Marathon training - what's that?

I haven't posted my training weeks in a few weeks.. and that's because my training schedule has essentially blown up due to a nagging knee issue. It started whatever weekend it was that I painted my office (Week 12 of my marathon plan) - I took a misstep while running and twisted my left ankle on an uneven sidewalk during my weekly long run (it was a 12 miler - cutback week) at about 2 miles in.. I turned my large loop into a small loop intending to stop once I got back to my house (I have had many, many sprained ankles in my running days and essentially I am good to go the next day, sometimes even I can keep running on it if it's not too bad), but by the time I got back, my ankle was runnable so I kept going. By the end of the 12 miles, my right knee was feeling achy. No big deal, I figured it would just take Monday off and get back at it on Tuesday.

Wrong.

 Since then, I have had this niggle on and off, more on than off. It killed my long run the next weekend which was supposed to be 20. I did 9 on Saturday and then 10 on Sunday followed by an hour on the trainer. A lot of my midweek runs have also been replaced by trainer rides. After about a week and a half, I broke down and went to see Jennie Hansen (she's a physical therapist) and of course, runner's knee. She gave me some stretches and exercises to do to try to correct the problem in the future (tight quads, tight hip flexors - none of this is new information to me, nor is this a brand new injury that I've never had) but not much can be done now other than back off running and hope that my current fitness level can carry me through the marathon.

It was very upsetting at first. I have worked so hard and put in so much effort for this race. I executed workouts, ran in the morning, around my crazy work/school/life schedule. Did all of my long runs. Ran when I was out of town. You name it, I did it. Then this happened and threw my training plan into shambles.. which ultimately made me lose motivation. Who wants to be in the basement sweating on a trainer when they can be running outside? Not me.

I have been trying to power through and I had a bit of a breakthrough this weekend - I ran 15 miles on Monday with manageable pain levels. I was in Baltimore over the weekend for a wedding and did not have much success running - I ran Friday and Saturday with John but both days, my knee was unhappy which did not leave me feeling optimistic about trying a longer run on Monday, but I had to try. I am glad that I did it, and now I am taking it easy from here on out.

I hope that my pace goals are not ruined for the marathon but if they are, they are, and I definitely learned an important lesson.. that I need to not cross the 50 mile per week magic threshold! And that I need to do more preventative maintenance.

Anyways, just trying to make it through the race (it's in < 3 weeks) so that I can switch to cyclocross where there is no time goal and everyone is drunk anyways!

John and I on our run at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore

at the wedding!

Off the subject of running..

I DO participate in other activities besides swim, bike & run.

I have had a 2 week break from classes which spanned two weekends. One of those weekends was a lower mileage running week and this past weekend, I had to cut back miles due to a knee issue (more on that at a later date for sure). So I made sure to take full advantage of those weekends (and weeks in between) where I had no school obligations.

The first weekend, John was gone in Vermont and I had the entire weekend to myself. What did I do? I painted my office! It's something that has been on my "list" for quite a while (basically, since I cleaned it out and put new office furniture in there) but just didn't happen because painting is time consuming and a giant pain in the ass, and I've been quite busy this summer. Also, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with the room, color-wise. A few weeks ago, my friend Kelly posted a photo of her office on Instagram and I LOVED what she did, so I decided to go a similar route. (Blatant copying, but isn't that what the internet/Pinterest is for? Ripping off other peoples' ideas..) Since I had no real plans over the weekend, I figured I couldn't justify putting it off for any longer, went to Mayer Hardware and got paint supplies, and got started! It took me Saturday afternoon/evening to clean/prep the walls (spackle holes), tape off the trim, and then edge and roll 2 coats of paint on 3 walls. Then it took me most of Sunday morning to paint my accent wall. Since the accent wall was a rather.. bold.. color, I taped everything - trim, the ceiling, and the other 2 walls, whereas I did the edges and ceilings by hand on the neutral walls (did ok but by the 2nd coat of the third wall I was starting to get tired and a bit sloppy AKA some paint ended up on the ceiling).

As you can see.. I did a BLACK accent wall! (The other 3 walls are a light gray). I knew it was a risk going in and I have not always made good paint color choices in the past (i.e. I have an almost-fluorescent orange living room wall) but I think I NAILED the color choice here. The room is small but well lit so the black makes it look larger and really delivers a nice punch. I hope to hang a large piece of artwork over the desk on the black wall, but currently there is nothing there. You can see the side-by-side before photo (blah boring beige) and after photo below!

My house was a ramshackle mess during the following week as I sporadically tried to put it back in order after removing mostly everything from the office to paint, but since I again didn't have any school stuff, I took the opportunity on Thursday evening to go see my neighbor's jug band - Ruckus Juice Jug Stompers, play a free show on South Ave. in the small park next to LUX. It was great and I can't believe I have known about this band for a year and only just now made it out to see them! I love any type of bluegrass music, so I loved them!

I have lived next door to both Jeff (far left, old neighbor)
and Dan (2nd from the right with the jug, new neighbor)
(Jeff sold the house to Dan this summer!)

my date :) isn't he cute?

Friday night I had some quality bf time. Dinner, Cheesy Eddie's cheesecake (I definitely win gf points for bringing that over), trip planning, etc., and then we ran 9 miles on Saturday morning, after which I did this:

ice bath!

Then I met up with Solveig on Saturday afternoon, since she was in town for some kind of organic seed conference thing. We saw Boyhood at The Little (which is one of my favorite places in Rochester) and it was AMAZING. Highly, highly recommended if you are at ALL into indie movies (or you know, real life, or people, or emotions, or anything really other than stuff being blown up). We then met up with our friend Emily at TRATA for a girls' dinner. Solveig stayed at my place and then left in the morning.

ladies' night with my beautiful friends

 I had a nice Sunday morning with coffee and icing my knee for a bit, and then did some more running and some time on the trainer, and then went to the Jell-O museum in LeRoy with 2 of my friends/coworkers, with lunch at Mooney's afterwards (mac & cheese!). I have ridden by this place numerous times, so when Kristin suggested it, I was on board! I'll pretty much do anything anyways (except for bowling.. you really have to work to get me to go bowling). It was a beautiful day so I'm glad that I got to enjoy it with some friends!

Jell-O museum outing, Kelly, me, & Kristin

As of tomorrow, I begin YEAR TWO at RIT.. My fall class is Theory of Statistics I which I know will be good for me to take, but it's been pretty nice having 2 weeks off. Oh well - I do better when life keeps me busy! With school starting and Labor Day this weekend, I feel as though this weekend was the bookend to my summer, and what a fun summer it was!

Morning workouts - not so awful!

I have never been much of a morning person. Scratch that. I have never been a morning person - EVER.

The bane of my existence were those 400 level biology courses that were ONLY offered at 8 am. Molecular Biology was the one I specifically remember. Sitting in a classroom, barely awake, learning about things that are happening WITHIN YOUR CELLS is not my ideal way to start the day. Also, I was late on the first day and ended up in the front row for the entire semester. Which is fine until your classmate Greg is making funny comments and you both start giggling uncontrollably.. yeah that never happened.

Extend that to almost 10 years later and I still don't function well in the morning. After my college years I did a "full time graduate student" year (late nights, no early mornings), then 2 years working the evening shift (3-11 pm) and then 3 years working rotating shifts (sleep? what's that?), and now I am working a normal day shift for the first time in my adult life. I roll into work anywhere between 7 and 8 am. Having a (relatively) flexible workday is a godsend.

One thing that has changed with my part time graduate school endeavor is less time available to me after work. I trained for all 3 of my Ironmans without having to do morning workouts (unless I was working the evening shift, but even then, it was never before 8 am). Ironman was my main priority (besides work) so I structured my entire life around training, all of my friends were other Ironman, and I basically ate, slept, and breathed Ironman. I also swore up, down, and sideways that I would NEVER do morning workouts (which is basically the bread and butter of every other functioning Ironman - but not me!). Yet, here I am, 2-3 days a week, up and running by 5:30 am. It was hard at first but I think I have gotten used to it. I even sort of like it. I have done short easy runs, longer runs (8 miles), even a tempo workout in the early morning hours before work. Of course, if I have nothing scheduled for after work, I still default to running after work. But it's good to know that if have class, a quiz, am meeting a classmate, or just want to do something fun in the evening and now have to schedule it around my run, I can plan to get out of bed in the morning and run before work and ACTUALLY DO IT. It's also better for my motivation. I work in a lab where I stand all day. Sometimes, I don't want to follow an 8 hour day of standing with another 1+ hours of running. I want to go home and curl up (or.. do homework on the couch).. which I can do if I get up and do my run before work! Then I just slip into my compression socks and welcome the 8 hours of leg hugs!

As the summer semester as ended, I have a glorious 2 weeks of no school obligations where I can do all of my running after work if I want (unless I have something else going on) and then it will be back to the morning for me (most likely, with a headlamp) several times per week.

Marathon Training Week 11

Summary of Weekly Miles

Monday - 4 miles, 36:36, 9:09 pace. Did in the AM.. felt ok and made it to work on time!

Tuesday - 3.78 miles, 36:40, 9:42 pace. Did this before work, thought I was supposed to run 4 when in fact I was supposed to run 5, and then ran into some issues. Oh well.

Wednesday - 10 miles, 1:28:49, 8:52 min/mile. I ran almost the same route that I ran the previous week (had to add on a mile), except I had to run it without Richard who was celebrating his wife's birthday that night, and somehow I ran it slightly faster. My legs felt better this week than the week before, and I did see some people that I knew while running (hi David) so that was a slight pick-me-up halfway through.

Thursday - 6 miles, 45:33, 7:35 min/mile, HR 160. This was 2 loops around the RIT campus with Trisha who paced me (AKA almost killed me) through a tempo run. (splits: 7:42, 7:41, 7:24, 7:27, 7:36, 7:40). She's fast. I am not. It was rough, but a huge help because I have trouble running tempo pace on my own. Then we ate food and worked on our Nonparametric Project for the rest of the evening.

Friday - off - did project/final exam for a few hours after work and then went to John's.

Saturday - 10 miles, 1:28:40, 8:52 min/mile, HR 148. Drove to Genesee Valley Park to run the river trail because I am starting to get a bit bored doing all of these 9-10 mile runs from my house (I always end up on either Winton or Culver, neither of which are interesting at all). I used this run to test out my SPIbelt which I bought for a weekend that I will be in Baltimore while training for the marathon.. don't want to end up lost somewhere and needed a way to carry my phone with me on long runs. It worked out well and I was very pleased with it! Then headed down to RIT to work on my final exam which is due Thursday. That was the theme of this weekend: running and Nonparametric. (Isn't that the theme of every weekend this summer? oh well).

Sunday - 20 miles, 2:57:03, 8:51 min/mile, HR 152. I parked my car in the High Falls parking garage, and then had John drive me to mile 6 of the Rochester Marathon course (~St. John Fischer College) and drop me off.. and I ran the rest of the course back to my car. The first 10 miles were great.. the last 10, not so much. I did see a bunch of friendly faces on the canal path - Trisha & Ken, and then saw Matt towards the very end near Corn Hill Landing. This run didn't go as well as I had hoped. I try not to run by pace on long runs, but I had a pretty decent one last week so I was thinking this one might be a bit faster - maybe 8:45 or so (since it's pretty much flat) but my hamstring was really starting to bug me about 14 miles in.. and it started to get really hot out (thank god I wore sunscreen). Unfortunately, the canal path doesn't believe in water fountains anywhere other than in Pittsford so I probably need to be mindful of this in the future (I don't do a whole lot of running on the canal path). I had a small handheld but it was drained by the time I got to GVP. Somewhere on the river trail near U of R I just sat down in the shade and texted John that I was dying. I had maybe 3 miles left to run and there was no way I was going to bail, so after a short pity party I got back up and finished my run.. and apparently he was worried (because I had stopped responding to texts.. what did people do before cell phones anyways?) so I found him in the parking garage waiting for me. It's kind of nice to have someone who a) knows you're out running for 3 hours and b) cares enough to make sure you survive it. Not that I am ever worried that I won't make it back and I have done hundreds of training swims, rides, and runs solo but.. what if I didn't come back?! No one would know until I didn't show up to work on Monday!

All in all, it really wasn't a bad run, I just wish my hamstring would pull its shit together. Also, I would have killed to lay around for the rest of the day, but instead I hit Tim Horton's and ate a bunch of food, showered, and then met Trisha at RIT for more project work, and then stuck around after she left to try to finish up my final (almost done!).

Week 11 Mileage: 53.78
Total Training Cycle Mileage: 412.79

Comments:

By far, my biggest running week ever. I know it doesn't seem like much to a regular serious runner but it's a lot for me for sure. I have never been a high mileage runner and I have spent most of my adult life as a triathlete (lots of bike miles, lower running miles), so I think this is about where I will top out. I was tired all week, sore, my legs hurt, etc. I drop down to an easier week now, and then it's back up for 2 more big ones, and then I taper.

WHAT will life be like for the (almost) 2 weeks I have off between Summer and Fall semesters?! I can only imagine...

Marathon Training Week 10

Summary of Weekly Miles

Monday - 3 miles, 26:51, 8:57 pace. Did in the AM, still feeling rough after the race on Saturday.

Tuesday - 4 miles, 37:08, 9:17 pace. Again, morning run. STILL FEELING LIKE ASS.

Wednesday - 9 miles, 1:20:09, 8:54 min/mile. Thank GOD I have Richard to drag me through these mid-week longer runs. This one was better than the previous week - we did a loop through the South Wedge to "count the mustaches" and discovered some really nice streets with some cute houses (Rockingham in particular) as well as a mystery park with some trails that need to be explored. Nice run, decent weather (a little humid) and I rocked my new purple compression socks to try to help my legs feel better. Also, right near the end of the run, Rich stepped in a pile of disgusting, squishy, gross-looking mystery mud. I thought it was hilarious but apparently, he did not.

Thursday - off. This was the first run in 10 weeks that I have missed. My legs just did not feel like they were adequately recovering from the half-marathon and I knew I had a big mileage weekend coming up, so I took the night off and hung out with the boyfriend and ate meat(less)balls with a spork at Skylark which I had been craving ever since Rich and I ran past Union St. a few weeks ago.

Friday - off - got a massage at Empire Therapeutic Massage.

Saturday - 9 miles, 1:12:11, 8:01 min/mile, HR 165. Marathon pace run. This is the first one I have been able to execute. All of the others were overlapping with races (Real Beer 5K and Boilermaker) or I tried to do them on roads with streetlights (not good for keeping your pace consistent and faster than your normal pace). Because of this, I purposely drove to Brighton Town Park where there is canal path access and ran there - 4.5 miles out and 4.5 miles back. And TOTALLY nailed it. Feels pretty good! I'm even going to post my splits just because: 8:07, 8:06, 8:02, 7:59, 7:56, 7:55, 8:00, 8:02, 8:00. I am not very consistent when I run so I'm pretty proud of this.. working on the whole negative split thing. My marathon pace is 8:12 so I am VERY happy with how this went. Afterwards I went to RIT and worked on my Nonparametric project with Trisha (with a lost USB drive debacle thrown in there.. not fun).

Sunday - 19 miles, 2:47:52, 8:50 min/mile, HR 152. Got up at 7:30 am, got some stuff done around the house and then headed to Mendon Ponds Park to run the Spring Forward 15K loop twice. First loop felt pretty good, 2nd loop I started to have some trouble with my hamstring.This average pace is pretty good for me but I am going to ease up on this hills.. especially for one particular reason...

Week 10 Mileage: 44
Total Training Cycle Mileage: 359.01

Comments:

I FINALLY chose my ADK Marathon replacement race - Rochester!! I'm pretty excited about this. I've been toying with the idea of switching marathons (I just think ADK is too hilly for me to try to BQ) and then Kevin hurt himself and is dropping to the half. I was going around in circles with all of these different options, but they are all mid-October or even in November, and I really just want my marathon season to be over by the end of September so that I can focus on cyclocross season (which got screwed last year because of Wineglass training and Statistical Software being the worst class ever). So I am going to do Rochester, then the weekend after, TRY to hobble the half in Schroon Lake (because I can't waste a race entry) and then.. who knows! If I get the BQ at Rochester, then I am done (except for the Baltimore Half with Lindsay). If not.. I will probably do the Harrisburg Marathon in November as a 2nd attempt. It's funny, because when I decided to do this whole marathon thing again, Rochester was my default option, but then silly Kevin talked me into the ADK Marathon! Maybe this was meant to be (not that I really believe in any of that anyways). Guess we'll find out! One nice thing is that I can do a nice 20 miler right on the course, 4 miles from my house!

Also, am trying to be better about stretching, foam rolling, and ice bathing myself after these long runs. Still trying to figure this stuff all out. The benefit to being a triathlete is that your workouts are so varied, it's harder to hurt yourself (at least, in my opinion). Now, my hamstring just yells at me 6 days a week!

Marathon Training Week 9

Summary of Weekly Miles

Monday -3 miles, 26:34, 8:51 min/mile.

Tuesday - 6 miles, 47:11, 7:51 min/mile. This was a 6x800 track workout at Brighton HS. I knew I was racing on Saturday (half marathon) AND I wanted to run long with Rich on Wednesday evening, so this was the only appropriate time to do this workout (I had class on Thursday night anyways). Did a 1 mile warm up and then ran 6x800s with 400 recovery in between: 3:25, 3:29, 3:30, 3:29, 3:30, 3:30 and then ~0.5 mile cool down to end at 6 miles total. It was hot as balls outside (88 or so degrees out and sunny). I was BAKING on the track and I am honestly surprised I was able to successfully pull this workout off AND stay on pace. I would dump water on my head and arms after every 800, run a 400 recovery lap, and by the time I got back around, it had dried/evaporated.

Wednesday - 9 miles, 1:20:55, 8:59 min/mile. Ran this with Richard. We did a tour of the city from the park behind my house. It was a rough run but I made it. Thank god for Rich.. we can chat and it distracts me from how bad or tired I feel. Probably the first truly bad run I have had during this training program.

Thursday - off. Opted to rearrange my week a bit because I had a half marathon Saturday (and not Sunday like Hal had suggested).

Friday - off

Saturday - PA Grand Canyon Half-Marathon (see race report) - 13.1 miles, 1:42:20, 7:49 min/mile, HR 189 (wow)

Sunday - 4 miles, 36:17, 9:04 min/mile. Hobbled my way through this. Active recovery, baby!

Week 9 Mileage: 35.1
Total Training Cycle Mileage: 315.01

Comments:

I was VERY pleased with my track workout. I was also pleased with my effort at the half-marathon even though I did not PR.

PA Grand Canyon Half Marathon Race Report

Week 9 of my marathon training plan called for a half marathon. This also happened to fall on the weekend of my dad's 70th birthday, and I had plans to go home to PA to celebrate. So I searched around for a half marathon and low and behold, found this one, in Wellsboro, PA which is about 90 minutes from my dad's house - basically in our backyard by rural PA standards!

I got out of work a bit early on Friday afternoon so that I could drive the 2.5 hours from Rochester to Wellsboro to pick up my packet (race morning packet pickup was not a thing for this race). Then I drove the 90 minutes to my dad's house (stopping at glorious Sheetz in Mansfield on my way). Basically got home at around 8, took a quick shower, and went to bed because I had a 3 am wakeup call the next morning.

3 am?

3 am??

WHAT???

So the race starts on the rim of the "PA Grand Canyon" which is basically a big gorge. I don't recall ever being up there before (apparently I have been) - it was quite nice. ANYWAYS, there was no parking allowed at the start, so everyone had to park at Wellsboro High School and ride a bus for ~30 minutes to the start. Because I registered late, after they had opened additional slots (I found this out after I emailed about a waiting list because the race was closed) I was obligated to take one of the earlier shuttles that they had added to accommodate extra runners. Basically, all shuttles before 5 am were fair game for me. I had no idea if they were policing this but I did NOT want to show up late, not get on a shuttle, and have gone to all of that trouble to have to turn around and drive home. So I woke up at 3, got dressed, got coffee, and left by 3:30. I got to Wellsboro at about 4:45 (driving time is less when no one is on the back roads!) and got on a school bus.

It was pitch black at 5 am, the bus was driving 3 miles per hour up this long, winding hill.. it felt like we were being driven out into the middle of nowhere to be murdered. The bus dropped us off before 6 am (still dark out), in the middle of the woods, by a row of porta potties with a handful of other runners standing around. One tiny light. It was crazy. I kept thinking "WHAT kind of race is this" - especially since there were no porta potty lines, EVER. I hung around until about 6:30 and then I walked the 5 minute walk up a gravelly hill to the rim where the starting line was.

Luckily I had brought a small sling bag with flip flops and I was wearing a long sleeved shirt (it was 50 degrees out) so I didn't freeze too much, and I was able to check my bag. I wasn't even sure there would be a bag check but I figured I could stick my bag somewhere in the woods and probably no one would bother it (maybe a bear would be interested in the Larabar I had stashed in there).

My Garmin would not locate. I had heard this rumor from other runners and it was true. So I guessed I was going to have to run without knowing my pace - I didn't want to take the chance of my Garmin signal dropping in and out mid run. This was worrisome since I have been gunning for a half-marathon PR for this whole year which would be more of a challenge to do if I couldn't see my pace. I switched my Garmin to inside mode (AKA glorified $400 stopwatch mode) and hoped there were mile markers so that I could at least manually lap my mile splits.

We lined up and started promptly at 7 am. I was in 3rd right from the beginning and 1 woman dropped back after about a mile. It was pretty downhill from the start and I was leap frogging for first with another woman. After about 2 miles, we did a 180 around a cone and she dropped me. That was the rest of the race - me in 2nd. The race was very downhill through mile 7 or so. There were some intermittent uphills but I remember thinking "this is going to be trouble when we have to go back up." I am not a great downhill runner so I am sure I lost some time due to that. I also had one mile in there where I ran an 8:30.. which is basically unacceptable but I am sure I just zoned out and wasn't actively "racing" the downhill which I need to force myself to do. I didn't realize it until I hit lap on my watch and saw it. Most of the race was on dirt roads (do you Rochester city people know what those are?) which are fine but traction was not always awesome. The scenery WAS beautiful though! And the weather was perfect. Mid-50s, cloudy, through the woods, with a bit of rain at the beginning. Exactly my type of weather!

I wear my sunglasses at night on overcast days

At mile 8 we doubled back on the course and I could see just how far behind #1 I was (a lot). I could also see that #3 and #4 were not super far behind me so I started to pick it up. I really hammered miles 9-11 and then I started to die a little, plus by this point the whole race was basically uphill. I knew by mile 10 that I would not get my sub 1:40 (AGAIN) but I was determined to stay in 2nd place. I saw the #3 girl right behind me out of the corner of my eye but managed to hold her off and crossed the line about 10 seconds before her at a dead sprint.

I bet that guy was pissed that I sprinted past him

It was pretty cool being the 2nd place woman. People were congratulating me left and right. Also, I guess I stuck out because I was wearing my sunglasses (just out of habit by this point).

1:42:20, 7:49 min/mile, 21st OA, 3rd F, 2nd F30-34.

Turns out.. they did places according to net time, not gun time, so #3 actually beat me. It's frustrating because I spent the whole race in 2nd, and the whole time before awards thinking I got 2nd, and then when they gave out awards, I got 2nd in my AG, not 1st (they only did overall awards for first place). Kind of a disappointment, especially grouped together with another failed PR attempt. To be fair, the course was wicked; I am not surprised that I did not PR, but I am seriously going to freak out if I can't get a sub-1:40 half-marathon before 2014 ends. I diligently took mile splits and I wore my HR monitor but I feel that the data is essentially useless without the elevation profile.

1st, 2nd, 3rd F 30-34

After the race, I stuck around for my award and a post-race massage, and then I walked (gingerly) down the hill to where the shuttles were picking people up. This is where the race experience started to go south for me. I stood in a line for over an hour to get back on a bus to take me back to my car. I tend to be pretty laid back after races, and I was in no hurry, but an HOUR?! I was sweaty, cold, hungry, alone, and my quads were completely wrecked. I just wanted to sit down (not on the ground) so the hour wait was ridiculous. I have never been so happy to get into a hot car when I finally got back to mine. Made the 90 minute drive home, barely able to keep my eyes open by the end! Took a glorious post-race nap in my disgusting running clothes because I was too tired/lazy to change or shower. Then I went out for pizza with my dad for dinner and did some homework before going to bed at 9 pm, again. Oh, the eventful life of a runner. :)

I can tell how bad the hill were for that race because it's been 2 days and my quads are still toasted. It's good, but ouch!

After that race, I am debating a bit of a schedule change for the rest of my season, but I need to really think about it and try to make smart decisions based on my goals for this year.