Summary for week ending Sunday, May 15, 2016:
Number of workouts: 5
Total miles run: 40.91
Average miles per run: 8.18
Miles in May: 98.38
Miles in 2016: 901.26
Tapering unofficially began last week, I suppose, if you look at it from a mileage standpoint, and continued this week, as I was traveling again -- this time in Montreal, QC for a workshop at McGill University. I had never been to Montreal before and while my hotel was seemingly ideally located to a very large park with trails, I did not have time to do any exploring (and, let's be honest, I'm not all that brave about running on trails in a strange city all by myself). I arrived late Wednesday afternoon and took the time to walk around a little but not up to the park. Thursday was a lovely and warm day, but I did not want to go exploring park trails in the morning when I had a firm morning scheduling commitment -- even just going out and back cannot be assumed to go without hitch. Thursday evening I was late getting back to the hotel -- 7 p.m. -- far too late to try to explore the park, so I did a few miles on the treadmill in the hotel.
I had not considered that I was in Canada and that in Canada, things are not really done in miles. I started the belt with numbers that made sense for my treadmill at home and wondered "Why is this so slow??" Fortunately I quickly put two and two together (I am a scientist, after all) and got it going, but then had to do math the whole time to try to tick off the mile splits on my Garmin at the right times. Who wants to have to do math during a run?! It was a decent run, if a bit zzz because I didn't take any music in with me and there was nothing worth looking at on the TV that was right in my face on the console; and nothing of interest out the window, which faced a small parking lot and a Subway across the street.
I had hoped to have time to go up and for a run in the park at the close of the workshop Friday afternoon, but the weather was no longer pleasant -- it had begun raining and was gloomy, and with rain threatening I passed on the park exploration again. And then, being actually quite exhausted from having to be thinking scientifically and being social all day, passed on running on the treadmill again too. Instead, I got up early Saturday to do another ~5 miles (~8K) on the treadmill. There was an older gentleman walking on the machine next to me, but he kept to himself and I kept to myself and had another pretty zzz run that did its job. It's been a while since I did any mileage on the treadmill.
So I did not run as much during the week (for the second week in a row) that I had hoped to/thought I might. Legs were feeling pretty fresh for the last long and tough workout on Sunday, which was 2 mi E + 15 mi M + 2 mi E. The day was decent enough -- cool-ish and though it had rained a lot overnight, it held off during the day. I thought I would do the M miles at around 7:40-7:45 and my legs felt good enough that they kept turning them out at more like 7:35, even when I tried to back off a little bit to be more 7:40-ish. So I just let them do it.
I had kind of thought that, if my legs were feeling it, I would run a little more than 2 mi E at the end and maybe try to get to 22 as I did not get over 20 this training cycle and that had/has me a little worried. But after 15 miles of ~7:35-7:40, anything more than the 2 E I did was going to be junk. So I did the 2 easy and called it a successful workout.
7:35-7:40 might be a little rich for another 11 miles, so unless my legs are totally feeling it, I'm going to really force them to go 7:40-7:45 (if they feel good enough for that, even).
This week the official taper begins, but that will only be formality after the last couple lower-volume weeks.
Showing posts with label treadmill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label treadmill. Show all posts
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Week #15 -- pile up the miles again
Summary for week ending Sunday, April 10, 2016:
Number of workouts: 6
Total miles run: 56.53
Average miles per run: 9.42
Miles in April: 75.62
Miles in 2016: 670.05
Spent most of the week on the treadmill. I doubled on Monday, with the evening run outside in relatively nice temperatures but a stiff wind ruining it. Had a business trip mid-week so did shy of 7 on Wednesday morning inside; could not force myself to get up early at the hotel to get in a few miles Thursday morning after a pretty late night of business socializing and then watching a terrible, late Flyers game. Two rest days last week, had to squeeze in miles on Friday and Saturday. Friday looked nice out, with a lot of lovely sun, but the temperature wasn't exactly nice and the damn wind was definitely not nice, so I voluntarily chose to run 10 miles on the treadmill instead. It felt pretty good after ~36 hr of rest. Saturday arrived with wind and snow-slash-rain and I was certainly not going to run in that if I had another option; fired the Landice back up for another ten that didn't feel quite as good as Friday but still pretty reasonable as I forced the pace to stay easy (average HR ~140).
Legs already had a little more than 35 miles in them when I started today's long workout: 2 mi E + 2(10 min T) + 10 mi E + 15 min T + 2 mi E. These workouts with a mix of relatively lengthy T and a long easy interval in the middle are tough but effective. It was not as windy as it has been recently but it was still windier than I'd like; I am heartily sick of fighting significant headwinds during my T workouts. The sun is strong and pretty warm, but the air was borderline chilly and the wind ruined it again. However, I surprised myself by feeling really good in the first two T intervals in spite of the stretches of wind in my face -- I didn't look at the pace, but ran only by effort. T effort was faster than it has been, which pleased me. 7:02 average for the first 10 min, 6:53 average for the second 10 min. The 10 miles in the middle were a bit of a drag and my legs felt on autopilot and not at all responsive. I did not expect the last 15 min T to feel very good at all, and I told myself I'd get to 10 minutes and see how it felt; I could quit at 10 if my legs were crumbling or struggling. The wind kind of felt like it had picked up a bit, but that might have been my frustrated imagination. It seemed to take a while to wind up from easy pace to T effort and my legs were heavy, but I was again surprised at how they responded to my orders to run hard -- 7:10 pace did not feel like I was overreaching on effort, and when I got to 10 minutes I just kept on through the whole 15. It was actually a bit hard to knock off down to easy again afterward, almost as though it would have felt better to keep running harder. I wanted to get my HR back down to near 140 for the last easy two miles, but at 145 bpm I did not feel that I could run any slower. My legs were on autopilot again and they would not listen when I tried to bump them down; it was 8:45 pace and, ok, fine. I was done at a little more than 19.5 miles. It's the longest workout so far this year, certainly the toughest, and I'm pretty happy with myself for getting it done with good pace and good effort. I think that race really did my system good and I think I am reaping benefits from making sure I run the easy runs easy.
Learning, learning. Next week a medium-long T workout and a 19 mile long run on Sunday with 15 mi at MP. I'm getting into the meatiest part of the training cycle. Now, if only the weather could warm up a little bit and the wind could knock it the heck off. I don't want to see snow again until November at least. Seriously! I drove up to a Flyers game Saturday afternoon in a veritable blizzard of huge, heavy, wet snow. It was very nearly a white-out. It was ridiculous. Let's be done with that, April.
Number of workouts: 6
Total miles run: 56.53
Average miles per run: 9.42
Miles in April: 75.62
Miles in 2016: 670.05
Spent most of the week on the treadmill. I doubled on Monday, with the evening run outside in relatively nice temperatures but a stiff wind ruining it. Had a business trip mid-week so did shy of 7 on Wednesday morning inside; could not force myself to get up early at the hotel to get in a few miles Thursday morning after a pretty late night of business socializing and then watching a terrible, late Flyers game. Two rest days last week, had to squeeze in miles on Friday and Saturday. Friday looked nice out, with a lot of lovely sun, but the temperature wasn't exactly nice and the damn wind was definitely not nice, so I voluntarily chose to run 10 miles on the treadmill instead. It felt pretty good after ~36 hr of rest. Saturday arrived with wind and snow-slash-rain and I was certainly not going to run in that if I had another option; fired the Landice back up for another ten that didn't feel quite as good as Friday but still pretty reasonable as I forced the pace to stay easy (average HR ~140).
Legs already had a little more than 35 miles in them when I started today's long workout: 2 mi E + 2(10 min T) + 10 mi E + 15 min T + 2 mi E. These workouts with a mix of relatively lengthy T and a long easy interval in the middle are tough but effective. It was not as windy as it has been recently but it was still windier than I'd like; I am heartily sick of fighting significant headwinds during my T workouts. The sun is strong and pretty warm, but the air was borderline chilly and the wind ruined it again. However, I surprised myself by feeling really good in the first two T intervals in spite of the stretches of wind in my face -- I didn't look at the pace, but ran only by effort. T effort was faster than it has been, which pleased me. 7:02 average for the first 10 min, 6:53 average for the second 10 min. The 10 miles in the middle were a bit of a drag and my legs felt on autopilot and not at all responsive. I did not expect the last 15 min T to feel very good at all, and I told myself I'd get to 10 minutes and see how it felt; I could quit at 10 if my legs were crumbling or struggling. The wind kind of felt like it had picked up a bit, but that might have been my frustrated imagination. It seemed to take a while to wind up from easy pace to T effort and my legs were heavy, but I was again surprised at how they responded to my orders to run hard -- 7:10 pace did not feel like I was overreaching on effort, and when I got to 10 minutes I just kept on through the whole 15. It was actually a bit hard to knock off down to easy again afterward, almost as though it would have felt better to keep running harder. I wanted to get my HR back down to near 140 for the last easy two miles, but at 145 bpm I did not feel that I could run any slower. My legs were on autopilot again and they would not listen when I tried to bump them down; it was 8:45 pace and, ok, fine. I was done at a little more than 19.5 miles. It's the longest workout so far this year, certainly the toughest, and I'm pretty happy with myself for getting it done with good pace and good effort. I think that race really did my system good and I think I am reaping benefits from making sure I run the easy runs easy.
Learning, learning. Next week a medium-long T workout and a 19 mile long run on Sunday with 15 mi at MP. I'm getting into the meatiest part of the training cycle. Now, if only the weather could warm up a little bit and the wind could knock it the heck off. I don't want to see snow again until November at least. Seriously! I drove up to a Flyers game Saturday afternoon in a veritable blizzard of huge, heavy, wet snow. It was very nearly a white-out. It was ridiculous. Let's be done with that, April.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Week #7 -- deep into winter
Summary for week ending Sunday, February 14, 2016:
Number of workouts: 7
Total miles run: 47.35
Average miles per run: 6.76
Miles in February: 91.95
Miles in 2016: 276.37
The weather was all kinds of wretched this week, so I only got outside twice. Did today's 13-mile mix of tempo and easy running on the treadmill, too, because I didn't want to subject myself to an hour-forty-five of 15F-feels-like-1F even though it was super sunny. I opened the curtains on the windows next to the Landice and pretended I was running outside somewhere warm, as the sunlight through the windows was actually quite toasty on my right side. I stared at my in-progress accolades wall while I worked through 2 mi E + 5x5 min T + 60 min E; that last half hour of easy running got to be a real drag, but getting a good look at that unicorn medal from a year ago can still bring the motivation.
Supposed to warm up a bit this week after a messy day tomorrow, but lots of rain forecast on the warmest day so it might as well not be warm for all the outside running I'll be likely to do that day. Winter is starting to wear on me; a stretch of dry 30s and 40s would be welcome.
Number of workouts: 7
Total miles run: 47.35
Average miles per run: 6.76
Miles in February: 91.95
Miles in 2016: 276.37
The weather was all kinds of wretched this week, so I only got outside twice. Did today's 13-mile mix of tempo and easy running on the treadmill, too, because I didn't want to subject myself to an hour-forty-five of 15F-feels-like-1F even though it was super sunny. I opened the curtains on the windows next to the Landice and pretended I was running outside somewhere warm, as the sunlight through the windows was actually quite toasty on my right side. I stared at my in-progress accolades wall while I worked through 2 mi E + 5x5 min T + 60 min E; that last half hour of easy running got to be a real drag, but getting a good look at that unicorn medal from a year ago can still bring the motivation.
Supposed to warm up a bit this week after a messy day tomorrow, but lots of rain forecast on the warmest day so it might as well not be warm for all the outside running I'll be likely to do that day. Winter is starting to wear on me; a stretch of dry 30s and 40s would be welcome.
Monday, February 8, 2016
Data crunching
I bought my treadmill a year ago, in early February. Up until that point, whenever I needed to get a workout done and was unable to do it outside, I used the Precor machine in our gym at work. I did a lot of quality stuff on it -- many threshold workouts and at least one 19-mile marathon-pace session (2 mi easy + 15 mi MP + 2 mi easy). I ran a 1:34:46 half-marathon off training that involved those workouts on that machine, so I feel they were doing a lot of good. Having done so many miles on it (I can almost guarantee no one else at work ran as much on that thing as I did) I had a very good sense of pace and effort on it; 7:30 on the treadmill felt quite a lot like 7:30 on the track, if not a little harder. Whatever the treadmill said I was running more or less felt like the same effort outside, and when I was doing ~7:10/mi T workouts, I felt comfortable and in control at that pace setting on the Precor.
I was very pleased to acquire my own machine for convenience reasons, but I quickly discovered during my first T workout at home that 7:08 on my Landice felt nothing like 7:08 on the Precor at work. I felt like I was flying, and I had to really, really work to maintain the pace. By this time, I had a heart rate monitor with my Garmin and made sure to use it while running on the treadmill as electronic proof that I had actually done the workout as much as for the HR information itself. I did not have the HR monitor for very many workouts on the Precor (approximately 10) as I have had for the Landice (40+), so there isn't a large bucket of data for the work treadmill. Comparing the average pace/average HR data from both treadmills doesn't show a dramatic difference between pace settings. It may be that the Precor data isn't a large enough sample size to be significant against the larger group of data from the Landice; there is quite a bit of scatter, too. Whatever the reason, this comparison did not show unequivocally that I was working harder on the Landice. I'll admit this disappointed me somewhat. I'd wanted to see those Precor data points way offset, but the results say what they say. Regardless of what the data points told, I knew what I was feeling. The Landice felt fast. There had to be a way to show that.
I set up an experiment.1 I measured the length of the belt and then timed its revolutions at different pace settings. My first experiment averaged 3 trials timing 5 revolutions at a range of pace settings, from 1.5 mph up to 8.6 mph mostly in steps of about 1 mph to cover what I would ever be likely to run on it. I later also did a trial averaging 3 trials of timing 10 revolutions with a similar range in mph but adding a few more steps in the higher range (8-8.7, where I would expect to do my threshold running); it was easier to time 10 revolutions than 5 at faster speeds. From the time per revolution data, I was able to calculate actual mph and convert to actual pace, which I then compared to the theoretical pace based on the machine's setting.
At all settings, there was a significant delta -- the belt was moving faster than what the console claimed. Aha! So I was not mistaken; what felt faster really was faster. I plotted the data; I was expecting some linear dependence where I could calculate some constant I could use to estimate how fast I really ran (e.g., if, based on treadmill settings, I ended up with an 8:15 average mile for my workout, what was my real average pace?), and was confounded when the plot did not show any such dependence. See below (plot from the 5 revolution data set).
The plots for both the 5 and 10 revolution experiments have the same features, so I expect what I see is real. At low mph, there is a very large difference between the setting and calculated pace (more than a minute per mile); the difference jumps up between 1.5 and 2.5 mph, then, as mph increases, the delta decreases -- to a point, where it stabilizes between 5 and 7 mph; a slight increase at 8 mph before suddenly stepping down again at mph greater than 8, where it appears to stabilize again.
Well, this all looked weird. How should I treat this odd relationship? I never, ever run below 5 mph on the treadmill as part of the recorded workout, so in coming up with a correction factor I could ignore that region, which includes the curving part. The great majority of the miles I've put in on the treadmill are below 8 mph (only T workouts go faster, and they are not generally representative of the bulk of the running I do inside), so I could set aside those strangely-offset data points too. I'm left with data points that form a basically straight line with a slight upward slope due to the slight increase in difference at 8 mph.2 (See below; plot from the 10 revolution data set, similar obtained for 5 revolutions.)
Using the slope of that line, I calculated adjusted pace for each mph setting; then, I plotted expected pace and adjusted pace for the range of mph settings I typically use to obtain a correction factor (the equation of that line):
Even though the calculations confirmed what I felt to be true, that the treadmill is faster than it says it is, I still thought that somewhere in the heart rate data would be the smoking gun to prove the calculations represented something real. Over the year-plus that I've had the Garmin with the HR monitor, I've racked up about twice the amount of HR data from running on the roads as I have from the treadmill. I've had fun playing with that data too -- correlating HR to altitude, temperature, etc. There is considerable scatter due not only to those factors, but others such also to terrain differences3 -- for example, some times I was in better shape than others or not recovered; some of those workouts are hillier than others, which can skew HR depending on whether I try to run even effort or even pace. Even with all the scatter, there is still a general slope correlating HR with pace. I wanted to compare road HR data (where, assuming reasonably accurate GPS, the reported average pace can be assumed to be actually what I ran) with the treadmill HR data. To cut down a little bit on the scatter, I limited the road data set to runs done in Delaware. The trend is still obvious regardless of the remaining scatter. By plugging in the as-obtained average treadmill place data into the equation from the correction factor plot, I obtained adjusted pace data, which I then plotted with the road data. The treadmill points fall right into the thick of the road points.
The calculated pace of the treadmill looks like it's comparable to the road pace, based on my heart rate. At last: I'm satisfied, and when I'm aiming at a target pace running inside, I can adjust the treadmill mph in good faith.
See anything I missed taking into consideration in my data crunching? Please let me know!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1Note: experiments were performed with no one running on the treadmill. It can be expected that the weight of a person running would create some drag on the belt, slowing it relative to no weight on it at all. I cannot judge how significant that would be for me at 110-115 pounds. All data analysis treats this as negligible. Perhaps in the future, in the interest of scientific accuracy, I'll redo the experiment and have someone else do the timing while I'm running those speeds.
2Perhaps someone with experience/knowledge of motors could explain to me why it would work so inconsistently in this fashion.
3I deliberately treat trail workouts separately (due to GPS accuracy issues, mostly).
I was very pleased to acquire my own machine for convenience reasons, but I quickly discovered during my first T workout at home that 7:08 on my Landice felt nothing like 7:08 on the Precor at work. I felt like I was flying, and I had to really, really work to maintain the pace. By this time, I had a heart rate monitor with my Garmin and made sure to use it while running on the treadmill as electronic proof that I had actually done the workout as much as for the HR information itself. I did not have the HR monitor for very many workouts on the Precor (approximately 10) as I have had for the Landice (40+), so there isn't a large bucket of data for the work treadmill. Comparing the average pace/average HR data from both treadmills doesn't show a dramatic difference between pace settings. It may be that the Precor data isn't a large enough sample size to be significant against the larger group of data from the Landice; there is quite a bit of scatter, too. Whatever the reason, this comparison did not show unequivocally that I was working harder on the Landice. I'll admit this disappointed me somewhat. I'd wanted to see those Precor data points way offset, but the results say what they say. Regardless of what the data points told, I knew what I was feeling. The Landice felt fast. There had to be a way to show that.
I set up an experiment.1 I measured the length of the belt and then timed its revolutions at different pace settings. My first experiment averaged 3 trials timing 5 revolutions at a range of pace settings, from 1.5 mph up to 8.6 mph mostly in steps of about 1 mph to cover what I would ever be likely to run on it. I later also did a trial averaging 3 trials of timing 10 revolutions with a similar range in mph but adding a few more steps in the higher range (8-8.7, where I would expect to do my threshold running); it was easier to time 10 revolutions than 5 at faster speeds. From the time per revolution data, I was able to calculate actual mph and convert to actual pace, which I then compared to the theoretical pace based on the machine's setting.
At all settings, there was a significant delta -- the belt was moving faster than what the console claimed. Aha! So I was not mistaken; what felt faster really was faster. I plotted the data; I was expecting some linear dependence where I could calculate some constant I could use to estimate how fast I really ran (e.g., if, based on treadmill settings, I ended up with an 8:15 average mile for my workout, what was my real average pace?), and was confounded when the plot did not show any such dependence. See below (plot from the 5 revolution data set).
The plots for both the 5 and 10 revolution experiments have the same features, so I expect what I see is real. At low mph, there is a very large difference between the setting and calculated pace (more than a minute per mile); the difference jumps up between 1.5 and 2.5 mph, then, as mph increases, the delta decreases -- to a point, where it stabilizes between 5 and 7 mph; a slight increase at 8 mph before suddenly stepping down again at mph greater than 8, where it appears to stabilize again.
Well, this all looked weird. How should I treat this odd relationship? I never, ever run below 5 mph on the treadmill as part of the recorded workout, so in coming up with a correction factor I could ignore that region, which includes the curving part. The great majority of the miles I've put in on the treadmill are below 8 mph (only T workouts go faster, and they are not generally representative of the bulk of the running I do inside), so I could set aside those strangely-offset data points too. I'm left with data points that form a basically straight line with a slight upward slope due to the slight increase in difference at 8 mph.2 (See below; plot from the 10 revolution data set, similar obtained for 5 revolutions.)
Using the slope of that line, I calculated adjusted pace for each mph setting; then, I plotted expected pace and adjusted pace for the range of mph settings I typically use to obtain a correction factor (the equation of that line):
Even though the calculations confirmed what I felt to be true, that the treadmill is faster than it says it is, I still thought that somewhere in the heart rate data would be the smoking gun to prove the calculations represented something real. Over the year-plus that I've had the Garmin with the HR monitor, I've racked up about twice the amount of HR data from running on the roads as I have from the treadmill. I've had fun playing with that data too -- correlating HR to altitude, temperature, etc. There is considerable scatter due not only to those factors, but others such also to terrain differences3 -- for example, some times I was in better shape than others or not recovered; some of those workouts are hillier than others, which can skew HR depending on whether I try to run even effort or even pace. Even with all the scatter, there is still a general slope correlating HR with pace. I wanted to compare road HR data (where, assuming reasonably accurate GPS, the reported average pace can be assumed to be actually what I ran) with the treadmill HR data. To cut down a little bit on the scatter, I limited the road data set to runs done in Delaware. The trend is still obvious regardless of the remaining scatter. By plugging in the as-obtained average treadmill place data into the equation from the correction factor plot, I obtained adjusted pace data, which I then plotted with the road data. The treadmill points fall right into the thick of the road points.
The calculated pace of the treadmill looks like it's comparable to the road pace, based on my heart rate. At last: I'm satisfied, and when I'm aiming at a target pace running inside, I can adjust the treadmill mph in good faith.
See anything I missed taking into consideration in my data crunching? Please let me know!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1Note: experiments were performed with no one running on the treadmill. It can be expected that the weight of a person running would create some drag on the belt, slowing it relative to no weight on it at all. I cannot judge how significant that would be for me at 110-115 pounds. All data analysis treats this as negligible. Perhaps in the future, in the interest of scientific accuracy, I'll redo the experiment and have someone else do the timing while I'm running those speeds.
2Perhaps someone with experience/knowledge of motors could explain to me why it would work so inconsistently in this fashion.
3I deliberately treat trail workouts separately (due to GPS accuracy issues, mostly).
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Week #4
Summary for week ending Sunday, January 24, 2016:
Number of workouts: 6
Total miles run: 40.80
Average miles per run: 6.80
Miles in January: 140.31
Miles in 2016: 140.31
Due to cold and other weather-related issues, I spent most of this week's miles indoors. At least this weekend's two runs were in front of the window full of daylight, which is probably the only thing that kept them from being total drags. It was a bummer to have to trade my only daytime runs of the week for indoor workouts, but there absolutely was no running outside on Saturday and it would have been slippery and risky to try it on insufficiently plowed roads on Sunday. I had difficulty getting into a groove where time seemed to pass itself quickly. I probably need to vary the grade more often while I'm running on the treadmill. It's not going to be very helpful in general if I keep it at 0% all the time. It's just easier that way (in more ways than one), but if I have to pay attention to changing the grade and/or pace, it might keep the run more interesting. Well, this was the last week of maintenance and quality workouts are now on the schedule; there will be plenty of paying attention to changing the pace for many of those.
Number of workouts: 6
Total miles run: 40.80
Average miles per run: 6.80
Miles in January: 140.31
Miles in 2016: 140.31
Due to cold and other weather-related issues, I spent most of this week's miles indoors. At least this weekend's two runs were in front of the window full of daylight, which is probably the only thing that kept them from being total drags. It was a bummer to have to trade my only daytime runs of the week for indoor workouts, but there absolutely was no running outside on Saturday and it would have been slippery and risky to try it on insufficiently plowed roads on Sunday. I had difficulty getting into a groove where time seemed to pass itself quickly. I probably need to vary the grade more often while I'm running on the treadmill. It's not going to be very helpful in general if I keep it at 0% all the time. It's just easier that way (in more ways than one), but if I have to pay attention to changing the grade and/or pace, it might keep the run more interesting. Well, this was the last week of maintenance and quality workouts are now on the schedule; there will be plenty of paying attention to changing the pace for many of those.
Friday, January 8, 2016
Common cold, and how it's changed me
I don't mean the illness. I'm healthy on that front, have been since I picked up a Canadian cold virus in Toronto in December 2014; I do my part to avoid grabbing another somewhere. I mean the kind that is outside everywhere, permeating my every cell and leaving me almost as miserable as I would be if I were sick.
I grew up in Iowa. Winters are not kind in that state. Some years they start early, with snow and misery happening even in October, and some years they linger into April, when you'll be surprised with a cold and damp snow mid-month just as you're starting to think you might be in the clear. In Iowa, you're almost guaranteed at least a week of shatteringly cold nights and daytime highs that struggle to reach even zero Fahrenheit, and these are almost always accompanied by a razor wind that intensifies the effect. On such days, even wearing glasses hurt, the frames resting on the bridge of my nose and feeling like two needles sucking every last iota of warmth away. The rest of the time, it's just your normal freezing cold, sometimes snowing, sometimes icing, sometimes crystal-blue-sky sunny; always, always cold.*
Given the 30-ish years I spent in this yearly tundra, you'd think that I'd have built up some kind of immunity to it. I now live on the East Coast, where it gets cold in the winter, but typically not that kind of cold. A stretch of days in the 20s is about as bad as it gets, with rare forays into deeper chill; average highs are in the 40s for the winter months, which, when you think about it, should actually feel quite tolerable compared to Iowa where the average highs are about ten degrees colder. The problem is that I very quickly acclimated to the milder winter; I was already having more and more difficulty handling the cold with every year that I lived in Iowa, and after one winter in Delaware, I had softened almost completely. I seldom go back to Iowa for the Christmas holiday anymore, generally due to some outright wretched traveling experiences at that time of year, but also, in large part, because I simply cannot stand the temperature. The last time I went, the warmest it got the whole week was on Christmas day: ~25 degrees. And it felt splendid. (Is it not a sad thing, when the cold is so awful that you are uplifted when the temperature manages to climb to 20? 20 is not warm!)
During the second half of my graduate school tenure, I started up running seriously again. It had been a few years since I ran with an almost-every-day regularity, and when winter came, I did not put it back on the shelf because I was afraid it would be too difficult to start it up again; also, I didn't want to quit running. I would not stoop to running on the very short indoor track at the Field House or, even worse, on a treadmill.** I went out. I ran after the day's work in the lab, so it was dark and the daily high temperature had long sunk with the sun. It was usually well below freezing, and sometimes I had to slather polymers on my exposed face to protect it. My stipend was not generous, so I did not have an array of expensive technical running gear, either. In fact, I had one long-sleeved shirt that was made for running and was not cotton. Of course, cotton is the worst base layer, but unless I wanted to wash that one technical shirt every single night (naturally, I did not), long-sleeve t-shirts were all I had. Until Santa brought me a lined, nylon Adidas jacket in 2002,*** I also did not have any good, lightweight outerwear; I had sweatshirts and a fleece that I loved. (One particularly cold night, I wore the running shirt and the fleece together, and when I was done, I had frost spread across my shoulders. I was amazed at this evidence of how well the running shirt and the fleece worked to wick moisture away to the outside.) I had two pairs of tights and two pairs of nylon pants, one of each I'd had since high school.
One of the attractive aspects of running is that you don't actually need expensive clothes to run, just whatever is adequate to protect from the elements, but now that I am no longer a poor graduate student or post-doc, I can allot a larger portion of my discretionary spending to lighter-weight, better-performing technical running gear. And looking back, I sometimes can't believe how much running I did weighed down by sweats and cotton long-sleeves getting damp and clammy against my torso. It was all I knew then, and I went out, night after bitterly cold night, and got some miles in. If it was "nice" (in the 30s or warmer), I might stay out for 45 minutes or an hour. However, if it dropped below 20, it got to the point where no matter how long I ran, my muscles struggled against the cold to get and stay warm; I usually would not stay out longer than half an hour under those conditions. I would only hang up the shoes and say "no thanks" if the temperature was in the single digits.
I used to be tough.
My years of running in Delaware winters have completely recalibrated my toughness. While snow is certainly not unknown -- see winter of 2009-2010, three giant storms with gross snowfall totals; last year seemed overly snowy in my opinion as well -- there have been several where snow was a stranger. In the winter of 2011-2012, I don't think there was a single measurable snowfall and I ran in shorts most of the season while training for Boston. I'm not completely soft; I will run in shorts until the temperature goes below 40. For the first few years, I ran outside all winter, taking the day off if it snowed or was unusually chilly and I didn't feel like braving it. Then, my workplace opened a small gym with treadmills.
I had never liked the treadmill. I very seldom had used one, because I was so averse to the very idea, and the only time I did use one for a significant stretch was when I was rehabbing a stress fracture in my foot and my PT didn't want me out on the pavement until well after it no longer gave me discomfort. I could not believe how slowly time passed while running on that thing at the Y. I forced myself not to look at the display screen; it would only discourage me to see that what had felt like twenty minutes was, in fact, five. I hated that I had to go to the Y late to make sure that I wouldn't have to wait for a machine. I hated every single thing about it, so when my foot healed, I intended never to go back to one. But then winter came, as it always done, and I needed to train through it for a spring marathon. I had no issues with rearranging the running schedule to get miles in if inclement weather interfered with my schedule, but there were weekly speed sessions that were hard to get done if I couldn't use the track or flat park, whether due to lack of daylight or snow or ice cover. Reluctantly, I took advantage of the treadmill at work.
It wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. Seldom did anyone else use the gym after work, and I had the workout room to myself most of the time. There was a TV in the room, but it was offset on the wall so I couldn't really watch it; I'd have it on just to prove to myself that time was indeed passing in the real world. I did quality workouts on that machine and some very long miles; threshold workouts and long runs with race-pace in the middle up to 19 miles. The treadmill miles kept me in good shape for my races, and my attitude about running on a machine shifted. My first choice would always be outside, if I had that choice, but even in a relatively mild winter, bad weather would crop up at a bad time. I did not dread those days anymore from a mental standpoint.
The only problem with the treadmill at the gym at work was that it was at work, and work is not a walkable distance from home. There would be days when it would not be prudent to stay at work and run, due to a storm arriving; there were days when weather would prevent me from going to work entirely. Once, I did a 15-mile race-pace workout there and when I emerged, it had snowed several inches, making driving home on as-yet unplowed roads a challenge. After a couple years of this, I finally sat down with myself and faced it: I had not liked how the weather could force me to use a treadmill, but I eventually acclimated to running on a machine; now I did not like how weather could force me to not be able to use that machine. Last year, I decided I'd make the plunge and splurge on my own. In February, I bought a Landice 7 Cardio. Since then, I've had a weird relationship with it. It was a snowier-than-usual winter and it served its purpose wonderfully; I no longer had to worry about getting to/from work to get a workout in if the weather was poor. Bad weather seemed always to hit just when I wanted or needed badly to get outside for a long run -- I needed long, hilly road work to prepare for Boston but it was hard to get out on many Sundays because of ice, or snow, or rain. I did a lot of long running on the Landice and it did its job, I liked the results, but I hated to have to use it. I found it dryly amusing that I had spent so much money on something I hoped I wouldn't have to use.
It was cold on Wednesday this week. The temperature never reached 40, and when I went out to run after work, it plummeted as twilight moved in. My toes went cold and then numb-ish before even half a mile. It's odd how overly-cold toes can both have no feeling yet also feel twice too large inside the shoes. After another 15-20 minutes, the feeling started to come back, which led them to feeling painfully hot for a few minutes before settling into being fine. By the time my toes had recovered, the rest of me was starting to feel too cold. I had not quite dressed right; after a mile or so, I'd wished I'd had tights on under my pants, another light layer over my long sleeves, and my real running gloves rather than the little stretchy ones. It's been since last March that it's been this cold -- cut me some slack for not getting it right on the first day out. I had wanted to do 6 miles, but I wasn't feeling it and stopped after 5.3, which is three laps around the park with lights on its path.
Thursday was slightly warmer, but I wasn't even going to give it a chance. I hit the treadmill at home and ran 10K. I am too soft now to want to run in sub-40F darkness. If it were daylight, I would have been more willing, but the combination of cold (that is, below 40) and dark is too off-putting anymore. I have been on the treadmill three out of four running days this week. Those nights of running outside unless it was single digits are long, long gone.
---------------------
*There are some days in the dead of winter in Iowa where there will be a lovely, beautiful anomaly and the high gets to 50-60-maybe even close to 70. While you should enjoy the diversion, do not trust it. Tomorrow -- maybe even this afternoon -- the cold will regain its bitter grip. Don't leave your winter coat at home.
**When I lived near Philadelphia as a post-doc, I did not trust to run outside in the darkness, so I ran on the indoor track on the Temple University campus. It was a great facility: 5 laps to the mile and wrapped around the upper reaches of the Liacouras Center, with windows providing views of the city. I tried to squeeze as many miles in as I could without having to take the later trains home, and I credit the work I did on this track as a large part of the reason I spent 2004 running PRs. I got in a solid base where running 7-7:30 miles was comfortable. When I think about running on that track, I can still smell the mix of working-out people and the track's flat, rubbery surface. I would have preferred to run outside, but this was an acceptable alternative. If there had not been this indoor track available, I don't know if I would have deigned to use a treadmill or would have steeled myself to run on roads I was not completely comfortable running. After about two years in Pennsylvania, I moved back to Iowa for a couple years, and it was back to running outside, even in the darkness.
***One of my all-time favorite jackets; it's a hot orangey-red color with dark gray stripes. I still wear it, but not usually while running.
I grew up in Iowa. Winters are not kind in that state. Some years they start early, with snow and misery happening even in October, and some years they linger into April, when you'll be surprised with a cold and damp snow mid-month just as you're starting to think you might be in the clear. In Iowa, you're almost guaranteed at least a week of shatteringly cold nights and daytime highs that struggle to reach even zero Fahrenheit, and these are almost always accompanied by a razor wind that intensifies the effect. On such days, even wearing glasses hurt, the frames resting on the bridge of my nose and feeling like two needles sucking every last iota of warmth away. The rest of the time, it's just your normal freezing cold, sometimes snowing, sometimes icing, sometimes crystal-blue-sky sunny; always, always cold.*
Given the 30-ish years I spent in this yearly tundra, you'd think that I'd have built up some kind of immunity to it. I now live on the East Coast, where it gets cold in the winter, but typically not that kind of cold. A stretch of days in the 20s is about as bad as it gets, with rare forays into deeper chill; average highs are in the 40s for the winter months, which, when you think about it, should actually feel quite tolerable compared to Iowa where the average highs are about ten degrees colder. The problem is that I very quickly acclimated to the milder winter; I was already having more and more difficulty handling the cold with every year that I lived in Iowa, and after one winter in Delaware, I had softened almost completely. I seldom go back to Iowa for the Christmas holiday anymore, generally due to some outright wretched traveling experiences at that time of year, but also, in large part, because I simply cannot stand the temperature. The last time I went, the warmest it got the whole week was on Christmas day: ~25 degrees. And it felt splendid. (Is it not a sad thing, when the cold is so awful that you are uplifted when the temperature manages to climb to 20? 20 is not warm!)
During the second half of my graduate school tenure, I started up running seriously again. It had been a few years since I ran with an almost-every-day regularity, and when winter came, I did not put it back on the shelf because I was afraid it would be too difficult to start it up again; also, I didn't want to quit running. I would not stoop to running on the very short indoor track at the Field House or, even worse, on a treadmill.** I went out. I ran after the day's work in the lab, so it was dark and the daily high temperature had long sunk with the sun. It was usually well below freezing, and sometimes I had to slather polymers on my exposed face to protect it. My stipend was not generous, so I did not have an array of expensive technical running gear, either. In fact, I had one long-sleeved shirt that was made for running and was not cotton. Of course, cotton is the worst base layer, but unless I wanted to wash that one technical shirt every single night (naturally, I did not), long-sleeve t-shirts were all I had. Until Santa brought me a lined, nylon Adidas jacket in 2002,*** I also did not have any good, lightweight outerwear; I had sweatshirts and a fleece that I loved. (One particularly cold night, I wore the running shirt and the fleece together, and when I was done, I had frost spread across my shoulders. I was amazed at this evidence of how well the running shirt and the fleece worked to wick moisture away to the outside.) I had two pairs of tights and two pairs of nylon pants, one of each I'd had since high school.
One of the attractive aspects of running is that you don't actually need expensive clothes to run, just whatever is adequate to protect from the elements, but now that I am no longer a poor graduate student or post-doc, I can allot a larger portion of my discretionary spending to lighter-weight, better-performing technical running gear. And looking back, I sometimes can't believe how much running I did weighed down by sweats and cotton long-sleeves getting damp and clammy against my torso. It was all I knew then, and I went out, night after bitterly cold night, and got some miles in. If it was "nice" (in the 30s or warmer), I might stay out for 45 minutes or an hour. However, if it dropped below 20, it got to the point where no matter how long I ran, my muscles struggled against the cold to get and stay warm; I usually would not stay out longer than half an hour under those conditions. I would only hang up the shoes and say "no thanks" if the temperature was in the single digits.
I used to be tough.
My years of running in Delaware winters have completely recalibrated my toughness. While snow is certainly not unknown -- see winter of 2009-2010, three giant storms with gross snowfall totals; last year seemed overly snowy in my opinion as well -- there have been several where snow was a stranger. In the winter of 2011-2012, I don't think there was a single measurable snowfall and I ran in shorts most of the season while training for Boston. I'm not completely soft; I will run in shorts until the temperature goes below 40. For the first few years, I ran outside all winter, taking the day off if it snowed or was unusually chilly and I didn't feel like braving it. Then, my workplace opened a small gym with treadmills.
I had never liked the treadmill. I very seldom had used one, because I was so averse to the very idea, and the only time I did use one for a significant stretch was when I was rehabbing a stress fracture in my foot and my PT didn't want me out on the pavement until well after it no longer gave me discomfort. I could not believe how slowly time passed while running on that thing at the Y. I forced myself not to look at the display screen; it would only discourage me to see that what had felt like twenty minutes was, in fact, five. I hated that I had to go to the Y late to make sure that I wouldn't have to wait for a machine. I hated every single thing about it, so when my foot healed, I intended never to go back to one. But then winter came, as it always done, and I needed to train through it for a spring marathon. I had no issues with rearranging the running schedule to get miles in if inclement weather interfered with my schedule, but there were weekly speed sessions that were hard to get done if I couldn't use the track or flat park, whether due to lack of daylight or snow or ice cover. Reluctantly, I took advantage of the treadmill at work.
It wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. Seldom did anyone else use the gym after work, and I had the workout room to myself most of the time. There was a TV in the room, but it was offset on the wall so I couldn't really watch it; I'd have it on just to prove to myself that time was indeed passing in the real world. I did quality workouts on that machine and some very long miles; threshold workouts and long runs with race-pace in the middle up to 19 miles. The treadmill miles kept me in good shape for my races, and my attitude about running on a machine shifted. My first choice would always be outside, if I had that choice, but even in a relatively mild winter, bad weather would crop up at a bad time. I did not dread those days anymore from a mental standpoint.
The only problem with the treadmill at the gym at work was that it was at work, and work is not a walkable distance from home. There would be days when it would not be prudent to stay at work and run, due to a storm arriving; there were days when weather would prevent me from going to work entirely. Once, I did a 15-mile race-pace workout there and when I emerged, it had snowed several inches, making driving home on as-yet unplowed roads a challenge. After a couple years of this, I finally sat down with myself and faced it: I had not liked how the weather could force me to use a treadmill, but I eventually acclimated to running on a machine; now I did not like how weather could force me to not be able to use that machine. Last year, I decided I'd make the plunge and splurge on my own. In February, I bought a Landice 7 Cardio. Since then, I've had a weird relationship with it. It was a snowier-than-usual winter and it served its purpose wonderfully; I no longer had to worry about getting to/from work to get a workout in if the weather was poor. Bad weather seemed always to hit just when I wanted or needed badly to get outside for a long run -- I needed long, hilly road work to prepare for Boston but it was hard to get out on many Sundays because of ice, or snow, or rain. I did a lot of long running on the Landice and it did its job, I liked the results, but I hated to have to use it. I found it dryly amusing that I had spent so much money on something I hoped I wouldn't have to use.
It was cold on Wednesday this week. The temperature never reached 40, and when I went out to run after work, it plummeted as twilight moved in. My toes went cold and then numb-ish before even half a mile. It's odd how overly-cold toes can both have no feeling yet also feel twice too large inside the shoes. After another 15-20 minutes, the feeling started to come back, which led them to feeling painfully hot for a few minutes before settling into being fine. By the time my toes had recovered, the rest of me was starting to feel too cold. I had not quite dressed right; after a mile or so, I'd wished I'd had tights on under my pants, another light layer over my long sleeves, and my real running gloves rather than the little stretchy ones. It's been since last March that it's been this cold -- cut me some slack for not getting it right on the first day out. I had wanted to do 6 miles, but I wasn't feeling it and stopped after 5.3, which is three laps around the park with lights on its path.
Thursday was slightly warmer, but I wasn't even going to give it a chance. I hit the treadmill at home and ran 10K. I am too soft now to want to run in sub-40F darkness. If it were daylight, I would have been more willing, but the combination of cold (that is, below 40) and dark is too off-putting anymore. I have been on the treadmill three out of four running days this week. Those nights of running outside unless it was single digits are long, long gone.
---------------------
*There are some days in the dead of winter in Iowa where there will be a lovely, beautiful anomaly and the high gets to 50-60-maybe even close to 70. While you should enjoy the diversion, do not trust it. Tomorrow -- maybe even this afternoon -- the cold will regain its bitter grip. Don't leave your winter coat at home.
**When I lived near Philadelphia as a post-doc, I did not trust to run outside in the darkness, so I ran on the indoor track on the Temple University campus. It was a great facility: 5 laps to the mile and wrapped around the upper reaches of the Liacouras Center, with windows providing views of the city. I tried to squeeze as many miles in as I could without having to take the later trains home, and I credit the work I did on this track as a large part of the reason I spent 2004 running PRs. I got in a solid base where running 7-7:30 miles was comfortable. When I think about running on that track, I can still smell the mix of working-out people and the track's flat, rubbery surface. I would have preferred to run outside, but this was an acceptable alternative. If there had not been this indoor track available, I don't know if I would have deigned to use a treadmill or would have steeled myself to run on roads I was not completely comfortable running. After about two years in Pennsylvania, I moved back to Iowa for a couple years, and it was back to running outside, even in the darkness.
***One of my all-time favorite jackets; it's a hot orangey-red color with dark gray stripes. I still wear it, but not usually while running.
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