Boldly running where I've never gone before

…just like Kirk, Spock, Bones, Chekhov and Scotty at the O.K. Corral.  Only not as
the result of a Melkotian death sentence, even if some of my abs videos might feel like it sometimes.

The second full week back into training  has been enlightening as well as encouraging.  The elephant in the room (“how the hell am I going to go from 6 miles to 10 in a month without losing more speed AND without injuring myself”) is a little less scary.  The amount of fitness which has slipped away in the past 6 weeks is a little more obvious.  And the determination to move forward over the next four weeks – regardless – is a lot more deeply entrenched and will serve to shake off the mantle of laziness that sometimes settles on my shoulders.

Races planned for this month are the Rockdale Ramble 10k on April 14 and the Lakefront 10 Miler on April 28.   I have no major travel or social plans.  The weather is generally good for running in April.  I am in a reasonable state of good health, despite the recent flu.  So it’s time for an all out push which, given my age and weight, means longer and higher quality runs rather than more days of running.

After the fairly difficult but confidence-building five miler on Sunday the 25th (on the day I would have done the Shamrock Shuffle in Chicago had I not cancelled the weekend trip there due to the events of the previous month), I had a fairly decent week.

Monday — I did a cardio video with lots of lateral motion which serves to balance out the constant forward motion of running and helps prevent overuse injuries.
Tuesday — I walked about a mile and a half with the dogs, then went out for a sumptuous lunch with a friend.
Wednesday — I ran 2.7 miles.
Thursday — A day off; I worked 12 hours.
Friday — Another day off; I was just too tired, having slept badly the night before.
Saturday —  I ran 6 miles at an average of 14:14 pace per mile.  After starting off slow, I picked up a lot of energy over the course of the run and ended up doing really well.
Sunday — I had a hangover.  Big mistake to drink with friends on Saturday night, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.  🙂

So, the goal for the next week will be to work out 5 days instead of 4 and to give a strong effort no matter how I feel.  Sleep is often the determining factor, so getting good sleep will be Job One.

As if life hadn’t already held enough distraction, I ended up with the flu two weeks ago.  On Friday, March 10, I started coughing around midday.  By the evening, body aches and fatigue had set in.  At nightfall chills and fever followed, and then it went downhill from there.  Man, did that shit suck!  Despite having gotten a flu shot in October, illness ate up the next ten days of my life and I ended up not being able to run the St. Paddy’s race I had planned.  Having spent more than another week recuperating, I now find myself set back more than a bit in my training plan (which has now been completely scrapped and retooled).  As a result, I am behind where I hoped the unseasonably warm winter would have allowed me to go and have started over once again as of this past week.

But what the hell.  C’est la vie.  At least I finally feel like I am back to health and freed from the clutches of Sick Bay.

St. Patrick’s Day races always kick off the spring running season, the culminating event of which will be (for me anyway) the Mayor’s Half Marathon on June 24 in Anchorage, Alaska.   My original plan was to try to finally finish a Half in less than 3 hours.  This would have mandated achieving a distance goal early in the season to ensure stamina while working on speed throughout.  Accordingly, my original training calendar had the distance of my weekly Long Run topping out at 7 miles to end this month and 10 miles by the end of April.

After the layoff due to my Dad’s death followed by my 10 days of flu, I have now modified the plan to play catch up on miles and pretty much forego the speed goal.   Having been knocked back to practically Square One, I will do 6 miles next weekend and jump up to 10 miles by April 28 when I run the Lakefront 10 Miler in downtown Chicago.  I can’t remember the last time I did any speedwork.  I think it might have been January.

In any event, today’s run was 5 fairly tough miles that reminded me how much further I still have to go, while providing plenty of fun and entertainment along the way.  It was a beautifully sunny 67 degree day, and my iPod was programmed with my favorite 80s dance tunes to add extra energy to my step.  Birds were singing everywhere and there was a cool breeze.  Even when I was tired (which happened about halfway through) and it was hard to keep pace, I was glad to be out there.  It was sweet.  Nothing clears the mind like a challenging run.  And I saw this gigantic rat that probably weighed as much as my husband’s cat!  I actually tried to chase it but it ran away.

Workouts this past week included:
Saturday — segments of Cathe Friedrich’s Push Pull DVD interspersed with Gilad’s Express (and I’m still sore because she kills me every time)
Friday — 2 miles   (would have done more but ran out of time before work)
Thursday — about 15 minutes of upper body weights while watching the morning news
Wednesday — 4 miles ridiculously slow, mostly walking (crappy sleep, really tired)
Tuesday — nothing; I watched a lot of TV
Monday — 2 and 1/2 miles (nice pace, abundant energy…I was so happy with this run)

For several of the weeks before that, I didn’t really do much of anything due to life’s events.  I managed a decent four mile run in L.A. when I was there for my Dad’s funeral, but I can’t even remember what else might have gone into my training journal if I had been keeping track.  However it’s forward we go now and on to the next goal, no matter where the hell it is I’m starting from today.

Seen here in a 2007 photo from my wedding on the bridge of the Enterprise at the Star Trek Experience (formerly located at the Las Vegas Hilton) is my father, Red Holloway, wearing Starfleet Admiral’s garb as he gives my hand over to my husband.  It was a wonderful day for all of us and nobody had more of a blast than my Dad.  He was not even a Trekkie and had no idea what he was getting himself into, but cheerfully joined in the craziness without so much as a second thought.

My 84-year-old father passed away on February 25 after several years of renal failure requiring thrice-weekly dialysis, most recently complicated by a series of strokes that occurred over the previous three months.  Despite valiant initial efforts at rehab and recovery, he left us in his sleep after a mere two days on hospice care.  Over his final weeks, he had faded away slowly — gradually spending more hours asleep than awake and finally not eating enough to sustain himself (while steadfastly refusing offers of tube-feedings and other extreme interventions) — and I believe his passing was peaceful.

Like a Starfleet Admiral or any other thrilling fictional character, my Dad always seemed larger than life to me.  He was a professional musician whose career kept him on the road hobnobbing with famous people and visiting exciting places around the world for over 60 years.  I wrote in his funeral program that he “came and went through my life like a comet, leaving a trail of stardust on my ordinary existence” because that was how I saw him in my early years:  always dashing off to the next adventure, doing things a kid like me could only dream of.  Then came a period of resentment as I sought to understand why it was necessary to give so much of himself to strangers instead of to me.  But finally there was acceptance after I began to carve out my own place in the world and came to understand what it meant to create an identity and goals, then bust your ass and sacrifice anything-and-everything to achieve them.

Eventually we developed a friendship that both of us found special for probably the last 30 years, one which saw us exchange confidences, give advice, gossip, share laughter and even occasionally travel together.  After having seemed the absentee father who I thought too busy to give me my due, he later showed up for every important occasion of my adult life — my college graduation, my medical school graduation, my wedding — which more than made up for the misperceptions of the past.  And we found similarities in ourselves which could only have come from nature rather than nurture, and we realized how these qualities bound us together as family:  our passion for new experiences, dedication to achievement, fierce independence, levelheaded “no bullshit” approach to life, outspokenness (perhaps too much sometimes) and relentlessly optimistic joie de vivre.   I realized over time that these were my inheritance, my Dad’s greatest gifts to me.   As much as oxygen, they have sustained me over the years and will continue to be my life force forever.

So instead of writing about my training plan and how well I did (or did not) adhere to it in the past few weeks surrounding my Dad’s passing I wanted to put forth just a few words about him, since this has been the main focus of my existence in the last month or so.  Next narrative I’ll get back to mileage counts and cross-training efforts and angsty tirades about my old body refusing to keep pace with my childlike mind.  For now, I will just bid The Admiral farewell and let the world know how I will miss him for easily the next million years.  But I will continue to forge onward in the fashion which would make him proud:  attentively, dedicatedly, and with gusto.

In an episode of Star Trek: the Original Series, the crew of the Enterprise encounters a planet in the Omicron Delta area of space upon which they take shore leave and discover that anything they can imagine is now coming true.  Of course, this becomes a huge problem when their imaginations run amok and it takes Kirk and Spock no end of suspenseful machinations to right the situation.  Fortunately, my recent days in Louisiana have not been nearly as dramatic.

I travelled to New Orleans with my husband last weekend to spend a few days actually relaxing (rather than checking on an ill parent or doing a snowshoe race like the previous two weekends).  And a relaxing time it was — eating delicious food, enjoying music, sightseeing for a whole four days — with very little exercise.  Here’s how it broke down:

Actually just driving up to the hills of Wisconsin — was what it took to get some winter sports fun this past weekend.  Now, I’m not complaining.  I LOVE an Illinois winter with very little cold and snow.  Throw in some extra daylight and I’ll never gripe again.  But my plan for this winter had included a couple of snowshoe races designed to inspire some training through the months which typically find me at my laziest.  It was just a happy coincidence that I had to drive half a day to find one due to the local scarcity of white stuff.

Since my last post regarding the Polar Dash we have gotten a pixie dusting of snow on a couple of occasions which has always melted within a day or two of arrival.  The snowshoe race I had planned to compete in on the last weekend of January ended up being a footrace over frozen mud, and thus I was quite delighted not to attend.  I found a snowshoe series in the northern reaches of Wisconsin and quickly signed up for a pair of races there instead.  The first — the Iola Twilight Snowshoe 5k, a night event — was held in Iola, Wisconsin this past weekend and it was a total blast.

I drove up with my husband on Saturday, February 4, and we stayed overnight.  I had managed to talk him into entering the race with me and even convinced him to train (albeit sporadically) for about 6 weeks.  We arrived at the venue and found the people to be friendly and the lodge warm and inviting.  Turnout for the race was low, maybe only 60 competitors, but that meant a more generous allotment of prizes.  In fact, everyone who entered earned a tasty gift of either Wisconsin maple syrup or organic chocolate bars.

The winter sports complex which hosted the event is located in a forested area with some impressively hilly topography.  After a kids 800-meter dash at 6:00 pm, the 5k and 10k races took off over a lighted forest path coated with a thick layer of fresh snow and ice.  Fred and I had signed up for the 5k.  The 10k was merely a double loop of the 5.  The announcer at the start line had cued us about the course, saying “Miles 1 and 2 have some hills but Mile 3 is mostly downhill.”  It sounded doable.

The first mile did indeed contain some gently rollercoastering hills which were a challenge in the ascent but allowed enough rest on the downslope to provide some catch-up for the legs and lungs.  The second mile was a killer — definitely rigorous with many steep climbs and a pair of double hills with just a bit of mesa in between for respite.  Somehow it seemed longer than a mile too.  But then the tough ones always do, don’t they?  By the two thirds mark, I felt strenuously challenged and was dripping sweat; my husband lost any pretense at enthusiasm and was bitterly grumbling.  Fortunately, the third mile was more forgiving and offered a handful of hills on mostly downward terrain.  Multiple times, Fred swore vengeance on that poor announcer.   But by Mile 3.1 we were done and ready for the hot cocoa.

It was a nice race — my first night event — and it was tough, and I loved it!  I adored being out in nature under a sky so beautiful with its nearly full moon and endless stars, inside the massive forest silent but for the crunching of our footsteps on the snow and the gasps of breath that sustained us.  I loved being surrounded by air so crisp and frigid yet from the exertion feeling so warm.  I even enjoyed the tremendous effort it took to get up some of those hills, repeating my mantra each step of the way “need power? got power”.  It was undeniable proof of the life left in these old limbs.

I never feel as eternally connected with all the forces of nature except in moments like that.  I would’t trade it for anything.  There is no couch, no bar stool, no lawn chair that can give me what I get out there.  And I’d do it again tomorrow.

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Training since the previous post:

January 22 – off
January 23 – 30 minutes of outdoor speed intervals
January 24 – tough total body workout for 75 minutes
January 25 – 30 minute treadmill program of hills, followed by 1/2 mile cooldown jog
January 26 – yoga/abs
January 25 through 31 – DAYS OFF taken to visit my Dad in California at the nursing home; no exercise
February 1 –  short cardio and stretch session to reawaken the body
February 2 – 2 mile speedwalking
February 3 – yoga
February 4 – Iola Snowshoe 5k
February 5 – off
February 6 – 30 minutes of speed intervals outdoors
February 7 – off
February 8 – mixed bag of 10 minutes each:  step cardio, compound weight sets, cardio on the Bosu, corework

…..the common cold is still a bitch.

Star Trek lore holds that the common cold was cured sometime in the 24th Century, and I am so looking forward to that day!  However here on Terra in the early 21st Century, it can still kick your unfortunate ass — as I very well know at this moment.  Despite hand-washing on a scale that would make Howard Hughes jealous, I have managed to catch whatever it is that the patients are bringing into my office by the dozens.  I woke up yesterday with a uvula that felt (and looked) like a punching bag and it went downhill from there.  I’ve gotten over the body aches and queasy stomach a bit today but am still not back to 100%.

Fortunately, this week is a “recovery week” on my training schedule and I am not expecting myself to do much.  After having spent the last month building workouts in both length and intensity, the unwelcome arrival of this virus reinforces the plan to do more relaxing than pushing.   But it still pisses me off because I really hate being sick!

I guess I can take heart in the fact that I don’t look like this (a victim of the Vidiian Phage  —-  See Star Trek Voyager “Phage” episode):

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Training since the last post:

January 11 – “Yogilates” DVD (a combo of yoga and Pilates) — because my “fun” 5.5 miles of speed intervals the previous day left me able to do little else  🙂

January 12 – 2 miles of speed intervals

January 13 – Cathe Friedrich’s “High Step Circuit” DVD which circuit training of aerobics interspersed with weights and corework

January 14 – 55 minute MotionTraxx podcast “Treadmill Coach“, an extremely intense workout consisting of hills, then speed, then speed uphill which kicked my ass in the most delicious way possible

January 15 – Off (start of “Recovery Week”)

January 16 – 20 minutes of intervals on the treadmill

January 17 – Off

January 18 – 20 minutes of light weight work

January 19 – 35 minutes of 30 second sprint intervals on the treadmill (with a 5 minute warm up and cool down on each end)

January 20 – Today is an off day

The next phase begins on Sunday.  More later…..

December 31, 2011

Thanksgiving has come and gone, followed by birthdays and Christmas, and I find myself again about to make that large flip of the calendar page which is due each year at this time.

Rather than retrospect and philosophize about the year gone by, or anticipate and resolve for the year ahead, I think I’ll spend the evening watching TV and then simply get on with it all tomorrow.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!