Twin Cities 10 Training Week 12

Week of September 25-October 1

Monday Planned: Race pace + speed 7 miles 4x100, 2 miles @ 10k pace
Monday Actual: Unplanned rest day. We were celebrating our anniversary in the evening, and I could not make myself get out of bed to do the run. My stomach was super upset all night. Oops. oh well. 

Tuesday Planned: Recovery 3 miles 
Tuesday Actual: Another rest day. I had every intention of doing Monday's run Tuesday morning, and it just didn't happen. Oh well.

Wednesday Planned: General Aerobic 4 miles  
Wednesday Actual: General Aerobic 3.5 miles with the group run aka with Toni. Chris joined us toward the end. I didn't look at the pace at all but it ended up SPEEDY.

Thursday Planned: POWER + Recovery 5 miles  
Thursday Actual: POWER + General Aerobic 5 miles. For some reason my legs were super tired after POWER, so my glutes (lol my MacBook autocorrected to gluten) weren't firing at all, causing some over striding and IT band discomfort. Barf, not ideal for race week. I finally stopped around mile 4 and did some glute activation leg lifts which helped a lot. Followed by some foam rolling when I got home.


Friday Planned: Rest
Friday Actual: Recovery 3 miles with the coffee run. We kept it super easy and it was awesome to run on a nice chilly morning. The coffee after is always a plus.

Saturday Planned: Recovery 3 Miles 4x100
Saturday Actual: Recovery 3 Miles along the 10k/5k course. All the hills.

Sunday Planned: Twin Cities 10 Mile Race
Sunday Actual: Twin Cities 10 Mile Race, except I suck at tangents so I hit 10.11 miles. Race report to come soon!!

Total Mileage Planned: 32 miles
Total Mileage Actual: 26.4 miles,  which is suspiciously close to a marathon. But like... over 5 days instead of 4-5 hours.

Twin Cities 10 Training Week 10

Week of September 11-17

Monday Planned: Recovery 3 miles
Monday Actual: Two mile recovery run. Kyle came out on his bike and kept me company. My calves were super tight, so I stopped to stretch a million times.

Tuesday Planned:  General Aerobic + Speed 5 miles 2 sets 4x150m strides
Tuesday Actual: Rest. I slept for ten hours and skipped my run. I did spend some significant time foam rolling and doing core work.

Wednesday Planned: General Aerobic 7 miles 
Wednesday Actual: General Aerobic 7 miles + yoga. I got in 3.5 miles before the group run with Chris, and another 3.5 with the group followed by yoga.

Thursday Planned: POWER + LT 8 miles, 36 min tempo 
Thursday Actual: POWER + Rest. My stomach was angry. There was no way I could do a hard workout, in the heat wave with that terrible stomachache. Uff.

Friday Planned: Recovery 4 miles 
Friday Actual: LT 8 miles, 36 min tempo. I had the day off on Friday but skipped the coffee run because I thought Toni had overslept. Luckily she was free to do our missed tempo run after supper. I can't believe how early it's getting dark already! :'(

Saturday Planned: Rest
Saturday Actual: 4.14 miles shakeout run. Just a few hours after the evening's tempo run. Had planned for 5 but cut it early.

Sunday Planned: Endurance 11 miles
Sunday Actual: Hilly long run 11 miles. We hit all of the hills on this long run to prep for TC10!

Total Mileage Planned: 37 miles
Total Mileage Actual:  32.24 miles

Hill Cramming

In June, prior to starting to train for the Twin Cities 10 Miler (actually before we even got in to the lottery for the race) I re-read my blog post from 2010, and was reminded of how hilly the route was. I sent a panicked text to Toni that there were ZOMG HILLS in the TC10 and I suck at hills, and I was going to die.

She calmly replied that we'd make sure to integrate all the hill running into our training. Because she's smart. And knows exactly what to say to calm the crazy. We had a lot of endurance runs with 100 meter pick ups in them, as well as ones with 12 second hill repeats.

But as I was driving to work this week, I thought to myself, "self, have you been doing diligent hill work as promised?" and my answer was, "shit, no!" So we're 2 weeks out from the race, and I know you can't cram train for a race, but can you hill cram for a race? Because I'm going to try.

We're going to pick hillier routes for our last two long runs, which should be easy since the bike trail (my beloved flat bike path where I don't have to worry about stopping at stop lights and getting hit by vehicles) is under construction. We also do a hilly route with the group run on Wednesday nights, so we might do 3.5-4 miles with the group instead of the usual 3 to take advantage of the hilly parts, and taking a hillier route during our regular runs from the library. Eeps.

So hill cramming. TBD if that works out or if we should've started in June AS PREVIOUSLY DISCUSSED. This will serve as a reminder for next year when we're doing the marathon instead of the ten miler. Mark my words (and someone actually remind me in June, please).

Twin Cities 10 Training Week 7

Week of August 21-27

Monday Planned: General Aerobic 4 miles
Monday Actual: Since I did my long run Sunday, I wanted to do this as a recovery run. And my legs felt like garbage. Thank goodness Kyle joined me on his bike, because I would've bagged the run at .18 miles it felt so crappy. I managed to go 3.25 miles and that was plenty. It was so humid and my body felt like crap. Did I mention how crappy it felt?

I did get some kisses from this beauty after. So it was totally worth it.

Tuesday Planned: General Aerobic 6 miles 
Tuesday Actual: Toni and I met up for 3 miles before the group run and the Ale joined us for the next 3 miles. They were fairly uneventful except that my legs still felt pretty crappy. I need to sleep for like six days. Not sure where that fits in my schedule though.....

Wednesday Planned: General Aerobic + Speed 8 miles 6x12 sec uphill, 6x100

Wednesday Actual: 

Thursday Planned:   LT 9 miles, 36 minutes at tempoThursday Actual: It was the anniversary of my mom's passing, so I took a couple of vacation days from work. I planned to go with Toni after work, and I was just exhausted. Felt like I could sleep for days, so I opted to bail on the run, knowing I couldn't make up the miles later in the week. Womp.

Friday Planned: Recovery 4
Friday Actual: I planned to do the coffee run with Toni and I either had a alarm malfunction or I shut off of my alarm and went back to bed. I slept until almost 10am. So tired.

Saturday Planned: Rest + High Vibe Yoga Festival (so uh... I guess not really a rest day :P)
Saturday Actual: All the yoga, omg. I did 5 yoga classes, totally 7.5 hours of yoga. I was pooped, and my hamstrings were so tight and mad at me.

Sunday Planned: Endurance 12, increase pace, last 3 miles at LT: 605 Series 12 mile
Sunday Actual: Uh.... DNF 12 mile race series and long run. We got home at 10:30pm on Saturday night. I took some ibuprofen because my hamstrings were so tight and achy, I laid out my stuff and went to bed. They were still really tight when I woke up, but I figured they'd warm up as I was running. The first few steps were super painful. My immediate thoughts were that this might be my first DNF. I told myself to run 3 miles without even giving that further thought. We were going slow, but it was just a long run with a finish line, so if we took out the workout portion and just got in the miles, we were both a-ok with that. Around 3.5 miles I realized that my legs weren't loosening and that my form was getting really chopping, especially on the right side. I let Toni know that I was going to leave her once we circled back to the finish line. Honestly, if I hadn't bailed on Toni for so many of our runs for this week, I would've skipped the run this morning in hopes that some foam rolling in the morning could allow it to happen later in the evening. But I wasn't willing to really injure myself for my fall goal races just to complete a 12 mile long run. Next week is a new week with a whole lot less emotions and feelings, so fingers crossed my body bounces back asap! New rule: no yoga festivals if you're spending all your free time running all the miles and not doing all the yoga. Duuuuuuuuh.

Total Mileage Planned: 43 miles

Total Mileage Actual:  

Twin Cities 10 Mile Lottery

My running buddy, Toni and I signed up for the Twin Cities 10 Mile lottery last weekend. It's open for 10 days before participants are selected. I ran the race in 2010 and desperately would like to run it again this year since I'm planning to run the TCM full in 2018 (eeps!) We registered as a team so we'll either get in together or not.

I have a room booked at the finish line that has a shuttle to the start for roughly a million dollars a night, so that'll be fun and not break the bank at all. There are a few other Sioux Falls lady runners who are applying for the lottery as well, so hopefully we can have a full room to cut down the cost a bit.

A few of my runner friends were talking about the Crazy Horse Half Marathon the following weekend, so we decided that will be our back up plan if TC10 doesn't work out.

Cross your fingers for us please!!

Also, it's totally our one year runnerfriendivarsary today, so yay us! Thanks for being my BRF Toni! You've made the last year of running way more fun than it has been in a really long time!

Race Report: Twin Cities 10 Mile

After hounding Alyssa all weekend about what my race goal should be, I think she finally realized I was serious and sat down with me to look at the elevation chart and help me plan it out.  We determined that my shoot for the stars goal would be 1:21.  With a goal in mind, it was time for bed.  After tossing and turning for.ev.er. I think I finally dozed off at 12:30.  Four hours later I was up and at 'em getting ready for the race.  I felt sick as soon as I woke up.  Not fun.  I choked down my protein bar and banana, even though I felt like it was going to come back up.  When I got to my car to head to the Metrodome, I found it covered in frost.  Uh... brrrrrrrrrrr.  

I got to the Metrodome, and I was happy to say that my first visit inside had nothing to do with the Minnesota Vikings.  :)  While stretching (or really just wrestling with pre-race nerves) Julie came up to me!  Julie was running her FIRST MARATHON!!!!  We have very similar race times, so we talked race strategy and goals, and before I knew it, my stomach was dictating the gazillionth bathroom break of the morning, and I didn't have much time before I had to be lined up in my corral.  I said goodbye to Julie, waited in an insanely long line, and hit the cold cold outdoors.


After growing goosebumps on top of my 2 layers of goosebumps, it was almost time for the race to start. At one point, a guy dressed for a winter blizzard came up to me and asked if I was cold, and said that I made him feel like a wuss.  Hah.  I almost told him he'd surely have the upper hand if it was hot and humid, but decided to just roll with the complement...ish.


When it was corral #2's turn to toe the starting line, everyone kind of chuckled as the race director yelled at "GO!" to start the race.... that is until we realized she was serious.  Oh ok then.  The crowd was pretty tight for the first mile.  By 1.25 I was so very happy that I had decided on shorts and a short sleeved shirt.  Oh who am I kidding?  I only brought shorts and a short sleeved shirt, there was no "deciding."  :p    By the second mile I was able to find a bit of a groove, and found my race pace.  Mile three was met by our first steep incline, followed immediately by a steep decline.  I tried to work hard up the hills, and ran somewhat tentatively down the hills as I wasn't sure how the knee was going to handle them.
1. 8:25 
2. 8:16 
3. 8:49


I had been going sans iPod for the beginning miles of the race and just enjoying the sounds of other runners' footfalls.  When we approached the hill at mile 4 I decided it was time to turn on the tunage.  No I didn't decide to listen to Rihanna's Only Girl (In the World) on repeat..... but I might have for the final 3 miles.... don't judge.  :)  We ran over a bridge that was covered by early morning mist and fog, and it was gorgeous.  Couldn't have asked for a better morning for a race.  I knew from looking at the elevation map that there was a steady climb from mile 4.5-7.  I found myself going back and forth between running hard and settling in to my comfortable running pace.  Each time I would catch myself running vs. racing I gave myself a stern scolding and the legs picked up the pace.
4. 8:25 
5. 8:37 
6. 8:49 
7. 8:40 


For some reason, I kept expecting my legs to crap out on me like they had during the Sioux Falls Half Marathon.  Yes, this was a full 5k shorter, but this route was much hillier than that one, and it slaughtered me.  Yet my legs still felt good.  At 3 miles to go I tried to pick up the pace.  At the 9 mile marker I realized I had a TON of gas left in the tank.... and a decent sized downhill to the finish.  I also knew that my Garmin was showing ~.06 long, and if I didn't want my official time to be 1:25 I would need to haul ass.  I started flying past people and down the hill.  My usual IT band screams were non-existent...whaaaaa?????  As I got close to the finish line I heard Alyssa yelling for me, and the announcer say my name.  YIPPEE!
8. 8:17 
9. 8:23 
10. 7:36 <---Uh oops!
.06 :23 (6:45 pace) 6:00 max pace.


I crossed the finish line and immediately started looking for my medal.  Shirt?  check.  Food?  Check.  Water?  Check.  Medal?  Hells to the no.  MINNESOTA RACES WHY MUST YOU SCREW ME OVER SO????  Sigh.  I understand a 10 mile race might not necessitate a medal, but if I'm dropping $70 on it (which, btw, is $5 more than I paid for the Green Bay Marathon) I best be bringing home some bling.  Rant done (for now).


I finished 10.06 miles in 1:24:44 for a pace of 8:25.
Yes, this is an auto-PR as I've (clearly) never raced a 10 mile before. :p

Results:

Field Placement:	1777 / 7017 (25.3%)
Age group:	22 – 29
Group Placement:	158 / 1029 (15.4%)
Gender Placement:	630 / 4311 (14.6%)

I met up with Alyssa shortly after grabbing my shiz (did I mention sans medal?) and we made a short trip to her car to change clothes and ditch some of my crap, and then it was marathon spectating time!  We got to see the wheelchair champion, men's champion, and women's champion come through.  We even got to slap hands with the men's champion.  Yes, we were slightly giddy over it.  :)

Alyssa and I both had the maximum number of racers we could track on our phones, and were beyond frustrated with it's successfulness.  We received multiple updates at the beginning of the race, but none after the half marathon mark.  We didn't know if our peeps had gotten injured, fell way off pace, decided to stop in at a bar and call it a day (office hubby).  We just had to keep staring at the throngs of people for certain colors of shirts.  Let's just say that for blind betty over here, that was not a treat.  My poor eyes are still killing me!

First to come through was my former manager and studly runner, Angie!  She was attempting a BQ, and came up just shy, but still posted a 7 minute PR.  Of course I attribute the PR to the fact that she was wearing green, but that's just me, you know?  :)

Next up was office hubby Tom!  I was concerned because he got hurt mid-way through training and only got an 18 mile long run in about 7 weeks ago.  He's definitely athletic enough to take on a marathon, but I didn't know if he would get hurt in the process.  After my phone updates failed me, I turned in to major office wife freak out mode.  It didn't help that every third dude was wearing yellow, and was so not him.  Finally I saw him coming down the way, and I screamed my little face off for him.  He gave me a smile slash I-hate-my-life-right-now look.

It was at this point that I had to leave and come to terms with the fact that I had probably missed Julie and Heather.  :'(  Turns out Julie had come in way under what she was expecting and I did miss her.  And based on Heather's finishing time, I'm guessing she was coming down the final stretch as I was heading out.  Damn you faulty race trackers! :(  Congrats anyway ladies!!  (Please check out their reports for their awesome race reports!!)

Twin Cities Marathon Weekend

I got in to the Twin Cities Friday evening after a long drive filled with Glee songs sung at the top of my lungs.  No joke.  I met up with Alyssa and we decided to head in to St. Paul for some food.  Stupid me at some chips and queso for breakfast after my 4 mile run, and then forgot to eat lunch before I hit the road.  Needless to say that by 7:30pm, I was starrrrrrrrrrving.

When we finally decided on a restaurant our waiter informed us that there would be a very long wait for food, as a huge party had just walked in before we got there.  Awesome.  After eating my weight in food, and drinking some pre-celebratory Shiner Bocks (I love Shiner Bock and have only had it when I was in Texas last winter).  YIPPEE!

We then met up with Alyssa's friend Kody at an Irish bar.  I love me some Irish bars.  True story.  Have I mentioned how much I love hanging out with runners?  Because I do.  :)  We had a lot of fun, and I was so wishing that I didn't have a race to tend to for the weekend, because raging would've been a lot of fun.  :)  Speaking of, Kody had asked how Alyssa and I had met, and my favorite quote from the weekend was born.  "We raced, we raged, and then became friends."  --Alyssa.

The next morning we headed back to St. Paul for the race expo.  We saw so many people on Friday night carrying around their expo bags, and were having serious expo envy!

Alyssa and I scored some sweet new Nathan's handheld water bottles, and plotted out our strategy to do almost every race that had a booth in attendance.  We're fools like that.  :)

Alyssa and I with Kody.

Showing off our Princess crowns at the Disney Marathon booth.  

Yes, we wore these tiaras to lunch, and yes we got many strange looks.  Oh well.  :)

After we left the expo, we decided to do some exploring.  Because the best thing to do before a race is to walk.  For hours.  I'm dumb. :p  We got to spend some time enjoying the beautiful day, and taking a bazillion pictures of course.

After stopping for some mid-afternoon coffee pick me up (worst idea EVER for someone who doesn't drink much coffee.  I couldn't fall asleep FOREVER. ahhhh!), I realized that we were really close to where one of my college bffs lives.  After determining they were almost wrapping up their beer fest (again, why was I racing this weekend?!?!?) we met up for a quick howdy do.  I love zeez boyz.

Andy, me, and Eric.

Twin Cities 10 Miler Goals...Maybe.

Monday I had an easy 6 miler on the schedule.  I had to rip roar through that puppy to make it home in time to get gussied up to watch the Monday Night game:  Packers v. Bears.  Pay no mind to me getting gussied up to watch a football game, as that's neither here nor there.  The trails were flooded out about 2.5 miles in to my route and my legs were traaaaaaaashed from the 10 miler the day before, so I decided to call it a day at 5.

I did 5 miles in 48:55 for a pace of 9:45.

Sadness prevailed during the game, but I won the award for cutest Packers fan in a Jennings' jersey, so it's okay.  jk.  But seriously....... My money's still on GB for the season, obvs.

Wednesday night I set out for my first speed work session in 3 weeks.  Uh whaaaaaaaaa?  This girl loves her speed, bring it BACK.  After finishing Born to Run on my lunch break, I was seriously raring to go.  Which is shocking, because I've been dreading tempo runs for the last 4 months.  Seriously, I whined like a little B before all of them.  Icky.  I was a little concerned at how it would go, however.  I had 7 miles to do with 5 at a pace of 8:19.

I started running and my knee was kind of wonky, and so was my left hip.  [Legs get it together now pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease!]  When I started my first tempo mile I was in the 7:50s.  And then when I looked I was in the 8:30s.  And so it continued for the next 5 miles.  No wonder I couldn't run an 8:15 paced half marathon; my legs have no idea what that feels like.

Partially through the 2nd tempo mile I thought about cutting the run short because my leg hurt, and I got to thinking about Born to Run and the portion that mentioned how much those runners truly loved to run, and you could see the sheer joy and happiness on their faces as they flew up trails.  I decided the least I could do is enjoy the run.  :)  And what do you know, when I started focusing on the fun and not the pain, the pain disappeared.

I did have to "off road it" a bit on one area of the trail since it was flooded out, and I must've picked up a blood sucking mosquito, because as I got started again I had an intense itch on my leg.  I stopped to scratch it but nothing was there.  It continued to itch and I scratched it violently while in stride.  When I got home I realized that perhaps I scratched it too violently as I had left claw marks on my legs.  Ooops.  (Sorry that's a lot of upper thigh to be showing to the interwebs, but nothing compared to the shorty mcshort-short running shorts I wore on this run.  Whoa!  But I totally understand why serious racers wear them, you feel nekkid and that = fast running. heh.)

I did 7 miles in 1:01:09 for a pace of 8:45.  Tempo average pace:  8:22.
Tempo miles:  8:18, 8:20, 8:24, 8:25, 8:23.

Twin Cities 10 Miler Goals
I'm taking off to Minneapolis sometime Friday (after I get my huge to-do list completed) and meeting up with Alyssa to take on Twin Cities 10 Mile/Marathon weekend.  I've been thinking about my goals for this race all week, and for the first time in....uh... forever, I don't know what my goal time will be.  Before getting injured my knee condition I had thought I could run the race at an 8:07 pace.  This was based on the McMillan calculator and the 1:48 I was to get in the half.  Based on the time I actually got in the half, McMillan tells me that I should just take a nap instead of running should do a 8:26 pace (which is slower than the HM pace I had attempted 3 weeks ago, mind you).  And then, of course today I looked at the results from last year and saw that only 4 or 5 girls in my age group (22-29) had faster times the one I had thought I could run before my knee hurt.

Which leaves me with ??????????  I'm going to run.  If I'm not tired, I'm going to run a little faster.  If I get tired, I'm going to continue to run.  If my knee hurts, I'm going to be happy that I'm dealing with something as minor as runner's knee that is merely an annoyance and not an all out injury.  And I guarantee that running the last 7 miles of the marathon course is going to make me want to sign up for next year's Twin Cities Marathon.  And Mr. EO is trying to convince me the same.

So if I'm feeling great, I want to get as close to 1:20 as possible.  At the very least, I'd like to run a faster pace than my half marathon time of 8:34, which could prove to be tough based on how much not running I've been doing lately.  Best of luck to all the TC racers.  I hope to see you all there!  I'll be the one in green, natch. ;)