Tag: life

Week 16 Training Recap

Upcoming race– SLO Marathon 13.1

Focus– Keep on with the 4x a week.

16 weeks into the year already? How did that happen? I am not prepared for it to be halfway through April. I feel like the past few weeks are nothing but a blur. There has been running, eating, some mindless tv watching and some staring into space. I haven’t been sleeping well, I think the bags under my eyes are permanent features now. Enough whining, let’s get to the running!

Monday- Rest Ha! 2 days post Firehouse and I was walking a little crooked. I thought I was hiding it well but the first thing an employee said to me was “are you limping?’. Just call me gimpy. Getting up onto my chair and then down was definitely amusing. But in shiny news- Meet Mel!

The week before was actually my 9 year anniversary at work and they (my boss) got me a new fish!

Tuesday- 3 miles After work I headed to the lake path to take things nice and easy. The first mile was rough but miles 2 and 3 felt pretty decent. I kept it short on purpose and I wish that was all I had to say about Tuesday but it’s not. Next post will cover the excitement though.

Wednesday- 4.59ish miles I was running with NikeC and somehow I accidentally paused my Garmin .25 miles in. I didn’t figure it out until we hit the turn around point 2ish miles later. Waah!!! No! I may not be focusing on my pace these days (yet) but I am paying close attention to my mileage totals as I am trying to do this whole marathon training thing smartly. Luckily, she has the Runkeeper app on her phone. Other than the technical issue, it was a good run. My calves were a little achy but I expected that going in. I am really starting to like running with friends.

Thursday/ Friday- Rest Both of these days are a huge blur truthfully. I worked and ate cookies. More on that below.

Saturday- 13 miles- 11:16 pace Going into this weekend, I knew I was overly tired, stressed and emotional. I had originally planned for a 14 mile long run and a 6 mile easy run. By Friday evening, I had decided that anything I did was more than fine even if I chose to do nothing at all. That said, I headed out to attempt a long run early Saturday morning. 8:30 is early to me.

I was a little stiff the first few miles but soon loosened up. Per usual, crossing the bridge was my fastest mile-9:48. Slightly slower though as I had to detour through the Albertson’s parking lot due to road construction. Miles 6, 8 and 11 were real struggles. My pace dropped into the high 11 minute range. I wasn’t 100% present. By mile 8, I had also confirmed that my Nike’s are not long run shoes. 11 miles in and I was adjusting my stride because it felt like my entire right arch was turning into one huge blister. Part of me wanted to stop and check but I was also afraid to. My stomach cramped really badly in mile 12 and I walked most of it. I recovered for mile 13 but I was thankful I had called for a pick up. 13 was way farther than I thought I was going to get in. And my arch? Completely fine. I don’t get it, I felt like my skin was on fire.

Sunday- 4.2 miles This was intended to be a run/walk with my mom. It was a very warm day and we headed out in the afternoon so I knew it was going to be slower. And it really was- in fact I only ran about 1/4 of a mile. My left knee felt off and my left groin? area felt tight. I decided walking was just fine. I was outside, my legs were moving and I could use it to help me get used to the warmer weather.

All in all, not a bad running week. I actually got in more miles than I thought I would. I am going to call that a win for the week.

Life- Sometimes real life rears its head. I admit that I don’t deal well when that happens. My family has been dealing with some bad news, but part of that was waiting for the inevitable, final bad news. The last few weeks have all blurred, I got all clenched up every time I saw my cell phone ring. That call came Friday. I’m still not processing well. I don’t know when I will.

That’s not really how I wanted to end this post but I seem to have written my way into a corner. At least for now.

How was your week?

Anyone race this weekend?

Tell me something shiny!!

June Recap/ Mid Year Check In

June come back!! It should not be July right now. It just can’t be. I was in the doctor’s office yesterday and it boggled my mind that my 6 month follow-up was January…2016. Umm, wait, what? Then someone made it worse by saying that Christmas is now only 5 months away. Slow down!!!

While June felt more consistent than May, the overall mileage doesn’t show much of an improvement. I guess I embraced my Slacker-ness in May and June.

Miles-

Races-

Talley Vineyard 10K- 56:54

So yeah, more miles than May but just barely. Also disappointing because I thought I had 65 miles. I am a little neurotic on the way that I track my miles with my Garmin, and Nike+ and SmashRun. Nike+ had me at 65 on June 30 and I had no reason to doubt it. Until I uploaded my miles to SmashRun last night and it had me at 59.4. What? I pull up Garmin Connect and it agreed with Smash. Everything syncs from my Garmin so I was confused and started double checking all my runs. One uploaded twice to Nike and I didn’t catch it. Grrrr.

Oh and June saw my 2 year Blog-versary!

Mid Year Check In

Already!? Ok, brief goal recap. For 2015, I wanted to –

Run 1000 miles– Hmmm, at the end of June, I was at 423 miles. Only about 80 miles short of where I needed to be. I don’t want to give up on this goal but I would have to average 97 miles a month for the rest of year to hit 1000. Honestly, I don’t know if I can do that. Would I love to- hell yes, but I need to be smart about what I can accomplish.

Break 2:00 in a half- I managed a 2:06:08 at Wine Country which was thisclose to my PR. I was optimistic for SLO but between my stomach issues and my fall, that was off the table. Which is fine because I am still damn proud of how I managed to finish that race. 🙂 Even though I am currently training to break 2 in October, I still just want to have fun with running.

Non-Running- Read 15 books- I was behind on this until yesterday. 🙂 I started a book in the waiting room of my doctor’s office and since I waited a while, I got through 100 pages. I had intended for this post to go up yesterday but when I sat down to type, I just wanted to read. So I finished that book. It was book 2 of 3 so I decided to just start the third. Then I finished that one. Yeah it was a late night. So 7 books finished so far. Man, I remember when that number would have been much bigger.

Blog Redesign– partially done. I am still working out a few kinks. And I still can’t figure out Dropbox, ugh.

So moving forward? Right now my goals are to keep running, reading and living! Oh and did I mention I am running (not racing) a half marathon in 10 days?! On my birthday. 🙂

Did you make goals for 2015/ June? How are you doing so far?

Read any good books lately? I need a new one now. 🙂

Things I’ve learned

So, my first ever two week vacation is coming to an end. Man, it’s been such a riot. Haha, 😛

But I have made a few observations over the days-

That insomnia I thought I was over? Ummm, not so much. I was wide awake every night until at least 1 AM and then I tossed and turned.

Diet soda has zero effect on my sleep. Normal non vacation days, I average 2 sodas a day- yes, usually 32 oz, I know, I know- and was in bed asleep by midnight. These past vacation days, I only had one soda a day and couldn’t sleep.

If I have nowhere to be, I have absolutely no problems staying in bed until 9. I think the odds of me ever being a morning runner outside of races are pretty non-existent.

However, 3:00 pm running? That’s kind of awesome. How does that become a regular thing? Oh, wait, it can’t.

Running in light to moderate rain is fun, pouring not so much. Either that or I am a big wuss like that.

Only owning running shoes, flip flops and heals is problematic when they are predicting a serious rainy season in our neck of the woods. I almost broke my ass wearing heeled boots during Sunday’s first storm. I had sudden paranoid visions of breaking an ankle.

This made me a hypocrite. Why? Because I finally broke down and bought a pair of these- I said I never would.

While I haven’t managed to quit sugar while on vacation, I have managed to cut back. Can it last through the holidays? Even the cake from the other day tasted odd. 😦

I was a very naive betty when I figured the prep for the colonoscopy would be easy peasy. Not true, nuff said.

I have strong customer service opinions. I had some business that had to be done before returning to work so I went to the local location. I was less than impressed. 😦

Somehow I messed up the mileage count on my shoes. It’s about 50 miles off. Which on a shoe I usually only get 300 miles out of is a lot. 😦

The moon looks really cool on a wet rainy night- if you are outside to see it at 11, that is.

Movie popcorn doesn’t even have to be that good for me to consume too much of it. Luckily, I bought a small and shared it. Oh, but the movie was really good!

Taking the puppy on jog-walks is fun now. She does so much better than she used to.

The flexibility is nice- knew I wouldn’t have a lot of time to run today, so I switched my 7 miles to Friday. They were wet and dreary but otherwise good!Running errands- literally- is interesting. Part of my run yesterday involved dropping my car off for an oil change and then running home. Took the puppy for the walk back to get it.

All in all, the time off was good. I feel like I accomplished some good running, got some errands done and failed at Christmas shopping. Oops. I’m still not the biggest fan of vacations but that’s ok. That said, I have another few days off in January/ February. I thought a little rest might be a good idea after back to back races. 🙂 Going forward, maybe I should work on saving some money so when I take my forced 2 weeks next year, I can actually go somewhere. Maybe follow through with the R n R Vegas plans. Hmmm.

What about you?

Do you love vacations? I like long weekends.

Anyone else see Mockingjay?