sweet sixteen

I ran 16 miles today! It's been a while since I've run that far.  Since Grandma's actually. Today's run went soooo much better than last week's long run. Let's see.....what was different?  Well,  I didn't eat a huge meal of oh so yummy rich food and booze it up the night before, and I also got more than 4 hours of sleep. I'm thinking that may have helped a bit. See? I ain't super stupid.

GarminElectra stayed with me for every mile. You never
know if she'll be interested enough to stick around for whole thing.

I ran the first 10 miles with the husband. He picked the route and let me go with him.  I tend to stick to the same routes and don't stray too far from what I'm familiar with (which equals boring but safe from the risk of getting lost); he's much more adventurous plus, he's not directionally challenged like I am.  It was a pretty clear cut route around a lake. It was a nice run.  It's funny how sympatico we can be - during mile five I felt the need to find a porta-potty.  PRONTO. As I was thinking that, the husband commented that he was feeling the same need. Isn't that cute how in sync we are?  And so romantic!!  And as luck would have it, we rounded a bend and - Ta Da!! - there was a porta-potty. I swear I heard angels sing when I saw it. We only got sort of lost once during mile 9 when we took a wrong turn in a neighborhood with all kinds of winding, confusing streets, but he got us back to the car safe and sound.

The place we parked the car was just over 6 miles from home. Perfect! So when we finished our 10, I walked the husband to his car and ran the remaining 6 miles home alone. Notice the final six miles are on a straight road. Keeping it simple (like me) and eliminating the risk of getting lost.  I ran with tunes for the first time in a long time (I usually only use my iPod when I'm on the TM) and I think it helped me to not have to listen to my labored breathing.  Remember when I  had a little tequila and downloaded a bunch of tunes from iTunes?  And remember my buyer's remorse and distain of "The Hustle"?  It turned out to be a good song to run to!! Who knew?? And turns out that my running app (iSmoothRun) pays attention to the songs that are played and the pace I run when each song plays.  So I learned that I ran fastest to "Push It" by Salt-n-Pepa.

Oh, and the ankle felt pretty good today!  I ran with my new inserts and they really seem to be helping. Whew!

If not for the wind, the weather would have been declared,"perfect for running," in my opinion at least. Dang, that headwind for the 6 miles home really sucked.  Other than that, the overcast sky and temps in the 40's...love it!

Here are today's splits.

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	3:00:35.4	16.02	11:16
1	11:27.4	1.00	11:27
2	11:32.1	1.00	11:32
3	11:11.8	1.00	11:12
4	11:18.6	1.00	11:19
5	13:30.5	1.00	13:30
6	11:11.0	1.00	11:11
7	11:09.9	1.00	11:10
8	11:29.5	1.00	11:29
9	11:30.2	1.00	11:30
10	11:14.1	1.00	11:14
11	11:43.1	1.00	11:43
12	10:05.5	1.00	10:05
13	11:04.0	1.00	11:04
14	10:30.2	1.00	10:30
15	10:32.0	1.00	10:32
16	10:54.2	1.00	10:54
17	:11.6	0.02	10:33

Oh, and one other thing - When the husband and I got to the parking lot after the 10 miles, I REALLY needed to blow my nose.  No kleenex on either of us, of course. So the parking lot is in this little triangle between two very busy roads.... I went behind a shrub with my back to the road but facing cars in the lot and tried to discreetly blow snot rockets.  I looked up when I was all finished and in the car directly in front of me (visible through the shrub since the leaves aren't all out yet) were two people making out.  Big time.  At 11:00 in the morning.  Who does that??  Anywhoo, I don't know if they saw me or not, but I'm guessing not since they looked kind of.....busy.  Discreet snot rockets - mission accomplished!

"anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung" Voltaire (1694-1778)

Life continues to be going at breakneck speed and my online fun time (blogging, Facebooking, Dailymiling) has taken quite a hit. I had a little alone time last week so I thought I'd do some catching up.  I poured a little glass of Don Julio Anejo (NOT 1942, unfortunately) and fired up the ol' Mac.  I logged my workout on dailymile.com, wrote a bunch of comments on other DMer's workouts, checked out Facebook, made some pithy comments on friends' posts there and then thought, "Hey, I should add some new running tunes to my iPhone!"

Long story, so I'll try to be brief...... Our house was struck by lightning a year and a half ago.  Along with several other appliances, my PC laptop was plugged in and it got fried. My iPod was set up to work with that laptop.  I have since switched to a Mac and am told that the music can't be transferred to the Mac from the PC. Whether or not that is actually true, I don't know, I haven't pursued it very much. (I'm lazy like that.) So now I'm adding music to my iPhone since I always run with my phone anyway. 

Don Julio's favorite songs

Still with me?  Cool!

Ok, so I must have had a little buzz going when I was perusing the plethora of iTunes tuneage because my final selections are all over the place.  Not sure what my newest collection says about me....... (The Hustle?  Really??  Takes me right back to 6th grade and learning the dance moves in gym class.) 

What can I say?  We all have pockets of bad taste.  I guess the most obvious thing my choices say about me is that I like some really dumb songs!

So. Marathon training - here's the week in review:

Week 3:  February 27-March 4

Monday 

Easy Run As Follows:

Warm up walking 5-10 min at brisk pace

Easy run 3 miles@11:34 min pace

Cool down brisk walk of 5-10 min

workout note: Ran with Jane around the 'hood.

Tuesday 

Hill Run As Follows:

Warm up walking 5-10 min at brisk pace

Run ½ mile Hill Repeats (find a nice long ½ mile hill that is pretty steep or 4.0% incline on TM).  4 x ½ mile hill repeat at 11:34 min pace.  Recover  with ½ mile at 11:34 pace and 1% incline (or jogging slowly down hill outside).

Cool down with finishing run to total of 4 miles at 11:34 pace.

workout note: Wow-this run kicked my ass.  It was waaaayyyy harder than it should have been.  But I got 'er done!

My fun Chicago run!

Wednesday Walked Jane 2.74 miles before heading to Chicago for a conference for work.

Thursday 

5 Miles Easy Run as Follows
WU w/ 5-10 minutes of brisk walking

Run 5 miles at 11:34-12:34 pace.

Cool down 5-10 min brisk walk.

workout note: I did this one in Chicago!  Ran along the lake with my new boss. We were having such a great run that we ended up going 6.69 miles at 10:25 pace.  Easy peasy!!!

Friday walked in Chicago and all over O'Hare.  I really have no idea how far I went but I do know that I got my 30 minutes in!

Saturday

Long Run as Follows:

WU for 1 mile at 11:34-12:34 pace

Run 10 miles@11:34-12:34 min pace

Cool down with brisk walk for 5-10 minutes

workout note: Ran the first 3 miles with the husband and then did the rest on my own.  Overall pace 11:04. Felt pretty good the whole time! I walked Jane another 3.31 miles AFTER I took an ice bath.

Sunday Rest day so I'll just be walking Jane today.

Have a great week, y'all!  

hold the whine, please

Pity, Pity Princess

So I had a little pity party for myself after the Get Lucky 7k because I wasn't happy with my pace, felt too good at the end, coulda/shoulda/woulda been faster if only.......

Blech.

Sort of forgot the fact that, HELLO, that was my fastest race ever!!  I have shown some real improvement in the last few months!!  My knee is on the mend!!  I'm starting to develop muscles in my abs!!!!  So many things to be happy about and proud of....

Not only that, but, ahem, let's look at what's going on elsewhere in the world and let's think about how lucky I am to be healthy enough to get out there and run a 7k.

Eventually I got over myself and pulled the plug on the pity party.

serenity now, dammit!

I'm starting to ratchet up the mileage now - this week I'm slated to do 24 miles total, including a 10 mile run on Saturday.  The weather continues to be rotten so I'm choosing to spend time on the treadmill, which I dislike.  Strongly.  Sooooo boring!!! BUT - yesterday's 5 miler, after a very rocky start, turned out to be a really nice run.

Anywhoo, so yesterday I was finally able to run at the end of my workday.  Changed into some running clothes, found my shoes, fought with what was left of the shoe laces after the cat chewed through them AGAIN.......

I so need this shirt

I was not in the mood to run so I thought I'd have a GU chomp to stoke the fire.  Walked through the kitchen to head to the workout room when I saw my laptop....  Ooo!! Shiny Object!!  I sat down in front of the computer, stalked dailymile.com and posted comments on other DM'ers workouts.  Finally saw the irony in that and headed to the treadmill.  Any benefit I may have gained from the single GU chomp was long gone by this point.....

Gotta tell ya, I was just not.feeling.it.at.ALL when I walked into the workout room.

Started the treadmill.....turned on the TV.....Hey, closed captioning isn't working, where's the remote that has CC on it?.....Crap, batteries aren't working on the damn remote.....screwed around with the remote, got off the TM and looked to see if I could manually turn CC on directly on the TV....finally in frustration, threw the remote down ("FINE!  I won't read the TV today!") making the batteries fall out.  Put it back together and Voila!  It's working!  I'm able to turn the CC on... (Ummmm yeah, shiny object girl likes to have the TV on mute and listen to her iPod while she runs, but she also MUST know what the people on TV are saying.)

Back on the treadmill..... Oops! Forgot to turn the fan on!  Off the TM again to turn fan on....
Back on the treadmill..... Dang!  Fans not oscillating!  Off the TM again to fix fan....
Back on the treadmill.... Screwing around with the iPod...damn, no pockets and no arm band!  Tied iPod to treadmill directly in front of me....

Soooooo, remember my run evaluation?  Another thing I do wrong while running is swing my arms so that they cross in front of my body.  That can pose a problem when I'm wearing ear buds connected to long wires that are connected to said iPod which is tied to treadmill directly in front of me......my wildly swinging arms ripped the buds out of my ears three times (each time quickly followed by an effenheimer outburst) before I decided I would just carry the damn thing.

Restart on the treadmill after untying iPod.... Crap! Forgot my metronome!  (Again, remember my run evaluation??  I need that to help me stay focused on shortening my stride, especially towards the end of my run when I get tired and start to get sloppy.) Off the TM again to get the metronome....

Are you tired yet?  I was at approximately the 0.3 mile mark here and just about ready to quit. But, brave soldier that I am, I pushed on.....

So here's the point of this really long (sorry about that) story: once I finally got moving and found my rhythm, I seemed to enter an almost trance-like state.... the iPod partnered with the metronome and knew just which songs to play..... I totally ignored the TV and instead just stared at the wall, felt the music and RAN....  Before I knew it, my five miles were done and I was in cool-down phase. Ahhhhh, serenity. One of my best runs ever.

Don't you just love it when that happens?