Just a quick note! I've been a bit pre-occupied this week but I promise to write after I get back from the weekend (it's duck opener!!).

 

Good luck to everyone racing this weekend! I know lots of people are doing the Twin Cities marathon and I have a bunch of teammates doing the 10 mile, too! It should be lovely weather. And then there's Nature Trax and the Grand Traverse and all sorts of things so good luck to everyone!

 

Also - I did decide on doing Whistlestop :) So I have one week to that and two weeks to my first ultra! Rock!

I'm three races behind! Well, four races, now, since I started this on Tuesday and have since run another NMTC race. Oops. I feel as though I hardly raced in summer and now all of a sudden I have a ton going on. I suppose it helps that the NMTC Fall Trail Series has started back up . . . So a quick recap of two races and more detail on my 25K!

Fall Festival 10K
So first up - the Fall Festival 10K in Port Wing Labor Day Sunday. Which already seems ages ago! The weather was lovely - it started as a nice, fairly cool day, which was nice. I needed 20 miles for the day, so I started with not quite 2 miles of warmup. Back to the starting line, take off extra clothes and off we go! The first 600 or so is downhill, followed by gradual uphill until about mile 2 that feels pretty evil by the end. I was plugging along fairly well and just when I thought to myself at not quite a mile in, "Hmmm, this is about where Marlo passed me last year," I hear her distinctive steps behind me! And away went Marlo! I spent pretty much all of the race all on my own, which seems to happen a lot to me. However! This time I was able to keep it pushing at nice even 7:15s and finishing as second woman, 11th overall and  a course PR of 44:56. I was extremely happy since I tend to have problems pushing the pace when I'm out on my own.

So then I ran one mile loops until awards - fun bobble head runners. And!! I won what I think was the first door prize I've won at a race. Free ice cream cones - yum. Since I was starting to be starving, next up was a shower, lunch, free ice cream, parade watching and then back out a couple hours after the race for the last 8 miles. Good practice for Ragnar, too, right?

This race has been consistantly having shirts that are one of my favorites for the year. Different colors and pretty designs with no ads. This year they went tech on us, a nice dark gray color that you don't see a lot with a very pretty woodsy design and no ads! Another favorite! Now, I'm not one of those people who feel that every race needs to give me a tech shirt. I like my cotton just fine, thank you, and wear them about all the time but a tech shirt is still pretty nice.

Sadly, no pictures since my camera has finally called it quits after going swimming over a year ago. I'm now taking recommendations on digital cameras.

Zapp's Loop, NMTC race
Three days later was Zapp's Loop - my second favorite (well, now it's my favorite since the Hartley race is no more) NMTC race. Though, for some reason, I always have trouble racing at Zapp's. This year, I don't think I ran a step of the race on my own, though - usually I'm all by myself on the back end downhill but there were guys everywhere! Still, it took me until the last couple of miles to start pushing the pace and I ended up coming in just a bit slower than last year. Ah, well still a good time. The water was super high this year, making for extra fun! Zapp's Loop has three river crossings - the first couple you can generally keep dry feet on if you slow down a bit and I usually consider the time lost to slowing to be worth it to keep my feet lighter for a bit. Definitely not an option this year, though! So I plowed through all the crossings, with guys right in front and behind, hoping I wouldn't twist something horribly since you couldn't really see the bottom at all and I didn't want to slow up and get passed. I'm happy to report no twisted anything. I did almost kill Randy, though! He kept slowing down on downhills (or maybe I kept speeding up on downhills?) so I tried to blow around him on a bridge. Except I didn't warn him that I was passing so we almost collided which would have been very bad for both of us. Bad single track etiquette, Sam! Luckily, we were both okay.

City of Lakes 25K
Next up was the City of Lakes 25K on Sunday down in Minneapolis - twice around Lake Harriet and Calhoun on the roads. Now, I'd run around the lakes before in college but only on the running paths where there are no hills so that's what I was expecting - a nice flat course. Luckily, my sister and I headed out to Lake Harriet on Saturday just for the heck of it where I remembered that the race was on the roads and thus, there would in fact be hills. Now, there's absolutely nothing large on the course, but it was nice to know ahead of time that some uphill would be happening. It actually ended up being pretty nice to have some hill just to switch up the muscles being used so that was good. However, it's the uphill that my knee dislikes most when it starts acting up lately so that ended up being a slight problem.

I had the goal of breaking 2 hours but mostly this was to be an indicator of whether I should be running Whistlestop or not. I wanted to know if my fitness was where I wanted and I wanted to see how my knee was doing. The race starts at the southwest end of Lake Harriet and finishes at the northeast (so we go around Harriett about 2 1/2 times total) and I decided it was better to walk a mile back to my car after the finish then walk a mile to the start. I was able to park just a couple blocks from the start, giving me time to park, hit the bathrooms and head back to my car to pin on my number, strap on my timing chip and ditch my warm-ups. I found a teammate at the start with a similar time-goal so we started out together. It felt nice and easy but the splits seemed right so when she picked it up, I stayed back and hung out around 7:45s. Not too much later, a couple of runners came up on me just a chatting away. Or rather, the woman was chatting and the guy was answering questions. I ran much of the rest of the race with them - Danny, an experience and speedy ultra marathoner (he won Voyageur in 97, I think) coming back from injury and Jenny, newer to the distance thing. Both very nice to run with.

I decided on wearing my racing flats - I hadn't worn them for anything over 10 miles before but figured this would be okay. Plus they feel nice and light. Of course, my stupid shoelace came untied. Again. Just one shoe this time, though and only once. I was able to head to the side and re-tie it and then Danny called out as he passed me so I was able to catch back up to him. For an ultra runner, he has terrible pacing, he kept speeding up and slowing down so I just went with my nice steady pace (7:40, 7:51, 15:37 for two miles (oops!), 7:43, 7:44, 7:51, 7:46, 7:49, 7:56, 7:51, 8:00, 8:06, 8:12, 7:50, finish) and let him do his thing in front and behind me. Yeah, see that slowdown for the last few miles? My knee started hurting around mile 12/13, though that wasn't the whole problem, my body seemed to suddenly not like the pace it was at. I felt SO INCREDIBLY SLOW and was happy to see that incredibly slow feeling was goal pace for Whistlestop (exactly goal pace, actually!). I worked hard on keeping some positive thinking during the last few miles - mostly centered on stopping thinking about pace and recognizing that 'I could easily run X more miles so just stop worrying and go with it'. Had I stuck on pace, I would have broken 2 hours! But I'm still happy with a 2:02. Especially as I realize that it's a 25K PR! Of course, my only other 25K was on trails but hey, minor detail right? :) I also ran a half marathon PR on my way to the 25K (they kept official Half spilts) which shows how long it's been since I've ran a road Half. Maybe I should throw one of those on my schedule next year?

So the question becomes - what did my knee not like? Was it the distance? Was it the pavement? Was it the racing flats? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. A person can legally sell their Whistlestop entry so I'm thinking about not doing Whistlestop and saving my knee for Wild Duluth. Especially since all the jerking around and uphill at the next NMTC race brought not a whisper from my knee. Looking at the splits, I realize that was about what I was sillily running during Whistlestop last year and that I lasted about half way before realizing how stupid I had been and that the pace wasn't going to last. Which makes me think if I pace smart this year with a slightly slower time goal - 3:35 instead of 3:30, then I might be okay. See me talking myself back into running Whistlestop?

The the end of summer has officially come as the Fall NMTC Trail Series has begun! I can't believe that it's already September, though - something is not quite right about that. Don't get me wrong, I think fall might be my favorite season and I LOVE the fall trail series but still . . . what happened to the last three months? Didn't we just finish the spring series?

So I took last weekend completely off, no long run for me and in fact, no run at all for me over the weekend. I did an easy run on Monday where my knee was unhappy for the first half and fine for the rest. I've started already running through scenarios in my mind of 'what ifs' for October regarding my knee, but I think I should probably calm down and wait and see what this weekend brings me. It was mostly fine on Wednesday's race, so I'm a little hopeful again. I have another race followed by the rest of my long run slated for Sunday so we shall see. The 25K on roads that I'm planning on racing next week is a big indicator, too. I don't want to run Whistlestop if I'm not in the shape I want to be in.

The first Fall Trail Race is in Superior - Brown's Point. Usually, it's on ski trails and contains some very nice parts and some evil and steep down/ups of the type that throw off your balance if you're on skis. However, the trails hadn't been mowed and the decision was made to move the race to the gravel roads around the area. 2 miles out, 2 miles back. I actually kind of enjoyed having the race on roads for a change, it was fun being able to run abreast with people where we're used to being on more narrow trails. I actually ran with someone for pretty much the whole way, which was nice and made for lots of short talking and joking. I ran even or probably negative splits - I glanced at my watch at the turn and saw 14:something and came in with 28:09. I was worried as it seemed as though there was an awful lot of downhill on the way out, but I didn't notice much uphill on the way back, so it must have been a deceptive slope. I was going hard with about 800 to go when I realized that I have a race on Sunday and I didn't want to burn all cylinders trying to race someone up the uphill finish, so I backed off a bit to make sure I wouldn't be tempted to try and race down the guys in front of me. A smart move, I think since my legs weren't sure how interested they were in going faster anyway :)

Wednesday was a good practice run for my 10K on Sunday, I think - it'll be mostly on rolling dirt/gravel roads. It'll be harder to maintain a nice pace since I tend to end up on my own out there but that will also make it a good test of mental strength to go the pace I know I can go, right?

Dear Left Knee,
I see you're still upset with me, choosing to voice your displeasure around mile 15 of an otherwise great 17 mile run. I'm sorry to hear this. Can we maybe talk about it instead of you just taking it out on me? Did you want more icing? No more yoga? A slower jump in mileage?
Love,
Sam

Yeah. I hit the Osaugie and Tri-Corridor trail with Leslie for 17 miles of fun on Saturday. I think it's good to do and I highly recommend hitting the Corridor at some point to all who are running Whistlestop. It's just nice to remember before the race what the surface you're going to be dealing with is like. I had been starting to worry about more gravel than there is and was pleasantly reminded of how nice the surface is. And also sometimes reminded of the single file running down the right hand side that went on when there were soft spots . . .

Well, my knee was vaguely annoyed throughout the whole thing. It didn't really hurt, but it had that feeling where I was aware of it and you shouldn't be aware of your knee while running, it should just be there. I had a mostly lovely run, though, even with how humid it was - the fog never really lifted and I'm actually pretty grateful for that since if the sun had come out during the run, it would have been hot AND humid. So it was hard to breathe at times but I guess that's what comes with summer.

A couple miles from the end, though, my knee started really hurting. Not enough to need to walk but enough to make me think about it. I didn't need to gimp on it and since that's my measure of needing to walk, I kept going. Turns out trying to slow down made it hurt worse so I don't think the cause was us boogieing our way along after the turnaround at goal pace or faster. Though, it WAS better to slow down and sort of squat more on the uphills. Very strange. I went home and iced it and it behaved walking around so I guess I'll go back to icing after all my runs.

So . . . now what? I'm scheduled for a 20 this coming weekend but when I whined about that, Leslie's had a very reasonable response along the lines of "would you rather run the 20 and not be able to do Whistlestop or do one less 20 and be fine at Whistlestop?" Hmmmmm. Excellent point. At this point, I'm not sure if it's something I should be worried about or if it's still annoyed from all the sudden kneeling and twisting at yoga when I've barely kneeled at all since February or March. So I guess it's another week of paying attention to how the knee feels and I'll probably make the long run decision later in the week. I'm about to head out for some trails so we'll see how that goes!

Today I experienced something that I don't think I've ever encountered before . . .

I wanted to run on the treadmill. It was beautiful outside and I did my easy 3 miles inside. On a treadmill. Voluntarily.

I know. What's wrong with me, huh?

Actually, I think it was part making sure I could stop if my knee was pissed and part not wanting to run up Chester today with the un-eveness and not knowing where 3 miles was at. It ended up being fairly nice, though. Sometimes it's good to force myself through a treadmill since it's much harder for me than it should be.

So something else that was new for me - I went to an official yoga class for the first time on Saturday. My sister goes every Saturday and since I was visiting her for the weekend, I got to go along. It was actually really nice. It was two hours long and I didn't even notice, I thought it was more like one hour. Turns out yoga is not so good for my knee though - lots of kneeling and I think too much twisting the leg out and holding. The kneeling I knew was a problem right away and made sure to kneel on a blanket and try to kneel uneven, keeping less weight on my left knee but I didn't really think about the twisting at all. So my knee was rather unhappy with me the next morning. Which axes my plans to check out yoga classes at the Fitness Center. I did look back into Pilates, though, and am annoyed to only find a morning class. Maybe there'll be a different schedule come fall.

So once my knee made some noise, I opted for being smart (yay, Sam!) and took a few days off to make sure it wouldn't freak out on me too much. My knee being unhappy could also be partially due to a jump in mileage I may have just done, too . . . I went for a test run yesterday and things seemed pretty good so I decided on a short run today, tomorrow off and go back to my scheduled long run on Saturday.