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?

From NR: Soon!

4 days! Though, it feels as though it MUST be later than Tuesday right now!

You can track me (or anyone else running), should you desire, by email or text message. Head here and enter in my name. It doesn't say how often they send updates and I don't know how many timing mats they have on the course now. I remember one at halfway and one at 20 miles, I think but there's probably more now, if they're doing the tracking thing.

So, weather. Looks great! Of course, you knew I was going to say that already, didn't you? Because no matter what it turns to, it's going to look great. Hehe. Every day the last couple of weeks has been some version of "Okay. If it's like this on race morning, then what am I going to wear?" I know pretty much what I'm going to wear (my Northwoods jersey, green, and my black shorts) but it's the little accessories that depend on weather the most. Arm warmers for rain? Hat for rain or sun? Little water bottle for extra water in heat or humidity? I'll be packing every little thing for camping, I guess - we camp in Two Harbors with my parents before Grandma's. Though, I have had the offer of a friend's house for the night before and the temptation of a bed instead of the ground sounds lovely . . .

Turns out I'll have to pay close attention to putting on my new shoes. The left foot needs to be tied super loose or else it cuts right across a nerve and makes my foot go numb. Lovely. I'll just have to make super sure before I start Saturday that it's tied right. It might be another good day for duct taping the shoelaces, too - no way I'm stopping to tie shoes, though I don't think I'm going to have that problem with these shoes. Something excited about them, though? The tongue stays where it's supposed to! Such a little thing that's so wonderful!

Things to do!
- Make sure all of my running clothes are clean, pack them
- Print out yet another pace band. Should the weather corporate, my goal is a 3:35!
- Finish making my holder for my gels. It's all figured out thanks to my mom (yay, Mom!), now I just have to finish it.
- Buy race day fuel
- Do a little dance!

From NR: Three-peat!

10 days! Which means, starting tomorrow, we can officially start haunting the weather.com website! Here's my thought for this year, though - I'm ready. No matter what I see the weather changing to, I'm going to say "Good! I can handle that!"

My 22 miler went fantastic last week, which leaves me super excited for Grandma's! I purposefully picked a brutal (for roads) course, lengthening a 17 miler that I did a couple years ago. Once again, silly me goes about adding on roads via googlemap without checking out what those roads are like. The result? Even more rolling evil hilliness than I expected. Okay, no problem, the goal was to keep strong, know it was going to be hard and not worry about time

So it all started with running up Highland/Getchell/Stebner. Luckily, it's about 2 miles from my house, so I got some warmup before all the uphill started. Last time I ran up Highland, I needed to walk - not so this time! I just kept plugging my way up the hill. And up and up and up. By the time I hit Morris Thomas, I was trying to remember what it was like to not be running uphill. The weather wasn't too bad for the start but it got pretty hot by the end. I had Kyle meet me just after half way for a water re-fill and luckily, I threw my hat in the bag I had him bring so I nabbed that for the rest of the run and headed up Haines to Morris Thomas and on and on until Lavaque. Lavaque is an evil road! Evil! You just keep going up and up into Proctor. I had misread my elevation map, too, apparently, because I sure remember there NOT being any uphill on the St. Louis River road. Well. So much for that! But I kept plugging away and felt fine. Let me tell you, though, running DOWN Highland at mile 20 is crazy painful. Wow. I went faster once I came off the downhill then I was able to do going down.

The 3rd Boulderdash 5K was this Saturday! The weather was great again and I was hopeful for a three-peat. Maybe the third time would be a charm (I had two other races that I won twice and then had some speedster show up on my third go-around). I talked Lisa into coming with and we showed up nice and early only to find out that they changed the course on me! Sneaky race directors. So I headed out to do the course backwards as a warm-up. I've found that longer warm-ups are good for shorter races and I like to know where 800 from the finish is at. Hmmm, the course is much hillier than it used to be. Of course, it was pretty pancake flat for most of it, so a hill increase wasn't terrible.

I get back from my warm-up and . . . Connie is there! Hmmm, again. Well, she's in the middle of a long run so let's not call the race until we run. And we're off with the quacking of a duck call - one of my favorite race starts. If nothing else, I figured I should be able to run faster than last year, so I tried to take off from the start. Well much longer and up comes Connie, though I didn't recognize her breathing and stride at all until she said something. And away goes Connie. So much for my three-peat. Now wait a minute, I tell myself, just stay in contact and see what happens.
They mark the kilometers on this course and I'm starting to think that I really prefer that. Sure there's more of them, but they go by faster and they really worked well with my thinking this race. I was excited to catch up to Connie towards the end and then the goal was to bring it hard into the finish so it wouldn't end up being a sprint race in.

So - three-peat! Which kind of makes me sound like a high school boy's basketball team, but I'm okay with that :) I even ran a faster time than last year, even with the harder course. My buddy Mike got third in his age group and Lisa got second in hers behind Connie who won her age group and came second for women overall. The race was awesome, as always - one of my favorites of the year. This year's trophies were agates with a wood cut backing - very nice! It's a great event in a gorgeous setting that's definitely worth the drive. The shirts were nice again this year, too. A different gold/brown color with a running shoe made of boulders. I made sure to look at last year's shirt before ordering my size, too, so it fits me well this year.

And now we come to taper time! Time to break out Marathon Woman for another read through.

From NR: Firefighter's 10 Mile plus updates

Wow, guys - it's been a super long time! Sorry for the utter lack of updates. I've been crazy busy, I guess. Lots of racing going on and my computer time has been mostly devoted to other things and I've been doing well with keeping consistent lifting and swimming so that's more time taken up. I keep starting entries and then not finishing them - I've had the NMTC series every Wednesday plus a Sunday, Moose Lake 10K, TC One Mile and the Firefighter's 10 Mile in Thunder Bay. The best news is that running has been going great! My knee feels a-ok and I'm pulling out some speedy times. I've been smashing my times from last year in the NMTC series and my Moose Lake run was the fastest I've done since my PR 3 years ago.

The biggest news, though - I am runner number 9857 for Grandma's! I signed up last week after I nailed my 20 miler. I'm getting excited - 3 weeks left, which is crazy! I feel ready to go, though. This weekend (well, Monday, I guess, since I've been working all weekend but have Monday off) is my 22 and then it's the countdown!

My 20 was on fishing opener so the run was by myself on lovely dirt roads up at my cabin. Since it's rather empty out there, I opted for heading twice around the lake instead of an out and back. This way I'd be able to refill water on my own and Kyle and Dad could fish in the morning without worrying (much) about me being by myself. I kept 5 mile splits and was pleased to review them at the end and see each split get faster. It felt humid at the start and in the beginning my legs felt way too tired for being only 5 miles in, rather worrisome, actually, but I knew I could do 20 miles so I tried not to worry about it and kept plugging along. Along comes the second lap and what I wanted to do was focus on staying strong from about 13-18 since that's where I often have trouble. Turns out not only was I able to keep the pace up, but my last 5 miles had an 8:19 minute mile average which is close to race pace. In humidity! Excellent.

Hmmmm. Let's skip ahead to this Monday and the Firefighter's Ten Mile Road Race. It's up in Thunder Bay so we (I rode up with Leslie and Shelly) took off Sunday afternoon, getting up just in time to get our race packets and enjoy the very last of the spaghetti dinner. Mmmmmmmmmm. The race is on a Monday morning (Victoria Day!) and it was the 100th anniversary of the race this year (but only the 70 something running of it since it was canceled during World War II). It's an out and back course (with a little loop at the end of the out) that's pretty flat - the one hill was an overpass that we run up and down and then came back the other direction on. I like out and backs since it means you can see everyone which was doubly good in this case since it was a pretty boring route. The hill made from the overpass was nice, too, to break up the flatness and not nearly large or steep enough to be any big deal.

10 miles isn't that common of a racing distance, so it was hard to know what kind of time to shoot for. I decided that 7:30s sounded reasonable. The miles were marked but I didn't see a single one until mile 5. Not so helpful. They were all these sandwich board type signs that sat on the ground so I think they were being covered by the spectators. There were tons of people out cheering! I love a course with lots of cheering! But, yeah, no mile markers for me which meant I didn't really know how fast I was going. I knew the water stations were about every 2 miles but beyond that . . . So I decided not to worry about it and just go by feel. I took a look at my watch at 5 miles and saw 36 minutes which means I ran even splits! Funny because the second half felt SO much faster than the first half - I was sure I had gone out much too slow.

Also - apparently the issue with my shoelaces is me and not my shoes. BOTH of my shoes came untied. I don't understand what my problem is! Clearly when I run, my ankles move in such specific circles as to undo double knotting. Bizzare. So my first one comes undone about 2-3 miles in. Hmmmm. 7 or 8 miles is too far to run untied so I keep going until I see a bus bench, run over to that and tie my shoe. Not ten steps later, the other shoe is undone. Nargh. Get caught back up with the group I was with and then stop again to re-tie my other shoe. At least it gave me some motivation to pick my pace up more to catch up and then try and keep that pace going. I'll skip over the middle for you and jump to the last few miles. I passed by a girl and she put up a bit of a fight and then fell back. Well, it was awfully nice to have someone to run with so I gave her a wave and told her to "come on" and up she came. It was super nice to have someone to pace with for a couple miles, she really helped me keep my pace. It's maybe something I need to work on but sometimes I just need to blank out and hang onto someone or at least have someone to share the work with. I have to remember this come the end of Grandma's - if I can just keep on pace through the rough part and not think about having to hold a pace, I can come out the other end okay. So I eventually dropped my help and caught up with the group of 3 women in front of me with a good strong finish (despite the lying handmade 'one mile to go' sign in someone's yard). 1:12:17! So much for 7:30s - apparently I decided to run just faster than my 10K earlier in the year and do 7:13s instead. Very exciting! Also super exciting was Leslie winning the whole thing and the rest of the team having good races, too! It's so much fun when most everyone around you also does well. I came in 4th in my age group (so close to an award!) but 3rd place was a couple minutes in front of me, so I'm a-okay with 4th.

So, here we are. 3 weeks out and 22 miles to run! I decided to go for my 'evil' route - running up Highland and doing mileage around the mall and back - it's surprisingly rolling. I promise to update more often. Hopefully again this week.

From NR: Tragedy!

It's been a little while since I discovered my personal tragedy but I have yet to write about it. Here goes: my favorite running socks are no more!!

Okay, not such a catastrophe, but still sad! I've been buying my running socks from the Army Navy store in Grand Rapids the last couple of years. They're nice and lightweight, super cheap and the tops are sparkly (some yellow, some green) and say sunshine on them! I love them. Sadly, almost every single sock has a hole for my right big toe to poke out of now. So last time I went up to GR, I decided it was time to buy more just to head into the store and find that they no longer sell them. Not only that but the saleswoman had no idea what I was talking about so it's probably been a while since they've had them (I don't think I've bought any since last summer). I have no idea what brand they are and so have no way to look them up online, though I did try a few quick and useless searches using variants of 'running sock' 'sunshine' and 'glitter'. Shockingly, nothing came up! Yeah. I think they still sell the same brand but different socks, though, so I'll have to check NEXT time and write the brand down. In the meantime, I am running out of socks. The problem I've found with anklets is that so many tend to be just too short so that the back of the shoe rubs against my heel. Not comfortable. I found some cheap ones at Old Navy, though, so I'll give those a try and report back! They aren't sparkly, though.

The first trail race was on Wednesday! It was my first speedy anything since I've been injured so I was a bit apprehensive about it. Usually, this is the easiest course (well, I suppose Western Waterfront is an easier course) of the spring. However! It's been rather dry this year, so it was decided that we could venture onto parts of the trail usually too muddy this time of year. I shudder to think what they look like in a normal year. My mom asked if we ran through some puddles and I laughed at her. We were trouncing through Marsh Marigolds it was so mucky! The first third was wet, mucky and shoe sucking - I lost my right shoe in the first third during the warmup run of the course. Not a good sign. The second part was hills. Hills reminiscent of Brown's Point. Yuck. I didn't have as much of a problem with them as I thought I might, though. I tried to work on trusting my legs and ignoring my mind going something like "What the hell is that? You want to run up another one of those?" Then you turned a sharp right and hit sudden pavement which gets the legs all confused. "What?! Solid ground? What do I do?? How do I balance?"

I lost my left shoe in an unassuming mud hole in the single track. During the race. Luckily, we weren't more than a quarter mile from the finish and there was someone I could hear behind me so I decided to just keep going and go back for my shoe when I finished. I didn't even need to do that since Randy found it and brought it in with him. Thanks, Randy!

Overall, a pretty good race, though there's nothing to compare it to since it was a new course. I was trying hard to just run my pace and not let anyone else affect what I was doing so I could focus on what my legs wanted me to do. I ended up running faster than I thought I would, so that was nice. My legs are still strong (actually, probably stronger in general with all of that PT) but my breathing is perhaps a bit behind.

I'll be giving everything a good test tomorrow at the Moose Lake 10K, though (man, am I link happy today). Flat and fast so we'll see what happens. Hopefully the nasty weather that usually accompanies the Millennium Trail race doesn't show up in Moose Lake tomorrow. But if it does, I always love running in the rain, so it won't be so bad!

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.

From NR: Decision Time!

Decisions to make! I was going to go on to say how I hate decisions but let's stay positive, right?

So, I had a fantastic 12 miler on Saturday! The first half was only so-so and I was getting worried by mile 5 but the second half felt great, even with it being more uphill. In fact, I really wanted to add a mile and make it an "even" 13 but decide to err on the side of caution, which was probably a smart idea. Everything felt smooth and fast on the way back and even with concentrating on going slow and then feeling slow for the first half, I finished in 1:44 for an average of 8:40 pace.

New things on the run - my Camel has mold in the tube so I went with my handheld as 10 miles is about my limit for no food or water. This was the first time I've used the handheld water bottle for any run of length (I've done a couple short runs just to get used to it and hadn't been a big fan) and I actually didn't mind it as much as I thought I would. I think I drink a lot more with a handheld and that is definitely good. It's nice to not have the rubbing on my back from the waist pack, too. However, while I did get mostly used to it it, I'm not a fan of the sloshing noise. Someone needs to invent a handheld with a bottom that moves up as you drink so that the liquid doesn't slosh much.

I also tried gel again, since it's time to switch to something else to make sure I'm taking in enough fuel and gel seems to be the way to go. You might remember that I tried gel once before with results such that I didn't want to try again. This time I tried Shelly's favorite kind - Accel Gel. Orange flavored. It's not SO concentrated that I needed to drink right away, but I did feel as though I needed to drink halfway through which I could see being a juggling problem at water stations but perhaps I'll get used to the consistency. I definitely didn't have the choking that I felt with the other brand. It was easy to open and eat on the run, unlike my first time around. It seemed to be a good size, too - I was able to suck it down quick and while I did spill all over my legs once, I think I'll figure it out and not do it again :) The only problem is that it's not available in Duluth so I'm stuck with ordering online only. I'm not a big fan of this since I like to be able to run to a store in a pinch so I'll have to try some brands of locally available gel brands, too. When I looked around, the Clif Apple looked familiar and I think that's what I tried that first time so I'll probably avoid that!

So the dilemma . . . Saturday was 9 weeks out from Grandma's and I'm just considering myself 'back' from injury in the last couple of weeks here. There's still time to get two 20s (or a 20 and a 22) out my schedule but it only involves one stepback week before the tape. So my long runs would look something like this: 14, 16, 18, 20, 12, 22, 12, 10, race.

I feel as though trying to run Grandma's hard is just not a good idea. I don't want to re-injure myself and I want to be prepared. I think a big problem I had at Whistlestop was that I didn't know my target pace well and I wasn't confident enough in myself to find that pace on my own, so I hung onto a guy who was going faster than I should have been. I need to know my target pace inside and out.

So. Do I forget about Grandma's this year and do the Sour Grapes Half the weekend before instead? I feel as though I have the time to be able to run a good Half. Fox Cities Marathon is September 19 and would be a good race to try for my 3:30 again. It seems like the smartest fallback choice - Whistlestop is only a week before Wild Duluth and there's not much for nearby marathons in the summer. September is a good time, hopefully getting cooler and it's before duck season :)

I could run Fox Cities as my goal race and still run Grandma's but I'm not sure I want to if I'm not ready to give it all and I don't know where I would aim. Do I try and just hit a 3:40 (my age BQ) and see what happens, just to make sure I'm in? Do I try for something bigger? Do I just have fun and not go for time at all (I'm not sure I can do that!)?

Now, the Eau Claire Half is for sure out. If I do Grandma's, I'm thinking about not doing most of the trail series. I need to do some track work and get my pace figured out instead of letting a weekly race count as that.

I don't necessarily need to make a decision now. Grandma's won't be filling for a while so I have some time to see what my knee is continuing to think. But thinking like that means I have to be training as though I were doing it so I guess I really do need to be making that decision soon.

From NR: Preconceptions

I had a great trail run Wednesday. About halfway through, I found my groove and felt like I was just flying down the trail. I thought a lot about things, too.

I do a lot better when I open myself up to failure and I have to remember that. It's why I still think going for 3:30 was good at Whistlestop, even if it didn't work out right. I've always done my best when I decide it doesn't matter if I crash and burn - it seems I sell myself short a lot and could really go harder then I thought.

First experience with this was back in middle school, really. It was the Princeton cross country meet in maybe 8th grade when it was still out at that campground. On the bus ride down, I was informed that I was cut down to JV instead of Varsity for this meet. I was pissed. To make it back up to Varsity for the next meet, I would have to beat the time from someone running Varsity at Princeton when JV and Varsity were running separate races so I wouldn't be able to directly race the people I was trying to beat. The JV race also had a TON more runners than the Varsity and the course was simply not built to handle the amount of kids running at once (probably why it was moved off the course the next year or the year after). So I decided I was going to run like mad - much faster then I thought I could maintain for the whole race. After all, you aren't expected to do well at Princeton so it'd be okay if I crashed and burned. Well, I ended up getting 2nd! All because I let go of what I thought I could do and just ran.

Maybe similar is how I've run my best time for the Trail Series races that very first time I ran each one (with the exception of Rolling Stone). Perhaps because I didn't know what to expect those first times around - I didn't know the course and didn't know who I 'should' be running with.

I guess my moral from the story is that you'll only be as fast as you let yourself be. Just let your mind go sometimes, take the risk and go. Whether this means for a race, a section of a race, a training day, an interval or even long term goal setting. Wednesday, I was running up a hill in the middle of the run, nothing too steep or bad, average trail length, average trail steepness when I realized I was thinking along the lines of "Okay, get to x point and you can walk if you need to." Wait, wait, wait! Evaluation time! Just what exactly is hurting enough to think about walking? Quads? Fine. Calves? Tight but fine. Those sore hamstrings? Just fine. Why was I thinking about walking? Could my mind have just decided without me that this seemed like the type of hill to walk some on or even the type of hill I would 'normally' walk some on? As soon as I stopped (mentally, not physically) to realize my legs were fine, I was able to keep going no problem. I'm trying not to let my mind psyche my body out.

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.