Christmas Comes Early!

Yesterday I posted that I got a fabulous stocking stuff from nuun in the mail. I loved trying out their u hydration line. It has some funkier flavours, but still offers the same electrolyte benefits of nuun, but with some added vitamins. So far I've only tried out the lemon chai flavour, but I really liked it! It was refreshing, and the herbal chai flavour helped to settle my stomach after downing my Gu. I can't wait to try the tangerine ginger and goji berry green tea flavours.

This morning I got an e-mail from Endurance Sports Bar to let me know that I won their Challenge #3! I successfully answered the question - what shoe did the winner of this year's Ironman World Championship wear? And yup, Chrissie Wellington wears Brooks! I won a $25 gift certificate to my choice of three online retailers, and I jumped at the opportunity to get a gift certificate to SwimOutlet.com. Hello sushi suit! I can't wait to pick this up from my friend Greg in Orlando in January. Thanks ESB!!


And finally, as a little present to me I decided to go for a new iPod. I'm a little behind the times technology-wise... While the new nano looks like one very cool device I jumped at the chance to get a 3rd generation nano at a steal of a price from Apple. I have a shuffle which works great for the gym or spinning at home, but I wanted this one for work so that I could have a bigger library of tunes to listen to over the day.

Well folks, keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm scheduled to be heading to Kelowna tomorrow afternoon. I'm flying via Vancouver because I really wanted to be there before the 24th, but price-wise it meant taking a non-direct flight. Vancouver has been pummeled with winter storms and I watched the cancelled flights between Calgary and Vancouver pile up today. I'm hoping that tomorrow things are a bit smoother since *apparently* the snow is supposed to stop. I'm just hoping I make it out tomorrow afternoon...

Survivor: Treadmill Island

The wicked arctic temperatures continue here in Calgary. I was supposed to have my final long run on the schedule but it was just too cold to attempt it outdoors and way too long to attempt it indoors. Coach reworked my schedule and I now had 10 km to run on Saturday and a 2 hour marathon race pace interval run for Sunday. I've never spent more than about 35 minutes on a treadmill so this was definitely going to be one exercise in treadmill survival. The question would be weather I could outwit, outplay and outlast the treadmill?
Saturday:

I slept in a bit on Saturday but was still at the gym at about 9:30 since I had somewhere to be by noon. I started off with my 10 km run on the treadmill which quickly was bargained down in to a 6 mile run. Even though there is supposed to be a 30 minute time limit on the cardio machines I was able to plug in a desired workout time of 65 minutes. I started on my merry way. I tried to focus on the music on my iPod, tried to think of anything except for the fact that I was like a little hamster running and running and going nowhere, but the time just dragged by. I hopped off after my 6 miles were up and quickly changed into my swimsuit and hit the pool. If you are looking for a time to bask in the quietness around the pool and just bust out some laps...Saturday morning is not the day to do it. There was only one lane open for lane swimming and the rest of the pool was dedicated to lessons for kids or other kids horsing around. Even with only one lane open there were only three of us swimming for most of the time so I was able to crank my laps out. I had hoped to get 2400 m in but it was going to be a stretch to make it so I decided to cut back to 2000 m. I was on my final 400 m set before a 200 m cool down and I was kicking with flippers on. All of a sudden my left calf seized up. I couldn't kick with my left leg anymore, but thank goodness for the flippers because I just kicked with my right leg to get me back to the other end of the pool. I stopped and stretched it out. Obviously it wasn't enough because half way through the next length it seized up again. Once again I kicked with my right leg down to the end and stopped to stretch. I abandoned the flippers and just decided to finish out with a pull buoy since crossing my ankles would keep my left calf in a stretch. Just at the end my right calf seized and I was so frustrated...and in so much pain! On every stroke I was pretty well just shouting expletives in my head. Thank goodness I was at 2000 m...I was done!

Sunday:

On Sunday there was no alarm, I just let my body wake up when it wanted to. Which was somewhere just after 10 am. Unfortunately I stumbled out of bed feeling like I had a tennis ball in each calf after yesterday's cramping in the pool incident though. I had stuff I needed to accomplish around the house and finally made it out to the Y just before 3 pm. Since this was going to be a fairly long run I hauled some nutrition along with me. This week I got a great little stocking stuffer in the mail from the wonderful folks at nuun that I couldn't wait to try out. They sent me some u to try out, and I had my choice between tangerine ginger, goji berry green tea and lemon chai. I went with the lemon chai and brought along a lemon sublime Gu to go with it.

Since this was going to be a two hour run in warm temperatures (inside) I figured this would be a good opportunity to try out my marathon race outfit. It is going to be great for running down in Disney World, but I felt a bit goofy looking at the Y... Oh well! I realized that once I got there I had forgotten to bring any Body Glide along. Gulp!

Outwit:

Yesterday I had no problems plugging in a 65 minute run, but the first treadmill I jumped on wouldn't accept anything more than a 30 minute run. Luckily yesterday's treadmill was open so I moved over and lo and behold, it took a 120 minute workout like a charm!

Outplay:

My workout called for a 2 hour run, with 3 x 20:00 at marathon race pace with 10:00 aerobic running between race pace efforts. About 15 minutes in I had to hit the bathroom. I tried to wait it out, but there was going to be no way I was going to last the full two hours. I made it to 30 minutes, hit pause and hoped that my bottle of nuun and my Gu would be enough to hold my treadmill... Ultimately I think taking that quick break at 30 minutes in helped me to break the workout up a bit. I was feeling pretty good on the intervals and my heart rate climbed nicely through zone 3 and into zone 4 throughout them. Having these different chunks of workouts also helped to break the run up so the 2 hours didn't seem like near the drag I was expecting it to be.

Outlast:

There was a bit of a question as to whether the skin on the inside of my thighs would outlast my two hour run. Seriously...must not forget Body Glide in the future... Surprisingly enough it hurt less when I was running fast then when I was running slow. Thankfully the calves held up during the run, but the left one was pretty tight after I was done. And yes...I finished 2 hours on the treadmill! I couldn't believe it, I outlasted every other treadmill opponent and won...!!

A Snowy 20 Miler

Winter boots...allowing for the resurgence of the "tuck and roll" concept:Sunday morning arrived and I was out the door at 8 am. I was carrying citrus nuun in my Camelbak and three Gus with me (Tri-Berry, Chocolate Outrage and Chocolate Mint). I'm definitely liking the nuun/Gu combo for nutrition and hydration. In hindsight I wish I would have gotten out the door an hour earlier... When I left the sidewalks were bare, but about 5 minutes in to my run the odd errant snowflake was floating around in the air. The run was feeling great - my heart rate was low, pacing felt easy...all was going so well. In fact, I wasn't trying harder, but I was running faster than last weekend. Initially the snow was melting when it hit the ground, but it didn't take too long for it to start accumulating. As the snow kept flying it became apparent that it wasn't going to let up anytime soon. I downed my Gus at miles 5, 10 and 15 and sipped on nuun about every 20 minutes or so. Right around the 15 mile point the amount of snow on the sidewalks was becoming insane. You can see that the shift happened so quickly on my pace chart below. All of a sudden it felt like I was running in sand and I was just losing a ton of energy.

*You can ignore the final pace bar since that is for the two seconds after mile 20 clicked off on the Garmin, but I didn't hit the "stop" button right away.* I felt so strong going into those last 5 miles and I was so ready to knock them out, but Mother Nature had something else in mind for me. All of a sudden I was just ready to be done slogging through the snow. Despite telling myself that I was stronger than this my legs just weren't having it. This was what it looked like when I got home, just over 3-1/2 hours later:

I figure we probably got about 5 cm of accumulation while I was out. Everything I had on was completely soaked - socks, shoes, tights, t-shirt, top, gloves and hat. I changed into sweats right away to warm up and downed some eggs, bacon and hot chocolate. I had intended to head in to work once my run was done, but after seeing all of the cars sliding around my neighborhood (and reading the heavy snowfall warning) I decided to just hang out at home. I figured this would be a great opportunity for me to catch up on laundry and maybe make a proper meal for dinner. Shortly after finishing my lunch the tiredness hit and I wound up napping on the couch for almost three hours! So much for getting stuff done around the house, but I did make it out for groceries and wound up fitting in my recovery spin, core and stretching. I am slightly disappointed in how this run ended up as I would have loved to finish stronger, but I'll have a chance for redemption in two weeks on my final long run. 35 km or 21.75 miles...

Someone Pinch Me - Warm Weather in November

112.64 running miles for the month of November. That's a new record by a whole 2.02 miles from a year ago!
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I got a bit of a late start today as I didn't head out the door until 1:30, but since I hadn't planned on doing much of anything else besides my long run today that wasn't much of an issue. It was nice and sunny and 7.5°C (45°F) here. I know for some that is pretty cold, but for me, that spells capris, a short sleeve shirt layered with a long sleeve shirt on top. For around here on November 30th, that is pretty good! I've really been pushing the pace on my long runs lately and I wind up feeling like crap in the last few miles - tired legs and very tight hip flexors. Today I was going to run easy and slow and see what happened. Thanks to the McMillan running calculator I've learned that my long run pace should be anywhere between a 10:47 to 11:47/mile.

I couldn't really get enthused about running along the river so I opted to just run my entire 18.64 miles (or 30K) around my neighborhood. Luckily there all kinds of culdesacs and loops that you can run around so finding the distance wasn't too bad. I figured if I needed anything along the run I would just detour back past my house and hopefully not be enticed by my couch.

I also wanted to try something different out on the run. I trained with Gatorade throughout the summer, and if you mix it from powder the taste isn't too bad, but I have been finding it a bit sweet lately. I've just been running with plain old tap water, but that really doesn't help you with electrolyte replacement. Yesterday I had stopped by Bow Cycle for their bike expo. There was a representative from nuun there and I had a chance to chat with him about the product and have a taste. I've read that a lot of my blogging buddies like it, but I hadn't given it a shot though. In case you haven't tried nuun yet either, it is a fizzy tablet that you add to a bottle of water. It turns that bottle of water in to an electrolyte replacement drink, but without the carbs. I found the taste to be pretty mild and unobtrusive, and while I was initially worried about my stomach's reaction to the effervescent effect it went down pretty smoothly.

My run was pretty uneventful, especially in the beginning. I've been working on running a 19:1 interval, although my walk break gives me enough time to have a drink and then I start back up again. Every hour I down a Gu. Today's flavours were Orange Burst (hmm, not my favourite), Chocolate Mint (love, love, love) and Chocolate Outrage (also pretty good). After I had been running for about 13 miles the sun was starting to set, I was almost out of water and I needed to go to the bathroom. I stopped in at Starbucks and once I came out I was freezing. I didn't feel like suffering through the last hour of my run getting colder and colder so I detoured by my home to swap out my long sleeve shirt for a heavier long sleeve layer. I was so happy for this, because as I continued on I was running head on in to some cold wind. Making the change was good. My legs were still feeling strong. Even though I finished up the last few miles of my run on a route that had some good hills thrown in I felt pretty good. Apparently this starting slow thing really works, and I averaged right where I needed to be pace-wise on a long run. I finished up right outside Starbucks (how convenient) and grabbed a beverage before heading home for a quick recovery spin and some stretching.

I'm often been asked by people how you don't get bored running for hours on end. What does one think of? I'm never really sure how to answer this question, so I pondered it a bit today. Truthfully, I don't think about too much out there a lot of the time. Plodding along, recognizing the rhythm of my footfalls and breaths seems to be the norm for me. Sometimes if I think too much this is a bad thing. Right now I'm working so much that running gives my brain some much needed time off. As another example, invariably you start to think about how something hurts, or about how you still have so far left to go. Today I made a conscious effort to not think about how far I had to run. I figured that if I broke it down (wow...you are only a third of the way there..!) it would get too depressing! I thought about when I needed to take a gel in relation to minutes on the road, but otherwise I just kept plodding along. Sometimes I get a snippet of a song in my head but it rarely lasts for long. When things get tough at the end and I just want to be done I think about what I want at the end of my run. Am I looking forward to my bike? Or eating something? A lot of times I think about what beverage from Starbucks I'm going to pick up. Just chanting "venti iced non-fat latte" over and over with every step got me through a particularly tough 15 miler this summer. Today I kept thinking about the grande decaf non-fat peppermint mocha twist with whip, but mostly because it was such a mouthful I wanted to be sure I remembered all components when it came time to order! What about you, what do you think of on your long run?