Time intervals

20 min w/up. 1-1-2-3-3-2-1-1 min fast with 1/2 the recovery time. 10 min c/d.

I did these on artificial grass of a football field and it felt very good to be on such a soft surface. I did not know my pace but I was keeping a very good effort.
It was weird, it did not feel like a real workout without trying to hit pace and such.

So bike is shipped, now I just need to pack rest of my things tomorrow and I will be ready to go on Saturday. It is exciting, I have never been to California!
The only thing that makes me uneasy is that I have heard that it gets dark pretty early in the evenings.

UCLA has a triathlon club and I was thinking that maybe I will go to see their workouts. Because one can workout with them for one week without paying the fees. So I could go to their swim workouts for one week and maybe they will teach me a proper swimming technique. Then after one week I will go join swimming club etc :)
Or maybe I could join volleyball club.

And maybe not, I should get a job at school to earn some money. So probably I will not have enough time for all fun stuff I want to do because I need to study as well.

Packing has started

I hate this but it must be done.
Actually this move to LA is much easier than almost all movings before because before I always had to think what I am going to take with me and what not. This time it is different because I am taking everything with me.

Tomorrow I am shipping the bike, bike accessories and some cloths. At first I thought to bring bike on plane with me but it would cost more than the bike itself. They charge $200! Come on, what has happened to free sporting goods on planes??? 2 years ago I could take a bike and golf clubs on plane for free.
Then I thought that I will just get rid of a bike and buy a new one in LA. But since I have also new stuff I bought here (helmet, fitness ball, foam roller, 2 sneakers. Do you see the trend? Only exercise things.) that I cannot/don't want to take on plane because I will be over limit and therefore have to send them anyway, which will cost me money so I might throw he bike into box as well.
I got a quote online and it was "only" $69 which is not that bad. And since it does not make a difference whether I send 45 pounds or 70 pounds, I packed into bike box a lot of other things. Co-worker is picking me up tomorrow morning and drive me and the box to FedEx. I just hope they will take it because it is not very professionally packed. As soon as I got the bike I went to Walmart to ask them for an empty bike box, and thankfully they just finished assembling some bikes so I got 2 boxes but they cut them to open them so I had to combine two to pack the bike.
I also hope everything gets to LA in one piece and sooner than in 1 month.

Here is the process:

Bike still in one piece (almost, I decided to take pictures after I dismantled some parts) plus I am sorry for a pure quality. My camera is a very bad one and I had low battery so could not use flash.


Bike in a box




Ready to be shipped


Yes, I did this in the middle of a living room while watching TV.

Work-outs getting harder

Sub-tempo + interval workout: 20 min w/up. 5 Strides. 12 min run @ 4:22. 3 min full recovery. 4 X 800 m at 5 km pace with 2min easy jog btwn. 10min c/d
800s: 3:07, 3:06, 3:03, 3:05.

When I got to the track I realized I do not remember what my recovery should be so I just went with 2min jog. Now I know it should have been 400m jog, but since I jogged really slowly it was approximately 200m, so it is ok.
Already during the sub-tempo I could not breath properly, as if my rib cage was tied together. Hm weird. That added to the hardness of the workout. But that had nothing to do with the fact that my legs were getting more tired on the last 800.
Overall, the workout was not too too hard but harder than previous workouts- I had to push harder and was breathing harder as well. Yeah, running on tired legs is harder but it makes us stronger!

Weights afterwards.

I feel little sore now.

Excitement

Today: 6 miles easy. No strides because I need to be 100% fresh for tomorrow:)

Today is the first day of my new 5k/10k training plan and I am freaking excited!
Until now it was kinda easy and getting-back-from-the-injury but it is over now. I will have two hard workouts a week, some of them are a complete novelty for me, some are regular intervals. Mileage will be kept pretty low because of the ITB troubles. Actually, my workouts are longer than my easy runs. Therefore I will continue biking to add some mileage.
Well, this week is still kinda easy but I have a "new" workout tomorrow and can't wait to see how it goes. Actually, maybe I can wait...

I have not been this excited for running for a long time. I mean, I love running and am looking forward to my runs but now it is different. I want to work hard again! And I am going to work hard (if injuries stay away from me).

29 miles on bike + 4 miles on feet

I wanted to do my last long bike ride today (because moving to LA on Saturday) but 14 miles in I got a flat tire. Stupid Michigan roads!!! There is glass, nails, screws and other junk everywhere on roads! You do not see that on roads in Europe. I have had more flat tires these past 3 months than I have had in my whole life before coming here.
I hate it. Soon I will be able to apply for a cock pit job with F1, I am becoming an expert in tire changes. (I know that changing car tires is different from changing bike tires but...)

I fix it with a sticky patch but did not want to continue my ride because I had no desire to walk 35 miles to my place if something else happens to that tire (and I did not have an extra one with me).

I ran 4 miles afterwards. These bricks are getting really easy. It might be because I am getting used to them or because I have a bigger water bottle and am not completely dehydrated for a run.

Plus I did something very stupid today. I had to go to Walmart to get an extra tire and it was already dark when I was coming back and there is no sidewalk so I decided to use a different road with a sidewalk. But this road was closed for traffic. So I was all alone on that road for about 2 miles, walking in a dark surrounded by woods. I was little scared. I always to stupid stuff like this.

Bus adventures continue

I had to go to Canada to change my alien status and of course I took a bus (ok, 3 buses).

My sister says that I am the only person in the whole world who has the Ivy League education and rides buses in the US. Come to think of it, she is probably right. But I do not care since there is nothing I can (want) to do about it until at least next year.

But today it was not that bad. It is approximately 40 miles from my place to Windsor in Canada. And it only took me 8 hours to get there and back. I left my place at 7am and came back at 6pm. I have spent around 3 hours in Windsor and in immigration office at the border and the rest was spent on a bus or waiting for a bus.
Good thing is that I did not have to walk 11 miles as I had to last time. Bad thing is that it started raining when I was in Detroit waiting for a bus to come back and it was cold. But I am defrost now and I did not get jumped, so everything is good.

By the way, Detroit is such a disgusting city. How could people live there? Does anybody live there actually?

I was pretty tired but dragged myself to the gym for 60min on a stationary bike. (I wish I had a home trainer, that way I can watch a movie or something and not just stare at the wall in front of me.)

Trail workout

Wednesday:
6 easy miles + 3 strides

Today:
20 minutes w/up. 3 X 6 minutes at 10k pace (6:33-38) w/ 2 min jog btw. 10 minutes c/d.

I just realized that I was supposed to do 3 min jog between...hm, I do not know why I assumed I have 2 min rest. Oh well, that does not make that much difference.

I was little worried because I have not run anything relatively fast over 4 min since June. And today I was supposed to run faster for 6 min and three times!
But then I figured, come on, they are at 10k pace, that should be easy. And it was not bad, not bad at all. Even with "only" 2 min rest:)
I used Garmin for this because I had had no idea how that pace should feel. I did 6:30 (downhill), 6:33(up), 6:29(down). On the last one it was dark already and I could not see digits so could not check the pace therefore it was little faster.

And I did not do weight because it was dark when I got home and I was hungry. I will do weights tomorrow or some other day.

I ran 4 days in a row because I will not be able to run tomorrow and Saturday.
We have picnic at work tomorrow so I will probably get home too late. I would not mind running in dark, but only on streets, not on trail. And since I am not going to run on road, I am not going to run tomorrow. I will ellipticate.
And on Saturday I have to go to Canada for couple minutes and then come back to have my alien status changed by immigration office. And since I am taking a public transportation to get there, it will probably take me the whole day to do that. The worst thing it to get to Detroit from here, then it is easy-peasy (I hope, I have not taken this bus yet). Maybe it will be faster to ride a bike to Detroit, then leave it somewhere at the bus stop and take a bus to Canada. I wish I could ride a bike to Canada:(

Easy-peasy TRACK workout

Today's weather was horrible. It was warm as if summer was back but the wind...on my bike ride from work I was struggling not to be blown off my bike while navigating around fallen road signs, flying newspaper and trash dumpsters blown to roads from people's driveways. But the track is nicely sheltered from the wind and it was only on small part of one curve where strong headwind hit me.

Other than wind issue, I LOVED today's (track) workout (yeah, track was open today):
20 minutes warm-up. 4 km worth of intervals at 5 km pace. I could decide how to break up the 4km BUT I had to decide ahead of time what the intervals will be and stick to the plan. The rest should be 1/2 of the time the interval took but no more than 2 minutes. 10 minute cool-down.

At first I wanted to do 5x800 but then realized that I have 800s next week and I really enjoyed 1k workouts couple months ago so I finally decided to do 4 x 1k @ 5k pace, which is somewhere around 3:55ish.

I must confess that I slacked a bit on warm-up. I did my 20 min and stretched but did only 3 drills and only 4 strides. I was afraid to be kicked out of the track because a guardian came and started to close some gates so I decided to start the workout asap. I know I need to stretch, do drills and strides to be warmed up properly.


Anyway, this is what I did:
3:53: 1st interval is always a struggle until I get into groom. I started fast but managed to slow down to get to required pace.
3:53: This was ok, not easy, not difficult
3:50: My legs usually wake up around this time (1.6-2k into the intervals) so here we go, faster than I was supposed to go
3:53: It was dark and I could not see the digits on the watch so could not check my 400m splits so I just went nice and easy and controlled.

I wish I could do workouts like this one every day because it makes me confident.

It felt easy but my logic is that it was supposed to feel easy because if that's my 5k pace I should be able to run at that pace for 5 continuous kilometers. And since today I ran only 4k and with almost 2 min rest between each, than it should feel easy. Because if it does not feel, that I should adjust my 5k pace. Correct me if my logic is wrong.

Weights for upper body afterwards.

Very uneventful Labor Day

Very simple:
easy 6 miles on a trail + 5 strides afterwards

I read today that biking is much better than "ellipticating/elliptication" because biking is a non-weight-bearing exercise therefore it is better for recovery. It kind of makes sense since you do not stand (most of the time) on your legs when biking. Plus I read something that ellipticals' motion range is too wide for a woman which strains hips and pelvis too much. Anyway, doing more biking than elliptication sounds good to me.

This was my longest bike ride ever

Maybe not really since it was not continuous...
69 miles bike + 2 miles run + 2.5 miles bike (for 71.5 miles on bike total)

I woke up, ate cereals with banana-berries-chocolate milk and started internet stalking...Great job coach, although it was not what you hoped for! And great job SLG, who ran a marathon only 2 weeks after rocking her first 1/2 Ironman.

Stalking lasted until noon and then I was finally free to start my bike ride.
I felt pretty good, although my arms hurt (???), I was freezing and hungry- cereals in the morning only managed to keep me full until mile 50ish. I was not thirsty though (I bought a bigger 1 liter water bottle). I had to stop half way through for couple minutes and defrost myself at the sun like lizards do. It was not that cold but the wind was chilly and my toes were frozen (I think that I will try to start working in marketing department of one of the sport shoes makers so I can propose to them the idea of proper winter sport shoes. Shhh. Do not tell anyone. It is my idea!).

Then I did 2-mile run on grass. I felt splendidly. I was surprised because last week I did only 50miles before my run and I felt horribly. Today I did more plus I did pretty decent workout yesterday and despite all this I felt awesome on todays run. Ok, I know I increased my mileage by those 2 miles, because my coach's plan did not call for that, but ITB is ok, so I figured why not? And if I run for a bit after bike, it loosens my legs.
And yeah, the legs felt refreshed (relatively) for final 2.5 miles to my apartment.

I ate tuna sandwich, drank some tap water/mineral water/orange juice mix and went to the pool. I did not swim because weather has been pretty cold past few days, I just sat on stairs and read a book about the last Russian tsar and treated that like an ice bath.

Higher powers tried to tell me something this morning but I did not listen to them

You know how I was supposed to do a track workout this week and tried on Tuesday (but track was closed), then on Thursday (track was closed) and I did not even bother on Friday and I was hoping for more luck today. But track was closed so I gave up and went to in on a boring never-ending gravel trail. It was windy and chilly (I was wearing a jacket on my bike ride there).

I warmed up for 2.5miles and when I was stretching...tornado sirens went off!!! SERIOUSLY?!? That was when I started to think that maybe some kind of higher power is trying desperately to prevent me from doing this workout.

(I have already run through tornado siren couple weeks ago (I was not sure what it was although I suspected it to be weather related when I saw a huge violet-orange cloud in a far distance).

But I kept stretching while thinking what to do. I was in a middle of nowhere on a trail surrounded by trees, 2.5 miles from my bike and bike was 4.6 miles from my apartment. While I was doing that a guy on a bike went by and screamed to keep moving (at least I think that's what he shouted at me).

OK, so I decided to run to my bike. But surprise, after couple minutes the sirens stopped! Awesome! And even sun came out. It was still windy, but thankfully from the side, not a head wind in any direction.
I even took off the jacket and t-shirt and left them in a bush.

You, higher power, are not going to get me!
I was pumped to get over with this workout! And I kicked butt I must say:)

Ladder Intervals. 20 minute warm-up. 1000 m, 800 m, 600 m, 400 m, 400 m, 600 m, 800 m, 1000 m. The 1000 m & 800 m should be at 10 km pace (4:08-4:15/km (6:36-6:48/mile)), the 600 m and 400 m slightly quicker than 5 km pace (4:00 per km(6:24)). Take 2.5 minutes rest after the 1 km, 2 minutes after the 800, 1:30 after the 600 m and 1:00 after the 400 m. 10 minute cool-down.

I used Garmin for those. I know that Garmins are not 100% accurate so my times are probably couple seconds plus or minus, plus it was on a gravel road. But I know I went faster than I was supposed to but I felt really good and honestly, I do not know how to pace myself outside a track.
1000 4:00 pace:4:00/6:24(slight downhill)
800 3:10 pace:3:57/6:20(slight uphill)
600 2:21 pace:3:55/6:16(slight downhill)
400 1:30 pace:3:45/6:00(slight uphill)
400 1:28 pace:3:40/5:52(slight uphill)
600 2:17 pace:3:48/6:05(slight downhill)
800 3:08 pace:3:55/6:16(slight uphill) I definitely started to feel that I was getting out of my comfort zone here. My legs and arms hurt and I had a weird feeling in stomach. But it is VERY important for me to get used to be out of comfort zone because I am weak mentally, very weak and I do not like suffering. And this helps my confidence and getting used to pain.
1000 3:50 pace:3:50/6:08(slight downhill) Still weird feeling in stomach but legs did not hurt, probably because it was downhill so I did not have to work that hard to keep the pace up.

I finished this by 10miles on bike: I had to get my clothes I left 2.5miles up the trail and back and ride home. I wanted to do weights afterwards but I felt tired.
Maybe later...

BONNE CHANCE COACH !!!!

(I will be internet stalking tomorrow)

OK, so I am giving it one more chance

and if the track is closed tomorrow I am going to do the workout at trail. Which will suck and I am already dreading it.
How can people run intervals on a flat-never-ending-boring stretch?

I can do my easy runs there but intervals? But we will see tomorrow. Maybe I will like it.
I already did it but it was long time ago. Back at home in winter when track was unusable and park covered with snow I would do intervals on a road. But I never dd anything longer then 600m.

Today 6 miles easy with 5 strides at the end. I need to get into this strides habit so my legs get used to change of speed and but firstly they need to get used to speed of course. I have always had hard time becoming speedy but once I got there I could blast 30s on 200s during workouts.

I am getting seriously crossed

(on the side note, I have never heard anyone use word "crossed". It is probably other Cambridge English expression that people do not use, like "learnt" (people here use learned))

I went to do my track workout but of course the track was closed again because of a game. How am I going to do this?
I tried to checked out the athletics schedule online but it does not make much sense. However, it seems that there is football game tomorrow and nothing over the weekend. But will the track be open over the weekend? It was during summer but now when the school has started...
So I do not know. Should I go to the trail tomorrow and do it there or give it one more try on Saturday. But if I wait until Saturday it is completely going to screw my biking schedule.

I need to think about it more. I am off to "ellipticate" since my run did not work out.

Exactly 70 days

without getting flat tire. Wow.

But today it was not my fault (it was never my fault! It is not my fault that I am short-sighted and see a huge pothole only when I ride into it...).
There was glass on a road and well...

I wanted to go for a ride after work but this tire problem plus month closing so I got out of work long after 6pm and by the time I put the patch on a tire it was almost 7pm. So no bike ride today.

60min on an elliptical.

I know those patches does not last longer than 20hours.I bought a glue couple weeks ago but the tube got hole in it and glue dried out. I had one spare tire at my place and changed it but as I was "air pumping" it, I tore it (again). So tomorrow morning I will put the old tire with a hole in it is back with a new patch that should last until tomorrow after work.
On days like this, I wish I had car.
Because tomorrow morning before work I have to go to Target or somewhere similar to get a tire or glue. I cannot do that after work since I have workout planned.

Isn't life just hard? :)