Nichole's running blog

Just Food on Tuesday, Fit to Be Tri'd on Thursday!

2012-01-29T20:11:00.004-06:00

I'll be doing a talk at Just Food this Tuesday at 7pm - my favorite place to shop!! (Well, I guess any running store would rival for that "favorite" title :)) - stop by if you have the time/are in the area! Or make a trip! I'll be talking about my journey, with a special emphasis on goal setting, follow-through, and nutrition. All audiences welcome, particularly those that have made new year's resolutions and are struggling to maintain them, junior high/high school athletes that have aspirations to have a great season, running/marathoning fanatics... heck, hopefully this is pertinent to everyone!

Thursday's talk will be at Fit to be Tri'd, 6:30. Best part?!? I've been told there might be chocolate and wine there! :) (Ironic, since my talk at Just Food will talk about my much needed diet changes... but it's the off-season, right? And what could make a talk better than my two favorite foods?!?) This talk will center more on the specifics that I've learned about marathoning - focusing on training cycles, all of the "little things" that I've felt have (or have not) made a difference, and just running/training in general.

Hope to see you there!!!
(if you are planning to come & read this, comment here to let me know!)

Olympic Trials Race Recap

2012-01-21T20:34:00.012-06:00

*This is part 3 of my recap of the Olympic Trials weekend:

As I scurried to the start line I looked around for and soon found Kristen Carter. We had met each other in the massage room the day before and found that we both wanted to start at 6:20 pace. We were lined up in the second to last row at the start line, which I was uncomfortable with... I probably should be farther up. Problem was, everyone was assembled and I didn't feel like I could charge to the middle of the pack, when everyone there is as fast, if not faster, than me. Kristen didn't look worried, so I tried not to be either.

Once the gun went off the nerves of the event left me. I'm generally a pretty patient and composed racer, and I think that showed. I stuck to my plan, which was 3 miles at 6:20 and then bringing it down to 6:05-6:10. My first mile was way too slow - 6:28 by my watch (started 6 seconds off the line), which meant the clock showed 6:34. But -- I told myself that was a good thing. Better to start too slow than too fast! I brought my pace to 6:20 for the 2nd mile (where I apparently was 4th from last! Glad no one told me that, I might have stressed a little at that), then a 6:23 for the 3rd. I knew at this point that my goal 6:05s were just not in the cards for the day... my legs didn't feel the best.

I find it impossible to "feel" the first mile of a marathon. Of course, my watch didn't work the first three miles because of all of the downtown buildings in Houston, so then I'm left more blind than usual. Perhaps it's something I'll get better at, perhaps I couldn't "find" a pace because I hadn't done a lot at MP in the last few weeks because of the achilles interruption... who knows. Something to work on for next time.

At 2.2 miles we looped through the finish line -- to start the first of 3 big 8 mile loops that we would do. What an absolutely AMAZING experience. I will never forget it. The street is lined with American flags, Marines down the middle in salute, and the deafining roar of the crowd (Go USA!). It made me INCREDIBLY proud to have made it here. I wish I could describe it more vividly, I will forever remember how that felt. I had goosebumps running down the finish line street. The woman next to me breathed, "Wow - nothing like that, eh?".

Catching a pack of women and moving up through them to lead for a while:

At mile three I tried to notch it down and struggled to swing into that rhythm (compared to Grandma's, where it came to me pretty easy). I could tell that it wasn't quite my day. With each passing mile, I willed myself to find 6:10s. My legs just simply wouldn't cooperate - much less allow me to find 6:05s (my real goal). The ensuing miles were 6:15, 6:14, 6:16, 6:16, 6:11, 6:15, 6:10. From mile 10-20 I averaged 6:12. So -- perhaps that was my "rhythm" for the day, I just know that I am faster/more fit than that. It was weird to have that slow feeling in my legs, to not be bouncing lightly down the course.

Despite knowing I was slower than I hoped, I kept an incredibly positive attitude. I am very proud that I left the watch behind and focused solely on passing the women ahead of me. I was so focused on making this a full effort, making this race hurt as much as possible, that I looked at the watch but didn't allow myself to process what it was saying. Instead, I focued internally. Can I pick it up? Can I hurt more? I know I've said it a lot here, but Dr. Asp's work is truly transformational and it has made a huge difference in my ability to "race".

I don't know my place from mile 2 until mile 20, but at 20 Nate yelled out that I was in 89th place. Really?!? I thought to myself. 89th is great! I had been hoping for top 100 (180+ started the race).

I also thought to myself that I felt TOO good at this point. I was a little uncomfortable, but not nearly enough (granted, I have coached myself to hurt A LOT during these... which is probably a little dangerous). For all of the miles that had clicked by that I had tried to make my legs move into that next gear, for all of the mental coaching I was giving myself, I knew I was leaving too much out there. 20 miles was also my cue to move into another gear, to truly race the last 10k. So... let's go!

At mile 20:

I had told my family/friends that this was an important point for me, and it was great to see them all there. I still remember Brenden's hoarse voice SCREAMING at me near that point, my immediate family shortly thereafter, and so many others. I had the absolute BEST cheer section on the course, all clad in bright yellow shirts with my picture on them :). I could not ask for better supporters (on the course and off! There were people dressed in "Team Nichole" yellow in Northfield, in Washington, at home!) ; I am really, really blessed.

See the yellow shirts? :)

I looked at my watch a couple of times that last 10k, but it didn't matter. This was about full effort. GO NICHOLE, I coached myself. I came up upon & passed women like never before, it even amazed me. I had a lot of cheers from others, "Wow - look at your stride!" and a lot of others commenting on how strong I looked. Cool, I guess? But that also probably means that I had too much at this point. But I couldn't physically do anything about it!!! Argh!!

I crossed the finish line, unbelievably proud. 2:44:12, a new personal best (2:44:06 chip time), and 69th place. (Seriously, 69th?) I am incredibly proud that a year and a half ago I set my goal to qualify for the Trials. I'm so proud to have made that goal, to have been in Houston racing amongst the country's best, to have held my own, and to have represented everyone that has supported me. THANK YOU to everyone that has supported me, cheered me on during junior high, high school, and collegiate races, paced me on crazy runs, and in general believing in me. It means SO much to me, and is the reason I am where I am today.

To those reading that may be thinking about their own goals -- dream it, live it, be it. Amazing things happen when you challenge yourself & aim to see what you can do. I'm living proof.

Now... a little more downtime to heal this bum achilles, but I'm fired up to race the 2:40 (or sub 2:40) I was dreaming of at the Trials. :) So there might be another marathon in my near future... :)

Race Day!!!

2012-01-19T21:52:00.024-06:00

*This is part 2 of my recap of the Olympic Trials weekend:

Race day started, in earnest, at 2 in the morning. A group of intoxicated guys entered into the room next to me and were excitedly discussing what time they were waking up to watch the Trials (ironically). I knocked on their door about 15 minutes later asking them to be quiet.

I actually think I saw the guy that opened the door cheering on the course the next day. I think he recognized me as well. Funny.

Anyway, I was WIDE awake at 2, ready to race. I was so excited, smile on my face, ready to go. Nothing worse than having to tell yourself to go back to bed after that :). But, I did fall back asleep and slept pretty hard until the first wake up call at 6:15 (2 hours before race time).

Time for breakfast #1 - bagel with organic jam (I brought a lot of my own food, just in case -- and most was from Just Food, love that place!!!!). I then went back to bed until the second alarm at 6:45, which was accompanied by Nathan (now feeling better, and now I don't have to be paranoid about him making me sick!) and a big bowl of oatmeal. Maybe it's odd to have two breakfasts before a marathon, but it's what I've found I need (as well as a lot of gel out on the course, guess I'm a big eater).

I changed into my race uniform: CW-X shorts, Run N Fun jersey, long sleeve and jacket for the warm-up. Nate helped me pin my bib on, and I was set to go. Can this be real? Am I really about to head down to the warm up area for the Olympic Trials? I'm normally pretty smiley and excited for races, but found myself nervous, unsure of myself, and actually a little emotional about the entire event. I thought back to a book Dr. Asp had given me: You can be nervous, just don't act nervous.

We got to the warm-up area at 7:15 and the last call to the staging area was at 7:45. Perfect time to eat another 1/2 of a banana, hit up the bathroom 2 times and get my first 5 minutes of warm-up in. I noted that my legs felt okay, but definitely not springy like before Grandma's. I didn't let myself think about it.

7:45 - last call, women! I joined the line of women being ushered to the staging area. Here's where it became really real. The mood was solemn, quiet. Note to self, in the event I'm here 4 years from now: make sure you're smiling and light hearted throughout all of this! It's just another race!

Upon entering the staging area I realized that the 38 degrees they had forecasted at the start felt a lot warmer (could be that I'm from MN, or could be that it was warmer than 38). In any event, I decided to switch to racing in a singlet to just a sports bra. I also contemplated switching to shorter shorts, but knew the longer ones were tried and true. So -- Nate and I scrambled to unpin and repin the number. Why do they make these things so huge? He somehow made it fit onto my sports bra.

I warmed up another 5 minutes (my typical) with a few pick ups. We were confined to a small track-like circle, so it was a little different. I then headed back to my bag and Nate to take off warm-ups, take my before-race gel and a handful of Sport Beans. And then... they ushered us closer to the start race...

It's about to begin... oh, my... am I really ready? Is this really happening?

I line up, almost at the back of the pack. Too far back? I knew the men had taken out their first mile BLAZING fast, and didn't want to be caught up in that. I know I need to start conservatively and work into my pace. I turn around and find I'm staring right into a NBC camera. Sweet, maybe my back made it on TV :)

I'm trying to maintain my typical Nichole attitude, but I'm finding myself a little emotional about the entire event. I am so happy to be here, for the opportunity to race at this level, to be lining up amongst the country's best...

And then the gun goes off :)

Leading up to the race

2012-01-17T21:47:00.018-06:00

*I will do my best to recap the whole amazing experience that was the Olympic Trials. Here is part one:

I flew out Thursday for the race. My family and coach Jerry met me at the Red Wing airport and we boarded the company's private jet. What an absolutely awesome experience :). We arrived in Houston right around 12:30 and quickly boarded a taxi to downtown.

Very cool to see this on the floor of the hotel:

I ran in to the hotel to quick check in, grab my credentials, and hit up the athlete lunch before it closed. The food was definitely a highlight - I was in heaven. They had every type of healthy grain, pasta, and other carb-only food option. I filled a plate with wheat pasta, brown rice, broccoli, a piece of bread with jam, and an Italian roll. YUM. I was too shy to sit with anyone, so instead just sat off to the side and watched every one else. It's really neat to see so many very fast runners! Nate and I checked into the hotel and changed into our running gear for a short shake-out run. Leighton and Ben (cousin and brother) came with us. We ran the first 2.2 mile loop of the course, which was a disaster because there was a red light literally every block or two (the time we made it three blocks without stopping we all cheered). Probably not the best choice of routes, but I wanted to be able to see the start, finish, and the first loop. After that we headed outside the downtown loop to finish our 30 minute run. I did three striders afterwards and noted that my legs were feeling pretty good. Yes :).

Took time to take a picture at the finish line after the run - they're still setting everything up.

Then I left for a massage, provided by the race. It was honestly the BEST massage I have ever had (granted, I haven't had many, but still...). They worked on my hamstring (not firing quite right) and around the achilles area. She also did a lighter massage on the rest of my legs. I made a mental note: massages like this will be really key in future cycles to break up muscle tissue and tight knots when you're training at peak volume.

I came back to the hotel room to find Nate lying on the bathroom floor, pale, and hardly able to get up. He was alternating between throwing up and well... you get the picture. What??? NOOOOOO..... He had just done the run with me and seemed fine! He told us to head out and you could tell he was trying hard not to throw up. I beelined out of there, careful not to touch anything. Ben and I gave each other a scared look as the door closed behind us.

Then a sinking feeling: right before the run he had drank from my water bottle and I had finished it off after him. Ohhh nooooo. Please, Lord, do not let me become sick the day before the race. All of the training, the goals, etc... Just don't think about it, I told myself. Your body knows what it needs to do and won't let itself get sick.

Luckily I had the best support team possible down there with me, and Leighton was happy (well, maybe not :)) to give up his side of the bed for me that evening. I slept the night with Kathy (aunt), with Brenden and Leighton on the floor. I actually slept for over 10+ hours - hard - which was much needed after a few restless evenings earlier in the week.

We woke up Friday and immediately did another shake out run - just 2 miles with 3 striders. My legs felt good, but not completely springy. I headed inside for one last massage to work the kinks out of my hamstring and flush the lactate out of the legs. Then it was "go" time with all of the pre-race check in stuff.

It was pretty weird to go through all of that without Nate. He was really sick, and didn't want to risk getting me infected, so put himself in quarantine and stayed away from me until race day. But since he's always the one helping me through race details, logistics, etc. I was really lucky that Brenden was in our same hotel (and Jerry was just down the road and I'm sure he would have been happy to have run over to help!). It was a stress-free transition to relying on Brenden to coordinate things and keep me on schedule. We checked in our uniform (which is crazy -- they photograph everything you'll wear and warm up in -- they also covered every possible logo with duct tape, including the word "dri-fit") and then headed over to the race's technical meeting. I got goosebumps during the meeting. The logistics behind something of this magnitude are impressive, and you realize just how important of a race it is. They went over race rules, schedule for the morning, how bottles would be put out on the course, more rules, and then let us pick up our race bibs and chips.

Then it was back to the elite suite to finish our bottles. Leighton had put them together while we were in the technical meeting, so we just needed to add some sort of identifier (I reused a bridesmaid bouquet's flowers and was proud of myself for the creativity), tape gel to the bottle, and put either water or a poweraid/water mixture in it. To note for next time: the frequency of gels was PERFECT, as was the mixture. We turned those in, figured out that mine would be on table 39, spot 5 (again, it's crazy how well organized they are!! Guess they sort of have to be...).

I then ran to the front desk to get a new hotel room (Nate had checked out of the infected one and moved in to stay with his parents who had already had the "Norwalk Virus", which is what they thought he probably had). I moved my stuff in, and then ran down for a 5:00 meal (earlier than normal so I could go to the Opening Ceremonies -- and didn't want to eat afterwards because I thought 6 or 6:30 would be too little time to digest it all).

The Opening Ceremonies were just awesome. They lead all of the athletes into the park, giving us flags to wave. Wish I could remember the stat... something like, when you consider the X thousand of high school distance runners that enter the sport, times that by the 15 year age range that we have competing here today, these 300 men and women before you truly represent the top of the top in the sport of long distance running. Guess I had never thought of it that way. They had a former gold medalist talk about the success and disappointment that the Trials can bring - she made the US team in the '80s by 1/100th of a second and went on to win the gold medal. The following Olympic year she placed forth in the Trials, missing the team (and the chance to defend her medal) by 1/100th of a second. Guess that's the beauty and the ugliness of such an event... it literally comes down to one day, one race. And potentially less than a second.

At the opening ceremonies, proudly representing my "shoe sponsor" :)

They encouraged athletes to leave part way through because the night air was pretty chilly, and I happily took them up on their offer. Now, on to set out all of my race stuff for the morning -- and wait for the morning to arrive!!

69th Place at the Olympic Trials!

2012-01-15T17:52:00.003-06:00

Quick update: I had SUCH a fabulous experience in Houston this weekend. It was the experience of a lifetime, really -- from the Opening Ceremonies to the race itself (and evertything in between).

The race went really well. My legs didn't have their best day - I struggled to find a rhythm and to be able to move FAST enough (weird thing to say - but every mile I willed myself to bring down my pace a few seconds as I knew my lungs were feeling strong & my legs weren't tired enough -- but they just simply couldn't move any faster than they were). BUT, despite that, I was still able to finish with a new PR - 2:44:12 (2:44:06 chip).

I just KNOW that I was capable of a 2:40, or even sub-2:40, so I wish I could have had a great legs day where I had that unique-Nichole spring that makes for a "fun" and very fast race :). Oh well... maybe that means that I'll be scheming to continue this marathon journey in 2012 :). (But we'll let myself digest this race & most importantly, rest this achilles which is now three times the size of the healthy achilles... ug).

I am most proud of my finishing place & how I raced. I started out conservatively. I guess I didn't know how conservatively - I was in 4th to last at the 2 mile mark (glad no one told me that). But, I raced my own race & didn't allow the fast opening pace to get to me. From the 3 mile mark & on, I focused entirely on dropping my pace and picking people off. It was fun :)

With 10k to go, my husband told me I had moved up to 89th place (150+ raced/finished). Again, I willed my legs to move faster. I'm not hurting enough! But they just couldn't. Ug.

I was SO mentally tough during this race. Wow -- thank you, Dr. Asp :). I don't think there are too many women out there that can embrace pain & think as positively as I did on that course on Saturday.

I finished in 69th place. Pretty exciting to think that I'm one of the top 70 US women's marathoners :). I am very proud to have been here, to have raced my way to a fantastic place amongst the women competing -- and most impressed by the support that I had on the course and from people back home. THANK YOU to everyone who has sent me Good Luck messages, Congratulatory emails/texts, etc. I can't tell you how much your thoughts, support, and overall encouragement has helped me to get me where I am today -- and encouraged me to think bigger and set higher goals. Thank you especially to my family and friends down here (Team Nichole!), to Jerry for believing in me a year and a half ago when I came to him injured, unsure of myself, and slow, and RWSC for their support throughout the journey. I honestly never thought I could get to this level, and I KNOW that I couldn't have done it without everyone's support.

I'll write much more later :)

It's race time!

2012-01-11T21:18:00.005-06:00

Wow, this week has flown by!

Thankfully I am on the carbo-loading portion of my pre-race diet (diet consists of 3 days of eating no carbs at all, followed by 3 days of eating almost nothing but carbs). The theory is that your body over compensates and stores even more carbs than carb loading alone. This is the third marathon that I have done this for, and the no-carb portion has been easier each time. I remember the first cycle feeling awful: http://nicholerunning.blogspot.com/2010/09/sierra-mist.html. For Grandma's cycle, I only noticed I was working harder on the 3rd day (easy 6 mile run with striders) and only the last mile and a half. I could just tell I didn't have a lot of energy available -- but it was very slight. Wonder why? Anyway, I do think going without any carbs does keep me from peaking too early - your legs just dont feel snappy without carbs, even though my milage has been cut way back. Once I add back carbs, I usually feel the energy building in them & that light, snappy, fast feeling come on just at the right time. So I know the verdict is out on which way to carbo-load, but this method is tried and true for me.

I am flying out tomorrow morning. One of the coolest things about working for Red Wing Shoe has been how suopportive they have been of my training for the trials. Most amazing thing yet: they are flying me, my coach Jerry, and some of my other family members down to Houston on the company's corporate jet! They have been really supportive of this journey (many longer lunch-hour workouts -- don't know how else I'd be able to double or run as many miles/week as I do without that flexibility!); I'm blessed to work for them. I'm also blessed that they understand running and marathoning. If I would have qualified while working at LM, no one would have even known what I was talking about. No lie.

Anyway, I'm done packing - Nate took a beautiful picture. I'm pretty exhausted. I have had the HARDEST time falling asleep this last week. I know it's because I cram too much into a day, so I'm literally working until the minute that I hop into bed, but there have been multiple nights that I've laid awake, mind reeling, for 1+ (last night TWO) hours. Wish I could just learn to shut off my brain.

Anyway, I'm rambling when I should be getting ready for bed :). I will try to update this as often as I can while I'm down there (but make no promises!). I will see how many pictures of fast runners I can post. ;)

Thank you to EVERYONE who has supported me on this journey, I wouldn't be here without all of you!! Special shout-out to Marice and John who sent me the nicest note in the mail today wishing me luck. I love mail :)

(No seriously, getting the mail is the highlight of my day!)

Wow, what a workout!

2012-01-09T17:39:00.002-06:00

Today was my last "hard" workout (and not even that hard, or long! Eek!):
4x1000m at tempo pace

Before Grandma's I did this exact same workout in 6:07 pace (not sure what happened with that one), then 5:58-5:59 pace.

Today I was significantly faster. 5:45-7 into the wind, 5:32-5:37 with the wind. Yikes! Best part? They felt great! My legs aren't 100% springy, but I can tell they're stronger than they've been before and turn over really efficiently. What a fun feeling!! And if that "spring" can come just in time for Saturday's race... that could make for a very fun day :)

I had wonderful company for the workout portion of the run, which made it so much more enjoyable and made the time go by a lot faster. I love that I have people willing to accompany me (thanks a ton, Tom!), and know that it has made me a faster runner this cycle :). Plus, I got to do the reps in the sunshine (and was down to a short sleeve shirt the last repeat because I was so warm!!). Who could ask for anything better?

Weather looks ideal in Houston. Overnight low of 40, high of 60ish. My guess is that I'll be racing in 45-55 degree weather. Hopefully the cold front they're predicting comes through!! Ironic part is that those temps aren't too different from temps here in MN (who would have THOUGHT??? Esp. after last winter!). I don't want to count on anything yet... but it's looking really promising!

So, now just need to nail down my pacing plan, work on my mental game a little bit more, and rest up and hydrate for Saturday! Crazy how fast this has come up.

Steve -- I have to ask again for a time prediction, if you're willing. Last time you were within 20 seconds :).

Carb Depletion Phase = Yuck

2012-01-08T13:49:00.004-06:00

It's only half way through Day 1 and I already feel gross. But it's completely my own doing.

This morning Nate made a beautiful omlet, complete with a chicken breast and bacon. I was so excited. I haven't eaten anything resembling this in a really long time!

As we changed into our running gear later in the day I commented on how I felt slightly sick. He said, "That's because you snacked on bacon this morning!" To which I replied, "That's because it tasted so good! But now it tastes so bad..."

True quote. I'm not used to eating any fat (well, very little), so it was probably too much of a shock for my system. But it was really good at the time (and fun to tell myself I could eat it!). Going forward I will only be eating HEALTHY no-carb options. Problem is, what is there to eat? Chicken breasts, egg whites, pork, peanut butter, fish? Ug.

Already looking forward to a heaping bowl of oatmeal Wednesday morning!

Less than a week to go!

2012-01-07T15:32:00.002-06:00

I always look forward to tapering. Until it actually comes...

I looked at my training plan for the next week and realized just how little there is on it... 8 mile run tomorrow, 8 miles Monday with a tiny bit of uptempo work in it, and then practically nothing until race day.

It's sort of fun, since I have more free time to do things around the house (I think my house may actually be clean by the end of the weekend!), I don't feel the need to sleep ALL of the time, etc. Plus, your legs are feeling fast & fit, which is also really fun. But, I feel lost, like I'm missing a best friend! Where did my doubles go? Where'd my long run go? I love marathon training, I really do...

For the last 3 days, I have been dreaming of warm, soft, goey chocolate chip cookies and chocolate chip banana bread. Yuuummmmmm... Don't they sound heavenly? These cravings are happening before my 1 week marathon-diet, can't imagine what I'll be dreaming of by the end of this week. Just have to make it to next Saturday night... desserts, greasy food, and drinks then :). I can do this!!

I love tapering :)

2012-01-04T19:32:00.003-06:00

My legs are coming around at the exact right time. I am SOO lucky!!

Today's workout was just downright fun :). I joined the Carleton women for some tempo on the track - their workout was tempo miles, mine was 3x2 miles at tempo, with the rough goal for tempo at 5:50 (but main goal to go on feel). So, it was nice to weave in and out of each other's repeats -- taking some of the monotony out of the workout.

Because I was on a track, I tried to focus on my form, the way the pace felt, etc. in hopes to settle into a consistent tempo pace. It didn't come easy. The first mile I cruised through, not breathing, in 5:41. Next mile was just below 5:50. The Carleton women I was running with quickly decided to drop off from me (didn't help that I brought them through their first mile in sub 5:45 when their goal paces were 6:00 and 6:05... oops!!!).

The next reps were about the same -- miles ranging right around 5:48 or so. Some were faster (5:45), some slower (5:50), but the range wasn't big.

The best part? I wasn't hardly working. My strides felt light, powerful and effortless. I could just feel that I was fast :). Oh, how I LOVE this feeling!!! It also makes me excited to think that I could pull off a big PR next week :). Let's hope!

Aside: At this point in my Grandma's training, I was fighting what I think was heat exhaustion. I came back from a Monday run and felt sick and had the chills. My tempo paces dropped to 6:10s and slower during this same week back in June. My calves cramped up the Monday and Wednesday before the race. SOOO - note to self: I am carrying around a water bottle with me at ALL times between now and next Saturday. I can obviously improve on that taper experience a bit :). Just need to stay healthy as well!!!

T-Shirts

2012-01-02T15:41:00.003-06:00

Nate decided to make T-shirts for the Trials -- and suggested I post here in case anyone in the blog world wanted one. They'll be $10, safety green (really a bright yellow, not green), 50/50 cotton/poly blend. If you do, let me know a size!

Confidence Booster

2012-01-01T19:25:00.003-06:00

I was intimidated by the look of this one... 22 miles total with 2x (30 mins at marathon pace, 4:45 at tempo pace). Goal MP = 6:10s, goal tempo = 5:50. I haven't yet been able to hit a longer marathon pace workout at that pace.

Until yesterday!!

Workout was: 4.5 mile WU
1st MP: 6:12 average (6:10, 6:09, 6:08, 6:10, 6:22. Turned into wind last mile and legs lost it.) 6:12 average overall. (31 minutes -- had to finish out the mile!)
Tempo: 5:48 pace.
2nd rep: 6:12 average as well: 6:18, 6:09, 6:09, 6:15, 6:07 (5 full miles again)
Tempo at 5:40 pace.
Cool down for a total of 22

My legs are coming around. They don't feel springy and light yet, but at least they're not soaked in fatigue like they felt like they were a week ago. 2 weeks to go, and I know that they'll come around right at the perfect time :)

Another great thing coming from the workout: I am very mentally focused. It is AMAZING how Dr. Asp's work has helped me focus during these workouts. I still have 2 weeks to go working with his CD's (and memorizing the one he made specifically for the Trials), and I know that I will be as mentally tough and ready for anything at this race, probably even more so than Grandma's. How exciting, since Grandma's was such an extraordinary, almost perplexing (in the best way possible) mental race for me.

What a huge confidence boosting workout!!

Just a little rusty

2011-12-29T11:57:00.009-06:00

Last week went really well. I was able to log 74 miles and a day of cross training. Not too shabby! It included a 24 mile long run (lots of fun, ran from Elm Creek where Nate was skiing to his parent's house in Shoreview. Had to ask for help interpreting my map once, and the woman was very confused... you're coming from where, and you're going WHERE?!? :)) and a string of 5 days of running in a row. Yes. You may also be thinking -- gees, 25% of your weekly mileage from a long run? Keep in mind that my recovery days are very low mileage (or cross training) in order that I can actually get in the long, hard runs I need.

Towards the end of that week and into this week I've had to deal with the "you're finally back to decent mileage for more than a few days" feeling in my quads. Pretty nice soreness all-around in them. It's good to have that, though -- means I'm now to the point where I'm rebuilding strength & stamina. Just have to be careful that the fatique doesn't last for too much longer.

I felt that fatigue big-time during this Tuesday's workout. 4x2 miles at tempo, where my goal was 5:50s. I went down to GAC to attempt this with Brenden, knowing that I needed to nail the workout (if nothing else, just to boost my confidence). It was one of the most perplexing workouts I've had:

1st rep: Into wind, 6:20s or so. My legs were very tired and couldn't respond. Shin muscle, whatever that's technically called, cramping up. Ahh, I hardly feel like I know what I'm doing!

2nd rep: First mile had a 3/4 mile steep uphill. 7:00 on that one. That's okay, I'm breathing pretty hard. Second mile wheels totally came undone. It was like the last 1/2 mile of a marathon (well, the last 1/2 mile you never hope to see) where you literally can't control your legs and are just praying to stay upright. I wasn't breathing at all, just could NOT go. Sort of like the 1000s last week, this week just had the "marathon legs" component. I was so mentally positive during this rep, though -- instead of looking at my pace and thinking "oh no!" I didn't really think about my pace and instead concentrated on making every 30 seconds/minute REALLY count. C'mon, Nichole, try to make this as HARD as you possibly can.

I considered stopping the workout at this point. I talked to myself outloud (Brenden listening), wondering if it was a good idea to stop. Are 6:50 miles really doing anything for me? I immediately stopped myself and said that I just needed to get through the workout no matter what the times were. Brenden nodded at me and we were off.

Rep 3: Better. Legs not nearly as tightly wound. 6:15 and 6:10. Legs didn't start seizing up until about 800m to go. Cool!

Rep 4: Even better. 6:10 and 6:05. Legs didn't seize up at all. What?!?

I looked at Brenden afterwards, completely perplexed. I have never had such a workout, where you have lost your legs completely & then come back. Granted, the 6:05 still didn't feel good & legs weren't there, but at least I could move somewhat fast enough to get the lungs to work. Weird.

Brenden said he thought this was totally normal. When I first came back I was able to hit my tempos and MPs because I was relatively rested. Now I'm fighting the fatigue of daily mileage & some intensity & it will just take a week or two to get back into it. "Gotta get the rust out of the legs" as he put it. I hadn't thought of it like that, but it makes total sense.

So, all in all, a very good workout. I'm really proud of it, even though times were sub-optimal. I'm proud of myself for finishing when I felt terrible, and I'm even more proud of how mentally positive and tough I was. [Dr. Asp's mental training is so amazing!]

Next day I followed up the hard workout with a 9 miler and then a 6 miler with a friend today with strides at the end. The achilles is very sore, though, which isn't good (had to stop to stretch a few times during today's 6 miler and felt a slight burning sensation at the end, hmm)... more sore than typical after a hard workout or longer miles. So, I emailed Jerry afterwards to see about moving a hard 22 miler back to Saturday this week to give me a day to cross train.

I just don't want to be dumb about this when we're so close. I know I have it in me, just need to stay healthy enough to get a few key workouts in and work on helping the legs to feel fast. One extra day of cross training won't hurt (although, as every runner knows, it is hard to have to constantly juggle workouts like this, to have had two shorter workout days to prep for the 22 on Friday, only to bump it out & cause your weekly mileage to go way down).

Tom had a great story for me on my run today: A coach in town was working with a woman who narrowly missed the qualifier in October so signed up for a last minute Sacramento attempt (there are about 9 weeks between TCM and Sac, and Sac and the Trials - not ideal in any way). She ran tired & was always missing her workout times (and stressing about that). Day of the race the coach gets a call: Guess what? I just ran a 2:41! The coach was dumb-founded. Lesson: workouts are just workouts, and target times are something to put stock into, but at the end of the day it comes down to what you have on any given race day. Oh, how true, and how perfect of a story for me to hear at this stage in the training cycle.

Last aside: Nutrition: The last 2 weeks I have decided to eat as much from the Co-op as is possible. There's just something about the way you feel after eating their healthy, hearty foods. Sticking true to my "something new" resolution, I picked up some Quinoa today. I remembered seeing a few recipes with it & thought it was a good-for-you grain that also had protein.

I strongly considered buying a beet, from a suggestion from Tom. Not sure why I didn't. Part of it might have been that I wasn't 100% sure that it was a beet (there's a few signs above the veggies in that area, and I didn't know what most of them were, leading me to wonder which ones were the beets :) ) and after thinking I did have the right one, was very intimidated by how it looks. I'll have to look up a few recipes online to see how to cook something like that... so maybe next trip!

Our fridge is pretty bare, now, on purpose (if you don't buy it, you can't eat it) -- the vegetable and fruit drawers are completely full, a shelf of yogurt and greek yogurt (paired with museli is what I use for "dessert"! It's great!), some fresh lean meat, whole wheat tortillas, eggs, and a few condiments (hummus, which is amazingly good!). Our counter has a few containers filled with a hot grain cereal, flours for homemade bread, museli, a couple sweet potatoes (THANK you to whoever suggested fries, what a great bad-for-you tasting treat!), a squash, etc. Seriously, WHAT a change! :) I'm pretty sure last year at this time I had a pan of brownies out, two plates full of cookies from the in-laws, and a fridge almost devoid of vegetables. There were probably a few apples in there, but that was probably it.

I also have the ingredients for the squash pasta recipe someone suggested here. Should be fun!

Okay, back to something a little more productive. Happy new year, everyone!

Reminders

2011-12-22T21:11:00.005-06:00

Yesterday's speed workout (3x1 mile tempo, 3x1000, 3x400) reminded me that:

1. I am still very fit & fast. I was beginning to wonder! I honestly do not "feel" that way (vs. how I felt for Grandma's cycle at this time). Tempo miles were clicking off in sub 5:50s, which is great.
2. I NEED to be diligent about drinking water and making sure I'm taking my multi-vitamin/iron (or just fueling myself with the right things). I also need to be sleeping more. Why, you ask? After the tempo miles, I started to unwind & my 1000s were pretty slow. Weird thing was, I couldn't do anything about it. I willed myself to turn my legs over faster, but they couldn't respond. Sort of an out of body experience, actually... didn't help that I'm really exhausted mentally & so I couldn't quite process thoughts normally. I'm attributing this to not drinking much during the week, mostly. Maybe lack of sleep as well? At least I couldn't think of anything else that would cause such a weird slow-down?
3. Also need to work on my speed. Granted, by the time I got to the 400s, there wasn't anything left, so it wasn't the best workout to judge, but I know that I don't have the ability to change pace right now. Need to work on that. Striders, perhaps?
4. I need to stay away from all of this holiday junk food sitting around! Ug, I am so bad at saying no... (my boss caught me sneaking a chocolate piece today at work & yelled at me. Pretty sure I blushed big time, like a guilty child :))
5. Also need to start visualizing the race. The injury hasn't done wonders for my confidence; I need to work to regain that. I know the next few hard workouts should do that for me, helping me to realize how much stronger & more fit I am than even before Grandma's (because, honestly, Nichole, you didn't get fat & slow cross training 10-12 hours a week those 3 weeks!). also, I appreciated that for Grandma's I had a very defined goal & it was very much "do or die". I have to find something inside of me that motivates me like that did (goal before injury was proving to myself that I could compete at this level, placing as high as possible) - I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around that now (or WANTING that really bad). Does that make sense?

Still 3 weeks to go -- good thing, I have some work to do :).

Day of (Cross Training) Rest

2011-12-20T11:26:00.002-06:00

Last night before my PM run (first double! Yes!) I just decided: I was going to cross train tomorrow instead of attempting the speed workout as had been written. No matter if the PM run went fine, it was pain free, etc.

Jerry's goal for me is to get back to running every day. So, we're purposefully trying to stretch the number of days I run in a row to try to get me to that point as fast as we can (without re-injuring the area). Easier said than done, mostly because you don't know how much is too much... so I've found myself thinking about my workouts waaay too much lately.

So yesterday, as I was trying to decide if I was being too cautious (by considering pushing the hard workout out - I'm finding myself a little scared to push things now) or too aggressive by thinking that I could string 5 days of running in a row (which had already included my first 20 miler, my first double, and the first time that I had run more than 2 days consecutively) -- I just decided. Tomorrow would be a cross training day. Enough of this wishy-washy thinking, I had wasted too much thought already on the topic.

My deciding factor: if I re-injured myself and was reviewing my training log after the fact, would I have shook my head at the crazy idea that doing a hard workout on the 5th day back in a row was a good idea? Most definitely. And what did I have to lose by being "cautious" and pushing out the speed day? Not much, if anything. So I'll get in 1 or 2 fewer days of running in before the Trials - better that than re-injuring myself.

So there. I will thoroughly enjoy my time on the bike tonight, I'm sure :)

How far is too far?

2011-12-19T14:13:00.003-06:00

How hard can you push coming back? I hate the guessing game coming back from an injury. Big time.

The Achilles has healed impressively well this last week, which allowed for a great training week (considering just 2 weeks ago I was pretty much sidelined to the bike/elliptical). I was able to log 60 (!!) miles, with one run of 20 miles and one of 16. Not bad at all! And I still have 4 weeks to go to build fitness, get that "long run strength" back, and in general build my confidence up.

The question becomes, where is that line? How many days in a row can I run before I should take a cross training day? This week I went from being estatic about running 2 days in a row to now stringing 4 days back to back. It's a little tight every run (vs. when I take a day of cross training it isn't tight at all the next day), definitely looks puffier than the healthy side -- obviously that means it's not 100%. The plan for today and tomorrow was a double (my first!) and a tempo/1000m workout tomorrow. On my run over noon today, I contemplated that. The hard workout falls on the 5th day of running in a row, after my first double... is that too much? Should the Achilles not be sore before starting my first full-length hard workout?

Argh. So many questions. Glad to have Jerry to throw stuff like this at & have him create the path forward.

On another note, we're withing 4 weeks! Yikes!! My husband reminded me that I need to declare my fluids by Wednesday this week. Hope I'm on top of all of the other logistics/entry stuff/etc...

Cool Olympic Trials preview - thanks for the shout out, Chad! Hope I can continue that "remarkable improvement" with another big PR!!!
http://cnaustin.blogspot.com/2011/12/olympic-trials-marathon-preview.html

I felt FAST today

2011-12-14T16:35:00.003-06:00

Wow, what a day! I can tell my legs and body are remembering how to run – I felt FAST today! I was running tall, feet hitting the pavement & bouncing off quickly, I felt very fit & efficient – it was so FUN. It's the first time I've felt that since starting to run again.

Did 8 miles, around 7:20ish pace. To most, that may not seem fast, but I generally take my easy runs pretty darn slow (7:50-8, sometimes even slower). So to be clipping away at 7:20 without effort, and FEELING like I did, is pretty noteworthy for me.

And the best part? The Achilles isn’t sore walking around today (and it’s been two days running in a row!)!!!!! Yahoo, do a happy dance!!!!

Never doubt Jerry's genious

2011-12-13T21:59:00.005-06:00

Jerry wanted me to try some speed today. On the original plan was 6x1000m and a few 400s. He edited to 3x1000m and 2x400m.

I pleaded to do more. As long as I'm going to make the achilles sore, why not get in a good quality workout? 3 repeats doesn't exactly have that "hard-core workout" sound to it.

He said I could only do more than 3 if I could run faster than 3:15.

I protested again. Seriously? I've only ever done these in about 3:19. First VO2 max workout back and you want me aiming for 3:15s?!? You're crazy. [Aside: 3:15 was the goal written before injury]

But, as he always is, Jerry was right. 3 was a great number for a first time. Times weren't great, I can tell I've lost the most at this speed: 3:22, 3:20, 3:22 (oh man, the last 200m was ugly!). 400s in around 1:15-1:17 (yes, I have no leg speed). As I finished the third, I knew that I COULD do a 4th repeat but that it would be ugly. My guess is it would be in the 3:30ish range, my legs were jelly (sad!). And I'm sure allowing myself to break down to that level would probably put more demand on the achilles.

As it was, we stressed the achilles the perfect amount. A tiny sore, but feeling good again tonight!

Before the last 400, two of the YMCA runners passed me heading back from their run. We stopped to talk for a while, and I couldn't wipe the "I am SO happy to be out here, working hard, making the lungs/legs hurt" smile off my face. I was overcome by joy in that moment, realizing how lucky I was to be out there with them (helps that they're the 3 nicest, most supportive people), talking about repeat times, progress, healing, and goals for racing. (they probably think I'm crazy :), and they're probably right)

So - puny as it may have looked at first glance, the first VO2 max day today was a perfect 1st workout back. Legs and lungs were reminded how they need to work, and I have no doubt they'll reward me with some quicker times and more repeats next time :)

Adventures with vegetables

2011-12-13T10:48:00.006-06:00

With the Trials just 4 short weeks away, I know I need to be even more careful about what I'm eating and making sure I'm on pace to reach that race weight.

With that in mind, my evening meals are generally pretty small (trying to go to bed on the hungry side). Veggies and other healthy/lower calorie items are generally my go-tos.

For one evening meal, I steamed brussel sprouts (fresh/local from Just Food). I'd never had them before (part of my "try some new produce every time I go in the store" resolution), and wasn't expecting anything. They were great!! Loved them, honestly. And it turns out, they're really, really good for you as well. One sprout has 8 calories, 1 gram of fiber and 1 gram of protein. It also provides 22% of your recommended Vitamin C, a little bit of iron, calcuim and Vitamin A.

I liked them so much that the next time I was in a regular grocery store I bought two bags of frozen steamable sprouts. They were on sale, a good brand, so I figured why not? Might be an easy thing to microwave at lunch.

Except we made the first bag the other night, and they're TERRIBLE. If I didn't know any better, I wouldn't EVER eat them again, fresh, frozen, or any other way. Except I still have one bag left, and I just can't allow myself to waste food... sigh.

Lesson learned: vegetables are actually REALLY good tasting when they're fresh/grown locally (not shipped for a week)/and organic (not sure if that affects the taste at all, but I feel better knowing they don't have pesticides sprayed on them). I never thought there'd be such a big difference, having only really eaten frozen bags or canned veggies my entire life.

So this brings me to poll the readers here: Any thoughts on what veggies or light healthy side dishes I should try from the Co-op next? 4 weeks is a long time to be looking to light & healthy dishes. There are still plenty of root-looking and other odd looking plants I still need to get myself to try... just need the motivation to give them a try :)

P.S. On a training-related note, my achilles heals so well after a day of cross training. After Sunday's 16 miler it was REALLY sore Monday, so sore I had to walk down the stairs differently at noon. Typically it loosens up by mid-day or after a cross training session. I iced and stretched frequently throughout the day and had Nate try some deeper massage in the calf/soleous region. By Monday evening, it felt SO much better it didn't seem like the stairs incident had happened just a few hours earlier. Odd, but I'll take it, since today I'm supposed to attempt my first "speed" workout!

Every Other Day

2011-12-11T21:37:00.002-06:00

My achilles can handle the stress of running every other day. As I told Nate, "I can get somewhere on every other day". (said with a huge grin on my face) (vs. my previous weeks where there where sporadic test runs of less than 8 miles) SO EXCITED to be healing!

But, as Steve warns, I need to be carefull with how fast I ramp things up. I tried 2 consecutive days of running last week, which wasn't good. Walking in general hurt after that and I knew I had pushed too far. But, my achilles seems to handle every other day just fine, and that's something I can totally work with.

Recap of this week:
Monday: cross training

Tuesday: 12.75 miles, as blogged about earlier this week. My first hard workout "back", and was surprised at how I was able to hold paces. Yes!!

Wed: 8 miles easy. Very sore in the evening, and knew I had pushed it too far. I also noticed the tendon now "squeaks", which I was a little freaked out about. This can't be a good thing...

Thurs: Day off. I realized that it had been 3 weeks since the injury without a day off. Went in for a 4th sterioid patch, after meeting with Dr. Bahl and my PT. They said that the squeaking doesn't mean that it's any worse, just different. There's nothing more aggressive we can do (cortizone shot = not a good idea in this tendon because it has the tendency to weaken the tendon). Good to know, I guess... I do feel like it's more of the typical achilles symptoms, where it's noisy, stiff after waking up, just tight during runs (vs. pain in a specific spot).

Friday: 8.25 miles with Nate. Actually felt great! Started with the goal of running 4-7, but felt good so kept adding miles. A rest day for the achilles does wonders.

Saturday: cross trained, 1:50 on elliptical (I'm impressed with my abillity to deal with the boredom of cross-training! I "only" went 1:50 because the Carleton gym was closing at noon, boo) Started sleeping with a homemade achilles brace so the ankle is at a 90 degree angle.

Sunday: A little over 16 miles. 3 miles at T, 2 miles at T, then 1 (modified down by Jerry). 3 miles in 18:03 (6:01 pace), 2 miles in 11:55 (5:57ish), 1 mile in 5:46. Lungs/legs don't remember tempo pace as well. Need to do some extra work at this pace. BUT, I am pumped that my body seemed to remember the pace as the workout went along (helped that I only had to hold the pace for fewer miles each repeat!). The last mile I actually felt strong, efficient, and didn't feel like I was working too out of the "tempo" comfort zone. Yeah!! Rounded it out with a longer cool-down, where I could feel that my hamstrings and glutes aren't used to mileage like that. Hmm... hopefully they strengthen up soon!!

Total week: ~10 hours, 45 miles. The lowest number of training hours since I was injured: partly because I took a day off, but partly due to me losing motivation this week (skipped a couple of PM workouts :( )

So -- in sum, this week was a great confidence booster. I'm pumped to actually be able to log mileage, even though it's sporadic (a fellow Olympic Trials blogger who dealt with this struggled to run more than 8 miles during a run 7 weeks out from injury... I'm at 3.5 weeks and logged ~40 miles/week). As I told Nate, I can get somewhere on this frequency/mileage. The dream of racing as fast as possible at the Trials isn't lost!! Let's go!! (but let's also be careful :) )

12.75 MILE WORKOUT

2011-12-06T15:50:00.006-06:00

The capitalization of the subject represents my absolute JOY behind today's workout.

But, before we get to that, let's back up a few days. I did a 7.5 mile run late last week where tightness crept into the Achilles at 4.5 miles. The pain didn’t worsen, so I kept running, gauging the tightness/pain level the entire way. Is this a good thing? Can I keep going? My mind was completely wrapped up in the injury – not a fun way to run.

Walking back into work, I tested the Achilles on a step. It did okay for about 80% of the heel lift, but close to my tip-toes, it couldn’t hold my weight. A sharper pain came on, but quickly disappeared. Sigh.

But, I told myself that this was progress. Previously, I couldn’t lift myself more than an inch without pain (and definitely not after running 7.5 miles). I promptly emailed Jerry and told him, planning to “test” the area again tomorrow.

Before I got a response, my good friend John Miller (the reason I sought coaching & found Jerry) came to visit in my oh-so-awesome cubicle. He patiently listened to my injury reports, and crossed his arms. “I think you need to take another week or two off”. WHAT?!? I exclaimed back? The trials are just 5 weeks away. That would leave 3 weeks left to train. We talked though how it would still be possible with just 3 weeks, but both recognized that that was just about the time it would take my body to remember HOW to run, let alone run fast. His argument was that I wasn’t fully healed yet – any pain is not a good sign.

I realized, albeit grudgingly, that he was absolutely right. I promptly emailed Jerry again, saying that I thought I needed a few days of cross training. I know that if I just cross train, the Achilles feels great – so hopefully some more time doing that would lead to me being able to run for consecutive days or more miles per day.

He emailed back (on his way to Mexico!) with a plan – cross train until next week, and then let’s try to string a few (if not an entire week’s worth) days of training together, adding in some speed. So that’s exactly what I planned to do. I did another hard workout on the elliptical on Saturday (2 hours on the elliptical which included 50 minutes of threshold work, 30 of which I had my HR above 190). As hard as that was, it’s just not the same. You don’t get that “my legs are exhausted” feeling :(. I miss that.

Fast forward to today (Tuesday). Jerry had my first “hard” workout scheduled. He scaled back the original plan to accommodate for the fact that I haven’t run more than 8 miles at a time for the last 2.5 weeks. I prayed about the workout the night before. Please, God, allow me to get through this. I think I’ve prayed more in the last week during my running miles (carry me through this!) and just in general than I have in a while… I was so worried about testing it with a longer/up tempo workout & knew I needed to be carried through it.

And He did. Seriously. NO PAIN, no real soreness afterwards. Just a little tight during the CD, which I needed to quit early anyway (darn work getting in the way). And the best part (other than the fact that I was RUNNING, didn’t have to entirely concentrate on the injury, enjoying the sunshine, etc!!)?? I wasn’t as slow as I expected!!! My lungs are strong as an ox, seriously. My legs have some work to do, but hopefully they remember how to run efficiently & strong soon.

Workout stats:
2.5 WU
4 miles at MP (averaged 6:12)
.3 miles rest (~3:30)
1 mile Tempo (5:53)
.12 rest (~2:30)
2 miles MP (averaged 6:14)
.3 miles rest (~3:30)
1 mile Tempo (6:00)
1 mile MP (6:07)
.5 mile CD, had to get back to work :(.

Very proud of myself, and this gives me hope that there might be a chance I could still race fast at the Trials. Guess we’ll have to see when I’m back up to full speed, though – I know I’m not completely out of this yet.

Slow progress

2011-11-30T15:17:00.002-06:00

Tuesday I was able to run 8 miles. Tuesday night the achilles was a little sore, so Wednesday over lunch I hit up the elliptical machine (for 90 minutes, yikes). Tonight I'll get in an easy bike as well, just trying to keep the training hours up. Walking around today it feels better, but I'd rather error on the side of allowing it to heal more vs. stressing it.

Also, 3rd steroid patch put on today.

Tomorrow I'll get to try running again, crossing my fingers that it goes well!!

I JUST RAN 6 MILES!!!!!

2011-11-28T14:01:00.002-06:00

Without any pain or burning sensation. I have the biggest internal grin on (trying to hide my giddiness from my coworkers :))!!

Went to the PT afterwards for the 2nd steroid patch. Plan is to have a third sometime later this week. (Apparently 8-10 is the equivalent to a cortisone injection... yikes... glad my body has healed fast & reacted very well to the first one). We talked about a plan to get back up to running full mileage/intensity, and, as everyone knows, it’s just a guessing game (hopefully an educated guessing game!). How quickly can you ramp up? Is it better to just run once a day? How “long” of a long run will I be able to do this week? When can I add in intensity?

Obviously, we’re trying to be cautious here so we don’t land back where I was 10 days ago. Decision was to try 6 today and slowly ramp that up throughout the week, with the potential of a first double day on Friday or Saturday (if everything is going REALLY well). When we get closer to the end of the week we can also decide on speed… hard to know when to try to do a hard workout (and how much to abbreviate that workout).

I have to say that I am SO thankful that I have been very smart and patient with this injury. I sought medical advice right away, immediately rested the area, and did all of the little things I needed to work on: flexibility, strengthening the muscle groups that are weak, icing/ibuprofen for inflammation, etc. Most importantly, I didn’t allow myself to have any test runs – I honestly think that was key. I was so tempted, but knew that it was better to error on the side of complete rest and running a setting myself up to have a longer test run once things were more healed. I also watched what I ate even more, knowing that I wasn’t working out as much & knowing how easily I gain weight when I’m not running a lot. I’m really proud of myself, especially considering it was a holiday week!!

I also poured myself into cross training. There were two really great workouts I was able to muscle through on the elliptical: First was 1.5 hours, where I had 30 minutes where I increased my HR 5 bpm every 5 minutes (175, 180, 185, 190, 195, 200). I ended up holding my HR around 202 for the last 5 minutes. Then another 20 minutes with a similar progression (180, 185, 190, 195). Second elliptical workout on Saturday was very similar, 1.75 hours total, just a few bpms lower (could only get my HR up to 197 at the peak, no matter how much I tried to beat up the elliptical!). I tried SO hard to get it higher, but wasn’t able – perhaps because it was a different machine? Or are there days where you just can’t get it as high, no matter how hard you try? Guess I’ve never paid attention (or done similar workouts so close to each other so I could prepare).

Let’s hope that tomorrow’s run also brings no pain!!

Making myself better today... even through injury

2011-11-22T16:46:00.007-06:00

I honestly think I needed this break.

Don’t get me wrong. I was loving what I was doing – reaching higher weekly mileage totals than I ever had before, working harder than I thought possible, etc. My greatest joy now is beating my body into oblivion. On the other hand, though, I was struggling a bit mentally (being able to wrap my head around attacking such long/hard workouts) and I’m realizing now that I wasn’t giving myself enough physical rest either. The day after the pain started I came down with the flu. At the time, I thought it was God’s way of making sure I took an extra rest day. [Still probably was] But, after sleeping a ton Friday to shake the bug and throughout the weekend, I realized how sleep deprived I must have been. So – lesson for next time – perhaps look into using my vacation days strategically so I can better recover during these big weeks. Also, make sure that I’m allowing some down time after each of the runs. All too often I do a quick noon-time or evening run and then rush back to work or on to something at home without stretching or relaxing. Not acceptable.

But, as much as I “needed” a little break, God could have made it a little shorter of a break.

To recap what I’ve done/learned in the last week (and a timeline just for my sake):

Thursday evening: sharp pain during evening run at 4 miles, started and stopped next ½ mile. Stabbing pain intermittent. Decided to stop at 4.5 miles, walked home.
Friday: flu, unable to run even if I wanted to
Saturday: ran 2 miles, walked rest of way home after feeling the “stabbing” sensation start to creep into the Achilles. NOO! Walked home.
Sunday: off, trying to decide a game plan. Reading Jaymee’s blog and what she went through and learned has been SUPER helpful. Nice to know others have been through it & come out of it just as strong. Decided to try cross-training tomorrow to see if it would bother the area.
Monday AM: Decided to turn myself into a cross-training machine. 38 minute pool “run” at the YMCA. YUCK. Every time I made a turn in the pool (which took about 1:15, in case you’re wondering), I told myself to try to make the next minute count. There are only so many minutes in a day, you have to use each of them to make yourself better. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my heart rate up for the life of me. I wondered if I was doing it wrong. I tried a fast tempo, a slow tempo, and everything else I could think of. At 38 minutes, I willed myself to try another lap or two. (The workout plan called for 6 miles in the AM, 6 in the PM, so I was trying to do something equivalent) But I just couldn’t. Noted that pool running just isn't my thing (I've tried it a few other times in my life, with the same results).
Getting up out of the pool, Dr. Bahl was entering. YEAH! Medical sage to the rescue! He gave me a little advice & told me to see a PT he works with. He suggested some sort of steroid patch.
Dried off, then did 40 minutes on the elliptical. GREAT workout! Time went by relatively quickly & I got my heart rate to around 170, which is good. (generally max is 210, hard workouts 190, easy workouts 155-160, easy-moderate 170. No achilles pain. Sweated a ton as well – so thought to myself that I should incorporate a session of indoor training at least once a week between now & the trials just to keep my body used to the heat/humidity.

Monday PM: 60 minutes on the bike, nice and easy.

Tuesday AM: 60 minutes elliptical, medium effort.
Saw physical therapist. Said there’s still some visible swelling around the tendon, so no running until Monday :(. Said we’re going to wait until we can do a 5-7 mile run with confidence (rather than heading out and just doing 2, re-inflaming the area, etc.). Waiting until Monday with an aggressive anti-inflamatory plan should allow the area to heal.
Things he noted that I need to work on:
1. Inside calf weakness. Need to do at least a little calf work (I do very little now), focusing on both the inside and outside.
2. I’m extremely inflexible. REALLY need to work on this. Again, I think it’s just dedicating 10-15 minutes after a run to properly stretching & winding down. Another thought is to dedicate 10-15 minutes at the end of my strength sessions to flexibility.

3. 10 degree difference in my ability to flex my foot forward on the injured side. Result of the injury? Or previous imbalance? I'll never know, but something to be aware of & work towards getting each side equal.
He did some deep tissue massage to get out knots in my low calf muscle that might be tugging at the achilles (where he commented that most people cringe with pain – yeah, it was uncomfortable, but I definitely wouldn't call it a “cringe” type of pain. But, perhaps my threshold for pain is different than most). He showed me some strengthening exercises and stretches and then put a steroid patch on the area (called Iontophoresis). Basically it moves the cortisone from the patch under the skin to take away the inflammation. Doing a bit of reading online, it sounds like it’s a pretty effective way to relieve the inflammation in the area.

Which leads us to now! I’m planning to hop on the bike again tonight, hopefully for another hour or so. Should be a jolly good time.

General plan forward: no running until there’s no inflammation and no pain to get up on my toes (right now there still is). Cross train my butt off. Try to continue on my weekly “get to race weight” plan, even thought that’s a lot harder when you’re not running & it’s Thanksgiving week (can I please replace the 10,000 calorie meals I know will be at both families' homes this weekend with wholesome Just Food Co-op food?). Strength work as usual. Extra time devoted to flexibility.

*Sigh* Not the most fun plan, but it’s all I have & I can choose to be down on myself or make the most of this. I’m choosing to be positive & think of this as an opportunity to make myself stronger/more fit/etc. My new motto is to "make myself better today" - every minute that I'm cross training, I think about how it's making me faster/stronger/more fit. Makes each minute go by a little faster :)

PS - I love living, running, and working in small communities. While hammering away on the elliptical today (I look a little phycho, not going to lie), someone came up to me and said, "I saw you running at the park last week! Man, you were flying! I was the man with the big white dog. You aren't injured, are you?" "Oh, no! Well, hope it's just something quick! Man, you looked so good out there!" :)

Achilles Tendonitis

2011-11-19T17:20:00.002-06:00

Anyone know how to treat this QUICKLY? It came on Thursday after a hard/long Wednesday evening run. I've never had Achilles trouble before, so I'm a little perplexed that it came on so quickly and has been so bad.

Generally it feels bruised/tight when walking around. Running on it Thursday it had a burning sensation. A couple steps later in the run produced some sharp stabbing pain. I took Friday off, and tried running again Saturday with the same progression (burning to stabbing). Called it quits at 2 miles. Hmmm... guess I'm a little worried about this one :(

Thought I'd throw this out there to see if anyone reading had great ideas :)

Dr. Asp

2011-11-17T17:53:00.003-06:00

I have talked before about how working with a sports psychologist made a huge difference in my race at Grandma's. Dr. Asp in Red Wing is that psychologist, and the Red Wing newspaper recently did an article about him working with runners. It is mostly about his work with the high school team, but I thought it was noteworthy. Here's a copy of the article. Pretty cool that the local high school has such a resource on their coaching staff!

Mind games paying off for Wingers
Even after running 13 marathons Dr. David Asp still needs to coax himself mentally through work-outs. Now, a volunteer assistant coach for the Red Wing cross-country team, Asp is helping the Wingers prepare for meets by training their minds. Asp, a psychologist in the Behavior Health Department at Fairview Red Wing Medical Center, focuses on using positive coping thoughts to push through difficult and stressful situations. With a specialization in sports psychology and as an avid endurance sports participant, Asp developed a mental training program that is helping Red Wing utilize positive thinking. Asp first became involved with the team in 2008 when Wingers head coach Jesse Nelson had Asp speak with the team about the impact mental training has on physical performance. A year later Asp became a volunteer assistant coach. With an extensive background in sports psychology, Asp was excited to equip younger athletes with the basic mental preparation needed to succeed. “It’s incredible the power of our imagination and how it can change things physiologically,” said Asp, who has completed 13 marathons and three Iron Man triathlons. Asp began practicing with the team two to three days a week and led the Wingers through visualization, relaxation, and breathing exercises a couple times per year. He also attended races as frequently as possible. Each year his involvement with the team as a sports psychologist increased, he said. Nelson and Asp decided to increase mental training as sports psychology became more prevalent in athletics. “There’s more of an awareness of the importance of it,” Asp said. “There’s more now we can do.” Asp tells the Winger runners to imagine their bodies as finely-tuned engines and their legs as powerful pistons running the engine. At the end of the race, runners want to kick into a “higher gear,” he said. All of the thoughts are positive coping mechanisms that redirect negativity and push the athletes past tough stretches in competition. “I tell them to trust their body to go to that pain threshold,” Asp said. The team bus is silent before meets. Most of the runners are listening to the podcast Nelson and Asp made which contains positive coping statements, Anderson said. The podcast equips the athletes with the focus it takes to overcome pain at the end of a race, Asp said. “It relaxes you and takes away some of the pre-race stress,” senior Christian Leitner said. The training has worked for the Wingers. After taking the team through relaxation techniques and breathing exercises before its meet at Rochester Mayo, the girls team won the meet and several individuals ran personal best times. “I had my best race,” said sophomore Lindsay Scribner, who finished 13th and ran one of the best races in her career, according to Nelson. “It helps.” The team also went through the program when it traveled to Alexandria for a meet. Before the meet, Asp tried to get the Wingers to focus on performing at their peak, not attempting to win the race or place. “You need to have some pressure,” Asp said. “But a lot of athletes have too much pressure. It acts as a mental emergency break.” Both teams finished 14th in a quality field that featured some of the best teams in the state. Sophomore Ryan Schnaith turned in a career best time of 18 minutes 5 seconds in the 5-kilometer race. Red Wing will compete in the section 1AA meet Thursday in Owatonna and Asp plans to lead the team through another session of visualization before the biggest race of the season. With the positive examples from Rochester and Alexandria, Asp said he hopes to keep growing the program. “This has been a special year,” Asp said. “The important thing is that they give it their all. Put everything out there. This is a beginning step. It’s coming together and I’ve got some ideas for next year already.” The program lends itself well to high school sports. Nelson said the emotional roller coaster of adolescence increases the impact visualization can have on an athlete. “Kids just lack confidence,” Nelson said. “They don’t believe in themselves as much as they should.” Low self-worth can be treated in athletics, Asp said. “That’s why mental training is so important,” Asp said of the roller coaster of emotions in adolescents. “You need to stay consistently mentally focused and believing in yourself. Focus on positives rather than negative or stressful situations.” Asp said he expected good results after taking the team through the program, but the overwhelming acceptance and immediate race results was a pleasant surprise. The more the kids tuned into the importance of training their minds and emotions, the better they competed and the more they believed his ideas, Asp said. “It helped tremendously,” Asp said of team’s success. “I saw their desire for more it, wanting to believe in themselves. I really sensed they wanted to have more of that. It was nice to see. Asp started as a psychologist in 1982 when Fairview was Interstate, a private medical group, and this year will be his 30th in Red Wing. The runners appreciate the amount of experience Asp brings to his volunteer coaching position. “It’s pretty cool knowing he’s gone through all that education,” junior Kelsee Anderson said. “We’re glad he can talk with us so we can run better. He’s definitely made a huge impact on me.” Asp’s impact is reaching beyond the course. Leitner, Scribner and Anderson said their schoolwork and overall lives have improved since starting the program. Leitner said his self-esteem has increased as a result of consistently using positive affirmation. “(The visualizations) helps with not only running but everything,” Anderson said. “If you can visualize yourself doing well in a race, then you will. If you can visualize yourself doing well on a big test, you’ll do well.” In Asp’s work for Fairview’s Behavioral Health Department, he helps patients work through test anxiety. In the same way Asp taught the runners to visualize success in racing, they are able to focus the calming thoughts toward any stressful situation. Scribner said it helps her relax before her tests and Leitner said his grades are the best he’s had. Asp also works with Nichole Porath, of Northfield, who will be competing at the 2012 Olympic Trials in Houston. Porath, a marathon runner who runs upwards of 95 miles a week, came to Asp seeking help to mentally prepare for Grandma’s Marathon in June. She spent time visualizing and Asp made a compact disc for her to practice with throughout training. Porath finished in a person-best 2 hours, 44 minutes and 46 seconds, more than a minute better than the Olympic qualifying time of 2:46 and more than five minutes ahead of her previous best time. “I don’t know if I would have qualified without his help,” Porath said. “I can’t say enough about how his work helped me.”

Biggest back to back weeks...

2011-11-14T10:26:00.003-06:00

Today is the start of a 105 mile week... uff!

To be followed up by a 95 mile week. This is the highest 2-week average I'll have in the build for the Trials.

I'm excited to work this hard, but also a little scared of the workouts scheduled. They're crazy hard, even without all of the mileage!

Get off the couch & finish the workout!

2011-11-09T21:41:00.005-06:00

I was excited to try a hard workout by myself. Jerry mentioned earlier in this cycle that I needed to make sure I could hit some of these key workouts solo to help build confidence and mental toughness.

So I started out & imagined hitting all of my goal times & being able to email him with the great news.

I was SO wrong.

Workout supposed to be: 19 mins T, 14:15 T, 9:30 T, 4:45 T inside of a 15 mile run.

I began the first tempo segment. First mile in something like 6:13. Ug. Granted, a little more uphill and 1/2 of it right into 13 MPH winds, but still. I looked at my watch again at around 7 minutes. 6:50 pace. WHAT?!? I know I was still running straight into the wind... but something in my mind said, "this is ridiculously slow..."

I stopped.

And then was immediately angry at myself.

Why do I do this? Sometimes I just need to throw away the watch, I know that. It doesn't matter how fast these are, as long as they're hard. But something inside me is expecting to hit very fast tempo times & is very disappointed I'm not. And there's another part of me remembers how these tempo workouts felt the last 4 weeks before Grandma's - and I know I'm not in that portion of my training yet - but I should be closer to those times than what I'm running.

I walked for a while & then started again. Attempting the 19 min rep for the second time.

Except at 11 minutes I HAD to run off to the bathroom.

UGGG.

Now I was just MAD at myself. I decided to jog back to the house to see if Nate was home yet. Nope.

So I decided to lay on the couch & shut my eyes until he came home (~10 mins).

He came home, I told him about my failed attempts, as I lay curled under a blanket on the couch. He got me off the couch, told me to change into dry clothes, and he strapped on rollerskis to help push me through the workout. Together I knew we could do this. Or at least make a valiant third attempt :).

And I did! 19 minutes: 6:00, 5:59, 6:13 (wind), 5:58 pace for last .12.

Then I did the math on what I had done & was supposed to do: 12 minutes left. I decided to make it two miles. I can, I will, I told myself.

2 miles: 6:07 (wind), 5:58.

Nate is so amazing. He knows what to yell for encouragement (you can do anything for 2 minutes!) & is the reason I got myself off the couch to finish this workout. I wish I would have been able to do it solo, but all that matters is that I did it (albeit broken up & slower than I hoped).

So, need to work on my mental game. Might be a visit to Dr. Asp in the near future! I know I struggled during this portion of my Grandma's training as well, so at least it's not completely unexpected. I CAN and DO want this & need to throw out expectations. I also need to remember that I AM faster than I was before Grandma's (just slightly, but that's something to celebrate considering the increase in volume this cycle) - and focus on that vs. focusing on the gap between where I am & where I'd like to be.

I want this more than I ever have before - just have to be positive & believe in myself!!

Adventures in Nutrition

2011-11-08T22:16:00.005-06:00

For one of my first "trying to only eat healthy/organic/from a farmers market" meals, I attempted to make a Gazpacho soup recipe (from the Co-op) and bake a squash. Sounds great, right?

The recipe was easy enough: fresh tomatoes, crushed, with a cucumber sliced small (supposed to be food-processed, but we don't own such an appliance, so I painfully cut it into what I thought were skinny enough pieces), shredded carrots (didn't really know how to do this either so I just used the carrot peeler... which makes for very thin shreds of carrots, but I guess that works), some white beans, and other miscellaneous healthy items.

Things were going well until I gave the tomatoes to my husband to break up to put in the soup. Our blender doesn't exactly work anymore, so he "pulsed" them... the only setting that works anymore. Problem? That makes for a very "frothy" outcome. See picture of end product below.

In addition, my squash turned out HORRIBLE. I'm not sure what kind it was (longer, muted yellow), but thought I had googled a fail-proof baking recipe for it. Wrong. It wasn't even edible.

I was devastated. I had such glorious hopes for the meal, and it turned out awful. Seriously. Look at the soup again. You'd feel defeated as well. My husband, who knows me too well, said something like "let me see what I can do", whisked it away -- and LOOK what he was able to create!

Our first "completely healthy/organic/from a farmers market" meal - YEAH!!

Other adventures: I've since cooked THREE squash. First one, here, rubbery and inedible. Second, better, but my body nearly threw up as I took the last two bites (I was TRYING to like it!). My mother-in-law heard about our dislike of squash and cooked an amazing buttercup squash at her place one evening - wow, it was actually delicious! So, my THIRD attempt, with her steam baking instructions on-hand, turned out absolutely fabulous. I'm so excited! Best yet, I really like the vegetable & it makes great tasting & easy leftovers.

Last side note: Don't think that I'm able to do the "completely healthy" thing all the time... I still definitely fall down some times, but with each day I'm getting better. Giving up all of the fabulous tasting sweets isn't easy...

And in case you're wondering, I've found the best way to cook a squash is to: cut in half, clean out the middle, lay it facing down in a pan filled with about a 1/2 inch of water, covering pan with tin foil, and baking it for about an hour :). Tiny bit of butter and/or salt and pepper afterwards. Yum!

Improvements

2011-11-01T22:29:00.003-05:00

As I’ve said in a previous post, Jerry is challenging me this cycle to step my times down quicker than I ever have before – to repeat and goal race times that I NEVER thought might be possible (or at least so quickly). Today’s workout was the first fast workout at the next step down in times.

Goal: 6x1000m in 3:15-3:17. WOW. Then 4x400, as fast as possible.
Actual: 3:24, 3:21, 3:19, 3:21, 3:19, 3:32 (completely fell apart!) = average of 3:22 for all 6, averaged 3:20 through first 5
The 400s were ugly. I don’t know if there was much of a pace change between the 400s and 1000s. Oops.

So, I wasn’t quite able to hit the new times. BUT, I’m proud of myself. With each repeat, I imagined 3:17. I drove forward with EVERYTHING I had, asking myself how badly I wanted this. I also reflected for a little while how lucky I was to be out, pounding my body – just a week ago, I was pretty concerned about a quad (that legitimately could have taken me out for a while if it weren’t for fast, smart treatment!).

I also noticed that I felt bigger (and with that inefficient, not able to move as fluidly). I let myself go a little bit while I was injured (waaay too easy to do…I should be better than that!). Funny how I notice a 2-3 lb weight gain now. But, now I’m back on track & know I need to work to get back to where I need to be! [Aside: I bought over $20 worth of veggies and fruit today :) Biggest cart of good-for-you-food yet!!]

After I finished I went back to my log to compare today to where I’ve been at in previous workouts. I was pretty impressed to find how much I’ve improved.

This cycle:
11/1 (today) 3:24, 3:21, 3:19, 3:21, 3:19, 3:32 = average of 3:22 for 6, averaged 3:20 through first 5
9/20 3:24, 3:21, 3:21, 3:22, 3:27. Average of 3:23 for the 5.
9/13 3:34, 3:23, 3:19 (downhill), 3:20, 3:15, 3:26 = average of average of 3:22 for 6, average of 3:20 without first repeat
9/2 averaged 3:23 average (5 reps) (~110 days before the Trials)
8/10 averaged 3:33 or so (6 reps)

Before Grandma’s:
3/5: 3:23.3 average. 5x1000 (3:27, 3:23 for next 4) (~110 days before Grandma's)

AND just 1 short year ago!
11/7/2010: 3:36.3 average. 6x1000s. 3:37, 3:37, 3:34, 3:38, 3:37, 3:35. Log entry: “Hard! Great workout!”

So, as you can see, the time drops this cycle have been much more subtle. I think I’ve hit a slight plateau with the VO2 max times lately, but I'm not worried about it. Usually that follows with a small break through in MP and tempo paces, and then a VO2 max break through shortly follows. Fun to have been doing this for over a year to be able to recognize patterns – and also to see the progress I’ve made!

3:17 next time, I KNOW it :) (Although... I have to wait until December 13th to try!!!)

Progress!

2011-10-27T22:03:00.001-05:00

Pain free run, swelling free evening. YEAH!!!!

Glad to have such a great team

2011-10-27T14:13:00.002-05:00

I am blessed to be working with such bright & caring individuals. I’m not completely over the low quad spasm yet, but it’s getting better quickly.

The worst part of every injury is the “What should I do? How can I get over this the quickest? Is it smart to keep running? If not, how long should I take off?” questioning that goes on. You know what I’m talking about. It’s only been a couple of days, but wow – a injury/setback of any kind almost takes more brain power & energy than training 90+ miles/week!!

I am lucky to be able to fully trust my coach and chiropractor’s advice. I can throw all of these questions at them & trust their answers & guidance on a path forward. It's not easy to find professionals that you can trust like I'm able to.

With that said, if anyone is ever in the Red Wing area & looking for a great sports injury guy, please look up Jim Patterson (chiropractor). He is simply the BEST. Extremely knowledgeable, and an uncanny way of simplifying everything down for you. Plus, just the most worldly thinker. Can’t say enough about him here to even begin to thank him for all he’s done for me.

Going to try a 5-6 miler tonight, hoping there isn’t a flare up or inflammation of any kind afterwards!!

Week In Review - Week 13

2011-10-24T11:50:00.005-05:00

Week in Review
Week 13 (to-go!): 71 miles total (recovery!!) vs. plan of 73
One day off
One long run, 21.65 miles (story below)
One hard workout: 14.25 miles total: 3x10 minutes at 6:00 pace, 20 minutes at goal MP (6:09)

The weather has finally turned cooler, which has been great. I’m such a cold-weather runner, it isn’t funny (PLEASE, Houston, make Jan 14th a very, very cold race day!!!). I’ve loved the change. Plus, it gives me the chance to wear more of the awesome CW-X gear that I received earlier this year. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to join their elite athlete team (check it out!), which is beyond cool since I’ve worn their tights for the last 6 of my marathons and think their stuff is great. I’ve always had a hard time with my thighs chaffing (big things, small hips = not fun!). But, I’ve NEVER had any problems chaffing in CW-X, which is why I’m such a huge fan of their products.

This week is a down week (YEAH!!) – 73 planned miles with one planned day off. The last time I’ve taken a day off was on 9/27, which was 24 days and 309 miles ago. Uff. That’s more miles than most high school runners log in a summer! It was probably just a tad too long of a stretch in between days, off, though. I was extremely tight & am now nursing something in my left quad.

I switched my off day to Saturday (vs. scheduled = Thursday) because of a family event. Friday ended up being my long run day, plan of 23 miles. This was the 24th day of running in a row. I did fine through about 16 miles, but then struggled. My right hamstring wasn’t firing and was getting a little worse throughout the run, so stopped several times to stretch it. Hate that old injury. At 19 miles I turned to the left and navigated through some rough ground to avoid being near traffic. I must have strained something in my quad. Ug. I walked/ran the rest of the way home, cutting the scheduled 23 miler to 21.65. It was actually quite painful.

I’m still nursing that quad. Not sure what I did to it, but there’s a sharp pain when I run now. Best to rest it, I’d rather play it safe than sorry.
Lesson learned… do not alter Jerry’s plan to further stretch out my “off” days. There are already very few scheduled, and there’s in there, in a specific spot of the week, FOR A REASON! (Yes, that’s me yelling at myself :))

I made myself better today

2011-10-19T10:17:00.001-05:00

I haven’t written much lately… probably because I’ve logged 95 miles each of the last two weeks. Impressive, especially considering I handled them pretty well (all things considered)!

Before Grandma’s, I had one week of 95, but couldn’t do a second. That 95 mile week took everything out of me and I had a hard time recovering. Now, I’m finding myself strong enough to handle mileage like this – and back to back, even!

I still have my tired days, obviously. Friday last week was one of those days.

Because of the timing of the week, my hard days needed to fall on Wednesday and Friday. On Wednesday, I expected to feel terrible. I was in the middle of the 2nd 95 mile week, and was going to try to run 5x1500m repeats with Simone. But, much to my delight, they went really well!! I was faster than Simone on all of them, which REALLY surprised me (last winter/spring I could only keep up for about 85% of her workouts!). Repeats were as fast as 5:19, as slow as 5:24 (done in the Carleton arb, on very wet slick ground). Exhilarating to be able to run fast in the middle of mileage!

Then came Friday. I could tell I had only given my legs a day to recover (and that day was a double of 12 miles… so not exactly the lightest “recovery” day in the world). Workout was supposed to be: 19 miles total: 3 WU, 2x9:30 at tempo, hour easy, 14:15 at tempo, CD for the remainder. It was incredibly windy that day- for the first tempo segment I found myself running a 5:50 first mile and 6:30-6:40 pace for the last .67 or so. I believe the next 9:30 at tempo was around 5:48 and 6:20. My legs were trashed.

I slugged through 7.5 miles, very slowly. Time to start the last tempo segment. Ug. I told Nate that I could commit to doing 9:30 of tempo (workout called for 14:15). He nicely suggested committing to all of it, but I just couldn’t. My legs hurt, I was slow, and quite frankly I just wanted to be done.

BUT, I didn’t give stopping a second thought when I saw 9:30 on my watch. I instead thought: Just 4:45 left, that’s not that bad! I can do anything for 4… then 3… then 2… etc minutes. I imagined bring tough the last ½ mile at the Trials & powered up a hill for the last minute (just makes me stronger! I thought). I stopped at 14:15 and bent over, gasping for air. I looked up at Nate, smiled, and said, “I made myself better today”.

That’s all you can ask of yourself, right? Take each day and make yourself better/faster/stronger than the last :).

Made me smile :)

2011-10-11T15:03:00.004-05:00

I've done a couple of talks this fall to different teams/groups. It is so rewarding to influence others to believe in themselves, have that 'go get 'em' attitude, and chase goals they're passionate about.

After one talk at a high school, I got the nicest note. Hope they don't mind me reposting here, it really made my day:

"Just to let you know, I was at grocery store this pm and a parent of varsity member on the girls team said after your talk all she could talk about was you, running and setting her sights high to run CC in college. This parent thought that her daughter's confidence has shot up tremendously in the last few weeks and felt that your presentation was a significant part of it going up.Having one student/athlete feel this way, I'm sure there are others and that it will be contagious."

:)

99 days and counting...

2011-10-06T10:15:00.003-05:00

We're within 100 days of the Trials... that's scary...

A quick mid-week update: I've been running a little tired lately, as evidenced by my TC 10 performance. It's hard to know what to do (since I'm relatively new to marathoning and mileage). I think I'm feeling this way because there have been so many changes to my training plan: I'm following the elite Daniels plan, which has much longer tempo and MP workouts in them (uff, I thought the regular plan was hard!!); Mileage is up (For Grandma's, I hit 95 miles once, 92 miles another week... for Houston I have 7 weeks above 95 miles planned (3 of which are 105)), and paces are being challenged.

Perhaps it'll just take a while to get used to all of this? Or perhaps I should back off the paces a little bit? During my MP workout yesterday, it was relatively comfortable to hit 6:16s -- I had to really work to bring that to 6:10s, which is my new goal. Question is: do you push for sub 6:10s, and eventually that becomes easier? Or do you go at what "feels" like MP and that pace will come down gradually as the training plan progresses & I become stronger & more fit?

On another note, I'm doing really well with my weight and nutrition (well, I should clarify: really well in comparison to what I used to be doing, my goals are still to do much better :)). I've held my weight at 107.4 this week, which is realtively light for me. I was down to 106.0 for Grandma's, and my goal will be to get there again within the next 3 weeks. Fun to think I can be there so early in the training cycle! The goal will be to be even lighter than that for Houston - a weight yet to be determined (with the help of a body fat test - hoping someone can point me to a "number" to shoot for). I just don't want to be carrying around anything I don't NEED at Houston. Based on how out of place I felt at TC 10 vs. the extremely fit/lean US Championship women, I have a bit on me that I don't need :)

Part of it has been the change in the foods that I eat: I'm now eating a TON of healthy foods. I haven't allowed myself to buy anything packaged or bad for you in the last 3 weeks, and instead have snacked on greek yogurt, organic bread with PB, etc. Sometimes I find myself staring longingly into our pantry or fridge, wishing there were packaged cookies, chocolate bars, pop tarts, or anything else to "satisfy" me. [Apples just don't fill you like a heavy, unhealthy, sugar/fat filled snack :)] Ohh, just writing about those things makes me crave them...

I do allow myself to cheat when the "bad" food is being provided (i.e. snacks left out at work, goodies made by mother-in-law, etc). There's probably a little more cheating than I should have, but at least this method limits it :)

My body/stomach have had a hard time getting used to this. Seriously. I'm guessing it's just because my diet now has a ton more fiber, and I'm eating a lot more (you can eat so much more when everything is healthy!).

That's all for now... plugging away, one day at a time (with only 99 more to go!). Yikes!!

Week 16 in review

2011-10-04T09:58:00.001-05:00

67 miles (down week)
15 mile hard tempo workout
TC 10 mile, 1:02.40
1 day off (YEAH!)

I purposefully had a down week this week to accommodate the 10 mile. Last week had been such a great training week that I thought big things might be in store.

I started in the US championship wave for the first time, which was really fun. You were supposed to have a PR of 58 minutes or less to qualify – apparently they thought my marathon time equated to that (perhaps it does?). I was excited to be able to race alongside some really fast women. But my legs had other plans. The race was torturous – my legs wouldn’t move! My legs were heavy & it felt weird to try to get them to move. Ug. At mile 3, I knew there was no hope. I stayed positive throughout (nothing I can do now except try to push as hard as I can & enjoy the day), but it was a little tough… I was fighting to last place in my wave L. At mile 7, I thought to myself that I wasn’t hardly using my lungs. You have to be able to get your legs to move faster than this, Nichole – you have to at least TRY to tax your lungs! But, I couldn’t. I seriously could not turn my legs over any faster or drive forward with any power.

Pictures of the race show just look odd – I’m sort of driving with my knees, but it’s an awkward angle (something only I pick out, probably), not efficient & not a natural gait at all. So I’m not kidding when I say my legs just weren’t working properly.

I reflected on the race afterwards and came to some good conclusions:
Even though this week was a “down” week, it takes me much longer to feel recovered than it used to. I usually don’t feel a down week until a week and a half later. If I’m really going to “taper” for something, I think it needs to start the week before the race.

This down week had one day off and one day of 5 miles – meaning that the other 62 miles were in 5 days, without a long run – that’s still a bit.

Last, Wednesday’s run of 14.5 miles had 45 minutes of tempo in it, and I completely drained myself during the workout (I struggled to maintain 6:30s at the end of the last 10 minute session… completely dehydrated & legs not working). To set myself up for a weekend race, I should probably have done some short speed or a shorter, quicker tempo run. Not something that made me feel completely drained & sick afterwards.

So, ug. Guess you just chalk it up to experience & move on!!

Stop by!

2011-09-27T22:32:00.005-05:00

I'll be at the Stunt Puppy/Subaru booth at the Twin Cities Marathon expo this Saturday at 4pm. Should be fun!

Pushing the limits

2011-09-26T10:04:00.004-05:00

Jerry sent me the next 12 weeks of training. WOW. It's pretty incredible to look at and to think that I might be able to DO all of this. His email warned me before I opened it: "After working on this for a while it was strange to look at an 85 mile week and think "This looks too easy". That should warn you how HARD the rest of it looks."

Oh, boy...

He also wrote in suggested pace ranges for these weeks.

Previously, I had been stepping down from my Grandma's training paces slowly. Tempo before grandma's was 6:05. So, 6:00 seemed like a reasonable target. After all, I had a really hard time hitting 6:05s most of the time, until I tapered. Jerry's suggestions instead have me reaching for 5:45-5:50 now, and stepping that down to 5:40-5:45 in the next month. Marathon pace will now be 6:04-6:09, in a month it'll be 5:59-6:04. My first reaction: what? is that even possible? But then I realized this is the exact same change that I've already made with race goals: I am much more aggressive in goal setting & not afraid to fall short (i.e. fail). I'm not sure why I hadn't extended that thinking into challenging myself on training paces. After all, isn't that how you get to those aggressive race goals - by training aggressively?

So, first tempo run inside a long run (18 miles) was Sunday. Goal was sub 5:50, per Jerry. First three miles at tempo I averaged 5:47, and felt pretty good (note that I didn't hit these paces for tempo runs until the VERY end of the taper before Grandma's, so it's sort of odd to be back there now, without that same "my legs feel so fast!" taper feeling!). That equates to a sub 18:10 5k, which is crazy. The second three mile tempo was at the end of the long run in 5:56 or 5:57 pace. I was toast. I tried to dig, but that was all I had. I can tell I have a bit of work to do in re-gaining that long-run strength. But, overall, a great first long run/tempo workout, and super fun to realize that I actually CAN be hitting these new faster paces.

All it took was a little reminder -- I am capable of much more than I think. I just have to BELIEVE. :)

I miss brownies...

2011-09-18T20:58:00.001-05:00

One of the things that has defined my training over the past year has been adding the "little things" to my training. One of those things has been nutrition.

About 2 months before Grandma's, I decided I also needed to make changes to my diet. I have always been a heavier (more dense?) runner, and I especially notice it at the elite start line. Previously, I didn't really watch what I ate - as long as the scale told me I was being consistent, I was happy. That meant that I got away with a LOT of junk food. Seriously. Frozen pizza and other quick "out of the freezer, into the oven" foods were common for supper. [I try to be cost-conscious at the grocery store, and it's fairly easy to find packaged, no-nutrients food for next to nothing when you combine a sale with a double coupon :)]

So, my husband and I talked and decided that we were going to try to eat more fresh foods, even though that meant we’d likely be spending a bit more on food.

First trip to the store: I bought lettuce and chicken & we made chicken Caesar salad. I was so proud of myself. Until Nate commented that the lettuce was iceberg, which has almost no nutrients in it, and the chicken was frozen and has a lot more sodium than fresh meat. Hmm... that had never occurred to me.

I am a horrible snacker. I justified it by telling myself that I had run 80+ miles – of course I can have an open box of cereal to snack on at night when I was catching up on emails at night. Before I’d know it, half of the box was gone L. I’d also eat handfuls of chocolate chips and other assorted packaged stuff from the cupboard. That box of brownies I made yesterday? They’d be gone by the next evening.

I knew I needed to cut all of this out & replace it with healthier calories. So, the plan was to have a lighter supper & stop all night-time snacking – goal was to go to bed hungry so that I’d crave a huge breakfast (which is generally all healthy foods). To help, we instituted a “give me a dollar” jar. If I did snack, I had to put a dollar into Nate’s jar [which he told me he was going to buy Mike & Ikes with, and they weren’t even going to be on sale :) - I never buy anything not on sale!]. The first couple of weeks sucked. I MISSED all of those junk calories! I HATE going to bed hungry! But, I am proud to say that I was stubborn enough not to put a single dollar in that jar the entire time :).

I saw immediate results on the scale. Within 2 months, I had lost nearly 7 pounds & felt GREAT. Running came much easier – either because of the weight lost, the fact my body was running off of better calories, or the fact that it was also the time I was tapering. Either way, I am now a huge believer in managing weight (in a healthy way) & putting healthy, nutrient-dense foods into my body.

So – in my quest to give myself every possible advantage possible to race well at the Trials, I am trying to be just a little better with food. This will likely mean targeting an even lower racing weight and trying to make even better food choices (because even though I did pretty well before Grandma’s, I can definitely do better). Luckily, I have the very generous help from “Just Food” in Northfield, an organic/local/sustainable grocery store.

I am super excited about the opportunity to buy organic and fill our fridge with veggies, fruits, and all of the completely healthy choices they have there. Not going to lie, I’m a little intimidated by it (going through the veggie section I recognized a whopping 2 or 3 names – what do you make with most of this??). I don’t really know how to cook with many of these things, and I certainly don’t know how to make quick snacks or meals with them. So – should be a fun adventure! I’m sure there will be some fun stories/learning in the coming months :).

Game On

2011-09-13T22:11:00.002-05:00

During my very slow COLL performance, I had time to think about why I wasn't performing as I had hoped. One of the things I decided was that from that day on, I needed to make the most out of each and every hard workout in my training schedule.

Since Grandma's, Jerry has had me putting in great base mileage, with a little VO2 max work thrown in. It's not that I haven't given it my all in each of those track sessions. I have. It's just that I need to make SURE that I am working as hard as I absolutely can. Digging harder than I have before, running as smoothly & strong as possible. I have 18 weeks until the Trials. In some ways, that's a long time from now (4.5 months!) -- but in another, I know weeks FLY by, and 18 seems like such a small number...

So for today's track workout, I did 3 1000m repeats by myself back & forth along a flat stretch of Red Wing over the lunch hour. First one: 3:34. My legs couldn't move. I told myself that didn't matter. I know I can be stronger than this. #2: 3:23 (perfect! Right on pace!). #3: 3:19 (a little downhill?). Nice!

I jogged back over to the YMCA, as I knew the lunch time runners would be gathering. My hope was that they could help with the last 3 repeats.

They are the best. No question about it, they all jogged to the start with me. Some just jog back and forth, others start before me & allow me to chase them, others line up along the course & join me as I catch up. How cool is that?

#4 was 3:20. YES -- that's the fast range I'd like to be hitting for these. My legs are feeling it at this point. #5 was 3:15. I was elated. This is the fastest I've ever done a 1000m repeat! I didn't allow much rest for #6, and felt it: 3:26.

What a fabulous workout. My lungs burned and I can truly say I gave it everything I had - success! A huge THANK YOU to the YMCA group for your help in making that happen, I am so appreciative of and humbled by the help. This journey would not be nearly as much fun without the awesome support crew(s) I have :).

COLL - my slowest race?

2011-09-12T17:21:00.005-05:00

Oh, man... what a torturous 25k race. My goal was to run under a 1:38. I ran slower than 1:45. Not good.

The plan was to start in 6:15 pace for a couple of miles and then bring that down to close to 6:05s. I started off just fine, but after the 3rd mile I could just tell I was working too hard. Since when did 6:10s/6:15s become fast for me?

I got progressively slower throughout the race (seeing some miles around 7:05 or so… goal was sub 6:10). At mile 8, I started to get a little dizzy. At that point, I was just running for survival. My goal was to practice running while hurting & feeling awful – just one foot in front of the other, I kept telling myself.

Good news: I finished and I didn’t walk. I’m actually proud of that :). Bad news: 1:45:something for a finish – pretty slow. So slow, in fact, that a fellow Run N Fun men’s masters runner asked what had happened to me (“Did you stop to use the restroom?”). I laughed. Nope! Just a really slow race! :)

A year or so ago, I never had races like this. I ran pretty well 99% of the time, and the delta between my good days and bad days was very narrow. Runners who had days like this puzzled me. How was it possible to do so well one race & so poorly the next? But now I know that the problem was actually me - if you're racing well ALL of the time, you're not training hard enough & not pushing your limits. I'm finally pushing myself, and therefore there will be times when I blow-up in races.

I won’t spend time dwelling on the race, it's not worth it. It clearly just wasn’t my day. I think continued stress, lack of sleep, and the temps/humidity (I am seriously the worst heat/humidity runner, why is that??) all really affected me. Plus, I can just tell that I haven’t done any work at threshold pace. I feel slow (despite having done some good VO2 max work). But, nothing I can do about the race or these factors now, other than look forward and try to fix the things that aren’t going well.

So, instead, I'll focus on this week’s 85 miles and start to longer MP/tempo workouts!

Getting stronger

2011-09-07T15:08:00.003-05:00

I can feel my legs/body adapting to my current mileage & training regimen - yeah!

It took longer than I would have thought to get back into the routine of daily mileage, not exactly sure why. Perhaps I was overly optimistic about my ability to get back into it. [I was running ~80-85/week for Grandma’s, it shouldn’t be a problem to jump back into that type of mileage!][This is why I hurt myself when I’m not working with a coach!]

Whatever it was, I think I’ve turned a corner. I now feel like I did in training before Grandma’s – where I can do a double of 14 (4 am, 10 pm) and my legs aren’t phased at all by it. I can’t accurately describe the feeling in words: it’s as if your legs are now strong enough and miles just click by. There’s not the extreme quad soreness I had for a few weeks, where no matter what I did or what the workout, I begged for a quad massage before bed. Again, it’s probably just my body adapting to the stress I’m putting on it: this is the 5th week under Jerry’s daily plan, and weekly mileage has been: 70 (on 6 days), 75 (on 7 days), 80 (on 6 days), 75 (on 7), and this week of 75 on 7 days.

I’m not completely “out of the woods” yet, my legs don’t have that fun “spring” in them when I know they’re a little rested and fast. But at least I’m no longer beat-up/fatigued…

Which would mean that it’d be natural to move me to another phase in training, right?

Daniels’ 18 week “Elite” schedule begins next week. :)

[Does Jerry just KNOW that it would take this long to acclimate to mileage? I often marvel at how perfectly timed the change in phases/mileage peaks and valleys are]

Racing Again

2011-09-02T15:04:00.002-05:00

Since the marathon, I have raced four times, but have been so busy that I haven't been able to recap them. Here's an attempt:

Uphill Challenge:
I got the chance through work to go out to O.R. (Outdoor Retailer trade show) in Salt Lake City, Utah at the beginning of August. The big event at the show is the "Uphill Challenge".

The race has two treadmills, set at incline, and you run as far as you can for 15 minutes. As I got to the treadmill, the starter said, "Alright, lets set this to 15%". WHAT!?! Last year was at 10%, and I had at least practiced that grade on my treadmill at home one day just to see about what pace I wanted to start at. I knew I could start around 7.3MPH and work upwards from there (knowing that the winning distance from last year was around 1.63 miles).But I didn't have any idea what to start at for a 15% grade, running at altitude. etc. etc.

I figured that starting at 6.5 seemed reasonable. I bumped it up slowly over the next 5 minutes, until I felt my legs burning and lungs having a really hard time keeping up. I looked down: 7 minutes into the race. I quickly decreased pace to 5.5, but no luck... my lungs couldn't recover (darn altitude!). At 8 minutes, I desperately hit the "stop" button.

How embarrasing! There are very few times in life that I've stopped during a race. I think the only other time was at Afton's 25k when I couldn't run up one of the last hills. I caught my breath and then started up the treadmill again. Those 15 minutes were the most torcherous I've experienced in a long time, and my lungs still hurt 3 days after the race. You can watch the last minute or so of my heat on CW-X's facebook page here.

The woman running against me ran 1.4 miles vs. my 1.35. Bummer! I was really hoping to win the women's event :). I didn't have anything to judge that effort/distance on, but turns out that 1.35 miles isn't shabby at all -- In 2007 (one of the other times it was at 15%) Krissy Moehl the Hardrock 100 champ ran 1.31 miles, Nikki Kimball the Western States 100 mile champ ran 1.33 miles, and Joelle Vaught won the 2007 Uphill Challenge with 1.34 miles.

The product development guy at RWSC emailed me afterwards to congratulate me on tying for 2nd place with a Salomon sponsored runner -- apparently she's one of the best trail runners in the world. The woman that won is also one of the top trail runners (professional). Sweet :). Next year, I'll be prepared for either 10% or 15% :). Watch out!

MDRA 15k:
I've been feeling pretty slow since the marathon, so decided to use the 15k as a way to get a workout in with people helping to move me along. I started out in about 6:20 pace for the first 3 miles, and then warmed up to 6:12s, then 6:08s, then just above 6:00s. I felt strong, in control of my legs -- overall, a great confidence booster!

I knew before the race that the MN state age group record for a 28 year old in the 15k was 58:54, set last year at this race. Despite racing well for many years, I have never had an age state record, and so that was definately on my mind.
I finished in 3rd place in 57:54 - a minute in front of the old age group record! But after looking at the results, I realized that Kim Robinson (who won) is also 28 years old. Bummer!

13.1 Minneapolis Half Marathon:
One of my goals for this fall is to lower my half marathon PR. Currently the second half of Grandma's Marathon is my unofficial PR, since I really have not raced a half marathon in a few years. So I had targeted the 13.1 Minneapolis Half Marathon as a place to go for that new PR, plus they have really good prize money ($1000, $750, $500 for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place) and my second half of Grandma's (1:22:18) would have won last year's race by nearly 4 minutes. :)

The week before the race was absolutely crazy. There were multiple nights that Nate brought food up to my computer so I'd be able to keep working while eating :(. I got out for each of my runs, but didn't make time for more than 1 strength session, and wasn't taking care of myself well: sleeping, eating, drinking, etc.

Even the morning of the race was hectic. We were coordinating other activities later in the day, coordinating pick-ups of stuff with my parents, etc. As we arrived to the start line with no less than 30 seconds before the gun went off, I thought to myself that I really need to find a way to slow life down... this craziness isn't fun at all!

The stress of the work week and morning showed. I was really flat & my legs wouldn't move. 6:20 pace took a lot of effort (not good, most of my miles at Grandma's were faster than that!). Luckily, Claire, a friend who is hoping for her OT Qualifier at Chicago this fall, came up to me around mile 4 or 5. I decided then that I could run sub 6:19s for her (she was using this as a MP run). Nice to have the "reason" to run -- instead of focusing on being slow/feeling crummy, I focused on racing for her.

I finished in 5th place in 1:22:34, Claire right behind me. I was a little dissapointed with this result, obviously - it's slower than EITHER half at Grandma's! And I was actually trying to race! Nate reminded me that the 4 women ahead of me are ranked higher than me on the national marathon list, so I technically finished right where I "should" have. But -- I KNOW I could have raced with #4 if I would have had a good day, legs were feeling good, etc. :) Overall, despite being slow, it was a great event & a good workout.

Gustavus Alumni Race:
Every year I look forward to this race. I've become more involved with the team recently & have become close with a number of the women. Plus, my cousin Leighton is a Freshman this year. How fun!

The week before was another crazy one at work, and despite a day off, my legs were pretty beat. (Could be that the week was 80 miles on 6 days - not a ton, but also enough so legs should be a little drained) I wasn't expecting much.

From the gun, I was surprised - no one even tried to come with me. Sad! So, it was me and the golf cart for 3.1 miles (actually 3.22 by my watch, I swear I tried to take tangents! I looked at my watch at 3.11 and was at 17:50 something). I was decently happy with my 18:32 finish, considering the long course, the spongy surface (I am terrible when you take away my push-off!), and how I've been feeling lately.Plus, Kate, the GAC woman who finished 2nd, was 1:10 behind me -- and she'll be a top 5 MIAC finisher & will be gunning for a NCAA qualifier.

Leighton finished 7th for GAC men, so he was pretty pumped. He's looking strong - I'm excited to watch him race & develop as a runner in the coming years!

Here's a picture from the race. Here are race results.

Stunt Puppy!

2011-08-22T22:06:00.012-05:00

I never would have guessed that our dog Mesa would snag a cool sponsorship before I did!

While out at OR (a trade show in Utah) I was browsing through some really cool dog gear made by a company called Stunt Puppy. Their stuff is so cool - extremely purpose built (seriously - every stitch and design component has a specific purpose), made for people that are running or active with their dogs.

I've run with Mesa since the day we adopted her. In fact, our first run was 9 miles, when we stopped only because I thought it was unnatural to run her any futher (she wasn't even panting after 9... I knew I was in trouble then!). She now runs a lot of miles (probably 50 or so a week? That's more than most humans!) & LOVES it :). It's pretty fun :). I've always used a regular leash, mostly because I didn't know what was available. My inlaws bought me a Ruff Wear stretchy leash/belt thing for Christmas last year, but it was so long that Mesa would practically be running in the middle of the street (doesn't help that both of us are smaller, so an already big/long product looks even bigger...). I tried to loop it around my waist to shorten it, but it'd always come undone or get tangled. Ug. So I'd revert back to the leash, sometimes switching off every 3-4 miles on a run with Nate because my arm would get a little tired. It worked, though. And Mesa didn't have any complaints :) (other than when we'd end our run :))

Anyway - back to the trade show. I was chatting with Stunt Puppy's founder at the booth and found out that they were actually based in Minneapolis. When I mentioned that I was also from MN, had qualified for the trials, and ran most of my miles with Mesa, they asked if I'd be willing to test out their gear & give feedback on new products. Of course!! I am beyond thrilled to do so (as I hope Mesa is!!)!

They first gave me their original "Stunt Runner" to try. What a difference from the Ruff Wear version!!!! Much shorter, and much better tension. I can actually use it for daily runs! And wow, what a difference -- runs are SO much more enjoyable with her now! They also have a prototype that's shorter and tighter, which I've found to be my FAVORITE so far. It keeps Mesa close, but allows her to move up and back without affecting my pace or stride. *Love*

I have a few more products to test out, which is super fun. I'm just excited to have something that works SO well for Mesa and I, and also help develop further products.

(Photo above from our "Photo Shoot". Ha! Who would have thought I'd EVER say that :)?!? This is with their original Stunt Runner product) I honestly think Mesa knew she was modeling, she behaved and ran better than she ever has before :).

We have already made an appearance on their facebook page. Please all "like" their page. And if you have/run with a dog at all, seriously, check out their stuff. You'll love it!

The best support crew!

2011-08-19T21:45:00.004-05:00

I needed to do a 8x800m workout during the middle of the week. I mentioned it to the YMCA runners on Monday to see if anyone would be interested... they all were either "travelling", "not able to make it Tuesday" or "going to be sick". :) Ha.

But I came Tuesday just to ask again if anyone wanted to join (figuring no one would, but it was worth a try). No one said "no", and we headed out towards their 800 "course" (which is back and forth between two electric poles). Immediately, 2 of the guys started on their own repeats. Two faster guys started shortly after, and I shortly after that. Gotta love a good reverse pursuit workout!

Long story short, the group did 4 repeats with me. I am SO thankful -- to think that a group of men would do a repeat workout just to help me!! Seriously, amazing. I knew I needed the help (it's so much easier to chase someone!), and it would have been nearly impossible to have done all 8 well alone. I am in awe of the YMCA group - the fact that they would come out and run any random, crazy workout that I may have planned for the day - and be so upbeat and supportive of what I'm doing. They are such good sports, and I love that I've started to run more with them.

Times weren't great, but not bad either: 2:41, 2:40, 2:41, 2:42, 2:47 (had to run around a car that pulled out without looking - ug!), 2:43, 2:44, 2:44.

I considered not doing the 8th repeat. My legs were TOAST. But, I told myself that there was no way that the top 50 women in the US were skipping out of their last repeat -- so I just gave myself a little more rest & started out.

One other change in my running (and came out on that last repeat): God. Before Grandma's, I prayed fairly regularly asking for help. During Grandma's, I thought about him a lot: "I hope I'm running with everything you've given me", "Please help me through this". There was a preacher about 1/2 way that asked the runners as we passed whether we were running away from sin, or towards God. I answered that I was running towards God, and I fully BELIEVED what I told myself (as with everything else I told myself that day). This is new for me... I don't consider myself a super religous person.

But during the last repeat on Tuesday, I thanked God for the opportunity to be outside, running hard, and pushing myself. This is really weird for me to say... again, I've never been super religous or had these thoughts often before. Towards the end of the repeat my thoughts went again to Him, asking him to get me through in a good time. He got me through, in another 2:44 (would have liked faster, but my legs were completely fried, so I guess a 2:44 isn't bad :) )

So in addition, I feel I need to acknowledge the latest person to have joined my team: "God". I don't want that to sound cheesy, but I do feel like that's a big part of the mental strength I've gained during this journey. Thank you to EVERYONE that has helped along the way. I am blessed.

Onward!

2011-08-13T13:58:00.005-05:00

First, a very nice article on Running Minnesota: http://runningminnesota.blogspot.com/2011/08/nichole-porath.html

This week is my first week back since Grandma's. I've maintained decent mileage after Grandma's, but it hasn't been stellar (45-60/week). Starting up again with a defined plan and goal has been GREAT.

The plan for the next 5 weeks is to work back into mileage and get myself ready for an even tougher marathon training cycle. So, this week I started with 70 miles (which feels surprisingly easy, crazy to think that a less than a year ago 70 would have been a big week for me) and will bump that up gradually to 90-100 in the next month. The intensity will be a little lower, so it'll be a nice way to introduce my legs/body to higher mileage again.

So, what's the plan, you ask? I had a really hard time answering this question. I guess I had never really thought about what I'd do post-Grandma's or post-qualifying. A lot of people congratulated me on the race and then would comment, "A huge PR! Wow! And you’ve only been training consistently for the marathon for a year! Gee I wonder what you could do with 15 or 20 months of training." "Do you think you could shoot for the A-standard?" That obviously got me pretty excited.

As I said in the Running MN interview, I also really, really MISSED training after Grandma’s. I missed waking up in the morning and struggling to get my workouts, strength work, and all of the little things into my day on top of a demanding full-time job and a part-time hobby job. I missed chasing a “big” goal. I usually get so wrapped up in achieving goals that I don’t enjoy the “process” of achieving the goal. This was one of the first things I’ve done that I truly enjoyed the process, and recognized that during the cycle. Without any of this, I was completely lost. I NEEDED a new goal. So I emailed Jerry within a couple of days to ask him to write up a fall marathon plan right away.

He, very smartly, didn’t respond until at least a week after the race, which gave me time to cool off and think more clearly. I also realized that I maybe wasn't as ready as I thought. I did a track workout about two weeks from Grandma's and my legs were pretty shot on the cool down. I realized that I was not at all ready to crave this feeling yet. Mentally, I just needed more time. I also needed a bit of time physically.

We talked about a few things, including trying to shoot for the A-standard at either Chicago or NYC (where I was extended an offer to run in their professional women’s division), but decided that there was just too little time –either after Grandma’s to prep for Chicago, or after NYC to prep for the Trials. Well, I can't say that I was that logical - I really wanted to take advantage of the NYC offer. I felt like it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. But, as Jerry reminded me, it would be too difficult to try to fit both in. I could certainly run both, and I'm sure both would be a lot of fun, but I'd do mediocre, which isn't the goal right now.

So my focus will be on the Trials, trying to run somewhere in the low to sub-2:40s, and trying to place as high as I can. Jerry threw out a top-50 finish, which would be amazing.

It's so nice to have a concrete goal again. It re-energizes me & gives me a purpose behind each of my workouts (during the hard workouts I literally ask myself if I think I'm pushing it as hard as the top 50 women in the US are... makes me push all the harder). I am really, really excited to chase down this huge goal.

Like I said, this week was my first week toward this goal: 70 miles and two harder days. I did a 6x1000m workout on Wednesday, which wasn't very pretty. I finished my first repeat in 4:05... to which I thought, wow, could I really have lost THAT much so quickly? Have my legs completely forgotten how to run? The next reps were in the low 3:50s, so better, but still pathetically slow. I purposefully did these on the roads so I wasn't constantly thinking about 200m splits, paces, etc -- I'm trying to give myself a little break from the more-strict hard workouts that I know will be coming. I also tend to care a little less about my finishing times when I'm on the road... but even though I wasn't trying to care too much, being THIS slow was obviously a little concerning.

I figured out later that day that I had set my watch to .67 of a mile instead of the correct .625. Haha! So the repeats were really in the low 3:30s. That's still slow, but at least I'm not left wondering if God decided to take away my running ability completely. :)

Tomorrow I'll use the MDRA 15k as a workout. My cousin and husband will be running the 5k as well, so it'll be a fun family event :).

So, a great start to the training plan. I know I've said it more than a few times lately, but I am beyond excited for this next cycle! Onward to the Trials!!

SO excited

2011-08-09T22:58:00.003-05:00

Jerry just outlined the first few weeks of the next cycle. I can't tell you how EXCITED I am about them (and the prospect of following a structured, challenging plan again)!! Seriously :). He is so good.

I also like how he titled the email "Beginnings". He probably didn't mean anything about it - this is the beginning of a new planning phase - but it struck a chord with me. I really feel like this is the beginning of something fun, something exciting. Just have to stay healthy (main focus!) and mentally positive, and I'm pumped to see what will come.

Last Half - 13.1 to the 2:44.46 Finish

2011-08-04T21:19:00.007-05:00

At mile 25 or 25.5 - can't wait to finish!

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking... it's about time :). I have been so unbelievably busy that I'm surprised I'm able to post even now! If you haven't read my report about the first half of Grandma's Marathon, here it is.

---
Shortly after half way, I thought I sensed some fatigue in my quads. Not a good sign, I thought to myself. Should I slow? This could hurt a LOT by the end if I’m already feeling something now. I put it out of my mind. Whatever will be will be - just keep going. All you need to do is run a 1:23.30 for the next half. You can slow if you need to. I took a caffeinated gel at mile 15, and the quad fatigue went away shortly thereafter (note for next time: do I need to take more earlier?).

Taking gels and my bottles turned out to be a mess. All of the bottles looked the same, and although I had orange paper wrapped around mine, it was really hard to find. At two of the bottle tables I literally had to stop for a half of a second with my hand hovering over the bottles, frantically searching. They were pretty heavy to carry, even though they were only ½ full (and the squirt top didn’t work very well so I actually didn’t take much out of any of them) – so next time I’ll have to do a better job with them in general. It IS really nice to have them out on the course, if nothing else just as a way to get my gels out on the course.

From miles 13.1-20, Brenden and I cruised. At a couple of the “check point times” I had written on my hand I realized how far under I was. With each mile I gained another 2-3 seconds. I got so excited that after 2 of the check-points (I only had 5 written – 5k, 10k, 10, 19, 23 or 24) I dropped a 6:06 and 6:04. Oops! I was just so excited to be under my times & feeling good :) (and obviously wasn’t really paying attention to my watch enough!). Other than these two miles, my splits were VERY consistent. Amazing, actually. I hardly looked at my watch – just cruised effortlessly. Despite this, I found ourselves in no-man’s land after we caught and passed the “slower” OTQ group of women at mile 4. There was literally no one around us or running our same pace. This surprised me. It wasn’t like my strategy was that weird… just 3 slower miles, and then locking into a few seconds under MP. I found myself completely alone, except for Brenden. So much for “pack running” with the other OTQ hopeful women.

I passed one of the “fast group” OTQ women that had fallen off the group around mile 19. I encouraged her to stick with us. She looked at me in a way that I knew she was hurting & there was no chance she was going to try. She just said, “You look GREAT! Keep going!”. We had a pact amongst us that we wouldn’t say anything negative (Not even to let the group know that you have a bad blister or that your contact is bothering you). I didn’t realize how key this pact was – and would be.

Overall, though, energy was managed very well. I took gels at about mile 6, mile 11, 15 and mile 18-21 (sipped on it). I took water at about every stop, sipping a little and pouring the rest over my head. I would have taken more gel, but I developed a side-ache after about 20 miles. I simply couldn’t eat any more. I got pretty dizzy the last few miles of the race, which I think is due to low blood-sugar (low brain sugar? Is there such a thing?) – I really think I should be taking more during the last half of the race.
At 20, Brenden reminded me that it was time to start racing. Ug. Really, I thought to myself? We have a 1:15 cushion! I thought about it a little more, and I knew deep down in me that I could push it if I needed to. I decided not to, though – my reasoning was purely “don’t screw this up”. Sounds very negative, but I knew at this point that I could only lose the OTQ. Just keep running, I reminded myself (one of the few things Brenden told me earlier in the race… that simple reminder would be so key these last 6.2 miles)

I was extremely positive throughout the entire race, with the help of the sports psychologist and his CD I had worked with for the last couple of weeks. The thing that most sticks out for me were the times I told myself, “You HAVE this!” and “This is your race!” and other miscellaneous cheesy positive thoughts. I usually tell myself these things during a race, but I’ve never told myself & BELIEVED like I did during the marathon. It’s really hard to describe. I also had practiced embracing and welcoming the pain I knew would be coming. Dr. Asp had coached me to think of pain as a good thing: it was a sign that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and therefore, I should be looking for and welcoming any feelings of pain. I did exactly that. With 10k to go, I know I felt a few seconds of discomfort/pain, but immediately shut it out. Oh, good, I told myself. But other than a few seconds here and there of allowing myself to recognize how I was actually feeling, I totally shut out pain. I have NEVER done this, to this extent – to be so positive about how poorly I felt. I will be forever thankful for Dr. Asp’s help.

Brenden and I hadn’t discussed the “nothing negative” pact before the race. Turns out after the race, he told me that he was hurting really bad from about 22-23 to the end. What?! I exclaimed to him. I honestly had no idea – I thought he was doing great & pushing me. Had he said ANYTHING about hurting, I know I would have acknowledged my pain & wanted to stop/slow/walk.

I knew I was passing a few of the “fast pack” OTQ women between 20-25, but I had no idea how many. Turns out, I passed all of them except for 2 – one of which we caught at mile 25.5 and encouraged her to come with us. That’s pretty amazing to me. The pack was at least 20, if not larger, at the start of the race. [I have to shake my head a little bit. It seems like there would have been a lot more had they paced a little smarter?]

I had another “checkpoint” time on my hand at mile 23 or 24. I tried to do the math. WHAT?!? I knew I hadn’t been paying attention to my mile splits, but this couldn’t be right. According to my calculations I was going to finish in 2:48 or so. My heart sunk a little. But then I remembered that not too long ago Nate had yelled out to say I had a 1:15 cushion. Could I really have lost ALL of that, plus some? How long ago had he said that? I thought about it, in slow-motion pace, for a little bit before deciding that I just shouldn't be doing math or thinking hard about anything at this point. I reiterated Brenden’s phrase from earlier in the race: We have this, as long as we keep running. So I told myself to stop thinking and just “keep running”.

The last 5k was a blur. We caught 2 women, fading quickly, around mile 25 or 25.5 and encouraged them to come with us. Both did. Other than that, I don’t have many memories of the last 5k, or the last 10k, for that matter. I didn’t hear any mile splits during that time, either. That could have been bad, but I found out later that the last 10k turned out to be within seconds of my first 10k. Wow.

And then we turned the last corner, with just under .2 to do. Brenden dropped back. What? I sort of looked behind me, as if to ask him why. I wondered if he was just letting me cruise in alone, so I could have the finish line to myself when I crossed? He should be here with me, I thought to myself! Did something happen to him? As I found out later, he had been holding on for dear life the last miles, and with .2 to go, he knew I could do it alone.
I tried to pick it up down the homestretch, but I don’t know if I actually did. It didn’t matter. I knew I had it. I saw the clock and knew I was in with plenty of time to spare. YESSS!!! Arms up right after I crossed, in relief and joy :). (video evidence)

Once the adrenaline left me, I realized I didn’t feel well at all. Nate took me over to the medical tent, where they quickly laid me down to do their routine tests (blood pressure 3 times because they didn't quite believe the numbers, threatened to take blood (I am so deathly afraid of needles!), etc). I didn't even care. Pretty sure even though I felt terrible that I had a huge smile on my face the entire time. I had made it!
---

Since the marathon there have been two very nice articles highlighting my race:
Northfield News, June 21
Marshall Independent, July 1

Thanks again to everyone on my "team". I had a lot of help to get me to 2:44:46, and a ton of fun doing it. Now on the the next one!

Back on the road

2011-07-22T22:03:00.002-05:00

Thank goodness!!! I was SO worried after Sunday's run & looking at a swollen top of a foot.

We think it's just tendonitis -- icing a ton this week and monitoring it closely. It seems to be working, so I'm ecstatic! Swelling is down, and not much for pain/discomfort anymore.

WOW, I can't wait to begin logging some serious miles! Tomorrow should be interesting -- Heart of Summer 10k. I have lost an incredible amount of fitness and speed, but oh well. You have to start somewhere, right? :)

P.S. Promise to finish the last half of the marathon blog sometime this weekend!

Foot pain :(

2011-07-17T21:32:00.002-05:00

ARGH.

Since starting running after the marathon, the top of my foot has been sore. I thought it was just because I might have tied my flats too tight or perhaps the chip I raced in pressed into my foot while racing (?).

I ran for about 5 days in the US before leaving for Amsterdam. Now, looking back, I see that even the first entries in my log say "foot hurts", sometimes with an exclamation mark, sometimes without. But the comment is in each entry :(. Guess I didn't think much about it because it didn't hurt that bad, and I assumed it was from tying my race shoes too tight.

Abroad, there was nothing I could really do about it. I just loosened my shoes & dealt with it. Towards the end of the trip, I think it hurt less, so I thought it was healing, whatever it was.

Until yesterday's run. I don't remember noticing it on the run, but afterwards I felt it much more than normal. I ran again today, but stopped multiple times because it hurt a bit. That's the first time the pain has concerned me enough to make me stop a workout... Nate took one look at it tonight and brought an ice pack. It's swollen (hasn't been before, I don't think) and a little discolored. Great.

So, I emailed Jim tonight to see if I could get in for an Xray first thing tomorrow. A quick google search seems to say stress fracture is the probable cause. Otherwise some sort of tendon injury?

Nate reminds me that I can't start thinking one way or the other now, but I can't help it... PLEASE do not let this be another injury. Please, please, PLEASE!

Grandma's Marathon - First Half

2011-07-13T09:23:00.005-05:00

FINALLY getting around to this. I've been putting it off because it takes so long to write... but know I need to, just to capture all of the details/thoughts/etc that went into the day. It's SO helpful to look back on.

This isn't very polished yet, and I'm sure I'll be adding to and revising this frequently within the next week, but at least wanted to get the majority of the first half of the race's details down here.

---

The night before the marathon, we all headed to bed early – around 10 or 10:30. The half marathoners in our cabin (Nate, Jess, Nate’s dad) had to be up EARLY for their 6:30 race start. I was happy to try to fall asleep early.

Morning came early. Nate’s alarm went off at 4:30 (or something ridiculous like that). I had asked him the night before to make me oatmeal when he woke up. I knew I wanted to eat a lot for breakfast, but also knew that I couldn’t do so within an hour or two of the race. So, he woke me up around 4:45 or so with a serving and a half (my typical!) of oatmeal. Yum. I really do love oatmeal.

I lay in bed after he left, and excitement filled me. This is the day! Oh, man, oh man. It can’t be; I’m not ready! So much to think about. But – I knew I needed to sleep as much as I could, so tried to fall back asleep. I think I was successful, and got about another 30 minutes or so.
At 6:00, my alarm went off. I immediately leapt out of bed. A feeling of excitement and strange apprehension fell over me. I changed into my race uniform, making sure I had my chip and number. Everything else in line? Do I have my race bag ready? Luckily I had packed the night before – I don’t think particularly well in the morning, so I’m sure I would have forgotten something. I had already pinned a gel to my race shorts, had the gels and water I needed to access during the warm up, clothes for after the race… anything I’m forgetting? I ate a bagel with jam and headed out the door.

The “boys” (brother and cousin) packed up their bikes, strapping them to the back of the vehicle. Nate’s mom was nice enough to drop all of us off at the start line. My goal was to be at the start line by 6:40, latest 6:45. By the time Karen dropped us off, I hustled across the road and through the car dealership to the start, it was exactly 6:45. Perfect.

I found Brenden almost immediately. Amazing how people stick out in a crowd. We talked a little (mostly about the game plan, what I was asking him to do, etc), and then headed out for a 5 minute warm up at 7:00. My legs felt GREAT. Light, springly, and effortless. My one calf muscle wasn’t working (still a knotted chunk of muscle tissue – great), but I ignored it. It’ll be what it’ll be, I guess. Despite that, I knew good things were going to happen. I turned and smiled to Brenden during the warm up and told him, “Good things are going to happen today :)”.

Then it was time for the bathroom (where the line was surprisingly long, considering they have dedicated porta-potties for the Elites) and another 4 minute warm up. I picked it up for the last minute to a little slower than marathon pace. Dang, I felt good. Time for a gel (caffeinated), and one last time at the porta-potty, and off I scurried to the start line. Because of the long lines at the bathroom, I was running much more behind than I normally like. I threw my sweat bag down near the car (too many people, too little time, and the car was too full to actually make an attempt to get it in there).

The elites were separated at the start, so Brenden called out to me to let me know he was at the start of the “non-elite” start. I found the pack of trials-hopeful women I had been talking to before the race (about 10 or so women? I had been emailing abut 4-5 of them), and settled in. The excitement in the air was contagious. I did a quick check of myself: everything according to plan. Breakfast was good, warm-up good, bathroom good, gels good. I should be set!

I had told the group of women that I was planning to start slow. Jerry’s plan called for 3 miles at 6:30, 1 at 6:20, and the rest at 6:15 (with some cushion for a slow down the last 3-4 miles). I loved this plan. First, it suits my running style very well. I tend to like to start slow and warm into a pace. Second, then you’re passing people for much of the way (huge confidence boost). Third, I am a VERY strong closer (I am amazed at this… or rather, how others don’t have this gift… it seems so natural to ramp it up that last 10k that I can’t imagine having to plan for a major slow-down).

The gun went off. I was as near the front as I could be (at one point I was right behind 3 Russian women, all speaking Russian, but then backed off a row because I knew I didn’t belong there :) (although I was the same height as all of them!!) -- but I wanted to be as close to the mat as possible! Olympic Trials standards are based on gun time, not chip). Brenden found me within the first quarter of a mile. All he said was, “I’m here”. It was amazing to me how little we talked throughout the race. We just KNEW what the other was doing, and I think had a great trust in each other so that we didn’t need to say much. Plus, we had a great game plan going into the race. His role was to read out actual splits each mile (based on course miles, since my Garmin clicks off every mile and almost always measures short). His other tasks were to lead us through the tangents (since I find when I’m zoned out that I tend to just follow the person ahead of me & forget to run the shortest distance) and to NOT let me let up during the last 10k. My role? To just run :). I was SOO blessed to have Brenden there with me, helping. Honestly, I am more than eternally grateful.

The first mile was a 6:27 from the gun. Next few miles were right around 6:20. Faster than Jerry’s plan, but it felt right. I knew that the first few miles were more downhill anyway, so allowed myself the quicker pace. After mile 3, I knew I needed to notch it down a little and find 6:15s. I worried a little before the pace change – 6:20s felt pretty good. 5 seconds faster? Uf. But, the subtle pace change was really easy. 6:15s came so NATURALLY. At mile 4 I told Brenden, “This feels so easy!”. That would be one of the few things I’d tell him during the race.
From mile 4 through half way, there was nothing really exciting that happened. I caught up to the “even pace” OTQ hopefuls and passed them. Hmm, did I pass them too early? I couldn’t see the “fast pace” group, so I knew I was somewhere in between the two groups.

My miles came so easy. Brenden read off the mile splits as we hit them – 6:15, 6:16, etc. It was amazingly consistent, without effort, and without monitoring via my Garmin. I think that’s the key of racing a good marathon: allowing your legs and lungs to find a pace that comes naturally (hopefully it’s a fairly fast pace!). I’ve had marathons where I’ve had to rely on the watch for pacing, and it’s SO much effort. One mile is too slow, another too fast – you’re constantly changing paces and your body can never relax.

I didn’t think much during the first half of the marathon. About 4 miles in I noticed I was running a little funny because of my cramped calf. Great. Leave it to this to stop me today. Don’t worry about it, I told myself. It’s not bad now, so just keep running, relax, and try to run as normally as you can. I saw Jerry about 6 or 7 miles in (?), and smiled. He had made it! He was on bike, so I guessed he was planning on biking in and out of the course. I also saw my “boys” multiple times the first half. So cool to have support along the way.

I had two splits written on my hand for the first half: one at 10k, the other at 10 miles. I was right on at 10k, just a few seconds under. At 10 miles, I think I was about 20 seconds under. Wow, I thought to myself! The miles were seriously FLYING by, effortlessly. I zoned out, not thinking of much. Before I knew it, we were at the half marathon mark, crossing it at 1:22.30. Perfect!

---
Read here about 2nd half of the race

International Traveller

2011-06-30T15:39:00.002-05:00

So, I haven't been very good about posting my "race day" blog, mainly because I know it's going to take over an hour to write. Maybe shorter, maybe longer... but nonetheless, more time than I've had lately.

This Tuesday I flew out to Amsterdam for a European strategy session (cool!) & will be here until Tuesday. Then I take a train over to Berlin, where I'll attend a lifestyle trade show for a few days. Nate is coming out on Saturday, and he'll come with me to Berlin & we'll extend the trip for a few extra days. Should be fun!

So far, the highlight has been (next to the working sessions, of course :) finding a track club at the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam & joining them for a workout. Pretty sure at first they thought I was a joke: I'm hardly 5'1, don't look like much of a runner, and after an "on your own run/warm-up", they do a bunch of weird plyometrics and hopping drills. I honestly couldn't do about half of them. I could see what they were doing, but couldn't mimic it at all. The coach of the club tried to help me, but basically ended up telling me that I need to start more of this stuff :). Ok, I admit, I probably should...

I hopefully looked less ridiculous on the track. 1st workout back after the marathon, so I wanted to make sure I eased into it a little bit (and I wouldn't have chosen a track workout for the day, but it was too fun to turn down). I started with the mid-distance group (mistake, but I had no idea which group was which since they all speak Dutch). I ran just behind the first woman, not really winded. She looks at her watch and says something about the time. She asks me what my 1500m times are. I told her I had no idea -- I haven't raced that since college, and pretty sure it was very slow. I told her my recent marathon time, and she exclaimed an expletive (F*) very loudly. Found out later that that seems to be one of their favorite words. Mildly amusing.

But anyway, turns out the Netherlands isn't much of a marathoning country, and they thought I'd be one of the top 2 (if not the top) marathoner. They talked to the coach, and I was moved into a group of fast-looking 10k guys.

The reward for running fast is having to run faster, right? :)

Anyway, the workout went great. 11 600s (I missed one when switching groups) with 1 minute rest, 5 minutes after every 3rd one. I went through in about 2:05-2:07 each time. Felt relaxed and easy, and could tell it was an excellent threshold workout by the last 2-3.

As I left, the coach and some of the runners invited me back for Monday. I might make an effort to get over there. Nothing like having a group to run with, even if the only words I can really understand is their expletives :).

The Day Before - June 17th

2011-06-20T19:54:00.004-05:00

In an effort to capture as many details as I can (SO many things went right, I want to make sure I can replicate them!), I'll break this into a few blog posts over the course of the next week. Helps me just to focus on one portion of the race at a time -- and also cuts the amount of time I'm writing each night as well :)

The day before the race was a little chaotic. We awoke at 7 am, wanting to get up to Grandma's as quickly as we could to beat construction delays. On the agenda: pick up cousin who is coming to cheer, grab his two bikes and strap them to our car (which didn't fit the bike rack perfectly, good thing Nate is fairly handy and could rig it so I felt somewhat safe), drive to Hinkley to drop off the dog at a kennel, and then arrive in Duluth.

On the car ride, my right calf cramped up pretty badly. Oddly enough, just 3 or 4 days earlier my left calf had done the exact same thing, same location. (Do I need to change my diet that last week?) It's the inside portion of the calf (sorry, I am a finance person and don't know much medical terminology). I was SO worried. I felt SO good, except for that part of the calf. It was a complete brick, and I knew that the left one had taken a little over 2 days before it worked again. I didn't know whether to knead it & embrace that pain because it would help or if I should leave it & my body would try to heal it faster that way.

Ug. Anyway, we got up to the elite check-in and grabbed my packet and info. I ate quite a bit -- big bagel (splurged on peanut butter because I thought my muscles would appreciate the protein), sandwich and a half (just jelly), and a banana. YUMMM, all-carb days :). We decided to use the water bottles they had there instead of what I had brought (which were the screw on caps). I was sort of flustered, trying to keep the bottles and Gu's straight during the switch -- too many things happening at once. I ended up pouring one of the water bottles all over my packet, at which point Nate graciously offered to finish switching the bottles :). He's so good.

Anyway, I took everything out of the soaked packet and put it into another bag. I specifically looked (as did Leighton, my cousin) that there wasn't anything left in the wet bags before we threw them. (Noted only because of what I find later...)

We then go to the convention center for Nate's packet. I sit on the ground & wait. Meanwhile, my mind suddently goes to my packet... I don't think I ever saw a chip in there? Hmm. I dump everything out & search. Sure enough, no chip.

We truck back to the elite building. They set me up with someone over in the convention center who will create a new packet. Ug. So, we truck BACK to the convention center. I ran, only because running is easier for me than walking (I don't typically walk much in a day). They had everything waiting, so it wasn't too bad of an ordeal - just a lot of back and forth. I noticed that the second packet also had pins, which the first didn't.

[Obviously, I could have thrown the first chip away, but I thought over what happened, and I REALLY don't think there was one in there] [Not that it matters, anyway :)]

I was also able to get a quick 10 minute massage, focusing on the right calf. The guy that worked on me touched it and immediately said "Hmmm..." and talked to me a while about contingency plans for the race tomorrow. He said that he's seen quite a few people try to run through cramps like this & it usually causes permanent damage. Great. Way to boost my confidence. But, it was good he said something... guess it hadn't occurred to me that I might need to have a plan in place if it got really bad.

We then headed out for a short run. I did another 9 minutes, and we tried to piece together the end of the race as best as we could. I also threw in 2 striders, just for good measure. I felt great. Now if only this stupid calf would loosen up...

Finally, 3.5 hours later, we finally were able to leave Duluth and head up to the cabin. Wow. Hopefully that was the end of the chaos.

We ate once we got to the cabin (whole wheat pasta with just a little parmesean at about 5:30pm), and then I happily took a 1.5 hour nap. The rest of the evening was spent laughing at my cousin, brother, and husband who were plotting out their cheering strategy (bro and cousin to bike from the start, husband to finish his half marathon and grab a bike at the finish and bike up to meet me), heating my calf, drinking lots of liquids, and talking with family. Good times :)

Bed at about 10:00, maybe 10:30.

(this is probably entirely boring to everyone reading, so I apologize... I use this to look back & learn what to do/what not to do for future races :).

2:44.46 - Olympic Trials, Here I come!!

2011-06-19T22:45:00.003-05:00

More to come later, but I at least wanted to post my results here since I ran with a last minute new chip/number that hasn't been registered to my name :). I'm currently listed in the results as "Unknown" :)

But, more to come later once I've had time to digest. I'm sure it'll be a series of blogs, just to make sure I capture all of the little details. It helps a ton to be able to read afterward to see what I did that worked/didn't work :)

But in the meantime, I'm ecstatic! 2:44?!?! I sort of knew that was a possibility, but to actually be able to call myself a 2:44 marathoner and an Olympic Trials Qualifier?!?!!!... it doesn't seem real. :)

Hurry up and Wait

2011-06-16T09:11:00.005-05:00

2 more days! I can't wait! I'm just excited to race, lay it all out on the line, and see where I'm at. Can we fast forward to Saturday, please?

Not sure if I've mentioned this here or not, but I'll be running with Brenden Huber, the assistant Gustavus coach. I'm so lucky to have him helping to pace and push me through. We've mapped out each of our roles (luckly my role is just to stick on his butt & not let him get away from me). I've also been in contact with a group of other women from around the country that are looking to qualify. Nice to have a pack to work with for encouragement, support, etc.

Update on the weather: low 50s at the start, dew points in the high 40s. Winds from the ENE (some say NE) at 12-13 MPH. Can it be any more perfect?

Things are coming together for me to have a great race! Just have to make sure my body is feeling good -- not sure what I can do to ensure that (can I help guarantee not to have a stomach ache? Cramps? GI issues?).

Left to do: make sure to HYDRATE, pack up tonight (including getting my bottles ready, writing down some key times, getting Gus ready), get to bed early... and relax and enjoy the rest of the week/weekend! After all, this is just a race, and the whole point of running and racing is to enjoy yourself and have fun :) (in fact, for all of the times I'll write down, strategies I'll map out, one of my MAIN goals is to be running with a smile on my face :))

Yummm

2011-06-14T13:43:00.004-05:00

My lunch was pretty awesome today. Grilled chicken breast w/ a little cheese on top (microwaved a little too long so it was a little rubbery), wrapped up in a big piece of lettuce, 2 hard boiled egg whites, beef jerkey, and some sugar free jello for dessert. Not very satisfying or filling (although I'm not hungry at all any more, I miss having that 90 mile/week appetite). Sigh.

I am so excited for bagels, oatmeal, fruit, and pasta tomorrow!!!!

Better yet, I'm really excited to have some type of chocolate bar or brownie after the marathon. Maybe cookies? Or a doughnut?

1 down, 2 to go...

2011-06-12T20:02:00.004-05:00

I know after TCM there was some back and forth on this blog about the latest research behind carbo-loading. I decided to stick with what had worked for me with TCM: 3 days no carb (to completely deplete your body of carb stores), and then 3 days all-carb (your body over-compensates by packing in the glycogen (and also stores water w/ the glycogen)).

I'm through day 1 of the no-carb diet, and it's awful. I'm really not a protein/fat eater, so to make an entire day's worth of calories out of foods like that isn't appealing at all.

On the bright side, it does help me to lose that extra 1 pound before race day. Basically because I don't really want to eat more than I have to because 1. I don't really have loads of chicken breast in the fridge waiting to be snacked upon, and 2. the foods I can eat really aren't appealing to me. So, just 2 days to go. I can do this, I can do it...

On another topic, weather for Two Harbors and Duluth looks spectacular! 50 degrees at the start, little bit of a tail wind (9mph is what they're calling for now, who knows what it'll actually be). Some chance of storms, so the air is more humid than ideal... hopefully that part will change. The rest can stay exactly as is!

Challenging Week

2011-06-11T21:33:00.003-05:00

Wow... less than 1 week to go.

The last week has been a little challenging, I think because of the heat. Rewind to last Saturday: we did a 1/2 marathon at MP effort. Luckily we started at 6:30, because by the last few miles, it was already getting uncomfortably warm. I felt good on the run, and finished in 1:22.10. That's proabably a little faster than I hope to go through the 1/2 at Grandma's, but the pace (6:16s) felt pretty effortless.

Sunday we did a medium length run in the Carleton arb. I've really started to enjoy running there. It was a nice place to excape to on Sunday because it was another really hot day.

Then Monday. I did just 5 miles, but did it in about 90 degree temps. I remember finishing the run and being pretty wet -- that never happens (I don't sweat much). I felt sick the rest of the day, getting chills randomly and just not feeling right. I hadn't realized that I had not been drinking a ton over the weekend or Monday before the run. Dumb.

The rest of the week has not been great :(. I'm not sure if it was heat, or I was coming down with something & running simply made it worse, but my workouts suffered. I took Tuesday off (high of 104, gross!), and Wednesday tried to do a tempo workout. I struggled to hit 6:10s. Not good. My legs felt dead and had no spring or strength in them. I decided not to do the second set of tempo work, figuring that I was probably just digging myself into a hole by trying to run hard. The easy run back in wasn't very pretty, either -- I checked the watch afterwards and found some of the miles were at 9 minute pace. That's when you know something isn't right.

I took Thursday off, as planned, and Friday went out for another tempo run. 2x12 minutes, and averaged 5:55-6:00. That's about where I should be. I didn't feel like I could have brought it down to 5:40-5:45 like I was able to a few weeks ago, but at least it wasn't as bad as Wednesday.

Today's run was better as well. 90 minutes, and covered 11.75 miles. I told Nate on the run that I felt like my "spring" was coming back -- only about 5-10% back, but coming back nonetheless. If I can have 100% of that "spring" and strength back in my stride for Saturday, it's going to be a very good day... so seeing it start to come back is fun :).

So, minor set back earlier in the week, but I still have plenty of time to recover & get back to where I was. I'm not too worried about it. If nothing else, it was good -- to remind myself that I need to be drinking a lot more, washing my hands a TON (I do NOT want to get sick!!!), sleeping more, etc.

Crazy no carb/carb diet starts tomorrow... not looking forward to it :(.

Mental Strength

2011-06-02T17:10:00.004-05:00

I've begun to visualize the race each night before I fall asleep. Maybe not the best time/place, but it's better than nothing. Sometimes I make it to the 3 mile mark, sometimes I make it to mile 20.

I also try to visualize the race during each run. Even on easy runs, when there's 6.2 miles left, I visualize seeing the 20 mile mark. I often have to remind myself to slow down, continue to take it easy. My pace tends to quicken as I get into the visual of race day/race day effort :).

I know that in order to make the 2:45.xx goal, I'll not only need to have one of my best days physically, but also mentally. I've struggled so far to know what to focus on. Do I try to run through each possible scenario? Running with a pack of women at first, and if they run even, staying with them, if they run too fast, lagging behind, etc. Do I just visualize how the effort feels? Visualize hitting my splits or not hitting them, and how I'll react? Sometimes I feel like the best way to approach a race is with little more than a plan to race ALL OUT. Leave nothing behind. That's how I've raced my best previously, but I think there's more mental preparation needed for the marathon distance. Maybe I'm wrong and should just keep it really simple.

Anyway, I was talking to a group I run with over lunch about my mental preparations, and they suggested seeing a sports psychologist in town. We've been emailing back and forth (it's someone I've met that is an active runner in town), and I'll meet him early next week. He's willing to sneak me in & make a CD so I can rehearse using that over & over until race day. No charge.

WOW. Which leads me to my next topic: I can not BELIEVE the amount of people that have been willing to support and help me along the way. First off, to my husband, who puts up with my constant chatter about workouts, how I'm feeling, trying to find the right shoes, eating right, etc. Next, Jerry, who has been the most AMAZING coach and the best thing that's happened to my training, ever (pretty sure that's a true statement). Next, Jim, my chiropractor, Dr. Bahl, who helped with iron testing, Chrissy, who helped put together a strength routine, Brenden, who will help pace me during the race... heck, this weekend I needed to put in a 13-15 mile MP run, and not only is Brenden driving over to do it with me, but the Northfield runners in town have mapped out a separate route for me (they're doing an annual informal 1/2 marathon that same day). The list of people is pretty impressive. Seriously, all of these people that want to help ME? They must not know that I'm really not that talented...

I am SO grateful for the help, and know that without it, I wouldn't be where I'm at today. However, with help comes the pressure of wanting to perform. One thing the sports psychologist mentioned in his last email is that I need to remember that I'm doing this for ME, and that there's no pressure from anyone (including myself) to hit that time. The race isn't the "end all". I need to let go of feeling like I HAVE to perfom because so many have put time & energy into me. Not an easy thing to do, since I feel very indebted.

Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. I'm excited to hear what the psychologist has to say. I'm a little nervous about the prospect of working with one (I feel like I need to have a mental issue to go to one!!)

P.S. Tempo workout earlier this week: 2 tempo 5ks inside of a 13 mile run: 17:52 and 18:03. How fun!

18:05 and 18:10

2011-05-26T13:28:00.002-05:00

Yesterday's workout:
35 min easy
18 min tempo
40 min easy
18 min temp0
1 mile CD
= total of 16 miles

I know my tempo pace has quickened, but I was surprised to come through the first tempo session in 18:05 for 5k (I wanted to go longer than the 18 minutes just to see what I did 5k in). 18:05, really? Perhaps I went too hard, I thought to myself. I'll pay for that in another 5 miles.

The second tempo was just as quick and easy, though -- 5k in 18:10! That's awesome! Before TCM during a similar workout I averaged 18:50s for 5k tempos. Another fun stat to note: 1 week before TCM last year I did a 5k and finished in 18:07. My training log noted that I couldn't move any faster.

Nice improvement, I'll take it!

Meet Mesa!!

2011-05-21T21:53:00.004-05:00

Our life just wasn't the same without a dog around!

We found Mesa on Craigslist (gotta love the site -- we've furnished our entire home from there!) from a family who had bought her as a puppy, but had since had two boys and was moving to a home without a yard. Not a good situation for a dog with a LOT of energy). I had posted for a Vizsla (look up the breed) a while ago, which was our ideal breed, but didn't expect a response.

Before their email, we had waivered back and forth. Should we get another dog? Puppy? Or nothing at all? We quickly realized we had NO time for a puppy. So then the question was... dog or no dog?

But then the owner forwarded pictures, and I was hooked :). Too cute not to have a "forever" home!! Best yest, she has been GREAT so far. She's super affectionate, a FABULOUS runner (runs alongside you without much pulling at all!!!), and just adds humor and adventure around the house. It's funny, but as much as I enjoyed Ellie around the home, I have fallen in love with Mesa.

I have to watch out for Mesa's paws - even though she has the stamina to run many, MANY miles, she hasn't been exercised much lately. Her paws are very soft, and were very raw after we ran her for two days. Granted, those first two days were 10 and 11 miles (note: she didn't even look WINDED after either of those). So I've scaled down her running until her feet can take it, but I don't think it'll be long. She'll be a fabulous running companion. She's already learning that she should be estatic whenever I ask "Go for a run?!?" :). Super fun.

Did I mention I have already fallen in love? :)

Phase IV - The start of a great relationships

2011-05-17T21:52:00.004-05:00

I started Phase IV of the Daniels' plan about a week and a half ago. So far, things are going great.

It might be a mentality change. Instead of being buried inside of Phase III, where all I saw was high mileage & really tough workouts, I'm now seeing mileage taper down and the workouts becoming a little easier. Don't get me wrong, they're still super tough, there's just 40 minutes of tempo instead of 48 :). It has me thinking: let's ATTACK this workout & really try to zap the legs and get every ounce of benefit from the workout. My mentality in Phase III was just of survival -- try to get through this workout, get through this day, get through this week.

Maybe it's the mentality change or just an increase in fitness or just my body responding to a little less intensity (mileage last week was still 90, and my rolling 7 day week ending today was 92, so it's not responding to lower mileage yet), but I'm definitely feeling faster. It's a fun feeling.

Take today's long tempo run, for example. 21 total miles: 2.25 WU, 4x6 minutes, 10 miles easy, 4x6 minutes T, .5 CD (supposed to be 2 miles, but I was completely spent & just shuffling at a "doesn't-resemble-a-run" pace, so packed it in early). The first 4x6 minutes I felt very smooth, powerful, and efficient. 5:53 pace for the first, 5:57 for the 2nd, 5:50 for the 3rd, and 6:00 for the 4th. That's the first time my tempo pace has easily been below 6. Previously, my range was around 6:02-6:07. I held back; I could have gone faster, just going on perceived effort, but I knew there was 24 more minutes at the end of the long run.

After 10 miles easy, we started the next tempo reps. The spring in my step wasn't as apparent :). I had to work a little more, but times were still great: 5:57, 6:01, 6:01, 5:53.

It's fun to have these mini-breakthroughs. I can't wait for the workouts to come! :).

Crazy Legs

2011-05-11T21:09:00.000-05:00

Apparently that's what it's called when you can't control your legs & start tripping over them at the end of a marathon.

It was also the cause of concern during the middle of last week. On Tuesday, I did 4x12 minutes at tempo pace. It felt terrible from the beginning (after the 1st one I told Brenden, my running partner, that I wasn't so sure about this workout... makes for a LOOONG workout), so I was glad I had someone running them with me to help get me through. On the 3rd repeat, my quad sort of gave out & I nearly tripped over myself. My quads have been full of lactate lately, and I think the reason I was having a hard time controlling them during this workout was because of the lactate, or genereal fatigue. And also because 4x12 minutes is also a lot of work to do at 6 min/mile pace :).

Tuesday night the inside of my knee began to hurt. More of a pulling sensation than anything, but it wasn't anything I had ever felt before. I was honestly a little scared. Was it because my shoes were worn out? I checked - YEP, way overdue for a new pair. I had worn through all of the black rubber sole on the outsides of both heels. Note to self: that's stupid. Check my shoes more often.

Wednesday walking around work, I felt that pulling sensation all day. I tried to stretch my quad and knee area, and felt a general pulling sensation there. NOOOOO. I knew that this wasn't a good feeling, and was even more scared when my noon-time run on Thursday had two stops during it to stretch the quad/knee. This can't be happening, I thought to myself!

Thursday late day I headed to "the miracle worker" (aka Jim Patterson, my chiropractor). He did some quick tests, and found that the quad right above the inside of the knee was completely knotted up. He did some deep tissue massage and moved the joint around a lot. Not the most comfortable thing in the world, but he reminds me to close my eyes and let the pain escape. That actually works, believe it or not.

Thursday's evening run, after the chiro visit, of 10 miles went GREAT. Seriously. No pain, no pulling sensation on the joint. Really?!? Jim is THAT good :).

Since then I've made sure to massage that quad, roll out the legs more often, and in general, just make sure to take inventory of my body & how it's feeling after every run. Any pain? Any aches? What else can I be doing to make sure I stay healthy?

So, a little bit of a scare, but I'm on the road again. This week is my last big mileage week (low 90s), and then there are just FIVE more weeks until the marathon. WOW!! Let's hope I can remain healthy for all of them :).

17:36.66 Alumni 5k!

2011-05-02T16:01:00.002-05:00

New all-time PR - that's 4 for 4 so far in 2011!

Although a little slower than my goal (2.5 seconds off of the stadium record), I'm still very happy with it. It was really windy on Saturday (15mph), and I ran solo from the beginning. The next girl was over 30 seconds behind me, and the third woman was over a minute behind.

So, all things considered, a great day for me! Makes me want to try another 5k again, this time with good weather and good competition.

Now... onto the LAST week of Phase III training. Should be fun!!

5K this weekend

2011-04-28T16:16:00.002-05:00

I'm getting pretty excited to race this weekend! I don't race often during a training cycle, so it's a real treat when I get to look forward to one.

First, let's revisit the goals I laid out for myself back in November of 2010. I haven't raced nearly as often as I laid out here, but crazily enough, I'm right where I wanted to be.

January I ran a 17:52 5k, on a no-so-great day for me. 2 seconds off of my goal of 17:50.
I didn't race again until the 8k in March, where I ran a 29:19 (goal back in November was 29:20). So throughout 6 months of training, I've been within 1-2 seconds of my goals. Not too bad :)!!

The goal I originally laid out for myself for the GAC Alumni race was a sub 17:30. Uff. My previous best has been a low 17:40 (even in college). Despite how fast that seems, I feel like I have a good shot at it. The stadium record is currently 17:34, and I would LOVE nothing more than to break that :). That's really what I'm gunning for -- sub 17:30 would be even better.

So, just have to try for it. 17:30 = 42s for 200, 1:24 for 400 (a couple of 1:23s would help), 5:36/mile. Then I'm just hoping that I have a little bit extra in the legs for the last mile or so. Ohh -- just mapping out a goal makes me excited about it!! Can't wait!

Weather forecast currently: 14 MPH wind, 45 degrees, chance of showers. Hmm. Can someone please work on that for me? At least the wind part?

8x6 minutes, 30 seconds rest

2011-04-27T15:37:00.003-05:00

I knew I needed to nail it. The last two weeks have been peppered with rough tempo workouts, stopping-midway, etc.

I also knew that I was unlikely to be able to do this myself. So, I called up the GAC assistant coach, Brenden, and asked if he'd be up for it. No hesitation. He was. Gotta love this guy, he's always game.

We did a 2.5 mile warm-up together, and I told him about the workout. He knew it was something like 8x6 (we had done 6x6 minutes a few weeks ago together), but bawked at the fact that there was only 30 seconds of rest in between each one :). Ha. Gotta love these long, sustained, little rest workouts :).

I told him before that I'd been having a harder time with this pace lately, and if I was having trouble, we could shorten the reps to 5 minutes each or lengthen the recovery to 1 minute.

We were off. The first three were into the wind, and more uphill. 6:07s for those. Not bad, considering the rain, wind, and incline! I purposely didn't look at the pace on my watch much -- tried to go by "effort". At 3, we turned back. Now we were around 6:02s, which considering we were going downhill, with the wind, was actually probably slower than the first three, but I didn't worry about it. I gave myself the option to take a longer rest or shorten the reps during reps 4-8. Do I need the extra 30 secs rest? Do I need to stop earlier? The answer was always "no". I can do this!

And I did!! What a fabulous workout & confidence booster. This isn't an easy workout, so it shows how strong I've become.

Next up: Gustavus Alumni 5k on Saturday. Hoping for good weather (there's a stadium record I'd love to chase down!!), but know there's less than a very slim chance of it... it's ALWAYS windy, rainy, snowy for their home meets :(. You think I'm kidding? I'm not :)

Some much needed rest

2011-04-25T15:56:00.004-05:00

Last Wednesday's tempo workout was not good. It wasn't mental. If anything, I was as strong mentally during that workout as I've been. I knew I needed to hit it and was excited to do it.

About 15 minutes into the tempo (averaging about 6:07 until this point), we turned a sharp corner & all of a sudden I felt my legs losing ground. They turned over at a much slower rate, and I felt like I couldn't make them go any faster. My pace slowed. I know this is not a good feeling... haven't had it very often, but it's not a good type of fatigue. Quads all of a sudden very heavy, slow, and unable to respond. It feels like the muscle cells are coated in a sticky, slow substance that doesn't allow them to work. I felt it last week as well, but this week was worse. I stopped at about 16 minutes, and ended up packing it in early that night. Sort of felt like I was failing, actually.

Jerry and I had a good conversation that evening. We decided to take a few days easy/off (I actually took 2 days off after scaling the stairs at work on Thursday morning and feeling like I was trying to move bricks up the stairway). I started up again on Saturday with a long easy run, and 10 more easy miles on Sunday.

I'm going to go get my iron/ferritin checked, per Jerry's suggestion. Maybe that's part of it. I think it's mostly due to mileage in general -- just a little too much for too long. The rest week this month was 75 miles, and was also right before Ellie was hit. I think the combination of the stress of her accident & the fact that I'm not quite strong enough to have 75 miles/week be a recovery week definitely contributed.

I'm glad I listened to my body. The runs the last couple of days have been better. Not 100% yet, but I can at least think about picking it up a little now (previously, even the THOUGHT of changing paces made my brain cringe... odd feeling, anyone else experience that?). I'll attempt another tempo run mid-week this week, and I'm praying that I've allowed enough recovery to be able to nail it. At this point, that's my goal: recover enough so I can start hitting all of the hard workouts again. After all, mileage is good, but only if you can hit the hard stuff :).

P.S. As we were cleaning our office late in the week, I came across a friend's training log who made the trials a few years ago. When I copied her logs, I remember being in awe: 80+ mile weeks were typical, some in the upper 90s. I was in awe of that and the harder workouts she was doing & the times she was hitting. I realized re-glancing through her logs how far I've come -- my mileage isn't too different from hers, and many of our reps are done at the same pace now! It made me realize how far I've come in this last year, and how strong I've become. You don't realize it when you're sludging through a workout plan with target paces, target mileage/etc (at least, I didn't). Glad I have those as a reference point -- a huge confidence booster!

Another week bites the dust

2011-04-20T16:44:00.005-05:00

Last week was not my greatest week.

I'm not sure why. Ellie, perhaps? Fatigue in general?

I'll recap:
The day after Ellie's accident I was supposed to do 7x6 minutes at tempo. Nate got me out the door. He's so great about that. The first two reps were awful. We were going into the wind, which was atrocious, and my times were awful. I wanted to quit. Nate kept me at it, reminding me that my times didn't matter. Just put in the effort. The third rep, my brain kicked back in. Yes, Ellie was gone & this was my first workout without her, but let's forget about that for now. The last 5 reps I was at a 5:57-5:58/mile pace, bringing the last one down to 5:48 without too much effort.

That was the last workout that felt "easy". The long run that weekend took a lot out of me. It was hot, and I was not properly hydrated. I averaged 7:15s for 21 miles, which is quick for me. The first 15 felt GREAT - so effortless! But the last few were torturous. I remember thinking, "this is good for me. I'll be praying for these last few miles to be done during the marathon as well". I couldn't let myself slow down, though, and ended up picking up the last mile to marathon pace. Later that day, I knew I had tapped too far into my "reserves". Note to self: even if feeling good, I should probably limit my long runs to no faster than 7:30s.

The following Wednesday I ran w/ the college team. I did 20 minutes w/ Simone (I kept up, but just barely -- I wasn't pushing the pace like the week before), then 3 minutes easy. Here's where I fell apart. Instead of 15 minutes at tempo next, I stopped after 8 minutes when I saw my pace was in the 6:10s. ARGH. I started up again and did the remaining 7 minutes. Another 3 minutes of rest, and my last rep was supposed to be 10-12 minutes. My legs were completely drained, and I really struggled to get them to move. I can't remember what my pace was, but for the first mile it was something like 6:20, and I stopped after a minute or two of the next mile, pace in the mid 6:20s. I was beat, and not because I had just nailed a workout. Hate that feeling.

Fast forward to the weekend (past Saturday). I'm supposed to do 13 miles at marathon pace. It snowed in the morning, which cancelled workout group #1. Back-up group #2 (aka high school senior, cousin) also sent me a text backing out. Hmm. Knowing the winds were 20-25 mph, I opted to attempt the workout on a treadmill. I started up & quickly realized my head wasn't in this at ALL. I didn't want this workout, and my performance reflected that. I stopped 3 times within the first 4 miles. I fought myself -- just DO this. At 4 miles, I realized that it wasn't going to happen on the treadmill. Should I try the remaining 9 outside? As I grabbed my outside gear, I passed the indoor track. I wondered if it was better for me to try to do the 9, knowing I'd probably stop several more times, limp along through it, or try to make it a hard track day. I decided that the track sounded fun: a chance to go fast, hard.

So, we did 5x1000m together (or, rather, Nate did the last 800 or 600 of each rep) :). It felt great! Times were 3:31 (legs a bit tired from the 4 miles at MP), 3:23, 3:32, 3:19, 3:19. I gave myself the option of just doing 4, but found myself wanting to push for a 5th.

Another thing I've noticed: extreme sleepiness. Luckily, I've been able to use the weekend to get 12+ hours/night, and have been good about getting to bed earlier than usual this week -- hopefully it's just because I wasn't getting enough sleep the last few weeks.

I'm hoping the fact I just realized there are ONLY 8 weeks to go puts that fire back in me. I CAN do this, I DO want it. Just need to re-light the fire. I'm on track to be the strongest, most fit, and likely fastest I have EVER been, so just need to get after each workout like I was before this last week. I can, and I will! :)

Hard tempo workout on the schedule for this evening... :)

Ode to Ellie

2011-04-15T12:45:00.008-05:00

I lost one of my best friends last Thursday :(.

Nate, Ellie and I went out for an easy 6 miler. She was crazy as usual -- "We're going to run? Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy..." as she paced around the house waiting for us to change into our running clothes and put on our shoes. She LOVES to run. She's gone as long as 20 miles with me, and probably averages above 50 miles a week, either with me or Nate.

When we got her, she was actually quite obese. She looked like a round, stuffed sausage :). In just a few short months, though, she was a fit and trim dog. Her first run with me was 9.1 miles, after all. Shortly after we got her, I taught her how to run on the treadmill. She loved it. Tail wagging the whole time, she'd easily go for 5-7 miles on it, completely alone. It's fun to look back and see old blogs about these events :) Oh, fun memories.

We turned left a little earlier than normal, as we only had 6 to do. Ellie kept running straight, until she realized she was separated from us (she runs with a shock collar on so she can roam the ditches and farm fields - she usually is very good about staying right with us, or at least off of the road). Her instinct was to run out of the trees and into the road to find out where we were at. Guess that makes sense, since we're likely to be either up or down the road she's standing in... but also very dumb when cars happen to be near.

You can guess what happens. A thud. I didn't see it, thank goodness. I just saw the red suburban swerving back into its lane and slowing down. Nate and I sprinted over to the lump laying in the middle of the road.

"Oh, no... Ellie", I murmured as I ran to be by her side. I couldn't stop crying. "Good girl, Ellie", I kept saying, petting her head and placing myself where she could see me without moving. I have never felt so helpless. She was at least alive, and all I could see was bleeding a little from her mouth and other side of her head. I took it as a good sign? A wonderful stranger drove Nate back to our house to grab our car and wallets/purse/etc. The same stranger also had the number to the vet and dialed it for us. I am so grateful for those 2 individuals. Wish I had their name. They may have said it, but I can't remember it for the life of me.

When we lifted her from the road into the car, I realized how badly she was hurt. There was a large flesh wound on her hip from the impact. I didn't take the time (and couldn't see 100% through the tears), but I'm pretty sure I saw bone.

On the way to the vet, Nate asked the dreaded question: how much are we willing to spend to save her? We decided to wait to see what the number would be before making a decision. I grew up on a farm where pets were lost often, so the thought of spending a lot to save a pet is foreign to me. But, it's so different when you have a indoors pet that has become a part of your family. Where DO you draw the line?

She was such a cool dog :) Quirky, definitely. She loved to lean her butt against you (we always thought it was so that she could keep track of you while watching what else was going on), wiggle in between you and the stove when you were cooking, and drag her beds all over the house :). She LOVED to wear human clothes. She thought she was so cool in one of Nate's T-shirts. Put a baseball hat on her head & she'd try to balance to keep it there. She was a great training partner as well. We went to the track a few times together, and she knew when the "beep" happened that she was to run on the inside grass, right beside me. After each repeat ended, she would make sure I was OK, wait to have her head petted once, and then go off on her own to sniff something until the next rep started. Oh, Ellie :).

The vet took one look at her and tried to break it to us as easily as she could. There was nothing we could do. Her lungs were filling with blood, and she was sure her entire back end was broken -- ribs, hips, legs, etc. I sobbed. Are you sure??? Please double check... she's a really tough dog...

We put her down shortly thereafter. I really hope she didn't suffer. What an awful thing to have to do :(.

I really miss you, Ellie Cat :) (she had a very cat-like affection towards me in the beginning, which started the name. She also had a tendency to toot, lending itself to names like "Smelly Ellie" and the "Smelly Cat" song from Friends. Hence, "Ellie Cat" became one of her nick-names :))

Spring back in my step!

2011-04-01T20:34:00.003-05:00

Tuesday my head-cold came back. Pretty sure it's the same bug I had before, I never really got over it. I've been blowing my nose for the last two weeks. Just as it was getting better, I could tell it moved into my sinuses. Ugh. Please go away! I'm hoping it leaves quickly... but I know that if anything moves to my sinuses, it's never good.

Wednesday morning I woke up completely stuffed up. Great. I knew I had 4x12 minutes at tempo to do, and contemplated moving the workout until later in the week. Problem is, between my work schedule and the way the miles lined up, I knew today was the best possible day to try it. Just have to do my best! I took a decongestant mid-day, and that helped a ton & carried me through the workout.

I did the first 12 minutes with Simone, then turned back for 2 minutes easy. We averaged 5:50 pace for the first 12 minutes, and it felt great! The Nichole "spring" in my stride was back. Ahhhh, I've missed you! I'm not sure if my stride looks any differently, but it feels different. Effortless & fun. It's been a long while since I've felt that way for a race or a harder workout, so it was great to have that feeling today & to be able to feel good on a harder workout.

For the recovery I ran backwards and was now behind all of the other Carleton women. It was pretty fun to move up their pack, talking to each individual runner, and then focusing up ahead on someone else. Tempo workouts are SO much easier when you have someone to run with/chase!

The last 2 were not as much fun. The team headed back to campus, and I went back out for two more repeats. I let myself slip mentally on the 3rd one, but on the recovery before the 4th one I reminded myself that I was just practicing for the "hurt" at the end of the marathon. How bad do you really want this? C'mon! I averaged around 6:07 pace on the last one, so slowed a bit (goal range is 5:55-6:05), but it was a really good effort & I was there mentally, which is all I can ask for.

Not a bad day, considering I'm not able to breathe 100% (imagine how great the workout would have felt then!). Hopefully this'll go away soon... it's getting really old :(.

29:19 Human Race 8k! 4th Place

2011-03-29T14:13:00.003-05:00

I've been meaning to get to this for FAR too long :).

Rewind to the few days before the race. My legs were feeling the 3 weeks of higher mileage, and the fact that I wasn't letting up for this race. On Saturday I went out for an easy 5 miler. WOW, my legs felt weird. They were tired, and I felt like I was breathing harder than I should have been to maintain an easy pace. Could also be that I am not 100% over a head cold I got about 10 days ago. Darn my terrible immune system. Pace was decent, though, despite feeling sluggish.

On to the race - I felt pretty good from the warm-up! I didn't feel springy and fast, but I also didn't have that "legs totally trashed" feeling, and my lungs were working OK. YEAH! Maybe this won't be the world's longest 8k after all!

I started the first mile in 6:00. I found that pace pretty easily, and didn't have to work at it. A teammate came up to me then & encouraged me to chase down another woman up ahead. That was all of the encouragement I needed. I sped up about 10 seconds/mile & got into a GREAT rhythm. The faster pace felt effortless & fun. I passed a lot of people, including about 4-5 women. Miles 2-4 were in 5:50, 5:48, 5:55 (slightly uphill). All the while I kept my eyes ahead. WOW -- Ladia Albertson (graduated from the U of MN, multiple time All-American for the Gophers) was up ahead! And Kim, another REALLY fast road racer. Can this be? I'm not in their league, but had been gaining on them through mile 4.

I thought to myself, what a lifetime achievement if I could reach either of them! I gunned it. Except I didn't seem to be gaining on them like I had before. Had they decided to take off at mile 4 as well? C'mon, Nichole, let's push a little more... I wasn't sure if I was going faster or not, as my legs weren't moving as effortlessly and I had to work to control them a little (why is that? just fatigue? I've had that feeling a bit lately). Afterwards, I realized I had run a low 5:30s last mile. Ha, really? :) I don't think I gained on either Ladia or Kim, but oh well -- what a great race, especially considering how I've felt the last couple of days!

--
Upcoming Plan

Since it's been so long since I've posted, I'll combine two posts in one. After the race, Jerry and I worked to define my next month's plan. After the race I took a recovery week, which was great. 65 miles with two hard workouts, and the hard workouts felt much easier! I could actually hit my tempo pace without straining, and did a track workout & nailed my times. AHHHH, I love recovery weeks.

But, I won't see another 65 mile week for a while. This week we're testing my limits, with 95 miles planned. The intensity is lower, with just one hard workout (I'll add in some striders 2-3 times this week) & I'm trying to really pay attention to my body. So far, so good! The next few weeks will be higher as well - it was a little intimidating to see it all mapped out, day by day, but also really exciting. I can do this! How amazing is it that my body now considers 65/week to be a lower week? I just have to take the workouts day by day -- I know it'll be difficult & I'll be tired often, but I know in the end this'll make me both physically and mentally TOUGH. Bring it on! :)

Mileage... is this what makes a marathoner?

2011-03-18T21:22:00.004-05:00

I took my first day off in 18 days on Friday (too long, I usually only try to go 2 weeks, but hadn't been looking at my training log). I tried to do a threshold workout on day 17, and felt like I was working harder than I should have been. My lungs felt fine, but my legs couldn't move quick enough. Why do I feel like I can't move any faster? I thought to myself: I need to work on my flexibility. I remember this feeling: whenever my mileage gets higher, I feel like my legs swell to the size of tree trunks and they begin to move SLOWER. Whether that's the case or not, I have no idea (I'm sure when I taper down, I am actually faster, but I feel pretty slow during the higher mileage weeks).

I looked at my training log after the workout, and realized that it had been a long time since I had taken a day off. That could be it. The tempo workout averaged 6:07/mile (2x2 miles @ tempo). Not terrible, but I'd like to be closer to 6:00. It was windy, and the majority of the tempo work was into the wind, but still. I need to be closer to 6:00, no matter the terrain or weather.

Hopefully the mileage and the lack of a day off explains the sluggishness I'm feeling. I've logged a lot of miles lately, at least for me (this isn't even that high in the grand scheme of things! I don't know how others are able to log 100+): 85.5 last week, and will be near 75 this week (and 75 the week prior to the 85.5). Jerry and I decided to keep this week higher than I normally would (given that I'm going to race on Sunday).

Given I can stay healthy, milage at this level so early is a GREAT sign. I hope it's making me strong, and not making me slow (I often wonder... if I ran 10 miles/week less, would I be able to NAIL my tempo and interval workouts ??). I have no idea. I'm shooting for a max weekly mileage of 95 during this cycle, which I'll plan to hit twice (per Daniels, unless Jerry makes changes). For the upcoming weeks, it looks like it'll be 67- (next week after the race) 95 - 86- 76- 95- 86-. Holy cr@p (sorry for the explative). That's a lot of consistent mileage. I really hope it'll make me strong/fast.

Anyway -- my thoughts are on the race on Sunday, especially after today's "tired" run. I ran today (~13 miles, with some fast striders). I feel sluggish/big/inflexible. Ug. I do not feel fast, which I was hoping to after taking a day off. Oh well, guess we'll see what's in store for me Sunday. I really do love racing, It's such a great way to gauge where you're at & a great opportunity for a hard effort. I'll lay it all out there, but I make no promises of a speedy time :)

It's been a while...

2011-03-09T10:41:00.003-06:00

Well, I survived the Birkie -- yeah! The first 15k were pretty ugly (my legs felt terrible and didn't exactly remember how they were supposed to move), but then it was pretty easy. Thank goodness I'm fit and my legs are strong from the running I do. I think I finished 190th or so for women. Last year I was 100th, so a bit of a decline :). Oops!

Afterwards, I happily put my skis in the basement, intending to only bring them out if I feel really inclined to go for a fun ski. :)

Meanwhile, the marathon training plan is in full swing. 75 miles last week, 85 this week. Wow. If I really hit 85 this week, that'll be the highest I've hit this early in a training plan (TCM's max was 83, and I hit that just once). I'm actually handling it really well. The only thing I've noticed is that my legs seem to be larger than normal -- I feel like the muscle fibers are swollen, sort of bulging out of their normal casing (NO idea what is actually going on, but this is how I picture it...). Probably just from using them so much, as well as doing leg-specific strength, which I've never done before.

Otherwise, nothing really of note. My days are pretty dull... lots of work, running 1-2 times/day, 2 or more hard days a week, and trying to sleep a lot. I'm really tired more often now, and need to make 8-9 hours of sleep a night a bigger priority.

Sorry for the boring post, but wanted to at least post something so it didn't look like I died at the Birkie :)

Me + Nordic Skiing = ?

2011-02-24T10:22:00.005-06:00

Long blog... warning!

This blog originally started when Ahvo, the owner of Finn Sisu, convinced me that it would be interesting to have a blog that followed a more "average" person learning how to ski and race, and trying to combine that with training for another sport (in my case, running).

Off the blog went. I was in the Sisu program at the time, and moved into Vakava the next year. I loved it! I loved the challenge of something new & the fact it required me to think about so much (balance, strength, technique, etc.). There were many frustrated blogs as well, when I'd come back scraped up after a rollerski, be unable to remotely use my fitness when on skis, etc. I know some of the early blog entries were erased when we switched over to this blogspot format, so I don't know how many of those entries still remain.

Anyway, after I entered and ran the Houston 2009 winter marathon, I decided I wanted to see where I could take my running. Was I a 3:03 marathoner, or did I have more in me? I just wanted to find that limit, wherever it was. That's still my goal today. In that next year, I struggled to find a balance between running competitively and learning to ski -- both take so much time, and I found that skiing with the Vakava group caused me to be pretty tired the next few days in my running workouts. It became increasingly hard to do both (especially as my weekly running mileage increased), and I eventually decided that in order to really see where I could go with running, I needed to run. Skiing could be an occasional way to cross train, but my skiing hours needed to be fairly minimal, and very "easy".

I decided not to do Vakava this fall/winter as a result, and my skiing has suffered because of it. I no longer get out for practice once a week with the team, and no longer make time during the week to ski either (when I went to practice, I came back with about 15 things to work on, so would make time 2+ times a week to get out and practice those). Do you know how many hours I've spent "on snow" this year? 7.6!!! (Go ahead, you can shake your head and laugh :)) 2 of these hours were at the Boulder ski race and 2 were at Mora.

I've fallen out of love with skiing. I don't know why -- I actually do like it (once I'm out there), and would really like to concentrate on it to improve a ton. It's just that now when I go out, it's usually tagging along to one of Nate's races, and I am not enjoying it at all. Probably because I don't find a point to it now: why race if I'm not actually going to be able to compete and to improve on last year's performance? My personality doesn't exactly lend itself to "race participation" :). I also fight (mentally) against the sport a little, I think because it's Nate's sport and he's so good at it. I sort of feel like then that I need to like it, need to be competitive. I'm not super motivated when expectations or goals are set on me by someone else -- even though I know he isn't setting any expectations for me, I just feel like they are there.

Anyway, what's the point of this blog entry, you're asking? Well, the Birkie is just days away. The "BIG" ski race. The one I am COMPLETELY unprepared for. This race will increase my total ski hours by 50%. That's absurd. It's like showing up to participate in a fall marathon when you've only run about 50 miles the entire summer. Luckily, I have strong legs from the running I do, and a great engine, but that won't help me when trying to navigate around fallen skiers or slick downhills :/. I'm actually a little terrified of the event this year. I've never been so unprepared for anything...

I'm going to try to just take it easy, to talk to people out on the trail, and to smile... but I know even that will be hard for me. Why is this? I would have no problem entering a running race and running really slow, enjoying the people/scenery/event. Why am I dreading and loathing this upcoming ski race?

Ah, well, just need to get it done. Then the weather can warm up, I can store my skis away, and the running season can commence :). Just hope I survive Saturday in one piece! :)

17:52 - 2nd Place

2011-02-19T21:12:00.002-06:00

Another indoor personal best!

To be honest, I was really hoping for something in the 40s, (I think when I set out goals a few months ago, I was hoping to be around 17:45 by this point in time). But, it wasn't a bad race by any means (very tactful, a lot of women vying for those top couple spots), and it's a 13 second PR on the indoor track for me.

Today wasn't one of those "amazing race" days for me, not like the 3k was last month. Those days, I have a very consistent rhythm, my lap splits are identical without trying, the race is fairly effortless until the end, and I can really put the hammer down at the end. I didn't have any of that today.

But, still a solid showing. I can't complain. I fought for my 2nd place finish; I covered all but one of the moves the women around me made (the one that cost me the win!). But, I still think I had a lot more left.

I just wasn't prepared to race "all-out". I don't know why. I think some of my marathon training teaches me to go long (i.e. Wednesday's workout: 30 min MP, 5 min tempo, 25 min MP, 5 min tempo, 5 min MP), and teaches you to conserve some energy for the next "interval" in your training. I need to learn how to lay it all out there for a shorter race. How do you switch gears like that? As always, a great lesson to learn now, and to practice and visualize about going forward!

I should be extatic about a large PR, but I KNOW I can do better than this. Guess that's a good thing -- it'll fire me up for the next training run and the next race. Bring it on! :)

5k at the U tomorrow morning!

2011-02-18T21:30:00.004-06:00

Legs are still a little tired from Wednesday's 14.5 mile tempo/marathon pace run (well, let's clarify, only 10 of it was at marathon pace or below), but what the heck, let's see what they can do!

Really? It's time to start the marathon plan?

2011-02-15T16:25:00.002-06:00

The last week, I've been meaning to work backwards from G'ma's marathon (June 18th) to see when I'd officially have to begin the Daniel's marathon plan.

Good thing I did... because turns out, I should be starting THIS WEEK.

Oh, man.

I still haven't decided which of the Daniels' marathon programs I'll attempt: 1. stick to the general program I did for TCM? Just add mileage and bump down the target times? Or 2. Move to the elite program?

What are the major differences, you ask? Good question.
In the Elite plan, Phase 2-4 are one continuous 18 week phase. The plan is set up to steadily increase the various types of stress being imposed on the runner rather than changing which system is being stressed during different periods of time.
Looking through the program, it mixes up interval pacing, marathon pace, and tempo pace workouts throughout. You can see that in the first two workouts (week 1):

1. 2 mile WU, then 30 minutes MP, 4:45 tempo pace, 25 minutes MP, 4:45 tempo, 4:45 MP, 2 miles easy (~14 miles)
2. 2 mile WU, 8 miles at MP, 2 mile CD

Vs. the General plan, which focuses first on interval training, then adds marathon and tempo pace. (Working one system at a time).

With that said, I don't know which one will work better for me. I feel like I have a good interval/VO2 max base from this winter's plan, which are what the first 6 weeks of the General plan works on... is that a good thing? Or is it unneccessary to continue to work on that system for that long? We'll see what Jerry has to say, he's very objective & is smarter than me when it comes to an overall plan. I'm pretty sure either will work really well, as long as I can pound out the mileage, get the quality in, and remain healthy and motivated.

Whichever it is, though, I'm excited (although also apprehensive) to begin! Let the mileage/work/general feeling of exhaustion begin! :) (Oh, crap...)

1st Track Workout Back

2011-02-11T22:34:00.002-06:00

I'm pretty sure I smiled most of the entire workout. I feel like I'm back from the dead!

Today's workout: 4x1000 with 1 minute rest, 3:45 each (tempo pace). Then 2x1000 at 3:28, 3 mins rest. Then 4x200 at 38.

I was able to do:
4x1000s in an average of about 3:42-3:43 each
2x1000s in 3:23 each
4x200s: 37, 36, 36, 35

It felt GREAT. Like, seriously great. I wasn't feeling blazing fast, but just to be back, running fast and meeting or beating my given times felt awesome. I was also super excited to be doing this on the indoor Carleton track! Wow, what a great feeling to breathe in the dry, indoor air and try to navigate the tight turns... it's awesome :).

12 miles on the day after a long cool down. I'm back! :)

Better Showing than Last Week

2011-02-09T22:15:00.002-06:00

And that's all I can ask for!

I'm starting to recover now, which is great. Today's workout with Carleton/Simone: 25 minutes of threshold/tempo (forget what term is right?) -- my 5:55 to 6:05 range. She's been a little sick lately, and knowing how I've felt, we each told the other that there was a good chance we'd just do 20, rest for 1 minute, and then do the last 5, which was last week's workout.

Side note about how FAST Simone is: Even though she's been sick, she ran a 10:02 3K last Friday. WOW. She's going down to Iowa state this Saturday to run a 5K against really good competition. I would not be at all surprised if she ran sub 17:10. There is this amazing "quickness" about her stride. She can make a really quick surge in these tempo runs - and it takes me 5+ seconds to respond and move back up to her. You can tell she just has that extra gear (or 2, or 3!), and knows how to fire into those quickly. It's really fun to watch :)

Anyway, back to the workout. I made it 20 minutes with her. First mile: 5:55, 2nd: 5:58. I'm starting to work the last 3rd mile. We slow to 6:04 pace, so I tell her to go. I don't want to hold her back at all! At 20 minutes, I'm losing pace quickly, so decide to take the minute rest. Great idea. I recovered quick and was able to hold 6:00 pace for the last 5 minutes.

We cooled down back to campus (the girls are really nice & fun to talk with, I love the company), and I went out for another 3 miles to get more mileage in. I added a few more up-tempo minutes (TRYING to mimic Simone's quickness!), so all together I had 30 minutes of tempo or faster on the day. Best part? My legs don't feel trashed! They feel like they worked, but a "normal" worked -- not like they've raced a marathon and hit the wall.

So, I'm getting there! I think next week I should be able to hang with her the entire way. I am so blessed to be able to work with the team!! The Carleton women's team is very close, and the head coaches are AMAZING. It's so fun to have this to look forward to. And honestly, who gets the opportunity to chase after one of the top d3 athletes in the nation?!? What a PRIVILEGE! I can't wait until next week :)

Starting Again Tomorrow

2011-02-07T20:19:00.003-06:00

I decided to give myself another evening off. I went back and forth about it today, and decided that I'd allow one more rest day. Am I just being a wuss? I decided I wasn't, that this was a fatigue I've never felt before, and thought that taking one more day off would be best.

After today, I just need to get back to it. If the legs are still dead, so be it, I'll just run slower and take it easy until they turn around. I've at least given them a good head start on recovery by taking 3 unscheduled days off in the last week (a LOT, lot, LOT! for me).

Few other changes I'm making:
1. WATER: I was SO proud of myself today. By about 2, I had consumed 2 water bottles, plus a 8 oz. ounce coffee/ 8 oz. powdered hot chocolate mix (my home-brewed empty calorie concoction/splurge most mornings). That amounted to about 55 ounces of liquid. The most that I've had in a LONG time! I was annoyed to have to hit up the bathroom so often.

But then I got a perfectly timed note from a fellow Run N Fun teammate. Said she had read my blog and that I should be trying for a gallon a day! Really?!? Prior to this, I think I'd been averaging about 25 ounces at work, and maybe another 25 at home? Probably less during the move. So, this is something I can change. It's sort of fun to have a goal to work towards during the day. Only complaint: Today, with my measly 55 (I'm now up to 90 and working on the last 30), I went to the bathroom every 45 minutes, I swear!! Oh well, guess there are worse things than being known as "that girl".

2. Food in general: This same teammate also commented on making sure calories count. Not counting calories, but just making sure they're all doing something good for me. I had let that get away from me. Most days I'm pretty sure I'm not getting my daily servings of veggies/fruits or protein. Too many "quick" foods, and too much snacking of bars and other goodies left out at work. I'm SO weak when it comes to brownies or other baked goods left out in the break room!!! Again, something I can easily change now that I'm re-focusing on it.

3. Making sure I get enough rest. Enough said.

And hopefully with the combination of 1, 2, and 3, I'll be back to my old self again soon! Can't wait! There's NOTHING better than the feeling after a long, hard workout/week of workouts :)

Trying to Recover

2011-02-06T20:56:00.002-06:00

I've spent the last part of the week just trying to recover. From what? I'm still not sure.

After Wednesday's threshold with Simone, my legs were shot. The "I've just run a marathon" kind of shot, where going down stairs is painful. WEIRD. It was just 25 minutes at a 6 minute pace!

I've tried to run a couple of times since, and my quads are still pretty sore. I can't even imagine trying to move quickly at this point. Hmm.

Possible reasons:
1. Steve's explaination of dehydration could be very possible. I know I haven't been watching that at all during this hectic time (In fact, last week sometime at work I caught myself thinking that I hadn't touched my water bottle in a long time...). So, this could be very possible.
2. General over-training.
3. General stress of changes: move, unpacking, the new commute, stress of the work, etc.

Anyway, whatever the reason, I just need to get over this ASAP. How do you get over fatigue like this? Time off? I've tried that (just a few days), with only a little success. Do I just run easy until the legs come around?

Here's hoping they feel at least a little better by this upcoming Wednesday... I have another tempo run with Simone that I'd like to keep up on!

1st practice - not my best showing

2011-02-02T20:01:00.002-06:00

I showed up to practice today, nervous as I've been in a long time! The distance team was driven outside of town on a less busy/no stop sign road. The team and I did about a mile and a half warm up, and then started the threshold.

Wow... Simone will be so helpful for me! We're actually the same height, which is really funny, and our threshold paces are the exact same (5:55-6:05). It's just awesome.

We did 1x20 minutes today, 1 minute rest, then 5 minutes.

Only problem? My legs. I did well until about 18 minutes. Then my legs came undone… it’s so weird. Not sure how to describe it, but it's the exact same feeling I had last week when trying to do a 20 minute threshold. They just start turning over at a slower rate and aren't able to react at all.

This is SO unlike me, especially at this threshold/tempo pace. This is usually my strongest workout, and I typically do 40+ minutes at this pace (broken up differently each week). Today was just 25.

How embarassing! I wasn't too far behind, but still... I don't want to "tag along"! I'd like to be up with her, each of us helping the other. So, I need to get back to my normal, and then I'll be up with her without any trouble.

I'm considering taking a few days off. I'm a little scared, because that means the last 3 weeks will be poor in terms of mileage, but I need to get over this ASAP. What's the deal? Does moving and stress of work really take that much out of you? (closed on a house last friday, moved over the weekend, and the following weekend I travelled to Denver for a trade show for the ski shop... too much) I haven't done strength yet this week (tonight was going to be my first session of the week, but I decided to skip), and I think I'll go easy on it if I do much strength work at all.

So, even though today wasn't my best showing, I am SO happy I was able to run with them! Looking forward to training more with them, as well as trying to help coach/help the team out a little!

A TRAINING PARTNER!

2011-01-28T20:48:00.003-06:00

I am SOOO excited. Unbelievably excited, actually. Although I've done well the last 7-8 months, training alone because I haven't been able to find anyone my speed within a reasonable driving distance, it gets REALLY old. Plus, I know I can push myself harder if I'm chasing someone or being chased.

[Aside on running in Red Wing: I loved the town, don't get me wrong, but there honestly was no one that even ran 8 minute mile pace (which isn't even fast!). I tried running a long run with a group one Sunday, specifically meeting a faster woman who was going 12 miles. We started out at 8 minute pace, but for the last 3 miles, we went between 10-12 minute mile pace, going slower each mile. I completely killed her. I felt SOO bad! She thought she was an 8/mile person, but obviously wasn't. She hasn't called me to meet up for a run since :)]

Anyway, back on topic. A while ago Jerry, my coach, was at a meet and he ran into the Carleton head coach. They talked about Carleton's top women's runner, and commented on how she didn't have anyone to train with. Jerry suggested that I might be able to help out.

WELL, I started the conversations in earnest after the move, and it looks like I'll be able to! Hopefully I can run with her twice a week (maybe more often, if we work well together and it works with our schedules). Need the boss' approval on leaving early once a week (hope, hope, HOPE he says I can!)...

She's very, very fast. 10:07 3k fast. Remember when I was pumped about my 10:23? :) So, she has a lot more foot speed than me. That's a good thing, I can use help there. I (per the coach) have more stamina/threshold strength (our threshold speeds are the same), so I think we'll actually make great training partners.

In addition, the assistant coach, a 2005 Carleton grad, might run with me once a week as well. So, I may go from training completely alone to meeting with someone 2-3 times a week. How absolutely wonderful!

Can I say it again, YEAH!!!

Because of the move?

2011-01-25T10:32:00.002-06:00

I took 2 days off because of the move. Wow, how do we have so much stuff?? [Aside: when we drove to our closing, it was literally -20 out, without windchill. Yikes!] Luckily, we had a lot of help, but it still took 2 full days. I meant to try to run Saturday evening, but I was completely exhausted.

It's the first 2 days I've taken off in a row in a LOONG time!

I ran Sunday for the first time, and went 16. My pace was slow -- 8:20-8:30s. I haven't run that slow in a while (can't remember the last time), but figured it was both 1. Because it felt like -10 out, I had a ton of layers on, and it was windy, and 2. Because of the move. My quads were really dead after the 16, which is also weird, since 16 isn't even that long.

I ran Monday evening again, and same thing. 8:25 averages. Weird. I felt like I was moving pretty decently! Guess the move takes more out of you than you think!!

I'm going to try to run hard tonight, we'll see how that goes. I'm just going on "feel" now, so if my "hard" this week is a little slower, that'll be fine.

On the bright side, I absolutely LOVE our new home! I feel so at home, even though it's a complete mess and there are boxes everywhere. That's a really fun feeling -- the last 1.5 years I've just felt unsettled and not completely "at home". Not sure why (probably because I didn't let myself call it home because we didn't officially own the house?), but I'm loving the difference!!!

Moving...

2011-01-19T16:58:00.004-06:00

Wow, what a busy time! I'm excited, yet un-excited at the same time. Is that OK?

I'm aprehensive about the move because I know it'll change my daily life a bit (ok, not "change" -- just shorten). I've loved living and working in Red Wing and I really like the house we've been renting (and tried to buy)! For the last year, I've been able to swing home over lunch to get a run in, swing home just to fold a load of laundry if I want/need (this rarely happens because of my schedule, but it's nice knowing I could if I wanted to!!), etc. Granted, it has become harder to find the time, but I really try to get home at least 2-3 times a week to run. Running over lunch has been my savior this winter -- starting a run when it's 7pm, dark, cold, windy, and just plain miserable is no fun.

Moving won't be the end of lunch time running, I'll just need to plan things better. I can use the YMCA down the street, I'll just need to buy a membership & remember to pack clothes for the day.

Ellie will be so sad to lose her lunch time running buddy!!! :)

I think we'll love the NF community. It has a great endurance community -- there are groups that meet on the weekends, not to mention the college runners I could hook up with (still working on one connection...). I'm already excited about running in the Carleton arb -- soft surface running without any technical footing/turns, yeah! Plus, NF just seems like a really fun town.

I'm sure once we start moving in and making the place "ours", I'll love it... I'm just scared of the change.

In the meantime, because things will be so busy in the next couple of weeks, Jerry has limited my weekly mileage to 60 just to make sure I'm not overdoing it. I hate having limits, but I know this one is good for me, so I'll comply :). (I like how he tells me, but then makes a point to tell my husband as well... he knows me well, I sometimes need Nate to watch over and enforce limits like this :)

10:23.46!

2011-01-15T22:23:00.002-06:00

An all-time personal best indoor 3k for me. And it felt GREAT! I felt completely in control, strong, and smooth the entire race. I hit 41s pretty much every lap (42s were the goal). I'm normally a really consistent pacer, but I was a little surprised by this just because I haven't done any pace work lately. But, 41s just felt right, so I went with it.

My previous indoor 3k best was 10:24.35 in late feb of 2003 (really? 8 years ago? wow, i must be getting old).

I finished 1st in my heat by 34 seconds, and 7th overall. It would have been fun to see if running alongside quicker competition (the first heat was much faster) would have pushed me faster, but oh well. My only real goal for today was to get a read on where my training was at -- and this showed me -- it's going very well! Plus, it was fun to race for the win, picking off girls as I tried to lap them :).

Now, time to head to bed. Nate and I are going up to Boulder Lake tomorrow for a ski race... not looking forward to it, it's supposed to be about -10 degrees at the start :(. Can winter please be over soon?

3k? Should be entertaining!

2011-01-11T12:16:00.002-06:00

I think ahead to Saturday, and all I can do is smile and shake my head :). Ha! I'm looking forward to seeing where I'm at, but know I'm completely unprepared for something this fast/short (it was really fast for me in college, when I was a 5k/10ker!) & will have some really fast competition from the U of MN's women's team. As I was lying in bed last night thinking ahead to the race, trying to picture myself racing, and the only image I had was of me running in slow motion, trying to keep up with heavy legs. Hmmm, need to work on that mental image :)

I don't have a hard and fast goal, but would like to be as close to 10:40 as I could. That isn't blazing fast, but would be a respectable time to build off of.

As a reference, at MIACs in college, I ran 10:30 (freshman), 10:29 (sophomore), 10:43 (junior, after struggling with a mess of injuries all indoor season), 10:52 (senior, first race back after injury). My personal best 3k is a 10:12, run outdoor my senior year. Without having run any sort of short reps lately (usually only 1200s/1600s and tempos), I think I'd be pretty happy with a 10:40.

And, just so I have some idea of pacing, that would be: 640 total seconds, which is 42 2/3 seconds/lap assuming a 200 meter track. I have no idea what a 42 second 200 feels like (other than "fast"! :).

Should be an adventure! Now, I should probably do a few shorter reps and/or striders this week, just to remind my legs how to move fast :).

P.S. I've been having a little bit of hip/SI discomfort lately. I think it's due to all of the uneven footing on MN's snowy roads. It seems that once the roads are somewhat clear, we get another 2+ inches of snow, and then you're fighting the slop again. Jim (aka miracle worker) is on top of it. Glad I'm completely aware of my body now & can jump on things right away.

Flu :(

2011-01-06T18:50:00.003-06:00

Dang... the last 3 days I've been completely knocked out by some sort of flu bug. I have honestly not been this sick in a very long time!

Tuesday I literally did nothing except sleep and lie on the couch. (For those of you who know me know that I NEVER sit on the couch for any extended period of time doing nothing). Everytime I'd try to eat or drink, I'd feel nautious. My body just hurt, and I'd get dizzy when I tried to move too fast. Yuck. Nate was just as miserable with me on the couch :(.

I was able to run today for the first time since Sunday. My stomach didn't feel well the entire time, but I just wanted to get out, go slow, and test everything out. After the frist 1.5 miles, things were a little better. I finished 4.5 miles, and felt pretty good about it. Stomach not doing great, but at least it's runable. Can't wait until I'm 100%, though... this is terrible!

BTW, before I got deathly ill, I signed up to race the 3k at the U of MN indoor meet on the 15th. EEEKKK! I sort of freaked out after I signed up, but then was like, "Well, guess it's just a chance see where I'm at -- might not be pretty, but there's no use ignoring reality!". Now, losing almost a weeks worth of quality training, I'm feeling even more unprepared -- 3ks are sooo fast! I haven't done speed work since the snow came and ruined reliable footing!! Oh man, this'll be an adventure :).

Who knew?

2010-12-29T23:03:00.002-06:00

A strength program really does make a difference!

Good things I've noticed lately:
1. Now I'm able to do the same exercises at about 20 reps each, vs. 10-12 when I first started.
2. I can actually see a difference in my stomach and arms. YEAH! :)
3. I don't notice it while running, but have noticed that I'm able to handle the miles without as many aches and pains. Is that because I've just worked myself up to handle the mileage? Probably. But I think a bit of it is due to a consistent and balanced strength program.
4. The other day I helped Nate carry a table inside. It was big, awkward, and we needed to maneuver it around corners and doors. I handled it much better than I would have before! I didn't have to put it down often, and could hold it out at weird angles without begging for a break like I used to. Cool!

Only gripe:
It takes 1 hour/session! Ug. I really like it, and love the way I feel afterwards, but it adds another 2-3 hours to my week. 70 miles a week (which I've been trying to be at/near the last 3 weeks) plus strength now takes 11-12 hours/week, without any skiing. Hmmm.

In sum, it's working! I'm excited to continue with the program!!

(Secretly I'm hoping that if I continue to do it & continue to marathon train that SOMEDAY I'll have a great stomach :)... this will probably NEVER happen, but I am ever hopeful)

Motivated again

2010-12-24T12:16:00.002-06:00

I don't know what has changed, but I'm loving running again.

I think it was just a simple change in mindset. Instead of "having" to do X # of miles, I'm now enjoying every one of them. I don't HAVE to do any of this, no one is making me. So no use in making it feel like a chore.

I think it's also helped that I'm starting to feel faster. I can't 100% tell (can't really do workouts to compare apples to apples to this summer), but I think I am. My lungs feel strong, and the little bit I did measure myself on my runs this week, they were fairly quick (yesterday's workout was 11 miles: 3 WU, then 5 miles of 2 minutes on, 1 min easy, 1 min hard, 30 sec easy, 30 sec hard, 30 sec easy... repeat until you've done a total of 5 miles. Most of the fast stuff was 5:30-5:35, which is at or a little bit faster that what the Daniels plan suggests for me).

Another thing I've changed: I'm not looking at the watch as much. When my plan says to go hard, I try to make it as hard as I can. When it says to go easy, I enjoy what feels "easy". Sort of a nice break. I can be a slave to pace when the weather is better and I need to memorize a few key paces. Right now, I just need to put in miles and become fit. That doesn't require constant monitoring.

Jim, my chiropractor (I might refer to him as "miracle worker" from now on, he's that good), also said it best: "If you didn't see Nate in two weeks, and you saw him again, would you be elated just to see/be with him? It's the same with running. Maybe you need to step away for a while to get back to where you love it, you're excited for every mile, every minute of it". :)

P.S. To look back and compare to last year (I like to do this every once in a while). My mileage for this winter has been much more consistent:

Since 11/07/10: 60, 69, 54, 68, 55, 70 (average of 62). Add in an average of an hour a week of strength (there was over a week where I didn't do any strength...) and some skiing, and my weekly training hours have been at 9.2 hours/week.

Last year for the same 6 weeks my mileage was: 45, 55, 65, 21, 53, 44 (average of 47) (with skiing 2.5 hours/week, total hours per week averaged 8.9 hours).

Oh, the treadmill...

2010-12-21T23:02:00.004-06:00

I'm not sure if my treadmill is calibrated correctly. It's about 4 years old now, and even though it's a good treadmill, do they sort of fall out of line at some point? The incline maybe doesn't go up as high as it says it is? Or it doesn't quite run at a certain speed, even though it thinks it is?

At first, this bothered me. I don't want to get to March to find out that when I thought I was doing X minute miles, I was really doing X+1 minute miles. That would suck.

So, I've decided just to make my hard workouts on the treadmill HARD. Who cares about pace? That doesn't really mean anything, anyway.

So tonight I popped in a movie into the DVD player in the workout room (best thing ever!!), and did 3x10 minutes. I played with the incline and speed, ranging from 3% to 5.5%, speed 9.8 to 10.0 (again, no idea if those are actually correct).

GREAT workout. And best of all, it was fun! It's fun to just try to beat your lungs/legs up. And playing with the speed or incline every minute takes your mind off of the whole "I have 5 mintues left to go?" thought. So, YEAH! I'm no longer absolutely hating my indoor workouts (at least for now :).

Did it

2010-12-12T22:30:00.003-06:00

68 mile week. Take that, lack of motivation. You can't get the best of me, despite your attempts at throwing -15 degree windchills at me for a long 18 miler today.

It did, however, get the best of my strength routine this week. But, I guess you have to take what you can get. Next week will be better, I promise.

Low on Motivation

2010-12-11T21:55:00.002-06:00

Ugh.

I've been trying to find excuses not to run lately. Good thing I have a good support system (aka my husband, who was the reason I started a treadmill run tonight).

I'm not sure why. Probably because I feel a little overloaded, with work, the move, and trying to log a lot of training hours. Could also be the weather... I usually try to run over lunch, but if I can't (which has been often lately, way too busy at work), I find it really hard to motivate myself when it's cold, dark, and snowy :(. Could just be that I'm going through a slump. Deep down, I know my marathon isn't for another 6 months... I thought about that tonight, and said to myself, one day in December won't matter at all, right? What'll really count is the 3 months up before the marathon. [That's when I told my husband I wasn't running tonight, and he said, "Really? Would you be happy with that decision later?". Argh. You're right, I wouldn't be.... so I trudged down to the treadmill]

The good news? I've been able to get myself out... even if takes a lot of coaxing. IF I can get myself out for my long run tomorrow, I'll have 68 miles this week. Guess that's not bad, considering the goal was 70 this week. I got in two of my 3 quality sessions, and am hoping tomorrow to incorporate the 3rd into the long run.

I will admit, though... I skipped all of my strength sessions this week :(. Chrissy (and Wilie!), feel free to yell at me. I deserve it.

So, overall, not bad, I just hope I hit a stretch where I'm super motivated again. I never know how to get over stretches like this (well, in the past, I simply just didn't run... hence why last winter my training log looked like 60-30-40-70-20-etc). Any ideas?

NORTHFIELD!

2010-12-08T22:25:00.002-06:00

So... great news! Nathan and I found an awesome home in Northfield!! We've been searching for over 6 months now (going back and forth between deciding to stay in Red Wing or move somewhere in between both of our jobs), so knew it was "the one" when we stepped into it.

Best yet? The sellers didn't counter (and believe me, we put an offer low enough, expecting at least a little negotiating!) so we were able to lock the evening we made the offer. It allowed us to lock in at a ridiculously low rate -- the rates in the last two days have already jumped 3/8%.

Super excited to make the move! Now... just to find time to do it all (Audit, last minute budget changes & year end at work, Finn Sisu's busy time, and trying to log 70 miles/week... and that was before trying to coordinate all of this paperwork/inspections/move stuff!! I honestly don't know where I'll find the time...). I think it'll all be worth it in the end. I'm excited about the prospects of having more of an endurance community in Northfield, and it seems like a really fun small town. I'm a little scared of the extra commute, but perhaps it'll force me to simplify my life a little bit (which would be a good thing!!).

Moving date: Jan 21st. Anyone available? :)

Focusing on "speed"

2010-11-29T17:28:00.004-06:00

So I think I've mentioned that I'm going to focus more on my speed this winter. I felt like my 5k speed left much to be desired during the TCM build up.

I want to clarify that statement. I'm focusing on speed, while also trying to put in as much base mileage as I can. When some people focus on speed, it's ok to cut back on the mileage... you can run a pretty speedy 5k on about 40-45 miles a week.

I know that's not going to cut it for my spring/fall racing goals, so know that even though I need to develop my speed and VO2 max a little more, I need to focus on my base mileage as well. That'll be tough, given MN winters, but I'll do the best I can.

Jerry suggested I have 60 mpw be my minimum, and I agree. I'm hoping that a solid winter of 65-75+ will make me really strong (esp. considering I had just 5 weeks of 70-82 mpw in the build up for TCM).

The hardest part about focusing on mileage and speed during the winter months will be my ability to judge whether it's working. Right now I feel like my legs are no faster than they were before I started following the Daniels' 5k-15k plan... despite 1-2 track workouts a week for the last 5-6 weeks. But, maybe it'll just take some time. I'm not even 1/3 of the way through a 16 week training cycle.

But how do you judge if it's working? Will the workouts become easier to hit? Racing during the winter months is so difficult... I'm going to try to hop into a few indoor track races (if GAC will allow an old alumni to tag along to 1 or 2 of their meets...), but other than that, what do you do?

So, guess I just have to trust that it's the right thing for me to do (which I completely do) & focus on getting myself out the door as much as possible this winter, despite what mother nature throws at me!

---
P.S. Very applicable quote (and the reason I ran 70 miles last week instead of 67.5 :))

"If the most common question I get asked is, 'How do I run a fast marathon?,' the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th ... most common questions have something to do with diet, running form, sleep, footwear, stretching, weights; anything but actual running. American runners seem to have an unending fascination with all these extra-curricular activities, yet we continue to get slower at running marathons ... If you want to improve your performance in the marathon, stop worrying about minimalist shoes, caveman diets, and new-age running form, and start worrying about getting out the door and running a little more than you did last week. High mileage works!" -Pete Gilmore

Wow...

2010-11-23T09:57:00.002-06:00

It's so cold and miserable out! Hope I can muster the dedication to stick to the plan (today is supposed to be 10-12 400s)... there's nothing easier than staying in and skipping workouts than weather like this :(.

One cool thing that happened yesterday: Gu sent me an entire bag of energy gels and chews!!! One of the men I work with at RWSC knows the VP of sales at Gu - I was encouraged to leave my PRs with the GU VP to see what they could do for me, so I did. I didn't hear anything back, so assumed that was a "no".

But, low and behold, they did! Wow!! How cool is that?!? It's literally enough to get me through the trials next year... wonder if that's by coincidence. :)

Another track workout...

2010-11-21T19:26:00.002-06:00

And another workout where I got to the track, and couldn't quite remember what the workout was.

I thought the book said, 4x [200 with 200 jog, 200 with 400 jog, 800 with 400 jog]. Goal times, written on my hand because I know I have a hard time remembering these times are (after the one mixup I had a week or so ago, I learned!): 200 - 38, 800 - 2:36.

Nate was doing these with me. First 200: 39. Second 200: 39. Nate keeps going for another 20-30 meters. Why'd you stop?, he asks. Because we're supposed to do [workout above], I answer. He explains that that doesn't make sense. It was 4x[200 with 200 jog, 400 with 400 jog, 800 with 400 jog] -- it's a simple ladder. I'm not convinced... but I decide to error on the side of more than less and do his workout. I'm so sure I'm right, and he's so sure he's right that we bet 5 minutes of massage on it.

I struggled to hit my goal time, especially the 800s.

Here were my set times:
Set 1: 39, 39 (200), 2:38
Set 2: 37, 1:17, 2:39
Set 3: 38, 1:18, 2:39
Set 4: :39, 1:19, 2:40

So the 800s were on average about 3 seconds slow.

When we got home, I checked my plan: HA! I was RIGHT!!! We were supposed to do 200s, not 400s!! Was that the reason I struggled more with this workout? I don't really think so -- I think it's more that my speed and VO2 max aren't where they should be. But for now, I'll blame it on Nate making the workout too long. :)

I'm going to enjoy my back massage tonight!!! :)

The land of the rising sun

2010-11-18T05:06:00.005-06:00

Sorry it's been so long! I'm on a week long business trip in Tokyo.

It's my first time in Japan. It's beautiful!! Tokyo is a bustling, energetic city. At first it's a little overwhelming (26 million people), but after a while it grows on you -- it's more like an organized chaos than anything else. Everyone is so kind & accomodating. It's also a very safe place to travel - very little crime. The Japanese are very respectful, honest, etc. Wish the US was more like that.

Everything is clean (despite the fact there are so many people), and everyone takes such good care of themselves, their clothing, their appearance. They pride themselves on wearing good quality, expensive items (which is why we can sell so many Red Wing shoes there!!). Quite amazing actually. Jeans sell for $300-400, a more casual flannel or plaid shirt $150-200... wow.

One of the coolest things: the portion sizes are PERFECT! Not a heaping pile like in the US. For example, someone ordered roast pork with mashed potatoes for lunch one day. What came was a piece of meat a little smaller than the size of your fist, and less than an ice cream scoop of potatoes. No wonder there aren't any (seriously) obese people here! Not to mention, everything is super healthy. I LOVE it! Lots of rice, with a little healthy meat or vegetables. Nothing heavy. Even their desserts are light-tasting. Not like in the US where they're dense, calorie filled, and all around heavy. Gosh, I wish I could take home their cuisine and portion sizes to the US.

Ok, on to running: My training has actually gone better than expected during the trip. At first, I wasn't planning to be able to get in many miles at all. But, then I found that the hotel had a gym (only free from 5-6:30am, otherwise an outrageous fee), so hit that up the first two days. It was pretty much awful. First, I am NOT a morning person. Perhaps the fact that 5am in Tokyo is really 2pm MN time helps. Second, it's warm, without any fans. Third, I forgot my ipod. They have 3 TVs in the room, but there's no sound (and even if there was, I couldn't understand any of it). So day #1, I stared off into space, thinking about nothing at all, for 10 whole miles. I guess I did get to occupy my mind a little bit by converting miles to kilometers...

Day #2: Back to the gym again. 3 mile warm up, and then I tried to pick it up. I did 20 minutes hard (I think 6:10 to 6:00 pace, but it felt harder than that). Then I started on a cool down. 1 mile into it, I suddenly felt really tired & sick. It was a weird sickness feeling... hard to describe. I decided to shut it down for the day. Even though 6:00 pace shouldn't be hard, maybe that's what triggered that feeling?

Day #3: The team in Japan drew out 3 different courses in Tokyo for me. YEAH!! The first was Yoyogi park. I woke up and hit up the gym to get a strength session in, and then hit the streets, map in hand. It was a 2km jog over to the park. It was BEAUTIFUL inside. Sort of a santuary inside the bustling, stressful city. About 20 minutes into the run, a Japanese runner passes me pretty quickly. I decided to chase after him & asked if I could run with him. Wish I would have worn my Garmin -- I have no idea how fast we went, but it was really quick. I don't think I could have gone much quicker. So much fun to run hard with someone!! I don't know if that was his normal pace or not (could be, he looked very smooth/fit and said he was a 2:33 marathoner), or if he kept picking it up because he had a young American girl running along side him :) He stopped after about 20 minutes. I continued on, at an easier pace, to finish a 1:30 run. Not bad!

Day #4: Tomorrow. Going to venture to the price's palace. I have to take the subway to get there... should be interesting.

I LOVE the fact that I'm a distance runner and can explore so much more of a city than those that don't run!!

So, all in all, not a bad week (I think it'll be 60-65 miles)! Not bad for a week I was expecting 10 or less!

What?!???

2010-11-09T20:28:00.002-06:00

I went to the track today. Workout: 5-6x1000 with 3 mins rest in between each. Goal time 3:38. I hit the track and had a great workout! I did all 6: 3:37, 3:37, 3:34, 3:38, 3:37, 3:35. I was proud, I ran really hard, through a good wind (and didn't even try to wind aid the reps), and was at or below my times.

I checked my 1000 rep times before the marathon. They were 3:31-3:35. Hmm, I was a little slower than that today. Bet that was the wind. Or maybe I just had a good day then.

BUT THEN I came home and checked my plan. Goal time: 3:28. What???!!!??? NOOOO! Check the book, make sure. Yep, 3:28. What a sinking feeling.

I start to think: did I work to my full potential? Could I have gone harder? After the first one (3:37), if I would have known I was 9 seconds slower than goal, would I have gone harder? ARGH!

I know I couldn't have hit 3:28s. If I would have had someone to chase, then maybe I could have been a few seconds faster. Maybe I would have gone 1-2 seconds faster each if I would have known how far off I was. Those two combined, I would have been MAYBE 3:32-3:33. That's a MAYBE. It wouldn't have been 7-9 seconds each time.

So -- need to figure this out if I'm going to get anywhere. Part of it is I haven't adjusted to VO2 max/speed work. I can hit tempo pace without any trouble. Hard long runs? Love them. But rep or interval pace, I'm not even close.

It's also because I've bumped up my pacing. Instead of 2:50 pacing, I'm now at 2:48 pacing (and in a few months, hope to bump that to 2:46). Again, I have no problem with the tempo pace change -- but everything else... it's ugly.

So it's really, really good for me to realize this is a such big weakness. I need to focus, really get after it. So, with that -- enough said! No more missed paces, if I have ANYTHING to do with this. I CAN do this!!