'arry Pottah + Vegas Marathon

Heyo, remember me?  Apparently I fell off the face of the earth last week.  Ooopsies.  I ended up getting sick last week and was out of commission from work and running.  I attempted a 4 mile run on Friday night in a windy 17 degrees that can only be described as "It felt like someone was cracking me across the face for 40 minutes."  Seriously, it was horrendous.  So week 1 of taper was a mega taper:  4 miles.  Whoo!

I've been looking forward to last weekend for months!  'Arry Pottah!!!!!!  If you may recall from previous posts, I'm a bit of an HP fanatic (HP6 anyone?)  :)  I rounded up my HP6 date and off we went.  Sadly we both thought we were too old to hit up the midnight showing, which after reading my post about the midnight movie of the last one, I'm glad we picked that option.  And Friday was just fine anyway.  I've been hearing that the movie was "the darkest one yet" which I think has been said about every movie, and was concerned that it wouldn't be as good because of it.  OMG it was amazing!  There were just enough light-hearted/humorous/awkward teen love moments to break up the seriousness.  And can I just say that Dobby is quickly becoming my favorite character ever?  He's so precious.... ha.  And could Emma Watson be any more gorgous??  Holy guacamole.

It was back to running this week, since you know... I'm about 12 days out from the MARATHON!!!  I knew it was probably silly to jump back in to a tempo run after taking it easy/partially comatosed (comatic?) last week, but when your body and brain want to do a tempo run, you kind of have to go with it (this is probably time #6 in my life).  Part of the reason may have been that I got my MARATHON!!! outfit in the mail and needed to give it a try.  Yes, ideally this should've been worn on my 22 miler (or at the very least a long run) but it's difficult to do that when my LRs are ran in the tundra and you're racing in a desert (p.s. I just typed dessert, and now I want some....for breakfast) it doesn't really work.

I figured the shirt would be a-ok but the shorts were a bit questionable.  Alyssa loves racing in hers that are similar, and my favorite pair of running shorts are a super old school shorty-short adidas pair that feels like I'm running naked, so I thought I'd give them a try.  I would've much preferred to do this test run outside, but alas, it was in the teens temp wise and I may actually lose my butt cheeks somewhere along town.  The verdict:  Uh yeah.... sorry to all the gym members.  Shorts are a no-go*.  I think they'd be pretty perfect for a 5k where I'm only running for a little bit, but I think I'd get annoyed pulling them back over my butt cheeks for slightly under 4 hours.  :/  One highlight, is that the sweatier I got the more they stayed in place, and we all know it doesn't take too long for me to work up a good sweat.  The good news is that the shirt was fab.u.lous.  It seriously feels like it's made out of baby skin; it's ridiculous soft and light.  And I was drenched in sweat-post run and you couldn't even tell!  Win-WIN-win.  (Ignore the crookedness of the pic.... I used to use my old tv as my self-timer photo tripod, but have since got a new one.  TV is much better, but a far worse tripod.)


At the gym I had 7 miles with 5 at tempo pace of 8:09.  I was ridiculously surprised at how good the 8 minute pace felt when I first started out.  My body has been super achy lately, and I didn't know what was going on.  I think someone told it that I'm turning 27 soon and need to begin old lady aches and pains asap.  Not cool.  A few miles in my right knee started to feel like there was a lot of pressure under the knee cap, so I spent some time figuring out that when hitting the treadmill with your heel while you're going forward and the treadmill going backwards has to cause even more force and pressure on your IT band and knee, so it's probably doubly important for me to FIX IT since I'll be doing a bit of treadmill running through the winter blizzard season.  I was pretty tired during mile 4 of the tempo miles, but got my second wind during mile 5 (probably just because I was almost done).  When I got done my quads/IT band area cramped up majorly, it was so strange.  I did some stretching quick and then jogged a super slow 1/2 mile cool down.


I did 6.5 miles in 55:44.  Tempo mile average:  8:05.


1.  9:40
2.  8:04
3.  8:06
4.  8:06
5.  8:06
6.  8:02
.5 4:50


Heck ya!  Considering my mile repeats were about 25 seconds faster with considerable breaks in between I was pretty happy in my effort.


And now the quest is back on to find the perfect marathon outfit.  But the bigger question is:  black or glow in the dark?

*They may in fact be perfect for the Post-Marathon Post-Rage Race or the PMPRR. :D