Building A Lot of Character

Well I finally had a running week to be proud of after a few less than stellar weeks.  The funny part is that it was in absolutely terrible conditions!

Monday: Hills Intervals on the Cooper River Bridge- started raining 1/2 mile in to my warm up, wind into my face going up meaning rain into my face on the up (granted the down intervals were even easier), stopped raining on my 6th of 7 repeats…go figure!!

Tuesday: easy 5 mile run, pouring rain, just being a tough kid

Wednesday: 50 minute tempo run and felt AMAZING for such a tough run…plus I ran into Tiny Terror during my cool down at the end.  Of course I was super creepy and out of breath and crossed the street like “Hey, pant, pant, blogs, online, pant, you blog, don’t you blog…pant.”  Sometimes I make myself look like such an idiot

Thursday: Rest; 45 minute yoga for cross training (still loving Yogaglo.com)

Friday: 10 miles at pace, learned for the 27th time not to eat Mexican at any interval of time before running, it never ends well, road the struggle bus to acid city, maintained pace by some unexplainable miracle

Saturday: 20 miles, more rain, felt good, no music/headphones, actually peaceful (yet another miracle)

Sunday: 5 easy miles, more rain, can’t stop getting soaked!

I think I did a total of 5 yoga sessions this week (1×45 minute, 4×15 minutes).  My legs have felt incredible and not at all limiting to my training as they have been.  I especially notice the difference when I walk Scarlett in the morning and climb the stairs at work first thing, that’s when my legs have been achiest (if that is a word).

I also spent some time in this position last night, which I love.  Easiest way to do something good for myself, minus having to look at my gross feet.

Hope you had a good training week too!!

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Scarlett is Two!!

My sweet, sweet puppy girl turned two this week.  I can’t believe it, time is just flying by!  Her birthday was actually Tuesday but I am a strong believer in the birthday week!

Really had to convince her she was allowed to have it

No longer interested in her new toy

She is a Chiefs fan, so this was her other present

I can’t imagine my life without this sweet girl in it.  Every day I get to spend with her is a gift.  I love all the time that I get to…

…help her with her fantasy team…

…run around the back yard…

…and just laze around with my girl.

Here are to many, many more years of Scar!!  Happy birthday to my one and only furry love!

Running Madness

After being so discouraged missing two runs in a row Sunday and Monday, the ridiculous Monsoon Tuesday was not enough to stop me.

I came home and immediately laced up before I could regain sanity.  I had 7x800m yassos on the schedule and my plan was to still do them.  I slopped through my first rep before realizing I had uploaded the wrong parameters on my watch allowing only 40 seconds rest in between reps (not sure how that happened) but there was no way to fix it on the run.  I decided, no worries I would do my 800’s on Thursday and do my tempo run for the run I was on, but I had already done an interval and was off trying to start a tempo run.  Instead, I decided to do a fartlek.  I never do these and thought it resembled a tempo run enough that it could be interchangeable.  I jogged two blocks to every one block pick up for the same distance I would have covered on my tempo run.  It went well and was fun, so nice to do something different.  I was absolutely soaked by the end and each of my shoes weighed about 5 pounds but I did it.  I actually got “Carried” in real life, except WAYYYY worse than it is in the theme song.

That’s what I thought of the 2 times it happened, but this is more what it actually looked like.

I was less excited than this kid.

Yesterday was an easy run leaving my Yasso’s to finally get done today.  7×800 is no joke and I was pooped by the end of them, covering 6 total miles and hitting my pace goal on each rep.  I am gearing up to hit some post run yoga from yogaglo.  Still loving it (and using it), so far so good!!

Monday Evening Confessions

My reinvigoration didn’t last very long.  Hence the confessions to come…

1.  I woke up to a rainy over cast sky and a promise of rain which didn’t sound like a good time to my blister ridden feet.  So I skipped it.  Then felt guilty about it all day.  When I got home I decided two things: a) I have 7 weeks left until race time which is plenty of time; b) I need to not do long runs on Sundays, the sacred day in our house hold which only belongs to watching football.  I made a plan to scoot all my runs one day forward, leaving Sundays with a short recovery run.  Much more realistic.

2.  Today was overcast all morning, then a monsoon in the afternoon.  Like, wind shield wipers on full blast and you still can’t see kind of monsoon.  I came home and looked up some yoga to do (more on this in a minute) before hopefully the rain would subside enough for me to still get in an easy run.  The rain never stopped which in Charleston means it was pouring AND I would be running in floods up to my knees.  So now I have gone two days without running and I feel like the biggest bum ever.  I get so down on myself so easily when I am training, especially because usually I never miss a run for 16 weeks, this training cycle I have really not been at my best.

3.  I discovered yogaglo.com today.  I signed up for a free 15 day trial and did a 45 minute cross-training for runners series.  My body feels AMAZING!!  I feel like I just gave my whole body so much love.  I am going to try to do at least 15 minutes of this yoga each day for my 15 day trial and decide if I want to keep it.  Maybe if I pay for it I will be more in to doing it more regularly.  A monthly membership is 18 dollars and there are literally thousands of classes for anything you could want, complete with pre-run routines, restorative and strengthening all directed at runners along with non-runner yoga routines. 

I am going to continue to peruse the site and at the end of my 15 day trial I will let you all know if I decide to re-up!

Do you ever feel completely deflated after missing a run or two? 

Reinvigorating My Running

My runs lately have been less than inspired, just checking them off of the list of things I have to do each day.  Sometimes that happens, and its okay but it was nice to be able to have some time to give myself a kick in the pants today.

It started with the email I got last night…

So that was pretty exciting, very far away, but exciting!

I spent some time this morning before heading out for my run reading Runner’s World which always inspires me and actually spent a decent amount of time stretching (go figure).

And guess what? I had a great run.  It was hot and humid and by the end of 10 miles I was ready to be done, but it was a good one.  It is crazy how much taking 30 minutes to prep your mind and body to hit the road will make a difference in how it goes!!

I know I won’t take as much time before my long run tomorrow but I will certainly take more time than it takes to shove a banana down my throat.

Good luck on your long runs tomorrow everyone!!

Crazy Week

Last Wednesday we had friends come in to town and the rest of the week was a whirlwind.  We didn’t really do any thing too exciting but spent a lot of time hanging out and going to the beach.  I was lucky enough to get a few good runs in the mean time.  But to catch up with random tidbits…

1.  We went to a restaurant called Leon’s on far upper King Street and I dove in to a fried chicken sandwich (after a 9 mile pace run of course) and it was fabulous and so worth it.  I especially appreciated the side of cucumber salad instead of fries, HUGE winner in my book.

2.  We took Scarlett to the beach with us one day and she had so much fun.  We haven’t taken her at all this summer, but I prefer to take her in the fall anyway when there are a lot less people around.

3.  Sunday was the first day of football!  My fantasy team got crushed, Eagles won, we all ate, drank and were very merry on this first day of a new season!

4.  My run yesterday was incredibly eventful including this…

The hawk caught the squirrel and it was still moving while I was taking this picture, real life Animal Planet

…then I fell.  And shattered my ipod. Got the skin of my hand stuck in the shattered screen.  Got glass stuck in my hand.  Had to put alcohol sanitizer on it all day.  Big fun!

My shoulder is actually the worst, I must have tucked and rolled but I couldn’t get a good shot of it.  If you have read for a while these pictures may look familiar because my cuts are all almost in the exact same places, right over top of the old scars.  Running is actually becoming hazardous to my health.

5.  I officially registered to go back to Boston today!!  Quite a few of our friends are going with us this time which will be awesome, I am so excited to share one of the best experiences of my life with more people I love!  Still haven’t registered for my race in November.  What is wrong with me?!

That pretty much sums up the high lights.  Hope your runs have gone better than that one!

 

Doesn’t Get Better Than This

We have had some friends come into town yesterday and more are on the way as we speak.  It is so fun having people in town, we love entertaining!!  I have been calling it early each night because of work but I am excited to be able to join in the festivities fully tomorrow night. 

I started my morning with my first cup of coffee with pumpkin spice creamer of the season.

After a regular old day of work (although every day is still an adventure) I called Casey to see what him and his friends were doing to find out they were at the beach.  I rushed home, let Scar out and got my running/beach stuff together.  I always seize the opportunity to run outside of my normal routes, and on the beach was a double bonus! 

It was a tough run to begin with, 45 minute tempo run, but adding the beach was a whole different element of hard.  I couldn’t find the right sand and for some reason the sand rubbed my feet really strangely, leaving me with many, many large blisters on the bottoms of my feet; not ideal.  Regardless the run was amazing, I peaked at the pace I was hoping for and felt great.  Plus ending with a refreshing jump in the ocean is the best way to go!

After leaving the beach, we headed to grab a quick bite to eat before coming home to watch the game. 

Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Salad

That is THE FIRST NFL GAME OF THE SEASON!!  It really doesn’t get better than September: pumpkin spice, beach runs, football season and cooler weather.  Bring on Fall in full force please!!

Real Life

So here’s the thing, real life really isn’t that exciting.  And guess what…? That suits me just fine.  I love having a predictable routine all week.  Monday: pumpkin spice latte day (starting this week), Tuesday: farmers market, Wednesday: grocery store, Thursday: thursday dinner with friends, Friday: well its Friday so that’s pretty self explanatory. 

What this leads to is much less to share that I feel like anyone really wants to read about, which is okay too.  It just means less than daily posts from me because I seriously don’t need to bore you all to death.  The real bummer is that every day I have so many things that I would want to share but because of HIPAA I can’t share all the stories that make me laugh, cry, want to scream and love my job daily.  What I can say is that my ego has been greatly inflated since I have started my job because I am luck enough to have someone tell me I am pretty almost daily, can’t beat that right.  It always helps that a lot of my patients can’t really see that well but I choose to forget that fact!

The highlights of this week really included three things:

1.  The first pumpkin spice latte of the year:

2.  This week was a cut back week marking halfway through training for Raleigh, meaning Friday and Saturday resting and a shorter long run of 13 miles tomorrow.

3.  Casey and his dad made our back splash and painted our living room and kitchen this week!!  And it is beautiful!

Wish the quality of this picture was better, need to get my good camera back out. They made this with wood from an old house they worked on and it turned out incredible.

Main man working hard

I am so in love with all of it!  So I’d say this week was a win overall.  The only bummer is that I have to work tomorrow because we can’t work Monday but have to make up the day.  Such is real life though…

Hope you are all having a wonderful Labor Day Weekend/last weekend of summer!

 

 

A Most Eventful Long Run

Today called for a 17 mile long run, luckily in much better weather than yesterday.  It was cloudy with a breeze/wind that really made the temperature tolerable.

Casey needed to use my car to get to West Ashley for a fantasy football draft, but I had plans to go to the beach with a friend (who’s husband was also at the draft) so I planned a run to go over to Mount Pleasant then back Downtown and out to West Ashley to finish where he would be drafting.

I headed out over the bridge into Old Mount Pleasant where I go fairly often and did my turn around at 4.75 miles to double back.  I trotted back through Shem Creek and toward the bridge to return Downtown and head toward the final stretch.  The upside of the bridge going back downtown is significantly steeper (though shorter) so I always bow my head and try not to look up too hard.  As I was staring down at the water, I noticed what looked like a boat flipped over and a man standing on top waving his arms; not exactly something you see every day.  People were running, walking and biking all around me without seeming to notice.  I finally ran into two ladies that seemed to be concerned.  We decided someone should call 911, the boat was sinking fast and no other boats were stopping to help.  I got on the phone and was describing what was happening to the dispacher and finally another boat came to their aid.  Once semi-uprighted, I could tell it was a small sail boat, this whipping wind must have toppled them over.  I continued to report the situation until miraculously both sailors had righted the boat and were some how sailing away!!  CRAZY!!  The boat that came to their aid rode along with them up the river, helping them as needed.  (I tried to get a picture of all this but it was way too small). 

Once I felt that the situation was sufficiently under control, I got back underway and headed down the other side of the bridge.  I stopped quickly to refill my water bottle before quickly heading back through town and out to my final destination.  While I was stopped, a man I had passed came running by as said, “You are an amazing runner, keep it up.”  It was such an uplifting thing to hear, especially from a guy that looked much older and much more experienced.  It was the perfect motivation to get through the last 7.5 miles.

In my final 4 miles I switched from my This American Life podcast to Things Mom Never Told You.  I was shocked and suprised to find an episode about the trials and tribulations of having curly hair.  It was the perfect thing to get me laughing (and commiserating) in my final miles. 

I finally made it to the house, feeling as good as you can at the end of a 17 mile run and was happy to spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the beach.

Hope you had a great weekend and wonderful long run!

Ice Bucket Challenge

If you are alive and have eyes and ears there is no possible way you don’t know what I am talking about here.

At first I was a little skeptical, what is this helping?  This seems silly if no one is actually donating!  What is this going to solve?

In actuality it has solved two things: awareness and huge financial gains for the ALS foundation.  They have (as of yesterday morning) raised 15.6 million dollars!!  That is real….that can make a huge difference.

It has gotten people talking.  People want to know what ALS is.  Yesterday while I was at the farmer’s market, I over heard 4 separate groups of people discussing ALS and what it is.  I even had one of the groups who wasn’t really sure say, “you look like you would know about ALS.  Tell us about it.”  I was wearing my scrubs of course, I don’t just wear that knowledge on my forehead.  But seriously, the awareness is out there and people are seeking information.  Ignorance is half the battle, which means a lot more people are half way there.

I searched (and watched, and cried through) a lot of videos on youtube to post here about ALS.  About how quickly and drastically it can change someones life.  I found a few that were rather long and this one that is a little shorter that explains how it starts, and tragically how it ends.  If you have a minute or a few and are interested this video shows the affect ALS had on this man and his family.

Knowledge is power and more people are arming themselves.  That is a major tick in the win column if you ask me!