Eat Drink Run Woman

Okay, so where is everyone?  Given yesterday’s major news I expected a deluge of comments.  Don’t tell me you actually HAVE a life.  Obviously you failed to comprehend what I was slyly telling you.  But I’ll give you one more chance.  Go on — go back and reread yesterday’s post, paying particular attention to the last line.  Take your time; I’ll wait.

Oh for heaven’s sake.  Here you go:

P.S.  Oh my goodness; I almost forgot to mention!  Based on my performance today, I’ll also be running a race back East the third Monday in April.

So now you’re probably asking yourself, “What’s the significance of the third Monday in April?”  Could it be… Groundhog’s Day?  No, that’s usually in early February.  Easter?  No, that’s on a Sunday.  Taxes due?  No, that’s April 15.  Solstice?  Come on, that’s June 21!  No, the third Monday in April is an obscure holiday called Patriot’s Day celebrated in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.  As part of the celebration they hold a marathon starting in the tiny town of Hopkinton.  I know, I know — seems crazy for me to travel 3,000 miles just to race in such a tiny town, but I’ve heard it’s fun.

Okay — I’ll stop with the coyness.

I FREAKIN’ BQ’D YESTERDAY!!!!!
My final time: 3:54:34.

(Gold stars to K80K, Angie, Leana and Running from 30 for figuring it out.  Nitmos receives only a silver star since he didn’t have a clue what the third Monday in April is).

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I confess: I’ve been holding back on you.

After pouring my heart out week after week, sharing the minutiae of my training for North Olympic, I decided to operate in stealth mode for a bit.  (Pretty funny coming from someone who has no problem sharing the intimate details of her biological functions).

However, it’s not that I haven’t hinted at my shenanigans.  After North Olympic my darling and I started thinking of other marathon goals to have besides Boston.  Given the Marathon Maniacs are based here, it seemed a natural.  We originally thought we’d try for membership after Disney (it falls 91 days after Royal Victoria; as long as we had run a marathon between the two we’d qualify).

But one thing led to another and we signed ourselves up for Skagit Flats on September 7.  We figured we’d run a November marathon, thus qualifying for MM status.  But once again, one thing led to another and we soon were signing up for the Tunnel Marathon, which was… TODAY!  A quick look at the calendar confirmed we’d be eligible for MM status after Skagit Flats, as that race is 91 day past North Olympic (their website states you need to run 3 marathons within 90 days, but I confirmed they’d allow 91).

I’ll post my race report soon, but we had a fabulous race today.  It was primarily downhill, going along an old railroad grade from Snoqualmie Pass to the town of North Bend.  We ran through a 2-mile long tunnel within the first three miles, hence the name (we had to wear headlamps which they collected at the end).  I was familiar with the final five miles of the race, as it ran along the same trail as the Mt. Si Relay.  It’s a wonderfully wide, compact dirt trail that’s easy on the knees.

So there you have it — I can soon officially call myself a “Marathon Maniac” (capital M).  Here’s my list of upcoming races:

Sept. 7: Skagit Flats
Oct. 12: Royal Victoria
Jan. 10-11: Goofy Challenge
June 29: Seattle Rock ‘n Roll Marathon

Knees don’t fail me now!

P.S.  Oh my goodness; I almost forgot to mention!  Based on my performance today, I’ll also be running a race back East the third Monday in April.

Oh that Nancy — she’s at it again, making us run.  Inspired by her trip to China, she once again held a virtual 8 on the 8th race on — you guessed it — 8/8/08 to coincide with the opening of the Beijing Olympics.

Originally scheduled to run nine miles with seven at marathon race pace, I decided to up it to 10 with 8 @ MRP.  However, given my late start I cut it back to 15K in order to make our dinner appointment with a friend.  But I’m no slacker — I ran my heart out for those eight miles.

My goal was to run a 1-mile warm up, then run two miles @ 9:10 pace (MRP for a 4-hour marathon, my BQ time), the next two miles @ 9:00, the next @ 8:50 and the final two @ 8:40.  If I felt good I could run faster, but I wouldn’t allow myself to run slower.

The first of the MRP miles was downhill, so I managed to run it in 8:42.  The next one was at 8:49, followed by an 8:48.  Fearing I wouldn’t be able to keep up that pace, I purposefully slowed for the 4th mile, running it in 8:57 (still faster than my goal).  The next two miles were at 8:48 and 8:49 respectively, but by now I was beginning to tire and questioned my ability to run the final two MRP miles at 8:40.  However, I must have channeled my inner Deena, as I managed to run them at 8:20 and 8:15.

Final time: 1:09:27.

Thank you Nancy for another fun race!

The folks at Runner’s Lounge are keeping it succinct for today’s Take it and Run Thursday. The theme? Write your running memoir in six words. Here’s mine:

From 200 pounder to Maniac contender.

I get home from work today, logged onto one of my running forums and saw the following announcement:

The newest Rock n Roll marathon is in Seattle on June 27, 2009. If you go to http://www.rnrseattle.com/ today August 5, you can register for half price! You must register before midnight today.

How could we pass up a deal like that?  The course isn’t published yet, but based on the brief description it appears it’ll be quite flat, save for the hill leading up to Greenlake (I’m assuming they’ll take us on Stone Way, which is .9 miles long, but very gradual).

So who’s with us?  Come on; it’ll be fun!  And since part of the course runs within 2 blocks of our house, we could always take a quick beer break 🙂

Now that more than half the year has gone by Amy and Tom over at Runner’s Lounge were curious to hear how we’re doing with the goals we’ve set for ourselves for the year.  When I set mine back in January, I was determined to make them realistic, yet challenging.  I didn’t want to come up with some arbitrary goals that were counter-productive to my marathon race training.

I’m actually quite pleased with my progress:

Goal #1: Determine my maximum heart rate
While the common method is to subtract one’s age from 220, that calculation is a bit off for me (it would be 176).  Based on several runs and tests, I’ve determined 180 is more accurate.  Why is this important?  Wearing a heart rate monitor provides another data point to analyze during your training.  I often go out too fast during my long runs, so I’ve come to just rely on my heart rate rather than my pace to make sure it’s in line.

Goal #2: Run at least 1,000 miles
Check!  As of my 15-mile run yesterday, I’m at 1,125 miles for the year.  I’m sure I’ll hit 1,600 by the end of the year, perhaps more.  I toyed with setting a goal of 2008 miles, but that seemed too ambitious.

Goal #3: Maintain a plank for at least 2 minutes, side planks for 1 minute
I’m definitely on track for this, although the front planks are getting more difficult.  Today I maintained a front plank for 95 seconds, and side planks at 55 seconds each.  I had slacked off a bit after my marathon, so I’m hoping by doing these 2-3 times per week I’ll reach my goal by the end of the year.

Goal #4: Fill out my arm weight routine sheet in 4 weeks at least 4 times
My gym has index cards where we mark down the weight, # of reps and sets for each exercise.  There are six columns on each side of the card, so by keeping my Monday/Wednesday/Friday routine, I would have filled the card within 4 weeks.  I did this twice, but have now changed up my gym routine to concentrate more on flexibility and strength training exercises for my legs.  So my new goal is to have at least 12 weeks between now and the end of the year where I go to the gym at least five times in a week.

Goal #5: Sub 2:00 half marathon
Check — twice!  My Mercer Island Half time was 1:58:02 and my Kirkland Half time was 1:53:35.

Goal #6: Get down to 155 pounds by March 9 for the Mercer Island half, 150 by June 8 for the North Olympic Discovery Marathon
Didn’t quite make this one (I was just over 160 for Mercer Island, 155 for North Olympic), but I’ve decided 155 is a good weight for me (I’ve had several of you express concern I was looking TOO skinny).  I’ve been a bit of a booze hound since North Olympic, plus we’ve been allowing ourselves a few more treats, so my weight has been fluctuating between 156-159.  But my goal is to not get above 160 (even during the holidays!) and to get my weight back down to 155 for race days.

Goal #7: Decrease salt intake
This is tough to measure, but I feel I’ve been doing rather well, especially after my doctor said my blood pressure was high just prior to North Olympic.  It’s now back down to normal, so I’ve probably been a bit more lenient with the salt consumption.  I know it’s not good for me, so I have to be diligent about keeping it in check.

Goal #8: Après-run junk food in moderation
Again, we’re doing rather well (although we allowed ourselves a burger, fries & beer lunch after a particularly tough 15-mile run last week).

Goal #9: PT exercises/stretching at least 5x/week
This is the area in which I’ve slacked the most.  Fortunately I haven’t had any hip or knee issues, but I know if I continue to ignore my PT exercises, they’ll come back.

Races:

January 12 & 13: Goofy Challenge — check!
March 9: Mercer Island Half Marathon — check!
March 16: St. Patty’s Day Dash — bagged on this one as I ran 17 miles the day before and needed a break
April 13: Whidbey Island Half Marathon — ran the Mt. Si Relay instead
May 11: Kirkland Half Marathon — check!
June 8: North Olympic Discovery Marathon — check!
August 17: Danskin triathlon — decided I didn’t want to give up an entire weekend to do this.  In fact, I won’t be doing any triathlons this year (but plan to next year).
November 2: New York Marathon — with the other travel we were committed to this year, I decided not to throw my name into the hat.  However, we will be running the Royal Victoria Marathon on October 12.

So there you have it.  If you were to grade my progress to this point, I’d say I’ve earned a B+.  Hopefully by the end of the year I can get that to an A-!

Although I’ve been somewhat of a slacker blogger of late, when I saw the theme of this week’s Take It and Run I knew there was no way I could skip it. ‘Cuz after all, I’m all about the food. (Besides, I’m sure they would have taken away both my runner’s AND chef’s cards).

When my darling and I first got back into running, we’d use our long runs as an excuse to indulge afterwards. An 8-mile run meant Flamin’ Hot Cheetos would be waiting in the car; 12+ miles would warrant a burger & beer lunch. But as we got more serious about our training, particularly when we set our sights on Boston, our food choices became much more healthy and sensible. We’ll still treat ourselves on occasion (nothing beats fries and a beer after a marathon), but moderation is our mantra.

Doing a long run after working all day leaves precious little time for fancy dinners, so we keep ours simple. One night it might be Suprêmes de Volaille à l’Écossaise or Pièce de Boeuf à la Cuillère or perhaps Ris de Veau à la Crème et aux Champignons. If I’m feeling particularly lazy, I might whip up a batch of Gnocchi de Semoule avec Pâte à Choux Patalina.

Um, yeah.

One need only hop over to my Ovens to Betsy blog to see I haven’t been doing a lot of cooking (at least fare that’s blog-worthy). But that doesn’t mean we’ve been resorting to pizza and other take-out. If we are to eat pizza, it’s made-from-scratch (although sometimes we’ll use dough from Trader Joe’s). And if it’s burgers we’re craving, I’ll make my own with either ground turkey or organic ground beef and cook ’em up on the grill.

So here I’ll share with you some of our favorites — breakfasts to fuel our races and long runs, the night before carbo-loading dinners, meals that are lower in fat and calories, and yes, even a few indulgences. Many of the recipes are posted on Ovens to Betsy, so hopefully you won’t mind clicking over.

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It’s not wise to do lunges, squats and wall sits on day you’ve scheduled a 9-mile VO2max workout with six 800-meter sprints. Your quads will hate you.

(Sorry for the short post. Summer has FINALLY arrived in Seattle, and as any local will tell you, you have to take advantage of it before it disappears for the next several months. My trip to Maine was relaxing, although I came down with a nasty cold two days in; GRRRR. But at least I had my Mommy — and my new sister-in-law — to pamper me. I promise I’ll write more soon!)

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned. It’s been two weeks since my last blog post.

I’ve been meaning to post for a couple days now, but when Angie emailed me to see if everything is okay, I figured I better write sooner rather than later (for some reason the concerned emails from the rest of you must have been lost in cyberspace). Rest assured I’m doing fine, but real life is getting in the way of my online existence.

You see, now that my marathon is over I’m left to deal with all the things I put off — housecleaning, filing, gardening, bookkeeping, feeding my cat (I kid! There’s no way in HELL she’d let us go more than five hours without feeding her). Normally I wouldn’t have any problems putting these things off even more, but my darling and I have signed up with a financial planner and need to provide them with all our financial documentation, including where our money’s been going. If we were organized folks that wouldn’t be a problem, but considering the last time I did any serious filing was during the Eisenhower administration, it’s meant I’m tearing through the house spittin’ and swearin’ looking for my credit card statement from April of last year.

So unfortunately that means you must suffer along with us and be deprived of my witticisms, at least for the time being. That said, there really wasn’t much to write about the week after my marathon. After all, I’m sure you’d get bored by post after post that said, “Didn’t run today; in recovery mode.”

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…

What can I say? It just wasn’t my day to BQ. But now that I’ve had my little pity party (and a few glasses of wine), I can see the day for what it was: an awesome experience, and a PR to boot! My official time was 4:15:19, which surprisingly puts me at 5th in my age group (let’s hear it for smaller races). Sure, I’m somewhat disappointed in the outcome, but I believe I ran the race as best I could. Perhaps I could have practiced better mind over matter and forced myself to run more in the end, but even then I would have only shaved off a couple of minutes at most. In fact, I’m glad I was so far off from my BQ time as I probably would be beating myself up more if it was within just a couple of minutes.

My respect for the marathon distance has intensified; you just can’t predict what will happen come race day. I know I have a BQ in me and believe I trained well, at least in terms of getting my body in shape for the rigors of 26.2 miles. I now have to figure out what’s causing the dizziness. It could be from dehydration, it could be from an impending cold, or — heaven forbid — it could be the symptom of something worse (I visited my doctor on Friday to have my Vitamin D level checked and my blood pressure is high. Hopefully it’s just from the stress I’ve been feeling over the race). I’ve learned many lessons from the experience and will train even smarter next time.

It’s clear I should have come up with a couple of goals for the race, rather than making a BQ the end all/be all. Although I’m thrilled with the PR, it’s not quite as fulfilling as I knew I hadn’t run the previous marathons to my full potential. If I hadn’t PR’d, it would have meant something went horribly wrong. However, PR’ing at Royal Victoria will be a good goal, and of course BQ’ing and possibly running a sub 4-hour marathon will be fantastic. If I had come up with a couple of secondary goals for North Olympic, perhaps I could have pushed myself just a tad more during the latter miles. But I’m not going to dwell on that!

So settle in for a long race report.

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