You know it's autumn when...

Despite continued balmy weather in Florida, you know it's autumn when:

• You no longer need to wake up at 5am to start a long run, because the sun isn't up, and it isn't sauna-temperature, until nearly 7.


• On Sundays running your long run on the treadmill is more tempting than running outdoors because it's a great way to catch the first half of the morning football games. (Also, dreadmill miles seem much faster when you imagine yourself running in for the TD.)


• Spending the rest of Sunday on the couch or at a sports bar, eating nachos, watching the afternoon games, seems like a brilliant post-run recovery strategy.



Football photo circa 1910.
Image source

• Oktoberfest beer is on tap. 'Nuff said.


• Before your morning run, you spike your coffee with pumpkin-spice creamer, and pumpkin bread is your post-run food of choice.

Peanut loves pumpkin, too!
Note: No animals were harmed in the making of this blog post.

What do you love about this season?

Rookie mistakes

This week in the "I should know better" files:
Cool morning weather tempted me into thinking I could switch my interval workout to the track, instead of the treadmill, for the first time in months. What followed was not my most graceful morning ever.

I should know better: Exhibit A
I should not attempt to run at the track on base on PT day. The track will be full of personnel in bright yellow shirts and navy shorts. Running intervals is not an option when 100 identically-dressed people in the infield are doing 100 crunches and 100 push-ups while chanting. Loudly.

Using the track under these conditions would be unpleasant at best, but more importantly the PT-ers are bound to switch between infield and track at any given time. And on PT day, I (lowly civilian) do not have the right of way.

Me at the track in 2009. (Blurry = superfast, right?)

Fortunately I'm not entirely daft. The sea of yellow shirts screamed "treadmill instead!" before I even got out of the car.

I should know better: Exhibit B
When running a "ladder" interval workout, it is not wise to start in your highest gear.

A ladder workout looks like this:
1600 meter sprint. recover.
  1200 meter sprint. recover.
    800 meter sprint. recover.
      400 meter sprint. cool down.
Given that 2 of the sprints are 1600 and 1200 meters, starting out at my normal 400-meter pace was... (how shall I put this delicately?)... f-ing stupid.

I managed to hang on through the first 1600, sucking wind and clawing at the "slow down" buttons when I finished. This should have set off the alarm bells in my brain (no not "those" alarm bells), but I let ego get in the way of reason. Each interval is supposed to be hard, but not heart-exploding, grasping for the treadmill handles merciless. You are supposed to finish feeling like you might puke, but you could run "just a little more" if forced at gunpoint. You are also supposed to get progressively faster (not slower) through each shorter distance of the ladder.

After ignoring the 1600 warning signs, I completed (what I thought was) an appropriate recovery and started my second interval (1200). I knew I was doomed in the first 200 meters. By 400 meters the treadmill handed my @ss to me. (Can treadmills laugh?) I attempted to hang on for another 800, but could not. When I stopped, I checked my heart rate. Um... 197. Not good. One minute later, still 196. Clearly I screwed up. Royally. I took a much longer recovery. I let my HR get back down out of the stratosphere, you know, to something more like 160. I salvaged the "final" 800 meters of that 1200, and completed the final 800 and 400 without further incident.

I left the gym embarrassed, which is weird, because no one else had any idea what my workout was "supposed" to be. Only I (well... and now you) know that I made a huge rookie mistake. Inside I was beating myself up, thinking I've been running this workout for years. I should know better!

Normally speedwork is the highlight of my week.
This week it was my "Doh!" moment.

Have you ever had a workout (or a race) that makes you feel like a rookie runner?

Sticking with the plan

Yesterday's plan: sprint, yoga, wine. (Sounds like a good Friday, right?)

Friday is speedwork day, and since I have made my peace with the dreadmill, I did my intervals indoors.

Workout: 1 mile warmup 6 x 400 @ 7:30 (with 400 rest interval)

This is not my fastest interval workout ever, but I haven't done a sprint workout since early July. I wanted to use this workout as a check-in on whether or not my speed has suffered from the sweltering summer heat and slogging-pace workouts over the past two months. (For those of you unfamiliar with interval training, read the notation as: six repeats of 400 meters at a 7:30 pace, with 400 meters of rest between each).

This is just the beginning of half marathon training, and I felt strong through all six intervals. In fact, I think I could have pushed a little harder. (My toes grazed the top of the treadmill a few times. Oops!) But I tried to keep in mind the sage advice from Claire over at Will Run For Beer:

"develop a plan and stick to it"

And I have a plan. So I stuck to it. (And yes, I had visions of the Will Run For Beer blog post in my head as I considered pushing just a little harder on my last sprints... But as I'm learning in the yoga challenge, sometimes what you don't do is as important as what you do.)

And since yoga has also taught me that all things in life should be in balance, my kick-butt workout in the morning required an equivalent level of debauchery in the evening. So Hubby and I made a plan to go to BBQ Heaven for their weekly wine tasting and an order of the world's most amazing smoked potato salad.

What? Yoga teachers doesn't encourage gorging on red wine + potato salad after a hard day's work? Maybe the teachers should try it sometime... It seemed like a great balance to me!

Sticking with that plan was easy.

What do you have planned for the weekend?

Cheers!

Short attention span workout

Maybe I have a short attention span because I watched too much Sesame Street as a child? Or maybe it's the daily digital technology overload?

Regardless of the reason, I get bored with stationary workouts. Quickly. To keep motivated, I gravitate toward interval training whenever I am parked on a stationary bike or dreadmill.

So a few weeks ago I convinced Hubby to join me in an in-home interval workout session:

3 x 10 minute sprints on the stationary bike, followed by 10 minutes of weight lifting and core work.

Every 10 minutes we trade off between the bike and weights. We each complete half an hour of cardio plus half an hour of strength training. All without leaving the living room. All without getting bored. This is quickly becoming my favorite non-running workout.

So today I have two questions:
How do you keep from getting bored at the gym?
and
What is your favorite cross-training or interval workout?


Photo courtesy of: The Library of Virginia

Learning to love the dreadmill

One of the things I love most about running is the time it gives me to go outside and play. I love the scenery. The fresh air. Watching surfers bobbing in the waves, waiting for their ride. Spying on dog-walkers, and wondering who is walking whom? Getting a regular tour of the neighborhood to see what new construction is underway or which neighbor is having a yard sale.

But with my perfect-year-round 68-degree San Diego days now 2,000 miles away, and a Florida Panhandle 90-degree, 95-percent-humidity summer stretching out in front of me, I am in a bit of a bind. I either have to accept a pace so slow I might as well be walking (which sort of destroys all of the progress I've made in training over the past thee years), or I have to make peace with the piece of equipment runners love to hate: the dreaded treadmill.

So I've sucked up my running pride, cast away all "dreadmill" stereotypes, and have learned to embrace my new running friend. In the mornings Kiran Chetry has become my running buddy, filling me in on all of the day's breaking news. Instead of surfers, I get to watch dancers, in the odd instances when Vh1 stops the chatter and actually plays a music video. I won't claim that the treadmill will ever replace the freedom of outdoor running, but I am learning to enjoy it, especially for interval training.

My new favorite treadmill workout:
10 minute warmup (starting at a 10 minute mile pace and gradually increasing to 9)
6 x 90 second sprints (1 min. at btwn 7:00-7:30 pace, last 30 seconds @ 6:30-6:50 pace) with 1 minute recovery (9:30 pace)
10 minute recovery and cool-down


By keeping the speed up on my treadmill workouts, I'm hoping to avoid any "damage" being done to my overall pace on my slogging, sluggish outdoor runs in the heat.


Photo courtesy of http://metaphoricalplatypus.com/
Photo link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29638108@N06/5618665304/