Get After It!

Today I did my track workout. Yesterday would have been a better day for it, but when I woke up yesterday I felt tired. Wednesday's a.m. Tabata and p.m. tempo workouts left me so tired that I needed an easy day of running. I hadn't planned on the evening tempo on Wednesday, and it was only 5 miles, but it was 93 degrees when I did it. I felt like I needed to do it, so I pushed the pace. Sub 9s. My old body felt it in the heat, too.

So Thursday I just ran easy, a few with Iris in the cool morning, and more on my own later. Thursday was an unusually cool day until late afternoon when the clouds moved out.

This morning I needed to get my butt over to the track, it was heating up fast and I knew the sooner I got it done, the less I'd suffer. It was 70 degrees when I started and 79 degrees when I finished.

Again, 3 x 2000 m of mixed intervals, faster than last time, with 10 x 200 at the end. My 200s are finally picking up a little, even though I'm still slow, I made it solidly into the 43-44 second range and the turnover felt better. Getting that leg turnover back is a little easier this time. But until my 200s are averaging around 37 seconds, I'm not anywhere near what I used to be able to do. I'm still carrying about 5 pounds of extra lard that I packed on since late April. Hopefully that will be gone soon, too.

I ran in my Pearl Izumi H3s on the track and they were amazingly comfortable. I've been breaking into them slowly, given a nearly 30 year history of running in Brooks. I could not believe how good the H3s feel on the track surface. The true test will be how my body feels in a day or two, whether I feel any effects of running in those shoes. But while I was running, they felt awesome. I'm hoping I can get used to them over the summer and it would be great to be able to run the 12 hour race on the track in them in August in Wisconsin.

At the track it was quiet at first, and then surprisingly everyone started to show up. Crazy backwards running lady was there, too. Now that I know her habits, I don't mind sharing the track so much because I know she veers between lane 1 and lane 2, and every time we're 50 meters or so apart, she does move back into lane 2, so my fears of a head-on collision with her have been abated.

There was this one tall dude at the track today, with a heart rate monitor around his chest, and he was totally freaked out by crazy backwards running lady. He was trying to run in lane 2 and he's about twice her height. I'm not sure how they worked things out, but he was giving her the evil eye. He obviously hasn't shared the track with her before. It was weird to be on the track on a Friday. There were a lot more people there than I expected. I need to switch my track days back to earlier in the week.

Tonight I'll do an easy 5 miles, tomorrow I'll take it super easy, probably just a run with the girls, and then Sunday is the Estes Park marathon. So far the word is that the air quality hasn't been affected much in Estes Park. The fire is around 600 acres at this point and 30% contained. The problem with this one is that it has the potential to do damage to our drinking water supply here in Fort Collins.

My legs feel tired, but that's the way it goes until I get back to it. I have an easy week planned next week, because I have to work 4 12 hour shifts. But after that I can get going and get after it, as Wheaties Boy says.

I need to figure out my next marathon training run after Estes. It has to be within driving distance, and preferably I won't need a hotel room. There's a marathon in Aspen on July 6th. It's pretty far from the cabin and I don't know if I want to fight the crowds around the July 4th holiday. I'll have to look for alternatives. And no, the Leadville Marathon is not an option. I'm permanently retired from that one. I'd like to run something that takes me less than 7 hours to finish! Breathing is not optional...

Work Hangover Wednesday: On Fire!

We're burning up again here in Colorado.

There are three fires that I know of going on in Colorado simultaneously. Yesterday afternoon at work, around 3 pm I took a quick walk down the hall to get something out of my locker in the breakroom, and saw out the window at the end of the hall a huge plume of smoke covering almost the entire sky over west Fort Collins.

It was from a fire in Rocky Mountain National Park, the Big Meadows fire. The temperature this week soared to almost 100 degrees here, and the wind picked up, perfect conditions for a repeat of last year’s fire season, which happened the same time last summer.

This morning, though, there was no smoke in the air, and the sky looked reasonably clear. I couldn't tell that there was a fire. Either the wind shifted, or the fire is under control, or both.

The past two days we were busy enough at work but it was manageable. Monday was a particularly challenging day for me because of all the time I put into a particular patient, but that’s a story for another place. Tuesday my big chemo got cancelled and it eased up the day considerably. Watching patients on different trajectories this week, some downward, some bouncing back, some in denial, has also been a challenge.

I woke up before daylight this morning and Iris pounced on me, wanting a belly rub. I scratched her for a while and then Dennis woke up, thinking I was getting up, he asked me to make coffee. I whined my way out of it, begging to sleep. I fell back to sleep and didn’t wake up until 8:00.

Just getting those extra two or three hours of sleep this morning made all the difference in my work hangover. It’s so much easier to face the day when you’re not sleep deprived.

It was already 70 degrees and looking to be a hot one. By the time I got the girls out for their walk it was almost 10:00.

I went out for my run, deciding to break it up into two runs today. I planned to do 6 in the morning and 6 in the evening. But there was a twist…I decided today would be the first of my Tabata workouts, to pick up the intensity to the max, to get a little fat burning and anaerobic benefit. If I survived.

It was almost 80 degrees when I got out the door, and I ran the Power Trail to warm up, trying to figure out where I might be able to sneak this workout in where no one would see me and call 911. I felt surprisingly decent on my run, even after the two twelve hour shifts on my feet and the hot morning.

On my way home I found a little isolated stretch of bike path near home where there wouldn’t be any people. It was 82 degrees in the sunshine, no shade. I dropped my water bottle, set my watch, stretched my hamstrings a bit, took a deep breath and prepared myself for the unknown…

I didn’t want to think about it. Without hesitating, I hit the start button on my stopwatch, and started the four minutes of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off as hard as I could possibly go. I went back and forth on the short little concrete path. The first couple were okay but after the first minute I could feel the effort catching up to me. I kept going, counting my steps to get through the hard intervals. Ten seconds is barely enough to gasp for an extra breath before you start the next one. By the last two I was digging hard, I thought I might collapse at the end but I didn’t.

My heart rate was easily up there around 200. I checked for 15 seconds immediately after the last one was done and it was at 180, but that was as it was dropping rapidly. It didn’t take me all that long to recover and run home for my cooldown. I got 7.7 miles in total not counting Tabata.

The flowers are going wild in our yard, and I’m hoping the summer doesn’t heat up too much and dry everything up so fast. We had all that good moisture this spring. The girls are not too happy about the heat either. I don't have AC in the woman cave- yet. That is my next priority.

Tonight I’ll go out and do another 5 or 6, and tomorrow is track day. I am really hoping the Big Meadows fire gets under control soon, or it could be a problem to have the Estes Park Marathon this weekend with the smoke.

But, I’m stuck here in the Fort for the summer and I need to make the best of it. I'm already missing Death Valley.

I do have some fun trips to look forward to later in the summer though…we’re going to Manhattan Beach again this year, and I did buy airline tickets to Milwaukee so I can run the Badgerland Striders 12 hour race in August. It’s already the middle of June! How did that happen?

Now the fun part begins: getting back into full training, adding weight workouts and core work, and burning off some of this fat that comes back so easily when I slack off even for a short time. I’m hoping to get the flame burning hot shortly…between two a day workouts, weight work, tabatas, speed, hills, and Wheaties Boy tempo runs spread out evenly and generously throughout the next few months, I can get back to feeling like a runner again before long.