Plan, what plan?

I'm slow this year. Yes, I realize fast is a relative term, I wasn't really terribly fast before, but this year I'm slower than usual.......it's really odd having people come up and comment on me being fast from before and asking what my plan, goal, time, etc is this year.  In reality, I have none, my only real goal is to finish the distances I've signed up for.  I'm not gonna say it's not frustrating but then again one can't expect to pull fast(ish) times out of their arse if they haven't done speed work in many, many months.  Shoot, half the time I go out to run now and I don't even have a specific mileage in mind other than anything over 3 miles much less having a set pace to do it in.  
But I do think after the past 2 races the "fast" reputation is long gone, LOL!!!  


So this brings me to the second race of the RRCA Grand Prix season, the Rivertrail 15k, I've never really had a great time at this race. It's always windy, rainy, or cold. Usually all 3........this year, we had moderate winds after the turnaround point, misty rain beforehand and 58F temps.  Short sleeve shirts and shorts were definitely the appropriate wear once you got moving and I was nearly begging for the mist to resume after about 3 miles.  And the no plan? Well, I'd settled in behind Brenda and one of the younger Cruisers (who IS speedy!) into a comfortably hard pace when after our first loop in the soccer fields, we spied Alise walking back towards us.  She'd been on some antibiotics and wasn't feeling well but after asking if she felt like she was in passing out kind of trouble I talked her into resuming and ran at her (slower) pace for a while.  Well, she's an amazing runner and her slower pace nearly killed me, lol!!!!!!!!!!  I knew I would crash and burn after that, even said so to Brenda when we passed them, but it was well worth it to get Alise back into the race. 

Click to see larger image

Looking at my splits, you can see where I lost it, taking water at the first stop combined with the faster than I'm used to/capable of sustaining speed resulted in some nasty stomach cramps and I ended up having to walk several times after to let them ease.  I'm not grumbling (other than about the worry of having to maybe make an emergency portapotty stop) but this does show that I need to start adding a day of speed work if for no other reason than to be able to survive little bursts like I did in the beginning of the race.

Oh, and even if I'd kept at the pace I was at near the beginning I still wouldn't have placed, there are some VERY speedy women in my age group this year. The top 3 masters women were 6th, 7th, and 8th place overall with 2 in my age-group and times that ranged from 1:04:11 to 1:07:28, I was 14th in the female 40-44 age group this year.  No way I can even come close to those times when I am closer to race-ready.  This year's time by the way, was 5:18 slower than my 15k pr.

Other news, Patti and I have decided to start meeting every Tuesday at 8am to run together.  I've missed her an incredible amount, didn't realize just how much until we met back up this past week.  Studying for the Comp-TIA A+ is going ok, at least it was until today when I had every intention of hitting the books after the race but instead got waylaid with a blissful nap.  My weight in the LoseAThon challenge keeps going up and down the same 3 freaking pounds.  I am seeing a slight change in body composition though so trying not to be discouraged.  Another fun little challenge that was put out is to do 10 pushups after every bathroom visit, I did so many on Friday I thought I was gonna face-plant on the last 2 sets (hydrate much?).  

Elsie "helping" me study

I seem to have made peace with the trainer, I've found that if I read a magazine for the warm-up bit, which for me is longer than what most require, then I can get through the session fairly easy and the intervals or hard steady sections seems to fly by.  Loud music helps too, I'm sure I'm not helping my already extremely poor hearing out any :D.  

Thursday

I mentioned day before yesterday that we were in for some rainy days and oh has that forecast come through, ugh.  It's been a gloomy, doomy mid-week and everything is saturated so both Elsie and I are kinda grumpy.  With that being said, I've still managed to get outside in it a bit.  Yesterday morning I drug the mutt out around the neighborhood loop for an extended first thing in the morning walk--from my door and back it's just over a mile then came back and spent some time on the trainer.  Finally felt like I had built enough of a base that I did some intervals after a 20 minute warm-up spin: 1 minute at 20-21mph then 1 minute recovery spin for 10 minutes.  Followed that up with a cooldown spin of almost 4 minutes, last minute was full out whatever I could get my legs to do.  Yes, there was major sweatage occurring even with the ceiling fan blowing on high speed.

Last week I finally made a trip to Wal-Mart to buy a mini-trampoline based on Andrea's advice from a few weeks ago.  Oh. My.  First off, it's kinda fun just bouncing about playing on it, 2nd, it's HARD!  Just a couple of minutes on it and I'm breathing hard, although that's probably a combination of being out of shape and laughing so hard.  I try to make it a habit of jumping on it a couple of times a day whenever I pass by it--yes, it's another piece of workout equipment in the living room, lol.  Hey, this way I know I'm gonna use it at least occasionally and while my veggies were heating up last night I took the time and did 2 minutes of jumping jacks on it.  My calves were feeling it by the end!!!!

Today was Elsie's day to get groomed and again trying to use my time constructively (not quite a resolution but close) by combining errands with workouts, I leashed her up and we ran to the vet's since it's so close and it was only foggy & misty.  That 2 miles didn't even come near to tiring her out though, she was still bouncing about when we walked (ran!) in the door.  However when it came time for her to be led into the back, she was giving me the most pitiful, why are you abandoning me look.........yes, I feel guilty, going to be even more so when I pick her up because I'm having her legs and underbelly shaved this time to hopefully minimize our grass allergies.

Oh back to the run.......after I dropped her off I ran back to my place to throw my gloves and her leash on my doorstep and see if I could manage to get 5 miles in altogether.  While running through the parking lot one of my neighbors hollered out "You're gonna catch the flu running in the rain like that!".  Yeah by this time the conditions had changed from mist to a light rain but what blew my mind is someone actually believing that you can catch a virus from exercising in the cold/rain, lol.  As a twitter friend commented, it's those nasty sky germs that get you every time, hahaha!  And that run where I was risking my health? Ended up with 6.25 miles altogether :-).  Gonna take a cardio rest day tomorrow, hopefully Brenda & company have a trail run planned for Saturday. Either way I need to give the legs a break.

While I'm on about exercise related stuff, this technical shirt I ordered from another twitter friend's CafePress  store (Bailey's By Design) arrived in today's post.  Cute, eh?  Really loving it although I think they may run a bit small, I ordered a medium and it fits more like a Nike small in my opinion.

Monday Mumbles

Yes, the upcoming event widget list actually has something in it......shocking eh?  The Sylamore 25k trail race I actually signed up for back in December when I got an urgent group text from my friend Brenda telling everyone if they were gonna sign up they better do it because registration was closing early. As in by midnight that night.  I'm thinking they got slammed with last-minute sign-ups, lol.

While renewing my memberships in the running club and the state RRCA I also decided to go ahead and sign up for the first 2 races in the grand prix series.  Now I am in no way race ready but figured since I was home I might as well participate and get out to see friends I haven't seen in what seems like forever.  Yeah, yeah, mostly my fault but I've been sort of a recluse with all my family and job related stresses this past year.  Granted the job related stress is gone seeing as I'm not working (by choice) at this time.  I am looking into some of the A+ and microsoft training bootcamps so if anyone has any advice, ie "this place is good, it's totally worth the $$$$, or stay far away from such and such business", please send it my way (thanks!!!).

Elsie and I paid a visit to the veterinarian this afternoon where me and the nurse were going over what all I needed to finish up getting the pet passport done.  After much scratching of our heads and trying to decipher the government mumbo-jumbo, I think we're done with everything except for what has to be done right before any travel actually takes place.  What has helped the most has been the information that I got from the Pet Travel Store where I purchased the pet passport paperwork, highly recommend them.  Anyways, from what we've determined the blood test is no longer required nor is the vet-applied flea and tick treatment right before travel (Elsie gets dabbed with advantix every month regardless) and the tapeworm dose is still "being discussed" (more government bs).

I managed a full hour on the trainer this morning, started out with 30 minutes of an easy spin, keeping the cadence over 80 and next thing I know I was at 35 minutes and still feeling good with only my left foot kinda aching.  Bumped up the intensity slightly and got in 17 miles altogether, yay!