February is always a very busy month for our family. Tom and I started dating 14 years ago on the 12th, then there is Valentine's Day on the 14th, my father's 80th birthday was on the 16th and then Tom's birthday was on the 20th! Phew!
The last week of February was spent taking care of our two children. They were both very sick. Thankfully they were not sick at the same time. Our oldest was sick first and started to feel better after a few days, then the baby started to get sick and man, oh man, was he sick. I didn't herald the exact end of my running month because the days slipped together in a sleep-deprived fog created by a cranky, feverish, and not sleeping toddler (I think he literally slept 3 hours in a two day span). Finally, days later his fever subsided and he started sleeping again. He's still recovering, but I'm sleeping back in my own bed and not on the extra twin bed in the boys room! Yay, small victories!
So back to running. Even when little Darren was very sick I only missed 1 run, a 3 mile mid-week run. Lately my running week has looked like this:
Monday: Resting (if my long run was on Sunday from the week before. If the long run got pushed to Monday then this was the long run. We're up to 10 miles now. My last long run was 7; a step-back week).
Tuesday: Shorter mid-week run. Right now these runs are 3 miles for Tuesdays. If I'm behind this run is on Wednesday after Zumba class.
Wednesday: Mid-week long run. These have gotten up to 6 miles. I do Zumba on Wednesday, so I run after class at night. It's pretty brutal.
Thursday: Shorter mid-week run. These are also 3 miles.
Friday: Rest. Sometimes I do Zumba on Friday night. It just depends on what our weekend plans are. I like to do Zumba twice a week, so I pick between Friday night and Saturday morning.
Saturday: This is supposed to be the long run day, but I usually do long runs on Sunday. Sometimes I do Zumba in the morning, but this usually ends up a rest day.
Sunday: Long run day. Coming up this weekend is 12 miles... I'm really not excited about it. I'm starting to get nervous about the long runs. Pretty soon I will run farther than I have ever run before!
February Goals? Met!
I completed a race (goal of 1 race/month), the 4 mile Frozen Foote and I ran 61 miles this month (goal of 40/moth)! Yay me! I missed two runs, one at the beginning of the month when I was sick, and then one I missed at the end of the month when Darren was really sick. Not too shabby.
I'm finally ready for March! And there are only 24 days of it left. I'm so ready for milder weather and for the snow to melt. For now I'll stay the course and keep putting one foot in front of the other whenever possible.
Happy reading everyone and have a great weekend!
Friday, March 7, 2014
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Winter Run
I took some pretty pictures while outside on a long 10 mile run today. They are from along the Maple City Trail, Oswegatchie River, (first two pics) and one of the St. Lawrence River (third pic). The bridge to Canada is in the distance at the bottom. There were people out ice fishing. You can see the little ice fishing huts. It was really nice to get outside, but the 15-20 mph winds were tough for me. Enjoy! :)
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Sickness, Another Race and a Hat
February started out pretty slow for Tom and I. Like someone snapping their fingers, overnight we went from being perfectly healthy to being quite sick. It was either one of the worst colds I have had in a long time or a light flu -complete with muscle aches and fever chills. We missed our long run from the end of week 3 and also a mid-week training run before either of us felt like we had enough energy to even go out to the garage and turn the space heater on to take the edge off the chill for treadmill running. Thankfully I can report that we seem to be in very good health again. Also, the kids were not ill, which is such a blessing!
Saturday the 8th was the third Frozen Foote race. Another race done! The weather cooperated very nicely in my opinion. It was overcast and about 18 degrees and only light wind on the 2 miles out. The 2 miles back were warm and pleasant. I was very glad that I switched out of my vest and into my windbreaker jacket. I was a little warm at the end, but I think I would have been uncomfortably cold for a very long time without it.
I shaved 5:20 off my time from last month!!!!! Woot Woot!
I contribute this acceleration to both actually running again and also doing "hills" on the treadmill. The Frozen Foote course is quite hilly compared to where I run around the house. I have really fallen in love with the "random" setting on our treadmill. The "hill" setting on the other hand... I'm sure it's great training, but MAN is it exhausting!
When I checked our mailbox yesterday I was surprised to find packages containing Buffalo Marathon tech hats! Maybe they are a little corny but I was pretty excited! They are from the race and there was a little note about the hat and that they are working hard to make it a great event. :) I love a surprise! It's nice to get a surprise present!
I'm exhausted, cold and tired right now, but there is a big smile on my face as I write. I just did what I am going to call an exhaustion run. I went to Zumba and it was a great workout and then decided to do my mid-week run on top of the Zumba (which I have done before). I did it as a hill repeat workout with the "hill" setting. Curse you "hill" setting! Wow. There has to be great benefit both mentally and physically to start a run when you are already physically tired. I'm finally cooling off from the run and I had better get cleaned up and into bed before I get any colder!
Thank you for reading and have a great end of the week and weekend. Happy Valentine's Day!
Saturday the 8th was the third Frozen Foote race. Another race done! The weather cooperated very nicely in my opinion. It was overcast and about 18 degrees and only light wind on the 2 miles out. The 2 miles back were warm and pleasant. I was very glad that I switched out of my vest and into my windbreaker jacket. I was a little warm at the end, but I think I would have been uncomfortably cold for a very long time without it.
I shaved 5:20 off my time from last month!!!!! Woot Woot!
I contribute this acceleration to both actually running again and also doing "hills" on the treadmill. The Frozen Foote course is quite hilly compared to where I run around the house. I have really fallen in love with the "random" setting on our treadmill. The "hill" setting on the other hand... I'm sure it's great training, but MAN is it exhausting!
When I checked our mailbox yesterday I was surprised to find packages containing Buffalo Marathon tech hats! Maybe they are a little corny but I was pretty excited! They are from the race and there was a little note about the hat and that they are working hard to make it a great event. :) I love a surprise! It's nice to get a surprise present!
I'm exhausted, cold and tired right now, but there is a big smile on my face as I write. I just did what I am going to call an exhaustion run. I went to Zumba and it was a great workout and then decided to do my mid-week run on top of the Zumba (which I have done before). I did it as a hill repeat workout with the "hill" setting. Curse you "hill" setting! Wow. There has to be great benefit both mentally and physically to start a run when you are already physically tired. I'm finally cooling off from the run and I had better get cleaned up and into bed before I get any colder!
Thank you for reading and have a great end of the week and weekend. Happy Valentine's Day!
Friday, January 31, 2014
January Musing and Musing and Musing...
I'm pretty sure I failed to mention one more goal I have for my running this year. I would like to run at least 40 miles each month. This stems from my dramatic lack of motivation last fall after I ran my half marathon. After two amazing months of running almost 70 miles/month I took a nose dive and ran only 11 and 8 miles in November and December. If I had only had a short term goal in place before the race ended I think I could have kept my mileage up to a decent winter level. I chose 40 because I thought it would be doable, but that I would still have to do the runs in order to make it happen (maybe that seems a bit obvious). As doable and obvious as that is let me tell you about how I barely made it!
I'm fresh from my last run of the month. A solid 3 miles that I found quite impressive. On Wednesday at Zumba I hurt my lower back. I'm not really sure what happened. Something funky was going on right from the start. In the first song I had horrible quadriceps cramps. I pounded on them and stretched them and chugged as much water as I could at our first break. Then near the end of the class my back started getting stiff and I tried stretching to get it back up to snuff and it just got worse and worse. I'm thinking that whatever was going on with my legs threw off my pelvis and pulled on my lower back or something which caused over stretching and then spasms. I didn't "throw out" my back, but it was definitely very tender. That continued yesterday and I didn't run. I did tally up the number of miles I lacked to get me to 40. I desperately hoped I had made it without working to hard to get there.
I carried this knowledge with me today as my back continued to relax and feel more normal. Tonight I even put on some Zumba music and tested out my Zumba moves to see if I think I will be "OK" to go tomorrow morning. I think yes?
Even at 8:30 tonight I had not decided if I would push through potential pain and put in at least 1.87 on the treadmill or write-off my near-miss as a valid injury and move on. Oh, and I wouldn't need to even tell you all about my 40 mile/month goal. So then it wouldn't be a real goal if you all didn't know about it right? HA! Good try me.
I played around with Spotify tonight. I have been listening to the Pop and Hip Hop Power Workout station on Pandora (which I highly recommend if you like that kind of thing!), but I wanted to listen to some specific songs and you can do that on Spotify as long as you play the music from a computer and not your phone. The phone app only does stations like Pandora unless you pay $$$. No thanks! I plugged our laptop into our amplifier in the garage next to the treadmill and kicked out some other "power" songs of my own liking. Really it was these songs (and Tom texting me to just go get on the treadmill and get it over with -He's having a night out) that got me out of my PJ's and onto the treadmill tonight.
Allow me to tell you about some songs I love. Sometimes Pitbull is the thing when you are running. Love Pitbull on the treadmill, but then there is my love of Freddie Mercury. LOVE Freddie Mercury and the movie Highlander. Yup, the original one with Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert. "Who Wants to Live Forever" was my warm-up song tonight. Yes, I fist pumped my hands into the air. This moved into
"The Show Must Go On". This was my "get your butt on the treadmill missy, your spine is not going to snap off your hips" song. Yes, the show went on. At first I was pretty stiff, but by the time I got to Genesis "Land of Confusion", which is one of my all-time favorite songs, I was pushing right along with a solid pace and only feeling slightly off. "These are the hands we're given, use them and lets start trying to make this a place worth living in!"
I moved from there to Avicii, "Wake Me Up". This song is such a great mix of dance beat and ballad. I feel the tune and the words. While I listed I see people happy and dancing in my minds eye while I run, run, run. Then I moved into some Pitbull songs :)
I ran right past my 1.9 miles goal and finished my 3 mile training run.
Now I'm just hoping that my back doesn't cramp back up overnight and make Zumba in the morning an impossibility.
Yeah, January was a good month. Cold as cold can be, but satisfying on the running front.
I'm fresh from my last run of the month. A solid 3 miles that I found quite impressive. On Wednesday at Zumba I hurt my lower back. I'm not really sure what happened. Something funky was going on right from the start. In the first song I had horrible quadriceps cramps. I pounded on them and stretched them and chugged as much water as I could at our first break. Then near the end of the class my back started getting stiff and I tried stretching to get it back up to snuff and it just got worse and worse. I'm thinking that whatever was going on with my legs threw off my pelvis and pulled on my lower back or something which caused over stretching and then spasms. I didn't "throw out" my back, but it was definitely very tender. That continued yesterday and I didn't run. I did tally up the number of miles I lacked to get me to 40. I desperately hoped I had made it without working to hard to get there.
Nope. I lacked 1.87 miles of getting my 40.
I carried this knowledge with me today as my back continued to relax and feel more normal. Tonight I even put on some Zumba music and tested out my Zumba moves to see if I think I will be "OK" to go tomorrow morning. I think yes?
Even at 8:30 tonight I had not decided if I would push through potential pain and put in at least 1.87 on the treadmill or write-off my near-miss as a valid injury and move on. Oh, and I wouldn't need to even tell you all about my 40 mile/month goal. So then it wouldn't be a real goal if you all didn't know about it right? HA! Good try me.
I played around with Spotify tonight. I have been listening to the Pop and Hip Hop Power Workout station on Pandora (which I highly recommend if you like that kind of thing!), but I wanted to listen to some specific songs and you can do that on Spotify as long as you play the music from a computer and not your phone. The phone app only does stations like Pandora unless you pay $$$. No thanks! I plugged our laptop into our amplifier in the garage next to the treadmill and kicked out some other "power" songs of my own liking. Really it was these songs (and Tom texting me to just go get on the treadmill and get it over with -He's having a night out) that got me out of my PJ's and onto the treadmill tonight.
Allow me to tell you about some songs I love. Sometimes Pitbull is the thing when you are running. Love Pitbull on the treadmill, but then there is my love of Freddie Mercury. LOVE Freddie Mercury and the movie Highlander. Yup, the original one with Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert. "Who Wants to Live Forever" was my warm-up song tonight. Yes, I fist pumped my hands into the air. This moved into
"The Show Must Go On". This was my "get your butt on the treadmill missy, your spine is not going to snap off your hips" song. Yes, the show went on. At first I was pretty stiff, but by the time I got to Genesis "Land of Confusion", which is one of my all-time favorite songs, I was pushing right along with a solid pace and only feeling slightly off. "These are the hands we're given, use them and lets start trying to make this a place worth living in!"
I moved from there to Avicii, "Wake Me Up". This song is such a great mix of dance beat and ballad. I feel the tune and the words. While I listed I see people happy and dancing in my minds eye while I run, run, run. Then I moved into some Pitbull songs :)
I ran right past my 1.9 miles goal and finished my 3 mile training run.
Now I'm just hoping that my back doesn't cramp back up overnight and make Zumba in the morning an impossibility.
Yeah, January was a good month. Cold as cold can be, but satisfying on the running front.
41.13 miles in January!
Hopefully February will bring with it challenges and great rewards. Happy Weekend everyone! Thanks for reading!
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Day 1 Marathon Training
It's already the beginning of the 18 week countdown to the Buffalo marathon! Ran 3 miles out in the garage on the treadmill. Pushed it on the random setting (varies the incline).
I guess I'm not much into writing right now :P. I thought I should mark the occasion with an entry :)
Goodnight everyone! More later! :)
Here's a sweaty post-run pic. Let's let the picture do the talking. Thanks for reading!
Monday, January 13, 2014
Signing up!
I've been running! Yay! I have some running goals this year. I really want to run a race every month this year. I'm happy to say that January is done!
Let me tell you about the race...
It's a series in a small college town called the Frozen Foote. There are 4 races and if you run 3 of the 4 you get a shirt at the end. It's a short 4 mile race that is an out and back from St. Lawrence University along Miner St. We missed the first one of the series in Dec. I guess we had better make it to the Feb. and March ones! So Saturday morning was particularly gorgeous because it was warm! 45! We dropped the boys off at my brother and SIL's house and went to the race instead of Tom pushing them in the stroller. What a GREAT decision that turned out to be b/c it started to pour huge stinging droplets about 1/4 of a mile into the race. Should have checked the radar... I had peeled my extra layer of running tights off and one of my shirt layers b/c I thought I would end up hot. The rain was SO cold. People turned back. I kept telling myself I was tough. I also could not stop thinking about Tom wearing a (now soaked and frozen) cotton mock turtle neck instead of a tech shirt.
My only saving grace was my down vest and my knee-high Smartwool socks. At least my feet were warm even though they were soaked. I really wish I had worn my rain jacket that sat warm and dry in the car. The race was not a pretty sight. Thankfully we ran out into the wind and once we turned around I was much warmer. I have not been that cold in a very very long time. Maybe never. My arms felt literally frozen.
Once we were back to the car we changed into our dry clothes as best we could and went to pick up the kids. Coffee tasted amazing.
Really looking forward to the race next month...
Most of my races will probably be 5Ks, but I'm signing up for a half with my niece Jacki and my Zumba instructor (and anyone else that wants to join)! We're pretty sure it will be the CNY Bread Run in Fabius NY on 9/21/14.
Lots of running ahead.
Thank you for reading and Happy New Year!
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Lets Get Serious: Marathon Time!
I was lazing around upstairs soothing baby Darren to sleep when a feeling came over me: a feeling not unlike the moment of inspiration and clarity I had when I started this blog last Spring. I walked downstairs and told Tom we were biting the bullet tonight and signing up for our marathon. I can now announce that indeed we have signed up for the Buffalo Marathon on Sunday, May 25, 2014 at 7AM.
It's been a while since I have written here. It's actually been a while since I thought about writing here. My thoughts have been filled with visions of sugar plums I suppose. I have run some. I have not been faithful. I had really high hopes of exercising like a maniac. I burned out after about 2.5 weeks. I have been in and out of funks. I have not run since a crisp- 18 degree - Thanksgiving morning "Gobble Gallop".
We have our treadmill set up in the garage next to the car. It's cold out there but once you start running you get really hot and sweaty because of the lack of a breeze. Guess I'll be out there more often.
Better break my funk, but for tonight I think I'll just Veg! :P
Happy future reading everyone! And thanks for being there!
It's been a while since I have written here. It's actually been a while since I thought about writing here. My thoughts have been filled with visions of sugar plums I suppose. I have run some. I have not been faithful. I had really high hopes of exercising like a maniac. I burned out after about 2.5 weeks. I have been in and out of funks. I have not run since a crisp- 18 degree - Thanksgiving morning "Gobble Gallop".
We have our treadmill set up in the garage next to the car. It's cold out there but once you start running you get really hot and sweaty because of the lack of a breeze. Guess I'll be out there more often.
Better break my funk, but for tonight I think I'll just Veg! :P
Happy future reading everyone! And thanks for being there!
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