Post State Meet, Vacation Time, and Celebrity Sighting!

Two posts in one month! It's a miracle!

I thought I'd pop on before I pop off and get busy straightening up and packing for vacation. Tomorrow afternoon we head to Phoenix for a bright and early Saturday morning departure. We'll be heading to Kiawah Island, South Carolina to spend time with my husband's family. The beach... The Olympics... I'm psyched!

In my last post, I talked about how my oldest son was going to the AZ Age Group Long Course Championships.

Yikes.

It was a weekend of major highs and lows, that's for sure. Earlier this week, we were watching the Today Show where Ryan Lochte talked about how he always got kicked out of swim practice when he was 8. He said that he liked competing in meets but hated practice and he also mentioned that he didn't get super serious about swimming until he was in high school. Oh, how I hope some of that sunk into Evan's little brain. Last weekend wasn't fun... For anyone. Evan is still too young to hang with the 10 year-old competitors. He's just not there yet. Explaining how it takes time is futile, however.  After most  of his events, he got out of the pool, asked if he made it to finals (nope-not even close in most cases) and then proceeded to pout for the duration of the day. ((sigh))

At any rate, our 10U boys did snag a win in the 200 Medley Relay! This race truly was the highlight of our weekend. The boys, moms, and dads were all smiles after their win.

Evan is the second leg--swimming breaststroke 

RUNNING

I'm back to 40 mpw and starting to build. My body feels good so far. Our summer schedule is proving difficult for me to get to the gym for strength training. So hard to fit it all in. I am hoping to be able to squeeze in a couple of strength sessions on vacation and then get back to Body Tone class in August. 

Earlier this week I did an 8 X 400 speed session. I did 4 400m repeats (ok, .25 miles on my Garmin because I don't actually do it on a track) with 200m (.12 on my Garmin) rest between sets. After the 4th 400, I rested for 400 and then did 4 more with 200m rest between each repeat. Make sense? 

Anyway, the point of this whole story is that the last time I did this workout (in March), my times were:

1:41, :41, :44, :42, :40, :41, :37, :42

On Tuesday, my times were:

1:38, :38, :37, :39, :40, :37, :36, :36

Yay! 

I'm getting faster, now I just have to build back my endurance with my long runs.

Oh, and I had a celebrity sighting on my run. 

Yuma's Bernie Montoya won the 2012 Adidas Grand Prix Boy's Mile in 4:01.32. Holy Hell.

Totally in awe of that kid. Whenever I see him running around Yuma, I feel unworthy to share the roads with him. Can you imagine being 17 and having that level of talent? He's only a senior in high school! Wow. He's really humble and grounded in his interviews too. 

Till next time!

Blaaaaaaaahg SLUMP

Hello! Remember me? It's been a while. Summer in my home has proved to be just as busy, if not busier, than the school year. How in the world did I make it through grad school? I feel like I couldn't do it now!

What have we been up to since the last time I posted, like a month ago? Sweet Laura left a nice comment on my blog inquiring, so I thought I'd get on and give an update. You can expect another one around summer's end. HA!

Mid-June marked my middle son's 6th birthday. We celebrated with a party at a fancy establishment called "Rodent du Fromage." Quite exquisite!

Rodent du Fromage = Chuck E. Cheese
Happy 6th, Tyler!

Then my husband went away on a training exercise June 13th, and I pretty much lost the will to live. I'm telling you... Raising 3 boys is not a job for 1! The middle to the end of June was ROUGH! I was dragging everyone out of bed at 5 am each morning so that I could get my oldest to 5:30 am swim practice. Good times. And then the rest of the day meant finding time to either get to the gym for a treadmill run or if I couldn't get a sitter, pool run in the back yard while the kids splashed around me.

I survived with the help of my mom, who flew in to help around the 10-day point. I was seriously losing it!

These 5:30 am swim practices for Evan have been a challenge... But as they say, "The early bird gets the worm." And if the worm symbolizes qualifying for 9 events at the Arizona Long Course Age Group Championships, then the worm has been gotten! I'm tremendously proud of Evan. He will be swimming in 6 events at the state meet July 20-22 (*swimmers are allowed a max of 6 events). Again, we're looking at this as a fun experience where he can hopefully snag a few more PRs. His times have been dropping like crazy since he moved up to the more advanced group at swim practice. 

On fire in the water!

RUNNING (in bigger font/bold just in case you wanted to skip the kid crap and head straight to this-Haha.):

I was SO happy to move on to July. June was rough for running with my back recovery and then my husband's travel. Ugh.

With that being said, July is the hottest month in Yuma, and I do feel like a lot of my running this month is being done in survival mode. Take yesterday's run for example:

93 degrees at 5:42 am. WTF?!?!

The day before, however, I had a fantastic speed day! My coach's goal for me was 6 miles with 2 X 1 mile @ 7:10P with .5 mile recovery between miles.  I went balls to the wall and did my first mile in 6:57 and the second one in 6:49. Not bad for 86 degrees at 6:30 am!

I know that I touched on explaining the numbers from my Cardio-Metabolic testing in June in my last post, and I know I could get into it more here, but I hate LONG blog posts. I will briefly discuss some crucial numbers, however, and how I've been putting them to use.

Heart Rate Training: 

After my testing, Ken presented me with a sheet of  personalized HR Zones that I could use to smarten up my training. 

Zone 1 (111 bpm-145 bpm) is what is known as the "recovery zone." I have been trying to stay in Zone 1 for the days after my long run, speed days and hill days. Believe it or not, it's hard to stay in this zone. It means slowing down A LOT. Since my HR is naturally higher than most, it actually doesn't take me long to get to 145. And I'll be honest, I've fudged this number a bit higher because of the higher temps here. Naturally with higher temps, one's HR goes up. On my recovery days, I try to stay below 155 (fudge factor of +10). The past month's running has shown me that this number can range anywhere from 9:20P-10:00P. It actually takes effort for me to slow down to this pace, but I am really trying to honor it. I wonder if some of my injuries aren't happening because I am still not going easy enough on my easy days. It will be interesting to follow this in my next training cycle.

Zone 2 (146-163) is the "endurance zone" and is where one should be spending most of his/her time with running. While I have not been wearing my HR monitor for runs other than recovery runs, I suspect I mostly operate in this zone. If I wander into this zone on recovery days, I don't stress too much because it is a "safe" zone.

Zone 3 (164-173) is for tempos and long intervals...  I'm probably here during *recovery jog* on hill workouts and speed day repeats

Zone 4 (174-179) is for threshold intervals/cruise/fartlek... Speed/hills

Zone 5 (180-187) is for repeats... such as my mile repeats on Tuesday

Zone 5 anaerobic & peak (188+).... I probably got here on my last mile repeat Tuesday. Ken tells me that you should not spend much time in Zone 5 or you're looking at injury/burnout.

There's a ton of information out there about HR training. For me, I'm using it strictly to monitor my recovery paces. I don't wish to become a slave to my HR monitor, and the limited research that I've done indicates that relying solely on HR training can actually hinder performance. Some days your HR might be higher than others (e.g. hotter days), so I think it's good to balance your HR training with perceived effort. 

And with that, I'll probably see you next month! Off to catch up on all of the blog reading that I've neglected!

Cardio-Metabolic Testing... Part One

In the interest of time, I've decided to split this up into a couple of parts. If you're anything like me, you just don't have time to spend more than a couple of minutes on a particular blog entry. Plus it gets boring listen to someone drone on.

So with that... Part 1.

For months, I'd been wanting to do some advanced fitness testing to pinpoint numbers that would help me with my training. I had actually bookmarked fitstoplab.com because we frequently visit San Diego, and I'd always think to myself, "Someday I'm going to do this." The timing was never right though. Either I was racing that weekend (i.e. Carlsbad Marathon) or deep into marathon training and just couldn't make the time on our trip. Additionally, it's a $200 test, and I don't exactly have that lying around for frivolity.

Finally, the stars aligned with our last trip. A few days before, I happened to stumble across a Living Social $85 special for the Cardio-Metabolic Profile, which is exactly the test I wanted to have done. Since I have not been training intensely because of my recent back injury, I feared that the numbers wouldn't reflect my accurate fitness levels, but I figured, "What the heck?" I might as well do it because now really was as good a time as any. 

The owner of The Fit Stop Lab, Ken Nicodemus, graciously made time for me to have the test done on a Saturday morning, something he normally doesn't do. I showed up at 9 am ready to see what I'm made of!

The first thing that he did was go over a bunch of paperwork that I had filled out and e-mailed back to him a few days earlier. Health history stuff, yada, yada. Next was a BP and resting HR check. No surprise... My BP SUCKS. I have been borderline for years (140/88). Damn genetics (My dad tends to have borderline BP as well despite being healthy and active). He also told me that my resting HR of 58 is higher than he would expect. Again, no surprise there, as I tend to have a naturally high HR for whatever reason. My cardiovascular system is just... interesting. I'll add that I had a full-work done at my stepdad's office (a cardiologist) in 2003 and nothing looked abnormal. My lipid profile for the last couple of years has also been fine. I guess I'm just a freak with a semi-crappy ticker.

Next was a weight and body fat check. I ended up being 129.2 pounds and 13.8% body fat. What a tremendously pleasant surprise!!!! I was expecting to be much higher. According to Ken (and some chart he showed me that I don't have), female endurance athletes should ideally be no lower than 12% body fat. For me to be at "racing weight," I only need to lose 4 pounds. SWEET! I likely won't bother with that, but it's great to know that I am pretty much already there with that particular number.

Random chart I found for reference. According to this, I can stand to be a shade fatter. Nice! Bring on the dessert!

Next was the big treadmill test. I had to strap on both a HR monitor and a face mask, which would measure my O2 and CO2 levels to determine my VO2 Max.

Interesting

I won't bore you with all of the details, but I ended up doing a series of different paces while having my O2 levels/HR monitored and letting the testers (Ken also had an intern) know what "level" I was working at during each interval. When I got to level 10 (maxed out), it was time to call it a day. I reached 10 sometime around 10 minutes and at 10.0 mph on the treadmill. I think I did about 15 seconds of a 6 minute mile before I cried, "Uncle!" I'm not used to running fast anymore.

At the end of the session, I was told that my VO2 max was 45.5. First of all, what the heck is VO2 Max? Basically, it's the size of your engine. It's your capacity to deliver oxygen to the working muscle.
Here's another chart to see where I stand:

Yikes. It's really hard to see.

Using a magnifying glass, you'd be able to see that a 45.5 for my age group (30-39) puts me in the "Good" category. This is sort of what I was expecting given what I believe is my fairly "good" (not great) athletic ability + 6 weeks of little to no running (other than Alter G). Just for comparison, Steve Prefontaine's VO2 Max, I found, was 84.4. DAAAAAAAAAAAANG!

My lactate threshold or LT was a 38.0, which is also "Good." Metabolic fitness is a marker that describes how much of your aerobic capacity can be utilized by your working muscles. Higher LT levels means that you have a greater resistance to fatigue.

Ken finished by telling me that he thought when I got back to my regular training, my numbers would likely bump up to the "High" category, which left me feeling pretty optimistic about it all.

Ok, whew. That's a lot, and I'm tired. Surely you are too. And that's not even all of it... Although, it is for today.

I've been collecting some interesting heart rate data during my recent runs, so next I'm going to share that with you. I've been trying to utilize the different "zones" that I also discovered during my testing. Pretty cool stuff!

   

Teaser... Or is it Spoiler?

Coming to you at 5:47 am... quickly. Hard to believe that summer break is upon us, and I seem to be just as busy as ever. In fact, I am waiting for my husband and 8 year-old to get back from swim practice, so I can head out for a run before the pavement starts melting.

That's right. My boys are at a swim practice, which started at 5:30 am. That's the price they pay for being such studs!

First, for visual interest... I present to you a picture of my latest kitchen gadget.

Yonanas

This thing is awesome! It's called Yonanas, and what you do is freeze a crapton of bananas and other fruit and then shove it in here and it makes an ice cream/frozen yogurt sort of deal. Delicious! Definitely recommend it if you are into kitchen gadgetry, ice cream, and healthy eating.

Next, my back is better!!! I called it... I said it was going to take until the end of May to heal, and sure enough, it did. Right around the last couple of days of the month is when I noticed it no longer ached during runs. 

I did my first long run on Sunday alongside an injured buddy who was completing her first marathon: RNR San Diego. I ran from my hotel to meet her at Mile 15 and then did the remainder of the race with her (total of 14.86 miles). I thought it might be a bit of an aggressive goal, however, she was struggling with a knee injury, so I knew we'd be completely CHILL on the pace. It worked out great! That is until I got physically shoved off the course by a Competitor Group "bouncer" at the finish line chute. See Facerant below, which no one from RNR San Diego or Competitor or whoever has responded to.

Count me out in *any* RNR races in the future.

So what is this spoiler business about?

On Saturday, I took a trip up to Carlsbad (from our hotel in San Digo) and had some cool fitness testing done at a place called The Fit Stop Lab. The owner, Ken, had offered his normally $200 Cardio-Metabolic Profile test for $85 on LivingSocial, so I nabbed the offer.

It was fascinating and will take me a while to sit down and explain it all. Basically I learned that I have a pretty good engine, I'm an efficient runner, and I have a high threshold heart rate. While 170 bpm for someone else might be busting his/her hiney, for me, it's not too taxing. The test provided a bunch of heart rate zones for my workouts, which I will explain in the next post.

Yep. 6:08 am and my other two kiddos are up. I'm outta here!    

Mixed Bag

I'm a total mixed bag of emotions lately. When was the last time that I blogged? Didn't look before I started this post, but I think it was a couple of weeks ago. At any rate, what's been going on?


For starters... This finally happened. FINALLY!!!!!

Cheers! Celebrating with sparkling peach faux champagne. 

20 months of graduate school... DONE! I earned an M.A. in General English Studies from Northern Arizona University last Friday. Now I'm eligible to teach more than basic writing at my community college! ENG 102, here I come!

I can't tell you how excited I was (am) to be finished. You think 26.2 miles is long? This felt like the longest marathon ever, and I can't tell you how many times I wanted to QUIT. Doing homework on planes, in hotel bathrooms (while everyone else slept--didn't want to disturb them), on vacations, during classes that I taught (when my class was testing or writing), when my kids were sick next to me on the couch, etc. There was never really a break until now! I am so grateful that I had the support of my husband throughout it all, and I'm happy that the boys got to see their mother graduate from college (again). Education is a lifelong pursuit, and I hope that getting a glimpse of this academic achievement of mine drove that point home to them. 

Or not. Who am I kidding? They were mostly excited by the non-alcoholic beverages we had before the commencement ceremony. 

Other exciting things...

I've been trying to eat clean. Want to know what I just ate for dessert?

Chocolate mousse made with avocado. What the what?

(source)

Believe it or not, it's actually pretty good. I got the recipe from a friend in Baltimore and decided to try it when I got home. Here it is if you're feeling adventurous:

Sheryl Crow’s Decadent Raw Vegan Chocolate Mousse

2 large ripe avocados

1/2 cup organic unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup agave nectar, plus more to taste

1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 1/2 tsp almond extract

1/2 pint fresh raspberries, or whatever berry you have on hand

Method

1. Cut a ripe avocado in half. Use a big knife to grab the pit and turn to remove. Spoon out the meat of the avocado and then blend to break it down a bit.

2. Add in cocoa powder, agave nectar, vanilla extract, and almond extract and blend for 1 to 2 minutes, making sure every part is included.

3. Refrigerate overnight and serve in martini glasses with garnish.

Running...

This Sunday was supposed to be the Pasadena Marathon, but instead, there is no marathon for me and I'm single-momming it while my husband is schmoozing folks in TX for his next (potential) set of orders. ((Sigh)).

On a good note, I did another test run this am, and it was a roaring success. It was exactly the type of run that I was hoping for. I ran 4 pain-free miles at a little under a 9 minute-mile pace. SUCCESS!

Am I jumping for joy?

I'm happy, but I can't say that I'm wildly enthusiastic, to be honest.

Would you be thrilled running in this for the next 4-5 months?

I'm relieved that my injury seems to be clearing up, but at the same time, I'm bummed that I'm entering survival mode for the next several months. Summer running here is awful. As I've lost some fitness, I'm also unsure of my goals and my direction. There's also the consideration of how I ended up injured in the first place. It's apparent to me now more than ever that I really can't afford to neglect my strength training. I truly was enjoying my ever-increasing mileage... What to do for balance though? I'm not sure that I can do both: lots of miles and lots of weights. Over the past 5 weeks, I've been putting in some quality hours at the gym, and I've really enjoyed the weight training and the new strength classes that I've been doing. I'd love to continue to keep up that aspect of my training, but doing both is a huge challenge. It's going to take some time to figure it all out. Not to mention that my boys are out of school in 1 week, which adds a whole new challenge to everything.

So much to think about... There really is never a dull moment in this girl's life!

Not Quite

So my running attempt last Saturday was a big, fat flop.

5 miles.... At the end, a little voice said, "Let's not do that again anytime soon," and I gingerly walked back home and proceeded to ice my back.

Damn.

It served as a reminder that the injury process is a lot like potty training. 1 step forward... 2 steps back.

This week has been another step forward. I'm back on the Alter G and able to do 70% of my body weight with pain level = nuisance. 

The tricky thing with the Alter G, however, is that running 8:50 min/miles sans nearly 40 pounds of body weight (70% of about 130 pounds) actually feels like I'm running 10:00 min/miles. So to try and continue to keep up my cardiovascular fitness, I'm incorporating the ARC Trainer in there as well. That thing kicks my ass. The plan for now is to do 2 days of AG, 1 day ARC Trainer, repeat. I may do some pool running on Sunday. We'll see.

I've also been hitting the weights hard. And core. Here is my new favorite exercise. I like to do it after doing a few minutes of regular planks and/or crunches.

Ouch. 

And no. I can't get to Z yet.

(I do it with both of my knees off the ground.)

Adventures in Injury

What to say since the last time I blogged? Well, for starters, Pasadena is OUT. It's ok. I've made my peace. I decided to let it go, since the whole point of the race was to PR for a better chance at getting into Boston 2013. I could do the half, but there really is no good reason, to be honest. Sure, I'm out $90 for my race fee, but if you factor in the gas, lodging, and food costs of the weekend... I'm actually saving money in the end.

My back is getting better. Slowly but surely. I went out of town last Friday-this Tuesday (for my godson's First Communion and to visit family in Chicago) and took 5 days off. I did do some core/hip/glute exercises a couple of times, but that was it. My back felt rough, and over the weekend, I went through a period where I felt like I had piraformis syndrome. What the hell?!?! At any rate, that dissipated. Today was the first day that I woke up feeling NO PAIN. Yay! Of course, as the day has gone on, my pinch-y/twing-y back sensations have been noticeable but not terrible. It hasn't precluded any of my cross-training. Today, I managed to try out a machine called the ARC Trainer in my gym.

Looks like a more horrible version of an elliptical. But it's not!

This thing was awesome. I mean, don't get me wrong. Machines SUCK! But I got a great workout on this beast. I did an hour of the "Pike's Peak" program, so my ass felt like it was going to spontaneously combust by hour's end (one could only hope... no such luck). I also noticed that it was easier on my knees and that my feet didn't fall asleep like they normally do on an elliptical. Sweet!

You Tube has a great video on the ARC Trainer that explains the physics and such behind this machine. I highly recommend it if you are laid up and would like a break from the monotony of other machines (elliptical, bike, etc), as well as pool running (which I've been doing... in my backyard pool! Yikes! BORING!).

Tomorrow is a test 4-miler to see how everything holds up. I'm hoping that with continued core work/weights and chiro trips ( X 3 per week) that this will be cleared up by the end of the month. Fingers crossed!