Recap: Training Week 3

Recap of Week 3/12 of Half Marathon Training

The Hal Higdon plan my training plan is based on allowed for some smaller races along the course of the training.  Today, the plan called for a 5k; and I had no 5k to run this weekend.  I instead moved my Wednesday speedwork (postponed due to weather) to Friday, and ran my 3 mile pace run (that I missed last week) today.

3  1/24-1/30

Spin  +abs

3.5 mi  easy

6 x 400   @5k pace

Boot   Camp

Rest

Rest

5k?

Monday:

• 1 hour of Spinning + 
• 50 crunches, 50 oblique crunches, 25 bicycle crunches

Tuesday: 2.85 mi easy treadmill run

Wednesday:  1.5 mile thundersnow walk w/pup and hubs

Thursday:

• 1.85 mile romp through the snow w/pup and hubs + 
• cleaned 12" of heavy wet snow off the cars (and out from underneath the cars) +
• OnDemand Jillian Michaels' 6 week 6 pack part 1 (40 min) + 
• 20 tricep pushups (on knees) + 20 chest pushups (10 on knees, 10 on toes) + 1:15 minute plank

Friday:  3.54 mi run outside (6 x hills workout)

Sunday: 4.94 mi pace run incl. warm up and cool down

Speaking of my pace run, it was 38 and sunny out yesterday!  There's still snow everywhere, but I was set on running outside.

I wore some of my favorites: my Lululemon Run: Energy Pullover, with just a tank underneath, my Lululemon Dash Crop & Baseball cap (because of the sun!).  I started off with gloves, but realized I didn't need them about 2 miles in.

As I wrote before, my target half marathon pace is somewhere in the 10:23-10:41 range, preferably at the lower end of the range, of course.

Warm up was a full mile at an 11:37 pace.

My 3 miles were at 10:30, 10:41, 10:17 paces.

And I was feeling good, so I kept up the pace tempo for another .45 miles (10:12) (apparently a little too good).

Cool down was .49 miles at a 12:32 pace, ending with a little walking.

I'm actually pretty pleased that my HR stayed mostly around 170 until about 2/3 of the way through, but that's also about when I picked up the pace.

4.94 miles, 53:27, Avg HR 172.

The Hills and Victory

No, not the TV show... my Friday evening.

Hubs had a 4:15 colloquium yesterday (Really? Who schedules something for 4:15 on a Friday??) so yesterday evening was a perfect opportunity for me to squeeze in a run.

Due to the weather this week (here and here) I didn't run Wednesday night, and I didn't get to the gym for boot camp Thursday night.  So, I did a little schedule juggling and made Wednesday my rest day.

Thursday night instead of going to the gym for boot camp, I found Jillian Michaels' 6 Week 6 Pack, part 1 on Exercise TV On Demand.

Not saying it wasn't tough, but boot camp is longer, so after I finished the 40 min workout, I threw in some extras like 20 chest push ups (10 on knees, 10 on toes), and 20 tricep push ups (knees), plus a minute and 15 second plank.

Back to Friday-
Since I missed out on my Wednesday speed work, I did it Friday.  Except as per Mr. Higdon, I am subbing in hill workouts in place of some of my regularly scheduled speed work or tempo runs. (My April Half will have some hills).

It was 33 out and snowing, but it wasn't really sticking to the ground and it was kind of pretty.  However, they were HUGE snowflakes, and I took several flakes to the eyeball while running up hill. They were cold on my eye.

From the above-referenced link,

"Hills: Some hill training will help strengthen your quads and build speed. Look for a hill between 200 and 400 meters long. Jog or walk an equal distance between each repeat...You can substitute hill repeats for any of the interval workouts, or even in place of a Tempo Run or two if you want."

Here's what my workout looked like:

{click to enlarge}

As I've mentioned before, I live at the bottom of a hill.  The hill is about .20-.25 miles long (~320-400 meters) There are several parallel streets on the hill for me to choose from.  So I ran up and down the hill, six times.  I ran harder when going up, and took it easy while running back down, or running over to the next street.

I'm not sure if the elevation is that impressive or not, but it's what I've got, and it was way harder than running on a flat road!  I was pretty pleased with how quickly my heart rate recovered on the downhill too.


Saturday-
We were going to meet a friend at a favorite brewery halfway between us.  Turned out our friend wasn't going to be able to make it due to some car problems, but we were already in the car, so we went anyway.

I had the Turkey personal pizza; hubs had the Smoke House burger.  Both were delicious, as their food always is!  Here's the blurry other half of my pizza that I took home with me:

 They always have a fantastic selection of beer:

With our lunch we had the Schwarz Pils and the Dark Lager.

We filled our growlers with the Dark Lager and the Milltown Mild to bring home with us.

Fill in the _____ Friday

Fill in the _____ Friday!
I saw Fill In the Blank Friday on Alyssa's blog (here) and liked the idea!  So I'm borrowing it.

1. If my house was on fire and I could only grab 3 things I would grab
(I will assume the things with legs can get out on their own - like my husband and dog?) my laptop, my wallet, and my car keys? I can't say that the sentimental things like pictures are organized enough for me to count them as one item- they're everywhere.

2. A smell I really like is cinnamon, clean laundry, any baked good in the oven

3. Something you might not know about me is I was in Marching Band for five years.

4. Some of my favorite websites to putter about on are facebook, lots of blogs, and I can usually spend way more time than I mean to on sites like: awkwardfamilyphotos, shitmykidsruined

5. This weekend I will be meeting a friend at a local brewery (well, an hour away) for lunch and to fill up our growlers; running; then less fun stuff like doing laundry and cleaning the apartment.

6. Nothing makes me happier than a big latte (with skim milk). or a big mug of coffee.  Or I guess being in my nice warm bed on a cold morning (see here).

7. A bad habit I have is not going to bed on time.  I will have every intention of being in bed by 11 or 11:30, and then somehow it's midnight.  See number 4 above.

Happy Friday!!

Recipe: Vegetable Frittata and a Snow Day

To prevent this from becoming my 24/7 weather blog, I will start with the recipe first.

New recipe tried from the January/February 2011 Food Network Magazine: Vegetable Frittata.

 please ignore the tiny piece of food that got stuck in the crease

• 3 large eggs, 3 egg whites
• 3/4 cup 2% reduced fat cottage cheese
• 4 oz smoked gouda cheese, shredded (about 1 cup)
• 1 tsp minced fresh rosemary
• 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 16 ounce pkg of frozen mixed veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots) thawed
• Kosher salt
• 2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
• 1 scant teaspoon paprika
• 4 slices multigrain bread

A few things--
I used 1% milkfat cottage cheese, small curd.
I used a couple sprinkles of rosemary from a container, not fresh
I did not use Kosher salt (or any added salt)
I didn't buy a loaf of multigrain bread; we had a piece of wheat toast with it though.

I realized after I made this when it didn't look enough like the picture that I shorted myself on the egg whites... whoops.  Apparently basic math is hard at 8pm.  I think I needed the equivalent of about another 1-1.5 egg whites.  Oh well.

It tasted good, and it had lots of veggies in it, so that has to count for something.


But I have one major beef with this recipe:  It calls for a 10-inch nonstick ovenproof skillet.  (The photo also shows it being served out of a fabulous Corning Ware French white casserole dish, which it clearly was not cooked in, and it would never transfer so nicely into another dish like that).

I have a 10 inch nonstick skillet; but our Calphalon items are only oven safe to 350 and this requires the oven to be preheated to 450.  This means I made it in the 10" skillet, then slopped it over into a 10" Pyrex pie dish when it was time to transfer it to the oven.

After yesterday's post where I mentioned I couldn't believe we did not have a delay with my crazy commute...we had a snow day today.  We ended up getting about 12" of snow overnight from about 7pm until ... sometime over night.  I got the call from work at 11pm last night. 

Hubs and I walked the dog at about 6pm last night, and it was some kind of snowy, freezing rain, sleet mix.  There was also thunder and lightning!!!  (Thundersnow!?) I don't remember ever seeing lightning in the middle of a snow storm.  Then it turned to all snow, and it kept coming down.

I slept in til 8:30, made coffee, and got back in bed to read until the coffee was done.  It was warm in there!  Molly joined us.  Hubs got up and got me a cup of coffee. niiiice.  Molly loves snow days too.

And after I got out of bed, Molly stayed there.  Greyhound burrito:

This is what it looked like out our front window this morning:

And this is what we found on our 2-ish mile snowy dog walk later this morning:

The walk was actually a decent workout...we cut through the nearby park, which had not been plowed, and did not even have any existing footprints through it.  I took Molly into the deeper drifts and we ran through them - I was out of breath!

The roads were a sloppy mess though (see above packed snow, or below- frozen/wet):

After that we worked on digging out our cars so we'll be ready for work tomorrow.  That was quite an adventure too.  This was a much wetter, heavier snow than we've had lately, so it's not as easy to brush off the car (and to get out from under the car, so you can back out of your space).  I think that counts as a little bit of a work out too. Then we moved our cars so the plows could clean up those parking spots the next time they came through.

Lots of snow in the parking lot:

Anyway, the snow day made this another short work week... which means I have about two days of work to do in one day tomorrow...ack! 

I'm going to do an OnDemand video in lieu of boot camp at the gym tonight.  I'm also hoping to run tomorrow after work since I did not run last night or today.  I think the hill behind our apartment is looking to be mostly cleared off, so it should be in good shape for a hill workout tomorrow afternoon.

No Snow Day - !?

Here are some photos of my commute to work this morning.

It usually takes me about 25 minutes; today it took 1 hour and 10 minutes.

While the sand/brine mixture is a nice gesture, a plow really would have been the best choice.  Sand or "brine" turns the 4" of snow into 4" of slushy muddy mix, and without a plow, that slushy muddy mix remains on the road.

We had a 90 minute delay last Friday for a very small amount of snow.  Much less than what we have today.  No early dismissal for me either.

Here's what the next 24 hours will look like:

Delightful! 



Actually, since taking that screen shot, the rain piece has been removed from the forecast.  Now it's just rain, snow, sleet til 4 -- then snow and sleet after 4. 

I'm thinking my speedwork may have to wait til tomorrow :(  They're saying no unnecessary driving, and I don't know that a short speedwork session constitutes necessary driving to the gym.  We'll see how slick it is when I get home!

Anyone else getting this crazy storm right now?

Super quick post

Tonight I was supposed to do an easy run.
I also wanted to get some professional development hours at a workshop very relevant to my job being held only 2 miles from my apartment, and for a cheap $10.  When work doesn't provide very much professional development and you still need the hours to renew your certification, you'll take anything you can get!

After work, I stopped home quick, packed my gym bag, and headed to the workshop. 

When that ended at about 8:30, I headed over to the gym for my easy run.  By the time I got changed and on the treadmill it was 8:45.  My run should have been 3.5 miles, but ended up more like 2.85 due as it was getting late, and the gym was pretty full, so I adhered to the 30 minute max. 

Better that I got in 2.85 easy miles than nothing! (I thought about using the workshop as an excuse and not doing anything...but that would have been very lame of me).  When I got home, I found that more than half of the cookies I made the other night are officially gone.  I think I'm responsible for about 10 of those missing cookies over the past 3 days...

How promising does this forecast look for a good outside hills workout (immediately behind my apartment) or some speed work tomorrow night?

Wednesday: Rain and snow before 3pm, then rain and sleet. High near 36. Northeast wind between 6 and 14 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow and sleet accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

Wednesday Night: Rain and snow before 3am, then a chance of snow. The rain and snow could be heavy at times. Low around 26. North wind between 11 and 18 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 3 to 7 inches possible. 

Yikes.  We'll see what it is like outside when I get home tomorrow, and I'll see what I can do...

Is anyone else's running being affected by all this lovely winter weather?
Or do you usually run on a treadmill in the winter anyway?

Recap: First Two Weeks of Training + Sugar 'n' Spice Cookies

Half Marathon Training, Week 1 - in Review.

The schedule:

1  1/10-1/16

Spin  +abs

3 mi   easy

5 x 400   @5k pace

Boot   Camp

Rest

3 mi  pace

5 mi  long

Here's what I did:

Monday: Spinning
Tuesday: 3.13 mi run
Wednesday: 3.65 mi run
Thursday: 1 hour bootcamp + 15 minutes on spin bike
Friday: Rest!  But I did 150 crunches and a total of 7 x 12 reps of various lower back exercises on my stability ball (I did all the ones featured on that site).
Saturday: 4.09 mi pace run incl. warm up and cool down
Sunday: 2.5 mile dog walk (pushed back long run to Week 2)

Week 2 Schedule:

2  1/17-1/23

Spin  +abs

3 mi   easy

30 min   tempo

Boot   Camp

Rest

3 mi  pace

6 mi  long

 
What I actually did:

Monday:  6.22 mile long run (from Sunday of Week 1)
Tuesday: 1.56 easy miles + 45 minutes of kickboxing
Wednesday: 25 minute/2.17 mile tempo run on ice.
Thursday: 55 minutes of the super-intense beyond-boot camp class
Friday: Rest day
Saturday: Another Rest day...it was freaking cold, and my quads still hurt from Thursday. Seriously.
Sunday: 7.58 mi long run


I expect some deviation from my official plan...Hoping to stick to it exactly when other things come up is just setting me up for failure/disappointment/whatever.

Saturday, after going to see Harry Potter (good movie, but really dark-- people and creatures died on screen-- I was really surprised so many people brought their small children) and eating half my weight in popcorn (haven't gotten movie popcorn in a really long time!!) we came home, it was 6pm, dark and 17 degrees.  Additionally, my quads were still sore from Thursday night and my arches were sore (wahh, I know I'm whining). 

So I chose not to run.  My leg muscles were sore just sitting down and standing up. Instead I did a bunch of stretching for my legs. Luckily, my super awesome husband offered to rub my feet! It felt fantastic.

Sunday, I went for my long run. My plan called for 6 miles, but I had energy from not running for 3 days.  So I did a little over 7!  (Also, prior to my training plan starting, my long run was up to about 5 miles.  During Week 1, I did a 6 mile run when the plan called for 5. I decided to up my long run by one mile for now, giving me some added flexibility in my training - I can build up to 13 before the half if I'm feeling up to it, or I can take an extra week to build up later on, if needed).

It was about 23-25F for my run, and especially cold when my route took me through some open fields and I caught a strong breeze.  At least it was sunny!

And, now, so I can include some pictures in this post... Sunday night I made cookies!  I'm not sure where this recipe is from, but my mom has made these cookies at Christmas time for as long as I can remember.  When trying to google the recipe, it seems there are some variations floating around out there.

Sugar 'n' Spice Cookies

3/4 cup soft shortening (butter)                 2 tsp. soda
1c. sugar                                                1/4 tsp. salt
1 egg                                                      1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 c. molasses                                       3/4 tsp. ground cloves
2 c. flour                                                  3/4 tsp. ginger

Mix together shortening, sugar, egg and molasses.  Add dry ingredients mixed together.  Mix thoroughly. 

Super moist dough.

Form into small balls the size of a small walnut.  Place 2 in. apart on greased cookie sheet. 

Bake at 375 for 8-9 min. 

Notice someone (ahem, hubby) took one before I could even photograph them!

Roll in confectioners sugar while still warm.  Makes approx. 4 doz.  

I made the third sheet of dough balls a little bigger than the first two; we ended up with 43 cookies.

Perfect!  I had three or four last night just for quality control :)

Thursday night's Boot Camp kicked my butt.

I've been taking the weekly boot camp class at my gym for the last 6 weeks or so.  It is intense, and I usually feel it in some muscle group (or two or three) the next day.  This week, the regular boot camp instructor was out of town so we had a sub.  I was warned that this sub might be tough, but I had no idea!!

Some of the instructors for our gym's classes also teach at a local (bigger) gym.  I think last night's class is more like what the sub instructor does at her other gym:

BodyAttack
The sports-inspired cardio workout for building strength and stamina. This high-energy interval training class combines athletic aerobic movements with strength and stabilization exercises. 1 hr.

I was stuck at work late, and had half an hour to get home, get changed, and get to the gym.  My commute is about 20-25 minutes so I knew I was going to be a little late, and figured better late than not at all.

Well, when I walked in, the other two girls in the class were doing wall sits.  The instructor turned to me, and said, "Before you join them, I need you to do 20 push ups.  On your toes." Yikes.  So I did that, then joined them for some wall sits. We were then instructed to sit lower.  Then to pick up our weights and hold them with our arms straight, above our head (Why did I grab the 5lbs, not the 3lbs!?)

Side Note: Did you know the Guinness World Record for a Wall Sit is 11 hours, 51 minutes, and 14 seconds!? Check out how tired she is after 11:51:14 has elapsed.



My leg muscles are probably my the strongest of my muscles, and they were shaking.  We were told to put the weights down, then we were supposed to return to the wall sit and alternate lifting our heels off the ground.  It hurt!

The rest of the class is now a blur (maybe I blocked the pain out of my memory) but consisted of:

• plyometric lunges
• jogging in place while kicking our butts
• jogging in place with high knees (you can lift them higher than that!)
• jumping jacks
• this variation on a jumping jack
• tricep overhead extensions with 5lb dumbbells, 3lb dumbbells, and a single 10lb disc
• more wall sits 
• many planks and pushups mixed in (this time knees were allowed)
• jogging laps around the room (we were told to kick or butts while we ran?  It did not come naturally)
• jogging forward until she yelled, then we switched to doing "jacks" backward across the length of the room, then forward jogging, repeat...  
• abwork at the end including:
• crunches
• bicycles
• laying on your back with legs extended/feet as close to the ground as possible.

I'm sure this burned way more calories than my regular bootcamp, but I'm still a little sore today! (And it's Saturday afternoon).  I'm also sure that if I wore my Heart Rate Monitor, I would have seen that I needed to step it down a little or take more of a break between some of those moves.  My face was beat red at times, as were the faces of the other two in the class.

One thing I thought was interesting is that this instructor did not do the moves with us.  She might have done one or two to demonstrate a new move, but she mostly stood there and yelled.  The regular boot camp instructor did everything with us, and knew when it was time to take a little break or to switch to something else.

I think I'm crazy, but I would probably try a class like this again - just not every week.  I think those plyometric lunges and some of the knee-high jogging is probably rough on the knees, and my main goal right now is to be training for my April half marathon, with a little strength on the side -- not killing my body.

Anyway.

Good thing Friday was a rest day!  It was another 90 minute delayed opening for work due to a couple inches of snow that came in the wee hours of the morning.  This is what it looked like when I got my 4:57 am wake up call.  It was dark. 

Hubby also had a delayed opening but decided to work from home.  Working from home apparently also meant organizing our big sampler of K-cups for our new Keurig machine.

After work we tidied up the apartment a little then met a bunch of friends for dinner at a nearby Hibachi restaurant.

I was on the end, and the chef seemed to enjoy picking on me, as I missed the zucchini he tossed in my direction about 4 or 5 times before catching it in my mouth.  After a failed onion volcano, he asked if we wanted more fire, to which we answered yes.  He then held his lighter and whatever is in that squirt bottle of theirs in front of my face and told to me to open me mouth...haha.

I should be doing a 3 mile pace run today.  It is cold out!

This morning we met friends for breakfast (bagels), cleaned the apartment some more, then decided we would finally go see the Harry Potter movie this afternoon (the one that came out back in November) with a movie gift card we got for Christmas.  After sitting for 2.5 hours, I may be more inclined to get in my 3 mile run this evening, regardless of the temperature.  Sunday should be fine for my longer run.  I'm glad Monday is a gym day! Brr.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Recipe: Curry Cauliflower and Beans Soup

Sometime over the weekend (Saturday?) I made a new recipe courtesy of my favorite grocery store in the world, Wegmans.  And that recipe is: Curry Cauliflower and Beans Soup.

As you can see, a nice simple list of ingredients. 

Basically you throw the onions in the pot with some oil, cook them a while, add the stock and cauliflower, cook until the cauliflower is soft, then add the beans and curry, then use an immersion blender. Done.

I'm all about easy recipes.

1 cup of this soup has only 90 calories, 4 grams of fiber and 5 grams of protein. The only unhealthy thing about it is the French Fried Onion pieces.

The recipe makes 8 one-cup servings.  We maybe got 7 bowls out of it, but I'm sure my husband's servings were a little larger than mine.

Sunday I postponed my long run in favor of going for a longish walk with hubby and the pup.  Hubby didn't get Monday off from work, so I spent the time with him Sunday and planned to do my long run on Monday.

Monday I was off from work.  In the morning I spent some time uploading newer music to my mp3 player (including the newer Black Eyed Peas album: The Beginning -- because I got a lot of mileage out of the E.N.D., Far East Movement's Free Wired because songs from that album were coming up on playlists everywhere, and Taio Cruz's Rokstarr).

Soon I realized that it wasn't going to warm up much beyond 24 degrees so there was no point in waiting.  I bundled up and headed out into the cold with my music for my long run.  It ended up being 6.22 miles!

I tried to focus on keeping my HR low at the beginning, but I picked up the pace over the last mile and a half, and with that came a higher heart rate.  It may have been that I was on the shoulder of a busier road and wanted to be done with that part, it may have been that I encountered two deer carcasses on that same stretch of road and wanted to get past them as fast as possible without breathing in the stench (gross!).

Anyway, that's not a bad thing, because in the advanced Hal Higdon plan, he calls for doing some long runs at a 3/1 ratio -- first 3/4 at a slow pace, and last quarter at half marathon pace.

Lap times: 11:29, 11:29, 11:39, 11:45, 10:48, 10:31, then the last .60 was at a 12:26 (ending with a little walking).  Because I had just done my long run, I did not go to spinning that night, I'm hoping to stay injury-free!

Tuesday (that's today!)  We had a 90-minute delayed opening at work due to a combo of snow, rain, freezing rain, sleet, etc. all in the wee hours of the morning.  I learned about this delay with a 5:10am phone call. It's hard to go back to sleep after being woken up (and with what seemed like all the plows and salt trucks of NJ convening in the parking lot behind our apartment), but I managed, and appreciated being able to sleep in.  Then I got to scrape an inch of ice of my car while standing in several inches of a slushy mix.

This may look snowy, but don't be fooled- it's ICE. Yes, I stopped in the middle of cleaning off my car to document this.

This is not typical NJ weather. 
This is like spring Western NY weather (I say this based on personal experience).  One time I had to scrape ice much thicker than this off my whole car in APRIL. No joke.  April of 2003. You can google it. (not my pictures that I linked to).

After work today, I went to the cardio kickboxing class at the gym (about 45 minutes), which included some push-ups, exercises with 5lb dumbbells, and crunches at the end.  Afterward I ran an easy 1.56 miles on the treadmill at a 1% incline.

Hooray, tomorrow's Wednesday already!

Too many shoes

This is one example of why I need to clean out my closets.

-I currently wear the Sauconys at the far right, purchased end of Aug '10.
-I wore the blue and orange NB 904TRs for my first half last April and my summer 2010 running. Still wear for hiking and spinning.
-The Asics are from end of Sept '09 thru end of March '10. Still wear for spinning.
-Next pair to the left are NB 892s I got in June '08, when I was maybe running 5 or 6 mpw. Wore for my 5k in July 09.
-The pair at the far left is the NB607 I bought in May '07. (Thanks to gmail for saving my entire life history since January 2005).

Clearly I no longer need (at least) the left 2 pairs.  Has anyone ever donated to soles4souls or a similar organization?

First pace run

This afternoon was a balmy 37F. Overcast, with light wind.
Today I was supposed to do a 3 mile pace run with a warm up and cool down. [pace run = half marathon pace]

I decided that while training for this half marathon, I will work more with a range of paces than a specific pace.  Previously I'd stress a little if I didn't hit, say, a 9:46 pace for an interval.  For a non-elite like myself, how likely am I to hit a specific time anyway.

Basically, my goal is a sub 2:20 half...
2:20 half = pace of 10:41.
2:18 half = pace of 10:32.
2:16 half = pace of 10:23.

So for my pace runs, my target range is between 10:23 and 10:41.
I think this will allow me some flexibility.  Later on in my training, I can figure out where in the range I have tended to fall and I can hopefully have a better idea of a realistic time as my training closes in on April 2nd.

Back to today.

This morning's breakfast, made for me by the hubby:

We only had one egg left. But we had a container of egg whites.  So it was a mix of 1 egg + egg whites for 2 breakfast sandwiches.  We didn't have a large selection of veggies in our fridge (cauliflower or carrots don't work on a breakfast sandwich) or any meat to put on this, so hubby cooked up some onions in the best basting oil ever. Plus some shredded cheddar cheese. All on a whole wheat English muffin.  With some fresh pineapple.

After trying to work on the Friday WSJ crossword puzzle and farting around on the internet for too long, I put on my running clothes and prepared myself for a 3 mile pace run.

I warmed up by walking a package to the post office, only to find the lobby had already closed and my box did not fit in the blue drop box.  So I walked it back to my apartment and left the package and set out jogging for the rest of my warm up.

Warm Up: .6 mi. - 9:12 (15:19 pace) Stopped for a quick stretch.
First Lap: 1 mile - 10:34
Second Lap: 1 mile - 10:16
Third Lap: 1 mile - 10:29
Cool Down: .49 mi. - 6:18 (13:00 pace)

Totals: 4.09 miles in 46:52, avg pace: 11:28, avg HR: 169.

{click to enlarge}

Note, my run was not entirely flat.  Neither is my half marathon course though.

I must admit...the first mile (after the warm up) felt a little rough as it began with a decent incline.

Then the wind hit me as I approached the top of the hill.

I started thinking of excuses for why I could maybe walk for a little bit once I made it through the first mile. Then I thought about how I would have to report back on my blog about what really happened on my run, if I gave up on a short 3 mile run. I encountered some un-shoveled and icy sidewalk and began telling myself there was no way I could run at the speed I wanted to without falling on my butt. I was starting to question whether I even had a realistic goal time for this upcoming half marathon. 

ALL BEFORE I GOT TO THE END OF MY FIRST MILE.

What's my deal!? I don't know why I was being such a wimp and so down on myself, but after I hit the first mile at 10:34 I gained a little confidence.  I talked myself out of a walk break. and kept running. I entered a nearby park that was mostly clear, with occasional packed snow sections.  I thought I should take my effort up a notch to compensate for the extra resistance from the snow and ice. And I banged out a 10:16 mile!  Third mile was at a 10:29 pace, then I slowed down to a jog and finally a walk for my cool down.

Anyway, it ended fine.  I can do it.  And I need to toughen up!

I had a buddy while I wrote this post.

I don't know what's up, but lately I've been her bff.  We'rethisclose.  She wants to be on me.  I think I'm ok with that; she's warm.

Dinner was a Curry Cauliflower and Beans Soup, recipe from Wegmans. Will post on that tomorrow.

Ice Ice Baby

Last night I did something stupid. Actually, no, it was just an accident. Despite wearing flats and walking in teeny tiny steps, I managed to fall on this:

...while carrying my work bag, my lunch bag, and two reusable bags full of groceries.  It was awesome.  While I will admit I was in a hurry, as I squeezed in a quick trip to the grocery store, needed to put that stuff away, change, and get to bootcamp by 5:30, I was VERY aware of the ice, and walked carefully. And still fell.

Quick science lesson:

It's true.

While our apartment's maintenance person did shovel a path for us, as long as there are 4 foot icicles 3 stories up that drip into the alley-way during the day, there will continue to be ice.   I just need to be more careful. What is amazing is that for the past week I have routinely walked on this ice in 2-3" inch heels, while walking the dog, and a couple runs earlier this week, and didn't fall.  And when I wore flats and tried extra hard to be careful, I fell anyway.

I landed on my left knee/shin (somehow...?) which did not feel good.  My shin about 2" down from my knee is a little puffy and sore today.  But last night I went to bootcamp any way and it felt fine.  I'm guessing I just bruised it.  I'd take a picture, but it's not purple, and puffiness doesn't really photograph well.

Which is why when I thought about doing an OnDemand exercise video when I got home from work today, I reminded myself today is a rest day.  So I will follow my training plan and rest.  And give my shin a day off. 

And after MollyWaffles followed me all around the apartment while I unpacked and cleaned up a little, I sat down on the bed.  And she quickly jumped up to join me.  So I kicked my feet up for 20 minutes with her to pass the time until her 6pm kibble.

It takes a lot of convincing to get her to snuggle with you.


Time to go pick up soup from a nearby restaurant for dinner.  I'm thinking chicken and dumpling. 

While I have no exciting plans this weekend, I am looking forward to a 3 day weekend!  My running plans for the weekend are easy: a 3 mile pace run on Saturday and a 5 mile long run on Sunday.

Do you have Monday off from work?  
Do you have any fun plans for the (long) weekend?