publix georgia marathon

US Road Sports announced today that Publix is the new title sponsor for the Georgia Marathon (formerly ING Georgia Marathon). I guess they didn’t like any of my suggestions. That’s cool, I can think of another little town that could handle the Cartoon Network Marathon.

I’m not sure that I will run it next year (future life being up in the air and all), but if so, I’ll look forward to matching the sweet peach and green uniforms of the cashiers at Publix in my race shirt. I have always thought, now, why do I not wear more peach and green outfits? JK, I love you Publix. You make me feel like a wealthy Floridian old lady and not an overgrown graduate student. More importantly, you keep me from having to shop at the gross, crazed sea of humanity more commonly known as Kroger.

weekly recap

It feels like I have barely run for the last couple of weeks even though I got a lot in the past few days. I am glad it’s my last peak mileage week! Woop woop! Can’t beat that with a stick. The weather is getting better and I have been doing more night runs now that I don’t have to wait until 8 or 9 o’clock to sweat my butt off in the dark.

9/19 sunday – warmup .5 mile, 4:49 (yeah, I was not that dedicating to warming up) – kennesaw locomotive half marathon, 1:57:33
9/20 monday – 3.16 miles, 27:53
9/21 tuesday – 3.4 miles, 31:58
9/22 wednesday – 7.01 miles, 67:41
9/23 thursday – 6.59 miles, 62:08
9/24 friday – 3.12 miles, 29:03
9/25 saturday – 20.02 miles, 3:21:42 (avg 10:05 pace)

total miles run: 56.9
total run time: 9:02:47

finish the drill

I had a sweet 20 mile run this morning with Katie and Denise. I woke up a little after 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so after playing with the puppy for a while (he didn’t mind waking up) and eating breakfast, I was more than on time to meet them on campus at 5am. Since I was early, I trotted across the parking lot to my building to use the bathroom there, armed with my banana-covered pepper spray. Our building is full of too many freaky noises at night.

We headed out a little after five and cruised out College Station to a gas station on Lexington Road where we bought some water at 6.33 miles. The guy running the gas station was like, “walking, huh?” Sir, if you think I sweat this much from walking…I chowed my Shot Bloks and was glad to not have to carry them anymore. We followed the same route back, which is a little more forgiving since you are running more down than up on College Station, and Denise peeled off around mile 11 so she would get back to Dawson Hall at 12 miles. KP was going to run 12 as well, but is either a good friend or just plain nutty because she continued with me for the remaining eight miles. They’re both running a marathon in California in two or three weeks, but I am not sure…I listen, but usually half of what I think about while running blanks out afterward. I know it has something to do with wine (the marathon, not my memory). It’ll be Katie’s second and Denise’s third. We hit my fave Golden Pantry at 12.66 miles for water and the bathroom. I took a Hammer gel here and drank Gatorade.

We continued with a pretty uneventful loop past Bishop Park and returned down Milledge. I felt good today; there were many times I thought I was about to be feeling it pretty hard, but it more or less held off until mile 17 and by that point, there just wasn’t that far to go anyway. The second ten miles was a bit faster than the first. I would say most talking had ceased around 16 miles and it was just time to get it done. I was glad to have Katie as a little rabbit to keep up with. I thought a lot about how hard it is in races to keep going when I am tired and just want a little walk break or whatever which will invariably turn into many slowdown breaks or walk breaks if you let it and it’s better to just keep moving and shut up about it. My two longest runs this time around have been with them, so it is going to be difficult to do another 20 by myself.

Since my thesis defense date was set for the week following Ridge to Bridge, most of my concerns for the race have taken a back seat to how I am going to finish my data analysis and write my thesis and defend in essentially the same time period. I have put the work in to finish the marathon well, even if not as well as I’d like, but I still have a lot to do on my thesis and it’s not as simple as taking a few hours a week to do something I enjoy doing. I think it will mostly come down to my “mental toughness” on race day, anyway. Like I said, the hardest part for me is pushing to do more than I feel like I can do comfortably, especially in the last hour or so on the course. It’s a couple of hours you just have to deal with being uncomfortable and being uncomfortable is okay, so.

To me, finishing a marathon is fine, but it is the culmination of all the hard work you’ve put in over 6+ months to get there that is the real accomplishment. If you didn’t do the work, well, congrats on spending a few hours running on one day, but I’m so impressed with people who put in the time to do it right and I feel like I’ve put a lot of time into this one, even if I don’t end up finishing as fast as I might’ve thought a few months ago. I hope to run Ridge to Bridge as stress-free as possible and then hopefully run Thunder Road again with a little more ambition when the weight is off my back.

weekly recap

Between two farmers markets, no long runs, and my birthday, I was a HUGE slacker this week. I ran, but I never went far. I did get up at 4:45 on my birthday to make sure I got some running in before the [long drive to setup the] farmer’s market. Brian was out of town for a funeral, so I hit the road in the pitch black and enjoyed the early morning and saw the biggest shooting star I’ve ever seen. Pretty rad and a good way to start the year.

9/12 sunday – 3.4 miles, 31:58
9/13 monday – 4.01 miles, 35:27
9/14 tuesday – off
9/15 wednesday – 5.47 miles, 54:04
9/16 thursday – 4.03 miles, 38:04
9/17 friday – 11.5 miles, 1:54:17
9/18 saturday – skated 8.09 miles w/ Lisa, 54:18

total miles run: 28.41
total run time: 4:33:50
total cardio time: 5:28:08

2010 kennesaw locomotive half marathon

I ran this race last year and you can read about that here. If you ran and are looking for your results, you can find them here.

I got up Sunday at a very respectable 3:45am and was on the road to Kennesaw by 4:15. It’s supposed to take a little shy of two hours from door to door, but I hate stressing about being late and would rather be ridiculously early, and I was. I got down there at about six, parked 50 feet from the start/finish area, and picked up my number. This year, they did b-tag chip timing, which is just a strip that stays on the back of your race bib instead of attaching to your shoelaces. Semi-upgrade, because there was no timing mat at the start. The number of participants definitely grew this year. I noted 258 half marathon finishers last year and the results list 438 half marathon finishers for 2010.

The original course has been changed for the better. The first year had you doing basically two loops of the main sections of the course, but this year, you ran a little further out and avoided circling around. These are technical terms. I’m not familiar with the area, so I have no idea where we went other than we went down a really nice downhill around mile three and the mile 4 uphill turnaround from last year, which you had to do twice, became a mile 7 downhill. Before the race started, the race director (I assume) made an announcement about there being a 1.25 mile uphill at mile 5.5, or I think that is what he said. Later, I couldn’t remember if it was supposed to start at 5.5 or 6.5. Either way, I kept waiting for it to start and it never came. The new course is much less hilly than last year in that it has more gentle rolling hills and fewer steep ones. I think maybe the worst one is at mile 10.5 and it’s not too bad. I think I just dislike it because I remember being tired as heck on it last year.

The big boo-hoo on the course is that you both start and finish with a lap around the shopping center, which is maybe 0.4 mile or so. It’s a little anticlimactic to run in a little circle at the beginning and end, but I guess them’s the breaks.

I ran 1:55 last year and hoped for about the same this year. Anyone who has been looking at the numbers on my weekly recaps has seen my pace steadily decline for about three months, so I was concerned that I wouldn’t even get it in the ballpark. I ended up feeling pretty good and tried to stay steady around 9:00/mile the whole race and finished in 1:57:33 (8:59 avg). My first mile was the slowest at 9:15 and mile 13 was the fastest at 8:48. I have trouble picking a pace and sticking to it, so I feel good about being consistent, if nothing else.

The price for this event went up quite a bit this year. Last year, I paid $40 to register the week of the race, I think, and early registration was $35. This year, I registered about a month in advance (8/25) and paid $60 ($55 registration + $4.80 processing fee on GeorgiaRunner.com). The tshirt was basically the exact same as last year, except on a white long sleeve tech shirt instead of a sherbet-colored shirt (sidenote: I had no idea until right now that the word is sherbet and not with an R, as in “sure-bert”). The medal is nicer and train-shaped instead of being one of the generic olive branch+ logo in-lay type ones. The course is a big improvement and much more pleasant than last year, in my opinion. I’m not sure I’m in any better shape than last year and even though my finishing time is slower, last year I’m pretty sure I wanted to crawl on some of those hills. They also had a lot of food afterward, but I didn’t eat any so I can’t report on that.

official results:
1:57:33
151/438 total finishers
46/220 females
12/36 age group

weekly recap

This week I hit a little bit of a snag with my ankle hurting, but I took off almost three days and felt good on my long run Saturday. Everything else hurt, but not so much ankle pain. This week was different in that I met up with my buddy Katie and her friend (new-to-me friend) Denise at 5am (!!!) on Saturday to run with them. I usually start around 6:30am so it’s still cool, but not pitch black outside since I am alone, so this run was pretty awesome to have about two hours of running in the dark before the sun came up. That and having other people around made the time fly by and it was nice to arrive home around 9am and have the day in front of me. I chose to spend it falling back asleep for 45 minutes, waking up to gnarly cramped up legs from curling up on the couch, and then detangling my hair so I could go see my friend Artee for a hair cut. She took pretty much all of my hair off and straightened it. Here is the picture I took in the car to show Brian:

Then I skated with Lisa for an hour and got all sweaty and ruined it. Typical. I am feeling a little tightness in my calves from yesterday, but ran a few miles tonight and have a light week in front of me running-wise, which is great because I have a ton of things to do for school. I’m running the Locomotive Half Marathon in Kennesaw next Sunday. I had something come up that I need to be in upstate South Carolina that afternoon, so that is going to be a challenge. Maybe it’ll motivate me to run a little faster, you know. I would like to get a long run in midweek, but I am not sure if I will make that happen or not. I turn 28 on Thursday…crazy because I still feel like I am about 12.

9/5 sunday – off
9/6 monday – 6.58 miles, 63:54
9/7 tuesday – AM 5.04, 48:13
9/8 wednesday – off
9/9 thursday – AM 3.10, 27:46
9/10 friday – off
9/11 saturday – AM 19.32, 3:19:18 (avg pace 10:19/mile), PM skated 8.43 miles, 56:46

total miles run: 34:04
total run time: 5:39:11
total cardio time: 6:35:37

boo hoo

Yesterday my Achilles tendon started smarting a little bit out of nowhere, which progressed into some full on pain after sitting down for an hour, more pain after another hour of class, and pain/burning after my three hour class. I call BS on this because it didn’t start hurting until I started sitting around. It didn’t hurt while I biked back to my office from downtown. What strikes me as a bit weird is that for the past month, I’ve been having little twitches in my right Achilles or lower calf when I wake in the morning (not painful, but ticklish almost), but now it’s my left that actually hurts. It is not horrible, just kind of foreboding at this stage in the game. I started taking ibuprofen and putting my foot up with a block of blue ice on it last night, wore my Cascadias all day for a little extra support instead of taking my shoes off at home, and skipped running today.

The last time I had a little mini ache like that, I took two days off and it went away. That is the smart thing to do, but it’s really hard to convince myself to take two days! If I make it through today, I’m halfway there! I was about to do a short run anyway because I got a new sports bra in the mail from Moving Comfort and I wanted to see if it was going to be the best thing to ever happen to me or not, but then I let the dog chase me around the backyard and it didn’t feel so hot on the leg…maybe I will run in the morning, maybe stick it out. I planned to do 20 on Friday, but now I feel pretty up in the air. Play a tiny violin for me.

three day weekend, buddy

We are sleepily finishing up a busy and excellent three day weekend over here. On Saturday, I got up super early to go skate with my pal Lisa. Unfortunately, it was too early and the park we usually skate at wasn’t even open yet, so we went to another football-and-baseball-field type of park. The pavement was really uneven and gravelly, so it got deemed a failure pretty quickly. I went home and ran a boring few miles alone and grabbed Spikey for my last mile. Mostly I was bored of running alone, although I’d love to claim it was for his sheer joy of running. I stopped and gave him the what-for after about half a mile because he was acting like a nut.

After my guilty running time, I joined Brian in painting our front porch. If I haven’t mentioned this a million times before, our house is very old – it was built in 1907. This provides for an endless array of chores to be done to keep it from toppling over. The paint on our porch was peeling, so we power washed the peeling paint off to prep for re-painting it…about a year ago. Yeah, our house has been looking pretty derelict for a while and I formally apologize to the three people in our town who actually bother to keep their houses looking nice. No, your trailer does not count. We followed painting up with a nap and a shower, then drove to our friends’ house in the north Georgia mountains about two hours away. We brought the puppy with us and he was a huge drama queen in the car. He wasn’t bad, just kind of silly and I think his squishy face/loud breathing lends itself to seeming dramatic. It was super chilly up there, I think it was in the 50s/60s in the evening.

Sunday morning came early with Ollie ready to get out of his crate and party in the mountains. He was playing with our friends’ kids and having the best time running all over the house and conquering the stairs. We went to the mountain Walmart where I fulfilled my dream of buying a pair of sweatpants and then wished I had leggings to put under them too. We took a scary mountain drive over to another friend’s house and then all went tubing down the Toccoa for a few hours. The water was freezing, but the weather ended up being perfect.

We came home Sunday night…it is always good to be home, even if you are only gone for a day. I went to school for a few hours today (five, but who is counting?) to catch up on some schoolwork and work on the program for my data. Boring, but I feel ready to start the week without these things looming overhead. I went for a short run that felt harder than it should have been, maybe because it was the hottest part of the day and I was expecting it to be cool again…finished up with a couple of minutes in the pool. I am beat.

Nothing major of note on the running front this week. Our average temperatures are starting to dip, but I’m not sure if it’s a fake-out or not. It should still be pretty hot out for another month or so, but the mornings are really pleasant. I ran 16 last Friday and felt decent the entire time, other than the first few miles, so that was encouraging. My average pace was still slow, but I’m noting that it’s a little faster than my last 55 mile (or 54.93 mile) week several weeks ago. I am hoping to run about 50 this week with a 20 mile long run. I’m trying not to dread the long run. It seems like waking up and getting the first few miles is the worst part and after that, it’s mostly autopilot, but I get stressed about whether I will get it done or not every week anyway. Nothing to it but to do it.

8/29 sunday – 4.0, 35:31 (8:52 avg)
8/30 monday – 8.12, 78:14 (9:38 avg)
8/31 tuesday – AM 4.45, 43:56 (9:52 avg – no idea why, but this run was SO hard) + biked 15:00
9/1 wednesday – AM 10.05, 1:37:50 (9:44 avg)
9/2 thursday – 7.18, 65:54 (9:11 avg)
9/3 friday – AM 16.05, 2:39:10 (9:55 avg)
9/4 saturday – AM skated less than a mile (10:00?) + 4.03, 38:22 (9:31 avg) + with spikey 1.28, 12:52 (10:01 avg)

total miles run: 55.16
total run time: 8:51:49 (avg 9:38)
total cardio time: 9:24:49

August miles run: 192.57
Total run time: 31:30:36 (avg 9:34)
YTD miles: 1301.48

what goes up

As good as I felt last week, I am feeling like total crapola this week. I slept through my 5:45am alarm for my long run yesterday, so it’s on the agenda again in the morning. I ran 10 yesterday instead and my legs are dying today. The run wasn’t hard. I blame it on finishing right before seminar and plopping down into a chair for hours immediately after I ran and then not getting to eat until 4pm. I hope I can get my act together by the time my alarm goes off tomorrow. It’s a game weekend, so doing my long run Saturday isn’t an option, tailgaters be damned. I only have two classes this semester (one’s 1:15, the other 3 hours), but between those, meetings, sitting at my computer working on SFMNP stuff and thesis stuff, and working at home on transcribing, I have noticed a huge difference in how generally gross my legs feel after a day of just sitting in a chair. It’s good to move when you can.