Posts filed under 'Marathon Momma'
So, a few weeks ago I mentioned needing to run between 7 and 8.5 miles to hit my next milestone on the marathon plan. I’m happy to say I ran 8 miles that day along the local trail. That meant Saturday was a nine miler. I got up in time to go out and beat the heat, but then, so did my son, and since my hubby’s never been one to go to bed earlier than way later than he should, didn’t seem quite kind to get him up so I could go run. Cameron and I went for a walk instead. Later in the day, though, when it was way too hot to be out pounding the trail, I did my 9 on the treadmill at the gym. Boring, but effective.
My marathon strategy is to recognize that I’m neither a fast runner, nor a great endurance runner. I can, however, run for stints of time over and over again, so Galloway’s method of run/walk works by me. At the moment, I’m a 6 minute run, 1 minute walk person, which puts me in at around 11 minute miles. (I did mention I’m not fast.) Since I just want to finish, preferably in under 5 hours, that puts me in good shape. This upcoming Saturday is my first training run with the local running club. I missed the cutoff date to get my entry bib into the Marine Corp marathon, but the local runners’ clubs have first-time marathoner entries. Gotta suck up the 6:30 am start time, and the ten mile + training runs, though.
In the meantime, I’m running loops at work at lunchtime, making good use of that afore-mentioned shower in the ladies’ room. The loop is 2 miles, with a nearly .5 mile trek to get there (with an almost .5 mile trek to get back). By the end of the summer, I want to run the loop twice, getting me a 5 mile trek. Short-term, I just want to run the loop itself without stopping. (Closer today, but still walked on the uphill side.)
I like goals. Running gives me goals, and accomplishments. Given how slow/out of shape I am, I can pretty reasonably continue to set incremental goals, and with some work achieve them. The upside to the side-effects of 3 pregnancies, too much beer, and too little exercise.
June 11th, 2007
7-8.5 miles tomorrow… yikes. I was driving back from Krispy Kreme tonight with the girls (today was National Doughnut Day, according to our favorite Krispy Kreme guy, Mr. Jeff), and was watching our van tell me how many more miles it could eke out on the last bit of its gas tank. 10 miles. Which looked to be longer than the distance from Krispy Kreme to get back home, in terms of how the Sienna’s mileage meter was counting. (Note that I stopped for gas before I got home, as I didn’t want to rely too heavily on that meter.) Still a darn long distance, though one that I need to be able to run/walk by the 16th to go on a training run with the Striders and get my marathon entrance. To make it to 10 by then, I’m supposed to run 7-8.5 tomorrow. I did 6 last weekend: very slowly, iterating on running N minutes, walking 1 minute. Starting to fathom just how much long a 5 hour marathon is…..
June 1st, 2007
Spoken by our 4 year old today - “Daddy can’t earn money, that’s what Mommies do.”
I’m so proud… she’s completely bucking social conventions, and doesn’t even know it.
May 23rd, 2006
Sunday workout - now that’s my idea of rest and relaxation. Sweating, pushing metal… it’s become my habit to go to the gym on Sunday afternoons. We’ll come home from the regular service, usually after going out to lunch, and then I’ll head to the gym for an hour or so before Jason heads back to play for the evening service. I used to feel a bit guilty about working out on the Sabbath until two things happened: (1) I ran into one of our pastors there on Sunday [granted, Sunday’s a work day for him], and (2) I realized that for me, working out is relaxation, both a mental and physical break from the ordinary jobs of software development and motherhood. It’s me time, all the better when I can convince a friend to join me there and talk as work out on the elipticals. Even more encouraging, I keep seeing a woman who’s obviously at least 7 or 8 months pregnant there, doing the same stuff as me, which gives me hope that I can keep this going. It’s nice to think that as I weigh in at the doc on Tuesday, that I can claim some amount of the weight gain as muscle mass. And if I can hold onto that muscle gain, then the baby weight oughta come off that much more easily.
The one gotcha I ran into today: a baby foot or arm, couldn’t tell which, in the ribs really isn’t conducive to working on the pec machine…
I keep asking my doc each visit, making sure this is all still OK. Each visit, she expresses surprise that I’m still able to do it, but keeps telling me that as long as I’m up to it, it’s OK for the baby. I’ll ask again Tuesday, but am sure hoping that I can keep this up for at least a few more months.
May 21st, 2006
The itch is back. Never really went away. Just went dormant for a while. 26.2 is calling me. Calling me to what looks like an impossible goal, at least in terms of aiming for this fall. My longest run of late has been 4. My brain’s sick enough to say, well that’s already 1/6 of the beast. (My brain also tends to give me the benefit of a few more miles after a long run: I’d rather not peter out 2.6 miles before end end.) I’m registered for a ten miler at the end of August on the theory that I’ve somehow gotta be able to run 10 miles then to be able to run 26.2 in October’s local marathon.
Jason’s out of town this weekend, else I’d push the 4 to at least 5 and maybe 6 depending on my hubris. I have hopes of waking up before the girlies tomorrow and putting in some miles on the treadmill, though treadmill running for me is a wonderful exercise in complete and total boredom in which I never seem to accomplish the miles that I intend. Put me out on the road or on the trail and I’ll make the distance, particularly if I don’t have to do multiple rounds around a loop where I get to make a decision to stop at some point. N miles is best done in an n/2 out and back kind of setup. Then I only really need to aim to get to n/2: after that n is inevitable, given that I gotta get home somehow.
Thinking/scheming tonight: half-marathon in October locally, full marathon on a flatter course in November near my sis. But then there’s no real backup plan: if I stick to the plan as-is right now, November can be my backup. Better get to bed, so the plan of the run in the morning can hold true, regardless.
July 2nd, 2005
Did a half marathon in October, with the intent of training up for a full one in February. Welp, life intervened: classes took more of my time than I thought, my training partner had some minor surgery that took her out of the training plan, and then of course, the holidays will take as much time as you let them. So, I’m nowhere near on track for a marathon in February. But … I do have hopes to run a half marathon in March on the local trail, and then run the full marathon in early June as part of our family vacation.
So, I’m out running my long runs on the weekends, and as much during the week as I can fit in. Today’s outing was 5 miles, which seems both short and long to me… used to be, just making it 2 required great concentration and perserverance. But on the other hand, I know that I’ve run 10 on that same trail, so 5 just seems so short.
To make the half marathon in March, I need to add a mile a week to my long run, which doesn’t seem so bad. I do an out-and-back route on a flat trail (the half will also be on that same course; need to check how flat the full marathon will be), so to add a mile, I only need to make it one more half mile marker down the trail - doesn’t seem so bad. Half a mile at my basic pace is a little less than 5 minutes, and heck, I can hold on for 5 more minutes. That it’s actually closer to a 10 minute impact I manage to block. But hey, 10 minutes isn’t so bad, either.
I think there oughta be a running book out there titled something like ‘Just 10 more minutes…’ Catch all the nonathletes like me that need to figure out how to get to this big goal. If each week I can just run ten more minutes than I did the previous week, I can run a marathon! Bet that applies in lots more situations: if each week I just spent ten more minutes studying, or ten more minutes listening, or ten more minutes cleaning - think of what I could do!
January 9th, 2005
My new favorite Christmas card: Santa running with milk and cookies….
If you’re interested in this Christmas card, or any of the rest in their line, see TriSanta
November 8th, 2004
Ran the Baltimore Half-Marathon this past Saturday. Posted a non-inspiring time of 2:35. For the non-runners, a half marathon is 13.1 miles. And the 2:35 would thus be 2 hours and 35 minutes by my non-official time from my watch. I think official times include that point at the beginning of the race where the race has officially started, but those of us near the rear are just sort of waiting to go across the starting line. I started my watch once my feet actually crossed the starting line - no fair cheating me out of the literally minutes waiting for the hordes in front of me.
I’d been told it was a runner-friendly course. And I had seen the maps and elevation charts of the marathon. The map of the half was posted, but the elevation chart never was. Turns out, that’s ’cause the half marathon was significantly more hilly than the full one, at least at the start of the race. The race was laid out such that there were several sections where one street equaled a mile. Those mile-long streets at the beginning of the race turned out to be uphill. So, at the bottom of the street, you can see the full mile laid out ahead of you, and it’s all uphill. Conquered the first one, grumbling a little. Conquered the second one, mildly cursing. When the third and fourth ones hit, my legs just plain oomphed out. Ended up doing a mixture of running and walking. Hadn’t planned on walking at all, but, ya gotta do what ya gotta do, and there was no way I wasn’t going to make it to that finish line.
Just to give you an idea of the shape I was in when I got done: the last couple of miles were downhill, for the most part, except for a major hill across the Howard Street bridge. I just walked that entire thing - didn’t have any gas in the tank, either physically or mentally, to power up it. When I crossed the finish line after running through Camden Yards, I was so tired that I had trouble sitting on the ground to stretch. Discovered my arches were cramping, the tops of my feet were cramping, the muscles along my shins and calves were cramping… When I tried to stretch all of that out, I got a muscle spasm along my rib cage so bad that I was concerned that I might have done some major damage (it seems I hadn’t: I’m fine today).
Today I’m more than a bit sore. I’ve had worse days after sports: playing the first game of rugby of the season would usually kill both my upper and lower body for up to 4 days afterwards. Today just my legs are in pain. Stairs are something to be contemplated carefully. But my feet are fine: very little blistering. I think I might even try a run on Tuesday.
I’m not sure when the next half will be, or when I’ll go for the full marathon (26.2). But I’m looking forward to them, and to building up my endurance (particularly on hills!) so that the next go-round, I win more decisively. Wasn’t sure in parts of the Baltimore run whether I’d have to cry uncle or not. But I now have a medal that says I beat the dang thing. And the muscle aches to prove it.
By the way, the 2004 results are posted at http://www.bkbltd.com/2004/baltimore3.htm. Apparently, I came in 1231st of the women entered in the half-marathon. Of 1530. Not great, percentile-wise. Plenty o’ room for improvement. But if I had been able to keep running at my 10 mile per hour pace (which I did for the first couple of miles), I’d have come in more around a 2:10, or 730th place. Looks like I need to do more hillwork. Given that I was doing 8 1/2 minute miles for the 5K last weekend, 10 seems within the range of reasonableness. Something to shoot for, regardless: I’ll test it out on the trail in the coming weeks at shorter distances and then build up to the 13.
October 18th, 2004
So, it’s Saturday morning and it looks like a beautiful day outside. Jason and his dad have plans to work on our deck this morning as soon as it’s reasonable to run power tools and not wake the neighbors. So, the long run needed to happen bright and early. No problem. Went to bed early last night so that I could get up super early and run before mommy-duty commenced (little girls and power tools don’t mix well). Jason stayed up, ‘cos he’d rather snag his goof-around time late in the evening than early in the morning.
Alarm’s set for a little before 6. A little before a little before 6, Cora yells out in her sleep. Which wakes up Callie. Which deep-sixes my run this morning. While Cora drifts back to sleep, Callie’s excited to be up.
Earlier this week, Jason had to wake Callie up at ten a.m., she had slept so long. Most days, both girls sleep until at least 8, and often closer to 8:30.
August 7th, 2004
Key lesson learned for races - get directions TO the race, not just the race course map. Never made it to my race last night. Couldn’t find the dern thing. Found the Capitol dome and lots of neighborhoods that I didn’t want to be in, but no race. I need one of those GPS runners watches just to GET me to the race.
On the plus side, Jason and the girls had gotten my ice cream in which to drown my sorrows. And frozen orange juice to dip into, in case I was trying to avoid the calories of the ice cream. And then I ran this morning - 3 miles on the treadmill while I was trying to avoid the rain, and then 8 miles on the trail after I decided to avoid the boredom of the treadmill. All I can say is, Ken, I was actually glad the softball game got rained out. The idea of sprinting around the bases was none too appealing.
July 18th, 2004
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