Pool ramblings

It feels like it's been forever since I've been in the pool. Between taper/race/recover/race/recover and new job switch over, I don't know if I've been there the whole month of October. So I finally got my ass back in the pool yesterday, expecting it to be super crowded as I've never been there after a 'normal' work day is getting over with. Apparently Friday at 5ish is the best time to go - there was practically no one there! I decided ahead of time to do a mile to get back into it and not let myself cut it short.

I tried to let my brain wander more the way it can running. The only problem is that it's super hard to both let your brain wander and keep accurate track of the number of laps you're swimming. I'm pretty sure I did more than a mile (maybe a lot more) because every time I wasn't sure if I was doing 14 or 16, I would say I was on 14 - if I can't keep track that I have to swim more! So I'll have to work on that, too. Maybe it'll be easier if I do lap counts instead of length counts. It's like thinking about the distance you're running by keeping track of how many blocks you've gone. Ugh. Which is why I'm trying to let my mind wander or focus on form rather than think always about lap count. It also seems that when I don't super focus on lap count then my body can get into a 'stride' better, too. Which would also be easier if my pool weren't so damn short . . .

Relativity

So I'm currently reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything which is fantastic. Anyway, I just finished a short section talking about the Theory of Relativity - things moving super fast appear to be shorter and slower when seen by someone NOT moving super fast. As Bryson says: "The effect actually happens every time you move. Fly across the United States, and you will step from the plane a quinzillionth of a second, or something, younger than those you left behind. Even in walking across the room you will very slightly alter your own experience of time and space."

So. I made the next logical thought - running moves you faster than walking so by running you actually ARE making your life longer compared to those who don't run. Huzzah for that extra tenth of a second by the end of life!

Unless you look at it the way Denis Leary does when he talks about smoking taking ten years off your life - "Well it's the ten worst years, isn't it folks? It's the ones at the end! It's the wheelchair kidney dialysis fucking years. You can have those years! We don't want 'em, alright!?"

But I prefer to think that running will keep me healthier than that to the end.

Okay, then.

So I'm pretty sure I've made my decision, though I'm not posting on Northland Runner until tonight.

Yesterday I was at work and the new schedule got posted. The schedule with includes Whistlestop Saturday. Apparently, I was so wrapped up in Wild Duluth that I forgot to request Whistlestop Friday/Saturday off even though I'm 100% sure I did. Oh, and the scheduler posts the requests with the schedules so I could clearly see that I didn't request the days and it's most definitely my fault not his.

Instant tears from Sam. So I'm figuring that that emotional of a reaction indicates I should do everything in my power to get that weekend off and run Whistlestop! I have a long list of people I can ask, so I'm feeling pretty confident of at least getting Saturday off. While I definitely don't want to work 8 hours on concrete the day beforehand, if I have to, I can. So. There it is, I guess. Next step is to think super healthy thoughts toward my knee!

Now, someone needs to help me with becoming more capable of making decisions. I've never been good at it and I feel as though my entire life has been full of decisions between one awesome event or another. Which, put that way, means my life is pretty good, huh?

Insight into the process of Sam's mind!

Here's what I'm thinking. Both silly and reasonable reasons listed!

Reasons not to do Whistlestop:
~ Wild Duluth (my first ultra) is one week later, recovery time might be an issue
~ My knee is grumpy still and I haven't figured out the exact reasons. It seems like it likes roads a lot less so is the Whistlestop surface considered road or trail by my knee? It was okay on that long run I did on the same surface until we got back to pavement. Good because perhaps the race is then okay for my knee. Bad because the last mile or so of the race is sudden pavement.
~ I feel as though I've hardly done anything long on roads (I've done lots of long on trails and some long on roads)
~ It's not as though I can really afford money-wise to fly to and run both Boston AND the Key West Ragnar only months apart. I haven't even figured out how I'm paying for Ragnar, yet.
~ How do I pace Hawk's Ridge (NMTC fall series race) the Wednesday before when I need to both taper and race to beat Aga?
~ I might as well miss another year of Boston since this year will be the yellow shirts again :)

Reasons to do Whistlestop:
~ I'd like another shot at 3:35 this year
~ I'd love to go to Boston with a group of friends
~ I want to do a marathon and then an ultra back to back just to do it - I've been planning to do it for several months, now, and it feels weird and sort like wussing out to only do Wild Duluth, now
~ Kyle will come watch
~ I know lots of people at Whistlestop so it'll be fun

I have someone to legally buy my Whistlestop entry, so it's not as though I'd be eating the registration. In fact, I think had I not had someone buy it, then I would just run it to not have to eat it. Maybe that's my answer? But I'd love to do well at Wild Duluth and running a hard marathon the week before is not the best way to do that. However, it's not as though I'm going to place so I might as well just have fun for my first one and have a goal to beat next time around, right?

Regardless, I need to get my decision made soon. I'm going to say by tomorrow so that I can tell the person who's interested in buying my registration if she can have it or not. Registration is still open, so she'll be able to get in regardless of my decision, she'd just get it cheaper from me.

Thoughts

Nothing makes you feel more alive than running fast in a cold rain.
Nothing makes you feel more alive than running trial in the dark with a headlamp.
Nothing makes you feel more alive than running long with friends.
Nothing makes you feel more alive than running.

Decision!

I forgot to update about my decision! Now, as so happened with this one, I didn't so much actively sit down and decide what I wanted so much as let it come to me. Sometimes that works - wait and see what I get excited about as I'm talking about it and let that guide me toward what I want to do. Well, I kept talking and thinking about Boston, even after thinking maybe I'd give it a skip by again and I sat down and wrote out a plan for Whistlestop. So that all seemed to indicate that just maybe I should be doing Whistlestop :)

I think it's a case of knowing I'll regret it if I don't do one more road marathon this year. If I'm going to be serious about having an ambitious future time goal that's also more of a "let's see How Fast I Can Be" attempt then I need to keep making progress with it. So. Now I have to make sure to register for Whistlestop in the next week or I won't get my $5 discount for having already run Grandma's :)

Whistlestop vs Moose Mountain

It seems the Half Voyageur has given me the longer-distance-on-trails bug. I had already been eying up the Moose Mountain Marathon since earlier this year, back when I didn't think I would be needing a fall marathon to get that elusive 3:30. Now I'm looking at the schedule thinking it might be a bit much - a trail marathon on September 11, a 'road' marathon on October 9 and my first ultra (50K) on October 16. I think were I not trying for a 3:30 at Whistlestop and wanting a decent performance at Wild Duluth then it'd be not as stupid.

Actually, here's a little secret (since this isn't a Northland Runner post): I'm toying with the idea of not doing Whistlestop and doing Moose Mountain instead. This would mean, however, no Boston 2011.

I'm of a couple minds about this. I'll be doing the Florida Keys Ragnar in January which means that also doing Boston is TWO high priced races requiring flights just a few months apart. Right now I can't even afford Ragnar and I'm just hoping things work out so adding another high priced registration in October (when Boston opens up) might not even work. Boston isn't going anywhere nor is my ability to run a BQ.

On the other hand, I LOVE Boston. Even though I had a miserable time, I still had a fantastic time crazy as that is. I want to go back in Wave One and run well. I want to not be mistaken for a charity runner. I have friends from Duluth also doing Boston 2011 and a MegaTough teamie who has said she'll head out with me, too. Moose Mountain is not going anywhere. I also am trying to march my way to an ambitious future time goal and it's probably important to do another marathon this year that helps advance that.

It depends on the day as to which way I'm leaning. It also depends on if you ask me while I'm out running trails or not :) Right now, I think I'll regret it if I don't try for my 3:30 again this year so that's probably what my answer should be.

Hehe. Oops

I successfully wasted all of my time tonight working on a side project of my Father's Day present. I now need to pack and also finish my gel carrier tomorrow before leaving instead of tonight. Oops. The good thing is that, really, I live right here. If something gets forgotten and I realize this in Two Harbors, I have all day Friday to make it right.

New blog look!

A new template! What do you think? I can't believe they don't have any sort of running graphic at all but this is good too. I'm not sure I like the black background to the blog entries. I tried making the background transparent but I'm not sure it's as legible as it could be so I'll keep it black for now.

Okay, I re-did. I loved the other background I had (trees) but it was very busy. I like the simpler style of this one so far. Any thoughts?

8 weeks!

So every new run seems to be another chance to analyze whether I'm going to feel ready for Grandma's or not. It gets to be sort of funny when I catch myself making another judgment call after a 3 mile run! The most important is the long runs, though, and the last two have felt fantastic - though, if I'm being honest here, I've only had three "long" runs if you count my first one back which was all of 10 miles. Anyway, good long runs bode well but I'm going to keep taking it a day at a time as long as I can. Nothings wrong with being smart and running Sour Grapes Half instead of Grandma's. Especially if it keeps me healthy.

Saturday was a lovely 13.5ish mile run on the Superior Hiking Trail. Lisa ran 27 miles from her house to Magney Snively and back (!) and was looking for company, so I ran out with her and had Kyle come pick me up. It was a perfect day - cloudy with threat of rain, just warm enough with a nice breeze at our backs (granted, I imagine the "breeze" wasn't fun to run back into and that threat of rain turned into rain on my drive back, leaving Lisa out in it). It made it hard to decide what to wear but was great once we got out there. I was hoping for 12-14 miles today (I hadn't really decided which) and this was a great way to up my mileage without too much extra wear - trails with the soft landing they come with and the slower pace they demand, not to mention the slower pace demanded by someone running twice the distance! I had a great time despite trying to twist my ankle apart at one point via a stick/rock combination. I blame Rick since we were plugging along just fine without incident until he came along!

It's hard to run on the Superior Hiking Trail without wanting to look around. Everything is turning spring green right now so you want to look at the views with the new budding trees and find the sprouting plants on the ground all while trying to watch your step. We saw three turkey buzzards soaring about, too! The great thing was, since we were so high up, they were soaring right at our height and they were close enough to see their red, which I don't think I've been able to see before. I also covered a few parts of the trail that I've never been on before and a lot of trail that I've never run on before. I really wanted to turn around and join Lisa on the way back and even though I knew it was silly and I wasn't in the sort of shape to run 27 miles, I really wanted to anyway!

Next up for the gel test was Gu brand. A Strawberry Banana and a Tri-berry with caffeine. I also tried a chocolate Accel gel with caffeine since we were out there a while. They all worked great - no sticky all over my hands this time! I think the Strawberry Banana was my favorite but since that was the first one, it's hard to tell - the test will be trying it later in a run sometime. Gu is buyable locally, though, which was my aim and also popular enough to be found at an expo should I forget my gels and need to buy them last minute. No negative GI issues with either gel, so far, which is also quite good! I love the idea that Cliff has, though - they have the top tear off but stay attached to the main body so that you don't have to be juggle little pieces of trash with everything else. I wish everyone would copy them.

Bike to Work!

I had my last PT appointment yesterday! Todd seems to think I'll be fine on my own from now on - though he said I can definitely come back if I feel like I need to. A lot of what we do, I can do on my own now that I have gym access, so that is good. I've made sure to write down what we've been doing just in case I forget. He warned me that I'd definitely be sore from this last session, though . . .

So what do I do but head over to the Fitness Center and do some upper body lifting since my PT focuses on legs and core. I've already been able to up the weight on some of my exercises but I'm still hanging out with the bare bar on the bench press. It's 45 pounds - that's a lot! Yeah. I've at least been able to up the number of reps in a row I can do of them.

Up next is home, eat food, and eventually, get back in my car to head to work only to find that someone (that someone might be me) seems to have left the headlights on and the battery is now unwilling to start the car. Well, I've been wanting to bike to work for a while but have had no idea how long it would take. Call work, let them know I'll be late and get dressed for biking!

Turns out it takes under 10 minutes to get to 24th Ave and about 20 minutes to get up the hill to LSC (jutting over to Piedmont on 10th St) much of that being walking up the hill. I did manage to make it further up 24th before walking then I thought I'd be able to but that's a brutal hill and I'm glad I chose my road bike since it's lighter to push. Then a final 10 minutes or so to get to the mall. So about 40 minutes from front door to work. Not too bad. Probably not a doable thing once it starts getting hot since I don't have access to any sort of showering once I get there but definitely workable in spring/fall. Biking seems to make me kind of hyper once I get to work, too, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

So. Hard PT + upper body lifting + unexpected uphill bike to work = rather stiff and sore today. My neck especially from biking and my hamstrings also. So when my alarm went off this morning to get me going to the pool, despite being rather tired, I was ready to jump up. Nothing like a nice swim to work out those sore muscles, right? I got into some really good rhythms and felt smooth despite the frustrating goggle issues I kept having (I think I need new ones as I've either completely lost the ability to put them on right or the seals are leaking). I haven't done any workouts in the pool for a while, now - today was just a straight mile. I've been following my swimming with stretching in the sauna more, too. It's funny, when I first starting going I could barely stand to be in the sauna. Now I go in, throw a cup of water on and hit the top bench. Rock. Here's hoping this does something to my summer heat tolerance :)

On board for the rest of the day? Finally ordering my Dirty Girls and going for a lovely trail run in the rain with friends and hopefully doing some organizing of my computer room tonight.

"Long" Run!

So PT has been going well - I've cut down to once a week, now, though I'm making sure to do what I can on my own, too. On Tuesday, Todd (my PT doc) told me I could run 4 times this week! Huzzah! Also that I should start structuring my week like I would normally be doing, ie a long run, a more tempo-y run, etc instead of holding around 4 miles. So today I did my long run - 8 miles. It felt quite great - the weather was beautiful and called for shorts and a t-shirt. I did the first two miles on my own and then joined up with the usual Wednesday group and did the last 6 with Leslie. It's really nice to be able to run with my friends again! I'll probably hold at 8 miles another week and then try 10.

I've been trying to maintain a good weight lifting schedule, too, under the thought that if I'm going to be injured then I'm at least going to get good arms and abs from it! Hopefully I can keep it going as summer comes since I love having weight room access again and I've always been very lacking in the arm strength side of things. On a side note, when you start adding weight to your lunges, you start to feel it in your butt . . . Actually, Todd added the weight in PT yesterday, but I added some lighter weight to my second set this morning, too.

I'm also getting stronger and smoother at swimming, too, which is fun. On Tuesday I forgot to bring my watch to the pool with me (I like to leave it on the pool edge so I can check in on the time every once and a while - no timing repeats for me, yet) so I decided to just swim a mile and see what the wall clock said then. So I start slow and then pick up the tempo and just see how long I can go a little faster for. I hit my mile and check the clock and it's just around half an hour! Now, I have no idea in the scheme of things what kind of speed that is, but it feels really fast! It also makes me wonder if I lost count in there somewhere but, ah well, it feels pretty cool right now. I'll give it another go Thursday night and see where I stand. Theoretically, I'd love to do a triathlon this summer but I have no idea where I'm going to find the time to shove that in (especially since the main one in town here, I'm doing as a team with my team from last year) so maybe it will have to wait. Actually, a friend of mine (part of Team MegaTough) is directing a triathlon in the UP, which would be fantastic. However, it's a 1.2 mile lake swim, a 56-mile bike course, and a half marathon. I think that's probably too ambitious for me right now. I'm trying to keep my focus on two (well, three) main things: A) get that mileage up and keep it up ALL YEAR B) first ultra!! and C) Wave 1 for Boston 2011.

I'm not so sure how C is going to go now that my main chance isn't even going to happen anymore (Eau Claire Marathon) but I still have Grandma's in June (maybe, depending how happy my knee stays and what kind of condition I can be in by then and whether the weather cooperates this year) and if that fails, there's others in the summer I could try, I'm sure, it would just mess with some of my shorter race plans.

Also - with the exception of the yummy chocolate milkshake I just made for dessert - everything I ate today was breakfast food. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Bummer

Last Wednesday, I went on to the group run at the lakewalk and all was pretty good, until that last 'downhill' that was the ramp at the end of the detour. Then my knee spoke up and reminded me that it wasn't happy. It wasn't far to the end of the run, so I figured I'd be fine. After all, it didn't quite hurt enough to make me limp on it. Of course, as soon as I thought that, I realized I was already limping on it. Lovely. Happily, wildknits was willing to walk the last 4 blocks or so in with me.

So I went swimming the next day and really enjoyed it! I was really in the need to do something until I was exhausted. I'm sick of these slow, short runs. I haven't been swimming for fitness since college, which made it tough to keep a good rhythm going but I was able to tire out nice. I plan to do it on a regular basis as cross training and hope to continue once my knee gets better. I even went out and bought a swim cap so my hair doesn't die. Also so I don't keep breathing my hair.

It's really hard to go for a run in the winter when you might have to walk home. Or maybe I'm just making it out to be worse that it is, but I really don't want to be very far from home and have to walk back when it's cold and I'm probably sweaty and dressed for running and not walking. Today I decided to run in the land behind our house - some guy has been out three-wheeling and snowmobiling recently and the trails are mostly well packed. So I figured I could run around back there and never be too far from home if things went awry.

I could have made a loop out of it, but decided to do a horseshoe around my house since the trails were starting to deteriorate at the close of the loop. My knee was also hurting after a mile in and I could have just headed down the hill and finished the loop but I figured since I was never far too from home, I might as well turn around and go back the other way, so I did 2 miles, which is better than nothing. I got home, ran through my short pilates DVD, showered and made dinner. Half way through dinner, I realized my knee wanted to be iced NOW. No, it wanted to be iced half an hour ago. In fact, standing on it at all was rather painful.

Sigh. Looks like more swimming and pilates are in my future.

Stupid Work

Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and place a lot of blame for my knee on work. I had a lovely week or so of vacation, lots of which was spent walking/bouncing around with an extra 13 pounds (in the form of my adorable nephew). My back was sore, my shoulder hurt, my arm muscles were felt, my knee was fine.

I went back to work yesterday and last night/this morning my knee is upset with me. Time to get back to icing on every break, I guess.

Coupon!

I have a coupon in my email for $20 any running shoes at Duluth Running Company for this week. Let me know if you'd like me to share with you.

Safe places to run?

Okay, so the midwest got hit with a giant storm over Christmas. Parts of Duluth got 20 inches, parts got 10, all got freezing rain on top of it. So what this equals out to is really, really shitty road conditions and non-existent sidewalks in most places. I'm not talking thse annoying houses that never seem to shovel and so you have to twist along through slippery, uncertain footing (though, they're part of it since many people were gone for the holidays and returned to completely frozen up sidewalks that are impossible to shovel). I'm talking about snowplows having pushed up several feet of frozen ice and snow chunks to the point of not even knowing where the sidewalk is let alone be able to safely navigate it.

The city has barely touched any of the sidewalks they're supposed to be maintaining. This means no safe place to run. In many places there isn't even a shoulder - I'm creeped out driving to work as there's no shoulder, the entire right lane isn't even clear and there's no place for pedestrians. We drove down Trinity today and saw deer legs jutting out from one of the snowbanks! Just the legs sticking out.

Now usually, I run on the roads, ignoring the sidewalks anyway. But when the roads are coated with ice and with no safe place to jump to should I need to, I'm not sure what to do. Residential roads can only take me so far before I have to get onto a 'main' road that the city should be maintaining and isn't. I have a long run to do on Monday and I guess I'll head the direction of the lakewalk since that route has the least amount of unsafe roads.

RoadID

It's an entry that's different from my Northland Runner entry!

Earlier this fall, I finally got myself a RoadID. I was out running a normal road route when suddenly I thought out of the blue "What if a semi truck hit me right now?" Very random, I know. So, forgetting that if a semi hit me then there probably wouldn't be much left, it was an important question. I never used to carry any sort of ID with me - my driver's license doesn't fit well into my running shorts and I don't carry a cell phone with me so what would happen if a car hit me? Or if I fell and cracked my head open? Noone would know who I was, who to contact or if I had any medical issues.

I went home and ordered a RoadID.

I went for the kind that velcros right onto your shoe since something around my neck would drive me crazy and anything that's not my watch drives me crazy around my wrist. I really do think everyone should have some sort of ID with them - be it a license or a RoadID or something similar. You want people to know your emergency contact and if you're allergic to anything major. So if you don't have anything - go make one! Right now! Or buy something that lets you easily carry that information.

So now that I'm on the RoadID mailing list, they sent me a Christmas coupon to share for 10% off any RoadID order through December 18th, just use the coupon code: pcHoliday294. They're $20-$30 and well worth it.