The Need for Speed

"I feel the need... the need for speed!"

If you are of a certain age – and I am – you don’t just know this quote and its context.  Oh no.  You’ve repeated it a few hundred dozen times.  You’ve performed the accompanying ‘round-the-world-over-the-shoulder high five.  You’ve also referred to your good buddy as your “wingman.”  And, chances are, you can sing every word of You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.”  You know – with feeling.

I digress.

I’ve been feeling the need for speed, now that my stupid IT Band seems to more or less have accepted that it’s going to run, whether it likes it or not.  Thanks to my piss-poor lungs, I’ll probably never be a fast runner, but I’d sure like to be faster.  So my training plan for the Tower of Terror10-Miler and Halloween Halfathon includes some speed training stints on my non-long run weeks.  And I got started on them recently.

First up was a session taken straight from Jeff Galloway’s Time Improvement plan for the runDisney Tower of Terror 10-Miler: run 800 meters at a pace 15 seconds faster than race goal pace, walk 3 minutes to recover, repeat for a total of four times.   Now, as I’ve mentioned before, I am a sprinter by nature.  Not a super fast sprinter, mind you, but a sprinter – I love to run at top speed for short stretches.  Distance training has been sort of a downer in that regard; I’ve been so busy building base mileage and nursing injuries, I haven’t had an opportunity to go fast in over a year.  So I was pretty psyched to tackle my first speed training task.

I have this awesome little outdoor, paved track near home.  It circles a pretty lake surrounded by trees, so much of the track is shaded – a huge plus this time of year in Florida.  I took a trip around to warm up properly and started in.  I’d set up my Runkeeper iPhone app to four interval sets of 800 meters followed by three minutes walking and wore my Garmin 10 to pause during recoveries and check my pace on the fly. 

So how’d it go?

No, no – I’ll tell you… it was GREAT!!!  Really amazing.  I don’t know when I’ve felt better in a run.  Forget 15 seconds faster than my 12:00/mile goal pace – I ran 800 meter splits of 11:05, 10:33, 10:44 and 10:42.  Up to a whopping 1:27 under goal pace!  Pretty comfortably, too; I really felt like I could’ve pushed harder, but didn’t want to invite problems unnecessarily.

Two weeks later, it was time for hill repeats.  Now, if you’ve followed my blog for a while, or if you live in the southern half of Florida, you know that there is a distinct lack of hills in the area.  But here in coastal Florida, we have many bridges connecting the mainland with our barrier islands.  Since my knee had been acting up the previous week, I opted for the lower of the two bridges near me and vowed to kill it.

I started out on the flat beach road, turning in a mile warm-up before getting to the bridge.  I then ran up, walked down the other side, turned around and repeated that the other direction.  Twice, for a total of four ascents and descents.  Going up a fifth time, the bells began to ring, alerting all that the draw bridge was being raised to allow a sailboat to pass underneath.  I took it as some weird sign to pick up the pace and beat a couple of teenaged girls to the top before turning around.  And I did.  Pass them. 

Once more I ascended and turned around, then finished with an easy, flat mile for recovery.

I must say that I’m loving these speed workouts!  Which is really making me think about next year’s race schedule… perhaps a bit less distance and more 5Ks?  We’ll see.  For now…

Make a New Plan, Stan... er, V.

So, having registered for the Glass Slipper Challenge… which comes on the heels of the WDW Half-Marathon… which is preceded by a late October Halloween Halfathon… which immediately follows the Tower of Terror 10-Miler…

I need a PLAN.

Not just any plan.  A Plan that’ll get me through these races without injury.  A Plan that’ll prevent physical and mental burnout.  A Plan that helps me improve my pace.  A Plan that also allows for a social life outside of convening with pavement.  (Not that I have one of those – a social life – but I’d settle for some nap time in its place…)  In short, I need a Plan with the strength and precision of a D-Day invasion.

I got to work on creating said Plan before I even registered for the Glass Slipper Challenge (GSC).  I started with Jeff Galloway’s Time Improvement Plan for the Wine & DineHalf-Marathon (I’m not racing that one, but it’s near the date of my October half, so it seemed like a good pick), and cross-pollinated it with his Tower10-Miler Time Improvement Plan.  Then, I added a layer of his Dumbo Double Dare Plan (because there isn’t a plan yet for the GSC), and filled in the small gap between it and the Wine & Dine Plan with Galloway’s WDW Half-Marathon Time Improvement Plan.  Finally, I sprinkled on top a bit of Hal Higdon’s distance training plans and filled in my own cross-training/strength training regimen.  And…

Voila!

Note how I’ve pre-scheduled myself at the ER every other week.  That’s pro-active, baybee.

No, no, I’m not really planning on being in the ER!  Not that often, anyway.

ER = Easy Recovery run

ST = Strength Training

Hills = bridge repeats… we don’t have hills here in coastal Florida

MM = Galloway’s “Magic Mile”

I’ll make the final call as I get to that time, but my thought is to race the 10-Miler for time, spend a couple weeks recovering well, race the Halloween Halfathon hard for time, recover and build up again to race the WDW Half for time, recover and build again to race the Enchanted 10K hard for time and go easy on the Princess Half the next day.  We’ll see.

Anyone else getting their Plans in order? 

10 Days Until Terror Strikes!

Know what today marks?  10 days.  10 days until the Tower of Terror 10-Miler.

TEN days.

Eeeeeek!!!

Suffice it to say I’m not feeling ready for it at all.  Still battling IT Band Syndrome, I did manage to complete 8 miles last weekend, my final long “run” of pre-race training… but I walked a huge chunk of it, only managed a 14:22/mile average pace, and by the end, my knee contained David Banner-like fury (though it did not turn green, thankfully.)  It wasn’t the kind of training run that elicits a sense of comfort and “Yeah, I’ve got this!” y’know? 

So I’ve been spending time focusing on the race planning elements that have nothing to do with running in order to distract my mind from thoughts of gloom and doom.  For starters, my race outfit.

I’m not doing a full-on costume – I’m all about comfort and I’m not very good at costuming in the first place.  I’ve known for a while that I want to wear my Badass Mother Runner tank and decided to add a skirt from Team Sparkle to wear over my go-to running skort.  Add on a matchy BondiBand to wick away forehead sweat and – voila!  My outfit is complete.

I may not be fast, and I may not even be able to run much, but by golly – I’ll look festive!

I’ve also spent lots of time putting together a special playlist for the race.  When I realized how much I’ll be walking, I knew I’d need more music loaded in, so what I wound up with is a mix of creepy, dark, themed sounds with a few pieces that are outside of the theme, but are proven pick-me-ups when the going gets tough.  Since I can’t count on maintaining a certain pace, I gave up on sequencing the playlist and I’ll just let it shuffle.  Here it is, all shuffled up:

Agent Orange: “A Cry for Help in a World Gone Mad”

London Philharmonic: “Carmina Burana, O Fortuna”

Social Distortion: “The Creeps”

Ray Parker, Jr.: “Ghostbusters”

Queen Latifah & L’il Kim, Feat. Macy Gray: Cell Block Tango”

Madonna: “Die Another Day”

Metallica: “Enter Sandman”

Daft Punk: “Derezzed”

Nin Inch Nails: “Sin”

Tones on Tail: “Go!”

Pitbull: “Back in Time” (from Men in Black III)

Green Day: “Brain Stew”

Marilyn Manson: “The Beautiful People”

Kanye West: “Gold Digger” (don't judge - it's got the perfect rhythm!)

Cee Lo Green: “Love Gun”

Nirvana: “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Daft Punk: “End of Line”

“Halloween” main theme

Red Hot Chili Peppers: “Higher Ground”

The Cult: “Fire Woman”

Blondie: “Rapture”

MC Hammer: “U Can’T Touch This”

Nine Inch Nails: “Head Like a Hole”

Eurythmics: “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”

Danny Elfman: “Mission Impossible” main theme

Florence & the Machine: “Dog Days are Over”

Michael Sembello: “Maniac” (because Flashdance was totally badass)

Marilyn Manson: “This is Halloween”

Girl Talk: “Oh No”

Girl Talk: “Here’s the Thing”

Salt-n-Pepa: “Push It”

Pink Floyd: “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2”

Metallica: “Master of Puppets”

John Williams: “The Imperial March” (Star Wars) (I'm not into character pics, but if I see Vader? Watch out)

Royal Stockholm Philharmonic: “Danse Macabre, Op. 40”

Danzig: “Mother”

Will Smith: “Men in Black”

Survivor: “Eye of the Tiger” (please - you know it's the BEST motivating song ever!)

Daft Punk: “Arena”

Michael Jackson: “Thriller” (the full version, Vincent Price included, natch)

“X-Files” main theme

Social Distortion: “Mommy’s Little Monster”

I’ve tried it out on a couple runs and it works well.  I just hope “Halloween” doesn’t come up in a particularly dark, empty stretch, as it did the other night… while I was running after dark… all alone… next to a stand of creepy cypress trees… ~shudder~

With my outfit and soundtrack ready to roll, the next planning steps should be easy: scheduling and packing.  10 days – eek… again!