I registered for the Surf City 10 run back in January of this year. However, I had a few otherraces in the mean time so those races forced me to start training for this race earlier than I usually would. You can check out the number of miles and time spent running each month in the screenshot below. There were a few months where I almost hit 100 miles! But it was hard enough as it was to even run those miles, with so many other obligations and responsibilities. I started running consistently in January as a New Year’s Resolution and am happy to have been able to maintain that schedule pretty regularly. I basically forced myself to wake up around 6am every day and just get out of bed and run. Those first few weeks were the hardest because it was still wintertime and it was pitch black and freezing cold (think 40 degree temps). Most days I just wanted to stay in bed where it was nice and warm. But I knew I would have regretted not going for a run that day, so that didn’t happen often. As the months went by and the sun started coming out earlier in the morning, it became less of a drag to get up to run. The summer was nice because I was able to just get out of bed and go for a run in the shorts and t-shirt I slept in. And because I was up earlier in the morning, I avoided the afternoon heat.
Disclaimer: I received free entry to the Hot Chocolate 5K/15K race as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review find and write race reviews!
After a few years of inconsistent running and exercising, at the beginning of this year, I finally made the effort to get up early in the mornings to go running again. It’s only been 3 miles every day with some ‘longer’ runs at 5-6 miles, but it has become a habit where getting up doesn’t take 2-3 annoying alarms to get me out of bed. The real issue I’ve been having with these morning runs is how cold it has been! When I first started running again in January, the temperatures in the mornings were around the mid 40’s which is nothing like I’ve been used to. I keep hoping for warmer, summer weather where I’ll be able to just get out of bed and run in the shorts and t-shirt I slept in. But I’m pretty sure once I get those temperatures, I’ll be complaining about it being too hot for me to run in. I guess I’m just never satisfied with what I have.
So January got off to a great start, I actually ran 23 out of 31 days of the month for a total of 76.58 miles. Sure, most, if not all of those miles were around 9-10 minute/mile pace, but at least I was moving. February dropped a little in terms of runs and mileage, but I will blame the abnormal number of days of rain we received. I believe March will be on pace to run similar numbers as January. I still have the same problems I had before when I used to run often: my pace at the start of a run is slower than when I finish (usually because my body is not awake yet) and my overall pace in the mornings are a lot slower than during the afternoon. I’m constantly snacking during the day but for the most part, feel like I have more energy than before I started running again.
I’ll be running the Hot Chocolate 15K/5K run this weekend. It’s a pretty popular race that I’ve wanted to run for a number of years now. I can’t think of a better combination of running and hot chocolate in one race. But it’s always inspiring to come out and watch so many other fitness enthusiasts get up way before they usually do on a Sunday to go run. Everyone is so happy and cheerful being able to participate in such a fun event together.
This is the first (of 3) weeks where I have to modify my Sunday long run and run during my off days to make up for it. I have a 5K tomorrow, which I’m definitely underestimating. Ever since I ran the half marathon, I feel like any race shorter than that distance is easy, which is totally not the case. Shorter races involve a lot more speed and you have to strategize about how much speed to use at what time. For all of my past 5Ks, I have started off too fast, which just tired me out for the rest of the race (you’d think I learned after the first time..). What I liked about the half marathon is that running that fast so soon at the beginning of a 13.1 mile race is literally suicide. So when I held back the first couple of miles of my half, I was surprised (and happy) to see how much more energy I still had even after running so many miles already. I finally got the concept of pacing, too bad it took me over a year of racing to finally understand.. 🙂 Read the rest of this entry »
I am happy to be able to say that I have the first week of my first marathon training in the books. I have been anticipating this for quite some time now. I never thought I would doing something like this when I started running again a little over a year ago. I randomly signed up for a local 5K and realized how long it’s been since I’ve experienced a race. I worked my way up to running a half marathon (and fast), which I have to say is pretty tough. But now I’m going to try and double that with a full marathon? What am I thinking? We’ll see how it goes. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s been a while since I wrote a post about my half marathon training, the good thing is that I have still been running and training (for the most part). It’s not necessarily due to laziness, but I just had to attend to other very important things that were going on in my life, outside of running. It is fairly safe to say that I will be able to focus on running again (maybe even more than before) very soon, if not in the near future.
There are some cool stats in DailyMile: TVs Powered, Gas Saved and best of all, Donuts Burned!
Each week, as my first ever half marathon comes closer and closer to reality, it seems as if I’m having better and better workouts. On days I need to go hard, I’m able to hit the pace that I’m hoping for and on days where it’s easy or off, I may not have the best workout which I’m OK with. The only thing I’m afraid of now is if I am pushing myself too hard and will peak too early. Back in high school cross country, our coach planned our hard workouts for the entire season in hopes of us peaking at the very optimal moment (league finals for some, and CIF prelims/finals for Varsity). I do feel like the half marathon training program that I was recommended is geared toward peaking exactly when I actually run the half, but I may be pushing the pace too much that I begin to burn out toward the end of the program. I’m happy to say that nothing of that nature has happened yet, but who knows whether or not that will happen next week or the week after. So now I am in a position where I can either do really well and actually hit sub-1:30 for my first half (based off Sunday’s long run) or I will push it too hard to the point where I can’t even finish the race, which would be a huge disappointment. This is something that I have to keep in the front of my mind as I am completing this program.
So as far as runs for the past week, I’m going to try and keep it as short as possible. Tuesday’s intervals was successful, 6x1000m @ 6:40 pace (4:10). Results: 3:49, 3:50, 3:44, 3:41, 3:34, 3:22. It’s weird that this program never asks for mile repeats but I did them ALL the time in high school to train for 3 mile races..Oh well. Friday was a 6 mile tempo run at moderate pace (7:00), which I was a little worried about. But I was able to run it pretty well, splits were a little off though: 6:27, 6:50, 6:39, 6:39, 6:29, 6:09. Sunday was probably one of the best workouts I’ve had so far, it was supposed to be 12 miles, easy. I never ran that many miles before, so I just wanted to go at a pace where I would be able to finish the whole thing in one piece. So I started off pretty slow, but I felt pretty good and my breathing was under control so I started picking up the pace as each mile passed. I ended up running at a pretty quick pace for an easy run and was surprised at the finishing time: 1:26. I just thought to myself, “I know I could run 1.1 more miles, I’m ready to race!” So now that I know I should be able to complete the half, I need to focus on how fast I want to run it. I still don’t want to start off too fast and then die half way through, so I think I should consider the strategy I accidentally did today, which is go out thinking it’s an easy run and just gradually pick up the pace. I know it’s going to be easier said than done since come race day, I’m going to want to hang with all the others out front, but I need to use self control and know that I will catch up later on.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Intervals 6x1000m @ 6:40 min/mile 3.75 mi 00:22 05:51 pace
What better way to start off the running week than with intervals? Was looking forward to these, probably the hardest one to date since it was a lot of intervals at a longer distance. Ran them pretty well and was able to run progressively faster after each interval. Results: 3:49, 3:50, 3:44, 3:41, 3:34, 3:22.
175/187
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The Loop – 5 mi
Post interval run, nothing special. Took it really easy and felt relaxed.
140/151
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Run not logged: 4 miles, easy
Friday, October 9, 2009
6 Mile Tempo Run 6 mi 39:16 06:32 pace
Tempo run for the week, 6 miles at moderate tempo pace (7:00) with mile warmup and cooldown. I was a little nervous about this run since it’s a good amount of miles at a decent pace. Like always, I started off too fast, but toned it down the very next mile to run the next couple of miles very comfortably. Had enough energy at the end to hit a pretty fast last mile. Felt pretty tired after the run, which is expected, might have to take tomorrow off instead of the usual easy/recovery run. Splits: 6:27, 6:50, 6:39, 6:39, 6:29, 6:09
176/193
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Run not logged: easy 25 min run around UCSD campus
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Fastest Long Run to Date 12 mi 01:26 07:10 pace
12 miles is the most I have ever ran so I wasn’t planning on going too hard, just easy enough to actually complete the workout. So I started off pretty slow (8:01) and would have been more than happy running the whole workout at that pace. But I ran the next mile faster and then the next and so on. My breathing was under control the whole time and it was actually cold out so heat was not an issue. It was quite a workout, and I still can’t believe I did it and did it well! I know that I would have been able to run 1.1 miles more, I’m so ready to run my half marathon already!! Too bad I’m only half way through my training! Patience..
Here are the splits, the loop I ran isn’t exactly 5 miles, so each mile within the loop is probably different. But if you compare the splits from loop 1 to loop 2, you can see that they are definitely progressives, nice!
Loop #1: 8:01, 7:43, 7:26, 7:21, 7:12,
Loop #2: 7:21, 7:18, 7:07, 6:46, 6:36,
1st mi of loop: 6:58,
Back: 6:42
161/185
Got some great feedback from that run: http://www.dailymile.com/people/SDrunner/entries/497603
Each week, as my first ever half marathon comes closer and closer to reality, it seems as if I’m having better and better workouts. On days I need to go hard, I’m able to hit the pace that I’m hoping for and on days where it’s easy or off, I may not have the best workout which I’m OK with. The only thing I’m afraid of now is if I am pushing myself too hard and will peak too early. Back in high school cross country, our coach planned our hard workouts for the entire season in hopes of us peaking at the very optimal moment (league finals for some, and CIF prelims/finals for Varsity). I do feel like the half marathon training program that I was recommended is geared toward peaking exactly when I actually run the half, but I may be pushing the pace too much that I begin to burn out toward the end of the program. I’m happy to say that nothing of that nature has happened yet, but who knows whether or not that will happen next week or the week after. So now I am in a position where I can either do really well and actually hit sub-1:30 for my first half (based off Sunday’s long run) or I will push it too hard to the point where I can’t even finish the race, which would be a huge disappointment. This is something that I have to keep in the front of my mind as I am completing this program. Read the rest of this entry »
This week was a pretty productive week, however in addition to my usual off day on Monday, I decided to take a nap on Wednesday instead of run. I guess it wasn’t that big of a deal since that day was an off/cross-train/easy run day anyways. I just feel that I need to run as much miles as possible to build up my endurance for the half. On that day though, I was just pooped, before work, at, and afterwards. It was funny because when I briefly woke up at 8:30PM that night, I disregarded the fact that it was dark and thought to myself, ‘dang it, I’m late for work’. Immediately after I realized it was night time, I so just went back to bed, it was nice! Read the rest of this entry »
So I followed my longest running week with my shortest, way to go! It wasn’t that bad of a week though. And I think I had good enough reasons not to run on the other days. Friday was another one of my coworker’s last day, so a group of us had dinner with her after work, can’t really say no to that. Saturday, I was planning to go for an easy ride and run, but the night before I happened to get one of those random cramps in my right calf. According to Dummies.com, it’s called a Nocturnal Leg Cramp. It was pretty bad, but I don’t even remember fully waking up when it happened and once it was over, I think I just fell back asleep. When I tried to get up in the morning to run though, I actually forgot about the cramp and walked to the restroom and then noticed the soreness in my right calf. I didn’t want to make it worse by running on it, so I was hoping to at least bike but as I did the biking motion while on my chair, I still felt the pain, so I took it as another rest day. This was my first 2 non-running days in a while now. I’m planning on going on a bike ride on Sunday, just to get some type of workout in. Hope that turns out OK. Read the rest of this entry »
The great debate about running in the morning and running at night.
Morning Running
Athletes have different preferences when it comes to running in the morning or running at night. Back in high school we would run in the mornings during the summers and weekends. But once the school year started, we would run in the afternoon after class. The reason why we ran in the mornings during the summer was because it would have been way too hot to run in the afternoons. It worked out because big invitational races were always on Saturday mornings, so we would be running in the same conditions. However, when the school year started, we had no other choice but to run after school, which was a lot harder than the mornings. But during the school year, our league meets against other high schools were after school, so we would be used to those conditions as well. There were a few times during the year where we decide to run at night..
Night Running
Night running is a lot different from running in the mornings. We once ran with glow sticks, but that didn’t really help and my teammate just threw his into the trees on the run back. Running at night is actually pretty scary for a couple of reasons. When we ran on the trail, we wouldn’t be able to see the path ahead or anything on the ground so we could have tripped on rocks, branches and other stuff. It was also dangerous because there could easily be an attacker hiding in the bushes and we wouldn’t be able to react or anticipate it. Because of those reasons, I always ran a lot faster at night than when I would run in the mornings, similar to how I sometimes run faster in the rain. There are a lot of reasons why I run faster at night, and fear is definitely one of the main reasons. There have been many runs where I ran faster because I was running with the fear of my teammate catching up to me and beating me. In the case of running at night, I was always afraid that there was something or someone coming up behind me, so it was like it was being chased the whole way.
Since I haven’t been able to log as many miles during my weekly long run or for the overall total miles for the week, I was thinking about other ways to get in a workout instead of running. About a year ago, I bought a bike on Craigslist to just to go cruising during the summer. However, that lasted only about a month or two and then it just sat in the garage for the rest of the year. So I was thinking of putting it back into use and bike a couple of miles after my regular run. I mentioned this on DailyMile and got some great feedback and advice and someone mentioned something about a Brick Workout. I have heard other runners talk about this before, but I never really understood what it was. I read that it’s a great way to cross train and help improve overall endurance. This would be a good way to ease myself into running a lot more miles and get some use out of my forgotten bicycle.
