tour de elvis 5k and week in review

I’m home from NC and not sure how wordy I’m feeling. I got a 14 mile long run in on Friday after sleeping for three or four hours that night, which didn’t feel great, but I tried to stay slow with my easy pace (E pace for long runs is 10:30) and ended up at 10:15. Nothing to write home about, but just about on target. I think I finally realized why I feel like so much of a wuss and scared to pick up the pace this summer. It’s so hot and humid that if I overdo it and start running too hard, it takes an incredibly long time to bring my HR back down and feel normal again, so I’m constantly being really cautious of whether I’m about to go too fast. End result: lot of slow runs, but at least they get done.

We headed to Albemarle that night for the Tour de Elvis 5K. My legs felt decent during the day and not knowing what the course looked like or being at all familiar with the town, I figured I would try to start out around 9:00/mile and see how I felt after that. We started right on time and it was dusky and relatively cool, which was awesome. The first mile had the only hill to speak of and the rest of the course was more or less flat with a big downhill in the last half a mile. My splits were 9:01, 8:42, 8:20, and 6:53 pace for the last tenth. My Garmin gave me a finishing time of 26:38, pretty close to my official time of 26:41. My effort level was medium; I was not trying to run hard, but tried to feel out a quick but comfortable pace and speed up as I went along. I was pretty impressed with the accuracy of the timing and the course distance considering it seemed like I was all over the place (sidewalk, road, crossing wherever) and still ended up hitting the mile markers spot on. It felt good to run a little bit faster without worrying about having to keep it up for long. I was wearing a shirt from MCM which was a decent motivator not to slow too much; didn’t want to be the jackass walking in a 5K and wearing a marathon shirt. Haha. Here is a sweet pic from the beginning of the race where I look roughly the same size as the ten year old kid I am passing…nice flattering photo of my thighs, too.

I’m running sideways because it was about half a mile into the race and people were walking/it was generally dense before we turned off to the right.

After the race, I spotted Richard from Old-Runner.com, owing to his slickly labeled Old Runner singlet, and got a chance to say hello while I waited for my parents to finish up. Richard took home 1st in his age group, which is not surprising if you follow his blog.

We had a little bit of success of our own in this little race and all placed in our age groups. I got a first place for my age group of nine runners, but really was second since the third overall woman was in my AG. My mom was second of three and my dad was one out of…one! We didn’t actually stay long enough for the awards, but Peter at Vac and Dash is super nice and putting them in the mail for us. How nice is that? The tshirts are also really cute and overall, I thought this was just a cool race.

8/8 sunday – 4.03 miles, 37.13 (9:15 avg) + dog run 2.04 miles, 21:09 (10:22 avg)
8/9 monday – AM 3.12 miles, 28:31 (9:09 avg), PM 7.0 miles, 65:30
8/10 tuesday – 7.0, 68:24 (9:46) – I have to defend myself a little bit here and say I was having a decent night run at about 9:10-9:15 pace until I ran into my friend walking her dog and walked a half a mile and talked to her, which dropped my average pace by about 30 seconds/mile…just sayin’.
8/11 wednesday – 7.24 miles, 70:53 (9:48 avg)
8/12 thursday – off
8/13 friday – AM 14.2 miles, 2:25:31 (10:15 avg), PM tour de elvis 5k 3.10 miles, 26:38 (8:38 avg)
8/14 saturday – 7.2 miles, 71:28 (9:56 avg…started out feeling good, ended up pretty rough)

total miles run: 54.93
total time run: 8:55:17
avg pace: 9:44

Overall, a pretty slow week speedwise and I’m a little pained to be .07 short of my goal miles for the week! As Cathy would say, ack! All the runs I did Wednesday through Saturday were serious HILLS and all ended up more or less the same pace for that reason. My knees were super creaky from all the climbing and my abs were probably the sorest part of my body on Friday. I feel pretty good about being able to recover quickly from tough runs, which makes me wonder if I’m not trying hard enough when I’m out there.

don’t let the backdoor hit you

I am up in North Carolina visiting my mom and dad. On Tuesday I was able to finish the last bit of data collection for my thesis, leaving me with a week of freedom before fall semester begins. The last few things I needed to do were like pulling teeth and I am so relieved to no longer wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it. I’ve moved onto waking up in the middle of the night thinking about data analysis instead. Really, if I could quit waking up in the middle of the night, that would solve the problem. However, last night I ran into my mom while I was midnight snacking (another favorite past time…stress eating while not fully awake) and she was looking for a snack and said she might take a shower…at 1AM. So, I might be stuck with erratic sleeping habits for life.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to attempt a long run. I’m feeling kind of defeatist about it already. What else is new this summer? Usually I run a few loops around the lake here (about 7.2 miles per loop) and they are hilly and brutal. The roads are tight so no one gives you any breathing room, which adds to the experience. I should run at least two and I ran one yesterday night and was crazy spent. The nice thing about running at night is the longer you run, the better the weather gets as opposed to morning runs where the longer you run, the worse it feels outside. We’re signed up to run a 5k tomorrow night so I am going to play it by ear in the morning. I don’t want to feel completely destroyed at night, but I’m not attempting to break any records at the 5k, either, so I should probably commit to doing a decent job at one or the other. On my way up here, I stopped by the Vac and Dash ,the legendary (to me, anyway) vacuum store/running store/shipping store/screen printer. It was pretty much all I expected it to be, which is to say totally weird and awesome. For once in my life, I didn’t find anything to buy, but it did convince me to sign my parents and myself up for their Tour de Elvis 5k.

My parents are having their kitchen/family room painted so I’ve been relegated to hanging out in the guest bedroom most of today and have been watching TV while I did some work and also completed two of my DI applications, which went in the mail this afternoon and I’ll probably discover that I had a major error in something tomorrow, but whatever. I have one more application to go, but I am so on top of things that the program doesn’t even have their application online yet. Boom. Hurry up, y’all, I have some fire burning over here. Anyway, TV is depressing and I was watching an Oprah about people who’ve lost insane amounts of weight, which made me think about how I want to exercise and then I was like, wait a minute. Crap. I already do. No losing 400 pounds for me, but a few sit ups probably wouldn’t kill me. I should clarify and say that I don’t find people losing massive weight depressing, but it is sad to see people who are clearly so unhappy and alienated and having a very low quality of life. It’s a burden I feel lucky to have not experienced. I hope they’re successful in keeping the weight off.

more wins than losses/twilight 5k

On Saturday I ran the Twilight 5k. I ran it last year in 25:05 and mentioned earlier in the week that I wasn’t too jazzed about my chances for besting that time this week since I have pretty much just been running since my last marathon and not thinking about speed. I fell asleep late Friday night and slept pretty badly, so the 6AM wake up came early. My legs were hurting, maybe because I ran late on Friday. It stormed during the night and the weather forecast was calling for storms all morning. I parked on campus, left my bike jammed in my trunk, walked to the start and picked up my card for the Gambler, then back to my car to take off my rain jacket. It was pretty cold, so I left a tshirt on over my tank top that I’d planned on running in, but it wasn’t really raining anymore…yet (foreshadowing, hint hint).

The rain returned right before the run started. It poured and I stood under a tree, which didn’t do a ton to keep me dry. It was at this opportune moment, while my Garmin was beeping and flashing between screens, that someone asked me how I liked my 405. I unleashed a little about its inability to deal with sweat/water. The race started and it was a quick start. The top ten (or fifteen?) men and women run later in the day in the thousand dollar mile, which brings out some very quick runners for the 5k. It’s a more or less flat race, especially the first mile. I was kind of waffling between whether I would try and run faster or not since I felt crappy and tired. I tried to start off a little slow and then pick it up, which I think I did; the first time I checked my Garmin was at 0.65 and I don’t remember being passed by anyone after that point while I was able to pass a decent number of people. It switched between raining and pouring for the next 20 minutes or so. The only uphill is during the last half mile or so when you return downtown and run up Hancock. My feet felt so heavy and waterlogged by this point. I also thought about wetting my pants since no one would notice in the rain, but I realized that during 90% of races I will weigh the pros and cons of wetting my pants. No, I have never actually done it.

I chugged up Hancock, made the turn onto Jackson, and almost fell flat on my face when I heard someone yell “Bootsy!” It was one of my derby buddies who was being a good sport by course marshaling in the pouring rain. I turned onto Washington and saw 24 still on the clock. I’m not sure what my official time was besides 24:xx; my Garmin said 24:53. It’s not a gigantic improvement, but I’ll take it. It feels good to move into a lower digit! Next stop, 23. Win.

It was a little before 9AM when I finished. I was signed up for the 50k bike that started at 10AM. I wandered around looking for some people I knew doing run/bike, but did not see any of them. At this point, I was totally bummed because I was sopping wet with no change of clothes. For some reason, I just didn’t take the weather that seriously so I didn’t have a change of shorts. I was already wearing my change of shirt, so the only thing I could do would be to put my rain jacket on over my wet clothes. I hemmed and hawed and decided I didn’t want to spend the next two hours alone, cold, and wet riding my bike. It felt like a guilty decision, but also the right decision. The ride was something I signed up to do for fun (and I didn’t sign up until I knew someone else was going), so if it was going to be miserable and lonely, no point in going. Loss.

I went home and ate pancakes with Brian. Guilty, delicious pancakes. Later on, my friend Will was looking for someone to be his partner in a homemade bike race called the Old Mil 5. He said it involved costumes, interpretive dance, and beer. That sounded fairly up my alley, so I decided to attempt to salvage my day since I was feeling like a loser for bailing on my original plans. Will is Canadian and dressed up as Captain Canada. I put on every red, white, and blue article of clothing that I own and he supplemented my costume with a blue afro wig and an American flag cape. We had to do some silly tasks (catching water balloons, coordinated dancing) before racing each lap around the block. It culminated in having to drink a 16 ounce Milwaukee’s Best before the last lap. It was gross. We came in third out of six teams, but there were no losers at the Old Mil 5 and we won best costumes, even though the people who legitimately had the best costumes (Mario and Luigi) won the loser award for coming in last. Another win.

I’m not sure exactly what everyone’s themes were, but from top to bottom you have a team in some kickin’ 90s cycling caps and gym teacher outfits, some misguided Twilight cyclists (who won, in their cycling gear and fancy bikes), conjunction junction engineer and hero zero (who trailed three wagons’ worth of “and or but” and nearly did some damage to vehicles in the road), Will and me, Back to the Future (second place), and Mario and Luigi.

I should mention that it continued to rain all day, so I found myself once again soaked. This time I had packed extra clothes and shoes before leaving home so I would be ready to stay out and watch the pro races at 8PM, but it was storming so much that I decided not to do that either. I went home and ate a lot of food instead. I must have eaten six meals on Saturday. It was out of control. I turned on our heater for a while and warmed up. My friend Kelly lives out near us and I went over to her birthday party, my final win of the day. Their house is always super fun and usually it’s the only time I stay up past 1AM on purpose. I slept most of the day yesterday trying to recover from that.

Ended up with a pretty light week…that’s what happens when you bail on a two hour workout!

4/18 sunday – off
4/19 monday – 5.1 miles, 45:00
4/20 tuesday – 8.08, 68:18
4/21 wednesday – 7.01, 60:00
4/22 thursday – off
4/23 friday – 7.11, 60:00
4/24 saturday – twilight 5k, 3.1 , 24:53

total miles run: 30.4
total run time: 4:18:11
total cardio time: 4:18:11

terrapin 5k plus one more mile

Somehow I ended up with a run-only week. School was kind of hectic and made going to the gym/spin classes not very practical. Tomorrow is another of those days, but I have my proposal defense on Wednesday (where you present your proposed thesis project to your department and people comment/critique) and after that there’s only a few more weeks in the semester. Having my last presentation done will be a big weight off, but I’m not finished editing it yet.

Yesterday I ran the Terrapin Beer 5k plus one more mile. I ran it last year; I think I need to branch out because I tend to like just doing something I know I’m going to like already. It was a bit of a sad day as I’d learned on Friday that Will Chamberlain, of Classic Race Services had passed away in his sleep overnight. Will was the race director for most of the local Northeast Georgia races and just a super nice guy. I didn’t know him personally (though I felt like I did), just through his races where he was always going out of his way to be friendly and encouraging to everyone. The race at Terrapin would have been his race and he always starts with his trademark, “have a good race and have a safe race,” which someone had written on a sign at the starting line. It was also a little sad to finish since he wasn’t standing at the finish line cheering people in while recording their finishing time. The race itself was pretty uneventful. It’s in the afternoon, so it was hot (though not as bad as last year when it was in the 90s, I think). There was a much bigger crowd this year as well. I finished in 35:35, slightly faster than last year.

I had a half of a half (that would be a quarter) of a Pumpkinfest and gave the rest of my beer tickets away so I could go watch roller derby/tailgate (and drink beer…). Mega tired today, maybe going to do a short run when the sun goes down.

4/4 sunday – off
4/5 monday – 7.0 miles, 63:21
4/6 tuesday – 3.03 miles, 26:15
4/7 wednesday – 8.02 miles, 73:11
4/8 thursday – 9.25 miles, 85:00
4/9 friday – 10.16, 90:54
4/10 saturday – 4.18 miles, 35:35

total miles run: 41.64
total time run: 6:14:16
total cardio: 6:14:16

the luck of the…

I have been super wiped out for the past week. School is busy and just as I got settled into some new work, my old work picked up a little again. It beats having nothing to do, that is for sure. I’ve also slept through the night multiple nights in a row for the first time in at least six months. I still wake up in the middle of the night, but I go back to sleep instead of waking up at 1:40am every single morning. My brain feels empty and sleepy already, so I am just going to check in with my last two weeks of running.

Also, I never win stuff online, but in one week I won a giveaway from Vanessa at Vanessa Runs, a Run Happy shirt from Brooks via the Brooks Running Club on Facebook, and Bondi Bands in week one of the Racevine winter giveaway (it just occurred to me that it’s not really winter anymore). Brooks usually gives away t-shirts on Fridays and the Racevine contest is on for a couple more weeks, so go submit reviews if you want to win. I need to win some free marathon entries, but I might need a little more contest mojo for that to happen.

Starting with pre-ING, what apparently was a mega taper week. What the heck did I do all week? Not sure.

3/14 sunday – off
3/15 monday – 3.25 miles, 29:00
3/16 tuesday – off
3/17 wednesday – 2.11 miles – 20:00, 45:00 spin class
3/18 thursday – 3.25 miles, 30:00
3/19 friday – 45:00 spin class
3/20 saturday – off

total miles run: 8.61 (!)
total run time: 1:19:00
total cardio: 2:49:00

And moving into marathon week…

3/21 sunday – ING Georgia – 26.36 miles (they were on my Garmin, I ran them, and I will take the extra .16) – 4:30:49
3/22 monday – off
3/23 tuesday – off
3/24 wednesday – 4.31 miles, 40:00
3/25 thursday – 3.22 miles, 28:01
3/26 friday – 1:00 spin class, 3.0 miles – 26:17
3/27 saturday – 3.15 miles, 28:28

total miles run: 40.04
total run time: 6:33:35
total cardio: 7:33:35

I have to mention that I played keg kickball for a couple of hours on Saturday and was in more pain than I’ve been in after any race (marathon pain is gone within two days, this was still lurking on Tuesday). Somehow I don’t think I can count this as exercise since beer was involved, even if it was mostly spilled all over myself.

I’ve run 16 miles so far this week, putting me at a somewhat weak 120.86 miles for March (down from 159.94 in February), but I can chalk that up to a pretty generous taper week (about 25-30 miles less than a regular week) plus missing a few days being sick at the beginning of the month. I’m going to shoot for 160 in April; no big races, just some fun shorties like the Terrapin 5k plus one and the Twilight 5k. I ordered and received a copy of the [Jack] Daniels Running Formula, so I need to open it with my hot little hands and figure out what torture to impose on my body to get some faster times.

twilight stroll by the granite bowl 5k

Brr. It has been really cold here for about a week. We rarely have temperatures below freezing, let alone daytime highs below freezing, so it’s been an adjustment. I knew I’d have a hard time getting up in the morning to run a race in the cold, so I opted to do this nighttime 5k instead. I ran this last year and was super cold, but I think it was around 40F that night. Last night temperatures were in the 20s and below, probably the coldest I’ve ever run in! I don’t know that I would describe it as exhilarating, but it’s better than 90F.

I set up my playlist and Garmin, then made it over to the Elberton Theater to register by around 8pm. When I went out to sit in the heat of my car, I noticed my Garmin was not responding to anything and was stuck on a time about ten minutes ago. Has this ever happened to anyone? No amount of messing with the bezel or buttons was getting a response, so I figured I was just going to have to run without a watch since my other cheapie watch wasn’t in my gym bag where I thought it was. Then I zoned out a little while jamming on both side buttons and it reset. Woop woop! The Garmin (it’s a 405) is really nice to have and I love the accuracy and feedback, which makes me all the more mad when it doesn’t function properly (IE not responding, bezel freakouts/barely being sweat resistant, taking a really long time to get a satellite signal). Also, they never sent me my $50 rebate from when I bought it at the beginning of the summer. I think I need to make some calls about that because $50 sounds pretty good right about now.

Anyway, I went inside and hung out for a while. A man played Georgia on My Mind on the piano and I noticed that pretty much every female in the room looked like she could be in my age group. However, I’m terrible at guessing ages and I think one girl was actually 15 and some others were in 35-39. Eventually it was time to go outside and start. I wore a fairly ridiculous outfit with the hopes of staying warm (full length tights with pink knee high socks over them+regular socks, hat, neckwarmer, halloween gloves, short sleeve+long sleeve+vest), but that definitely was not happening while standing around at the start. My teeth were clacking and my middle was practically convulsing. The race itself went by pretty quickly (though not really in finish time, haha) and knowing the basic layout of the course helped. You start off on a downhill, dipping and coming back up a small hill, and then turning onto a main thoroughfare which alternates between being flat and a very slight incline. That’s the first mile and a half or so and it’s pretty boring. You run in the right lane with cars going by in the left lane and the lane wasn’t actually blocked off, but there were a ton of police and firemen holding traffic. You take a right into a more residential section, run around a little town square, go back the way you came, take a right, and then you are almost done and you can see the cars by the finish line.

I ran most of the race behind this tiny master’s woman wearing shorts; at the end of the race inside the theater, she kind of said to herself, “this old gray mare ain’t what she used to be.” It was kind of awesome. Anyway, I was behind her and then there was another girl in black between us that I didn’t want to pass too soon. My legs weren’t tired, but my arms were super cold and I felt like I was carrying concrete blocks around with me. They were just dead weight and not helping me move at all. She kept shaking out her arms, so I imagine she felt the same way. With about a third of a mile to go when I could see the lights at the finish line, I decided to go for it. Then 20 seconds later, I was like, crap, I am tired and now she’s going to pass me. I managed to pass a guy and then let my legs kind of flop down the hill to the finish. You know, when you are just going, slap slap slap and not doing a whole lot of actual pushing off.

I finished in 26:21, which was slower than I would have hoped, but 42 seconds faster than last year. And it was super duper cold. I was wearing a Buff (love this thing) around my neck and had it pulled over my mouth so I would get some warmer air. I pulled it down for a minute because it was getting damp and when I tried to pull it back up, all the moisture had frozen it solid. My splits were pretty even; 8:25, 8:32, 8:27, and then 7:05 pace for the last .14. I should also mention that the volunteers/police/firemen here were all smiles and very friendly, even though they were standing out in the dark and freezing cold. The course is easy to follow and overall very flat with the exception of the hill at the very beginning.

Results:
finish time 26:21
1/6 age group
4/26 female
24/80 overall

I went to the gym this afternoon and eeked out four miles. Something in my [very bland?] lunch was making my stomach feel like it was on fire and even the promise of MTV True Life: I’m a Fanboy could not make me sweat it out any longer. Mustard, why are you going to do me like that? Lazy. So, I finished with a pretty light week both in miles and exercise time. Next week, I need to get in a long run sometime. Making statements with loose goals like “a long run … sometime” is how I end up not doing things. How about at least ten miles next Friday?

1/3 Sunday, nada
1/4 Monday 6.53 miles, 60:00
1/5 Tuesday 8.0 miles, 72:14
1/6 Wednesday 2.3 miles, 20:00 plus 45:00 spin class
1/7 Thursday, nada
1/8 Friday, Elberton 5k, 3.14 miles, 26:21
1/9 Saturday 4.0 miles, 36:47

totals for the week:
23.97 miles
3:35:22 time running
4:20:22 total workout time (cardio, not including any weights)

all over the place

Spring semester starts tomorrow. I’m ready for this after nearly a month off. I’m taking statistics, kinesiology (exercise and aging), proposal writing, and then my “special topics” class where I meet with my advisor about my thesis. It will be weird taking no nutrition courses (I’ll take the last of those in the fall). Hopefully it won’t be too bad since my two office-mates are in my statistics class, so I will not be floating around in the ether by myself. I’m really looking forward to the exercise and aging course after I read a few papers by the professor last semester for another project, but also a little nervous because it’s my first graduate course outside of my department.

Last weekend was a wash for workouts after going out for New Years Eve and over to our friends’ house for dinner/drinking on New Years Day. We had a good time, but I pretty much splayed out on the couch all weekend after that. Apparently, I’m not as young and resilient as I used to be. Can you believe that? I picked it up again Monday for 6.53 miles, 8 miles Tuesday, and then a quick 2.3 miles before my spin class this evening. My spin class has switched from being semi-dark/blacklight to being lit and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I really want the loudest, meanest instructor that will yell at me.

On the topic of things I want other people to do for me, figure out what races I want to run this year and when. I feel pretty tied to running ING Georgia (3/21) just because it’s so nearby, but it’s relatively soon. I would like to run another marathon maybe six weeks (give or take two weeks) afterward to capitalize on whatever fitness I have at that point before the summer heat kicks in. Repeat in October/December pending life not getting in the way. I’m not really excited about any halves because I don’t want to deal with traveling, though I would like to run more halves if it was convenient/inexpensive. There is this thing called the Run and See Georgia Grand Prix (link is to a Facebook group, the best source of info I’ve found on it), which gives you points based on your placing in your age group in races that are in the yearlong series (about 400 according to that page) and then lists the top 25 per age group at the end of the year. I was 18th in my age group; I’m not really sure how to interpret that. Mostly I guess it’s pretty good because I didn’t run too many of those races and I assume there are just a zillion people with a handful of points from running a couple of races that aren’t listed (my AG ranges from 1,011 points to 143). If I ran more of the races, I might be disappointed about it. I will admit it makes me want to run more of them to get more points! But that’s the point – to get you to run more races, which can be expensive.

There are two races that I was wanting to do, but didn’t realize until yesterday that they’re both this weekend. Twilight Stroll by the Granite Bowl (“You can run it or you can walk it!” according to the flier, which I love) in Elberton on Friday night and the Winterville 5 Miler on Saturday morning. Elberton is cool because it’s nighttime and small and cheap. Winterville is a little longer and requires getting up in the morning. It’s allegedly going to snow tomorrow and you never know how that’s going to go over around here, but I’d like to do one or the other just for fun.