So, this week's running rumination is basically just a variation on a theme from a few weeks ago. There's apparently some part of my mind that still has not really come to terms with my ability to sustain a given pace over a length of time, even as my body adapts to running longer and longer distances. Case in point: this week was a scheduled easy "recovery" week, and today I ran 11 miles. I mean, seriously. Two months ago 6 or 7 miles might have been possible, but 11 miles seemed like a more or less impossible distance. Or just one month ago I was pleased as punch to have run 11 miles for the first time. Now, though? Eleven miles is apparently what I do on my week off. And I'm sorry - I really don't mean to keep going on and on about running farther than ever before every week or so - but while my lungs and legs have gotten used to the distance, my mental image of myself still hasn't quite incorporated that fact yet.
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Monday: 20 minutes on the stationary bike, then 10 on the erg.
Tuesday: 5 x 1000 fast, but with a full three minutes of recovery in between each interval.
Wednesday: A light 5 mile run.
Thursday: An even lighter 4 mile run... Coach wasn't kidding about this being a recovery week!
And a restful (albeit work-filled) Friday
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A' shall answer it. Some pigeons, Davy, a couple/of short-legged hens, a joint of mutton, and any/pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell William cook
This is probably not going to be the most appetizing thing I've ever posted on this blog, but today I took an occasional phenomenon far enough that, seeing as I don't have anything else in particular to talk about, I thought I'd mention it here. So, I usually do the long Sunday runs a little bit before noon, which means that by the time I've finished the run, cooled down a bit, gotten back to the apartment, and showered it is well past lunch time. Coupled with the fact that I usually eat breakfast early and, oh, wait, I just ran some silly distance, well... By the time I've transitioned out of running mode I just about always find myself ravenously hungry. Usually this leads to nothing terribly interesting: I make a sandwich, followed by a second sandwich. And, if the bread wasn't terribly large or was too airy, sometimes a third sandwich.
Then there are days like today, which I've affectionately taken to calling "Many Wonders" days ("many wonders" being code for "leftovers" in the Incandenza househould). You see, sometimes I haven't done my weekly grocery shopping before the run, and sometimes I've already just about run out of bread (or real leftovers from one of the week's dinners, for that matter)... but at such times my stomach cares not for such excuses, and merely shouts "SUSTENANCE! CALORIES! FOOD!" over and over and over. Well, clearly there's nothing for me to do but scour the cupboards for anything and everything that is vaguely edible without long cooking times. This week, though, I think I hit a new low in terms of hoovering up anything within reach - at least in terms of variety, if not in total amount - as I went through a granola bar, 5 fairly unpleasant whey protein balls, a pear, the last lonely slice of bread (with peanut butter), a few bits of herring, and a single serving Thai Kitchen "just add water and microwave!" noodle dish from my emergency meals stash.
I might be going out on a limb here, but I think that's probably the most surreal assortment of food I've ever eaten in the span of a single meal. Well, what can I say? Everything is delicious when you're hungry!
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Saturday: 7 quick miles... a workout, but not so tough after a light week and yesterday's day off.
Sunday: 11 miles. Happily, off of the treadmill this time!
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Recently watched: Mulholland Dr. You know what? David Lynch sure makes some strange films...
Current estimate of my odds of completing a marathon on May 1st: Another slight, no-particular-reason uptick... 86%
February 28, 2010
February 21, 2010
Week 8 - In which I get back on track
I'm happy to report that I'm now feeling much, much better than I was last week. Illness-wise I think I'm just about 100% better, and my foot has healed up enough that outside of doing sprints it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
However, feeling better has also meant that this last week I've just been playing a vicious game of catch-up on some homework that was due and all of the work I put off last week. So, outside of exercise and work, I really haven't done too awfully much to write home about. Next week will be more eventful, I'm sure...
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Monday: Hurting a little bit after the previous day's long run, so I took the day relatively off with 20 minutes of light, low impact strength training/conditioning exercises.
Tuesday: 4 x 1200, at a pace rapid enough to find out that my foot still hurts if I push too hard.
Wednesday: 7 fairly uninteresting miles .
Thursday: 1 warm-up mile, followed by 4 progressively faster miles, with 1 cool-down mile tacked on at the end.
Friday = rest
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Well, the weather wasn't so great today, and my usual running partner is off at a conference, so I decided to take Sunday's long run inside to the treadmill. In addition to finding out that it's really mind-numbingly boring to log 15 miles on a treadmill (particularly over the last half-hour, when my ears started hurting from my headphones and I had to run without music), this afforded me the opportunity to see a James Bond film I hadn't seen before, albeit on the tiny treadmill TV and without sound.
Still, it's kind of incredible just how little gets lost watching a Bond film without the sound. For example, here's my interpretation of one of the scenes:
JB - "The name is Bond. James Bond. I shall now say something particularly suave, despite having been, moments ago, in a life-threatening fist-, gun- , and knife fight."
Bad guy - "I know who you are, Mr. Bond. But now, ha ha ha, you have fallen into my trap!"
JB - "Au contraire, obviously European bad guy. I have a gadget!"
And that pretty much sums it up, no? Still, fun to watch for a while.
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Saturday: 7 miles, marginally faster than the ones on Wednesday.
Sunday: 15 miles! A crazy distance both in (a) being such a nice, round number and (b) being the same as my estimate of what my total weekly running distance was before I started this whole endeavor. So, on the one hand, that felt awesome! On the other hand, fifteen miles on a treadmill? Booooorrrring!
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Currently reading: enough papers on continuous time random walks to sink a ship... or, perhaps more accurately, kill a tree.
Current estimate of my odds of completing a marathon on May 1st: Now that I've (hopefully) gotten injury and sickness out of the way, the last remaining roadblock is the threat of spending a week off-schedule when I go to a conference in mid-March. So, I'm bumping this estimate up to a lofty 85%
However, feeling better has also meant that this last week I've just been playing a vicious game of catch-up on some homework that was due and all of the work I put off last week. So, outside of exercise and work, I really haven't done too awfully much to write home about. Next week will be more eventful, I'm sure...
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Monday: Hurting a little bit after the previous day's long run, so I took the day relatively off with 20 minutes of light, low impact strength training/conditioning exercises.
Tuesday: 4 x 1200, at a pace rapid enough to find out that my foot still hurts if I push too hard.
Wednesday: 7 fairly uninteresting miles .
Thursday: 1 warm-up mile, followed by 4 progressively faster miles, with 1 cool-down mile tacked on at the end.
Friday = rest
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Well, the weather wasn't so great today, and my usual running partner is off at a conference, so I decided to take Sunday's long run inside to the treadmill. In addition to finding out that it's really mind-numbingly boring to log 15 miles on a treadmill (particularly over the last half-hour, when my ears started hurting from my headphones and I had to run without music), this afforded me the opportunity to see a James Bond film I hadn't seen before, albeit on the tiny treadmill TV and without sound.
Still, it's kind of incredible just how little gets lost watching a Bond film without the sound. For example, here's my interpretation of one of the scenes:
JB - "The name is Bond. James Bond. I shall now say something particularly suave, despite having been, moments ago, in a life-threatening fist-, gun- , and knife fight."
Bad guy - "I know who you are, Mr. Bond. But now, ha ha ha, you have fallen into my trap!"
JB - "Au contraire, obviously European bad guy. I have a gadget!"
And that pretty much sums it up, no? Still, fun to watch for a while.
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Saturday: 7 miles, marginally faster than the ones on Wednesday.
Sunday: 15 miles! A crazy distance both in (a) being such a nice, round number and (b) being the same as my estimate of what my total weekly running distance was before I started this whole endeavor. So, on the one hand, that felt awesome! On the other hand, fifteen miles on a treadmill? Booooorrrring!
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Currently reading: enough papers on continuous time random walks to sink a ship... or, perhaps more accurately, kill a tree.
Current estimate of my odds of completing a marathon on May 1st: Now that I've (hopefully) gotten injury and sickness out of the way, the last remaining roadblock is the threat of spending a week off-schedule when I go to a conference in mid-March. So, I'm bumping this estimate up to a lofty 85%
February 14, 2010
Week 7 - In which I remember that
when sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions. Well, that's perhaps going a bit far, but this really wasn't a good week for me. Just as my foot started healing up nicely enough for me to walk around without looking like I was going about on tenterhooks, I got hit with some kind of viciously unpleasant stomach bug. Well, there went that week...
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Monday: 40 minutes on the stationary bike... not so interesting
Tuesday: 20 minutes on the bike, then 2 x 10 minutes, then 2 x 5 minutes, each time with progressively more resistance. Kind of the stationary bike equivalent of the Tuesday from two weeks ago.
Wednesday: Hmmm....does lying on the coach half-sleeping, half-watching movies all day count as exercise?
Thursday: How about if you're half-watching a DVD of TV episodes?
On Friday, the coach said to rest. As if I was going to do anything but.
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Fortunately, I'm starting to feel better now, and rounding that corner always lifts the spirits, doesn't it? But, otherwise, this was not a week to remember, and not one with anything in it worth reporting.
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Saturday: Started to feel better, but decided that my body had more or less no nutrients in it, so one more day of rest.
Sunday: 14 miles -- as in, a half-marathon plus a little bonus added on top! Objectively, probably not the wisest decision to run so far today, but I was excited to get back on track with the training plan. And anyway, right now I feel much more tired than I normally might, but otherwise I think I got away pretty much unscathed.
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Current estimate of my odds of completing a marathon on May 1st: Umm... how about 75%?
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Monday: 40 minutes on the stationary bike... not so interesting
Tuesday: 20 minutes on the bike, then 2 x 10 minutes, then 2 x 5 minutes, each time with progressively more resistance. Kind of the stationary bike equivalent of the Tuesday from two weeks ago.
Wednesday: Hmmm....does lying on the coach half-sleeping, half-watching movies all day count as exercise?
Thursday: How about if you're half-watching a DVD of TV episodes?
On Friday, the coach said to rest. As if I was going to do anything but.
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Fortunately, I'm starting to feel better now, and rounding that corner always lifts the spirits, doesn't it? But, otherwise, this was not a week to remember, and not one with anything in it worth reporting.
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Saturday: Started to feel better, but decided that my body had more or less no nutrients in it, so one more day of rest.
Sunday: 14 miles -- as in, a half-marathon plus a little bonus added on top! Objectively, probably not the wisest decision to run so far today, but I was excited to get back on track with the training plan. And anyway, right now I feel much more tired than I normally might, but otherwise I think I got away pretty much unscathed.
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Current estimate of my odds of completing a marathon on May 1st: Umm... how about 75%?
February 7, 2010
Week 6 - In which the chickens come home to roost...
Really something along the lines of "ask and ye shall receive" would have been a more appropriate title for this week's post - I don't think I've cursed/insulted anyone and am now getting my comeuppance, anyway - but I like the phrase too much to not use it. I mean, the ominous connotations are just so at odds with the image used (also, fun fact for the curious: a variation on the phrase goes back at least as far as Chaucer. Check out the Parson's Tale, lines 620-622).
So, you might recall that last week I was wondering - and coming awfully close to complaining, almost - that there hasn't been enough pain in my training schedule. Well, that was obviously just tempting the fates, and this week I got what was coming to me. Early Thursday morning I set a water glass on a cutting board on the counter. Said cutting board is not really the best - it's made of hard plastic, and it's curved so that instead of resting securely on the counter it balances on its center, free to spin if there isn't enough to weigh it down. And clearly a water glass was not enough to weigh it down, because I accidentally bumped into it, sending the board spinning and the glass crashing to the floor. Thus far, all well and good. It's not like I was particularly attached to that glass, after all. However, in the process of sweeping up the pieces I somehow managed to step on a lovely little assortment of shards and splinters.
Well, after hopping up and down in surprise for a few seconds and subsequently making a bloody mess of my kitchen floor, I finished cleaning the remaining bits of glass off of the floor and then sat down to try to get the glass slivers out of my foot, and then went about the rest of my day. Unfortunately, I didn't get every last piece out, so at the end of the day when my foot still hurt really more than I thought it ought to I hobbled over to the health center to have a doctor pull the one remaining chip out. And you know what? "Clear glass is really hard to see when it's underneath the skin, so I'm going to have to just dig around in there and try to find any last pieces by feel" has now officially been added to my list of phrases I don't want to hear when I visit the doctor.
Moral of the story: I'm still not sure, so feel free to submit your opinions. "Never complain about a lack of pain", maybe? "Don't be so clumsy"? Good advice, but not really "moral of the story" material, I think. "Invest in a pair of slippers"? Feels a bit too specific, but it's got potential. Or perhaps just "get a better cutting board"? Prosaic, but possible...
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Monday:22.5 minutes on the erg...One and a half more minutes than last week, but a full extra kilometer of distance covered. A good, solid workout.
Tuesday:6 x 1000 meters, progressively faster.
Wednesday: 1 slow, warm-up mile, 4 faster miles, and 1 slower cool-down mile.
Thursday: The day I finally let The Coach down. My scheduled gym time spent at the health center, getting bits of glass out pulled out of my foot. Fun fun.
On Friday my foot was still bleeding a bit, and the coach said rest anyway, so I took the day off.
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Well, entirely separate from all injury-related talk, I'm very excited to have participated and be about to indulge in what has to be a particularly American form of excess. Tangentially, of course, I'm talking about the Superbowl party that I'll start heading over to in an hour or so. But specifically, I'm talking about the fact that I (along with one of my friends) just made a turducken!
I mean, first of all, I had been pretty sure that all earlier mentions of attempting this for today were jokes, but I was clearly wrong about that. Second, I had never de-boned poultry before, but one Julia Child's cookbook instructional page, several YouTube videos, a turkey, a duck, and a chicken later I've now had more than my fill of it. Between three different birds - which don't necessarily complement each other - and three different stuffings layered between or inside of each bird - which also don't necessarily complement each other - I have no real reason to expect this contrived, semi-mythological beast of a dish to actually taste good. But I feel like by taking part in the creation of it I've done something worthy, if also terribly excessive. As if, had ancient Greeks conceived of this dish, surely there would be a tradition of Homeric epics about their creation that I was now taking my place in.
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Saturday: 63 minutes on the stationary bike. My current plan is to guess how long a given day's run would take me, and then cross-train for one and a half times as long.
Sunday: 1 hour on the stationary bike, followed by 48 minutes on the elliptical. So, so very mind-numbingly boring. Seriously, if I'm still stuck cross-training instead of running a week from today, when under this scheme I'd have to cross train for almost 3 hours, I'll be very, very sad.
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Pair of kind of awesome things that happened to me this week: First, the professor for my Phase Transitions class explicitly referenced Ninja Cat while trying to explain some physics. Definitely not expecting that one. Second, on two separate and unconnected occasions in the last 7 days I had someone turn, look at me, and say "Mo' money mo' problems." One of them even did it with a straight face. I mean, if I've already said I wasn't expecting the Ninja Cat reference, I don't know how to even begin to explain how much this took me by surprise.
Current estimate of my odds of completing a marathon on May 1st: Well, I can't not decrease my odds after this week's happenings. Now, I still got some exercise in the last two days, so I'm not really the schedule yet. But I worry that if I'm stuck unable to run for more than a week or so my enthusiasm might start waning. So:74%
So, you might recall that last week I was wondering - and coming awfully close to complaining, almost - that there hasn't been enough pain in my training schedule. Well, that was obviously just tempting the fates, and this week I got what was coming to me. Early Thursday morning I set a water glass on a cutting board on the counter. Said cutting board is not really the best - it's made of hard plastic, and it's curved so that instead of resting securely on the counter it balances on its center, free to spin if there isn't enough to weigh it down. And clearly a water glass was not enough to weigh it down, because I accidentally bumped into it, sending the board spinning and the glass crashing to the floor. Thus far, all well and good. It's not like I was particularly attached to that glass, after all. However, in the process of sweeping up the pieces I somehow managed to step on a lovely little assortment of shards and splinters.
Well, after hopping up and down in surprise for a few seconds and subsequently making a bloody mess of my kitchen floor, I finished cleaning the remaining bits of glass off of the floor and then sat down to try to get the glass slivers out of my foot, and then went about the rest of my day. Unfortunately, I didn't get every last piece out, so at the end of the day when my foot still hurt really more than I thought it ought to I hobbled over to the health center to have a doctor pull the one remaining chip out. And you know what? "Clear glass is really hard to see when it's underneath the skin, so I'm going to have to just dig around in there and try to find any last pieces by feel" has now officially been added to my list of phrases I don't want to hear when I visit the doctor.
Moral of the story: I'm still not sure, so feel free to submit your opinions. "Never complain about a lack of pain", maybe? "Don't be so clumsy"? Good advice, but not really "moral of the story" material, I think. "Invest in a pair of slippers"? Feels a bit too specific, but it's got potential. Or perhaps just "get a better cutting board"? Prosaic, but possible...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday:22.5 minutes on the erg...One and a half more minutes than last week, but a full extra kilometer of distance covered. A good, solid workout.
Tuesday:6 x 1000 meters, progressively faster.
Wednesday: 1 slow, warm-up mile, 4 faster miles, and 1 slower cool-down mile.
Thursday: The day I finally let The Coach down. My scheduled gym time spent at the health center, getting bits of glass out pulled out of my foot. Fun fun.
On Friday my foot was still bleeding a bit, and the coach said rest anyway, so I took the day off.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, entirely separate from all injury-related talk, I'm very excited to have participated and be about to indulge in what has to be a particularly American form of excess. Tangentially, of course, I'm talking about the Superbowl party that I'll start heading over to in an hour or so. But specifically, I'm talking about the fact that I (along with one of my friends) just made a turducken!
I mean, first of all, I had been pretty sure that all earlier mentions of attempting this for today were jokes, but I was clearly wrong about that. Second, I had never de-boned poultry before, but one Julia Child's cookbook instructional page, several YouTube videos, a turkey, a duck, and a chicken later I've now had more than my fill of it. Between three different birds - which don't necessarily complement each other - and three different stuffings layered between or inside of each bird - which also don't necessarily complement each other - I have no real reason to expect this contrived, semi-mythological beast of a dish to actually taste good. But I feel like by taking part in the creation of it I've done something worthy, if also terribly excessive. As if, had ancient Greeks conceived of this dish, surely there would be a tradition of Homeric epics about their creation that I was now taking my place in.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday: 63 minutes on the stationary bike. My current plan is to guess how long a given day's run would take me, and then cross-train for one and a half times as long.
Sunday: 1 hour on the stationary bike, followed by 48 minutes on the elliptical. So, so very mind-numbingly boring. Seriously, if I'm still stuck cross-training instead of running a week from today, when under this scheme I'd have to cross train for almost 3 hours, I'll be very, very sad.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pair of kind of awesome things that happened to me this week: First, the professor for my Phase Transitions class explicitly referenced Ninja Cat while trying to explain some physics. Definitely not expecting that one. Second, on two separate and unconnected occasions in the last 7 days I had someone turn, look at me, and say "Mo' money mo' problems." One of them even did it with a straight face. I mean, if I've already said I wasn't expecting the Ninja Cat reference, I don't know how to even begin to explain how much this took me by surprise.
Current estimate of my odds of completing a marathon on May 1st: Well, I can't not decrease my odds after this week's happenings. Now, I still got some exercise in the last two days, so I'm not really the schedule yet. But I worry that if I'm stuck unable to run for more than a week or so my enthusiasm might start waning. So:74%
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