Running Like A Girl

Speedwork Take 2.

This week’s speedwork went much better (note:  I only do speedwork once/week as it should only be about 20% of your overall training).  I put into practice the things I learned from last week.  No doritos and I did it first thing in the morning  (granted, we are not having the extreme heat wave we were having last week either).

This one is called “In or Out”.  I like this one - it’s fun.  You run 8 400’s at approximately the same pace.  Your pace is determined by what your goal time is on an upcoming race.  You start every 4 minutes.  Once you run the 8th one, every one after that has to be faster than the one before or you are “out” (since I was doing this solo, there was no “out” really).  I was faster than I was supposed to be for the first 8, but I didn’t push it; it was a comfortable pace - EXCEPT for the 8th one, the one that counts, dummy.  I intended to run it at about the same pace but someone else showed up at the track and I became Miss Speedy Pants.  I dropped like 6 seconds off my time.  Then I was like well dammit, cause I had to beat it.  But I did.  9 & 10 were each 1 second faster; I dropped 3 seconds for 11 and then another 9 seconds for the 12th and last one.  This makes me realize that I was holding back too much on 9,10, and 11.  And I don’t think I went all out on 12 - makes me wonder how fast I could do it.

I’m liking this.  Speedwork is my friend.

- Runner girl

Well, I attempted speedwork last night.  “Attempted” being the operative word here.  It was all kinds of ugly.  What I learned:

1. Doing speedwork at 5:30 PM in 100 degree heat (with a heat index of what 105?  110?) NOT a good idea.  It’s either too early (7 PM would be better) or way too late (5 AM sounds good).
2. You need sunscreen even in the evenings.  I could feel my shoulder burning.
3. DO NOT (and this is very important so I’m going to repeat it) DO NOT eat a half bag of doritos (or probably any doritos for that matter) on the day of doing speedwork.  I didn’t even say not to eat them right before running, because that’s not the case - anytime is a problem.

I was doing 5×1000’s last night.  I ended up doing 3×1000’s.  I felt so lousy I did the last 2 this morning at 5 AM (much better timing).  I don’t think speedwork has the desired effect though when you split it up.

And I end on this note:  If you wanna make the world a better place, then take a look at yourself and make a change. Good bye Michael Jackson.  Vaya con dios.

- Runner girl

I saw my bff chiro on Monday and he gave me the go-ahead to train for a half-marathon.  He said it is trial and error and that I’m probably going to have to cut back on my other stuff (ie boot camp) because if I am running 30 miles/week and doing a couple of boot camps, I’m just going to end up reinjuring myself or having a whole new injury. I guess he is getting to know me, because that is exactly what I’d be doing:  running, boot camps, hard core ab class, body sculpting, tennis.  I want to do it all– but that’s not really working for me.

He did say though, that it is very important that I do speedwork — and here I was wondering if that was something I could skip!  Guess not.  He described it like this: say you have a car.  The engine burns gasoline (input) to run and expells exhaust (output).  Your body is like the car in that your muscles burn carbohydrates for energy (input - and if you don’t burn these they turn to FAT - yuck!) and expells lactic acid (output).  Training helps you get rid of the lactic acid before it builds to the point that it causes muscle fatigue.  At the cellular level, training means building up mitochondria in muscle cells - which burns lactate for energy.

The moral of the story is that you need to train beyond your lactate threshold (the intensity at which lactic acid starts to accumulate in your blood) which helps to train your body to more efficiently process it as a fuel — and thus, you can run faster and longer.

Oh, yeah, that would be speedwork.

- Runner girl

That’s what I told Tina should be the new name for Boot Camp.  At my first class, a girl was taken off by EMTs (asthma attack); there have been sprained ankles, bruises, velcro scrapes, rope burn.  Just yesterday a girl pulled a pull up bar down on her nose.  Fortunately she caught it before it hit her too hard or she would have a broken nose.  Note:  this is the same girl that sprained her ankle.

There are probably some of us that are more injury-prone than others.  I seem to be the only one who got all the bruises up and down my legs from the rope.  They are practically gone now and although I still seem to slide down sometimes on that rope, the bruises are going away.  So I think maybe that area is toughening up.  And yesterday, I banged up my shin again on the wall.  Tina had made the wall taller and a lot of us were struggling to get over it.  Anyway, I jumped just a sec too soon and ended up banging my shin on the step.  That’s where the blood came in.  And bandaid.  And swelling.  And peroxide.

I guess this is what you can expect when you have 30 & 40 somethings doing boot camp.  We get kinda banged up.  But then again, one time (note:  one time) we had some 20 year olds show up.  They went home and told their moms that they were half the age of everyone else in the class and about half as fit.

So, what’s with a little blood . . .

- Runner girl

When I was in my late teens/early twenties, my stepfather took us out on his boat and I learned to water ski.  My brother and sister had been skiing with friends before, so I was the only one who didn’t know how.  I can still hear my mom calling out over the water:  “Don’t be a wimp pigeon.”

Now that I am contemplating whether I am healed enough to train for a fall half-marathon, those words are coming back to haunt me.  My foot/heel is much improved; but I know I am not totally healed.  Evidently, the pain is the last thing that you feel and the first thing to go away (according to my bff chiro).  I can tell that my feet are stronger.  I no longer have pain after my hard core class or after boot camp.  I no longer get leg spasms that start in the arch of my foot and go up my leg (I got these in both legs; probably not fasciitis-related; but the strengthening has made them go away).  I can run.

But I still get pain.  Last weekend, I ran 3 miles and walked 6 (overdid it!) and was sore for days.  I still cannot play tennis.  And today I felt like my arch was stretching 3.5 miles into what was going to be a 5 mile run.  When I run around barefoot, my foot starts to bother me (WEAR SHOES my bff says).

So, am I ready?  Am I not ready?  IS IT TOO SOON?  Am I going to go backwards?  Lord knows I don’t want to have to stop all activity again.  Training starts next weekend so I’m going to have to figure this out.  I have an appt. with bff coming up.  If he gives me the go-ahead, that will give me the confidence I need to give it a shot.  Otherwise, I’ll just stick with my current workout plan for the summer and push that half-marathon back.  There are always more races.

The thing I’ve learned about injuries thus far is that they don’t heal when I want them to - they heal when they are damn well good and ready.

- Runner girl

A recent study of 17000+ Canadians aged 18-90 proved something that we’re already aware of - the more you move, the longer you will live.  However, a new interesting angle popped up.  It seems that the more you sit, the quicker you will go on to the great beyond.  Exercise did not mitigate the effects of sitting; increased sitting time was linked to higher death rates of all causes except cancer.  Yes, a higher mortality risk exists if you spend loads of time sitting — even if you engage in regular physical activity.

And yet another study says that lack of sleep can send us to the checkout line sooner.  Adults need, on average, 7-9 hours of sleep at night and most of us aren’t getting it.  Even a one hour deficit over 5 years raises the risk of developing high blood pressure 37%.  High blood pressure contributes to 7 million deaths worldwide each year.

Now I don’t know what to do!!!  Sleep?  . . . Or walk?  Sleep?  Or walk?  Sleep?  Or walk?

Duh.  Sleepwalk.

- Runner girl

I recently started biking trails on Sundays for my cross training activity.  And I have learned A LOT.

1. Biking is easier than running (at least the way I do it).  I think coasting is even encouraged. You can’t coast when you run.  I believe that is called “stopping”.
2. Going 18 miles on your bike is much faster than going 18 miles on your feet.
3. You collect many many bugs on your arms if you are wearing sunscreen.
4. Keep your mouth shut or you will collect many many bugs in your teeth.
5. I need to massage my butt after bike riding - not so much after running.

And the best part about biking is stopping at Bobby’s Frozen Custard for a turtle sundae on the way home (junior size, lite 98% ff custard — I’m not stupid, afterall).

- Runner girl

Now my favorite post recovery drink (well, after a race I will often drink a chocolate milk and then a beer), low fat chocolate milk, is an even better recovery drink than previously thought.  I started drinking chocolate milk after long runs during my marathon training last summer thanks to my running guru.  She said it was a great recovery drink because it is 4:1 Carb:Protein.  And it tasted great.  I didn’t even know I liked chocolate milk until then as I have never been much of a milk drinker.

The latest study by James Madison University states that chocolate milk is better for muscle recovery than your typical sports drink with the same calories.  It tested the same in all other aspects, like muscle strength, but was superior for muscle recovery because of significantly lower levels of creatine kinase (an indicator of muscle damage) in the milk drinkers versus the drinkers of sports drinks.

So, chocolate milk: not only good for your bones, also good for your muscles.  My mom is so smart.

- Runner girl

I have been worried about my breathing getting back up to par since I started running again.  Doing boot camp twice/week means I have only been running 4 days (instead of at least 5) and I have been blaming that on my breathing issue (the issue being that it’s just not what it should be).  Had me scared (crying like a girl scared . . . ok, not really).  Decided I should start running on at least one boot camp day and maybe that would solve the problem.

But just when I am ready to push the panic button, things improve! My breathing is good again.  No problem.  And thus, my running is better.  I think I’m back to the pace I was before the injury.  I’m just not back to the distance yet, but that will come.  I ran 5 miles Saturday - the most I have run (is it run or ran??  I never know.) since the foot injury.  Now, distance becomes more mental than physical.

But there’s no way I’m gonna give up.

- Runner girl

This morning in boot camp we had a new, shall we say, hurdle.  It was actually a wall.  We had to run up, jump up, and go over that wall.  I looked at it and thought, man, I don’t know how to do that.  On my first attempt, I used a step at the bottom - evidently, that was cheating.  No using the step.  From then on I did it without the step.  And I have new bruises to prove it:  I banged my knee coming down on the backside and scraped up the front of my legs on the velcro from the mats that created the wall.  Or did I get those scratches from the rope??  Hard to remember.  I think she was trying to kill us today.  Just when you think you’re going to throw up, she has us sprinting races.  And then, we run stairs.  First one to throw up, wins.  Or is that, loses?  I’m confused.

Tina said she dreamed up today’s wall in her sleep.  Me?  I was dreaming about banana pancakes.

- Runner girl