Running Chick

I think winter is having a little fun with us.  Between Sunday and Friday, we had two storms that dumped 18-ish” of heavy, wet snow on us. Schools were closed and even MTU shut down early on Wednesday. Granted it was during the peak of the storm when visibility was next to nothing when they sent everybody out on the roads, but it’s the thought that counts, right? 

I snapped this photo Sunday morning, just before SNOWPOCALYPSE 2012 began.

Just a few hours later, when SNOWPOCALYPSE 2012 was raging, I took this photo of Josh plowing snow.

Nasty. Thank goodness for the tractor, though.  It saved our backs from having to deal with that mess using the snowblower/shovel. Except that on Monday morning it broke, so after work I scooped while Josh took apart the entire engine and attempted to get it running.  And then he had to order parts that weren’t going to come in until Wednesday, and that’s the day we got another nasty storm. Long story short, the parts came in, Josh did his magic to get it running, and when the storm died down around 9pm on Wednesday night, we joined the rest of the people in the neighborhood for a snow removal party. Fun! I got my exercise by digging  a path to the street for the tractor.  My back was not happy about that.

I lucked out with running this week. The storms were on Monday/Wednesday and I had runs scheduled for Tuesday/Thursday, so I didn’t have to take any weather-related skips.  I did my hill route on Tuesday and dropped 30 seconds per loop from last time. Thanks to all the scooping & shoveling on Wednesday, my legs were feeling especially tight and heavy when I headed out on Thursday.  It wasn’t one of my better runs.  I felt a little better on Saturday after a rest day on Friday, but not as good as I was hoping.  My eight miler was just okay. Oh well, what can you do, shit happens. Next week is a cut-back week so I’ll end up with around 11 miles. They will be easy miles, for sure.

Anyway, to summarize, Tuesday 4 @ 10:12; Thursday 4 @ 10:31 and Saturday 8 @ 11:27.

Here’s some pictures of some graffiti I spotted under the bridge on Saturday. Some folks have been busy.

And some final pics from the Copper Dog 150. I wasn’t able to get more than a few photos because I was too busy freezing my ass off working, but it was pretty cool to be right at the starting line.

These guys were drumming up support for the snow bike race on Saturday. Check out their tires. Fat.

Here’s the first team getting ready to head out. The dogs are built like marathon runners, tall and lean. Much different than the fluffy husky types that you usually expect to be pulling a sled. And, fast! When they took off, they took off. It was really impressive.

They’re also holy cow loud. They’re excited to run and they bark and whine and howl and make all sorts of weird noises in anticipation of taking off. One dog is bad enough, but most teams had eight dogs in their team and when they were all making noise together, the sheer volume of it was mind blowing.  I have a video of one particularly noisy team, but it’s stuck on my new fancy phone which I have yet to figure out how to work properly. And I’m supposedly an IT person. Yeah, right.

My mileage jumped up into the teens this week. It’s been since summer that I’ve hit those miles, thanks to my ankle and foot issues.

Monday was a regular old 4-miler out to campus and back. The snow statues were looking pretty good after Winter Carnival weekend. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t get any pictures, through. I got a new phone a month or so ago and it’s a lot bigger than my iPhone and just barely fits in my waist pack. Inserting & removing it is a real pain in the rear so unless I see something that really makes me want to spend five minutes wrestling it in & out, it’s staying in. I should probably just upgrade to a bigger pack.

Wednesday was hills. Ah, hills. I used to have a love-hate relationship with them and did everything I could to avoid doing them, but now I’ve decided that I’m okay with them.  They make my legs stronger, they make my lungs stronger and they get me into shape fast.  Oh, they still suck and they hurt and sometimes most times I feel like I’m going to have an internal organ yard sale about 10 feet from the top, but the benefits far outweigh the negatives. And, as long as I toss an organ that I can live without (appendix, spleen, gall bladder, tonsil, kidney, etc.), it’s all good.

I went back and visited my same old hill-loop that I was able to do once before my legs started giving me trouble last year.  I was about 30 seconds/loop slower than I was last year, but last year I was about a month farther into training. Oh well, something to shoot for. I did the loop three times and then ran easy the bring my total to four for the day.

Saturday was my seven mile long run.  I felt really good for the majority of the run, but I did run low on energy for the last two miles. I’m experimenting with new pre-run breakfasts since my usual 1/2 bagel thin & almond butter isn’t doing anything but making me feel like I have a brick in my stomach for the first three miles. I’m trying Irish oatmeal with fruit now, and it worked so much better, but I didn’t eat enough. Next time, I’ll definitely double my amount. Also, like a big dummy, I left my gel on the counter and didn’t realize it until I reached in my pocket for it. Oops. I think I’d have been okay if I’d had that with me and taken it on schedule. Oh, and I didn’t take water with me either. Sheesh, now that I think about it, I really hosed up my fluid/nutrition. No wonder I was feeling low on energy.

Finally, to recap for this week – Monday, 4 @ 10:48; Wednesday, 4 @ 10:50; Saturday, 7 @ 10:57. I little bit slower than I’d like, but lots of room for improvement. Next week is a cut-back week. I think my total mileage will be around 10. Easy peasy.

So, have you ever had a battery explode five feet from you? That’s what happened to me on Saturday. Josh had replaced the battery in his shaver and it was charging in the kitchen on the butcher’s block I have next to the oven. I was standing a short distance away preparing chicken for dinner. Pippen was at my feet begging for food helping. All of a sudden I heard an extremely loud CRACK, debris went flying everywhere and the kitchen filled with acrid and probably toxic smoke.  The battery on the shaver, for whatever reason, exploded. My butcher block ended up with a powdery, black burn mark on it. Debris was everywhere – on the wall across the room, behind the refrigerator even farther across the room. The wall closest to the explosion even has some paint chipped off.  I didn’t get hit by anything that I know of, but my ears were ringing for quite some time that night. Poor Pippen, who was standing right next to me, took off and hid in the basement. It took me forever to find him and longer to convince him to come out. Once he did, I took him right upstairs into the bedroom and closed the door. He was shaking and so scared. It took him quite a while to calm down. Scout was better, but she was pretty upset just the same. Josh opened all the windows and doors and had fans pushing all the smoke outside and cleaned up the shrapnel. Unfortunately, because it got everywhere, today I ended up emptying the kitchen and mopping the floor and walls. Josh saved my butcher block by sanding & planing it down, so at least that looks as good as new. And I thought the most exciting thing on my schedule for this weekend was my long run.

Somebody stop me, I do dumb things.

I’ve been feeling a little discomfort in my shins lately, nothing major and completely kept under control by icing & Advil, but it’s there. The other day I got to thinking that maybe I should try my custom orthotics on a run just to see how my legs feel. So, I did.  Now, this wasn’t necessarily a dumb idea per se, but completely ignoring that these custom orthotics gave me such bad knee pain that they knocked me out of consistent running for almost a year, was stupid.

The first mile of my four mile run was kind of promising. No shin pain, no other issues. The next quarter mile, my shins started to ache and by a half mile they were pissed off. I stopped, stretched for a bit and took off again, but I didn’t get too far and had to stop again. I thought about walking back to my house, but decided to take out the insoles and see how that went. The pain went away by probably 50%, and I considered finishing my full run, but for once, I listened to what my body was telling me and ended with three.

I’ve been icing both shins for 20-30 minutes every 1-1/2 to 2 hours and I think I’d downgrade them from pissed off to aggravated. Fingers crossed that they’re okay for my long run on Saturday.

Anyhoo, I decided that I need to add some hill training to my regime so on Tuesday, I sent out to do four miles of hills. I wasn’t interested in doing sprint repeats, I wanted some mid-length upward grinds with some downhill recovery and I found my perfect loop on Jacker Avenue.

The loop (square, more like) is about .8 of a mile long, the first .4 mile (starting at the corner of Jacker & Military) is uphill, the next .2 is flat and the last .2 is downhill.  I did about a mile warm-up and then did the Jacker –> Dodge –> Frue –> Military Road loop three times. It’s a pretty steady half-mile climb from Jacker to Frue and I struggled and stopped once for a few seconds on the first loop and once again on the second loop.

I forgot to press the lap button on my Garmin on each loop, but thanks to my handy dandy SportTracks program, I was able to estimate that I did the first loop in 10:19, the second loop in 10:16 and the last loop in 10:08. I would love to take all the credit for the time on that last loop, but there was some extra downhill in there as I made my way back to my house. I imagine the actual time was slower than the second loop because I could feel myself running out of steam toward the end.

Here’s the elevation profile. It looks ickier than it actually was, but I felt like I got in a really good workout.

I haven’t decided if I want to add hill training to my weekly schedule yet, though. Now that I’m getting into bigger mileage weeks, I’m a little bit scared of overloading my legs and getting injured.