Aaaaaaaaaaand now, the last entry of the Oakland Running Festival/Oakland Marathon training cycle. It’s a little weird to write this nearly a week post-marathon, but hey… I like closure.
Hazy memory, so this will be brief. The theme of the week was RECOVERY and just waiting until the big day.
Monday, March 17
p: rest/XT
a: rest
Always the rest-day Monday.
Tuesday, March 18
p: recovery double: 5 mi a.m.; 4 mi p.m.
a: yup, a recovery double — 5.1 mi a.m.; 4.06 mi p.m.
Felt pretty solid on both of these recovery runs. On the first one, pre-dawn, the temperature allegedly dropped 11 degrees, which I’m not entirely sure I buy… but the gigundo full moon was to.die.for. I bet there’d be more pre-dawn runners out there if they knew how beautiful the moon was (or if they’d get to go back to sleep for a little bit after their run. Minor detail).
Part two felt great, especially after driving for three hours (another aquarium trip). My legs were all AMEN, SISTA for giving them the opportunity to streeeeeeeeeeetch.
still has nothing to do with running, but jellyfish are still cool
Wednesday, March 19
p: GA 7 with 2 @ GMP
a: GA 7.07 with 2 @ GMP (well, not exactly– 7:39, 42)
Missed the mark a bit on this and couldn’t quite lock down the GMP very quickly. The goal was to do this descending, in accordance with my corresponding pace at Oakland, with a range of 7:37 down to :26. It was a bit of a ‘eghhh’ moment because it was hard not to overthink or overanalyze why I couldn’t quickly lock down my pace, but rationally, I knew that at this point in training, it was kinda inconsequential and that it was probably more indicative of some sort of ‘blergh’ that morning and less so of something egregiously wrong with my training. It did, however, spur me to consider reigning in my pacing a bit for race day from a 1:39/36 split to a 1:40/38 split, which was definitely wise, given the course profile.
Thursday, March 20
p: recovery 5
a: yup, recovery 5.09
Decided to get outta my hood and run around the Catholic cemetery for a while. It’s actually kinda cathartic to run in a big, .8-sized circle, that also throws me some little ascents and descents; it’s just a bit weird to do so pre-dawn and see random shit strewn along the sidewalk leading up to it, like children’s toys. What I also find interesting is that many headstones in the cemetery have these little LED votive things, presumably so the graves are always illuminated (I guess as a way to honor the deceased?). It makes the headstones kinda pretty… but also kinda eerie when you’re circlin’ the cemetery pre-dawn and only see little votive lights, in addition to that which your headlamp is illuminating. Kinda rave-y. Kinda weird.
Friday, March 21
p: recovery 5 + speed w 5x100m strides
a: yup, recovery 5.01 with 5x100m strides
Very relaxing and cathartic laps around the ‘hood. Totally kumbahya, totally wanted to run forever. Thank you, taper; thank you.
Also, on many of my runs this week, I had noticed the absence of my feral felines, my usual company that typically terrifies me graces my presence mid-run. Later in the day, during a walk with A, not only did I see some graffiti–NBD for SJ–but it was feline-themed. I had to preserve the moment.
seriously
Saturday, March 22
p: recovery 4
a: recovery 4.03 with Lynton (!!) in the west side of PCP
Race weekend! Race weekend! Just a little jiffy with Lynton, who so awesomely flew over to the Bay from Chicago so he could race 13.1 at Oakland and run with Rozanne for her first 5k. Even after a late flight, he still drove a long haul down to SJ for a little shake-out. Beginning of an awesome weekend!
Sunday, March 23
p: 26.2 miles – RACE DAY!
a: 26.2 miles – RACE DAY! 3:23:47, third woman OA, second AG
Hard to believe that I just wrote “one week out” in my title, that my 22nd marathon is less than a week away, but it’s **almost** that time, guys! Pretty wild and exciting stuff.
Last week ended on a bit of a crappy note with me getting ill and deciding to pass on my 17 miler, my last real LR, though I knew it was the wise choice. This week, I slowly but surely felt like I was regaining strength, even with the reduced volume that comes with the territory of a marathon taper–and finally getting off all the cold medicines that made me feel like I was floating above myself helped, too, no doubt. It’s a bit bizarre because before I got sick, I was feeling pretty invincible about everything–not like this marathon was in the bag (because, newsflash, that never happens…) or anything, just a good, solid feeling of confidence–and once I got sick and was pretty much on my ass for a couple days, suddenly I had this ridiculous crisis of confidence and wondered if I’d even be able to finish a marathon, without any regard whatsoever to time goals.
Part of this so-called crisis is just taper nonsense for me, wherein my emotional and my rational sides duke it out in the confines between my ears, but typically, if I start to freak out about anything, I just think of what I would tell my running family if they told me the same stuff… and I generally tell myself to STFU, though (usually) in nicer terms. 🙂
I should write a separate post about this stuff, but suffice it to say that a week out from Oakland, I’m feeling well–healthy, strong, confident in my training, and really pretty eager to see what’s there. Oakland is a bit of a mystery to me because the race has only been around for five years now, I don’t personally know anyone who has run it, and I can only glean so much from what I find online, from people’s blogs (and of course, the quality control is all over the place)… so unlike before NYC (and many other races), when I felt like I knew everything I needed to know about how to pace myself, what the course/topography was like, and all the secret little ins and outs of how to run a successful marathon there, Oakland is a bit more of a surprise. It’s fun that way, maybe a bit unnerving, but mostly just fun. I’m beginning to get tangential, so I’ll cut myself off now and take you to this week’s training!
Monday, March 10
p: rest
a: rest
Like a champ.
Tuesday, March 11
p: GA + speed – 8 w 6x100m strides
a: GA + speed, 8 w 6x100m strides (8:24 pace)
This run was much more mentally and physically taxing than it should have been. It was also my first day of running after 48 consecutive hours off (a rarity for me), and my legs felt gelatinous, I felt like I was going to keel from dehydration (it wasn’t hot; it was 5am and probably high 40s!), and though I was feeling a lot better from my cold that sidelined me over the weekend, I just still felt meh. This was also my last day of being on a cold medicine cocktail which, if I can help it, I want to avoid in the future. No doubt the medicine helped, but I hated the way it made me feel.
Wednesday, March 12
p: recovery 5
a: recovery 5, 8:33 average
A rare afternoon run for me. We’re a sharing family, so by this point in the week, the cold that sidelined me for a couple days, and was an annoyance to my toddler, was full on rockin’ out in my husband (hence the afternoon during-the-kid’s-nap run). Lots of mental nonsense still about the race, though I was feeling a lot better overall and finally off medicine.
Thursday, March 13
p: VO2 max 8 mi with 3x1600m at 5kRP; recovery jog bt
a: VO2 max – 8.58 with 3x1600m at 5KRP; 3 min RI (avg for 1600s: 6:40, 6:41, 6:34 [goal: 6:40])
Just what I needed, both physically and mentally. This workout usually smokes me because I pace myself poorly and end up just about death-marching it in. I vowed I wouldn’t do that today, and it helped tremendously. I’ve also never done mile repeats on a track (only on the LFT back in Chicago), so that was a bit of a change as well. I managed to squeak in most of these before the school day began near the PCP track I was using, but a PE instructor was out there with his class and ended up shouting my splits to me each 400m, which was kinda fun and made me nostalgic for track season.
Anyway, I was THRILLED with this workout. Just thrilled. It has to be the only time I’ve done this that I actually succeeded in realizing that which I wanted to, and it was nice (read: reassuring) to see that one cold, that took me out of commission for a LR, didn’t totally deplete my fitness or somehow squelch any remote possibility of running 26.2 here in a couple days now (as ridiculous as that all sounds to admit). Awesome. And with this workout, the taper was officially official.
Oh, and I got some pretty pictures from the track and the sunrise. If you see my stuff on IG/fb/twitter, you might have noticed this lil photo-a-day thing I’m doing as part of the ZOOMA Napa promotion. It’s fun. 🙂 The photo prompt that day was ‘favorite,’ so I wrote that my favorite time to run was with the sunrise.
PCP track (on the way there, anyway), then Chicago, Chicago, Chicago 🙂
After the mile repeats, my gal and I headed down to the aquarium in Monterey and oogled over jellyfish for the better part of an afternoon. That has nothing to do with my training this week, but dammit, jellyfish are really pretty cool.
we’re fans
Friday, March 14
p: recovery 5
a: recovery 5.03 (9:03 average)
I’m totally embracing the easy recoveries and keeping them as easy as possible. My levels of vertical oscillation are probably horrendous, but the pace sure is fun. 🙂 Not a whole lot else to say about this one.
Saturday, March 15
p: GA + speed, 7 mi with 10x100m strides
a: MLR 13.07 (8:21 avg)
Little switcheroo with putting my LR on Saturday instead of Sunday. For a change, I drove over to the section of the GRT where I first began running here, when we were in temporary housing on the north side of the city, so it was hard not to be nostalgic (even though it was just two months ago!) for a while. Started pre-dawn on a path lit only by my headlamp and the light of a really gorgeous full moon… and it was just all kum-bah-ya. This MLR was also one of the only times this cycle where I’ve run by myself without having my phone jammin’ to some music; I didn’t want the musical distractions to interfere with the birds chirping that I wanted to hear more. 🙂 Anyway, kept the run nice and easy, and once I hit halfway, I allowed myself to do a little mini-progression but not quite approach GMP, going a lil somethin’ like 9:07, 8:47, 41, 45, 47, 40 for .47 – screwed up my watch when I dropped off my headlamp at the car (moron), 8:41, 25, 7:59, 53, 53, 49, 47, 33 for .6 .
Again, rationally, physiologically, I know there’s no benefit or no adaptation that’s going to occur that will give me any sort of competitive edge a mere 8 days out from my race, but emotionally, it can be hard to tell myself to calm TFD sometimes about this stuff. 🙂
pre-dawn on the GRT with the big full moon over the new stadium
the sunrise, as seen from Alviso
doesn’t do it justice, but the fog rising from the riverbed was really cool…and kinda looked like a bunch of ghosts
Pretty fun (and early) run though before the family and I trekked into SF to meet-up with my first supervisor post-undergrad (read: one of my first ‘real world’ job supervisors). We had a great relationship when I worked for him, and he has long been a source of awesome encouragement and motivation, both in my personal and professional life, and I always feel like I leave our get-togethers feeling super charged and ready to just take on the fuckin’ world. That’s a pretty good feeling to have before your first marathon of the year, folks…
yay mentors!
And, how cool is this– he was also a D1 hurdler back in the day, has also run several marathons, and has been a lifelong vegetarian (and vegan, for a while). Maybe it’s not so coincidental after all that we jibe as well as we do.
Sunday, March 16
p: MLR 13
a: GA 7.0 (7:57 avg)
Very awesome day for the running community. I was jazzed all morning and day from my friends’ race reports comin’ in from all over the country, and while I had planned to run pre-dawn, my 4am alarm came and went… as did my 5… and before long, I got to go over to volunteer as a course marshall with some other Wolfpack runners at the Go Green St. Patrick’s Day half marathon/10k/5k in Los Gatos, about 20 minutes from home. It was a beautiful morning for a race, and being a course marshall so early in the race, between miles 2-3, just rocked. I had a ton of fun cat-callin’ to all the racers, and they seemed to appreciate my nonsense.
and the view wasn’t too bad, either
It wasn’t until I got home, then, and well after brunch, and after I fell asleep in my daughter’s bed waiting for HER to fall asleep… and after I came this close to not running because I awoke to her totally cuddled up in my arms… that I ran. 2pm, 79 degrees, unadulterated sun, and about 15mph winds from the north. It made for an interesting run, that’s for sure; I typically am running in temps that are nearly 30 degrees cooler, so my body was a lil’ WTF about the drastic change.
And that’s a wrap, folks. On to race week! Let’s go, OAAAAAAAAAAKLANNNNNNNDDDD!
Hazy memory, so this will be brief. The theme of the week was RECOVERY and just waiting until the big day.
