Wednesday, April 30, 2014

No More Excuses!

I’ve got the numbers!

Straight from architectural plans:

  • The distance around the track from the center of the middle lane is 504'-8" 
  • The distance around from the center of the outside lane is 523'-6" 
That comes out to 1 mile being 10.46 laps around the middle lane and 10.09 laps around the outside lane. 

Of course, that information doesn’t do me much good while I’m actually running, but as long as I record the number of laps that I run and the time in which I complete them, I can come home and calculate my actual distance and time.

With precision!

For example, on a recent run I completed 30 laps in 29 minutes and 55 seconds, which I felt was a pretty hard run. I was definitely pushing myself and, this time, rewarding myself for finishing fast by stopping before my goal time of 30 minutes.

Since I ran in the outside lane, I can now calculate that I ran 2.97 miles, which comes out to a pace of 10:04.28 minutes per mile. Not my fastest, but decent for an indoor track, non-race situation.

During that set of laps, my fastest 11 laps were run in 10 minutes and 35 seconds. 11 laps on the outside lane comes out to 1.09 miles, making my pace on that mile a speedy (for me) 9:42.57 minutes per mile.

And the 55 laps that I ran not too long ago in 56:48? That comes out to a very decent 5.45 mile run with an average pace per mile of 10:25.32 minutes.

I love math.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

A Box is Not a Platform

I've been practicing box jumps at the Rec center since the platforms were installed. And I've conquered the platform at level 3, which is the closest level to the 20" boxes at Crossfit. But until today, I still had a dark cloud hovering around the idea of doing box jumps, because the wooden box that bit my leg and made me afraid to jump again was still not conquered.

Sure, I could have tried a box jump even though the workout didn’t strictly involve them. Especially when there were pull ups, since I use a box to help me reach the band around the bar safely. But I didn’t. I hesitated to do a box jump when no one else was jumping.

And I managed to miss workouts that included box jumps… Until today:

CrossFit Conditioning:
For time:
10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – 6 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1
- Dips
- Box Jumps

I wasn't worried about the dips, because I knew that I could use bands to work at my own level for them. The box jumps, however, sent a bit of a thrill through me. This would be it - I would either conquer my fear, publicly, or fail.

I hadn't been stringing together many sets of 10 at the gym lately. My husband and I had been doing sets of 5 so that we could switch off between the platform and the landmine more efficiently. But I had been practicing, once a week or more, and I knew that even if I hit my leg again, I could do it. I'd been doing it, getting bruised and getting back up.

Surely the metal platform hurts more than the box?

Before the time started for the workout, I took an experimental jump beside the box to get my nerve up. Then I did a single jump on to the box. And I landed it, heart pounding and hands cold.

55 reps to go.

I knew I wouldn't be able to go fast, because I wanted to do each rep right and not land on my shin again. Also, aerobic exercise becomes mysteriously more difficult when you're breathing shallowly and feel like you're going to faint. But I did it anyway. I counted down my 10 reps on the box and then took a nice break doing dips.

I convinced myself that since I had done 10, that meant I could do 9. And I did. But by the time I had finished my 5 set, everyone else had already finished all of their reps. Once again, I got to be the last person working, listening to shouts of encouragement and exhortations. I finished just under 9 minutes, every jump accomplished and only one almost miss.

I did have one of those flub jumps where your foot catches but doesn't land on the box, but it only threw me off a little bit. No injuries, and no stopping.

After everyone had put up the equipment, and we had all finished stretching out, I went up to the trainer. I felt so good about what I had accomplished that I just had to share it with someone, even if I felt a bit silly sharing.

I told him that this was the first time I'd done box jumps since I'd injured myself on one back in December, and that I'd been practicing on platforms that weren't quite as high as the box. He told me that my form was really good, and then he thanked me for telling him.

I'm not sure why he thanked me, of course, because I can't read minds. But I like to think that he was glad to hear about someone conquering a fear of box jumps that resulted from a box attack. I like to think that he found it inspiring, because I did.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

55 Laps Is Not 5 Miles

I still don’t know whose idea it was to make a track where 11 laps equals a mile. But I think they were crazy.

Add to that the fact that this only applies to the center lane, and it’s driving me crazy. Here I am, running on the outside lane, thinking that every 11 laps is a mile, when it isn’t. It’s more than a mile, and the fact that I don’t know how much more irks and maddens me. Am I running really slowly if a lap takes me 66 seconds? Probably, but how slowly? Was that 11:12 “mile” really a 10:10 mile? A 9:48?

I like numbers. I’ve always like numbers. Some people I know complain about math. They don’t get math; they’re so glad they don’t have to take math; they just know they would fail math if they ever took it again - not that they would. And the math they are talking about isn’t what I would consider the difficult kind - we aren’t even talking differential equations here. Sometimes I smile and say that I like math, and sometimes I nod along with them.

I never talk about how in grade school I would look forward to this one kind of math quiz the teachers gave us. They called it a “mad minute” and it was a whole sheet of simple addition, subtraction, multiplication or division that we worked on with a time limit of one minute. I always finished, and I always scored well. Those tests were a bit exhilarating for me.

I enjoy the precision of math.

So it isn’t just a matter of wanting to know my actual mile splits for the sake of knowing my speed and progress. It fundamentally bugs me that I don’t have enough factors to calculate my speed to a higher degree of precision.

I can guess, but my guess is that the outside lane is longer than the middle lane. Not precise at all.

So when I ran my 55 laps and kept track of my time every 11 laps for a “mile” it was on the one hand quite satisfying. Every set of 11 laps was under 12 minutes (11:14, 11:12, 11:05, 11:28 and 11:49). If 11 laps were a mile, I’d be moderately happy at those totals. 11(ish) minute miles aren’t great, but they are better than 12 plus minute miles, especially strung together like that. However, 11 laps on the outside lane do not equal 1 mile. I don’t know how far I ran, or how fast I ran. I know I’m faster than the times I recorded, but I don’t know how much faster. It’s enough to make me want to pull my hair.

What I really want is one of those surveyor’s wheels to determine the length of that lap, but it’s probably going to come down to a measuring tape and some good old fashioned geometry.

It’s a good thing I like math.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Taking the Discomfort to the Run

Well, I did it. I was feeling so tired and miserable that I couldn’t stand to do a full workout like I’d planned. Therefore, I made myself a deal.

If I could run to the point of being uncomfortable until 5pm, then I could stop running at 5pm. My meeting ran late, so I didn’t get to the track until 4:35. Surely I could run hard for 25 minutes.

My FiveFingers shoes had been giving me blister issues when I ran for more than 20 minutes at a stretch. Something about my gait or the way that I’d worn them in made my big left toe scrape across some part of the inside construction until the skin was worn right off (not pretty). I almost gave up on the shoes at that point, but I decided instead to try toe socks.

Now, I tried toe socks once before. I used to be very into socks, and I received as a present a pair of rainbow toe socks from a friend right before I left for college. I was excited, because each toe was a different color of the rainbow, and my other rainbow socks were getting rather worn out.

Then I put them on. And immediately took them off. Maybe they were cheap socks, or maybe toe sock technology simply wasn’t developed enough back in ‘01, but my poor little toes felt like they had nooses around their bases with those socks on. I swore off toe socks forever.

Forever turned out to be until I bought some toe socks from REI, Injinji toe socks. They aren’t perfect. My toes don’t fill out the toe spaces completely, and they do feel rather odd around the bases of my toes, but they don’t strangle my toes, and they do prevent that spot on my big toe from getting worn away by my FiveFingers.

I’m still not sold on all toe socks, but these particular ones aren’t bad. They did keep the discomfort of the run mostly out of my feet. Mostly, because I did have some issues with my right foot going numb. I think that’s just a gait thing though. The most uncomfortable part was the breathing, and convincing myself to keep going even though it hurt.

I don’t feel that running has come naturally to me. All through school, running the mile was torture. I’ve never been comfortable running at a decent pace, a pace that wouldn’t make my brother (and brother-in-law) scoff. I did recently learn that the 11 laps to a mile distance at the Rec center applies to the middle lane, so running the outside lane like I do means I’m going more than a mile in 11 laps. But I don’t know how much more. If it were 11 laps to a mile, then I would have been running just under an 11 minute mile pace.

But it’s not. So I had to have been going faster. And to do a 5K in just over 30 minutes (like I did in Vegas), I had to be doing better than 10 minutes per mile.

So I ran, pushing the pace as hard as I felt I could sustain. My stomach reminded me that I hadn’t had a snack before starting to run. My lungs protested that I was overdoing it. My heart pounded, too busy for extraneous commentary. And I ran the seconds down with each lap.

The plan was to stop when I hit 5pm, but I was running fast enough that when I had 2 laps to go, I came in under the minute. I would have to go 2 more laps to hit 5pm (instead of just 1 more).

Or I could slow down.

My husband would have rewarded himself for running fast by stopping early.

I rewarded myself for running fast by running an extra lap.

26 laps of the outside lane in 25 minutes and 28 seconds.

I’ve really got to find out just how much longer those laps are!

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Discomfort

Even though I’m not going to Crossfit every day, I still check my gym’s website now and then to get ideas for what I might do on my own. For example, I saw that there was a workout recently that started with 150 double unders. Now, depending on who is leading the class, that would mean anyway from 450 to 750 singles if you can’t do doubles.

I can’t do doubles.

So I went to the Rec center and checked out a jump rope to practice double unders. Okay, to practice trying double unders. I’m still not there yet. It’s something to work on…

When I checked it on a recent Sunday, I saw that there was actually “homework” for the endurance class. They were to go on a 50 minute run, on a trail or course. It’s been too long since I’ve been on a trail run, but it’s also been a long time since I followed the other requirement for the run:  “Run hard and get uncomfortable the whole 50 min.”

I’ve been afraid to run hard since my ITB issue started taking over my running life. And I’ve never been good at forcing myself to be uncomfortable…

I can run for a 50 minute stretch at this point, but slowly. I’m just not sure if I should be pushing myself to discomfort when I’m still trying to get my ITB to stop being stiff and painful. But maybe that’s just an excuse. Maybe being uncomfortable is just what I need to get my hip to stop feeling like it is pulling the ITB into a bad position every moment I’m not actually Chi-running.

If I can get over my fear of box jumps, if I can work on double unders even though I feel like every single person in the entire Rec center is staring at me while I fail at jumping rope, if I can run on an indoor track where eleven laps equals a mile for five miles at a time… then maybe I can make myself just uncomfortable enough to fix this lingering ITB issue once and for all.

Then I can start working on rope climbing!