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March 26, 2007

I am a busy lady

You know I do like to keep things interesting... or at least busy enough that I never get bored. Right now I need to read 250 pages or so by Wednesday at 7:00 pm, it is 70 degrees out so I would love to go biking, I have a dinner with some parents tomorrow night, I am getting married in under seven weeks, and now I have decided that it might be fun to do a bike race in early June. Of course this is just at the 'might be fun' stage as opposed to the 'I am signed up and now I am freaking out' stage. So that is so much better. And it might be crazy to do a bike race then, less than a week after the Bolder Boulder and whatnot. But it might be so fun! And this is how I over-commit myself :)

Anyway it was a great weekend in my household. Saturday was cold and rainy so we had a very low turnout at practice - there were six of us! It was a surprising group as well as I ended up being the second fastest one there. And there are literally about seven people in the entire group that I am faster than, so the turnout was definitely skewed. We really had a great time in spite of the cold, wet conditions. We ran a long warmup and cool down, because we did not want to run on a cold, wet, muddy trail. Then we did 1 x 2 mile at half marathon pace (14:05 total), 4:00 active rest, and 2 x 1 mile at 10k pace (6:18, 6:40) and no, I do not know what I was thinking with the 6:18 since that is faster than my 5k pace right now! It was hard but fun. One of those workouts where you're tired at the end but not completely dead.

The rest of the day I enjoyed reading for class and then we had sushi with our friends M. and S. I had a massage and girls' lunch scheduled for 11:00 Sunday so I was up around 7:30 and running by 7:55, for 11 miles in around 1:39. At that point I had run 54 miles for the week and was very excited about my massage!

Sunday was a gorgeous day so I continued reading (however, this book is massive and massively verbose), went for a walk with Matt, cooked dinner, did laundry, and essentially found myself to be quite productive. Today I ran an easy 6 mile recovery run and now I am considering a bike ride but I am not sure because I really should read and my legs are still kind of dead from yesterday. Maybe I'll bring my bike down to this area tomorrow and ride before dinner, that could be fun!

Posted by barb at 4:13 PM | Comments (2)

March 19, 2007

Sometimes I wonder...

How my blogging friend Beth does it. And let me explain why. I was feeling really hard core this morning after my HUGE weekend of training and other exercise. I was wondering how I even survived, and how I ran this morning after my super-huge weekend. And then I read Beth's entry from yesterday! Now I am still feeling hard core but I am just so impressed by the amount of training Beth can fit into one day.

So here is what I did yesterday, because I am still kind of hard core :)

I woke up at about 8:00 and put my running clothes on (shorts and a short sleeved shirt, hooray!!). Then I sat around for 15 minutes, took an Aleve, drank a bottle of water, and ate a granola bar. I like to ease into my long runs, as most days I just wake up, throw my clothes on, and trot out the door. I am actually reading a pretty entertaining book for class right now. I had never even heard of the novel or the author - it's The Clever Woman in the Family by Charlotte Mary Younge - but I am really enjoying it. I read a few pages while I let my granola bar settle and then I headed out. I was kind of frozen for the first 15 minutes or so but then I started to feel pretty good. There were so many people out walking, running, etc., already, it was nice to see. And I like lots of scenery since my iPod is still non-operational after a few home PC issues. I wasn't sure how I would feel after Satuday's workout (which I will describe below), but I actually felt all right. I am not generally a proponent of taking anti-inflammatories before a run, but I think it really helped me get rid of random aches and pains. However, I was feeling good and the run did not even seem all that long (I ended up running for 95 minutes or what I think is about 10.5 miles). I think I am getting used to long runs again which is definitely a positive thing.

After my run I took a shower and Matt and I went to breakfast at my favorite place, which was delicious! Then Matt wanted to go for a bike ride (he slept through most of my run), so we did about 14.5 miles in around an hour on a path in town. It was nice and for me it was not too strenuous - Matt doesn't have a road bike so he was on his mountain bike, and I was on my road bike. Then, when we got back our friends invited us over for appetizers so we headed to their house. We hung out there for 45 minutes or so and decided to go for a walk. We got into looking at houses and stuff so we ended up walking for about 90 minutes! Needless to say by the time we got home all I could do was lay in my bed and watch a movie.

The rest of the weekend was somewhat quiet but I went to Boulder Saturday morning for a relatively strenuous track workout. We did 4 x (400-800-400) at 5k-10k-5k pace, with a 200 jog in between each interval. It was not that bad on paper but I ran with a pretty fast group, including an incredible pacer - she kept us right on about 1:37 for each 400 and 3:20 for each 800. It was a gorgeous day, and generally a really fun workout.

And today I hobbled through about 6 miles. Okay, I really didn't feel that bad, but I definitely was not on record pace. This is fine as today is a recovery day.

That is about all the news for today. This week is spring break from school, so that is nice! I am looking forward to NOT getting home at 10:15 pm on Wednesday night.

Posted by barb at 8:58 AM | Comments (1)

March 16, 2007

busy, fun week

I have to say I have been really busy but I've just been having a dynamite week. The weather is fabulous, I think I have figured out school again, work is good, and generally I am a happy camper.

Here is the week to date in running:
- Monday - 6 miles running, 15.5 miles biking - recovery day
- Tuesday - 7 miles running
- Wednesday - 8 miles running
- Thursday - 8 hilly miles running at a decent pace
- Friday - 5 very slow easy day/recovery miles (and I am not kidding about really slow, I think I was right around 10:00 miles on this one)

I am feeling pretty good. We are doing a track workout in the morning which should be fun. I would also like to do a long run Sunday and some biking and possibly yoga, although I also have a bunch of crap for the wedding to do and if I spend my entire weekend working out and don't spend time with Matt he probably will not like it... so there will be that too.

I am heading out in a few minutes to go hang with my friend M. and her 9 week old white lab puppy, Blizzard, who is very cute! And that is that. Someday I might actually write something useful in here but I think it may not be for a few months when wedding and school madness are done.

Posted by barb at 3:37 PM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2007

beautiful weather, tired legs

Wow, my legs really kind of hurt today. I didn't notice it much until I had to walk up and down three flights of stairs twice in an hour this morning. Going up was not too bad but going down was somewhat awkward. Now you may wonder why I am sore. Essentially, I have moved up from the slowest group to the middle group in my team. And these people are hard core! I definitely think it is beneficial to me as a runner to be in a faster group, but I cannot glide through the workouts. Of course I do not pay money to be coached so that I can glide through workouts so overall I think this is a good thing.

Anyhoo, Saturday we ran 7 by 1k at 10k pace. Holy cats, as they say in Minnesota! I think my slowest one was 4:18 and my fastest was 3:59. I have no clue what these equate to pace-wise except that 3:59 times 10 is about a 40:00 10k. Well, that would be sweet, but it is not exactly realistic right now. I am kind of thinking next year I should attempt a reasonably fast 10k. Maybe back at Tufts, which was one of the most fun races I have ever done!

So that was Saturday. Yesterday I ran approximately 10 miles which was nice. It was a beautiful weekend weather-wise, I hope it will keep up! And this morning I woke up at 6:00 which seemed to be rather early relative to 6:00 last week. I ran 6 miles which also seemed to take rather a long time, I do not know why! It must have been my tired legs. I guess it is in the 70's today so in spite of my tired legs I may hop on my bike for 45 minutes or so after work. I love daylight savings! And I really love spring-like weather in March, although I will not be getting my hopes up that the spring-like stuff will stick around as March is our snowiest month, and we could still have weeks of winter ahead of us.

Anyway what a great day! I love spring. I hope everyone has a fantabulous week.

Posted by barb at 1:38 PM | Comments (2)

March 8, 2007

sports bra weather

Oh I am so happy!! I am back from the Frozen North (Minnesota, where the highest temperature the whole time I was there was 22 degrees), and it is beautiful here!! Our last snow is finally melting, and yesterday it was in the mid-sixties. It is like perfect running weather. And great weather for other stuff of course, like going for walks, and biking, and running around in t-shirts. Which is great too!

Anyway here is the week in running:
- Monday - 6 miles on a treadmill in Minnesota
- Tuesday - 7 miles on a treadmill in Minnesota (as a note, I did take outdoor running stuff but it snowed a bunch there last week, it was cold, and I did not want to run on very icy roads. Yes I am a wuss)
- Wednesday - waited to get back from the Frozen North before running, which was a great decision in retrospect, because I had an awesome 10.5 mile run. It felt so good to run in shorts again!

I spoke to my coach and I am pretty sure I'm running a flat, hopefully reasonably fast half marathon on April 1, so I am trying to have reasonable mileage until then (I realized just now that it's only a few weeks away!). All I really need from the half is a qualifier for a preferred start for Chicago, but it'd be nice to run about a 1:40. We shall see!

Posted by barb at 7:54 AM | Comments (3)

March 5, 2007

busy weekend

So maybe this is just me, but I doubt it. Do you ever get a vision in your head about something - like how you want your run or your day to go or something - and then when it doesn't quite happen, it is like a big crisis? I get that a lot. I think it is part of my OCD ;) Anyway yesterday was one of those days for me. I had a vision about breakfast yesterday and it just didn't happen, which caused a minor meltdown, from which I recovered after a little while and created a new vision for my day which was that I wanted to work out a lot. Which I achieved and which made my day a lot better. Basically yesterday I ran 10.5 miles and then biked for 55 minutes. It was really fun and it was a beautiful day - I was running in shorts and a short sleeved shirt and biking in not much more. After that I was tired :)

Anyway I also had a great run Saturday in the mountains. I ran about 7 miles (well, I ran for 70 mintues and called it 7 miles because I was on a lot of snowy, slippery, slow terrain). It was great. Kind of windy but not bad at all for 8000 feet of altitude in early March. I love running! And the mountains. Of course now I am in Minnesota for work and it is about 16 degrees so I will be on the treadmill for a few days but I don't mind that considering I had a great weekend of training. And now I am going to start projecting my screen, so I am out of here.

Posted by barb at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)

March 1, 2007

New England Snowstorm

We had a storm yesterday that was, to me, highly reminiscent of my days in New England. Usually when it snows here, it just snows - but not yesterday! We somehow got a layer of ice under several inches of snow, which I remember fondly from Maine. Which is really awesome if you like spinning around in odd directions in your vehicle. Which I did yesterday, more than once. Luckily I did not hit anything!

So it has frankly been an exhausting couple of days. Monday we had nothing going, Tuesday we had a long dinner out with Matt's parents, Wednesday (yesterday) we had a tasting for our wedding and then I supposedly had class. I say supposedly because I rushed out of the tasting, drove for an hour and 15 minutes in terrible traffic and conditions, showed up in my classroom, and waited for 20 minutes for the rest of my class and my professor to show up. After which I realized apparently there was some memo I didn't get. Then I drove home and fumed. Tonight we have dinner plans as well. I am about to pass out in my chair!

Anyway running is going well. 6.5 miles Monday, 8 miles Tuesday, 7 miles yesterday, and TBD today (I am planning on 8 miles at about 2:00 pm when it's nice and warm out). I think I have pretty much decided to run Chicago this year, and hopefully qualify for Boston, so that is exciting. I will be spending a good amount of time running with friends in Boulder, which I am really looking forward to! I actually don't know how everything will go what with the triathlon training, and as of now I am assuming my mileage will be lower than it was the last time I trained for a marathon. However, I want to target my miles more so that instead of running 12 miles every day, I would like to have good long runs, good workouts, and a few nice easy days each week. I hope that employing smarter training strategies like these, instead of just running as much as possible but ignoring the whole long run idea, will lead to a kinder, gentler marathon experience for me.

That is all the news!

Posted by barb at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)