Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Aug 30 and 31st workouts

Aug 30: elliptical 10 minutes, 2 miles
'mill hike 20 minutes, 1.2 miles
planks for 90, 80, and 70 seconds
5 sets of 'man' push ups: 7,7,7,7,10
upper body weights

Aug 31:3mi run, 41:43 (no that is not a typo), 13:53 avg pace
................a lesson learned today, if you are going to run with a group, MIGHT be a good idea to find out the pace they plan to run at before you commit. I was suppose to run with a friend of mine (new friend-only ran with her once before-she headed the LifeGate race that I ran back in April). She and a couple other ladies were going to meet at a lake close to my house at 5:30 this morning. She said they (the other ladies) would probably run a slower pace but she would run 10:30 with me (which is about the pace I hoped to keep this morning).
I got there and met the other 2 ladies-SUPER nice. We wait for 10minutes and the other gal hasnt shown up, so we decided to head out on our own. Ya wanna know the splits? Mile 1-13:13, Mile 2-14:39, Mile 3-13:49...It was really hard for me to run this slow AND I had a time restraint as well. One of the gals normally runs around an 11min mile she told me at the end, but the other gal said this was actually a little speedy for her, so she must run closer to a 15min mile.
It was pretty dark there at 5:30 and thankfully one of the gals had a flashlight (apparently the gal who was suppose to come wears a head lamp thing-a-ma-bob and brings her big Rottweiler with her. However, we felt brave enough to give it a go with a little ol' handheld beam and our own hands for defense. I think the only thing I could have beat up this morning would have been a questionably shaped bush).
I am running with this same group again Saturday morning but it will be a larger group and I think I have some 'outside' friends who are coming along. I'm kind of looking forward to it! PLUS it will be light out this time so if I need to run ahead, I'll feel comfortable doing that.

Most likely I'll be doing some upper body and core work tomorrow and maybe some cross training (mill hike or elliptical).

My girls took my Garmin out again today. They ran a full 1/2 mile this time (Monday it was like .42 miles) and dropped their pace down from 11:30 to 10:18. They were pretty proud of themselves =)

Raising the next generation right? YOU KNOW IT!!

Monday, August 29, 2011

The good, the bad and the in between and a RACE REPORT!

Ok, so, wow. It's not that I dont love you running folk. I do. From the bottom of my ever-sweatin' heart. But I was kind of mad for awhile. Not really AT you 'uns. But at the fact that you were all able to run like the wind at any given moment, and here I was. STILL semi-injured. And STILL not being able to run as much as my carefree heart desired.
You could say I was throwing an inner hissy fit.

So anyway, I wont bore you with ALL the details, but if you remember, after my 10K on June 26, I didnt properly recover and was rewarded with some nice achy knees. So I was a good girl and took 1 whole week off of running. Went back into it nice and easy and was fine.
THEN.
The night of the 11th and 12th (July) I went for a HARD 10mi bike ride, (and the morning of the 12th I went for a 3mi run too), and then worked out pretty hard the morning of the 13th.
MAJOR knee-setback. grrrr.
But I was stubborn about it and just tried to do my runs easy and keep the miles low. Well, on July 22, it became apparent that wasnt going to help. So I ran just over 5miles (I was being onery-knew I wasnt going to be able to run for awhile so I wanted to get a longer-ish run in before that happened).
So, I took off another whole week and a day of running (only did VERY light cardio a couple times that week) and seemed to be doing ok. So I went for a run July 30th and felt pretty good.
I kept all my runs easy and kept the miles low and ran a few of the runs on the 'mill.
Things were lookin' good. So on the 12th (friday) I thought of hopping in on the 1/2 marathon plan so that I could maybe run the 1/2 on Sept 25th here in town.
On Sunday following, the plan had me running a 5K. Well I knew I wasnt ready for that, so I just planned a route of that distance, upped the pace JUST a bit and threw in a HUGE, long hill to make up for the fact that I couldnt go all out on the pace.
Welp.
that probably wasnt wise. Knees were pretty achy all day after that run AND the next day. So I took off another 4 days of running. I was getting nervous as I had a 5K race coming up Aug 27th (we'll get to that later). Ran again on the 19th and just kept the miles low and easy. Felt great.
Ran again on the 21st, still good. then again on the 24th. STILL good. Then the NIGHT before my 5K (last Friday) my left hammie was really tight all day. Not painful but REALLY tight.
I.Was.Scared.
I did a lot of praying that night and spent a lot of time in the bathroom (nervous fluttery tummy hit me with a vengance!) and the next morning my legs felt good. (tummy was a whole other story-dont know why I was so terribly nervous!)
Anyway, the lower body weight training has pretty much fallen off the map as I didnt want to risk a set back in my legs/knees. Upper body has stayed consistent and I have worked my way up to being able to do 400 crunches (100x4 sets), as well as 3 sets of planks for 90,80 and 70seconds. I have also switched to doing the 'real' pushups after having done week 6 of the hundred pushup challenge about 742 times in the modified push up form. I am doing 6x 5 sets 3 times a week. I am SO wimpy when it comes to upper body strength.

My weight has fluctuated during the last month or so, but I DID meet my goal of 100 during July and was actually down to 99.8! For one day at least =) I seem to hang around 101-102.8 alot, but I am ok with that (for now)..... =)

Here is a pic of one of my favorite night time snacks. Fresh fruit with a generous dollop of yogurt on top (1/2 plain greek and 1/2 vanilla)

THEN I discovered just how much more AMAZING that combo is when it has some Kashi thrown in. Oh my yum.



This is a common breakfast for me on non-running days. Big bowl of cut up fruit. About 150-200 calories depending on what I put in and I am SUPER stuffed after I eat it, but pretty hungry again about 2-3 hours later. So its the prefect amount of food for me on these days.



I read an awesome book called 'The Raw Food Detox Diet' and this is one of her recipes from in there. A homemade veggie soup w/ Ezekiel bread (with raw honey on top) on the side. This whole lunch was 300 calories (the soup is only 50 calories for 1 cup!) and it left me almost TOO stuffed. I love her book and would love to implement more of her ideas but I dont know how to make that work with my workouts (she emphasizes different food combining rules and eating only fruit til noon-which I like to do, but I feel I need more protein after my runs). I know there are people out there (athletes) who eat this way but my body seems to be more finiky. I may try it sometime though and see what happens.



I also checked out 'The Green Smoothie Revolution' and we liked a few different recipes of hers. I dont remember what all was in this smoothie but I know the veggie was kale and spinach. It was actually really good and my kids liked it too!


Ok, so ON TO THE RACE REPORT!




Ted E Bear Hollow 5K Aug 27, 2011 8:30am


My stats Time 27:20 Placed 3rd in my age group out of 33..... 52 overall out of 223





So I got there around 7:45, picked up my packet and head back to my car to put my bib on. Head back near the start line to wait for a couple of friends who were going to meet up with me






Met some very cute random dogs like this little snookums.



So I met up with my friends (it was their first race) and we chatted for a bit before race time.


This was a 10K and 5K so the 10K folks lined up and set off about 5minutes before we did (they went the opposite way as us on the course).


Then we all lined up and good golly was I nervous. My tummy is in a knot right now just thinking about it-so weird!! Anyway, I lined up WAY at the back like always (love to pass people, hate to BE passed). Heard the gun and we were off!


Due to the fact that I was at the back, it was slow going the first .2 miles or so which I think was good for me as I didnt start out too fast. Once we got on the trail, I started slowly picking people off one by one. (only got passed a few times the whole race). I actually ENJOYED the whole first 1/2 of the race, where as I usually HATE the 5K distance from start to finish as I am pushing it so hard. The back half of the race, I picked up the pace a bit but still felt good. But around 2.80 miles in I started to feel it.


Those thoughts started to enter my head 'Just walk for a minute and catch your breath' or 'who cares if you get passed, just stop' and 'I think I'm gonna pass out'.


So anyway, I powered past all that.


The last .10 there was a kid about 10 years old, just huffing and puffing and groaning and lookin' like a hurtin' unit. So I gave him a 'You're doing awesome! Finishline is just ahead, you can DO this!' as I passed him, and about 5 seconds later he ZOOMED past me like nascar racer! Little stinker =)


I finally felt like I had a kick left in me the last .05 miles so I turned on the boosters and rocketed to the finishline passing one guy as I did (I have a pic of his face looking at me as I did that-so funny, should have posted it)



No I did NOT run a 5K in 4:07, I dont even think I could run HALF a mile that fast, no clue why the clock says that. I give God all praise and glory for this run! No WAY could I have done this pain free with out him. this is over a minute slower then my 5K in April, but I have done NO speedwork for 2 months and have only done minimal, slow, low mileage runs, so I'll take it =)



Hubby surprised me by bringing the kiddos to the race and I got to see them at the finishline! I was BEYOND surprised and thrilled. Love these little guys.



I'd give you my splits and all that fun stuff but that little boy in front of me pushed the button on my garmin that made it start going again and I didnt realize it for a few minutes-little stinker.





Receiving my age group award.





They announced my name as placing 2nd but I really got 3rd. I actually ASKED them before all this if I had placed and if so what place I got, and they told me 3rd. Then they announced me as 2nd. I checked the online results the next day, and sure enough, it has me down as 3rd as well!





Next race on tap is a charity run on the 17th of September for a friend of friend who was in car accident in July (5K) and then the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure at the beginning of October. I am really bummed that I cant do the 1/2 marathon in September, but I just figure given what happened after that 'mock 5K' run I did, God was trying to tell me 'eh eh eh Anna, not gonna happen', so I'm fine with that =)







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What races do you have planned for the fall? What races have you done this month?