Surprised Myself

This Saturday was mile repeats. Funny, I'm now really finding out what all of these terms I see in Runners' World mean! When the schedule stated "3 miles" I wasn't sure how it would be accomplished, but it was a 10 minute warm up, two 1 mile repeats with 5 minutes rest in between, and a mile cool down. The goal here was to do the second mile faster than the first. The second mile didn't need to be faster by much (a couple seconds was fine), but I was nervous about this because the second time around only meant that it would be hotter out there! I actually surprised myself though - the first mile was 9:05. This was 12 seconds faster than my timed mile from last Saturday. I thought to myself during my 5 minutes of rest there was no way I could do it again. 2nd mile start was great, but I saw myself drop the pace at around .75 in...I wasn't sure what to do to get back on track. Luckily I always carry water with me because a little water as it was warming up out there got me around the corner at a quick enough pace to finish it out at 9:03 - 2 seconds faster than the first mile, but that was all it needed to be! By the way, did I mention I love my Garmin at times like this? :) I also think I did well running with my friend James - he is typically much faster than me so far in our training, but he unfortunately had a bit of knee pain that day so I did my best to keep up with him until that last quarter mile. Always motivating to have fast friends! I do hope his pain goes away though - that's never a good thing even if he helped my pace for the day. Can't remember what tomorrow night holds - I'm sure I'll have something interesting to report on Wednesday!

You only set your alarm for 4 am to do the thing you love the most

My Dad sets his alarm for 4 am during hunting season. Especially opening day. Noah's Dad sets his alarm for 4 am to study the scriptures. What are you willing to get up that early for?

Saturday we met at 4:30 to repeat last week. A 12 mile route to the gym, and then finish on the treadmills. Complete with recovery chocolate milk at the end. I thought about that chocolate milk all week- and had to repeat the experience!

I was very impressed with our friend Karen, who has been getting up so early with us to run- even though she is not registered for a marathon or any event. This isnt training for her, its a 4 am social opportunity! Im very glad she has been willing- she is a fun part of the group. She said 12 miles was good enough for her, so she stashed clothes in my car and took the opportunity to shower and do her hair while we finished our mileage. Weve decided the best thing about our new gym is the shower facility.

I didnt check how many calories I burned on the run saturday- maybe around 1800? Let me tell you, I MORE than replaced those 1800 calories throughout the day. Those long runs make me SO hungry! I eat all day on saturdays. How is a runner supposed to lose a pound or two? There's no way. Is this different for anyone else? Do any of you find that marathon training is a good weight loss method? If so, Im jealous.

Thanks for all the entries...its fun to get on the blog and see like 4 new entries to read! I love hearing about everyone's training programs!

Wanting to Stay Warm

As I was waking up this morning, I could hear the wind howling outside. Howling. Like it wanted to break our windows and come inside for a visit. Ugh. I wasn't up to running in the howling wind this morning and on top of that it was raining. I wasn't up for running in the rain, cold and wind. Triple threat. (Sorry Arizonians, you would probably love to run in a bit of cold weather right now.) But I was being a wimp this morning. And one of my little boys kept us up last night with a horrible cough. Poor thing. So I didn't get a good night's sleep and for some reason, I just wanted to stay warm.

So I headed over to the gym and ran on the treadmill. 18 miles was on the schedule. And I ran 18 miles on the treadmill. I started at an easy pace and then would pick it up at random times during the run. As I was nearing 16 miles, I picked up the pace to an 8 minute mile because I wanted it to be over so very badly. I was thinking to myself, "Must run faster. I want this to be over. Can't watch another infomercial or music video." Much prefer the outside scenery over the inside. It took me 2 hours and 49 minutes. It was a long 2 hours and 49 minutes, believe me. I hope I don't ever have to run that long on a treadmill again. But if I'm ever faced with that option, at least I know I can do it.

Happy Anniversary!

Happy anniversary to Cynthia and Lindy today! How unbelievable that you randomly share this occasion. :) Here's to the good men you have in your lives that support you in running and ALL you do! And to you two women for being amazing wives and moms! Your strong marriages are invaluable! Have a wonderful celebration weekend!

Not a Bad Thursday Night

Last night's meet wasn't too bad except for the fact that I was dripping with sweat after speed walking our 1/2 mile warm up! Ew...you didn't want to smell me on the drive home. ;) We had a warm, rainy and muggy day yesterday here. Anyways, it was run for 3 minutes at your target marathon or half-marathon race pace then rest for 3 minutes, run another 3 minutes, etc. We did that 4 times so that took about 25 minutes. I found that my co-worker Justine and I run at about the same pace right now (about a 10 min mile), so it was nice to be running with someone. We chatted it up and the time flew by. Pretty easy night on the track, but since it was so hot and sticky out I was glad for it being easy! Off for today and just 3 miles tomorrow morning plus a mile warm up, a mile cool down and a meeting about workouts. It feels weird starting over again with such a short "long" run, but my legs are still sore from Tuesday's hard running...I'll embrace the 3 miles and try to make it a fast 3!

Games?

So the first week of training is already interesting. Saturday was a timed mile in addition to about 2 miles total of warm up and cool down. My time was 9:17 – not bad for me at all, but let’s keep this number in mind as the months go along because this is the “baseline” and it should improve from here – I hope, but I never really thought this could be! After our cool down Saturday morning were all handed schedules and forms to fill out our goals followed by an introduction from Josh, our coach, talking about the season, making goals, etc. Some of us had a 5K race at South Mountain the next day. I was one of them – didn’t do the best out there, but it was hot and since it was an out and back ½ of the race was uphill. We took it easy and were just happy to have gotten out there and finished the race, meet up with running friends, etc.

Monday - 25 min easy on my elliptical at home.

The schedule for Tuesday’s training showed “Games”. I’m thinking all day Monday and Tuesday…what does “Games” mean? Well, we found out.

The first game had to do with a couple of dollar bills. Someone says a random number between 1 and 30. Josh counts over across the serial numbers of one of the bills the number said, whatever digit was there is how many yard lines we had to run on the football field before switching between easy and hard running. The luck of it comes in when someone drops the dollars on to the field, they can drop as 0, 1 or 2. If the dollars both land face up it counts as 2 (even – start easy), one up one down as 1 (odd – start hard), both down as zero (I think this would be all hard, but we never had this drop thank goodness!). We wanted the even drop in most cases because if the digit was 8, it would be 8 yard lines easy, 8 yard lines hard, then the remaining 6 yard lines easy again. There are 22 yard lines to cross on the field. We would run from one end of the field to the other and do the dollar drop again so that each time across the field was different. Kind of fun, but man does the sprinting get you winded! We finished that one off with 5 easy, 5 hard all the way up the field and back on the last round.

Next, Josh pulls out his cell phone and pulls up the phone number for one of the people on our team. Someone now has to pick a number between 1 and 10 for the digits in the phone number to count over. Even was to start out easy, odd was to start out hard. Now this game we wanted odd – it had to do with the way the light poles around the track are laid out, we would switch between easy and hard at each light pole. Just so happened that the longer distances between poles were at the even changes. And this time, luck was not on our side – most of this trip around the track was hard running! Thankfully we only had to go around once for our first night out there on the track! I can’t imagine what it will be like when we build up! That was only about 1.25 mile total running but it is amazing how sore my legs were when using them in a different way for sprinting, etc.

Anyways, that is games for that evening. Wednesday night was another 25 min easy on my elliptical at home, but I sure didn't want to move the legs! LOL Tonight’s meet is listed as “4 x 3 min w/3 min rest”. Details to come later – going to change out into my running clothes now! :)

Double Coupon for P.F. Chang's in January

Might be too late on this but it is worth a try if you are planning to sign up for P.F. Chang's Rock and Roll Marathon in January. I registered for the full! :)


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