Moving the Wall--Week 2--The adjustments

If I were smarter (and if I wanted to take a more scientific approach to this whole thing), I would have looked at the list of all the things that concerned me on last week's run and tweaked one thing to see if that would make a difference. 

I'm not smart. I tweaked everything. 

1. I ate a better dinner the night before. I've been trying to cut calories in a smart way during the week to drop some weight (it is taking forever), but I have to make sure that the night before a long run I'm not hungry. So I ate well last night. 

2. I didn't have gels to take with me on the run. It was an emergency last Sunday morning but not enough of an emergency for me to actually sit down and order some online this week. So I found myself this morning staring down an 11 mile run without any nutrition again. I started rummaging around in the kitchen and came across this pack from Generation UCan . Seemed like a good idea this morning before I started, so I mixed it up and planned to drink it while I ran. I also tucked a couple of packets of my daughter's fruit snacks into my shorts. 

3. I listened to a Runner's World podcast this week with Jeff Galloway talking about his run/walk intervals, and I was inspired to go shorter on my intervals. I have been running 2/1 for as long as it is sustainable (see the Wall) and then rolling with a survival of the fittest mentality for the remainder of the run. After listening to Galloway talk about intervals as short as 30/30, I was thinking it was time for a change. If you haven't heard this interview with him, it's worth a listen. (He's just so darn cool!). 

4. I run the same direction every week when I run the lake. This week, I decided I'd run in the opposite direction. Not exactly sure why. But I was tweaking stuff. So why not tweak all the things?

How'd it go? Awesome. Which is kind of a problem. Because now I'm convinced that I have to do ALL these things every single time for a long run to go well. When really, one of the things might have been enough. What really worked, though?

The Galloway talk convinced me to try a 60 run/30 walk interval from the first step I took out the door. His argument is that the point of that frequency of run/walk intervals will prevent fatigue and allow for whatever is in the legs to last more consistently over the duration of the run. Since I've been running a 2/1 interval for as long as I could sustain it, the 60/30 interval is technically the same amount of walking. And it worked for me today. I not only maintained the 60/30 interval for the full 10.7 miles, but I felt like I could go even further. 

The other significant shift for me was with nutrition. I mixed up the drink like a rookie--powder everywhere, too much water in the bottle on the front end. Mental note for next time: fill the water bottle halfway with water. Add the powder. Fill it the rest of the way with water. Mix it up. Yep. Gotta remember that for next time. My kitchen counter got half the powder. 

Even though my kitchen counter got half the powder, the uCAN did the trick today. I took a small sip of my bottle every third or fourth walk interval all the way around the lake. I never got hungry (a problem in past runs). And I never had an energy dip (another problem on past runs). And the one packet (130 calories) was enough for the whole run. I did have to carry a second bottle of water (just water) with me because periodically it felt like I needed to drink something to water down the other thing I was drinking. And it ended up being a 2 hour, 14 minute run, so 130 calories in that time wasn't likely enough. I'll have to do some more research around this. But the point? No dips. Not a one. Picking up some more uCAN today to play around with it on long runs to come. Still need to find a better solution for carrying beverages on the run, though. 

And the question of the day coming out of the run intervals is if I should be doing that interval for every run? Or should the shorter runs during the week be done differently? If so, how? Why? Another thing to research.

Run on friends. 

This week's running log: 26.54 miles.

This year's running log: 793.79 miles. 

Trying to move the wall

I headed out for my long run yesterday morning--I planned to do a 2/1 run/walk ratio for 10.5 miles around the lake here. The Dopey Challenge training plan called for 9 miles, so I was shooting to feel good through 9 miles (in as much as one can control such a thing), and then reward myself with a "run when you feel like it, walk when you don't" mentality for the last mile and a half.

One nice part about yesterday was that I woke up with a stiff neck. Or stiff left side of my neck. Like I had an urge to try to massage a kink in my neck every few seconds. How might that be considered "nice?" Well, it distracted me from any other discomfort I might have been having on the run. I was so preoccupied by the tightness in my neck that my legs felt awesome. For 7.5 miles. And then not so much.

Is it possible that I hit a wall at 7.5? Maybe. A mental wall, at least.



I have been running consistent mileage all summer--short runs during the week of 3-5 miles and a long run on the weekend of 10.5. Often lots of walking on those long runs. I don't mind that. But I do mind that I haven't gotten to the point that the full 10.5 feels easier. I wonder how long that will take.

Some guesses on yesterday:
1. Underfueled. I didn't eat much the night before the run, and I have been cutting calories for a few weeks to try to drop some weight, so I was a bit behind going in. I took a gel with me, but I need to order some more--I usually take two over the course of my long run, and I was just out.

2. Dehydrated. It is August and humid. But I didn't want to hand carry a full water bottle around the lake with me. I have been running with a waist belt with one water bottle in it and a hand bottle with a strap on it, but the hand bottle with the strap on it has been driving me nuts. So I put a bottle in my waist pack, and I took a little plastic water bottle that I knew I could drop in someone's recycling bin as I was running. Don't think that was enough. When I am running, and I have to think about rationing out water, that's a layer of thinking that isn't helpful. Especially on an already mentally taxing long run.

3. Who knows?

I did save a bug that found itself in the unfortunate position of being turtled on its back and kicking next to the road. Felt like I was earning some points in the world. I'm not a bug fun. But that little guy needed some help.

On strength training and habits and deeds and forward motion...

I hate lifting. I hate burpees. I hate strength training. I hate planks. Yeah. I've said these things for years. When I first started out training and racing for triathlons, I could rely pretty heavily on the balance between swimming, biking, and running to make up for any deficits I had even though I wasn't strength training. So rather than do an upper body workout with weights, I'd swim a couple of miles and call it a day. And man, my arms were ripped, so I didn't see the point of lifting. I looked good; I felt good. I was a hella fast swimmer compared to most of my competition. Why lift? I was also often doing two-a-days to try to get in the mileage in the three disciplines, so who has time to lift? And why should I do something I don't want to do when I'm getting the results I want doing the things that I want to do? 

Watch your thoughts. They become words. Watch your words. They become deeds. Watch your deeds. They become habits. Watch your habits. They become character. Character is everything.--attributed to just about everyone but me...

I often see this on an inspirational poster in a classroom or quoted in some leadership text. I'm sure you've seen it or some version of it. And I am a firm believer in the power of language to inspire and effect change, so some of this certainly rings true to me. I don't know that I see the relationship between "words" and "deeds" and "habits" the way that this speaker implies, but this isn't a philosophy blog, it's a running blog, so I need to dial back the teacher brain a bit.... on to the point...

I think that I have been saying that I hate lifting and burpees and planks for so long that it has impacted my ability to find a way to do them. My words have become deeds and habits and... well, not character, honestly. That's taking it a bit too far. Really more just like excuses. "I hate burpees" isn't about character. Let's be clear. 

But my physical reality has shifted substantially in the 18+ years that I've been training and racing. My daughter is now 7 1/2, and in the 7 1/2 years since she was born, I have spent nearly all my training/racing time running. Not biking. Not swimming. Not competing in triathlons. Missing-in-action is my ripped upper body (for now, at least), and it's been replaced by arms perfectly capable of swinging a 7-year-old girl around when she wants a dizzying spin in the yard, but those arms are unrecognizable to my triathlete self. And out of the mouths of babes, add to that the fact that my filterless-mouthed daughter so nicely pointed out to me that the skin on my arms looks a little like the skin on our Basset hound (OUCH!). She thought it was funny. I cringed. 

My "I hate" words have come back to bite me in that I've allowed my dislike for lifting and burpees and planks to override what my body needs. I am amazing at moral licensing--that mental glitch that allows me to think that because I'm doing something good (running 100+ miles a month), I am somehow licensed to also do something not-so-good (skipping the stuff I've mentioned here). And I just have to do better.

Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do in order to be able to do the things you want to do. 

True that. I wonder, though, if it would be more useful (herculean?) for me to change my thinking about strength training altogether so that I start to think of it as a thing I want to do. (Is that even possible?)  I certainly want the results that it promises. So perhaps focusing on the results will help me overcome this mental hurdle? For now, though, I'm taking the "streaking" approach. If I don't like doing something, I just do it a whole lot until I like it. Like every day. So I started this morning--planks and burpees at the end of my run. And planks and burpees every day until they become habits. And results. Wish me luck. Relentless forward motion, friends.  

An Ultra? Can I even be serious?

The link to the Lighthouse 100 ultra marathon popped up in my newsfeed today on Facebook, and that, of course, launched me into a full hour's worth of fantasizing about running an ultra on the shores of Lake Michigan in early June. Of course! Who wouldn't? (My husband... he wouldn't...I get that it's a little bit nutty...)

My longest run is 26.2 miles. And I don't remember a single run of 26.2 miles that ended with me wanting to run another step. In fact, to be fair, here is my face at the end of my last mary (when I discovered that I had to climb 40 steps to get out of the stadium that was hosting the finish line): 

So it's not like I've ever really said to myself at the end of a marathon, "Yep! I wanna do that a second time! Right now!" or "Meh, I really need a belt buckle instead of a medal to hang around my neck." 

Yet somehow, the ultra marathon has always intrigued me. I watched the Badwater Marathon documentary  called Running on the Sun and was absolutely enchanted by the guy who had his toenails surgically removed because he was sick of losing them on long runs (I hate toenails anyway), or the older man who gave me the quote that inspires this blog-- "I always start these events with very lofty goals. Like I think I'm going to do something special. And after a point of body deterioration, the goals get evaluated down. I always get to a point where the best I can hope for is to avoid throwing up on my shoes," said by Ephraim Romesberg--Badwater Ultramarathon participant. Seriously, just watch the first two minutes of that video. "I don't think there's a thing about this that's good for the body," says the race organizer. It must be good for the soul.

I feel like I should dig into this idea more, but I also don't feel like I'm up to digging too deeply tonight. A couple of ideas are sitting right at the front of my mind. The first is that I have the foundation for the mental resume to do an ultra. I've done two races before that have taken me fourteen plus hours to complete. And I was on the verge of some pretty dark places in those races, but "relentless forward motion" (my mantra) pulled me through. I imagine the dark places on an ultra run are different from the dark places on an Ironman, but I sure would like to find out. 

The second idea on my mind is pace. My last full marathon (in April of this year) took me five hours and fifty six minutes to complete. That was nearly an hour over what I was hoping to do. It wasn't my slowest marathon, but it was nowhere near to my fastest (4:31). I ended up at 13:31 pace when I was hoping for closer to 12:30 pace. And lately, even my shorter runs have been in the 12+ pace range. That's miserable for me. I just am not at the pace that I'd like to be at. And in the same way that I am not at the weight I'd like to be at, I look at it almost like a clinician. "Hmmm, that's really interesting! I wonder what could fix that!" but nothing much changes from looking at it from that angle.

I'm not yet serious. But I'm thinking about it. I wonder if I'll somehow let fate determine my destiny on this one; if there are still spaces for registration after Dopey, and if I have the will do it it, perhaps I'll sign on. Two kinds of crazy in one year?