Fear is the Training Killer

From Dune

If you were to have talked to me yesterday, I would have a jittery story of how the bottom of my left calf randomly had cramps/spasms throughout the day. It happened walking to work, in the gym, and to a lesser degree later in the day.  I didn't feel any radiation into the rest of my leg, which I guess is good. The cramps make my walk pause for a moment, pull up, then it goes away. I'm guessing it is a mix of fatigue, hydration, and the strain in my leg.

Now last night if you asked me if I would have a successful run today, I would say, 80% chance of NOPE. My leg scared me. I really don't want to do anything bad to it. Time to the marathon is getting short. I didn't want to skip the run, it is the hardest run until next Tuesday. Mentally I'm thinking, I've already missed enough. I'm already rethinking time goals to be reasonable with any leg issues that might linger. I've had some freakout thoughts that I may not heal up. I ate my emotions all evening. Although, I couldn't even manage to get myself to feel full and disgusted with myself! what gives? I took at few Ibuprofen for good measure and went to bed.

We're at 3:40am now, I get out of bed. I think I isolated the foot force that will cause, or at least help make the cramp/spasm occur.  I didn't have an incident, but I could feel the extra pressure in the area. I'm trying to decide what to do. Drink my coffee. Bio. Foam roll. Stick. I can't conjure up any good reason not to run. A big part of me wanted a reason. Bad stomach..weather.. something to make an excuse for me.  But off we go. I started about 10 minutes later than planned thinking I had to bio it again, but no go with that.

I did my warm up jog before stretching, and tried to get a photo of the moon and stars..Not much success, only got a blurry moon photo:

this is why I haven't shared more photos. 

I passed a group of about 6 running at 4:30, and the lead guy jokingly said: You are out too early! what are you doing? Then a lady said, no no! We see him every Friday!

Glad I'm remembered!

My plan today was warm up, 9 miles marathon pace, cool down. I did 2 warm up miles.  I felt timid. I kept waiting for the OH SHIT moment. Kept waiting for my calf to buckle.  I didn't want to go faster. I was content just trotting along.  But that isn't why I wake up so early. I make an agreement with my fear, go a little faster each mile, and see what happens. Run it smart.

As I speed up, the agreement seems too one sided. My confidence starts to wake up. It speaks up and says, dude, its been 4 miles and you have had no issues. Man the F up, and run. Only thing holding you back is your fear.

Me: Okay, lets go then.

The speed felt great. Going slow gave me too much time to be unstable with my cadence and over think my steps.

I will say that the run was rough energy wise.  I've been trying to up my food intake, maybe I also ate too late and was a tiny big sluggish. Maybe it was the humidity and sweating. My GPS had my half mile splits between 6:45 and 7:15. I should have brought a gel and water with me to help out.

My slowest split was my turn around lap. After that mile, I felt like I might need a bio break, slowed down, and thankfully was near the Belmont restroom, but that was a false alarm.  This happened one more time. At least I didn't freak out over my splits too much to care.

The last few miles I lost my mental focus for little intervals and had to wake back up to get my pace adjusted. The last half mile was the hardest. Another guy jumped on the path going my direction, at like my exact goal pace.  I was ready to hear my GPS beep my mile and be done.  But my ego kicks in and says, oh come on,  you ran hard 90% of the way, and you want to F up the last half? His foot steps got closer, and this played through my mind:
Yes, a 300 movie clip

Was my run perfect? No. Average mile was 7:09 for the marathon pace distance. I know I held back to start and drifted at time. But was I happy with it? Hell yes. I ran through a fear, I didn't feel any pain, and I still was able to recover my times when I drifted away. Lots of good lessons today.

I also saw Mr. and Mrs Fueling Strong.. TWICE! Even got a high five, which I think resulted in a 30 second faster lap. Thank you Kelsey!

Now for making it through my Friday dramatics, here is some comic relief.

Happy Friday!

How your office should ideally behave...just the tip of the.. HR reports.


Happy Friday Everyone!

Too Soon?

It is Friday Eve, and you know what that means... my rest day and a post with a lot of disturbing links and photos.

First off, I went to the grocery store last night and noticed this by the checkout:

 Way too soon man.. Halloween is pretty much my favorite holiday, but this is too soon!

If you follow my blog with any consistency, you've seen me crying over the fact I got some funky tightness going on in my left hamstring and occasionally groin. I'm super paranoid, and since this is my blog, I'm venting on it until I'm satisfied! It feels best running and for the first 2/3 of the day, then it gets random aches and tight again. Icing and elevating the leg when I get the chance, trying to get up and stretch it out during the day. I'll be interested to see how today goes without a run.  I'm mentally preparing myself to rest a few days if I don't see myself making marked improvement.

Now that the boo hooo woah is me part is over, here are some random photos to make you laugh or cringe:

My reaction this morning when my alarm went off:

I love horrible sloth gifs, click me to see a mildly offensive one.

What are you looking at?

A prayer a lot of you pray daily:

Your reaction realizing this is the end of my post:

Preparation For Pre Friday Eve Intervals!

Almost the weekend right? Yesterday evening was the last gymnastic class for the summer for my tot. Now she was in a pretty sensitive mood all day, but this was one of the few happy moments she had, and I don't know that I will ever experience this much fun:

If I had drafted the intro to this blog last night, this section would be filled with fear of a DNS for today or altering my interval day to a gentle run.  My left hamstring and groin were tight again in the evening, after not bothering me all day.  I iced, stretched, and some massages. But I didn't, and neither of two things happened.  I woke up feeling normal again.

Woke up at 4am. Drank my coffee, wait 30 minutes, and I was out the door. I had checked the weather and saw T-storms predicted at 5:45, so I put my phone in a ziplock bag (storm never happened).

Pretty muggy out, GPS picked up fast, and I went on me way. Plan for the day, 2.5 mile warm up 6 x 800 meter intervals, then cool down until I hit 10 miles. My first mile is always unpleasant as my body is still waking up and each part of my body spends a couple minutes calling me a jerk and saying they want to rest. Shut up, I didn't ask you your opinion, NOW PREFORM!

 I met up with ever famous Ruminator and we did a few warm up miles together before we parted ways for our own work out needs for the morning.

Now just a note about using +Endomondo for intervals. The Pro's: You can make whatever interval plan you want, it is easy to set up, and pretty accurate. The Con's: If you are hung up on times to the second, you'll likely get frustrated, as you are at the mercy of your GPS accuracy. Even on a good day, you will be a few meters off, which can be a couple seconds. On a normal day, maybe more or make you look faster. Another mental hang up you may experience, not knowing how close the end is.  This may be big for people that give it a last hard kick for the last 100 meters or so.  Hopefully not knowing where the end is helps you mentally stay strong with the speed.  With that, my times were pretty close. I felt the humidity hit my lungs after a few intervals and breathing got a bit harder. Whenever I felt any signs of an ache, I tried to take a step off to make sure I didn't go in the danger zone for a strain.

On the way back I was praying for the rain or a storm to cool off, but that never happened. Although I did get home looking like I went swimming.

The gnats were out in force again today.  The gnat party bus was parked heavily by the golf course.  They fully took out one lady running in front of me, she had to stop completely to clear out her eyes and mouth.  I imagine the gnats look forward to a glorious death every day. Much like the Sontarans:
We stare into the face of death! (Click me)

And one photo of the beach before I headed home:

Have a great day!

Gotta get that run off your shoulders

Two run recap post!
Yesterday was my last day in Michigan for our little trip and my last run there. Overall, the scenery was pretty, I felt safe running on the side of the road, and I would run there again (and will as we visit pretty often).

I had an easy paced long run scheduled for yesterday, figuring that I'll do an easy paced 13 every other week for my plan, and then do a bit stronger run on the other Sundays. Good thing I was already mental prepared for a slower run.

The first few runs I did on vacation, I recognized the hills in the roads, but I didn't respect them enough. My legs secretly did though. After the first few miles, I instantly felt the fatigue in my legs. The hills in the road quietly had been sapping the energy from my legs the last couple days. I instantly thought -if you are going to do me like that, at least take me out for a drink or dinner too, jeez.

Now, I can't go comparing it to a cool mountain run or anything legit like that, but it certainly made every run a hill workout setting you'd see on a treadmill. Hills from 50-150 feet, total elevation 2x that done on Lake Shore Path for the same distance (although that isn't saying too much 478 v 976 feet). Doing 13 miles on that at an 8 minute mile pace was as hard if not harder than doing it on the lake front under 90 minutes. Hopefully I see some gains from this!

In the 4+ hours I spent out there the last few days, I had a 100% success rate with waves ( 1 for 1). There were three different gangs of those black birds with the red patches on their wings that took turns circling over my head until I left their area. I eventually talked to them in my head as it got a bit lonely out there.

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Fast forward to this morning. Recovery run, 6 miles. Was hoping to catch a nice sunrise, but was pretty overcast. That was a good thing as it was already warm and humid, but there were no gnats which was a nice change. I had to limber up my running wave hand as I felt a little rusty to start, but I got on a good groove. Multiple thumbs ups, waves, nods, even double dipped on waves seeing people a second time on my return trip. Feels nice to run on my home turf again.

Tomorrow: 5x1k intervals with 400m jogs in between. I'll be doing what I did last week and run it a little slower than I should ideally hit to make sure I don't restrain my right calf.
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Now for some non running things:
Yesterday while I was out running, my daughter said something like - I'm jogging! and started running around  the house, sad I missed that!

You ever have an inappropriate tv show joke that is stuck in your head for too long and not enough people pick up on it so that it can move out of your head? Here is mine,  from FX's Archer:



Please tell me you watch this show so we can trade wildly bad jokes.

I mentioned the other day that my wife got me +The Settlers of Catan . I always love going into game stores like Dice Dojo, but rarely get a game. We tried it out with a cousin and her cousin's boyfriend and we all liked it! Now we have to figure out how to play a 3-4 player game, guess we need to invite people over?

Sad vacation is over, I enjoyed being with my ladies every day.

Have a good one!