Yesterday I headed out the door for a run, planning to do one of our regular routes that take us 4.6 miles through the neighborhood. I got about a mile and a half into it, and suddenly the heaven's opened up! It was DUMPING rain on me - I'm not just talking about a light shower, but a torrential downpour! Plus the wind was blowing at about 50 miles/hour! I felt like I was in a hurricane! Ok, well not really, but it was pretty terrible. So there I am, 2 miles away from home, soaking wet and cold. At that point I really had no choice but to press on - there's a quote I love that says something about how the thing with running is that once you realize that you don't really want to be there you're already miles from home! Ain't that the truth!? So I kept on running, albeit like I was drunk because the wind kept blowing me all over the place. I'd see people driving past me in their (dry) cars, and I could just hear their thoughts "What the heck is she doing out in this?", "Ooooh...sucks it be her!", and "She's crazy!". All very valid points. But I kept going, cut my run a little short, got in 3.8 miles and jumped in a hot shower immediately upon my arrival home. Of course, the minute I got to our house the rain stopped. Typical!
To top it all off, my blisters came back with a vengeance! I think it's time to buy some of those $12/pair socks. For that price they'd better give my feet wings!
Oh, the joys of running.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
10km is a long way to run!
Well, we did it! Jeremy and I ran our first 10km race on Sunday. It was GREAT! Aside from a couple of blisters I still feel great afterwards - I'm not sore at all, which is incredible. It was a pretty tough course - the race director must have the devil on his shoulder whispering mean ideas in his ear because there was a killer hill at the end. Why they can't put the bad stuff at the beginning while you're still fresh and eager is beyond me! Oh well.
Sunday morning was absolutely perfect - low 60's, a little cloudy but still nice. Our 6-mile run during the week had been pretty slow and painful so we lined up towards the back of the pack to keep out of everyone's way. We started out extremely slow (the lady at mile marker 1 called out our time of 13-something minutes), and it seemed like everyone sped on ahead. At one point, there were only a handful of people behind us - when I noticed that I very nearly threw in the towel. I didn't want to be so far back - truth be told, I was embarrassed. I figured there was no way we could keep up and run a respectable time, and I would HATE to be last! After mile marker 1 we hit the old baseball park - we had to run around the perimeter. I think we ran downhill for a moment and then we had to run back up, which was pretty tough. Somehow, we started to pick up the pace and our strides were much longer than they are during our training runs, which felt great! All those people who had started out so fast began to slow down and we were catching up! We started picking people off and when they called out our time at mile marker 2 we had run about 2 minutes faster than our mile 1 pace. The next few miles were great - we had found our rhythm, and I just kept picking a person in front of us, we'd chase them down, then pick the next person. We were doing a lot of passing and not getting passed by many. We had one quick water stop (I learned I CANNOT drink and run at the same time), then it was down Capitol Hill, along the straight-away and back up. At the base of the hill was a guy with a cowbell, holding a sign that said "Git er done!" - what a riot! Then came the hill and boy oh boy was it BIG!! I really, really tried to run the whole thing, but towards the top I felt almost faint and we had to walk for a minute. With the mean ol' hill behind us, we picked up the pace again, and pushed hard for the 3/4 mile of so until the finish. I felt great crossing the line, and although our time was still slow, we ran 5 mins faster than our training run during the week. We finished in 70:26.
I definitely learned a few things from this race -
1. Competitors at a 10km are a LOT different from those at a 5km. Quite clearly they are people who have been running for some time - while we were somewhere in the middle of our 5k race, we were definitely towards the end of the 10k.
2. I'm not coordinated enough to drink and run, as learned when I splashed water up my nose.
3. Hills are hard, and will be incorporated more frequently into our training runs.
4. It's ok to have a slow start - it just means you'll feel great when you start passing all those folks who went out too fast!
5. I need to get better socks to stop my poor feet from suffering with blisters!
I felt like it was a GREAT race and, even though I was really nervous at the beginning and didn't think I could do it, I'm so glad we ran. Now I have to work on getting FAST, so we can give mum and dad something to cheer for when they watch us run the Marine Corps Marathon 10km race in October.
Sunday morning was absolutely perfect - low 60's, a little cloudy but still nice. Our 6-mile run during the week had been pretty slow and painful so we lined up towards the back of the pack to keep out of everyone's way. We started out extremely slow (the lady at mile marker 1 called out our time of 13-something minutes), and it seemed like everyone sped on ahead. At one point, there were only a handful of people behind us - when I noticed that I very nearly threw in the towel. I didn't want to be so far back - truth be told, I was embarrassed. I figured there was no way we could keep up and run a respectable time, and I would HATE to be last! After mile marker 1 we hit the old baseball park - we had to run around the perimeter. I think we ran downhill for a moment and then we had to run back up, which was pretty tough. Somehow, we started to pick up the pace and our strides were much longer than they are during our training runs, which felt great! All those people who had started out so fast began to slow down and we were catching up! We started picking people off and when they called out our time at mile marker 2 we had run about 2 minutes faster than our mile 1 pace. The next few miles were great - we had found our rhythm, and I just kept picking a person in front of us, we'd chase them down, then pick the next person. We were doing a lot of passing and not getting passed by many. We had one quick water stop (I learned I CANNOT drink and run at the same time), then it was down Capitol Hill, along the straight-away and back up. At the base of the hill was a guy with a cowbell, holding a sign that said "Git er done!" - what a riot! Then came the hill and boy oh boy was it BIG!! I really, really tried to run the whole thing, but towards the top I felt almost faint and we had to walk for a minute. With the mean ol' hill behind us, we picked up the pace again, and pushed hard for the 3/4 mile of so until the finish. I felt great crossing the line, and although our time was still slow, we ran 5 mins faster than our training run during the week. We finished in 70:26.
I definitely learned a few things from this race -
1. Competitors at a 10km are a LOT different from those at a 5km. Quite clearly they are people who have been running for some time - while we were somewhere in the middle of our 5k race, we were definitely towards the end of the 10k.
2. I'm not coordinated enough to drink and run, as learned when I splashed water up my nose.
3. Hills are hard, and will be incorporated more frequently into our training runs.
4. It's ok to have a slow start - it just means you'll feel great when you start passing all those folks who went out too fast!
5. I need to get better socks to stop my poor feet from suffering with blisters!
I felt like it was a GREAT race and, even though I was really nervous at the beginning and didn't think I could do it, I'm so glad we ran. Now I have to work on getting FAST, so we can give mum and dad something to cheer for when they watch us run the Marine Corps Marathon 10km race in October.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
The Mustang is no more
Much to Jeremy's dismay, today we traded in the Mustang for a 2008 Ford Fusion. Because I have to drive almost 30 miles each way to & from work, we decided it might be time for a more fuel efficient car. We had been looking for a good week or two, done lots of research and looked at a couple of cars. The first was a 2007 Sebring sedan which, although it looked gorgeous on the outside, was terrible on the inside - all beige, cheap plastics. Ick! Then we had a look at a 2009 Toyota Corolla, which was actually a really nice car. I guess they sell about 10 million of those a week, because they only had one that had all the options we wanted at the dealer, so we put down a deposit in the event they could get one in for us. Then today Jeremy noticed that Ford was offering great financing, so we went to look at the Fusions. And even though we really did trade down - from a V8 to a 4-cylinder, muscle car to family car - it sure doesn't seem like it! We decided on a red Fusion, with the sport package. It has a 6-disc CD changer, 18" aluminium wheels, sunroof, reverse sensing (so it beeps at me before I hit something), and leather seats (black with red inserts). It really is a NICE car! Plus, and here comes the best part, it has a backseat that actual people can fit in (not just elves!)!! It gets much better gas mileage than the Mustang, and it's the type of car that will accommodate our one day growing family. It's perfect!! YAY!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)