carb loading + overpacking

Thursday: A practice 5K with my Girls on the Run buddy

Friday: rest day

It’s the first time I’ve volunteered with Girls on the Run, a program that encourages self esteem in young girls through fitness and running. Each girl (3rd, 4th and 5th graders) is paired with an adult Running Buddy. We running buddies encourage them to walk/jog/run a 5K race by, um, walking, jogging or running with them. :)

Here are a couple pics from the practice 5K on Thursday:

I’d put my phone away by the time I met my buddy so I don’t have any pictures of her, but she was pretty cute — a 3rd grader. And so funny about running. She’d want to sprint for about 100 meters, then she’d be exhausted and ask if we could walk. I tried to get her to do a slower, extended jog, but she wasn’t having it. So we did sprints & walks for the duration of the 5K.

The race we’re practicing for is next month’s Starlight Run. My buddy is really excited, and said she’s going to “stretch a lot more” before that one. :)

Today, I’m taking it easy and packing for tomorrow’s 10K trail run. I’m driving up to the Tacoma area in the morning, and meeting my friend, Jill, who’s driving down from Seattle. And I’m inexorably excited!! SO. EXCITED. I don’t care if you tell me it’s silly to be so excited because it’s only a 10K and I haven’t really been training enough to make a marked difference in my speed yet. Don’t matter. I’m ready to run.

And, also, ready to carb load. From an appetite perspective, I’m oddly treating tomorrow as if it were a marathon. Today’s meals looked something like this:

• Breakfast: bagel with cream cheese, 12 ounce latte
• Snack: Jelly beans
• Lunch: Polenta with cheesy sauce, mushooms and peas and shrimp
• Dessert: A slice of chocolate cake
• Snack: Wheat thins
• Dinner: Spicy tuna roll
• And … maybe there will be another dessert

Perhaps I’m going overboard, but, I don’t know, it’s fun to fuel up. I can’t help it.

Another thing I’m going overboard on? Packing. In my real life (‘cos, you know, running isn’t real or something), I am the world’s lightest packer. I can travel out of the country for weeks with only a carry-on. But, when I’m running, I seem to want to prepare for EVERY circumstance (Will I want ankle socks? Knee socks? Will I want this headband? Maybe I’ll want this one.) and EVERY type of weather (I should bring a fleece! I should bring a rain jacket! And I’ll need sunglasses!) possible. I do believe I’ll need to learn to streamline before the Ragnar Relay this summer (12 people, 2 vans, not a lot of room for bags).

Think good thoughts for me while I’m running tomorrow! Or tweet at me — I’ll be super pumped if you do.

What are you doing this weekend?

slow and easy

Wednesday’s workout: 5.8 miles, slow

I was excited to run today, but knew I wanted to take it easy. The soreness from the weekend (or, I should say, the intensity of the soreness) surprised me, and I want fresh legs for the 10K I’m running on Saturday.

Dorky running belt. Happy runner.

I had a bit of heavy legs/heavy mind syndrome today, but it still felt good to be out there. And I wore the Garmin, but wouldn’t allow myself to look at it. (Which is really difficult to accomplish. I just kept telling myself that I didn’t want to know how slow I was going.)

I have my Garmin set on auto pause, so it automatically stops whenever I do, like when waiting for a stoplight. On one hand, I really like this because it captures a more accurate view of my pace. On the other, it absolutely feels like cheating. If I’m stopped for 20 seconds and start back up, I’ve had time to gain my breath back. (One could argue that I’ve lost momentum, and perhaps that’s true … but, more often, it feels like I’ve just taken a happy little break.)

And it’s pretty striking how much my heart rate drops, even in those brief breaks. Take a look:

See?? Cheater! Cheater!

When I got home, I was jonesing terribly for some protein, so made a big plate of eggs, turkey bacon and yellow peppers.

FUEL

And now I’m getting caught up in the days-before-a-race excitement. :) I know I’m slow and that Saturday’s time doesn’t really matter, but it’s a starting point. Something to work to break in the next race.

What’s your favorite post-workout meal?

preventing injuries & drinking wine

Monday’s workout: Hip hop boot camp class at the gym … which basically involves looking moronic while feeling like a Fly Girl:

Tuesday’s workout: stretching and drinking wine (yep, it’s a workout)

I really, really want to run today. I’m running in a 10K on Saturday, and I planned to do a six-mile tempo run today. But Sunday’s track workout did weird things to my leg muscles. Namely, I feel pain in these spots:

Okay, just kidding. I don’t feel pain in all those spots. But I do have a lot of soreness on the anterior parts of my shins and the front of my ankles. (Guess what?! I must’ve actually been successfully toe striking on Sunday!)

And while I know I could probably run today without aggravating them much, I’d really rather not get shin splits this early on in my “serious” running training.

In the last few weeks, I’ve gone from working out 3-4 times per week (more like 3) and only one of those days being a run to working out 5-6 times per week with 3 (or more) runs. I’m not pounding out high mileages, but it is a considerable upgrade from before. So I’m going to be smart and take it slow.

There’s a lot of this going on around here:

Ahhh, that's better.

And this is happening while I’m sitting at my desk at work:

Sweet, sweet relief

Why am I so paranoid about getting injured? Well, I have a History (with a capital H, naturally) with knee, hip and IT band pain.

(Please stop reading here unless you’re interested in an overwrought, dramatic account of my running-related pain. You’ve been warned.)

Back in 2007, when I was young and dumb (har har), my friend Amy suggested that we run a half-marathon in San Francisco. (I honestly can’t remember which one we did, but if you’re looking for one in SF, this looks cool.)

Amy and I ran cross country together in high school. But, let me clarify: Amy ran cross country (#2 girl on Varsity, I think). And I jogged cross country. By my senior year, I’d edged my way to #7 (the last spot) on Varsity. Even then, I think it was more of a consolation type of thing that coach gave to me because I was a good sport. I did cross country because I liked to stay fit and hang out with my friends — and I wasn’t good enough for any other Varsity sports.

Throughout college and afterward, I kept jogging, but I mixed it with a lot of other things: dance, kickboxing, the elliptical, keg stands. (Actually I’m sort of lying about the keg stands. I like to conflate the one keg stand I’ve ever done and pretend I’ve had a raucous, storied past.)

Also, when I say that I kept jogging, what I really mean is that I ran once every couple weeks for no more than 30 minutes at a time.

Fast forward to the half marathon. I said I’d do it, and then I promptly forgot to train for it. I think I upped my runs to twice per week or something, but I don’t know if I ever ran any long runs, definitely not anything over 7-8 miles. But, I figured, I’m in good shape. I’ll be fine.

And I was fine, mostly, except for that nagging knee pain that started to plague me around mile 9 or 10. (That’s also, I believe, the mile Amy decided she’d had enough of my slowness and left me to finish her last 3 miles strong.)

Here we are in happier times (around the first mile):

Happy. Slow. Before my knees crapped out.

I mean, how badly can you injure yourself if you’re only running 13 miles? Apparently, quite a bit. By the time I finished, I was doing the runner’s hobble, and the following week was, well, stupid. I stretched, iced, OD’d on Advil and couldn’t shake the knee pain.

So there began a solid two years of knee pain, hip pain and IT band uber-tightness. During that time, I didn’t actually make the connection to my IT band — I thought it was all in my knee — and so I didn’t really know how to properly treat it.

I’d try to go out jogging, and I’d feel the pain around 2-3 miles and call it a day. I did lot of other activities in the meantime and sort of gave up on running.

Eventually, I really missed running. And I got a bit smarter. And figured out I was dealing with bursitis and IT band syndrome, which are awfully common among runners, and also really treatable.

Since I caught the running bug again — it was only in January that I started getting excited about running again, and only in the last month that I’ve really cared about pushing myself — I’ve been doing things correctly.

• I found the right shoes for me.
• I ice and stretch and use the foam roller (although, frankly, probably not enough).
• I’ve started wearing compression socks and compression shorts after longer runs. (I am a total compression convert. I love this stuff.)

And, now, apparently, I take rest days even when I don’t want to.

Cheers!

Well, yes, my wine glass looks roughly the same size as my head.