Done-ski.

I survived the half! 

The weather was pretty bad... but not as bad as I had thought it would be.

I have to run to a wedding now, but I'll leave you with this question:

Q.  Is there anything that can make runnning 13.1 miles in the freezing cold and rain more enjoyable?

A.  You bet, and I'm pretty sure it has something to do with frilly undergarments worn outside your clothes. For 13.1 miles. :)

Full race report to come soon!



Chicken Soup Bath!

Good morning!  It is a bright and sunny Tuesday morning in Wisconsin... which is in stark contrast to the forecast for the race this weekend.  My fellow runners and I have been checking the weather obsessively, and yesterday it said "Rain/ Snow Showers/ Wind" and 40 degrees.  Awesome.  ha.

Today, it's quite a bit better - 40 degrees and snow.  I would MUCH rather run in the snow than some sort of rain/sleet garbage.  I know I should stop checking the forecast every 5 minutes, but I'm doing it anyway.  :)

So, my whole family came down with a nasty cold a few weeks ago... and let me tell you, nothing is more difficult than caring for sick kids and a sick husband when you're sick too.  I really missed those days when I could just call into work and lounge around watching crappy daytime TV all day... but then I wouldn't get to see things like this:

Please excuse my scratchy man-voice and my inability to make coherent sentences... sleep deprivation is a funny thing.  :)

Tuesday Track tonight!!  We have another runner joining us... I may have to bring my camera and stalk them for your viewing enjoyment.  I think I'll be having them do ladders - 200, 400, 800, 800, 400, 200, and I may or may not join in.  Really trying to baby my shin before Saturday.

What is your most favorite workout, running or otherwise?

Deep Thoughts

"If you're an ant, and you're walking along across the top of a cup of pudding, you probably have no idea that the only thing between you and disaster is the strength of that pudding skin." Jack Handy

 

“If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.”  Jack Handy

    

Hey, happy Sunday everyone! Remember Jack Handy from SNL?  Makes me laugh every time I read one of his quotes.

Anyway, reason for the post title is I had some cool revelations about running, while running.  I headed out solo for my six miler yesterday to practice a little race strategy and push myself a little bit, and I've got to be honest with you... it SUCKED.  For about the first 1.5 miles, my shins were killing me, my stride was all goofy, and I just felt plain out of shape.  I was running about a ten minute mile, which is my plan for race day, and I felt beat and ready to call it a day.  But then I tried to picture myself at the race... cheering spectators, big mile markers, and my favorite, cowbells. .. I glanced at my watch, and it said I was running a 9:10 pace.  Nice! The rest of my run was awesome, fast, and fun.  My last mile was sub-eight minutes, and I felt strong.

That's when I realized how thin the line is between a great run and a total bust.  I think it's all about making the right decision - if you quit when the going gets tough you may miss out on an awesome experience.  Sometimes during a run when I feel like junk, I get it into my head that it's a bad day and tell myself there's always another run... but I wonder how much of the bad runs are caused by me giving up on them...  hmmm. 

Schedule for the Week

Monday - Upper Body Workout

Tuesday - Easy Track (4 x 400)

Wednesday - Lower Body

Thursday - Easy 2-3

Friday - Rest

Saturday - HALF MARATHON!

The theme for the week is stretch, stretch, STRETCH!!

Hope you all have a great rest of your weekend!

 

Let's Talk Numbers

So, my half is a week from tomorrow. 

It's my fourth half marathon, and the second since I had the twins in March of last year.  It's the Oshkosh half-marathon, and it is also the first half I ever did, and I finished in around 2:10 I think.

The next one was the Chicago Rock n Roll half, where I PR'd with 2:06, and I was also unknowingly pregnant with the boys...

I took a big long break for the pregnancy, and jumped back in with the Chicago Rock n Roll in 2010, where I suffered through with a horrible, awful, painful 2:45ish.  I ran with my best girlfriend, the hilarious and beautiful Rachel:



She loves my babies :)

 Here's us at the race expo last year:                                 

If only that were our finishing time...

I don't know what went wrong with this race exactly.  I was very undertrained, nursing, four months post-partum and a good twenty pounds heavier  than my last half, so maybe those things had something to do with it.... ha.  This is us at mile six, before we wanted to hang ourselves with our running shoes:

Me in the blue, Rachel in green

Haha - coincidentally, this picture was taken a few minutes before my milk randomly decided there must be a hungry baby nearby, so after noticing the growing wet spots on my chest, I just squirted water all over myself to make it blend in.  Only, it wasn't water, it was my patented 50/50 water gatorade mix... so I had sticky orange stuff mingling with the sweat and breastmilk.  Man, I am so attractive.  My husband is a lucky man. 

So anyway, are you still with me after that history lesson?  yikes, sorry about that.   Here's the moral of the story.  All I've been thinking about for a month is my time for this half marathon.  Rachel and I have exchanged pages-long email strings detailing what we believe to be the essential goals every runner needs:

1. The If-I-Don't-Get-This-I'll-Die Goal
2. The Stated Goal
3. The Secret Goal
4. The Super-Duper-Secret Goal

 I came up with my numbers for all of them... but to ensure that I'm not too embarrassed to come back and update you all, I'm only going to give you #2 and #3. 

Ok... drumroll please.....

I REALLY want to get under

2:15:00

But I REALLY REALLY want to get under 2:10.

We'll see.  I'm terrified just seeing it in black and white. 

Does anyone have anything really fun they're doing this weekend?  I think it'll finally be warm enough in Wisconsin to get out with the kiddos!  Woo!

Last Will and Testament

So, I'm cleaning out my house today, and I'm finally going through all the random boxes of old high school notebooks, pictures from 15 years ago, etc. that never got sorted through when I left for college, and I found a gem. 

My self-written will, from when I was 8 years old.

I have died

and gon to heaven. 

Leave not one

speak of dust

to him.  I want

all my stuff

giving to good will. 

And put chris in the

slammer beacause

he was a meane all

----->  ----->

his life!

I'm dead!

give my garden

 to I don't care!

Oh yes, feed my

garden to the horeses

in our back yard.

So maybe my brother and I didn't get along very well as kids, but we love each other now.  He's the best!

Brother/Sister Love.



Crappy track workout last night (for me - the rest of the group kicked butt).  Damn shins are still bad, but I'm just trying to ignore them for now, and hope they hold up for my half marathon.  That is in ten days. 

Anyway, hope you all have a super happy Wednesday! 

THUNDERHAIL!

When you read the title of the post, it's very important that the voice in your head sound like the deep, dramatic, wrestling announcer voice: "Noooowww, entering the ring.... THUNNNDERRRHAIL!!"  Sounds much more impressive. 

Well, I made it through the ten, and it was actually really fun.  As fun as running outside while getting pelted in the face by ice chunks can be... 

I woke up really early on Sunday (before my kids, which is a first), and got my stuff together.  I was really excited to try out my new Camelback handheld water bottle:

                                                 

It was awesome.. I totally recommend it.  My old bottle would always slip out of the sleeve, and it wasn't insulated, and the water tasted like old dishrags... so yeah, it's safe to say I love my new bottle.

Anyway, I wrote out the directions for our new route, and "laminated" them with some Scotch tape.

                                  

                                     

I picked up Matt, and we drove twenty minutes to get to our run, and the weather was bad.  It was about 30 degrees, sleeting, and pretty windy.  Honestly, I wasn't looking forward to it.  I do NOT like being cold, and I'm not particularly in to this kind of masochistic behavior.  But, we had to get the run in. 

We parked, and I snapped a quick picture through the windshield:

                                    

 We started running, and it actually wasn't too bad.  Once we got wet, we weren't cold and didn't really notice the rain much.  The first few miles passed pretty uneventfully, but I could tell Mattie wasn't feeling it.  He ended up peeling off a couple of miles early, but still made an awesome effort. 

Around 4 miles, it was sleeting pretty hard, and our necks and faces were stinging from the little chunks of ice.  Luckily, we had worn hats with brims, so it wasn't so bad as long as we tilted our heads in the right direction.   By about 6 miles, it started thundering and lightening...  Bad.  With one particularly terrifying crack of thunder, the hail started streaming down, and that was when I started seriously questioning finishing up early.  But, I was still four miles away from the car, and I figured running would get me out of the hail quicker.  It did, and I was super happy to be done when I saw my car. 

Me, at home post-run, very very happy to be done.

Our deck an hour after the storm... the hail melted somewhat, but it still looked cool.

As a treat, I picked up Subway on the way home... it was SOOO GOOD.  Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki on Italian Herbs & Cheese bread with provolone cheese, extra spinach, lettuce, onion, tomato, green pepper, banana pepper and sweet onion sauce.  mmmmmmmmm

                                   

Coming up for this week:  cool track workout on Tuesday, tempo on Thursday, and a six on Saturday.  Next week, half marathon!!  Hope you all have a great Monday!

Butterflies

Oooh I've got a serious case of the butterflies about my run today...

My kids, Nick, and I have all been sick since Thursday, so I missed my glorious ten-miler with my best buds yesterday... which is super crappy because yesterday was 45 degrees and sunny, and today is 30 degrees, steady rain, and windy! 

But, I mapped out a new course for my training buddy Matt and I to run, and it's going to be awesomely hilly and all-around super fun.  So I hope.  So, hopefully my under-nourished, not quite healthy body is ok for this run.  I'd consider putting it off, but it's my last long run before my half in THIRTEEN DAYS!!!  OK, I'll update later.