SF Road Warrior

A Bit of Crazy Shoe Kismet

2012-02-29T13:16:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you'd agree that if there's one thing we runner-types can get just absurdly, unreasonably excited about, it's shoes.

("Unreasonably??" I hear you protest. "The hell you say. My level of running shoe excitement is completely appropriate. Running shoes are awesome." Well...alright. It is. And they are.)

And I am excited.

I have new shoes.

For the last six months or so my all-around, super-reliable, go-to shoe has been the Brooks Adrenaline GTS 11, which I absolutely {heart} and will probably keep a pair around for at least the foreseeable future. They're perfect for long runs, half & full marathons, & putting in a lot of miles on concrete. Retail, they tend to run ~$100, but after my Road Runner discount it's more like $90, and if I time things right & wait for a good sale or a coupon, I can usually get them for $80ish. But recently the new model has come out, which means the price on the 11s has dropped even more and with my discount I could get them for $72. Perfect timing, considering my current pair is quickly approaching retirement.

Now, I do love the Adrenalines. At 9.3 ounces, though, it's definitely a lot of shoe. The heel is a tad on the shall we say generous side, and there's a pretty signiticant heel-toe drop (maybe 8mm-10mm?). It's partly for those reasons that I finally broke down & got flats last year. And for track work & 5K/10K racing, I love my little Mizuno Musha Wave 3s. They're thin-soled, light-weight (mine register 6.8 ounces), and have maybe 4mm of heel-toe drop, but also just enough stability to be workable for someone like me with moderate over-pronation.

I've been longing, though, for something in the middle. Something a little more stripped-down than the Adrenalines, but more substantial than racing flats. Something a little more natural-feeling, but that I can still run 6-8 miles on concrete in without ending up with achey feet. Something I could even conceivably race a half marathon in, maybe.

But I'm afraid to be without my trusty Adrenalines.

What I really wanted was to buy two pairs of shoes.

Unfortunately, running shoes are really freaking expensive. Witness some of my current shoe crushes in the lightweight trainer/not-quite-flats/performance shoe department:

New Balance 905; 7.4 ounces.

Brooks PureCadence; 8.3 ounces. (Definitely the chunkiest of my crushes.) $120.

Newton Running Distance U; 7.0 ounces. $155.

Newton Running Motion; 7.7 ounces. $175.

Love. Want. I'm actually drooling a little here as I'm writing this. Still, a part-time contractor's gotta eat & pay her student loans. So while $72 is a pretty good deal for a solid pair of running shoes, unless I could find an outrageous deal on something in the lightweight/performance category (say, oh, *75-80% off*), it's not really good enough to make two new pairs realistic.

~*Weep.*~

On Sunday, however, I went with Don on a Tahoe-related trip to Lombardi Sports. Now, typically I don't go to Lombardi Sports because it's downtown, and I almost NEVER buy things there because it's crazy expensive. But, as long as we were there, I decided to swing by the clearance racks just to see what they had.

Lo and behold:

Friends, I snagged the last pair of Adrenaline 11s in my size (and any size even remotely close to it, for that matter) anywhere in the store. They didn't even have a lid or fancy tissue paper or plastic inserts or wadded-up paper towels inside. (Does anybody actually know what those are for?) And $12 cheaper than the sweet Road Runner clearance price that I was probably hours, at most, away from taking advantage of.

Which meant that maybe, just maybe, my dreams of lightweight/performance/not-quite-flats still had the faintest glimmer of a pulse.

I think it's pretty clear that, as much as I'd like to, I won't be wearing any of the hot shit pictured above any time in the near future. But back a few months ago, someone mentioned the Saucony Kinvaras to me, another lightweight performance shoe that's not quite a trainer and not quite a flat. I read a lot of good things about it & heard of many people wearing it for daily shorter runs and even racing half marathons with good results. Best of all, it weighed the same as my Mizunos!

But it was not to be. When I looked into it further, I learned that the Kinvara is a neutral shoe, and while I haven't given up hope of running in one someday, I want to hang on to a little extra stability for now as I start trying to do more running in lighter/scaled-down shoes.

Instead, I dug a little further down into Saucony's lineup & found the Mirage. From their site: "Building on the success of the award winning Kinvara, Saucony invites the mild pronator into the minimalist category with the introduction of the ProGrid Mirage. The addition of a midfoot support bridge provides motion control, while still allowing the runner to enjoy the advantages of a minimalist shoe."

Bonus -- Saucony just introduced a new model of this shoe as well, meaning the previous model is beginning to go on clearance. Predictably, I found listings for shoes in the $40-50 range, but only for sizes < 7 & > 9. And there were a few results in my size for $70+ish, but that was still more than I really wanted to spend, given that I'd already put down $60 for the Adrenalines.

And then, as if in a vision from on high, I stumbled upon this:

In my size.

Hellz to the yeah, Overstock.com.

You better believe I snagged that shit with a quickness.

So, a few days later, here we are:

Huzzah!

I'm planning to wear the Mirages a bit this week to see how they feel. Updates to come!

Week in Review: Feb. 20 - 26

2012-02-28T12:22:00.002-08:00

This is my weekly training journal. Including it in the blog gives me a little extra accountability in the mileage department & helps me stick to my schedule. :)

4 Weeks to Oakland Half Marathon

Good morning/afternoon/evening! (It is morning for me.) I have been in Tahoe for the last three days, without my computer. And let me just tell you how lovely it was to go 72 full hours (a little more, actually, now that I think about it) without once looking at email, Facebook, Google Reader, the blog, etc. etc. A girl could get used to that.

(Well....for a little while.)

I'm not even going to try to catch up, so if something momentous happened in your life between Friday afternoon & now & we don't see each other IRL (that means "in real life"), I probably didn't hear about it.

But I should catch up on this. Without further ado, eh?

Grand Total: 32 miles

* 23 easy
* 3 speed work
* 6 HM pace

Not ideal, but okay under the circumstances. I'm a little bit annoyed that I haven't been able to get a long run in in three weeks, for reasons various & sundry. With the exception of the week when I was working all weekend, my February mileage has been okay, but still short of the consistent 40 / week average that's been my goal, and the missing long runs have been the main reason why.

Monday: Complete rest.

Tuesday: Strength work + 2 wu + 3 x 2 mi @ HM pace, 2 mt recovery = 8 total. This day was scheduled for some really FAST speed work, but post-race weekend I decided it was better to put that off & ease into the week. HM pace miles are not easy, but I figured my body would probably deal with that a little better right now. Keeping up the pace, which is good.

Wednesday: Karate + strength work. I'd originally also scheduled to run an easy 8 as well, but something very strange & concerning was going on with my left knee. I had a sharp stabbing pain inside of it for most of the morning, and then at several points in the day I would take a step with my left leg and feel my knee start to collapse as I went to put weight on it. This happened a few times toward the end of CIM, and I had some dull, aching pain in that knee for the rest of the December (when I wasn't running at all), but this is the first time it's come up in 2012. I hate skipping a run when I'm actually feeling pretty good and motivated, but when even a few easy strides down the hallway didn't feel right, skipping it seemed like a better idea. (We were also having a previous sensei back for karate that night, and I didn't want to be too broken to participate.)

Thursday: 2 wu + 6 x 800 @ 5K pace minus 10-12 sec/mile + 4 easy = 9. So I don't actually even know what my 5K pace is right now, let alone 10-12 seconds faster than that. I kind of thought, "Oh, 7:00 / mile sounds about right. Sooooo...6:50? 6:48?" I had no idea what that pace felt like running, but it sounded, you know, fast, so I kind of just started running fast. (I had my Garmin set to auto lap each .25 mile & show me average lap pace -- with paces I (should) know I've been trying to get away from relying on it so much, but for this I figured it was okay.)

I basically went into it shooting for 800s in the 3:24-5ish range.

Riiiight. (3:21 & 3:24 may not sound all that different, but remember that that's a 6:42 mile vs a 6:48 mile over a very short distance, and six seconds per mile is the difference between a 20:46 5K and a 21:04 5K.) Still, this pace actually felt pretty reasonable for what I was doing -- not easy, but not exhausting, even sticking to the prescribed 2 minutes of rest in between, and I finished feeling like I had maybe a couple more left in me.

I consulted Coach McMillan when I got home, & according to him, my recent 44:49 10K predicts a 6:57 / mile 5K pace. So realistically, my target for these guys should've been 6:45-7, or 3:22-4ish per 800, so I wasn't actually that far off.

Friday: 8 "easy." Knowing I'd be in Tahoe all weekend and unlikely to get my scheduled 13 miler in on Sunday, I figured Friday was a good day to do it. But no. This was one of those days when, for whatever reason, I just physically felt like shit. Really bad shin splints. Bad pain in the ball of my left foot. Exhausted after 2 miles. Nausea. Weird chest pain. The running commentary in my brain went something like, "Okay, twelve. Twelve miles. Twelve is doable. Or ten. Nice ten mile loop. Am I going to vomit? I think I might vomit. Okay, just get to three. Three and turn around. Six is okay. Alright, three down. This isn't so bad! Maybe we can get to four and turn around? A solid eight? Maybe by the time we get to four, the ten mile loop will seem pretty doable? Yay, four down! OhgodohgodI'mgoingtodie." So I turned around at four and by 4.5 I legitimately felt as if I couldn't keep my legs moving forward. I felt sick. I had chest pain. If I'd been on a treadmill I would've quit then. But, since home was still 3.5 miles away, I ended up with eight. Eight bitter, painful miles.

Saturday: Skiing / "rest." I left Saturday open for an apres-ski run if I felt like it but didn't specifically plan anything. Which was good, since I was having ski boot issues in addition to the foot pain issues I've been dealing with for several weeks now. Post skiing, even just putting weight on my feet felt iffy, so rye & ginger in the hot tub it was.

Sunday: 7 miles easy. The snow was pretty shitty on Saturday so I skipped skiing altogether on Sunday & instead just went for a run. (Fortunately, shitty skiing conditions = sweet running conditions. The roads were bone-dry.) I didn't know the area very well & also didn't know what my busted-ass feet were going to feel like, so I figured I'd just run until I got to 13 miles or it started seeming like a bad idea to keep going. My feet started to give out at around six & change, so I called it good (or at least adequate) at seven.

Our street after the crazy Monday morning storm. We finally got some nice skiing in on Monday!

I did not choose to run ridiculous hills that day, but ridiculous hills was what there were, so I did. And by the way, if you've never run ridiculous hills at altitude, you should give it a try sometime. Part of me really wants to believe that it provides a little extra cardiovascular benefit per mile than running flat/moderate hills at sea level, ie, so that 1 hilly mile at altitude = 1.2 reasonably miles at sea level or some such. Alas, I can find nothing on the interwebz to support this hypothesis. :P

A Happier Post...

2012-02-25T17:57:00.000-08:00

In other, less utterly heartbreaking news, I felt this needed to be shared:

No Words.

2012-02-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

I just learned this morning that a nine-year-old Alabama girl recently died after being forced to run for three hours as punishment for having lied to her grandmother about eating candy bars. The cause of death was severe dehydration & hyponatremia.

This is an absolutely horrible story under any circumstances, but it made me a little extra sick because it reminded me of something I saw at the track last fall, another little girl about the same age being forced to run as a punishment.

What the hell is wrong with people?

My Conflicted & Tumultuous Relationship With HM Pace Miles

2012-02-22T12:05:00.000-08:00

Unlike marathon or long run miles, they are fast enough to feel like work.

Unlike 5K or 10K miles, they are slow enough to feel interminable.

I want to slow down because waaaaaah, I'm tired.

I want to speed up because, dammit, I want the things DONE.

I want to rest less in between intervals because they're not too tiring & I'm impatient.

I want to rest more because I don't really want to start the next one.

I want to do them because I really, really want to improve my HM time.

I DON'T want to do them because of all the reasons I already said.

Race Report: Bay Breeze Half Marathon/10K/5K (Or: A Tale of Two 10Ks)

2012-02-21T00:48:00.000-08:00

I think I may actually be developing some skill at the 10K.

I'm not talking about speed, necessarily (though I have improved there); I'm more talking about strategy, and about the intuitive body sense of how hard you can run at a given point in the race that only comes with experience, through racing the same distance over and over again in a short amount of time.

If you do much racing in the Bay Area, particularly the East Bay, chances are you're familiar with Brazen Racing. Mainly their bag is trail races (and they do some amazing ones!), but they also host the occasional thinly-disguised good ol' fashioned road race. Last summer I ran their Bad Bass 10K at Lake Chabot (mostly runnable paved hills and one MONSTER dirt hill -- very much not an example of a thinly-disguised road race) as well as the extremely flat, fast, PR-friendly Summer Breeze 10K at the San Leandro Marina. The 10-second story is that I had a perfect day and a perfect race, and seven months of 10K-specific training culminated in a 44:42 PR finish, good enough for 1st in A/G & 2nd overall.

In February, they host basically the same race (same distances, courses, etc.) under the moniker Bay Breeze. The timing couldn't have been more perfect for a half marathon tune-up. The 2/18 race date fell almost exactly halfway between the beginning of the year (when I started running again after taking 4 weeks off) and the 3/25 Oakland Half, and having a strong time on the same course when I knew I was in really good 10K / half shape would make it easy to gauge my current fitness.

Location: San Leandro, CA

Date: Late February (2/18 this year)

Price: The prices for each distance are the same at all Brazen races. Price increases generally happen one & two months out from the race. (5K = $29/$34/$39; 10K = $34/$39/$44; HM = $50/$55/$60)

Deadline / Sellout Factor: Race day registration if space. Last year you could count on race day registration, but recently their events have started selling out ahead of time, especially the 5K/10K. I think this was the first one where everything sold out pre-race day.

Logistics

Pretty much identical to Summer Breeze. Parking is free but limited, so get their early or car pool (highly encouraged). I arrived at 7:15 & had a 10 minute walk to the start.

As with the other Brazen races, you have the option of local pre-race packet pickup on Thursday and Friday or race morning pick up. As always, the pick-up & t-shirt tables were well-labeled, well-organized, and efficient, & free sweat check close to the start. This time there were boxes of sample bags sitting out for runners to take if they wanted instead of handing them out with the T-shirts, which seemed less wasteful to me. (I always feel bad that I end up recycling or throwing out over half the stuff, so I didn't take one. Plus I have enviro-guilt about plastic bags.)

Volunteer photographers are stationed along the course & upload their pics for runners to download for free (love), not to mention awesome, enthusiastic, & hard-working volunteers all around.

The Course

Summarizing from my Summer Breeze RR...

Flat, fast, & paved with the exception of 80-100 yards of grass at the start / finish & a short gravel stretch. (From the pictures, it seems like the half spends more time on gravel further down the road.)
A bit on the narrow side, though runners are supposed to stay to the right since it's an out-and-back course & all three distances share the same road. Fine for me most of the time, but I can imagine that it might get tough in the middle of a big pack, and at both races the last stretch did get a bit touch-and-go as the 10K leaders had to weave in & out of the 5K walkers.
Reasonably scenic & quiet -- right along the water for most of the way

Goodies

Again, to summarize:

Cotton T-shirt is included in the registration price; $6 gets you a nice tech shirt; skipping the shirt saves you $5.
Hefty finisher medals for all distances; age group medals awarded three deep in each age / gender group in five year increments, plus Fleet Feet gift certificates to the overall male & female winners for each distance.
Bags of free samples (optional this time)
Fantastic post-race spread (water, sports drink, bagels, fruit, granola, cake, candy, etc.)

My Race

When I ran Summer Breeze in August, I had a reasonably good idea of what I'd be able to do based on the other three 10Ks I'd run that summer. This time was different, given that I've done a grand total of 7 weeks of any kind of running since sitting on the couch for 4 weeks post-CIM. I felt pretty certain that I could run sub-7:30s at the very least and fairly sure I wasn't up to my 7:12 PR pace from August, but within that range, I really had no idea.

My strategy at Summer Breeze had been to run 7:15-7:20 miles for the first half (a strong but slightly conservative pace for me at the time), then kill the second half with whatever I had left. I decided to go with the same general strategy this time, except aiming more for the 7:20 end of things for the first 5K. If I started off running 7:20s and was dying by the second or third mile, I could always dial it back; it was just a tune up, after all.

I lined up in the second or third row and watched maybe twenty women blow by me in the first hundred yards or so. I took a moment then to reflect on how there'd been a time when this would have bothered me and I would have charged recklessly after them, pace be damned. These days I've got a lot more experience and a lot more confidence; I'm completely comfortable now with running my race & letting everyone else run theirs. If I can catch them, it'll happen when it happens, and if I don't, then charging after them in the early miles wouldn't have helped anyway.

~One mile down

I did a little Garmin stalking in the first couple of miles, just to be sure that I wasn't going out too fast or falling into the trap of settling in behind or next to someone who appears to be going about the right pace for me but then imperceptibly begins to slow down.

2/18/12 Bay Breeze - Mile 1: 7:23; Mile 2: 7:18

8/27/11 Summer Breeze - Mile 1: 7:13; Mile 2: 7:18

This pace felt good. Yes, it took effort, but I also felt like I had plenty in reserve & could've run faster. I kept telling myself to stick to the plan, though, & keep it around 7:20 at least until the turnaround. Surprisingly, it was during miles two & three that I picked off the women who'd gone out too fast, plus the odd dude here & there; in the past, most of my passing has been spread more evenly across the middle half of the race.

"Third female!" a volunteer on a bike called to me, coming back the other way as I approached the turnaround.

2/18/12 Bay Breeze - Mile 3: 7:23

8/27/11 Summer Breeze - Mile 3: 7:19

It was then that something in my runner brain clicked on and everything else shut down. I stopped thinking. I stopped looking at my Garmin. Yes, the rational part can draw on data from tempo runs and speed workouts and analyze and calculate and make smart guestimations about just exactly how hard my body should be working at this point in a race, what my pace should be, what my heart rate should be, but for some reason at that moment my runner brain decided to step in and take over.

"Good work in the first half," it said to the analytical part. "You played it smart & got us this far in good shape. But I can take it from here."

The analytical part obliged, slipping amicably into the back seat as the runner brain took the wheel.

I could tell in mile 4 that I was speeding up, but not really by how much. But I also knew intuitively that whatever the numbers were, it was just the right pace for this point in the race given my current fitness. I reeled in a few more dudes. I ignored my Garmin. I kept speeding up; it hurt but I knew that the runner brain was in charge and trusted that it knew its business. Somehow it knew exactly how hard to push and when -- truly, I can't express in words how liberating it was not to have to think & worry about & watch pace at this point. I kept an eye out for either of the two women purportedly in front of me but couldn't see them anywhere.

2/18/12 Bay Breeze - Mile 4: 7:16; Mile 5: 7:13

8/27/11 Summer Breeze - Mile 4: 7:17; Mile 5: 7:09

In mile 6 I caught up with the gauntlet of 5K walkers, both out- and in-bound. I duked it out with a guy in blue. We traded the lead back and forth for maybe half a mile before the runner brain said enough of this and dropped him. With less than .7 left to go in the race she became exceedingly fed up with 5K walkers three and four abreast on both sides of the road. She may or may not have barked at a few and/or clipped some shoulders here & there; I can't say for sure because I wasn't running the show at that point. (Honestly, I don't feel too badly about it either way, though, since we were given clear instructions multiple times to run/walk single file unless passing due to the narrow-ness of the trail.) A volunteer at the last water stop called out "Third woman!" again. Having seen hide nor hair of them, I figured at that point that whoever those two ladies were, they were WAY out of my reach.

Once the finish was in sight it was tunnel vision. At this point, all conscious thought had ceased and I'm pretty sure it would have taken a physical barrier or debilitating injury to stop me. The rational, analytical brain was just holding on white-knuckled at this point, doing her best to keep breathing & not pass out.

"Hold on," the runner brain said to her. "Just a little farther now."

She nodded and clenched her jaw and covered her eyes.

2/18/12 Bay Breeze - Mile 6: 7:05; Last .2: 1:14

8/27/11 Summer Breeze - Mile 6: 7:05; Last .2: 1:20

When I crossed the mat I was a bit unsteady on my feet but managed to smile at the volunteer who draped a lovely cephalopod medal around my neck and told me "Good job!" I heard Sam announce me as the 4th 10K woman overall; apparently the other volunteers had missed someone.

It wasn't until I'd been stumbling around the finish area for a while that I realized I hadn't stopped my watch (I had to go back later & subtract to figure out my split for the last .2), so I didn't know my exact time until the official results were posted. I knew I'd run a solid race, though, and probably a fantastic one considering where I was training-wise. Still, it still blew me away to see 44:49 next to my name -- only 7 seconds off my Summer Breeze PR time. I'd have been happy if I'd managed to average a 7:20 pace; 7:13 was beyond my wildest expectations.

Not that I was even REMOTELY in this one for competition's sake -- I'd gone into it assuming I was nowhere near ready to put up a medal time -- but it was sort of gratifying to see that the three women ahead of me (40:56, 43:21, 44:01) were too far ahead to have worried about catching. (Also interestingly, at 47:00, the next female finisher was more than two full minutes behind me. Since I was never going to run faster than 44:01 or slower than 47:00, my place in the finishing order was basically pre-ordained.) And, bearing out my long-standing and well-supported belief that on average the fastest chicks are in their early thirties, two of those speedy chicks in front of me were indeed in my age group.

So hey, bronze medal! :D

Looking Forward

According to Coach McMillan, a 44:49 10K should give me a good shot at a 1:39:44 half marathon (plus the 5 weeks of training time I have left). It looks nice on a computer screen, but so far I have yet to translate a sub-45 10K into a sub-1:40 half marathon. It seems clear that I've got the speed, so in the next few weeks (months?) the real work will probably need to be around melding that with the strength necessary to make it 13.1 miles at a reasonably uncomfortable, just-barely-manageable pace. Yes, there's a lot left to do, but it is nice to know that I'm at least back in the right ball park. :)

Week in Review: Feb. 13 - 19

2012-02-19T22:23:00.000-08:00

This is my weekly training journal. Including it in the blog gives me a little extra accountability in the mileage department & helps me stick to my schedule. :)

5 Weeks to Oakland Half Marathon

Grand Total: 34.2 miles

* 19.5 easy
* 4 speed work
* 4.5 HM pace
* 6.2 race (10K)

Monday: 7 miles easy + karate + (mini) strength work. One of the biggest obstacles for me when it comes to getting out the door for my runs is the monotonous nature of the scenery. When you take into account traffic, lights, pedestrians, giant hills, etc., reasonable running in SF can be scarce, particularly if I just want to put on my shoes & run out the door (vs. driving to GG Park or the Embarcadero). I had a meeting at Stanford Monday, and although I've thought several times about going for a run when I'm down there, this was the first time this year it's actually worked out.

"The Dish" - Another of my favorite (notoriously hilly) places at Stanford to run.

I ran most of the campus loop twice (skipping the section on Junipero Serra), one of my regular routes from my student days. It was SO refreshing to have some variety! Hopefully I'll be able to do this more often.

Tuesday: 2 wu + 5 x .8 mi @ (fastish????) pace, 2 mt recovery + 3 easy = 9 total. I left the house thinking I was supposed to run at 10K pace minus 10-12 seconds per mile, but when I got to the track I was like, "Wait. Was it 10K pace? But .8 mi seems too short for 10K pace repeats. Should I just do, like, 5K pace?"

Racked by indecision, I just kind of started running at a fast-ish pace & figured I'd try to split the difference. (This might be one of those situations where you try to do a little bit of two different things and actually end up not doing anything useful at all.) My .8 mi splits went 5:43, 5:41, 5:40, 5:39, 5:34 (or 7:09, 7:07, 7:06, 7:04, 6:58 in pace terms). So I guess I started out closer to 10K pace & then ended up closer to 5K pace. These felt really easy, even with longer intervals & less recovery time than I'm used to (when I do 5:00 intervals at 5K pace I usually take 3 minutes). Also, no soreness in the balls of my feet! YAY. (If you are like Don, you are probably snickering at the phrase 'balls of feet.' That one never gets old.)

Unfortunately, the easy three down MLK Drive afterward kind of sucked & some of the ball-of-foot pain came back. Hindsight suggests that running on the track after noticing this type of pain was #smart and taking it to the concrete after was #dumb. In an effort to be #smart, I decided to do the rest of my runs for the week on the track (even if the monotony killed me).

(Also, I got home & checked & it was supposed to be 10K pace. Oops.)

Wednesday: No running; karate + strength work.

Thursday: 2 easy + 3 x 1.5 @ HM pace, 2 mt recovery = 6.5. Trying very hard to stick to my resolution to run half marathon (goal) pace miles every week. Each week, I try to increase either the length or number of intervals. For the past two weeks I've run 3 x 1 mile, so today either 3 x 1.5 or 4 x 1 would've worked. I know these are important runs for me because I'm scared of them and also a little intimidated by the fitness I've lost around this pace, but I can't ever afford to let that stop me from doing them. So the protocol has become 1) gradually increase number/length of intervals, 2) shoot for < 7:40 pace with 7/10 effort, & 3) if that doesn't work, do as much as I can at that pace & effort, then finish the scheduled intervals at 7/10 effort at whatever pace I can. It was hot and windy today, so I was really pleased to be able to finish all 3 at 7:39, 7:37, & 7:35 at what I *think* is about the right level of effort. The challenge now is getting strong enough to do that for 13.1 miles. Right now I think I could probably run 8:00-8:10's & I'll be happy if by Oakland Half I can run 7:59s (which would still be a PR!).

Friday: No running; rest up for Bay Breeze 10K.

Saturday: 1.5 easy + 6.2 race = 7.7 total. A great race and a shockingly good time, given only seven weeks of running since my month of post-CIM sloth! Good enough for 3rd in A/G, even. Kind of hard to complain about that. :) (Race report soon.)

The ball of my left foot has been bugging me on and off since I started running again in January, and in the last week or two it's been especially bad. I did most of my running this week on the track for that reason, knowing I'd be running on pavement Saturday, which helped, and it was also for that reason that I decided to race in my big cushy Adrenalines rather than my flats. Still, within ten minutes of finishing I couldn't really put any weight on that foot at all. It got a little better over the course of the day (though, to be honest, I was probably on it for the rest of the day more than I should have been), but if it's not a LOT better within a few days, I'm probably going back to the podiatrist. Also, my right Achilles bugged me pretty much the whole way. Not really sure what's up with that.

Sunday: 4 easy. Sunday was two firsts for me. 1) As far as I can remember, going back even to high school, I've never run the day after a race, and 2) I've never literally "run" an errand. I'd added some miles to this week to make up for the bustedness of last week a little, including a short recovery run the day after the 10K. Long story short, I hadn't slept well for the last two nights & was still feeling a little sore / blah-ish after the race & very nearly just called it a rest day. Then I remembered that I had a close-by errand I needed to run & that I really, really didn't want to risk losing my parking spot (parking SUCKS around here on weekends), so I decided to just try & jog it.

Bodies are funny things. I've had so many sucky runs two days post-race, including a rest day, where my legs have felt like lead and my cardiovascular system like that of an emphysema patient. This run, on the other hand, felt ridiculously easy. I floated effortlessly to my destination & back, then decided to go just a bit farther to make it a nice even 4 round trip. Why can't ALL post-race runs be this awesome?

Overall, a pretty encouraging week. For the next few, my focus will be continuing to build mileage & getting in those half marathon (goal) pace miles. :D

Strength Training Part 3: Pelvic/Core Stability

2012-02-15T16:20:00.000-08:00

Strength Training Part 1: Introduction

Strength Training Part 2: Hamstrings

Today's post is about hips & glutes. It's a long post, but frankly, in terms of bang for your buck when it comes to injury prevention, this is probably the most useful & important of this entire series. If you're only going to read all the way through one of them, I'd probably go with this one. As I learned from my PTs, it's the exceptionally rare running pain that can't ultimately be traced back to either foot strike or hip strength (excluding sudden injuries like twisting an ankle, of course).

My original plan was to do what I did for hamstrings -- start off talking about how everything works & where the injuries come from, then show some exercises. Hips & glutes are complicated, though, and by the time I finished all the "how stuff works," this post was already fairly longish. So I'm just going to post that stuff first, and then show the exercises in a different post. I am utterly fascinated by muscles & body movement & how everything works together (or doesn't), but if you're more the "just fix me" type, I won't be TOO offended if you just check out the exercises when I get them posted. ;)

(Quick Reminders:

I am not a doctor/PT/trainer/etc.
The info I have to share with you by & large comes from sports medicine doctors/PTs/trainers/etc. but has mostly come to me in the context of dealing with my own injuries.
If you try anything and it hurts, stop & check in with a pro

If you ARE a doctor/PT/exercise professional and anything here sounds sketchy or like I've misunderstood it, let me know so I can fix it!)

The Nuts & Bolts

One of the things I spent a lot of time working on when I was in physical therapy was what they call pelvic (or core) stability. Pelvic stability, as you might guess, refers to how much your pelvis wobbles around when you run.

The red dude has poor pelvic stability. When his left leg pushes off and leaves the ground, his left hip drops, causing his pelvis to tilt horizontally. When his right leg leaves the ground, his right hip will drop. You can see how this will cause a horizontal see-saw motion in his hips while he runs.

The blue dude has good pelvic stability. When his left leg pushes off and leaves the ground, his hips stay even. This means that his hips will stay level and even as he runs rather than see-sawing.

So why should you care about how stable your pelvis is when you run? Well, according to the physical therapists I worked with, poor pelvis stability accounts for a huge number of the running-induced overuse injuries they see. In my case it was hip pain right beneath the iliac crest, but apparently this is the kind of thing that can manifest in all kinds of exciting ways.

What an unstable core/pelvis looks like in a real runner.

Me: "Ah, interesting. I'd been kind of wondering whether it was some kind of IT band syndrome thing or something."
PT, with a shrug: "Eh, it wouldn't have changed much. IT band syndrome is often pelvic instability too."

A few sessions later:

Me: "(Blah blah blah), a few years ago when I was having all this knee pain...(blah blah blah)."
PT: "Yeah, that was probably the same thing. Pelvic instability is a pretty common cause of knee pain."

A few sessions after that:

Me: "(Blah blah blah), medial tibial shin splints on & off...(blah blah blah)."
PT: "The overpronation & hypermobility is probably causing some of that, but a lot of times MTSS is just another symptom of pelvic instability."

A few sessions after that:

Me: "Hey, at least it's not piriformis syndrome!"
PT: "Yeah, guess what I'm going to tell you about that."
Me: "So what you're saying is that pelvic instability is basically what keeps you in business around here."
PT: "Job security, man."

As one of them explained it, all these diagnoses and syndromes that are out there -- ITB syndrome, piriformis syndrome, patellafemoral syndrome, etc. -- are all just extreme manifestations of the same underlying problem, and most patients fall somewhere along a multi-dimensional spectrum in terms of their particular symptoms. A runner with persistent hip/upper leg pain obsessing over "What do I have?" is asking the wrong question. The label you attach to it, he told me, is irrelevant, because most of those things have the same root causes. They could have written "Mild ITBS" or "Mild piriformis syndrome" or "Mild TFL syndrome" on my chart for all the good it would've done, but the treatment would've been the same. (Instead they went with "general hip dysfunction / not otherwise specified.") The important question is, "What is the underlying cause?"

Of course I'm not saying that every running pain you've ever felt in your life was a result of weak pelvic stabilizers. But I am saying that it's a problem that manifests in many different ways, and if you have a thing that's gone on a long time & you haven't had the whole pelvic stability thing checked out, it's maybe worth looking into.

So let's talk about your pelvic stability muscles. Today's cast of characters:

Hip flexors. These are the muscles that let you bend your leg or torso forward at the hip. The most important hip flexors are the psoas major & minor (fun fact: not everyone has a psoas minor, which I guess is why it's not in the picture), the iliacus, and the tensor fascia latae, or TFL.

Glutes. Your gluteal (butt) muscles let you move your leg backward at the hip. You can feel them working if you lay on your stomach and raise your leg backward up off the ground, keeping your knee straight. There are lots of gluteal muscles but the most relevant ones for us are the gluteus maximus ("glute max" for short) and the gluteus medius ("glute med," which you pronounce "glute mead").

Piriformis. Trying to explain about the piriformis is kind of hard for someone like me who is not a pro at this. Wikipedia states, "The piriformis is a flat muscle, pyramidal in shape, lying almost parallel with the posterior margin of the gluteus medius. It is situated partly within the pelvis against its posterior wall, and partly at the back of the hip-joint." I'm going to tell you it's a little pear-shaped muscle deep in your butt muscles. If you stand up and raise one leg a little off the ground in front of you, keeping your knee straight, then try to rotate your whole leg out and backward at the hip, that's your piriformis working.

Iliotibial Band. I think a lot of people are under the impression that the IT band is a muscle. In fact, the IT band is a long, tough, fibrous piece of connective tissue that connects to the TFL and glutes at the iliac crest & to the muscles in the tibia at the other end. (Get it? Ilio-tibial?). The IT band is primarily made up of the same type of collagen fibers as your spinal discs, which which gives you an idea just how tough and strong it is. The main role of the IT band is to stabilize the lateral (side-to-side) motion of the upper leg/femur.

How Does A Wobbly Pelvis Cause Running Injuries?

On the left is an example of more or less what your lower body is doing during the support or stance phase if you have a stable pelvis (except that my left leg should really be pushing backward, like in the other picture...sorry). Notice that my hips are level and my right knee is pretty close to directly under my hip. (It is harder for women to align our hips & knees perfectly since we tend to have wider hips than men, but this is pretty decent.) On the right is a slightly exaggerated example of what it's doing if your pelvis is not so stable.

See how in the unstable version my right hip is popped out slightly to the side, my left hip is dropped, and my right knee is (kind of) collapsing inward as it bends? (I've spent so much time working on fixing this that it was really hard for me to do the collapsing knee intentionally, so this isn't the greatest picture for that.) These are the telltale signs of weak hip abductors, the muscles you use to lift your leg sideways away from your body (as opposed to the adductors, which you use to squeeze your thighs together). The prime mover (the muscle that does most of the work) is the glute med, & the synergist muscles (the ones that assist & help control the motion) include the psoas, piriformis, & TFL. These muscles control the IT band, which keeps your femur straight and your hip and knee in alignment.

Here's another picture that shows the collapsing knee idea a little better:

It's this lateral motion of the support (touching the ground) leg that causes so many problems in runners.

IT Band. The IT band tries to stabilize all the wobbling & tilting of the femur, but it can only do so much. Overtaxing the IT band pulls it in a way it isn't really designed to go, causing the underside to rub against some of the knobby bony parts of the femur & resulting in irritation & damage (think of a rope fraying as it's pulled back & forth across a rock). Scar tissue forms where the damage happens, causing a) tightness (scar tissue is tougher & less flexible) & b) more pain (scar tissue is nerve ending-rich).
Lateral Knee/Hip. A tight/overworked IT band can create pain & tenderness where it connects to the TFL and glutes (the problem I had) or where it connects to the tibial muscles on the outside of the knee (the more standard ITBS symptom).
Patellafemoral. When the hip pops out and the knee collapses inward, a misalignment of the knee joint results. This makes it hard for the patella to slide smoothly over the patellar ligament that connects the quads to the lower leg. The ligament rubs against the underside of the knee cap, causing pain & swelling. (A lot of times this is referred to as 'runner's knee' or patellafemoral syndrome.) This is the problem I had several years ago.
MTSS. This collapsing of the knee inward also creates what's known as induced pronation, and probably accounts for a lot of the orthotics & stability shoes out there. Knee collapses in -> lower leg follows knee -> ankle follows lower leg -> foot follows ankle & rolls inward. Excessive pronation is one of the most common causes of medial tibial shin splints. (I've dealt with this on & off for most of my running life.)
Piriformis. If the glutes & hip muscles are too weak to control the lateral motion of the femur (resulting in all this hip dropping & knee collapsing), the piriformis will often try to compensate for it. Because it is a synergist muscle when it comes to hip abduction and not a prime mover, it isn't really strong enough to do this, and the result is same as with the IT band -- damage, scar tissue, tightness, and pain. We call this piriformis syndrome.
TFL. On the anterior side, the same thing can happen to the TFL (also a synergist in hip abduction). It tries to compensate for the inability of the stabilizer muscles to do their jobs and ends up sore and tight (TFL syndrome).

So what causes all this lateral motion in the upper leg?

It's the job of the IT band to stabilize the femur & keep it moving in a fairly vertical plane between the hip and knee. But remember, the IT band itself is not a muscle -- it's connected to the TFL and glute med. So really, it's the job of the glute med (and its synergist muscles) to stablize the femur via the IT band.

When the glute med, et al. is strong, it's able to use the IT band to keep the femur square and prevent the support knee from collapsing inward. When it's not strong, it can't do this (or can only do it for a little while). It's just the physics of the motion that cause the leg to want to roll in in this way, but when the glute meds & synergist hip abductors aren't strong enough to limit that motion, you get the problems above.

The upshot: If you're going to do any amount of serious mileage, your glutes and hip muscles have to be strong.

Why are weak hip abductors/glutes so common in runners?

Running is primarily a front-to-back motion. Our legs get a lot of work in that direction but almost no work in the rotational / side-to-side direction. Yes, our hip abductors will still work to try to stabilize the lateral motion of your legs through that front-to-back motion, and if you don't run all that much, they might be able to handle it. But the more running you do, the sooner those hip abductors are going to get worn out and overused. This is why paying special attention to strengthening your hips and glutes goes hand-in-hand with building mileage.

Secondly, weak hip abductors/glutes are common in runners because they are common in first-world people in general. It's just a fact that most humans, even those of us who are active a lot, spend a lot of time sitting. I mean, think about a recreational athlete with a typical commuter/office job. Half an hour sitting in the car/bus/train/etc. on the way to work; let's be generous and supposed she manages to spend a grand total of two of the nine hours she spends at work standing or walking & spends the other seven sitting in front of her computer or in meetings; half an hour sitting on the ride home. Again let's be generous and suppose she finds two hours on average in her evening to exercise and be active and do things like make dinner that involve standing and walking. Then maybe she spends three more sitting at the table for dinner, relaxing on the couch, helping kids with homework, sitting at her computer checking email/paying bills/etc., or sitting up in bed reading before she goes to sleep. That's 8 hours sleeping, 4 hours standing/walking/exercising, and 11 hours sitting. (Divide up the remaining hour however you want.) And that's an ACTIVE person who prioritizes exercise.

So what's the problem with sitting? Remember how we talked in the hamstrings post about how complementary muscle groups (muscles that move the same joint in opposite directions, like the biceps & triceps for your elbow) should ideally stay equally strong & flexible, and how imbalances in complementary groups can cause overuse injuries?

When we sit, our hip flexors are shortened and our glutes are lengthened. When we stand, it's the opposite. Our ancestors living on the African savanna three million years ago had a much better balance between the two, resulting in (surprise!) fairly balanced hip flexors & glutes in terms of both strength and tightness. These days, though, even for active folks, tight hip flexors and weak glutes are the norm. (BTW, lower back pressure/pain? Probably the same cause.)

Do your hips/glutes need work?

The simplest DIY way to test your hip/glute strength is with the single-leg quarter squats that I used above to demonstrate a stable pelvis vs an unstable one. First, make sure you're wearing something where you can clearly see what your knee and pelvis are doing (probably not pants, and a top that leaves at least the waistband area of your shorts visible). Stand in front of a mirror and lift one leg off the ground. Note the angle of your waistband -- at this point it should still be pretty much horizontal. Now slowly bend your support knee until you're about a quarter of the way to a full squat position. The following are red flags that can indicate weak hip abductors:

You can't do the squat at all (ie, you don't see how you can stand on one leg and bend your knee and still support your body weight). The first time I tried to do it, I was sure I had misunderstood the instructions because it seemed so completely impossible. Nope; I'd just lost a ton of muscle tone in my glute meds.
Your knee doesn't stay in alignment with your hip and foot and instead moves inward. (Like I said above, women get a very little additional leeway here, but not much.)
Your knee/leg trembles or wobbles as you move through the squat.
The hip on your suspended leg drops instead of staying level with your support hip (sometimes it's easiest to see this by watching the waist band of your shorts -- if it tilts as you squat instead of staying parallel to the floor, the hip on your suspended leg is probably dropping)
The hip on your support leg pops outward as you squat

Another thing they had me do a lot in PT is jump off of a small box and freeze as I landed. The box was not tall, maybe 18 inches or so, and my instructions were to bend my knees a little to absorb the force of the landing while keeping my back straight as much as possible (ie, not leaning over too much). To assess my hip abductor strength, they would look at what my knees did when I landed. If they stayed pretty much square over my feet as they bent, then my glute meds, et al. were strong enough to do their job & use the IT band to stabilize my femurs and knees. If they collapsed inward, that was an indicator that they still needed work.

Left: A strong, stable landing with knees more or less directly over feet. Right: An unstable landing with knees collapsing inward.

Last but not least -- Eccentric Strength & Shock Absorption

Your muscles are capable of two types of contractions: concentric, where the muscle shortens (ie, bending your elbow to lift a weight toward your shoulder), and eccentric, where it lengths under a load (ie, gradually straightening your elbow to lower the weight in a smooth, controlled motion rather than just letting your arm fall). Eccentric and concentric are two different types of strength that don't always go hand in hand. You can have good concentric strength in a muscle but poor eccentric strength, or vice versa.

For runners, eccentric strength in the glutes & other hip abductors is essential for preventing injury. When you run, your foot (hopefully) lands directly beneath your hip in order to reduce braking forces and direct most of your energy horizontally and into forward motion rather than vertically down into the ground. Still, even the most beautiful foot strike the world has ever seen will generate some amount of downward force, which in turn generates upward force from the ground to the foot (Newton's 3rd). All that force has to go somewhere.

Concentric strength in your glute meds (as well as most of your other leg muscles) is important for running because that's what you use to push off the ground and propel your body forward. Eccentric strength, on the other hand, is what lets those same muscles lengthen in a smooth and controlled way when your foot hits the ground and your ankle, knee, and hip bend to safely absorb and distribute the upward forces from the ground. (When you do the slow, single-leg squats described above, you're using eccentric strength on the way down and concentric strength on the way up.) Having poor eccentric strength means that instead of gradually lengthening to absorb the force over more time, the muscles lengthens more suddenly, meaning they absorb less force. And the less force that gets absorbed by eccentric muscle contractions, the more ends up channeled into ankles, shins, knees, hips, spine, etc.

To get a better sense of this, think about what would happen if your biceps did not have the eccentric strength to slowly lower a barbell in a controlled way, and instead you could only drop your arm & straighten your elbow suddenly. Instead of the force slowly getting absorbed by your biceps over time, most of it is absorbed suddenly by your elbow joint & its various connective tissues. This is often the mechanism by which “too much / too fast / too soon” leads to strains, stress fractures, & other overuse injuries.

"Think of your muscles as cushions," one of my PTs told me. "The stronger they are, the more they will protect your bones, joints, and connective tissue."

Testing Your Eccentric Strength

Again, the single-leg quarter squats are great. If you're able to slowly lower your hips (keeping them square) a quarter of the way to a full squat without too much shaking or trembling, the eccentric strength in your glute meds is probably pretty good. If you can't do it, or can't go very far, or your knee & femur wobble as you do it, you could probably use some work in this area. (I was not discharged & cleared to train again until I could do 50 in a row on each side pain-free.)

A few other things they constantly looked at when I was in PT included:

Vertical hip bounce while running. I would run on a treadmill while they videotaped from the side, and then we would watch to see how much difference there was between the highest point my hip reached in a stride and the lowest. A few inches was okay, but more than that meant that my entire pelvis was dropping as each foot hit the ground because I didn't have the eccentric strength in my glutes to control the downward force.
Loud/quiet foot strikes. From my first weeks, they coached me to "run whisper-quiet." Barely audible foot strikes indicate that force is being absorbed & distributed efficiently & safely, while easily audible pounding/slapping indicates poor absorption due to poor eccentric hip/glute strength.
Loud/quiet landings on the box jump. Remember how I mentioned they watched me jump off of a box a lot & watched to see what my knees did? They also listened to how loud my feet were when I landed, for the same reason as they did on the treadmill. A soft, quiet landing meant good absorption & eccentric strength, and a loud landing meant I still needed work.

Whew! If you made it all the way through that, then good on you. Hopefully you found at least some part of it informative and/or useful.

For all that I would have loved to avoid four months and many hundreds of dollars in physical therapy last year, I still feel very fortunate to have gotten a chance to learn so much about the details of how running works and how to continue doing it while taking care of my body. In the next post, I'll show the strength exercises I still do, even many months later, to keep my hips and glutes strong and pain-free.

Week in Review: Feb. 6 - 12

2012-02-12T23:10:00.000-08:00

This is my weekly training journal. Including it in the blog gives me a little extra accountability in the mileage department & helps me stick to my schedule. :)

1 Week to Bay Breeze 10K

6 Weeks to Oakland Half Marathon

Hey, congrats all you trail racers! I wish I could have tagged along, but alas I was stuck working 9-4 both Saturday & Sunday. Not really my ideal weekend, but at least they're paying me for it.

This week turned out to be a perfect storm of running fail. Well, not fail, really; more like loss of momentum. In addition to a busier-than-usual M-F work week & working all weekend, I had my 3rd degree brown belt testing (a big one because it's my last before black belt) at karate on Monday, so I knew I might have to be a little more creative in terms of finding time to run. Also, while I don't normally think of testings as being all that big of a deal in terms of exertion and stress, physically this week has felt sort of like a post-race week (soreness, random leg pains, general exhaustion) and I kind of wonder if maybe that's part of why. In any case, mileage was looking pretty bleak by mid-week, but I did rally enough towards the weekend to at least keep myself semi-respectable (for very generous definitions of "semi").

Monday: Testing + strength work. Yay! :D

Tuesday: ~~2 wu + 4 x 10:00 @ 10K pace~~ Strength work + running fail. In addition to just plain feeling exhausted, I was super sore & having some weird pain in my forefoot/ball-of-foot areas. that made even walking uncomfortable & had me googling 'running pain sesamoid.' I probably could have forced myself through a few easy miles & went back & forth for a while about whether that would be a smart & hardcore thing to do or a dumb & reckless one that I would regret the next day. In the end I just did my strength work & called it good.

It's been mostly like this.

Wednesday: 8 easy (not) + karate + strength work. Most of the time preceding a run with two rest days is a recipe for awesome, but this was just HARD. Yes, it was unusually warm, but towards the end I felt like I could barely keep my legs moving. It's hard for me to believe that I was still that worn down from the testing after two days; then again, I suppose I've felt this way for multiple days after racing 5Ks & 10Ks so maybe it's not so crazy. Anyway, I couldn't think of any other reason for it.

Thursday: Running fail. Still a bit sore & having foot pain, but mostly I was just exhausted still. Another day I went back & forth with myself about whether I was being smartly conservative or just letting the couch win.

Friday: 2 wu + 3 x 1 mi @ HM pace + 3 easy = 8 total. Still feeling worn out but negotiated my way out the door with a little winter pesto and a promise to myself that if I felt really miserable or had bad foot pain I could just do a few easy miles to avoid another goose egg for the week. I did not actually believe I had enough gas in the tank to run at HM pace for very long, but felt better enough after two warm-up miles that I decided to try. They turned out passably okay, though I had to work much MUCH harder for them than I did the last time I did this workout. Still, no goose egg!

Saturday: 6 easy. The ball-of-foot pain wasn't too bad & I actually felt like I could have run a few more easy miles Saturday, but this was about all I had time for between work & dinner.

Sunday: Got home later than expected from work & the weird foot pain was back. No running. Again -- smart? Lame? Who can say?

Grand Total: 22 miles

So yeah; not really the week I had planned. Trying not to beat myself up for it too badly, given all the weird foot pain & extra soreness from the testing Monday (?). I'm running Bay Breeze 10K next weekend so I was planning to keep it < 30 next week, but since it's not an A race & really just more of a fitness gauge, I may do a little more than I'd originally had planned & just take it easy the two days before the race.

Winter Pesto (or, "I finally put too much garlic in something.")

2012-02-10T16:29:00.000-08:00

This has been a hard week for me running-wise. I knew I'd be busy & might not have time to get all my runs in, but that turns out not to be the real issue.

I didn't run on Monday because I wanted to be fresh for my 3rd brown belt test (smashing success, btw). Tuesday was supposed to be my normal track workout; I was really busy that day, but mostly I just felt completely exhausted and really sore (which I can only assume was from the testing). Wednesday I forced myself out the door, still sore, for an "easy" eight miles that completely wore me out, then went to karate (perhaps not the wisest of plans). Thursday I was back to feeling sore & exhausted again. I decided against running again, which led to the inevitable no-running guilt. Reminding myself that there is a difference between tired/lazy and actual pain only made me feel a little better.

Needless to say, mileage for this week is rather in the toilet.

But now it's Friday. I'm feeling better & ready to go run this afternoon, but before I could face it, I needed a little comfort food.

One of my favorite comfort foods is traditional basil pesto. I still remember how excited I was when I figured out I could make it at home. I think I made it every weekend for months. This past summer we started growing basil in our backyard, which has made the process that much easier. The only trouble with making your own pesto, though, is its summer growing seas. Yes, we can still get it in winter, but I try to buy & eat seasonal & local whenever I can, so this time of year it takes a little tweaking.

Friends, I give you a lovely winter pesto.

1) Preheat oven to 350 F. Spread a handful of almonds on a baking sheet & bake for 10-12 minutes.

2) Rinse & chop 1.5 cups each of dinosaur kale & arugula & combine in a food processor.

3) Grate 1.5 cups of a sharp pecorino & add to the greens. I've used other winter pesto recipes that call for chevre, but in my opinion most goal cheese is a bit too mild. I like the tangier flavor of pecorino.

We get bulk EVOO at costco for more mundane uses, but this is our favorite "fancy" kind. Our local Italian market recommended it as the best "nice" bottle they have for the price

4) Add the juice of half a lemon, a quarter cup of almonds, & ~3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. (Adjust to taste, of course; I probably like it a little on the dryer side.)

5) Peel & add a few garlic cloves to the mix in the food processor. This would be the part where I finally added too much garlic to something. My general practice is to at least double the amount of garlic in any recipe as a starting point. This time I peeled a head & just thought to myself, "Oh, eight or ten cloves seems about right."

Which turned out to be too much, even for me. So I'd recommend starting with 4-5, even if you're a big garlic fan & then going from there.

Anyway --

6) Pulse the ingredients together in the food processor until it looks like pesto.

Look,it's pesto!

7) Top with more pecorino & enjoy! :)

You can really use any kind of leafy greens you want. (I've also used chard & different types of kale which has been good too.) Cilantro can be interesting as well.

Alright -- time to get out the door.

Hardcore January!

2012-02-08T18:41:00.000-08:00

I've never done a monthly recap before, and to be honest I don't see them becoming a regular thing. (Alright, I know we're well into February; the beginning of the month sort of got away from me.) I tried to write a monthly recap back in August & the whole thing just felt a little rehash-ey and un-genuine. This month I'm doing one for #OpHardcoreFit, which feels less re-run-ish and more genuine because I actually have stuff to tell you about that is actually NOT the same stuff I've been writing about all month!

First among those things is, well, Operation Hardcore Fit. OHF is the baby of Meg O (of Watch MeGo Run), who is training for her first marathon this year & gunning for a sub-4:15! (GOOOO MEGAN!!) As she put it in a December blog post about marathon training, "The only option is hardcore."

"So, once I was all registered, I was all, "I'm so cool, I'm gonna run a marathon" and so I decided that one thing and one thing only could happen at the gym today: HARDCORE. No wimpy workout. Go big or go home."

Then in January:

"Recently I've been thinking about Operation Hardcore, my mission to train for the marathon and be an overall better runner this year. I'm terrified, to say the least. What if I don't have what it takes? Then, I thought, 'you know what would make this better? If I had other people on the same page as me.'"

And thus #OpHardcoreFit was born, its essence being thus:

"Operation Hardcore is a project to push yourself past your comfort zone into a territory you may not even know existed. I have a feeling 2012 is going to be my year and I want you to join me in it, by making it your year too. To push yourself past your limits, test yourself, and prove you ARE stronger than you think, faster than you feel, and better than you know. It will motivate you on the days you think, "I'm too tired" and will convince you that you, do, in fact, "got this" on the days you feel unstoppable."

The idea is to choose one big goal and maybe a few other smaller ones for the year & support each other in doing what we have to (even when we don't feel like it) to make it happen. My big goal is to run 2,000 miles this year, and my smaller goals are a sub-1:40 half marathon and a sub-22:00 5K.

Now, I will be honest with you. These goals are not going to "push [me] past [my] comfort zone into a territory [I] may not even know existed." They are 'safe' goals that I feel pretty sure I can achieve in a year without taxing myself overly much. I decided to "HardcoreFit" them, though, because over the years I have had a very bad case of the "I-have-nothing-to-prove"s. Ie, "It would be kind of cool to run a marathon, but I know I could do, it takes a lot of work, & I have nothing to prove. So whatever." It turns out, though, that no one is very interested in things you know you could do if you wanted to but haven't actually bothered. For me, I guess that's what #OpHardcoreFit is about.

So what did I accomplish this January in that vein?

I ran every single day that I had scheduled for a total of 131.5 miles.
I've recovered from my post-marathon 4-week period of holiday sloth.
I've lost 6 of the 8 pounds I gained during said period of holiday sloth.
I've averaged ~4 strength workouts per week.

Other more and less hardcore things that happened this January:

1) I finished reading this book, which, at 925 pages, I had been putting off for a while. Yes, it took me a month, but it was a fantastic read and well worth it. Like just about all of Murakami's work, it's a bit strange in places, but the story is really sweet and about as original as they come. (Runners may also want to check out his autobiographical What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I confess that I haven't read it yet but I've heard it's fantastic.) #hardcorereading

2) I found out that I was being tested for 1st kyu on Feb. 6th. (Note: It's over and I passed! :) ) Kyu ranks are student ranks and go from 10th (white belt) to 1st (3rd degree brown belt). 1st kyu testing is kind of a big deal because it's the last one before black belt. #hardcorefighting

3) Volunteering at Coyote Hills 5K/10K/Half. I've run two Brazen races & really enjoyed both (even though neither were among their *real* hardcore trail-ey ones), but this was my first time volunteering. I was up at 4:30 & at Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont setting up tents in the dark by 6 am. (In retrospect, I should've brought a headlamp.)

From about 7 to 9:30 I worked at the bib table, then spent 9:30 - 11:30 pouring gallon after gallon of water into tiny Dixie cups for the finishers. And OMG, I had no concept of how much water even smallish races (2000 people?) go through!

Maybe two thirds of the gallon jugs of water we went through.

For the last half hour I sorted trash & recycling (which was kind of gross because they were giving away It's It ice cream sandwiches, the discarded parts of which were melting all over EVERYTHING). I will not lie to you and say that I wasn't mainly doing all this for a free entry into next month's Bay Breeze 10K, but I am also not lying when I tell you that it really was a lot of fun and I would totally do it again. Jasmin & Sam are great & I can highly recommend their events. #hardcorevolunteering

4) I went to Sonoma with Don & his folks. If you have never gone wine tasting with someone who works in the industry, you absolutely must get on that shit. It is no secret that I love me some good wine or that Don & I spend several weekends a year in Paso Robles & Napa/Sonoma, and it's also not too terribly uncommon for us to chat up the folks pouring & end up not paying tasting fees and/or tasting things that are supposedly not open / VIPs only / sold out / etc. But when one of your party is a wine educator & buyer & has done a bunch of consulting with well-known wineries, that experience is increased by an order of magnitude. No tasting fees? 30% discount? An hour & a half in your caves tasting everything you make? Yes please.

My top Sonoma / Healdsburg / Santa Rosa wine picks:

Porter Creek - Super tiny; $5 fee waived with purchase; tasty pinot, award-winning viognier, & a really unique food-friendly zin. Plus reasonable prices!
Williams Selyem - Mostly pinot, but they're making a few other things now as well. Not cheap, but hands down the absolute best California pinot I have ever had.
Bella - This was a first for me on this trip. Don's dad wanted to go to pick up some of their Late Harvest, but we ended up tasting through everything. The Late Harvest & Late Picked were both amazing, they had an excellent pinot & chard (under their Ten Acre label), and several very tasty zins. Plus, very reasonably priced for the quality.
Siduri & Inspiration - These two are right in the same little plaza in north Santa Rosa. Siduri makes a TON of stuff under that label and another one called Novy Family wines. Very tasty pinots, a FANTASTIC $17 syrah (!), and a lovely dessert white. Inspiration has only a few wines, but their chard & viognier were lovely, and I enjoyed the zin, pinot, & syrah very much as well.
Yoakim Bridge - A long-time favorite mom-and-pop winery. Don is a member so we go there any time we're in the neighborhood. Uh-may-zing zin, syrah, cab, and petite sirah.
Ridge - Not cheap, but reliably good. Taste the Montebello if they offer it because you probably won't ever get another chance. They also have a tasting room in the Cupertino hills.
Seghesio - Reliably good zins, a lovely field blend called Marian's Reserve, and a tasty 60/40 cab/sangiovese blend called Omaggio.
Twomey - It's been a while since I was there but I pretty much loved everything I had and the tasting fee is cheap even if you don't buy anything, so just go.
Wilson - Lots of really good zins, & several other things that are worth tasting as well.

#hardcoreoenology

So that's really it for my hardcore January. For February my only real goals are to keep building mileage & stay healthy, and to run strong at Bay Breeze 10K on Feb. 18.

How was your January? Anything hardcore to share?

Week in Review: Jan 30 - Feb 5

2012-02-05T22:44:00.000-08:00

This is my weekly training journal. Including it in the blog gives me a little extra accountability in the mileage department & helps me stick to my schedule. :)

2 Weeks to Bay Breeze 10K

7 Weeks to Oakland Half Marathon

Monday: 4 easy + karate + strength work. Boy, do rest days make all the difference! Yes, it was a short run, but still one of those rare workouts where I feel like I'm bounding effortlessly along and everything is working the way it's supposed to. (More of these, please?)

Tuesday: ~~2 wu + 4 x 5:00 @ 5K pace + 1 cd~~ 2 wu + 3 x 1 mi @ HM pace + 1 cd = 6 total. I just could not get going today. When I finally did make it to the track, it was closed for a soccer game. Long story short, I find running at 5K pace on sidewalks dangerous & scary, so I swapped that day with Friday's HMP intervals. Even so, this was just one of those days when I was #notfeelingit. The weather was crappy, I was wearing a cotton sweatshirt (this is how you can tell my brain wasn't in charge), carrying a water bottle, and kind of needed to pee. After 1.5 warm-up miles I kind of went, "Ah, screw it. Six easy & call it good." I stopped after 2 anyway to have some water and loosen up my legs. When I started running again, though, something sort of magical happened. "Oh, who am I kidding?" I sighed to myself. "I love running fast."

Race pace intervals are always a little tricky off the track because of hills, wind, traffic, pedestrians, etc., so I wasn't too worried about exactly nailing it & was fully prepared for my pace to be a little slower than it should really be. I was surprised to see that my first mile was 7:44 because the whole thing was uphill (maybe a 3-4% grade). Coming back, I expected the reverse mile to be faster (which, at 7:24, it was). The last involved a bit of tricky terrain, plus more pedestrians & lights & a few small up-hills, so back to 7:42.

I know that one thing I really have to work on with HM pace in general is not going out too fast. When I'm slogging through my easy miles in the 8:45-9:15 range, 7:38 sounds wicked fast; as a result, I inevitably end up going out like that, suddenly realizing I'm running sub-7s, & having to rein it back in. I've been trying to err more on the side of going out a little on the slow side (which is what I should be practicing for races anyway), because I find it easier to speed up by a few seconds per mile than to ratchet back down.

Wednesday: No running; karate + strength work.

Thursday: 8 easy. Just an easy jog in the park. Well; sort of easy. Maybe a touch fast for "easy," especially considering all the hills & the lovely 70 F weather. But still good. :)

Friday: 2 wu + 4 x 5:00 @ 5K pace + .17 cd = 5 total. In terms of pace, my intervals went 7:10, 7:08, 7:03, 6:58. That combined with the fact that they really all just seemed too easy makes me think I need to push these a little more and that maybe I'm ready to start doing more intervals sooner than I thought I would be. I am always too conservative in the beginning because I don't want to go out too fast & end up too tired to manage even/negative splits (which is generally my goal), but I really shouldn't be able to go THAT much faster from interval to interval. In terms of running problems to have, though, this is probably an okay one. (And yes, I had to jog a last .17 to make it a nice round number!)

Saturday: 5 easy. By which I mean VERY easy. I know I have a habit of running my easy runs too fast; there are some reasons for that, none of which are very good ones, and also some not-so-great consequences that maybe I will blog about later. Today I challenged myself to run 5 miles without breaking a sweat. While I didn't quite succeed, just having that idea in my mind helped me keep things nice & slow.

Sunday: 12 miles easy + strength work. My longest run post-CIM! I felt a little sluggish until around mile 4 & had a bit of asthma for maybe 2-7ish (have I mentioned how *over* the asthma thing I am?), but the last half was great. Negative splits, basically no pain anywhere, & ran the last two sub-8:40.

Grand Total: 40 miles

No complaints this week. Shooting for mid-40s for next week, but it's going to be kind of a busy one so we'll see what I can fit in.

11 Random Facts...

2012-02-05T12:35:00.000-08:00

Firstly, a huge shout-out to everyone who ran Kaiser Permanente! PRs and fabulous performances abounded, & I can't wait to read all your race reports. KP is one of my favorite local SF races & owns my current half marathon PR; if not for my current lack of half marathon fitness, I definitely would've been out there with you. :)

Secondly, Tasha from Healthy Diva tagged me to share 11 random things! (I'm assuming you all know how this works by now, so I will skip the rules.)

My dumb phone

1) I don't have a smart phone. In fact my phone is nearly 4 years old at this point. I will probably break down at some point this year because I have a feeling that pretty soon no one is going to support dumb phones anymore. I only replaced my last phone in 2008 when I accidentally hurled it across the room and into a glass of water, which shattered.

2) I love kale SO MUCH. Like, so much. I make kale salad or kale chips at least 2-3 times a week. I could probably live on kale.

3) I love my nephews, but I have no desire ever to have kids of my own. I'm pretty sure I would be a pretty abysmal parent, though, so it's probably for the best. ("Hey....Don't touch that stove....Told ya.")

4) I haven't had a haircut since April of last year. When I finally do get one, I'm thinking of going to the San Francisco Institute of Esthetics and Cosmetology, where you can get a fancy high-end hair cut from a student (under supervision) for $20-40, which is frankly the most I'm willing to pony up for hair as straightforward as mine.

5) I am FANATICAL about dishes going in the dishwasher in a certain way. (If I do it wrong, I feel certain the clowns will eat me.)

6) I often find myself powerfully ensaddened by my lack of dressy winter clothes, but too lazy to actually do anything about getting new ones. I have like 2 outfits that are not jeans that I wear over and over again.

7) My ears aren't pierced. Well; not really. They were pierced when I was five but I stopped wearing earrings when I was maybe eight or so, so they've grown back together.

8) I love advice columns & I read Dear Prudence & Miss Manners religiously. This definitely helps me keep any problems I might have in my own life in perspective.

9) A few years ago I read "Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets" in Spanish. My spoken Spanish leaves shall we say something to be desired, but I can read & write in it fairly well as long as I have a dictionary. I haven't done it in a while but I used to really like reading in Spanish because it was a great way to learn new words. (Note to self....Maybe start reading in Spanish again...)

A cocktail I made up called the Rusty Corpse. The recipe is somewhere on my woefully neglected mixology blog.

10) I love inventing new cocktails & actually have a mixology blog that I treat like my redheaded step-child (ie, I post on it maybe once every three months or something). There are some good recipes (original & curated) if you're into that sort of thing, though.

11) After 10+ years, there is a good chance that I will finally be a black belt in Isshin-ryu karate sometime this year! I have my last kyu (student) testing this coming Monday (2/6); then I'll start preparing for my shodan (first black belt) test.

Tasha's Questions:

1) What is your favorite recovery drink? Coconut water after a short run; after a long one, beer.

2) Love the treadmill or hate it? It's been a long time since I ran on a treadmill so it's hard to say. I didn't hate it (in fact it was super convenient when I was routinely going to work before sunrise & getting home after dark, & I occasionally covet the treadmills of others when the weather sucks), but I distinctly remember that I had real trouble staying on it for longer than 3-4 miles. (I never could watch TV or read magazines on the thing so I got bored easily.)

3) Name your favorite cross training exercise/routine. Heh...That's easy, because the only cross training exercise of any kind I do are my basic strength exercises for hips/glutes/hamstrings/core/etc.

4) Favorite book read within the last year? The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss. Highly recommend!

5) What type of dessert do you like to indulge yourself in? I'm not super-picky, as long as there's not too much chocolate. I usually go for the fruity or baking spice desserts, but if someone offers me dessert, I will probably eat it.

6) What motivates you to get through a tough workout? The very calm, positive, reassuring split personality that lives in my head. She is always saying things like, "Come on, you can do it!" and quoting Vince Lombardi at me.

7) Favorite race ran? At this point probably CIM '11, because it was a whole weekend experience and I had so many amazing supportive people around me.

8) If you had to eat fast food, which would you prefer? I have been known to indulge in vegetarian fare from Taco Bell on occasion, particularly the bean burritos. Don't judge.

9) Favorite childhood memory? After roughly 4 minutes of consideration, probably starting riding lessons when I was seven or eight.

10) Runner’s World or Running Times or both? I 'like' them both on Facebook & occasionally click on an article if it looks interesting, but I wouldn't say I'm fanatically attached to one over the other.

I'm not going to tag anyone because it seems like pretty much everyone in my reader has already been tagged at least once, but if you have some more random things to share, by all means share away! I never tire of reading them. :)

Strength Training, Part 2: Hamstrings

2012-01-31T11:00:00.000-08:00

Last week I wrote a post about the importance and relative easiness of strength work for distance runners. Not crazy circuit training or hours in the gym to get totally ripped; just simple exercises to keep our most important muscle groups balanced and free of overuse injuries.

In this & future posts, I want to share some of the strength exercises I do in case it's helpful to folks who want to get started with it or are just interested in learning about someone else's routine. I don't just want to list a bunch of exercises, though. One of the most valuable parts of going through all the physical therapy I did last year was learning more about how different muscle groups are involved in distance running, how they interact, what the risks are to those muscles, and how the exercises I was learning helped mitigate those risks.

Today's exercises are for hamstrings. Now, I am a total body movement nerd & find all the nuts & bolts & finer physiological points fascinating. But I know that not everyone does, and if you aren't interested in all the how & why & just want to read about my exercises, go ahead and scroll to the bottom; I promise I won't be offended. :)

Cast of Characters

Quads. Our quadriceps are a muscle group made up of four muscles (sartorius, vastus intermedius, vastus medialis, and vastus lateralis). Your quads let you straighten your leg at the knee, and also play a role in flexing the hip (raising your knee upward).

Hamstrings. This muscle group is made up of three muscles -- the biceps femoris, semitendinosus, and semimembranosus. Your hamstrings bend your leg backward at the knee, and also perform a kind of "braking" function when your quads contract that prevents your knee from hyperextending.

Most muscle groups in the body come in complementary pairs that act on the same joint but pull in opposite directions -- ie, your biceps lets you curl your arm, while your triceps pull in the opposite direction & let you straighten it. The quads and hamstrings are complementary muscle groups -- your quads straighten your knee, & your hamstrings bend it backwards. This is a nice set to start with because the relationship between quads & hamstrings is pretty straightforward (as opposed to the muscles that work the hip, which can move sideways and in circular motions in addition to forward & backwards).

In a perfect world, complementary muscle groups like this would be equally strong & flexible. This wasn't a problem for our ancestors, because millions of years ago we spent our days doing a wide range of physical activities (running, walking, climbing, dancing, carrying things, etc.) that kept everything in balance easily. Nowadays, we do a lot more sitting, and for most of us physical activity is more something we plan and schedule for short periods of free-time than it is a way of life. When we are active, many of us choose one, maybe two activities that we really enjoy and do them to the exclusion of everything else. Whatever muscle groups that activity happens to work get strong, and if the complementary groups are left to languish, it's easy to end up with one muscle group weaker or tighter than its opposite. It's these types of imbalances that often lead to the nagging overuse injuries that plague many distance runners.

So what causes this lack of balance in the hamstrings & quads?

When we sprint, we move our legs through a pretty full range of motion -- we're using both the anterior (front-of-body) and posterior (back-of-body) muscle groups fairly evenly and at near-full extension. Long-distance running is different; by the very nature of what we do, we rarely run 100% all out, meaning we spend most our miles moving our legs through a relatively small range of motion. Most of time, that particular range of motion means using our hip flexors and quads quite a bit, and our hamstrings and glutes relatively little.

Click on pictures for sources

It's easy to see the difference between how much a sprinter uses the posterior muscles compared to how much your every-day recreational distance runner uses them, purely based on range of motion. (You can't see it as much in this picture, but distance runners usually come closer to full range of motion when they move their legs forward to begin the next stride. It's in the backward "push-off" part of the stride where there's the most dramatic difference.) It may seem like a relatively small difference, but because running is a repetitive activity where we do the same set of motions over and over and over and over and over, even a slight difference between how much we're engaging each set of muscles becomes magnified over time.

If runners don't work to strengthen those posterior muscles, they can become quad-dominant, a situation where the quads overpower the action of the hamstrings in a running stride. (Overstriding & heel-striking can also contribute to quad dominance.) When this happens, the hamstrings have to work harder to compensate (remember that braking function I mentioned above?), which can lead to strains and tears. Quad dominance is probably *the* most common cause of hamstring injuries in recreational distance runners. This article does a great job of going into more detail about how & why; as the author points out, hamstring strains and tears are notoriously slow to heal and easy to re-aggravate, so it's *absolutely* worth taking the time to make and keep these muscles strong relative to your quads. As an added bonus, strong hamstrings will let you ascend hills with strength and speed and sprint hard at the end of a race without injury, which is always fun. :)

My Favorite Hamstring Exercises

Before you get the wrong idea, please know that this is just a list of the hamstring exercises I like and find convenient and rotate through fairly often -- I certainly don't do them all every session or even every week.

My ongoing goal is to do strength work 3-5 times a week (5 times being an A+ week and 3 times being more like a C-). I usually do 4 different exercises, each for a different set of muscles -- ie, in one session, I might do a couple of sets each of a core exercise, a glute exercise, a hip exercise, and a hamstring exercise. The whole thing usually takes 15-20 minutes start to finish. On Mondays & Wednesdays I do it while warming up for karate; otherwise I usually do it last thing before bed during the Daily Show.

How many sets & reps I do of each depends on which exercises I pick, how those muscles feel, how much I did the last time, etc. If you are just getting started with this kind of work, I can't say enough about starting off slowly and paying close attention to how everything feels; especially if these muscles are on the weaker side, it's easier than you think to overdo it. This is especially true for hamstrings, so I would recommend erring on the side of doing a little less than you think you can than risking doing too much too soon -- remember that weak hamstrings are easily damaged and take a long time to heal. The upside is that it will take fewer sets & reps than you think to make a difference.

1) Single-Leg Bridges. (Also works the glutes.) The biggest mistake people make with this exercise is arching their backs in order to raise their hips higher, which defeats the point of the exercise (in addition to being bad for your back). Don't worry at first about how high you're raising your hips -- focus on keeping your lower back flat and feeling your hamstrings & glutes contract. It's also smart to lay your hands at your side palms up or across your chest, to prevent you from pushing against the ground (some people do it subconsciously). You can lift your other leg straight up as in the video, rest your ankle on the opposite knee, or fold your knee up against your chest -- whichever is most comfortable.

2) Stability Ball Bridges. This is a more challenging version of the same exercise; when first started PT, I could only do 8-9 before I felt like I was about to get a serious cramp, so definitely be cautious until you get a sense of how hard they are for you. I don't have a ball at home, but there's one at my karate dojo, so this is one of the ones I try to do when I'm there. Naomi also posted some strength exercises that she's been doing, including a version of this exercise that uses the seat of a chair instead of a ball, so that's another option if you don't have or want to get a ball. If you do get one, a 65 cm ball (the size I use for this) can usually be had in the $15-25 range, depending on what brand you get & where. (They just take up a lot of space, which is the main reason I haven't gotten one.)

3) Good Mornings. Good Mornings are a good one because it focuses on a type of strength called eccentric strength, which, put very simply, is the type of strength where a muscle gradually disengages in a controlled way (ie, slowly uncurling your arm while holding a heavy weight versus just letting it drop). You can google the details, but eccentric strength is a) extremely important for running muscles, and b) something people rarely work on developing.

In this video, he demonstrates how to do Good Mornings with no extra weight, which is perfect if you're just getting started. As your hamstrings get stronger, you can experiment with holding extra weight behind your shoulders. We have a set of adjustable barbells at home and when I do these, I just hold one over each shoulder with maybe 5-10 pounds on each side. This video shows how you can do them with a weight bar if you're super hard core & have access to it. The hamstring article from above gives good instructions for this one: "Start with your legs locked, back in neutral position and core tight. Slowly bend over at the waist, gently feeling the stretch on the way down. Keep your torso fixed -- don't be tempted to droop your shoulders toward the ground in an attempt to look like you are going lower than you really are. Constantly keep the core tight to support your back. On the way down, keep the barbell as close to your leg as you can to reduce the pressure on the lower back. Keep the back in the neutral position. When you have gone as low as you can with your knees locked, start to go back up slowly. (Avoid the tendency to jerk upwards or arch your back. If you feel inclined to either, use less weight.)"

4) Eccentric Hamstring Curls. This is another good eccentric strength exercise covered in the article above. Their instructions explain how to do it with a partner, but I just stick my heels under the couch & it works just as well. The rest is pretty much the same, though: "Kneel on a folded towel or mat with your toes pulled toward your shins. Keep your hands in front of your chest. Your partner [or couch] sits behind you, facing your back, pressing down on your lower legs with his hands. Keep your core tight, chest up, and hips forward so your body forms a straight line from your ears to your knees. Maintain this posture as you lower your torso toward the floor while resisting gravity with your hamstrings and calves. Control the range of motion as far as you can, catch yourself with your hands, then push off the floor to assist your hamstrings and glutes in pulling you back up to the starting position."

This one can be as easy or hard as you make it, depending on how much you use your arms to catch yourself & push off the ground, and how much you use your calves to control the lowering part of the exercise. Remember that if it's very hard at first, then yay! You've found an exercise you need to do! And there is no shame, ever, in starting off easy.

So there you go -- some of my hamstring exercises, along with a little of the how & why. Stay tuned for Part 3!

Week in Review: Jan 23 - 29

2012-01-30T10:26:00.000-08:00

This is my weekly training journal. Including it in the blog gives me a little extra accountability in the mileage department & helps me stick to my schedule. :)

3 Weeks to Bay Breeze 10K

8 Weeks to Oakland Half Marathon

I knew going in that this would be a tough week. Most of the time I take Monday and Wednesday off, but since I was planning to volunteer at Coyote Hills 5K/10K/Half in Fremont on Saturday morning, then spend the rest of the weekend with Don's parents in Sonoma (more on that later), I needed to run every week day this week in order to make up for Saturday & Sunday. This was on top of the four days in a row I'd already run the week before, for a grand total of 9 consecutive days of running -- kind of a big deal, considering that I usually only run 3-4 days in a row.

Monday: 6 miles easy. Surprisingly, I felt great after my 10 miler the day before(first double-digit run of 2012, holla!), and other than a little asthma (which, OMG, I am sooooo over) and leaving me a bit tired for karate, it was a good run.

Tuesday: 2 miles easy + 3 x 10:00 @ 10K effort = 6.12 miles. For all that I adore track workouts, 10@10's are no joke, and they are even less of a joke when it's only your second speed workout in 2 months. As with the 5@5's last week, I was a little conservative with the first one because I wasn't 100% sure what I'd be able to do. I ran the first one at a 7:22 pace, which was not a cakewalk, but I felt like I'd maybe run it a little conservatively & could probably speed up a bit while staying in 10K territory. What felt like more effort on the second one resulted in exactly the same pace, so I pushed a bit more on top of that for a 7:18 pace. I figured I'd have to run the last one with effort like unto the last mile or so of a 10K to beat that; I ended up with a 7:14 pace, but I may or may not have done it by running the last half mile or so at a 6:35ish pace (WELL under 5K pace) which is kind of cheating & probably means I should have started that interval out a little faster. My PR 10K pace from last year was 7:12/mile, so I'd like to get back down to that, if not faster, & have it feel comfortable.

Wednesday: 7 miles easy. Cardiovascularly (is that a word?), it was exceptionally easy, which I knew I needed to stick to given that I was on day 7 of 9 without rest days. But I can't remember the last time my legs felt so tired & heavy! From the first mile, I felt completely out of gas. I thought about cutting it short because I was actually afraid I might reach a point where I was miles from home & no longer had the energy to run, but I managed to power through & finish the whole thing.

Thursday: ~~2 miles easy + 6 x 800m @ HM pace w/ 400m recovery~~ 2 miles easy + 4 x 800m @ HM pace w/ 400m recovery + .88 easy. Day 8 of 9 consecutive running days! I was really, really tired mentally and very nearly just called it a rest day, but in the end I made it to the track. I got some good advice recently to try splitting up my early-cycle pace runs into intervals (ie, 6 x 800m @ HM pace rather than 3 consecutive miles), so that was the plan. On the very first one, though, I realized I was going to have the same issue as Wednesday -- regardless of the fact that my heart & lungs weren't really working that hard, my legs felt heavy & out of gas & just really couldn't move all that fact. It didn't really bother me, though, because I knew it was most likely just a result of over a week of running with no rest days. In consideration of that fact, though, I decided it was probably smarter of me to just do 4 HM pace intervals (which, believe me, was plenty challenging) & not jeopardize my ability to finish my long run on Friday (moved up from Sunday).

Kezar totally socked in, while over in my neighborhood it was 70 & sunny. Gotta love micro-climates.

Friday: ~~12 miles easy~~ 8.5 miles easy. It was supposed to be 12, but then social plans unexpectedly changed & at 4 pm I suddenly had 90 minutes until I needed to walk back in the door. Not 90 minutes of running time, but 90 minutes total, including dealing with stoplights & traffic. So the plan became "Run as far as you can until 4:45, then run back at the same pace or faster." It turned out that, of the 90 minutes I spent outside, 74 of them were spent actually running & 16 of them were spent waiting at lights. That was kind of depressing.

Saturday/Sunday: Volunteering / Sonoma.

Grand Total: 33.5

So basically the same as last week, which is okay. If I'd run everything as planned, it would have been a little over 38, but at least I can honestly say that I did the best I could under the circumstances and that none of those un-run miles were due to wimping or lazing out. I knew going in that it would be a busy week -- the next few should be a little easier.

Happy running! :)

100 Things to Eat [in San Francisco] Before You Die

2012-01-24T23:44:00.000-08:00

Although lady-running brands like Lululemon and Tres Ladies would have us believe otherwise, there are in fact women in the world who run for reasons other than building up a calorie deficit they can then stuff with pie or cupcakes. Even more shockingly, some of us even enjoy rich, high-calorie food without mentally calculating how many miles we have to run to "atone" for it. A world in which I need permission from my training log to have pizza for dinner is not any kind of world I want to live in.

In celebration of this fact, I'm joining my friend Katt in her New Year's resolution to eat everything on the 2012 7x7 100 Things to Eat [in San Francisco] Before You Die list (and not running a single extra mile because of it). Several other friends are already on board, so I foresee an even more spectacularly tasty year than usual. :)

The List:

Custard French Toast from Nopa
Salt cod fried rice at Mission Chinese Food.
~~Roasted chicken & bread salad at Zuni Cafe~~ - Done and DONE! Absolutely divine -- you *must* try it.
Dry-fried chicken wings at San Tung
Carnitas taco at La Taqueria
Chasu ramen at Katana-Ya
Custard French toast at Nopa.
~~Morning Bun at Tartine Bakery~~ - Good, but I must question -- out of everything they have to offer at Tartine, why the morning bun? It's kind of dry & stiff & gummy & gets all stuck in your teeth. I'll take a croissant or a slice of tea cake any day of the week.
Cellophane noddles with crab at The Slanted Door
Eggs In Jail at Outerlands
Kelvin-made ice cream at Smitten
Pork sugo with pappardelle at Delfina
Porchetta sandwich at RoliRoti
Soup dumplings at Kingdom of Dumpling
Warm egg salad sandwich at Il Cane Rosso
Any seasonal flavor at Scream Sorbet
Katsu curry at Muracci's Japanese Curry & Grill
~~Pizza margherita at Pizzaria Delfina~~ - potentially the best pizza margherita I've ever had.
The $24 prix fixe at Cotogna
Benwaffles at Bar Jules
Benwaffles from Bar Jules
Salumi misti plate at Perbacco
Tonkotsu ramen at Izakaya Sozai
Vietnamese roasted pork sandwich at Saigon
Duck and sausage jambalaya at Boxing Room
Loaf of bread straight out of the oven at Tartine Bakery - I've had it, say, an hour or two removed from the oven, but not straight out.
Pistachio meatballs at Zare at Fly Trap
Spicy baby octopus stew at La Ciccia
Tuna tartare at Bix
Clam chowder at Anchor Oyster Bar
Amatriciana pizza at Ragazza
Pupusas at Balompie Cafe
Prime Rib at House of Prime Rib
Pork belly bun at Chairman Bao Bun's truck
~~The Little Star at Little Star Pizza~~ - Love it!
~~Argentine beef empanadas at Venga Empanadas~~ - quite good, as I recall (though admittedly I'm not sure I'd put it in the top 100 food items in SF).
~~Salted caramel ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery~~ - fantastic!
Soft garlic pretzels at Absinthe's bar
Whole wheat pasta with hen & liver at Flour + Water - I've never had a pasta at F+W that I didn't like, so I'm excited about this one.
Burger and fries at Spruce's bar - Haven't had the burger, but everything else at Spruce was FABULOUS.
Egg custard tart at Golden Gate Bakery

Pork Belly Bun from Chairman Bao's
Pierna enchilada torta at La Torta Gorda
Langos at Bar Tartine
Maccaronara with ricotta salata at A16
Nojo sundae at Nojo
~~Beer sausage at Rosamunde Sausage Grill~~ - again, pretty much everything at Rosamunde is amazing.
Duck larb at Lers Ros Thai - Lers Ros is definitely where we take out-of-towners for the best Thai, but I haven't had this dish.
Secret Breakfast at Humphry Slocombe
Chips and salsa at Papalote - I've only had burritos here.
Seafood chowder at Bar Crudo
Ginger snaps at Miette
Chicken soup with dumplings at Leopold's
Pho ga at Turtle Tower
Carnitas at Nopalito
Tika masala burrito at Curry Up Now's truck - Don has this for lunch all the time because apparently the truck often parks right by his work. He raves about it but I have yet to try it (though the deconstructed samosa was uh-MA-zing)
Pho Ga from Turtle Tower
Koulgn Amann at Four Barrel
A dozen Sweetwater oysters at Hog Island Oyster Co.
Chicken porridge at Bush Street's Out the Door
Sandwich No. 1 at Lucca Delicatessen
Pork shoulder fried rice at Sai Jai Thai
Hamburger at 4505 Meats - love their charcuterie, but have yet to try the burger.
Huarache with cactus salad at El Huarache Loco
Spaghettini with tuna heart at Incanto - I will eat anything, any time at Incanto.
Dim sum at Ton Kiang
Pozole at San Jalisco (Fridays)
Sand dabs at Tadich Grill
~~Cookies-and-cream cookie at Anthony's Cookies~~ - out of this world!
Paper masala dosa at Dosa
Meatloaf sandwich at Fatted Calf

Faux Shark's Fin Soup from Benu
Foccacia at Liguria Bakery
Omakase menu at Kiss
Calamari with chorizo and black rice at Contigo
Fried green beans at Coco500
Peanut brittle cookie at Mr. & Mrs. Miscellaneous
Munsoned at Deli Board
Faux shark's fin soup with black truffle custard at Benu - To be honest, I'm not sure I'm going to get to Benu this year...
Super carne asada burrito at El Farolito
Steak frites at L'Ardoise
Fried chicken at Foreign Cinema
~~Bone marrow at Alembic~~ - I'm not big on bone marrow so this was kind of 'meh' for me.
Crawfish beignets at Brenda's French Soul Food
Potato latke with pickled beets at Baker & Banker
Pickled egg at Comstock Saloon
Bacon-Wrapped Mission Dog
Breakfast eggs at Boulettes Larder
Rice burger at Sandbox Bakery
~~A cheese slice at Arinell Pizza~~ - This is another that I'd have to say I'm not sure belongs on the list of top 100 food items in SF. I mean it's tasty, but it's a slice of cheese pizza.
Sesame balls at Yank Sing
Fried chicken sandwich at Marlowe
Coconut buns from King's Bakery
Malaysian curry laksa soup at Betelnut
Korean taco at Namu's Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market stand
Albondigas soup at Mijita
Bacon-wrapped hot dog at a cart in the Mission
Chicken liver on toast at Frances
Seven flavors of beef at Pagolac
Hawaiian Hangover cake at Bluestem Brasserie
Deviled eggs at Park Tavern
Ube ice cream at Mitchell's Ice Cream
Green goddess salad at Prospect - To be honest I can't remember if I had this or not. I definitely had a salad there but I don't remember which one it was. To be safe I should probably just go back. ;)
Chicken curry lunch special at Punjab Kabab House
Fried chicken and waffles at Little Skillet
Cracked Dungeness crab at Swan Oyster Depot.

This is serious business. Katt has figured out that we'll needs to hit 2-3 per week on average to make it happen, so there is a lot of work to be done. There may be a few pinch hitters due to allergies & geography (I've had Tamales Bay Oysters -- I don't need to drive an hour for Hog Island ones), but by God if we won't make a valiant effort.

Any of these you've already had? Any others we shouldn't miss?

Week In Review: Jan 16 - 22

2012-01-23T18:01:00.000-08:00

This is my weekly training journal. Including it in the blog gives me a little extra accountability in the mileage department & helps me stick to my schedule. :)

4 Weeks to Bay Breeze 10K

9 Weeks to Oakland Half Marathon

Monday: No running; karate + strength work.

Tuesday: 2 miles easy wu + 4 x 5:00 @ 5K effort + 1.17 miles easy cd = 6 miles. OMG, I've missed being on the track so much! Given how hard my "easy" 4 mile run was on my legs the previous Sunday, I was a little tentative going into my first track workout in months, but it felt GREAT. Yes, I was a little slower than I was back in August, but significantly faster than I was expecting, so that's a plus.

Wednesday: No running; karate + strength work.

Thursday: 7 miles pseudo-easy. It was really supposed to be an easy day, but to be honest I just didn't have an easy run in me. As I've mentioned, easier runs in terms of effort have been significantly more painful for my legs & feet lately than faster ones; also it was raining today & I was not trying to spend more time than necessary out in it. I decided to do one loop of Golden Gate Park (fewer stoplights = less time in the rain) at a pace that was just fast enough to be slightly uncomfortable. I had some significant MT pain at first, but later in the run I experimented with increasing my turnover a bit and found that it actually did help (though I felt kind of ridiculous given that I wasn't really running fast enough to warrant, say, 100 strides per minute). In terms of re-building aerobic fitness, I was pretty pleased with myself for averaging 8:06 / mile going downhill & 8:28 going back up. Definitely not something I could have done two weeks ago.

Rainy day running = Ski socks FTW.

Friday: 2 easy wu + 3 @ HMP (???) = 5 miles. A wet day out out at the track, though not especially cold (in fact, it was ten degrees warmer than Tuesday's speed session). Friday was supposed to be three miles at half marathon effort, but I got in a rush and left my Garmin at home (ironically, it seems more susceptible to being left behind than anything else) so I actually have no idea how fast I was running. I'm guessing somewhere between 10K & HM effort, but probably closer to HM. Not being back in great shape yet makes it a little more difficult to tell, and also my perception of how hard I'm running gets waaaay thrown off when I do anything other than intervals at the track and causes things to often feel tougher than they are.

Saturday: 6 miles easy. Some concerning MT pain (again) at times. Faster turnover does help some, but at a certain point this causes my "easy" run to become not all that easy anymore and I am not trying to do four tempo runs a week.

Sunday: 10 miles easy. I tagged along with Layla on the last part of her 20+ long run through Golden Gate Park, which was good because it was EXTREMELY wet & nasty out & we both agreed that we might have wussed out if we hadn't already planned to meet up. Also, this was my first double-digit run of 2012!

Grand Total: 34 miles

Progress! Hitting 2000 miles for the year means averaging ~38 per week -- I knew it would take some time to build up to that after taking December off, but it looks like I should be back in that neighborhood in another week or two.

Next week will be tricky because we're spending Saturday & Sunday in Sonoma with Don's parents and there really won't be any time for running (I think I've mentioned in the past that for me running & wine tasting weekends don't mix). That means that I really need to run every week day this week in order to stay on track with mileage, meaning that by this Friday I will have run on nine consecutive days. That's kind of a big deal for me -- I almost never run more than four days in a row, so it'll be interesting to see how my legs hold up.

Strength Training is Not A Joke

2012-01-21T23:59:00.000-08:00

//Begin rant//

Excuse me while I lug out my soap box.

Is it just me, or is strength training the red-headed stepchild of the run-blogging world? I feel like at least once a week I read a post where someone is like, "x muscle group / body part is acting up, AGAIN. I know I should probably do strength exercises for it, but it's not like I'm actually going to or anything. LOL!"

It's like the trendy new run-blogger thing to do. I find this utterly baffling, because

You have a problem.
You know what the solution (probably) is.
It's an easy fix. (Seriously. 15-20 minutes, 3-5 days a week. On the floor in front of the TV. Free. This is about as far from rocket science as it gets.)

It's like if it's winter, and you leave your windows open every day, and your house is always cold when you come home. "Ugh, the house was freezing when I got home, AGAIN. I know I should probably close the windows before I leave in the morning, but it's not like I'm actually going to or anything. LOL!"

Why on earth would you not just freaking do it? Why are we whining about shit and then semi-bragging about the fact that we're choosing not to fix it? Why??

//End rant//

Seriously, though.

A friend of mine and I were talking about strength work recently & she brought up the very excellent point that some people just really don't know what to do, or how to start, or how much/how often to do, or where to fit it in. (Plus there's all those folks with nagging pains / injuries who aren't bragging about how they never do strength work/cross-training who may not even be aware that that's something that might help.) So I thought I would share a little of what I do & why, in case it's useful. :)

(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, physical therapist, or health professional of any kind. Everything I know about strength training & running, I've learned from sports medicine doctors / physical therapists / trainers / etc. -- it's not like I'm just making shit up -- but it's information that's mostly come to me in the context of dealing with my own nagging injuries, so it's possible that you might have different issues / injuries that need something a little different. Also, I hope I don't actually have to say this, but if you try anything and it hurts, you should probably stop & check in with a pro before continuing. Also, if you ARE a doctor / PT / exercise professional and anything here sounds sketchy or like I've misunderstood it, also do please let me know so I can fix it! Cool? Cool.)

So...

What Is the Deal With Running Injuries? (A lightening-fast overview)

Maybe the first thing to get out there is that most running injuries are overuse injuries -- ie, it's not like football or basketball or something where you have people dislocating joints or twisting ankles or tearing their ACLs all the time due to a single traumatic event. Our injuries more often come on slowly over a long period of time. This is mainly because

Running involves a relatively small, repetitive set of motions.
It relies heavily on certain muscle groups and very little on others, which can cause imbalances in muscle strength & tightness.
Very few people are biomechanically perfect; in most people, tiny flaws & inefficiencies go unnoticed, but when you do the same motion over and over, thousands and thousands of times a week, the effects are magnified & bigger problems can result.

These are the root causes of most running injuries.

Three million years ago, hunting antelope on the savanna or whatever, this was less of a problem. Yes, we did a good amount of running, but we also did a bunch of other stuff like climbing, dancing, building, carrying heavy things, etc. that helped keep all our muscle groups strong and balanced. These days, because most of us have limited free time & don't have to physically exert ourselves all that much to make a living, we're more susceptible to finding one activity we like to do & just doing that all the time (eg, running).

The Origin Tale: How Angela Came to Strength Training

Back in the day when I first started running track & cross country, I went many many years without a running injury (other than my ever-present MTSS/shin splints). For this, I credit the facts that a) I was doing gymnastics at the time, which is pretty off-the-charts in terms of a full-body workout; b) I did a lot of horseback riding, which does wonders for the posterior kinetic chain; and c) track & cross-country included twice-weekly strength training sessions in addition to running practice. I did less running in college/grad school but also did a lot of lifting, swimming, karate, & also started playing polo. Post-school, I continued riding/polo & karate for a while.

But then I started getting back into running more seriously, and I quit riding/polo. Once that happened, it took me less than a year to develop an overuse injury. It started as an achy hip, which got achier and achier in spite of my valiant efforts to ignore it & treat it at home with ibuprofen & ice. Then I had two achy hips, which I continued trying to self-treat & run through, & this is all what led up to the Great RNR SJ Debacle, or as I like to call it, Sufferfest '10.

Cue sports medicine doctor -> physical therapy -> all strength training, all the time.

This was when I first heard the term posterior kinetic chain. It is pretty much PT speak for "stuff runners like to ignore."

It was also when I first heard the term pelvic stability, which is the extent to which your pelvis stays square and even when you run. (Hint: Even among runners, most of ours really don't.)

My biggest problems were weakened glute meds & hamstrings compared to my quads, and hip abductors that were not balanced strength-wise. To quote one of my PTs, "Probably 75% of all running injuries we see are the result of a lack of consistent strength training for the core & pelvic stability muscles."

It took 4 months for me to get strong enough to go back to safely building significant mileage. For the first time in a very, very long time, I was able to go back to running 45-55 miles pain-free last fall.

So you are crazy if you think I am *ever* ditching strength work ever again.

What/Where/When/How often/etc.?

People often overestimate what is involved in strength training. They ask, "Do I have to join a CrossFit gym/Pilates class/yoga studio? Do I have to spend 3 hours a week in the weight room? Do I have to do one of those Boot Camp circuit-train-ey things?"

No, no, and no. CrossFit and yoga and Pilates are all wonderful and good-for-you activities and many people enjoy them, and from what I understand, if you have the time & resources and enjoy some of that stuff, you are probably good as far as getting in enough strength training to avoid an overuse injury from running.

But if you don't, fear not! It can be way, way simpler than that. Do you have a few minutes at home, a few times a week? You're golden. (Remember, I'm just talking about doing enough to maintain balance between muscle groups & prevent overuse injuries, not getting crazy ripped. Crazy ripped is a different blog.)

Before we delve into specific exercises, here are my top tips for beginning a strength program:

Start small. If you are intimidated by strength work, don't really want to do it, or are worried about adding something new and big to your weekly routine, choose one or two exercises at first and make your goal just to do a set or two of something. Do you have 5 minutes, three days a week? Perfect! The routine that seems manageable is the one you're most likely to stick to. Just like with running, you can increase from there.

Distract yourself. The nice thing about at-home, isometric exercises is that you can do them really anywhere. Watch TV. Listen to music or a podcast. Whatever. If you've committed to five minutes (or whatever), set a timer. Another friend of mine got started by committing to doing strength exercises for "3 pop songs every other day."

Keep track of things. Just as with mileage, writing down what you do, when, & how much keeps you accountable and also gives you a sense of accomplishment. It also helps you keep track of which muscles you're exercising so that you can make sure you don't over-work one set of muscles while ignoring others, and lets you see your progress as you begin to spend a few more minutes or do more sets or reps.

Stay tuned for Part 2, in which I actually share some exercises. :)

Back on Track

2012-01-18T15:08:00.000-08:00

Why hello, 6:xx pace! Long time, no see!

For the last two weeks, I've been doing easy runs in the 4-6 mile range in order to rebuild my aerobic base & generally remind my legs what running is like. Now it's week three, though, and I am running a 10K in four and a half weeks, so it's definitely time to get back on out on the oval and work on some speed.

Gorgeous day at Kezar Stadium - a brisk 47° & sunny.

I can't really explain to you how much I love running on the track. Maybe it goes back to my track & field roots. There's just something about it that's incredibly satisfying, and I've missed it so much.

Plus, I got to lace up these bad boys again. (Yes, the laces do sparkle.)

It's totally okay to be jealous.

For the last few months it's been all marathon all the time, so it's been a while since they've seen the light of day. I love my Brooks Adrenalines, but I can't tell you how good it felt to slip my feet into something light and fast again.

I spent most of last summer working on my 10K as a vehicle for eventually improving my half marathon. During that time, my weekly track workouts alternated between five-minute intervals at 5K pace (usually 5-6) and ten-minute intervals at 10K pace (usually 3-4). If you want to improve your 10K time, I can highly recommend this regimen; in four months, I went from an exhausting 7:24 / mile pace to a fairly comfortable 7:12 / mile pace, on a grand total of about 25 miles a week.

However, I think I made a tactical error during the two and a half months between my last 10K and Clarksburg Half Marathon by trading those workouts for the track workouts dictated by my marathon plan (longer & slower). At the time, I figured that if I was in shape for a full marathon, the half marathon would take care of itself. It was after running the Clarksburg Half that I had the grand epiphany that the 10K and the half marathon are basically the same race, and the only real difference in training for them should probably be somewhat higher mileage & longer long runs for the half. I definitely won't try to train for a marathon and an "A" race half or 10K simultaneously ever again; the preparation is too different.

So I'm definitely going back to my trusty 5K / 10K pace intervals in preparation for the Oakland Half in March. (Until I get my speed back, I'm thinking of them more as 5K & 10K effort intervals instead of pace, but the principle is the same.) The only question about yesterday's track workout was whether it was smarter to start with fewer, longer, slower intervals or more, shorter, faster ones. I decided I'd try to do three 5:00 intervals at 5K effort, just to gauge where I was, and if I felt alright, I'd maybe try four.

And I have to say, I really surprised myself.

First, my "easy" runs lately have been in the 9:00 - 9:30 / mile range and rather unpleasant, so imagine my amazement when I clocked an effortless 8:20 on my first warm-up mile and 7:54 on the second one. Well, this is promising, I thought to myself.

After a few minutes of dynamic stretching, I changed into my flats & set off on my first interval. I wasn't sure what kind of pace I'd be able to maintain, but I tried to think of it the way I do the first mile of a 5K -- basically, run as fast as possible without feeling uncomfortable. (The uncomfortable usually sets in around mile 2.) My pace pendulum-ed embarrassingly between 6:30 and 7:20 on that first interval (out of practice, much?), but I was pleased to see that I was able to average a 7:09 pace and stay strong through the whole thing. After three minutes of rest, I ran the second at a 7:09 pace as well, which was easy enough that I felt like I could push a little harder. I ran the third at a 7:02 pace, and felt so good after that one that not only did I go ahead and run a fourth interval, but I did it at a 6:57 pace. (For comparison, my PR 5K pace is 7:05, and I'd really love to be able to legitimately call it sub-7 by the end of this year.)

I felt good enough that I could have run more after that, but didn't want to push it too much too soon. My intervals netted me 2.83 miles, so I jogged an easy 1.17 to make it a nice, round six for the day.

It's amazing to me how I can sometimes feel totally wrecked after an "easy" 4-6 miles through my neighborhood or the park and completely fine after a track session with the same (or more) total mileage. My podiatrist has suggested that it has to do with how much time my feet spend in contact with the ground with each step (more time with feet touching ground = more force on bones / joints / etc.; faster turnover = less time touching the ground = less force on the body = less achey-ness later). Makes sense to me.

I can't wait to try some 10K effort intervals next week. I'm not expecting to be as fast at my February 10K as I was by the end of last summer, but it seems like I'm definitely on track to be faster than I expected. Maybe a sub-1:40 is in the cards for Oakland after all. :)

Week In Review: Jan 9 - 15

2012-01-16T12:40:00.000-08:00

This is my weekly training journal. Including it in the blog gives me a little extra accountability in the mileage department & helps me stick to my schedule. :)

5 Weeks to Bay Breeze 10K

10 Weeks to Oakland Half Marathon

Monday: Karate + strength work.

Tuesday: 6 miles easy. Still super hard.

Wednesday: Karate + strength work + 4 miles easy. I wasn't trying to run any faster than usual, but this ended up being an 8:40 / mile run (as opposed to 9:15-9:30). I think the main difference was running in Golden Gate Park, which is considerably flatter in my neighborhood. Still pretty tough, though, & sunny to boot.

Thursday: No running; strength work.

Friday: 6 miles easy. I can't say it really felt easy, but I definitely felt a LOT closer to normal than I have. This run felt a lot more like what I expect a 9:06 / mile run to feel like.

Saturday: 8 miles easy. I met Courtney, Alyssa, and Sesa at the Presidio Sports Basement to run with the PamaKids Kaiser Half training group. When we realized they were planning on running a hilly trail route, we decided to just do flat, easy laps at Crissy Field. The first few miles were tough but once I got warmed up, I started to feel almost normal.

Sunday: ~~6 miles easy~~ 4 miles easy. It was supposed to be six, but when everything below my knees was crying out in protest after a quarter mile, I wasn't sure I could (or should) make it. I felt sluggish & slow & tired on top of that which didn't help. I could've dealt with that; after all, the day before had been my longest run since Dec. 4, technically making this one of those "recovery" runs where you practice running on sluggish, tired legs. What I wasn't sure I could deal with was the immense amount of legitimate pain in my lower legs (shin splints, ankles, Achilles, feet, you name it). Seriously. It felt like someone was hammering a giant spike up through my feet and into my shin bones with every step. When it hadn't gotten any better by the time I got to 2 miles, I decided to cut my losses & just turn around. Later a bunch of us then went for an 8 mile urban hike through Golden Gate Park & up to Sutro Baths. Fun, but chilly and SUPER windy.

Grand Total: 28 miles

I'd wanted to get to 30 this week, but those last two miles were just Not Going To Happen today. Still, progress. Next week I'm going to start adding in a bit of speed & threshold work. Having a little bit of shin splint & ankle pain and a little tightness in terms of breathing, but I've got my fingers crossed that all that will resolve as I get back into shape.

On the plus side, I got up at 8:15 & 8:30 am respectively on Saturday and Sunday to run and didn't feel like I wanted to shoot myself, which is kind of a big deal since I am rarely up before nine even on week days. This is slightly encouraging re: potentially committing to one "early" run a week.

Hope you had a great week 2! :)

What's in a Medal?

2012-01-14T22:33:00.000-08:00

If you don't regularly read The Runner's Kitchen, a) you should start, and b) you may have missed a recent guest post by Sarah about race medals. (If you haven't read it, go ahead; I'll wait.)

In case you didn't read it, Sarah begins:

"There are plenty of things that piss me off about running culture: $150 stability shoes, white compression shorts, overemphasis on marathons, Gatorade stops in a 5K, and so on. But there may be nothing – nothing! – more maddening than the impression among recreational runners that the completion of a race merits a medal."

She's got a real point there. On plenty of occasions, I've seen the preoccupation with race medals overshadow the focus on running, competing, being active, challenging oneself, and yes, even having fun.

Some choice statements about medals that I've run across:

"[T]he 10K runners and the 1/2 marathoners got the same medal. This is my first event that gave medals to 10K runners and I was disappointed that my medal had the words 10K on it. I wish they had a separate medal for 1/2 marathoners. I run for the medals and train hard for my accomplishments and wish I was rewarded for my hard work, not just with a general medal that was shared with everyone."

"Yes, I have shamelessly searched for the races with medals. I am always amazed that not all races have half marathon medals much less 5K medals so you have to look for the races that have them."

"I wasn’t going to actually do said race, since I stopped training about a month ago and also because I felt the promoter was not being nice. However...I went for it and I’m so so so happy I did. I wanted my MEDAL!!!!! That was pretty much my main catalyst for this night owl getting up at the pleasant, lovely hour of...FOUR AM."

And, overheard at a party, a friend-of-a-friend speaking with a patronizing grin to another friend preparing for her first half-marathon, "I have sooooo many medals."

Is it just me, or do these statements feel a little...well, sad?

I keep mine in a shoe box under my bed. Clearly among my most prized possessions.

Today I'd like to discuss, if you'll indulge me, the difference between an award and a souvenir. I could be wrong, but I feel like that maybe where a lot of this knotty business about finisher medals gets tied up. Now, push come to shove, I'm ultimately in Shelby's camp -- it's your medal; you do whatever you feel like with it, and go on wi' ya bad self. That said, I do have some strong opinions about how runners think about medals, the emphasis that different ones of us put on them, and how all of that affects our relationships with running and racing.

In every situation I can think of where awards are given out, they are given to a select few, in recognition of an outstanding accomplishment. I can't think of any situation where something given to basically everyone is called an "award." I'm not saying there's anything fundamentally wrong with giving something to everyone; I'm just saying we don't typically call those things "awards."

For example, I got my first-ever medal at the Cowtown 10K in the 4th grade. My friends and I ran-walked it, and it was by far the longest distance that any of us had traveled by foot in a single stretch. I'm sure it took us at least an hour and a half, and we were wiped out for the rest of the day afterward, but we couldn't have been more proud. This is the only finisher medal I have ever placed around my neck, and I don't think you can blame me. I was nine, I'd just done something *incredibly* hard, and I'd never had a medal before. I was proud of it and I still have it somewhere, but it wasn't an award.

My next few medals came from track and gymnastics. At that point, getting a medal just for crossing the finish line was a distant memory. These medals--perhaps a third the size of the monsters from my road races--were given not for participating or training really hard or meeting an ambitious personal goal, but for winning, or very nearly winning. I probably ran several dozen races during that time, maybe as many as a hundred. I received less than a dozen medals. A similar ratio applies to gymnastics. Those are examples of awards.

Because most of my early exposure to medals was as awards, as something rare and elusive that was never, ever presumed or guaranteed, I think I came to public road racing with a slightly different mentality about them than, say, the folks quoted above. I don't share this in order to point out how awesome and fabulous I am for having won *real* medals or to belittle anyone who hasn't (it was high school, for god sakes, not the freaking Olympics). I just point out this period in my life as the one that shaped how I think about medals. (Seriously, you should've seen my face at my first road race when the volunteer handed me one. I'd forgotten all about the Cowtown medals and for a split second figured there must be some mistake, because I'd definitely seen a lot more than two people finish in front of me.)

Left - A medal nearly identical to the one I received for winning the All-District 400 meters in high school. I didn't have to pay for the race, but I did have to run hard & perform well all season and qualify for the District meet with a certain time. Right - The medal I received for stumbling across the finish line at Rock N Roll San Jose in six hundred and something place with three injuries for a personal worst. All I had to do to get into this race was pay $85.

Many years later, I started reading running blogs, and was again pretty confused by how obsessed some people seemed to get with finisher medals. They're nice keepsakes, but going out of your way to run specific 5Ks and 10Ks purely because you get a medal? Bitching and moaning because your half marathon medal has been soiled by the word '10K'?

Bitch, please. Receiving a finisher's medal is basically the organizers saying, "Congratulations! You did at least the minimum amount of training necessary to finish the distance, and didn't get irreparably lost or forget to breathe!" Sure, that can represent a real accomplishment (I know it certainly did for me at my 1st marathon last December), but when you're sniffing out short local races every other weekend just because there's a medal, I'm going to go with not so much. Let's be real; in the grown-up world of adult road racing, how many medals someone has doesn't say as much about how fast, strong, or even necessarily hard-working s/he is as it does about how much free time and disposable income s/he has.

So no. Medals I have received for merely completing a race in which finishing was never in doubt really don't mean much to me in the way of achievement. Furthermore, I will go on the record in saying that I find the thought of paying good money to meander one's way down a course that poses little challenge for said one, just to get another $5 bauble to hang on the wall, kind of pathetic, not to mention financially wasteful. I mean...what IS the point of that, really? It can't be the accomplishment, if it wasn't a real challenge. It can't be just running the distance, because you can do that for free any day of the week. Let's be honest about what's going on here. At this point, you are purchasing medals; case closed.

You can also purchase medals on Ebay. Some of them are a lot cheaper there!

Certain medals, on the other hand, do hold a lot of meaning for me. My first Cowtown 10K medal meant a lot, because 6.2 miles seemed like an impossibly long distance to my nine-year-old brain. I was pretty sure I could finish it, but not completely sure. I worked hard to prepare for it. I was afraid of what might happen. I encouraged my friends during the race and they encouraged me. It was a real, true challenge that I was not sure I was equal to until I did it.

I felt the same way about my CIM medal. Preparing for & completing that race was a real, honest-to-god challenge for me. Billable hours, those were. (And unlike the woman on Twitter that Sarah quotes in her guest post, I definitely understand that simply finishing a marathon doesn't make me a 'winner.' It makes me a marathon finisher, just like millions of other people on the planet, and nothing more.)

Absolutely, those medals are reminders of sweet accomplishments that I'm proud of. But the value they have for me lies in the fact that they remind me of the accomplishments, not in the actual, physical medals themselves. They are symbols, and it is what they are symbols of that's actually important.

They aren't awards. I'm under no illusion that I in anyway deserved them. I didn't earn them. The race just gave them to me, like they did everyone else who crawled across the finish line regardless of how hard they worked, because that's just what they do. As much as we like to wish it were otherwise (especially in the U.S.), working hard and accomplishing something challenging doesn't entitle anyone to an award. It entitles you to pride, to bragging rights, to be able to say, "I worked INCREDIBLY hard and achieved x." Awards, at least in a race, aren't for accomplishing something amazing relative to your own goals & abilities; they're for accomplishing something amazing relative to everyone.

Don't get me wrong; I like finisher medals. I don't throw them in the trash or give them away. But I do think that some of us maybe need to do a little shifting in how we think about them. There are a good number of us who I believe would do well to stop thinking about them as prizes that we have somehow "earned" with our mediocre performances and start thinking of them more like souvenirs. Kind of like when I went to Niagara Falls that time and bought a key chain. They remind me of a place I went and a thing I did and (hopefully) a good time that I had.

Note that I don't hang all my gift shop key chains up on my wall, or display them on a giant rack that reads ALWAYS PURCHASED, NEVER GIVEN or some such. (Though I guess some people do.) I am not under the impression that, by completing the journey to Yellow Stone and back and laying down a few bucks, that I have done anything terribly notable. If I tell people about this neat, fun journey I had to Yellow Stone, they might be all like, "Oh, nifty!" Then, they'll probably be like, "So where do you want to go for dinner?" Because, let's face it; that's about as interested as my non-runner friends are in any race I've run. (In that sense, I can sympathize with people like those who ran RNR Las Vegas and were irked that the race ran out of medals. If you think of it as a memento, as something that was advertised and supposedly included in the race fee as a souvenir of the experience, that makes some logical sense. What I can't get behind is people claiming they "earned" the damn thing. You didn't earn it, folks; you paid for it.)

Finisher medals are party favors. Like the wine glass you get to keep from a tasting. Or the heart-shaped candle holder you took home from your friend's wedding. They are not awards.

And let's not pretend that they are. It's fantastic that more people are running road races of all distances, getting active, and becoming healthier. I'm incredibly excited any time I hear about a friend taking on a new physical challenge, be it signing up for a first race, a longer distance, or a type of event s/he's never tried, and I'd never begrudge anyone being proud of a medal they feel like they worked really, really hard for (again, see CIM). But the accomplishment should be its own reward. Run and race for the challenge of it, for the achievement, for the social aspect, for the physical benefits and how it makes you feel. Run for the joy of it; not the party favors.

Gear: Ethical Consumerism & Running

2012-01-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

Having gone to a hippy-dippy liberal arts college and residing in hippy-dippy liberal San Francisco, I've spent a reasonable portion of my life concerned about things like labor practices, social justice, civil & human rights, environmentalism, sustainability, etc. This can be conflicting sometimes because it's difficult to live in the 21st century without doing or supporting *something* that doesn't match my values in one or more of those areas. I try to do what I can, but you can only delve so far down that rabbit hole before you're living in the woods gathering roots & berries for sustenance and weaving your own clothes out of hemp seed and dandelions.

I suppose, to a certain extent, it started back in high school. I'm sure you remember the Nike sweatshop scandal of the early nineties. Before then, Nike was my brand of choice when it came to athletic gear. When I found out about their repugnant labor practices, I was horrified that I'd been supporting such things & swore off the brand forever. The real trouble, though, came when I tried to find another brand I could purchase with a clear conscience; although most weren't as bad as Nike, just about all the major athletic brands at that time were engaging in a few practices that turned my stomach. The one exception seemed to be New Balance, so that's what I ran in for a while. With regard to clothes, I kind of threw up my hands & started just buying stuff at Target. (Don't think I don't see the irony of that now.)

In college, my roommate & I found out we could no longer shop at The Gap, for similar reasons. Then we found out Old Navy was part of The Gap, so that was out. Then we found out that Taco Bell, our one fast food indulgence, was horrible to its tomato pickers, so then we couldn't eat there. Then we learned that formaldehyde is routinely used in the manufacturing of "wrinkle-free" frabrics, which brings up all sorts of environmental & health concerns, so we couldn't buy those anymore either. At one point, my roommate began an active campaign to avoid hearing about such issues, because once she knew, her conscience wouldn't let her ignore it. "Pretty soon I'm going to be eating weeds & hunting & skinning squirrels to make my own clothes," she said soberly. (There were a lot of squirrels at our school.) "It's the only way to be sure."

Which brings us back to, no, you can't do everything. Most of us don't have time to sew our own clothes, grow our own grain, make our own bath products from scratch, etc. In general, my philosophy has been to do what I can, within reason, and to do the most where I spend the most. My big ones are food and health & beauty products -- if it's going in or on my body, I can take the time to do a bit of research. I try to buy recycled and reusable as much as possible, and avoid patronizing companies known for poor practices.

In the last few years, though, I've spent enough money on running shoes & clothes that I've started to feel like that's an area where I should make more of an effort. If I'm going to regularly support a brand or company with my hard-earned dollars, I decided, I needed to find out what their policies and practices are with regard to the things I value. Are they environmentally responsible? Do they pay their workers a living wage? Are the chemicals they use in production safe, both for the workers handling them and the consumers who will be wearing/using the product?

For a long time, I kind of figured that unless I heard something particularly egregious about a certain product or company (like Nike in the 90s), then most of them were pretty much the same and it didn't matter which one I went with.

Well, they're not. It matters. And thanks to technology, it's easier now than ever to find out who's making it a better world (or at least not actively making it worse) and who isn't.

So I've started looking into the brands that I personally have purchased the most, and those that I see and hear a lot about in the broader running / active community. It's a bit of an ongoing project, but I'll try to post about one or two every week or so.

(Disclaimer - The purpose of these posts is NOT to make you feel guilty or like a horrible person if you prefer a brand or product that doesn't have the greatest practices ever, or to necessarily persuade you to switch to something different. It's purely to inform. I absolutely, 100% believe that we should get to make our own choices, using whatever criteria we want (this is 'Murika, after all). But I also believe that we make our best decisions when we have all (or at least more of) the information. These posts have one purpose, and that is to inform.)

Have a favorite brand or company whose practices you're interested in? Let me know!

#wheniwinthelottery

2012-01-10T00:24:00.000-08:00

...which will actually be never, given my lack of playing the lottery (mathematician). But #whenireceiveamassiveandlargelydisposablewindfall doesn't have the same ring to it.

But seriously. When I do, I am totally buying this outfit

and I will race in it forever.

Let's see that again:

For $64.95 plus shipping & handling, you too can be stylin' (do the kids say 'stylin' anymore?) in your Hollywood Dragon gear from INKnBURN. (I like the cherry blossom outfit too, but push come to shove, I've got to go with the dragons.)

They also make compression sleeves. Wearing the compression sleeves apparently makes you run like you're in Flashdance:

Now, short of receiving enough cash to make myself & loved ones debt-free for life, there exists no universe where I'm ponying up $65 for a sports bra or a pair of shorts. Likewise for the $33 arm warmers.

But still. My birthday is next month, so if you're feeling generous, you know what to get me now. ;)

Week in Review: Jan 2 - 8

2012-01-08T01:12:00.000-08:00

This is my weekly training journal. Including it in the blog gives me a little extra accountability in the mileage department & helps me stick to my schedule. :)

6 Weeks to Bay Breeze 10K

11 Weeks to Oakland Half Marathon

First weekly training journal of 2012! One week down, fifty-one to go.

And holy base training, Batman. What a week it's been. Not in terms of mileage, or eventful-ness; just in terms of what I was expecting after not running a single mile for a month.

During the last three weeks before CIM, I suffered from some serious training burn-out. It was a good thing I was tapering because forcing myself to run five and six times a week had by then become a serious psychological battle. On December 5, I told myself, "Kudos to you for hanging in there. For the rest of the month, no running unless you really, truly want to. No schedules. No 'have to.' You worked really hard for the last few months, and you deserve a good, long break."

So I didn't run. For a month. I just never felt the urge (which I figured was just as well, given that I had a few niggling aches & pains that probably needed a chance to completely heal). But on January 2nd, I set up my Garmin a la ultra-RoadBunner (distance only), laced up my running shoes, and set off on my usual six-mile loop.

Let me tell you. For the first time, I think I really, truly empathize with not-so-active folks just starting to take up running. That run sucked ass. ASS, I tell you. I was not above slowing down a little as I approached the corner so as to catch the red light. Oh no no no.

My friend Teresa (who also ran CIM last month) has apparently been feeling the same way:

(Jessica & I ran track together back in the day. Her first marathon was last April.)

I knew that four weeks of no running would take its toll and I would have some fitness to make up. However, I had no *idea* it would be this dramatic, that I would be counting down tenths of miles on 4 & 6 mile runs and at a 9:00+ pace to boot. (I went ~3 months without running at the end of 2010 because of my hip, but I started back so slowly & gradually that I never really noticed the effect on my fitness.) Had I known, "You deserve a month off" would have become "NO ONE deserves to feel this bad on an 'easy' training run." I would have forced myself out the door for a short jog *at least* a couple of times per week, and gladly.

Monday: Strength work + 6 miles "easy." By which I mean ass-hard, in spite of the fact that I was running at a pace that, four weeks ago, I would have called leisurely. I can't be sure, but I think the last half-mile was actually harder than the last two or three miles of CIM. The level of soreness the next day was somewhat awe-inspiring. And GAWD did my feet hurt (!??).

Tuesday: Strength work + 4 miles "easy," with hills. I stopped and rested at the top of each one. Which meant every couple of blocks. Feet still hurting weirdly.

Wednesday: No running; karate + strength work.

Thursday: 6 miles easy. I kind of thought this run might have felt a little easier than the previous two. Or it could have just been that I'd been expecting it to suck, and bad things always seem a little less bad when you know they're coming.

Friday: Strength work + 4 miles easy. Still feeling like a 200 pound walrus with emphysema, but getting it done. Enough foot pain after this one to cause a little limping (?).

Saturday: No running; strength work.

Sunday: 6 miles easy + strength work. On Sunday it was hot as balls, by which I mean it was almost 70. (Hey, it's January.) I think this run was maybe very slightly less hellish than the previous ones. On the other hand, six miles feels really hard right now. To the extent that I find myself using all the same mental tricks as I did on my long runs during marathon training.

Grand Total: 26 miles

I didn't really set an "official" goal for this first week, just because I wasn't sure how I was going to feel, but in the back of my mind I'd been kind of hoping for 20-30 miles, so not too shabby. It's been hard to force the rest days, since there's a part of me that thinks I should be running any time that I'm physically capable of it in order to get past this unpleasantness as quickly as possible. Fortunately, the rational part of me knows that less-than-peak fitness + not enough rest = injury-ville. For the next few weeks, I'm hoping to increase my mileage by ~3-5 miles per week, which seems pretty reasonable.

By Sunday, the bizarre foot pain was mostly gone. Other positives this week include no shin splints and no PT tendon pain (I've gone AirCast-free 3 runs out of 5), and as of Sunday evening I feel great. I'm still having some tightness in my chest during the runs; it's not really full fledged asthma, but I'm clearly not quite back to normal yet, either.

By the by, I'm experimenting with tracking mileage online. I've never done it before, so (as you can see on the sidebar there) I'm trying out both DailyMile and RunningAhead. At some point I expect one of them will speak to me (or just amuse me) more & I'll give up the other, but for now everything is in both.

Happy first week of 2012! :)

Musings on 2012 Races

2012-01-04T01:00:00.000-08:00

So there are still a bunch of things about my life that are up in the air as far as 2012 goes, meaning I'm not really ready to commit to much in the way of races (at least not in any way that requires a credit card). But I also got kind of got sick at looking at the row of question marks under "Race Schedule" over there on the side bar, and I'd hate to be caught unprepared once other non-running aspects of my life are settled, so I figured it was not a bad idea to at least start thinking about what races I'd like to run in 2012 if I had my druthers.

My 1:39:xx half marathon is still out there, so the first task was to find a few good halfs amenable to a fast time. (BTW, can we all agree that when we're talking about half marathons, the plural is 'halfs,' not 'halves'? I don't know why, but somehow that feels like it makes more sense.) At the pre-CIM sleepover in December, there was much discussion about the March 25 Oakland Running Festival & several bloggers were already signed up for various distances, especially the half. It seems like people liked the course and that the race was well-run and -organized, so I signed up. This one will be an 'A' race since my goal is a sub-1:40 or at the very least a new PR.

To fill in the gap between now & then, I'm also tentatively planning to run the Bay Breeze 10K on February 18. This wouldn't be an 'A' race or a PR attempt, just a bit of a tune-up before the half marathon to gauge where my fitness is. (Because let's face it -- I've got some serious ground to make up after not running a single mile between December 5th and January 2nd.) Another plus is that the course is the same as the Summer Breeze 10K last August -- flat, fast, and familiar.

I also wanted to find another half marathon around two months after Oakland. As I've learned, even once you're theoretically in shape to run a certain time, circumstances don't always cooperate, so it would be nice to have another one already on the schedule in case I don't meet my 1:39:xx goal in March (entirely possible, given how much fitness I've lost). The only half that appealed to me really at all in May was Avenue of the Giants, which I definitely want to run sometime, but it's early May, and I'd rather have a fully two months between HMs. (Plus, AotG involves more traveling than I really want to do for a race right now.) Instead, I decided on the See Jane Run half in Alameda on June 3. For the most part, I've heard good things about it. And if I do get my sub-1:40 in Oakland, it would be a good chance to see if I can do it again (or--dare I say it--do even better).

Odds are also good that I'll run SF PrideRun 5K or 10K again (June 23, presumably). It's small, close to home, reasonably cheap, and for a good cause, so there's no real reason not to. I had good luck with the 10K last year, so it would be fun to try to beat my previous time, or to try to place or PR in the 5K (mostly just for fun, since I probably won't have done much 5K specific training at that point).

I definitely want to run Summer Breeze in San Leandro again in August (the 24th last year, so I'm assuming it'll be the 25th this year). If I get my sub-1:40 in Oakland or Alameda, then I'll probably run the 5K, since 21:xx at that distance is my next big goal and 2 months is plenty of time to do some 5K-specific training. If not, then the flat, fast SB course will be another good place to try.

Finally, I threw in the Zippy 5K in Golden Gate Park on April 24. I've kind of wanted to run this race for a while - it's close to home, it's cheap, and although it's SUPER competitive and I'd be doing well to even make the top 20 in my A/G group, I haven't run a good, solid 5K since August 2010 (and any kind of 5K since Jan 2011) so I'm kind of curious to see where I am with it.

That's as far as I've planned. My fall is still pretty up in the air in general, so I'm leaving everything after that open for now.

Other races I've vaguely entertained include....

SF Half Marathon at the end of July (just for fun)
Bridge to Bridge 12K in October (SF)
US Half in November (SF), depending on how our fall plans shake out
Big Sur Half in November, again depending on fall plans
Another CIM in December? Again, fall stuff up in the air.

What's on your calendar for this year? Anything you're really looking forward to or on the fence about? Any other hot Bay Area races I can't miss?