Flipping a coin to decide your workout isn't a good strategy.

Workouts:

Wednesday: 6 mile easy run
Thursday: 8 mile tempo (6 at pace)

I wrote earlier about my dilemma concerning whether or not to add my 6 mile easy runs back into my training schedule on Wednesdays.  I woke up Wednesday not sure which one I was going to do...run or bike or run or bike or RUN OR BIKE DAMMIT was all I could think about after I got up.  I finally decided which one I was going to do through a highly scientific process known as "flipping a coin."

It came up "run".  So I did.  And now I regret it.  My left ankle/shin is now so tight I don't even think my foam roller will make a dent, especially after running an 8 mile tempo this morning--a tempo run that I successfully finished, unlike last week, in the cooler temperatures of the morning and at 15 seconds slower per mile than I attempted last week.

Gee, I guess I know what I'll be doing next Wednesday, huh?

The only good thing about all of this is that I did remember to wear my new compression socks for both of these runs.  On Wednesday it was super foggy when I got up, so I decided to wear my neon yellow shoes and my Ragnar compression socks:

I swear to God it felt like those shoes were glowing in the fog, sending off beams of neon light streaming into the grey morning.  Too bad drivers still didn't see me and I had to run in the ditch.  A lot.

This morning was much less foggy, so I decided to try out my royal blue Pro Compression calf sleeves and socks, which are totally awesome because they are BLUE.

Please to note the cute running skirt.  The shirt I was wearing was not so cute, but I wore it because it was a long sleeve shirt and  I thought it would be cold outside for some strange reason.  It wasn't.  This morning, therefore, was one of those mornings where I wished I had a superhot skinny body so I could have just stripped off the shirt during the run and strutted down the street in just my sports bra and running skirt.  But instead I just had to suck it up like the former bigger girl that I am and hope like hell for a breeze.

Thankfully tomorrow is one of those "rest" days where I do stuff like weights and biking.  I'll have to keep it easy, though, because Saturday is my first mud obstacle course race for the summer--the Rugged Maniac.  Last summer I could barely haul myself up any of the ropes, so I'll be interested to see if I have gained any strength from all the weights I've lifted in the past year.

Last year at this Rugged Maniac race (the hardest 5K I have ever run in my LIFE, people) a guy had to push me up by my posterior region through a pipe that had a rope in it because I couldn't physically pull myself up the rope.  So here's to hoping I don't have to have a strange man touch my ass to help me through an obstacle on Saturday.  Oh--and here's to also hoping that I don't injure myself even further jumping over walls or fire.

I wore compression sleeves to work today.

Workouts: 

Monday: Total body workout that was entirely too glutetastic the day before speed work.
Tuesday: Speed work - 3 x [1 x 1200, 1 x 400]

I really did wear compression sleeves to work today.  Under my dress pants.  Check the sexiness out rightcheer:

That's because I did some intense (for me) speed work this morning.  The workout itself wasn't long (3 x [1 x 1200, 1 x 400]), but I accidentally ratcheted up the pace for those repeats.  Instead of running them at 8:15 (for the 1200s) and 8:00 (for the 400s), I stayed down in the 7:50s and 7:10s for the most part.  I write that almost casually, as me running those speeds isn't a big deal.

But it's a HUGE FREAKING DEAL.  Why?  Because a) I ran them too fast and last time I kept running my intervals too fast I got this thing called an "injury" and b) I have never ever run 400s under 7:30 (that I can remember) so even though I am frightened to death of injuries I am also over-freaking-joyed.  That is, if I don't injure myself.  Which is why I am wearing my calf sleeves to work all day to get the goodness that is recovery from compressing your muscles all day.

I am also wearing them because I have been using my new Mizuno Wave Sayonaras which, if you didn't know, are a much more minimalist shoe than my typical Mizuno Wave Riders.  To me, the Sayonaras have just enough cushioning without all the bulk or heaviness.  The toe box is also really wide, which allows your toes to splay outward, supposedly giving you a much more realistic stride.

They are the lightest and most minimal shoes in which I have ever run, and I can tell that I am running differently in them due to the band of soreness that runs medially up both shins.  They don't feel like full-on shin splints--it's a deep muscle pain that hurts the most when I squat.  But, after I squat, the muscles seem to get stretched out and the pain disappears.  And that's exactly what I did during my recoveries this morning-squatted and stretched out those muscles, and I am not feeling any pain whatsoever right now.  I just wanted to wear the calf sleeves as an extra-added insurance policy, as it were, against that pain.

But the pain doesn't make me love my Sayonaras any less than I already do.

In fact, I'm considering these as a potential marathon shoe for my October marathon.  I know I can't train in them all the time (especially with that "pain" thing), but I want to wear them for some type of speed work at least once a week.  That is, if the pain goes away and doesn't get worse.  If not, I guess I'll just have to wear my compression sleeves to work a tad more often, eh?

Irish people: Today was your day.

Today was my day. I am Irish.

I don't drink so the way I celebrate is by running a race.  I think my ancestors would tar and feather me for that if they knew.  But they're dead, and, if they were here, they'd probably be dead drunk, too (har!).

Because my husband wimped out and refused to come (it was 24 degrees outside and windy when we started the race), I had no official race photographer.  Below are the best I could do on my own:

Yes, I am in the bathroom.  That's where the mirrors are.  And some awesome smells.

Pro Compression Shamrock Socks completed my outfit.

I forgot to wear my tie.  I was a little upset, especially since it cost me a whole dollar at Target.

The race was cold and windy.  No matter what direction we ran, the wind was in our faces.  I planned on taking this race a little easy what with my foot still not at 100%, so my goal for the race was to practice my negative splits.  I wanted to end up at around 8 minutes per mile, so my first split was at about 8:28.  I was pacing a dude for the first 1.5 miles that was doing that pace who kept clearing his throat every 3 nanoseconds, so I started to pull away just to save what was left of my sanity.  After that, I busted out an 8:11 2nd mile, and, thanks to the fact that 0.6 miles of the 3rd mile is all downhill to the finish, I managed a 7:51 as I crossed the finish line.

Because this was not my best performance (a 25:32; last year I pulled off a 24:17) and there were about 600 people at this race, I didn't expect to place.  I just went inside the building to get warm, scope out the post-race food (bread, cole slaw and donuts.....?), and find a place to stretch and pee (not in the same spot).  I stuck around as the raffle began, but I really wanted to leave because I had 19 more miles to do--technically, I was supposed to do a 22 mile run according to my training schedule.  And leave I almost did, until they hung up the results and I saw that I had taken 1st place in my age group.  Not too shabby.

After collecting my medal, I scrambled home, threw on my hydration backpack, and took off for my 19-mile run.  My foot whined off and on for the entire run, and it was the worst in mile 11.  But, for a 19 mile run, I had some pretty good splits (for me, anyway):

The main event that happened during this run was: people.  There were people out EVERYWHERE.  People walking their dogs unleashed, people trying to find their lost doberman, people trying to find the nearest exit to I-90...it was a pretty steady parade of people in the middle of my run.   Some of these people decided to be all friendly and try and talk to me.  However, during a run, I'm not really interested in talking or stopping--I am interested in running.  It's like how I drive my husband complete and total batshit by never answering my phone on a run.  This is because the phone is there for me to call SOMEONE ELSE, not to answer it and have a chit-chat while trying to make it through mile 15.  I just want to run, dammit, and run uninterrupted.

But some of these people I met on the run were driving cars and stopping to talk to me.  Now, I don't know about you, but when I am a female and running alone (which is often), I don't like it when people stop their cars, get out of their cars, and then try and walk up to me.  I tend to back away and get out my pepper spray, which causes them to look very concerned.  All I know is that if they grab my backpack, they can probably get me to their car before my uncoordinated ass unbuckles the clasps on the front of my body, so I don't want these car-driving-getting-out-of-cars people anywhere near me.  At least the last 5 miles of the run were people-free; it left me some time to concentrate on my foot and obsess over whether I was getting a stress fracture or had a synovial cyst of some kind along the length of my extensor tendon.

Speaking of the foot, it's a little sore now; I iced it immediately afterwards and took some ibuprofen.  And then I went to Red Robin and had a pretty damn good burger at my husband's nephew's birthday party.  Hey, I know how to eat for recovery baby, and recover is what I intend to do tomorrow with my cross-training day.  I'll let you know what I choose to do to screw up my foot further for cross-training in tomorrow's post.

Total Running Moron Tuesday

I had every intention of running outside this morning.  I really, really did.  I had 4 mile repeats to do, and the weather was in the 50s at 5 A.M. on January 29th.  In Illinois.  Which, in case you didn't know, is in the Northern Hemisphere, so we are supposed to be in the depths of winter, but we're not--the Snow Miser is on vacay and his brother Heat Miser is here to stay.  At least for today, anyway.

But, as you probably suspect by now, I didn't get to do my repeats this morning.  I did do these things:

a) Go outside.
b) Run

But it was just too freaking windy (20 mph winds) to do any sensible speed work.  I only managed a mile warm-up before I turned around and came back, being blown all over the place in the meantime. I know you hard core types would have been pumping out the miles and cursing Mother Nature into the wind the entire time, but I actually like to get up to the proper speed in my speed work.  And maintain it.  Winds that are too high don't let me do that, you see.  I toyed with the idea of doing them on my treadmill, but the thought of the mental anguish I would suffer doing that when I can barely manage 1000m repeats on the thing caused me even more mental anguish.

So I just came back in and got ready for work--but I packed a bag of running clothes for later.

After my last period class, I changed into said running clothes:

The gruesome aftermath of my run.  But my compression sleeves are freaking awesome.

I snapped on my new Garmin footpod, slapped on my 910XT, and then began to run in endless circles around the upper floor of our school, over the terrazzo floors and through the halls.  I did this in front of a lot of students and staff that knew me, which resulted in a lot of battle cries, jeers, and snide comments thrown my way.

Lessons learned on this run:

• It is much nicer to run mile repeats in endless circles than on my treadmill.  While technically my displacement for both would be zero, I have actually traveled a distance by running in those circles.
• There is no wind or rain when running inside the school.
• High school students sure do come up with witty things to say about teachers who are running in the hallways.  Witty, funny, and highly inappropriate.
• I maintained pace nicely, unlike what would have happened this morning.
• It was actually nice to talk to people in the halls that I knew while I was circling; it helped pass the time.
• I shocked a lot of students who didn't expect to see me running all-out at them in the hallway in shorts and a t-shirt.  I was not in my regular teachery uniform, you see.  I half expected some of them to start throwing homework at me just to get me to stop barrelling towards them.
• My cadence sucks.  Going to have to work on that.
• My new purple compression socks are working out quite nicely.  They would look great in a race photo or two.

I didn't care that I looked like a total running moron.  I had a run that needed to get done (without getting injured!), and I plan on crossing that finish line of my first marathon somewhere close to my time goal.  I hope to do it upright, however, and not by crawling and/or throwing myself one body part at a time towards the line.

Monday Ramblings

I began my morning by ever-so-gracefully slipping in my driveway on the sheet of ice that had formed overnight and landing right on my ass.  Good thing I have worked long and hard at putting extra padding back there; I don't even have a bruise.  Yet.  That'll teach me to wear fashionable boots with an almost nonexistent coefficient of friction instead of practical ones.  Since ice tends to melt when it hits warm ass molecules (I know this because I am a science teacher), that meant that any ice clinging to my ass thereby underwent a change of state and transformed itself into liquid H2O which wet my pants and backside thoroughly.  I got to drive to work with a wet ass.

Good thing this happened after I did Cathe's Supercuts workout (DEEElicious!), or I would really have been in trouble.  This is the third time I've done it, and I must say I am in pretty heavy serious like with it. Compound moves that make my heart rate skyrocket and that crazy core at the end....mmmm mmmm.  Now if I can only convince her that I really am committed (she keeps asking me, dammit, every time I do the workout), it would be a perfect workout.

Now, it's probably obvious I love me some cross training, mainly because it mixes up my workout week and staves off boredom.  But I also like it because I really believe it helps you train injury-free (if you're doing it right, that is.  I've done it wrong before and only got more injured.  Let's just say you shouldn't do high-impact workouts on your cross-training days-just because it's not running doesn't mean you should do it).  And my marathon training plan (which I am bitter about purchasing but glad that I have) provides two cross-training days after my long runs on Saturday.  This isn't something I ever had in a training plan before, and I dig it.  I'm thinking this has been allowing my legs to heal before smacking them around with more running abuse each week.

Why do I think this?  Because I have been the proud owner of an Achilles injury since September.  And, even after running 18 miles on Saturday, all is quiet on the Achilles front.  In fact, it feels 95% normal--and I am hitting a weekly mileage I have never ever seen before.  I guess I just got all jacked up in my old training schedules that never gave me two days off from running in a row; being a novice runner, I just assumed that wasn't what was done.  I got all mentally trapped in the boxes of those schedules I never realized I should have just given myself two days off if my body needed it, breaking free from the schedule shackles I had imposed upon myself.

Whoa.  It got all serious for a second.  Let's lighten it up:

That's better.

Anyhoo, after a pretty craptastic day today (at least I had no meetings), this came in the mail for me:

Calf sleeves.  And they're purple, people--my lucky racing color. Plus they are from Pro Compression, a neat little company whose products would make excellent Christmas gifts for the runner(s) in your life.  Just sayin'. Can't wait to try them out tomorrow morning when I'm running mile repeats in the dark.

Random Fitness Ramblings

The past few weeks have been full of fantastical fitness happenings in my life.  Well, not really, but I have thought a lot about stuff that's important to me regarding fitness, recovery, and working out lately.  So, if you choose to read further, you will now be subjected to some random fitness ramblings about topics that probably only interest me.  And maybe you.  But you'll never know unless you read it, right?

Rambling #1: Compression Stuff

When I do my training runs, I have this tendency to run all my speed work too fast.  I'm talking "so fast that I got seriously injured and thoughts of stress fractures were prancing around in my frontal lobes at all times and giving me more wrinkles" fast.  In my injured state, I read a lot about what other runners were saying helped them not become injured during training (besides stop running my speed work so moronically overfast).  One of those things was compression socks/sleeves/garments.  So, having a habit of plunking down tons of cash for stuff simply because it's for running, I bought some compression socks and sleeves from various companies (CEP, PRO Compression, and SL3S) and have been wearing them during training and for running races. I have even purchased recovery socks, and--believe it or not--wear them after a race or hard workout to recover.  Below are some images of how sexy they are and remind me of when I was a kid in the 80s and we all wore our socks that high and we were the COOLEST:

Grey shorts = I look like I didn't quite make it to the bathroom during my run.  SL3S compression socks.

Recovery socks.  They feel awesome.

CEP compression socks for my first run in Ragnar.  I'm not a huge fan of these.

Half-marathoning-it in my PRO Compression socks.  I dig these.  

To put all these socks to the test, I performed a series of highly scientific experiments.  For the socks designed for running, I ran in them.  For the socks designed for recovery, I recovered in them.  From those little experiments, I used a rigorous data collection method known as "asking myself a question and then answering it."  The question asked was, "Do I hurt less during and after I use these expensive things--Yes or No?" After careful systemic analysis of the data, I have come to the conclusion that the CEP socks I have are the ones I like the least.  I experience the most pain during and after my workouts in them (maybe I need to go down a size, even though I measured my calf circumference just before buying them?).  My favorites so far are the SL3S calf sleeves and the PRO Compression socks, because I experience the least pain during and after running.  The only negative about them is that these companies need to start making them in purple or navy blue, because those are my two favorite colors in the entire universe. (Can you tell from the pics?)  The recovery socks I do like as well--I sleep in them and my legs wake up feeling all bouncy and ready for the day.  I feel it important to note at this point that the shin splints that plagued me after my last half marathon have pretty much disappeared since I have been recovering/training in these socks.  But that could also have been a result of....

Rambling #2: Ice baths.

 As I have already mentioned, I had the shin splints from hell.  This was right before I was supposed to run  Ragnar Chicago, which I thought might be a tad unpleasant with shin splints.  After coming back from an easy run with my shins screaming, I elected to try ice immersion for my shins.

This was my response face to my husband's incredulous "why is my wife sticking her leg in a bucket of ice" look.  Yeah, I can throw down the looks, yo.

Now, some say that you shouldn't do this, because you're basically stopping the recovery process, and it is from this process that you make gains in strength, speed and endurance.  Others say you should do this to aid in recovery and to help your legs feel fantastic the next day.  Because I wanted to see for myself if this whole icing thing was worth it, I again resorted to my science teacher training and designed an experiment to see if plunging body parts in ice would help them feel better the next day (as well as my nagging, annoying ankle injury that made it feel like someone was pulling up a sock that was on the inside of my skin).  Here's a run down of my experiment and my results:

Step #1: Run.  Then stop running at some point.
Step #2: Immerse body parts in ice for 10-15 minutes or however long I could stand it before I wimped out.
Step #3: Go to work and earn money for more running stuff.
Step #4: Come home and go to sleep.  Dream about buying running stuff.
Step #5: Determine how body parts plunged in ice felt the next day upon rising and stumbling down the steps half-asleep and not stepping on any sleeping dogs.
Step #6: Repeat Steps #1-5 for 3 months.

Results:  Said body parts that were immersed feel better--MUCH better.  Shin splints have not been felt for at least 4 weeks, but this could also be a result of a vacation in Alabama where the researcher's mother makes excellent Southern food that may have special healing properties.  Further experiments are warranted that involve eating copious amounts of this food.

So, according to my research, ice = body parts feel better.  As a matter of fact, I have moved up to taking full-on ice baths after running (see picture below).

Just chillin.  Dig the homemade ice cubes?

However, icing will not prevent you from doing stupid things while training, like running your speed work too fast.

Rambling #3: Cathe Friedrich never fails to make me think I'm going to die.

Cathe Friedrich is my favorite DVD-trainer-person ever.  I will gladly arm wrestle anyone who wants to argue with me on this, especially since Cathe has done quite the nice job of helping me get some upper-body strength and definition through the remnants of my former fatness.  I did two of her workouts this week that were new to me, To the Max and Pyramid Upper Body.  The former is a step workout like no other--no complicated choreography, just simple HiiT moves that will leave you a sweaty, drenched mess and needing a towel to wipe the sweat off of anything in your exercise space because it will be drenched in sweat, too.  The latter is a pure weight-lifting workout that uses simple moves but pyramids what weight you use to do them.  How effective is this workout?  Well, let me tell you all of the things I am had a hard time doing today as a result of doing that workout yesterday:

• Washing my back in the shower
• Making right turns while driving the car
• Making left turns while driving the car
• Opening the front door 
• Closing the front door
• Doing anything involving lifting my arms above the level of my shoulders
• Doing anything that involved moving my arms medially or laterally

I think I had been hitting a plateau with my weight-work (I believe it makes you a stronger runner who can endure to the end when form starts to crumble), and this workout was what my muscles needed to wake 'em up again.  Plus, I love Cathe because she doesn't just make the same old DVD with a new name on the cover. And she's not afraid to lift heavy or make workouts that make me think I will drop dead after it's over.  And she doesn't scream at you, she motivates you.  I love that woman.

Well, I appreciate it if you've made it all the way through this rambling post about ramblings. If you have any ramblings of your own that pertain to fitness or any of the contents of this post, feel free to share.  Or not.  This is a no-pressure kind of blog.