running

PP5M Training: Week 8

Since I counted the weeks wrong and started my 8 week training program a week too soon, this week was kind of… strange.

Monday: 5.2 mi, road
Tuesday: 6.7 mi, trails, Hartley Nature Center
Wednesday: 4.5 mi, tempo, 3.5 @ 12:30 avg pace
Thursday: rest
Friday: 6 mi, road
Saturday: 6.7 mi, training, Superior Hiking Trail
Sunday: 5.2 mi, road
Total: 33.4 mi

That’s my highest mileage week for this training cycle. I realized that on Sunday and decided not to run the 8 miles I’d planned. I want my legs to be fresh on Friday.

My running watch, a Suunto Ambit 2R, is really sucking. I haven’t been able to use the heart rate monitor for a few weeks because it connects but does not display or record a heart rate, no matter how good of a connection I get. I wonder if the battery is dead, or if there’s some other problem. I’ve been too lazy to check.

But now I do need to contact the company because the watch still charges (thank goodness) but the computer doesn’t recognize the device, or if it does, the download fails. This happens in all my USB ports on my home and work computers so it is clearly an issue with either the watch or the cord. I have only had this watch for 6 months, so it’s still under warranty, and there’s no reason it should be failing. It doesn’t charge with a micro USB cord, so I can’t just swap in a different charger.

This week of training was kind of weird, since I was just winging it. I didn’t do a long run, but I did 3 runs of six or so miles, so I don’t think I needed a long run. I got speedwork and trails in, and all the runs felt decent-to-good. I am pumped for the race (except I think it’ll be hot), and plan to take it easy in the days leading up to it.

On Speed

Yesterday I enjoyed a well-deserved rest day after a long streak of running, ending with back to back speed days, a big mistake that I got away with, at least so far.

I ran 8 days in a row again, in order to get back on track with my usual Thursday rest day. 8 days in a row isn’t that big of a deal, especially since most of my runs are easy, but because of my weird schedule last week and a mistake on Tuesday, I ended up doing three speed workouts in the span of 5 days. Oops.

I guess I can’t say Tuesday’s hard workout was a mistake. I just let myself get caught up in the moment. I had a terrible start. I was out on the Hartley Nature Center trails, without any bug spray on, and I spent the first mile obsessing over every last hint of a possible mosquito proboscis piercing my skin, stopping and slapping at my legs, arms, and back as though I was Nancy at the end of The Craft. I didn’t stop obsessing over bugs until I was like 3 miles in. I wanted to quit several times because I was so frustrated by the mosquitoes, the bites I’d already gotten that were itching like mad, and the energy I’d expended flailing my limbs. I kept thinking “Ok, that mile was faster than the last one” and they kept getting slower and slower. I wanted to finish under 2 hours, so I started to speed up once I passed the biggest climbs, and I ended up doing a “fast finish” workout, with the last 2/3 of a mile ramped up to a 12:46 pace, which is fast for me for any non-speed workout but is especially fast for a trail workout.

I felt fine on Wednesday and did my tempo run on the “northern” Lakewalk. I did a 3.5 mile tempo (well, basically progression) run, starting at 14:00 (or thereabouts) and ending at 11:00, for an overall pace of 12:30. Pacing-wise, I did ok, with a gradual upward progression in pace (on the graph, I mean, obviously in time it was a downward progression) and occasional spikes or dips. I still end up overcompensating one way or another when I’m trying to hit a certain pace. I’ll speed up, my watch won’t have caught up, and I’ll suddenly be :30 to 1:00 above the pace I want to hit, then I’ll back off and end up backing off way too much. It’s annoying.

I can’t do that again, though, or I’ll wear myself out. My sleep schedule has been off lately, and I’m hoping to get it back on track this weekend. I’m 8 days out from my goal race, and I’d like to be fresh and well-rested when it comes around.

I read a blog post about speed today from Jim at 50 After 40, a straightforward site written by a pretty fast guy. He wrote about the “speed ceiling,” and how we don’t all have the potential to run elite level times, no matter how much we train and how hard we try. I really hope my “speed ceiling” is a lot higher than my current level. I realize certain achievements are unobtainable, both because I just don’t have the natural talent and because I don’t have the drive and ambition to really dig deep, but I’d like to think I can graduate from the back of the pack in a few years. With patience, luck, and hard work, I think it’s possible!

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.