Superbowl and Speed

For some reason, I keep reading back to my July-August 2013 entries and seeing how fast I was. I was running so much more than I am now, and my mile splits were almost always in the 8's. Why?!

January 26: 4 Miles, 9'03" average pace - sunny, 51°. This run felt great, but I was really pushing it because I was upset by the above statement. What has stopped me from being fast? No real effort at wanting to be faster? Was it because I stopped listening to music while I ran? Was it because I had turned off the vocal queues at each mile, telling me how fast my average pace was? Well, I turned that back on, and it may have made a difference - it may haven't. This pace is definitely the fastest I've ran this route, anyway.

January 28: 4 Miles, 8'55" average pace - sunny, 51°. Another run where I actively pushed myself to be faster, though admittedly I wanted to make the first mile much much slower than it ended up being (8'55"). I sped up progressively throughout the third mile and then took the last mile as a cooldown at 9'18", still pretty speedy. I guess the old adage "To get faster, be faster" is certainly true. I listened to music this time - Songza's playlist "Performance Enhancing Pop: Cycling" for the last two miles, and it really helped. I forgot how energizing listening to music while running is! I've gotten so used to listening to podcasts...

January 29: 4 Miles, 9'01" average pace - sunny, 49°. I didn't think I'd run this day (Thursday) since I had run pretty hard the day before, but this run felt just a great as Wednesday's run. I tried a new route and was inspired by the new-ness of it, I guess. I had no idea I was going so fast. I started at a "slow" pace of 9'26" and my second mile was the fastest at 8'41". The rest of the miles were in the 8s.

Superbowl fun!

January 31: 9 Miles, 9'15" average pace - cloudy, 42°. Brr. This was a cold one. My second mile was the fastest at 8'48", and the rest of the miles were in the high 9s, except for the last mile, which was at 8'57". What has happened to me?! I actually tried to actively make this a slow run by listening to podcasts but still managed to be more than 15 seconds faster per mile than last week's long run. Maybe running fast for most of the week has really helped.

Total Miles for January 25-31: 21 miles, an 11% increase from last week.

Our group on Superbowl Sunday

It was clearly bothering me that I'm so much slower than I was in 2013. I think I really enjoy running 3-4 days a week. 5 is just a little bit too much for me to handle right now, at least until I build some decent mileage. I like focusing on speed (it makes the runs go by quicker, after all!).

One thing I really wish would stop happening is for cars to stop honking at me as I run by. I know I'm not in the way, I know they aren't honking at anyone else (it always happens right as they pass me), and sometimes it's two short distinct beeps and sometimes it's one longer beep, but it's unnecessary and frankly, a form of harassment that needs to stop. I have as much of a right as anybody to run on the sidewalk, safely, and it isn't right for anyone to honk at a woman attempting to exercise. I don't care if they're actually doing it for encouragement - it's not, at all.

Anyway. I had a great week - it was filled with sunny, fast runs and it ended (started?) with hanging out with great friends. Even though we ended up losing (1 yard...!), I still had a blast hanging out with everybody.

Recognize someone? :D

Some really awesome things with theatre are happening with me, which I'll announce when I can! Basically, I've had some really stellar auditions and I can't wait for the summer. :D In the meantime, the play I'm in, Death By Chocolate, has been really fun. We open in two and a half weeks!

We'll see if I can keep up with running - but since I'm not training for anything specific right now, I think my maximum might be around 20 miles a week. It's quite a struggle to get any more, unfortunately. I honestly can't believe I ran 9 miles last Saturday! Right now I think I might focus a little more on dancing and singing... we'll see.

What's your miles-per-week "sweet spot"?

Running with Stitches, and New Shoes!

My running this week got off to a shaky start. I wasn't sure how I would fare with stitches in my thumb and a slightly sore arm from the tetanus shot, and wondered if the area around the cut was going to start throbbing when I was running. I decided to take the whole weekend off and start anew on Monday, with what was scheduled as a 5 mile run.

Well, I was feeling bad for all the eating I was doing, so I turned off the voice notifications for how many miles I had gone, set it to "Basic Run" (meaning it had no halfway point), and just ran around the neighborhoods that branched off from the main road. I ended up running 9 miles!

I ended up really paying for this later, because my legs were killing me! This was a nice and relaxed run.. I tried not to push the pace too much (because I couldn't), and there were some unexpected hills that I tackled, but overall I'm really happy with how this went.

I went to a yoga class that night, and realized I couldn't really do yoga without being able to put weight into my thumb. Stupid thumb.

:(

The 9 Miler was my last run in my pink Mizuno Wave Rider 17s that I got at Christmas! I ordered some new ones and they arrived on Tuesday.

I love the color!!

After I got my shoes on, I attempted a speed run. I decided to do a 1.5 mile warm up and cool down, and speeding up every .5 miles with a .5 mile cool-down, until I got to 5.5 miles. My dismal attempt:

There's a better look at my paces for the speed run - as you can see, I did well with the first .5 "speedy" run, but then after that one, it all just kind of looks the same. This wasn't the best run. Plus I was sore!

The shoes felt great - like new shoes should! I never had a problem with my Mizuno's, which is why I ordered the exact same model as my last three shoes have been :). I love the color change, though!

I took a day off on Wednesday, and on Wednesday night repeated to myself out loud, "I WILL wake up early to run tomorrow. I will do it."

So Thursday was kind of awesome because of how much I accomplished!

Only 5 miles, but the weather was PERFECT (64 degrees!!) and the fact that I actually got up in the morning really makes me happy. I went to a Restore Yoga class, went to Nordstrom Rack for a return, then drove to my voice lesson, afterwards going to the post office and going grocery shopping. Phew! Then I made Yeah...Immaeatthat's Spinach & Tomato Lasagna for dinner and JW really liked it! I thought it needed some spices- it seemed a little bland to me. So, if you make it, beef (hah) it up with spices!

I decided to skip today's 4 mile hill run since I don't want to over train (and ran 4 more miles than I was supposed to on Monday), and tomorrow it's my first long run since 12 miles three weeks ago - 13 miles! This'll be a good indicator of how I'll do at the Bellingham Bay Half - I'm definitely not convinced I can run it in under 2 hours, but I'm happy to be back at some higher mileage, anyways.

A little under a month until the Bellingham Bay Half!

The Tempo Runs

What's the difference between a speed workout and a tempo run? I'm sure I should probably google it but those have been my runs this week - one speed, and one tempo. Tempo seems to alternate between race pace and "steady" pace (whatever that means) for 1 mile at a time, and speed seemed to be a shorter sprint with little recovery jogs inbetween. I guess that makes sense?

The speed run on Tuesday called for the following, with .25 mile recovery jogs in between.

1 mile warm up

1 mile- 10k pace (8 min mi)

.75 mi - 10k pace (8 min mi)

.5 mi - 5k pace (7'30'' min mi)

.25 mi - 5k pace (7'30'' min mi) 

.75 mile cool down

So, I'm still working on finding my true 10K pace - but my best pace ever for a 10K distance was during an 8 mile training run, so I based it off that (my average pace was 8'06" during that run) so I figured that was a good goal to set.

Well, my first "fast" mile ended up being average 7'55" (fastest at 7'34"!) - about 10 seconds faster than I wanted to be, and it ultimately killed the rest of my workout. I was so winded by the end of it, .25 recovery miles wasn't enough... I slowed down to about a 10'30" pace. Ugh. I tried again to run around 8'06" for my .75 mile segment, only to peak even faster (7'19", woohoo downhills!) and further screw myself for the rest of the workout.

I essentially did the workout backwards - I should have been a little slower at the beginning, to fly at the end when I was supposed to be doing 7'30" (or 5K pace) splits. I'm sure I could have done the workout as it was intended, but sometimes I just have no concept of my pace, and Nike isn't really that great at telling me what my pace is while I'm running it. Maybe I should get a Garmin...?

So, I attempted to run 7'30" for my 5K paces (.5 mile and .25 mile segments), but I was so tired that I could only muster peaking at 7'42" for the briefest of moments, and I mainly hovered a little faster than a 9 minute mile for the rest of the half mile segment.

The last segment, the tiny orange color midst that sea of red, which was supposed to be my fastest, ended up only peaking for a brief second around 8'53" before plummeting back down to almost a 10 minute mile.

Lesson learned!

This morning, I knew I had to knock out a 9 mile tempo run, so I got up early so I would have enough time to go to a Restore Yoga class at 9:30. The workout would look like this:

1.5 mile - warm up

1.5-2.5 - half marathon pace (8'50")

2.5-3.5 - steady pace

repeat, and alternate between half marathon and steady pace, in 1 mile increments, until:

7.5-9 mile - cool down

The average pace by mile picture doesn't really work in this case, so I looked at nikeplus.com to see what my paces looked like when I was sprinting:

So, all those green tops? Those were my mile splits - all around the same speed, and all around 8'20"! That was better than I was hoping for - my PR half marathon pace time is 8'52", so I was aiming for around that.

I wasn't really sure what "steady pace" meant - just, my normal pace? That varies every day, so as you can see I tried to kind of keep around the 9'30" mark for my "steady paces", but soon got tired from all the energy I was exerting on the sprints, so I dropped back down to well past 11 minute miles as it got to the end there.

I tacked on another little half mile split before I started the cool down, since technically I was running at a "steady pace" for miles 6.5-7.5 and didn't want the whole rest of the workout to be so slow.

I mean, I'll take what I can get - I haven't done speed in a really long time, and lately all my workouts have felt really slow - so this was a nice change of..pace. Hah. Hah. I'm hilarious.

Nerdy running post, ftw!

Feels Like Training Again

It's official! In addition to the 10K, I'm officially also training for the Bellingham Bay Half Marathon on September 28!

My training plan is following the half marathon, and I'm just kind of shoving the 10K race in there. It's in less than a month! Man, time really is flying.

Friday morning started off with a really perfect training run - 4 miles in the hills, all negative splits, with my friend Chelsey.

No pictures of us because I figured we looked like death at 5:15 in the morning.

I wanted to wake up early this morning to tackle my farthest distance in this training cycle yet: 9 Miles. I hadn't run that close to 10 miles in.. what feels like forever, and I just wanted to get it over with this morning, meaning around 6 or 7am. Well, I didn't get out of bed until about 7:45 (naturally), and didn't get to my destination until about 8, starting my run around 8:15am.

Another deer sighting! There were two, but I could only catch this one.

I tried out a new trail - the East Lake Sammamish Trail. This trail connects to Marymoor Connector, which is what I start on mostly, but I go the other way, towards the Sammamish River Trail. Sometimes I'd go towards the East Lake Sammamish Trail, but would only get a little ways before I turned around back to Marymoor.

I tried to go to this trail when I ran 7 Miles on Wednesday, but was thwarted by no free parking. Well this time, I figured it out! I just parked at the McDonalds across the street, and it turns out that tons of other runners/bikers do that as well.

The run was pretty good, but I was feeling kind of tired. I ate two prunes with peanut butter in the middle as my fuel around Mile 3- first time I've done that! It was pretty good, just kind of messy.

I'm doing really well with keeping my last mile my fastest, but man this was a mentally tough run. I stopped at Mile 1.5 to take a picture of the deer, and thought I was going to stop at the halfway point, but I made myself push through. I'm happy that there's so much green in my paces!

I feel like I've gotten slower though? I keep looking at my Seattle Half Marathon paces, all in the 8s, and wonder how the hell I did that. How did I get so fast? And I seemed to have gotten super fast by accident, too. So many of my posts are like "I was tired, but I still ran super fast!" without any kind of effort. Was it because I was training for the marathon, and was just ecstatic that I wasn't running 15+ miles? Hmm.

After my run, JW and I got brunch at Issaquah Cafe, which was DELICIOUS.

The pancakes are JW's (pumpkin! jealous!), but mine was the "Potato Burrito" and it was GLORIOUS. "Scrambled eggs, baby reds, ground sausage, Tillamook cheddar, diced tomatoes and green onion wrapped in a flour tortilla, drizzled with avocado cream sauce" With a side of fruit. YUMMM. JW also got the Eggs Benedict, which were delicious.

With a long, early run on Saturday, plus delicious brunch, plus officially registering for the half, it really does feel like I'm back in the thick of traditional training again. Woohoo!

Food Poisoning Makes Running Difficult

We're in tech week of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and our time at the theatre has gotten increasingly longer each night. We open tomorrow night - eek!

I ended up moving a workout - the 9 mile tempo run that was supposed to happen on Wednesday had to happen on Thursday.  On Tuesday night, I woke up around 3:30am, and continued to wake up on the hour, with what I've now diagnosed as food poisoning. I had eaten some green beans on Tuesday that had been in the fridge for maybe a few weeks? I checked them before I ate them, and they looked okay - but lo and behold, my stomach did not agree, and I ended up throwing up for 3 hours. Greeaaat. 

I decided that running 9 miles after no sleep and vomiting wasn't the best combination. So, I waited until Thursday to run. I was still tired from the previous night's rehearsal (we were there until 11:30!) so I didn't get up early to run, and since Seattle is going through a HEAT WAVE, I decided to do the miles on the treadmill. 

Calorie count is wrong - the app originally thought I had run over 10 miles, but nope.

Tempo run, with the first and last miles the slowest. Pretty good!

I watch Conan during my runs - sue me. (first half)

(second half)

So, total distance ended up being 9.06 miles with 938 calories burned. Sweet! I had Nuun with my water (I'm coming around to it!) as well as some Gatorade Prime chews during the run.

I've got a small, 15 minute NTC workout tomorrow, and then it's my mission to get up early on Saturday to knock out 18 miles before my second performance that night. Eep!