Exercise

9 miles in 1:13. Crazy great workout!

Food

It wasn’t a great food day. I was hungry and lazy, not a good combo-
- carrot, apple, cilantro juice
- warm quinoa with coconut milk, cinnamon, blueberries
- tea
- banana
- coconut water
- almond butter and hemp seed sandwich on Ezekiel bread
- homemade kale chips. Wow! I’d bought these at the store before and they were gross. But upon recommendation from the clerk at Natural Grocers, I decided to give them a try. And promptly ate an entire (head?) of kale. No, I’m not exaggerating.
- taco pasta leftovers
- 1 beer (I told myself I could drink 2x/week! This was ‘beer night’ after our workout, so I decided to partake. You know, to be polite!)
- half a vega pre-workout energizer
- vega post-sport recovery
- vega sport protein
- “food should taste good” chips and non-dairy “hickory cheddar” cheese. This was my attempt to quell my nacho obsession. It tasted ok, although then I remembered when I made my own nut cheese and I wondered why I just bought some.
- blueberry chia pudding

The multitude of Vega products is because I’m reviewing them. It’s not purely laziness!

Oh, cutest thing ever. I was at Natural Grocers and a mom came in with her two sons, aged about 2 and 4. The 4 year old walks by the produce and says “Mommy, can we get some wheatgwass?”

1min, 2min, 3min, 4min, 5min, 4min, 3min, 2min, 1min
1&2 min at 5-10K pace, 1 min recovery
3&4&5 min at HMP-MP pace, 2 min recovery

We’ve done this workout before, back in December. This time, I ran without looking at my watch for pacing. A few times I’d look at my watch to assess how long we had in the lap, but more often than not, I just ran.

1- 6:16
2- 6:37
3- 6:46
4- 6:57
5- 6:31 (For whatever reason, the folks I was running around decided to really pick it up this time, so I stuck with them)
4- 6:35 (I was starting to fade at the end of this, and my Coach told me to stick with him to maintain our pace}
3- 6:33 (At the end of this one, I pushed extra hard and passed a few people who’d been ahead of me during the 5 and 4. I honestly felt like I was closer to puking than Ive never felt before after a workout. At the end my throat felt closed off, and I kept clearing my throat a bit through the final two..)
2-6:04 (However, that didn’t keep me from running strong!)
1- 5:28 (I made the mistake of looking at my watch halfway and felt myself immediately slow. No! Must learn to just push through to the whistle!)

Total: 9 miles in 1:13
AvgHR: 159, MaxHR 186

On the way home, I listened to Episode 178 of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast and he mentioned an article about VO2Max and how if we start a workout hard and know it will become easier, we can actually push harder than if we start easier and work up to it. He said this was related to the central governor proposed process, wherein our brain regulates exertion to keep us safe. If we perceive a workout will get easier, we conserve less energy. I know for myself, I often pace myself to finish with “something in the tank”. A workout like today, where the intervals (past 5) got shorter, meant I was wiling to push harder with each, as at least time-wise they were less intense. Fascinating stuff!

Today felt really great. It’s going to be hard for me to wait a few months to race!! (I’m not including these 5Ks I have coming up)

- Ezekiel cereal with kefir, hemp seed, blueberries
- 2 bananas
- egg, potato, veggie chili, mango salsa, guacamole, veggies in a whole wheat tortilla
- apple
- tea
- wild woods sprouted tofu burger, curried cauliflower and squash, quinoa (leftovers from yesterday)
- cashews
- veggie juice: cucumber, apple, cilantro
- weird gluten-free taco pasta pre-packaged thing. Ingredients: brown rice pasta, shelled hemp seed, salt, tomato powder, paprika, onion, garlic, oregano, ground red pepper and silicon dioxide. I added onion, tomato, cilantro, olive oil/citrus habanero olive oil, and quorn chikn bits. Not bad, though stuff really does taste different out of a package.
- frozen banana “ice cream” (just blended frozen bananas, a bit of coconut milk and cacao nibs)

Exercise

- Mad abs class. We did a lot of planks, which were actually a challenge. Guess what I haven’t done much of lately??
- Power 30 class: kettlebell swings, band rows, band shoulder presses, and some throws and pulls with these
- Spinning class. And I didn’t hate it!

- Ezekiel cereal with kefir, hemp seed, blueberries
- tea
- Vega pre-workout energizer
- honeymilk
- coffee/hot cocoa mix. I’ve decided this is a new TBT rule: this is ok after a race.
- Probar superfood slam
- whole wheat pita with veggies and tzaziki sauce
- avocado
- veggie juice: carrot, cucumber, spinach, lime
- curried cauliflower, quinoa salad (tomato, onion, cilantro, lime), wildwoods sprouted tofu burger – my favorite brand!
- raisins
- vega whole food optimizer with coconut milk

Exercise

- 5K race
- 2 mile warmup/cooldown run

(..and then I ramble on anyway….)

Today was the Super Bowl 5K. We had a time trial scheduled for our Saturday workout, so I hadn’t been sure how serious to take this race. I spoke with my coach on Friday and he recommended not racing, but just “partaking”. I ended up pushing hard on the workout Saturday, so I suppose I knew it wasn’t going to be my best effort on Sunday.

I got to Wash Park around 9:15 and got in a bit of a warmup jog. It was actually a beautiful day, weather-wise. I wore calf-length compression tights and actually stripped down to a t-shirt to race. As I lined up at the start, two girls who looked like they were serious lined up just ahead of me. Although I’d never met her before, I gathered that one of them was Heather Utrata, a local runner who recently pulled off a 5 miler around a 6 minute mile pace. Well crap. Oh well, I reminded myself, I wasn’t “racing”.

I guess I had a few goals going into this race (A and B were of equal importance/awesomeness)

A. Win
B. Sub-20 (Sub 19:47 would be +)
C. PR

With Heather on the line, I figured A was out the window. Not a big deal. Because of yesterday’s hard workout (and Darren’s advice), I wasn’t really prepared to kill myself at the event, so decided to run by feel and see what happened.

The race started and three women rushed out ahead of me. I saw right away that one of them had gone out way too fast so within about 10 seconds of the race starting, I decided I wanted to hold onto 3rd place overall.

And then, I ran.

There were a few slick spots but not at all like the Rudolph Ramble. I just ran along, and the second half of the race generally consisted of me catching up to and passing guys. I think there were one or two guys that passed me. In the last half mile, I played cat and mouse with some guy, and with about a quarter mile to go, I told him to kill it and finish strong. But then of course we hit the three mile marker and my competitive spirit kicked in and we raced in. In the end, we had the same gun time, but his chip time was a second faster.

In that last 10th of a mile, I caught a glimpse of the finish clock and it was very clearly over 20 minutes. Damn, there went goal B.

I finished in 20:43, which WAS good enough for me to meet goal C. My previous PR, set at the Valentine’s Day run last year, was 21:16. After the race I went to retrieve my long-sleeved shirt I’d left at the start and cheered on other runners as they were passing mile 2. One of the highlights of the entire day for me was about a half hour later, when some guy finished, and came and gave me a big high five and thanked me for cheering him on while he was running.

Overall, the race went fine.

M1: 6:23
M2: 6:42
M3: 6:42
.1: 5:38mm

20:43 = 6:40 pace
avgHR 183, maxHR 191 – which is the highest I’ve seen it in awhile.

It’s funny how arbitrary pace can seem. I ran the Turkey Trot 10K at 6:40 and was really excited about it. Today actually seemed a bit tougher (and I don’t completely attribute that to running at sea level). The fact is, I know on a good day I can run faster than this. Today just wasn’t that day.

I’m sure it was a combination of a hard workout the day before (running AND lifting!), and knowing this wasn’t any sort of a target race.

But in the end, I can’t forget that this is a PR! This is the fastest I’ve covered 3.1 miles in a race situation. Anytime you do that is worthy of a good ole pat on the back. And some race bling helps, too. 1st in my AG, thank you very much!

Next week is the Valentine’s Day 5K, and of course in a month is the Pump and Run. As much as I’d have loved to rattle off a sub-20 today just as a confidence booster, that’s the day that really counts! As it was, my legs felt great today, less than a month after Houston. I’m thankful for that and look forward to continuing to get stronger and faster!

- Ezekiel English muffin with almond butter and hemp seed
- tea
- honeymilk
- coffee (I needed to kill some time after the run and before AllSports opened, and also to change clothes)
- superpump max – 2 scoops (still haven’t felt that same rush as the first time I used it)
- monster aminos
- warm quinoa, coconut milk, cinnamon, blueberries
- cucumber, apple, parsley juice – decided to stick to juice recipes I found instead of trying to make my own
- banana, almond butter, hemp seed in a spelt tortilla
- a couple seitan wings :-/, pickles, quinoa burger with onions, egg and mushrooms. This sounds gross but it was actually really good! I didn’t even have them bring the bun.
- coconut water. They had a case sale on at Sunflower market.

My fridge now looks like this:

Exercise

- 30 minute tempo run (plus a few miles to warmup/cooldown, workout was just over an hour total).
- bench press: 3×85, 4×85, 3×90, 2×95, 1×100 (!!!), 3×90, 5×75, 5×80, 5×80, 6×80, 5×80, 10×65, 30×45. Highest weight ever, and I do think it helped make the 80 seem “light”
- other chest and tricep work
- light abs

While I like stopping at the gym on my way home from Boulder, and my coach did tell me to double up strength-training with runs, I really think I need to work on my bench press on different days. I need to be fresh for these workouts, coming there after an hour of intense exercise doesn’t truly give myself the opportunity to see what I can do. The race is in exactly a month!

Recovery

Between my run and the gym, I stopped at AllSports. Compression boots, inversion table, rumble roller. Good stuff!

Here are some of the various rollers they have in the “self massage” area:

This morning I headed over to Boulder for our club workout. I wasn’t sure how it would go, given the 1.5ft of snow we received in the past 36 hours. We met in a slushy, unplowed parking lot and headed out. The target workout was initially a 15 minute out-and-back – we were to run on a path for 15 minutes, then turn around and the first one back won a prize. However, the path was slick and no one was terribly interested in risking injury. So somehow we ended up at a local parking garage and decided to just run hard for 30 min there. No prize AND, no way for us to really assess the distance as our garmins were NOT happy with the run.

We did one easy lap to figure out a “route”, and then set to work. I am finally starting to get smart and started out near the back of the pack. As we progressed, however, I felt myself getting stronger. I do like climbing – I think my name suits me (Hill, not Andrea). One guy said that he lead some of us on an extra turn, so I’ll assume that’s my “lap 6″ . Apart from that, my laps got steadily quicker and I found myself catching and passing others in the group.

After 4 laps, someone watching the time called out what I thought was “15 minutes” and I was bummed! I was sure we were doing around 4:30 laps and I couldn’t figure out how we were only half done! But after a brief dip in motivation, I dug deep and told myself we were in the home stretch. The time after the next lap was 23:30 (?), so we only had one last full lap, plus a bit. I gave it all I had, and at the very end we JUST managed to get to the top of the garage where a truck was plowing, and it pulled out ahead of us. Done! We’d done the last climb in 2:15! (It turns out he said “19″, not “15″)

It was a great workout – I was definitely pushing myself and the ups and downs added some nice variation. I just wish we had some idea how far we’d gone at what pace. I do know that I negative split the crap out of the run!

Once we got back to the cars, people chatted for a bit and a few people discussed having an ice bath later. I decided not to wait, and promptly sat down in the snow and covered my legs with it. Easy enough!

Food

- quinoa in coconut milk, cinnamon, blueberries, hemp seed
- worst.juice.so.far – cauliflower, tomato, cilantro, spinach, lemon.
- almond butter, hemp seed, apple sandwich on an Ezekiel English muffin
- homemade kombucha
- cashews
- homemade chocolate chia tea latte with coconut milk and cocoa powder
- Vega protein bar (this has sugar but I have a bunch of their products I need to sample within the next week)
- Kabocha squash soup with coconut milk and cilantro, Ezekiel bread
- Vega whole food optimizer with coconut milk

Today I came across this video. Although I think this guy is a bit over the top with his fat-phobia, this sort of stuff frustrates me. Why must consumers be mislead???

Exercise

Glorious 6.6 mile run through snowdrifts! This is how you know you’re a runner – you can barely see as snow flies in your face and your feet squish in your shoes, and you love every minute of it!

Anyway… So I KNEW I’d get hurt at Crossfit. I spent all night alternating an ice pack and a heating pad on my back. However, I did wake up feeling absolutely giddy because I’d dreamt about running an ultra. It was as though I felt honored to have had this dream. Huh?

Food
- two bowls of Ezekiel cereal with kefir, blueberries, hemp seed
- tea with ginger and turmeric (natural anti-inflammatories)
- ProBar
- whole wheat pita with hummus, falafel, veggie salad, eggplant (at garbanzos)
- a few raisins
- pear
- quorn chikn niblets with black beans, tomato, onion, lime, spices in a whole wheat tortilla
- monster aminos
- carrot, apple, ginger juice. So pretty!

Recovery
Since I hadn’t been all week, I went to AllSports after work. Did the boots, inversion table and rumble roller. Also got a massage from Maria. I was a bit worried it would further aggravate my back, but she did a great job and helped a lot!

Exercise
Went to the gym on my way home from Boulder, but I was NOT feeling it. Plus, I didn’t know what to work on! Did some incline bench work ( dumbbell chest press, flys, bicep curls) but nothing too impressive. So we’ll call this one a rest day.

I did decide to expend my energy with a really hard workout, so I FINALLY made it over to Crossfit Lohi. Oooh, and SUPER excited, I got a huge sample pack of Vega Sport to try out and review! The presentation was awesome:

Food

- omelet with spinach and tomato
- dry wheat toast
- coffee with cream
- quizno’s veggie sub
- PROBar
- peanuts
- Dunkin Donuts coffee (I didnt even like it but I felt like it was something I should have while out east)
- almonds and raisins
- quinoa, coconut milk, blueberries, cinnamon
- vega sports protein
- veggie juice: carrots, celery, chard, lime

Exercise

- “McGhee” Hero workout at Crossfit. Details in another post