This was a fun weekend of training. On Saturday, I ran 36 miles and made friends with another ultrarunner out for similar distance (doing part of the loop of Headlands 100 for which he was training. Paul, who runs a non-profit called Wilderness Way and I met on Miwok, heading up one of many hills and found that we were going to be heading similar direction and distance. We decided very quickly that I would join him on his planned loop since I didn’t have a specific plan in mind, just had vaguely mapped something out. We headed out Coastal, down to Muir Beach, and ultimately ended up at our turn around point at Pantoll. It was awesome!! So nice to meet such an interesting and friendly person. We had such a great time getting to know each other and passing the hours together. The run got much harder when we finally parted ways back a Miwok, some 5 plus hours after meeting. I will say I am blown away by the Chia Seeds. I was blown away to only have to eat 1 larabar and drink 1 Vega shake in the entire 7 hours. I also only consumed 2 water bottles of coconut water. The Chia regulated my hydration and blood sugar perfectly. Ancient running food indeed! I would write more about this experience, but time is limited. Needlesstosay, I am continuously impressed by ultrarunners and their amazing spirits & commitment to each other, the sport and our community. It is refreshing, especially since I have been feeling like I have a serious lack of close relationships since I moved to San Francisco. It just seems like a place where there isn’t much community. Everyone is too busy hustling, bustling and trying to survive. It is very easy to feel like you could just fall off the face of the earth and no one would notice.

pausing for a photo op on Coastal, thanks Paul!

Sunday, I took Sarah and Angel for a “long run” down through Sausalito and around through Mill Valley, 12.2 miles. It was a nice recovery run from the previous day. Pretty crazy that my legs could even function. My shoulders were actually more sore than my legs from carrying the backpack that whole way! I didn’t even really need it! But I guess its helpful to carry around a heavy pack while running up those hills!

Monday, Sarah and I went for a nice jaunt through the Headlands and nearly got killed by a bunch of wankers who were racing through the Rodeo Valley Tunnel and we drifting from the high winds. We had to throw ourselves up against the wall to not get hit. They were going well over 60 mph and there were about 10 of them in a single lane tunnel. It was very scary.

I wanted to write a better post about this weekend but I just am not really feeling it write now…..

Whoa, whoa, whoa…easy tiger. That is what I was thinking when I read the comment to my other blog, the one about Run Easy. The only reason I even brought it up was because a friend of mine and I had a discussion about it and I had been reading some responses out there in blogland about it. And the real reason was to talk about a fast workout I enjoyed…

The ads I was referring to:

Why Hit the Wall? It Hurts. Run Easy.

Why Run Till You Can’t Walk? Run Easy.

this is an excerpt from dshen.com that I think sums it up:
Running easy as the main message is just plain wrong. It should say something like Run Motivated and Smart. Running easy should be a function of your mental and physical condition, your fitness level, and whether your are energetic or recovering. Sometimes you should run easy, but sometimes you shouldn’t. But running should be about being motivated to do something, like lose weight or entering/finishing a race. And doing it smart means you should run with the appropriate exertion level when it’s the right time to do so, thereby reducing your chance for injury but getting fitness gains. You do the same thing over and over again (like running easy every time) and I guarantee you’ll get bored or see no fitness gains after a while and stop doing it…

my opinion:
I was not saying that you have to run fast as in “as fast as this that or the other pace”. I was referring to the “easy” part of it. “easy” and “slow” are two different things. I am all about strategic training, in fact to say “that you have to do all your miles fast to get/stay fast can contribute to injury and overtraining” just means that you missed my point (which in fact, I didn’t even try to make a point about it, just merely commenting). I don’t think you have to go out everytime and run fast. But there should be a point to every workout. There should be a specific focus and simply “running easy” will not in fact make you better. I don’t go out and sprint every workout because that would be dumb and in fact lead to overtraining and injury, which I have been smart enough to avoid thus far. I think an endurance athlete who looks at these ads can understand a different intent (i.e. strategic heart-rate training, etc) but I really don’t think those ads are targeted at endurance athletes (especially since 95% of endurance athletes I know have disliked the ads, so that means if it were targeted to them they failed in their intent!). And just to note, obviously I can run “at the speed of chat” and still not have it be considered “easy” (read Quicksilver recap if you don’t believe me, I talked my head off).

I think the misconception in society about running is that you have to be fast to do it. I don’t agree with that. The point I was trying to make was that if you are going to encourage runners to run, take the stance of “you can do it”, not “do it easy”, not “do it haphazardly or half-assed” .

Slow is fine. Fast is fine too. The serve the purpose of training and building endurance.

I am not some elitist who thinks everyone should do things the way I do it or they are wrong. In fact, I encourage the exact opposite. I encourage people no matter ability level to get out there and do it. I train people and take runners who are of a much different ability level out regularly on training runs. The point of the post not to open a debate about it, I merely was reflecting a thought that passed through my head on my run in my training blog which is not actually a place where I think that I have to write anything but exactly that….random thoughts, views, opinions, training, et al. I save the formal stuff for my other blog…

Last night I went on a really fun late night run. I hadn’t been able to get out during the day so after class, I hit the road for a short 6 mile loop. It was quite invigorating and an interesting experience as compared to early morning running. The streets are busier in places but I completely owned the streets for the most part (which is also true in the morning) but it felt different because the streets continued to get more empty as opposed to full (as they do in the morning). Plus, there was something that felt more rebel about running around at 10pm. I know that there are many people and situations that say that running as a female at night is not a good idea, but I stuck to main streets and didn’t do anything dumb. Plus, that just made me run faster. I wore my headphones and as I ran through the fog, my favorite piece of mournful cello music came on and there was some spooky and surreal about it (Paul Scott’s Essays). I felt like I was floating along in a dream. It was nice to discover (for the second time this week) how much running on the evening’s cusp or utter darkness of night is so much fun….