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.)

Did-You-Know Cats

(With apologies and gratitude to Drew Mokris' "Did-You-Know-Bats" over at Left-Handed Toons.)

A Tale of Two Kitties

While cleaning house yesterday, I posted this picture to Facebook, captioned "This is where Krieg chooses to sleep, in a room with a bed and a wide windowsill."

Srsly, what?

Upon its posting, several of my German friends commented, saying "Your cat's name is Krieg?!" ("Krieg," in German, means "war.") Suffice to say, it's not a very common name for a cat. There's a reason for that.

At the beginning of my second year of college, I moved into my first apartment. While apartment-hunting, the one question that was absolutely a dealbreaker was "Do you allow cats?" I'm a cat person, aspiring to be a crazy cat lady. The landlord at my new apartment said sure, I could have a cat.

That September, I found a calico kitten on Craigslist out on a farm near Prague, Nebraska (pronounced "PRAYg"), and Spencer (who was just my friend at the time) and I took a trip to meet the little cutie.

Did you know that calico cats are almost always female? That's because the color of a cat's coat is a sex-linked trait. The X chromosome carries the trait of black and orange fur; white is a stand-alone. Since females have two X chromosomes (XX), they can be both black AND orange. Males, with only one X chromosome (XY), can only be black OR orange...unless they happen to have two X chromosomes (XXY), which occurs with about 1 in 3,000 calicos, and in humans is called Klinefelter syndrome. These males are usually sterile.

The calico is Maryland's state cat. I'll give you one guess why.

When we got there, I dibsed the calico immediately, but there was a little grey and white girl kitten who was also just totes 'dorbz. I felt kinda guilty that I might miss out on an awesome cat just because I was being petty about its color. They were itty-bitty-teeny-tiny, so I figured I wouldn't be breaking my lease (where I could have "a cat," singular) since the two of them together added up to one full cat. I brought them home and set about trying to find names for them.

THEY WERE SO TINY.

After several weeks, much hemming and hawing, and lists upon lists of ideas for matching names, I finally decided on "Stella" for the calico and "Luna" for the grey and white one. Stellaluna, for the uninitiated, is an adorable children's book about a baby fruit bat. ("Stella" is Latin for "star"; "luna," for "moon.")

Bats are awesome, guys.

We settled into our life together...and Luna was a pain in my ass. She was pushy, she was obnoxious, she peed on my futon and on my bed. But goddamn were the two of them cute.

My friend Kiersten with Luna

About three months later, I was sitting on the couch and Luna walked past. I glanced at her and froze. There were some tufts of fur near her butt that looked...suspicious. I scooped her up and gingerly prodded at them.

Oh, god.

Luna's balls had dropped.

Apparently, this can sometimes take up to six months in cats.

I was furious. I had wanted a house full of girls, and this stupid boy cat was ruining everything. (It was now obvious why "Luna" had been peeing on everything, though.) Plus, I had put off having the "girls" spayed, since they were both indoor cats and naturally didn't pose a threat to one another, but now, I was DAMNED if I was going to have any incestuous kitty-babies running around my apartment. Plus, what the hell was I going to do about their names?!

As for getting them fixed, my mom was awesome enough to make that my Christmas present. But their names? Ugh, back to the drawing board. I didn't want to punish Stelly for her brother's dumb mistake of being born male, but what name could I match up with Stella?

You remember how I ended up renaming him "Krieg"?

Yup. My cats' names mean Star Wars.

Friday Fess-Up, 21June13

It feels like I just posted one of these! Ah, yes, I did, because I didn't post on time last week. For shame.

Highs: Um just let me link you to pictures of some of the delicious things I ate this week.

Bananas & strawberries in Cheerios (actually, Toasted Wheat
O's, but who's counting?) and unsweetened almond milk (4 PPV)

Super-cheap, super-delish raspberries

Also consumed: four pounds'-worth of cherries; nectarines; peaches; white flesh nectarines (here's a good post about them!); red grapes; and bananas. In addition to eating right, I made some super-easy but very beneficial choices: parked at the top of a parking garage and took the stairs, both up and down; parked at the back of several parking lots; kept at least two water bottles with me at all times. And when we were camping/tubing down the Niobrara this past weekend, I didn't drink very much booze at all, since I was still recovering from being sick. Plus, it turned out that most of us camping were healthy-ish eaters, so there were chicken brats, whole-wheat buns, and diet pop, as well as lots of fruit & veggies around.

Lows: You know, I think there's a great nursery rhyme that very much fits me.
"There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good,
She was very, very good,
But when she was bad, she was horrid."
This was one of my very, very good weeks, so nothing really on the "lows" side to report. Side note: when I looked this up to make sure I had it right (I think I remember it from our Children's Book of Virtues), I learned that it was actually a poem by Longfellow, and that the "very, very good" line is supposed to be "She was very good indeed." I prefer being very, very good, myself.

Activity PPVs: According to the website, I only earned 24 this week, but I didn't wear my AL at all on Saturday (when we were tubing on the river -- didn't want to risk losing it) and only put it on later on Sunday.

Stuff was stacked perilously as it was. So many coolers.

Mileage: Ran 8.62 miles; walked 6.56 for a total of 15.2 miles. Planning on doing a long run tomorrow morning, so that total should increase.

Weigh-in: I weighed myself on Monday morning, once we were back from camping. From that weight, I'm down 2.9 pounds this week! Success! And the great thing is, that's just from being good Monday-Thursday. If I can commit to tracking and being active the majority of the time (even if that's just 4/7 days), I should be fine. Tonight, we're getting pizza and going to a movie, but I'm already tracking it and I'll stay focused.