Knee Ups and Downs

The past few weeks have been rocky. The small amount of knee pain I had a few weeks ago got worse and worse. I did the 6 mile run on week 4 with Olga and it felt great. The following weekend I ended up getting new shoes and resting instead of doing the 6 mile run. Week 6 I did a 5 mile long run instead of the 7 because the knee was still bothering me. Today I did an 8 mile long run and felt great!


I'm not really going to go through each of these dates one by one, because I did keep to the training plan overall. Besides the long run adjustments above, I did stick to all of the mid week runs, along with doing Crossfit ~3 times a week.

Week

Dates

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

4	1/20-1/26	Rest	3 m run	3 m run	3 m run	Rest	6 m run	30 min walk
5	1/27-2/2	Rest	3 m run	3 m run (1 mile run, 2 mile elliptical (knee pain)	crossfit	3 mile run, November Project Hills	6 m run	Cross
6	2/3-2/9	Rest	3 m run	3 m run	3 m run	Rest	7 m run	Cross
7	2/10-2/16	Rest	3 m run	4 m run	3 m run	Rest	5 m run	Cross

I'll get better about recording stuff next week. The train start to ramp up here on out. Here's a preview:

8	2/17-2/23	Rest	3 m run	4 m run	3 m run	Rest	9 m run	Cross
9	2/24-3/2	Rest	3 m run	5 m run	3 m run	Rest	10 m run	Cross
10	3/3-3/9	Rest	3 m run	5 m run	3 m run	Rest	7 m run	Cross
11	3/10-3/16	Rest	3 m run	6 m run	3 m run	Rest	12 m run	Cross
12	3/17-3/23	Rest	3 m run	6 m run	3 m run	Rest	13 m run	Cross

Are we in California yet?

My blog has been given a makeover as inspiration for California.

It has been a COLD few weeks here in Boston. Because of that, the majority of my training has been treadmill-focused. Here was my prescribed training plan for the past two weeks and how things have been going:

Dates	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
1/13-1/19	Rest	3 m run	3 m run	3 m run	Rest	3 m run	60 min walk
1/20-1/26	Rest	3 m run	3 m run	3 m run	Rest	6 m run	30 min walk

Tuesday 1/14
Track workout at Tufts. I met up with a couple Crossfit friends for an early morning speed workout at Tufts. In our workout we did a 800m warm up,  then 3x200 with 100m walking breaks in between, 3 times, then some bodyweight stuff between each round. This is what is looked like:

800m warm up
track warmups: broad jumps, butt-kickers, high knees
3x200 max sprint, 100m walks in between
20 jumping squats
1 minute plank hold
3x200 max sprint, 100m walks in between
20 pushups
1 minute plank hold
3x200 max sprint, 100m walks in between
20 jumping squats
30 second side plank each side
800m cool down

I was surprised with how fast I went on the 200m sprints. My garmin says my top speed was 4:55 on the sprints and my overall averagepace was 6:47. zoom! I didn't do the total 3m as prescribed, but this speed work felt great.

Wednesday 1/15
AM: 3 mile run on treadmill, easy 9:20 pace

PM: Crossfit!

Shoulder Press (3 RM)

12 Minutes to hit a 3RM

Metcon

Sweet Pea (Time)

2 rounds for time
- 1K row
- 50 DU
- 20 TTB
- 1 rope climb
rest 5 minutes between rounds

Woof.

Thursday 1/16
3 miles on treadmill, easy 9:15 pace. Right knee feeling a little weird but not bad. I also developed a pretty bad cold for the next few days so i took them off from working out.


Sunday 1/18
3 miles on treadmill, 9:00 pace with some speedwork in the middle. first day back from feeling sick,


Monday 1/19
MLK Jr day so off from work! Had the chance to go to the noon WOD which was nice:

Weightlifting

Press Complex ( 5 x complex ascending)

2 Push Presses + 1 Push Jerk without putting bar down.

Metcon

The Ants Go Marching (2x 2) (AMRAP – Rounds and Reps)

Alternate with a Partner
2 Minutes on, 2 Minutes off (x 5)
- 10 Pullups
- 20 Double Unders

I did pretty good at DUs.My longest sets were ~10, but I didn't whip myself too much which was a small victory.

Tuesday 1/20
3 miles on treadmill, hill work. did a 3-5% incline every other song

Wednesday 1/21
3 miles on treadmill, Tempo run
mile 1: warm up (6.0-6.9 every minute increasing)
mile 2: 8:27 pace
mile 3: 9:00 pace

Thursday 1/22
3 miles on treadmill, 9:20 pace. Right knee hurting the whole time. My knee continued to hurt throughout the day, especially when walking down stairs

Friday 1/23
 Rest!

Saturday 1/24
Long run day! For breakfast I had oatmeal made with vanilla almond milk, banana, and a scoop of Teddy's PB. Eaten about an hour before the run:

I met up with Olga for this run and it was great. We were going to run on Sunday but Saturday ended up being the warmest day in recent history, a whopping 25 degrees! I parked at my gym, ran the 0.5 miles to her house, then we did a 5.5 mile course around the river. We ended at my gym and she finished her 6 miles by running home again. Here are the splits:

Mile 2 was a little slower since we had to cross a couple streets. Overall, I'm super impressed with these times.I know these are no record breakers, but are definitely way more consistent and fast than I used to be.

My knee didn't hurt at all during yesterday's long run. A couple hours later (after eating lots of food and sitting on a couch at a Crossfit brunch), it bothered me a bit. This morning when I woke up, my right knee felt fine but my whole left leg was super tight: glute, hammy, calf, knee. 

Sunday

75 Minute All levels yoga class at the Corner Studio. The stretching felt so gooood. I'm going to keep doing some lunges and glute stretches this afternoon to try and work out this left side. Here's me now! Icing away the knee and relaxing with a book. Can you spot the pup? Hint: stairs.

Goal this week: go to crossfit more than twice. Definitely haven't been getting my money's worth this month but I have stuck 100% to my running plan so I don't feel too bad.4 weeks down, 18 to go!

San Diego Training Week 1

Oh hey! Since the last time I posted, a lot has happened. Mainly, Olga and I have decided to run the 2014 San Diego Rock N Roll Marathon on June 1!

That gives us roughly 6 months to train, and we're going to take it nice and slow. My goal only for this race is to make it there. And by that I mean, not get injured. I found a nice Hal Higdon novice plan that builds the mileage very gradually so we have high hopes. We already bought the plane tickets to at least we have that much going for us.

This past week kicked off week 1 of marathon training. Here is what was prescribed:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Rest	2 m run	3 m run	2.5 m run	Rest	5.5 m run	30 min walk

and it was a success! Which is really exciting considering I was in Cancun Monday-Thursday on a work trip.

Monday-Wedesday

I did my short runs on Tues and Wed at the hotel treadmill at the Fiesta Americana in Cancun, which overlooked the Caribbean Sea. Very Nice.

Thursday

rest

Friday

Thursday was an exhausting travel day so I ended up doing the 2.5 run on Friday. I actually ended up doing 3 since my legs felt pretty good. i did that one as a speed workout on a treadmill at the gym, this one to be precise:

Saturday

Double workout! Saturday morning I woke up planning to go to crossfit. I was feeling pretty tight though so I decided to first go to a 75 min vinyasa yoga class at the Corner Studio, followed by crossfit. The WOD yesterday was a good one, filled with lots of different movements.

Metcon

1/11/14 (Time)

With a Partner, 4 rounds of 4 minutes of work, 1 minute rest between rounds. 1 Partner works at a time

Round 1
- WallBalls (Min 1 and 2)
- Partner Medball situps (6′) (Min 3 and)

Round 2
- Thrusters (95, 65)
-OH Squats

Round 3
- Air Squats
- Burpees

Round 4
- Pullups
- Toes to Bar

For round 2, I did shoulder to overhead and squat lunges since my left hip has been really fussy when I squat lately. I just finished up 4 weeks of physically therapy on it, but I'm pretty sure i have a hip impingement that will cause deep squats to hurt forever. yikes.

Friday

First long run! Today was great, my first long run of the training, with almost all negative splits! 

 

I was supposed to do 5.5 today, but the route I chose ended up being close to 6.5. I went all along the Charles and it was gorgeous. I decided to run to the 6 mile mark, then walk the rest of the way as a cool down.

I want to do a better job of tracking and experimenting with what i eat pre and post long runs. I've had stomach issues in the past with running, and want to rid them once and for all. Today actually went really well! I had a little bit of cramping around mile 2, but nothing too bad. Here was breakfast, eaten about an hour before the run:

2 Kashi 7 grain waffles with Teddy PB and a banana. I considered only having one, but I had so much energy throughout this entire run that 2 might have just done the trick.

Post run: Fage 2% plain greek yogurt with a chopped apple and kashi cinnamon wheat squares

And that's all! Now for some pics of pups:

Olive before I left on my run. She's mad I"m not taking her.

And this BEAST of a pup at the dog park in the afternoon::

Rebuilding

I'm BACK. I feel like I start most of my blog posts with some sort of statement like that. I'm not very good at this whole thing. I'm back for real this time though because I've got the itch again.


About 2 months ago, I lost the running bug. In a big way. I just hated it. I decided not to do my marathon in early August for a few reasons. First and foremost, running just was not fun. It became I chore, and I felt like I was only getting worse at it. If I woke up in the morning and had a run on my schedule, I dreaded the thought of going outside and doing it. I was just mentally negative about the whole activity. In addition, I was getting a weird pain in the back of my right knee (more on that later). So I just decided to ask myself

If it's not fun...why do it??

So I didn't :)


In fact, I pretty much stopped running completely by late August. One problem however, was that I did still have Reach the Beach on my calendar for mid September. I was very nervous for this race. My 3 legs covered over 18 miles in 18 hours, which was far more miles than I've ever put in in that period of that. But I sucked it up, and ended up loving that race. Like I always do.

I did decide to continue my running break for a while though. After Reach the Beach was done, a pretty weird thing happened to my running schedule...I had no major races planned. And to this very moment I still don't. This is the first time since January 2011 that I haven't had a half marathon on my calendar, and it feels very liberating. I can go to the gym on my own terms, and I don't feel the painful guilt that I used to get when I didnt go every single day.

That being said, I am starting to get the itch again. With more crossfit and short, high-intensity track workouts under my belt under the past month, I feel stronger. I want to start slowly bringing running back into my life.


I told this to Bill this morning, and he had some great advice. Don't register for anything yet. I have a very bad and impulsive habit of signing up for races the second they get in my head, without starting any training. This has been my consistent recipe for disaster. Instead, I'm going to start slow. I'm going to set small goals for myself week to week until I feel that I'm ready for a race again.

That being said, my goal for this week will be to run TEN miles. Not a ten mile run, but 10 miles total. This should be totally doable, so I'm excited to take it on.


We'll see how it goes!

Overwhelmed with Olive

So what's been going on lately over here?

The puppy has arrived!! We picked up Olive about 10 days ago today. We named her Olive after a little Olive tree that we have growing in a pot in our kitchen. No real other rhyme or reason to it.
She is the greatest little puppy ever. She's super smart, spunky, and overall obedient. It doesn't hurt that she's freaking adorable too.

This puppy has a LOT of energy. As I sit here writing, she is going absolutely insane over a bunch of tissue paper I gave her to play with. Bill and I really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into with an 8 week old puppy. We knew it would take a lot of time and patience, but we didn't really know just how much energy it would take to keep her fully trained and entertained. We've been sleeping in shifts and neither one of us has really been able to fully relax. The good side is that Bill works from home so he can spend lots of time with her during the day.

Needless to say, I'm tired. My schedule has pretty much become wake up ~5, take Olive out to poop/pee, give Olive breakfast, try to tire her out before 6am crossfit/Run,  (if it doesn't work, Crossfit/Run doesn't happen)commute , work, commute, eat dinner, take Olive out to pee/poop, feed Olive, play with Olive to tire her out before bed, sleep. Basically it's Olive's world and we're just living in it :)

My marathon training hasn't taken too much of a beating from it...yet. I did my 11 mile run on Monday, did a Yoga for Runners podcast on Tuesday, and now I'm mustering up the energy to go for my 5 mile Wednesday run.

What I really want to do right now is this...

Happy National Running Day!

This week I've been a good little marathon trainer, sticking to my plan every day! Here's what's been happenin:

Yesterday I went to 6am Crossfit for the first time in a while. Now that's it's warm and bright out at 6am, the class is much more crowded. During the winter there would usually be 4-5 people in the 6 am class, and yesterday there was ~12. The more the merrier!

Strength

3x5 negative pull ups

2x5 dips (blue band)

WOD: 4 Rounds for Time

• 4 Squat Cleans (75#)
• 8 Deadlifts (75#)
• 200m run

This workout took me 11:20. It was a good one! The combination of leg strength work in the squats & deadlifts + fast short runs left me super exhausted. Surprisingly my legs feel good today, but my arms and back are super tight. super super super.

Today I went for a 5 mile run around JP pond after work. I was feeling pretty tired for most of it so it definitely wasn't my fastest run ever. Oh well, 5 miles is 5 miles when my goal right now is to just get my weekly mileage up.

Then I came home and made this ugly dinner. Chicken, mashed caulilower, sauteed mushrooms. It was a pretty bland meal, but I was tired and it did the trick.

Now I have a tummy ache while watching the Bruins. There's 8 minutes left in the third, and I have no hope of staying awake for the finish. Bedtime for this old lady.

Monday Runday

Today has been a lovely little Monday. Work was pretty good, slower than usual. Day One of Puppy Challenge was also a success.


Lunchtime: salad with kale, quinoa, mushrooms, baby tomatoes, and 2 hardboiled eggs. 4 dates for "dessert" :)

I snacked on some cherries and almonds in the afternoon.


After work I headed to the track at Tufts for a track speed workout.

• 1 mile warm up (9:40 min/mile)
• 400 meter @ 7:10 min/mile, 200 meter walk, repeat 5 times
• 1 mile cool down (9:40 min/mile)

total: 4 miles:

It felt really great. The weather was beautiful- much cooler than the past few days. After the run I did two 1 minute plank holds with 30 second side planks in between.

I was ravenous when I got home. Big salads with romaine, mushrooms, raisins, corns, baby tomatoes, a hardboiled egg, and broiled salmon. 

NOM!

Okay, time to keep catching up with Arrested Development. Night!

6 Week Puppy Challenge!

Happy Rainy, Humid Monday Boston!

So I feel like I've fallen off the wagon a bit- with running, crossfit, eating, AND blogging.

To get back on track and try to feel overall better before this summer is over, the boyfriend and I are starting a 6 week challenge. This won't necessarily be 100% Paleo (will include things like quinoa, greek yogurt, peanut butter, etc), but it will be 100% cleaner eating and more regular exercise. The end goal will not necessarily be to watch numbers fall from the scale (though I will weigh myself before and after)...but I will take body measurements, and just record how I feel overall. For the record, right now I'm feeling pretty Blah.

The thing is- we needed an "end" date. A date to look forward to that that wasn't so far away that we lost interest, but was far enough away that we could work towards measurable results. Hmmm...What could be a  cool event happening in our lives that takes place somewhere in late July-early August....



THE PUPPY ARRIVES!!!

So today is day 1. I'll be blogging here MUCH more to keep myself accountable. I'll be posting my workouts and a lot of what I eat.

So let's get started! This morning's breakfast was a Two Ingredient Pancake topped with Trader Joes crunchy peanut butter...green tea with almond milk on the side.



Also, I still need to do a race recap of the John Kelley Half Marathon from last weekend :)

Back at it

Guess what! I ran yesterday and today... pain free! Granted they were both super short distances... yesterday I did 3.5 miles and today I did 2 directly after crossfit.

Though these distances aren't huge, I'm really happy that I feel like I'm in a place to start training again. Speaking of training, next week begins my MARATHON TRAINING. dun dun dun. I went with Hal Higdon's website for ideas since I've used him in the past for halfs with success. I'm going with the 18 week Novice 2 plan. The Novice I is also for beginners, but that plan makes me feel like a wimp. Then I looked at the Intermediate, and though I think I could handle the mileage, I know I wouldn't be able to balance is with other crosstraining (crossfit/yoga/etc).


To kick off this grand training plan, I have a half marathon is weekend. HAHA. seriously. I haven't run more than 10 miles in a week in quite a few weeks due to a variety of issues. Here's to hoping crossfit is all you need to train for a race like that... heh....



Other great news, our puppy was born today! A few months ago we found a corgi breeder in New Hampshire who was having a litter. We sent in a down payment and we've been anxiously waiting ever sinnce. We get to go pick out the pup in 4 weeks and then take em home 4 weeks after that. We have yet to decide on a name though....

Though i don't care that no one reads this blog, sometimes it'd be cool to have readers to help me with questions. Like, have you ever run a half marathon with no training at all? And more importantly, what would you name a corgi puppy?

My Achilles Heel

Hello! So, latest update on my running life: I'm injured again. SURPRISE!

Since last Friday, the muscles around my achilles tendon have felt irritated. It's not the tendon itself, but more like the soft areas between the tendon and the ankle. They started to bother me after crossfit last Friday. On Saturday I went for a 2 mile run, and that's when it really started to feel weird. Both heels hurt too, which I thought was even weirder.

(image source)

I'm pretty sure the culprit is double unders and not running. We've been doing them a lot in crossfit. I've never really done any sports that involved much jumping so I can only imagine that my form isn't as good as it could be. I also thought that maybe my running shoes were getting to the end of their shelf life (I've trained for and run 2 half marathons in them since last August when I bought them...). 

Buying new shoes was my first attempt at fixing my problem. Ta da!

 I've running Brooks Trance for a few years now and I love them. This time around I upgraded to the latest version, the Trance 12 (before I wore the Trance 10). They feel SUPER comfy and I have no achilles pain at all when walking in them. 

On Monday, I tested them out for their first run- 3 miles around Jamaica Plain. During the run I felt pretty good (probably a 2 on the pain scale but still small irritation), but once I stopped the problem area got super sore. I decided to make a doctor's appointment for Tuesday to make sure I wasn't tearing anything that could turn into a bigger problem.

The doctor confirmed that I hadn't torn the Achilles (YAY!), but that there was definitely some inflammation. He referred me to a physical therapist to work on some stretching and icing techniques, and that is where I went today.

The physical therapist pretty helpful I guess. She basically showed me a bunch of calf and ankle stretches that I am already familiar with from yoga and crossfit. An interesting discover though was that my right ankle is much tighter than my left for some reason. When I went to a deep tissue massage last week, the massage therapist told me that the right side of my back was also more developed than my left. I guess I need to work  on better overall balance!

Anyways, I'm taking the next few days off from running. The PT gave me a list of stretches and icing techniques to do at home. On Sunday I'll try out a run and see how it goes. If it still hurts, she strongly suggested that I sit out of next weekend's half marathon, especially since I have bigger goals of running a marathon in October.

OOF. 

What a month

I'm back! Blogging about running has fallen to the wayside a bit for me this month, and this is not because I haven't had anything to say. I've actually had more to say than ever.

This has been a very long and tough month for Boston, but we are getting better. Tomorrow is the one month anniversary of the 2013 Boston Marathon.

I've also been traveling. Bill and I went to St Thomas for a week!

Anyways, this won't be a full post, just want to write this as inspiration for me to start posting regularly again.


John Kelley half is in two weeks. My heel/achilles is aching bad. If it's not one weird injury it's another right?


Better post later tonight!

Cohasset Race by the Sea 10k

Yesterday Albert, Stacey, and I ran the Cohasset Race by the Sea 10k. Such a fun and pretty race! At least half the race was directly along the ocean, but MAN was it hilly.

Here's the three of us before the race start:

The weather was supposed to be in the high 50s and sunny, but the high winds ended up making it feel MUCH chillier than we expected. One more complaint: my legs were dead. Crossfit the day before really kicked by butt, and I felt like cement the whole time. There wasn't one step of the 6.2 miles that I didn't feel like molasses. oh well, fun time nontheless!

The race started at 1pm in quaint downtown Cohasset. This was definitely the latest start time I've ever had in a race. Wayyyy better than those 4-5am wake ups for past 7am races I've had...

The race started right on time and was pretty crowded at the start. This guy was in front of me for a while wearing wearing moon-ski-boot things....wtf?

After Mile 1, we race started getting close to the water...

The views just got prettier and prettier going through miles 2-3

Miles 3-4 were directly on the water for almost the whole time. People who lived in their big ocean-side mansions came out to cheer us on.

 Hill of DEATH at around mile 4. This is where the race turned inland away from the water:

 I lost Stacey for the first 5 miles of the race, but right around the 5 mile marker I spotted her up ahead (blue sweatshirt/black pants up ahead in the picture below). My one goal became to catch Stacey!

At about Mile 5.8, I finally caught her and we crossed the finish line together. See our times prove it:

There was fruit and hot dogs for post race eats:

WONG

 Then we were off to Mary Lous for some delicious coffees :) The usual Peanut Butter Wonderful for me! Milky Way for Stacey and Tiramisu for Wong.

I'd definitely do the Cohasset 10k again next year. The course was gorgeous, and next time I'll be ready for those hills!

Today was a rest day for me. I did the 8 minute plank workout from carrotsncake, but nothing else major.
Goodnight!

Half Full

News! I signed up for a half:

Bill and I are going to be on the Cape for Memorial Day weekend this year so I figured why not! Since it's getting to the point where I need to start getting my weekly mileage up in preparation for training this summer, I thought this would be a good kick off. So far I don't really have any particular training plan in mind since they never really go to plan anyway. The next 2 months are super busy too so that kind of structure will get stressful. I'll just plan to keep my weekly mileage consistent with some speed workouts and long runs and hope for the best! We'll see how it goes!

Thursday night I ran home from work. It was great! I need to do this more often. The only tricky thing is planning the gear and proper clothing, but I'm hoping to do this maybe once a week going forward. The commute is only about 15 minutes longer when I run too...go figure.  

Mile 1 got me to Mission Hill

Mile 2 to Northeastern Campus

Pitstop at mile 2.75 (Starbucks Mass Ave)

Mile 3 to the start of the Mass Ave Bridge

 

 Mile 4 to the Asgard (between Kendall and Central Square)

Mile 5 to Harvard

 Then I totally forgot about my cute plan of taking picture every mile until I finished. Whoops.

Success!

I then had plans to go to Crossfit Friday but my legs were not having it at 6am. I brought my workout clothes to work with hopes of going after work instead, but my Friday afternoon ended up looking a little more like this:

 Yup, I love my job.


This morning however, I did make it to Crossfit! Brian's wedding is today so we had a wedding themed WOD:

Love it. This was a partner workout so we worked together to split up the reps until it was all finished. It took us about 38 minutes.



I'm feeling good about my running condition right now! Always a good thing since I sort of despised it for the last 6 months of last year. 10k tomorrow!

Oh yes, and right now:

Post Crossfit Smoothie:

• 2.5 cups spinach/kale mix
• 1 cup almond milk
• 1 scoop protein powder
• 1 banana
• 6 almonds
• 1/2 inch slice of ginger root

Happy Saturday!