I came pretty close but fell just short. August clocked in at my second highest mileage month of the year. As cool as that it was, I was also a little irritated. I had been on track to finally break 100 miles in a month, but life happens. Taking 4 days off due to a headache that wouldn’t quit and then turning a 10 miler into 4– well that hurt the numbers.
August Totals-
Miles- 87.7 Races- 0
I also managed to make it back to the track twice. None of that was speed work, but the track is still my happy place. I ran the lake path, the river path, from home, around the track and on the treadmill. I realized that my long runs may have too many hills to be called a long, easy run but they definitely meet the slow mark. However I did run my fastest mile in August-
And never came close again
Beyond that, I finally had my doctor’s appointment, attended the company picnic, got a new boss and took a lot of naps. Seriously, why do I nap so much? My doctor’s appointment gave some lovely antibiotics, which are kicking my ass, and a referral to USC. Anywho, hopefully something works, I miss speed work.
I also had a very scary run in with some dogs. Last Friday, the customer that has 2 Bouvier’s brought them in. I forced myself to give them a treat. Granted, I kept the counter between us, but they still good have bitten my hands. Mission safely accomplished. However I have yet to run/walk down my driveway since then.
Coming into to September, I have 3 races scheduled, half marathon, 10k and 5k. With that being said, I am not going to try to hit 100 in September. In fact I am thinking that I will run very little the week after Ventura. I start volleyball again on Monday and a boot camp class next Saturday. I also am volunteering at the Avocado Margarita Festival over that weekend, probably on both days. So it seems to me like it will be the perfect time for fewer miles. But I also have Monday and Tuesday off, so my feet may be itching to run, depends on Ventura. How well I will be able to squat and bump the ball at volleyball will also depend on Ventura, ha! 🙂
August was rough and I feel a little run down, between work and my stupid stomach and a few weeks of rough runs. With that in mind I have not registered for my October half yet. I have two options. City to the Sea (which may sell out) that I have done the last 2 years and the Harvest Marathon. Harvest may win just because it is the end of October and literally down the street. However running goes in ebbs and flows and it will be awesome again, I just have to bide my time. And maybe cross my fingers. 🙂
I took Thursday and Friday as rest days. I had planned for a 8-10 mile run on Saturday. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Call it another rest day. Which was not so good because my lunch may have looked likethis-
Not even sorry
Saturday night I was up late reading again, oops, so my alarm was quickly slapped in the morning. I had a BBQ to attend for work in the early afternoon. The weather was amazing and the view of the ocean from their back yard was awesome. I would have taken pictures but I felt that wasn’t cool doing that at an executives home. My ride had to be back early but even the short amount of time in the sun was too much. I guess when they put warning labels on medicine, they mean business.
I headed to the gym hoping for 8 miles but knowing that 6 was more realistic. Ha!! 4 very sluggish miles were all I could do. I warmed up with 1/2 mile walk then alternated between a 6.00 run and 3.8 walk. It was rough from the start. I never hit a groove, and it was all I could do to complete the 4. This not feeling well crap is beginning to make me cranky. I tried my Garmin again on the treadmill. I thought I turned off the GPS but apparently not. So I present to you the slowest mile, and actually it’s not even a mile-
Nice. Splits- 12:43, 10:56, 10:33, 10:41
So it is looking like I will end up with a 2 week taper for Ventura. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s closer to how I trained last year but I feel anxious missing that last long run.
Work has been a little stressful these last few weeks. My boss was offered a position at another location so now I have a new boss. So far it’s all good and I even took 2 full hour lunches last week, I almost didn’t know what to do with myself. Overall though, it still leaves you feeling a little wonky. I admit that I make poor food choices when stressed, so last week didn’t help that. Combine that with less running and I feel like even more of a Slacker than usual. It’s temporary and I will get back on track. Think positive right?
Hope everyone is having a good weekend! Do anything fun?
Have you ever had one of those weeks where you were just in left field? Like the world existed on one plane and you were on some other cuckoo level? Yeah that’s where I am at this week. Welcome to my planet. Today I actually told a coworker “that I had never forgetted” something. Seriously? Did my brain take a vacation without me? *Case in point- I published this without a title and had to correct it.
Last Friday, I had the start of a headache. Combine that with all of the sun from a 2.5 hour run on Saturday afternoon and a few hours at the beach on Sunday and you get a raging headache that arrived Monday. And it’s still here. It’s my good buddy now. Ha! Monday’s run, though stressful, helped a bit. On Tuesday I set out for another run. I met my mom after work at the river path, it made for a nice warm up. I kept it pretty easy though, so just 4.5 miles with warm up and cool down. I did push it a bit for mile 4. Thanks to my lovely stomach I can only go faster than 9:30 in short bursts. Anything more than that is just not working right now. Once again the headache eased while running only to return later. It’s like a bad penny!
still turning off the Garmin for cool down, I’m so odd sometimes.
Wednesday was more of the same but I refused to cancel on gym night with NikeC again. Plus it’s back to Wednesday nights now since my class was canceled due to low enrollment. Boo! I crawled a mile on the treadmill for a warm up before we hit the circuit room. I used slightly lower weights than normal but at least it was something. I also did a bunch of squats because those didn’t hurt my head, and I can so feel it in my legs today. Our gym offers a boot camp type class on Saturdays and NikeC went this last Saturday. I want to go but am waiting until after the Ventura half. The trainer came up to us while we were warming up and asked me why I didn’t go. I said I didn’t want to try anything new before the half. She replied that they had never had anyone get hurt. Maybe so but I am just plain clumsy. When I informed her that I currently had a sliced foot and had managed to cut my hand that day, she decided I needed an injury/ liability waiver. Nice.Today I just marched to the beat of my own drum apparently. And the drumstick was broken. For those who are thinking why doesn’t she just take something for her headache? I usually would if a headache lingered this long but I am currently taking the lovely (multiple) antibiotics prescribed by my doctor and figured that was more than enough pills. I made myself go to sleep earlier last night and slept with an ice pack on my head. But even with all that, today was a rest day. Tomorrow likely will be too. I tried running it out, so now I’ll try waiting it out. This usually happens 2-3 times a year, so it will pass.
I have one last 8-10 miler that I would like to do this weekend and then it’s taper time!! I won’t lie, that actually sounds pretty nice right now. But right now I am looking forward to cookie Friday and a 3 day weekend!!! Which hopefully means sleeping in.
Sunday was bright and sunny and on the schedule was the company picnic. I really like lazy Sundays but I don’t get one for awhile beginning with this picnic. I always seem to be one of the first people to show up anywhere. I even tried to be late. I left later than planned and even got stuck at a take-your-life-in-your-hands stop sign turning onto a highway. I was still on time. I always feel awkward at these kind of things, I am not the best at mingling. Case in point- a slideshow of pictures from the event was released today- in one pic, you can see me standing by myself with my arms crossed. I eventually did get to mingling. The weather was great, the food (BBQ) was good. There was a bounce house-slide thing, volleyball courts, some bean bag toss thing and lots of chairs and cabana type things, oh and a tug of war. Am I not great with the descriptions? I got to see some people I hadn’t seen in a while and met some new ones. Tug of war was interesting to watch. I also took part in a volleyball game against the executives. Not that I did much, I don’t think the ball ever came my way. Truthfully, I was ok with that because during the warm up games, my left foot managed to find a rock. Which left a nice hole in my left foot. The paranoid runner in me was kind of freaking out, I have a half in 2 weeks!Speaking of a runner, when I first got to the picnic, one of the greeters asked me how many miles I was running or had run that day. When did I become that person? I admit that I am still surprised when people call me that, I still feel like a slacker. 🙂 The picnic went til 3 but I left at 2. Between Saturday’s long run and a few hours on the beach, I had had way too much sun. Before leaving my house I plastered on sunblock but I still ended up red. I took more pictures but my phone was having issues and didn’t save them, boo.
Monday I came up with every excuse to avoid a run. Work had been stressful, I had a headache, my foot still hurt from the day before, yada yada yada. But I knew the main reason was because of Saturday. I told myself to stop being such a sissy and made myself go to the lake path. Why the path? Because I knew there would be dogs there. Let’s rip off the band-aid before my imagination can make things even worse. My foot really did hurt so I took it easy, only 3 miles. My mom called while I was warming up and apparently I sounded a little freaked out. The first dogs I saw were Chihuahua size, ok I got this. An off lease German Shepherd- not so cool. Oh look a pit bull, but on a leash, another Chihuahua, and a Pomeranian. The pep talk I was giving myself in my head was all over the place. I was not exactly relaxed but I was dealing. I rounded a corner and there was a Great Dane. He looked friendly but his sheer size had me skittish. 3 miles was enough pushing it for that night. I did it! Still not happy around dogs but run done!
Ever play tug of war at work? How about slicing your foot and trying to run?
What are you doing this weekend? Looking forward to it?
Saturday was a little rougher than I had hoped for. I faced a long run I was afraid of as well as a fear I thought I was past.
I was really nervous, more like freaking out, about this week’s long run. I had never actually completed 12 consecutive miles outside of a race before. My previous longest training day was 11.5 miles that was split into a 7 mile run followed later by a 4.5 mile run/ walk. Something about 12 just seemed so far and impossible. I had a headache Friday evening and it was lingering Saturday morning. I checked the weather and it was only predicted to be in the 80’s so I figured I would run then and get a little more rest. I had a route mapped out of 3 loops of 3.8 miles. I would add one last hill to that last loop to bring myself to 12 miles.
I was already thinking about calling it at 10 when I set out, did I really need 12? I did my first loop and since I felt tired I decided to do the extra hill then instead of last. Even though that got that hill out of the way, somehow it really screwed up my mileage, I lost a mile. I figured it out around mile 9, I didn’t have enough road left to hit 12, so I looped another street to add it back in. As I was running up one hill for the third time, I realized why I may hate long runs so much. My long runs are usually loops of hills- I’ve been doing hill repeats in disguise and never figured it out! Hello, blonde runner over here. This run had an elevation gain of 920. By mile 9.5 I was done. I stopped at the middle school and doused myself and my visor in water at the fountains. I walked the last 2.5 miles but I did it!! 12 miles done! This fear was mostly overcome.
Slow but done!
I honestly thought I was over my fear of dogs. I had been bit before as a teen but the worst was when I had just started running. I want to say it’s been more than 4 years since I was attacked by 2 border collies while running. Ok, let’s be honest, I was walking. It was near the top of a street that I had probably walked 100 times by then; I had never even noticed the 2 dogs in that yard until that night. The standard Poodle who stood guard at the second to last house at the top, sure, we had had conversations before. I first noticed the dogs on my way up the street, they were in the front yard and their barks sounded less than friendly but I didn’t think much of it. There were kids playing in a nearby yard and a woman gardening. I went all up the end of the road and turned around like always. On my return trip, both dogs rushed out of the yard and ran my way growling and barking. I froze because running away makes it worse right? Plus I thought they were just going to be noisy and not actually do anything. Wrong- one got around behind me and bit me. On the ass, nice. I was in shock. By now the owner was running out for the dogs and the woman gardening had come closer to observe. The owner informed me that he had just removed their shock collars to give them a bath. Umm, what? By now I had determined I was bleeding so we exchanged numbers and I started the trek back to my car, it was about a mile away. About a block later, the shock wore off and I burst into to tears and started shaking. I had 2 puncture wounds and a gnarly, scary bruise. I later found out that I was not the first person the dogs had attacked. It hurt to run for weeks after- you know you need to lose weight when your butt hurts because it jiggles while running. I started carrying pepper spray on my runs and I still have not gone all the way up that street since that day.
I was afraid of all dogs for a while. I was once rushed by a yellow lab who just wanted to have fun and I freaked out. But over the years, I thought it had eased. There are dogs in the office all the time, ranging from Chihuahua’s to Pits to Dobermans to Bouvier’s. I had come across a loose pit bull on a run once and been ok about it, I told her she was pretty and we went our separate ways. Like I said I was over it. Until Saturday. I was finishing my long run and had just turned up my driveway. When I day driveway I mean street, but there are only 7 houses on the street and with the exception of 2 houses, the rest of us have been here for 10+ years. All the houses have some land so while we don’t all know each others names we know what is usual behavior. One house I call the Victorian has 2 Bouvier’s. Ever seen one? They look like bears, gentle nice bears, but huge all the same. One of the Bouvier’s passed away a year or so ago because I have only seen the gray one. Saturday, there was a gray one and a white one, I still didn’t think much of it because it’s my driveway for crying out loud. I was just passing the first house when I heard them bark. I looked up from pausing my Nike+ app to see them tearing out of their driveway my way, the white one in the lead. Once again I stood still, I had a water bottle in one hand and had been screwing with my phone in the other so I couldn’t even grab my pepper spray. I should have thrown the water bottle but wasn’t thinking that clearly. The white one looked possessed, it looked like it wanted me for dinner, the grey on was just along for the ride. The owner was now yelling, trying to call them back. It got within three inches of my waist before listening to the owner. Crisis over right? Nope. It got about 10 feet away and decided it didn’t want to listen the guy anymore. It turned around and came back at me growling and snarling. Screw standing still, I started backpedaling as fast as I could go. By now the owner was running and finally managed to grab the white one’s collar. As soon as the white one was contained, the gray one was perfectly behaved. He apologized but I was having troubles stringing words together to make a sentence. I finally just bolted up the driveway. I lost it just past his house, again sobbing and shaking. I was shaking so badly I couldn’t get my gate open. I had to stand there for a few minutes before I could get it unlocked.
The one dog I am not afraid of right now- Zoey
So yeah, still not over it. And now I am afraid to go back down my driveway. What am I going to do when that customer brings her 2 Bouvier’s into the office? What about the dogs that are always at the lake path? Even just typing this kind of freaked me out again. One step forward, two steps back.
But I did my 12 miles! Sorry this was so long, thanks for sticking it out!
Slacker Runner 