It's 7:02 and I just hopped off my friend's Vespa at the entrance to the park. I run to Lakeside for bib pick up. The lady tells me, "It's 7:04."
FuckFuckFuckFuckFuck. The race starts at 7:10 sharp and I'm still a good 10 minute walk from the start line and my left shoe is on wonky. My hair is stupid from squishing my ponytail into the helmet and my hat is in my hand. What does a ten minute walk translate to in running?
I find out soon enough when I hear the horn blow and I'm stil
Vertical Mile Challenge – June 15, 2019
Rocky Face Park | Hiddenite, NC
Race 6/12 for 2019 goal! Halfway there!
It’s been a minute since I’ve written anything, and that’s because my world has changed quite a bit in the last month. I’m now living back in my home state of North Carolina, and have a lot of time on my hands while I find a job. I haven’t been using all that time to run though. I’ve let the stress of everything (that I’ll write about some time) get to me and haven’
Two things I can think of why Monday's tempo went better than awful. The last few years I've needed a couple of days after donating blood to feel back to normal. So I had plans for an easy run instead of Monday's normal tempo. I hydrated more than normal, and it was only 65 degrees again. June has been pretty good that way around here so far.
The week before I struggled to average 8:15's for 4 miles. This time it was a smooth 8:04.
Tuesday was not bad, either, although there were stoma
Plenty of people, I'm sure. It takes all kinds to make a world.
Relationships are funny things. Sometimes you do things that you wouldn't normally do. Call it compromise. Flexibility. Love. Weakness.
With a late spring marathon for 2019, it made so much sense to me that plans for my other marathon this year would involve something in November or even early December. I keep a spreadsheet with several options for different times of the year. I look at it when it's time to pick one. Mrs.
We got a kitten and he is the cutest! We took almost a week to settle on his name: Nugget Theo Ibbetson. "Nugget" from gold nugget (my husband and daughter love the show Gold Rush), and also because it sounds good with our other cat's name, Bandit. Theo because he was named Theodore at the shelter we adopted him from. Scroll down through excessive kitten photos for the running update I'm excited about.
I ran this about 3 weeks ago and now am just finally writing about it.
I awoke to overcast skies, but not so overcast that I was bothered. After all, the weather had been predicted to be sunny that Saturday with a high of 80 degrees.
It had been a pretty good training cycle. I survived the early winter months with my discovery of Peloton Digital's on-demand treadmill workouts and surprised myself with how much I was able to push the pace. By the time regular outdoor runn
Here is some music while you read. (And if you like that, you can read this)
After 3 marathons in 13 months, I've decided to take it easy for a while. No more marathons until Fall 2020 (probably...); No halves until December. Just some 5Ks and a 10K and running what I feel like. So that means I'll still do track workouts on Wednesdays, because I like to run fast, and long group runs on Saturday, because I like to be social. But nothing longer than maybe 12 miles. And no pressure if I want t
May 2019 in Review
Total mileage for the month: 345.8
April 29-May 5: 87.6 (2:11 strength training)
May 6-12: 66.8 (2:00 strength training) - planned cut-back week that I disliked
May 13-19: 94.3 (2:18 strength training) - new weekly mileage PR
May 20-26: 80.7 (0:55 strength training) - I had bronchitis, & started antibiotics on May 23
May 27-June 2: 70.1 (2:03 strength training)
Remember that the little cold I had the week before last? Well I guess that took more out of me than I thought it did. I still had a little bit of a cough, I still had some stuffiness in my nose, but I felt OK. Anyway, I have a whole list of things it didn't quite go right in Vermont and I'll go through those for whatever they’re worth. Call it making excuses if you will, but when you have a decent training build up you sort of expect to do fairly well on race day. When that doesn't happen there
I've noticed a bunch of random links inserted in bloops. Then I checked my old posts and they have been altered with random links from the looptionary replacing some of my full sentences. Almost all of my old bloops are affected. Any way to fix that and salvage the original posts? Very strange.
The short:
I readjusted my goals for this race after being diagnosed with bronchitis about 44 hours before it. I knew I wouldn't be able to run the PR I'd hoped for while wheezing and taking antibiotics, plus it ended up being 72-80 degrees and 90% humidity during the race. I hoped I could go for the overall female win, and I was able to accomplish that with a 1:23:32 half marathon, which bettered my previous on-antibiotics-PR of 1:28 -- you've gotta take the PRs you can get, right?! I w
As a Mother’s Day present from my Mom, she offered to watch DD while I ran a 5K race in Cape May, NJ – a 2.5 hour drive for her. (DH had a horrible work schedule for the past month or so and has been stuck working weekends). I really wanted to see how fast I could run a 5K with my current training. I haven’t tried to race a 5K in almost two years. For that last race I finished in 21:43, which was good enough for 2nd in my age group and a cupcake from the local bakery (still my favorite prize
Started feeling a thing in the back of my through on Friday. By Sunday I was coughing pretty hard and didn't sleep much that night. Monday was a little better and I'm about 100% today. Missed running Monday and Tuesday. That's a little scary the week before a marathon.
As for the rest of last week, it was just about right, considering that I was about to be sick with a little spring cold on the weekend. Three 8 milers (Wed, Thur, Fri), all about 8:45 pace. Tired on Wednesday, of course. Thu
Not quite time to get nostalgic yet, but with the taper begun, it is time to put a cap on this training plan for marathon #19. So, how'd it go?
I'm not really a Type A guy, so the whole "push yourself to the limit every time" isn't my problem. But I do like to run. I do like to watch the miles pile up. I do like going faster and farther. I'm a little gun shy from that meniscus disaster from last year. I worked that into things this winter/spring. Not that my training plan was necessarily li
Embrace the Suck
It is cold. I am wet. Why am I out here? These are the thoughts that keep running through my mind as I have almost reached the halfway point of my twelve miles out and back on the Pinhoti Trail. I also keep making the internal observation that this would be a good trail to run. It is a little wider than single track and although it is constantly going up or down it is not too steep. For a moment I lament the fact that my hips can only handle a pace of about 2.5
Colorado Women’s Classic – 10 miler | Westminster, CO | May 12, 2019
Race 5/12 for 2019
When one chooses to sign up for a race, the results of that race will directly reflect the training you put into getting ready for it – barring any unforeseen, unfortunate circumstances. My result of this race directly reflected my lack of running, as of late. Nonetheless, I have completed my May race and my 5th of the year! I’m still on track to complete one race each month for the year, so I am ha
Since I have a 10 miler coming up this weekend (Colorado Women’s Classic – my May race!), I thought I’d share this enthusiastic race report. I’ve been under the weather this week, and have been dealing with some heavy stress (which is probably why I’ve been sick), so I’m not expecting this weekend’s race to be quite as awesome as this one was. Nonetheless, I get to JFR around a bunch of awesome, inspiring women on Mother's Day!
Raven Rock Rumble 10 miler – Lillington, NC
November 20, 2
At least, I feel the worst on Wednesdays lately.
Since Tempo Tuesday is my only real tough workout each week, I've noticed that I really feel it the next day. To make things doubly interesting, I've also inserted a long-ish weekday run on Wednesday, so, tired for a long run.
Last Wednesday was just OK. But what really kicked me in the gut was the shingles shot. Mrs. Dave and I are the age where we need to get a pair of vaccines for it. The first one (back in February) wasn't bad, but
RunDisney races- always early, well-organized and IMO Super-fun! This weekend was Star Wars themed. Now, I used to be a huge Star Wars fan. I nerded-out reading all the published books that expanded on the original three movies and loved it. Then the new movies came out, and, of course none of them followed the books I read, so the world I envisioned was destroyed, and although I was happy to see the new movies, I never became a huge fan. However, I couldn’t object to a trip to Disney for a
“When ya know, ya know... ya know?"
That was Crush, the sea turtle, in Finding Nemo.
And that’s me, veering into a whole new career choice.
Most of you know my background, growing up in what is a glorified (by some) cult. For the first 24 years of my life, few of my decisions were my own. As an Amish person, first, which took away most of the experiences and choices of what we consider normal coming-of-age, and secondly, as a woman, which limited or eliminated them further. What y
Turns out grad school takes up a lot of time. I haven’t written since January (when I was between class periods) and have barely been able to even visit the loop. I feel out of touch. Ultimately it will be worth it, but it’s going to be busy until late 2020 at least.
My training has gone relatively well even with working full time and taking classes. All I do is run, go to work, study, eat and sleep. (More or less) It’s a good thing running feels mostly like a break to me and I never had an
Back in October I was up to running about 10 miles per week, and basically running two runs at “as fast I could” speed for up to 4 miles. Every run felt hard, but I wanted to make some progress, and I had no idea how to judge speed while running with a stroller. My trusty Garmin was saying I was running around 9:30s, which felt very difficult (7:30s used to feel easy). At the beginning on November I ran a 10K I ended up somewhere between 50 and 51 minutes. I was thrilled with this time, but wa
April 2019 in Review
Total mileage for the month: 333.0
April 1-7: 68.3 (strength training 2:07)
April 8-14: 78.6 (strength training 2:05)
April 15-21: 67.0 (strength training 2:15)
April 22-28: 93.4 (strength training 1:56) - new weekly mileage PR!
April 29-May 5: projected at 86
Airplane April
Miles of smiles
Not going to recap here. Except for the week I was sick that summer (FIVE YEARS AGO!), I hit every workout. Every single week, every single mile.
2019, not so much.
First there was my goal to only run when the weather was decent. I'd also planned to take days off when I just didn't feel it. Broke that one. Anyway, the last three weeks were supposed to be the big ones getting ready for Vermont. Oh by the way I officially registered for it yesterday. 58 - 48 - 60 miles. Wedding messed th
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