Hello Lover! Introducing Polly Sunshine Light....

Cue Miss America Music.....Isn't she lovely???? :)

I have been looking on craigslist for a bike for over a year now. I knew I wanted a beach cruiser type bike, but didn't know whether I wanted one that looked old school or actually was old school. When I found this beauty I was in love. After a weekend without internet, I jumped online a week ago Monday to find that her listing was gone. I was heart broken. A few days later I had an email from the seller asking if I was still interested. It was destined to be. :) She joined my family on Monday and it's 2rue love 4ever 4 sure. When she first arrived I immediately started thinking of names: Sunshine, Banana Split (yes apparently I was taking names for My Little Ponys, whatev), when it hit me--Polly. My buddy Matt cued the middle name as Sunshine, and the rest is history. Of course Monday was 40 mph winds, and yesterday I didn't have time to take her out, and today is 30+ mph winds again. I still may take her for a short jaunt to the local library. I'm so happy. Heheh. :)

On Monday night I decided to say pooh-pah to an easy run and do my speed workout that I had scheduled for the week. I wanted to do 2 speed workouts this week, and thought my legs would be fresh to do them on a Monday, recovered enough to do another one Thursday, and then be good to go for the easy long run on Saturday. Plus I love me some speed work (have I mentioned that before :) ?)

I haded to the gym with my old running buddy Matt (who was doing his second gym work out of the day, crazy kid) for some 400 m. repeats. My fave. Sidenote: Absolutely NOT MY FAVE when I had to do them in high school, but I digress. I was to do 5 miles; 1 mile warm, 6 x 400 in 1:35 (6:20 pace) w/400 jogs in between, and 1 mile cool down.

Since I had the crazy bike purchase after work, and didn't hit the gym until 8pm, I was STARVING. Definitely not the way to start an intense workout. Uff. I started the workout at a very leisurely 10 min mile pace for the first mile. Then it was ON! After the first 400 sprint/jog, I did have to switch it from jogging 400's to walking .15 as I didn't want to waste any of my waining energy on jogging. Lame, I know.

1 mile warm up 10:00

Interval #1 1:34 (6:16 pace)

Recovery jog 2:35 (10:20 pace)

Interval #2 1:27 (5:48 pace)

Recovery walk 2:34

Interval #3 1:29 (5:56 pace)

Recovery walk 2:38

Interval #4 1:29 (5:56 pace)

Recovery walk 2:42

Interval #5 1:31 (6:04 pace)

Recovery walk 2:44

Interval #6 1:33 (6:12 pace)

Recovery walk 2:44

1/2 mile cool down 4:53 (9:46 pace)

Uff da, I was dead tired after the run, and ooooooooooh soooooooo hungry. But nothing feels better than running fast and hard, that's for sure. It is kind of crazy to think that in 7th & 8th grade (when I ran distance for our HS team, actual high school years, I sprinted) I ran my miles at those paces, only without .15 walk breaks. That's crazy. I think my best mile time was 6:07. I can't imagine doing that now. :p Although it would be fun to see what my mile time is now....hmm.... interesting... :)

Yesterday was a boring, I mean easy, 4 miler. I grabbed my gear after work, had the garmin look for the satellite and I was off. Whoa, Garmin is telling me I'm running a pace of :45. That's kinda of crazy. Then all hell broke loose, it was beeping all over the place, mile 1 clocked in at :02, mile 2 at :04. I stopped, walked back the 10 feet to my apartment, and by the time I got there it read 3.14 for the distance. Does that count as a new 5k PR? I think so! I tried to tinker with it, but decided it wasn't a big deal since it was just a junk mile run. I fished through an old drawer and pulled out the old running watch stand by. This baby has been with me since I started running in 2005. Looks so much cuter on my wrist than man watch aka Garmin. :) We made a good team.

vs. 

The run was pretty boring, legs were a little tight/tired which is to be expected. Stretched really well post-run. I did the 4 miles in 39:15. I was keeping track of the splits, but gave up.

1. 9:57 ish

2. 9:40 ish

3. ???

4. 39:15-9:40-9:57-??? :)

I spent the evening running to Walmart to get a bike lock for Polly, dropping off the pics from the wedding (they're HILARIOUS!), get ingredients for cookies (nom), and stop by the grandparents for some supplies I was missing for an art project.

Last day without internet.  Can't WAIT for tomorrow.  :)

Insert Fail Whale Here

Oh hey....well that actually worked. To say that I was nervous about this morning's workout would be an understatement. It's probably the workout that seemed the most "scary" out of all of them when I clicked print back in June. Speedwork: 8 miles (WTF?!?!?!? For serious???) 4 x 1600 @ 7:37, with 800 m recovery and 1 mile warm up, 1 mile cool down.

In my world, 8 miles and speed work do NOT go together. Last night I had am A-MA-ZING meal for fuel for the run. Speaking of, after I was having my glass of Pinot Noir for dessert, I remembered that I had promised pics of my sweet dinner. Whoopsies. Have no fear, I managed to spill most of the glass of wine on the floor after this realization. No use crying over spilled wine!!! Umm...unless it's the last of your wine...and your carpet is white. Then cry. I ate grilled salmon, with a ginormo salad with 1/4 of an avocado and some mango pieces on a huge bed of lettuce. Unfortunately, SOMEONE removed the lid from the dressing, so I ended up with waaaaaaaaaaay too much dressing on my delicious little salad, so I just added more lettuce to even it out. :p

I woke up this morning at 7:45am to get psyched for my run. I twittered, facebooked, checked my email, checked the weather (60 degrees, cool, fabulous) until I finally kicked my butt out the door.

My warm up mile was great! Haha. I felt like I was going much slower than my split showed, but legs felt fairly good, minus some quads pain/tenderness that was still lingering from Tuesday's Speedy Seven. My first "fast" mile was good. Every time I looked at my pace, it was showing slightly over 7 minute miles. I actually thought I was going to come in under my goal pace (I gave myself 7:37-7:47). This is definitely a pace that I don't practice much (or haven't lately) as this is around my 5k pace, and even when I was doing 5k training I was either running much faster than this (400 repeats) or slowerfor long runs/easy runs. Somehow my body must've felt the pace, because I came in right at 7:37. Well look at that. :)

The 1/2 mile recovery jog in between HURT. My quads were sooooooo tight. I got started on Mile repeat #2. It was definitely more difficult to maintain the pace that felt pretty strong the repeat before, but I still managed to come in under time, 7:44. During the last quarter mile of this, I vowed to myself that if I could finish this mile in the goal time, I would be done doing my mile repeats, and I was true to my word.

I decided to switch and do 4 x 800 with 400 jog in between them. I did one and almost died. :( I did the 800 at a 7:53 pace and I hurt. The whole time I was running this 800 I had convinced myself I was going to injure myself by continuing. I pulled my right quad the first indoor track meet of the year in high school my junior year and was out for 8 weeks, basically the whole season. I really freaked myself out and decided just to finish the rest of the 8 miles so I could be on track for my monthly mileage goal (> last months: 130).

I felt like I was crawling, but was still running at a decent clip (????). I guess that will happen when you're running that fast of repeats, but still. I ended up doing another 1.3 mile cooldown (??) before calling it quits, vowing to run my Tuesday easy 6 on Monday to get my miles in. :)

I ended up doing 5.6 miles in 48:28 for a pace of 8:40.

1. Warmup 9:22
2. Interval #1 7:37
.50 Recovery 4:50 (9:50 pace)
3.5 Interval #2 7:44
.28 Recovery (meant to do .25 but forgot to look @ the clock) 2:43 (9:43 pace)
.50 Interval #2 1/2 3:57 (7:54 pace)
4.29-5.6 Cooldown 1 mile--9:22, .31--2:50 (9:09 pace)

Sooo that was confusing to type, so good luck if you're actually trying to understand it.

I think this training run gives me some valuable information to consider when I'm trying to figure out my December 1/2 marathon training plan. If a training session sounds TOO HARD, I will psych myself out of doing it. It should be just challenging enough to get me to fight to conquer it, not cower in the corner and quit. Also, 4 x 1600 speed repeats? Nada. I'm not even sure how this sort of a training run would be relevant for my race. I think 1600 m repeats are good, but 4 is a bit daunting. I think it would've been better if I set out to do 2 x 1600 and 2 x 800. Maybe thrown in some 400 for variety.

I'm also slightly concerned because my mileage had been increasing by about 10% each week, but since I've missed/cut short almost one run a week since the WWR, I'm currently running just shy of 30 miles/week. This week has 38 (now only 35.6 b/c of Quitter McGee). Should I adjust my mileage on some easy runs in the next two weeks so I'm not increasing by that much? If I get hurt in the final two weeks I'm going to be maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. :p

Mock half marathon on Saturday! Super pumped, as I've never ran farther than 12 miles as a training run, and I'm going to run the race route (a race I've ran 4 other times, so I'm fairly familiar with). I might even make Taylor come out to do some mock-cheering practice.

Oh ya, go here http://chicrunner.com/ to get info. on how to win a sweet iFitness belt. Also, if I don't win, this would be an excellent gift for Xmas/Birthday for me. (is anyone else noticing how this blog is becoming a gift wishlist for me? hmmm... :p)

Hardest. Workout. Ever. + 2-a-day(ish)

Wow I really left you guys in suspense, didn't I? Did she or didn't she do a two-a-day??? She didn't. :) By the time we had made dinner, I realized it was unrealistic to think that I would get a run in without feeling like revisiting my shish-ca-bobs (sp?) on the side of the road, so I put the kibosh on that idea.

After getting zero sleep (or so it felt) Tuesday night, I nixed my early run. EEK! I don't think that's happened since becoming a "morning runner." Go figure, once I decided to go back to sleep, I couldn't. Just my body further reminding me not to try to adjust its running schedule. Luckily I had time to do the run after work, and the weather was cooperating. Sort of. It was in the low 60s and on and off raining/misting.

I had 6 miles to do: 1 mile warm up. 3 x 1600 m @ 7:42 pace (YIKES!) with 800 m jogs in between. 1 mile cool down. The plan had actually called for an 800 m. job after the warm up and before the cool down, but that seemed a bit excessive. I typically don't need a "recovery" job after my warm up. :p Of course I added a mile to my easy run on Thursday so I wouldn't lose any mileage for my week. Go figure.

Going in to this run, I knew it was going to be tough. The 1600 pace was slightly faster than my 5k pace of my PR (24:02/24:04 depending on who you believe, haha) so I knew I was going to have to haul my booty to make my time.

Mile 1: I took the warm up mile nice and easy at a 9:31 pace. I quickly stretched out everything that needed to be stretched, and then got ready for pain.
Mile 2: 7:40. Weird. I feel like I could throw up after that. That was not fun. At. All.
Jog 1/2 mile: 4:54 (9:45 pace). Funny it's VERY easy to slow down your pace when you're dreading to get to the end of the 1/2 mile jog.
Mile 3: 7:45. I had some slight ab pain, but just kind of a dull, "hey, remember me? I'm still here...watch it...." sort of reminder. Thankfully.
Jog 1/2 mile #2: 4:42 (9:42 pace).
Mile 4: 7:36. I have never wanted to quit a run more in my life. Honestly. I was in pain. No pain that shouldn't be there, just pain at running at this pace for the 3rd mile. I had to talk myself out of not stopping for at least the last 1/2 mile of this, and am uber proud that I didn't. I honestly didn't think the pace would be this quick either. I thought I had slowed down to 7:50-8:00 because of how heavy my legs felt. As soon as this mile was done, I stopped and dry heaved for a good 3-5 minutes. Starting to become NOT A FAN of the post-run almost puke session. :(
Mile 5: 9:27. Cool down. Glorious, glorious cool down. You know what I love most about a cool down? It signals the END of the hardest workout ever.

That's a 7:41 pace for the 3 hard miles. WHOO!

Maybe I'm just a baby, but that's the hardest I've ever pushed myself, which is surprising. I was very competition while competing in sports in high school, and truly thought I was pushing myself to be better and faster than my teammates, a lot of times running with the boys because I was the fastest girl. But I don't ever remember feeling that "all out" mentality during a tough/hard workout. Oh well, it's nice to know that I have an extra gear there somewhere, it just takes some almost puking to get to it. :)

The best part of the run is that it was rainy, especially during the last 1/2 when I really needed to feel cooled down. On top of how much I sweat and how rainy it was, I was a sight to see when I got home. Taylor got to my place shortly before I was getting ready to shower. When I went into the bathroom to turn the shower on, he was confused, "Didn't you already shower?" Then it hit him, "Eeew, you're just the sweaty? Gross. Go shower." :D He loves his little sweat bug. Don't worry. :p
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This morning I was up and at em for an unofficial 2-a-day. Since it was less than 12 hours, I kind of count it as such, but I won't be offended if you don't. :) I just really need to prepare the ol' legs for running that close together for the Wild West Relay that is in one week! Whoa.

This run sucked. Bleck. I think my legs and stomach were still tired from the previous ass kicking run. It honestly felt like I had JUST stopped running those 6 hard miles and decided to tack on another 5 to the end. My legs felt heavy. My stomach felt jostled and borderline nauseous. I had to stop quite a few times because I was slightly lightheaded and dizzy. All in all, sucky run. I did make it home in one piece. YAY. :)

5 miles in 46:25 for a pace of 9:17.
1. 9:17
2. 9:17
3. 9:28
4. 9:24
5. 8:58

Pretty fast splits for a recovery run, but I honestly felt like I was running 10:30 mm. Seemed like I was just plodding along.

I kind of feel like I'm getting a little burnt out from running so much. EEK. I've dreaded my last 3 runs so far. I'm SUPER excited for the Wild West Relay next week, but unfortunately it fell during what should've been my "cut back" week on my 1/2 training program. Instead of doing 24 miles, I'll be at 31 still. I think I just need to remember to try to put a race every 4-6 weeks into my training programs, because it keeps the training runs from being to monotonous, and gives me something to look forward to in the short term. Someone please remind me of this comment when I'm making my 1/2 training for Dallas in December. Thanks!

Day 2: Morning Runner (A day delayed)

In honor of National Running Day, I was motivated to get out of my comfy, warm bed to take on Day 2 of my morning running challenge.  It was much more difficult to get out of bed Day 2 than it was Day 1, because I could not fall asleep Tuesday night.  It did help that I had a speed/interval workout to look forward to.  :)

I had decided to save gas and jog to my gym as my warm up, and then jog home for my cool down.  Somehow I had it set in my head that my gym was 1/2 a mile away.  Ha.  I was wrong.  More like a mile and a half.  Oh well, it was a great warm up, despite the fact that it was 40 degrees out.  SERIOUSLY!?!  I had to wear sweats and a long sleeve over my shorts and t-shirt so I didn't freeze my tas off.  

1.  9:00

.36  3:19 (9:50 pace)  This is the point of the run where I had to run through grass/weeds that were knee deep because there wasn't a shoulder or sidewalk to run on.  Awesome.

At the gym I got a good stretch in, and then had 7 x 400 to rock.  And rock I did.  :)

2 @ 1:42 (6:48 pace)

2 @ 1:41 (6:44 pace)

2 @ 1:40 (6:40 pace)

1 @ 1:38 (6:31 pace)

I walked .1 in between each interval and felt super strong during each of the quarters.  I did realize that I need to scout out a track nearby because it's so much easier to pace yourself when you're not actually pacing yourself.  Shocking, I'm sure.  Plus it'd be nice to relive my fast track days.  Ha.

After the sprints I stretched again and headed for home.  I felt like SUCH a B.A. running home from the gym.  I had to take a different route because traffic had finally picked up, and it was kind of fun taking a new trail route home.  

1.  10:04

.39 3:56 (10:07 pace)

It was pretty slow going, since my legs were tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired.  I really wished that the cool down was hmmm.... half mile instead.  :)

Morning running finally caught up with me yesterday afternoon when I was half-zombie the last 2 hours of work.  Yikes.  I may or may not have accidentally fallen asleep for 30 minutes before heading to Tay's softball game after work.  Ha.

The other thing that I've noticed about running in the morning is my eating habits.  Usually I would eat a smaller breakfast and lunch, with a decent sized snack around 2 or 3, and then a very large meal post run at night.  Now I'm needing to get the eating switched around to have a decent sized breakfast and maybe a morning snack so I'm not dying of hunger at 10am.  Learning curve, right?  

All in all, I think I'm getting a hang of this early morning junk.  

P.S.  Who else wishes they could dance and were rockin' So You Think You Can Dance this season?  Oh man, I just love this show, and since I have two left feet, I'm in awe of their skillz.  :)

Speed workout, long time no see. I missed you.

Last night was supposed to be an easy 3 miles. When I got off work it was 92 degrees with 25 mph winds. I was sweating in my car driving home from work. UGH. Apparently we were 2 measly degrees from breaking the temp record yesterday. Darn. Anyway, because of the elements, I decided to head to my gym, and switch out my quarter mile repeat workout. My love. :) If you've been following along at home, I stopped doing sprint workouts after the Washington Pavilion 5k because my stupid strained ab was still, well, strained, and I knew the speed work, specifically the sprinting part of the speed work, was causing it to not heal. That means the last sprint/speed workout I did was April 15th! I looked at my running log and decided I would run them at the same pace I did then, and scale back/stop if the ab started to hurt.

IT. WAS. AWESOME. I felt like I was flying (especially since I was on the treadmill). I did 6 x .25 at roughly mile pace, with a .1 walk break in between. I warmed up with .5 and cooled down with a .5. The best news was, I didn't hurt. At all. :)

.5 warm up 4:30/9:00 pace
.25 1:43/6:52 pace (2 at this pace)
.25 1:42/6:48 pace (2 at this pace)
.25 1:41/6:44 pace
.25 1:30/6:35 pace
.5 cool down 4:30/9:00 pace

Avg. pace for sprints 6:46, warm up/cool down 9:00.

I'm also excited because these felt (dare I say it) easy. Granted the last couple had me huffing and puffing, but I remember being much more labored on these a couple of months ago. Assuming the pain doesn't come back, I think I'll be bumping up the speed a bit. YAY!

This also makes me think that I could do another race before June 27th (the next one I have on my list). There is a 5k on May 30th put on by the Canaries/Roller Dollz, and another 5k on June 6th for SIDS research. 5 more weeks is a looooong time to wait to race, so we'll see. Luckily these are races that you can sign up the night before and still get the low low rate.

Today's weather is pretty similar to yesterday's, except more wind. Ya, seriously. It might be another gym day because somehow easy does not equal sweating my behind off while fighting hurricane like winds (or so I'm guessing since we don't have hurricanes here, obv). Then I get to watch the bf's team kick some softball booty. Go T-bagz. (Um..ya.)