Speedy Friday

This morning I woke up at 4:30 got dressed and headed out to the middle school for speed training. Every Friday at 5 am the running club meets. I decided to run to the middleschool instead of driving there. I figured it would be a good warm up, it's only 0.85 miles. I was a little early so there wasn't anyone there. There ended up being 4 guys, the coach and me. The coach was a really nice guy. He has ran 40 marathons in the past 10 years. Wow maybe one day I will be like him!! We started with a one mile warm up then started doing our sprints. Since this was my first speed workout I did 200m sprints with 200m jog. I did a total of 10 sprints. Then Finished up with a 1 mile cooldown. The other guys have been doing it for a while and they were doing 400, 800, 1200, and 1600 sprints! Then they would got back down to 400. That's a pretty tough workout! Maybe I'll build up to that. I did a total of 5.4 miles!! It was a good workout and I definately think it will help me get faster!! Tomorrow I am doing a 5k with my running buddy! We both hope to get a PR!! It will be fun either way!!

Ran a 5K

This morning I decided to run a 5K distance to see what I could do. I have never run a 5K before so I had no idea what I could run it in. So this morning was great weather. Calm winds and temperature of 59 degrees.

My Splits

Mile 1 = 8:32

Mile 2= 8:03

Mile 3 = 7.27

Mile 3.1= 6:53

5K= 24:41

I am proud of that time. Hopefully when I do a the 5K in May I can go ever faster. Nothing better than starting the morning off with a good PR run!!! (LOL any 5K distance would be a PR for me since I have never just ran a 5K). But it stills counts. You have to start somewhere.

Wanting to gain strength!!

Today I have focused a lot on wanting to become really strong and fit. This time in my marathon training I am going to work on gaining more strength versus endurance. The last marathon I was just focused on wanting to put in the miles. So cross training, strength training and hills are going to be the main part of my training program. Long runs are the easy part of training for me. Now I want to be fast and look like a runner.

Lately life has been really busy and has made fitting in runs harder than ever. My husband is in west Texas fighting the wild fires. I am starting a new job on Monday and there are a lot of activities going on. I am so type "A" and when I start a training program I do not miss a day. As a mom it is hard to balance life, kids and running. I think over time it will get easier. I know that running is my stress reliever and makes me a better mom and wife. So cheers to all the moms out there that are runners. WE ROCK!!!

Back in training

Well it has been a week now since my marathon. I am feeling great and ready to start training for the next race. After I finished the marathon I was very discouraged and was questioning why I wanted to run a marathon. I guess those are all normal thoughts right after you get finished. Now I feel more determined than ever to run another marathon and accomplish a PR. So tonight I ran 7 miles. I felt very good running. It is very peaceful running at night, there is not a lot of traffic and not distractions. Just me and the road. I ran 7.25 miles in 61 minutes. Thats a 8.24 pace. Now if I could just maintain that pace for 26.2 miles then I could qualify for Boston. I am so determined to qualify. I am just going to keep training hard and hopefully I will meet my goal. I look forward running tomorrow!!!

Big D Texas Marathon

Well I have completed my first marathon. On Sunday I ran Big D Texas Marathon. I started the morning off at 5:30 a.m. First thing I did in the morning was check the weather. It was 71 degrees, 89% humidity and 18mph wind. No my favorite weather. I got all dressed and gathered my gear that I had laid out the night before. My husband and I left the house at 6:00 a.m. I ate my pre race breakfast on the way to the race. I had a peanut butter cliff bar, half a banana, and 16 oz of water. We arrived at fair park around 6:45. The place was already packed with cars. Oh yeah and we stopped at McDonalds before we got there so I could make one last stop at the restroom. That was a good idea by the way. We just walked around for a while and then made our way close to the finish line. I wanted to get towards the front of the line since they were using gun time versus chip time. My family was watching at the starting line when the gun fired at 8:00 am. My goal was to start off at about 9:30 pace and then after mile three pick it up to my pace of 9:06. I wanted to have a negative split from the first half. Well lets just say that things didn't go as planned. I started the race off way too fast. At the 5 K mark I was at 26:30. Which was way too fast. Here were my splits:

First Half..........2:10:03

Second Half .....2:44:13

Finish Time .....4:54:16

I placed 21/60 in my age category and 320/699 overall. Well at least I was faster than half of the people. The marathon was very hard. It was a lot tougher than I expected. During training I felt wonderful, was hardly out of breath. Not during this race. I knew at mile 6 that it was going to be difficult. I think it was a combination of things that made it tough. It was hot, humid and windy. The course was difficult there were a lot of hills. It didn't help either that I started out too fast. That is why most people say to not set a time limit on your first marathon and just run it and have fun. Well I tried too hard in the first half and that made the second half difficult. I hit the wall (yeah that wall that they talk about is real) at mile 15.5. I was able to see all my family at that mile marker and I just wanted to get in the car with them and go home. They motivated me and of course I kept going. At the finish line about 0.2 miles left my husband ran with me. Right before the finish line my 4 year old son came up and ran across the finish line. That was the sweetest thing. When we crossed the finished line they gave me my medal. My son was asking where is medal was so I had to give him mine. The race was very challenging and just goes to prove that you never know what a race is going to be like until you are there doing it. I look forward to running my next marathon. Next time I think I will train on hills. I think that was what I was lacking in this training program. There are not a lot of hills around my house to train on so I will have to go someplace else. I wanted to list my gear I raced with for future races.

Gear:

Iphone and holder

Brooks pink tank top

Brooks pink skort

Asics Limited Edition Gel Kayano 17

Hand held water bottle

Headphones

Energy Bloks

Sport Beans

Its official!!

Today I went and picked up my race packet. I always get really excited when I packet pick up day arrives. I think it just confirms that the race is days away. I am lucky number 114. I think there are going to be about 2500 half marathoners and about 1000 full marathoners. So maybe I will not be the 1000th person!!! I did my last run tonight. I ran 4 miles and felt great. I was suppose to just do an easy 4 mile jog, but my body only knows one pace and that is 9:06 pace. Its crazy how my legs just consistently run that pace. I hardly ever go slower than that. It is just hard for me to run any slower, sometimes I catch myself running an 8:15 pace. I have to say slow down this is suppose to be an easy jog. Well now it is all up to me and how I trained the last 18 weeks. I am excited and nervous at the same time. I said when I started this process that I was not going to put a time limit on this race. I said I was just going to run it and enjoy it. I don't know how to do that so instead I set a goal for 4 hours. I am beginning to wish I would have stuck to the originial plan but I didn't. I think that is what I am worried about the most, making my goal. I guess it doesn't really matter as long as I finish I will be proud. There will be plenty of other races in the future.

One of my friends ran the Cowtown Marathon in March and her comment after her race was scary. She finished in 5:15. She said she would rather give child birth than to run a marathon. She has the wind was horrible and it was a lot tougher than she had imagined. That makes me nervous, hopefully I won't feel that way.

The next 2 days are going to be dedicated to rest and relaxation. I look forward to race day!!!

Feeling Good

I just got through running 8 miles and it felt very good. I ran in the dark tonight, which is very pleasant. Its crazy that running 8 miles is one of my easy short runs. I ran at a 9 minute pace. I felt so comfortable running tonight. I think I could have ran the full marathon tonight. It is because the weather was great, just the way I like it. The temperature was 54 degrees with NNW winds at 6 mph. Lets just say perfect!!! I don't think I will be that lucky on race day. As of right now the temperature is suppose to be a high of 92 degrees with a 20-30% chance of rain. I hope the temperature isn't that high because I have not trained for that temperature. I guess I will take what I get. Todays run made me more confident that I will finish the race feeling good.

One week left

Well the marathon is officially one week away. I can't believe it is almost here. After 18 weeks of training I know I am ready!! I started training December 6th. I am following Hal Higdon's novice training program. I really feel prepared I just hope the weather will cooperate. Right now they are saying that there is a 30% chance of rain and thunderstorms, but hopefully that will pass. I am hoping to run the marathon in 4 hours. That is big goal for me. If the weather is good (for me good would be mid 70s and light wind) then I should be able to accomplish my goal. Through all my reading the week prior to the race is very important. You have to eat right, drink alot and rest. So this week I hope to be relaxed and well prepared. Of course I start the week off tomorrow with a job interview. So I am nervous about that too. This week is so weird because I am use to putting in 40 miles a week and this week I am only doing 9 miles. So by the time sunday comes I will be ready to run. I am so addicted to running that if I don't run everyday I feel incomplete.

Just an update on how my training program has been the past 5 months. I have ran a total of 434 miles. Overall the training was pretty easy. I hit a wall at Week 12. I think I was just getting bored with the route I was running and tired of running by myself. I trained completely by myself. I joined the Mckinney Running club 2 weeks ago and ran with them one saturday. So hopefully I can meet someone that runs at my pace so I could have someone to run with. The biggest struggle I had was trying to fit in all the running with life. Trying to juggle kids, husband, work, to-dos, and then running. All I can say is thank god for my treadmill. I couldn't have trained without it. I do not enjoy running on the treadmill, it is just not natural for me to run on it. I would either run early in the morning or after the kids went to bed. My husband is a huge support for me. Every opportunity he had to watch the kids he did so I could run. I did all my long runs on Saturday mornings. I would wake up 2 hours before I had to run and eat a peanut butter cliff bar, banana and bottle of water. I would then go back to bed and wake up an hour later and start stretching and getting ready to run. I would try to leave the house by 7, sometimes earlier. I only had two injuries during training. At week 10 I got hip bursitis so I had to ice a lot and take ibuprofen. Luckily it healed on itself after a couple of weeks. It probably would have heeled faster if I would have stopped running but I couldn't do that. The other injury is a funny story. I went for my 20 mile run at 530 am. Everything was going good until mile 5. It was dark and I couldn't see that well so I didn't see the two different levels of concrete on the sidewalk. I fell face first into the concrete. Luckily my hand caught my fall. I immediately started looking around to make sure nobody saw me. It was so early so nobody was out and about. All I did was scrape up my palm. It could have been way worse!!! Let's hope I don't do that next weekend!!