Life After Marathons: A Running/barre3/Coffee/Life Journal

[SarahDisney]

Where's The Easy: A Rough Training Week
​

I had three runs scheduled this week - 3 miles Easy Continuous, 2 intervals Daniels T pace (10 mins @ T + 2mins RI) iwth 0.5 mi WU + CD, and 5 miles at Easy/Long Run.
All three runs were faster than they were supposed to be. The Daniels T pace I was just pushing too hard, which I think is just me not yet knowing where the right pace is.
The easy runs, though ... I know exactly what the problem was. Neither run felt easy. And while I knew they were supposed to be easy and I tried to self-correct, I couldn't do it. I couldn't find that easy pace groove. I kept trying, and it just wasn't there. Ugh.

It's tough. Last training plan I really grew to appreciate and enjoy the easy runs. It's frustrating to feel like I no longer know what that easy pace is.

I'm off until Tuesday, so I'm just going to try to relax and not worry about it. Tuesday is scheduled as 3 miles at Easy/LR, so hopefully that will help me figure out if this was just an off week or if I need to start working harder to find my easy pace again.

 

[LikelyLynae]

DD28 (who is now a Starbucks manager) told me that if a Starbucks is inside any other business, it is owned and operated by that business, not by Starbucks corp. The stand alone buildings are owned by Starbucks corp. and they are the only ones who allow using rewards. At least that is how I remember it. I don't know if there are any exceptions to that rule. Disney Springs vs. Disney parks confused me since Disney owns all the property but since Disney leases the land at DS to all the businesses they also lease to Starbucks corp. Now, wasn't that confusing, lol!

I heard my name....and coffee.
Yes, so stand alone stores are the only ones owned by Starbucks, ones in target, Safeway, Kroger, king supers etc are all actually owned by whatever business they are in, so whether or not they allow rewards is up to them. They updated a lot of rules recently, so star rewards are able to be used at more locations. The partners (workers) in these stores also don’t get all the amazing benefits that Starbucks offers, and often times they aren’t able to get tips. Sometimes they only have one bar machine, which is why a lot of tarbucks don’t offer the blonde espresso, because they have to offer decaf instead.
Things like promotions and events, birthday rewards (which are now only available to be used on your actual birthday) have even more strict rules.

We proudly serve- in hotels, hospitals, etc- definitely not Starbucks owned. They brew Starbucks coffee. But they are owned and trained by whatever building they are in. Some of them are operated extremely well, and they use our training material. Others, not so great.
But if you want a “Starbucks experience” I would suggest going to a stand alone store. Typically speaking, they treat their partners the best, and have the most trained partners, with the most benefits available for both customers and partners.

(Also please don’t boycott Starbucks )

 

[SarahDisney]

I heard my name....and coffee.
Yes, so stand alone stores are the only ones owned by Starbucks, ones in target, Safeway, Kroger, king supers etc are all actually owned by whatever business they are in, so whether or not they allow rewards is up to them. They updated a lot of rules recently, so star rewards are able to be used at more locations. The partners (workers) in these stores also don’t get all the amazing benefits that Starbucks offers, and often times they aren’t able to get tips. Sometimes they only have one bar machine, which is why a lot of tarbucks don’t offer the blonde espresso, because they have to offer decaf instead.
Things like promotions and events, birthday rewards (which are now only available to be used on your actual birthday) have even more strict rules.

We proudly serve- in hotels, hospitals, etc- definitely not Starbucks owned. They brew Starbucks coffee. But they are owned and trained by whatever building they are in. Some of them are operated extremely well, and they use our training material. Others, not so great.
But if you want a “Starbucks experience” I would suggest going to a stand alone store. Typically speaking, they treat their partners the best, and have the most trained partners, with the most benefits available for both customers and partners.

I think that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation!

(Also please don’t boycott Starbucks )

Any chance you can talk to the higher ups about giving me more time to use my birthday reward?
(I'm sure my Stabucks boycott will end soon)

 

[LikelyLynae]

I think that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation!



Any chance you can talk to the higher ups about giving me more time to use my birthday reward?
(I'm sure my Stabucks boycott will end soon)

This is where going to a Starbucks owned store would benefit you. We have slightly more lax rules, and we were told to make the moment right when it comes to birthday rewards since they changed it so fast. (Actually, make the moment right is Starbucks main customer service policy, but that’s besides the point)
So if you were unable to use your reward bc you couldn’t make it out to one bc of work, appts, or whatever, I would explain that to the barista. I’m not promising anything. But I know what my store was told to do.

 

[SarahDisney]

This is where going to a Starbucks owned store would benefit you. We have slightly more lax rules, and we were told to make the moment right when it comes to birthday rewards since they changed it so fast. (Actually, make the moment right is Starbucks main customer service policy, but that’s besides the point)
So if you were unable to use your reward bc you couldn’t make it out to one bc of work, appts, or whatever, I would explain that to the barista. I’m not promising anything. But I know what my store was told to do.

This is good to know. Thank you! I know the baristas have some latitude with what they can do for customers, but I didn't know that applied to expired birthday rewards ... that's good. I still wish they hadn't changed it, but ... this makes it less bad.

 

[FredtheDuck]

Hey, wanted to comment on the runs this week. Remember that you're coming off of a race and you have a lot of other stuff going on right now. Easy to see how body and brain can get out of sync a little. Shoot, I've been on DB plans for a year now and I still totally lose pacing (see: my LR over the weekend). And when you're struggling to find the right pace and your brain dwells on it during a run, it's hard to settle in to the run and feel like it's not a slog.

All of that to say, see how things go this week. I'd bet things settle down. And if they don't, then I'd bet you'll get some good guidance here on what to do.

 

[SarahDisney]

Hey, wanted to comment on the runs this week. Remember that you're coming off of a race and you have a lot of other stuff going on right now. Easy to see how body and brain can get out of sync a little. Shoot, I've been on DB plans for a year now and I still totally lose pacing (see: my LR over the weekend). And when you're struggling to find the right pace and your brain dwells on it during a run, it's hard to settle in to the run and feel like it's not a slog.

All of that to say, see how things go this week. I'd bet things settle down. And if they don't, then I'd bet you'll get some good guidance here on what to do.

Thank you for the insight and encouragement.
I think that with this being such a short plan (4 weeks), I was expecting everything to be back to normal from day 1. But one of the big reasons why I wanted to do this plan myself instead of having Billy design it is because I knew everything would be out of whack for me early in the plan, and I guess I just didn't realize that that would manifest in terms of my paces and effort too.

Which is a long way of saying... we'll see how things go tomorrow. And even if things aren't back to normal by tomorrow... I have to remember that that's okay. I wasn't expecting anything to be perfect on this plan. I knew life would get in my way. I just have to remember to do the best I can.

 

[SarahDisney]

Spoiler: Work Update

I think today might be the day I find out what I was actually hired to do!
... although the answer may be that nobody knows.
I'm not excited.

 

[SarahDisney]

Spoiler: Work Update

I think today might be the day I find out what I was actually hired to do!
... although the answer may be that nobody knows.
I'm not excited.

Update:
So ... my supervisor is as clueless as I am. Sort of. It's apparently complicated.
At the end of the day ... I don't want to learn Java.
But this was a good meeting. At least now we're all equally clueless and I'm not more clueless than everyone else.

 

[Bree]

Update:
So ... my supervisor is as clueless as I am. Sort of. It's apparently complicated.
At the end of the day ... I don't want to learn Java.
But this was a good meeting. At least now we're all equally clueless and I'm not more clueless than everyone else.

Uh, at least the coffee is good???

Seriously though. It’s got to be frustrating not knowing why they have you there.

 

[SarahDisney]

Uh, at least the coffee is good???

Seriously though. It’s got to be frustrating not knowing why they have you there.

Well, the coffee is what matters most.

Surprisingly, this cluelessness is not bad. For my first month at the job, I thought it was just that nobody wanted to tell me anything. Now I know that things changed between when I was hired and when I started and a lot of the lack of information is due to that - it's not that nobody wants to tell me, it's that nobody knows. The person who was supposed to know what was going on (and was supposed to be my immediate supervisor) was never hired. So my boss is going to work with his boss to figure things out ... and hopefully more information will be coming soon.
Of course, whether or not they should have hired the underlings before hiring the manager (who was then never hired) is a different issue entirely...

 

[SarahDisney]

Running Update:
If you saw my run from yesterday on Strava, that's a lie. Strava seems to be ignoring the last 5-6 minutes of the run. Tha actual pace was 13:45, so ... not too fast (easy/lr pace is 13:16). But that was a bit of a disaster run for other reasons.

Today was 3 miles easy continuous (12:28) at a pace of 12:01. So ... still not quite there, but getting better. I had to remind myself to go easier, but I was able to course correct sometimes, which was an improvement over last week. I think.

 

[Bree]

I just requested to follow you on Strava!

I'm on week 12 of my plan and still struggle with pacing. Sigh.......

 

[SarahDisney]

I just requested to follow you on Strava!

I'm on week 12 of my plan and still struggle with pacing. Sigh.......

I get that ... that's why I try to focus more on effort than on pace. I find that when I get my effort right, my pace is pretty close.
Of course, getting the right effort isn't as easy as it sounds...

 

[SarahDisney]

Just gonna drop this here ...

http://coffeebylt.com

That's Des Linden and Ben True's coffee company (I think that's what it is ... it's something coffee).
Which just goes to show you ... even professional runners love coffee.

 

[Dis5150]

Running Update:
If you saw my run from yesterday on Strava, that's a lie. Strava seems to be ignoring the last 5-6 minutes of the run. Tha actual pace was 13:45, so ... not too fast (easy/lr pace is 13:16). But that was a bit of a disaster run for other reasons.

Today was 3 miles easy continuous (12:28) at a pace of 12:01. So ... still not quite there, but getting better. I had to remind myself to go easier, but I was able to course correct sometimes, which was an improvement over last week. I think.

Strava constantly annoys me. It always wants to cut my runs at least .1 miles short. So My Garmin will say 4.0 miles but when I go to check it on Strava it says 3.9 miles. And I know the miles on my Garmin are accurate, plus Strava is getting the info from my Garmin so
I sometimes find myself running longer than I am supposed to, just so Strava will show it correctly.

 

[SarahDisney]

Strava constantly annoys me. It always wants to cut my runs at least .1 miles short. So My Garmin will say 4.0 miles but when I go to check it on Strava it says 3.9 miles. And I know the miles on my Garmin are accurate, plus Strava is getting the info from my Garmin so
I sometimes find myself running longer than I am supposed to, just so Strava will show it correctly.

Yeah, Strava and Garmin never agree. It's super frustrating. This is the first time I've had it load 5 minutes, but my nice clean distances from Garmin are never that on Strava.
When I did my NYRR virtual races earlier in the year (which do GPS verification of your distance on Strava), they said to run a little extra so that it showed up as the right distance on Strava. So apparently this is a known thing with strava. It's just annoying.

 

[SarahDisney]

Very proud of this one. I was originally scheduled for 3 miles, but knew I would likely have to cut it short. Last night I decided two miles, but then almost decided to just skip it because I was very overtired. I decided to leave my alarm set, but I was too tired to pick out clothing.
This morning I woke up and almost called an audible and scrapped the run. I ended up finally getting out of bed at 6:10 and deciding that if I could get out of the house at 6:30 (not likely) I'd do 3 miles, later than that would be a max of 2. After tearing a contact lens, I finally got out of the house at 6:38. Set a course in my head that I knew would be close to two miles (actually modified a drop on the fly, but not a huge difference) and went.
Mostly this was easy effort. Based on the effort, I was actually expecting a pace around 5-6 seconds slower, but I'm pretty happy with 12:59.

Next step is to plot a flattish course for sundays mixed tempo/long run.

Oh, and I have to figure out this marathon weekend travel agent situation. I dont know how to choose a travel agent or when to book or anything like that. I've always just done this myself. But I want the partial cancellability. Ugh. This is too complicated.

 

[jennamfeo]

Oh, and I have to figure out this marathon weekend travel agent situation. I dont know how to choose a travel agent or when to book or anything like that. I've always just done this myself. But I want the partial cancellability. Ugh. This is too complicated.

I feel you there. I don't necessarily need to be able to cancel, but it's so far out, who knows where life will take me. But I think I am going to just do it on my own and hope for the best. Pretty much how I do everything else in life.

 

[run.minnie.miles]

Great job getting out there today!
Also, I am enjoying following your work saga... It will be interesting to see how it will all play out!

I think, like @jennamfeo , I am going to risk booking by myself... but I am really interested to hear how your experience is, because it's definitely something I've considered. I want to know if they can get me a better price!

But in the long run...we will all be drinking coffee (beer for you @jennamfeo ) in WDW together in no time!