First Workout of the Week

I wanted to run after work, but I had a few errands I had to run first. I needed to stop by the vet as Maggie was out of food. Ever since Maggie got really ill back in July 2007 she's had to be on special food or else it can really disrupt her stomach. It it somewhat ironic that she can munch on bark mulch or chew on toothbrushes and be just fine though! Yesterday I had to feed her Finlay's food and she wound up getting ill at 2 am this morning...

I figured since I was out and about that I'd head somewhere out of my neighborhood for my run. First I thought about going to Edgemont since I hadn't been there in awhile, but the pathway was completely covered in snow and ice. I guess they don't clear the snow there in the winter? I went with the backup plan and headed over to run the river from Edworthy instead. I actually had a trainer workout on the schedule but I figured I'd take advantage of the nice temperature instead. With no real gameplan I thought I would aim for about three miles.

When I got started I felt about as coordinated as Phoebe from Friends when she runs.

And it sucked. How is it that I had a great run last Thursday? And set a PR at a race on Sunday? I looked down at my Garmin at one point and my average pace was 10:44/mi. WTF?

After I hit one mile I stepped off the pathway and stretched a few things out and thought about what was going on. I was probably being a bit hard on myself... I continued on and I managed to pick up the pace at some points but it still felt like a pretty tough run overall. 3.4 miles done. It wasn't pretty, but at least I got out there!

A blustery, thoughtful 5 mile run inspired by crazy dreams

Yup...well...tonight my time management skills were not their sharpest again. Truthfully they were off to a rough start from the get go when I attempted to take the train in to work for about the third time this month (I've been spoiling myself by driving in during my quest to start work at 6 am for most of this month). I got to Dalhousie station at 6:38 am and there were no parking spots left. Rather than driving to the next station to park and arriving late I opted to suck up the $17 to park near my building and arrive on time. So anyhow....needless to say I didn't run with the Roadrunners tonight, so I was on my own. I decided to head out to Edgemont since it was close enough to arrive and finish running before dark. I wasn't feeling the crazy hills at the start of where I normally run though so I started a bit further on. This pathway is pretty quiet so my thoughts really start to wander normally. On a blustery night like this one it was even more quiet than usual, so it made for some interesting thinking throughout the run. I was remembering a recent post by No Wetsuit Girl that you have to read - but really she referenced an older post of hers about some of the crazy race inspired dreams she was having at the time that was leading my thinking. (You should read both posts if you haven't already...they are really good.) I've been having crazy running nightmares recently - mostly involving waking up in the morning and looking down at my right ankle and seeing it swollen into a heartbreaking cankle. I start hyperventilating because the Nike Half Marathon is a month away, and I'm just starting to train for the Goofy and this can't be happening to me... I'll put it in words now and say my ankle at times feels funny even now, although I know it is mental over anything else. I'm guessing the nightmares come from a certain amount of anxiety that I feel about starting to train for the Goofy because for as strong as I feel on some of my back to back runs, running that often still worries me. I ran a grand total of 92.17 miles last year over a period of about 2-1/2 months that resulted in a stress fracture. So far this year I have run 464.83 miles... I know I wasn't in a place where I probably should have attempted marathon training and that things are different now, but I guess I still have that deep seated worry in the back of my brain that creeps into my subconscious while I sleep. When I was looking at starting up running again last fall I walked into a Running Room store to talk to them about their group training programs to get some more information. I told the fellow behind the counter how I was recovering from an injury and I wasn't sure if I should try the 10K training group or not since marathon training really hadn't gone so well. He made an important point that the biggest thing about coming back from an injury is the mental aspect of it, and having to trust yourself a bit that you aren't going to go back out there and get injured right away if you are smart about it. Sometimes I think I'm there, but I guess the dreams indicate that I still need to learn to trust myself a bit more. Maybe one of these days I'll go back to having the non-running related dreams like where I show up to school but I've forgotten that I'm actually supposed to be back at school and I have no books and I don't even know where my classes are. Except I've been out of school for over six years now. Right....I think that will get an interpretation at another time....

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Anyhow, back to the fact that I ran tonight... Since I was attempting to beat the incoming storm and the impending darkness I only went out for 5 miles. I took my new Asics Gel Kayano 13s out for a spin to see how I liked them. I wasn't intending to put these in the rotation just yet since I've got a pair of green 2110s with 160 miles on them, and a brand new pair of pink 2110s that recently just came out of the box. I'm not loving the pink 2110s as much as my green pair though, so I'd like to see how I feel about the Kayanos in case I'd like to pick up a second pair for the tail end of my Goofy training and races. Truthfully I wonder if I don't love the pink shoes because they are pink....and for as much running in skirts as I do I'm not much of a girly girl and these shoes just scream girly girl to me. So far I like the Kayanos so we'll see where they go (plus they are orange...not pink). Oh....and the 5 miles went well.

Mind Games

Wow...today was one crazy busy day at work, and tomorrow looks to be much of the same. I was once again running late today and I opted to take the $17 penalty and drive into town and park. I was pretty late leaving the office and sitting in traffic on my way home had me questioning my decision to vehemently drive standards over automatics and any energy I had left was draining the closer I got to home. But I had at least 5 miles to knock out tonight and I didn't want to bail, but I could feel a total stonker coming on. I needed some mental motivation outside of the usual encouraging phrases I say to myself on my run. Things like - "slowing down is for sissies...suck it up...you show that hill who is boss." Right.

"OK Leana, let's make a deal. Go home, feed the dogs, change and get your butt out the door and whatever you do, do not sit down. And you can wear your iPod...""What? Really? Are you sure you want to go there?" Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I really don't talk a lot about the whole running with music thing on here at all, but there was a day when I didn't think running without music was possible. After all, if I paid too much attention to how far I was running, then I might not make it, and music always proved a useful diversion. At times it was a pain though - like at the Pacific Spirit Run in 2001 when I was running with my trusty Walkman but I forgot the tape. Who wants to lug a silent Walkman around? (I pr'ed that race though...) Or at the Sun Run in 2006 when my trusty mp3 player froze up at the 3 km marker and I had to lug a silent mp3 player around. It wasn't until my first run in Calgary when I hit the pathways and I found out that you had better pay attention to the bikes whizzing around you or else... I then decided I was going to try this running thing au naturel and until this evening I hadn't looked back.
Tonight I needed that diversion, so I grabbed the shuffle and headed out the door to Edgemont - the ridiculously hilly neighborhood nearby. It is a pretty quiet pathway, so no worries about dodging cyclists tonight. For the first half a mile I wasn't convinced that the iPod was going to do the trick though. But then all of a sudden I found myself in a race with a roller blader....and I was winning. From there on out it started to get better and I was having a blast. The reason why I like running Edgemont is it is a great bargaining run - another mind game. I always tell myself on Mondays that I'll run 5 mi, but if things feel good I'll stretch it out to 6 mi. With the first half of Edgemont being mostly downhill I always seem to stretch it out to 6, which makes for an uphill slog all the way back to the car which I figure is probably a good character builder for San Francisco. I was grooving to the tunes and the hills were blowing by. And then I hit mile 5.37 and all that uphill running caught up with me. I thought I might get an encore of the sushi I had for lunch. Yikes. Thank goodness that was the second to last hill and it was another downhill cruise to the end. So there we go, 6 miles in the bag.
Oh, and as for the iPod thing - I loved the diversion and I think it really did help to avert a stonker, but otherwise I don't miss running with music too much. Once I hit the really long back to back runs I may need to pull that trick out of the bag though, because that will be a lot of one on one time with just myself.

Memories of 6 miles past

Even though BBC is spending this week out at Edgemont Park I opted to head out here regardless for my run last night. Since the general terrain has some rolling hills I figured this would be a good route as I'm going to shoot for speed work instead of hills on Wednesday. It was 54F (12C) and really overcast out so it was time to search for a second pair of running tights... Will my skirts ever see the light of day this year again...?? I was aiming for 5 mi, but if I felt good I wanted to push for 6. The first mile is all uphill so I just felt so slow as my body got used to running and to going uphill. There were just a few people out on the pathway last night so it was pretty quiet. Something funny was going on as something in my GI was sloshing about in time with the Gatorade sloshing about in my water bottle. That was an interesting feeling. When I was about 2 mi in I decided I felt good enough that it was definitely going to be 6 so I vowed to keep going, despite the sloshing. A few minutes later it dawned on me that I was feeling so good because I had been running downhill for a pretty long time now... To tell you the truth the uphill on the way back felt pretty good, so evidently progress is being made. The highlight of the run was definitely when I had 1 mi left to go and there were three young deer on the hillside next to me. They were so close... I finished up the 6 mi for the evening feeling great despite the sloshing the whole way.

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I was remembering my first ever 10K while I was running last night. It was the Vancouver Sun Run in 2000 (the third largest 10K race in the world). I was not a runner and only signed up because I had friends that were doing the run as well. I tried to run on the treadmill at my gym but really only lasted 20 min and I really questioned how I was going to do this for an hour plus. The day of the race I just ran and it felt great to cross the finish line. Then the next day it felt like my quads would never be the same as I was so stiff and sore from the race. It is an amazing feeling that I can now blow 6 milers out of the water.

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Back when I ran the Sun Run I was in Toastmasters, and one of the guys in my group wrote a speech on his first marathon experience. I wish I could remember more about his speech, but I talked to him about the marathon afterwards. He said that if you wanted to train for a marathon you had to be comfortable running 6 mi runs at least three times a week before even contemplating to train. Remembering the pain after my first 10K I was pretty sure that I would never feel comfortable running 6 mi that regularly. Looks like I was wrong on that one, eh?

Fending off boredom

Boredom in running is the root of all evil. Well....maybe not....but it sure makes it difficult to get out the door. I have really only been hitting a few different pathways, especially during the week, and I really need to branch out and try new routes out. If I don't, I'm sure boredom will soon ensue. This weekend when I was in my local Co-Op grocery store getting my July transit pass I decided to purchase the official Calgary pathways and bikeways map. With 635 km of pathways in this town, why am I limiting myself to seeing just a few kilometers? (That's 394 miles by the way!) And didn't I say that I wanted to explore Calgary by heading out for a run? So my quest begins...

Monday night I ran through Edgemont and was rewarded with some good hills, a couple of deer sightings, birds and ducks, and some great views. Tonight I went out to Confederation Park for my 2 mile run. This route also had some good hilly parts to it, was fairly quiet for traffic and had a nice wide pathway. I ran alongside the golf course there for the most part, but if I would have continued onwards it would have led me right into the park with lots of opportunities for loops and branching off. I definitely want to head back out there to explore it more. For now though - rest until Sunday!

4 miles full of wildlife, and a skirt review

Yesterday was one busy day. We had the day off in lieu of Canada Day and I got in plenty of cross training thanks to my massive cleaning spree around the house. I wanted to move my Tuesday and Thursday runs to Monday and Wednesday this week, and I finally made it out for my 4 mile run in the evening. I decided to try a new pathway, so I headed out to Edgemont in the NW quadrant of the city to check out their pathways. The pathways follow the ravines in the area, so you are rewarded with rolling hills, and lots of green and nature. I spotted two deer out there last night, plus a ton of birds and ducks. Luckily neither of the deer decided I was a threat on the pathway and thought I should be taken out..!! It was a great route (loved the hilliness), and I'll definitely be adding this one in to my repertoire!

I also tried out my New Balance Bonita run skirt last night. I may have a stronger opinion of it after a longer run, but I did like it. I think the waistband may have a tendency to roll, but with my waist pack on that was minimized. The shorts did creep up (they didn't really feel like compression shorts to me), but I found them pretty comfortable and did not feel the need to keep tugging them down. I loved the shape of the skirt, but it would be nice to have a pocket somewhere. So yes, very comfortable, but I have to say I still think the Skirt Sports are my favorite though!