Richmond Training #2

Richmond Training - Week 2

Taking a page from Tracy's book, I'm not calling my training recaps "Sunday Sweats"...because they will probably never get updated on a Sunday.

Week 2 long run: ✔️ ! This weather today is everything 😍 Even after waking up later than I wanted, the awesome temps and almost non existent humidity let me push through to 6 miles. Richmond training is off to a pretty good start ! . . . #running #training #halfmarathon #13point1 #runrdu #runlikeagirl #fitsnap #raleigh #umstead

A photo posted by Lisa Marie 💀 (@lisamdee) on Sep 3, 2016 at 10:39am PDT

Sunday Sweats (on Monday) #1

If I put my weekly training recap up on Monday, can they still be Sunday Sweats ? I say yes, since it's my blog and I do what I want !

Richmond Training - Week 1

This week was my first official week of Richmond Half Marathon training.  Because, um...oops.  I decided to do a half.  Blame Alyssa.

Twenty-Nine

I turned 29 years old on Saturday.  For the first time in 4 years, I was able to travel home and spend my actual day of birth with my family and friends in the house and town I grew up in.  My heart is just so full from this weekend.

Training for Tuesday - Spring 2016

With a finish time of 2:02:37, I've wrapped up my spring race season. 33.1 miles (23.1 of which were the hilliest I've ever run) between 4/2 and 4/23. I think I've earned a nice long break from racing (well, until the fall anyway) ! 👟🏁🏅#running #runrdu #runlikeagirl #tarheel10miler #runhappy #10miler @tarheel10miler

A photo posted by Lisa Marie 💀 (@lisamdee) on Apr 23, 2016 at 2:55pm PDT

Rock N Roll Raleigh - Race Recap

My DC Weekend - Cherry Blossom 10 Miler

This past weekend was the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 Miler in Washington, DC where I got to see Alyssa & Tracy and run an awesome race in a pretty rad city.

What a great weekend with amazing people. 10/10 would do it all again ! After the race, @briandouglas138 and I got to hang around the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the Air and Space Museum. Our step count ended up totaling 20 miles for the day !! 🇺🇸❤️🏁👟🌸 #cherryblossom10miler #cherryblossom #washingtonmonument #smithsonian #washingtonDC

A photo posted by Lisa Marie 💀 (@lisamdee) on Apr 3, 2016 at 4:46pm PDT

You're a Slacker, McFly

I'm not a fan of seasonal depression.  Obviously no one is, but I feel like I'm a prisoner in my own head because I'm all "THERE ARE SO MANY AMAZING THINGS I WANT TO DO" but in reality, I only have enough energy to watch Netflix.  I've had zero motivation or desire to train for races and have just slacked off of life in general.

HOWEVER ! I know this is a problem for me so whenever I can, I've been really pushing myself.  Taking Barre classes has been the BIGGEST help.  Without realizing it, I've been working towards trying to be healthier (I'm super nervous writing about this because I'm afraid my brain will realize what I've been doing and sabotage my progress !) and just taking the good with the bad.

Spring Race Countown

I've been absent from the blogging world for some time but I wanted to make sure I came back for Training for Tuesday !

RIP David Bowie

I've missed you all ! Happy New Year and hello to my first post of 2016 !

I will not be recapping 2015.  Goodbye and good riddance.  While I'm thankful that 2015 showed me that I am a hell of a lot stronger than I ever thought possible, I'm ready to rock 2016.

[RIP David Bowie.]

I'm Not Ready

I woke up on Tuesday with a sore throat and body aches. I left work early, holed myself up on the couch and binge watched Friends.  For the past 3 days, I have loaded up on Vitamin C & E, drowned myself in hot tea and honey and soup and Coldeeze.  It's Thursday, and while I don't feel worse, I don't feel like I could run a half marathon. I have a doctors appointment today because of course I have a cold or strep or the plague something.

My thoughts over the past few days:

Bloggers #RunOaks

I've been looking forward to this past weekend ever since Alyssa told me she was thinking about signing up for City of Oaks.  The fact that it's over already and I'm writing a recap doesn't feel real.  I hope that you've already been over to Alyssa's page and check out Tracy's as well.

Training Linkup: The Richmond Edition

In case you didn't get enough training talk yesterday, here's some more !

I need to be a Time Lord

I haven't written a post in HOW MANY DAYS !??! Jesus, where the hell is the time going ?! Someone get me a Tardis so I can go back and update this more often. I could have sworn I only wrote a post the other day and it wasn't THAT long ago. Le sigh. Well, since it's been forever and a day, how about some updates, yes ?

I'm Only Doing this for Donuts

I was not about to let another Training for Tuesday pass me by without getting on board !

Weekending - My Legs Hurt

I've come to the conclusion that if I could just pretend the weekdays don't happen, that I would be a much happier person.  Since that's not really an option, and I'm forced into adult responsibility and mandatory socialization, I'll just relive this past weekend to make myself feel better over my severe case of the Mondays.

World's Okayest Runner

Today marks 52 days until the Richmond Half Marathon.  It seems like a good time for a training update considering I've updated this a total of, um, zero times...

After attempting to create my own training plan after extensive google searching, my resident super runner/Fleet Feet Training program coordinator/favorite human in the whole world helped combine the 3 calendars I had into one super awesome training program...AKA he threw them out and made one that worked for me. 

(Yes, he knows I took this and that this would end up here eventually)

The general idea was that during the week I would train for time (Run for 35 min, Cross Train for 25 min, you get the idea) and that on the weekend for my long runs, I could focus on distance.  Without boring you with the sordid details of the affect of humidity on my lungs this summer, I can honestly say that my training got started last week.

Which means I really don't have too much time to start getting my miles up.  Right now I can do 5 miles for my long runs no problem.  Except I should be doing anywhere from 8-10.  I'm working on being okay with this and just focusing on doing what I need to do to make sure I'm smart and uninjured and progressing and not dying.

My biggest struggle at the moment is knowing the difference between pushing through pain to get to the next milestone and when to be smart enough to stop.  Currently I keep erring on the side of smart.  On Saturday I had this plan to do a run I've wanted to do since I laced up my shoes again: Run from my apartment to my second home favorite coffee shop, Cup A Joe.  It's 7 miles.  I was excited, I was ready, and I had it all planned out.  That whole week the weather had been phenomenal, I was running (and BREATHING!) better, I was doing hill repeats and running faster than I had been since I started trying to train in August.   Of course on this lovely Saturday that I had been looking forward to for what seemed like forever, the heat came back - FAST. Realizing I had started my adventure too late in the day, I cut my 7 mile run to 3.6 miles.

Tonight I plan on doing a 30 minute run just to get my legs moving again.  They've been hating me rather seriously since Saturday but I think I finally got all the knots out of my calves. Also, in order to avoid freaking myself out, I'm focusing on getting myself in good shape to run a 10 miler on October 24th.  Which based on where I am now, seems 100% completely accomplish-able (is that even a word ?) 

Until the next update, here's a picture of the newest addition to my running shoe family:

ALSO ! I'm looking for some fun running related apparel either to wear during training or a race or just when I'm being lazy in sweatpants.  

What are your favorite running shirts ?

From Zero to 13.1...Again

It's about time I linked up with my favorite blogger girls (and favorite in real life girls !) for their Training for Tuesday linkup.  I've been hesitant because I've been lazy.  Not lazy about posting, but running.  However, this blog is an outlet for me, a way to throw things out into technology land and see what happens.  So here we go.

I'm Not Dead

Hi. Remember me ? I'm not dead [yet]. I just tend to fall off the face of social media for an extended amount of time. Especially one that requires thought and planning and effort and it's not that I don't love you guys but honestly

Story of my life for the past 2 months. Which I feel SUPER bad about and will probably apologize for over the next million blog posts.

Especially when the creation of this blog was to track my progress for a certain half marathon that, oh yeah, I KILLED in 2:14:14.

So would it be okay that even though I haven't been around in almost 2 months, I got a little braggy ? I mean, you do come here to read about me, right ?

Oh good.  Want some pictures ? Of course you do. And I just happen to have some right here:

(Finish line pic - Sweatband dude is my FAVORITE)

(YAY for this guy. I'd probably be dead if it wasn't for him)

(Let's talk about the unnecessarily GIANT finishers medal, shall we ?!)

And you'll never guess who I ran into (no not literally, she was TOTALLY done before me) ?! The super awesome Tracy !

It was one of those fun moments of "Hey ! I'm so excited to actually meet you and I smell and you're here with your family and I'm awkward and I really want coffee but high fives for awesomeness and I'm gonna go die now, kbye !" I only hope that one day I can run a sub 2:00 half like this girl. Damn !

THEN, I ran the Santa Paws 5K which was my first ever 5K last year. The course was in a different place than last year, I got lazy and hadn't run since the half and holy hills batman did that course hurt. But I still PR-ed with a 29:01 !

(Again, This guy ? Best. Ever.)

And lastly...I ran my first Turkey Trot 8K on Thanksgiving. That however, was not a fun run for me as my lungs have decided to suck A LOT. I still managed to do it in 51:58 but I walked WAY more than I wanted to.  Shout out to Big Mike for running and walking with me the whole time while I was pretty sure I was dying. [Asthma that has been dormant for about 15 years has decided to rear its ugly head again in the form of exercise induced asthma.  Currently on a steroid inhaler to kickstart my lungs so cross your fingers they stop sucking - metaphorically of course - and breathing becomes not so brutal.]

Otherwise I've just been relaxing and having awesome adventures (pictures to come once I get them all off my phone, obviously): Front row seats to a Hurricanes hockey game, fun trips to the zoo, Dracula the ballet, and lots of other fun things. I can honestly say for the first time in a VERY long time, I am so insanely happy with my life. Now if I could just get a job that doesn't make me grumpy...

What does the future have in store ? Once I can get my breathing under control, I plan on training for a TBD spring half marathon. Only this time ? NO WALKING. Now that I know I can complete one, I want to run the whole thing. And I also want to nail some PR's in the process.

I guess the only thing left is...are you guys going to hang out and see how it all unfolds ?!

Quirky.

Last night I had a spectacular 9 mile run.  Unfortunately, my legs refuse to ever be okay after running anything over 6 but whatever. Lots of heat and ice and elevation for me today. I've got enough problems with IT band on my other leg, so you better get your shit together Achilles tendon...

Anyway, post run, I was soaking in my bathtub (Epsom salts FTW !), eating some yogurt, watching Netflix, and texting Alyssa.  Thankfully this girl just gets me because anyone else would have totally thought doing all of those things concurrently would classify me as certifiable.

On Sunday, B and I watched Good Will Hunting.  After the whole thing was over, he told me that HE'D NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE !  I felt like a moron because I kept making comments about different scenes (again, operating under the assumption that he had seen one of the best movies ever created).  One of my favorite scenes is when Sean talks about his wife.



[Random fact: the camera shakes because the camera operator couldn't hold it still from laughing so hard - Robin improvised that scene]

Why did I tell you about my post run soak and Good Will Hunting ? Because it got me thinking about weird things people do that sometimes seem completely ridiculous to some but totally normal to others. So, I now share with you some weird idiosyncrasies I have which are totally normal to me:

• I can go run for 90 minutes without any music but need to have my phone, food, and a movie playing in order to sit still in a bath for 20 minutes. 
• I won't open a can without tap tapping the top of the can, knowing full well it doesn't do anything. 
• I won't leave my apartment without saying "Be good monsters, Mommy loves you" to the dogs. 
• When I'm at work, if I have Spotify playing in the background, no work gets done but put on a TV show from Netflix on and holy crap you wouldn't believe the amount of work that gets done. 
• I eat Smarties 3 at a time.  For some reason 2 is too little and trying to eat more than 3 at a time just doesn't work.
• When I don't have my rings on, my thumb still goes to each finger and tries to spin them even though they're not there.
• If I run in the morning, I can't have coffee before but fiend for it by the time i'm done; if I run at night, drinking anything other than water after makes me want to kill myself.
• I try to limit the amount of times I check my phone but when I do, I have 4 apps in the bottom corner that if I check one, I'm checking them all.
• If I'm the only one in my car, things have to be in a certain place so I can get them whenever I need to without taking my eyes off the road.  If someone else is in the car, they get a purse on their lap and the phrase "Can you get me my..." happens about every 5 minutes. 
• I can recite pretty much entire movies, TV series, discographies, but ask me something like "Is today Tuesday ?" and I'm all "I dunno".

So there's that. Completely random, useless, not remotely related to anything things that you didn't need to know but things that make me, me !  But I'm super nosy...what are your peccadilloes ? Tell me, tell me, tell me !

Have a good Tuesday friends :)

Insanity.

There is no excuse for my absence other than I simply haven't been able to make blogging a priority. I just need you to know that I thought about you everyday. I didn't forget about you.  I hope you didn't forget about me !

Mostly my training has been going phenomenal with some setbacks here and there. I'm currently panicking as I realize how close my 10 miler is and then the week after that is my first ever half marathon.  Um, give me a minute, I'm freaking out again.

I need to get back to my insane work schedule, but I just wanted to make sure you knew you were still loved.  I do have some fun blog posts planned (just be patient with me) like:

• Why I became a runner
• Where I see myself in 5 years
• Obsessions (including Netflix binges !)
• Anything you've been dying to know about me :)

Until then, please enjoy a random assortment of shirts I need from lookhuman.com.  You know, for when I have infinite monies and all. 

And my two favorites (because reasons for those of you who know me)

I hope everyone has an awesome week !