And So It Begins

If you follow me on Twitter you saw me mention yesterday that Marathon Training has officially started

Being the smarty pants that I am I remembered that cartooning photos makes the messy room magically disappear. Too bad I can’t make that type of thing happen in real life. Then again that might be freaky.

I kicked off Monday with a 4 mile run. 3 @ an easy pace, the last at 7:35-7:40. Yes I should have stayed at an easy pace for all 4 miles but mentally I was getting bored and my legs felt like running. Or maybe it was my Pro Compression socks that made me feel like picking up the pace. Whatever it was it felt good.  

Day 1: 4 miles, avg pace 8:21

Real quick: Did I tell you all about when I ran in my compression socks while in Texas? Good golly you would have thought people saw Brittany Spears running their neighborhood. Guess the pan handle doesn’t see a lot of blonde lady runners in knee highs. Hilar.

Why did I just say hilar? Ahem.

Tuesday Morning (today): Hills. A little more than 5 miles of what felt kind of like torture. In an awesome way. I kept my pace nice and easy and just focused on getting up hill and then recovering. I was so tempted to pick up the pace during recovery but I held back. Guess I am finally figuring this training thing out, huh? Took long enough. Slow and steady = injury free.

Day 2: 5.35 miles, avg pace 8:27

Tuesday Night (Tuesdays are my two-a-days): KOR Strengthening and Conditioning. Per the usual I met up with this awesome lady and her extremely cool boyfriend.

We got are arses handed to us while staring at the ocean. Not a bad gig.

Bring on tomorrow. Easy run. Way easy. Walkers might pass me up. If that happens I’ll high-five them and then slow down 🙂

~

As I mentioned above I wore Pro Compression socks on Day 1 during my run. I usually wear them for recovery but lately I have been digging the compression while running. Especially on long runs. The tighter the better. 

I have several different pairs of compression socks however Pro Compression are my faves. I was lucky enough to receive a few pairs during Ragnar (they were one of our sponsors) and ran 2 of my 3 Ultra Legs in them. Beings that I could walk the days following that crazy race I have to give credit to compression. Since our race I have picked up a few additional pairs in sweet colors and thought I was set for life until I saw June’s new color. Marathon Orange.

How rad will these be for  a Halloween race? Or Thanksgiving 5 miler. Or during Texas Football (That’s right SR, tell Jaymo I said his Red Raiders are lame sauce). Hook Em.

How do I keep getting so side tracked? Blame it on the double day.

Right now the awesome peeps at Pro Compression are offering 40% off (Say what?!) on these new colorful babies through July 10th. All you have to do is go shopping HERE and enter coupon code SOM610.

You can also get socks for $30 plus FREE shipping with code SOM612 at checkout.

So many deals, so little time.

Go get you some.

Time To Get Race Ready

If I could choose one word to describe myself right at this moment it would be LAZY.

Soooo tired.

Although I did manage to drag my butt to yoga yesterday I just haven’t had any motivation to lace up and log miles. I told myself to just get one run in this weekend and I would feel better. You know, one of those deals where once I am out the door it feels good. Should do the trick! I set my alarm for 5:45 this morning to get a long run in before church and never got up. Why? Because my phone was still on silent.

Divine intervention. Sometimes I just need a break and the extra sleep this morning was HUGE.

Why run when I can just sit and stare…

So I officially took a whole weekend off. I think I saw dust on my kicks. Or is that sand?

Maybe I shouldn’t call myself lazy. Let’s go with smart. Yup, I like that.

So now what? Time to buck up and get ready for Chicago. 

This week will still include some pretty darn easy runs. I am out of town next weekend and don’t want a crazy long run on the books in the hills of San Francisco. But the week after that will be go time. I am running a 15k race on the 4th of July and then it’s time to build endurance. 

Hills, speed work, long slow runs and yoga will be key. And strengthening and conditioning (that hurts!). All that followed with sushi and a whole lotta sleep. Yup, that will be happening. You guys ready?

FYI:

I am coming for you Chi-town. With guns (or should it be running shoes?) a blazin’…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

V.L.O.G

As promised. My morning in about 3 scatterbrained minutes. I still don’t have our editing software mastered. One day peeps. One day.

Editing in progress

Hold on to your pants. A VLOG is coming. Tonight. 

Until then…

Namaste.

(This was right before I lost my balance. LOL)

Home Sweet Home

First and foremost: Thank you to each of you for your kind words regarding the health of my MIL (and my race effort). I have read every comment (some of you made me cry in a good way) and I am overwhelmed at the amount of support. There is a blessing that comes out of each trial we face and I know that HE has a plan. Enduring the ups and downs will not be easy but with family and friends like you I know our family get through it. 

Second: I apologize that I have not been able to respond you each of your comments yet. Please forgive me. Travel to Texas, time with family, doctor visits and then trying to get back to CA has all been kind of a blur. I am home now and gathering my thoughts has been difficult. I feel like I am at a loss for words and for those of you that have met me you know I am a talker. I will make time this weekend to get back to each of you. Thank you for being patient with me.

And now to try to make a long story short…

~

Our Travels

We left for Tejas at the butt crack of dawn last Saturday. We had a quick layover in Denver and made it to Amarillo with no problem. We were greeted by my BILs, SILs, grandparents, cousins, nephews. You name it. FAM-I-LY. On Sunday we attended Trinity Baptist (my in laws home church) and met a spectacular group of people. I am not sure if I shared this with you all but when my MIL was diagnosed 2 weeks ago her Sunday School group asked her what she needed. She said that seeing her grand babies was it. Well they turned around and raised the money within 48 hours to fly my family to Texas. We are forever indebted to them for their kindness. I still can’t believe that they did that for us. It speaks volumes. VOLUMES. We took family photos that afternoon and then called it a night as treatment was scheduled to start Monday morning.

At 9:45 a.m my MIL checked in to oncology and was there until after 4 p.m. Talk about a long day. They hit her with the most aggressive treatment possible which ended up being 6 bags of fluid (if I recall right it was 5 of chemo, 1 of calcium/vitamin D). She then had a pump hooked up and chemo was slowly administered for 46 more hours. So she basically had 2.5 days of chemo. INSANE. The good news is that the doctor called the cancer “unimpressive” and feels that her odds are better than average. With this type of cancer (pancreatic) that is HUGE. We don’t know how the cancer will react to this treatment but what we do know is attitude is everything. To me unimpressive means she has a fighting chance. Break out the boxing gloves, my MIL is ready to go 12 rounds! 

On Tuesday we just spent time together and watched the NBA finals. A huge storm rolled in bringing thunder, rain wind and crazy hail. All of the weather ended up resulting in a loooong trip home on Wednesday. I am talking 12 hours long. I cannot believe my 2 little ones did not completely melt down. They were travel champs. 12 hours. It makes me want to barf thinking about it.

So now we sit and wait. And pray.

~

Home Sweet Home

Being back home is good. The beach brings peace and serenity. I am allowing myself to recover physically (from Ojai) and emotionally. I have only run twice in the past 2 weeks and am itching to get back to it.  

I registered for a 15k on the 4th of July that is a lot of fun. I think I will use it as a tempo since  it is time to start training for Chicago! Woohoo! I hope you all are ready for my crazy training posts. Train smart race hard. Time to make Chi town my “PR” race. Whadda ya think about that? Boom. Time to do work.

Okey dokey that’s it for tonight. I need to get some shut-eye so I can be ready for yoga tomorrow morning with the sister. That’s right. She’s coming with. So.much.fun.

Getting B-Slapped By The Marathon

I’m baaacccckkkk. I’ve missed you all dearly. A lot has been going on and it’s about time we get caught up.

Let’s just get Ojai out of the way. #$%#@.

I had a lot going on leading up to race day but for some reason I really thought I could pull off a GOOD if not GREAT race.  I mean, look at that elevation profile! Who wouldn’t want to go for it? My brain kept telling me to just do it but I should have known that the conditions were not ideal for me. 

Why? It’s a fast course, right? Yes it is. But the stars did not align. I could not get comfortable in my pace and my head was working against me the whole time. When my head is not in it that means my heart is not in it and when that happens 26.2 miles feels like 262.2 miles. Ojai smacked me down and reminded me to respect the distance. This isn’t a 5k. This is 26 freaking miles. Downhill or not, that ish is HARD. And I love it.

The bright side? I did not quit. No matter how badly I wanted to throw in the towel I powered through. That meant a LOT of breaks. More than I have ever taken in a race. Around mile 21 I met reader Krystal who caught me during an “eff this” moment and really brightened my day. So sorry I was dazed and confused but thank you for your encouragement! It meant the world to me.

So what went wrong you ask? After all I was all fired up on my willingness to PR right?

A few things…

1. Crammed Training. Coming off Ragnar with a lingering injury lead to low miles in April. Then when I decided I was going to do Ojai whether or not my hel hurt I entered 3 weeks of crazy mileage. I ran 50 more miles in May than I did in April. Yeah, I would call that a big increase. Also not likely the smartest move as I did not properly taper. Oh, did I mention I did not run one single 20 mile run? Not one. Not since January. Ooops.

2. My MIL was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer race week. Tuesday to be exact. This has been beyond rough. Mentally and physically I am drained. One week they said she was fine, the next it’s cancer. How the doc went from one extreme to the other is beyond me. We have been praying round the clock and will be leaving for Texas in a few days to spend time with her.

3. Work asked me to go out of the country for 2-3 weeks the same day that my MIL was diagnosed. Stress city. I was told to prepare to work in Tokyo for 2 maybe 3 weeks. I would have to leave June 16th. I cried. Literally. Multiple times. How can I leave in the midst of a family crisis? How could work not understand? After a few days of going back and forth and discussing our family’s state of emergency I finally made the decision to stand up and say I couldn’t go. I had not heard a word from my big boss before I left. Stressssss.

Given the above it makes sense to me why I could not and did not give it my all. I had nothing left. In the end I crossed that finish line in 4:09:xx.

Not my best, not my worst. But then again given the above I would say I am pretty freaking lucky to have even finished in that time.

I would like to say a quick thank you to my COACH 🙂 You know who you are. Your encouragement over the past few weeks has changed my running game. I am so thankful for you. I sincerely appreciated every email, text, tweet, etc! Chicago here we come!

~

Next.

I have had a few days to recover and now it’s time to get ready for Chi-Town. I am heading to Barre at Lululemon La Jolla tonight and will likely get a few workouts in here before we leave for Texas. It’s probably going to be hotter than hot in the pan handle so either early am or pm running will have to do.

I may register for a few shorter races to test my fitness along the way. Coronado on the 4th of July is a favorite and maybe a half mary in between to use as a tempo. We shall see. If you have any suggestions let me know. The only weekends that are out are June 30th (nor cal wedding) and August 17th (nor cal wedding).

Side serious note:

Please keep my MIL in your thoughts and prayers. We do not know what lies ahead but we have faith in HIM and his plans. This will not be an easy journey but in the company of family and friends we can’t go wrong.