catherine's running efforts

Guess what? I didn't run yesterday. It was the first time since the first week of the year that I missed a day (that wasn't Sunday). But after not feeling so hot during my runs on Monday or Tuesday I was feeling kind of burned out, and I decided that it would be better to take a mini-break and get to bed a little earlier (I usually run at 8 or 9 or 10). But I didn't get to bed earlier, and once I was in bed I felt all sorts of antsy and so didn't really fall asleep for a couple of hours. 

But tonight I was happy about running again. My tummy was still full of yummy dinner, so after a couple of miles at my normal-for-now pace I slowed things down. On Tuesday my Launches hit 600 miles and my achilles is all better from Saturday, so I'm officially into the Altras as my everyday shoe. I still like them - they're not magic, but they're very comfortable and they stay out of my way. 

Songs that made my run happier: Madonna's Vogue (again) and that "Like a G6" song. I feel like a dork about it sometimes, but there are some songs that just make me want to dance and that make me feel like I can do anything. Those songs can turn any frowny run upside down.   

Also did 20 fake pullups/dips at 70 on the orange machine.  

My plan was for 3 miles, but I only made it to our super-early-closing gym with enough time to do 2.5. They were fine. 

I finally made myself do a legitimate "long" run. (The quotation marks are because 12.5 miles isn't a long run to a lot of people, and even though it feels like a long run to me right now I feel like it's still just not that long.) *And* I didn't wait until the last minute before the last gym closed (it was the last minute before *our* gym closed, but our gym closes stupidly early). 

Even though it was a nice day it was still colder than I'd prefer, so I watched parts of Good Will Hunting, Sliding Doors, and Footloose (the old one...I guess there's a new one?) as I trudged along on the treadmill. Things didn't get uncomfortable until after about 8 miles. After that my legs and feet started to be a bit achy, and I was afraid I'd be sore later. But I told myself that if I kept going I'd be better able to stick other runs out, and it didn't ever get too bad. 

When I was done I was glad I had run what I had planned, but it made me realize that I don't think I like running for longer than about 2 hours. Sometime I'm going to do a marathon because it's something I'd like to do at least once, but really I think half marathons are the perfect Catherine distance. 

Later Eric and I dropped Elliott off at Eric's sister's house and we went to the Orem gym to chillax in the hot tub. It wasn't very hot. We also tried the hot room and the steam room. The steam room scares the bejeebees out of me. I'm pretty sure that if I don't suffocate in there I'm going to get gutted by some crazy hiding in the corner with one of those big fish hook stabber things. 

I've been down with some sickness for the last couple of days - something coughy in my chest. So I only did a few miles (kept myself from walking out after just one, though, so that's something) and then sat in the steam room for a bit. I'm not as afraid of the one in American Fork because it's smaller and better lit (so I can see what's what before I go in). Tonight there were four guys in there. Two were speaking Spanish, and after a few minutes one of the other guys said, "Can you guys speak in English?" They said, "Yeah, we speak English. We're American." But not in the way I would have said it. They were really nice. Then the stupid guy said, "I just wanted to know what you were talking about." Then one of the Spanish-speakers said, "We weren't talking about you." The stupid guy said, "Oh, I know. I just don't like it when I can't understand someone." Then a Spanish-speaker said, "We were talking about taking some classes at BYU." Then the asked how long the guys had been in the country (14 and 12 years). I was embarrassed to live on the same planet as the stupid guy. Then I started talking to one of the Spanish-speakers and it turns out he has his master's degree in mechanical engineering, so we talked about grad school for a bit. Then the stupid guy and his mute friend left. 

I made a video about how there should be a girl AltraManiac. If there were, maybe her name could be A-Bound. I wanted to set it to Final Countdown but it was taking me longer to figure out than I wanted to spend in iMovie. Also there's another version where Eric doesn't pan down at the end, but I fell over a little bit in that one. 

Finally the I'm-sick-and-I'm-going-to-die feeling subsided (really it's just a cold), so today I went to the gym for 3.5 miles before dinner and 4 miles after. I didn't feel like I was going to cough out my lungs, and my legs felt nice and rested. Bonus. 

After my class (guest speaker! Didn't have to prepare a lecture!) I did the 3 mile loop around campus in the beautiful sunshine. Maybe sometime my legs will be tan. Right now the whiteness highlights the cellulite. I saw a lean runner girl on the track and committed myself to eating better. A mile later the smell of burgers at the creamery reminded me that I had only eaten a few graham crackers all day. And a half mile after that I ran past some Girl Scouts selling cookies, and I committed myself to buying some. I got the peanut butter ones, the lemon ones, and the Samoas (they're still called Samoas?). I like thin mints, but really to me they're just like the grasshopper cookies that are available all year. 

After I got home I went to the gym for 4.38 more miles. Then I came home and had bacon and a green smoothie (new blender!).  

I had all sorts of plans to make up for my two sick days. I did what I needed to do to catch up on Thursday and Friday, and then I planned to break up the 12 miles I needed on Saturday since I still wasn't feeling my best. So I went out for my first run of the day with Eric and Elliott...and then that was it. We had friends over for dinner and that went later than we had planned, and then Elliott puked when we tried to give her baby tylenol (she got the sickness I had) so I hung out with her for a bit, and then I just wasn't in the mood to drive to the Orem gym at 10:00. 

I was pretty bummed at messing up my mileage graph and giving in on my goals. I've been being really consistent and getting my runs in no matter what, and this week I just lost the game. But Eric says that what matters is whether I stick with the old (new old) pattern of consistency or if I adopt this new (old new?) pattern of less consistency. I want the consistency pattern, but when I miss days/miles I think of myself as a person who misses days/miles and it's easier to keep doing that. So I'm trying to think of myself as a person who doesn't miss days/miles but who got sick. Plus, I've been afraid to go from 30 to 35, so maybe having dropped down for a week will make it easier to take a step up.  

Just a mile on a bike path Eric wanted to explore. The path was a lot shorter than he thought it was. 

*I moved this mile over to Monday because it bugged me that it didn't count toward that week on my graph.  

When I got to the gym I realized there were only 10 minutes left of Monday-Bachelor night! Fortunately there was a whole other hour on after the main show. 

Last week I was chillaxing and I saw a flier advertising a visit from one of the professors at the school where I did my PhD coursework. I talked to some people and ended up at a dinner tonight with him and a few professors in the department where I teach. I had all kinds of anxiety about the dinner - I was pretty sure someone was going to call me out for being adjunct or for being a grad school dropout or for reflecting poorly on one or both schools. Yeah - I have zero academic self-esteem right now. But really the dinner was kind of fun and I realized that in real life no one is as hard on me as I am on myself, and I had a really good little talk with the guest professor about what I would need to do to finish (which was why I wanted to go to the dinner in the first place). It's nice when things don't go the way I'm afraid they will. :)

Also, Elliott still has the cold I accidentally gave her and it's so so sad.

*I moved over the mile from Sunday so it would count on this week's graph.  

A bunch of the women in my neighborhood get together for lunch every so often, so today I went. One of the women runs a few times a week, so we made plans to make plans to run together sometime. It would be nice if there were someone nearby that I could run with once in awhile. Plus, she runs in the mornings, so that would help me transition to morning instead of night running (like I've been wanting to do but haven't since most of the time I can't bear to get out of bed before Elliott makes me). 

I still like the Altras, but I think they stretched.  

Ever since we had some chicken Jun made a couple (few?) weeks ago, Eric and I have been thinking about chicken. We had a bad experience with some chicken from Smiths a couple of years ago and hadn't bought it since (we're not huge meat eaters...or dinner eaters), but the chicken at Jun's house was just *so* good. So I got some at Costco (Costco=safe) and we've had it a couple of times. Eric made some tonight with a bunch of butter (sometimes I think he takes for granted being skinny), bread crumbs, and that garlic spread stuff (also from Costco) and it was awesome. But I went to the gym about 20 minutes after eating, and at 3 miles I got a crazy side ache. Usually I can head off a side ache by focusing on breathing in every two steps and out every two steps, but that didn't work. Then I remembered that someone had talked about this on the FRB and there was something about imagining that you're trying to blow up a balloon. Or something. But that didn't work either, and at about 3.18 I had to stop. But it went away pretty quickly and the rest of the run was uneventful. 

Boring story, I know. But that's how it went.  

Quantum of Solace was on in the cardio cinema so I just ran in there. It's an excellent treadmill movie. 

I'm doing the Rex Lee 5k on Saturday and I can't decide which shoes to wear. The Altras are wonderfully comfy, but they're pretty roomy and even though I've never even almost tripped on them I'm afraid that I won't be able to try to run fast downhill in them (and to be clear, my goal is just to be under 23 minutes so I'm not actually going to be running fast), and I would really really hate to fall down. Especially in front of a bunch of people. So then I think about wearing the Kinvaras, which I used to love so much and are a lot more snug, but then I think that maybe I'll trip myself on *them* because I've been running in flat shoes. It's a hard decision. Even though it shouldn't be because, you know, it's 3 miles and I'm not trying to PR.  

I wanted to wake up and pump for Elliott so that she'd have fresh milk when Eric took her to my mom's house for the day, so it was easy to hit the gym after and start my first day as a morning runner. And I noticed that the morning people don't mess around - usually I feel pretty good about myself when I'm at the gym in the evening, but in the morning people are a lot less soft. I wore the kinvaras and decided that they're too small (huh...Eric was right...), but I might still wear them tomorrow. 

Just 4 miles on the treadmill (after a mile I realized that the sound was playing out of the TV and not through my headphones and I was mortified. That's one of my peeves - it's so rude when people do that. So I turned off the TV and went to a different treadmill on the other side of the room), with .1 at 6:00 every quarter in the last mile.  

I had been nervous about today's 5k because I wanted to be faster than I was at my last 5k, but then last night I realized that the course is long (3.24 according to the website) and there are like a thousand people in it. So I decided not to take it too seriously. I still wanted to try, though. So I started in the third row back and ran with my elbows out for the first quarter mile or so, and then I tried to have a pushing-but-not-all-out pace for the first mile. Usually my first miles are the fastest, but the first mile in this race is entirely uphill and I don't like running up hills. That first mile was 7:44.

The second mile is completely downhill, so during that mile I tried to visualize falling forward (using the decline, not tripping) and told myself that the hill was helping me rest and got 6:33. During the third mile I thought about this girl that had been ahead of me for awhile. She looked like someone I should be able to beat, and I remembered something I had read on someone's FRB about how if you can see someone near the end of a race you can catch them. The third mile has a bit of uphill to it, so I thought about keeping steady. I got a little closer to the girl, and I decided that I'd try to pass her if I got the chance. (Third mile was 7:33.) At the end we have to run around the BYU track, so as we started on that I totally passed the girl and then just held steady. Then she surged and passed me back a few seconds later. By then we were coming around for the last bit of track, and I thought about passing her again. But you know that thing about how people will suddenly sprint and go way faster at the end of a race than they've been going the whole rest of the time? It's super awkward to me. Of course I think that people should do what they want to do, but if you've got enough energy to all of a sudden go twice as fast at the end as you have been going, wouldn't a person rather go a little faster throughout? Or maybe the excitement of being at the end gives people extra adrenaline. I don't know. Anyway, I didn't want to do that. Also I was kind of self-conscious about the whole trying-to-beat-someone-in-front-of-a-bunch-of-people thing, especially since it's not like we were super fast. So she was a little ahead of me. (Last bit was 7:23 pace.) But guess what? It turns out that if I *had* beat her, I would have gotten 1st (instead of 2nd) in my age group (I think). So now I wish I had tried to beat her. Especially since it would have validated that mile and a half where I was thinking about how I could totally take her. 

I was a little bummed because my goal had been to be under 23 minutes, and as I was coming around the track I knew I wasn't going to make it. But Eric points out that since the course was long, if we assume that I would have gone the same pace for just .1 that I went for the .22, my time would have been around 22:34. That makes me feel better.  

Remember how last week I said I had anxiety about going up to 35 miles? I decided to skip that and go straight to 40, so a few hours after the race Eric and I dropped Elliott off at my sister's house and went to the Gold's Gym in Sandy. They didn't have the fancy new treadmills (even though when I called and asked the person who answered said that they did (liar!)), and there were only a few channels on the TV. But it was nice to be running "with" Eric. The first 6 miles were fine, but when I started on the second 6 I was feeling kind of sore. And the last 2 sucked so much. I even went faster so that it would be over sooner. But I'm glad I did it.  

I was looking at my race times over the past couple of years (thanks, FRB!), and I noticed that on Saturday I was 20 seconds per mile faster than I was on the same course at the end of August, and I was 10 seconds per mile faster than I was on an easier course about a month ago. And I was 20 seconds per mile slower than I was on the same course right when I got pregnant (or the day we found out I was pregnant) in 2010. So that's good, right? And maybe I would have gone faster if I hadn't been about to finish my highest mileage week ever (though still not that high) and planning on running 12 more miles that day. But maybe not. 

Today was day 2 of Catherine-runs-in-the-mornings. I only did 4 miles because my quads were a little sore and because Eric and I are doing the Buffalo Run 25k on Saturday (but really 16 miles) and I only want 35 miles this week. Also, it feels a lot harder to run in the morning. Maybe because my body isn't warmed up from the day? 

Also - according to the race results, that one girl was 3 seconds ahead of me on gun time but 7 seconds ahead of me on chip time. So now I'm a little more on the side of being glad that I didn't try to pass her again, because thinking that I beat her and finding out that I didn't would have been a bummer. 

This morning I ran with a couple of women in my neighborhood. I was thinking that it would be similar to when I ran with Melody and her fast friends a couple of years ago. It wasn't like that at all. The run this morning was slower (expected and welcome), but also quieter. I had kind of expected that they'd be pretty chatty. Maybe they are when I'm not there. 

I thought that the weather would be warming up this week so I just wore shorts, a long sleeved tech shirt, and a lightweight running jacket (and knit gloves and a headband for my ears). I never really got warm, and my hands and quads started to hurt from the cold after about a half mile. I stuck it out and continued with the main running person after we dropped off the other person, but I was glad to head back home once my watch chirped at 4 miles. Unfortunately we had been doing a loop so I didn't get the 5 miles I wanted for the morning, but there's no way I'm going out there again today and I'm not sure it's worth it to go to the gym for a half mile given what I need for the week and Saturday's planned 16 miles. 

Five miles at the gym in the morning. I love getting the run out of the way, but I hate that my only TV choices are local news, informercials, or Charmed. 

Morning Runner Catherine ran in the evening today. It was my night with Elliott (we switch off) and she woke up a few times between 2:30 and 5:30 (but nothing like RAD's night a few nights ago...what the gravy) so I stayed in bed for as long as I could once she was asleep again. She was super fun later in the day, though, and I made it to the gym for a few miles before going to bed. 

I was back in the morning runner saddle this morning for a quick 1.5 at the gym after seeing Eric and Elliott off and heading to campus. It'd be nice if 1.5 a day was always enough. Or if I had a time-turner. 

Going into the race I wondered if I was about to make a huge (little) mistake. It would be the longest distance I've run in about 2 years, the first trail run in about a year and a half, and maybe the fourth time running uphill in about a year. But I wanted the distance, and it would be our third year going to the island for the races, and I was curious about my fitness level compared to a couple of years ago when I went into the race with more trail and hill running but a lot less consistency and fewer miles. Two years ago, when the race was 16 or 16.1, my time was 3:03:28. This year I had 2:51:?? for about 16.5, so definitely better. 

I ran with RAD for the first maybe quarter mile, but she soon found her carrot or rabbit or whatever and went off to chase it. Once we stopped going uphill I enjoyed the course, and I settled in a bit and tried not to think about the switchbacks that I knew were coming. I told myself that I didn't have try to run the switchbacks. I stayed with about the same people for most of the race; they'd pass me on the ups, and I'd pass them on the downs. Once we hit the switchbacks I listened to Temperature over and over again - it was a nice marching beat. On a less steep part of the switchbacks I started jogging because a lot of other people were too, but then I told myself to stop getting peer pressured and I went back to my march.

I enjoyed the course for the first half, and for awhile I was thinking that Eric and I should come out and do it about once a month. But after about 8 miles my mood soured and I thought about how much I hate running up hills. I don't mind some trails - I love the pipeline trail, for example (even given some unfortunate experiences there), and I enjoy the Mountain View Trail half marathon course, and I'm almost fond of the stretch of the BST that goes from about Shriners to about Memory Grove. But I just don't think it's fun to try to charge up (or down) things like the Buffalo Run mountains or that Sapper Joe mountain, and I'd only go up that mountain in the pancake run (Grandeur Peak?) if someone were paying me a lot. Or some. I'd probably do it if someone offered 100 dollars. But that would never happen. Anyway, I think it's okay to not like certain kinds of running. Everyone's different. Or maybe it's like how I don't like trying to do pushups or pullups - maybe I'd like it more if I had some muscles. Maybe I'd have some muscles if I tried it more? After the bigger hills I listened to No Diggity over and over to keep myself going, and I was able to keep a pretty consistent pace and pass several people. 

Eric and Elliott made my day by meeting me at the blue tent near the end (when I was thinking, "What the heck? Where in the gravy is the freaking finish line?"). I really really hated the part up the road to the finish, especially since I had been planning on 16 miles and not 16.5. My mom and her parents were waiting at the finish after having explored the island and visitor's center a bit. I felt bad because I wasn't in the best shape for about 20 minutes after finishing (my feet, hips, back, and shoulders hurt pretty bad) and didn't feel like visiting, but it was nice to see them. Before going home we stopped at the Bountiful rec center to play with Elliott in the lazy river and take turns sitting in the hot tub, and after that we stopped at a cupcake place in Salt Lake to cash in a gift certificate for free cupcakes that we've been carrying around since about January 2011. 

I dawdled a little bit getting out of bed this morning so I only had time for 3 miles at the gym before I had to be back home for Eric to leave. My legs felt fine running, but my quads hurt (from Saturday) getting on and off the treadmill even though I had taken a mess of ibuprofen a couple of hours earlier. 

After Eric got home I went back to the gym for two more miles before having to be back for final presentations for the online class I teach (you know who hates group work more than students? Instructors who have to listen to students complain about how much they hate group work). My quads felt like they had fevers before and after, but running made them feel better.  

Nothing. 

Way too soon after yummy dinner at CPK. I couldn't get through the first mile without a crazy sideache, so I just hiked on the 15% incline for a mile until Eric came to pick me up from the gym. 

Three miles at the gym until it closed, then 5.35 outside until Eric got done at church. Bummer week.