Monthly Archives: November 2012

Streaking 8 and 9

DAY EIGHT (11/29/12)

Weather: 30 degrees

Mileage: 1 mile

Report: An early morning treadmill run before a busy, big day.  I was feeling pretty tired as I started this mile, so I decided to just do a mile and then lift, which I needed to do this week still.  Nothing amazing to report about this run, but the streak continues, even on a crazy, busy, stressful day.

 

DAY NINE (11/30/12)

Weather: 50 degrees

Mileage: 1 mile

Report: I SOOOOOO wanted to do this one outside.  The weather finally warmed up and it was sunny and wonderful during the day.  Unfortunately, however, I planned to run after work due to a crazy day and it was dark by the time it was time to workout.  I eked out a mile on the treadmill and then hopped on the bike for some new scenery.  I’m very excited to take advantage of the beautiful, warm weather this weekend and head back outside to run!

Streak Day Seven

DAY SEVEN (11/28/12)

Weather: 37 degrees

Mileage: 2.15 miles

Report: Another treadmill run today which went very well, actually.  I even played with the speed a little bit and got to have some fun with intervals and hills.  The lesson learned for today was the time of day worked out.  Running on the treadmill after work wasn’t my favorite, but it’s nice to mix it up each day and not get too bored with the same thing each day, even with this running streak.  It’s about fitting it in each day and not making excuses and so far, one week in, it’s going strong!

Streaking 6 Days Solid

DAY SIX (11/27/12)

Weather: 39 degrees

Mileage: 1.25 miles

Report: Today I tried sneaking in a run at lunch, and it went surprisingly well!  I’m lucky to have a gym in the same office complex as where I work, so it cut the commute time down to about 10 minutes.  I wanted to be able to get there, workout, shower and be back in my seat in an hour or less.  Today I made it back in 45.  I even had time to lift after running 1.25 miles and fitting in lifting, too.  The gym was pretty empty which was a big help and something to keep in mind moving forward.

An update on my goal of not hating the treadmill as much is also progressing as I’ve found Netflix is a huge help in passing the time.  Next lunchtime workout I think I’ll be confident enough to spend a few more minutes working out now that I know how much time it takes me to shower/get ready at lunch.

Streak Day 5

DAY FIVE (11/26/12)

Weather: 30 degrees

Mileage: 1 mile

Report: Busy day ahead, so I hit the treadmill this morning before work.  Update in case you were curious, I have not yet mastered loving the treadmill.  I got my mile in and then hopped on the bike.

Streaking Days 2-4

I’m bulking these recaps because the weekend itself was a little crazy.  BUT, I got at least a mile in each day, and two of those days I ran outside.

I have two long-term goals for this streaking plan that I hope to accomplish.

1) Use this challenge to fit in running every single day.

2) Learn to like the treadmill more.

So far I’m definitely seeing goal #1 working as I fit the miles into these past few days.  Goal #2 I’m hoping to beat into submission.  We’ll see how that goes.

 

DAY TWO (11/23/12)

Weather: 35 degrees, partly cloudy

Mileage: 1 miles

Report: I ran the treadmill on Friday because I spent most of the day on Friday taking care of and keeping an eye on my husband who was fighting some food poisoning.  It was dark, so I decided to hit the gym on the way to pick up dinner (plian, dry breadsticks fit into his simple-to-digest meal prescription).  I was quickly reminded how much I hate the treadmill.  I don’t know why, but I do.  My next treadmill attempt will have to try and incorporate some Netflix to help the time go by.  I hit the one mile mark and hopped off and onto the bike to continue the workout.

 

DAY THREE (11/24/12)

Weather: 30 degrees, clear

Mileage: 2 miles

Report: It was pretty empty outside for these few miles, but I actually found that I had dressed too warmly.  The cold was a little bit of a shock to the system since I haven’t run in the cold in a while, but it was good to do a few outside.

 

DAY FOUR (11/25/12)

Weather: 44 degrees, clear

Mileage: 2.12 miles

Report: I ran these after the Colts game and despite the warmer weather and fact my legs felt good, I wanted to puke the whole time because I had just eaten lunch during the game. And it was a heavy lunch.  But, the miles felt good and I’m still on track 4 days into the challenge.

 

#RWStreak – Day 1

What is the #RWstreak?  The Runner’s World Streak is a holiday challenge extended by Runner’s World magazine to help keep runners motivated after their fall races and before spring training starts. It’s simple, you commit to run at least one mile per day between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day.  Some days that will only mean a mile, some days it will be longer, but each day you run, regardless of your excuses and the reasons you normally wouldn’t run.  This year, I’ve decided to try my hand at this 48-day challenge! I’ll try and keep up with mini-blogs for each run, too.

DAY ONE

Weather: 62 degrees, partly cloudy

Mileage: 1.12 miles

Report: What a beautiful day to start the #RWstreak!  I only did a mile today because of getting back from vacation, getting ready to leave town again and all the things that have to be done along those lines.  After traveling, flying and eating vacation-style for the past week it did feel good to get out on the road and stretch out again.

Adventures in Cooking: Quinoa

I tried a new recipe tonight and it involved using the bag of quinoa we’ve had in the cabinet since I thought I would be creative with cooking and bought it over the summer.

Here are the assumptions that I had about this interesting new food…

1) I thought it was pronounced quin-ooo-a.

2) I thought it would be a hybrid of rice and pasta and very similar to couscous.

3) Based on assumption #2… I thought it would be very similar to cooking rice or pasta, or even couscous.

Here’s what I learned tonight.

1) It’s pronounced keen-wa.  I was no where near correct in that one.

2) It kind of was like rice or pasta or couscous… but not at all soft or tender like those others.  It has it’s place, but doesn’t really fill that comfort food carb niche.  Still working on finding the perfect meal with this grain.

3) It was not like cooking  rice or pasta…

Why was it not like cooking rice or pasta?  Oh, because it crawls out of the pot like a live animal!  That is probably something they should put on the box.

It started off pretty normal with boiling water, putting in the quinoa, and then I turned down the let it simmer, per the box instructions.  I even put a slightly smaller lid on pot so it wouldn’t boil over (as rice and pasta do) while it was simmering.  I walked into the other room and a few minutes later started to smell burning.  Not totally uncommon w/ our stove, but it really smelled like smoke this time.  I walked into the kitchen and found not only had the quinoa (a grain, mind you…) crawled up the side and popped right out of the pot, but some of the pieces had caught fire and burned to black where the flame touched.

So, lesson learned. Do NOT leave quinoa alone in the kitchen.

On a related note… now accepting interesting quinoa recipes for future dinner experiments.

November Race: Monumental Half Marathon

Four months of training definitely paid off for this race!

The theme was #PRorBust for this race and I definitely achieved that goal.  But, more than a few times during these past few months before the race I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t be able to race.

I started training in July because I had taken the month of June almost entirely off from running.  July was hot and humid and so was August.  When September rolled around and we were driving up to Valpo for the Popcorn Panic I remember saying to Jerrod that I wasn’t sure I’d run the Monumental Half because I didn’t think I’d be ready and didn’t think I would be in the right shape to run it in time.  After finishing the Popcorn Panic strong, I changed my tune and started weekly training runs with a friend of mine to help keep each other on track.  I got serious about my training schedule and really dug in to training this time.

I had a really great long run three weeks ago that gave me a lot of confidence going into this weekend.  Two weeks ago I had a bad long run, which I was hoping meant I got that out of my system.  Last weekend I did a hard 6 miles, which was supposed to be an easy long run taper, but it felt a little rough regardless.  So, this week I took most of the week off and just did a few miles on Wednesday on a treadmill.

By Thursday this week I was chomping at the bit to race on Saturday.  I felt ready and excited and started to put my goals and race day plan together.

Based on my training plan, here was my race plan:

Miles 1-3: Run the first 3 miles, walk a minute, have some Gatorade, start back up.

Miles 4-6: Run the next 3 miles, walk a minute, have some energy chews, start back up.

Miles 7-10 and 11-13.1: Repeat pattern for the rest of the race.

I wanted to finish the race in 2:45:00, which was a bit of a stretch for me, but way better than my May 1/2 time of 3:08:27.  That meant basically shaving 2 minutes/mile off the last half time and was even :15 seconds faster/mile than I had been training at – even on my best days.  BUT, I wanted to aim high and see what happened.  I didn’ t put it in writing in public in advance because I was afraid of failing and too much pressure, but that was the goal time.  I expected to fall just short of it and end at a 12:45 pace, like my good training runs.

I woke up on Friday, the day before the race, and I knew something was wrong.  I didn’t feel well,  I didn’t feel like myself and I debated between going to the doctor or ignoring the symptoms and finally ended up at the doctor on Friday night.  And, it turns out, diagnosed with a bit of an infection.  The NP I saw said I could chance it and wait until after the race to take first course of antibiotics, but risk feeling bad during the race, or start the first course of antibiotics on Friday night as I was leaving her office, but risk running the race on the antibiotics which I didn’t know how they would impact my system during the race.

There’s a cardinal rule of running… Don’t try anything new on race day.   Welp, that doesn’t really help me here because either the meds, or the infection, was going to be new… so I opted to roll the dice with the medication and hope for the best.

So I was terrified on Friday night that after all this training, after feeling so ready for this race, that it wouldn’t happen.

Thankfully, I woke up on Saturday and felt much better than I had on Friday night.  It was looking like taking the medicine on Friday night was the right to do.

I had planned and laid out almost everything the night before so I quickly got ready to go and Jerrod bundled up because he was going to be biking along the course to see me at several points.  We were running just a few minutes behind when we were driving downtown and I realized, to my horror, that I had forgotten my bib.  Whoops.   I pulled a U-turn on College and ran back in the house to grab the bib.   Now, I was officially running late.

Luckily, there was no traffic and I got downtown just in time to walk over with about 10 minutes to spare before gun time.  We lined up and I was feeling pretty good about how the race was going to go.

Pre-Race

Race Recap

Miles 1-3: I started out at what I wanted to be a solid start pace, 12:30.  I was feeling like it was a bit fast, but I figured my watch was correct and I would just have to make it work.  About mile 2 I realized I had forgotten to turn the GPS feature on my watch on and it was WAY off.  By about 30 seconds, if not more.  So, I figured I would just do the best I could without dropping below an okay pace according to the watch and then I would have some padding built in to the end of the race.  Jerrod was going to be waiting to see me about mile 3, and I was internally debating if I would walk after mile 3, like I did on some training runs, or mile 4, but wanted to keep running until I saw Jerrod, so I decided to go until mile 4.

Miles 4-6: I started to feel good as I started this amount and decided to keep running, no break.  The only non-running steps I took through the first 6 miles were the few I took to swallow a sip of water and chew an energy bite at about mile 6.  I saw Jerrod just after mile 5 and I was feeling great and wanted to keep running as long as I could.   I set my next goal to keep running until at least mile 7, when I planned to take an aspirin and the half split off from the full marathon.

Miles 7-10: I popped an aspirin at mile 7’s water stop and decided to keep running, no walk break.  I was still hanging in there and didn’t want to give in.  I just wanted to keep running, at least though nine miles, which was the longest I had previously run continuously.  I wasn’t going to see Jerrod until mile 11.5, so I figured if I was going to walk I could do it around mile 9 or 10.  My pace was slowing by about 10-15 seconds/mile and I was getting tired.  I grabbed my energy bites at mile 9 to eat a few more and as I chewed the first two, I decided to keep running.  I was going to try and go the distance.  At about mile marker 9.7, just as we turned on to Meridian Street I got the best surprise yet – a friend had a “Go Diana!” sign and was out braving the elements to cheer me on!  I nearly ran past her without noticing and when I did it gave me such a burst of energy to get through the next few hard miles!

Miles 11-13: As I approached mile 11, it started to rain/sleet.  I was determined, though, to just keep going and at this point I began to really think it would be possible to run the entire race.  I was tiring and it hurt, a lot, but I just kept reminding myself that this is what I’ve been training for.  I could destroy my muscles and body today, but this was no training run, I was going to leave everything I had out on the course.  I finished my energy chews as I approached 16th and Meridian, where I knew Jerrod was going to be waiting again (this time in the sleet… what a trooper!) and kissed him as I ran by.  The last few miles were going to be hard and tough, but I was going to make it happen.  My friend Jess was along the course again cheering and it was an awesome burst of energy as I high-fived her and kept on going.   I wanted to walk, my body wanted to give out on me, but I would not give in.  I was going to run this thing to the finish.

At the mile 12 I checked my watch and saw the goal time was in reach.  I just needed to keep running.   That last two miles got progressively harder to the point that I may have blacked out a bit because I can’t remember much more that just putting one painful foot in front of the other.   DO. NOT. STOP. RUNNING. was the only thing going through my head.  I had made it this far, there was NO WAY I was going to walk now.  Blisters, muscles spasms and pain are a given.  The last mile or two aren’t about your physical strength or training plan… it’s only about mental toughness, and this was a battle I was going to win.

Crossing the finish line!

The last half mile seemed like 5 miles.  I pushed and pushed and wondered if I was going to drop dead before I reached the goal.  DO. NOT. STOP. RUNNING. was all I had going through my head.  I told Jerrod later, after the race, that I really, REALLY, had wanted to walk during the last mile.  He said exactly what I had going through my head during that stretch… “If you had finished and told me you ran the entire race only to walk during the last mile, I would have been pissed.  And you would have been, too.”  [That’s the support I love ;-)]

But, I did not walk and I did finish the race.  And then my body just kind of gave up as I finally let it rest.  I paid for my leaving everything on the course for the next 5 or so hours, but it was well worth it thanks to the awesome accomplishments I achieved with this half.

What I achieved:

          – Longest consecutive running in personal history.

          – Ran the entire half marathon.

          – Bested my first 1/2 marathon time by 25 minutes, 1 second.

          – Bested my goal by 94 seconds.

This will go down as my best race to date and it’s in large part to all the awesome people who encouraged me in training and on race day.  All this excitement definitely gets me excited for Half #3… Mini Marathon 2013.

November Race
13.1 Miles
12:28 pace
2:43:26 total time

What’s next?

My next race will be the Santa Hustle 5k which would be another fun run to finish out the year. Jerrod and I are doing this one together and I love the energy and atmosphere at this run race, where everyone dresses as Santa.

I’m also considering joining the #RWSTREAK plan.  This is an initiative by Runner’s World magazine where everyone who commits promises to run at least one mile per day every day from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.