A Runner’s Balancing Act

I am writing this post from my new HTC Droid Incredible. I am sitting in a park in Payson, Arizona, where the temperature is probably about 72 degrees. I just finished a 13 mile run and I‘m feeling pretty good! I‘ve been running up here on the weekends now for for 3 weeks. Its only about hours drive from my house, but the elevation changes from 1,000 to 5,000 feet in that hour and the temperature drops a good 20 degrees. I’ve been wanting to spend a little more time in Payson instead of driving up here and just turning around and heading back to the hot desert as soon as I finish my run. A good friend suggested I get a laptop so I could blog from anywhere. That would be wonderful except I really don’t have the cash for that. So instead I opted for a full size blue tooth keyboard that pairs with my Droid phone. WOW. All I can say is… this is freaking awesome.

I got my HTC Incredible back in July and I have been loving every second of being a smart phone owner. I downloaded the WordPress app right away and intended to blog from my vacation in Mammoth, CA where I did a ton of running. Unfortunately, as nice as the little touch keyboard is, it really is not conducive to creative writing. I doubt you all want to read a blog post filled with text message shorthand. The keyboard is called the “Freedom Pro“ and I definitely recommend it. It even folds up and has a carrying case for easy transport.

I‘ve been playing around with a lot of different running apps on my phone since I got it. Unfortunately I have been  disappointed in nearly every app on the market. This phone isn‘t going to be replacing my Garmin anytime soon.  It is interesting to think that I could have all of my running gadgets combined into one – gps, radio, mp3 player, map, cell phone, and camera. At this point, I think I can use it for everything but the GPS. It IS accurate enough, but my biggest problem is that I have yet to find an app that will pause recording if you come to a stop light. I hate how the average pace data gets thrown off.

In future posts, I hope to go through all of the running apps and cell phone products I’ve played with and review them. Maybe I can save someone my frustrations.

But before I do that I thought I‘d just give you all an update on my life and running.  I‘m mentally gearing up for the fall and winter racing season. I‘m still trying to figure out what races I want to run and if I‘m going to attempt 26.2 again in January. I for sure will do a half or two before then.  There are a couple of halfs in November I will probably run.

My long run buddies are no longer available, so I‘ll be doing my long runs alone this season. I‘m sort of bummed out about that, but at the same time I‘m sort of an introspective soul and a good long run by myself can be enjoyable.

My average speed seems to have dropped over the last couple of months. It’s no surprise really – it’s hot out there and my milage has dropped as well. I‘m in the process now of slowly upping the weekly milage, and adding in some speedwork here and there so that come October I can really start pushing myself. I‘ve still got another month of hot temperatures to deal with so I can‘t expect too much out of myself just yet.

That’s it for now. I have to drive back down the hill so I can meet my hubby for lunch. Have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend all!

1. Make the summer your “off season” and expect to put in far fewer miles. Even professional athletes train in cycles to optimize their athletic gains. Your body needs a period of time to recover and rebuild especially if you are constantly training for races in the fall, winter and spring. I remind myself of this often when I start to feel like less of a runner because my weekly milages are falling under 20 miles a week.  In AZ the weather is the worst from mid June through mid September. I’m pretty lucky because that’s only 3 months. If I lived in colder climates I’d be dealing with crappy weather from October through April.

2. Find your comfort cutoff. Get a digital indoor/outdoor thermometer that measures both the temperature and humidity. Then track the conditions before you leave on your run and after you return (if you run at dawn or dusk this can actually change quite a bit). Keep track of how you felt in each temperature and humidity combination. This way, you can start to get a feel for where your comfort cutoff is. I get up most mornings around 4:30 am and check my thermometer. I know if the temperature is above 80 degrees while the humidity is above 30%, it’s going to be too hot to run outside by the time the sun comes up (and I go back to bed or hit the gym). Your tolerance may be different. Knowing your range will allow you to watch the weather forecast and predict the days you might be able to run. I keep an eye on the “overnight low” forecast since I usually run at dawn when its close to that temperature. I’ve found that the midday high prediction really has no bearing on the overnight low.

Besides the humidity and the temperature, the last factor you’ll want to track is the presence of the sun. I have found I can run in temperatures between 85 and 100 fairly comfortably when its dark or very cloudy. Especially if the humidity is lower than 25%.  I have also found that 80 degrees in direct sunlight, feels a whole lot hotter than 80 degrees in the shade or darkness.

4. Start exploring the gym. I’ll be the first to admit that being in the gym SUCKS. I am a nature girl at heart and I’m sure that’s one of the reasons I love running so much. On top of that, I’m also an endorphin junky so when I do go to the gym its a rare occasion when I venture out of the cardio room. But since mother nature and I aren’t on such good terms during the summer I make do with the gym. The problem is that the treadmill is BORING. This summer I hired a personal trainer for a few sessions since I have very little knowledge or experience with weight training. Now when I’m stuck going to the gym, I run on the treadmill for about 25 minutes and do 25 min of weights. It works well for me because I am far less bored. I do different muscle groups each day so it’s always something new. There are such a variety of exercises you can do in a gym that no day has to be exactly the same. I usually spend my time on the treadmill planning my weights workout which keeps the boredom away. Another thing I really like about weight training it leaves me feeling pleasantly fatigued, where 25 minutes of running wouldn’t be enough to give me that “ahhhh” feeling as I walked out of the gym.

5. Do intervals on the treadmill. By mid July I cannot stand the thought of getting on the treadmill. The boredom can be crushing. I combat it with doing intervals – after all the treadmill is the perfect place to run a prescribed pace for a specific time. You spend all that time staring at the numbers on the console, might as well make it work for you! I like the book “Run Less, Run Faster” to pull interval workouts (I convert the paces to MPH using an online calculator). But you don’t have to be that precise. Make up your own intervals if you want. Just varying the speed breaks up the monotony. Instead of thinking “geeze I’ve got 45 more minutes to stare at this wall”, you are thinking “just 5 minutes till the end of this interval” By running harder, you can run less and still get in a great workout that will help you PR come fall.

Snapped this photo of the sunrise on an early morning run last week.

Rain from my front door this morning.

I got up this morning not knowing if I would be running or not. I had planned to meet one of my running buddies at 6:30 am, but because of the uncertainty of the impending storm (which the weather guy painted to be slightly less than a hurricane!) we decided to wait until right up to the last minute to decide if we were going to go.

I woke up in the middle of the night and heard the rain on our skylight. Surely that meant we wouldn’t be running. I don’t mind a run in the rain (if its not coming down hard), but the rain combined with the darkness of the early morning is a little more dangerous than I’d like.  I dreamt that I texted my friend and canceled, but when I woke at 5:30 to my alarm I realized that hadn’t actually happened. And to my surprise, the rain had stopped. Hmmm.  So I got up, put my clothes on, ate my breakfast and drank my coffee. Then the rain started again. Shoot.

Then I got the text message from my buddy saying she didn’t want to go. So here I am, dressed and ready to run, but I’m not going. I could go by myself to the gym and run on the treadmill, but I actually did a hard run last night less than 12 hours ago (I was sort of expecting this morning’s run to get canceled). I could lift weights, but I don’t usually have much strength for that in the early morning. I suppose it’s best that I wait and run on the treadmill after work again tonight to give my body the extra time to recover from last night’s tempo run.

So what’s the next best thing to actually running? Blogging about it! Ha.

Lots of thoughts have been swirling around in this head of mine since PF Chang’s. I’ve felt a renewed enthusiasm for training and possibly pursuing that Boston goal towards the end of the year. I think what I want to do is train conservatively for The Rock and Roll full in San Diego. I’ll just run that race without much expectation, to see where I’m at in June. The goal would be to just be a little faster than my PR which is 3:58.  If I can do that and finish feeling somewhat good, I will put my sights on the Tuscon marathon next year. The Tucson course is known for being fast (it loses elevation from start to finish). If I come close but don’t succeed, I can try to redeem myself at The Rock N Roll AZ Marathon in January. So here it is, my tentative 2010 race calender. I’m so excited!!

Feb. 14 Lost Dutchman Half Marathon, Apache Juction, AZ

March 6th Run for Ryan’s House 1/2 marathon Scottsdale, AZ

March 28 Valley of Gold 1/2 marathon, Tucson, AZ

May 1st Whiskey Row half Marathon, Prescott, AZ

June 6th San Diego Rock and Roll, San Diego, CA

December 12 – Tucson Full Marathon, Tucson, AZ

April 18, 2011 – BOSTON (fingers crossed)

Happy running!