Same Time, Same Channel

General Aerobic + 10 x 100 m strides.

4:53 am, 28°F, 74% humidity, winds calm, light snow, with about an inch of powdery snow on the ground.

I didn't sleep well last night on account of a long nap yesterday and a stuffy head. I got up briefly around 3:30 and contemplated going running at that point, but decided against it and got back in bed until 4:30. I had gotten all my clothes laid out, including putting the yaktrax on my shoes, last night, because I needed to get out the door before 5:00 in order to be back in time to drive to seminary. I hurried this morning and made it out in time, even with doing my dynamic stretches in the house before I went out.

I forgot to assign myself a new proprioceptive cue for this week. The only one other than last week's pounding the ground that I could think of while I was running was pulling your navel towards your spine, so I kind of focused on that during the run, though I was probably more focused on the condition of the ground. I think that cue is supposed to help you attain a more neutral position with your pelvis. I'll have to look it up and see if I'm on the right track or completely off base.

My head's still pretty stuffy, but I figure I'll get over this cold in due time regardless of whether I run or not, so I might as well run.

I ran my normal six mile loop, but instead of heading home at the end, I went to the middle school track to do the strides. The track was covered with snow, so I couldn't see the markings on the track. I used the lap button and the lap distance field on my Garmin to measure the strides, but in my early morning stupor, I wasn't real sure how many feet are in 100 meters. I think I ran most of the strides just slightly longer than 100 meters. After I finished the strides, I ran home from the track the remaining distance that I had to make 8 miles in total.

AP: 9:48. Splits before the strides: 10:20, 10:07, 10:19, 9:47, 9:57, 9:41. Pace on strides: 6:49, 6:53, 7:16, 7:08, 7:23, 6:57, 7:05, 7:14, 7:09, 6:45.

Medium-long run.

2:20 pm, 43°F, 37% humidity, wind 5 ENE.

I got up at 4:30 this morning and checked the temperature. It was about 5 degrees. If I had a shorter run on the schedule, I might have gone out, but I had 12 miles, which meant almost a two hour run and would require my boy to walk to seminary. Neither of those things was appealing, so I ironed a shirt for my husband and then went back to bed for an hour. Then I got up and drove the boy to seminary and then I started my work day. I was thinking that I would run during the day while the kids were at school, but then I ended up keeping my youngest home because she's got a cold too, so that threw a wrench in my plans. But then I let my oldest come home from school after 5th period because he doesn't have a 6th period class and I let him skip 7th period jazz band because he was with the jazz band until 10:00 last night. Since he was home, I was able to head out as soon as I got some work I needed to do done.

A few days ago Tracy was wondering whether a morning runner like me would have more energy running later in the day and I guess the answer is yes. I kept up a pretty good pace with a moderate effort today, but it was possible partly due to this week's proprioceptive cue - falling forward. Still, I doubt I have would have run as fast if I had run early this morning, but it would have been because of the cold as well as the early hour.

AP: 8:44. Splits: 9:14, 9:09, 9:00, 8:35, 8:53, 8:41, 8:16, 8:38, 8:35, 8;38, 8:40, 8:25.

Description of the Falling Forward cue for those who are interested (quoted from Brain Training for Runners by Matt Fitzgerald):

"Tilt your whole body slightly forward as you run. Don't bend at the waist! Tilt your entire body from the ankles. When you're first getting a feel for this proprioceptive cue, feel free to exaggerate your lean to the point where you feel you're about to fall on your face. Then ease back to a point where you feel comfortable and in control, but where gravity still seems to be pulling you forward. This cue will help you correct overstriding, because when you're running with a slight forward tilt in your body, your feet will naturally land close to your center of gravity."

Recovery run + core conditioning exercises.

10:30 am, 40°F, 36% humidity, wind 3 SSW.

It turns out that I am unable to get up and run early in the morning if I take liquid Nyquil the night before. That has been my situation the last two mornings. Not only was I in a drug induced stupor this morning, but I had reset my alarm for 6:20 when I went back to bed yesterday and I forgot to change it to 4:20, so my alarm didn't go off. My husband's alarm went off at 4:30, but I didn't hear it and didn't hear him get up and didn't notice anything at all until I woke up at 5:12. At that point there was time to run before seminary, so I went back to sleep until about 6:10.

I'm working from home again today and I managed to send Thing 4 to school, but I kept Thing 3 home because he was coughing up a lung this morning. But he's old enough for me to leave him in the house alone, so I was able to go out for my run when I got to a good stopping place with my work.

I took little tiny steps today to keep my pace slow while focusing on the falling forward proprioceptive cue (I love the word "proprioceptive"). But I was tired from yesterday's run, so it wasn't too hard to do.

I ran a four mile loop and then came in the house and blew my nose and changed into my VFFs and then went out for another 1.12 miles. I did stretching and core conditioning after that.

Incidentally, my target pace range for recovery runs is 10:00 to 10:30.

AP: 10:14. Splits: 10:20, 10:02, 10:05, 10:25, 10:16.

General Aerobic run.

5:13 am, 25°F, 50% humidity, wind 3 SE.

I slept last night without any chemical assistance, so I was able to get up and run this morning.

In the past I've designated some days as easy days, but my easy days tended to not be all that different in either distance or pace from a lot of my harder days. Since I started this current marathon training plan a week and a half ago, I've done real recovery days for the first time, where I've really drastically reduced my distance and pace. I'm liking having more of a contrast between hard and easy days because it's letting me pick up the pace more on my hard days.

I somewhat arbitrarily decided to classify anything slower than 8:30 as slow miles and anything faster than 8:30 as fast miles today. I actually don't know my pace on the last .16 because I neglected to stop my watch and so I deleted that lap, but I'm assuming it was fast. In any case, I know I ran that last bit pretty hard.

AP: 8:44. Splits: 9:07, 8:57, 8:45, 9:00, 8:51, 8:37, 8:30, 8:34, 8:15.

Recovery Run + Core Conditioning.

5:13 am, 27°F, 48% humidity, wind 3 SSE.

I ran four slow miles in my really old Brooks Adrenalines and then changed into my VFFs for a little over a mile. I figure if I do a little over a mile in the VFFs twice/week for about 3 weeks consistently, then I can up the VFF mileage to 2 miles per run and keep increasing in like fashion. I have short recovery runs on Wednesdays and Fridays for the next several weeks, so those work out to be good days to do it.

This was the coldest weather I've ever worn the VFFs in. The tops of my feet and ankles were cold when I first went out in the VFFs, but within a few minutes they felt fine. Of course, I was only out there in them for just under 12 minutes.

My lower back was sore all day yesterday. It's somewhat better today. I figure it's either from the core conditioning, which has doubled in quantity since last week, or from the "falling forward" proprioceptive cue I've been focusing on this week, possibly both. The core conditioning exercises really aren't that hard. I had to do one set of each exercise each time I did the exercises last week, and I had to do two sets of each exercise each time I did then this week. Next week, I'm supposed to do three sets, and then it switches to a different set of exercises. This first group of exercises is pretty easy, so I think the more likely culprit for the sore back is the falling forward.

AP: 10:13. Splits: 10:26, 10:09, 10:06, 10:10, 10:14, 0.13 @ 10:36.

Marathon pace run (16 miles total w/ 8 miles at goal marathon pace).

7:36 am, 32-44°F, 31-15% humidity, wind calm until the last 2 miles, then 3 NE.

I met Carly and my friend Michelle and my other friend Michelle at the Highline Canal Trail today. Carly wanted to do 9 miles and so the Michelles agreed to do that amount too. I ran with them, but then when we finished 8th mile I sped up and left them so that I could do my marathon pace portion. I really wasn't sure what pace to run for my marathon pace portion. On the training plan it says "marathon race pace" but in the book that the training plan comes from, it says that you should do these at your goal marathon pace. Well, I'm not really sure what my goal marathon pace should be. I ran the Ogden marathon at an average pace of 8:36. If I put my most recent race time (which is a 5K) into the McMillan calculator, it gives me a marathon pace of 8:30. But my goal (which might be a little optimistic at this point) is to run a 3:30 marathon, which is 8:01 pace. So I just tried to run between 8:01 and 8:30 for the marathon portion, the closer to 8:01 that I could, the better.

The first 9 miles were 4.5 out and back on the trail heading north from the rec center. There were a few snowy sections on the trail, one relatively large one, through this part. My next 5 miles were 2.5 out and back on the trail heading south from the rec center. It was considerably snowier than the northern part of the trail. Almost all of it was snow covered, which was kind of a pain. Incidentally, during this portion, I literally ran into a dog. It was a small dog and it's owner was right there, but the dog was off leash and it ran right at me. It wasn't threatening at all. I wasn't worried that it would bite me. It just seemed excited to see me and ran right into my leg. I just kept running. I felt the impact, but I assume the dog was okay. If the owner wasn't happy about it, then too bad. That's what he gets for letting his dog off leash on the trail.

When I got back to the rec center after my little adventure on the southern part of the trail, I still had 2 miles to go, so I went north to the 1 mile marker and then turned around and came back to the rec center. I really had to use that mile marker because a little past the rec center (after 14.4 miles to be exact), my Garmin died. I had gotten a low battery warning when I turned it on this morning, but there was nothing I could do except how that it would make it through the run. So when I got to the end of my run, I just checked the time on my cell phone so that I could use that to figure my time for those last two miles. It's not terrifically precise, because my cell phone shows the time to the minute, not the seconds. Also, there's also no 0 mile marker at the rec center, so I just had to kind of guess where to stop. So those are the caveats to my pace calculations for the last 2 miles. Nevertheless, I did push it on those last 2 miles and I felt like I was going to throw up when I finished.

AP: 9:04. Splits: 9:52, 9:50, 9:50, 9:46, 9:56, 9:52, 10:03, 9:59, 8:14, 8:06, 8:13, 8:17, 8:19, 8:21, 2 miles @ 8:07 (but maybe not - This is based off a finish time of 10:01:22 am, but the 22 seconds was just a guess. The phone just said 10:01. I could have been as much as 38 second slower, which would make my average pace for those last two miles 8:23. The truth probably lies somewhere in between). In any case, if I go with the arbitrary guess of 22 seconds past 10:01, my average pace for the marathon-pace portion was 8:13.

I think that in the future when I have a marathon pace run on Saturday, I should take it a little easier on Thursday than I did this week.