December 2016 Running Challenge

22 of 50 so far, on schedule but no wiggle room. I might have to pick up a running day here or there but we will see, pretty worn out by Sunday with my new routine.

After see all the posts about the cold I am now really happy I live in the desert where it is warm. On Thursday we should be having perfect December weather with a high of 80 degrees

patrikc333 wrote: »

My first road bike will be ready on Friday, I'm so looking forward to it! I moved to a different country and I'm missing my wonderful parks, scenarios for runs are quite boring and ground is flat here, on the contrary there are a milion beautiful places to cycle. Plus I'm concerned one day I'll pay the price of running a lot everyday, so I want to do some cross training

Awesome! What kind of bike? Did you get a fitting? Here in Florida it is a big thing to get your bike fitted by a person who has been to fitting classes and knows all about it. The guy that did mine measured all these angles and lengths of arms/legs/stride/ who knows what else. I love my bike! It fits me perfectly. He had to change out the stem and handlebars, which sounds expensive but it really wasn't. Something about the width of my shoulders and my reach, IDK. I think you will love mixing up the two sports. I thought I was going to be amazing biking because of all my running (which is nothing compared to your distance), but it turns out, it uses different muscles and it took quite a while for me to get really fast. And at first, I kept getting weird pains after biking. I used the foam roller a lot on my IT band at first. Now the two sports just seem to complement each other. Good luck!

The other thing that can be difficult is getting a saddle that doesn't make you sore. Yeah, saddle sores are a real thing. Both my husband and I have gotten them.... no fun! I tried out about 5 expensive saddles (just borrowed from the store) and couldn't find any I liked. Then my cousin gave me a $30 saddle and I love it. Been using it for over a year and no problems. For short rides most saddles will do, but once you start doing 50+ miles the saddle is really important.

Question for y'all, does it get easier to control your pace? I seem to have a hard time reigning it in if I start faster than usual. I tend to settle into a pace about a quarter to a half mile into my run and then tend to want to stay there. At the moment, I am not running more than 5 miles or so, so it isn't a huge issue. But when I start going for more distance, I am going to be in trouble if I am always starting out too fast. About a month or so ago, my average pace was a slow 13 minute mile. Now, I am running mostly between 11 and 12 minute miles. I haven't been intentionally trying to increase my speed; I kind of just run however it feels comfortable. I have been paying more attention to form and have made some noticeable improvements there. I am thinking that improving my form is having a positive effect on my speed. I'm not complaining; I am glad to be running faster and can't wait until I can go even faster still. However, Houston is basically a swamp and the humidity makes breathing a challenge especially considering that I am still carrying about 60 pounds more than I should be. I think I need to figure out how to slow it down at least a little bit if I am going to add more distance. I'd like to try to push my distance out another mile or so for my next Sunday run. Maybe aim for 12 - 12.5 minute miles? Thoughts?

@7lenny7 Your tree is awesome. Very creative! That's funny about the snow tires there. I thought maybe Calgary was an exception, but it sounds as if Vancouver is instead. I'd say a third to half of people here in Vancouver put snow tires on every winter.

Yesterday, much of our snow melted and it rained, which created a slushy mess. Then, it got colder overnight, so much of that slush turned into little ice mountains, which then got covered with more snow. I had to take my car in for a service, so decided to run back home. Even the businesses haven't bothered to clear their sidewalks. The road is all slushy puddles and the sidewalks are uneven ice chunks covered in snow. I was worried I was going to twist my ankle, but I made it home safe and sound.

Here is a picture of the snow from the first run in it the other day. I should have taken one today to show the dirty, slushy mess it is now, but I didn't. Can you spot a sidewalk? Nope. No shovels to be found. There are mountains in the distance (you can see the dark shadow of one between the two far trees) that are beautiful when covered with snow - and look much nicer when we don't have any snow!



Anyway, running in snow/ice is crazy hard. I was working at almost tempo hr but ended up around a 15:00/mile pace.

Oh, and I love how Strava deducts all the stops at traffic lights or from chatty neighbours so you end up with a better pace than Garmin gives.

12/12 - 1.52 miles

Total: 14.52 miles / 40

Had a stomach ache this morning so left my run until this afternoon - fortunately finished todays activities whilst still enough light to get a quick daytime run done. Had originally thought I'd do 13k hill circuit today but a little tired so switched this weeks runs around to give me a 7.5k easy run for today. It was 8C out, a little windy but not overly so and threatening rain as I left. I went with short sleeve top with a light cycling jacket over the top which worked well. The rain was even kind enough to wait until I got home. The run itself was good/uneventful and ended up at 8.2km.

My runtastic app informed me after I'd finished that I'd run 599.9km this year compared to my 600km target - unhelpfully adding "To reach your goal keep running 0km per week". Whilst it's tempting to go out and run 100m I guess I can wait until tomorrow to officially make that goal!


1-Dec: 6.2k easy run
2-Dec: 11.5k - 10k tempo plus warm up/cool down
3-Dec: 2.1k TM
4-Dec: 5.3k easy run
5-Dec: 21.7k long run
6-Dec: 8.3k 'tired' run
7-Dec: 3.1k TM
8-Dec: 5.3k easy
9-Dec: 12.6k easy
10-Dec: 2k short run
11-Dec: 11k - 10k tempo plus warm-up
12-Dec: 8.2k easy

lissadecker wrote: »

Question for y'all, does it get easier to control your pace? I seem to have a hard time reigning it in if I start faster than usual. I tend to settle into a pace about a quarter to a half mile into my run and then tend to want to stay there. At the moment, I am not running more than 5 miles or so, so it isn't a huge issue. But when I start going for more distance, I am going to be in trouble if I am always starting out too fast. About a month or so ago, my average pace was a slow 13 minute mile. Now, I am running mostly between 11 and 12 minute miles. I haven't been intentionally trying to increase my speed; I kind of just run however it feels comfortable. I have been paying more attention to form and have made some noticeable improvements there. I am thinking that improving my form is having a positive effect on my speed. I'm not complaining; I am glad to be running faster and can't wait until I can go even faster still. However, Houston is basically a swamp and the humidity makes breathing a challenge especially considering that I am still carrying about 60 pounds more than I should be. I think I need to figure out how to slow it down at least a little bit if I am going to add more distance. I'd like to try to push my distance out another mile or so for my next Sunday run. Maybe aim for 12 - 12.5 minute miles? Thoughts?

I've been running off and on for a couple years - took some longer breaks due to an injury and due to scheduling conflicts. At first, I had terrible pacing issues... I would go way too fast for a few min. and then walk for too long. Over time, it has improved somewhat, but not as much as I had wanted. The things I've done to help with pace are to use music targeted to a specific pace (using jog.fm), using technology to get constant updates about pace and heart rate (and I can see on my Garmin how fast I'm going on average for the run and at the moment), running trails instead of roads (which requires a slower pace due to more obstacles... also how I got injured), and just trying to make a conscious effort to slow down when I know I'm going too fast. I'm doing better than I was at one time, but still not where I want to be as far as pacing. It might be worth mentioning that I'm genetically inclined towards fast twitch muscle fibers, so that doesn't help. Over time, I've improved, but I'm open to other ideas how to help avoid sprinting as well.

dkabambe wrote: »

My runtastic app informed me after I'd finished that I'd run 599.9km this year compared to my 600km target - unhelpfully adding "To reach your goal keep running 0km per week". Whilst it's tempting to go out and run 100m I guess I can wait until tomorrow to officially make that goal!

Ha! That's too funny! It reminds me of some of the tickers a couple years ago that didn't print correctly when you went over the goal.
It would say something like "only -7 miles to go" when someone had 107/100 miles.

[img]https://tickers.TickerFactory.com/ezt/t/wu2I393/exercise.png[\img] Gotta get moving! MWF and one weekend day are my goals for running, other days weights and yoga. Ran home from work the other day - good way to get home! Run about 3.2 miles each run.[/img]

Ran home from work the other day - good way to commute! Try to do 3.2 each run. Cheers!

@Stoshew71 -So bummed for you. I was certain you had this. I know that nobody has prepared better than you. I guess sometimes there is nothing you can do to plan for an off day though. Please don't give up trying though. All of your hard work is going to come through for you in a big way.