tempo – Slacker Runner

Week 5- Training Begins??

February 6, 2017February 5, 2017 Fallon @ Slacker Runner

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?

Run!

Tempo Troubles

February 2, 2017February 1, 2017 Fallon @ Slacker Runner

Year of Challenge, right?

Training for Destination Races Santa Barbara started Monday. After much deliberation and a little reworking, I am using a combo plan. Primarily Run Less Run Faster with a little Jeff Galloway thrown in. Kind of an oxymoron but I was hoping it would work for me. The plan means 3 key running workouts a week, 1 tempo- 1 interval workout- 1 long run.

Sounds great, right? Except it’s day 3 and I am already having troubles.

Monday opened with a tempo. Probably not the best idea (also against the plan) considering I had run the previous 2 days but unfortunately that was how my schedule worked out this week. That wasn’t the only trouble. I suddenly realized I had no where to run said tempo. I have no access to a track. The treadmill tries to break me, even the idea of attempting a 5-6 mile made my calves seize up in imagined pain. I haven’t been on a treadmill since the nightmare fiasco back in October. Normally I run my tempo runs at the lake path…except thanks to the mudslides not only is my commute 15 miles longer each way due to the road closure but I can’t get to the lake. A fact that did not occur to me until Sunday night. Oops.

So now what?

Monday’s run called for a 1-2 mile warmup followed by 3 miles at short tempo pace with a 1 mile cooldown. What was my tempo pace? Well according to my last 5K- it should be 9:02. Trouble. Let’s all start laughing now. People, I’m not in 9:02 shape not even close. I would need a downhill with an 8% grade, a strong tailwind and maybe even skates to pull that off. I went back to the pace chart. Could I even maintain a sub 10? Honestly, I wasn’t sure. Ouch.

Next trouble. I was running this in work town. After work. In the dark. On the streets. With cars. Yeah, this was going to be very abbreviated and interesting. What really happened?

.75 mile warm up
1 mile tempo
.2 mile gasp for air
.7 mile tempo
.5 mile cooldown

Holy crap, I was sucking wind. My legs were so confused. They were like, wait, fast running? I thought we didn’t do that anymore, who agreed to this? As for the paces? Haha. Tempo mile 1- 9:55. Ouch. I had hoped it would be a little better than that. Except let’s be real, there was a 30 second walk break in there. Ok, there was also a break. Because when you come around a corner and see this sunset, you stop and stare a bit.

And try to stop panting.

That last tempo portion wasn’t a full mile partly because I decided it was too dark to run safely and if I stopped it there, I had a half mile cool down jog to my car. That .7 mile of tempo came in at a 9:27 pace. Somehow I improved going uphill, wonder if I could have held it.

So yeah, ouch. I cut my 6 mile run in half. Ran hard into the reality of how much work I need to do get faster. I felt like toast just after those 3 miles.

However I still have the problem of where to run. Until the highway opens back up, I can’t get to the lake path. I could try the treadmill but I fear it would cause more harm than good. I could keep running them at work until the lake path is available, they would just be way shorter than the plan says. Something is better than nothing right? The days are getting longer so I could the push the tempo portion to be a little longer each week. I was looking forward to working on my training plan and now I just feel foiled. Grrr.

What would do?

Where would you run?

Goals, Run!, Training

Week 20 Training Recap

May 16, 2016May 15, 2016 Fallon @ Slacker Runner

Week 20 for real??!? Where has the year gone?

And the marathon training keeps rolling. I am already tired. Or still tired from an emotional April. Who knows anymore. My focus this week was to up my running from 4 days to 5. My big goal for May is to consistently run 5 days a week. My training plan actually calls for 6 days of running but one of the first changes I made was dropping Friday’s run. If I handle May well, I may consider adding in Friday miles but I am not going to worry about that now.

Monday- 4 easy miles. After an unplanned Sunday rest day, I was really hoping that these “easy” miles would feel easy. Yeah, not so much. My legs felt tired. Part of it may be mental- I was a die-hard believer in never running on Mondays. It’s only been a month-ish since I started running on Monday’s and I think I still mentally rebel sometimes. #rebelwithoutaclue Post-run, things snowballed quickly and the next 6sih hours were spent waiting in the ER.

Tuesday- 6.98 miles- 1.25 mile w/u, 8 x 600’s, 1 mile c/d. Dude. This was the first time using the workout feature on my Garmin; it worked pretty well. With Monday night being so long and not getting to bed until 2 something, I told myself 2 things going into this run. 1-walk the recoveries and 2- listen to your body. I knew I was overly tired and under fueled. I didn’t want to just bail on the workout though. I decided to try the warm up and 2 600’s with recoveries and see how I felt. If I needed to drop the intervals and do easy miles, I would. I was hoping that making the recoveries a walk would be enough to get me through it. My plan calls for 600m repeats to be done between 3:26-3:35 but never having done 600m before, I had no idea what to expect. I just tried to run by feel and be consistent. The drawback to the workout feature is that it showed my current pace, I’d knew what overall time I had to hit but had never translated that to pace. Oops. Actual repeat times– 3:17, 3:22, 3:15, 3:23, 3:20, 3:19,3:16, 3:21. Holy crap, I did it!! I felt pretty good when I was done but was tired so I skipped my last recovery and went straight to the cool down. I might not have done that had I realized the watch would just stop at 6.98 miles!!!! Grrr.

Wednesday- Rest day Pizza day- nuff said. 😜

Thursday- 7.25 miles- 1.25 mile w/u, 5 tempo miles, 1 mile c/d. Oof, that was rough. Nothing about this run ever felt good. I ran this tempo on the streets and I looked forward to every stop light. Built in breaks without having to feel guilty? Hell yeah! Outside of those, I never walked or took a break, so that is huge in itself. I was glad to hit the cool down portion and even happier when that was done. I was so happy for cool down that it was almost faster than the tempo miles. Oops. A run-in with an off leash dog turned it into a walk and lowered the pace, which was probably better anyways. 😒 Tempo goal- 10:18. Tempo miles- 10:03, 9:58, 10:04, 10:10, 10:07. Pace wise, I did what I was supposed to do but it was just ugly. It was also my first run with my Fitbit and one point it said my heart rate was 182. What?! I know that most runs will feel tired but this one just had me worried for the longer tempo runs that I know are coming all too soon.

Friday- Rest day. Aww, bliss. I indulged in some very yummy tri-tip, garlic bread and garlic green beans. It was amazing.

Saturday- 8 miles Misery. I am intentionally keeping one of my weekend runs in the mid-late afternoon. I need to work on building my heat tolerance back up. I know that’s one of the things that hurt me at SLO- it was a very warm morning. Saturday was only 76 but it kicked my ass. I took more than a few walk breaks, a couple of stops and ran out of water. Well hell, that’s not a good sign. We’re not too far from constant triple digits here! Oh well, I got in some hills. To add to the pain, I realized that my training plan only called for 6 miles. 😓😂

Failed cool pic attempt but my Benjamin Button-ish made me laugh

Sunday- 10 miles I got up early in an effort to beat the very high heat of 81. Yes, that was sarcasm. 😏 This was rough, my pace was all over the place. Some 10’s, some 11’s and some 12 minute miles. It was warmer than I would have liked but like I said I have to get used to it. I had more water than the day before but I dropped my bottle around mile 4 and broke the lid. Seriously?? I had enough left to get me through the run but I had to carry the bottle in a certain way so I didn’t spill the rest. I also knew that week’s mileage was catching up with me so I was fine with going slower. When all was said and done, I was still closer to long run place than I thought I would be.

Weekly miles- 36.2 miles

It was a long, hard week but I completed every workout I set out to do. I felt like throwing a little party when I finished my long run. This was my highest mileage week ever– hell yeah! Right now I feel ok, but I know I need to keep on foam rolling and stretching. Moving on to this week, my mileage stays relatively the same but my intervals shift to 6x 800’s. Yikes!! I have a doctor’s appointment on Monday that could mess with my easy run though. I thought about moving it to the morning but if I am still struggling with 8 AM runs, 4 AM is not going to happen. 😜 I really don’t want to miss my run so we will see. I know consistency is going to be key to getting through this training cycle. And a good dose of good luck.

I feel like there is something else I wanted to share but I can’t remember what it was. Oops!

How was your weekend?

Do you run a last recovery or go straight to cool down?

How’s your weather?

Run!, Slacker, Training

Marathon Musings

May 6, 2016May 5, 2016 Fallon @ Slacker Runner

Head games are strong with this one.

I think I finally figured out why I was so panicky the week before SLO. Other then the leg issue, that was real. I know my last few ~~years~~ races have been rough but it seemed like I was stressing more than I should for a race that I wasn’t planning to try for a PR at. A course I had run twice before so I knew what I was in for. I don’t think my panic had anything to do with SLO, it was about this week. This is the week where marathon training got serious. #shitgotreal

What I haven’t mentioned is that I chucked my training plan out the window. I spent weeks mashing my McMillan plan with a Higdon Novice 2 plan. I gave myself an Excel headache over it. 😝 The more I looked at it, the more I didn’t think it was enough. I also realized how poorly I had followed McMillan last year. The only thing I remember really doing was hill repeats, all of the speed work outs looked completely foreign to me. Apparently, denial also runs strong in this one. Oops.

So I started over. I did the research, a lot, and I found an 18 week plan that I liked. It seemed intense for a Slacker like me but it also seemed doable. Doable if I put in the work that is. That is always the question. In fact I don’t even want to say how I’m training as I know it’s the crazy train for a Slacker. Even after a modification, it’s a little scary on paper. Let’s see if I can get through the next month without flaming out.

The first 5 weeks were easy- as I was already running more than the mileage scheduled, I was supposed to wait until the plan caught up to me. It caught up. Ahhh, crap. Thursday’s run in particular was freaking me out. A 5 mile tempo not counting warm up or cool down? After work?! Tempo’s scare the hell out of me. Which is why I wanted them in my training plan.

SLO kicked my ass and I couldn’t even really explain why. What was I thinking signing up for a marathon? My confidence took a beating and my past history with tempos wasn’t helping. I can’t remember the last time I ran without taking a walk break. I was thinking of numerous ways to rationalize bailing on the whole thing or cutting it short. But I’d already made one adjustment this week since SLO hurt a little more than I had planned so I told myself to get over it and just run.

Spoiler: I kicked that tempo’s ass. Probably a little too much as it was 30 seconds fast; I was aiming for 10:18. Considering I didn’t even think I could maintain a 10:30 pace for 5 miles, I’ll take it! Plus, for me, that is remarkably consistent pace.

I needed that, I really did. Even if the rest of the month knocks me down- and I know it will- this one run will keep going through the misery. 😝

Now, hopefully my legs will like me in the morning.

What run scares you?

What do you hate running? Love running?

Run!, Slacker

That’s What She Said

February 18, 2015February 18, 2015 Fallon @ Slacker Runner

Anytime I have a day off during the week I like to rearrange my running schedule so I can run that day. During the winter that means one less day on the treadmill and anytime I can straight home after work is a plus. Since I have a business mixer on Thursday, I figured running Monday and Wednesday would work better anyways. At least that was the plan. However when the alarm went off the next morning, the room was spinning. I paused to notice the accompanying pounding headache and went back to bed.

It never fails, once a year in spring, usually on a long run, I get a little too much sun and feel like crap for the next 24 hours. However it usually happens in late March, early April- not February. I had a feeling I was going to regret not wearing a hat on Sunday. So instead of running, I took my usual rest day and slept some more. Then I spent the day doing a little bit of shopping in SLO. I picked up some new toys-Tuesday was supposed to be the start of running outside instead of my easy treadmill run. The sun didn’t get the memo and never came out to play. Where was the cloud cover when I was doing my long run on Sunday? Work ran over and by that time I had zero desire to head to the gym. Particularly when I knew I had a tempo on plan as my other run for the week. I’ve been trying to only look at the current week of the training plan. That way I can con myself into following it- it doesn’t seem so intimidating that way. 🙂 If I had noticed that I had a tempo two weeks in a row, I would have chosen the hill repeats last week.

It said a 15 min warm up, 3 miles at tempo followed by a 15 min cool down. Yeah, I didn’t have that kind of time. I started my new medication at the beginning of February and it has been an interesting experiment so far. One of the things I’ve figured out is that I have to eat earlier, either that or don’t go to sleep. Or skip eating dinner but that’s not a better option. So I shortened my run. I had 45 minutes so -10 minute warm up, 1 mile tempo, 60 second recovery, 1 mile tempo, 60 second recovery, .5 mile tempo, cool down. Random, right?

Holy crap, it didn’t suck!! In fact, it kind of rocked. I was able to hit my paces and keep my breathing under control. Yes, I should have skipped the little recoveries but I still maintained for 2.5 miles. That half mile was faster but I didn’t push the lap button until after I’d slowed down. If I hadn’t been pressed for time I would have completed that last full mile and my full cool down.

Oddly enough, I noticed a few things while on the treadmill this time. Walking I felt fine, no real achiness and I was walking in straight line. Hitting the tempo paces felt good as well. No aches or pains and again running in a controlled, straight line. And when I slowed down to a 10:30-12:00 pace? I was all over the damn place. Things ached and twinged, and I was bouncing off the sides again. What gives?! I tried to focus on my form throughout the whole run and I didn’t feel like anything had changed. I am curious to see what happens on the treadmill next week.

It was nice to leave the gym feeling like I accomplished something for once. I was still a nasty mess but I felt like it was a good nasty. Usually I just feel disgusting and nasty. What is it about the gym that makes me feel so gross? Is it Daylight Savings time yet?

When was the last time you were surprised by a run?

Does your form change when your pace changes?

It’s almost Thursday!!!!