3 Things Thursday

1.  I love running again!!!  I am really liking the interval runs I've been doing on Wednesdays.  They make me feel strong and powerful.  I am amazed each time by the fact that I finished them! haha!  I really enjoyed my long slow run this past Saturday.  My Garmin died 2 minutes in though so I didn't have anything to tell me my pace or time.  I think I did almost 6 miles in about 1 hour and 5 or 10 minutes.  My other two runs of the week have been faster and easier (for the most part).  I'm really glad I decided to add these two elements into my running because it has given me something to look forward to each week and some almost immediate results as well.

2.  I don't love running with the jogging stroller so much.  I have been in denial about this since I bought the damn thing.  It is of course better than not running at all, or running in the 100 degree heat later in the day.  It is hard to push that thing!  Maggs is only 23 or 24 pounds, but still its hard.  I run in a pretty flat area when I have her with me, but it's still hard.  Maggie loves it though!  She sings songs, points out every bird and flower on the way by and is happy the whole time.  It is still hard though! Luckily I only have to do it on half my runs.  Dave is home on Saturdays and my dad watches her on most wednesdays when I do those intervals.  I think he would watch her on Mondays and Thursdays too, but I don't want to ask him that much.

3.  My brother and sister-in-law do something they call "Fat Kid Sundays" where they eat a whole bunch of junk just because it's Sunday.  It's usually also because they are hung over and those kinds of not so good for you foods are oh so good for hang overs.  Dave and I had "Rich Kid Monday" this past Monday.  Unfortunately, we aren't really rich, but we bought a new computer and a Wii.  I got my Mac Book that I've wanted forever and Dave wanted a Playstation 3, but I convinced him to get the Wii instead.  They are both awesome and we are having tons of fun with them.  So "Rich Kin Monday" was followed by poor idiot Tuesday, but oh well.  If you can't indulge every once in awhile what's the point? You can't take it with you right?

3 Things Thursday

A couple of people do this on Thursdays so I figured I would too, so here goes:

1. I love So You Think You Can Dance!  It is so awesome and the dancers are amazing.  They are just all around amazing, but if you really sit down and think about the amount of time and energy that goes into learning all of these dances, plus practicing multiple dances and doing them as well as they do them.  It is really mind boggling.  This week they learned and perfected 5 routines.  Some in genres that they have never danced before, or at least before being on the show.  Awesome!

2. I think I might be crazy, but I think I'm getting faster.  I've only done a couple runs with intervals and a few long, slow runs, both of which are supposed to help with speed (right?) My last few regular runs have been faster average pace.  Hmmmm It's probably all in my head, but whatever works!

3. It's so hot outside I think I might actually melt at some point.  I am a winter person, I would much rather be freezing than in sweltering heat (yes I'm dramatic) Really though, the heat indexes were in the 100 degree range today with ridiculously high humidity.  Yuck yuck yuck.  Dave has a softball game tonight, I think I will be missing it tonight.  Sorry Babe!

Happy running everyone!  Stay cool!

Run like the wind....

After talking to my aunt who has been running for years and has done 5 1/2's this year and has run the Chicago marathon and done several triathlons I have decided to not just run each time I go out.  I've been reading blogs for awhile and I see people doing tempo runs and long, slow runs and all that stuff, but I just assumed that I wasn't that advanced and I just needed to run.  And then I got bored.  And I felt like I wasn't improving, all of my runs were the same pace, I felt like I was dying if I tried to go any faster, and I felt discouraged.  She told me that she had been a 10 min miler for 10 years.  She never really worked at it, that's just how she ran.  Then she started running with a friend and this friend did tempo runs.  My aunt started doing them with her and now runs 8:30 miles.

So I did my first tempo run (I think, I don't know if I have the correct terminology) on Wednesday.  Then today I ran 5 miles slower than I have been running "normally".  I set the Garmin to chirp at me when I was going faster than 11:00 min/mile.  I did the same thing last week and it chirped at me a lot.  This week, not so much! I had no problem slowing down.  I don't know if it was because I was really focusing on it or if it would've been a crappy run if I was trying to run "normal".  Either way I felt good the whole time until the last quarter mile I started to feel really tired.  I ended up only running a little over 5 miles in an hour which seems so incredibly slow compared to all of you, but hopefully it will help me actually get faster.  That's the logic right?  We'll see.

Doing a little biking

Dave and I have decided to add biking into our workouts.  I knew I needed to do something besides just running but I let my Y membership go because Maggie wasn't happy in the KidZone anymore and it was silly to keep it since I was only there 15 min before they had to come get me.  After hanging out with my aunt and uncle at the lake the weekend before last we decided that biking would be a good thing to add in. 

I have no desire to do a triathlon, but Dave thinks that he might want to do one.  We have a craptastic bike that we bought at Farm and Fleet several years ago.  It was the cheapest one they had.  I need to get some kind of seat cover because yowsa does my bootie hurt after riding just a few minutes!  Dave decided he wanted to buy a new bike this week.  I told him he needed to actually ride the bike for awhile before we went and spent more money (that we don't have) on a new one.  When we bought the craptastic bike he really really wanted a bike.  He rode it all of twice in the next 3 years.  Nice, so he needs to actually want it this time!  Silly boy!

In a Rut

I think I'm in a running rut, or was, I'm not sure.  I don't have anything coming up.  When I was doing Couch to 5K last fall, the end was the goal.  Then I ran a 5k a couple months after that, and then another 5k a few weeks later.  Right now I've got nothing.  There is a 10k in my little town at the end of October.  It's on Sunday of Pumpkin Fest weekend though so I'm torn.  Pumpkin Fest is a big deal here.  It starts on Wednesday with a display of decorated pumpkins on the courthouse lawn.  It ends on Sunday afternoon with a super ridiculous long parade.  It is my favorite time of year!  Honestly, I'm not sure why anyone that's not from here would want to subject themselves to this, but people come from all over the place to participate.  The best part is that a lot of people "come home" for Pumpkinfest and I get to see a lot of old friends.  On Saturday night our good friends have a party and then bar crawl.  That's not going to work if I'm going to run 6.2 miles for the first time the next morning.  I wish they would do the run on Saturday morning, that would make it much easier.  So even though I really love running, and have never run the pumpkin run before (I worked at it all 4 years in high school) I don't know if I want to give up my Saturday night.

Because I have nothing planned I feel like I'm in a rut.  Although I have been running, I don't feel like I've really been improving at all.  Most of my runs are right at 3 miles (or a little more) and that's it.  I haven't missed any runs because I'm trying to loose weight (10 pounds to go) but that's kind of been in a rut too.  I don't have a lot of motivation to do any more than the 3 miles.  I would like to work on speed and to increase my distance some.  I've been running in the mornings quite a bit and pushing the jogging stroller.  Maybe that's why I don't want to do more than 3 miles, pushing the stroller is hard work!!!!

We went to the lake last weekend for a family reunion.  It was super fun and it was great to see all my cousins and second cousins and their parents.  My aunt and uncle and 2 cousins were here from Colorado.  They are both runners and my uncle did an Ironman last year (I think, could've been the year before)  My aunt offered to run with me one of the days we were there.  I was a little worried.  I wanted to run with her, but she's fast, or faster than me at least (that's not hard to do) and I can't talk while I run.  I have to think about my breathing in order to not hyperventilate.  We got there on Thursday afternoon and I ran on Friday with my sister-in-law.  She ran slow with me and we didn't talk.  I actually ended up running faster than usual by around 15-20 sec/mile.  On Sunday my aunt asked me if I wanted some company on my run.  I gave my usual, "are you sure?  I'm super slow, you can probably walk faster than I run, and I can't talk" speech that I give when anyone mentions running with me.  She said she wanted to do a recovery run anyway and would run at my pace.  She said she talked a lot, but would be quiet if I wanted her to be.  I told her I could handle listening so she could talk all she wanted, and I could grunt yes and no responses periodically if need be.  We took off 20 min later and we talked the whole time!  It was great!  I was huffing and puffing, but so was she!  I felt like if she was huffing and puffing running my 11:00min/mile pace that it wasn't as embarrassing that I was huffing and puffing too.  At one point on the way back she said, "we are at a 9:50 pace, do you need to slow down?" Holy crap!  Yes, I needed to slow down, but I didn't feel like I was running that fast at all!! It was great and I was tired  but felt awesome when we were done.

Both my aunt and uncle have Garmin Forerunners.  Dave ran both times with my uncle's and fell in love.  I have my Nike+, but he had never run with anything more than his Timex watch.  We decided we had to have one, especially since they told us that we could probably find one in the $150 range if we looked around.  I thought they were closer to $300-ish which was definitely out of our price range.  Dave's b-day was yesterday so when we got home on Monday afternoon I started searching for them online.  I found the 305 at Best Buy and Walmart for $145 woohooo!!!! Of course they didn't carry  it at our Best Buy in town, but they had it in Elgin so we hopped in the car and headed there.  So we are now the proud owners of a shared Garmin Forerunner 305!  I am still getting used to it, but I really like it a lot!!!

Dave also decided he wanted to start riding his bike (Super cheapie that I bought him 2 or 3 years ago for his b-day that he's ridden all of 3 times) and swimming at the Y.  So I decided to ride the bike too.  I rode on Tuesday (with the new Garmin) and on Friday.  The bike kills my butt and my back, but my mom has a much nicer bike so I rode to my parents house and traded.  I think I will keep doing that.  She has a much nicer seat and the handle bars are higher so I'm not so hunched over.  Much better.

My runs have all been a tad faster this week and I even ran a little of 5 miles yesterday.  Maybe getting the new Garmin and riding the bike is helping me get out of my rut.  Lets hope so!