I ran 2 days ago, and am finally getting around to posting about it. The run wasn't long enough in time or distance to be considered a week 8 run so I don't feel it appropriate to put it in that category, but I'm still going to blog about it just so you know I'm not sitting on the couch watching tv and eating cheetos.
Picture it: Saturday morning, North Reading, MA. I put my 5K mix and the whole New Kids on the Block "The Block" CD on my ipod shuffle. I really don't like the 2 mile out-and-back route that I do (perhaps you've heard me complain about it...) so I decided to do the old standby 1.6 mile loop. I ran the whole thing without stopping, and I finished in just under 21 minutes. It felt good to know I haven't regressed in my training to pre-W5D3 ability. It also felt good to realize that I just ran a 13:07 pace. That's about a minute off of my pace from my last run. Pretty good for slacking off for 3 weeks, eh?
I really need to finish the last 2 weeks of this C25K program. The annoying thing is that one of my co-workers wants to start the C25K program and because I'm not good at saying no to things I don't want to do, I somehow agreed to run with her 3 days per week. What? I don't have time to do my own workouts 3 days per week, and now I'm going to start over at week 1? Plus, she wants to run after work which is miserable, and she's rearranging her schedule to do it, so now I really feel obligated to do it with her. I had a dream last night that she had a doctor's appointment and told me that she'd be unable to run with me. Of all the dreams that I could wish would come true, I'm actually hoping it's this one.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Week 8, Day 1: So much for muscle memory
I finally made it to Horn Pond tonight, a day late, after being a week late. I got out of work late, made it to the Pond by 5:08, and had to make a phone call at exactly 5:45pm, so I knew I only had 37 minutes to complete the run. My run was only supposed to be 28 minutes, but knowing I only had 37 minutes eliminated the possibility that I would scrap the run and turn it into a leisurely walk. I thought the pond was 2 miles around, but I tracked it on the USATF site and it's only 1.92. It took me 29:39 to complete the loop. I'm not going to lie, I walked a lot. I told myself not to take my first walk break until 10 minutes in, which I did, but then the walk breaks were about every 2-3 minutes until I finished. I know in one of my previous posts I vowed to finish the program as written and without walk breaks, but I'm still counting this run at W8D1. If I don't, I'll never finish the program and I'll give up before running a 5K.
The tricky thing for me to do is to keep running 3 days per week. Daylight is shrinking and I feel like my schedule is getting busier. Those of you who me in real life will be shocked to know that I haven't watched any fall TV this year, so it's not even like I can cut useless TV watching from my schedule to find more time. (Ok! I lied again! I LOVE GLEE! But that's the only show I watch. Honest.)
Emily, Jane, and Michelle - who's up for a nice & easy 15:00/mile run on Saturday or Sunday?
The tricky thing for me to do is to keep running 3 days per week. Daylight is shrinking and I feel like my schedule is getting busier. Those of you who me in real life will be shocked to know that I haven't watched any fall TV this year, so it's not even like I can cut useless TV watching from my schedule to find more time. (Ok! I lied again! I LOVE GLEE! But that's the only show I watch. Honest.)
Emily, Jane, and Michelle - who's up for a nice & easy 15:00/mile run on Saturday or Sunday?
Monday, September 28, 2009
Week Huh? Day What?
I can't believe it's been a whole week since I last ran. Although after the run I just had, maybe I can believe it. Week 8, where I should be, is 2.75 miles or 28 minutes. I planned to do my 2 mile loop, which had previously taken me 28 minutes. I included the 5 minute warm-up walk in that 2 miles, and then figured I'd add on distance at the end if I needed to meet the time. Buuuuut, I ended up walking about 20 minutes into the run, and then never got back into the groove. I walked a lot on the return home. My total time for 2 miles was 33:51. I obviously can't count this run for week 8, so I'll have to try again this week. I think I'll try running Horn Pond after work one night, because it's too dark in the morning and this 2 mile course is too damn hilly. Tomorrow night, I'll run Horn Pond tomorrow night. Thanks, Blog!
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Week 7, Day 3: Ok, I get it, NO WALKING!
After my last run, I got some feedback about the walk break debate, and the general consensus is that I need to be doing the program as written, which is to say no walk breaks. So, to prove to myself and others that I can do this, I went out today and ran for 25 minutes with no walking. So there.
I went back to my old, original route today. While I like the exactness of the 2 mile route I'd been doing lately, it's much more hilly, which I think was contributing to my need for walk breaks. It was also taking me 28+ minutes to complete that loop, while the W7 workouts only call for 25 minutes. I feel like I've been in a state of indecision about the time vs. distance dilemma for too long, so I'm putting my foot down and making a declaration.
I, Effie of effieruns.blogspot.com, will from here on out, finish the C25K program based on TIME, not DISTANCE. I will also RUN, not WALK the entire time. After week 9, when I'm done with the program as written, I will continue to increase my distance up to the 5K distance, or I will be bold and just sign up for a 5K and see what happens. This declaration is starting to sound wishy washy. I declare an end to this declaration.
I think I need to run a 5K before Halloween. It's getting really dark out in the morning. I might not even be able to finish C25K outside, unless I want to either run in the dark, or be late for work. I looked up 5K races again, and found this one, http://www.allandmorrison5k.com/index.htm which takes place about a week and a half after I finish the C25K program. Pros: It's close to my home, and it's advertised as a run/walk. Cons: It looks like a first annual, which may mean poor turnout and/or poor organization. I also found this one on the next day: http://www.theprofessionalcenter.org/Trot%20for%20Tots%2009%20entry%20form%20laplume.pdf which is even CLOSER to my house and it's advertised as a flat course. I like flat. My decision could all come down to who plucks at my heart strings more: an old guy with dementia, or developmentally disabled children. Hrmmm... tough call. Is it rude to choose based on who has better post-race food?
I went back to my old, original route today. While I like the exactness of the 2 mile route I'd been doing lately, it's much more hilly, which I think was contributing to my need for walk breaks. It was also taking me 28+ minutes to complete that loop, while the W7 workouts only call for 25 minutes. I feel like I've been in a state of indecision about the time vs. distance dilemma for too long, so I'm putting my foot down and making a declaration.
I, Effie of effieruns.blogspot.com, will from here on out, finish the C25K program based on TIME, not DISTANCE. I will also RUN, not WALK the entire time. After week 9, when I'm done with the program as written, I will continue to increase my distance up to the 5K distance, or I will be bold and just sign up for a 5K and see what happens. This declaration is starting to sound wishy washy. I declare an end to this declaration.
I think I need to run a 5K before Halloween. It's getting really dark out in the morning. I might not even be able to finish C25K outside, unless I want to either run in the dark, or be late for work. I looked up 5K races again, and found this one, http://www.allandmorrison5k.com/index.htm which takes place about a week and a half after I finish the C25K program. Pros: It's close to my home, and it's advertised as a run/walk. Cons: It looks like a first annual, which may mean poor turnout and/or poor organization. I also found this one on the next day: http://www.theprofessionalcenter.org/Trot%20for%20Tots%2009%20entry%20form%20laplume.pdf which is even CLOSER to my house and it's advertised as a flat course. I like flat. My decision could all come down to who plucks at my heart strings more: an old guy with dementia, or developmentally disabled children. Hrmmm... tough call. Is it rude to choose based on who has better post-race food?
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Week 7, Day 2: To walk or not to walk?
Week 7, Day 2 completed today, 2 miles in 28:12, a 14:06 pace (and NO bathroom emergencies today. Yay!). I'm almost under a 14:00/mile pace! I took quite a bit of walk breaks on today's run, at no planned intervals or for a planned amount of time. I just walked when I felt like walking, and made sure to start running as quickly as I felt it possible. The end result? A faster time than the W7D1 run. I definitely felt myself running faster on the second half of the run (which is when I started taking the walk breaks).
I remember from my former life as a runner the age-old debate of walk breaks. Proponents of the walk break, namely Jeff Galloway, say that it's a good thing because it allows your body enough of a rest to be able to run faster & longer. Opponents say that if you need a walk break, you're probably running too fast, and slowing your pace down a bit will yield the same results. Then there are those elitists who are anti-walk break for the sole purpose that they are RUNNERS not WALKERS but for the intents & purposes of the walk break discussion in this blog, their opinion is too far out there to even be considered. So what do people think about walk breaks? And has it ever been suggested in the C25K program that we will be running a 5K without walk breaks? I'm interested to hear your opinions.
I remember from my former life as a runner the age-old debate of walk breaks. Proponents of the walk break, namely Jeff Galloway, say that it's a good thing because it allows your body enough of a rest to be able to run faster & longer. Opponents say that if you need a walk break, you're probably running too fast, and slowing your pace down a bit will yield the same results. Then there are those elitists who are anti-walk break for the sole purpose that they are RUNNERS not WALKERS but for the intents & purposes of the walk break discussion in this blog, their opinion is too far out there to even be considered. So what do people think about walk breaks? And has it ever been suggested in the C25K program that we will be running a 5K without walk breaks? I'm interested to hear your opinions.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Week 7, Day 1: Cat Stevens, are you mocking me?
I felt good going into Week 7. I actually thought about the week and how I would attack it. I made two small adjustments. First, I cleared all the songs from my ipod and then made a 45 minute mix of songs that I wanted to hear on my run. I even put them in a logical order to try to match my psychotic moodiness. The order of the songs ended up being perfect, for reasons I'll explain later.
The second adjustment I made involves the timing of my runs. I decided that I would do the 5-minute warmup walk as a separate part of my loop, and then start my watch again when I started the run. I basically walk 2.5 minutes away from my house, then turn around and come back. The new route I've been running is exactly 2 miles from the top of my driveway, so doing the walk separately lets me actually RUN for 2 miles, and it allows me to time myself just on the running so I can compare my pace from day to day. The week 7 workout is the same every day: run 2.5 miles or 25 minutes. (Really? How many Couch to 5Kers are running a 10-minute mile?!) So I'm a 1/2 mile short on my runs, but that's pretty consistent with the whole program up until this point so I'm not sweating it. Today's 2-mile time was 28:40, which is a 14:20 pace. I'm resisting the urge to make a comparison here (thanks for the advice, Gift of Isis) so instead I'll just say that 14:20 sounds like a great starting pace upon which I can improve.
As my cousin Lisa says, I'm not afraid to talk about the good, the bad, and the poop. Brace yourself people, because it's time for another poop story. So the new 2-mile loop that I'm running is all residential. There are only 2 tiny wooded areas on the run, which are within 1/2 mile of each other. These are my only bathroom options, and neither of them are very appealing. I think one is a swamp, and the other one, I found out today, is a thicket of thorns. I passed the first bathroom option, willing my body to keep it together until I got home, but when I approached the second bathroom option, I knew it was now or never. There was one tall pine tree, and it was surrounded by a tall thicket of thorns, which I didn't realize until I got really close. My only option was to crawl underneath the branches of the pine tree to get behind it and hopefully out of sight of passing cars, kids waiting at the bus stop, people walking their dogs, etc. I was literally on my hands & knees scooching under branches. At one point, my headphones got snagged on a branch and got pulled off my head and then when I turned around to retrieve them, my shirt got caught on another branch. I'm lucky to have gotten out of there alive, people. Let me tell you, the suburbs are a very scary place. So anyway, I got far enough in to do my business, then had to crawl back out. LUCKILY, I'm fairly certain no one saw this 240-pound woman wearing sweatpants and lopsided headphones crawling out from underneath the pine tree. If they did, I'm dying to read the blog post they are writing right now. But wait! I have to tell you the best part! While all of this crawling and pooping was going on, the song on my ipod was Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty", which apparently is so dirty you need to spell it with 2 r's because that's the sound you make when you're doing dirty things, like crawling underneath a pine tree to take a dump. So that's pretty funny, right? Well it GETS BETTER. The very next song on my ipod that starts playing is Cat Stevens' "Can't keep it in", whose lyrics go, "Oh, I can't keep it in! I can't keep it in, I gotta let it out." How perfect is that? And more importantly, how did I not see the irony in these lyrics before? I've never made the connection in the hundreds of times I've listened to the song, but today, I swear I could see Yusuf Islam sitting on his prayer rug laughing his ass off.
Here's to hoping for a sub-14:00 pace and no bathroom emergencies on the next run.
The second adjustment I made involves the timing of my runs. I decided that I would do the 5-minute warmup walk as a separate part of my loop, and then start my watch again when I started the run. I basically walk 2.5 minutes away from my house, then turn around and come back. The new route I've been running is exactly 2 miles from the top of my driveway, so doing the walk separately lets me actually RUN for 2 miles, and it allows me to time myself just on the running so I can compare my pace from day to day. The week 7 workout is the same every day: run 2.5 miles or 25 minutes. (Really? How many Couch to 5Kers are running a 10-minute mile?!) So I'm a 1/2 mile short on my runs, but that's pretty consistent with the whole program up until this point so I'm not sweating it. Today's 2-mile time was 28:40, which is a 14:20 pace. I'm resisting the urge to make a comparison here (thanks for the advice, Gift of Isis) so instead I'll just say that 14:20 sounds like a great starting pace upon which I can improve.
As my cousin Lisa says, I'm not afraid to talk about the good, the bad, and the poop. Brace yourself people, because it's time for another poop story. So the new 2-mile loop that I'm running is all residential. There are only 2 tiny wooded areas on the run, which are within 1/2 mile of each other. These are my only bathroom options, and neither of them are very appealing. I think one is a swamp, and the other one, I found out today, is a thicket of thorns. I passed the first bathroom option, willing my body to keep it together until I got home, but when I approached the second bathroom option, I knew it was now or never. There was one tall pine tree, and it was surrounded by a tall thicket of thorns, which I didn't realize until I got really close. My only option was to crawl underneath the branches of the pine tree to get behind it and hopefully out of sight of passing cars, kids waiting at the bus stop, people walking their dogs, etc. I was literally on my hands & knees scooching under branches. At one point, my headphones got snagged on a branch and got pulled off my head and then when I turned around to retrieve them, my shirt got caught on another branch. I'm lucky to have gotten out of there alive, people. Let me tell you, the suburbs are a very scary place. So anyway, I got far enough in to do my business, then had to crawl back out. LUCKILY, I'm fairly certain no one saw this 240-pound woman wearing sweatpants and lopsided headphones crawling out from underneath the pine tree. If they did, I'm dying to read the blog post they are writing right now. But wait! I have to tell you the best part! While all of this crawling and pooping was going on, the song on my ipod was Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty", which apparently is so dirty you need to spell it with 2 r's because that's the sound you make when you're doing dirty things, like crawling underneath a pine tree to take a dump. So that's pretty funny, right? Well it GETS BETTER. The very next song on my ipod that starts playing is Cat Stevens' "Can't keep it in", whose lyrics go, "Oh, I can't keep it in! I can't keep it in, I gotta let it out." How perfect is that? And more importantly, how did I not see the irony in these lyrics before? I've never made the connection in the hundreds of times I've listened to the song, but today, I swear I could see Yusuf Islam sitting on his prayer rug laughing his ass off.
Here's to hoping for a sub-14:00 pace and no bathroom emergencies on the next run.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Week 6, Day 3: Guess who's back?
That's right, bitches, Effie's back. (Sorry, that was rude.)
I completed day 3 of week 6 today, a 25 minute run with no walking. I did walk for 1 minute at about 22 minutes into the run, but that was on a short uphill and I purposely kept the walk to only 1 minute. For the past couple of days and up until the minute I left the house this morning, I've been indecisive about what workout routine I would do next. (Side note: I just realized I may have had this conversation with myself before. I am sort of alarmed that I didn't notice this until right now.) Anyway, I didn't think I was ready to do 25 minutes, and somehow I got off schedule for the past 2 weeks where my day 3 run is occurring on Monday morning which really messes me up. But as I started walking this morning, I decided I'd just do the 25 minutes, or the best I could in trying to do it. I think walking for 1 minute is pretty damn good. I also ran a new route today, which I think helped me mentally. The new route is 2 miles total, so I'm still coming up short on the distance since I'm supposed to be running 2.25 miles, plus the distance of the 5 minute warm-up walk. I'm excited for week 7 because every day is the same, so I'm planning to run that same route and hopefully I'll see an improvement over my total time by the end of the week, and then I can increase the distance for week 8. Yep, I'm definitely back.
Today's time: 30:40 including warm-up.
I completed day 3 of week 6 today, a 25 minute run with no walking. I did walk for 1 minute at about 22 minutes into the run, but that was on a short uphill and I purposely kept the walk to only 1 minute. For the past couple of days and up until the minute I left the house this morning, I've been indecisive about what workout routine I would do next. (Side note: I just realized I may have had this conversation with myself before. I am sort of alarmed that I didn't notice this until right now.) Anyway, I didn't think I was ready to do 25 minutes, and somehow I got off schedule for the past 2 weeks where my day 3 run is occurring on Monday morning which really messes me up. But as I started walking this morning, I decided I'd just do the 25 minutes, or the best I could in trying to do it. I think walking for 1 minute is pretty damn good. I also ran a new route today, which I think helped me mentally. The new route is 2 miles total, so I'm still coming up short on the distance since I'm supposed to be running 2.25 miles, plus the distance of the 5 minute warm-up walk. I'm excited for week 7 because every day is the same, so I'm planning to run that same route and hopefully I'll see an improvement over my total time by the end of the week, and then I can increase the distance for week 8. Yep, I'm definitely back.
Today's time: 30:40 including warm-up.
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