Crime during training

Posted by Rachel

That title was one of the themes of this week. The other was fatigue. Last week, I ended the week with an awesome 20-miler where the last 10 miles were 10 sec faster than my GMP. As a result, I felt pretty tired this week. I focused on trying to balance the benefits of running on tired legs without overdoing it and getting injured or overtrained. In order to address the title, I'll go through my week with accompanying stories.

Monday (1/4)
The gym parking lot was packed, probably due getting back into the routine post holiday and New Year resolutions. Somehow though, I was the ONLY person in the pool. I was ok with that, and I did not encounter any criminal activity.

Tuesday
This was a track workout (7.7 miles total). I started out strong but got tired REAL quick. Again no crime, but I did eat my first Chipotle burrito of 2016. We stayed away for a while because of the e coli thing, but there were no issues.

Wednesday
I was running around nice and easy (6.7 miles total) because my legs were so dead and was on the sidewalk along the lake. All of a sudden I heard brakes squealing and I looked up and saw a car rear-end another car stopped at a red light, pretty hard (NOT just a tap). I noticed the driver of the car looking over his shoulder and it occurred to me that he was going to make a run for it, which he did. I looked at the license plate number and recited it to myself the whole run home. When I got home I called the cops and reported the license plate, but unfortunately could not describe the driver (who could describe a person sitting in the dark 20 ft away?). I read an article that less than 2% of hit-and-runs in this city are caught, which sucks. How can there be so many assholes?

Thursday
I was running 10 miles, and abandoned tempo in favor of running every 3rd mile at ~7:40 pace (GMP - 15 sec) and the rest easy because my legs were so tired. At one point, I noticed a lot of cops on the other side of the lake but didn't think a whole lot of it. A couple of miles later, while I was running in the darkest part of the lake, I found myself with a police helicoper + search lights directly over my head. I heard instructions coming from the helicopter, including "Surrender! The dogs will find you! Residents, stay inside your home!" No wonder there were way less people around than usual! I got a little bit nervous and ran quickly back to the main road, where a cop stopped me. I thought I was going to get in trouble so I told him (all out of breath from running faster) "I'm not near my home!" He asked where I lived then pointed which way I should go to get there, at which point I took the well-lit main road instead of dark lakeside path. My splits for those miles are comically significantly faster than the rest of my run. If you don't believe this happened, you can check this out. At the time, I didn't know what offense the criminal had committed which made it a little bit scarier than it sounds right now.

Friday
Masters swim practice. My coach said "You looked tired from your very first stroke." That about sums up that workout.

Saturday
20 miles in Golden Gate Park with Chen to practice rolling hills. Fortunately, I did not witness any crimes nor did I run into a crime scene. Also, I had a blast running with Chen and eating takeout Thai food afterward (3 entrees between the 2 of us, of course).

Sunday
Easy run of 6 miles. Again I saw nothing related to any crime, so hopefully that short streak is over.

Next week I'm taking a step-back week to try to balance out some of the fatigue I was feeling this week. I'm feeling good with 5 weeks left, so hopefully the rest of training goes better than this week!

Holiday training recap

Posted by Rachel

As I found during Thanksgiving, I was reminded this week that it's a lot easier to train for a marathon when you only have to go to work for 3 days (go figure). Maybe my next marathon will be after I'm retired. Actually, scratch that, I'll be happy if I can walk and be active when I'm retirement age, no need for marathons.

Christmas week
Even though I had a lot of free time, Christmas was a step-back week for me after 2 weeks of hard training. Unfortunately, I don't burn as many calories during a step-back week which led to me gaining 2 pounds. The only kind of interesting run that happened during the step-back week was a 12 mile trail run in Bakersfield with Travers. It was basically a constant 200-250 ft climb/mile for half of the run, then downhill the other half. I'm not much of a trail runner, but this was actually a great opportunity to practice downhill running (one of my weaknesses). The views were pretty neat, even though it was a bit chilly. And as an added bonus, I managed to not trip on any rocks and fall flat on my face!

Wind Wolves Preserve - near the I-5 Grapevine I think, but you know my sense of direction

To overcompensate, I then enjoyed prime rib and cheesecake.

New Year week

With the luxury of step-back week over, this past week was a tough one. I had a couple fun workouts to share:

Tuesday/track - dice workout

This is one of my favorites that our running club always does at the track workout closest to Jan 1. We roll two dice and multiply the sum by 100, and that's our interval. I had two training buddies doing this workout with me and we took turns rolling. After 7 rolls we had managed 9, 6, 9, 6, 7, 9, and 6. We noticed that 5200 m of speedwork was a little bit lower than recommended by the coach, so we literally decided to roll the dice and let fate take its course. And then this guy Jim rolled a 10.. ugh. The odds were not in our favor and that last 1000 was pretty miserable, but then everyone from track went to the brewery which kind of made up for it. It was interesting to talk more to people that I run with weekly; most of them have interesting jobs (although not ones where I could be hired), but we had never talked about anything other than running. 

Saturday/long run-

Today I completed what I consider the hardest long run of the training cycle. I got it from the Asics sub- 3:30 plan. The run was a 20 mile long run, with 10 miles at 9:00/mile or easy pace, and 10 miles at 8:00/mile or marathon pace. I was actually very nervous for this run and I was worried that if I felt like death it would be indicative that I'm not ready for sub-3:30, but the run ended up going really well. The last 10 miles I managed to average 7:45 and not feel too awful doing it. Success!

This picture is actually from yesterday and not from my run, but I ran on the Bay trail so it's a close enough representation

Weekly miles - If I manage to do my slow 6 tomorrow, I'll break 50 miles for the week for the first time since 2012.

Trying to not be fat

I got the cookbook "Plenty More" for Christmas, which is a follow-up to the cookbook "Plenty" that we also have, that contains all vegetarian recipes. My target was to make a lot of salads and lose those annoying 2 pounds, but I think I somehow ended up overeating again (verdict to be determined at the gym Monday because I don't own a scale). Probably because there was so much chocolate around the house. Or because I'm still drinking too much. Anyway, the Plenty books are worth checking out- here is a snapshot from my journey de salad this week:

Salad A

Salad B

6 weeks until LA!

Race Report: San Diego Holiday Half Marathon (AKA that time I signed up for a race less than 24 hours before the start)

Posted by Chen

Oh hey, blog world! Remember me? I didn’t intend to abandon this site for so long, but when you stop working out for 4 months, you don’t really have much value to add to a training blog :-P.

Before I get into my race report, you might be wondering what I’ve been up to since the Ironman. Well, post-vacation (see Rachel’s amazing recap), I returned to normal life and intentionally took August mostly off. I won’t lie - it was glorious! Lots of seeing friends I hadn’t seen in a while, eating delicious food, and drinking all of the wine.

Once September rolled around, I diligently made a 12-week training plan for the California International Marathon (CIM), just like I’d done every year since 2011. I’ve always loved training for and running this race (it holds two of my marathon PR experiences!), but this year, it just wasn’t meant to be. To make a long story short, life got in the way; my motivation remained at an all time low, and I ended up deferring my entry to 2016. I also managed to not run the Healdsburg Half Marathon for other life reasons (though the rest of Team Running for the Win(e) ran it and crushed it!).

Running and I were officially in a fight.

Then, about a month ago, I went through a pretty difficult personal time, but instead of abandoning running further, I took it back up with a vengeance. It came crashing back into my life during a time when I needed it the most, and I couldn’t be more grateful. I’m currently on a running streak (27 days and counting!), and I’m reminded on a daily basis why I love this sport so much.

Most of my runs have been untimed and easy, which is exactly what I’ve needed. No pressure – just running for the pure joy and calm of running. I know I won’t be able to keep this streak up once I start my next marathon training cycle, but for now, it’s allowing me to get out there every day, process my thoughts, and heal.

My next few months will see the Austin Half Marathon with a Princeton friend in February, the Oakland Marathon with Rachel in March, and my goal race – the Mountains 2 Beach Marathon in May, where I will try to finally break 3:30 after years of failed attempts. Side note: I’ve already convinced one of my coworkers to run M2B as well – hi Chris! :-)

Given this upcoming race schedule, I’ve been trying to increase my weekly mileage as well as my long runs throughout this running streak. I was aiming to run 14 this weekend, so when I realized yesterday that the San Diego Holiday Half Marathon was happening today, I decided to sign up on a whim. I’ve had some pretty impulsive race sign-up experiences in the past (hello, first M2B experience), but this one probably takes the cake. I registered for the race at 11am, and 20.5 hours later, I was toeing the starting line.

Was hoping this shirt would magically help me fly :-)

I ran this race a couple years ago, so I generally knew what to expect when it came to the course and race logistics. The starting line is only 4 miles from my parents’ house, so I didn’t have to get up too terribly early to make it to the 7:30am start.  Parking was a bit more nightmarish this time (the race must have grown since 2013), so I had to walk ~0.6 miles from my car to the starting area, which left no time to wait in the porta-potty lines. I kind of expected that might happen, though, so I purposely didn’t drink anything until right before the start, and everything worked out OK (contrast that to my 2013 race experience, when I had to use the porta-potties no fewer than five times. Lesson learned – there IS such a thing as too much fiber).

I did have time for a 1-mile warm-up to hit 14 for the day, and I arrived back to the starting area just in time to hear the national anthem. I inched my way into the right corral, reset my Garmin, and at 7:30am, we were off.

I knew the course was a fast one with a net drop of over 700ft, though it had some considerable rolling hills throughout. I didn’t really know what to expect in terms of a time, but based on my 12-miler with Rachel last weekend when we averaged an 8:29 pace while talking the whole time, I figured that a sub-1:50 might be a reasonable goal. That said, I didn’t pay much attention to pace early on and instead wanted to keep the effort easy – I basically didn’t want to be breathing hard unless I was going uphill.

Very reminiscent of M2B; just half as long!

When my first few miles clocked in in the low 8’s, I was surprised, but I continued to keep things easy. The last time I’d run 14 miles in a single day was over 5 months earlier, so I needed to play it safe, at least for the time being. The crowd slowly thinned out as we made our way onto the bike path that would take us to the beach, and I found myself getting into a groove. I took in the lovely scenery and chuckled at fellow runners who were in costume or in funny shirts, including a green painted Grinch and a dude whose shirt said, “I didn’t ask for this present.” For the record, I would LOVE to receive a race registration as a gift!

Mile 1: 8:08

Mile 2: 8:06

Mile 3: 8:14

Mile 4: 7:45 (way downhill – as in, elevation loss: 184ft; elevation gain: 0ft)

Mile 5: 8:00

During the middle miles, I was still feeling strong, so I allowed myself to pick the effort level up a bit. Every time I glanced at my Garmin and saw a pace in the 7’s, I would start to get a little nervous (because let’s be honest: after 4 months off, I had no business running anything that started with a 7), but then I’d remind myself that running by feel usually results in a smart race, so I kept on.

Mile 6: 7:54

Mile 7: 8:04

Mile 8: 7:51

Mile 9: 7:42

Mile 10: 8:01

After mile 10, I was still feeling good, so I decided to kick it into high gear to see what I had left. I knew by this point that a sub-1:45 was possible, and by Mile 12, I knew that a sub-1:44 was in the cards if I could just… hold… on. I haven’t done ANY tempo work since July, and I was being reminded of just how badly tempo work can hurt. It was painful, but it was also a good kind of pain – the type of pain that reminds you what you are capable of. I was expecting to average an 8:20 pace this morning and instead ran my last full mile in 7:24 - who knew I still had that pace in me! My overall time was far from my fastest, but I crossed the finish line feeling just as elated as if I’d run a personal best.

Mile 11: 7:39

Mile 12: 7:43

Mile 13: 7:24

Mile 13.16: 6:47

Overall time: 1:43:37 (~7:53 average pace; ~7:55 official pace)

I’ll run a race that ends at the ocean any day <3

I'm not sure when I'll decide to end my running streak, and I have yet to put together a training plan for either Austin or M2B, but there's one thing I do know: Running and I are no longer in a fight ;-).

8 weeks until the LA Marathon

Posted by Rachel

It's been about 3 weeks since my last update, so here's how the training has been going.

3 weeks ago
I spent the week in Switzerland for work, so needless to say my weekly mileage was low. As in, my grand total mileage for that week was lower than the # of miles in a marathon, which is probably not sufficient for marathon training. There were a lot of challenges though, including having to run in the pitch black darkness every day. I had a light but I just wasn't sure how safe it was, so I kept running back-and-forth in the section of well-lit path behind the train station. Having to work too much was another challenge, though I stayed an extra day with a coworker and sacrificed running to have some fun. I just can't justify giving up sightseeing time in Europe in favor of running.

Europe has awesome Christmas markets, and Zurich has one of these including a Christmas tree covered in Swarovski crystals. Old Town Zurich on the Limmat was really nice, and one of my legit Swiss meals included what was basically mac and Swiss cheese with an excellent Burgundy (chocolate not shown). 

A day trip on my last day included awesome views of the Swiss countryside (so green!), a stop in Lucerne, and a couple of hours at 10,000 feet. I walked across the world's highest suspension bridge, rode ski lifts, and enjoyed the awesome views. As a bonus, it wasn't even that cold that day.

Two weeks ago

Back to reality. I got home from Zurich on Sunday evening then jumped right into a week full of work and marathon training. Not much to say about that week, except I had a solid 9 mile tempo run (2 x 3 mile segments with an average 7:14 pace) and a good 18 miler that included the hills of Piedmont. I capped the week with a concert Friday night and a party on both Saturday and Sunday. 

Cookie party, with great friends and entirely too much sugar

This past week

Another pretty solid week of training with a good track workout, solid 9 mile goal marathon pace run, and 20 flat miles at a steady pace on the Bay Trail (8:23). The best part was the long run because I got to meet up with fellow blogger Chen who ran the middle 12 miles with me. Since she's not posting about training right now, I stole her pictures to post here. The weather was perfect for a long run, and I never stop appreciating how awesome it is to be able to live and run here!

Views like this and awesome training buddies make it pretty easy to get out for that 20 miler

With mileage for the past two weeks of 45-50, I'll be taking a step back next week. I know this is lower mileage than a lot of plans out there, but I run a lot of them hard and am still maintaining 2 swims per week, which has to be in some way good for my fitness (I think?). Happy holidays! Here's to overeating, drinking too much, and hopefully managing to keep up with marathon training!

Eat/drink 5000 cal/day --> succeed at marathon training

Posted by Rachel

Well, marathon training week 2 was MUCH better than week 1. It probably helped a lot that I only had a 3 day work week and I ate and/or drank nonstop. I haven't trained in November/December since 2012, but I have to say it's not too bad so far. It turns out it's possible to have a "fat drunk November" at the same time that you are marathon training; previously, I skipped the marathon training part.

Week 1 I died in pretty much every workout, but this week I had 5 good runs for 41 miles total. The first hard workout was a Tuesday track workout: 2000 tempo/200 easy/1600 tempo/200 easy/1200 tempo/200 easy/1000 tempo/200 easy/600 tempo. Before we started I dubbed this the "ladder of misery", but it ended up not being too bad. For the first few intervals the tempo pace doesn't feel that hard (I was running ~ 6:45), then once it starts getting hard the interval gets short. Then on Thanksgiving I had a solid 8-miler with 4 @ "marathon pace". MP is in quotes because it was actually about 15 sec faster than my goal marathon pace, but it felt relaxed and I don't mind training with a buffer. We were at my aunt & uncle's house near Santa Cruz, meaning I got to run on the beach and this view during stretching wasn't bad :)

Obviously, the rest of the day was spent eating and drinking. A lot.

Friday was an easy run through the Forest of Nisene Marks. On Saturday, I took a rest day and spent time with the family in SF eating and drinking even more. 

Then today I did my first fast finish long run. It was a 16 miler with target 8 miles @ 9:00 pace and 8 miles @ 8:00 pace. My legs felt good (probably from the rest day Saturday) and I ended up with the first half @ 8:41 and second half @ 7:43. I felt strong the whole time, which I attribute to having an infinite bank of calories within my body from the day before.

We rounded out the week by decorating our place for Christmas. I'm on travel for work next week and I don't anticipate really training, so maybe I'll check back here again in week 4. Happy holidays!

I unintentionally started marathon training this week, and other tales

Posted by Rachel

Today marks 12 weeks out from the LA Marathon. My plan was to begin a 12-week training plan tomorrow, but then this week I found out that I'm going to Switzerland for work the first week of December. This effectively eliminates a week of marathon training, so here I am on Wednesday of this week trying to figure out what to do. Realizing that I had already done a couple of quality runs in the week, I decided what the hell...this can be week 1!

I thought my fitness was doing alright, given the Ironman we did 4 months ago and the surprisingly good half last month, but week 1 of marathon training was a rude awakening. It kicked my ass, all 39 miles of it (and yes, I know that's not even that many miles compared to many plans). I would love to blame my cold but I'm pretty sure it's my shoddy fitness. To top it off, here are some things that went wrong:

1.) I body glided the wrong part of my inner thigh for my 14 mile "long" run yesterday (seriously? how do you miss?). Tons of chafing - ouch.
2.) I somehow lost a toenail already. WTF?
3.) Major stomach issues after my run Thursday and my Saturday. Macy's is not where you want to be when having stomach issues post-long run.

Granted, none of those things are that bad, but I feel like I have a long road ahead (in a short time) if I really want to PR in LA. This week a February PR felt like an impossibility, so but hopefully things start looking up as I get back into marathon shape (if that ever happens).

I haven't said much about my training plan, which is a hybrid of many things I read on the internet specifically designed for a sub-3:30 marathon. The main difference between what I'm doing this time versus previous plans is my use of the long run. Usually in the past, I just ran my long run at "whatever" pace. This time, I've designed my long runs to have a "purpose" based on this Asics plan:

http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/news/images/asics/ASICS_TRAININGPLANS_Sub%203.30.pdf

The 3 types of long runs are:
1.) Target 8:30 pace. This is pretty much the standard/straightforward long run.
2.) Easy long run 9:00 pace. I'm going to reserve these for weeks where I have a long/hard tempo run on Thursday, or when I want to add some hills into the LR.
3.) Half the run @ easy 9:00 pace, half the run @ 8:00 (marathon pace). These are going to hurt, but I think they'll help build confidence.

I'll check in sometime soon on marathon training progress (or lack thereof).

Healdsburg half marathon 2015 race report (*see alternate titles)

Posted by Rachel

*alternate titles
Replacing some run training with wine drinking improves performance (n = 1)
I run faster when I don't care about my time
Taking tequila shots within 36 hours of race time is a good idea
Doing a tempo run hungover makes that pace seem a lot easier on race day
Good thing I did those two hilly runs
Ironman fitness lasts a long time

So there was a half marathon this weekend, but easily the best part of the weekend was the fact that two awesome friends (and former training buddies) came into town for the race and the whole group of us got to stay together at an amazing house in wine country.

Wait a minute... where is my wine glass?

The view was alright :)

Truth be told, I didn't have any hard goals and wanted to have fun with this one. I felt I had undertrained, especially compared to last year when I ran a 1:36, so if anything I was hoping to come in at a time that gave me a glimpse of hope that I might be able to break 3:30 at LA in Feb if I actually start training for it. I think this means I would have been happy with anything sub-1:40.

Fast forward to race morning, we could tell the weather was going to be awesome (and it was). Last year when I ran this course I charged the hill in the first mile WAY too hard and felt I suffered the rest of the race, so this year I ran much more relaxed and hit the first mile about 15 sec slower than last year. After 2 downhill miles, the next 5-6 miles are rolling and my plan was to try to keep a 7:30ish pace if it felt ok. When I let myself run by feel, I noticed that I was hitting a consistent 7:20. Sometime in mile 5, I thought to myself "I have no business running this fast based on my training, and if I keep doing it I will probably blow up. Oh well, let's just see what disaster happens if I don't back off." By the time I got to the hill at mile 10 I hadn't died yet, and I could tell I was somehow feeling way better than I had at this spot last year. Even though this was shocking, I figured I might as well take advantage of it. I ran the hill comfortably, and then mile 11 is net downhill and I clocked a 7:06. It seemed so miraculous to me that my legs still felt good, so I thought to myself "I wonder if I can run a 7:00 pace for miles 12 and 13." I kept trying to do math and I thought that 2 x 7:00 miles might get me to a PR, although I wasn't sure how much "extra Garmin distance" I had accumulated at that point so it was hard to tell exactly. By the time I hit mile 11.5 I realized that 7:00/mile pace is really hard (duh), but I figured the race is supposed to be hard and and I hadn't come anywhere near the struggle I had at points in the IM yet (thank you, 13 hour race). So I just kept pushing to the end. One detail I forgot from last year is that the finishing chute is deceptively long (almost 1/4 mile) and I had started cranking as soon as I could see it. Although sprinting at this point was really starting to get painful, I knew I only had a minute or so left and I somehow came across the line in a 1:35:37, a 59 second PR from last year!

This is what over-striding (because you started sprinting way too early) your way to an unexpected PR looks like! Thanks to Lois for the picture!

Travers had a huge PR!

(split 14 - 0.19 mi)

Why couldn't I execute like this last year?

Everyone on the team did so awesome, and we were all able to enjoy the wine festival afterward. And as an added bonus, team Running for the Win(e) got 2nd place, and more importantly, 6 bottles of (almost) victory wine!

Yeah team!!

Afterward we stayed in, continued the wine drinking that we began at 9:30 am that day, cooked awesome food, and enjoyed the views!

The next day wasn't so great weather-wise, but I was ok with that because (1) we didn't have to run, and (2) we need water. Even in crap weather, Healdsburg still has a certain charm.

Next up: in 3 weeks, I'll begin a 12 week training plan for the LA Marathon. More on that later!