Run like the wind....March 10th-16th

[HillSlugger]

Karen, sorry you had a bad run.

I had a great run this morning! I pushed my distance up to 4 miles (first time!) and still improved on my pace from Tuesday's 3.7 miler. My running feels wonderful right now; everything clicking into place. Makes me wish I had a race soon!

[Grog]

C'mon Karen, cheer up. You're putting your body and mind through a lot lately, have some kind words for them!

Unless you're trying to go pro and get sponsors, I say don't worry about speed!

Gentle run on most of this weekend's race course this morning. I did the unthinkable: I did not want to run back up the hill and stress my tendon more so I drove down (it's 3 km away), parked the car near the start of the race and took it from there.

I think the trails are going to be quite wet on the weekend, it's already muddy and it hasn't rained that much. That should make for an interesting race!!

[btchance]

Karen - we all have days where we just can't get our legs to work - trust me, I'd say about 1/2 of my days are like that

Anyways, I had today off and decided to do my long run of 8mi for the week. Went pretty well. I did 3 loops of 2.5mi each with a 1/4mi walk to and from the loop to w/u and c/d. Well, as I was finishing my 2nd loop it started to rain some, so I picked up the pace quite a bit for a while until it stopped. Didn't want to be 2mi from home if the sky dropped out

[teigyr]

I ran 6 miles today and it still felt really great! I continued to think about my form and where my feet were hitting. Nothing hurt (unless I'd start to slip and go back to running on my heels) and I had more energy. It could be that this has been an easy week too though

Regardless, I didn't walk at all. Usually if I do a longer type run I have a turn around point or stairs or stoplights somewhere along the way. I did constant loops with this one and still felt good at the finish.

Karen, please don't be too hard on yourself. I've been thinking I've really been sucking lately and it's not a fun thought. You've been through a lot and it takes a while to catch back up. Sometimes it's frustrating to be amazed by small accomplishments; I know for myself I look for more then get disappointed. And re speed, Grog is right. If you don't enjoy yourself, what's the point?

[KSH]

Thanks for all the kind words ladies. I appreciate it.

Yes, it was a sucky day, but I know it's just one day. There are good days and bad. One day you right like a gazzelle... the next day a tired turtle.

I was honestly SHOCKED at how slow it was though. But my nutrition was off during the day, and I think it showed.

Eh, I'm sure this weekend will be better.

On the upside, I had an amazing ride on Wednesday. I blew past a lot of boys and my boyfriend said he had never seen me ride so fast! Even a 25 mph headwind didn't slow me down!

[Jo-n-NY]

First run of a program I am following from Running for Mortals. I guess I should have refreshed my memory. I ran a minute and walked a minute. WRONG....I was suppose to run 1 and walk 3 for 6 sets which I also lost complete count of the sets and did probably did like 8 to be safe.

If I have no aches tomorrow I guess I did no harm.

~JoAnn

[kelownagirl]

Well I finally went for my first post-op run yesterday. I had been trying to get myself out after school for the past two days but I've been so tired and my eyes are fatigued and blurry by that time of day so I kept bringing my running gear back home unused. Anyway, after I got home, I had a nap and listened to a Running podcast that motivated me to get up out of bed, get dressed and just do it. And I felt fine. It was weird to run without perfectly clear vision but I was careful to avoid rough road and I felt confident enough.

My body, on the other hand, wasn't used to running after 10 days off, and it objected a little. It was the first time I had tried out my new cut-down left orthotic and, sad to say, I still felt pain at the top on my foot so I guess I'll have to go back in for a recast. That's a drag. Once I got going, my foot stopped hurting though and my other achey parts started to warm up so I was able to do the same 3-4 minute run intervals that I was doing 10 days ago. And today I am feeling fine, no shin pain at all - hurrah!

I will go for a run again tomorrow and then DH and I are off for a week on the west coast so I won't be doing a lot of working out. I might run if the opportunity presents itself but I'm not going to stress about it. Training begins agains the day after Easter....

[KSH]

First run of a program I am following from Running for Mortals. I guess I should have refreshed my memory. I ran a minute and walked a minute. WRONG....I was suppose to run 1 and walk 3 for 6 sets which I also lost complete count of the sets and did probably did like 8 to be safe.

If I have no aches tomorrow I guess I did no harm.

~JoAnn

HA! You sound like me when I do interval work on the trainer.

Here's what you have to do, know what your end time is. That way, you know how far along you are.

Yes, trust me... it confuses me as well... and it's like a dog chasing it's tail.

[KSH]

Well I finally went for my first post-op run yesterday. I had been trying to get myself out after school for the past two days but I've been so tired and my eyes are fatigued and blurry by that time of day so I kept bringing my running gear back home unused. Anyway, after I got home, I had a nap and listened to a Running podcast that motivated me to get up out of bed, get dressed and just do it. And I felt fine. It was weird to run without perfectly clear vision but I was careful to avoid rough road and I felt confident enough.

My body, on the other hand, wasn't used to running after 10 days off, and it objected a little. It was the first time I had tried out my new cut-down left orthotic and, sad to say, I still felt pain at the top on my foot so I guess I'll have to go back in for a recast. That's a drag. Once I got going, my foot stopped hurting though and my other achey parts started to warm up so I was able to do the same 3-4 minute run intervals that I was doing 10 days ago. And today I am feeling fine, no shin pain at all - hurrah!

I will go for a run again tomorrow and then DH and I are off for a week on the west coast so I won't be doing a lot of working out. I might run if the opportunity presents itself but I'm not going to stress about it. Training begins agains the day after Easter....

GREAT JOB!

[tattiefritter]

I have been struggling this week, I put it down to a combination of time of the month and some serious passive smoking! I visited my folks in Scotland last week, now all my family and all my Scottish friends smoke , I never have , its always been like that. For the last few years when OH and I go up to visit we take bikes/walking gear etc and are generally out and about but this time as OH was away I was on my own, the weather was pretty awful for hill walking and I don't like MTBing on strange trails on my own, so I pretty much just visited friends and family and was smoked on. God knows how many cigarettes worth of rubbish I have inhaled but after two days I was insisting we go to the pub so I could get away from it (yay for smoking bans!). Now I used to live in that environment about 10 years ago and coped (or did I? ) but now I spend no time in a smoky environment and have no friends here who smoke so all this week my chest has been so tight and sore, I just know its from the cig smoke

I ran on Tuesday for 5 miles and struggled for breath a bit and ran with the club on Thursday for about 5.5 miles, I was better but it was a harder run that I am used to as we were chasing the faster runners so I still struggled for breath especially up some hills which I can normally cope with.

Today is start of period day so I'm always a little out of whack but I set off for a trail run then turned round after 1.5 miles as I was just drained, didn't even have the energy to run downhill which is not like me. I have obviously not eaten enough this week, seemed to be constantly hungry at work Thursday and Friday. I came home from the run and have eaten some yoghurt and honey, some G & Bs ginger chocolate , a pitta bread and some houmous and I have just polished off the most enormous bowl of pasta and now I'm eyeing up the remains of the Margarita ice cream I made a few weeks ago.....Had a bit of a thought, maybe the reason I get so tired during my period is because I don't eat enough, you need up to 500 extra cals a day around this time or something ? Nutrition has never been my strong point. I have a 25 mile MTB ride planned tomorrow - I will be filling my camelbak bladder with sports drink, I normally just eat a bar when I remember (usually when hungry and its too late) but I'm taking no chances.

Sorry that was long!

[Grog]

Sorry Tattie about the smoking thing. I don't know how you did it. My tolerance to smoke is now near zero. Even the smell of a house where someone has smoked bothers me...

Good for you, going on that club run with faster runners. It's good to push your limits now and then. Plus: you survived!

I went for two easy runs in a row in preparation for my 8K race tomorrow. I'm starting to be really scared. Haven't run fast in a week, except for half a dozen pick ups. What will be will be, I guess!!!

[kelownagirl]

I went for another run today. Tops of both feet were tender so I took out the orthotics and nothing hurt. Did 4km, ran 4 min, walked 1 min. I feel like I could run steady but I won't. Take 'er easy....

I am hoping to do a few runs while I'm away next week.

[OakLeaf]

Well it was touch and go but I got to post in this thread before the week ended

I was really having a hard time with it being such a prolific week for y'all, and me on the couch with food poisoning.

Yesterday I finally resorted to the Garlic Cure and it fixed me right up. I'd lost a bunch of muscle though not eating anything for four days

To top it off my ForeRunner lost my track today, so as far as my training log is concerned I still didn't run this week.

But I got about 3.2 miles IIRC, slow and easy.

Been that kind of a year. Either I've been running around, or I've been sick from so much running around. It's really getting to be an issue between me and DH

.... anyway, never mind the whining and the thread drift, I DID get to run today. Yippee!

[Grog]

Wow!! I did it, and I survived! And did even better than I hoped!

I did my long-scheduled women's 8K run on the beach (the Diva on the Run 8K in Vancouver, BC) today. This is my last race of the season, I was doing it for the third time and I decided I would try to go really hard. My last time was 38:49 and I was now wanting to touch 36 minutes. After my half-marathon a month ago I started doing a lot of speedwork and got really scared because it seemed quite hard to run that fast for so long. About two weeks ago I had a really good hill reps session which lifted my spirit... and hurt my left big toe tendon. So I had cut down training dramatically to avoid aggravating it, and this morning as I warmed up I was really scared because my body just didn't remember what it meant to go fast.

This is a small race and the local fast runners don't really show up. According to my study of previous years' results, a 36-min time would make me between 10th and 15th overall.

Despite my fears, after kissing my kind husband-turned-into-warm-clothes-carrying-assistant, I headed to the very front, near the start line. Who was standing on my right? Suzanne Evans, who won the Victoria marathon the last three years and was just featured on the cover of a local magazine. She asked me if we knew each other because I looked familiar. "I'm afraid no, of course I recognize you but I don't think we've met." I was more and more scared, and then the woman who won the Divas' race the last three years arrived, too, and started chatting with Evans. What was I doing there? Somehow there was a gun shot and we took off.

The start of the course had lots of twists and turns - its' a beach-trail run - and I was sixth in line. But I was too out of breath to be scared by then. The two leaders took off and were out of sight after only 1 km (they finished about 5 minutes before me!). And there I was, running a 4 minute kilometer! I stuck a few meters behind another woman and stayed there for the next four km. Thankfully she slowed down a bit and I could at last control my breathing. Woman #7 was not far behind and when we turned a corner I realized that the rest of the pack was far behind.

At the 5 km mark, I could feel #5 runner slow down and we were both passed by #7. I knew I had enough in me to press a little harder so I passed #5 so I could remain in 6th position. At the 6 km sign there was a 180 degrees turn. I though I'd have a tail wind at last but NO! I turned into a head wind. Ouch! I slowed down significantly for the last two km, but the other woman never caught up.

Near the end, I just wanted to stop and puke. But then I saw a really big man that I always see walking on the beach with a coach. A month ago, he could barely walk and his breathing was really laboured. Two weeks ago he was walking with more energy. Today when I saw him he was walking AND talking and looking happy. That sort of gave me a big kick and I decided to throw whatever spare change I had left and just keep going.

I happily crossed the finish line at 35m13s, thus 45 seconds faster than the best time I expected. I was really happy (while trying not to throw up on the guy that clipped of my timing chip). I was also coughing for the next hour or so!! And I got a really nice SportyJewels pendant to go with my age group 2nd place! It was good to meet the other women at the finish and to congratulate each other. The great thing about this run is that most people stick around to cheer for the last Diva coming in, even if that means waiting for almost an hour in the cold.

Lessons learned:
- Races are really a mental thing. There's NO WAY I could run this fast while training.
- Small races are cool because they give you a chance - but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't even try to place in bigger events.
- Starting faster than planned is not necessarily a bad thing if it can be kept under control: it allowed me to dig a comfortable gap between myself and other runners while my adrenalin was at its highest; accelerating later would not necessarily have been possible.

And now on to cycling!!!!! I will mostly be off this thread until September, but I will keep lurking. Thanks for letting me tell the story. And here is the "running spirit" I now have around my neck:

[yellow]

Wow!! I did it, and I survived! And did even better than I hoped!

G_G_G!! (good going Grog!) Thanks for the great race report. Sounds like a really wonderful run.

Oak, when I have weeks like yours, I have to remind myself that I'm doing what I can to keep myself healthy and fit...sometimes your body just doesn't cooperate but it doesn't mean it won't later. (My DH has issues with my running around, too. That's a whole different challenge altogether!!!)

I did my 25k trail race today (which was actually a smidge over 26k). My butt is kicked; I still haven't cooled off (it was probably in the low 60s, which I am soooo not used to). I kind of did this event with my brother; he ran the 12k (placed 2nd overall) and then ended up running me in on the last about 5k of my run. He really helped me pick it up at the end. Unlike my 50k in Dec, I had NO gas in the tank when I finished this one. I ran it pretty hard, but I honestly don't remember my time. I think it was around 2:37-2:38 ( I forgot to turn Garmin off until I'd been standing around the finish for a bit). Brother claims I was in the top 10. I won't know, though, until the results are published in a couple of days. It was a tough event, with 2 peak climbs (that totaled about 3200' of climb, though it felt like more because I was so freaking overheated).

I am tyred.