running

We’re Not Worthy!

I had a decent (but slow) trail run today (2 full loops of Bagley Nature Center and one short loop for a little over 4 miles), and while I was running these slow miles, I was once again wondering how I am ever going to complete a marathon before the cutoff. I mean, really, I know I could, because I could just walk the whole way and probably do it in fewer than 7 hours. Maybe. Not at the pace I was going today, but of course that was through snow. I’m not sure if that made enough difference though. We’ll see.

I read a lot of random message boards, social media, and articles about running, especially those that are long-distance running-related, and it seems like there’s a weird attitude about marathons and those who run them. Specifically, there’s an attitude that everyone and their mother runs marathons and everyone and their mother shouldn’t be. I do think it’s stupid to make a goal of running a single marathon just to check it off a bucket list, but I don’t think it’s stupid for more people to get interested in a sports. There’s also a weird attitude about slow people, like slow people don’t belong on the course. This attitude seems to come from people whose times I could only dream of, but who are solid middle-of-the-packers. Slow runners don’t belong in the first corral or at the front of the starting line of a race, no. Slow runners need to watch where they’re running and not clog up the course, but so do medium runners and fast runners. All runners need to be respectful of others on the course, but it’s usually the slow runners who take the heat for making mistakes or being rude on a course.

I also see people question individuals who are running marathons, wondering why they would want to. Why not run a 5K? Why not start out with a little bitty race and leave the big marathons to those of us who were running marathons before it was cool (aka they’ve run like four of them)? Maybe I’m projecting a little. I can’t answer this question on behalf of all runners, but I can answer it for myself.

I’m not interested in training for a 5K right now. I am signed up for one, but that’s really just a training run and a chance to figure out how to behave at a race before I get lost or miss the bus or show up late for a marathon. I just don’t see the point of training for a 5K as a goal race when I am so slow. Most people could just drop by a 5K on the day of, wearing jeans and flip-flops, and throw down a better time than I could. Well, maybe not most people, but enough that I find it embarrassing. Plus I don’t have any interest in doing speed work and track workouts in the middle of winter. I also want to get into trail and ultra running once my endurance and speed have improved, so training for a 5K isn’t going to do much good for me. I’d rather race through the woods for 12 hours than get stampeded by a bunch of zippy 5Kers.

I’m still not sure I want to run a marathon yet. I’m not sure I’m fast enough to complete the training without it completely taking over my life. Obviously I am one week in and I am still running based off my goal heart rate of 142 bpm, so I am not sure where I’m really at. My plan right now is to continue with the heart rate training restriction until Week 6 of the marathon training plan (so the week of March 23rd), when the training plan has its first medium run as well as its first planned hill workout. I do think the training has been working, as I didn’t have such a heck of a time getting up the large hill at Bagley without my heart rate shooting through the ceiling, but I have decided it’s not going to work very well for this training cycle. I’m still going to keep 142 bpm as a goal heart rate for any “easy” run, but I’m going to have to abandon that pace for medium runs and tougher runs.

Maybe someday I’ll be able to do an entire training cycle with heart rate training, but as of now, these sad 17:xx paces aren’t going to cut it. I suppose if I see some significant improvements in the paces I can achieve once the snow is gone and the weather warms up a bit (and I mean to the 30s and low 40s, I’m managing my expectations) maybe I can revisit that plan, but I don’t anticipate becoming a (relative) speed demon just because the windchill isn’t torturous.

No matter what I decide to do, I would like to extend both of my middle fingers to anyone who looks down on slow runners. We’re all slow relative to someone else.

Week 1 Update

I’m mostly through my first week of “marathon” “training,” which actually feels like “slightly shorter than a normal week” “training.” I had to take an unexpected rest day on Thursday when I came home from work at 6:00, took my coat off, and realized it was really cold in my house. 55 degrees, in fact. The furnace blower had gone out, and I had to wait to get that fixed, then wait for the house to warm up again. I huddled under the covers with my cats and the heated mattress pad on while I waited for the house to heat up, dressed in my workout clothes, planning to take advantage of the slightly cooler house so I didn’t have to turn a fan on. Unfortunately, being cold basically all day (since it barely got above 0) left me sleepy, and I decided to skip the run.

Yesterday I forced myself to run outside since it was in the teens and not too windy. Since it snowed, the sidewalks were mostly horrible. I wore my shoe chains in order to give myself some traction, but it was an unpleasant run. My legs were burning from the effort of running in the new snow, although it’s still preferable to running in sand! I ended up with all 4 (well, 3.93) miles in the 17:XX pace (actually no, the final 0.93 miles were at an 18:26 pace, ew), which was disappointing, especially since I didn’t hit my heart rate target (average BPM was at 147). Overall I was just thrilled to be running outside rather than on the treadmill. I keep looking at the 10 day forecast and it only looks like a few more terrible days are in the forecast… unless there are some lurking just over the horizon. Some mid-40s temps by mid-March would be glorious, especially after last March was still so bitterly cold.

On another note, I need to buy a new winter coat because my current one is about 10-11 years old, is dirty, and the zipper is wearing out at the bottom. They are a lot more expensive than I thought, even on end-of-season clearance (this is what happens when one goes a decade between coat purchases), which is annoying, because there are a couple of running accessories I want (a hydration vest, a new top layer for running outside in cold weather that actually has ZIPPERED POCKETS, and a new sports bra) and those will have to wait. Unless I end up with a teeny tiny tax return, in which case the coat will have to wait, too. I have a backup coat somewhere that’s even older than my current coat; it is orange and I won it at the all-night party after graduation. It’s a nice coat but is also kind of dingy. With all the salt and sand and dirty slush around, it’s hard to avoid. Here’s hoping I only have another month where a winter coat is required!

The Best-Laid Plans

Today I begin marathon training.

There I go, throwing out the gauntlet. Using the m-word. I’m not sure if I’m actually going to run a marathon, but I’m going to start a marathon training cycle. Last year I had planned to run Grandma’s Marathon and had signed up for the free training emails. I had a strange, minor injury to my hip that wouldn’t go away and so I scrapped the idea. Plus I wasn’t really that dedicated to begin with. I saved the training emails for future use, and today’s the day to start the 18-week plan in order to sync the plan up with the race date (June 20th). So, I’m diving in with a 2 mile run this evening, as indicated on the plan. (Don’t worry, I had an unplanned rest day on Saturday because I felt gross.)

Why train for a marathon if I’m not sure I’m going to run it? I don’t know. It’s something to do. I do want to run marathons in the future, so I do want to give a training cycle a try. I’m just not sure I’ll be able to dedicate enough time to the long runs, due to homework. It will be warmer and lighter out later by the time many of those long runs come along, but I’ll also be in the thick of exams, projects, and general fatigue from yet another grinding semester as an engineering student, so I am going to have to play it by ear.

I have given myself til March 31st to decide if I’m going to enter, as the entry fee increases again on April 1st. I might have to extend that date and just eat the higher entrance fee, because the training time commitment increases quite a bit in the middle weeks of the program. I will have to see how the first 6 weeks go and how my body and my schedule handle the increased mileage.

A prescribed two mile run sounds like a great end to my day… at 8 pm. Today is the first day of the rest of my semester, I guess.

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.