Wow! 2 Loopettes at the same race! We will meet one day!
My friend H has been trying to get me to race more. He's convinced that I'm way faster than I think I am.
I hemmed and hawed about signing up for this 5k because it was only 2 weeks after the marathon. After the marathon I've been having some left calf pain/tightness. I think it's just fatigue so have been trying to give it some time to heal without completely sitting myself down (*shudder*).
I ran fast on the trails with H
YAYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!! I get to write a race report again!!!!😍😁
My training has been inconsistent at best. There are some weeks I get in 15 miles with 1 workout and other weeks where I get 0 miles. So, I didn’t have much in the way of expectations, but my Mother’s Day present to myself was to race in person (without the stroller thanks to my mom sacrificing racing herself to watch DD and DS). Plus, an excuse to go to Cape May and the beach is always good!
My goal was under 24 minutes
You know, once this Achilles finally gets better (although, truth be told, I have times nearly every day when I wonder if it ever will), my next comeback to marathoning is going to be quite the adventure.
In the meantime, still working on the house. Things are going VERY slowly. I decided that since I'm doing so much trim I better do it better than I have before, which means I needed to learn a fair amount about how to do it correctly. I've never been happy with how my previous trim work ha
April 2021 in review!
Total mileage for the month: 307.1
March 29-April 4: 101.6
April 5-11: 92.0
April 12-18: 72.6
April 19-25: 52.5
April 26-May 2: 60.2
I take my best professional
race photos in training races
Though this one from mile 21 at
Frisco came out well #runhappy
If you read my last blog -- Confident -- you know I'm not a super confident runner .... or apparently person as several people have pointed out lately. I'm a work in progress, I suppose. I did however feel super confident in my training leading up to the marathon. The 1 mile PR, the amazing last 20 mile run and an 8 mile bridge run where I ran an 8:07 mile without trying (unheard of for me).
As I was driving the 6 hours down to Chesapeke, VA, I had my music cranked and was getting more ampe
How has it been so long? I meant to do better…honestly although my running has been decent, most everything else has been a struggle. I talked to a career counselor and I have changed some things about how I’m doing my job search, but I still have had no interviews and I haven’t seen a job that just jumps out at me as what I really want – a couple that combine elements of research/human health/nutrition were the best, but nothing has worked out…between days of monotonous data entry and the job s
The short-ish:
I'm an ultra marathoner! On April 24, I took on the 50k distance for the first time on a non-technical dirt trail in Willard, Missouri. I knew I was fit, but I also knew how much could go wrong in a race of this distance! Lucky for me, things went right for 27 miles and I fought through the final 4 miles well enough to land an overall person win, an overall women's Missouri state record, a course record (faster than the men's course record), and a killer runner's high. My
There are many adjectives that describe me.
Stubborn -- just ask my mom she'll tell you.
Diligent -- haven't missed any runs on my training plan
Adventuresome -- remember the Triple Trailfest and 50k on a whim
Shy -- OMG! Do you know how long it took me to walk into the CrossFit gym BY MYSELF?? or to meet my internet running friends?
But Confident is not a word that I would use to describe myself - especially in running.
I shy away from group runs because what if I
Progress can be slow at times. But progress is still progress. You do the best you can. You keep moving forward.
I remember having a pretty serious hamstring strain a few years ago at the height of training for the Rehoboth marathon. As is often the case, despite not being 100% healthy and with less than optimal training coming in, I went anyway because Loopsters. I'm not much of a party guy and even though Rehoboth is the most famous and enduring party Loopfest, I knew I wanted to touch ba
The short:
I added the Clinton Historic Half Marathon to my race schedule less than a week before the race. With my 50k being a week after Clinton, I didn't want to run too hard, but I thought/hoped I could win it without running all out. My running buddies Colin and Brad rode to the race with me, making for a fun trip, and I ended up cruising to 1st overall female in 1:24:37, which was faster than I thought I was going to need to run but still felt comfortable enough that I'm not worried
I’d say we were up bright and early on Saturday morning, but, while it was early (6 am), it was anything but bright. That big nasty storm that gave MeganKate and stewmanji snow, and popped tornadoes through OK and other states, crept up on Ontario while we were sleeping and it was pouring rain in Niagara Falls. Glad I was driving and not running. We drove past the river above the falls for a bit – icebergs! OMG, I don’t think I’ve seen anything that looked so cold before in my life.
It took
No running this week.
Went down to Ford Field for my second covid shot. More people than the last time I was there, but still a very smooth operation and next to no waiting.
There's one spot where the new tile didn't quite lock into place properly. The guys are supposed to come this week to look at it and hopefully fix it. There are a couple of other places where if I walk around barefoot I can feel my bargain basement underlay, but I'm going to let that go.
I've repaired the pla
Unless you count the fact that my Achilles is still being a butthead. I was going to give it some time before I escalated treatment, but as I was sitting at my office desk (dining room table) a couple of days ago, I noticed that It would give me a tweak almost every time I moved it. Not a ton, but not great and it hasn't gotten any better in the 3 weeks since I came up lame. So I pulled out the walking cast I used in 2006 for my ruptured PF and strapped it on. I'm going to use it all day until I
Then I'll write about something else. (let me know if you can see the pics now)
Went for my annual physical last Friday. As usual, it was a ho hum affair. Fortunately, because of covid (I think) there was no rectal prostate exam. And since I'm still active for a guy "my age", the fact that I'm not on any medications, my blood pressure and HR are optimal, and my cholesterol and other heart disease indicators are excellent, he didn't have much to say.
Until the blood test results came ba
March 2021 in review!
Total mileage for the month: 428.2, which is a pretty significant new monthly mileage PR for me (my previous was 400.2 in Dec. 2019)
March 1-7: 102.2
March 8-14: 91.9
March 15-21: 100.2
March 22-28: 90.3
March 29-April 4: projected at 100
Races:
March 13: Running of the Squirrels 5k in 18:36 (5:58 pace) for 1st overall female. I accomplished the goals I had for this tra
Guys, it happened. I was doing four sets of five minutes, in the hopes of eventually stringing along enough minutes to ditch the walk breaks all together, and it happened!
It was my third set. I was chugging along, listening to “Nice White Parents,” and fretting about the world, when I realized that I wasn’t struggling. I looked at my garmin, assuming that I must have slowed down, but no! I was at my normal pace. It just didn’t suck. I didn’t feel like all I wanted to do in the whole w
The short:
I won a half marathon and set the Oklahoma female masters state record! I had an amazing race trip with my friends! Runners are the best people ever! Everything is wonderful!
I didn't run quite as fast as I'd have liked at T-Town, but 60 degrees in March is much warmer than 60 degrees in September. I was proud of my even pacing and solid performance running solo on a course with some tricky elevation. As per usual, I'd have preferred a 30-40 degree day, pacing partners, a
Who knew that staying indoors, driving instead of walking, and having outdoor restaurants be your only form of entertainment, would lead to weight gain???
I am almost unable to deal with myself at the moment on this front. I am at the limit of my wardrobe and I refuse to buy new clothes and accept that I might stay at this weight for a while. I am honestly and simultaneously doing everything I can and having no idea what I am doing.
I started tracking my calories and dropped half
I'm signed up for 2 marathons this spring. Both of which should happen since they had limited fields based on COVID regulations.
Training has been going really well. I'm using Hal Higdon Advanced Marathon Training 1. I'm at the point in training where the miles per week are bouncing back and forth between 55 and 40. My body seems to be able to handle the higher mileage week and then recover on the "lower" mileage week. 6 days of running and 1 day off.
I'm also doing CrossFit but only 3
So... I quit my job. It really was killing me and my boss didn’t believe me when, after months of working six day weeks, I told him that I couldn’t absorb anymore. I really couldn’t. And he expected me to keep my staff in the office through several covid outbreaks. None of my employees were making enough money to risk their life for.
So... I jumped at something that came my way. Turns out I went from one extreme to the other. This job is so much more junior than they lead me to believe
I was looking for a cake recipe in my emails today and this gem popped up. I have no idea what it’s about, I vaguely remember why I had Spanky Pancakes, and I’m only half certain that I know who this comment was really from, but I love that it was there for me to find.
I miss those days. I miss mentally composing bloops while I ran and spending hours reading and commenting on everyone. I miss when we all hung out here. How did we not get fired?
A little background, when I first started running consistently, training to run my first marathon I ran in Asics Cumulus shoes which have quite a bit of cushioning. Back then I was a heel striker and since I am somewhat bowlegged and supinate as well I ended up always wearing out my shoes on the outside of the heals. It turned out back then the Cumulus cushioning would eventually not bounce back after repeated outside heel strikes making the supination even more pronounced. I believe this w
As I finished up last week's post I realized that I had developed a disturbing habit of spending my time here whining about how crappy my running was.
I didn't like being that guy. So I resolved to positive up my writing and focus on what was going right. After all, my paces through those 4-5 milers I was doing were well within reasonable for the shape I've been in the last few years. Surely, once the worst of winter was over and I was on the roads regularly again, I'd get some pop back in
.thumb.JPG.5789871a3d608a680cd2374ce4914116.JPG)
