8K training – Week 10 – Ready to race

[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!

8K training – Week 9 – Aaah rest

[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

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).

8K training – Week 6 – Running on Canada Day

Last week I was in Ottawa for my best friend’s wedding (more on that in an upcoming post). I was a little worried that with the wedding and its associated distractions I wouldn’t be able to stick with my training schedule. However I managed to shift things a bit and complete the week. It helped that my parents have a treadmill in the basement so I could knock off short runs independent of the weather. The crowning achievement of the week was a hot hot hot noontime 9 miler on Canada Day in Ottawa. There was no way I was doing 9 miles on the treadmill (that’s just asking for shin splints) so I picked a beautiful route along the canal and through the experimental farm. I felt strong during the run but the last two miles were a bit though; that’s probably because I’m not used to the Ontario heat and humidity. Still, there’s nothing like Ottawa on Canada Day.

So for the record my total week 6 mileage was 20 miles (3+5+3+9).

8K training – Week 5 – Once a run is lost, it is lost forever

Week 5 was supposed to be a step back week and boy did I step back.

On Tuesday I ran 5 miles in the morning and then played an ultimate game in the evening. I’m not sure what happened, it could have just been too much impact, but my left foot was not happy when I went to bed. On Wednesday I had a strange non-localized sort of ache in my foot. I iced and stretched and iced and stretched and by Thursday morning things felt mostly better. I still decided to skip Thursday’s 5 miler and watch the USA vs Ghana world cup match instead though. While I can skip a solo run I have a harder time skipping out on my team so I did play in an ultimate game on Thursday night. Thankfully the turf was super soft and my foot felt fine. My foot also felt fine on my Saturday run so hopefully the 3 days of rest fixed whatever was hurt. I could have tried to make up Thursday’s 5 miler on Sunday but I sort of believe that once a run is lost, it is lost forever. Really, missing one 5 mile run is not the end of the world!

All in all my week 5 step back mileage was 10 miles (5+5).

8K training – Week 4 – My gels are melting!

Another week, another 19 miles in the bag: (3+6+2+8)

Thursday’s run was a bit of a challenge. It was scheduled to be a 6 mile tempo run with the middle 4 miles done at 9:47. I’m not the best judge of pace so my average over the 4 miles was more like 9:10. I was a mess when I got home. It didn’t help that I ran first thing in the morning so I’d only eaten half a banana with a squirt of honey and a gel at mile 3. Note to self: runs greater than 5 miles can’t be done without a real breakfast first.

Speaking of gels I’ve made a discovery. Before I started running I’d heard that gels were pretty gross. Then I tried them last winter on my long runs and thought they were the greatest thing ever. I wouldn’t have called them tasty but they were far from gross. They gave a little boost to my runs even though I acknowledge the effect might have been psychological. I haven’t changed the brand or flavour of my gels but lately they haven’t tasted so great. I think the problem is that the summer heat is changing the viscosity and flavour of my gels. In other words, my gels are melting! During the winter they were almost chewy and I like that much better. I tried putting today’s gel in the fridge 24 hours before my 8 mile run but the gel was warm by the time I was ready to have it. My next plan is to try the freezer. I’m a little worried freezing a gel might burst its packaging or it might not defrost quickly enough once I start running but I want my chewy gels back so I’m willing to experiment.

8K training – Week 3 – Running in TO

Week 3 was a solid training week. This is especially pleasing since I had to schedule my runs around travelling to and from Toronto and Hamilton for Dave and Angela’s wedding. My total mileage was ~19 miles (3+5+~3+~8). The approximate distances (~) were runs that I did based on time (instead of distance) in Toronto.

Matt ran the 8 miler (really a timed 89 minute run) with me on Sunday. We didn’t have a solid plan when we started but we ended up doing some trails through High Park and then running along the waterfront boardwalk. I almost always run alone so it was great to be able to chat with someone during a run. And the scenery was a nice change of pace from my standard Seattle routes.

8K training – Week 2 – new shoes!

First things first, I bought new running shoes: Brooks Adrenaline GTS 6. My new shoes are a full size bigger than my previous pair – I’m now wearing a men’s size 9.5! I had to go bigger because as my mileage increased before the half marathon I got a nasty blood blister on the end of my second toe. So far the shoes seem pretty good. I was a little wary of going with a men’s shoe but these are a narrow width so the fit is fine and the sales associate assured me that she’d put lots of women in these shoes and no one had come back with problems.

Now onto the running. Week 2 started out right on schedule. I did two short runs, a sprint training session and hit the weight room. Then the weekend came and everything took a back seat to ultimate frisbee. I was supposed to take Saturday as a rest day and then run 7 miles on Sunday. Instead I played two ultimate games on Saturday and one on Sunday. We had lots of subs so the games weren’t too strenuous and I seriously considered running on Sunday evening. But by the time I got back from ultimate I was tired, hungry and probably a little dehydrated so I decided to axe the long run and bake calzones instead.

For the record, my week 2 mileage was 10 miles (3+5+2). I find this number depressingly low but if I think of the three ultimate games as sprint training it’s not so bad!