January Running: starting the New Year on the right (and left) foot

[OakLeaf]

Hahahahaha! Now if we were grinding fresh flour that would make it worthwhile. Straight from the treadmill to delicious baking!

So, I got my tempo run in. It was really hot and humid, my schedule didn't let me run earlier (and I'm not sure it would've helped anyway, earlier in the day it was 75° and 90% humidity, instead of the 80° and 70% I ran in).

I was pretty intimidated by it, but DH gave me the BEST pep talk before I headed out. He goes, "It's just feet vs pavement. And feet always win. You know how you know that? Look at any marble or stone staircase that's been used for years. Feet win."

One mile warmup, five miles at goal race pace (so, the last mile was 10 sec/mile slow, it's what I had in me), five minutes of dry heaves and seeing spots, 6 x 100m strides, and I am DONE for today and really looking forward to a nice SHORT and easy 10 miles on Monday. It's supposed to be cooler then, too.

[Catrin]

I've a question that came to me this morning, and while I will be asking my coach, I am very curious to hear what you ladies think.

I like deadlifting. Let me rephrase that, I LOVE to deadlift - it really doesn't matter which style, I just love to it. I am also working, again, to build running-related conditioning for trail running this year. This morning I was torn between deadlifts and running...and I came down on the side of deadlifts. I've been having a few issues with a hammie that troubles me when I run, so I decided that I probably shouldn't do both activities on the same day especially since I normally mix up regular style and RDL. I don't go THAT heavy, currently I am about 10 pounds over my body weight, I hope to get higher at some point but the number isn't my goal.

Anyone have an observation on mixing the two activities? I just figure that since both impact the posterior chain that I shouldn't run more than a brief sprint or a couple hundred meters - not the 30 minutes I had in mind (run/walk mix). I will likely do that tomorrow. Just wondering if I am over-analyzing things - but am trying to avoid over-use injuries from taking on a new activity (trail running).

Oakleaf, you rock woman, that sounds great! You also are in much warmer climes than I thought, good for you!

[skhill]

I ran! Outside, even! Last week was a total of 2 miles, so it's been a while. 3.75 miles, with a stiff headwind for the first half and tailwind for the second half. I'm committing myself to run at least 3 miles a day every day this week, trying to get back in a routine. Looks like a lot of it will be treadmill miles, given the weather forecast. So ready for spring...

Maybe I should sign up for our terribly hilly late March half marathon, to force me to get on a solid running schedule. But it's really miserably hilly, with a scary downhill. So I don't know.

[katluvr]

Perfect running weather this AM. Cool, probably about 60 but mostly sunny. I had 7 miles scheduled and I did them, a bit slow but no walking. I accomplished what I set out to do and felt pretty good. So that makes it a good run!

K

[TrekDianna]

I've been running a 5k with two co-workers every work day since the beginning of the month. We take weekends off from running. We're pretty relaxed and run during lunch.

[OakLeaf]

Catrin, the dry heaves and spots weren't actually in my training plan and coach wasn't much happier about them than I was. Our weather has been just as variable as yours, in a higher temperature range. Tuesday morning it was 32° and we were covering sensitive plants. Saturday was that. Sunday it never got above 62°, which was great, too bad it was my day off running! Today was humid but only in the low 70s. So that's why I wasn't acclimated to that heat on Saturday. Haven't been able to acclimate to anything. Welcome to the new world ...

I had fun today with my new toy though. I'd kind of written off the running dynamics on my new Garmin 620 as something that was mostly fun to look at, and possibly over time I'll be able to see improvement in the values, but not something I'd use in realtime. I was still feeling kind of depleted from Saturday, and as I said, my plan for today called for not only slow but also backing off the mileage a bit, so it was a good day to work on form. First off I just worked on keeping my cadence up even though I was running slow, and I've been improving there. But then after I stopped for water I decided to put the running dynamics screen up and tried to keep my vertical oscillation under 8 cm, and here's what happened:



I'm actually pretty surprised that I was able to put the realtime feedback into practice so readily. Yay.

[Catrin]

Oh my, I obviously skimmed through your post faster than I realized, I didn't get THAT at all Glad you are ok! Have fun with the new toy, that sounds like fun

Catrin, the dry heaves and spots weren't actually in my training plan and coach wasn't much happier about them than I was. Our weather has been just as variable as yours, in a higher temperature range. Tuesday morning it was 32° and we were covering sensitive plants. Saturday was that. Sunday it never got above 62°, which was great, too bad it was my day off running! Today was humid but only in the low 70s. So that's why I wasn't acclimated to that heat on Saturday. Haven't been able to acclimate to anything. Welcome to the new world ...

I had fun today with my new toy though. I'd kind of written off the running dynamics on my new Garmin 620 as something that was mostly fun to look at, and possibly over time I'll be able to see improvement in the values, but not something I'd use in realtime. I was still feeling kind of depleted from Saturday, and as I said, my plan for today called for not only slow but also backing off the mileage a bit, so it was a good day to work on form. First off I just worked on keeping my cadence up even though I was running slow, and I've been improving there. But then after I stopped for water I decided to put the running dynamics screen up and tried to keep my vertical oscillation under 8 cm, and here's what happened:



I'm actually pretty surprised that I was able to put the realtime feedback into practice so readily. Yay.