Pre Race Jitters

I threw my back out night before last. In my sleep. Few people have mastered the art of injuring themselves in bed, but I am learning.

I haven’t run well since last September, when I ran myself into overtraining.

I wasn’t able to run the marathon I planned in October.

Then I did the half marathon in November and was almost a minute slower than the year before. Exactly the decline the age-graded tables predicted. Obviously I would only run more slowly from now on.

When I did a marathon in Dec I had to scale my goal way back — and then I failed to make even that.

In January I tore my glut after running the resolution races at a moderate pace.

I couldn’t even run for a month.

Then I got achilles tendinitis.

I didn’t run Orchard to Ocean well.

My easy runs were very slow. My track and tempo workouts were also slow compared to what I used to do.

Everyone else seems to be doing so well. All kinds of people passed me at Orchard to Ocean; people whom I have, in the past, been in front of.

A week ago I noticed that my easy runs had become faster. Naturally. Was I starting to feel better? But the tempo run was still slow and that’s what matters.

The 10 miler is tomorrow. I should be sleeping. Instead I’m writing this and worrying. Can I run 10 miles at the pace I had trouble running 4 last week-end?

I’m done now. I hope I’m done feeling sorry for myself and done with apprehention too. Maybe that will help me sleep. Good-night.

Dark

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

A Child’s Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson lived before daylight savings though.

I used to like daylight savings time — my father would let me run barefoot after the change. My computer friends, who tend to arise “at the crack of noon”, are all in favor of it.

I’ve come to hate it. At least in March. In May it’s ok, I guess.

By the beginning of March the winter darkness is dissipating, and when I do my morning run at 6 or so it is light again. And then comes daylight savings time and bang! it’s pitch black again at 6.

I suppose it could be worse. During World War II the Germans decided that France should be in CET rather than GMT. This means that France (and Spain) is always at least one hour off from solar time, and is two hours off in the summer. England also had “Double Summer Time” during the war, but they came to their senses afterward.

But it’s  pitch black now when I start my runs. I worry about being seen if I run on the roads, I worry about my footing if I run on trails.

It is pitch black as I start my run a little before 6. The stars are shining. No cars are on the road today. By 6:15 there is a faint light toward the east. When runners pass me I can’t see their faces. By 6:30 the eastern sky is blue and low lying clouds are black, but the western sky is still black. I no longer worry about my footing. By 6:45 there’s a tinge of yellow to the east, and I have no problem seeing people. By 7:00 it is reasonably light out. I see the sun for the first time at 7:25.

When I did a track work-out I couldn’t see my watch until just before 7. The watch does have a light, but when I’m running hard, pressing the button is difficult and focusing on a dim, jiggling set of numbers seems beyond my eye’s abilities (I have no problems when running slowly, but when I’m running at 10K pace or faster I just can’t focus. Maybe I need better glasses. Or better eyes).

Why do we have DST? I thought the theory was that it saved energy, but there seem to be as many studies saying it doesn’t as there are saying it does.

It certainly messes up my life in March.

I look forward to May…

Nothing Hurt

For the first time in almost two months: I ran. Nothing hurt.

At first it hurt to walk. Then it hurt to run. Then it hurt after I’d been running for a while. Then it hurt after I’d done the hard stuff. But yesterday I did a Rusty work out, and nothing hurt ever.

Oh, the hip hasn’t healed completely, there’s still the odd twinge, but it doesn’t hurt.

Such pleasure.

6:30/6:37/6:41/6:27/6:46/6:34

Miscommunication

Last week my PT told me to run a tempo run. I was a little surprised by that, it was faster than I expected, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

There was no tempo workout that week, instead Rusty sent us off to the Valentine’s day 4mile race. Now a 4 mile tempo run for me is usually about 6:10~6:20min/mile, but given that I hadn’t done much for a month and a half, and the nature of the course (half trail, with steep ups and downs) I figured a 6:30 pace would be more prudent.

It was a beautiful morning, I got to Goleta Beach just in time to watch the sun rise over the ocean (with some low-lying clouds to the east lit up electric orange). The race went around the UCSB lagoon. Blue heron, snowy egrets, mallards, buffleheads, grebes, coots, comorants, seagulls..

It’s two miles (give or take) around the lagoon, I did one lap as a warm up with some friends (we had hoped to do two, but by the time everyone got out of the bathrooms there was only time for one).

When we started the race I ran at the back of the second pack, that seemed about the right amount of effort. My hip wasn’t bothering me, so either the PT was right or adreneline and endorphins had kicked in. A pleasant pace. As we ran along the ocean I saw Travis out with his surfboard. At the halfway mark I saw I was about 10 seconds faster than I wanted to be, so I slowed (but everyone else I was running with seemed to slow even more on the second lap). With about a 1/4 mile to go, I knew I could catch the guy in front, his breathing was labored and he seemed tired. I sped up a little, and did catch him, but then he sped up — again I was pretty sure I could catch him — but then it wouldn’t be a tempo run. I let him go. Not as easy a decision as it should have been.

As I got near the chute I noted the clock read 25:56. I ran a little further. The clock still read 25:56. It didn’t seem to want to move. I remembered that scene in Holy Grail where Lancelot keeps running over the same stretch of ground again and again and never getting anywhere. And then suddenly he’s at the door. And suddenly I was at the finish, and the time was 25:59.

Now my hip began to ache.

Not really badly, but it let me know it was there. I went twice more around the lagoon as a cool-down and it nagged at me (my hip, Maggie (vocative case), not my friends) . Jim Cochran, the chiropractor, invited me onto his table and cracked it back into alignment.

When I saw the PT yesterday she told me I shouldn’t have run so fast (but that’s my tempo pace, that’s a slow tempo pace) . She has a different idea of a tempo run than I do. She said she meant about 7 min pace. OK. Next time I know better.

But it was fun to run fast again.

Pilates

I am standing on a padded table. Attached to the corners of the table are metal pipes going up to a rectangle of pipes over my head. So, I’m in an open box, with the edges defined by pipes, the bottom by the table and the sides and top open.

Facing a narrow end of the table, holding on to the pipes above me, I walk my feet up the pipes in front of me. Now I kick my feet up, over my head. I spread them into a split (well as close to a split as I can come).

I can’t seem to stabilize myself and I oscillate back and forth like a pendulum. It is terrifying.

And suddenly the fear departs.

It is exhilarating.

And funny.

I start to laugh as I sway backwards and forwards up-side-down. I laugh and laugh until I can no longer support myself, and I come down.

Then I do it again, and this time it isn’t terrifying, and I manage to control the oscillations. And come out of it the proper way.

There is more to this piece, but that’s all for me today.

Accident — they will fall

The latin word accident means “they will fall”.

My friends seem to have had far too many this year. First Annie got planar fasciitis which eventually pulled her out of St. George. Then Melissa G. had hip problems which meant she couldn’t even try St. George. I had — well, whatever it was I had — and couldn’t do Twin Cities. Rusty had hip problems too and had to run too slowly. Dianna, Maggie & Melissa M. had too much heat at Twin Cities.

Resurgent — they will recover.

Maggie, Melissa G. and I all decided to join Lauren in Sacramento.

And what happens? Lauren gets injured with less than a week before the race.

Damn.

Travis will help you go out too fast

Rusty does not often ask me to run too fast. But last Tuesday he wanted me to do so — and then try to keep going after it became impossible. This is to get me used to fatigue poisons, or something.

Rusty had me run two miles, starting at a 5:30~5:40 mile pace. A rather frightening prospect. Luckily Travis was willing to help me run the first mile (Travis is faster than I).

84 second quarters. The first one is easy, of course.

I forced myself to stick close behind Travis (5:39), my breath turned into the horrible rasping gasps, after a mile Travis pealed off and I slowed down a bit. I needed a rest. 90 seconds. Not generally what I think of as a resting pace.

Rusty joined me for the next two. And told me to calm my breath.

Then with about 500m to go, Rusty pulled off to the side and told me to speed up. I whimpered. Rusty told me stop whining (I wasn’t whining, I was whimpering, but decided not to correct him).

So I did speed up and ran an 82 second final quarter.

Dream

The marathon starts downtown in my home time, and quickly moves inside a house. It twists and turns inside that house, doubling back on itself. There are chalked lines drawn on the floor with numbers indicating which route you should follow this time through the room. I don’t notice them at first and have to retrace my steps. The numbers differ from room to room and they do not start at 1. This room contains routes labeled “2,8,9″; route 2 continued as route 2 in the next room, but route 8 turned into something else when it got outside. Route 9 just twists around in the room and causes confusion. There are also kilometer marks. One room has a tile floor and the chalk has gotten skuffed up so as to be invisible.

It is impossible to go fast. I’m never sure if I’ve gone the right way. The guy who is running beside me keeps persuading me to stop and rest. I realize I’m running terribly slowly — just jogging really, but somehow I don’t care. It’s impossible to do well, it doesn’t matter, nobody cares, so why try?

At the first rest stop they are serving iced-tea because it is a nicely dehydrating drink. They also have tiny cups of sugar water for “serious” runners. The sugar water tastes vile.

Now we’re out on the streets again. We run around the block and then back inside the house…

And then slowly I wake up — oh, marathons aren’t really like that. How odd.

Doubts…

The long workout this week called for 10 miles easy then 8 at a 6:50 pace. I still think of a 6:50 pace as easy — even though it no longer is.

When training for Catalina I did a 20 mile workout with 10 at a 6:30 pace. So 8 at a 6:50 pace should be trivial.

I thought the same last week. We had 10 miles at 6:50, then 5 easy, then 2 at 6:30. Lauren had no problems with it, while I struggled to keep up with him, and then totally failed to speed up for the two miles at the end.

I decided to make up for it this week. I’d do the last mile at a 6:30, just to prove to myself I could speed up at the end.

Well, I couldn’t. When I started the hard part I passed Maggie, who blithely told me she was a little ahead of pace after 8 miles. I was a little behind pace after 1. It only got worse. I ended with a 7:05 mile. I could even hold the pace.

Again, I could not speed up. This does not bode well for my long distance endurance. And I realized…

I’m no longer getting better. In fact the last two long runs I seem to be getting worse. Have I fallen into overtraining yet again?

Will I run the first mile of the marathon at 7:20, the next at 8:05 and then realize it is hopeless, give up, and walk back to the start?

Not as bad as it was before, I hope. And with luck two weeks of taper will pull me out.

Or is this normal exhaustion at the end of a long training period (except I haven’t really been training that hard or that long. This should be easy; damn it). Maggie and Lauren don’t seem to be having this problem; it’s just me.

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Rusty told me I should get a pair of light weight trainers for the marathon. My racing flats wouldn’t do for this long a race (I suspected that), but my normal shoes wouldn’t either.

So I went in to Joe’s for light weight shoes. I was given only two choices. Neither felt good. I chose the pair I thought was the least abusive to my feet. After running 23 miles in them I had a large, painful blister on my right least toe.

Rusty told me I needed shoes that felt good (shoes rarely feel “good”, my feet are weird, I’m almost always forced to compromise and chose the least bad). He suggested I try another brand, (the new store seems to have a third choice).

These don’t rub my toe, but they seem to push my knee out of alignment, after today’s 18 mile run the left knee felt odd and was clicking on every step. Then when I finished my arches felt completely abused, as though I were heading for planar fasciitis. I think I’m better off with a bad blister.

Or maybe with the normal trainers that I know I can tolerate.

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Rusty wants me to start out the race slowly, then speed up to 6:50, and then half-way through speed up further. I don’t think I can. I have not managed a single workout where I could speed up at the end.

Perhaps my body doesn’t work that way? My natural inclination is to start out a little fast and try to hang on as I tire. I can’t imagine doing the reverse. Certainly my training indicates that speeding up will be difficult.

On the other hand, I have no hopes for doing well on this race, so why not experiment? Rusty says this (slowly speeding up) is the way to race. So do the books I’ve read. I’ll try it on this race I’ve given up on. If it works, great, I’ll have faith in the technique in the future.

But if it doesn’t work, well I won’t have lost much.

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Annie dreamed too; but her dreams were interesting. I wish I could dream of giant teratorns to pull me from the waters, much preferable to my rather dull worries.

Not Yassos but Snows!

Most of us are aware of the Yasso 800 workout for marathon training — where you run 10×800 (or 10 half miles). You run your 800s at a weird variant of marathon pace: if you plan to run a 3 hour marathon then you run 3 minute 800s, if you want to run a 2:47:00 marathon then you run 0:02:47 800s. And so on. In between each interval you have the same amount of rest (easy jog) as for the interval itself (so 3 minutes, or 2:47, or whatever).

Rusty Snow has his own variant on this workout. Not 10×800, but 8×1k. Same pace, 3 minute rest between, same total distance, a little less total rest.

I’ve never managed to complete this workout before. I seem to fade after about 4k.

But today I did it!

(And then the nasty little voice in the back of my head says “Well, of course. You aren’t trying to run as fast as you usually do, in fact you’re only running at your 10k race pace — and if you can’t do 8k, with rests at 10k pace you are in sad shape.”)

No… actually the little voice is wrong. It was a little (but a significant amount) faster than any 10k I have raced.

Anyway, I did it. And what better way to prepare for a winter marathon than to do a Snow workout?

Two and a half weeks to Sacramento…