2/17 Run

Another solo run around the lake, and this one was GREAT!

After beating myself up for the debacle that was Saturday's run, and then not deciding not to run yesterday since I was still feeling a little squirrely, I realized today that I think this may have been my bodys way of telling me to take a break. :)

3 days off meant I had nice fresh legs for this run, and was able to do 7.34 miles in 1:11:40 (9:46/mile!!!!!!!!!) at 150 average bpm. I really had to hold myself back on more than one occasion. I had to walk about 20 seconds to get my HR down coming up the hill on Eastlake, which was annoying, but not as annoying as listening to Garmy bitch at me. A little bit of left knee pain, and my right shin is bothering me a little, but nothing that worries me for a change. :)

Looks like this HR training thing really is working. Wow, them experts might just know what they are talking about. :)

Val had her first continuous run on Saturday and did 20 minutes! Then she went to the gym today, and did 35!! Slowly, I think she did 2.8 miles, but she's getting it down. :) I think she's really going to surprise herself at the Dash.

I finally got it through my head that she's not interested in 'endurance' running, and is more interested in the strength portion of her fitness stuff. And I'm even starting to accept it. :) I got here The New Rules Of Lifting For Women based on a large number of positive recommendations and it really seems to map to her goals. WE just got it and haven't had a chance to read it yet, so we'll see. I do thing, and Val agrees, that the military branches set between 1.5 and 3 miles of running (depending on branch) as a standard for a reason, and it's not an unreasonable expectation for a fit person to be able to run that far.

Got the other books, and am working my way through Core Performance Endurance, physically it's a nice book, full color and glossy pages, but I'll let you know how the content looks in a bit.

I'm trying to figure out who I want to 'impress' with all this distance stuff, and that's something that I'm going to have to chew on a bit, but I realized that one of the reasons I really like running long is that it both takes that long to beat my brain into submission and just be, and that once that happens it's a few hours where I can just let my brain float. Even if I let myself get caught up in some mental craziness (relive high school, what would I have done differently if I knew what I know now, how would that have affected things... for example) while I run it's just gone when I stop running. Unlike if I do that when I'm walking or on the bus or whatever, where it grates at me, on and on and on... Thank goodness for running.

Took Iliana to lunch to thank her for all the help and advice during the Marathon Club sessions last year. If you live anywhere near Kent she and her husband own The Balanced Athlete in Kent, and they've always done right by me. She's a pretty balanced person, and has always had great advice for me. She's headed up the street to a new gig in a few weeks, so it will make getting together harder, so I wanted to get together.

We talked about work and family, but I also wanted her opinions about some things related to running since she's a little more 'sane' than Bruce is with her mileage, etc. Her 'off season' mileage is around 45/week (vs Bruce's 60/week) and gets to 55 to 75 when she's actively training for a marathon. She tends not to hit 75 often since it starts to interfere with the rest of her life. She also emphasised the need for breaks and fallback weeks, confirming my supposition, that if you don't do it yourself, you body will take the break it needs. :)

Had an interesting discussion about HR training (she thinks I may be 10ish points to high for my aerobic zone even), and VO2 max and genetics and improvement. Balanced Athlete offers a pretty dang inexpensive set of testing (VO2max and metabolic) (just under $200, if I recall correctly) that I'm putting on my wish list.