Back in the swing of things

I finally have a routine again, and it’s been nice! I’m going to do a weekly recap like how I did for the marathon. Here we go!

Monday: Strength – I did a cardio/strength circuit that was killer! It started with 10 minutes on the stairmill (aka the revolving staircase of death). Then a superset of 2 leg moves (I forget which now). Then 6 minutes on the stairmill. Then another superset. Then 4 minutes on the stairmill. And then I ended with 4 more strength moves. It was great!

Tuesday: Run – I would have liked to do speed or tempo, but I decided to just go easy. I headed out with the plan to do 4 – 7 miles. When I got to 4 miles I told myself to suck it up and I did 2 more. I would have gone for 1 more, but I didn’t have enough time before meeting a friend for dinner. It was a perfect night for a run. I kept a 10:17 pace.

Wednesday: Strength – I did the same work out as on Monday but with upper body. It was excellent again. This is definitely a new favorite.

Thursday: Run Rest – I was beat. So I bailed on my run.

Friday: Strength – I worked out with Mom and her trainer. It always kicks my butt!

Saturday: Long-ish run – I did 8 miles around Hoboken. It was so pretty running along the river!

 

The run was tough, but felt really good. I kept a 10:31 pace. Much slower than I used to be pre-marathon, but I ran the whole time (and same for the run on Tuesday). My goal is to get rid of the walking breaks that I got used to during marathon training.

Sunday: Rest!

I also never blogged about the charm that Vic got me for the marathon. Can’t believe I forgot! But here it is.

I love it.

That’s all I’ve got. 4 weeks til Broad Street!

–Melissa

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Marathon Training – Week 10

Week 10! I can’t believe it’s already been 2 and a half months of training. Less than 2 to go. Wow. This week had the potential to be very, very, VERY challenging. I started a new rotation at work. My days looked something like this:

5:00 or 5:30 am (depending on the day) – wake up and work out

7:20 am – leave for work

8:20 am – get to work

10:15 pm- leave work

11:15 pm- get home and go to sleep

Repeat.

Ouch.

But, I managed to make it through the week. I’m going to take it one week at a time. Only 5 weeks to go until I’m back to my “normal” work. It’s pretty crazy how a week ago I couldn’t even imagine waking up this early, but that was back when I got out of work around 6ish. So, now that I am much more pressed for time I have to make it work somehow!

So, this weeks work outs:

Monday: Speed Work – Warmed up with 1.06 miles at a 9:36 pace. Then it was 8×400 with 1:30 of rest in between each quarter mile. The 400 paces were: 7:56, 7:47, 9:36, 7:40, 7:48, 8:36, 8:03, 8:03. I’m not sure what happened with that 3rd 400, but otherwise I thought that was a great run. Then I cooled down with a mile of running and .3 of walking, for a total for the day of 5.06 miles.

Tuesday: Cross Training – During my normal work routine, I can never get to spinning class (6 am on Tuesdays) in time. This week, I made it! It wasn’t the greatest teacher ever, but it was nice to be in a class that early and have someone else push me.

Wednesday: Tempo Run – This was supposed to be 8 miles at a 10k + 40 second pace. (On Wednesday I got confused and thought it was 10k + 20 seconds.) For me that means 10 minute miles. Totally do-able. But….this was one of the worst runs ever. I think it was a combination of being over tired and thinking I had to do it faster than I really had to. My legs did not want to run. At all. So I ended up walking a ton of this run. Oh well. The splits: 9:53, 10:33, 11:57, 11:36, 14:46, 12:43, 12:25, 12:16. Not pretty. But I still managed to move 8 miles even before most people wake up in the morning, so that has to count for something, right?

Thursday: Cross Training – Elliptical and upper body weights. Pretty standard for a cross training work out. I really love weight training. Feels so good! Then I stretched for a while because my new desk chair is beyond uncomfortable. That felt great too!

Friday: Cross Training – I did a fun little cardio circuit. Bike, elliptical, arc trainer. Then I did some planks and called it a day.

Saturday: Rest – I also have to work Saturdays until the end of February. This makes squeezing in long runs a bit more tricky, but I think I can make Sunday long runs work. I thought about hitting the gym but it wasn’t open before I left for work and I was beat by the time I got home. It was nice to relax on my couch for a change.

Sunday: Long run – this was a step back week. It’s official. Step back weeks are the greatest thing to EVER happen to marathon training plans. EVER! I had to do 12 miles today. 12 miles…psh easy! I was feeling really great at the start of my run and didn’t really want to start with the walking breaks. But I forced myself to do it anyway because I think I really want to run the race this way (.9 mile run/.1 mile walk). Well, it totally worked. Not to brag, but I killed it today. The splits: 10:22, 10:34, 10:26, 10:34, 10:50, 11:02 (it was icy here and I had to slow down so I didn’t wipe out), 10:17, 10:19, 10:05, 10:45, 10:09, 10:37. Then I cooled down for 1.08 miles with walking. I actually ran into Mom at 11.48 miles, stopped to chat for a second, finished the last half mile and then met back up with her for the cool down. But did you see that!!! Only ONE mile above 11 minutes. This was a total confidence builder. Woo hoo!

Total miles: 24.14 miles

Back to the super early work outs tomorrow. Let’s hope I can do it again this week!

–Melissa

 

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Marathon Training – Week 8

I’m not going to make any drastic moves. And I am going to continue with training. But…I’m considering switching to the half marathon. My shorter runs have been great, but my long runs have been torture. At least 5 times on my long run today I thought to myself “why am I doing this, this is so not fun”.

There isn’t any point in doing this if it’s not fun. I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone except for myself, so it’s just a matter of whether or not I really want this. This week might not have been the best because I was sick (I love you, Dayquil) and it was my first week back to work after 11 days off. I guess I’ll see how next week goes again.

Here’s how this week went:

Monday: Cross Training Rest – I was starting to come down with some sort of sickness. I wanted to run on Monday because I had the day off and the gym closed early. I walked to the grocery store before I was going to do my run to get food for the week. It’s about 2 miles round trip. When I got home I felt like I was going to pass out. A run would have been a dumb idea.

Tuesday: Speed work – I warmed up for a little over a mile in 9:41. Then I did 5 rounds of 2 minutes fast, 2 minutes easy. My fast splits: 7:51, 7:51, 7:52, 7:58, 8:28. I lost it a little on that last one, but overall I think I kicked butt. Then I cooled down with another mile and walked a bit for a total of 4.42 miles. It was freezing out and I don’t know how good this was for my cold which was getting worse, but I survived.

Wednesday: Cross Training – I didn’t feel good, but I wanted to do a quick work out anyway. I did 20 minutes HIIT on the elliptical and a quick chest/back/tricep circuit. It was better than nothing.

Thursday: Tempo Run Rest – I couldn’t get up in the morning and I had plans at night. Since I still wasn’t feeling great and it was still pretty cold I decided that a day off would do me good.

Friday: Tempo Run – I was scared for this run. It was 1 easy mile followed by 7 tempo miles. SEVEN! I decided I would let myself sleep in and just do it after work. It was a beautiful night. I couldn’t hold back the first mile so I ended up at a tempo pace (9:40 for me) for the first four miles easily. Mile 5 I started to lose some energy and that mile was a bit slower, but then I managed to pick it back up for the last 3. So I ended up with 7 tempo miles, just not in the order that my training plan called for. The splits: 9:17, 9:39, 9:28, 9:46, 10:35, 9:45, 9:27, 9:30. Then I cooled down for .29 miles.

Saturday: Cross Training – I had grand plans to spin, or swim, or do Pilates. But the timing just didn’t work out. I ended up having a real great work out anyway. I did 20 minutes on the elliptical followed by upper body weights. I did bicep curls, front raises, lateral raises, skull crushers, tricep pull downs, lateral pull downs, and push ups. My shoulders were very sore this morning. Then I stretched for a bit in preparation for my long run today.

Sunday: Long Run – Last night, I went to bed relatively early for a Saturday night but I woke up at some point because I felt like I was having an allergic reaction to something. My entire body felt like it was on fire. The bottom of my feet were so itchy. It went away but then I couldn’t sleep for a while after that. Needless to say I didn’t get the best night sleep. I woke up this morning and took my time getting ready for my long run because I was pretty nervous for it. I haven’t had a good long run in weeks. But, I tried to think positive and headed out the door. My strategy was to go at a very, very comfortable pace. This seemed like a good idea in order to maintain the same pace throughout. But I still freaked out and ended up walking a lot during the second half. I am cringing as I look at my splits: 11:07, 10:57, 10:49, 10:57, 11:06, 14:12, 11:17, 12:56, 11:35, 12:20, 12:17, 11:58, 9:48. At least I finished strong… I cooled down after for a total of 13.57 miles. I took Gu’s after mile 5 and mile 10 (explains the 14:12 mile). I can finish the race at an 11:39 pace, but it’s just so far from my original goal. It’s so frustrating because I killed it on Friday night. Why do I keep psyching myself out! Mom said “you don’t need a trainer, you need a shrink” Hehe.

Total miles: 26.28 miles

Hoping week 9 will be better. It will be my first PDR since my first half marathon. 14 miles this weekend!

–Melissa

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Marathon Training – Week 1

Yes, it’s true! I’ve signed up for a FULL marathon. Am I crazy? Probably. Since I have not been great at posting I’ve decided to do a weekly recap instead of a post after each run. My marathon training officially started on Monday, but since I signed up on Friday I decided to start 2 days early.

Here’s what week 1 (plus the 2 extra days) looked like:

Saturday: 6 mile run – Since my watch was still broken I used map my run to find a 6 mile loop. I hit the 6 mile mark around 55 minutes and I didn’t believe that I could have possibly ran that far in that short amount of time, so I ran for 5 more minutes until I got to 1 hour. When I got home I mapped my route again and it said that it was 6.5 miles! I was pretty impressed with myself!

Sunday: 45 minutes on the elliptical – I wanted to lift some weights, but I didn’t have a ton of time because I was leaving for a work trip to Dallas. I decided that since I would be sitting on a plane for 4 hours I would be better off moving my legs than lifting weights.

Monday: Speed work – 4.5 miles – I bought a new watch on Sunday and this watch is much fancier than my old one. It times you for intervals, so I set it up to do a 10 minute warm up, then 6 intervals of 1 minute fast, 3 minutes slow, followed by a 10 minute cool down. The hotel had a “jogging path” which was really just a loop of a parking garage that had no cars parked in it. I headed out there before the sun was even up to get a run in. I warmed up at a 9:17 pace. I ended up doing 1 minute of sprints, 1 minute walking, 2 minutes jogging for my intervals. The pace of the sprint intervals were: 6:35, 7:07, 7:13, 6:45, 7:03, 6:57. Not too bad.

Tuesday: I tried to go to the hotel gym, but it was packed! I was able to hop on a bike for a little and to lift a little, but it was tough with so many people in the tiny gym. I ended up going back outside to the parking lot and did a little boot camp with squats, jumping jacks, crunches and leg lifts. Then I ran a mile in 9:02.

Wednesday: Tempo run – I headed to the parking lot again for a 6 mile tempo run, 2 miles easy, 2 miles tempo, 2 miles easy. My mile splits were: 10:06, 10:06, 9:22, 9:12, 9:50, 9:29. I know I should be happy with those splits, but I really need to work on slowing down if I want to be able to run 26.2 miles. I have definitely gotten faster, but it’s not sustainable over 26.2 miles. I would much rather run all 26 slower and run the whole thing, than to go out too fast and end up not being able to finish.

Thursday: Off. I needed to sleep in a little!

Friday: 8 mile run. I went back to the parking lot again, and like a hamster I went around, and around, and around!

My splits: 10:04, 10:22, 10:22, 10:17, 10:07, 9:56, 9:53, 9:07. I was happy with this run because I saved enough energy for the end to be able to run the last 4 miles faster than the first 4.

 

Saturday: Off. I went back up to Lehigh for the Lehigh/Laf football game. I did work out my liver though!

Sunday: Off. I wanted to get to the gym, but I didn’t end up getting home til much later than planned.

Total miles: 19.5

I’m off to Antigua bright and early tomorrow for Thanksgiving with the fam!

After this week I hope that I can get in more of a training routine since I will be traveling less. So far so good though!

–Melissa

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Almost Quitter

I had 8 miles scheduled for this weekend. I really wanted to get it out of the way on Saturday because honestly I was kind of dreading it. But, Mom said the weather was going to be bad so I decided to put it off until Sunday.

The weather seemed to be holding off on Saturday morning but since I had already decided on Sunday I hit the gym for an upper body strength work out. It was great! I’m feeling a little sore today, but not as bad as I would have expected.

Here’s what I did (sorry this is so long, and I can’t un-italicize it!):

10 minute warm up on the bike

 

Chest:

Dumbbell bench press:

12 reps at 12.5 lbs

1 minute rest

10 reps at 15 lbs

1 minute rest

8 reps at 17.5 lbs

1 minute rest

6 reps at 20 lbs

1 minute rest

12 reps at 17.5 lbs

No rest

Dumbbell flies:

12 reps at 17.5

 

Back:

Lat Pull Downs:

12 reps at 54 lbs

1 minute rest

10 reps at 58 lbs

1 minute rest

8 reps at 64 lbs

1 minute rest

6 reps at 76 lbs

1 minute rest

12 reps at 64 lbs

No rest

One arm rows:

12 reps on each side at 20 lbs

 

Shoulders:

Seated Shoulder Press:

12 reps at 7.5 lbs

1 minute rest

10 reps at 10 lbs

1 minute rest

8 reps at 12.5 lbs

1 minute rest

6 reps at 15 lbs

1 minute rest

12 reps at 12.5 lbs

No rest

Front raises

12 reps at 10 lbs

 

Biceps:

Regular curls:

12 reps at 12.5 lbs

1 minute rest

10 reps at 15 lbs

1 minute rest

8 reps at 17.5 lbs

1 minute rest

6 reps at 20 lbs

1 minute rest

12 reps at 17.5 lbs

No rest

Alternating Curls:

12 reps at 17.5 lbs

 

Triceps:

Cable Extensions:

12 reps at 50 lbs

1 minute rest

10 reps at 60 lbs

1 minute rest

8 reps at 70 lbs

1 minute rest

6 reps at 80 lbs

1 minute rest

12 reps at 70 lbs

No rest

Tricep dips:

12 reps

 

10 minute cool down on the bike

 

It was entertaining and went by really quickly. I’m sure I will be doing more of this! FYI: I didn’t make up this work out. I found it by googling. So I can’t take any credit for how awesome it was.

Anyway, back to the running…

This morning I woke up and groaned at the thought of running. I don’t know why, but I just have NOT felt like running lately. But, I knew I had to do it in order to make Broad Street (in 2 weeks!) not torturous. I was keeping an “eh” pace for the 1st 4 miles. Around mile 4.5 I passed my apartment. I kept running past it but at mile 4.6 I realized how windy it was and how freezing I was, so I turned around and ran upstairs to get a jacket. I didn’t feel like going back out so I called Mom and Vic for a pep talk. Neither of them answered. Thanks guys! 😛 I thought about how I would feel later if I quit, and how I would feel if I finished.

So I grabbed a long sleeved shirt and headed back out. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I ended up run/walking the last 2 miles because my calves and IT band were starting to bother me. Gulp! But, I ended up doing 8.37 miles! Woo! I’d say over 7 of that was running and around 1 was walking.

Just 5 more runs until Broad Street!

–Melissa

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Twitchy Eye

After my St. Patrick’s Day run I went out. This was NOT a good idea seeing as I had to be at work at 7:30 on Friday for a meeting. I bought a large coffee on my way to work and during another meeting at 9:00 I drank another cup. So much caffeine! My eye was twitching and one of my co workers said it was probably from all the coffee. More on that in a minute…

Today I had 8-9 miles planned. Vic’s friend is doing Team In Training and had an 8 miler today, she invited me to come along. The run was at 8 am and I wasn’t quiiite ready to run at that hour. It would have been nice to run with a group though.

I set off around 11 (with my eye still twitching from the day before) and ran down the Parkway to the art museum where I would do a few miles on Kelly Drive. My favorite running spot! The art museum was about a 1.5 mile run from my apartment. I was keeping an easy pace of around 10:20-10:30. I turned around at 4.25 miles. I was getting really thirsty, but I knew that there was a water fountain near the art museum which was a little more than 2 miles away. So I kept moving along and finally at 6.5 miles I reached the water fountain.

Just my luck, it was shut off for the winter! Noooo! I was so thirsty, I think it was from all the dehydrating coffee the day before and I didn’t drink much water = twitchy eye and a painful run. I stood there for a few minutes debating what to do. Walking would take longer, but running would be harder when I was so thirsty. I decided on running since I knew I was almost back to the Parkway, which has a lot of traffic lights, so I knew I would be stopping fairly frequently.

While I was waiting at one light someone ran up next to me and stopped to wait too. It was one of the partners from the fed tax group at work. We chatted for a minute about running and training for races and then when the light changed we said goodbye, as he is much speedier than me.

At one traffic light I forgot to turn my watch back on and I probably ran a quarter mile before realizing it. When I got to 8 miles (or 8.25 ish if we are counting when my watch was off) I was right in front of a Starbucks and I stopped in for some water. I chugged it and decided to walk the rest of the way home. I ended up running over 8 miles and walking under a half mile. It was challenging but a good one.

Now I study and drink lots of water while I wait for my favorite visitor–> Vic!

–Melissa

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8-ish miles

Almost forgot to post about this weekend’s run. I did 8.3 miles outside (including cool down) I wanted to do between 8 and 10, so I did that, but secretly I wanted to do 10, but I was mentally not there so I quit a little after 8 miles. However, I think it was actually more than that. I finally got my watch battery replaced, but I think the foot pod/watch relationship was being a little wonky.

At one point I looked at my watch and it said 3.99 miles, 3 blocks later I looked down again and it still said 3.99 miles. What the heck?! I did so many random twists and turns that even if I mapped it, it probably wouldn’t be accurate either. So I’m going to say it was 8 miles for this weekend. It took me 1 hour and 25 minutes, which again I’m not sure is accurate for the distance, but whatever. Next time I’ll map it and then wear my watch for timing purposes too. I think I “need” one of the GPS enabled ($$$$) Garmins.

Time to pass out, how is the weekend over already?!?!?!

–Melissa

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Icky 8

I woke up this morning for my run and I knew I didn’t feel quite right. I should have gotten back in bed and hid under the covers. There were so many signs too! It hurt to wear my Camelbak because I have a really bad sun burn. My running iPod was dead. Ok well there were only 2 signs…

I had 8 miles on the schedule for this morning and I was determined to run those 8 miles. So instead of getting back in bed I found my running gear and some how managed to get dressed in my half asleep state. I took my gym iPod and put it in one of the pockets of my Camelbak and positioned the headphone cord a certain way so it wouldn’t annoy me during my run. I’m so creative. And I have too many iPods.

It was nice outside, so I knew that the weather wouldn’t get in my way. I started off on my run and I made it to around 2.5 miles when I started to feel really not good. At mile 3, I stopped to try and compose myself because I felt like I was going to puke all over the sidewalk. You can ask any of my college friends, not even obscene amounts of tequila shots make me throw up, so when I do feel this nauseous it’s a big deal. I felt so icky 😦

I immediately decided that I wouldn’t run to my 4 mile turn around, going further from home would not have been the smartest idea. I told myself that I could walk the 3 miles back home. But as I turned to start walking back I got a feeling worse than the nausea–quitting. I refused to quit, what if I felt like this on race day, I wouldn’t quit then. But as I started to run, the icky feeling trumped the quitting feeling. I pulled my pace WAY back, and decided I would run a mile and then see how I felt. At mile 4 I felt ok, not great, but good enough to keep going. I used the same strategy for the rest of my run– stopping after every mile to make sure I wouldn’t die.

I started to cut up and down side streets to add mileage, because I knew once I was close to home I would stop and I kind of still wanted to finish the 8 miles. When I stopped at mile 7 I told myself to push hard through the last mile. I had given myself a lot of slack for the whole run and didn’t care about my pace, but I wanted one good mile. I picked up my speed and before I knew it, I was doing my cool down walk back home for .77 miles. Today’s splits are disappointing to me…but I still pushed through and finished so I’m over it:

Mile 1:	10:22
Mile 2:	10:10
Mile 3:	9:55
Mile 4:	10:45
Mile 5:	10:41
Mile 6:	10:58
Mile 7:	10:53
Mile 8:	9:35
0.77	14:19

Then I got to spend hours (yes, plural) at Toyota for my car inspection. When I got there they said it would be less than an hour…I was not happy. Nap time.

–Melissa

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