Legs like a table. Arms like a chair.

Okay, NOW I’m getting my groove back. Today was a fake-ass public holiday for no reason, so I wanted to take the opportunity to kick off the marathon training. Unfortunately, my plan to wake up at 5:00am to go jogging and be all virtuous and shit was foiled by sheer laziness. I’d like to blame it on daylight savings, if I can. Can I? Okay.

So the morning run was off the cards thanks to daylight savings. So I spent the morning cleaning instead because I’ve got a house inspection on Wednesday. As soon as boredom set in (about 2:30 in the afternoon) I slathered myself with about a litre of sunscreen and went out for a nice slow stagger.

I turned off the sprints on Zombies, Run! because I was going for distance over time. The weather was nice. Not too hot, a cool breeze but not a great deal of wind. An awesome spring day. My throat didn’t bother me too much, so I think I’m finally almost recovered from the tonsil stuff.

I spent most of the run in thoughtful introspection, as one may tend to do while being chased by the mangled re-animated corpse of a helicopter pilot. Not bad thinking, just thinking thinking. Funnily enough, I don’t do a lot of that when I’m running these days. I constantly distract myself with music and podcasts and zombies. Sometimes, I need to distract myself from the pain or the exhaustion. Sometimes I just need to not be thinking, or it might go into a black and horrible place where I don’t want to be, especially whilst running. Just a penalty for being me, I guess. Today, though, I was happy to be thinking. Life is pretty good, right now.

I got beeped at by, like, three cars while I was running. That’s a few more than usual. It’s not as if I were naked. Or screaming obscenities. Or particularly attractive, for that matter, shiny with sunscreen and sweat, spotted with dead bugs and bright red in the face (not from sunburn, thanks to the sunscreen). I was wearing a skirt. But I was wearing three-quarter length stretchy pants under my skirt. The stretchy pants were to avoid between-leg chafe which would generally be caused by the skirt. The skirt was to avoid butt-related self-consciousness, which would generally be caused by the stretchy pants. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

I should have brought some water with me, but I didn’t think about it until it was too late. Altogether, today I ran 15.26 kilometres in 1:40:50. Not particularly fast, but not incredibly slow either, at a pace of 6:37 per kilometre. A nice steady, easy long run.

I’m going to try to get two more runs in this week. Evening runs, after work. Could this possibly be caused by the fact that my favourite Zombies, Run! mission is coming up after the next one, and it’s a mission that is best run at night, in the dark? Probably. But I take my motivation where I can get it. There seems to be a limited supply of motivation to go around, these days.

How I fell flat on my face

There are scrapes all down my leg, and there is gravel in my palms. My shoulder is going to bruise up badly tomorrow, but luckily my tattoo is still intact. Although footpath is harder on the feet than road when you’re running, I’m fairly sure that concrete is less painful, all things considered, when you fall on it. It seems like road would be a bit more… abrasive.

Not that I feel like testing it out.

I had this great big extended metaphor that I was going to write, going into the circumstances of how I tripped on the pavement this morning, and extending it further to talk about how I’ve been sick and lazy and haven’t run in weeks and weeks. But what’s the point? I fell. Then, I fell. Guess I’m just a lazy/clumsy bitch.

I’m not going to dwell on it. I went for a ten kilometre run this morning. My lungs didnae like it. I’ve been sick with tonsillitis for some time now. Feeling mostly better, but my throat is still being sucky. I feel like I’m dehydrated all the time. Obviously I didn’t drink enough water yesterday. Not a good idea. Anyway, The first half of the run was tough. It did get better eventually. I did a bunch of good sprints, with the awesome motivation of being chased by zombies.

I had about five hundred metres to go, when I tripped and flailed around for a couple of metres in an attempt to regain my feet. Inevitably, I failed. Skidded across the concrete. An old couple was watching me, and they didn’t ask if I was okay. I guess I didn’t register as an important thing.

Anyway, back to the gym tomorrow. I’ve got me a marathon in January, so I’d better start getting my shit together.

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!