Four for Friday – the THANKS edition

1.  THANKS all of you for your super KungFu awesome comments on my cruddy race report.  I am overwhelmed by the support here and IRL I have.  I must have put out some good karma along the way to deserve this.

2.  Old Laura would have let Sunday beat her up a lot – skip some workouts, eat a bunch of crud etc.  New Laura busted out some pretty sweet workouts this week and feels ‘good'.  I actually kind of felt like I was doing some penance running this week.   Let’s just keep on keepin’ on and THANKS for kicking Old Laura in the butt.

3.  Anchorman 2.  THANKS!!!!!

4.  THANKS to the various aches and pain that were very evident post race to be gone.  I hit up a yoga class last night (finally!) and got a seriously good stretch out of it. 

Are you an Anchorman lover?  What are you giving THANKS for right now?

Around the Bay Race Report – when you do everything right but it feels so wrong

Not going to lie…I have totally been avoiding writing this race report but I need to just get it out and be done with the whole thing.  I went into the Bay with a few goals:

• keep a slow, steady overall pace as this is just a training run
• negative split
• finish and feel confident about my May marathon. (m much?)

The results?

• Pace:  I keep the pace I was supposed to.  PASS
• Negative split:  giant FAIL and apologizes to those who I told post race that I did negative split.  Apparently basic math is failing me.
• Confidence:  Another giant FAIL.  I feel like the marathon is going to be yet another fiasco and I will have let myself and my support team down.

I debated even starting the race on Sunday as I felt terrible.  In retrospect, I should have just sucked it up and popped a couple of Advil prior to the run.  But I have the fear of my liver exploding if I do something like that so I took 1/2 an Advil which did nothing.   We were lucky to have a place right downtown Hamilton to park and meet up prior to the race.  Most of my friends had great races and some giant PBs which is awesome. 

Even if some of them can’t figure out their Garmins.  :)

The weather could not have been better for the entire race.  By the end I was dumping cups on water on myself to try to cool down.  Huge difference from last year and some good prep if on marathon day it is as warm as it was.    The volunteers and spectators were amazing.  Hats off to you all – you made me smile on a frown dominated day. 

The hubs was out roaming the course on his bike and it was a treat to see him at the 10km mark:.  The arm sleeves came off very soon after this pic. 

I basically felt like crap from the start line to KM 18 where for some reason I felt really good.  That lasted until KM 24 and again just felt terrible for the rest of the race.  I limped into Copps in a personal worst time feeling deflated…and sweaty.  Only the hubs could have coaxed this kind of smile out of me.

It is easy to say:  “Move On.” It’s tougher to actually do it.  I KNOW this was a training run but I still feel like it just should not have been this hard.  I will go into our next set of long runs with a positive attitude but the doubt seed remains. 

In the end…move on I will.  And hopefully kick this Debbie Downer to the curb.

Four for Friday – another Around the Bay edition

1.  Sunday is my 3rd full Around the Bay 30km race.  I love this race.   The route is different and challenging, the expo is pretty good, there’s a Grim Reaper and from a “I don’t care but I do” point of view, the race shirts rock. 

2.  Last year I was dressed like Ms Winter:

This year it is looking like a capris and tshirt kind of day.  15 degrees, virtually no wind and cloudy.  Perfect running weather in my books.

3.  I am my usual excited/nervous pre-race self.  I know this is a training run but I want to run strong and give myself a bit of a confidence boost going into the last weeks of marathon training.  My goal is to start slow.  Seriously….this is what I will need to do in the marathon so let’s practice it in a race for a change.  Once I hit 15km, I am just going to keep picking it up a bit and see how long I can hold it.  I am hoping for a PB but just want to finish feeling…’good’. 

4. “…last weeks of marathon training.”  After Sunday, there are only the following runs left: 20km, 34km, 36k, 23km and 10km.  Yikes.  There is lots of running left to do but it seems like time has flown  by since training started.

Are you a Bay-er?  Are you racing this weekend?

It’s the little things

..that make me happy.

• a weekend filled with visiting friends and family
• having the windows in the house open
• winning a free coffee from Tim Hortons…your reign of terror is ending Roll up The Rim to win!
• watching the hubs get all excited to be riding outside again
• hearing our golf course is opening this week
• spotting crocuses on yesterday’s run
• and of course…running.

Saturday was my run test.  After a cruddy test in November I have spent the last few months doing EVERYTHING my coaches told me which usually translated to:  “Run slow…run slower…run even slower.” 

And it paid off.  I had a great test going 3 min longer than I ever have and have some new paces to train with that I am slightly scared of.   Thursday Tempo training just got real difficult.

Yesterday was a fantastic 27km run.  It started off a bit cool and very foggy.  That crazy kind of fog where you hope you aren’t in a horror movie where Jason/Freddy/The Terminator is targeting you.  With about 4km to go, the sun came out in full force and it was hot.  HOT in March.  (booyah) 

Sweaty face and frizzy hair.  Hello humidity..

   

I was bright enough to have a t-shirt on under my long sleeve but not bright enough to try to take off said long sleeve without taking my hat/glasses off.  I am sure if any saw me struggling to disrobe on Walker’s Line got a good laugh out of it.

I know I did and if you can’t laugh at yourself, life is going to seem a whole lot longer than you’d like.  (Garden State)

Four for Friday – the yes more running edition

1.  Because of a crazy stressful work week, I have two mornings where I did my runs @ 4:30am.  They were awesome.  Speed work that early in the morning is easy when you pretend zombies are stalking you.  Or you are basically a zombie at that time in the morning.

Zombieland rule #1":  Cardio

2.  Last night, the CBC aired a very interesting documentary:  http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/the-perfect-runner.html 

The Perfect Runner celebrates the modern love of long-distance running by exploring our evolutionary past as a species defined by its ability to run.   How did our ancestors survive the shift from trees to land?  How did Homo sapiens evolve to dominate the planet?  How did our ancestors hunt before they developed weapons?

The answer, you’ll be amazed to learn, is that humans became nature’s perfect endurance runners.  With a skill that evolved far earlier than the development of our powerful brains, our African ancestors had the ability to outrun all animals around them, allowing them to endure and ultimately thrive.

I LOVE this quote from it:  “People think running is extreme but, in fact, it’s sitting at a desk that’s extreme,” he said. Today’s much lamented obesity epidemic “is the result of thinking an ordinary act is extreme.”

3.  Sunday is another long run ramping up to my 30km race.   The temperature is telling me I can wear capris and a TShirt.  Yessssss.

4.  I have my second run test of this training session tomorrow.  I plan to bring a napkin so the treadmill know it got served.  (props to The Big Bang Theory for the quote)

Run on Friends..and don’t get caught by zombies.

The GSD weekend

Hello Monday – you came too quickly.  This weekend was, according to the hubs, a GSD weekend. 

GSD weekend?  Get Sh!t Done weekend that included:

• a crazy training day on Sat including sweat-tacular biking and 45min of cross training that rocked out legs.
• house cleaning. so.much.fun especially when the hubs does things like actually get rid of junk.  Not easy for the packrat that he is.
• buying and installing new fire alarms.  Did you know you are supposed to replace them every 7-10 years?  Yeah..me neither.
• meeting with contractor to arrange roof repairs (stupid wind), install new water tank and other fun homeowner fun.  ($$)
• FINALLY ordering curtains for the kitchen.  After only 4+ yrs of not agreeing what we should get.  Photos to come. 

I also rocked out a splendid 25k+ run yesterday.  The thought of doing an out and back route did not appeal to me at all yesterday.  The hubs agreed to come and pick me up so I mapped out a route from our place and along the Bay route.  It was sunny but really breezy and while it was a bit of a slog here and there I felt good. 

Can’t beat seeing the sunrise at 4km into a run and it beats sitting on the couch any day:

And being all goober-happy about almost being done a run is also awesome:

Did you have a GSD weekend? 

Four for Friday – the photo and weather edition

1.  As predicted my race photos from Sunday show my ‘awesome’ running form.

Flat footed as usual….argh.  It also looks like my race belt has strangle hold on my waist.  Maybe the corset look is in for running.

At least this one at the finish line isn’t toooo bad.

2.  The weather this winter remains baffling.  Yesterday morning at the crack of early I was out for a tempo run in a tshirt and capris…in March…and sweat like crazy.  This morning I experienced sun, snow, wind, hail and cool temps.  Weird.  (and the hail freakin’ hurt)

3.  Sunday’s predicted weather for my long run is sun and temps in the double digits.  YESSSSSSSS.

4.  The Around the Bay 30km race is in a couple of weeks.  Instead of ramping down to the race, I am ramping back up on my long runs.  25km this week, 27k next and then race day.  I am strangely excited about this.  No idea why. 

Say it with me….IT’S FRIDAY!!!!!  what a week….

Is the weather in your area weird?  Do you ramp up to a race? 

Frosty 5km Race Report – a top 10* finish

Yesterday was a weird day in a few aspects:

• I ran a 5km race for the first time in ….. 5 yrs maybe?
• I had a time goal…for me it was a fast one.
• For the first time in awhile it was cold…really cold seeing as this winter has been so kind
• I would usually be running the half marathon race in this event – it felt very weird to not be doing it and I had to remind myself Friday/Sat that I wasn’t eating for a long run on Sunday.  Ease up on the food chick!

So, how was it?  It was hard.  I didn’t get into any semblance of a comfortable pace the entire run and it was a struggle.  I knew it would hurt but man I had to focus the whole time. 

In the end  my chip time was 29:51  so I made my goal of being under 30 min officially in a 5km.  If I filter by chip time and put myself in the correct age group (thanks for thinking I am younger than I am SportStats!) I was 9th in my age group.  Gotta love a small race!

Some sweet pics from the hubs.  If someone I love gets these kinds of pics of me, imagine what the ‘official’ ones are going to look like.   Bad lighting on the porch dude….

We stuck around for as long as could to cheer our friends and runners in – hope you heard us.    More cowbell!

*note…I know that the official results are by gun time.  I am used to being slow (and accept it) so we did our natural routine of lining up at the back of the pack.  And then weaving like wild people to get around everyone.  Hope we didn’t knock anyone over and I apologize if we did.  :)