Priorities

I know that I complain a lot about being slow, and complaining is bad. However, being slow is a huge problem for me right now, logistically speaking.

I am not the best time manager, even in my most motivated periods. My attention span is pretty short, which is probably part of the reason I’m so bored on the treadmill. It also means I’m not very productive. I am trying to balance school, work, running, and slacking off watching television and farting around online. We’re also going through a cold snap up here (though it’s been much better overall than last winter, when the cold snap was approximately 6 months long!!), and I am still getting home when it’s dark out. Cold weather and darkness are two major motivation killers for me.

To relate this to running, I’m struggling with two major problems. On any given day, I either feel like I don’t have enough time to get in a significant run, or I run when I should be doing other things. Sometimes both!

Wednesday I got home around 6, knew I wanted to get a workout in, but also knew that I had a lab report I really needed to finish start. Ahem. Instead of starting in on one or the other, I watched an episode of Gilmore Girls and played a computer game to wind down. Oops. While vegging out, I thought about whether or not I could really get in a run (on the treadmill, of course). I really should have done an hour or so, and I realized I just didn’t have time to do that. For most people, an hour would be a nice medium-length run. With my current running strategy, it’s not even 4 miles. It’s hard to justify a shorter workout, because it seems so stupid to log a 1.8 mile run or whatever a half an hour workout ends up being. Since I had done another one of my patented double rest days (Sunday and Monday), I couldn’t skip another run without feeling a lot of feelings, so I convinced myself to do 35 minutes and then dive into my homework. On the plus side, I did get in over 2 miles, because I was able to hit a 15:39 average pace. (All my whining last week seems to have been premature.) Someday I would like a 30-minute workout to cover more than 3 miles. I dream big.

Sunday I skipped running altogether, which I regret, because I am not sure if I’ll be able to get outside this weekend. The high this Saturday is 2F, so I will not be going outside. Anyway, I also regret it because I didn’t work or do homework in place of running, so I might as well have gone out. Running outside takes up even more time than the treadmill. First, I have to get the motivation to get outside. That’s difficult, even when I’m strapped into my running shoes and ready to go. If I decide to go on a trail run, I have to drive there, which adds extra time. My outdoor workouts usually take longer, since I go farther and I also have terrain and elevation changes that slow me down. And then there’s the inevitable stop for a latte afterward, and then I get home and have the chills and don’t feel like doing anything and I feel tired.

I have to make better use of my time. There’s still going to be time in the day for watching TV, surfing the net, and other mindless activities. I just need to cut down on that time in order to get my work hours in, my homework done, and my running done. That means:

1. Accepting shorter runs might be all I can squeeze in, and running them without feeling like I haven’t done enough. Something is better than nothing.
2. Running on the treadmill even if I can run outside, if it’s cold and I’ve got a lot of work to do. I can’t risk that chilly, tired feeling afterward preventing me from getting any real work done.
3. Taking extra rest days if I need to get other stuff done. If I’m running instead of working, I’m going to miss that on my paycheck. If I’m scrambling to get homework done, stressed out and sleeping less, I’m not taking care of myself mentally or physically.
4. Cutting down the amount of time I spend gearing up to work out. I need to get into my spandex and get downstairs or outside, rather than toodling around wasting time trying to mentally prepare myself.

It’ll be warm soon, lighter out later, and hockey season will end, so I’ll have more time and fewer complications soon, but there could be six more weeks of crummy temperatures and there will be 12 more weeks of homework, so there won’t magically be hours and hours of free time on the horizon. Best to find some discipline and act like a grown up.

Trail Review: Minnesota Point (Winter)

I really, really love this trail, but it does have some drawbacks.

This is not one of the drawbacks.

The Minnesota Point trail is a mix of access road, single-track, and wider trails that extend to the very tip of the spit. It’s somewhere between 4 and 4.6 miles, depending on which route you take. I took a longer way out than I did back, hugging the edge of the Superior Bay side, and then cutting back in at Point Zero Lighthouse. The ruin of the lighthouse actually once stood at the tip of the spit, but sand deposits from the lake changed the location of the harbor entry. I saw it on an episode of Lost Duluth on public television last summer, which was what prompted me to head out there in the first place.

The major drawback to the trail is the terrain. Much of it is sand. Running in sand is annoying. I am sure that it was a good strength workout for my legs, or something, but it is still incredibly annoying. I had hoped since it was winter, the sand would be compacted and covered in a bit of snow, but that was not the case.

All the snow had blown off the trail, I think. That’s the other drawback to the trail in winter. The vicious wind. At the beginning of the run, I was questioning if I was appropriately dressed, and if I had made a horrible mistake. One side of my body was being pummeled. The trail heads into the woods early on into the run, so I was somewhat shielded, but it was whistling and howling above me through the treetops, which made me imagine it was colder than it was.

Those are the only two drawbacks to the trail (in winter). The rest is beautiful. There are a few small “mounds” but no great changes in elevation, the sand was a little bit compacted so it was easier to run in than it is during warmer temperatures, and the scenery is amazing. Some of the trail is in the trees, other parts along the shoreline, and the end of it is…

…even better in person. The only downside is having to look at Wisconsin sometimes.

It’s still better in the summer (despite the sand), because the sound of the waves against the shore is heavenly, but it is a great place for a hike or a run. It is not a great place for speedwork or tempo runs. I don’t know what the trail grooming is like if there is snow, I’ll try to get out there when/if it snows a bit more to see. The trail, other than the sand, is not difficult; there aren’t trees or boulders or other obstacles. In a few spots the trail gets a little overgrown, but it’s not too hard to push a few branches out of the way.

A great long run would be an out-and-back of the entire strip of land, from the lift bridge to the tip and back again. I have run from the entrance to the park to the lift bridge and back (which is about 7.5 mi) but I’ve never put the two together. Sounds like a bucket list item for a time with warmer temps and a better training base.

Patience

Ah, I love this song. I wish Axl wasn’t old and fat with a ruined voice. I saw him perform Welcome to the Jungle a few months ago on some show and he was out of breath and horrible.

Out of breath and horrible? Sounds like me.

I took both Monday and Tuesday as rest days this week. It was unplanned, but probably for the best. I hadn’t taken a rest day since the Friday I fell down the stairs, in an effort to turn Mondays into my scheduled rest day for the rest of the semester. I don’t plan on taking 9 days between rest days in the future. Tuesday I had too much homework to take an hour or so to work out. That was unfortunate because I like to work out the day after a rest day.

I like to work out the day after the rest day because I have more energy and I always expect to be about a minute faster than the dragging workout I suffer through right before the rest day. I don’t know why I expect it because it’s never true, but hope springs eternal.

Until recently, when I ran, I expected to get better every time I ran. I expected to “PR” each route every time I ran it. My logic was: I’m so slow and out of shape, every workout should come with fitness gains because my body isn’t used to it. This was obviously based on nothing. It also led to an ineffective way of training. My “easy” days were shorter distances and flatter routes. My “hard” days were longer distances and hillier routes. The effort level was the same: try to be faster than the last time out on the course. This doesn’t mean I was giving 100% effort on every run. I don’t think I’ve ever given 100% effort ever during an athletic activity, except when I was on a swim team. I gave 100% effort at meets, or at least 90%. That was long ago and far away.

Since I’m training based on my heart rate, I’m giving a similar effort (from a cardiovascular perspective) each run, so that hasn’t changed. However, the pace I can maintain at that heart rate varies from day to day, so some days are faster than others, but all days are slower than what I am capable of achieving.

At first, I made peace with this. Now I’m creeping back into that same old mindset again. I expect to be faster at the same heart rate. I expect that I should be starting to see some 15:xx times at the same heart rate. I did, finally, on Thursday (15:44 average pace for 45 minutes on the treadmill), but I was expecting it on Wednesday (which is stupid because I had a 16:02 average pace for an hour, so that’s still an improvement) and was bummed when I couldn’t get it.

I did have a mini-mental breakthrough when I reminded myself that on the treadmill, I can only adjust my pace in discrete intervals. When I bump up the pace one increment, from say 3.7 mph to 3.8 mph, that is an increase in pace of 26 seconds. A bump from 5 mph to 5.1 mph is only 14 seconds, and from 6 mph to 6.1 is only 10 seconds. A 26-second increase in pace is significant. Maybe I’m capable of maintaining 142 bpm at 3.85 mph; I can’t do that on the treadmill. What I can do is run a longer period at 3.9 before bumping it down to 3.8, but every time I hit the decrease pace button, it feels like a defeat.

That was a lot of feelings and frustration for one post, but translating those feelings and frustrations into words makes things more clear and more logical to me, and can help me move beyond them. I should probably bookmark this post for myself and revisit it from time to time when I’m getting impatient with my training plans. Alternatively, I can revisit GNR when I’m getting impatient and get the same message as this post. Woman, take it slow and it’ll work itself out fine.

Trail Review: Guardrail at Hartley Nature Center (Winter)

I gave the Guardrail another shot on Saturday, after my first whack at it left me a bit puzzled. This time I didn’t wander off the trail onto Blue Pots, which, it turns out, dumped me off on the trail headed in the direction I’d already traversed when I ran on it before.

Guardrail is a single-track, two-way, packed and groomed, multi-use, technical trail at Hartley Nature Center in Duluth. It winds its way through the woods like the switchbacks on Berthoud Pass in Colorado. Whoever designed this path made the most of the space available in the park, which I appreciate.

Since I am a little bit lazy, I don’t even mind stepping off the trail for the occasional cyclist. All of the cyclists I’ve encountered have been friendly and don’t come whipping around corners out of nowhere, so I am more than happy to accommodate them. I was lucky that most of them were coming from the opposite direction, so I could see them coming and pick a spot to let them pass. I hope in the summer there isn’t a significant uptick in bike traffic on the trail, but if I extrapolate my experiences last fall at Hartley (on different trails), that would seem unlikely.

The trail is accessible by taking the Old Hartley Road Trail to Tunnel Trail to Fisherman or Rhamnus. I ended up getting on the trail via Fisherman and getting off again at Rhamnus, which is the clockwise version of the loop.

Let me take a moment to mention how much I love the Tunnel Trail.

I could run that forever.

I enjoyed the twists and turns of Guardrail, even though it felt at times like it was a net uphill course, which it obviously can’t be since it’s a loop. What goes up, must come down. There were exposed icy patches on some of the steeper parts of the trail, not all of which were immediately visible, and so I was as conservative on the descent as I was on the ascent. I may or may not have briefly thrown out my heart rate training restrictions to fly across a few of the more gentle declines. They were just too good.

The trail, as I took it, ended up being about 4.9 miles, which makes it a nice medium (for me) run. The other trail I’ve run at Hartley, Root Canal, is a bit shorter, so now I have a few options at the same park. I can also combine Root Canal and Guardrail for a long run, something I’m looking forward to as I gradually increase my mileage.

Overall, this trail is one of my favorites within the city limits, with lots of access points, including Howard Gnesen Rd, Marshall St., and North Road, so it’s not necessary to drive all the way to Hartley if there’s a closer trail spur. I almost ended up living out this way, as I looked at a house to rent nearby. The house ended up being small, with an incredibly weird layout, and a trompe l’oeil “basketball court” scene in the basement, and I am glad I didn’t end up there, but I suppose a small consolation would have been easy trail access.

On The Tundra

It was a little bit colder yesterday than I realized, until I was out on the street for a run.

First of all, the cold weather makes it nearly impossible to keep my heart rate down. If it’s in the 30s, or even the 20s with no wind (a rarity around here), it’s only a problem at the beginning, but it was down in the teens yesterday and felt a lot worse than that, and at 19:xx paces I was still hovering above 142 bpm for the first half a mile or more. This training is really not ideal for cold weather. A blog I read, Miss Zippy, had the same trouble keeping her heart rate down in the cold and has had to give up on MAF training for this training cycle. I laughed because she lives in Baltimore and blamed the “very cold temperatures” for her heart rate issues. I find it funny when the 20s or 30s are called “extremely cold,” unless we’re talking about 20 or 30 Kelvin, in which case, yes.

A couple miles in, I was up near the UMD campus, crawling along the gradual but interminable incline along College Ave between Woodland and Junction, trudging pathetically along at a 17:xx pace, my path was crossed by a pack of actual fast runners. There were probably 6 or 7 of them, all tall, leggy, and graceful, all at the same pace, all making that pace look effortless even though it’s probably a pace I could only dream of. I felt like a walrus watching a pack of caribou prance by.

I was under-dressed for the weather and for the pace I was forced to take, but it took me awhile to realize that. I didn’t realize that running so slowly, keeping my heart rate low, would keep my body from warming itself up as I went along. I was 2 or so miles into the run when I realized I wasn’t warming up. The skin on my face, forearms and thighs was stiffening up, which indicated I’d already gotten a bit of frostbite. It’s fine to start out cold, I usually do, but by that point I should have been warmer. I was still just under 2 miles from home, and I realized I was facing another 25-30 minutes outside if I kept following the heart rate restriction.

With 1.5 miles to go, I cheated. I turned on the jets and let my heart rate skyrocket into the 170s or 180s and zoomed (for me) the rest of the way home.

Splits:
17:35
18:42
15:59
11:31

Oops. Also, FYI, I’m not really that fast, it was all downhill. It did feel amazing to run “fast” for me again, and I did start to warm up a bit as I charged along. I still ended up having to take a shower to warm up, which was probably not very good for the affected skin. It all turned bright red and started to itch. I need to be more careful.

I think kicking it into high gear at the end of a run when I’m cold and haven’t run fast in a long time as a sign that this slow aerobic training I’m doing is working, or at least is not detrimental. I also think I need to check the weather report before I go out, and I need to cover my legs better to block the wind. (I usually cover my arms better, with 2 layers of long sleeves.) I also need to stop writing this post and get dressed for today’s run.

Two A Days

Hahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahhaahahahahahahah!

Yes, even thinking of doing actual two-a-day runs is hilarious. I didn’t. What I did do is meet up with a friend during my break between classes and take her dog for a walk. I wore my watch but not my heart rate monitor, as that would have been both ridiculous and obsessive. We went for a loop and a half walk around Bagley Nature Area, which was about 2.5 miles. Loki found some squirrels in a tree and almost lost his mind over them.

I ended up getting my pants soaked with snow and my friend drove me back home so I could change before I went back to class. I also ended up getting insanely sweaty because I wore my winter coat, which was a dumb idea. I’m fairly certain I exceeded my heart rate targets going up that stupid hill, but I’m also confident I stayed well below the target most of the rest of the walk.

After I got home for good, I made a poor but tasty choice for a late lunch (I eat at weird times): a bagel and cream cheese (not the poor choice) and the rest of the pulled beef I’d had for dinner a few nights ago. It was glorious and delicious and I felt gross the whole half hour I spent on the treadmill an hour or so later. Yet another slow and demoralizing session on the treadmill. I need to make better food choices, I guess.

While I think two-a-days for someone like me are ridiculous, I did like making use of my break to do something outside. It’s something I can consider in the future: stop by my car, drop off my backpack, and run for an hour between classes. So I’m sweaty in class later, no big deal. It’s an opportunity to get a run in before it gets dark, and avoid the treadmill for another day. I have to find a way to avoid kicking up snow behind me and soaking my pant legs.

Arrowhead 135

The craziest ultramarathon no one is writing about is winding its way down today, almost 60 hours after its start (as of the timing of this post). The Arrowhead 135 is a biking/skiing/running race along the Arrowhead State Trail, a snowmobile trail from International Falls, MN to Tower, MN. When I am listening to the radio in the morning and they are giving the current temperatures in the region, the coldest temperature is almost always in Tower. And it’s probably that even colder than that in International Falls, but it’s outside of the broadcasting area. So that tells you something about this race. This year it was positively tropical, about 50 degrees warmer this year than last year. And the race still happened. Think about that.

There’s almost no coverage of this race on any of the normal running sites I read (which are trail/ultra sites, so I expected to see something), and I’m not sure why. There aren’t any big names running in this race, of course, so that’s one reason. It’s also not solely a running race, so maybe that plays into the lack of coverage by running sites? A large proportion of those completing the race are runners, so I don’t see that as an explanation.

I don’t know why every ultrarunner ever doesn’t do this race. Look at the finisher’s award:

This photo is from the Arrowhead Ultra Facebook page.

And the race shirt is so metal I can’t stand it.

This photo is from the Arrowhead Ultra Facebook page.

Sick. This race is on my bucket list. Eventually. Because remember, one day I am going to be a fast, strong runner who will be able to complete races like this. I don’t think I could handle it in the typical conditions, but I suppose I could just keep entering and DNSing until another winter like this one came along. (No, I would not do that, it would be really obnoxious to take someone else’s spot.) Or I could learn to suck it up.

This year’s running winner completed the race in 34 hours and 20 minutes, which was a new course record. He has a blog and I hope he’ll do a race report I can link to. It’s in Swedish but with Google translate I am sure we can get the gist of it. He also finished ahead of 22 bikers (23, probably, there is one guy still on the course) and all of the cross-country skiers (only 2 skiers have finished at this point, one is still out on the course, and the fourth skier dropped. I think the conditions are kinda crappy for them.)

This race isn’t like most ultramarathons I’ve read about (I like to read race recaps!) Most ultras are, of course, not held in sub-zero conditions. No pacers or crews are allowed in this race, and there are only 3 checkpoints. There aren’t aid stations full of M&Ms and salted potatoes every 7-10 miles. Competitors are also required to carry a whole bunch of stuff, although that is not unique to this race, I think most multi-day races make runners carry certain types of gear. Here is the gear list, straight from the race’s website:

  • Minus-20F degrees sleeping bag or colder rating. Colder than -20F almost all previous races. If you skimp here you are foolish. And we will not allow you to skimp. So do not skimp. Fool. 2011 it was -42F on trail.
  • Insulated sleeping pad.
  • Bivy sack or tent (space blankets/tarps do not count).
  • Firestarter (matches or lighter).
  • Stove.
  • 8 fl. oz. fuel at ALL times (either gas, alcohol or 2 canisters of propane/butane 100 g. each or 12 Esbit tablets).
  • Pot (min. volume is 1 pint)
  • 2-qt (64 fl. oz.) or just under 2 litres, insulated water container. (Yes, Camelbacks count)
  • Headlamp or flashlight. Suggest minimum ~100 lumen good for 12 hours/bike or 20 hours on ski/foot. Bring a spare, the cold eats batteries.
  • Flashing red LED lights, both on front and back of sled or bike (or on backpack if skier). Everyone have at least 10 square inches of reflective material on front and back of the person for this race. Two lights total are required, one on the front of the bike, sled or racer (runner or skier with backpack), one on the back of the bike, sled or racer (runner or skier with backpack). Each red blinky light must be easily visible, don’t skimp here and buy a cheap blinky that we can’t see.. Keep ON ALL THE TIME. HIGHLY IMPORTANT….THIS MAY WELL PREVENT YOU FROM BEING HOOD ORNAMENT ON LARGE FAST-MOVING SNOWMACHINEs.
  • Whistle on string around neck to call for help, because your mouth is too numb to yell.
  • 1-day food ALL times (3000 calories) (tip: pound of butter or jar of peanut bar 3200 calories).
  • You will be given 2 bibs. We must be able to see your bib number on the front of your body (outer layer) at all times!!! Post the 2nd bib where it is easily visible.

Basically this is telling me I will die on this course, should I attempt to run it. And I will die alone, because the race directors want to “maximize solitude.” But what a way to go. Trampled by a moose. Eaten by a wolf. Freezing to death in a stoic, dignified pose. Flattened by a rogue snowmobiler. Murdered by Canadian drug lords. Sign me up.