First 10ks and Weird Mental Things

Let's talk about the weird mental things first. 

The reality of my situation is that I don't run that often.  My goal was three times a week, and that rarely happens.  I am faithful about doing speed sessions on Mondays when my husband isn't out of town and I try to sneak in one other day throughout the week.  And that's it.  That's all she wrote. But here's the kicker: every week I continue to feel faster.  And the speed session workouts are telling me that I am faster.  I feel in shape (ok, not like Boston-qualifying-in-shape, but I feel good). I can, and have, run 6+ miles without feeling like I was going to die in the middle of it.  Or feel like I needed a month to recover afterwards. I find this amazing because, like I said, I'm only out there 2 days a week. 

I guess here is my point: 

You don't have to workout everyday in order to feel good about your training, or working out, or weight loss, or getting in shape, or yourself in general, or whatever your personal motivation is.  Being told that you have to workout everyday for 30 minutes and it has to be cardio and your heart rate has to be above 180 for that entire 30 minutes blah blah blah blah blah is really unmotivating. You end up beating yourself up when you miss a day or have a bad workout and, honestly, it can be really hard to pick yourself back up after that. You will make progress at 2 days a week. 

Soooo.....

Maybe this is the wrong way to looks at things; but set the bar low. Maybe your low bar is really higher than you thought. But also, and super importantly, don't be afraid to move that bit** up when it's time :)

Speaking of which:

10ks. Always wanted to run one, but I've totally been chicken about the whole idea.... up until now.  Not only did I sign up for one, but TWO within three weeks.  And they're not even "easy" road races.  The first is a trail race this Saturday and the second is a cross country race on October 13th. Holy cow. I'm excited! And nervous. I feel like I'm going on a first date. With a 10k. What if the 10k takes a fake phone call in the middle of dinner and never returns? Am I suppose to still go on the second date with the 10k?? Or do I say "screw you, 10k. You suck.  I'm going to sleep with your cousin- the 5k"? But then what if the 10k is glorious and I fall in love?? And then I say, "Ugh. 5k's. Gross.  Who would ever stoop so low?I mean, please, have some self respect." And then I'll turn into a running snob and a 10k slut.  Agh! 

 

I'll keep you posted......



Rockin' It Out

Here's what I've been up to in the recent past:

I did a speed session the last Monday in August.  It wasn't a particularly difficult session, my running buddy wasn't there, but I did manage to do my lunges super duper slow which led me to win one of those things you wear on your hand that holds a water bottle.  I have no idea what those are called.  But I won one.  I love surprise surprises!
They don't do speed sessions on Labor Day because there is always a race going on somewhere around town.  I had all intentions of running it.  And then I got sick which resulted in me not running for 11 days.  (Honesty time. Only 4.5 of those days can really be blamed on the sickness.  Whew, that felt good to admit)

So that Thursday morning 11 days after said speed session was my first run in, like, forever.  And I only did it because I had a running buddy (the power of a running partner should never be underestimated).  I have a strong aversion to running in the dark, especially by myself.  And it's dark at 5am.  And let's face it, running on a treadmill for 4 miles at 5am doesn't exactly scream of excitement.  I made sure my running buddy was aware that she needed to show up with lowered expectations since I'd been sick and not running and was sure this was going to be a terrible run for me.  Can't you just feel my positive attitude emanating through the blog? Don't you feel all warm and sunshinny inside now? Anyway, I arrived early to our meeting place.  And by early, I mean on time.  My running buddy also arrived on time.  And by on time, I mean 10 minutes late. I greeted her in my usual friendly manner, "Wow. You look really tired." She laughed. Then we ran 4 miles.  And it was awesome! I totally felt great the entire time.  You always hear of people who do the whole 'mind over matter' thing; which was obviously not my approach to this run.  This run ended up being 'matter over mind'.  I thought the run was going to be awful, but it was actually super awesome! (Honestly time again. Pre-run, my running buddy said that typically she has really great runs after she's taken a break.  Even if the break was due to a sickness.  She was right.)

NYC Running

We went on a little trip to NYC last weekend to visit my brother and his super cool wife. And we flew.  With both babies.  And a husband who had just arrived home from China not even 12 hours prior to our departure.  We are hardcore in our family.  We don't just fly- we fly with 2 infants (first time for either baby on a plane) and 1 jetlager.

We didn't really have anything on our agenda- just Central Park mainly.  I wanted to take Beverly to the zoo. So we did. And secretly I wanted to run the Central Park loop with my husband.  It's 6.2 miles, which intimidated me a little.  I know I needed to be running that kind of distance, but I was a little scared to try.  What if I have to stop and walk? What if I start running too fast and just die half way through? Heaven forbid I just go out and run.  Geeze. Anyway, here is the play-by-play of the run:

Both babies decided to take long naps so the husband and I decided that would be a good time to go run the loop.  It was awesome to be able to go on a long run with the husband, just the two of us.  I think it's super cool that we have running in common.  It's like date night for nerds. "Hey baby.  Wanna go for a run?"
The first part of the loop smelled like horse poop. Then I got hollered at by a girl on roller skates to "watch behind" me while I was running.  I could seriously type for 3 pages about roller skater girl's comment, but let's just move on.  We ran up around the reservoir for a short while too.  Didn't even know there was one in Central Park. Then we entered into this super cool part of Central Park that doesn't resemble NYC at all.  You couldn't really see any buildings or hear any street noise.  It was like you could convince yourself that you were running on a hilly, tree lined road anywhere in America.  I thought that was cool. And there was a pool. Then there was a garbage truck in front of us.  Gross.  I almost threw up.  NYC trash smells worse than any other trash.  Except for maybe in Korea. Korea definitely smelled bad.  We ran some more.  Then got stuck behind another garbage truck.  Gross again.  We ran some more.  Then the smell of horse poop came back and I knew we were close to being done.  And then we finished! It was one of my all time favorite runs.  We ran the whole time at about a 10:00 mile pace.  It was amazing.
It was fun to see how far Clayton's watch said we had ran (his uses GPS) and how far mine said we had gone.  They were pretty close.  In the end I think they were only like .1 miles off of each other. 

We got back home on a Sunday and I went to the speed session Monday night. I hadn't been in about 3 weeks.  It was an easier session which was fine with me. My running buddy wasn't there- sad.  But I did "win" a water bottle holder hand grip thing. I did my lunges at the end of the workout the slowest.  Who knew you'd win a prize for that??

I promise I'm still running!

I've actually had a pretty good month.  Well, for me at least.  I've been going to the Monday night speed sessions and I've been running every Thursday morning for the past month+.  "Hey, 5am. How YOU doin'?" I've even managed to finagle someone into running one morning with me.  But only once.  My goal was to run at least one other day during the week- either Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.  That hasn't happened. Except for 1 race. I don't have a legitimate excuse but I do have reasons...

It's totally because I'm making other things my priority instead of running (which is exactly what my husband called me out on the other week).  Sometimes its laundry or other cleanliness related thing.  Sometimes its errands or little to-dos that need to get done.  This is obviously a balance issue that I need to figure out.

Time for good news! Last weekend the husband and I did a 5k. It was an absolutely perfect morning for running! The nasty heat we've been having for the past few months finally broke so it was an amazing 70 degrees that morning.  We even had to bust out the long sleeves! My goal was to break 27:00. I ran a 26:30.  Yay!  The watch really helped me on this run.  It was awesome to see what pace I was going at and how far I'd run. 

I've had to skip most of my running this week since husband is away on business.  I managed to sneak in a little 4.1 miler at 9:13 pace yesterday though. I'm still deciding on a short run later tonight.  I really want to give the double BoB a whirl so I'm leaning towards  going. We'll see.

The next race I'm planning on doing is a 10k trail run down in Fayetteville at the end of September.  I haven't really done any trail running and haven't run over 6 miles in like........ ummm...... 6 years??  Something like that.  So needless to say I have a lot of work to do before then.

First 5K and other milestones

A couple items of note happened in my training world in the past few weeks.

1. I ran really far.  5.7 miles to be exact.  It was another awesome run where Superman himself was running through my veins and I felt like I could go on forever.  I set out determined to run until the sun went down, and that's exactly what I did.  It was glorious.  My next step is to do 6+ miles.  I'm thinking I can make that happen next week......

2. I did the Cancer Challenge 5K this past weekend.  I didn't do nearly as well as I'd hoped, but I ran what I felt like was a realistic (albeit sad and humbling) picture of where I am with training.  I'll spare the details.  I ran 3.1 miles in 27:30ish.  I was really hoping for an under 9:00 mile pace. But at least now I have a starting point and it'll only get better from here!

3. Rush Running speed session happened today.  How hot was it, you ask?  100+ degrees.  But my running buddy was there so that made the heat at least tolerable :)  It's amazing how having someone to run with makes the workouts and the weather not seem as bad as they would if I was by myself. 

4. New training set-backs that I hadn't really thought about happened as well.  (Or maybe I did think about them...... I'll have to go back to post #1 and see.) Husband out of town + highs in the upper 90s = no running for this lady.  That could have been a partial contributor to my less than stellar preformance on Saturday.  

August 11 is the next race that I know for sure I'm doing.  Tontitown's Run for the Grapes 5k.  I did it last year with a friend, pushing a stoller, newly preggo, and it was awesome! My goal this year will be 25:30.  Game on.

Outta The Funk. At Least for a Day

My last run was a great run! One of those runs where you feel like you could just go forever. I was determined to make sure my run was longer than 3 miles.  I did just over 4.  I kept the pace easy going for the first 3 miles.  For the last mile-ish I picked up the pace and tried to keep it at under 9:00.  And I still felt great at the end!

I'm still planning on running later today.  I have a feeling that it will either start raining or I'll get distracted by baking and end up not going. 

Tomorrow is Monday which means speed session day.  I do believe I will be participating again this week. We'll see.

I keep going back and forth between wanting to do the 5k or the 10k at the Cancer Challenge in a  couple weeks.  I've never done a 10k, only 5ks and a marathon.  Kinda backwards, isn't it? And it's not like there are a ton of 10ks around.  But at the same time, I need to work on speed and a 5k would be a good judge of where I am fitness wise.  Decisions, decisions. 

I Found Out I'm Slow. And I'm Commiting to the 4.

So I did end up doing a trail run after my last post.  Well, part of the run was trail. I finally got around to running through the Crystal Bridges Museum trails.  They are so nice! And so fun! I forgot how much fun trail running is and how different it is from running on paths and sidewalks.  I feel like I could run forever on a trail.  It's like every step is a challenge- where to put your feet, step up, step over, run through- it's a blast!  I think I might try to trail run a couple times a month from here on out.

I did my first speed session last week.  Just in case our local running store, Rush Running, wasn't awesome enough as it is, they put on free speed sessions at the track every Monday.  I'm not even kidding that there are 70ish people who attend every week.  Some people are super duper fast and some people have never even ran before.  It's totally cool.  Last summer Hubs and I would trade off weeks.  Someone would do the speed workout and the other one would take little Beverly on a run in the BoB.  I haven't done a speed session in almost a year.  And it showed.  Holy cow.  We had to sprint 200m before we got into our intervals and I thought my legs were going to fall off.  Really it was my quads.  I decided that after each run from now on I'm going to do some sprints up and down my street.  I can't even believe how slow I was.  It's like my body forgot how to sprint.  Weird, but I guess it makes sense. 
I totally made one of the girls at the speed session run with me.  Or I made myself run with her, I'm not sure.  But either way it was nice to run next to someone and have them push you. She made me run more than I originally intended to and I appreciated that from her.  Even though I thought I was going to puke after the last set.  I've never puked from running before, but man I was close last Monday :)

I feel like I'm in a 3 mile funk.  All my runs are right around 3 miles.  I think it's time to up my game and Commit To The 4. I need to make all my runs at least 4 miles to get out of this funk.  And if they are less than 4 miles, they need to be fast.  Like under 9:00 fast.  (Please hold your comments- under 9:00 is fast for me right now.) I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

I'm going to sign up for my first race soon.  It's going to be the Cancer Challenge June 23 and I will be doing the 5k.  I originally thought 10k. But that was before I realized how slow I am.  So I'm going to use the 5k as a speed workout.  If my splits are under 8:30 I'll be happy.