life+running » speed

At least I’m still moving.

chimes — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:00:00 +0000

I’ve been beating myself up lately because I kind of got out of running. And by getting out of running, I mean that I pretty much completely broke up with it in January and February. We’re talking taking a full week at a time without any run action.

The last time I went a week without running was when I finished a marathon, then proceeded to get the stomach flu in the week following.

Before that? Maybe senior year of high school (2001–02).

I didn’t discover the magic of running until I hit college. And that’s probably because the college I chose wasn’t a good fit (amirite, Kim?) and my roommate’s social life drove me batty, so I hit the 9 mile trail to keep my mind off things. My across-the-hall neighbor tried to talk me into going out for cross country. Run 5 miles on command? No thanks. Running is for fun. Not for racing.

So where did that attitude go? Good question.

I’ve put on a ton of weight* since November, when I fell flat on my face during my traditional pre-fooding Turkey Trot on my favorite 7 mi route back home, then face-planted again a few days later and had to call in my friend Kelly to come pickup my sorry, scraped-up butt.

Skinned knees and bruised ego in tow, I [ mostly ] gave up running at that point and started LiveFit after seeing a post about it on meals & moves. Perfect timing for that, so thanks.

I did the prescribed workouts, but then added 2-3 days of running — twice over lunch during the week and one longer weekend run.

But then it got kind of cold. I stress KIND OF because Iowa had a really mild winter this year. And I became one of those fair-weather fans of running. The kind of people that I used to snark at when I saw them out in hoodies and sweatpants in 50 degree weather come spring, while I was wearing MAYBE a tank top and shorts. Psh.

Being a fair-weathered fan of running, to me, is like when some Packers fans became Vikings fans during Favre’s short-lived stint with the purple and gold, then hopped back on the green and gold bus when Favre left and the Packers won the Superbowl [ twice since then. ugh. ]. That analogy might be totally lost on this crew. I like football, in case you forgot during this month of madness that is March.

So I wasn’t loving running when I went this winter either. I had gotten so big and bulky from all the lifting … and let’s be honest … all the peanut clusters I consumed over the holidays. Running made my knees and joints hurt, which reminded me of the weight I put on that coincidentally I could lose if I was able to get back into running and run without pain.

I kept waiting for something to make me want to go again.

It was 70-80 all last week and I worked holiday hours while the college students were out on spring break, so I was off by 4 PM. And it hit me. Dammit, I admit that it’s the weather. Whatever, because I’m into it again and enjoying myself. But, now that I’ve gotten the bug again, I’m wanting to go out in crappy weather. So there. I guess. I’m starting to feel like my Nike+ mini again. See? She’s cute:

But the thing that’s still bugging me? Back to what I was talking about before. Speed. It’s a race to me. I continually race my time and get frustrated if I don’t hit an average pace of 8:30/mi or less. It’s gotten worse. I ran a 10K last weekend and averaged 9:13/mi. I saw this on Pinterest (where else?) today:

via ripped and fit pinned by amanda schwarz of there are two sides

That? ^ up there? Used to be my motto. I ~~HATED~~. No, HATE being called a “jogger”. That implies that I’m just bored and decided to tool around the block. No. I mean business. No matter how slow I go, or how far I go.

I just have to get back into it and remember THAT.

So here you go. I’m proud of my run on Sunday. Even though I stopped to walk a bit. And that the mile time is hella slow for me.

I went back to try to find another March 18 run to compare distance and time, and apparently this is the first time I’ve run on March 18 since I’ve used Nike+. So there we go. March 18 run number one!

There is also the fact that I’m HUGE (* keep in mind that “a ton of weight” and “HUGE” are terms relative to my fastest-run-running weight) right now and most of the heft is new muscles that I’m not used to moving (I have weighed this much and ran before, but it was most definitely not muscle that I was moving). And that I’ve not really trained all winter. I usually spend the winter doing speedwork on a treadmill during exceptionally crappy days, or running in the snow / ice (of which we had next to none this winter). Running on bare ground after months of running on junk always makes spring times faster. So not only am I not fast, I’m not able to run far.

Meh. I’m going to go at it, have FUN with it, and it will all come back!

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Distance Interval Treadmill Workout

chimes — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 13:00:44 +0000

Remember that time I said I hate treadmills? Well … I have a date with a treadmill today. I run an hour to an hour and a half on Saturdays and the last few Saturdays have been pretty crappy outside. I thought I’d take the opportunity to get a good interval workout in since that’s kind of my theme nowadays.

Behold. I wrote another workout. I’ve done this before, except I think it was a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 minute thing instead of a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 minute thing. Fun times. My high school boyfriend and I ran this on the cross country course back home when I started running. He was trying to make me get faster.

Note that since you’re running for a longer time that the bursts of speed are a little less speedy. Feel free to adjust if you feel like you could kick it a bit faster.

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Getting Ink’d

chimes — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:17:29 +0000

She’s gettin’ a tattoo yeah, she’s gettin’ ink done.

Wow that’s an old song.

Anyway, I posted a while back about beautiful body art, and I’m excited to say that I’m now the proud owner of some. I’m going back to get a couple of things added and a little touchup work with the pink. He didn’t want to overwork the skin because he knew I was going for a lighter look — I wanted this to look almost like watercolor.

I’m kind of excited to see how it heals. It’s pretty awesome. Looks like brush strokes just the way I wanted it.

Here’s some photos from start to finish …

bye bye naked foot!

Bravery glasses. Courtesy of Shelly.

getting prepped

linework

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FINALLY under 10 min/mi

chimes — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:14:14 +0000

my average time FINALLY made it under 10 min/mi according to Nike+.

And if you notice, I’m pretty close to 500 miles (since August — I’m about 15 miles away from 1000 since last March).

I ran 7 miles last night between the treadmill and track. Dunno if I’ve mentioned this before, but I HATE running inside. BO-RING. I did each for about a half hour.

Today I did speed intervals. Nothing too exciting.

I also noticed that nikeplus.com adds a cool background if you ran at night vs. the day. This is the day version (missing a hell of a lot of snow though).

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home for T-day

chimes — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 05:57:37 +0000

i’m home for thanksgiving and that usually means logging a ton of miles on gravel with lotsa hills.

not with this stupid knee injury it doesn’t.

5 miles today on gravel. no hills. definitely wore the spandex getup. i’m sure that started some sort of rumor around town (maybe i’m pregnant now? nope, sorry folks, that’s just all the baked goods i’ve been making and eating). I’ll be anxious to hear.

i totally forgot i thought about doing that turkey trot tomorrow in DBQ, and I really shouldn’t run tomorrow cuz that’s 3 days in a row and 2 days in a row is currently pushing it. hallooooow elliptical machine in the basement and a video of slipknot live (cuz really, i honestly don’t have any other live dvds).

OOOH i almost forgot. today’s run pushed me over my goal of 5x runs in under 9:34/mi. way to go, chica. pat on the back. srsly. last month I didn’t think I could hit a 9:00 mile, and now I’m running nearly 8 minute miles. rockin.

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