Running Army Wife

Well. I tried. Kind of. I will say I tried about as hard to continue train as I tried to relax. I knew I wasn't going to be able to totally keep up with the schedule , but I didn't know what to expect so I didn't have a set mileage goal. The vaca was just under two weeks long. Total mileage that I was supposed to do: 51 Total mileage that I actually did: 24 Yikes. Less than half. Florence The excuses: It was crazy hot.  I was staying in close quarters with my family, which made it pretty impossible to go to bed early so I could get up earlier.  Not all the areas that we stayed at were safe for me to go running by myself.  I wanted to enjoy my vacation without having to stress about centering it around running.  One of the two weeks was a "recovery" week with only 6 miles as the "long run." So I kind of just extended the recovery week to two weeks in the plan.  I still have over 3 months til the Marathon so it's still pretty da...

The Chicago Marathon is in a little over 4 months. That seems pretty far away, but my training plan is for 18 weeks so marathon training actually starts today .  It's been marked on my calendar since February when I signed up. Feels really sweet that it's finally here.   I've mentioned before that I really want to break 1:50 in a half marathon. This is a little problematic since the marathon training that I'm using offers no speedwork. I'm pretty sure speedwork is what enabled me to run my 1:54. So I'm combining Hal Higdon 's half marathon intermediate plan with the marathon intermediate 1 plan. Basically adding in the midweek speedwork (and maybe some hills?). I only planned it up to the my half marathon on week 7 though and we'll see after that. Technically I'm supposed to do a half on week 9, but is anyone really able to coordinate the races exactly anyway? And I have another half marathon scheduled for week 14. Hmm. Maybe it will be possible...

Today I did my first 10-miler of the year! Well. 9.8 miles actually. Had to cut it a little short because my brother (and recent long run partner) wasn't feeling so great. So I had to run the last mile by myself back to the house to jump in the car and drive back to pick him up from the bathroom at Walgreens. :/ Poor guy. Oh the side effects that come with running distance sometimes. Anyway. This long run was my best pace yet! At least since I was training for cross country in college.  When I put it into dailymile, I always put in the "moving time" so it takes in the "avg moving pace" which is a bit faster.. is that cheating? I figure that maybe it's not counting the time that I'm slowing down right before I stop at the light or something. Anyway. Obviously, I like the "avg moving pace" better. :)  Here are my splits: Yay! I'm so happy. My two 8 milers were good, but my 9 miler was not good last weekend. So it was really ...

Running is going really well for me right now. I think part of it is that I like my training plan better this time. It's the Hal Higdon Intermediate one. People from my old running club had been raving about it, so I decided to try it out. I'm in the middle of week 7 right now. Hal Higdon Intermediate Half Marathon Training Plan I had an 8-mile run last weekend. My average pace was a 9:08. I had run 8 miles the weekend before on the treadmill (I was actually supposed to race a 10k last weekend.. I decided to just run 8 miles again instead) and my average pace was a 9:35. And as I've looked back at my "long" runs, my pace has actually gotten better, even though I'm running a little longer each week. So that's encouraging! Half marathon PR on the way? Hopefully! I also just had a really good workout last night! My 400 splits were 1:53, 1:54, 1:40, 1:54, 1:54, 1:56, 1:55, 2:13 (had to turn around in the middle of last one so it slowed me down). But ma...

I've had my Garmin 405 a little over 2 months now. I love it. It maps my workout for me. It graphs out my pace and elevation for me. AND it's got this little virtual running partner guy that I can set to the pace I want. This is probably old news for a lot of runner folks out there that have had these watches for a while. I'm a little behind. I'm still super-excited about it. Yesterday, my training plan called for a 400m (quarter mile) repeats workout. It wasn't that cold out, so I decided to try out the "workout" feature for the first time. The Garmin connect website has this sweet little interface where you can build your workout.  So I did my little workout. I left through the garage and my poor dog was like "oh no! she forgot me! and took off after me. So those spikes in the beginning are me getting her back in the garage. Sorry, Moka, I'll bring you next time.  If you look at the graph, it's kind of cool to see when I sp...

Alright. Starting to get back into gear. Recently celebrated 6 weeks down of this deployment (thank God!). Still don't know about whether the deployment will be shortened or not. So I can't make plans yet about Chicago Marathon. However, I did sign up for my first half marathon of the year! Woot. So April 1st will be my first half of 2012. One of my 2012 goals is to finish 6 half marathons, so this is a start. It's actually the first race of the Chicago Half Marathon Series . If you do 4 out of 6 half marathons, you are automatically entered and you can get points by how you place in your age group. Sounds awesome, right? 'Cept they haven't updated their website for 2012 yet. So I don't actually know if it's happening. I'm all about it, if it is though. I started this half marathon training plan . I've also been going to my local YMCA for pilates and yoga. It's been a humbling experience. Sure I can run, but I have no upper body streng...

I have been wanting a little Camelbak for a little while now for my long runs. Sometimes it's hard to plan out water stops, so I figured this little guy would be perfect.  Isn't he cute? When he's filled up with water, he weighs less than 5 pounds. Because my dad flew in on Saturday morning, I decided to move my long run to Friday instead. I thought hmm perfect time to try him out.  I joked with hubby that it's my baby ruck sack. So.. I realize that it was my longest long run that I've done in a while.. and it was also the first one I did by myself in a while.. but it was not fun . I ran almost a 10 min/mile pace versus a 9:20 pace that I did for my last long run. I thought I would barely notice the backpack but all I wanted to do was throw it away into the bushes the whole time.  I can tell you one thing.. I will definitely not be wearing it for any races.  The good news is that I got it done and now it's taper time for my race on the 27th.  ...

Well, it's been pretty busy. After a little over a week of the Army getting our hopes up that the deployment might be delayed and shortened, we found out that it wouldn't be. He won't be home for Christmas, and he'll most likely be gone 12 months. Dangit. At least I can say that training went well this week. (btw that 22 is a bike ride , not a run.. just fyi) My in-laws are in town and will be for the rest of the week. It's been pretty crazy and we've been doing lots of stuff with family (hubby's aunts and uncles are all local here near fort lewis). I love family, but I'm so glad that I signed up for this half marathon so I have an excuse to have a few minutes to myself in the morning. A little part of me wishes that I could just have my husband to myself these last couple weeks.. but I have to remind myself that it's their son, nephew, and grandson leaving for Afghanistan, not just my husband. I kind of feel like we're standing on a divi...

Happy Halloween! :)  Last week was good. I technically had two long runs in one week, since I had to postpone the long run in week 1. So I sort of combined my long run with what was supposed to be a 6-mile run.. but I should be back on track now. This week's mileage should hold steady and come out to be around 24 miles as well.  I decided to move around some things in my plan. I had my bike day on Monday before, but I decided that doesn't really make sense since Sunday is a day off. Bike day should be a rest/cross training day. So I switched the Monday column with the Friday column. I got my pace tat for the Seattle Half Marathon. Omygoodness I'm so excited. I'm going for 1:57:30. That's a 8:57 mile. I ran an average 9:06/mile at the Chicago Half Marathon. So basically I only need to run 9 seconds faster per mile.. but it's on a hilly course. And the Chicago Half Marathon was totally flat. Hmm. My wonderful hubby said that he might run with me...

Well, I would love to tell you that things are going smoothly, but it's been a little rough. Here are a few changes/notes about it so far: I totally forgot that we had the Zombie Dash 5k on Saturday. So I didn't do my long run. Zombies don't run long. They only run short, fast distances. I'm trying to keep Sundays totally free to relax with hubby and have a sort of Sabbath. Because of points 1 and 2, I did my long run on Monday (yesterday). It went well, except that I miscalculated on distance so I didn't get the full 8 miles in. My achilles has been acting up again. So I'm biking today instead of running 6 miles.. then getting back on schedule. Gah. Not really a good report of the first week. I'm running with a club at Fort Lewis on Saturday, which is their long run day. So I shouldn't have a problem getting that run in this week.

I was recently re-inspired to run in the morning by Runner's World "Rise & Run" article in the October issue. In college cross country, we had to get up a couple times a week and be at the track by 6am. Thankfully, I never had to run 400s around the track for being late, probably because my roommate was also on the team and didn't seem to have as much trouble getting up as me (thanks Bekah!). But I did love running in the morning once we started. The getting out of bed and the shivering bike ride on the way out to the track were not fun. But once I warmed up after the half mile or so, the morning runs were bliss. I still remember doing an out-and-back run with another girl from the team. We ran out in the dark, chattering along. When we turned around at the half-way point toward the sunrise, we both gasped at how beautiful it was. But holy cow, it's hard to wake up without that accountability. I told myself I would get up at 7:30 this morning to go running. Hu...