Fuckass Half Marathon Training Plan: The worst run of all time, and other news

Feb 20, 2011 21:36

First of all: This week I ran 12.76 miles. I actually ran about 13.5, total, because I did a couple laps of jogging while calibrating my Garmin FR60 plus calibration was off for my longest run, but 12.76 is the official number and that's what I'll report for now.

On Friday I had what I think is the worst run I have had all year. The sun was out and I was out of lab early; that's enough to make a girl forget she's carrying around a friendly disability for which COLD and EXERCISE are her two main triggers. Sun! In Akron! No lab! No wonder I went crazy. It is still February, and it was nowhere near warm enough to run, for two reasons:
  1. The trail I wanted to run alternated between 3-inch-deep mud and sheet ice.
  2. At about 3.3 miles I had a whopper of an asthma attack. This is probably because the first mile and a half of the run was me trying frantically to keep my balance on ICE and MUD and SLUSH before I gave up and went to road; my heart rate was way too high and once it spikes it doesn't come down. The rest of the run was as agonizing as you can possibly think.
I got back to my car - somehow - and cried for about 5 minutes because it felt like I was breathing knives, not air. Good times. I'm not even going to share this run here, although you can find it by clicking around my Garmin site.

I ended up pulling 4.85 miles out of it, though. The tracker says 4.6mi but I had calibrated the footpod entirely wrong prior to the run. DID YOU KNOW? The difference between the inner and outer lane on a track is pretty substantial. I knew there was a difference - obviously; it's math - but I did not realize the difference was so significant. It is. I thought it was a couple meters or so -- try 50. LOL.

Today I went back and recalibrated the footpod to the high school track - the INNER lane - jogged, did it again, repeated, until I was SURE the calibration was as correct as the track was. Then I somehow pulled this run out of my ass:


3.3 miles at a <9:50 pace with my heart rate hovering around 165 and never over 170? And my lungs not feeling like death afterwards? I almost am afraid I calibrated the footpod incorrectly, but it was a freaking track and I repeated it. I am such an engineer. I WANT MY DATA TO MATCH LOLZ. Turns out - after some research on my part - treadmills aren't that accurate. Which makes me feel a lot better about all the times last year I felt like I was going faster or slower for like no particular reason.

So, successful training week overall. Maybe I didn't get my long run where I wanted it to be, but I, uh, reconfirmed some of my weaknesses to myself (cold; running outdoors; shitty terrain) and I kept my total miles close to where they should be. I'll do a longer run this week and make up for it. Tuesday's tempo run was good, too, so I'm progressing overall. Just made a mistake this week. Oh well.

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asthma / inhaler, oh good!, half marathon training plan, running, series: healthblogging

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