runrunkitkat

Marathon training has officially commenced.  

Obviously, I’ve been running for awhile, even building up to 12 miles, but I started a new training plan and am now doing my best to stick to it instead of doing my own thing.  It calls for more weekly mileage than I’ve previously done, including a mid-distance run on Friday to tire me out a bit for the Saturday long runs.  It will be hard work and require me to push myself out of my ‘comfort zone’, but I think definitely worth it in the end.

Basically, I’m trading fun for pain.  Good pain hopefully, as I don’t want to relive the excruciatingly painful experience I had in San Diego 3 years ago.  That is what scares me the most, what still causes me some sense of apprehension about training for this one.  That experience is what has kept me from training for a marathon up until this point—not the time required for training or even the expected pain of running 26.2 miles—but the possibility of me having a mid-marathon injury and not getting to enjoy the race.

The marathon course has finally been published and at first, I was not happy with it.  I mean, of all the wonderful places to run around the Seattle area, they pick this (somewhat) point-to-point route?

I didn’t think it held any possibility of being enjoyable…running on the viaduct and passing the finish line 3 times before I actually finish?? No thank you!  Plus, how am I supposed to run the route beforehand?  I’m 99.9% sure that pedestrians aren’t allowed on 70% of the course.  

But the more I think about it and visualize the race, I’m pretty excited for it, and think it will be a good first year course with great views.  My friend Aubrey will be running the half marathon, so it will be fun to get ready for this together and have our husbands out on race day as our cheerleaders.  And I signed up to volunteer at the Expo, so I’ll get to be one of the smiling faces giving the runner’s a good start to their marathon weekend.  

Only 16 weeks left!

Success!  I have completed one entire month of running every single day (I started in January since February was short).  Final recap:

Day 28 – 4 miles

       29 – 1 mile

       30 – 2.5 miles

       31 – 12 miles

That’s a total of 104.3 miles for the 31 days….Whew!  

Oddly, I feel like this is the only challenge I’ve ever given myself that I have been 100% without a single doubt successful at.

And a much as I wanted to keep my streak going, I decided not to run today.  It’s March 1st—the first day in 31 days that I haven’t ran.  I felt kinda weird, like I should’ve been doing something important.  But I restrained myself and realized that I deserved a little break.   

Ok, mostly it was because I needed a break.  Not because I’m injured or exhausted, but if I keep going, at what point will I ever stop?  I would keep pushing for a lengthier goal—100 days, 1 year, 1000 days…— and the only beneficiary of it all would be my orthopedic surgeon, requiring weekly visits while we figured out how to do a double shin transplant.  So I delved into my seldom-used left brain and rationalized that I should stop this before it becomes an addiction or injury.

No rest for the weary, though.  Superfab right brain tells me that I love running and can’t stay away from it for too long, no matter what the costs are.  Plus, I just registered for this little puppy:

Let the real running begin.

The end of my month long running challenge is nearing.  I can finally see the finish line!

Day 19  - 2 miles

        20  - 1

        21  - 3     

        22  - 2

        23  - 8.5

        24  - 3 or 4? Not sure, we spent 4 hours on a scavenger hunt, running to different locations.

        25  - 1

        26  - 3

        27  - 2 

Today will be day 28, so I have 4 more days to go until February is over.  (thank goodness for the short month!)  Not that I don’t enjoy this—it’s not too difficult or time consuming to throw in a quick 1 mile run. But, for the sake of my body and due to my past history of leg injuries, I’m really looking forward to giving my legs a little break and going back to focusing more on other workouts and marathon training.

Plus, I was kinda scolded by my chiropractor when I told him I run everyday.  As if I don’t already have enough back problems, here I am subjecting myself to an increased risk for injury.  Thankfully I haven’t noticed any impending injuries, but I probably shouldn’t push my luck much longer.

An update on my ‘Month of Running’ challenge….

To date, I have ran everyday for the past 18 days.  It’s been relatively easy to stick to, only a couple of times has my husband had to prompt me to get my run in.  Then I say, “oh right.  Be back in 15 minutes!”

I will admit that if we didn’t have such easy access to a treadmill, I am not certain that I’d be good enough to do this.  One good thing though, is that I used to hate running on the treadmill, but now that I know I only need to go a mile or two, it’s become much more enjoyable (it also helps that I can watch Food Network on tv and be easily distracted from the monotony).

I last left an update when I was getting ready for Day 9, so here’s my progress since then:

  Day – Miles

      9 – 3.5

    10 – 8.5

    11 – 2

    12 – 2

    13 – 1

    14 – 1.3 (I have to be exact on this b/c it was a hard uphill the entire way. Torture.)

    15 – 4

    16 – 2

    17 – 10.5  (painful uphill for the first 4 miles. what is my deal with self-induced pain?)

    18 – 2

I got new running shoes too, so it’s always exciting to take those for a long test drive.  I’ve loved my previous Asics 2110 & 2120 so much that I have no doubts about ordering new shoes online.  2130 is the most recent model, and when I found a great deal online, I snagged the last pair in my size.

Not a single blister on their 10.5 mile debut, so I’m already in love with them.  I better love them, because these puppies are in for a lot of miles in the next 4 1/2 months.

A shot of my Saturday morning 10.5 mile run.  I think I’ve learned to deal with the steep hills, because once you go up, you have to come down (though my knees hate that part).  And I kept having sideaches, so the uphills actually were a great way to distract myself from that pain. 

You may or may not be aware that I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day.  I could go on a long criticism about how it’s an unemotional commercial scam forcing people to feel obligated to buy tacky items to ‘profess their love’ for someone….but i’ll stop there.

My husband seems to be glad that I have this opinion—no pressure on him.  And while we don’t celebrate the ‘holiday’, we do wholeheartedly appreciate any cards or gifts that are sent our way by those who love us (ie: our parents).   

I was pleasantly surprised to receive a special package in the mail this week.

cereal in a can!

My mom knows me so well.

In a past blog post I mentioned how this cereal had piqued my interest, and being the thoughtful person that she is, she ordered me a tube of my own cereal.  Aptly titled, Katie & Goji. My very own custom cereal—How exciting! 

I promptly opened it and had a taste test (no matter that it was mid-afternoon. ANY time is cereal time).  Mmm…yummy!

nutritious & delicious!

I love that it comes from a small company, they personally mix your cereal and add their signature, as though they’re a long lost friend sending you a care package.  The canister is twice the size that I expected it to be.  It’s huge.  Even so, I’ve been doing my best to not have my usual giant servings so that I can keep this around longer than just 3-5 days like I tend to do with any cereal.  

I especially enjoy the dried blueberries and goji berries, and there certainly is no shortage of them.  Not only is it tasty, but I feel good knowing that I’m putting awesomely nutritious foods into my body—artisanal cereal, almonds, goji, blueberries, wheat germ, and chia.

I’ve never had chia seeds before, but they’re like poppy seeds, fairly tasteless, and are apparently excellent nutrition for runners.  I just hope I don’t start sprouting like a Chia Pet!

Thanks, Mom & Dad!  You’re the BEST!

Yesterday I felt the desire to make a reappearance at my Tuesday night gym class at 24 Hour Fitness.  I have two classes that I like to think I am a ‘regular’ at— a strength & endurance class and a shadow boxing class.  They are a great complement to my running and help me be a better runner by strengthening my core and upper body.  Problem is, I haven’t been to the boxing class for two months until last night.  

Not because I haven’t had the time.  But because it scares me.  

Every. single. time.  

The class is a combination of full throttle boxing/boot camp/plyometrics/athletic drills.  The instructor is a 5 foot tall ball of energy who doesn’t accept anything less than 100% effort.  Kinda like a petite drill sergeant.  She’s ruthless.  It is 45 minutes of pure physical exhaustion and pain, followed by 15 minutes of torturous ab work. 

Everytime I sit there waiting for class to start, I get nervous.  I am willingly signing myself up for pain.  And everytime, during the middle of doing 3 minutes of constant pushups and burpees, I ask myself why I’m subjecting myself to it.  I can easily run for 60 minutes.  But this…..this is torture.

And I love it.

Yes, there were times I thought I might fall over and pass out.  But also times when I looked in the mirror and thought “yeah, i could knock someone out with my left hook”.  It makes me feel powerful and strong.

An update on my running challenge:

So far, I am doing a good job of sticking to the goal.  Today will be my 9th consecutive day of running.  

I was asked what my definition of ‘running’ was for this.  Good question.

I set my own standard that I have to run at least 1 mile, and not in a lazy manner.  I prefer to measure my running in distance, rather than in duration, because distance is a constant.  1 mile to me is still 1 mile to everybody else.  30 minutes of running to me is 3.5 miles, but can be anywhere from 1 mile to 6.5 miles (for the crazy people), depending on your speed.

I feel like this makes the challenge somewhat simple for me, because even if I just really do not feel like running on a certain day, all I have to do is put on my running shoes, walk the 15 feet to our gym, spend 10 minutes in there and be done.  I have absolutely zero valid excuses possible to wiggle my way out of this.  

Recap:

Day 1-  3.5 miles