Excitements and Diversions

Jess be gone and I be sad . . .

But there are several things coming up. Exciting things. Fun things. And then some not so fun things, but good just the same.

Firstly, another Jess is here. Jessica Milnes. You will now find a link to her blog on the right side of this page. We'll be traveling around Ecuador attempting and hopefully summitting a few volcanos.

August 11th, Tim and I leave for Peru. We are heading straight to Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca. No, we're not going to Cusco. No, no Machu Pichu. We are going to the most beautiful mountain range in South America and I can't wait.

Before we go, Justin Kleiter and his girlfriend will be here visiting and we'll do a bit of southern Ecuador with them. Then when we're back from Peru, we'll have a long weekend just with Justin, and then it's straight back to school. Wow. Time flies. Maybe I will too.

I have my sights set on a 10k at the end of August. It's Nike's Human Race and is happening in 25 different cities around the world. If you happen to live near LA, Chicago, or New York, you can virtually run this race with me. Wouldn't that be fun? Of course, that's assuming you live in the States. You might also be near London, or Paris, or Madrid, or Rome, or Lima, or Buenos Aires, or any other city hosting one of these things. I just saw the sign for this thing today, so I don't know much about it, other than Nike races here are well supported and instead of a fish-net blue shirt and bottle of ketchup, I'll get a real technical t-shirt and no ketchup, which is sweet.

In heart monitor news, my running specific one arrives here on August 14th. I won't be here, but I'll go get it the moment we return from Peru and give 'er a test-drive--so you'll just have to anxiously await that information.

Happy running to all!

So Many Doings, So Much Time Away

Jessica is here in Ecuador and we've been frequenting my two favorite city running spots! Okay okay, yes, it's true, I only have two running spots. But I like both of those very much. Jess has set the short term goal of charging the last hill in our big loop around Parque Metropolitano and as that freaky coach from Ashe county (whom Addie always loved to reference) used to say about the last hill: "It's a booger-bear, girls. A booger-bear." I know she'll do it just fine. In between running we've been climbing mountains, repelling waterfalls, and surfing!


However, tomorrow we go to the jungle for 4 days and we're not going to run there. It's just not going to happen. The jungle is hot and sticky and full of snakes and spiders and other scary sorts of things. I think 4 days will be fine. We already took a buncha days off in between going to Cotopaxi park and the beach. Again, I am no longer worrying about time taken off as long as I get straight back into it and push through how hard it is to start back.

In other news, tomorrow is my birthday and to aid in my year-long goal (and beyond), Tim got me a heart-rate monitor. This will be an interesting foray. I have seen plenty of people running with these contraptions but have never used one myself. I have no doubt it will aid in training. But I'm interested to see how my obsessive head handles constantly knowing my heart rate and the target and how long I'm in it and how long not. I'll report regularly. But first I have to get the running specific one. Then I have to go the jungle. Then I have to come back. And THEN I'll get back to it. Until then, happy running to all!

Running on empty...

I am happy to report that for the past few weeks (since my last post) I have successfully incorporated a long run day as a part of my weekly routine. I did have to change my level of ambition from the 6 miles to as many miles as I can handle in an hour (so far this has been about 5). With this added day, I am running three days a week and feeling fantastic! So fantastic in fact that by the time the weekend rolls around I usually celebrate till the wee hours of the morning...case in point this past weekend where I hit the town like a 21 year old champ staying out, dancing, and doing all those things girls do when they go out with their girlfriends (and I mean real girlfriends, not the gays!). Needless to say this party hardy until 3am has got me feeling like my long run always hits on the absolute wrong day...Monday.

Now the obvious thought would be to move the long run day, but it just won't work on any other day during the week; the second option would be to not drink like a fish on the weekends, and while this is a great goal (and I promise, I don't drink nearly as much as I used to) I wanted running to add to my life not take away (unless you mean take away from the belly which I of course welcome); third option (and the one I am doing as I type) is drink as much water as possible at work, have a protein snack right before I workout and tuff it out. Suggestions are always welcome....

To end on a positive note, this long run day is making my interval day very very easy....I am running hard for 1 min and jogging for 2 for a half hour. Last week I was able to do the hard min. at 7.5 mph!!

Going Raw? Or Thinking of It?

I would just like to take a moment to direct your attention to a new link under our "Friends" section blog roll. Okay, this is going to sound complicated: *deep breath*, Kendra is Tim's counsin's wife. Does that make her our cousin? I mean, she's my cousin-in-law's wife. That makes us cousins-in-law, right? Okay enough semantics.

Kendra, a personal chef, has ventured into the world of all raw and you all know you've been interested in the raw-revolution ever since Samantha Jones ate raw all night just to get close to "Smith."

Check her out--she offers coaching, recipes, and general advice for anyone who's gone raw or is thinking of going mildly to full-on raw. I happen to know for a fact that Kendra is an incredibly talented chef, and her cooking classes have been met with wild approval.

On a personal note, she has a smoothie recipe that I'm very interested in trying to modify. It involves a blender full of spinach. Please allow me a short diatribe . . . Spinach here is difficult. It is very mealy, big and thick. It's okay cooked. But what about spinach salad? Too bad for me because I love baby spinach salads almost as much as chocolate. Additionally, I NEED to eat spinach. My grandfather suffers from macular degeneration, a genetic eye disease, and I am scared to death of contracting this. But wait, there's something I can do: eat spinach. Kendra's smoothie recipe just may save my eyes. . .

Forced Rest = Antsy but NORMAL

Tim and I have been plagued this past week by camping, weather, injury and illness and now it has been 5 entire days since I last ran. Usually, in the past, such a lapse would indicate either a mental breakdown or full-on quitting and would result in feelings of guilt, remorse, disgust, and even a tinge of hopelessness. But now, I'm happy to report: I feel none of these things. Perhaps I was right when I thought I was finally able to handle working for a running goal--training. Understand I have not "trained" in almost 10 years. But these 5 days are not even a blip on the radar. I have the long view--a big picture. Something I lacked maturity and normalcy to be able to see before. No worries about how this is going to affect my training, no giving up and resigning myself to sucking, which was always an excuse before. I'm just picking up where I left off and not giving it a second thought. Sweet.

Speaking of the T word, I don't have a marathon plan, so here's my plan: continue building my base through July, maybe even August too. We'll see. Either beginning in August or September, I'm begining the Runner's World verteran marathon plan as it's geared for people who run 1/2 marathons and can start at 13 miles for their long run. That will apply to me at the end of the summer and I have run a few halfers.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm probably going to need to start in September when I'll have access to a track again. Yep, that makes the most sense. Just try to get distance and base in July and August.

The plan will end round about December/January. Of course, there's no marathon here at that time. Or in any neighboring countries, really. But whatever. If I can't find anything, I'll just run marathon distance that day--hard, take a week off, then start it over with Ultra-specific changes to make it fit, like dropping the speedwork, do long back-to-back long runs here and there, etc etc.

PS--Jess gets here on Tuesday. Wooo Hoooo!

A Milestone?

Well, the good news is that I have not yet fallen off the treadmill (although I did trip the other day and made a wretched squeaking noise that did boast a few stares), but even better than that I ran my first 2 miles in a row without stopping!! Since I have started reading more about this whole running thing I have come to find out that this is actually a pretty big step, and that the 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc miles are easier to add (any confirmation on this from you ladies?)

Whatever the verdict I was pretty proud of myself. I am now on a semi-schedule which unfortunately has to be somewhat flexible because of my hectic life of happy hours and evening events in the big city. What I don't think I realized before is that this whole training thing has to be kinda varied (apparently just grunting out 5K every time I go to the gym is not the best choice), so I have devised a plan to have a long run day (6 slow miles!! fingers crossed), a short run day (2 miles that I now know I can do), and an interval day. This plan is straight from the experts at runnersworld.com (and at my sister's suggestion that I start there). Just for fun I have thrown in a pilates class and a swim day. I know it sounds ambitious (or at least it does to me) but while there is an option for training every day of the week actually getting there is up in the air.

As for the bouncing girls...I have kept my fingers to myself so far and am going to go bra hunting this weekend.....

Homemade Goo or Gu or Goobers or Whatever You Call It

As I increase my mileage, run when I haven't eaten, and other such practices that necessitate caloric intake during a run, I am considering entering the world of homemade energy gel. According to Tim I could even make my own shot blocks in ice trays. But let's first see how this first round of experimentation goes before we try to make something we actually want to congeal (eww) of which I prefer flavors like margarita and cherry that sound difficult to produce.

Here's a couple recipes I'm considering trying:

The PB and Honey one:

--7 parts honey. This is a medium-high glycemic index food, so it’ll give you an instand hit, followed by a sharp come-down in about 30-40 minutes.
--2 parts peanut butter - low GI, so it acts as a buffer to the honey, slowing down it’s burn rate.
--1 part hot water to help mix the other two ingredients.

Peanut butter and honey is one of my most favorite food combinations in the whole world, and I can actually get them in my current part of the world which is of upmost importance as I try to do this. I've already come across so many recipes that I have to immediately discard because I don't have access to organic pumpkin seed butter (what the hell is that?) and maltodextrin powder (again, huh?).

Another concoction I'm considering--The Molasses One:

--7 and 1/3 tablespoons of honey
--3/4 teaspoons of blackstrap molasses
--1/10 teaspoons (just shy of 1/8 tsp) of table salt

I have no idea if we can get molasses here such as what you and I would expect. I know the "blackstrap" variety is reaching. I'd be lucky to get some fruit variation. What we do have is tons and tons of panela. If you don't know what this is, be sure to have a look at Este Ecuador and Tim's entry about Cafe Velez. If you don't have time for that (make time soon, cuz it's a great entry), just understand that panela is a brick of brown sugar direct from cooled sugar cane juice.

I figure this stuff, melted, is probably all molasses is anyway, right? I also have some confidence in this stuff because as this country is painfully lacking anything Cliff, Honey Stinger, Powerbar, Tiger Milk, Larabar, etc etc etc, pure panela is the energy goo of choice here among Ecuadorian runners. I learned this at the starting line of Ultimas Noticias (be sure to read about that below). Dudes were pulling little baggies of crushed-up panela out of their shorts and passing it around. I had a mocha-flavored Cliff Shot in my back pocket and thusly stuck my nose up at the sugar, but maybe they were on to something?

So if molasses are (is?) nowhere to be found, I'm considering using panela instead. I would probably also add coffee grounds, or strongly brewed coffee or some other coffee additive, because, well, my name is Erin, and I'm an addict. I also notice that the bod prefers shots and blocks with caffine. Perhaps it's my dependence, or perhaps caffine truly is a performance enhancing drug. Since my system has never been without since I was about 14, I don't think using it is cheating in any way. I'm not adding anything new into my system to help performance. So there.

Anyway, the short of it is, while we have visitors bringing us shots and blocks at varied times, those supplies are always limited, and we use them lots. I can't eat while running, so I need gel. Please, please, talk to your friends and acquaintances and find out if anyone you know has made their own goo before. Get their recipes and post 'em. Go ahead and post it even if it does call for something stupid like organic sunflower dust extract, because, while I cannot get that stuff, hopefully I'm not the only reading this blog. I'll let you know how my little experiement goes, though we just booked ourselves to climb Antisana this weekend (Ecuador's 4th tallest mountain) so my weekend long-run is kinda shot. Maybe I can do it Friday instead. We'll see.