February summary

today was a shorter run 6.9 miles, however on a more flat road. I found out that if you turn in the opposite direction to Lake Mary Upper or Lower there is a flat as a table piece of road. so I unleashed my legs an tried to run the fastest i could but still feeling comfortable. nothing above 152bpm.
my average pace was 8:12min/mile. thats including all the ascents before hitting the flatness of flagstaff ;)
here is the course i ran today. boring as hell, but fast.

today's run is sponsored by the Heart

one interesting thing. i looked at my running summary for Feb. it turned out that i ascended the height of mt everest plus some. i find that pretty amusing, since i am in the middle of J. Krakauer's Into thin Air. Amazing book by the way. It's about the infamous 1996 Mt. Everest ascent.

February summary

anton krupicka

i love the dude's blog. really good music and a lot day to day info on his training.
beneath is a video of Delta Spirit, name of the record is Trashcan. obviously stolen from Anton's blog. thx man!

snowy, windy and beautiful

it snowed the whole night and the entire morning. i guess there is about 12 inches of fresh snow. i was the first person to jog on the snowy FUTS (Flagstaff Urban Trails System) south of NAU campus. it's cold today, about 23oF and windy.

i was curious how my ankle was going to hold up on the rugged, snowy trails. it did ok, however it felt a bit weak (my foot wasn't as stable as the healthy one).

i did 8.5 miles in 1h15min.

swallen interior ankle

during the night  my ankle swell a bit. kept it in ice for most of the day and opted to take a day off from running. instead i went to the gym, to work on my upper body.

http://www.physicaltherapyfirst.com/library_ankle_48

From http://www.physicaltherapyfirst.com

This often occurs in overweight, middle aged women and men as a result of degenerative changes in the tendon. The rupture may be partial or complete with pain below or behind the inside ankle bone (medial malleolus). A flattened arch is common. Anti-inflammatory treatment (physical therapy modalities), orthoses, and surgical debridement are common treatments.

So I run like a middle aged woman :)
also this injury can be incurred by strenuous training, rough terrain and too much running (?).

I will ice it for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow I will take it for a spin. 6-7 miles.  

4 days out of 6

a planned 13.8 mile long run. i thought i would feel my back from Saturday's kayaking but it was ok. it was my legs that were aching, especially the inner part of my left ankle.
as usual i started at NAU and headed along s lone tree rd to lake mary rd.
Weather was great, warm, sunny, NO wind.
I thought I'd be more fresh since I ran only 4 days this week. but my legs especially the quads felt tired and lacked the "spring". 

kayaking on verde river

this was a lot of fun. first time in a real kayak. in the beginning (2h out of 3.5h) it felt as if sitting on an ice skate, trying to balance my act. the first few minutes were exciting and the best part was that the water was almost at a standstill. i knew i was going to land in water sooner or later because there were some small "dips" planned down stream as my friend Chuck told me :)

Water nice and calm. Me scared shitless :)

Rapid - upper 2 lower 3 class :) Covered no problem

it took me 7 miles out of 10 to start enjoying myself. but still i was extremely concentrated on minding all the rocks and keeping the kayak afloat ;)
All in all it was one of the most interesting and exciting experiences i had in a long time. can't wait to repeat this!
for the record i did not fall into the water.

Red dots showing where the pics were taken. We paddled along the Verde River. 10 mile ride

Mom and Chuck had a major kayak leakage

strong sun and and chilly wind. it does feel 7000'

distance: 9.1 miles
time: 1h18min
pace: 8:41m/mile

today i felt a lot better and stronger. i can feel fatigue accumulating in my legs. it takes me about 40minutes to get rid off the rust, however as i mentioned before the hills in flagstaff don't allow any slacking. i am really grateful for that :)

check out the map of today's run. remember metric scale.

low energy

in the morning I did 31.4miles (1h55min) on my road bike. I went to Lake Mary and back. on the way back I hit a really hard head wind. after coming home I felt a little tired, but I was still planning on changing shoes and going for a 7 mile jog. I did a mile and turned around, I couldn't manage to climb the hill closest home.
At home I felt my level sugar drop so I ate a few small pieces of salmon with guacamole on the side and more than enough Andes (choc and mint). I gave myself three hours rest and made a second try. After 2 minutes I turned around.
Nothing left in the tank. Tomorrow I'll feel better however I'm looking forward to my long run on Sunday. Hopefully my glycogen level will be restored and legs fresh for a 15.5mile run. The rest of the week I will rack up as many miles as possible trying to recuperate for Sunday.

tempo run

today I had the pleasure to do an LT.
length 7.5 miles
pace: 8:43min/mile
duration: 1h04min

today I managed only 3x4minutes. I tried to keep my heart rate above 80%. These hills in Flag are going killing me :) not one spot of flat land in this town. I try to do at least half of my "spurts" on a flat road, but the closest thing resembling flat is Lake Mary Road. So by the time I get there I've already done 2 4min spurts uphill and 4 miles of semi easy jogging.

For those interested, you can see below the ascent and descent in meters.

bad day what then?

somewhat interesting article about a bad training day. it is inevitable that after a couple of weeks of hard training we stumble upon a day or a successive string of days where we feel like shit, and everything even running pisses us off. it's what we do next and how we handle this situation is really important and critical to our self-esteem and the quality of our remaining training cycle.

feeling strong

After Sunday's long run I was a bit self conscious of my stomach. However it behaved well today. About 15 minutes before the run I had two pinole (prepared by my Mom) instead of a powerbar.
Gorgeous weather today in Flagstaff, no wind, sunny, and really warm for this time of the year, 49oF.

I did 8.6 miles, pace 8:43m/mile. I felt strong and fresh today. Looking forward to this week!

snow, sleet and wind

The plan to go to Sedona was cancelled and postponed to next week.
So instead I went for a run along Lake Mary Road towards Upper Lake Mary. Jogging weather conditions where not the best however I saw one cyclist and a few joggers.

I ran 13.7miles in 2 hours. Nice and easy pace, but after an hour I felt weaker and weaker. I had stomach cramps and my calves hurt. Stomach problems where probably caused by a powerbar I ate and my calves were weakened by a midweek work out (6miles) in my vibrams.

This is the map of my today's workout. A simple but satisfying route.

Tomorrow is Monday, - recovery day.

Who am I and what I want

I was born in Cape Town but when I was twelve my parents moved back to Poland (their fatherland).
At the moment I live in Flagstaff, AZ with my Mom. She is a full time PhD student at NAU.

I've been running for two years, however most of 2011 I spent on recuperating from a knee injury I sustained during the Warsaw Marathon. Before taking part in it I ran one 10k and a few 5k races. I ran no more than 20 mpw. So this is how I blew my joint.

Since September 2011 I have started training again. I started off with 3-4 easy runs per week. Racking up no more than 20 miles. I steadily added miles and quality to my training regimen. What I mean by quality is LT runs (some call it tempo runs) and long runs (16-20 miles at a time) during the weekend. I upload all my runs to Buckeye Outdoors Training Log via Garmin Forerunner 405CX. The log can be reached by following this link.

In the following posts I will share my thoughts on my diet, runs, trails and life in general :)
I am getting prepared for my first 50 mile ultramarathon. I don't know where I'm going to run it yet but it will be sometime at the end of April beginning of May. I'm really psyched about this because I'm not a good runner yet. And it's going to take a whole lot of will power, energy, pain to get to the point where I will be able to run a 50 miler below 10-11h.

This was my today's morning 7.9 mile run. Really easy pace 8.55min/m. I still feel my quads and hamstrings from a workout a few days back.

Getting prepared for tomorrow's run in Sedona. Hopefully I will get there before 11am and I will be able to do at least 14 miles.