So... I thought I was slacking off and was going to do terribly in August. I ran a total of 17.xx miles in July... terrible... I was determined that August would be better.
As it turns out, August is better! I've been running a lot faster a lot easier. I attribute it to doing more fitness type workouts and, as I noticed when looking back in my running notes, doing lots of "fast 1 mile" workouts because I didn't feel like going long.
I feel amazing. I'm super happy.
YAY!
Showing posts with label relentless forward progress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relentless forward progress. Show all posts
Friday, August 7, 2015
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
So...hi... and running things...
So it's been over a month since I've written anything... which doesn't surprise me really. I'm bad at being consistant.
I feel like I shouldn't say that though, because I label myself as "inconsistent" and thus make myself feel less accountable and more likely to be inconsistent in the future. So I am consistent. Just inconsistently. haha.
I started my marathon training and I'm on week 4. I have decieded to incorporate speed work into my marathon training beause I feel, for one, that the training isn't challenging enough and, for two, I don't want to just finish my first marathon - I want to finish and be proud of my time as well as the distance.
I haven't done speed work in a while. I did it yesterday though and found it very rewarding and revealing. I found that I certainly have more in me than I think - I just need to push myself a bit harder than I'm used to. Greatness lies beyond the comfort zone and all that.
My main struggle, though, hasn't really been running. I've been having good runs and I feel great; I feel strong. My main problem is nutrition. I can't seem to eat healthily for very long. It doesn't help that I'm pretty much the only one that is health-minded (shall we say) in my house... no one else cares about eating junk food and frozen stuff. I am too soft spoken to be like "hey i know we have a limited budget and we only have X amount of money to get us through two or three weeks, but we should buy some (quickly perishable) veggies and fruits 'cause they're healthy!" Whoever said eating healthy was cheap was wrong. So wrong.
So I'm going to try not to nosh on ice cream, sweets, and completely empty foods. I am going to stick to good protiens (healthy meat, eggs, milk) and calories... getting my veggies as I can via beans, sauces, and such.
I also feel weird wanting to eat healthy when other people see no problems eating tubs of cookie dough. It's not like they're overweight or anything and cookie dough is delicious! It just makes it hard for me to think healthily when i'm like "anything in moderation is ok..."
That's about it for now. I'm going to try taking pictures and illustrating my posts more, especially now that I have a decent phone with an ok camera that I can use on my runs.
Happy running!
I feel like I shouldn't say that though, because I label myself as "inconsistent" and thus make myself feel less accountable and more likely to be inconsistent in the future. So I am consistent. Just inconsistently. haha.
I started my marathon training and I'm on week 4. I have decieded to incorporate speed work into my marathon training beause I feel, for one, that the training isn't challenging enough and, for two, I don't want to just finish my first marathon - I want to finish and be proud of my time as well as the distance.
I haven't done speed work in a while. I did it yesterday though and found it very rewarding and revealing. I found that I certainly have more in me than I think - I just need to push myself a bit harder than I'm used to. Greatness lies beyond the comfort zone and all that.
My main struggle, though, hasn't really been running. I've been having good runs and I feel great; I feel strong. My main problem is nutrition. I can't seem to eat healthily for very long. It doesn't help that I'm pretty much the only one that is health-minded (shall we say) in my house... no one else cares about eating junk food and frozen stuff. I am too soft spoken to be like "hey i know we have a limited budget and we only have X amount of money to get us through two or three weeks, but we should buy some (quickly perishable) veggies and fruits 'cause they're healthy!" Whoever said eating healthy was cheap was wrong. So wrong.
So I'm going to try not to nosh on ice cream, sweets, and completely empty foods. I am going to stick to good protiens (healthy meat, eggs, milk) and calories... getting my veggies as I can via beans, sauces, and such.
I also feel weird wanting to eat healthy when other people see no problems eating tubs of cookie dough. It's not like they're overweight or anything and cookie dough is delicious! It just makes it hard for me to think healthily when i'm like "anything in moderation is ok..."
That's about it for now. I'm going to try taking pictures and illustrating my posts more, especially now that I have a decent phone with an ok camera that I can use on my runs.
Happy running!
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
The Awesomesauce
...is that I broke my official course PR on my "hometown" 5k course. By 0:40. Yes. I know. It's awesome.
So, I decided to do this because I was tired of it hanging over my head. My previous (official) PR on that course was 42:28. Part of that was because I freaked out because I had gone out quicker than usual and wasn't really feeling it, aside from some calf stiffness that I was used to at the time (it was a shoe problem). At that time, I don't think it was as good as I had done before, but it was pretty close. I don't even remember what it was before that. (Do you ever forget old race times? It's been a year since I did that and it was never posted anywhere; I just remember...)
So, yesterday, I made a decision to break PR today. Not a goal, not a hope - a decision. What made me do that? I don't know. Somehow, I knew if I tried really, really hard - I could. So, I got myself ready. I figured out my splits, I told people what I was going to do (accountability) and geared up.
I woke up this morning and my ankle was hurting a bit. I was tired. I didn't feel that great because I had eating waaaaaay too much for dinner last night. Around 9:00 my brother knocked on my door and said that I should get up (in the nicest of terms) for getting ready to run. I debated with myself for 15 minutes about whether or not I should do it. I finally got up and was starting to put on my everyday clothes when I thought: "You know what, why not? My ankle thing doesn't really do any worse if I run; it has a range of "good" and "bad" that's not going to change if I try to PR today, this morning!" Also, I didn't want to tell my brother again (I do this a lot) "Let's wait until later..."
So I went. My planned splits were 14:00, 13:00, 12:00, and at most 2:00 for the last 0.1 (really 0.19 on this course).
Break Down:
Lunge Matrix Warm Up
Mile 1: 13:24
2: 12:35
3: 13:42
last .19: 2:06 @ 11:18 pace
Total: 41:48
Just about perfectly what I wanted, although towards the end I was thinking: "Anything less than 42:28, even if it's by just a second! Just keep going!" And I did. It was AWESOMESAUCE, as I promised before.
R. ran the last 0.6 mile with me. He also PR'd in the same distance, same course by 58 seconds. I was quite proud of him, especially since he thought it would be quite difficult for him to get even a few seconds off that time.
So yay! I'm going to be doing this exercize (hehehe) once a week during marathon training until it gets too hard, or I'm not noticing results. But it was fun, and it showed me what I really can do, no matter what.
I think it also helped that I just kept my concentration on that one goal of PR'ing. I'm so happy!
Happy Running!
So, I decided to do this because I was tired of it hanging over my head. My previous (official) PR on that course was 42:28. Part of that was because I freaked out because I had gone out quicker than usual and wasn't really feeling it, aside from some calf stiffness that I was used to at the time (it was a shoe problem). At that time, I don't think it was as good as I had done before, but it was pretty close. I don't even remember what it was before that. (Do you ever forget old race times? It's been a year since I did that and it was never posted anywhere; I just remember...)
So, yesterday, I made a decision to break PR today. Not a goal, not a hope - a decision. What made me do that? I don't know. Somehow, I knew if I tried really, really hard - I could. So, I got myself ready. I figured out my splits, I told people what I was going to do (accountability) and geared up.
I woke up this morning and my ankle was hurting a bit. I was tired. I didn't feel that great because I had eating waaaaaay too much for dinner last night. Around 9:00 my brother knocked on my door and said that I should get up (in the nicest of terms) for getting ready to run. I debated with myself for 15 minutes about whether or not I should do it. I finally got up and was starting to put on my everyday clothes when I thought: "You know what, why not? My ankle thing doesn't really do any worse if I run; it has a range of "good" and "bad" that's not going to change if I try to PR today, this morning!" Also, I didn't want to tell my brother again (I do this a lot) "Let's wait until later..."
So I went. My planned splits were 14:00, 13:00, 12:00, and at most 2:00 for the last 0.1 (really 0.19 on this course).
Break Down:
Lunge Matrix Warm Up
Mile 1: 13:24
2: 12:35
3: 13:42
last .19: 2:06 @ 11:18 pace
Total: 41:48
Just about perfectly what I wanted, although towards the end I was thinking: "Anything less than 42:28, even if it's by just a second! Just keep going!" And I did. It was AWESOMESAUCE, as I promised before.
R. ran the last 0.6 mile with me. He also PR'd in the same distance, same course by 58 seconds. I was quite proud of him, especially since he thought it would be quite difficult for him to get even a few seconds off that time.
So yay! I'm going to be doing this exercize (hehehe) once a week during marathon training until it gets too hard, or I'm not noticing results. But it was fun, and it showed me what I really can do, no matter what.
I think it also helped that I just kept my concentration on that one goal of PR'ing. I'm so happy!
Happy Running!
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Best Run Ever...
Okay, so this is going to be a two-in-one post because I forgot to blog yesterday... le sigh... (I'm going to relieve the suspense and tell you that the second run was the best. Just so you know).
So, yesterday I did an easy 6.3 miler. It was on-purpose-easy because 1) I didn't feel that good once I got started and 2) it was the 4th day of my streak, which may not be a lot for some, but it's been a while since I've ran that much, so I wanted to take it easy. For number 3, I keep getting reminded that slow, easy miles are good and should be a regular part of endurance training.
My goal was a 15:00 pace and I actually ended up doing 14:32, despite loads of walking to keep myself on my goal pace. I really, really didn't want to go too fast on a longer run for fear of blowing up, plus, as I said before - long, slow miles.
So a breakdown of that:
Lunge Matrix warm up
Mile 1: 15:14
2: 14:00
3: 14:52
4: 16:21
5: 13:56
6: 14:41
Last .3: 4:28 @ 14:43 pace
So yeah, I got a good easy run in, which I was happy about. I listened to 100 mile ultrarunning (one of my favorite podcasts) and enjoyed it immensely. As a matter of fact, I wasn't done by the time the podcast was and so I switched to music. I found that it was just too much. I realize that, at least for now, the stress of finding the "right" song for the "right" pace is just too much and is overriding the "listen to your body!" mantra that works so well for me! So I'll be taking a break from music and going back to podcasts (which I really have missed!) at least for now.
Okay, the second (today's) run was awesome. It's the 5th day in a row that I've ran. I felt sure that my legs were going to be sore and just uncooperative and miserable. I had planned a 6 miler again but only did 3.2, but not for the reason you might think (aha!).
Earlier, I was looking at the time limits for the marathon in May (yippee!) and found that only the first half had a time limit. The first 13.1 miles had to be done in 3:30 because of road closure issues. I decided that on Sunday, I was going to run 13.1 (or as much as possible) just to see where I stand. Thus, I decided that I'm going to take it easy on today's and Friday's run so that I'll be more prepared for Sunday.
So, on my run, I felt awesome! I was able to just zone out and multiple times I forgot that I was even running! I've never had that happen to me before. I had to stop and walk a couple of times, sure, once because I was really charging a hill and decided to slow up and ended up talking (while walking) to someone for longer than I absolutely wanted. Another time I stopped because I was getting abdominal cramps (dehydration?), and at the end, I was feeling so good and didn't want to "ruin" it that I walked a short, steep hill. I felt so, so, so good. I think the fact that I jump started my mileage and started running more has maybe broken through a rut I was in and didn't realize it - or didn't know how to get out of. So, the truth really is, run more to run better!
I was aiming for a 14:00 pace just so I knew I could take it easy. I knew I would probably do better once I got going because I felt so good. I actually did a tiny bit of sprinting, haha. This time I was listening to Running From the Reaper (another favorite) and was really, really able to zone out. I didn't PR or anything, but it was a very happy, satisfactory run. It was a run that made me realize what I can do, instead of feeling like my body can't do what I want it to. I didn't even look at my Garmin that much! I sort of just loped along at a pace that my body and the road allowed, which wasn't too slow - especially considering the insta-boost in mileage- and it was just awesome!
Anyway, breakdown:
Lunge Matrix warm up (slightly abbreviated)
Mile 1) 14:35
2: 13:02
3: 14:23
Last .2: 2:22 @ 11:49 pace.
My average pace ended up being 13:52.
So not especially speedy, but it was especially nice. I hope tomorrow's goes just as well!
Happy Running!
So, yesterday I did an easy 6.3 miler. It was on-purpose-easy because 1) I didn't feel that good once I got started and 2) it was the 4th day of my streak, which may not be a lot for some, but it's been a while since I've ran that much, so I wanted to take it easy. For number 3, I keep getting reminded that slow, easy miles are good and should be a regular part of endurance training.
My goal was a 15:00 pace and I actually ended up doing 14:32, despite loads of walking to keep myself on my goal pace. I really, really didn't want to go too fast on a longer run for fear of blowing up, plus, as I said before - long, slow miles.
So a breakdown of that:
Lunge Matrix warm up
Mile 1: 15:14
2: 14:00
3: 14:52
4: 16:21
5: 13:56
6: 14:41
Last .3: 4:28 @ 14:43 pace
So yeah, I got a good easy run in, which I was happy about. I listened to 100 mile ultrarunning (one of my favorite podcasts) and enjoyed it immensely. As a matter of fact, I wasn't done by the time the podcast was and so I switched to music. I found that it was just too much. I realize that, at least for now, the stress of finding the "right" song for the "right" pace is just too much and is overriding the "listen to your body!" mantra that works so well for me! So I'll be taking a break from music and going back to podcasts (which I really have missed!) at least for now.
Okay, the second (today's) run was awesome. It's the 5th day in a row that I've ran. I felt sure that my legs were going to be sore and just uncooperative and miserable. I had planned a 6 miler again but only did 3.2, but not for the reason you might think (aha!).
Earlier, I was looking at the time limits for the marathon in May (yippee!) and found that only the first half had a time limit. The first 13.1 miles had to be done in 3:30 because of road closure issues. I decided that on Sunday, I was going to run 13.1 (or as much as possible) just to see where I stand. Thus, I decided that I'm going to take it easy on today's and Friday's run so that I'll be more prepared for Sunday.
So, on my run, I felt awesome! I was able to just zone out and multiple times I forgot that I was even running! I've never had that happen to me before. I had to stop and walk a couple of times, sure, once because I was really charging a hill and decided to slow up and ended up talking (while walking) to someone for longer than I absolutely wanted. Another time I stopped because I was getting abdominal cramps (dehydration?), and at the end, I was feeling so good and didn't want to "ruin" it that I walked a short, steep hill. I felt so, so, so good. I think the fact that I jump started my mileage and started running more has maybe broken through a rut I was in and didn't realize it - or didn't know how to get out of. So, the truth really is, run more to run better!
I was aiming for a 14:00 pace just so I knew I could take it easy. I knew I would probably do better once I got going because I felt so good. I actually did a tiny bit of sprinting, haha. This time I was listening to Running From the Reaper (another favorite) and was really, really able to zone out. I didn't PR or anything, but it was a very happy, satisfactory run. It was a run that made me realize what I can do, instead of feeling like my body can't do what I want it to. I didn't even look at my Garmin that much! I sort of just loped along at a pace that my body and the road allowed, which wasn't too slow - especially considering the insta-boost in mileage- and it was just awesome!
Anyway, breakdown:
Lunge Matrix warm up (slightly abbreviated)
Mile 1) 14:35
2: 13:02
3: 14:23
Last .2: 2:22 @ 11:49 pace.
My average pace ended up being 13:52.
So not especially speedy, but it was especially nice. I hope tomorrow's goes just as well!
Happy Running!
Monday, January 2, 2012
It's Monday and I'm Still Running!
hahaha yeah....
So...
Kind of a heavy feeling run. I think it was because I ran yesterday and haven't done back-to-back runs in a long time. I had fun, though. I also think the cold made my muscles stiff. It wasn't that cold though - around 45 degrees... but it felt colder than, say, the 40 degrees I was used to a week or two ago. Very strange, as the Beatles would say.
I ran with R. because his leg was acting up - partly his IT band area. I told him to do the rehab on the strength running website (it's a really good website!), but he hasn't yet. I'll bug him some more; I don't want him to have issues!
But during the run, his legs loosened up. Afterwards his calf was giving him trouble. Oy. I swear it's the building up of mileage and being not used to back-to-back running days. Oh, well. It'll iron itself out. Hopefully; we'll keep an eye on it.
Anyway, it was slow, but enjoyable.
Matrix Warm Up (also did a bit of a slower first half mile to warm up):
Mile 1: 14:40
Mile 2: 13:14
Mile 3: 14:41
Last .21: 2:54 @ 13:58 pace (walked a bit)
I'm trying to get over my habit of walking. I know it's a habit because I just do it. I do it when I get into rhythm and feel great; I do it when I start to ache all over. It's bad. Very bad. I know if I just keep running, I can get past the mental barrier and forget that something hurts or I just feel like stopping in general.
What are your ways of solving this difficulty?
Happy Running :D
So...
Kind of a heavy feeling run. I think it was because I ran yesterday and haven't done back-to-back runs in a long time. I had fun, though. I also think the cold made my muscles stiff. It wasn't that cold though - around 45 degrees... but it felt colder than, say, the 40 degrees I was used to a week or two ago. Very strange, as the Beatles would say.
I ran with R. because his leg was acting up - partly his IT band area. I told him to do the rehab on the strength running website (it's a really good website!), but he hasn't yet. I'll bug him some more; I don't want him to have issues!
But during the run, his legs loosened up. Afterwards his calf was giving him trouble. Oy. I swear it's the building up of mileage and being not used to back-to-back running days. Oh, well. It'll iron itself out. Hopefully; we'll keep an eye on it.
Anyway, it was slow, but enjoyable.
Matrix Warm Up (also did a bit of a slower first half mile to warm up):
Mile 1: 14:40
Mile 2: 13:14
Mile 3: 14:41
Last .21: 2:54 @ 13:58 pace (walked a bit)
I'm trying to get over my habit of walking. I know it's a habit because I just do it. I do it when I get into rhythm and feel great; I do it when I start to ache all over. It's bad. Very bad. I know if I just keep running, I can get past the mental barrier and forget that something hurts or I just feel like stopping in general.
What are your ways of solving this difficulty?
Happy Running :D
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