Marin 10k Recap

I will save those of you looking for a quick summary of my first post-injury racing experience some time and report up front that I did set a new personal best yesterday at the Marin Memorial Day 10k race, running 37:17 (6:00 pace).  I placed third in my VERY competitive age group behind two of my speedy Impala teammates and 10th overall female.  All in all, I am happy with the results.  For those interested in the deets, please read on.

Yesterday’s race was exactly the race I needed at this point in time though it was not without its challenges.  I ran fast enough to be pleased with my performance, but not so fast as to injure myself or feel overly exhausted.  More than anything else, the experience gave me a positive counter to the disastrous cross country race I had back in February and renewed my faith in my racing mojo.

I'm not known for being a particularly punctual person and typically find myself rushing around like a crazy woman before a race.  Consequently, I never seem to give myself enough time for a proper warm up.  After I registered for the race, I had just enough time to wait in the long potty line and do a short warm up of a few strides while en route to the starting line.  I'm sure a 1-2 mile warm up would have served me well, but I had to settle for about 800m instead.  


The start was super crowded and didn’t thin out for at least 1/4 mile.  My pace was slow for this section as I tried to avoid stepping on runners‘ heels and elbowing them in the face as we all fought for air space.  This pace was fine with me, because I really wanted to make sure I didn’t go out too hot for the first couple of miles.  A few minutes into the race, it felt like a huge rock had lodged itself under the sole of my left shoe.  I knew that my Lunaracers didn’t have grooves in the sole that would pick up a rock, so I suspect it was a tootsie pop or piece of hard candy stuck to the bottom of my shoe.  It was really starting to irritate my foot after a few minutes and a wave of panic set in as I flashed back to my cross country shoe debacle and subsequent injury.  I tried to shuffle my feet a little and almost tripped myself.  I thought briefly about stopping to scrape it off, but knew I would lose my rhythm.  Luckily, a few stomp*stomp*stomps later, I freed the Jolly Rancher and went on my merry way. 

I then experienced an unfortunate technological challenge.  A couple of weeks ago, the wrist strap on my Garmin broke after a run.  Luckily, I had purchased it at REI and was able to simply take it back to them for a brand new replacement unit.  I am normally not an auto-lap kind of runner, but the Garmin comes pre-programmed for this functionality.  I had been too lazy to change the setting.   Just before the one-mile marker in this race, I heard a “bleep bleep!” coming from my wrist and suddenly realized that I was auto-lapping where my GPS thought the mile markers were.  Damn it!  At each subsequent mile marker, the unit lapped farther and farther away from the marker on the road.  

My pacing suffered as a result of not being able to get good mile splits.  Without them, I was forced to follow the pace reading on my GPS to reveal how fast I was going.  I do effort-based running, but, as I’ve recently reported, my 10k through half marathon effort workouts have equated to paces that are within seconds of each other.  My GPS showed that I was going much faster than I had planned.  In the end, it said that I ran 6.35 miles at an average 5:54 pace.

I knew that I was running slower than my GPS indicated, but I didn’t know by how much.  I ended up slowing my pace in response to this feedback because I was too worried about crashing at the end of the race, particularly when my GPS unit showed me running 5:48 pace for the 3rd mile!   I couldn’t convince my brain that I wasn’t really running that fast.

I think my biggest mistake of the race was a decision in the 5th mile to pace off of another runner for a bit.  It seemed like I had a pack of guys hanging on my butt for most of this race, and I wanted to take a break from leading the pack for a spell.  After about 1/4 mile of this I looked down to see my average pace had slowed from 5:55 to 6:10 for that mile.  I immediately sped up, but this was still the slowest of the day.  I think the best indication that I hadn’t run to my potential in this race was that, according to my trusty GPS, I ran the last 1/2 mile at 5:33 pace.

As I said up front, I am happy with this, my first post-injury race.  I had low expectations going into it having been back to running for less than 2 months and hard training for only 5 weeks.  Knowing that I can comfortably hold 6:00 pace for 6+ miles is a big deal to me right now.  Best of all, I ran in my racing flats and didn’t experience any pain before, during or after the race (except maybe a little Jolly Rancher discomfort).  In fact, I have no post-race soreness or fatigue at all!  

I am taking this week to recover, but I will race again this Saturday.  Originally, I had planned to do a mile road race this weekend, but traveling ~200 miles to run 1 mile just seems wrong to me.  Instead, I’ve registered for a local all women’s 5k.  My performance in the 10k predicts just under 18:00 for the 5k, and I will try for that.  My current 5k PR is 17:55 (throwing out the 17:33 Race for the Arts 5J time from last August), so maybe I’ll see a twofer PR this week.  Wouldn’t that be something? 

I almost forgot... I met Dean Karnazes after the race showing off his ElliptiGo bike.  I introduced myself to him, and he put out his hand and said, "Hi Jaymee, I'm Dean Karnazes."  I told him I already knew that, and he sort of smiled and kicked the dirt a little.  I'm not quite sure I got the gist of the sales pitch he was making for the bike, but he seemed to indicate that his training has changed as a result.  Instead of doing a hard run followed by an easy day of running, he's now able to do consecutive hard workouts by adding in the ElliptiGO as the second workout.  I'm not sure that this is sustainable given the fact that the body needs to recover after consecutive workouts regardless of whether  there's impact, but hey, he's Dean Karnazes, Ultramarathon Man.  

10k predictor

Memorial Day morning I'll be in the San Francisco Bay Area running my first race since my cross country debut disaster in February.  In fact, aside from that race, I haven't really raced in about 6 months.  My typical pre-race mental gyrations seem to be amplified this time around probably because it has been so long since I raced or maybe because the last one was such a disaster.  For the last two weeks, I've spent a fair amount of energy trying to divine an appropriate 10k race goal.

I realize that it doesn't really matter much what I think I can run.  I'll run what I'm able to run and it will either be super painful because I went out faster than my body could handle or it will just be painful because the 10k is a painful distance for me.  I get this, but I like to torture myself anyway.

I've been trying to keep my expectations low for this race even though my workouts have been going surprisingly well.  After all, I only have 6 weeks of running training under my belt at this point and had one down week (=lower mileage) in there when my achilles acted up again.  My fitness level has rebounded nicely though.  I haven't done any true race predictor workouts, but I've done a few that give me an inkling of the pace I might be able to maintain.    

What has been really confusing is that my effort-based paces all seem to be about the same.  In the last 2 weeks, I've run a 10k effort workout at 6:00 pace, a half marathon effort workout at 6:07 pace and a lactate threshold effort workout at 6:04 pace, and they've all felt like the right effort level.  My coach expects that I'm getting slightly more fit each week, so that explains some of this, but it sure makes predicting my 10k race goal hard.

Here's what I have to work with.  I blogged about my workout a couple of weeks ago where I ran 10k effort mile repeats + 5k effort 400s around the track with the miles just under 6:00 pace and the 5k effort at around 5:40 pace.  Last weekend, I did a 16 mile long run with 4 x 10 minutes at lactate threshold effort with 2 minute jog rests.  I averaged 6:04 pace for the 40 minutes and felt great.

Tuesday of this week, I was back on the track for a fun workout that started with 15 minutes at marathon effort (6:18 pace), 15 minutes of jogging to the track and 16 x 400m at 5k effort with 1 minute jog rests.  I was a little nervous about this workout because I haven't done that many 400s in a long, long time and I knew that 1 minute rests would feel pretty short as I got into the later repeats.  I had company for this workout, which was fantastic.  I started off with 82 second 400s and immediately questioned whether I could hold that pace for 15 more circles of the track.  I did.  My splits were:

82
83
82
82
83
82
82
82
82
80
83
83
82
83
82
81

That averages out to somewhere around 5:30 pace for the group.  I felt great during and after this workout.  The last lap was hard, but doable and I left the track feeling like I could have done a few more repeats.

I want to believe that these workouts indicate I could come to close to my PR on Monday (37:23, ~6:02 pace).  The little devil on my shoulder says that I'm high to think that I can hold that pace given my last race performance and the short amount of time I've been back into training.  I think a reasonable goal is to shoot for something in the range of 6:00-6:05 pace and just hope to see a 37:XX on the clock when I cross.  I think breaking 38:00 right now would be wonderful.

Look for my race report on Monday.  Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Oh, and if you haven't checked out JT's latest project featuring….ME…you should take a look at the Houston Hopefuls website.  Check back regularly as she interviews other masters women trying to qualify for the Olympic Trials.  Should be a great series.


 

My new toy

That's right.  I got an Alter-G super duper treadmill!  It's been really hard to keep this a secret.  I used the prize winnings from the Belgrade Marathon to make a down payment, but I think the investment is well worth it.  I mean, think of all of the prize money I will earn as a result of how fast this thing is going to make me.  And, I can charge a pretty penny to let other runners use it.  The possibilities are endless.  This thing will end up paying for itself, I just know it!

Okay, if you believe that, you are a serious Gulli Bull!  My new toy is actually an iPad, and in this post I'm going to show you a few of the ways that it is contributing to making me a faster runner.

Let's start with some obvious attributes.  There are hundreds of thousands of apps that you can download for this thing, not even counting all the iPhone apps that you can also use (though the experience isn't quite as nice with those).

MyNetDiary

This app is fabulous.  It keeps track of everything I eat, the exercise I do, tracks my weight and body fat, and has a massive web-based database that makes finding nutritional information about the foods you eat a snap.  Throughout the day, I'm able to check my calorie balance to gauge how much and what I need to eat to meet my goals.  This product comes as an iPhone app too, and it looks like you can just use the web version as well.  I highly recommend it!

Your basic calendar

This app uses the same calendar that's found on the iPhone and all of my Apple computers.  It's just a whole lot prettier. Because I use MobileMe, all of my calendars stay synced at all times.  I use this program to track my shoe wear by color coding the workouts based on which shoe I'm wearing.  Eventually, I know someone will invent an app that will add up those miles and automatically order my next pair of shoes for me at exactly the right time.  I can dream, can't I?

      

Keeping up with my blogs

There are a couple of apps I've found for this.  To keep up to date on all of the blogs that I follow, I am testing out StickyBeak.  It's quick and easy to set up by simply accessing your Google Reader account information.  It's been a little buggy, but a recent update seemed to fix a lot of the issues.  I'm also excited about using my iPad for updating my own blog.  BlogPress seems to be the way to go with this.  Compared to the iPhone, the iPad is really a dream to type on whether you use the on-screen keyboard or a bluetooth wireless like me.       

50 Cent is in the HOUSE!

While it may seem a little bulky to you, having all of my music, e-mail, blogs, calorie counters, internet browsers, etc. at my finger tips everywhere I go is essential.  So, I found this great armband case for my iPad so I wouldn't miss a thing while I'm out on my runs.  The GPS navigation is handy too on the go!

Getting all stretchy stretchy   

This was a recent discovery for me and one that will make me faster by keeping me from getting injured.  Did you know that iTunes has yoga podcasts?  I didn't.  I discovered these the other day when I was looking for an alternative to the Rodney Yee video after my DVD player crapped out.  I was surprised by the number of quality podcasts available.  The series by yogadownload.com has quite a variety of slideshow and video programs to choose from of varying lengths.  I've done the Yoga for Runners workout and really liked it.  It's closer to Vinyasa Yoga than Hatha in that you're constantly moving, so you work up a sweat.  I like that a lot!  I did one of the yoga for core strength workouts the other day and found that 20-minute zinger to be very challenging.  Of course, you don't need an iPad to view these.  I do love being able to plop down my yoga mat, prop up my iPad in front of it and follow along just about anywhere.,

     

Remote desktop    

Picture this scenario.  You're at Peet's Coffee using your iPad to create an important blog post.  You forgot to take note of your splits from the workout you're writing about and you really, really, really want to get this post on line.  But, how do you access your home computer from Peet's Coffee?  You use an iPad app called Desktop.    What you see in the screenshot is my home computer screen with Garmin Training Center running.  Using this app, I can access my home computer (must be turned on, of course) and take control of it to check my workouts, download my data from my Garmin, send files and pictures to myself.  I've done all of these things.  It's a little on the slow side, but well worth it when you really, really, really need something.

I Love my iPad

I'm not ashamed to admit it.  The Genius is getting a little tired of competing with the iPad, I think.  He has found me awake at night tapping away at it's cuddly keyboard.  The other day, he surprised me by playing paparazzi and snapping a shot of me using it in the shower.   

No doubt, I will be a faster runner as a result of owning this fabulous piece of technology.  

Not so fast

I know better than to make a statement like I did in my last blog entry about being done with my injury.  Those kinds of things always come back to bite you.

Last Sunday, I had a 14-15 mile long run that included 60 minutes at marathon effort plus The Rock Circuit.  I took off into the wind at marathon effort determined to stick to my new rules about not stopping during the quality in my workouts (R-WYCH = run what you can hold).  I started out at 6:33 pace for the first 20 minutes or so with my HR in my marathon zone.  I picked it up for the next 30 minutes to 6:25 pace and then even more to 6:22 pace for the last 10 minutes.  I loved this workout!  I was so happy to finish strong at a pace that was close to my goal marathon pace AND without stopping.  The interesting thing too was that my HR only appeared to go up, on average, one BPM with each increase in effort.  It amazes me sometimes how little difference I see in my HR for the various efforts I run.

I started my recovery jog and noticed a familiar little pinch in my achilles.  I hadn't felt that in a while and it made me nervous.  I thought that it might go away as I continued to jog and get ready for The Rock.  Then, it started to absolutely dump buckets of rain on me.  I was 2 miles from home and thought, "What the hell?  Let's just get this damn thing over with."  So, I did The Rock in the pouring rain, knocking out my crunches and supermans while laying in the mud, flopping around.  It was kind of fun in a Private Benjamin sort of way.  Unfortunately, my achilles did not feel better after The Rock.  It was sore on my 2-mile soggy jog home as I finished off my 16 miles.

Looking at what I've been doing, this was not unexpected.  I got to that point in the injury cycle where I truly believed I was home free.  I had stopped doing all of my regular maintenance like icing my calf after each run, stretching, rolling out the calf, massage.  I wasn't doing any of it.  How soon we forget.

Monday morning, I ran with my girlies and my achilles was still sore.  I was definitely disappointed, but I had a feeling that it was temporary.  I chose to believe it was just my body's way of reminding me that my calf/achilles is still slightly undercooked.  I resorted to this full-on treatment regimen:

• icing my calf after running
• doing my 60 minute yoga for athletes video 3 x per week
• rolling my legs with the TP Massage system every day
• massaging the achilles
• massaging the calf

The good news is that it has worked.  I ran on land for 30 minutes Tuesday followed by 60 minutes of pool running and then only did yoga on Wednesday.  Thursday, I was expecting to jog an easy 6, but took a look at my scheduled workout before heading out the door just in case.  I'm glad I did because I was able to do the whole 9-mile workout without any pain.  I ran another easy 6 on Friday and felt some tightness in the achilles, but I was pretty sure it would pass.

This morning, I met some girlies who also had workouts that would be best done around a track.  That's right, I said TRACK!  I haven't done a track workout in an incredibly long time and was a little excited about it.  After a 5-mile warm up, I headed to the track to start my workout.  It was 5 x (1 mile repeats @ 10k effort with 1 minute rest, then 400m @ 5k effort with 3-5 minutes rest).  Here's how I did (pace for 1600m, pace for 400m):

1. 5:59, 5:38
2. 5:55, 5:32
3. 5:59, 5:37
4. 6:00, 5:41
5. 6:04, 5:39

This was a good workout and ended up being my longest (16.7 miles) since being injured.  I felt strong the whole way in fairly warm and exposed conditions.  I was pleased to average just under 6:00 pace for the 10k effort and under 5:40 for the 5k effort.  But, the best news of the day was that I felt nothing whatsoever in my achilles and still feel nothing right now as I type this.      

So, I will refrain from making predictions about how over this injury I am.  I promise to be good and take care of the regular maintenance it requires so I can continue ramping up my mileage and intensity.

I'm still working on a clever way to reveal my newest gadget.  I love the speculation from my blogging peeps: Alter G, altitude tent.  What could it be?  I promise I'll reveal it soon.
                    

My dirty little secret

I have finally reached the point where I no longer worry about re-injuring my calf/achilles. Last week I ran three hard workouts in seven days of running for a total of 60 miles. Over the last two days I have run up and down hills for just shy of 20 miles, abusing my quads and shins without a peep from my calf or achilles. I truly don't even think about my left calf (or was it the right?) any longer unless someone asks me about it.

Now that I can stop obsessing about that, I have turned to thinking about my decreased fitness level. I know how my fitness ebbs and flows around a marathon cycle--peaking for the event and then taking quite a while to return to a familiar level post marathon. But, the post-injury comeback is a new thing for me with plenty of opportunity to learn. While injured for six weeks, I had lots of time to think about my previous training regime. I've decided to try to change some of my "bad" training practices.

I think I've mentioned before that I tend to run my workouts on the hot side. As a result, I am embarrassed to admit, I have become accustomed to taking "water breaks" when necessary to maintain the intensity. I am quite aware that this is not right, but it's simply the way I've done things for the last 5 years. My measure of fitness has become less about how fast I'm going for how long and more about stringing together longer and longer workouts at a given pace without stopping for a break. These breaks are typically very short (10-20 seconds), but they give me a chance to catch my breath and get my heart rate down enough to sustain the higher intensity for the planned duration of the workout.

Acknowledging the wrongness of this approach, I have a hard time believing that it has had a major negative impact on my overall fitness level. I say this because, under this method, I have attained a level of fitness and run faster than I ever thought possible. Of course, one could question how much faster I might be running if I employed a break-free approach, but I don't find that kind of speculation very useful.

Where I think I have shortchanged myself is in the mental aspect of training and racing. When I get to the point in a training run where I'm pushing myself harder than I can sustain, I allow myself that 'out' to stop and walk. Granted, I haven't stopped to walk in a race in like three years, but I wonder how much better I'd be at handling the mid-to-late race urge to bail if I trained to complete my workouts without stopping.

I've decided to find out. In one of my first post-injury long runs a couple of weeks back, I had a 25-minute progression run that started at marathon effort and progressed down to 10k effort for the last few minutes. I ran this in 80-degree weather and into a headwind most of the way, but I didn't adjust my paces to compensate for the conditions (or my conditioning). I took about 4 short breaks during that progression run and progressed from 6:38 pace incrementally down to 6:03 pace. I would normally declare that I was improving if I did the workout at the same paces but stopped fewer times the next time I had it on my schedule.

I had a 30-minute progression run on my schedule a week later and decided I was not allowed to stop during the workout.  I started out at about 6:40 pace again in 80-degree weather but without a headwind. I stepped my pace down by about 5 seconds/mile every 5 minutes and resisted the urge to progress any faster than that.  I repeated the mantra "run what you can hold" throughout the run.  As I dropped from 6:20 down to 6:15 pace, I started feeling that urge to stop, but I fought it.  When my Garmin alerted me to change paces for the last 5 minutes, I thought I couldn't possibly go any faster. Somehow, I did and finished up at 6:08 pace.  I completed this 14.5 mile workout with an hour of The Rock Circuit including strides.

Even though my paces in that workout were pretty slow compared to where I was 2 months ago, I was so damned pleased with myself for resisting the urge to take a break and holding the paces I did the week before. That's the great thing about running. You can always find some new way to test yourself and improve.

My focus now is on gauging effort and building my mental strength. I think I'll need this more than ever in the shorter distance races. I am quite familiar with how I feel in a marathon and what I can ask of my body and mind. The shorter stuff is an entirely different animal with a new set of pain and suffering to adapt to.

In my next blog: I have a new toy and it is guaranteed to make me a faster runner! What could it be?

Where I left off

I am happy to report that I am back to regular running again.  Blog buddy Joe predicted a couple of weeks back that soon I would be running along and wouldn't be able to remember which leg had been injured.  I'm almost there.  My runs are all pain free, but I do feel a little tightness once in a while on the inside of my achilles following a hilly or harder workout.  This is easily remedied with a short stretching of the calf, and I don't feel a thing in my calf following the run.  What I have felt is soreness in my quads after harder workouts.   I know this pain as the type I get after a short race.  My legs are just getting used to that pounding again, but they are happy to be doing it.  It's a good kind of pain.

One of the perks of being an ecologist working for The Nature Conservancy is that you get to see big chunks of land that have amazing habitat, like the one pictured above, protected.  And, sometimes, when you're lucky, you get invited to camp out on them and run.  The picture above is the GPS track from a run I did on April 10th on a privately-owned ranch in Merced, CA.  We camped out there with a bunch of geeky scientists and had a great time.  The run was along a ranch road and was gorgeous.  If you look closely at the aerial photo, you'll see a network of what look like tiny pockmarks on the land.  Those little divots are actually seasonal wetlands called vernal pools that fill with water in the winter and dry out in the summer. I have spent the better part of 15 years studying the incredible little plants and critters that inhabit them.        

Back to running.  Here's what I've done the last couple of weeks:

The week of April 12th, I ran a total of  41.6 miles and exercised (not including strength training and core) a total of 10 hours.  I received my new training plan last week, which excited me to no end.  My coach prescribed mileage in the low 40s for the next few weeks run over 6 days with one day of rest or cross training.  She also gradually added in some speed work for those first few weeks. After 4 weeks, if my leg was completely healed, I would start into hill work again.

My workout last Saturday was a true test of my progress in healing, and to a lesser extent, my running fitness.  I ran a loop around beautiful Lake Natoma in Folsom and realized, just a mile or so after starting this run, that I was taking a big leap by doing this.  I was committed to running the entire 11.5 mile loop, the longest I'd run since being injured, and there was no turning back.  I was doing a lot of new things with this workout: running on hilly terrain, running longer, faster intervals and a faster overall pace.  If my leg held up through this, I knew I was golden.  And, it did.  I had a great run, easily managing 5:35 pace for my 1-minute intervals, running up hills with reckless abandon and clocking an overall 7:07 pace for the run.  I iced my calf after the run, and had no soreness in the days following the run.

I felt so good on that run, after 5 days straight of running, I proposed a slightly faster increase in my mileage over the next few weeks than my coach had planned.  She was thrilled that I was feeling so great and said she had been conservative with my mileage because it's risky to increase both intensity and volume of training simultaneously.  But, I think she trusts that I know my limits now and will back off if needed.  She told me to go for it.

I have had a great week of training so far with the return of The Rock Circuit on Tuesday and a great 8 mile run yesterday.  Last night, my run was to include 30 minutes at 6:45-7:00 pace and I was supposed to monitor my heart rate and report back to my coach.  Two miles into the run I started the pace work and couldn't quite keep the horses under control.  They dialed right in to 6:20-6:25 pace and wanted to stay there.  So, I thought it wouldn't hurt me to run a mile at that pace and record my HR.  My HR got up to the low 170s for that first mile, but averaged 162.  This was nice to see since the last time I monitored my HR at around that pace (6:15 and right before Twin Cities) it was in the 160s as well.

I tried throughout the run to slow down to the prescribed pace, and I eventually locked into a 6:30-6:35 pace that felt so natural and easy that I just went with the flow.  I averaged 6:30 for the 30 minutes and my HR averaged in the mid-160s, which is about 85% MAX.  This was a reassuring run for me and confirmed that I haven't lost a lot of fitness over the last couple of months of cross training.  My leg felt a little tight after the harder miles, but my magic calf stretch resolved that immediately.

This week, I plan to run 7 days and get my mileage up to 57 miles per week.  This is a goal that I don't mind dumping if I start to feel any "bad" pain in my calf or achilles.  I plan to keep my mileage around the 60-mile mark for another few weeks and continue to cross train a second workout on a couple of days to keep my volume of training around 10-11 hours total.  By mid-June, I should be rocking and rolling into higher mileage territory and on my merry way training for the Chicago Marathon in October.  After all is said and done, I do believe I will be a smarter, faster and stronger runner as a result of this injury.

MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY…MONEY!

I finally received my prize money from the Belgrade Marathon last week.  Thursday, I received an e-mail from the organizers asking for my bank account information.  I sent it to them expecting that I would either find an empty bank account the next day or have a balance increased by 2000 Euros (minus 18% Serbian tax).  I woke up the next morning to neither scenario.  Overnight, the Marathon had wired two transactions of 1650 Euros each to my account!  The transactions showed up as pending, so I assumed they would figure out the error and correct it themselves.  They didn't.  So, being the honest person that I am, I sent them a message this week explaining what had happened and asking how they wanted to resolve it.  I haven't heard back from them.  I was just happy to have actually gotten paid.  It just goes to show you that persistence literally pays off!

DEFICIENCIES

I went in for some routine blood work this last week and was forced to face my vitamin-taking laziness head on.  I have had problems with low ferritin levels (the first stage of iron deficiency) and have been taking liquid iron since I discovered this.  I hate taking the blasted stuff and started slacking off more and more over the last few months.  In December, I received a message from my coach introducing me to the subject of Vitamin D deficiency and how it affects performance.  After receiving that message, I just decided to start taking vitamin D supplements (4000 IU/day), but my vitamin D supplementation waned along with my iron intake.  It was no surprise when my test results documented my lowest ferritin level in 2 1/2 years (25 ng/ml) and low vitamin D levels (45 ng/ml; the goal is to be above 50 with an ideal of 70).  While the ferritin is probably not low enough to impact my performance (<20) it's dangerously close.  Low vitamin D levels affect your immune system and recovery, so I wonder what impact it had on both my becoming injured as well as the subsequent healing process.  Needless to say, I'm back on my meds with hopes of getting a better report card in 6 months.

While I may not quite be at the point in my recovery where I forget that I was injured, I am well on my way to running long and fast again.  That makes me very happy.

The 7-week itch

It is somewhat hard for me to believe that it has been 7 weeks since I was taken out of action by this calf/achilles injury.  I am happy to report that I have been making steady progress with my rehabilitation and have returned to regular, pain-free running.  Up until last week, I had been testing my leg by running consecutive days.  While I was keeping these runs short, by the third day of running, I was generally pretty sore and had to rest from running for a couple of days.  I finally started running slightly longer, every other day and found this to be sustainable.  Last week for instance, I got in two, 8-mile runs including strides and two, 6-mile runs.  With each day of running, my leg felt better and better.  This week, I'm working on running nearly every day in a long, short pattern for a total of 40 miles.  That is a big week.

My fitness world has been transformed from a fixation on running mileage to focus on how many total hours I work out (not including strength training and yoga) during the week.  However, I do like to convert that back to the equivalent amount of mileage I'd be running for that amount of time, since, I am after all a running geek at heart.  For instance, a 10-hour week would roughly equate to an 80-mile running week assuming an 8 mph average pace (a little on the slow side).


As I'm returning to running, I realize that all of the cross training has paid off.  I generally feel pretty fit, though I haven't started doing hard workouts yet.  Still, striding along at 5:30 pace feels good and doesn't require a ton of effort.  I've even thrown in a couple of 800m intervals at marathon pace (6:10) and those didn't feel too bad either.  Believe it or not, I think I'll miss some of the cross training activities, except the ellipti-devil, when I get back to higher running mileage. These past few weeks of biking and pool running have been fun.

Last week, I rediscovered a great yoga workout video featuring Rodney Yee called Yoga Conditioning for Athletes.  My coach had recommended it to me a couple of years ago, and I used it a lot for a while.  As with most other non-running activities, my yoga practice fell by the wayside after a few months.  I relied mostly on the TP massageball kit to work the kinks out of my legs thereafter.

I didn't realize how tight I had allowed myself to become until I did the video the other day and had trouble doing poses that I had easily mastered the last time I tried it.  While I've read conflicting reports on the importance of flexibility for runners, I know that I am tighter than I have ever been in my life and I have to assume that's not a good thing.  I don't suspect I will be a good yogi for long, but I want to believe I'll find the time to do this yoga routine now and then to keep a little Gumby in my body.

I'm still not out of the woods, but I am making good progress at this point.  This week will be a good test of my readiness to return to running workouts.  I hope to run 6 days this week for a total of 40 miles.  I will try an 11-mile 'long' run including some short intervals around a moderately hilly lake this weekend.  If all goes well, I will be trying on some harder running workouts next week and will hopefully start up my speed-demon training in preparation for a couple of short, focus races.  I can't wait to get out there and start tearing it up again!

P.S. Sprinkles I promised I wouldn't mention DiaB.  Proud of me?