the countdown is on

today marks the official one-month-until-the-marathon mark. 

i'm finally starting to feel all these emotions...excitement, fear, anticipation, disbelief.  it really hasn't seemed real until just recently and i still can't believe that in 1 month i will be a marathoner!!  almost time to get a 26.2 sticker for my car.  haha.

here's the course map and elevation.  i'm totally ready to get this party started!

days of the week

monday: treadmill time at the gym. tried to make it more interesting than the infomercial that was playing on the only screen in view, and did progressive miles. 9:30, 9:15, 9:00, 8:45, 8:30, 8:15 with a blast of 8:00 at the end. workout: 6.4 miles, 1 hour


tuesday: track day with the MVS striders. so gross out; nasty, windy and rainy. queue nancy kerrigan..."whhhhhhyyyyy?" we did 3 sets of 400, 800, and 1200 with 200 jogs in between legs and 400 jogs in between sets. (1:52, 3:59, 6:22, 1:55, 3:55, 6:11, 1:53, 3:57, 5:56) workout: 7 miles, 1 hour


wednesday: spin day with kertch! i hate spinning, but i'm hating it less! workout: lots.of.spinning, 50 mins

thursday: more treadmill time at the gym (drat that NE weather!). today includes a bonus shot of my back. in case you can't read in reverse, it says "you just got chicked" getting chicked is what happens to boys when they get passed by girls! :) workout: 4.9 miles, 45 mins

if ya'll like this format, give me a shout out and we can make every week just as fun!
http://shoppingandsuch.blogspot.com/ (for you FB peeps)

quick and random

found a few long lost pics on my phone and thought that the trio made an excellent "favorite things" post.

lady gaga: i loooove me some gaga


kara goucher: girl crush! call me kara! we'd totally make awesome besties.


pizza, food in general: doesn't my cart look staged? i'm normally not such a tidy shopper. :)


have a great hump day folks!!
http://shoppingandsuch.blogspot.com/ (for you FB peeps)

weekend recap

this weekend turned out to be very productive on the running/exercise front!

i DID end up getting my 12 mile run in on friday. the weather was perfect (i have gotten VERY lucky this training cycle in terms of long run weather), my transition from work to bike path went perfectly and on-schedule, and i thought i had escaped any friday the 13th hi-jinks. then my garmin battery died. 5 mins into a 2 hour run. wah wah. so i had to guess how fast i was going, and try not to run faster than i should for optimal non-dying-at-the-end-ness. i failed and the last mile was pretty miserable. its just so odd, i really don't feel like i ran any faster than i did during my 16 miler, so a 12 miler should have been a cakewalk. i already didn't like this particular bike path, so now i really don't like it. :P take that minuteman!

(i get childish and cranky in the afternoon (at work))

saturday - did pilates in the city (how posh) :) with the sis and friends. i am woefully inflexible, but this class was pretty good and i am still feeling it in my lower abs and butt-tocks 2 days later!

and on sunday, the impromptu 5k went mah-voulously. both sis and i PRed!! my time was 24:39 (7:56 pace) and hers was 30:08 (9:43 pace) we were so excited, we went right out and signed up for another 5k AND 5 mile combo on memorial day weekend. (you get a COMMEMORATIVE cup for doing both...swank!) any peeps in the 01844 should join us! its sure to be good times!

http://www.coolrunning.com/major/11/sonsofitaly/

i shall leave you with my outfit from 5k sunday. nothing too fancy. long sleeve tee (brooks), tights (lulu) and shoes (asics). i've got a whole bunch of running outfits i'm just dying to share. maybe this week, i'll do a "days of the week" running montage. kind of like "days of the week" underwear, but less exposed. :)

just a few race pics for ya

let's see...what to chat about...

well, tonight is week 3 of track practice. so far so good on that. i've got a 12 mile run in the lineup for fri since the weather is supposed to be pretty good. then on sat i'm being a good crosstrainer by going to (a supposedly very hard) pilates class with the sis and friend and on sunday i'm thinking of running an impromptu 5k.

sounds fun! would sound even more fun if it was sunny and 75 degrees for all that fun-ness. i am completely over these spring months. deathmarch was the worst. crapril wasn't much better. and dismay is just dragging on and on....come on namesake month!

ok, enough with the words. onto the not-so-cute pics! (side note, for a second there i thought i deleted this post. that would have been tragic and ya'll def would have missed out on these not-so-cute pics cause i am not one to re-write. phew!)

this was at around mile 2ish i think. i look tired already. i'm not! i just hate race photographers and after one too many failed smiling attempts, i just look down, hoping that they won't see me.

mile 5, i believe. see that overly smiley girl in front of me? yeah, that's why i look down.

i def remember this photog at mile 12. he was laying on the ground and i couldn't quite tell what he was from a distance, but i just kept saying to myself, "make it to the black blob on the ground, you can do it. just a little bit more to the black blob"

aaaaand the finish!! so happy to be done.

wallis sands half marathon - race report

since i don't blog as much as i should, i never actually included a post about my goals for this race. let me start with those.

i actually had a few levels of goals for this race:

a) run a smart race/don't die and/or finish in under 2 hours - this was my bare minimum goal
b) beat my previous best time (1:54:15) from the last race i ran, 2 years ago, right before i fell of the running wagon
c) better than 1:50:00 -this was def a stretch goal

the conditions on race day were pretty much perfect. very light wind, temperature was 50 at the start and 57 at the finish, flat course, and beautiful scenery -along the ocean for about 4 miles total

my plan was to run the first mile in 9, the second in 8:45 and then the rest at or under 8:30. i did pretty well with this plan (alright, re-looking at my splits, i may have been a bit fast) , right until the 9 mile mark or so, and then the wheels just fell off.

Mile Split time Split pace Elev. chg.
1 8:46 8:47 +3
2 8:29 8:29 +2
3 8:18 8:18 +16
4 8:13 8:14 +231 (wow, faster mile, biggest hill. hmmmm)
5 8:23 8:24 -167
6 8:19 8:19 -10
7 8:40 8:41 -8
8 8:37 8:37 -18
9 8:45 8:46 -10
10 9:00 9:01 -29
11 9:27 9:28 +17 (stopped to drink some gatorade)
12 9:17 9:18 +27
13 9:09 9:09 -66
0.1 0:50 8:25 +32

total time 1:54:55

in hindsight, i'm sure i just went out too fast, but i'm not actually upset that i did because it gave me the chance to try; to get to my goal pace and see how long i actually could hold it for. i'm really proud that i ran as fast as i did for as long as i did and it gives me a very attainable goal for the future: work on my stamina for miles 10-13 and hold that pace! i totally think i can do that.

so lets see. i sort of met goal A. i was pretty darn close to goal B. and goal C, well, ya know.

and oh, this race also reminded me that i need to work on my positive talk. if kara's mantra is "fighter" and mine is "i wanna die, just let it be over", then i can see why i'm not a world class athlete. :)

--hope to post pics soon. the race website is being soooo slow in posting them

march-ing along *groan*

stats for march: total miles: 109.1 miles, longest run: 10 miles.

right now i am logging my runs in a few different places. I use runkeeper cause I started with that one when I began my marathon training. Its also where the sis and bro-in-law log their runs so it is fun to see how everyone is doing. I also started using the software that came with my garmin as well as a free downloadable software that I heard good things about, but I only use those 2 for outside runs with my garmin so they aren’t very complete. I also have a spreadsheet I keep that is very simple; date and number of miles.

needless to say, I am looking forward to paring this process down. I think I’ll prob end up with the free sw and I’ll just manually enter my treadmill runs (or get a garmin footpod). the good thing about that option is that when I do a monthly stats, I’ll be able to give a total time and thus and average pace. I’m curious about what that might end up being.

sister and I went to the nashua rail trail for our 12 mile run this past sunday. it was refreshing to run on a flat surface…almost made the run seem “easy”. here is my ensemble from the run. Lululemon run:inspire tights in sprinkler, nike shorts, and nike jacket that was FREE with coke points.

is it wrong that I have over $300 in free nike and adidas clothes that I got with coke points? at least its diet coke!