Real Funny Weatherman....

We are now officially in the the 10 day window for scoping out the weather forecast for Marathon Monday!  I dutifully checked the forecast for Boston today and this is what I saw:

Horror of horrors!  Seriously, someone at the Weather Channel must be playing a trick.  50s and 60s for the next week and then BAM.....80 on Monday!  I thought it must be some sort of error so I checked Hopkinton too just be sure and wouldn't ya know???  81!!  I'm hoping as the days go by this will get a little lower.  60....I'll take in a second but 80 is a little extreme.  The record high is 84 which was in 2003, my first year.  Fingers crossed that year 10 doesn't break that record!

Crazy Runner Girl

This one was in my drafts never published.  I will be posting some catch up posts this week!

That is what I think must have been going through my neighbors head on Sunday January 22nd.  We had just been hit by a big snowstorm on Saturday.  There was a foot of snow and nowhere to run. 

The treadmill was a thought...but 10 miles on a treadmill did not sound like a super fun time to me.  So I did the next logical thing.  I ran 34 loops around my neighborhood.  :)  Yup.  I did that.  I live on the bottom of a road that is a horseshoe so I went online to the USTAF mapit website to measure how long one loop was...0.3 miles.  Bigger than a track and since I live at the bottom of the horse shoe I would get to practice running up and down the hills.  Good practice for Boston!  So it was decided.  I got my running gear on and headed out the door.  The laps actually went by pretty fast!  The dogs were not excited in the least to watch me run by every 3 minutes or so, barking every time I went by.  Finally, after looping around for 5 miles worth of loops (I wore my garmin watch so that I wouldn't have to count) I popped in the house and grabbed Maddie.  I decided I'd do 3 miles with Maddie and then the final 2 miles with Baxter. Running with the dogs was definitely an added challenge, but it split up the second half of the run quite nicely.

While there were some pros to passing the house every few minutes, I'm not sure I will be doing that again anytime soon. :)

DFMC 2012!!

10 years!!!  2012 is the 10th year I have the honor of running the Boston Marathon as a member of the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge team!  I cannot believe it has been 10 years!  I think every year since year 5 I have been saying I am going to take a break.  Then, every September I get the application in my email and I have to instantly fill it out and cross my fingers I will be accepted for another year.

So the 2012 running and training season is off and running!!  This year, my goal is to raise $10,000, a lot of money that is going to help the scientists at Dana Farber find a cure for cancer.  My mom has volunteered to be my right hand fundraising lady.  Between the 2 of us, I am confident we can do this!  As far as training is going, I am a little behind my training schedule.  Even though the weather has been cooperating, nothing else is :).  So back to blogging to you can all keep me honest and getting my runs in. I have been keeping up with my strength training even if I am not able to get out and run during the daylight.  I am a huge scaredy cat and am afraid to run in the dark.  It's very dark here on Cape Cod.  

Training partners - well if you have read any of my past posts you know I have my trusty golden doodle running partner Madison.  Lucky for me this year I now have 2 trusty golden doodle running partners!  Baxter has passed his first birthday and now is a ready and willing running buddy.

After a late November 5 mile run!

I'll be back with more tales of training and fundraising so please stay tuned and pass this on to anyone you think may be interested!  I added a gadget on the side so you can get my new posts delivered to your email as they are posted!  (I'm still getting the hang of this blogging thing.)

One Final Catch Up

Ok I think with this post I will be all caught up!! I was a little sore on Sunday from my 2 seconds of sprinting in the Brew Run. I was supposed to run 11 miles per my schedule, but I instead decided to take the day off. Next weekend the schedule calls for 11 miles or a 10k so I just swapped weekends because I ran just a miles short of a 10k race. I’ll do the 11 miles this weekend.
Monday is a no running day, but it is a gym day! So I was off to Koko FitClub, where I logged another perfect score!

This week there is no track workouts but my schedule upped the mileage a little. Tuesday my Maddie girl and I ran 7 miles. I felt really good! I think my body appreciated the little break Sunday. And we even ran into some puppies so Maddie made some new friends and was very happy when we got home.

Which brings us to actual today (Wednesday)! Today I got up and ran 6 miles with my Madison before work and then hit the gym at lunch where I got another perfect score! Two in a row! Yay me!
I’m feeling really good about my running and my health in general lately. I have been going to Koko FitClub fairly consistently 3 times a week since the beginning of June. I have been following my half marathon training plan since the end of July (not THAT impressive but I’m still proud!). I have also been tracking my food and drink intake in the Loseit! calorie counter app, which is making me be much more conscious of what I am eating and I am attempting to control my compulsive eating problem!

Brew Run

Saturday was the Brew Run, a 5.2 mile run in Brewster, the next town over from me. I have lived on the lower Cape since I was 8 years old (that would be approximately 22 years ago but not quite because I am still a few months away from the big 3-0) and have never run the Brew Run before! I’m shocked at myself! I guess I have never been much of a summer runner before. Most of my running usually occurs between January and April.

Back to my first Brew Run! It was so fun! We got there early and picked up our numbers!

I roped Glenn’s friend Danny, who recently re-found the joys of running, into running the race too! The race started at 4PM and it was still pretty hot then.

And we are off!! It was VERY crowded at the start and I felt like everyone was dragging. I held back for maybe a half mile and then I just couldn’t take it anymore! I had to start aggressively weaving. I passed the first mile marker and it said 10:45. Whoa way to slow….so I picked it up a little bit and weaved some more. They had water set up every mile and it was hot so I think I stopped at 3 of them, just for a quick sip. At one point in mile 4 I overheard a dad say to his son “We just have to go around the corner there and the rest is downhill.” Sounds great to me so I picked it up some more! Unfortunately, the downhill was not right around the corner but I tried to keep my pace up. Once I finally saw the finish line I ran as fast as I could and crossed in 44:22. Not too shabby! Here are some post race pics!

Me and my honey!

We made it! YAY! And now time to celebrate!

I even ran into some friends from the 413!! Overall it was a great day! I will definitely be signing up for this one again!

Recapper!

Ok I am trying really hard to be better at posting on my blog, but I’m still not doing so great. It’s not that I don’t want to…. I am even getting more pictures to add to make my posts more exciting. I just can’t seem to get into a routine with it yet. Summer on Cape Cod is busy!! I’m going to keep at it though!!

Since my last post (my super awesome track workout) I have kept up with the gist of my training schedule. I did a 10 mile run that Sunday in the rain and felt a little tired in the final mile or two. Monday I did not do any workouts, but I did go to the Britney Spears concert!! Oh how I heart her! She was amazing! And of course I had to buy myself a t-shirt!

Because I got home really late on Monday night, I gave myself another break on Tuesday. Wednesday was double workout Wednesday! I got up and ran 6 miles with my favorite running partner.

And then I stopped at the gym on the way home. I will have to post about the awesomeness that is Koko FitClub sometime soon because it is really the best thing that has ever happened to strength training. I even managed to get a perfect score!!
Thursday it was back to the track!! And I even got some amazing new summer running clothes in the mail Wednesday night to make me even more motivated to get up and head to the track.

Yes I did get another running skirt!! They were on sale! I had to! Back to the track workout, in store was 6 x 800 meters (2 laps around the track) at 3:36 each with 400 meters recovery jog (one lap). I was a little nervous but tried to convince myself that if I could do the mile repeats then I could do 800 repeats. And you know what?? I DID IT! I ran them all in 3:36 or under except for one I did in 3:37, close enough. I even did my last one in 3:33! So I think I have some speed in me yet. I just need to use the speed for more than a mile at a time.
Friday was another double workout day. I ran six miles in the AM with my Maddie girl and then hit the gym after work for some strength training. I did indulge a little bit at lunch so the double workouts were definitely needed.

Box Office Pizza!! And yes there were 4 pieces of pizza on my plate but I couldn’t even wait to eat it!
Well I think that is plenty for one post. I will continue on in a new post later about the Brew Run!

Take That Track!!

Ok I was really nervous going into today’s work. The schedule called for a mile warmup followed by 3 x 1 mile repeats at 7:21 pace jogging an 800m (2 laps around the track) for recovery and finishing with a mile cooldown. EEK! First of all, I can’t even remember the last time I did a track workout. I think I was in high school (because I have blocked my very short lived college track career out of my mind). So that was 12 years ago *cough*. Needless to say I did not know what to expect nor did I think I was capable of running a mile faster than 8 minutes. I’ve always thought of myself as having one speed, let’s call it a brisk jog. So I told myself as long as a ran all three of the miles faster than 8 minutes I would be happy (which I knew might have been a lie, I would definitely be a little bit disappointed).

I decided that my new running skirt was the perfect attire for my first track workout in over a decade. I grabbed my water bottle to bring with me as well and headed out the door to the local high school track, which is conveniently 1 mile from my house. I was a little nervous when I got there but I picked a spot on the nearest straightaway, put my water bottle down and just jumped right in. I ran in the 3rd lane, thinking that each mile repeat I could move in a lane and effectively run a little bit shorter each time. I had previously calculated in my head (on the warm up jog) how fast I should run each of the laps and what time my watch should say when I finished each lap: 1 – 1:50, 2 – 3:40, 3 – 5:30, and 4 – 7:20. After my lap 1:56 I was starting to think maybe I could do this, then the next two laps were pretty close to my target numbers so I was really excited! I ended up finishing my first mile in 7:25!!! I was in shock! I grabbed my water bottle and started jogging my two recovery laps VERY slowly. I figured that first super mile would have tired me out and the next one would surely suffer but no!! I finished that one exactly on target at 7:21!! I took my two recovery laps and then the craziest thing happened. I ran my last mile in 7:20!!! I couldn’t even believe it so when I got home I had to take a picture to share!! (Please excuse the grossly sweaty arm!)

YAYAY! Take that track! Now I can’t wait for the next track workout!!