Every Wish That We Put Into Motion.... (comments welcome!)

[nancipants]

Can confirm that doing your long run while kids are at school is the best.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Can confirm that doing your long run while kids are at school is the best.

it's just never been an option for me, and while there are a few scheduling conflicts (away XC meets and parent-of-the-day) it seems like it would be a nice option to have. BUT, we are "used to" me ducking out for a good chunk of a Sunday afternoon to run.

Also, if I do end up registering to referee basketball this winter, that might put everything into flux again because it probably wouldn't be a great idea to do a long run or a workout in the morning and then go try to run up and down a basketball court in the evening. Not 100% sure that's happening yet though.

 

[DopeyBadger]

I'm realizing how close we are getting to when my training program is going to transition (it's coming WAY sooner than it feels) and I'm wondering about timing for my long runs in relation to a "hard" day.

This fall (until mid-October when they close for the season) I'll be working 2 days a week while DD is at school, and then on Fridays I'll have 2.5 hours to myself between when she starts school and when I have to pick her up. I have 2 thoughts with this: I put my long run on Fridays, so it won't interfere with weekend stuff (our otherwise quite busy weekends won't have 2-3hrs dedicated to me getting out the door for a run, coming home, and then doing recovery stuff) OR keeping my long run day on Sunday.

And depending which day I choose to put the long run (Sunday vs Friday), would the other day be OK for a hard/workout day?

I'm thinking something like:

Week 1
F- Long Run (capped at 120-150 min)
Sa- <60 min easy run
Su- 60-90 min speed workout with decent rest intervals

Week 2
F- Long M Tempo w/ WU/CD (capped at 90-120 min)
Sa- <60 min easy run
Su- 60-90 min easy/moderate run
Mon/Tues/Wed - 45-60 min speed workout with normal rest intervals

For the Week 1 LR, be ok with doing something a little slower than your traditional LR pace. This will make the recovery a touch easier and easier to be able to attack the Sunday speed workout with maybe a little extra long rest intervals.

The Week 2 LR Tempo needs more recovery and thus I'm not sure I'd attempt another hard workout within a 48 hr period. The Mon/Tues/Wed speed workout could be shorter (because now it's a weekday), but just reduce the RI to something smaller.

 

[Herding_Cats]

@DopeyBadger I was just in the process of messaging you to look at what I've come up with.

 

[Herding_Cats]

A late-to-the-party weekly wrap up:

I mostly got in my miles this week; work plus a camping trip cut back on my long run, and I may have shuffled a few other things around mileage wise, but I still was pretty close to my weekly mileage goal. This week is going to be pretty challenging to fit running in, but that's basically going to be the rest of the year. Notable changes for this week: I switched my intervals from 30/30 to 45/30. It was a bit tricky to get myself to slow down enough to not be massively overrunning my easy pace, but I need to work on it for Dopey training (or change my intervals for Dopey training.)

Monday: 4.5mi 3mi with a hill. I decided to look into the big hill that's just down from the end of our driveway and see what the elevation change is there. I was also a bit pressed for time, so this was cut short. The answer is: about 100ft over 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile. So I walked down and up the hill, and then ran 2mi. My legs let me know this was not the norm for a few days after.

Tuesday: 3mi or cross train rest? Apparently I did nothing this day.

Wednesday: 4.5mi Also nothing? I know I worked this day, so I'm guessing I got out late and then didn't have time to do anything else before it was dark.

Thursday: rest 5mi easy during DS3's soccer practice. Ran on the trail along the lake, but it was still pretty warm.

Friday: cross train 4mi easy. We went camping locally for the holiday weekend, except I still had to work on Friday, Sunday, and Monday. Woo. I was expecting to get done with work early and be able to help set up the camper, but things didn't go to plan at work, and I got done well after DH was wanting to leave. So what did I do? I came home from work, ran, showered, and THEN went to the campground. Winning all around.

Saturday: 8mi 5mi M pace near the campground. 75/30 intervals. DS2 had a workout for XC, and I thought the road we were running to was a different road. No. This was a road that people go WAY too fast on, and the shoulder isn't great. I had intended to only do 4mi, but I decided I wanted to keep DS2 in sight longer, so I ran a bit further to make myself feel better. T+D was 132, so my 12:17avg pace adjusts to M pace. It felt harder than I think it should have, but I'm still rebuilding my fitness from the winter, and I didn't feel awful after, so this was a win.

Sunday: rest. More pies. So hot. It actually warmed up during the night, which is gross.

 

[Herding_Cats]

All you southern state people have my respect. T+D was at least 153 today, with 67% humidity and let me just say, it was ROUGH.

 

[nancipants]

All you southern state people have my respect. T+D was at least 153 today, with 67% humidity and let me just say, it was ROUGH.

It was only 70 when I started my run this morning and it was incredible. First time in months it's gone below 70.

 

[Herding_Cats]

It was only 70 when I started my run this morning and it was incredible. First time in months it's gone below 70.

Today was 83, feels like 88 at 11am. It's going to cool off at the end of the week (and my kids report that the car thermometer said 39 last week when they went to practice one morning) but today was disgusting.

 

[Herding_Cats]

I'm talking myself out of shoes again. Because I want to "try something new," and I want to spend some of my paycheck from this summer on myself and not just put it all into savings. And these fuelcell supercomp elites are

But, but but......

They would work SO WELL for my Rapunzel costume, and then I could use them for the half (Daisy.)


BUT. IDK if they'll work with my feet. And I have no idea what the durability is like (are they shoes it's ok to do long runs and mileage in, or are they *just* for racing?) Also, expensive. Do I really need a plated shoe? SHOULD I run in a plated shoe? (I'm breaking absolutely NO speed records here.)

And they have purple ones that are available for "pre-order" which would also work.

 

[azrivest]

My two cents...

I bought the FuelCell RC Elite v2 for my marathon last year. They were awesome shoes: bouncy and soft, yet responsive because of the carbon plate.

Would I buy them again? For that price point, no. I'm not enough of a good runner for it to have a significant impact, and I can't train in plated shoes. Also the fact that I overpronate, and I was limping severely at the end of the marathon since my left arch collapsed.

On the other hand, @The Expert ran in them for Dopey and seemed really happy.

 

[The Expert]

My two cents...

I bought the FuelCell RC Elite v2 for my marathon last year. They were awesome shoes: bouncy and soft, yet responsive because of the carbon plate.

Would I buy them again? For that price point, no. I'm not enough of a good runner for it to have a significant impact, and I can't train in plated shoes. Also the fact that I overpronate, and I was limping severely at the end of the marathon since my left arch collapsed.

On the other hand, @The Expert ran in them for Dopey and seemed really happy.

I LOVE my RC Elites! I rotated two pair for Dopey last year and the year before and had zero issues. But I agree, it's all about how budget tolerant you are if you're not a front-of-the-pack runner (which I am NOT). For me, it was worth the extra cost to have a shoe that I don't have to think about at all. Now, if I could find a shoe as light and bouncy that doesn't flare my Morton's Neuroma for half the cost, that'd be GREAT!

@Herding_Cats note that the Supercomp Trainers are different from the Elites. I bought a pair of SC Trainers and they flared my MN bad, even with lacing adjustments. I wore my Elites for most of my long runs during training (rotating pairs each week). I retired the older pair just after Dopey but still use the other ones now and then for short runs, so I would call the durability good for a high-end shoe.

 

[The Expert]

Quick edit to add that NB usually does a NY Marathon specific version of the Elites for their race, and it tends to go on sale right around the holidays, especially if it didn't sell well at the expo. I picked up a pair about a month before Dopey last year and the only tells were the NY on the front instead of NB and the skyline on the back of the heel. I used them exclusively for training and as a backup pair for the races (which I didn't end up needing).

 

[Herding_Cats]

Weekly wrap up. What a week it's been.
This weekend is the only weekend that we didn't have to be somewhere else for the whole month. And it's also the youth-hunt weekend for whitetail deer, so that worked out well. (It would work out better if we could actually see a deer!) In the rest of this month we have: a wedding, a trip to Disney, and a XC meet 2.5 hours from home on the weekends. This also meant that THIS was the last remaining weekend to get all of our chickens processed and into the freezer. And the last weekend to get any canning done (so I'm not driving myself further bananas trying to do it on weekdays.) Also, it was the first week of school, we had sports events every night, and I threw in a bonus trip to Urgent Care. Wheeeeeee! It was not a great week for consistency.

Monday: 5mi easy. Everyone else was wrapping up camping, and I worked. And I worked a little later than usual. And then had to help with all of the leftover mess from camping at home (odd dishes, extra laundry, etc.)

Tuesday: 3mi easy. 5mi easy. DS1 goes to our regional career-tech school in the morning for engineering academy, and his teachers all had professional development in the morning, so he watched DD and I got in a run. It was so hot. DH sent me a strongly-worded text about my idea to run when the temperature was nearly 90 outside. But miles needed to get done.

Wednesday: 5mi easy. 3.36mi "no-mans pace" which was an average of 12:39. Too fast to be easy, too slow to be M pace. This was me getting in time-on-feet before DH had to leave to ref football and I had to leave for a soccer game. Better than nothing. Also, this run felt great and my VO2max went up a point fwiw. It also cooled off by about 20 degrees from the day before.

Thursday: 2mi easy. DD had meet-the-teacher at preschool in the middle of the day, and I was too lazy tired from multiple nights of poor sleep to get up early and run on the treadmill.

Friday: rest. SUCCESS! Sort of. DH took the day off from work so we could butcher chickens. Everything was fine and dandy until we were quartering them up and I tried to cut my finger off (when my hand on the handle lost it's grip and went sliding up the blade.) This was karma because I had accidentally poked my hand about 30min earlier and quipped that we do not have time to make a trip to urgent care today. 3 stitches later, I have no restrictions and just need to keep it clean and dry for a week. This also means that we only got half of them done, and would have to figure out when to take care of the rest of them because see first paragraph.

Saturday: 10k time trial. Nope. We did a bunch of other stuff that needed to get done (such as grocery shopping and canning 16 pints of salsa, and an absolute ton of housework because we have sports.every.day.of.the.week.TYVM.

Sunday: rest 4mi easy+2.6mi 10k pace. Since I did such a terrible job of getting my miles in during the week, this became a makeup day. I had originally planned to do 6mi, and then when I was at mile 5 I was considering doing 7 (because I felt pretty good after the first 10k-pace mile) and then changed my mind when I saw that it was 1pm and was also gasping for air. My "old" pacing chart has me at 10:56 for 10k pace, and my current pace chart has me a little bit slower than that at 11:08. I figured somewhere between those would be fine. My easy miles went well (mile 4 got a little quicker than it should have) at 30/30 intervals with my HR maxing out below 150 during the run portion (which is zone 3 for my HR.) WOO! Feeling good. Of course, the last 2.6mi are the hilliest part of the route, and while I switched my intervals to 75/30, I didn't stick to them strictly and walked parts of some of the hills and ran some of the downhills when I was "supposed to" be doing the other pace. My avg paces for the 10k portion were 10:55, 10:59, and 10:53. If I hadn't already run 4 miles before I did that, I would have finished out a 5k at that pace and had my 2nd ever fastest time if I had been able to hold the pace for another half mile. We are having fantastic September temperatures (high 60s/lowwww 50s) and I'm not sure I even broke a sweat for most of my run. When I got home, I chugged the remainder of my liquid IV from my running belt, changed my clothes, and headed outside to help DH take care of those remaining chickens. I was OFF knife duty today.

Next week is bananas. I don't want to think about it (just get through one day at a time!), but it's going to require me to get up early and run before DD goes to school a few times, so I'm trying to plan my personal schedule to accommodate stuff.

I ordered a sale color of the NB supercomp elites (they were $80 off) in the mens "version" and am hoping they are wide enough AND fit my silly ankle. If I love them, I'll start looking for a deal on the yellow ones, or the purple ones (if I need a wide.)

 

[Herding_Cats]

That feeling when you push your run off to late afternoon so you can use your getting-delivered-at-lunchtime shoes for a test run. Only to open the box and see that you ordered a men's shoe size, but were delivered a women's shoe size. I can *barely* fit my foot in it, so I compared them to my current shoes, and yep, they're way smaller. And the model number on the inside of the shoe starts with a W and not a M. Ugh. Off to initiate a return.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Weekly wrap-up. Not much to put here. 4 soccer games, 2 XC meets. Had an extra trip to the doc for a kid with a weird rash, trip to the dentist for all 4 to get cleanings. Working. Trip to Grand Rapids for one of the XC meets. Trip to the other side of the state for a wedding. Not a whole lot of time for running.

Monday: 5mi easy. 13:31 avg pace, and I was in zone 2 for a little over 1/3 of the run. Cooler weather did absolute wonders for my HR and RPE. 30/30 intervals, if I remember correctly because I didn't pay any attention to my watch on this run (on purpose) just to see what running by feel would look like for splits. Miles 1-4 were all within 4 seconds of each other, and mile 5 was a little slower, but I also walked a little bit extra at the end with some extra traffic and the fact that the county hasn't mowed the shoulder in 6 weeks and ticks are gross.

That's it. That's all the running I got done.

DS2 is struggling to get out of the 18s in cross (he "should be" in the high 17s, and his goal for the season is sub-17:00 for a 5k.) DS1 had 2 shutouts in goal at soccer last week, and then ran almost a personal worst at the XC meet on Friday when he blew out his spikes, ripping them from the forefoot to just in front of the heel on the instep, just after mile 1. Lots of big feelings on that car ride home.


The exciting news this week is that we're going to Disney!!!! I got called off work today, so I'm hoping to get a long run in (8-10mi) and then working on getting all of the other "stuff" taken care of for the trip.

 

[Herding_Cats]

I should have gone for a run today. Instead I worked on this so I could pack it for our trip.

No one in my house knew what it meant. And it’s arguably DD’s favorite movie.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Weekly wrap up:
Things, as expected, have kind of fallen by the wayside for training. But since last week was due to a Disney trip, it's allowed. This week (as in, starting today) is our busiest week of the fall sports season, 8 games or meets in 6 days, and I have absolutely no clue how I'm going to get any running in, but we'll give it a try.

Monday: 10mi easy. 30/30 intervals. This was supposed to be the previous week's long run, but it didn't happen. I tried to make sure I wasn't pushing the pace a all, especially early on since I tend to over run the first couple of miles, and I was definitely successful since my avg pace at 13:52. Ahh the joys of getting called from work on a Monday (which won't happen any more since the owner figured out something else for me to do on days we don't make pies.)

MNSSHP/birthday trip-report:
DD's birthday trip was a success. She was definitely overstimulated for a lot of it, and we had some unsurprising meltdowns, but it was so much fun. We left DS1's soccer game at half time (DH was supposed to referee football that night, but another guy got injured and they had to rearrange a bunch of the crews and he told his scheduler that if he had to go to a game further away to just not schedule him at all) and were able to get on the road to Detroit 2 hours sooner. A short night at the hotel and then we flew frontier roundtrip and had no issues. Dollar annoyingly made us stop at the main counter for our rental car, even though we used DH's express account AND have rented from them before. Fortunately there were only 3 other people in line when we got to the counter. I checked MDE to grab the resort address for our GPS, and almost immediately got a text that our room wasn't ready yet. And then 20min later, our room WAS ready. At 1:00. At a DVC. When they were completely booked for DVC availability. (The downside to our room was that were were in the furthest building toward the treehouses in grandstand. I was hoping to be much closer to a pool, and had put that in my requests, and it made for a SUPER long walk to DS when the boats were closed due to lightning in the area.) We pooled, picked up our grocery delivery, checked out springs for any souvenirs that we might need (we didn't really find anything) and ate dinner at polite pig, and ended up being in bed by 8pm because we were exhausted from all of the travel and late night/early morning.

Friday was intended to be a not-too-busy day since we were going to MNSSHP. We bussed over to Ft Wilderness for DD to do the pony ride, which she absolutely loved.

Went back to the pool for about an hour hoping to wear DD out enough to take a nap. This failed. We did goof a little and didn't eat enough before we got ready for the party, and ended up using more time that I would have liked to get food in MK (there were basically no mobile order time slots available once we figured out we would need to eat, so there's a tip for any first-timers, early in the day schedule a mobile order if you think you'll want to get something to eat between 4 and 6pm in the park. DD also fell asleep on the bus to MK, and slept through all the waiting in line, which was probably an enormous blessing.


We sweated a TON waiting 40min in the line to get in. We hit up BTMR first, and got a rider-swap, which I ended up not using. Rode the carousel, teacups, met rapunzel and tiana. Met stitch. Rode dumbo 2x in a row. Rode the barnstormer (which DD LOVED) 4x in a row (they didn't make us get off.) Met goofy. I did manage to grab VQ/LL for Tron as we were finishing eating. Of course, this ended up being group 160, and when did that group get called? 15min before the fireworks. We watched the fireworks and then booked it over to tron for DH to ride, with the plan being I would go after him. Except it seemed like a TON of other people had the same plan. I ended up taking DD and DS3 back to Main Street for the 11:15 parade and DH met us over there. The kids were exhausted and tired at that point, so once the parade was done we left. It was almost 1am by the time I got into bed.

Saturday morning I woke up and immediately checked if I could move or Topolino's reservation (1145) to an earlier one. Fortunately, I was able to get us moved to 1030. DD barely ate anything; too many people and characters to watch, which was a theme of the trip, and a good lesson for future trips. She was thrilled to get to meet Minnie and Daisy (and Mickey and Donald.) We rode the skyliner over to AoA to walk around and look at all decorations, and then more pool time back at Saratoga. Blaze pizza for dinner, followed by the requisite dolewhip. At this point DD was done. Exhausted, over-stimulated, off her schedule, etc. So instead of more pool after the sun went down, we went back to the room to pack and get to bed early.

I had made us a clear reserve appointment for Sunday morning. We ended up being way too early. We could have slept for almost another hour before leaving, but you never know what the frontier bag-check line is going to look like. I was able to edit our time for the clear lane, and WOW, I will definitely be using that every time I fly out of MCO.

The drive home from Detroit was long. So, so, so, so long. I started looking at flights for MW since Delta has changed us to another flight (again.) I'm hoping I can cancel our flights and rebook through SW out of grand rapids, but I'm pretty sure that's not an option since I booked basic economy and have no use for ecredits. Flying from our small, local airport to Detroit is an option, but then we would have to go through security 2x, and sit around in the airport for hours and hours. AND it would cost us another $500+. Not really "worth it."


It was weird to be at WDW and not be doing any races. I mentioned this to DH, who rolled his eyes at me, but it was true! I know we talk about it a lot in here and it can seem like a kool-aid kind of comment, but the on-property energy of a race weekend is just different.

 

[DopeyBadger]

Sounds like a fun trip! Any tips for going to MNSSHP? We're heading there in about 3 weeks.

 

[azrivest]

Such a cute Bo costume!

 

[Herding_Cats]

Sounds like a fun trip! Any tips for going to MNSSHP? We're heading there in about 3 weeks.

my tips:
-eat right before you go, or, eat in line if you are going to get there early to wait for the tapstiles to open. OR, if you have a good idea of what you'll want, schedule a mobile order for between 4 and 6 pm by noon of that day.

-only show up to wait in the line to get in early if you want to get into a super rare character meet line. otherwise, show up at 4 (and not 330) and the lines will probably be way better/non-existent to tap in and get your bracelet per a lot of reports I've seen on fb.

-take something for shade while you wait if you're going to get there early to tap in (small umbrella or something) if you are ok with hauling it around for the evening.

-if getting on tron is important to you, use every device available to you to try to get a vq; those drop at 6pm

-don't believe the wait times for the rides (space ranger spin said 20 or 30 and it was basically walk-on)

-take a backpack if you're going to trick or treat, so you can empty your party bag into it. It will definitely get heavy, but it's nice to not have to worry about candy falling out everywhere. the trick or treat spots at the edges of tomorrowland (laugh floor and CoP) were pretty short and moved quickly; little mermaid was about 15min to get through the line and HOT.

-the crowds for the parade and fireworks were NOT like a normal park day; while still crowded, they aren't the crush that busy park days are. We were able to easily find spots for both, with good viewing, 10-15min before they started.

-the fireworks start very abruptly, and there's not much a lead-in like they have to HEA. They have the 15/10/5min warning, tell you the lights will be reduced for the show, and it starts pretty much as soon as the lights go down.