Jenny's (& Jordan's) Star Wars Training Journal (Comments Welcome!)

It's been a little bit since I posted an update...

Since it's a new year and I want to be able to see how far I've come when I look back on this later, I'm going to start adding monthly and YTD stats on a weekly basis, or at least try to keep up with that! So for the first 2 weeks of January (through Saturday the 12th anyway):

January miles-to-date: 24.3
2019 miles-to-date: 24.3

I didn't update on the last 2 runs of last week. Friday was 3 miles at EB (14:44) + strides. Splits were 14:19, 14:35, and 14:44. I tacked on the strides after the end of the 3rd mile because I really wanted to keep trying to get to the right pace. So total distance ended up being 3.28 miles in 47:12.

Saturday was 6 miles at LR (14:21). Splits were 13:51, 14:33, 14:06, 14:06, 14:25, and 14:22. It does get easier to slow down the farther I run. :)

We haven't committed yet (as in I haven't actually registered) but I think we're going to do a 5K (Austin Cupid's Chase) on February 9th. I have either a 5k race or a 5k time trial on the plan for that day, and an actual race sounds more fun (plus a medal and tee shirt!!) It looks like it's a bigger race than the ones we've done so far, so that could be a good experience as far as learning to run with a bigger crowd. The biggest race we've done to date had a field of a couple hundred, so no course crowding at all beyond the actual starting line.
 
Yesterday was another speed workout. It was supposed to be 3 intervals of .375 miles with .25 recovery in between, with a mile warm up and cool down. While I did figure out how to set up an interval run in my Garmin, as far as I can tell I can only set intervals in increments of .05 miles, so instead of .375 I ended up doing intervals of .40 mile. The warm up/cool down/recovery pace I was aiming for closer to EA (15:47) because the warm up (16:51) is just too slow unless I walk it. The speed intervals were supposed to be 11:35 pace.

Warm up mile--15:33
.40 interval 1--11:40 pace
.25 recovery--15:10 pace
.40 interval 2--11:20 pace
.25 recovery--15:31 pace
.40 interval 3--11:23 pace
cool down mile--15:19

The Garmin breaks those .40 mile intervals into a .25 interval + a .15 interval, so I get to come home and add them all up and then convert them into paces. I'm getting lots of practice at time math, LOL!
 
You could consider converting the miles to meters:

Screen Shot 2019-01-17 at 7.41.28 PM.png

Looks like it can do 603m instead of 0.375 miles. It's a pretty small difference though, so you're fine if you want to stick with the rounded mileage.
 


You could consider converting the miles to meters:

View attachment 376137

Looks like it can do 603m instead of 0.375 miles. It's a pretty small difference though, so you're fine if you want to stick with the rounded mileage.

Thanks! I figured it was a small enough difference that it probably didn't matter. I'll most likely just stick with rounding up since it looks like that odd number only shows up once more during the entire training cycle. The rest are all numbers that work with the Garmin.

Today was 4 miles @ EB (14:44) + strides. Splits were 14:16, 14:49, 14:44, and 14:35. Again I did the strides after the conclusion of the 4th mile so I could concentrate on hitting the pace.

I found that if I concentrate on my breathing it is much easier for me to run more slowly. If I breathe in for 4 steps and then out for 4 steps, I naturally fall more in line with that 14:30-14:50 pace. I have to concentrate on it and count it in my head though, because when I don't I naturally slip into a breathe in 2 steps and out 2 steps pattern, but also speed up in the process. So maybe that will be helpful for me for internalizing the slower paces.

A random side note--my Garmin tracks something called "fitness age" which is somehow tied into VO2 max. (It shows up on the same screen anyway.) When I first started using the Garmin it had my fitness age at 47, and a couple weeks later even bumped it up to 48 (which is also my actual age). It has been slowly dropping since mid-December or so and as of today it's telling me my fitness age is 38. So I've somehow gotten 10 years younger, LOL! I'll take it! :)
 
I'm way overdue for an update here, courtesy of the kids and me joining my husband on a business trip to San Diego last week. We left the morning of Saturday the 19th and returned late this past Monday night. I'm generally NOT a spontaneous person but we decided the day before that the kids and I would tag along. It's a good thing we all like road trips. Ha.

I managed to keep up with running for the first part of the trip, more or less. Saturday was supposed to be my long run (6 miles @ LR and 1 mile @ HM tempo) which I tackled in the hotel fitness room after checking into the hotel in El Paso at 10:00 at night. Between being tired and the fitness room being too warm, by the time I made it to 3.5 miles I realized this wasn't going to end well if I did all 7. I ended up stopping at 4 miles of LR pace and then doing the 1 mile at HM tempo. We spent the night at my father's house in Scottsdale the next night, so I did my next run on the jogging trails (paved) in his neighborhood the next morning. I was a bit too fast on this one, mostly because I was running alone in a place I'm not super familiar with even though it's a really safe area. He's also in the foothills of the mountains, so the first 2 miles were entirely downhill and the last 2 were allllllll back up again. I'm not a fan of hills, lol. My own neighborhood runs are flat by comparison. Two days later was another hotel fitness center treadmill run, this time of speed intervals. As much as I dislike running on hotel treadmills, I'll admit it made it much easier to do the alternating paces correctly.

And that's pretty much where it ends. The rest of the time was too busy to get my runs in, with the exception of getting in about a mile and a quarter at a rest area on the last leg of our drive on Monday.

Yesterday I did last Friday's run...3 miles @ EB (14:44) + strides. Average pace was 14:11. I haven't gone back and added up the splits (I had it set at 1/4 mile intervals) so I'm just going to go by the average.

Today I did Saturday's long run...5 miles @ LR (14:21) but done as a blind run. I was SO SURE I would do it way too fast, since that's my pretty much constant issue. So I kept telling myself to slow down, slow down...and ended up with 2 of the 5 miles within a second or 2 of the pace, and the other 3 quite a bit slower! LOL! Splits were 14:22, 15:15, 15:03, 14:23, and 14:38. It felt nice and easy and I really enjoyed it after missing several days.

So now I'm not sure what I should be doing to get back on track. One thought was to take a day off tomorrow since I've run 2 days in a row, and then do another 2 days in a row after that, etc. Another thought is to just skip the rest of the ones I missed and start with the next day on the plan, which is tomorrow. That would be 3 days in a row though. My Garmin is telling me I need 8 hours of recovery (from right now, which is 9:30 pm central) so maybe it's okay to run again tomorrow?

Oh, and I love my Garmin--it's very flattering, lol. It has dropped my fitness age to 35. If it could also do something about gray hairs and wrinkles, I'd be set!
 


Another week down, and another week closer to Star Wars weekend! I can't believe how close it is getting! I'm excited and nervous at the same time.

Thank you @DopeyBadger for the amended chart for this week! I followed it for Monday and Wednesday, then was out allllll day yesterday and didn't get in the 3 miles + strides. Figured I'd do it today and then the 5k/time trial tomorrow. With our trip to CA at the end of January and vacation with my dad and sister coming up at the end of next week, I decided I didn't want to pay for Jordan and I to do a "real" 5k this weekend.

I ended up cheating tonight, lol. I set out to do 3 miles at EB or whatever it was supposed to be, but I ended up putting it off way too late so it was totally dark, and it's cold here (for us anyway) so I had on long sleeves, gloves, and a light jacket and had my watch, which I use to keep track of my pace, totally covered. And hubby was insistent on driving along behind me since it was late and our neighborhood is poorly lit. So I just decided to run whatever felt good and ditch checking the watch every 30 seconds.

I started out and by the time my watch buzzed the first 1/4 mile I was fairly sure I was going faster than EB but I didn't think it was MUCH faster. By the time I hit the first mile I was curious, so I scraped back the sleeve layers and checked the Garmin--that 4th quarter mile was 3:01, so yeah, I was going quite a bit faster than my 14:44 EB. So then the mind games started, lol, and I started thinking since 12:00 is pretty close to the 11:35 5K pace I was supposed to be shooting for, maybe I'd just keep it up and see if I could maintain the current pace for the whole 3 miles. See, I've been nervous for the past couple weeks about the 5k/time trial, afraid there was no way I could actually do it, because in both of my previous 5Ks I totally crashed halfway through and had to slow way down and walk parts of the 2nd half. So somehow in the space between miles 1 and 1.5 I convinced myself a 12:00 mile pace today would be good practice for the real test tomorrow. Silly, I know.

By the time I hit the end of the 2nd mile, it was getting a little bit harder and it hit me that running this hard tonight would probably mean I shouldn't try to run even faster tomorrow. LOL. Yeah, that would have been a good thing to think through before I even left the house. So at that point I decided that whatever it ended up being, THIS was going to be the only run I did this weekend, and I was NOT going to fade at the end. I figured I could keep up the current pace through 2.75, then push harder to the end. The question was, would that pushing harder mean going faster or just pushing harder NOT to slow down and walk. Turns out I've built some more endurance over the past few months, because I did actually run the final .35 mile faster. Yay!!

Splits:
Mile 1: 12:50.0 (My assumption was totally wrong on that first mile, lol. While the last 1/4 of that mile was at a 12:00 pace, I'd apparently started off much slower)
Mile 2: 11:33.3
Mile 3: 10:55.5 (Where'd that come from???)
final .1: 0:58.8 (9:55 pace)
Total: 36:17.6

If I had done the whole run at 5k speed of 11:35 it should have been a time of 35:54. Considering that I ran the first mile not aiming to race, I'm pleasantly surprised that I was able to get within 24 seconds of that. And while I could NOT have run another even half mile at the end of that, I didn't feel sick and have to immediately sit down like I did after my last 5K in November, where I started out too fast and walked a lot of the last mile. (That race in November was my PR at 37:58)

So while the perfectionist in me is still bummed about messing up over the past couple weeks the great training plan Coach Billy so kindly put together for me, I do feel better seeing proof that I am in fact improving. That gives me a lot more confidence moving forward!

Now the goal is to STICK TO THE PLAN for the rest of the time between now and April 7th. Virtual half for the Kessel Run is scheduled for next week!!! It will just be a slow training run. My biggest concern is getting bored to tears running around my neighborhood for 3 hours. I'm guessing it won't be quite as exciting as running that same distance through Disney World will be!
 
Well done! Funny thing about this. It proves you are indeed faster than we think. How do I know? Because a 10:55 mile predicts a 36:17 5k. You don't do both in the same run. And you don't come that close to the 5k we predicted with a closing mile so darn close to what we would estimate as mile PR. The good thing is we'll keep the paces where they're at for now because training just slightly slower is better than slightly faster. But I've got a feeling that that big jump may just be around the corner. Keep up the good work!
 
I'm still alive! LOL! Things have been crazy busy around here (or maybe just crazy...) so I haven't been around to update. But I have been running and mostly following the plan.

Shortly after my last update hubby and I went on a week-long vacation, but the day before we left Jordan and I did our virtual half marathon. It was MISERABLE! After being in the 40s and 50s, we had a temperature jump (mind you this was mid-February) to a high somewhere in the mid-80s. And I don't do heat well. Added to that we also had a big jump in oak pollen, which is my spring nemesis, and I had a nice sinus headache and congestion going on. Bleh. Hubby had generously offered to make the 8-hour round trip drive to take our 4 youngest kids to their grandparents alone (they were babysitting while we vacationed) so Jordan and I could do our run. So after they left at around 9 a.m., we got started. I made it about 4 miles before my lungs were burning and I thought the heat was going to kill me. It was only about 66 when we started, but I overheat quickly. I made my first pass back by the house at the 5 mile mark and was totally ready to quit. Jordan happened to show up at about the same time (he was running a different route and had already covered 6 miles and change to my 5) and convinced me that I couldn't give up. And he was right, because I have no idea how I would have worked 13.1 miles into the training plan on a different day. So I ran into the house long enough to refill my water bottle, and then headed back out.

I think I ran about another mile before finally saying screw it, I'm just going to walk it and at least be able to say I put in the miles. So, after months of training...I WALKED the last 7 miles of the virtual half marathon. And I still thought I was going to die. It was 82 degrees and sunny when we finished, I was beet red, and I hurt everywhere. I was rather surprised and relieved that the whole 13.1 mile fiasco took me a total of 3:28:25...so worst-case scenario (short of actually breaking something, anyway) I won't get swept in April! Whew.

I got in all of my runs while on vacation. The first couple weren't fun...I was fighting that sinus infection the first few days, and the fitness center was way too warm. Thankfully they were short runs that week. Oh...running on a treadmill on a moving ship is a GREAT exercise in keeping one's balance. I'm sure I looked drunk, lol.

Since we've been back I've been about 85-90% successful in following the training plan. The jump from 4 days a week to 5 caught me off guard that first week back so I messed that up, but got back on track and the past couple weeks have been good. Our weather is pretty much warm for good now (highs in the mid-70s) so we've been trying to do most of our runs in the late afternoon/early evening when it's close to the high for the day and just starting to cool back down. I'm sure the sane thing to do would be run early in the morning when it's still in the 50s, but I'm hoping I can get my body better acclimated to running in the heat this way so Orlando won't be quite as big of a shock.
 
You did it!!! Everybody has that one race that goes south. Good to get that terrible run out of the way so you can have a better experience in April.
 
Congrats on finishing even when it was tough! Keep up the great work! Just remember that it's advised to slow down in the heat (T+D is temp+dew point and choose the peak of the training run/race as the basis for pace choices):

Screen Shot 2019-03-21 at 11.20.30 AM.png
 
I'm starting to panic a little bit. Basically nature is trying to kill me. LOL, sorta.

My last 2 runs last week were more or less successful, although they both felt much harder than they should have. The 6-mile run on Friday I know I was going too fast. I still have a hard time hitting EA / EB while running. For the 8 miles on Saturday, I made a much bigger effort to slow down on the warm-up, and was a little bit slower than I should have been on the HM pace interval. But it was also 72 degrees and 69% humidity, so I kept telling myself that was alright. Garmin told me my training level was "unproductive" for both of those runs which of course makes me feel like I'm failing, but it could also just be from having a hard time adapting to the heat, right?

Our allergens are high to very high all this week, so once again I'm fighting sneezing and congestion and the sluggishness that comes from medicating it. My normal daily allergy meds aren't cutting it, so I've been taking Benadryl, which pretty much knocks me out. Ugh. I ended up taking Monday off, and doing the 4 miles at EA Tuesday instead. I switched to early in the morning, so it was also cooler. (mid-50s) Humidity was in the 70s. I made myself stick pretty close to EA, and the run felt much easier than the previous 2.

I'm not sure what the best way forward is for the rest of this week. Should I rest, even though I only have a week left? Should I just do some short, easy, slow runs? Or do I try to push through and follow the plan? Today should be speed work, with a couple intervals at T, I think. With warm up and cool down a bit over 6 miles total. I know I could go out and get it done, although probably a bit slower than it should be. But would that be counterproductive?

In happier news, we've gotten our shopping done and now have everything we need for our "costumes" (just decorated shirts really, and matching bottoms), everything else we'll need for the race, and park stuff taken care of. And our new Magic Bands should be here today! In 8 days we'll be at Disney!!! Woot!
 
For the 8 miles on Saturday, I made a much bigger effort to slow down on the warm-up, and was a little bit slower than I should have been on the HM pace interval. But it was also 72 degrees and 69% humidity, so I kept telling myself that was alright. Garmin told me my training level was "unproductive" for both of those runs which of course makes me feel like I'm failing, but it could also just be from having a hard time adapting to the heat, right?

So that would be a T+D of 133 (72 + 61 dp) which puts HM pace at around 12:56 min/mile as a starting point.

The Garmin could certainly be off. I'm not positive on how the "productivity" of the Garmin works. But I do know the VO2max output is based on %HR related to pace. So when the temperature starts to increase all the VO2max calculation sees is that your pace is becoming slower relative to the same %HR. That would suggest to the VO2max output that you're becoming less "fit" (lower value). But that's not really the case. It's just that in those current conditions (elevation, temperature) that's what you're capable of. But if you suddenly went from your current conditions (T+D of 133) and then ran in T+D of 80 up in Canada, suddenly your VO2max value per Garmin would skyrocket. But that's not the reality per se. It's more of a current VO2peak based on current conditions than it is a VO2max. If the Garmin "productivity" is using this value in any way (which my guess would be that it's watching the trend to see whether VO2max is increasing/decreasing/staying the same), then you can see how the "productivity" measure could also be faulty in changing weather/elevation environments.

I made myself stick pretty close to EA, and the run felt much easier than the previous 2.

I'm not sure what the best way forward is for the rest of this week. Should I rest, even though I only have a week left? Should I just do some short, easy, slow runs? Or do I try to push through and follow the plan? Today should be speed work, with a couple intervals at T, I think. With warm up and cool down a bit over 6 miles total. I know I could go out and get it done, although probably a bit slower than it should be. But would that be counterproductive?

I'd say run at a WU, T pace, and I pace that you feel you can hold consistently for the scheduled workout. So maybe that's slower, and that's fine. Consistency matters more. If the pace is dramatically slower, than consider cutting off some of the intervals, as the scheduled duration of the intervals matters more than the mileage of them. It's only counterproductive if you feel too sick to run it. But going slightly slower won't necessarily be counterproductive.
 
We're back home now (boo hoo!) after having SO MUCH FUN at our first runDisney race, in spite of it being so incredibly hot and humid! Jordan finished in 2:21 and change, and I finished in 3:21 and change, and stopped for a few pictures. I'll come back later and write up a race recap. We're already talking about maybe coming back for Wine & Dine. Just need to dig up some more cash to fork over to Mickey first. Does anybody know if it's cooler there in November? LOL!
 
Y'all.

Something crazy happened tonight, more or less by accident. (At least at first.) I ran 5K through my neighborhood...in 30:39!

Jordan and I were running together for the first half to 3/4 mile or so while chatting, then he pulled ahead. He warms up and then does run/walk intervals. It was dark so I didn't want him to get too far ahead of me, but I also felt good and didn't realize I was going so fast. My watch buzzed the first mile, and I checked it...10:40.7. I was surprised because I was pretty sure that was the fastest mile I'd ever run, and it didn't feel hard enough to be that fast.

2nd mile I would catch Jordan when he slowed to a walk and then he would run and pull ahead again. At one point when we were together I looked at my watch and it was showing a 9:05 pace. I told Jordan and he pointed out that would be an under 30-minute 5K pace, to which I replied that there was no way I would be able to keep that up that long. He asked if I could keep it up for the current mile, and I told him I didn't know but I wasn't going to slow down on purpose because I still felt good, and we'd see what happened. Finished that mile in 9:15.5, which is crazy fast for me.

I did slow down a couple times in mile 3 and I even speed-walked up a couple of inclines. By 2.5 miles I was really feeling it. But I'm competitive, even when it's just against myself, lol, so by that point I wanted to see just how quickly I could do a 5K. Mile 3 was 9:48.6. Did the final .10 mile in 54.3 seconds (9:15 pace). Then we walked the final 4/10s of a mile home. I was seriously feeling it, as in that was definitely a 90% effort run. But I was faster than my previous best 5K (from another training run back in February) by more than 5 1/2 minutes. That seems seriously crazy!

This week we've run 3 miles on Monday, 3 on Wednesday, and 3.1 tonight. I was thinking I'd do 5-6 tomorrow and keep up a 4 days a week routine for a month or 2 while we decide what we're going to aim for goals-wise and races-wise next. I might back tomorrow's off a bit after working so hard tonight--either cancel it completely or just do a couple really slow miles.
 
Wow! Congrats! Says to me that all that training you've been putting in has really been paying off. Well done!
 
Dusting this neglected training journal off a bit...

After the Star Wars half last year, I ran pretty regularly for about the rest of April and then slacked off...big time. I blame the Texas heat. Tried a bit to pick it (running) back up in the fall, but not super consistently and I was so disappointed that I had lost pretty much all of the gains I had made while training for SW. We happened to have our family Disney vacation last month overlap with Marathon Weekend (only time my college kids could make it) and seeing everyone in their shirts and medals made Jordan and me totally wish we had registered for a race!

Anyway, we're back at it and slowly building back up. I'm running 4 days a week about 3 miles each time, and plan to slowly increase. Just have to figure out a way to make sure we keep it up once it gets hot again. We're planning to do the Wine & Dine challenge this year. Dopey is a bucket list item for both of us, so we're tentatively thinking we'll aim for Marathon Weekend 2022. (Jordan won't be 18 until Oct. of '21, and he's told me I'm not allowed to do the marathon before him, lol.)

Even though I lost a lot of my fitness gains, one thing I still have is the knowledge that I CAN DO THIS, which I seriously doubted when I first started running in January of '18! So that's a big hurdle out of the way this time around!
 

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