Tag: travel

Week 12- Under the Weather

Upcoming Races:

Livermore 13.1 -March 26!!
Destination Races Santa Barbara 13.1- May 13
Rock N Roll San Diego 13.1 June 4

This will likely not be very long. 😛 Not a lot happened last week unless you count coughing and sniffling. Unfortunately I have yet to see any ab gains from all the coughing. 😛 A girl can dream right?

Monday- Sick- I called in sick. Who am I??? I got up and attempted to get ready for work but when it took me 20+ minutes to attempt to brush my teeth I conceded defeat. I spent most of the day in bed. The only movement was to move to the comfy chair when the bed got old.

Tuesday/ Wednesday- Rest/sick- I made it to work both days but I was barely hanging on. I was still coughing all the damn time and I had the worst sinus pressure building. Grrrr. I slept poorly all week as I spent most nights coughing.

Thursday- 2 miles- With Livermore 3 days away, I figured I needed to do a test run. I still felt miserable but I also needed to be realistic. I bundled up like it was 30* outside ( it was 60) and headed out for short run. Yeah, I walked the first mile and ran/ walked the second. It wasn’t miserable but it wasn’t exactly pleasant either.

Friday- Rest- My ears went funny on the way to work. I was starting to seriously consider dropping from the half marathon to the 5K. Work tired me out, how was I supposed run 13 miles? Oh and the forecast still called for rain on race day.

Saturday- Road trip! I packed and headed on up to Livermore. Mom was along for the ride like usual and she let me know exactly what she thought of me running while sick. 😛 I was still debating about a 5k drop down. After an uneventful drive up and a stop to eat for lunch at Pieology we arrived at the expo to pick up my bib. After checking into the hotel we tried to do a little shopping at a nearby outlet mall but but we literally drove around the parking lot for 20 minutes with 100 other cars looking for a parking spot. No thanks. After dinner it was back to the hotel and an attempt to get an a decent night’s sleep. Fail.

Sunday- Livermore Half? – more to come on that.

Weekly miles- 15.1. Guess that tells you what I ran. 😛

It was a long week of not doing a lot but I feel exhausted. I am really hoping to be on the upward swing of this thing. I miss sleep, I miss running, I miss what little breathing capacity I had before. Ha!

This week coming is going to be interesting. It’s merger week, so there is lots of overtime happening and some things are up in the air. It’s going to be a very play it by ear week but I am hoping to get my mileage back up. There was a trail race I was thinking about on Saturday but I can’t commit due to the up in air work schedule so I’m taking as a sign that I should probably not run up a mountain a week after a race.

How was your week?

Any plans this week?

Week 9 Recap-Chaperone

Upcoming Races:

Livermore 13.1 -March 26
Destination Races Santa Barbara 13.1- May 13

This week was exhausting. I feel bruised all over. Man, I’m getting old. I actually crashed around 9:00 3 nights this week which is unheard of for me. This post is a day late because I just couldn’t finish it on Sunday, I was so tired. So let’s get to the recap!

Monday- 2.5 miles– I headed for the lake path after work. I had been watching the light as I drove home on previous nights and I thought I had enough time to get in 3 laps before it went full dark. I knew I had my Knuckle Lights but I wasn’t sure what the vagrant situation might be so I didn’t want to push things. Holy crap, I had never seen the lake that full! I only ended up getting in 2.5 miles. Partly because I jammed my ankle jumping a curb and couldn’t loosen it up by running it out but mostly because I was completely distracted by the sunset-I took about 30 pictures😛. The sky was amazing. My Instagram has more pics too.

Tuesday- Rest Gave my sore ankle a break.

Wednesday-Rest– Same as above. But it felt better so I figured I would be ok to run the next day.

Thursday- 3.5 miles. Mother of migraine. I felt horrible all day. I was torn between running and going home and sleeping. I damn near called in sick to work. I decided to try a few miles to see if it would help the pain and nausea at all. I headed to the lake again figuring it would be easy to bail if it turned out to be a horrible choice. I wasn’t breaking any speed records but for 40 minutes, my head actually felt ok. Then I stopped running and the pain came back, boo.

Friday/ Saturday- California Tennis Classic Long days. My mom’s tennis team was in a tournament up in Clovis and I agreed to be her chaperone/driver. Did I mention I still had a migraine on Friday? Ouch. 2 days with teenage boys and rap music? I did pack running gear with the hope getting in a 10 miler if the court location was in a good area on Saturday but this Slacker forgot her shoes. How! Which was a bummer because the area around the school was awesome, I could have totally gone for a run. What was less awesome was the serious lack of sportsmanship I observed by some of the teams. I seriously thought 2 of the teams were going to come to blows. It started with the players and then moved up to the coaches. Yikes! Then again, if I hadn’t been there as a chaperone I might have responded in kind when one got in my face because I didn’t respond fast enough. Ugh, that condescending tone of voice gets under my skin. The boys did well though, they ending winning their bracket. 🙂

Sunday- 8 miles. I did not want to run. At all. I was exhausted. But I couldn’t miss a longer run 2 weekends in a row. I forced myself out the door and decided to just do what I could. My shoelace came untied and I was rushed by a giant German Shepard in the first mile, I damn near said screw it and went home. Especially when the man told me “excellent choice” when I came to a dead halt. Once again, I restrained my first impulse to snap back extremely colorful words. Put your damn dog on a leash!! I kept running. At the turn around for my 4.5 I pushed on to 5, at that turn around I pushed on to 6 then the 8 mile turn around. I still had an option to shorten it if I started feeling tired. A little past mile 5 I added in a modest hill repeat so I could avoid the killer hill at the end, I just wasn’t feeling up to it. Or so I thought. Come up on 6.8 miles and I realize I really messed up my mileage. The easiest way to hit 8 miles would have to include the nasty hill. I almost started crying. I just couldn’t. I turned around and looped a neighborhood and approached my house another way. I still had a hill but instead of soul crushing I was able to run this one and not hate myself and running at the end.

14 miles for the week. Better than last week and considering how crappy I felt the last half, I’m just going to take it and move on. On the upside, it finally looks like the weather is on the on the upswing and one of my favorite days of the year is on Sunday-time change! More daylight after work hours- woo hoo!

How was your week?

Would you have your tongue about the dog?

Do you like the time change?

Week 45 Training Recap

Training for:

Golden Gate Half

It’s the final countdown! Race day was Sunday and I was hoping to get in a solid week of running before that. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The aftermath of the very wet Harvest Marathon took a toll on me. Boo.

Monday- Rest I was feeling a little rough so rest was awesome. I was also afraid to even attempt putting on a sports bra after the chafing hell leftover from Sunday’s race. Boo.

Tuesday- ~~45 minute recovery run~~ Sick. I didn’t even make it through the work day. I felt horrible and looked like crap so my boss kicked me out. I made the long trek home and took a very long nap that felt more like a coma.

Wednesday- 2.5 miles. I still felt wobbly but I wanted to try and get my legs moving. Putting on a sports bra was a little uncomfortable. Boo. I lasted for a slow 2.5 miles on what was most likely my last time running the lake path until next year. Good night lake.

Thursday- 3.6 miles Shouldn’t have done that. I wasn’t feeling so great but I didn’t want to only have Wednesday’s run before race day. So I headed out for a few miles after work. I told myself to stick to 3 miles but I allowed the thought that this was likely my last work run until next year get to my head. I ran on until the 2 mile point, not thinking about the fact that it was getting colder and the return trip was uphill. I crashed hard. Shouldn’t have done that.

Friday- Rest Felt like crap.

Saturday- Rest? The plan called for a shakeout run but I was feeling crappy and didn’t want to figure out the logistics of that in San Francisco. Instead my Fitbit says I covered almost 7 miles walking around San Francisco and it usually runs short so I figured that was enough.

My mom and I headed up to SF early and picked S up from college along the way. The plan was to hang out around the Embarcadero during the day, pick up my race packet and head to the hotel. The hotel was within walking distance of the start and then S and mom would come down to finish line on race morning. I started to feel worse during the day but I tried to chalk it up to a bad pepperoni pretzel. Wishful thinking. After finding dinner a nearby burger place, I still felt horrible so I headed to bed early. I also got a little bitchy. Sorry mom and S! I was tossing and turning, alternating between freezing and burning up. Then to make matters worse- a large, loud group of guys returned to the hotel room next to ours around 1:30am. They were the loudest, most obnoxious group of people ever. It sounded like they were slamming into walls. I can only imagine what the poor people below them heard. ☹ I just wanted to sleep. I was beginning to wonder if I should even race.

Sunday- Golden Gate Half….. could I do it?

How was your week?

Have any hotel nightmares? or chafing nightmares?

Would you have raced?

The SF Marathon Week 18 Recap

Race week, no, marathon week- holy crap.

I feel like it just last week that I was writing the post about signing up for the marathon. In some ways time flew and in some ways, I wish that I had had more time. I don’t think you ever really feel prepared for a race let alone your first marathon but I felt like a wreck.

Monday- Rest With my last longish run of 9 miles the day before, I knew I wasn’t running today. It was another day of flats at work and trying not to freak out.

Tuesday- 3.1 miles With the race so close, I knew I wanted to run but also didn’t want to go crazy with the miles. Especially since week 17 was such a small one. I thought abut running in work town to expose myself to more humidity but decided that was silly. I thought it would be akin to trying to run ALL the miles right before a race. So instead I headed to home town and temps of 93 degrees. Why not dry out the lungs? 😛 My calves were so tight. They might have gotten better if I had run more but as it was a short run, they never loosened up. It stressed me out and I headed home for a date with my foam roller.

Wednesday- Rest Not only did I think 2 days in a row would be silly, this was also the day I dropped a FULL 5 gallon water jug on my left foot. Son of a monkey. I later found a bruise where it hit my stomach on the way down too.

Thursday- Rest Yeah. I fell off my chair this day and re-bruised the same foot. Like fall on the ground, legs splayed in a dress. What the hell?!

Friday- 2.21 miles Last run before race day. I had the day off work and I forced myself to stay in bed until 9. Once up, I headed out for a very short run. Figured the heat wouldn’t be too bad as I was only running for 2 miles. I didn’t take the fires into account. Oops. The smoke from the Sobraones fire has been burning for over a week and the smoke coming our way made for a severe air quality warning last week. My legs felt ok but I was disgustingly sweaty and gasping for air after a slow 2 miles. I had taken a 24 oz bottle with Ultima in it and I drank the whole damn thing. It was only 2 miles!

Then I headed home to pack for San Francisco and to try to not stress. I watched a lot of Lost. 😛

Saturday- Expo day!! Ashley picked me up and we headed north. We made good time and checked into our hotel before heading for the expo. Seriously, roads and traffic in San Francisco are a giant cluster f***. Who designed that crap? It took the Uber driver 20 minutes to go less than 2 miles! It’s not even the time that made it stressful- that actually happens in Paso all the time but in apparently in SF red lights mean nothing and everyone loves their horn. Grrr.

I won’t lie- the second we got out of the car at the expo, my heart rate spiked. My Fitbit says it hit 105. Ha! We wandered around the expo a bit and picked up our bibs. I caved and bought a San Francisco marathon 3/4 zip. I hadn’t wanted to buy anything until after the race since I wasn’t even sure I was capable of finishing but they were selling out too fast. From there it was back to the hotel after picking up a pizza for me. I piled up my clothes for Sunday, tried not to panic and was in bed by 9. Once we had linens for the pull out bed that is. I think we frustrated room service that night. 😛 Surprisingly, I slept a decent amount of time. But race morning arrived all too quickly.

Sunday- Race day!! To be continued…

Anyone as accident prone as me?

Do you ever buy race themed apparel?

Share something!

2016 Surf City Recap

Race- Surf City 13.1

Location- Huntington Beach, CA

Saturday-

After the hotel snafu of Saturday and once I accepted that I would not have a nice, leisurely race morning- after my mother and I had mapped out a long, circuitous route to the race start- I realized the even bigger mistake I had made. I hadn’t packed any water. What? How?! I had a bottle of Gatorade and my Skratch Labs but no water outside of what I had drank on the drive down. Face palm. So after a yummy dinner at Red Robin- water, lettuce wrapped burger and a few fries for me- we stopped at a Walgreen’s. Where I bought 8 bottles of water. 🙂 Then it was back to the hotel for a little downtime before I headed to bed early. And proceeded to wake up every hour on the hour. Grrr.

Race day-

Luckily, I have my pre-race ritual down, so I don’t have to get up too early. As of right now, I am still racing on an empty stomach and it has been working out. The race had a 7:45 start but I wasn’t planning on being there super early, I knew it would be a while before my corral crossed the start line. My mom was able to drop me off a few blocks from the start line a little before 7:30. Another bonus about arriving “late”? No line at the port-a-potties. Except the damn thing almost blew over with me in it!

Ok, the corrals. Serious cluster-f***. What is the point of asking a participant their projected finish time if it’s not used for corral placement? More than a few people in my corral were in a similar position. I put down a projected 2:10 finish time. The 3:30 pacers were about 2000 people ahead of me. Seriously. I considering jumping corrals but at that point it was already so late. Grrrr. My corral crossed the start line around 8:15.

Miles 1-3 10:09, 10:14, 10:09

My plan was to treat this like a well supported long run and hopefully maintain around a 10:00 min pace. Mile 1 started out ok. My legs felt good and my pace felt good. Mile 2 required more dodging. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with people walking at races- however if you are walking 6 people across in the first 2 miles of a race- we have an issue! This happened more than once. Then the first water station was a crowded mess but I had learned from last year that this was the case and just avoided it all. I also a music snafu in mile 2. I had started my playlist in the starting corrals and paused it. When I pushed start around mile 2, Christmas music started playing. What?!

Miles 4-6 10:30, 10:54, 11:08

By my standards, this course is flat, the only real hill is in mile 4. I was excited to see it as I had an ankle ache that I needed to run out. And I did but I was starting to realize that I was having troubles catching my breath. I didn’t feel like I was pushing hard but I was starting to wheeze. I took a quick walk break to try and get things under control. It didn’t really help. There was a little down hill coming up and I was hoping to make up some speed but I just kept slowing down. My inhaler wasn’t helping either. Mile 6 is where I got real. This breathing issue is not new. I have been having troubles since I was sick in January. It’s more than my usual asthma, it comes with some odd chest pain, but I was hoping that denial would make it all go away. Because that works so well, right? Yeah no. I called my mom during mile 6 and let her know I was having some issues but was going to tough out. I didn’t need her getting the real time runner alerts and wondering what the hell was going on. 🙂

Miles 7-9 11:50, 11:35, 11:37

New game plan was a run/ walk plan. 4:30 of running and 1:00 of walking. The running was slow so I was hoping that these intervals would keep me moving but not gasping for breath. I changed my watch face to just show the interval times so I had no idea what my overall time was. This was a long section of out and back so I was able to see Ashley of RatherbeRunnin’ coming back on the other side of the highway looking strong. Luckily the course is scenic so I was able to enjoy the view. I also had time to people watch. PSA here, a fabric may be black but that does not mean that it is opaque! If I can see the moles on your butt- wear underwear!! Ok, PSA over.

Mile 10- 13:04

This was a struggle. Even 4:30 seemed like way too long to run. I was wheezing and the inhaler was useless. We ran through the Cliff shot zone in mile 10 and I grabbed a citrus and a mocha one. Both have caffeine and I was hoping for a Hail Mary pass and that one would help. I walked a lot. The finish line seemed so very far away.

Miles 11-13 12:17, 11:50, 11:36

I was beginning to think this was going to be my slowest half yet. And it was getting so hot. I had been drinking water at each station but now I was dumping it down my back too. The volunteers were also having troubles keeping up with the demand for water. There were some stations out of cups. I am hoping more were on the way as there were thousands of people behind me still. I was trying to stick to my intervals but the walking sections were getting longer. It was getting more crowded on the course as well. I accidentally smacked a guy in the crotch when he came up on my right. Oops!!! Sorry! I just kept moving towards the finish line, the increased crowd support was helping. I walked the beginning of mile 13 and then ran the rest in. I crossed the finish line gasping and wheezing and promptly burst into tears.

Finish- 2:28:24

Not my slowest!!! I collected my medal and avoided all the photographers. I heard my mom and thought I was losing it but then realized she was on the other side of the fence. I made my way through the recovery stations and then out of the chute into the crowd. I met with my mom and headed to a curb to sit. My legs felt good but I was so tired from fighting my lungs for so long. It gave me time to admire my medal though- it’s huge!!!! And was fought for. But it was also a lesson in something I should already know- you can’t ignore things and hope they go away. It doesn’t work like that. Was this race I wanted? No. But every rough race is a lesson learned, right? I still got to run with thousands of other crazies like me. 🙂 And for the record- I have a doctor’s appointment next week.

They were some things I didn’t like about the race this year but overall it is a good race. The weather is gorgeous- just bare in mind that temps hit the high 70’s. Perfect beach weather post race. 🙂

The day was finished out resting in the hotel watching the Super Bowl- yay Broncos!! I needed some time off my feet—I had big plans for Monday—-Disneyland!!!!! But I’ll save those adventures for next post. 🙂