What to do before race day… ? Sit on an amazing rooftoop and drink wine? Sure! Hung out with my friend Melanie yesterday and had some much needed girl time and sun time. It could not have been more perfect weather in Philly yesterday. Gorg!!
Welll I guess my dowhateverthefuckyouwantbeforeahalfmarathon pre race plans worked because I got 2nd place in my age group. SCORE!
Damn you VF and your addicting hills!! When I ran my 18 miler the other day, I was really hurting towards the end. And not my legs but just my energy level. It was tough to pull the strength and run the last few miles. Most of that coming from the fact that I didn’t fuel at all and drank the night before. But anyway… I wanted to get even with these hills and really crush it this time.
I woke up in Reading since I stayed over Kristen’s house the other night for Sushi and Wine Night. On my way back into the city I passed VF park and stopped in for a little re-match. I was in a hurry because I had to get to work. It was a gorgeous morning, sunny, dry, a little cool. For whatever reason I woke up in a great mood with that ready to take on anything attitude. Not sure why since I only seemed to sleep a few hours. Maybe that was just it. Anyway… needed to not dilly dally for a lot of reasons #girlproblems … so I knew this had to be a quick run. Banged out the loop in 38 mins which comes to about a 7:45 average minute mile. I crushed the hills and cursed them for beating me up the other day. F-U hills… you don’t know who you are dealing with.
Kristen has a good room for pictures… nice and sunny and lots of mirrors. Welcome back to dorky pics of me again!
Done and done. Still got to make it to work on time and hang with this little cutie all day. Mayple.
WORKOUT – YESTERDAY 5 miles (hills, bitches!!)
I’m kinda liking this ‘not running a marathon til fall’ thing. Because now I can sign up for a few of these halfs that are coming my way. Running DE this Sunday – should be a good time.
I’m looking at these extra two races, DE and 1/2 Kraut as ‘Not for Profit’ races. I can’t go into them hard because I want to be fresh and recovered when I start my serious training for Philly come end of June/July. So they are more for fun, training runs and to get some extra race time and experience in. After June 16th it’s recovery time…. and training planning time!!
So…. Sunday stuff is ready to go. Packet pick up will probably be done that morning (can’t be any less stressful than Chicago was).
Is this beer guzzling, German-wanna-be for real? Maybe… I’m still deciding on signing up for THIS RACE or not. Basically trying to decide if I want to spend another $70ish on a ‘training run’… or just run 13.1 on Kelly Drive like any other usual Saturday. OR do I want to be really motivated stupid and sign up for the full? NO – what did I tell myself about that! Ok… no Full. So just have to decide Yes to the Half or No. I mean, I’m basically saving myself that much money anyway by staying in the night before the race so it pretty much breaks even. Besides, everyone needs a hobby and it’s not like mine is shopping for diamonds. Unless you call that dating because technically wouldn’t that be the same thing?
Well… I’m attracted to any race that A:serves beer at the finish B:I can get up and roll out my door to the start C:looks fun! AND – I don’t know of many races that give you a game time decision of running the Full or Half …
Categories:
1/2 and full marathon (13.1 & 26.2 Miles), yes we are serious! Might become the hottest race in town, literarily
Need options? Not sure if you want to/able to run the full marathon? Sign up for the marathon (only $5 for the option), and decide during the race, if you are going to run the half or full. If you decide before mile 13 that you had enough, simply cross the finish line, get timed for the half (and officially compete for the awards in the half) and receive a finisher medal.
But seriously, the real issue – if there is one. Is that I just need to talk someone into coming with me. No one wants to drink German beer and eat brats by their own sweaty self. Any takers??
WORKOUT – yoga class, bike 1 hour, JM
It’s time for speedwork. And I’ve been saying that for a long time now. Since I’m not doing another Full Mary until Philly, I want to concentrate on speed this summer. Speedwork to me has always just been – running with someone faster than me, or booking it at the end of my run just because I’m late or want to get done. Or if it’s going to rain. Such as HERE and HERE. Sometimes these little tricks work but not if you are really trying to improve. Which I will be come fall training season. I hate the track for whatever reason – probably comes from highschool gym class. So speed for me is most likely going to be fartleks on KD or treadmill stuff.
Today it was the dready tready. I really don’t mind it sometimes. Especially when the weather is kinda crappy out, and I’m in the mood to run fast. I hit up the gym shortly after I got back from my first run this morning. Intervals were 30 seconds of faster pace (8.5 or higher / 6:50min miles or faster) and then 30 seconds of running at an 8:00min mile pace. Felt really good actually. Why do I not do speed more often? Once a week I need to be doing this. And it’s fun to run fast and get a good quick 2 miler in. So Marta – the treadmill conversion is (7.5mph = 8:00 minute miles) 
Before the gym time today I hit up Kelly for another rainy run. I need to start running elsewhere because KD is getting real boring real fast. Good thing I had a new playlist on my I-pod because that helped. 7 miles in the mist and rain – missing the sun!!
Took a little energy break in between workouts..
WORKOUT – 7 miles, 2 miles speedwork, yoga
So if you live in the Philadelphia area you usually have a bridge that you prefer to use when you go over to NJ. Ben Franklin, Walt Whitman or…. what’s that other one? Oh yeah Betsy Ross… everyone forgets about her. Well I used to be a Walt Whitman user all the way. When I had my Sea Isle house (see Memory Lane Monday). I would cross over every Friday night after work heading down the shore for the weekend, feeling great and excited to party! And then every Sunday on my way home, feeling like crap and wondering how I was going to function at work the next day, trying to figure out the quickest way to recover so I could be fresh again for Friday and do it all over.
WW, got old and I’m not really a huge fan since I start using good old Bennie. Closer to my house now, I can jump on and off quickly and I think the Ben Franklin is much nicer. So I’m a BF girl now! Instagram from yesterday.
Anyway… so I needed a change of pace today on my run and I’ve been wanting to try running across the Ben Franklin – which apparently is pretty cool. So I put on my compression stuff and headed out the door.
It’s a nice walk there down Spruce St and through Washington Square and Society Hill area. I always forget how close this is. Cute little streets and old school historic architecture. I mean… who doesn’t come to Philly to check out where the Real World house was. Talk about some serious history.
Well crossing over the bridge was fun and I think this might be my new fav recovery run. You get to warm up with a walk, nice easy run, good views and a gradual hill across and back.
And you get to see cool things like this that you’d never know were here otherwise.
Plus who doesn’t love running across rush hour traffic instead of sitting in it. Ok – so of course there’s none down there for once in the life of Philly.
Legs feel good… ready for more!! Still trying to take it slow this week but I’m excited for a nice steady gradual and hopefully healthy climb in mileage.
WORKOUT – 4 miles, yoga, JM
Just going through some old pics and thinking about summer. Gotta love outdoor drinking down the shore.
18 miles bitches!! This run was very unplanned today. I had on my schedule to do 11 and was comfortable with that. I’ve been trying not to overdo it and with the half marathon next weekend I thought that would be enough. It’s hard to hold back when you really want to run more. Arriving at Valley Forge this morning at 8am, to meet with the Team in Training group I saw that the full marathoners had 18 planned on their schedule. I want, I want!! Kinda knew right then and there I’d end up doing more. Carl – who I ran SD with was there. He is super fast and very entertaining so I figured I’d keep up with him for a while and see how things go. Well… running with the boys, definitely pushes you more and we did the loop and then some back on one of the river trails. I was keeping up pretty good and felt good so I ended up getting talked into doing 13. And by then I figured if I’m doing that, then why not finish it out with one more loop. Super humid, lots of sweaty clothes today. And def should have remembered my body glide.
Towards the end I was hurting pretty bad. I didn’t eat or take any energies in the morning because I usually don’t if I’m only running 11 or so, depending on what I ate the night before. And since I woke up starving at 3am, and ate a bowl of Kashi Crunch with a banana. Not eating anything in the morn and banging out 11 wasn’t going to be a big deal. But by mile 15 I had burned off the cereal and the few SlyFox‘s I had last night. No fuel = no energy. I toughed it out and finished at 2:30 – not bad for going in unprepared. And now 13.1 next week will hopefully feel like a piece of cake.
Yum, cake! Speaking of re-fueling I was starving when I got done and since Philly traffic sucks ass and I knew it would be a while til I got home, took a little stop at Wawa and grabbed some mango and hard boiled eggs. Ate just the whites and by the time I got to my place about and hour and a half later I was hungry again.
So to add to my lucky 18 today, I decided to take runnrgrrl’s advice and ice bath for 18 minutes. Not as bad as I thought. You’re pretty numb after a few minutes anyway. So I tweeted it up to entertain myself and I was good to go. We’ll see how tomorrow feels after being on my feet working all night. Happy Cinco de Mayo!!
When this is all I really want to do tonight! Compression, comfy sweats, and couch.
WORKOUT – 18 miles
Nothing like a yoga workout and a nice 5 miler to wake you up on a dreary day. Got a lot accomplished so far this morning.
So apparently Colin Farrell has been working out at my gym. He’s been to a few of the spin classes and my yoga instructor had him in his spin class the other day. He said he’s super nice and stayed after to take pics with everyone. Damn – why do I not like cycling again? One time when I would actually enjoy it!! Sitting next to Colin in class would be pretty sweet. I just might have to sign up next week
Anyway… they are filming a movie a few blocks away from my apartment. The movie is supposed to be set in NYC so they changed the street signs and parked cars with NY license plates. This is pretty cool but also annoying. Some of the main streets are closed and the movie trailers are taking up precious parking spots. Not going to lie though I do go a block or so out of my way sometimes just to walk by and see if I see anyone. Ok – so anyone that I would actually recognize. Yesterday I was coming out of South Moon Under on Chestnut St and almost literally ran into Terrance Howard as he was walking into his trailer. Luckily I asked someone ‘who the hell is that?’ when everyone was screaming at him on the street the other day. So this time I knew. Not that exciting, but whatev… probably better than anything else that happened yesterday. New York, or Philly?? …
Ok, so onto running. Things have been going pretty good. I’m slowing getting my way back in without pushing it too much. And I came up with a nice plan for the next few weeks where I’m actually following the rules and only increasing my mileage by 10% a week. So far, so good…
WORKOUT – yoga class (no Colin 
) , 5 miles
Another good run in the rain yesterday. It was nice and peaceful being out next to the river with a slight rain. Took it easy and decided to do 7 casual miles. Saw one of my coaches along the way and chatted for a bit. Forgot to stop my Garmin though – hate when that happens! Didn’t take my camera with me again… as usual. Sorry, I will start doing this more often, now that I am back running again on regular basis. I’m liking the fact that I switched down to the half. Less pressure and worrying about getting in a certain amount of miles. Let’s me really get back to enjoying the run itself and getting into my form, speed, hills etc. Loving the run, not the training. And this my friends, will hopefully carry over into the summer and fall season because it’s time to #RedifinePossible !
No, I wasn’t running in traffic… looks like it might be kinda dangerous. Rainy day in Philly…
Here’s one not cool pic. Checking out my mileage over the past few months. January rocked! What happened? No wonder I am grouchy all the time. I dropped way off, obviously for marathon reasons but I don’t like the idea that I only ran 50 some miles in a month. Weird. Need more consistency. Sometimes I really really wonder how I ever PRed at the Bi-Lo with the attitude and amount of training I put in. Miracle?
Anyway, I’m excited to run again ‘just to run’… Thanks Steph for the advice because it has definitely helped!
WORKOUT – yoga class, 1 hour bike, TRX
