More XT...

Apparently the elliptical is my best friend this week.  I suppose it's a good way to get in a decent cardiovascular workout without over using my running muscles.  I did 70 minutes on the elliptical this morning, followed by 20 minutes of strength training.  Nothing too rigorous; 100 ab crunches using the stability ball, then reps of arm exercises using 5 pound hand weights.  Tonight and tomorrow night my focus is going to be on getting a good night's sleep.  We'll see how that goes. :)

I also wanted to direct any of you, my loyal readers, who may be training for (or would like to train for) your first 10K, half marathon or full marathon, to a great new feature on Active.com:

http://www.active.com/running/first-race 

If you go to this page you will find forums, tips and other helpful tidbits on running and training for your races!

2 miles and other things.

Last night I tossed and turned and I kept waking up feeling like my neck and shoulders were getting pinched.  When I finally got up for the day at 6, my head was pounding.  I rubbed some Icy Hot on my shoulders then headed downstairs to hit the Motrin bottle.  After I got the kids' lunches made and all of them off to school, I jumped on the elliptical for 30 minutes while I waited for my husband to wake up.  He had said he wanted to run together this morning, since we both only needed to do a short, easy run.  After he woke up, we walked to the park, then did a little over 2 miles in well under 20 minutes (woo hoo!), then walked home to cool down.  When we got home, I got back on the elliptical and did another 15 minutes.  I felt like I needed to get more exercise in today, but I don't want to do too much running.  Now my headache seems to be gone, so I'm feeling quite a bit better and I can enjoy the peace and quiet of the day...until the kids come home from school. ;)

Let the countdown begin...

Not much to report today; all's quiet on the home front.  My husband is at work and only one child at home with me, so I did a decent XT workout this morning.  I started out by doing 90 minutes on the elliptical, followed by about 15 minutes worth of strengthening exercises using the stability ball.  I'm looking forward to a week of short, easy runs and lots of good food, culminating in an awesome 26.2 mile run on Saturday morning! ;)

10 miles.

It was another hot and sweaty one today, but I opted to bring my water bottle with some Powerade - good call on my part!  I got up at 6am and was expecting my friend to meet me at our house at 7 so we could run our 10 miles together.  When she still hadn't arrived by 7:45, I started calling her and finally at 8am I just left on my own.  I still haven't heard back from her, and I'm praying everything is okay.  It is very unlike her to do something like that, and since she has a 4 year old boy going through chemo therapy right now I'm really hoping everyone's alright.

I did my 3:1 run/walk ratio and my run went well.  I felt pretty good, actually.  It was very hot, but again, another  "practice" run for the day of the race.  I finished with an average pace of 11:12 min/mile, so not bad.  I'm starting to think that's a pretty realistic prediction of what my pace will be next Saturday.  When I got home from my run I did 10 minutes of Pilates, then I did 30 minutes on the elliptical also.  My legs are feeling tired, but they feel much better than they did after my run on Thursday.  Hopefully the remainder of my "rest" week will go well.

Rest and XT.

Today is a rest day, theoretically.  I woke up this morning feeling very tired, which I think may partly be due to my run yesterday in the heat.  It seems it was harder on my body than I thought, and I may have gotten a little bit dehydrated.  I did manage to do an hour on the elliptical and about 20 minutes of easy walking on the treadmill and I actually feel better now.  I'm still contemplating what I may do in terms of my long run tomorrow.  My schedule has me doing 10 miles, but as sore and tired as I've been, with only one week until the marathon, I might do less and just take it easy the rest of the week.  We'll see how I feel tomorrow, I guess.

9 hot miles!

This morning I left for my run after dropping all of the kiddos off at school, which means I didn't get started until around 7:45.  That's a little later than I'm used to doing my runs, especially when I need to do a medium-long run like today's 9 miler.  It's a beautiful day out there, so I'm not going to complain, but I was dripping with sweat and my face and arms were beet red by the time I finished.  I guess it's probably good for me to do some of my training runs in the heat, since on marathon day, the second half of my run will most likely be in the heat of late morning.  I did make the mistake of not taking any water with me, though.  I don't normally take water on runs shorter than 10 miles, but today I probably should have.  After my run I did 20 minutes of Pilates, and now as soon as I finish my chocolate protein smoothie, I'll be taking a cool shower! :)

It's Wednesday, you know what that means.

XT day!  I began my workout this morning with an hour on the elliptical.  After that I used the stability ball to do 50 ab crunches, then some arm exercises with the 5 pound weights, for about 15 minutes.  Then I got back on the elliptical and did another 30 minutes, just because I can! ☺

The 4 miles that felt like 40.

This morning after we took all 4 kids to school, Chris and I headed out together to do an "easy" 4 miles.  He wanted to stick close to town so we could run by the park if he needed to use the bathroom there.  We basically zig-zagged our way around town, which made it seem like a really long run.  When we were at about 2.5 miles, Chris' knees were hurting, so he decided to head towards home while I continued on in an irregular route around side streets until I hit 4 miles.  It took me just under 42 minutes, so that's not too bad, pace-wise, but it was kind of a painful run.  When I got home I did 35 minutes of Pilates to work the kinks out of my legs.  I much prefer doing either a loop or an out and back run.  There's something about having a specific route and destination that propels you forward.

It's Monday and back to school day!

This morning I sent my three older kids back for their first day of school.  I still can't believe I have 6th grader, let alone that my youngest will be starting Kindergarten tomorrow.  Now that the summer break is over, I'll be having to make some adjustments to my workout and running schedule.  Today wasn't affected too much, since it's just a cross-training day anyway.  After I got the kids off to school, I jumped on the elliptical for an hour, then did 15 minutes of walking at an incline and using hand weights on the treadmill.  After that I sat on the stability ball for 75 ab crunches and a bunch of reps of arm exercises using the 5 pound weights.  I am surprised to find that most of the soreness is gone from my legs.  That's a much better recovery from Saturday's 14 miler than my last long run, which is definitely a good thing.  There's not going to be a lot going on running-wise for me between now and September 3rd.  This week: 4, 8 and 10 milers, next week maybe a couple of 30 minute runs or something, we'll see.  I'm feeling good and I'd really like to keep it that way!

14 mile run on the day of my 500th blog post!!

Wow...have I really posted 500 times since starting this blog a year and a half ago?  Crazy.  Well, this morning my (literal) trooper of a husband got up with me at 5:30, after he only got home from his shift at 3am.  We were out the door by 5:45 to start our 14 mile run.  It was dark and cloudy when we started out, I even saw a couple of lightning strikes off in the distance, but had hope that the storm was just over the mountains and would miss us.  We used the 3:1 run-walk ratio right from the beginning of the run.  We both have knees that bother us so we wanted to make sure we'd be able to make it the whole way.  Things went along just fine.  At the half-way and turn around point we had been averaging about an 11 min/mile pace, including the walking breaks.  On the way back, we did take one extra walking break when my husband's knee was really hurting him, which slowed our overall pace.  But we were still able to finish it out strong, and actually even ended up doing 14.16 miles total in about 2 hours 44 minutes.  And just as we were about a block from our house, it started to rain - timed it perfectly! :)