Double training post (3/2/2014 to 3/15/2014)

Sunday 3/2: Workout - 2 mile warmup, 10 mile tempo in 54:51 (Splits: 5:34, 5:34, 5:36, 5:26, 5:33, 5:29, 5:30, 5:35, 5:23, 5:07), 1.5 mile cooldown. 4.6 miles at 7:30 pace in the evening.

Monday 3/3: 8.6 miles (PM) at 7:20 pace

Tuesday 3/4: 6.2 miles (AM) and 6.05 miles (PM) at 7:30 and 7:50 pace

Wednesday 3/5: Workout - 20 minute warmup, 4 mile tempo in 21:28 (5:23, 5:21, 5:23, 5:20), 5 min jog, then 2x(5x400 w/ 100 rec), 400 btw sets in 74.3, (30), 70.3, (30), 71.3, (29), 71.8, (30), 71.8 (1:58) 71.8, (29), 71.3, (29), 71.8, (30), 72.2, (29), 71.6. And yes, that is the format from Once a Runner, and yes I only did 10 instead of 60. Sue me.

Thursday 3/6: 8.6 miles (AM) and 6 miles (PM) at 7:25 and 7:20 pace

Friday 3/7: 8 miles (AM) and 5.3 miles (PM) at 7:25 and 7:45 pace

Saturday 3/8: Race - Bayou City Classic 10k in Houston. Got 2nd to Sammy Kiplagat in 32:22. The race was very odd - I got 4th last year (top 3 get some money) with a 31:30, but this year I was at or near the front from the gun. In terms of decisions, I knew I had no chance against Sammy, so the best strategy was to push the pace and ensure I got away from everyone else. It went just about according to plan, as by 5ish miles (when Sammy finally passed me) I had a good 45 seconds on everyone else. 5 mile double at 8 minute pace in the evening.

Weekly Total: 94 miles total, 24-25 miles of quality. Nearly a great week of training, but through a combo of working late a couple days and just plain old laziness I missed a couple runs, so it was just a very good week of training. The quality was all there, which is the important thing.

Sunday 3/9: 8 miles (AM) and 5.4 miles (PM) at 7:55 and 7:15 pace

Monday 3/10: 11.4 miles (AM) and 4.7 miles (PM) at 7:20 pace for both

Tuesday 3/11: 8.6 miles (AM) and 6 miles (PM) at 7:30 and 7:10 pace (plus 4x 20 second pickups in the PM)

Wednesday 3/12: Workout - 2 mile warmup, 14 miles of 5 minutes on, 5 minutes off fartlek averaging 5:37 pace overall. Really this was supposed to be a long tempo, but it was windy out and (little secret) I find it easier to not stress about pace in bad conditions if I'm doing a fartlek format. 4 miles in the evening at 7:40 pace.

Thursday 3/13: 6.5 miles (AM) and 6 miles (PM) at 8:00 pace and 7:45 pace

Friday 3/14: 7.5 miles (AM) and 7.7 miles (PM) at 7:30 pace and 7:20 pace

Saturday 3/15: 7.3 miles (AM) at 7:20 pace and track workout in the PM - 10x400, 10x200 all with 200 recovery. Splits were 71, 69, 69, 70, 70, 69, 70, 69, 70, 70, 34, 33, 33, 34, 34, 33, 33, 33, 33, 31 (recoveries avg 55). Total 10k in 35:55. Trying to get back in shorter distance shape bit by bit and this was a good step in the right direction. Still have a ways to go though - those 200s were freaking hard.

Weekly Total: 109 miles, 20ish miles of quality. Great mix this week, a solid long workout on Wednesday and a good starter track workout on Saturday. I'm hoping to PR at 5k in the next couple months, which means getting comfortable at 70-71s. I would not call today's workout "comfortable" by any stretch, but baby steps right?

Training 2/23 to 3/1

TWO WEEKS IN A ROW!? WHAT????

Sunday 2/23: Raced the Cowtown Marathon in 2:35 to get a share of the money for breaking the existing course record of 2:36. Felt good, ran 5:47 pace through 20 miles then slowed down a bit for the last 10k.

Monday 2/24: 4 miles (Lunch) at 8:05 pace. Felt terrible, super sore in the achilles from the race

Tuesday 2/25: 6.8 miles (AM) and 4 miles (PM) at 7:50 to 7:56 pace

Wednesday 2/26: 9.5 miles (AM) and 4 miles (PM) at 7:30 to 7:50 pace

Thursday 2/27: 8.5 miles (AM) and 5.5 miles (PM) at 6:45 (did a workout with Emily - 6 miles at 6:20ish
pace) to 7:20 pace

Friday 2/28: WORKOUT (finally!): 10.2 miles (AM) with 3.2 miles @ 5:21 pace, 4 minute jog, 7x30 second sprint, 1:30 recovery around McAllister Park (total of 5.7 miles @ 6:04 pace). Felt good, very different running fast after a long time not working on that. The tempo felt just a little bit out of control but not bad all things considered.

Saturday 3/1: 8.2 miles (AM) and 5.5 miles (PM) at 7:15 to 7:30 pace.

Weekly Total: 93 miles total, roughly 30 miles of quality? Debatable whether the last few miles of the marathon really count, but since I'm making up this definition, I'm counting it. I had planned on doing my first real workout back on Thursday, but I still felt absolutely terrible by then. Cowtown is a tough, tough course, and it beat me up good. That being said Friday's workout felt great, so I'm happy to be back to training seriously. Also, small preview, I did a 10 mile tempo this morning in 54:51, so not at all a bad workout. Although sadly now only slightly below marathon pace.

Happy training everyone! And Texans enjoy at least one more week of winter weather!

Training: 2/16 to 2/22

Confession: I can absolutely see how my training would be less than useful, if not wildly uninteresting. I'm still too slow to be looked up to as an elite runner (the type whose training logs I have absolutely devoured in my day), but also probably too serious/intense in training to be a useful example for the average joe. I love it when people ask me for running advice, and I always do my best to help them out, but the last thing I would say is "oh just check out my log and copy that, you'll do great."

But at the same time I think if we're going to have this blog, it shouldn't just be for the big sporadic updates. So I'm going to try to give a really quick summary of what I did each week in case anyone finds it remotely useful in their own athletic lives.

A note first: the things that I consider important in training are 1.) hard workouts, and 2.) total mileage. Somewhere in there are a whole bunch of other really important things like sleep, hydration, hours worked, etc. but since I don't measure those with any regularity they will be ignored. But I digress.

Sun 2/16: 7.5 miles (AM) and 4.6 miles (PM) easy - 7:30 to 8:00 pace

Mon 2/17: 8.2 miles (AM) and 5.0 miles (PM) easy - 7:25 to 7:40 pace

Tue 2/18: Warmup, 7x 3 min fast / 3 min medium fartlek (41 min total). Covered 7.32 miles at 5:30 pace average, no idea on the actual pace of individual fast/slow parts.

Wed 2/19: 4.6 miles (AM) and 5.9 miles (PM) easy - 7:30 to 7:40 pace

Thu 2/20: 8 miles easy (AM) and 4.3 miles with 8x12 seconds hill sprints (PM)

Fri 2/21: 6 miles (AM) and 4.6 miles (PM) easy - 7:20 to 7:40 pace

Sat 2/22: 4.6 miles (AM) and 3.1 miles (PM) easy with 3x20 second strides in PM

Week Total: 81 miles, ~8 miles of quality work

BONUS:
Sun 2/23: Ran the Cowtown Marathon in 2:35 (5:55/mile). First 20 miles in 1:55:40 (5:47 pace) then a little slower into the finish to get under the 2:36 existing course record.

Next up is getting back into serious training - so far I've just banked on residual fitness from my Houston buildup. Looking forward to keeping this thing updated with all of the good and the bad...

A Not So Smart Idea

So I'm doing something a little strange tomorrow: running another marathon. Now there are plenty of tough, battle-hardened individuals out there that can race marathons at near their full potential with no more than a week or two of recovery, but I am not one of them. I can barely run the first week post-race, and I remain physically and motivationally deficient for at least another two weeks. But when I heard that beautiful Fort Worth was offering up a decent chunk of change for everyone and anyone who can break the existing course record of 2:36, I thought "what the hell."

Game time! Ft Worth Edition

2:36 is 12 minutes slower than I ran at Houston 5 weeks ago. 27 seconds/mile. Piece of cake right? Honestly I really don't know. Certainly it's a more difficult course. And I don't know what will happen to my legs around mile 20, because guess what? The last time I did a run over 20 miles was...that other race. But I'm excited to get out there and run hard with the other 100 guys and gals who also had the same idea (that money is going to get split a loooooot of different ways). Here's hoping I can hold it together long enough to be one of them!

Lucky Marathon #9

Three weeks ago I ran the Houston Marathon and lowered my PR from 2:27 to 2:24. I guess since I haven't exactly been good about updating our blog, that deserves a little backstory.

I can start with all the changes I didn’t make. The easy narrative in this type of situation would be I got focused, trained harder than ever before, cleaned up my diet, etc - but unfortunately that isn’t even close to true. Am I still known to toast a good workout with a glass (or 6) of beer? Yep. Do fried chicken and mexican food still feature prominently in my diet? Definitely. Oh and the training I’ve done is more or less an exact replica of what I’ve done for previous marathons.

This isn’t to gloat or seem overconfident. My build up races were spotty at best. I prepared conscientiously and even tapered(!) for a 10 mile race in mid October - a race in which I ran 52:37 last year at the end of a 130 mile week - but this year I turned in an awesome 54:30. Thanks taper, really stellar work there.

But somewhere around mid-December I started to get in a groove. 4 weeks out I did a moderately hilly 20 mile tempo at 5:37 pace (which was my previous PR pace). Then came 8x(2k fast, 1k medium), hitting ~5:15 pace for the fast ones, 5:45 pace on the slow ones, for a total of 14+ miles at 5:23 pace. I could only smile as I sailed a minute under my time from that 10 miler and then kept going another 4+ miles.

The workout that gave me the most confidence though was 20 days before the race: 4x4 miles at just below marathon pace, with 1 mile “float” recoveries between at roughly 5:55 pace. I averaged 5:26-5:27 for the fast parts, and 5:31 pace for the entire 19 miles (2:24 pace). At that point I started to think that maybe 2:24 could be doable, but I tried to stick with my previous goal of 2:25-2:26 and not get ahead of myself.

Even with this attempt at conservativism, by race day I was beyond nervous. I didn’t help much at the time, but with hindsight I can see now that the weeks leading up to the race could not have gone any better. I got tons of sleep, drank plenty of water, and with the exception of the last 24 hours, didn’t let the nerves get to me. Lots of people at work getting sick? Nope, somehow doesn’t affect me. Ok maybe my legs didn’t feel great, but they never do during the taper.

Let’s revisit that whole 2:25 goal - on race morning I heard that the elite women were planning on going out at 1:12, which didn’t exactly match my original plan of negative splitting my way to 2:25 (more like 1:12 high or 1:13 at halfway). I figured it would be better to hang onto a pack of pros and their pacers than to do my own thing in no man’s land. I mean 5:30 I’ve been preparing for 5:33-5:35 pace, so what’s another 3 seconds? 5:30 pace won’t be so bad.

Early on, hanging by a thread

Except right from the gun we were hitting more like 5:25. I was a little frightened (ok, maybe terrified), but I stayed hanging off the back of their pack. Thankfully after 5 miles in 27:10 and 10k in 33:50ish, they started slowing down. To my goal pace? Nope, after going too fast for me for 6+ miles, they now went decidedly too slow (almost like the world doesn’t revolve around my exact pace goal? Weird). At that point I decided I was in too deep and should just go for it, for better or worse. I pushed forward and, after a couple mid 5:30s, brought the pace back down to high 5:26-5:29. I hit the halfway mark in 1:11:37, and I knew I was officially committed.

Making new friends

At this point the best possible thing happened to me: I caught another guy who was trying to run 2:24, no slower, no faster. JACKPOT! We worked together for 6 magical miles, splitting mostly high 5:20s along the way, until my inner moron again showed himself. My split at mile 18 was slower (5:37). And what does a moron do when confronted with exactly ONE (1!) slow split? Why crank the pace down to 10:44 for the next 2 miles of course. I hit 20 miles in 1:49:14. It made me very happy to see that split under 1:50.

I know it doesn't look like it, but I am actually feeling quite good

I hung tough through the next 5 miles, mostly in the mid 5:30s, but by the start of mile 26 I was cratering hard. 2:23 went out the window during that mile - a time that 2 days prior I would have told you was not even in question, but when you’re that close it’s hard not to get greedy. I got over that thought pretty quickly, and as I was coming down the homestretch I felt myself smiling despite the immense amount of discomfort I was in (definitely located that wall during 26). I felt (and still feel) a great sense of accomplishment. I did exactly what I set out to do, and I felt as though everything had gone exactly as I hoped. 

Last 50 meters 

If I could chalk this success up to one (or two) things I would say these:

1. A sudden and previously undiscovered ability to blow off a bad workout, and

2. The old ball and chain, Emily Daum.

I had a few stinker workouts in there, even mixed among the great ones towards the end, but for whatever reason I didn’t waste much thought on the bad ones. And as for #2, which may be related to #1, I let Em dictate a lot more of my decision making in training and racing. During training she helped me make good calls that kept me injury free and motivated, and during the taper she forced me to focus on rest to an extent that I haven’t previously. The result was the best feeling race of my life. Happy training everyone.

Don't Call it a Comeback

Well it’s been a little over a month since the last update. Im excited to say that I’m back to running again! I was cleared a little after six full weeks off (early-ish October). Jer and I wanted to take a more cautious back-to-training plan than what the doctor prescribed though. The thing we’re both worried about is coming back too aggressively only to be sidelined again. So we started off with 8 x 1 minute jogging/1 minute walking and slowly progressed from there.

Finally, three weeks later, I was able to do my first running workout. It had been ten weeks since the last time I went FAST! Jer gave me a fartlek, 5 x 2 minutes on/1 minute off. I had been doing all my runs on grass, but I convinced him to let me do my fast parts on the track because I was curious to see exactly how fast I was going. I ended up average 5:25-5:35 pace for the 2 minutes on segements. I did the minute recoveries on the grass. I was extremely gassed on the last few, but I can’t begin to describe how amazing it felt to move my legs again, to feel my lungs working that hard, and to just be on the track putting one foot in front of the other again.

My next workout was nearly a week later, a three mile tempo at 6:30-6:40 pace. I was really nervous going into this one. To me it was going to be a true testament to what kind of shape I was in after taking soooo much time off. It was also going to show if all that time I spent cross training actually did anything. It was a really muggy day, so I was crossing my fingers that I could even hit the prescribed goal pace; usually my asthma is so bad on humid days. I get started and end up hitting the 200m in 43 (5:45-ish pace) and knew that I’d be ok. I slowed it down and hit 6:13, 6:13, 6:09 for the three consecutive 1600’s. Needless to say I was ecstatic with how the workout went. This is basically what I would consider a good workout after coming back from a season break (1-1.5 weeks off).

My last big workout was Thursday. It was seven by alternating 1000m’s at 6:00 pace for the fast ones and 7:00 pace for the up-tempo ones. I ended up averaging 6:08 pace for the 7000 meters and worked my fast ones down from 3:39-3:31. It has been the best feeling workout since coming back. No issues breathing and I felt like my old self.

As of now I’m running two to three times a weeks with my mileage being around 12-20 miles per week. We’re focusing more on getting in running workouts rather than mileage right now. So I’ve been supplementing the low mileage with hours and hours of cross training (11-13 hours a week of it). The cross training has been more geared towards swimming and aqua jogging now, since the intensity has gone up with running. I’m still doing a little ellipticalling and exercise biking, but not as much as before.

A lot of other wonderful things have happened over the last month. For one, my midget twin/bff recently got engaged to the sweetest guy in Fort Worth. Will and Lizzie are the kindest people and I’m so excited to see them venture into marriage. Oh and that isn’t the only exciting life event that happened to Lizzie recently, just a few weeks ago she qualified for the 2016 Olympic Trials! She ran an impressive 2:42 at the Chicago Marathon. So proud of her!!

The last piece of running news comes from my assistant coaching world. The men and women's teams at Trinity captured their second consecutive conference titles!! Last year the ladies made history by running a perfect score (finishing 1-2-3-4-5). This year they decided to repeat that difficult feat! In the men’s race we knew Colorado College would be our toughest competition. The entire race it was as close as it could be. Well we ended up winning by ONE point! IT was a great day to be a Trinity Tiger!! We just got back from Regionals on Sunday and our ladies won the team title for the second straight year. We’re headed to Indiana tomorrow for the 2013 NCAA Division III National Championships! The girls are actually racing on the SAME course Liz and I ran on our senior year where we placed sixth overall as a team. The team this year is just as driven and is in a great position to make Trinity and SCAC history!

TUXC - 2013 SCAC Champions!

Golden Year

Last Friday, the 27th of September, was my 27th birthday. 27 on the 27th! I just recently found out that means it’s my GOLDEN YEAR!! How cool does that sound? It supposedly means it’ll be my best year and I hope that turns out to be true. It has at least started out that way. I had the best birthday weekend ever, surrounded by so many friends and family.

It started off with an awesome breakfast, post workout, from my wonderful husband Jeremy. He brought me my favorite bagel and drink from Panera. A couple hours later was lunch with the best team in the world, at Trinity’s dining hall. The team gave me a GIANT birthday card (the biggest I’ve ever gotten), a cute stuffed puppy, and a big bag of sour patch kids. They are a great group of kids.

Asiago bagel and caramel frozen drink...yum!

TUXC lunch...sooooooo happy!

Biggest birthday card EVA!

My cute puppy and the kindest words in the world

In the evening time we planned a dinner at one of my favorite places, Sushi Zushi, and then moved the party over to our house. It was also a pretty diverse group, united only by being beautiful, awesome people. It ranged from middle school best friend, college roommates, running community friends, family, work friends, and even a college running rival who has become one of my bff’s. There was tons of yummy food, great drinks, and lots of fun! 

Sushi Zushi group...so good

We made a cake for some awesome friends that came over...I think I'll keep my day job :)

Party peeps!

They forced me to get on the table

The weekend capped off with a trip over to my parents. The food was delicious, the company was spectacular, and I even got to try out some stick shift driving! GAH! It went as well as expected….no one died (except for Jer’s car’s engine a couple times), so I consider that a win.

Now what kind of running blog would this be if I didn’t mention running? Well guys, I haven’t done a lot of it the last six weeks. In fact, today marks exactly six weeks of ZERO running for me. I was experiencing some slight discomfort in my lower right shin and turns out it was a stress fracture. It’s my first serious running injury EVER. 

It's the little black dot on the inside right leg

The news hit me hard, but honestly these last six weeks have gone by faster than I thought they would. I miss it more than words can describe, but I’ve been working hard to make sure I’m not too far behind once I’m on the road again. I’ve been averaging a little under two hours a day of cross training for the last month. It includes aqua jogging, biking, and, with the recent clearance, using the elliptical. I’m seeing the doctor early next week and judging by how the last visit went he should be giving me clearance to run again. Woot!

So even though my golden year started off with me not being able to do one of the things i’m most passionate about, I’ve realized how lucky I am to be surrounded by an amazing husband, loving friends, and an irreplaceable family.

PS: Jer's gonna post an update soon....I promise!