Duel in the Sun

...that's what today's race felt like. I haven't written on here in over a week with traveling and honestly not very exciting training. Today, in Fort Myers, FL me and my sister's BF ran a Memorial Day race on a golf course. It was actually not very hilly (nothing long and steep at least) but it alternated between the cart path and the grass which was tough. Plus it was incredibly hot, as it is ALL the time down here. I came in second behind an amazing phenom, a freshman highschool girl who ran somewhere around 19 flat. I ran something like 20:16 which isn't bad, but could have gotten under 20 if my third mile didn't suck. Splits for mile 1 and 2 were 6:21 and 6:29, but didn't get the last mile which was probably 6:40 (ugh) considering .1 is usually around 45 seconds. All in all, it was a success: I kept good form, stayed positive, kept my stride rate high, but didn't kick as much as I needed to. That just goes with getting used to 5ks! If I keep up with the 5k training this summer I should be back down near my PR.

Looking to do a 10k in July, still choosing between a few. FL should be fun because I'll get to cross train a lot (biking, tennis) since my mileage isn't so high. Also I'm going to use the excuse that that highschool was acclimated to the heat since she lives down here.

One last thing: big props to FHS track's state meet qualifiers. At the state meet Josh get a new high jump PR for 5th place and Jon got 2nd for shot put. Ash R and Esanye had great efforts in their events and are only sophomores.

Much Needed Recovery Week

So today marked the end of my much needed recovery week. I only did about 20 miles total I believe, and cross trained more than usual for a good change of pace (no pun intended). However, I guess I really had been putting my body through hell, because if I felt the urge to run more than intended this week and starting to do an extra mile during a run, my legs were hurting. Guess I needed the recovery week more than I thought! It pays off to listen to your body.

Last night I actually had a few drinks to celebrate bday/graduation and was reminded why as a runner, I typically don't drink. Just 4 LIGHT mike's hard lemonades and I woke up dehydrated and slightly hung over. Did not make for a very enjoyable run this morning! However my legs are still feeling relatively fresh except for a little sore from spinning but that's just because I hadn't done that in a while. Looking forward to starting up some more 5k type training and doing a 5k or 10k in June to see how that works out!

Tri-day Friday!

...Meaning triathlon type training. Since this week is my recovery week, today was one of the days I was supposed to xtrain instead of run. So, I did some stuff I haven't done in a while... practice RPM (spinning) and swim. And let me just say... I felt out of shape (for those specific sports) as I was breathless 5 minutes into both! So I concluded I should cross train a little more.

Also my 4 mile run yesterday was good, I actually felt fresh and my legs felt great from all of the rest! Then there's Bay to Breakers Sunday which went well. The Hayes Street hill, which occurs about 2.5 miles into the race, was BRUTAL! I thought I've seen hills... until this one. It must have taken like 5 minutes to climb, and it is so STEEP. After that, the following mile was even slow because my legs were still recovering. Luckily, the rest of the race into Golden Gate Park was mainly downhill, allowing me to throw in a 6 min mile for mile 7. All in all it was very fun, lots of costumes and even some naked runners. Plus I managed to sneak in with the elites while they were warming up even though I didn't belong there.

Splits were 6:33,6:38,7:31,6:59,6:44,6:32,6:00,3:15 for a total of 50:13. I sort of felt like I had some left at the end and really kicked hard, but I wish I would have known better how to pace myself for a 7.5 mile race as well as this unique course. Oh well, I'm doing it next year so I will destroy that time then!

If You're Going to San Franciscoooo

...be sure to run Bay to Breakers like I am on Sunday (or wear flowers in your hair)! Tomorrow morning I leave for San Francisco, where my mom has a work meeting conveniently the same weekend as Bay to Breakers, the huge, famous 12k race in which participants have ranged from elites like Deena Kastor to people wearing costumes and groups of "centipedes" who have to run linked together.

I have not really tapered much for this race, because it's not crucial (or at least not to me) to do really well here. First of all, it's SUPER hilly, plus it's a distance I've never done before so it's a PR no matter what, haha. Also, it's the end of my racing season so I'm not really in peak performance condition.

I am trying not to push too hard since my body is pretty worn out by the months of high mileage I've been doing, so mile repeats, long hard tempo intervals, and things of that sort are not really good to do right now. So, I did 10 miles today: 3 mile warmup, 4 miles that consisted of 15 x 1min 5k pace/1min easy, then 3 miles easy, which felt like I was trotting because I was so tired. I must have been going hard on the 5k pace, because my 4 miles ended up being 7:11,7:22,7:20,7:16. This meant that since the ratio was 1:1 of hard/easy, my hard was probably at 6 min/mile or less pace and my easy was probably at 8:30 min/mile or more pace. My heel was started to hurt a bit but I think it was just because I was probably extending my stride a lot and possibly heel striking. It's fine now though.

Bed time... have to be up early for airport!

Eat, Sleep, and Run.. with less emphasis on sleep lately

So this week is already insanely busy, causing me to wake up pretty early in the morning to run which we know I already did Saturday. Sunday I ran at Loch Raven and my butt was pretty sore to be attacking those sort of hills, but I guess I brought it upon myself. Then mother's day which was nice. Monday was sissy and mommy's law school graduation, which I then went straight from to go teach at the gym. Today I woke up early to go to the trail and did some tempo work but nothing too crazy since i'm sort of in post-season mode and also the glute is miserable right now.

The workout was 2 mi WU/CD and intervals of 3 mi, 2 mi, and 1 mi in that order, with 90 sec jogs between. Times were 20:37 (6:51, 6:51, 6:54), 13:34 (6:46,6:48) and 6:40. My goal is to be able to really get that 1 mile time down. Obviously it's not one mile all out, but I should be able to blast my last mile. Although, once I start doing more speedwork during June, I should have a much better kick... or so I hope.

Can't forget the most important thing tonight... my brand new car! Loving XM radio :-) Off to bed to catch up on sleep then massage tomorrow after my morning run!

Little Darlin' Here Comes the Sun...

Being a lyric person, I thought this was appropriate with how I started my day. Woke up at 5 am to have a GU gel and banana before getting ready to head to the trail for my long run. Didn't get light out until halfway there.

My dilemma today was, with counties starting at 9 am (which I knew would be a long and tiring track meet, surely not fun to run AFTER), should I change my long run to Sunday? I decided that I should just stick to my usual schedule, especially since doing my long run closer to my next race (next Sunday) would not be best for me. So, I sucked it up and figured out what time I would need to get to the trail and eating breakfast after, which I never do... but hey, waking up even earlier than 5 am to eat was not worth it. I was also surprised to find several other people out on the trail at 6 am!

The run went well, running almost all 16 miles in the 7:30s and 7:40s and dropping the last 3 (before a mile CD) to 7:22,7:08, and 6:59. The only drawbacks from such a good run today were that 1) I was hobbling around at counties (I actually managed to plop myself down at the 200m mark to give splits and not get up), 2) now my butt hurts even MORE, even when I'm just laying down, and 3) my hill repeats might totally suck or not even be doable tomorrow. And obviously a drawback of running that early is that I was exhausted all day.

The track meet went well particularly for JV girls who had a ton of PRs. That's what good competition will do for ya. Also Jenna is improving consistently on her mile (I think she got 3rd for JV?) and should be under 6 min very soon.

Why must I be such a tight ass??

And no... I don't mean my personality. My right glute has been killing me ever since the beginning of this week after the race!!!

So Wednesday was obviously easy run - 8 miles, and teach. However easy is always relative around my neighborhood since it is so hilly. Then I went to the trail Thursday and figured I should lay off of distance intervals so that I'm not so hard on myself, and just run time intervals. So, within a 10 mile run I did (after 3 miles) minute intervals of 1,2,3,2,1,2,3, with 3 min jogs in between which is a decent jog time to allow recovery. I must have been going pretty fast because my overall splits for those 4 miles (averaging recovery jogs and pickups) were 7:21, 7:27, 7:17, and 7:28. Although then I was hobbling all day because my hip/low back/glute is incredibly inflamed - you can even see a noticeable difference in the two sides.

So today I said I would just do 6, but ended up doing 8 miles. My legs were so dead, I'm really glad I didn't wear a watch because I was probably trotting at 8:45-9 min/mile pace. I need to cut back more (hence the dead legs) but I know that I'll be tapering next week then recovering the following week (the week of my birthday) when I'm only going to be running 2/7 days. Tomorrow is a 16 mile long run BEFORE county meet which means 6 am woo hoo!! I've been doing a good job of eating more fruits and veggies which I am very proud of.

A thought I had today at the Cockeysville Giant - Why do they only have 2 checkout lanes, forcing you to utilize the self-checkout, which is so hard to use that they end up using employees to help you anyway? Doesn't seem to make sense.

I've got the month of May

.. and yes that's from the temptations My Girl. But more importantly I'm talking about how I have the month of May before I delve deep into my first phase of training in the few months leading up to fall races!

May is a big month... Bay to Breakers 12K in San Fran, Birthday, and Graduation... in that order! Then back to FL the end of the month. Going to take a very easy week after the the 12K before I head into training! Then in June I will give a 5k another shot which should be good as I will be doing a bit more speedwork.

This morning did 2 miles easy before car shopping.. happy to report I will be getting a brand new Honda Accord very soon! Just need to decide between dark blue, silver, and polished metal! Then lunch, practice, and ran at the trail which I usually don't do in the evening so that was a nice change. Wanted to throw some marathon pace tempo in the middle but my legs are still a bit tight from Sunday's race so splits ended up being 7:54, 7:52, 7:49, 7:56, 8:00, 7:55, 7:52 and then 1 mile CD for a total of 8 miles.

So basically the idea going into the summer will be more recovery days so I can be very ready for hard workouts. Should be an interesting change and we'll see how it goes! And yesterday was 8 easy miles but I should maybe not run so much the day after a race.

Can't Forget the New Town meet

Also, there were a few performances I was very pleased with at Franklin's meet yesterday! Jeff, Andrew, and Michael ran very well in the 800 with 2:10, 2:12, and 2:13 respectively. The good thing is that our 800 m runners go out incredibly fast but I feel like they can hold it if we worked on endurance more. Also Ash B is very close to breaking 60 in the 400!

Good News/Bad News

So this morning was the Alexandria Running Festival Half Marathon. Up until this weekend I thought I was setting myself up to PR (1:30 is what I was aiming for) then when it was ungodly hot, I know I'd have to rethink that. I was pleased to find out at the starting line that there were no Kenyan/Ethiopian women (or actually no men either) and so I knew it'd come down to me and Jill, an awesome woman I met trying to find our way to where the race was held. She runs crazy good times and I was lucky enough to have caught her during a race when she hadn't been training as much.

I still tried to go out on pace, only to find that there were not really any mile markers and the few there were were inaccurate. For someone who has only been racing for 2 years that can be very difficult if you're trying to run a good time because while the pace should feel familiar, it is probably still off by 5-10 seconds per mile, especially as the race goes on and it feels like you're keeping pace when you're slowing down.

The course was out and back TWICE on Eisenhower Avenue and I wasn't a fan of the park it had us run through that was very windy, had a lot of turns, and a few hills. I wouldn't have called it fast and flat. However the park version did provide some shade that we didn't have on the road. I also decided to forgo my usual "I don't need every aid station" and drank at ALL of them given how hot it was. Although I did manage to get about half of every gatorade cup all over my chest.

So anyway, to make a long story short, I won! I was pissed there was no tape to break, but I guess it was a tiny race. My time was about 4 minutes off what it should have been, but I guess there's no need to be upset considering a) the weather sucked b) I won (250 bucks!) and c) everyone else's times were off today.

One thing I need to work on is relaxing the night before a race. I get so hyped up when I stay in a hotel that I can never fall asleep! Then of course I'm up thinking "now I only get ___ hours" which coincidentally keeps me up longer! Anyway, time for Army Wives. I think that was a good race recap.