Running Goals

I’ve spent lots of time talking about my weight-loss efforts, but now I’d like to switch gears, and talk a little bit about running.  I’ve mentioned that I’ve been doing a half marathon program targeted at heart rate instead of speed. Here is the breakdown of heart rate zones for me, as calculated by Katie at Runs For Cookies, who happens to be both a certified running coach and my friend.  🙂  Katie used my heart rate data from a hard run I did in May  to calculate the numbers:

It seemed like it was working pretty well, and I was enjoying the training, but after not meeting my goal at  the 10K  I ran a few weeks ago, I decided to take Katie’s suggestion to do a race-specific run last week.  Prior to that, I’d been doing speed work that utilized heart rate training. As an example, I might do a 10-minute warm-up at Zone 1, and then  20 more minutes at Zone 2.   From that point, it was 60 seconds at Zone 5 followed by 90 seconds at Zone 1, and do that repetition 10 times.  Or, another interval workout Katie had me doing was 10 minutes Zone 1, 10 minutes Zone 2, then 10 minutes in Zone  3, followed by six minutes of Zone 4, followed by two minutes of Zone 5, and repeat the Zone 3/Zone 4/Zone 5 laps two more times.   Just reading that is pretty tiring, isn’t it? 😉 

“Race specific running” means to run segments of a long run at race pace, with short breaks in between.  She suggested doing 2 miles at pace, 3 times total, with 4 minute breaks in between.  She was adamant that I not do it before last Thursday, since I’d just run a race hard, so I decided to skip my usual interval training on Tuesday and do it Friday.

I’ve mentioned before that we’ve had a ridiculously humid summer this year; yes, it’s Michigan and we get humidity every year, but we usually have a few breaks with some nice, cool days, or at least, some lower dewpoints (the biggest indicator of humidity).  Every day this past week, I would check the weather for Friday, and then I would groan:  Thursday night’s low temp was forecast to be around 75, which is crazy warm.  Overnight temps like that are almost always accompanied by high humidity. Put them both together and you get pure misery if you’re a runner.  I was really getting worried.

And then I woke up Friday morning at 4am to find this:

OMFG. Eighty degrees?!  Seriously, the first words out of my mouth were, “Are you f’ng kidding me?!” (Only I didn’t abbreviate any words.)  I stood there for a minute, asking myself, “Am I really going to do this? Should I?”  A part of me said, “No, no, a thousand times no!”  But the “not a quitter” part of me said, “You’re already up, fool.  You might as well get out there and give it your best effort.”  So…out the door at 4:30am I went, water bottles and sweat cloth in tow.

I won’t bore you with the drawn-out details (even though I totally could!), but instead I’ll just give you the Reader’s Digest Condensed version: I completed 2 of the three segments at race pace, but I just could not make it through the third.  🙁  About 1/2 mile into the third two-mile lap, I just had to stop and catch my breath.  After about a minute, I started up again and finished out the mile at a 9:58 (goal pace is 9:48-9:53), but then I just stopped the workout and walked/jogged home.  Even that was hard, to be honest.  Because I’d quit with a mile left on my final interval, that meant I still had a mile and a half to go to get home, and I was so tired, I just did not want to even take one more step.  If I could have called someone for a pickup, I totally would have, but no one wants to come get you at 5:30am.  Unless you’re dying, which I wasn’t, although it sure felt like it for a while. 😛

I was very down about the whole episode after that.  Even spending a half-hour in the pool once I got home didn’t help. Although it was a heck of a way to view the beautiful sunrise. 🙂

I texted Katie and told her I was a failure and I was never running again.  Or something like that. 😉  I also told her I wasn’t going to run my half next month for a goal but would instead run it for fun.  Because, seriously, I hate running and it sucks more than anything else in the world ever. (Melodramatic? Me? Nevvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvver.)

But after about 5 or 6 hours of my little pity party, I began to think about it in a different light.  Yeah, I totally failed the race-specific run that morning.  But dear God, if there were any conditions that would make even an experienced runner think twice about running, they were last Friday morning’s conditions.  And you know what?  Yes, I was a total quitter that morning, but on the other hand–unlike a lot of other people, I was a starter. I did try to go out there and run my best.  Did I fail? At first blush, you might say that, but the more I think about it, the more I think that true failure would have been to not go out at all. Was I crazy for going out there?  Maybe.  But now I know that I’m capable of running four and a half hard miles in some extreme conditions.  Was it six? No.  But it was more than zero!!

At this point, I’ve decided to just postpone any goal-setting for my half for a few weeks.  I think I’ll try the test again toward the end of August and see where I stand.   In the meantime, I texted Katie Friday evening to ask her opinion on my long run for Saturday.  I ended up running a little over 7 miles total Friday morning,  but my Saturday long run was  scheduled to be for a total of two hours.  That seems like a lot of running back to back, so I asked Katie’s thoughts.  She said that if I wasn’t planning to shoot for a goal for next month’s half, I should just take it easy and cut it back. But she said that if I was trying for a goal pace, doing a long run after a semi-long, hard workout would be beneficial.  So basically, she left it up to me.  😛

I decided to see how I felt Saturday morning, and when I got up, although the weather wasn’t any better than it had been the day before, I figured I could give it a try.   I plotted out a looped route  around my neighborhood that would take me two hours at a 13-minute pace.  I made sure to pack some water, and I even packed some Gu chews, although the only ones I found in the fridge were from JJ’s 8K in June.   Unfortunately, they were watermelon-flavored (I don’t like watermelon), but I knew I would be foolish not to run with some kind of fuel, especially that long and in those conditions.

I started out just as the sun was getting ready to rise at a little after 6:30 a.m.

I took it nice and slow, and I have to admit, it was pretty enjoyable, even though I was sweating  and hot as hell.  I really do love the early-morning runs.  In my opinion, there’s just nothing like being up  and out the door before the rest of the world, and taking in the sights of your own neighborhood (or whatever neighborhood you’re running in).  I’m always amazed at the things that I see while running that I miss when I’m just driving by.

I saw a rainbow, too, but the picture wasn’t that great with my phone.

By the time I was done, with a little extra mileage added in with an out and back down a side road, I had done my first double digit run since March!

I was a lot faster back in March, when I finished with an exactly 11:00 average pace, but I was also running with Katie, and it was also a hell of a lot cooler! :-P.  That was back before I got into the heart rate training, too.

I’ve had a few more runs since Saturday, all of them very hot and humid.  Seriously, I feel like some days I would give my right eye for a dewpoint below 65. :/   Until that happens, I’ll keep slogging through, hoping that I can recapture some of that speed I seem to have lost once the weather gets cooler.

I will say this, though:   That same day that I had the failed speed work run on Friday, I happened to see a runner later in the afternoon while I was driving.  The first thought that popped into my mind upon seeing him was, “Man, I wish I was running right now.”  That, despite the fact that it was around 5 PM and therefore ridiculously hot and humid.  So, yes, even though my running isn’t going exactly as I would hope right now, I still enjoy it.  And to think I want swore that I would never be a runner!   Honestly, I think more than my speed or distance, just the fact that running has become something I look forward to (well, except for the speed work 😉 ) qualifies me as a running success.  🙂

Thanks for reading!