weather update!

The F-cast has changed a little bit since yesterday. In a good way. I may even start to think of the "F" in F-cast as Fun instead of F*&$.......... Now we're looking at a high of 74, a low of 62, and only a 40% chance of precipitation! Woot! Even better news is that the hourly forecast is now available and the outlook for 8am on Saturday is cloudy and 56 - that sounds like nice running weather to me!

In preparation for the possibility of rain, I've been doing a little bit of shopping. I am currently the owner of 2 rain jackets - neither of which I really like. Mostly because I'm cheap and I bought one at TJMaxx and the other at Marshalls. Don't get me wrong, these are 2 of my favorite stores, but you don't always get exactly what you're looking for. You don't pay 3-4 times as much either :) Anyway, one jacket is an Adidas wind jacket, which is a little too small and possibly not water resistant. The other is a Marker (some ski co.) rain jacket, which is a little too big, but it's made for the rain. I'm going to check out the TJMaxx and Ross stores near my work at lunch today and see what else I can find. Hopefully I won't need any rain gear at all on Saturday (please, please) and I can take them all back!

I realized that I haven't posted my pace lately and I don't know why because it's been damn good. In an effort to be nicer and congratulatory to myself - my pace for the past 2 weeks has been under a 9:00/mile in every run, culminating with last night's 8:26/mile :)

4 days and 1 run

Not too much going on around here except that there are only 4 days left until the half! I switched up my runs a little bit this week so that I could have 2 days to rest before the race on Saturday. I usually do ballet on Mondays after my long run on Sunday. This week I did 4 miles on Monday, 3 miles today, and then I'll do 2 miles tomorrow. And that's it!

Training for this race has left me a little bit drained and unexcited. (there's another word that i'm looking for but i can't think of what it is, i'm too tired) The half last November was more exciting because it was my first race. That meant that almost every week in training, I was doing something that I had never done before. This time it's not as fresh and new. It's also different this time because it's more about pace over distance. I put so much pressure on myself to go faster and I have a hard time congratulating myself when I do well. Instead, I just think that I didn't do all that great and I can do better. It's good and bad. It's good in that I have the motivation to push myself, but it's bad in that I'm worried I'm going to push myself into an injury.

I think I am going to take a break from serious training after this race and try to give myself a little bit of a break. I want to enjoy running again, just like I used to enjoy dancing and horseback riding before I effed them all up with not thinking I was good enough. Ha! - it's funny what comes out of your head when you sit down with nothing much to say.

4am.......

This is what time I wake up every.single.morning. I have no explanation as to why, except that Fresh Prince comes on at that time and maybe my subconscious really wants to see it? I'm only awake for a few minutes; just long enough to look at the clock, change the television station, and roll over. It's getting to be an annoying little quirk, and I'd really like to sleep through the night. OK? Thanks.

Aside from my bizarre sleeping habits, not much has been going on in this girl's life. The weather has been crap for the past few days, which made for a super fun 12 miler in the rain on Sunday. Annnnnnnd I made the mistake of trying something new before the run. I decided to eat a small breakfast - just 1/2 a bagel and peanut butter - about an hour prior. BAD IDEA there. I usually don't eat anything at all before a long run and now I remember why. My stomach cramped up to the point where I was gasping for breath and barely shuffling along. In retrospect, I should've just stopped, caught my breath, and then continued. But, on par with my inability to give myself a break, I kept going, albeit slowly. I finally caught up with my running partners when they stopped for a drink of water. I managed to finish the second half of the run more satisfactorily, but still felt kind of down on myself. Oh, and I ripped holes in the bottoms of my pants because I am an idiot. Lesson learned: don't wear long pants to run in the rain because they'lll get soggy and heavy and stretchy at the bottom. And will end up over and under your shoes. And it will suck.

Fast forward to yesterday - I ran 5 miles. At an 8:57 pace. It felt damn good. Maybe I will not quit running after all.......

tuesday already?

I did not want to go out and run tonight. I haven't felt like that in a long time, especially not when the weather was freaking gorgeous. I don't know what my problem was tonight, but I just felt so sluggish and unmotivated. I am wondering if I overdid it this past weekend after my long run. I had actually been thinking that staying more active than usual after my long run was a good idea because I haven't felt as sore or as stiff as usual. I think I need to combine that theory with a little bit of rest as well. Live and learn.

I usually do a ballet workout on the day after my long runs. I did most of the workout yesterday, but sadly I had a skip some of the grand plies and the jumps because that shit is hard on the knees. It's so funny to think back to all of the YEARS I spent in dance class hoping that we wouldn't have to do jumps in the center or that the plies would be replaced by floor work. Now I am actually sad that my knees won't allow me to do them? I guess it really is true that you don't know what you really have until it's gone. I know that's cliche and I didn't mean to spin off into a post about dancing, but I really miss it and I'm sorry I didn't appreciate it more when I had the chance. Makes you think, doesn't it?

It took me a good 2-3 miles before I was really into my run tonight. I'm usually in a pretty good rhythm after 1 mile, so I was really stuggling. I even gave myself permission to take it easy since I've trained pretty hard the past 2 weeks. Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE my Garmin, but damn that thing makes it hard to back off my pace. I look at it way too much and I speed up if my pace is not what it was the previous time I ran. Which meant that tonight I finished 5 miles in 45 minutes. While I am of course thrilled with that pace, I have got to give my body some sort of rest or I'm afraid I'll be looking at an injury. To top it all off, I have no appetite, which also happened last fall towards the end of my training. Whine, bitch, moan, I know. I'm sorry. I'll do better tomorrow :-)

sub-9, baby!

Tonight I ran 3 miles at a 8:58 pace! That is the fastest I've ever run and honestly not a pace that I expected to see. I really wasn't pushing myself too hard because my ankle was bothering me a bit. Who knew that possible injury = faster pace. Ha!

Honestly, I know that's not funny and I'm concerned that I am overtraining just a bit. My right ankle has felt funny all day - just a little bit sore if I move it a certain way. It felt OK while I was running. If I thought about it, I could feel a twinge but otherwise it didn't bother me. While feeding the horses after my run though, I noticed that my right knee was a little painful. Sigh. I noticed that particular pain while I was squatting down to squeeze under a gate. I think (and really hope) that if I am careful with how I bend and move then it should be OK. Ugh. I sound freaking old having to worry about that. I hate that my aches and pains are overshadowing my excitement about my pace tonight!

edited to add: don't you think "squatting" is kind of a gross sounding word? I was reading back over my post to make sure my wine-influenced grammar wasn't too horrible and that word just bothers me. Odd, I know.

5K in the 'hood

In other news, I ran a 5K Wednesday night. Well not exactly "a" 5K because it was just me, running around the neighborhood by myself. I only had a 3 mile run planned for that evening, but once I got out there I was feeling good. So I decided to add that .1 mile onto my workout - haha, I'm so hardcore. I was curious to see what kind of time I could pull if I tried to push myself. I ended up averaging 9:04 per mile! I'm pretty pleased with that number - it's the fastest pace I've ever maintained and the course I ran was pretty hilly. Definitely a good feeling!

my stats

My chiptime was 2:06:36, which means I ran a 9:40 pace. I truly did not expect to finish that fast and I am thrilled with my time!

Related news - the results were finally posted from the 5K that I ran in October. My official time was 28:58, which means my actual time was at least a few seconds faster. I also ran 6 miles that morning prior to the race. I'm thinking that I could finish a 5K at a pretty good pace if I was fresh. I'll get a chance to test that theory in early December!

too tired

I am too tired to blog well, so here is a quick recap. I tried to write a post about my 10 mile run last Sunday, but it just ended up sounding stupid. It was a good run, the last long run before the half, and I finished strong. Second breakfast afterwards was great! Either Perkins has really great food or I was starving.

Tuesday was a nice, easy four miler. Although there is not much nice or easy to say about running in the cold, rain, and dark. I take that back, it was very nice to be running it with my group. I don't think I could've (or would've) done that one on my own. We are hardcore!

Wednesday = three miles. Alone, ugh. I went home after work, let the dogs out, changed into my running gear, brought the dogs back in, and drove over to the neighborhood. In the dark. Luckily there were streetlights, so it wasn't pitch black out. I was in hurry to get it over with I guess, because my pace was under a 10 minute mile! I felt like I had a good pace going, but I did not expect the 9:48 that my ipod reported when I was done :-) That really made it worth it, considering that I almost skipped the run because I am so exhausted.

That leads me to the whiney part of my post. D left Sunday afternoon to go to FL for work. I felt like such a bad wife because I didn't even make it home from my long run/breakfast on Sunday before he left. We met up at Starbucks (when did I turn into such a yuppie?) for a quick goodbye. I know that he had to go for work, but it just really sucks that is was this week before the half-marathon. It has left the the house and the animals solely under my care, which I can handle, of course, but it would have been nice to take it easy this week. I'm also not very good at cooking and/or eating dinner when it's just myself at night. That has stressed me out trying to find the time to plan meals and cook. I've done just OK with that this week. I had second breakfast leftovers on Sunday night, soup and cheese toast on Monday night, Twizzlers on Tuesday night (um yeah, Twizzlers the candy), and a shrimp, veggie, & brown rice stir fry last night. I have leftovers from that for dinner tonight so at least that's covered. D gets back Friday night so maybe I'll ask him to pick up some dinner on his way home from the airport. I am thinking of taking a half-day tomorrow to give myself a little time to rest, I think I'm going to need it.

For being too tired to blog, I sure wrote a lot! One more run before the race, a big two-miler tonight, then book club, then driving home, then handling the animals, then doing laundry, and then...........sigh. I think I'll have more time to relax while I'm running the half than I've had all week!

i'm superfast

I had no idea how much better it is to run in a group than alone. After my group long run on Sunday, I met up with everyone again on Tuesday for a five miler. Something about being with a group makes the cold more bearable and the distance feel shorter. And I run faster! We started off running about a 9-minute mile and my nike+ipod says that we averaged 10:09 per mile once we were done.

Alas, the past two days I have run alone. Yesterday I did three miles and I really tried to push myself because of my recent paces on the group runs. I knew that my body was capable of going faster so I decided that it needed to work up to its potential. So I pushed and ran like the wind - while I was running I was thinking, "damn, I'm probably burning it up, running a sub-10 minute mile. Go me!" So yeah, when I finished, I found out that it was 10:11 per mile. I'm not saying that's bad AT ALL, but I'm just saying that I expected it to be better because of how much I "felt" like I was pushing myself. I guess I should have expected that because it's always the case. It still makes me wonder about the calibration of my nike+ipod. I think that when I push myself harder, my stride gets longer, BUT because the nike+ works as a pedometer, it thinks that I am just taking less steps, therefore shorter distance than I really am covering. Therefore my pace is not as ...............shit, I am not even making sense to myself at this point. Summary - nike+ is a big fat liar and I most likely run at a 7:00 per mile pace - HA!

1.1 miles to go

Yesterday morning I finished my longest run yet - 12 miles!! I had a hard time deciding what distance to run because I have gotten so much different information about training. I was originally following Hal Higdon's novice half-marathon training plan, but since I started it early I ended up finishing it early. In my revised plan, I had decided to run 11 miles yesterday, 12 miles next week, and then the half the following week. Well...........then I learned about "tapering" before a race and that I really shouldn't run 12 miles the week before the half-marathon. BUT, in Hal Higdon's intermediate training plan there is a 12 mile run the week before the half-marathon. Confused yet? So was I. I understand that the idea of tapering is to give you a rest before your race so that you can run your best, but if I'm not worried about my time, does that really matter? If I was training for a marathon, wouldn't I run 12 miles one week and then 13 the next? What's the difference, really?

In the end, I decided to take bits and pieces of everyone's advice and information and form my own plan. When I started out yesterday I set my nike+ipod for 11.5 miles. That was a good compromise and I knew that if I went that far, I could finish out 12 if I felt like it. I ran the first 8 miles with a great group of ladies (hi!) and then went on to finish the last 4 on my own - well, with my audiobook :-) I really felt good for the entire run and when my ipod congratulated me on finishing 11.5 miles, I already knew that I was going to push for 12. I had to keep checking the distance on my ipod for the last .5 miles because NO WAY was I going further than 12! When you check your status using the ipod, it announces your distance, total time, and pace. By doing this, I realized that I was *very* close to running 12 miles in under 2 hours. I pushed it as hard as I could and finished in 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds. Only once I was done did I realize that I had run 12 miles with just under a 10 minute per mile pace. I haven't run under 10 minutes per mile in quite a while! I owe a lot of thanks to the group for that!

I'm feeling good about the half, knowing that I only have to go 1.1 miles further than my longest run. Could I physically do it with 10 miles as my longest run? Probably. Could I mentally do it? Not sure. Knowing what I know now, about how much of a mental sport running is, I'm glad I went the extra distance. Now I have no excuses come race day.

postscript - i have plenty of excuses for why i haven't updated my blog though! none of them are very good, but hey, i'm not getting paid for this :-)

so, 9.5 miles...............

This morning I went out and ran 9.5 miles - my longest run yet. And it.kicked.my.ass. Literally. It is now 4:00pm and my legs and butt are still hurting. I don't think that I have felt this bad during or after a run up to this point. In fact, things have been going so well that last night as I was reading about marathons in Runner's World, I actually had the thought in my stupid head, "THAT WOULDN'T BE TOO HARD." OMG, what? Has running fried my brain cells? This morning was a real wake-up call for me. I finished it though and didn't walk a bit, even though I contemplated it.

After a run, and after the half-marathon, I want to be able to say that I "ran" it, not "finished" it. That may be silly, but it's what I've gotten in my head as the goal that I want to accomplish. I have gotten past fretting over my ever slower pace and I don't have a time-goal in my head at all for the half-marathon. I haven't even tried to figure out what an average time is or what my time would be if I ran a certain pace per mile. Right now I'm just concentrating on running, one foot in front of the other, for 13.1 miles.

bad mood = speed

Last night I was in a very bad mood before I went out on my run. Not for any real reason, just because I'm a girl and sometimes I'm moody. I decided that I would use my irritation and frustration in my run and see if that would help me increase my pace as well as calm me down. It worked! I had the best run that I've had in a while. I did 4 miles and my pace was about 10:30. I think I've just gotten a little too complacent while running and I haven't been pushing myself to improve. I've been putting in the miles, but not working up to what I am actually capable of. Because even though I cut 30 seconds off my pace, it wasn't that hard and I still did it comfortably. I was even able to sprint the last 100 yards, which is always my goal. It was a good lesson to learn last night.

I also learned that running harder improves your mood. I'm not sure if it is the endorphins or if it's just that you're too tired to be bitchy. Either way, it's a good thing.

it's better to have it

My latest run was 3.5 miles on Thursday evening. I really tried to push myself on this run because I would like to see my pace improve. I know that I really should add intervals to my runs, but for some reason I am hesitant. I think that I am afraid if I run full out for even a short distance then I will be too tired to keep going afterwards. I am thinking of doing a 2 mile run on Wednesday of this week and trying out the intervals then. Anyway, even without adding interval runs yet, I managed to finish with an average pace of 10:28 which was not bad.

I got my RoadID in the mail on Thursday, so I wore that when I went out on my run. I hope that it will never be needed, but it's a good thing to have. It has my name, phone number, and emergency contacts engraved on it should they ever be needed. As D always says (and as I'm sure our future children will tire of hearing), "it's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it!" I got the ankle ID and I was worried that it would bother me having something foreign around my ankle while running. It turns out that I barely even noticed it. With my order I received a coupon code for $1 off - if anyone is interested let me know.

Later today I have a 5 mile run planned. It will be the farthest I've ever run. I'm constantly amazed at the things that come out of my mouth. Last night D and I were on the way to dinner and I told him that I had that 5 miler planned for today - and I said, "I'm not worried about it though, it'll be easy." Where did this person come from? I'll let you know if she's still here after my run later this evening!

first run

Well, my first run of this training program. And it was ONLY 3 miles! Ha! I had just worked up to 3.5 miles so starting off this week at 3 miles was a little bit of a break. With this program, I'm planning to run on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays - with my long runs on Sundays. On Mondays and Fridays or Saturdays I plan to do a ballet workout that I have on DVD. Sounds like I'll be pretty busy these next few months!

Anyway, my run today went pretty well. Even though the temperature was near 90 today, the humidity was low. I went out for my run about 8:15ish so by then it was really comfortable outside. I wore running shorts and a sports bra with no shirt which always makes me feel weird to be so exposed. I am trying to get over that though because it is just way too hot with much else on. I know, I'm such a hussy.

I just got fitted for new running shoes a couple of weeks ago. They are finally starting to feel good on my feet and legs. I wasn't very happy with them the first couple of times that I ran and I was worried that I had just blown a ton of money. I added some innersoles to them and that has made a big difference.

I've been having some trouble with my knees lately and I'm trying to decide if it warrants a trip to the doctor or not. My knees and hips have taken a beating over the years dancing and horseback riding. I think they are protesting this new endeavor, but they are just going to have to get over it damnit. I am going to start looking for a sports medicine doctor though, for when the time comes.

So back to the run - I really felt good and I really felt like I was pushing myself in a good way. My pace has been in the 10:45 range lately and I have not been happy with that. When I first started running this spring my pace was much closer to 10:00 and right under. I don't know if increasing my distances has caused me to start pacing myself or what. But today I finished with a 10:31 average pace and I was happy with that. I'm interested to see how I feel tomorrow on my 2 mile run. This will be my first time running 2 days in a row. Piece of cake, right? Mmmm....cake.....