Hills for breakfast, hold the gnats

Objective: endurance, w/ hills

Conditions, starting at 7:30 AM: 39F, rising to low 40's, wind 4-10 mph, steady rain first 3 miles, thereafter: light showers, occasional fog, cloudy, pleasant. 

A good run: very challenging but also satisfying and fun.  I always have hills on my long runs, but today I explored a new neighorhood (up near Ridgestone), which added some hills. I also pushed myself a little harder on the hills than I usually do.  I am experimenting with my running form on hills.  I think I'm going to be sore tomorrow!

Weirdness: I stopped at mile 16 to go to the bathroom and discovered that my nose was bleeding.  I mostly "cowboy sneeze" on runs, but I also have a hankie along to keep things dry. I just hadn't noticed the spots.  The bleeding soon stopped, however.  I was laughing to myself afterwards: "those hills must have been steeper than I thought!"

Objective: active recovery

Conditions at 5:30 am: 42F, foggy, light rain/heavy mist, breeze (0-7 mph)

20 min core & strength

Very tired and slightly sore today (did my work right yesterday).  I had to cancel the planned hill sprints.  I will mostly likely do them on Wednesday. 

The hill sprints in my program are always scheduled at the end of the Monday "easy" run; I don't think that's going to work most weeks.  I work pretty hard on Sundays and aside from the psychological challenge (just getting out to run at all!), I'm going to need Mondays to be Pure Easy.  I think it would be best to evaluate it on a week to week basis for now.  Some weeks it might be doable.

Later that same day.... I forgot to mention a couple of things earlier.  The first is rather trivial: I am retiring the blue Nikes today. They felt a little weird this morning.  The second is not trivial.  Believe it or not, my father-in-law has still not left the hospital.  Last night we heard they had to put him back on the ventilator. He now has pneumonia. Some blood thinners made his lungs bleed. And he has 5 different bacterial infections. How can a man survive so much?  My poor MIL practically lives at the hospital and cannot do much of anything for him.  It's just one thing after another.  All so sad.

Objective: VO2 max / Hill repeats : warm up, 5 x (.2 mi hill at maximum effort, 6-10% grade), moderate miles to finish.

Conditions at 5 AM: 40F, partly cloudy with patches of thick fog, waning gibbous moon showing.

15 min. core & weights

My legs are still sore today from Sunday's run,. But I kept telling myself it wasn't about legs today, it was about oxygen.  During the hill repeats I may have had gimpy form and no speed whatsoever, but as long as I was gasping for air I was doing well!  lol  I won't be doing a lot of these hill repeat workouts, partly because I get hill work every single day and I do hill sprints regularly, but also because they cut into my mileage so deeply. The slowest VO2 max workout imaginable, imo.  On the bright side, my energy level was pretty good compared to yesterday. It's amazing what difference a day can make. 

I'm adding another race to the calendar: March 22, Mercer Island Half Marathon.  My DH said, "why aren't you running it this year?" (I've run it a couple of times before.) I replied "Well, it doesn't really fit into my training schedule for Eugene..." But then I looked at the schedule and saw that I had a 15 mile run for that very day, followed by a cut-back week.   So actually, it does fit! The cut back week will be a recovery week.  I can use it as an intermediate goal, and as a time trial for my progress, though the course is hillier than Eugene by far. 

Objective: easy w/ strides (x5), mini-tapering

Conditions at 5:10 AM:   32F, breeze (0-9 mph), clear and frosty.

Frosty, pretty morning.  The sky was just one wee click this side of Utter Darkness, so I could see the outlines of the mountains and the tops of conifers against the starry sky.

I continue to go back and forth as to whether I'm racing this weekend, or sort of... attending a race.  I guess I'll have to see how I feel Saturday morning.  I have two race plans, just in case. 

Objective: easy w/ 1 mi @ MP

Conditions at 5:35 AM: 32F, calm, thick fog

15 min. core and upper body

Today, I would like to talk about elbows.  In college I had an anatomy-in-art professor who liked to say "as goes the elbow, so goes the angle of the scapula." I wonder if we runners should have a similar saying that ends with "...so go the legs." 

I have a couple of bad running habits I'm trying to break.  One is curling my toes. I can't imagine why I do that but it has got to stop.  The other is what I call my "chicken arms." It's mostly the right arm now, since I've been working on it and the left is coming along nicely. But the right elbow likes to float outward and stop swinging.

When I concentrate on making the chicken arms swing properly, it's like someone flipped the turbo switch. It makes a huge difference in speed and fluidity.  I often watch my shadow as I cross through the light from street lamps to see whether I look like a "real runner," and the elbow swing makes a difference there too.  And then I ran across this little gem in one of my old running books (Miller, Programmed to Run, p. 32): "...during the later laps of high schooler Alan Webb's sub-four-minute mile... his coach Scott Raczko 'implored him to "Keep going! Drive your elbows back!"'"

I have a photograph of Deena Kastor, taken by a friend of mine at the Women's Olympic Marathon Trials in Boston last year.  Deena was practically flying down the home stretch and my friend snapped her photo at the exact moment when Deena was directly in front of her. (So there is no trick of the angle.)  Deena's elbow is so far back that it's practically level with her shoulder.  I can scarcely make my elbow go that far back while sitting in this chair!  Add running, and making sure the shoulders stay down and relaxed, and that's a real challenge.  But later on the same page of Miller books, we read this: "Craig [Poole, women's track coach at BYU] pointed out that both turnover and push-off are managed by posture and arm swing.  ...He went on to say not only that running technique is the foundation of perfromance but also that it can be taught and learned." [My emphasis.]

So here's to reaching for our goals with our elbows. :)

It's Thursday night, and I'm pre-blogging my non-run. lol  Resting Friday for a Saturday race.  But since I've got a minute, by special request (see Thursday entry and comments), here is Deena, goddess of the arm swing...

Misc. details:  Warm up before race: 1.4 miles easy w/ some short strides.   Low to mid 30's F & very foggy.   First mile of race at easy pace.  Hills at mile 1, 6, 10.5 (big one).  1 gel.  Driving time to race: 1:35 each way.  Time listed above is from my Garmin (haven't checked for official time yet).  No chip timing, old fashioned hand entries.  The race finishes with an up hill climb, hate that.

The good news is that I love fog and it was very foggy. The bad news: no swan sightings. I could hear them out there in the fields but it was just too thick to see them. (This race is known for it's traverse through an area where migrating Trumpeter Swans stop to feed and rest.) 

The very good news is... PR's!!  Six minute course PR and 1 minute PR for the distance.  When I woke this morning I was pretty sure I would race this course at a hard level. I just felt really good.  I can honestly say I left nothing on the course; I worked really hard. 

2:04 does not bode particularly well for a BQ (4:05), but I've got over 3 months of hard work between now and May, so maybe I'll have a shot.   The most exciting aspect of the course PR is that I think it reflects the fact that this is the very first winter where I've really kept my running up.   My 1 minute PR for the half-m is such a wee little thing, but I'll be running the course of my previous PR in March (Mercer Island Half), so we'll see what that race has to say.  :)

Not much to report about the race itself.  This is a well organized but small race, with (imo) a fast field of runners.  (Who else wants to race a Half in the dead of winter here?) This is my third running of this course, and I have always felt that the bulk of the runners are very fast and competitive. Not great for my psyche, being a slow one, but it's also very inspiring to me.

Most of the course runs through farmland, with a bit of woods and small town. There is a pretty lake around mile 6-7.  Not much to see today, due to the fog. 

I had one real problem during the race, and I believe it may have cost me.  There seemed to be a lot more cars on the road this year than I remember.  A police car came through at about mile 3 and warned us all to keep to the right, after which we all went single file while the cars whizzed past us. It was frightening, but the worst consequence was trying to pass people.  After starting the race slowly, I began to steadily pass other runners by about mile 3 [insert crazy happy dance here].  But it really screwed up my pace to do so without being run over.  Trying to keep my pace between 8:55 and 9:10, I'd hover behind someone at 9:30, getting all stressed about having to slow down, then speed up to 8:45 or even 8:30 to pass them, getting winded in the process.  We made a turn around mile 5 and the traffic lessened, but there were still enough cars (going quite fast) to keep us crowded to the side of the road.  So much for practicing steady pacing! Gr.

One thing I love about this race is the gym. The race is held at a small college in Mt. Vernon, WA. The runners get to stay inside in the warmth until it's time to warm up.  After the race, runners may use the showers and locker rooms, and the race provides hot foods in the warm gym -- perfect for a January event.

My splits: 9:56, 9:04 (downhill), 9:24, 8:57, 9:01, 9:19 (small, steep hill), 9:22, 9:14, 9:07, 10:06 (long hill),10:08, 9:46, 9:04, last .1 @ 9:25 (uphill finish).

I've go to scoot. I'll come back for editing and adding later when I have time.  :) Sno  [More details added above.]

With the long driving time, I just had enough time to enter my draft report, take a short nap, and get tidied up for our evening out. We had a lovely dinner in Seattle and went to see The Pearl Fishers.  Excellent production! But even with the nap, I was dead tired by the time we made it home.