Treadmill Pacing and January Round-Up

Happy Saturday!  Remember how my legs felt so fatigued on Thursday and therefore I only ran 30 minutes?  Well, yesterday I went back to the treadmill and felt awesome!

Day 5 - 7.5 miles in 60 minutes - 8:00 average

I really didn't think I'd make it the full hour again last night because I thought for sure my legs would feel so tired and sluggish like they did Thursday.  I started the treadmill at 6.7 (8:57 pace) and increased by .1 every time the song changed (I always do my treadmill workouts by number of songs instead of minutes).  I wasn't sure how long I'd make it and kind of thought once I got to 7.5 (8:00 pace), I would just keep it there and cruise for as long as I could, hopefully an hour.  But I was feeling great, so I just kept increasing with each song and when I got to about 43 minutes I really wanted to quit...but I had made it that far so quitting wasn't allowed.  I finished the run at 8.3 (7:14 pace) for a total of 7.5 in 60 minutes - exactly 8:00 pace average.

Boom.  I did not expect to have that good of a workout after Thursday's not-so -good workout.  But I guess I just needed a bit of a rest day!  Today will probably be an easier day.  And we are getting more snow :(  So I think the treadmill will be calling my name for awhile.  And I will answer it's call and bring my BFFs Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and a few others to help get me through it.

Here's a treadmill pace chart:

And alas, it is February.  So I must do my analytical-self thing and give you a recap of my January mileage:

Total Miles - 66

Total Runs - 12

Average Miles/Run - 5.5

And here is a comparison of this January to all my previous Januaries since 2008:

I think I was trying to get super motived in 2012 and show the tax busy season who's the boss...but it didn't work out (tax busy season is always the winner) and by April of that year, I wasn't running any more... but we can analyze that when we get there.

All in all, I guess the years I'd want compare to the most are 2010 and 2013 because those are the years (although not until October) that I ran good marathons.  However, January 2010 was when I was still injured (groin muscle) so running was a struggle until May/June.  I think I'm where I need to be for now, just building up the base and mileage.  And actually, about half that January 2014 mileage is from the past 5 days.  So my goal for February is to run higher mileage, but evenly spaces throughout the month.  That shouldn't be a problem if I keep up with my 30-Day Challenge!
 
I didn't do a Friday Five post this week, but I do have a few really great articles or blog posts you should check out!

What I Learned From My First Marathon - from Kristin @ Glitter and Dust

15 Reasons Cousins Make The Best Friends - Thought Catalog

Weight Is Just A Number - from Elise @ 9 to Fit
Los Angeles Will Host The 2016 Olympic Marathon Trials - LA Times
Season of Humbling - from Katie @ Peace, Love, & Oats
Why Can You Bet on the Super Bowl But Not Races? - Runner's World

Friday Five - 1/24

Since I fell off the blogging train over the holidays, I haven't had the chance to do the Friday Five posts and these are some of the most fun posts!  So I'm going to try to get back to doing them every week :)

I did manage to stay on the Twitter train for the most part, so you should follow me there...Here are  Five Tweets that I've enjoyed recently (well, in the past month):

Price of Gold was an ESPN 30for30 special on last week about Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.  It was really good!  And then 90s hairstyles were definitely classic.

I tweeted at US Airways as I waited on the runway for my plane to Phoenix take off and they tweeted back at me!  Don't you just love when companies do that?  I responded to them saying I did indeed enjoy the flight and slept almost the entire way and they even responded back to me saying they hope to see me again.

The Polar Vortex is over, thankfully!  But temperatures are still very very cold here in Chicago.

This would make my life a million times better...but also a million times more expensive.

Hilarious.


Five Articles/Posts:

New Chicago Marathon Registration Process for 2014 <-- Combo of qualification by time and lottery.  Luckily my time will qualify me so I'm considering doing it again this year!

Work-Life Balance is a Lie, So Here's a Better Way to Think About It

Depression is NOT a Mental Illness

Penn Freshman Runner Commits Suicide

The 100 Greatest College Traditions <-- UD has 2 on this list!

Five Things Making Me Happy:

I got Katy Perry tickets for Chicago!!  I tried really hard to get better seats and would've paid more, but TicketMaster was being dumb, it said I had the tickets, and then the next page said they couldn't process my request.  But nonetheless, at least I have tickets.  I will probably still monitor various sites to try to get better tickets and sell the ones I have.  And will gladly still go to any city to see her again if anyone wants to.

The Bachelor.  It is so ridiculous, but I just can't NOT watch.  I was sad to see the Free Spirit be let go last week, but there's still lots of crazies left.

Selling books on Amazon.  We have a huge box of old textbooks from as early as my high school days, about 10 years ago.  I listed them all on Amazon and I didn't expect many to sell since they are all old editions, but so far I've sold 2!

Reading.  I will probably do a whole post on books I've read recently or want to read.  I just finally finished The Art of Hearing Heartbeats.  I started it over the summer I think and would read it off an on.  Airplane flights/vacations are the perfect time to get a lot of reading done.

The fact that Justin Bieber got arrested and will hopefully be deported to Canada and never again allowed to enter the United States.  That's probably a stretch, but I hope it happens.


And a Public Service Announcement: A blog/blogger I read frequently, Hollie from FueledbyLOLz, entered a contest to win entry to a Zooma Women's Half Marathon Race in Napa, California!  You can vote for her here!


What is making you happy right now?

Do you like when companies tweet at/back at you?

Treadmill Tweeting

I'm sorry my workouts have not been the most thilling lately.  Trust me, I wish they were.  Just me, hanging out on the treadmill for about 35 minutes.  But once I get back into better shape, I'm sure I'll be having super awesome, fun workouts to share.  I do have a few treadmill hill workouts and repeat workouts to try, but I'm not quite ready yet!  So here is yesterday's workout:

4 Miles on the Treadmill - My intention was to do 8-10 miles as my "long" run for the week...funny how depending what physical fitness shape you are in how a certain distance can be either a long run or a normal run.  In my prime during Chicago Marathon training last summer/fall, 8-10 miles would be a piece of cake.  And now, a bit more out of shape and stuck on a treadmill, 8-10 miles seems so hard!  So yeah, I made it 4 miles...I just get so bored and restless, no matter how much I try to motivate myself.

I usually don't bring my phone with me to the treadmill, but since I was expecting a longer run and the accompanying boredom that goes with a long run on a treadmill, I brought my phone out there with me.  So at the beginning I was having a jolly good time and snapchatting some friends from the treadmill.  These only went to the closest of friends because I would not want many people to witness my sweaty-treadmill running self.  Speaking of being sweaty/using my phone on the treadmill, I tweeted:

(That's why you have to excuse my mis-spelling...the treadmill was bouncey and hard to type!)

I even considered making a video log of me talking each mile and telling you how I felt, what I was listening to, etc. but I didn't want to scare the people around me.  But really, they all had their own headphones on and I'll never see them again in my life.

I had a bunch of time though still since I only did 4 miles, so then I did:

Leg Circuit - The same one I did earlier this week - 3 sets of 10 squats and 10 lunges on each leg.  With 8 pound weights in each hand for all of it.

Core Circuit - Again, the same one I've been doing regularly.  Regular crunches, side crunches, V-ups, medicine ball ab stuff.

I managed to get a 10 mile run done outside this morning so I'll have details on that tomorrow...and I promise it was a lot more exciting than any of these treadmill runs! 

Do you use your phone on the treadmill?

Friday Five - 12/6

Happy Friday!  In case you missed last week, you can check out my very first ever Friday Five post here.  So let's get right into this week because I have some great things to share!

Five Tweets:

My cousin Erin will be tweeting a different Christmas movie quote every day of December and this is one of my favorites from Christmas Vacation.  It doesn't quite give the voice inflection of this quote credit though, so I hope you're saying it correctly in your head.

Dayton is ranked #25 and that means that Siri is a huge Dayton fan! (For the time being at least...until we move up in the rankings.)

I am too, Shannon.  I don't think I'll ever know.  Except blogging, I like blogging.  And running.

My brother lives in Ohio now, so he is proud to call himself an OSU fan.

And now take a minute to read just a few of DiGiorno Pizza's tweets during last night's The Sound of Music Live with Carrie Underwood:

Five Articles

Philadelphia Marathon On Cheating - Who Cares

10 Personal Finance Tips From Hip Hop Lyrics

The Dumbest Things That Happened This Year 

Why ING Broke Up With The Marathon

Holiday-Themed Workout Playlist

Five Things I Ate This Week:

Gingerbread Latte - I guess I didn't "eat" this, but it has calories and tastes awesome, so it counts for my list.

Sushi - I hadn't had sushi in quite awhile but, Mac and I needed to catch up on life since now we don't run together anymore.  I suppose we could, but it's cold, sooooo that doesn't happen quite as much.

SweetTarts - I moved desks at work this week and now where I sit in unbelievably close to a HUGE bag of SweetTarts.  I was able to avoid them easily at my old desk, but now at this new one, I find myself grabbing a bit each time I get up!

Pesto Pizza - The extended Smith family had a Christmas trolley ride last Saturday and afterwards we ordered pizza.  I realized that after the half marathon earlier that morning (full recap coming tomorrow!), I really didn't eat much the whole day except for a few snacks.  So by the time that pizza came, I went to town on the pesto pizza.  Pesto has become one of my favorite things and ever ytime I have it on pizza, I am in LOVE.  And truthfully, the only other time I had a pesto pizza was last St. Patrick's Day when I was also mildly under the influence.  I can guarantee it'd be good sober too though.

Ham - I usually have turkey on my super awesome salad that I've been taking to work for lunch most days.  But this week I decided to switch things up a little and go with ham in my salad.  I figured I was eating turkey every day in either a sandwich or a salad and then ate a lot of turkey on Thanksgiving, so it was time for a change.  Back to turkey next week though.

Five Quotes from Pinterest:

And I'll leave you with some words of inspiration/fun:

So I guess I picked all the super-girly Pinterest quotes for this week.  I really like glitter and champagne.  Therefore, I wish people always acted like it's New Year's Eve.  Wouldn't that be a good idea?

Don't forget to be awesome today :)

December Goals

Before I get into the December goals, I want to say a few words about my run this morning.  But before I do that, I want to say a few words about how the phrase "I want to say a few words" only belongs right before a eulogy at a funeral.

I managed to wake myself up and get out the door this morning for a run and I'm glad I did because it was fairly nice out (in comparison to how it has been/how it could be).  I brought my watch with the intention of running 40 minutes and that's just what I did.  Actually I did 39:40.  I even tried to go a little farther down the block past my apartment building to get in the FULL 40 minutes, but then there was a dog in my way so I just stopped there.

Running/Fitness Goals:

Run 150 miles

Do weight training 3 times a week and planking as much as possible

Go to spinning twice a week - It's free at the gym I belong to and I might try going to some of the spin studios in the area.

Blogging Goals:

30 Posts - This is gonna be a toughy.  That's basically posting every day, but since I plan to run almost every day this month like a good like half marathoner, that shouldn't be too hard.

500 unique visitors

200 Twitter followers

150 Facebook page likes

Life Goals:

Read 2 books (see some books I want to read currently here)

Listen to as much Christmas music as possible

Go to Mass every Sunday of Advent

I'm sure I can come up with a bunch of other general life goals, but I think I'll save those for New Years.


What are your December goals?

November Goals - How Did I Do?

Remember when I made some goals back at the beginning of November?

Well, here's how I did on them:

Starbucks - I only had Starbucks a few times, and most were for good reason.  Once while I was visiting Anne in Denver and hung out in the Starbucks near her house for a few hours while she was at work.  And again when I met up with Katie from Peace, Love & Oats.  Besides that, I think I had Starbucks 2 other times - one Friday night when I went to Starbucks to hang out and read, and only once during the work week all month!  Woo for easily saving money!

Eating out for lunch during the workweek - Boom, saving even more money.  I didn't eat out at all for lunch at work except for the last workday of the month - this past Wednesday.  I couldn't help it.  I didn't grocery shop for the week since it was a short week and I just didn't have enough food to get me through all 3 days.  And in case you're wondering what I had - Sopraffina's.  People from work go there a lot but I never had, mainly because it is right across from Potbelly's and Potbelly's is always a winner.  But I'm glad i tried something new because the panini I had was really good - ham and Swiss on a pretzel bun :)

170 Twitter followers -I was at 167 followers at the end of the month, so not bad.  My ultimate goal is 200 by the end of the year, so I think I'm on track.

100 Facebook page followers - My blog's Facebook page is up to 119 likes on Facebook!

500 unique visitors to my blog this month - I feel a little short on this - 468 unique visitors during the month, but I'm still pretty happy with that!  I've had a lot of new traffic, so I can't really complain.  And I know to if I am patient and write good content, the readers will come.  But I'm happy for all the readers I already have :)  That's way more than I expected to have when I started the blog!

Run 150 miles - I fell more than a little short on the running goal.  November ended with a total of 69 miles...less than half of my goal.  It was very hard to motivate myself most of the month given the cold temperatures and post-marathon laziness.

Weight training - I haven't been specifically tracking my weight training, but I've been keeping it up pretty well!  And I've have started working in the planking too.

I think my November goals went pretty well.  As far as the running/weight training, I'm gonna call November a rebuilding month.  It's hard to get going again now that the Chicago Marathon is over.  I did a really good job on not eating out/getting Starbucks during the week and am continuously increasing the blog traffic!  I hope my new design changes have helped :)

I've been working on the December goals and will have those up soon!  Let's just say running more consistently is at the top of my list.

How was your November?

Friday Five - 11/29

Happy Black Friday!!  And a belated Happy Thanksgiving!  Something I've seen on a lot of blogs is a Friday favorite/week round-up post and I decided to join in on the fun!  There's all sorts of ways I've seen it done, but I'm going to try to pick some categories that I most often think about sharing.  And I'll be doing a link-up with Clare's blog (Fitting It All In) - she has been doing these Friday posts forever and are always my favorite posts of the week to read!

Five Tweets: 

There were lots of good tweets this week (especially about the UD basketball games), but here are my favorites!

*Dayton upsets Gonzaga, classic mix-up.  Apparently they know about the annual Dayton 2 Daytona trip!  And even though I didn't stay up late for the game, it was fun to wake up to all the exciting tweets and Facebook posts.

Those clever marketers!

The Little Drummer Boy is my favorite Christmas song!

Just tweeting with Bart Yasso, Chief Running Officer of Runner's World!  He's just as funny in person too.  The snow he was talking about was the whopping 1/2 inch we got earlier this week.

Classic Toy Story.

Five Articles:

New College Running Group Will Offer Prize Money
Be Careful What You Tweet, Fox News Is Watching!  --> And so am I...see above tweets.
Bernard Lagat and Nick Willis Take On Speedgolf  --> Sounds like a fun sport.
It's Thanksgiving So We Asked Some Brits To Label The US States  --> Hilarious.
8 Tips You Need To Know Before You Start Weight Training


Five Books I Want to Read:

The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Restaurant Man


Five Things on my Christmas List (since it's Black Friday):

Garmin Forerunner 220 - It's time I became a real runner and got a Garmin.

Mattress topper - To make my bed even comfier than it already is.  So practical.

Race registration for the Phoenix Half Marathon - I already booked my flight but haven't registered yet.  Races are expensive!

Nike Flyknit Free shoes - They are sweet and so light.  I've never ran in "minimalist" shoes, but I figure the winter on the treadmill would be a great time to give them a try.

Really warm running spandex - I only have one pair of really warm spandex.  The rest I have are a lot thinner.

I have a few other things on the list too...and yes, some non-running related things, but those are all more general.


Have an idea for a Friday Five category?  I'll try to always share 5 tweets and 5 articles, but then I'll probably pick another 1 or 2 random categories each week based on the time of year or what I have to share!

Have you read any of those books?  Thoughts on them?

What is on your Christmas list? 

Treadmill Motivation & Geese

Monday I did half of a progression run.  I don't know why.  I was on the treadmill and 3 miles in it came time to increase the pace, but stopping seemed like a better option.  I was sweating quite a bit and working hard at it, but as I walked home from the gym, I felt like I wasn't even tired.  Maybe that's a good thing, but then again it was only 3 miles so it shouldn't feel hard to me.

I did the first mile in close to 9 minutes, then the next 2 at 7:30 and 7:19, respectively.  I was trying to take it a mile at a time, but wasn't having it I guess.  I wasn't in a bad mood or anything, I was just super bored and yes, it was hard, even though I ran 18 miles of the marathon at 7:30 pace and plan to run a half marathon even faster than that.  Actually, Sara Hall, a professional track athlete, tweeted this a few days ago:

It really is true.  A 7:30 pace on a normal day feels like I'm really working, but during the marathon, it felt so easy to maintain for a long time.  And outside, I feel like I could run like 5 times as long without nearly as much problem as on the treadmill.  Last week I did the  same progression run I was aiming for this Monday, but made it through the whole 6 miles.

I don't know why one day can be fine and I can get through it without as much difficulty and then another day all I want to do is stop.  And the problem with the treadmill is that you can just stop running at any time.  You can't do that outside.  You can't go out for a 6 mile run and get 3 miles away and decide you're done, because you still have to get back home.

There's nothing left to do though except get over it and focus on the next run.  At least I had 2 miles at a faster pace than my standard 8 minute.  Gotta work in that pace variety!

Yesterday, I decided to take a slightly longer lunch break and go for a run outside.  It was very chilly, but I bundled up and wore my new hat.  I didn't bring a watch, but mapped out the run to about 5 miles.  The first and last half mile were super slow because of traffic lights and pedestrians, but once I got to the lakefront, it was smooth sailing (aka running...all the boats are gone from the harbors!)

I ran south on the path to the museums and Soldier Field and then headed back north the same way.  It was very nice and peaceful compared to my runs on the lakefront this summer.  In the summer, the path is crowded not only with runners, but also bikers and I'm still afraid I'm going to get hit by one again.  But running in the middle of the workday in the chilly weather means very little people outside!  But as I've said before, I watch too many episodes of SVU to feel safe running out there by myself, with few people around, next to a lake.

But I wasn't just worried about human predators.  There were so many geese!  If one of those things came charging at me squawking with its beak out, I'd have no choice but to go dive in the lake.  I wish I took a picture of the geese.  Next time I promise I will.  I need to get better about taking pictures!  But I also don't want to stop TOO much during a run for pictures.  Oh well, all about balance.

How do you motivate yourself to keep going on the treadmill when it's so easy to stop?

Have you ever been threatened by geese or other animals on a run?

No Spend November & Other Monthly Goals

Since boys do No Shave November (which is gross, btw), I decided to make up my own thing called No Spend November.  Maybe it's already a thing somewhere, I don't know, but I made it up in my world.  I know I'm a little late on this post, but here's my plan for No Spend November and a few other monthly goals I just made.

I had a very expensive October.  And really a lot of it was one-time expenses, like my new iPod, a flight to Denver (going next weekend!), a lot of gas for the weekend I drove to Dayton and then to St. Louis, etc.  But there was also a lot of other "discretionary" spending that I would like to get rid of just to save some money.

So basically here's what I'm planning to cut out for the month of November:

- Stabucks - This sucks because it's Gingerbread Latte season and it's cold out, but Starbucks is so dang expensive and I can make free coffee at work.  Obviously the quality is a thousand percent different and the reason I drink work coffee (for caffeine) and the reason I drink Starbucks (for delicious-ness) are completely different.

- Buying clothes -  I've been good about this lately and haven't bought myself many new clothes at all.  And the ones I have bought have been running clothes.

- Eating out for lunch during the week - I do love eating out for lunch and it's so easy, but luckily I've found some good alternative options to pack for lunch, because eating out sure adds up!  It's like $10 a day, plus the $4-5 for Starbucks a few times a week.  I can save hundreds of dollars this month.  Instead, I can just make the best turkey sandwich ever, and also an awesome new salad I've been making:

It is lettuce, turkey chunks, hardboiled eggs, cucumbers, and poppyseed dressing...in a HUGE bowl.  And since I can't go without some type of bread, I've been having half a bagel with it.  But this isn't just any bagel, it's a gingerbread bagel with cookie butter.  It's so amazing and like a dessert.  And if the hardboiled eggs and turkey isn't enough protein, I've been drinking the Bolthouse Farms Protein Plus shakes.  The one in the picture (in my Hangover glass from Grace) is mango flavored and it's really good.

OK, back to my No Spend November though.  Weekend spending on food and alcohol will still be happening.  I have lots of plans for this weekend already, including brunch with Catherine, going out for Christina's birthday, Sunday Funday for the Bears game with Brittany, and hopefully meeting up with Alex while she's in town!  And then a fun weekend with Anne in Denver next weekend!  I'm not going to give up the social life to save money, where's the fun in that?  I even splurge and buy Bud Light now instead of Natty Light.  OK, now we are really off topic.

So here's a random picture to go along with this randomness:

(from the UD Magazine Facebook page)

November running goals:

- Run 100 miles - November is kind of a rebuilding month for me now that the marathon is over and I took some time off.  So time to get back into it and training for the Phoenix Half Marathon.

- Get in at least 2 days of weight training per week - This is something fairly new I'm working on.  I occassionally get into moods where I try weight training, but it never really sticks.  I made up a circuit earlier this week and am going to try to keep doing that or making up new ones.  I'll post them soon!

November blogging goals:

- 20 Posts - This post is only my 4th of the month, but I'm making it my goal to do 20 posts this month!

- Over 500 unique visitors to my site - Google Analytics is super fun.  In October I had 398 unique visitors.

- Get new Twitter Followers - I currently have 146 Twitter followers.  I would like to be at 200 by the end of the year, so I'll go with that I'd like to be at 170 by the end of November.  Follow me here :)

- Get over 100 likes on my Facebook page -I just made a Facebook page for the blog a few weeks ago and it has 87 likes so far.

- My first giveaway! - I am currently being shipped a sample of a fitness-related product for me to try and review and then some to offer in a giveaway to my readers!!  So be on the lookout for that!  And as a heads up, you'll be able to gain more entries to this and future giveaways if you are a twitter follower or fan of my Facebook page, so you might as well get on that now :)

My blogging goals are really quantitative as you can tell!  I like measurable things!  Which is why I like running.

I have a few other personal goals to accomplish before the end of the month or end of the year, but I can't share all those just yet...some big projects I'm working on though.

What are your November goals?

How do you cut your spending when you try to save money?

St. Louis Half Marathon & Weekend Happenings

This past weekend was the Rock 'N Roll St. Louis Half Marathon!  I ran the whole thing with my brother's girlfriend Erin and it was her first half marathon ever and I'm sure she wants to keep doing more and more.  Look how happy she was:

I didn't get to St. Louis until late Saturday night, but the Cardinals World Series game was still on, so Erin had made some pasta for me and we watched the game.  Unfortunately, it looked like the game was going to go into extra innings and we needed to be up super early, so we turned it off in the 9th.  Apparently the game ended (with a Cardinals win!) shortly after we hit the hay.

So, race morning.  We woke up and got ready to run!  We had bought matching Lululemon tank tops, but it was a bit too chilly for that.  I advised Erin to eat a bagel and some GU Chomps energy bites and I did the same.  When we got to the start line, I needed to grab my bib and t-shirt since I didn't make it to St. Louis in time to go to the expo.  But that was surprisingly quick and then we jumped in the corral and it was time to go within a few minutes.

The first few miles of the race were through downtown St. Louis, which was cool because it was sunrise and we ran towards the Arch and then around Busch Stadium.  We were each wearing coats over our running clothes because it was so cold at the start, but took them off around mile 2-3.  Luckily, we knew we'd see Katie around mile 5 because the course went right by her SLU apartment.  We ran to her, gave her a quick hug and our coats and continued on.

I was very colorful...and cold.

The race really wasn't that eventful.  Erin had hoped to maintain at 10 minute mile, but we were going much faster staying right around a 9 minute mile.  One of the later miles was even 8:40 and I think she was shocked at how fast she was able to go considering she hadn't trained this pace!  We were even chatting and having fun taking some pictures and videos.  And I will have those videos for you in my next post hopefully...they were taken on my iPod that I was running with, which I left at home today.  Anyways, there were some pretty killer hills, but we maintained a solid pace and finished in 1:56:45!!  Woohoo congrats Erin!!  Erin's mom also ran her first half marathon and finished faster than the first place marathoner!  (That was the goal.)

The pace was fairly comfortable for me, but having run only 2 3-miles runs in the past 2 weeks since the Chicago Marathon, diving right into 13 with those hills did my knees some damage.  They are fine now, but they sure hurt for the whole day.

My cousin Kevin had a funny tweet this weekend:

That's kind of how I feel about blogging.  I feel like a failure if I don't have photo proof of everything I did to show here.  But I can promise I really did go out to dinner with Angela and Liz on Sunday night in St. Louis.  And we were so deep in conversation and sat at the restaurant for so long after paying, that the obvious choice was to move our party over to the nearby fro yo place.

We had such a great time catching up with each other and talking about running and dorm food...and how we ran so much that we could eat so much dorm food.  And then we started reminiscing about the good ole days at UD.

I wasn't driving back to Chicago until Monday, so in the morning I went to breakfast at Einsten brothers with my 2 Billiken cousins, Katie and Kevin.  We had a great time catching up and talking about the upcoming holidays and of course, the event of the summer that we CANNOT wait for - the first Smith cousin wedding.

How was your weekend?

Do you like to take pictures documenting everything you do?

Tempo Runs & Twitter

Yesterday, I read this article about tempo runs and ironically, I ended up doing a tempo run last night, which was not originally planned.

Mac and I were going to do mile repeats, but decided on just a normal run instead.  I thought a normal run would be good instead of a hard workout since we are racing on Sunday and I want fresh legs for that.  Well...normal/marathon pace for Mac = tempo run for Colleen.

I don't know all the actual splits on this because I was not in charge of the Garmin.  I think the first 2 miles were about 7:30 and then we picked it up for a few to 7 minute pace and then the last mile was back down to about 7:30 again.  I had my watch at 48 minutes and mapped it out online to 7 miles, so if that is all correct (or even if it's a bit off), that was a really fast run for me!  We did stop in the middle for a bit to stretch, etc. but that is quite alright and I needed that break.

So after I read that article on tempo runs, I started freaking out that there are only 5 and a half weeks left until the Chicago Marathon and that I haven't gotten in enough "quality" workouts or "marathon-specific" workouts.  I decided I really need to build in some tempo-paced runs.  With only about 3 weeks left before I have to taper, I wanted to know what workouts I should try to get in.  So I did the logical thing and emailed Catherine.  Subject line: important running question.

First of all, I realize this article is from 2007, but I doubt running philosophy changes that drastically (even though I do think running has gotten way more popular in the past couple years and more and more research has been done).  I just stumbled upon it yesterday because the Columbus Marathon tweeted it, so I read it.  They tweet lots of good articles.  You know who else tweets awesome stuff?  I do.  So you should follow me @CSmith_Run.  While you're at it, also follow @PJSmith9.  He tweets good stuff too (and he knows it).  Some examples:

Anyways though, Catherine and I are pretty comparable in pace and she has trained for a few marathons and knows what workouts are good.  So I trust her.  I asked what pace she does for tempo runs and if she has any good workout suggestions.  She usually does tempo runs around 7:20-7:30 pace, so that was consistent with what I was assuming.  The article says tempo pace should be 30-40 seconds per mile slower than your current 5k race pace.  I did a 4th of July 5k averaging 6:55 pace and I think I would be even a little faster than that now.  So the 7:20-7:30 tempo pace sounds pretty reasonable and manageable.

The article also said a good indication of tempo pace is the "talk test."  A simple question or answer should be possible, but conversation should not.  This was definitely true on our run last night...my sentences were pretty broken up in between gasps for air.  And then Mac got too fast for me so I was about 10 feet behind for a bit.  Conversation is not possible that way either.  I guess that means I need to get faster.

Catherine suggested a workout of 2 x 3 miles at tempo pace.  I think that would be a workout that would be very beneficial.  The article from Runner's World suggests a tempo workout of 2 x 5 or 6 miles at tempo pace, but with the warm-up and cool-down, that would essentially be a long run with tempo portions.  A workout that Mac has on the schedule in a week or two is 3 x 5k, which would also be at a "tempo" effort.  So I think I will aim to do that when he does and then make one of my two remaining 20 mile runs into a tempo workout/long run.  Two workouts in one!

Who is your favorite person to follow on Twitter?

Any good tempo workout suggestions?