Long and Less Long Runs: 3-26 to 4-1

[yellow]

TF, I love getting beat up by the massage therapist.

Mixture of snow/rain today so I ran 4 miles on the dreadmill and did my usual weight workout. I got a call from my doc today...I had my routine on Monday and it seems I flunked the urinanalysis and almost flunked the iron. I was told to "not exercise for 2 days and then come in for a recheck" on my urinanalysis. I've flunked before, so I know what this is about. But 2 days of no exercise? Is she CRAZY??? The iron thing surprised me, though. I did get thumbs up for all my weight bearing exercise (including running!) and cholesterol. And I got the usual calcium warning (extra harsh since I pretty much avoid all of the foods on the "high calcium foods" list) and pretty much flunked my bone density test 2 years ago.

I'm on a plane and in airports most of tomorrow and in meetings all day Friday. If I'm lucky I'll get to run on Fri eve in San Diego but for some reason I'm thinking that I'll be subjected to peer pressure to engage in the usual drinking and networking that goes along with these conferences. Hopefully the hotel will have a "workout" room with free weights...

ta ta until next week!

[Deborajen]

Did 5 miles this evening - 3 miles of tempo with a mile of warm-up and a mile of cool-down. Will try to do two miles on Friday and 8 on Sunday. Saturday is gym day - weights and rowing machine, and tomorrow is strength workout at home and maybe a short bike ride.

Does anyone else make a big effort to breathe through the nose instead of the mouth when running/biking? I've heard it's better to breathe through your nose but didn't think it was that big of a deal. Now I just read in Runner's World that breathing through your nose is more "relaxing" and helps you control your form. I breathed through my nose most of my run today and focused on keeping a steady pace, and I was surprised to find out I'd completed my mileage a little faster than I'd expected - ? Not a huge difference, but maybe this is a detail I shouldn't have been overlooking - ?

Deb

[Wahine]

Deb, breathing through your nose tends to get people to breath more into the lower lobes of the lungs and to use their diaphragm more. That's a good thing, it improves oxygen exchange so your blood should be able pick up more oxygen per breath. But you can only do this up to a certain level. With practice, I can breath through my nose (both in and out) in my zone 1 and 2. By zone 3 I can breath in through my nose but I have to breath out through my mouth. Zone 4 is all through the mouth.

I like nose breathing, it helps me to monitor my effort level and forces me to be more efficient while I run. I don't think it's made me any faster though.

[tattiefritter]

I also try to breathe through my nose as much as possible, it means I'm not working too hard and is definitely more relaxing. The point where I change from solely nose breathing to needing help from mouth breathing is always pretty consistent no matter what I'm doing - about 162/163. On long runs I always try to breathe through my nose all the time. It also means your less likley to inhale any flying bugs.

[rocknrollgirl]

Howdy running girls.

I traded my normal mid -week interval run for a hill run on the trails before mt biking last night. It was a tough run, but I am starting to feel the payoff of all of the intervals.

It was bout 3.5 miles.

[Deborajen]

Wahine, interesting description about nose breathing increasing use the lower lobes of the lung and the diaphragm and the blood being able to pick up more oxygen per breath. Nose breathing felt like it helped my posture and gave me a more "relaxed" feeling with my efforts. Not a big thing, but the little things do add up, especially over distance.

Tattiefritter, you're not kidding about not inhaling bugs. I like to run on a path that follows the river and there are sometimes lots of gnats. They go straight for the teeth and the eyes - ick!

Deb

[tattiefritter]

Deborajen, its not so bad at this time of year but yes, inhaling bugs is just horrible.

I did 5.76 miles yesterday according to my new toy (which I am in love with). It was 2 miles easy then about 2.5 miles of fartleks then a mile or so of easy to cool down a bit. I tried to keep my pace for the first two miles down to about 9 mins per mile which was difficult (a lot easier for the last mile though ). Then did various length fartleks and got to feel what 7mm pace felt like - ouch, there is no way I could keep that up for any length of time yet. I find the pace feature really useful, more so than heart rate at the beginning of the run - I also noticed that as soon as I switched my Ipod on my pace increased as I listen to dance music.

Got 5 miles easy today - going to aim for 8:45mm/9mm pace - as got sports massage this evening. The only drawback with the RS200 is I keep looking at the watch to check pace and I just know I'm going to run into a lamppost or something.

That will give me a total of about 17 miles for the week.

[tattiefritter]

5.6 miles today at an average of 8:45 mm but there was some serious fluctuation in pace including the short section where I just got carried away and started running fast - no idea why had to get a grip on myself. In general it was easier to maintain the steady pace than yesterday as my legs were not as fresh. 17.5 miles total this week.

I almost did run into a lampost as well! Not because I was looking at my watch but because I was running past a primary school looking at the kids playing and thinking how great it was to see so many little girls running around playing football (soccer), just looked ahead in time to take evasive action. It would have really hurt and been really embarassing as I was approaching a crossing and there was a big queue of cars!

[KSH]

Thursday:

34m 3.00 miles 11m 20s /mile

Well, it was raining, so I hit the treadmill after work.

Per instructions from my coach:

1st mile -slow- 12 minute mile

2nd mile -fast and steady- 10:30 minute mile

3rd mile -slow- 11:30 minute mile.

No side cramp. I think I'm figuring out that my body likes to run a 11-12 minute mile.


Friday:

I went to my AM swim, and did:
40m 2300.00 meters 1m 44s /100 meters

Workout:
250 W/U

4, 100's- 25 kick/50 swim/25 kick

4, 400's- 50 slow/50 fast

4, 100's- IM: Butterfly, backstroke, breastroke, free.

Then a C/D.


Here in about an hour I am heading to the gym for my slow 3 mile run. The rain has cleared some, but I didn't bring clothes to run outside in. So, back to the treadmill.

[KSH]

I almost did run into a lampost as well! Not because I was looking at my watch but because I was running past a primary school looking at the kids playing and thinking how great it was to see so many little girls running around playing football (soccer), just looked ahead in time to take evasive action. It would have really hurt and been really embarassing as I was approaching a crossing and there was a big queue of cars!

I have almost done that myself, from not looking where I was going!

[KSH]

Yesterday (Friday) I did...

34m 40s 3.00 miles 11m 34s /mile

Raining. Got on the treadmill at lunch.

Side cramp popped up at .10. Worked through it for the rest of 2.90 miles. It never got too bad, thank goodness.


And for the month of March... I have run 52 miles! I have NEVER run that far in 1 month, in my life in one month!

For the month of February, I only logged 35 miles... so my dedication to NOT missing running workouts has paid off.

Last year at this time I was barely able to run 2-3 miles and now I can run 50 miles a month!

[kelownagirl]

Slowly building up my endurance. Today I did 3 km without stopping and then walked for 1/2 km then ran another 1.5 km. Hopefully I can do 5km in 30 minutes within another month. I am consistenly running a 6 minute km (10 min mile) so I am happy with that.

[Wahine]

It sounds like everyone is doing really well. Way to go KSH. That's a huge milestone, not only did you have your biggest month ever, but you also cracked 50 mi.

KG, you're doing way better as well.

I ran on Thursday. I couldn't get my HR to behave properly, so I cut my run short, I did a 1 hour run rather than 1.5. I love rest week.

Tomorrow is my 1 mile test day. I hope it goes as well as my swim and bike did. The only problem is that I rode harder than I should have today, but I was having sooooo much fun. DH and I finally hooked up with another couple for a ride. Yay, I'm making new friends.

[rocknrollgirl]

Hi girls,
I had a great brick today. Today is the last day in a hard two week cycle. We did a mt bike ride and DH and I changed and went out for a run. I felt really good. We did a hilly run about 3.5 miles. There is one long hill in the middle, when we got to the top, DH was in front, and he says over his shoulder, pull it back and let your hr recover....so I did what any self respecting girl would do...I passed him...he says, oh no folks, she is picking up the pace!
And then he smoked me. Darn long legs of his.

So I did well this week, two hilly trail runs, and a recovery run. No big miles like some of y'all, but hard hilly runs.

[Grog]

Sunday long run, one of the biggest one before our May 6th half-marathon. Had a great little group of four this morning. I had planned a 16.2 km running route that would take us down to the beach, steeply back up in the woods and then on a somewhat-level ground back home. I was sick of runs when we had to finish by going up that huge hill.

It went quite well, and I was proud of the route I charted. We had lots to talk about so it was pleasant too. The only thing I'm puzzled about is my heart rate. Geez, I had a 182 average HR. It's always an issue when I run with a group, especially two of these girls who are faster runners. And, granted, there's that very steep hill we have to run up for about 2km. But more often than not my HR was in the 180s. It's a LONG time to be in the 180s!!! Still, I was conversational most of the time (but timed my interventions to be on the downhills!! hehe). I guess the talking brought the HR up by a few beats.

We finished in 1h33m, which means about a 5m50s/km pace (a little below 10min/mile?), so that's great too. According to Mr. Polar I burnt 1000 calories on the dot, which I thought was cute. Walking 1 min every 20 rocks, it makes the finish much more pleasant...

Anyway, I'm tired but happy and not exhausted, so I guess I shouldn't worry too much about the HR thing. I've downed two heavy bread-peanut butter-honey-jam toasts (yes, all of that on one piece) and a bottle of water, will have a (cold) shower and a 10 minute nap, then go back to work. I think I'll be fine on that half-marathon, especially considering that I'll run it on my own, at my self-controlled pace.

I think I followed my plan for this week, except that I didn't swim and took a full rest day instead. Bring on another week!