Heisenberg's Uncertainty Pacing

I'm really, really terrible at self-pacing. Basically, I would like a built-in speedometer or an app shouting at me approximately once per minute or every couple of minutes to either speed up or slow down to meet my goal pace. 

Source For Heisenberg Gif... Or is it?

I've never owned a GPS fitness watch-and-thermonuclear-reactor thing, just various iterations of the iPhone, though I'm soon going to be the proud owner of a Bia and Go Stick combo, for I am a Kickstarter backer who is down with supporting the technical ladies and female entrepreneurship and the rather innovative idea of having a built in SOS button for all your "I'm being attacked by a bear, send help."-type needs. Heart rate training for me consists of clinging to those capacitive metal thingummies on the treadmill handles and wondering if it's even slightly accurate. Over the years, I've tracked time and distance on outdoor runs using, as the notion strikes, Zombies, Run! (regular and 5K training versions), Run 10K by Felt Tip, Run 5K by Felt Tip, Charity Miles, MapMyRun, and Nexercise.

Back when I was training for my first half, I did almost all of my training on the treadmill. Look, it was winter, it was cold, I was starting early and running long, and I did not have any desire to be a cautionary tale about dying of exposure after bonking or slipping and breaking a leg. 

 

Or being eaten by a bear. They just look all cute like that to make you drop your guard. Then they eat your face.

 

As luck would have it, around the time of my half, I also won a free month's membership to MapMyRun's MVP features. Now, most of the MVP features, I don't give a flip about (no one with a smartphone really cares to track my runs second by second, I like my interval training with a side of story and character and zombies, thanks, and I rarely run anywhere unfamiliar and need the advanced map features) but one caught my eye. Live Coaching. For a brief, shining moment, Live Coaching was just plain built into the paid MapMyRun app. It is, in fact, half the primary reason I bought the darned app. It lasted for about three weeks before they moved it behind the monthly paywall that is MVP. *shakes fist* I had barely gotten to test it out, but it allowed you to set a goal pace and have the app alert you at intervals how well you were doing in hitting that pace. I'm surprised they didn't also move the "control your playlists from the app" feature behind a paywall. The playlist feature simply wasn't all that great.  You couldn't just point it at a playlist and make the controls more accessible from the main part of the app, developers?

Uh... seriously, guys? This is it? You not only have to go into the Record screen to look at the controls, you have to go into Songs and pull in all the songs you might want to listen to individually? Even if they are on a playlist? Every time? You can't just load the playlist? And if you double-tap the plus sign next to a song, it gets played twice? With no real indication that you've added it twice until you start wondering why the song is playing again? You can't see the playlist you're compiling? Then when you start recording your workout you have to go into the screen again to get at the controls? I've definitely seen better designs...

So I did what any self-respecting cheapskate-who-can't-estimate-her-own-pace would do. I saved that free month for the half, activated it just before and used Live Coaching during the race. I was annoyed to find that, along with a move behind a "monthly membership" fee, it had very little flexibility. You could only set it down to intervals of 5 minutes or more. Helpful, but not as helpful as I might have liked for keeping me on pace. Works okay during a half that takes you more than 2 hours to run, not much help when it comes to keeping you on pace for a narrow 5K PR, right? 

 

When Zombies, Run! can also be set to let you know your distance and pace every mile or kilometer, that feature's not really worth a monthly fee all by itself. Also, this app gives me a serious case of The Feels. "Current Pace... Ten... Minutes... Per... Mile... Slow down!" doesn't really hit me right in the emotions or make me laugh the way the idea of naming a pet chicken Mildred Van der Graaf does, MapMyRun. Have you thought of hiring a better writer?

 

I've got another "free month" code thanks to another MapMyRun, which I may need to hoard and activate once more for the trail half, at least if I have no alternative for pacing. Worst case, I can get past denial and straight on to acceptance if it is not in the cards that my second half will be no speedier than the first well before reaching the finish line.

 

At least until the Bia watches ship, I'm just going to come to terms with the fact that I'm not so much bad at pacing, I simply cannot know where I am and how fast I'm going at the same time without breaking science. Heisenberg said so.

The Plan I Ran - Week Two

Week 2 was pretty much like Week 1, with more of the same. The table contains the target distances and paces in column 1, and the other columns contain the free, bonus, extra, new and improved non-running things I managed to do. Conservatively, I've been shooting for at least a couple of sessions of pullups per week, a day of low or no impact cross-training, and some plyometric jump squats. Because "plyometric" is just fun to say.

Yay, cross-training!

Date	Target	Pullups	Plyometric Jump Squats	Avg HR
8/19/2013	5 mile speed work, 1 mile warm, 1600 m @ 9:36 then 800 m jog x 2, 1 mile cool			172
8/20/2013	5 mile easy run @ 11:48	27 @ 45	5 sets of 15
8/21/2013	Rowing machine	24 @ 45
8/22/2013	8 mile long run @ 11:48
8/23/2013	5 mile easy run @ 11:48	24 @ 45, Bonus 5 chin-ups @ 45	5 sets of 15

Since I can't be having with metric, I just did a mile and half-mile stretch instead of the 1600 and 800 meter intervals. It made the math nice and easy on the treadmill. Since the treadmill offers the "make the pace or fall on your face" factor, making the pace was not a problem. My paces were a tiny bit faster than prescribed otherwise, partly because I had this nasty habit of abusing the snooze button every morning except Thursday. Wednesdays Row To Nowhere was 30:05 of stroking for 4306 m. 

Week 3, I'm coming for you. Game face! I'm bringing it!

And by "it", I obviously mean this lemur's invisible bicycle.

I Ran With A Plan - Week One

I'm actually training when I have a plan. I still feel sufficiently clueless about training that I just plain love it if I have someone who allegedly knows what they are doing telling me how far to go and how fast and when. Especially when I'm training for anything longer than a 10K. Granted, my ability to pace myself (or rather, to estimate my own speed at any given time) is pathetic, so I practically need a treadmill or a speedometer to hit a pace reliably, but that's a whole other post.

So I downloaded the SmartCoach app for my iPhone. It's from Runner's World, a publication that allegedly knows some stuff about running and has never really struck me as too "out there" when it comes to telling you nonsense like "triple your speed while sitting on the couch!" or similar. Their advice tends to be the far more sensible "Run Your Butt Off! Lose weight by... well, running your butt off..." variety.

The app is pretty simple, in that you plug in a recent race time and distance, goal distance, pick a target training intensity, weekly mileage and training plan length, and the number-crunching pixies in your phone tell you how far to go and how fast and when. 

I wanted to finish up the Dash For Life 5K first and use that as my starting point for the training plan. I was really hoping to best my 5K race PR of 28:31, but it was hot, humid, muggy and so on. When the sun came out, you could quite literally feel the steam coming up off of the damp road, so I opted to not run until I hurled. I still finished in a pretty respectable 29:06, just out of placing in my very competitive age group.

I plugged in 29 minutes even for my 5K time, half-marathon goal distance (obviously), 21 - 25 miles weekly mileage, Very Hard training level, 12 weeks and picked Friday as my long run day. Combining that and a bit of cross-training of my choice, my dream target for the week was as follows:

Date	Target	Pullups	Plyometric Jump Squats	Avg HR
8/12/2013	5 mile tempo run, 1 mile warm, 3 @ 10:10, 1 mile cool
8/13/2013	4 mile easy run, 11:48 pace	24 @ 45	5 sets of 15	159
8/14/2013	Rowing
8/15/2013	Rest Day
8/16/2013	8 Mile long run, 11:48 pace

Monday's tempo run  was pretty close, though mile 2 might have been a smidgen slow at 10:30. Tuesday's 4 mile easy run was dead on within a few seconds, because it was on the treadmill. I rowed 4446 meters in about 30:10. Thursday was my day off, and Friday's long run was glorious. The weather was perfect, not too not, not too cold, but I was a bit rushed due to oversleeping. So I shaved about 5 minutes off the recommended pace. Next week should be better and  hopefully, I won't spend as many late afternoons trying to escape the gravitational pull of the office long after I meant to leave.

Also, hopefully next week will produce less "ho-my-goodness plyometric jump squats are making me walk like a cowgirl!" as well. 

Run-nesia

Amnesia. Some crazy, runners-high induced amnesia. It's the only logical explanation for why I've signed up for a second half-marathon this year.

One of the things on my running bucket list has been, for some time, to run a half-marathon. For a year or so, I kind of half-heartedly (hah!) looked for one that didn't involve traveling far enough to stay overnight AND didn't take place on Sunday. And didn't take place in Louisville, because, Louisville traffic during Derby Festival season?

 

Source 

I finally spotted one that met all my personal criteria. Didn't take place on a Sunday, check. No need to feel guilty that I would be running 13.1 miles for no particularly good reason other than "I wanted to" while simultaneously feeling like I really should be teaching Sunday School instead. Took place in Lexington, check. I did the 2013 Run The Bluegrass Half-Marathon on March 30, 2013, Easter weekend. I met my twin goals of 1) finish in less than my corral time, 2:30, despite not being particularly speedy and  2) still be able to walk normally the rest of Easter weekend. The course was gorgeous (and hilly), filled with thoroughbreds (and hilly) and I finished it in 2:25 without my lower half hating me. Unfortunately, the traffic situation was nearly as bad as Louisville near the Derby, as it turned out, because they were doing major construction right in front of Keeneland at the time and had only one lane of traffic and some major fog going on. Thankfully, they delayed the start 15 minutes just to make sure everyone had a chance to make it in on time, but at one point, I thought I was going to have to bail on my dad, who graciously did the driving and photography, as usual, and run the last half mile or so to the gate just to make it to my corral.  

It was awesome and beautiful and uplifting and life-affirming, and I proved to myself I could do 13 miles off the treadmill without actually weeping at the fact that one hill made me crane my head back to see the top, way off in the distance. I did a thing I wasn't sure I could do when I started training. I did a thing that was hard. I did a thing that I had never done before. And I immediately swore I would never do it again, because 16 - 18 weeks of training plan is a lot of time commitment when you run the majority of it as slowly as I do, and Christmas was right in there and so. Much. Planning. I swore it out loud. To people. To multiple people. People who possess the sense of hearing and understand English.

And then maybe 90 minutes after not actually dying on the Really Nasty Uphill Curve Of Mile Nine Where Everyone Walked, I'm informed there's a half-marathon at Shakertown in November. A trail marathon. And it plants a seed. A seed that keeps niggling at me while I cut my mileage back during recovery and focus on just getting my annual 10K under an hour this year. One that kind of hovers back there while I try to get my 5K times a little faster and do a bit of speed training on the 'mill and wonder if I can ever work my way down to an unassisted pull up. The part of me that loves a deal keeps telling me that the cheap registration ends in July.  Only $65! And then the runner's high kicks in and you begin rationalizing. You're running, generally, faster! And you could do a shorter training plan this time! And no Christmas break! And you can train in the late summer/early fall mornings, when it's cool but not too cold to go outside! And it's trails! That's way easier on your body! I know all the things I did wrong last time! I can do it better this training plan!

Then you click the registration button and start having buyer's remorse before the confirmation email even shows up.

Source

Like you do. Incidentally, this nearly universal "What the heck was I thinking? That's barely three months to train! I can't remember how to use my legs all of a sudden!' thing that runners do is surely the reason why nearly all race registrations proclaim in big letters that they are totally non-refundable and possibly non-transferable.

So you don't immediately freak and cancel.

Oh well. At least when I talk myself into impulse-buying a race (if you can call waffling over doing a thing for months "impulse"), it forces me to do healthy things.

I'm shallow. I'm totally in it for the shirt, bragging rights, pasta dinner, probable-post-race-banana and the picturesque views. And maybe a slightly faster finishing time than last go round?

Front Of The Middle Of The Pack

I've never exactly been what you would call speedy. A few years ago, I finally got brave and started running outside, mainly because the indoor track in the fitness center on campus, where I work, has a 12-lap-per-mile circumference.  You feel like a Hot Wheels car after a few miles and need one of these to keep up with any run over a mile. 

Yes, tiny adorable child servant included.


Back in 2010, I made the mistake of running a local 5K. It was a memorial 5K run during Mother's Day weekend, the race fees all went to support Backpacks for Kids, a charity that and I was immediately freaking hooked on the metaphorical crack that is the occasional charity runner lifestyle. It's a seamy underworld of free bagels, granola bars and all the free t-shirts and tech shirts you can stand, kids. Don't let them tell you that you can stop after just one. Especially if you work in a college town that seems to have a vibrant and competitive running community that holds at least a 5K once a week from about April through September.
 
I've done a number of local 5Ks, an annual 10K and this past spring, did my first half marathon. I'm a pretty solidly middle of the pack runner who occasionally hits it lucky and lands in third in my age group. Like most recreational runners, when it comes to a training plan, this was me for most part.

My best 5K time to date (on land, as opposed to the alternate universe of the treadmill) is 28:31. By some miracle, I recently managed a 25:25 on the treadmill at 1.5% incline without actually breaking my spleen. That PR course, which is advertised as "fast and flat", is coming around again on August 10, and I intend to get a new PR.

Then, maybe, just maybe, I'll bother plugging my time into the Runner's World SmartCoach app and see what it spews out for a half training plan. Because I'm thinking of doing another. Even though I pretty much swore I would never do another because of the insane time commitment required for training halfway decently.

Clearly I am insane.