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)

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!

I then ran the Boston marathon 4 times, in 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2009. By 2009, the novelty had worn off and I’m no longer terribly interested in running the race again. However, the qualifying time remains a good indicator.

In February 2011, the B.A.A. announced they would be tightening up the qualifying times. The new time for females 18-34 would be 3:35:00, and for males 18-34 it would go up to 3:05:00.

I know very well that non-runners often don’t have a good sense of really how fast these paces are. My cabbie to the Houston airport asked how I did, and when I said I’d done well, he asked if I’d managed to break 4 hours. For him, that was a great marathon time.

In trying to explain really how fast 3:09:52 was, I mentioned to a friend that “a year ago, that would have been a men’s BQ time”. Ugh, that year ago disclaimer weakened the message a bit.

And then this morning, I had a thought. I keep getting older….

And yes, sure enough, as I crest into a more mature age category, my time would even earn a dude a BQ for the 2013 race.

When I first started doing marathons, I remember saying to Andy that I wanted to run a men’s qualifying time. I’ve always felt the women’s times were a bit soft. How cool that even with their more rigid standards, I met that goal! I guess aging isn’t all that bad

warmup, strides, 5x45sec hills, 3×4:00 at 10K pace, 4x75sec at 5K pace, 5min at HMP, cooldown.

I received special instruction to do a partial workout, which was not to do the 5K pace bit.

We started out, and I was at the front of the pack as we warmed up, so happy to be running! We hit the hills and I was the first one hammering up the incline! At the end of it, Darren said that I should feel free to take it easy. I laughed and said my legs just felt fresh, but I told him I’d ease off. For the rest, I lined up at the back, and another guy in the group (a trainer for the Striders) told me to tag along with him. He said he ran 3:09 in Boston, so we were roughly equivalent. Um, looking at my paces, I wouldn’t necessarily say these were “easy” paces for hills (30ft incline over .12miles)… 5:34, 6:21, 5:42, 5:57, 5:51 (and my heart rate never crested 184)

Next we were to do 3×4:00 at 10K pace. I told myself to feel free to relax, go around 7mm. But alas, it just felt so good to run! 6:48, 6:45, 6:32.

Then came the 4x75sec at 5K pace. I KNEW to truly take it easy for this and just chugged along fast enough not to be left behind. Yet surprisingly, I found that my easy pace was still pretty respectable: 7:08, 6:52, 7:16, 6:43.

For the last five minutes, we were to head out “below threshold” for the first 2.5 minutes, then turn around and really push it for the last 2.5. I was obviously better recovered than everyone else, and was eager to finish strong. We started, and my coach called out that I should relax (sense a theme here?). He said “I know you feel good now, but we want to be sure you feel good in 3-4 weeks”. So I cut my speed.. until we turned around and then I pushed it a bit harder even as we had a nice incline to go up. As we neared the end of the workout, I couldn’t help myself and really pushed. It felt great! This also came in at a 6:45 pace: apparently my body likes that speed. *COUGH-13.1milesofthatwouldbe1:28-COUGH*

In all we got in 9.5, pretty good for my first outing back! My energy was right there and my legs didn’t seem to have any sort of residual soreness. And of course, my confidence is sky-high. So excited about running!

9.5 miles in 1:20, average HR 163, max HR 187.

Better Bodies On Tour DTP training from Smith Tree on Vimeo.

Basically, you take a single exercise and do it about a billion times. I’m barely exaggerating. You do 12 sets total, starting at 50 reps and going to 40, 30, 20, 10, 5 and then back up: 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. You get one minute recovery between each set. The goal is to work with the heaviest weight you can handle for those reps, but if you can’t complete, you can drop down to the next lower weight. According to a write-up on bodybuilding.com*, “DTP targets both the fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers in order to both enhance and define your muscle. It provides an overflow of nutrient rich blood to the muscle group you are training to provide a fuller appearance and more separation to the physique, at the same time increasing the heart rate and the intensity to burn fat and build muscle as well.”

I was supposed to work my back today, but often after lat pulldowns I end up with a really sore neck, so I decided to go with chest-supported incline rows. I suspect I used my shoulders (rear delts) more than I should, but those could use work too so I’m ok with that. I actually love rows but I wanted to add in the chest support so that I wasn’t sagging, twisting or doing anything crazy as I got fatigued.

Does this look like fun? (And yes, I am that girl who hogs all the weights. There was no one else around!)

50 – did 50x15lbs
40 – did 31x20lbs, dropped to 9x15lbs
30 – did 22x20lbs, dropped to 8x15lbs
20 – did 20x20lbs. As the number of reps got shorter, I had more confidence to grab heavier weight
10 – did 10x25lbs
5 – did 5x30lbs. Hurray! Now to work back up..
5 – did 4x35lbs, 1x30lbs
10 – did 10×30. Hey, this is more than on the way up! But I knew I wouldn’t squeeze out 20×30
20 – did 13x25lbs, 7x20lbs
30 – did 21x20lbs, 9x15lbs. By this time it was even tough to pick up the weights to re-rack them on my breaks…
40 – did 35x15lbs, 5x12lbs
50 – did 50x12lbs

For a total of 310 rows!

I was absolutely spent afterwards. I seriously just sat and stared at the wall for a moment. It was definitely a challenging workout. I think I pushed harder than I ever have before, lifting? The combination of both endurance and power was tough, and I was thankful there weren’t too many people around the women’s free weights as I struggled to complete my sets. Yes, even those 12lbs weights by the end were a struggle!

After I collected myself, I did some abs, and I actually came to muscle fatigue reasonably quickly (usually I give up on abs out of boredom). I think I did a good job at using up my resources so that the rest of my workout counted even more! After my ab work, I felt that good exhaustion, the kind that makes you just want to close your eyes and let your body recover. I updated my FB status about it, and a friend made a comment that “at least my thumbs weren’t tired” but I will admit it took some focus to get my hands to work: holding the dumbbells for that long, even with gloves, had also taken a toll.

I gobbled down a protein drink (with creatine and BCAAs), a protein bar and headed over to AllSports Recovery Club – I earned it!

*There was actually a series written about some guy who did this workout on various body parts: DTP – Changing Bodies and Lives.

Forget belonging to a gym to work out in – this club is for recovering AFTER those workouts!

I joke that this is something you’d only see in Boulder, but I’m actually tickled to live so close to a community that can support a club like this. For a monthly fee, AllSports Recovery offers daily access to all sorts of foam rollers and sticks, an inversion table, lasers/TENS systems, an ice bath tub, and these crazy compression boots. There are also massage interns available for 15 minute massages (you get one per day included in your membership.)

They also have a selection of discounted services as well: ultrasound, gralston, k-taping, chiropractic.

There was actually a write-up in 5280 magazine the other day (“Take it Easy“) which hinted that a Denver location may be in the works, so perhaps I’ll have to change my sentiment to “only in Colorado”.

The idea behind the club is that most athletes can’t afford these types of tools at home to aid in recovery. On a Sunday afternoon just while I was there, there were a good half-dozen athletes that wandered in to take advantage of the various services. Actually when I walked in, half of the compression boot chairs were being occupied by people I knew: my coach Darren, his wife Colleen, and Lydia.

I gave the boots a try – sat down in front of the Ravens-Patriots game on the big screen (which I didn’t care about, but the guys seemed to) for a half hour. The compression pressure was strong. Not to the point of discomfort, but I definitely felt the “metabolic wastes being flushed” (that’s what the girl who showed me around said they did). Then I tried the inversion table. The inversion table is right next to the ice bath, and some guy in the ice bath explained that I could actually go all the way back, lock the table out and hang suspended by my feet (not touching the table at all), like a bat. It actually felt great and made me think fondly of my gymnastics days, some 25 years ago.

After the table, the blood rush to my head (and the fact I suspected I was now 5’4″ rather than 5’3″) emboldened me and I decided to try the cold laser with TENS. My achilles has been a little tight so I lathered on some conductor fluid (something like that..) and gave it a try. The TENS sent little sensations all through my heel, which was kinda amazing.

Lastly, although I have a standard foam roller at home, I decided to try one of their many different types and went with a rumble roller. Yikes! It was harder than my foam roller and the bumps really got deep.

Eventually I got tired of playing, and decided to head home. As I walked out of the club, I felt like my muscles had been worked/flushed out. I didn’t bother waiting for a massage, but Lydia was getting some work done. I’m actually really interested in the Gralston technique, which seems painful but great at loosening up scar tissue, etc. Last year I had the hip doctor as well as a massage therapist tell me that it’s likely my IT band on the left is a bit tight due to scar tissue from my car accident. I can’t help but wonder if some of this treatment (or perhaps even the less intense laser) can help. It’s not actively hindering my performance, but every bit helps, right?

Going into the club, I was a bit skeptical: did I really need all this stuff? I wasn’t injured, I felt fine. But once in those boots and feeling what it felt like to truly get worked over, I can see the benefits to it. I asked Lydia how frequently she went: she said the week leading up the marathon, she went every day. Wow! I like the idea of being able to be proactive in looking after yourself rather than waiting for serious injury. Right now I pay $49/month for a Massage Envy membership, which gives me one massage a month. At AllSports, I could get one several times a week (granted, only 15 minutes, not the full hour I get at ME). But the other services they provide, while not necessary, seem to offer more well-rounded self-care than just a single massage.

I sure hope they open that Denver location soon! Although… right now I train in Boulder twice a week, and those are most most intense workouts. They’re likely the ones that would be best to follow up with a treatment… Would I really go more frequently than that anyway?

P.S. They’ve also been featured in WIRED Magazine: “Recovery Club: Pro-Level Training Tools for Weekend Warriors How cool is that?

I’ll admit it, the endorphin junkie in me struggled a bit with this! Early in the week work was a bit stressful, and I yearned to go for an easy run to clear my head and boost my spirits.

I get it, though. I know that recovery after a hard effort like the race last week is a really smart idea. Although my legs seemed fine, on Thursday I got a massage and she found some tender spots in my calves that I hadn’t realized were there! Rather than struggling through that first hobbling run a few days post-race, I’m truly giving my legs the time to fix all of those little microtears. Then when I start training anew, it will be from a strong base.

Also, the two weeks before the race I had a sore throat (I think I was even a bit fevered race weekend, as my lips chapped) and by not exercising this week, I’m letting my body focus on rebuilding my immune system (I still have a bit of a phlegmy cough. ugh).

Lastly, there’s a big mental component to recovery. I’m a notorious goal setting-and-knocker-downer. I barely meet one goal when I’m off to set the next. As I get faster, my goals are going to become increasingly more difficult to attain. So this week to relax and not worry about logging miles or anything is a nice welcome break. Because I wasn’t exercising, I also took the week off the TBT. I let my nutrition slide as well. Although I wanted to eat healthily to promote recovery, I did treat myself a bit. I figured if my body wanted something, now was the time to get it. Already this weekend I’m back “on the wagon” and ready to refocus.

It was nice to have a short break to mark a transition. That training period is over, I’ve earned a bit of a reprieve and now it’s time to start again. As someone who devotes 110% to something and then often suffers burnout, I think this is a great way for me to prolong my interest (and ability) in this sport.

I posted about my meeting with my coach a week before the race. The first thing he said was that he thought I was being too conservative with my goal, and he thought I could run 3:10.

WHA WHA WHA???

Honestly, I’ve toyed with 3:15 in my head, but 3:10?? I wasn’t so sure.. but he’s done well thus far at anticipating my goals in training runs). I tend to keep up with Lydia, who has a 3:09 PR and is going for 3:10 next week.

He told me that he felt I should start with the 3:10 group and gauge how I’m feeling, how I can always see how I feel and if it’s not my day, I can relax and let the 3:20 group catch me. His sense is that if I try to go with the 3:20 group and then pick it up near the end (what I was planning), that I will be dodging a lot of folks at the end and wondering if I could have done better.

It’s a little intimidating to try an aggressive pace and “see how it goes”. When he said that I thought about Rock and Roll AZ in 2009, when I actually ran a 3:22 pace until 21. Then I thought I was off my goal pace and let the wheels fall off. (Ok, so three years later, I JUST realized that was not off my goal pace (3:23). I think my heart just cracked a little…) I want Houston to be a good effort for me, and didn’t want to risk the mental breakdown I had that day.

However, the more I think about it, the more I realize I didn’t have a backup goal in that race. I felt the wheels fell off and I slowed too much (which actually wasn’t the case) and that was a sign of a problem. But talking to Darren, he is encouraging me to go out aggressively and see what I can do. If that means at mile 20 (or 13, or realizing that I’m not going to be able to sustain that pace, then I dial it back. No one says you have to run a marathon in a completely steady state (although of course it’s nice). It’s ok to run the first few faster, then dial it back (provided of course I don’t push to the point I’m building up lactic acid, burning through fuel too fast, etc etc).

It’s fair to say my coach is blunt. I remember him telling us all about tracking one of our runners at CIM online and wondering “what the hell was he thinking (going out that fast)”. For awhile I’d been wondering if he was purposely giving me a really aggressive goal just to see what I’d do with it. But that doesn’t seem to fit with what I’ve seen of him so far. Just to be sure, I emailed another runner on the team just to get a sense if Darren gave “stretch goals” for races or not. I got back a very thoughtful response, including:

Everytime he has told me to shoot for a time in a race – he is spot on and I have run it (with the exception of a few races over the last 5 years where I just had a bad day). I hate to admit it but he is very good at it. And usually whatever he suggests will sound too hard to you – and you will say there is no way I can run that – and then if you decide to try it – you run it. But you do have to be willing to push yourself and commit to it. You have to decide if that is what you want to do. And it’s his job to push you a little bit harder than you would naturally push yourself.

I had to smile at the “I hate to admit it” part!

Well, what I received back from my teammate further helped me realize that I have ONE day – only a few hours – to put it on the line and see what I can do. Since we’re only talking about 2 fast marathons a year, that’s an awful long time to wonder where my level is at.

I could plant all sorts of seeds of doubt in my mind, but for what? Why generate excuses for something that hasn’t transpired yet? I have a very talented coach who thinks I can achieve something. He doesn’t gain anything from seeing me falter. I’m thrive on external validation, and challenges. I have nothing to prove from running a “safe” race.

Can I ask what is the concept behind the cheat day? Is it just a day to rest your mind about what it is you can and cannot eat or is there more to it than that? After I cheat I feel disgusting.

I have a lot of thoughts on that, so I decided to post them here rather than just as a reply to her post.

First off, I think that her last sentence sums it up! When I first started eating clean, I’d look forward to those cheat days, stockpile some chocolate and eagerly look forward to my treats. And then I’d have them, and think it wasn’t worth it. Often the day after, I’d feel a little ill. Letting yourself have those “reminders” keeps you from fixating on what you’re missing out on.

Also, eating clean is intended to be “a lifestyle”, not “a diet”. That is, it’s something you can conceivably do forever. Yet there are probably very few people in the world who will never want to have any “unclean” food. By building in those cheat days, you are still living within the program even when special occasions arise. I believe the actual Eat Clean program only builds in a couple cheat meals, though, it’s not really intended to be 24 hours of gluttony.

I think the idea of allowing for some treats is encouraging: if you go out with friends or want to enjoy something special, you can do so without feeling guilty or thinking you’ve failed at the program. After all, this is not a short-term diet, it’s simply a healthier way to fuel yourself, and in the grand scheme of things, having 104 cheat meals out of nearly 1000 a year is a heck of a lot better than the yo-yo dieting that too many people go through.

As for the idea of a single cheat “day” rather than splitting up multiple treats over the week – I think that this helps you with self-control. If I knew I had a special event coming up, I would plan for that day to be my cheat day. I’d simply make healthy choices the other days, and that helped with recognizing that treats are treats. If you let yourself eat something crappy every day, are you really exhibiting any discipline?

There are probably some metabolic implications too but I’m not going to do that research today

So that’s my take on cheating. For most of 2011 even after I was officially off the TBT, I continued to eat healthily most days, because that’s what I’d programmed myself to do. I remembered how it felt when I’d wait 5 days to have a piece of chocolate, only to realize it didn’t taste as good as I had anticipated. It was thoughtful, and I believe it’s a smarter, more sustainable way to eat.

“Andrea is so flexible she could do a stiff-legged deadlift and probably be stronger than most of the guys here.”
- Instructor at my first day of Crossfit

Today I went to my first Crossfit class at Crossfit Lohi!

I’ve purchased a few crossfit packages from Daily Deal sites, but hadn’t had a chance to use them until today. The place is actually within walking distance to my apartment, which could be VERY dangerous…

They make you go through 4 basics workshops before you actually get to attend classes, which I was kinda bummed about. There was a short lecture on how “unlike working out in the 90s, you don’t focus on ‘chest and tris’ one day, ‘back and biceps’ the next”. Rather, crossfit workouts focus on functional strength and tapping into different energy sources. So while you may work the same body part from day to day, you’re working it for different durations (seconds, minutes, etc). That’s not really anything I’d heard about crossfit before, so it was kinda interesting. Although we all know I LIKE muscle definition, not just “functional strength”!

Then we got to do some technique work, deadlifts and cleans. My kettlebell experience (and also working with a trainer for a short period) definitely came into play. It’s still very weird for me to hear that I’m flexible! The cleans were a little different than the kettlebell cleans I’m used to but it seemed pretty straightforward.

I asked another instructor about the tightness in my back (left rear shoulder blade) I feel when I was doing the cleans. He asked if it was my rotator cuff. I don’t know.. that’s sorta why I was asking! He told me to squeeze my back more as I set up, and that seemed to help, and if anything made me feel like perhaps the tightness is the RIGHT thing to feel?

My back does not look like this ?!?!

Then we ran out of time and didn’t get to do through the rest of the lifts for the day, so the instructor told us to do a Tabata burpee workout. But it was a weird type of burpee I’d never done before which had you actually throw yourself right down to the ground (not a pushup). I did a couple rounds and then the top of my left shoulder started hurting. Crap! So I stopped and did situps for awhile. That sucked. I did the last two rounds with the group again.

The sore shoulder was a bummer, but apart from that it was pretty fun. There was a lot of standing around as our partners went and the instructor gave them feedback, so it wasn’t the greatest workout today. But I anticipate it’ll be fun once we actually get going!