My first encounter with the Green Monster...

Wow...I really thought that I had blogged in December! I guess not...

To catch up: I survived my first semester of grad school and got a 4.0 instead of flunking out. Whew. So far this semester I'm much less stressed and tired. I also found a great dirt and gravel running path. I am planning on running a half marathon here in Boulder at the end of March, although I have yet to sign up for it. I hope to run the Steamboat Marathon in June, but since I don't know if I'll be here for the summer (an internship may take me elsewhere), that is all still up in the air.

Regarding the Green Monster: I don't mean Fenway or some sort of mountain creature. I am referring to the spinach-based smoothie that has become quite popular among running and fitness bloggers and podcasters lately. Spinach, I know...as much as I love it, I couldn't really see it in a smoothie. But, it's actually quite good. I made my first Green Monster smoothie after my 12-miler today. Recipes vary, but this is what I did.

Green Monster

2 cups spinach

1/2 cup frozen blueberries

1.25 cups almond milk

1 banana

1/2 TBSP flaxseed

1 serving Spirutein vanilla protein powder

3 ice cubes

Put everything in the blender and blend baby blend!

Admittedly it looks a bit strange, especially because the blueberry skins create black specks in the smoothie. When I poured it into a glass, Joe said, "What are you torturing yourself with?". But, it is actually very good, not to mention nutritious. I'm not typically a fan of protein shakes or powders, but I picked up a single serving package at Natural Grocers yesterday and it seemed like a good post-run recovery drink.

It looked like this.

I had a great run today as well. There is really nothing like being able to run in shorts at the end of January with a view of the Rockies the entire way.

Happy Running!

Jen

Don't Fear the Track Workout!

Hi!

So, as promised, I went to a group track workout on Tuesday. Admittedly, I was pretty nervous about the whole thing and almost bailed. I don't know why I'm so weird about group workouts. It was totally fine and I'm glad I went. Some were faster than me and some were slower. And, during 400m and 800m intervals, it's hard to get too strung out anyway. Since this was my first track workout since, say, 2005, I was a bit unsure of how it would go. We did a ladder workout with rest in between.

400m
400m
800m
1600m
800m
400m
400m

My last 400s were about the same pace as my first ones, but I didn't feel like I had a ton left in the tank, so I think I paced things pretty well. The only interval that I think I should have gone harder on was the 1600. I was a bit conservative because it was a long one and I had a lot of the workout left to go. You can see the details by clicking on the DailyMile widgit and looking at my training.

The other runners were very friendly and there were Popsicles after the workout. :)

Tuesday was also my birthday. Some may go out for a night on the town for their birthdays, but I really know how to party!

Happy Running!
Jen

Track Workout

Hi!

Tomorrow I'm going to a track workout arranged by the YMCA at Appleton North High School. I'm excited but nervous. I guess the good thing is that, unlike a regular road training run, I can't get lost or anything if I am the slowest person there.

I'm excited to do a track workout though. I actually haven't done one in years.

Another thing that makes me nervous is that the workout is at 6:30 PM. I typically run later at night, so I come home, eat supper, let it digest and then go. I think I'm going to have some sort of substantial snack around 4:30. I can't not eat before the workout. I pretty much melt down mentally and physically when I miss a regular mealtime. Hopefully I can strike a balance and be well fueled but not have a bunch of food sitting in my stomach for the workout.

Jen

She's going the distance, she's going for SPEED!

Okay-so that's a bit of a Cake ripoff.

I had an awesome speed workout last night. You can see it by clicking on the DailyMile widgit on the sidebar.

Maybe I can do this fast running thing afterall!

Happy (fast) running!
Jen

Widgits!

Widgits! I have widgits! (See the sidebar at the left).

I finally decided to join the DailyMile and put their training widgits into the blog. I haven't done my run yet today so for now I've got goose eggs. That'll change in a few hours though!

Happy Running!
Jen

Heat, Plantar Fasciitis and Taper

Hi!

Running this week started off pretty well. I got three six milers in and a ten miler with fartleks. Then we came to Sunday and my last long run. I intended to run 22 miles. This is where things got a bit ugly. I knew it was going to be hot, so I sacrificed sleep in order to get on the road early. Even so, it got over 80 degrees while I was running. I planned my run so that I would be back at my house to refill my water bottles at 16 miles. I have a fuel belt (which I discussed in a previous post) that is supposed to be able to hold 32 ounces. However, based on other graduated containers I know it doesn't actually hold quite that much. Typically, it should have been plenty for 16 miles though. Unfortunately, I ran out of water at 12 miles. Sometime early on I decided to cut the run down to 20 miles. While I would have liked to do 22, it just didn't seem in the cards and five 20 milers is pretty solid in my opinion. When I got back to my house at 16 miles, I nearly vomited at the end of the driveway and decided to call it a day. I got into my house, took off my shoes, drank some juice and started to feel a bit better. I decided to struggle through the last 4 miles, so I refilled my bottles, laced up my shoes and headed out. The last miles were slow and consisted of walking, running and dumping water on my head. It was ugly, but at least I got the time on my feet.

My plantar fasciitis issues are haunting me again too. I hadn't really had pain while running until yesterday. I changed my shoes from my usual trainers (Brooks Defyance) into the Nike Free's for the last 4 miles, which helped a lot. This led me to wonder what to do for the marathon though, since I had planned to run in the Defyance. I don't want to run a marathon in Free's since they allow so much lateral motion. I decided to buy some racing flats and try them out. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my socks to the store. I wear Thorlos, which are fairly thick for running socks. I borrowed some sock at the running store, but they were a bit thinner. When I got home and put on the flat with my Thorlos, they seem slightly too small. I'm going to go back tomorrow and try the next half size larger. Hopefully that will work out. I've also been icing and stretching my foot like crazy. I plan to take some ibuprofin as well, but I don't have any right now. Hopefully the PF will calm down over the next three weeks.

So, I head into taper for Grandma's. I'm more collapsing into the taper than going into it with a bang as I'd prefer, but I should be fine. This training cycle has had some real high points and some real low ones. I learned that maybe the Pfitz plan exactly as written isn't for me and that 24 weeks is way too long for me to focus on training for a single race. Overall, I feel pretty good and I'm getting excited for the race. More in-depth reflection is to follow....

Happy Running!

Jen

This Week in Training & Long Run Pace

Hi!

I had a very solid training week this week. One thing that I've been thinking and reading a lot about is long run pace. I've been so happy about my blazing fast long runs the past few weeks, but I was also well aware that running long runs that close to marathon race is not generally recommended. My initial opinion was that if I could maintain that pace, why not? The more I read though, the more I was realizing that these fast long runs could be compromising the quality of my training the rest of the week and also increasing my risk of injury and just plain burnout. Obviously, these are not good things. Another thing pointed out by Pfitzinger in Advanced Marathoning is that you want to train yourself to be on your feet for the length of time it will take you to complete a marathon. Assuming that you only train up to 20-22 miles, you will need to run long runs slower than marathon pace to accomplish this. McMillan's running calculator says that for a marathon time of 3:40:59 (BQ Baby!), long run pace should be done at 8:57 to 9:27 minute per mile pace. I tried very hard to hit this today. I was very, very close with a 8:55 minute per mile pace. I was happy with that.

I messed up my Tuesday run a bit. I thought it was supposed to be 10 miles with 4 miles at 15k-1/2 marathon race pace, so that is what I did. The tempo portion was supposed to be 5 miles, actually. Still, it was a very solid workout.

Saturday I ran a 5k race that supported the local high school track team. This was not in the schedule, but I felt like I would benefit from this sort of race and it was a good cause. I ended up running faster than expected. My finishing time was 22:38, or a 7:25 mpm pace. This is definitely a PR, although I had only done three 5k's prior to this. Two were in 2005 and the last one was in 2008 or so and was part of a Corporate Challenge. I did that one purely for the t-shirt and it was a Personal Worst. Joe ran with me and paced me. The first two miles felt great. The last 1.1 were hard, but not terrible. I ran a pretty even pace and was the second female finisher in the "Adult" age group (there were just three age groups: youth, high school and adult). The first place female finished about 4 minutes ahead of me!!! I had seen her doing her warm-up and knew that she was either doing her warm-up way too fast or was just an ass-kicker. It was the latter.

My long run today was pretty good. My legs were a bit sluggish from the 5k effort, but I wasn't sore. I felt good throughout. I unsuccessfully tried a new water bottle set up. I will post about it in my next post. I saw a lady running (apparently a fairly long run since she had a Fuel Belt) and picking up litter along the trail. A noble cause indeed, but I think I will stick to running while I'm running.

Weekly Summary:

M: Rest + 3 mile dog walk
T: 10 miles with 4 miles tempo (8 mpm pace)
W: 5 miles recovery (slow)
R: 10 miles general aerobic
F: Rest + 4 mile dog walk
Sa: 5k race (7:25 mpm pace) + 4 mile dog walk
Su: 18 mile long run (8:55 mpm pace)

It's crazy to think that I've completed a long run of 18 miles already and the marathon is still about 15 weeks away. Uncle Pfitzy is a killer!

I hope everyone's spring marathon training is going well!

Happy Running! (<----I realized this week that "Run Happy" or something similar is Brooks Running's slogan. I somehow doubt that they will care though.)

Jen

This Week in Training

Hello!

Here's a quick summary of my training for the week. It was a good week of training, but nothing too exciting.

M: 4 mile walk with the dog
T: 9 miles with 10 x 100 m strides
W: 5 mile recovery run + 3 mile dog walk
R: 10 mile general aerobic run
F: Rest
Sa: I skipped my 5 mile recovery run and went ice skating for 90 minutes instead. I guess I was inspired by the Olympics!
Su: 17 mile long run. There was a Garmin snafu that prevented all of my data from being recorded, but the 14 miles of it that I got were at a 8:35 min/mile average. Not bad at all.
My right calf and both achilles tendons were slightly sore from the ice skating, but it didn't
seem to hurt me too much. I guess I went a little too Apolo Ohno.

A solid week overall, although I feel a bit guilty over skipping Saturday's run. There's no real reason I couldn't do it. Oh well. It was just a recovery run and I went into today's long run well rested. The ice skating was also quite fun, despite the soreness I have today. It was surprisingly busy. A youth hockey tournament was wrapping up when we got there. I knew that hockey was big around here, but I guess I didn't quite understand the scope of it all. There were lots of people there for the public skate as well. It was nice to see people doing something active and supporting a local business. One kid there was way more interested in sliding into the wall and eating ice shavings than actually skating!

I guess that's about it on the training front. Next weekend I plan to do a local 5k on Saturday and then my 18 miler on Sunday. It is the last week of building before a cutback week. I think I will be looking forward to the cutback week, which I think is a key sign that I am training hard enough. You should always be mentally and physically tired enough to welcome a cutback week or taper, but not so exhausted that you couldn't go on.

This was a great weekend, but, like all the others, was too short. I'll definitely have a case of the Mondays...

Happy Running!

Jen

This Week in Training & My Awesome Long Run

Hello!

Time for the weekly training summary. It will be a bit brief-primarily because I didn't take a watch on most of my runs and am just lazy! ;) If I can remember my old Buckeye Outdoors login information, I will try to start posting on there again.

M: 15 mile long run (displaced due to my fall & done on the treadmill because I was skeered.)
T: Rest + 4 mile dog walk
W: 9 miles with 3 x 5 minutes @ 8:00 mpm pace
R: 5 mile recovery run + 3 mile dog walk
F: Rest
Sa: 5 mile recovery run
Su: 16 mile long run @ 8:21 mpm average pace

My long run today was AWESOME!!! It was probably run a bit too fast since it was even faster than my desired marathon pace. But, I like to do my long runs by feel and as long as I get my rest days and recovery runs in this week I think I'll be okay. I had to slow myself down at several points. I was getting tired the final 1.5 miles, but that's too be expected. I felt strong throughout.

Lots of times in training I am not very good with my fueling. For some reason on training runs I tend to try to avoid taking my gels. That is something that I am committed to improving this training cycle. Today I took gels and water at miles 4, 8 and 12. It worked well and I didn't have any stomach issues. This run was a great way to end a week that started pretty badly. Yahoo!!!

In other news, I found out this week that I have been accepted to 2 graduate schools! I'm going to wait until things are more settled to elaborate, but it looks like I will be moving West at the end of the summer! I'll always be BadgerGirl, but I will no longer be training in America's Dairyland.

Happy Running!

Jen

Uncle Pfitzy

Hi!

I promised at some point to discuss my training plan for this marathon. I am following Pete Pfitzinger's "55 miles per week or less, 24-week schedule". Actually, I missed the first week, so I'm technically doing a 23 week plan. The title "Uncle Pfitzy" comes from a running podcast that I listen to called 4 Feet Running. Nik abandoned "Uncle Higgy" (Hal Higdon) in favor of "Uncle Pfitzy" and got a huge PR. Unfortunately, Nik and Dan have decided to move on to different projects and therefore there podcast is ended. But you can still check out their blog here:

4 Feet Running

I have had Pfitzinger's book Advanced Marathoning for quite some time, but I have never completely and faithfully followed the plan. I attempted it when I trained for Austin and was running really, really fast for awhile. I ran a 17 miler at BQ pace! Unfortunately, I wasn't taking the prescribed rest and recovery days, which caused me to basically crash and burn about halfway through the program. I think it's a very solid training plan, so I've come back to it. I am taking the rest days this time.

The plan is broken into 4 "mesocycles". Mesocycle 1 is "Endurance". Mesocycle 2 is "Lactate Threshold + Endurance". Mesocycle 3 is "Race Preparation" and Mesocycle 4 is "Taper". There are some tough workouts in this program. I expect that things will get difficult later on when the program calls for 13 milers mid-week. That's a pretty long run for me to do on a work night. But, in the end, I think it is worth it to get a PR.

Hm...I thought that I had more to discuss related to the training plan specifically. But, I guess this at least gives a bit of background information to my weekly summaries.

Happy Running!

Jen

This Week in Training & Miscellany

Hello!

I definitely owe a better post than just a training summary, but I think that's all I can muster for tonight.

It's been a busy weekend. It started off a bit badly when I came home from work Friday evening to a mailbox with a door missing. When we moved into our house ~2.5 years ago, our mailbox was on a post that was not properly installed and thus was very flimsy. Our neighbor's mailbox is also in our yard since they are all along one side of the street. Their mailbox was in one of those big orange buckets that you get from Home Depot with rocks and chunks of cement keeping the post upright. Yes-it was quite attractive. So, I decided that it needed to be fixed. I bought some pretty attractive, matching mailboxes and my dad built and installed the post. Perfect. Well, until one week later when I come home from work and our mailbox door is lying in the street. It had broken off. Basically, the hinge is a metal piece that has been molded into the plastic door trim. The force of the mailbox door falling open broke the plastic and thus the door fell off. Luckily the trim came in two color options, so I had 4 parts total. I replaced it with the other color and moved on. Eventually, ours broke again. Now, I should have been more proactive in obtaining new mailboxes or contacting the manufacturer, but my mailbox is not really my number one priority most of the time. It became my number one priority this past Friday, however. When I came home on Friday, the neighbor's mailbox door was missing entirely. I had no more parts to fix it and mail gets delivered on Saturday afternoon. I'm not sure if the mailman would deliver it if the box had no door, but it's probably a bad idea anyway since it's been snowing lately. Naturally, the new mailboxes are less wide and so I had to saw (by hand) the mounting board. Anyway, after much swearing, sawing and frozen hands, the mailbox was replaced.

Saturday night we had a party for Joe's (my husband) work group. We went and played dodgeball (who knew that there were places where you could rent dodgeball courts?). It was actually pretty fun, although I'm quite sore today. Then we had a get together at his manager's house. They are a fun group and it was a good time had by all.

Today we took Butler to the dog wash and gave him a bath. Then we had a friend's Super Bowl party. I don't care about football in the least, but it was fun anyway.

This week was a recovery week for me, so there were some extra rest days and no long run. Here it is:

M Rest
T 4 miles (this was supposed to be 7 miles + striders, but we were getting a "wintery mix"
which made it very difficult to get any traction. The slipping was killing my feet, so I cut it
short and moved the rest of the run to Wednesday, which was supposed to be a rest day. It
was the strangest thing. I've never in my life had my feet hurt like that. It was awful.
W 3 miles plus striders (~9:30 pace minus the striders and a treadmill run)
R 9 miles (~9:30 pace on the treadmill)
F Rest (had planned a dog walk, but the mailbox fiasco took up all my time and energy)
Sa 5 mile recovery run (8:32 min/mile. This is not my recovery pace, but I felt rushed and
ended up running faster than I had intended) + 3 mile dog walk (~20 min/mile). Cross
training: dodgeball.
Su 11 miles (8:39 min/mile)

All in all, not a bad week for a recovery week. Admittedly, the weekend was a bit booze-soaked and full of party food. Oh well-onward and upward!

Time for bed!

Happy Running!

Jen