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!

Scheels Run for the Red 5k- race recap

This was THE.HOTTEST.RUN.I.HAVE.EVER.DONE.IN.MY.LIFE.

95 degrees or so at race time (6pm).  Humid as a mofo.  Sunny sunny sunny.

Sounds like a great evening for a race, yes?  No, not really... but it had been a couple of months since I'd gotten a "free" race shirt, and I was jonesing for a new one!  My scheduled training run for the day was 3 miles, so I thought I may as well sign up. 

As I like to do, I encouraged forced a couple of friends to join in on the fun... since misery loves loves loves company! 

I went about the earlier part of my day as normal, but realized around 2pm that I hadn't really had a drop of water all day.  Ooops!  Sista needs to hydrate for running in 973% humidity and 432 degree temperatures!  It was a busy day- I worked and then I donated plasma.  Sometimes people ask me if I should be donating on days I workout, because it might not be safe or it might deplete my energy.  I don't have any scientific evidence, but from all I have read, it IS safe to donate.  I have never had any ill effects from it, and I always feel fine after donation.

I got to Scheels about an hour before the race to pick up my packet and meet up with Angie and Beth.  Suddenly I was overcome with the thought of "I SO don't want to run this."  Great positive attitude.  I think I also repeated about 50 times something about HATING 5k's.  It was just so hot out, I was getting cranky.  OH and it was windy too!

Anyway, we made our way to the starting line, I grumbled a bit more, and it was time to run!

So I ran.  And it was hot.  And it felt hard!  And about 1/2 mile in to my run, I realized WHY it felt so hard- my Garmin showed that my average pace thus far was UNDER 8 min/ miles.  It was somewhere around 7:50 something.  What the WHAT?!?!  I don't DO THAT.  This might have been great and awesome if this was a low-pressure training run, but I knew that I couldn't maintain such a pace, and I had a feeling I was draining ALL of my energy and might have some struggles near the end of the race. 

I slowed down, but still ended up finishing that first mile in under 9 minutes.  Holy cow!  And I was still feeling pretty good after mile one.  I knew there was going to be a water station somewhere between mile one and two, and I figured I would just keep running till the water station and then let myself have a quick walk break (since I haven't really mastered the art of running and drinking).

Started to run out of steam before I even hit the water station, so I took a quick 15 second walk break and made my way to the water.  I drank half and dumped half on my head.  And suddenly this felt like the longest 3.1 miles ever.  Starting up again felt tough and from here on out, I really struggled.

I finished mile 2 with about a 9:30 pace (I don't have exact stats and will tell  you why soon).

The last mile of the race was a mental battle.  I was tired and hot and zapped.  I took several walk breaks and slowly watched my "average pace" on the Garmin creep higher and higher.  I forgot to do the exact calculation prior to the race to know what pace I needed to run under 30 minutes, and I really wish I would have!  In my mind I was thinking I needed around 9:42 pace to go Sub-30 (it's really like 9:37).  So as I was run/walking the last mile, I was just trying to keep my average pace under that 9:42 mark.

I crossed the finish line in 30:26. 

Okay, BEFORE I complain about how I didn't meet my sub-30 minute goal, let me say how excited I am that I PR'd like CRAZY in this race!  I ran the St Patty's Day 5k in 32:17, so I PR'd this race by 1:51.  Not too shabby to slice that much time off a 5k!

But COME ON, I was THISCLOSE to going Sub-30.  Perhaps if I would have known a more exact pace to keep, I could have mentally got myself to run that.  My own fault. 

For the next half hour after the race, I focused my energy on not passing the hell out.  On more than a few occasions, I started to get dizzy and see spots (I'm no "doctor" or anything, but friends, I think that's no good!).  After I finally cooled myself to the point where I wasn't literally bursting into flames, I felt a little better.

I checked the race results when I got home and it turns out I was 5th out of 43 in my age group!  I finished 83 out of 273 runners!  That might not sound super duper impressive, but to finish in the top half is HUGE for me!  Especially since speed is SO not my strength.  I'm much more comfortable running 10 easy miles than I am running 3 fast miles. 

So, overall, I'm really proud of myself!  I feel like my hard work is paying off and it's a huge motivator to keep pushing myself.

One sad note about the race is immediately following the race, my poor poor Garmin locked up on me.  It got all sorts of wonky and wouldn't let me upload my run to my computer.  OF COURSE.  The ONE run I really wanted to look at stats and upload it to Runkeeper, and I couldn't. 

I had to call Garmin and they were super nice and helpful and even though I think the problem was fixed after doing a master reset, I opted to have it sent in and replaced with a new one since it was still under warranty.  This was the first issue I'd had with it, so I'm not saying it's not still a great watch... just unfortunate that it had to konk out on me after a great race!  Lucky for me I can borrow my hubby's Garmin till my new one arrives!

7 weeks!

A quick and dirty recap
Hal said:
Monday- Rest
Tuesday- 3 miles
Wednesday- 6 miles
Thursday- 3 miles
Friday- Rest
Saturday- 12 miles
Sunday- cross train.

I said:
Monday- Biked 9.12.  Family ride.  Fun times.
Tuesday- 3.01 at 9:36 pace
Wednesday- 6.01 at 10:40 pace.... 6.49 mile bike ride later that day.
Thursday-  3.1 miles at 9:49 pace (Scheels 5k.  Race report yet to come!)
Friday- Rest!
Saturday- 12 miles at 11:26 pace
Sunday- Nada.


It was a really good week of training!  If I count the miles back from last Sunday, I racked up 27 miles for the week!  By far the most miles I've ever run in a week and I felt good at the end!

1/3 done with training!

I can't believe I'm already in the 7th week of training!  This has really been flying by and so far I am still feeling great!  A little soreness here and there, but overall I really can't complain!  The Summer continues to be hot and humid, but I have managed to avoid indoor running because I am trying to convince myself that I am forcing my body to adapt to the ridiculous conditions.  This week also marked the first of many upcoming weekends where I have to do training runs while traveling.  Looking ahead, we are going to be out of town several times in the next couple of months, so I am making sure I will have time to fit in long runs during those trips!  This past weekend we were in the Twin Cities, so finding a place to run was no problem.  Finding friends to run with was also no problem!  One of my oldest and most awesome friends, Rachel, recently started running and she and I are going to be running the Women Rock MN 1/2 marathon over labor day weekend.  It just so happens that her long run for 1/2 training and my long run for TCM training were the same, since this was a step down week.  My old college roommate Sharon also lives in the cities and is also training for Women Rock, so she joined us as well!  It was so fun to run together!

On to the recap!

Hal told me to do this:
Monday- Rest
Tuesday- 3 miles
Wednesday- 5 miles
Thursday- 3 miles
Friday- Rest
Saturday- 7 miles
Sunday- Cross train

So I did THIS:
Monday- 3 bike rides, totaling 29.21 miles.  Okay, Monday sounds a little ridiculous when I say I went on 3 bike rides.  But I did.   The first ride was over to the bike shop to have cleats put on my new cycling shoes.  Then I had to bike around for awhile to try to get used to clipping in and out of my pedals.  In the afternoon I went out for another short practice ride, and in the evening we did the family bike ride!

Tuesday- 3 miles at 9:41 pace.  I almost skipped this run because I was pretty tired on Tuesday morning, but I'm so glad I ran anyway!  Can't believe I was able to run this pace!  It has to be pretty close to being my fastest 3 mile run ever!

Wednesday- 5 miles at 11:01 pace.  Ran this with Nicole and we ran along the river.  I've been doing a lot of very very flat runs lately, so running along the river, while not necessarily "hilly," it does feel more difficult.  It just felt like a tough run and my legs felt heavy.  Was glad to have Nicole there to pull me along :)

Thursday- 3.02 miles at 10:42 pace.  Ran with Angie and she chatted my ear off, which helped distract me from my very tired legs.

Friday- Rest

Saturday- 6.98 miles at 11:12 pace.  Did this run along the Medicine Lake Regional Trail in Maple Grove.  Got up at 6am and tiptoed quietly around my hotel room, trying not to wake Jay and the kiddos as I got ready to run.  Went down to the hotel lobby and sucked down a coffee, trying to shake off the travel sleepies.  Rachel and Sharon showed up at 7am and we were off!  It was about 73 degrees, sunny, and very humid.  It was so much fun running somewhere different!  The trail we ran went on for miles and was full of trees and bunnies and ponds and loveliness.  Much more hilly than I am used to, but I felt great the whole time.  I swear I have never sweat so much in my entire life though!  Great start to a busy day.  We spent 5 hours at Mall of America, went to a park, went to dinner, and went swimming when we got back to the hotel.  A fun, but exhausting day!

My alarm clock is very bossy.

Rach and I after our 7 mile!  This was Rach's longest run ever!! 

Sunday- 3 miles at 10:21 pace.  I ran for my cross training!  The hotel had a fitness room, but I just couldn't help but get back out on the trails.  I wasn't even originally going to run, but I wanted to take advantage of the change of scenery!  Got up early again and this time was out the door by 6:15am.  It was already 76 degrees- ick!  Another soupy but great run!


It was a great week of training!

Heatwaves and near-fainting fun. Week 5 summary!

5 weeks behind me and 12 ahead of me.  Training is just zipping along!

Hal told me to do THIS:
Monday- rest
Tuesday- 3 miles
Wednesday- 5 miles
Thursday- 3 miles
Friday- rest
Saturday- 10 miles
Sunday- Cross train

This is what I did:
Monday- mostly rested.  I did ride my bike about 4 miles.  Hubby had his gall bladder removed that day and he had driven himself to the hospital, so I rode my bike over there and drove him home.  It was about 95 and humid that day, so even 4 miles felt gross!  No Monday night bike ride because it was way too hot!

Tuesday- 3.02 miles at a 10:20 pace.  Was up early to try to run before it got too hot, but it was already 74 degrees around 7am.  It was still a pretty good run though!

Wednesday- 5.05 miles at a 10:26 pace.  The heat continued.  I woke up at 6am and it was already almost 80 degrees.  At 7:30 when I started my run it was about 82 degrees, sunny, and humid.  It was a hard run, but I managed to keep a good pace.

Thursday- 3.01 miles at a 9:48(!!!) pace.  Glorious run in 60 degree weather.  Amazing how great 60 feels after choking on the humidity for a few days in a row.  I intended on taking this run easy, but my run started fast and since I was feeling good, I just kept it up!  My first mile was a 8:59 pace!

Thursday night I did my usual bike ride.  36.04 miles.  I think the heat and training caught up with me, because I was tired before the ride even began.  We took a longer route than normal and I struggled.  I think I was a little dehydrated because I drank both of my bottles of water well before the ride was over.  The weather wasn't overly hot- maybe about 90 degrees, but not humid at all.  Anyway, I was tired, but otherwise I felt okay.  Weirdly though, when we finished our ride, we were all standing outside the bike shop and all of a sudden I felt the blood rush out of my head, I got really woozy and started seeing spots.  I was sweaty but cold.  For a second I thought I was going to fall over.  In hindsight, I probably should have sat down, but instead I stood there straddling my bike and trying not to pass out.  It was crazy!  I drank some Gatorade and felt a little better.  We biked a mile over to Erika's house and had some snacks and I felt much better!

Friday- "rest."  I use quotations because I took the kiddos to a water park in Grand Forks and spent the afternoon chasing them around and going down waterslides.  It did not feel very restful!  It was fun, but was I ever tired by the end of the day!

Saturday- 10:01 miles at a 11:25 pace.  The plan was to meet Stacie at 7am... so I had set my alarm the previous night for 5:45a.  My usual Saturday long run routine is to wake up early, relax, drink coffee, eat some toast, and get my brain ready to run long.  That SO didn't happen this week!  I set my alarm incorrectly and it didn't go off when it was supposed to...so I WAY overslept till 6:45a!  I frantically texted Stacie and let her know I was going to be late and then ran around the house like a crazy woman trying to get ready to go.  I hate hate hate oversleeping and it throws off my entire day.  I was nervous that it was going to screw with my run because I was in a crabby mindset!
It actually ended up being a fantastic run!!  It was about 65 degrees at the start of the run and very little wind.  We went out with the plan to keep a similar pace to last week (last week we did our 9 miles at a 11:35 pace).  I felt great through the entire run and really the only complaint I had by the end was a blister on my right big toe and a little chafing on my shoulder from a bra strap.  By the end it was pretty warm (around 75 degrees), but it didn't bother me much.  We even ran the last two miles at 11:04 and 10:56, which was faster than the 11:30 we were aiming for.  It was definitely a confidence-boosting run!

Sunday- Absolutely nothing.  Sat around most of the day.  I probably needed that.  :)


It was a great week of training!  This week is a step-down week, so the long run is only 7 miles!  Woo!!  We will be in Minneapolis for the weekend, so I will get to do my long run there!  Can't wait!

Fuel, nutrition, and whatnot

Every once in awhile, people ask me what I eat/drink before/ during/ after runs, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to post it.  Obviously take all of this with a grain of salt, as every person is different and what works for me might not work for you.  There are no less than a kazillion articles, blogs, etc out there in the interwebz that address fueling for runs.  If you are new at running, you might want to do your research and try a few things out to see what works for you!

This is what works for me:

Short run (4 miles or less)
Before:  Nothing special. A little glass of water perhaps.  If it's a morning run, I don't typically eat anything before I go out, but I DO drink a cup of coffee if it's right away in the morning.  I can hardly put together a sentence without coffee, much less move my body in a forward fashion.  If it's later in the day, I don't eat anything above what I would normally eat. 

During:  Nothing.  I don't eat or drink anything during short runs- though the other day it was about 734% humidity during a morning run, so I did bring a handheld water bottle.

After:  This is new.  I used to finish up a run, drink some water, and hit the shower.  Since I've started training for a full marathon, I've been trying to be more aware of how I am feeding my body.  I have always hated drinking calories unless it's coffee... but I kept hearing about how helpful protein shakes are for helping your muscles recover from a run.  So for the past couple of weeks, I have followed up my run with a protein shake.  I'm a huge fan!  I've been playing around with different combinations of things to find the right consistency and taste, but still keep the calories relatively low.  Depending on how you make your shake/smoothie, calories can add up quickly!  At the end of the post, I'll share a couple of my protein shake recipes.


Medium run (4-7ish miles)
Before:  If it's a morning run, I of course have my cup of coffee.  For these mediumish runs, I also have a piece of peanut butter toast- typically on some type of whole grain bread.

During:  Depends.  If it's extra hot out or I'm feeling dehydrated, I may carry water with me.  If I am feeling extra lazy but thinking I might need to drink something, I may plan my route so I can swing by my car.  It also depends on the day if I eat a GU or not.  If it's closer to 6 or 7 miles, I may eat a GU later in the run.  If it's closer to 4 or 5, I probably won't.  Speaking of GU, that's generally my gel of choice.  Jet Blackberry 2X caffeine is my favorite.  I also like Tri-berry.  We just bought a couple of boxes of the GU Roctane- blueberry pomegranate flavor, and also wasn't too bad.  **When I say "wasn't too bad," I mean, wasn't too bad for thick, weirdly textured gel.  I don't particularly like gel, but it does the job.**  Sometimes I also like gummies.  Powerbar Energy Blasts are pretty tasty- it's just like eating gummy bears.  I don't buy them as often because they are a little spendy.  We can usually find good deals on boxes of GU, but not so often with the chews.  Also the chews come in packs that have enough for 2 servings, and the packaging doesn't fit as easily into my belt fanny pack.

After:  Water and a protein shake.

Long run (7+ miles)
Before:  Same drill.  Coffee and peanut butter toast.  I haven't gotten into the really long runs yet (longer than half marathon),  but then I may have 2 pieces of toast instead of one... or add a piece of fruit.  I don't know yet!



During: Water with a NUUN tablet (lemon tea is my favorite), take my first GU around 6 miles, and then a GU every 4 miles or so.  As marathon training continues, I might experiment with other things, just to switch it up on the long runs.

After:  Protein shake... and whatever else is within reach to shove in my face.  Kidding... I try not to eat every single calorie I burned immediately after I finish running :)  Plus, after long runs my stomach gets a little funky.


Strawberry-blueberry protein shake
1/2 cup blueberries
1/2 cup strawberries
1/4 cup fat free plain yogurt
1/2 cup vanilla almond milk
1 scoop Vanilla Whey powder
ice

I blend mine up in the Magic Bullet (my new favorite product).  Delicious smoothie.  I also like banana, mango, and peaches in my protein shakes.  At first when I started using protein powder, I was um... a little gassy from it.  I think I've adjusted now that I've been using it for a couple of weeks.  


Well, that's about it for now!  It's been a HOT week for running here.  I hope all this hot weather running is going to make me some sort of badass....

OH- Update! The other day I complained at length about my new handheld water bottle (the Nathan Quickdraw Plus) leaking.  Turns out it must have been user error.  I must have threaded the lid wrong or didn't get it tight enough?  I have run two more times with the bottle with NO leaking.  Yay!