Half Marathon Pics

Here we are before the race. Ready to go!


Our husbands and kids met us at about mile 8 and cheered us on. That was awesome!




Here we are at mile 13, right about to run into the finish. See how happy we look?

Tri for Fun #3

I did my first triathlon ever this morning, more than 10 minutes faster than my ultimate goal! I'm so excited about it!

It started off with a 400 yard swim in a nice clean lake. Before the tri, I read as much as could about peoples' experiences on this course and discovered that it helps to start off to the left side of the big pack of people when you start the swim, so I did, and I was able to jump right out into the front group of swimmers. The swim was much better than I feared it would be--I was worried that people would be kicking me and splashing water in my face the whole time, but I barely touched any other people at all! Peter told me I was one of the first people to finish in my heat, which was exciting. My time for the 400 yard swim was 6:25.

I took a depressingly slow amount of time in the first transition area, and my friend who came in a minute and a half behind me in the swim headed off onto the bike ride right in front of me. She rode off in front of me never to be seen again, because she's a blasted fast sort of person. I was expecting the swim to bike transition to be easy, but instead I was pooped because I swam much faster than I normally do in the pool. My legs were so shaky and tired and my heart rate was really up! But I managed to get into a groove and completed the 11 mile bike route without any problems. I even managed to muster up a really loud cheer for my friend when we passed each other on an out and back section of the ride.

Once I got off my bike, all I had to do was take off my helmet, but I had no idea where I was supposed to be running, so I wasted a few seconds figuring that out, but not too many. The transition from bike to run felt AWFUL! I definitely did not train well enough for that part. I ran really slow for the first half of the run or so and was finally able to get in stride for a little while, but then I was really tired so I slowed down a little, but then I was at the END and saw my friends and family cheering for me so I sprinted past the poor woman several yards in front of me who didn't have friends and family there to cheer her on and help her push her little red button. My finish time was 1 hr 18 minutes and some odd seconds. And it was so much fun! I can't wait to sign up for another one and actually train right this time! (I don't think the stuff I did could really be considered training, aside from the running, which definitely did count.) (And in case you're wondering, my blasted fast sort of friend runs a lot faster than me too, and finished the race in 1 hr 10 min.)

I'll post pics soon, probably along side the pics from the half marathon that I have yet to post (but are finally edited!).

Regina Spektor

I like Regina Spektor.

Fidelity

On the Radio

Eet

Better

Getting Faster...

I guess that title is a little misleading because it's really more than just 'getting faster'. My exercise buddies and I have been planning on working on our speed now that we've conquered distance and today was our first official day of trying it out. Luckily, I felt like it went really well and had to document it! We started out small, running 2 miles, and did the two miles in just about 19 minutes even, giving us a mile pace of 9:30!! Woohoo for us! I know that in the world of running that is still not fast, but I feel like it's fast enough not to make fun of how slow I am anymore. Our goal is to work on speed a few times a week and just run without thinking about it the other few times. I'm not going to make a really specific target yet, but I'm running a 10K on October 2 and I'm hoping to set my goal time with a mile pace of 10 minutes or less. We'll see. 10K is a pretty long time to keep up a pace that is 2 minutes per mile (or more) faster than my average pace for the half marathon training.

Wish me luck!

Back at it

Well, now that I've completely lost fitness after taking a three week vacation from exercise, I'm training for a little sprint triathlon, which will happen on August 15. I've always wanted to do a triathlon and FINALLY it's going to happen! I'm pretty excited! I'm hoping to do an Olympic distance tri in a couple years, too.

The distances for this sprint tri are 400 yard swim, 11 mile bike, and 5k run.

Wish me luck! Training has started off pretty nicely already, so I'm feeling good about it!

Half Marathon Results

For the record, I finished my half marathon, running non-stop (with somewhere between 5-10 minutes of veeeeerrrrrrrrry slow jogging while I waited for my friends at the port-a-potty)! (Running with people was much more important to me than getting a time a few minutes faster!) I came in 945 out of 1400 and finished in 2 hrs 39 minutes flat. The first 11 miles passed by pretty easily, but then we could taste the finish and started running faster so the last two were pretty rough on me. I was fighting back sobs of pain and mental/emotional exhaustion at the end, but I DID IT! Yippee! But MAN my legs were hurting SO BAD at the end and for the first few hours after the race. Wow. That was intense.

Next stop: sprint triathlon in August!

Half Marathon in Two Weeks

My race is coming up so quickly! Today we ran our longest run before the half-marathon (11.2 miles) and starting next week we'll be tapering a bit so our poor legs have some time to recover. While we were running today, I was talking to my training buddies (Brittney and Nicole) and we were all talking about how none of us ever would have thought ourselves capable of running such long distances. We were running for 2 hrs 18 minutes today (no stopping and no walking!! Well, there were a few stoplights but I jog in place at them so I don't creak when I start back up again...). That's a LONG time to be running (or, jogging--you can do the math if you like--we're not doing this for time)! And honestly, parts of my legs and feet hurt SO BADLY after about 5 miles, but it's really helpful to have a goal and a training schedule to keep me on track. My only goal is to finish the race without walking, so that's my goal for each training run, too.

On our shorter runs (5 miles), we've been focusing on running a bit faster, so our pace is about 30-45 seconds faster per mile on those days than it is for our long runs. Now, after our "halfie", we'll be focusing on speed and hills more, rather than distance, but our base distance will still be 5 miles. AND we'll probably be doing a sprint triathlon in August. Woohoo!

Hooray for getting fit!