Category: Fitness and Health

Where in the hell have I been, huh?

I’ve been in a funk for about 4 weeks. Four weeks ago yesterday, we were told that my favorite maternal aunt had 3-4 weeks to live with her liver cancer. Four days later, she was gone (I got up to see her and had a proper goodbye). Three weeks ago yesterday, we had her visitation and three weeks ago today, we buried her. Since that phone call four weeks ago, I pretty much have been depressed, eating everything tasty, and doing no exercise but running.

I’ve gotten soft and gained 3-4 pounds.

Today, I told myself it’s time to get back at taking care of myself. None of my training runs had slipped off the radar because running brings me peace, but the other body maintenance stuff disappeared from sight. Last night, I did ab work after running a 5.4 mile interval training run, and today, I ran a 5k, lifted weights, and did ab work.  I got back on point with my eating yesterday too.

It’s time.

Tonight, I’ll sign up for another half marathon.

I’m back.  🏃

 

Truth be told, I don’t think I’ll run another half marathon under 2 hours until the fall, at best, and maybe next spring.  I may never run a half marathon under 2 hours again in my life, being perfectly realistic.  With that being said, I wanted to post the official documentation here.

I was there.

I did it.

I did it under 2:00:00 when my original goal was 2:02:00.

 

 

My goal for this half was 2:02:00. About 5 miles into the race, I knew I’d make that easily and changed my goal to come in under 2:00:00.

I did it!

My official finish time was 1:58:53 with a pace of 9:04 per mile. I am beyond thrilled!

Here are some nifty stats:

66/387 for age division – 17.05%

559/3456 for all women – 16.17%

5 mile time – 45:16

10 mile time – 1:30:21 (second 5 miles were slightly faster than first 5)

Chip time – 1:58:53

Pace – 9:04

The first half of the race took me 59:24.6. The second half took me 59:28.4. So… another negative split by 3.8 seconds!!!!

I’m completely wasted right now and resting. This was the perfect race. Perfect  weather, just a slight breeze, great crowd support, great course! There were 3 decent hills which made it, overall, a  tougher course than my first half of the year… but they were still pretty manageable!

The way this race runs is truly from one dam in the suburbs to a dam downtown. Buses deliver you to the start line and you can just barely see our tallest building from the dam… and that’s where you’re running to! It’s truly awesome!

I started a FB group for those of us running a half marathon together in Colorado on July 23rd.  I love FB fitness groups – they really keep me motivated!  I posted every single training run, and usually the stats to go with them, to this group and I thought it would be fun to put them all here as a re-cap!

This training plan is RIDICULOUSLY wonderful!  I have followed lots of training plans in the past specifically created for the novice runner up to the intermediate runner and none of them have motivated me like this one does.  This plan is only 6 weeks long, requires 4 days a week of running versus 5 (but I usually do 5), and really focuses on speed training versus getting the mileage in.  Mileage only matters for the weekly 5K run and the weekly long run.  Besides those runs, you’re focusing on tempos, hill training, and interval training.  As long as you’re doing as the program asks, you will get faster!  I’ve run through this program twice now (and will start it again next week for the half in July) and I just keep getting faster.  It’s amazing!

 

 

We were on vacation this past weekend  and I carefully planned for my long run. My husband agreed to take the kids to do something while I got my 18k (11.18 mile) lakeside run in. I set my clothes out the night before so that I would not disturb anyone on my way out. I mapped my 12.0 mile course with mapmyrun a week before we left. I was set.

Best laid plans….

My little guy woke up early and I jokingly asked him, “Do you want to go on a long run with Mommy?”  He lit up and shouted, “yes! Yes I do!!”

Not in my plan.

So I loaded him, his toy trucks, and ” the good snacks” up and we hit the road. The route I’d planned was all on the road and there was no way I’d take my kid on them with me, so I quickly re-routed us to the bike trail that ran nowhere near the lake. Sigh.

I planned to go one direction for 3 miles and then turn around to run back quick and drop him off work my husband at the condo, but he was so happy and content that we just kept heading north! I wasn’t familiar at all with the trail system, having never been on it, and ended up taking the long/wrong way north. When we were headed back (turned around with 9.6k left to run, so almost half way), I noticed a much nicer section of the trail that I’d missed on the way up, and it was more direct, so we got back to the condo with 5.1k left to go. My husband met me on the deck, took my son, and I was off for the final stretch of my run… And I went straight for the lake!  It was a nice way to finish my 11.94 miles!

I finished with an average pace of 10:08 which is great considering the stroller, the unfamiliar trail, all the stops to hand over snacks, the seriously deep rain puddles, etc. I was actually shocked that that was my pace!

Bring on my second half of the year… I’m ready!

 

The first time I trained for a 20k (almost a half marathon at 12.4 miles), I thought to myself, “I am going to lose so much weight!”

Guess what?

I didn’t drop a pound.

I gained endurance and a lower resting heart rate, but my weight and body fat didn’t change. You see, when you’re running 20-30 miles a week, you’re hungry all.the.time. You certainly burn a ton of calories while training for a long distance run, but you also take in more because you are always hungry.

I now know this and don’t expect to lose any weight while training, and I’ve learned to expect a slight increase in my body fat percentage since I don’t have the time to commit to weight training. I don’t even get upset, I just shoot to stay at a certain weight every Wednesday (145 pounds or less) and below a certain body fat percentage (24%). Today and yesterday, I was 144.8 pounds with a body fat percentage of 23.1%. Sure, I’d love to consistently be in the 22.x% range for body fat, but 23.1% with minimal lifting is absolutely satisfactory to me.

My abs have suffered along with my body fat percentage, and this is all due to my eating. I do serious ab work 5-6 nights a week (I can’t remember the last time didn’t work my abs) and they’re rock hard under there, but you can’t see them as well as before. They still look fine and good by most people’s standards, but I know they’ve looked better.

My “nice weather months” (mid-March through mid-October) center around running. November through February are for cross training, strength, and other fun stuff.

That’s just my reality.

Today was my last “long run Monday” until my half marathon on June 4. My next long run will be this coming Saturday or Sunday while on vacation up north. I’ve mapped my route and it will be beautiful (lakeside)! I need to pull my long run back to the weekend to allow enough recovery time for the half… Because I’m totally going for a personal best on the 4th!!!

My kids had camp so I ran from their school/camp to our downtown river and back. The weather was perfect, the traffic was minimal, the paths were clear, and I had more than enough time! I had to stop for 3 pretty long stop lights and then took time to snap a few photos three different times, never stopping my tracking apps. When you race, your timing chip doesn’t stop for water breaks or photos or potty breaks, so I’ve broken the habit of stopping my timers when I run. This made for a terrible pace (9:35-9:42, depending on which app I trust), but that’s ok.

I’ve gotten to the point where I can just lock in and run forever, just taking in the sights and thinking through whatever is on my mind. I was turning around at 5.5 miles before I knew it and the run back really seemed to go by quickly (as it should being only 5.5 miles left versus, 7 or 9 or 10!). I even enjoyed the hills, and they were long and frequent!

Best long training run so far! I’m really looking forward to my lake run this weekend (18k so at least 11.5 miles).

 

I did something on Saturday that I’ve never done and honestly, I’ve never thought of doing.  I ran a 75 mile relay with 7 other gals from sun-up to sun-down!

We all met in a dark parking lot at 5:30 AM, ate the scrambled egg and cheese muffin sandwiches I made, and drove for an hour and a half to Jefferson to run the Market to Market Relay back to Des Moines!  Our start time was 7:15 and we got there with plenty of time to check things out and soak up the party vibe (these people know how to put on a FUN race!) before sending our first runner on her way!

We had 8 runners, so we each got to run 2 legs and one of us, our first runner, ran 3 legs.  Once our runners switched at an exchange point, we were back in the car and driving to the next exchange point.  I thought we would have a lot of time to kill at each exchange waiting for our runner to come in, but we really got there just in time for a bathroom break and the exchange.  We were constantly moving.

When it was time for my first leg, lightning struck and we had to wait 30 minutes before we could get on the course again.  There was a rule that if we had to wait more than 45 minutes, that the leg would be skipped and we’d drive to the next exchange point.  Another lightning strike happened within 15 minutes of the first one, which would have pushed us out 45 minutes but we were told to hang tight for an official ruling.  I was not happy about missing my leg because I’d skipped running the day before and was really hoping to run!  I decided to run to the bathroom quick as we waited  but as I was heading there, I saw runners hopping on the course and we were told that we could run at our own risk.  OK!  I skipped the bathroom and went for it!  I ran those 5.7 miles in 48:07 with an 8:26 pace!  It only rained for the first few minutes.  I passed 12 people and 3 people passed me, so I netted 9  😉

I came in strong and happy and handed off the timing chip to runner #8, my friend who invited me on this adventure.  Funny story, she lost the chip!  She had a rain jacket on and had the chip band on her arm and when she whipped her jacket off, the chip went flying and she had no idea.  The poor thing turned around and backtracked 0.35 miles before deciding to leave it and came in to the mid-way check point chip-less.  No one cared, they manually logged us in, and we were on our way again.  Being chip-less worked out great because then we could just high-five each other and not worry about putting the chip band on, starting our running apps, making sure music was on, etc. all at once!

The weather cleared up and we enjoyed the day, but man alive, we were tired!  By the time I was up to run again, I was just ready to be done.  I ran my 4.3 mile leg in 36:10 for an 8:23 pace so I was happy with that!  I was passed by 3 people but passed 5, so I netted 2  😉

Everyone ran way faster than they thought they would and our finish time was 11:45:06 including our 21 minute stop for the lightning – we were THRILLED!  We ended up placing 54th out of 102 female teams which isn’t too bad for a team of gals who expected to run 10:00 paces the entire way!

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I loved doing this, but I’m not sure I’ll do it again anytime soon.  It took the entire day and I was left exhausted and spent!  If I do it again, I’ll want to do it on a team with my husband.  That would be more fun for me!  But really, this was a blast and I’m so glad I did it!