Making peace with pace

Let me just say it right now: I am a slow runner.

In fact, I don't know if I have the right to call myself a runner at all, given my usual pace. Jogger is a more apt term but I really don't like that word.

In the name of owning my weakness, I am going to share it right now:

Twelve minutes per mile.

That's how "fast" I usually go on a long run.

I can do better on shorter runs of 5 miles or less. But even on those, I'm at or close to eleven minutes per mile.

When I'm running on popular routes, like the B-G trail or around Greenlake, people pass me constantly. I try not to let it bother me, but it does. I take a shameful pleasure on the all-too-rare occasion that I'm able to pass someone else.

I know that there are things I can do to increase my pace. More speed work. More running in general. But I don't want to do those things. I just don't want to be the slowest person on the road.

But the philosophical part of me thinks that it's good for me to get passed up. It forces me to question why I'm running, what my motivations are and how I define success. So, although it's a work in progress, I am trying to make pace with my pace.

Weekly roundup

Monday, 9/21:

4-mile run

This was supposed to be interval day, but SuperAthlete J invited me to a running event at the fabulous Market Street Athlete store -- so, instead of pushing my limits on the stairclimber, I got to try out a pair of Pearl Izumi shoes during a fun group run to Golden Gardens and back. The evening was gorgeous, the company was very fine, and after the run we were treated to pairs of Pearl Izumi socks, BPA-free water bottles, microbrews, electrolyte drinks and delicious snacks! It was delightful and well worth the torture that ensued on Tuesday ...

Tuesday, 9/22:

Full body weights

25 minutes on the elliptical trainer at zone 1 (125 bpm)

Intervals -- 3 sets of 2:00 at zone 2 (144-156 bpm); 10:00 at zone 4 (165-175 bpm)

Whew, a super tough workout. I've done intervals after weights a few times but this really kicked me in the ass -- probably due to a combination of the run I'd taken the night before (which was definitely fun but executed at a faster pace than I'm used to) and the intensity of this particular weight workout. It's one of my least faves and I'm always thankful to put it behind me ... although on this day I was hoping to make it last a bit because I was dreading the intervals. Who was really, really happy to leave the gym that day? One guess.

Wednesday, 9/23:

7-mile run

SuperAthlete J is really encouraging me to stick with the marathon training schedule -- as much as I can, anyway. The schedule calls for four days of running and one day of cross-training each week and that's too much running for me. At the most, I feel comfortable with three days. So, along with the long run for the week, I'm also doing the second-longest one (and one other, 5 miles or less, if I feel up for it).

The 7-miler was this week's second-longest run. Again, I got to enjoy the delightful company of SuperAthlete J and some wonderful sunshine. The route proved challenging for me ... the first mile was a long, slow uphill and I've found that I do much better overall when the first chunk of a run is flat. The last half mile was also uphill and I had to do several stop-and-walks to keep my heart rate in the right zone. But at least I finished.

Thursday, 9/24:

Upper body weights

45 minutes on the treadmill, super low zone 1 (100 bpm)

Still loving the new treadmill workout: 15% incline, 1.5-2mph ... although I have yet to get anywhere near the higher end of that range. I'm fine with that -- plus it gives me something to work toward!

Friday, 9/25:

10-mile run

This distance, I think, is supposed to represent a bit of a break in the training schedule -- next week, the long run is 15 miles (a distance I've never attempted before and that is causing me some anxiety). Husband M was out of town and that knocked my schedule a bit off kilter ... by the time I'd gotten Little C to school, eaten breakfast, digested and planned my route, it was after noon and warmer than I would have liked. Still, I set out with high hopes, sport beans and two water bottles filled with G2 Gatorade affixed to my belt.

Not a great run. I had to slow to a walk less than four miles in because I couldn't keep my heart rate below 156 -- and I spent the rest of the run keeping a close eye on it. I probably ended up taking a walk break every 10-15 minutes, which wasn't bad ... but I couldn't figure out why I was having such a hard time. The heat? My pace was faster because I was alone and not chatting with SuperAthlete J? I was tired and hadn't given myself enough recovery from the week's earlier workouts? I don't know -- I was just glad to get it over with.

Sautrday, 9/26:

Rest day

Heaven, heaven, heaven.

Sunday, 9/27:

Full body weights

45 minutes on the elliptical trainer at mid zone 1 (125 bpm)

The perfect springboard to next week's workouts ... or so I hope.

Ass-kicking tricep dips

Holy crap, these are hard -- at least they are for me. But they're a great way to do something quick and you can pull them off anywhere you have access to a bench, ledge or chair.

Here's what to do:

• Put yourself in a seated position on the edge of your bench, ledge or chair.

• Adjust your feet so your legs are positioned in a 90º angle. If you want to be a badass, move your feet farther away from you. If you're not feeling terribly macho, move them closer in.

• Support yourself on the heels of your hands with your fingers pointing out.

• Raise your butt off the bench/chair/ledge, then use your arm strength (not your legs!) to lower yourself down. Don't go down so far that you can't get back up, but do go down far enough so that you feel your triceps working.

• Do 2 sets of 15 or 20.

You can also mix things up by lowering yourself down to a count of 3, then coming back up on a count of 1. Or vice versa: lower down to a count of 1, back up to a count of 3.

I must say that I find defined triceps to be super sexy on both men and women -- and this exercise is a great way to get them. Have fun!

1 mile = 100 calories

Isn't that handy to know? In general, we burn 100 calories for every mile we run. During all my poking around for info about weight gain during marathon training, I saw that formula repeated several times. It's going to be useful to have in the back of my mind when I consider whether I can justify seconds at dinner or a bigger afternoon snack than usual.

Finding balance with food and rest

I've been hungrier than usual this week, and yesterday I was insatiable: all I wanted to do was eat, eat, eat. And while I feel quite good at exercising, apparently I am terrible at exercising my will power: I gave in to my cravings right and left. During and between my eating festivals, I was reminded of a couple articles I posted about earlier -- the one from TIME about how exercise won't make you thin:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html

And the one I found online about the potential for weight gain during marathon training. When I went back to look for it just now I found a slew of articles devoted to the topic. Here's one I liked better, that delves more deeply into why people may gain weight while training for a distance run:

http://www.everyday-sports-nutrition-for-women.com/marathontrainingweightgain.html

I don't like the foo-foo inspirational stuff in the article, but I think the info is good. I'm particularly interested in the point about glycogen stores; I'd like to look into that further and dedicate a separate post to it.

From reading those articles, I know that I took two common missteps yesterday. After a challenging 7 miles with Super Athlete J in the morning, I overcompensated with 1) excess calories and 2) excess rest. In fact, I have to admit that when I did get up off my butt yesterday afternoon, it was more often than not to get a snack.

Now, one day of this isn't terrible. I know rest is important and I'm guessing there might be a womanly cycle-type reason for my urge to eat everything in sight. However, after seeing the barrage of information available online about gaining weight while training for a marathon, I can see all too clearly that I need to be mindful about how much I'm eating and laying around.

Honestly, I would be quite sad if I gained significant weight while working toward a marathon. But I don't want to fall into deprivation mode, where I'm severely limiting my calories while continuing or increasing my usual rigorous workout routines (something that's unfortunately quite easy for me to do). Conversely, I don't want to get into a pattern of "rewarding" my hard work with tons of extra calories and hours on the couch. I tend to see everything in terms of black and white, and this situation is a great illumination of that. How do I find the middle ground between those two extremes? How do I make sure I get what I need without under- or over-doing it?

That's the big question. And it may be ridiculous to pose it after a single day of over-eating and over-resting. But it is something to think about ... especially if I notice that my pants are a bit tighter when I put them on next week after wearing shorts all summer long.

Lesson learned: don't try new equipment on a long run

This seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it? But apparently it wasn't to me.

I've been looking for a comfortable device to let me carry water and fuel on long runs (a necessary hassle that I am slowly resigning myself to). Last week, I bought what seemed like a good option. Here's what it looked like:

This was actually my second try with one of these. I bought one last year while training for my third half marathon and didn't like it -- the size I bought didn't fit comfortably around my hips and I felt like I was suffocating if I put it around my waist. I toughed it out on the last few long runs before the half marathon, completed the event, and never used it again.

Since my main issue with it was the size, I thought I'd get a bigger one -- which I did last week. I tried it on in the store, jogged around, and it seemed good. It felt comfortable on my hips and stayed put, although I didn't have much room to tighten it if needed. (Do you sense trouble brewing?)

Fast forward to Friday, my long run day. I filled up the water bottles, stowed my sport beans and other necessaries in the zippered pouch, then headed out with J. Less than half a mile in, I realized that my new contraption was not going to work: it was bouncing all over the place and the heavy bottles pulled it down my hips. I tightened it as much as I could but that didn't help. I considered holding it in place -- not very realistic on a 13-mile run -- or ditching it, but smart J suggested that I tie it on instead of using the Velcro. Brilliant!, I thought.

But not only did I tie it too tightly, I didn't realize that I'd done so until nearly the end of the run. By the time I got home and took it off, I had a the beginnings of a huge swollen bruise in the middle of my groin, where the knot had pressed into my flesh. And to go with it, I had some very attractive chafing at the top of my butt crack, where the zippered pouch had rubbed too hard.

Three days later, I am still sore and puffy between the hips. I don't know if I've ever had a bruise in this exact spot! But my little injuries are great reminders for the lesson I'm never going to forget: no new equipment allowed on long runs. From here on out, I'll try new stuff on shorter runs to make sure it's comfortable and works the way I need it to.

Weekly roundup

Last week's exercise

Monday, 9/14:

Intervals -- three sets of 2:00 @ zone 2 (144-156 bpm), then 10:00 @ zone 4 (165-175 bpm)

For the time being, I'm not going to try to increase my zone 4 times -- I'm working plenty hard on my endurance with running right now, and I've already made it to the goal that smart Izette at Real Rehab gave me last year. Until I can: a) make a decision about/complete/attempt the Seattle Marathon; and b) afford the fee for a new EMR, I'm going to stick to this pattern of intervals and do it once a week.

Tuesday, 9/15:

Full-body weights

40 minutes on the newfangled elliptical machine at the gym, zone 2 (147 bpm)

I love these new machines but man are they ass-kickers. They're called Adaptive Motion Trainers and they're made by Precor. Here's a link to see what they look like: http://www.precor.com/comm/en/amt. And they're not extra hard simply because they involve arm movement too -- my gym has some older elliptical trainers that make you use your arms and they're not nearly as challenging as these new guys. It's got to be something about the way the lower-body part works ... that you can lengthen or shorten your stride, plus increase or decrease the resistance. There's a lot more flexibility to these machines.

Wednesday, 9/16:

6-mile run

The first time I've taken a rainy run in a long time! I headed out immediately after buying the shoes I wrote about in my last post. I ran a couple times around Green Lake, plus another half mile to make sure I did a full 6 (the inner path around the lake is 2.8 miles and there are markers every quarter mile). Almost exactly at mile 1, the sky opened up and it started to pour. It was still pretty warm outside, though, so I didn't suffer -- except at the end of the run, when I realized that I forgotten to put on my Body Glide ... all the extra moisture from the rain contributed to a huge chafing rash across my sternum. (BTW, I can't rave enough about Body Glide; it's saved my skin on countless occasions. Here's a link to it on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/BodyGlide-Anti-Chafing-Stick/dp/B001FSL8MA.) The rash was the last straw -- I decided I had to find a new bra before my long run on Friday.

Thursday, 9/17:

Upper-body weights

45 minutes on the treadmill at low zone 1 (100 bpm)

My second time doing the new fat-burner that Trainer A recommended to me. Love it!

Friday, 9/18:

13-mile run

Yee-haw! What a great, hope-building run. Not only did I have new shoes, socks and a sport bra -- I also carried water and sport beans AND enjoyed the very fine company of J for the first 9.6 miles of the run. Icing on the cake? It was a fabulously beautiful day and we had a gorgeous route that took us past lots of amazing views.

My shoes and socks felt incredible ... for the first time in months, I didn't come away from my long run with blisters. And I loved, loved the sport beans. Here's a link to them: http://www.sportbeans.com/. I had the "Extreme Watermelon" flavor and found them to be yummy but not overpowering, and small enough to fit comfortably in my mouth. I've tried several options for quick fuel on long runs and haven't liked any of them ... I'm thankful to have finally found something palatable.

J and I turned out to be great running partners. She's a total star athlete and her natural pace is far faster than mine (as I humiliatingly discovered on a couple runs with her earlier this year) -- but as I mentioned in an earlier post, she's working to stay in her fat-burning zones on long runs, which means she has to slow down quite a bit. Thanks to that, we're now quite compatible! I couldn't get an accurate read from my heart rate monitor thanks to the barricade of Band Aids I had on my chest to cover the chafing from Wednesday's run. So I just slowed down whenever J needed to and assumed that I was OK as long as I felt good. She was only running 10 miles that day, and we split off at 9.6 miles. I finished my 13 feeling strong and like I can definitely push my distance ... whether I can push to 26 miles remains to be seen.

The only off note about the run: I tried out a new water-carrying device and feel so strongly about what happened that I'm going to do a separate post about it.

Saturday, 9/19:

Rest day, yay!

And what a perfect day for it: chilly and rainy. Little C and I stayed inside for most of the day; we left only to go to her soccer game (where she played like a trooper despite the showery weather) and out to dinner.

Sunday, 9/20:

Full-body weights

45 minutes on the elliptical at zone 1 (125 bpm)

All in all, a very satisfying week!