All not according to plan, Part 1

I started this week by shifting some runs around early on, but really, the whole week was one big mish-mash, which is kind of disappointing, since we had a not so great finish to last week’s plan.

J really wanted to do a track workout on Tuesday, with some of the people we had met the previous weekend when we were volunteering. I had wanted to add in some speedwork this week anyway, so I acquiesced. This meant, however, that we would be running 3 days in a row (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday) which would be our first time ever doing that. I was a little nervous about how my legs would handle 3 days in a row (the first day being a “long run” and the third being a track workout), but they performed beautifully.

Monday:
3 miles (10:07 avg pace)

Tuesday: (Track Workout)
This was planned as a 5 mile run, with some speedwork added into the mix. We decided to join a group at the track. This was our workout:

11x600’s with 20-25 sec rest at T pace

Here’s where it gets really good. J had checked out the sheet that was supposed to list our T pace for 600’s, based upon our 5k PR. It is clear that we are faster than our current 5k PR at this point, so we had used McMillan’s calculator to convert our 10k PR into a more “accurate” 5k time (27:01). J saw that we were supposed to finish each 600 in 2:56. Now, I am a Garmin newbie. I could not figure out at the right time, which buttons were supposed to be pushed when. Luckily, J had our “back-up” watch, and was keeping track of our splits, with which we were dead on. (I always held a very consistent pace when I was swimming; I think it’s rolling over into running, too!) The one time I think I had the Garmin doing what I wanted it to, it told me we were running at 8:00 avg pace.

Hmm… “J [heavy breathing] I think we’re going too fast… [heavy breathing]… aren’t we supposed to be holding 9’s…?” “No, we’re doing great!” Well, we later found out that the chart must have had a wee bit of a typo in it… Like, it told us to do each 600 in 2:56, when what it probably actually meant was 3:56. OOPS! So, that means were were holding 7:49 avg pace, which is probably why I kept telling J how much I hated him during each rest break… Truth be told, I didn’t know I could run that fast, so that’s exciting! And I was able to hold the same pace the whole way through; 4.1 miles! Looks like I’m going to have to push a bit harder in these 5k/10k races!

Summary:
1.71 mile warm-up
4.1 mile tempo @ 7:49
0.25 cool down (I’m thinking this should be more, next time)
Total: 6.06 miles (That’s longer than last week’s “Long Run”! :)

Wednesday:
Rest Day

Thursday:
GOTR 5k (Oh boy…)

So, it’s not that I didn’t have fun, but it’s not exactly what I had hoped for. I showed up on time and met my girl with plenty of time to spare. She was very hyper and energetic as we were waiting for the 5k to start. She was a bit clingy, which was a little weird, but J has 6 nieces and nephews, so it’s not my first time around the block. Soon enough, we all headed over to the “starting line”. My girl wanted to line up at the front, which I am always hesitant about, because I never start up there, and she didn’t seem to be in the best of shape… Well, I couldn’t deny her, since the leaders were telling everyone to move in. Before you knew it, we’d started. We started running, hand-in-hand. I was surprised; she was holding a decent pace, not sprinting with all her life (like some of the other girls). I heard my name called from behind me, just after the start, and it was Alisa. I wish we could have chatted, but my girl was still charging ahead, so I waved instead. Soon, we were at the hill, and that was when the running stopped…

My girl had a side cramp. I told her my tried and true solution for this (smell the roses, blow out the candles), and soon her cramp was gone. We were walking at a nice relaxed pace, made it up the hill; “water!” Our first water stop of the day, 1/2-way through the first of 8 3/4 laps. We continued walking and finally finished the first full loop. “How many more do we have to go?” “Only 7 and a little bit.” “7!!!!!?????????? We can’t do that!” [Insert super bubbly and motivational Marya] During the second lap, she had a calf cramp, but she was able to walk it off. The next few laps go by without much of a difference. More walking; slow walking. During the 5th lap (and the remaining laps) we have to take a standing rest break on the hill. Since we were at least 45 minutes into this thing, my motivational pep talks were needing their own motivational pep talks, and we were only halfway through!

Eventually, other volunteers jumped in (Hallelujah!) and tried to inspire her. We got nothing. She continually told us that she wanted to quit, but I kept telling her, “No way! We can do this! We’re gonna keep going until we’re finished!) Well, as we were nearing the finish line along the loop, and had but 1 lap to go, one of her coaches ran up and said “This is it! You’re almost done!!” I slyly replied, “We still have another lap to go.” You could see the defeat in the coaches eyes. “Well the van is leaving, so this has to be it.” So we finished our less-than-5k. Yes, we were the last to finish, but J says we were probably only 1 lap behind the next to last finisher.

Well, chances are I won’t have to worry about being physically drained the week before our Half. Emotionally? I hope we can finish the Starlight Run 5k! I was sad that my girl’s family wasn’t there, like some of the other girls’ families, but from what she told me about them, I’m not surprised. I would be surprised if they showed up at the Starlight Run… I guess that’s why she’s in this program!

It was a good experience, and I’m sure I’ll try to do it again next year. We’ll see what the Starlight brings!

Summary:
3-ish miles of walking (I’m counting it! I was definitely on my feet, emotionally drained, and I certainly wasn’t going to run after that!)

Friday:
Happy Hour :)

I’ll recap the weekend in a separate post, since this one is already so long (and the weekend is not yet over!)

SoCal Vacation, Part 1

Before I get into our trip, here’s a recap of the week, so far:

Monday:
3 miles (avg. pace 10:22)
This run took place around the city, i.e. around tall buildings. Therefore, I’m taking Garmin’s avg. pace with a grain of salt. Either way, I felt really good on this run, and it was fun taking a random path through town.

Tuesday:
Rest Day, and I mean it!

Wednesday:
3 miles (11:07)
We joined a running group for the Easter Fulton Pub Run. There were probably at least 50 people there, and I think everyone had a good time. J and I apparently are not very good at finding Easter eggs (we only found 1 each, and by “we” I mean J let me have one of his…), but we still managed to have fun! The first 1.5 miles were along a thin trail, and we were following a group in the back of the pack. We didn’t want to pass them for fear of getting lost, so our pace was a little slower than usual (12:13 and 10:57 for the first 2 miles). After we made it to the turn around for the second half of the loop, we picked it back up and brought it in at 9:48. All in all, we had a great time, and I hope we can join in for one of these group runs again sometime!

Thursday:
3 miles (9:35 avg. pace)
I’ll recap this run later on.

Friday:
Rest Day/Vacation Day!

Ok, now onto the vacation:

Obviously, we made it safe and sound! We started our voyage by waking up at 3am! Look how chipper we are waiting for the Max to take us to the airport:

We made it through all the various airport lines, got ourselves some coffee and breakfast snacks (mmm…coffee cake!), and finally made it on the plane.

We flew JetBlue, so I got to catch up on some trashy reality shows. This trip included America’s Next Top Model (reruns) and Sober House; good quality stuff!

We landed in Long Beach 30 minutes early to beautiful blue skies:

We made it to J’s mother’s house by 9:30am. Good Morning! We were fading fast. Nap time? Nah. Let’s just go for our scheduled run! I brought my Garmin and we took off in random directions, around various neighborhoods, for 3 total miles. J totally picked up the pace for the last mile, and we clocked in at 8:59. I didn’t even notice how quickly we were going! Here’s some pics we got along the way:

I like how this picture is all distorted from the combined movements of J an I running:

Self portrait:

Thumbs Up?

Later that day, I had a dentist appointment (our secret reason for coming down here). I’ve been going to this dentist for more than a year and a half for the same problem, but after yesterday, I only have 1 trip back in May, and I’ll be done! It has been nice to have a reason to come down and visit J’s family, so we’ll take it!

Today is reserved for relaxing and spending time with J’s family. Tomorrow, we will complete our long run (6 miles!) sometime around watching the nieces and nephews hunt for eggs. Sunday is reserved for family time! Happy Easter!

I hope everyone has a good weekend, and a good Easter! See you next week!

Girls on the Run

Earlier this week, I signed up for something I'm pretty excited about. Yes, it is a race (or two), I guess. But it's not really a race for me... It's for Girls on the Run, and it looks really fun. Here's a description of the program from their website:

“Girls on the Run is a twelve week program, consisting of twenty-four ninety-minute sessions. The curriculum is taught by a team of two to three coaches. All Girls on the Run coaches have been screened, interviewed and trained by Girls on the Run of Portland Metro, and all Head Coaches are CPR and First Aid certified. Coaches are required to adhere to the prescribed curriculum for each lesson.

The girls meet twice a week to participate in fun running activities that develop team cooperation, goal setting and leadership skills. The sessions incorporate focused discussions about critical issues that will affect the girls as they reach adolescence.”

I signed up as a "Race Buddy", meaning I only have 2 time commitments:

1. Show up on April 29th to meet my little running buddy. And what better way to get to know someone then to jump in and run/walk a practice 5K?! :)
2. Show up on June 5th to run/walk a real 5K with my running buddy at the Starlight Run!

Sounds easy enough. My only hesitation in signing up was that I am running my first half marathon the weekend following the Starlight Run, but I signed up as a 10 min/mi pace runner, so I hopefully won't be running at full speed!

In any case, I love kids, and this looked like a really fun and worthwhile cause to be a part of. If anyone out there wants to find out more about being a "Race Buddy" check out their website. And if you're interested in participating, just follow their registration instructions, as if you're registering for any other race! There is a background check involved, but all I had to do was print out the form, fill it out, and fax it in. Not too difficult. If you're going to sign up, though, you have to do it by April 14th, so hurry up!

First Run Race Report

Quick Summary:
It was AWESOME!

Full Story:
There was a party at the start/finish line starting at 10:00PM, but we hung out at home until 11:00PM. I had a plan for my shin pain, which started with a hypothesis. I'm fairly certain I'm overpronating when I run (my arch is collapsing), stretching my posterior tibialis muscle, which is what is causing me pain. So my plan was to tape my arches so that they were unable to collapse. Here's what I came up with:


(Excuse my gross left big toe...I should have had J take the picture from another angle ;)
So, after getting "suited up" (We are How I Met Your Mother junkies :) we headed down to the start/finish area. Now all day I had been a little nervous. Not really nervous, but I had that tummy "thing" I would always get before a swim meet.. When I saw the starting line, my nerves disappeared, and I was filled with excitement. Our first real running race!

We pinned our numbers on. Attached our timing chips. (Both firsts for us!) And stood around for about 30 minutes awaiting the start. It was hard to hear the announcer, but when people started herding out to the starting line, we followed suit. We did some walking to warm up our muscles, used the porta-potty, than grouped up behind the masses. Then the count down began. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-Happy New Year!!! *Smooch* (It was a new year after all, and I was with my sweetie!) Then the herd began to move forward; very slowly. I started wondering if we had gotten stuck behind all the walkers. (It was a 1.5 mile/5K Walk/Run, and we all started at the same time.) 2 minutes later, we finally went through the shoot...

And started to jog, and dive, and duck, and dodge...for at least a mile. Technically we were passing people the whole time, but it was definitely the most jumbled for the first mile or so. One of the hardest people to pass was this amazingly fast speed-walker. I couldn't believe how quickly she was able to walk. My pacing plan going in was to run the first mile at our easy, daily running pace. Then, on the second mile, build the pace a little bit. Then, depending on how we felt, build into a nice speedy finish. Despite the dodging, diving, and ducking, we pretty much stuck to that plan.

It was pretty humid out, which made breathing a bit more difficult than average, but we still plowed on through; and it was awesome! We stuck to the pacing plan, and continued passing people into the final stretch. The first half of the race was relatively dry (rain-wise) but it started coming down during the last mile or so, which was very much welcome. It's nice to have a coolant system built in to the race like that!

When we finally made it back to the first turnaround (meaning there was only 0.75 miles left) we were very encouraged. I was waiting to see the final shoot before we really kicked it in. I saw police lights that seemed miles away through the crowd, and thought that must be the finish, so kept up with our 3rd mile pace. But then we saw it, the finish, and we really kicked it in. I grunted to J, "Hold my hand," and we crossed the finish line together. It was amazing!

So how did I do? Well, my lower legs didn't feel too bad, especially after the first 1/2 mile. Whether that was due to the taping or do to race adrenaline, I'm not sure. But whatever it was, I'm thankful! As for the goals, let's recap the list:

1. Primary Goal: Finish (this one I just added due to my "injury") - Goal Met!
   
2. Secondary Goal: Run the whole way (this used to be my "primary" goal) - Goal Met!
   
3. Secret Goal: Finish in close to 30 minutes (this one seems to be less realistic than a week ago...) Drum-roll please....Goal...MET!

That's right. We made my secret goal. And not just "close enough", but even better than expectations!

Run stats:
Distance: 5K
Official Time: 29:16
Official Pace: 9:25/mile

I'm also pretty sure we negative split it. We'll never know officially, since they didn't take splits, and I don't have a fancy computer watch (maybe someday?!). But I started my watch just after we passed the starting line, and when I looked at it at the turnaround spot, it said 15:15, so we must have!

I'm sooo happy with our performance last night (this morning?). We went faster than I had expected, my legs felt ok during the run, and we paced ourselves perfectly! Now, in keeping with my Bloggy New Years Resolution. Here's a picture of us after we finally hobbled home. (By "we", I really mean "me". I said my legs didn't hurt during the race, but they were quite sore after we finished...Ice bath sore...)

(Yay for awesome mirror pictures!)

I'm also ready to finally post the pictures I promised a week ago from our running path in Sunriver, so here they are:







Fun Fact: We didn't slip and fall once on that snow. And we saw at least 3 other runners out there with us! (Two guys in shorts!)