Day 7, Week 8: A stupid FAQ about a stupid 50 mile bike ride.

I mentioned yesterday that I had one heck of a bike ride planned for today.  50 miles of cycling goodness, to be exact.  And I'm as surprised as anyone that those 50 miles actually happened.

Five OHHHHH my quads hurt

Why was I surprised?  Well, that sounds like a good start to one of my world-famous stupid FAQs.

So, why were you surprised you could do a 50-mile bike ride? Didn't you do 45 miles last weekend?

Yes, but the number "50" is nice and round and large enough to make my brain start this crazy mantra even in the middle of actually doing it.

"I can't do this I can't do this I can't do this WHAT ARE YOU DOING I can't do this" 

Also, it didn't help that my quads were really tired and I put the part of the ride with all the hills up front, making my quads scream from the get go and further feeding that false mantra.

What kept you going during the ride, then, if you wanted to quit early on?

The fact that I blogged about doing 50 miles yesterday and so...shame if I didn't actually do it.  Yeah.  Shame. That's healthy, right?

Hmm...maybe no so healthy.

Wait...haven't you done a 50 mile ride before?

I sure have - when I was training for a half Ironman that ended in DNF shame and excruciating IT band pain.  

Well, how'd that first 50-miler go?

You can check out the details for yourself below.

How does that ride compare to the one you did today?

Well, I have to say that I did just a tad bit better.  Like a half-and-hour freaking better.  But it has been four years since that first 50 miler and I am juuuuuust a tad bit more trained for distance than I was back then.

Well, it certainly seems like you've improv-- hey, wait a minute...why was your last 5 miles today so much slower than the rest?  Slacking much?

Two reasons, really: 1) My legs were really, really tired.  Like, really.  Really, really REALLY tired.  And 2) those last 5 miles were up a huge hill and then a turn right into what was a light wind but felt like a wind tunnel by that point in the ride.  It was pretty much all I could do just to keep going at that point and not pull over, go sit in a corn field, and cry myself into oblivion. 


Sounds like bad planning of a route to me.  Can't you do a better of picking a route?

Well, I could pick flatter routes, but, you know that duathlon bike course pretty much consists of 56 miles of nothing but hills.  So, if I went with flatter training routes, I'm pretty much increasing the odds of actually sitting in that cornfield and crying during the race.


Understood.  Can I ask what time goal you're looking at for the bike portion of your duathlon?

You may ask. 



Oh...you want me to answer the question too.  I don't really have a time goal.  Unless "survival" is a unit of time now.


Overall, how do you feel about your ride today?

My face in the pic below pretty much sums it up.

BUH it's over. 

Tomorrow's workout: As if 50 miles on the bike wasn't enough today, a 17-mile run is on tap for tomorrow.   *quietsobbing*

Day 4, Week 8: Stupid axial tilt of the Earth as it revolves around the Sun.

This morning's workout?  A sweet little 17-ish mile bike ride on a cool-ish morning with no wind (yay!).  Just a few quick things about this ride because I am about to pass out asleep on my keyboard:


1) The first time I ever wore a tri suit to go biking I was convinced the cows and horses were telling me how fat I was in it with their eyes as I rolled by their pastures.  Now I throw one on anytime I bike and I'm all like "DEAL WITH MY FAT ROLLS SUCKERS I GOTTA TRAIN HOW I RACE"

Tr-suit SEXY.

2) I am secretly (and now not-so-secretly) impressed with the fact I can bust out two splits at and 18 mph average after doing 8-ish miles of speed work yesterday.

3) Did you notice the time the ride started in the picture above?  Did you also notice that there's more and more dark around in the mornings this time of year?  And that dark made the start of the ride look a lot like this:

I did bike on the road, not the grass, btw.

Stupid dark and the stupid axial tilt of the Earth as it revolves around the Sun that causes the more dark to happen.

Cycling in the dark.  Buh.  Double-buh, in fact.  Earth science ruins everything.

Tomorrow's workout: A tempo run has finally appeared in the My Run Plan app...

I got more workout than I wanted today.

Let's start off this post with two things:

Thing #1: I found my awesome Stridebox head scarfy-thing that is a collage of all the stickers you get in each box.

I do love a busy head scarfy-thing.

Thing #2: The dumbest weather I have ever seen in April in northern-almost-Wisconsin-Illinois.

SO DUMB

Now that I got those out of the way, let's talk about my workout.  I had planned on doing a bike ride on the stationary bike and then a weight workout, but I got busy cleaning and cooking and baking a cake that expressed my feelings about having to clean, cook, and the state of my cake decorating skills:

Buh indeed.

So I just ended up wanting to do a weight workout.  As I scanned my copious amounts of Cathe workouts, I realized I just wanted something light and easy, seeing as how my marathon is this Sunday and all.  So I settled on Cathe's Low Impact Cardio/Metabolic Conditioning workout from her latest Fit Split series, seeing as I've never done it before and it had the word "low" in it, so it must have been pretty super easy, right?  Right.

Yeah.  Wrong.  Let me give you the run down of each part of this workout:

Low Impact Cardio: Low impact?  Yes.  Cardio?  Only in the part where you're not using a gliding tool of some kind (I have sliding discs).  Once the gliding tools came out, my heart rate plummeted.  Which made me sad because I was really enjoying the non-gliding part, which moved quickly between moves that were fun and interesting. What helped redeem the part where I was sliding around on large yellow discs was the fact that she had some nice ab moves towards the end (hellooo dragging plank) that are making my abs whine at me at this very moment.

Metabolic Conditioning:  This is a lower-weight workout (the heaviest weight Cathe uses is 15 pounds) that had a nice variety of moves and worked all the major muscle groups.  Cathe uses a lot of compound exercises that work both legs and upper body so your heart rate does get up there a bit.  However, if you're looking for a workout that is going to help you get yooge and swole, this is not the one for you.  For a tapering runner like me, this is kind of the perfect weight workout.  Again, I liked that Cathe incorporated the abs in the last few exercises so I didn't have to internally sob about doing a completely separate ab workout.  Thanks, Cathe!

Overall, I got a decent workout...more workout than I really wanted to do.  Which is way more of a workout than these slugs got:

They're just in prolonged recovery.

But the workout situation today is what it is. Whatever that "is" is.


And these learnings are what they are:

• Head scarfy-things.  I'm kind of addicted to them now.
• Everyone needs to have some BUH cake once in a while.  My BUH cake is white with chocolate frosting.
• I plan on eating the "B" of the cake first so eventually it will be an UH cake.
• I kind of dug doing a little cardio and a little weights in one workout.  I'll have to do this workout again.
• Female cat appeared after the workout was over, and here mere presence is a sign of approval.

Tomorrow's workout: Only a 6 x400 and lots of worrying about my marathon on Sunday!

Lessons from the long run: 15 miles of treadmill BUH-ness

Mother Nature was made good on her promise to give us 20 to 30 mph winds today.  If you've ever had a long run planned and then woke up to the whistling of the high winds past your bedroom window, you'll know how depressing that is.  Since the winds were coming straight from the east, the hubbs and I briefly toyed with the idea of him driving me east for 15 miles, dropping me off, and then me running home to the west with that nasty wind at my back.

But then he was all "oh if we do that I will worry about you getting killed or hit by a car or some crazy person shoving you in the trunk of a car and stealing you" even though I have been running all over the place by myself for 7.5 years and usually the only things I need to worry about where I live are stray dogs and goats following me.

I eventually ended up humoring him and headed to the treadmill.  Total BUH.

BUH and a BUH

Even though this long run was on the treadmill, I still learned some long run lessons:

Lesson #1: My treadmill and my Garmin watch think quite differently about distance and pace.

Add 99 more minutes of BUH to that time you see there.

I had to run more than half a mile for my watch to actually read a happy "15" whilst the treadmill had already pushed past that number.  Running on the treadmill is BUH enough without having to run extra because I'm a slave to what my Garmin reads.


Lesson #2: Doing one mile slower and two miles at pace really helps get through the longness of treadmill long run.

Doing this splits the run into smaller chunks of 3s for me, which makes it easier to get through.  Plus I get to look forward to a slower mile every once in a while...so, bonus.

Lesson #3: The Last Jedi is a good movie--DON'T BELIEVE THE HATERS.

Downloaded that sucker on my Kindle, hooked up my Bluetooth speaker so I could actually hear the movie over the treadmill, and it sucked me in entirely.  I even bought the one with all the deleted scenes at the end, so I didn't have to suffer through the last few minutes of the run with no movie.

Kindle deployed for maximum treadmill distraction.

Lesson #4: This new watch band I bought for my Garmin sucks.

I've whined before about how bands aren't made for people with nickel allergies...well this band isn't made with a strong enough magnet.  This means the magnet slips down the band while you run, loosening the band and annoying the crap out of me.  I would get a new one but they all contain nickel somehow, which takes my annoyance to a whole.  'nother.  level.


Lesson #5: The Headsweats visors really are better at sopping up all your head sweat.

Now, let me first state that I like the visors and hats Headsweats puts out.  However, I always thought they were kind of hyped when it came to their sweat-soaking abilities...until today, that is.  I wore a visor that was just that: a visor, and during the last 3 miles I was slinging more sweat off the brim of that visor than I was off the rest of my body.  I've learned my lesson in terms of visors.

So during my 15 mile treadmill run I ended up wiping my visor more than my face. #treadmillrunningproblems #treadmillrunning #longrun #marathontraining #facetiouslyfit

A post shared by Terie Engelbrecht (@mrsebiology) on Mar 24, 2018 at 1:39pm PDT

Lesson #6: I dig the Brooks Levitates.

I've run a marathon in them and done some long runs in them including this one...they're not as heavy as I thought they'd be (like the Glycerin is and the Ghost now feels) and they have a springiness that I didn't think I'd like, but I do.  These have goal marathon potential.

Now, if only they came in tie-dye, they'd be perfect.


Lesson #7: I've got to stop the online shopping while I procrastinate before doing my run.

I don't know if I've said much about this on the blog, but we're remodeling a new house that one day I may actually eventually live in (maybe) and that takes money.  So I really really shouldn't have bought the St. Patrick's Day version of the Brooks Launch 5s and I should have never, ever thrown my name in for this:

It's $170 bucks if I get in, plus they sell you cool merchandise during registration, which is the best way to suck my wallet dry.  Like I tell the hubbs, at least my addiction is running and not things like cocaine, heroin, or gambling.  I do have a knack for putting things in perspective for him, I know.

Lesson #8: If it's the last mile of a long run, nature will call.

Seriously, what is it about the last mile of any long run and the need to answer that call?!?  It's a good thing there's a bathroom right next to the treadmill.  I need to take a serious look at my fiber intake.


Big lessons are done, now for the smaller learnings:

• If I could have done this run outside, I would have.  Mainly because large dog needs the naughty run out of him again.
• I'll have you know that if I don't get into the MCM, I already have Grand Rapids Marathon as my back-up marathon (which is way cheaper).
• There may have been some hooting and hollering while I was watching Star Wars and running at the same time.
• And there was so much sweat being flung from that visor that male cat, who usually likes to hang out by the treadmill while I'm running, kept getting hit with droplets and vacated the area.
• Fiber.  A friend and a foe.

Tomorrow's workout:  I'm thinking about a bike ride OUTSIDE like a crazy person plus some upper body weights.

This morning's workout review: BUH

There's only one word to describe this morning's so-called "speed" workout:

BUH.

Didn't stop me from taking stupid pics whilst I was on the treadmill, though.

So much stupid in one picture - AMAZING

I got up 45 minutes late today to the hubbs asking me, "Hey-are you getting up or what?!?"  While I would have loved to say "or what" and slammed my head back into the pillow and allowed the male cat to continue to sleep on the back of my knees, I like having money to pay the bills so I got up.  And, for some reason, I was utterly exhausted and it was all I could do to get dressed and drag my tired legs over to the treadmill.

But I decided to see how many of those four 1200 m repeats I could do, so I started slogging away at those repeats.  And here's what happened:

• Approximately 3,000 stops to blow my nose
• One husband sneaking up on me so that all of a sudden a giant husband head appeared to the right of my head while I was deep into my 1200m repeat "can't hear anything with my headphones on" groove 
• Two loud screams at being startled by the giant husband head
• 1 male cat that kept trying to get on the treadmill with me and...
• 2.5 trips to the bathroom

Like I said...the run was total BUH.  But better to have run and BUH-ed than never to have run at all, I guess. 

But maybe I should have just stayed in bed.  The cat, apparently, is much smarter than me.

I'm not that smart, but here are some learnings:

• Seriously, I'm glad I didn't run at all.  The pace wasn't hard, but apparently the rest of my body wasn't having any of this "running" nonsense this morning.
• Stupid fitness photos are my specialty, in case this is the first time you've ever read this blog.
• Sleeping is also my specialty, one I didn't get to practice much last night.
• You think female cat is mocking me by napping like that while I was on the treadmill?  Yeah, I think so too.

Tomorrow's workout:  Boot Camp with Cathe!

Mile repeats? Put on a happy face.

It figures that mile repeats, my most hated speed workout, comes up after my sickness and my not running because of the sickness and my whining calves.

It freaking figures.

But I still got up and put on a happy face before I hopped on the treadmill to embrace the pain.

The happy face didn't last long.  Well, it lasted through the warm-up, where my calves screamed at me at every step.  But I decided to do as much as I could, even if I had to later cut some of the repeats to 1200s or 800s.

So how much was "as much as I could do?"  Well, the workout called for 3 x 1 mile repeats, and here's how they went:

• Repeat #1: Oh look I finished the first two quarters...only 2 more to go....wait--what's that ringing?  Oh, it's nature calling.  BRB.

• Repeat #2: Ran that whole thing and my lungs only felt like they were going to die 95% of the time instead of 100%.

• Repeat #3: OK, last one...I got this...only a 1200 more to go....*ring* *ring* Nature....is that you again?!?

Buh.  This workout is what it is.  Or what it was, I guess, since it was in the past. Specifically, it was the cause of my calves being even more sore than they were yesterday.  And then I wore high heels to work because I'm a moron.  Female cat would agree if she wasn't asleep.  Or even cared.

Hyooman-this way I can't see your stupid blog
pictures.

Ready for learnings?  I know you are:

• Mile repeats.  Buh.
• Nature needs to get a life and start bothering someone else during their runs.  So needy.
• Some workout is better than no workout.  Or at least that's what I tell myself.
• I think my calves may be permanently traumatized. 
• I also think my calves would appreciate me not wearing high heels to work, no matter how super cute they are.
• By the way, I'm still eating my veggies.  And it's still all VEGGIES BUH.

Tomorrow's workout: Probably some of Cathe's PHA.  I think I'll switch back to the Strong & Sweaty series this week.