We made it. It is weird that I prefer days NOT to be so long? Probably. I guess it’s good that I live relatively close to the equator.
Running Report:
I ran a workout that I got from Daniels’ Running Formula that I have done a bunch of times, which is 3 x 1 mi at tempo with ~2 minute rests in between. Here is my data:
The verdict: Miles 1 and 2 were slightly faster (by 20-30 seconds, at 8:44/mi and 8:47/mi) than prior fasted tempo runs have been recently. However, I still died in mile 3 and OH MY GOD look at my heart rate!! 201 shouldn’t even be physiologically possible for a 42 year old, should it!?
75F is actually a decent morning temp in June for FL and look at that 96% humidity.
I did not get a side stitch but I didn’t really enjoy eating at 5 am either (I had half a bagel with jam, carbbbzzzz). I think next tempo/interval run I will try to drink something with some glucose/electrolytes instead. (Tailwind? Gatorade endurance? Nuun endurance? Something else? Let me know if you have a specific magical rec!)
Other things report:
Annabel and I went down the Youtube Amanda Rach Lee rabbit hole together and now she wants to bullet journal. She tends to make things that look like bujo spreads already, so I think this will be a very natural fit!
(I wish I had discovered the world of bujo as a kid – also would have LOOOVED it.)
While we were watching those (and C was again watching his own show), G did this:
Does a tiny part of me feel guilt that we are not doing anything educational in the evenings (group reading time, music practice, etc)? Yes.
But right now that part of me is too tired when I get home AND there are too many kids around to really enforce anything without a lot of drama and also G can’t yet read so my fantasy of family reading hour just seems untenable.
So whatever. We are taking a break from trying too hard at things after 5 pm. Hopefully it will all work out.
25 Comments
A little orange juice is great for energy before a run! Also I’m 40 and my heart rate can definitely get in the 200s, usually when I’m going up hills. So it’s possible but I’ve wondered if it’s a great thing to do.
I usually run fasted first thing in the morning too. For a longer run I’ll have half a piece of toast with sunflower butter. I’ll typically have nuun when I come home. I honestly don’t really notice a difference in my energy levels when I have something to eat or not.
Skratch is popular and they are having a sale through June 23 (but stocked up for summer yesterday). There’s also LiquidIV, but that’s a little bit lower in sugar and higher in sodium – more of a night before/recovery drink. I often use old-fashioned Gatorade because I have a bunch that I bought when I was running a race and that was the course drink. During the summer I usually drink a Skratch/Gatorade for runs less than an hour (usually less than 45 minutes) with just a little coffee before hand and then Skratch/Gatorade + gels every 30 minutes during long runs.
Skratch is about all I eat/drink when working out these days. The bars, chews and drink mixes are all good. They have amazing customer service as well.
Have you ever done any heart rate training? I’d be interested in hearing your views. I’ve been trying the Maffetone method this year where your max heart rate should be 180-your age. I have mixed feelings about it. I don’t feel like I’m doing much running since I have to take a lot of walk breaks to keep my heart rate under 137. Overall though I feel really good, my knees don’t ache, my heart rate returns to baseline much faster and I can go longer distances without feeling tired. My resting heart rate fluctuates depending on where I am in my menstrual cycle but It’s consistently been about 58 during the low point which is lower than when I started doing this.
I think I’m going to keep it up through the summer but when it cools off in the fall I’m go to train for a 5K to see what happens when I’m not trying to keep my heart rate so low. My running routine had gotten very stale so the experiment has been worth it for a shake up.
My resting heart rate is below 50 (usually like 44-48). I don’t think I have the patience for HR training to be honest!!
Love reading you’re day to day musings. Makes me feel normal ^^. Also a doc here (Family physician in France ). When i get home we eat and we just chill and relax with the kids . Sometimes outside , sometimes inside . No intentional stuff ( reading together ), i am just too tirer for that at the moment so just being together it is :).
And i don’t know if you’ve already read that book but it made me réalise that kids just like being around us ( without doing anything in particular or sometimes even just helping me out). The Book is hunt , gather, parent by Michaëleen doucleff.
Try not to feel guilty about not doing enrichment activities with your kids in the evening. Think back to your childhood – I bet you weren’t doing enrichment activities with your parents? I for sure wasn’t because I was 1 of 5 kids. I don’t have many memories of my parents playing with me. They definitely supported my love of reading, and my mom read to me before bedtime, but that was kind of the extent of it – which is totally fine because they were working full time/running a business together and caring for 5 kids! When it comes to the evenings, I suggest what is most enjoyable for me once the 18mo is in bed, which lately has been playing the game memory. But I love board games and things like that. We read books, too, but that is really it for enrichment. We are all depleted at the end of the day so it’s all about making it to bedtime in our house. We’ve also been trying to get outside as much as possible after dinner with the weather allows. Tonight I’m taking the 4yo to a local wading pool after dinner and my husband will take the toddler on a stroller walk. But we are in opposite seasons – you are in the “winter” of Florida! So I am sure you are all feeling very cooped up!
Nice work on those tempo runs in high humidity! Bleh!
I love her pillow throne! It’s just the three of us and our evenings aren’t enriching, kiddo plays Lego and then we read stories before bedtime. Although the neighbour kid who is 9 has started coming over and hanging out with my nearly 5 year old son some nights, so it’s social interaction?
Watching planner YouTube videos sounds educational to me! 🙂
Nuun or Liquid IV (from Costco) for me. I usually do a fasted run, but anything more than 3 miles/30 minutes, I prefer to eat a banana to something dry and grain-based that usually makes me feel weighed down.
I eat a whole or half a banana and that seems to work well for fueling an early run.
Well, I feel like I am going to die when my HR gets above 160. Interestingly, as I have gotten fitter, the HR I have been able to tolerate comfortably has increased by about 10 bpm. So maybe a HR of 200 is actually possible in a 40yo woman if you are in good shape?
I make my kid do Khan academy on the iPad at night. I’ve been doing this for 2.5 years now, and she has learned to teach herself math by watching videos, which… isn’t that the educational wave of the future? I figure that they want her to do extra reading in the evening after school, and math is just one other skill that benefits from daily practice. It did take about a year for this to become a “habit” and she complains about it mightily, but also, now she’s doing 7th grade math on the computer with almost no input from me, and her testing in math is great so it does appear to be helping.
Anyway, don’t feel guilty about not making all three of them do this kind of stuff every night. I can barely do it with one.
FWIW my heart rate on my watch typically is a bit high relative to the reading I get from an actual HR monitor. When I’m road biking, I wear a HR monitor around my chest and my HR usually caps out around 180. It’s much more variable when I use the watch reading. My PT (who is an ultrarunner) also says the watch HR reading isn’t very accurate so I wouldn’t worry too much about it as long as you didn’t actually feel like you were dying. 🙂
My heart rate gets close to 190 sometimes when I’m working all out. I’m 40. My resting heart rate is like 52. Sometimes I wonder if this is a problem and I should see a doctor, other times I figure it recovers fast and it’s fine.
I also let me kids have basically unlimited screens after camp. They’re tired, I’m tired. They don’t get screen time at camp unless it’s storming, so it’s fine. We all need downtime.
I try to cut the screens off after dinner. From dinner to bedtime, read or play with toys. But we get home at 4, have dinner 5:30-6 and in bed by 7 for the 5 year old and 8 for the 10 year old, so the timing is different for your family.
I can’t run fasted – I wake up hypoglycemic and I get really lightheaded and bonk on anything longer than 4 miles or anything that requires speed. I do a larabar or a banana/date with peanut butter, but I have an iron stomach.
As far as summer evenings – I would not feel guilty! Summer is for a break and relaxation. We do try to start enforcing our school year schedule a 1-2 weeks before school resumes so that it’s not really hard for the kids, and we keep up some activities (piano) throughout the summer, but otherwise, I think everyone needs the summer break to relax. G does a handful of science-based educational camps among his outdoor camps, so I think he gets a bit of info there, and he is an avid reader so we don’t have to encourage reading for him.
I certainly wouldn’t worry about doing enriching activities at night, but just wanted to add that my 3.75-year-old has been very into audiobooks lately. We’ve gotten packs from the library that have the physical book and the audiobook (you could also find they physical book at the library and look for a downloadable version of the audiobook—the nice thing about most of these packs is the audiobook chimes to tell the child to turn the page).
I also second the recommendation from Marie-Elise for the book Hunt, Gather, Parent. It was really interesting in general, especially as I have been watching Old Enough on Netflix (the author also has an article about the show, I think on NPR’s website—she’s a science correspondent for NPR).
are you sure your HR monitor is alright? how is it possible to get to 200? I did treadmill stress time and never got beyond 180 and I was literally “dying” hahaha… do you think you did well/faster when eating something before the run? or whether it changes your post-run day hunger level? I just had a day I was hungry ALL the time after a hard workout day the day before, I wonder if eating before would help to tame the hunger level.
figuring out nutrition while training for a marathon is tricker than just do the workouts.
it’s my Apple Watch so probably not the world’s most accurate. maybe i’ll have to try an actual chest strap sometime . .
Have you heard of Epic Books? It’s a subscription app that has thousands of children’s books available. Many of them are “Read to Me” books and my daughter who can’t read yet really enjoys them. Just thought it might be an option for G if you are wanting to have a reading hour with your kids at night. Please also note that if you want to allow all children to have screen time and just veg out then I’m fully in support of that too. 😂🤣 My kids did that exact thing this evening because I. Was. Done. 😂🤦🏼♀️
I NEEED to try this b/c I really want some kind of ‘family reading time’ and having G occupied is a key part of this!!
They have a free 30 day trial, I believe, but if she likes it, the price is very reasonable, especially for everything you get!
Seconding Epic books. My 8 year old, who is now 2 grades (at least) above reading level, learned how to read after he was sent home from school during the pandemic. I credit it all to my reading to him at first. We were concerned at first that he used Epic only to “listen”, not to “read” books. However, he recently read the entire Percy Jackson book series in ONE WEEK. In second grade. Purchasing Epic (a great gift to request from the grandparents too!), was one of the best things we ever did.
I LOVE the late light/early light and this time of the year is my fave, which makes me probably a little wacky especially since we live far north and get (checks notes) like almost 2h more than you in Miami, how is this possible? The size of the US astounds me sometime, I don’t think of myself as that far from FL (in MN). Anyway.
I would def. keep with your current evenings and feel no guilt. Everyone needs down time and screens aren’t all bad. Enjoy!
I’m so confused about heart rates. I do the same workouts I did months ago and now my HR is lower, am I just taking it too easy?? Or is that good?
that’s probably a good thing – means your body has to work less hard to accomplish the same feat!
My high HRs are concerning to me, in part for that reason. Maybe I just don’t run enough miles these days to get cardiac adaptation?