Happy Birthday to me (part 2)
Birthday related junk food eaten today:
- 1 chocolate cupcake at breakfast (Matt arranged to have this given to me when it became my birthday in West Greenland Summer Time last night)
- 3 chocolate cloud cookies (1 at lunch, 2 to celebrate my birthday with my softball team)
- 1/2 slice of chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake at dinner
Thank goodnesss this only happens once a year!
Thanks for all the emails, e-cards and phone messages today! I feel very loved.
Happy Birthday to me
link
Some days PhD Comics hit just a little too close to home! (These are meant to be funny, not depressing!)
Race Report: Torchlight Run 8K
Yesterday evening I ran the 8K Torchlight Run at SEAFAIR. The start was at 6:30 pm. I got down to the start at Qwest Field at about 5pm. That was way earlier than necessary but I’d always rather be too early than too late. I picked up my race t-shirt and bib, got changed, checked my backpack and then sat around on the grass for a while sipping water. I should have thought to bring my own disposable water bottle (note to self) since my Nalgenes had been checked with my backpace but luckily they were giving away water before the race so I took one of those bottles. Apparently last year it was over 100F at the race but yesterday we had perfect running conditions: cool and partly cloudy.
I started my warm-up just before 6pm. This is where I got really nervous. I got a side stitch/cramp after one lap around the parking lot. I was not happy. Did I eat too recently? (I’d had oatmeal at 3pm) Was I dehydrated? Overhydrated? I decided that it wasn’t likely that I was dehydrated so I kept sipping water and took a gel (with caffeine) while stretching. I tried another lap a little later and felt a bit better but the cramp was still there. At that point I decided my legs were warm enough and I focused on stretching and breathing for the remaining 15 minutes before the race start.
The start line back packed and although I started just behind the 8-9 minute sign I knew I was too far back. It took a minute or two after the start before I actually crossed the line. I spent about the first 5 minutes passing people. There were no walkers allowed in the 8K so at least I was passing runners which is way easier than passing walkers. I was aiming for a 9 min/mile pace so I was pretty happy when I passed the first mile marker at 8:38. My cramp came back in the second mile but it was bearable and I picked up the pace at did mile 2 in 8:13. At this point I thought, either I’m going to be able to maintain this pace or I’m going to crash soon. I chose the first option and did mile 3 in 7:50. That might have been my first ever sub 8 minute mile!
After mile 3 the course turned onto the Torchlight parade route. It was pretty cool to run the last 2 miles with thousands of spectators cheering you on. There were little kids lined up along the road trying to give high fives to the runners. I gave the first few sets of kids high fives but after that I decided to focus on the running. The cramp was getting a little worse and I was starting to really feel my legs. I got a little worried as I watched the time tick away on my watch without seeing mile marker 4. I think the marker must have been blocked by the crowds because I never saw it.
My friends Jeff and Leah had come down to the parade route to cheer me on. They’d told me they’d be on the east side of the road on a specific block downtown. That ended up being near the end of an uphill stretch and knowing I was going to see them kept me going up that hill. They were pretty easy to spot because they’d made a “Go C Go” sign and were cheering loudly! It was great to see them because at that point things were getting rough. A few blocks later I got a cramp on my right side! Not good. I felt myself slowing down over the next 3-4 minutes and people started passing me. About 500m from the finish I got a second wind and was able to pick up the pace and finish strong. My final time was: 40:53
I ran the last 1.97 miles in 16:10. My average pace was 8:13 min/mile. That’s way faster than I thought I could run and I did it with a cramp for most of the race. I’m actually still a little shocked that I pulled of at 40:53 8K! I definitely think I’ll do this race again next year. It was really well organized and running along the parade route was a great experience.
The weddings are over, bring on the tan lines, it’s time to crank
The 2006 wedding season is officially over for me. Three sets of friends are now happily married. The weddings were lovely and I had a great time attending them all but the travel has been wreaking havoc on my productivity. So now that I’m back in Seattle for a full month it’s time to crank away at the research. That’s right, the word of the month is C-R-A-N-K. Actually it’s the word of a time frame much longer than a month but I’m just focusing on the present. I figure I spent all of last August studying for the qualifying exams and if I can apply half of that determination (OK fear) to my research I should be able to make some good progress.
On a lighter note, the end of the wedding season also means it is the end of the strapless dress season. Thank goodness! Up until now I have been operating in 100% avoid tan lines mode. Finally I can give in and embrace the inevitable racerback swimsuit/sports bra tan line I get every summer. I don’t want anyone to worry though, I’m still a slave to the sunblock.
Crank on.
8K training – Week 10 – Ready to race
| 24/07 | 0 miles | Rest day, evening IMA softball game |
| 25/07 | 3 miles | Slow & easy, evening ultimate game |
| 26/07 | 4.5 miles | Tempo run, 2.8 miles @ 8:37 min/mile, legs felt slow |
| 27/07 | 0 miles | Rest day, evening IMA softball game |
| 28/07 | 0 miles | Rest day |
| 29/07 | 8 km | RACE DAY |
| 30/07 | 0 miles | Rest and recover day |
| Total | 12.5 miles | TYD: 459 miles |
[29/07] Taper week is now over and I am ready to race. Or at least as ready as I’m going to be. I feel as though I didn’t do much this week. I only ran twice but I that’s because I wanted to take two full days off before the race. My primary goal is to finish the 8 km in under 45 minutes. I think that’s attainable, it’s 9 minute miles. I’m also going to focus on having a good warm-up and making sure that my hamstring is ready to go at the start. Really I just want to have fun and push myself. The pushing myself part may mean the last mile or two aren’t so fun but that’s OK too!
Once again with the half-marathon
I promise this will be my last post related to the 2006 Vancouver Half-Marathon.
The finish line video is finally available! If you’d like to watch me cross the finish line go to the Vancouver Marathon page and enter a time of 2:15:00, select Half and press View. You should see me speed across the finish line on the left side of the screen. My first thought when I saw the video was “ouch” because I remember how much my legs hurt at the end. All I could think about was putting one foot in front of the other and getting to the finish line as fast as possible even if my form wasn’t pretty.
8K training – Week 9 – Aaah rest
| 17/07 | 0 miles | Rest day, evening IMA softball game |
| 18/07 | 4 miles | ~11min/mile, legs felt horrible, I think I need a couple days of total rest… |
| 19/07 | 0 miles | rest rest rest |
| 20/07 | 0 miles | rest rest rest |
| 21/07 | 5 miles | legs felt much better |
| 22/07 | 0 miles | rest rest rest |
| 23/07 | 10 miles | slow & easy, felt great for the first 7m and decent for the last 3 |
| Total | 19 miles | YTD: 446.5 miles |
[24/07] This week I decided to listen to my body and take things a little easy. I tweaked my right hamstring sometime during week 8 and although it was a fairly minor injury it needed a bit of time to heal. I should have taken the time off right away but I had softball and ultimate games to play and a training schedule to stick to so I just kept going. I don’t think my leg got any worse but it wasn’t getting any better either so this week I decided things had to stop. I took three days completely off of all athletics and it helped immensely. My hamstring seems to have recovered and my legs feel better all around. In the long run that’s much more important than the fact that I was 4 miles short of my mileage goal for this week.
5 days to the 8K race, it’s time to taper…
8K training – Week 8 – I could totally bust apart my 5K PB right now
| 10/07 | 0 miles | Rest day, evening IMA softball game |
| 11/07 | 3 miles | approx 11:00 min/mile (slow & easy), evening ultimate game (16-15 victory!) |
| 12/07 | 7 miles | tempo run, 2x 2.8 miles: 8:24 min/mile, rest, 8:50 min/mile. Hard but good |
| 13/07 | 0 miles | Rest day, evening IMA ultimate game |
| 14/07 | 2 miles | 11:19 min/mile, weights |
| 15/07 | 0 miles | Rest day, softball practice |
| 16/07 | 10 miles | 11 min/mile |
| Total | 22 miles | YTD: 427.5 miles |
I’m trying out a new format for my training posts. The idea came from “running commentary” one of the running blogs I occasionally like to visit. My plan is to update my mileage in the above table during the week and then write the final summary at the end of the week. I’m going to try to keep this entry at the top of the log so non-running entries I make during the week should appear below it.
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Well I hope everyone enjoyed my first week of daily mileage updates. I don’t actually keep a training log (I know, the horror) so it’s nice for me to record what I do every day. This week was sort of odd in that I had two longish runs and two shortish runs and nothing in between. Things even out a little bit next week.
Wednesday’s run was quite the experience. It was supposed to be 7 miles with 5 miles of tempo in the middle but instead I split the tempo up into two 2.8 mile repeats (that’s the distance around the inner loop of Green Lake). I have to admit I was tired when I started the run. On Tuesday I’d run 3 miles in the morning and then played a monster ultimate game in the evening. I actually amazed myself and ran the first 2.8 mile loop at 8:24 pace! Then I took 5 minutes to recover and did the second loop at 8:50 min/mile which was much slower but, like I said, I was tired. If I were able to hold 8:24 for a 5K that would give me a finish time of 26:05 which would take a full 1:30 off my 5K PB set in February. I’m still focusing my training on the 8K in 2 weeks (which will be a PB since I’ve never done an 8K before) but I think I might try to do a 5K later in August because I’d LOVE to bust apart my 5K PB.
8K training – Week 7 – In which I remember that I can’t eat then run
Or, In which I babble on about running…
On Thursday I had a 6m tempo run scheduled. Last time I tried to run 6m first thing in the morning I did it on a mostly empty stomach and was a wreck when I got home. This time I decided to be “smart” about it and eat a small bowl of oatmeal 45 minutes before heading out. I guess that wasn’t enough digestion time since I had a sharp stich in my side for most of the first half of the run. The stitch eventually went away but my stomach never really settled. I managed to pull the second 2m of tempo out at about the target pace but I wasn’t thrilled with the run as a whole.
So now I’m not really sure what to do about my mid-week semi-long (6m or more) runs. I’m almost to the point where I’m ready to set my alarm for 5am, eat something, go back to sleep and then start running at 6:30am or so. My alternative is to run in the late afternoon or evening but then I have to deal with timing my lunch/snack eating and the heat. Plus usually I’m more motivated to run first thing in the morning than after a day of work. Plus I play ultimate and softball in the evenings so I think I’ll be sticking to my morning run schedule.
Later on Thursday I very briefly considered running a half-marathon this Sunday. My thought process went something like this: hey there’s a half in Bellevue this Sunday, hey I just ran a 9 miler so I could totally pull off a half, hey I could cancel the rest of my week of training and call that a taper, hey look there’s still time to register! And then reality came crashing down and I realized that while I’m sure I could have finished the race it probably would not have been at a pace I’d be happy with and that doing the half would completely mess me up for my 8K in 3 weeks and I need to be mentally 100% this week at work/school so toasting myself on Sunday would not be a good idea. Needless to say I talked myself out of it. But I did decide to officially register for the Torchlight 8K on July 29 so now I’m committed to that race.
The 8K is an evening run which I’ve never done before. Start time is 6:30 so I’m a little concerned it could be hot hot hot. I ran at 5:30pm on Friday and definitely felt the effect of the heat. I guess I’ll have to do a few more evening runs to get used to the heat despite the above mentioned reasons I don’t like running in the evening.
Today I did a nice 9 miler squeezed between watching the Wimbledon Gentlemen’s final and the final game of the World Cup. I solved my gel problem from a few weeks ago. It turns out that freezing my gels before running does make them much more palatable.
Week 7 mileage was 21 miles (3+6+3+9).
Canada Day weekend at the cottage
I spent the Canada Day long weekend at my Aunt and Uncle’s cottage. There were 9 of there so we occupied every bed in the cottage. It was a great weekend filled with relaxing (or chillaxing as my sister would say), swimming, boat rides, fireworks, sparklers, fishing (not for me), Scrabble and lots of good food. My cousin Trish was there and I hadn’t seen her since 2000! Of course we had to take another photo to add to the collection of Cotton Cousins photos.
I’ve put a few more photos of the weekend up in my Cottage July 2006 photoset.