800s.

Today was the first time in about a year (can that even be true?) that I did anything resembling speedwork. I think it was November of last year that I started to work my way into marathon training, and from there on out my focus was on upping mileage without killing my knees. But I actually have a pace goal for this training cycle, so I thought maybe I should toss some intervals in there to help put some pep in my step.

I only had 3 miles planned for today. By the time I got around to running it was almost noon and ~75 degrees (hotter than I ever like) so I headed to the gym for some treadmill 800s. I PLANNED to get some strength training in afterwards.

The workout:
800m warmup
4x800s with standing rest until HR below 150
800m cooldown

Holy hell did this workout kick my butt.

My repeats were 7.3/7.4 mph range (8:06-8:12 pace) at 1.0 constant incline (usually I like to keep the incline on random but not for speedwork).

Repeats 1 and 2 were pretty decent, and my heart rate dropped after about 2-2.5 minutes. After the 3rd though, I was SPENT. I think it was 3 or 4 minutes until my heart rate resembled anything like 160, and I just wanted to get it over with, so I probably started a little too soon. 0.3 miles into the final repeat and I knew it was NOT happening, I just did not have the energy to keep going. I paused the treadmill and gave myself 45 seconds to recover, and then finished that last 0.2 at 8:00-7:43 pace as punishment (ha). I had to stand there for a few minutes doubled over before I could even contemplate a half mile cooldown. I stumbled over to a mat to stretch for a bit before heading the heck home... see ya, strength training.

I guess I really underestimated how much I've slowed down while marathon training this past year. I mean, I ran an 8:15 mile more than halfway through a half marathon 2 years ago, and it felt like nothing. Humbling, to say the least. Oh well, I'll get it back eventually.

Fast or not fast?

As in, am I eating before I run or not?

I mentioned yesterday that I am not ordinarily a morning runner. My favorite time to run is early evening. There's nothing better than knowing that this run is the last hard thing I need to do for the day, and after that, it's all hot showers and relaxation and fun. Plus I've been eating all day and my blood is full of sugar, leading me to feel KICK ASS when I run at night.

BUT.. 99% of races are in the morning. And since I'm currently slightly funemployed (interviewing for residency programs for next year) and I don't have anywhere to be in the mornings, I figure I should try to make it a habit. Plus, I mean, everything's prettier in the morning.

So this morning I headed out around 8:30am for an easy 5 miler. Before breakfast.

It sucked balls.

I honestly wanted to quit at about mile 0.02. My legs were tree stumps, I was running through quicksand, hills felt like mountains, downhills felt like uphills, you get the picture.

I live towards the top of a gradual but reasonably hefty hill, so unless I'm running up to the reservoir near my house, I'm ALWAYS slogging uphill the last 1.5 miles back to my house. Today was a 2.5 mile out and back route with a solid hill in the middle miles, so although I knew the hill home was coming, I really underestimated how much of a pain in the ass it'd be.

Pittsburgh, just give me ONE flat-ish 5 mile loop. Is that too much to ask?

My easy pace is usually 9:50-10:00ish, and today 9:55s were a slap in the face. My splits were pretty consistent for the first 4 miles - 9:54/9:53/9:52/9:43 - and then mile 5 was 10:20 and I felt like I was DYING. It was a battle just to keep myself from stopping. I can't remember the last time I felt this bad on an easy 5 miler. My watch beeped 5 and I almost cried with relief.

I wonder, if I ran this exact route at 6pm today instead of this morning before breakfast, how different I would've felt. Or if I had eaten breakfast and then waited until 9ish and gone out with some sort of sugar power in my veins. I never really think of 3-5 milers as anything I would need to "fuel" for, but maybe I'm underestimating the power of food in my life?

(On the plus side, I'm down 3 lbs since Halloween! Water weight, I love you. You're so motivating.)

Day 1

Today is day 1 of my marathon training cycle. The marathon is in 6 months. Excessive? Perhaps. (I like to think of it as "enthusiastically prepared.")

My training plan for the next 6 months is something I'll explain in a post sometime soon. Basic plan for the next 2 months or so is base building. I ran the EQT 10 miler last week, so I could keep my long run in the double digits from here on out, but my training plan calls for 5 days per week of running, and I've been averaging about 3 recently. I'm planning to back down on the long run mileage and focus on getting used to more dpw of running. Long runs from here through the end of the year are 7-10 miles each, nice and easy.

So today was the first of my Monday Easy 3s. I met up with a friend for a few reservoir loops at around 8:30 this morning. FOG CITY.

Something that has been bothering me lately is the discrepancy between any GPS app on my phone vs. my Garmin. I wore my watch and C had MapMyRun going on her phone, and we wound up with a 0.17mi difference between us. The Garmin is ALWAYS longer than any GPS app on my phone (I used to use Log Your Run). In the absence of any certified race course... what does this mean?! Is map my run short? Is Garmin long? Is the actual length somewhere in the middle? This honestly bothers the heck out of me, since by my watch we ran a 10:01 average pace, and by her phone we ran a 9:36. Those are legitimately different paces for me as far as effort/etc is concerned, so I would really like to know which one is right. Sigh.

Anyhow, I tend to go with the less impressive of the two stats so I don't give myself false hope about my fitness level. According to Garmin, our splits were 10:43 (including a stop so C could fix her shoe)/10:01/9:19.

(To be honest, the effort level felt more like what C's phone was showing -10:00/9:34/9:19/8:06 last 0.17. But running in the morning before I've eaten or had coffee is always more difficult for me, so maybe that's the difference in effort?)

Back from the dead!

Resurrecting the blog! Hooray. 3 posts before quitting blogging must be a record. How appropriate for this blog to return from the dead on Halloween night.

Anyway, to catch you up, I survived the marathon in May (barely). I have a history of terrible blisters underneath my right pinky toe - story for another day - and despite minimal blisters during training, I whipped up a huge honking one at about mile 7 of the marathon. My best guess is that it was due to the fact that the temps during the marathon were mid-upper 70s, while I had done all my training in sub-40 degree temps, and my feet were probably sweating. 

Either way, I was miserable for the last 19 miles of the race, which included a crap ton of walking and a few pit stops in aid tents to try to cushion/band-aid/beg them to amputate the toe. I had no time goal to start with, which made it easier to stomach the tortoise-like pace, and I am VERY proud of myself for finishing at all. My time was 5:14:38 which is a 12:00 pace on the dot. The good news is that I'm pretty sure I can PR my next marathon with minimal effort.

Post-marathon, I took a few months "off" from running. I was pretty burnt out, to be honest, and it took a long time for me to actually desire to run again. My friend Caryn suggested a 5k in September, so around August I finally started getting out there for a few miles. Then we ran a 10k in October, and a 10 miler last weekend, so I'm finally feeling like I'm back in the groove. 

My big race next year is my attempt at Pittsburgh marathon redemption. I created a training plan for myself (mostly based off of Higdon's intermediate plan) that takes me from November through May with a month or two of base building to start. I plan to chronicle my training and nutrition here -- hopefully I'll make it beyond 3 blog posts this time. 

GOALS FROM NOW UNTIL MAY:

1) Get to start/finish line of Pgh Marathon healthy and happy

2) Get down to goal race weight of ~120-125 lbs

3) Knock 1 entire hour off my marathon time (goal: 4:15, 9:45ish pace)

Today's run was a 3 mile progression. There is a 0.75mi reservoir loop that's a few blocks from my house and flat as a pancake.. but straight uphill to get there, and straight downhill back home. Very conducive to progression runs since I can really fly in that last half mile and it's motivating to see a fast pace when my legs are a little dead.

I had to take a quick break at mile 2.5 because I had such a painful side stitch that I was seeing stars with every step. I paused the app (which I know is cheating) but apart from the side stitch I was really feeling good and felt like I could've maintained the pace, so I was curious to see what my final mile split would be. I was wearing my Garmin also, which I did not pause, and mile 3 turned out to be 8:20, so I lost about 20 seconds stretching out that cramp.

TELL ME...
What's your stance on pausing GPS/watches vs. letting them run in training? Obviously there's no pausing the race clock, but sometimes I think pressing pause can be more indicative of actual training times/fitness levels -- within reason. Lately I've been using my iPhone AND Garmin together, mostly because I can look down easily at my watch to see my split time, but the perk is that I can pause one and let the other one run if I need to stop for any reason.

Slogging through

This week has been rough to say the least.

I'm fighting some horrendous cough untouchable by over-the-counter meds. Thank god I have friends in high places (doctors) because I currently don't have a primary care doc. Some codeine-laced cough medicine and a Z-pack and I'm finally sleeping through the night.. Only problem is that I can't take narcotics during the day, so I'm doing my best not to cough constantly into my patients' faces. Guess my office is getting their money's worth out of the masks they buy for us.

I know there are articles out there that preach not to run if you're ill "below the neck" - aka chest cold. I went back and forth on whether to keep running this week, and eventually decided to because:

1. I missed an entire week of training for my knee pain and halved a second week while recovering, so I'm down a 12- and a 13-miler. My longest run so far has been 10, twice.
2. My cough is more dry than productive, except in the mornings
3. I cough way less/not at all while running. (It's only once I stop that I pretty much die.)

Monday - 3 miles easy

Winter in Pittsburgh has been abysmal. We get a few inches of snow every few days and NOBODY shovels their sidewalks. I don't have Yaktrax or any kind of traction device for my shoes so I'm at the mercy of a few streets' worth of reliably clear sidewalk. There's a pretty simple 1ish mile stretch mostly down Fifth Ave from Shady to about Morewood... tack on a few tenths of a mile from my house and you've got my go-to 3 mile round-tripper. It's definitely not flat, but not too brutal given Pittsburgh's hill situation.

Splits: 10:22, 10:19, 10:21 (Consistency!!)

My legs felt a little heavy and I couldn't quite find a rhythm on this run. I was keeping my effort super easy, but sometimes that makes me feel like something is just "off" with my stride and my legs just feel unnatural- I can't really describe it. The last quarter mile my mechanics felt so strange that I eventually gave up and started "tiptoe" running, which is how I naturally ran when I first started running but resulted in horrendous chronic shin splints, and I haven't run that way since. (After multiple months of PT, custom orthotics and completely readjusting my mechanics, I've been a heel-striker. I'm aware that's not ideal. Story for another day.) Seriously, forefoot running has never felt so good as it did at the end of this run. I felt like my body finally lined up and started coordinating itself and I was bounding across the earth like a gazelle and all was perfect. I only mention this because it inspired my treadmill strategy on Wednesday.

Wednesday - 7 treadmill miles

Between my cough and generally fatigued legs lately, I knew I needed a rest day Tuesday. Wednesday began a 2-day snow/rain/sleet storm that was supposed to last until Thursday night, so I knew I'd be stuck with a 7-mile treadmill run one of those two days. Lately I feel the need to get these longer midweek runs over with so they don't hang over my head, so I sucked it up and headed to the gym with Brian after work. My plan was basically to last as long as I possibly could, whether that meant walk/running or taking some breaks to lift between miles, since the treadmill really exacerbates that weird uncoordinated stride feeling (my theory is muscle imbalance related to my leg length discrepancy) and lately I've given up after a mile or two on the treadmill. 

I set the speed to 6.0 and the incline to random level 1 (0-1.5% varying every 30 seconds). To give you a better sense of normal for me, my half-marathon-training easy treadmill runs in the past were about a 9:30 pace at random lv4, which is 0-3.9%. It's been a little hard for me to embrace the fact that if I want more miles, my body can only handle that with less of everything else (speed, hills). Oh well.

Anyhow, within a few minutes I was already feeling the weirdness. I can only describe it as feeling like my legs are not quite in sync with each other, I'm a little off balance, and I'm kind of uncoordinated. I was inspired by the end of Monday's run and decided to test the waters forefoot-striking. Felt perfect. So I figured I'd run normally at any incline less than 0.8%, and run on my toes anything at or above that. I really never wound up having to go more than 1.5 or 2 minutes in any given mode, and it seriously kept things feeling more normal than I've felt on a treadmill in probably a year.

Splits: 10:00 for 7 miles, no stops.

By the time I was done, I had baby blisters underneath the balls of my feet, just enough to make things slightly uncomfortable. My fault for not wearing running socks, but I had never expected to last 7 entire miles on the treadmill. It's always nice when you surprise yourself! Cardio-wise this felt nice and easy, pleasant even. I think I'll still try to avoid the treadmill if at all possible, but when I can't, hopefully this new magic trick keeps working.

Spring Thaw 10 Miler: a "race" recap

On Saturday, I ran the Spring Thaw 10 Mile race that took place in North Park. I had signed up back in the throes of my "I'm gonna run a marathon" high a few months ago, since I had 10 miles on the schedule and it's always nicer to run when people hand you cups of water every few miles and plop a medal around your neck once you're done.
Sounds good in theory, until you wake up on the morning of and it's -3 degrees outside. "I could just crawl back into bed until the temperature reaches double digits..."

But the dog had to pee at 5:30am, and then I was up.
Anyone else feel an inordinate amount of stress having to get to an unfamiliar place at a very specific time? I spent the entire morning calculating how long it would take to get up, eat breakfast, take Sam to doggie day care, get to North Park, find where I was going, pick up my race packet, etc etc.

I got there way earlier than I meant to, had my race bib pinned on by about 8:45am and then had more than an hour to kill. I HATE unfamiliar places. I found the barn where registration was, but that's not where the bag drop was, so I braved the cold walk over to the drop-off place (the boathouse) only to find out there wasn't a place to hang out over there.
So back to the barn I went. It was nice to people-watch for a little while and scope out the Pittsburgh running scene, I guess, but going to a race alone in a new city is a little lonely..

The race started at 10am. There was a 10, 15 or 20-mile option, depending on how many 5-mile loops you felt like suffering through doing.

Starting line in the distance

By the time the race started, it was a balmy 5 degrees. The kind of cold where you feel the lining of your nose freezing every time you breathe. I seriously don't own any legitimate running clothes because I'm stubborn and kind of cheap, so I was dressed in regular old leggings (not any particular special warm kind), a tank top, a long-sleeve shirt, and the lining to my ski jacket - which I like to refer to as my space jacket, because it's lined with some kind of silver material that leads me to believe it retains warmth.

All bundled up.
In my fiance's fashionable ski neck warmer and the liner to my ski jacket.
Because I don't own actual running gear.

I was not racing this. Story for another day, but I have determined that my knees/lower limbs can really only handle mileage increases if I significantly decrease speed. So this was planned as a training run in the ~10:30 pace range, which is my "super easy this feels like walking" speed and pretty tolerable for my knees on my long runs.

Loop #1: Miles 1-5

• Mile 1: 10:17
• Mile 2: 10:11
• Mile 3: 10:30
• Mile 4: 10:14
• Mile 5: 10:26

First loop was kind of getting my bearings. I had never seen North Park before, but I had heard of those lake loops. And for some reason, I envisioned "lake loops" as some scenic flat gravel trail right next to a pretty (frozen) lake... similar to a reservoir near my old house in CT. I was not correct. 

It was paved, kind of hilly, and about 2% of that 5-mile loop was on a road that was not canted significantly to the left or right racetrack-style.

In the beginning, I stuck near the 10:30 pacer, which seemed like a good way for me to cool the competitive fire and not care that plenty of people were passing me... including people who appeared to be just walking quickly. There weren't a whole ton of people around and it was kind of boring/depressing.

In no-man's land...

Loop #2: Miles 6-10

• Mile 6: 10:17
• Mile 7: 10:08
• Mile 8: 10:14
• Mile 9: 9:57
• Mile 10: 9:45

The second loop was a bit more fun. I knew what I had coming up, and kept checking off little things as they went by... "water stop, first annoying hill, water stop, really winding road section, turn onto the main road, water stop, sidewalk..." I started "easy passing" people once I realized that I only had a few more miles to go, and my knees were feeling decent. "Easy passing" = attempting to pass people while still keeping the effort solidly easy. I haven't pushed the effort on a long run since my knees started causing trouble, and I didn't want to be sucked into that just because it was a timed race.

Showing off the goods

My official time was 1:42:35, a 10:16 pace - by my Garmin it was 10.08 miles, which just goes to show how winding those roads were. If it had been an actual race for me, I would've put more effort into the tangents. I seriously do not care what my pace is on my long runs nowadays, so 10:16 was fine by me.

Overall, it was a well-managed race. Boring, and not exactly scenic, but water stops every 1.5-ish miles was really nice, and they handed out some sort of energy gel at the 5 mile mark, which is great for people who enjoy/can stomach that. It would've been more fun if I had actually been racing and could stick with more of the "pack"... but I'll have to save that until after the marathon if I want to get to the starting line with knees intact.

"Spring Thaw"... psh.

Introductions

Hello and welcome, people of the internet.

I'm a late-twenties, newly-graduated dentist living in Pittsburgh and training for my first marathon. Come along for the ride as I attempt to make it to 26.2 with life and limbs intact.

A little about me:

• Originally from Boston, spent 4 years in Connecticut for dental school, now a Yinzer (secret code for Pittsburgher, unknown to anyone outside of western PA)
• Engaged to a handsome guy named Brian, planning the wedding for next April
• Recently welcomed a little hairy daughter (German Shepherd puppy) named Sammy, who deprives us of sleep more than I thought possible.

I follow a bunch of blogs run by super fast girls who can do really amazing things, meanwhile I'm over here like "where are the blogs by people with crappy knees who think mile times starting with 8 are pretty freaking fast?" If you were thinking that too, search no more, I've got you covered.