study break

It's been a crazy, crazy week. I cannot believe that it is already Wednesday. I drove back to Mobile this afternoon and I have this icky feeling in my stomach... I hate being here when my awesome family is hanging out with baby Lily without me. But I definitely had to come home. I had already missed three days of work and two classes and my cats were basically starving to death, so it's good that I'm back.

This is week one of my epic FOUR WEEK taper. It was supposed to be three weeks long, but I knew I wouldn't be able to get my 20-miler in this coming weekend so it was either four weeks of tapering or two weeks of tapering. Most people thought that I ought to train on the conservative side, this being my first jaunt into marathoning. This week is pretty shot for me, because of family time and Friday's Mardi Gras Ball and more family time, but I did manage a spin class tonight and I am planning a 10-mile run with Hans while he's here this weekend. I figure I kind of owe it to him, seeing as he was flying all this way to run a 1/2M in St. Pete. (We decided against making the trip so that we can spend time with my family. Priorities!)

Spin was kind of rough tonight. I don't know if I'm still fatigued from my run on Saturday, or just feeling shitty because of all the bad food I've eaten since this weekend (I was POOPED after being up all night at the hospital on Sunday and indulged in a Baconator on Monday... my first fast food of the new year!). After class, a bunch of people came up to me and asked how my marathon training was going. My first thought was, "Damn! I need to stop telling people about this! Now they all have expectations!" but really, it was kinda neat. Except for one of the guys I chatted with who is a very experienced long distance runner and cyclist and has run something like 30 marathons. He asked me how my 20-miler went and I have to say... I was pretty embarrassed to tell him. IT TOOK ME FIVE HOURS. He started doing the math out loud for what kind of pace I was running and I started making excuses "it was hilly, I had a cold/flu-thing, my legs were already tired, etc." All in all, not a very uplifting conversation. But he was nice about it and tried to be encouraging and I know it will motivate me to know that I have people that I am kind of sort of accountable to. I'm the kind of person who likes to keep goals a secret because I hate to let people down almost as badly as I hate to let myself down. Maybe it's time for me to nut up a bit.

Anyway, back to studying :-/

I want to ride my bicycle

I took yesterday off, much to my disappointment. I had a 5 mile run and spin class planned out but I have a cold or flu or something and it was recommended to me that I take it easy. New thing I learned about strenuous training- it takes a toll on your immune system. Dislike! If I'm going to attempt 20 miles this weekend, I need to be feeling better than I do right now...

I did do something productive and exciting though, beyond finishing off the tub of thin mint ice cream in my freezer (what is wrong with me!!)- I signed up for both of my bike rides for the summer!

July 14-15, 2012

This summer will be my first time riding the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic! I'm super excited because it's one of the biggest cycling events in the country (~10,000 riders) and I've heard that it's a lot flatter than the RSVP... 204 miles with an elevation gain of around 5,000'

August 17-18, 2012

Yes I am doing the 188 miles AGAIN... It was a tough bugger last summer, but I think I'm in better overall shape this year so I should be able to fare the ride a bit more comfortably! Even though it is a f-ing beast... I think the elevation gain was 7 or 8,000'. The steepest thing I saw was this spot of road in Vancouver, BC called "The Wall". A lot of folks were walking their bikes up... meanwhile, I was climbing soooo slowly, I could barely stay balanced on my bike. According to my bike computer, I was riding at 4mph. I am very excited about the RSVP this summer though because one of my best girlfriends will be joining the team! She's coming to Mobile this weekend to catch the Super Bowl Sunday sale at my bike shop, Cadence 120. Hopefully we'll be able to find her a road bike that she likes and is a better price than I paid for mine ;)

RSVP 2011- We have reached America's hat!

rest day, take 2!

I thought about working out today. I actually packed some clothes and my running shoes to get five miles in after work... thing is, my arches are still really tender from the run this weekend. So I got a pedicure and a massage instead! I went to Nou Veau in west-ish Mobile and took advantage of their stellar BCS Championship special: $74 for a pedicure and a 1 hour massage. Roll Tide!

A nice mint green pedi to disguise my icky feet!

Sorry if that picture is too gross. I know a lot of people who hate feet, but I am proud of what my feet are able to do (sustain the impact of running for miles and miles and miles and miles...) and REALLY proud of this cute nail polish color choice! So suck it, podophobes!

The massage was pretty stellar, as well. The massage therapist had me strip down to my underoos and lay under all these soft, warm sheets. The room was comfortably dimmed and the sounds of water flowing and the gentle ringing of bells just soothed the HELL out of me. I was asleep and drooling in minutes.

My sentiments exactly, Mr. Meow Meow

She traced the muscles along my spine and around my shoulder blades and found a few small spots that I didn't even know were sore. My arms, unconditioned and lacking any semblance of musculature, did not benefit much from this massage. She flipped me over and did a nice job on my shins and my quads but I have to say- overall, she could have been a lot harder on my legs. My calves and whatever it is that runs down my calves to my heels are still pretty achey and my feet, particularly my left arch, are very tender. It felt nice to have someone touching them, but I kind of wanted to feel it more. I don't know.

One thing I really like to do is use my elbows to massage my arches and the bottoms of my feet. If that sounds weird, sorry, but my thumbs just can't push through all that tough skin and tissue enough to make a difference. Maybe my weak hands are an extension of my weak arms. But anyway, elbows. They are pointy and hard and I can use them to dig precisely into each of those sore spots way more effectively than this (otherwise very talented) masseuse did this afternoon. Yeah, yeah don't knock it till you try it, okay? 

This is how I do it: I sit down as though I am doing the butterfly, or groin stretch. I adjust my feet so that they rotate somewhat towards the ceiling (this requires some ankle flexibility). I take my elbow and push it into my foot, sometimes slowly rotating in circles and sometimes just dragging my elbow along the length of the bone or muscle. I do the elbow massage after every long run and it hurts so, so good.

Foot turned slightly towards the ceiling. Elbow in the arch of the foot. Also, penguin PJs.

listening to my heart

I got my heart rate monitor in the mail earlier this week. The Omron HR-100C has a stopwatch, backlight, settable target zones, and a zone alarm and that's pretty much it! It cost me ~$35 on amazon.com and is probably one of the most basic models out there. I know some folks whose heart rate monitors save recorded values through entire workouts and can shoot out beautiful graphs and interesting data to be used for optimizing one's training routine or approach to a given workout. I could get really geeked out on something like that, but I chose to go simple. Mostly because I had just put a massive order in at nike.com and knew it would be unwise to spend another $569.95 on something really cool.

I wore my heart rate monitor to the gym on Wednesday. I ran 2 miles at right around an 8:30 min/mi pace (I don't have my workout calendar handy for the specifics) and I think my heart rate was up in the 170s. That sounds high to me, but I felt really good and could have definitely kept going if I wasn't already late for spin class. In spin, my heart rate stayed 130-150 and might have shot up a bit during sprints. I felt GREAT in that workout (the class I blogged about in the previous entry) and mostly breathed through my nose- a good indication that I wasn't working too terribly hard.

My friend Sam recommended that I use my heart rate monitor to measure my resting heart rate by wearing it to bed and taking a quick reading when I wake up in the morning. I tried to do that, but I'm a tosser and a turner and the thing was so darn uncomfortable, it would wake me up several times through the night. I would take a reading before I ditched it and went back to sleep. Having done that for a few nights, I think it's a safe bet to say that my resting heart rate is 55 bpm.

Maximum heart rate is a more finicky chicken to pluck. I used this MHR calculator to estimate that my maximum heart rate is 197bpm. There are a few age/gender based equations out there, but the gold standard, supposedly, is a clinical stress test. This Runner's World article describes a DIY method of calculating your max heart rate while running a track workout. I want to do this at some point because my estimated MHR seems kind of low to me... I will regularly end a tough treadmill workout at 185bpm (as measured by the sensors on the treadmill handle bars) and that would put me in the 90%-100% maximal zone which is potentially dangerous to heart health. Either my estimated MHR is off or I'm working way beyond what is safe for my poor ticker. Hmmm...

In other news, tomorrow is the BankTrust First Light Marathon and 1/2 Marathon. I will be running the 1/2M with some friends and then spending the rest of the day eating bagels and pizza to "restore my carb reserves". In the handful of races that I've done, I have always had two goals- one goal would be the one that I share with people who ask, the other goal would be my REAL goal which I would keep to myself. The goal that I share with people is a finishing time that I am positive I will make. The goal that I keep a secret is what I consider the ultimate, best-case scenario and it's so lofty that I am embarrassed to even speak it out loud to someone else. The lame thing about this blog is that no one reads it. The AWESOME thing about this blog is that... no one reads it. So here is my real, secret, lofty goal for the First Light 1/2M: I want to finish in under two hours.

So what do you think about that?

day of rest!

Ahh... I've been waiting all week for this day. The day my feet, knees, calves, quads, hamstrings, core, and BRAIN gets to recover from all the mess I put myself through since my last day off (last week Tuesday). The day that my "workout plan" says STRETCH and that's it! No spin class, no weight lifting, no running, just resting and recovering.  And maybe some Ben & Jerry's.

Sometimes it's hard for me to take a day off from working out. I'll get out of work and think "You know what? I feel fine today, and today is a perfectly good day to train so why waste it!" but Hal Higdon has a lot to say about the benefits of rest and I figure he probably knows better than I do. Ed Eyestone of Runner's World Magazine says that a rest day is as crucial to his training as a long run. Does that mean I'm off the hook for tomorrow's 14-miler????!!

Back to the subject of stretching, behold- one of the best tricks I learned from Chris G at Synergy Yoga.

The Pigeon Pose

*cooo... cooo...*

It can be difficult and painful at first- but once you're able to relax into this pose, it works wonders for hip/glute tightness! I like to listen to classical music while I'm stretching because it makes me feel like a beautiful, graceful ballerina (or maybe it's because I get so damn tired of Ke$ha and Lil' Wayne by the end of a workout). Last week, I listened to Claude Debussy's "Menuett" as I stretched each hip flexor and I'm telling you- it totally transported me. Duuude...

And for the days when I'm feeling EXTRA fancy...

But gosh- that looks like way too much work for this rest day. And you can't devour a pint of Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby with your arms all twisted up like that!