Answers to Running Questions

I typically email people back when they ask questions, and also try to remember to put my response in the comments if it will help others.  But I know I sometimes miss questions, so here are a few great ones that I have received a few times.  Topics: pain, injury, music, preparation the week of a race. 

 

Ouch!  My knee hurts when I run.  Do you have any tips for easing the pain and avoiding injury?

 

I have been lucky to have avoided any real injuries throughout my running experience.  This is probably due to the fact that I never over train; I typically run 3-4 times a week. I also don’t push myself to the edge for more than a short distance.

 

However, I occasionally will get a sharp knee pain right between the joints and, also occasionally, mild ankle pain.  While these are rare, I have found two things to nip the problem in the bud immediately: buying new shoes and stretching.

 

These are the four stretches I have found to be incredibly helpful for nixing pain asap.  I recommend stretching before and after.

 

1. The IT stretch where you cross your left leg behind your right and then reach over your head to the right with your left arm, hold at least 10 seconds and reverse.

 

1. The cross-legged toe touch-especially and oddly good for knee pain.

 

1. Runners lunge- lunge forward, knee at 90 degree, back leg extended, raise arms over head.

 

1. One Leg Squat Cross- cross leg over your knee at 90 degree angle, so your ankle is on your opposite knee and you lower into a squat.

Many runners that experience knee pain or have “bad knees” wear a Jumper’s Knee Strap-Patella Support.  They are only $8, a great investment. I bought one the first time I ever had knee pain, wore it once and never needed it again.  Still a worthwhile purchase.

 

*forgot to add an important one!  New shoes!  Whenever, I start feeling slight pain, it is almost always around the time I need new shoes! Replacing shoes frequently is incredibly important.  I really need to get better about wearing running shoes only for running.  It is my worst running mistake!

 

Do you have any advice for the week prior to a big race, half or full marathon?

 

My marathon coach (and the coach over thousands of successful first time marathons each year) gave me some great advice for week before and race day preparation (Sunday race):

 

 

• Wednesday do not run. If you must do something stretch….nothing else, no lifting, no yoga, no cross training, nothing. You want to conserve the energy, prevent sweating (dehydration) and make your body/mind hungry for exercise/miles.
• Thursday go for a 30 minutes easy run.
• Saturday run 20 minutes and stretch 20 mins stretching
• Starting yesterday concentrate in nutrition and hydration, especially hydration.   Drink plenty of liquids, you can/should add a sports drink per day, or add a little extra salt to your meals (this guarantees that you have a good level of electrolytes so you retain the liquids) just don’t over the hydrating.  If you have to go the bathroom every 30 minutes you are overdoing it,  if so stop hydrating for a while and resume later on.
• 60-65% of your calories should come from carbohydrates.   Remember it is not about eating more, it is about making sure most calories come from carbs, eat normal size meals. This is by far the most common nutrition advice offered by experts.
• Sunday morning you should be done with breakfast by 5:00 am (at most you can have something very light at 5:30 am).   What to have for breakfast?  Don’t try anything new, just have your usual breakfast, it should include some kind of carbs (PBJ sandwich, cereal, bagel, banana,etc. are good choices) and YES coffee is allowed ! (just keep it to one cup!)
• Continue to hydrate up to 5:30 am. After that make sure you get rid of the excess of fluids (aka   go to the bathroom as often as you can).  5-10 mins before the start have your last 6-8 oz of liquids (bring a cup/bottle of water to start line).
• Before your leave your house, ‘force’ yourself to go to the bathroom (nothing better that being in the comfort of your own house to take care of business.
• The first thing you’ll do when you meet us will be going to the bathroom, lines are going to be huge. Do not wait to the last minute to go the line.
• It’s common to have strange twitches, if your left knee usually hurts, your right knee will hurt. Suddenly your right eyelash will start cramping, it’s nerves, relax.

 

How do you find new work out music to keep your playlist fresh? 

 

I find music all over the place. I obsessive check the music section of itunes for best of store, essentials and any other cool things I see.

 

I also like to use MTV Video picks and VH1 morning jumpstart for ideas.

 

Gossip Girl and the Hills/City have great music, so check out their websites to see what great new bands are being featured in each episode.

 

z100 playlists will give you the top 40 mix.

 

Fitness Magazine has a plethora of great playlists  to suit any and every taste!

 

You can check out my sidebar (which needs to be updated) and music and playlist tags for some of my favorites.

 

I look at other bloggers playlists and I ask you guys for ideas.  That is how I found out about Girl Talk. Best.workout.music.ever.

Running Question and Review!

Wow, this has been the best monday in a while!  I got a lot accomplished, a great package in the mail (more on those two things in another post), got quite a bit done on a paper, and had a great workout!

In honor of the upcoming fashion week and to fill the void of no new Gossip Girl, I am dedicating a GG song from the Serena Also Rises episode as workout song of the day: NYC Gone Gone

As I have mentioned, I use this for sprints or if I am doing an interval workout that calls for one minute of a given exercise. 

I got a good running question today from Ashley:

Quick question that many runners may have. Can you help me understand what the difference between my speeds should be. I just realized yesterday during my run that I run every run at the same speed which is crazy… Assuming that 9:45 or so is my current race pace, what should I set the treadmill to during tempo run days? 

This is a great question, first of all a lot of runners only have one speed, so don’t feel crazy.  A lot of my TNT friends, who have done multiple marathons and half iron mans, joke that when the coach says run at your 5k pace, they are like, dude I only have one pace.  Personally, I am extremely consistant with my pace. However, if you are looking to improve your speed, it helps to break out of your comfort pace.  Tempo paces are best described as comfortably hard.  Meaning you can say a few workds, maybe a sentence, but you aren’t really in the position to have a conversation.  Basically, you want to run at the fastest pace you can sustain consistantly for the given distance.  So if you are doing a 3 mile tempo run, you will be running faster than if you are doing a 5 mile tempo run.   For example if you are doing a 3 mile tempo run and 6.5 miles per hour is the fastest you speed you can maintain without slowing down for the entire workout but you feel very happy to stop when you hit 3 miles, your 5 miles tempo pace should be slower.

To be more specific the Runner’s World Book has a chart to explain tempo paces based on your 5K time–they have it for every 5 seconds, but I will just give a few examples:

5k time     short tempo  mid tempo    long tempo    easy

22:30          7:32MPH        7:47MPH       8:02           9:07

26:15           8:44                    8:59                9:14          10:19

30:00         9:56                  10:11                  10:26         11:31

So reviews:

Core Strength Vinyasa Power Hour with Sadie Nardini DVD

I really liked it.  I much prefer taking yoga in a studio than in my house, and this was the most enjoyable home workout I have ever done.  My friend who took the class at Pure Yoga with me, also loved the class and  bought the dvd the day we went, but just couldn’t get into yoga at home.  Usually I agree, sometimes I can’t even make it through the 20 minute yogadownload workouts. 

This is a different style of yoga, that focuses on the core and building energy in the body.  I would encourage you to watch the video first because there are a lot of non-traditional yoga poses that you have to see to understand.  It’s hard to see when you are in down dog.

I think the reason I like Sadie is that she is very good at explaining poses.  During her class I was just following her directions, and before I knew it, I was in crow’s pose.  I had never gotten one toe off the ground in the pose before, but when I didn’t know it was coming, it was effortless.  This video is a good strength workout, there is not a ton of jumping around, but I did manage to workout a little bit of a sweat.  I think I will probably do this in halves in the future because when I do yoga at home, a half an hour is enough to kind of refocus and relax.

Today I did the Oxygen “run it off” workout I saw on Gina’s blog.  It was good, I was glad Gina suggested it because I don’t read Oxygen.  It kind of scares me.  Not because I have a muscle woman fear, it’s just a bit hard core for my personality.  I am best described as type z.

Anyways, the workout FLEW by, it is only 25 minutes, but it felt like 15 tops.  I found the sprints easy, but the uphills very challenging.  Since I don’t have a heart rate monitor, I base the intensity on how grossly red and splotchy I look when I get off the treadmill. This was about a 6.5 out of ten–ten being drenched in sweat and a combination of beet red and yellow in complexion—aka total hottie.

After the run I did 30 minutes on the elliptical, about 10 minutes of abs and maybe 10 minutes of stretching.  I should mention that I definitely felt the lower body workout I did yesterday, the hammies were screaming this morning!

Elise! I am so excited you are doing the race, you’ll be fabulous!

HMC:FAQ

Look what arrive today!  Goodies from Honest Foods Granola Planks, Keribars and Skin Appetit!  Thank you awesome sponsors.  I will be telling you guys all about these great products over the next week. Get excited and don’t forget to comment on this morning’s post, so you can be in the prize drawing tomorrow morning if you are a challenger.

I had several great comments, questions and anwsers this morning.  I posted them below. My thoughts are in blue and the other answers are in black.  Thanks guys!

I’ve decided I am going to run 2 half marathons within 28 or so days of each other (one Mar 28th, one Apr 25th).  Should I be training differently than I did for my last half since I plan to do 2 races so close together??  Or should I train as normal and just be sure to keep up my training in between races?

My advice, based on what my coaches recommended for people doing multiple half or a half and a marathon in the same month, is to train normally for the first half, and make sure to ease up on the running the week before, the more “hungry” your body is for miles before the race, the better you will do.  If you run the first half hard, take about 4 days off to recover, and get a massage! Then before the second race just do your normal training. You will not lose your base, even if you do just 30 minutes every other day, and then a long run on the weekend, you will finish no problem. 

How do you dress to not FREEZE while running in -6 and 5″ of snow?

Good question, I am a wuss.  If there is 5 inches of snow you, risk frostbite if your feet get wet. So I wouldn’t risk running in snow/hidden ice.  But, if the path is clear and it is just cold, you can run if you want to.  I would recommend shelling out the dough to buy real outdoor running clothes; taking time to warm up; and making sure your hands, face ,and head are covered.  Base layer turtlenecks are amazing insulators!  Here are a few good articles for more advice:

Cold Weather Safety Running Tips

More Cold Weather Running Tips

Weathering the Weather

Winter Running

As for my clothes: I plan on wearing tights, on top of that sweat pants, then a long sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, hat and gloves.</b> I believe this will do the job!

as for winter wear clothes, i highly recommend REI, go there or online, i run in 10* weather last winter and i was never cold

i like a shirt that has a hood vs a hat  (not a jacket but i shirt) and that same shirt has hand wrap things, i can’t stand running with gloves on.  the end of the shirt has an extra piece of fabric that you can turn over to wrap around your hands.

 

What is the best stretch to prevent shin splints?  Any time I up my speed  above 6 even if it just intervals I get really bad shin splints.

I have never had shin splints, but this ivillage article has good stretch and prevention ideas

how do you push yourself further?  I’m thinking it’s more mental than physical?

I agree with everything below. 1.) I also HIGHLY recommend signing up for a race, even before you are ready!  That has always really helped me.  2.) You are right that running at least 70% mental, having a clear goal, workout plan, and race in mind is crucial to my ability to run long distances.  Even if you make up your plan the day of your workout, it will help.  3.) Finally, joining an organization like Team in Training is a foolproof way to reach a distance goal.  I had great new running friends, coaches, a commitment to a cause (blood cancer), honored teammates to inspire me, plus people donating lots of money to my race! I couldn’t miss practice, and I used the knowledge of all the good I was doing and people I was helping to push me through hard runs!

I have to say that music is what gets me to go further than I thought I could. (Love this, music is by far my favorite thing about working out)

I think the key to pushing yourself is to keep making concrete goals-be it another, longer race or a faster time or whatever.  If you have a goal that is past your current physical abilities, you can push yourself more and more.  Having something exciting to look forward to will help the mental part.  Think of how great you’ll feel when you finish a 10K or even longer!  Use that mentality and keep pushing!

Take your time when increasing speed and/or mileage. Too much, too soon will eventually catch up to you and leave you injured. I learned the hard way!

running advice: i know studies say you should or might not need to, but i think stretching is necessary; it has kept me out of so many injuries!

I always start out slow(er) and then work up to a quick pace. I like the feeling of pushing it really hard for the last half mile or so!

Is it better to increase milage by going slow and steady or doing intervals? I’ve been going slow and steady for about 4 miles, but want to increase my mileage, so what is the better way?

 Slow and steady is the best way to prepare yourself for longer distances because the time on your feet is the most important factor when it comes to endurance. However, adding tempo runs, which are longer distances done at a comfortably hard pace, will give you an added challenge. Intervals are ussually done for speed work, but any runner can use them to bust boredom and mix up their routine!

For all those trying to add mileage, I would recommend finding a running buddy. The miles fly by when you’re talking, and your partner can push you on that last mile or two when your brain tries to turn off your legs.

 

What should I do about a blood blister under my toenail? It is at the base of my toe and the pressure is awful! I am wondering if my shoes might be to blame? Any ideas?

This is a tough one. You can get a small toe pad to put under your toe to relieve the pressure of contact with your shoe.  My friend had a toe sprain and they actually have a little toe elevator to support it!  I think your shoe size is the problem. If you are rubbing that much, you need to go up a size or at least find a shoe with a roomier toe box.

Where can I find this excel spreadsheet you speak of?

The spreadsheet can be found here, it is a log for everyone who signed up for the challenge.  Unfortunately sign up is closed, but I will definitely do it again at some point! Like summer when I don’t have to use a treadmill

I have a question- I am tempted to get a Nike + but I havent seen anyone really on the blogworld use one so…do any of you have one? do you recommend it?

I had one, but I didn’t have the right shoes, and I tried to just tie the chip into my shoe, but it flew out on my first run.  I have seen bloggers mention them.  Roni at Roni’s Weigh loves hers.  Now all of nike’s shoes have the little slot for the nike +
 chip, when I had one, one a few pairs did, so if you like nike you can pick the best shoe for you, not just a pair that are nike + enabled.  Also shoe pouches are everywhere now, for around $10. I plan to get another one,  you can’t beat the price. Although I asked for a polar heart rate monitor and shoe pod for xmas, so we’ll see what happens.

 SHOUT OUTS!

Wow everyone deserves a shout out! So many are already at over marathon or ultramarathon mileage! ROCK!

Meghan-99!

Betsy-56.95!

Shane: 26.4!

Chandra: 31.6!

Maggie: 65

Melissa (TTH) 36.5

Lora-29.6

Claire-43.9!

Amanda M. 41.3!

Hangry Pants-58.25!

Tina 31.9

Maureen-26.8

Jessica G-37

Moran-26.25

Amber 46.85

Sharon  80.15

Sarah 38.3

Colleen  31

Erin C.  29.2

SallyAnn  104.9

Elsa-33.4

Gina -29.55

Matt- 101!