Tommy Neal’s Training Camp
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Just a quick update and there will be a longer post at the end of the week. We’re a few days into Tommy’s training camp. After taking some time to recover from Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston, Tommy came out to North Carolina to get in some intensive work on balancing his diabetes management with his high caliber training. Yesterday was a track workout over at Duke to take detailed notes on insulin dosing, carbohydrate intake, and pacing. Sorry, no specifics on the workout … except to say that even including the recovery intervals, Tommy went through 9K on the track in about 30 minutes! Blood sugars spot on – 100 about halfway through and 102 after his cool down run of 4 miles or so. Friday will be a paced tempo run with detailed note-taking again.
Tommy has been looking over the questions that have come in for him and I’ll post a blog interview at the end of the week. So, if you have any other questions, get them in!
Happy Trails,
Missy
Updates and random thoughts
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
I’m back to a regular training week this week. It was nice to take a break from my long run last week and, even without a long run, I got in about 85 miles and almost 3 hours of elliptical time. Back to business this week, though. I got my hill repeats in yesterday morning, 20 x Damn It Hill. A neighbor walking her dogs saw me finishing up and asked how many times I had run up “the big hill.” When I told her twenty times she asked me, “Why?” Awkward moment. We stood there staring at each other for a moment until I finally shrugged and said something stupid like, oh I don’t know. I guess I should file that one away with the secret long runs lesson.
I’ll run my long run tomorrow and I plan to up it to 60K. Hubby goes in early tomorrow so he gets up at 4:00am and leaves by 5:00am. Perfect. I can start my run by 6:00am and finish in time to take a shower, eat lunch, get some life-saving coffee, and have been hard at work for hours when he gets home. I can’t repeat this lesson enough times: the family loves your long runs when they don’t realize how much time a long run takes! The post-long-run coffee infusion helps tremendously with maintaining the facade of running ease. And, again, I can’t say this one enough either – it’s a good idea to suggest that take-out be picked up on his/her way home to help with the facade!
Saturday will be another tempo run. I’m not sure yet what the distance will be. I’ll wait to see how I recover from the 60K to decide. If I stick with the rotating schedule, it should be 10K. I’ll wait, though.
So, now I find myself at the random thoughts section of this post.
The amount of spam comments that I get bombarded with here is just ridiculous! Most of them are embedded with links for drugs, especially v1agra (mispelled on purpose). Oh yeah, of course that matches up so well with a blog on diabetes and running.
Next week is going to be a busy but really cool week. I have a guest runner for the week. Tommy Neal, who just became the second ever diabetic runner to compete in Olympic Marathon Trials, is visiting for the week. It’s a “training camp” sort of week so it’s full of work. So far the weather forecast is looking great. Hooray for NC’s usual lack of winter wonderland! Sorry, I can’t tell you the workouts, though. When the paycheck depends on outrunning the competition, Tommy’s workouts don’t get published. I would say that it’s not rocket science, but … it is! I’ll be getting up early all week to get my running in before Tommy even rolls out of bed, but he’s on a two hour time difference so it doesn’t require much of a schedule change for me.
I have my winter garden started. In NC, it’s possible to start some lettuce this early and cover the seedlings on nights when the temps will drop into the 20s. I got my peas started and a few of them are already coming up. It’s going to be a while before they need stringing up, though. I’ve also found that starting carrots in the fall and keeping them protected during the winter makes for some great carrots early in the spring. But, I never got the carrots started this year. Oh well. I have an area that I’ve been working on to make a little cottage garden and I hope I can carve out enough time to complete that by spring, but it’s looking doubtful because of the amount of work I’m inundated with lately. I have four raised planting beds edged with stacked stones (from going around collecting rocks from everywhere I run and see piles of big rocks in the woods). I’ve made a cobble stone sidewalk that curves through it with cobble stones that my hubby got from the Habitat for Humanity Restore. We also found some cast iron yard furniture at an estate auction and I’m making a slate patio for the chairs. I’ve planted 10 Knock-Out Roses (5 pink and 5 red) in two of the raised beds. And I’ve planted a couple camelia bushes. Okay, the rest of it, though, is a mud pit right now. And, I have to get the picket fence panels up to keep the deranged deer out of there. And, I still haven’t finished painting the panels, fixed the broken pickets, or dug holes for the fence posts yet either. But, I can look out my office window and see what has been done and imagine how good it will look when the rest of it’s done!
I had a stupid low the other evening. These are the kind of lows that hit you like a bat and make you look like a rambling idiot and which make you feel like you tied on a big drunk or something. I have no idea why it hit me like that; actually, I rarely figure them out. I was downstairs and my meter, my open bottle of dex tabs, my bottle of water, and my husband were all upstairs. We have a bell, by the way, for emergencies – I’m supposed to slam my hand down on the bell to ring it. The bell was in the bedroom, though, and all the things I wanted were upstairs. I was in the kitchen. Yes, yes, I know – isn’t there food right there in the kitchen? Remember: this was a stupid low. I had enough sense about me to know that I needed my meter so that I could write down the exact time, what I ate, and what my blood sugar was. Stupid lows make me lose any sense of time and make it difficult to remember what I just did seconds ago. I’ve found that the best way to prevent overcorrecting the low is to write it down and wait. So, I bounded upstairs, ran around the corner to my office, grabbed my meter and dextabs off the desk, flew back around the corner (slamming my office door shut behind me), dove into the chair, and tried to mumble to my husband that I had a bad low. I sort of knew what I was doing and saying, but he sat there and looked at me like I was crazy. I tried again – I’th b-loooow, wud time idit???? Usually after one of these stupid lows, I get asked about the whereabouts of the bell, the glucagon, etc. Shouldn’t those things be checked on prior to a stupid low? Sheesh!
I’ve been fighting off the wicked cold that my husband had. Somehow, I’ve managed to fend it off … barely. I’m downing astragalus and vitamin C. I have some sinus stuff and that “I might be getting sick” fatigue, but so far it hasn’t hit me full strength. Fingers crossed. He was sick! Fingers crossed for sure! I decided to cancel on a talk on campus last night that I really wanted to hear because I didn’t want to be out late in the cold rain with an almost cold and then get up early this morning to run in the cold rain with an almost cold.
Well, I could keep going on with random thoughts, but I now have to return to my work – break time has expired. I’ll take some pictures and try to get some short video snippets next week with the flip cam. I’ll also try to get an informal interview with Tommy for the blog. Let me know if you have any questions you want me to ask him for the informal interview!
Happy Trails!
Missy
Rolling along ….
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
It’s been a busy week and, unfortunately, it’s been the kind of busy that results in nothing really to show for all the stuff I’ve done. So, here it is Wednesday night and I’m trying to get a blog post done so that I can’t distract myself from work tomorrow. Bob always says that our house is never cleaner than when I have a due date riding on my back.
This morning I had to get up at about 4:30 so that I could lift weights and get in some time on the elliptical before the sun came up. That’s the kind of week I’ve had. But, on the flip side, it meant I actually got to go for an afternoon run today! And … we had steak and salad for dinner which is one of my most favorite meals of all time.
My return to some sort of training has been going much better than I ever would have guessed. That’s encouraging. I ran last week’s 50K long run in a surprising 3:37. I decided that I should skip the long run this week because they have been getting faster each week, I’ve been adding to my hill bounding each week, and the tempo runs have been going well (with the exception of Saturday’s 5K tempo when the miles and paces caught up with me, which doesn’t need to be hashed out here except to say I crawled in with a 6:40 last mile – ugh).
So, knowing that I would be sans long run tomorrow, I decided to get in my 10 mile loop and do a nice tempo on it. I call the loop Lake Orange 10 or LO10 for short. It’s part single track trails with makeshift foot bridges over the swampy area, part dirt farm roads, part paved road, and some rolling terrain. It’s my fave run at home and it’s literally steps out my front door. I’ve run this loop for years now and my best time on it stood at 66:30. As soon as I got started today, I thought, hmmm I might be able to give that old best a run for the money today. And, before I knew it … game on. We runners, we be sick! Who the hell races themselves against a random stopwatch time on a course at home??? But, I completely surprised myself with a 64:33! I walked inside the house and announced to Bob: I’m ready to race! His reply: oh, okay. Bob is not a runner. That was probably obvious.
As much as I’d like to run a 50K tomorrow, I won’t. I’ll skip the long run this week and get back to it next week. My body will be secretly happy about it. It’s all good because I am so swamped with work to get done anyway and, well, 50K eats up a good bit of the morning. But, I’m really the only one in the house who knows how time consuming it is because of the practice of sneaking in the long runs discussed in an earlier blog post. Another bonus to skipping the long run is not having to run 50K in 20 degrees tomorrow morning. Plus, I can get a little more sleep in the morning. Hmmm, I think I might have some idea how I ended up not training anymore. I remember a running friend once told me that he figured out how to avoid injuries for certain: don’t run.
Well, that’s where the week stands for now. Time to take a quick shower and go to bed early!
Happy trails!
Missy
Saturday, January 14th, 2012 – Olympic Marathon Trials
Saturday, January 14, 2012
It’s a big day. The Olympic Marathon Trials take place in Houston. A young guy named Tommy Neal will become the second diabetic runner in history to compete in the Olympic Marathon Trials. It has been twelve years since I became the first to do it. It’s been a long twelve years. Every time I thought that someone else could do it, something made them quit before they got there. I have waited for this day for a long time.
I thought all week about all the things I might say in this post, but I think I’ve decided that I am just going to leave it at that today.
Congratulations Tommy!
Missy
A little bit of diabetes history
Monday, January 9, 2012
In honor of the ninety year anniversary of Leonard Thompson’s miraculous recovery, here is a little diabetes history for you from a section of my dissertation writing.
Even though the earliest known references to diabetes date back as far as 1550 BC with the Ebers papyrus, an Egyptian document of medical treatments, for the three thousand years leading up to the discovery of insulin very little progress occurred in terms of understanding and treating the disease. Doctors documented the known symptoms of extreme thirst and excessive urination and then waited for the patient’s rapid wasting and death to confirm the diagnosis of diabetes. In the mid-eighteenth century, the presence of sugar in the urine became the key diagnostic criterion for the disease, assessed either by the attraction of ants to the patient’s urine or by the less palatable “taste test” and, eventually, by chemical urine tests. Attempted treatments varied widely across time and space, but the course of the illness continued unabated. As Elliott Joslin, world renowned diabetes physician, explained:
The average duration of the life of diabetic children was surely less than a year, and that of the largest group of diabetic children in the world under careful observation was less than two years. Undernutrition was the only way of prolonging life, and was permitted by the despairing parents simply for the hope set before them that someone would discover something which might save their child.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, as American physicians and researchers made huge strides in conquering infectious diseases through vaccinations and sanitary practices, diabetes care had “undergone no essential alteration.” The picture remained dismal until 1921.
Throughout the summer and fall of 1921, Frederick Banting and two colleagues, Charles Best and J. Bertram Collip, worked in a small, under-funded lab at the University of Toronto practicing experimental treatments for diabetes on whatever groups of stray dogs they could round up. They made the dogs diabetic by removing their pancreases and then tried to cure the dogs by injecting concoctions from ground-up parts of these organs. When they made the leap from keeping the lab dog, Marjorie, alive for seventy days to injecting their experimental extract into the buttocks of public ward patient Leonard Thompson on January 11, 1922, the researchers put into play what has been called the greatest miracle of modern medicine.
By the end of 1921, the team’s incredible successes in the lab brought them to the proposition of their first human trial. In spite of tremendous conflict among the group, replete with arguments, fist fights, and relentless threats over secret recipes for their new pancreatic serum, the university’s administration contracted with Toronto’s Connaught Laboratories to help the team purify their serum, increase its production, and attempt treatment in human subjects. In January, they selected a fifteen year old boy who was dying in the public ward of the Toronto General Hospital to be given injections of the experimental extract. Thus, Leonard Thompson, a charity case at a public hospital, became the first person saved by insulin. The first injections, on January 11, had little clinical effect, but a second set of injections with a new batch of serum on Monday morning, January 23, produced incredible results. By the week’s end, Leonard Thompson was very much alive.
Missy
Still moving forward in 2012
Sunday, January 8, 2012
I got in 98 miles this past week, ran another 50K long run, did my hill repeats, and ran a 10K-ish tempo run yesterday. So far, so good. The hill repeats felt hard. They’re not for time but rather for form, bounding up the short, steep hill and then getting down it with a quick leg turnover even if the steps aren’t all that long. If the hill were longer and less steep, I would be trying to work on the length of my stride but not so much with the short steep nature of Damn It Hill. The long run went well. Yay! Then I had the tempo on Saturday. I was dreading it when I awoke with a 180 blood sugar. I’m not sure where that came from. My first inclination was to skip the tempo but then I decided that it was an opportunity to work on how to fix that kind of problem since it could always come up on a race day. I added an extra unit of Humalog to the morning regimen and that did the trick. The tempo went well. I call it 10K-ish because it wasn’t quite 10K. I forgot that for the 10K all road loop I had to go about 50 meters past the driveway where I turned around. I ran 39:33, so I guess it would have been a tad over 40 minutes with the extra 100 meters (50 meters past the driveway and the 50 meters back). There were a couple places on the loop that I have a piece measured so I was able to check my pace a few times and I was pretty much on 6:30 pace give or take a few seconds for pretty much the whole way. It felt manageable but a little quick, which is how a tempo is supposed to feel. Next week is a 5K tempo. A side note on tempo runs: they don’t always go well, so don’t put a lot of stock in what they mean; they’re supposed to be for training, not racing against yourself.
This coming week will be another week of hill repeats, a long run, and the 5K tempo. I’ll also try to get over the 100 mile barrier for my weekly mileage. There really is something about clearing the 100 mile mark for the strength it gives you. It takes years, though, to get to the point that your body can tolerate it without risk of injury. I can pretty easily jump up to that range now without breaking down because I’ve probably accumulated years of 100 mile weeks by now. Plus, I handle high mileage well and I’m smart about listening to how my body feels and adapting to what it’s telling me. If I need to run really slow, I have no problem doing that. I tell people that I work with that if they can imagine walking a certain distance (if they had enough time to do it) then there should certainly be a pace at which they can run/jog that distance until they become accustomed to it.
Well, one week from today is hopefully going to be a big day. I’ll tell more on that little teaser when we get closer to Sunday, January 15th. I think it will be some news to which a lot of you will say, finally!
On that note, stay tuned and Happy Trails!
Missy
Well, three days into 2012 … so far, so good!
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
I have my weekly training schedule written out. I have a little flicker of enthusiasm. Nothing really hurts right now. I feel pretty rested and caught up on sleep for the most part.
I’m starting out with a phase called “hills and drills.” I usually like to run this phase for 6 to 10 weeks, but I may cut it off at 4 weeks. It depends how I feel after 4 weeks of it. So, what it involves is pushing my weekly distance up to about 160 kilometers (which is about 100 miles); running hill repeats of a short and steep hill once/week; getting in a long run which is starting at 50K or about 31 miles; and running a tempo pace for part of a run on the weekend (which allows for a local race if one fits in my schedule and isn’t too early in the morning). The other elements I’m adding in are: drills and/or strides after an easy run, weights and core strength work, and stretching.
So far, I’ve got one week in. I ran some unstructured hills last week just to “sneak” it in on myself – it went okay. I ran 50K for my long run and it went fine. I was a little tired on the end of it but it went fine. I got weights and core work in twice. And, I ran a ten mile tempo on Sunday morning. I ran real hill repeats this morning so I’m on my way for week number two. I’ll stick with 50K for the long run until I get comfortable with training again. I also want to make sure nothing starts hurting! I always run a fair amount of miles but structured training has not been a staple for a while. There have been the occassional tempos and such, even the back-to-back weeks of hard running, but having an actual structure that I plan to stick to … better make sure my body says okay before I raise the bar at all!
I don’t have a race plan yet. I have been trying and trying to figure this one out, but I think I just need to wait until I get through some training before I commit to races. I have a couple goals and even a specific race way out in the future but trying to nail anything down before I know how everything starts falling in place … can’t do it. I can do some time trials in my weekend tempo runs for now. I think that once February rolls around I can revisit the idea of races.
Now that I think I have my training figured out, I have to catch up with the few people that I’m advising on their training. I’m so OCD about advising people on their training plans! I make all kinds of notes and lists and practice schedules over a few weeks … and then I revise … and then I revise again … and then I pull out a calendar and decide that things aren’t put together right … and then I worry that there are missing pieces … and …. Well, you can see where that goes until I feel like it’s planned out. And, I say that I “advise” a few people because I don’t really see myself as coaching. I believe that coaching is a whole other level than what I’m doing. I don’t think you can coach someone without being able to see them run … in person … at least a couple times each week … and especially for workouts. But, I can advise on training: offer my opinion, plan out a training schedule, help with race selections, problem solve when issues arise.
Okay, back to where I am with things. I got in about 90 miles last week and about 220 minutes on the elliptical. I ran the 50K in 3:51 and the 10 mile tempo on trails in 70:19. The 50K left me a bit tired the next day but the ten mile tempo wasn’t a problem. Well, I couldn’t run faster than 70 minutes (or, obviously, I would have) but it didn’t leave me wiped out the next day. Also, a disclaimer on the 50K: I had to break for a few minutes in the middle to go lock my cat on the screen porch because she kept trying to get into my little cooler with my Gu and meter and all. After the third 10K loop with my cooler on the ground again, I’d had it with all that.
Three days into 2012 and I’m feeling enthusiastic. Now I’m just hoping that the weather doesn’t become completely nasty.
Happy Trails,
Missy
It’s time for those New Year’s Resolutions!
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
I’m trying to get back to work today and since I’m having very little luck with getting anything of substance done, I decided that it would be a good time to post on the blog!
I’m still feeling very enthusiastic about doing some actual training in 2012. Oh, and I want to run some races (or else there would be no reason to do workouts). Right now, my inclination is to stick with local races for the shorter stuff and then pick some marathons and ultras to travel to. I have a few of both (local and out-of-town) in mind but I haven’t taken the time to think about a schedule and to figure out what will and won’t work. So, that’s where I am with that.
I have gotten started back to core work and weight lifting, but missed a day because of the holiday blitz. And, I finally feel normal running again after the debacle that was the Tucson Marathon. I had fun running with friends but that course busted my legs.
I don’t really like training in the cold weather, but at least in NC winter is short-lived. It shouldn’t be too terrbily bad if I plan some flex days in here and there. I don’t believe in doing workouts in bad weather. It takes so much out of you that you don’t really get the training impact. What do I define as bad weather? Hmmmm, let’s see, I definitely call cold and rainy a bad combo. I also think that extremely windy is not good. Snow isn’t bad if it’s fresh and not too deep (but I wear yak-trax and only do something like hills). Ice is a definite no.
Since my focus is ultras and an occassional marathon, the most important training will be long runs. But, tempos are important as well. Local road races can easily serve as great tempo workouts. I will also add in a real workout every week (or nearly every week) to try to get some speed back in my legs. It will take a bit to get used to having an actual schedule for my running, but once I get used to it I’ll be fine with it. It would be nice to have a training partner or a team nearby again, but I don’t have the flexibility with my daily schedule any longer to make something like that work … so, I haven’t even looked into it. Still, I may try to find a group doing track workouts and try to join in once/week or so. I really hate getting on the track but as my coach used to say, the track doesn’t lie. If you want to know where your running is heading, get on the track.
I better get my head back into a work mode now!
Happy Trails,
Missy
What’s up with you?
Friday, December 23, 2011
This past semester was sooo busy that pretty much everything got put on the back burner for me except teaching and writing up my research. Toward the end of the semester, all effort went into teaching as I had three classes of mostly freshman! I love working with freshman students and watching them adapt to college but, wow, I’m glad that one is over!
As soon as I got exams graded and grades submitted, I flew out to Tucson. My flight left less than 12 hours after I got grades submitted, but I left my computer at home so that I could not even consider fretting over the emails that students inevitably send at the end of every semester when they finally realize that they are not getting a good grade in the class.
I went to Tucson for a Team Type 1 meeting put on by their main sponsor, Sanofi. A while back, I was asked about participating in an effort to develop a running program in the Team Type 1 endeavor but I was so busy with the way-too-many things in my life that I said I just didn’t have the time or energy. Then, I started thinking about it … and thinking about it … and thinking about it. The idea of helping to grow a running program, especially something that would have women with diabetes as a central focus, was just too important to pass up. So, I sent an email out: if that offer to come out to Tucson is still open, I’m game.
It was a good meeting and the program is really going to be great. There are lots of ideas, lots of great people involved, and lots of enthusiasm! Everyone was so enthusiastic in fact that a bunch of us decided to run the marathon that Sunday before jumping on planes to head home. So, um, that part of the weekend was … interesting. I, of course, have done zero training for, oh, a long time. I have stepped outside the front door and gone running pretty much every morning, but no training has occurred and long runs happened only accidently as of late. Add to my lack of fitness the 5000 feet of altitude and the elevation changes (up and down at the beginning followed by a series of downhills, some of which were fairly steep) and the result was trashed legs for ten days! I ran with two of my diabetes buddies, Marcus Grimm and Ryan Nichols. The altitude pretty much killed all three of us. I ran about 3:22 (a little under by chip and a little over by gun) and the aerobic effort felt easy even for the altitude. So, although my legs were trashed, I decided that maybe I should actually go ahead and train for a marathon again.
Now I’m trying to decide on a marathon … or maybe two or three or…. I have a research semester next semester so even though it will be extremely busy with long hours of work, I can make my own schedule and I can actually get some training in. Plus, I can plan a race several weeks in advance and not have something interrupt my plans. And, I don’t have to cancel class to travel out of town. I can schedule research trips around a race schedule, too. Hmmmm, this research semester thing is sounding great!
It’s hard to work training in even if your schedule is flexible, though, because other people don’t understand if you can’t work around their schedules. And, family can be very unforgiving. I learned when I started doing ultras that the best way to work in those really long runs was to do them in the middle of the week when everyone was at work or school. Then, replace the lost work hours with some work on the weekend. Oh, and the key to making that long run schedule work is to refrain from mentioning your ingenious idea to the fam and let them think that the few extra work hours on the weekend are a result of your hectic work schedule and unforgiving deadlines. When nobody knows that you’re squeezing it in, nobody complains about the time they think you’re taking away from their lives. So, I get up early on a mid-week morning (say maybe 4:00am) and I can get in a 7 hour run, take a shower, eat lunch, and still get in a half day of work. Since most of those ultras start somewhere between 5 and 6 am, I pretty much start at the time the races do. It gives me a little bit of training for those pre-dawn starts. The other trick to making this ingenious schedule work is to hide any long run exhaustion from the fam. That sometimes requires a lot of caffeine, chocolate, and anti-inflam’s. It makes for a great night to eat out, especially since you can eat almost anything you want after such a long run and your blood sugar still looks normal. And, at the end of the day, everyone is happy!
Let me know what’s up with you! I hope everyone is having a great holiday season. I am.
Happy Trails!
Missy
Reviving the blog!
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. It just kind of happens sometimes. Life gets in the way and when the time gets longer it gets harder to revive the blog.
My running has been on a simple maintenance mode as well lately. I’ve been putting in a good bit of “junk” mileage and throwing in the accidental tempo runs (the ones where I’m forced to run fast because I’m late for something). But, today I bumped the long run back up a little and put in a 40K. The surprising thing has been that I haven’t gotten all that terribly out of shape. I ran 2:56 for the 40K this morning and felt pretty good.
Today was a pretty good day. This was the first day in a long time that I took some time off and spent the afternoon hanging out with the hubby. We had chicken pot pie at the cafe up the road and did nothing of substance. Then we sat on the dock until it was dark out. We were watching what was going on across the lake – the guy over there is trying to rebuild a dock and hired some guys who brought the wood and supplies in a U-Haul and got it stuck in the mud after they backed into a tree in the dark. It was interesting.
So, tomorrow it’s back to educating the youth. The semester is flying by. It goes sort of like a marathon – the first part goes by so easy, then you hit that stretch where it starts to drag, then you hit the part where you can’t remember what mile you’re on, and then all of a sudden it seems like the end is coming up too fast.
Happy trails,
Missy