Lots and Lots of Running: Hills and Sprints

The past two days have just been a blur of running.

After I ran 5 miles on Tuesday morning, I had choices to make. On the planner were 3 miles of hills and 8 easy miles, all taking place before Thursday. I could either run 3 more miles on Tuesday, or push everything back.

JW came home from rehearsal around 9:45, and said he was going to go to the gym for his Insanity workout. I decided to go with him and complete 3 more miles on the treadmill, just to get it out of the way.

3 Miles of Hills: 1 mile warm up, 8 X200m uphill sprints, topped off with a 1 mile cool down.

Since the workout called for "Uphill Sprints",  I bumped the incline to 3.0 and the speed to 6.1. I decided there needed to be an equal amount of cool down time between sprints, so I tacked on another 200m "Downhill Jog" after each sprint by choosing a 1.0 incline and 5.4 speed. After the mile of warm up, it looked like this:

1-1.12 miles: 1st Uphill Sprint
1.12-1.24: Downhill Jog
1.24-1.36: 2nd Uphill Sprint
......(etc, etc)
2.7-2.82: 8th Uphill Sprint
2.82-3.21: Cool Down

At least the Calories Burned are similar?

I was pretty spent!

On Wednesday, my legs were still pretty tired from the 9 miles I had run over the course of the previous day. I wasn't sure when I was going to tackle 8 miles, but it gave me comfort that the instructions told me that I should take it easy.

Around 2, I decided that I would try a sunset run at the park. I knew I had to get there before 6 so I would still be running while the sun was up. I updated my iOS during the day and played through it - some cool features, but ultimately I wasn't jumping up and down about it - but I never plugged it back in to charge before I left.

At 6, I was still sitting in my apartment. I had about 5 minutes of intense vacillation while I decided whether I should just go now and run in the dark for a little bit (sunset was slated to be at 7:15- it's setting so much earlier now! I'm not ready for it!), or postpone for Thursday.

A little voice in the back of my head piped up: Why did you run twice yesterday if you were just going to get behind schedule again the next day? And it was absolutely right - my efforts would have been for nothing if I put off another run. I quickly got dressed and left, braving through the 6pm traffic, and arrived at the park at 6:30. 30 minutes off my mark, but at least I was there and doing it!

I listened to my audiobook while I ran since I wasn't really worried about my pace - I was more worried about when the sun would set, running in the dark, and now a new worry crept into my mind: if my phone was going to die midway through my run. It was at about 30% before I started, and I'd be running two apps simultaneously: Nike+ Running and Music. I had to get this finished as quickly as possible!

I didn't start out with a sprint, but with what felt like a pretty fast pace. I disregarded it. Last time I tried to guess my pace, I overshot it and thought I was running in the 9s when I was really in the mid-10s. Wake up call! I decided not to think about it.

I forgot that I had turned off the voice updates for each mile, and that it would come on in the middle of the run and tell me how fast I had been going. (I can't decided if I like this or not.) It came on all the same at 4 miles and said that I was running at an average pace of 8'05''. What!!

That gave me a little boost of motivation just to see how fast I could end up going.

A "slow" first mile, with a boost of confidence at Mile 5 and a surging last mile.

I am SO happy with how I ran! It felt effortless and I felt like I was just flying along, putting one foot in front of the other. So much for taking it easy... but whatever, I felt awesome.

Harvest Moon

I snapped this picture of the moon and my phone immediately died. Hah! Here's a better picture (not mine):

Beautiful!

Next up: an NTC workout and an "easy "15 miles on Saturday. Eep!

Negative Splits!!

This is a (long-ish) story of VICTORY!

On Tuesday night, I arrived at rehearsal and the stage manager pulled me aside. She told me that the girl that was playing one of the featured roles broke her toe the day before and had to drop out of the show. She's okay, but was told by her podiatrist that she couldn't dance. Then, the stage manager asked if I would be comfortable taking over as her replacement! Now, this is both awesome and kind of daunting news. First of all, this is the role I wanted when I auditioned for the production. Win! But, we only had 11 rehearsals left. Yikes. I accepted the offer, and quickly scheduled some more voice lessons so I could go over my song and devoted the rest of my time to learning my lines.

On Thursday, my day was becoming jam packed with stuff. I had a voice lesson in the afternoon, my sister was visiting a venue for the wedding that I had to be "present" (via Skype) for, and I had another 3 hour rehearsal. For some reason, I wasn't finding the energy to do my NTC workout before my voice lesson. It also took me forever to get home because of traffic, and I didn't get the workout in before my rehearsal.

Rehearsal was rough - lots of jumping, kicking, and spinning in heels. I was exhausted by the end of it and was thinking that this would be another Thursday where I would skip my NTC workout, since it was 11pm by the time I got home.

HOWEVER, JW also hadn't completed his Insanity workout of the day, so we motivated each other to go downstairs to our apartment gym and complete our individual 45 minute workouts together. I must say it was really nice to just have someone physically there, keeping me accountable. Bonus points for it being my fiancé! :)

Warm-up

Completed with 8-10lbs dumbbells

 The bulk of the workout were squat and plank exercises, and many of them were 2 minutes. This made the workout seem a bit faster since I wasn't doing so many moves. I always say I don't like when there isn't a discernible pattern, but this time it didn't bother me so much.

Ab Section

Cool-Down

 I ended the workout at midnight. Before I went to sleep, I tried to plan out my weekend. It's a holiday weekend (yay Labor Day!) and I didn't necessarily want a bunch of workouts looming ahead of me, so I decided that even though I ended my workout at midnight, I still wanted to run 5 miles in the morning. If I didn't, then I wouldn't be as rested for the 14 miles on Saturday, which is the longest distance I've ever run. I had to run on Friday morning if I wanted everything to stay on track.

I set my alarm for 6:30am, and somehow didn't get out of bed until 8am. I hate it when that happens! In any case, I got outside by about 8:15am. I had one of these for my fuel:

Yum!

I put on my new Mizunos and went outside down the normal way. I wasn't really feeling great - pretty tired, and my feet were getting used to the new shoes. They felt great, just different. Throughout the run, I kept wondering if I was going faster or not, but ultimately decided to stop worrying about it and just run.

I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID NEGATIVE SPLITS! Look at those green numbers! I cannot tell you how happy seeing that made me feel! And it just goes to show that even when all the elements are different and out of my control - that my workout the previous night was much later than I anticipated, that I ran on tired dancing legs, that my new shoes were being broken into, that I kept running into stop lights and wet pavement - I can still be successful, no matter what!

I feel AWESOME. I felt so awesome that I went home and completed about 10 different errands that I was meaning to complete all week. Now I feel so accomplished! And all before noon! I'm so ready to get the 14 miles out of the way tomorrow (I'm SO nervous!!) and then enjoy my holiday weekend!

Any plans for Labor Day?

A Dragon Run, some Deer, and a Puppy

Another 7 miler down the drain in the bag! (It's been a long day.)

I woke up EEARRRLLYY this morning (re: 6:00... so not early at all, I know, I know-) and quickly made myself a pre-run meal of a whole wheat English muffin and almond butter. I don't know if it was because it was 6:30 in the morning, or because I hadn't eaten since 7pm the previous night , but that muffin was the BEST muffin I had ever tasted in my whole life. That snack gave me LIFE, y'all.

I really wish this was my photo. But it basically looked exactly like this. Source.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the best pre-run meal that I could have had. I had a few cramps at the very beginning of the run that I was a little worried about, but they went away right around the halfway mark. I ate a Clif's Shot Blok around mile 3, and it seemed to go down okay.

I think it kinda looks like a dragon. See the horn, and the two nostrils?

So elusive!! Stupid 3rd mile.

I may have gone so fast on the last mile because I saw a family of deer crossing the trail right in front of me. A FAMILY. OF DEER. This adds to my animal count on this run: two bunnies, and a flock of geese that I was sure was going to kill me if I didn't run super fast through them. Bunnies and geese are a given, but DEER?? I wish I had gotten a picture, but a) it was on the last mile and I wanted to finish strong, and b) I wasn't exactly sure Papa Deer wasn't going to assault me with those antlers if I lingered too long.

Trying to find pictures of the breed of deer I saw is turning out to be pretty icky - hunting pictures and such. Ugh. Moving on...

Much better.

I wore my new sports bra - review forthcoming, as soon as I can get a decent picture of it without me sweating all over it - and my yoga pants, with a cotton shirt. For some reason cotton really doesn't bother me on long runs as it does for some people. I liked it just as much as the new Nike tee I keep taking pictures of. Who'd a thunk.

What I looked like right before my shower. I know, you were dying to see.

After I got home, I quickly took a shower and put on my compression socks (I took a Snapchat picture of them.. and forgot to save it. **headdesk**) and immediately took an hour nap. IT WAS GLORIOUS. I think that's the best part of morning runs - the fact that, because of the flexibility of my job, I can go home and GO BACK TO SLEEP.

Hm. Did you know if you Bing (I'm so trendy, I know) images of the word "sleep" you get some really freaky shock pictures? Yikes. Never doing that again.

Here's a picture of a sleeping puppy.

Now we all feel better, right? :)

This day is begging to be over with - so I will end it here. Happy running!

A Cider-Fueled Worm Run

Y'all.

Y'ALL.

I did it - I did a morning run.

My plans changed - AGAIN. No judging. It got to be around 5:00 yesterday, and I was thinking, you know what? Rather than try and get in the run on a Friday afternoon, why don't I just put it back a couple more hours than I usually do and start getting into the habit of morning runs? So that's exactly what I did.

Last night, we went to a going-away party of two of our good friends. They're moving to Las Vegas for school, and this was their last weekend in Seattle, so we celebrated with them at a place called Von Trapp's. It was a lot of fun- they had Bocce ball, which I had never played before!

Bocce Ball courts!

So many people came to see them off that it ended up being quite the party. I had 44oz of cider (that's about 1.3 liters...) at Von Trapp's, and then we all went to Manhattan's and had a tequila shot. Wooo!

MONSTROUS tequila shot.

We got home at 1 and I still woke up at 6:30am so I could finally start morning runs. I RULE.

I call this a worm-run.

Great weather - 58 degrees! It felt amazing! I started out the run decidedly slow. I would NOT let fast starts be a habit with me! Of course, since I was tired, it worked. I felt like I was running around a 10 min/mile pace, but in reality it was only about 9'40''!

Allllllmost!!!

I was SO CLOSE to that elusive negative split! I cannot BELIEVE how fast I was going. This is really new to me - as I said before, I'm usually always in the nines. But since I had a nice warm up, didn't feel too much pressure since it was early, and wasn't expecting much, I ended up just running to RUN and it felt amazing. I am so proud of myself!!

Apparently this is my favorite running shirt now? I promise I wash it all the time.

I'm really happy that Mile 1 was my slowest - even Mile 5, where I faltered a bit, was still faster than Mile 2. Consistency is key! And, I am MOST proud that my last mile was my fastest. I felt like I was flying! I resisted the urge to make effort-noises in the last few seconds - it was so hard! But worth it :)

I drove home, took a shower, put on my compression socks, and went to sleep for another 2 hours. It was the best sleep I've had in weeks! I woke up again at 10:30 and felt ready to start my weekend. Morning runs are the best!

Do you ever make noise while you run?

To those of you who have thanked me on our engagement, THANK YOU! I will make an engagement post very soon - the ring is getting re-sized and appraised right now, so I want to take more close up pictures of it before I post anything about it :)

Building a Base

For the week leading up to the official start of the marathon training, I wasn't exactly sure what to do. I knew I couldn't just not run, but I knew I couldn't kill myself either. I have a tendency to try and do too much at once, so I was trying to stay away from burning out, but I was also really excited and nervous to start marathon training, so I wanted to be sure I was ready.

I knew my training would start with 3 times a week, every other day- starting with 3 miles each day. So I decided to mirror that, running on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, changing the mileage each time. My other goal was for each mile to be faster than the previous one, which is something new for me. It was definitely challenging! Each of my runs were on the treadmill.

Monday, July 1

I tried my best to do negative splits, but the chip in my shoes had died a while ago, so I had to hold my phone in my hand while I ran so it would track. Even though I never went slower on the treadmill, if my hand suddenly stopped going back and forth (to check my phone for my pace, etc.), then it would think that I had stopped overall. This was extremely frustrating!

Wednesday, July 3

This was a hard day. As you can see, I ran at almost 11pm, so I was already tired. I also started out way too fast for what I was used to. And again, I ran into the same problem of holding my phone in my hand. My plan was to run 4 miles, but I decided not to push it.

Friday, July 5

Finally, negative splits! I was really really happy to see these results, especially since I felt like I was really killing myself on the treadmill. I was in a hurry, so I knew I didn't have any time to waste. It's such a good feeling seeing all that green!

After these three runs, I felt ready to tackle my marathon training head-on!

Do you have any tips for building an adequate base after not running for a while?