7K, Recovery and Change

If you don't like your life-CHANGE IT. If you are in a dead end relationship and or job with no future prospects of things ever getting better- quit wasting time and energy and  GET THE HELL OUT!!! Life is too damn short to be miserable all the time. Well that's exactly what I finally did and am in the process of doing. My long distance runner personality carries with it a tough it out mentality. Sometimes, I can get myself into bad situations and just keep gutting them out over long periods of time until I finally have had ENOUGH and just have to get out. Many years ago I was in this kind of situation at work in Fairbanks where I gutted out SEVEN YEARS. The work situation went south after the Russian program was cut from the high school program and I was involuntarily forced to teach Spanish( one of my other qualifications that I have but do not like to advertise) until I could find a better job which I eventually did as a Russian bilingual teacher in Wasilla and now terribly miss :-(  In late 2007, the visa laws changed here and i had to give up a governess job I absolutely loved. The hours were great-from mid afternoon to early evening and the little boy was a good kid. This job and my wasilla job are probably the two I have most enjoyed in my life. The company could not provide work visas so I had to find a job that did. I had to go back into corporate which I really did not want to do because the hours and the split shifts can be brutal plus the pay is not great compared to what I can make as a governess or on my own. The first year the salary was still relatively competitive then the Crisis hit in 08 09. We lost clients and I had little work. I took the initiative and picked up more privates and started seeking out commercial races to pay the bills.  This being Moscow the cost of living was and is still continuing to skyrocket yet my salary no loner is able to keep up. Well the way it works is that when you get stuck working for a corporate language center they are middlemen. They pretty much take half of what you could really be making. Lets say for a lesson you can make 100$ on your own and most schools charge about this. You will at best see 50$. So why onj Earth did I agree to this- I needed the darn visa. The alternative was going back to the US jobless in the middle of the friggin' winter. In life and in sport I accept nothing less than the best and I will not stoop to levels beneath my potential. This also means i will not go back to the US just to go back to the US and take a crap shoveling job just to go back to the US. I would likely not get hired anyways for a crap shoveling job because i'm overqualified. This has actually happened to friends of mine in the US. NO , I WILL NOT USE MY ADVANCED DEGREE TO ASK YOU IF YOU'D LIKE FRIES WITH THAT BURGER!!! Plus, crap shoveling jobs don't pay the bills and you can't support yourself shoveling crap.

Well this has been snowballing over the past couple years in a major way. The split shifts disrupt my sleep patterns big time and might I say that this is not good for me at all since I've struggled with sleep disorders off and on since I was 15. I need to bed down and get up at roughly the same time every day and NO I DO NOT recover on 5 hours of sleep. No amount of money is worth screwing up my health. My boss can always replace me but I can't replace my health. It's been nearly FOUR years since I've been to a concert because I work anti social hours. All the things I used to do here that made Moscow a halfway desirable place to live I can't do mostly because of my antisocial work schedule. Friends ask me out but I rarely go because I often have to drag my ass up for an early class only to not be free anyways til after 9PM. Salary-year 3 no rise. Situation in Alaska- not good for getting back to my old job this year. I HAVE TO TAKE ACTION NOW I simply cannot continue like this anymore. I'm depressed over it and sometimes really bitchy from the lack of sleep from being drained from split shifts. My boss knows I run too and he tried to minimize the crazy split shift stuff but I still had it in there at least twice a week and it was slowly killing me.

In late August I met a good friend for breakfast and a coffee after my morning class. I hadn't seen her but ONCE since the new year!!!! We talked and she knew I had been miserable for a long time. She was actually starting to worry about me. Bless her heart. We then went off to the honey market where I picked up some good yummy honey from Bashkiria to load up on before the 100k. By midsummer I was so burnt out in my work situation(mind you I had not had holiday since I got back from Gibraltar LAST NOVEMBER) I didn't even want to get up in the morning. Again the salary was a big part of it and just not feeling appreciated (no raise in 3 yrs...c'mon). Decision made - I will deal with this after the 100K I need to focus on that right now and I've never been one to let all the other noise in my life screw with my running.

Two years ago, a friend of mine who works here passed me on a contact of a person who has a firm that does work visas. I am so thankful now she passed me that contact.  I so wanted to do this but simply could not afford the visa costs plus the trip back to the US for the initial work visa. Work visas have to be done in home country. The contact had open quota spots for US passports too. Shortly before I left for the Netherlands I met with this man and we worked a timeline up for filing for my new work visa. When I was in the Netherlands I got a text saying I had to submit docs by September 23rd so my work visa would renew in country annually in December each year(like I do now). I needed to pick a time I don't usually travel out for races then and each byear once you have a work visa as long as you are with the same firm they need your passport for a week or so to renew the work visa here in Russia-no visa run outside required. So last week, I paid the fees (I've struggled to put the $aside to do this) and submitted all I needed to. My visa will be ready in late January and I'll pay some employment taxes on it monthly but nothing killer. I may just time that visa run with Rocky Raccoon and run the 50miler. There is a Russian consulate in Houston. Moreover, I will once again fill my hours from afternoons into the evenings and still train late mornings like I do now but no more split shifts and wicked chasing around. the chasing will be on my terms now and I will be paid accordingly.  I may even pick up some part time governess work again as I have been getting wind of good offers. I'll have to do a visa run in early December for a short term visa to cover the time when my current one expires and when the paperwork on the work wone will be done but that's just an excuse to cut town and go to Riga and get the visa there. After doing al this I officialy resigned. My boss was bummed and yeah the fall is not the best time to do this to him but the bottom line at the end of the day was really the bottom line plus long term concerns for my health. He's actually not a bad person and very down to Earth.

Ok work situation in check now. I actually feel like I have a burden lifted. I have requests coming in to fill those evenings but hey, if I want that once in a blue moon evening off to see a concert or maybe even shhhhhh show up to a track meet....I have the option. I need work life balance. Hell, my students take those once in a blue moon evenings off too. We are all human.

OK now the running front. Knock on wood, I'm coming off this 100k much faster than  the last one. I ran walked on day 3 and that was it- all the crap was out of my legs. I just did very easy 8-10k recovery runs during the week and well ummm on the seventh day rest she did not but RACED....WHAT?! Yeah i went out of town for a 7K-just to have an I-don't-care- no pressure race. I figured I'd just do what I could, sandbag if I had to, but no FORCING ANYTHING. Well speed was still not what it was pre 100k but I held 4min/k pace just parked it. A couple girls went out fast and i passed just before 5k  but then made a fatal wrong turn in the last K so finished behind one of them. They do awards in 10 yr age brackets at this one so i won that and was 2nd overall. I wasn;t even supposed to race but moving the legs again felt good. I need to continue to carefully recover and listen to my body and slowly build up so that maybe I can redeem myself by the time the Chicago 50/50 rolls around.


Ok now the BIG picture with all this running. I've been thinking for a while...need to change smthg here too. If I look at the WHOLE BIG PICTURE I have really only had two outstanding races since coming out of my hole in 2007. Riga 2009 would be what I call my last decent marathon and the 50K World Cup in Daugavpils this yr. Ok to be fair Moscow International Half in 2009 was good too. After Riga in 2009 the kind of training I was doing led me to my first nasty experience with something between overreaching and overtraining followed by evil injury. Basically, at age 34 I was doing more than I did at 24 or at any other time in my running career. I started having recovery issues between hard sessions. I ran Solnechnogorsk in August and did well but soon all hell broke loose after. I had my first ever experience with shin splints in my left leg near the ankle then screwed up my right piraformus and sciatic nerve closer to Chicago that year and had a crap marathon. I spent a good portion of the winter at the therapist's literally getting my right ass and lower back fixed....not fun. 2010- I'd say was mediocre performance wise. This year got off to a mediocre start but after Luzhniki I started doing the kind of training that looked more like what I used to do when I was on my own in Alaska and also the kind of training that subsequently led to PRs. Only problem this yr is I really only got to show that in the 50k. There are certian things my body responds to and certain things that will just kill me all around speed and everything else included. This year I also started listening to my body and categorically refused to do a hard workout not recovered enough from the previous one and guess what....shocker...I got better! I have a pretty good idea of what I need and I think I've finally come to the conclusion that I need to go it on my own for a while and tweek a few things here and there and I should be ok. Ryan Hall got overtrained and went on his own and is kicking ass. One of my best friends in the world who I miss dearly back in Alaska is on her own and is an 8:08 100k runner. I need to do what's best for me and this may be it. I've been thinking of that for some time now much like I thought out the work decision before making it. Sacrificing what could have been a good season and possibly a good marathon time this year only to end up in EPIC FAIL is not cool. yeah I was prepared for the 100 but there is only so much you can do in the heat but it;s not about the 100 so much as it's about the BIG PICTURE. I'm not of the age to just toss a season like I will have many many more next years to fix it and make it better. I need to problem solve now before it is too late. If that means I need to go it on my own for a while than so be it. I was on my own in Alaska for over nine years and did nothing but run very well across the board. The only thing I'm lacking are the mountains and domes but that's where I'll start spending occasional training time once I get all this visa running done. Like I said, I have never let all the other bull in my life screw with my running and I'm not about to start now. When things aren't going to plan, it's time to adapt and make changes. Sometimes change is necessary for the better, sometimes change is good.

                                                       7k

100KM World and European Championships Wincshoten 10-09-2011

Well this was actually the course my coach wanted me to make my 100K debut on in 2011.They usually have an open race here each year, but this was the course that would serve as the course for the Worlds. It's supposed to be one of the flattest and fastest courses in the world and lots of records have been set there. The team DROVE a mini van from Daugavpils to the start. They figured it would not only save $, but then they could avoid the hassle of not being able to bring this and that on the plane. Last yr, security confiscated honey from one of our women that had brough it to have during the race! Honestly, we think he just wanted to help himself to some damn good quality honey! So the team left early Wednesday morning from Daugavpils. The plan was to pick me up in Dusseldorf early Thursday morning. Back in the spring, our manager and team captain Andris found me a dirt cheap flight on Air Berlin for about 200$ RT from Moscow. Ok - it was a total redeye w/ a 6:10am departure (means I had to leave the house at 3:15 to be to the airport by 4), but it was worth it. I knew I would never hold up on the long van ride after taking the overnight train from Moscow to Latvia. So I arrived in Dusseldorf on time about 8AM only to get a message that the team was stuck in traffic and it would be another 3 hours.....OK how to kill time.....I walked arond then got some munchies. The baked goods and sandwiches I would find along the way going and coming from Germany were yummy. So off I was for the fresh sandwiches on fresh bread and some wicked good fresh cookies. In Russia I am SOOOOO deprived of chocolate chip cookies! I was looking for good carbs and found them. After waiting not THREE but SIX hours,the team finally arrived. The problem really was traffic and too many slow 2 lane roads as it would take us another FIVE hours to get to Winschoten. The total trip from Daugavpils was 36 hours! No, I would have never held up.

It was cold and rainy too when I got in. We arrived in the evening and the organizers got u set for housing and dinner. Housing was nice this year. The women had a 2 bedroom townhouse and the men did also. I opted for the single bedroom w/ the less comfy triple bunk bed- I just slept on the bottom and the other 2 ladies took the room w/ the 2 twin beds. We even had a kitchen and a fridge! We were all tired from the road and went to bed.

On Friday I slept in then went to breakfast. After breakfast, I stopped back at the townhouse because I had to use the loo. Oh dear, for some reason, I had tummy issues until early afternoon that day. I had no idea what the culprit food was but there was definitely one. I went out for an easy 30 min run around noon ish and things felt good but I noticed it was getting quite warm and HUMID. I came back soaked from the humidity.

By evening time, things had cooled off to 18C for the opening ceremony and it was nice out but you could still tell it was humid.

                                                Meghan Arbogast- very inspiring woman-much RESPECT to her and may she continue kicking ASS in her future races!

Race Day- I got up and had breakfast then we packed up the van and were off. The teams from Belarus, Russia,Latvia and Ukraine all decided to wear black ribbons in honor of the entire Russian hockey team that died in a plane crash just outside Yaroslavl on Sept. 7th during takeoff en route to play in Belarus. This was a terribly sad incident.  We needed to get our tables set by the time they closed the course at 9AM. At 8:30 we arrived to set our table at the 5kmidway point on the 10K loop  but the course was already closed!!!! Not good. We did make it to our maiin table near the start finish where we parked the van and set the table. I would be able to get my Vitargo only once on the loop and have to rely on getting water along the course. Cute little kids with sponges and water were everywhere so this helped. Gels and Vespa I left on the table. I took a couple gels with me just in case as well as my salts. If i get into trouble I cannot wait several K before I get salt especially on a hot day.

We were off at 10AM and it was already warm....too warm for me to wear my compression tights I prefer for the 100 to protect my quads. I went out easyeasyeasy not to push anything. it was very humid(I would come to later find out close to 100% humidity). I went out at 5.05-8/km pace and would park it there until past 60K. Each 10k loop came out in 51min and change.I was not pushing anything hard. I was also making sure to drink plenty in the first half as that is so important later on. Just past 50-I made a quick stop at the table to get more gels and felt a little light headed. After getting fluids I felt better and kept on same 5 min and change pace. After about 65, my legs were still good but the sun was out in full force and it was humid. I started getting really kight headed so I made an effort to grab more cold wet sponges along the way in addition to upping things from 1 salt per hour to two. Luckily, my tummy was ok and still taking calories. Just before 70K, happened to see a thermometer in the SHADE....it said 28C...well that explains why I am starting to feel really crummy. I knew it was boiling but had no idea it was THAT HOT! I later saw a South African guy passed out in front of me on the grass. Heck as early on as 30K people were slowing down and I was passing though deliberately NOT picking up the pace by any means given the conditions. I really didn't start getting  iky lactate buildup in my legs til closer to 80k but I was really feeling the heat. At 80 I pitted for that quick 2 min massage to fix my quads and that helped.

By 85 though I was really getting sick from the heat. I caught up to an Italian  woman also not having fun with the heat. We ran together til about 94 then she dropped back:-(. It's easier to run with company. She did finish though. At 92 I knew I was in trouble- I had GOOSEBUMPS all over my body! Yeah that's a classic sign of heatstroke if anything else is. I picked up the last loop a little just really wanting to get the job done. I finished in 9:34 -losing close to an HOUR  in the 2nd half from the heat sickness.Damn- that's so not like me. I typically run even and or sometimes neg split in races much like I did  in the 50 back in July. I t was still 26 when I finished early evening too. I would have to call this one EPIC FAIL of grand proportions. I was 25th in the Euros 42nd in the Worlds. When I finished, Andris told me the other 2 women had dropped out ine at 30 the other at 60. Nadezhda dropped out at 60-she was very capable of going for a WR in the 75-79 category, but it just wasn't her day. I really hoped she would do it. Only 2 of out men finished but Gunars had a major PR despite the heat and ran 8:08! I got reports that Ellie Greenwood dropped out in tears at 90-that's really sad as she won last yr and is one of the leading women in the world. Although only 7 men went sub 7, Marina Bychkova won in 7:20 and beat most of the MEN! Meghan Arborgast continues to be very inspiring finishing in a new WR time for 50+in 7:51! Major RESPECT there!

                                                                  at90k


Yes, I've been asked to do this again in Italy next April, but I'm not sure about it because Italy in APRIL =HOT. PLus, I don't want to be down half the season recovering. I'll have to see just how long it takes me to recover this time. Last year I took a good 6 weeks to feel human again and get some speed moving. I know like they say, sh!t happens and there are things you can't control like the weather, but the bottom line is that I put all my eggs into one basket this year and sacrificed performances at all other distances this yr save for the 50k in order to prepare for this race. Along the way, by late summer I knew I was in damn good marathon shape-probably good enough to take a crack at my PR. Now, I will never know and being that I turn 37 at the end of the year, what really are my chances of getting into that kind of shape again? I even started getting visits from a long lost friend named Speed over the summer during workouts then Speed made his presence known a week before the 100 in the form of that 18.49 5Ksplit in the 6K. Damn I thought, I'm in shape to crack a high 38 in the 10 now but I won't because there is nowhere to do it and after the 100 I'll be toast. Speed hasn't paid me visits like he has this summer in several years and I'd figured he'd long forgotten me. My endurance is good and my body has always done well with a combination of  high volume complemented by shorter intervals so as not to neglect that nice friend called Speed. For example, I perform better given say 12x1000m intervals or 16x800m as opposed to repeat 5k intervals. The shorter stuff is no less in volume but the pace is faster so I can't get monotonusly slow as I sometimes can w/ looong intervals. For some reason this is what my body proocesses and this is the kind of thing I did years ago in Alaska and even during my heyday when I had PRs in everything in the mile to the 50k. I'd go long then a few days later throw in shorter faster intervals to keep speed from bottoming out. Sometimes they were on hills sometimes on the track. I don;t know but my current marathon PR happened doing just that. High volume, long runs,but complemented by high quality sometimes darn intense interval sessions. Need to figure out something for next year though because this will go down as the year I got in damn good shape and have zip to show for it because I put all my eggs into one basket.

6.1k Luzhniki-Final Tune Up 3-09 2011

I'm not sure whether to be really pleased or really sad about this one. This week, I finally tapered for the 100 and cut the volume. After the Half a week ago, I worried I may have beat my legs up on the hard course despite not busting my ass in an all out effort. I did a couple days of easy distance then hit the track on Tuesday for some 1000s. Legs were just about good to go only 3 days after running the hilly "half". I did the 1000s at about 80-85%-subconsciously holding back and not burning down the barn so I could save it for the weekend. At this stage, it's better to cut back and go easy than risk not being fully fresh and recovered for the 100k.
So the 6.1k is the final race in the Luzhniki summer series and I had to run this one to secure my 2nd place standing. Now, I usually don't like to go out fast,nor do I care for races much less than 15k or a half anymore because all this ultra training builds endurance but tanks my speed. Well, I figured what the hell- every year I go out sane in this race and get boxed in during the 1st k. I decided to line up in front and try running a balls out pace and then seeing if I could hold on. It's only a 6k so if I feel crappy from going out hard I won't have to hang on too long and suffer. First K- 3.47  next, 3.45, 3.38(I surged to gap the girl half my age that was currently 3rd in the standings really I was up over 3 min on her in the standings but wanted to see if I could beat her in a short race for good measure). 3k split 11.10-that's when I thought hmmmmmmmmif I REALLY haul ass I MIGHT be able to eek a sub 19 5k. I was just following Zina Semeneva when I passed the girl 3rd in the standings. It was nice to have someone to try and stick with.Ok so follow Zina and I might run a decent time.... She has won and placed in many of the top marathons in the US over the yrs  like Twin Cities, and Boston.A couple yrs ago she won the masters at Twin Cities running a 2:40 in driving rain! She was 46 at the time-very few ppl in that age beacket can even come close-Zina rocks!  She is still very good. 4k-3.50 right at 15 min-a bit lazy of me. 5k (by the marker on the course  18.39   hmmm suspicious Garmin showed it shy about 40m sooo I'll take the REAL split which was 18.49). OK 3.49-makes sense. Zina was 4th and I ended up 5th. OK I used to regularly run my 5s under 19 or on a bad day just over for YEARS. Sometimes I'd get them quite a bit under 19 but never could run a 17(I don't train for this distance). When I moved to Moscow in 05 I pretty much quit running 5s and 10s because they are few and far between here. This is embarrassing- but the last time I saw a decent 5 was in the HEART RUN in Anchorage back in 2004. I was still very capable of putting down an 18 but just never had the opportunity in Moscow at the right time.Then came the bee ess that hit me in 2007 and I was never able to return to even near the level of speed I once had in the shorter stuff. I had pretty much written it off now since I sure as hell ain't gettin' any younger.
So, How in the hell did I get into speed shape while training for a friggin' 100k doing high volume and high volume intervals? I don't have an answer here. So now I have mixed feelings about the 100. It's great my long since dead speed has finally come back, but after the 100 it will be gone and then I wonder if I'll ever have it back again. I've noticed my speed is unusually up this season too -first after a fast Kremlin Mile in June, then in track workouts it's faster and very consistent usually getting faster 2nd half of the session.
Which now raises another issue, speed and endurance are such that I could go after a PR in the marathon now. Ok, what if next yr I'm too damn old and can't get that fast again? No fall marathon for me because of the 100. I now have to wonder if I am doing the right thing.by running the 100. Coach seems to think it's cooler to be a sub 9 hour 100k runner than a sub 3 in the marathon. I'm not sure. I run every season like it's my lastbecause I never know what will happen down the road. I seriously hope I did not make a huge mistake by not going for time in the shorter stuff like thehalf and the marathon while I still can.