Random Post...including the return of good coconut water and speedwork

Wednesday I got a call from the local bike shop that my specially-ordered Mint Chocolate gu was in!  I stopped there last Friday after work, picked up some Espresso Love gu and they ordered a box of Mint Chocolate for me.  That was super fast.



I was super excited.  And still am.  I'll be having one of these on my long run on Sunday and another NEXT Sunday during my half marathon.

Despite my excitement over mint chocolate gu (did you not know I like mint + chocolate?) I was exhausted after getting home from work on Wednesday so I made it a rest day.  I think the gross weather was making me feel rather blahhh too.  Pup-a-roo felt the same way too:

 

Oh wait,  I'm pretty sure she naps on our bed every day (I caught her mid-yawn here).  Look at what a number she did to our nicely made bed while we were at work.

I kicked my feet up for a little.  Did some laundry.  And when hubs got home, he seemed to be feeling the same way, so we walked down the street to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner.

 

These flowers my husband picked up earlier this week will help me remember it's spring even though it's been barely 40 all week.  Oh, and after dinner on Wednesday?  It was raining/sleeting sideways. Hard.  And then it started to thunder and lightning.  Then we had pea-sized hail.  Perfect spring weather.

We were stuffed from dinner, but brought home this delicious macaroon to split.



...minus a couple bites.

In other news, recently I picked up a giant 1 Liter container of coconut water from Trader Joe's.  I used to love the Zico brand, but then they started selling it in plastic bottles instead of little tetra-packs and it tasted different in a not-good way (here's my previous discussion of coconut water).  But I was intrigued by the return of the tetra-pack-like packaging and took a risk.

And I'm glad I took the risk, because the taste of the coconut water in this packaging is good again!  Also, I found an explanation on the tag.  According to the tag (pictured below), the blend of Brazilian, Thai, and Indonesian coconut water tastes like balls.  However, Brazilian or Thai on its own is delicious (my opinion).

I drank some on its own the other day and in a smoothie with strawberry lowfat kefir, a frozen banana, and some frozen berries:

Last night I did my bootcamp class.  As usual there were a lot of planks, crunches, pushups. We also worked on triceps, biceps, did bench presses, and ended with some lunges and squats. (I promise the class was more varied and exciting than my summary though).

Afterward I did the speedwork I should have done Wednesday (by the way, I'm glad I took a rest day Wednesday...I ended up passing out on the couch after dinner and macaroon, somewhere around 9:30).

My speed work was 5 x 800 @10k pace.  You can see my recap on Daily Mile here. But to summarize, my goal pace for the 800s was 9:49-10:07.  I ran them at the following paces: 9:46, 10:02, 9:40, 9:38, 9:42.  I did a .15 mile rest interval between each.  0-2% incline to keep it interesting. Including a short warm up and cool down, I ran 3.5 miles.  Avg HR 167, Max 185.

(Does anyone else find some minor discomfort in the ankle/lower shin region while running on a treadmill...but never while running outside?  I stopped and stretched, changed the incline, and it got better).

Those paces weren't uncomfortable, I was just bored out of my mind because I did not bring my mp3 player, did not have headphones to plug into the built-in tv, and I couldn't figure out how to get closed-captioning on it.  So I watched a tornado special on the weather channel, without any audio or text, for 39 minutes.  There's a cool built-in fan on the treadmill which is nice...but it turns out that if you're 5'2" you're not really tall enough to enjoy the full benefit of the fan.  Bummer.

Anyway, I was pleased with Thursday's workout.  Today was a scheduled rest day.  Tomorrow's a shorter pace run. Eight days to go til my half marathon!

If you run with a Garmin, please check out my post from earlier this week and comment on how you like to use your Garmin during races (what screens you find most helpful, etc).  Inquiring minds want to know!

Enjoy your weekend!!

Tweaking and Tempo Run

Bear with me while I tweak my blog based on my recent poll.

I'm trying out one sidebar with two columns. 11 voted for one side bar over 7 voting to leave it with two side bars.

About Me is now at the top of the side bar, with Blogs I Follow and the Archive right underneath.

More people said the font is easy to read (9) than not easy to read (4).

More people said ditch the dark brown w/light font (7) than keep it (5).

And people said leave it alone (7).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Tonight I went to spinning.  It was another good class with the new guy instructor.  He may make us work harder than the Monday night instructor (according to my Heart Rate monitor).  Both instructors are good, just different!

Then after spinning I planned to get in my 35 minute tempo run.  And I did! But the gym is still crazy with all the undergrads back.

After spinning I stalked the treadmills for about 10 minutes while talking to a friend.  Even all the ellipticals were taken.  I gave up and got my stuff from my locker.  I figured I'd run outside under street lights (because of ice) even if it meant I'd have to loop around a short route to get the time in.  

Then!  On my way out of the locker room, a man stepped off his treadmill.  Yessssssss.

So I gave my tempo run a shot.

Here's what Hal Higdon says a tempo run should be: This is a continuous run with a buildup in the middle to near 10-K race pace.  A Tempo Run of 30 to 45 minutes would begin with 10-15 minutes easy running, build to 15-20 minutes near the middle, then 5-10 minutes easy toward the end.

I have a hard time thinking of my run in minutes instead of miles.  But I walked for a minute or two, then ran for another 10 minutes at 5.3 mph and a 1% incline.  

When I hit the 1-mile mark, I had been running easy for 12 minutes, and I switched to 6.0 mph (10:00 pace is in the middle of my 10k pace range of 9:49-10:07 and it was easy to remember).  I told myself I'd hold that pace for 15 minutes.  The first half crawled by while I watched some Real Housewives Reunion on closed captioning with Lady Gaga on my mp3 player, trying to distract myself as much as possible.  As I approached 15 minutes, I thought "I can do this another minute, no problem!" So I did it until 16 minutes.

Then I switched back down to 5.3 mph for the easy end of my run, for 5 minutes.  I slowed it to 5.1 for another 2 minutes, then I was done.  Yippee.  

Total of 3.24 miles in 35:01.  

Does anyone else do tempo runs?  How do you do them?
This is my first time doing them the Hal Higdon way, which I think is the real way.  I feel like Runner's World Smart Coach just gave me a pace to run for the entire tempo run.  Or maybe they didn't provide much direction.
Have any tips to provide?  

I think I like my hills and speed work runs better, because they require a little less thought!  The tempo run would have been a little harder for me to plan outside, (I plan in miles, not minutes) so I'm glad I did this one on the treadmill (glad + treadmill!? in the same sentence?  shocking, I know).


Sorry for the lack of pictures tonight, I'll try to find something fun to post a picture of tomorrow.

Wednesday & Thursday

Wednesday morning I squeezed in a fabulous 20 minute upper body workout.  How, you might ask?  Scraping this solid sheet of ice off of my car:

The ground was a solid sheet of ice too.

Here are some icy pictures from that morning to make this post interesting, because after these next two pictures I'm going to talk about the details of my Thursday night speed work.

Icicles everywhere!

Unfortunately this picture is not super in-focus, but I like Japanese maples and I think this tree looks cool anyway:

Luckily the overnight and early morning freezing rain only gave me (another) 90 minute delay for work, and my gym was open that night.

Wednesday night workout: 1 hour of Spinning with a friend (second time this week), because she joined the gym I go to!  It was a different instructor than Monday night's class, so it was interesting to see how someone else runs things.

Thursday night:  I think I have lots of work stress building right now.  So I have lots of energy for sweating.  Since I didn't do speed work Wednesday night (schedule called for 35 min tempo run), I did some tonight. 

I had hoped to have time for a 35 minute tempo run before spinning, but I didn't get out of work early enough for that.  I know splitting it up into two sessions isn't quite the same, but it's better than nothing.  I think a 15 min and a 20 min tempo run would defeat the purpose, since the point is to do it for a prolonged period.  So I did intervals, split into two sessions (still not the same as all in one shot, I know).


Week 3 called for 6 x 400 @ 5k pace; Week 5 called for 7 x 400 @ 5k pace.
5k pace for me, based on my approximate goal half time, would be somewhere in the 9:28-9:45 range.

I had about 20 minutes before boot camp started, so I hopped on the treadmill.

I calculated the paces afterward, as my Garmin does not communicate with the treadmill.  I just hit lap on my Garmin for each change in speed.  Then I tried really hard to commit the distances to memory.

Speed Work session 1:
 @ 1% incline

Insert one full hour of Boot Camp.  Lots of crunches, bicycles, oblique crunches, planks, chest & tricep pushups, tricep dips, some jumping jacks, squats, various exercises with 5lb dumb bells-- tricep extensions (over head and while standing, bent over); and a bunch of chest and shoulder exercises. Several circuits of each.  I'm probably missing some.

Next came... Speed Work session 2.
 @ 1% incline

Since I was already warmed up, this next warm up was shorter. I felt good still after 3 repeats, so I added a 4th. (7th, overall).  I jogged for all my rest intervals (no walking).

I'm all screwy with my speed work/ tempo/ hills schedule - compared with what I originally set out to do.  But what is important is that I'm still doing one of those each week!

Here was my last speed work session, 5 x 400.  I'm happy that I was able to cut the rest intervals down from .2 miles on January 12th to .1 miles on February 3rd, and I was still able to hit the necessary paces each time! (Progress??)

Alright, that's enough of that for now.

We have more icy stuff on the way tonight and tomorrow, but the weather is looking good for my long run Sunday!  41 sounds tropical.

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Super quick post

Tonight I was supposed to do an easy run.
I also wanted to get some professional development hours at a workshop very relevant to my job being held only 2 miles from my apartment, and for a cheap $10.  When work doesn't provide very much professional development and you still need the hours to renew your certification, you'll take anything you can get!

After work, I stopped home quick, packed my gym bag, and headed to the workshop. 

When that ended at about 8:30, I headed over to the gym for my easy run.  By the time I got changed and on the treadmill it was 8:45.  My run should have been 3.5 miles, but ended up more like 2.85 due as it was getting late, and the gym was pretty full, so I adhered to the 30 minute max. 

Better that I got in 2.85 easy miles than nothing! (I thought about using the workshop as an excuse and not doing anything...but that would have been very lame of me).  When I got home, I found that more than half of the cookies I made the other night are officially gone.  I think I'm responsible for about 10 of those missing cookies over the past 3 days...

How promising does this forecast look for a good outside hills workout (immediately behind my apartment) or some speed work tomorrow night?

Wednesday: Rain and snow before 3pm, then rain and sleet. High near 36. Northeast wind between 6 and 14 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow and sleet accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

Wednesday Night: Rain and snow before 3am, then a chance of snow. The rain and snow could be heavy at times. Low around 26. North wind between 11 and 18 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 3 to 7 inches possible. 

Yikes.  We'll see what it is like outside when I get home tomorrow, and I'll see what I can do...

Is anyone else's running being affected by all this lovely winter weather?
Or do you usually run on a treadmill in the winter anyway?

Recipe: Curry Cauliflower and Beans Soup

Sometime over the weekend (Saturday?) I made a new recipe courtesy of my favorite grocery store in the world, Wegmans.  And that recipe is: Curry Cauliflower and Beans Soup.

As you can see, a nice simple list of ingredients. 

Basically you throw the onions in the pot with some oil, cook them a while, add the stock and cauliflower, cook until the cauliflower is soft, then add the beans and curry, then use an immersion blender. Done.

I'm all about easy recipes.

1 cup of this soup has only 90 calories, 4 grams of fiber and 5 grams of protein. The only unhealthy thing about it is the French Fried Onion pieces.

The recipe makes 8 one-cup servings.  We maybe got 7 bowls out of it, but I'm sure my husband's servings were a little larger than mine.

Sunday I postponed my long run in favor of going for a longish walk with hubby and the pup.  Hubby didn't get Monday off from work, so I spent the time with him Sunday and planned to do my long run on Monday.

Monday I was off from work.  In the morning I spent some time uploading newer music to my mp3 player (including the newer Black Eyed Peas album: The Beginning -- because I got a lot of mileage out of the E.N.D., Far East Movement's Free Wired because songs from that album were coming up on playlists everywhere, and Taio Cruz's Rokstarr).

Soon I realized that it wasn't going to warm up much beyond 24 degrees so there was no point in waiting.  I bundled up and headed out into the cold with my music for my long run.  It ended up being 6.22 miles!

I tried to focus on keeping my HR low at the beginning, but I picked up the pace over the last mile and a half, and with that came a higher heart rate.  It may have been that I was on the shoulder of a busier road and wanted to be done with that part, it may have been that I encountered two deer carcasses on that same stretch of road and wanted to get past them as fast as possible without breathing in the stench (gross!).

Anyway, that's not a bad thing, because in the advanced Hal Higdon plan, he calls for doing some long runs at a 3/1 ratio -- first 3/4 at a slow pace, and last quarter at half marathon pace.

Lap times: 11:29, 11:29, 11:39, 11:45, 10:48, 10:31, then the last .60 was at a 12:26 (ending with a little walking).  Because I had just done my long run, I did not go to spinning that night, I'm hoping to stay injury-free!

Tuesday (that's today!)  We had a 90-minute delayed opening at work due to a combo of snow, rain, freezing rain, sleet, etc. all in the wee hours of the morning.  I learned about this delay with a 5:10am phone call. It's hard to go back to sleep after being woken up (and with what seemed like all the plows and salt trucks of NJ convening in the parking lot behind our apartment), but I managed, and appreciated being able to sleep in.  Then I got to scrape an inch of ice of my car while standing in several inches of a slushy mix.

This may look snowy, but don't be fooled- it's ICE. Yes, I stopped in the middle of cleaning off my car to document this.

This is not typical NJ weather. 
This is like spring Western NY weather (I say this based on personal experience).  One time I had to scrape ice much thicker than this off my whole car in APRIL. No joke.  April of 2003. You can google it. (not my pictures that I linked to).

After work today, I went to the cardio kickboxing class at the gym (about 45 minutes), which included some push-ups, exercises with 5lb dumbbells, and crunches at the end.  Afterward I ran an easy 1.56 miles on the treadmill at a 1% incline.

Hooray, tomorrow's Wednesday already!

Speedwork + Snow = Treadmill

I resorted to the treadmill yesterday for my speed work because of all the snow.

I was supposed to do 5 x 400 @5k pace.  For me that's in the 9:28-9:45 range.

I set the treadmill at a 1% incline and ran the following...  

Note, the distances are + or + .01 of a mile, as I tried to watch the treadmill closely so that I could hit lap as soon as it ticked up to the next number.  
-Sometimes I missed the lap button.  
-Sometimes I missed the treadmill distance turning over.

Distance	Time	Pace
1.0	12:51	12:51
.25	2:23	9:32
.2	2:21	11:45
.25	2:24	9:36
.2	2:49	14:05
.25	2:25	9:40
.2	2:59	14:55
.25	2:26	9:44
.2	3:00	15:00
.25	2:21	9:24
.2	2:14	11:10
.4	6:12	15:30
3.65	44:29

My first four 400s (bold) were done at 6.3 mph on the treadmill  (I attribute the range of 9:32-9:44 pace while on the same speed to be due to me not hitting lap right as I hit .25 miles...or an inaccurate treadmill?).  

For my first .2 rest interval, I jogged (5.1 mph). Then I saw my HR and decided I would walk for the other rest intervals.

 

To make things interesting, for the 5th 400, I kicked it up a notch to 6.4 mph (~9:22).  And I could do it!

For my final .2 rest interval, I did .05 miles each at 6.3, 6.0, 5.7, and 5.4 mph; then switched to walking for the last .4 miles.

While I don't love the treadmill, I will admit it is very helpful for speedwork since you can just plug in your speed and go.  It is definitely harder to hit specific speeds when you are just running outside, looking at your watch every so often (intervals would be difficult without my Garmin!). 

I brought along my mp3 player and watched FoodNetwork to distract me from staring at the numbers too much.  My mp3 player is in need of an update though.  I've got a bunch of playlists that have been shared online that I have been meaning to look through, but haven't had a chance yet.  Here's a handful of them--

Tone It Up's January playlist

Tone It Up's December playlist 

The Hungry Runner Girl's January 8 Spin Playlist 

The Hungry Runner Girl's January 6 Spin Playlist 

Lululemon blog 10k Playlist

Lululemon Best of 2010 Playlist  

Any good playlists out there, or good upbeat song recommendations?  

I'm going to need some to get me through some future treadmill speed workouts over the next two months...

8 miles on the treadmill and a 2 mile easy run outside

I toughed it out on the treadmill yesterday for nearly 8 miles!!

Had to get new tires for my car early in the morning, then had an eye appointment so I didn't have time to run outside before it got hot. Once my dilated pupils returned to their normal state, I went to the gym in the afternoon.  I did a mile warm up, then 4x[1mile@9:41; .5mile@jog], then .85 mile cool down.  The reason for the .85 mile cool down is the gym was getting more crowded and at about .6 miles of my cool down, I realized all the treadmills were taken up and I had been on it for almost an hour and a half (half an hour limit when people are waiting), so I shared.

I listened to Black Eyed Peas on my mp3 Player; I chose not to use the fancy little built in TV.  I thought about stopping after my 3rd repeat thinking "that's probably good enough" but then that was followed by another thought: "you've done 3 of these, you can do one more!"  So I stuck it out.

I brought along my new little friends for longer runs: Clif Shot Bloks in Strawberry.  I had one at 3.5 miles, 5.4 miles, and 7.45 miles.  I picked up another couple packs of them at the store - I thought I'd try Cran Razz (no caffeine) and Strawberry (no caffeine).  I tried one Cran Razz before I left for the gym, and I'm not really a fan of that flavor.  Good thing I had the other half of the Strawberry package from my Tuesday 9 mile run.

----------

This morning I did an easy 2 mile run before we are out of town for the weekend again.  I was supposed to run it slow at an 11:52 pace, but ran it at an 11:12 pace.  I thought I consciously tried to slow down too.  I wore my Wish Blue Cool Racerback and my White/Wish Blue Speed shorts from Lululemon (Item LW7526S). 

As you can see, the white shorts are not see-through though, which I was concerned about before I bought them.  I wore the Cool Racerback inside out - you can see the fun stitching that changes colors along the armpits and neckline.  I'm happy to report that on a 2 mile run in 81 degree weather, these shorts do not show any sweat (they did on a longer run a couple weeks ago, it was not so flattering).

Exercise Month in Review: July

Can't believe July is over and August is here already! Summer is going by fast. Here's my exercise month-in-review for July...

July 2: 6.22 mi run outside
July 3: 30.3 mi bike ride

July 5: 2.47 mi run outside, 30-minute abs class
July 6: 7.25 mi treadmill run
July 7: 45-minute spinning class
July 9: 5.5 mi run outside
July 11: 6.45 mi bike ride

July 12: 7.82 mi run outside
July 14: 1 mi treadmill run, 1-hour spinning class
July 16: 6.38 mi run outside
July 18: 8.19 mi run outside

July 20: 4.67 mi treadmill run
July 21: 1-hour spinning class
July 23: 3.81 mi run outside
July 25: 4.01 mi run outside

July 26: 1-hour spinning class, 30-minute abs class
July 27: 2.04 mi run outside
July 29: 5.55 mi run outside
July 30: 2.19 mi run outside

Daily dog walks, long dog walks, and 1.5 mile round trip walks to our garden plot are also sprinkled throughout, but not included as I don't wear my GPS watch for them.

I'm relying on my Garmin Connect software for the following totals:

• 48.67 miles of outdoor running
• 18.42 miles of treadmill running
• (67.09 miles of total running)
• 36.73 miles of bicycling
• 4 spinning classes
• 2 abs classes
  

21 hours 34 minutes and 39 seconds of physical activity for the month!

That's a 50% increase over last month (14h 0m 53s). It was a lot easier to make time for exercise (especially the classes) in July as I was off from work, but my weekly mileage has also been increasing as part of my half marathon training. On to week 10 of my plan (7 weeks to go!)

Is anyone reading this also preparing for an event?
Whether it be a walk, run, ride, or triathlon?

Heat Wave

Like many parts of the country, NJ experienced quite the heat wave last week.

90+ temps put a serious cramp on my training schedule. Actually, a couple of those days ended up breaking 100. When the overnight low doesn't even hit 70, it doesn't matter how early you wake up in the morning. By 6:30am it was already in the mid to upper 70s with high humidity. I squeezed in an easy run (2.5 miles) early that Monday morning when it was only 80 degrees. Not only is it incredibly uncomfortable, I find I feel sluggish and really struggle to run at the pace I need to.

I didn't want to put off running completely for the week...so I sucked it up and went to the dreaded treadmill for my 7 mile long run on Tuesday. This was quite the feat for me, as I usually become terribly bored on the treadmill, and I don't know if I've ever stuck it out longer than about 3 miles. The last time I ran on a treadmill was just over 3 months ago. We were driving back from Florida and staying over at a hotel along the way and the only reason I used the hotel's treadmill was because it was 2 weeks before my half marathon.

On Wednesday evening, I squeezed in a 45 minute spin class for some cross-training. Thursday was a rest day and Friday afternoon I sucked it up and went back to the gym for 5.5 miles of speed work. I have a Garmin Forerunner, which tells me my pace when running outside, but I must say the treadmill was very helpful in forcing me to run at the right pace for my intervals.

I was very pleased to find out that I am capable of running longer distances on the treadmill when I need to, but I'm eager to resume running outside when it cools off again.

For those of you that run, do you prefer to do it outdoors or on a treadmill?