Racing=Some Guys' Alternative to Match.com?

Just need to share this one: last weekend, I did a 4.5 mile race that started an hour after a half marathon event.  As I crossed the finish line and entered the tent with medals and refreshments, a half marathoner finisher stopped me to ask me about my time and training.  Only at a race could someone flirt like this:

Him: What are you training for next?

Me: A half marathon in April.  What about you?

Him: Well, I'm always training for Boston.  I have my qualifying time, but I'm going to Tucson to see if I can get a better qualifying time.  

This went on for awhile and included a funny mix of stereotypical flirty comments with runner-specific stuff like these lines.

I've had more guys come up to me after races than at bars, which I guess is funny.

Does racing ever feel like a singles' bar to you?  What kinds of running pick up lines have you heard?

 

Ice Ice Baby

On Sunday night, I went to sleep and had nightmares about pulling bones out of my heel.  That's how bad it hurt. I spent the night worried that I've been running for months on a stress fracture, but I really believe it's an achilles tendon issue: it doesn't hurt once it's warmed up.

When I woke up, I decided to spend a week trying to do everything I could to deal with the injury (without actually needing to take a week off from running). Here's what I've tried:

1. Foot strengthening exercises.  Seriously--a trainer told me my issue is caused by the fact that I have weak foot muscles.  I thought that was kind of silly until I tried doing the exercises.  Yes, I have very weak feet.
2. Stretching. I wait until I've warmed up the muscle and then do a few calf/achilles stretches, both before and after running.
3. Running :) but with much lower mileage than usual.  When I was training for my fall half marathon, my mileage was up to 40-48--it's much lower than that now, especially since my heel issues are exacerbated by longer, slower runs but not speedwork.
4. Rolling!  The foam roller is seriously one of the most amazing tools a runner can have.  
5. Ordering new shoes and an orthodic. I've been doing ALL of my running in Nike Frees, which I love, but I'm thinking having more cushioning for my very high arch during long runs will help.  
6. Icing.  15 minutes at a time, at least three times a day.
7. Taking anti-inflammatories twice a day.
8. Warm, salty foot soaks. I bought some bath salts, which seems a little decadent, but maybe it will help.
9. A massage scheduled for this morning. Ditto on the decadence, but it's for my health!
10. Lots of time barefoot.  
11. An x-ray scheduled for a week from today, in case I still have lingering pain.

I have woken up yesterday and today without the sharp pain I've been dealing with for months, and it looks like the swelling in my heel area has gone down a little, but it's hard to know if some of the pain's being masked by the Aleve I'm taking, or if it's gone. 

I'm hoping I feel good enough to have a strong run this weekend--I'm doing a 4.5 mile race while my boyfriend does a half marathon.  Until my injury peaked, I regretted signing up for the shorter race--now, I think it's just what the doctor (um, who I'm avoiding!) ordered.

Now I'm going to try to run four miles without having "Ice Ice baby" stuck in my head.

Race Results and a Week of Injury Recovery

I didn't quite hit my 20 minute target for the 5K on Saturday (my time was 20:56), but I was the overall female winner.  That's never happened before, in part because one of the local runners in my area is an ex-college athlete who regularly hits a 6:30 pace across MARATHON distances.  Naturally, she can go a lot faster than that for a 5K.

I achieved two of my goals, and I'm going to work on all of them again at a 4.5 mile race this weekend. I wanted to keep every mile under a 7-minute-mile pace, to practice leaning into the hills, and to "empty the tank." The first two were fine: I had been nervous about the downhill start, because I tend to brake myself during downhills, but the energy of the race helped me use it to my advantage.

Emptying the tank is hard, though. I have never finished a race thinking, "That was all I have," and this was no exception. Maybe the 5K distance makes that very difficult, but at the same time, I think I could have picked up my pace during the final mile.  It was psychologically difficult for me to do that, though, once I realized I was the first woman.  I know I need to dig into myself for motivation and to run my own race, but it's really challenging for me to push myself past self-created limits when there's not someone pulling me along.

I felt fine after the race, but the next night, I experienced horrible pain in my heel/achilles tendon. I've been dealing with inflammation and pain there for months, but on Sunday it was debilitating. I even had a dream about it.

Now, I'm spending the week trying to recover form the injury by icing it, taking anti-inflammatories, and getting a massage. I'm going back and forth about whether or not I need an x-ray.  It seems more like a tendon issue, but I don't want to make any mistakes and wind up needing to take months off from running.

How do others stay injury-free, and how do you respond to some of the nagging aches and pains that could turn into injuries?

Striving for a sub-20-minute 5K

Two months ago, I got the Women's Running issue with a 5K training plan ("Break 30, 25, or 20 Minutes").  I looked at the plan and realized my times fall right in between the 25 and 20 minute plans--25 minutes involves intervals at a 7:45 pace (my easy runs are at 8-8:15), but intervals in the 20 minute plan are 6:16.

I had never run anything that fast before, even for short intervals, so I put the plan aside to focus on half marathon training and the relay I did last weekend.

Then one morning, I tried out a fast interval.  I did repeats at a 6:16 pace, and even though I was holding on to my treadmill for dear life, I was hooked.  I started following the plan around three weeks ago, and today I had a breakthrough speedwork session: 5 miles, with 6 quarter mile repeats and 1 full mile at a 6:11 pace, with a mile recovery.

Definitely the fastest running I've ever done.

I know the treadmill doesn't have wind resistance or hills (I use a 1.0 incline to adjust for some of that), so I'm guessing a mile at that pace on the track would be much harder for me, but it was still a very positive experience.

But now I'm nervous!  I signed up a few weeks ago for a Halloween 5K on Saturday morning. I wanted to do it for fun--my daughter is coming with me, I'm wearing a tutu, it's a super hilly course, and I just started this plan.  However, I'm also hoping I can feel like the speedwork has made a difference.  I decided to have two goals for the race:

1. Keep my pace under 7-minute-miles throughout the race.
2. Feel like I am pushing myself for me--not to stay in the position that seems right for me.

Every time I try to run fast, I get a little scared and pull back. I guess I don't want to feel like I run out of steam, so I keep myself in a safe, comfortable spot--and I often decide on where that spot is based on who is around me rather than how I feel.  Once the fastest women are well ahead of me and the slower women are behind me, I stay in my position instead of pushing myself.

I'm already more nervous about Saturday than I have been about my longer (half marathon) races!

Finishing the Fall 50

On Saturday, I finished the Fall 50 as a member of a 5-person relay team.  Our group brought two teams paired approximately by pace so that we could all run our segments with a partner.  I ran one leg with my boyfriend (who could not, incidentally, "kill the hill" at the end of our leg--even though he's naturally a slightly faster runner than me, I wound up waiting for him at the top) and the other with Liz.  

Liz just recovered from an injury that involved a few months off from running, and she was nervous about joining our team again.  We met last year when Matt was injured--Liz became my default partner, and I was absolutely terrified about running with her: she has a high school and college track background, plus tons of age-group awards and fast races under her belt, and at that point, all I had accomplished since having my daughter 4 years earlier was bonking during one half marathon and finishing another. We ended up being an amazing team: we pushed each other and managed to run at a 7:45 pace across two of the hilliest legs of the route last year.  This year, despite her injury, we got our pace down to 7:25 for a challenging 4.1 mile leg.  Running with Liz, and talking to her about training, has given me much more focus and determination about training than I had before.  Where I used to measure my success by miles logged, now I find myself thinking of new ways to push my boundaries and challenge  myself.

Being able to pass at least eight people during our leg while running in tutus was pretty awesome.  I definitely had a girl power kind of race as I thought about how many people probably saw our outfits and thought we'd be too "girly" to work hard right before we powered up a hill. 

Next year, we're planning on running the race together as a two-woman team.  I haven't run a marathon (or at least, not one I'd like to remember: before my daughter was born, I ran/hobbled one through a stress fracture and another through serious diarrhea) and don't want to train for one, but 25 miles broken up by time in a van, proper hydration, and stretching seems more manageable while also sounding like an amazing challenge.   

Vegan foods for runners

(Yes, sometimes I do feel like I'm being tugged to the finish line of a race by the prospect of oatmeal, vegan muffins, or pasta with soy sausage!)

In this month's Women's Running magazine, three of the recipes look delicious and include only vegan ingredients:

Apple raspberry crisp
Molasses almond cookies
Tropical smoothie

I love that the tropical smoothie is dairy-free but included in the article on calcium and its importance in helping runners keep their bones safe and strong, because so many people believe that vegans are deficient in this crucial mineral.

The vegan desserts are even more exciting, especially since they're in an article that's not specifically on vegan food (it's about replacing refined sugars with natural alternatives like agave, date sugar, blackstrap mollasses, honey, and brown rice syrup).

I eat a predominantly vegan diet.  For me, that means eating low on the food chain but including occasional fish (once every week or two, I eat salmon for its healthy fats, and I take an omega fatty acid supplement) and yogurt when I crave it (which is normally once every two or three months).

When I was younger, eating vegan involved extensive label reading, which made me ultimately feel like I was too obsessed with food.  I stopped eating vegan for awhile, first dropping my whole vegetarian identity in the aftermath of a meatloaf craving but then rebuilding so that I was eating vegetarian in a mindful but not obsessive way.  Now I don't stress too much about being vegan; I just am.  I feel stronger and healthier when I eat balanced vegan meals, and I don't beat myself up if something non-vegan winds up on my plate: a few days ago, the barista at my favorite coffee shop accidentally gave me non-vegan chocolate banana bread instead of the vegan blueberry bread I normally eat.  I knew after the first bit that he had made a mistake, but chocolate banana bread was a fun treat.

For runners, especially runners adding mileage, eating vegan does require some planning.  I'm used to it after more than 20 years of vegan or vegetarian eating, but I have evolved over the years.  Now I can quickly plan meals that involve a grain plus protein plus good fats plus either fruit or vegetables.

I get frustrated when vegetarian and vegan options aren't included in training plans for runners, because I know that the right combination of vegan foods can be incredibly satisfying and sustaining.

Earnest Bars in chocolate peanut are one of my favorite pre-run foods.  I normally eat one plus a pack of raisins around two hours before my run.  Afterwards, I refuel with stel-cut oats, peanut butter, fruit, and flax. I also love experimenting with vegan muffins and quick breads: I want to try to veganize the butternut oat muffins in Women's Running.

Does the word "vegan" on a label make other runners skeptical about taste or nutrition?  Do you have go-to vegetarian or vegan products that make you feel strong, healthy, and well fueled on a run?

Relay bound

I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon for the Fall 50.  This year, I'm doing it for the second time on a 5-person team.  Next year, my friend and I want to sign up as a 2-woman team.

Here's what I've packed:
Two sports bras
One running tank
Capris and two pairs of shorts
Two pairs of thigh-high Halloween socks
Three different weights of jackets (today the wind was 30 MPH--hoping for less on Saturday!)
A tutu from Target
A bag full of Luna bars (chocolate raspberry) and Earnest bars (chocolate peanut)
Peanut butter
Almond butter
Fig Newtons
My eyelash curler
My Garmin
Two pairs of running shoes
My massage stick
Icy hot

I am so excited!