Friday, August 22, 2008

Great Run x2 - Bad Run x2

It has been a mixed up week!! Good days and bad days but I guess that is how life is so it's best to roll with the flow. I can say that today now that it has been over 24 hours since my crappy Thursday morning run where I drove home practically in tears I was so dissapointed. But today is a new day, it is a rest day and I had a wonderful Massage yesterday evening that was both painful and pain relieving at the same time. Like I told Christy that hurt so good!!

Let's start with the GREAT runs!!!!

Monday I met Kelly, Jane, Brenda, Michele and Karen at the CC. Kelly, Jane and I had met at the CC and the other girls ran from Michele's house to meet us. We made up a new route, that would take us back to Michele's house with 4 or 5 miles and then we would get an additional 2.25 miles back to the Community Center.
We have been blessed with mild weather for most of August I give Cheryl, Michele and myself credit for this, I think we must have brought back the wonderful San Francisco weather with us.
It was warm Monday night kind of humid but cloudy and a little breeze. From the very beginning of the run I felt good, breathing, legs stomach everything was working the way it was supposed to. It was a treat to have Brenda with us and I think that added to the overall greatness of the run.
Everytime I looked at my Garmin when we were running we were running under 10 minute miles and sometimes we were quite speedy. The more animated the conversation it seems the faster we got!! We didn't take any walk breaks except for when we had to wait on traffic to cross over hwy 89. We did do a lot of circling back which had an effect on our overal avg. pace but the best thing was just how good I felt the whole time!!
We ended up with 7 miles at a 10:19 avg pace I was very pleased!

Tuesday night was our Running Clinic and again it was warm and humid but cloudy so that helped some not much of a breeze for most of the run but hey we can't have everything! Most of our summer the temps were in the mid to upper 90's with blazing sun during the clinic runs so 80's and cloudy feels like heaven!
We had a very small group Tuesday night just Me, Brenda, Kelly and Andrea, Rock and Karla. Rock and Karla had done the Lake DeGray Sprint Tri on Sunday so Dennis had them do a couple miles with some strides.
I warmed up with the fast girls which usually spells the kiss of death for my actual workout but not tuesday night it was great. I kept up with them for a mile and then I stopped at the CC to use the facilities and then back to the track on my own... well it would have been on my own but Karla also needed a pit stop so we ran back together.
My workout consisted of :
1x800 at interval pace
2x400 at interval pace
2x200 at interval pace
Pretty easy workout but when at interval pace not so easy. I did add on one more 400 after the 200's.
I hit all of my paces was actually fast on most of them especially the 200's but I was very happy.
After that I ran a 1 mile cool down with Kelly at a 9:47 avg. pace which is excellent after a workout!!
Total 4 miles.

I was feeling wonderful and so happy that I was getting a little speed back, I always slow down in the summer.
Well then comes Wednesday :(

Wednesday I met Michele at 5:30 for Bun's & Ab's, it was my first class back since the week before the San Francisco Marathon. I knew that I would be sore but I didn't realize I would be sore before the class even ended.
We start off with 120 squats of different variations wide legged, toes in, toes out etc. Not sure how many lunges probably around 60. Next was the half bosu ball where we did even more squats and lunges.. still not done, next we used the "gliders" they look like frisbee's you put half your foot on them and then do even more lunges, I love the gliders I really feel it in my glutes it hits spots I never even knew existed. She added a few new things into the routine some jumping jacks with the gliders etc. finally we are on our mats and we do donkey kicks with resistance bands I think 30 on each leg or something like that.
After she felt like we had tortured our legs long enough we went on to torture our abs for the rest of the class.

Immediately after class we met Kelly outside of the community center for a run. It was rainy and very humid, and although my legs felt like chunks of concrete I still thought it would be good to run down East Main which is nothing but hills!!
From the very first step I knew it was going to be a rough run and it was!!! My legs were killing me and my breathing and heart rate were erratic. The first 2.78 miles we did not take any walk breaks, we just kept plugging away at the hills and would try to regroup on the down hills. Michele had surged ahead from the very begininng of the run so it was me and Kelly. When we got to 2.5 miles we were ready to turn around but didn't want to leave Michele out in the middle of nowhere alone so we kept going. The road eventually dead ends and she had turned around, we were at 2.78 miles and that was our first walk break, but unfortunately not our last. It was just before we saw Michele when my stomach started really rumbling. We were far away from any restrooms so I just slowed down and would take walk breaks every now and then to let it calm down and thankfully I didn't have an emergency. I think I only had to stop and cross my legs one time.
It was a pretty discouraging run but we ended up with 5.75 miles so at least one bright spot.

The whole time I was running on Wednesday night I kept thinking Annette you really shouldn't run at 5:00am tomorrow, it just isn't enough rest inbetween runs which wouldn't be a problem if not for the leg torture. I had that thought in my head the whole time but then I also thought wouldn't I rather get my done early and not have to think about it later???? plus Jackie C. was going to meet us and I haven't run with her in ages and I thought surely it will be better in the morning......
UM NO!!
Thursday morning the first step I took I felt a sharp pain from my left glute all the way down my leg.. OMG that hurt!!! but I kept going and it went away after the first few steps. Again my legs felt awful and I couldn't get my breathing and heart rate into any kind of normal rythym so I struggled the whole run... well then add in the stupid stomach thing again and it was just a crappy run!!!! I only ended up with 3.75 miles and lot's of walk breaks. I apologized to the girls and tried to get them to go on once we got back to a more well lit area but they wouldn't leave me and they told me over and over it was NO PROBLEM.. but I still felt terrible that I had ruined their run!! It turned out that Jackie coudln't meet us Phil had to go into work at 4:00am for an Exercise on Base.
Although the run was pure torture I am glad that i got it over with especially since i was able to get in a last minute massage appointment.
Christy did some new stretches on me and really was able to get into my hips and glutes even deeper than normal. I have this thing where sometimes I giggle uncontrollably during pain and i was doing a lot of giggling during that session!!! She said my IT band on the left side was really tight, well that freaked me out because i've seen too many people sidelined or running in a lot of pain because of inflammed IT band's so I am borrowing Michele's IT band strap to use for my long run on Saturday morning.

Oh almost forgot one bright spot in our Wednesday night run as we were running down East Main in a steady rain a guy in a car slowed down, rolled down his window and said "now that's dedication" and gave us the thumbs up as he drove by. It's not often we get those kind of encounters so that felt good!
Most drivers around here would rather run over us than give us any encouragement.

We have a big run and bike planned for Saturday morning at the River Trail, I'm really looking forward to a change of scenery and getting back on Francesca.

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