Saturday, December 17, 2011

Ouch

My long distance running partner and good friend Tiffany broke her ankle last night.....so devastating! My training plan called for an 18 miler today but in talking with some ultra runners they suggested I try to do 20-22 at a 12-13 min mile pace since my 50K is coming up Jan 7th. I didnt look for a plan for the 50K cause it really wasnt something that was in my mind to do when I signed up for the 50 miler and the 50K kinda accidently presented itself to me thru another friend Chris (Thanks!) So with Tiffany out I still had to do my miles but decided on a different route that would keep me close to civilization and my car so I could stop every 7-8 miles to refuel if needed. I did Lampblack trail adding in a little of the main road 3 times thru. I started the run with the idea of trying to keep my pace back at a 12-13 min average for the entire run...last week I did 2 laps of the course but I went out to see how fast I could go and averaged a 10:50 min mile....I knew I couldnt do 3 laps if I did this pace though. So I walked the hills from the get go...Im not sure if it helped cause boy was I tired after wards....but that could also be due to the fact that I went 22.56 miles and my longest run to date is 17 straight up. Tiffany and I did 19 a couple weeks ago but we did the fast 5K race before heading out for 16 so had a little bit of a rest in between. I tried to fuel without worrying about the calorie intake....it amazes me how many weight watcher points are in a gu. I had 4 gus for a total of 10 points!! I started the run with an uncrustable PBJ, had the 4 gu's half banana, 2 power bar brand things call oatmeal energy bites....i liked them pretty well and about 16 oz of water. That amount of fuel added up to be my entire days worth of weight watcher points but I cant let that play with my head. Upon finishing I had another banana chocolate milk and when i got home a giant bowl of fresh fruit! Tomorrow I am going with Chris as she has a 12 miler and it will be a good recovery run for me.
I think I know why my legs felt more tired today...I taught a pretty tough spin class yesterday and upped my weights while doing walking lunges.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

PR!

Wow.....I did learn a lesson today but I have no regrets. I started getting a bug on Weds evening and went out of town shopping with a friend on Thursday...when I got home Thursday evening I had been chilling and feeling a slight fever so I got some antibiotics and started them immediately. I bagged the 8 mile run that night since I was feeling weak and fevered and thought I'd be better to miss that then my longs this weekend. I took friday off and rested all day and felt really good this morning. There was an new 5k being held this morning for the Red Cross and I wanted to support it...knowing I had an 18 miler on tap I hesitated on doing the 5K but I also hated not to support a new event. So my friend Tiffany and I (she does the long long runs with me every other weekend) decided we will take it kinda easy and then go run 15 in the forest. Well that never works...you get there in the atmosphere of things and off you go. I felt really good....it was a new route and I actually didnt even know what it would be so it was all a surprise....we went over the river to KY and back and that was a little bit of a climb. I finished in 26:43....my previous best time for a 5k was in 2008 and it was 27:51-1st in my age group and 5th overall female. Tiffany was 3rd overall female and another friend was 2nd overall female..this friend is my age but they didnt let her get two awards so thats how I guess I was 1st in my age group. We then stopped and I changed into a dry bra, got my nutrition, my new trail shoes and my regular running shoes as I didnt want to go 15 plus miles in brand new shoes especially a new style and brand of shoe...I am glad I thought of this! We did out 8 mile trail out and back twice so that we could stop at the truck and I could change shoes...also grabbed a half banana and swapped out my water bottles. We headed back out for the 2nd loop and it wasnt too far into it when we realized how tired we were and how silly it was that we did push ourselves on the 5k. I actually felt I coulda pushed harder on the 5k but now I am glad I didnt! We had about 6 miles left and kinda started laughing cause we were both sooooo miserable. She and I can usually carry on conversation for hours while running but neither of us were in any sort of chatty mood at this point and we were grabbing for anything to try to keep the others spirits up. I turned on my itunes on my iphone and let it play out the phones speaker and sang a little bit to try to keep my mind off things...I had to stop a couple times and stretch my hamstrings....when we saw the truck it was like an angel sitting down there waiting on us. We made it we did it and it turned into 15.9 miles....sure we coulda turned around when we knew it woulda been 18 total for the day but even though we were feeling like crap we had to get to the end of the trail. We started a new tradition with this trail as well....there is a gate across the street so we have to get to the gate and touch it before turning around....I think that is the OCD in me. :)