Contraflow: bringing the storms

We went to Oregon to run in some cool northwest weather.

This was supposed to be the after-party at the beach. It was...a little windy. 

Instead we brought a tropical storm. That's what happens when you name your team "Contraflow".

Ten years

Ten years ago, New Orleans changed forever as Katrina wiped neighborhoods, lives, livelihoods, and memories away in her violent storm surge. We didn't expect the storm to head straight for us. We didn't expect the levees to breach. We didn't expect the ones who should have protected us to turn on us, or forget us, or leave us. 

But we also didn't expect the grace of strangers, the outreach of those with plenty to those with nothing, the sharing of meagre resources, the indomitable will to survive, and the resolve of will of those who had experienced great suffering. 

Today, our city and our people live with the scars of this great storm, but we also live with a profound thankfulness for the gift of home, family, and friends. 

Confidence booster

You know how all my recent runs have been about the speed of an octogenarian settling down into a church pew?
I have been pretty annoyed at that. I know I haven't been running and improving consistently for years, thanks to this endless injury thing, and I know over a full year of serious injury + surgery and recovery + more surgery and recovery = long time coming back, but I'm still shocked at how difficult everything has seemed.
My easy pace is well into the 8-min range (not recover pace, easy pace. My recovery pace is like 9:40, no lie).
I've failed several tempo attempts, quitting early or not hitting the pace or both.
Long runs that are actually short - like, ten miles - have felt insurmountably hard and required breaks to stagger around lowering my heart rate.

But you know what? I think part of it might be the high 90's I'm running in. And the stupidly high humidity. I had speed work scheduled for Tuesday, and it was an unbelievably cool day for August. I was actually excited to run - I couldn't wait to get out into that weather! I planned to do 8 440's, but realized at the end of the workout that I had done 9. I program my Garmin 305 when not at a track, and if anyone  has this model, you'll know that it tells you that you have one interval left when you don't. That "interval" is the cooldown. So it beeps after the last rest period and I start running thinking it's my last interval, and finally I look down at my Garmin and see that I've been running farther than 440...and I should have been done. Oh well. Anyway, I did 9 400's with a minute walk/jog in between.
AND IT WAS EASY. I ran 1:33's and 1:34's for the most part, which was actually faster than planned, but it felt like no sweat. Because there was no sweat. I was refreshed and could have done another 9! The difference the weather makes is really huge!

Hurray for being less out of shape than I thought!

Team Contraflow

Yesterday and today we were lucky to get some totally off-season weather: temps and humidity both in the 70's! Like, with a seven. I can't wrap my head around it. While I was thrilled with the cool temperatures, low humidity, and fresh breeze, something about 76 degrees in light wind in August brought back ominous feelings. That's pre-hurricane weather. If anyone has experienced the calm heaviness of the air in an evacuated city, followed by the jarring cool breezes and lovely sky that immediately precede the arrival of a hurricane or tropical storm, that's how this felt. And coming the week of the Katrina's 10th anniversary, it was unsettling.

Evacuation signage

Speaking of Katrina, I am going to be running Hood to Coast for the actual anniversary of the storm, and I have mixed feelings about that. Part  of me feels like I should be here in NOLA on that day, but part of me is ok with being gone. For one thing, I wasn't there on the actual day of the storm either; we evacuated. And for another thing, what better tribute to pay to Katrina than to be crammed in a van with poor food and water supply, dubious outfit changes, and a bunch of sweaty people, crawling at a slow pace down the highway?*

That leads me to our other team tribute to Katrina: our team name. We're Team Contraflow. It's a play on words that only New Orleanians will get, and I like that (obviously, since I named the team!). Contraflow, of course, means just what it sounds like - the term refers to when the state opens all interstate lanes in one direction to aid in evacuation. It's eery, driving north on southbound lanes and seeing the backs of highway signs. It's slow, and it's going the wrong way, and given our level of team talent (very little), it's perfect for our race, too. So we're Contraflow.

*Never evacuated from a hurricane before? That's exactly what it's like!

Adventures in KT tape

With the Hood to Coast relay looming, and my left leg still on long-term disability leave (or so it seems. Cannot get the thing to come to work at all), I decided to shore up my hamstring with some KT tape.
I can't really explain my left leg. It's like it just won't work as hard as the right leg, and somehow surgery either encouraged or unmasked that tendency. On a long run, I feel fine...but when I get home, I realize that my right leg is a little more tired that the left and a whole lot tighter. I know I'm not using the left as much. But when I focus on using the left leg, I get tendon pain at the distal hamstring insertion. To allow me to start using my left leg more, I decided to tape it up. I'd never used KT tape before (except when my PT taped my scars, which supposedly helps reduce scarring post-op, but my right hip [with its caterpillar-like red welts] begs to differ). I ended up finding a great deal on Ebay - two new boxes of 20 strips each for $11 total.
I looked up how to tape on Youtube, and applied the tape before a short run. It's hard to get your own hamstring, though, and I erred too far to the side, basically taping between my hamstring and IT band. However, the base of the tape was nicely positioned behind the knee, right where I wanted it, and that's what mattered most.
The tape stayed on for a short run, a ten mile run, and another short run before peeling off in the shower.
Verdict: Tape feels good on, like it's a little supportive, and doesn't irritate me. It did make a difference on the long run, and I don't think it was placebo effect. The problem, however, is that it's not very suitable for summer use. I put some on Saturday morning before my hour and a half run, and I sweated it off in under three miles. Now, Saturday was some extreme weather, and I don't know if I've ever poured sweat like that before, but until fall rolls around, it's not worth wasting the tape.
But it will come with me to Portland. I might need it then.

A better tempo

Or, perhaps my first tempo ever.
Last week I crashed and burned trying to finish a long run with a tempo. I think a few things went wrong:
1. It was in the mid-90's and, since I started rather late, the sun was strong.
2. I was wearing my heaviest shoes, which makes a surprising difference.
3. The fast portion was tacked onto an hour of easy running.
4. I vastly overestimated my speed and fitness.

So for a 40 minute tempo run later in the week, I made some changes. Luckily, that morning was not nearly as warm - yes, the humidity was still over 90%, but it was low 80's. I wore my Kinvaras, and followed the prescribed workout thus:
- Ten minutes easy
- Twenty minutes tempo, building up to 10k pace at the fastest, then slowing
- Ten minutes easy.
Of course, with less time on my feet and less time running a tempo portion, it was automatically better; what made it work (and allowed me to finish) was choosing a reasonable pace goal.
I didn't think to lap my Garmin when the tempo portion started, so mile one included about 2 minutes of "easy pace" running, but anyway, the three miles that included at least part of the tempo were 7:12, 7:06, and 6:58. The 6:58 mile included both speeding up to 10k pace for a few minutes and slowing back down.
Overall, I was much happier with this tempo, and I didn't feel completely beat and miserable afterward.
I think that's actually the first tempo run I've ever done! Hopefully I can build up to longer tempos as a way to get some speed back with minimal stress to my hips.

Hood to Coast: Vans and legs

This week, most of our HTC team got together to divide up legs.
Our team has undergone some changes: we went from ten runners to twelve, then back down to ten, and now we're at eleven. We are by no means competitive, with an estimated finish time sometime over 30 hours.
So some of us gathered in my living room for sandwiches and sangria to divide up the legs. Turns out that we had very little input. Andrew, who put this team together, had already picked out the hard legs and assigned them. And then everyone else just piled into vans, and that was it.

Andrew's talented wife, Melissa, kindly offered to take the hardest leg assignments, runner 5, while the even more talented Celeste was assigned runner 2 (she wasn't there, so I cheerfully volunteered her for the spot). I have runner 9, which is ranked as the second most difficult assignment, but does not have any "very hard" segments - which should protect my hips somewhat (I didn't want any screaming downhill portions).
My legs are:
Leg 9: Flat, on a trail, no van/water access. No problem. It's five miles. I don't need water for five miles. And flat sounds awesome to me.
Leg 21: Flat or slightly downhill on gravel. Dusty. Five miles, but will be longer because I'll have to be dropped off early. Eh, no biggie. I hate gravel, but whatever. It's only five miles.
Leg 33: Almost 8 miles of rolling hills. Now this will be hard. My legs will be tired already and there will be hills. Probably equates to utter misery.

I think it will be fun, even though my van only contains one person I know (um, David!) and he's the only chap. And we're short a runner. But it should be an adventure! I'm starting to get excited!