366 posts, a cold, and two year birthday

I wanted to note here that this is the 366th post on drunkrunners.blogspot.com, which means that we have a leap-year's worth of commentary about running and drinking. That's a pretty big achievement. Even better, in early August we passed the blog's two year birthday. That mean you have all been drunkrunners for some time now, and I can't even begin to count the marathons, half marathons, Bay to Breakers and other races that have been run since that time. I think the most fun I have had as a reader of this blog would be reading about all the shenanigans that occur while training for these races. Of course, the race reports are always fantastic and awe inspiring as well.

Currently, I am battling a cold. I switched my first twenty miler from last weekend to this weekend, and am now just trying to stay awake. I will post a large post about the past two weeks as soon as I hit the asphalt.

Running On and Off

I, too, have been a bit spotty with my running lately. Some weeks I manage 12 or so miles total, other weeks 0-4. Boo! Unfortunately, I don't have as good an excuse as Sixpack. I only have myself and my stress to blame. However, I can report that the runs I have been doing are a decent pace (9 and under) and you will be proud to know that I intentionally include more uphills than downhills in my route. It hit me the other day that I could probably alter my route so that I ran uphill only 1 or 2 times and that the remainder of my run was either flat or downhill. But, being who I am, I realized I would have been cheating myself. Hills still suck, don't get me wrong, but they are sucking considerably less. Formal numbers and more details coming soon.

Not Running

Just a note to the group that I haven't run since my last post. This job has not offered much time to do anything. I felt guilty today running to the post office for an hour.

Deetschei-- I will still begin training again ASAP and will at the very least do run/walk marathon in Dublin. I'll have a free place for us to stay, that should make up for my poor performance. :-)

More when I get back to the states. Only 6 more days in Beijing.

Running in Germany

I was warned that the weather in Germany would be horrible this weekend. Although that never materialized, when I went to the university to do my speedwork on Monday, I saw at least five girls wearing scarves. When it was 23 C out. You gotsta love Germany.

I love running in Germany, anyway. Things went really well this week. Thursday’s speedwork was challenging: I had 3 x 1600meters at 7:33 per mile, with 800 meter jogs in between, but I managed to get it all done in spite of some pretty bad humidity. In retrospect, the biggest challenge was getting myself clean afterwards after having forgotten to bring a towel…or finding a place to stash my things after forgetting to bring a padlock for a locker. On the one hand, I felt stupid for thinking I could get by without these essential items, but then I remembered that I always lived around the corner from the track and never needed to bring these things before. It was just a force of habit, I suppose.

And by “biggest challenge” I naturally mean “second-biggest challenge”. My biggest challenge was suppressing the urge to vomit after my tenth lap of near-sprinting. I found it fascinating that my time per lap (400m) was the exact same time the women were running 800m during the Olympics. I think that makes me half as fast as an Olympic athlete, which is completely mind-boggling. If I ever tried to DOUBLE my speed I’m pretty sure my legs would rip out of my hips and get bloody sinewy grossness all over the track. Which would be hard to clean up. So I won’t even try it.

Sunday’s run is the big story, however. My alternately discouraging/encouraging 16 mile run last week that ended up being well over 17 miles left me alternately hopeful/apprehensive about 18 miles. I decided to just the bite the damn bullet and do everything I could to make it a decent run. I bought a fuel belt for more isotonic drinks. I bought vanilla flavored goo. I didn’t drink alcohol on Saturday. AND, I woke up at 6:30 Sunday morning and ate two giant plates of salmon pasta even though I had no hunger whatsoever that early in the morning.

I hit the turf at 8AM, and had what could only be described as a moderate, comfortable run. Don’t get me wrong, I was tired by the end, but this was the most relaxed 18 miles I think I have ever had. I am not going to make any bold statements, and will re-test things next week for my first twenty miler, but I think I may have made a breakthrough in fueling myself before and during runs. I simply never hit a wall and never felt, well, pain.

Basically, as I ran along the Rhine I tried to concentrate on my form and simply break the run into three one-hour increments. I just kept telling myself to “manage this hour”, and I basically did. I had three bottles of fluids and two goo packs, and made sure I took down one of each by the hour mark. By the third hour I had enough juice left in me to speed up and I ultimately ended up with negative splits: The first 9.1 miles took about 1:28, and the second took about 1:25. My total time for 18.26 miles ended up being 2:53:44, which put me exactly at 9:30 per mile. This was exactly my target speed for the run, so I was very pleased.

Concentrating on my upper body form helped in two ways, I think. First, it kept my mind off my legs. Second, it kept me from getting overly sloppy, which hopefully conserved energy and helped me keep going forward. I don’t know. I do know that before Sunday I had never run 18 miles without immediately afterwards thinking anything other than dreadful thoughts about adding another 8 miles to the distance. This time, I felt pretty good about everything. I think the weight training on my non-running days is paying off, although Tessa claims that my arms are heavier and now I am no longer allowed to put them around her when we sleep for fear of crushing her. Because I'm that huge. Right. ;)

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I can run a marathon tomorrow. But I feel like by focusing on “managing” the pain and breaking down the run into workable increments, I can create a system that will get me through the marathon at the end of my training plan.

Oh, and I think my giant breakfast that morning certainly helped. Next week I will eat the same, and try adding bananas.

16 Miles.* Still Bonking.

Dear dudes and girl dudes, my apologies for not covering the recovery week. It was three runs of six miles, and I skipped the weight training. I figured that you guys didn’t want to hear about it, so I decided to conserve my energy and watch Top Gear instead of posting. If it seems like I have been watching a lot more television than I ever have before, it is because I am victim to so much quality programming. Watching television is okay in a foreign culture, because it constitutes research. I am learning about the Brits every time I watch The Daily Show.

Week five was a big week. My tempo run on Thursday was sixteen laps at 2:00 per lap, which worked out to a 8:05 mile for four miles, plus two miles warm up and cool down. The tempo was good, in that it kept me going just outside of my comfort zone. I would have happily slowed down at any point, but it didn’t get excruciating until the twelfth lap. Those last four laps were less than fun, which may have been heat, or it just may have been the fact that the runs were doing the work they were supposed to do. Which was kick my ass into shape.

Sunday’s run was less than grand. I met some friends Saturday afternoon for a Beer Festival in Earl’s Court, and heavily restricted my beer intake in preparation for the run, but I’m not entirely sure it helped. All that I know is that when I was in the thick of it on Sunday, I didn’t feel good at all.

I just didn’t have the energy to finish well. In fact, as I hit the last two miles, I was even heckled by a street performer who stopped doing a magic trick long enough to remind me that he could walk faster than I ran. I couldn’t even argue with him. He was probably right. I don’t even know how fast as I was going at that point, but I know that I was exhausted and cramping. And I think it was due to eating way too little before the run. And nothing during the run. Soooo, I’m back to square one with my bad habits, and have decided that I need to wake up extra early on Sundays just so I can eat a big breakfast and then have time to digest it somewhat before the run. Next Sunday we will try something along those lines, and I will let you know how it goes.

Other than the bonking, the run was actually beautiful, but extremely windy. And the wind didn’t help. I finally moved things up into central London and ran almost the entire distance along the Thames. I started at London Bridge, traced my way along the South Bank, went through Battersea Park to the Albert Bridge, then doubled back through Chelsea to Parliament Square and Green Park to just short of Buckingham Palace. The thing was, there were 20-plus mile an hour winds along the Thames, and I was getting blasted like I was in a wind tunnel. I had to deal with this for the first five miles, and then once I made the turn home from Parliament Square, again on the Chelsea side for another three miles. I was exhausted by four miles, and feel like the wind might have contributed to my bad run more than anything…but nonetheless, if I had a bit more food in my system, then maybe I would have been able to finish fast enough that I could escape the silent heckles of the abusive mimes. I finished it nonetheless, but I ended up with mile averages that hovered around 10:30 or so. Like I said, it was a challenging day.

This week promises some real fun. I am flying to Cologne Thursday morning, so I will do my track work at my old track on the Unigelände. Its not as nice as the track at Ladywell, but its considerably more free. Sunday I run eighteen miles along the Rhine, so I am essentially switching one big river for another. It should be considerably less windy though, because the Rhine is much wider than the Thames and lacks the giant buildings on either side that funnel the wind into your face no matter which direction you face. This will be a sentimental run. I’m looking forward to it. But not as much as the ginormous breakfast I am going to eat at six o’clock that morning.

* (Update: I just checked my route on USATF for the first time, and it turns out I ran about 17.3 miles and that my Nike+ seriously needs to be re-calibrated. The real new lesson is to check your routes before you run them, unless you have a GPS! :) So instead of 10:30 miles, I was closer to 9:35, which is only a little slower than my goal pace. I'm officially less discouraged by this run. I am also dreading the 18 miles next Sunday a little less, knowing I only have to run an additional .7 miles or so. After that big breakfast, I should be sorted. Hopefully.)

Third Week Review! Action! Comedy! Hijinks!

14 miles. So very, very long. When did it get to be so long? I don’t know. But man, somebody added bonus miles to my long run last week. Quite frankly, I don’t think its cool, at all, to mess with somebody’s long run by sneaking in at least six miles extra. I mean, fourteen miles? Who are we kidding? That felt like it was at least twenty miles. Maybe even 22. Whoo boy.

Anyway, as you may have gathered, my third week involved challenges. And determination. And alterations.

I knew that things would need to be juggled slightly because Tessa and I were going to Stourhead Saturday night for some fireworks and fancy dress, and also to Wells to visit our friends Megan and Andy. So, in order to accommodate this wrinkle, I did something unprecedented: I moved my long run forward instead of back. Knowing that my weekend would be jammed full of friend-type goodness and farm time chicken chasing, I woke up very early Saturday morning and ran. And ran. And ran. In fact, I’m probably still running at this very moment, and if you should see me in Greenwich, ask me what I did with my keys.

The things is, my body just doesn’t understand Saturday long runs. It just didn’t catch on that it was supposed to be partaking in an endurance building activity. It thought that it was supposed to be on the couch scanning the TV for O.C. reruns, and as a result, it never got into the groove. It didn’t step to the beat. So the long run lived up to its name, and I didn’t enjoy myself as much as I could. Considering I was running around Greenwich Park while holding a giant banana for sustenance, I should have been having a blast. I mean, parks + bananas = tomfoolery of some sort, doesn’t it? Don’t answer, P.P. because I already know your response, and I know it involves George Michael, and both he and I don’t find it funny. Not one bit. ☺

Anyway, week three is over and I am in the middle of week 4, which is an oh so savory recovery week. Three runs of six miles, and nothing more. Its been fantastic, and I am really looking forward to waking up Sunday morning, strapping on the shoes, and being home again in less than an hour.

So I can get back on the couch and find those reruns of the O.C..

Last Weeks Miles: 23 miles

Last Weeks Average: Somewhere around 9 minutes per?

Total Impression: Halfway to Halfway There on Sunday! (HHTS!)