Running Chick

I ran the Breakers to Bay 5 mile race on Saturday.  Thanks to the humidity, sun, the first two miles being uphill and, um, the many beers I consumed the night before, it wasn’t one of my finer events. 

My heart rate was through the roof the entire time and I ended up taking a few walk breaks just to get that and my breathing under control.  I ended up finishing in 50:30, not exactly slow, but I should have been able to knock out some faster miles had I properly prepared for this event.  Oh well, live and learn, I guess.  My recap isn’t too exciting, so head on over to my friend G’s blog for some in-depth analysis and pictures(!)

I’m easing myself back into a running routine, so I ended last week with a total of 11.5 miles @ 10:46.  My monthly total from April was 59.24 miles @ 10:40 and May was 31.86 @ 10:13.  So far for 2013, I have 277 miles.

My next race will be the Canal Run in July.  New this year is the half marathon option, so I’ll be doing that with the above-mentioned friend.  After that, it’s Fox Cities Marathon in September. I think, anyway.  I figure I’ll start training for the full and then if I crash and burn/chicken out I’ll drop down to the half.

Wow, what a boring post. I don’t even have any pictures for you. Next time, for sure.

Hello, I’m still alive!  This last month has been a whirlwind of packing, moving, crappy weather and trying to maintain the last of my training schedule along with my sanity.  I’m happy to report that I survived.

I ran Journeys half marathon two weekends ago.  I ended up finishing in 2:08:27 which is about a 9 and a half minute PR over last year.  I honestly have no idea how I pulled that out.  The weather, Josh’s injury and moving really made it next to impossible to stay consistent and unfortunately, running had to take a backseat. My mileage wasn’t even close to where it should have been, but I did focus on lots of hills and I was able to get in six 10+ mile long runs so maybe that helped? Or, maybe it was the tailwind.  I really have no idea.

The weather on race morning was unpleasant to say the least.  34 degrees with about a 15 mph wind, plus intermittent rain/snow.

I dressed in full February running gear and I was still cold but there were some ladies up in the front of the line (read: fast) who dressed like it was 75 degrees outside. Runners are nuts.

This was my fourth time running Journeys and this damn course never gets any easier, no matter how many hills I run during training.  But, looking at my stats, I did manage run a pretty textbook successful race.  My second half was faster than my first, and I ran negative splits for the last six miles.  I took gels at 4.5 and 9 and had a bunch of Swedish Fish in-between.  I had water at every aid station, except the first, and I ran through all but two.    Running that distance at under 10:00 minute miles is really fast for me.  In hindsight, I probably should have taken one more gel had I anticipated maintaining that pace, but I figured I’d end up gradually slow down in the second half and noodling my way across the finish line somewhere around 2:20.  But, my legs kept working and I didn’t feel like I was going to have a heart attack or anything, so I just kept going.  When I crossed the finish line, I was spent.  After a hot shower and a two hour nap (oops, bad move), we headed out for our traditional post-Journeys boozing.

Anyway, next year I’m contemplating skipping Journeys in favor for the Green Bay Cellcom HM.  I know a couple of people who do it every year, and it sounds like a lot of fun.  Lots of time to think about that, though.

Hey, how goes it? Did you know I moved? I live in Jpigjtpm, MI now.  It used to be Houghton, MI, but somebody at the Ashland Chamber of Commerce decided to shift their fingers one key to the right when typing my city so now I will forever be known as being from the strange and mystical, far away land of Jpigjtpm.

So, race recap.  It was ... I dunno. I have yet to come up with a word that describes it accurately. I supposed “fine” will suffice for now, in lieu of “sucky” and “rotten”.  The weather was pretty crappy – cold & rainy for most of the way.  Not completely unexpected for this time of year, but there were times when I was questioning the sanity of running 13.1 miles in cold & wet weather when I would have been home in my warm bed.  Sanity checks told me that this was the last race of the season and every step I took was one more step closer to RUNNING VACATION.  Don’t laugh, it got me to the end.

We arrived in Ashland in the early afternoon on Friday. Puttered around the town a little bit, checked out the race area, finish line, bus & packet pickup areas, all that stuff.  We spent some time poking around in the downtown shops.  This race is a big event for Ashland, so we heard “Where are you from? Are you here for the race?” frequently.  We had a very disappointing (not to mention expensive) lunch at the Deep Water Grille, but their beer was really good (they ended up comping it, which was nice).  Packet pickup was a bit of a disorganized frenzy, but we made it out alive.

The race starts out in the little town of Moquah and follows the road for a mile a half or so before and then we get on the Tri Corridor Trail back into Ashland. 

We checked the trail out on Friday and the surface was hard packed. Unfortunately, we discovered that by the time we got on it, and 50% of the people in the race had already gone through, it had turned soft & loose.  My quads started complaining around mile 4 and didn’t stop for the rest of the way.  Getting out of bed this morning was painful.

Since this was the final race of the year, I decided to run with Josh.  The first mile was mostly downhill, so we started out a little fast (10:09).  Once we got on the trail, our pace evened out to around 10:30, which we held onto until around mile 10.  Then, the soft surface started to take it’s toll and our pace started dropping as our legs got more sore and our blisters got worse.  For some weird reason, I started to clip the inside of my right ankle with my left shoe so I had painful, bloody and muddy ankle.  My quads were complaining loudly as were the blisters on my left foot thanks to the rocks in my shoes.  Josh wasn’t faring much better.  In fact, in the last two miles or so, everybody around us looked like the walking wounded.  There were lots of people either walking slowly, limping, stretching something out.  We saw one guy being hauled off in a stretcher.  It was pretty crazy. 

Finally, FINALLY, after 11.5 miles, the trail turned to pavement and I think I can honestly say that I was never so happy to see pavement in all my life, except for maybe this time. 

Josh was hoping to make 2:20, but he ran out of gas in the end and my legs were too trashed to keep up any sort of wild 2 mile sprint to the finish, so we settled for 2:21. It was still 3 minutes better than he did in Appleton, so that was really great.

Race swag was a cool duffle bag.

And a non-specific medal.

The aid stations had plenty of water & Gatorade and the volunteers were very well prepared.  Also, for the course basically being out in the boonies, there were a surprising number of spectators along the way.  Less than Appleton, but way more than Eagle River.  The finish line was also set up very efficiently and there was plenty of food (donuts!).  We did have to shuffle around a while before we figured out where the drop & duffle bag pickup was, but we eventually found it.  The cost of this race was $84 (we registered after the price break periods). Was it worth it? Eh, probably not. Appleton had better swag and a better course. Would I do this race again? Probably not. Regardless of the weather, the trail just didn’t agree with my legs and the whole straight line in one direction for endless miles ended up crushing my soul after a while (sanity check, see above).

Up next is....nothing.  I’m taking a vacation from running for one, maybe two weeks.  I can usually go one week without a problem, but two makes me twitchy so we’ll see.  I have no more races on the schedule for 2012. Unless something really interesting comes up, I’ll just derp around until January and then dive back into a schedule for Journeys in May 2013.

Until next time, I will leave you with this last bit of whining. This is how my legs feel, y’all. Running is fun!