Welcome Back

Dear Readers,

I’ve missed you. Sorry it has been a while. Life got a little crazy for a minute there; I got married (that’s Mrs. RunnerTeal to you!), honeymooned, and moved to Boston for an incredible internship. Running has been minimal to say the least.

After Boston, I took my usual post-marathon time off. Then, thinking I should be recovered, I went for a few short runs but I still wasn’t feeling quite right. It was as good a time as ever to give my body a break, and it was telling me it needed one. Unfortunately, I had to maintain my pre-marathon wedding dress shape, so I was forced to cross-train (which served its purpose in reminding me that I love running, not cross-training). After I got married, I let myself go. (Sorry, Husband, I’ve got you now!) I enjoyed the honeymoon like a normal person would (with an abundance of tropical drinks, great food, no running, and not a hint of guilt). But it's back to business (and blogging) now.

Mr. & Mrs. RunnerTeal.

Dear Running,

I've missed you. I wanted to start up again as soon as I got back from the honeymoon, but I had promised my body a longer break. Finally, this last week, it was time. In the few moments we’ve spent together this week, I can tell you’re punishing me for ignoring you. Sunday’s excursion was the most time we’ve spent together in a long while, but two months ago (gosh, has it really been two months??) that would have barely qualified as a date. I can tell this upsets you; I can feel it with my whole body.

I’ll have to work hard to earn your forgiveness. It seems like an impossible task at the moment, like we’ll never get back to how we used to be. But we’ve come out of worse before; I know we can pull through this, and be stronger than ever.

Dear Boston,

I’ve missed you, especially your running routes. When we parted a few years ago, I didn’t know if I’d see you again. But you kept your paths and trails just the same, waiting for my return. It was here, on these roads, that I fell in love with running and marathon training. It was here, right along this river, that I chased alongside the Trials competitors to see if I could keep up. (I’m still chasing the dream that started here.) I’m going to have to get in better shape quickly, because I can’t wait to spend more time with you.

I’ve missed you all. It’s good to be back.

Dream big,

Teal

[Photo credit: Liz Reese Photography.]

Boston 2013

Yesterday I ran the Boston Marathon. It was not the day I, or anyone else, had hoped for.

It started with a disappointing race. The details are meaningless now; I had hoped for a five minute PR, but struggled with cramps and a cranky hip just after halfway, and I barely managed a PR at all. I crossed the line in tears, and fell into my Fiancé’s arms, heartbroken.

But then it got much, much worse. A few short hours later those tears seemed like the silliest thing ever. And my heart would break many more times over before the day would end.

When we left lunch, my family and I tried to board the T near the finish line. It was closed; no one knew why. There were rumors of some threat on the T, and we saw police car after police car drive by. Firetrucks came too, but no ambulances, so I was comforted that perhaps no one was hurt. As we walked up the street to another T station, my sister sent a desperate text: “Please let me know you are alright, heard there was an explosion.” Then the ambulances started coming. I got an email news alert simultaneously, and when I read the headline, I crumbled to the sidewalk in a fresh set of tears. Explosions at the finish line—no one knew why/how many hurt/what to do. Fortunately I was able to get a few texts through to my sister and brother who got the news out to family and friends that we were okay. My teammates started an email chain, and quickly almost everyone responded. One teammate, unable to get through as the cell phone towers went out, wouldn’t be heard from for a few anxious hours. We were comforted knowing she had finished long before, and had no reason to be near the finish anymore. We kept walking, trying to figure out a way out of the city, and the news kept getting worse. As we tried to hail cabs, we found out people had died. More tears were flowing, real tears for people’s lives and limbs lost, lives forever changed. 

We couldn’t make it to my parent’s car to get our bags, so we left them behind and headed to the airport. At the airport, we saw the footage for the first time. I struggled to watch it. I could not, and still cannot, believe what happened. I feel ridiculous for having cried over some silly time in a silly race. The events of yesterday quickly put that in perspective. Life, family, and friends are so much more important. Who cares about a running race?

But that’s what makes me so angry. This race, this event, is not offensive to anyone. It is a celebration of hard work, of hope through adversity, of triumph over diseases and tragedies just like this one. Spectators line the entire 26.2 mile course, standing for hours, cheering for strangers. There is no ill will; from the starting corral to the finish line, everyone is bonded together as they run, as if they have been friends forever. I don’t think there is a friendier environment anywhere. Why would someone ruin that? The runners yesterday are people who have spent years trying to qualify, who have worked hard to become better athletes for a chance to compete at Boston. Other runners raise millions for charities—supporting cancer research, veterans, and victims of Newtown. The spectators yesterday are those people that stand by their sides, giving these runners the encouragement to keep going, to keep up the training, and to keep fighting through the whole grueling race to the finish line.  The fact that an event like this, a celebration like this, would be targeted is unreal. The fact that the spectators—our constant support team—took the brunt of it is not right. A day later and safe at home, I am in shock this happened.

In the airport, we met others who shared the story of where they had been and how fate had saved them. Two parents talked about their daughter, how she was set to run but an injury prevented her from being on the starting line. Instead they watched from near the finish line. They left before the explosions, but the daughter said she would never run a marathon again, not after this.

I’ll admit, I was thinking the same thing—even before the day changed forever. I was selfishly moping, thinking I had spent a year working hard to improve my marathon time and had only come away with only 30 seconds. I was thinking how hard the race was, and how I didn’t know how I’d be able to do another one, faster. I was thinking the same thing many marathoners think at the end of the race, how that will be the last one. Time, healed legs, and encouraging supporters will eventually change our minds, but that’s the important thing: we will get to make that decision ourselves, in our own time. No terrorist should be able to take that away from us. We cannot live in fear. We will band together, as runners always do on our way to a far off finish line, and we will pick ourselves up and get through this together. We can’t let these terrorists get what they want—to ruin our celebrations or crush our spirits.

I am moved by the generosity already exhibited. The influx of donations crashed the Red Cross’s websites, their blood banks are full, donations are being offered from around the country in the form of food, coffee, places to stay. The running community has always been a supportive one, and it will continue to support us all, even when a tragedy crumbles us.

Dream big and pray for Boston,

Teal

Highs and Lows

Just a graph today. Good luck to everyone in Beantown or wherever you may be racing!

Click for a larger version.

Dream big,
Teal

Science Friday: High Fat Tapers

We all know about carbo-loading. A couple days before the marathon, we suppress our tapering woes with heaps of carbohydrate goodness. There’s a lot of research behind it and so inevitably the Italian restaurants on marathon weekend are teeming with runners.

But what about a few days before the carb-fest begins? I’ve heard that the week before is a good time to make sure you’re eating healthy fats. What’s the logic behind this?

The idea is to get the body to oxidize (i.e. break down and use for energy) fat more than glycogen (that precious molecule we so carefully try to stock up and save). This can be achieved to some extent with training; the more we train to become endurance athletes the more we teach our bodies to use fat. But can we help out by eating a high fat diet?

There’s a lot of research into this idea; the problem is not all the studies agree. Some use long periods of fat-loading (seven weeks!), some only a few days. Some use different percentages of calories from fat, some look at endurance, others at speed... it’s hard to know what to think. 

I looked up the article that’s often cited for the recommendations I’ve heard. In this study, the researchers had well-trained cyclists eat 10 days of a high fat diet (>65% of calories from fat, see below for an example day), followed by 3 days of typical carbo-loading (>65% calories from carbohydrates). They compared this to a separate trial where the same subjects ate their normal diet followed by 3 carbohydrate filled days. They had the subjects bike for 150 minutes before completing a 20 km time trial. The high fat diet increased fat oxidation and decreased oxidation of muscle glycogen, as the researchers hoped. Moreover, when the cyclists had eaten the high fat diet, their times for the time trial were slightly (but significantly!) faster.

A fatty day!

So this study suggests 10 days of high fat diet followed by the typical carbo-load helps improve performance. The inclusion of the carbo-load is important; studies that don’t include it often don’t see any benefit from the high fat diet. It seems like without the carb-fest, the fat-fest won’t work. You always need to eat that pasta.

Now available in
stores research labs.

One thing that jumped out at me was that they also gave the subjects easily digestible fat solutions just before the time trial and a combination of digestible fat and carbohydrates during the trial. I picture a fatty version of GU. The authors say this was done to maximize potential fat and carbohydrate oxidation during exercise, but they don’t have any controls to see if this is necessary to reap the benefits of the high fat diet. I've never eaten any fat during a race, so I wonder the real world relevance of this.

I’m fine with eating some healthy fats (bring on the guacamole!), but I don’t know about 65% of my diet from fat. That seems like a lot of fat at a very delicate time in the lead up the marathon. It’s certainly an interesting idea, and I’ll keep a look out for more studies. In the meantime, has anyone tried this drastic of a pre-race diet?

Dream big,

Teal

Race Report: Rock-n-Roll USA Half Marathon

I’ve mentioned before my goal of a sub 1:22 half. Early in the season, I thought for sure I would get after it this time. But as the reality of my training set in, a 6:15 pace seemed a little crazy. A few days before the race, though, I started believing, based mostly on some sketchy statistics. I've run the 8k a week before running the half for the last two years. Last year, I ran 11 seconds/mile slower in the half compared to the 8k. This year's 8k was 6:04 pace, which means the half should be/could be (drumroll please) 6:15 pace. Also, I had been thinking I've never run that pace for anywhere close to that long in my life. Then realized I ran 6:14 pace for 10 miles last October, when I was feeling terrible and training wasn't going well. Surely by now I could add on another 5k at that pace. But the weather could be a factor...

Side-ramble about technology: It annoys me to no end that we can’t predict the weather with 100% accuracy. (I understand that we can’t, but that doesn't mean I’m okay with it.) Particularly with a race on the way, I get obsessive about the weather. Rain was predicted on race day all week, so I had conceded to wearing my rainy day duds. But the morning of the race, in one last moment of hope, I grabbed my laptop and checked weather.com: it said no rain! Then I checked weather.com on my phone. (Not the App, which is always way off the website (unclear why?), but I opened it in my phone's browser.) It said it would rain. The same website, run on the same browser (Safari), predicting two different things on two different pieces of technology. I risked it, trusted the laptop, and assumed no rain. The laptop was right. (I tried this again since, and the two are often different. Anyone have an explanation?)

So it turned out the weather was pretty perfect. Nothing to hold me back from a great race now. We had some trouble finding our way around the start, and arrived on the line without much time to spare. That meant not much time to get nervous, which was perfect. The first mile was smooth, I hit 6:15 on the nail. The next couple of miles I just tried to keep my rhythm and was pretty close to dead on. I remember at one point thinking about how awful I had felt in the last half I ran, and how this was completely different. This was my day.

We started up Rock Creek Parkway and a couple miles were a tad fast, but I knew the Big Hill was looming. I also realized my teammate J was close behind me (I could hear the cheers for her.) She had originally planned for a bit slower; I knew she must be feeling good and en route to a great day herself. Two big PRs, here we come.

Shot from above-- taken from a bridge over Rock Creek Parkway.

The Hill in the USA Half (a slightly different course than year’s past) is also a hill I run often in my training (I live close by, so it’s unavoidable) and it’s a Beast. In the weeks leading up the race, while slowly shuffling up it, I would wonder how the heck I’m going to race up this thing. On the way up race day I actually felt alright, I just tried to keep an even effort even though I certainly had to be slowing. I passed the woman right in front of me halfway up and that gave me confidence—maybe my hill skills are back. At the top, I think I looked like death (friends said I looked pissed.) I was glad it was over, but I just wanted to get my legs back under me asap.

But the next mile or so I was still going slow. (The split for the hill mile was incredibly slow—as expected.) The course is perhaps ever so slightly uphill at that point; I was just aching to get some downhill, gain some time back, and get back to nailing 6:15s. I remember really liking the rolling hills through miles 8-10 last year, so I looked forward to those. I got my rhythm back, passed another girl after another hill, and then managed a quick split for mile 10 (mostly downhill) but realized I was still ~20 seconds off pace for a sub 1:22.

Between miles 10 and 11.

There were two women not far ahead, and I used catching them as motivation to pick it up. I somehow completely missed the split for mile 11 and at mile 12 was still 20 seconds slow. With only a little more than a mile left I had to move. I had passed the women, but now a man was running in front of me and every time I came close he took off sprinting. Well, I didn’t like that one bit, so I got a little mad and went after him. (More motivation!) J was close on our heels, speeding along to her own huge PR. I knew it would be achingly close to 1:22 and so I sprinted as hard as I could. I could see the clock and I knew I just barely had it.

1:21:57, three seconds to spare. According to my GPS watch (so take it with a grain of salt), my pace for the last 1.1 miles was 5:49 (!) J also annihilated her PR by 8 minutes. (I don’t know what happened to the guy who tried to beat us.)

Afterwards I felt pretty good. I took a longish cool down and my legs felt fine. I was pleased with my 1:22, especially since I was pretty unsure that was possible a few weeks ago. I certainly have had loftier goals in the past (ugh, Philadelphia) and fallen flat on my face, but this time I did exactly what I set out to do.

Using the same sketchy statistics I used above (comparing half marathon to full marathon times from past years) it seems like I’m in shape for a big PR in Boston. Now that the taper has started and the race is looming, the doubts and questions are trying to creep back in, but hopefully I can silence them on Patriot’s Day.

Excited for Boston, too? Here are two of my favorite Boston-related posts:

Blast from the Past Race Report: Boston 2011

Marathon Match-up: Boston vs. Chicago vs. NY

Dream big,

Teal

Science Friday: Stress-ercise

I've been a little stressed lately. There's work, wedding planning, and plenty of workouts, enough to make anyone a little crunched for free time. Some people's response to my hectic life is to suggest I give up running. I have to work of course, and the wedding will be the wedding of the century. (She says without a hint of Bridezilla in her voice.) But running, that's just for fun. Why add any unnecessary stress?

My response is always something along the lines of running is my stress release. Sure, as the Big Race gets closer it can seem quite the opposite, but in general, running keeps me sane. Even though it robs me of mornings spent sleeping in, late nights socializing, and lazy Sundays, I love it. I'd rather metaphorically run around a little hectically than literally not run around at all. 

But it has got me thinking, is there a point where the pressures of lots of miles, big races, and goals of PRs negate the stress release provided by a daily jog? What if it starts to feel like just another item on a long to-do list?

An interesting article came out recently about forced exercise--if you really hate exercising but your doctor or gym teacher is making you, do your stress levels still benefit? Or does the agony of it all just lead to more anxiety? To address this, the researchers used rats forced to run on treadmills and on running wheels. Previous research has shown that rats forced to run on treadmills don't have the same reduction in anxiety as rats that voluntarily run when they please on a wheel. (Rats: I totally understand your perspective here. Treadmills stink.) Was it the forced nature of the running? Or was the treadmill running just unnatural for rats? Rats tend to run in intermittent bursts, so the researchers rigged running wheels to do the same. (I.e. the wheels rotated quickly for a few minutes then stopped for a bit before starting again, uncontrolled by the rats.) Another group of rats ran on wheels whenever they wanted, a third group was forced to run continuously on a treadmill, and a final group did not exercise. After six weeks, the rats were stressed by a standard rat-stress-paradigm (shocks to their tails.) The rats’ behaviors following the stress showed the no exercise group and the treadmill group were the most anxious. The voluntary wheel runners had less stress (as expected), but interestingly, so did the forced wheel runners. Even though they were being told when and how to run, their anxiety levels still went down. The take-home: even forced exercise (doctor, gym teacher, or Jillian Michaels prescribed) is better for stress relief than no exercise. (Provided the exercise isn’t “unnatural” for humans.) Also, treadmills are the worst. (See previous comment about unnaturalness.) 

Of course I don't feel my running habit is forced upon me. I do it because I love it. But it’s nice to know that even on those days when it might feel like another chore, it is actually helping me relax. But if I was really pressed for time, would it help to give it up for a little while? 

A different study hints at the answer to that question. What happens if exercising mice stop exercising? Do they return to baseline (the same as non-exercising mice), or do things get worse? Here there were three groups of mice: mice that exercised for three weeks, mice that did nothing for three weeks, or mice that exercised for one and a half weeks and then did nothing for one and half weeks. Continuous exercise reduced some measures of anxiety, but the group that stopped exercising looked the same as mice that never exercised. On other measures, the exercise-quitters were worse than the ones who never exercised. The authors suggested these could be withdrawal symptoms; maybe the mice were addicted to running. Finally, the authors measured the number of new neurons in the hippocampus. (Exercise has been shown to increase neurons in the hippocampus, an important area for memory.) Once again, the mice that kept exercising had the most, while the non-exercisers and exercise-quitters looked the same. The take-home: Reducing exercise can increase anxiety, negating any benefits from previous exercising. So no, you shouldn't give it up even (especially!) if you're feeling stressed. 

Remember, these are rodents. But from my own human experience, I almost always feel better after a run. Maybe it's because I've already checked one item off my day’s to-do list, making the others seem do-able as well. Maybe it's because I’ve got new neurons in my hippocampus and endorphins in my bloodstream. Maybe it’s because I love running, even when it’s hard to fit in my schedule.

The take-home: I'll keep on running and not stressing about it.

Dream big,

Teal

Race Report: St. Patrick's Day 8k

The Fear has set in. Only a few weeks left until the Big Race, have I put in enough hard work to beat my previous self? Workouts this season have been different than the past; they're more frequent, but (purposefully) slower than last season. The marathon pace runs, which are one of my standard measuring sticks from season to season were faster, but never quite as fast as wanted. Worse yet, a disastrous last attempt made them end up shorter than last season. And there's no time left for another go.... 

Going into a marathon with shaky confidence is a dead man's game (DNF man's game?) so something had to be done. After the upsetting marathon pace run, I decided to give the 8k a try. 

I've run this race the last two years, it's always a fun day with lots of green and lots of costumes (despite being a week away from St. Patty's.) I figured all I needed to do was run faster than last year to prove to myself I'm in better shape. Last year I ran 6:15 pace (31:02, 8k is a hair under 5 miles) and beating that should be no problem at all. After I'd proven that to myself I'd feel better. 

As in past years, I didn't taper and took it more like a workout. On the line, I was shocked to realize I wasn't even nervous! (If I could summon this attitude for every race, we'd really be talking.) The first mile was a little fast, the second a little slow, but I tried not to let it phase me. Last year at that point I was dying, getting passed by people, hating racing. This time I felt fine. Good, even. And I was the one passing people. At four miles, I tried to push it a bit, but I'm not sure how much I actually picked it up. I finished in 30:05; if I had known how close I was to sub 30, would I have pushed more? I think I could have.

So the race served its purpose: I got a good workout and a confidence boost. I really needed the boost now, before tomorrow's half marathon. I didn't want to go into the half marathon with shaky confidence, race poorly, then be even more worried for Boston. But I proved to myself I'm in better shape than last year, so there's no reason not to go for a big PR in the half.... 

And then another one in the full... (one month to go!)

Spectators beware: Fiance had a spectacular showing. On a course that is <5 miles, he saw me 4 times. The parents will be down this weekend to join him in their own final Boston tune-up; can they set a spectating PR? 

Dream big, 

Teal