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

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 !

Run All the Things

I've been such a giant bum this past week because I've been trying to get better from whatever plauge-type cold I fell victim to after Richmond. Thankfully I was able to breathe enough to run 3 miles with the 8K group on Saturday in preparation for the Turkey Trot 8K on Thursday.  I have mixed feelings about that race, but I'll get to that in a minute.  Because she's a genius/goddess/amazing human being, Alyssa mentioned that she has a spreadsheet for all of her races, was gracious enough to send it to me, and it has never been so easy to plan 4 years in advance for races because everyone does that.

My 2016 tab is a little more detailed and full, but I love being able to track everything (insert awesome sense of accomplishment here).  Here's what's coming up:

Training Linkup: The Richmond Edition

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

I'm Only Doing this for Donuts

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

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.