Ilanarama!

It's not that I was trying to hide it, I just kind of never got around to mentioning that I have a half marathon coming up. I started just generally training in July, figuring I could wait until September or October to actually pick a race, and it didn't make sense to talk about race planning here until, you know, I had a race planned!

I had been thinking about something in mid-October; that's when the Other Half Marathon in Moab used to run, which is where I got my PR (amazingly, considering the hills!) but then in late September two of the couples we did the Italy bike trip with invited us to go camping and mountain biking in early October in Prescott, Arizona along with some other friends of theirs, and that was too enticing to turn down. (And it was fun!) But it also meant I needed to have time to ramp up again to get race-ready, so I started looking at November races instead.

It was around this time that I got invited to use Bard, the new Google LLM chatbot (which I think has not yet been fully released), so I asked it about fall and winter races, "with cool or cold weather, in the western US, with a rolling course." Immediately it gave me five races in Colorado, which - I wanted to race somewhere I could use my altitude advantage, so I amended my request with "not in Colorado", and it listed five more races. They looked great...until I actually followed the links, and discovered that one was non-existent (Bard had somehow invented a half marathon from a news article about a high school cross-country meet a few years ago), three were in the spring, and the one that actually was in the fall had the wrong date. So much for "AI!"

So I did a bunch of web searching, and asked on a running sub on Reddit, and got a few real suggestions. I settled on the Berkeley half, partly because my brother lives in Santa Clara and it would be an excuse to visit him and his family (who I last saw in person about a year and a half ago). He's been doing a crossword & cryptic crossword puzzling get-together with friends on Saturday morning for years, and during the pandemic, when they couldn't meet at a cafe, they switched to on-line meeting. One day he invited me to join them, and now it's been a regular thing for me on Saturday morning for over two years! So I'm looking forward to an in-person puzzling that Saturday morning, too.

And then on Sunday morning, the race! Basically at sea level, with that sweet, sweet oxygen; a couple of moderate hills in the first half, some flat miles in the middle, and then a slow climb to the finish which I will hopefully not notice because sea level.

My training has been - okay. As you may or may not recall, depending on how closely you follow this blog :-) my last two half marathons were the new version of the Canyonlands Half in Moab in March 2022, and the Thirsty Thirteen in Durango in August 2022. For Canyonlands, my training was super solid, with 42.5mpw over the previous 8 weeks and 8 long runs, with fairly fast tempo runs, and I blew away my own expectations, coming in just under 1:44. For the Thirsty Thirteen, I trained slightly differently, running fewer weekly miles but more speed and tempo workouts and cross-training, and - spoiler alert - it did not go so well and I just made my B goal, running about 1:47:30.

This cycle, I took the advice of Paul, the world-class 65-year old I met at the Thirsty Thirteen, and put together a 9-day "week" so I could get both tempo and speed in, plus a long run, with two easy runs between. I tried to aim at about 45mpw (that is, per real 7-day week), though because of the mountain biking my average mpw over 12 weeks is closer to 39. (We'll see if I manage to lift this during this last week of training!) I only have 3 12+ mile runs, and although I've been running a lot of tempos and track intervals they have not been nearly as fast as they were 1.5 years ago, alas. And, well - I'm older. At least now I'm at the bottom of my (60-69, how did this happen?!) age group.

So I'm going to be conservative, and say my goal is sub-1:50. It's a stretch based on my tempo runs, but I'm hoping that my altitude bonus will help somewhat; certainly my tempo run when I was in Virginia was surprisingly peppy considering how warm and humid it was. I'm just going to try to ignore how much slower that goal is than my previous ones!

It's still too far out for a real weather forecast, but if the conditions are average for the time of year it should be in the lower 50s to start and upper 50s at the end, which suits me well.

I kept meaning to post about my training and plans, and...I never quite managed to. So, this Saturday I'm running the Thirsty Thirteen. In 2014, the first year of this race, I volunteered and worked an aid station; I ran it in 2015, with minimal (by my standards) training due to our extensive Canadian Rockies vacation and still came in a few seconds under 1:44. (Admittedly, I was only a couple of years past my PR!) I registered in 2018 and last year, but was a DNS both years due to injury that could have been due to mountain biking in Telluride (each time!), so this year, I cannily did not go to Telluride. :-)

This morning, Chuck and I drove the course to give him an idea of what it's like, and remind me. (He ran last year, but due to Covid? or some other issue, they couldn't get the busses to drive to the start of the point-to-point course, and rerouted along a different road, which honestly I was not thrilled with and so I wasn't too bummed about missing that year.) It's soooooo downhill, which means fast, except it ends with an extremely nasty big uphill/big downhill/big uphill again combination.

Other than the backpack trip (which was cross-training, at least!) I've been running 30-35 miles a week all summer, with a track workout and a tempo workout each week, plus mountain biking and hiking. (Normally I've done either track or tempo, because at higher mileage I can't recover enough for both.) I've run 5 "long runs" (11+ miles), including an excellent progression 12 last Friday. As it happens, my last LR as well as my last track workout were the same as I did in the run-up to the Canyonlands Half in March, where I ran 1:43:53, and they were both a little slower, but not much slower. But it's really hard to tell how the race courses compare, as Canyonlands is also net downhill but much gentler, and at lower elevation altogether. So my A goal, I guess, is to beat my 2014 time (sub-1:45) my B goal is 1:45-1:48, and my C goal is sub-1:50. I guess my D goal is, you know, upright and breathing.

I think I've trained as well as I can for my race (this Saturday! Eeee!) and I hope that, as the saying goes, proper preparation prevents poor performance!

Over the past 8 weeks I've averaged 42.5mpw. I've done 6 runs of 12 or more miles, with two of 14 and one of 13.7, and run a tempo pretty much weekly with two 9-milers with 6-mile HMP segments, both of them averaging right around 8:13 pace. Today's 3x1 mile on the river trail (a traditional pre-half last workout of mine) averaged 7:37 for the hard miles, but each one got faster, ending with a 7:22 mile. (Admittedly, the first one was net uphill and the second two were net downhill, but none of them had a lot of elevation change.) Most importantly, I've come to terms with my age-related decline and am not, repeat, not, going to be overly-ambitious and push too hard early! (I hope.)

The weather at this point looks decent - a little warmer than I would prefer, but that's offset by a prediction of overcast skies. There will be a headwind, but the race is starting earlier this year than it did back when I ran it before, so I'm hoping the wind will stay fairly light (which is what's currently predicted). So the goals I set back in January still look good. 1:46:45 (about an 8:09 pace) is really a stretch goal, and I doubt I can actually hit it, but if I can average a 8:13 pace, as in training, it will bring me in under 1:48, which will make me happy.

The biggest wildcard for me is the course, since it's been changed since I've run it. We start by running UPcanyon, and then there's a turnaround, and we run back past the start and down the canyon to the finish; I don't know how steep (in either direction) the first part is going to be. The old course had a very steep downhill near the beginning, which is now going to be more like mile 3, and quite a bit of uphill between 7.5-8.5 and 9.5-10.5, which will now be later in the race (when I'm tired). On the other hand, it's all 2000-2500 feet lower than my training, so hopefully I won't even notice the hills. (Wishful thinking.)

Think fast thoughts in my direction on Saturday!

Last weekend I ran Reach the Beach for the third time (2019, 2015). As usual, it was super fun and I got very little sleep!

( bla bla and photos )

Happy housiversary to us! Yep, one year ago today we moved into our Rim Drive house, and I have to say that considering we have been "forced" to spend a lot of time here lately, it was an excellent decision.



Tuesday was our wedding anniversary, too; I joked on Facebook that the 28th was houses, and the 29th facemasks and toilet paper. Who knows what our 30th (!!) will bring next year?



Of course the Covid-19 pandemic has affected our lives, but we are fortunate enough in our situation that it has not been terrible or terrifying. I work at home anyway, so the only difference is that my cow-orkers (yes, that's deliberate, a habit from my old talk.bizarre days) are also online during our meetings - and actually, this has caused us to switch from a voice-only plus screencast type of meeting to Google Meet and Zoom, where we all see each other, and I think it has made me feel a bit more part of the group. Britt is mostly retired and so things aren't all that different for him, either; he still spends a lot of time on the phone, no change there! Our ski areas never reopened, but after a month of closure and putting new systems in place, the golf course did, so Britt has started playing again.

I'm still running, even though the other race I'd registered for, the Steamworks Half Marathon in early June, just canceled. (In addition to Canyonlands, which was supposed to be mid-March, and canceled the previous week.) I like running, though, so even without a race I'm happy to get out and enjoy the world. Our White Rim bike trip, which would have been next weekend, was also canceled, but we're still hoping that the hut trip in late June will be allowed to proceed (though I'm dubious it will). I feel bad for people who are truly stuck at home, or in tiny apartments in cities (like our Barcelona friends, who can only go out for grocery trips), but our governor recognizes the importance Coloradans place on outdoor recreation, and it's considered the necessity it is - provided, of course, that one practices proper social distancing:



So we have gotten out for longish rides on the mountain bikes a few times, which has been a lot of fun, and I'm running around the neighborhood most days. I haven't ridden my e-bike that much because when I've gone shopping (twice in the past four weeks, go me!) I want to get more stuff than will fit in my panniers. But I did ride down to a quiet country road to do a run last week, locking my bike by my favorite bakery, and then bought bread there. (They only let one person in at a time now, but it was a nice day, and nobody really minded standing in a sparse 6-foot-apart line.) I also rode over to the college (a mile and a half) to pick up some eggs, greens, and bacon from the college-associated farm collective which does my CSA, though that won't start until next month. I'll be getting more eggs from them, as well as honey, on Tuesday.

We've done a few social distancing happy hours over Zoom and Hangouts and WhatsApp, and a friend had a Zoom birthday party for her 40th, but really, I think we're just antisocial people who are happy to spend time together in our wonderful house.

I hope all of you are healthy and happy and doing well! In conclusion:

Earlier this week I posted my goals for this year's Steamworks half: I did not make my A goal, coming in about 50 seconds slower than my time two years ago with a 1:48:10, but that time satisfies my B goal of sub-1:50. I think I might I also ran a much better-paced race this year, which was really my primary goal, so I'm quite happy with how things went.

I biked to the finish, which from my new house is mostly a downhill coast followed by a half mile of gentle uphill, and then got on one of the buses for the start. I shared a seat with a guy named Tim who was running his first race of any distance, and if I hadn't already been fired up, his enthusiasm would have done it. At the start I saw quite a few people I knew, including Allan, who lives an hour south in northern New Mexico and comes up for a lot of our races. We first "met" via the old Runner's World forum, and it was fun to discover that we were sorta-neighbors. Allan is 62 and just ran Boston (and set a PR!) in April.



Heading from the staging area to the start. I'm in the white visor with my head turned, in the center front.

I was determined to not go out too fast this year (which is alas very easy to do, as the start is subtly downhill), so I placed myself well back from the start line. The start line had been moved back some distance this year; this has always been a short course, with my Garmin showing 12.9-13.0 at the end, but this year I think the distance was about right (I recorded 13.09), though the intermediary mile markers were too close early and too far apart late (which threw my pace math off like whoa). I kept a close eye on my watch and clocked my first mile at 8:06, a few seconds faster than my goal of 8:08 for the first miles but not bad. Second mile at 8:09, third at 8:12. Heart rate just a little higher than my easy-pace HR, a good sign that I was relaxed and not expending too much energy.



Still happy at mile 3!

Mile 4 went uphill, though, and my speed dropped as I strove to keep my heart rate under control, giving me an 8:33. But the next miles had more downhill, and I got my pace back into the 8:10-8:15 range I had been aiming at. My HR slowly rose into what I consider my HMP HR range.

Somewhere in the third mile I had seen Allan not far ahead - I hadn't realized he'd gotten ahead of me as we'd started fairly close to each other, and he'd told me he was aiming at 8:20 pace - running alongside a slender woman in a yellow shirt, and eventually I caught up and said hi. The three of us ran more or less together for the rest of the race. Occasionally one person would get ahead and then get reeled in. I walked at all the aid stations (and actually turned around and went back at the 8-mile aid station because they had gummi bears, and I had missed them and wanted some!) but Allan and the woman in yellow didn't, so after each aid station I worked on catching up. This was not just because I like Allan. It was because after glancing at the face of the woman in yellow, I was pretty sure she was in my 50-59 age group, and damn it, I wanted to win!



Just behind Allan and chasing my temporary nemesis

After the hill at mile 9 I decided that I had enough energy to start pushing, so I did. I started gaining on Allan and the woman in yellow, and passed them at the last aid station by not slowing to a walk. I used the downhill of mile 11 to push even harder, clocking my fastest watch-mile at 8:03. (The "miles" I'm listing are based on the mile markers, but as I mentioned they were pretty far off in places, so every once in a while I manually hit the lap button on my watch to bring things into sync. Mile 11 on my Strava record came out at 8:06, the same as my first.)

I was pushing partly to pass my temporary nemesis, but also because I knew that the dappled shade of the downhill would soon give way to a sunny uphill stretch, which I always dreaded. Possibly because I had controlled my speed well early, or possibly because it hadn't heated up as much as expected (it was only around 66° F instead of 70° as it had been last year) it didn't seem nearly as bad as usual, and I passed a few more people, including a man I'd noticed at the start because he was wearing a Shiprock Marathon shirt. I was definitely getting tired, though, and I could feel I was slowing down as I reached the last turns. I saw the finish clock and knew I wouldn't beat my time from 2017, but gave it a burst of speed anyway. The announcer called my name as I crossed the timing mat, and then called out Allan's name - it turned out he'd been gaining on me for the last few miles and he finished only three seconds behind me! (If the race had been longer he probably would have passed me!) The woman in yellow was next, about 15 seconds later, and indeed she turned out to be in my age group. The man in the Shiprock shirt came in ten seconds after that, and he was in Allan's age group. So it turned out that both Allan and I won, but it wasn't a gimme for either of us.



Sweaty and happy at the finish! Allan is visible behind my left arm, and Yellow Woman just coming into the finish chute. #233 was one of the early starters - walkers and slow runners are given the option to start 45 minutes early - which is why she looks so fresh!

Despite coming in nearly a minute slower than I did two years ago, I'm much happier with this race. In my 2017 race report I compared my average pace over portions of the course with my 2009 race, which was the first time I ran it with serious training. Comparing those segments with today's run it's clear I paced much better:

segment	2019	2017
mile 1	8:06	7:37
miles 2-3	8:11	7:50
miles 4-11	8:15	8:18
miles 12-13.1	8:30	8:57

So, I'm still slowing down, okay. But I'm still a (relatively) fast old lady! For my first place AG finish, I got a $50 gift certificate to a local running store, which incidentally is the same award I got for winning the 5k in April. As it turns out $50 only makes a small dent in the price of new running shoes, and so when I used that award I actually paid more out of my pocket than I usually do for discounted older models online. But hey, I like to help out the local businesses, especially ones who sponsor our races, and I am sure they made some money off me. (The second place prize was a 6-pack of local beer, which I considered trying to trade for, though then I saw that it wasn't a flavor I was fond of. Oh, well!)

Allan gave me a ride home, which was good because otherwise I was going to text Britt and have him pick me up - I was not thrilled about the idea of biking up ~300 feet in the noonday heat after running a half! But this should be the last time I have to worry about biking up the hill to our new house (or feel bad about running errands in the car) because...as I've been planning ever since we decided to move, I finally finished my extensive research on e-bikes and ordered one, and it should arrive sometime next week! SO EXCITED. I will post more about it when it arrives!

Huh, from recent posts in my journal it looks like all I'm doing is building a house. Well, that's...not far from the truth. I see that the last time I posted about running was last August, when I decided to DNS the Thirsty Thirteen half marathon, and the last biking was our Thanksgiving vacation to Scottsdale. But I get super antsy without physical activity, so I've definitely been doing stuff, I just haven't been writing about it.

After several years of "exceptional drought" we finally had a relatively epic winter. It snowed a lot in town, and it snowed a LOT up at Purgatory. We pretty quickly earned out our ski passes, going once or twice a week.



Even with the snow, I was able to run 4-5 times a week throughout the winter, because Durango keeps the (paved) river trail plowed, and at midday it was usually pretty pleasant. Because of the issues I had after my pelvic stress fracture, I've been trying to keep up my stretching and core exercises and increasing mileage verrrrrry slowly, so I'm only up to a slow 35mpw right now, but I registered for the Steamworks Half Marathon in early June, so I've got something to train toward.

We also took out our mountain bikes for the first time since our Arizona trip! Things are still muddy up here (though rapidly drying out), but there are a few trail areas near Farmington, New Mexico, about an hour's drive away. Last Saturday we went to an area new to us, the Road Apple Rally trails, and spent a very pleasant couple of hours.



Other than that, we are still madly packing and moving things and cleaning. The movers come on Friday! The closing on our old house is a week later!

Just under 40 miles running (because I forgot to check to see how long I needed to run to make exactly 40!) and about 19.5 miles cycling.

Monday: easy 4.6, felt kinda creaky since I'd run long the day before.
Tuesday: 8.7 with 5 tempo miles. Aimed on the slow side for the tempo and averaged 8:08, which is...a little slower than I wanted. HR was also a little low. But I feel like it was a good workout anyway, and built confidence.
Wednesday: rest. Normally I bike up to get my CSA veggies at the college on the mesa but it was hot, so I got a lift from Britt, who was going up to check on our house, and then hiked down.
Thursday: 9.6 in the morning, started out a little late and it got hot, so it wasn't very fast. In the afternoon I did 4 miles of biking to pick up eggs and some peaches and corn at a farmstand.
Friday: 4.6 trail running with Britt, rather slow but a pleasant run.
Saturday: 12.4 miles with surges in the first minute of miles 5-12.
Sunday: 15.5 miles mountain biking. We did part of this route back in April and I was much faster this time!

Next week will be a mulligan of sorts for my half marathon training, as we're taking a mini-vacation to Telluride to go mountain biking (and incidentally for Britt's birthday, which is August 1st). So Monday through Thursday will be biking rather than running, but I'm sure I'll get lots of exercise in.

Look, I'm actually getting a post in after only one week! The rains have indeed started to fall in the high country, so we no longer have smoky mornings and I can run before breakfast as I prefer in the summer.

This week I still had 35mpw on the plan, but I ended up running 40mpw (which I'm going to try to keep up), and it felt good.

Monday: 8.1 easy outside (yay!) with 6x10 sec hill sprints.
Tuesday: 7.9 with tempo. I'd penciled in 2x2.5 tempo as a treadmill workout, but since I could run outside I decided to do the same I did last week on the treadmill, 2x2 with 3 min jog. Tempo miles averaged 7:52, HR smack dab HMP HR.
Wednesday: biked to pick up CSA and run other errands, 5.7 miles mixed trail and road, 450' vertical.
Thursday: Easy 5.3 with strides, cut short from planned 6.3 because I got a call from my dentist's office (while running!) offering to move my afternoon appointment to get my permanent crown to the morning.
Friday: Easy 6.3, which came out at 9:20, a fast pace for me, probably because I started earlier than usual and it was nice and cool.
Saturday: 12.5 on a moderately hilly route (not as hilly as last week's) which I did as a progression since I wanted to make sure I had energy for the whole thing. Started super easy, last three full miles between 9:15-9:20, then an easy half-mile warm-down.
Sunday: 10-mile MTB ride consisting of about 1500' climb (with a lot of hike-a-bike) over an often-steep, often-rocky 4.5 miles of old forest service road and singletrack (and old forest service road that had deteriorated to singletrack) followed by a long downhill on a dirt road. The view from the top was worth the climb:



Total 40 riding, about 16 of biking. It all looks very good on my training log program, especially when I looked back at my log from this time last year, just before I ran Kendall Mountain and gave myself a stress fracture - in fact my paces are quite similar, including my tempo runs. But I was running higher mileage then, and doing trail running (which I haven't started up again), and I still only ran 1:47 at the 2017 Steamworks Half last June despite thinking I was in 1:43 shape. In my post-race analysis, I attributed this to 1) a hot day, 2) being overly-optimistic about my fitness and going out too fast, 3) failing to recover from a race two weeks prior, and 4) tapering poorly.

At the end of my race report from that half, I wrote: Anyway, I think it comes down to this: Now that I'm an old lady, I can't just half-ass my training and still improve. I need to allow a lot of recovery after races, I need to get and keep my mileage (relatively) high, I need to be conservative with my taper, and I need to be realistic about my goals. I think it's good that I was inspired to revisit that report, because these are the things that I will need to keep in mind going into the Thirsty Thirteen in six weeks!

At the end of May I posted about training to run a half marathon in August as the next step in my comeback from the pelvic stress fracture I suffered last July. I began my "official" training program the following Monday, three weeks ago. (I should point out that I don't use canned plans, but instead write my own "unplanny plan" based on the principles and workouts in Brad Hudson's Run Faster, which I have been doing since - gosh, 2009? By "unplanny" I mean that, rather than having specific distances and workouts for each day, I list only a mileage goal, a long run distance goal, and key workout(s) for each week. Actual distances and the days I do them may vary. Also per Hudson, I may change the plan as needed along the way.)

I started the plan with 31mpw the week before on 5 days running (all easy, one run with strides, another with hill sprints) and a longest run of 8 miles, plus two biking. I've maintained the 5/2, and last week bumped up to 35mpw (well, actually 34, but the goal is 35), which I will hold for a while before bumping up to 40mpw mid-July.

Week 1 plan: 30mpw, 8M LR, key 6x0.25 with 3 min jog recoveries, plus hill sprints and strides. ( Week 1 went pretty well except the LR became a hike. )

Works out to 23.5 miles running (with the 7.6 hike that gets me 31.1 miles on my feet) and 11 miles riding.
No hill sprints or strides, oops.

Week 2 plan: 30mpw, 10M LR, key 4x0.5 with 3 min jog recoveries, plus hill sprints and strides. ( Week 2 was largely on the treadmill due to smoke. )

Total was 32.9 miles running and 6.2 miles riding. The city and county had closed all the trails due to the fire danger, so there was nowhere to actually go for a ride, and the smoke was pretty bad all week. (I bought an N95 respirator mask for wearing to ride to the gym. It's okay for easy effort but I can't imagine running with it on.)

Week 3 plan: 35mpw, 12M LR, key 0.25/0.5/1/0.5/0.25 ladder with 3 min jog recoveries, plus hill sprints and strides.( Week 3 back on the roads and trails, yay! )

Total was 34.2 miles running and about 17.2 miles riding. And no hill sprints or strides, bad me.

The fire's perked up again as we've had hot, windy weather. I couldn't start today's run until 10:30, as I was waiting for the air quality to get decent, and by then it was really warm and my heart rate was too high for the slow pace I had to run. So it's back to the treadmill, sigh. No rain in the forecast, either.