weekly recap and hello november

I think someone took a cheese grater to my leg muscles this weekend…I’m not sure, though. This might be the first time the aftermath of a marathon hurt worse than the actual run.

10/24 sunday – Athens Half Marathon – 13.11, 2:02:50
10/25 monday – off
10/26 tuesday – off
10/27 wednesday – 3.62, 33:53 (9:22 avg)
10/28 thursday – 3.0, 27:14 (9:04 avg) + skated 5 miles w/ lisa, 34:20
10/29 friday – off
10/30 saturday – Ridge to Bridge Marathon – 26.22, 4:12:45

total miles run: 45.95
total run time: 7:16:42 (avg pace 9:30)
total cardio: 7:51:02

October miles: 169.94
October time run: 27:15:28 (avg pace: 9:37 – didn’t really pick it back up like I “planned”)
YTD miles: 1646.87 (surpassed last year’s miles with two months to go…woop woop)

athens half marathon

I ran the Athens Half this morning. This was the first year for the race and I think they did a really great job. The proceeds from the race are going to benefit AthFest music education programs, I think. They should have some impressive proceeds because the 2000 available registrations sold out; at $50 early and $60 late entry, that is serious (although I have absolutely NO idea what it takes to put on an event of that nature as far as cost). Putting on a huge annual event like AthFest probably puts them ahead of the curve on planning a decently sized race. They had lots of pre-race information available, a well organized, if not a little cramped, expo, nice shirts, chip timing and plenty of “honey buckets” at the start. Couldn’t hear a lick of the PA, though.

My “race” plan ended up still not much of a plan; run around marathon pace or so for the first 8 miles, then decide if I should go faster (if I felt great) or not (if I felt just okay). I ran the first few miles with my officemate from school, who made snarky comments about just about everything and that made the time go by until my ” very conservative” and his “first half marathon” strategies diverged and he headed onward (ended up finishing about 7 minutes head of me). I tried to stick with my main priority of not doing any lasting damage before Saturday and when I got to mile 9, I just kept going with no aspirations for speeding up. I don’t mind saying I walked in the last mile where the hill on Broad Street is and my pace for that mile showed it at 10:40, I think; I figured I was not going to finish in less than two hours at that point, but guessing by my actual time and the timing for that last mile, I was probably wrong. Oops. Totally used the marathon next weekend as an excuse to slack. Sometimes I can walk up hills faster than if I “ran” super slow. I finished in 2:02:50 (761 out of 1791 finishers). I thought about peeing for about 02:07:50, plus the ride home.

The main shortcoming of the race was that the water stations were kind of terrible with one or two tables set up together and it was too crowded to get water without stopping (the exception being the one on Boulevard). Several of them only had a handful of people volunteering with one or two handing out cups so it was mostly people stopping and grabbing a cup off the table and I skipped most of them for those reasons. It made me feel really bad for the people volunteering. I think they were supposed to hand out gel at mile 7, but I didn’t notice (or get it) because that station was super crowded with people stopping (had Shot Bloks anyway). Hammering out getting enough volunteers is probably rough, but they would have been a lot better if they had a table on either side or separate the two tables. The medal is a little dinky, but unless you plan on wearing it around, NBD. The course measurement was spot on – I stopped my Garmin at the line and it read 13.11. It was a cool event and I will look forward to running it again in the future.

I have been working on school stuff all afternoon and consider this probably the first day of a rough couple of weeks. The draft I have of my thesis is clocking in at 112 pages (including appendices)…MS Word just gave me a heart attack when I opened the document and it took a couple of minutes to show the full length. Walking the dog would probably be good for legs+sanity.

week in review

This was a pretty sweet week of dialing things down. Hopefully this time next Saturday, I’ll be back on this couch with a sore butt and another 26.2 miles behind me.

Tomorrow, I’m running the inaugural Athens GA half marathon. I am mildly pumped. The course is pretty nice and I ran it a couple of times early in the summer, but haven’t done it since then. I think that I remember the “worst” part being around mile 8 when you run a gradual slope up Sunset for about a mile. The neighborhood is boring ’70s houses, it’s at that point where you’re not almost done yet, and it’s just enough slope to stink things up a little. On the plus side, I discovered that I love incorporating running the opposite direction down Sunset into my long runs. I went to the race expo and picked up my number, etc this afternoon; it is really nice to be able to drive to an expo in 20 minutes and be done with it (I only ever have that happen when I do the Pinehurst Turkey Trot with my mom – all my other races have been out of town).

When I pulled into the parking lot, I waited for this lady in a Land Rover/Range Rover/whatever those are to straighten up in her parking spot. I sat there waiting for about 30 seconds as she moved incredibly slowly. Then a guy in a BMW in the spot behind her started backing out. I watched them both slowly backing up, neither of them looking in their rearview to see the car behind them. They got about two feet apart and I laid on my horn and they both looked over with dirty looks and I pointed at them, then they both finally noticed there was another person who was magically equally as oblivious as themselves backing up behind them…nice. It was ridiculous. The worst part is how slowly they were both moving, which you might assume meant they were paying attention to what was going on around them. Anyway.

My goal for tomorrow is nebulous. The idea of just comfortably running the route is okay, but I already know I can comfortably run 13, 15, 20 miles so unless I do it at a decent pace, it will probably not be much of a confidence builder for next Saturday. I don’t want to kill myself the weekend before the marathon, either. So, as usual, I will attack with no plan whatsoever and be mildly pleased with whatever happens.

10/17 sunday – off
10/18 monday – 6.56, 61:38 (avg 9:24)
10/19 tuesday – off
10/20 wednesday – 8.13, 75:52 (avg 9:20)
10/21 thursday – 6.71, 61:28 (avg 9:09)
10/22 friday – 3.12, 27:53 (avg 8:57)
10/23 saturday – 2.05 w/ spikey, 18:51 (9:12 avg) + skated 8.something miles with Lisa for about an hour

total miles run: 26.57
total time run: 4:05:42
total cardio time: ? haven’t checked yet, about 5:05

school daze

I have this habit of – I am trying not to say over committing – but basically setting a very high goal to get a ton done in a small period of time, getting halfway through no problem, and then realizing, oh, this is why I am freaking out – because I planned to freak out and be busy for a month or so instead of being kind of lazy for a couple of months. Of course, by that point it’s too late to give up even if I wanted to and nothing is ever really TOO bad. But I think the next several weeks will give me a run for my money on attempting to complete graduate school in as short a time span as humanly possible (short of getting a fake online degree or other non-thesis degree). This is to say, I’m kind of wiped at the moment and am having daydreams of napping. Luckily running makes me feel less homicidal than looking at the computer for 10 hours a day. My advisor recommended I make time for some runs. I don’t think she knows I run marathons…maybe she actually reads the tshirts I wear, I don’t know. Or she noticed that I’m perpetually sweaty. I guess it doesn’t take a psychic.

I owe a September recap and my miles from last week. Last week, most of my runs were in the evening and accompanied by some heartburn-y, stomach bloating thing that wasn’t really doing anything good for me. I am not sure what was going on because I didn’t eat within hours of running, so I am going to go ahead and attribute that to stress or something. No problems with my long run Saturday morning or so far this week. I’ve had a couple of long sleeved runs in the past couple of days…life is good.

september miles run: 175.45
time run: 28:14:50
avg pace: 9:39 (ouch, but not surprising)
YTD miles: 1476.93

Goal for October is pull my average pace back down below 9:30, where it hasn’t been since July. If I could do that in part by running a marathon faster than 9:30/mile, that would be sah-weet. I was going to do another 20 last Saturday, but was informed that was basically dumb planning so I decided to do 16 instead and save the 20 for this week. Oh, goody. I’m stoked to have almost all my long runs in the bag. It’s one less thing to think about. After that, I might do a 10 next week if I’m feeling sassy and then I’m running the Athens, GA Half Marathon the weekend before the Ridge to Bridge Marathon. I am feeling more or less prepared at this point, but I am really hoping that with the change in weather comes a return in some old speed I’ve been missing.

9/26 sunday – off
9/27 monday – 5.28, 47:26
9/28 tuesday – 4.10, 37:54
9/29 wednesday – off
9/30 thursday – 4.84, 33:00 + 3.38, 46:34 (stopped to see Brian along the way, so I reset in the middle)
10/1 friday – 6.02, 58:07
10/2 saturday – 16.28, 2:42:48 (10:00/mile), PM skated w/ Lisa 8.17 miles, 57:14

total miles run: 39.81
total run time: 6:25:49
total cardio: 7:23:03

fall races

The weather has been so good this morning that I finally signed up for a couple of races that I had been procrastinating, the Locomotive Half Marathon in Kennesaw on September 18th and the Athens Georgia Half Marathon on October 24th. I have been sitting in my office imagining being outside in cool, breezy weather but I can’t remember the last time I woke up and went outside to temperatures in the low 70s.

I ran Kennesaw last year. It was a bit of a boring course that mostly ran through office parks and shopping centers, but the pickings are slim for local September halves, so. The price is a little higher than last year (which was cheap). It was a toss up between this one and 13.1 Atlanta on October 3rd. I think my long run the week of October 3rd is about 22 miles and it wouldn’t make as much sense to build the long run around the half because I would inevitably at least be taking some break after the race before running the last 9 miles…at least in September I can either do a 19 mile long run another day that week or it won’t be as big a deal if I’m piecing two runs together. I’m also somewhat familiar with the area that the Locomotive is in and I think it would be easier to keep running around there if I opted to do that.

The Athens Half is the week before the Ridge to Bridge Marathon, so it will be my last long training run. My schedule calls for a 1.5 hour run that week and needless to say, I don’t run a 1:30 half so it will just be for fun. There aren’t any big local races and I did not want to miss this one. I’ve also run the course a few times…pretty stoked for this!

I can’t wait for long sleeve and shorts weather!

june recap

Hello, ignored blog. I have been pretty busy for the past few weeks with work+research so I haven’t kept up online super well, but I have had a pretty good month of June. Data collection is really draining. There is a lot of talking involved, more than I would generally prefer to do, and sensitive subjects (food, body weight, finances). We are more or less halfway through, I think. It’s been hot as a beast and I am happy to have made it through the first hot month of summer while keeping most of my runs outdoors. I am feeling a little slow and suffering more than usual, but hopefully that will pay off when the temperatures cool down…you know, four months from now, if we’re lucky. I have adapted a bit by running more days of the week but with shorter runs so I can wait until later in the day.

I had kind of an interesting short run the other night where I saw an armadillo, one of the few I’ve seen in person, much less scuffling along in the grass next to me…came home and had my second post-run allergic reaction in a week. Not sure what that is about. The first one was just my eyes, but this one continued into full blown swelling of my face. Our puppy had an allergic reaction to something the same night. He went to the vet because it persisted; mine went away the next day.

We’re getting some reprieve today with temperatures only in the mid 80s. I need to get up and do something, but I really want to take a nap! I am not feeling the computer today.

Here’s what I ran last week as well as my totals for June!

6/20 sunday – off
6/21 monday – 6.61, 60:35
6/22 tuesday – 4 miles, 37:02 (I actually got up really early to run instead of going at night and this was easily the grossest, most humid run I did all month)
6/23 wednesday – 7 miles, 62:29
6/24 thursday – 3.12, 27:21
6/25 friday – 13.03, 2:09:08 (ran the course for the Athens, Georgia half that is in October. I didn’t get up that early – started at 8-ish – and it was so, so brutal, although the course is pretty nice)
6/26 saturday – 6.62, 60:00

total miles run: 40.38
total run time: 6:16:55 (avg pace 9:20)

total miles run for June: 158.09
total run time for June: 24:13:20
average pace: 9:11/mile
YTD miles run: 900.3 (almost 100 miles ahead of this time in 2009)