Tag Archives: marathon training

20 Miles and a Busy Weekend

Posted on April 12, 2010 | 14 comments

Good morning all! Hope you had a lovely weekend. Mine went by so fast I can hardly recall all we did…but it was a lot. We were all over the place and I barely even saw my Hubby!

Friday night we headed upstate around 7 p.m. and got to my parent’s house by about 10 p.m. We ate some grub (and I may have snacked on some cake) and then I headed to bed since I had my first 20 mile run planned for bright and early Saturday morning. I was pumped because I would have two friends with me for the first 5 miles or so.  Initially, I was supposed to have three friends with me, but one texted on Friday to cancel because she has the flu. So I headed to bed and slept TERRIBLY – nerves I think.

20 Miles!

I was up around 6:45 and began my pre-run ritual. Around 7:00 I received a text from one friend telling me she was too tired and was going to have to skip our run. And then there were two. I finished getting ready and tried texting my last remaining running friend to confirm if she was still game. I texted and called to no avail.

So I began mapping out some potential runs to do on my own just as my last friend showed up at my house. She was supposed to be picking me and driving us to a nearby park to meet our other friend. Turns out she just got back from a trip, didn’t feel well and had lost her phone, so she didn’t get any of my messages. She drove over to tell me that she wouldn’t be able to run.

Sadness!! It finally dawned on me that I would indeed be running my full 20 miles all alone. A little tremor of fear ran through me, but I decided there was no turning back. I gathered my gear, strapped my water belt to my waist and headed out alone. (My mom was too cute – I think she was a little nervous about me going it alone and she told me that she wished she was a runner so she could run part of it with me.)

So for this 20 mile run I had a few things working against me: it was crazy windy and colder than I expected, I was all alone for the whole thing, I didn’t have my ipod, and I mapped a pretty intense route.

I was more than a little nervous starting out. But then I reminded myself that for this long run I wasn’t running part of it as a race, so I could set whatever speed I wanted, and I had just done 18 miles, so really it shouldn’t be too much harder. Right…18 to 20 is easy – haha!

Miraculously, the entire run went pretty smoothly. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and for exhaustion to kick in, but I stayed strong. And let me tell you, there were some pretty insane hills in this run. Here are my stats from the whole thing:

Mile 1 – 8:53
Mile 2 – 8:31
Mile 3 – 8:09
Mile 4 – 10:01 (biggest, steepest, scariest hill of my life)
Mile 5 – 9:08
Mile 6 – 9:00
Mile 7 – 8:43
Mile 8 – 8:49
Mile 9 – 9:09
Mile 10 – 9:10
Mile 11 – 9:02
Mile 12 – 9:08
Mile 13 – 8:52
Mile 14 – 8:40
Mile 15 – 8:54
Mile 16 – 8:33
Mile 17 – 9:37 (hills, hills and more hills)
Mile 18 – 9:48 (and more hills)
Mile 19 – 8:57
Mile 20 – 8:36
.36 – 3:07

Total mileage – 20.36 in 3:02:58. Average page – 8:59 minute miles

And my 20 miler was done! It wasn’t my fastest long run, but I think given the difficulty of this course, I did okay. I made it particularly tough and hill-ridden because I know the Poconos Run for Red Marathon has a bunch of hills, so I need my body to be prepared. Plus, my last long run 21-22 miles next weekend (April 25) will be done primarily in Central Park, which has some hills, but not too many. So yes, in short I tortured myself during this long run in order to be extra ready for my marathon.

All that being said, I was surprised at how decent I felt throughout this run. My waterbelt water supply was more than adequate (I think because it was a lot cooler, so the heat wasn’t taking its toll) and I took one Gu packet between miles 14-15 and it did its job.

Have you ever been pleasantly surprised by a long run? Maybe you expected it to be tough or you felt lackluster when you began, but great by the finish?

I finished up my run back at my parent’s house and tried to stretch as much as possible. I didn’t have my marathon stick with me, so I was a little sad about that. Oh and I forgot to mention that around mile 5-6 of my run a small skunk ran right across my path. It was a scary moment because I know that healthy skunks typically don’t come out during the day. So I thought this skunk was sick and was probably looking for someone to spray. I stopped dead in my tracks and waited for him to cross the road and then fly by him as fast as possible. Skunk spraying averted!

The rest of my Saturday was crazy busy – no napping after this long run. I ran errands with my mom, then headed to my friend’s house for dinner and finally got back home and to bed around 11 p.m.

Sunday was another busy one. We got up early and headed to Utica for the baptism of Hubby’s best friend’s adorable little daughter. Hubby is actually the Godfather of little Audrey. She was very good throughout the whole baptism – and she’s absolutely gorgeous!

Side note – sorry about the pic-less post, I’ve barely had time to breathe, let alone upload pics.

After the baptism we went to the after-party for a bit and grabbed some food. We got on the road to head back to NYC around 6:30 p.m. – much later than I would have liked. 😦 That meant we got home late, I went to bed late and I’m super exhausted today. Blah!

A very good, but busy weekend. I know that my posts have been very running-centric lately. A few books have made it in here and there, but food has definitely taken a back-seat to running-oriented topics. I think that once I start to taper I might be able to focus more on food, or even just be less running-crazed in my posts. I’m not sure if this happens to other people when they train, but running seems to take over my time, body and my brain. Has this happened to you?

I do want to mention the new book I’m reading though because it has made me laugh out loud MANY times already and I’m only on page 75: The Year of Living Biblically. Hysterical!

Anyway – enough rambling for today. Have a good Monday all!

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Posted in Books, Running, Travel, Uncategorized

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Cadbury Egg Craving

Posted on April 5, 2010 | 9 comments

Hi all. Good afternoon. Where has the day gone? I didn’t have a chance to blog until my lunch break!

How was everyone’s weekend and Easter?

Mine was very good. The weather in NYC was fabulous, I ran a great race on Saturday and then Hubby and I hit up a local restaurant for a delicious celebratory dinner.

UVA Review

On Saturday, we went to Uva on 2nd Avenue between 77th and 78th, upon the recommendation of one of Bill’s colleagues. We went to celebrate the fact that Hubby recently passed a hugely important test thing at work. Seriously, he was stressing about this thing for months! But he passed and with flying colors (of course I knew he would).

My apologies in advance, there will be no delicious dinner pics, since Hubby gets extremely embarrassed when I snap away in public places. We started off dinner at Uva with a delicious cheese plate with three different selections and we each had a glass of wine. I absolutely LOVE cheese plates. I order one every chance I get when I’m out. I’ve also been known to make a nice little cheese plate as an appetizer when hosting or attending parties. 🙂

Hubby also ordered the baked calamari, which I’d never had before. Have to say it was pretty good and I’m not the biggest calamari fan.

For my entrée, I had the Bigoletti Di Barbabietole – red beet fingerling gnocchi in a gorgonzola sauce with baby spinach and yellow grape tomotes. It was DIVINE!!

I also tried a bite of Hubby’s dish which was some kind of ravioli filled with artichoke and something else – his was amazing as well!

Overall, our meal was delicious. It wasn’t exactly inexpensive, since we did order two apps, two entrées and three glasses of wine (of which I had two – hehe). But I think that the price was definitely more worth it than some of the other restaurants in the area we’ve eaten at before.   

I also liked that our server was very knowledgable. I asked her for cheese suggestions and she totally knocked it out of the park.

After dinner, I forced Hubby to stop at CVS while I picked up some half-priced Easter candy. Lent was almost over and my sweets craving was starting to grow.

Which leads me to Sunday, which was a very candy-filled day. I woke up and had a decent breakfast. Oatmeal with mixed frozen fruit blended in and a side of light cranberry juice.

After breakfast we headed to church for Easter mass and then when we got home we went to work cleaning and scrubbing the entire apartment. Seriously, it took hours.

And while we cleaned, I snacked on chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. Including my favorite…

Cadbury eggs!

Mmmm so yummy. I ate all four eggs in that carton yesterday. Yes, sickening – I know.  Are you a cadbury egg fan? I think people either love them or hate them. We know how I feel about them – obviously.

I didn’t really eat lunch, since I was snacking on candy all day and cleaning incessantly. So by the time dinner came around, I wanted something über healthy. Hence, my giant salad.

It was so yummy and just what my stomach filled with chocolate wanted. Romaine lettuce, carrots, feta cheese, apple and walnuts with Newman’s Light Italian dressing. I definitely overdid it with the candy.

How about you – did the Easter bunny visit you this weekend and bring you lots of candy? Were you able to use any willpower?

I clearly was not able to abstain. But I do not eat like this everyday, so if I go a little crazy once in a while, I think it’s okay.

That’s all for today folks – I’ve got a 5 mile run on the training plan tonight. Weather.com says it’s gorgeous out – so I can’t wait! I really can’t believe I’m already in week 13 of my 18 week training plan. Scary!! Marathon will be here way too soon.

Have a great day!

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Scotland 10k and 13 Miles Recap

Posted on April 4, 2010 | 8 comments

Happy Easter all! We’re about to head to church right now, but I wanted to do a quick recap of the Scotland 10k Run yesterday and my 13 mile run.

I ate my normal pre-run breakfast – English muffin with peanut butter and banana and a big glass of water. I headed out of the house around 9:15 a.m. to get to the start on the west side around 65th street. Last week’s 15k race was surprisingly calm and uncrowded, so when I got to the start area I was a little overwhelmed by the amount of people there. I found my corral, which was a ways back – I was in the 5,000 corral and it was packed. I was so far from the start that I could barely hear the starting announcements.

The race started and it took me a solid 10 minutes to actually reach the start. From there it became all about trying to get around people and keep up my pace. I had decided that I wanted to try to race for time, so I was getting frustrated by how trapped I felt.

The first mile flew by. I had never run the reverse route of Central Park, so it was kind of hard to gauge where I was. Mile two and three went by quickly, but then came the big hill. While trying to get around other runners I slightly twisted my ankle, but was able to keep going.

At mile 4 I heard my husband calling to me and saw him on the right side of the course waving and cheering. I was so excited that I sped up a bit.

Mile 5 felt okay, but from 5 to 6 I started feeling some pain. The last .2 of this race seemed to take forever! Once we hit the six mile mark we had to go up a slight hill that felt like a mountain. And finally it was all over!

All in all, it was a decent race for me. I felt like I was running pretty hard and was happy with my final time, which was a personal record (but having never run at 10k before, a PR was guaranteed). Here are my stats from the race and then my additional 6 miles afterwards:

Mile 1 – 7:55
Mile 2 – 7:36
Mile 3 – 7:29
Mile 4 – 7:52
Mile 5 – 7:35
Mile 6 – 7:47
Mile 7 – 11:04 (finished the race and stopped for some gatorade)
Mile 8 – 9:51
Mile 9 – 10:15
Mile 10 – 9:25
Mile 11 – 9:10
Mile 12 – 9:28

Total mileage was 12.01 (plus 1 mile jog to the start for 13 miles) in 1:45:38. Average pace was 8:47 minute mile.

I felt okay during the race, but was exhausted afterwards. My last 6 miles after the race were much slower and really tough. My final time for the Scotland 10k was 48:32 and my average pace was 7:49. Yay to a great PR!!

Ok – we’re off to church. We had a great celebratory dinner last night which I’ll post about either later today or tomorrow. For now – everyone have a great Sunday!

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A Bad April Fool’s Joke

Posted on April 2, 2010 | 24 comments

Good morning all – happy Friday! How are you all today? I’m doing okay – dealing with a little work stress, but trying to figure it out.

So confession time – the Hubby and I played a bad April Fool’s joke yesterday. But for the record, it was totally his idea and plan. I may have posted on Facebook last night that I was “due in October and marathon training was over.” 🙂 Oh and the comments came flying in. Again – totally Bill’s idea, I just went along for the ride. But he made me post it on my FB page because it would be more “believable.”

Some people believed it and others called our April Fool’s bluff. So then Hubby downloads a picture of a positive pregnancy test from Google images and posts it on my page! And then I think more people were on the believing end. Our phones were ringing, we were getting text messages – things were getting crazy.

Finally, at about 10 p.m. I couldn’t take it anymore and I let everyone know the jig was up. The thought of going to bed with that big fat lie circling around was stressing me out and I was terrified I would wake up to my mother calling and screaming at me for not telling her first.

So phew – that joke is done and I don’t know if I’ll ever play another April Fool’s prank again. The things my crazy husband gets me in to. He is pretty darn proud of that joke though.

Did you play any April Fool’s jokes yesterday?

My co-worker also almost got me with the one about the Boston Marathon qualifying times being bumped up by 10 minutes. A momentary wave of panic swept my body and I’m pretty sure I started sweating, but then I screamed out “it’s an April Fool’s right?!!” And yes it is, but she was fooled by it!

Breakfast yesterday was some creamy and delicious oatmeal with banana and peanut butter.

Lunch for Thursday was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on an Arnold Sandwich Thin.

Afternoon snacks were unpictured, but they were Chobani with Kashi Go Lean and a small bag of walnuts and raisins.

After work, but before the Facebook fiasco, I went for a 6 mile run on the East River Promenade. It was much windier than I anticipated. Here are my stats from the run:

Mile 1 – 7:35
Mile 2 – 7:56
Mile 3 – 8:23
Mile 4 – 8:03
Mile 5 – 8:21
Mile 6 – 8:36

Total mileage – 6.04 miles in 49:18. Average pace was 8:09 minute mile.

I was running most of that at a good clip, but not too far off from what pace I’d need to run the entire May marathon. That idea scares me a bit. Can I sustain for that long at that pace?

For any Boston Marathon qualifiers out there – how the heck did you do it?!!

After my run, the Hubby concocted our April Fool’s prank and I made myself a yummy dinner of a fried egg with cheese on an Arnold’s Thin with a side salad.

Then for dessert I had an apple with peanut butter.

I certainly had quite the peanut butter-filled day. It played a role in my breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’m sorry, but I just love me some peanut butter!

And that’s all folks! Tomorrow is the Scotland Run 10k race and it’s supposed to be gorgeous out. Yipee!! And I’m going to try to post a few reviews this weekend as well. Have a great Friday and weekend!

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Excellent 18 Miles & Race Recap

Posted on March 29, 2010 | 18 comments

Good morning all. Sorry for my brief hiatus, but this weekend was pretty busy and tiring. But good at the same time! How was your weekend? I have minimal photos to share from the weekend – apparently snapping pics was not my priority.

Friday night was low-key – the Hubby and I ordered pizza and watched Inglourious Basterds. Gotta say – not a fan of this movie. Has anyone else seen it – did you like it? Maybe I just didn’t get it, but I wasn’t impressed.

Saturday was busy with laundry and cleaning and then visiting with my old boss, who just had a baby. The baby, Julia, was the cutest thing ever. She is a little peanut.

Saturday night I made a nice pre-race dinner of chicken with rice.

I ate a big mound of rice. One of my fastest runs lately was fueled by rice, rather than pasta – so I figured I’d give it another shot. What carb do you prefer to fuel with?

Sunday morning I was up early – about 8:00 a.m., but the Colon Cancer 15k Challenge wasn’t scheduled to start until 11:15 – holy late! I am used to my long runs always starting at 8 a.m., so it was hard for me to sit around and wait. I tried to make sure I didn’t eat too early. I had my usual English muffin with peanut butter and banana, two big glasses of water and a granola bar. Finally around 10:30 a.m., I headed out to meet Liz and Katherine for a slow jog over to the start.  

We worked our way over to main area, hit up the bathrooms quickly (no lines!) and then headed to our corrals. Katherine was placed into a faster corral, one ahead of Liz and me, so she came back into ours. We talked times and tried to figure out how fast we wanted to run, but that all went out the window once the race started.

Our first mile was at a very manageable and reasonable pace, but after that things started to really pick up. Liz and I managed to stick together throughout the whole race, which is always a difficult thing. Around mile 5-6, I realized that we were still running pretty fast, with no signs of slowing. So I decided to just go with it – even though I knew my long run afterwards might be a bit painful.

We ran two of the 5-mile loops in Central Park, cutting off the very top north portion of the outerloop – a.k.a – the section with the ginormous unbearable hill. I was happy to avoid that area, but we still had to run the East Side hill (from about 72-79) twice. Not fun.

Once we entered the finish area and I saw on my Garmin that I was somewhat close to beating my PR, I pushed it full speed ahead and flew through the finish. Alas, I was a few seconds off. My PR (from the 2009 Boilermaker) was 1:17:03. My final time for this race was 1:17:15. Oh so very close! Still – I had no intention of running that fast, so I’m very happy with that time. 

After the race, I grabbed a quick drink, celebrated a bit with Liz  and then headed out to finish up the last 9 miles of my long run. And surprisingly, I felt okay. I had planned to head south from the 72nd Transverse on the East side, but decided to go north instead. Just after I made it up the huge hill at the very top of the loop it started raining. But nothing was going to deter me from finishing my 18 mile run. If I could run a fast race and keep running, then I could certainly deal with the rain.

One of the nicest things about running the rest of the 9 miles after the race was that they were just starting to clear off the water stations on the West side when I came around again, so I was able to grab a drink as I reached about mile 13-14. Very helpful.

And I did it! I managed to finish my 18 mile run after running a 15k and almost PR-ing, contending with the rain, and pushing through exhaustion.  Here are my stats from my Garmin for the whole shebang:

Mile 1 – 8:53
Mile 2 – 8:01
Mile 3 – 8:23
Mile 4 – 8:18
Mile 5 – 8:06
Mile 6 – 8:22
Mile 7 – 8:06
Mile 8 – 8:29
Mile 9 – 8:02
Mile 10 – 11:20 (finished the race, stopped for water)
Mile 11 – 8:52
Mile 12 – 9:00
Mile 13 – 9:19
Mile 14 – 9:01
Mile 15 – 8:41
Mile 16 – 9:05
Mile 17 – 8:29
Mile 18 – 9:34

Total mileage – 18 miles in 2:38:13. Average pace – 8:47

I got home just as the rain started coming down harder. I did a LOT of stretching right after and used my marathon stick. Okay – I have yet to mention my marathon stick, but I bought it awhile ago. I have a foam roller, but I bought the wrong size (too fat), so then as I was searching the web for a smaller foam roller, I stumbled upon the marathon stick.

The Stick has a website with a bunch of different stick options, but I went with the marathon stick because it’s smaller, easier to handle and I’m very petite.

According to the website, the stick provides the following benefits:

Prevent & Predict Muscle Injuries
Dramatically improve strength, flexibility and endurance
Rapidly prepare muscles for physical activity
Disperse the effects of lactic acid following activity
Accelerate muscle recovery

I use it primarily after running for “Enhanced Lactic Acid Removal.” From the site: During exercise, lactic acid can build to critical levels where optimal performance is sacrificed, Intracell Technology expedites the discharge of lactic acid from your muscles and encourages its conversion into glucose by the liver. Intracell Technology appears to be very promising in the arena of enhanced sport performance. Look for more research along these lines in the future.

Has anyone else heard of or use any of “the sticks”?

I also like it because I can roll my legs while sitting or standing. I don’t need to have space to lie on the floor, like I need with the foam roller.

After I stretched, used my marathon stick a bit and showered, I took a mini nap. When I woke up, Hubby started dinner. As my marathon training has gotten more intense, with longer runs during the week and weekend, I have been lucky that Hubby has been cooking dinner more often. Thanks Hubs!! He made a pasta dish with a meat sauce (using venison meat).

It was yummy and filled me right up. After dinner I immediately grabbed The Help to read. I had been reading it on and off all weekend and finished it last night right before I went to bed. I totally agree with everyone who has commented on this book – it was really great. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone. But now I’m way behind on my reviews. Now I have to post reviews for both Angela’s Ashes and The Help! However, you know whenever I read a book that fast it’s a good one.

So – all in all – a great weekend! I wasn’t able to pace myself like I wanted for the race. Like others, it seems that if I’m running a race, my inclination is to race it rather than maintain a reasonable pace for training. But thankfully, I’m not hurting too bad today (knock on wood).

How was your weekend?!!

P.S. – I can’t believe that I’ve already run my 18 mile run! I have a bit of a decline in mileage this weekend (13 miles) and then next weekend is my first 20-miler! How did it come up so fast?!!

You can check out my training so far here. Have a great day all!

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Worst Case Scenario Run

Posted on March 26, 2010 | 14 comments

Happy Friday all! This is going to be a super quick post because I have lots on the agenda today. But I did want to share some details about my awful run and my lessons learned. Part of my lessons learned can be explained by yesterday’s eats.

Breakfast was all good – I had oatmeal with frozen raspberries. Yummy – and a side of cranberry juice.

I had my normal granola bar for a snack around 11:00 a.m. and then the trouble started after that. I was busy with meetings and tons of stuff going on, so I didn’t actually get to eat lunch until after 2:00 p.m. I didn’t have leftovers and hadn’t had time to pack anything that morning, so I went out and grabbed a salad.

It was yummy and all, but in retrospect, maybe not the best pre-run fuel. Shortly thereafter I ate my Chobani yogurt with some granola and then a little later, about half of an apple (both not pictured).

After work I flew out of the office and home so I could try to squeeze in an 8 mile run. The weather report had been precarious all day, but now it was saying that rain would hold off until later that night. I quickly changed and set out – my plan was to try to maintain a pace of about 8:15 – 8:25 throughout the whole run. That did not happen – here are my stats:

Mile 1 – 7:56
Mile 2 – 8:14
Mile 3 – 8:20
Mile 4 – 8:30
Mile 5 – 9:37
.39 – 4:02

Total mileage – 5.39 miles in 46.43. Average pace: 8:40

Yeah, so not exactly 8 miles and not exactly a constant pace. What happened? Well, right around the middle of mile 4 I started getting nauseous, experiencing shooting stomach pains and just generally feeling awful. Then I began burping, and I know this is really gross and TMI, but it smelt and tasted like salad. Clearly, I think the combination of my salad choice and it being so late in the day was wreaking havoc on my tummy.

I trudged along and finished mile 4, but as I moved into mile 5 things just got awful. I was heading south on the East River Promenade, down by about 72 street and the waves of nausea just became unbearable. I really wanted to stick it out and at least run 7 miles, but at one point I visualized myself vomiting on the promenade and made a quick turnaround to head home. I did not want to be “that girl” that puked on the promenade.  

I made it home without any true catastrophes, but my stomach was on fire. A few rolaids, crackers and glasses of water later, I felt slightly better. But I decided dinner needed to be something safe. I made some wheat pasta with sauce and called it a night.  

So that’s my awful run experience. The lessons I’ve learned are:

  • I need to fuel with complex carbs (like rice, bread, pasta, etc.) before a run.
  • Salad is not an optimal pre-run meal for me – especially for runs over 5 miles.
  • I need to eat my lunch around the normal time (1:00 p.m.) and then snack wisely in between lunch and my afterwork run.
  • I should not take my good and great runs for granted! I’ve been having some pretty fabulous runs lately and I haven’t even been appreciating them!
  • A bad run, while torturous at the time, will only make the good runs seem sweeter.

So that’s that. I’m hoping that maybe that will be my only bad run for a while. But who knows – bad runs seems to pop up out of nowhere. With this one, I could clearly define some of the contributing causes, but I’ve certainly had other runs that felt impossible or were just not that great and there wasn’t really anything I could point to as a cause.

All in all, it hurt (physically and mentally) and left me feeling disappointed, but I’m moving on.

What about you – have you ever had a really tough run (either because of a particular factor or for no reason at all)? Were you able to push through it and finish the run, did you have to stop, and what did you do differently next time?

The one thing I did think to myself while the awful run was occurring was: Thank God this is not the morning of the marathon! And then after having just experienced what would probably be my “worst case scenario” for a marathon run – I prayed that my marathon day would be nothing like it!

Have a great Friday all – and a great weekend!

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Finding and Keeping the Perfect Pace

Posted on March 25, 2010 | 10 comments

Good morning – how are you on this fine Thursday? I have been a crazy person over the past two days. I’m going to skip Tuesday’s food recap altogether because it was pretty boring. I did squeeze in a decent 5-mile run after work on Tuesday night though, despite the looming rain. It was only drizzling, so I figured why not give it a shot. Running under rain sprinkles was actually surprisingly refreshing. Here were my stats from Tuesday:

Mile 1 – 8:16
Mile 2 – 7:53
Mile 3 – 8:14
Mile 4 – 7:55
Mile 5 – 8:11

Total mileage – 5 miles in 40:33

I was pretty happy with that run and my speed. My average speed overall was 8:06. If only I could keep that up for my marathon in May!

So that brings me to yesterday (Wednesday). For breakfast, I made some delicious oats in a jar with a side of light cranberry juice.

For lunch yesterday I ate at noon! That is unheard of for me – the earliest lunch ever. The reason being that I was teaching a training around 1:00 p.m. and had to travel and then set-up. So at noon I heated up some leftover stew and ate a Chobani yogurt with granola.

The training went pretty well. I have another one scheduled for Friday and that class is much bigger, so I’m more nervous about that one.

After the class I was able to come back to the office for a bit and snacked on a banana to fuel my post-work run. I’ve had to change my training schedule around a little this week, so I did my 8-mile run last night instead of a 5 miler. I didn’t feel like going to Central Park for some reason, so I ran it all on the East River promenade. Here are my stats:

Mile 1 – 9:49 (I located satellites from inside my apartment, so Garmin was a bit confused at first. It didn’t clock my first mile correctly.)
Mile 2 – 7:27 (yay for me – my first sub 7:30 minute mile since high school!)
Mile 3 – 8:32
Mile 4 – 7:40
Mile 5 – 8:58
Mile 6 – 8:19
Mile 7 – 8:37
Mile 8 – 8:18

Total mileage – 8 miles in 1:07:45. Average pace 8:27

I did two mile reps in this run, purposely trying to run at a faster speed (mile 2 and mile 4). Then from mile 6 on, I wanted to try to keep my pace around 8:20 (what I would likely need to run during the marathon in May to qualify for Boston). Obviously, that was tougher than I thought. I think I’ll use one of my upcoming “medium” runs in the near future to test my pace maintenance again and I will not run two mile reps before. I’d really like to be able to control my speed and be able to naturally feel how fast I should be going.

What about you? Are you able to tell about how fast you are running without the help of Garmin or other gadgets? Have you ever tried to maintain a certain speed? Did it work?

I’ve been thinking about strategies for the marathon a lot recently and how I’ll need to focus on staying around a certain pace, so as not to burn myself out. It sounds simple, but this run proves that it’s not going to be so easy. I’m also contemplating buying or creating a pace chart – I’ve been toying with the one on marathonguide.com.  Of course, my Garmin is wonderful, but the pace chart would just be an added back-up to help me see where I should be without having to do any math while run (I’m not too great at math to begin with).

Have you ever used a pace chart?

After my run I didn’t feel like really making anything – this has been a theme for me lately. So my dinner ended up being a black bean burger with a side of veggies with hummus and two pickles.

Instead of dipping the celery in hummus, I spread some peanut butter on it. Yum! And I needed the protein after that run. I also snacked on half of an unpictured Apple Pie Larabar right after my run and then finished the other half for dessert after dinner.

After dinner I tried to watch American Idol, but I ended up choosing to read more of my new book The Help instead. I am really liking it and I’m flying through it. I may be done with it before I get a chance to write a review of Angela’s Ashes!

Ok – that’s all folks. Have a great Thursday – moving closer to the weekend!

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Enjoying Some “Choice Eats”

Posted on March 23, 2010 | 10 comments

Good morning all! How is your Tuesday going so far? Mine is already busy, busy. I also have a feeling the rest of this week is going to be a little bit crazy.

But first, let me do a quick recap of my busy day yesterday. After missing my morning run, I finally dragged myself out of bed and ate some Kashi Heart to Heart Cinnamon cereal for breakfast.

My workday was very busy – I was tying up loose ends and prepping for a big training later this week. What I’m trying to say is that I forgot to take photos of my food throughout the day. I know – I’m a bad blogger. I had a granola bar as a my mid-morning snack, my regular salad for lunch and a pomegranate Chobani yogurt for an afternoon snack.

But the monotony of my daily foods was soon overshadowed by my “dinner” fun. After work I met my friend Katie and we headed to the Village Voice’s Choice Eats Tasting Event. This event featured 50+ restaurants and food from over 35 nations, including Vietnamese, Italian, Uzbekistani, Brazilian, Cambodian, Russian, Tunisian, and Cajun/Creole among many others.

Katie and I dove right in and tried so many things. Here are just a few snapshots:

This meatball, mashed potatoes and drizzle of cranberry sauce was delicious and came from Smorgas Chef.

We then had some delicious mac n’ cheese and I forgot to write down where it was from.

One of both of our absolute favorites was this mini salad with sweet glazed pork on top, along with pickled shalots and cilantro. Yum! This was from Xie Xie:

 I took this kind of cool action shot while we were walking around. This place was über crowded.

 
Despite the many, many vendors and food options, there was a clear winner in our book. We tried a whipped cheesecake with blueberry on top and it was divine. In fact, we went back to Spot Dessert Bar’s table twice! 😉

Yes, technically this was a sweet, but it was eaten for the sake of taste testing.

All in all, Katie and I had a great time. The event went until 9:30 p.m., but they began to run out of food around 8:00 p.m. At that point, we’d had our fill anyway and couldn’t eat anymore. I also sipped on three mini cups of wine…seriously mini. There were tons of beverage stations as well, but we were more focused on the food. Here we are at the end of the night:

There were definitely some way-too-crowded moments with a bit of bumping and pushing, but overall the amount of people was tolerable. I definitely think I’d hit this event up again next year.

One of the best parts about the event is their charitable partner: Slow Food NYC. “Slow Food NYC is the local chapter of a national association that is part of an international movement. Slow Food USA, with over 200 chapters in the USA, is dedicated to achieving a good, clean, and fair food system, where good means food that is real and culturally rooted, clean means food that is produced sustainably and humanely, and fair means that those who produce our food are treated fairly and that everyone has access to good, clean food. 

A portion of the Choice Eats ticket sales will be donated to Slow Food NYC. The donation will be used to maintain and expand these important Harvest Time Programs.”

Have you ever attended a tasting event like this?

This event was absolutely huge, but also a lot of fun.

I headed home in the pouring rain – not fun. I made it home by almost 9 p.m. and watched some of Dancing with the Stars and then headed to bed.

I expect a busy day today and then probably a 5-mile training run on the treadmill since the rain has continued. I’ve got a 15k race coming up this weekend which I’m pretty excited and nervous about. I won’t be racing it, but I’ll run it as a training run. I need to run 18 miles this weekend, so the 15k will be the first 9.3 miles of that long run. Fun, fun – right?

Have you ever run a race as a training run? I’ve seen a few other bloggers mention doing this (like this lady and this gal). And they are both pretty darn speedy, so maybe there’s something to the idea. I just have to focus on not running it too hard and getting caught up in the racing atmosphere or else my long run will turn into a painful run.

Have a nice day all!

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Saturday’s Successful 17

Posted on March 20, 2010 | 11 comments

Good morning! I just finished a 17 mile run and I feel surprisingly good! I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I had some running buddies for part of it. Seriously, I think it helps so much. Katherine and Liz ran with me for about 9 miles and then I ran the remainder of my 17 alone. We talked about some pretty exciting stuff. I found out Katherine’s good news (but I won’t tell) and we celebrated Liz finding out she was placed at her top choice hospital for her upcoming residency! Congrats to both!

It seemed a little chilly when I first got up this morning, so I wore shorts, a tank and a long sleeve shirt. I knew the long sleeve shirt was a mistake within the first three miles. We headed toward Central Park from our usual meet-up spot around 81st and York. From there were did a full exterior loop and then hit the bridal path upper part for a bit more – topping out at 9 miles. They headed out the East 90th entrance and I headed around the loop again. Boy it got really hot by the time I finished around 10:30. Here are the full 17 stats:

Mile 1 – 9:44
Mile 2 – 8:51
Mile 3 – 8:55
Mile 4 – 9:11
Mile 5 – 8:49
Mile 6 – 9:04
Mile 7 – 8:57
Mile 8 – 9:15
Mile 9 – 9:16
Mile 10 – 8:40
Mile 11 – 8:57
Mile 12 – 9:07
Mile 13 – 9:05
Mile 14 – 8:43
Mile 15 – 8:50
Mile 16 – 8:40
Mile 17 – 8:49

Total mileage – 17.04 miles in 2:33:33

I am feeling a little bit sore, but not altogether that bad. Time to hit the shower and get ready to head to Brooklyn to hang with some lovely lady friends! And what a gorgeous day out! So amazing. The people running the NYC Half Marathon tomorrow are going to have an amazing day. Good luck to all those runners!

What are your plans for the rest of the weekend?

I hope you can get out and enjoy the nice weather! 🙂 Have a great weekend.

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Spring is in the Air!

Posted on March 19, 2010 | 19 comments

Good morning all. Sorry I have been MIA, but the past few days have been crazy busy with work, St. Paddy’s Day fun and marathon training.

I started Wednesday off with a nice 4.5 mile run with Liz. The last time I ran in the morning we watched as the sun rose around 6:15. This time there was no sun on the horizon – it was a dark morning. Our splits were:

Mile 1 – 9:09
Mile 2 – 8:53
Mile 3 – 9:09
Mile 4 – 9:33
.53 – 4:31

Total mileage – 4.53 in 41:17 

When I woke up to head out for our run my hip was feeling very tight. But as we got moving it started to actually feel a little bit better. I think my body was not prepared for my super fast run on Tuesday night.

I’m not going to post all my eats for the past two days because there were a lot and I didn’t get a chance to photograph many of them.  I did take a few St. Paddy’s day pics though!

Here is me out in my green gear, trying to drink a Guinness.

I say trying because I only drank about 1/3 of it. I poured the rest into Bill’s beer. I really wanted to drink a glass of wine when we went out, but literally, not a soul in the bar had a wine and I knew I’d feel like a fool ordering one.

We went to three bars on St. Paddy’s day because we were searching for food. Yup – while everyone else was focused on drinking, Hubby and I each had our minds on food (Hubby also has his mind on Guinness though). At the second bar we went to, they were serving corned beef sandwiches, which was what Hubby wanted. But I wanted no part of that.

After he finished his gross-looking sammy, we left that bar in search of some nachos for me to snack on. We finally found The Back Page on 3rd Ave, which was serving food. I ordered a giant plate of nachos.

P.S. – these had WAY too much crap on them. We literally had to dig to find the chips. I still like making my own nachos better than I like most restaurant/bar nachos.

Hubby munched on some nachos as well, and enjoyed a few more pints of Guinness.

So much so that he had a Guinness “stach.”

He’s a little silly…

We stayed out with the crazy St. Paddy’s day partiers until about 9 p.m. – I know we’re so old! All in all, I had 1/3 of a Guinness and 1 Bud Light at the Back Page and then we called it quits. I took one “self portrait” before we headed out.

Thursday was a normal day with some normal eats. I was soo busy at work with a big project we are trying to wrap up. I may be a little scarce towards the end of next week as we launch the project and I devote about 4 hours of Wed, Thurs and Friday to it. Eek!

But anyway – after work yesterday I had another 8 mile run on my marathon training plan. Seriously – Hal Higdon is trying to kill me. I used his intermediate plan as a basis for my plan, but moved some of the runs around a little. And boy did these mid-week 8 milers sneak up on me. I still felt a twinge in my hip (p.s. – thanks for the stretching suggestions!), so I wanted to take my run slow. I had mixed success with that:

Mile 1 – 8:32
Mile 2 – 8:14
Mile 3 – 8:26
Mile 4 – 7:46
Mile 5 – 9:00
Mile 6 – 8:32
Mile 7 – 8:45
Mile 8 – 8:52

Total Mileage – 8 miles in 1:08:14

Ok – so I know about half of those splits aren’t taking it easy. And then yes, I know mile 4 is pretty ridiculous, but there was a reason. I ran on the East River Promenade and headed north to about 115 St. As I turned around and headed back, a big group of high school (I assume) boys trotted down one of the ramps and were basically running right beside me. Umm hello – awkward. Especially when I didn’t have headphones on and could clearly hear them talking about me. And then when they began making little yelps and noises, I decided it was time to pull ahead and get the heck out of there. Hence my speedy 7:46 pace. 

And Mom, before you read this and freak out, there were many other people around that area running, biking, etc., so I wasn’t in any danger, just kind of uncomfortable.  

Have you ever had a weird, scary or uncomfortable running experience? How did you handle it?

After my run I felt pretty good – the hip felt okay, but I was tired. Hubby and I did enjoy a nice steak last night with some broccoli on the side, but I forgot to upload the picture. I also had a banana with peanut butter for dessert. Then I headed to bed at about 10:15 and slept like a rock.

I also wanted to post that I finished Angela’s Ashes on St. Patrick’s Day – how appropriate right?! I hope to have a review coming soon, but I also feel like everyone has already read the book. All the same, I like to record my thoughts on it.

My next book is the The Help. I started reading it on the subway yesterday and last night before bed. It’s definitely very different and it was hard to get the dialect at first, but now it’s flowing.

I am definitely looking forward to the weekend and the nice weather we’re supposed to have in the city. I think it’s supposed to reach 72 degrees out tomorrow! Have a great weekend all and get outside if you can!

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