Harry Potter Review + Easy Run

Holy crap!  I forgot to even mention HP-HBP (as the kids are calling it these days ;))  I went to the 12:03am showing on Tuesday night, and at the age of 25, was probably one of the oldest people in the theater.  Not surprising.  I forgot how much I can't stand high school/junior high kids.  WOW.  They are annoying and obnoxious, and catty.  I would've gladly paid more money to have an adults only theater.  

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was my second favorite book in the series, behind The Goblet of Fire, so I was super stoked to see this movie.  I loved it.  I re-read all the books around Xmas, so I'm sure they left out some details and such, but because it's been awhile, I don't remember the details, so I can't complain.  I actually can't wait to see it again when I'm not deathly tired.  Also, I'm slightly in love with Miss Luna Lovegood.  (Pictured left).  She cracks me up.  :)

To keep on with my Wild West Relay training (which is really just my 1/2 marathon training with some modifications), I planned to do my easy run the morning following my evening tempo run.  By my calculations, for the relay my legs will be 9-12 hours apart.  I had planned on getting up at 4:30am with Taylor, but my eye was still bothering me, so I went back to sleep.  I called in sick to work for the morning, since I knew my eyes wouldn't be able to handle 8 hours of staring at the computer (I was right, they were killing after being at work for 3 hours this afternoon!)  I went out for my run at 8:30am this morning.  While it wasn't my second run for the day as I had originally planned :( it was less than 12 hours apart, so it worked for me.

The easy 5 didn't feel too much different than they normally do after a day of speed work.  The legs were a little heavy, but that's to be expected after running so hard the day before.  All in all, it wasn't bad, and I think 2 easy runs (one in the morning, one in the evening) would kind of be a fun way to "spice up" easy runs that I sometimes get bored with.  Also the miles were really consistent which was cool.

1.  9:25

2.  9:24

3.  9:26

4.  9:27

5.  9:09 (I always just want to be DONE during that last mile and can rarely slow down my pace, oh well.)

I finished the 5 miles in 46:53 for a pace of 9:23.

Post-work I got to enjoy my leftover shrimp fajitas, YUM and am now catching up on SYTYCD while the lover boy is at class (he's not a huge fan, weird).  :)  I could really go for the other half of my watermelon though!  

A Diagnosis + A Tempo Run

I finally went to the doctor.  Nope...not because of the ab pain that's been plaguing me for 4 months, but for my poor eye balls.  :(  I've had what looks like pink eye for the last few weeks.  I get this eye condition at least twice a year (it stems from my stupid allergies), and it's more of a pain the butt than anything.  It usually clears up on its own, and the times it hasn't, I've had to empty my pocketbook to pay for the teeny tiny bottle of drops.  On top of the pain and extreme redness in my eye, it decided to start being extremely sensitive to light.  As in, on my drive to work at 11am my eye was pouring.  Once I got in to the office I had to turn my light off and shut my window and still my eyes were killing me.  

I went to the eye doctor and got diagnosed with allergic conjunctivitis.  My stupid Rx was $64 for the GENERIC brand.  Ugh.  So annoyed.  I work for a non-profit, I'm a poor gal.  I'm fairly certain that the price for the drops per fluid mL is more expensive then crack-cocaine.  I'm guessing anyway, not too big on the street drugs.  The doctor instructed me no contacts for the next 4 days.  I thought about telling him I couldn't run with my glasses on, but figured it wouldn't be worth it.  :)  He put some anesthetic in my eye while I was in his office, but it started wearing off shortly after I ret

urned to the office, so I just called it a day.

After an amazing nap, my eye felt a lot better and I decided to take on my tempo run.  I waited until 9pm so that it wouldn't be too bright outside for my poor little eyes.  :)  I had 5 miles to do, 3 miles at a pace of 8:14.  Again I gave myself +/- 5 seconds for a range.

Mile 1 - 9:41 (warm up).  I saw a funky little animal.  It looked similar to a ferret, but not as long and was dark black.  I've never seen anything like it.

Mile 2 - 8:18 contemplated stopping for some mulberries that were growing next to the trail

Mile 3 - 8:06  Gnat #1 dive bombs into my left eye (still infected eye but lesser of the two).  Stop.  Remove.  Continue run.  Immediately after, gnat #2 dive bombs into the same eye.  I yell, "You've GOTTA be kidding me!"  Stop, remove.  This must ward off any future gnats, because that was my last encounter of the evening.

Mile 4 - 8:09  It was getting way too dark out, so I was just trying to haul booty to get home.

Mile 5 - 9:02 (cool down).  nothing exciting to report about this mile, other than Taylor drove by me 2-3 blocks from my apt. and didn't even recognize me.  Turd.

I finished 5 miles in 43:18 for a pace of 8:40.  The tempo miles pace was 8:11.  Whoo.

The one amazing thing about the run was the fireflies.  I've always had an obsession with fireflies.  They are so beautiful, and just scream summer time and happiness to me.  It was really fun running on the trail sans headphones, just listening to the evening and watching the small light show by the bugs.  It was great.  And my ab didn't hurt.  Double bonus.

When I got home I ate half of a watermelon to hydrate (along with water, of course, but I just couldn't stop eating it).  Nom nom.  Needless to say, I think I had to go to the bathroom about 6 times during the 8 hours I was sleeping.  Hah.

I'm cheating on morning running with HARRY POTTER!

Oh 'arry Potta, I heart you. I may or may not have had the movie premier date written on my calendar back in December (or whenever they re-announced the premier date). Since then I had planned on attending the midnight showing, because I am a NERD. (Sidenote: I ALSO may or may not have re-read all the books this winter in preparation for the movie release.) I even did some rearranging of my work schedule so I wouldn't have to come in to work 4 hours after going to bed. Call me Hardcore for Harry. With this sort of planning, obviously my running schedule had to be tweaked a bit also.

There was no way I was going to wake up at 4:30am to run if I had no shot at taking a nap at some point during the day. I don't care how fabulous the movie is (oh, and it's gonna be) I would be falling asleep after being awake almost a full 24 hours. That doesn't fly with this sleeping beauty. ALSO, it was storming this morning. And I only had my new pretty CLEAN shoes with me at Taylor's, and I refused to get them dirty on their christening run.

To accommodate the random schedule I did a easy 4 after work today.  Except that it was anything but easy.  :(  We had a storm the last hour of work today, so of course there was a blanket of humidity left in its wake.  Ugh.  That and I couldn't get my legs to slow down.  Which caused my ab pain to start, which IMMEDIATELY made my legs slow down.  Tricky job body, tricky tricky....  I was hot, I was sweaty, I was HUNGRY.  Blah.  I was actually supposed to do 5 but decided to flop my easy 4 from later in the week with this one since it was being so craptastic.  Luckily, the last mile felt pretty good, so it was only the middle too that suuuuucked.  I left my Garmin at home, so I don't have my splits here is what I can recall.  4 miles in 37:11 for a pace of 9:18.  

1.  9:01 (whoops)

2.  9:25

3.  9:38

4.  9:07?  I remember the first three, but didn't look at the 4th.  If my math is correct, that would be the difference. If not, who cares.  :)

After the run I had a green-ish monster to cool off (and to hold me over for a late dinner).  I was out of 'naners, so I used 5 strawberries instead of the 3 I usually use, what teeny tiny amount of spinach I had left, and a kiwi along with some protein powder, vanilla soy milk and ice ice baby.  It was actually really really good.  I was kind of getting sick of the banana's overwhelming taste in them, so it was a nice change of pace.  Plus the kiwi gave it a ZING.  :)

Tomorrow I will do my easy 5 after work at about 8pm (or potentially my tempo run depending on the weather). And then I'll hook back up with morning running on Thursday morning (which will be a true biatch I'm sure) with a tempo run. To help my legs get ready for the Wild West Relay in 24 days (!!!!!!!!!) I'll be doing an easy 4 miles Thursday evening. My first double day. WHOO!

Now I'm off to eat some delicious shrimp fajitas at Chevy's with my old roomie and HP fan. Then we'll be spending a couple of hours waiting in line at the theater to ensure we get a good seat. EEEEEEEE! So excited.

Hey Everyone, Come See How Good my Feet Look!

Apparently beer and pizza is good fuel for a long run.  Who would've thought?  Friday night we went to a friend's house for some bean bag fun, and I decided to have a couple of beers to enjoy the summer night.  A couple turned into three, followed by a mix drink at the bar, along with 4 slices of 'za.  Luckily I followed them up with a huge glass of water and refused to drink ANY more when offered.

Saturday I woke up feeling just peachy and got ready to set out for a 9 miler.  I've yet to do a long run early in the morning, so I failed to fuel before the run.  Luckily, it didn't seem to effect me much.  The run was ridiculously consistent for the first half, and then I allowed myself to pick up the pace on the back half.

1. 9:13
   
2. 9:13
3. 9:12
4. 9:14
5. 9:09
6. 9:03
7. 8:59
8. 8:46
9. 8:05

I did the 9 in 1:20:58 for a pace of exactly 9:00.  Some highlights of the run:

• I saw a mommy and baby deer around mile 5 1/2.  I was so excited I pointed it out to a runner in the opposite direction, who thanked me for showing him.  Once he had ran by, I checked to make sure no one else was looking, and waved.  :)
• I saw a chick with fabulous abs and she inspired me to be dedicated with my ab work so I can run sans shirt and spike envy in people who see me.  Ha.
• I took a Mocha Gu at about 3 1/2 miles.  Every time I have one, it gets a bit easier to suck down, but still not good.  I think they help though, so I'll keep on it.
• Go girls!  I saw about 8 or 9 female runners to every 1 male runner.  That was pretty sweet.  Every time I saw another chica I wanted to yell out, "Girl Powa!"  In a British accent like the Spice Girls.  I refrained.  I figured waving to animals was quirky enough.  I did see a lot of women running together, and it made me jealous of not having a running pal.  Sad.
• I did run by a girl who went to my rival school for sports.  She was their star basketball player that I always had to guard and try to keep her from scoring her season average of 25 points.  Maybe I'll facebook stalk her to see if she's looking for a running buddy.  I'm a genius sometimes.
• I also saw an old coworker and his fiance, who used to play on my intramural basketball team in college.  Small world, small town, small bike trail.  :)
• Light colored tops show off nippage much easier than darker tops.  Light pink tank was a poor investment.  I apologize for anyone who saw me miles 2-9.

After the run I attempted ice bath #1.  I stretched, chugged some water, ate a cereal bar and started filling up the tub.  Mental note for ice bath #2:  Start filling up tub during stretching time, so it's actually FULL when you're ready to use it.  Apparently my tub is slooooooow.  I had time to clean/scrub the toilet while it was filling!  I wanted to get a pic to commemorate the momentous occasion, but Taylor was still snoozing HARD, and my camera is so old school that

 it doesn't have the self-timer option.  Oh well.  To give you a mental image, I through on some swimsuit bottoms and an old school high school track hoodie, hood up.  I did have to tuck the bottom of the hoodie in to my sports bra, so it wasn't sitting in the water.  Um...that was a bad idea, as that's one of the um...sweatier areas post-run.  It was covered in sweat.  Yuck.

The initial shock of the ice bath was kind of intense, but after that it felt pretty awesome.  I definitely could've used more ice, but I only had a couple of buckets full.  Most of it had melted when the 15 minutes were up.  Next time, I need to remember how thick my quads are, the water was about 1/2 an inch to low to cover them completely.  :(  

After a successful long run and enduring my first ice bath, I was off to the running store to celebrate with a new pair of shoes.  :)  I knew which ones I was looking to get, the Nimbus 11 in pink, but I thought I would look around before.  Lucky for me, I found the Nimbus 10's (with the wonky side lacing) in pink, in a 7 1/2 on SALE.  Boom.  I swear I have the most average shoe size, so I rarely find my running shoes on sale.  So excited.  I decided to try them along with the 11's on to see which I preferred.  I previously had the 9's and HATED them, so I wanted to make sure the 10's had been updated enough.  

Both shoes felt exactly the same to me, and the 10's were $30 cheaper.  Guess which ones I chose.  :)  I figure by the time these ones are maxed out on miles, it will be close to the new 

release of shoes, so then I could get the 11's on sale.  Maybe that's wishful thinking, but it sounded like darn good reasoning to me.  I also got some Espresso Love Gu's and some Blueberry Pomegranite.  I'm hoping for deliciousness.

My apologies on the make-up free face and frizzy hair.  This is as cute as I look on Sundays.  :)

My brain took a break this morning + Foto Friday

This morning sucked. Which sucks, BUT that means I got my crappy run out of the way for this training schedule, right? Amen. I had 5 miles to do at a recovery/easy pace and for once, I didn't feel like going a lick faster. That speed workout yesterday took it out of me. Phew.

But let me back up a bit. I hate people who hit the snooze button. Let me rephrase that, I hate people who hit the snooze button causing me to wake up repeatedly when I would much rather be sleeping. In college, all my roommates that were avid "snoozers" had kicked the habit about a month in to living with me. The wrath of a tired Jeri can cause intense transformations, I guess. Taylor's alarm goes off at 4:30am, which would be fine if he got out of bed at 4:30am, but he doesn't. He lays there until 5ish hitting snooze over and over again. I like to stay in bed while he's getting ready for work, allowing me almost an extra hour of sleep, genius. EXCEPT that he keeps hitting the damn snooze button, causing me to not fall back asleep at all, and be crabby.

When I finally got out of bed, I didn't want to run, but I knew I was too awake to go back to sleep. After talking myself out of not running, I finally got ready, only to find that I had left my iPod at home. Grr. Strike 2 Friday morning, seriously, you're on my poop list.

Strike 3 came in the form of poor mathematical skills. To be honest, I'm actually really good at math (Toot toot. Yes, that's me tooting my own horn.) My job requires a lot of math, and I'm proud that I can do a good chunk of it in my head. However, these mathematical skills are not awake before 8am.

Since I'm pretty bored with the trails by Taylor's apartment, I decided to run to one side of the trail for a mile and back (2 miles) and then a mile and a half in the other direction and back (3 miles) for a grand total of 5 miles. The distance to the trails is .2 miles. I knew this, and was factoring this in to the distance, or so I thought. At one point I even thought that I needed to only run 1.3 miles in the 2nd direction to get the correct distance, but then argued with myself that I would end up .4 miles short. And who wants to run around an apartment parking lot for .4 miles? (You know you'd do it too, don't scoff at me.)

Wrong-o. I was right the first time. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this until I was at the roughly one mile remaining marker, and still had almost a mile and a half left. The fact that my legs were DEAD, it was insanely humid, I was tired, crabby, still hating the snooze botton, and no iPod tunes to drown out my negativity did not help.

Oh well. I survived, and I'm probably stronger because of it. One this is for sure, I will be doing my tricky math the night BEFORE I plan these weirdo routes to avoid any extra length in the future.

The only good news to report, is that I actually hit my slow target pace, for the first time, um...ever. Also, my training log is back up on runnersworld PHEW, so I can report my stats. :) 5.25 miles in 51:06 for an avg. pace of 9:44. Target pace: 9:46. BOOM. :)

For Foto Friday, I thought I would include some sweet pics of the softball tourney of Tay's.

My arm looks way weird, but I think I'm trying to get my bev out of the photo. :)

The guy to my left is the one I raced after the bars back to our hotel. If you need a reminder, I won. :D

I really like this one of us. :) We struggle at cute pics, so I get excited when we succeed.

One of the other gf's who made the trip. Good times.

EEW! The treadmill is sweating....

oh wait...that's me.

This morning I woke up to a horrendous thunder storm. I was bummed because I was looking forward to the track workout I had planned, but was really just TIRED. So I snoozed for another hour. Gotta love coming in late on Thursdays. :) When I got up, it was still storming, so I headed to the gym. Blah. I kind of hate the gym, but it's better than being struck by lightning I guess.

Today I had my first workout with mile repeats. WHOO! For my 5k training plans, I had been doing 400 m. so I was excited to switch things up a bit. The plan called for a 1 mile warm up, 2 x 1 mile at 7:46 mm, 800 m. recovery after each, and a 1 mile cool down.

I set to work and away I went. And on came the sweat. Phew. I think this is seriously the most I've EVER sweat. I was silently thanking myself for being smart and wearing black running shorts instead of something like that would make it look like I peed myself, yikes.

The first mile felt strong, but the second mile was a struggle. Oof. It would've been interesting to see this workout on a track as I had originally planned, to see if I would've been able to maintain the pace when I was tired on the second mile, or if I would've backed off and picked it up at the end to compensate (that's usually my style).

Holy freak out. I just went on to runnersworld.com to check my running log to post some stats from my run, and my log is coming up blank. Fingers crossed that's a weird glitch in their system, or I'm going to freak out!

Okie dokie. From memory, the first warm up mile was around 9:22. First mile repeat was 7:42, followed by 4:57 1/2 mile recovery. Second mile repeat was 7:41 with the same recovery. Cool down mile was around 9:40. If you want to add those together, you would come up with my total time for 5 miles. You would then be able to calculate an average pace.

At one point in the run I looked down at the control deck (?) of the treadmill and thought the treadmill was sweating. WOW! It must be REALLY humid in here, I thought like an idiot. Look at all the sweat spots on the piece in front of the actual belt that I'm running on. Yuck. Then I looked to the treadmills to the left and right of me. Weird, they're not sweating. As I again faced forward, I saw a huge thing of sweat fly from my arm to the treadmill screen (?), drip down onto the base on the treadmill. Oh. Wow. That's me. Awesome. :)

In other news, I think I need new shoes. On one hand: YAY! I love new shoes. On the other hand: Ugh. I'm broke. Can't you wait? Right now my shoes have about 270 miles on them (I'd give you the exact amount but a certain WEBSITE appears to have lost my INFORMATION!!!) I should end up hitting about 120 miles for my training this month, and will desperately need new shoes by then. Plus, I would like to have the new shoes broken in for the Wild West Relay.

Also, I'm not sure if it's because my shoes are wearing out already, or if it's because of the increased mileage lately, but I'm starting to get callouses on my toes in places I never have before am feeling some shin pain post-runs. I had horrible shin splints in high school and do NOT want those to reappear, so shoes will apparently be fit in my budget asap.

Asap as in Saturday. :) After my long run, I think I'm going to head to the local running store to have them do that thing where they check your running style or whatever (please insert the technical much smarter sounding terminology here) to make sure I'm in the correct shoes. It's not a gait analysis because it's not with the treadmill, it's the thing you stand on that determines where your weight naturally lies....I think anyway.

Asics Nimbuses (Nimbusi? Nimbuseseses?) have always worked, but I'm just interested to see what they say. If all goes well, I should be the proud new owner of these puppies by Saturday afternoon.

They're so...pink. And I'm not really a girly-girl/pink girl. But darn it they're cute. And they don't come in green, which would've been my first choice.

Alright, I'm going to go back to checking runners world obsessively to make sure they haven't lost my running data for the last 2 years, because that would be less than awesome. :(

New Running Clothes + Hissing Geese

Yay for new running clothes! I had bought a lavender running tank from Target to wear for my race a couple of weekends ago, without trying it on (because I'm an idiot) and when I got him it did not fit. As much as I love clothes that cling to the love handles, I think I'll pass. PLUS, since it was so um..form fitting near the hips, guaranteed that puppy would ride up big time once I started running. So back to the store she went.

I had just planned on getting the same tank in a bigger size, but shocker, they only had XS and XXL left. THEN I spotted the green bra I've been dying to get on SALE. Jackpot. I love these Target bras (although I know some of you despise them) and love when they're on sale for $12. I usually stock up. I will admit that 2 of the 6 that I own are "duds." They're super stretchy material and are about as supportive as, um...nothing. These two appear to be top notch, and CUTE.

Then I saw these tanks. Which...eh...are definitely not the cutest. But they're lightweight, the bank panel is a mesh-ish (hah funny made up word) breathable material AND, most importantly, they are lose on the hip area so no possibility of rideage. Nothing bothers me more than having to tug down my top every .15 miles. Last time I wore the "wrong" tank, I ended up tucking it IN to my running shorts so I wouldn't have to mess with it anymore. Talk about fashion faux pas. I felt like a wrestler, ick, they always seem to do the shirt tucked in thing when they workout. ALSO, the tanks were only 10 bones. Can't go wrong with a price like that. Plus since I was returning a $20 tank, it made me feel like this trip was so much cheaper than it really was. ;)

Last night, when I got home from work, I went to my fridge to cross off my 4 miler from the schedule, and -GASP- realized it was supposed to be 5!!! Of course I had a mini freak out (because one mile is a HUGE difference, side note: I'm an idiot.) Then I saw that Thursday called for an easy 4, and it would be an easy flop to just do 5 then. Which is probably a good thing, because another mile of hills yesterday would've probably been the death of me. I think I'm going to have to make a second copy of the schedule to post to Taylor's fridge, since I seem to be doing most of my morning runs from there. I'm sure he'll just love me bringing more crap over to his place. Hah.

This morning I had an easy 5 miler on the schedule. Because of the hills yesterday, my legs were a little sore/tired, so it was nice to take this one slow. There were a couple of random things worth mentioning from the run.

First, my run took me very close to the airport in town and I ended up running under a plane taking off. I wish I was a good judge of distance, but it was CLOSE, and it was REALLY cool, until I immediately thought, "oh crap! what if this thing crashes, I'm donzo!"

Secondly, I'm sick of geese. Seriously, I love all animals. But I'm starting to hate geese. There was a ginormous gaggle of geese (3 points for alliteration) on the trail this morning. Usually when this happens, I'll run off in the grass as far from them as possible to keep from making them mad. Well, of course, today a family of bikers was coming in the opposite directly and took their jolly sweet time getting through. By the time it was my chance to go by they were fired up and hissing at me. I let out a little yelp and started hauling some booty. Last thing I need is to be chased by a gaggle of geese :) in the middle of my recovery run! Stupid birds. Don't they see me waving to deer? I can't be a bad person. QUIT HISSING!

I ended up doing the fiver in 47:49 for a pace of 9:34 (supposed to be 9:46). But my splits were pretty darn close for the first 3 miles, after that I just got bored and wanted to go home to watch Saved by the Bell. ;)
1. 9:42
2. 9:42
3. 9:40
4. 9:28
5. 9:15
Oh Zach Morris, you are such a heart throb. :)