back from san francisco!

Total Distance So Far: 63.1 miles

I had to go to San Francisco all week for work (hence the lack of blogs this week).

One unfortunate note: I think I have developed plantar fasciitis in my left foot. According to wikipedia, Plantar fasciitis is a painful inflammatory condition caused by excessive wear to the plantar fascia of the foot. The pain usually is felt on the underside of the heel, and is often most intense with the first steps of the day.

yep and yep. my symptoms fit this exactly. oof. I think I need to find podiatrist early next week, cause I ain't quitting.

On Monday, I attempted the interval training on the hotel's treadmill. It wasn't super easy, but I was able to run 6 faster quarter mile intervals with a warm up and warm down.

On Wednesday, I was only able to fit in a 20 minute run (instead of the 30 minute run I was supposed to do), but I figured 20 minutes was better than nothing.

So I spent 1 hour 20 minutes on these:


The cool bit was the TV built in, so I watched all sorts of TV while I was doing my workouts.

I skipped the weight training this week for lack of time. I'll pick it back up next week.

I flew home last night, and this morning did the 6 mile group run. Unfortunately thanks to the plantar fasciitis, I think my old runner's knee is flaring up again (hence the quick need to find a podiatrist so all my woes cease and desist).

I was able to run a good amount of the 6 miles at roughly a 10 minute mile pace, but my knee started to stiffen close to 5.5 miles, so I decided to walk the rest of the distance. Val humored me and my aches as she also is having a knee issue today.

Anyway, good to be home. I'm tired, and ready to conquer whatever this foot thing is I have. I hope to be "up and running" in no time!!

a big day!

Total Distance So Far: 51.6 miles

After only 3.5 hours of sleep, I was up in time for the group run this morning.

It went great! I was able to run 6 miles with Val in 1:04:17. That's a little faster than an 11:00 minute mile avg pace. That was my longest run to date (both time and distance!). I have to say, the Lief Erickson run in Forest Park is super nice. I actually had FUN today. I never thought I'd say that after a 6 mile run.

I got back home in plenty of time for the garage sale. My friend Paul arrived in good time to help me put up the signs, and get ready for the sale. Sale was on starting at 10am.

It was kinda a slow start, puttered out by noon... and then lagged a bit. The weather was stormy, which altho sucky for a garage sale, has to suck worse for the participants in the grand floral parade in portland going on this morning. At least I have a large garage to seek shelter in.

When Mike showed up at 1pm to fire up the grill and make Otto Sausage Market hotdogs (#3 in the nation), things sprung to life once again, and was reasonably hopping until 4pm.

So, altho I had a slow & late start, and a sparse showing due to weather, I still was able to raise $145.45 (after recouping cost of the otto hotdogs). Not bad at all!

AND, I got a chance to meet some nice neighbors I had never met before. Double bonus!

So, altho the weather sucked, I'd consider today a relative success (still have a garage full of stuff too, ineffect have posted some of it on craigslist).

all set!

ok, tomorrow is gonna suck considering what time I'm blogging this. That aside, I just finished setting up for my garage sale in the morning (to be held following the group run).

Very excited! Wish me luck!!



P.S. the panaramic photo didn't stitch together very well, but it seems apt considering how long I've been working on it today. Everything is kinda a blur right now.

running in place

Total Distance So Far: 45.6 miles

Today I was scheduled for a 30 minute run. Around 11:45 I left my desk for the little employee shower room, changed into my running kit, got slathered up with sunblock, strapped on my Garmin, took a sip of water, and headed out into the pretty weather of low-60's and partially overcast skies. Good runnin weather.

I switched on my Garmin, and it said 0 hours of battery left. Shutting down.

ACK!

I stood there for a bit, dumbfounded. I had drained my Garmin of it's lifeforce by mistake. I must have forgotten to turn it off on Monday night. oops.

I considered running without my Garmin, and realized I really didn't want to do that. I'd be depressed if I didn't know distance and time. Just straight up, not gonna do. I went and grabbed my stuff in the shower room, and marched across my work campus to the fitness center. I was going to treadmill my 30 minutes today.

All three treadmills were free, so I took the one on the right. Poked at it for a bit to get it to start moving, and then immediately set it to a 9:30 minute mile pace, and tried to settle into a rhythm. After about 4 minutes I found myself kinda struggling with maintaining this pace, so I slowed down to a 10 minute mile.

run run run run run run run.

Man, running in place is boring. The only thing to do that is visually stimulating is to watch the treadmill display, and then you start agonizing over every second. What? that was only 15 seconds? weird! Huh, I've got like 25 more minutes to run, this sucks.

run run run run run run run.

I became painfully aware of my body. My lower back was aching a little... one of my knees had a little pain.

run run run run run run run.

Dude, 24:30 more minutes to run, this sucks.

About halfway, I started to get more into the rhythm of the treadmill, and was entertaining myself by staring out the window at a tree directly infront of me, that I never seemed to get any closer to. Still, you can only stare at a tree so long before you wonder, "how long was I staring at the tree? 1 minute? hm."

I became elated when someone would walk across the parking lot in front of the window. It gave me something to use as a control to guage the passage of time with. It gave me something, however mundane, to WATCH. Anything is better than literally watching the seconds tick away.

I did notice that I no longer was obsessing about my body. My back and knee no longer felt like anything. I was just chugging along.

In the last 7 minutes I noticed I kept bumping the console with my hands... I guess I wanted to go a little faster than a 10 minute mile. So, in response, I pumped the speed back up to 9:30. I was only able to manage that for like, 45 seconds before I felt like I was possibly pushing myself too much. Back down to a 10 minute mile.

The last 5 minutes of the run flew by. I'd have to thank the cafeteria worker who took that opportunity to have her cigarette break and talk on her cell phone in front of the window. Thank you dear girl.

I pushed myself at a 9 minute mile pace for the last 10 seconds. ooo, living on the edge! The clock hit 30 minutes, I desperately tried to slow the treadmill down to a fast walking pace to allow my heart rate to come down gracefully. The treadmill just doesn't adjust fast enough to make that easy.

While walking, I decided to put my hands on the heart rate monitor to see what my heart rate was at. 166! whoah. I watched as it slowed down slowly.

Catching my breath, I looked to see that my run today was 31:48 minutes long (including walking cool down), at a distance of 3.15 miles [I'm guessing thats a 9:40 minute mile avg pace]. The treadmill said I had burned over 300 calories too. hm. I know I was sweating like a pig.

Deep breath, I climbed off the treadmill and dealt with the vertigo of actually MOVING when I took a step. funky. I caught a glimpse of me in the full wall mirror, not a pretty sight. It looked like I had just run 30 minutes non-stop. oof.

Remind me to never let my Garmin die again. I don't think I much like running in place. Time goes slower.

a hard run, and some tables

Total Distance So Far: 42.6 miles

Track session again tonight. I got there a little late thanks to an after-hours presentation my work team was putting on for our lab manager (read this as my boss's boss's boss, kind of a big deal). I had to be there to answer any questions she may have around my part of our demo.

Anyway, I rolled up to the track around 6:15pm, all the other TNT people were done with their warm-up run and were doing a group stretch before the real meat of the night (the fast laps). I stood in and did some stretches and listened to any announcements (there weren't any), and when everyone else stepped off to do their fast laps, I started my 10 minute warm-up run (approx at a 10:31 minute/mile pace). Then I started my laps. We had to do 6 faster laps tonight, instead of 4. Ah, the training gets more challenging! I started feeling a side-stitch during lap #3, so I was struggling a little this evening. Was taking kinda longish breaks between my fast laps to try to recover.

Lap 1) TIME: 1:36 minutes PACE: 6:24 minute mile
Lap 2) TIME: 1:39 minutes PACE: 6:36 minute mile
Lap 3) TIME: 1:42 minutes PACE: 6:49 minute mile
Lap 4) TIME: 1:43 minutes PACE: 6:51 minute mile
Lap 5) TIME: 1:51 minutes PACE: 7:02 minute mile
Lap 6) TIME: 1:39 minutes PACE: 6:36 minute mile

By this time it was about 7pm, I needed to do my cool-down run, but I also had my friend Sheri driving out from Newberg,OR with a load of garage sale items and some plywood and sawhorses to use as garage sale tables, and I needed to be home in time to meet her. I wasn't sure what time she was planning on coming out... but I was worried about not being ready for her.

I compromised, and since Val had just gotten there and had done 1/2 her warm-up run, I decided to do 1/2 a cool-down run with Val (the rest of her warm-up) and then take off. I ran 5:10 minutes at a 9:10 minute mile pace with Val (slightly over 1/2 a mile), picked up some garage sale signs from my mentor Vicki, and got on my way.

Roughly 45 minutes later, Sheri pulled up to my house with her truck loaded to the gills with garage sale items, and pulling a U-Haul trailer with some more stuff. I love Sheri. She had some good stuff too! We unloaded it into my (formerly cleaned out) garage, and then she helped me setup 2 tables and started sorting items on them with me. It was super awesome of her. We practically setup all the items I had already sitting in my garage for the garage sale tonight, and I have more in my spare bedroom already priced that I'll move into the garage on Friday, so I'm feeling pretty good about this up-coming Saturday.

Should be a nice little garage sale... now that I have tables.

group run #3

Total Distance So Far: 39.6 miles

This morning I actually managed to get myself up on-time for the 7:30am group run (yes, val volunteered to call me to help make sure I wouldn't sleep in again). Everything worked out swimmingly; I was able to get up at 6:30am to make it to her house by 7:10am.

Today's run went great too! I was really energized for it, and found it alot easier than last week's. I also found myself WANTING to go a little faster cause it felt good (albeit I noticed I was a little thirsty during the run, next week I'll bring my hydration pack on the run).

We did the Willamette esplanade again today. 4 miles total. Same run as last week. Next week gets more difficult though.

Anyway, today's stats:
DISTANCE: 4 miles TIME: 39:24 minutes PACE: 9:51 minute/mile

At the end of the run, the mentors had set up a breakfast for us runners. That is so nice of them! I had a donut, a banana, some strawberries, and some watermelon. It was all so very tasty!

minimalist training

So, Hana pointed me at this article yesterday:
NYT: Modern Marathoners Have Fewer Miles on Them

It's surprisingly relevant to me right now. Apparently in the last decade or so the school of thought around training for a marathon has gone from RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN!! to running smart, and making it count. Neat. I seem to be a member of the minimalist training movement. I like that, since normally I'm more in the "taking things to excess" clique.

Admittedly, I've never been one to jump on a band wagon simply because Oprah showed me how, but look at me now! hee. Mind you, I don't have anything against Oprah. I hear her recommended books are actually quite worth reading. I've just never much followed what she's up to. And, I'm much more inclined to check in on Nancy Pearl for ideas around what to read.

In other news, I played 2 games of indoor soccer last night as part of my cross-training. In the first game (second half) I went ahead and blocked a shot on goal with my foot... and it kinda hurt. Some of the toes on my foot are a little swollen today (only slightly). I'm going to baby it (today is a rest day thankfully) and hopefully it'll be all better in time for my 4 mile run tomorrow morning. Hopefully.

oops.

btw, I gave away 13 muffins last night. I'm not sure any donations will come of it, but I can hope!