Slow & Steady Wins the Race :-)

Easy recovery run to the dog park with Cooper.  My ankle is bothering me, the same tendonitis type injury that bothered me back in August.  Blah.  So I quit early, and let Cooper get his chase on at the dog park (the joy on his face!  He had some good chasing going on), then we walked the 1.25 miles back.  100 lunges (50 each leg).

Was excited for a sunny evening, rushed to get ready and we headed to the golf course.  When we got there, the sky was black and it was raining, BLAH!  WHEN WILL IT BE SUMMER???!!!!  

30 minutes of yoga / strength stuff - I WILL start doing 2 days of at least a mini-strength workout.  Taking it a little easy this week, 5+ weeks in a row of higher mileage and I think my ankle is telling me I need a lighter week.  And that I need to stop being an idiot and actually do my leg strength stuff. 

I'm taking it easy right? :-)  Lovely mid-day sunny (shockingly!) run at Burke-Gilman before my meeting / class.  Had time to run about 45-50 minutes, ended up running 52 minutes, last time I did this loop mapmyrun said 6, kind of seems doubtful, but whatever.  I did run moderate or hard almost the whole time.  Ran 6 minutes hard, break, 3 minutes hard, break, 3 minutes hard, break, then 6 minutes hard (mostly because I was worried I was going to be late!).  Some left shin pain early on (especially on downhill), some tiny ankle tendon pain later.  Overall felt good, it feels good to barely be able to breathe! :-)  Now to torture my meeting-mates and class-mates with my sweatiness.

In preparing for the summer in Singapore, I'm thinking of going to a full-fledged blog.  I can't decide.  On the one hand it seems to be more work, on the other hand it seems easier for posting pictures and letting non-frb-ers write comments.  Thoughts?

http://boringrunningstories.blogspot.com/

3 miles around the neighborhood this morning with Cooper - 29 minutes, 6:56am.  BRRR!  Wore my ear wrap but it was COLD.  

I have a race plan for the rest of the year!  That makes me happy.  I also ordered a replacement Garmin last night, YIPPEE.  Yay for my husband letting me. :-)  I made it 3 full weeks without it, but I miss it so much, just knowing exactly how far I've gone seems to be very important to me!  I also signed up for an Earth Day 10K in Tigard on Saturday. 

Race Plan:

Saturday April 23, Tigard Earth Day 10K

Saturday May 7, Snoqualmie Half Marathon

Sunday May 22, Keizer Iris Festival Half Marathon

Saturday July 23, Singapore Marina Half Marathon

Friday-Saturday August 26-27, Hood to Coast

Saturday September 10, Portland Warrior Dash (jumping over burning fire!)

Fall - A Fall Marathon with Lisa?  Possibly Winthrop September 25th or Leavenworth October 15th, however I just don't know if I have the motivation or the desire to be so injury-prone this year.  Maybe another half marathon instead.  Didn't see a triathlon on there?  Yeah, I'm a triathlon loser.

3:20pm, 48 minutes, 5 miles, Burke-Gilman

This morning when the alarm went off I was soooo not feeling it.  After back-and-forthing and snoozing like usual, I convinced myself that if I got up now and went to work, it would be the same as if I ran now and then went to work or went to work now and ran later.  So that's what I did.

So a nice mid-day semi-sunny run at Burke Gilman before class, 2 speed-ups in the last mile just to get the heart pumping. 

In other news, last night at the class I taught, one of my students says (this is nearly verbatim, not exagerating!), "My head is going to explode if you don't stop reading the PowerPoint slides like we're 12."  I was so taken aback I thought I HAD to have misunderstood her.  WHAT?  EXCUSE ME???  I mean I definitely want feedback, I know I have tons of room for improvement, but the exit slip where it says, "Is there anything else I should know?" would be the PERFECT place to share this, not in front of everyone in the middle of class, and so rudely!  Its good though, I need to thicken some skin. 

I was so excited to get to Oregon last night and see my brand-new Garmin.  I hugged it!  Then this morning, I woke up, and although it had said it was charging last night, it was so longer saying that.  It also wouldn't turn on.  WHAT?!  AMAZON!  What kind of crap are you sending me?  So that was a HUGE dissapointment that's importance will be revisited later.

Did the Tigard Earth Day 10K this morning, just signed up this week in my effort to punish myself some and get faster.  It was certainly punishment - I suffered big time.  Its funny that I enjoy doing this to myself, making myself want to die!  Got there too early (it was only about 8 minutes from home), did a 30 minute warmup (about 3 miles), went to the porta-potties a few times, got a bunch of free bars, and finally we started.  

Mile 1 - 7:53  (I downloaded some stopwatch app to my phone, that's where these splits came from)  Some uphill, lots of weaving at the beginning (should have started closer up)

Mile 2 - 7:50  A little more uphill, little rolling hills, this is feeling hard, but I'm continuously passing people and I like that. 

Mile 3 - 7:17  Some downhill which I try to fly down, my legs will probably feel that tomorrow!  Enter the pretty Cook Park trails (where I used to bike last summer when I lived here)

Mile 4 & 5 - 15:25 (7:44 avg) Here's where I suffer big time.  Mile 4 was a desolate time, I was feeling like keeping up this pace was impossible, and that I was going to totally bonk.  Then we came upon a fork in the road, everyone in front of me went right (looking at the course map now we should have gone left to stay on the trail), we entered some neighborhood, I was pretty much alone with one other guy and then 6 people about 200 feet ahead of us.  Then 3 of the people ahead of us turn left, the other 3 look confused and keep going straight.  I didn't know what to do!  I was already feeling so exhausted that running anything extra was going to kill me.  We kept going straight, and about 200 feet later I was certain we were not in the right place.  But we just kept going (luckily), and then we saw everyone else, relief.  I was also feeling discouraged because the mile felt never-ending!  Made sense, we missed the 4th mile marker (on the trail where we were supposed to be), and I felt SO happy when I saw the 5th mile marker.  With 1 more mile to go I knew I could do it and felt better and picked the pace up again.

Mile 6 - 7:01 (What What!!)  At the beginning of this mile a lady came up behind me and was passing and I started hanging with her, we ran side-by-side pretty much the whole mile.  I tried to pull away on this little downhill section, but after that I had nothing left, I was going as fast as I could at that point, there was no kick (if anything I went slower as we approached the finish).  So she pulled ahead.  I wanted to beat her so bad!  When I saw the results I was even more bummed because a) I got 6th (could've been top 5!) and b) because of the chip she only beat me by ONE SECOND. 

So this is an official PR - the first one of 2011!  By over a minute and a half!  I also got 6th place and 3rd in age group!  I had to leave right away to go golfing (we golfed 9 holes in this lovely 70 degree day, which I'm sure all the walking will help with any soreness), but supposedly age group awards are MEDALS?!  I would be stoked, I've never gotten anything but a ribbon before.  We'll see if they mail them.

Overall, extremely pleased.  This was very very punishing though, but that's what I set out to do - go as hard as I could for as long as I could and if I die, I die.  The only thing that is bothering me still is if it is REALLY a PR.  I think it is, no matter what, because of the 1.5 minute cushion, its a PR for me.  But I may have shortcutted .1 or so, I'm not sure (so it may be hard for me to beat this PR in the future!).  I tried to analyze the map but we're splitting hairs with the distance so without my beloved Garmin (key importance of earlier fail) I have no idea the true difference.  After I recovered I tried to go find that girl I ran with or the guy who I was running with earlier to check their Garmin splits (if they had one) but I couldn't find them, and most of the other people milling around were 5K runners. 

Anyway, absolutely LOVELY Saturday, felt great about this, lovely 9 holes of golfing, sunny 70 degrees, and a great dinner with the family and adorable precious nephew.