High Holy Mass of Contradictions

Normally my Google-fu is strong, but even when my search terms are imprecise there's always the chance to discover something cool. I was looking for something else entirely but just stumbled across this Google Maps mashup called WalkJogRun that tracks running routes all over the place. Perfect for when you're out of town on business or whatever and want to get out and explore but looking for suggestions on what the locals would advise. I don't know about you, but it's been my experience that the concierge doesn't always have the best running route suggestions.

Just got back from a hot, sticky run in the hot, sticky heat, and in my delirium and shaky state, I managed to break the end of a plug off in the Treo's headset jack. Great. I managed to get the end of the plug out of the Treo, but the headphone is shot now, unless anyone can reassure me that I can replace a plug on the end of a headset cord and have it sound OK.

I need to remember that not only is a good workout healthy and stress-relieving, but it also always seems to leave me chock-full of good song ideas. Awesome.

Just got these pictures back from brightroom.com and thought I'd share. This year's Park Forest Scenic 10 mile race really took it out of me, but I finished, and that's the important thing. Or maybe the important thing is I'll do better next year. Either way, it's over for this year, and I'm glad. :-)

It has been brought to my attention by multiple people that I haven't been posting. Thank you, multiple people, for missing me. :-)

I've been trying to keep focused on work while I'm at work, and to stay productive when I'm at home. One of my goals this year was to cut down on LJ and email use, after all, and I'm doing it. I set up a series of filtered friends lists that capture varying degrees of keeping up: the narrowest includes just a few close friends about whom I always want to know the latest. And the rest are increasingly broad. When I find myself with a little bit of time, I hit the personal friends list and read up. I try to comment, if I have enough time. If I have more time, I'll hit the next broadest list, and so on. It seems to be working. I just haven't been good so far at keeping my own journal updated within the pinched time constraints.

Anyway, ( here's what's going on in my offline world )

Running is supposed to be good for you, right?

Just checking. Because in the past two months, I've injured my knee, my hip, and both my second toenails. I have blisters on the tops of those second toes (cleverly hidden by Band-Aids so that I can continue to wear open-toed heels at work without grossing out my colleagues).

I actually had to cut my right second toenail back this weekend almost all the way. It had been slowly separating from the toe for two months or so, and it was finally so separated that it was starting to catch on things and that was hurting like hell.

I've got ice packs on both my right knee and my right hip, just as I have every day for the past several months.

But I'm like an addict. All I can think about is when I'm going to get my next fix.

I'm such a weirdo.

The Scenic 10 web site has the race route online, so yesterday I printed it out and this morning I ran the entire 10-mile course, simulated, of course, on the treadmill.

It seems like a fun course! And since this is my home town, I do actually know the places being described, so that helps me envision it as I pretend to run it on a treadmill 700 miles away. :-) The parts where it mentions rolling hills were fun to simulate: I would increase the incline a bit and let it even out, then decrease it to 0 and let that even out, then increase it again, and so on for the entire distance indicated. Whee!

So. I actually finished it in 1:41:45. Which is absolutely fantastic, because my goal was 1:50:00. I was pushing a little, but not nearly as hard as I could. If I really work on my intervals in the next few weeks, I might just break 1:40:00 in the actual race.

I'm icing both my knee and my hip right now, but it's more preventative than reactive: I don't feel any unusual discomfort.

This bodes well! I'm excited!

Another interesting article:

Researchers say elite distance runners share several inborn physiological traits, including large hearts, an efficient way of moving and an ability to keep running when they are exerting so much effort that they are panting for breath, that make them faster than most recreational runners.

I've done some reading about VO₂ max, or maximal oxygen uptake, and I have a suspicion that I fall woefully short there as a runner. Breathing is where I really struggle. I think it's the years of cigarette smoking, even though I quit more than seven years ago. But it's just as likely that I'm just not genetically gifted as a runner.

Oh well. Off I go to struggle on the treadmill. ;-)

"If a swimmer like Michael Phelps or a bike rider like Lance Armstrong tried to focus on primarily eating proteins and fats, there's no way they could ever perform the way they do."

I also enjoyed the following quote from the article:

After athletes compete, they tend to bypass more healthful entrees in favour of sweets and junk food. They are especially susceptible to all things chocolate.

Now that I've sent in my registration for the Scenic 10, I'm feeling the pressure to get trained and ready. I'm definitely being careful not to re-injure myself, but I need a bigger daily mileage base. I did 4 miles this morning, and while that's OK, it only brings me to 10 overall for the week, and that's not good. My original plan had me doing more than twice that.

On the plus side, I seem to be able to regain my speed more easily than I expected to. I "budgeted" for 12:00/miles all the way through the race and psyched myself up for that to be OK even though it's really slow for me under non-injured conditions. But the 4 miles I ran today came out to 40:29, and that was with a few breaks to stretch. I kept up between an 8:30/mile and a 9:00/mile pace for a large portion of the run. And I feel fine now -- no twinge-iness or anything.

I may struggle to finish the full 10 miles on Labor Day, but I'll probably be able to do the first 5 or 6 at an easy 10:00/mile pace, which will leave me plenty of time to come in under 2:00:00 even if I need several walk breaks in the last half of the race.

Good. Now that I think it through like that, I'm feeling better about doing this. Of course, I still hope I can make it in under 1:50:00, but that seems like a lot to wish for right now. :-)

We received word from our apartment property manager yesterday that they were doing some work this morning requiring us to move our car from the lot by 8:00 AM, so it seemed like a good morning to go out for ( breakfast. )

( Then thrift shopping. )

Alright, now this is kind of ( embarassing. )

( Workout. )

( Lunch. )

( More shopping. )

( Dinner. )

( Live music. )

And then it was back home. And now I'm getting sleepy. It's been a good, long day.

I miscalculated. Last week, I anticipated that I'd be eager to do really long workouts this week, and Karsten and I planned that he'd skip his daily run for the week as his vacation and I'd do super-long workouts each day as mine.

There's just one problem: the gym is at the office.

Now, I knew this, of course. But I still figured it would be no problem. After all, the gym is in a different building from the one where I work, and if I went there a little later than my usual time (no reason to start my workout at 6 AM when I'm on vacation) I probably wouldn't even run into the usual crowd, and so no one but the security guys at the front desk would need to be the wiser.

But I woke up this morning -- well, more to the point, I slept in until 7:30 and then woke up this morning -- with no desire to follow the same patterns I do every weekday morning. I feel like working out, but I want to do it here. Or outdoors, nearby. Work's not far away at all, but it's the fact that I'd be driving the same route that I do every day... you know. It's tedious.

So I dunno. I'll do my usual stretching/yoga/dance thing that I do throughout the day every day, and maybe I'll do a concentrated dance workout or something. But for today, at least, I'm not going to the gym.

I'm sure I seem to be making a big deal out of nothing, but it's incredibly, stupidly difficult for me to find ways to relax. I thought the extra-long workout would be relaxing, but it seems that it's more relaxing to not have to drive to the office. At least for today. There's always the rest of the week.

Tough workout this morning. After 2 miles on the treadmill, I had to hop off, stretch, and do some other exercises like squats and Roman chair bends. Then I got back on the treadmill for another 2 miles, but it was really rough going the whole time.

I guess it's understandable, though. Yesterday I did my fastest run since my injury, so my muscles may still be trying to recover. It was still not fast, mind, but I kept a steady 10 min/mile pace, which is significant improvement from my 12 min/miles two weeks ago. I'll try to keep up the 10:00 pace for a little while longer before I start shooting for under 10 min/mile over a longish run. It's tough to be patient about this because before my injury, I was working my way into the 7 min/mile range. I expect it'll be months before I regain that kind of speed. But at this point I'm more concerned about regaining my mileage than my speed, and that's steadily improving.

Did my first five-mile run since my injury. I do have a little bit of twinge-iness below and to the right of my right kneecap and slight soreness in my right hip, but otherwise I feel fine. I'm icing my knee and I took some ibuprofen, and I'll rest this weekend. That brings my total for the week to 13 miles, which, although I'd planned a 17 mile week, still feels like good, solid progress. Next week should be 19, but I'll be satisfied with 15 or more.

So looking at my training log and projecting a training plan for the next few months, it seems still feasible to run the Park Forest Scenic 10 on Labor Day, which is cool because I used to watch this race as a kid growing up in Park Forest and I always wanted to run in it. I'll have to be careful not to overtrain, and I certainly won't be setting any course records, but I think I can do it without reinjuring myself. I'm still going to hold off until the end of the month before I sign up, though, just in case.

And I hereby formalize my plan that, if that works, I'll run the local half-marathon in spring and shoot for the Chicago marathon next October.

Ran three miles this morning, hurrah! It's beginning to look a lot like recovery. :-)

One of my coworkers brought me in blackberries she picked from her property. They look luscious; I can't wait to eat them.

For anyone interested in a new workout:

I highly, highly recommend the New York City Ballet book and DVD.

There is nothing like ballet to make you feel simultaneously strong and graceful.

Did my first run in over four weeks this morning. I trotted along slowly for about a mile, with some walking and stretching interspersed throughout. Then I hopped off the treadmill and did 10 minutes or so on the elliptical, then got back on the treadmill and ran without walking for another mile.

I felt sure I'd have some achiness today, but it's not too bad. A little twinge-iness in my knee and hip, but nothing nearly as bad as it's been over the past few weeks even without having run.

Check this out, though: my jaw locked up at lunch today. I was having a lunch meeting and I'd just finished my sandwich when my jaw felt like it came unhinged on the right side. I wiggled it around trying to pop it back into place, but the longer it stayed out of whack, the worse it hurt until I was finally crying and my colleagues were asking if I needed to go to the emergency room. Finally the pain started to subside and my jaw gradually felt like it was mostly back in place, but even now, 9 hours later, it's still kind of achey.

I had no idea running could hurt my jaw.

Forgot to mention that when I bought my new running shoes on Saturday (same model as I had before -- Saucony Trigon, Responsive Cushioning), the running store guy moved me up a half-size. Which meant I had to buy men's shoes. In size 10.5.

Quoth he: "it's normal that your arches drop and your foot size increases from running."

But, said I, my feel were already huge. Like, I could barely find women's shoes in my size when they were an 11 kind of huge.

Of course, I wore them this morning on the elliptical machine and they feel like heaven. I can't believe I'm admitting that.

I just went and bought new running shoes from Team Nashville, which is a local store that specializes in running gear. (The owners are both marathoners many times over.) Same basic shoe I had before, but a half-size larger -- more mileage means bigger feet.

The owner that was helping me was also advising me to stay the hell off my knee until it's really, truly healed. He said to do aqua-running five days a week and one day of aqua-interval-training. Interval training? In the water? Yep. He says it's the only way to not lose my mileage and speed while I'm healing.

So I guess I'll be joining up at Centennial Sportsplex for a month or two so I can get access to a pool. They have one-month and three-month memberships in addition to their normal annual rate. The Team Nashville guy said to expect it to take 2-3 months before my knee is really healed. And I think he's being quite conservative, but maybe a one-month membership would do the trick.