My quest to tackle health and running

Back to basics

2010-09-26T23:48:00.000-04:00

This morning, I was running around the house trying to find my Garmin. I couldn't find it to save my life. Then, I remembered I had the Strands app on my phone. It's funny how I rely on a device to get through my runs, but it's like addicting to be able to know exactly how fast I'm going and how far I've gone, lol. I decided I was going to take things nice and slow today. I have been focusing on running my runs faster overall, even my long runs, but I don't really think this has really been helping me much. I mean, last year I trained at much slower paces and ran the Distance Run faster. The big difference was that I alternated speedwork with long tempo-style runs every other week. It seemed like that one day per week of faster running was all it took. So, I slowed it down today. I mean, the whole point of a long run is to build endurance and to teach your body how to store glycogen. If you run it at a fast pace, you're not reaping the benefits of what a long slow run is really supposed to do.

Because of this slow pace, I felt amazing the whole run. That's another thing about the long slow run. When you finish, you're not supposed to be dead. You're supposed to feel as if you could keep going. That's a nice feeling to have after you have just run 2 hours. When you feel good during a run like that, you actually enjoy yourself. You feel good about yourself and what you are doing. You are breathing the fresh air, taking in the beautiful surroundings, and thinking about life. I had a nice run today. It was what a long run should be.

This is a big reason I have decided not to run a full marathon this fall. I have had such anxiety just thinking about the very long runs that were on my training plan leading up to Nov 7. I have had anxiety about running 26 miles, period. I just don't have the time to or desire to run an 18 mile training run. Right now, that just seems to take the enjoyment out of running when I think about it. On the other hand, I really really like the half marathon distance. It's challenging, but not too challenging, and it's not overwhelming. I can keep my long runs under 15 miles, run about 30 miles per week, and be a happy person.

I revised my whole training plan. I was just looking around on the RW website, and found a detailed Ryan Hall half marathon training plan. After looking over it and various other plans, I decided to just go with it. It gives me some speedwork once per week, and a tempo run once per week. I really missed speedwork, so I'm actually really excited to start on this plan this week. I would like to finish a half in 2:10, which is a 9:56 min/mile pace. This will be my goal for the Nov 7 Marshall Half Marathon.

Here come the fall blues

2010-09-24T23:30:00.001-04:00

It's been a while since my last post. Lots to update!

The Charleston Distance Run was Sept 4th. I can't believe I have not been on here to post about it. It was the most beautiful day and weekend we have had in a long time. The weather was super cool and it was just perfect. I started off in the back with my friend, Mary Ellen. I felt great. She was running without a watch, and I was running with her, but I knew we were running too fast starting out. I was wanting to keep a 10:15-10:30 pace the whole time, and she was running at a 9:30. We got to Capital Punishment hill about 3.5 miles in and I was feeling good going up. Mary Ellen needed to stop about half way, so I stopped with her to walk. We walked a good bit, then started up again, but only for about 45 seconds, then she needed to stop again. She got frustrated and told me to go on without her, so I did. I managed to get through the rest of the hills without having to walk but only a few more times. I didn't want to wear myself out on the hills, anyways. I came down and over the bridge and still felt pretty good. Great, 7 miles left. I was managing about a 10:00 min/mile pace for a while, then I started to get really tired around mile 12. I realized that I was killing my last 13.1 time by about 5 minutes, so I tried to push myself to get to 13.1 before I gave in. I didn't quite make it, but still had a better time at this point than the Parkersburg Half. That made me feel good, but boy was I hurting! I ended up walking/running the last 2 miles. I managed a slow slog the last mile or so and finished in 2:37, which reached my goal of under 2:40. I ate a donut after I finished.

Last year, I finished in 2:28. I had a great training year last year, it being my first time ever training for a big race. I am still proud of my finish this year, considering the lay-off I had due to that ankle/achilles injury. Instead of giving up on running all together, I overcame it and trained my little heart out in barely 10 weeks. For that, I am proud. The future of the race is still undecided, though. We are definitely having a race next year, but they aren't sure if it's going to be a 15 miler, or a half marathon. I'm glad I got to race this year, just in case it was the last 15 mile race we had.

So, last year after CDR, I pretty much quit running and gained weight. I ran out of motivation and didn't want to get up and run anymore. I even signed up for a half marathon and ended up not going! Well, this year I am determined for that not to happen again, but I'm already suffering from the lack of motivation that I had last year. I have read that this is common, though, going through post-race blues. I don't think my problem is just post-race blues, though. It's fall/winter blues. You see, it gets so dark so early here this time of the year, and it's going to be way worse when we set the clocks back. This means, it is very dark when I get up in the morning to head to work, and dark when I get off work at 6pm. Do you know how depressing that is?? To lose all daylight to work?? All I want to do this time of the year is sleep because it's dark outside. Well, I can't let that happen this year. I have worked so hard and lost 14 pounds, and I'm not going to give that up. I want to keep going!

I took a lazy two weeks of recovery after CDR. I totally regret the second week. I failed to plan for any of my runs, so a few of them didn't happen. I tried to get back on track this week, and have almost failed again. If I don't run about 9 miles tomorrow, I'm going to be behind. I need to keep my mileage above 30 miles/week. I have the Columbus Half Marathon on the schedule for Oct 17, and was thinking about running a marathon Nov 7, but I think I'm going to just do another half. I may think about a full marathon in the spring, but i'm not sure yet. I really enjoy the half marathon distance. Personally, it's an easy distance to train for with my schedule, and I can keep my long runs under 15 miles.

I really think another way to keep my motivation this fall/winter is to hit the gym and lift weights. I feel so much better about myself when I'm lifting. It's another thing I can do to clear my head. Instead of lying around the house on my days off, I should go to the gym and pick up some weights. We will see how I do with that.

I have a friend, Shaun, that is weight training pretty heavy right now. His blog is very motivational to me, and he is a rapper, so he's very good with words and inspiring people. I'm copying this from his blog because it just gives me so much motivation:

   "i dont do this to look good, i do this because i love waking up and visualizing my goal and day by day
   watching myself get closer to that goal... i am the competition, i am my competition, the only person who
   can stop me is me... i go to the gym when im tired, and i lift when im so sore i can barely lift my arms, i do
   squats soaked in sweat with sweat in my eyes, i deadlift until my hands bleed and i bench press until the bar
   bruises my chest (true story)... yea i love this sport... bring on the next 96 days..... "

Stay motivated, my friends!

Parkersburg News and Sentinel Half Marathon

2010-08-26T00:06:00.000-04:00

Well guys, I ran a half marathon this past Saturday. It was kind of a last minute plan. I had thought about running it a long time ago when I was planning out my training plan for the distance run. Well, then I forgot about it. I really was unsure if I would have my mileage built up enough to run it, and I didn't want to plan on running it and then get injured along the way and have to lose my registration money. So, the Sunday before last, I ran 10.4 miles in 1:50. Thursday I decided, what the heck, it's just a few more miles, so I registered. It was pretty last second, and my husband had other plans, so I had to make the trip by myself. That kind of stunk because I had to work out of town, come home, pack up everything, then drive over an hour to Parkersburg. I didn't end up getting there till 11:30PM, and didn't get to bed till about 12:30. I had to get up early in the morning to get my race packet before the race.

Let me just tell you about this hotel I stayed in. Because of the race and my lack of planning, there were only 2 rooms left when I got there. One was a smoking room and the other didn't have a key. No key?? What do you mean?? The hotel guy told me that he could let me in, but I couldn't come and go. Lol, no problem I'm just going to bed and leaving in the morning anyways. This place was so gross. It was the smallest hotel room I have ever stayed in, and the carpet was nasty. I was so creeped out by this place and excited about the race that I could barely sleep. Luckily, I survived through the night.

So, on to the race. I had heard this race was a little hilly. Nothing like the Charleston Distance Run, but still hilly. I figured it would be a great training run for the CDR. I also heard about a monster hill at mile 11. I didn't think much of it. Boy was it ridiculous. Just at the moment you can't take one more step, you get to a giant hill. Terrific!!

My plan was to run this as a long slow run, in place of my usual long Sunday run. I told myself I would run it between 10:30-10:45 min/mile pace and pick it up at the end if I had anything left. Well, I made it through the first couple of miles holding back a little, and then I couldn't hold back any longer. I felt so good, and my competiveness got to me. I settled in at a 10:00 min/mile pace and felt amazing. The hills didn't phase me a bit. My breathing was very controlled and I felt great. I got water at every water stop, not losing a beat. Then, around mile 8 my race bib decides to rip half off. Great. I'm trying to keep it from falling off, and I finally ask another runner if she could spare one of her safety pins. She was nice enough to do so, so I pinned it back on and kept running. I felt good till about mile 10. I had to take a walk break. Not necessarily because I was pooped at this point, but my stupid feet were killing me. Seriously, my feet never hurt, so I don't know what was going on. So, I started running again, then came to a bridge at about 10.5 miles. Haha, yep I'm walking this one. At this point, I'm really tired, and I'm had to start doing the running/walking thing. Then, I got to mile 11.4. The monster hill. And man, they weren't kidding. It was the steepest hill, but luckily not too long. I laughed, as I wasn't even going to attempt to run up this thing. I walked to the top, then saw the big downhill and started running again. I was 1.5 miles away. I stopped to walk a couple more times, then with about a 1/2 mile left, I could see the finish line. This motivated me enough to keep running to the finish and to finish strong. Boy, that last stretch of street seemed to go on forever! I crossed under 2:19. It averaged out to be about a 10:35 pace. Even though I had managed about a 10:05 pace through the first 10 miles, those last 3 miles kicked my ass!

I'm actually very pleased with the race. I mean, I have only been back training from my injury for 8 weeks. So, I am actually very happy with how I did. I believe had it not been for the hills, I could've maintained my 10:00 min pace. I'm not disappointed at all that I tired the last few miles. Considering my last long run up to that was 1:50, I think I did pretty good. The Distance Run is in 10 days. It's 15 miles, so I will have to push myself, especially with the 5 miles of hills in the beginning-middle, but I know I can finish. I'm probably not going to finish in under 2:30 like last year, but I will finish nonetheless.

I will say that the Parkersburg Half was a very well put together race. There were tons of spectators all lining the course, which was very encouraging and motivating. They had groups of people strategically placed when you needed it, lol. It was very cool how supportive the city was. Also, there was a nice pizza party afterwards with Papa Johns Pizza, cookies, and ice cream. And, the local YMCA opened its doors to allow the runners to take showers. By the time I got there, there was no hot water, but I was thankful to take a shower and change into dry clothes. The sucky part was having to drive home tired and feeling like I just got hit by a bus, lol.

Overall, a great experience and I will definitely run it again!

race info: http://www.newsandsentinelhalfmarathon.com/
My race pic: http://cu.newsandsentinel.com/photos/index.php?id=2050349

20 days to go!

2010-08-15T00:45:00.000-04:00

Wow, it has been almost a month since I have blogged! Sorry about the long hiatus, but my life has been pretty busy lately. I finished working in Summersville about 2 weeks ago. Thank goodness that is over! No more driving 90 minutes every Monday, staying in a hotel for 2 nights, and driving back home Wednesday night. I mean, it was nice just working 3 twelve hour shifts per week, but I'm not going to say it was easy to leave my husband and pets every week. So, I'm back home now and very happy to never have to go back there again!

I'm finishing up my 8th week of training for the Charleston Distance Run. Things have been going very well! My ankle and achilles are pretty much all healed up. I run 4-5 days per week on it, and the only time it reminds me it's there is the day after a long run. It gets a little bit stiff after the long run, but I just stretch it out and it's good to go. I did an hour and 40 minute run last Sunday, and I'm bumping it up to 1 hour 50 minutes this Sunday. I have really been enjoying my long runs. I have a great downtown route I run that includes part of the CDR course. Last year, I tried to keep my pace 11:30-12:00 min/mile because I was going off of heart rate. This year, I ditched the HR monitor and I just run how I feel, so my long runs are faster. Last week I ran a little over 9 miles at a 10:50-ish pace. This Sunday will be my first 10 miler in a really long time. It's pouring the rain now, and is supposed to rain in the morning, so I should have a nice rainy 10 miler.

I ran the CDR hills for the first time in almost a year on Thursday. I forgot what a beast Capital Punishment is. It's almost 1 mile at a 5% grade. I had to walk twice up that, then a couple more times on a couple other hills. I got a tummy cramp under my rib at the downhill. I finished the 5.5 miles in 60 minutes. I was pretty satisfied with the run. I'm going to run the hills two more times before the race, which is only 20 days away!! I'm barely going to have enough miles built up for my long run to even think about running this race, but I have to run it! It may actually be the last year of this race :( They keep talking about turning it into a flat half marathon to draw more people. There's actually an article about the race in the most recent article of Runner's World. It's towards the back and talks about how the race is in danger of being in its last year. It's quite sad to read. When we heard RW was doing an article about the CDR, us locals got really excited. I thought they were going to talk about the history of the race and talk it up to try to get people interested in running it, but instead it just talked about how it's almost dead.

Anways, it's been so freaking humid and hot here, my runs have been hit or miss. I have been doing my runs early in the morning between 6-7AM to beat the heat. The heat index has actually reached 105 degrees a couple of times. Some days, the morning weather is good and I have a great run, and other days the air is just so heavy and humid, I can barely run. I'm hoping to have two weeks of really good training in before the race. If the weather cooperates, I should be fine. I just hope that raceday the weather isn't too bad. Last year, it was just the perfect temperature, and I had a great race. They start the race early at 7:30, but with this weather, they should start it at 7! I'm not sure what my goal is, or even if I have a goal time. With the limited time I will have had to train (10 weeks v. 16 weeks last year), I may be just happy to finish. I have told myself that I'm going to take it easy on the hills, and take a few walk breaks, so I don't wear myself out. I may just shoot for a 10:00 min/mile pace again and see how I feel. Last year I finished in 2:28. We will see how things go, though. My training has been very different this year, so I may just surprise myself.

Oh, I ran a 5k last Saturday. I finished in 27:37, which was a huge surprise to me! I planned on running it as a tempo run at about a 9:15 pace, but the weather was so cool at about 65 degrees, I pushed harder. I tried to keep it under a 9:00 min./mile pace, and I succeeded. It was a flat 5k just minutes from my house. I was very pleased with the results. Considering I haven't done any speedwork or hill training, I'm very happy with that!

This week's training plan:
Monday: off
Tuesday: 80 min medium effort run
Wednesday: CDR hills
Thursday: 80 min medium effort run
Friday: 60 min rolling hills
Saturday: off
Sunday: 2 hour long run

Week 4 Training Recap

2010-07-18T18:24:00.000-04:00

I have been training for 4 weeks now, and things are going great. I am still experiencing some soreness/stiffness after some runs, but I am managing it very well with ice, massages, stretching, and rest when I think I need it. I think I'm still in the healing process and it will take some time for it to completely go away. I have changed up my stride and am trying to correct slight overpronation, so I am still adjusting. The good thing is, I am definitely able to run 4-5 days per week! It was so bad before, that if I ran I would hurt for 3-4 days and would be limping. That is definitely gone! My husband has become the best little calf massager, so it's all good!

I accidentally skipped Week 3 recap, so I will do that first.
7/5: 4.85 mi in 50 min (10:18 min/mi) also my 26th birthday!!
7/6: off
7/7: 3.8 mi in 40 min (10:31 min/mi)
7/8: 3.62 mi in 40 min (11:04 min/mi)
7/9: 5.0 mi in 50 min (10:00 min/mi)
7/10: off
7/11: 6 mi in 66 min (11:03 min/mi)
total: 23 miles

Week 3 was a really good week for me. I got some confidence in proving to myself that I could run faster paces. Last year, I really held myself back training in certain heart rate zones. Now, I just run based on how I feel, and that has put me at a faster pace. I got in 5 good days of running and my ankle/achilles didn't bother me too much.

Week 4:
7/12: cross training - weights/abs
7/13: 5.12 mi in 55 min (10:48)
7/14: off
7/15: 4.07 mi in 45 min (11:03)
7/16: 4.75 min in 1:02 (13:04)
7/17: off
7/18: 6.36 mi in 70 min (11:00)
total: 20 miles

This week was a little weird for me. Week 3, I started running this somewhat hilly route with Becca near her house. It's a nice quiet run, with enough small hills to transition me into hill training to come. Plus, it's a good test for my ankle and achilles to see how they are going to react to hills. I ran this Monday, 7/13, and it was a good run. 7/15 was a bad run. My legs felt heavy and it was so humid outside I could barely breathe. Still a decent run, numbers wise. 7/16 was the biggest epic fail of a run. My mistake for trying to get a run in at 4 in the afternoon in humid/sunny weather. By the time I realized what a mistake it was, I was more than 2 miles from my house. I ran/walked 3 miles of it, then walked the rest back. Saturday, my 5k got rained out, and I ended up not getting my run in at all because I had a jewelry party that lasted all evening. Today, 7/18, was a turnaround after 2 bad runs and a missed run. I got up early this morning to beat the sun and heat. It was a very solid run for me.

The rest of this week, I have two 60 min runs and two 50 minute runs scheduled. One of the 50 min runs will be run on a hilly course of some sort. I would like to start training on the Distance Run hills, but I don't think I'm ready for that yet. Maybe here in a couple of weeks. I am also going to finish remodeling my kitchen. I took vacation from work to go to the beach this week, but we decided to finish our kitchen instead. We bought cabinets from a warehouse a few months ago, and they have been sitting in our garage ever since. Time to start destroying the old kitchen! I really don't want to do it, but I will be very happy when it's done!

Weekend recap and randomness

2010-07-04T23:55:00.000-04:00

I finished up my second week of training. I did a couple miles less this week, 15 to be exact. I think I ran 5 days last week and 4 this week. I usually run every Sunday with Becca for her C25K, but with the holiday and stuff we just couldn't get together. We normally run at 8PM so that it's not so hot and humid outside, but she went to see the new Twilight movie. I haven't seen any of them, so I didn't go with her. I need to catch up on these movies! Anyways, my calf got pretty tight this week, which made my achilles a little sore, so I decided to take Saturday and Sunday off, instead of running without Becca. I'm trying to play it smart and listen to my body!

Friday evening, I ran in the Independence 5k with Becca. I ran the whole thing with her, as it was her first 5k. I pushed the baby stroller most of the race, so she could focus on her running. My goal for her was under 35 minutes, and we did it in 33! She wasn't ready to run the entire race straight without a walk break, so we took 2 walk breaks. She made it to the turnaround point (about 17 minutes) before taking a break, and that's the longest she has ran straight, so I was really proud of her! We took the pace really easy till the halfway point, about an 11 min pace, then did a 10:30 pace another mile, took another walk break, then did about a 9 min pace the last half mile. We had a great time! I just hope Becca enjoys running as much as I do, lol, because I really want her to keep running so we can run together. All last year I ran mostly by myself, but I have had a blast having a running partner this year!

Yesterday, I went to a spa and got a calf massage. The lady was really nice, but she didn't work my calf out like my physical therapist does. I mean, it felt good, but it wasn't as effective as when he does it. Good thing I see him this coming Thursday so I can get a good massage. I'm using that stick roller, too, but it's also not as effective as my PT. I'm still a little tight tonight, so I'm going to stretch really good before bed.

A new 24 hour gym just opened up this Friday. It's called Anytime Fitness, and it's the only 24 hour gym around here, so I signed up for a membership. I hope this new gym will motivate me to get some cross training in. I have really fallen off my ediets plan because I've been so down and out about my injury. After a weekend of poor eating, I need to get back on track. I guess I will wait till Tuesday to get back on track because my birthday is tomorrow, and the pharmacy is throwing me a little bday party. One girl is making oreo bon bons, and I can't turn that down, lol. I need to get these last few extra pounds off, then start to drop more weight. I really need to get back into weight training. I felt so much better when I was doing that (years ago, haha).

I think this coming week, I'm going to start the long run. I will probably do about 55 minutes, so about 5 miles. I have been leary of doing a long run right off the bat, but with 2 weeks of training and my achilles behaving pretty good, I think I can start doing a long run. I'm going to increase my weekly mileage slowly, and I should have just enough time to build up to the Charleston Distance Run. If that goes well, I'm going to run the Marshall Marathon in November. I've never thought I would ever run a marathon, but for some reason I really want to run one now! I just hope I can stay healthy!

I'm back beotches!

2010-07-01T00:50:00.000-04:00

I am happy to report a whole week and a half of running with minimal complaining from my ankle and achilles. Yep, that's right! I'm back, bitches!!

Last Thursday, I had another PT appointment. We didn't really do a whole lot. He massaged my calf for about 10 minutes, and man oh man, did it feel good! When he was finished, it felt as if I didn't even have an injury. No tightness whatsoever. That lasted through to Sunday, then the tightness started to creep back up. My injury is so weird lately. It's healed enough so that I can run daily on it, but that stupid calf gets tight on me and puts a lot of strain on my achilles. I bought The Stick massager, so that I could massage my calf myself, so I have been doing that since last Thursday. It works pretty well, but it's nothing like a professional massage, lol. It's getting me through, though. I also discovered the ThermaCare Heat Wrap. Wonderful product. I have been using a wrap every other day or so after a run to keep my muscles loose. Love the heat wrap! I scheduled a calf massage for this coming Saturday. My PT is on vacation this week, but I will go back to see him next Thursday.

As for my runs, I ran 17 miles last week! I have been training my friend, Becca, on the Couch to 5k Program. It has pretty easy runs, and I think she is on week 7 this week. I did a couple of 35 minute runs with her last week, and two 40 min runs by myself. The calf massage did me wonders through 3 runs. Monday, I rested because it felt like it was getting a little tight again. This week, I have run Tuesday and today. Tuesday, I did a 45 minute run, and it was amazing. It was my first real run without breaking to walk. I had been breaking to take it easy on my ankle, but I'm barreling forward now, lol. Today, I did a 35 min run in the sun. I'm feeling pretty tight tonight. I made my husband massage my calf with the stick tonight, and I'm hanging out on the couch with a heat wrap on, catching up on my shows on the DVR. The funny thing is, I am running faster paces now than I did last year when I was training, lol. I took 3 months off from running. I cross-trained a little bit, but definitely thought I would struggling when I came back full force. I guess I kept up enough cardio on my break to still be able to run a decent bit. I'm taking the advice of local runner, Jason Pyles, who recommends I run based on how I feel, not based on a pace chart or HR zone. Running how I feel has me running faster than before! I ran today's 35 min run at a 10:00 min pace, and last year I would've ran an easy run like that at an 11:15 pace. The 10:00 pace felt good, so I just went with it!

I am very optimistic that I am on the up side of this injury. At least now, I can actually run on it regularly. A little tightness I can deal with through massage and stretching. As of right now, I believe that I have enough time to train for the CDR. I don't know that I will run it any faster than last year because I'm getting a much later start, and I'm fresh off an injury. Last year, I took 16 weeks to train, but I started from scratch. This year, I have 10 weeks to train!! But, I know from last year that I am capable of pushing myself harder. I know that I can do more weekly miles, and I can do them faster. I may just surprise myself!

A slap in the face

2010-06-21T23:24:00.000-04:00

Still singing the injured ankle blues, unfortunately. I felt pretty good after the adjustment the podiatrist did. I I ran on it the next day, then that Sunday, and I was a little sore. I called her and her staff relayed messages back and forth between me and the doctor. She said it was normal to have soreness after the adjustment. So, why didn't she tell me I needed to rest for a week or something? Instead, she tells me it's ok to run, and I'm wondering if I'm hurting myself even more! After Sunday's run, I stayed off of it till Thursday. The funny thing is, I was having this little funny feeling in my ankle the day before and the day of my run. I decided to run Thursday anyways, then I ran Friday, did Zumba Saturday, and ran Sunday again. Four days in a row of physical activity. I think it was a little too much, lol. Today it was pretty sore behind the ankle. I'm hoping it will be a little better because I plan to run tomorrow morning. Here I am still wondering if I should just stay off of it for a while, but then I only have 11 weeks till the Charleston Distance Run. I may have to forget about this race this year, which is devastating for me to think about, but if I can't do it then there's no reason to push for a faster recovery than I'm capable of.

I went back to the physical therapist. The same guy who saw me free the first two times. I told him I wanted to be a paying customer this time, so he doesn't get in trouble. He said ok, and he did a full workup on me. He even had another physical therapist take a look at me. At this point, the other PT just starts ripping me to shreds, lol. My left hip is weaker than my right hip, and this is what's causing my ankle problem, because other muscles are trying to compensate for the weakness. My core is weak. All my leg muscles are tight, which prevents my running form from being at his full potential. My upper torso tightens up when I run. I arch my back and throw my hips back when I walk and run, and that is just wrong. At this point, I'm thinking holy cow, how do I even get through a day by myself, lol?? I had not one single problem last year and now I apparently don't know how to run or walk, haha. They gave me strengthening and stretching exercises to do, and I'm supposed to go back this coming Thursday. Apparently, the shoes may have been the culprit, but I would've eventually developed a problem sooner or later, according to the PT. I'm just really overwhelmed at the fact that these measley little exercises are supposed to transform me into a better runner and cure me. The last few days, I have really focused on keeping my hips forward when standing and walking. It's really hard teaching yourself to stand and walk differently. Something that you never had to think about, now you have to think about all day long.

I am just venting, lol. I am taking this seriously. I really love my physical therapist(s), and I understand what they are telling me. Under all the whining, I am determined to beat this and to get stronger. It's just really hard to hear that something you do so naturally has been wrong your whole life, lol. I just want my ankle to heal so I can run like everybody else. I miss it so much, it tears me up inside.

And all this because some new stinking Asics and a treadmill........

Peroneal Tendon Subluxation??

2010-06-12T21:51:00.001-04:00

Say what? Peroneal tendon (the tendon running behind the ankle and up the side of the fibula) subluxation (a partial dislocation). That's right! My peroneal tendon somehow decided it didn't like living in its nice little home and ventured off to cause all kinds of ruckus in my ankle/achilles area. How ridiculous is that? What did I ever do to you, PT? I have suffered 3 months with this crazy injury, hoping it would heal up with some rest from running and light cross training. Stupid me. I saw a physical therapist a couple times, who helped me alleviate much of the pain through stretching. But, I knew there was something else wrong going on in there. I booked an appointment with a local podiatrist, Dr. Carrie Lakin. Her staff was very nice and got me in the same week I called because there was a cancellation.

I went in and gave all my history to Dr. Lakin's nurse. I explained where the pain was and how it began the day I ran in a new pair of shoes on a treadmill. I explained how it didn't hurt during running, but would kill me the next day. How if I rested, it seemed to get better, but was always bothering me. Dr. Lakin came in and listened to my story, watched me walk down the hall a few times, moved my foot around a little, then told me what she thought. She told me that when I walk, I come inward on my big toes. She said that I probably had peroneal tendon subluxation and that sometimes that tendon slips out of place. She also said that because of my mechanics, I was a little more prone for this to happen. I guess the new stiff shoes on the treadmill just pushed me over the edge. Then, she told me what she was going to do to fix it!

She said a colleague from another state told her about a manuever a few years ago, and then she saw it in a podiatry journal the next year. She told me she was going to push on my fibula, pull down on my foot, then dorsiflex my foot, and that if it worked we should hear a sound. It all happened so fast, I didn't know what to think! Sure enough, she did the 3-step move, and sure enough, there was the clunk sound! When we heard the sound, we looked at each other with wide eyes, lol, like we were shocked it worked. She told me I could run and see how it felt, and that if it happened again I could come back and she would fix me. She said she could make me an insert if I needed it. I saw the doctor for less than 10 minutes, I paid $120, and went home.

My ankle definitely felt weird the rest of the day. But, I could tell that the pressure and tightness in my ankle and along the tendon was gone. There is still a little soreness and tightness in my achilles, but I believe I am fixed! I ran with my best friend, Becca, yesterday. She is a Zumba instructor and just had a baby about 3 months ago. I talked her into starting a Couch to 5k program, although she is no couch potato! I started her off on week 3. She is doing so great! I decided that I should run with her so that I ease myself back into running and don't do too much too fast. I was a little sore today, so I took the day off. We are supposed to start on Week 4 tomorrow. I just need to be sure and stretch really well, and I think I will heal up nicely. I have heard of this being a recurring problem for some people. I hope that is not the case for me. Hopefully, my tendon will stay in its home and behave itself!

Picture courtesy of https://www.northcoastfootcare.com/footcare-info/tendonitis.html

Back in the game!

2010-05-13T12:35:00.000-04:00

I am happy to report that I am healed!! Well, for the most part. I did a test run Tuesday morning at the hotel on the treadmill. I did a warmup, then did intervals of 1/2 mile running with 1/4 mile walking, for a total of 2.3 miles. Then I tested it out the very next day, but did intervals of 1 mile running with 0.2 miles walking. I did notice a little twinge of something above my achilles after my run while I was getting ready for work. I don't know if it was the fact that I ran two days in a row, or it was the longer intervals. I iced it at work and stretched, and by the middle of my shift I felt better. I know it's going to take some strengthening and baby steps till I'm full out running 5 miles. Right now I need to be cautious because I don't want to reinjure it. I have come so far! I plan on working out today, so I will test it again. I might cut back and do 3/4 mile intervals.

I was trying to figure out the best way to repay the physical therapist that helped me. He saw me twice and didn't charge me a thing! He is a local runner, so I think he was just trying to help me out. He was so generous to provide me with therapy where he works and not charge me anything. I thought about getting him a giftcard to runningwarehouse.com. Then, I heard that he was thinking about running the Deckers Creek Trail Half Marathon, which is in Morgantown. I had registered to race it, but can't run it now. I emailed the race director to see if I could give my spot to somebody and she told me yes. So, I messaged him and told him he could run in my spot. I feel better that I can at least give him that. I can't remember how much I paid in registration, maybe $50 or so. I know that doesn't come close to paying him back, but at least it's something!

Next week it will be exactly 16 weeks to the Charleston Distance Run. This is the race that prompted me to create this blog last year! I took 16 weeks to train last year, so I'm cutting it close this year. I know I won't be able to jump right into running 15 miles next week, so my training plan might be cut short. I know I can do it though! I feel like I trained hard last year, but I can train harder. I just have to get over this injury completely. I need to be able to run everyday and not have any signs of an injury.

The Long Road to Recovery

2010-05-06T23:25:00.000-04:00

This has been the most awful experience of my life! Well, that may be exaggerating, but it's a really close second. I haven't posted in a while because there's been pretty much nothing to post about. The injury thing leaves my life a little boring right now, and I'm generally in a depressed mood about it. I do have some updates, though, and I might be able to better explain what's going on and how it's going to affect my summer.

I don't know exactly what is wrong with me. I haven't seen a doctor to get a diagnosis. I believe I have an achilles tendonitis or tendonosis or something like that. Because I ran on this injury for over a month, long runs and all, I ended up making it a lot worse than it probably should've been. Instead of taking a little time off to heal, I kept running and now I have been off for about 6 weeks. I mean, I didn't even go that long during the winter without running, and I had a horrible winter of not running, lol. So, the achilles thing turned into an ankle thing, because well all those things are connected in there and I guess all that stress on my achilles affected my ankle. As soon as I started taking time off, the achilles pain went away, and I have just had this nagging sensation above my outer left ankle. Dorsiflexion makes it obvious that something is wrong, and my ankle and achilles have been very stiff, particularly in the morning.

The whole time I have been off, I have been cross training. Stationary bike and stairmaster. Well, I decided that since I was stuck at "almost better", I was going to stop cross training all together and see if I got any better. At the same time, I went to see a physical therapist, who is also a runner. His name is Craig, and he is about 45 minutes away, but he offered to take a look at it for me. He immediately told me I had really tight calves and that's not good for a healing achilles. He sent me home with several calve stretching exercises to do twice daily and told me to ice it. Withing 3 days, I felt 100% better...no pain in my achilles or my ankle! Craig is amazing and I was so happy! I decided to go for a test run, and I stretched really well, ran 1 mile, stretched again, and ran 1 more mile. I had absolutely no pain or sensation of an inury doing the run! I was healed!!!

Then, I went to sleep and woke up the next day. And what happened? I woke up with a pain in my achilles!! **!#$*$*#*!!! I was so heart-broken, it's ridiculous. On the good side, I didn't have any ankle pain. I left a message for Craig to call me back, and when he did I broke down wining and crying, lol. I hope he couldn't tell I was crying a little, but he probably did. He told me not to worry and at least I didn't have any pain during my run. He suggested that it may take a combination of doing a lot of little things to get me all better. He recommended some Sugoi compression socks, which I should get tomorrow. He also recommended me running 1/4 mile at a time and walking, and slowly building it, instead of running 1 or 2 entire miles at once. He told me not to give up and to be patient. I felt a little better.

Well, the very next day I woke up with absolutely no pain in my achilles! I was so excited again. At least I only hurt for one day, lol. Then, I made a mistake. I decided to workout, and did 30 minutes on the stationary bike and 15 minutes on the stairmaster. As soon as I finished the stairmaster, I realized what a mistake that machine was for me to use. Then I realized that I had been cross-training on that thing the entire time and that was probably the reason my ankle wouldn't heal! The stress of the stairmaster motion was hurting me the entire time and I didn't realize it until I was almost all the way healed and used it again, lol. This has been the most difficult thing to figure out!!!

So, here is where I am. I have another physical therapy appointment tomorrow. I am still stretching and icing. I'm going to wait till I have absolutely no pain for 3 consecutive days, then I'm going to do another test run, of 2 quarter-mile repeats with a walk in between. If I wake up the next day without any achilles pain, I'm going to do it again, adding on another 1/4 mile. I planned on starting my 16 week training plan for the CDR on May 17th, but I don't think it's going to happen, and my training plan may be cut short. Only time will tell.

My stubborn ankle!

2010-04-14T21:57:00.000-04:00

Holy moly, it's been two weeks since my last post!! What have I been doing lately?? Well, I have found a really amazing awesome website, http://www.strands.com/ where I log my workouts and such, as well as follow some really talented local runners. Good luck to Jason Pyles, his wife Marian, and their friend Marshall, as they are tapering for Boston. It's so cool witnessing them train and prepare. I joined the site a little late, so I didn't get to see a lot of their training, but they are definitely very motivating and genuinely kind hearted. I am still using http://www.dailymile.com/ as well because I really love the running community on there. So, I am logging my runs on two websites! Strands provides better stats and feedback on running, but DM is fun, too.

Well, my ankle has been injured for a while now. It was injured a long time ago, but for some reason I was too stupid to rest and let it heal. I think it's because it never hurt during my runs, just afterwards, then by the time I had to run again the pain would subside enough for me not to worry about it. It finally bothered me enough to take time off. I took 12 days off and it still wasn't healed. Ran a mile on it on day 12, a little sore the next day. Day 15, I was so fed up, I wrapped it in a sports band and ran 2 miles. Still a little sore the next day, but nowhere near the pain I was in before. Then it dawned on me: I should probably be wrapping this ankle every day! Hell, I stand on it 10 hours a day working, so the time off isn't that great if I'm standing on it all day. I have been wrapping it for 4 days now, and I feel like it's almost completely healed. What a dummy, huh? Why didn't I think to wrap it for extra support before? Well, it feels great, and I'm hoping to be running again in about 5-7 days. Fingers are crossed!

I definitely haven't been slacking, though. In fear of losing my cardio, I have been doing the stationary bike and the stairmaster ever couple days. Those are two hard workouts, let me tell you! The stairmaster makes me sweat more than any activity I think I have ever done. The bike really works my quads and butt! I am hoping that it will make my running stronger. I'm going to try to keep these cross training activities in my training plan when I return to running.

I have been pretty bummed out about this ankle thing. I am missing races that I want to run on the weekends, and I am missing valuable long runs and speed workouts, so when I do return to the races I'm not going to have the speed I was hoping to have. So, I am going to be about a month behind on my training plan, but if my cross training is successful I can bounce back where I left off at the 8 mile long run, and still run my half marathon in June. I was hoping to have a great base built by June so I can train hard for the Charleston Distance Run in September. Looks like I'm going to have to really train hard when my ankle heals if I want to reach my goals. Last year I was starting from scratch in April for the September race. This year, I should have the half marathon distance under my belt in June and can have 3 great months of quality long runs and speed workouts. The year is not a total loss!

As far as the weightloss is going, I had a little setback the last couple of weeks, but got back on track for this week. I let a cheat weekend turn into cheating most days for a little bit. I gained 2 pounds back, but got those off, so I am still at 5 pounds lost. Still doing ediets and loving it, just strayed from the meal planning for a little bit. The point is, I am seriously back on track and it's ok that I stumbled. It's going to happen!

A weekend full of mistakes

2010-04-01T11:07:00.000-04:00

I have been following ediets now for 3 weeks. I was doing very well following the meal plan and not cheating, then this weekend I ran into problems. Friday evening, I fought the urge to eat chocolate chip cookies for hours. For some reason the late night hunger got the best of me, and I ate several cookies. I went over my calories about 500 calories Friday because of that.
Saturday, I went to a baby shower, and did remarkable well. I ate a balanced plate and stayed away from the dessert. However, Saturday evening was the Mountaineer basketball game. We went to the usual sports bar and I ate a horrible horrible meal of wings and fries!! I am kind of glad I did it, because it reminded me of how uncomfortably bloated and full I was all the time before I started ediets. I felt awful. I don't even want to think about how many calories I ate!
Sunday actually wasn't too bad. I went to the Chinese buffet, but stuck to vegetables, and stayed away from the breaded chicken in sauce. I did eat some lo mein. I was full, but not miserable. Overall, it was a weekend full of mistakes, and I ended up gaining 2 pounds back for my weigh-in today. Monday I got right back on track with my diet, but I guess it wasn't enough time to at least break even!

I have learned a couple of things from this weekend. Yes, if I completely deprive myself of the things that I enjoy the most, I am probably going to have some serious cravings and end up bingeing. I think that if I want to have something to eat, I should allow myself to have it, but within the realms of my calorie intake. If I want a cookie, I will have 1, but it gets counted. I was able to find some neat things at the grocery store Friday. Edy's makes little tiny ice cream containers that have about 160 calories in them. It's 1 serving and doesn't put too much of a hurtin on my diet. It's premeasured, so I am not tempted to underestimate exactly how much I ate out of a gallon size carton. I also found mini Cadbury eggs, that are only 45 calories each. Eating one of those would definitely satisfy my sweet tooth. Hopefully, these small changes will prevent me from bingeing. I need to work really hard this week to make up for my weight gain. The good thing is I'm not discouraged, and I'm moving on!

On the running front, I took a week off this week to let my ankle heal. Today was the first day I woke up and it didn't hurt. It's not 100%, but it's almost there. Hopefully, it will be healed for the long run I have planned Sunday. Since, I haven't been able to run, I have been very diligent about cross training this week. My race was Saturday, then I went to the gym Tuesday night and biked 11 miles (45 minutes), then this morning I did the stairmaster for 25 minutes and biked 7 miles (25 minutes). I didn't want to lose any cardio that I had built up. I will probably take the day off tomorrow, then maybe try to run 2 miles Saturday to see how my ankle feels.

Fighting the sweet tooth cravings

2010-03-31T01:08:00.000-04:00

I went to the gym this evening and used the stationary bike for 45 minutes, biking 11 miles. I usually don't bike, but it was a great workout. Since I am taking the week off from running to let my ankle/achilles heal, I have no choice but to do some other form of cardio. I can see why runners cross train with biking. It really gives the legs a good workout. My butt felt like a million bucks when I walked out of that gym, haha.

I will be heading out of town early in the morning to go work for 3 days. I have to do this every week now till they find another pharmacist. It's about a 90 minute drive to get there, which sucks, but they are paying me well to do it! The problem with being out of town for 3 days per week is that if I don't plan, it's easy to fall off the diet wagon. After the gym, I went to the grocery store to stock up on fruits and veggies and stuff to take with me to eat healthy. I will be eating 7 meals while I'm up there, so I am packing as much food as possible to cover them. It was a lot of preparation in the kitchen, chopping and bagging all the food, but I know it will be worth it. I do see how it is a hard thing to maintain, but I am so dedicated right now I am sticking with it!

I'm trying to use running as my motivation to lose this weight. I keep telling myself that if I can lose 10-15 pounds, then I will be a lot faster and be more competitive when racing. This is actually really good motivation for me because I am tired of being so slow, lol! I hope this motivation holds and I can see my times improve as I lose weight!

This past weekend, I had a few cheat moments. I was craving to cheat Friday evening, and it continued the whole weekend. I didn't binge at each meal all weekend, but I did have a few meals and snacks I shouldn't have. The good thing is I did it and immediately got back on track Monday. I have decided that the best thing for me to do is to allow myself to have things that I want, but in small quantities. That way, I'm not feeling like I'm depriving myself all week and want to binge on the weekend. I found the perfect "cheat" when looking at the Easter candy. Cadbury makes these mini Cadbury Eggs, and 4 of them is 180 calories. I mean, one of those eggs is rich enough to satisfy any sweet craving I'm having, and at 45 calories, that's not too bad! Of course, I will only limit myself to 1 or 2 and it will be counted in as part of my daily calorie intake, not as extra. I hope this works better than depriving myself all week till I cave in!

Joker Run 4 Miler

2010-03-29T01:00:00.000-04:00

Saturday was my first real race of the season. I did run a winter series early in the year, but I was not running or training at the time, I kind of just showed up and ran slow. I surprised myself a little bit because of my lack of speedwork preparation. My goal was to finish in under 40 minutes, and I finished in 38:06. I was thinking to myself that I would keep around a 10:00 min pace or a little faster. I felt really good, so I settled in around 9:30. I wanted to run at a comfortably hard pace and not kill myself. Killing myself would be the equivalent of trying to PR a 5k. You know, that miserable pace that you just want to die the whole time, lol. Yeah, I didn't want to do that at all this race. The last mile, I felt really good and had plenty of conserved energy, so I kicked it up and ran it in 9:10. I was a little disappointed when I finished and saw my time because I knew that I had a lot more in me, but at the same time I was happy. Now I know that I can push myself harder. I was just worried I would push too hard at the beginning and then tire out halfway through. I probably could've maintained a 9:15 pace and not killed myself. At any rate, it is much better than the paces I ran during the Winter Series. If I can get back to my 5k PR pace of 8:40 by June I will be very happy. I think I can do it. It was very cold for the race, around 35 degrees, and not that many people turned out....maybe 50. There were only 3 people in my age group, and of course I got 3rd place, haha.

I stumbled upon this amazingly awesome website for tracking runs when I left a comment on a local runner's blog. He's local, but pretty much a rockstar in the running circle, lol. Actually, that would be an understatement. His name is Jason Pyles and you can find him over at Running with Pyles if you want to see some pretty amazing runs. The site he told me about is http://www.strands.com/. It's so integrative and offers lots of analysis and charts, it's crazy! Check out my profile and play around with the training charts. I'm at www.strands.com/tammyrunswv. Pretty cool!

Running stats:
Miles: 4
Time: 38:06
Ave pace: 9:30

A little speedwork, if you can call it that

2010-03-24T23:35:00.000-04:00

It was a beautiful day today! My bestest friend had a big healthy baby boy this morning, weighing in at 9lbs 3oz. I was at the hospital at 7am and left at 11. His blood sugar was low, so we still hadn't got to hold him when I left at 11. I came back home and crawled in bed at around 1 and took a nap with my kitty. Woke up around 3, got a bite to eat, and headed out for some speedwork at the local high school track.

I was so excited to go to the track. It was my first track workout of the year, and honestly the first one since August! Needless to say, I'm pretty slow with that kind of huge break from speedwork. I have no problem with long slow distance, but upping the pace just about kills me right now. I ran to the track for a warmup, then had a plan of running 3 repeats of 800m @ 8:30 with 400m repeats, and running back. Well, I ended up doing 2 repeats of 800m @ about 9:00, instead. I mean, I wasn't dead when I finished, but it just seemed like I couldn't do it. Last year, I used to put in some work at the track, but right now it seems too difficult to push through. It's probably best that I don't push myself at the track at the beginning, so I don't get injured or something. I'm not discouraged by any means. I know it will come back, I just have to get my butt to the track each week, and start running the hilly routes. I'm running a half marathon in June, the Deckers Creek Trail Half. That should be plenty of time to find some speed!

After my run, I headed back to the hospital to see the baby. His blood sugar finally came back up, and he was nursing just fine. I got to hold him for a little bit, and he is so cute! Glad he's doing better, that's for sure!

Running stats:
Distance: 4.5 miles
Time: 48.47
Ave pace: 10:50

My kitties!

2010-03-24T16:17:00.002-04:00

The sweetest kitties ever!

5 pounds down and a Congrats to Barbie!

2010-03-22T00:26:00.000-04:00

I have officially lost 5 pounds so far on my ediets.com diet. My weigh-ins on that website are on Wednesdays, but I still weigh-in on my blog on Sundays. That gives me a mid-week checkup to see how I'm doing. I started ediets at 160 pounds, and was 155 when I jumped on the scale this morning. I am so happy to be getting closer to my "normal" weight of about 153 pounds. I can already fit into a couple pairs of my jeans, but they are a little snug. A few more pounds and a couple more inches, and they should be fitting great. My ultimate goal is 140 pounds, and if I stick with the diet I know I can get there. I'm going to be increasing my mileage each week, so the only thing that can hold me back is my eating.

This year is going to be quite a good year, I think. For one, I'm finally committed to a nutrition plan that works for me, so I should be able to reach my goal weight. Secondly, I am going to be so far ahead on my running as compared to last year, that I should be able to shave some time off when I race the CDR in September. Last year, I spent most of the summer just building my mileage, and I didn't hit the 10 mile long run till July. August I had built up to 14 in preparation for the 15 mile CDR. This year I will be at half-marathon running distance by May. So, I will be maintaining a great weekly mileage of about 30+ miles per week, and maybe even increase to 40 miles per week while training for the CDR. I will have a chance to greatly improve my speed, and I'm really excited about that. I definitely want to get faster, but I know it will not only taking me hitting the track for lots of speedwork, but it will also take me reaching my goal weight.

On a running note, I ran 8 miles today. The weather was beautiful, but I didn't get out to run till it had turned overcast and windy. It was still warm, though. I was afraid it was going to pour the rain on me, but I'm a trooper and was prepared for that. Luckily, it only sprinkled on me a little bit. It was a good run, and I have no complaints. Other than the fact that my Garmin froze on the main screen that only shows the time! It was still keeping track of my run, I just couldn't see my pace or distance. I was fine with it and decided to just continue to run at a comfortable pace. My comfortable pace ended up being slightly faster than I wanted it to be. I was trying to keep an 11:30-ish pace, and ended up running an 11:05-ish pace the last 3 miles that my Garmin was acting up.

Running stats:
Total miles: 8
Ave pace: 11:11
Time: 1:29

Before I go, I have a huge congratulations to give to Barbie over at Barbie Runs. She ran the ING Georgia Half Marathon today and beat her old time by 19 minutes! Go Barbie!

Tammy v. O'Charleys

2010-03-20T23:17:00.001-04:00

I have to blog about my victory tonight. I successfully went out to eat at a really tastey restaurant and I totally kicked its butt! If you have eaten at an O'Charley's, you know what I'm talking about....soft, fluffy rolls, broccoli cheese casserole, chipotle chicken tenders, cajun chicken pasta. You walk into this restaurant, and you can plan on spending at least 2000 calories. Did I mention the ooey gooey caramel pie?

The only way I survived this trip was the fact that O'Charley's is kind enough to put their nutrition facts online. Gotta love the iPhone for its awesome internet access. I scoped the menu for a long time, then decided on the 5 ounce sirloin with asparagus and a cup of chili. The sirloin only had about 260 calories, the soup had 150 calories, and the asparagus about 50 calories. And, I didn't eat one roll. I didn't even look at the rolls!

Score: Tammy 1 Restaurant 0

I really think this whole diet thing is 80% mental and 20% physical. What I mean is for the longest time, I couldn't get through one single day trying to eat healthy. I would starve to death, even when I really wasn't starving. I just had to eat sweet stuff while at work....chocolate in particular. And at night, I had to cheat and eat chips or something. My mind was what was ruining my "diet" attempts. It's kind of like that with running. There is a huge mental aspect to running. It may hurt like hell, your lungs on fire, your knees screaming at you to stop. But, you just push through it. Then there are days when you just give up and go home.

For some reason, a switch got turned on somewhere in my brain. A switch that turned off all the negative dieting thoughts and turned on my willpower. A switch that suddenly has me saying no to "bad" foods. I have only been eating 1400-1500 calories per day and I haven't even really been hungry. Today, in particular, I went a long time without eating (not on purpose), and normally I would be going crazy throwing a fit starving, but I wasn't. I didn't feel hungry. And when I got to that restaurant, instead of eating all the rolls and ordering a huge meal, I kept my cool and ordered what I was supposed to. And this time, I didn't eat off of Eric's plate, lol, something that I am severely guilty of doing on a regular basis. This is all a mind game, and I'm winning right now. I just hope that switch doesn't get turned off somehow!

Week 1 of eDiets in the bag

2010-03-17T22:14:00.000-04:00

Today was my first check-in on eDiets.com. I have followed a great meal plan for 7 days now, and I really did it! I stuck to the plan and I didn't cheat! That's a huge deal to me because I always cheat on diets....maybe that's why I have always failed to lose weight?!?! Anyways, I can't praise eDiets enough for the menu plan. There are thousands of meal combinations for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, that I'm never eating the same things and everything is fulfilling. There is usually a mix of fruits, veggies, whole grains, and protein at each meal and snack. Luckily, I'm not hungry on this diet! I start to get a little hungry right before my next meal. The real hunger comes at 10PM at night when I want to eat again, but I haven't! I have told myself each night that I will be going to bed soon and don't need to eat, and so far it has worked.

Seriously, nobody from eDiets is paying me to say any of this, lol. I realize now why I always had problems with diets in the past. I mean, I know what I'm supposed to eat! Lord knows how many fitness magazines I read and how much research I've done on running and nutrition. My problem is the planning part. That's where eDiets comes in. It puts all my meals and snacks together each week. All I have to do is sit down in front of the computer for about 30 minutes at the beginning of each week and review the week's menu, making any changes I want to it. I then print it out, along with the grocery list it creates based on my menu. I go to the grocery store, get the week's worth of food, and I am set for the week. It takes all the guessing out, and it takes all the chances of me wondering off to a fast food restaurant out. Plus, if I do happen to forget my food, I know I am supposed to eat 420-450 calories at each meal, so I grab something in that range.

Anyways, I am proud to say that I have lost 2.5 pounds my first week!! I am now at 157.5 lbs. My weigh-ins are every Wednesday. My goal weight is 140 pounds, and I started off at 160 pounds. I am really hoping that I can stick to this. This meal plan, in combination with my running should get me there, as long as I don't deviate from the menu. I will be running a half marathon at the beginning of June, so my mileage will be increasing back up into the 30+ mile/week range. Of course, I will run the CDR again in September, so I will maintain that mileage for a good while. I'm almost at 20 miles per week now. If I'm feeling spunky, I may jump up to 40 miles per week while training for the CDR.

I have found a nice group of girls in the eDiets forum. We are in a group on the forum called Remarkable Runners. They are really friendly, and post about their daily runs and life in general. It's nice to find people on there to talk to who are doing a diet and who like to run races.

Aside from all my eDiets posts, I guess I should post something about running! I had been sick for like 10 days with a chest cold, and it really kicked my butt on the running front. I got my runs in, but not the whole distances and goal paces. One of the runs, I had to do 1/4 mile intervals, running at a slow pace and walking. My lungs just coudn't handle running the entire time. One of my runs was supposed to be a 6 mile speed workout, and ended up being a 2 mile easy run. FINALLY on Sunday, I had a fantastic run. It was a scheduled 8 miles on my training plan. I headed out the door with the intention of doing 7 IF I felt ok. I figured that 8 wasn't an option considering the quality of my recent runs. Plus, 8 miles is the longest I have run since October! Well, as soon as my feet hit the pavement, I felt great! So, I went for the 8 miles. I felt great the whole time and was so happy! Unfortunately, I had done lunges Friday. Needless to say, Monday at work my legs hurt so bad I had to break down and take some ibuprofen. That stuff works like magic! I have never been so sore before! Not even the day after the CDR last year. I guess the lunges and the long run together kicked my ass!

I have a 4 mile race next Saturday. It's called the Joker run. I ran it last year and am excited to run it again. No real goal time, I don't guess. Maybe under 40 minutes? I'm not sure what kind of pace I can maintain for 4 miles. I haven't been doing any tempo runs, and have only done a few speed workouts. I'm pretty sure I can keep a 10 min pace, maybe. We will see.....

Sunday's long run stats:
Distance: 8 miles
Time: 1:32
Ave pace: 11:32
Calories burned: 1259 (as calculated by dailymile.com) I assume it's closer to 800-1000 calories?

Day 1 of eDiets

2010-03-11T21:13:00.000-05:00

Well, I have made it through the first day of my eDiets meal plan. I have to admit, it wasn't toooo bad, but I was very busy at work, so I really didn't have time to think about how hungry I was. My hunger peaked before lunch time, but lunch was very fulfilling. I was pretty hungry right before dinner, also, but that's because I missed my afternoon snack. Gasp! I usually never miss food, but again I was slammed at work.

My meal breakdown for the day:
Breakfast - the plan called for a protein shake, an english muffin with PB, and an orange. I bought the Slimfast powdered protein shake mix in chocolate. I mixed that in the blender with light Silk Vanilla Soy Milk and some ice. It was rather yummy! Between the shake and my english muffin and the orange, I was very satisfied. I kind of anticipated that it would stay with me, but at the same time I was doubtful because it seems like breakfast never stays with me no matter what I eat, unless it involves the Shoney's breakfast buffet. I ate this at about 7:45AM, and was very hungry by noon, but didn't get to go to lunch till 1:20.

Lunch called for a Lean Cuisine chicken meal of about 200-220 calories. The one I chose had rice in it. In addition to the frozen meal, I had a mixed greens salad with tomato, cucumber, celery, and a raspberry vinaigrette, a light fruit yogurt, and some grapes. I was decently full after the Lean Cuisine and salad, and thought about saving the yogurt, but went ahead and ate it because I figured I would be hungry in an hour, haha.

My snack was supposed to be between lunch and dinner and was supposed to be celery with PB. I ended up not eating it till right before dinner, as I was preparing dinner. This actually was a good idea because I tend to graze and eat lots of junk while I'm cooking dinner, and the celery w/ PB kept me from doing that.

Dinner was a total surprise! It was a true home cooked meal, and was delicious! I had Chicken and Pepper Saute with Rice Pilaf, recipe courtesy ediets. The rice pilaf was amazing, with garlic, onions, and mushrooms. It had a great flavor. The chicken and pepper saute was yummy, with onions, green peppers, and chicken stir fried with light soy sauce. On top of that, I had another salad. Dinner also called for some strawberries, but I'm saving that for later in the evening when I watch television. Dinner was definitely satisfying, and like I said was very delicious! I am very pleased with the recipe and hope that the others are just as good!

Total calories for the day was about 1500. I didn't exercise today, but I'm off Friday thru Sunday, and I plan on getting lots in over the next few days.

Yay for me for my first day of the diet. I didn't feel deprived and the meals were very filling. I wasn't expecting that!

I signed up for eDiets!

2010-03-10T20:35:00.000-05:00

Well guys, I have officially admitted defeat in the world of healthy eating. Haha! I am unable to plan my meals and count my calories for more than 2 days. When I do well and abide by the ~1500 calorie diet, I am generally hungry all day, and then crash on day three, eating everything in site. I am still teetering about 10 pounds heavier than I usually am, and even though I have began exercising 3-4 days per week again, it hasn't been enough to compensate for my dietary intake.

So......

I signed up for http://www.ediets.com/. Yes, I am paying a website to pretty much plan out my meals for me, lol. It's less than $20 per month, which isn't bad, and there are forums and groups and such on there for me to mingle. It gives me one week at a time, and I can change up my meals and pick and choose from a very large list of meals. I picked the combination plan, which is a mixture of fresh foods and packaged foods, and dinner is usually an easy recipe that I can cook. I opted for this plan because I would most definitely fail if I had to cook each meal everyday. At least this plan is good for those who may be on the go and work, but like to cook dinner.

To give you an idea, here is an example of my meals for tomorrow:
Breakfast: Strawberry protein shake, english muffin w/ PB, and an orange
Lunch: Lean Cuisine Cafe Classics Honey Dijon Grilled Chicken with salad, yogurt, and grapes
Snack: celery stuffed with PB
Dinner: Asian Chicken with Rice, salad, and an orange

The breakfast is quick and easy to make in the morning, for lunch all I have to prepare is a salad the night before, and dinner is a nice recipe with fresh vegetables, chicken, and rice. I went grocery shopping this evening, and when I got home I prepared little ziplock baggies of carrots, celery, grapes, and such, so I can just grab them in the morning and go. I'm kind of excited about this because I don't have to sit here and think about what I'm going to eat for the whole week. The website compiles my menu, and if I don't like something, I can change it. It also generates a grocery list for me, based on my menu for the week. That is nice too.

Back in the day, ediets used to only offer one diet plan, and that was simply ediets. I will admit, I tried ediets about 10 years ago, haha, but didn't do it very long. I was a teenager, so I can't really remember what became of it. Now, they off a bunch of other diet options, such as a diabetes diet plan, a Mediterranean diet plan, a low-fat diet plan, a vegetarian plan, and lots others. You can change your diet plan at any time. I think I'm going to try the eDiets Weight Loss Plan for a while. When I get bored with it or hit a plateau, I may change it to the Mediterranean plan or the vegatarian plan. I just like that I have different options.

They do have nutritionists available for live chat and email. I will more than likely utilize them once my weekly mileage increases and I'm at 10 mile long runs again. I figure that 1500 calories isn't going to be enough, or I will have to change some things around. It will be interesting to see what kind of advice they give me.

I canceled my personal training session for today and tomorrow. I feel bad about it, but I feel like I'm wasting my money as long as my diet is in shambles. Once I prove to myself that I can stick to this diet plan, I may go back. Or, sticking to the diet plan may provide me with the motivation I need to get my own butt into the gym on non-running days to get some high intensity cardio and lifting done without the need for a personal trainer telling me what to do. Let's be honest, I know what I should be doing!!

Oh, by the way, Eric and I celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary on Monday. We went away to some cabins in the woods for 3 nights, which was super nice. We went on a hike one day, and the other day I ran 4 miles outside. The weather was amazing while we were gone, and it hit 70 degrees! Unfortunately, they drain the lake during the winter, so the lake wasn't very pretty. We were the only ones renting cabins while we were there, so we pretty much had the park to ourselves. It was nice, and in the evenings we cuddled up on the couch and laughed and talked. We are going to go back with friends this spring to get the full cabin experience.

Last week recap

2010-03-01T02:01:00.000-05:00

Last week was my first big week back to working out, running and cross training. I have been running regularly for a couple of weeks now, yay! I'm so glad to be back, and now it's March and it's only a matter of time before we see some decent weather. The days of being able to run till 8:30PM are just around the corner!! All this dark, cold winter weather sucks!! So, this last week I worked out everyday, except Tuesday and Saturday. Sunday, I ran 7 miles, Monday I went to the Fitness Center for my first personal training session. I got my ass handed to me there! It's awful starting back into strength training because you are sore for 4 days after your first few sessions. The trainer had me do lunges up and down the hallway, and every inch of my legs from ankle to butt hurt so bad till Friday. I could cry everyday, lol. Tuesday, I took the day off, then Wednesday I woke up early and ran 2 miles and did 20 min on the elliptical. I was still really sore, but knew I should work it out. Thursday I went to Zumba. Friday I ran 5 miles, which included a fartlek run, and then had another personal training session, where I got my ass handed to me again. I hope this starts to get easy soon!

I had never done a fartlek run before. I get emails from McMillan Running, and I had received this message about 'the lost art of fartlek'. You can read the article here. First of all, the word fartlek is really funny to me, and I don't like saying it. Try telling your friends you did a fartlek, and then you have to explain what the heck you're talking about. The article talked about how your running peaks during the fall, and then in the winter you usually are just doing maintenance miles and not much track workouts. When spring hits, you hit the track again, but have no where close to the speed you had during your peak the season before. And it's not a bad thing, obviously winter is a time to recover. But, you shouldn't be discouraged, such as I was, that when you get back into the training, you aren't as fast as you were during peak. Rather than jump back into track workouts and kill yourself because you try to run the same times as when you were peaking, you should do fartleks to ease your way into track workouts. The article made a lot of sense, so I decided to give it a shot. I mean, I tried to do some speed workouts on the treadmill and didn't last very long, which made me pretty discouraged.

The first week of fartlek training, the article said to do 10-12 repeats of 1 minute at faster than 5k race pace, with 1 minute recoveries. I needed to get 5 miles in, so I did a 2 mile warmup, then started into the fartleks. Last summer my best 5k pace was around 8:40 (holy cow, I was so proud of myself!), so I decided I would try an 8:30 pace. I thought to myself that wouldn't be too horrible to run for a minute at a time, but I wondered about the 1 minute recovery. Well, I did it! By the 7th repeat, I was really tired and the minute recoveries felt more like 30 seconds, but I pushed myself and finished! And I did a 1 mile cooldown. The 10 repeats ended up being 2 miles, so it worked out perfectly. It was probably the best and toughest running workout I have had in a long while, and I felt very accomplished. I'm pretty excited to do this week's workout! The paper says that fartlek 2 involves 4-5 surges lasting 3-5 minutes each with 1-2 minute recoveries. Each surge should be run at faster than 10k race pace, but not faster than fartlek 1. I think I may run this between 8:50-9:00. That should be fun!

I'm really hoping to get faster this year. I did take some time off this winter, but it didn't take me long to get it back. I'm already at 7 miles on my long run, and hope to maybe run a half marathon May 2nd. With a half marathon under my belt in May, I have no choice but to pick up some speed and train some hills pretty hard by the Distance Run in September. Last year, I just started training for the Distance Run in May, so I was basically building the mileage to be able to run the race. This year, I'm going to have the base mileage under my belt by May, so I just have to maintain my mileage and do some work on the hills. Maybe I can reach my 25 minute 5k goal this summer! Maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but I have some high hopes!

Now, if I can just get my eating under control and lost this winter weight......

7 miler and a personal training session

2010-02-22T22:53:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I ran 7 miles. It was beautiful outside, close to 60 degrees and sunny. I just had to take advantage of that because this winter it has been snowing a lot and has been really cold. We have never gotten this much snow before! The 7 miles was a good run. It was my longest run since October, I believe! Most of you know, I have had a rough winter of not wanting to run. The only thing that kept me running here and there was the Winter Series I signed up for. I think I am finally back! For a few months, I have tried putting a training plan on my calendar, but haven't followed through with anything. The last 2 weeks, I have run every run on my calendar and actually look forward to each run. That's how I know I'm back!

Anyways, I'm hoping now that I'm back, I will quickly drop the 8 pounds I have put on since my running came to a stop. Not just those extra 8 pounds, but I hope to lose close to 20! I have turned my diet around the last two weeks as well, turning down certain restaurants and not touching the pizza that my husband's friends bring in my house. I'm rather proud of myself lately! In a effort to be serious about the weightloss, I jumped on an offer from a local physical therapy/fitness center. It's not a gym, but offers personal training sessions for cheaper than any local gym around here. I went this morning for my first session. She new I was a runner, and I think that's why she kicked my butt, lol. I asked her to take it easy on my due to my 7 miler the day before, but she didn't really. I did 10 minutes on the treadmill and 10 minutes on the stairmaster, but at a HR of 170. She kept turning up the resistance, telling me my HR wasn't high enough. I'm looking at her like she's crazy! After the cardio, we did some upper body free weights exercises, 3 sets of 15 reps each. After that, she had me do walking lunges up and down a hallway 4 times. So much for going easy on my legs! Every inch from my ankles to my butt is hurting right now! Finally, she had me do those situps. It was a good workout, I must say. Honestly, it's the same type of stuff that I would normally do on my own at my local gym, but not near the intensity she had me do. I would definitely let myself take it easier on the cardio. But, that's what I need. A kick in the butt to turn up my cardio a notch. Just because I am a runner and can run long distances, doesn't mean my cardiovascular system is trained to do high HR workouts. It's definitely a different kind of cardio that will probably benefit my running in a positive way. I'm going back Friday. Hopefully my butt won't be sore anymore!

Where have I been??

2010-02-19T23:14:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately! The truth is, I have been running, just not blogging! I think I am finally getting out of this winter funk, and really getting excited about running again. I ran the 3rd race of the Winter Series on Valentine's Day. It was a 10k. I haven't run or trained much for any of the Winter Series runs, just enough to get through them. Overall, my times were slower on each of these races this year compared to last year, but I actually trained last year. Here are my times for last year and this year:

          2008-2009 Series         2009-2010 Series
5K          29:30                              29:35
8K          47:48                              52:43
10K        1:01:56                           1:03:38
Finish:      117 out of 143                not posted yet

Basically, the 2008-2009 series was when I first started out as a runner, and I was training decently hard for a beginner, and running 3-4 days per week. The 2009-2010 series, I was a huge slacker. I ran my 15 miler in September, and then running kind of took a back seat. My best 5k time during training was 26:50is, so you can see my 5k time definitely slipped. My 8k time sucked this time around, but that's not completely my fault. That race, there was snow and ice on the whole course, so I ran slower to keep from busting my behind! The 10k, I really surprised myself this year. I thought I would be dead by mile 4, trying to run at a decent pace, but I somehow found this burst of energy and maintained my pace till the end. I just want to say that I ran a 10k this summer that involved horrible hills for most of the run, and finished in 58 minutes, so to finish the winter 10k, which is completely flat in 1:03, is pretty pathetic. Then again, I try to tell myself that's not so bad considering I have been running less than 10 miles per week up till then! Not so bad, then, huh?

Now that the winter series is over and the warm weather is right around the corner, I am getting super excited. I have a lot of races on my race calendar already through July, and hope to add more. I want to add a half marathon somewhere in there around June. I am definitely getting back into it!

Food prep night

2010-01-21T23:16:00.000-05:00

I finally ran out of food today, so it was back to the kitchen to prepare some more for the next few days. I made some of those small red potatoes. Baked them in evoo, sea salt, pepper, and paprika. I have a love/hate relationship with making red potatoes. They never get soft enough when I bake them according to the directions, so they are always too hard. Today, I cooked them a little too long, lol. They are a little too soft, but still have a great flavor. I also made some awesome tuna salad with light mayo, red peppers, celery, a hard boiled egg, and some relish. Finally, I made a homemade salsa from Tosca Reno's newest eat clean cookbook. It has tomatoes, onions, red peppers, garlic, cilantro, chili powder, and lemon. I still have cut-up veggies in the fridge. I have to get up really early in the morning tomorrow to go work a pharmacy that's about an hour and a half away. Those days are usually bad for me because I tend to eat out all day. Lunch is typically a Chinese buffet. But not tomorrow! I will have my lunchbox with healthy food packed and ready to go.

On a side note, I went to the gym and ran today. I ran 3 miles. They felt ok. I want so bad to be back to running 10 miles. I felt so good when I was running that much. Not just physically, but mentally. After the distance run, I planned on just taking a little rest from serious running. Maybe a month. But then the idea of running for an hour and a half just overwhelmed me. I simply didn't want to do it. I didn't want to give up my Sundays anymore, haha. Now, I would give anything to be able to run 10 miles, lol. I know I will get there again. I need to quit sulking about it and just get my butt outside. I'm trying, slowly. I'm hoping for a 6 miler this coming Sunday. Thank goodness I signed up for that winter series or I probably wouldn't have ran 1 mile this winter. Oh, spring hurry up and get here!

Eating healthy day 2

2010-01-20T17:45:00.000-05:00

I mentioned how inspired I was by Denise over at Running Journal to eat healthy. She has been preparing her food ahead of time and taking it with her. Great idea! Except, that I spent hours in my kitchen Monday evening preparing and cooking food. It was a lot of work, but it was very nice to come home yesterday after work and simply heat up a healthy meal! I got off work at 6, and was home with dinner ready at 6:35. I called my husband to tell him dinner was ready, and he was like, "you're home with dinner ready already??" He knows that IF I make dinner after work, we don't eat till closer to 8.

Anyways, Monday evening I made several things. For dinner that evening (which created healthy leftovers for lunch) I made a vegatable and chicken pasta. It was a recipe I found on http://www.kraftfoods.com/ a long time ago and is very yummy. It has asparagus, zucchini, and red peppers, chicken, and pasta. For the sauce, you use chicken broth, 4oz 1/3 less fat cream cheese, and a little parmesan cheese. It makes a lot of food, and I have eaten on it for a couple of days now. Since I had extra asparagus, peppers, and onions, I went ahead and sauteed those up with some chicken and teriaki sauce, made some brown rice, and stuck that in the fridge for the next day. I also chopped up veggies and fruit so I would have healthy snacks to take with me and make some hard boiled eggs. I have packed my food for the whole day to take to work with me the last two days and am trying to eat every 2.5-3 hours. So far, it's working out well. Yesterday I got hungry here and there, but today is much better. Hopefully the hunger pains will subside after I train my stomach to eat smaller portions again.

I guess I will repeat the meal prep on Friday. I anticipate running out of food then. It does take a lot of work to prepare all that food in one evening, but then it makes the rest of the week so easy. Having my lunchbox makes what to eat not a question, and I'm much less likely to eat out everyday. I hope to continue this!

A great run for a change

2010-01-19T22:40:00.000-05:00

Since I haven't been running regularly, whenever I do get a run in it feels so difficult. I think that's another reason, on top of the weather, that I haven't been running much. Whenever I do run, I feel like poop. Well, tonight I had a great run on the treadmill for a change. Five miles and I felt great the whole time. I ran it at the South Charleston Rec Center. I think I've raved about that place before because each treadmill has a television. I watched the end of American Idol and some new show called Human Target or something. Pretty interesting, but not sure it will be around long, lol. At any rate, it kept me going!

Running stats: 5 miles/57:41/10:32 min/mile

New Years Resolution 2 week update

2010-01-18T15:05:00.000-05:00

Not so good. Ok, it's been terrible. I have not put forth much effort at all. But, I have one excuse, which wouldn't even be an excuse if I had better prepared myself. The first week I was going to start my resolutions to eat clean and run and such and ended up working six 10-hour shifts from Monday thru Saturday. Needless to say, I wasn't able to get in clean eating or exercise with that work schedule. I usually only work four 10-hour shifts, but we had a pharmacist on vacation and I chose to pick up the slack (and the overtime, lol). Had I thought it out and prepared my meal plan for the week, I would've been fine, but I didn't and I was a total flop. Last week was no excuse at all, I just didn't do anything I should've done. I did run my 8k, on Sunday the 10th, though. Yay me! The only problem was that the entire 5 miles was a sheet of ice and snow, and I was more worried about not falling on my ass than speed. This may have been a good thing because I ran a slower pace and finished without feeling like I wanted to die.

I snapped this pic after the race. I have never ran on ice and snow before, but it was kind of fun to do it with about 200 other crazy people. I bet the neighborhood thought we were nuts! I ended up finishing in just under 53 minutes for an average pace of about 10:30. Last year I ran the same race in about 48 minutes, but there wasn't snow or ice on the ground and I actually trained for it. This winter, as you all know, I haven't been running much at all. The 10k is on Valentine's Day, so I have some time to prep for that, and I will actually train for it (I will!!). I don't really think I can go into a 10k without running at least a few times per week, so I will have to train. And, if I train like I want to and do well, then I may have my eye on the Pittsburgh half marathon on May 2. Hopefully, I will get back into my groove training for this 10k, and the weather will be warming up shortly after that. The weather has been by far my biggest barrier to running. Winter kind of depresses me and I don't want to run in the cold or on a treadmill. When the weather warms up, I will be outside guaranteed.

So, I was really super motivated by a blog that was posted by Running Journal. She is an absolutely amazing runner and is currently dedicated to eating clean. Her blog was an inspiration to do what I need to do - go grocery shopping, come home and prep all my food for the week, and take it with me everyday. It is very nice today, so I'm going to go for a run, then go to the grocery store and come home and prep my food.

I hope everybody is doing well and sticking to their resolutions. I haven't forgotten or given up on mine, I'm just getting a late start!

Reflections on 2009 and New Years Resolutions

2010-01-01T22:25:00.000-05:00

2009 was a good year for me. I actually became a "runner" in 2009. In April, I set a goal of running the Charleston Distance Run in September. I signed up for the race really early and trained for four months. My goal for the 15 mile race was 2:30, and I finished in 2:28. I had a great time and learned a lot about myself in the process. I learned that I really really like running. Sure there were times when I didn't want to get out and run, but most of the time I couldn't wait to get outside. Each run was like a new challenge for me. I tackled speedwork, tempo runs, long runs, and hills. I had bad runs and awesome runs. I learned about running and nutrition. I did the most I have ever done for my body in my entire life, and it felt amazing. When I finished that race, it was the greatest accomplishment ever.

Then, I took some rest time....and some more rest time.....and some more rest time....and before you know it, it was getting dark outside at 6PM and it was winter. I rested so much that I lost all my endurance and stamina. Everything I had worked so hard for was lost. The motivation of a big race. Gone. I even signed up to run a half marathon in Pittsburgh in November and didn't go because I had slacked so much. For this, I am ashamed, but I guess when you don't feel like running, you don't feel like running. Only you can give yourself the motivation you need to get out there everyday.

The whole reason I started training was to lose weight, and I didn't. Sure, I was in great shape and lost enough inches to drop a size. But, the scale didn't move. While I trained for the race, I also trained myself to eat what I wanted, when I wanted, simply because I was running. I told myself it was ok to eat the Chinese buffet, wings, Olive Garden, or whatever it was, because I was going to run 10 miles the next day. This is the reason I didn't lose any weight, and the reason I have gained 5lbs since the race and feel like a fat blob, lol.

So, I come to my resolutions.

1. Get down to a goal weight of 140 pounds. I am currently 5'3 and weigh 160lbs. This is the heaviest I ever remember weighing in my adult life, lol. I usually stick between 150-155. When I was training, I got down to 148 quickly, then settled in at 153. Basically, I have 20lbs to lose. If I lose 1lb per week, that means I should reach my goal by May 23rd. I'm going to make it a goal to reach by June 1st.

2. Run at least 10-15 miles per week all year round. None of this training hard for 4 months, and then doing nothing the rest of the time. There have been 2 weeks at a time since my race that I haven't run 1 mile. I resolve to not do that anymore. I need to be active and fit exercise in each and every week of the year.

3. Eat Clean. Period. This will obviously be the toughest of my resolutions. Anybody can follow a healthy diet for a couple of months, but for a whole year? The point is, it's not supposed to be a diet, it's supposed to be a way of life. I'm reading Tosca Reno's The Eat-Clean Diet Recharged. I read the original Eat-Clean Diet book over a year ago. The prinicples are simple - eat clean. Avoid processed foods and sugar. In a nutshell, you don't eat anything that doesn't come from nature in its simplest form. You eat fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats. Brownie sundaes don't fit into this category, nor does pizza at midnight, or unlimited amounts of food at the buffet. Eat 6 small meals per day, about every 3 hours, and drink lots of water. This will be difficult with my husband and all his buddies around all the time, but I am serious about this. I know how to eat healthy, I just need to do it.

4. Strength train twice per week. I always talk about doing it, but never make time for it. I know the only way I'm going to get the results I want is if I weight train. When I make my running training plan, I need to limit the running to 4 days per week, so I have time to do other exercise on the other days and still have a rest day or two.

5. Eat out less. I need to make healthy foods at home for me and my husband. I love to cook and my husband loves it when I cook. Eating out is the devil and is the reason our nation is so overweight and obese.

6. Blog more. Sorry, I know I have been a delinquent blogger.

So, that's about it. I plan to run as many races as I can, and to run the CDR again this September. Those aren't realy resolutions, just goals. I know that to stick to these resolutions I am going to have to keep a training and food diary. I am also going to have to lay off the chocolate. There are days that I just want to eat a big bag of hershey kisses or M&M's. Nothing like chocolate to sabotage a week's worth of healthy eating.

I wish everybody good luck on their resolutions. I know we will motivate each other!

Oh treadmill, how I love you

2009-12-07T22:52:00.000-05:00

Well, I usually don't love the treadmill, but I have to this time of the year. I forgot that last winter when I was a newbie, I ran the treadmill all the time. In fact, I was scared to hit the pavement for a real run. That is, until I had a 5k to run and thought that I better get used to running outside. That was a big wake-up call because running outside was so much harder than the treadmill. Fast-forward a year and I have run about five 5k's, an 8k, two 10k's, and a 15 mile race.

I decided that I would stop using the "it's too dark and cold outside" excuse and just go to the gym to run on the dreaded treadmill. If I do go to the gym to run the treadmill, it's either early in the afternoon on my day off from work, or late in the evening around 8:30 after the evening rush of people has left. Tonight, I decided to go to the South Charleston Rec Center. I'm not a member of the rec, so it's $4 a visit, but I think it's very worth the money considering their treadmills have televisions on them, and they stay open till 10:00 at night. My lame gym down the street has 3 treadmills and only stays open till 9.

I tuned into the Carrie Underwood special and started my run. I needed to get a speed workout in, since the 5k is this coming Sunday and I haven't been running very much. I did a 1 mile warmup @ 11:30, 4 x 1/4 mi @ 9:13 with 1/4 mile recoveries, and a 1 mile cooldown. Actually, I did the first speed interval at an 8:48 pace, but that about killed me, so I droped it down a little, lol. 9:13 felt pretty comfortable, though, and by the end I was pooped. It was probably my best and most productive run in a month. It was a great workout. I'll probably take tomorrow off from running, but if I feel skippy I may do the Wii Active or something at home after work.

Workout stats
Distance: 4 miles
Ave pace: 11:09
Ave HR: forgot the HR monitor on purpose, lol, it's been elevated since I've been a couch potato)

A little update

2009-12-07T18:30:00.000-05:00

I know I have been MIA for the past two months. I have definitely been taking a long break from serious running and working out all together. After the Distance Run, I kind of went into my "fat phase", if you will, lol. This is the phase where you really don't care about working out or eating poorly, you are happy and content just being and enjoying life. That is, until you suck it up and get on the scale, lol. I realized that during my training for the race, I simultaneously trained myself to eat whatever I wanted (example- eating wings, Chinese buffet, etc with the guys all the time) because I was burning it off running. Exit running and combine that with still eating what you want and you end up with a couple extra inches on your waist and about 5 more pounds. But, I have been happy, lol. Except that I have a 5k to run on December 13th, the first in a 3-race winter series. I have been out here and there running small distances, barely reaching 10 miles per week (ouch!). I definitely have the cold winter weather blues, combined with the fact that it gets dark at 5:30 now. I used to get off work at 6:00 and could run outside till 8:30. Now, all I want to do is go home and get under the blanket with my kitties.
New Years Resolution time is just around the corner, and I will revamp my eating and working out schedule accordingly, lol. I definitely need a better plan for the cold winter blues time of the year. For all you guys who have supported me through my tough training times, I'm sorry I haven't been around. I will be back, I promise! My 5k is next Sunday, so I will update you on that. I'm proud of you guys, training and running your half and full marathons while I'm sitting on the couch! Keep it up and run a few extra miles for me!

Long time no blog

2009-10-11T20:08:00.000-04:00

Hey guys, sorry I have been missing lately. My excuse is that I'm changing job locations, so I'm not going to be at a location where I have internet at my disposal all day anymore. I used to work at a pharmacy in South Charleston, which is crazy busy, then started working at the new Charleston location, which is super slow. Well, now I'm taking the assistant manager position at the South Charleston store, so I will be working there all the time and won't have internet. The internet thing sucks, but that's the price I will pay for being asst. manager and getting a raise!

I ran a 5k yesterday morning. It's the first race I have run since the 15 miler on September 5th. I really didn't have a goal in mind. Considering I've only been running 2-3 days per week and have had a hard time with speed work, I really anticipated having a pretty bad time. But, I thought what the heck, I just like running the local races and getting the race t-shirt, lol. Earlier this week, I did a speed workout at the local high school track. My goal for that workout was to keep an 8:45 pace during the speed portions. Surprisingly, I did it with ease. I did a 3x800 with 400 recoveries. Not a big workout, but something to get my legs moving at that speed again. That gave me a lot of confidence back, since I have been having a horrible time with speed lately.

For the 5k I originally thought about treating it like a speed workout because I didn't think I could maintain the 8:45 pace I did during my track workout. But, when I got there they had race bibs and the little timing chip and everything. They never do that for the small local 5k's, lol. I guess they just wanted to be high tech and have the results posted quickly. Basically, when I saw that they had race bibs and timing chips my strategy changed. I kind of felt obligated to give it my all. I warmed up for about 3/4 mile before the race was suposed to start. Then they announced that they were running behind about 10 minutes. Crap! I hate when that happens. I decided to keep warming up, then luckily I came back right as they were starting the runners. The weather was about 55 degrees and wet out.

I started out with an 8:30-8:45 pace and felt pretty good. At the halfway mark I started to get a little tired. I thought about walking for a few seconds at that point, but for some reason I didn't. I was passing people the whole time, picking them off one by one. This made me not want to slow down, so I just kept pushing. When I got about a little over 1/8 mile away I saw the time clock. It was about 26:50 or so, and I knew I wasn't going to PR (my PR is 26:55). But, I started kicking really hard and finished in 27:11. It was funny because this woman in front of me looked really shocked as I busted it out at the end and passed her. For some reason I can pick it up at the end, even when I feel like dying, lol. Needless to say, I was so surprised at myself. Driving to the race I thought I would be lucky to finish in 29 minutes, but I did very well. I only finished 16 seconds off of my PR! I guess I found my speed, it just took some time and some rest.

There are quite a few 5ks this fall, so I'm going to work on improving my time. The next one is October 31st. That's just two weeks, so I'm just going to shoot for less than 27 minutes.

Yes, I am still running

2009-09-30T11:09:00.000-04:00

I haven't been very active lately on my blog or in general. I try to take time out daily so I can read everybody's blogs and leave comments, but I just haven't had the time to. So, I'm sorry if I haven't commented or read your blogs lately. I'm struggling with my running. I simply don't feel like doing hard tempo or speed workouts or doing the long 10 mile runs. I signed up for a half marathon at the end of October, but some things have come up (things that I could put off if I wanted to) and I don't feel like training for it. I am still running and will continue to run, but not on specific schedule. I am still going to keep my mileage around 20-25 miles per week. I enjoy my little 5-6 mile easy runs, so I will probably do a lot of those, and I'm still going to have a long run day, but I'm going to keep those about 8 miles.

I really want to lose weight. I'm so horrible at it. I don't know why. The biggest barrier that most people have is exercising, and I don't have that problem at all. I love to run and exercise, so that's not a barrier for me. My barrier is eating anything and everything I want to. I just have to teach myself (again) that I don't have to eat all the time. It's so hard for me, because I'm hungry all the freaking time, and I can't stand to have hunger pains. I have talked and talked and talked about how I need to calorie count. I'm going to try to do it. I'm also going to try that 30 Day Shred with Jillian Michaels. We finally got our rec room finished, so I'm going to give it a try. I figure I can do that in the evenings and days that I'm not running. I feel like I'm letting everybody down, especially myself. I jumped right into that half marathon, not really thinking, not knowing how I would feel after the Distance Run. On a positive note, I am doing the local Winter Series, a 5k, 8k, and 10k from December-February. I did it last year, and that kept me moving during the winter.

I ran 5 miles early this morning on the treadmill at my local gym. I hadn't run in 5 days. I had to work Friday thru Monday, had a dinner with my sister and a birthday dinner to go to this weekend, so running didn't happen. Bad Tammy!

The speed blues

2009-09-25T13:34:00.000-04:00

Speed! Where are you, speed? Come out come out wherever you are! Speed!!!!

Has somebody found my speed? If so, I desparately need it back. I lost it a few weeks ago and can't seem to find it.

I complained a few posts back about losing my mojo and how I've had nothing but bad runs lately. Well, I had an awesomely amazing long 10 mile run on Sunday and have had some 5-6 mile runs here and there as well. Distance doesn't seem to be a problem a bit. I was afraid I had lost that, but I haven't. However, whenever I attempt a tempo run or a speed workout, I fall on my face. I just can't maintain anything remotely "fast" by my standards. By fast, for me at least, I mean keeping a 9-ish pace during speed or tempo runs. My pace for the long run is about 11:30-12 min/mile, and regular easy runs about an 11:00 min/mile pace. I am fine with those paces, but faster is not going so well. For example, I went out yesterday evening for a speed session, 7 miles total with a 1.5 mile warmup, 3x 1mi @ 9:00 min/mile with 1/2 mile recoveries, and a 1 mile cooldown. I barely made it through the first speed mile (aka, I had to stop and walk a few times), then I gave up on the speedwork and ran the rest of the way at a slow 11:30-ish pace. I don't usually give up on things, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to finish the speedwork for that run at least.

Maybe I'm wrong for thinking I could jump back into the same paces for my tempo and speed workouts that I ran the last month before my race. Ok, after typing that, I really realize that I am wrong for jumping back into the same paces. I did taper for a couple weeks before the race and I took a week off after the race. So, in 3 weeks time, I lost my speed. How ridiculous is that? So, I'm not a genetically gifted runner, and maybe getting to a slow 9:00 min/mile pace takes a lot of work and lots of weeks of training for me. I'm ok with that. At least I still have my distance. I just need to slow down my pace on these tempo runs and speed workouts. Maybe I will regain some confidence if I just slow down the pace. Maybe a 10:00 min/mile pace instead of a 9:30. That's what I will do.

A redeeming long run

2009-09-20T21:20:00.000-04:00

So, I had some crap runs last week. I am still new to this racing thing, so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel tapering before a race, running the race, then jumping back into training again. My race was September 5th, then I took a week off with some recovery runs, then started back with a training plan this past week. Every run this past week felt pretty bad. Well, not too bad till I got to my tempo run Friday. I felt like I had lost my endurance and speed. But, I think maybe I was just having a bad run/ a bad week. I had a 10 mile run scheduled for yesterday, which I ran today instead. Considering my bad runs last week, I thought there was no way I could do a 10 miler, but I set out to do it anyways. I secretly told myself I could stop at 8 if I needed to. Well, I ended up having a great run! To my surprise, my endurance/stamina was there and I was able to complete the run just fine and even pick it up a little in the middle. That makes me so happy, and gives me some confidence. My last post I was talking about how I felt like I didn't want to run anymore sometimes, but I think it's because I was getting burned out before my race and then had some bad runs afterward. Honestly, long run days are my favorite. I get to run at a nice, slow, comfortable pace and just enjoy my surroundings. It definitely makes me feel a lot better when I have a good long run, and that carries me into the week on my next runs.

Running stats
Total miles: 10
Time: 2:02
Ave pace: 11:50 min/mile

A Case of the Lazies

2009-09-19T16:18:00.000-04:00

Do you ever just feel like you don't want to run anymore? I mean, I know this is something I shouldn't talk about, lol, but lately I have had this lazy feeling like that. Like, sometimes I feel like running takes up a lot of my free time, when I could be doing "funner" things like hanging out with friends, watching football games, going to the mall, etc. I'm sure most all of you who run regularly have to frequently tell friends/family you can't do something because you "have" to run. They just don't understand, then I get asked why I just don't run tomorrow. Haha! I am running tomorrow, too! Sorry. I run 5 days per week, if I take an extra day off, I'm screwed and can't get my mileage in. They just don't understand. Anyways, I have been forcing myself out the door lately, against my will. I have a half marathon to run November 1st, and I'm not just laying down and giving up because I don't "feel" like running. I need to tough it out. I know I will get out of this rut, it just really sucks while you're in it. I'm so incredibly lucky to have friends on here and on dailymile to keep me going. Thanks guys!

I ran a tempo run yesterday evening. It was terrible. Maybe I wouldn't have this "I don't want to run: feeling if my runs were good. I was to run a 1 mile warmup, 4 miles at 9:35, and a 1 mile cooldown. I could only manage 3 miles at tempo pace. I think I took too much time off and ran too many lower mileage weeks since I tapered before the race the last week of August. That pace seemed much too difficult yesterday, when just 3 weeks ago, I would've killed that! My confidence definitely dropped yesterday. I'm hoping that I bounce back pretty quick. I'm sure I will after a few speed/tempo runs. I'm supposed to run 10 miles today, but my Mountaineers are playing an evening game and it's hot and humid outside. I might run it tomorrow morning. If the sun goes away, I will TRY to get outside by 6:00 this evening so I can run and watch the game. This chair is just so comfy!

Running stats:
Total miles: 6
Time: 1:02
Ave pace: 10:15

Back to the grind

2009-09-14T23:02:00.000-04:00

Today was my first day back on a rigid training schedule. I feel well-rested after some lower mileage weeks. The week of the race, I had about 24 miles and last week I only had 13. I think I really needed a break. I'm not sure how to describe this, but I noticed that last few weeks of hard training that my tibias felt sore. I'm pretty flexible and generally sit in chairs or on the floor in weird positions (I will sit with my legs folded underneath me). I noticed that when I put pressure on my tibias they felt sore/bruised. It's really hard to explain, but I know that they didn't feel right. Now they feel pretty good. Hopefully I can jump back into 30-ish miles per week without that feeling coming back.

Today I ran an easy 5 miler. I meant to run before the sun came out and heated things up, but I didn't. It was about noon when I got outside. It got pretty warm out, about 86 degrees. I ran it in 55:55. I thought that was funny. Heart rate averaged around 157.

I'm supposed to run 5 miles tomorrow, but tomorrow is the one day per month I work out of town and will be gone from 7AM to 8PM. So, I won't be running tomorrow.

Reflections on my training

2009-09-11T01:03:00.000-04:00

So, my big race is over and done with. I reached my goal time and survived. I was really fatigued the last 3 miles, and I keep wondering if this was because I exerted myself too much from the start and on the hills, or because I tapered a little too much, or both. I guess I will never know! Overall, it was a successful finish to 16 weeks of training. I have built a good base of mileage at 30 miles per week, from nothing just 4 months ago. I have a half marathon on November 1st in Pittsburgh. I was sure to sign up for something quickly so I wouldn't completely stop running, lol. I don't think I will ever completely stop running, but I was getting burned out of the intense training runs. I think after this half marathon, I will relax my training in the winter to shorter distance races. I plan to run a winter series of a 5k in December, an 8k in January, and a 10k in February. That will keep me moving at least.

So, what changes am I going to make to my training plan? I would like to work on speed. I think I'm going to incorporate more speedwork into my plan, but nothing high mileage wise. Going to the track to run a few miles of speedwork once per week should help with that without being too taxing. That's all I think I will change running wise.

I would like to make serious changes to my diet. My original goal for starting this whole running expedition wasn't to become a good runner, but to lose weight. And guess what? After 16 weeks, I lost like 2 pounds. How ridiculous is that? I simply eat too much. I eat all the time. And it's not really that I eat bad stuff, I just eat around the clock. I have no will power. My stomach tells me I'm hungry all the time, and I respond. I really think I have a problem, lol. And I don't want to hear, 'oh, but you gained muscle and muscle weighs more than fat,' or 'you lost inches, and that's what counts'. No, no, and no. I weigh 150 pounds, and I'm 5'3. I am overweight. I can plainly see that I have plenty of excess body fat on me. Rubbish about muscle mass and such...the muscle is hidden under fat and I want it gone!

I think there are a couple of reasons that contributed to my failure to lost weight. One is the obvious thinking that I can eat what I want because I will just run it off. I get that all the time from my husband and friends. If I eat something "bad", they always tell me it's ok I will run it off. Another reason is that I overcompensate. I think I need a pre-run energy bar or mini meal and a post-run recovery bar, when I really don't. I eat enough for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks to more than give me enough energy to run. I don't need to eat that darn Zone Bar before my run. I have to calorie count. Period. I tried to blog my food log and failed miserably at that. It's difficult enough to write down what I eat, much less go to the trouble to format it in a blog. I need to keep a personal journal of my food intake. I did it 2 years ago successfully, why can't I do it again??!?!?

Cross training. Period. I need to do it. On the days I don't run, I need to cross train, not sit on my lazy butt in the evil comfy recliner. There for a while, I did a good job of going to Zumba and doing the Wii Active, then I just stopped. I also tried to make weight training a priority (Sorry I failed at this, too, B.o.B) but that didn't work out. I gave my friend Barbie the advice to schedule her runs in her calendar like an appointment. I need to take my own advice and schedule my cross training in my calendar. Weight training is going to make a huge difference in my effort to lose weight and shed some body fat. I just need to do it!

So, those are the things I'm going to change. Getting faster, eating better, and cross training. Fingers are crossed. If I fall off the wagon, I need you guys to send me a cyber smack in the face! I know I can count on B.o.B. for this one, lol.

Training for my November 1st half marathon starts Monday. I switched my long runs to Saturday because I have been neglecting my husband with Sunday long runs for many weeks. Sundays used to be our day to sleep in together and have a big breakfast. Then, I started jumping out of bed at 7 or 8 AM on Sunday for my run. He misses me, and I really miss our Sundays too.

Official Race Results!

2009-09-06T00:42:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted up all week. I tapered all this week, with a 3 miler on Monday, a 3 miler on Tuesday, and a 5 mile hilly run on Wednesday. I worried that I didn't get enough miles in and that I tapered too much, but I felt really strong on my hilly 5 miler. I managed a 9:30 pace on that course, which involved lots of rolling hills. So, on to the race!

I woke up about 4:50AM to eat a bagel with PB. I thought I would stick with what has worked for me. I drank a PureSport electrolyte drink at about 6:30, an hour before the race. I had tried this drink before my hilly 5 miler this week and felt great, so I thought I would do it again. My stomach felt a little full for the race, and this worried me, but ended up not really being a problem. Of course, I had the "race runs" this morning. I get them every time I race. I still felt like I needed to use the bathroom one more time at the start line, but obviously couldn't. By the time I got to the hills, the feeling was gone.

My goal was to keep a 10:00 min/mile pace and finish in 2:30. The weather was perfect again, starting off in the high 50's. It was actually kind of chilly. I felt really good. I had a fully charged Garmin and iPod and my heart rate monitor, so I was all set. I immediately settled into a very comfortable stride and felt great cardiovascularly. I looked down and was running a 9:30 pace, which felt very comfortable, so I decided I would go with that and see what happened. At the 3.5 mile point, the hill started. I knew this would be my test because when you're having a bad day, the hills will kick your ass and send you home crying, but when you're having a good day, they aren't a problem. Luckily, I was having a great day! I originally planned on running an 11:00-ish pace on the hills, but again I felt pretty good. I think I ended up having a 10:30-ish pace up the big hill. I was actually passing people on the hills because I had been training on them for months, which gave me a lot of confidence. I flew down the hill, trying to make up some time. On this portion, I started to get a side stitch under my left rib, but it went away after about two miles. When I hit the halfway point, I looked at my watch and it was exactly 1:15, so I was perfectly on pace for my 2:30 goal if I could just keep a 10:00 pace or faster.

Once I was back on the flat, I was relieved. I tried to keep a 9:30 pace, but I was getting tired from starting out a little too fast combined with the hills. I started slipping into the 9:45-ish pace. Surprisingly, my daddy came out to cheer me on. He showed up at 3 different points on the course, which was nice. My husband, Eric, and a couple of friends were at mile 13 to cheer me on as well. I seriously needed it because at mile 12 I really started to fatigue. The idea that I had to run 30 more minutes seemed impossible. At this point, I was stopping at every water station to take a 10 second breather and drink some water. I was really struggling to keep my pace under 10:00. At mile 14 I was so tired! Fourteen miles was the longest I had ever run before, so I was ready for it to be over. At this point, I had slowed to a 10:15 pace. I just didn't have the strength left to muster up anything faster. My heart rate was off the charts. It had been in the 170's for most of the race, except the hills, but the last four miles on the flat it was in the mid 180's, reaching 190 when I hit the track to finish. I reached Hansford Street and saw the entrance to Laidley Field. I was so happy, yet so tired. Seeing the end gave me some strength, and as soon as I hit the track, I found the strength to run a 9:00 min/mile pace. My husband, dad, and four other friends were standing on the fence cheering me on, so I couldn't disappoint. I rounded the track and saw the time clock. It was still on 2:27. Holy crap, I was going to break my goal of 2:30! I held my pace and kicked it in in 2:28:05 (a 9:53 pace). It was finally over!!!!!

Official race results (till the complete results are posted)
I finished 334 out of 482. For those wondering, my running friend Andrew, who I train with sometimes, finished in 1:46, placing 47th. You can see my splits here.

My legs, my chest, my ribs all hurt. My legs are still hurting as I type this, lol. The race was difficult, but I did it. There was no way in my life I would have ever thought I could run anything more than a mile, and here I finished a 15 mile race, beating my goal. Sixteen weeks of hard training and I did it. When I decided to take on this race, I had no idea what I was getting myself into or what I would learn along the way. Yes, I ran 15 miles, but I learned that I can accomplish something if I put my mind to it and have a good plan.

Thank you to all of my runner friends out there in the blog world and on dailymile. I know for a fact that I couldn't have done any of this without the support of all of you each and every day. This has been the best thing I have ever done for myself in my life, and I hope to continue running and taking on new goals.

I have one question: now that I have tackled the Charleston Distance Run, what should I change the name of my blog to?

Refreshed and ready to run

2009-08-31T13:23:00.000-04:00

I cut the end of my training week last week a little short mileage wise and am on my taper this week. The race is this coming Saturday! I'm getting really excited, especially for the race packet pickup/pasta dinner on Friday. I was starting to get burned out pretty bad, like I didn't even want to run, but the rest I have been getting lately and the awesome support you guys have been giving me have made me feel much better! I only ran 4 days last week, mostly easy runs aside from my 14 miler and short 6 mile tempo run, and took Saturday and Sunday off. I feel much better today and am giddy to get outside and run after work. I am running three miles today at a nice easy pace. Who wouldn't look forward to a little enjoyable run like that? After all these weeks of training, I feel like I have a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. You guys have reminded me that I have put in the hard work and am ready for the race, and that makes me feel really good! Maybe that is what taper week is all about, relaxing before the race and looking back at all the work you've done. I have let my diet slip up quite a bit the last few weeks. I haven't really gained any weight, but am stuck at 150 pounds. I'm ok with this right now. After my race Saturday, I will be able to sit down and reflect upon my training and what I want to change. I will be making a new training plan for my half marathon that is on November 1st. I vow to stick with cross training, and hopefully a structured diet. I am in a way baffled that I didn't lose much weight (3 pounds is all) during these 16 weeks, but in a way I'm not surprised. A lot of the time I cheated on eating nutritiously (daily) and I know I was consuming too many calories. My new plan will hopefully identify that, and I can come up with a diet I can stick to. My goal for the next training period is not going to be to run a fast half marathon, but to improve my basic health, and this starts with a solid nutritious foundation.

Let the tapering begin!!

2009-08-29T11:07:00.000-04:00

So, I had been contemplating on my big 10 mile tempo run. I was supposed to run it Thursday, but it got pushed back because I was lazy on Tuesday and didn't run. I got an email from a local running club wishing us good luck and reminding us to "tank up and start tapering." It said "You can not make any more gains and can only hurt your chances for a good race". I have read this type of advice before, but it was a reminder I didn't expect. I began to wonder if a 10 mile tempo run would be too much a week out from the race. I've never run a race like this before and have no experience tapering. With that advice, on top of being a little burned out, I decided I would still do the tempo run, but not 10 miles. I settled for 6 miles. I'm glad I did that because at the end, my knees were rather sore. The weather was nice out, just a little humid. I forgot my iPod, so that stunk. Overall, I wasn't really feeling the run, but I got it in. So, now I'm going to sit back and enjoy my taper. I have three small runs scheduled before Saturday's race. I have two easy 3 mile runs and a 5 mile tempo run scheduled next week, followed by 2 days of rest and then the race. That sounds pretty good to me! My legs feel a little sore from all these weeks of training. I should be fresh and ready to go come next Saturday! I'm going to enjoy eating pasta this week, hahah. Mmmm, Olive Garden!

Running stats:
Distance: 6 miles
Time: 59:48
Ave pace: 9:58; tempo splits: 9:33, 9:24, 9:22, 9:16
Ave HR: 166

Somebody give me some motivation!

2009-08-27T21:06:00.000-04:00

I don't know what's wrong with me lately! I have been coming home and sitting my butt down in the recliner and taking a nap after work. That means I have to force myself to get up and go run. Then, I come back home after my run and go back to sleep! I think I'm getting burned out all of a sudden, and it's scaring me! Good thing my race is next Saturday. I mean, I'm really excited and proud that I've come this far, but I think my body may be telling me it's time for a little rest. After my 14 mile run Sunday, I took Monday off and was supposed to run Tuesday, but didn't. I pushed that workout to Wednesday, then waited till 8:00PM to do it. I ran 5 miles on the treadmill. Tonight, I ran 4 miles outside in my neighborhood. I didn't want to do that, I wanted to stay in my chair and watch a movie, lol. I think I'm tired of having a structured running schedule with big 14 mile long runs and 10 mile tempo runs in the same week. After my race next Saturday, I'm going to take a couple of weeks off from serious training. I'm still going to run, maybe 15-20 miles each week, then jump back into a training plan again. I have another half marathon on November 1st in Pittsburgh. As long as I keep my mileage up between now and then, I should be fine. I'm just going for the experience. So, somebody please motivate me!! My last big run before the race is tomorrow. It is a 10 mile tempo run. I'm not excited about it! But, then I start taper for the race. I'm almost done!!!

A glorious 14 mile run

2009-08-24T12:03:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I went out for my highly anticipated 14 mile run. If you remember last week's long run was a complete fail, as I was having stomach issues and was running a quicker pace than I normally do. I couldn't run up any of the hills and by the last two miles, I was walking mostly. This run was a complete 180 from last week's run. I felt amazing and killed those hills! The temperature was unlike anything we have had here lately. I woke up early as usual to beat the heat, and realized it was only 62 degrees outside. I checked the weather.com and found out it was going to be in the 60's all morning and early afternoon, so I went back to sleep for a while. I ended up running at 9:30, and on top of the cool temperature it was overcast, so there was no sun beating down on me. It was the absolute PERFECT running situation and I thrived. Now, if only the weather could do a repeat of yesterday for the day of my actual race!

I started off at the Capitol where the race will begin. I was having some dificulty with the first mile, as I normally do, but I quickly settled into a groove and was fine after that. There were several people out running the CDR course yesterday. I wondered where these people have been because I have been religiously training on this route for weeks and weeks and weeks....14 to be exact. I didn't encounter anybody on the hills, just on the flat. My goal was to take it easy and keep between an 11-11:30 min/mile pace, even on the hills. I think during the actual race I'm going to keep that pace on the hills so I don't wear myself out and run out of steam. I was able to run that with ease, so I know I can push myself a little harder on race day if I want to. I made it up the huge mile long hill with no problems and my heart rate teetering in the high 170's-low 180's. I even had enough in me that I didn't have to stop at the top like usual, and I just kept going! Woohoo, victory #1. I did have to stop at the top of the next hill because it's just ridiculous. It's an uphill that curves onto another uphill road, and it's just too steep. But, I only walked for about 15 seconds, then I was back at it. I stopped after the third hill for about 10 seconds, as I know this is going to be a crucial water stop for me. At this water stop, the long downhill starts, which I just breeze through. I don't mind having a slow pace on the hills because I can more than make up for it on the downhill.

Once I got off the mountain, I ate some raisins and about 3 ounces of water and kept going. I felt so great! So great, in fact, that I found myself running about a 10:30 pace the whole rest of the way! I wanted to slow down and take it easy, but I just felt so good, I kept on with the faster pace. This is awesome because my goal pace is 10:00 min/mile. If the conditions are similar temperature wise, I will definitely be able to bust out the 10:00 minute pace. My legs started to feel heavy at mile 13, but I think it was mostly mental. What a time to start having mental problems during a run, lol. I just had 1 mile left, 2 if I were running the full course. My husband was waiting for me at mile 14 to take me back to my car. As soon as I saw his truck, I got a burst of energy and picked up my pace immediately. That stupid mental block that was telling me I was tired was just a bunch of crap. I had plenty left in me.

This run gave me so much confidence, which I had lost from last week's run. I proved to myself that I could manage the hills and the long distance together. If the sun peeks its head on race day, I may struggle a little, but the race starts at 7:30 so I should be fine.

My splits: 11:19, 10:53, 10:53, 10:51, (hills-11:13, 11:16, 9:56, 9:22), 10:35, 10:38, 10:33, 10:33, 10:33, 10:30

Total miles: 14
Time: 2:29:12
Ave pace: 10:39
Ave HR: 163
Calories burned: 1688

Next run: Tuesday 5 miler

Speedwork, oih!

2009-08-22T11:45:00.002-04:00

Wednesday I ran an easy 3 miles on the treadmill. I put it off till the absolute last second, till it was too dark to run outside, and the gym was closing in 30 minutes, lol. I got to the gym just in time and put in my baby run. I ran it in 31:11.

Thursday, I took an off day, in anticipation of a 10 MILE SPEED WORKOUT!!!!! For some reason, I was not looking forward to this one! I had to be at work at 12:30, so I planned on running in the morning. I woke up and it was pouring outside. I started to panic! I was like I HAVE to get this run in TODAY!!!! I contemplated running the darn thing on the treadmill. Yikes! Then, I called Andrew to ask him what he would do. "Run it in the rain". He said that without even thinking about it. Ok, I'm going to run it in the rain. I'm just that hardcore, lol. Then, when I got to the boulevard, it completely stopped raining, not a drop the entire run. And I almost did this on the treadmill!

Enough about me being a weenie about running in the rain. I mean, I was going to be soaked with sweat head to toe anyways, so what's a little rain? On the plan was a 1.5 mile warmup, then 5 x 1 mi @ 9:05 with 1/2 mile recoveries, followed by a 1 mile cooldown. The run ended up being pretty good, except that I had to pee really really really bad from the get-go. I stopped at a park-type place to use the restroom, but they had the doors locked. I guess they only unlock them when there are true events going on. So, I ran half of the run thinking how badly I needed to pee the entire time. I stopped at our lovely State Capitol Complex to use the bathroom there. Such relief! The first three speed intervals weren't too bad, but the last two I had to fight for. I guess it's not speedwork unless it's at least a little difficult. I started getting side stitches under my left ribs again. Not sure why that's been happening lately. I stopped to walk and that calmed down, so I was fine after that. My Garmin was actually working properly this time, and let me hit the lap button, so I was able to get true feedback for each speed interval. Last time it wouldn't let me hit the lap button, so I had no idea during the run. The last speed interval mile was a tough one, as it always is because there's this stupid (small) bridge on the way back, as well as 3 streets to cross, that seem to slow me down at the end. Just as I'm typing this, I realize my Garmin is dead, so I have to post my splits from memory: 8:58, 9:05, 9:03, 9:02, 9:18. Not bad at all! I remember it took 1:43 to run the 10 miles, so I think my average pace was around 10:13 or so. I will update this post once my Garmin is charged.

So, I'm taking the day off today. I had another baby 3 miler scheduled, but I have to run 14 miles tomorrow, and I just don't want to run today! By the way, tomorrow's 14 miler is my LAST LONG RUN on my training plan before the race. Wow, I just realized that my race is exactly 2 weeks away!! Holy crap, I am going to be like a hyper 10 year old ADHD child that whole week before the race. I'm already starting to get really really excited! Next Sunday, I start my taper. It's what all the big boys do, so I'm going to do it too. I guess you don't lose much during taper time. I'm just kind of nervous not having a long run in there for 2 weeks. During my taper week, the longest run I have is a 5 mile tempo run. My legs will sure be fresh for the race!

Progressive 5 miler

2009-08-18T22:23:00.002-04:00

I ran a moderately tough 5 miler this evening near my house. This guy, Andy, on dailymile, does these progressive runs where each mile he runs is faster than the last. He's an awesome runner and puts in a lot of miles each week. I accidentally did a progressive run last week, and I realized it after I looked at my splits. I just felt very strong during that run and found myself picking up the pace each mile. Today, I did it again. I didn't set out with the goal of a progressive run, but after the second mile I felt like I could do it. It actually makes the run a lot more interesting, as you compete against yourself to beat your last mile. The last mile you run is your fastest, so you end up pushing pretty hard. Here are my splits: 10:31, 10:21, 10:11, 9:59, 9:34.

Total miles: 5.01
Time: 50:41
Ave pace: 10:07
Ave HR: 166
Calories burned: 598

It was hot and muggy outside. I sweat a lot anyways. After the run, I came home and ate a homemade chicken and dumpling crockpot recipe I made. It was quite yummy, but I definitely ate too much. My tummy is very full right now :(

Next run: Wednesday - easy 3 miler and strength training
Total miles this week: 18

New car and a few runs

2009-08-15T15:14:00.001-04:00

Wow, I haven't made a post in over a week! I have been out of town a few days, away from blogger world, and I have missed a couple of runs this week. Not important training runs, but the mileage runs.

Sunday was my long run. I hit a new distance, 12 miles, woohoo! This was actually a pretty significant run for me, which should have its own blog post, but I just didn't have the time to do it. I decided that I was going to run the CDR course, complete with the 5 miles of hills. Until this run, I had done all my long runs on flat ground, and I had done the 5 mile hill portion by itself on a separate day, usually running it with Andrew. So, I needed to incorporate them both together in one run. With the race being less than 4 weeks away at that point, I needed to see if I could manage the distance and the hills. I had to work that day too, so I decided to run the 12 miles before work, at 5:30AM. I have never gotten up that early to run before, I mean it was still dark for the first 3 miles! It was actually kind of scary, running all alone out there in the dark in the wee hours of the morning. The sun finally came up when I started up the first hill, and I felt a lot better. I was running at an 11-12 minute pace from the start, and surprised myself by keeping an 11:30-ish pace on the hills. I will be happy if I run the hills at that pace even during the race. I don't want to wear myself out on the hills and not be able to finish. I handled the hills well and ended up back on flat ground. At about mile 9 I was wishing it was over, lol, but I kept going. Every muscle and bone in my legs hurt when I finished. I stretched my legs a little when I finished and they felt much better. At work, I was fine and my legs didn't bother me at all.
Running stats:
Total miles: 12 miles
Time: 2:15:35
Ave pace: 11:15 min/mile
Ave HR: 164
Calories burned: 1435

Monday and Tuesday I didn't run at all. Eric and I were on the road, looking for a car to buy. We actually ended up in Lancaster, PA, which is 6.5 hours away from home. I had planned on running Tuesday, I even took my running clothes with me. I woke up Tuesday morning and started getting dressed, then realized I forgot my running shoes. I was soooo mad! So, I missed a 4 mile run that day. Wednesday, I got up early to run a quick 4 miles, then we went to Ashland, KY all day. I ran it in 42:38 with an average pace of 10:37 min/mile.
Thursday I ran a 9 mile tempo run. I ran a 1 mile warm-up, 7 miles at a 9:35 min/mile pace, and a 1 mile cooldown. I ended up keeping a quicker pace, which surprised me. I ran each mile a little faster, with the exception of the last tempo mile. It got really dark and I had to come back over the bridge again. I just didn't have the strength in me to run it any faster. My splits: 10:42, 9:35, 9:32, 9:32, 9:27, 9:24, 9:23, 9:38, 11:26.
Thursday's running stats:
Distance: 9 miles
Time: 1:28:44
Ave pace: 9:51
Ave HR: 172
Calories burned: 1064

I had another steady state run scheduled for yesterday, just 3 miles. But, I had to work about an hour and a half away and didn't get home till 9:00. So, I missed another run for the week. I'm planning on running this evening, probably about 5 miles. I have 13 miles scheduled for tomorrow, so I don't want to wear myself out this evening.
So, you guys are up to date on what happened with me last week. Sorry to be away for so long!

This is what I missed my run for. My 2006 Subaru WRX STI. I love this car :)

Healthy pancake recipe

2009-08-07T23:56:00.001-04:00

I ran 6 miles today at the gym on the treadmill. I usually don't like the treadmill, but I've been off from work a few days and wanted to get my runs out of the way in the middle of the day (sans the heat and humidity). Today I had some great songs playing on my iPod Shuffle, and I was lip singing the whole time, lol. The people at the gym probably thought I was crazy, running for over an hour and lip singing. I ran at about an 11:15 pace, so it took 1:07 to run. After my run, I ate a Clif Bar and started in on some strength training. I did well this week sticking to my strength training commitment. I planned on going twice, as I knew I would be sore jumping back into it. I did some upper body and lower body again. Two sets of 12 of each exercise, including eights, lying dumbbell extensions, lat pulldowns, pushups, bench step-ups, good mornings, squats, and lunges. No core workout today.

I have this cookbook that I bought about 2 months ago, The Eat Clean Diet Cookbook by Tosca Reno. I have read the Eat Clean Diet, but never really tried it fully committed. It completely eliminates all added sugars, and focuses on fresh fruits, veggies, whole grains, and lean protein. It doesn't even let you eat light flavored yogurt. At the time, I thought it was way too strict for me, but it still had very good nutrition information that any healthy diet should be based on. I may consider trying this diet again soon. I highly recommend this cookbook. There are lots of recipes using healthy foods such as quinoa and lentils. Since I don't get to cook a lot, I haven't tried many of the recipes. But, this morning I was craving some pancakes - healthy pancakes. Sure enough, Tosca has a recipe for Power Oatmeal Pancakes. I'm going to share this recipe with you because I think it's a great alternative to the unhealthy pancakes we typically eat.

Power Oatmeal Pancakes
6 egg whites, beaten until fluffy
1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese
1 scoop protein powder
1/2 cup oatmeal, uncooked
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup flax seed
1 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp canola oil
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Cooking spray

1. Place all ingredients except beaten egg whites in a food processor and pulse or blend until mixture is uniform (when I did this it formed a big ball, I think because of the oil)

2. Pour blended ingredients into a bowl and add the egg whites. Fold until just blended. (I suggest leaving the ingredients in the food processor and adding the egg whites to the food processor, blending until mixed).

3. Prepare a griddle with cooking spray. Ladle pancake mixture onto griddle and cook until both sides are browned.

After making these, I think I will change a couple things for next time. I may try adding more cinnamon or add some raisins to the batter for some sweetness. Tosca recommends eating these with unsweetened applesauce. I topped them with bananas and applesauce when I ate them today.

Recovery Week and Strength Training

2009-08-05T11:20:00.004-04:00

Sunday I took the day off, having just run the 10k on Saturday. I had to work anyways. Yuck. I usually don't have to work on Sundays, but it was my turn. I'm taking one for the team and am working next Sunday, too. Luckily the hours are 10-6, so I can fit my 12 mile run in before work if I wake up early enough.

Monday I ran an easy 6 miles in Saint Albans. It was very nice out, about 78 degrees and felt rather cool. My tummy started playing tricks on me and I stopped to use the bathroom halfway through, but other than that it was a nice run.

Run stats:
Distance: 6.01 miles
Time: 1:07
Ave pace: 11:16 min/mile
Ave HR: 145
Calories: 731

Tuesday, I woke up early to go to the gym and STRENGTH TRAIN. I got there about 6:45 and warmed up on the treadmill for 5 minutes. Then, I hit some core training on the bosu ball. I love that thing. I moved onto upper body. I hate my arms. I mean, they are somewhat toned and when I flex, I have big muscles, but when they aren't flexed they are just fat, lol. I need to really work on my upper body. For lower body, I focused on my hamstrings and some single legged movements. My thighs are big, so I'm looking forward to leaning them out a little and sculpting them. Anyways, here is what I did:

2 sets of 14 - standing biceps curl 2 sets of 15 - good morning
2 sets of 12 - dumbbell flye 2 sets of 12 - bench step-up
2 sets of 12 - lat pulldown 2 sets of 12 - single legged squat
2 sets of 12 - bench dip 2 sets of 12 - reverse lunge
2 sets of 12 - lying overhead bar press

I didn't want to start off too difficult because I didn't want to be sore all week. I'm a little sore today, but I should be fine to go back for the same workout on Friday. I'm doing two days of strength training this week, then next week I'm going to bump it up to three days.

So, B.o.B, where is your strength training workout?? (a little friendly motivation)

By the way, as you know I'm always trying to eat better. I was checking out this blog called Chocolate Shoestrings. She is having a giveaway on her blog for the book Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes. Check it out!

Saturday's brutal 10k

2009-08-03T23:08:00.003-04:00

So, Saturday morning I ran a 10k. It's only the second 10k I have ever raced. The first one I ran was back in February, and I finished it in about 1:02. It was a very flat easy course. At that time, the longest run I had completed in preparation for that 10k was 8 miles, and I had only run that once. So, obviously I am in better running shape now than I was back in February. I set a goal for this 10k to finish in under an hour. I thought that would be pretty easy considering all the speedwork and tempo runs I have been doing.

What I didn't realize was that this 10k was at Coonskin Park and that there would be some hills involved. Lots of hills actually. Once I realized what was in store for me, I really started to doubt the under one hour goal I had set. The first mile was decently flat, and I started off at about a 9:30 pace. The first lengthy hill slowed me down a little bit, but nothing major. The second hill started separating people a little. I started passing some people, yay! Then, there was this huge downhill. We ran to the entrance of the park, then turned around and headed back. Realizing I would have to run up that huge hill I just ran down, I slowed my pace a little. Then, the most annoying thing happened. These stupid cars were trying to get by us. We had runners on both sides of the road, and some of the runners had stupid iPods in their ears and couldn't hear us yelling at them to let the cars by. I am guilty of running with my iPod, but I always keep the volume low where I can hear things going on around me. I could tell the driver's of the cars weren't very happy. I don't think the race organizers did a very good job of trying to control traffic. There were only a couple signs up that said watch for runners. I mean, it's a state park with little to no traffic, but still.

Anways, back to the race. At the top of this hill, there was a flagger person waiving the 10k people to the right, up this crazy steep hill. I look up and my heart sinks. This is probably the steepest hill I have ever seen, much less attempted to run up! I saw 3 people ahead of me, and they were walking the hill. Very smart idea. I decided I would walk the hill too. That was even really difficult! It was not just a steep hill, but it was long. My calves weren't used to that at all and were aching. I got to the top, huffing and puffing, my strength drained. The people ahead of me were still walking, so I walked a little more to get my strength. The rest of the course on the hill wasn't bad, just small rolling hills. The 4 of us started running again. There were 2 guys and a girl in a bright pink shirt. It took me a good 1/2-3/4 of a mile to get all my strength back. But once I did, I was right back to it. I passed one of the guys. Then I passed the other guy. It was down to me and this chick in the pink shirt. I'm actually very glad this girl was in front of me because she really seriously motivated me to run harder. I was determined to catch her!

So I'm on this hill loop, which is a good 2 miles, trying to pass this girl. GOSH, I can't catch her! I'm picking up my pace in the straight, flat areas. I actually felt a lot stronger on the second half of this race, particularly the last 2 miles. We are starting to get close to heading back down this steep hill. I'm still trailing this girl by about 200 yards. I start down the giant steep hill, half afraid I'm going to fall down because it's a little wet, and half afraid I'm going to hurt my knees if I run too fast down it. I made it to the base of the hill and the flagger is cheering me and tells me it's all flat from here. I have 1 mile left. I know this, and from somewhere deep within me, I start running this incredible pace. I don't know where it came from, but here it was. I was running so fast, and it felt amazing. It didn't feel like anything could stop me. I'm glancing down at my watch and I'm in the low 8's. I couldn't believe it! I'm running faster than my 5k pace, and all that after running that damn hill! I see this guy ahead of me, and I pass him. I have my eye on the pink shirt. She's tired, drained, and I am on a mission. I surge past her, and keep going, speeding up a little. I hit the 7's. WTF?? I've never run under an 8 min pace! I'm huffing and puffing and feel like I'm going to die, but the finish line is just ahead. I make it. They didn't have a time clock, so I looked at my watch and it was 58:41. I couldn't believe I finished in under an hour! I thought the hills definitely ruined my chances for that. I walked for at least a minute. I felt so victorious. I'm not sure how I finished in my class because they haven't posted the results or official times. I know I didn't get 1st or 2nd, though. It didn't matter to me. I passed the girl in the pink shirt, and found this speed locked away deep inside me.

I guess those 12 mile long runs and 8 mile tempo runs really help out. When those other people were struggling at the end, I was running the fastest times I have ever run. I'm posting the splits, but these aren't accurate because my Garmin only read 6.01 miles, not 6.2.

9:23/9:50/12:17/9:54/9:15/7:56(!!!)

After looking at my HR during the run, I realized I didn't push myself hard enough. I think I was being very reserved at the beginning because I was afraid I was going to lose steam and not be able to finish. I actually really psyched myself out before the race, thinking to myself that I couldn't do it, couldn't finish, couldn't do it in under an hour. The mind can really screw with you. Now I know that I had plenty more in me and I could've finished even faster. Next time, I'm going to go into a race telling myself that I'm a running machine (lol) and I'm going to give it all I got from the beginning. I'm well trained, I've put in the speedwork, I've put in the tempo runs, and I've put in the long runs. Why did I doubt my ability?

Easy run & Call-out to B.o.B.

2009-07-31T12:39:00.002-04:00

My husband woke me up this morning getting ready to go to the gym. He’s not as hard-core as me about working out, he usually goes twice a week. A while back he got really serious and went every other day. He doesn’t do any cardio, just lifts weights, but he gets a good cardio workout doing that because he lifts at a pretty high intensity. Anyways, seeing him getting ready made me get out of bed and go to the gym with him. It has been pouring the rain for the past couple of days. I decided I was going to run an easy 3 miles and then do a little lifting. I didn’t want to do too much because my 10k is tomorrow morning and I want to be fresh, with no muscle soreness. I felt really good during the 3 mile run, running at an easy 11:15 pace on the treadmill.

After the run, I did some situps on the incline bench. I honestly haven’t been to the gym in a while, doing most all of my running outside and my core training at home. It’s nice to change up the core training a little. Usually the incline bench awakens my abs and I really feel it the next day. After that I did a couple of different upper body strengthening exercises. I did this thing that a personal trainer showed me once. I think she called it eights. You do 1 set of bicep curls, 1 set of hammer curls, and 1 set of curls where your arms are angled at the side of your body (not sure of the name of them). These sets of 8 repetitions each are done back to back to back and you really feel it! I then used the lat pulldown machine for a couple of sets, and finished with two sets of the lying tricep extension. Not a lot of strength training, but getting me back in the spirit of doing it.

I don’t know why I don’t make strength training a priority. I’ve been focused so much on getting my training runs in that I don’t think about anything else. And while running makes me feel great and has taken a few inches off of me, there’s nothing like the sculpting that strength training can do. I feel incredibly amazing and sexy when I have been strength training. So, B.o.B, I am calling you out, girl. I will commit to it if you will. Starting this coming week, I’m going to strength train 3 days per week. This probably means I will have to get up and go to the gym in the morning before work, and then run after work some days of the week. Let the strength training begin!

Bad week & prepping for a 10k

2009-07-30T23:51:00.003-04:00

This week I decided to change up my running schedule a little bit because I have a hilly 10k this coming Saturday, and I didn't want to overdo it. Sunday's 12 mile tempo run must've taken something out of me for this week because I haven't felt very good on the other two runs I did after that. Obviously, I took Monday off. I didn't even cross train because I worked all day and didn't plan ahead very well. I could've went to Zumba, but forgot to bring my clothes with me to work. I planned a 5 miler on Tuesday, which turned into a 4 miler because my tummy started acting up around mile 2.5. Wednesday I didn't do anything again, not even cross training. Today, I had an 8 mile speed workout scheduled, but decided to cut it way back because of the 10k Saturday. I ended up only doing 4 miles (1/2 mile warmup, 4 x 1/2 mile @ 8:30 w/ 1/4 mile recoveries, and 1/2 mile cooldown). I can't say I didn't feel good today, I just didn't WANT to do anymore. I felt like I could've done another mile of the speedwork, but didn't feel like it. That's no excuse, and I better get out of that thinking quick! I'm going to do a light 3-4 mile run tomorrow at an easy pace, then my 10k Saturday I'm going to try a 9:15 min/mile pace and see how I do. It's supposed to be hilly, but I'm not sure just how much. The good thing is that next week is a recovery mileage week. I enjoy recovery weeks because I'm nice, refreshed, and ready to jump back into the harder runs the week after. I think I definitely need it. I'm going to try to get quite a bit cross training in, hopefully strength training. I really need to stop talking about strength training and just do it. Somebody make me do it!

Long run turned into Tempo run

2009-07-28T13:08:00.002-04:00

I skipped out on my Saturday 3 miler. I didn't mean to exactly, but that 8 mile speedwork on Friday wore me out. Plus on Saturday, I had to work 9-2, then I had a birthday party to go to at 6 and I didn't want to have to shower and get all glammed up again, lol. Anyways, so I planned on 12 miles for my long slow run on Sunday, then I get this text from Andrew at about 9:00AM asking me where I'm running. He has been doing a lot of cross training but hasn't jumped back into his intense running regimen. He wanted to run with me because he knew that I would keep a nice slow pace, and he wouldn't push himself too hard (his typical 7 min/mile pace!) I knew what this meant for me, though. I usually run a 12 min/mile pace on my long runs, but I didn't want to put him through that, haha. So, I used this run as a chance to see if I could maintain the 10:00 min/mile pace I want to run for the Charleston Distance Run. A 10 min/mile pace for him is slow and for me is fast, lol. I have been training at slower paces and faster paces, but not at the 10:00 pace, so this would be a good test. If I could keep up that pace for 12 miles, with about 6 weeks left of training I should be fine for the Distance Run, as long as I don't wear myself out on the hills.

I had high spirits that I could do this; at least Andrew was running with me and I push myself harder when I run with him. One problem, however, was that I picked a new 12 mile course I had never run before. I found it on a local running club's website, and it said there were some rolling hills. For some reason I didn't quite understand this when I read it. The term "rolling hills" didn't send out an alarm to me at the time. We get about 3 miles into the run and I start realizing the rolling hills part. Here I am trying to keep a 10 min/mile pace, which is hard enough for me to do on flat ground, much less on rolling hills! Needless to say, I was getting beat up by these hills, lol. But, we were keeping the 10 min/mile pace, except for 3 different occasions. In my opinion, keeping that pace for 9 of 12 miles is pretty darn good! At mile 6, we stopped and I downed some Gu and some Gatorade. The run back felt a little harder, as if the hills were harder. Probably just in my head. I had to stop at the top of one of the hills and catch my breath a little. I felt like that tiny bit of Gu was sitting in my stomach like a brick. It was probably just the fact that I was not only running hills at a pace that was difficult for me, but also a distance. I have never ran that many miles at that kind of pace. At about mile 8, it started pouring the rain. It felt amazing and energized me for a couple of miles. I had to stop at mile 10 and at mile 11 for a short breather. That last mile was the most aweful mile that I have ever run in my life! We probably ran it at a 9:45 pace, and I was cussing and whining and praying to Jesus the whole way. Andrew just laughed at me. Seriously, though, I don't know how I made it. I can't even explain how it felt, I was just exhausted. I crashed to the ground when we finished, a little delirious. I ate a Clif Bar while trying to talk to Andrew.

I know for a fact if I had not run with Andrew, I would've given up on the whole 10 min pace thing. I would've given up really early actually. For those of you who run solo or are afraid of running with others, you should try running with someone who is faster than you. You will be surprised at how far you can push yourself just by having someone else by your side. He knew I was dying, lol, and he would've slowed down if I asked him to, but I didn't, and I'm a better runner for it!

Running stats:
Distance: 12 miles
Time: 2 hours!!
Ave pace: 10:00 min/mile
Ave HR: 171
Calories burned:

Another speed workout!

2009-07-25T11:10:00.002-04:00

Friday after work I went out for another speed workout. I know I just did one on Tuesday, but that wasn't planned, and it involved 1/2 mile intervals, not 1 mile intervals. Plus, I can use all the improvement in speed I can get, lol!

I got off work at 6:00 and started running about 6:45 or so. I should've waited till about 7:30 because it was still sunny and humid outside during much of my run. I just thought I would save time by bringing my running gear to work and just running afterwards. Not next time! I had to stop a few times during my recovery jogs to get some water. Luckily, there was a Wendy's on my route, and they gave me a big cup of ice water. I couldn't have finished the run if it hadn't been for that break of a few minutes. I was supposed to do a 1 mile warmup, 4 x 1 mile at a 9:15 min/mile pace w/ 1/2 mile recoveries, and a 1 mile cooldown. I ended up doing the speed part at about a 9:00-9:10 pace. Because my recoveries were 1/2 mile, it kind of messed up my splits. The Garmin wouldn't let me reset my laps at the half mile, so I only know my true pace for two of the speed miles. Overall, it was a great run, just beat me down a little because of the humidity. The last mile of the speed portion was difficult to finish, but I made it through, thanks to the water from Wendys.

Running stats:
Distance: 8 miles
Time: 1:22:53
Ave pace: 10:21
Ave HR: 165
Calories burned: 932

Next run: Sunday, 12 mile long slow run
Total miles this week: 26

I need a day off!

2009-07-23T20:29:00.003-04:00

I have been working out and running a lot lately. I feel like I haven't gotten much done the past two weeks except working, coming straight home to change, and then working out. I've been kind of tired lately, so I think I'm going to take an off day. Driving home from work, I just felt like relaxing this evening. Well, I will do my W1D2 pushup workout tonight. I'm going to do my 8 mile speedwork tomorrow after work, and then my 3 mile pace run on Saturday, then back on schedule with my long run on Sunday.

Speedwork and Zumba

2009-07-22T23:08:00.002-04:00

Today, I went to Zumba class at the YMCA. One hour of Zumba makes me happy :) This week I increased from 4 running days/week to running 5 days. Wow, I will be running five days per week for the next 6 weeks or more. There is really no where else to fit another running day in besides my Zumba day on Wednesdays. So, after an hour of Zumba, I ran 3 miles on the treadmill. My friends are beginning to think I'm crazy! It was a nice easy run, at about an 11:30 pace. After all of that, I did 2 sets of the good morning, and 3 sets of back raises to strengthen my hamstrings.

Tuesday is usually the day I run the hills with Andrew, but he is still out trying to heal an injury. The hills are too dangerous to run by myself (no shoulder for most of the run), so I decided to do a track workout. I did a 1 mile warmup, 4x800 meters at a 5k pace with 400 meter recovery jogs, and a 1 mile cooldown, for a total of 5 miles. My Garmin's battery was dead, which I didn't discover till I stepped foot on the track, so I really don't know how fast I was running or how long it took me. I assume I was doing close to an 8:30 min/mile pace during the speed part. I was really movin and was about to die by the end of each interval. It felt really good, and I had lots of energy the whole rest of the evening, and all morning today! I do have to complain about all the people who walk on the track and hog the inside lane, knowing there are runners on the track as well. It's common courtesy to walk on the middle or outside lanes when there are runners on the track, but maybe people don't know this?!?

Next run: Thursday, 8 mile speedwork (1 mile intervals)
Total miles this week: 19

Nutrition Facts for McDonalds

2009-07-22T13:40:00.002-04:00

I have posted nutrition facts for McDonald's menu items that contain less than 500 calories and less than 20 grams of fat, with complete nutrition facts on my Food and Exercise Log blog. If interested, check it out. It may come in handy to print off!

New Food and Exercise Log Blog

2009-07-21T15:57:00.002-04:00

Well, I decided that since a running blog has done such a great job at keeping me running, a food log blog would be a good idea to keep me calorie counting! I think all of us runners should keep some kind of food log, so we know what types of foods affect our running. Mine is more for purposes of controlling my eating.

Here is a link to my new food and exercise log. In it you will simply find a log of everything I put in my mouth, complete with the nutrition facts, as well as simply a line about what physical activity I did that day. If you are interested in what I eat while I'm training, then check it out! You may discover some different foods to try. If this works and I actually start losing weight, then maybe it will inspire you!

Calorie counting blah!

2009-07-20T14:07:00.003-04:00

Ok, so a while back I made a post about losing weight as one of my goals and I calculated the number of calories I needed to eat to lose 1 pound per week. I never actually started calorie counting because it seemed that I was doing fine with just "watching" what I was eating and running. Well, that's not working anymore, lol. It seems like I'm always finding a reason to eat a meal I'm not supposed to or snack when I'm not supposed to, and because I do run a lot I think this is ok. Obviously it's not ok or I would weigh a lot less than I do! I'm so tired of jumping on the scale and occasionally seeing 150. I never ever ever want to see that number again! I want to get far enough away from that stupid number that no matter what my hydration level is that day (or whatever other stupid contributing factors there are), the scale will not give me that number. If I sound hysterical right now, it's because I am!!

Now, a couple of years ago, I calorie counted for 3-4 months straight, at 1300 calories per day. Boy, did I see results! I was treadmill running and lifting weights on a regular basis during this time, so the results were great. I reached 144 pounds, which is the lowest I've ever weighed, and I trimmed a lot of inches off. I feel like the only way for me to reach my goal is to resume this dreaded calorie counting again. Obviously, 1300 calories is crazy, especially for as much running as I'm doing. I'm going to shoot for 1600-1700 calories daily for this week and see what kind of results I get. Yesterday, I ate 1800 because I ran 11 miles and I felt like I needed to eat more. I'm going to play it by ear and see where this lands me.

Let the calorie counting begin!

Long Run #8 - 11 miles!!

2009-07-20T11:55:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was the longest run I have ever done in my life! I am at a point in my training where I will be having these types of workouts. Until a couple of weeks ago, all the distances were familiar to me in past training, but now I'm venturing into new territory where I will be pushing myself farther than I have ever before. It's very exciting! I felt that way during my tempo run the other day. It seems like each run now is a test of my ability, and so far I have been up to the tasks.

So, I made some changes from last Sunday's 10 mile long run. Last Sunday, I ate half of a Power Bar during the run and ended up with horrible side stitches. Before yesterday's run, I went to Dick's Sporting Goods and purchased Gu Energy Gel. Some runners on dailymile recommended it to me. The only flavor they had was tri-berry, so that's what I bought. I was also armed with three 6 ounce bottles of regular Gatorade. I have heard people complain that they can't take the energy gel and drink regular gatorade because it's too much electrolyte for them and they end up with a tummy ache. I am a super salty sweater, so I figured I would be ok. It didn't bother my stomach one bit.

The temperature was perfect - well almost perfect. When the sun wasn't shining, it felt great out, about 70-73 degrees. The sun wasn't shining for about half of the run, but the half that it was shining was difficult, especially because it was the last half of the run and I was getting tired. My pace started off around 11:50 min/mile and by the end had slowed to about 12:20 min/mile. I slowed down according to my heart rate, which I tried to keep under 150bpm. Apparently the heat was getting to me, so I slowed down. I think that my knees and shins are a limiting factor in my running. They start aching after I run long distances, I would say longer than 8 miles. There is a dull aching to them, not bad enough to stop running, but noticeable. When I have to stop for traffic while crossing a street, I can really feel my shins aching, then it subsides a little when I continue to run. Once I'm finished running, they ache for a little afterwards, but by the time I'm back at home they are fine, and they don't hurt the next day. I'm not sure if this is normal or not. I need to do some research on this. One thing I have noticed is that they used to ache during a 5 mile run and now they don't. I think that they just need to get used to the mileage.

Here are my splits and heart rates, as you can see at mile 8 the heat started wearing me down!

1 11:51@145bpm, 2 11:48@147bpm, 3 12:00@148bpm, 4 11:57@148bpm, 5 12:04@148bpm, 6 12:03@149bpm, 7 12:02@150bpm, 8 12:14@148bpm, 9 12:27@150bpm, 10 12:34@153bpm, 11 12:20@154bpm.

Total miles: 11
Time: 2:13:22
Ave pace: 12:08 min/mile
Ave HR: 149
Calories burned: 1233

Next run: Tuesday, hill run or speed workout
Total miles this week: 11

Hill run, Zumba, tempo run

2009-07-17T22:40:00.003-04:00

I so need to stop slacking on posting my workouts. I feel like the last two weeks have gone by so fast! I do a workout, delay posting it, then before I know it, 3-4 days have passed and I haven't posted anything!

Monday was supposed to be a compete rest day, but for some reason I felt like walking, so I called up my friend Keely. She was up for a walk, so we walked 3 miles around Saint Albans. After that, I decided to start this hundred pushup program. I've been seeing a lot of people on dailymile doing this and thought I would give it a try. Let me just tell you, this program is no joke! First, you do a test to see how many pushups you can do in a row in good form. I was able to do 15. It takes this number and decides where to start you based on your level of fitness. So, for the first workout, it had me do 45 pushups, divided into 5 sets, broken down as 12, 10, 7, 7, and 9. I was struggling at the end, but completed it. But, the next TWO days, I was so sore I could barely move. This is a good thing, but nonetheless I was very surprised. My obliques were even hurting! I forgot how great pushups are for your core. I was supposed to do 2 more workouts this week, but I didn't. I have been falling asleep early this week and have been busy. I am going to start over on Sunday.

Tuesday was my hill run with Andrew again. This time was a bit tougher because I ran up 119 way too fast. I think I ran it at like a 10:30 pace, not intentionally. Whenever I run with Andrew, I push myself harder for some reason. I guess this is a benefit from running with others. He is a much faster runner than I am, and although he keeps whatever pace I'm running, I feel compelled to run faster so I'm not soooo slow, lol. Anyways, I booked it up the first hill and felt pretty drained for a couple of miles after that. I started feeling better, though and finished strong. Andrew was nursing a pulled muscle and was unable to run fast down the last portion of the hills, so he actually slowed me down this time! We ended up finishing the hills in the same time as last time, as the fast uphill was balanced out by the not so fast downhill.

Wednesday was Zumba for an hour and then some core training. I also decided to work on my hamstrings. I got this popular iPhone/iPod Touch application called iFitness. This application is worth paying for. It gives you so many different workouts, with illustrated pictures and instructions on how to do them. All I had to do was select the hamstring muscle group, and it listed a bunch of strength training exercises that work the hamstrings. I ended up doing the back raise, the lunging step up, and the good morning. I had never done the good morning before, and never would've thought it would do much, but I have been sore for 2 days after doing these workouts. I'm going to try to do these twice a week.

Thursday was an off day, as it was Eric's birthday and we had baked spaghetti and cake w/ice cream. I woke up this morning ready to burn off the birthday meal with a 7 mile tempo run. The plan was to do 1 mile warmup, 5 miles at a 9:45 min/mile pace, and a 1 mile cooldown. This was probably the first training run in a while to really test me and show me where I am physically. Aside from the improvment in my 5k time by a whole minute, this tempo run was either going to make me or break me. I had never maintained a pace like that for that long before. I ended up doing great. That pace was comfortably hard, but I knew I could run harder if I needed to. I really surprised myself today. I have been so happy lately because I have truly seen improvment in my times, endurance, and stamina. All the hard training is FINALLY paying off. For a while I wasn't able to see much improvment, but lately I've been seeing lots. I couldn't find my HR monitor this morning before leaving to run, so I have no idea what my HR was. I was so mad about that! Of course, I found the stupid thing the minute I came back home after my run. My right knee started bugging me at about mile 4, just a slight discomfort behind the knee. After the run, it really bothered me for hours. It would hurt just sitting there, and if I turned it or twisted it, it was uncomfortable. Finally early in the evening, it quit bothering me. I'm supposed to run about 4 miles tomorrow, then 11 on Sunday. Hopefully, it won't give me anymore trouble.

Splits for the tempo run:
Mile 1: 11:20
Mile 2: 9:44
Mile 3: 9:27
Mile 4: 9:38
Mile 5: 9:47
Mile 6: 9:35
Mile 7: 10:56

Next run: tomorrow, 4 easy slow miles
Total miles this week: 22

Seven Traits Award

2009-07-14T17:22:00.003-04:00

I have been blogging for a couple of months now, but am still pretty new to all of this. Kristin passed on the Seven Traits Award to me. This is where I share seven things about myself and then pass it on to seven other blogs that I enjoy reading. Well, here I go.

1. I love makeup. Actually am obsessed with makeup and spend a lot of money on higher end brands like MAC. I watch a lot of youtube videos on makeup tutorials and have gotten pretty darn good. In fact, I did my friend's makeup for her wedding!

2. I am a pharmacist at Wal-Mart and I provide diabetes education counseling. My goal is to become a certified diabetes educator.

3. I love animals. I have a cat named Bizzle Cat, 2 cockatiels named Baby Bird and Sweety Pie, and a hamster named Ham Chop. I'm trying to get a dog, but my cat will not have any of that.

4. I enjoy cooking, but between working and getting my runs in I usually don't have time to do it. I can actually cook really good. My poor husband wishes I would cook more.

5. I'm into cars. I have a red 2008 Nissan Altima Coupe. It's a 6-speed manual transmission (yes, I drive a stick) with a cat-back exhaust and an aftermarket grille. My husband has a drag car, so it's something we both enjoy.

6. I have a shopping problem. If there was a local chapter of shoppers anonymous, my husband would probably make me go. Along with the makeup, I buy lots of clothes and jewelry. I have way too many clothes, in fact I have turned our spare bedroom into a walk-in closet. Due to my blessed wide feet, I don't have a shoe obsession because I can't wear most brands.

7. I hate to clean. It's just something I despise having to do on my days off. If you come to my house, it's generally not cluttered, but you will find the dishes sitting in the sink.

So, I will pass this Seven Traits Award onto the following bloggers:

BarbieRuns
B.O.B.
Tyly
Miles with Mickey
RunnerDude
Never Quit Never Stop
26.2 Quest

This was fun, I enjoyed it!

The Long Run Woes - Long Run #7

2009-07-13T11:12:00.007-04:00

Yesterday was my long run day, another 10 miler.

The last 10 miler I ran, I felt pretty good, but was completely drained at the end. I had run for 2 hours and all I brought with me was 8 ounces of G2. This time, I was much better prepared. I bought a hydration belt, which holds three 8 ounce bottles, from the Nike Outlet. Armed with one 8 ounce bottle of regular Gatorade, two 8 ounce bottles of water, and a half of a Power Bar, I thought I would be able to get through the run without any problems. The hydration part worked out very well for me, but the Power Bar part didn't.

I always seem to have problems when it comes to eating and running. If I'm going for a hard run, I can't eat any kind of meal within 5 hours of running, or I end up with side stitches. Generally, on slow long runs, I can eat a small breakfast and head out with no problems. Before the run, I had half of a 100% whole wheat bagel with 1 tablespoon of PB. I decided that I would eat the Power Bar at mile 6. This Power Bar was real chewy, which made it kind of hard to chew, so I ended up stopping for a couple minutes to chew up this snack and take a few sips of water. I started running again and felt pretty good till around mile 8, when I started to get horrible horrible side stitches. And these weren't normal side stitches, they were more like all-over stitches. I stopped to walk a little again to calm my stomach down, then started running again. Usually this fixes my side stitches, but not this time, and I ended up running the last 2 miles with an aching tummy, which made it difficult to breathe.

Next time, I am going to try half of a Cliff Bar instead. I think that it wasn't completely the energy bar's fault. At about mile 5, I noticed that my heart rate was slowly creeping up, and I was having to run at a slower pace to keep a lower heart rate. I was fighting this the whole rest of the run, and felt like I had to slow down quite a bit to keep my heart rate under 155. As you can see below, by mile 6 I had to slow down to slower than a 12 min/mile pace. I couldn't quite figure this out because physically I felt great. I was having a nice run, wasn't losing my breath at all, and here my heart rate is creeping up for no apparent reason. Maybe I wasn't hydrated enough. I must admit, I had slacked on my water intake the past week, but felt I drank enough the day before. Oh well, it's hard to really tell what made my body act up. I'm not discouraged at all, though. I will get back out there for my long run next Sunday and give it another try.

Distance: 10 miles
Time: 1:59
Ave pace: 11:59
Ave HR: 153
Calories burned: 1133

Mile 1: 11:26 min/mile; 148 bpm
Mile 2: 11:49 min/mile; 151 bpm
Mile 3: 11:41 min/mile; 152 bpm
Mile 4: 11:57 min/mile; 155 bpm
Mile 5: 11:51 min/mile; 153 bpm
Mile 6: 12:01 min/mile; 154 bpm
Mile 7: 12:11 min/mile; 154 bpm
Mile 8: 12:13 min/mile; 153 bpm
Mile 9: 12:41 min/mile; 154 bpm
Mile 10: 11:56 min/mile; 159 bpm

Next run: Tuesday hill run with Andrew
Total miles this week: 10

Hill training, cross training, and more

2009-07-11T11:41:00.002-04:00

Wow, it's been 4 whole days since I blogged last! I apologize for that, but I have been busy lately and went out of town for a couple days. Where do I begin?

Ok, so Tuesday the 7th was my hill workout. Andrew and I ran the hill portion of the CDR again. The hill portion is a little over 5 miles. If you remember, last time I ran the hills was about 3 weeks ago. We ran it in the daytime, with the sun beating down on us. I had to stop several times and walk. Overall, it was a very difficult run. This time was completely different! We ran it about 7:30 in the evening, so it wasn't as hot. I felt so amazing on this run. Something was just different. Actually, the past couple weeks have been pretty amazing for me. It seems I have come to a point where running is no longer very difficult for me and I am able to get my runs in and feel very comfortable. I'm not sure how to explain it, but I can get out there and knock out my runs and feel great. Anyways, back to the hill run. My first goal was to make it to Oakwood Road without having to stop and walk. This is a little over a mile of running at a pretty steep incline. Sure enough, I made it to the top without having to stop to walk. We did walk once we reached the top, but not for very long at all and I was off again. From then on, I never had to stop and walk again. I felt great. I also tested out a new hydration belt I got from the Nike outlet. People had told me that they were annoying and not to use them, but I didn't have one bit of problem with it, and rather enjoyed not having to run with a water bottle in my hand.

Hill run stats:
Distance: 5.34 miles
Time: 56:47
Ave pace: 10:38 min/mile (Look at that pace!!)
Ave HR: 170 BPM

Ok, so next was a cross training day. I went to Becca's Zumba class for an hour. Did I mention how much I love Zumba. It's so fun to break up my usual routine with some Zumba. After Zumba I went into the gym and did a couple sets of dips, pushups, lat pull-downs, and curls, and then did some core training. Didn't lift as much as I wanted to because I was also being social with Becca, as I told her I would lift with her. Overall, it was a good cross training day.

Next, I went to Weston on Thursday (about 110 mile drive from my house) to work for 2 days. I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express (don't you just love their commercials) and luckily they had a "fitness room". Their fitness room was comprised of 1 treadmill, 1 elliptical, and 1 stationary bike. Lol, it was a cute little room. I can't complain, at least they had a treadmill for me to get my run in. I did 4 miles on the treadmill, which felt like it took forever! Since I've been running all my runs outside, I absolutely cannot stand to run on the treadmill anymore. I didn't wear my HR monitor, but I checked my HR at the end, and it was between 145-150. I ran the 4 miles in approximately 45:20 at about an 11:19 pace. Nice, easy run.

I was supposed to run another 4 on Friday, but with work and driving back home afterwards, I opted for a late night dinner and some putt-putt with my husband and some friends. I beat my husband, so that was fun. I'm going to run my 4 miles today after work. Sunday is my long run day, and I'm going to do 10 miles.

So, that is the recap for my week. Again, sorry I've been missing for 4 days.

Total miles so far this week: 15

Easy 6 miler

2009-07-07T10:06:00.003-04:00

So, back to the grind after the 4th of July/birthday weekend celebration. It was more like a binge eating fest for me, lol. I ate poorly at a cookout, then I got two birthday cakes and a dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Sheesh! I was supposed to run on my birthday Sunday, but I just couldn't get away. Yesterday, I planned a trip to the outlet mall in Jeffersonville, OH with a friend and new that would be an all-day event. So, I got up and ran 6 miles at 6:00AM. I never get up early and run because I tend to stay up later at night and value my mornings in bed too much, but I had to do it. It actually wasn't too bad. I remember trying to get up early to work out years ago, then giving up after 3 days, but that's when working out was a chore. Now that I enjoy running, I may be able to do the morning thing. It was nice to have it out of the way. I may try it out and see how I like it.

Back to the run itself. I was supposed to run 5, but made it 6 due to my poor eating over the weekend. I felt great, aside from needing to use the bathroom then last 3 miles, lol.

Here are the running stats:
Total miles: 6
Time: 1:09:34
Ave pace: 11:36 min/mile
Ave HR: 147
Calories burned: 713

Next run: Today; hill portion of the Charleston Distance Run (about 6 miles)
Total miles for the week: 5

Happy Birthday to Me!

2009-07-05T10:25:00.003-04:00

Well, today is my birthday. I'm 25 years old! Wow. I always thought I'd be married and having kids by the time I was 24. Well, I am married, but kids are far far away in our plans. I have too much running to do :)

I'm going to try to run 5 miles today and test out the shin.

I hope everybody had a good 4th of July. The weather kind of ruined it for us here :(

My Updated Training Schedule

2009-07-05T00:47:00.006-04:00

When I decided to run the Charleston Distance Run, I started off with a 16-week training plan that I got from the Runner's World SmartCoach. The SmartCoach is a good tool for creating a training plan based on a current race time. It's very flexible and gives you a long run, easy runs, and alternates tempo and speed runs. It tells you what paces and how long to run. All in all, this is good for people who don't want to pay for a training plan, but still want something personalized. There are limitations to the SmartCoach. For example, the CDR course involves 6 miles of hills, but the SmartCoach doesn't incorporate hill workouts in their plans. Also, there was no option for a 15-mile race, so I had to select a half marathon, and then tweak the plan by adding more mileage.

I have definitely been neglecting my strength and core training. I try to get Zumba in at least once a week, and do the Wii Active, which has me do lunges like crazy. But, I need to fit more into my training plan and commit to it. I took the Runner's World training plan. copied it into Microsoft Word, and tweaked it. I incorporated the McMillan Running Calculator into my plan as well, which basically tells you what paces to run every type of run based on a recent race. McMillan's website also does a fantastic job of explaining the what each type of run is and the benefit you get from training in different heart rate zones. I am sharing with you my newly revised training schedule. I had 10 weeks left last week, so now I have 9 left.

Here's my new training plan: CDR Training Plan

Happy training!

I set a PR at the Independence 5k!!

2009-07-04T10:44:00.002-04:00

I totally crushed my goal time in the 5k yesterday evening, completely surprising myself! As I mentioned in yesterday's post, my goal was to run it in 27:30, maintaining an 8:50 min/mile pace. Till now my PR was 27:55, which was on June 13th, about 3 weeks ago. I beat my old PR by 1 whole minute! My unofficial time was 26:55! Woot woot! I guess my increase in mileage and long runs have paid off. I cannot believe that I bested my last 5k by a whole minute. I'm still in shock right now, please excuse me, lol!

There were about 250 people running this 5k. I showed up about 40 minutes early to check in. I absolutely love the people who put the local races together and really appreciate the work they put into it, but I have to complain that they always run out of small and medium shirts. That makes me mad sometimes. I usually end up getting an XL for my husband. Anyways, so I warmed up a little bit, only a half mile. My good friend Andrew, who runs the hills with me, was there. He is really fast and his summer goal was to run a 5k in under 19 minutes. Good luck with that! We wished each other luck and headed toward the pack of racers at the start. The gun went off and there I went. I had my Garmin and my iPod all charged up. Of course, everybody starts off so fast, which used to be my problem. The Garmin has fixed that. I made sure I wasn't running too fast and of course ended up near the back. "That's Ok," I told myself, "I will be passing these people later when they run out of steam." I looked at my watch frequently and noticed I was running between 8:15 and 9:00 min/mile pace. I was running faster than I should, but I felt good, so I kept with it. At the halfway point, I started to question my ability to keep my pace up. My earbuds and the cord was bugging me and I was pulling on it, and messing with my watch. I started to freak out. Then I calmed myself down. I started to focus on my running form and my breathing, ignoring my stupid earbuds. "Smooth and steady," I told myself. I started passing people one by one. I passed a couple of really fit guys and it made me feel good, lol. When I had one mile left, I realized that I was going to be ok. I knew I could maintain my pace and make it, so I just kept focusing. I got into view of the time clock and it said 26:48 on it! Holy crap! I was going to beat 27 minutes!?!?! I kicked it in, as the people at the finish were yelling at me to bring it home. I estimate I finished in 27:55, but we will see the official time on Monday or Tuesday.

I was so happy! Plus, Andrew said he thinks he finished in 18:59. Sweet!! We both achieved our goals! The only problem was I noticed my right shin was really sore. I felt it when I stopped running at the finish. It was really bothering me. I think I stopped too abruptly at the end. I was worried, but not too much. I knew today would be a rest day and this coming week is a recovery mileage week, so I would be able to rest it. I didn't make top 5 in my age group, but there were so many runners I didn't expect to. I did get a cool orange towel for participating in all 4 runs in the summer race series, so that was cool. I came home after the race and ate, my shin still noticably hurting.

This morning when I woke up, it wasn't hurting anymore. Good stuff. But, I'm going to stay off of it today and test it on Sunday when I run 5 miles. I'm sure it will be fine!

Short tempo run and prep for the 5k

2009-07-03T10:40:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I was scheduled to run a tempo run - 6 miles total, 4 miles @9:50. I debated on whether or not I should do this run because of the 5k that I have today. I didn't want to overdo it the day before a race. Good thing is the race is an evening event, starting at 7:30PM. So, I decided to go ahead with the tempo run, but just cut it short. I was running out of daylight also, so I kind of had to cut it short. I ended up doing a 1 mile warmup, 3 miles @ 9:50-ish, and about a 1 lap cooldown, for a total of 4.33 miles. I actually ran the tempo part faster than I was supposed to, as you can see in my splits. I felt really strong throughout the run, which I ran at the local high school track. I hope that I saved enough for the 5k tonight.

One thing I am worried about is what to eat today and when to eat. This will be the first evening 5k I have ever run. Most 5k's are early in the morning. I always skip breakfast and just sip a little water before the morning 5k. If I eat something, even 2 hours before, I end up getting horrible side stitches during the race, and that really stinks. I guess I'm going to try and eat something light around 4:00 and hopefully it won't come back to haunt me during the race in the form of a side stitch. I'm shooting to run the 5k in 27:30, which is a pace of 8:51 min/mile. My PR so far is 27:55, which is a pace of 9:00 min/mile. I hope I'm not setting my goal too high. I have felt very strong this week, so I'm hoping that will continue.

Tempo run stats:
Distance: 4.33 miles Splits: Mile 1 - 11:07
Time: 43:55 Mile 2 - 9:45
Ave pace: 10:08 Mile 3 - 9:44
Ave HR: 165 Mile 4 - 9:34
Calories burned: 515

Next run: Tonight's 5k
Total miles this week: 19

Easy 5 miler and new shoes

2009-07-01T21:28:00.002-04:00

So, last night I impulsively bought a pair of Saucony Progrid Ride 2 running shoes online without every trying them on. I have wide feet, so it's not easy for me to find running shoes locally. I found this website, www.endless.com, that sells all kinds of brands of running shoes. They are having $25 off a purchase of $100 and FREE Overnight Shipping. What?? Free Overnight Shipping, you say?? That's right! I ordered these babies at 7:50 PM yesterday evening and they were on my front porch today. Now, that's awesome! What's even more awesome is they actually fit. I got a 6.5 wide and they fit. Felt pretty good. However, when I started running, I started having doubts. I started having little aches in my achilles area and in a muscle right above my right ankle. The funny feelings went away about 3 miles into my run and then I felt fine. I think I laced them too tight, too. They have lots of cushioning in the heel, but I'm not a heel striker. There wasn't as much flexibility in the mid/forefoot area, and that's wear I land when I run. I'm going to give these shoes a few more tries before I decide if I like them or not. If I decide not to keep them, I may end up selling them.

As for my run, it was great. I did 5 miles on the Kanawha Terrace. I'm already seeing the benefit from my slower paced 10 mile run Sunday, as my heart rate was a lot lower on this run than it usually is. It usually averages around 168, and this evening it was 153 at an 11:30-ish pace. I felt a lot better and didn't feel as drained afterwards. My goal is to get my HR under 150 on my easy runs and still run a decent pace. I have a tempo run scheduled for tomorrow and a 5k on Friday evening. I'm going to try to hit 27:30 on the 5k.

Running stats:
Total miles: 5.01
Pace: 11:34 min/mile
Time: 57:59
Ave HR: 153
Calories burned: 598

Next run: Thursday, 6 miles total, 4 miles @ 9:40
Total miles this week: 15

I gained 2 pounds, poo poo!

2009-07-01T19:06:00.002-04:00

So, I was on my way to a 1 pound per week loss, then I hop on the scale this weigh-in and I'm up 2 pounds! Waaaaaahhh!! Honestly, I haven't been eating right and I know it. I guess I just need to refocus and start eating better again. I know what I'm supposed to do, I just need to do it.

OMG, I ran 10 miles!

2009-06-29T23:53:00.002-04:00

So, I ran 10 miles on Sunday. I don't know what possessed me to do this. I think I just wanted to see if I could do it. I was only supposed to run 8. Another reason I did it is because I skipped my easy 2 miler on Saturday and felt guilty, so I figured I would add the 2 into my long run. I still cannot believe that I did it. I mean, that's double digits! When you say, "I ran 10 miles", you realize that 10 miles is pretty darn far! I never in a million years would ever have thought that I would be capable of doing something like that. I was always overweight in elementary school and junior high. Some of you know what it's like to be overweight growing up. I had a lot of friends, but there were always people that would make fun. I lost some weight in high school playing softball, but I have never been skinny. I've always stayed around 150-155 pounds since high school. It's just really satisfying to look back on that and see where I am today. I love running. It has given me so much confidence. I have never done anything that makes me feel the way running does.

I also approached this run differently in regards to how fast I ran it. I've been reading a lot about training programs and what the different types of runs you incorporate into your training plan do for your running, like the long run, easy run, tempo run, speed run, etc. There are target heart rate zones you should be running these in. For example, the long slow run should be run at a HR of about 65-75% of your max HR. For information on how to calculate your max HR with the new formula, see this article from Runner's World, or you can do it the old way by taking 220-age (Obviously this is only an estimate). The RW article talks about using a HR monitor and the benefits of knowing your HR. Another really great source of information about HR training is McMillian's Running. My max HR is 192, so on my long run I should be keeping my HR between 124-144. For me, this creates a problem because on all of my long runs my average HR is always around 165. There are two reasons for this: 1. I haven't been training long enough and am in not good enough cardiovascular condition to have a HR this low while running and 2. I'm running my long runs too fast. I'm always telling myself I'm too slow, so I try to run faster, but I may be doing myself harm, not good. I have read that training at a HR of 65-75% of your max HR will improve your running, and your HR will start to come down with continued training. I think that I have started off too fast for my own good. So, to make a long story short, I started this run will the intent to keep my HR around 135, but it resulted in a pace of around 13:30 min/mile. Now that is just ridiculous! I couldn't run that slow, it would kill me! So, I settled for keeping my HR around 153, which is about 80% of my max HR. That way, I kept a pace of 12:00 min/mile and didn't feel like I was as slow as a turtle. I think I'm going to start either taking a long walk once a week or use the elliptical, keeping my HR around 136 and see if that helps.

I know I would not have been able to run 10 miles Sunday had it not been for me slowing my pace down and watching my HR. Sometimes running isn't about running fast, but about running smart! I am going to start paying more attention to my HR during my runs and hopefully my running will improve as a result.

Monday was a rest day, so I did 40 minutes on the Wii Active and 35 minutes of my new Billy Blanks Ab Bootcamp DVD. Billy Blanks kicked my butt!!

Running stats courtesy of Garmin Connect:
Total miles: 10
Ave pace: 12:17 min/mile
Time: 2:02:52
Ave HR: 154
Calories burned: 1,083!! wow!!

Next run: Tuesday, easy 5 mile run
Total miles this week: 10

7 mile speed workout

2009-06-26T11:55:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I did a 7 mile speed workout. I accidentally posted that I was doing a tempo run in a previous entry, then realized it was a speed workout. Yesterday's weather was not typical. It was about 70 degrees and felt really cool outside at about 10:00 and was very overcast. I piddled around the house, then finally got myself out the door. As I was driving down to the Kanawha Boulevard, I realized just how overcast it was and that I was probably going to get rained on. I considered turning back, but thought maybe the rain would hold off for another hour. I was wrong, lol. About 1/4 of the way through my run it started a steady sprinkle. Not too bad, I thought to myself. It started coming down harder at the halfway point. I have never been caught in the rain before. It was exhilirating! I actually kept to my speed pace much better and probably ran a little faster because I told myself I was trying to "beat" a downpour. There were people out walking and had umbrellas and here I am running. I really felt like a runner, as only "real" runners would run 7 miles in the rain, right? It felt good. I did a 1.5 mile warmup, then ran 3 repeats of 1 mile at 9:00 min/mile pace with 1/2 mile recoveries, then a 1 mile cooldown. The downside, was coming home later to news that my beloved Michael Jackson was dead. I was glued to the television the rest of the day. My husband and some friends were working on the rec room, so I ended up eating pizza for lunch and dinner, 4 slices total. Then, I was so depressed about MJ that I begged my husband to take me to Mayberry's for a chocolate hot fudge sundae. And yes, I ate it all by myself and it was delicious. Today, I'm jamming to MJ's tunes all day at work. I love you MJ!

Stats courtesy of Garmin Connect:
Miles: 7
Ave pace: 10:25 min/mile
Time: 1:12:54
Ave HR: 168

Next run: Saturday easy 2 miles (or more if I'm feeling skippy)
Total miles for the week: 17

RIP MIchael Jackson

2009-06-25T20:09:00.003-04:00

I am in tears. I absolutely love Michael Jackson, even though it has not been acceptable to love him over the past 10 years. Nobody can deny that he is the true King of Pop and influenced the music industry in more ways than we can ever appreciate. I was really looking forward to his comeback tour in England. This is truly a devastating day.

I am in mourning. I will be eating icecream later. This is horrible.

Easy 2 miler

2009-06-24T23:41:00.002-04:00

Ran an easy 2 miles this evening at a nice park hidden away near a friend's house. Felt great. I have no idea what my pace was or how long it took me because I forgot my watch and was having a good time with friends. They were walking while I ran. I seemed to recover well from the 8 miler on Monday. I did Zumba and a Turbo Jam Abs workout on Tuesday.

Next run: Thursday, 7 mile tempo run
Total miles this week: 10

Long Run #5 - 8 miles

2009-06-22T17:11:00.003-04:00

Had a great long run today. I had planned on running it this evening, but as I looked at the weather.com I realized it would be better to do it before noon. Usually 11:00AM is still too hot, but it was about 72 degrees and not too humid, so I thought I would go ahead. Glad I did because the weather felt good. It was sunny, but there was a nice breeze. I ran 8 miles on the Kanawha Boulevard, nice and flat with great scenery. I ran from Drug Emporium near the Patrick Street Bridge to the State Capitol and back. I felt good througout the whole run and kept a pretty constant pace.

Stats on http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7429241
Total miles: 8
Average pace: 11:20 min/mile
Total time: 1:30:42
Calories burned: 966
Ave HR: 168

My heart rate seems to always be too high on my long easy runs. I just couldn't get myself to slow down. I still felt great at this pace. I'm hoping with continued training it will start to come down.

Next run: Wednesday - easy 2 miler/hills at the end
Total miles this week: 8

Run for Your Life 5 Miler

2009-06-21T20:07:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I ran the Run for Your Life 5 Miler. I didn't really know where they got that name from, till I realized it was because the course involves a 2 mile stretch running up to Spring Hill Cemetary and running in the cemetary! The slogan for the race is "the toughest 5 mile race around". That is probably an understatement. Even though I live in WV (the mountain state), most of the 5k's and other local races are on flat land, with the exception of races at Coonskin Park, the Charleston Distance Run, and this 5 miler, of course. Needless to say, the treck up Farnsworth street leading up to the cemetary was pretty brutal. I would compare it to running 119 in the CDR, but with a couple steeper points.

I started off the race feeling great. I wanted to maintain a pace under 10:00 min/mile, which would be a challenge for me. I had just come off that aweful tempo run on Thursday morning where I couldn't even maintain a slow pace. I brushed that off and didn't even think about it. Every day is a new running day, and you never know what you're going to get! So, I started off and the first mile I ran at a 9:40 pace and felt pretty good. I noticed, however, that my Garmin hit the 1 mile mark before the actual 1 mile point, which was marked with a water station. I didn't think much of it. The start of mile 2 began the climb up Farnsworth. The beginning of it is more like an on-ramp and wasn't too bad. I slowed my pace down to an 11:00-11:30 min/mile to help conserve energy. This road was long, and I had to stop and walk at about mile 1.5. I did this running/walking thing the whole way to the top of the hill, till I got to the cemetary. The road got really steep, and there was no way I could run it the whole way. There was another water station at mile 2. I got a drink, then started running again. I had to run a mile in and around the cemetary before coming back down again. The cemetary itself was comprised of lots of rolling hills; nothing too steep, but still hilly. Somehow I fell into this groove. My breathing felt great, my form felt really natural, and I felt really strong all of a sudden. I was able to tackle the hills without slowing much. It was a difficult run in the cemetary, but I felt very strong and confident. At mile 3, I headed back down Farnsworth. I was in autopilot at this point, just cruising down that hill! It felt awesome. I had a pace of about 8:30-9:00 down the hill. Once I got to the bottom at mile 4, it was flat from there. Ahh, the home stretch. I still felt amazingly strong. I'm thinking to myself, "where is this coming from??". I usually am struggling pretty bad at this point in any race. At mile 4.5 I started to feel the energy let up a little, but I kept my pace. At this point, I realized that my Garmin was reading a lot farther than the course was. I KNEW I would finish this race in 50 minutes or less. Then, I saw the finish line and the time clock. It said 53:30!! WTF?? I looked at my watch and saw that it read 5.28 miles. I was irritated, but then also determined to cross the line before it hit 54 minutes. I don't know where it came from, but I started an all-out sprint to the finish. I mean, I don't think I have ever run that fast before in my life. And I felt so strong! People saw me sprinting and started cheering for me. I guess they saw the determination on my face. It was amazing. I crossed at 53:58, lol.

I caught my breath, then headed over to the table to turn in my popsickle stick. I was number 78 to finish. Not sure how many ran in it. I will have to see when they post the race results online. I asked a girl next to me, who was wearing a Garmin Forerunner 305, what her watch said the distance was. She told me it said 5.3. Mine did, too. She said she was going to email the race director to ask about the distance. I figure they will say this is the 4th year they have done this run, and it's been the same 5 miles each year, lol. But, I truly believe that it was 5.3 miles. The way I felt and how hard I pushed myself, there was no way I ran that race at a 10:47 min/mile pace. At no point during the race did my Garmin read slower than a 10:50 min/mile pace, except between miles 2-3, the hill part. I did forget to stop the timer at the finish, so it didn't stop at 53:58, it was stopped at 54:21.

Here are my splits from Garmin Connect:
Mile 1- 9:40
Mile 2- 11:56
Mile 3- 10:49
Mile 4: 9:19
Mile 5: 9:24
Mile 0.3: 3:10

Garmin Connect calculated my average pace to be 10:13. If I use this data and extrapolate it to 5.0 miles, instead of the 5.3 the watch said, it would make my average pace 10:47. I just don't believe that. Maybe I'm just being hard headed, or putting too much faith in the Garmin. It's not really that, it's the fact that I felt amazing during the race and ran my ass off. It absolutely did not feel like a 10:47 average pace, even with the hill portion. Oh well, 5.0 or 5.3, I felt great. It was probably the best race I've ever run and felt awesome in. I really had a good time and liked the hill challenge. At the end, I wanted some more, haha. I will definitely be doing this one again next year.

Next run: Sunday - long, slow run, 8 miles
Total miles for the week: 21 miles

My not so tempo run

2009-06-19T13:15:00.002-04:00

I was scheduled for a 6 mile tempo run yesterday. Coming off my easy 2 miler from the evening before, I thought I could knock this run out. I felt so amazing on my 2 mile run, like I was superwoman, haha. I did the 2 miler at about 9:00PM the night before, then the Wii Active, finishing my working out at about 10 or 10:30 give or take. I woke up in the morning to run at 8:00. Starting off, my legs felt heavy. I noticed that my breathing didn't feel right and I was having a hard time. I just couldn't get into a groove. Then, there was road work on the Boulevard on a bridge, so I had to take a detour around. It was bad. I plain stunk. I think that I started off too fast, still on my high from the run the night before. I was supposed to warm up at about an 11:30 min/mile pace for 1 mile, run 4 miles at a 9:40 pace, then a mile cooldown at the 11:00 min/mile pace. My splits are as follows:

Mile 1: 11:02
Mile 2: 9:53
Mile 3: 10:06
Mile 4: 10:01
Mile 5: 11:13
Mile 6: 11:51

I was close to my pace the first 2 miles, but completely fell off after that, having to stop and walk several times throughout the whole run. It was really ridiculous. I mean, I couldn't even keep my normal pace! It was just a terrible run, but I'm not going to let it get me down. Runners just have bad days, and they are completely unexplainable. From now on, I'm not going to do a full workout the night before an early run. And, I HAVE to make sure I'm hydrated enough. I think that may have been an issue, too. I'm not going to let this get me down. I have a 5 mile race tomorrow morning, so I'm going to take today as an off-day, or I may get some core training in. I'm running the Run for Your Life 5 mile Race, part of the Smoke on the Water Chili Cookoff. It's supposed to be difficult, running up Spring Hill Cemetary. I'm going to take it easy and not kill myself. Hopefully, it will be a good day.

Run stats:
Total distance: 6 miles
Time: 1:04:09
Ave pace: 10:41
Calories burned: 707

Next run: 5 mile Run for Your Life race in the morning
Total miles for the week: 16

Easy 2 miler and Wii Active

2009-06-17T22:42:00.002-04:00

I took 2 days off from running after Sunday's 8 miler/hill climb. I started to feel like a bum, not running for two days! I did go to Zumba yesterday, so Tuesday wasn't a complete rest day. I went out for an easy 2 miles this evening after dinner before it got dark. I'm not sure if I was just really feeling good today, or the hill climb on Sunday made me stronger, but I felt awesome running today. I ran the Terrace, which usually wears me out, but I hit every incline feeling super strong and ran a faster pace than usual. I didn't pay much attention to the pace on my Garmin today, just went by how I felt. When I got home, I did a 25 minute workout on the Wii Active. Still loving that game. It had me do bicep curls and shoulder presses, as well as some jumping and lunges. It gives me a good workout. In the morning, I have to get up and go do a 6 mile tempo run before work. I hate hate hate getting up early to workout. I highly value my sleep, lol. But, it will be nice to have it out of the way.

Running stats:
Distance: 2.02 miles
Time: 21:10
Pace: 10:27 min/mile
Calories: 245
Ave HR: 162 BPM

Next run: Wedesday, 6 miles total, 4 miles @ 9:39
Total miles this week: 10

What a way to start off the week w/ Long Run #4

2009-06-14T21:48:00.006-04:00

So Sundays are my long slow run days. I decided to start running on the CDR race course because of all the hills, which start at around mile 3.5 and last 5 miles. If you can get through the first 8 or 9 miles, the course is all flat from there. Prior to training for this race, I had never trained on hills. Actually, the only hill workout I have ever done was 2 weeks ago, when I did hill repeats. I know that I need to run hills regularly or I'm going to die come race day.

So, being the fifth week of my training plan, I decided it was time to run the course. I asked my friend, Andrew, to run it with me. He's the only runner friend I know that is capable of running this type of course. He can put in a 13 mile run at any given time, and runs about a 18-19 minute 5k. He trains on hills regularly, so this wouldn't be that hard on him. I was worried about holding him back because he trains at about a 7 or 8 minute pace even on his long runs, but he agreed to keep my pace, as he just wanted to learn the course. We started off at a 10 minute/mile pace, then on the hills it was about a 11 to 11:30 minute/mile pace. We started about 11AM and it was about 72 degrees and sunny. By the time we finished it was really hot and sunny.

We started off at the State Capitol on nice flat land, crossed the Southside Bridge, then hit the largest hill of the course, 119. This hill is a monster! It's about a mile long to the next road on the course and is pretty steep. Halfway up this hill I'm thinking to myself, "Tammy, what have you got yourself into. There is no way you can do this, this is a big mistake. You aren't trained enough to even think about running these hills". Andrew kept my slow pace, and I decided to walk a little about 3/4 of the way through the hill. We both walked for a little, then ran the rest of the way to the top, where we turned onto Oakwood Rd. We stopped to walk at this point as well, as the first part of the road is very curvy with lots of traffic. We started running again, and I really needed water badly. We continued left on Oakwood and finally came to a church. We took about a 5 min break there, as I used the bathroom and got some water. Andrew wasn't even breathing hard up these hills and didn't need any water. I'm so envious, lol.

We left the church and finally came to Bridge Rd. I knew that the next road we would turn on, Louden Heights, was all shady and downhill. I kept telling myself if I could just make it to Louden Heights, I would be fine. Bridge Rd had a few steep hills, and I did my best to run them. About the last hill on Bridge Rd and my quads couldn't take it anymore. I had to stop and walk again. My legs were feeling pretty week. All of a sudden, I saw the Louden Heights street sign. I'm screaming to Andrew, "there's Louden Heights!! We've made it!!" I was so incredibly happy all my energy started to come back. We turned onto Louden and it was beautiful. Lots of shady trees, just a great nature run. I felt great at this point. We were at mile 6 as we turned onto Louden, and it was about a mile to the end of the road back over the bridge. There was one somewhat lengthy hill about halfway through Louden, but I managed to maintain my pace and not have to walk. It was downhill again after that hill. We finally made it to the end of the hell course and back over the bridge. We had parked his car at the bottom of the bridge so we could hop back into it and drive back to the Captiol, but he talked me into running back to my car, which was about a mile away. I was pooped, and had practically nothing left.

I planned on only doing 7 miles today, but ended up doing 8. I couldn't believe I was able to run the hills and survive. There were brutal, but not as bad as I thought they would be. It was great to have Andrew there running with me, motivating me. There is no way I could've done that run without him there. Having a running buddy definitely pushes you to run better and further. Hopefully, he will run it with me every other Sunday. It's not exactly a safe course to run by yourself, considering there aren't any sidewalks on the hill portion.

Running stats: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7144776
Distance: 8.03 miles
Time: 1hr 30min 53 sec
Pace: 11:19 min/mile
Calories burned: 935 (though it is probably more than this considering the hills)

Next run: Wednesday, easy run
Total miles this week: 8

I set a PR at today's 5k, yay!!

2009-06-13T10:58:00.002-04:00

My goal for the 5k today was 27:30. I think I was over-shooting, but I thought I could pull it off. My best time to date was 28:15. It ended up being pretty humid this morning. I didn't realize my Garmin's battery was running low, so this morning when I turned the GPS on, I got the low battery message. Sick burn!! It had 15% battery left. I thought it would be enough to get me through the race, but it ended up dying on me at about the 3/4 mile mark. It said my pace was 9:00 min/mile when it died, so I tried to keep the same speed after it died and hope for the best. The clock still worked on it, so I had an idea how I was doing. I was running out of steam with a half mile left. My lungs felt like they were going to explode! I could finally see the finish line and when I got close enough to see the time clock, it said 27:40 on it. At that point I realized I didn't reach my goal, but I was determined to finish in under 28 minutes, so I used what little gas I had left and kicked it into high gear and finished with a time of 27:54-ish. I'm not exactly sure what my time was, but I know it was under 28. So, I was bummed I didn't reach the goal I set for myself, but when I turned my popsickle stick in, I realized that I was 2nd place in my age group. They did the age groups different at this race. Usually they do 20-29, but this race they did a 20-24 age group and a 25-29. I will be 25 next month, so I was still in the 20-24 group. I got a trophy! A real trophy! I was so excited that I got second in my age group and got a trophy that it didn't matter to me that I didn't reach my goal time. I still set a PR, which is great. I'm really proud of myself. My first 5k was last year in August, and I have improved since then. I'm starting week 5 of my 16 week training plan for the CDR, so I know I will continue to improve. I have several more 5k's and a 10k on my schedule before the CDR, so I'm hoping to improve each time. Yay for a trophy!!!

4 miler, Zumba, and I want more!

2009-06-10T13:20:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I managed to work out twice in one day. This is definitely a first for me. In the morning I ran my easy 4 miler. It didn't go as easy as it should have. I was going to run it on the treadmill at the gym again, but I was determined to run outside on the Terrace. Like I have said before, running the Terrace is more difficult because of all the inclines. However, it puts me in much better running shape than just running on smooth flat course. It was 85 degrees outside and pretty humid. Luckily the sun wasn't beating down on me, or it would've been much harder. My heart rate is still pretty high for an easy run at this pace, but I think the inclines have a lot to do with that. I'm hoping it will come down to the low 150's with more training. My pace was pretty slow, but it's what I'm supposed to be training at. I try to aim for an 11:30 min/mile on the easy runs, but the heat just slowed me down.

Here are my running stats from the 4 miler:
Distance: 4.01 miles
Time: 47:11
Pace: 11:47 min/mile
Calories burned: 485
Average HR: 163 bpm

In the evening I went to Zumba. My good friend/Zumba instructor, Becca, finally came back from her honeymoon, so I was so excited to go to her class because she is the best. I got a good hour long workout there, then a group of us went to Taste of Asia for some dinner. I ate sushi, yum!

I just want to say how different I feel about working out and how working out makes me feel. I used to dread working out. I wanted so badly to just go home and sit in my comfy chair, watch tv, and take a nap. Now, I want to work out as much as I can. I really enjoy my running and training for races. I'm also really lucky to have found Zumba and that Wii Active game. It's so important to find things that you like to do and that keep you interested, and I really feel like Zumba does that for me. It's not like working out at all, and I get to hang out with my girlfriends at the same time. I just feel better all around. I have more energy and I'm in a better mood. I look forward each day to do something physically active. Plus, on true rest days, taking a nap is like a reward for all the hard work I put in all week and I don't feel guilty about it. I just feel so much better about myself!

Next run: Thursday, easy 2 miler
Next Zumba class: Thursday

Next race: Saturday, 5k

Total miles for the week: 8

The new Wii Active

2009-06-09T10:01:00.003-04:00

I absolutely love the new fitness game for the Wii, the Wii Active. I picked it up yesterday at a local game store. It is amazing and gives a great workout! For those of you who have the Wii Fit, this is way better than the Wii Fit, and this game allows you to use your Wii board for a lot of the exercises. The original Wii Fit game was nice, but there was no fluidity to the workout. You have to click on different exercises and you could basically just do the ones you wanted. The Wii Active has actually taken many different exercises and placed them back to back for you for a complete workout. You can chose the length of time you want to work out, anywhere from 20 mintues to 55 minutes (roughly). You can also set the intensity level at low, medium, or high. You get a personal trainer that will walk you through the exercises and motivate you. And, the workout is different everyday, especially if you do the 30 Day Challenge. For example, I did day 1 of the 30 Day Challenge and it had me walking, running, doing side lunges, kickboxing, punching, squats, curls, shoulder raises, and much more. I am actually sore this morning! The trainer told me that for my next workout, we will be doing different exercises. This is to keep you interested and wanting to work out. The game is pricey, at a little more then $60, and includes the game, a resistance band, and a leg strap. The leg strap is needed to hold the nunchuck so when you do kicking and lunges, the game will read your movements. You will use the resistance bands during the arm exercises. I just can't say enough about this game! It's easy to use, and I had no problem having the game pick up my movements. Bottom line, this game is amazing, and if you have the Wii and like to workout, then run out and get it!

Easy 4 miler on the treadmill

2009-06-07T16:57:00.002-04:00

I almost didn't run today! My husband and I don't get too many days off together, so I was very very tempted to just stay snuggled up with him in the chair. I was strong, though, and went to the gym for an easy 4 mile run on the treadmill. It was way too hot to run outside today...the sun is just beating down out there. Usually I will wait till the evening to run outside, but this evening is Symphony Sunday at the University of Charleston and I've been looking forward to going to that for weeks. The WV Symphony Orchestra will be playing all day, and there will be lots of food vendors and boat events on the river, plus fireworks tonight. I'm so excited! So, I ran on the treadmill. I went about an 11:30 min/mile pace. That pace was nice and easy and I felt great the whole time. I finished my workout with some abs. I really need to put together a good weight lifting routine, especially for my legs. I'm worried that I'm putting too much stress on my knees because my hamstrings are too weak. Any ideas on some leg exercises?

Next workout: Zumba Tuesday
Next run: Wednesday - easy 4 miler

Total miles so far this week: 4

Tempo run and a doughnut

2009-06-06T01:04:00.005-04:00

Yesterday was National Doughnut Day. You've gotta love Twitter for such useless information. Actually, my husband made fun of me for knowing it was National Doughnut Day, but nonetheless he took me to Donut Connection to get some doughnuts. I told myself that I was allowed to eat a chocolate-iced cream-filled doughnut after my tempo run, and to reward myself for my first three weeks of training.

On Thursday I went to Zumba to get some cardio in after work. I tell you what, Zumba is no joke. I have noticed a nice difference in my body after adding 2 Zumba classes this week. An hour of that class and I'm sweating as if I just ran 5 miles. After Zumba, my friend Keely and I hit up a Mexican restaurant and ate vegetarian fajitas and rice. We skimped on the tortilla chips, trying to be good. She's been a vegetarian for 15 years, and I love vegetables so it's nice to eat out with her. I feel like I'm eating healthier.

So, back to my tempo run and doughnut. I ran a little over a mile from a local church to the high school track, then ran 3 miles at a 9:45 min/mile pace, then ran back to the church. It was wet outside, but not raining. The run felt great. I used to dread running around a track. The idea of running 4 laps, much less 12, used to be so daunting. Now I can knock it out no problem. After my run, my husband and I went out to O'Charley's for dinner. I had salmon, rice, a side salad, and half a roll. And yes, I still ate my doughnut when I got home!

I was looking forward to yesterday's run because it was the last run of the week, and next week is a recovery week. I just have to run 3 days next week, 4 mile easy runs. Well, I do have a 5k next Saturday, but that will be fun. I get to run with a cop, lol. I feel like I need a little break, though. Training for a big race can wear you out, and I definitely don't want to overtrain and get injured or burned out. I'm not used to this consistent training, so my body is like, 'what are you doing to me??' I know I can do it though! Three weeks down, 13 more to go!

Next run: Sunday - 4 mile easy run

Total miles for this week: 15

Easy 2 miler & hill workout

2009-06-04T12:39:00.002-04:00

It's been a couple days since my last blog! I ran my 7 miler on Sunday, then on Monday I went to a Zumba class with a friend. I'm trying my best to fit extra workouts into my schedule on top of my running, and what better way to do that than to do some Zumba. For those of you who don't know what Zumba is, it's kind of like a group aerobics class, but it's got great dance choreography and is set to awesome Latin music and other popular dance beats. It's lots of fun, and I definitely get a good 60 minute cardio workout. Needless to say, after my 7 mile run on Sunday and my Zumba class on Monday, my calves were killing me on Tuesday so I took the day off. I pushed my easy run to Wednesday hoping my calves would feel better, and they did!

The Charleston Distance Run has a 5 mile stretch of hills...ouch!! I have never ever trained on hills before, so this will be difficult. Yesterday I did my first "hill workout", incorporating it at the end of my easy 2 miler, for a total of 3 miles. There's a part of Saint Albans referred to as "the loop" where the street loops around and heads up into the opposite direction. At the end of the loop starts a nice big hill. I thought I would tackle this hill. At the end of my 2 miler, I beared down and sprinted up the hill. The hill is 0.08 miles on my Garmin. I felt great running up that hill! I stopped at the top where it flattens, then walked back down. I ran this 6 times. I felt great the whole time, and the 5th time up the hill I started feeling it. I was breathing much harder and walked down the hill slowly. I was going to stop there, but thought I would go for one more, so that I would have about a 1/2 mile of the hill under my belt. That last interval was definitely more difficult! But, I felt awesome after it was over. People might not enjoy these workouts, but I loved it. I honestly like to do speed workouts and intervals because it changes things up and challenges me in a different way than the long runs do. I feel like long runs take more mental effort....just knowing I have to run 7 miles seems impossible, but I get out there and do it. The hill workout was invigorating. I will certainly be doing many more of these, so I hope that I keep liking them!

Next workout: Today - 60 minutes of Zumba
Next run: Thursday - Tempo run 5 miles total, 1 mile warmup, 3 miles @ 9:45, 1 mile cooldown

Total miles for the week so far: 10

Long run #3 - 7 miles

2009-06-01T21:58:00.002-04:00

Yesterday's long run was my longest this year. I worked 10-6, then ran afterwards on the Kanawha Terrace in St. Albans. I usually like to do my long runs on the Kanawha Blvd, but I was running out of daylight. Running on the Terrace is a lot harder. It has lots of inclines, a bridge, and a very steep hill. Needless to say, I am in much better shape when I run the Terrace on a regular basis. I drank lots of water at work in anticipation, and sent my tech to Fazoli's to get me a small spaghetti towards the end of my shift. I have to say I felt a little tired. I never really understood what it really meant when people would say that their legs felt heavy, until yesterday. My legs definitely felt heavy and my calves were aching a little at the beginning. The thing that bothered me the most was that my knees started noticeably aching around mile five. I don't recall them hurting much during my last two 6-mile runs, but those runs were on the Boulevard, which is relatively flat. Maybe those inclines and little hills put a lot more stress on my knees. Regardless of the reason, I'm hoping that with continued training, my knees won't bother me. I have to run 15 miles for the CDR, and my knees can't be aching for 10 of them. Other than my knees, I felt good. At the end, I knew I could go further if I needed to.

Next run: Tuesday - easy 2 miler
Total miles this week so far - 7

Speedwork on the track

2009-05-31T01:18:00.002-04:00

I did my first ever speed workout on a track on Friday. In the past, I have had to do all my speed workouts on the treadmill because it's the only way I could keep my pace where it needed to be. Thanks to my Forerunner, I am able to take my speed workouts outdoors. I discovered that it is much harder to do this kind of workout on the pavement than on a treadmill. I'm also discovered that it's difficult to keep a certain pace. I find myself varying my pace widely, so I have to constantly look down at my watch to make sure I'm in my target pace. I did a 1 mile warmup, then I did 2 repeats of 1 mile @ 9:15 with 1/2 mile recoveries, followed by a 1 mile cooldown jog. I ran the whole time, and felt like I had enough energy at the end to keep going at a slow pace. Don't know if I could've done another mile at the faster pace. It was just nice to get outside. I do haven one complaint. There were several people on the track walking or jogging. There were some kids kind of making fun of me for running so much. I was thinking to myself what a bunch of dummies. I'm out there running my ass off. Come see if you can keep up with me kiddies! I bet you $500 you couldn't run 2 miles with me, much less 5! Go home and play video games.

I didn't succeed in getting any extra workouts in last week. I really tried to get to a Zumba class, but was confused about the schedule and showed up at the wrong time. So, this week I am definitely going to Zumba on Tuesday and Wednesday. That is my goal for the week, if I survive my 7 mile long run on Sunday! I have to work Sunday, so it may get pushed to Monday. I did succeed in sticking to my diet this week. Getting through a whole week on the diet is a big feat for me, but I did it! Goal #2 for the week - continue to stick to the diet.

Next run: Sunday (or Monday) - 7 mile long run....ouch

Last weeks total miles: 13

Easy 2 miler with my new Garmin!

2009-05-27T22:00:00.003-04:00

I FINALLY got my Garmin Forerunner 405 in today. I find Amazon Super Saving Shipping ridiculous because I placed my order on May 15 and just got it today. I know it's free shipping, but should it take that long?? Anyways, I was so excited to get it!

First impression out of the box: this thing is huge! I mean, I know I'm a girl and all, but I'm not a teeny tiny girl by any means. This watch is big. Wearing it anytime other than while running would be out of the question. Guys may be able to pull this off. I know Garmin is touting how this watch is smaller than previous versions and looks like a watch, but it is still bulky. I don't mind this, however, because of the valuable information it gives you.

Downloading the Garmin software and intalling the wireless stick took no time at all, and the watch linked to the wireless stick very quickly. The heart rate monitor also links up instantly. The software is nothing special. There is desktop software, and an online website that stores your runs, too. The online tool shows your exact route on a Google map, which is really cool.

As far as accuracy, it was spot on. I was concerned about its ability to hold a signal on the Kanawha Terrace because when I had satellite radio, it lost signal frequently on this road. Not the Garmin, though. Held signal the entire time, and was very accurate.

There are lots of bells and whistles on this thing, so I need to sit down and mess with the settings. I am very pleased with it! I was apprehensive about buying it because there are a lot of negative reviews about the watch out there. Now I realize the people that left poor reviews must not be technically savvy. You have to be good with electronics, or be able to read and understand the manual. If you can't do that, then you may have some problems. Bottom line, I love this watch!

Oh, and my 2 mile run was great!

Long run #2 - another 6 miler

2009-05-25T22:41:00.003-04:00

Today was another 6 mile long run. I was supposed to run it yesterday, but the family reunion took up the whole day, and I ate too much. I started my run about 2:00 on the Kanawha Boulevard. I was worried because it was 80 degrees outside, but the sun wasn't really out so I thought I would be ok. I made sure I was well-hydrated and decided I would just slow down if the heat got to me. Surprisingly, I felt great the entire run. I didn't stop to take a walk break at all, and I didn't have to stop for water because I took a full bottle with me. This run was a lot different from last Sunday's 6 miler. Last Sunday I thought I was going to die! Today I felt great the entire time, and even felt better the last half. There was a 60% chance of rain, but I took my chances. It started to sprinkle the last 1/2 mile, and I had enough in me to increase my pace to beat the rain. Good timing too, because once I got on the interstate to go home, it started to pour the rain. Bottom line is I felt really good after my run, and that's how you're supposed to feel after a long slow run. This run really motivated me! That's why I like running - you really get to see yourself improve from week to week.

Next run: Wednesday - easy 2 miler
Total miles for the week: 6

New diet plan

2009-05-25T11:14:00.005-04:00

I've said before that I've been running consistently for about 10 months now, and I have failed to lose any weight. I like to think that I eat healthy foods and make good choices. But, the truth is that unless I know exactly how many calories I'm consuming, it doesn't matter how healthy I eat. If you eat too much, even if it's of a good thing, you're not going to lose weight. Also, eating healthy and watching calories is something you have to do every day, not just a couple days a week. I fall into this problem, because I will do really well for a 3-4 days out of the week, but the other 3-4 I'm cheating. Also, I was not consistently getting my miles in each week. I was lucky to get 2 running days in per week. Then, I wonder why I'm not losing any weight. Big dummy.

Reading this blog on Runnerdude's page the other day really got me thinking. Now that I'm training for the CDR and will be CONSISTENTLY running more than 15 miles per week, I need to pay attention to what and how much I eat, especially if I want to lose weight. His post showed me how many calories I need based on my resting metabolic rate, daily activity level, and running. Based on this algorithm, I learned that I need 2000 calories per day, not including running or exercise, to maintain my current weight. That's just based on my resting rate and daily activity level, which I selected as sedentary because my job doesn't require me to do much physical activity at all.

To lose weight, I know that I have to create a deficit in calories somehow, either through reducing food intake or exercising. I know that a pound is equal to 3500 calories. This means that I need to create a deficit of 3500 calories per week to lose 1 pound. Seems like a lot. I burn about 117 calories per mile I run, based on that algorithm. This week, I am scheduled to run 13 miles, which will equal about 1500 calories. That leaves 2000 calories for me to cut out over the course of the week, which is about 300 calories per day. Right now my training plan only has me running 3 days per week, which leaves 4 days that I can get more exercise in through cross-training. So, I can either eat 1700 calories per day and not add anymore exercise, or continue to eat 2000 calories per day, but add in more exercise. This all seems very complex and confusing. It's all a number's game, and I'm pretty good at math, so I think I can figure this out.

I will probably end up eating 1700 calories on days that I don't work out and 2000 calories on days that I do. Keep in mind that "working out" refers to extra workouts I get in during the week on top of my running. For example, the light gym day I had Saturday is considered a workout day. So, last week I had 3 running days and 1 workout day. If my math is correct, I should have eaten 1700 calories everyday, except on Saturday I should have eaten 2000 calories because it was a workout day. I hope that makes sense!

Today, I will begin calorie counting. If my calculations are correct, I will be a pound lighter next Sunday. Wish me luck!

Light gym day

2009-05-23T15:19:00.003-04:00

Surprisingly, I made it to the gym today. I tell myself I'm going to go lift weights a couple days a week, but I usually only get in my runs for the week and shrug off weight training. In my new committment to running, I recognize that I need to incorporate weight liftining into my training so that I am well balanced. I need to train my core muscles and my hamstrings. While the quads get a good workout from running, the hamstrings get neglected, and weak hamstrings can lead to knee injuries. I definitely don't want that to side track me.

I warmed up with one 10-minute mile. Then I did three sets of three different arm exercises, including push-ups, assisted pull-ups, and dips. In between the arm exercises, I worked on my abs. At the end I finished up with hamstrings. I kept my heart rate up pretty good during the entire workout, which lasted about 40 minutes. It felt good to get a strength training session in. It's a nice break from running. I hope to get two of these sessions in per week.

Hopefully, I will get my long run in tomorrow before the family reunion. I will thank myself at the end of the day when I feel guilty for over-eating!

On a side note - my Garmin is STILL not here. I find this pretty ridiculous because it was shipped on May 18. With the holiday Monday, I probably won't get it till Tuesday.

Thursday's Tempo Run

2009-05-22T11:10:00.004-04:00

Thursday was a good day overall. Wednesday evening I ate very poorly for dinner because I was helping with the pharmacy move, but Thursday I got right back on track. I even had a Frosty-cino from Wendy's and still managed to stay under 1800 calories for the day. The Frosty-cino was sooo yummy! But, me being somewhat lactose intolerant, I should've known better. Basically dairy gives me horrible gas and bloating. Add a run to the mix and I get cramps and frequent trips to the bathroom. I know, I should've known, but I had been avoiding dairy for a long time and thought I'd give it a try.

I went home after work and grabbed a ham sandwich, waited around for an hour, then went to the gym at 8 PM for my run. I can't wait till my Garmin gets here so I don't have to train on the treadmill on beautiful days. Word to the wise - don't select the free Super Saver Shipping on Amazon. It literally takes forever. Just suck it up and pay the shipping. Anyways, I did a mile warmup at an 11 min pace, then 3 miles at a 9:45 pace, then a mile cooldown at an 11:20 pace. I felt good through the run, but was exhausted by the end of mile 4. Not to mention, I started getting random cramps halfway through from the Frosty I had eaten after lunch. Not doing that again! Overall, it was a great run. Now, I get 2 days off! I will probably go to the gym Saturday and get some strength training in. Sunday is another 6-mile run. Here's the problem with Sunday - family reunion with tons of yummy food. The goal is to get up and run before the family reunion....but I may end up pushing the long run back to Monday! Another goal for Sunday is to not eat so much that I am miserable and have to go home and sleep it off! Wish me luck!

Next run: Sunday (or Monday): Long run 6 miles

Total mileage for the week: 13! woohoo!

Long day, bad eating!

2009-05-21T00:44:00.002-04:00

So I worked 15 hours today. I finally made it home at 12:30 AM and will be back at work at 9:00 AM. I normally don't do this, but the pharmacy I sometimes work is remodeling, so we had to move everything out of the pharmacy into a temporary pharmacy shack. This was a nightmare, and we had Taco Bell. I ate so well all day long, and have been for a couple of weeks now. I even had a bag of chocolate candy at work earlier today and only ate 1 piece! Well dinner was a disaster....I ate a bean burrito (fresco style), 2 tacos, and cinnamon twists. Then I ate a donut!! Ouch. Oh well. I hope one day I will learn not to be so weak during stressful situations. I will be back on the good diet in the morning. I don't feel too horrible because I have a nice tempo run to do after work. Hopefully I didn't ruin my weight loss effort for this week.

Easy 2-miler

2009-05-19T22:03:00.004-04:00

I ran my 2-miler this evening after work around 8:00PM. It was so nice outside....a little on the cool side. I ran on the Kanawha Terrace in St. Albans. I enjoy running the Terrace because I can run right out my front door and end up on my route in less than 2 minutes. No driving anywhere to run. From my house to the high school is a little over a mile, so I ran to the high school and back.

Today I realized how much I enjoy running. When you're actually in shape, these runs are very pleasant. I used to blow these small runs off, but I know how important they are for building my mileage and clearing my head. These are the runs that take very little effort, and give you a chance to focus on just being outside enjoying your surroundings. A nice change from crawling to my car after my 6 miler on Sunday.

Next run: Thursday - Tempo Run
Dist: 5 mi - 1 mi warm-up; 3 mi @ 9:45; 1 mi cool-down

Total miles so far this week: 8

Long Run #1 - 6 miles

2009-05-19T13:07:00.006-04:00

I went on my first long run of my training plan on Sunday. It was 6 miles. First, I did a walk at the State Capitol for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. They raised over $120,000! It was a lap around the Capitol complex, which is actually pretty long. Anyways, I walked to the Kanawha Boulevard from the Capitol to do my run. Running on the Blvd is so amazing and beautiful. The Blvd is a stretch that runs from the eastern end of Charleston (past where the Capitol is) to the west end of Charleston at Patrick Street. A running marker to start at is the 35th Street Bridge. Once you reach the west end, you go over a bridge to the other side of the river into South Charleston and end up on MacCorkle Ave. This ends up being a 4 mile run from point to point. From there you can either run the other side of river back to Kanawha City, or you can continue into South Charleston.

Anyways, the river route is amzing. Here's a picture of part of the run:

photo courtesy of http://family-images.com/wv/index1.htm

The State Capitol is that little blob in the upper right on the left side of the river right above all those trees. This view shows about 2 miles of the Blvd. I think this is a fairly old picture, as things on the right of the river don't look nearly as developed as they are now. I will have to find a newer picture for you guys. But, anyways you get the idea of how pretty this run can be!

So, I felt good most of the run, till about mile 5, then I was struggling with it. I stopped at a couple water fountains for a few seconds to refill my little water bottle. I was going to make it! I started looking for the big green Greenbrier Street interstate sign. Greenbrier street was my final destination. About 1/2 mile out I could see the sign. A sigh of relief!! But this last 1/2 mile was really testing me. I passed someone I knew walking her dog and shouted "hi" at her. Almost there....1/4 mile left. I'm thinking, "come on, Tammy, you can do it". Elizabeth street. Just one block away! When I finished my lungs felt like they were going to explode. I was panting. So much for an easy run. I have no idea what pace I was going at the end....I started off at a very comfortable pace...probably around an 11 minute per mile pace. I'm not sure if I sped up or was just not in shape enough for that long of a run. I am waiting for my Garmin Forerunner 405 watch to come in, then pace won't be a question. I staggered back to the Capitol, collapsed under a tree and stretched for a few minutes. Then I staggered to my car, stopped at 7-11 and got a G2, and went home to rest.

Next run: Tuesday - Easy run, 2 miles

More info about the CDR

2009-05-19T12:52:00.003-04:00

Here are some links about the Charleston Distance Run:

Charleston Distance Run official website - race information and last year's results

2009 changes to the course - an article about changes to the course for this year

The future of the CDR - and article about the possibility of changing the CDR to a half marathon

Currently, they don't have all the race info up on the official race website, but it should be there soon.

Introduction to me

2009-05-19T12:22:00.004-04:00

Well, this is my first ever post as a blogger! I will tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Tammy, and I was born and raised in Charleston, WV. I graduated from West Virginia University in 2008 with a Doctor of Pharmacy Degree. I work as a pharmacist in Charleston and I also get to provide diabetes education. I have been married for a year now to the absolute love of my life. I have a cat, a hamster, and two birds, lol. Everything but children! We are waiting about 5 more years for that! I am obsessed with makeup, in particular M.A.C. makeup, and I spend way too much money on it if you ask my husband!

Ok, so this is a blog about running, not pharmacy, or makeup, or being married!

I started running about a year ago as a way to lose weight. Unfortunately, I have not lost any weight, but I am trimmer and it definitely prevents me from gaining! If I can just control what I eat, I think I would be ok. Anyways, to keep myself running, I sign up for every local 5k, 10k, or whatever there is out there to sign up for. I usually run at least one race per month...that way I keep myself training. My best 5k time was 27:52. The very first 5k I ever ran was the 5k in the Charleston Distance Run last year, in which I ran it in 30:33.

So that brings me to the Charleston Distance Run (CDR). This has been a local race for the past 37 years. Like I said, I ran the 5K part of it last year, and this year I want to do the actual CDR - the 15 miler!! I think I may be crazy. There are a couple reasons I am running this race come September 5, 2009. One is that I really truly want to lose weight. I haven't been logging enough miles to make a difference in weight, and I can't get myself to log more miles on my own. So, signing up for a 15 miler is my committment to log more miles. Another reason I want to run the CDR is this might be the last year for this race. In an attempt to draw more people to the race, they are considering changing it to a half marathon and cutting out the 6 mile hill section, making it a flat half marathon. I want to be part of something that has been a tradition in our town, and be able to say that I ran it. Before it gets changed to a half marathon, that is.

So, there you have it - my background and why I'm running a 15 mile race.

Stay tuned!

Tammy