Burnt Out

Days until Nike DC: 12

Miles in 2014: 310.4

Ok.  I’ll say it.  Perhaps this spring the mantra of “Run all the Races!” may have come back to bite me in the asphalt.  Since our spring session started mid-January I’ve run 6 half marathons and a 10k.  Apparently that’s a few too many!  I definitely have been feeling it.  My legs are sore, I’m tired, I’m unmotivated, and I’m grouchy.  I’ve missed more week day runs than I’ve gone too.  I stopped cooking healthy meals and returned to easy convenient fixes.  The combination has totally taken a toll on me in terms of training.

Instead of continuing to whine about it, I’m going to try and put a plan into place.  As a teacher, this time of year is exhausting.  I always seem to struggle spring break through the beginning of summer.  This morning though, I got up and went to the gym.  It was not my most inspired workout, but I got up and out of bed on a week day morning which is more than I’ve been able to do for a month now.  Tomorrow my goal is to get up and run.  I made wise choices all day when it came to food and didn’t go off the reservation and eat the easy stuff.  The goal tonight is to cook dinner and get food ready for breakfasts and lunches for the next day or two.

Next up is the need to lose some fat mass and replace it with lean muscle.  The 10 or so pounds that have crept back on do not make it easier to run.  That’s the next focus, I know how to do it, I’ve done it before, it’s not complicated.  So some amended “goals” for the remainder of the year:

1.       Less Races.  That’s right you heard it here first.  I have Nike DC in 2 weeks, and then a fun 12 k, and a 5k the two weekends after that.  After that nothing is on my schedule until the Portland Marathon in October.  Then in true form race junkie I’m already signed up for 5 halves in October and November.  3 of them are non-negotiable but the other two I may decide to bail on.   I made my coach promise to beat me if I sign up for anything else.

2.       Focused training.  For me it’s very easy to mentally crash long before I really physically need to.  This summer session I am going to work on my mental toughness and focus on doing all my training the right way and with the best effort I can give it.  I want to go under or right at 5 hours in Portland in October and I know that I will have to put in the work and make it count in the worst months to train here in Florida.

3.       Quit being lazy… it’s been so easy to sleep in.  Even easier to not make the right foods and get something easy from the store or go out to eat.  Though, I am going to rest just a little in between sessions in May to recuperate from my rough Spring season.  We might even sit at Starbucks, sip a latte, and watch everyone else run by.  But come June it’s back to business!

Hopefully all of this will snap me out of my self-inflicted slump!

GOALS

Miles in 2014: 100

Days until Nike DC Women’s Half Marathon: 88

Recently I posted a picture of my 2014 Running Goals on my facebook. It’s a funny thing about goals.  You make them for your own personal growth, but to help with accountability you almost have to share them.  Goals can be nerve racking if you put them out there for everyone to see.  If you don’t reach them – people might judge you.  If you do reach them there is always someone hating on your accomplishments. 

I was admittedly not a very strong runner when I first started.  I hurt, I couldn’t breathe, I was too slow for the group, I couldn’t keep up, I couldn’t finish a run using our 3:1 intervals, the list goes on and on.  If you were to ask my parents, I’m sure that they would agree with this next statement.  I’ve always been incredibly stubborn.  So I was not going to let this running thing get the best of me.  Every 5k I ran the goal was the same “I want to go under 40 minutes.”  I came close on my 3^rd one.  At the 3 mile marker the time was 39:30… I yelled and cursed out the man with the clock.  Finally 2 months later during my next 5k I was able to finally break that elusive 40 minute mark.  After my first half (in my defense I ran it sick and had my fever break during the race) a new goal was in place, this one was achieved in my next half.  Running my first marathon I came nowhere near my expected time goal.  I’ve learned about goals, you don’t have to reach them right away, that’s why it’s a goal.

2013 I knocked things out of the park.  I PRed EVERY SINGLE DISTANCE I raced! That’s not normal.  I took my marathon time down by an hour and 14 minutes.  That’s CRAZY.  My half marathon time came down 4 minutes since my previous PR (and almost an hour from that miserable first race.)  My 5k PR was 31 minutes and change – I can run a 5k under that once elusive 40 minute mark without “really” trying anymore.  In short, it was a good year.  In the past I have been accused (here come those “haters” I mentioned before) of only caring about myself and my own personal times, or only running to improve and not to have fun.  So let’s tackle those misconceptions.

I know I’m not perfect, I’m no running saint, BUT I do genuinely want to see everyone I meet through this running adventure do well with their own goals.  It’s one of the reasons I enjoy being a group leader.  In 2013 I walked a half marathon with my best friend, threw time out the window to just enjoy being able to do that with her.  I ran a few different races with people new or coming back to running so they wouldn’t have to go it alone, I helped officially pace a race almost 20 minutes slower than my PR.  I RODE A ROLLER COASTER DURING A MARATHON.  So clearly time isn’t always important, sometimes people need support more than I need to shave some time off of my PR.

Now to the one that really gets me.  Yes, sometimes I want to kill it out there on the road.  I was a swimmer in high school.  One thing that taught me was yes, I’m swimming against the other 7 swimmers in this heat, but I’m also swimming against my own best time.  I carry that notion with me when I run a race.  Yes, sometimes I want to beat someone in front of me (sometimes I know them, sometimes they are just a random target I’ve selected) but truly running is an individual sport.  When you’re at the level of running I am it is very unlikely that I will be in the front of the pack or a contender for any awards.  So really I just want to improve on myself.  I work very hard to get better at what I’m doing.  My parent’s would also probably agree to this next statement.  When I start something I dive in head first and take it to the extreme.  People have called me too competitive.  Sometimes, yes, I am competitive.  But I think it really boils down to this:  If I’m going to spend this much time on something – why wouldn’t I give it my all?  I know plenty of runners who are happy with where they are.  It’s comfortable and they enjoy it.  That’s great, they are out there doing something wonderful.  However, for me, that’s not enough.  I know I can be better.  Sure it would’ve been easy to stay where I started.  Running a few 5k’s and some 3 hour average marathons.  For some people that is there goal.  I know myself well enough to know that if I stayed there in the 13-18 minute miles I wouldn’t be happy with myself and I would quit after a while.  So for me the answer was to put in the work religiously and improve.  What I don’t understand is how people think you can’t have one without the other.  Yes, I can push myself hard in training and targeted races AND STILL HAVE FUN.  It’s possible.  I’ve picked up a pretty amazing group of people that I train with.  Sometimes I’m up front and sometimes I’m the sweeper, but I ALWAYS enjoy the time we spend together.

So here they are my 2014 Running Goals:

1: Be at the third milestone in Nike+ by the DC Women’s half – this means I need to run about 356 more miles before April 27.  Looking at my training, it’s totally possible, I just need to sneak an extra 35 or so miles into my training.

2. Get to the Black Level in Nike+ - I expect that I will be Leveling up sometime in August.

3: Run 1200 miles in 2014 by running an average of 100 miles a month.  I still have one run left this month and I’m already at 100 miles!  Right on track!

4: Here are the big ones  - THE TIME GOALS:

5k – under 30 minutes

Half Marathon – under 2:15 in the spring and under 2 hours in the fall

Marathon – Under 5 hours at the Portland Marathon in October

These may be difficult.  That’s why they’re goals.  I know that if I achieve them some people will be ecstatic for me and some will be “haters” I’m ok with it.  And if I don’t reach them, that’s ok too, I set some tough goals in order to really push myself into continued success. I mean, why shouldn’t I? 

Back on Track!

Miles in 2014: 93.3

Days until Nike DC Women’s Half Marathon: 89

After over a whole week of rest after the Dopey Challenge, I hopped right back on board with training!  Tuesday I opted out of the track workout and chose to do mile repeats instead to work my tired legs back into running.  Thursday we did our "hill loop" with a hill repeat thrown in.  This week we also switched our intervals from 3:1's to 4:1's.  When I first started running two and a half years ago I struggled with the 3:1. Most days I could not run an entire 3 minute interval to save my life.  It took me a very long time before I was able to complete the bulk of my training runs where I was able to run the 3:1 interval for the entire time.  As we have been training this past season we came to the realization that we are reaching a point with our running that we will be unable to run those 3 minutes much faster than we are and the only way to continue improving our times is to increase our running intervals.  After the Dopey we agreed to try and bump them up to 4:1's and then again to 5:1's by the end of the session.  While the 4's were challenging, I was able to run all of my intervals for our 2 week day workouts and our 8 mile run on Saturday.  It really seems to be a much easier transition that I had expected.

Saturday was the first weekend long run of the season and I am a group leader I had to go to the run even though I had a race the following day.  We had a great run at a comfortable pace which was great since many of us are either still recovering from recent races or just coming back to training.

First Weekend Run of Amanda & Leah's official group!

The next day was the Inaugural Celebration Half Marathon.  We had a huge group running the race and I truly loved this event.  The course was pretty and well supported.  We ran our 4:1 intervals for the first half of the race before switching back to 3:1's. At mile 10 we decided to walk it in the rest of the way to help Leah's knee which is still a little tender after her tumble at Dopey.  The after party had a great sampling of food from all of the local Celebration business.  Overall it was a great race.

What a great group!

Amy captured this classic cup toss of me!

This week it's back to work.  I need to continue cleaning up my diet for sure.  It's amazing what an important role that plays in this.  Tomorrow's track combo workout looks BRUTAL but I'm interested to try it out.  Thursday is our usual neighborhood run.  Saturday I'm headed to Safety Harbor for the Best Damn Race.  Last year this was a great event so I am definitely looking forward to running it again.  There are 6 of us running the half and another friend will be running his first 10k ever!  I'm so proud of this accomplishment and I hope I can beat him back to the finish line to see him cross (I'm gonna have to run really fast to achieve that!)  I know I have lots of other friends running the 5k and 10k so I hope to see them all there! 

Dopey Challenge

Miles in 2014: 60.9

Days until Nike DC Women’s Half Marathon: 100

As I sit her with the inevitable post-marathon plague, you know the one you get when you stop moving and all of a sudden your body attacks you a cold, I have a few minutes to reflect on 4 days, 4 parks, and 48.6 miles!  I knew the Dopey Challenge wouldn’t be an easy undertaking and Leah and I battled for days before we signed up for it, but now that it’s over I’m so glad we did!

Day one: Thursday 3.1 miles – Waking up to run 3.1 miles on a Thursday is no big deal usually, most Thursdays we log more like 5-6 miles.  We did have to be awake much earlier to make it to Disney with plenty of time to be ready to run.  Having learned our lesson last year, we agreed to get to Disney about 2 hours before the race start every day.  Leah and I parked within minutes of each other which was good since she had my bibs and shirts.  We hung out in her car for a bit before meeting up with Amy and Carolyn.  We made the rookie mistake of stopping at the first set of porto-potts we came to and I luckily used the last of the toilet paper in mine!  We said good bye to Amy at the corrals and met up with Dennis to enter our corrals.  I had a C corral start, and everyone else had a D corral start.  I tried to remind Dennis that we were most likely faster than everyone in this corral and his usual “start at the very back and let everyone pass us” plan was a bad idea but no one listened to me.  So with the start of our corral, just I predicted it was crowded and we passed hundreds of people the whole time we ran.  So, you know what that means, it was super crowded!  While I know that this is called the “Family Fun Run” the number of little kids darting around or being drug by their parents made navigating the course tricky and sometimes a little dangerous.  I may not be popular for making this next suggestion but, perhaps RunDisney needs to require anyone under the age of 10-12 to start in the final corral to prevent some of the problem races with little kids creates.  It’s dark, they’re short and the combination makes it hard to see them causing some of us slightly more tunnel-visioned racers to trip over them.   The race was crowded as I said, and right at mile 1 Leah fell and scrapped her knee!  This was particularly bad since we had 47.6 more miles to go in this challenge.  She dusted herself off and got back to it.  We finished in a conservative 35:18.  Later that day Leah stood up at work to find out that she could barely put any weight on her ankle as a result of the tumble.  After a frantic trip to the orthopedic we hoped that she was fixed up enough to make it through the next 3 days of races!

Day two: Friday 6.2 miles- The final 3 days of races all started earlier than Thursday so I was up at about 2:30 in the morning.  Again, Leah and I parked near each other.  Today we spent our car time in the morning watching youtube videos on how to use KT tape to stabilize an ankle.  After that we got ready to meet the gang!  We found Gloria, Amy, and Michelle and made our way toward the corrals.  Today we got smart and used the porto-potts with no line.  Leah, Michelle, and I decided to start in C today, since we were almost late for work on Thursday.  C corral was still crowded but we did seem to have a little more room as the race went on.  We took Thursday pretty easy to test Leah’s ankle.  I also was cautious of some of the ground since it had rained that morning.  We walked all of the boardwalk since it seemed extra slippery on the wood.  We also walked in the last half mile or so to give Leah’s ankle a cool down.  We finished in a 1:20:19 which was a nice easy pace.

Day three: Saturday 13.1 miles- Day 3 started a little off schedule.  Sarah was meeting me at my house to ride over together but she forgot her bib and had to turn around.  While she was doing that I realized that I needed gas in my car.  The gas station on the corner is right next to a Taco Bell that was still open and had many a drunken college kid in the back of a pick-up.  That should give you insight on just how early we were up.  We made it to Disney still on our time frame and met up with the group.  We took our Marathonfest before photo and started back on the long hike to the corrals.  Once we were settled into Corral K, Leslie, a friend of mine I’ve known pretty much my entire life met up with us.  She just had a baby a few weeks before and was understandably a little undertrained.  I told her to stick with us and she would be ok.  We started off comfortably and just enjoyed the course.  Leah has two mandatory photo stops in the Magic Kingdom; one is on Main Street and the other is in front of the castle, we don’t stand in line for photos, but we will peel off to take a quick group shot, and honestly some of those photos are some of my favorites.  At mile 10 people started to leave us – which is always ok.  We just wanted to finish steady and standing.  Susan left first, then Michelle and Sarah.  Since it was Sarah’s first half I’m glad she went ahead and pushed herself!  Leah, Leslie, and I finished in 2:52:58 – which matched down to the second me and Leah’s times from the Goofy last year!  What a great way to finish off my 20^th half marathon!

Day four: Marathon Day – Sunday 26.2 miles – No matter how many of these I do, I don’t think they ever will just feel easy.  We knew that setting a PR was highly unlikely, it was too hot, and we had just put 22.4 miles on in the days before.  Instead of worrying about our time we went into looking to enjoy a marathon as much as one can enjoy a marathon.  We started with a huge group! Lauren, Dennis, Carolyn, Angela, Brittany, Michelle, Leah, and I stayed together through Leah’s mandatory photo opportunities and our first bathroom break.  After the bathroom break Lauren and Dennis took off and finished right around the 5:30 mark – they are ready for their spring marathons Boston and Tokyo!  The rest of us did a good job of staying together for awhile.  Around mile 12.5 Michelle and Brittany hit the bathrooms and Leah, Carolyn, Angela, and I hopped onto Everest and rode the ride.  This may just be the coolest thing I’ve ever done during a race.  It cooled us down and gave us a much needed adrenaline rush.  Our only mistake was not pausing our watches, but man it looks like we ran one really fast mile in the middle there!  One of the things that made running this marathon much more bearable was knowing we had people we knew all along the course.  It was easier to think in 2-6 mile chunks of who we should be seeing next.  There are way too many people to name here who were out along the course, but I am so thankful for all of them.  Michelle and Brittany caught up with us when we stopped to use the bathrooms around mile 14 and we all stayed together until mile 19.  After we left a pit stop stop with Dan and his wife, it was just Leah, Carolyn and I.  By this point I was grumpy and the sun was really starting to get to me.  Last year the sun wipped me out at mile 15, so I was glad I was now nearing mile 21.  Leah refused to let me slow down and dropped our interval from 3:1 to 2:1.  I know at least once I whined to Carolyn to stay with me so Leah would have to slow down.  We kept up the 2:1’s for a few more miles before dropping again to 1:1’s.  I know I was not fun to be with at this point but Leah and Carolyn drug me through those last icky miles.  It is the first time though that we finished a marathon still running a formal interval and not doing a death march at the end.  I know I complained a lot, but I am so happy that Leah made me finish strong!  We finished in 5:55:22, which was 28 minutes faster than last year’s Goofy.  After getting ice on our knees and picking up our last 3 medal (rounding out the week’s total to 6). We settled down in the runner’s village to wait for all of other friends who were finishing up.  This was a great weekend to complete Marathon #5 for me!

As crazy as it sounds this was one of the best and most fun marathons I’ve ever run.  So fun I might just decide to go and try to be “perfectly Dopey” and run every Dopey race from here on out.

To all my fellow Dopeys!

Check out this giveaway!

http://www.discombobulatedrunning.com/2014/01/did-you-dopey.html


you can win this!!!! (BUT I REALLY WANT IT!!!)

2013 Wrap Up

Miles in 2013: 1038.44
Days Until Dopey: 9!

As 2013 wraps up I thought I'd take a look back at my year in running.  As I lay here resting some sore legs I can't help but be proud of how much I've accomplished.

I started running in 2011.  That year I ran 4 5k's and one half marathon.  I logged 339.73 miles.

In 2012 I ran 4 5k's, 1 10k, a 2 mile race, 2 10 mile races, 7 half marathons, and one marathon.  I logged 883.25 miles.

In 2013 I raised the bar.  I ran 7 5k's, a 2 mile race, a 5 mile race, 2 10k's, 2 15k's, a 10 miler, 11 half marathons, and 3 marathons!  I PRed at every race distance this year (some of them more than once!)  I took AN HOUR off my marathon time.  I raised almost $4,000 for the Pink Agenda as part of my NYC Marathon run.  I logged 1038.44 miles.

2013 was a great year for me and running.  I can't complain.  Is every race my fastest?  Uh no.  But I have made great friends, had a ton of fun, and was able to travel to Louisville, Anaheim, Cherokee, and NYC.

2014 holds a lot of promise too.  I'll be kicking it off with the Dopey, which is a 5k, 10k, half marathon and a full marathon.  4 days and 48.6 miles.  Then I'll take a short rest before the spring half marathon season kicks off.  I'm signed up for 7 half marathons in the spring.  I'll be "resting" from marathon training and just focusing on the half and speeding up.  Our group will be changing our intervals and increasing our speed and stamina.  Spring will be topped off with the Nike DC Women's Half Marathon.  The fall will have me hopefully training for the Chicago Marathon and as always, the Space Coast Half Marathon as a PR goal race.  I look forward to hopefully logging more miles and more PRs than I have this year.  I know I'll have fun on the road with my group and will be able to share in everyone's success!

Now it's back to tapering and resting before the Dopey Challenge in a week and half! 

Blasphemy: Sometimes Running Just Isn't Enough

Days in the Gym this month: 2

Pounds: 159

In addition to running and training for all of these half and full marathons I am determined to get consistent with heading back to the gym.  When I first started to lose weight 3 years ago I headed to the gym 4 mornings a week for several months straight.  I kept up with weights for several more months when I first started running.  I was running 3 days a week and strength training 2 days a week.  When I’d get really tired and run down the weights were always the first thing to go.  I started this fitness journey almost exactly 3 years ago and I was 234 pounds.  In the summer this year I got down to my lowest weight in about 7 years – 147 pounds.  This was after a 3 day juice fast that left me run down and tired.  I admittedly fell into some old habits and got lazy when it came to eating clean and lifting weights.  “But you run so much” or “those extra pounds must be muscle” is often what I would hear when I would say I felt lazy or “heavy.”  Sadly for me running alone is just simply not enough to get me to and keep me at the ideal weight, size, and body type that I would desperately love to have.  Looking back at my Nike Boom training app it’s no surprise that the pounds have crept back on, before Sunday I had only gone to the gym 11 times this whole year!

This weekend I weighed myself.  EEEEEEK.  I was 159 pounds – I hadn’t seen that high of a number in almost a year.  I’m terrified of seeing 160 again.  I pulled out the book (The Female Body Breakthrough) that had helped me 3 years ago when I was finally ready to be healthy.  I refreshed my memory of stuff I already knew but I had slacked off about doing.  Instead of the usual “I’ll get back on track tomorrow” that I would normally say, I drug myself out of bed, put on a cute gym ensemble, kissed the snuggly pups goodbye,  and drug myself to the gym.  I figured I would do the shorter and easier of my two typical workouts to ease myself back into this gym thing.  I did better than I had expected to do which was a relief.  From there I went straight to the grocery store and stocked up on all the right foods I need to be eating.  I didn’t stop there.  I came home and went to work in the kitchen.  I made 5 salads in a jar for my lunches this week, I cooked egg white muffins for my breakfast, and I grilled some chicken breast on the Foreman so it would be ready to toss in the salads.  My husband made spaghetti for dinner, instead of plowing through the pasta and commercial sauce, I cooked a green pepper and tossed in the ground beef and onion he was using for the spaghetti and added in some canned tomatoes, then I topped it off with a piece of Havarti cheese and melted it.  A successful and healthy alternative to what he was making.

Healthy Eats

This morning I woke up and got to my gym as it opened.  I did the harder of my 2 workouts (the metabolic acceleration) and did pretty well with it.  I also hopped on the recumbent bike and pedaled an easy 14 minutes and 3.5 miles as a cool down.  I’ve always liked the way the recumbent bike feels when my legs feel particularly tired.  It was a great start to the day and the work week.  I came home and drank my protein shake with ground flax and dark cherries blended into it.

I also set up my rewards system again.  I know it sounds like I am a five year old who needs a positive reinforcement system, but I don’t care.  I have a jar. Every time I hit the gym I put a dollar bill in it.  Last time I used this system I also put in a dollar per mile I ran.  Jason sponsored my weight loss, he contributed a ten dollar bill for every 10 pounds I lost.  So the jar has $2 in it.  I think I will wait until I hit my goal weight/size/physique and use that money to either get another tattoo, or make it the money I can blow at the Nike DC Women’s Half Expo.  The harder I work now, the more rocking that tattoo will be, or the more Nike stuff I can OD in April.

For some people losing weight or keeping yourself at a certain size is easy.  Unfortunately, for me it isn’t.  It is definitely a process that I have to continually work at.  My goal right now is to hit the gym 11 times in December – that’s right the same number of times that I have gone all year.  I’ll still be running three days a week – I mean I do have a 48.6 mile 4 day race series in month!  But it’s time to focus and reinvest in myself.