Healthy DOES NOT equal delicious.

Last Thursday I decided to run up and down the stairs for 20 minutes at lunchtime rather than go to the gym. As a result, my calves have been killing ever since. I can only just stand on tiptoes again. Not that I tend to stand on tiptoes often.

Just not feeling 100% today. Tried to clean, forgot about the bedroom. Decided to be healthy, because the scales hate me and keep lying just to piss me off. Made a healthy stir fry for lunch, and it tasted awful.

Days like this, I don’t want to be a grown-up. It sucks. Adults feel like they have to eat certain stuff, not because they want to or because it’s great and they enjoy it. Because it’s healthy. Because they think they have to. Screw this. If healthy food was so goddamn good, then everyone would be eating it. Healthy food is depressing. You can’t just eat healthy food one day a week and expect to be skinny or fit. You have to eat that shit every day. Cut out the bread, cut out the alcohol. No pasta, no sugar. Forget frying things. Butter ist verboten!

I hate this. I try so hard, but then I fuck up. And end up in a worse place than I was in when I started. If I could only see some sort of improvement, some sort of end-point, then I may be more motivated to get there.

The way I see it, I’m doggy-paddling, and I’m caught in a current. I’m just going to run out of energy one day, unless I can find some way to give myself a boost.

How am I supposed to comfort myself, when all I have for comfort is carrots and fucking peas? I’m sick of peas. I want fig and honey ice-cream. Hot caramel sauce. Crunchy biscuit crumbles. That’s comfort food. Soft cheese and crackers and wine. Not bloody apples. I’m sick of bloody apples.

I’ll probably be better tomorrow. Gym, maybe a bit of treadmill work. Proper run on Tuesday after work, perhaps. If I can get home at a reasonable time.

In the meantime, being a public servant sucks for being healthy. Morning teas, more morning teas. Constant stream of snack foods. I’m going to put my headphones on and trying to ignore it.

EDIT: Ah, forgot to mention. Official time for the Canberra Times Fun Run was 54:42.

Woot.

A quick race report before snoozytime

I’m feeling absolutely wiped right now, so I’ll make this a quick one and then I’ll go and have an early night.

I got up this morning feeling fine, after a fairly moderate evening. Wine, but not too much wine. Cigarettes, but… Yeah, okay. Maybe too many cigarettes. Even one would have been too many. Went to bed before midnight, as I recall. Breakfast was entirely fruit-based, and I supplemented that with half a hairy lemon tablet, two ibuprofen and an antihistamine. A bit of water, and I was ready to go.

I didn’t wear my costume, as anticipated. I thought it would be windy and horrible but it was really a lovely warm morning. Sunny. Almost too sunny, but I did remember to sunscreen myself up before I went out there. The field was big, but basically pollte and easy to ignore. I cranked my music the whole way, interspersed with pace information courtesy of Runkeeper. I didn’t feel the need to get my Garmin out. To be perfectly honest, I still don’t trust the bitch after it screwed me over in Sydney.

I went out a wee bit too fast, just a shade over 5:00 per kilometre. Because I was lacking the constant feedback of the Garmin I didn’t realise until the end of the first kilometre, and by that time I felt I was in a comfortable stride and wasn’t willing to chicken out. The second kilometre got steadily less comfortable, and by the time I hit kilometre number 3 my heart was leaping in my chest and I could imagine myself having a heart attack or some sort of fit any minute, twitching and gasping on the side of the road like a dying goldfish.

I gradually slowed through the race, but this was mostly because I was hurting. My legs kept on, but my lungs were struggling. I know, all my own fault. I do seem to recall though that there were only two water stops along the way. That can’t be right. Surely they have at least three. Surely they always did. I got a bit dehydrated along the way. I tried to spit (maybe 4 kilometres in) but I couldn’t. I gagged, almost vomited, ended up spitting all down the front of my pants and when I tried to remedy this situation I lost track of where I was going and basically ran into a light pole.

Clever girl.

It wasn’t an easy 10kms, but it was a beautiful morning and I was thoroughly psyched when it was over. So I guess it was a success. I was going to put a map picture in here with my route, but then I realised that it doesn't actually say anything interesting. The Garmin maps show pace and stuff, but I didn't have my Garmin. Doh.

I think I broke my personal best, probably by about a minute. I’m not entirely sure yet, but I’ll get the results tomorrow or Tuesday. My unofficial result at this point is 54:46, which is pretty nice. It gets harder and harder to break my records, but at least I’m still on the way up and not actually getting worse. Woohoo.

I had a nice big brunch after the race. No lunch, but a nice long nap. Leftover cake-related goodies. Popcorn. An embarrassingly unhealthy dinner, that I won’t go into here. I think I can afford it, but it’s back on the diet and back into the gym tomorrow.

Night, all.

Hmm

Not so sure about the costume, anymore. I’m running solo this year, and I haven’t had a PB in the 10km since 2010.

Getting a PB In a french maid costume doesn’t seem likely, and I won’t be comfortable. I think I’d much rather go hard, push myself til I pass out or puke. No sense in doing this if I’m not going to go all the way. I will try to survive and keep both of my legs, but anything short of that is fair game.

After a short recovery next week, I’m going to need to sit down and overhaul my training routine, or lack of routine as the case may be. I’ve been so goddamn lazy. I need some sort of 80’s movie training montage. Is Kenny Loggins still around? Can I commission him to write some inspirational theme music?

Mostly, I need to ease myself back into the marathon training. Cadbury Marathon is in January, and I want to aim for 4:30 or better. Is that even do-able? I’m going to get some new shoes in the next couple of weeks, and that may bring some bounce back into my step.

Hey, here’ s something awesome. I just discovered that this is my 101st post on this blog. Woohoo! 101 posts and exactly zero in the way of content!

Newsflash

So I thought hard about the idea of running the Canberra Times 10km in costume again. I thought hard, weighed the pros and cons, and after a while I decided against it.

Then I was shopping at lunchtime today, and noticed that one of the cheap shops in Woden had a bunch of Halloween costumes out already.

Presented for your approval, here is my Canberra Times Fun Run outfit!

French maid? Oui, d’accord. Excuse the lack of a head, but I’m a little under the weather this afternoon and I certainly look like it. There’s a little headband with a black bow and some pink lace up top. It’s very frou-frou.

Bad photo in general, but the rest were all worse.

I might need to perform some alterations to the skirt as it’s rather long. I’ve pinned it up in the shot here, but I might chuck a few stitches in so it sits better. Also, a bit of ironing might be required. But it’s serviceable.

Dunno. Still not sure. What do y’all reckon? There will be a feather duster involved.

Shoe Musing

I went to take a look at some new shoes the other day. My current shoes still do the trick, but I don’t know how much longer it’ll be before I start getting injuries. They’ve done several marathons, several City2Surf and a couple of half-marathons. Maybe it’s time to change things up a bit.

I’m running in a pair of Nike Lunarglide+ 2 at the moment, so I wanted to try a pair of Lunarglide+ 4. I also wanted to try a pair of the Nike Free Run+ 3, as I’ve been toying with the idea of transitioning towards a more barefoot style.

I got to the Athlete’s Foot store, and took a look at what they had on the shelves. On first impression, I wasn’t particularly impressed with either of the prospects. This may seem hideously superficial, but I don’t want to run in ugly shoes. The Lunarglides were white with a greeny-yellow trim. Bleh. White shoes, no thanks. The Free Run were a little better, low profile and rather speedy-looking, but the colour was a pinky-purply sort of washed out nothing. With these little dark silvery-grey designs. I wasn’t wowed.

I waited about fifteen or twenty minutes before the guy came over to help me, but he wasn’t really a lot of help. He managed to find a different colour in the Lunarglides, black and hot pink, but they were the wrong size. He found some bright orange Lunarglides from the last generation, but they were orange. So, no.

Between walking into the store and finally getting some service, I’d already decided I wasn’t too excited about the Free Run shoes. He told me that I wouldn’t be able to run in them all the time, and that I’d only be able to do short distances at first. He said I looked like a pretty serious runner, so I’d have a pretty good chance at being able to adapt to the reduced-cushioning style.

I wasn’t sure if he thought I was a serious runner because I was asking the right sort of questions, because he says that to everyone who comes in, or because of my marathon-distance tattoo on my ankle. Possibly a combination of the first and the last.

I’m still thinking about new shoes. If I can find a pair of the black and pink ones in a size that actually fits, I’ll probably go for it.

In other news, had a nice 10km jog on Saturday, and a passable 5km this afternoon after work. I was feeling a bit sick when I left work, and I’m feeling even worse now, but I sort of forgot about that for a little while when I was going around the lake.

Whee

A brief post-race (post-post-post-race, it seems) entry here. I thought it had posted sooner but apparently I’ve screwed up a setting with my blogging program thingie.

So, City2Surf was on the 12th, and boy was it an interesting race.

I tried to be good the night before, but failed miserably as usual. Living large at the Sheraton on the Park always gets to me. They upgraded me to a park view room this year. Pretty swank. Those darned ninja waiters at the Sheraton Club Lounge struck again. They keep refilling my glass with champagne. Of course, I’m not going to exercise any self control, and of course I’m going to drink every drop they give me. Silly girl. We were going to go out to dinner but I was tired after so much bubbly and we ate so many nibbly snacks with our drinks, so I wasn’t really in the mood to go anywhere special or eat anything much in particular.

Later, I felt a little guilty that I hadn’t eaten anything in the way of protein (well, apart from cheese) all evening, and the carbohydrates weren’t particularly good ones. So I compounded this error with a quick trip to McDonalds, a bunch of nuggets and some chips. That was a terrible idea, quite epically terrible in fact, as I was violently ill not half an hour later. I guess I just can’t metabolise that kind of food as well as I used to.

After all that malarkey, I got up the next day with little fuss or drama. The early morning wasn’t very promising. Misty, windy, a little rainy. I kept away from the little sausages at the breakfast buffet after grim memories of last year’s race. I did however eat a pile of bacon, and lived to regret it later on. In the long run, though, can bacon ever be truly regrettable? It’s okay, bacon. I forgive you.

I think I hit a winner with my pre-race pills. An antihistamine to cut down the snifflies, a couple of ibuprofen, and an imodium (not that I needed it, but nothing kills a race like a half-time queue for the portaloo). Now, the ibuprofen has been debated by many. Some say that taking a painkiller before a race is a dangerous thing, as you won’t be heeding your body’s signals when it’s trying to tell you something is wrong. I just like it, as it helps with the hangover. Yep, I’m a real running pro, me.

When I went back down to the room to prepare, disaster struck. My garmin was unfortunately as dead as a dodo. Look, I’m not so attached to my tech that I thought I couldn’t run the race without it, but it was definitely dissapointing. I like to keep track of my pace, and I like being able to plug it in later and get a full picture of how I was running. My splits, heart rate, the elevation... It’s very useful and very cool. Without the garmin, I didn’t feel as if I could pace myself as effectively. I pulled out my iphone and looked for an alternative, and decided I’d wing it with the help of Runkeeper (which I’d installed at some point and I don’t think I’d ever actually used).

There was a little sprinkling of rain as we headed out to the start, but nothing too depressing. It wasn’t even really that cold. As we didn’t get out there too early, there wasn’t a great deal of fanfare. The race was away before I even knew it.

This year there seemed to be a bunch more bands along the way. Tons of entertainment. Smurfs giving out bottles of water and smearing everyone who came within an arm’s length with blue paint. The blue-spattered bottles littered the gutters for a hundred metres afterward.

Paper cups at the drink stands, so we were all spared the ear-shattering racket of people trampling over a sea of sharp plastic shards at every station. I didn’t partake of the gatorade this year. As it didn’t rain at all, not really, I was probably more soaked than most when I got to the finish as most of the cups I grabbed ended up being overturned on top of my head. I was overheating, and I wanted to distract myself. I was also rather ill most of the way, and got fairly close to puking.

After the finish, I realised the reason for this. I was going way, way faster than I expected to run. My final time was 1:20:55, a full four minutes faster than my previous best. Woohoo! It’s a shame I didn’t crack 80 minutes, but there’s always next year. I’m sure I can do it.

When the race was done, me and mum got straight on a train, then straight on a ferry, then we went to the zoo. Taronga zoo kicks ass.

My legs didn’t hurt until the day after. Then they hurt even more the day after that.

I think I’m in a lot better shape than I thought I was. Canberra times 10k is on in three weeks or so. Looking forward to seeing how well I can do this year.

Packing and the pre-race jitters

One of these days, I would like to train properly for a race. At least three if not four days a week. Fartlek, speed sessions, tempo runs, hills... I’ll eat properly, hydrate properly, keep myself in top physical condition. I’m hoping to hit the Cadbury Marathon in January, so I guess the training will need to start soon. I just don’t know what I’m capable of until I really try.

I packed way too much running gear for the weekend, but I think I’d prefer to have some choices on Sunday morning. I have long pants and some short stretchy compression pants. Three sports bras. Two options for tops. A skirt, in case I feel like it’s the way to go. I’m about to go into my sock drawer and pull out some long stripy socks as well. Just in case. A tutu would have been nice, but I forgot to shop for one. I’ve been so busy.

As far as everything apart from the actual training goes, I’m ready for the City2Surf.

It looks like Sydney has had some pretty brutal winds over the last couple of days. I hope I don’t get blown off the road at the top of Heartbreak Hill. If I do, no big loss. I can catch an updraft and drift off over the ocean. It’s a nice thought. Calming.

Here it comes

So I’ve sort of been cheating on my blog with another blog (of the cooking variety) and I feel really bad about it, but I actually haven’t been able to run much in the last couple of weeks. I did something strange to my back last week, so last weekend was out. The weekend before, I was too lazy to train.

I got up this morning to do a short 10km to sort of get a feeling of whether the City2Surf was going to be hellish. I wanted to get out there and think through some kind of race plan for next Sunday, but it’s kind of hard to do that when you’re on the run and you can’t get hold of any statistics. I tried asking Siri.

Me: What was my result in the City 2 Surf last year?

Siri: Checking on that... Would you like to search the web for “Post letters optimistic SFR stew”?

Me: No. Forget it.

Siri: I didn’t catch that.

Me: Play my Maritime Insurance playlist.

All I could do when I was out on the run was think about whether I wanted to wear a skirt in the race, or my standard stretchy pants. On the way back, all I could think was “I’M BLIND” because of the sun directly in my face. So that was no good.

I’m going to think about it now, to at least maintain the facade of being an organised individual.

As far as I see it, I have two goals. The primary goal is to beat my personal best. The secondary goal, if I really tank it, is to at least qualify for a green entry next year.

Last year, I ran a time of 1:24:55. Hmm. That’s cool. Better than I remembered, when I was on my run this morning. So to beat it, I’d have to run every kilometre in faster than 6 minutes. Eww. I don’t like that quite as much. This is going to hurt.

If I stuff up, the qualifying time for a green bib this year was 90 minutes. Assuming they’re nice people and decide to keep it the same, I’ll get an auto-qualification on the basis of last year’s time anyway. I know I’ll definitely get in under 90 minutes in any case. That’s reassuring.

So, will I run a steady pace, or are there parts I’ll need to push a bit harder to make up for the hills?

Last year's elevation map. It thought the run was only 13.5km long. Silly Garmin.

From the elevation maps recorded over the last two years on my Garmin, I can determine one or two things: The first five kilometres or so are undulating, with a few short hills and some nice little downhill stretches. I could probably afford to up the pace in this section, providing of course that I don’t let myself get pulled by the crowd and burn out too early. Maybe 5:20 or 5:30 pace after a short warmup over the first kilometre, depending on how I’m feeling and whether I’ve eaten too much at breakfast.

Then, we hit Heartbreak Hill. which starts easy and gets harder over two kilometres. Nothing I can’t handle, as long as I keep my head down. I could afford to slow to a pace just below 6:30 here, but I don’t want to let it become a habit.

The next two kilometres after the halfway point are a brief respite, and I should take it easy at this point given that there’s a tough and steep little hill coming up. Maybe a 6:00 pace just to be safe, but it will probably be speedier if last year is anything to go by. The hill is about a kilometre long, and when I hit the top of it at about the 10km point, it’s all downhill from there.

I’ll floor it for the last couple of kilometres because they’re nice and speedy and exhilarating when you can see Bondi looming ahead.

It looks so easy on paper.

Let’s see how we go.

I am concerned though, I still haven’t figured out whether to wear stretchy pants or a skirt yet. This is an important decision, people!

I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal.

I ran just over 25 kilometres this morning, it’s been a couple of hours but I’m still feeling really pumped. I wanted to make it out to Parkrun because they were having some special guests, and it seemed like time to attack my personal best.

I didn’t really take it easy on the 10km out to Ginninderra, even though I probably should have. It wasn’t freezing outside, for a chance, and it just felt like a nice, easy run. I didn’t notice that I was running too fast until about the 5km mark, and I decided that I didn’t care.

Parkrun was great, although I went out at too fast a pace. I settled into a 5:15 pace after about half a km, and sat there until almost the end. It hurt like a bitch, and for a lot of it I wanted nothing more than to stop. But I didn’t. Glad I didn’t. Came in at 26:28, 35 seconds faster than my previous personal best. That may not seem like a great improvement, but when I’m running hard, so close to my threshold... 35 seconds is freaking awesome.

Shame that I got the worst finish photo EVER.



Hemmed in by the two previous finishers, who stopped as soon as they hit the line and didn’t pay any mind to the photographer who was snapping away just in front of them, or the finisher coming in behind them. Sadface. Still, this is probably karma because at the first Parkrun I did exactly the same thing to someone else.



Hee.

I sucked down a gel about ten minutes before Parkrun, don’t know if it helped but it sure didn’t hurt. I made it all the way home, didn’t puke or bonk, so I count it as a win. Did the last 10km in 1 hour and 9 minutes, or thereabouts. So there wasn’t a significant drop in speed. Heart rate was significantly higher, so I must have been putting in more effort.

Life is frigging brilliant, people. You know what? I don’t want to sound like an ego monster, but I’m a motherflipping superhero, bitches. Screw your excuses, forget your self esteem issues. Get off your ass, and let’s all be superheroes together. Awesomeness isn’t something that’ll come if you sit there and wait for it. The universe isn’t going to just hand you a cape and a pair of stretchy pants. You have to get out there and grab them.

All those people in the past who have put me down or tried to make me feel bad about myself, I don’t give a shit. Their opinion is irrelevant. Do I think I’m better than them? No. Well, probably. But I’m not competing against these people. Throughout our lives, our toughest rivals are alway going to be ourselves. Out of the corner of your eye, if you glance backwards, there you are. Nipping at your own heels. If you fall behind, if you let them win, you’re going to stop saying “Man, I’m getting more and more awesome all the time.” and you’re going to start saying “Hey, remember how awesome I USED to be?”.

I’m not saying you always have to go hardcore, train too hard, mess yourself up. That’s counterproductive. I’m not just talking about running, or any other form of exercise. General awesomeness is a skill you have to work at, but you should keep working. Don’t let your past self trip you up, go out an annihilate that sucker. You can do it. You should do it. Fuck your doubts. Do it. Do it now.

Ima get off my soapbox now, go and make something to eat.

Running in the time of Hypothermia

So I currently can’t feel the tips of three of my fingers, but I’m going to assume that it’s because of the amount of guitar I’ve been playing lately. Even though it may have felt like it at the time, I don’t think I’ve sustained any permanent nerve damage in my fingertips. Yay for me.

In case you’re not a Canberran, you might not be aware of the insanely cold mornings we’ve been having recently. Last week the temperature has been steadily down below zero every morning, some days tending closer to minus seven or minus eight. I’m just going by what everyone else has been saying, because although I’ve been in the habit of getting to work at seven am every day, I never spend more than five minutes outside. When I’m heading for the bus, I’m generally running anyway.

This morning, I guess it was about minus five. I certainly felt it. I went out late because it’s hard to get up early on a freezing cold morning. Guess I was probably out the door a little after 7:30. Two pairs of pants, trackies over compression shorts. Sports bra, crop top, tank top, jacket. Headband and a hat. Fingerless gloves.

I think I need some gloves that have fingers. I know I’m used to the fingerless gloves by now, but this morning was brutal. I figured that my fingers would recover after a couple of kilometres when I’d warmed up a bit, and I guess they did for a little while, but heading towards Belconnen the temperature started to go down. And my fingers started to hurt. Not in the kind of way I can ignore. Something a little closer to screaming agony. I unzipped my jacket and tried to warm my hands one by one with a little upper-chest skin contact, but there’s something not quite right about running along with your hand down your top, grimly clutching a boob in one frozen hand while you try to ignore the other. The mechanics are off. It’s not the most efficient running technique in the world. By the time the pain really set in I was about forty-five minutes from home, so I turned around at the seven and a half kilometre mark and headed back in the other direction.

Things got better, the closer I got to Gungahlin. Must have been the sun finally doing it’s job. Everything was numb by the time I got in the door. It’s mornings like this that really make me appreciate hot showers.

Actually, all things considered, this morning’s run was pretty gruesome. I saw a frozen dead mousie on the path on the way out. On the way back, I saw a magpie in the middle of a frozen dead mousie breakfast.

I got about ten metres, then I threw up.

I’m not usually this sensitive, but I guess I was also running a bit harder than I should have been, just to keep the blood pumping.

About a month to go until the City 2 Surf. I really need to start planning what I’m going to wear. I feel ashamed that race outfits and playlists are my primary concern, rather than the actual training. Oh well.