My Vancouver running diary

Vancouver, B.C., is my favorite city outside the United States, and is near the top of my list of North American cities too. That's not at all surprising, considering that Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland are all fairly similar in culture, climate, and geography.

With my brother having moved to Vancouver recently, we decided to visit him for a week. The last time I was in Vancouver was 2010, which was before I started running, so I was looking forward to getting in some miles in a "new" location.

Embracing my inner "teenage girlness"

I once posted on Facebook that when people ask if I like country music, I respond I like Taylor Swift's songs, and that people find that a non-responsive answer. (Admittedly, the more she's moved toward pop rock, the more I've liked her albums: Red > Sparks Fly > Fearless. I've got high hopes for 1989.)

One of my Facebook friends commented, "When did you turn into a teenaged girl?"

Ha ha ha ha! Fortunately, I am comfortable in my fortysomethingness, and I'm not embarrassed to write that I really do enjoy listening to Swift's music. However, today I'm ready to embrace my inner teenage girlness fully.

I went for a threshold run this morning, and for entertainment, I was prepared to watch the end of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, which I had leftover from yesterday's long run. For some reason, though, my Kindle Fire wouldn't stream in the gym even though it appeared to have connected to the wi-fi. I could have listened to an audiobook on my phone (I'm about 2/3 of the way through Peter F. Hamilton's space opera Judas Unchained) but on a whim I decided to shuffle through the selected songs I loaded on my phone from Red. That turned out not to be quite enough, so I moved to Sparks Fly from there.

Anyway, the resulting threshold run rocked in more ways than one! I had intended on a 2-3-2/2.5 split, meaning 2 easy miles* to start, and then 3 miles at threshold pace, and then 2-2.5 miles back at an easy pace. I ended up feeling so strong that I increased my threshold pace from 7:13 to 7:08 and then to 7:03, and finished 5 miles instead of 3. My 10K PR is around a 7:12 pace, so the last three miles of this run were slightly faster, and yet I didn't feel like I was pressing; I'd categorize the effort level as a 3 on a 1-5 scale.

* My easy miles are around an 8:30 pace.

There is some research to the effect that for non-elite runners, music can boost running performance. I don't usually listen to music when I run, as it's mostly TV on the treadmill, or an audiobook if I'm outside (and I live in a hilly area, so it's hard to track "fast" performance outside), but Taylor Swift really seems to get me to run fast without feeling like it's too hard.

Hmm, guess I need to head out to Target to pick up the deluxe edition of 1989. . . .

Variety is the spice of running

Today was supposed to be a speed session but I didn't feel like running repetitions, so I changed things up and did a threshold run instead. A true threshold run should last about 20 minutes, according to running coach Jack Daniels, but I ended up splitting mine into two ~10 minute segments, separated by an easy mile at an 8:35 pace.

Per the Daniels/Run SMART pace calculator, my threshold pace based on my most recent 5K race is 7:11. Now, I didn't actually look this up before running; I just went to the gym and picked what seemed like the right pace. (Yes, it was a gorgeous day today, but I haven't watched "Justified" in a while....) And that was 7:13 for the first threshold, and 7:08 for the second one - and those average to 7:11!

What I've noticed is that I feel like I've accomplished more in a speed session when I jog the recovery intervals instead of walking them. 8:35 is somewhere around my long run pace (sometimes I'm slower if it's especially hilly), so it's an easy pace, but I wouldn't have thought of it as a pace that I could manage while recovering from 10 minutes of a threshold pace, yet it was. Cool deal!

Anyway, this ended up being not that different from repetitions, only it was two 1.5 mile reps, but it didn't seem that way when I was running it because I was thinking to myself "threshold run," not "repetitions." So perhaps it's true that variety is the spice of running.