This is just a quick post to let people know that my friend Nat Strand, who is T1 and who won the Amazing Race, is going to be doing a live chat on dLife. You can register for free or if you just want to post a question, you can do that. The link is:

http://dlife.com/livechat

Happy Trails!

Missy

I’m not really sure what has motivated me to address this particular topic on this particular blog on this particular day. It certainly doesn’t seem to follow the interview with Tommy Neal very well. But, I will follow up on that interview with a post about the science of training and on what we know about endurance training and the importance of insulin. I’m talking to a few exercise phys people to make sure I have references and details correct. Then, I’ll get the post written up for here. And then, hopefully, there will be a bigger article in a magazine later. We’ll see how all that pans out and I’ll keep you updated.

Okay, so favorite things. I was thinking about this while I was running this morning in the 2 inches of really fluffy, wet snow that we got yesterday and last night. The ground is so warm here this winter because it’s been so mild this year that the snow is almost completely melted already and it’s not even lunchtime yet. But, it was pretty to run in early this morning. There’s something about the muffled sound and the damp, cold smell. There’s something about the way the sun bounces off the snow. It’s just beautiful. I’m not really a snow lover but a small snow like this is really special.

So, I thought I would share some of my favorite things that I thought about while running this morning.

Being the first one to wake up in the morning and standing outside to watch the sun come up – any time of year, any type of weather or temp.

Running. Period.

The smell of a hotdog vendor on a street corner in NYC.

The smell of a cigar – it reminds me of my Uncle Tex and being a kid in NJ.

Having my cat snuggle up under the sheets, press right up against my belly, and then start giving herself a cat bath – and, it’s extra special when she gives me a couple sand-paper toungue licks on my arm for good measure.

Laughing. Period.

Getting through a really difficult personal encounter (I hate confrontational things) and knowing that I handled things maturely and that I was reasonable, but that I was successful in holding my ground.

Doing something good for someone else and remaining anonymous, resisting the temptation to get a self-congratulatory pat on the back.

Chocolate. Period. Well, okay, really good, dark chocolate. Period.

Feeling the warm sun on my back while I’m working in the garden.

Having time to be in the library trolling through the stacks without knowing what I’m looking for and not worrying at all about how much time I’ve wasted.

Talking to people.

Being strong enough and fit enough to run for a really long, almost ridiculous amount of time, then taking a hot shower followed by a cup of coffee out on the back deck. If I could do that every day and not risk injury (and, of course, still have the bills paid), I would.

Sharing knowledge with others and learning from others. I could teach or go to lectures every single day of my life and never get bored with it.

A ribeye steak cooked on a charcoal grill, a big salad with ceasar dressing, and a baked potato with butter and sour cream.

Putting together jigsaw puzzles of cool scenic photographs.

Walking outside in the middle of the night when there’s a full moon.

The smell of sheets hung on the line to dry.

If I sat here long enough, I guess I could keep thinking of more and more things. Everyone should spend some time now and then to make a little list of some of your favorite things. Every time you write one down, you get this flood of thoughts and memories that go along with it. It’s fun. It teaches us to remember not to take life for granted. It makes us want to carve out some time for special things. It helps us create a life full of great memories and few regrets. It gives us perspective.

Again, I’m not sure why I felt compelled to write such a sappy post, but it probably has something to do with spring being on the way. I always get excited as spring inches closer. I’ll get back to the running and the diabetes topics next time around.

Happy trails,

Missy

On January 14, 2012, Tommy Neal ran into the history books by finally bringing a diabetic runner back to Olympic Marathon Trials. Twelve years earlier, Missy Foy became the first diabetic athlete in history to compete in Olympic Marathon Trials when she qualified for and ran in the 2000 Olympic Marathon Trials in Columbia. Tommy recently spent a week at the Foy’s home in North Carolina. With questions submitted by readers of Missy’s website and from those who have been following the new Team Type 1 Running Team (who sponsored Tommy’s training camp in North Carolina), here is an interview with this rising star on the U.S. professional running circuit.

Missy: Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. There have been a lot of questions submitted, so I’ve tried to group them together. Before we get to the questions, though, can you start out by telling us a little bit about your running career so far?

Tommy: Well, thanks for having me out here and thanks to the people at Team Type 1 for making it happen. This has been such a help. I grew up on a farm in Missouri. I actually started running because my mom made me run a mile before school every morning to use up some energy and keep me out of trouble. I became a top-ranked runner in high school and then went on to run in college for the University of Central Missouri. After college, I finally ended up in Colorado Springs, running for the Boulder Running Company’s Adidas team and being coached by Scott Simmons and Renato Canova, one of the best distance coaching combinations in the world. I had gotten my 5K time down to the low 14s and ran 29:32 for 10K and then ran 1:05 flat for the half marathon in Duluth, Minnesota in June, which qualified me for Olympic Marathon Trials.

Missy: So, at that moment, you thought your running career was taking off, right? What happened after the half marathon?

Tommy: Yeah, so shortly after the half marathon, the wheels fell off. Actually, things had started to happen even before that but I kept ignoring it. I had problems with really low energy, a series of bad workouts and races. I just didn’t feel right. I was constantly dehydrated and went from 145 pounds down to 128 pounds [note: Tommy is 6’ 2”]. Blood work showed a high hematocrit and high ferritin levels [note: iron stores]. I tried to lower my iron levels but still couldn’t keep up with training, so I went in for more blood work. My blood sugar was so high that they sent me straight to the emergency room. I felt bad, but not that bad, so I thought they were over-reacting.

Missy: I think for all of us, that day of diagnosis gets burned into our memories. I remember thinking that my running career was over.

Tommy: Oh yeah, definitely, I thought that was it. It was the nutritionist who gave me a little hope, telling me that running was actually good for my diabetes management. But, still, I just didn’t know what to expect. I couldn’t give myself a shot. The first time, I had to touch my skin with the needle first. I was like, oh okay, there it is. I would keep touching the needle on my skin, trying to find a place that wasn’t so sensitive, some place that I could get it in.

Missy: Okay, so this is probably a good place to get to the questions. The first questions: Do you use an insulin pump? How many times per day do you test your blood sugar?

Tommy: No, I don’t use an insulin pump because I’m still producing some insulin on my own. I use two different insulin pens, one with a rapid-acting insulin and one with a long-acting basal insulin. I test my blood sugar a lot. I test 6 to 10 times a day depending on what I’m doing. If it’s a workout day, like yesterday, it might come out to be ten or even fifteen times. What did we test something like five times during the tempo run?

Missy: Yeah, I think it was five times.

Tommy: If it’s a workout day, I want to stay on top of my blood sugar and prevent ketones, which can happen when I put in the hard efforts like with workouts and long runs. For racing, I have a plan for where I want my blood sugars in the days leading up to the race and it takes a lot of testing to stay on top of that. It’s not an easy thing to do so I test just about every time I eat or do something. Basically, I test a lot because I can’t make decisions about insulin and food and running if I don’t know what my blood sugar is and what it’s doing, like what the trend is. I need to know if it’s stable or if it’s going up or down.

Missy: The next set of questions deal with racing and with being a professional runner with diabetes. What is the most difficult part of having diabetes as an elite level runner? How do you prepare for races?

Tommy: The hardest thing right now is trying to balance everything. Once I inject insulin, it’s in my system and it’s not going to turn off just because my plans change. So, I have to schedule everything. I run twice a day and I work in between that. It’s really hard to make everything fit. I end up running in the dark a lot this time of year! But, even though I have diabetes, as an elite athlete I still have to push my body harder than the other guys I’m racing. And, if I think I’m sick and that there is a limit to my potential, then there is. I have to control my diabetes but at the end of the day I have to believe that I’m better than the other guys. As far as races … that’s a work in progress right now! That’s part of why I came out here. For Olympic Trials, I went with a basic plan of taking a little bit of insulin with a small breakfast several hours before the race and then stuck with water and Powergel during the race. I usually add electrolyte tablets to my water also. We practiced a race strategy yesterday with an 18 mile tempo run, a ton of blood sugar checks along the way as you drove around following me for 18 miles, and taking in Powergel and water at certain times. My blood sugar stayed pretty good. I think it was 122 at 5 miles and then stayed between 74 and 81 pretty much the whole way. You know, that’s what it’s about – you try to figure it out on these kinds of training runs.

Missy: The next set of questions all focus on your training in some way: What are your goals with running? What is your training like and what are you focusing on? What is a typical day like?

Tommy: Right now I want to run under 28.30 in the 10,000 meters during the spring track season to qualify for the Olympic Track and Field Trials. If I can keep my training in order and things continue to go as well as they’ve been going, I want to go for a win at the Penn Relays 10K. Then, this fall I plan to run a solid marathon, hopefully going solidly under 2:15. My training is really pretty typical for top level runners. I usually run between 100 and 140 miles/week with 2 or 3 hard workout sessions. The hard workout sessions usually involve running about 8 to 12 miles worth of 5:30 mile pace and maybe part of it as fast as 4:30 pace. Training at those paces and with that kind of volume will help me be able to maintain the effort I need at longer distances like that marathon. So, let’s see what was the other part of that?

Missy: A typical day.

Tommy: Oh, okay, right. I wake up at about 7 am, check my blood sugar, and then feed and water my chickens. For breakfast before my morning run, I will have a ½ cup of steel cut oats with a little of my parents’ raw honey, nutmeg, and almond milk. By 8:30, I’m out the door for my morning run, which is typically about 10 miles. I come home, check my blood sugar … it should be under 100 by then. I then fix a protein-based smoothie and adjust my insulin accordingly. My insulin to carb ratio is about 10 carbs to 1 unit. I also take my morning shot of Lantus [note: a long-acting basal insulin] then. I ride my bike to work, which is about 4 miles the hilly way or 6 miles the flat way, and eat a small snack when I get to work, check blood sugar, insulin if needed, etc. Depending on the day, I will run home or ride my bike home after work (I don’t really care what the weather is… yesterday it was -3 degrees wind chill). I will then fix dinner and have some nuts as snacks (almonds, peanuts, and cashews) while I’m waiting for my dinner to finish (maybe black beans with some veggies and spices), watch a little TV or play some video games, check my blood sugar, take my evening shot of Lantus, and then head to bed between 10 and 11. It’s not a very interesting life! And, it revolves around checking my blood sugar all the time!

Missy: Next question: Have you had to change anything about your training/coaching since being diagnosed?

Tommy: Yes, I carry Power Gels with me everywhere, just in case I start to go to low. I also do some sprints or hard uphills if I’m low when I start out the run so my glycogen stores will kick in and take care of it right away. I guess the main thing that’s different is how strict my schedule is now and how I have this constant calculator going on in the back of my head all the time … all the time.

Missy: What advice would you give to a diabetic runner about moving up to the marathon distance?

Tommy: Learn to love your gels for a quick sugar spike! But seriously, don’t increase just straight mileage, but increase the volume of your workouts too. You want to be able to run a lot but you want to run quality mileage for a good part of it.

Missy: What would you tell a high school runner with diabetes about training?

Tommy: Check your blood sugar often! Know what activities will raise your blood sugar and which ones lower your blood sugar. MOST importantly, pay attention to your diet and stick with natural foods and with low glycemic index foods like beans, steel cut oats, and vegetables.

Missy: The last question is a tough one; it’s from a sixth grader who says he wants to grow up to run faster than you! If you were offered a cure for your diabetes, would you take it and leave the rest of us behind?

Tommy: I would take it, a cure that is, and I believe so would everyone who has been diagnosed with any sickness. I would want you to take a cure if you had the opportunity and I didn’t. There’s no leaving anyone behind. There’s an old saying, “Remember, we’re all in this together.” My Grandma Doe always told me that and, well, she’s pretty wise.

Missy: Thanks for taking the time to answer questions and give all of us a peak into your life, Tommy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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