Toot! Toot!

So I'm not one to toot my own horn, but I've got to after this workout. Today I ran the last "hard" long run of my training for the Autumn Leaves 50K. Due to the 10 Miler road race at the end of September, I cannot run another hard long run and be recovered in time to hopefully PR in that race. My plan is to run two easy runs the next two weekends, one 15 miler and one 20 miler and then race a hard 10 miler, and the following weekend run an easy 28 miler to complete my training before my 3 week taper.

These past two week's I've felt like sh*t on my runs. Ever since the hilly 14 miler Kevin and I ran in Seattle three weeks ago, my quads have felt like crap. I spent much of the next two weeks on the trails to ease the pounding pressure on them, but that ended up messing up my arches and I've been dealing with the beginnings of plantar fasciitis. After a rough massage treatment from Kelly, I finally got my feet back under me literally. No more pain when running, but my legs felt sluggish and in a 10x800m repeat workout this past Thursday, my first interval was at 8min pace and my last was only at a 6:37 (to put it in perspective, I did the same workout the Tuesday after the Seattle run and nailed all 10 in a 6:30 pace, with only half the recovery between each).

Saturday evening, Kevin and I began prepping for our long runs. Kevin was planning to run 22 miles and I had 25 on the plate. My workout was something like: 14 mi progression from warm up down to gmp, 6mi fartlek of 1min hard (6:40-45)/1min easy (7:20-30), and finish the last 5mi @ ghmp, or the a.k.a. "Dathan Workout". I asked Kevin what he had planned and he also said the Dathan Workout. I asked him what his intervals were going to be, hoping perhaps we could run together for some of the run. He began rattling off something insane and I said, "that's not the Dathan Workout!" "Yes, it is. It's what you had me do back in 2008 when I was training for my 3 hour marathon." Sure enough he was right, and I realized I have modified the Dathan Workout over the years to accommodate the runners I coach. So I asked him to repeat the insanity again and told him, "Kevin, that's impossible!" "Yeah, I know! But it's what you had me do and it's what I'm going to try to do again." "I want to do it with you," I said. "Are you sure? Well, I guess you can always slow down if you need to." I took this comment as a challenge, but also a realistic compromise. I could attempt this thing, but if my body could not handle it, I could always just slow down.

The "real" Dathan Workout: 3mi warm up 
20min @ 7:30 
20min @ 7:00 
20min @ 6:45 
20min @ 6:30 
15min @ 7:00 
3min @ 7:20 
12min @ 6:55 
3min @ 7:15 
9min @ 6:50 
3min @ 7:10 
6min @ 6:45 
3min @ 7:00 
3min @ 6:30 or whatever's left in the tank 
2 mile cool down 

Sunday morning rolled around and Kevin and I drove to our normal parking spot one mile outside of Minto Brown Park in Salem. We warmed up 3mi @ 8ish min pace, which ended up feeling good (compared to my 9-10min pace warm ups lately). Then we started the workout. The first 20min felt easy, and so did the next 20min. The 3rd set started to burn and the 4th was brutal on the quads especially since we had been running a paved/trail combo, but we held 6:30's the whole time. We looped back to the car at the start of the 15min @ 7's and grabbed full water bottles for the second half of the workout. 7's felt easy and the 3min recovery was pedestrian. Then we went back and forth down the fartlek chain. It was hard to keep track of pace since I had my Garmin calculating average lap pace, but Kevin's Nike watch did a good job filling in the gaps so we didn't speed up or slow down too much. Finally on the 6min @ 6:45 pace we rounded back to the car one more time and my Garmin beeped at 22mi right as we finished the set. Kevin dropped out and decided his legs were fried. I was feeling great. I slowed my 3min recovery to a 7min pace and the blasted the last 3min as hard as I could. My watch showed and average of 6:40 on that mile, but if the first half was at 7min pace, I'm thinking the last 3min had to have been 6:15's or so. 

I didn't slow down too much on my 2 miles at the end and the thought briefly crossed my mind to run another 1.2 mi so I could get a marathon PR for the day. Kevin said his watched showed us at a half marathon PR of 1:28 and some change for the first 13.1mi. Anyway, I'm super pumped with how this workout went. I ran 25mi in a 7:05 pace average, making the run under 3 hours with a warm up and a cool down totaling 5 miles. Now I know I'm in 3 hour marathon shape and that was my goal going into this 50K. I need to just maintain at this point and stay healthy! My legs are very tired and my low back is really sore, possibly from my water-belt being strapped so tighly. Anyway, the plan is easy all week, with a short tempo on Thursday. Ahh, it feels so good to have that run behind me!

Link to today's workout: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/220869181

Running Scared

There's a lot of good that's been happening in my life lately. And when there's a lot of good happening, I start to get scared. First off... I'm engaged! My best friend Kevin finally dropped down to one knee and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. I'm so excited (and anxious) for our new life to begin. Kevin has been there for me in some of my highest and lowest points, especially when it comes to running. He's listened to my every sob story, ever twinge, and every recap of a good workout and bad workout. He's cheered me on at many races and even sacrificed several of his own to pace me to a new PR. He took off of work during my knee surgery to take care of me as I recovered. He's celebrated all of my runner's highs and held me during all of my runner's lows. Oh, and I can't forget, he's my back up massage therapist. The poor boys hands are going to have carpel tunnel syndrome before he's 30!

Lately, Kevin's been listening to me worry about an injury I don't have yet. It's an injury that's out there just waiting to happen because I'm running so well right now. Even though I believe I am training smart, something random like a Plica, could happen at anytime. I believe this because it's happened before. No matter how careful I train, how much I rest, how often I change out my shoes, or how healthy I eat, something has always happened to sideline me from my goals. Kevin has listened to me every night since my first 5K PR in the All-Comer's Meet worry about some random, life threatening, career ending, flat on my back injury that's floating out there in the cosmic galaxy just waiting for the most unopportune moment to come barreling down to earth and hit me like a sack of rocks. Most of the time, Kevin just shakes his head and laughs at me. Once and awhile he'll agree with me, saying I've probably already got a stress fracture in my hamstring muscle and tendonitis in my fibula bone. Oh and most likely a bursae exploded in my plantar fascia. Yeah, let's just say he enjoys making up super random injuries as much as I dislike thinking up injuries I don't actually have yet.

Why Kevin puts up with my insanity, I will never know. Why I put myself through it, I may never know either. Yesterday on an easy 10 mile run, I spent the first 4 miles worrying about all the different types of injuries I could get if I was not careful. I spent so much time focused on this absurdity, that I hadn't even noticed that my legs were feeling great that I was running faster and longer than I had planned to. When I came back to reality, I shook myself out of my funk and decided to focus on the here and now, not the then and when. I had a great run and was able to savor the things I love most about running: the sweat dripping down my face, the sun on my shoulders, the feeling of the ground underneath my feet, the sound of my breath, and the effortlessness of the run. I wondered to myself, why can't I enjoy this feeling on every run? When I'm injured, this is the feeling that I miss the most and I long for. Yet, when I'm healthy, I do not permit myself to take pleasure in it.

So, with the help of my soon to be husband, and my own commitment to dealing with my internal struggles, I'm going to strive to live more in the moment. To live in the run. No more worry about tomorrow. No more concern about the what if's, the I can't's, and the woe is me's. I need to remember that each injury has made me stronger and smarter and if something does occur, that it's not the end of the world. There's always another race. I will come out of it strong and healthy like I have every time before. Ha, that reminds me of what my massage therapist Kelly Woodke just told me, "Wow, you always get so much stronger and faster after every injury. It would actually be a blessing if you got injured again, so you could be even faster!" Ha, ha. Well I don't want attempt to purposely get injured, but what a different take and more positive way to look at what I've been fearing the most.

Happy Running!

What's your secret?

I wanted to wait to blog until after the Coburg Half Marathon that way I could verify if all this made absolutely no sense, or if I had previously just been lucky. The verdict? This all makes absolutely no sense.

I want to take you back to something that happen last fall. If you know me at all or have read my previous posts, you know that I had to have knee surgery for plica removal on October 31, 2011. Plica is something I was born with in my knee that I didn't need, like wisdom teeth or an appendix. It got pinched under my knee cap and swelled up, resulting in a lot of pain. I had it removed and have been on the mend ever since. I've had a lot of ups and downs after the surgery and have had professionals in the medical field as me if I think the surgery was successful and others tell me, rarely does plica removal work for people with knee problems. These negative comments have effected me. When my knee starts to hurt I think that they may be right, but when I have a breakout run, I feel as though I'm proving them wrong. I have worked very hard in the past two months to get rid of any residual scar tissue in my knee and gain back all of my range of motion. The result? I can run down hills again without pain and I can finally touch my heel to my butt in a quad stretch.

Before my knee surgery, my fiancé, Kevin, and I attended a conference in Portland on real estate management. Kevin attended most of the conference on his own, but I joined him for the last day. The speaker used many generic motivational tactics to inspire people to reach for their dreams. I decided then an there when I figured out what was wrong with my knee and fixed it, I would get dead serious about my training. Before and even after my surgery I could not do much in the way of exercise. Bending my knee whether it was in a weight-bearing or non weight-bearing phase hurt. I picked up a new sport, POP Pilates, and worked out 30-120min a day on the floor of my apartment while watching Cassey Ho's videos. I began to notice a difference in my body after only a few weeks. I was more toned and the exercises were getting easier and easier. I had done Pilates in the past, but never on the level Cassey does them. She'd push me to the point of exhaustion. Sometimes I would collapse under my own body weight unable to do one more tricep dip. But, as many things go when they are continually worked at, I was able to finish her workouts and gained strength and endurance. I "raced" my first 5K in March and broke 20 minutes. WHHHHAT? The barrier that I've worked at for years, just broken with little running and no speed training. I was asked that time old question, "What's your secret?" I would tell people, Pilates. I felt strong, solid, and efficient when I ran. I didn't have any endurance training so running fast for anything longer than a 5K fast was out of the question. Or so I thought. A week later I set an 8K PR. Now I was really baffled.

Let me take you back one more time. During the time between this 8K race and when I began running again after the knee surgery (late December) I was having digestive problems. I began keeping a food diary to find out which food I was eating was causing me such discomfort. I could not narrow it down to one specific food so I decided to take out an entire nutrient. I started with gluten and had planned to try dairy if that did not work. After a few days on a gluten free diet, I noticed my symtoms had subsided. After two weeks they were gone all together. By the time of the 8K PR race, I had been gluten free for about 3 months, only "cheating" in the evenings with my gluten filled favorites. After the cheating began to cause me discomfort the next day, I cut out gluten cold turkey and never noticed the symptoms again, unless I accidently ate a food containing gluten.

So I was gluten free and still doing POP Pilates through April, May, and June. During these months I steadily increased my mileage from 20 miles, to 30 miles, to my normal training regimen of 40 miles a week. I was dealing a little with knee pain, but it would come and go in phases. I went to Cooperative Performance and Rehab and got the treatment on my knee that I had been needed to get done since the surgery. The exercises helped and now the knee is about 95% back to normal with only a bit of residual scar tissue remaining. I begin doing what I called "two a day Tuesdays" runs and after several weeks of the one day doubles, I added in a double run on Friday's as well. I hovered around 50-60 miles a week for about a month, and this last week I bumped it up to 65 miles a week.

And so, why all this blah blah blah background information. Well, because a week ago I PR'ed in the 5K and I wanted to blog about it right away, but then I didn't want to jinx myself for the half marathon I was planning to run on July 22nd. I got all those questions again, "What's your secret?". I wasn't doing any speed work and most of my runs lately had been slow. The week before my 5K PR, I'd warm up at a 10:30 pace and get down to a 9:30 pace by the end of them. I didn't try to fight it too much, but rather let my body do what it wanted to. I was also getting questions about my weight. I have lost 10 pounds since December. I have lost 15 pounds since last summer. The weight began to come off as soon as I started doing POP Pilates. The gluten free diet really helped the pounds melt off. My ferritin levels went up and my vitamin D was through the roof. I had subbed a lot of my bread eating with oats, rice, and lots and lots of veggies and yogurt. I no longer felt sluggish or weighed down on my runs (until that strange slow week before the 5K on Hayward, which I think had a lot to do with rebounding from a hard 17 miler that I will talk more about later). Oh yes, and one more minor detail to this story, the weekend before this 5K race, I pulled a muscle in my calf when running down a steep trail and had to get an emergency massage from Kelly on the Tuesday after. I could hardly run and the muscle was bulging out. The massage and an easy run strategy was a success, but I didn't know if it was too soon or smart to try to race a 5K four days after the pull happened.

As I warmed up for the OTC Series 5K race held on historic Hayward Field, I felt like crap. My legs were heavy and I was having a hard time maintaining a 9:30 pace. I ran and ran hoping my legs would finally turn on and realized they needed to be running fast in about a half an hour. Four warm up miles later I was able to get down to an 8:30 pace, and thought, "oh boy this is going to be fun."

When I stepped to the starting line, James, a running buddy of mine, asked me what I was planning to run. I told him I didn't know and I may just jog it as a workout. I wasn't about to reveal the truth, I was running on an injury and if my warm up pace was any reflection on how this race would go, I was going to run pretty poorly today.

We took off and instantly I felt good. On lap 9, I was regretting running the 5K and wished I had bailed out on the 3K, but I continued to push and managed to regain my pace on the last 2 laps. The result? 19:29. Three seconds faster than my 5K PR that I ran 3 weeks before the Eugene Marathon last year when I was in the best shape of my life.

The following week I managed a 1500 meter PR and then 3 days later I ran a 1:29:43 half marathon. 56 seconds off from breaking my half marathon PR. The Coburg Run in the Country Half Marathon was another race that I went into with low expectations. I had signed up for the race to see where I was at fitness wise over a long distance so I knew where to start my speed workouts at when I began actually "training" at the end of the month. I thought maybe I could run a 1:32 if I was really really on my game. 1:32 was my old PR before the 2011 Corvallis Half, and I had run a 1:32 twice when I had been relatively fit. The only run I had to base my prediction off of was a 17 miler I had run three weeks prior at a 7:25 pace (that was including the warm up).

Kevin had registered 3 days before the race to pace me. The gun went off and he and I headed out, and immediately checked our watches. Too fast, I saw a 6:30 and backed it off. At a half mile in we were at 6:45 pace and I continued to hold back. Lots of people were passing us, and Kevin reminded me, it's much more fun to pass them back at the end. At 1 mile we had gotten into our groove and my watch reflected a 7:08 mile. After that, we chit-chatted to keep the pace slow. I felt relaxed and very strong. We cruised gently down from 7:07 to 7:00 to 6:50 for the first 7 miles. The progression felt great and very natural. I was not winded when we talked. At mile 8ish we picked it up and had a stretch of 6:45's. This is the point in the race that we really began passing people. We saw all the people that had passed us in the first mile. We continued to chat and try to remain relaxed. Finally with 2 to go, Kevin said if we threw down two 6:30 miles we'd break 1:30. He asked if I thought I could handle it and I said I would try. Our first mile was 6:30, our next mile was 6:17. Kevin was even breathing a little hard on the one :) When we rounded the last turn and I saw we were going to break 1:30, I yelled at Kevin with glee, "we're going to do it babe!" I finished with a 5:18 kick. 

I felt as sore after the race as I expected to. My calves were tight from running on my toes for the last 2.1 miles of the half and my right hip was tight due to the canter of the road. My Monday recovery run was slow, but I embraced it. I did my normal POP Pilates workout since Cassey has posted some new videos I had not tried yet. 


Ok, so did I answer the question, "what's your secret?" Maybe not. I don't really have a secret. I've just been listening to my body and really enjoy learning what it responds well too fitness wise and food wise. I don't mind sharing my secret either. I've gotten many of my friends doing POP Pilates and trying gluten free diets. I also don't mind sharing my racing strategy for those who wish to contact me at happyrunningcoach@gmail.com. Funny, a woman I passed in the race has already emailed me asking if I would coach her for a sub 1:30 half. I also know God has had a major hand in my recovery and has blessed me with this talent that I never thought I had growing up. I just need to remember not to take Him nor the gift for granted like I have in the past.


I'm excited to see what happens this year both physically and mentally. I say mentally because after being racked with injures for the past few years, it's hard to accept that I may have finally gotten over a huge void that was in my training and I don't have to "run scared" anymore. Meaning, I can go out and enjoy my runs and not worry over every twinge I feel or fret that I'm going to get hurt again. That's been the biggest worry that I've faced. Kevin has been super supportive and really kept my head on straight when I just about lose it because my arch feels cramped (I have plantar fasciitis!) or my hip is stiff (I have a swollen bursae sac!) or my knee gets achy (the plica is back!). He tells me to give it a day and don't run hard and sure enough everything goes away. Now I just have to convince myself that I'm strong and smart and if something does happen it's not the end of the world. Also, one or two days of rest is better than one or two weeks of being injured. Maybe that's the secret. Maybe its giving up gluten and the inflammatory response it caused to my body. Maybe its the strength I've gained with pilates. Maybe it's losing a few pounds and running lighter. Maybe its the higher mileage with no speed. Or maybe it's all of these things or none of these things. I think my friend Liisa, who also got knee surgery for a plica, put it best in a recent message to me:

"It's cool to know that the older we get (to a point) that we continue to build on our base, even when coming back from injury. The long term callousing effect of running, base training, and racing seems to make it easier to return to the form you were in and then surpass it. And like you mentioned at some point, as women we can almost expect that our performance can improve into our 30s at least. It's promising and definitely somewhat exciting to think that our best years could/will be ahead of us still."

Happy running friends!

Pain

Pain comes in all forms. Quick like a lightening clap. A sharp stabbing jolt through your body. Pain can be dull and seethe in slow, digging deep into your bones and hurt like a faint pulse. Pain can wake you up in the middle of the night- make you shoot straight up out of bed with a gasp as though an intruder creeps in your midst. Yet, pain can keep you from ever falling a sleep in the first place. It keeps you tossing and turning until your eyelids finally give up trying. Pain can be visible as with a cut or a bruise. There can be swelling and redness. And sometimes, the swelling cannot be seen. It sits deep within your heart and makes your insides turn and twist. The worst kind of pain, is the pain you cannot express with words or even emotion. The pain that stays burred within your soul. The pain of losing a loved one or getting a grim diagnosis. The kind of pain that others do not understand. Many times, the visible pain can be healed with medication or bandages. A trip made to the doctor's office can decipher between bad pain and tolerable pain. The doctor can make much of the pain go away. Some of us athletes elate in pain. We punish ourselves in workouts and races just so we can feel pain and have our bodies natural pain killers kick in to give us a self medicated rush. But nobody asks for emotional pain. And yes, there are specialist you can see to help you talk though your pain, but really no one can understand what is going on inside of you and no one can take away those feelings. Its not until you come to terms with the situation and yourself that you can have relief from emotional pain.

(I found this draft on my blog recently and do not remember writing it. Sometimes when I get caught up in the moment of writing, I go somewhere else and do not return until the thought is gone.)

Walk/jog your way to a 5K PR?

Yeah, I know the title of this post is a bit insane. Can one really walk/jog their way back into the best shape of their life?

Ok, to be honest, I'm not quite there yet. But my body has really been surprising me, both positively and negatively lately.

First the negative. Since when does it take so dang long to heal a small strain? I know I'm getting older, but 2.5 weeks! Really??? If I tweak my calf by turning too sharply on a run (and FYI I'm only running 20 miles/week) it should NOT take half a month for the pain to go away! I miss those days when I was 19-20 years old and would twist my ankle stepping off a curb, and have sharp shooting pains and numbness all the way up my leg, thinking OMG I just broke my ankle... and then 30sec later, not only be able to walk it off, but finish the run and have no after effects the next day.

Ok, done complaining. Now the positives. Where did this 19:59 with no training stuff come from? (the sub 20 holds significance that I'll get to in a bit) I was literally "walk/jogging it" back in January. Before that I hadn't run a step since Oct. 31 when I got my knee surgery, and before that my running was spotty because of my Plica pain. The only thing I could do to keep any fitness for the past 5 months was Pilates. I did POP Pilates for hours a day, working on developing washboard abs and buns of steel. 'Cause you know, if I could never run again after my surgery, I might as well still look like I can. My cardio was pretty non-existent. I did a little pool running here and there, but biking and elliptical were completely out of the question before the surgery (see older posts).

Yet, somehow, on March 8th, after working up to 15-25 mpw during Feburary and then 25-30 mpw during March, and still taking some cross-training days in there, and on a max long run of 8 miles, I was able to run the 4th fastest 5K time of my life. Really??? Maybe I've been setting my expectations too low. Now if I remember correctly. I had spent years try to break 20min in the 5K. In college I was on a club cross country team and trained specifically for the 5K. We did both on road and off road 5K's, but I could never crack the 20min barrier. It really hasn't been since 2010 that I got my first legit 5K time under 20min. (I had run one 5K race with a recorded time under 20min before that, but the race director told me after the race that he had measured the course short). I had been training for half marathons that summer and had run a half-marathon PR shortly before my first 19:56. Last year, I ran my fastest 5K time of 19:32 when I was in 3:08 marathon shape. This came from no 5K speed training, but solely marathon training and high high mileage.

So how am I able to run a 19:59 on 20-25mpw, with a long run of 8mi, ZERO speed work, and at the spur of the moment? (Did I mention I came into the race with no expectations other than to run it as an easy progression run?) I thought to myself a mile into the race (of which I hit at 6:20) either this is going to be the best comeback story ever or the biggest epic crash and burn of all time. I pictured my pace crumbling to a walk as all of my athletes sprinted by me. They would say, "Come on coach, run with us! You can do it!" And I would not make eye contact with them, but rather stare at my feet as they shuffled pathetically toward the finish line. Imagining myself dying a miserable death during a 5K footrace is probably not the best form of mental imagery during a race, but believe me, I saw it all.

Yet, that's not what happened. Instead, my hips stayed strong (thank you Pilates!), my feet effortlessly tapped the ground and lifted right back off, and I felt like I was soaring over other runners as I passed them. Where did all this energy come from? To be honest, I hadn't had much energy for running lately. I could blame my new gluten free diet as the culprit, but I really don't think that was the issue. I still get plenty of carbs and protein from other sources. It wasn't until I at a hamburger and had one of the best runs of my life the next day that I learned I was becoming anemic. So I began adding red meat to my diet on a more regular basis and realized I had a lot more energy. But red meat alone can't be the only reason why I went from a sub 21min 5K runner when I'm out of shape to a sub 20min 5K runner.

I've had a week to reflect on last Thursday's race, and I think what happened, is something that I've been preaching to my athletes for years. When you get to a certain high level in your training and then take a break, you don't lose everything and you don't go back to square one when you start up again. My body had adjusted and adapted from that last training cycle. Physiological and chemical changes took place while I was training for my last marathon, and those changes had built off previous marathon training. I kept strength in my muscles through Pilates, and even though I had not done a lot of lactic threshold workouts or high mileage running, my body retained its muscle memory. It did not forget that it can run fast.

Now, there is no way I could have maintained that pace for a 10K or even another mile. Training plays a HUGE role in performance. But, I think I need to realize that I've been putting in the hard work for years now. I've been training at a higher mileage for years, I've been doing harder workouts for years, and I'm not longer that 20:30 5K girl I was in college. By switching from shorter distance, to longer distance over the past 5 years, my body has developed and adapted and is now stronger and more conditioned to this intenser way of training. I'm excited to see what 2012 brings. I feel that I was training smarter at the end of 2011 before my Plica blew up, and the rest and intense core work that I'm bringing into 2012 is just what I needed. I'm listening to my body. How so? Well, so far in 2012, I've had every old injury creep up. Pes anserinus, Achilles tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, psoas tightness, hamstring pain, calf strain... the list goes on. But most of these ailments disappeared in a day or two after I stretch and strengthen the areas as I have been taught to over the years (rather than running to a massage specialist for help). I feel that running maintenance is a never ending chore, but if I want to stay healthy, I need to keep up with my eccentric exercises, lunges, Pilates, and stretching routines.

Can one PR after coming off of a walk/jog program? Most likely not, unless your PR wasn't obtained during your highest peak of fitness, but sometimes your body can surprise you. I know I just need to remember to listen to it every day and be kind to it so it will return the favor this fall!