The road includes more than just running

If you're reading this, you're probably sick of hearing about the healing foot. Try having the damn thing. The road to Boston, like progress, isn't linear. And it includes a few detours. The current detour has lasted about six months. Not only am I sick of having it, I'm sick of talking about its progress. And that's just it, it's making progress, even if it's slow. So, to keep you, lonely reader, which is mostly myself and sometimes James or my Mom, entertained, I've decided to twist this blog around to include the many paths and adventures traveled on my way to Boston someday. There's the injured path, the training path, and the life path, which includes school, work, and everything else.

Paths traveled this week:

Injury: Making progress.

Training: Traveled 12.8 miles this past week on foot and 3100 yards in water. It was a light week and even included a day off on Saturday. Running felt good, even tried waking up my fast twitch fibers on Thursday, only to have them want to remain slow twitch, but that bodes well for any marathon training. Since taking it down a notch and increasing cross training, I have felt stronger and in shape on all runs. Interesting. I also had a nice trail run on Wednesday morning. I love living close to six or so different trails...close enough to not have to drive.

Life: Had a midterm for a class that I freaked out about but there was no need to do so. In doing so, I realized that I tend to exhibit test anxiety with anger, withdrawal, and procrastination. This is good to know for the future, indeed. Work wise, the cross country team headed to the Legends Meet on Saturday. It was a great tune up for our upcoming "playoff" season.

Speaking of anxiety, you know how they tell you to go to a place that makes you happy when you become stressed or anxious? They usually suggest you imagine a beach scene. Well, the beach never quite worked for me. And I've struggled for so long with finding that comforting place. Until this past week. As odd as it sounds, my comfort place is a hospital bed! Whenever I get worked up (ala panic inducing feelings) I lay myself down and imagine I am in the hospital- in the care of others who will ensure that nothing bad is going to happen. Maybe I took so long to find this place in my head because I was afraid to let my mind explore the odd. Moral of the story? Next time you find yourself seeking "expert" advice, don't be afraid to think outside the box. Much of what is "expert" is merely a researched opinion. The difficult answers lie in you anyway.

Lastly, some of my heightened anxiety this week was probably attributed to, well, yes, being a female, ahem, but add to that, making the decision to embark on foreign travel. Yes, the road to Boston stops in Peru between November 17th and November 30th. James and I, along with his travel buddies, will be adventuring the Andes of Peru, including Lima, Cusco, and Machu Picchu. This leaves me overly excited and yeah, a little nervous. Last year, I told myself that I should embark on an "adventure" each year that puts various fears to the test. My 2 day trip to Miami, FL to meet this guy I met online was last year's adventure. Peru, and all of its glory, will be this year's. Habla Espanol?

This past week...

Monday: 3.4 miles

Trail run at Hampton Hills (8:48 pace)

Tuesday: 1650 yard swim

4 x 150 yard repeats (70 seconds rest in between each)- 2:34, 2:34, 2:38, 2:38 (last two with resistance from whirlpool)

Wednesday: 3 miles easy with 6 x 25 meter strides

Thursday: 1 mile easy with team, 1250 yard swim

5 x 50 yard swim repeats (30 seconds rest in between each)- 42, 44, 44, 44, 44 (HUGE improvement!)

Friday: 3 miles treadmill

Saturday: 17 mile bike ride through the rain and mud

Sunday: 2150 yard swim

34:13 for 1600 meters

TOTAL: 10.4 miles running, 17 miles biking, 2.8 miles swimming

Weekly Recap (X-Train week)

Monday: 3 miles easy

Team run. Wore inserts and took it slow. Pain free during run. Dealing with some pain afterwards.

Tuesday: 30 minute swim (1250 yards)

Wednesday: 40 minute swim (1600 yards), 20 minute aqua jog

Thursday: 30 minute swim (1250 yards)

Friday: 1 mile run with team, then pool workout- 12 lap warm-up, 10 x 50 sprint simulations, 12 lap cool down (1700 yards)

It's a lot harder to get faster in the pool than it is to get faster on land, at least for me. I definitely improved on my sprints (used to do these in about 58-60 seconds, now averaging 53 seconds). Those are still slow times, about a 30 minute per mile pace, which is the average time it takes for a swimmer to swim a mile and this felt nearly all-out. But for me it's nice to see my extra time spent in the pool pay off. I'm glad I found a cross training activity that challenges me just as much as running and makes me feel like I worked hard at the end of the day.

Saturday: 2 miles

My biggest accomplishment this week was a short 2 mile run at midnight on a golf course. It was an accomplishment because it was late at night, cold, I was on my foot all day, and I was dreading it. The last couple of runs with such a scenario have turned out terrible but on this night, it went well and I was glad I was able to overcome the variables and be PAIN FREE! This will hopefully be good practice for winter training.

Sunday: 1600 meter swim

New pool PR! 34:49, nearly six minutes off my previous best. Still slow but working my way up to the average miler swimmer. I didn't go all out. Rather I started off with a breast stroke lap then did 4 freestyle laps emphasizing kicking hard and then continued with one breast stroke lap as a recovery then repeated the 4 laps of freestyle for a total of 33 laps. It felt like a quality workout.

TOTAL: 6 miles running, 4.2 miles swimming

Emphasized cross training this week to let all the scar tissue heal on the heel. Foot hasn't felt this good since January as a result. The next few weeks will continue to be lower running mileage and higher cross training output.

Progress isn't linear

I raced another 5k on Sunday, September 19th in Cuyahoga Falls. The course was advertised as fast and flat but in actuality it was slow and rolling. However, that made for a great training effort (22:44). The effort felt a lot harder than the previous 5ks but it could be because I didn't warm up as early or as long as I am used to and I didn't get much sleep the last two nights. Or, it just wasn't my time that day. Or the obvious, it was a slower course. I can try to analyze what went wrong all I want but I'd rather focus on the positives, not only in the race but with the progress made in the last year:

Race-wise positives:

• 6:56 first mile
• Felt like I was pushing myself the entire time
• A female passed me around 2.5 miles but I battled back and got her at the finish line
• Won my age group
• Foot hurt afterwards but nothing tore

Other positives:

• Took some time off after that race and foot has been feeling better than ever
• Not in tip-top shape and yet I'm running at my previous PR times
• 1.5 minutes faster than last year

My man friend has told me that progress isn't linear, a couple times actually. But after this weekend it finally stuck. I'm not going to get from point A to point B to point C in a straight line (i.e. improve each race). Rather, the process is going to cycle, with some ups and downs, dips, highs and lows. Each time however, I will learn something new and keep making contributions to my fitness.

Weekly Recap (Racing Week)

Monday: 1.5 miles

Easy run with the team that included cleaning up our course to prepare for our home meet. Was going to run in the evening but ran into some painful bathroom issues instead.

Tuesday: OFF

Planned to run after the home invitational but I realized that the longer I am on my feet for most of the day, the more my foot pain acts up. The good thing is that I hadn't taken a day off from any activity in about three or so weeks. However, I started to feel a little guilty and worrisome that this would hurt my fitness as the night went on. But dinner and a movie with the boy quickly fixed that.

Wednesday: 6 miles

Definitely kept the pace slow, which was the goal, and surprisingly it felt refreshing. I have been a little bit more worried about the foot since last week so that has been having an effect on how I feel about racing this Sunday. I have to remind myself to take it day by day, prepare for some pain after runs or standing all day, and keep doing my rehab exercises.

Thursday: 6 miles (track workout)

1 mile w/up, 1 mile c/down

2000, 1600, 1200, 800, 400 + 1 x 200, 2 x 100 strides

2000: 9:50 (2:30 rest)

1600: 7:49 (2:00 rest)

1200: 5:45 (90 rest)

800: 3:39 (85 rest)

400: 1:39 (80 rest)

No foot pain so workout was a-go. Done late at night again. Cooler than the last couple of late night workouts and I felt it in my lungs a little bit. Started off somewhat rough but evened out and finished strong. Goal was, again, to be controlled and as James put it, save some leftovers for the race.

Friday: 50 minutes in the pool

19 minutes pool running, 31 minutes swimming. Foot was very achy upon waking up, so I did my recovery day in the pool. Also massaged it under the spa nodules and made sure to ice, wear inserts, golf ball, do all the good stuff immediately. It's feeling better.

Saturday: 3.4 miles easy

Sunday: Cuyahoga Falls Natatorium 5k

22:40ish. Pain free for the race but feeling it afterward. Time to back down :(

(but cross train like a madwoman!)

Total: 21 miles running, 1100 meters swimming

Weekly Recap (Racing Week)

Monday: 6.1 miles (RACE)

1 mile warm up, 1 mile cool down, 1 mile race and 5k race

1 mile goal time: 6:15

1 mile actual time: 6:24 (went out too fast, at 5:40-ish pace!)

5k goal time: 22:40 (based off of racing mile 30 minutes prior)

5k actual time: 22:16 (in shape!)

Tuesday: 3.5 miles easy

Wednesday: 1500 meter swim

The foot was hurting since the race so decided to take it easy and give it a break from land

Thursday: 6 miles, track workout

1 mile warm up, 4 x 1600, 2 x 200, 2 x 100, 1 mile cool down

1600s: 7:52, 7:45, 7:42, 7:32 (85 seconds rest in between each, hit all goal times)

200s: 44, 42

100s: 19, 17

All repeats felt controlled (which was the goal of this threshold workout). James paced me on the 2nd and 4th repeat and those felt the easiest. Overall, felt fresh and energetic, even with the cooler temps. I added the 200s and 100s afterwards for some stride work. They weren't all out (except maybe the last 100 which made me feel really slow!) and the 200s were meant to mimic future mile race pace.

Friday: 1600 meter swim

Taking it easy with the foot. It is starting to feel better but since there was significantly more pain this week, I decided the pool was a better choice for a recovery day.

Saturday: 4 miles steady state run

Did not intend to do this as a quasi-workout (32:26, 8:06 pace) but I wasn't sure of what I would do this weekend racing/time trial/workout wise. Between a little more foot pain, a planned 5k race being called off due to traveling issues, and an idea to do a mile time trial on Sunday, I had a lot of "what ifs". So when it came time to run, I just wanted to hold a quicker controlled pace which I thought would be 8:30 but as I mentioned before, I still haven't figured out paces. Lesson learned. Legs felt good and foot pain subsided after 15 minutes which leads me to believe it's just some scar tissue that I need to work on getting rid of. So no race this weekend (rescheduled a 5k for next Sunday), no mile time trial, and an easy recovery day on Sunday. This day was nice but I have to watch it next time because if I increase the intensity too much too soon, I'll risk being injured again or won't have positive fitness gains.

Sunday: 1500 meter swim, 20 minutes aqua jogging

60 minutes total in the pool

Total: 20 miles running, 4600 meters swimming

Increased intensity a lot this week and more foot pain indicated so. I kept the mileage shorter because of this.

The six minute range

On Monday, September 6th, I took my chances with doubling up in the racing department at the Aurora Labor Day Classic 1 mile and 5k. I chose to focus more on the mile. The result indicates I need help in the speed department and some more aerobic work. However, I also still need help in the pacing department as I went out way too quick and then died around the halfway mark. Looking back, I guess it wasn't that bad. I started in front thinking I would avoid all the kids doing the run but as soon as the horn went off, I realized that I should have let them go, knowing they would take off sprinting. I fell into their pace and had about a 76 sec 400 meters. I am not there yet. At 800 meters, I was on pace for a 6 flat but came back 20 some seconds slower and finished in 6:24. My blind eyes couldn't see where to stop either so I stopped early, adding a few seconds to my time. No excuse though as I was taught to go through the shoot. I even reinforce it with the XC team every week and here I go, ignoring my own rule!

Overall it was a good effort, especially for going in blind. This was about a 10 second PR and a first place female finish. More importantly, this effort introduced my body to the six minute range, a range I would like to be able to start racing at. Taking a few days to let what disappointment I had fizzle, I was able to find a positive perspective: At the beginning of the summer, I went out and did a mile at a pace that felt "all out" and the result was a 7:46. In two months, all out is now 6:24 (well, almost 5:40 if I could've held that starting pace, which felt all out).

For the 5k, I didn't know what to expect feeling wise, especially after feeling slightly disoriented after the mile, so I set my expectations low. This proved beneficial and demonstrated my fitness when I finished 1 second faster than last week in 22:16 (consistency even when going in to the race with non-fresh legs). I finished 3rd overall female but there were quite a few in the 22s behind me. I held 3rd place for much of the race so I was left trying to race guys. I passed a few at the end but also got passed by a few at the end. I definitely could have had a stronger kick and I need to remember that for next time. I felt even the entire time, something positive I noticed during the last two 5ks. In the past, I went out way too hard and died around 1.5 miles, kind of like the mile! I am happy with how the day turned out. This whole racing into shape is fun! Also nice when you win gift cards for running, kind of fast.