mediocre runs

I'm not sure whether I hate bad runs or mediocre runs more. A bad run is a run where you drag yourself through it, you're in pain/dehydrated/exhausted, you have to stop and walk, etc. It's pretty obvious when you have a bad run. A good run is a run where you feel strong, your body seems to be fluid and wanting to move, you can push yourself and not be miserable, etc. It's pretty obvious when you have a good run.

And then there are mediocre runs. These are harder to define - you're able to finish your run, but it's not particularly enjoyable and it's a little bit more of a challenge than usual. These are the ones that you have to dig the deepest on, in my opinion. On a bad run, you know you're having one and that they happen from time to time and you have to just push through it and accept that these are normal and happen. And mentally you can accept that. Mediocre runs are where self-doubt starts to creep in. You start to worry that you're not in good shape, that maybe your body is tired and needs a break, etc. And you wonder why you're up at 5:30 in the morning slugging your way down the running trail instead of snuggled deep under the covers. It's not bad enough of a run to make you just shrug it off and chalk it up to a bad day, but it's not enjoyable.

I guess it's pretty obvious that I had a mediocre run this morning. I got up nice and early to hit the Back Bay trail by the time it was light out, and I managed to run a decent pace, but I just never seemed to hit my stride and I spent the last couple of miles obsessing about how hard it will be to qualify for Boston and how I'll never be in good enough shape to run 8:26 pace for 26.2 miles.

Monday: day of rest (tired from last weekend)

Tuesday: day of Beth being fat and lazy and not running

Wednesday: 45 minute tempo run, about 5.5 miles. Plus triceps

Thursday: A little over 3 miles, run at unidentified pace but I'd estimate at around 8 minute mile pace

Friday: 12.2 miles, Back Bay trail, around 1 hour 44 minutes

Not running related, but got my heart rate up...

So Adam came over yesterday afternoon and we ended up cuddling on my bed and he was super cute and affectionate and stroking my hair and things. And after a few moments of silence, he finally started talking. He said he was sorry he wasn't very good at talking about his feelings, but he was really into me and every time we had plans to hang out he always would have a huge smile in anticipation and that he knew I knew this, but that this wasn't just some fling for him.

It was really, really nice to hear all this from him. I mean, our first date was nearly 2 and a half months ago and we still have never had the exclusivity talk and he's not very forthcoming with compliments and talking about how he likes me, etc. I guess I don't really need to hear it from him to know it, because I can tell from things he does and how he looks at me and how much fun we always have together. But a little reassurance never hurts, and it definitely made me really happy to hear. I really like Adam - we're compatible on a lot of levels. So keeping my fingers crossed on this one....I'm sure I'll be re-living yesterday's conversation in my head for all my runs over the next few days.

Dirty Girl

I did the mud run down at Camp Pendleton today with Brooke and Brittany and a few of their friends. I woke up with my toe throbbing from the blister again and was limping by the time I walked out the front door. When I picked up Brooke, she noticed I was limping and asked if I was OK and I felt like a complete wimp when I had to tell her it was because of a blister. I mean, Brittany had a stress fracture and she was in better shape than I was. I think the blister has to be infected or something because I've never had one so painful. 

I was a bit scared when we arrived down at Camp Pendleton because the toe was hurting and Brittany had let it slip that there is a swim across a lake. I am a bad enough swimmer without shoes and clothes weighing me down, so that got me worried. To be honest, when I was standing at the starting line with Brooke, I thought I might have to drop out of the race in the first couple of miles because my toe hurt so bad. And the first mile or so was kind of rough. I was running at a weird angle to try to minimize pressure on the blister, which in turn made my ankle feel weird. Fortunately, however, after about a mile we encountered our first gross patch: a calf-deep stream of water to ford that got my feet completely soaked. And miraculously, even though my feet felt swampy and gritty, the pain in my blister subsided soon after that. It disappeared for the rest of the race and hasn't really come back yet. 

Thank god it disappeared, because the course was tough enough without it feeling like someone was holding a hot poker to my big toe. I ran with Brooke and purposely just took it easy and ran her pace. It actually was kind of challenging to keep myself from going faster, particularly on the hills that went on and on for about a mile and a half. Normally I would have actually liked the hills - I tend to do well on hilly courses for some reason, maybe because it works different muscles and gets the heart rate going. I didn't mind walking with Brooke up the hills because I knew the race would be a lot more fun if I did it with someone else, but a tiny little part of me wanted to just put my head down and barrel up the hills full force. Especially when I saw that everyone around me was wheezing and gasping for air, and I wasn't even breathing heavy.  I wanted to feel their level of pain, as weird as that sounds, and I wasn't getting that at the nice slow pace (and walking) Brooke and I were doing.

After the hills came the first mud pit and wall to scale. That was a blast. I had a young Marine help me scale the wall. After the wall came the lake that was probably about 3 swimming pools long. It was a bit difficult for me because I could barely touch the bottom at parts and it was nearly impossible to swim with my shoes on and so many people in the water next to me (I think I kicked the poor guy behind me in the face), but here I was glad I stayed with Brooke, who used to swim and play water polo in high school, because she held my hand and helped pull me through. After the hill came a long stretch of running, followed by another mud pit with  wall to scale (I scaled it by myself this time!) and a nasty muddy tunnel to crawl through and then a steep, steep hill of sheer mud. It was tough to get up - no one was running; everyone was just trying to avoid falling.  Another brief stretch of running and we came to the final, and most fun, obstacle yet: the mud pit you have to swim through. Basically you have to crawl through retched-smelling mud and keep your head below flags for about 100 feet. It was an absolute blast. So gross but so fun. 

Since I had maintained such a slow pace throughout the race I didn't feel like I'd gotten much of a workout in so I sprinted the short distance from the mud pool to the finish line and beat some girl at the last second, with a couple of Marines giving me high-fives for pushing myself at the end (I didn't want to tell them that I was barely out of breath and hadn't pushed myself for the other 99% of the race).  I think I finished around 1:22, which, even with a mud hill and mud pits and a lake of water, is still pretty embarrassing. But I had an absolute blast and can't wait to do it again next year, so who cares what my time was?

Today's workout: 6.2 miles of running, swimming, crawling through muck and loving it.

My damn blister had better cooperate for tomorrow, which is when Operation BQ officially gets underway.

Blisters on top of blisters

My feet are pretty used to having gnarly-looking blisters on them.  In fact, at any given moment, I usually have a black/bruised toenail and at least one fresh or one remnant of a blister. They're a fact of running. I wear special wicking socks, I make sure there is plenty of room in the toebox of my shoe, and yet I still routinely get blisters on all my toes. 

Yesterday I discovered a particularly painful one. I'd gotten a blister after the Laguna Hills half marathon on the outside of my big toe on my left foot. It had popped and drained, as usual, and I paid no attention to it. Well, over the course of the next 2 weeks, I kept developing new blisters in pretty much the same spot - blisters developing on top of blisters. Yesterday morning I peeled my sock off before heading to the shower and discovered that the entire side of my toe was a gruesome looking yellow mass of half-popped, half-fresh blister, with a small sore gash next to it. I wore flip-flops to work to give my foot room to breathe, but by the afternoon, my toe was throbbing even while sitting at my desk and I was hobbling around. I came home and rested on the bed for a while, but my toe was throbbing in pain so bad that the slightest touch of the blanket or rolling over was agony. I put some neosporin and a band-aid on overnight and that helped a bit -- enough to enable me to get a 12-miler in this morning with only mild discomfort.

I've heard it said that the most painful part of a run is actually the shower after the run, and when the water in the shower this morning hit the side of my toe and I gasped in pain, I saw the wisdom of that statement.  I've never been this disabled by a blister that wasn't under my toenail (those effers hurt). It's almost impressive. I'm supposed to do the mud run down in Pendleton tomorrow. I'm hoping my toe cooperates, because marathon training starts on Monday officially and I can't afford to get off to a bad start because of some poopy blisters.

Today's run: 12.3 miles, about 1 hour 48 minutes, Aliso & Wood Canyon. Plus stopped at the gym to do biceps. 

Sweater Magee

It seems the more I run and the better shape I get in, the more I sweat. It's to the point where I I only like to work out in black shirts because they don't show my sweat as much as other colors . Even just a 3 mile run has me dripping with sweat. I've heard that increased sweating is actually a sign of an efficient cooling system, but it sucks being a girl and going to the gym and being a huge sweatball and using my sweat towel more than anyone else there. Most other girls are in cute workout clothes and don't seem to be sweating, while sweat drips down my legs and my shirt is absolutely soaked. It's embarrassing. Wish I were more feminine and didn't have to look like I just stood under a waterfall after I run. Oh well. It is a nice feature to have when I'm hungover and then I just hop on the treadmill and sweat out all the toxins and feel much less hungover. I suppose it has its perks. 

By the way, I ate Kabuki sushi yesterday and it was really disappointing. Mental note to never get sushi from there again. 

Monday: day of rest

Tuesday: 1 mi warmup, 2x1600 @ 7:13 pace with 1/3 mi slow jogs in between, plus 1x400 @ 7:13 pace, 1 mi cooldown (5 mi total). Plus abs and biceps.

Wednesday: 5 mi @ race pace (8:13 pace). Plus triceps and shoulders

Thursday: rest

Friday: 1 mi warmup, 5x800 @ 7:19 pace with 1/4 mi slow jogging in between, 1 mi cooldown (5 mi total). Plus abs and back.

One week until official training starts

Why is it that the day after a long run I always have some of my best runs? Today I decided to do a tempo run and thought I'd do a 45 to 50 minute one.  Five minutes into my run I knew this was going to be a good day so I ended up doing a 60 minute tempo run, peaking at 7:40 pace for five minutes and holding 7:47 pace for another 10.  And at the end of 60 minutes, I felt great and probably could have kept going for another couple of miles. 

It's always like that the day after a "long run" (not that yesterday's 10 was that long).  I always am able to do great tempo or interval workouts the day after. Does it work different muscles? Are my lungs in peak form or something after an endurance run? I'm not sure what it is, but I think I'm going to continue to take advantage of the stamina boost I always feel after my long runs and try to do my tempo runs and interval training (but maybe not the hill repeats) the day after long runs. I know Hal Higdon's plan calls for those on Tuesdays and Thursdays but I think it makes sense to do them on days that are easier for me. I don't know, maybe my logic is completely flawed here, but I think as long as I'm doing those workouts, it fundamentally doesn't matter what day I do them on, right?

Training for LB starts next Monday officially. I'm a little nervous because this is for real - the training that supposedly gets me up to Boston level. I think I can do it, I just need to be disciplined.

Time to bust out the new shoes and lay my old shoes to rest. My shins will thank me.

Today's run: 60 minute tempo run, 7.45 miles. Also finally did some ab work, triceps, and back.