Adjusted Reality

If you’ve been following me here this shouldn’t be any surprise, but for the rest of you and for my posterity, here is how last week went:

Monday: 6 mile run + yoga

Check, and check.   Run was good, I felt crappy at the beginning it, but felt better by the end.  I love those runs.  I still find that doing yoga in the morning is the only way I can really tolerate it, really like it even.

Tuesday: yoga and 35 minute tempo run (5 mins jog, 25 mins hard run, 5 mins jog)

Check and check.  Did the yoga before work and hit the gym to do the tempo run since it was hotter than a frying pan outside.

Wednesday: DDR and yoga

Check and check.  Did this before work since I wasn’t sure what sort of crazy work was going to throw at me and ended up actually getting off on time, so it was a nice night.

Thursday: weights and 3.5 mile run

Not check and not check.  There is one day of the month where it takes all my mental mettle to get my fatigued and crampy ass off the couch, but I usually do it.  This day, however, I was woken up with said pains at like 3 am and couldn’t fall back asleep until almost 6.  So after 4 hours of broken up sleep on top of regular ol’ fatigue – I figured working out would do more harm than good.  I ate pizza and sat on the couch and vegged.

Friday: Rest!

Not check, but appropriately so.  Since I skipped all of Thursday’s workout, I just felt like I needed to not go from Wednesday to Saturday without a run.  I did an easy 3 mile and felt good.  I did totally skip the weight session though, which meant no weights all week.

Saturday: Race and Biking Adventure

I’ll cover the race more tomorrow, but let me just say – uh, hells yeah.  Then later, we did a slightly shorter 15 mile round trip bike ride to a co-worker’s house to play poker.  Spark says I burnt over 2000 calories this day.  Good thing, because I ate like 3000+.  Funny how the body just takes over and says “Nuh uh, girlfriend, we are eating a LOT when I expend a lot.”  Good for it!

Sunday: Rest.

Check.  Oh hell yah.  I got groceries and did laundry.  The rest of the day I spent within 10 feet or less of the couch.

Total week 4 mileage (running):  18.7 (plus about a mile of walking)
Total week 4 mileage biking: 15

Week 5?  Let’s do it!  Races are done, now it’s time to start going the distance…

Monday: 4 mile run and weights at the gym

Tuesday: yoga and 7×400 sprints (sprint 1 lap around the track, jog one lap, rinse and repeat)

Wednesday: yoga and 40 mins of DDR

Thursday: 4 mile run and weights at home

Friday: 7 mile run (and I think this might be the first time I use the gel/moons/beans etc)

Saturday: Bike Adventure

Sunday: Rest

Things I learned last week:

1.  Sometimes an unplanned rest day is the best thing for you.  I thought it was just going to decimate my ability to perform in the race but I think it did me a lot more good than if I pushed through my exhausted day.  And I think a short easy run the day before the race was better than resting.  Nothing hard enough to make me sore, but just enough to keep the muscles loose.

2.  Let’s hope I still feel the same way next week, but skipping weights twice is not the end of the world.  I think I’ll skip the weights the week of the half marathon too.  My muscles felt more…rested.  Makes sense though.  I am also seeing that increasing distance later in the training = increasing time worked out and something might have to give.  Once I get to 5 mile short run days, weights might go to once per week.  I *DO* plan to go super weight heavy after I run this race, so it will all balance out in the grand scheme of things, eventually.

3.  I like 10ks better than 5ks.  Maybe I’ll like half marathons better than 10ks!  I usually feel like it takes me a mile or so to get into my groove, and for a 5k, that’s a third of the race!  For the 10k…well, I’ll talk more about it tomorrow.  But running the distance in a race was amazing.

4.  Some days you are really into it and it’s magical.  Some days you’re not into when you start, but you feel great when you get going, and you just have to thank yourself for having the drive to get up off the couch and the faith that doing is better than not doing.  Some days, you’re not into it and you just have to power through and it doesn’t get better, but it does end.  Those days are few and far between though, and if they’re not, you’re probably doing something wrong.

5.  This week (5) starts the shift into expanding my comfort zone.  4+ miles as my short runs is going to take a head shift.  I run 7 miles as my long run this week, and that’s half a mile longer than I’ve ran before – which is probably not terribly significant and I’ll be fine.  But what’s eating the back of my head is next week is 8 miles.  That seems a lot longer.  I mean, it’s gotta happen if I want to do 13.1, but I usually run a distance quite a few times before I stretch further.  However, I am assured by many sources that the extra distance just sort of comes naturally and I could actually hurt my body training the way that feels right (tons of long rons, practice makes perfect, right).  We shall see.  All I can do is map the routes, put on my shoes, and see what I can do.

If you’ve been following me here this shouldn’t be any surprise, but for the rest of you and for my posterity, here is how last week went:

Monday: 3 mile treadmill run + full body weights at home

Check, and check. Did the weights in the morning at home, and did the run in the gym after work since it was rainy. Nothing spectacular to report here. Tried to make this an easy run, but failed. Especially on the treadmill, I just wanna be DONE.

Tuesday: yoga and 30 minute tempo run (5 minute jog, 20 mins at a fast but sustainable single pace, 5 minute jog)

I love me some tempo running. I like pushing my pace. Unfortunately I sorta failed at it being a true tempo run, but since it was my first one, I’ll cut myself some slack. I kept pace for about 10 minutes, then had to go slower for about 3, then found a pace that was somewhere in between the fast and slow for the rest of the duration. With my completely inaccurate timing system, I estimate I did about 2.5 miles in 20 mins. Which is about an 8 minute mile. This week, I have a new stopwatch watch so I can more accurately time myself.

Wednesday: 30 minutes DDR and yoga

Check and check. Did this in the morning because I anticipated a crazy late day at work which didn’t come, so it was a nice early evening to relax. Since it was a beautiful day we sat outside and drank beers, which did not promote excitement the next day for getting up early and running.

Thursday: 3 mile outside run + full body weights at the gym

Check and check. But ya know what, run I did. It wasn’t even so bad. I was able to keep myself at a nice easy pace and by the end I felt great! Then that evening, I hit the gym and did the long, slow weights session (half the reps – but not less than 8 because that seemed like a waste of time – and twice as slow). It was a nice change, but I’m not sold. I might throw this in every once in a while after this training is done, but I don’t think it did much for me. Maybe try 2/3 the reps next time.

Friday: 6 mile run

Check! Was a nice run. I ate a crap ton of food the night before and actually strode into mile 6 feeling energized and like I could keep going instead of exhausted. I did get a blister and felt my shoes were a little worn, but energy-wise – I was totally on. I wanted to try out my running skirt but it was too cold when I started out.

Saturday: Shopping

I only mention it because I was out shopping ALL day (from about noon until 9) and I think it made me WAY more tired than my 6 mile run. The weather was crappy and rainy and Zliten was tired from helping the neighbor with landscaping jobs this week, so we passed on the bike ride we wanted to do.

Sunday: Rest

Check. Spent Easter relaxing. The only active thing I did was playing bean bag toss with the ‘rents.

Total week 2 mileage (running): 15 (plus about an extra mile warmup and cooldowns)
Total week 2 mileage: 15

Week 3 has already begun! Here’s what’s on tap-

Monday: 3.5 mile run outside + full body weights at home

Tuesday: yoga and 6×400 (1 lap warmup, 1 lap 5k pace, 1 lap jog, repeat pace and jog 5 times, 1 lap cooldown)

Wednesday: 3.5 mile outside run + full body weights at the gym (one set to exhaustion)

Thursday: 35 minutes DDR and yoga (switched normal Wed + Thurs to have a more chill workout the day before my race)

Friday: 5k race!

Saturday: Rest

Sunday: Bike ride (and hopefully canoeing)

Total week 3 mileage: 13.5 (plus whatever we do on the bike)

The mileage went down because the race takes the place of the long run, but a 3.1 mile all out is just as tiring as a long run! I’m looking forward to getting another race under my belt.

Things I learned last week:

1. The instincts of a gymnast are ingrained in me forever. On mile 5 of my long run, I was shuffling a bit and hit an uneven curb and tripped and fell. I essentially just rolled over my shoulder and kept going, I didn’t even stop or miss a stride. I used to do that in hurdles all the time. Made me happy that even 14 years after my last double full, some things never go away.

2. Eating a big dinner before particularly long/hard runs is essential. While I’m sure eating a big healthy breakfast, letting it settle for a few hours, and then running would be better, I can’t (won’t) do that. It was nice to feel like I wasn’t sputtering out of gas by the end of the run. Will try not to have the dinner include so much fried food and sugar next time, though….

3. Partying the night before is an effective, but not recommended method of keeping myself to a easy running pace.

4. I am really getting into getting either half or all of my workout done before work. It sets the tone for the day – if everything else is going wrong, at least I had a great weights/yoga/run session. I am realizing that Friday mornings are going to become increasingly earlier and earlier.

5. There is no real judge on how your shoes are holding up better than how they feel the last mile of a long run. Prompted me to go get new shoes this weekend since I felt great beyond my heels feeling a little less padded than they should an developing a blister on my left arch. Strangely enough, after trying on all the shoes in the store, I went with my same pair in a different color, in a half size smaller. Who knew that 40 lbs lost = half a shoe size!

Comments are still disabled due to spammers from hell, but I’m going to tinker with it tonight again, I swear! If anyone can let me know how to install a captcha required on WordPress here, or any other ideas on how to keep the blog on a spam-lite diet, please email me at pinksparkly at yahoo dot com. Otherwise, I might just be moving the blog somewhere spambots can’t go. Hope everyone had a happy Easter and I’ll be back soon, hopefully with commenty goodness!

If you’ve been following me here this shouldn’t be any surprise, but for the rest of you and for my posterity, here is how last week went:

Monday: 3 mile treadmill run + full body weights at the gym

Check, and check.  Did these both after work at the gym.  I actually busted my ass with my time on this and did the 3 miles in about 28 minutes.  Weights were good, but for some reason took longer than normal.  Maybe I was just working harder than normal and needed extra rest between sets.

Tuesday: yoga and 4×400 pace run at the track (1 lap warmup, 1 lap 5k pace, 1 lap jog, repeat pace and jog 3 times, 1 lap cooldown)

Check and check.  I did the yoga before work and headed to the track after work to do the run.  Instead of a lap to warm up and cool down I just ran there and back (which is about a mile round trip).  I figured out a good way to time myself – with my Zune! At the beginning of each timed lap, I started the next song on my playlist and then stopped it when I finished.  I wanted to stay within an 8-9 minute mile pace which I did each fast lap.  I felt like I could push myself a little harder each lap but didn’t want to sprint like I was actually racing a 400 meter (which I actually did in middle school track, running this way brought back memories).

Wednesday: 30 minutes DDR and yoga

Check and check.  Did the yoga again before work.  I have to say, I actually really quite like yoga much better in the mornings, it’s a great way to wake up.  At night, I just want to be over and done with my workouts as quickly as possible so I can never really relax during it.  By this day, I was glad it was DDR and not running, as my legs were ready for a break.

Thursday: 3 mile outside run + full body weights at home

Check and check.  I did the weights in the morning at home and tried 1 set to exhaustion (where I start doing pushups and don’t stop until I fall over, then move on to the next exercise instead of 3 sets).  I think I am in love.  It was quicker, it was harder, it definitely worked me in different ways, and I loved it.  This is definitely a keeper.  The run – eh, I was sore from the morning’s weights (did it after work), and was just not into it when I started, but by the first mile marker I was in my groove and at a good pace.

Friday: 5 mile run

Check!  Got up in the morning and knocked this out before work.  I felt a little stiff during this but figured by the end of the run I’d feel better but I didn’t.  The whole day, my tailbone/lower back was KILLING me.  I thought my tailbone injury was going to relapse – which I haven’t had since I started regularly working out again, and which also tends to put me out of commision for up to a week.  However, with some stretching, ice, a hot shower, and a liberal dose of whiskey (ya know, to keep me loose…), the next day I didn’t wake up injured, just stiff.  I think I slightly pulled a butt muscle.  Which I can totally deal with.

Saturday: 15 mile bike ride and 5 mile walk

Unplanned check!  Found out the local running store RunTex was doing a free unofficial 4k or 4 mile walk/run, ending at a restaurant with free food.  I was totally up for the 4 mile run except Friday’s butt fiasco made me question whether it was worth injuring myself for an unofficial race.  Plus, if I walked it Zliten and I could do it together AND we’d be cool to ride the bikes the 12 miles down to the store.  We had a beautiful ride down and JUST made the starting time, hiked our 4k to Curatos, enjoyed tons of water and good grub, and then hiked the 4k back.  We got on the bikes and rode a bit, and after seeing our bus home pass us a few times, we hopped on about 3 miles in and enjoyed the AC.  I was going to push myself and try to make it home, but I was also on less than 5 hours of sleep and doubt I would have made it out to our friend’s housewarming party that night after a 24 mile bike ride w/a 5 mile walk.  That’s just insane.

Sunday: Rest

Total check!  We drove everywhere we needed to go that day, which involved shopping and mass amounts of Chinese buffet.  My butt and the couch became reacquainted and were happy together.

Total week 1 mileage (running): 13.5
Total week 1 mileage (on foot): 18.5 (biking): 15

Now we are careening headfirst into Week 2!  Here is the plan…

Monday: 3 mile run (outside if the weather cooperates) + full body weights at home

Tuesday: yoga and 30 minute tempo run (5 mins jog, 20 mins fast run, 5 mins jog)

Wednesday: 30 minutes DDR and yoga

Thursday: 3 mile outside run + full body weights at the gym (half the reps, twice as slow)

Friday: 6 mile run

Saturday: Rest

Sunday: Rest

Total week 2 mileage: 15.  Rest may or may not involve a bike ride one of those days.

Look pretty similar?  It is – the only difference is a tempo run instead of track intervals and 1 more mile on the longer run (since I’ve done the distance before I’m not worried about it).

In the first week I’ve learned these things:

1.  Stretching is VITAL now that I’m running 4 days a week and active for 6.  I haven’t had body pains in a long time, but Friday’s butt muscle freak out and today, my shoulder blade being a little out shows me I’m pushing myself in ways I haven’t in a while.  2 days a week of yoga is good, but I need to make sure I’m stretching every day.  If I don’t have time to do it before work, do it after and don’t forget!

2.  I am definitely going to take the focus off calorie counts and limiting portions these 3 months.  In fact, this week I am going off of calorie counts entirely to give myself a break.  I don’t plan on going crazy, but gonna try to eat when I’m hungry, don’t eat when I’m not, and try to eat as many Good Things as I can and as few Bad Things as possible.  Ya know, be sane and all.  This 151-153 range I’m at right now isn’t where I want to stay, but it looks pretty good on me.  I reserve the right to change my mind on this, but right now, I’d rather run a half marathon at the end of June than lose weight.  If it happens – hey, that’s awesome.  I’d love to accidentally drop at least 2 lbs below my current low so I can be within the normal BMI for my height, but I guess that’s more semantics than anything else.  I think no matter what weight I run a half marathon at, I’m doing pretty much alright.

3.  I have to start differentiating my training between short run and long run pace.  I can right now run 3 miles in just under 30 minutes, and 5 miles in about 50 minutes.  I should not be running both at approximately the same pace.  Either I’m pushing myself too hard on the long runs or not pushing myself hard enough on the short runs.  According to this calculator – based on my 5k in February, it wants me to slow the steady state runs WAY down.  I’m running all my runs at almost tempo pace – which is the only pace I really have.  What I think that means is I’m ready for a faster 5k race pace if I’m running it regularly in practice.  It’s two weeks until the 5k I have planned, so we shall see.  I’ll definitely have to play with my pacing this week.

4.  I like having the weekends off.  Since Friday night generally is a partying night, Saturday long runs just don’t work for me.  There is nothing like some awesome moderate exercise to kill a hangover, but a long run?  No thank you.  Also, we’ve taken to doing long bike rides on the weekends, and I’d rather not have to run and bike on the same day.  So my training is probably going to stay Monday – Friday for now.  Hopefully 5 days in a row doesn’t kill me.  The other option is counting my bike rides as the day of cross training and cut out the DDR, but…I don’t wanna!  I think I might cry if I have to give up DDR for 3 months.

5.  I also like doing some/all working out in the mornings.  Anyone who knew me before I started this blog is say “who is this girl and what have you done with the night owl?”  I don’t know what happened, but if the 30s have embodied anything yet, it’s been morning workouts.  On my birthday, I got up and did weights and a run before work, and ever since then, I’ve really enjoyed getting up and getting at least half my workout done.  This morning, I got up and did weights so all I have is my 3 mile run after work.  I’ll probably get up and yoga the next 2 days and perhaps even get the whole workouts done.  Anything involving the gym is out though – with the travel time I just have to be up too early and pack too much crap.  However, I am, as a rule, going to do all my long runs in the mornings.  First of all, by the time late June rolls around, it’s going to be hotter than hell after work.  Second – most races are in the morning so I need to get used to it.  Third – I love being done for the week when I roll into work and know that when I’m out for the evening, fiesta can begin.

So, internets, what’s your plan for the week?  Anyone else training for something?  Anyone want to swing by my work and give me a nice backrub and make the shoulderblade knot go poof? 😉  Cute doggie pictures today from ihasahotdog.com.

First of all, let me call out that this is NOT an April Fools post.  If it was, I’d probably post that I was going to try one creation from here daily.  Or that I was going to try the Acai berry stuff the ads keep pushing on me.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, you must have a good ad blocker, so I won’t even bother with a link.  Nope, this is the real deal folks.  I am going to attempt to run 13.1 miles approximately 12 weeks from now.  I can currently run just over 6.  Crazy?  I know…but sounds like a good challenge.

How did I arrive at this?  Blame Fitness Magazine.  I’ve commented various places that I really don’t care for fitness-y magazines, but Zliten has made it a habit to collect all of our Coke point codes and put them into the website.  Since we didn’t really want them to send us random Coca Cola merch and kitchy things to clutter up the house, we started getting bathroom fodder, I mean, uh, magazine subscriptions.  So we got through Wired and EGM and decided the next one was Fitness, I mean why not, it’s free.  I have to say I’ve actually enjoyed reading it, I found a really awesome curried veggie and chickpea recipe I want to try, though there is a lot of crap in it (one article criticized a subject’s fridge because they didn’t have whole grains, but the next recipe had white rice).

However, last month’s mag had something that caught my attention – half marathon training.  They said that you could start from nothing and run a half marathon in 2 months.  The training schedule seemed a little weaksauce to me – I think it jumped from 10 or 11 miles as the long run the week before the race right up to 13.1.  Personally, I do NOT feel comfortable with that at all.  Two months to more than double my distance also seemed like the stuff major injuries are made out of, so I set it aside.  Sorta.  Instead, the idea of running anything with the word marathon (even if it’s got the modifier half in front of it) sounded awesome and empowering.  So I decided that instead of what I had planned this month, I was going to look into a half marathon training program, though one that seemed a bit more sane.

After reading through training programs from Runner’s World, Hal Higdon, Jeff Galloway, marathontraining.com, marathonrookie.com, and Cool Running, I frankensteined together my own plan taking into account that I don’t want to drop my 2 sessions of yoga per week or my 2 sessions of strength training, I don’t want to run 5, 6, or 7 days per week (cross training for the win), I don’t feel comfortable increasing my mileage more than 1 mile per week.  Actually, I barely feel comfortable increasing my mileage more than 1 mile a month, but this is where the experiment is – reaching out of my comfort zone here.

Since this is a 3 month endeavour, this is going to eat up April, May, and most of June’s experimental time.  Every Monday, I plan to post about my training for the last week and what next week’s schedule is.  Since I started 2 days ago, here is this week’s plan:

Monday: 3 mile treadmill run + full body weights at the gym

Tuesday: yoga and 4×400 pace run at the track (1 lap warmup, 1 lap 5k pace, 1 lap jog, repeat pace and jog 3 times, 1 lap cooldown)

Wednesday: 30 minutes DDR and yoga

Thursday: 3 mile outside run + full body weights at home

Friday (or Saturday): 5 mile run

Saturday (or Friday): Rest

Sunday: Rest

Total week 1 mileage: 13.5.  Rest may or may not involve a bike ride one of those days.

If you’re interested in the nitty gritty details – I’m going to be tracking everything here as well.  Because the site is kinda nifty and sakkath sent it to me.

This is actually a pretty mellow week for me.  I was all pumped on Monday to start on this endeavour and then I looked at the training spreadsheet I made myself (yeah, I am a project manager, sue me) and realized – yep, except the fact I’m running 4 out of the 5 days, this is actually downgraded a bit from my normal workout.  No matter, I’ll have enough weeks of crazy soon enough.

Weights:

Just to change things up, I’m going to start varying my weight routine.  I mean, I change exercises and up my weights and reps, but I really wanted to try something different.  So, I’m going to change one day a week to either 1 set to failure instead of 3 to a certain number (so instead of doing 3 sets of 32 calf raises, I’m going to sit there and calf raise until I cannot… do… another…, and then move on to the next exercise), or 1/2 the reps, double the time per rep (which I hate, hate, hate – I think weights should be secondary cardio and I try to hit as many muscles/machines as I can in the time I have).  This week, I’m going to try 1 rep to exhaustion on Thursday.  Should be interesting!

Eating:

Well, I’ve found that I am just not happy when I limit myself so much the weight falls off at the rate that makes me happy.  So I can either be happy with the amount of food I’m taking in and feeling fueled for my training, or I can feel happy when I jump on the scale and can say that I am of normal BMI sooner than later but feel exhausted and cranky.  I choose, for the next 3 months, the former.  While I’m not going to try and stop losing weight, I am going to boost up the amount of calories I eat by a little, and try to be a little more intuitive.  At the end of the day, if I’m still hungry, I’ll allow myself another serving of veggies/fruit/lean protein to satiation even if it’s a little more calories than I would like.  I think I screw myself when I go to bed hungry and have that hanging over myself the next morning.  Now, if I am hankering for an ice cream but fruit sounds nasty?  Then, I can let it go, because obviously THEN I’m just cravey.

The plan is to start at 1500 calories per day (average, if I have a crazy weekend day then I just have to balance it out) and follow my appetite.  When I’m running 20+ miles a week, I’m pretty sure I’m going to also need to have a little more fuel.  My little sparkulator thing says I can eat between 1350-1700 calories to lose 1 lb per week, and goddamn if I wouldn’t be thrilled doing that right now.  So there it is.

The culmination of this endeavour in late June?  Well, since it’s hotter than hell here in Austin there are no half marathons between April and October.  Either I’ll search around and find an official race to run and travel, or I’ll host my own.  I’ve already recruited some friends to sit in my front yard that morning and drink beer and hand me water and gel packs, and I have a fantastic 2.7 mile lap around my neighborhood I’m comfortable with.  Plus, seeing my friends lounging and drinking beer will probably make me want to run faster, so I can after that, lounge and drink beer.

One final note.  I am still at approximately 1 pack of American Spirit Lights per week, the majority of which are consumed with major amounts of booze.  As always, I’m trying to continue to whittle down my smoking until I can take it or leave it (and then leave it), but I am also interested if a very casual smoker can actually do the mileage.  I figure somewhere before marathoning I’ll have to make a choice (smokes or distance/times), but I’m curious when that will be.

Anyone out there done a half marathon?  Anyone want to talk me out of my insanity and instead have April be a “sit on the couch and eat ice cream” experiment?  You know where to find me…