lifted but not enough.  I had an odd headache on Wednesday, my side pain became a little worse and then my back started hurting towards the end of the week.  Really?? I can’t blame the lifting because I barely did it this week.

I also stupidly dropped a migraine pill down the side of my recliner on Thursday evening and spent 3 days tearing the chair apart, vacuuming sides trying to find the damn thing.  Meanwhile my cat was confused as to why she wasn’t allowed in my room for 3 days.   Surprisingly the chair still holds together after I put it back together- although I feel a little crooked.

This training week called for a step back week and a 5K race.  However that didn’t fit my  not running life schedule.  Plus I have a 5k scheduled for the following week.  So I decided to flip weeks 6 and 7.  Except somehow I still screwed it up.

The week should have played out like this- a 6 mile run, 5 mile run and a 9 mile long run.  4 Liift4 workouts sprinkled around for cross training.

And reality?

Monday-Liift4
I had planned on running after work but we got out really late.  Combine that with who beats who game I play with the cleaners and that I had already seen their truck pull in and I just decided to push the run to Tuesday.   Then I ended up stuck in traffic on the way home.    However I stuck to the lifting plan.

Tuesday-Rest
I had plans for running and plans for Liift4 but my side pain which is mostly tolerable these days was intense.   Something I did that day must have angered it but I don’t know what.  But considering I am 8 months in without a diagnosis who knows???

Wednesday-1.2 miles
Epic fail!  I headed to the lake path for a 4 miler but all of my gear was in the wrong places in my car.  As I was getting my pepper spray from my gym bag as opposed to my pack, I put my car key down on the front seat.  Can you guess what comes next?  Yep.  Locked my key in my car.  Tried all my doors and pushing the windows down.  Nope.  I talked my parents into getting my spare and driving it to me on the caveat that I take them to dinner after.  😛  I then squeezed in a lap of the lake while waiting for them.  In all honesty, I may have called it at a lap anyways as there were 2 total creeper cars on the backside of the lake.

Thursday-5 miles -tempo intervals
Not gonna lie, after the previous days’ fiasco and the last week of rough running, I was not feeling this run.   And for some reason, I thought I had a 40 minute tempo on the plan.   We were under an air quality warning the latter half of the week so I broke the tempo into intervals- it was supposed to 15-15-10 but it was more like 12-12-6.   I ran a completely different route than normal and there was a hellacious headwind that damn near shoved me backwards in the last interval.   I made up for it in the cool down though when I inadvertently hit an 8:30 pace for 1/2 mile thanks to The Big Gigantic.  Oops, not how to cool down.  Then the chair drama started.

Friday-Liift4
More chair drama.  I searched for hours and tore the thing apart to no luck.  Grrr.

After she was allowed back in

Saturday-Rest
I had a work event at the homeless shelter in the morning.  I was thankful for the chance to help out, I’ve missed helping out since it’s been a few years since we ran a dinner night each month.   This event was a walk and I was calling on all years of race experience working the registration tables.
Afterwards I went home and performed more surgery on the chair and was finally successful.  The pill was found!    After that I was in a cleaning mode so I kept organizing a few things before running some errands and then being lazy.

Sunday- 8.23 miles
When my alarm went off in the morning, I kind of growled at it.  I just wasn’t feeling it.  I wasn’t feeling like doing much of anything.  I made a quick trip to SLO to the Running Warehouse to exchange the Neuro’s and then came home and took what was supposed to be a 20 minute nap.  An hour later I finally decided to head out for my run.  I wasn’t feeling like a long run anymore so I figured I would just run a short run and break in the new shoes instead.

And yet, I kept running.  Up one hill and down the other.  There’s a reason I don’t do long runs in my neighborhood.  I stopped twice to BodyGlide my heels as I felt a blister forming from the new shoes.  I told myself to bring a band aid but forgot.   Oops.  A funny moment happened around halfway when I ran past a car that had been in an accident.   It looked like it had been rear ended- it still had the bumper of the other car attached- and the it had hit something else.  They must have it had towed there but it still smelled like a car accident- that metal on metal on burnt plastic smell?  Apparently that brings back memories for me as I kind of started to hyperventilate.  😛   I’ve been in a few accidents but until today I wouldn’t have said that smell would trigger any reaction.    On the return route I went a different way.
For not wanting to run my long run, I ended up running all 8.  Only to check the plan later and realize it should have been 9.  Oops.

14.52 miles for the week.  How did I ever come close to 1000 miles in a year once?

How was your week?

BibRave, Run!, Training

Week 32:Upcoming Races-Rock n Roll San Jose Training Week 4

Fallon @ Slacker Runner

Upcoming Races-

  • SLO ULTRA 5K-9/2
  • Rock n Roll San Jose 13.1 (Thank you BibRave!)-10/8
  • City to the Sea 13.1-10/14
  • Rock n Roll Los Angeles 13.1 (Thank you BibRave!)- 10/29
  • Monterey Bay Half Marathon (Thank you Bibrave!)- 11/12

I was fussy, cranky and tired this week.   I had a few too many balls in the air at work at one point.   Home town was in the middle of an almost 20 day streak of over 100* weather and I was sleeping poorly.

I like to sleep with the window open during the summer which is odd because I am also one of those people who tends to over react at every sound.   Unfortunately this week, some creature decided to come visit the yard every night a little after midnight.  And it was not a small creature.    I tried to tell myself it was a family of deer.  Which is likely was but I worry about the bigger felines.   I digress…it was every single night.  So eventually I would end closing the window but then it would feel super stuffy and sleep would still be crappy.  Grrr.

Ok, training.  This week called for a 5 mile run, 4 mile run, 7 mile long run and 4 Liift4 work outs.

So how did I do?

Monday- Liift4
I planned on running after work but work ran long and I was feeling cranky so I decided to push my run to Tuesday.  Then while I was driving home I was feeling guilty for doing that only to arrive in run town and then home town to realize they were both completely socked in with smoke from fires.  Combine that with the 3 digit temps and somehow my lazy choice was the smart choice.

Tuesday- 3.78 miles
Another hot day, it was around 95 when I started running and there was still a ton of smoke in the air.  I decided to stick to the run/walk intervals I had programmed since I had also forgotten any way to carry water on my run.   Short and easy miles, that was the plan.   My legs had other plans and those running intervals were some of the fastest paces I’ve seen in years.  Oops.  I did keep it relatively short though.

Wednesday-Liift4
I am sure I did something else but I can’t remember what it was.

Thursday-3.5 miles
I had woken with a gnarly Charlie horse around 1:30 that morning and it never really went away. That said, I still wanted to attempt a run. Oh, my gawd, I was melting.  I don’t know why.   It was 93, so this was coolest run I had had in weeks.  Or it should have been. It was so muggy at the lake path though.  I had 3 decent, consistent miles and even though I was able to stop at my car for water, I could tell I was overheating. My leg also hadn’t loosened up at all so I finished 3 laps of the lake and called it.    If the lake wasn’t so nasty I may have jumped in.

Friday- Rest
My tiredness and crankiness caught up to me.   Could the animal outside at night just stop?!  I told myself I was going to work out when I got home from work but I didn’t.  I just zoned out watching Netflix’s Insatiable.  That show is on crack, people.

Saturday- Liift4
I meant to do my long run.  I laid out my clothes and charged my Aftershokz.  I set my alarm- 5 of them.  I slept through all of them.  Grrrr.    I thought about running my 8 miles (I also had the number of miles wrong) in the afternoon/ evening but although we finally break the streak of over 100* days it was still hot. Also, ended up taking the cat to the vet so that took up some of the afternoon.

Sunday-7.4 miles
My mother was planning on cleaning her tennis courts in the morning so I figured that would be good incentive to actually get my butt out of bed and run to the high school to meet her.    75* should have felt amazing after the last few weeks but it was more humid than I would have liked and I felt a little wilted.

Pace wise, I was doing fine for a long run but by mile 5 I was feeling hot.    My mother was also feeling it on her end as she called me around that point saying she was done at the courts- it was too warm.  I convinced her to wait for me in the shade instead of coming to get me and I tried to pick up the pace to the school.    I am hoped for 8 to make for the run I shorted on Tuesday but 7 is just fine with me.

14.69 miles for the week.  Much better than last week and almost all the miles the plan called for.  So close!!

Now if the damn creature in the yard could just go away.

How was your week?

BibRave, Run!, Training

Big Sur Marathon Training-Week 14

Fallon @ Slacker Runner

Don’t freak out, don’t freak out.

My leg is giving me grief.  My back is putting up a fight.  I feel like I am barely running any miles and I am falling apart.  What gives?!  I really should be sleeping more.   How do I become less of an night owl??

Oh my gawd, I made it to taper.  Even though my whole training cycle has been another runner’s taper, haha.   Last week was a rather pitiful peak week but it’s done.

Monday- 2.62 miles  The irony of the mileage of this run is not lost on me.  My leg was not on board.  In fact it protested something fierce.  Fierce to the point of pain and I decided that rest days after long runs were going to have to become a thing during the next few weeks of this training cycle.   I turned around fairly soon into the run and headed back to the car trying not to be alarmed.

Tuesday- Nada I could feel my leg every time I moved.  From the car to work.  Every time I got off my chair or stood still too long.  Boo.

Wednesday-More of the same.

Thursday- 2.3 miles I headed for the lake path hoping the dirt path would be friendly to me and that I could get in a good 4-5 miles.   But that did not happen.  I managed 2 laps of the lake before I threw in the towel.  I may have pushed for more but with this weekend being my last chance to get in 20 miles I figured that was more important.

Friday- Rest I took a vacation day for a once again canceled tennis trip -rain, so I spent the day attempting to catch up on sleep and rest my leg.

Saturday- More of the same. Another rainy day.  I had started reorganizing my closet on Friday and it turned into the never ending project.  🤣

Sunday- 18.25 miles I overslept and started a little later than planned, oops.  I was also running in what I hoped would be my race day outfit to see how it worked out.  With my leg being fussy all week, I wanted to keep the run slow and steady and walk whenever I needed.  And things were actually good for the first 10-12 miles.  The temp was pleasant, my leg was cooperating and I wasn’t tired.  My clothing was another story.  My tank was riding up into a crop top, the shorties under my skirt kept moving around, my pack was shifting down my back, I had to put BodyGlide on at mile 6.  I don’t usually have to use BodyGlide when I wear skirts.  Grrr.   And my shoes were starting to hurt my feet.

The problem arose around mile 14- my back started to hurt.  And I slowed way down.  So much so, that I knew I was going to have a problem keeping my lunch plans with my mother.  Hence the 18.25.  My lower back was super cranky, I think part of the problem was the bladder of water in the back of my pack.  I stopped carrying water on my back due to back pain a few months back and stupidly forgot about it. Silly Slacker.  So another lesson learned- no bladder in the pack on race day- bottles in the front only.

When I mentioned how much slower I had gotten towards the end of the run during the lunch, my mother asked what the minimum pace was before being swept at Big Sur.  Thanks Mom.

23.17 miles for the week.  Not the 20 miler I was hoping for but not horrible.  I am trying to think positive… or maybe I am just in denial.

How was your week?

BibRave, Run!, Training

Big Sur Marathon Training-Week 13

Fallon @ Slacker Runner

Ok, I lied, you get the training recap before the race recap.  Oops.

It’s coming, really!  It’s never taken me this long to write a race recap before but maybe that’s because my brain checked out last week.  I was so tired and just couldn’t figure out why or seem to catch up on my sleep.

I had wanted to move my 20 miler up a week to this weekend as it just fit my schedule better that way but between some leg issues and the extreme tiredness I was getting the feeling that was probably not a good idea.

Monday- 2.5 miles I planned on a few shake out, easy miles to get my legs loose from the day before.  I was aiming for 3-4.   My leg had felt ok during the day at work but it quickly let me know that it was not on board with a run.  Not at all.  I was hoping it would loosen up but instead it steadily grew worse until it felt like the pain was in the bone too which alarmed me so I called it short and just headed back to the car.

Tuesday/ Wednesday- Nada  I was giving the leg a few days to see what it would do.   Working at my desk makes it very, very angry.  I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again- stand up desks are not all they are cracked up to be.

Thursday- 4.5 miles  I headed to lake path as I had a feeling that the dirt path would be more forgiving than pavement or concrete.   I started slow and kept it nice and easy.  Because spring had suddenly made an appearance and it was 80 degrees at 6 PM, going slow was not an issue.  In fact I needed a few walk breaks due to the warmth.   However those breaks pointed out that my leg was ok once in motion, it really does not the stops and starts of walk breaks.  Which is problematic as I know I will be walking part of this marathon.

Friday- Stupid For some reason I was so freakin’ tired this week… and it was making me stupid.  And slap happy.  I took a nap on my lunch but it didn’t help.  I had a feeling my long run wasn’t happening on Saturday.

Saturday- 2.2 miles  I was still super tired and my leg was sore but this was supposed to be longer.  But we got a little lost.  My mom and headed to do a trail but the one we did a few weeks ago is closed, boo. So instead, we did the Pine Mountain loop.   It gains almost 500 feet in the first 1/2 mile or so but the path is fun with a couple of random off shoots.  Once we made our way to the top, we took one of the random off shoots thinking it would make the path longer but instead we had climb over and under some downed trees before it deposited us almost in someones front yard and on the highway.  Oops!

Sunday- 10 miles My leg was sore and I was still so tired, I pretty much knew that 20 wasn’t going to happen early and I was going to stick to the plan of 12.  But when my alarm went off in the morning, my head was pounding, likely due to hormones from that TOM, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.

That had me heading out for my run in the afternoon.  It was over 80.  I didn’t think it would be that bad.  And it wasn’t until mile 5 and then it was all downhill from there.  So much walking.  I was so damn warm.  I had 2 bottles of water in my pack and I drank them both.   I even took a few moments iny a lone shady spot to just try and cool off.   But no luck.  It took me so long, that I ended up only having time for 10 miles before I needed to head back for Easter Dinner.

19.23 miles for the week.  Not great but not horrible considering how my leg felt on Monday.

How was your week?