The Trouble With Strava

I joined Strava last week, in order to connect with women I know from an online community, and I kind of regret it.

Strava was clearly created with competitive runners in mind. The ones who size each other up at the starting line, who take photos of their feet on their treadmills or their running watches in order to “prove” their best workouts while conveniently leaving out the struggles, who speed up when passed during a training run but slow down later on, who go on every Runner’s World forum thread and make snide comments about people who dare to run marathons against their sage advice (which they don’t follow themselves). There are a lot of really great, fun, inclusive runners out there, but yeesh, there are a lot of smug jerks.

Strava is all about comparing yourself to others. When I click on someone’s profile, it immediately gives me a comparison to that person, pitting my PRs, training times, training miles, YTD miles, everything up against that person. I always lose (except I always win in the “average time/week” category because I am so slow), which is fine, but I don’t see the point of such an in-your-face comparison. It also shows how many people I pass during runs. I don’t actually pass people; I am sometimes overtaken, and I guess I go by people heading in the opposite direction, and walkers, but I’m not passing other runners. Again, I don’t have a problem with this. It just confirms this app was not designed for people like me.

I am the slowest person in my group, too. By a lot. Last week my average pace according to Strava was 16:24 (it eliminates times when I’m not moving so it gives a slightly different pace than other apps), and the next closest person was a minute and a half faster, and the next closest person was 4.5 minutes faster. The average pace of the fastest woman in the group was 9 minutes faster than mine. 9 minutes! I can’t even run a mile in 9 minutes! I don’t think. Maybe one single mile. I am out of my depth! But still #1 in total running time! Go me! I wonder what the fast woman thinks about having someone like me in the group. She probably doesn’t think about it at all.

I’m not quitting the app or anything, and I’m sticking with the group (getting and giving kudos is kind of nice), but I would not recommend it for a runner who prefers to run their own race, rather than getting caught up in how they compare to others.

PP5M Training: Week 7

Another jumbled-up week, spending Thursday-Sunday trying to cobble together some miles to salvage it.

Monday: OFF
Tuesday: OFF
Wednesday: 4.5 mi, trail/run mix
Thursday: 4.6 mi, trail
Friday: 5.1 mi, trail
Saturday: 4 mi, paved trail, including 35 min tempo run @ 12:33 average pace
Sunday: 10.3 mi, road
Total: 28.5 mi

Yes, I did my speed work and my long run back to back. It wasn’t ideal, but it was what best fit my schedule.

Friday was a really frustrating day for me. I jumped on the Superior Hiking Trail at the Kingsbury Creek trailhead, heading towards town. I was moving along at an ok clip, in spite of the heat, but I ended up losing the SHT and was dumped out into a West Duluth neighborhood. I circled back, and sure enough, at the underpass, the SHT split off from the larger, multi-use trail. I was cranky enough about getting off the trail, but even more annoyed when I saw the vegetation had encroached on the trail and I was going to have to run through long grasses and other plant life. I assumed every tick in the northland would be wriggling into my socks. It was a pretty tough section of the trail, I was hot and crabby, and when I got to a steep uphill section, I threw in the towel, turned around, and headed for the car.

Saturday’s tempo run was supposed to be longer, but I kept lollygagging and I had to cut it short, since I was meeting my family for frozen yogurt (which HIT THE SPOT after that run, let me tell you!) I parked at Brighton Beach and ran the Lakewalk path from there, which was flat enough to not impede my tempo progression. Even though it was only in the 60s, it felt really hot for some reason, and I was glad to have the run over with.

Sunday’s long run actually felt fantastic, save for the first mile or so, which is always slow for me, and the 8th mile, which dragged. My overall pace was 15:51, which was similar to my last double-digit run (apparently I haven’t done a double-digit run since April, oops!), and that route was flat (Park Point + Lakewalk) plus I took a break and had sports drink and candy to refuel. For Sunday’s run, I just had a hand-held with water. It was over 80 degrees and muggy for most of the run, but because I waited til after 5, and it was partly cloudy, the heat was bearable. My back’s a bit sore today, which isn’t surprising.

The 10 mile run will be my longest of the training cycle. It’s twice the distance I’m covering in the race, and since it’s only 2 weeks out, I’m not sure I’ll see too much of a benefit from it. It will be helpful towards my base for my fall training cycle, though. This upcoming week, I’ll be scaling back down a bit, and then the week of the race, I’ll back off to just a few easy runs and a little bit of speedwork. I am really excited for the race, to see what I can do with a full 9 weeks of training and planning behind me.

New Shoes: Mizuno Wave Prophecy 4

I am loath to give free advertising to a product, but I guess since we all do it inadvertently on social media by talking about movies we like, music we listen to, hobbies, food, etc., it doesn’t really matter if I post about some shoes.

This spring, I wrote about problems with my shoes. A reader recommended I contact the manufacturer, Mizuno, to see what they could do, and it turned out the shoes were under warranty. After I got the return approved, I finally got around to mailing them back in. I don’t know why going to the post office is something I put off the way most people put off the dentist, but it is.

I was given a choice of color for the Wave Prophecy 4s (I got such a great deal on the 3s because they were closing out the model, so they didn’t have them in stock), so I chose these:

When I got them, they looked like this:

IMG_20150608_201519260

So, they’re a bit brighter than I thought. I expected more of a minty green. I like them, but I prefer the color in the photo.

When I first started running in them a few weeks ago, my feet cramped a bit during the first few miles, especially on softer trails. Pain like that led me to use inserts in my shoes before, but I knew I’d run in a similar model of shoe without this pain, so I decided to run through it until the shoes were broken in more, and I don’t have the foot pain anymore.

These shoes are really heavy. They weigh 10.2 oz, making them Mizuno’s heaviest shoe (they actually have a shoe that only weighs 2.2 oz. I can’t even fathom that. It would be like wearing a flip-flop.) It doesn’t feel like I’m clomping around with cement shoes or anything like that, but when I switched over from my old shoes, I noticed a difference at first. The extra weight is from the cushion and the shock-absorbing sole. They really do absorb the pounding of the pavement nicely. Sometimes clods of mud or other debris get stuck in the shock-absorbing bottom of the shoe and rattle around a bit, but I have also noticed my feet don’t get as wet or as cold because the bottom of my foot isn’t actually touching the ground.

I don’t have any unusual fit issues with shoes, like extremely high arches, or an uncommon width. I haven’t had my gait analyzed or a professional shoe fitting (I chose these shoes originally because I wanted to see what a $200 shoe felt like, and they were on sale for like $80), so maybe I am completely unaware of some huge issue with the fit of my shoe. That makes this shoe review fairly useless, because I can’t say “Well the toe box is [wide/narrow/long/whatever] and the shoe is totally different from the previous model!” I don’t know, it’s a shoe. There are all these reviews on the shoe’s page where the reviewer said they loved the Prophecy 1 and 2, but the 3 sucked, and now the 4 is great! I don’t really get it. I had a durability issue with the 3, but I don’t notice that the 4 feels any different than the 3. Of course, I didn’t use the shoes back to back and analyze every step.

I am spoiling myself (specifically my feet, shins, and knee) with these shoes, because they are not worth the price to me at this point, but for someone with injury issues, they could definitely be worth the price, because they really do absorb a lot of the pounding that one’s body normally does during running. And I don’t know, maybe the “insulating” effect they have in the winter will make them worth my money sooner rather than later.

Running Through Pain

On Sunday evening, as I was typing up my weekly recap post, I was thinking about all the other posts I had planned for the week. I wanted to chat about Western States, I finally got my replacement shoes, there was plenty to talk about.

Late Sunday night, my 15 year old cat got sick, and early Tuesday morning, he died.

I didn’t run Monday, because I hadn’t slept well and because I didn’t want to leave him alone. I’m glad I didn’t, because it turned out I only had hours left with him. Tuesday I was still exhausted, and I was finding everything tiring. My legs at times felt like they wanted to give out on me. I fully realize there are people who find this excessive grieving for an animal, but it’s how I feel.

I went running Wednesday evening, and every part of me felt heavy. I went slow slow slow slow slow, and I had no drive at all to run faster. I hauled my heavy limbs and heavy chest along as I went. It would have been a good time to have brought headphones, in order to take my mind of the last few days, but I focused my thoughts and for the most part kept from getting too emotional. I did half trails and half roads, running down and back up the trails along Chester Creek, then heading back past the little ski hill (noted for future hill running activities once I am done with this training cycle) and ending up on Kenwood. Parts of the Chester Creek trail are closed due to improvements, but most of the trail remains open.

I hope that heaviness is gone tomorrow, or at least starts to dissipate. I didn’t find running very therapeutic; it felt like a chore that had to be done. I didn’t feel a runner’s high or even enjoy the downhill parts of the run. There were run-able parts of the trail that I walked, because I didn’t feel like picking up the pace. Once I get back on a normal sleeping schedule and my appetite returns, I am sure running won’t feel so awful. And I probably would have felt even worse if I hadn’t gone out and run, if I’d had three days in a row with nothing more physical than a stroll around Target on Tuesday evening, so it’s good I got out there.

I need to choose my routes and my workouts wisely for the next few days, choosing trails or paths that have nice scenery and are gentle on my mind and body, and choosing workouts that don’t push too hard. No speedwork until the leaded feeling leaves my chest and limbs. There’s no value in a half-hearted speed workout, and there’s no point in trying to push aside my feelings and run a harder one anyway. I’m not a world-class athlete, I don’t make my living running races. I don’t need to push myself mentally to complete some difficult workout when I’m sad like this. I know I’ll recover mentally by race day, I just need to give myself time. I still have two weeks and a day until my race, and I’m not going to gain much speed, endurance, or strength in those days, no matter what I do, so I’ll just take things as they come, follow my training plan as best as I can, and trust that the work I’ve put in will get me to the finish line intact.

PP5M Training: Week 6

Tune-up race week!

Monday: 4.6 mi, road
Tuesday: 5.9 mi, trail
Wednesday: 6 mi, paved trail, 9×400 intervals
Thursday: rest
Friday: 0.5 + 3.1 mi, warmup + race, paved trail
Saturday: 3.9 mi, trail
Sunday: 5.6 mi, road
Total: 29.5 mi

This week ended up being a bit of a step-back week, which is fine, since I gave a pretty strong effort for the race. I slept pretty horribly after I came back from the race, as I was physically tired but my mind was racing, no pun intended. It was pretty humid all weekend, so it wasn’t good sleeping weather. I don’t have air conditioning, so all I had to combat the stuffiness was a couple of fans.

Because I hadn’t slept well, and because it was fairly warm (for Duluth) on Saturday, I kept the run short and easy. I brought my hand-held even though I was only going to run for an hour. Most other places in the country, it’s been hot long enough for runners to acclimate a bit, but here in Duluth we haven’t strung together many hot days, so I’m still trying to get used to running in heat and humidity. It was kind of a sluggish run, but I didn’t want to push it.

Sunday, I thought it had cooled off. I almost didn’t work out at all on Sunday because I thought we were going to get significantly more rain than we did. It poured while I was out to a late lunch with family, and it seemed like more bad weather loomed, but it held off long enough that I marshaled my spirits enough to get out there. The sun returned and it ended up being a lot warmer than I thought it would be; the coolness brought by the rain had been short-lived. I didn’t have my hand-held with me because I hadn’t put it in the fridge as I’d thought, but I was still able to push the pace a teeny bit and ended up finally doing a medium-long run under a 15 minute pace (14:58! But still!) despite walking the hills at the beginning to prevent getting overheated.

This was a pretty strong week of training, although it lacked a long run. I didn’t have one prescribed in Hal’s training plan, but since my race was on Friday (technically Saturday, but logged as Friday), I had two post-race days to play with and could have stretched Sunday’s run to 7 or 8 if I’d planned better. I am starting to chip away at my race pace, and my training paces are starting to drop, too. I was right that the interval paces I was naturally hitting indicated I could run a faster 5K. I’m pretty pleased with the progress I’ve made in a short time. It won’t always be that way, of course, but I’ll enjoy the rapid progress that comes with the beginner phase of running while it lasts. Eventually I’ll be working my butt off to improve a PR by mere seconds.

Race Report: Midnight Sun Midnight Run 5K

Official Results:
Time: 34:21
Pace: 11:04
Placing:
Overall: 395/569
(Other results not available)

Watch Results:
Time: 34:24
Pace: 11:04
Distance: 3.10 mi
Heart Rate: N/A

Goals:
A: 35:00
B: 36:00

Food:
What I ate the night before for lunch: Spaghetti and meatballs
What I ate on race morning for dinner: Curried chicken with rice (not the best idea)
What I carried with me: nothing

Gear:
What I wore: Tech t-shirt, running tights
Gadgets: GPS watch

Discussion:
I guess my goals were a little conservative, no? I crushed both of them, and now I’m chastising myself that I didn’t shave off that extra 15 seconds or so that would have gotten me to a sub-11 pace. That’s silly, though. Perhaps if I had not eaten curried chicken at 8:00 PM, I would have found that extra oomph? I think the course was a little short, since I only measured 3.1 miles on my watch, but I think it’s also having some issues.

I did some yoga after I got home from work, to try to loosen up a bit, but I didn’t do much else and kind of sat around watching TV until it was time to get ready to go.

I didn’t want to park in Canal Park, so my plan was to have my husband drop me off. However, bib pickup ended at 11:30, so I couldn’t just roll up with 15 minutes to go. I really should have picked my bib up yesterday afternoon at Duluth Running Co., but I didn’t think about it. I picked up my bib just after 11, and then I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t going to bring my phone or anything else with me, so I wouldn’t have had anything to do for almost an hour. We live 5 minutes away, so we went home. I know that sounds ridiculous, but there wasn’t anything else to do, and I had to pee, so we went home for about 15 minutes.

I got back to Canal Park at about 11:40, and did a short warm-up, just over half a mile. I wanted to do a slightly longer warm-up because there was nothing else to do, but they said there would be a runner’s briefing at 11:50 so I made sure to get back in time. It didn’t matter because I couldn’t hear anything anyway. Everyone lined up at the start behind Endion Station, and I made sure I was pretty far toward the back. They said go, we shuffled forward, and then immediately ended up on rocks/gravel and a bunch of people started walking. So I dodged them, zipping along, passing people left and right. My concerns about the congestion on the course were valid.

Since runners were going both ways on the course, we were told repeatedly to stay to the right of the path. Some people ended up on the boardwalk, but I tried to stay off it. It was hard to get around people as many were walking two or three abreast, which is annoying in a road race, but extremely frustrating on a narrow trail. At one point, a woman made a move at the same time, and we almost bumped into each other. We ended up befriending each other and ran most of the way together, dodging walkers on the hills (THANK YOU, HILL WORKOUTS), sneaking our way around others when we saw a gap in the oncoming runners. The course hit both major hills on the Lakewalk (in Leif Erickson park) both ways, so there was plenty of hill passing going on. The only good thing about getting hung up behind walkers in the narrow parts of the trail was that it forced me to moderate my pace, because my legs wanted to fly.

I started to fade in the last 0.75 miles because I felt a little nauseated. Well, not really, but I just had kind of an icky feeling in my esophagus, and that made me worry I was going to hurl yellow curry all over the pavement. I lost the woman I was running with, cheering her on to go ahead of me, but I hung on and I had one hell of a kick at the end. The last 0.2 mi I turned on the jets and ended up flying through the chute feeling strong. I passed a couple people at the end, pleased that I had finished strong, which is always one of my non-time goals.

I felt pretty great afterward too, grinning like crazy after that great finish and the time on my watch. (There wasn’t a time clock at the start or finish, so I couldn’t tell when I crossed the start or the finish.) I got my shirt and didn’t feel like waiting in line for food or drinks, so I just went to find my husband. Once I sat down in the car and we started driving, I started to feel a little bit icky, and my face was a cherry red tomato, but I just stuck my head out the window like a golden retriever and bore it for the short drive.

I am really, really excited with these results. This is a huge confidence builder for me going into the 5 miler next month, and it’s also a sign that my training is effective. If I can have a strong 5 mile race and avoid too great of a drop-off in pace, I will feel a lot better about whatever fall race I decide to do. As long as I can increase my mileage safely and without getting too worn down, I should be in a good spot to run a nice long race in the fall.

To bring myself back to earth a bit, I’m just going to remember that the Western States runners are going to run 33 times the distance I just ran, and a large portion of them will do it at a faster overall pace than I just ran. I’ll be following along!

Midnight Sun Midnight Run 5K Goals

Today’s the day! I’ve got the Midnight Sun Midnight Run 5K coming up at 11:59 PM! I am excited, I feel ready for this race, physically. I took yesterday off from running after a nice speedwork session on Wednesday (9×400: 10:49, 10:39, 10:50, 10:46, 10:46, 10:42, 11:47 due to an intersection I think, 10:54, 10:58), and ate a bunch of food.

This isn’t my goal race, of course, but I’d like to build some confidence going into the PP5M, to really feel like my training has paid off and to feel I’ve improved. The main thing I’m worried about is the time of day. Will I feel sluggish? Or will I be able to shake off any tiredness? I’m probably going to grab a latte in the late afternoon/early evening, just to give myself an extra little perk up.

I’m a little worried about pacing, because my heart rate monitor isn’t working and it will be harder to see my watch. I did re-set it so that the “light” button is in toggle mode. I’ll probably just leave it on the whole race so I can glance at it as needed. I hope I don’t end up eating pavement as a result; tripping and falling is a little bit of a concern, too, but I do know the Lakewalk is well-illuminated at night.

I don’t want to go out too fast, but I do also want to challenge myself and push myself harder this race. There’s no sun to heat me up like last time, and I was just over 36 minutes that time. The evening caffeine boost plus a longer warm up plus a cool lake breeze might be a chance for a big PR for me. I know I’m supposed to downplay my hopes for the race and just smile humbly after the fact if I do well, but I don’t think that will work when I post my goals.

A Standard: 35:00
B Standard: 36:00

Yep. Both are below my current PR. Both are achievable for me, if I can dig deep and I don’t run into any abnormal issues (falling, coming down with a cold somehow between now and the race, getting lost on a completely well-marked trail). I do wonder if this race is going to be a little more crowded than I’d like, but I think I can fight off the crowds if I need to, and blame them for my abject failure if I can’t.