It's pretty much not a training cycle for me if I don't end up with some sort of stupid injury.

This time around has been no exception to that rule, but at least what I'm dealing with now seems sort of minor compared to some other injuries I've dealt with.

Back in February, I was having some serious calf/shin issues every time I ran. It was a pretty clear signal I needed new shoes, and once I replaced the old ones, things seemed to be good.



But in the last week or so, I've noticed my calves have been ridiculously tight after all my workouts. No amount of stretching or compression-sock wearing has been able to get things back to normal.



Mainly annoying, and not overly problematic.

Until last week.

My right calf really started to annoy me at volleyball on Tuesday night, and it hurt to walk around my apartment on Wednesday. So I took Wednesday off from running to let things rest.

It felt a little better Thursday, until softball practice after work. I was jogging after fly balls during batting practice, and every step it sort of felt like my calf muscle was ripping in half. I don't really know a better way to explain it, but it hurt like a B.

By Friday morning, I could barely walk around my apartment. Trying to stretch it hurt, and the pain was moving up into my hamstring. I made a panicked phone call to my sports massage people and was able to squeeze in an appointment for this afternoon.



I also completely rested Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which meant skipping spin class, my long run and my pool session. I'm also bailing on today's intervals to see how things feel after this massage appointment.

I'm hoping that by Wednesday, I will be able to get out for a short easy run to see how things feel. If all goes well, then I'm crossing my fingers I'll be able to jump back into my training plan.

My calf feels a little bit better today after just some time off, so I'm hoping this isn't anything major and that that massage will work out any remaining kinks.

Happy Tuesday friends!

Last night I went over to College Park to watch the Lady Terps play in the second round of the NCAA tournament. The girls stomped Princeton and are moving on to the sweet 16!



I'm sure that made these Supreme Court Justices (and Princeton alums) sad.

https://twitter.com/Lesmitch529/status/580233253975560192

Anyway, on to training talk.

Week two is in the books and I'm happy with where things are going. I didn't have any MBA classes last week since most of the class was on an international trip, and professors decided it wasn't worth it to hold class. The extra time in my schedule let me fit in some solid training and some extra fun.

Monday: 6x400. Wore my compression socks because my calves were really tight from my run the day before.



Repeat 1: 1:50.77
Repeat 2: 1:42.64
Repeat 3: 1:58.10
Repeat 4: 1:39.30
Repeat 5: 1:42.31
Repeat 6: 1:48.92

Target pace was 1:55. Nailed it on all of them except repeat 3.

Tuesday: Volleyball. My rec league team is pretty terrible, but we actually played a couple of competitive games Tuesday night. I will be ready for this sport to wrap up though and softball season to start.

Wednesday: Rest day. Got to have lunch with Dear Abby for work. It was pretty awesome. She asked me for some advice on things.



Thursday: Was supposed to be a 6-mile tempo run, but it didn't happen because I set myself up for failure.

Wednesday night I met up with some friends for happy hour since I had some free time in my schedule. My plan was to grab a drink or two and call it an early night, but we were having a ton of fun, and I stayed way later than expected. Got home late, woke up early for work and fell asleep on my sofa at 5 p.m. I was pretty annoyed at myself for blowing it here.

Friday: Spin class. Had a blast, was a great workout and realized that I missed my spin buddies. I'm glad I'll be making this class a regular thing.



Saturday: 8 mile long run. I talked about it yesterday, so won't blabber on about it here.



Sunday: 1400 yards in the pool. Felt like I was going to sink to the bottom of the pool for the first 400 yards, but then things improved slightly, and I finished feeling pretty good.

Didn't mean to disappear for almost a whole week, but got caught up in training, work and of course, so much basketball.


Friday night Terps game watch

The Terps lost last night in heartbreaking fashion, and I'm not really going to re-hash things here this morning. Last night the emotions were kind of brutal. This morning it's a little bit easier to appreciate what a great season we had and how this team made watching Maryland basketball fun again.

But instead of being all sad face about Maryland (which let's not kid ourselves, I still totally am), let's talk about running!

This weekend was busy, so I had to squeeze my long run in super early in the morning Saturday. When my alarm blared at 6 a.m. and I looked out the window and saw it was still dark, I basically didn't want to move.

My goal was to be out the door by 7, so after doing the check email/Twitter/Instagram/Snapchat routine, I got my rear in gear.

Had to dig out the cold gear from the back of my closet since it was only 33 degrees when I started.



I thought I was done with cold gear runs for the season. Sigh.

I had 8 miles on the schedule, which was the same as last week. Unfortunately I felt a lot more sluggish this time around. Not sure if it was the early morning, the cold or just in general training catching up with me, but I couldn't get moving in the first couple of miles.

Average pace was 9:27, which was a bit slower than the 9:22 average I was hoping to maintain. Oh well, not every run will be perfect.

With my run done, I scrambled through the rest of my morning routine to make it over to my cousin's house for her son's fourth birthday party. It was pirate themed and there were 24 four-year-olds running all around the house.


Me and the birthday boy

Helping run activities and getting that many kids fed was seriously exhausting.

I collapsed on my sofa afterward to spend the afternoon watching basketball. After this weekend, my bracket is pretty shot to hell (thanks for that Villanova), but I'm still alive in my survivor pool.


This is my work bracket, it's not for money.

Before we dive into how my first week of half marathon training went, let's talk tournament.


Yes I repped my Terps on my long run on Selection Sunday

Is this not one of the greatest weeks of the year? Who's excited? I know I am.

But you know what I'm actually not excited about at all? The Terps #4 seed. It's some BS. We had that #3 seed all but locked up and somehow Oklahoma, who has a worse record than us, ends up in our seed playing games in Pittsburgh, while the Terps are sent out to Columbus.

Not cool selection committee. Not cool at all.

The team's reaction says it all.

https://twitter.com/JesseYomtov/status/577229927134699521

Also, I'm fairly certain the selection committee must have been on some pretty powerful drugs this year to let UCLA and Baylor into the seeds they got while snubbing Temple and Colorado State.

Ok, ok. Done with my tournament ranting. Maybe I'll get to witness some history as the Terps knock off undefeated Kentucky in the Sweet 16. Maybe I'm living in a dream world...


Terps love - last home game of this season

Let's move on to training and stuff.

Week one went exceptionally well. I had two hard speedy workouts and a nice long run. Hit the pool twice and was supposed to get to spin class, but after a work happy hour went way late, I ended up sleeping through it the next morning. Oops.

Here's how things went down.

Sunday: Swim Day. 1400 yards. Felt good to shake things out after my failed six miler the day before.



Monday: 3x1600. Mile repeats. Brutal. But I hit my paces for all but the middle one.

Tuesday: Supposed to have volleyball but it got canceled. Unintentional rest day.

Wednesday: 5 mile tempo. Hills and tempo runs don't mix well. Lesson learned.


First shorts run of the season!!

Thursday: Rest

Friday: Spin class that I accidentally slept through. Unintentional (but welcome) rest.

Saturday: Pool day. 1400 yards. Was supposed to do my long run, but it was pouring outside all day and I wasn't about to deal with that. So I swapped my normal Sunday swim sessions for my long run.

Sunday: 8 mile long run. This run was everything I needed it to be. It was my first easier effort run of the training cycle, and while I did keep an eye on my Garmin to make sure I was hovering around my target pace, I didn't get too tied up in it. I just sort of tuned out to my music and enjoyed being outside running long distances again.



Eight miles used to be my favorite training distance. A good workout, but not too overly taxing. This run reminded me why that is.

Also of note, I ran the entire time. Usually I snag a short walk here and there on my long runs to give my leg muscles something different or to conserve energy on hills, but I was feeling pretty good the whole time and didn't stop to walk once even when a nasty headwind kicked up.

Goal pace for my long runs is 9:22. I average 9:19 on this run! Whoop!

Mile breakdown (more for my reference):
Mile 1: 9:22
Mile 2: 9:25
Mile 3: 8:59
Mile 4: 9:43 (long hill)
Mile 5: 9:14
Mile 6: 9:35 (really steep hill)
Mile 7: 9:26
Mile 8: 8:45

Let's hope this streak of awesomeness continues the rest of the training cycle. If I can keep these kinds of paces and rock my workouts like this over the next several weeks, I'll show up at Frederick ready to do some big things.

Guys, it turns out that not only do I hate tempo runs, I'm pretty bad at them too.

Something about maintaining a challenging pace over the course of several miles just really messes with my mental game. Plus tempo runs hurt way more than intervals.



Intervals you push really hard, but then you get a solid recovery pretty quickly.

With tempo runs, it's just consistent discomfort until the run is over.

So why even bother with them? Well, they're supposed to help you build a strong and speedy race day base, and since I want to go into Frederick feeling strong and speedy, my training plan is full of tempo runs.

Yesterday I set out for a five mile tempo run.

The weather was nice so I got to wear shorts for the first time all season! Whoop! Spring is in the air!



I never quite know how to approach tempo runs. Should I start out strong and try to maintain the pace consistently throughout the run or should I start out slower and look to build by the later miles?

My goal pace for each of the miles in this run was 8:37. Definitely fast for me, but doable, at least I hoped.

Here's how things actually went down:

Mile 1: 8:14
Mile 2: 8:40
Mile 3: 9:01
Mile 4: 9:07
Mile 5: 9:13

Average pace: 8:51

Welp, not quite what I was going for, but I think some of my problem was the hills in the latter miles. I was still running pretty strong and actually feeling OK on the flat parts of this run, but the hills just really took it out of me.

I probably would have been OK if the hills were steep and short, but most of these were pretty steep and at least a quarter mile long (one was a half mile). I was pushing to get up them fast, but it wasn't fast enough to maintain the speed I needed for the 8:37 pace.

At the end of the day, that's totally OK. Even though my splits weren't exactly where the training plan called for them to be, it was still a solid effort, and running hills aggressively is solid training on its own.

I still hate tempo runs, though maybe one day I will figure out how to master them (please feel free to leave advice in the comments!), and I'm actually really looking forward to this weekend's long run, so I can just run slow for the first time all week.

My first workout of my Frederick half training cycle was mile repeats. Oof. Repeats in general are no joke, but mile repeats are just kind of torture. Welcome to half marathon training!



Normally I do most of my speed work on the treadmill so that I can control my pace, but we finally, finally had a break in the cold weather yesterday. I just couldn't let a day with temps in the 50s pass by with a treadmill run.

So, I did some creative thinking about where I could find a track.

And then it dawned on me. I sort of live on one.

My apartment building takes up an entire city block, with sidewalks encircling the whole thing. Sure it's more square than oval, but it's literally right out my front door. My own urban track.

So I mapped the distance in MapMyRun, and the loop around my apartment building is somewhere between .3 and .4 miles. It took about three loops (maybe a tiny more) to equal a mile. How perfect is that?

I started with a two-loop warm up, just to shake things out and mentally prep myself for the pain that was about to follow.



Then I launched into my repeats. 1 mile fast, 1/2 mile recovery. Repeat three times.

The goal was for each of the miles to come in at 8:07. Here's how things actually went down:

Mile 1: 7:57.68
Mile 2: 8:21.95
Mile 3: 7:58.94

Totally nailed it on the first and last miles. Not sure what happened in the middle. That might have been when I got stuck behind some walkers on the sidewalk and it took me a bit to get around them. Guess that's one of the hazards of doing intervals on the sidewalk and not at an actual track.

Overall though, totally killed it on this workout, but boy were my legs aching and my chest heaving when I finished. Those half mile recovery periods were slooowwww. Lots of walking to catch my breath and make sure I was prepped for the next mile,  but I feel great about the effort.

And even though I normally despise "track" workouts, running my repeats this way actually worked well. Maybe it's because I couldn't see through my apartment building see to how far I had to go, so it didn't seem quite so long and awful. I'm sure a few people I passed more than once thought I was a big weirdo, especially those construction workers that saw me go by about 500 times, but this might just be the way I handle my repeats all spring. Puts new meaning to "running around the block."

On Saturday morning, I had plans to do a six mile "long run" to ease my way into training for the Frederick Half.

When I woke up I was having an intense internal debate about whether to do the run outside or suck it up and do it on the treadmill because it was cold.

I opted for an outside run because the thought of another treadmill run sort of made me want to cry. So I bundled up and went out to enjoy some winter sunshine.

I didn't get very far on the run before encountering lots and lots of not shoveled sidewalks in DC. Honestly what is wrong with people? The snow stopped on Thursday. It was Saturday morning. How have people not shoveled by now?


Start of the snow on Thursday morning, by the end we had like 5 inches

I was getting so angry as I was slipping and sliding all over icy patches. These are the annoyed thoughts that ran through my mind:

Do people not know that if I slip and fall and get hurt on their non-shoveled sidewalks I could sue them? I mean we live in a pretty sue happy society, shouldn't the worry that some bonehead like me will slip and fall freak people out enough that they will get off their lazy butts and shovel their sidewalks?

Apparently not in the nation's capital.

About three miles into the run, I took a turn and looked down a long hill completely covered in snow and ice. I figured that was a really good way to break an ankle or something, so I turned the other way and cut the run short.



My "run" (more like a careful glide across the sidewalks) ended up being a little more than 4.5 miles and took a really long time.

To make myself feel better after such a crapastic excuse of a run, I treated myself to a new pair of shoes to kick off training season.



I didn't realize how many miles I had put on my old pair of Wave Inspires, and when I slid the new ones on in the store, it was like running on a cloud.

Plus I'm kind of digging the new color.

I truly have no idea where February went. Going into the month, I knew it was going to be extremely stressful. I had three straight weeks were I didn't have a single free evening. It was all work, school and other commitments.

Plus the weather was just awful all month, which made for some truly miserable days.


This picture pretty much sums up my month. Bad weather and lots of school.

SPORTS

It's March! Which means we're only weeks away from tournament season starting! The Terps have locked up at least a No. 2 seed in the Big Ten.


Post-Wisconsin victory celebration

We went undefeated in the Big Ten at home (and actually only lost one game at home all season, to UVA). It's going to be so great to be back in the tournament!

The Eagles traded McCoy. I am sad.


RIP Milcetich family jerseys.

The news broke last night and I pretty much was unable to pay attention through the rest of my Operations class. But then I read this this morning, and it helped me laugh through the pain.

MILES

Even though I was super stressed and time crunched for a lot of February, I did manage to hit a bit of a pattern with running toward the end of the month.



I took my friend Zac's advice a lot and squeezed in some shorter workouts here and there to keep my sanity.

Plus I ran Love the Run 5K and trained for the St. Patrick's Day 5K and 10K. Longest run of the month was six miles, unfortunately on the treadmill. That was definitely the trend this month with the weather being so terrible.

BOOKS

Reading was definitely something that got pushed to the side this month. I had started reading the Goldfinch, which was really good, but really long, and the library took it from my Kindle and I never renewed it.

The only book I actually finished was American Sniper.



I'd been on the library waitlist forever to get this book and was so glad to finally get my hands on it. I know there has been a lot of controversy surrounding both the book and the movie and major questioning on the validity of some of the stories in the book.

Here's my take on the whole thing.

I liked the book a lot. It was a pretty fast read, and I appreciated Chris Kyle's sort of arrogant, cocky writing style. The guy was a Navy SEAL, he had some opinions on stuff, and I appreciated that he just wrote them and didn't try to sugarcoat things to appease people.

Some of my favorite parts of the book though were the parts his wife wrote. I thought the book did a nice job of showing the impacts of war on one family. Taya Kyle actually has a book coming out later this year, which will dive more into that topic. I think I'll probably read it because I thought she had a pretty honest perspective.

This book gets high rankings from me, but if you're easily offended, you won't like it.

LOOKS

With the ice/snow mess that was the entire month of February, I worked from home a lot, and therefore wore a lot of sweatpants and stuff.


Lax t-shirt from the high school days

But I did venture to the office a few times, once after a nice big Terps win and rocked some celebratory red and black.


Linh had the same idea

BABY BONUS

And because no monthly recap post is complete without some pictures of the adorable cuties in my family, here's what the munchkins sent me for Valentine's Day:

A couple of weeks ago, I threw down the registration fee for the King Crab Challenge. (That's the Frederick Half marathon, the Baltimore 10 miler and the Baltimore Half). Run all three in the same calendar year and you are rewarded with some sweet swag. Register for them all at once and you save some money on the registration fees.

I love swag and cheaper registration fees, and I was pretty excited to do all of these races this year anyway. They are some of my favorite long distance races in the area.


Pre-Frederick half 2011 (Coach Zach, me, Tracy, Ashleigh)

Frederick is the first of the bunch, held on May 3, and after this past weekend's 5K and 10K I'm feeling pretty good about where my endurance is after this winter.

I was really worried that it would be in shambles after what has felt like months of hibernation and school stress. Sure my speed is largely gone, but at least the endurance is kind of still there.


Post-race soreness is legit though. Spending a lot of time in these bad boys.

And so I spent last night crafting a training plan. It is the first time I've been really, really excited to put together a training plan and tackle half training in a long time.

Sure I've run some halfs in the last couple of years, but the training has been half-assed at best, and I just wasn't toeing the starting line with the best training under my belt.


Navy-Air Force half in September. Not well trained at all.

This time around, I'm sort of ready to actually put in the work. I think I have my school schedule under control for the moment, so I'm hopeful can carve out the time I need to do that.

I don't know that I'll be in a position to PR, but I know I want to show up on race morning feeling confident that I've done the work needed to run a strong race.


I want to be this stupidly happy after I finish the race. (This was the first time I broke two hours in a half. Cried happy tears like a baby.)

I'm excited about running for the first time in a long time, and that's a really fun feeling and it's putting me in a really great mood.

Yesterday Pacers held the St. Patrick's Day 5K, 10K and Double. It was the first time in years this race had been held, and it was on a brand new course, which was super exciting because after living in DC for a lot of years and running a lot of races here, it's hard to find a course I haven't run.


Pre-race selfie because it seemed mean to ask someone to take off their gloves to take our picture

I had signed up for the Double with Meghan, and Emily had originally signed up for the 10K, but then Saturday afternoon, yet another winter weather advisory was issued for DC, and Pacers wasn't sure they would be able to hold the 10K at all.

The race directors promised an answer by 5:15 a.m., but also said if people wanted to defer to 2016 or drop from the 10K to the 5K they could.

Emily opted to drop to the 5K, but by Saturday night, the three of us were pretty confident we weren't going to be running the race at all. Nothing sounded fun about running any race in 23 degree weather with the potential of sleet.


This pretty much sums up my feelings on the whole thing

Fast forward eight hours to 6 a.m. Sunday when I spring out of bed wide awake. The Pacers update said all the races were on and the sleet wasn't supposed to start until 10 a.m. After checking Instagram and seeing lots of other people still planning to run the race, I decided to suck it up and do it as well.

Game on!

So we get to the base of the Washington Monument where the race is going to start and line up for the 5K, and it starts snowing or sleeting or something. Cold stuff is falling from the sky.


Ideal running conditions right here!

The three of us set off, and all I'm thinking about is getting moving so I can warm up and regain feeling in my fingers. (You'll note the lack of photos in the post. My hands were too cold to mess with my phone.)

The 5K sort of flew by. Since I was running the 5K and the 10K back to back, my plan was to take the 5K nice and slow, but in my haste to get out of the house in the morning, I'd left Garmin at home. So I was totally running by feel.

I didn't push it too hard and I crossed the finish line with at least 15 minutes to go before the 10K was going to start, which meant I'd done something in the 30 minute range. (Official time from the website 29:20).

I found Meghan and we lined up to start the 10K. We ran the first mile or so together before splitting up.

I knew the 10K would be slow for me. The longest I'd run in training for this race was 6 miles, so running 9 was going to be a stretch. Plus I'd be having some issues with my right calf lately, and I wasn't sure how my legs would handle the extra distance.

I stopped to walk sometime after mile 2 because my form was falling to pieces. My calf was in knots, and was just completely destroying my stride.

But I was able to pick it up again pretty quickly. At this point though, the sleet was coming down hard, and I was getting pelted in the face with ice nonstop. Plus it was sticking to the roads, which made footing really questionable at places. I plodded along until mile 4 and grabbed another quick walk break.

When I hit the mile 5 point (or where I assumed mile five was, the marker wasn't there anymore), I walked one last time and then decided I was picking it up to get to the finish and have this race over with. I was picking up a little bit of speed until we went over a bridge. Ice + bridge = slippery, slippery road and I slowed down big time to make sure I didn't end up on my butt.

I somehow still managed to cross the 10K finish line in under an hour (59:12 official time), which was actually kind of shocking because I hadn't trained well.


I found Megan and Katie and a few other friends who had also run the double.

While the conditions were obviously less than ideal for this race, I'm actually still glad we all dragged our butts to the start line. I loved both courses. They were flat, you ran by a ton of monuments and looped the Tidal Basin. Seeing the Tidal Basin and the Potomac all iced over was actually really pretty.


Snagged this one picture of the frozen Potomac because it seemed worth it to pull my camera out for this.

And as will all Pacers races, this was extremely well organized and well run. The volunteers were wonderful, a big thank you to all of them for being out in the awful weather to help cheer us on and keep everything running smoothly.

I'm a little sore this morning, but not as bad as I thought I'd be, which gives me high hopes that I'll be able to run a strong race at the Frederick Half.