Slushy Fun

Thank you everyone for offering me suggestions on what could be causing my knee pain. After reading all you comments, I decided:
1. To retire my Brooks
2. To roll my IT band more

To start the week off right, I went for a run despite the slushiness of my route.

It was gorgeous, but super slippery. 

I got in an easy 5 miles at a 9:59/mile pace. For a while, I freaked out, because holding the pace felt hard. But I decided to let it go and just enjoy being outside. Also, I really should be doing my easy runs slowly anyways.

Other than not being able to hold a faster pace, the run itself was good. There was no knee pain. The only bad part was stepping in a huge mud puddle and ruining my sneakers. I then made a series of bad life decisions:

1. Oh no mud! I'm going to wipe it off with snow.
2. I'm going to grab the snow with my bare hands and try to rub it on my sneakers
3. That didn't help. And now my hands are covered in mud.
4. I'm going to break a trail to the lake to break through the ice to wash my hands in it
5. Oh wait, snow's too deep for my sneakers, I'm just going to use fresh patch of snow to wipe my hands off.

All the above resulted in super frozen hands with no gloves.

It was too hard to get down to the bank through the snow. 

Luckily, the day wasn't too cold and my apartment, only a mile away. 

Not that bad. I have no idea why I freaked out and started rubbing snow all over it with bare hands. 

After the fiasco, I conveniently ran into the bf and made him take photos of me fake running. If only I had camera men waiting for me all over my running route. 

Yay! I love running! (What my pose and expression was supposed to convey) Looks more like I'm being blinded and going off the sidewalk. 

On the knee front, it didn't hurt during my run. But about an hour after, while I was lying on the bed, I noticed some pain. Enough to make me feel nervous, but not enough to take drastic measures. I think I will keep on foam rolling and not wearing the worn out shoes and see where I am at the end of the week.

On the training plan front, I am going to make a training plan soon, I swear. My friend who ran a 2:45 Boston told me that he'd virtually coach me. Well, he agreed to give me some advice, which I took to mean, "I'll totally be your coach. Please e-mail me tons of questions about everything."

All in all, life is good. 

Happy Monday! And of course, in addition to my friend, I will be relying heavily on you guys as my training progresses for advice. How are your runs going? 

Training Plan

PRing is hard work. I know that I can't just run whenever I feel like at whichever paces I feel like and expect to hit my goal time. But finding a right training plan is so hard.

For the Oak Tree Half, I found my training plan by checking out two years worth of Runner's World Magazine from the school library. Then I went through each issue cover to cover in the span of two days. Luckily for me, I found a perfect six week plan with a day of intervals, a day of tempo, and a day of long run. And I followed that plan like the world was going to end if I didn't.

Sort of like this, but less hardcore. Since the training was during the summer. And also at the beach. 

But now, I have an important race coming up, but no training plan.  Every time I think about having to hit certain paces for a tempo or intervals, I get stressed out and lose the motivation to run. I think I can't, before I even step out the door. I think that for my first half, there was less stress to PR, because I could have ran that half in 5 hours and it still would have been a PR. Additionally, I did most of my training runs by the beach in Cali.

Elevation profile of my run at the beach. It changes maybe about 40ft at most. 

Elevation profile of my runs now. It changes around 300ft. 

Since I don't have easy access to a track or a treadmill, and even if I did, I wouldn't want to run my longer intervals on the track, the hills are daunting. 

This also is probably why I had such a hard time at Oak Tree Half. I went from sea level flat training runs to higher altitude hilly course. 

My point is that I don't know what to do about a training plan. It would be nice to have one, but at the same time, I am afraid of not being able to hit my paces. These are the times when I wish I had a coach telling me what to do. 

Exactly my problem. 

How do you guys find a training plan? How do you keep yourself from being intimidated by the specific paces that you hope to hit?

Random Things Thursday

1. Garmins are expensive
I had  24 hours of panic mode yesterday when the garmin refused to work after a 5 mile run. So I spent a good part of today looking at every website for a new garmin or a good timex stop watch that can lap. But magically, the garmin started working today in time for a good interval workout!
One garmin forerunner 405 costs about $200.
Forerunner 405 = 2 good pairs of shoes = about 1,000 or so miles of fun
Forerunner 405 = 3.5 moderately priced half marathons
Forerunner 405 = 8 reasonably priced 5Ks
Forerunner 405 = 100 cups of java chip frap from Starbucks.
You get the point.

2. There's a pretty tree on my way from classes that makes me want to run. 

It's a very pretty tree. And my phone did a decent job at capturing it. 

I don't know why it makes me want to run. But it does.

3. Running is good but training is even better.
When I don't have a training plan, I can't muster enough motivation to go out and run. I ran intervals today because I'm debating on signing up for a 5K next weekend.

Just think of my face instead of the cat's. Totally what I look like.

Found on google images for a lazy cat. Training rocks, because it makes me do speed workouts and while they hurt, workouts make me faster. And faster is always good.

4. I really want to run a 5K.
I am DYING to run a 5K. After two half marathons, I want to feel fast again. But since September has been a dismal month of no intervals or tempo, a fast 5K may not be possible. I want to try though.

5. I have thunder thighs.
But all the better to thunder down the course with. I've always had a body type with bigger thighs than my waist (annoying when buying pants), but lately I realized that when I look in the mirror, I appreciate them more than I used to. Especially true when I looked at my race photos from the bread run. My face was a scary grimace in the last sprint to the finish, and my legs are awesomely strong and springy looking.

Bam! Finishing strong. 

 I told you my thoughts. Your turn.What are you guys thinking about?