'Then life intervened'

Sometimes, the best laid plans don't happen.  That was yesterday.  I really did want to go run, but was waylaid by stuff that needed doing.  For some reason, this reminded me of a Runner's World article from a while ago.  There were a bunch of half-marathon plans that were designed for individuals.  One was for a mother who had trained for a half-marathon before.  'Then,' as the article put it (at least in the paraphrased version that I'm choosing to remember'), 'life intervened.'  Or something like that -- it was definitely that gist.  I feel like this past January has been a whole month of life intervening.  On my marathon blog, I mentioned a book by Lois Lowry called Anastasia On Her Own (which is a fab book), where the nascent Type-A teenaged protagonist tries to schedule everything around the house, only to find that sometimes life intervenes.  So she makes up 'unexpected events,' which she schedules in to the daily routine (yes, this is probably the most Type-A thing ever).  I think that it's important to remember that sometimes these things happen.  Sure, it would have been better if I could have run more in January.  But it's okay.  I can still run 5k.  This might not be the PR that I was seeking, but it's not like I've lost all fitness by sitting around eating pork rinds in bulk.

Anyway, I have vowed to do better in February, barring any life interventions of course.  That started a day early because today I did get out running (yay!).  Today's workout was eight intervals that were 600 meters with a 90-second break in between.  I went just across the street on a relatively straight stretch of sidewalk.  This was a good workout: tough, but not impossible.  My times ranged pretty widely and weren't as fast as I would want in a perfect world.  However, that is exactly why we train: to get better.

All in all, I think that it went pretty well.  I definitely got a workout!  And it was somewhat humid (over 70%), but not completely ridiculous or anything.

Tomorrow's workout will be another Indo-Row session, so that one I can't miss or I might forfeit the class (you need to reserve in advance).  So that is on.  Here we go for February!

In exciting racing news, it looks like I will be doing a 5k later this month with a friend.  Just for fun.  It's a run put on by the Tampa Bay Lightning (local NHL team) and we will get a free ticket to see that night's game just for participating.

Crosstraining: Super Slimdown, in which we do sit-ups that are just plain evil

Somehow, I managed to get motivated to go running Wednesday when I felt icky, but have been a bit of a slacker ever since.  Thursday morning I decided to take off since I had not been feeling well Wednesday.  Friday just didn't really wind up happening.  I really should have gone this morning, but decided to sleep in instead.  Then I planned to go later today, and that didn't really pan out either.  We did fix my bannister though (long story that involves having to chop off a bannister).

Rather than completely lose a day, I decided to do an exercise video.  I have an exercise video at home.  One.  Exactly one.  And I like it.  It's The Firm's Ultimate Fat Burning Workout and it's led by this super-perky girl named Alison (who also has a super Carolina accent).  Alison, I think, was a cheerleader, but she was one of those nice cheerleaders who was generally supportive and didn't hang out with the mean girls.  Or at least she tried to call them out when they were being mean.  This is my elaborate story that I've developed while doing this video, which likely gives you the hint that I have done this video rather often:

Is Alison not adorable?

The workout is pretty good, but today, I thought that I would seek change. 

So I went to Netflix and found Super Slimdown as an instant video.  The reviewers seemed to indicate that this one was pretty good.  And it was pretty good.  As in, it was totally brutal and I may very well be feeling my abs for a week.  But that is good.  It's supposedly a combination of yoga and pilates; having never done pilates, I can't really speak to that.  Certainly I would not really describe it as 'yoga.'  I would heartily endorse it as a brutal abs workout since you are supposed to keep your abs tight through the whole thing.  You'll particularly love the sit-ups where you pull yourself up off the floor.

I still feel like it would have been better to just go running today.  But at least I did something.  A strong core is also an important feature for runners, so it's not like this workout was a waste.  Tomorrow morning, I have vowed to get up at a reasonable time and go.  Plus I will do the hills that were supposed to be done this week and then I shall consider myself redeemed for sloth.

You have got to be kidding me

This afternoon, I noticed that I wasn't feeling great: lethargic, not motivated, and tired.  Then my stomach started acting weird.

Not again.

I just cannot handle another bout of this stupid flu!  Enough!

So I refused to accept the flu.  Went to the treadmill and ran my intervals despite the fact that I felt lousy.  Did my 5 x 50m on this week's workout (with a 2-minute RBI).

This might have been a very stupid idea.  I think that if someone came to me and asked what to do in this situation, I would advise taking a rest day.  But I am just not going to be sick again.  And that is final.  You had better be listening, stupid flu.

(That being said, it is entirely possible that I change the schedule to have a day off tomorrow.  I'm going to see how I feel in the morning and play it by ear.  Supposed to be 50 minutes with some hill intervals).

Also, the weather is fabulous for running.  Nice and cool again.  Of course.

In case you're curious, I did finish the Dark Tower and I liked the ending.

She who hesitates gets humidity in return

The running schedule was to do a 25-minute run yesterday, which was supposed to be at half-marathon pace.  But yesterday I was really not feeling it.  Not quite sure why, except that I generally get off of my sleep schedule on the weekends. 

I lie.  I have no sleep schedule.

Anyway, then Monday comes and I have to be up at 6:30am and that generally does not go well.  I know, there are easier solutions to this problem (like adapting to get up every morning at 6:30am).  But I've been staying up late working, so I feel like at least I'm not staying up watching reruns of 'News Radio' or something, so it isn't so bad (that being said, I am maybe staying up past my bedtime to read Stephen King's Dark Tower but dammit, I need to finish this thing.  I'm on Book 7 of 7.  Also, if I'm too tired, I will fall asleep while reading, so problem solved).  I need to find a way to get more done in the day.  Anyway.

Mondays.  Yeah, not my favorite.  But in hindsight, I really wish that I had gone.  Yesterday, we still had the awesome cold front in place.  Today, not so much.  It was humid during the 25-minute run.  Not 'Oh God someone kill me' summer humid, but humid nonetheless, like over 80% easily.  I'll bet that it would have been more fun to go yesterday when the humidity was probably more in the 50% or less range.

Ah well.  The point is that I went.  And it wasn't completely terrible.  It's weird to me that I still feel guilty about changing my workout plans, even when they do actually get done.  Any cures for this?  Or maybe it is a good thing that keeps me going?  No idea.

Ask, and ye shall receive

Okay, last time I complained that it was too humid and voila!  Cold front!  This is the second time this has happened since I started blogging about running (also happened once on the marathon blog). 

Today's run was 70 minutes.  I decided to take it easy and enjoy, particularly considering the awesome weather (mid-50s with a cool breeze, but plenty of sun to warm you up).  I only took the watch and left the Forerunner at home.  It will get plenty of use for the rest of the week, so I think that this made sense.  Anyway, I did manage to take it easy and it was quite enjoyable.  I could have maybe worn slightly less (I went went a long-sleeve performance shirt and a real hat), but it was not too awful.

I think that I'm starting to realize the differences between marathon training and this plan.  I feel like I have a lot more power in my legs than I am used to actually using.  This makes sense to some extent: for the marathon runs, I was mostly just trying to keep going and not worrying too much about speed.  Now, I think the time has come to switch this mentality.  Part of what feels weird, though, is that I have more strength than I am accustomed to, so I'm still trying to figure out how I can use this.  I'm not sure if this will be resolved by the 5k (I hope it will) and I don't really know how to explain it.  Let me just say that it feels kind of weird, for lack of a more clear description.

Cross-training: Indo-Row

Last week on Groupon, there was a deal for five Indo-Row classes at a gym in the area.  What is Indo-Row?  It's an hour-long workout class that takes place (get this) on a rowing machine.  Those of you who have rowed are undoubtedly thinking that this is the most torturous idea you have ever heard of.  And it would be if you had to spend an hour prepping for an erg test.  But as a fitness class, it wasn't so bad.  The longest distance that we had to do in one go was 1k, which is very reasonable.  There was also a relay race 250m at the end which was exceedingly reasonable, even for me (and I haven't been on a rowing machine in years).  It was fun!

I've tweaked this running program so that there is one day of cross-training a week.  According to the master plan, you can have 1, 2, 3, or no days.  The Indo-Row is a nice change of pace and something else to do.  Plus it's rowing, so it gives you a ridiculously complete workout.  I found it encouraging to realize just how much more fit I was than when I last did some serious work on a rowing machine, which would have been four years ago now (!).  Or their rowing machines calculate your 500m split very generously.  I'm choosing to believe that I've gotten severely better :)

Oh, and for those of you who read the marathon blog: remember how I talked about the fact that when I was 26.1 miles through, I tried to push myself to finish by reminding myself that this was no worse than a 2k erg test, then realizing that actually it was easier to finish the marathon than do a 2k erg test?  In a way, I think that I was right.  The very end of the 1k today was mentally very tough.  You are so tired and done by that point, plus if you are not careful your technique fell apart somewhere around 200m or so.  I found it amazing that even now, after all of the tough running that I've done, getting those last few pulls in was hard.

(Okay, I even cheated a bit and let it run down for the last 5m.  But I am not doing that again!)

All things considered, it wasn't so bad

Today's run was a 50-minute jaunt at a reasonable pace, followed by some hill training...er, 'hill' training.  I used the same 'hill' that I ran for my marathon training, which is not really a hill per se.  Unless you are in Florida.  In which case it meets the criterion.

Actually, there is a hill buried in the golf course neighborhood which might be even better, forgot about it until later today.  However, for the purpose for getting a bit of hill training in, I think that today's was just fine.  I did six reps up the hill, then walked back down.  Not particularly challenging, but enough to definitely get me tired.

The 50-minute run was okay except that it was really freaking humid out.  I felt more sluggish all day that I would have hoped, but I am going to chalk that up to humidity instead of freaking out about it like I usually do.  Today was rather out of control, though: like in the 90% range.  At least there was a breeze and it was decently cool.  Actually, it was less awful than I thought (but less awful does not mean perfect).

Sometimes I wonder why I even check the weather

Tomorrow's AM forecast: humidity should start at around 100% at 7am, improving to 96% by 8am and 90% by 9am.

Really?

I thought that this was supposed to be winter!  And I thought that in winter, the humidity was lower than in summer!

Baby steps to the faster pace

When I was sick with the flu, I saw 'What about Bob' again for the first time in years.  Hence the title of this post.  You can achieve anything and everything with baby steps, after all.

Today I broke my streak and managed to run on a day other than Monday (plus it did not even rain).  For some reason, it is unseasonably humid, which is not great.  But today's run was even less (in some respects) than yesterday's, only more brutal (in some respects).  It was four intervals of 'fast' running -- the plan isn't specific, just that it should be 'near the max.'  You do 4 x 50 meters (WHY suddenly meters?!?), then take a 2-minute break in between (labeled as an RBI in the plan, which in this case means a 'run between intervals').  This was tougher than I thought it would be since the distance looked like a little wimpy amount -- it corresponds to 0.3 miles.  That is a ways, though, if you are running fast.

Rather than run outside in the hot and humid, I decided to go on the treadmill.  Those of you who followed my previous blog may recall that I'm not the world's biggest fan.  I have used it in the past to good effect, but it's just not all that fun.  Plus the room at my local gym also gets humid, which is almost like an insult to injury.  However, I can see that the treadmill might come in handy for this running plan.  One thing that is really good about a treadmill is how you must run evenly on it since it stays at the same pace.  I noticed during yesterday's run that my pace varied pretty extensively during my run.  To get back in the even pace habit, I think that the treadmill will be helpful.

I'm finding myself annoyed because I want to be running faster than my current paces.  However, I keep trying to remind myself that just because I ran a long distance for my last race, it's different running a fast pace.  Eventually, this will sink in, plus the reason that you do a running plan in the first place is to get better.  There are still 6.5 weeks to go.  That's lots of time to improve.

(But it is still annoying).

Apparently I am a Monday runner

So remember that flu that I had about a week and a half ago?  It continued last week.  Monday after I did my run I was not feeling great and for the rest of the week, I was unbelievably tired.  I decided that my best move was probably to take a week off.  Not ideal, but better than overdoing it and getting sick yet again.  This past weekend I managed to eat pretty much normally so I drew the conclusion that if you can eat, you can burn off those calories through running.

I was a bit concerned that I wouldn't get out today because it has been rainy.  Like, all day with thunderstorms rainy.  These weather conditions are somewhat unusual for this time of year.  Although since it rained also last Monday, maybe this is just a Monday thing.  I did manage to get out at a point when it was not raining and there was no thunder heard.  As you can probably guess, though, it was a tad humid.

Like 87% humid.  Blech.  That ranks as too humid in my books.  It was in the high 60s, so I was hoping it wouldn't be too bad, but the high humidity was pushing it.

The run was only supposed to be a little 25-minute jaunt around the neighborhood.  I was hoping to sustain a quickish pace.  However, that didn't quite happen.  I'm not sure if it was because of the week off or the weather or so combination of both.  The good news is that there are still seven weeks before this 5k to work up my speed.

Who knew I would go running today?

There were so many factors that were against me to go running today:

1) There were storms.  Big storms.  And do you know what else they brought?  Humidity.
2) I had a long day at the office.  Like, about twice as long as I anticipated.
3) I slept terribly.
4) I can still feel the dregs of the flu.

And yet, somehow I went anyway.  The new running plan started today, this time for a 5k race.  It's nice, because you don't have to start thinking of your 5M runs as 'the short ones.'  For most of the day, I was pretty much convinced that I would do some form of cross-training instead of the designated run for the day.  Then for some weird reason, as I was driving home, I suddenly wanted to run.  Now.  And so I did -- well, okay, once I got out of the car of course and changed.

Mind you, today's actual run was not exactly the toughest I have ever done.  It was two 10-minute intervals that were supposed to be at my half-marathon pace, with a 2:30 jog break in between.  I do have to say that I think I went faster than my half-marathon pace (I left the new and awesome toy at home...long story short, I am dogsitting again and figured I wouldn't need it, what with the flu recovery and all) and parts of this run were not great.  For instance, I was stiff because I decided to paint my bedroom on Saturday and for some reason this tightened some of my hamstring muscles.  I did a warm-up to start (no idea how long by time or distance), then plunged into my intervals.  Voila, run complete.

Some days I remind myself that it's easy to find a myriad of reasons not to run and that you really just need to find your one reason to go.  I'm glad that today worked out in the end, even if it was much to my surprise.

Hiatus

Not sick of blogging, not sick of running -- just plain sick.  And have been for a while now.  The tired set in already early in the week, as did the lack of motivation to do anything related to exercise.  As I should know by now, that generally means that I am not feeling well.  Yesterday, I took the day off and today am still moving slowly.  Definitely not feeling up for a run by any means!

New training program is supposed to start next Monday, so hopefully I will be have kicked this flu bug by then.

First Florida run in a while

I'm definitely back in Florida.  What gave it away was the 86% humidity that accompanied me during this morning's run.  I went around 10am, figuring that in January, it should be okay to run that late.  It really wasn't.  I was not feeling any part of this run, even though it was only 3 miles.

For the first half, my legs felt like they were pushing through molasses.  I would attribute this to the lengthy amount of driving that I did over the past few days (from Canada back to Florida).  It was really not fun and I had to push remarkably hard just to get through the first mile.  It was one of those runs where you start looking at the distance already at 0.2 miles, only to realize that there is a long way to go.

Then as the run went on, I noticed that I felt hot and sweaty.  I mean, the weather wasn't horrible and I've run through worse, but apparently I have lost any and all hot-weather adaptation that I once had.  I feel like these conditions would not have felt so bad two months ago, but for some reason they did not click today.  After all, the dew point was only in the 60s, which is only maybe slightly uncomfortable according to Wikipedia. 

When I got back, I tried to stretch out my legs and realized that I had virtually no flexibility at all.  Again, I would attribute this to having spent too much time in the car over the past week.  I'm hoping that a week of good running will help correct these problems.  Also, if the weather wants to cool off and be less humid, I would not complain.

Post-marathon activities

Today I sat down and chose my next race: the Bartow Race for the Arts on March 5. I found a 5k training plan in an old issue of Runner's World that should help me prepare for it.  For some reason, I was convinced that almost every issue of RW had a 5k plan it in, but apparently not -- the one I chose is from the July 2008 issue (I keep all of my old issues just for such an occasion).  My goal is to best my 5k time: either run under 30 minutes or faster that 10-minute mile splits.  I've come close before.  My best 5k was in September 2009 and I had a 10:06 split, so this seems doable, particularly since I'm coming off of marathon training.

I have been taking a bit of a break since the marathon to allow for recovery, even though I have to say that I wasn't really feeling any serious problems.  Better safe than sorry though.  Basically, I've been trying to do something every 2 days over the past three weeks, although this hasn't always worked out.  I was in Canada, so that affected my plans since it was a bit tricky to just throw on my shoes and go for a run.  However, I did do a bit of running at our local recreation center (or 'centre'), where there is a track over one of the hockey rinks.  You know you're in Canada when you are running on a track above a hockey rink.

I thought about some other activities to do and brought the appropriate equipment; however, I didn't actually do any of those activities.  For instance, I brought my swim suit and even made a plan to go swimming and everything.  Then it turned out that the pool was closed for maintenance.  I brought my skates but just didn't have the motivation to go. 

What I did wind up doing several times was cross-country skiing.  I went to the local park and skied around a bit.  There were no interesting hills or anything like that, just pretty basic trails.  It was fun and a nice change from the usual.  Here is a sample of the park:

Typical grey day in my Canadian hometown

I also had to take this picture because it isn't every day that you see skis and a Florida license plate:

I think I've had those skis since the Reagan administration.

Skiing was a nice change of pace and I enjoyed the opportunity to do it. However, it's rather tricky to do in Florida, so back to running tomorrow morning.

Mostly, I miss the blogging

Three weeks ago, a ran a freaking marathon and tracked my training through a blog.  Well, I'm not preparing for another marathon right now, but I kind of miss the blogging, so I decided to start a new blog (the title of the old one is clearly not appropriate; it was a closed work that had to end with the event).  So here is my running blog!

About me: I am a relatively slow runner, hence the title of this blog.  I've completed 1 marathon, 2 1/2 marathons, several 10Ks and a bunch of 5ks over the past 4.5 years that I've been running.  While my speeds are not very impressive, I'm pretty diligent about training and fortunate not to have suffered any major injuries to date.  This blog will mostly keep track of what I'm training toward.  Enjoy!