Dress to compress

Someone pointed out to me at the No Excuses 5k just how many people are now wearing compression socks and sleeves.  They wanted to attribute this phenomenon to me starting to wear them in training and at races, but I am not taking any credit.  Other speedsters like Paula Radcliffe and Gete Wami have been wearing them on and off for years.  I think the Escays were the first on the Sacto running scene to be seen wearing them regularly, so give them the credit.

I first started wearing them for recovery after my trip to Washington D.C. for the Marine Corps Marathon in October.  As I've noted before, I didn't have a great experience there because my body felt like hell.  After the race I was emailing back and forth with my coach from the Impala Racing Team and mentioned that my legs felt really dead before and during the race.  He asked if I had worn compression socks on the flight over.  Of course, I had not.  I wasn't even aware this was necessary.  He said I should definitely get a pair and wear them on the flight to Belgrade because they can really help reduce leg swelling and maintain good circulation in addition to preventing clots.  I bought a fashionable pair of the white, drugstore knee-highs that night. 

I had seen runners wearing them during training and races for years and always wondered what was up.  So, I went in to Fleet Feet Sports to check out what they had in stock for my trip to Belgrade.  I chatted with store owner and triathlete Pat Sweeney about his experience wearing them.  I found out that he swears by them.  I bought a pair of knee-high recovery socks and was thinking about getting a pair of the sleeves for training.  Pat was very enthusiastic about the sleeves he had tried from RecoFIT Sports.  He ran upstairs and grabbed one of them for me to try on.  It seemed to fit and he told me to run with that one and see what I thought.  I thought the idea he had was for me to test the one out and compare how that leg felt with the other leg.  I later found out he just couldn't find the other sleeve.

So, I started with just the one sleeve.  It looked a little weird, but that doesn't really phase me much.  I quickly realized the folly in this experiment and sent a note to the owner of RecoFIT Sports explaining how I only had the one sleeve and wanted to find out how to get a complete set.  She had great empathy for me and sent a complimentary pair to me right away.

I have worn these sleeves for the last few months of training and racing and feel like I can properly evaluate their merits.  Of course, as I always say, I am but a sample size of one in this big experiment, so take my data for what it's worth.  I don't believe compression devices confer much if any advantage while racing in terms of performance.  I do think, however, that they speed your recovery and that is super important.  This seems to jive with an article written by Brian Metzler for Running Times recently.  He cites a 2007 study that compared the performance (measured as maximal oxygen consumption, heart rate and minute ventilation) of treadmill runners wearing the sleeves to those not wearing them and found no difference between the two groups.  They did find a significant result in shorter lactate recovery rate after exercise in the runners wearing the socks.

I also think that they provide biomechanical support or reduce lower leg jiggle.  I have had consistent issues with tight calves and tender shins for as long as I've been running.  Nothing that has ever kept me from training, but just a side-effect of running.  I've noticed this tenderness is much reduced since I've been wearing these things, especially the RecoFIT version.  I have also tried the Zensah sleeves, but they're just not as well designed and executed. They don't seem to support my leg as well. 

I do have to say that wearing these bad boys takes a whole lot more commitment in the summer months as opposed to the winter.  First, there's the heat issue.  You're wearing a black, tight fitting piece of spandex on your lower leg when it's 90+ degrees out!  I do have to say I didn't really notice them when running in the heat in Belgrade.  They were actually the least of my worries.   I'm also somewhat concerned about the funky tan line I'm developing that leaves the impression of wearing a winter-white knee-high on my lower leg all summer.  Not attractive!  I guess that's why they make fake tan in a bottle.

Finally, I got a great tip from Pat about wearing full-on compression tights.  These are apparently quite popular with the Tri guys.  I bought a pair of Zoot tights from Fleet Feet and wore those on all of my flights to and from Europe.  I think these are much better than just the socks in this circumstance.  I noticed a major difference in how my legs felt after these flights.  Major.  I also wore these after super hard training efforts for several hours post workout.  I think this helped with recovery too.

So, you have lots of options for compressing.  You will get occasional snide comments from trail monkeys or a sassy little whistle here and there if you're lucky.  As a gadget junky, I always suggest you try new things to see if they work for you.

  

            

Keeping it real

I have been asked by more than 2 people about the title of my last post, so I'll start by explaining the dealio.  It was an inappropriate attempt at dark humor on my part, really.  The one time I channel surfed and caught the Tyra Banks Show, she was parading a circus of girls with eating disorders on her stage.  It was one of those morbid fascination encounters where I just couldn't look away.  The one that stuck in my head was the girl with pica disease who ate baby powder to sate her appetite.  The girl who ate cotton balls was a close second, but baby powder--ack.

Now, on to this week's training..

As I looked through the weighty tome I received from my coach entitled "Jaymee 17 weeks to Twin Cities Marathon", I noticed a subtle reminder that my goal training paces had been adjusted to the slower side. Maybe the yellow highlight wasn't so subtle.  Physiologically, this makes so much sense, but psychologically, it's a little harder to handle.  These were the same paces I had heading into my last cycle of training for Belgrade (except the goal marathon pace was slower for that one):

Goal Marathon Pace: 6:16-6:20 

Marathon training pace: 6:30-6:35 

1/2 Marathon: 6:10-6:15

LT: 6:00-6:10 

10k: 5:55-6:00 

5k: 5:45-5:50

A good year of training has cycles.  For me, these tend to revolve around marathon races.  I'll gear up for a marathon for a few months, increasing volume and intensity of my training, peak, race, and then spend a couple of months recovering.  I had achieved a new high level of fitness in my last training cycle right around the Shamrock'n half marathon.  The time I ran there is my fastest race at any distance to date.  After that race, my coach adjusted my paces down a notch to reflect this new level of fitness.  Of course, when I started up this new training cycle, I was looking at those paces and race times thinking they were my new baseline.  It is really hard for me mentally to adjust my expectations for training paces down for the 6-8 weeks or more after a marathon, but I think it is very important to make sure I don't burn out or get injured.

My coach doesn't seem to believe in pure and simple, unpolluted easy running days.  I found on average 1-2 days per week where all I'm supposed to do is run or jog easy.  There are several more "easy runs" in there, but there's always some sort of plyometric, stride, sprint, or hill shizzle built in.  I used to see these as options or suggestions rather than part of the workout and would prune them if I was feeling tired or sore.  I don't do that anymore.  I realize that every little thing she puts in my schedule has a purpose and I make sure I get it done.  

So, this week started with a good workout at the No Excuses 5k and just got better from there--after Wednesday. I went to a dinner party Tuesday night and had a lovely time enjoying the outdoor setting but was bombarded by pollen and munched by mosquitoes.  I snoozed through my 4:45 wake up call the next morning leaving myself only one option for running my 8 miles: at night in 90 degree heat.  Bugger it gets hot here.  I also dreaded this situation because it meant less than 10 hours recovery between that run (which included plyo drills) and the next morning's hard workout.

Thursday's 8 mile workout, as scheduled, was packed with delightfulness.  While programming this one into my Garmin, I realized it was not all going to fit into the prescribed 8 miles, so I estimated about 10 miles.  Sprinkles had the same workout, so we headed out together from our usual early morning meeting spot.  It's now light enough at 5:15 for us to head straight to the American River Parkway trail to run.  This is a true summertime treat.  

We did a nice 3 mile warm up and then started our sprint training after a few strides.  These short little suckers are surprisingly tiring because you're going at a gut-busting pace.  We then made our way back to the William Pond Park Bridge which I use for hill repeats of 75 seconds or less. This set of 10-15 x 60 sec hills at 3k effort with 60 second jog down rest was going to be a logistical challenge since I knew we would run out of hill if we only jog rested for 60 seconds. So we took a generous extra 30 seconds to get down the hill.  I was happy to be holding the same pace for these as I did a couple of weeks ago when I only did 8 of them (though they were 75 seconds long for that workout).  I felt super strong even on the last repeat and was very happy that Sprinkles stuck it out with me maxing out the reps at 15.  When I looked at my Garmin to see how far we had gone, it read 12.5 miles at that point.  I told Sprinkles I thought we should skip the 10x strides that were prescribed and she looked like she was going to kiss me for that.  So, we ran about 13.3 miles that day.      

This morning's workout made me realize I am starting to break through the other side of recovery.  I can feel the speed returning to my little legs.  We selected an early morning start and had a nice group of early girlies to run with for the warm up.  My 15 miler included a step down workout of timed repeats all at 10k effort.  I did 7, 6, 5, 5, 3, 2, 1 minutes @ 10k effort with half the rep time jog rest.  I had actually been looking forward to this workout.  I can do reps like this all day long.  Mentally, these are so much easier for me than long steady runs at LT effort.  I like having that rest break to look forward to.

I wasn't sure what pace my 10k effort was going to translate into, so I gave my Garmin workout program a wide berth--5:50-6:10 minutes per mile.  It is probably somewhat counter productive to program a pace for effort-based workouts.  I am a data geek and thrive off of instantaneous feedback.  I like it when my Garmin beeps at me calling me a lard ass making me speed up.  I also like it when it trills in the opposite direction and I am feeling comfortable at that fast pace.

My paces were 6:00, 6:05, 5:59, 5:57, 5:58, 5:50, 5:33.  It all felt like 10k effort and well in control.  We finished the run with 8 strides and I felt just fine.  An honest effort to top off a good 68-mile week of training.

Next week: more miles and harder workouts.  I even get to do 400 meter repeats!  I haven't done those in ages.  I'll need them to get me ready to face those cute fez-topped Shriners in their little cars at the Shriner's 8k race in a couple of weeks!          

Maybe I should start eating baby powder...

I got my new training schedule from my coach yesterday.  Reviewing the summer torturefest she has prescribed for my next 17 weeks of training, I realized the enormity of what I am trying to accomplish.  I looked up statistics on how many women qualified at either the A (2:38) or B (2:47) standard for the Olympic Marathon Trials held in 2008:  181 women. How many of them were over the age of 40?  14 women.  And that standard was a minute slower.  Only 136 (75%) of these women ran a time fast enough to qualify for the new B standard of 2:46.  This analysis led me to ask the following question of myself:  what in the hell are you thinking? 

I start with this in part deux of my weight blog because I think it helps explain why I think the way I do about my weight.  It should serve to reassure you that I am not interested in losing weight or changing my body composition to look better.  I actually like the way I look and do not think I am fat.  My weight management goals are based on my running goals and shaped by the laws of physics. 

In fact, I have suffered from bipolar exercise disorder most of my life experiencing manic cycles of jazzercise-like activity followed by depressive cycles of hydroponic butt-farming on the couch.  I now understand why this was--my fitness goals were all shaped by a desire to look “fit” rather than a more compelling goal like running in the Olympic marathon trails at age 44.

I take my professional running career (and yes, I think I qualify as a professional runner after the windfall I won in Belgrade though I have yet to see a single Euro from them) pretty seriously.  I recognize that lacing up my running shoes daily and running hundreds of miles a week will not get me to my goal.  Rather, I have to train like a professional athlete and this involves a certain lifestyle.  I see running, both physical and mental strength training, nutrition and weight management as equal factors affecting my fitness and performance (well, the compression socks are vital too).  I also recognize that these factors are all interconnected in that an imbalance in one area can ripple out to affect all of the others.

How I lost 5 lbs without trying

Last summer I was traveling in China and Mongolia and ended up on an involuntary form of the Adkins diet. Mutton and cheese were on the menu every day and not a lot of food was provided to me (hmmm...this sounds a lot like Serbia).  Our eating schedule was completely whack with breakfast at 6 a.m., lunch around 3 p.m. (with only a ration of the Chinese version of moon pies to eat in between) and dinner generally around 9 p.m though we once ate dinner at midnight.  As a result, I ended up losing about 5 pounds during the 3 weeks I was gone and most of this was body fat.  

I was not unhappy with this change in my body composition.  I had people commenting on how fit I looked and asking what strength-training program I had initiated to look that way.  I had done no strength training, but I had removed a layer of insulation from the surface of these muscles allowing them to show through. 

I noticed a concomitant change in my fitness level pretty quickly.  I was killing my workouts and starting to perform really well in races.  I decided I liked the new me and wanted to try to maintain this leaner configuration.  So, I took this weight loss as an opportunity to change my eating habits and lifestyle. 

How I kept it off 

I decided to start tracking everything I ate using a clever little iPhone application called Absolute Fitness (version 2.1).  I was chiefly concerned about my net calorie intake as well as the composition of fat, protein and carbs in my diet.  I wanted to try to keep my fat intake low (<20%).>

This plan has worked very well for me mostly because I am capable of exhibiting self-control with my eating (on most days).  I do this by reminding myself of my long-term goal of running 2:46 when I am tempted by the entire carrot cake sitting in my kitchen from a friend’s party or by that beautiful In-n-Out burger sign on my way home from a work trip.  

I have also become a lot smarter about the foods I eat and their relative nutritional contribution to my diet.  I am able to plan my meals before races and workouts using this iPhone application to ensure I have the right proportion of carbs in my diet.  I can also see when I have a major calorie deficit and need to bulk up on foods in order to have the energy the next day for my workouts.  I hope you can see just how much work this is. 

When the program stopped working 

After I ran my 2:50 marathon at CIM (btw, did anyone notice that I ran 5 minutes faster at CIM than I did 7 months earlier in Eugene after losing 5 lbs?) I was still slowly losing weight (got down to 126) and feeling great.  I was continuing to track what I ate, maintaining the same calorie load and nutritional balance as before.  The only thing that really changed was a slight increase in running volume and intensity.  In about February, I started noticing that my weight leveled off.  I saw this as no big deal because my body fat continued to go down.  Then, my weight started going up to about 128 while my body fat continued to go down (about 9-10% right before Belgrade).   

You may be thinking right now that I have a bad scale.  While this may be true, I'm talking about trends over time rather than daily ups and downs.  Though I know the body fat measurement on my scale is not accurate, it is precise in that I weigh myself on it daily at roughly the same time and therefore have the ability to compare the values on a relative basis.  There is variation around the mean to be sure, but there is a downward trend in body fat and an upward trend in weight that cannot be disputed.  I have the data. 

I became pretty discouraged at this point.  I was working my butt off (or so I thought) and being so vigilant about my diet.  Furthermore, I was lifting no weights and was doing strength workouts similar to what I had done for the last couple of years.  What was going on?  I don’t know for sure of course but my working hypothesis is simply that I was gaining a whole lot of muscle while I was losing that fat. 

I think my body is still transforming into a runner’s body since I am still a relatively new runner.  I look at recent pictures of myself in full stride and don’t really recognize my body as my own sometimes (and I don’t want to when the race photographer catches me on the down swing with every percentage point of body fat trending toward the core of the earth). 

Where do I go from here? 

My wise coach told me to be less concerned about my weight and focus instead on reducing my body fat.  As she pointed out, the muscle I am gaining is running specific (except that my brain is also getting gigantic because I’m getting so much smarter) and will only help me be a stronger marathoner despite the additional drag.  

Both my weight and body fat have gone up since my long running break coupled with my April tour of the wine, bread, cheese, pasta, and gelato of Italy.  I agree with my coach that I can get my body fat even lower than it was before Belgrade for a short period of time.  Keeping it that low would be a mistake, but a short foray into the single digits will certainly not hurt my body one bit. 

The question is really a psychological one: Can I look at the numbers on the scale and not be disappointed when the weight reads high even if the body fat reads low?  I guess I’ll soon find out.

Weight. Weight. Don't tell me.

This is nothing like the NPR quiz show, but it is a game I play with myself.  I wake up every morning and weigh myself on my Tanita body fat measuring scale.  I talk myself through this procedure trying to assess whether I feel heavy or light and brace myself for the result.  I close one eye and peer through a slit in the other eye to see whether the number will come up on the light or heavy side. Lately, I've been disappointed in the result.

Today, I weighed in at a whopping 128.8 lbs. with ~12% body fat.  A runner will look at these stats for a 5'5" female and perhaps let out a little gasp.   To provide a graphical representation of this phenomenon, I have provided a hypothetical graph (below) of the weight distribution for 100 competitive female runners of my height.  As you can clearly see, I show up as an outlier giving the distribution curve a nice positive skew.  

I sort of knew that I was a little bigger than most of my female competitors.  That is pretty obvious.  It was really when I first noticed that the average weight of the entire men’s elite field for any given marathon is lighter than me that I started to realize that my weight might be a factor I should consider as one component in my training to run a faster marathon.  

Of course, one can't completely disregard the “Swiss” episode from the 2008 Eugene Marathon.  My Mom was at mile marker 18 or so when I came running up the bike trail hot on the tail of the lead female runner.  I would pass her while my Mom was watching and take the lead for a few short miles.  My Mom was looking for a place to vent her pride and found a gentleman that turned out to be a local running coach standing close by.  She told him I was her daughter at which point he glanced at my then 133-pound body and quickly responded that I sure wasn’t built like a marathoner.  My Mom replied without batting an eye, “Oh, right.  She’s just Swiss.”  Not sure what that means, but you get the picture. 

So, approximately how much could I shave off of my marathon time by reducing the badonkadonk I’m carrying in my saddlebags?  According to the following web calculator (http://www.runningforfitness.org/calc/weighteffect.php), if I became no fitter than I was at CIM last December (where I ran 2:50:22 @ 128 lbs) I could run my goal of 2:46 (given similar conditions yada yada yada) by simply losing 4 pounds.  This equates to about 67 seconds for every pound lost over the marathon distance. 

This is a big deal and you can probably see why runners are drawn to the fantasy world of weight loss as an “easy” way to become faster.   For a runner that is already in the teens on the BMI scale, this approach will most certainly lead to sickness and injury.  For someone like me, I doubt that anyone would look at the following statistics--5’5” 124 lbs--and think “bone thin”.

Before I became a runner, I rarely  thought about my weight.  I actually went through much of my 20s and early 30s thinking that I was immune to weight gain, happily able to *eat whatever I wanted* without gaining an ounce.  There's some magic point in mid-life where your brain continues to believe this myth while your body starts developing evidence to the contrary.  This came around age 36 for me and was one of the original reasons I started running--to shed some pounds.  

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that the amount of attention paid to women who have gained a few extra fat nodules is equaled only by the gossip surrounding those deemed to be “too thin.” We are programmed at a very young age to look for our thinspiration in the world in the headlines plastered across every magazine stocked at the check out counter of the local grocery store.  If one of our kind dares to stray out of the tidy distribution of acceptable weight values, they are vilified in this week’s body image news.  Case in point:  “Tyra Banks Speaks Out About Her Weight: 161 lbs.—I still feel hot” is on the front cover of People this week.

The world of weight gossip is brutal among female runners. So and so was anorexic in utero and needs constant vigilance to ensure she doesn't relapse.  This other girl only eats crackers and kale garnish at restaurants and is therefore on the verge of an eating disorder.  Yet another always accepts chocolate cake at birthday parties, removes the icing completely and then eats only ¾ of it.  She is most definitely on the fast train to ana-mia-ville.   Ladies, these things do not go unnoticed!  I have seen this first hand and have to admit that I feel uncomfortable talking about my eating habits, weighing behaviors, etc. with some for fear of being labeled binge and purge worthy (though I guess this blog entry sort of makes employing a code-of-silence tactic impossible in the future).  I have to ask when did showing self-control when it comes to the food you eat become a sign of an imminent eating disorder?

In my next blog entry, I‘ll tell you how I lost 5 pounds last summer, why I think it had an impact on my running, how I gained some of it back and what I plan to do over the next few months to lose it. 

Excuses don't make you any faster...

...but they sure make you feel better some days.  I ran the aptly named No Excuses 5k here in Sacramento this morning but only after throwing out and eventually shooting down every possible excuse I could find not to run it.

The rest of my training week went as well as could be expected after the hillfest I had on Tuesday. As predicted, my legs were certainly a lot more sore on Thursday than on Wednesday.  On Wednesday, I had to decide whether or not to do my scheduled strength exercises.  When it's difficult to even walk, you have to wonder whether it's smart to bring on one legged squats, step ups and squat thrusts.  I did it anyway (as well as on Saturday), letting out a little scream with every rep.

Thursday morning, it was difficult to waddle out of bed and out the door for another quality workout.  This workout marked the beginning of sprint training for me.  Luckily, I had some girlie company for the sprints and they helped take my mind off of the quad sting. I had to go the 15-minute lactate threshold portion of the workout alone.  After eating humble pie two weeks ago in a lactate threshold workout where holding 6:07 pace for 25 minutes without stopping was impossible, I was curious about how I would hold up.  The main goal was to run the 15 minutes straight without stopping and I almost made it.  I stopped at the halfway point for a water break.  I held 6:09 pace for this one, so there was really not a lot of improvement over last weekend (where I held 6:11 pace non-stop for 15 minutes during my long run).  Given the state of my legs, I was okay with that.

This brings me to today's race.  I awoke at 0500 hours with the clunking of the sprinkler system and subsequent whining of my dog Sadie.  I then proceeded to lay in bed and ruminate on my options for this day.  My legs were still hurting slightly yesterday during my easy 5 miler, but strides felt okay.  I asked myself why I was running this race today recognizing that I would not run very fast.  In fact, my track record at this race was quite miserable.  I have always run a relatively fast marathon 3-5 weeks before running this race and have turned in subpar times.  Last year, after running a 2:55 PR at Eugene a few weeks before, I turned in a blistering 19:25 5k at No Excuses. Excuse #1--I ran a marathon a few weeks ago.

As I mulled this over, I realized the primary reason I was running the race today was to get another mark in the age-graded series that I'm enrolled in.  You can count 4 short (less than 8k) and 4 long (greater than 10k) races in the series.  I was 3rd female overall last year in this same series and did win some prize money.  The problem with doing this series is that many of these races conflict with my marathon training (or in this case, recovery).  So, I have found myself more than once compromising on a workout or trying to fit a workout within a race to try to maximize my age-graded performance. You might recall me doing this at the Nutrition Fuels Fitness 10k I blogged about last week.

So, there's excuse #2--I'm only doing this for the age-graded points and that's not a good enough reason.  At this point, I had convinced myself to abandon the race series and just do a workout today instead.  I used the following additional lines of rationale to make my case solid: Excuse #3-- I hate the feeling I get when I run a 5k; Excuse #4--I couldn't even hold 6:09 pace for 15 minutes last week without stopping so I'm certainly going to suck ass today.

I was happy with my decision to not run the race.  Within a few minutes, however, I felt a little guilty and started the list of reasons to run the race: 1) I had already paid for my entry, 2) I had to run today anyway, 3) I wanted to watch my friends race, 4) I didn't want to wonder what I could have run had I gone out to the race.  That last one was the clincher.  So, I decided that I would compromise and do my workout within the race.  Why not?  Dissin' Genius (MF's rave name) helped me come to this conclusion.  I think he had fun watching me throw these excuses (with F-bombs attached) all around the room for about an hour before finally coming to this compromise.

I felt gnarly in the warm up, but that is definitely par for the course.  It doesn't seem to phase me anymore.  I like to formulate my race goals during my warm up and always have various layers of goals.  I'll have a realistic goal, a definitely doable goal, and then a back up "in case I fall completely apart" goal.  Today's goals were now set: first, keep each mile as close to 6 minute pace as possible; second, do the whole race at a comfortable effort that left me only feeling slightly taxed at the end (this would be my measure of maintaining LT effort); and finally, beat last year's time (19:25).

I lined up a little behind the starting line because I didn't want to get sucked out too fast. About 300 meters into it I passed many of the 12-14 year olds that had gone out at 4:25 pace and were now heaving on the sides of the road.  By the first mile marker, I was at a surprising but comfortable pace (5:48) and more importantly an effort that I felt I could hold for the rest of the race.  I had a nice group to run with, which was great.  I loved running next to DA, a Fleet Feet racer, who had on the sweetest blue terry cloth head band I've seen in a long time (BTW, DA, you do know it's too late to jazzercise, right? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kn7-wYzdZo).  He held a great pace, and we were able to work together the whole race.  Mile 2 was around 5:48 as well, but I think the mile marker was a little short.  I failed to hit my lap button at the 3 mile marker, but I know I slowed that third mile.  My Garmin showed me running a 5:58 pace for the last 1.11 miles of the race.

I was pumped.  I just ran 3.1 miles in 18:26, a 5:56 pace.  As a bonus, I didn't have to stop and it actually felt easier than the 6:07-6:11 pace I had been doing in my training runs the 2 weeks before.  My goal LT pace right now is 5:55-6:00, so I feel quite ready to start hitting that regularly and have it feel like it should in the next 4-6 weeks.

In the end I was glad that I had run this race.  I enjoyed watching everyone run their own races, competing against their competitors' statistically-calculated performances rather than the race clock.  Instead of the extreme confidence sinker I had predicted it would be, it helped me to see that I am on the road to recovery.  It also restored my confidence in my ability to run an adequate albeit not excuse-free race at the No Excuses 5k.  I guess the third year is a charm.     

Dealing with DOMS

I have a really cool job.  I get to visit some of the most interesting and strikingly beautiful places in the country.  These places harbor some of the rarest species on the planet and my job is to help figure out how to protect them from imminent destruction.  You’ll be happy to know that most times we succeed in this effort.  If we were losing battles left and right, I’m pretty sure my job would not be as cool.

This week I was called upon to tend to some important science matters on a property The Nature Conservancy just purchased near Mt. Shasta.  As you can see from the picture, it has a lovely view of the mountain.  It also has critical coldwater springs that are key to the survival of some highly threatened salmon runs.  

Originally, I had planned to do this week’s killer hill run, scheduled for Tuesday, on the treadmill when I returned on Wednesday since it’s impossible to find a convenient 30-minute uphill climb here in the Valley.  I keep telling my coach this in hopes that hill workouts will mercifully disappear from my routine.  Does she not get that you can see the immense flatness of the Great Central Valley from space?  She lives in Montana and is a National Mountain Running Champion.  I think the hill workouts are here to stay.

With this new wrinkle thrown into my schedule for the week, I started researching hill options out of Mt. Shasta City.  Of course there were plenty of roads leading straight uphill there, and I was excited about the prospect of actually doing this workout outside breathing in the beautiful mountain air.  When I arrived at our TNC office in Mt. Shasta, I consulted one of my colleagues who lives in town, is a runner and is very fit.   I asked about my hill options, and she told me that the one I was looking at would be a great option.  She said it was a Forest Service Road that had a nice, gradual, but consistent grade.  It was paved, but had no traffic.  It sounded absolutely ideal. 

We took a tour of the new property on Monday afternoon.  It was a beautiful hike.  Well, it was fine until my poor choice in footwear created two nickel-sized blisters on the backs of both feet—OUCH!  The tour ended around 8:00 and I was famished having not eaten since noon.  I started flashing back to my hunger fest in Belgrade.  I got a big fat burger, garlic fries and downed two beers in record time at a local bar called the Billy Goat Tavern.  I took my happy, drunken self to my hotel room to try to rest up for an early-morning run.

I rolled out of bed and threw on my running clothes, GPS and shoes after gingerly covering my newly acquired blisters with band-aids.  I screamed a tiny scream every time I took a step.  I then strapped a water bottle pack around my hips. I never wear these torture devices, but I thought it might come in handy on this run.  Let me say that I have never found a water bottle and holder that fits my body aside from one I can carry in my hand.  I’m convinced that they just can’t make these for women.  The pack inevitably starts out in the right place, on my hips, and within a few shakity shakes, shimmies up my hips to become a hula-hoop around my waist.  If I cinch it at the waist, I find myself unable to breath. I ran back to my hotel after about 10 minutes and chucked the damn thing in my room.

I found my hill road after ditching my pack and started up the hill at lactate threshold (LT) effort.  The hill was mild at this point and I felt like a rock star.  I was doing 6:45-7:00 pace steady and having fun.  Then, I turned a corner and saw the real hill.  Wow.  I was facing about a consistent 7-8% grade.  I kept going and my pace slowed.  It then dawned on me as I was sucking wind in a major way that I was at altitude and was probably going to start suffering much worse as I climbed higher. 

I surrendered after about 5 minutes into this climb, having gone out too fast.  Damn.  I really wanted to try to do this one without stopping.  I caught my breath for a few seconds, tried to forget that I had 25 more minutes of climbing ahead of me and took off again.  Like my LT effort run last week, I couldn’t seem to slow this one down enough so that I didn’t have to take a break.  The hill seemed to get steeper as I climbed and of course the air became thinner as I approached 5000 feet.  To my mountain goat friends, that doesn’t seem that high.  To a sea-level puke like me, it might as well have been Mount Everest.

As I got to around 20 minutes, I started negotiating with myself.  I knew that the workout as written called for 25-30 minutes and I thought about stopping at 25 to head back down the hill.  I propose such things to myself quite often while running, but I never take myself up on them.  I always max out my workouts whether it’s the number of reps, the mileage, or the pace.  No matter how painful it feels, I know that I will feel a lot worse shortening my workout than pushing through the discomfort and finishing the whole thing.  No excuses.  I actually came up with a mantra that I like to use:  excuses don’t make you faster.  Damn straight.

Each time I stopped, I thought I heard chipmunks mocking me.  I just flipped them off and kept chugging up the hill.  I finally got to 30 minutes and realized I had an “easy jog down” to deal with.  I have a long and rich history of trashing my quadriceps on down hills like this.  There was no way to avoid the fact that I would do damage.  How do you run down an 8% grade hill without trashing your legs?  I just went with it and enjoyed the ride.  I ended up climbing about 1800 feet for the whole 10+ mile run with 1300 of it in those 30 minutes over ~3.7 miles.

I was so preoccupied with the hills that I had forgotten what the rest of this workout was supposed to include.  So, I invented something.  I did 5 x 1 minute at 5k effort with 1 minute jog rests.  This was tough after the down hills, but I actually felt okay.  Then, I had a few cut downs to whip out and I was done.

Thinking back on the workout I am disappointed that I couldn’t pull the whole uphill off without stopping.  I do believe that the setting made the workout too tough to actually accomplish in one long run (unless I was half billy goat like my coach).  I am pleased with myself for sticking it out and doing the whole 30 minutes.  I could have easily completed the whole thing without stopping on a treadmill, but I wouldn’t have had nearly as interesting a story to tell, now would I?

DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) has set in today, but not nearly as badly as I expected.  My easy run this morning was not as painful as I would have predicted.  However, it’s always the second-day-post quad trashing that is the worst.  I‘m looking forward to another tough workout tomorrow on these hill-ravaged legs.  No excuses!

A small slice of humble pie

The first week of "hard" training after a marathon is always a humbling experience for me.  My brain should know that I am not going to be in the same shape I was before the race, but for some reason I never quite accept that fact.  I spend quite a bit of energy agonizing over what pace I should shoot for in a lactate threshold (LT, aka tempo) workout, how fast 5k effort should be and how I should feel after the workout is finished.  I feel crushed if I don't meet my unreasonable expectations.  

I took 11 days off after Belgrade.  I mean completely off--no running, no cross training, nothing. That is the longest rest from running I have had since I first started.  I believe I really needed the mental break.  Physically, marathons don't beat me up much.  I had no soreness after this marathon.  I normally get a little tightness in my calves, but I had nothing at all.  My brain, on the other hand, needed a break from the intense focus I had been giving to this crazy pursuit.

I had always heard from coaches of elite runners that they give their athletes a break as much for their mental as physical recovery after a marathon.  I think this was the first time I really got that.  After Belgrade, I finally relaxed and had a new perspective to contrast with my life before the race.  I was so focused for the 2-3 months leading up to the race it made my brain hurt.  It really took about 3 weeks for me to recover mentally and start getting excited about starting a new training cycle.

This week marked that three week milestone and a return to a 7-run-per-week schedule including two intense training efforts.  I had a tough workout scheduled for Tuesday and was nervous about it for over a week before.  It was 10 miles overall with a short warm up, 25 minutes at LT effort then right into a 25 minute fartlek bout.  

My anxiety was a result of the scarring I had developed from my first hard workout back after CIM.  My CIM time was so far off any of my other PRs, Coach Nicole told me it was hard to come up with new target paces for me.  She did come up with some based on the marathon time.  When I saw these new paces, I freaked out.  I thought to myself I couldn't possibly run those paces!  But, they were the equivalent of what I had just done at CIM.  So, my first workout out of the shoot, I attempted to hit the new paces even though it was an effort-based workout.   Ridiculous.  Predictably, I failed to reach these paces and actually fell apart quite spectacularly at the end of that first workout.  I was humbled.

So the scars were fresh, and I thought I should shoot for something more reasonable this time around.  I decided I wouldn't program my Garmin and would just go by effort for 25 minutes. That worked fine until I looked down at the pace reading on my Garmin and saw 6:10 pace and it felt hard!  I was determined to prove that I was faster than that and sped up slightly.  Now, I was averaging 6:08 pace and couldn't hold it.  I stopped for a *water break* after only about 5-6 minutes into this bastard workout and regrouped.  

So, I started up again and my body gravitated back to an unreasonable 6:07 average pace.  I stopped at least 3 more times to catch my breath before I was done with the 25-minute workout.  I did end up averaging 6:07 for that portion of the workout, but that was not LT effort.  So, I totally missed the boat on that part of the workout.  What a moron.

I completed the fartlek without incident and spent the whole time cogitating on all of the data calculations I was going to do when I got home to make myself feel better.  I thought I'd check out the humbling workout from the last training cycle.  I was very happy to see that I was having trouble back then even holding 6:25 pace for the same amount of time and had to stop and walk when I pushed it into the 6:10 range.  So, maybe I wasn't as out of shape as I thought.

That workout made me set a new standard for Saturday's workout which I luckily got to do with one of my Early Girlies, Sprinkles.  She's also coached by Nicole and does many of the same workouts as me.  This one was 13 total miles with a warm up, 15 minutes at LT effort and then 8 x 75 second hills at mile-3k effort, finishing with strides.  My new goal was to run the LT effort section without stopping for a water break--lofty, I know.  I set a reasonable pace for myself this time and met my goal.  My pace was 6:11.  I was secretly disappointed that that pace felt harder than I wanted it to, but I was also proud of myself for keeping a pace that I could hold for the whole time. What I can't do (even though I am right now) is think about the fact that I ran 6:06 pace for a half marathon just a couple of months ago.  I'll get back there, I know. Baby steps.

The hills were hills.  Brutal as ever.  I was doing them at mile pace to start--too fast--but then calmed down and ran them closer to 5k pace.  This weekend also marked the first days of 100+ degree weather in the Valley.  Even though we were smart and started at 6, we didn't miss the heat.  It will take some time to acclimate.  I hate acclimating.

I got in all of my strength training and core work this week too.  I also started back into my routine of stretching using the TP  massageballer twice per week to make sure I stay injury free.

Next week:  30 minutes up a hill at LT effort.  This is the workout I dread the most.