Yep, it's that awesome time of year where ever piece of my body is sore, tired, and really wants a nap. I've napped, compressed, and been eating fairly clean for a while now but my body is still protesting. I was joking a couple weeks ago about never knowing what fresh legs will feel like again, and I'm starting to think that is true. One week from Sunday I will be running the Flying Pig Marathon, then two weeks later, I will be in the Little Smokies Triathlon in Portsmouth, OH. I am feeling stronger and faster than I was last year, but I'm also a lot more tired than I was last year. I'm guessing this is a good thing? I don't really know. I know that last year I was content with 2:00 100's during my swim sessions, because I was faster than Red. But this year I'm swimming 1:35's for my 100's and I keep telling myself to get faster instead of content. I know my body can do these races, so all I have to do is take care of it and feed it correctly.
Speaking of food, I feel like I am eating more in one day than some families of four eat in a month. Red can confirm that I will eat a full meal in its entirety, then say that I am hungry again in 2-3 hours and eat another full size portion of food. It really is getting out of hand. The funniest part? I haven't gained weight. I actually lost a little weight before I realized that I wasn't hydrating quite enough and increased my water and calories a bit more.
Ok, well I need to get a speed workout in before it gets dark. Two hour run tomorrow then a 4 hour bike on Sunday (weather permitting). Yep, I have no idea where my taper went, and if this is taper then I hate to think what peak week will be like before Muncie in July or anything else leading up to Beach to Battleship. Yeesh!
Quick update on Grandma. She is onto her weekly chemo treatment and doing great. She has actually become completely fed up with being tired all the time and decided to build her stamina up by doing laps inside her house. She wants to do them outside her house, but the weather here in Ohio is just fantastic. By fantastic I mean ridiculously bi-polar and can't decide if it wants to be 30 degrees or 90 degrees. Yeah Ohio. But I talked to Grandma today and she amazes me all the time. She has decided to give herself a project each day to keep her busy. The other day it was to clean and organize all 4 bedroom closets, and today it was to clean out and organize the cupboards in the kitchen above the sink. I know fully functional people decades younger than my grandma who have less ambition than she does. It's impressive how awesome she is despite having every right under the sun to complain, quit, and say screw it. Keep the prayers coming!
Friday, April 26, 2013
Monday, April 8, 2013
Xenia Half Marathon
Well this was fun, actually it was a lot of fun. My coach sent me my workouts last week and on Sunday said there was a half marathon in Xenia and that I should do it. Well, he is wicket fast, so I knew there was no way I would run with him, Red has been having shin problems, so he wasn't able to run with me either. I have an awesome running buddy who jumped on the idea of doing a half marathon at the drop of a hat. Let me point out that Ali is super fast and super tall, but we can usually stay together during our training run, so I figure this was a great chance to see what I could do. This all sounds well and good, and on Monday and Tuesday morning it still sounded great. Then Tuesday evening I get ready to get on my bike trainer and I smash my pinky toe against it, not just a little bit, but it popped and cracked, and I'm pretty sure it's broken. It swells like a little grape and hurts like no other. Yep, perfect timing.
Well Wednesday I can barely walk in any remote sense of the word. Thursday I can walk a little bit better and attempt to run. Wearing shoes was not a thing, so I ran around the track in the grass with Ali for about 6 miles. So long as I was careful and barefoot, I could run. Well that's fine and dandy, but I have a half marathon that I can't go barefoot in and won't be in a nice little controlled track. Hmmm...Well my coach brought me the smallest pair of shoes that he has, which are still a size 9 in men (I wear a 7-7.5 in women), so that the fabric doesn't crush my toe. These shoes looked like clown shoes, but felt amazing on my feet so I didn't care. One of my clients has the same shoes, but much closer to my size, but still a size too big so it left room for my toe to be cranky on its own. She brought me those shoes on Saturday and they worked like a charm! I could walk normally, even run carefully and without too much of a problem. Motrin + slightly bigger shoes = happy running midget!
Sunday morning comes, and I've been able to do all of my workouts the past week so I had some tired legs. But I was still excited to run with Ali, then it dawned on me. I had been looking at this weekend as just another training run, and when we got to the start there were people everywhere seriously geared up and prepping for a race. Oh yeah, this was still going to be a race. Well Ali surprised me and I discovered that she makes the perfect long run training partner, but not always the best idea for a long race partner. She is FAST and she sees people in front of her as people that should be picked off continuously. I realize that's a good thing, but that's not what I was prepared for. During our runs of 10+ miles we normally chit chat, wander a few places, stop for traffic, and generally relax. The last time we ran 13 miles it took us about 2:30 or more. Our time for the Xenia half was 1:54:54, just a wee bit faster. I learned that I can in fact run in the shoes that my client gave me, and run fast at that. I can also run and drink at the same time now. But when I slow down to drink gatorade, I still drown a bit. If I pinch the cup so it's more like a funnel it works a lot better than leaving it open all the way. During one of the gatorade stops I slowed for a drink and Ali kept moving because she wanted to get the people in front of her. Ok, that's fine, I caught her really quick then she saw that we had 4 miles left in the race, ok that's fine. She took off like a bat out of hell and I had no chance. I grabbed another quick drink, nearly choked to death so I slowed way down, and by the time I could breath normally she was WAY in front of me. I decided to try to close the gap and realized that she wasn't going to make it easy for me. She was on a mission to pass as many people as possible between now and the 4 miles back to the finish line. Every time I started to make up ground, she started to speed up to get to the people in front of her. FINALLY there was a long gap between her an the people in front of her, I'm basically sprinting for 3.5 miles and yelled at her to not pass those people or else I would kill her. I was a little grumpy and very tired. I ended up catching her and just about lost my religion cursing. It was intense. She finally told me that during those 4 miles she had been running 8:20min/miles which meant that I was running under 8 minute miles to get to her, ugh, that explained why I wanted to kill something. Either way, we ended up negative splitting the race and came within a minute of my Half Marathon PR. So I went into my race thinking I was just going to enjoy it and do a nice low key training run, and I came out super tired and close to a PR. Ugh.
Now this week I have another long week of training and clients, plus it's my sisters Bridal Shower this weekend. I'm some how supposed to get a 60 mile ride and a 19 mile run in this weekend. Holy crap. I'm thinking the ride may be on Sunday morning and the run may be Monday afternoon or something. yeesh.
On a positive note, my toe is still very sore and hates me, but it was just fine during the run and now I know that my current fitness is increasing and I'm faster already this year than when I finished last year. I also have 4 more weeks until the Flying Pig, which means 6 weeks out from my first Half Ironman Distance of the year. Who knows what will happen between now and then. I foresee a lot of organizing of my life, a lot of protein being consumed, and my compression gear going into over drive.
A neat thing I saw on my friend's Facebook status: Control what you can and let God control the rest.
Well Wednesday I can barely walk in any remote sense of the word. Thursday I can walk a little bit better and attempt to run. Wearing shoes was not a thing, so I ran around the track in the grass with Ali for about 6 miles. So long as I was careful and barefoot, I could run. Well that's fine and dandy, but I have a half marathon that I can't go barefoot in and won't be in a nice little controlled track. Hmmm...Well my coach brought me the smallest pair of shoes that he has, which are still a size 9 in men (I wear a 7-7.5 in women), so that the fabric doesn't crush my toe. These shoes looked like clown shoes, but felt amazing on my feet so I didn't care. One of my clients has the same shoes, but much closer to my size, but still a size too big so it left room for my toe to be cranky on its own. She brought me those shoes on Saturday and they worked like a charm! I could walk normally, even run carefully and without too much of a problem. Motrin + slightly bigger shoes = happy running midget!
Sunday morning comes, and I've been able to do all of my workouts the past week so I had some tired legs. But I was still excited to run with Ali, then it dawned on me. I had been looking at this weekend as just another training run, and when we got to the start there were people everywhere seriously geared up and prepping for a race. Oh yeah, this was still going to be a race. Well Ali surprised me and I discovered that she makes the perfect long run training partner, but not always the best idea for a long race partner. She is FAST and she sees people in front of her as people that should be picked off continuously. I realize that's a good thing, but that's not what I was prepared for. During our runs of 10+ miles we normally chit chat, wander a few places, stop for traffic, and generally relax. The last time we ran 13 miles it took us about 2:30 or more. Our time for the Xenia half was 1:54:54, just a wee bit faster. I learned that I can in fact run in the shoes that my client gave me, and run fast at that. I can also run and drink at the same time now. But when I slow down to drink gatorade, I still drown a bit. If I pinch the cup so it's more like a funnel it works a lot better than leaving it open all the way. During one of the gatorade stops I slowed for a drink and Ali kept moving because she wanted to get the people in front of her. Ok, that's fine, I caught her really quick then she saw that we had 4 miles left in the race, ok that's fine. She took off like a bat out of hell and I had no chance. I grabbed another quick drink, nearly choked to death so I slowed way down, and by the time I could breath normally she was WAY in front of me. I decided to try to close the gap and realized that she wasn't going to make it easy for me. She was on a mission to pass as many people as possible between now and the 4 miles back to the finish line. Every time I started to make up ground, she started to speed up to get to the people in front of her. FINALLY there was a long gap between her an the people in front of her, I'm basically sprinting for 3.5 miles and yelled at her to not pass those people or else I would kill her. I was a little grumpy and very tired. I ended up catching her and just about lost my religion cursing. It was intense. She finally told me that during those 4 miles she had been running 8:20min/miles which meant that I was running under 8 minute miles to get to her, ugh, that explained why I wanted to kill something. Either way, we ended up negative splitting the race and came within a minute of my Half Marathon PR. So I went into my race thinking I was just going to enjoy it and do a nice low key training run, and I came out super tired and close to a PR. Ugh.
Now this week I have another long week of training and clients, plus it's my sisters Bridal Shower this weekend. I'm some how supposed to get a 60 mile ride and a 19 mile run in this weekend. Holy crap. I'm thinking the ride may be on Sunday morning and the run may be Monday afternoon or something. yeesh.
On a positive note, my toe is still very sore and hates me, but it was just fine during the run and now I know that my current fitness is increasing and I'm faster already this year than when I finished last year. I also have 4 more weeks until the Flying Pig, which means 6 weeks out from my first Half Ironman Distance of the year. Who knows what will happen between now and then. I foresee a lot of organizing of my life, a lot of protein being consumed, and my compression gear going into over drive.
A neat thing I saw on my friend's Facebook status: Control what you can and let God control the rest.
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