Ilanarama!

This past weekend Britt and I went on our first backpack trip of the season, to Grand Gulch, which is a canyon system in southern Utah which was a major population center back in the 11th century. Lots of ruins and rock art to look at, in addition to the natural beauty of the redrock canyon country; lots of wildflowers and a little wildlife (a big gopher snake, and I didn't put his picture inline here but be warned there is one in the linked photoset, if you are a snake-o-phobe).

( short trip report, and a few pictures )

Set of 24 photos at Flickr

I think I've finally recovered from last week's 5K. The problem with running slowly most of the time (and not really pushing hard workouts) is that racing so much faster than any of my training takes a toll on my body. I mean, yay magic pixie dust (and downhill courses la la la) that let me average 6:50 pace for 3.1 miles, when I have only run that fast or faster for max a quarter mile at a time (and not many of them!). But ow ow owie afterward.

This week I have run every day, between 3.8 and 9.3 miles, two runs on the trails and the rest on pavement (rec trail or road). If I run at least 5 tomorrow I'll have 41 miles for the week, same as last week, but I'm hoping to do a bit more than that. Pretty much all my running is slow (relative to my race times); ~9:15 pace on the road, 11:15 on trails.

I'm registered for the Steamworks Half Marathon on 6/9, which is a really awesome race I have run three times and worked at twice (while injured). Rolling hills on a country road, 300 runners, free microbrew at the end. I'm also probably going to run the Narrow Gauge 10-miler on Memorial Day Weekend, which I have run twice. This is the oldest race in Colorado, and involves a steep climb up the back switchbacks on the college mesa, a run around the rim (in the opposite direction of last week's 5K), and then down the fast, straight road off the mesa. (It also involves crossing the train tracks, and both times I ran it I got stopped by the train, although only for ~20 seconds.)

Looking at my training in 2009, which is the year I PRed both at Steamworks and Narrow Gauge, I was averaging 45mpw in the weeks before the race. But I was also running a whole lot more slowly for the most part (although I was doing workouts, intervals and tempos) and at this stage (mid-April) I was only averaging about 30mpw. So I think I'm positioned to get a course PR at both races again. (I don't think I can get a half PR at Steamworks, but I think I can come in under 1:40, which would be a second-best finish and a course PR.) We shall see!

First mountain bike ride of the year! (Also, first mountain bike crash of the year, but I'm okay; I've got a couple of scrapes on my hands and arms, and a knot the size of an egg on my right shin. I feel it with every step. I expect I will turn all sorts of pretty colors tomorrow.)

Because the trails here are still too snowy or muddy to ride, we drove just over the border into New Mexico to find the Alien Run Trail in Aztec NM. Amusingly, out of 12 cars in the parking lot, all but one had CO plates. Aliens!

The trail is named for the alleged UFO crash site it encircles. It's a great trail, lots of swoops and swirls alternating between packed (and sometimes loose) sand and slickrock. Alas, it was a short steep slickrock uphill that got me, and because my hand and shin ached, we cut the ride short and opted for the 5 mile rather than the 10 mile option. Still, it was a good time, a nice ride, not too hard (mostly!) and yay for getting out and riding!

(The subject line is probably more entertaining when considered along with my previous post.)

That old race-day magic came through, because I ran 21:44, a PR by exactly 30 seconds. I came in second woman overall (about 2 minutes behind the first woman, but that's okay because she is a local pro triathlete and 14 years younger than me), but there were no prizes - it was a fundraiser and very low-key - and I didn't even win a random draw prize.

I ran 1.5 miles to the rec center to register, but the race was not for an hour after registration "closed" according to the flyer (it didn't really close, though, and I should have just shown up later) so I did a rather long warm-up, totaling just under 5 miles before the race. It was a lovely day and I stripped down to a singlet and my "crazy shorts" (the ones I wore at the Winter Sun), and lined up just behind the fast kids.

There were some obvious slowpokes right on the line, but fortunately they were mostly on one side; I squeezed between the others quickly enough and settled in behind a guy I know is a bit faster than me, letting him slowly pull away (he finished in under 20 minutes). I could see I was the third woman right from the start; I passed #2 (a middle school girl) a bit more than a mile in, and at the turn-around I could see that I was now #2 and the next women were far behind. After the turn-around the line was pretty strung out. I managed to pass a couple of guys bit by bit, and a couple different ones passed me.

The splits are ugly. Obviously I don't know how to race 5Ks, although I can blame part of it on the course. The first mile drops about 50 feet, the second drops 20 then climbs 20, and the third retraces back up. By my Garmin I ran 6:42, 7:09, 7:22, and 7:19 for the last fraction. My HR pegged right at 167/87% WHR and stayed there the whole time, which is kind of weird because that's supposedly 10K pace (that is, too low). It didn't spike at the end or anything. On the other hand, my other 5Ks, other than my first (where I set my max) have been similar in terms of HR pattern, and I wonder if that's due to the altitude - that a true 5K effort at 6600 ft doesn't allow my HR to climb as much, now that I'm relatively fit. (Whereas the first one I did, I wasn't as fit, and maybe that let it spike more?) I certainly felt on the edge of puking in the last mile and a quarter or so, and after I crossed the line I curled up in a ball on the woodchip mulch and just breathed for a while.

Here is my HR (and elevation and pace) plot, for kicks. Um, the weird exaggeration makes it look like I fell off a cliff and had to claw my way back up, but I assure you it wasn't that bad.



After the race I jogged around a little, and then ran home the long way to make a total of a little under 12 miles for the day.

PS: I understand that there have been problems commenting here with OpenID - I've been having the same problems on your blogs, too! I answer the Captcha and it just keeps refreshing. You can comment here anonymously if you like, just be sure to include your name so I know who you are.

As many of you know, my husband Britt was working in Bakersfield, CA for much of this winter. As his project began to wind up, I flew out to stay with him (I worked from his hotel, since I telecommute anyway) and then on Friday, January 27th, we packed up the Sportsmobile (he'd driven it out, originally) and headed home, taking our time and visiting tourist traps and national parks along the way.



Our first destination was Joshua Tree National Park. We are both rock climbers - or used to be, anyway - and had heard about the climbing there; we were not prepared to actually climb there, but we wanted to see the rocks, and hike around, and so on. We spent two nights at the entirely gorgeous Jumbo Rocks campground, and two days visiting pretty much every corner of the park accessible from the main road.

( More photos and rambling about Joshua Tree NP )

( Trailer parks and tourist traps. And a wolf. )

( Petrified Forest National Park )

Oops, I almost forgot: more photos (a total of 30) at Flickr.

In just one week - on Sunday, January 15th - I'll be running the Houston Marathon. (Gulp.) Actually, I am quite excited about this, because unless I get injured or sick in the next week (KNOCK ON WOOD LIKE WHOA) I will be better-prepared for this one than for any previous marathon I've run. More miles, better fitness, a solid 10K six weeks prior. (BTW, I have added links to two race photos to my Winter Sun 10K race report - or you can use this Flickr Guest Pass to see them, along with the photo from The Other Half I'd posted before.) Fired up and ready to go!

My bib number is #3060. I believe you can track me, or at least check my results afterward, at http://alerts.houstonmarathon.com/. There is also a team competition, which is scored as (age group placement) / (number of people in age group) * 1000 for each person (so for example, if I come in at #10 in my AG out of 300 people, which incidentally is about how I expect to finish, my score would be 33), and the lowest three scores on each team of up to 6 people are added for the team score. I'm on a team called The Competitive Jerks, but my score is unlikely to count as everyone else on my team is a lot faster than I am (likely to get single digit scores). That's okay by me, though - it means the pressure is off!

Well, sort of. Because of course I have goals, and I am going to do my best to meet them. These are:

I think these are realistic goals. My 10K PR points to something between 3:25 and 3:35, depending on what kind of assumptions one makes (it was downhill, but at altitude while the marathon is at sea level, my endurance tends to be pretty good, but I have only been running more than 50mpw for a short time, etc). I spent a week around New Year's in Bakersfield, CA, which is at 400ft, as Britt's working on a solar installation project there, and I did a test "marathon pace" run, 2 easy miles followed by 10 at MP (I was striving for between 7:50 and 8:00) - my average pace was 7:55.5 and my heart rate was perfectly flat at 76%HRR, or the low end of marathon pace HR. This, for those of you less geeky than I am, is a very good sign. Of course, the downside is that I was running in this:



Can you see the mountains in the distance? I didn't know they were there until we drove over them the next day.  But Bakersfield has the worst air quality in the US - just this morning our local paper ran an (AP) article about the horrible air quality there, with the helpful information that this year is the worst in over a decade, and that pollution has exceeded federal health standards nearly every day - and I was seriously wondering how much damage I was doing to my lungs.

Speaking of Bakersfield, ( some nattering about weight... )

Incidentally, that article about elite marathoners also listed the following breakdown of their mileage:  70% is slower than marathon pace, 10% marathon pace, 10% tempo (between half marathon and 10K pace), 6% 10K pace, and 4% 5K pace.  I looked at my own mileage and did the math:  even if I start counting in early October, when I started including some faster running, I have run 89% of my miles slower than MP (I used 8:10 for this, even though I'm hoping to actually run 7:55-8:00 pace), 5% at MP (7:50-8:10), 4% tempo (7:25-7:49) and a grand total of 2% faster than 7:25 pace.  

Counting everything since I started running again in August (and adding the miles I'm expecting to run this week before the marathon) I will have run around 828 miles this training cycle.  Yowza!  Of course compared to the elites this is peanuts, but it's been a good cycle for me.  The past eight weeks have been: 56, 61, 47, 51, 66, 66, 52, 54, and next week will be around 20.  (The taper looks odd because I ran last week's 16-mile long run on Monday; if I swap Sunday and Monday the last weeks are 66 and 42.)

Today I ran my last long run before the marathon, which was not long at all, only 12 miles - and I went up and over the mesa, which is about a 600ft climb/descent, which is probably more than twice what I'll have in all 26.2 next week.  Felt good, felt fast.  Now it's time to taper hard and rest up, and get ready to run a marathon.

Of running, that is. Although the week's awesomeness was enhanced by Britt arriving on Thursday; he's been out of town on a work thing for the last two weeks, and I have missed him. (And not just because having him gone means I have to kill ALL the spiders and wash ALL the dishes.) We spent the afternoon cutting firewood on his folks' ranch, then joined them for a lovely Thanksgiving dinner.

But I want to talk about running. ( The story so far: injury, recovery, another injury scare, and getting back on my feet. )

( So, my awesome week. )

Next Saturday is the Winter Sun 10K. It amazed me last year how fast I was able to run it; the combination of the downhill course and the lower elevation meant that I could sustain paces I just can't run in training here. So I'm still a little dubious that I can run it EVEN FASTER. But...maybe I can. I'm feeling good, I'm feeling fast, I'm feeling strong. And I could really use even a measly PR, since so far this year I am 0 for 4 in my PR goals. So, I'm going to give it a really good try. And we'll see what happens.

Gorgeous, gorgeous day (my apologies to folks in the Northeast shoveling out and cleaning up), so I decided to take the camera along on a trail run. Wanna come along?

I started up the trail behind my house which joins with the Nature Trail; I went up one switchback and then took this picture:



( More... )

[pre-race report]

Cliff notes version: 1:43:54, my worst time on this course and only 23 seconds faster than my spring 2009 half, my first race after getting serious about running, but I'm happy with it as a comeback considering I only started running again after my stress fracture ten weeks ago. (Also, it barely qualifies me for the NY Marathon for the last year before they tighten their standards considerably. I might have to run it next year.) 6th in my AG (out of 123), 30th woman out of 1144, 127th human being out of 1733.

( The play-by-play )

This was my third Other Half, my sixth race put on by the Moab Half Marathon organization, and the first in which I did not take home a trophy or medal[*]. And I'm okay with that. Comparing my run this year with the previous two years, I don't see anything I could have done differently. I paced reasonably. I worked at an appropriate effort level. I raced with what I had on the day, and that is all I could do.

( The post-game analysis )

So I know that this year's racing season is a work in progress, and it's barely begun. The Winter Sun 10K is in seven weeks. We'll see what happens.

[*] Well, actually, I did get a medal, as The Other Half gives finisher's medals to everyone who runs. This year's medal is not only attractive but useful, as it's a combination race medal/bottle opener! (Photo courtesy of my friend Paul, paulbe.)



And that reminds me that in fact I DID get a PR this year. One reason I love this race is because the Moab Brewery supplies free beer (in souvenir pint glasses) at the end. I learned last year that all Utah beer is 3.2 (that is, relatively weak) due to Utah's bizarre alcohol regulations. But I don't mind, because that means I can drink a whole lot! I had three pints direct from the tap, plus two other people decided they didn't want to drink and I got half of each of their beers, for a total of four. That is a post-race Beer PR! (And I still felt entirely sober driving home.)

From my legs, that is. Tomorrow morning I'm driving to Moab, Utah, and on Sunday morning I'll be lining up at the start of my first race since...the last time I was in Moab, in March. Yikes.

I almost didn't sign up for The Other Half this year, as you, O Constant Reader, know. But in the last few weeks I have gone from "just finish it, and enjoy it" to "okay, maybe I can run it at MP as a workout" to "RACE THAT PUPPY!!!1!one!" I mean, I know I'm not going to PR; I'm definitely not in PR shape. But I am going to run it as fast as I can.

The past three weeks I have averaged 41mpw, and I'll match that this week after the half. My easy pace has floated down to the 9 minute range, and I even ran a "hard end of easy" run at 8:42, which is the sort of run I was doing just before I was injured. I have run a tiny amount of speedwork - a threshold run of 2x1.5 miles at 8 minute pace (which gratifyingly did not hit my LT heartrate, so I am pretty sure I can run faster than that for a half) and 6x half miles with 2 minute jog recoveries, which averaged 7:25 pace. Now, last spring before I was injured I did a similar workout in 7 minute pace, so clearly I'm not in that kind of shape yet, but it's really encouraging to see that I seem to be getting back more quickly than I had hoped.

It's really hard to talk about goals for this one, though. Race-day magic nearly always surprises me, with paces better than I ever run in training; I guess I need the adrenaline of actually being in a race to run my best. Moab's lower, so I get the altitude advantage, but on the other hand this is a rather hilly race. I know I said I was looking for 1:52-1:58, but I think I can do better. So I'm going to say: stretch goal is sub-1:41:44 (my slowest time on this course, from 2009), A goal is sub-1:44:18 (my slowest half since getting serious about running), B goal is sub-1:46, C goal is sub-1:50. And of course, overriding goal is don't hurt myself.