Travel Plans

So we're trying to plan for our Boston trip. My hubby is super excited about spending thousands of dollars (yes I did say thousands) on this. But I'm trying to get the price down so we can all be happy. Besides when I am ever going to get to run Boston again? Probably never or at least not for a long time. Sooooo after researching flights I think we're making it work. If we fly into CT it's way cheaper then flying into Boston, and I have some fam. there who we're hoping to stay with for 2 nights. Then we'd only have to pay for a rental car and a hotel for 1-2 nights. So I'm hoping to lower the cost significantly...but we'll see. I am excited though!
Now my fitness level, or should I say blah level. It's amazing how out of shape you can get by taking a month off. That's all it takes to make me feel gross and out of shape. So today I'm back on the running kick. I got up and ran 3 miles on the treadmill (it's a snow covered wonderland outside). I'm just going to run 3 times a week till I think the last week in Dec. till real training starts. I actually feel a ton better just from that run today. Now the real challenge is all the holiday sweets. :)

Just call me a slacker

So after St. George I worked out at the gym almost every day for a week (to help my legs feel better)...and to compensate for all the food I was eating in Hawaii! Then when I got home, I think I forgot how to run or do much of anything. Or maybe I used the let your body have one day of rest per marathon mile. So yeah my 26 days of rest has come and past and I'm a slacker. I ran for the first time on Sat. and even though it felt great, I still haven't done it again. I think if I'm not training, I cheat doing my fitness runs. Just can't get myself to do it. So call me a slacker in running and blogging for the next few weeks.
Oh on an exciting note: I was accepted to run BOSTON! Yah! I was lucky. 25,000 runners signed up and within 8 hours the registration closed. Luckily I was included in those 25,000! I can't wait!

Video of run

It was Camerons first time using the video camera on our camera to film me running. Um yeah, you can tell it was his first time. I still wanted to post it though because it's all I have. This was me at the end of 26 miles...so beat. Enjoy. :)haha

My race results are in...

After a week of sleepless nights due to major anxiety over this race, I was nervous to say the least. Last night we checked into our hotel at 9:30pm in St. George and I pretended to go to sleep by 11 since I had to be up at 4:15am to leave for the race. Of course I didn't sleep a wink. After we boarded the buses that took us 26 miles up the canyon we got out to find it warm (it was a record for the warmest start time EVER). That worried me since it's usually freezing at 6am and I run much better in the cold than heat. 7,700 runners started at 6:45, me included. I had originally planned on running with the pace team to get my 3:40 finishing time, but I was ahead of them from the start and decided I better not chance waiting for them to catch up...so it was just me and my garmin. Have I ever mentioned how I LOVE my watch? It's amazing and made all the difference. So the race started and by mile 2 I was hot..not good. I ran hard, the hardest I ever ran. I decided to try and stay under an 8:20 min mile. One of the many hard parts was Veyo Canyon. That is the infamous volcano hill you have to run up for about a mile straight and it kills. So that slowed me a bit...but I never stopped running. I knew that at the half mark (13.1) I needed to be at 1 hour 49 min. I was at 1hour 50min. It was then that I knew if I didn't pull out all I had that I very possibly could miss the Boston qualifying time by 1min. or something totally defeating. So after that I tried to stay at an 8min. mile. The problem were the hills. St. George has a lot of downhill, but I forgot how much uphill there is too. Sprinting uphill at an 8min. pace kicks your butt very, very fast! At mile 20 my time was 2hours 45 min. Once I realized that I only had 6 left and that I was very possibly going to get Boston I was thrilled, but also knew I couldn't let up at all. So I didn't. Instead I experienced every emotion possible. I cried, I had a few hopeless feelings, at times I thought for sure that I was crazy...I mean who does this??? I had major highs of endorphins, but mainly I just keep kicking, and kicking as hard and fast as my body would allow. I finally saw Cameron at the last mile and I only had about 400meters left. I was a little over 3:30 and knew that I had Boston. Those last .2 of 26.2 miles were purely torture. I wanted to walk, actually I wanted to crawl or just fall over and never move my body again. Instead I kicked harder and crossed the finish line with a time of 3hours and 35 min and 28seconds.

One of the best accomplishments of my life. By far the hardest physical thing I have ever done, but one of the best achieved goals that I have experienced. I loved it! So many emotions, but a feeling of thankfulness for it all keeps running through my thoughts. Thankful that I know that even at times in life when we feel things are out of reach, they really can be reached.
Of course I am hobbling around, but I'm not complaining.

Just wanted to share my stats for the race
Out of 7,700 runners from the start only 5,694 finished. Out of that I placed 952 overall. There were 2,455 women who ran and I placed 186 out of them. For my age group 25-29yr olds I placed 28.
Now tonight we are packing to leave first thing in the morning for Hawaii. I think that is just the right recovery for all those miles. :)

One week and counting

Next Saturday at about this time I will be icing my legs and gorging myself on something ridiculously fattening while hopefully rethinking my amazing time....(that's me and my hopeful thinking). :) I've finally fully recovered from the flu, running last week was a bit challenging. Today I ran my last 10 before the marathon and I felt great. So I'm positive and looking forward to it. Even if I don't qualify (which I'm still planning on doing everything in my power to qualify)I've decided to not let it devastate me. I'm going into this still hoping I can, but realizing that it's an extremely hard goal and even as much and as hard as I've trained, a 3:40 may not be possible this time around. So here's to that, and this next week of easy runs, till Sat. :)

Yuck

Can I say Yuck? That's the word of the weekend. Yuck. Before bed I laid out my running clothes for my last Sat. morning 12 mile run. I was feeling especially tired but contributed it to the hike the boys and I just went on earlier that evening and my "running diet" that leaves me craving my chocolate and white bread. But unfortunately it was none of those, instead it was the evil stomach flu. From about 2am till 6am I ran from my bed, to the toilet for a nice throw up session, to bed and repeat. Not fun. I missed my run and spent most of Sat. feeling incredibly nauseous and weak. The best was when it was finally bed time and I went to sleep feeling exhausted, nauseous, and weak when I heard my little 4 year old crying. Crying because he had what I did, only he didn't make it to the bathroom, but did manage to cover a very large area of bedding with puke. Yuck. Theres nothing like cleaning up puke when you're on the verge of doing it yourselg. So, I got to clean, and then stay by his side as he repeated my ordeal. Then today I was luck enough to wake up feeling better, but weak and sleep deprived. But then today my husband got it too...Yuck. So I'm 2 weeks out and I'm just thankful that I got it now instead of on my race weekend. But on the bright side, I'm feeling lots better. It's only a 24 hr. bug, so by tomorrow my fam should be puke free. Oh and did I mention that on Sunday the day after the marathon me and my hubby are going to Hawaii? :) Now that is not Yuck.

Less than 3 weeks and counting

I can't believe it's almost here. Ready or not, St. George here I come. Today my nice mommy biked my 20mile run with me. Anyway you look at it 20 miles stinks. But there was some good news. First the weather was great, I think it started out around 50degrees and ended around 65 or so. It's beautiful to look around and take in the mountains with the sun peeking over them. Now only at certain points of my run, where my endorphins were buzzing, could I actually appreciate this. Other times I was grumbling about marathon running. What crazy person enjoys this? Oh yeah, that would be me ...at times. But I didn't have to take my ibuprofen until mile 17 which is a huge improvement from past runs. So the positives: no injuries, no knee pain, beautiful weather, great company. The negative: my time. Boston is seeming more and more out of reach. I just don't see how I can maintain an 8:20min/mile for 26 miles straight. So far I've had 2 20 mile runs and both have not even been close to averaging that. Bad news...very bad news. Of course IF and only IF I have an amazing running day where everything falls perfectly into place then maybe I can qualify. Otherwise it looks like I'll just try and if I don't I'm going to have to wait about 6 years till I'm 35 and the qualifying time goes up.

Another week down

I've slacked on my journaling, but life has been crazy. So a quick recap- last week a ran a 16 mile hill run and it was pretty good. Honestly I can't even remember much about it besides the fact that 16 miles sucks just as much as 20, especially when I'm doing it alone. This past week was my down mileage week, thank goodness.7 miles Monday, 6 miles Wed. and 6 today. Very easy and very nice. I think it's been so helpful in preventing injury. My knee has been great this week. We'll see how Saturdays 20 mile goes.
Mainly my thoughts this past week have been on acquiring some form of personal protection. Monday night I had a scarey runner experience. I missed my morning run and couldn't get myself out till around 8pm. I had to run 7 so the last few miles were ran in darkness. I'm smart enough to never do this alone, but that night happened to be the exception. I live in a very safe area (or so you think) and always run in pretty populated, lit areas. Anyways as I was running a car passed me very slowly. This is common, but I get the creepy feelings sometimes and this one triggered it in full force. It then stops and turns down a street a few ahead of me and just sits there waiting so that I would have had to run right in front of it. I had a very bad feeling but rationalized that they were probably just lost. To play it safe I crossed the street anyways and ran on the other side past them. No sooner had I done this then the crazy car comes out and drives slowly by me again. Now I began to panick imagining the worst scenarios, so again I crossed to the opposite side. Thankfully some people turned the street and I could see them walking so I ran to be by them and scarey crazy guy took off. So not quite sure what that was all about, but I'm glad I didn't have to find out. I love running, but that was one of the things that I don't love about it. So next thing on my list for alone runs is pocket sized mace.

Marathon Pace team

I have a little hope that maybe I can make this goal, maybe. I signed up with the Cliff Bar pace team for the 3:40 marathon time. They say that as long as you stay with them then they will cross the line within that time. So at least now I don't have to only rely on my Garmin, I'll have actual people to run with and motivate me. That was huge news for me. Also I went to a meditation class last night and met a girl there who ran both SLC and St. George. She missed Boston by 30 sec. last year but she did say that her time from SLC improved by 20 min. for St. George. I haven't run St. George since 2005, so I'm hoping maybe the same will hold true for me. Hoping. I just finished my 7 mile tempo run. 1 mile warm up at a 9min pace, 5 miles at 7:40 and then 1 mile cool down. I'm tired but am feeling pretty good. Now I just have to spend some time with the ice and my knee.

First 20 mile run

Yesterday I did it, the dreaded 20. I've been building to get there. 17, 18, and now 20 miles and it hurt. I decided to drive to flatness so that my 20 miles could be hill free, and I wore my new super cute running skirt that I LOVE...so worth the $50. :) My mom was nice enough to ride a bike next to me for those 3 long hours of nonstop running. It was so nice of her to be there for company and also for protection from the random scary men that walk the Parkway. Not that my mom is much for protection, I mean we're both about 5'1, and so not scary, but at least I feel better on secluded river parkways, to have someone with me. To my surprise those 20 miles actually flew by and I felt really strong and really good. My end time was 3:06 which was not what I wanted, especially because there really were no hills to tire me out. To make my 3:40 marathon goal I am going to have to do it MUCH FASTER. :(
I hate the discouragement of not doing what I want to do. But I keep telling myself it was just a training run. Then I give myself all my justifications as to why my time isn't where I want it to be. 1. It was just a training run. 2. There was no competitiveness, no one to beat. 3. I was talking a ton with my mom which makes me slower. 4.My knee was hurting.
My knee...that's a whole different story that I'm hoping magically goes away on it's own. Otherwise I am going to have to take another trip to Costco and buy the Bulk bottle of Ibuprofen again. Blah. But anyways at least I'm doing it. Only 6 more weeks till it's here.

18 miles

Well I'm getting there. Friday I ran my 18 and did much better than my previous 17. I still feel like training alone is not fun, not fun at all, but at least I'm getting there and sticking to my schedule. There was a random guy who was running ahead of me and I thought I'd challenge myself and try and pass him. For about a mile he remained ahead of me, but I kept closing in on the distance until finally I passed him. That was a needed boost for the run that morning. I have always had that streak of competitiveness in me, well more than a steak. I am competitive and I like to compete. And I really like to win. :) The only bad part of my run was when my knee pain started. It lasted a few miles, but I ran through it and it went away. That of course scared me because I was injured for my last marathon. So I'm just hoping I can keep all parts of me feeling good for this one. Next week is 20. Not thinking about that yet though. :)

Another tempo run....check

Today I took my 7 mile tempo run outside. First of all have I mentioned that tempo runs to me are torture? Wednesdays are my I hate running day. Reason 1: Tempo runs kick my butt. Reason 2: Wednesdays are garbage days which means I get to smell the stank of rotting garbage throughout the entire run, not to mention that stupid truck following me everywhere. Reason 3: Today the wind. Reason 4: The hills, the many, many hills. But despite my extreme hate for Wednesday runs it went really well. To my suprise I did most of those 7 miles under 8 min. miles with 3 of those miles below a 7:40. So I was very happy with my time, and even more happy to be done with the run today. Maybe Boston is back on the plate. Now if I could only start eating more healthy, now that would be helpful.

Last week recap

My running "journal" had to take a backseat last week, but here's a quick recap.
Let's see the big 16 mile run was last Saturday and it was pretty brutal. Mainly because my 16 mile run turned into a 17 mile run. Not good when that happens. Actually I was doing pretty good until about mile 14, then the hills started getting to me. As I approached the last mile and a half (straight uphill to my house) I realized that I just hit 16 miles and the wall. The "wall". I've heard of it, I've kinda experienced it in the past, but it wasn't until I hit 16 miles and still had 1 extra to do (that my mind was in no way going to allow)that I truly understood what the wall was. I barely could walk/run that last mile. Somehow I got home and as I approached my driveway, I just cried. Yes, it's the emotional part kicking in of the feeling of I can't do this. Sure I can run the distance, but run it at a Boston pace, now that I just don't know if I can do. I had a very bad week following that run and thankfully it was my down mileage week. So I only had a few 5 and 6 mile runs to do. Now I'm back to it and am still not sure how I'm feeling. I have a hard tempo run on Wed. and then 18 miles on Friday. Boston is seeming a little out of reach right now. I'm wondering if my goal needs to be altered. :(

Running skirt

I really, really want a "running skirt". I think they are super cute, and um can my legs look like that if I wear it too? I love that they have pockets to hold my carb booms, bigger pockets than my regular shorts. But $50 for one piece of clothing...I'm really trying to convince myself or my husband why I really, really need that. Pronto. It's worth it, right?

New Running Shoes

Time for new shoes, my other ones have had it. I got the same ones again which are Brooks Adrenaline. This time around I had color choice, so of course I chose pink. Hopefully that will bring me a little extra luck.
Just finished my 6 mile tempo run and today it wasn't that bad. I think maybe theres something to "muscle memory". Once my legs got going at that 7:40 min/mile speed I was able to withstand it okay. I just kept thinking as I was running, okay you can do this, only 20 more like this. haha. Yeah right.

14 miles makes me tired

14 miles, half way point and it kicked my butt this morning. Left at 6:30am with Cameron (my sis was visiting so she was able to watch the kids for us.) We did a route full of hills and more hills with the last few miles um again guess where, yes straight up hill. Cam ran 10 with me and I made up the other 4 on my own. I like having him as a partner, sometimes. Of course we got in a "running fight" today. I had to yell at him about "Road etiquette" which didn't go over well. I just think that when bikers are pounding straight up the hill and we are running down it that "we" should both get over to the side so they don't have to swerve around us. But I'll stop now since he reads this blog, but thankfully with all the endorphins pumping through our body, not to mention pure exhaustion it's hard to stay mad at each other. Good times. :) As far at my training run speed is going I'm just feeling a little frustrated. Running at an 8:20 min. mile for 26 miles is just seeming more and more out of reach. Today I averaged between 8:40- 9:30 min. miles and that's just not good enough. I know that I have to take the hills into consideration and also know that I still have 2 months of training to get better, but I just don't know if I can. :( So on that thought I'm feeling a little down, but in no way I am giving up. If only there was an easy way to improve my time...

7 mile tempo run

Wednesdays, my hate day in training. Today I ran 7 miles in 57 min. 3 of those miles were run in 7 min. 13 sec. Ouch. All I can say is it's over and now I'm ready to eat, like a lot for breakfast. The hunger pains are coming on strong and my shredded wheat is calling to me...:)

12 miles

Yesterday I woke up at 6:30 to run my 12. Of course I didn't get to bed till 1am since I was having some issues with my itunes and needed to get my music in order for my run. Cameron announced that he wanted to go and run with me (I think the most he's run in the past few months is 4 or 5 miles). I told him okay, but that I'd leave him if he was too slow. ;) So tired and very tired we left by 6:45 for the 12 mile run. It's been averaging over 100 degrees the past few days and I could feel the heat after my first mile. Training in heat is so much harder than the cold runs I used to do. So, we picked a loop with of course lots of hills, but lots of beauty too. As much as hills kill me (and I do mean KILL me)I love to run so close to the mountains and to have such gorgeous views. We saw a mommy deer with her little baby and ran maybe 10 feet from them.
My hubby was an excellent running partner and we stayed together for the most part. Running with someone makes such a difference. For the SLC marathon I had a training partner and she was great to run with. She was running in the Ogden marathon a month after mine, but still came and ran a part of my marathon with me. When I reached that struggling point around mile 17-20 she was there to keep me going. I really need to find a partner to run this marathon with. Cameron registered for St. George, but didn't make the lotto, so now I'm on my own. The last few miles we were running uphill and so we separated then, but he stayed strong till the last few. He's a natural athlete and I was pretty impressed that he could just go and run 10 no problem. So my 12 miler down, now in the weeks ahead it really starts to get fun.

Tempo Run

I've had an emotionally tuff week...just some personal issues I'm dealing with, but they have been bad enough to put a dent in my running. So Monday I missed my easy 3 mile run, but that's okay. I ate a box of chocolates instead from my sweet aunt. So anyways back on track today. So the tempo run. Can I just say that if I had a choice to do a 6 mile tempo run or run double that (13 miles) at normal speed I wouldn't even think twice about choosing the 13 mile run. It's bad. Today the workout was a warm up mile at a 9 min pace and then 4 miles in a row without stopping at a 7:40 min/mile. Then a cool down mile for a total of 6 miles. I chose to stick to the treadmill today because with that speed and all the hills outside (not to mention my chocolate binge the past 2 days) I was sure to be found on the side of the road. So treadmill I did and it was brutal. But surprisingly to myself I did it all. I guess once your legs get used to running that fast they just keep going or at least I kept telling my mind to make them go. I'm feeling better and running definitely helps my mood, my stress, and my life. I'm just so glad that tempo runs are only once a week.

Training...4 weeks in

I just finished week 4 of training for the St. George marathon. 12 more to go till its here. And I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. After running a 3:52 at the SLC marathon in April I felt great, well actually I felt amazing. So much so that the thought of that magic number 3:40 entered my mind and has consumed me. I want Boston and I want it bad! So in order to shave those 12 min. off in my time I am really going to have to work. Maybe a little harder than I am now. I am doing a pretty competitive training program, that tells me how fast I need to be running. The problem is that I live in these horribly hilly mountain roads and it makes training at a faster speed so much more difficult. Sooooo....I'm trying. My "long runs" need to be done at a 9:11 speed which is easy to stick to as long as the miles aren't straight uphill, which they often are. So yeah, working on that. Wednesdays are tempo runs where I'm sprinting my miles, and that kills me too. I'm thinking I may have to take those tempo runs indoors to the treadmill to eliminate the hill work. So at least tomorrow is Sunday, my day of rest.