Sunday, October 05, 2008

How far I have fallen...

So I HTFU and started running again. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but my goal since July has been to do all my weekday runs at sub-10 min miles and my long run in my Zone 2 for HR. When I stopped running at the beginning of September, I could do 3.5 mile at sub 10 min pace and my long runs were 7 miles and Zone 2 was about a 10:30 pace.

On Friday, I managed to run one sub-10 minute mile and was dead at the end of my run.

Which was only 1.5 miles.

Seriously!

Then yesterday I went out to do a leisurely 3 mile "long" run in Zone 2.

My average pace? 12 min miles. Really! But to stay in the HR zone I kept having to slow down.

Not that I complained too much about that - I was hurting by the end of a three mile run.

Seriously!

One good thing about my long runs now and having a totally old Garmin and an old HRM which I refuse to wear both of at the same time (unlike some people, ahem Laurie) is that with only my HRM I have no clue how fast I am going, so I don't stress about being slow.

But it's all good. My obsessive compulsiveness is good for something, so that means that once I get going, I usually stay going. Two days in a row with running and I think I'll run again today. I also started going to my weight class at the gym again. Wanna talk about loss of fitness? Yeah, I pretty much had to go down to putting the lightest weights on the bar again. And lunges! Even with a pitiful amount of weight on the bar, I was in pain. So pathetic!

Well, no matter, soon I will be like a centaur* galloping around the streets of Ames!

And when you start so low, you can only go up, right?

In other news, I applied for a second postdoc in Seattle. That one hinges on the oceanographers accepting a limnologist like myself as one of their own. I always crash their parties and steal their money and I am writing a paper dissing their methods, but still! I'm such a catch!

And Lisa and I have been scheming to figure out how we can be running buddies again and we are both contemplating a return to the Hole for postdocy goodness (WTF? Apparently spell check doesn't think"postdocy" is an objectionable word?), where it all started lo these four years ago. We can run along the ocean again and see if the lady who used to run shirtless with nothing but this big white old lady bra that was three cup sizes too big for her is still there. But alas, the Food Buoy is now some posh little grocery store for the yuppies about to catch the ferry to the Vineyard, so that's sad.

*for Nitmos

11 comments:

Jenny Davidson said...

Good running plan! You will quickly regain fitness...

Laurie said...

Ha! I am still a total dork and wear both the HRM and the Garmin at the same time. Sometimes I go without the HRM but never without the Garmin. Somehow the run doesn't count unless I can download the GPS data to my computer. Hmmm, maybe that's why I am never motivated to use the treadmill...

Happy running!

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

Freakin' oceanographers! Think they're so much better than us - like their estuarial effluvia don't stink!

As an undergrad English major, I used to hang out with my brother and his pals in the American Studies department. (There were 4 American Studies majors.) They drank beer at their office parties, distinguishing themselves from the wine and cheese affairs the English department threw. (I don't care for wine.) And they played board games like Class Struggle, which had on the front a big picture of Karl Marx (the least funny of the Marx Bros., imho, even less so than Gummo).

I found it all a bit over the top, but hey, you know, they had beer. Wine, cheese and horny old English profs (who somehow managed to score all the hot female English major co-eds) wasn't a viable alternative. So I made peace with my decision to help overthrow the established order. I even had a Tee-shirt that read, "Will foment Workers' Revolution for Beer."

I've evolved. Today, it'd have to be an imported beer, or a nice micro-brew. A regular beer would barely get me out in the streets to non-violently protest the latest atrocities of Da Man.

Unknown said...

Postdocy!!!

ButterPeanut said...

hehe, when I saw the job advert for the Hole, my first thought was, "Danielle can get a job there too and we can run by the ocean! With the bra lady!"

ah, the bra lady.

hey I survived brussels...roundup to come.

Anonymous said...

I've always wanted a garmin and a HR monitor maybe Santa can bring me one.

Anyway, good luck on the postdoc application. Seattle is awesome so I hope you get it.

Marcy said...

Hmmmm maybe I should just get a HRM and only wear it. I'd probably be a more happier runner LOL

Anonymous said...

come to the whole!!!

Frayed Laces said...

Don't worry about being slow. All that matters is that you CAN run!

Unknown said...

Everyone loves a little Nitmos reference.

Nitmos said...

Nice use of centaur. And since you are the only one I've caught taking up the challenge, you win! You win nothing, of course. There was no prize. Using centaur was prize enough for all.