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PF Chang’s Marathon Training Week 4

December 11, 2012 · by Ari ·

Okay, so before I talk about last week, I want to talk a little bit about my mental game because, well, it sucks right now. For 6 months, I’ve been training for a marathon. For 8 months before that I was training for half marathons–my first and then training to PR at a couple of others. That is a long time. Surprisingly, my body feels okay. I feel much stronger than I did a few months ago during the first round of this training cycle, and while my body still doesn’t seem to love the idea of running a marathon, I’m not in a constant state of pain the way I was while training for New York. My mind, however, is a little done.

The last 2 weeks have been lower mileage, and let me tell you, I have done the bare minimum. Last week I ran something like 22 miles, when just a couple of weeks ago, I had a couple 7 day periods (not M-F weeks, but still technically weeks) that were double that. Somehow I doubt cutting back means halving my mileage. Unless I have plans to run with a friend, I’m having a tough time forcing myself to do much of anything. I’m sure I could come up with a million excuses–it’s too cold now to ride my bike in the morning, I’ve been so busy that it’s hard to get to the gym for spinning or strength training (to be fair, last week was tech week…), etc.

I actually think the cutback weeks might be partially to blame. I get excited about challenging weeks with high mileage, and I get excited to get them in. The last two weeks, I’ve felt excited for my races, but the rest of the time I can’t get into it. So maybe the world could just plan races on all of my running days, so I could get excited about them too? I would love if everything could just revolve around me. 😉

In all serious, I know it will be fine, and I know that a 7 month marathon training cycle is a little ridiculous, and I would be a freak of nature if I didn’t feel some burnout, but the fact is, I have 3 weeks left of real training before we go into taper, and I need to make the most of it. I want to get to the starting line of PF Chang’s feeling confident and like I’ve done everything I can do to run the best marathon I have in me. I’m not a person who settles or simply does something to “get through it”. After everything that’s happened, I need to do my best, and cross that finish line with no regrets.

Okay enough rambling. Here’s how my kind of lame week went down.

Monday: Strength training. I did the same thing as last week, but did my push ups and reverse push ups in sets of 12. I know I’ll have to change it up eventually, and get to a gym or get some free weights at home, but for now, I’m adopting the “something is better than nothing” approach.

Tuesday: Speed work!! YAY!! First, let me say, it’s a lot harder when I can’t go to track. I love the track. I love it’s perfect 1/4 mile distance that you can see the end of. I love Coach Susan standing there with her little clipboard, and telling her my paces at the end. I love watching everyone whiz by and leave me in the dust. It’s not quite the same along a path of the canal, but I did have Nicole there to kick my butt. We did a little over a mile warm up, then 4x400s at 7:21, 7:29, 6:58, 6:44, then a mile at 8:59, then a cool down. I kind of wanted to die, but it was good. I really miss the track, and I can’t wait until spring when it moves back to mornings and I can go again! We ended up running 3.7 miles in 35 minutes.

Wednesday: Push ups? That’s all I did. My regular push ups and my dip push ups. I did half of that at the theatre when I got there for rehearsal, and the other half while I was getting dressed. I’d made plans to go for a bike ride, but I forgot about a meeting, and just ran out of time to do much, but I guess something is better than nothing.

Thursday: Off. I guess I could call it “rest”, but I’m not sure what I’d be resting from…

Friday: 9 mile run. After a really stressful week, and honestly, a pretty crappy week emotionally, I just didn’t want to run that morning. At 1am when I was still awake, I *almost* texted Nicole to cancel, but plans hold me accountable, and even Steve reminded me that I’d feel worse if I didn’t do it, so I woke up at 6am and ran with Nicole, and you know what? It was AWESOME. After the run, I felt like a new person, and the stress of the week seemed to melt away, at least for a little while. I felt strong almost the entire run, and Nicole was great and let me vent about everything that was bugging me. We did 3 miles easy, 2 at marathon pace, 1 easy, 2 at marathon pace, and 1 cool down ending at an average pace of 10:03, which is pretty darn good considering my goals for this marathon. In fact, it was probably “too fast” and I probably don’t care in the slightest. 😉

Saturday: Rest. But okay, for real this time. I ran 9 miles on Friday and had a 9 mile race on Sunday. This one was actually intentional.

Sunday: Hot Chocolate 15k, Full recap coming soon. I didn’t really race it the way I had planned, but I’m actually pretty proud of my performance and how I did all things considered.

So there you have it. Hopefully this is the last you see of the whining and complaining about training until I get to taper, where I will inevitable complain about how my life sucks because I’m not running enough, I’m getting “fat”, and how after a 7 month training cycle including 2 20 milers, I’m so ridiculously “under prepared”. At that point, feel free to judge me.

What do you do when you’re in a mental and motivational rut? Inspire me please.

Filed Under: Uncategorized · Tagged: marathon training, pf changs, rnraz, running

PF Chang’s Marathon Training Week 2

November 27, 2012 · by Ari ·

And just like that, I’m back into peak marathon training. Somehow I only have 2 long distance runs left before it’s time to taper. This second section of training that I expected to take forrrrrrever seems to be flying by, and I can see definite improvements from the last time around! It’s nice because I’m no longer scared of these distances, so I can push myself more, and I’m seeing a pretty big difference in speed especially in my long runs. Sweet. Here’s how last week’s training went down:

Monday: Rest. This was the unintentionally real life becoming more important than exercise type of rest day. I planned to do something, but I had no idea what, and then life got busy and I didn’t stress myself out to try to fit it in. Most people have a hard time fitting their work outs into their lives; I sometimes have a hard time fitting my life around my workouts, and honestly, that just seems silly, so I took a real life day and got stuff done.

Tuesday: 6 mile run. My best friend Bethany is working really hard on her running and I am sosoSO proud of her! She wanted to tackle her first ever 6 mile run, so I ran with her and she ROCKED it! It’s so great to be able to run with her and watch her make so much progress!

Wednesday: 3.5 mile run. Easy run before physical therapy with Ashley. 10 min pace, then a whole like 5 minutes of abs that made me want to die. must.start.strength.training.

Thursday: Mesa Turkey Trot 10k. Check out the recap!

Friday: 8.5 mile bike. Easy ride to coffee with Steve.

Saturday: 17.17 mile run. This run started out tough. Nicole and I were both feeling slow and lethargic, and I watched our first few miles clock in ridiculously slow. I knew I wanted to beat my time for my last 17 miler, and I felt like finishing in less than 2:55 would be a nice bonus. I was a little worried about our first slow miles, but I know myself, and I know that’s just how my body works on long runs, and I really believe it’s for the best. I always start ridiculously slow and negative split the crap out of it, but I still always worry that I won’t have enough left in the tank to make up for it at the end. However, looking back at the splits from just 2 months ago, I can see a huge difference even in my slowest miles, and as always, we sped up. A lot. The plan called for the first minute of the final 10 miles to be at goal pace. This was a nice way to break up all of those miles at the end. We had something to focus on for a minute out of every mile that wasn’t “GOOD LORD HOW MUCH LONGER????” At first we were slightly speeding up to make these first minutes happen, but soon we were running faster than goal pace, and then we were confused–Do we speed up? Slow down? Run the same? Sing Call Me Maybe? 

We kind just kept doing our thing, and I finished 17.17 miles in 2:54:25 for an average pace of 10:09. That is pretty darn good for these slow legs! The end started feeling hard, and I was tired, but I felt so much better than after the first time. I was peppy and energized rather than lethargic and in pain. I also did a much better job of taking care of myself afterwards. Nicole and I got in her pool for an ice bath with our Dutch Bro’s, then stretched for quite a while. It made a world of difference!

Sunday: Rest. Necessary and fabulous.

Totals for the week:

Running: 32.95
Cycling: 8.5

Onward.

Tell me about your training!

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized · Tagged: fitness, marathon training, pf changs, running

Eddie’s Birthday

October 17, 2011 · by Ari ·

Last night, Steve and I went out to PF Changs with our favorite Starbucks friends to celebrate out friend Eddie’s birthday. There were only 8 of us there, but it ended up being the perfect sized group and the three people I didn’t know very well I liked a lot. Steve made Eddie pose for photo testing because he’s super photogenic

Charlie and Mona wanted to pose too!

Mona’s face is priceless. I love that girl!

When I opened the menu I started to stress out a little bit and proceeded to act like a total freak by looking up all the nutritional info on my phone. Yes, I’m crazy and I admit this. I’m working on it. The more I looked at the info and realized that every dish contained 2-5 servings, I started to freak out calmly figure out how to make a smart decision on how to proceed. I ended up ordering what I wanted and asking them to pack half of it in a to go box, so now I have a delicious lunch to look forward to today also. There is always a solution when it comes to making smart food choices, it is just so easy to get overwhelmed and either not enjoy yourself at all, or make a less than fabulous choice.

Dinner was good, but not amazing. I used to love PF Changs, but honestly I am just kind of over chains for the most part. If I’m going to go out to eat, I want it to be somewhere unique where I can try something different, and if it is Asian food, I really just want it to be sushi. I have no interest in the rest other than what I could more healthily and tastily make myself at home (stir fry, pad Thai, etc).

But the company was great. Steve became besties with Luke, a new-ish (at least to me) barista as they laughed about nerdy boy internet things that I don’t understand. Kara and I planned the next two weeks of our training (which hopefully will include a SLUMBER PARTY!!!!!)

And we all had a great time. Oh yeah, and there was some chopstick funniness in there as well…

This is Tori. I didn’t really know her before last night, but she is funny and fabulous!

Aaaannnd my Chocolate Peanut Butter Rice Krispy Treats were a hit! TAAAAADDDDAAA!!!!

When we got outside, Steve wanted us to pose with the horse statue. Of course it took so much convincing for my to climb things and pose ridiculously in public. I normally have so much more class. 😉

I’m glad I’m not the only ridiculous one!

Then of course the night wouldn’t be complete without a moomoo

Still not 100% sure how or why this happened…

Such a fun night! Happy birthday Eddie!!

Filed Under: Uncategorized · Tagged: birthday, friends, pf changs, starbucks

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