CIM Training Log: Week 8

I'm inching closer and closer to the marathon (10 weeks left!), and I'm getting to that point where I mainly want to talk to everyone about training, especially the day after a long run. I have figured out every single coworker who runs so I can feel less guilty in regaling them with tales of my mileage. Clearly I need a(nother) hobby. Or for Game of Thrones to come back so I can talk about that instead. Ice zombies > running, at least in terms of conversation topics.

Speaking -- or rather, writing -- of conversation topics, have I mentioned I'm concerned about El Nino? Because I'm concerned. El Nino = increased rain in California. Great! California needs it badly. Especially in the mountains because increased snowpack is the most important cure to a drought. However... this was CIM in 2012:

Photo Credit: HMGiraffy

[Insert biblical joke about Noah and boat and/or Jesus and walking on water.]

Rainy winter? AWESOME. Rainy December 6? Please no.

Do I win an award for the earliest someone has ever worried about race day weather?

In more practical and less worrying-about-the-weather-10-weeks-away news, it was another busy week at work. There was a major project I was brought in on, but thankfully it was mostly done by Friday, so I only had to work a few hours over the weekend. Unfortunately those hours were 9pm Saturday evening to just past midnight, which messed with my long run a bit. Work doesn't seem to understand the importance of running. Rude.

In non-running news, Sourabh and I went to dinner at Provenance Friday night (second time in two weeks, you could say I'm a fan) and it was just as good as the first time we went there. The Greek yogurt biscuits are SO GODDAMN DELICIOUS. I direct you to their Instagram for photographic evidence:

Biscuits!!!!! Made with Greek yogurt and always available at dinner with house honey butter. They're sort of like crack for us culinary fiends. #biscuits #biscuit #breadandbutter

A photo posted by Provenance Restaurant (@provenance_oc) on Sep 25, 2015 at 8:51am PDT

I'm seriously contemplating ordering a bag of these for the drive up to Sacramento in December. Perfect carb-loading, right??

We've now eaten twice at Provenance, and both times our meals have been delicious. They grow almost all of their vegetables in the garden located by the restaurant, and they're all about seasonal, local, fresh ingredients. Also, they serve my favorite prosecco at a relatively affordable $10/glass, so there's that. And I love that you can almost always get a table there day-of, which isn't always the case at the tastiest OC restaurants. Clearly I'm a fan. (No, I'm not being paid to shill for this restaurant, but if they want to give me free biscuits, I will gladly name drop them constantly. Did I mention I like their biscuits?)

Saturday I met up with Laura, who was in OC to meet with a sports chiropractor, and we had a great time chatting about running, food, TV, Hillary and the current Republican circus primary candidates. No photographic evidence because I just don't take that many people pictures. Sorry?

Sunday was spent with my legs up the wall post-run, more eating (obviously), and the typical food prep. I'm currently obsessed with Trader Joe's turkey and wild rice-stuffed bell peppers. I tried them last week and decided I loved them, so I got enough for every lunch this week (minus the office-wide lunch on Thursday). We'll see if I still like them on Friday...

Anyway, on to the training log!


CIM Training Log: Week 8

Monday: Off.

Worked till 11pm on Sunday so gladly slept in till 7:30 and took a rest day.


Tuesday: AM Yoga + PM Strength.

20 minutes of lower body yoga in the morning. Lots of hip/quad/hamstring loosening.

PM Strength -- 3x15:
(1) single leg deadlifts
(2) chest press
(3) squats
(4) elevated plank to row

4 x 1 minute plank

Wednesday: AM 6 miles easy around the neighborhood and Bommer Meadow.

Cooler than it had been in a while, but humid (high 60s, 87% humidity).

6.01 miles in 1:01:55 for 10:19 average pace; 134 avg HR; 363 ft. elev. gain.

I felt pretty good, especially given that a fair amount of the run was climbing (and by fair amount I mean half since there's very little flat -- it's mostly up on the way out, down on the way back, then up the hill back to my place). My legs were a bit sore from strength the night before. 

I was happy with the pace given the hills and the low heart rate. And I didn't look at my watch/pace much. I was just trying to run what felt easy. Focusing on running by effort as much as possible.

Thursday: PM 6x400m at Back Bay.

I was bummed at how much slower these 400m repeats were than the last time I did this workout, but then I compared the heat to the last time (86 degrees versus low 60s), and it made a lot more sense. This is why I keep track of the weather in these logs -- it can make a big difference in the run, especially for tougher workouts.

2 mile warm up nice and slow.

6x400m: (1) 1:51, (2) 1:46, (3) 1:46, (4) 1:46, (5) 1:43, (6) 1:44

1 mile cool down

Worked until midnight, so I replaced the typical 15 minute core workout with four 1 minute planks. Not as good, but everything counts.

Friday: PM Spin + Strength. 

45 minutes on the bike, 130 avg HR using the spin playlist I put together a couple weeks ago:

I'm really loving "If I Go" by Ella Eyre and "Clap Snap" by Icona Pop lately. Also, I beg forgiveness for the Pitbull and Jason Derulo on my playlists. I just love trashy pop music...

2x15:
(1) tricep press on cables
(2) squat to bicep curl on cables
(3) "Arnold" shoulder presses
(4) one legged squat w/ weights

2x15:
(1) single leg bicycles on BOSU (each leg)
(2) toe taps on BOSU

Saturday: 45 minutes easy at Back Bay.

81 degrees, "feels like 90". Ran without a watch but had a pretty good idea of the mileage since I know Back Bay so well (also, there are mile markers). About 4.6 miles, so roughly 9:50 pace.

4x20 seconds strides. Dripped all the sweat everywhere.

Sunday: 14 mile long run from hell (12 easy, 2 miles fast finish), through Shady Canyon, William Mason Park and Back Bay.

ARGH this run was insanely frustrating. I was running alone, which was fine, but I had to work until past midnight the night before (urgent work came in at 9pm) so didn't sleep until around 1am. If I'd been meeting someone I would have gotten up, but I opted for more than 7 hours of sleep instead of less than 6. Coach Jess said she thought this was the right decision, despite the heat, since it was a long week of work.

I had a Picky Bar, glass of Nuun (extra electrolytes were necessary) and a few bites of a banana before I headed out. My handheld water bottle was half Gatorade and half water, which got more diluted each time I refilled it at the occasional water fountains. I took 1/3 of a Gu at mile 6 and had the rest at mile 8.

When I started it was high 70s and it just kept climbing, going from feels like 89 degrees to feels like 91 by the end, and almost my entire route was in the sun. I thought I had drunk enough water on Saturday, but from miles 7-9 I had side stitches that I'm guessing were from dehydration. (For context on heat/sweating: I weighed two pounds less when I got home, and I'd drunk at least three handhelds on the run and chugged a Camelbak and 1/4 of a Gatorade bottle on the ride back, so I'm guessing I sweated 4-5 pounds of body weight.)

All of this was not great, obviously, but it was hardly a run from hell. However. Around mile 9, my Garmin started showing much slower splits than I'd been seeing. I had my Garmin set to display only mileage and heart rate, no pace, so I would run by effort. As my miles clicked by, the splits had consistently dropped, from 10:40 down to high 9s as I left the hills.

At the first slower mile, I thought I was just slowing down, even though I didn't feel like I was, so I switched to view pace so I could push myself a bit more and make sure this wasn't just me mentally giving up. Only the next mile clocked in at 12:00+! It felt soul-crushing when I felt like I was putting in the right amount of effort, yet my pace was dropping so substantially. It made me question my ability to gauge my effort, and of course I was questioning my fitness level, especially after running a relatively strong 14 miler the previous week.  I put more effort into speeding up, and my heart rate increased, but the pace wasn't dropping -- it was only increasing.

It dawned on me that it wasn't me breaking down; it was my Garmin. I realized I was at the 11.5 mile mark of the route (based on when I had run the exact same route with Kristina two weeks prior), yet my Garmin was registering 10.5 miles. I used Google Maps when I got home, and yes, my Garmin was about 0.75-0.80 miles off. As I finished the 12 miles, my Garmin suddenly started showing a 6:45/7:15 pace. Not quite the pace I was running. 

It's you, Garmin. It's you.

After those demoralizing last three miles of the easy miles portion, I tried to use my phone's stopwatch for the last two miles, using the Back Bay mile markers. However, I had long run brain and instead of hitting stop when I finished, I hit reset. I believe it was 16 something, and that sounds right effort-wise, but I honestly cannot remember. I was a mess. 

I believe my pace for the first 12 miles was ~10:00 (Garmin recorded two hours flat before I stopped it at what I believe was the accurate 12 mile mark, and I'm hoping that was correct). It wasn't a bad run effort-wise or even pace-wise (at least I think?), but goddamn, those three miles from 9-12 where I felt like I was utterly failing at producing any kind of a consistent effort sucked. I was melting in 90 degree temps and questioning how I could possibly run 26 miles when I was falling apart after 9 miles. 

But as I keep reminding myself about the run (and each day it's humid or hot or I run up a steep hill): it all makes me a stronger runner who will be more prepared on race day.


Total Mileage = ~31 miles

Life Lately

I haven't done much life updating in a while, so I thought it would be kind of fun to do that for my family/friends who read here to know what's happening down here in SoCal. Lately I've been...



Studying...

I just started my three week bar exam leave. If you've been reading for a while, you might recall that I spent summer of 2013 studying for the New York bar exam (and I passed, phew). Unfortunately, a lot of states do not accept the bar admittances of other states, so I have to retake the bar exam in California. Where it is three days instead of two. And instead of a summer, I have three weeks. Thankfully I wasn't too busy at work the past two weeks so got a fair amount of studying in, which was good. I will gladly be accepting all good luck wishes and/or condolences at having to retake the bar.


Listening to...



Still jamming out to my Surf City Half playlist. Some of these are "oldies" that show up on my playlists routinely and some are new to me. The MVP of the race's playlist was definitely David Guetta's "When Love Takes Over". I hadn't listened to it more than once before and it gave me such an energy boost heading up a hill, so I added it to the playlist mid-race, figuring I'd want that feeling at the end (I did).

Resting...

Today was my first day working out since race day. I'm really glad that I took five days to rest and recover. I stretched and foam rolled each day, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't jumping back into working out without giving myself both a mental and physical break. I think it worked because I was excited for my training session today (it went well) and can't wait to spin for two hours tomorrow in support of Cycle for Survival. I think giving yourself a mental break after a race is just as important as a physical one. By Friday, I was eagerly anticipating my first run on Monday, and that's the feeling I want to have about running.

Reading...

Well, mainly bar materials, but I've also been reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel before I go to bed at night. I'm trying to be strict about getting enough sleep, so I usually only read for 15-20 minutes, meaning it's slow going (the book is about 600 pages long), but it's reminding me why I was so fascinated by the Tudor period of England's history in undergrad. Thanks to a research grant, I actually spent a month in London doing research on Anne Boleyn and writing a paper on her impact on British culture and religion the summer after my freshman year of college. Wolf Hall focuses on Thomas Cromwell, a lawyer/banker/councillor of the king. It's part of a trilogy but the third book hasn't come out yet.


Eating...

I had a fantastic Korean dinner with a friend at Tang 190 last night. I love the fact that there are so many different cuisines in Irvine. I was a bit worried before we moved to Orange County that it would be all Applebee's and Chili's, but I've been pleasantly surprised at the quality and type of food here.

This probably doesn't look great, but it was delicious -- crispy chicken thighs with kumquat relish over freekeh with Swiss chard.

Sourabh and I recently signed up for Blue Apron, the ingredient-and-recipe delivery service, and have been enjoying it so far. It forces us to cook more and gives us recipes and ingredients we wouldn't normally think of making. We'll see if it's still feasible when we're both working, but for now, it's been a fun change of pace. I'd recommend it for home cooks who have a hard time making anything but standard, simple recipes (that would be me).


Wearing...

This awesome Beast Mode hat. Marshawn Lynch is my favorite Seahawk (please read this great article on him and why he doesn't talk to the media), so Sourabh surprised me with a Beast Mode hat. He ordered it before the Super Bowl, so it wasn't just a "please don't hate me because my team won" gift. Which is good because I'm still a bit bitter...


And that's about it. I don't know how much I'll be posting over the next few weeks as I cram for the bar, especially since I won't be training for anything, but if I do go silent, I'll hopefully have a triumphant return in March!

5K Playlist and Race Pump Up Playlist

Gooood morning!

I'm flying to Chicago today to spend four days with my Uncle John and his family, and to celebrate my birthday a couple days early with the bff, Katie. Her birthday is only three days after mine (13th for me, 16th for her). Clearly we were meant to be friends! I haven't seen my Chicago relatives in two years, so it'll be wonderful to catch up.

My 5K Playlist!

Confession: I still haven't taken my blue ribbon out of my purse. I stashed it there after the Northwest Raspberry Festival 5K, and I don't have a place to put it in my apartment, so it's still sitting in my purse. It's in the pocket where I keep my phone, and it makes me smile every time I see it. 

Part of the reason I had such a great race a few weeks ago was definitely my mental game. I felt more mentally strong than I have in a long time. There was no, "why am I here, this hurts, wahh." It was all "yes, you've got this, you are rocking this." It was honestly kind of embarrassing, but hey, whatever works!

Another reason I felt great? I warmed up before the race while listening to my new favorite pre-hard workout playlist. It's a Fort Minor song and two Eminem songs, and the playlist leaves me SO ready to race and kick ass. 

For the 5K, I put together a playlist full of fast-paced, fun music. And guess what? It's approximately 25 minutes and my goal was to finish in less than that. I made the playlist specifically with the idea that it shouldn't end before I finished the race. Mission accomplished! :)

The Usher vs Nirvana mash-up is awesome -- I found it here, although unfortunately I don't think it's available for download anymore.

Do you use music to pump yourself up before a race or tough workout? What are your favorite fast songs?

Marathon Training Motivation Playlist

Do you guys know what next week is? It's the start of marathon training for me! Yes, after announcing that I am running the Chicago Marathon way back in February when I had to register, I am finally starting marathon training.

I am so excited to push my limits and see what I can do! Once I hit long runs above 13.1 miles, for the first time since August and September 2012, I will be going the farthest I've ever gone on each long run. It's both scary and exhilarating.

I am also really eager to start fundraising for the Lurie Children's Hospital. I wrote about why I'm fundraising when I registered -- this place has treated my best friend, Katie, for her cancer continuously over the past 10 years and everything I've ever heard about them from her has been incredible. I cannot think of a more deserving Chicago institution to run for than the Lurie Children's Hospital. I hope you'll join me in supporting them!


Now, since I am both excited and freaked out at the distances I'll be running, I put together a motivational playlist over the weekend. A "move yo' ass" playlist, if you will. I used it while running on Sunday and loved it. Since it's the start of fall marathon training season, I thought I'd share it!

What's your favorite motivational running song?

NYC Half 2013 Playlist

Thank you all SO much for your amazing comments yesterday. I was really content with the outcome of Sunday's race, especially as I thought about the fact that I get to always have a 2:00:00 half marathon in my race history. Reading your sweet and thoughtful comments made me feel even happier about it!

I wanted to share my playlist that I used while I was running on the West Side Highway. I actually went music-less through Central Park and down Seventh Avenue through Times Square because I wanted to save music for the rough times.

Thank goodness because, like I said, the West Side Highway was really rough for me because my body started giving out at that point. My pinkeye has come back, just in the other eye, making me think that my body was still fighting this virus all weekend and I was just in a lull. That would explain why I was so fatigued!

This playlist was pretty awesome. It kept me going through some pretty shitty miles. It's a big mix, as you can see -- from Kelly Clarkson to The Lonely Island to The Heavy to M.I.A.

What's your go-to pump-up song right now? Has a playlist helped you through rough times in a race before?

Race Recap: 2013 Gridiron Classic 4M

I wasn't sure how to start writing this race recap. Every other race I've run recently I had really strong feelings, both good (and very good!) and very, very bad. This one was fun because it was a race and there was no pain, but I just didn't come out of it feeling amazing or terrible. It was more, "ok, that's done. Cool!"

Part of that is my fault since I wasn't exactly well-prepared for this race. I was treating it as a tempo run and my prep the night before wasn't exactly that of a competitive racer. And by that I mean I had three glasses of wine and stuffed myself on cheese, chips, and this incredible cauliflower buffalo dip made by Abby as she, Beth, and I made our vision boards. I also did not go to sleep until after 1:30 AM and had to wake up at 7:30 AM.

But I regret nothing. Because that was a great night and this race/tempo run ended up fairly well, too.

After drinking a tall glass of nuun (with two aspirin, not going to lie) and downing a banana with peanut butter, I met up with Nicole, Allison, Meg, and Brittany. It was a fun mix of girls! We chatted and hopped up and down to stay warm, complaining about the freezing cold and explaining the Super Bowl to Meg, who's Canadian.

Nicole, Allison, me, Brittany, and Meg
(source: Meg)

I had met Allison and Meg the previous day at Lululemon Run Club, Nicole I knew from the informal Thanksgiving Turkey Trot, and Brittany is in my running book club that's coordinated by Jess. We also saw Ashley as well before heading to our corrals to start the race.

So, first things first. IT WAS COLD. I'm not sure why, but other runners agreed that Sunday was much colder than Saturday despite what the thermostat read. My face felt frozen during the entire run. My breathing didn't feel that labored during the race, but it hurt in my chest like the remnants of a cough for several hours after.

Central Park was gorgeous, though. A fresh coat of snow had fallen overnight but the roads were clear, so there wasn't any issue running and we got to enjoy a winter wonderland as we ran through the park.

I think I'm going to repeat my light breakfast of a banana and peanut butter for future short races. I really liked having so little in my stomach, although I was stuffed from the previous night so the holdover might have made me fuller. It's something I'll be trying again, though.

My splits demonstrated my biggest weakness right now: hills.

Mile 1 - 9:13
Mile 2 - 8:34
Mile 3 - 9:05
Mile 4 - 8:30

Mile 1 had Cat Hill and Mile 3 had the rolling hills on the west side of the park. Sooo.... I guess I better do some hill repeats in preparation for the NYC Half. Because those 8:30's felt really good and not too hard at all, so it sucks to be dragged down by my poor performance on hills. I felt like I could have kept the 8:30 pace up for several more relatively flat miles.

All of this added up to:

Average pace (according to NYRR) - 8:56
Total time - 35:43

A :02 pace PR for me in NYRR races and a PR at the 4 mile distance. My last 4 mile race, in September, I held a 9:17 pace, so this was a PR of 21 seconds. I think I could have done better, but all things considered, I'll take it.

Me being able to run this race despite not feeling in tip top shape might have been helped by my awesome playlist. Seriously, this one's really good, you guys. I highly recommend downloading at least the song "Coming Home" by Diddy (or is he Puff Daddy now? Or Sean Combs? P. Diddy? I can't keep track). It's a great, great song and has a terrific beat.

Anyway, after crossing the finish line, I tried to find people and saw Ashley one more time (who ran a completely kickass race, by the way!). After about 5 minutes, though, I decided I was freezing so I headed home and crawled into bed to warm up.

And after checking Twitter, it looks like that's what everyone did because--stop me if I mentioned this already--it was cold.

Did you run a Super Bowl race? Have you run any races in sub-freezing temperatures?

Goals & Weekend Update: Friends and Fitness

I had such an amazing post-Thanksgiving weekend, full of old and new friends and lots of exercise, that I want to recap it before laying out my goals for this week and how I did on last week's goals.

Weekend Update
I spent Friday being lazy and watching movies, doing some yoga, and getting dinner with a friend and seeing Lincoln. The movie was really good, but what stood out was Daniel Day Lewis (of course). His performance as Lincoln didn't seem like a performance, it just seemed like Steven Spielberg had conjured up Lincoln for his movie. There's no way it's not going to be one of the 10 Best Picture nominees next year! As for Black Friday shopping, I can't decide if it's awesome or terrible that my only Black Friday purchases were Knicks gear and exercise-related. I picked up a running water bottle from Athleta since the fountains around New York are shut off for the winter, and I'm excited to receive my first Oiselle purchase soon! I ordered the runfinity scarf and a long-sleeved run tee. I'll update with my thoughts when I get them.

On Saturday, I took a wonderful Uplifting class with friends from my firm, Lauren and Hana. It was so great to get back to Uplift Studios. It had been too long! I hadn't taken a class with Michelle in quite a while, and she did a great kickass interval-based class. Hana loved the studio and we were all exhausted by the end.

Michelle had an amazing playlist with some terrific mashups that had me searching SoundCloud for more mashups. I ended up finding a ton that I'm so excited to run with in the coming weeks.

After hanging out at Uplift catching up for a bit, we parted ways and I headed uptown to meet up with Abby and join her on her first post-marathon run. We kept a slow pace since she was just a tiny bit sore from, y'know, Boston qualifying at the Philly Marathon on Sunday. In her first marathon. No big deal. (In case you don't know, Boston qualifying is a huge goal for runners around the world, and many runners work for years and are never able to achieve it)

We ended at JackRabbit Sports -- they were having a big Black Friday (weekend) sale that we wanted to check out. I picked up a pair of Brooks for only $50! I needed a pair that gave me greater support for over-pronation so finding a pair of Brooks for such a low price was really exciting. Beth met us at JackRabbit and we met up for brunch and drinks. New discovery: grapefruit mimosas are delicious. It was so great to sit down with some fellow running-obsessed friends and chat for several hours, and I loved getting to know both Beth and Abby better.

it's gotten SO cold, but Central Park is beautiful as always

I can't lie, today was kind of rough. In the best possible way. I had already committed to taking a Refine Method class with Lynette today and wasn't about to cancel on her, but when Holly Rilinger posted on Facebook that she was leading a Nike Training Camp session on Sunday morning for free, I knew I had to hit it up. So it was a double day, despite already being pretty tired from the Uplifting class on Saturday.


The session at Nike was amazing. Holly was a fantastic instructor, which I would have expected given her spin class, but one thing that I really loved was how sports-oriented the workout was. Holly is a former pro basketball player, and I felt like that came through in how she led the workout and started it -- team cheers on three, lots of partner-oriented work, and even a basketball-style shuffle around the room. We did two 10-exercise circuits by time, doing each exercise for 1 minute, and there was extra core work in between the two circuits. I left Nike and walked through Central Park to Refine Method, feeling tired but energized in that great way you feel after an amazing workout.

the Sunday morning crew!
(source)

I was left exhausted, but today was amazing. When the first jumping jacks started at Refine, I wasn't sure I could push through, but I did. I was able to put in real effort and almost perform as well as I would have at a normal class. I loved pushing myself to my absolute limits and seeing how far I could go.

But um... I'll be doing some less intense strength work this week. Because my legs are gone.

Last week's goals
Here's how I did last week:
• 1 spin session (done and loved it!)
• 3 strength training workouts (ended up with 4!)
• 3 runs for at least 15 miles (only got two runs and 10 miles in)
• 2-3 yoga practices (1.5 - a bit with my trainer and one video practice)

Goals for this week
This week's goals:
• 1 spin session
• 3 runs (2 speed sessions, 1 long run of 8 miles including a race!)
• 2 yoga practices
• 2 strength sessions


How was your Thanksgiving weekend? Any fun Black Friday purchases?

P.S. My trainer Amanda went to Haiti recently to teach yoga to children there. She's written an incredible series of posts about her time there: part 1, part 2, and part 3. Give them a read if you have a few minutes and want some inspiration!