Where the hell did THAT come from?!?!

I really, really need your guys' input.

I've been really dissatisfied with my coach. I have many grievances, but these are the big ones:

1. He is training me to be slow. I understand that a triathlon is a swimbikerun (as Rocketpants put it), not a swim, and a bike, and a run. But this guy wants me to do the swim and the bike so slow that I would have to have the run of my life to significantly beat my time from last year. The swim "Ironman pace" he has chosen for me is so slow that I have to interrupt my stroke to go slow enough to make it.
   
2. I feel like he's not listening to me. This ties into point 1, but it also has to do with conversations we've had where I've said, "In the past I've seen improvement by doing XYZ, not ABC." And he says there will be more XYZ in my program, but when I check my schedule, it's all ABC. He says one thing is tiring me out, and that's why I had a bad next workout; but all I keep thinking is a 45-minute swim/2-hour easy bike has never tired me out before. I didn't feel tired.
   
3. I am so very bored! I knew that I liked being my own guinea pig, but I never thought that training would be so bland without it. I find myself dreading most of my workouts now that I can see them coming from a mile away. I hate training these days. The only workouts that have been fun are the ones I wasn't supposed to do.
   
4. I just can't afford it. I thought I could when I hired him, but something seems to come up every month. The cat gets tapeworm, the car needs an oil change, I need a new cassette... I just don't seem to have the financial flexibility to pay for it on my unemployment checks.
5. I've felt like I'm getting weaker. I haven't felt so aerobically out of shape since I quit drinking and smoking. It's hard to pinpoint, especially since he won't let me use bike speed as evidence of lost fitness, but I can feel when I'm having a bad day. I've been having a lot of bad days since I hired him.
   

So I was all ready to fire the guy. About a week ago I started looking at my training plan as more of a suggestion and throwing half my workouts out the window. I stopped following his pacing suggestions, and started going faster. I rode a hard, hilly century on a day when I was supposed to do an easy 3 hour ride. I replaced two rides with runs. Then, I moved this week's key workout up to when it fit better in my schedule. So rather than taking an easy day followed by a rest day leading up to this workout, I just plunked it the day after a tough trail run (and two days after a relatively intense brick). The workout was a 90 minute easy ride followed by a 10K running time trial.

I ran a fucking 41:58 for a 10K! This isn't just fast for me, we're talking is my Garmin broken? fast. I almost shit myself a month ago when I ran a 48.5-minute 10K. So where the hell did those extra SIX MINUTES come from? (I uploaded the data, and it seems sound).

Last month's 10K: about 65º and sunny
This month's 10K: about 60º and cloudy/windy

Last month's 10K: on a flat to rolling course following a day off
This month's 10K: on the track as part of a brick, following a 90-minute ride

Mile 1: 7:24; 6:42
Mile 1.5: feel like I'm going to shit myself; feel alright
Mile 2: 7:37; 6:13
Mile 2.5: get a stabbing pain in my right kidney; get a stabbing pain in my left kidney
Mile 3: 7:53; 6:34
Mile 3.5: hit the wall and consider ditching the workout; slow down a bit as a preventative measure, poop feeling goes away
Mile 4: 8:00; 6:59
Mile 4.5: start playing mental games; begin to feel like my legs are drained and wonder how long I can keep it up
Mile 5: 8:08; 7:04
Mile 5.5: just aim to get through it; start feeling a bit nauseous but figure I have less than a mile to go
Mile 6: 8:02; 6:50
Mile 6.2: finish in 48:35, av. 7:50; feel like I'm going to throw up; finish in 41:58, av. 6:46; am convinced I am going to throw up. Somehow I don't

There are some things that might have contributed:

• I take these pills called Optygen. They're fucking gold, I tell you. I kind of felt that they made me stronger, but I'd never been off them for more than a few days at a time until two months ago, when I ran out and couldn't replace them. This could have something to do with why I felt so weak, and why I feel stronger now that I'm back on them. (They're legal, by the way, and recently coronated as "the official supplement of Ironman"). However, I was still on them when I did the last 10K time trial in 48:35.
• My nutrition has kind of sucked lately, and I've only been back on the ice-cream-free wagon for a week or two. But I've eaten well in the past and never run a sub-seven minute mile, let alone 6.2 of them.
• Is it the coach and the low volume, or is it that I've finally ignored his advice and gone with my own instinct that I'm better slightly tired than I am fresh? I'm sure that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
• Could it be that my Garmin really was shitting itself? I mean, I was running on a track, and it seemed pretty consistent with the distance per lap... but there also were train tracks next to the field that could have fucked with the satelite signal...
• After about 2 months of running in 90-degree temperatures and stifling humidity, it's finally cool again. Finally I can cut loose again.
• I only started running again about 6 weeks ago, and before that I'd done significantly different training than my usual triathlon training program. Meaning that my 10K last month was on almost no run training in over 6 months. Maybe this time was already coming? Has cycling put me in better aerobic shape, which is only translating to better running times now that I've got about 6 weeks of running in my legs again?
  

So the question is: Is my coach holding me back, or is he a miracle worker??? What do you guys think?

Update: I really appreciate all your input, and it's interesting to hear everyone's take. I have some responses to the comments I've gotten so far.

BANDOBRAS: That's an excellent point. So you think that the fact that I didn't feel good till I chucked his plan in the trash is telling me something? (serous question)

TRIHARDIST: Boo! That's an EXPENSIVE gamble... But I'm coming around to the idea.

GRETCHEN: I was running so hard I had no idea WHERE I was.
To clear up everyone's comments, I WAS following the plan religiously for the first 5 weeks and feeling pretty miserable. Then I decided that he was full of shit and started ignoring it. That was a little over a week ago. After about 9 days of doing my own thing, THEN I blew my own times out of the water.

JUDI: I've only been working with the guy for 6 weeks, and only following what he said for five. I don't think ANYONE can give you that kind of fitness improvement in so little time (legally), they can only tweak something to bring out what was already ready to happen inside. But I'll take my own words into account in my decision. He has been telling me that I've never been rested enough to know what I'm really capable of. However, an ironman ends with a marathon, not a 10K. Less than 3 months out, the longest run I've been assigned so far is 1 hour.

BOBBY: Where did you get the idea that it was a run-intensive program? He has me doing about 60% of my training on the bike (I believe that the bike is not where the problem lies). If I were to follow his plans to the letter, I'd be running less the 15 mi/wk. The biggest change I've made since deciding to ignore him is swapping out bike rides for runs, adding about 50% more running. The run-intensive thing is all Claire and all in the last week.

Suffering – It ain't pretty

Suffering has been something I've spent a lot of time thinking about this summer. It all started with a desperate email to Mindy and Mary, two of the fastest runners I know under the height of 5'3", where I begged for running advice. I was told that to become a more competitive runner, I needed to learn to suffer. I was familiar with this concept, but I'd thought that I was already suffering. When the student is ready, the teacher will present him/herself, and suddenly I started seeing evidence everywhere that faster runners were just willing to suffer more than I was.

Slowly it began to dawn on me that maybe, just maybe, I just wasn't working hard enough on the run. What solidified this was Anne's 15% pace increase overnight, just because Michelle told her to "run like she stole something". I'll be damned if I'd let Anne beat me just because she was willing to suffer more! So starting sometime late in the summer, I made the decision that if that's what it took, I was going to SUFFER on the run. I was going to suffer like the best of them.

Suddenly the meaning of speed work made sense. Suddenly I understood the value of different training paces for different distances. Suddenly it made sense why someone would bother to run a 5 or 10K. I attacked running with a new abandon (and maybe even a bit of enjoyment). And slowly I realized that a willingness to suffer isn't necessarily enough.

See, for me, lacing up my running shoes is already low-grade suffering. Okay, that's not true. I talk a lot about how much I hate running, but it's not like I'm skipping my running workouts. Clearly I get something out of it. What exactly that something is still eludes me, but I'll admit that I don't HATE to run. Still, I don't enjoy running. From the second I start, I can't wait for it to be over. Just the act of running is so much effort that I can suffer to a pretty high degree with very, very little extra effort without actually going much faster. Which is not to say I'm not trying. I've been diligently putting in the hard work (maybe too much of it). See my training log in the sidebar if you don't believe me!

And then there's my bike. I love riding my bike, but we all knew that. Recently I've been riding my bike across the city at rush hour to get to work rather than taking the train. It means dodging car doors, out-sprinting buses, darting between cars, playing chicken with pedestrians, shooting through red lights, and fish-tailing my bike when someone decides to pull over without signaling. Stressful? Maybe for some, but for me it's like a video game trying to get through tight spots and beat lights. (Hmmmm, someone should invent that game, perhaps with a frog trying to cross a busy road...) There are 65 traffic lights in my 11.5-mile commute, 63 of which lie in the 8 miles that go through Cambridge and Boston. This means a lot of clipping in and out, a lot of hairy bike handling, and most of all, a lot of accelerating. The other evening I was waiting at a light when this guy pulls up next to me with an all-carbon bike, matching kit, and a Tour de France ass. I sized him up, and decided he had to stay behind me. I clipped in, stood up, passed him, and then HAMMERED. I pedaled as hard as I could on my shitty commuter bike with my big, fat backpack on my back. I pedaled so hard that my bike was squeaking. I upshifted, but it was one of the gears that wasn't working, so I upshifted some more and pounded even harder on the pedals. My legs burned. I didn't look, but my guess is that I was riding roughly 24 mph. When I finally hit another red light about a mile later I was heaving for air, my heart was going like a jackhammer, sweat was pouring out of my helmet into my eyes and mouth. I hadn't even noticed how hard I was working while I was riding. Mr. Tour de France Ass was gone, which was a shame because I really wanted to race some more.

Hmmm... burning legs, pouring sweat, gasping for air, heart racing... All those things sound like suffering, don't they? But not on my bike. On my bike it's fun.

See? That's the difference. I love suffering on my bike, and love putting the hurt on someone else. I love dropping the hammer and saying, Catch me if you can! I always get to work sweaty and gross, because I can't help but ride my bike as hard as I can. In all the times I've ridden to work, only one person has ever passed me. One. Running? Not so much. When running I'm always looking for a way to make it easier, always hoping that everyone else will slow down so I can slow down too. When I get home on my bike, I'm sad to see my house. When hit the mailbox on the corner at the end of my run, it's like walking out of the office at the end of the day: relief!

BUT, in the race this weekend, I may have been disappointed with my result relative to other runners, but no one, but no one suffered as much as I did. Let's compare my finishing photos to Anne's:

Running like she stole something... and got away with it.

Grimace of pain and suffering

On the verge of tears perhaps?

Running like I stole something... and got shot in the back.

The kind of suffering that stays with you... (Please ignore the cold runner syndrome)

In other news, look at the fucking helmet I had to wear!

Feel free to sing the Super Mario Brothers theme song to yourself as you look at this picture.

I should correct one thing I said in my last post. It turns out I was 7th woman on the bike. I had only counted the women ahead of me because I found it inconceivable that someone could be a stronger cyclist (if only marginally -- less than a minute and a half separated me from the fastest female bike split of the day), and an even WEAKER runner than I am. But it must be so, because there were 3 women who rode better than I did and came in behind me. Maybe they're shitty swimmers. Then again, look at the mushroom sitting on top of my head! That thing must have been worth at least a minuet over 40K!

My new secret weapon

This week was the launch of the New Claire. This New Claire is going to become a runner.

runner - [RUNner] n, 1. a person or animal who runs, especially races
2. one who runs for fun
3. a person capable of completing a 5k in 21 minutes or less, a 10K in 45 minutes or less, a half marathon in 1:45 or less, and a marathon in 3:40 or age-graded Boston Marathon qualifying time; antonyms – jogger, Claire

Since The New Claire has decided that becoming an ultrarunner is the stupidest idea she's ever had, The New Claire will have way more time and energy to spend concentrating on getting fast.

(By the way, the New Claire, once she has achieved this goal, is going to go right back to being the Old Claire and begin a training program that is about 75% cycling, because running is stupid.)

And the New Claire has a secret weapon. Just two doors down, in a big, beige house that looks much like Speedy Labs (only with more children's toys in the front yard), lives the most dangerous weapon known to women ages 25-29. In that house you will find the key to my future success: MICHELLE!

Dun, dun, DUUUUN!!!
(Yes, in dire circumstances I have been know to cavort with women in pink... and believe me, my running is in a state of emergency. I would dress in pink if I thought it would make me faster.)

And how does this very dangerous Michelle work? Well I'll tell you... But you'll have to go find a michelle of your own, because this one's taken!

First, Michelle is older than me. So much older than me that we'll never be in the same age group, and therefore never in direct competition.  Therefore, she doesn't mind (much) if I start running faster.  She is so much older than me, that there is no reason why she should be able to run so much faster than me. In pink. Michelle knows that making me mad is a good way to make me go faster. Michelle knows EXACTLY how to make me mad. She knows that the active ingredients of that potion are the color pink, skorts that you run in, and a "we're all winners here!" attitude. Michelle has all those ingredients in endless supply.

Second, Michelle has way more experience running than I do. She's... you know... old and all, but she also has a coach. So while I'm gasping for air and she is still breathing free and easy, I get to mooch all kinds of free running advice off of her.

But here's the secret ingredient that will be the key to my success, and makes my Michelle better than any michelle you could ever find: Michelle is the worst pacer in the world. Okay, maybe the second worst pacer. I'm the worst.

And this will make me faster.

How? I'll tell you.

Tuesday I was going to run 5x1M@7:50 on 10:00. I was going to do it on the treadmill so that I could go an even pace and get the work in. I love the treadmill because I can't go out too fast, and all I have to concentrate on is not falling off the back. But Michelle wanted to run on the road. "Don't you worry," she said. "I'll take care of the pacing, all you have to do is follow me, it'll be fun!"

And I trusted her. You always trust a woman in pink. Pink evokes trust... and it stimulates the gag reflex.

I should have known that I was fucked when, as a warm-up for our 7:50 mile repeats, Michelle set the warm-up pace at 8:00 miles. You will never find a michelle cruel enough to do that to you. Only my Michelle, created in a top-secret facility in southern Ohio, is specially calibrated to fuck with your lactate threshold that early in a workout.

We got to the lake, and to my relief, Michelle needed to stop for a minute to calibrate her specialized precision pacing monitor: she hit reset on her Garmin. What?! That's it?! THIS is how she's going to keep our pace?! I thought. Then Michelle was off like a shot.

Before I disclose the details of how Michelle is going to improve my performance more than any drug, let me tell you a little story about pacing from a Garmin. A few months ago, back when I was at a job I liked and life was good, I got an e-mail from Angry saying something like, "I just ran 4.xx miles, average pace 8:04. Beat that!"
"Okay, I will!" I said. This exchange would ultimately nearly end our friendship, but this story is not about our friendship. It is about my running. But you have to PROMISE not to tell Angry, cuz he still doesn't know this.

Promise? Okay.

So the very next day I went down to the track determined to run 4.5 miles averaging 8:03 pace. I have a GPS, I thought, this'll be easy! I set it to beep if I went slower than 8:03 pace and started running. When I first looked down at my watch after a second or two, it said I was going roughly 9:58 pace. Oh no! This will not do! I thought, and sped up. Then I hit about 9:15 pace. Oh no! This will not do! I thought, and sped up. After about two hundred meters I look down and suddenly I'm running about 6:50 pace, breathing like a fat girl, and snotting all over myself. What I discovered is that there is AT LEAST a 5 second delay on that damned thing. Five seconds is a really long time when you're running about 40 seconds per mile faster than your threshhold.

Long story short, after about 2.5 miles I needed to stop or I was going to puke or shit my pants or both. But I couldn't walk, because that would fuck up my time. I already had my garmin set to autopause when I was stopped, so what did I do? I stopped dead in my tracks. Just went from a 7:20 min/mi to standing stock still in one step. I didn't even move my wrist for fear of the satellite thinking I was moving. I felt woozy for a couple of seconds, but I didn't move, and I stood still until I felt like I could run again, and then I SPRINTED back down the track so that it wouldn't register me as having actually stopped. I had to repeat this little stunt about 2 more times, but I DID finish the 4.5 miles on about 7:50 pace. Not counting rests.

(At the moment that I write this, Angry and I are still friends. Who knows if that'll be true if he finds out what really happened on the track that day).

The ironic thing is, that as I was running home from the track, I actually SAW Michelle and we had a good laugh about it, because Michelle probably already knew it's impossible to pace off a Garmin Forerunner!

Back to the lake, Michelle resets her timer and then is off like a shot. I take off after her like the fat little bunny in Disney's Robin Hood that's always yelling, "Wait for me, Mama! Wait for me!" I finally caught her, and when I get a chance to look down at my watch after about 100 meters, we're going at like a 6:10 mile. "SLOW DOWN, MICHELLE!" I gasped.
"Oh, sorry!" she giggled.

We ran that first mile in 7:29. That is the fastest continuous mile I have ever run in my life. It was so fast, that I involuntarily peed my pants for the first time in a non-cough-related incident. When I asked a friend (who will remain nameless) about how to run fast, she confided that at one point she would run 5 and 10K's so hard that she would lose control of her bladder at the end. When I read that, I hadn't the faintest idea of how that could happen. Now I know. There were people that I went to high school with walking around this pond right now, and I'd wet my pants. Great!

Do you remember in 7th grade science class how you did the experiment where you stuck only a corner of a paper towel in water and watched the water rise through the paper due to capillary action? I insist that that's the reason I continued to pee my pants on the rest of the mile repeats.

You may find a michelle, but your michelle wouldn't make you run so hard you pee your pants. Only my Michelle can do that.

"Michelle, next time we have GOT to run slower!" I said. I already hadn't been feeling well, and had debated whether running was a good idea at all.
"Alright, this one will be slower, I promise!" she said.

And we DID hold an average of 7:50, on the hilly end of the course, which meant spending a good half of the time in the 7:10 range. "Do you remember when we started?" Michelle asked, as I was going into cardiac arrest.
"No! That was supposed to be your job! You're the pacer!" I gasped.
So instead of trying to figure it out, Michelle, who is not only a superb pacer but also an accurate judge of distances said, "I say... riiiiight... here!" It turned out to be only .8 miles, which was just fine by me, because I felt like I was about to puke.

Finally, on the third one we hit 7:48, but at this point my legs were so fried I thought I was going to die right then and there. "Michelle, I can't do another one!" I said.
"Aw, come on, just one more!" she said, and took off again. I had no choice but to run after her again. Wait for me, mama!  Wait for me!

On this one we managed to average 7:49 pace, but on the hilly end of the course. Michelle was pulling away. At .75 miles I did the only thing I knew how to do in such situations. I stopped dead in my tracks, stood stock still, and yelled after her, "I'm not running with you anymore!" My crotch was soaked, I had that stabbing pain above my right pelvic bone in the back again, and I was pretty sure I was about to shit my pants (nothing would have surprised me at this point).

And when I had given up and wanted to run easy the short way home, what did Michelle do? She made me keep running. Any generic copycat michelle would have taken mercy on your soul, but not my Michelle. She was determined to kill me. Not only did we take the long way back around the lake (tacking on about 2 miles), but we also took the long way home, tacking on another couple of little (huge) hills. And did we go slow?! Of COURSE we didn't go slow! We went only slightly slower.

On top of everything else, what was supposed to be an 8-mile run, was over 9. At one point in time we had actually hit 5:32 min/miles. When you say, "I want to qualify for Boston or die trying," most people wouldn't take that literally. Not my Michelle. And that's why Michelle is the most dangerous thing to ever happen to the female 25-29 age group. Because Michelle is going to turn me into the baddest assest mofo on 2 legs by making me survive workouts that make me wet my pants until I just curl up and die at the side of the road.

We went for a tempo run on Thursday morning. The pace got out of control again (this time it was my fault), and this time I was quite sure I was going to shit my pants. But for the first time I'm putting up average speeds (for the whole workout, including warm-up and cool-down) that are in the mid-8-minute range! I have no idea what I'll do when Michelle's rest week is over and she gets back to the REAL running. I'm thinking of tying a bungee cord to her waist and just coming along for the ride.

And the best part?! She's maybe, probably, I'm pretty sure, possibly, I don't want to make any promises but..., thinking (very seriously) about running Disney with me in January.

By the way, Michelle reads this blog. So everyone, be nice to her. But go get your own, this one's taken!