3/4 Marathon Training Briefing: Week 3 of 12

Mileage for the week: 11 miles
Long run: 8 miles

3/4 Marathon Training Debriefing, Week 2 of 12

2/12 weeks: one-sixth of the way there!

Got rained out a couple different days this week, and our membership at the Y is still new enough that I forgot that it's my contingency plan in case of bad weather. Beyond that, I still got all my miles in, and my 10 miles this morning were pretty durn good -- it was a cool, slightly overcast morning and about half of Lincoln was out running.

I need to work my strength-training into my plan more diligently; didn't get any of it done this week, and I always feel so much better when I've lifted some weights and whatnot. Gotta keep my womanly figure! By which I mean I want my arms to look good!

3/4 Marathon Training Briefing: Week 2 of 12

Week 2, here we go!

Mileage for the week: 9 miles
Long run: 10 miles

(This is how I have my schedule displayed: clipped up on the wall in our bathroom. Every mile I run, I get to cross out! and the "10 wks 'til 20" means I have 10 weeks left until the 3/4 marathon, which rounds up to 20 miles.)

3/4 Marathon Training Debriefing: Week 1 of 12

Okay, here's the sitch. I'm running a 3/4 marathon on October 5th. (That's 19.6 miles, and if you haven't heard of the distance before, that's because it's not a common race.) I set up a training schedule for myself, loosely based on Hal Higdon's marathon training schedule, and I just completed my FIRST WEEK! And it went SWIMMINGLY. (Runningly?)

So my new plan for a bi-weekly post is going to be posting the week's training schedule at the beginning of the week (Sunday) and then my recap/debriefing of the training that week will be posted on Saturday. Since we were out of town this weekend, here's the first debriefing!

This week, I was supposed to run a total of 9 miles during the week, and then my long training run on the weekend was to be 9 miles as well. In actuality, I ran 12.9 miles during the week, and did my 9-mile training run on Saturday morning. I'm still psyched about this, since we were on vacation this weekend and I still managed to stay committed to my training schedule!

We were in Rapid City for our good friends Mike and Abby's wedding, and I just gotta say, I. Love. The. Black. Hills. Every time I visit there (which has been every summer for the last three years), I decide that we'll live there someday. I'll do a post about the wedding sometime soon (omg, best wedding efvar, sorry to all my other friends who've already gotten married, but Mike & Abby totes win), but for now, here's a picture of what I found when I headed out of the hotel at 5:43 on Saturday morning.

Rapid City has some really nice trails; I hit up one near our downtown hotel which ran alongside a little creek, so I very much enjoyed my nine miles. I've been listening to Stephen King's Dark Tower series on my iPod and that definitely helps for the longer runs, when I might otherwise get bored. Listen to audiobooks when you run! Best thing I ever figured out!

(catch-up) Friday Fess-Up, 12July13

After I banged out two FFUs last Friday, catching up from the previous two weeks, I didn't have the energy to do yet another to stay current -- so here 'tis.

Highs: Well, as I'd previously mentioned, my week prior to this week was HORRENDOUS. Finally, when Sunday hit, I decided that I just needed to finish it up and get right back on track on Monday morning: which is exactly what I did! I tracked EVERYTHING, and I mean EV.ER.EE.THING. Spencer and I finally got signed up at the Y on Tuesday; I rode my bike there and took a yoga class on Wednesday; we did a round in the circuit training room on Thursday. I hit a little bit of a speedbump on Friday when I woke up with a stiff neck, so I didn't do much activity on Friday or Saturday, but I kept tracking diligently.

Lows: I needed new running shoes -- I've been having some calf pain, mostly in my left leg but sometimes in my right as well -- so I didn't do very much running, as I was scared I'd exacerbate something before I got paid and could therefore get new shoes.

My old Kinvara 3s and my new Kinvara 4s

Activity PPVs: 22.

Mileage: Only 6.79 running, but another 9.38 on my bike.

My BostonStrong lace medallions on my old and new shoes.

Weigh-in: After my week of gorging, I was WAYYYY up when I weighed myself at home on Monday. After a week of clean eating, lots of water, and hitting the gym, I was down 6.4lbs on Friday!!!

catch-up Friday Fess-Up for 5July13

Hehhhhh. Okay, this week sucked pretty hard. What's really funny is that the meeting topic last week was all about the "Ripple Effect," where every decision we make makes its own ripple, which has the potential to be either good or bad.

Case in point: I had a not-great weigh-in on Friday the 28th. Then what happened? I was ticked-off about it, so I pigged out while camping. Then what happened? I didn't track because I'd already screwed up. Then what happened? I kept pigging out because I could blame it on my period. Then what happened? Well, I couldn't stop! What a ludicrous suggestion! It was a holiday weekend, after all! Then what happened? I ate like absolute CRAP from Saturday through the next Sunday. Then what happened? I felt gross! I felt fat! I had headaches from not drinking enough water and I had NO energy.

I also skipped my weigh-in on Friday morning, because I knew it was going to be horrible. I did manage to get 39 Activity PPVs, though.

Life-wise, things were fairly good over this week. We had a lot of fun camping and then I ran 12 miles over the course of the week, which brings us to the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT of the week's HIGH POINT:

For the first time ever, I actually PLACED in a race! This was the Seward Optimist Club's Freedom 10K, which takes place on the morning of the Fourth. For those who don't know, Seward is "Nebraska's Fourth of July City," and they really pull out all the stops. Anyway, Mindy and I drove out there early on Thursday morning and did this 10K. It was a gorgeous morning for it, and it was a great run, made even greater by the fact that I got third place in my bracket. And yes, there WERE more than three girls in my bracket, thankyouverymuch. ;D

catch-up Friday Fess-Up for 28June13

Yeah, yeah, I know I haven't done one of these in a couple weeks. It's been a busy couple of weeks, and a WEEKLY commitment!? Pah. That's way more fortitude than I normally exhibit. I'll do my best to remember some of the basics of each of these weeks I've missed.

Recap: the week of June 21-28th wasn't too terrible. I got in a nice long run on Wednesday morning and racked up nearly 16 running miles for the week, plus an extra few walking, and went for a run while camping that weekend with my buddy Emily. It was INSANELY windy and there were TONS of hills, but we still did four miles! Plus, there was an exciting storm rolling in on Tuesday morning as I left on a run with another friend, Mindy. I ended up earning an impressive 44 APPVs!

You don't want to know how many pictures I took in order to get the ONE
with some lightning in it.

LOVE these clouds.

Particular high: That Saturday night, my buddy Elizabeth and I got together for a movie night at her place. She had initially suggested pizza, but easily adapted to my suggestion of getting Subway instead. Hooray us!

Low point: (Of course, my reason for avoiding the pizza was because I'd just had pizza with Spencer the night before...after going to the movies, where we had a jumbo popcorn with plenty of "butter product," plus Junior Mints, which are my favorite movie candy...)

BUT I tracked EVERYTHING, all week long, INCLUDING the pizza-and-popcorn-and-Junior-Mints on that Friday night.

Weigh-in: HOWEVER, I was still up 0.2 pounds on Friday. And this happens sometimes! But I let it get to me, and when we went camping that weekend, I maybe-kinda-sorta went off the deep end and drank lots of Lime-A-Ritas and ate lots of s'mores and banana boats. (Dangit! I still need to do a blog post about those!)

But it's okay, because Spence and I are totes 'dorbz.
(Photo credit goes to the ever-awesome Christine.)