easy saturday

Today we did 14 "easy" miles instead of the usual 20+ mile long run. Mike created a fun tourist route for us. The run wasn't bad...I was just dragging as usual. I'm so tired now! I don't know if it's too many miles, lack of sleep, nutrition...or everything all together...but I'm beat. I bailed on the 10 mile trail run tomorrow and am going to just do 5 on the trails. Hoping to go to bed early tonight too.

pluses: time w/ teens

minuses: lack of sleep, wind

2/26 steady state

Today may have marked one of the worst runs I've had in awhile. I've been having a hard time "recovering" this week...but then looking back I realized that nothing about this week has been a recovery. I'm at the same point mileage wise as I was last week. The only difference this week will be a rest day tomorrow and a shorter run on Saturday. Hopefully after those days I'll be "recovered." We did a 7 mile steady state this morning. Things started out ok for the first mile or so of the steady state. Steve and Ken passed me and I thought about trying to stick with them for awhile. After about another mile I realized my legs felt like crap. I decided to slow it down a little bit because my breathing was erratic and I couldn't find a rhythm. It pretty much went down hill from there. Got lost a few times, suffered on uphills, and spent the last 4 miles or so just wanted the run to be over. The whole run, with warmup and cool down, averaged out to 7:03 pace. It's not that 7:03 is horribly slow or anything, but I've done long runs (20+ miles) at a faster pace than that and felt way better than I did to day. Doesn't make much since, but oh well. I guess it's good to have really crappy work outs sometimes. Supposedly it's supposed to make you stronger. We'll see.

pluses: dinner with friends tonight

minuses: really tired, moderately cranky

2/25 recovery run in lakeway

I met up with Cindy and her friend Lorena today in Lakeway. I hadn't met Lorena before but enjoyed getting to know her and chatting with Cindy on the run. The weather was pretty nice, a little humid though. I've gotten into a good Wed routine of getting to South Congress in the morning to get my weight workout in, then coming out to Lakeway to run before heading in to Church for the rest of the day. Wednesday always seems to be my hardest day to get motivated to run. I feel like I hit a slump in the middle of the week and usually want to take the day off, but so far I haven't given in to that temptation this season. Knowing that I have plans to meet someone makes it a lot easier to make sure I actually do run. The only downside of Lakeway is that there are a lot of hills. It's pretty to run out here because the houses are awesome, you can see a lot of Lake Travis, there are greenbelt trails, and it's a different scene than the regular Rogue routes...but the hills get a little old on recovery days. We ended the run right under 8min pace. My legs are feeling better. My hamstring feels fine now but I haven't really "pushed" it. I don't think I'm going to until I need to.

pluses: great weather, UT bball game tonight

minuses: have to go to HEB today :(

ML run

I met up with the team this morning for a 14 miler. I was a little worried about how it would go because I slept really bad last night. Not sure why, just a lot of tossing and turning. Anyways, the first 7 or so miles of the run felt hard. I felt like I was barely hanging on to the train for most of the first half of the run. Finally, after a pit stop behind a building, I felt a little more alive. I really started feeling good over the last few miles and even had a little bit of a "close" left in me. I haven't really done that on a workout (with the exception of Saturday) in awhile, so that it was nice to know I could still pick it up a bit :) Finished the workout with a 7:12 overall pace.

pluses: pretty weather, puppies

minuses: annoying paperwork

2/23 town lake run

Today I ran around the lake. Sometime I get really tired of town lake but sometimes it's a nice recovery run because of the soft surface. Tim is still in recovery mode, so I ran the 7 mile loop on my own then I met up with him for 4.5 mile. I actually felt better than expected. I ended up right around 7:40 pace which is a good pace for a recovery run. This week is going to be a slightly low week mileage wise which I'm ok with...and I talked to Steve a bit to get insight on whether it's better for me to take 2 days off and run 20 on Saturday or take 1 day off and go 14 on Saturday. I was looking forward to keeping up the 20+ mile runs....but I don't think I'll get two off days in this week because I already having running plans for the rest of this week except Friday...so I'll stick with 14 on Saturday.

pluses: awesome weather, lunch at whole foods

minuses: laziness

2/22 recovery run

I ran 6.3ish miles in the neighborhood I grew up in today. It was kind of cool because there were a ton of people outside in their yards...playing with their kids, dogs, etc. My legs are pretty tired but I'm glad I made myself work out a lot of the crap that was built up yesterday. I loosened up pretty well after the first few miles. I hit a new PR for mileage this week at 80.55. For a lot of people on my team this may not sound like too much, but this is the 4th week I've tried to hit 80, and it's been my only success. The other weeks, for one reason or another, I ended up closer to 75. Also, I completed my 3rd run over 22 miles this year...compared to last training season when I only ran over 22 miles once in the whole program. So it was a good week...and all of this has been on not so fresh legs. I'm looking forward to a bit of recovery this week then I'll get back at it. Only 8 weeks until Boston.

pluses: nice trip to houston, great weather

minuses: missing out on cook-out tonight

Soul Buster Lite

Today was supposed to be the first of the Team Rogue Soul Busters. Last season was my first experience with the Soul Busters, and I only ran one because of an injury and because my race was 3 weeks earlier than everyone else's. I was really excited to run the planned SB, which was 3 miles warm up, 1 mile all out on a track, 20 mile cool down. After the pulled hamstring issue last Sunday, I knew that SB would not happen for me. There is no way I could go all out on a mile right now. The good news is plans changed for the whole team. A lot of people had a super hard run last week, so the SB became "lite" for today. It was an 8 mile descent, followed by an 8 mile ascent, then 4 miles at marathon goal pace on the track. I met up 30 minutes early with Ken to get a 3 mile warm up. It takes me forever to warm up now with my hamstring issues so it was a nice thing to get that it. Then we started the descent. At first, there wasn't too much of a descent...it was all rollers. We did hit some nice downhills before the uphills. The uphills were rough. We ran on Pecos over to Mt. Bonnell all the way across 2222, then hit some nice hills in there...include Mountain Villa and Mountain Climber. It was like one massive uphill after the other. This part of the workout was the real soul buster for me. My legs were dead, my hamstring was tight, and I just didn't think I'd make it up the hills. I feel like I'm doing a better job recovering on the smaller uphills and flats, but I still don't feel very strong on the hills. It's either that or everyone I'm running with kicks butt on hills :) After the hills it was straight to the track. At this point I was a little worried about holding MGP for 4 miles. Originally it sounded easy by my legs were trashed. According to mcmillan, my MGP is a 6:41 mile. I dropped that to 6:40 to make the math easy, so each lap on the track needed to be 100 seconds. No one in our group was shooting for that (some faster, some just a bit behind) so this was a good experience for me to lock in to a pace by myself, something I struggle with. I got so spoiled last season running with the 3:10 train there were times I didn't were a watch but I knew I could just lock in with them and be right on. My mile splits were pretty consistent. On the last 800m Steve told me to pick it up and try and gain ground on Larry and Ken. I knew there'd be know throwing down the hammer because if that happened I probably be sidelined with the hamstring. I did gain ground though, so that was good. Here are my splits: 6:37 6:40 6:37 6:13 All in all I'd say it was a successful day. I'm exhausted but pushed through it enough to hit my goals on the track. pluses: good workout, time with family minuses: sitting in a car driving to Houston

2/19 tempo run

I was a little disappointed to find out we'd be doing the Enfield 4 mile loop for the tempo run. It was basically a repeat of the course from Sunday...but oh well. I wasn't sure what pace I'd be shooting for because of the current hamstring issues. My splits were as follows:
6:28
6:06
6:41
6:06
Not exactly consistent, but consistent with the course and the way I feel. The first mile was slow...basically taking time to warm up the hamstring. The next mile I felt a little more in the grove, then I hit the Enfield hills. They weren't bad but I was a bit hesitant to take them too hard. Then I picked it up again on Expo and back to the lake. Partly because I felt better, and partly because Ramon was coming up on me :) Then we did some 200s which were sub-par. The big question at hand now is if I need to take some time off to let me hamstring heal. It doesn't feel like it's getting worse but I can say with certainty it is not getting better. I am going to see Mark today at South Congress and see what he suggests and then I'll go from there.

pluses: low key day, time with Brian this evening

minuses: lost the spring in my step (or run)

lakeway run

I've gotten into the routine of meeting up with Cindy in Lakeway on Wednesdays for a nice change of scenery and good company. This morning we did a different route where we ended up on trails for most of the run. It was nice because my legs are not feeling great. They aren't bad, but my hamstring still feels really tight. We ran for 80 minutes and we did about half trails (Lakeway portion of the greenbelt) and half roads. I'd guess we got in around 9 miles. I'm hoping my hamstring is in the process of recovering, but I'm not feeling too confident about that. I'm going to see Marc at South Congress tomorrow so we can work on some different exercises to help strengthen my hamstrings and then maybe I'll get some massage work done too to see if I can nip this thing in the bud. I don't want to miss out on too many team workouts but if I don't get this taken care of I know I'll suffer more in the long term.

pluses: awesome weather

minuses: volunteer issues

2/16 & 2/17 recovery

Yesterday I went out on the greenbelt for an easy 5 with Mike and Karma. It was easy as in we ran slow...but that was the only easy part about it. I felt like I couldn't stride out at all b/c my right hamstring is pretty jacked up. I enjoyed the weather and the company, but other than that there isn't anything positive to say about the run.

Based on yesterday's run, I thought today would be pretty ugly. It wasn't great, but wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. I averaged about 8 minute pace on the way out. I was debating doing 10-14 miles, just depending on if my hamstring loosened up. It felt pretty bad at first but finally right before the turn around it started to loosen up. The second half of the run was all around 7:20 pace. It felt good to be moving a little quicker, but I did feel like if I picked it up any more than that I would've killed the hammy again. Good news is I got in a decent amount of mileage (13.75 total). Slow and easy for the next week and hopefully I'll be back to 100%. I feel like I'm in a little bit of a running funk right now but I don't think I'll be successful in getting out of it until my legs are 100%. It's hard for me to be patient with an injury when really all I want to do is work twice as hard as before to make up for my lack of execution on Sunday.

pluses: time with Laura

minuses: weather

Austin 1/2 Marathon Race Report

I have really mixed emotions about today's race. I definitely had some highs and lows. I wanted to start out conservative on Congress, try to break even on 1st street and then settle in to 6:30 pace until I closed around mile 9. That isn't really how the race went. I went out way too fast which is super frustrating. I was really not confident with going out at 6:40 pace because I just don't know how that "feels." I met up with a friend who had the same end time goal so I decided to just go out with her (big lesson on running my own race was learned here). I went out at a 6:15 first mile. Way too fast. Then I never settled in to a 6:40 rhythm. By mile four my legs felt like crap and I was getting kind of nervous. "Flying" down 1st street felt painful. The good news was I let my friend go after the first mile...I didn't try to hang on, which definitely would've ended bad. I was running mostly by myself at this point which wasn't much fun with the wind that hit on Caesar Chavez and LAB. I stuck behind a guy on the end of CC which left me with a slow 6:55 mile...ugh. The positive think was that after mile 7, I really started to feel good. I guess this is where my fitness level came in to play. I felt recovered from the miserable start and was feeling strong up LAB and into Enfield. Through this part of the race, I caught about 5 women (including my friend that I started with) that had passed me through the Congress and 1st St. area. I felt strong on the beginning hills of Enfield, I became more consistent with paces, and my confidence was up. Then I hit the BIG hill on 15th coming up in to down town. I really wanted to close this race hard and try to be sub 6 on the last mile. I don't know if it was the course or my stupidity at the beginning of the race, but I couldn't close at all. My last mile was right at 6:30 pace. There was no closing which is what I thought would be a strength for me given my plan. Here are my splits:
1 6:15
2 6:32
3 6:24
4 6:26
5 6:13
6 6: 19
7 6:23
8 6:55
9 6:34
10 6: 27
11 6: 29
12 6:24
13 6:31
.1 :42
finish time: 1:24:40

Overall I'd say I am not satisfied with the race, but I think it's important to look at some of the good things and what I can learn from today. The things I am happy about are that I didn't give up when I felt crappy at mile 4. I let myself recover and got my head back in the game. I'm also glad I raced well on LAB and Enfield. I'm also happy I finished 5th overall female and that I won my age group. Two of the women who finished ahead of me are already Olympic Trials runners...so I have to be pleased with my overall finish. When you log on to the results page for the half, I'm on the leader board...which is a cool thing to see. Also, I had a 4 minute PR which is always a positive thing. I think I showed some toughness, but I ran like a really immature runner at the beginning. My mantra for this run was execute, and I didn't. If I had stuck to the plan I would've most likely had better results. I am still beating myself up over that, but oh well....

pluses: good finish, time with family

minuses: poor execution, hamstring

a million bucks...

...that's how good my legs feel after my 4 mile shake out run. i'm ready to race!

2/12 on my own

I decided against the team steady state run this morning. I was worried about going too fast and I also was looking forward to a few extra hours of sleep. I slept in until 7 and then headed to Rogue to get my run in. I ran to the Austin HS track to do some 200s. Basically the purpose was just to stride and out and get some turnover going. Also, I wanted to test my hamstring out and see if it is going to be ok for Sunday. All in all, everything felt good. I didn't feel particularly fast, but nothing hurt. I did 8 200 strides with a 200 recovery jog between each one. Then I headed to the trail towards mopac and headed back to Rogue via the trail. I think I ended up with about 8.5 miles or so. I wasn't really going for mileage or time...just testing out the legs today. They passed and I hope I'm ready for Sunday!

pluses: house is clean, dinner w/ friends tonight

minuses: lack of motivation at work

early wed

I like sleeping in on Wednesdays because I usually don't head out to Lakeway until 12pm. Today we had a wonderful staff meeting at 8:30am so I had to suck it up and get my run in early. I met up with Mike, Damon, Ken, and Kamran for an easy 8 miler. I felt pretty good. I was concerned the run might be a little rough because of the aftermath from my massage yesterday, but my legs actually felt pretty fresh. I didn't do any strides or anything to test my hamstring...I'm going to save that for tomorrow.

pluses: nice weather

minuses: useless staff mtg; in lakeway until 9pm

2/10 ML run

I ran most of today's run with Mike, Steve and Sean. We ran on Kamran's course which wasn't bad :) We got a little off track towards the beginning so we added some extra mileage, so I'm not really sure what total distance/pace for the run was. We did the usual where we started out relatively slow then locked in around 7:15 pace. I had to slow up in the last several miles. My hamstring really locked up and I didn't feel like I could get my normal stride back. I'm a little nervous about how this could affect my plans to race this weekend (see below) but I am going to see Lisa today so hopefully she can work it out for me. Today's run was the longest of the week which is a nice feeling. The rest of the week is about getting ready to run on Sunday.

pluses: massage, UT game tonight

minuses: gloomy weather adding to my already crappy mood :(

rest day and Austin 1/2 plan

I went back and forth about running today. I woke up with a plan to run but it was raining so I figured I'd wait since I had all day to get it in. Then I thought about taking today off. It started clearing up so I thought about running again, but then it started raining again...so I made the final decision to take a rest day. My last off day was 10 days ago...so it is probably time. I am going to "race" the half on Sunday so this is a down week for me. I want to use this race as a way to wrap my brain around running faster times. Essentially, I'm asking myself to run a 1/2 marathon at the pace which I used to run 5ks and 10ks at...which is kind of a scary thing for me to be ok with. I know I'm more fit now and I'm ready for more aggressive racing, so I'm hoping this 1/2 marathon allows me to get comfortable with the fact that my goals times now are times which never used to register as potential paces for shorter races. With that said, I'm going to outline my plan for Austin. It still looks crazy to me, especially since the end of the course is going to be rough...but I think if I get it out there then I'll have more accountability to the plan. So here it is:
-start the race up Congress at 6:40 pace and hold this through mile 3
-heading down 1st, drop the pace to 6:20 (it's all downhill)
-hit 6:28 pace up Caesar Chavez and around Austin High School
-start to drop the pace gradually on Lake Austin Blvd back to 6:20
-survive Enfield at the same pace...GUT CHECK
-all out last mile...

So my pace band will look like this:
1: 6:40
2: 13:20
3. 20:00
4. 26:20
5. 32:40
6. 39:00
7. 45:28
8. 51:56
9. 58:21
10: 1:04:41
11. 1:11:01
12. 1:17:16
13.1: 1:23:45


There are going to be hills which will cause some bumps in the road at the end...but it's only the last 3 miles so basically it's just a huge gut check to see what I'm made of right now. If I stick to this plan then I should end at around 1:23:45 with my hard close. I'm excited to race and look back at this and see how close I can come!

pluses: productive day around the house

minuses: my puppies stink!

easy trail run

I ran about 5 miles with Brian on the greenbelt this morning. Overall I felt fine. I needed to get more mileage but we were running short on time. My "down" week ended up at 71 miles. I still haven't hit my goal of 80mpw but I have time to get to that. Since December 1 I've been avg 60mpw....some highs and some lows. Next week will be a true down week so I can get ready to hopefully have a good race next Sunday.

pluses: lunch with my dad

minuses: apathy

2/7 not so long long run

Today we cut back on mileage and went 14 for our long run. It's kind of funny because this was actually shorter than my medium long run this week. The next two weekends are going to be crazy hard so this was an attempt to prepare for that. I did a great job and held back today :) No closing. I felt kind of sluggish overall...but that's ok. I ended at 7:45ish pace for the 14 and then did some strides to loosen up my hamstring. Afterwards we enjoyed a nice team breakfast at Elsie's.

pluses: great nap, free cake

minuses: none, it's the weekend!!

2/6 recovery run

Met up with Ken and Mike (and Karma) for a 10 mile run. I am really glad that I got up and got the run in. We had a lot of good conversations ranging from quoting the office to making up a "soul buster" that included some of the obstacles from the tough guy competition. Imagine, getting poked with a cattle prod after your all out mile, before you drop down to "fire pace." I love it :)

pluses: relaxing day

minuses: hamstring is still tight

2/5 tempo

Today was my first attempt at speed since SA. I have run some fast miles here and there when I've closed on runs...but I haven't set out at the beginning of a run with a plan to run fast until today. I was thinking I'd try to run around 6:20 pace for the four mile tempo...but then decided the best plan may just be to sit behind Larry and Ken and get comfortable with their pace...and just hold it. I was semi-successful at that. I was a little slow on the 3rd mile. That's when I started to feel my hamstring tighten up. I should've been a bit more mentally tough then because in reality running a mile or two 10 seconds slower isn't going to prevent any injury on my hammy. Anyways, my best guess on my spilts is as follows:
mile 1: 5:50
mile 2: 6:10
mile 3: 6:16
mile 4: 6:08

Overall it was a good run. I didn't feel too bad at the end. This run does make 6:30 pace for the Austin 1/2 seem a little bit more reasonable...but it's a whole different terrain so we'll see.

I need to be careful with my hamstring and really take it easy between now and next Sunday. That means no more closing!!

pluses: time with 5th graders

minuses: tired

lakeway recovery run

I met up with Cindy again and we did a run in lakeway. The weather was awesome and we had a lot of nice views of Lake Travis. It was a really nice run. Great conversation, pace, scenery, etc :)

I hoping that it was a good enough recovery for the steady state tomorrow. My legs have been feeling pretty tired but I think that is normal. I'm still having a lot of fun with all of the running so I think I'm in a good place. I'm a little nervous about racing next week because I don't really know what to expect. I think Steve said it pretty well last night when he told me I really have no idea who I am as a runner. I still feel really new to all of this and I feel like I'm totally in an unknown realm with regards to my training and current fitness. I guess the Austin half should be a gauge of those things and help give me a little direction.

pluses: amazing weather

minuses: can't go to the UT game tonight :(

2/3 ML run

Today's run was tough. I felt like I was hanging on from the back the whole time. I started out kind of slow. I'm still feeling Sunday's long run/marathon PR run with Steve. I forgot my watch today so I didn't have any idea of pace. I do know that every time I was about to let the front pack go, we'd hit a light and I'd catch up and decide to stick with them again. I was able to close which was nice, but I am definitely ready for a real recovery day tomorrow. Based on Ken's GPS, I'd say I ran around 15 miles (a bit more) and averaged around 7:10-7:15 pace. Like I said, it was tough...but considering the paces of the last few runs I'm not surprised with how I felt. I am starting to get a little worried that I'm ramping mileage and pace too much. I'm about 90 seconds per a mile faster on every run that I'm doing compared to my San Antonio training. I don't want to try to do too much too soon and end up hurt so I may need to reevaluate. The good news is that I got my longest run of the week done today so there is some recovery in sight.

pluses: productive day at church

minuses: sore finger, tight hamstring

long run and recovery

Yesterday I met up with Steve, Charles, Jason and Kamran for a long run. Jason and Kamran were with us for the first 5 then they headed back. I didn't do my long run on Sat so Steve and I were set to go 24. Charles ran with us for the first half but took a different route back. Overall, it was a pretty tough day. From the get go I could tell I had run too hard on Saturday. My legs were feeling kind of heavy. I did start to get in a good rhythm after the turn around but then we hit some hills and Steve pulled away. After the hills we ran the rest of the way together (more or less). I felt like he was pulling me along the whole time. Everything felt really labored towards the end but I was trying my best to hold on. I was really happy to be done. Ruth brought us some chocolate milk for recovery which was much appreciated. I haven't felt that worn out after a run in awhile, but I think it's good because I know I worked hard and survived. After the run I figured out we avg 7:00min pace overall. That made me feel a lot better because although I was working hard I didn't really feel like I was moving at all. 7 min pace for 24.4 miles...I'll take it.

Today I ran about 5.5 on trails with Mike, Bruce, and Karma. It felt good to be on the trails and work out some of the aftermath from yesterday!

pluses: nice weather and good time on the trails

minuses: finger is sore from dislocation yesterday