Running a marathon this fall started as an idea in mine and my hubby’s heads way back over a year ago. Last fall was the official 10 year anniversary of our first half marathon, that we ran together, trained together, and started dating soon after. Last year we thought, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if we could run a race together to celebrate?’. Continue reading “10+1 years Run-plus-more-a-versary”
Month: November 2013
2 Weeks and counting!!
I think I’m officially in count-down mode! I posted that after my last super long run my calf was feeling tight. I took an extra cross training day last week on Tuesday, and rode the spin bike instead of running. Then on Wednesday, I did our scheduled 12km MLR, and the next morning my ankle and Achilles were definitely tight and sore. I decided that this needed to be nipped in the bud and scheduled a chiropractor appointment that morning. He found that my pelvis was out, and adjusted that, and also grastoned my calves and foot. Continue reading “2 Weeks and counting!!”
Doing my part to keep it real
I’ve been thinking of doing a post about women’s bodies, fat shaming, and whole host of topics along that line. They are so prominent in media and social media these days. Lauren Fleshmen wrote a blog post this week titled ‘Keeping it Real’. For anyone who follows her, you might have seen her Oiselle runway pictures. She is seriously hot in those photos and was something like 3 months postpartum when they did the shoot. Continue reading “Doing my part to keep it real”
Freezer to Slow Cooker meals batch 2!
I spent this morning (Remembrance Day – a holiday in Alberta) making up another big batch of freezer to slow cooker meals. My other post with the Slow Cooker meals has been pretty popular, so I thought I’d document this batch as well. Continue reading “Freezer to Slow Cooker meals batch 2!”
Peak Week done, it’s taper time!!
I have to say, I’m pretty excited to be tapering, this might change in the next few weeks but I’m certainly ready to run just a bit less. I’ve really enjoyed this training cycle, and am really happy that my body has come through mostly unscathed. My total mileage for the last week was 81.86 km’s (or 51 ish miles). I think that’s the most I’ve ever run in a week, and I definitely had the longest long run I’ve ever done at 34 km’s.
Here’s a quick summary of my week last week:
Tuesday was a progression run. Did 2k WU, then, 2k @ 5:45 ish (5:43,5:44 ), 4k @ 5:30 ish (MP) (5:31,5:22,5:24,5:24 ),2k @ 5:15 ish (5:13,5:13), 2k @ 5:00 ish (HMP) (5:01, 4:57), and CD . I really thought the MP paced km’s were good practice, and was a little surprised how hard it felt to run that ‘slow’. I know that a lot of marathon plans have a lot of MP workouts in them, but I haven’t really done any. I really have been careful with how many ‘fast’ km’s I’ve been running because I’ve been worried about being injured and not making it through the training cycle. I’ve done some tempo runs, but that’s those have been my only ‘paced’ runs.
Wednesday, Lori and I did our medium long run. It was 16 km’s (10 miles), and felt hard, mostly because the stomach bug that I had the week before randomly resurfaced during the day on Wednesday, and my GI tract was not cooperating with this run.
Thursday I did an easy 7 miles on the treadmill at work.
Saturday was our long run. We planned another reasonably hilly route, quite similar to our last 32 km run, except we did not run through Weaslehead because it’s not cleared during the winter. Both Lori and I felt way better on this run than we had on our last super long run. That was a big relief! Our average pace was 6:16/km or 10:05 ish/mile. The pace felt nice and easy, and we walked through all our gel breaks, plus up the end of a few really long hills, so overall that’s a good pace for that run! My legs felt pretty good, other than my left glute and left foot. They weren’t too bad, but I could feel them. Once I was home, my left foot and calf were definitely tight, I’ve spent a lot of time since them rolling my calves and massaging them and my foot, and it’s helped a lot to loosen things up. I’m really not too worried about this, as it’s already almost back to normal after a couple of days.
Sunday I did an easy treadmill run. I decided to copy Lori and do 8.2 km’s so that my Saturday and Sunday mileage would add up to 42.2 km’s (26.2 miles)! I also added the times for the two runs together, just for fun, and got 4:25 – which would be a PR, so as long as I can run this marathon faster than my training pace, I’m sure to PR. I’m hoping I can go quite a bit faster than that!
The week before last I had been feeling a bit burnt out and tired from all this training, but by Saturday, I was all over it again, and really enjoyed that run. I’m excited for my mileage to be a bit lower for a few weeks, and also to see what it all adds up to in Seattle! I’m also excited to start to think about what might be next in the spring, but am trying not to get ahead of myself.
Thanks be to daylight savings time…
We are all running more of our runs in the dark. Whether you tend to run in the morning or the evening, this is the time of year when anyone who lives very far north is running a lot in the dark.
Last night Lori and I ran what will be our last really long midweek MLR (medium long run). We started nice and early (5:00 pm), but ran 16 km (10 miles), so we were out there a while and it was dark for a lot of the run. We chose a route that had a fair amount of street lights but still had large sections of pathway that were completely unlit. The route we ran is a major commuter route for the cyclists of Calgary and was very busy. The vast majority of cyclists do have some sort of light on their bikes and a lot of runners did as well but we did see some stealthy bikes and quite a few ninja runners dressed in black. At one point when we were running along in one of the dark sections we heard a crash and an expletive from a cyclist behind us. He and a runner had collided!! Everyone was ok from what we could see, but it looked as if the cyclist had come upon the unlit runner, had failed to ring a bell or announce his presence and had tried to pass her when she made an unannounced move in the dark and bang, crash!!
It was a good reminder for Lori and I that we need to be on the defense. There is no point in arguing fault here, we need to be responsible for our own safety and visibility. Last night Lori and I both had headlamps, she had hers strapped around her abdomen and I had mine in my hand. She also had a red LED band around her arm. We both have running jackets with reflective strips on them.
I also came home and read this jacket review from pavementrunner. What a great jacket!!
What about you? How do you adjust your running in the dark winter months? Do you avoid running in the dark, take your chances, wear a light of some sort?
October in Review!
Wow, November already! That means big things to me in my running life… mainly that I just have one more big week of training, and then I’m tapering for the Seattle marathon!
October was a record setting month, and little did I know that September was too! My October mileage ended up at 302 km’s ish.., September was 256 km’s and before that, I think my biggest month was around 237 km’s. I exported all my Dailymile logs into an Excel spreadsheet one day this week, and was having fun playing with the data, making some graphs 🙂
The most exciting thing, as I keep repeating on here, is that I’m not injured! YAY!!
This past week has been a cutback week, which is a good thing, because we’ve had a stomach flu going around our house. My oldest daughter had it last week, and this week both my younger daughter and myself have fallen to it. I haven’t missed any runs, but have had some not so great ones, and have dropped my mileage a bit.
Today’s was my long run for the week, and I was super happy to get to do it with my hubby! We have run together since we very first became friends, but don’t get to do it very often anymore, so when we do it’s a huge treat. It was a crazy day out there, weather wise. Calgary had a snowfall warning and was supposed to get 10-25cm’s of snow. By the time we started the snow was falling pretty hard.
I originally had 21km’s on my schedule but had already decided, based on my flu, and level of energy, that I was ok with going shorter. We ended up running just 15 km’s (and walking an extra km). I’m totally good with that number, and was just happy it was a cutback week, as I would not have wanted to do 32 km’s (20 miles) in these conditions! The worse part was that it was so warm that the snow was sticking to the bottoms of my shoes, and I kept having to kick it off.
Oh and the other exciting thing that happened…? I got my marathon shoes!!!
This week was also halloween, and I’ll include one last picture of my kids, because I think they were completely adorable! Maiya was the big bad wolf (she has been totally obsessed with the big bad wolf for almost 2 years now), and Olivia a little piggie.
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