Running Chick

I wrote this on Saturday afternoon, but it took forever for my PT video to upload so I wasn't able to post it until today. So, pretend it's Saturday when you're reading because I'm too lazy to go back & fix it. ktnxbye.

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I was sitting on the couch last night watching The Good Wife (seriously good show, go watch) and popped open my laptop to check Instagram and discovered a lengthy discussion about getting the Team /var/run people together for a Saturday morning run. Nine miles is what Amy suggested.

My leg was feeling pretty good, thanks to a week of The Stick (quads, calves, hamstrings, hips – 3 min. sets each):

The tennis ball (I'd go as long as I could stand it).

And more of the above but replaced with this little torture device (loaned to me by Amy, whose friendship I started to question right after the first use. OUCH.)

And an awful lot of trying to replicate this treatment, which my PT allowed me to take a video of when I saw her a couple of days before the marathon.

I was planning on running on Saturday, but only 5 miles. Anything over that wasn’t even on my radar. But, everybody else was on board and it sounded like a lot of fun, so leg be dammed, I jumped on board, too.

It was in the low 30s when I got up in the morning.  It’s been a while since I’ve run in those temps, so I spent a while scratching my head over which cold-weather gear to go with, and then more time trying to locate it all. Josh was in better shape, since a lot of his cold weather biking gear doubles as his cold weather running gear. Anyway, all gear finally located, we headed out for our 10am meetup at the Suomi Restaurant.

Josh and I arrived first, G and Amy a couple of minutes later. Shortly after that, we were off. Our route took us on a loop through Houghton & Hancock. It was mostly flat, but we did hit a few hills heading up to Daniell Heights and M-203 and some gravel on Navy Street.

I was concerned about the hills and the gravel (extra stress on the tendons), but I never felt more than the occasional twinge. It was awesome, and such a relief. I was starting to really worry that this thing wasn't going to go away for a long time, probably thanks to reading all the worst-case scenarios on the intertubes of people being laid up for six month or longer due to their tendonitis. p.s. it's probably not a good idea to research your injury on the internet.

You know what else is awesome? Chatting with somebody the entire way and completely forgetting to look at your watch every minute. I'm sure the guys were rolling their eyes at some of the things we were gabbing about, but hey, run with girls, talk about girl stuff.

Here's a thing from Garmin that shows our route.

We headed over to the 5th & Elm coffee shop for warm drinks & lunch, before everybody took off to take care of their Saturday errands.

I think we decided that we're going to try to do a group run a couple of times each month, hopefully that works out because this really was the most fun I've had on a Saturday run in a really long time.

Also, here's a fun, yet crazy fact: at no point did I ever really consider those nine miles to be a long run, so I never even took fluid or nutrition. Nine miles not a long run? No fluids or nutrition? What has marathon training done to me?

Carbs have been loaded.

Veggie bowl from Rodeo Mexican Kitchen the team var/run/ unofficial sponsor, meeting place.

Smoked brisket from Fitzgerald’s by way of the work fall party.  I was in a brisket stupor for the rest of the night.

Bags are packed, with everything but the kitchen sink.

Several more “just in case” items made it into the pile after this photo that I'm pretty certain I won't need but I know if I don't take them I'll be obsessing about them for the entire drive.  I’m now taking three pair of shorts and four tops and a set of cold weather items.

Inspirational and informative reading material has been collected.

I’m still looking for my mantra, maybe I’ll find it in there.

Tendonitis has been (hopefully) massaged into submission thanks to a very painful visit to my PT lady.

Fingers crossed.

I think I’m ready to go. Fox Cities Marathon, here I come.

I'm back, after a week of not running. I only missed four runs, so it's not like I missed an entire week, but still. Anyway, my blister is all healed and those weird muscle spasms that I was getting in my thigh/knee area have been foam rolled/massaged into submission.

This is marathon week (eeesh.), so my schedule is pretty tame. 3 miles on Monday, two each on Wednesday & Thursday.  I've been kind of antsy to get back to running, so I was looking forward to last night's run.  I debated over whether to head into town or not.  It seems pretty silly to drive my giant gas hogging SUV into town for a stupid 3 mile run that I could easily do around my house, but my goal was to take it easy and keep my left leg as happy as possible, so I decided to hit the flat & forgiving Nara trail over the hard & cambered roads in Liminga.  Screw the environment, YOLO!

As soon as I got a couple of miles from home, I realized that I left my Garmin sitting on the table so I decided to use the RunKeeper app on my phone. Only the battery on my phone was almost empty and I didn't have my spare battery with me.  Great.  I'm not really good at running by feel, I need that electronic feedback to tell me how fast & far I'm running, so I was pretty annoyed.  Anyway, Zoe and I took off. I was hoping that my phone would at least get me to the turn-around mark, around 15 minutes, which it did because Zoe took off like a bat out of hell.  Seriously, this dog is a crazy good runner.  No matter how fast I run, all she's ever doing is casually trotting along ahead, she hardly ever breaks into a run.  Occasionally she'll glance over her shoulder to make sure I'm still there and to see if she needs to stop and give me CPR. The cool thing is that I'm laying down some really fast splits running with her, the not cool thing is that she's probably is going to need to give me CPR one of these days.

Anyway, we were zipping back after the turn-around and I checked my phone to see how close we were to the finish & how much battery we had left, and accidentally hit the button which stops the activity at 2.72 miles. Gah. I ended up running what I thought was the last quarter mile and figured we finished that 3 miles in 9:30 pace or close to it.  We wandered around on the boardwalk for a bit then headed home.  Here's a foggy picture of the Pilgrim River, thanks to carrying my phone in my bra. Classy.

Unfortunately, my left leg was ticked off at me. This is what I did for the majority of the night.

And, here's what's happening at work today. 

It feels just like it did a couple of years ago, before I started cadence training.  I stopped carrying my mp3 player with 187bpm mp3 last summer because (1) it was annoying and I was always fighting with the wires to the ear buds, and (2) I have a fancy cadence sensor for my shoe and I figured I just keeping an eye on it that way.  Unfortunately, (2) only works if you consistently pay attention to it, and I probably haven't.  I suppose I'll have to start using the mp3 player again. Boo.

I don't know if I'll run again this week. I'll continue to use the ice packs & take Ibuprofen and I'll go by feel.  I'm not really worried about losing any fitness in the next few days, but I am worried about being in pain on Sunday. 

Speaking of Sunday, holy cow it's almost here.  I'm starting to obsess about things: should wear my hydration belt? (that one woke me up in the middle of the night last night) orange or purple compression socks? (yes, it does matter!). what pace should I try to keep? should I go with a pace group? Plus, a million more things that make my head hurt.

Overall, I'm feeling pretty anxious & nervous. Scared. Unsure. You know, all those feelings that make you, like, feel.  Bonus, I'm sure they'll only get worse as it gets closer. If I don't end up having a full on meltdown sometime between now & Sunday, I'll be amazed.

In other not running news, we got our first frost on Sunday night. Winter is coming.