running

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.

Ups and Downs

Friday was an unexpected rest day.

Now that school is in session, my planned rest day is Monday. I have class starting at 9 am and don’t get home til 8 pm, so it’s not a day conducive to working out. I don’t like the situation because I like having the flexibility to slack off when I feel like it, rather than on a schedule, but I guess I’ll have to take two rest days in a week if that comes up.

Friday was an unexpected rest day because I went out to start my car to let it de-ice a bit and fell down the four concrete steps from the door to my yard. I didn’t realize that the stoop would be icy under the awning and stepped out confidently into the warm air, only to completely lose my balance on the invisible coat of ice, tumbling down the stairs. I actually rolled down them, rather than sliding like I have in other stair-related incidents in my life. I kind of wish I had a video of it because I am sure I looked ridiculous. I wasn’t hurt that badly (just some bruises) but I had some stiffness in my back (which could have been from sit-ups from Thursday) and some random twinges, so I chose to take the day off.

Saturday I felt good, apart from the bruise, and it was a beautiful day (any warm day in winter is beautiful, even if it is cloudy), so I drove to Hartley Nature Center. There’s a trail map here. I enjoyed running there last fall, although the trails I typically ran on are groomed for classic cross-country skiing, so I chose to stay off them. I tried out a new trail, the Guardrail, which is not shown on the trail map I just linked to. I should probably look around the interpretive center and see if there’s a better map, but I spend most of my time on the Guardrail trail wondering if it was a loop, an out-and-back, or part of a larger trail. I wondered if I was actually going around in circles or possibly getting farther and farther away from the nature center. It turned out I was not, but it was a bit nerve-wracking. I ended up running just under five miles, a lot of it at a pretty slow pace. My GPS was acting kind of funky and giving me 19:xx paces when I was flying down a hill and quicker than expected paces when I was walking, so I was having trouble gauging how things were going. I was also fairly cautious because the last thing I wanted to do was fall again, especially if I fell on my already-wounded right side.

The Guardrail trail is actually pretty nice and I would like to run it again soon. I planned to do a full trail review but I’ve already forgotten my thoughts about the trail.

Sunday I was really struggling to get moving. I got up, had a bagel and cream cheese, and got dressed in my running clothes, but I couldn’t get my butt out the door. I kept stalling. I was having an “I hate being slow” moment. Even a few miles at my sloth-like pace ends up being a major commitment. There’s no such thing as a “short” run for me, time-wise. I can’t fit a run in at lunch or between classes; it’s not worth the hassle for a measly 1.5 miles. I want to be at a point where I can put in 3-4 miles and have it be over like *that*. That is a long way off.

I finally got off my butt and headed out, running along Skyline to Chester Creek Trail. This stretch of Skyline Drive has some of the best views (I should have brought my phone to snap a pic or two), but I also don’t feel safe running on it because it doesn’t have a sidewalk, and just before the bridge over Chester Creek, there’s a nearly blind curve. I end up running on the wrong side of the road at that point because I am concerned about being struck by a car coming around the corner. I had to kind of sprint (relatively speaking) across the bridge because half the sidewalk was under construction and blocked off. I hate road running.

I wanted to do a trail review of Chester Creek Trail from the Skyline bridge down to 4th St, but in order to do that, I would have had to slide down on my belly like a sea otter. It was horribly icy, and even with my shoe chains on, I didn’t want to risk it. One slip at certain spots along that trail and I’m falling over a cliff. I was really bummed because I like that trail and because I wanted a little extra distance. Instead I had to circle back home and didn’t even get to three miles.

Monday I got out of class about an hour early, and decided to forgo the rest day by running an uneventful 40 minutes on the treadmill. I managed to run an average pace of 15:33 with an average heart rate of 142 bpm, so I guess I’m improving? That should be a pick-me-up after Sunday’s crabbiness, but I’m mentally drained. I also won’t get a chance to run outside until Friday, thanks to work and a meeting, so I’m disappointed about that. I’m going to need to end this post before I complain about something else.

To end on a high note: I have no lingering effects from my exciting tumble down the stairs on Friday.

Meep Meep

Road running!

Since school has started, I’ll be able to get home when it’s light out three days a week (I work the other two days). Or at least I will until classes really ramp up and I’m stuck working on assignments til midnight.

I have a few general comments on my approach to road running.

1. I am a fairly strict obeyer of traffic laws. Even if there’s no one coming, I won’t cross against the light. I run on sidewalks as much as possible and run opposite traffic when I can’t. I hate when drivers who have the right of way motion me through. I also won’t cross unless I make eye contact with the driver and see them motion me through, even if I have the right of way. If I can’t see them, I will stand there all day if need be. I always give a thumbs-up of acknowledgement, so that I can show I’ve seen them and appreciate it, instead of waving, which could cause confusion. Safety is such an integral part of my profession (engineering) that it carries over into my daily life. I am the poster woman for Defensive Pedestrianism.

2. I don’t pause my watch for stoplights, stop signs, untied shoes, wedgie picks, or any other reasons. I understand that it can skew splits, but those aren’t real splits anyway, if I stopped in the middle. By that logic, I could run 200m 8 times with breaks in between and call the aggregate time my mile time. It doesn’t matter anyway, no matter what, I’m still slow! I also don’t plan on making excuses for the slow times associated with a long layover at a stoplight, or pointing out how many times I stopped. My times are my times. Voila.

Okay, now onto yesterday’s run, specifically. I wore my shoe chains, since there are a lot of jerks on my route who haven’t shoveled the sidewalks in front of their homes, myself included. It was a good idea because while there were stretches of clear sidewalk, there was slush, packed snow, and ice along the way. It slowed me down a bit, as did the annoying long hill that lasted the entire first mile of my run. This is not a flat city. Running on the sidewalks in Duluth is also at times more technical than a trail. Not only are there a lot of hills, there’s large cracks in the pavement, slabs of pavement jutting up just waiting to trip an unsuspecting runner checking her heart rate for the millionth time, and spots where it feels like I’m running sideways due to the slant of the path.

I felt pretty good, certainly better than I ever do running on a treadmill. I had the same problem with my heart rate monitor I did last weekend, with the spikes at the beginning. I don’t know if that’s due to the shock to my system from breathing cold air or what, but I “cheated” and ran at a higher heart rate at the beginning since I was already going pretty slowly and I knew it would settle down. I was right. I power-walked a fair amount up the first hill but that was the only one I had to walk up, and on the way down I was flying! Giggity!

Splits:
18:49
16:21
14:45
17:06 (pace for the last 0.98)
Average heart rate: 140 bpm

After I got home, I put my coat on and walked to the convenience store 2 blocks away and bought some Powerade (Strawberry Lemonade), pretzel M&Ms, peanut butter crackers, and motor oil. Both my car and I were filled with delicious, nutritious sustenance.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles

…begins with a single race registration.

RaceReg

Holy crap. I registered for a race.

The Fitger’s 5K is April 11th, which means there will probably be a foot of snow on the ground. It is also far enough in the future that I should be a tiny bit faster. I joked to the Grandma’s Marathon Twitter account that I would be coming in DFL (Dead F**king Last), but I don’t really believe that. I looked at last year’s results and am confident that I would be able to avoid DFL. Maybe not in my age group, but overall, yes. Even running with my self-imposed heart rate restrictions, even running on the treadmill, I am above the pace of the last finishers from last year. So, that’s already checked off the list. Now I just have to figure out how to run in the morning, and how to speed up a little so I’m not in the stragglers at the back. And how to avoid chickening out and skipping the race.

To The Core

Well, I didn’t wake up sick yesterday, so that was a plus. I did wake up with my back and hips still creaky, which was a minus. I didn’t have any coffee today, so I can pat myself on the back for that. Just a mug of chai tea and two pops! (FYI I do drink water too, I’m not solely subsisting on caffeinated beverages.)

I thought a bit about my overall soreness situation yesterday while trying to loosen up my muscles at work via sporadic stretching in my chair. At the beginning of the day I was fairly certain I was going to have to either take another rest day or just walk on the treadmill in order to minimize stress on my poor old lady joints. I absolutely do not want to get injured. It would be incredibly stupid to get injured by pushing too hard while running at a 16:xx pace on the treadmill. There’s nothing more ridiculous than over-training while running mediocre times. Of course, I would like to actually run times that would be considered mediocre, but that doesn’t mean I can’t roll my eyes at someone killing themselves trying to run some crappy-yet-still-faster-than-me time.

I decided, based on no medical knowledge and just how I feel, that I’m not in danger for injury just yet, but I do need to be careful. So I ran for an hour (with a short potty break halfway through just because) and while it didn’t feel great, I don’t feel worse. Yet. We shall see.

I also have some theories on the causes of this soreness.

1. I am running more slowly, so I am on my feet longer to run the same distances.
This is not such a big deal when I’m on the treadmill, because I can cut the time short if I’m feeling fatigued, but it will be a problem if I haven’t made much progress by the time I can run outside frequently again. (And that time is coming soon! School starts this week, and I’ll have afternoon time to run during the week!) I am going to have to continue to focus on time rather than distance and be careful not to increase the overall time I spend running by too much from week to week.

2. I am spending too much time on the treadmill and not enough time on varying terrain.
Running on the treadmill is repetitive, so I’m stressing the same spots on my body over and over again, rather than making little adjustments along the way as I would on a trail or even road running (since a flat, even stretch of road is hard to come by in Duluth). I also think my posture is different on the treadmill, but I don’t know how I’d verify that beyond someone watching me run or take photos of me running, and I don’t want either of those things to happen. There’s not much I can do about this now, like I said above, I just need to be mindful of my mechanics and get outside whenever I can.

3. My core muscles are not strong enough.
This is an obvious one. I need to start doing at least a little strength training in order to progress. Yes it is dumb that I was not doing it already, and I’m obviously paying for it, but I started yesterday! I did a groundbreaking regimen of sit-ups and push-ups. Real push-ups, not fake ones with my knees down. I didn’t go hog wild and try to break any records for consecutive push-ups, but it’s a start.

Off Day

Yesterday was an unexpected day off from running. I am somewhat annoyed about it because it was another nice day, and because I want to run outside any time I can, and I cannot during the week. I woke up with a sore back and hips. My back is fine, it’s just kind of stiff, it’s definitely plain old muscular soreness and not something worse. My hips are just a little worn out, I think, but I’m concerned they feel like the Tin Man’s before Dorothy found the oil can, and I decided a break would be a good idea, even though I just had a rest day on Friday.

I felt a bit guilty about sitting on my couch watching Gilmore Girls during the time I planned for running, but after creaking around the rest of the day at a UMD hockey game and running errands, it turned out to be a good idea. This was confirmed once I started feeling chilled and overall achy in the evening. Since I sometimes write posts in the evening and schedule them for the next day (a shocking revelation, I know!), I could have come down with a full-blown case of influenza by the time you get around to reading this. Or, I’ve successfully given my body the extra bit of rest it needed to fight off whatever crap was trying to take over. With school starting this week, I’m not taking any chances.

With my level of fitness, spotty track record with commitment to running, and overall bent toward laziness, rest days worry me. Since I don’t plan them, instead choosing them based on either my schedule for the day, how I feel on a particular day, or how long it’s been since my last rest day, one rest day can very easily turn into two… or three… weeks. Or more. I hope my two-pronged formula for success this way around will work. This plan is, obviously, 1. Run at an aerobic pace so I’m not killing myself with every run and 2. Write about running publicly (while not doing anything to actively promote this writing), so that I’m forced to keep going in order to have something to write about.

I really hope I am not sick. It would not be the best way to begin spring semester.

Decaffeinated

As I suspected in my post on Wednesday, caffeine was affecting my heart rate. I cut down to one cup a day (12 oz) the rest of the work week, and noticed I could run a bit faster on the treadmill at the same heart rate. It’s not an amazing leap forward, but I’m not doing myself any favors by artificially inflating my heart rate even a few beats.

Cutting down my coffee intake has made me feel pretty crappy the past few days. I suppose that’s a sign that I’ve made the right decision to cut back. I held fast even though Friday I was feeling really gross, with a headache and sort of general malaise, and it was a rest day, so it wouldn’t have mattered, and I went to a hockey game after work, so the energy would have been welcomed. Yesterday I let myself sleep as long as I needed to, which helped, and I didn’t have my usual glorious post-run latte, so I’m hoping I’ll level off soon. Just in time to go back to school, where I will have three lattes a day sometimes just to survive. Hooray.

Yesterday I also took advantage of the warmer weather to run outside. I went down to the Lakewalk, my old standby. I wanted to try running on more even terrain so I didn’t have to plod up a hill at a 40 min/mile pace with my heart rate still spiking at 160.

I didn’t wear my shoe chains since it has been warm enough to melt any built-up ice that might have been on the path. There was a bit of snow cover in places but I didn’t slip. Unfortunately, when I started off, I wasn’t able to get my heart rate under control. I really don’t know why, but it was spiking and then dropping and then spiking again for the first few minutes of the run, so I had to go pretty slowly to start off with. My first mile was the slowest.

Splits:
17:00
15:58
16:13
15:53
15:39 (0.46 mi)

See? That makes no sense. After the first mile I had no trouble keeping my heart rate down, other than the little inclines. I don’t know if there was a problem with the monitor at first, or if breathing in cold air was affecting me, or what, but I’m glad everything evened out. I got a little bit of a headache after my ears got cold, which ended up lingering awhile even after I was out of the cold. I also took a shower too soon after coming in from the cold, so my skin got all itchy and blotchy and it still felt cold to the touch in places after the shower.

A latte sounds amazing right now. Ugh, this sucks. But it’s for the best, right?