Week Six

First (and with any luck, Only) illness of the training season. Just a head cold, nothing serious, and it's clearing up, slowly but surely. It's a reminder of how training with this team is so different from training competitively. I'm not being yelled at to ignore the pain and train harder, to suck it up and keep going, instead I'm encouraged to take care of my body. This isn't like Basic Training where they tear you down and built you back up the way they want you, this is about working with your body and respecting your limits - two completely different schools of thought and it's taking some getting used to!

Ross has started running with me.

He needs it to build up his cardio/endurance to pass his next PT test. I consider myself pretty good in that department; I'm more interested in the mileage and working on technique.

As I hoped, he's a really good running partner, keeps the same pace, and - I think from his military training - he automatically matches my step/rhythm; it's kinda funny.
I missed Tuesday because of a meeting for the up-coming More To Life weekend, and Ross came with on Thursday and Saturday.

Saturday's run was good because it cleared my sinuses a little bit, and it forced me to listen to my body and only push myself a little bit instead of pushing too hard like I'm used to doing.
Things my body was telling me:
My ankle still hurt from last weekend a little bit, and I rolled it again going over some rocks. I could have run on it, it didn't hurt too bad, but it was much better to walk instead and get the miles in without doing more damage.
And, of course, I was sick. I could mostly breath, but stopped at the 6 mile point instead of pushing on to the 8 mile point where the majority of the team was going.

Also got a lot of work done outside this weekend. Weeding and dead-heading in the front flowerbed, re-stacked a pallet of bricks, and moved a heap of sand away from the end of the driveway. There were three lizards and two snakes living in the brick pile that I had to evict. I'm not terribly fond of snakes, but they were really little and I wasn't surprised to find them, they were actually sort of cute.

My company is providing a flu shot today. Don't want to go get it. I'm not at high risk of catching the flu in the first place, and my body REALLY doesn't like getting stuck with needles - the odds are about 80% that I'll pass out, even though it's tiny needle and over in about 2 seconds *shrug* I don't understand it, and it's not a conscious fear, but 4/5 times I still end up on the floor.

Week Five

Tired. Just plain TiReD.

Been a full week! There's always so much to do and never enough time to get it all done,
and stuff going on with my parents has been distracting...

As far as running, didn't get out Tuesday, the team was mostly at the Wine Tasting fundraiser, but I didn't go and didn't want to go running by myself. Thursday was ok; I don't really like running in the rain because it's always so humid, but it wasn't a cold rain which was good. As it's getting colder out I need to find more motivation to get out and go running. It's REALLY hard to convince myself to crawl out from warm blankets to go running in the cold evening air.

The 5K on Saturday was a huge turn-out for the breast cancer walk/run! I didn't have the best race but did ok. Several of my teammates ran it also and did Great! And I convinced my boyfriend to run it with me and i think he'll start running with me more often, which will be awesome. I really don't have the motivation to run by myself.



*sigh* But a cup of hot tea will make everything well and good with the world...

Week Four

Tuesday evening run was good; Thursday I ran with Jamie and she and I took a longer route and she let me push myself at much faster pace than usual. I was still able to keep up a breathy conversation, so I didn't push the pace too hard, but it was difficult to rein myself back. The pace will be great for my next 5K this weekend, but I couldn't hold something like that for long during a marathon. I really need to run with a watch and teach my muscles to hold a slower pace.

Saturdays are notoriously full for me, and while I manage to to wedge in an hour or so of running somewhere in my day, it's rarely with the team in the morning. This weekend was the first one I've made it to with the team, and it was also the longest I've run - we did most of the Cotton Row route on the NE end of town, approx. 6.2 miles with lots of hills, which is great practice for Birmingham. That's going to be my biggest learning curve, elevation change. Having grown up in the North Dakota/ Minnesota Red River Valley where it is F-L-A-T, and now I have to deal with inclines and hills and the occasional small mountain.

Went to Fleet Feet yesterday. They did a great job, as always. Tried several shoes, and a pair of inserts, and inevitably ended up liking the Most Expensive Pair in the heap *roll eyes* I always have had expensive taste, even when I don't know it. At least I don't have a shoe fetish, or I'd be in deep financial trouble! If I put as many miles on these shoes as I anticipate, I'll probably need a new pair sometime in January, which will be just long enough to break in a new pair before the race mid-February. I might could make them last until February... just not sure yet how hard I'm going to be on them.

Week Three

CrAzInEsS !!!!!

I ran in my first event this weekend!

Went to Nashville with my boyfriend, and his aunts invited me to go running with them. It wasn't until we were on our way downtown that I realized we weren't "just running," we were signed up to run a Breast Cancer 5K! Now, the fact it was a 5K didn't scare me, we've run further than that in practice, but I've never been to a running event before, much less been in one, so there was a lot to learn very quickly.

Getting signed in and getting my number and figuring out where it belonged and how to pin it to my shirt so I didn't nearly rip it off every time I moved wasn't too difficult - I just had to look around at the several hundred other runners around me.

Pre-race fitters weren't anything new, I've dealt with all that before with swimming, but I was amazed how much energy a big crowd at the starting line can suck OUT of you! But there were at least as many people cheering along the sidewalks after the first mass-lunge forward and we got thinned out a bit, that helped put some of the excitement energy back IN.

But I'm still getting the hang of running hills, and the very first leg was a very steep hill, and there were several smaller ones along the route, and there were no markers telling you how far you'd gone, all of which threw me off a good bit.

Even though it was a short course, there were two water stops. At the first one I got way more water ON me than IN me. At the second one I slowed down enough to grab a cup and gulp most of it down, but it was difficult to get around people and not slip/trip over all the crushed cups on the wet ground.
During the race my mind-talk was moving MUCH faster than I was. I was thinking about technique and trying to remember every iota my first roommate (on a full-ride track scholarship) had every said about running. And I didn't have my iPod with me, so my old swimming manta just kept going around and around in my head, "Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming..." (from Finding Nemo). Also, I was telling myself that I've gone absolutely crazy, there's no way I'm going to finish this without hurting myself, if this is only 3 miles what makes me think I could ever run a 13 mile half marathon much less fantasize about a full marathon... had to get all that negative crap handled. And at the end (finishing with a respectable :32.54) I was on an adrenaline high and couldn't wait to tell my coach I'd changed my mind and wanted to run the full marathon in February! *roll eyes* Isn't it amazing how quickly one changes their mind once they realize they didn't die!?!

'Nother 5K coming up in a week and a half. Should be fun!