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Little changes making a big difference.


NYC Marathon Training Week 4

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Wait, that was week 4 already? I totally typed week 3, then realized that was wrong. Oy! Last week was really great. I felt really motivated, and I felt like my pace was starting to pick up a bit. I had the fastest long run I’ve had in a long time (ever?), and made a comeback to double digit runs after almost 2 months away. Success. Also, I raced and PRed. Here’s how it went down.

Monday: 4 miles. 9:36 average pace that felt easy, and awesome. One of those “I love life, I want to run forever and ever!!!!” type of runs.

Wednesday: 3.1 miles. 9:43 average pace. My body was tired. My mind was tired. My Legs were tired. My abs here are always tired. Abs 3-4x a day is simultaneously the best and worst part of my job. Anyway, I was doing too much the beginning of last week on too little sleep. Wasn’t taking excellent care of myself, and Wednesday I felt pretty much like crap, but running helped a little, and I forced myself to sleep that night for…

Thursday: 10.25 miles. 10:13 average pace. Negative splits. Last mile (okay, it WAS downhill, but I’m still excited!) in 8:31. Serious runners high. Also, great friends got my through. They’re awesome. Best way to train for a marathon? Make all of your friends run with you at all times. Also, people get all happy and get their own runners high and are super appreciative, and make you feel motivational or something. It’s cool. I like it.

Saturday: Actual rest. Holla.

Sunday: Be The One Run. Here’s my recap 🙂

Week 4 of training = success. Still riding the excited train.

Fundraising: My fundraising page is still sitting at $600. I haven’t been able to do as much work in that department here in Portland, but please don’t hesitate to check out my for sale page, or click over to make a donation. 🙂

 

Work It Out 5/14-5/20

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Well, after a pretty mellow week with 3 full rest days, I definitely kicked it into gear last week! By Sunday afternoon my weekly mileage on daily mile reached 100! No, I did not ride extra miles on my bike just because I wanted to see a 3 digit mileage number. Who does things like that? Crazy, number obsessed people. I just happened to ride exactly 17 miles when my daily mile was at 83. Obviously. 😉

Monday: 3 miles with Jason. Remember when this guy ran like 12 minute miles? Umm, our average pace was 10:06. He’s amazing, and I’m starting to really get a lot out of our weekly runs together!

Tuesday: Spin, Strength & Swimming. I kind of felt awesome after completing 3 workouts in one day. I mean, sure, my strength training was all of 15 minutes, but I was still sore the next day from it! I am working on getting up to a 5 minute plank like this girl, and Tuesday I got to 2:20. Obviously, I have a ways to go. Spin class was awesome as usual, then I had my first swimming work out with my fav triathlete! I swam 400 yards, and it was hard and awesome.

Wednesday: Tempo run. This run was not fun. I had 6 miles on the schedule with 4 tempo miles @ 9:03. Well, my last tempo run was the same thing with the tempo miles at 9:07, and it was hard, but I killed it, and even had my last mile below 8:50. This run felt entirely different. I was struggling .5 miles in, it was 80 degrees out, and I left my ipod at home, so I could literally hear myself grasping for air. I stayed on pace,  but had to stop after the second and third tempo mile to catch my breath. As frustrated as I was by this run, I feel like I learned a lot from it. I had a great talk with my coach about it, and realized that I’m really not hydrating well enough, and that as it gets hotter, I need to be okay with slowing down. It won’t be this hot in Seattle or in NYC, so I need to focus on how I feel rather than what my garmin says. This is especially hard for me since my focus on running numbers has been such a huge aid in taking my focus away from scale numbers. I am number focused. It’s how I measure my progress, and when the numbers don’t reflect my effort, I get frustrated, discouraged, and whiney. That’s okay. I don’t think I will feel that way forever. I’m not going to beat myself up about the way I feel or react to things. I am simply going to note it, try to be more aware, and do my best to not let it get me down.

Thursday: Spin. Sweaty, hilly love.

Friday: 20 mile bike ride with Nicole. We had a great time, and chatted the whole 20 miles. Perfect way to start the day!

Saturday: Long run. Our team training runs for Chances for Children don’t officially start until I leave for Portland, but Susan invited us to come run with her, and the group she coaches, so I jumped on the opportunity! My alarm went off at 3:55am (yikes!), and I headed out to meet the group. Unfortunately, the park bathrooms were locked, and so when Stacey arrived, we went in search of a restroom and ended up starting closer to 5:30 than the 5:00 start time. We started off running with Susan’s husband bill who was so nice and went slow with us to show us the path. Around mile 2.5, we separated from Bill because my stomach is still a mess, and I had to stop at this resort to use the bathroom. Even considering that, I was feeling the best I have on a long run in weeks! We were maintaining around a 10:25 pace, which is right on target for my plan, it wasn’t too warm out yet, and I just felt really into the run. By the end, though, I started fading a bit, and Stacey was pushing me through, then at the last mile, we saw Susan who had waiting for us long after everyone who had started on time was already gone, and came up to run the last mile with us! Having a coach is freaking amazing, let me tell you. That was the push I needed, because I finished the last mile in 9:26, and ended 13.06 miles with an average pace of 10:16, which, for me, is pretty awesome! I had serious runners high all day long!

Sunday: 17 mile bike ride with Steve and Jason. I wanted to go on a bike ride, and I wanted to hit 100 miles, so that’s what I did 😉

What a great week! Even with a crappy run, I still feel like it’s one of the best training weeks I’ve had in a long time!

How did you work it out last week? How do you stay motivated and track your progress when the numbers start to kind of suck??

Star Struck

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Yesterday was a pretty amazing day! It started with a killer speed session with speed demon Ashley before Physical Therapy, some super twitchy needling (this part was not awesome, but I was suuuuper tight today, so obviously it was necessary), and then I met up with this amazing lady.

Susan has run multiple times in the Olympic trials, and she runs something ridiculous like a 2:42 marathon! You know, about the amount of time it takes me to run half that. As soon as she told me that, I felt like I was talking to Bernadette Peters. What? You’re not musical theatre obsessed like me and that means nothing to you? Okay, I felt like I was talking to Meryl Streep! You want to know what else??? She didn’t start running until she was 36 years old! And she ran her first marathon in about 4 hours. Talk about freaking inspiration!

Turns out she’s kind of like a running celebrity here in Phoenix! She also happens to be my coach for the New York City Marathon!! And now if she reads this she will think I’m a crazy stalker and probably disown me. I knew when I made this commitment that I had made the right choice, and I was super excited, but after talking to Susan yesterday, I realize just how amazing this organization is, and how lucky I am to be working with such an incredible coach on my first full marathon.

She also explained a little bit more about what Chances for Children does, and how my fundraising will offer physical education and fitness opportunities to kids who can’t even afford to buy shoes. There are several events that I have the opportunity to be a part of and see exactly where this money is going, and I cannot wait to get more involved!

If you would like to be a part of this journey with me, you can donate here. No pressure, and there will also be some fun things for sale over in these parts soon, so there are lots of ways you can be a part of this endeavor, including some awesome virtual cheer leading.  😉

Big News!!

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Hi friends! I have big exciting news. Well, perhaps it is only big and exciting in my world, but I’m going to share it with you, and I hope you think it’s exciting too!

But first, I want to talk about my awesome speed sesh with Ashley this morning! I am trying to be a legit runner, and stick to my training plan, which means today was my first official training speed session. I mean, I definitely made up some of my own in the past with no idea what I was doing or why I was choosing certain distances, just in the hopes of getting faster. They were killer and I think they worked pretty well, but there is something about seeing it on the plan and the determination to reach that goal that really excites me!

All 3 of my previous speed work outs (maybe there were only 2? who knows…) were done at 800 meter intervals. This training plan uses exclusively 1600s (1 mile). I have a small confession. In the past, if I didn’t feel like I could make it, I wouldn’t just slow down like an honest non cheating runner, I would stop, pause my garmin, catch my breath for a second (or 10), then be on my merry way. It was easy to let myself give up, and I felt like I was cheating…and honestly, I kinda was. I am determined for no more cheating!

Today the plan called for 4 miles including a 1 mile warm up, 2x1600s @ 8:45 with an 800 recovery jog in between, and a cool down. The first interval was challenging, but I knew the entire time that I could do it. I never felt like I was going to die or anything, which I take as a good sign. I finished the first 1600 in 8:42. Not bad, self. Not bad at all. Towards the end of our recovery jog, Ashley asked if I needed to stop before the next interval and I proudly denied the possibility of stopping and said my 800 of jogging should be plenty of rest, and if I have to slow down, and I don’t meet my goal, that is my problem, but I’m not allowed to stop. See friends, I have turned over a new leaf!

The second interval was challenging, but I never felt like I needed to stop. It just felt hard, but running is supposed to be hard, and that’s why I like it! I finished the second interval in 8:37, and after the cool down, I completed 4 miles in 38:24. Not too shabby. The whole run felt challenging, but great! Tomorrow is a rest day, and then Friday it says 8 miles at a snail’s pace. Or at least, it might as well. 😉 After the run, I got lots of twitchy needling done. Today was a little rough. The more your muscles twitch and grab onto the needle, the more painful it is, and today Gabe got all excited talking about how I was “getting so many good twitches” while I was fighting the urge to yell obscenities because the pain was a little ridiculous. But you know what? If it works as well as it did last week, NEEDLE AWAY GABE!!!!! For real.

Okay, so that news….

Drum roll please………..


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Excuse me, but I don’t believe you actually made a drum roll sound, can you please play along?

I’m sorry, I’m 5.

This is me when I was actually a child. Now I just act like one.

 

*** I SIGNED UP FOR A FULL MARATHON!! ***

That’s it? We had to drum roll for that? I’m never reading this blog again!

It’s okay friends, I’m not very observant, so even if you only pretend to be excited, I will never know the difference 😉

But wait…there’s more! It’s not just any marathon. Let me explain. While Kara and I were training for PF Chang’s, I started musing about the day I would complete a full marathon. I remember saying to her that when we did our first full, we should go somewhere special, and make a big celebratory vacation out of it! Well I was training for my first half, while lots of awesome running bloggers were training for and running the New York City Marathon. I remember thinking “How amazing!!! I want to do that!!” I declared to Kara that this would be our marathon. Well, remember that I am a new runner, and I didn’t know about the lottery system or anything like that. Once I discovered that not just anyone could sign up, I cried because my dreams were crushed, I moved on to other options. I had all, but decided on San Diego, when I heard terrible things about the race, and resigned myself to the fact that PF Chang’s in Phoenix next January would be my race. Which, don’t get me wrong, would still be awesome, but I remember so clearly dreaming about New York.

Well, Monday I went to get my hurrrr did (yes, that is how I say it), and Allison mentioned that Chances for Children had spots open for NYC. I couldn’t even believe it.

“Chances for Children is committed to improving quality of life by supporting programs that provide access to sports, physical education, and character education for youth. We provide fitness training, nutritional programs and educational services to students at schools throughout Arizona. Chances for Children was founded on the belief that in life everyone deserves the chance for opportunity. Research shows that diet and exercise promote a balanced well-being, resulting in positive life achievements.”
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The opportunity to raise money for a foundation that provides health and fitness opportunities for kids?!?! And the opportunity to run the NYC Marathon?!?!?! It kind of seemed like fate. Within 24 hours, I filled out a form and secured my spot. Lots more to come about the foundation, my plans for how to raise the money (it’s a $5,000 commitment that I hope to not just meet, but exceed), and my training.

Being a part of this program, I get a personalized training plan as well as coaching which is absolutely amazing. I also am thrilled about the idea of working with a team, being a part of something bigger, and running for more than myself. I get to run to help all of those kids struggling with health and self esteem like I did when I was their age. I have the opportunity to open doors for these kids, and possibly help them from struggling with weight, health and self esteem until their mid 20’s like I did. I could help someone like me, and make their life better. And isn’t that what it’s all about? As someone who works with kids every day, and knows all too well the challenges of being an overweight child, I cannot think of a more relevant organization to accomplish this life long dream with. I haven’t been this excited about something in a very long time, and I can’t wait to share this journey with all of you!

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