8 at 8

I'm just going to start this with a huge disclaimer. When I was prepping for last weekend's 10 miler race, I made sure to eat my go-to pb and banana on whole wheat bread 2 hours before I ran and kept fueling throughout the run. When I prepped for this Saturday's planned 10 miles? I ate a Mojo bar at 7:15 and was running at 7:40 with limited fuel on me. Can you see where this is headed?!

I ran from Huck's house to Fleet Feet, where I joined up with their Saucony Grassroots run. It was a special event designed to join local (and 30 min away "local" ) run groups with people that might be interested in having people closer to home to talk to when they jog. I looked at all the routes and the main difference between them all was where the turnaround point was. Mentally frustrating for me?! They all required me to go back the direction I'd just come from!

SC wanted me to do 10, but after getting exhausted in a "dear heavens I have no calories to burn after 8 hours of sleep and 2 miles of running and a FRICKIN GRANOLA BAR!" way, I figured I'd go and see how everything felt. I ran with someone I'd never met before, which was a challenge to keep talking as we explained what we did, how we got into running, etc. I'm so used to running with Huck or KR that it was a challenge to remember that not everyone knows that I like to be on the edge of the sidewalk, to your right, and that I'll let you go first when we need to go single file.

Our path took us through Meredith College, over the 440 bridge and through the dreaded NC Art Museum trails/hills :/ I wimped out on them going out, but after we turned around to make the route 6 miles, I bucked up a bit and ran all the way up the longest hill coming back. When we got out of Meredith, I turned right, thanked my running partner for the entertainment, and trekked back to my car at Huck's.

This run took a looooot out of me. I did one round of speedplay, and when I got over a hill and on to where I could do a 2nd round, I didn't trust my balance enough to keep going that speed, but at least I kept going, because Huck drove by!

End result: 8.1 miles in 1:34 on a friggin' empty stomach with hilllllllsssss!

Here's to the next TV timeout!

-Syd

PS- Huck was out getting pallets, and look what he and his buddies made on a Sunday afternoon :)

Maybe the chair was a bit big?!

Downtown Challenge

Remember when I did the little Easter egg hunt around town? The same store and organizing group had a different challenge this past Thursday. In their Tuesday e-mail, they sent out the clues for Thursday's run, the text of 10 historical signs located around DTR- downtown Raleigh. There are over 32 signs in Raleigh, so knowing which 10 could give you points was key. Oh, as was finding out just WHERE the signs were. And then you had to make the most efficient route as possible to try to max out your options. Ohhh the strategy!

I looked up the clues and sign locations, completely messed up on one of the clues' locations, but still managed to map out a route that hit 8 of the 10 signs and was 5.3 miles. KR agreed to come with me, and since DTR is safe, but not exactly where I'd want to be with just another girl and my running gear, Huck agreed to be our running bodyguard as well. I kept looking at the map on Thursday and managed to cut out .4 miles of running, but keeping all 8 signs. By the way, you had only an hour to do this and get back to the store.

Huck and I loaded the mapmyrun route onto our phones and I had this scrap piece of paper with the turn by turn directions and little stars to remind me that hey, somewhere around here you should be looking for a sign! There were only a few signs that we had all to ourselves, making the process of finding exactly where on the corner our target was super streamlined. Our little trio took pictures at each stop, then figured out where to go next.

KR and Huck are about the same pace, so they ran ahead of me, chatted and every now and then turned around to go "hey, where do we go?!" or "come on!" Lol, I kept up with them pretty well, but I know they had to restrain themselves a bunch with me! In his boredom, Huck ran up a ramp and leaped over the railing at the top of the ramp onto the concrete sidewalk below where his minimalist shoes did jack squat to protect his heel when he landed. He now has a really pretty red bruise not on the heel that hurts, but on the inside of his ankle and chides me to slow down when we walk places together :/

When we got back to the store, 4.83 miles and 55 minutes later, we showed off our pictures for tickets. See the pretty pictures?!

It should be noted that my app never stopped, even when we paused to take pictures, cross the street or figure out just which way to turn and where! A free beer and mass amounts of water  made the pain go away, and I put my tickets in to try to win a foam roller, ice pack, visor or t-shirt/pint glass combination. KR was going for socks and the foam roller, and she did this squeal when they drew for the foam roller first and on her first attempt at the Downtown Challenge, she won the first item! She also won her pair of socks, so she was double happy!

Overall, it was a pretty fun run! Having Huck AND KR run together went very well, which I realized was a gamble since they've only met a few times even though they both hear tons of stories about the other one. Those two swapped notes and realized I can go faster than I have been, so I have this evil feeling I might start getting pushed more soon!

Here's to the next TV timeout!
-Syd

Because sometimes I wing it

And by winging it, I mean I use SC (smartcoach) as a guide when I'm recovering from the 10 miler. Monday was icky and rainy and while normally I'd love that, it seriously shot down my motivation to go run. Even the roomie wasn't going to hold me to our 2 mile date. Crap.

But then I committed a cardinal sin of running- I double booked myself! I asked both the roomie AND Huck to do 2 miles on Tuesday!!!...except the roomie went during the day since she had it off and that left Huck and I to do whatever for the evening.

When I thought I'd be double booked, I mentally moved Wednesday's tempo run to Thursday, figuring I'd do my Thursday miles on Tuesday. Confused yet? Don't worry, it'll all be working out in the end :) Instead, I went right instead of left as I left Huck's place (he lives in a valley so its pick a hill to walk up as your warmup!) and he suggested we do a route we'd mapped out a while ago. It meant we had to survive an evil hill, but at least it was done and over with at the beginning of the route, and relatively flat from there.

Huck asked what our goal pace was, and I told him "survive?!" after the gray shaded (aka evil) hill. Surprisingly, we talked from the start through that hill. I'd gotten details of the news from Saturday and I shared them with Huck, along with what I will and won't be doing. Right now, it looks like I'm going home for a very special holiday in June, both to be there for my family and run a race with some of them! I was so focused on the run as we talked that I didn't have any extra energy to cry :)

The mapmyrun lady told me our pace kept dropping... and dropping...even as Huck and I chatted a bit and I focused on NOT crying, so when we got a little bit beyond this awesome photo op, Huck went all Super Coach on me. It was neat having him coach me with fixes that I could do without messing up my form or other crazy stunt. He pushed when I needed it, and we agreed on start/stop points to test out our sprints.

Our fartleks were focusing on one step per sidewalk "square." When the squares were uneven- two where there should've been three- it was hard to keep at it, but to keep up the momentum of such long strides, your speed had to really ratchet up. I don't really know if my turnover increased that much, but lengthening my stride considerably dropped the average pace for our last mostly downhill/fartlek-ing .25 miles a 8:19 mile pace.

Overall, 2.25 miles in 22:10. I'll take it! Fun run for tomorrow night. I've already nerded out about it!!!

Here's to the Next TV Timeout!
-Syd

PS- My tech shirt for my half marathon? Unisex medium and I can swim in that thing. The Tarheel 10 miler tech shirt? I ordered a medium, thinking it was unisex and even if it wasn't, I'm an Old Navy (tall) medium, so even if its tighter than I like, its still not baring everything. When I got to packet pickup, they said these shirts ran small, so they bumped everyone up a size. I should've gone up 2. or 3. the front barely covered my belly button! I've lost most of this tummy and gained a defined waist since I started running! WT...! AND, I realize I have relatively broad shoulders for a girl, but the sleeves started on top of my shoulders by a good inch on each side. Combine that shirt with shorts that are a bit big, oooh dear I was self conscious. Someone yelled something at me from their car as they turned into their apartments but it was during the speed time and they can bite me, so I flashed them not one but two fingers in a gesture of peace- no really, the peace symbol! not two of the same finger but on different hands!- and kept going.

TarHILL 10 Miler

First off, someone else coined the title of the post, but its more PG than what I wanted to call Saturday. Namely, its one vowel too far, but a lot of that has to do with how much I just doooon't like Chapel Hill.

Annnyway. Easiest race recap ever. Ya ready?

The more detailed version goes like this:

Lined up in the endzone of the field at Kenan Stadium, UNC-Chapel Hill (better known to everyone outside of NC as just plain "Carolina"), behind the 10:30 pace group sign. My goal was 11 min miles. Ran into a few people I knew and had last seen at the NC Half in Charlotte, which made me feel slightly less alone! I tried to ignore the people lined up behind me talking about hos compression gear was all a placebo effect, as I had my fancy hot pink compression sleeves on my shins :( Listened to Meb give some inspirational advice, and then, we were off!...sort of. I had to travel the from my endzone to the other one, around, and halfway back down the field before I hit the start line. It was quite an antsy while, which you'll see in my chip vs. gun times.

The course was pretty, well laid out, tons of volunteers making sure you were going the right place, and many chances to see other runners. For one part of it, the 2nd loop around was 2 lanes of the street and the slower first loop around was the other half of the street. I had to keep reminding myself to run MY race and also not get distracted looking at the form of the faster runners.

Water breaks were at the 2, 6 and 8 mile marks, with Gu at the last one. I made the mistake of taking the Gu last, so the last taste I had in my mouth was the vanilla bean Gu, which is a good taste, but I had to climb an evil hill- no really, they do a split time of just that 1 mile stretch because the hill is *that* evil- and finding water after the finish line was like hunting it in the Sahara sooo I should've rethought that strategy. Or they should've had the Gu lady first, not last at the station.

Anyway, I almost stopped at 3 miles in. Not because I hurt, but because a family member I haven't talked to in nearly 3 years called. Other people had been keeping me in the loop, but still, to get the call directly from them was enough to make me break down in tears on the side of the course. I read the Google Voice transcript of their voicemail and had this moment of "what the crap do I do?!" I could've walked back to the stadium, but the more I breathed and thought logically, the less good I figured that would do. I had trained for 10 miles, knew I had it in me, and I'm pretty sure that the way I will deal with this news is running, so might as well get used to it now. Besides, there was nothing I could do, so I might as well just keep running. Yes, the irony of getting a phone call 3 miles into a race that raises money for a cancer research center from someone calling to tell you they're dying of cancer.

I cried, a lot, and pretty sure between my already red-hot face, sunglasses, and my location solidly in the 2nd half of runners, people just thought I was tired and injured. What hurt first, however, were my hips. Just like in my half, I was super excited that what came to my "um...ow?!" senses first wasn't my shins or my knees. My shins felt fine and my knees weren't painfree, but whatever. There were hills, if I haven't mentioned that yet, and some of them were steep mofos, so I don't blame the hip flexors for hurting first. Later that day, my glutes would also scream their "hey, remember us?!?!" message :/

Where am I in this seemingly meandering race recap? Uh, how about if I just get to the end. I was running 10:30 miles until I hit the hill, and I just didn't have the mental focus to keep running, no matter how slow. Only a few short walk breaks, but dang, that killed my pace. My clock time had me doing 11:41 miles, but chip time was better than that :) You can see just how flipping long it took to actually start!

1:56 is my gun time, 1:47 is my chip time, 10:47 is my pace. First 2 numbers are start and end of the eeeevil hill!

I wasn't the happiest camper at the finish line. There was a pause in handing out the medals, so I had to wait on the field surrounded by other recent finishers, no water, no liquid refreshment, and seeing medals finally getting handed out halfway up the stairs with people completely oblivious to the horde waiting for them to MOOOOOOVE below. When I finally got my medal, I was still ready to strangle every volunteer who HADN'T run up Laurel Hill since the last time they had water and told me "oh its not very far"... If I can pass 2 tents of volunteers between you and the water, don't lie to me!

Good race, don't know if I'll do it again, just because its a weird distance, I detest Chapel Hill and UNC especially (hazards of being a State alum) and that hill is nothing but evil.

Here's to the next TV timeout!

-Syd

Flat Speed

I got behind. Lots of reasons, but Wednesday's speed workout was one I'd been scared to do. I asked the rehabbing KR to be my pacer for it. We built a mini-girl date out of it, so quite fun :) I did just what KR suggested- drank my water and held on tight when we took off! She was keeping track on her wrist GPS and I deliberately turned off my GPS app from telling me average pace. Because we ran on trails, my phone would occasionally tell me my current pace, alternating between 16 and 6 minutes per mile. The 6 was never accurate, although when I took my walk breaks, the 16 might not have been off, but I got told that during my fast times!

The goal for the day was 4 miles total, with 2 single mile fast runs, with 1/2 mile in between. The fast miles I was aiming for 8:45 pace, which was my fastest single mile EVER! KR kept us between 8:15 and 9 pace, occasionally giving me hand taps to slow down (hee hee, never thought I'd have to write THAT!) but even more, especially the 2nd mile, gesturing the "gimme more!"

KR sort of chided me, a lot:/ Her point, methinks, was that I could do the fast miles and not die. Or puke. Not puking is a good thing! IT might be painful, but enh, running for 2 hours is painful. Running for 2.5 hours is a different pain. Be the fast pain. Get back to views like this faster:

Here's to the next TV timeout,
-Syd

A case of the Mondays

SmartCoach told me to go run an easy 2 miles, at a bit faster pace for Monday. When I looked at the weather forecast for Monday at, oh, 11:50pm while reading an old Runner's World magazine Sunday night, I realized that I'd need to be out the door by 8am to have any chance of finishing my run before it got to 70*, and yes, I am still a heat wimp when it comes to exercising. Only then. Other times I'm the first person to be cold in a room and deathly hate all air blowing on me.

Back on track... I put my magazine down and set my alarm for 7am, and figured that if SC wanted me to run 12:31 and I've been trying to go 90 seconds faster, that was 11 min pace...which I knew I could do, no big. Then I looked forward to the speedwork for Wednesday, and well, I'm panicking. Staring down only my 2nd glass of water for the day (whoops!) and remembering what KR wrote to me " Anyone can pump out an mile at a time with a rest, so quit stressing, hydrate and just prep for it, then cling on for dear life when we take off on wed :)"




Wrar, so, alarm went off, I put on my awesome new compression sleeve (story about the uber pinkness some time), made a cute little claw to make sure I got a full 2 miles in, and I killed the final hill so I had to run up and OVER the hill, with a nice long recovery walk back to the house and sleeping roommate :) The entire time, I had this in my head:

And I busted out 10:11 min miles with serious up and down hills. Even MapMyRun calls my standard hill a scorcher! Showered, got on with my awesome day, and generally did my happy "woo!" dance for the day. I did before 8 am more than lots of people do all day :)

Here's to the next TV timeout!
-Syd

When the GPS gets stuck, just keep going

SmartCoach, my new best frenemy, told me to go run 8 miles at a 12:35 pace today. Since I'd been shooting for ~1.5 minutes faster than what SC tells me, I wasn't too worried when RunKeeper told me I was running an 11:34 pace, I figured I would pick it up as I warmed up. For these long runs, I figured since I was getting tired of campus, the evil NC Art Museum hills and near where I live, it was time to go on an ADVENTURE!

I've hiked quite a few miles of trails at Umstead State Park and the only time I'd really been on the bike and bridle packed gravel trails was to cut short a hike but there are lots of races that go through there, so it was time to go try it out!

I parked near the trail heads on the bottom of that map piece. We took the orange dots east to the road, then onto Reedy Creek Lake Trail. I'd read somewhere that the Airport Overlook was 3.1 miles, so I knew somewhere after that, we'd have to turn around. I part spaced out and part didn't want to have the voice in my head telling me how fast or slow I was or how much more I had to run.

Ignorance was total bliss! Huck and I passed these two guys running up a hill and smiling when we weren't even 1 mile in. Crazy guys, smiling while going up a hill! Except... we figured out why they were smiling! They were all DONE with hills! Seriously... I'd heard people say some crazy things about these hills, so I should've been more clued in, but this hill just kept winding around and going up and for every crest, there would be 2 seconds of downhill, NO FLATS and then more hill!

At 3 miles in, Huck got a call from his roommate explaining that he'd locked himself out and he needed to do X, Y, Z and etc. Huck explained we were 3 miles in and thus 3 miles away from a car, but we still had more to do. It was at this point that the GPS app stopped, which we didn't realize for who knows how long. Having never been on the trail, I wasn't certain of the random open space as the airport overlook, sooo we kept running. We were about to just say "enh, screw it!" when we saw a billboard shelter thing with a map in it, so we ran to that and realized we'd gone to the park's edge! Yeah, we ran to the right edge of that map slice which connects to a county park and a Cary greenway, definitely past 4 miles.

I was flat out deliriously happy at this point and both Huck and I turned on our GPS apps so we could figure out the "out" from the "back." Plus, we knew that all those hills we'd had to climb up the first 2 miles were going to be nice easy downhills to cruise down! ... except we forgot about that first hill, the one where we cruised down and Mr. Happy smiled up :/ I tried, oh how I tried, to kill that hill, especially since I know next Saturday I get a 1 mile uphill 8 miles in to my race but when we rounded a corner and Huck's "motivational" gasp was "yeah, don't look up" because we still didn't see the top of the hill, I winced and realized I couldn't quite keep my breath :( Some other runners passed us (sad face) and I had this "enh, good for you" which is neeever a good thing!...until we saw the pavement, our agreed upon stopping point. We kicked our butts from walking into "dear heaven, let us just be done" with a little friendly sprint race to see who would be first through the gate and we were DONE! (Huck won, which isn't all that surprising- he's faster/stronger but doesn't have the pink shoes like me ;D )

The final "back" stats were 4.3 miles at 10:53 pace, 500 calories burned for moi. For an 8 mile 12:35 long slow run, my 8.7 at sub-11 has me deliriously happy! Ice, NSAIDs and compression sleeves are my best friends, especially since the muscles around my butt are sore! Guess that's how you gain/lose a butt, going up those hills?! Good thing I got my interview pants taken in this week!

Here's to the next TV timeout!
-Syd