Auntie Em Goes Running

So good to be back home!  Long, slow run this morning.  It has been awhile since I did one of these low heart rate runs, and it was very challenging.  I chose the wrong terrain, for sure, with many hills and rough trails, which make the heart rate go up, and I barely managed to keep it in low range, even though my average pace was over 12 minutes!!!

I discovered an outdoor sculpture park a couple of miles from my house, that I have never seen before, tucked back in the woods on a trail that I have never been on.  About thirty different sculptures, spread out over about an acre of gravel trails, go figure.  A nice diversion, but after that I went downhill for EVER!  I don't know how I gained this much elevation, but the downhill was very very long.  

Galbraith Mountain trail run.  I made the climb longer than usual to explore some trails higher up.  The trails I ran are up on a part of the mountain where there is an old homestead still standing, and the trails are called "homestead", "papa bear", "mama bear" and "baby bear".  Recent logging has been rather messy, and only "papa bear" was runnable.  

On my way back down the ridge (about a mile from the end), I twisted my ankle, rather badly.  I jogged down to my bike and biked home.  Very surprised to find that later that day and all day Monday I had to use a crutch to get around.  Some swelling, lots of pain.

Rest and moping around day.  Its sunny at least.

Got some work done on the ankle this morning; I could walk when he was done!  Still painful, and no running possible today, but no crutch either.  My healing genius suggested an easy spin on the bike, provided it was comfortable.  It was, so 33 miles in the sunshine at a nice easy pace, no charging the hills or anything.  No pain at all until I got off of the bike.  Hoping for fast healing.

The ankle is better, but still no real running.  Pool workout this morning, ran 20 minutes wu, then 3X5 minute tempo paced intervals and 1X10 tempo paced interval, with 1 minute rest in between, then 15 cd.  I did not die of boredom.

1 hour this afternoon on the bike, at a moderate intensity.  I stayed seated on all the hills to save the tender ankle.

Strength workout after biking.  Focused on arms and core.  Tomorrow my doc wants me to do some side lunges and gentle one legged balancing stuff.  He is a genius to fix me so quickly!  Hard to believe I was on crutches on Monday.

Not ready to run on the ankle yet, so I did a really long strength workout, which included lots of stretching, upper body work, core, hip, single legged balanced (for the ankle), squats and lunges!

Then, in the evening, I went for a bike ride around Lake Sammish.  Its a hilly course, and it was for some strange reason super windy late in the afternoon.  The wind felt almost arctic.  What happened to summer already?  I have lived here a long time, and we tend to get rather short summers, but TWO DAYS?  come on...

More pool intervals!  10 minutes wu, 3X10 minute tempo intervals, with RI of 1 minute, the 15 minutes cd.   Ankle looks a whole lot better today; swelling almost gone, just some yellowish bruising here and there.

After swimming, I biked the course for the race I am directing tomorrow.  Placed flour for course obstacles, important directional issues, and ribboned each mile.  My truck will be out bright and early tomorrow morning, placing mileage signs, setting up water stations, and delivering all the necessary stuff to start and finish lines.  I got a nice 14 mile bike ride!

Chuckanut Footrace today; I am the RD, so no running for me, unless you count about a hundred 200m sprints between the band shelter and the finish line!  Busy day.

Bike ride this morning; 32 miles at an average pace of 17.7.  Beautiful morning, beautiful hilly ride, fun group!  Coffee after.  Very nice.  

My ankle felt so great on the ride (I could stand up pedal on hills!), that I decided to test it out on a run!  4.62 miles, at an average pace of 9:27, and all was A-okay!  I guess I am healed.  AMAZING, since I was using a crutch on Monday, but I am happy about it!

Low heart rate run.  These 4.2 miles took almost 45 minutes - SLOOW.  I forgot that these runs are so challenging.  

Directly on to yoga, with time for a liquid recovery beverage in between.  That plus a couple of shot rocks is all I usually eat before a morning run/yoga combo.  And, usually that is fine.  But this morning,  I was fainting weak part way through yoga.  Lightheaded, and just plain out of fuel!  Disturbing.  My daughter was laughing at me because I came home and at EVRYTHING in sight!  Luckily the cats were outside playing.

This evening I did a bunch of strength work, mostly abs and upper body.  Funny, but I haven't been hungry since my post yoga feast this morning.  I am really messed up.

Fun Tour de France this morning!  I really want to go to France some year and watch this race, maybe 2012.  Thor Hushovd took of his bike shoe going 40 mph, had the cleat adjusted, and put the shoe back on, cycling alongside the aid car in his sock, and STILL made it to near the front of the peloton for the fiinish.  Exciting sprint finish too, with Mark Cavendish coming in second to former teammate.

Luckily for me, I am doing bicycle sprints today, so I can rif off of the energy of this morning's tour.  I am going NOW, and doing 5X4 minute intervals  in zone 4, heart rate of 155-172.  I seriously don't even know if I can get my heart rate this high on the bike, unless its a major hill.  We'll see.

Track workout; first one since my mono recovery that I have felt "on" for track!  Feels kind of like my old self again - hooray!  My paces were:  400m@1:23, 800m@3:30, 1200m@5:12, 800m@3:38, and 400m@1:35.  The first 400m was WAY too fast, but everything else was on pace and felt great.  Finished off with 200s, and I didn't worry about pace.  They were :45 and :43. WU and CD in the Hattoris, because I love them; workout in the kinvaras, since the ankle is only about 98% and I wanted to give it a little extra love and support for the hard work.

Another great tour de france this morning, with an exciting sprint finish.  Mark Cavendish showed 'em who is really the fastest sprinter in the world and did his missile thing at the end; excellent performances by a group of break away lead riders, who almost made it, but were swept up by the peloton anyway.  Tomorrow starts the mountain climbing stages, and we'll get to see the climbing guys come out and do their stuff.  My money is on Andy Schleck this year; Contador is not having a great year so far, and Andy looks strong and determined!

Early yoga (which felt perfect after last night's track workout), and then an EZ bike ride in the freezing cold and pouring rain.  July?  Really?  Something is whacked about the weather.  I was going to go strawberry picking today, but now I'm not sure.

Had to miss the tour this morning, but I need to find a replay, because it was the first mountain stage - exciting!

Easy run, longish strength workout (mostly upper body and abs), plus stretching.  Busy work in the yard, then off to Seattle for an evening swim clinic.  Swim clinic was a bad idea, because it made my ankle hurt.  Biking and running are fine, but swimming is not?

Was supposed to run a very small, local 1/2 marathon this morning.  I was just going to run it at marathon pace, for practice.  But I got home after midnight from Seattle, and couldn't sleep, so I opted to stay in bed this morning until 7, get up and watch the Tour de France, then headed out for a lazy, slow long run around Bellingham.  Fun morning for it, and I wasn't sad at all about missing the race.  Especially when I looked at tomorrow's workout, which looks very intimidating!

Just found out that I got into the JFK 50 miler!  Its in November in Maryland.  Exciting, huh?

Fun workout this morning!  1.25 hours on the bike, part of it at time trial pace, followed by a 30 minute easy run, followed by another 30 minutes on the bike, all of at time trial pace, finally followed by a 30 minute run with 20 minutes at tempo pace.  By the last run, my tempo pace was not really tempo pace, it was only about 8.00 minutes a mile, but it certainly felt like tempo effort!

On the running bits, which I did around Lake Padden, I saw many people dressed in tutus, dressed, and other wild garb running and walking around the lake.  After the tempo bit of my last lap, I saw a friend of mine and jogged with her to slow down a bit before I was done.  She told me it was a marathon maniac event - they have to run around the lake 10 times!  I even saw a dog in a tutu.

Going to an event this afternoon called "Burning Beast", where all kinds of meat, wild and tame, will be BBQd.  All the meat is sustainably raised.  I will ask if it is kindly slaughtered.

Yoga this morning, followed by an easy run with a friend.  I used the Hattoris; I still haven't taken them out for longer than six miles.

In the late afternoon I went mountain biking.  We were out for 2.5 hours, but I'm only counting 6 crosstraining miles.  I don't know why, really.  The effort seems just as much as road biking or something.  The mountain biking around here is, sadly for me, not easy mountain biking.  The climbs up are generally my best part.  The routes down are either steep, covered in large rocks or logs or drops, or too narrow.  I would LOVE to ride sometime on some easy trails.  Anyway, fun time!

Rest day here!  Really, really needed this one.  4 easy miles in the late afternoon sunshine.

It is terribly hard not to run today when track is at 6pm tonight.  I want to run NOW!

Track:  1 mile wu barefoot on track.  10X15 sec. hill sprints, 6X200m (.39, .44, .45, .45, .45, .45), 2X800m (3:22, 3:24).

CD.

Running on snow today!  Snowshoes.  There is no summer here, so I am up at the mountain enjoying winter.

A wet muddy easy run in the woods by the cabin.  Kept it easy to rest up a bit for tomorrow's duathlon.

Too rainy here to get on the bike, but I am back in Bellingham this afternoon, and will ride a bit if its dry.

Always cracks me up to call these mountain runs "easy", since the long climbs are anything but easy.  They are easy on the joints, however, and the long winding descents are certainly easy.  Maybe I ran too easy, because my son "easily" ran 18 miles while I did this.

Low heart rate run before yoga.

Bike and then run.  TIRED.

Track, but after wu, I felt a twinge in my rectus femorus muscle and stopped and went home.

Just a little bike riding and hip stability/mobility work, abs and upper body strengthening.

Trail run for one hour, easy.  All rectus femoris twinging is gone, body feels great!  Trying some faster running tomorrow.    I have become so cautious it is a little freaky.

Long run, with 5 miles at MP.  Used my new bright yellow addidas.  They kept my eyes up and forward, because they are so bright it hurt to look down.

Well, for some reason very tired after yesterday's long run.  This was my group bike ride, and it was raining hard, and I rode really slow, and I finished DFL!  I have never been DFL in anything in my whole life.  I was squishy wet too.  The really sad thing is, and I think this says something not entirely good about me, I had a good time on this ride!