Friday, May 27, 2011

five for friday

*NOW, I have my comments working again. An email from blogger would have been nice to tell us what changed to make them no longer work...


*If you commented on my breakfast post from last week - Thank you!! I still havent gotten Greek Yogurt yet. So many people mentioned that, I will definitely get some! This past week I just ate a banana or a cereal bar for breakfast since I already had those readily available.

*Yesterday at my ww meeting, the leader talked about exer-scuses and why we dont exercise. A friend and I both said, bc our weight goes up not down when we are exercsing. She then started to explain how we need to make sure we have enough water in our system and how we need to eat protein within 30 minutes of running or our body will hoard the water and protein causing our weight to go up.... this makes sense, so i'm going to give it a try for the next week and drink some chocolate milk or eat a tablespoon of peanut butter or a hard boiled egg after I run and see how it works out on the scale.

*i ran monday and tuesday this past week and was up .2 on the scale yesterday. being up .2 is not bad, but it's not a loss either!! i did buy a new scale that has the body fat calculated too. so hopefully if the weight number isn't moving the body fat number will come down at least!!

*i have been looking at vacations for 2012 this week. we are wanting to go in january when i have a week off between winter and spring term. airline prices are way down right now but we are waiting to see if Jeremy's family is going or just jeremy and i. if his family isn't going, then jeremy and i will go by ourselves and then go with his family in the summer. :) i LOVE vacations!!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

starting over with night running

I ran!!!   Amazing I know - a runner running....  It has been one month, one week and two days since my last run.  I will admit it was SO hard to get started again.  I should have started a couple weeks ago, but the weather was bad, life was busy...you know how it is, so it just got pushed aside. 

In all honesty I was afraid to start running again. I had started weight watchers and have done very well the past month.  I kept wondering - is it bc I'm NOT running that I'm losing weight.  Yes i know diet and exercise will work, but for me they dont seem to.  i can focus on one but the other goes to the wayside. 

a friend asked last week if i would go running with her. i said yes but was very hesitant. i'm always nervous when running with someone new and was very nervous about running with this person bc she is very competitive in everything she does.  i knew i would be slow and was afraid she would leave me or make fun of my slowness.  she said she hadn't run in a month either so that made me feel better, but i was still nervous.  last week she had something come up so we scheduled our first run for tuesday (last night)

i HAVE to start running again bc there are some big races in the fall that I want to do and one I have already paid for so i knew if i ran with someone i would be forced to go and make myself do it.

on monday i decided i was just going to do one mile on the treadmill on my run 4, walk 1 interval. just so tuesday i wouldnt be running 3 miles for my first run back.  i tried to use my footpod since our treadmill is wonky, but apparently the footpod's battery is dead bc the garmin woudlnt pick it up.  so i had to go by what the treadmill said, which was not pretty! ;(   17:40 for one mile! Blah. That's horrible even for me!

yesterday it was raining so i texted my friend to see if she would run in the rain. she said depending on how hard it was she would. i had already planned on bailing if it was raining, bc i can run on the treadmill.  however, the rain held off and i met her at her house at 9:15pm after i dropped dinner off for jeremy.  she wanted to run 3.1 miles and knew the route from her house to get that.  the very start though is up a fairly short, but steep hill, which i was not looking forward to. 

we set off though and i felt good.  she is a talker and talked pretty much the whole time. which was good bc i think it made her go slower than she normally might have.  we ran up through down town and the street lights were enough not to need a head lamp.  i wasnt' thinking when i dressed to go though and put on a dark purple running shirt and shorts.  definitely need to wear something lighter in color next time we go that late. 

my pace was comfortable, i didnt get out of breath or struggle breathing like i normally do.  i didnt do my run 4, walk 1 interval. but we did stop and walk probably 4-5 times during the course of the run. our average pace was much better than my treadmill time the night before and was really good considering i hadn't run in over a month. 

i am happy with my run and glad i didnt put off running another week....  now to get back into the groove and make it a habit again!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

breakfast and new routines

Normally I dont eat breakfast bc when i wake up it's already lunch time, so it's not an issue.  But today starts the first day of my summer work schedule. I am going from second shift to first shift for the next three months.  Which means I need to start eating breakfast, otherwise i wont make it til lunch!  It also happened to be that today's topic at ww was breakfast. We were divided into three groups and had to create 4, 6, and 10 point breakfast options. people wrote down hard boiled eggs, cereal, milk, etc...


I have some cereal bars that i can take and fruit of course.  But does anyone have some good, filling, quick breakfast ideas??  I want something i can take and eat in the car or at my desk.  cooking isn't an option in the morning for me.... 

Monday, May 16, 2011

making plans

A couple weeks ago, I scheduled my long run milage from May 21st-November 5th. I have 2 big events this fall that I need to get ready for. 1) Bourbon Chase 200 mile relay on Oct. 7-8 and 2)RnR Savannah Half on Nov. 5th.


I read an article in runner's world a month or two ago that said you need to prepare for half marathon distance to properly prepare for a relay race. So starting this Saturday, i will do 4 miles and slowly go up from there. I have put in some local 5k's throughout the schedule that I plan on doing.  I used Runner's World "SmartCoach" to come up with my program.  I printed out both my 5k time with my 5k goal in mind and a half marathon time with my half marathon in mind.  I compared the two and found that a lot of the distances were the same, just the times were off.  So i combined them onto another document and wrote down both times. I am aiming to go under the times or at least stay in between the two.
I have two goals for 2011: 1) 2:45 in a half marathon and 2) 30:59 min or under in a 5k. The half being in November and the 5k in August (bc its a fast course).

Since I"m starting back up again this week, I thought it might be wise to go on and plan out my weekday runs and cross training as well. I am going to run 3 days a week and cross train 2-3 days, hopefully with a minimum of 2 until the end of June. Then it will bump up to 4 days of running.  One day will be easy runs, one day will be speed/interval work at a track, and the third day will be long runs. Adding a second easy day in once i move up to 4 days a week.

For cross training I plan to bike or swim on Sundays and Wednesdays. There is a local bike group that bikes on Wednesday evenings. I rode with them a few times last summer and would like to start it back up this summer. Plus, I'll be doing swim lessons occasionally during the summer and "water walking" (aka walking around in the pool while teaching a kid to swim) 4 days a week on those weeks for 45 minutes in addition to running, biking and swimming.

There is a sprint tri in September too, the one I did last year, that I would like to do again this year. If i'm going to be swimming, biking and running anyway, why not do a tri?!

So, that's pretty much my summer and fall in a nutshell. Any suggestions, questions, thoughts about it???

Sunday, May 8, 2011

great form

This past Saturday Jeremy and his brother Jordan both ran in a local 5k.  They both did terrific and both got PR's.  Jordan ran a 20.02!! He was so close to being in the 19's!!!  Jordan and Jeremy took first and third in the 30-34 age group.  There for the longest time, Jordan kept knocking Jeremy out of the awards, but now Jeremy is usually in the top 3 right along with Jordan.  We are waiting til they get 1, 2 together!

Why didnt I run? well, since i still haven't ran in the past 3 weeks, i didn't feel "ready" for it, plus it is an expensive race $23 for early registration and $30 for late registration.  I've also been trying to lose some weight before i start training again!

I have made a running schedule though to train for the bourbon chase in october and half in november.  so i'll be starting back to running for sure in the next week or so!

After the adults had raced, they had a kid's run.  My niece, who is almost 3, was going to be in it!  She loves to "run like her daddy".

Before the race, warming up:

taking warm ups very seriously!

the little guy she was practicing with didnt stand a chance

The 3 runners:

Jeremy, Jordan and Anika
Andrew, 2 weeks old, slept through most of the festivities:




Wednesday, May 4, 2011

not as planned

Friday was supposed to go like this:
wake up, go to work and pack up book fair for 2 hours, come home, lunch, shower, then leave for Louisville, be on the road by 1:30 or so, go to expo, check in hotel, nap, dinner, balloon glow, bed.

It went more like this though:
wake up, got to work and pack up book fair for 2 hours, come home, lunch, shower, drop off dog at parents, take garbage to dump, come back home, switch vehicles, drop off dishes at a friends, leave for louisville.  by the time we got on the road for louisville it was about 3pm.  :(  we thought the expo was at the expo convention center - which is NOT where it was. there were no directions on the website to get us there, the gps did not recognize the name of the building.  i found the address on my phone and we punched that in to the gps.  it started taking us away from downtown, which is NOT where we wanted to go! we stopped at a culvers, so i could use the rest room while jeremy played around with the gps trying to get us in the right direction.  by the time we got downtown Louisville it was 6pm and rush hour.  we checked in to our hotel and went to the expo - which just happened to be right next door to our hotel - ARG!! 

by the time we walked through the expo and i got some shotblocks and a super cute sweaty band (see below) it was 7:45.  we still hadn't eaten and the balloon glow was at 9pm.  i realized it just wasnt' going to happen. so dissapointed that there was no way we would get there in time. even if we got there late that would just put us later getting back to the hotel and with our luck that day we would get lost to or from the airfield, so we went to dinner at outback and then came back to the hotel to rest and watch tv.


Race shirt


Bourbon Chase shirts - front (will run for bourbon) and back with a map of the distillaries and course
my new sweaty band :)



we woke up at 6am on saturday morning, got ready and started walking towards the start line.

ready to leave the hotel

all the runners in the lobby

wonder woman

the trumpeter to start the race derby style

the running elvi

one of the running elvi


the balloon race was at 7am and we could see the balloons in the distance.  this was as close as i got to them this weekend.





 the weather was perfect!! i dropped j off at his corral and went to mcdonald's to use the bathroom and get a drink.  i took off walking to the start hoping i would see jeremy cross the start line, but i had missed him. so then i took off walking to a corner where i thought i would see him between mile 4-5.  on the map it looked close, but after walking for 30 minutes and a man saying it was still 6-7 blocks away I knew by the time i got there jeremy woudl have already gone by! GRRR!!  i happened to only be a block or so from the hotel, so i went back to the room for about 30 minutes to drop off my jacket and jeremy's long sleeve shirt.  i started walking towards the finish line via the race course.  i had 45 minutes to get there so i figured i would either see him on the course there or make it to the finish line in time to watch him! 


Great place in downtown Louisville, close to the hotel. Too bad we didnt have time to go there either the night before

i cheered and clapped for the runners on the way. i kept thinking i would want people to clap for jeremy as he passed even if they didnt know him. i was surprised to see spectators not clapping or congratulating the runners as they went by while they were waiting for their own runner.  it made me a little mad actually!  i made it to the finish line and worked my way up to the gate and watched and clapped for the runners as they crossed the line.   jeremy crossed and was 45 seconds under what he had gone at the end of march.  i had been a little worried that he might have added time based on the race clock time, but there were so many runners there were several minutes difference in his time and the race clock.

almost at the finish line


so close!!

after the race, with his medal