Ilanarama!

Last week I said:

I'm...less excited than I might be, because I seem to have pulled a muscle (?) in my groin; it started hurting while in Telluride (where I was doing biking only, no running!) and it hasn't stopped yet. At first I was nervous that I'd somehow re-injured my stress fracture, because it hurts in about the same place, but the pattern is different: it hurts most at night and in the morning, and when I start walking (or running), or stand up from a sitting position, but it eases up after some activity, and doesn't bother me much on runs after a mile or so. My body guy thinks it's a case of inner thigh muscles working when they shouldn't, and I'm doing exercises and have my second appointment tomorrow, but I'm really not pleased with the way things are feeling.

Well, after another week, I'm even less pleased with the way things are feeling, and so I've decided to bail on the race.

Monday: 5.7 miles mountain biking. Felt pretty good, though I noticed my groin hurting when I was pushing up steep bits.
Tuesday: 6.3 miles easy with strides.
Wednesday: 8.4 miles with 5 miles tempo, and this time, it was a really good tempo! Average pace for tempo miles was 7:59, average HR 152. I thought this was a good indicator for, if not my nominal goal, at least for getting in the vicinity of 1:45.
Thursday: 4.6 mile slow and painful trail run. All the other runs this week, my groin felt a little sore for a while but then eased up. This one, it hurt the whole time.
Friday: 11.5 miles mountain biking with Britt. Felt pretty good for the first 3 miles (at which point we stopped at our usual "lunch log" for a picnic) and then the next few miles were mostly coasting downhill - but after that, I started hurting again. A lot. At about mile 7 my right foot accidentally kicked a tree root or rock, and the pain just shot up my leg right into my crotch (the right side of my crotch is where the sfx was, and where the pain is now). I bailed to pavement as soon as I could, because the bumps were all making my owie ache, but basically any uphill (i.e. requiring effort to pedal) hurt a lot. After a visit to our homebuilding site I coasted home by the most downhill route.
Saturday: The plan was a 10 mile run with some surges. The actuality was two blocks of miserable pain, so I turned around and went home.
Sunday: Britt and I decided to hike up Perin's Peak, which is one of the small peaks that surround town. It seemed like everybody in town was out there that day! Unfortunately, this turned out to be one of those days when the smoke from the fires in western Colorado and in California was relatively thick, so our views were disappointing and depressing. As far as pain went, it was generally okay except for when I happened to land badly or step oddly on uneven ground. I used my hiking poles, and I think that helped somewhat. I was starting to hurt by the end of the 6-mile, 1500' round-trip, though.



(Those things that look like billboards are actually old radar reflectors. I wish they could be removed, though, they're visible from town and look weird, and they kind of ruin the "on a mountaintop" ambiance.)

Anyway, not running or biking any more for a while. Walking, and doing some core exercises. Needless to say, not doing the half marathon on Saturday. I probably could do it, but I'd like to heal up at this point, before doing anything more. I'm not as disappointed as I might be, as it's just a local race, and not really one of my favorites. I'd be much more upset if it was something I'd been planning to travel for. But I'm not looking forward to the inevitable loss of fitness and slowdown and weight gain that will result from yet another layoff.

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.

Another 51 miles, woohoo.

Monday - 8.2 miles with a 'ladder' of intervals: 0.25 mile, 0.5, 0.75, 1 mile, and then back down again, all with 2 minute jog recoveries in between. Paces for the intervals as usual were all over the map: 6.49, 7:06, 7:29, 7:21, 7:12, 7:10, 7:21.

Tuesday - 8.1 miles trail running at a relatively peppy average pace of 10:47.

Wednesday - 6.6 easy with strides, which made it faster at 8:38 average pace, followed by 6x10 sec hill sprints.

Thursday - 9.6 miles with the full workout that I curtailed last week: 2 w/u, 7 miles alternating 0.35@HMP with 0.65@HMP+35sec. Last week I did 5 miles and averaged 7:16/7:50; this week I averaged 7:16/7:54 for all 7, but the first 5 miles averaged 7:11/7:47, and my HR overall was slightly lower than the previous week, so I think (hope!) this is an indication of improved fitness.

Friday - ski day! And it had snowed overnight (and was still snowing) so it was an excellent powder day and a very good workout. My quads and calves ached when I got out of the car after we got home!

Saturday - 12 miles easy, 9:12 average pace.

Sunday - 6.7 miles easy, 9:20 average pace, with 8x10 sec hill sprints at the end.

I also signed up yesterday for the Steamworks Half Marathon at the beginning of June, one of my favorite races. The course is along a rolling country road where I do a lot of my long runs, and there's free beer and burgers at the end. It's a small race with 10-year age groups, and two years ago, the most recent time I ran it, I came in second to a woman who'd just turned 40; this year, unless disaster strikes, I should be a lock for the 50-59 win.

There is a 5K in two weeks I might run as well. It's an annual fundraiser, no prizes other than random draws at the end, but it would push me to do a hard workout and it might be a decent fitness gauge.

It's been gorgeous weather here - sunny, dry, and (relatively) warm. Not good news for the ski areas, agriculture, the spring rafting season, or the summer fire season, but it makes for nice running. (Um, apologies to all my friends in the midwest and northeast?)

Monday - 9.7 miles with 12x(90sec hard, 90sec jog). The hard bits averaged 6:44 pace, overall avg 8:30 pace.

Tuesday - 5.3 trail run, slow and creaky. Avg pace 12:30 which is about 75sec slower than usual!

Wednesday - 8 miles at 9:08 pace. Felt achy; I think I was still not yet recovered from Monday's hard workout, which is why:

Thursday - 7.2 miles, failed tempo. First three miles were with Britt, comfortable, starting at 9:12 pace and getting slightly faster each mile. Next half mile I did strides, bringing my pace to 8:23. The plan was 4 miles @7:15-7:25, but after just a few tenths of a mile my stomach started cramping. I slowed down and folded the waist of my running tights down, to not press on my stomach, and eventually it went away, but that mile averaged 8:04, way off plan. I started to accelerate again, and this time my legs started hurting. After half a mile I gave up and slowed again...and I kept slowing. I just hurt all over, from my toes to my hips. I cut my run short and even walked up a hill on the way home - my pace in the last 2 miles of my run was almost 10:30 on average! Overall pace of 9:17 hides a multitude of sins...

Friday - skiing! Sunny warm day, conditions not all that great but adequate.

Saturday - 9.1 miles trail running. I decided to check out 'Snakecharmer', a new mountain bike trail running down from Raider Ridge; my plan was to run up it, with it hopefully being a better route than climbing 'Babyhead Hill' which is so steep I have to walk most of it. It was still quite steep, but more pleasant, and then I was up on the beautiful ridge.

As many of you know, on Saturday runners were asked to participate in 'Meg's Miles' (#megsmiles, https://www.facebook.com/events/489458451159627/) in honor of Meg Menzies, a Virginia runner who was struck and killed by a (possibly drunk) driver while running last week. Runners were encouraged to log miles on a Googledocs spreadsheet, mark their locations on a map, and take photos of their run and post them to the Facebook event or the Twitter hashtag. I took my new smartphone (I have a smartphone now! It's a Nexus 5! I am still figuring it out!) and took a couple of shots:



Yes, it's the dorkiest selfie ever. Look at the mountains, not at me!

I don't yet have an armband for carrying the phone - I'm not planning on carrying it on most runs, anyway - but it was a perfect opportunity to test the Gregory Pace 3 hydration pack I got as an award for being the female masters winner at The Other Half. I was dubious about the way it strapped high across the chest with no waistband (though waistbands tend to be uncomfortable while running) but it was awesome - fit tight to my back and didn't bounce even as I ran on rough trails. The only thing I didn't like was that the bite valve tasted icky, but I'm sure that will go away with time.

Anyway, my average pace was almost 13 minute miles, but according to my mapping software the total elevation gain and loss was almost 1100 feet (the biggest part of which was 665 feet in 1.5 miles!), so.

Sunday - 7 miles easy with a few strides in the middle and 8x12sec hill sprints at the end. 9:00 average pace.

Total was 46.4 miles, a little less than last week but I got two trail runs in. Next week I'll try to push closer to 50, though I won't be able to run Tuesday morning as I'm judging a middle school science fair.

December 1st, so I'm using my Santa-hatted mountain icon (made for me by blnchflr). And also, ONE WEEK TO CIM! Yay! Yikes!

The first thing I want to say is to reassure those of you who read my most recent post that after several days of rest and aggressive self-massage/foam rolling/icing, my mysterious calf injury seems to have retreated. I'm pretty sure it's related to my ongoing peroneal tendon issues (the ankle bone's connected to the knee bone, as it were) and possibly even to the iliac crest pain I've been having lately. I'm also pretty sure it's not going to be a problem for the race, hooray. And three days of rest during taper is not going to destroy all the training I've put in. (However, the three pounds of fat I have put on...maybe!)

Okay, on to the (abbreviated) week:

Monday - 6 miles easy (9:07 avg pace) with 8x10sec hill sprints. I think this is where I did whatever bad thing I did to my calf, because it was tight that night and the next morning.

Tuesday - 9.9 miles with 3GMP, 3 min easy, 3HMP. Looked like this: 8:53, 8:24, 7:43, 7:44, 7:39, 8:14 (3 minutes), 7:18, 7:21, 7:20, 9:07, 9:15 (.5 mile). Overall pace 8:01, a real solid workout. (This is partly to brag, and partly to remind myself that see? I'm in great shape for my race! No excuses! I can do it!)

Wednesday through Friday - no running. I walked 3 miles on Wednesday and I did my core exercises on Wednesday and Friday, and foam-rolled and massaged my calf twice a day.

Saturday - 4.2 miles easy at 8:30 pace. Yeah, when you take 3 days off, you can run faster. I was tempted to keep going but this was a test. The peroneal tendon at my ankle hurt when I started but loosened up with the run.

Sunday - 10.4 miles easy but hilly, 8:36 average pace. Felt fine other than the same initial pain in the PT, hooray.

Total 30.5 miles, about 2/3 of what I'd planned for the week but it's really no biggie at this point.

While I was sitting on my butt not running, I indulged in a bit of retail therapy and ordered a new Garmin 610 to replace my 305, which has experienced a recent dramatic decline in battery life. Possibly wearing it while hiking all day in England contributed, but anyway, it's three years old and I bought it when it was already nearly obsolete. In fact, I bought my 305 almost exactly three years ago, when retailers were deeply discounting older GPS watches as the new ones were being rolled out for the Christmas shopping season, and that's why I got the 610 - the 620 is now the hottest newest, and so the 610 is on sale all over the net (as is the 210 in the wake of the 220, and so on). I even splurged for 2-day shipping, so it is supposed to arrive Tuesday - good thing, as I got low-battery warnings from the 305 today on my run only an hour in! I just hope I can figure out how to use it before the race.

But even if I can't keep track of out how fast I'm going, you guys can. Online tracking for CIM is up and available at http://rtrt.me/cim - my bib number is 7873. You can set up alerts or just check the website periodically. There will be timing at 5.9M, 13.1M, 20M, and the finish. Also, I've set it up (I think!) so that my splits will automatically post to Facebook.

One week! Aie!

Or, miles what I have run lately. A lot of them. I am...really looking forward to taper.

Monday - 9 miles trail running averaging 11:16 pace. I felt slow and creaky, but that's actually a fairly typical pace for this route, only slightly slower than usual.

Tuesday - 9.9 miles as 2 easy, 3x (2GMP, 2 min easy-but-not-too-easy), then easy home. I faded a little toward the end but overall it was a good run: 9:00, 8:37, 7:45, 7:43, 8:24 (2 min), 7:42, 7:45, 8:32 (2 min), 7:47, 7:48, 9:28 (2 min), 8:59. It's pretty hard for me to maintain MP outside of a race, particularly while my mileage is high, so I'm not too worried. The one thing that did worry me was my HR seemed on the high side for these paces.

Wednesday - 8.3 miles easy-ish. Or rather, I started easy, but as I got into the groove I allowed myself to speed up, as long as my HR stayed in the easy range. 9:28, 9:11, 9:02, 8:52, 8:32, 8:27, 8:28, 8:31, 9:11 (.3). Overall average pace 8:50.

Thursday - 9.1 miles on the trail, with 6x10 sec hill sprints near the end on the community ski hill (where I have never actually skied). Avg pace 11:01.

Friday - 6.4 easy with strides, avg pace 8:50.

Saturday - 6.8 easy-ish, or what I call the hard end of easy; avg pace 8:33. Ended with 6x10 sec hill sprints on the last hill home. I have slacked on my hill sprints in the last few weeks and so I did two easy sets this week, but wow, I shouldn't slack, they are fun!

Sunday - My last 20-miler of the cycle! Well, to be honest I haven't actually done ANY 20-milers, and this one wasn't 20, either; it makes a very nice 19.3 mile loop to run up one side of the Animas Valley, cross at Trimble road, and run back down the other (I try to alternate clockwise and counterclockwise) so that is what I do. And did. This was a 'hard long run' aiming at 2 miles warm-up and the rest between 8:10 and 8:30 pace (that is, my GMP+5-10%). (For me, this is a hard long run! But a lot of my friends with similar PRs run that kind of pace all the time.)


Anyway, this was a solid workout for me to cap a solid week of 68.8 miles, again (barely) setting a new mileage high. Next week will have more MP miles, a shorter LR, and a slightly lighter mileage load; I'm going to aim at 60+ but not many +, as it were. Then 40-45 the following week, and 20ish the week before the marathon.

Okay, recovery week is over! Time to start focusing on that little 26.2 race coming up in December.

Monday - I still felt tired and creaky from the hard 17.5 I did on Saturday, so I ran my 7.8 trail miles easy-peasy.

Tuesday - 11.8 as a progression: first 6 miles averaged 9:06, next 3 8:50, next 2 8:15, and then I tried to run half a mile at MP-ish (7:45) but only managed 7:51. Average overall 8:53.

Wednesday - 10.5 miles on a hilly route (up/down) with strides. Felt pretty good, 8:32 average pace.

Thursday - finally got to my tempo run, and it went well! 10 miles with 5 at HMP-ish averaging 7:22, overall average 7:56.

Friday - 7.1 miles on the trails at 11:10 pace, plus 4 10-sec hill sprints. I woke up with some iliac crest pain (that's the pointy part of the hipbone) and didn't want to push the sprints, since I was planning a long run the next day.

Saturday - 19.5 miles in the Animas Valley on a beautiful day! This was a great and confidence-building run. The plan was to go easy early and try for a mild progression toward about MP+10%; I set an early floor of 8:50 pace and it was surprisingly hard to go slower than that! Then I allowed myself to go as fast as 8:40 through mile 10, then 8:30-8:40, and trying to run around 8:30 or faster for the last 3 miles. It worked great: 1-4 averaged 8:53, 5-10 8:44, 11-16 8:37, and miles 17-19 8:30. (The last half mile was at 9:30 pace. Hey, cool-down, right?) Total average pace was 8:42, which - okay, I don't place much weight on training run pace, but this run was not just faster but ended stronger than the same run I did four weeks before my 3:29 at Houston, which was 19.3 miles at 8:58 average pace, and I slowed to ~9:15 in the last several miles. So I'm thinking this is a good sign.

Sunday - 'rest' day. And by the quotes I mean that actually I need to rake leaves today, and then go to the in-laws' and cut firewood. So, not all that restful. But no running.

Total for the week 66.7, booyah!

So, um, I didn't get around to posting any of the stuff I talked about last time. But here's what I did this week:

Monday - 5.8 miles on the trails easy, 11:25 pace and super-low HR. I was still a bit tired out from the previous day's 19.3.

Tuesday - Lousy tempo run, 11.7 miles total with 6 miles that were supposed to be at half-marathon pace but were at 7:34, on the slow side. Then again, my heart rate was also lower than half-marathon heart rate - closer to marathon-pace HR (but certainly not effort). Overall pace 8:14.

Wednesday - 8.6 mile trail run, again just taking it easy at 11:19 pace, felt pretty good.

Thursday - It rained pretty hard in the morning, and so I waited until things slacked to a drizzle before going out. I pushed a bit and ended up with 6.4 miles at 8:36 pace, but my HR stayed in the 'easy run' range, yay! My timing worked out pretty well: after I'd come home and showered, I looked out the window and saw it was snowing!



Friday - 10.1 miles, pushing hard again which was kind of stupid as my right peroneal tendon was aching (this is an old injury which pops its head up every so often) but I was spurred on by a Facebook friend/rival's post about her runs, which have been faster and better than mine lately, grr. 8:36 pace again, HR a bit higher than the previous day.

Saturday - I was to be a course marshal for the Durango Double's trail races, so I woke early and ran to my station with my pack stuffed with warm clothes, a thermos of coffee, granola bars, and my backpacking chair. I haven't run much right around sunrise and it was lovely. The trails were slightly muddy from the rain and snow, but still frozen solid when I headed out; unfortunately it had melted into mud by the time the racers came by. It was plenty slippery when the last runner passed my station and I packed up and headed back down, and I fell hard within the first 10 minutes, landing on my right index finger which still hurts an awful lot! I also felt tired and my peroneal tendon was screaming by the time I got home. 8.6 miles total, 12:22 average pace. (That pack was heavy!)

Sunday - I also had volunteered to work the finish line at the road races from 12-3:30 and so I had to get my run in early. My peroneal tendon still hurt, and I also forgot to bring my water bottle but didn't feel like heading back for it, so I made some loops back and forth around the rec center (where I could stop at the water fountain) and cut my run relatively short, to about 13 miles. After the first 6 miles easy I was feeling okay so I did a Squires Long Run (well, not really so long): a 90-second surge of fast running (5K-10K pace) at the beginning of every mile. This really sped up my average mile pace in the second half of the run, and my average pace ended up at 8:43.

Total this week was 64.4 miles, which is a lot considering the longest run was only 13 miles! Next week will be a small cutback as I taper a bit for my Sunday half marathon, and the following week will be lower as well for recovery.