a catch up post

Whooops!

Not sure where the past 2.5 weeks have gone, but I seem to have lost steam on the ol blog.  I am sure my 16 followers are WAY bummed about this! :)

A super quick catch all blog, filled with lazy bullet points and random punctuation.

• The past two weeks I have done my longest runs to date!  15 and 16 miles!  They really don't feel a lot different than 12 and 13 mile runs- what a huge relief.  I have a feeling that 26.2 WILL feel different.  I have a feeling the next big runs (18 and 20) will feel a little tougher.
• Carb loading should be a sport of its own.  I would win a gold medal for sure.
• I'm watching Teen Mom right now.  Is anyone else totally OVER this show?  Farewell Maci, Farrah, Amber, and Caitlin.  I'm done!
• I've never ever ever been a morning person.  I've never ever ever successfully been a morning exerciser.  The past few weeks, however, I've been up between 4 and 430am to finish my run before work.  Woo hoo!  It sucks so much!  
• My midweek runs are starting to get long.  This week I run 4, 8, 5.  8 is hard to squeeze in before work (hence, the 4am wakeup!)
• Fun fact:  The Real World is STILL A SHOW.  (this is what happens when I try to blog with MTV on in the background)
• We got YMCA memberships!  After this marathon is done-zo, I'm going to have a little cooling off period with the running and focus some more time on strength training and short speedy runs.  
• I went to my first spinning class since 2006.  I remembered it being a terrible experience last time I went, which is why it took me 6 years to try it again.  This time around was an awesome experience!  Since last time they have new bikes, a new cycling studio, and I am just overall more accustomed to biking.  I can't wait to have more time to do spinning!
• I think I might just be really tired tonight, but in this moment I am feeling kind of burnt out from my training.  
• Also I think people might be getting tired of me posting about running all the time on Facebook!  
• The hubster continues to be very accommodating when it comes to my training.  It DOES take up a lot of time.  He is great about not complaining *too* much :)  In turn, I try to run as early as possible so I don't dip into family time as much.

This was a super crappy blog post!

I hope to keep caught up now :)

Till next time!

8 weeks done- almost to the halfway point!

What day is it?  I'm all confuzzled and discombobulated today as I try to get myself oriented to the real world of work!  Today I am back at work again full time (the beauty of a 10 month position is having June and July off of work!) and I am trying to figure out how to adjust my training schedule now that I have 45 less hours a week available for running! Buuut, I'll let you know what I figured out in the next recap post.

For now, here's how week 8 shook out!

Hal Higdon told me to run this:
Monday- Rest
Tuesday- 3 miles
Wednesday- 6 miles
Thursday- 3 miles
Friday- Rest
Saturday- Rest
Sunday- Half marathon

This is what actually happened:
Monday- shopping all day in Minneapolis (this MUST count for some sort of exercise, right?  trying on clothes all day long sure felt like a lot of work!).  One of the upsides to doing all of this running and biking is that I am working on exchanging my old wardrobe for SMALLER sizes!  Woo hoo!

Tuesday- 3.12 miles at 9:36 pace.  Great run that morning- I decided to go the extra .10 mile to make it a 5k and see if I *could* run a sub 30 minute 5k.  And I did!  Woo!!

Wednesday- 6 miles at 10:22 pace.  A humid, rainy run.  Felt good though!  It was my birthday and I turned the big 3-4 that day.  A great start to a new year!

Thursday- ......... **crickets**  ...... *hello? anybody there?*..........
Um, oops?  Nah, I didn't do a damn thing that day.  I also decided to continue the birthday eating binge this day as well.  What happened was I had an early meeting at work this day and wasn't going to be able to squeeze in the 3 mile run.  I rationalized it because I had every intention of doing my Thursday night bike ride that evening.  Well, it was just a busy day and the weather was spotty.  Off and on rain, coupled with wind and I just didn't feel it.  Instead I went to Buffalo Wild Wings and binged on subpar wings.

Friday- Rest, in the form of sitting on my butt in a car for 13 hours (though it felt more like 1300 hours).  First day of our family vacation to Chadron, NE.  There was a whole lotta SD to cover first though!  I never realized how BIG South Dakota was, until I had to seemingly drive through every square mile of it.  Yes, I'm exaggerating, but I'm just saying, long road trips plus small children= frazzled parents.

Saturday- 2.08 miles at 10:04 pace.  My sister in law warned me that running at higher elevation might be a little tough.  I was also aware that this area of Nebraska was MUCH more hilly than flat Fargo.  So, still feeling a little guilty for skipping my 3 mile on Thursday, and feeling a little curious about what it's like to run in higher elevations before I embarked on my 13 miler the next day, I went out for a quick 2 mile trial run.... holy cow!  That felt like a very hard 2 miles.  Hills and elevation are no joke.  Granted, I wasn't running on a mountain in Colorado or anything, but there are some pretty significant hills to climb in Chadron, NE.

Sunday- 12.86 miles at 11:38 pace.  I was shocked that this run went as well as it did!  After my tough 2 mile the previous day, I fully anticipated dying during this run... either that or having to run way slow.  Usually my long runs are around a 11:30 pace, but I fully expected to do 12:00 or even slower.  To run almost my usual pace is pretty shocking!  The route we took was gorgeous, as we ran along a really scenic highway.  We ran early  (5am) to beat the heat, and we were lucky to have overcast skies during much of the run.  Lots of scenery to look at and we even encountered some wildlife.  We saw a large snake coiled up on the side of the highway, we saw a large turkey meet its unfortunate death when it was hit by a semi (said turkey was hit and then almost hit US!), and we saw a handful of deer.  Overall we had a loss of elevation, so I think that definitely contributed to my faster pace, but there was still some hills to climb along the way.  I was proud of myself after finishing that run- great to push myself to run in conditions to which I'm unaccustomed and fun to see new sights!
EDIT:
My WONDERFUL husband pointed out to me that I made very little mention about him in this run (though the photos below prove he was there).  It was a lot of fun to get to run together, which is something we rarely get to do.  We were even awesome enough to take self portraits WHILE running.  We did wait until after the run to post them on Facebook though :)   

So, that's the week!  After I finish this week of training, I am officially at the halfway point!  So excited!

Happy Wednesday!