Tag: long run

Week 6- Ouch- Fail

Training for:

Livermore 13.1 -March 26
Destination Races Santa Barbara 13.1- May 13

Did anyone else have an odd week last week? Did it seem freaky long and just off for no real reason? Everyone at work seemed to feel it too. I know there was a full moon on Friday but still the whole week was just odd.

Monday- Rest- Last week saw a wealth of knowledge drop on us at work- all merger related. It started today with a meeting with the new CEO. It was a good meeting but I was kind of fried by the end of the day, I can’t remember what I did when I got home. 😞

Tuesday- Gym Fail- Work was a little busy but overall the rain and the highway closure is keeping us a little slower. I changed after work and planned on heading home for some #bibchat and hitting the gym for intervals. What the hell? Traffic was ridiculous. It was raining but nothing like it has been lately but I didn’t get back to home town until almost 7. So much for #bibchat. Ok, gym time. Every single treadmill was taken. What?! I admit I gave up. I bailed. I headed home and ordered a pizza.

Wednesday- 4 miles– After the previous day’s snafu, I decided to do another baby tempo at work. Except when I set out I realized I has somehow lost my inhaler the night before. For crying out loud. Ok, so no speed work. The marine layer was heavy so running without my inhaler was probably asking for trouble but I really needed to run. I kept it nice and easy but even with the slower pace, my breathing still sounded like I was sprinting, ha. The marine layer holds light pretty well so I pushed further into the state park and was able to make it to the Natural History Museum before I had to turn back. I love running though the eucalyptus grove.

Thursday- Ouch– I woke up to some not so good pain in my left leg. And not the typical shin variety pain. I took my running clothes to work but when it didn’t get better throughout the day I conceded defeat and decided to make it a rest day.

Friday- More ouch– My leg still hurt. It was isolated to the inside of my left ankle and I was starting to freak out a little. I also figured I knew what did it. While I loved running the trails through the eucalyptus grove on Wednesday, I shouldn’t have done it in my Nike’s. While I love my Nike’s for speed work, they are not big on traction, they have very smooth bottoms and the trails were pretty slick and muddy from all the rain. But I was having fun in the moment.

Saturday- More of the same– Good thing I decided it was too muddy to that run that 10k! I opted for active rest and wandered around SLO doing some shopping and consoling myself with some amazing pizza. I may have spent too much money at Lululemon. 😛 The clearance rack was just too tempting.

Sunday- 9 miles I had rested for 3 days, what was my ankle going to do??? I knew I was going to be slow and that was fine. I was stiff for the first few miles which is typical but I made sure to focus on my ankle and walk anytime I felt more than a twinge. Overall I felt ok. I picked up the pace a bit across the bridge per usual and indulged with a little river watching when I made it down to the river bed. Everything was going ok until a little past mile 6. Then things went south real fast. I was hustling to cross an intersection before a car and I suddenly felt ill. I had to pause for a breather rather than be sick and even when I got going I had to walk a lot. I felt very crappy for the last 3 miles, it was all I could to finish. If I could have bailed sooner I would have but it’s not like I was getting to the car any other way. My lungs were abnormally pissed too. They were angrier then they had been on Wednesday but I had found my inhaler so what gives? I wasn’t quite right the rest of the evening either which is why this post is a day late.

13 miles for the week. Once again, I missed workouts. Grrr. Between merger stuff, crazy rain, and my weird dizzy, nausea spells, I feel like I’ve turned into a giant flake. My lab work should be done next week but knowing my luck it won’t show anything. I’m not even sure what I should keep my fingers crossed for? This year is Challenging in me in different ways than I planned. I broke down crying in a meeting with my boss last week. Get it together!

Anyways, moving on to a shiny new week. One good thing— my road is open again!!!!! 30 less miles a day!!! It’s the little things right?

How was your week?

Ever bailed on a workout when you were in workout clothes already?

Tell me something shiny!

Week 5- Training Begins??

Training for:

Livermore 13.1 -March 26
Destination Races Santa Barbara 13.1- May 13

Or does it? I was looking forward to putting my money where my mouth is as it were and hitting the marks during week 1 of training. Or at least trying to. I knew the miles were going to be hard and I knew I had a busy week but I was looking forward to the challenge.

Monday- 3.1 miles Baby tempo! You can read all about that enlightening run here. I’m still debating where to run my tempo miles. I’ll figure something out.

Tuesday- Planned rest day My legs were a little tight after the attempt at speed the previous day. I wore compression socks under my slacks most of the day and made sure to foam roll.

And here’s when things went south-

Wednesday- ~~Intervals~~– rest I woke up with a headache and stomach pain. I held fast that I was going to run after work. Except that I didn’t make it through the day at work. It got to the point that I couldn’t even stand up straight my stomach hurt so bad. Joy.

Thursday/ Friday- Rest What I didn’t mention was that starting Tuesday night I woke up every night sweating ridiculously. TMI? Sorry. Maybe I was fighting something? My brother had been sick, my boss missed a day being sick. Whatever it was, my migraine wouldn’t quit and I felt weird. I also had a doctor’s appointment where he ordered a series of fun tests. Yay.

Saturday- Planned rest. We were going out of town for my grandmother’s memorial. I knew I wasn’t running that day. It was a sad, nostalgic, interesting morning and a long day.

Sunday- 8 miles. I didn’t want to run. I still wasn’t feeling great but I also wondered how much of that was real and how much was just lingering inertia of the week. I slept in in the morning and headed out a little before 3. Yes, I was running during the Super Bowl. 😛 I was bartering with myself in miles 1 and 2, the week was already a wash so I could call it at 4 right? I even slowed down in mile 3 which has a downhill and is usually a little faster. Grrr. But I kept running and something changed around mile 3.5. I just kept going, mile 4, across the bridge- where I pulled a sub 10 mile. This is only interesting because I average around 11:30ish until I hit the bridge and bring the pace down over the next .3 mile. I swear I wasn’t sprinting. Mile 5- still going and feeling pretty good. Mile 6 and I ran an entire hill that I have never run all of before. I celebrated on IG and my mother laughed at me. Ok, so the hill less than 1/2 mile and only gained 92 feet but let me have my tiny victory!!! Onto mile 7 and mile 8 and I still felt good! Woo hoo!! I have no idea what happened but I’ll take it!

11.1 miles for the week. 1 half completed workout, 1 fully completed workout. 1 missed run and 2 missed cross trainings. I’m still on the long run high though so yay! But I am thankful that this is a longer training plan now. If it was the standard 12 weeks, I may be a little nervous but the longer plan is keeping me a little calmer. It may be a false sense of security but only time will tell.

How was your week?

Did you watch the Super Bowl? Puppy Bowl?

Week 4 Recap-Finding Calm

Just like that, we’re 4 weeks into the year. Dude, how.

The weather here is crazy. On one hand we finally had a break from the crazy rain, yay! Which made room for the hard freeze. I hit ice twice on Wednesday morning… I screamed like a little girl the first time while the rear end of my car fish tailed all over the road. We actually get freezing temps frequently out here but that was the fist time I’ve ever hit ice while driving. Yikes!

In better news, I found out last week that I get to keep my job. 🙂Which is great news and while it will help with some of my stress; right now I admit that I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. There are still so many unknowns about the merger as a whole. I know that this was a huge part of what is stressing me out so I hope I can start to dig myself out of the stress hole I keep crawling into. But it’s like quicksand, the more I dig, the more I sink. I did sleep a little better last week, so there’s that.

Monday- News day. I didn’t know I was getting the news about work and wasn’t feeling mentally prepared. I went home and ate pizza. 🍕🍕

Tuesday- Rest. I can’t remember what I did. Oops. I know I did my planks and push ups all week. Still can’t hold a plank up to a minute without falling on my face but I’ll get there. Maybe.

Wednesday- 3.1 miles. I love my Knuckle Lights. Seriously, they let me run in work town in the dark and I really needed that run. I called it a therapy run. I wanted to run down to the Eucalyptus grove but the path was blocked off. Boo. I made due with a 5k but that’s ok. It was enough. I watched a few moments of the sunset and just enjoyed the views.

Thursday- Rest I had to sit through a class on driving for the school district. I’m chaperoning a trip for my mother’s tennis team and I had to be re-certified. Mostly I spent the class thinking how I wanted to redo their entire PowerPoint.

Friday- Nothing 😛

Saturday- 8 ish miles I decided to try last Saturday’s run again, same route, same plan to end at the high school and catch a ride from my mother. I need to stop planning. I was 15 minutes late getting out the door because my Garmin wouldn’t turn on. What?! It had been fully charged on Wednesday. So I plugged it in and ran with Strava instead. I turned on the voice cues and auto pause so I didn’t have to fish my phone out of my belt at all the stop lights. It reminded me why I dislike autopause. It turns on too soon and takes too long to turn off. I also realized how much I like my 3/1’s on this run. Without my Garmin I was trying to estimate the 3/1’s by songs and it just wasn’t working. I like that the watch does all the thinking for me. Such a whiny problem I know but I missed my watch. This run just felt more tiring than I would have liked. I think it was mostly mental but I was just dragging for most of it. Almost getting hit by a car at the halfway point sure didn’t help matters. The guy never even saw me. He was too busy staring at his lap. I’m guessing he had just left the Wendy’s drive thru. Whatever, I was pissed. Grrrr.

Sunday- 3.6 miles I planned a nice, easy 4 mile recovery run. Yeah, plans. I set out with my mom planning to walk a bit and then run ahead and double back like we used to do. Half a mile in, my stomach let me know it was having none of that. I cramped… bad. Grrrr. The me of 2015/16 would have turned around and called it. Instead I slowed way down and it turned more into a wog, heavy on the walking but I got something done.

Weekly total- 14.8 That puts me exactly where I wanted to be for January and there’s still 2 days so that’s not so bad. Training for Santa Barbara and Livermore starts this coming week so I know my mileage will start to increase. I’ve also realized that I need to rework my training plan thanks to the landslides but more on that later.

It was an interesting week and this likely to be another interesting one too. Will I actually get in 5 workouts????? We shall see.

How was your week?

Is your weather crazy?

Share something fun!

Week 43 Training Recap

Training for-

Paso Harvest Marathon 13.1
Golden Gate Half

It’s the final countdown! Come on, sing it with me! Sorry, I think the lack of sleep is making me slap happy. 😛 I’m still not sleeping but I’m also tired of whining about it. It is what it is so I am trying to just find the shiny and keep moving on.

I actually ran all the miles planned this week and almost pulled off some of the paces. Who am I?!? I started off the week by taking some rest days. It’s how being told to rest by someone else takes some of guilt away. I think my brain needed that after the last few weeks.

Monday- Yoga What?!? I used an app on my phone and did a beginners workout just to try to loosen up and relax a little. I only got 3 hours of sleep the night before so I was dragging.

Tuesday- Rest This day was a Monday Redux. Seriously, it was rough at work. I was so glad I didn’t have to run.

Wednesday- 4 miles After a few days off, I was feeling nervous like I forgot how to run. As you can read here– the run was freakin’ awesome!

Thursday-3.5 miles Interval ouch. The workout called for 6×400 with warm up and cool down. Normally I love 400’s but I was so damn tired and I knew I would be chasing the sunset. I had an option of rest or a light jog between the 400’s and I chose the rest. Even with that, the intervals kicked my ass. My paces were 7:58, 7:53, 8:41, 8:25, 7:56, 8:33. Not sure what happened with that third one. I was whipped at the end. I could not have run another one if I tried. I was proud that I finished the work out but damn that was hard.

Friday- Rest Oh crap, I think I broke myself. I was limping all day and my left knee and shin were pissed. I was kind of freaking out. I had 12 miles on the plan the next day, what do I do?!?! Does it really hurt or am I just being a baby? I have a mental block with 12 mile runs. Give me 11 or 13 or 15 and I look forward to them after marathon training, but 12? I hate them for some reason. Was I just whining? I texted Coach Jenny for her opinion and she agreed I should push my run back to Sunday and rest.

Saturday- Rest I attempted to catch up on sleep. Did I mention Thursday night was another 4 hours if I was lucky? Then I ran a few errands and read a book-Run!. I love reading Dean Karnazes’ books. Even if they make me think crazy thoughts. I signed up for my first marathon 2 months after reading Ultramarathon Man. What now?

Sunday- 12 miles Of course, when my alarm went off I was in the most comfortable moment of sleep that I had had all week. I hit snooze for 40 minutes before dragging myself out of bed for my run. My plan called for 6 miles @ 12:00, 5@ 9:30 and the last @ 9:00. My leg felt a little better but I was planning on taking it easy and keeping an eye on how it felt. I even had my mom on alert in case I needed a pick up.

I kept it nice and easy in the beginning and just focused on my leg. Mile 1 was super slow and I managed to keep the bridge mile at 10:00 which is fairly calm considering I usually bolt across it. At the halfway point I was actually right on pace and I felt ok so I tried to pick up the pace a bit. I couldn’t get to 9:30 though. Miles 7, 8, and 9 clocked in at 10:00. I was still pretty stoked about that though so I was hoping I could keep it up. Then I slammed right into a wall. Miles 10 and 11 were 11:18 and 10:57. Oops. I didn’t necessarily feel tired but I could not move any faster. I took so many walk breaks. I had already run more miles than I thought I was going to pull off so I decided not to stress about the pace. That said, I was so glad to see my watch hit 12. Success!

19.5 miles- an improvement over the last few weeks! Woo hoo! And now it’s on to race week #1! Eeek!

How was your week?

I whined a little didn’t I? Oops.

What are you reading?

Week 38 Training Recap

So, I think I have been a little too hard on myself. Maybe. It’s been 50 days since I ran a marathon and I’ve been over sitting over here pissed that my long runs haven’t hit 16 yet. This coming from the person who took 3 months off after her first half marathon years ago. I think I momentarily lost my mind. So, I am trying to get it back. My legs are achy and I am more tired now than I was during marathon training. I also have 6 races in the next 8 weeks. Oops. I have the opportunity to work with Ekiden Coaching though, so I am hoping that having someone to report to will reign in my craziness. Fingers crossed!

Training for:

City to the Sea 13.1
Harvest Marathon 13.1
Golden Gate Half

So let’s get to last week!

Monday- 2.34 miles Another short Monday. Not entirely my fault though. You can read all about the creep fest here.

Tuesday- 8 miles bike, plank, pushups, bridges. I had an appointment with my gastro and it was more of the same old, same old. Decent cross training after though.

Wednesday- Rest. I had planned on running but I fell off/ on my stool at work and it felt like I broke my foot. The top swelled and turned purple. Destructo girl, that’s me. My planks had to be broken into 30 second sections- it hurt to bend my foot.

Thursday- 4.25 miles Not the best but could have been worse. I determine my last pair of PureFlow 4’s were dead dead though. Calf pain, shin pain, foot pain, you name it this run had it. I changed into my Nike’s for the last 1/2 mile or so. I just really wanted to hit 4 miles!

Friday- Rest First early shift Friday in over a month- it was awesome. Except the computers were down for the first 6 hours. Oof.

Saturday- Rest Well, does shopping and trying on shoes count as exercise? I did clear 10, 000 steps without running though. Woo hoo! The PureFlow 5’s went back to the store. I hate returning shoes! I went in with an open mind and asked for help. I tired on 10 pairs of shoes!!! 10! I was torn between a pair of Nike’s, New Balance and Hoka’s. I left with the Hoka’s. Fingers crossed!

Sunday- 10 miles In my original schedule for myself, I really wanted to run 16 miles today. But since I didn’t pull off 14 last week or 12 the week before, I decided to be smart. After last week’s tunnel of dark and pain 8 miles, I headed out early and with a full Camelbak. It wasn’t early enough. The predicted high for the day was 102. Ouch. I optimistically hoped for 12 but knew 10 was more likely. Especially since I was running this in my Nike’s. I didn’t want to test the Hoka’s on a long run. My Nike’s may be the least painful pair of shoes I own but they are not a distance shoe. 10 miles is their limit. Truthfully, today I wanted them off my feet by mile 9. The run was hot and long and I was tired. I found a lone shady spot at the end and sat down. Cool concrete post run feels kind of amazing. 😛

Rookie moment- My mom had planned on meeting me halfway so she could walk some miles but had texted that she wasn’t feeling well. Which I got because I was thisclose to saying screw it when my alarm went off. Anyways, while I was waiting for her to pick me up so we could do lunch I drank more water from my Camelbak then part of water bottle when she picked me up. Too much water, too quickly. I got so nauseated I thought I was going to lose my cookies. Guess it’s a good thing I don’t eat breakfast before running right? I know better!

16.6 miles for the week. It is what it is. There was a time when I would have called this a very solid week. That was also the time when I lied to myself and said I ran long runs but rarely did. I was also faster than so hmmm…..

How was your week?

Ever tried to run in Hoka’s? Thoughts?

How is it almost October?!?!?