SNOW!

This weekend we got several inches of snow. Ryan said it was around 6 inches. Thus, I did not get to run in the 5k I had planned to run in yesterday. So I guess I'll have to do 2 races in February to make up not having done any in January. My mileage for January was 42.21 miles. It should have been more. I have totally slacked off with my running. I am determined to get back on track in February. Hopefully the roads in our neighborhood will be good by Tuesday so I can run outside.

Penny absolutely loved the snow. She wanted to stay outside and play all day. We had to call her in periodically so she wouldn't get too cold. Here are some pictures of the snowfall.

Get Back on the Train!

This past week I really slacked on my running. We did our long run of 8 miles on Monday and then I only did one other run. Eight miles was tough and my knees were pretty achy for the next couple of weeks. So I think it was kind of good that I took the rest of the week to kind of recover. So this past week's mileage is a bit lower than it should be.

Mon: 8 miles
Thurs: 2 miles

Total: 10 miles

Today we took Penny to the Matteson Trail and ran 3 miles. It was a good run. Running with Penny kind of pushes me to run faster...or should I say Penny pulls me. My avgerage pace was 10:27 mins/mile. I thought that was great. The last time I ran at the Matteson Trail was for a Halloween 5K and I finished in 36 mins. So I've shaved off 4-5 mins of my time. I plan on running a 5K this coming Saturday, hopefully I'll be able to run in it the same pace I ran today!

I have to get back on this running train and stick with my training schedule. The half marathon will be here before we know it!

Mileage

This week's mileage:
Sun: 4.08
Tues: 3
Thurs: 2
Fri: 2.15

Total Miles: 11:23 miles

I have a scheduled long run of 8 miles tomorrow, but I think I am going to save it for Monday for a couple of reasons: 1) it is suppose to rain tomorrow and 2) the husband is out of town until tomorrow evening and I don't want to run that far by myself.

Since Monday is a holiday I can push back the long run and do it on Monday. I'll have the day off!

Treadmill Run = Awful

I used to enjoy running on the treadmill. Now I can't stand it. After work today I decided to do my 3 mile run on the treadmill. That was a big mistake. It was awful. It was even painful. My shins started to hurt and I almost gave up. I finished my 3 miles by doing run/walk intervals. Which is fine, but when I can run 7 miles without stopping to walk outside I should be able to run 3 easily on the treadmill. I don't know what has shifted, but now I would much rather complete my runs outside. Plus, according to my Garmin my pace is faster when I run outside. Hmmm...who knew!

Fresh Start

This past week I did not get much running in. Aside from my long run last Sunday, I only ran 2 other times. Which is not great, but I did do more strength training so I guess that is a positive.

Weekly Mileage:
Sun: 7.13 miles (11:37 avg. pace)
Tues: 2 miles on the treadmill
Fri: 3.08 miles
Total for the week: 12.21 miles

I'm off to a fresh start with a 4 mile run this afternoon. That was the scheduled long run for today, which I don't consider long anymore. Hopefully the rest of the week I'll be able to complete all of my runs.

SWAMP STOMP

Since the Shamrock 1/2 Marathon was full when we went to register I had been looking for a replacement. A friend informed me of the Dismal Swamp Stomp 1/2 Marathon in April. I think this will actually be a better deal for Ryan and I. It gives us another month to train and it is cheaper! So as of Tuesday morning Ryan and I are registered to run in the SWAMP STOMP on April 17, 2010. Hey, I even think the name sounds better than the Shamrock!

(Sorry the picture is so blurry. Not quite sure how to make it better.)

30 Day Shred

After reading many reviews of 30 Day Shred I decided to go ahead and try it out. It was on sale for $9, so I picked it up today after work. After completing my treadmill run I popped in the DVD and did level 1. It wasn't too bad. But it was a good 20 minute workout. I plan on doing Level 1 10 times and then moving up to Level 2 for 10 times and then Level 3. Hopefully it will help me to shed or SHRED some pounds. I thought running would have helped with that but I haven't lost a single pound. I need to get back to some strength training ...so hopefully with 3DS, Kettlebells and BodyPump at the gym I'll be looking and feeling better.

Mileage Update

Since running with my Garmin Forerunner 305 and uploading my running stats on the Training Center computer program I've realized that I need to keep track of my mileage from Sunday-Saturday instead of Monday-Sunday. So with the New Year I will blog my weekly mileage Sunday to Saturday, which only makes sense since the first day of the week is Sunday.

So since I won't be recording my weekly mileage today (since it is the first day of the week), I will comment on my long run of 7.13 miles today. It....was....great! I was a bit nervous about jumping from 5 to 7 miles, but it was actually quite easy. I kept a slow and steady pace, averaging 11:37 min/miles. It was a great way to end my Winter Break from work. Tomorrow it is back to the grind. So I guess I better go start preparing for the week a little bit.

Races in 2010

To go along with my running goal for this year I would like to complete at least one race each month. I've been looking at the Peninsula Track Club's race schedule and I would like to complete the following races each month:

January: Big Daddy 10K (Jan. 23) and/or Cold F-F-Feet 5K (Jan. 30)
February: Virginia is For Lovers 14K (Feb. 13)
March: Fort Eustis 10K (Mar. 6) and/or Mutt & Jeff's No Ifs, Ands, or Butts 5K (Mar. 26)
April: ???
May: Yorktown Freedom Run 5K (May 31)
June: ???
July: ???
August: Coast Guard Day 5K (Aug. 7) and/or Smart Smiles 5K (Aug. 21)
September: ???
October: Mariners Museum Noland Trail 10K (Oct. 16)
November: ???
December: ???

I will have to update my schedule for a few months that don't have races. So stay tuned....

New Year....New Goals

Since all of the other blogs I have been reading have included goals for 2010, I thought I would too. I really like the idea of setting a goal for miles to run this year. Since starting to record my miles when I began training for the half marathon I have logged 64.61 miles (from Nov. 16 - Dec. 31, 2009). Of course, I have run many more miles than that this past year, these are just the miles that I have recorded.

To determine my goal for 2010 I did not want to set my goal too high. I know a lot of people have set their goals at 1,000 miles for the year, but I didn't want to set my goal that high, based on the amount of running that I have done in the past months. So, I think I will average between 15-20 miles a week, some weeks may be more and some may be less. With that being said I'm setting my goal to....

Run 800 miles in 2010.

I will be ecstatic to reach that goal.

I'm going to try to set up something on the side of my blog to track my mileage.

Here's to running in 2010!

Heartbroken

I am devastated. Ryan and I planned to register for our half marathon at the end of December. So yesterday we logged on to the website to register and it was FULL. Immediately my heart sank. I clicked around on the website trying to find another way (as if that were possible). Then what did I do...I started to cry. First, they were quite little tears that I tried to hide from Ryan. Then they were big, fat sobbing tears. I said to Ryan, "Look at me. I'm crying over running, over wanting to run and not being able to." I never thought that would have been possible. But I have put in so much work training for this half marathon. I was really going to do it. I was committed.

So we proceeded to look at the website some more. The full marathon was still open, but there is no way we would be ready to run 26.2 miles. The training for that is already in double digit miles. Then we looked at the local running clubs website for a chance that there would be another half marathon at around the same time. Well there is one at the end of February, but all the logistics look pretty bad. It is a hilly route and there is a time limit of 2.5 hours. My goal was to finish under 3 hours, but I'm not confident enough to say I would be able to keep up my 12 min/mile pace for 13.1 miles. So I'm not feeling confident for that half marathon...so now what....

I think the plan will be to just keep training for a half marathon as if we were going to run in March. I guess I can keep looking at the Shamrock website each day to see if there are any changes. I'm really bummed, but I've put in a lot of effort so I'm not going to give up.