Plan? What Plan?

The last couple of weeks, the training plan has somewhat gone off the rails. The last Saturday of September was a 5K race day. It's my annual "slowest time of the year, but, hey, the last mile smells like country ham breakfast" festival run, so I hate to miss it, even for a better half-marathon time. Anticipating this, I banked on skipping one of the training plan easy runs, and time constraints meant that I couldn't quite get in the entire 10-mile long run before squeezing in two rest days. I still did about 8.67 miles and called it good. 

Then I left work on Friday afternoon. The plants were all apparently having an orgy, because my chest tightened up the moment I stepped out the door.

The Daily Meme 

I'm guessing all the goldenrod and ragweed in Kentucky are having the sexytimes, because there are globs of pollen everywhere and the sneezing and coughing commenced. Coughing, mostly. I was a little wheezy and coughed a bit on Saturday, but I went into Monday only slightly choked up and my nostrils were 95% functional. My sinuses were being fairly cooperative, no pain, no pressure. 

I figure I'll head into the last cutback week, get over the allergies and cruise into the last month of training plan in pretty good shape. Only, The Saga Of The Monday Blue Laws happened.

I work in a fairly fun department. Good folks, friendly, funny, and most importantly, we can all throw down with some good eating. We wanted to buy some baked goods for a little celebration. And maybe buy a little lunch while we're at it. We head off for a neighboring town, their cupcake bakery and their extremely good local roadside barbecue joint.

We pull into the barbecue joint, only to discover it has recently changed its hours and is closed on Mondays. Right. So we'll pull down the street and pick up the cupcakes, right? Wrong! Closed on Mondays. The only other restaurants available in this neck of the woods are a Hardees that shares digs with a gas station, and a local restaurant that we're not quite sure is open. It once housed a combination Italian/Mexican restaurant that had since vacated the premises. We set off to see if that, at least, is open on Mondays.

Behold, it is open, and it is a little country cafe. We stroll in to discover that it is, apparently, the only non-cigar bar smoking establishment left in North America. Smoking is not only allowed, apparently it may be required to get in. There's a two smoker per table minimum, possibly, to keep the ashtrays on every table hot. We're starving by this point, so we decide to stick it out. From a "good  and affordable food" point of view, it wasn't bad. The beef stroganoff, cottage cheese, macaroni and maters, plus green beans went well with the very sweet sweet tea. From an "I kind of like breathing" angle, it was a terrible choice.

I'm 36 and have lived my entire life in Kentucky. My family raised tobacco when I was growing up, I've helped in setting, cutting and stripping it. I've never smoked, but in my childhood years, smoking was common and not many people hesitated when it came to lighting up in public. Somehow, in the ten years or so since "non-smoking" became the default choice and "smoking" practically became synonymous with "societal outcast", my lungs must have gotten spoiled rotten from all that fresh air. Just in case there were a few molecules of fresh air anywhere near our table, one lady helpfully took her cigarette along when she went to get a drink refill. I guess she was worried she would get lonely on the fifteen foot walk and couldn't bear to leave her cigarette in the ashtray for ten seconds. Maybe twenty seconds if she got winded. As soon as I finished eating, my tongue tasted of tobacco and my eyes felt gritty. Our hair and clothing reeked.  We all had the sinking feeling we had just shaved three to six months off of our life expectancies.

To add to the annoyance, they turned out to be a cash only establishment, probably because they can't be assured their customers will actually live long enough to make a payment on their credit card bill. We tried another cupcake joint back in town and it was also closed on Mondays. At that point, it was reaching the level of the absurd. We finally found a bakery that was open and bought cookies instead, since, clearly, the forces of fate did not intend for us to be able to feast upon cupcakes this day.

An hour after leaving the Den of Smoke, my respiratory system basically thanked me for bringing it along by trying to shank me. My sinuses and nasal passages more or less swelled shut, my cough became horrible and fits lasted for several minutes, my eyes were gritty, and in general, I was miserable, sleep- and oxygen-deprived for a week. I finally broke down and bought some Tussin Tab DM from Good Neighbor Pharmacy. I've spent a lot of the weekend taking some heavy duty naps and recovering. I'm back to running regularly tomorrow, I hope. It may be indoors, on the treadmill, and it may not be pretty, but I'm gonna run.

Seriously.

I mean it.

Someone Needs To Turn Vivienne Westwood On To Some Pratchett

This Vivienne Westwood article seems to be doing the rounds of the internet lately.

Everyone Buys Too Many Clothes

The most discussed bit, it seems, is this:

Speaking after the show, Dame Vivienne said: "Buy less. Choose well. Make it last. Quality, not quantity. Everybody's buying far too many clothes. I mean, I know I'm lucky, I can just take things and borrow them and I'm just okay, but I hate having too many clothes. And I think that poor people should be even more careful. It doesn't mean therefore you have to just buy anything cheap. Instead of buying six things, buy one thing that you really like. Don't keep buying just for the sake of it. I just think people should invest in the world. Don't invest in fashion, but invest in the world."

And somehow, I feel rather vindicated that the majority of comments about this piece of advice seem to be saying, "Yes, that's all very well and good if you can afford it and feel like it, Dame Vivienne, but kindly take that piece of advice you've helpfully aimed at the 'poor' and shove it in your probably $5000 borrowed kid leather handbag, because a pair of your shoes may be half the rent". 

It's the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness, in other words. The non-Pratchett fans among you might be going "The whose theory of the what, now?" at this point.

Sure, many of us are lucky and comfortable enough that we can be choosy with how to spend our money. And the wise thing to do, if you're so inclined, is indeed to invest in better quality goods that cost more up front but are cheaper in the long run due to durability. But there's a fascinating, and quite real, economic phenomenon in which you can be too poor to save money. Not just in the "there's no money left over after paying the bills" sense, either.  You lack the resources to be able to effectively plan long term. 

You're living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to pay your dental or medical bill early enough to reap a discount. So, you have to wait until payday and end up paying the full price.  You can't afford the Costco membership and buying in bulk, so you pay full price for those goods and make more trips when you have the money. You occasionally have to pick one bill to pay late and incur late fees, thereby spending more in the long run. You can't afford the good pair of leather boots that will last a decade, instead, you end up buying boots that cost a fifth as much but last only a tenth as long. It's something many politicians don't seem to grasp.

It's a phenomenon that cannot be explained more brilliantly and succinctly than it is by one of Terry Pratchett's characters, Samuel Vimes.

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.” 

I'm sure Vivienne Westwood meant well enough, and there's certainly a segment of the population that could probably save money and closet space over time by following her advice. You know, assuming you're also one of those people who are lucky enough to never fluctuate in size in addition to being well off enough to afford being choosy about when and where you're spending your income.

But the instant she brought the word "poor" into it, someone really should have handed her a copy of Men At Arms and suggested she read that passage.   

Sam Vimes as drawn by the brilliant Paul Kidby. Go buy all the things he sells at http://www.paulkidby.com, Vivienne Westwood be darned. Also, read the Vimes books. Start with Guards! Guards! You won't be sorry.

Many Guys Doing Manly Things

You may have picked up that I'm slightly geeky and tend to get most of my entertainment from the interwebs. If not, allow me to state the obvious and point out that when I'm not running, I'm probably doing something slightly geeky, possibly involving the interwebs. I also like video games and  sci-fi and comics and usually prefer action movies to chick flicks. 

We've been around decades, tone-deaf entertainment producers. Seriously, stop reacting like this when we keep calling you on your "Women don't buy this stuff. So we're good treating female characters like bikini-wearing pork chops, right?" malarkey. Especially when you keep acting like our money's not just as green as a teenage boy's. And more plentiful, too. Kind of side-eying you here, DC Comics and large portions of the video game industry...

 

I rather like web comics. There are some brilliantly drawn, engaging, and erudite comics out there. They extend beyond the well-known xkcd.

Sometimes I'm a little behind the curve in discovering something great, but one of the wonders of modern technology is the web archive. Which just means you can binge like crazy when you finally hop on board the bandwagon.

Then react like this when you reach the end and have to wait for more.

Image from the hilarious Instant No Button. For all your "Nooooooo!" needs.

I just recently discovered the web comic Manly Guys Doing Manly Things. The shortest way to describe it is "Imagine a sort of halfway house for all the super-macho "Stubbly McWhiteguy"s that tend to populate about 90% of popular entertainment and as they try to (re)integrate into society." It's the sort of concept that could, in the hands of the wrong person, be a very two-dimensional, one-note joke that ceases to be funny five strips in. In the hands of Kelly Turnbull, it's anything but. While a lot of the humor comes from poking a healthy dose of gentle, loving fun at the manly tropes that crop up so often in video games and movies, you're not required to be a major gamer geek to get the humor. The tropes are common enough that if you have ever consumed any popular culture whatsoever, you'll get it. If not, scroll down and she's sure to have provided some context. Google it if you have to. I swear it will be worth it. 

Additionally, the original characters are brilliantly drawn, and I'm not talking solely about the art. They have actual personalities and character arcs, romantic subplots and the occasional road trip where they sing Cyndi Lauper songs. There's a lot of very clever and subtle commentary on gender roles and solid female characters who are there for more than the wearing of the skimpy bikinis. It walks the fine line of making fun of the macho stereotypes while it celebrates them. It is, in short, awesome that way, because it doesn't shame macho men for being macho. It's fine and dandy to be macho. Macho does not automatically mean "misogynistic loudmouthed jerk". Some of us ladies just want in on the fun, too.

Basically, it's like a big, fat love letter to manly men who have to shave twice a day, have broken noses and yet are still secure enough in their manhood to bake muffins with their toddlers. Perhaps I can put it no better than the About page.

"Sometime this is a comic about macho action heroes. Sometimes this is a slice of life comic about a time traveling Navy SEAL single dad from the nonspecific spacefuture. Really, it just depends on how things were going that day."

Get over there now. Seriously, it is so worth it.

 

The Commander said so.

Yay, I Won A Flipbelt From HolaBirdSports.com!

If there's one thing I love even more than finding and buying a useful product, it's winning one in a contest. Because trying new running-related products can be extremely expensive. $25 here, $50 there, before you know it, you're talking real money. Particularly when we're talking about all the various hands-free "I need to wrangle some stuff while running" products on the market.

Like most runners, I like some tunes while I'm on the move, partially to get that famous psychological and performance boost from up-tempo music, partially to drown out my pathetic and sometimes distressing huffing, puffing and wheezing. Seriously, I have no idea how people could miss hearing me coming. Also, I like knowing how far I've gone, running from imaginary zombies and being able to phone the office for a pity pick-up if need be. Obviously, this means taking your phone along. Having accidentally drowned my iPhone 4S in my own sweat while on a 14-mile treadmill run (I'm dainty.), I sprung for a Lifeproof frē case for my replacement iPhone 5. The case is pretty awesome, bar a minor complaint or two, and Lifeproof also sells an armband that's compatible with said case. 

The armband is... considerably less awesome but serviceable. But then, I've never gotten on well with armbands in general. It often seems to be so tight that you're pinching your arm or bouncing down your less-than-manly biceps and swinging wildly around your elbow. The earphone cord is in the way a lot of the time. It's easy to pinch said earphone cord in the cradle meant to... well, cradle your phone. After a certain point, the neoprene band picks up a case of runner funk and has to be washed and dried, which is easier said than done when there's a padded portion that goes behind the hard plastic cradle. It works, but it can occasionally be annoying and adjusting it for comfort is not easy, is what I'm saying.

Not too long ago, I ran across a mention of the Flipbelt. It's basically one long, stretchy pocket belt with several slits for easy access and a single short seam that eliminates the need for a buckle. You pull it on over your head or step into it and let it grip around your waist or hips. If you want to make your items more secure, you simply flip the belt over and put the slits next to your body, making it difficult for the items to fall out. If that's not enlightening enough, the Flipbelt site has a video demonstration.

I was somewhat intrigued, and put it on my "maybe someday I'll check this out when the thing I'm currently using either gives out or sufficiently annoys me" list. I also, as is my habit these days, did a quick search to see if said thing on my list was maybe being featured in a current giveaway or sweepstakes. Goodness, it was, over at http://www.holabirdsports.com and I was lucky enough to win one. 

After a bit of debating about size, I went with the Small. I figured if it was a bit snug for the hips, it would still fit my waist. For reference, I usually wear a size 4 pant/skirt. I'm somewhat kicking myself that I didn't get the neon yellow when offered a color choice, but the carbon/black combo seemed like a nice, under the radar color for those cross-training days at the gym. The neon yellow would have offered visibility and also been a great accessory for all your Wonder Woman running costume needs. Seriously. I bought a running skirt from SV Forza just because it looked like Wonder Woman's costume. I'm now on the hunt for a suitable red top.

The folks at Holabird got my choice out to me quickly and I gave it an trial run (hah!) during a race, but not during a road race. I was a participant in The Dantastic Race, a Boyle county version of The Amazing Race complete with clues, puzzles, physical challenges and driving/running from spot to spot. We didn't have the chance to coordinate the elaborate group costumes that some of the other teams sported, being late entries, but hey, The Fast And The Curious were in third for a bit (even without a challenge skip in hand) and we had a great time, which is the most important part. I'm pretty sure we had more per capita fun than anyone else.

And more awesome purple mustaches.

Participation required registering one team member's smart phone, and needless to say, mine rode in my Flipbelt when it wasn't currently in use. It was out of the way but accessible, comfortable, and not bulky at all. It was a slightly tighter fit than a naked iPhone because of the Lifeproof case, but still tucked away fairly easily. After that success, I wore it on outdoor runs ranging from 4 to 5 miles and found it equally comfy and there was zero annoying bounce. I also found the earphone cords were much easier to wrangle when they're plugged in near your waist as opposed to your bicep. You can likely get several runs in before the belt needs a wash. I'll certainly continue swapping the armband out for the Flipbelt when the belt is in the wash, but let's just say I was quite happy to see the belt make its return from the washing machine.

And I'm already enviously looking at the bright yellow one to go with that skirt and looking to see if Holabird might have a nice, bright red running top.

Have You Tried Posting To Facebook About It?

I will never completely understand human nature. Particularly the bit of it that drives supposedly intelligent, well-educated employees of an institution of higher learning to totally avoid three completely convenient and well-advertised modes of communication available for conveying their problem directly to the highly trained professionals available on site who are actually paid to solve it.  Plus, there's the only marginally less convenient but additional option of "get your behind up out of your chair, walk across the beautiful and compact campus in the fresh air and sunshine to the office building which houses said professionals and have some probably pleasant face to face interaction.

But somehow, this is way too much trouble. Yet, somehow, they've got the time, motivation and bandwidth to get on the internet and "Vaguebook" about having an issue of some sort.

I have a revolutionary idea. If  you have an issue with the setup of a lab machine, maybe try notifying the department responsible for setting up the lab machine in something other than the most roundabout way possible?

From the Brilliant IT Crowd Gif Tumblr

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.