Easy Run + Early Foto Friday + 2 A Day?

Foto Friday came early this week.  Just because this pic is too cute to wait.  :)  Somehow the red sunglasses were stolen/lost by my drunk booty at some point during the night.  :(  Taylor was less than pleased, to say the least.  Too fun.

This morning I drug my butt out of bed, but did NOT want to run.  Usually once I'm up in the morning, I'm excited for my run, but not today.  I think I need to stop eating dairy.  :(  This is probably obvious for those of you who know that I'm lactose intolerant but I l.o.v.e. cheese.  But my consumption of it as of late has made me feel like crap.  Last night after Tay's softball games, we went to Old Chicago and I had a roasted tomato/spinach calzone.  It was awesome, but my stomach was not very happy this morning.  Dairy out.  Or else I need to be more consistent with taking lactase pills when I do eat it.

Anywho, the 5 miles was pretty uneventful.  Gorgeous sunrise to enjoy, so that was nice.  But it was definitely cool this morning at 5:45am.  It got me thinking about what I'll do once it starts to get cold.  Shortly after the Sioux Falls 1/2 Marathon on September 13th, it's going to be cold, and dark early in the morning.  I'm afraid if I go back to being an after work runner, I'll come up with awesome reasons not to run.  :(  We'll have to see I guess.

I finished the 5 miles in 46:32 for an avg. pace of 9:19 (supposed to be 9:40 now, but close enough).  It felt "easy" except for the first mile.  Which, coincidentally, was my slowest mile.  Weird.

1.  9:51

2.  9:16

3.  9:23

4.  9:04

5.  8:58

Now, I'm bored.  And I'm contemplating doing my easy 5 that is slated for tomorrow, tonight.  Make it my 2nd 2-a-day run.  I'm going to try to convince loverboy to come out for a bit of it with me.  I could really use to sleep in tomorrow, so it'd be great to get it out of the way tonight.  Unfortunately, that would probably mean that I would be antsy tomorrow, and would want to run anyway.  I think I have the running fever.  EEEK!

First Double Day + Long Run Report

Busy weekend = no blogger/running update. It also means that I haven't had a chance to upload any data from G-man to my computer, so any times are from memory.

Thursday night was my first official double run. Thursday morning I did a kick ass tempo run, and had planned to do an easy 4 miler after work Thursday night. After battling a horrendous headache all day at work, my ibuprofen finally kicked in and I had a super fun run. There is an "outdoor campus" pretty close to my place, and I see people running on the trails there when I start out on the bike trails, and decided to check it out. I figured running on dirt would be just what the legs needed/wanted for run #2 of the day. I was right, it was awesome. I felt like a little kid running through the dirt trail deciding at the fork in the trail whether to take a left or a right, laughing to myself when I'd come full circle without realizing it. I could've ran on the trails forever. Except that it was getting dark out, and I'm slightly directionally challenged without the sun to guide me, so I high tailed it out of there once the sun was no longer visible through the trees. I did have a chance encounter with a raccoon that almost scared the pants off of me. After 2.25 miles there, I decided to run a short route around my apartment area to make it an even 4. Let me tell you, running on dirt really slows you down. My pace for the first 2 miles and change were around 10:15-10:30. The last part was closer to 9-9:30. SUPER fun though, and will definitely be back for another easy run. I think the legs will thank me.

Friday was Taylor's brother's rehearsal dinner. Food was good. 1 glass of wine + 1 short glass of beer over a 5 hour span (much better than the drinking fest that was the last two weekends) was good. Company was good (two of Taylor's HS friends were back in town, and they're two of my favorite friends of his). I somehow convinced Tay that 1am was a good bedtime, and I didn't have to go to the final bar of the night. Unluckily for me, Taylor had been drinking since 10am when the groomsmen went golfing, so he was a snoring machine. I promptly kicked him out of bed, and was bright eyed and bushy tailed for my 7am long run wake up call.

I snagged a banana to eat on the way back to town and had decided to start my run at a different spot on the trail since I had to drive back to town anyway. It was super fun to switch things up, even though about 3 miles of the 10 mile run were on the same part of the trail that I run all the time. I decided to take this 10 miler easier than last week's. Most of my splits for the first 5 miles were right around 9:10. The next 2 I aimed for 9:00 and the last 3 I ran as hard as my legs wanted to. Which ended up being around 8:45-8:50. My overall time averaged out to a 9:00 mm pace. I had a blueberry pomegranate GU Roctane around mile 3.5 and I think that's the best flavor I've had yet. It was pretty tasty. :) I'm trying to think of any weird sightings that I had throughout the run, but I must've been zoning because I can't think of any.

Edited to add splits from the G-man:

1. 9:29 2. 9:06 3. 9:10 4. 9:07 5. 9:12 6. 9:02 7. 9:00 8. 8:58 9. 8:44 10. 8:16

Saturday was the wedding and reception. It was a blast. Somehow I only managed to take one photo. Perhaps Foto Friday it will make an appearance. :) I am still in recovery mode today from the festivities, so lucky for me I have a rest day today. Yay for shuffling the schedule last week!

OH! I also hit 100 miles for the month during my long run. I totally forgot about it until I was entering it into my running blog. I feel like I should've done a celebratory run/dance/shuffle at .4 of the long run, but alas. Maybe next month. :)

brain pain + tempo run

I sure do love getting to sleep in on Thursdays. 4:30am? No way. I even reset my alarm after it went off at 7am, this girl needs her beauty sleep. I finally got up at 8, and was out the door at 8:30 for my tempo run. 6 miles, 4 at 8:19 pace. Slightly excited, as I’ve never done a tempo run with more than 3 miles at a tempo pace.

Folks, it is HOT at 8:30am. Bleck. I should’ve just gotten up to do my run and then gone back to bed. Yet the bikers were still wearing pants and jackets. Crazy bikers. I did actually see a dude wearing old school sweat pants. I think my jaw dropped, as I had already sweated through my lightweight tank.

But on to the run, I did the first mile at a very leisurely pace. When my time popped up, I was kind of shocked at how slow it showed. I haven’t ran a 10 mm for quite a while. But oh well. Kicked it in to the tempo pace. First tempo mile beeps in at 8:31. Whoa. Not even close to the pace I was shooting for. At this point, I decided that my legs couldn’t do that pace for whatever reason, and would just go at an 8:30 mm pace if that’s what they wanted.

Except that the next 3 tempo miles came in at 8:11, 8:12, and 8:08. So now I’m thinking there’s something a little fishy going on with the old G-Man, because honestly my level of exertion was almost identical for all 4 miles. While doing my final mile cool down, I was able to determine that my Garmin had lost ~.06 miles in the first couple of miles (based on the landscape markers for my out and back). After tacking the extra .03 to each of the first miles, the splits seemed much closer.

Officially unofficial splits:
1.03 9:57 (9:40 pace)

2.03 8:31 (8:17 pace)

3. 8:11

4. 8:12

5. 8:08
6. 8:51 .04 :21

6.1 miles in 52:15 for a pace of 8:34. My tempo miles were a pace of 8:12, which I think was the goal pace of last week's tempo that my legs seem to have memorized. I'll take it. :)

As soon as I walked in the door I SLAMMED two glasses of water. But I’ve had a monster headache all day. It’s days like today that I wish I worked in the medical field and could just hook myself up to an iv during my break to rehydrate. I can’t seem to take in enough water. Boo.
After my shower, I did manage to make an AWESOME green monster. I haven’t had one for a few weeks, and it cooled me off right away. I had a huge handful of spinach, some vanilla soy milk, half a scoop of whey protein powder, 3 strawberries, and half a banana. Nom. I did get some somewhat strange looks from my co-workers for my breakfast though.

Tonight I am attempting my first legit 2-a-day run. I have an easy 4 on the schedule tomorrow, but Taylor’s brother is getting married Saturday and their rehearsal and dinner is tomorrow night. I’m guessing it won’t be an early night and waking up so early to run tends to make me want to crash at about 10, so I figure this would work out perfect. Plus then my legs have tomorrow off in preparation for the long 10 on Saturday. I’m hoping to run off my headache. Ugh.

5k results + Carb Overload

Guess what I got in the mail today?? :D Finally validation that this race really did exist. Also, they finally posted the official results of the race too (only 3 1/2 weeks later, but still better than not at all).

Official time: 24:04. Boo. My Garmin said 24:02 which I deem to be more accurate with a non-chip timed race and me starting 4 rows deep, but whatev. Besides as my co-worker/intern said, at least you weren't a few seconds faster with this problem. It'd really suck to think you broke 24 minutes only to find out a few weeks later that you didn't. Excellent point co-worker/intern. :)

Age Group Place: 1 of 4. (If I would've known this prior to the race, I think I would've changed my pre-race goal from placing in the top 3 in my division. Ha.)

Gender Place: 1 of 23.

Overall Place: 11 of 58. Missed the top 10 by 10 seconds. Grr. Oh well. He seemed A LOT farther ahead of me than 10 seconds. :)

Funniest thing about the race (which most of you won't get because you don't know my last name, but oh well, do some research if you want, you'll get a kick out of it) the Male Overall Winner's last name is Heavy. My last name is an opposite of sorts. I really wish this would've been a larger race, because that would've been a SWEET headline. When I told my bro, he told me I should submit it to Letterman. Good stuff.

This morning I had an easy 5 miler on the schedule. It was easy, but it sure was boring. I had a little bit of tenderness in my left hammie, but I'm hoping it was just thanking me for the awesome hill workout yesterday. I did 5 miles in 47:44 for a pace of 9:33 (supposed to be 9:46...close enough eh?)

1. 9:42

2. 9:35

3. 9:35

4. 9:32

5. 9:18

When I looked at my Garmin it said that I had burned around 580 calories and I was shocked! Yesterday it said right around the same amount, and I just assumed I burned way more on the hills. Score. But when it said that today, I figured something must be up. To my surprise, my settings had reverted back to the default: Male/150 pounds/1.1.70 DOB. Stupid expensive watch.... :p

I somehow managed to eat my weekly amount of carbs today. For lunch. YIKES. I had 2 leftover breadsticks from the Olive Garden (YUM) for an appetizer. Haha. And then met an old roomie for bagels, where I ate 2. Ugh. I'm going to go into a bread-induced coma this afternoon. But sooooo tasty in the process. :)

hills, hills, hills

I did hills this morning, and they didn't kill me. [Insert pat on the back here.] In no way do I feel completely prepared for the Wild West Relay that's in....oh..17 days...but man I feel a heckuva lot better. This morning I had 5 miles of hills to do, so I set out on the route that I did two weeks ago except with an extra .5 mile added on (to up it to 5 miles total). I felt like a machine. Each time I would get to the bottom of the hill, I would look up, sigh internally, and before I knew it, I was at the top. It was the craziest thing. Perhaps I was still half asleep, but even so, I'll take it.

Close to the turnaround point was the high school track that I've been eyeing to do speedwork at (it's only a mile or so from my place, I ran from Tay's this morning). I decided to veer off course to check to see if I could get in. That place is locked up tighter than Fort Knox! I did spy an area of the fence that is a good foot off the ground, so I could crawl under if I REALLY wanted to, but I'm such a wuss when it comes to getting yelled at, I'm sure I won't. Plus, it's a Catholic school, so I'm fairly certain that intruding on their property would subject me to eternal damnation, and I'm just not sure if it's worth it. :)

On the way back through the hills, my iPod died (of course) and realized that despite how good I felt, I was breathing HARD. Of course hearing myself made me convince myself (slightly) that I was actually tired, even though I wasn't. Does anyone else like listening to their iPod to drown out their breathing? Because I definitely do. Yowsers.

I did the 5 miles in 47:08 for a pace of 9:26.
1. 9:33
2. 9:13 (!!)
3. 9:35 (part was spent running somewhat aimlessly around the track looking for an entrance)
4. 9:36
5. 9:09

I have an intern in my department that I've been training for the last month or so who is also a runner, training for his first marathon this fall. So of course, we spend the first chunk of our morning talking about our runs. When I told him what hills I ran, he didn't believe me! He was thoroughly impressed, and I, again, patted myself on the back. Hah.

****************
One of my personal goals for running is to do a race in every state. I know some of you crazy people are already on your way to becoming maniacs, but I just don't ever see myself getting that nutty about marathons (we'll see after I finally do one, I guess). But I'd love to do some half marathons in some cool locations that I've never visited, or randomly do a little 5k or 10k while in a different state for whatever reason. Part of this goal is being accomplished this fall/winter. In August, I'm doing the Wild West Relay, knocking Colorado off the list. And in December I'm doing the Dallas White Rock half marathon, crossing Texas off my list.

While looking at the leg maps for the WWR last night, I was reading the directions when I saw "Enter into Laramie county." Wait. Isn't Laramie in Wyoming? By George it is! I get to run from Colorado to Wyoming on my second leg of the race. Too cool. PLUS, that totally counts as a "race" in WY in my book. Two birds in one stone, I'd say. :)

In other news, I finally got back on the strength training boat last night with some push ups (35, holla!) next to the muscle machine aka the boyfriend, and some intense ab work. Both arms and abs sufficiently hurt today, so I'd say it was a success. I need to keep doing this, especially the ab work, because it seems to keep the ab pain away. A strong ab is a happy ab. I should totally make a shirt with a smiling ab muscle. My God I'm random....

Also, I had the MOST AMAZING dinner ever last night. Again I should've taken a photo but it just looked toooooooooo good to wait. All day I was craving avocado, so I basically planned the meal around getting me a healthy amount of avocado in my tummy. I ended up making a grilled wrap with smoked turkey breast, pepper jack cheese, a teeny tiny amount of ranch, tomatoes, and AVOCADOS all rolled up and pressed in my sweet panini machine. (Thanks Ma for giving this to me 4 Xmas' ago, I finally found it still in the box and use it all the time now!) Oh. My. God. This was amazing. Something about p-jack cheese and avocado together hits the spot EVERY time. The wrap was followed up by some super juicy watermelon. Pretty much the greatest dinner time experience of my life. I was probably patting myself on the back between bites. And by probably I mean, most definitely.

Oh hey. I just noticed that my run for today put me over my total mileage for June. And it's only the 21st. Hey-o. :)

10 miles, I kicked your @$$

and subsequently, you made my digestive system your bitch.  Touche.

But let's back up, shall we.  :)  Saturday Taylor and I went to the big jazz festival that was in our town this weekend.  I somehow managed to resist the temptation of the funnel cakes, cheese curds, indian taco deliciousness.  Small lie.  I did have a small bite of Tay's fry bread.  Nom.  He's not a big jazz fan, so we went to his hometown to hang out with some buddies.  Since I didn't get the wine that I was craving on Friday night, I decided to have a glass.  Merely hydrating for the long run, I told myself.  The wine did not hit the spot.  So I followed it up with a TALL glass of Fat Tire.  Mmmmm.  That hit the spot.  Unfortunately, these 2 drinks took me from soberness to not so sober in a very limited amount of time.  Whooops.  We also split a buffalo chicken pizza.  Holy crap it was good.  But yes, I'm an idiot as I'm lactose intolerant, and didn't have any lactase pills on me.  Also, it is very possible that I have a mild case of IBS, this will come into play later in this story.  [If you're keeping tabs at home, this is long run #2 that I have fueled with pizza and beer.  I'm an idiot.  :)]

Then we went back into town to the jazz festival with his friends.  In his mind, jazz is bearable when he can drink large amounts of beer.  Decent reasoning.  :)  Drink 3, 4, and 5 followed over the course of the night.  Luckily 4 and 5 were teeny tiny glasses of cheap wine.  But still not the ideal way to spend the night before a long run.

I woke up early and realized that I didn't really have anything to munch on to fuel up, so I ate a sugary cereal bar.  Definitely not ideal, but better than nothing.  My stomach, was NOT happy with me.  I laid on my bed reading magazines begging it to chill out or just "process" all the bad (meaning the buffalo pizza that was still lingering) so I could go out for my run.  Luckily, it was nice and cool this morning and would be until 11am, so I had some extra time to wait.  Finally, an hour later, I was ready to run.  :)  Within the first .2 miles I thought I had to turn around and hit up the rest room again, but thankfully it was a false alarm (the only bathroom on this route is 3.5 miles in, that could be brutal).  And I was officially off.

Some things worth mentioning:

• My ab started to hurt during the 2nd mile.  The pain was so intense I had to stop a couple of times to try to stretch it out.  Just as quick as it came on, it was gone.
• I had an Espresso Love GU for the first time and liked it quite a bit.  Except I thought it tasted more honey-like than espresso-y.
• Not nearly as many runners/bikers out as last Saturday.  Is everyone in this town on a Saturday long run program?  It was kind of boring without the extra people watching.
• Not to disappoint:  I saw a lady biking, with a big basket in the back for her yorkie.  The yorkie was wearing sunglasses.  I literally laughed out loud when she biked past me.
• I saw a lady jogging in cut off jean shorts and a fitted tee.  It was random.  I practically get chaffing just walking in jean shorts, I can't imagine how that worked out for her.  :s
• I saw a badger for the first time in real life.  At first I thought it was a fat squirrel, but when I did my double take I realized I was wrong.  The only reason I was about to identify it as a badger is because of Wisconsin's mascot logo.  Ha.
• I had a biker ask how far I was going, which was kind of random, and another tell me I was "running strong" on the last mile of my run.  Literally made my run.  :)
• Ab started hurting again towards the end of mile 9.  The pain (or possibly the exerted effort at that point) caused me to feel pukey/nauseous, which was interesting.
• I actually spent the first few seconds post-run dry heaving outside my apartment.  Eew.

It ended up being a really great run.  I wanted to shoot for 9:00 pace doing an under/over method/negative splits/progression run.  At the halfway point I was 30 seconds over the pace, so I knew the last five miles had to be averaging 8:48 to hit my goal pace.  (Does anyone else love a good math problem while running?  I love figuring out math in my head because it makes me forget I'm running.)  :)  I hit that pace and then some.

I felt really strong on the back half of the run, but started to feel sick the last couple of miles (as I mentioned above).  It was only mid-60s when I was running, but I started to get goosebumps and feel chilled during the last couple of miles.  Granted, it was in the shade for a bit of the run and it was breezy, but I know my body temp wasn't cool.  When I got home my fingers were swollen to the size of sausages.  This has happened during each of my half marathons, but still not sure why.

I'm wondering if I got sick because I over-hydrated.  ????  It was MUCH cooler than it has been and I know I sweated much less than I have on my recent long runs, but I still stopped and drank at the water fountains on the course (4 in total).  Or it could've just been because I was pushing hard and my body wasn't used to it.

Either way, I've felt sick all day.  My stomach still hurts, and I almost feel like I have food poisoning it is so upset.  :(

Ponder that and let me know your thoughts.  It's also completely acceptable to give me a virtual slap in the face and tell me to suck it up because I'm being a wuss.  I won't be offended by that.  :)

Here are my glorious splits.  Totally worth the last 9 1/2 hours of pukeyness.

1. 8:59 2. 9:10 3. 9:11 4. 9:05 5. 9:00 6. 8:49 7. 8:41 8. 8:42 9. 8:18 10. 7:51

I did the 10 miles in 1:27:50 for a pace of 8:47. Whoo. Plus I was super psyched at the last 2 mile times. :)

A Running Buddy (?!?) + A Therapeutic Run + Foto Friday

Do you remember the other day when I "jokingly" mentioned that I might facebook stalk an old kind of high school pal to see if she was looking for a running partner?  Well.  I was only kind of kidding.  And by kind of, I mean, not at all.  :)  I waited a couple of days after the initial encounter, so as to not seem too eager, before sending a wall post, 

"Hey! How was your run on Saturday? If you ever need a running partner, let me know. I'm sooooooo bored with running by myself. Do you live near the bike trails?"

to which she replied,

"i would love to run with you!!!! i'm bored with running by myself too! let me know when you wanna go!" (whoa I almost posted that including her response to where she lived.  that would've been baaaaad..)

Whoo!  So of course I follow up with a "private" message with a brief (ok, not so brief) overview of where I'm at with my training, days/times I run, and roughly the pace I'm running, with a mentioning that I wouldn't want to slow her down if she's much speedier than me, which she very well could be.  But that's the number one quality, in my book anyway, about a running partner is to have someone slightly faster than you to help to push you.  Either way, it'll be good to have someone to meet up with for a run a week, or part of a run a week.  Plus, since I'm a loser at making friends with girls (seriously, I'm that girl who has like 3 close girl friends and then only boys, lame) maybe we'll become besties, and braid each others hair, and have sleepovers, and do boy talk.  Ok, jk.  But it would be sweet to have another gal pal.  :)  

No worries, I will keep you (thoroughly) posted on his this partnership unfolds (as if you had any doubt).  (Overkill on the parenthesis yet?  I thought so...ugh.)

This morning marked my first legit morning run of the week.  My goodness have I enjoyed not waking up at 4:30am.  Luckily I barely slept last night, so it was actually easy to get out of bed.  Don't you hate when that happens?  Grr.  But there was a lot of stuff that was weighing heavy on my mind and my heart.  It's amazing how much a run can just clear your mind and help you put everything in perspective.  Things aren't 100% better, but at least I was able to understand my thoughts on a more rational level.  

I did 5 miles in a leisurely 46:48 for an avg. pace of 9:22.

1. 9:20 
2. 9:33 
3. 9:23 
4. 9:23 
5. 9:06

It was FRIGID outside this morning.  Silly me packed a pair of shorts and a t-shirt to take to Tay's to run in and it was 52 degrees at the start of my run and only 48 once the wind was factored in.  Don't worry I managed to work up a sweat to cover my goosebumps.  I made the bikers look like pansies when they were going by in sweatsuits and hats.  WUSSIES.  :)

I have a long run of 10 planned for Sunday, but am contemplating doing it tomorrow morning instead.  Given that it's almost 11pm and I'm blogging, my night has been fairly low-key.  It'd be kind of fun to see how the body reacts to a long run without pizza and beer to fuel it.  We'll see.  ;)

For Foto Friday, I am going to share some pics of the Packers game I went to the fall of 2006.  Speaking of besties, I miss her, and I wish she'd return to the states from saving the world because I want to seeee her.  :)  The summer after college, she lived in Ohio and I went to visit her.  We drove to Detroit to watch the Packers play the Lions.  I'm a HUGE Packers fan, and a HUGE Brett Favre fan.  This was the first year that he said he was going to retire, so when he didn't, I knew I had to get tickets as it could (but ended up not being) be my last chance.  Here are some pics from the day.  Beware, I was VERY EXCITED.  :)

Pre-road trip 'bucks.  Not that I NEEDED anything extra.  :)

Below:  Meg was trying to get a pic of me with the field in the background.  Right before she snapped it, Brett ran right next to me right by the goal post.  This is the happiest you will EVER SEE ME.

above:  first huddle of the game.