August (2016) Running Challenge

Thanks @katharmonic and @MNLittleFinn for the kind words!

@shanaber - I wear the calf sleeve(s) while I run, and usually leave them on for a bit after the run. I've struggled with shin splints for a few years, worse in my left leg than in the right, and two tibial stress fractures (left also). Shortening my stride, stability shoes, and hip exercises have helped a lot but I still get pretty bad shin splints/calf pain that comes and goes, and the sleeves help with the pain. For a while, my shins were good enough that I didn't wear the sleeves at all. But about two months ago my left one started bothering me again, so I wear the one sleeve for longer runs (7+ miles) or fast runs. Twice now, I've felt my right shin/calf start to twinge so I wear a sleeve on that leg too for the next run or two. I guess I could always wear both instead of just the one, but they make my legs kind of hot and I don't really like to rely on the sleeve if I can avoid it. Plus it makes for a fun tan line- with all this summer running, my left shin is noticeably lighter than my right one

MNLittleFinn wrote: »

OK. I need some help figuring out my Cutback week this. Last time around it was easier, because I was running less mileage, and wasn't being so hardcore about it. I've averaged 40 mpw the first 3 weeks of this training cycle. I'm trying to figure out how to structure or not structure my cutback. Normal weeks looked like:

Mon: 4 miles
Tues: 7-9 miles hillier
Wed: 4-7 miles (depends on how many I ran on Tues)
Thurs: 7-8 miles (Tempo run, Steady State Run or Cruise Intervals)
Friday: 4 miles
Sat: 10-14 miles
Sun: Rest

I'm aiming for like 25-30 miles for this week, so I can still run a 9-10 mile long run and will probably be running a Tempo Run of 30-35 minutes plus W/u and C/d on Thursday.

Thinking about skipping tomorrow's run, but that's as far as I got. Any thoughts?

Wait, you've been running 6 days a week? I thought you were pretty much a newbie runner like me who's reached doing a HM. (I run 4 days a week.)

Distances in miles (as I've said previously) turn my brain to mush, but my thoughts are to just cut back to 4 days a week and run easy. It's supposed to be a cutback week.

IIRC you've been really pushing it lately. I'm totally in awe, but just a bit worried you might push it too far, old beast. xoo

Thanks for the welcome. Hubby and I went searching for a new running place for me. I've been running the hilly horse trails in my neighborhood with my dog since I started and the basketball court at my gym.....LOL. I don't do treadmills, they scare me. We found a nice park where he's convinced I'll be safe in the early morning hours and so I'm intending to try that one day this week.

I also broke out my old HR monitor which I used to use for swimming. According to my last fitbit, which bit the bullet, my HR was generally in the 130 to 140 range when I felt like I was pushing my pace a little. I have no idea if that's a good target or not so I need to do some research.

Also, last week I had the miracle cold that only lasted two days but last night it came back with a cough.........ugghhh, weirdest cold I've ever had. I'll take two days and see what happens then try to get back to the gym and running.

I may have to lower my expectations this month already.

29.17% of 140 mile goal

01-Aug: 5.11 miles
02-Aug: 5.38 miles
03-Aug: 5.57 miles
04-Aug: 8.41 miles
05-Aug: 5.69 miles
06-Aug: 5.08 miles
07-Aug: <Life Day>
08-Aug: 5.60 miles
09-Aug:
10-Aug:
11-Aug:
12-Aug:
13-Aug:
14-Aug: <Life Day>
15-Aug:
16-Aug:
17-Aug:
18-Aug:
19-Aug:
20-Aug:
21-Aug: <Life Day>
22-Aug:
23-Aug:
24-Aug:
25-Aug:
26-Aug:
27-Aug:
28-Aug: <Life Day>
29-Aug:
30-Aug:
31-Aug:



Upcoming Races:
13-Aug: Apple-a-Day 5K, Macon
27-Aug: John 316 Cancer Awareness 5K, Lizella
05-Sep: Labor Day Road Race 10K
10-Sep: Glazin' a Trail Donut Run 5K, Centerville
17-Sep: Joshua's Wish 5K, Macon OR
Race for Education 5K, Warner Robins
24-Sep: Georgia Golden Olympics 5K
01-Oct: Terry's Run 5K, Eastman
22-Oct: S.C.A.R.E. 5K, Macon
05-Nov: Ridge Run 5K, Macon
12-Nov: Pecan Orchard 10K, Fort Valley

@ariceroni -Congrats on the 10K. Still a very good time. And don't worry about the slowing down. Just what you need to do great on your marathon!
@louubelle16 -Sorry the relationship didn't work out. As others have said, probably not the one for you. Better to find out sooner than later.
@katharmonic and @shanaber - I have a Starbucks about a mile and a half from my house. I often plan my long runs to end there. I take a baggie full of chocolate protein powder with me, add it to an iced Americano, and enjoy my recovery drink while I walk home. Couldn't be more perfect. And for the record, Starbucks has the BEST water. Maybe it's because it's after a long, hot, run, but I could drink a gallon of the stuff right there!

Aug 1-Rest Day
Aug 2- 3.5 miles AM, 7.4 miles PM cruise intervals, 0.7 mile run with puppy
Aug 3-5.9 miles
Aug 4- 6 miles easy
Aug 5- 5.5 miles speed intervals on the treadmill
Aug 6- 10 miles easy with the group
Aug 7- 10 miles with speed play
Aug 8- rest day- Of course it's the nicest day we have had in weeks!

I have a question about my Garmin heart rate monitor (FR220 with chest strap). Yesterday I did a 10 mile run with speed play which required me to do a two mile warm up and then do the first 0.25 miles of each mile in zone 3 with the remainder of the mile in zone 2. I kept getting unusual spikes on my heart rate when I was in zone 2. I would be cruising along in the 130-140 range, and then all of a sudden it would shoot up into the 150s-160s and even 170s at time. There was no change in effort, speed or elevation and it definitely didn't FEEL like it was that high. Then it would come right back down. I did not notice it happening when I was running in zone 3 though. I was running at paces of 7-7:20 and my heart rate stayed in the high 150s for the whole interval. It kind of had me worried a bit. The graph of the HR data does not look normal. Instead of gradual ups and downs, it's full of drastic spikes. Has anyone ever seen this before? Trying to figure out if it's a problem with my heart rate monitor or my heart!

8/1 - 40 mins total body strength + pilates, 20 min light cardio, stretching
8/2 - 3 mi walk - .75 mi of which was running intervals to test out my leg
8/3 - 3.1 mi walk - again I ran about .75 mi in short intervals, also a few tiny hill repeats
8/4 - 20 min light cardio, 55 min strength&pilates
8/5 - 3 mi walk
8/6 - back to school shopping wore me out!
8/7 - just totally being a lazy bum here....no excuse
8/8 - 20 min light cardio so far

Running Goal: 0 of 60 miles (adjusted down further due to leg pain)
Non-running goals: Take my strength training more seriously this month/Lose 5lbs (dang it!)

Well I was reading over the weekend but not posting so I won't try to catch up and comment on anything except this current page we're on I've been super tired which is not shocking considering the little sleep I've been getting. I napped Fri/Sat/Sun afternoons and I normally would nap only 1 day a weekend.

Saturday I went out for tax-free back to school shopping in the pouring rain and ended up being gone 5 hours and I at least got 8000 steps but then I crashed. Sunday went to church then crashed again with less than 5000 steps for the day. Two days in a row without ANY official exercise is just not normal for me.

I'm possibly depressed due to my lack of running My calf is totally better but I have one specific point of pain in my shin with high impact and I just can't bring myself to run on it. I don't want to trash my leg and end up worse off. At this point, I don't know when I'm running again. And the pain is really so mild. I've seriously had way worse pain from running "injuries". But something about this is giving me hesitation and I'm just not willing to risk it. So it's now been almost 2 weeks since my last real run.

@lporter229 I wonder if your chest strap battery is going bad causing it to malfunction?

@cljoe7 and @luluinca Sorry you both haven't been feeling well.

@jazlynunbedacht Welcome to the group

@Elise4270 2.9 still beats 0!

@5512bf You really plan most of your runs in enough detail to hit exactly the goal distance? Wow, that's impressive!
I have some rough ideas of "if I take a left here, it will be about 2kms longer than the other way", but that's it. My training plan was originally in miles, and the conversion leaves me with funny numbers (I refuse to run in miles, I only run kilometres ^^) - hard to take those serious. Last week I should have run twice 6.44 km (came out 6.73 and 6.20), twice 12.9 km (ended up 12.3 and 12.7) and once 27.4km (turned into 28.1)... 100m more or less are definitely a case of "*kitten* it, close enough" for me.

@9voice9 That's great that you found a running partner at work! If he wants to do tris and hasn't done any running most of the year, he's really lucky that you are going to drag him out for some runs.

@HonuNui Not sure I would call mowing 2 acres and mucking out the chicken coop lazy. More like... "active rest day"? ;-p

@luluinca Coughs are the worst part of having a cold. Hope you get better soon!

@KatieJane83 Great job on the 10 miles!

@lporter229 My old HRM used to give me crazy spikes whenever I ran under power lines or across rail tracks. Could it be something like that? Or maybe you were running next to somebody with the same HRM, and the signals interfered with each other? I can't imagine your actual heart rate would do spiky things out of nowhere like that.

@Virkati Great that you are back!

@shanaber I haven't yet found any shorts where I could keep the phone in the pocket. Either they don't have any pockets that are large enough (the tights), or I can feel the phone bouncing around in the pocket (the shorts)...

Actually, my good resolution for the next few short runs is sorting my running pants collection! I tore them all out of the closet on the weekend, as I was digging for something breathable (because summer...) yet long (to run a trail on Saturday and still wear shorts to work on Monday, without any shocked questions regarding all the scratches on my legs ^^ ). Can you believe I have 11 (yes, eleven!) running trousers? 7 short and 4 long. Out of all those, there are three that I actually wear, the others are retired to the bottom of the pile, because I don't like them for various reasons.
I decided it's time to get rid all the ones I never wear (and maybe replace them with one or two nicer ones ). Four of them went on the donation pile right away, because I still remember what's wrong with them: 1x no pockets (not even a tiny one for a single key), 2x shorts that try to transform into underwear when I run, and 1x compression tights that are so good at that compression stuff that they actually hurt.
The remaining four are all loose black shorts; all short enough that I need to use body glide if I don't want chafing on my thighs, but if I recall correctly, at least two of those have "riding up issues" as well. Since they are all boring black, it's impossible to tell them apart. I'll have to go for a run in each of those to figure out which ones are tolerable and which ones have to go.

@greenolivetree I wonder if wearing a compression sleeve like @ariceroni would help? It's tough to deal with feeling depressed from lack of your regular exercise endorphines (sp?) Hang in there!

@ariceroni

I wore those CEP sleeves for a while and they really do help with shin splints. I've got screws, plates & rods hold both lower legs together so I had a lot of issues when I started running with lower leg pain. I'm hopefully through that period of my running life since I haven't needed them for about a year now. I do still wear the recovery socks which are amazing if you can sleep in long compression socks. I wake up with no swelling or shin/calf pain.

@lporter229

My 225 with the optical wrist HR monitor does that from time to time. It's typically when it's not making contact right. It normally happens right at the start of run but works itself out with a few minutes. With the chest strap it could be a battery, but I'd bet it just wasn't setting right. This is what mine looks like when it goes bonkers. This was from yesterdays 10 mile MP run. IT spiked to 174 then back to 80 then stayed solid about 142-146.

8/1 - 2.23 - HS XC Practice
8/2 - 6.0 - Easy
8/2 - 4.15 - Easy
8/3 - 15.03 - Easy
8/4 - 6.0 - Recovery
8/5 - 11.06 Easy + 3.47 @MP XC Practice
8/6 - 7.0 Easy W/ 10 x 160M Strides
8/7 - 10.22 MP
8/8 - 4.38 recovery

Total 69.55 of 285 miles

Since my long run got cut short yesterday because of fear of getting zapped by lightning, I went ahead and ran a bit with the kids at XC Practice. I had mentioned a week or so ago how i loved running in a light rain, I'm over that now. I've been rained on last 5 days, sometimes to the point it was difficult to see where I was going. I'm now going to say how I love to run in 60 degree weather and see if that happens for a few weeks.