speedwork!

Yesterday: 3 miles and some resistance exercises.
Today: 5.5ish miles.  My husband and I left a very disappointed dog behind and hit the track.  The workout was 5-6 sets of 2 X 200M + 1 400M, but we decided to do just 4 sets because it's been a while since either of us has done speed work.  And four sets were enough!

It was sunny and warm, maybe 22C, and the track on post was a yard sale.  This was my very first time using this track and I didn't know what to expect.  We pulled up to an empty track; there were a couple of cars there and once that group had all arrived, they did some exercises and then took lanes 1 and 2 to do intervals while we were doing our warm up on the outside lanes.  That was fine. we had marks for 200M on our lanes, and though we didn't quite figure out 400M, we got close enough.  It didn't help that we had to keep changing lanes, though that wasn't the fault of the group.

A lady and her three kids pulled up, two of the kids on bikes and one in a cart, and at first they took 7 and 8.  Ok, so we switched to 5 and 6.  They didn't stick to 7 and 8 though!  Mom whipped out her phone and  became Mombie and she and her kids weaved all over the place.  I tried my best to turn my ire into speed.  Maybe they come to the track every day, and at least they're out, plus it's a somewhat snotty army post, a bit too much "well, my husband is such-and-such a rank" and I'm just trying to keep a very low profile (and mostly off post, lol).  So we adjusted.

Then a young couple came and did a circuit workout of sorts and they were having the same issues as us.  Mombie +3 were all over the track.  We ended up getting into each other's way a bit but it was ok.

Then the husband of Mombie showed up, plunked himself in track 6 and/or 5/4/3, and did a few short reps amid resistance exercises, collapsing histrionically after each rep.   It wasn't just a few seconds bent over to catch his breath: he laid himself out in full despairing "I coughed up a lung but missed Olympic gold by a hair and even as I speak, people in my home country are tearing my picture off walls and fridges and vehicles, especially the kids, oh, the kids who looked up to me" style.  I understand perfectly how much track work can stir things up--thank goodness there was a bathroom right beside the track!!!--but I try to step off the track to do my biz.

Lanes 1 and 2 opened up because the group finished, and the former was quickly claimed by a fast guy doing intervals, and a slow woman.  I saw her move out of the way a few times for him, which was nice, but I'm not sure why she just didn't stick to lane 2.

Meanwhile, the couple had finished, and Mombie's brood was tired of the track and her husband was too so he was minding the kids; she unMombiefied and did a couple of reps in lane 1 finally, and I felt some sympathy for her: she couldn't do her stuff for the longest time.   Her husband showed up after she'd been there 15-20 min or whatever but he went right to flopping on the track without giving her a bit of a break.

Two guys showed up that looked semi-official.  I think they had something to do with track maintenance because they were talking and examining the track while standing on some of the middle lanes.  My husband and I were alternating between 5 and 6, 6 and 7, and 7 and 8 by this point, but we still had to switch lanes in mid-rep for each 400M.  The 200M intervals were easier to plot.

Hopefully next time we'll get there earlier!

I can't remember what my times were last time I did 200-400 repeats, eons ago.   This time, 41-43 s per 200M, and 1:32-139 per 400M, not counting 1:18 or whatever when I stopped at the wrong mark.

The planned post-run Zwow workout was jettisoned.  I was beat!  But I did enjoy the post run warmth.  It felt good to have pushed myself.

Long run...next weekend?

Our long run today was thwarted by the heat.  We ran for about a minute then decided to enjoy a nice hike instead.  Ten minutes later, we found some trails in the woods on post that we'll definitely revisit.  I'm not sure how many miles of trails there are, but even three miles would be superb.   We had heard of these trails before, but hadn't tried them out until today.  They are nicer, and considerably closer, than the trails we walked yesterday afternoon.

Then I came home and jogged on the treadmill for an hour and then did Zwow 15: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dyaGe-MUhs

Admittedly, my 180 burpees were just regular burpees, and they withered further on the 5th and final round to plain old pushups.  At least I stayed off my knees.  Also, on the 5th round, I did the single leg squats without the dumbbell because I was a bit too wobbly with it.   This was the 2nd time I did this workout and it definitely flowed better even though I used 10 lb dumbbells this time instead of 5 lb ones.

But, wait, this blog is about running.

My run was better today than yesterday, and marginally faster: 4.9 *ph.  Maybe it is mph, but I'm still not quite accepting of that!  At any rate, it remained an easy run throughout, even when I pushed it up to 5.2 for the last ten minutes, and for a minute or two here and there, I managed to reduce extraneous wobbling enough to feel my spine straight(ish) and suspended in space.  This is a delightful efficient feeling.  My legs simply have to hit the ground and lift up; they are relieved of the burden of the rest of my body.  I become a flesh-and-blood, and much more graceful, l'homme `a planchette.  http://www.strumhollow.com/dancing-man.htm (in the process of googling, I found out that these are called jig dolls in other parts of the world).

Tomorrow will be an easy day!

Long Run....Monday?

Hopefully we'll both be game for it.  Instead, I jogged for an hour on the treadmill this morning.  It was warm inside but hot outside (34 C now and still rising) and I needed something flat.

I settled into a nice place and zone very quickly; I'm still sore from Friday's workout, but it did not affect running.  It was a bit disconcerting to see that my pace was only 4.6-4.7 mph, and part of me wants to calibrate the treadmill (mark the belt, time, measure, etc) but the other part of me, which I'm trying to emphasize, is thrilled that I had an hour-long easy run.   My breathing stayed easy and my legs stayed pretty loose.

There were a few glitches due to a hastily-burned CD that might have been defective to begin with.  It choked through the fifth track and then gave up.  I was amazed at how much this affected me.  The music has been so conducive to treadmill running and I was pushed and pulled in a haze of endorphins and then, blip, blip, I was back on this planet and in the midst of exertion.

Today is Race Weekend back home and I'm a bit sad that I'm not participating.   I like watching the races and running the races and going to the race expo, and generally being surrounded by other people who also practice my hobby.  It's essentially a convention.

However, I am pumped by a change in running log.  This year, I decided to use a free Garmin program I'd downloaded, and I gave it a fair go for five months, but it doesn't suit me as much as an Excel file.  I lost my 2nd Excel running log with my last laptop death but now have a 3rd one set up with pretty colours, one for each week, and space enough to input whatever the heck I like, and the freedom to omit whatever I wish.  The Garmin program is too strict and narrow, I suppose.

lazy Saturday

My husband and I both attempted Z's latest workout yesterday, ZWOW 19, and we were both sore today.  Hey, maybe I should provide urls for these:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Reku3SknC-4 (with apologies for the ad).

I cannot do pistol squats yet.  Even going down just halfway is a strain.  Nevertheless, I did not quite my absolute best, and made it through the 5 sets.  Today, certain isolated parts of my butt are sore, mainly one point on the right side.  This is a muscle that has never felt sore before.  I suppose it has spent the last 30-odd years basking in inactivity; I hope to rudely awaken it more often.

We were content to walk around town this morning and check out a few shops that we hadn't visited before.   It was an outing that got out of hand: a quick trip to the farmers' market turned into a multi-hour exploration in search of a chair I'd painted for a local fundraiser.  We didn't find it, but we found other things instead.  

Even if my butt had been more cooperative, I would not have run outside today because it was too hot.  Summer has been coming and going for a while, but perhaps it's here in earnest.

Yesterday, I jogged for 20 minutes on the treadmill marginally faster than I'd jogged on Thursday.  It felt better too.  Tomorrow's plan is a longer run, hopefully 9ish miles.  We'll see how hot it is.

My running motivation is not at an all time low, but it's hovering just above the silt-choked bottom.   The heat has coated it with stringy brown algae.  It's not super hot, and we've already had a bunch of 30+C days, but I'll feel better about them once we're in June.  May still seems like it should be spring-like.

The strange thing is, I'm actually not too put out by the heat.  I finally managed to enjoy summer running last year (not having colitis really helped!), and I did a marathon in 30-32C without any problems beyond the usual marathon issues (except that I had to stop eating gels after an hour and a bit, but I was jogging easily enough to not require food).   And I've gotten used to the heat here; I have been sweating copiously even while walking, but it's ok.   Rather, I have seized upon the heat as an excuse.  Oh, it's too hot to run!

I hope this post isn't too disjointed.  Today has been intellectually and artistically lazy, not just physically so.

a run!

I jogged for 20 minutes on the treadmill and it felt horrible at first.  I kept the speed slow and my breathing remained easy, but my legs remained sore throughout.  By the end, it felt a bit better.  That was my goal.

1.5ish miles in 20 min.  I'm not sure if the calibration is off, or what...could I really be that slow?  I've had my share of pain-wracked recovery jogs, and they have been pretty slow at times, but not that slow.   The treadmill is at a slight incline, but too slight to slow me down that much.  

But I scrutinize it too closely!  It is a cheap treadmill that I got out of an attic for free, but it serves the purpose of letting me jog easy in this place of many hills.  And, at this point, I'm still sort of sleep deprived, still recovering from the 1/2 marathon, and a cold, and probably my ferritin levels are low again.  Hey, at least I ran today!  It wasn't going to be pretty, no matter what.  Afterward, my legs felt very warm.  hopefully that is a sign of rejuvenation.

Afterward, I tried one of MarC's workouts, a yoga-based workout, but my muscles were still sore so I ended up doing some gentle yoga instead.  I used to do this in the morning but have been too sleepy recently.  Perhaps if I do gentle yoga after runs and workouts, I'll recover more quickly.  It definitely felt good.

My nap today, and yesterday, wasn't ideal: I woke up in the middle of it.  Not because of the bells, though!  That is an improvement.  Knock wood, they have become insignificant.

no run yet

My calves are still tender, I'm still tired, and I slept in a bit because my throat has been feeling sore for the past day.

However, I needed to prime today's nap with a bit of fatigue especially since I slept in, and I was also a bit disgusted at the thought of going to Thursday without a single workout.  I did one of Z's routines.  It was a rather intense ten minutes.

Although my running has gone down the tubes, I was gratified to see that the demands of work have made me fitter in other ways: I kept pace with Z during the competition burpees.  With these, you lower yourself completely until you're lying full on the ground, and I found it much much easier to push up from this pose this time--in fact, I'm not sure if I've ever managed to do this type of burpee at all before.   Plus I kept pace with her.  Usually I cannot; truthfully, in order to follow her workouts, I usually end up dropping a burpee or two.  Not this time!

Admittedly, I used lighter weights than her, but they were enough.  It was a solid workout.

success!

At times, a partial success is nevertheless overpoweringly full.

I have not managed to run or work out yesterday or today, but I slept through that bell!   For the past two weeks and a bit, I've been using a soundscape application, Relax Melodies, and various combos of rain, river, ocean, etc noises; these work during the night but were proving inadequate against the bell.  Then I considered that, since the overtones of the bell actually seem to be the most disturbing part because they buzz against my teeth and skull much more acutely than the base sound, perhaps I needed something to counter these more closely.   Something musical.  Something with a vampiric pitch.

Relax Melodies, even the free version I have, has a few melodies along with the rain and wind and so forth noises.  A few of these seem very unsoporific, especially "Wind Chimes" and "Medieval", but "Zen" and "Melody" seemed promising, so I tried them.  Together.  I also tossed in "River" just to smooth things out a little.  The melodies are very repetitive and so the resulting discordances are rhythmic as well as actually pleasing.  I have been listening to a lot of electronic music recently so this sort of thing is comfortable anyway.

This is the winning triad!

Yesterday, I tried it and I woke up at the bell, but barely, and I went back to sleep.  Today, I woke up halfway through the nap, but this was before the bell had even started.  I went back to sleep quickly and the bell did not wake me up at all.  Now I feel refreshed and optimistic.

I still have to recover and ground my schedule a bit more; this week will be easy.  Maybe I'll run sometime, maybe I'll take more time off.  The most important thing is to become consistent with the naps and with my night sleep.

exhaustion

Didn't run or nap Thursday.

Friday, we jogged just two miles then I worked out, and I actually napped for about 10-15 min after this.  By this point, I was so tired that my left eyelid was having involuntary spasms.   Why not both, I don't know, but when I miss too much sleep, one of my eyelids develops a twitch.  I can't remember if it's the same one each time.  I've been sleeping very soundly from about 1-1:30 am to about 7; I've given up late night snacking and will be trying to go to bed more quickly this week.  And I will definitely be trying to create a better nap environment.  My original biphasic sleep plan was 6 hours at night and 1.5 during the day, similar to what I've done before, but I've been missing most of those 1.5 hours this time.  However, I am intrigued: what will happen?  Will I relearn to nap, or will my schedule take a completely different turn?

Didn't run or nap Saturday, and didn't get to bed early enough, either.  I also didn't make it to the farmer's market that morning with my husband: we were going to wake up at 6:30 am but I was a corpse at that time.  It's very unusual that I'll sleep through an alarm or my husband getting out of bed or the dog jumping off the bed and yawning and clicking around (the dog is noisy).  My husband rightly decided that I needed to sleep.  I woke up to an eerily quiet house.

Today we both ran 13.1 miles and my husband ran them faster than me.  This was the local race, the Leavenworth Five Trails 1/2 marathon.  The five trails refer to historic settler routes; the race is actually on pavement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVzpfTGCWaE

Here is the elevation map: http://www.fivetrailshalfmarathon.com/images/elevation.png.  Smaller dips and rises are smoothed out.  This course is pretty much all hills.

I have no idea what the temperature was except that it felt coolish for a singlet and shorts, but once the sun came out, it felt warm.   I wasn't concerned about the temperature because it was just the final log on the fire.  Those hills!

My husband and I ran together and got over the big hill at mile 3 without too much discomfort, I think.  I was already a bit appalled at this point because the little hill just after the start got me breathing harder than I would like to be breathing before mile 8 of a 1/2 marathon, and there were a few smaller bumps after that so I couldn't quite get my breathing back down.  Nevertheless, the monster hill went very well!

Trouble was, there were still 10 miles to go, and many more hills, including a few that I hadn't anticipated.       However, that didn't really matter because the small hill after the large hill torched me and I was done.  I hung in until mile 5 and then started to feel queasy and hot.  I took off my singlet--I was wearing a running bra but I think at that point, I wouldn't have cared too much if I hadn't been!--and told my husband to go ahead.  He was feeling good and trying to pass people and I needed to slow down and try to let things settle.  He left me and I considered going home.  The route at this point passed within a few blocks of our house.  I did not consider then that I wasn't carrying a key--it didn't even cross my mind!

Fortunately, this part was mostly downhill; I didn't have much time to feel too apprehensive about a certain hill coming up (past another smaller one).  If I could make it up this hill, I'd be ok.

There were several hills after this which I'd forgotten about, some of them part of a nice series that gradually got higher and higher.  People were taking to the sidewalk to walk by the last hill but I decided that I was going to keep running.  I didn't care how slowly I went; I wasn't wearing a watch or GPS, I wasn't going for a PB, just a solid effort.  Small steps.  I'd gotten used to my fast breathing by this point, I think, but my legs were heavy and my shoulders and arms were getting tired.  But if I kept going, I was a winner! or at least, not a loser.  This was manageable.

For a while, I also had someone right behind me who sounded like they were coughing up alveoli.  This was incredibly draining and I considered stepping aside but I figured that this hoser was hanging on for dear life and if I stopped, he (or she?!!) would stop and I'd have to look at him/her and probably have a short a conversation with him/her, and I simply didn't have the energy for this.  It was easier to run up a hill and try to shake the vampire.

However, after a few more hills, I found some sort of comfort.  I felt like I was leaning toward the left side, but I also felt some sort of efficiency that made each step almost automatically fall into place prior to anticipation.  Very convenient!  Each new hill was appalling but I kept this form.

Bad math moment: at nine miles, I thought "oh, just three more to go!" And so Mile Ten was a crusher.  LOL.  It's amazing how stupid I get during races sometimes.

By this point, I was stopping to walk through the water stations, but I kept running otherwise.   Mile 11 was abstract.  This was on a hill or just after or before one--they were blending together by this point--and there were open fields to the right, real tilled fields and not just segmented future commercial building sites haphazardly mowed, and I have no idea what was to the left of the road or even on the road except that it was a wide road and there were no trees nor shade, and I wasn't thinking "where the heck am I?" or "how much longer?" but simply "11."   Actually, it was more of an observation than a thought: I stared at this thing as I approached it and it was just 11.  Not even a number.  It was a big orange and black sign on an otherwise featureless stretch of road (uphill?), sitting there off to the side, and at that moment there was no Mile 10 or Mile 12, nor any conceivable end to my discomfort, which had become a sort of equilibrium instead; I'd never felt better or worse, nor would I, and 11 signified absolutely nothing but it was also everything and passing it was disconcerting at first because there was nothing else.  And then my inner monologue kicked in again and I remember thinking that 11 was kind of constraining anyway, not that I could determine its demands, and I was much better off with nothing at all, or rather, endless limitless possibilities.  Sun and open fields, no barriers, just a collection of atomic bonds that are stronger than the surrounding others, spanning empty sunlit space.

This is the sort of thing that keeps me running.

The last mile was mostly downhill; I coasted down and felt the pull of the finish line amplified. And then a slight uphill, and then to the track and the finish line.  I was astonished to see the clock read 2:00:xx: I was thinking for sure I was doing 10-11 minute miles, and maybe I was going up the hills--I also felt like I was slacking on the downhills because I was trying to relax and rest, but gravity is indomitable!

I think my final time was 2:00:30ish.  This is a good kick in the pants.  Plus my husband beat me in a 1/2 marathon for the first time ever, by 8 minutes.  Another good kick in the pants.  This competitiveness is sort of distasteful to me--it's fun to joke about it and trash talk each other, but I also don't want my husband to be a rival, and I race against myself (and occasionally strangers ahead of me that get under my skin).  However, if I take it as a sign that I have gotten out of shape, rather than as a comparison to him, then maybe this will force me into my sneakers more often, and for longer.

My nap afterward was about....?  20 minutes?  My watch recently died so I have to check my phone for the time, but I didn't do this.

What next?  I have to gently coax naps first and foremost!

chasing ZZzzs

Doesn't work!

Instead, one must become tired enough to invite them, but it's surprising just how much fatigue and sleep deprivation this requires at times.

I have been sleeping about 5-6hrs a night for the past two weeks.    This is my third time working an evening shift and I've decided to do the biphasic sleep thing again; it worked well last time and suits the family schedule best.

Unfortunately, the midday nap has been an issue.  The chief antagonist has been a certain Episcopal church's noon bell behind our backyard.  It is so close that I can hear the reverb of the bell through closed windows and over a ceiling fan AND white noise generator; we are on top of a little hill and the church slightly below it, and so the bells and our house are pretty much level.  Worse still, the ringing of this bell is lengthy and random: ~ 12 repetitions, give or take one or a few, with an unsteady beat.   This irregularity has spawned a compulsion to count and observe.

This would be neither here nor there except that noon falls in the middle of my optimal nap time.  I've been trying to shift the nap without much success.  The last two days, I couldn't manage to nap at all, despite being pretty tired.

On Monday, we jogged 2.5 miles and then I did one of MarC's workouts, well, half of one of her workouts.  The volume is sometimes too much for me.

Yesterday, the dog and I were so wiped, we didn't run nor even walk.  I pretty much stayed horizontal until I left for work.  And yet, I couldn't nap.

Today, we got up earlier and I had the option of going back to sleep, but, no, I did not fancy spending a couple of hours in unsatisfactory drowsing and then maybe one or two more in ineffective napping.  Instead, we ran earlier than we usually do, and it felt fresh and wonderful.

So we got up and jogged 2.5 miles.   I felt half asleep for much of it, but since we live on top of a hill, gravity helped me get rolling.  (quick calculation for funnies: PE = mgh = 58kg*9.8m/s^2*10m = 5.7 kJ) And then I did one of Z's workouts, lots of squats, and now I'm feeling pleasantly tired.  And hopeful!

I haven't been running much more than 2.5-3 miles at a time these days but maybe that's all I need.  And, I suppose, this could count as a taper: this Sunday, my husband and I are going to run (suffer?) the rather hilly local 1/2 marathon.

Back to basics

2.5 miles with the boys.
2.5 miles on the TM.  I finally replaced the display batteries and I didn't really like what I saw, but if I'm jogging at 5.7 mph (on an incline), then that's that.  Of course, it could be calibrated wrong, or maybe I'm still not quite used to running on the TM.   I can't really compare it to running outside, though, because I haven't been recording pace or time.  Maybe I've just gotten slow.

And does it matter, really?   What's the rush?

It was nice having numbers to look at for a change; I determined fractions and stuff like that.

Afterward, I did some classic exercises, squats, deadlifts, rows, etc.

3 mile trial

So I have plotted a route that is almost exactly 3 miles long, just a little 0.01 or so over.  As much as I'm a fan of randomly jogging/exploring and listening to my body and all that, I'm craving some sort of

not structure, per se, but a plug-n-play deal.  When I hoist my zombie body out of bed these mornings, I want to drop it onto a track on cruise control.  I'm going through an automaton stage and discovery is on the back burner.  And I can't listen to my body here because the hills still make things sort of hurt most of the time.   The 2.5 mile creek path route has been working great, now I need something a bit longer.

So we tried out my new 3 mile route.  It turned out to be more tough than I'd anticipated, but also more poetic, which is more than enough compensation.   It's like a mini milder version of the 8 mile loop: a punishing ascent which is really a punishing descent into the most inaccessible and most grudgingly granted energy reservoirs.  And then after digging into/onto the summit in this fashion, one receives the immediate reward of a long downhill stretch.

So, the route's a gentle rejuvenating downhill to the creek then a series of five steps follows.  Hills, but each one gains a bit of altitude overall.  The last hill is the shortest and steepest, a final ruthless kick onto a gradual decline on overgrown and shaded brick sidewalks past stately old mansions (and other things including what I think is a tavern--I still don't know if this town actually has zoning laws--my short street has, among other things, houses of widely varying sizes, some church stuff, a fruit store, a cabinet store, a social assistance centre, and a former feed factory (as in, animal feed)).   And then we cross the creek again, running onto concrete and into the sun and up the hill back home.

It was kind of hot by the time we set out, almost 80F, whatever that is, and humid, and sunny, but there was still a lot of shade on the route.

I think that if we do this every second day for a couple of weeks, that would be a good start.  It's barely longer than the creek path route but much bumpier.

After the run, I did some pushups and things.  I was too tired to find and follow a routine.

Friday!

Yesterday, the dog and I were both tired so we went for a walk instead.

Today, we jogged almost 2.5 miles and then I did a Z workout that was very intense.   Zuzana Light used to be the host of bodyrock.tv and now she has her own thing going, including real-time workouts.  I really really like these.  Admittedly, at times, she's done 10 reps and I got only 7 or 8 in; I skipped the rest and went to the next exercise with her.  I've gotten somewhat out of shape and sometimes 7 or 8 out of 10 is all I got.  But, occasionally, very occasionally, I've gotten ahead of her because she was using heavier weights, and watching her struggle for a few seconds was enough to convince me to pop an extra rep or two.

Zuzana has this amazing capacity to inspire others, not just me, to dig deeper, especially when she is clearly tired.  Her new workout videos are edited in terms of sound effects and superimposed graphics, but they don't appear to be edited for time.  One take only and at times we see her hurting pretty badly!  I suppose that it's partly this vulnerability that drives me to stick with her.

I've also tried some of MarC's workouts, which were fine and I like her charisma as well, but I haven't been consistent with her routines either, and I have not been doing the exercises that I should be doing as well (clamshells, etc).   Next week, I'll tweak the routine.  At least we ran 4 out of 5 mornings this week.  Eventually, I hope to lengthen at least a couple of those runs, but I have to ease into things and figure out good 3-4-5-6 mile routes.    The three mile route I thought we had is actually almost 2.5 miles: good for restarting a weekly routine and for easy runs at least, but not quite long enough for a daily run. There is also a good 8 mile route, the one with one of the large hills.  The other large hill route is ~6 miles depending on which way I go, and it is partially superb (in a park, partially on trails) and not so fun (sometimes uneven, sometimes absent sidewalks, lots of barking dogs).  There is also the option of taking the dog on the 2.5 mile route (which will work well during summer because he can cool off in the creek) and then continuing the run on the treadmill, but I would have to resist all distractions coming in to the house, but I cannot skip feeding him his post-run breakfast, which leads to feeding myself....we'll work on it.

almost high and dry

Yesterday: 5.5 miles total.  The lowest part of the creek path was ankle deep.
Today: 5 miles total.  The lowest part of the creek path was about an inch deep.

Tomorrow, we might keep our feet dry!  (knock wood in deference to severe storm warnings)

I've also been painting a chair for a town arts program fundraiser which involves a fair bit of squatting.  I also have been squatting a lot at work (that actually sounds like I'm living there, but no).