Friday ladies run

My last Friday morning session for a potentially long time! The group was small today - just 7 of us ladies...and Chris. Some new faces as well, which was nice. We started off with sprints along Kangaroo Point. We did a 1:1 ratio of sprint/recover. There were a lot! The total distance probably equated to about 1.2km. We arrived at a park and then proceeded to do 5 intervals of 600m+. If you have never done sprints followed by intervals, you may not appreciate how it kills the legs! I can't explain why, but trust me that it is exhausting. The hilly cool-down jog back was more than enough for my legs at the end.

Back in the Galeforce Groove

Well, I'm back training with Galeforce again this week. A final hoorah before I leave. I went to the Wednesday night "beginner" group. I loved my Wednesday night group back in the day, but I jumped ship to suffer the Thursday morning hills group instead.
Wednesday night is...relaxing. Our coach was sick so we had a new coach instead. He was fantastic! we jogged around Roma Street Parklands as he made up our training night as we went along.
First: "stride outs" we did about 10 of these. This is where you run for ~20m at 70% of your fastest pace. It's meant to be a sort of warm-up for sprinting.
Second: 4 min hill run. Everyone went at their own pace up and down the hill. The focus was hard on the way up, recovery down. For one of these runs the coach ran right at my heels to push me faster. Awesome!
Third: we happened to stop at a drink fountain for some water that lay at the bottom of a hill with stairs. So we then did 5 min of the hills with stairs. Oof!
Fourth: sprints or "fartleks". I didn't like these so much. We did 5min of fartleks where the coach called out "go" or "recover" at random intervals. I didn't like it because I never gaged it fast enough. For example, if I had known that we were doing a 20-sec sprint I would have pushed a lot harder than I did. But not being certain if the interval was 20-sec or 1min, I didn't push all that hard.
The Wednesday night group is easy going and really is a good run for beginners. We all went at our own pace and there was no pressure if you sat out one of the drills to recover.

Dreams vs reality

Oof! What a day! I ran my first 25k today. Farthest distance I've ever been by 3km! I dreamt that I finished it and found it super easy...and then woke up to reality. Sadly, I never run as fast in reality as I do in my mind.
There were only 13 of us doing the 25k, so we mostly stuck together as a group on the way out. I passed the 10.5k mark where I usually turn around and falsely believed it "wasn't that much farther". The distance seems to stretch out sooo much farther when you don't know where you're going! It was along the river, so a nice pretty route that was flat except for the hills when we had to go over the bridges.
I made it out in 1h11min something (I was too exhausted to look closely). On the way back our group split into four natural groups...the faster, the fast, the back posse, and me. :P I just couldn't keep up to the others! So I set my legs to a "comfortably fast" pace and trekked those 12.5k back on my own. I actually passed the back posse as they were stopping for water breaks and I was too much in the zone to stop (and too fearful I wouldn't start again).
Total time: 2.29.37!!
A quick math calculation shows that this is justover 10k/hour, or justunder 6min/k split times. I am feeling fairly satisfied with myself. I had hoped to get a time under 2.30 and I did. The last 2k I couldn't quite keep up my rhythm, so I fell into the mental mantra of "almost done, almost done." And total unstopped time was only about 5min slower than that, so clearly I didn't stop too much! Actually, I only stopped once on the way back when there was 2k to go, as I was desperately thirsty. My mistake, as that threw my rhythm. But then, I don't know how much faster I would've been if I hadn't had the water.
And now the reality is that my muscles are exhausted! As in, really, really exhausted!

Indecision

I can’t say I sprang out of bed this morning, but at least I did get up! It was another day where I couldn’t decide what to do for training. But the cold decided for me. Cold makes my muscles sluggish, so I might as well do hills to get my heart pumping. I did an interval to Hospital Hill and ran up four times. The bootcamp group was back again. They only ran 1/4 of the distance I did up that hill…but they also ran down. I, lazy creature, walked down the steep part of the hill and only ran the bottom half.
Round 1: 3.37 (woohoo! Personal best!!)
Round 2: 3.40
Round 3: 3.55
Round 4: 3.50
Yes, I see the big fat gap of time between #2 & #3, but I’m happy I didn’t get over 4 minutes on any of them! I could feel those quad muscles working, too. I briefly considered a 5th round, but decided instead to do an interval run home (rather than a recovery). Sure, it wasn’t the fastest of intervals. But it definitely wasn’t a recovery jog, either!

Mixed Terrain

It astounds me how slack I really am. Sunday I skipped the fantastic Bridge2Brisbane race because I was worried about recovery after the 22k hill run of Saturday (I was fine and consequently bummed that I missed out). Monday I also skipped. Just because. Tuesday I woke up early for a run…and promptly reset my alarm to sleep in instead.
Finally today I did get out of bed for a run. And can you believe it? When I went outside I could see my breath!!! For nearly 3 years (since living in Aus) it has not been cold enough to see my breath. Except today! I was pretty stoked. And cold too, for that matter.
I couldn’t really decide on what I wanted to do today: intervals, sprints, or hills? So I decided to do all three. I did a 10min interval run out to Hospital Hill. A slow 10min interval run, that is. I probably could have gone faster but if I normally run like molasses, today was like molasses in January! It took me a while to warm up. I then ran up the hill, but only twice.
Round 1: 3.41
Round 2: 3.45
I did sprint reps on the way home, with a ratio of 3:1 for sprints. I probably should have kicked it up a notch and done one more hill, seeing as how it is only 3.5 weeks to Melbourne. What can I say...slack!

The Back Posse

Can I just say, I love my fellow back posse runners! We may not be the fastest bunch but we have lots of fun.

Today we ran the Mt Coot-tha circuit. This circuit starts at Regatta, goes up through Bardon to The Gap, and then to the top of Mt Coot-tha and back. I did this one back in May as a 16k. I thought I was going to die! The route is flat for the first 2k and after that you are either running uphill or downhill. And when I say uphill I don't mean any little road lumps, either! It's the kind of uphill where just when you think you can't do anymore you get to the top...only to turn the corner and realize you're only halfway there.

I was quite worried I'd fall behind and lose the group. My strength is the downhill, so I continued to power down those to gain some speed and ensure I didn't fall behind the group. Although we stuck somewhat together, we splintered off into 3 mini-groups: front runners, middle runners, and "the back posse". After 5k the middle runners (where I was at) combined forces with the back posse as the front runners peeled away.

We hit the bp station that was the turnaround point from last time. And I was cautiously full of energy (cautiously, because Mt Coot-tha would be coming in at the 16k mark and we were only at the 8k). And the hills through Bardon felt a lot more manageable than last time. Or maybe last time the pace was extra fast? ... Whatever the difference, I am absolutely floored by my improvement since last time. Is this what “fit” feels like? Hmm. I guess it’s all relative.

The run was slow and easy-going along the gently rolling hills of the middle k's. Then we got to Mt Coot-tha and ran up a steep side trail to the top (well, when I say “run”…)

But we made it to the top with much elation, as there were only a few little hills to go after that! For those in the know, this is the same hill that was on my first hill session.

Around through the back of Mt Coot-tha as that way was longer and down the long windy road to the bottom. I couldn’t get over how long that downhill was! I’ve run up it a couple of times when it seems to go forever…but it’s the same feeling when I run down it, too! You keep turning a corner thinking, “it’s gotta end soon!”. Naturally, we all picked up a fair bit of speed at this part and regrouped at the bottom.

From there it was just 3.5k back to the car lot. My first run in over a month that hasn’t aggravated my ITB! Hooray! And I ran with my water carrier, which despite the scare I had last time I carried it, ended up just fine and – I’m happy to say – pain free. I even got to foister it off on others throughout the run who wanted to see what it felt like to run with. Heh heh heh.

Approximate total distance: 21.7k

Approximate total time: 2.23.05 (not counting our re-group stops where the 8 of us in the back posse did a well-being check on everyone…and a head count to make sure we hadn’t lost any.)

And you know how I felt after that gruelling 21.7k hill circuit? I felt that I could have kept going…

One more time!

I have only ever had the time (and energy) to run up Hospital Hill 4x in a session. Today I made it my goal to run up a 5th time…even if that 5th time was more of a walk! So I set my alarm clock early and proceeded to waste my morning because I had “so much extra time”. Still, I made it out on the early side.

Round 1: 4.43min.
Round 2: 3.48min.
Round 3: 3.47min
Round 4: 4.02min
Round 5: 4.12min

I was rather stunned about round 1 until I realized I had started my time a block earlier than I normally do. The other 4 rounds I started at my usual place. I mean, why run that extra block when I don’t have to, eh? I realize you can see a pretty significant downward spiral at the end, but by round 3 I was on the edge of throwing up so I’m impressed I kept going at all. I told myself if I did 5 rounds today I would warrant a rest day tomorrow, which doubled my motivation. Walking back down the hill helps me recover and is also a practical trick: My leg muscles are simply shaking too much to coordinate a downhill jog. My training session today ended up totalling over 75min, which is longer than usual. Rest day tomorrow and then a scary attempt at an extra extra long distance on Saturday! Fingers crossed I make it all the way…

Social run and such

Sunday I went for a social run with two fantastic friends, and they brought along a 3rd person to make a quad group. I don't do enough social runs! They are super fun and easy going. For this run we went on a lovely 7.5k loop around the river, which is my favourite route.

Today I made the mistake of getting up almost an hour earlier than I needed to (I'm so used to getting up at group training times!). It was a beautiful morning albeit a bit cold. I ran 3x 10min intervals. I'm not sure how far I went but am happy to say I went farther each time. I've come to realize that I'm not so much improving with my solo training as "maintaining". Sort of. 5 weeks to go until Melbourne Half Marathon! I can't believe this will be my third half marathon of the year.

...And I've decided to do one final race of the season. A 500k team relay in November. I know I said Melbourne was it...but 500k team relay! How could I resist?

The ican

Every time I think my little ipod has sputtered its last song it gets another revival. I'm thus changing it's name to the ican, because it's the little pod that could. I could learn a few lessons from it. If running is a mental game than I am an infant learning to crawl! 21.7km again today. The river is open (finally!) so we got to run along the nice flat footpath on the river rather than through hilly back streets. Hooray! I ran with the "medium" group. Not the fast group, not the slow group. But the medium group went from 4 to 2 of us by the 8k mark. We were going to go 25k with the rest of the squad but decided that 21k was long enough! It's funny; it's not the way out that gets you, but the way back! I was fine until the 14k mark and then - guess what! - that darned ITB reminded me how unhappy it was. I pushed on (it only hurt if I stopped and started again).
Total running time was just under 2h20min. I couldn't say for sure as I forgot to time part of the distance (so my watch came out showing under 2h14min). But there was a lot less stopping this time - just one longish stop for a drink rather than the 5+ we normally have (it's always longer stops when the group is larger). Hmmm. Not sure how this bodes for Melbourne. 5 weeks to go!
Oh, and on a side note I've signed up for a 500k relay in November. This running season just keeps getting longer and longer...I guess that's my fault!

Social Creatures

I am not cut out for solo training. I don’t know how I managed it my first year. It is an anomaly. Tuesday I was in the car at 5am to head to Kingaroy, so no running. Wednesday I could barely open my eyes when the alarm went off. I hauled myself over to the window, saw there was a heavy fog (and heavy fog means it’s drizzly, right? That’s almost like rain) and went back to bed.

Thursday. Ah, Thursday! I was up before the alarm but desperately didn’t want to go out. I saw it was a clear day (siiiiigh) and reluctantly, slowly headed towards Hospital Hill. I accidentally brought both my ipods up with me and you know what? Neither worked! One was out of batteries, and I think the other has gone to the great Apple in the sky. It has never been quite right after “The Bus Incident”. For those who were reading my training updates via email back in those days, you may recall this unfortunate event.

No intervals for me out to the hill. I kept it at a sluggish jog. I figured if all I did was walk up the hill once and jog back, that would be okay. Just getting out the door felt like an accomplishment. But then something happened.

Round 1 – 4.08min

Round 2 – 3.53min

Round 3 – 3.46min

Round 4 – 4.04min

Now let me tell you that in round 2 & 3 I happened to be running uphill with a bootcamp group. Sure, they were only running 1/5 the distance I was, but the point is that my competitive nature kicked in and I had to push myself harder. It gave me an extra kick when I otherwise wanted to kick the bucket on training and call it a day.