Thursday, July 29, 2010

The Luckiest

I'm the luckiest. I have such a wonderful husband. Look what he sent me just because...


Oh yeah and after happy hour with some of my favorite ladies I went for a run. Not going to lie my ankle and calf hurt the entire time...not horribly but I could feel them like a sore muscle. First time I felt like I could have just kept making laps around my neighborhood.  It really is amazing the difference between dreadmill and outdoors. I think I finally settled into a pace that was sustainable for me...at least for now. Need to bump it up to reach my half marathon goal.

Stats:

Time: 39:45 mins.   Distance: 4.14 miles    Avg. Pace: 9:36 min/miles

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

So about deodorant

Last night was busy. After another crazy busy day I headed home to get ready for my sister and brother-in-law and our niece and nephews to arrive for the night. They had a busy day at Cheyenne Frontier Days and planned to crash at our house then head back up to Cheyenne for an air show later today. Anyway, I ran into the house, opened the windows, turned on our house fan…so hot, through the sheets in the dryer, fed our little fur-baby and headed to the gym. If I was going to get in my workout I had to do it right away.

Luckily there was actually a treadmill available. It was amazing for one to be open during the after work rush. I got on and started my 1200 meter warm-up. On the schedule I had 4x1200s @ 7:51-8:13 min/mile pace. First bad sign, I forgot my water. Second bad sign, there was already condensate on the windows.

Then a nice middle-ish aged women got on the treadmill next to me. I was almost finished with the first recovery interval when it hit me…the third bad sign. It was that awful I forgot my deodorant this morning but thought I could squeak by without it even though it’s almost 100 degrees outside smell. Yikes. Now of course, we’re all working out and I’m the first one to admit after a run I am smelly. But this was overwhelming. I actually began feel nauseated. It was stifling really in the heat of the gym.

Between that and knowing I had to hurry up to meet everyone for dinner at The Pumphouse I cut my workout one interval short. So I ended up doing 3x1200 @ 8 min/mile pace. Better than nothing right!

Stats:

Time: 40:23 mins   Distance: 4.5 miles   Avg. Pace: 8:58 min/miles

I went to dinner straight from the gym. Sweat and all. I’m sure Josh was thinking man did you forget deodorant too. It all comes back around.

Tonight I’m enjoying some Indian food with Rache at our local place, Flavors of India. It’s so good. Can’t wait to catch up and eat lots of saag.

Oh yes and a big CONGRATULATIONS to Hilary and Ed Lammon! They welcomed their baby boy on Monday. He's so adorable isn't he. No name has been decided on yet, so they're still calling him bean.

I think that he definitely looks like Ed, at least for now.

Monday, July 26, 2010

On the road again

By 4:10 am on Saturday we were on the road headed to the Westminster Park-N-Ride to catch the SkyRide to the airport.  I think I was nervous about the car purchase because I could not sleep at all the night before. Our flight was uneventful and we landed without incident in Dallas a few hours later. Mitch from Classic of Denton was there with our new car to pick us up! There it is, our new car! Of course it's not brand new, it's a 2009 Ford Escape Hybrid.

We headed to the dealership and after a few hours of paperwork and listening to the finance guy ramble we headed out towards home.

We were starving when we hit Bowie, TX. We made it to Main St. and saw this cute little place named Nostalgia Antiques & Soda Fountain that said they had fresh sandwiches.  I have never been to a place quite like it. It was a restaurant and soda fountain inside an antique store.  My Grandma Walker would have LOVED it!



We got our sandwiches, chips, drinks and desserts for only $23.  Love that all meals came with dessert. So tasty. I definitely recommend it if you happen to be in Bowie.  Don't forget to write on the inside of the phone booth.  We jumped back on the road and headed towards Amarillo.

We drove through small town after small town before we reached Amarillo early evening. The one thing all these towns had in common...Dairy Queen. The smallest one was under 500 I believe, yet they all had a DQ. Texans love their ice cream apparently.

First stop in Amarillo...the Cadillac Ranch of course! It had been raining off and on all day so of course it was one huge mud puddle. It was much easier to walk in barefoot.





We cleaned up in a nearby puddle and headed back out on the road. We had only made it a few miles before a big red barn caught our eye. 


Yep we ate dinner at a steakhouse called the Country Barn. It was delicious. Quite possibly the best apple crisp ever. It also had awesome sinks like this:


Only in Texas.  We were planning on staying in Dalhart, TX which was about an hour and a half away so we needed to get back in the car. Of course we had to stop at a western store.  You know it's going to be good when this is out front.


I had no idea that cowboy boots and hats were so pricey! I don't think there was a pair of boots under $200 and we saw a hat that was over $1k! 

Man it gets dark on 287 through rural Texas.  Of course we were too busy playing with our Sync system to notice that we were suppose to turn to get to Dalhart.  Figuring Boise City, our back-up wasn't far we continued North.  Yeah, Google Maps lied to me.  Boise City was not only not in Colorado, but it only had two motels and neither one of them were that appealing.  Here's where we ended up:


It may not have been so bad about 40 years ago but it was gross...totally rundown. At least the sheets were clean. Both Josh and I checked before setting foot in them.  I kept my flippy floppies on at all times outside of the bed.  Needless to say we never need to go to Boise City, OK ever again.  We got outta there asap.

The rest of the trip was uneventful.  We made room for the new car in the garage. My poor little Honda was kicked to the curb.



I did a quick run around our neighborhood. There was a bit much indulgence this weekend.

Time: 31:09  Distance: 3.29 miles  Avg. Pace: 9:28 min/mile

Total stats for the week:

Time: 2:19:55  Distance: 15.04 miles   Avg. Pace: 9:18 min/mile

I almost forgot! We went up to Ft. Collins to pick up our chickens from the farm. 



We are part of the Jodar Farms CSA so we get four fresh, natural, cage free chickens a month. Yep, I held a chicken.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Not Ready for That

I had this ingenious plan to do my 'long' run for the week last night since we'll be spending 14 hours in the car this weekend. Lucky for me, the run was only 6 miles. I'm doing two weeks of mileage build up with a week of 'taper' following the next cycle. Worked really well for Nashville so I'm doing it again.

We didn't get home from signing our new car loan until 6:30 which meant we weren't done with dinner until 7:30. If I was going to fit in an hour long run I needed to get my butt in gear and get over to the gym. Bad plan #1.

So I get to the gym and start running at a comfortable 10 min/mile pace. But one mile in I decided to make this run a tempo which is what I would normally do on one of my weekday runs.  Bad plan #2. I was not ready for a 6 mile long tempo run.

The first few miles were fine. I got to 2.5 miles though and the brat I had just eaten decided to get it's revenge. Yep, hop off the treadmill and get to the bathroom asap.  Back running again I got the next mile and a half or so down, started feeling nauseated. Awesome.

I paused the dreadmill at this point, drank some water and gave myself a little pep talk instead of telling myself I sucked at running and it's pathetic that this run is so hard for me. After all this was no problem at all a few months ago. Boo.

I finally finished the run. It felt like it took FOR-EV-ER. It was not my best plan ever to do this as a tempo run. Definitely going to hold off a little longer before doing a tempo longer than 4 miles...at least for a few more weeks.

Stats:

Time: 56:20    Distance: 6 miles    Avg. Pace: 9:23 min/mile
2 miles @ 10 min/mile pace   4 miles @ 9:05 min/mile pace*

*Yeah had I been actually thinking I'd have done 2 mile warm-up, 2 mile tempo, 2 mile cooldown.

Legs are a bit sore today but I'm pretty sure it's from my intense deep tissue tendon rub at PT yesterday morning. Yes, it made my eyes water and I winced in pain. Whatever it takes to get me back to 100%. I'm for it.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

If It Walks Like a Duck...

...it must be a runner after their first speed workout. I am sore today! Yesterday I was telling Josh how I didn't think the No More Trouble Zones DVD really worked me out as much as the 30 Day Shred (which was disappointing considering it's twice as long) because I wasn't sore at all.. I don't know if it was the combo of doing the DVD on Monday night then the speed workout, or just running intervals for the first time in months, but man. I swear I'm walking like a duck today trying not to work my thigh muscles at all.

I have to say this interval workout kicked my butt!  This is what I looked like after.  According to my training plan I needed to do 8x400 meter (.25 mile) intervals at about a 7:30 min/mile pace.  Note that this was my speed interval pace and not my sprint interval pace...eek.  I didn't note however in my plan what my recovery intervals were supposed to be so I made those 400 m @ 10 min/mile pace.  I know that there is a way to program this in my Garmin, but I'm lazy and would rather just have the treadmill do it for me.  Plus I'm pretty sure I would have quit all together or slowed down significantly had I been on an actual track.

Here's how it went:

1 mile warm-up-10 min/mile
.25-7:30
.25-10
.25-7:30
.25-10
.25-7:30
.25-10
.25-7:30

Already overheated at this point I took a 2 minute break to throw some water on my face...the gym was HOTT hot.

.25-10
.25-7:30
.25-10
.25-7:30
.25-10
.25-7:30
.25-10
.25-7:30
1 mile cool down-10 min/mile

Time: 52:26 minutes    Distace: 5.75 miles    Avg. Pace: 9:07 min/miles

This was hard for me. Just reinforced why I need to do this speed work.  Overall I ran 3.75 miles at the 10 min/mile pace and 2 at the 7:30 min/mile pace. Not fast for some, but definitely fast for me since I'm just getting back into it. Can't wait until next weeks torture, I mean speed session.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Lions, Tigers and Bears...or Airplanes?

Last weekend I conquered 8 miles. Longest run since Nashville...felt pretty good.  I started off out my front door but my stomach quickly put a stop to that. Apparently pizza, wings and beer are not a good thing to eat the night before a long run.  Oh yeah and ice cream. Almost forgot about that. 

Stats:
Time: 80 mins    Distance: 8 miles    Avg. Pace: 10 min/miles

For the week:
Time: 146 mins   Distance: 15 miles   Avg. Pace: 9:44 min/miles

Tonight I'm going to do my first speed workout. I'm actually really looking forward to it. I'm tackling 8x400s with the intervals 7:22-7:41 min/mile pace and rest in between. 



Back to the weekend. Later on Saturday we headed up to Winter Park for another night of camping.  Look at this douchy truck that was behind us. Really smoke stacks?

Anyway, lucky for us our friends Liz, Jared and Jason headed up early to claim a nicely wooded spot for us.  When we got arrived, got camp setup and got the fire going.  It's amazing how quickly it gets dark when trees completely block the sun.

Sometime around midnight Lucky was out exploring and came to a dead stop.  I swear, along with a few of our friends, that we heard growling.  Josh yelled to get Lucky. I retrieved our puppy and he, Russell and Morgan ran to Russell's truck.  Once Josh got there he called for me.  We had to make fun of him the rest of the weekend for running and leaving me behind. He swears he thought I was right behind him, but it's fun to tease him anyway. 

How would you not want to save this sweet puppy?
  
We don't know if it was a bear or an airplane as Jason said (did not sound like a plane). Regardless it was another fun time. We're working hard to make up for not going camping at all last year.  We're heading back to McConaughy again in a few weeks.  Can't wait!

We have another road trip planned this weekend.  We're heading to Dallas to pick up our new car!  We bought a 2009 Ford Escape Hybrid. I'm super excited to go pick it up! We're going to fly down on Saturday morning then drive it home. Hopefully there will be some interesting things to see along the 14 hour long drive home.  We'll also be listening to French on CD to pick up some phrases for our trip. Only 6 more weeks!

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Tempo Tuesday

I did my first tempo run in months last night.  I was pretty stoked about it. Josh and I headed to the gym because it was about a million degrees outside and in our unconditioned house. Even our humid gym felt pretty good. I wasn't planning on doing a tempo but after 5 minutes on the dreadmill I knew I needed some variety to get me through my 4 miles I planned to do.  I was one of those people last night....yes I ran in just my sports bra.  Well and of course shorts, etc. It was just so hot after the first mile and weighing passing out and being flung off the back of the dreadmill into the elliptical machines vs. showing some skin, I figured it was the lesser of the two evils. Here's how it went:

Mile 1-10 min/mile
Mile 2-8:57 min/mile
Mile 3-8:57 min/mile
Mile 4-10 min/mile

Distance: 4 miles    Time: 37:55 mins    Avg. Pace: 9:29 min/mile

Amazingly I wasn't even dying running a sub-9 min/mile. There may be hope for me yet. I picked up my orthoditics yesterday. I was instructed not to run with them until I can walk in them comfortably for 7-8 hours at a time. When we got back to the gym I put my sweaty feet into my need to be retired Asiacs and wore them for about an hour. I figured some sweat should help me break them in a bit faster. Now I understand why I shouldn't just run in them right away. They feel strange and are kind of hard so the bottoms of my feet were not happy.

Bit on the sore side today.  Knot in calf has reappeared and my ankle is tender.  Tonight is a cross-training day so Jillian Michaels is on deck to kick my ass.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Training Commencing

I ran 7 miles yesterday. Yes they were on the dreadmill only because it was already really hot out. That is officially my first long run of half marathon training. It felt pretty good though I felt like I was moving like a snail.  I did 5.5 at a 10 min/mile pace, then .5 at 9:30 min/mile with the last mile at 9 min/mile pace. I was just so tired of being inside that I wanted the run to be over. I feel pretty good about it. I did stop at 5.5 miles because I was having chest pains reminiscent of the pain I had a few years back caused by Costochondritis.  After getting some water and walking around for two minutes I felt ready to finish. My legs were a little sore after the run which I expected as it was my longest run since Nashville and the first time in months I've run that much in one week.

Last week's stats: 14.5 miles  Avg. Pace: 10 min/miles (we're going to be picking it up this week!)

I'm still having some pains today, but hopefully it's just heartburn from all the crappy food I've been eating lately.  Super excited to throw myself back into training...for real this time. I'm picking up my orthoditics tomorrow morning. Yeay! I also finished up my training plan which goes all the way up until the Rock N' Roll Marathon in Arizona this coming January. I'm not commited to the marathon yet, but the course looks pretty awesomely flat and it would be nice to go somewhere warm in January. Of course there are other expenses with traveling like that and I only have two weeks of vacation each year which I'd rather not burn right away again. Regardless, I thought having a plan intact would be a good idea.

I would really like to run a sub-2 hour half. My last half in Moab I ran just under 2:06 which was an 8 minute improvement from Denver. Pretty nice improvement I'd say.  Because I've been out of the game and am totally out of shape, speed workouts are a must and are twice a week for this training session much like last time.  I wandered over to the McMillian Running Calculator and it spit out my paces necessary to achieve my goal pending all else goes well.


I'm feeling a bit itimidated right now, but I'm sure once I get into the swing of things I'll be fine. The long run paces are no problem. We'll see how the rest goes.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

A Newsed Car?

We're thinking about buying a new car. This weekend was a good example of times when an SUV would just be much more convenient and useful.  We spent the 4th soaking up the booze sun at Lake McConaughy. It was at 100% for the first time in more than 10 year but more on that on a later post.

Josh's Subaru was great for the dirt roads and we were able to get it down to our beach campsite. The real problem was the lack of storage space. Had we been able to fill it to the top of a hatch we may have been able to fit Lisa back in our car so Shanna didn't have to drive to our house to drop Lisa off.  Oh well.

Of course our primary requirement for the new car would be it cannot be a HUGE gas guzzler. Now SUV and gas guzzler are basically one in the same but the new hybrids do open the options a bit.  We'll also be buying a used car. It just seems silly to buy a brand new car which loses it's value as soon as it's driven off the lot. Our top two contenders:

Toyota Highlander Hybrid

My Dad and Liz have a Highlander that they bough a while back and I really like it. I've heard it's like a minivan on stilts (Russell) but I don't care. It gets good mileage for an SUV and optional 4WD. I'm not really worried about the recall that happened this year. Most of them should have been fixed right now and if not, maybe we'd be able to get a screaming deal and then just get it fixed on our time.

Ford Escape Hybrid

This one gets even better gas mileage than the Highlander but it's still a Ford. I know they are have been working really hard to improve their quality but I still remember when Ford stood for Fix Or Repair Daily. 

Of course since my little Honda gets great gas mileage (awesome for my 81 miles/day commute) and it's worth basically nothing as a trade-in we'd be trading in Josh's car.  This would also mean Josh is the primary driver of the new one...boo...but on weekends and in bad weather it would be all mine.  This weekend we may venture out for a test drive to determine which we like better. Then we'll shop until we find the right one at the right price. There are about a million other things we could spend money on right now (hello air conditioner) but Josh's car is starting to wilt and we may as well trade it in while we can still profit.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Rolling with it

This week I found out my friend Heather is getting married! Yeay! She met her fiance Dan just a few months before Josh and I started dating at a house party we went to. I remember going back to the sorority house that night and talking about that cute guy she met. Last year they had their beautiful daughter Kylie and unfortunately I was unable to go to her baby shower since she lives in Boise...sad. Needless to say as soon as I got the date for her wedding I booked my flight to Boise!  I'll be heading there the weekend of Sept. 17-19th...yep the weekend after getting back from Europe. I'm going to be one tired chica.  It's also the same weekend as the Crossroads Half Marathon.  As excited as I was about the race, Heather's wedding is way more important.  So my next half won't be until October.

Last night I took to creating a training plan for myself with thoughts of training for the Arizona Rock N' Roll Marathon which is in January.  Not that I really want to go support the state of Arizona and their ridiculous, racial profiling, anti-immigration law, but it's an available winter marathon. Anyway, it's that or Vegas which is in December but I won't have vacation time until the start of the new year.  So I set out to create a training plan which is almost done. Heather just ran her first half so we'll see if I can talk her into heading to Phoenix for the race with me. My plan is based off of the Runner's World Less is More plan which has only 3 days of running. One speed workout, tempo run, and long run. It's all about quality and not quantity which works well for me. I'm also going to continue to cross-train and take a couple rest days per week.  We'll see how it goes.

Josh and I ran around our neighborhood last night. I have to say it was not my finest run.  It was only 3 miles but felt like eternity. It was my first outside run since Nashville and I could feel it. The treadmill is awesome because it keeps you at a steady pace. Last night my pace was all over the place. I ran as slow as 10 min/mile pace all the way up to 8:43 min/mile pace. Yeah, all over the place and panting the entire way. I'm not sure if Lucky's tongue or mine was hanging out further.  I felt so out of shape. Of course Josh was there to remind me that I've been injured and I'm out there doing it. It's going to take a little while for me to regain all my fitness. At least that is two runs this week for a total of 7 whole miles. Haha. I'm considering trying to get in a run early early tomorrow morning before we head to the lake but I'd have to be out the door at like 5, not sure that's going to happen.