A One-Month Challenge: Run, Lift, Sleep, Eat, Teach, Mother, repeat....

Credit: www.goneforarun.com Facebook page

The PF Report and Long Runs

I've said it before; I don't know who I am when I'm not running. And yet I haven't been running. Because PF. And when I saw this image pop up on yesterday's Facebook feed, it spoke to me (even if ironically). 

Long runs matter. For me, long runs are therapy. Personal time. Think time. Work it out time. Time I've needed very much in the last two weeks. And had my left heel not hurt so stinking much, to mitigate the stress of the last two weeks at work, I would have needed fifty miles on the road. 

Coffee matters. No further explanation needed there.

So I did go long today. Six miles long. That's as long as I felt comfortable pushing my heel. They were six hard-fought miles, though. I'm not sure that I got any closer to accepting the things I cannot change, but I got a little closer to accepting that the conversations I have in my head while running long might be the best I can do with some of that work stress for now. 

A One-Month Personal Wellness Challenge

The injury has set me back quite a bit mentally in other ways. I wasn't prepared to run the 1/2 marathon this weekend that I usually run in Indianapolis with my best friend, so I didn't go. I've justified it by saying that I'm resting from the injury, but I also know I'm not doing enough to heal the heel; I need to be consistent in icing, taking anti-inflammatories, stretching, wearing a Strassborg sock to bed, and trying out this new essential oil that's been recommended by a friend. 

But I always do better when I've got a target, so I'm taking on a one-month personal wellness challenge. I chose a month because I've got one month until my Wellness Screening at school. Every year we get a weigh in with a BMI and a blood test and a flu shot and a whole host of other pieces of data about our health. Every year I tell myself I'll do something different. But a year seems like a bit too big of a bite (and it clearly is since I've only got a month left until this year's screening.) 

So one month. Targets: Run, bike, or lift every day. Record and manage nutrition for all 30 days. Consistently treat the PF.  

We'll see what a difference a month can make. Anyone else interested? 

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.