worst blogger ever!

so...yeah...umm....i PLANNED on updating this site weekly, after my runs.


but you know what they say about the best laid plans!


sorry.

not that anyone is actually reading this or anything, but it's more for my own purposes.

I WILL someday go back and tell you all about my first 1/2 marathon (which I rocked in 2:46:46!!!) and my second 1/2 marathon (which i rocked even harder at 2:42:01!!! AND it was a hilly course!!!!!!) and my plans for my THRID 1/2 marathon...to be done on my 35th birthday! And today's 20 (YES! TWENTY) mile run.

but right now, my legs are too sore from that run to allow me to concentrate enough to type about it.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!

DOUBLE DIGITS!!!!!

Not sure if you can read that clearly or not, but today we ran TEN MILES!!! DOUBLE DIGITS, BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our mentor's 'results' are:

Distance 10.01
Time 2:09
Average pace 12:54 min/mile
Average calories burned 1600

I finished a couple minutes behind the group, but I *did* finish! And, unlike last week, I didn't end up walking the end. In fact, I dropped behind the group a little with about 1 mile to go, so I just ran at a bit of a slower pace the entire last mile, even the 'big' hill up from the pier!!! At one point, about 7-8 miles in, I had a huge spurt of energy and was struggling NOT to pass the mentors! Then we hit a walk break, and BAM! I started dropping back.

For the first time ever, I carried water with me, and it wasn't near as cumbersome as I'd feared. I also used GU for the first time. I think both of these things really helped my performance. I think I should have had 2 gel packs though, that might have helped give an extra little boost when I started dropping back. I did have 2 packs with me, but gave one to another girl in our pace group who also hadn't ever used gel.

My knees are a little sore, well rather, just below both knees is sore, it hurts to bend or straighten them a little. Other than that I'm not feeling too badly (yet).

My feet hurt a bit too, but I think that's cause I am pretty sure I need new shoes. My shoes don't have a TON of miles on them; 84.45 miles since getting my nike+ stuff. I logged 37.5 miles on them last year...but I'm pretty sure I didn't log every run. So, I'd guess they have maybe close to 200 miles. One of our mentors said that Mizunos are great shoes, but that she's heard that they break down quicker than other shoes. As soon as my legs feel better I am going to go to Runnergy to see what they'd recommend as far as new shoes go. If I like what they say, I'll be buying new shoes. Otherwise, I'll head out to RoadRunner Sports to see what they recommend. I bought the ones I have now (Mizuno Wave Creation 7) there and really like them.

Wanna know something really crazy? I'm thinking of running a half marathon in 2 weeks! We're scheduled to do 12 miles that weekend anyway, so, as they were telling us today, why not get a medal for it?!

NIke Run Hit Remix Race Report

I did this race a week before joining the Leggers (Sept. 15th, 2007), but since I was using it as a tool to gauge whether or not I would join, and since the reason I *hadn't* joined the Leggers prior to the race is cause they weren't having a meeting that week cause they wanted everyone to run or volunteer in this race (so if i *had* already joined, I would have run this race as part of the group!) I decided that I should include this race report in this blog.

My goals for this race were:
1) don't die
2) finish
3) finish in under 90 minutes (how long it took me to mostly walk 5 miles at the gym a couple nights before the race)
4) run as much of it as possible
5) if i could, run the whole thing (other than water stations and the turn, this is the goal I figured I wouldn't accomplish, but you have to have something to stretch for! right?)

well...goal #1-check...2-check...3-check...4-check...5-CHECK!!!! Ok..so there MAY have been great-grannies walking faster than I ran most of the way, but I kept at a running gait even when it was slow!

We ran from the Collesium, where the 1984 (I think) Olympics took place up to the Staples Center and back. It was a nice course and mostly flat.

Carl Lewis and Serena Williams ran this race too. I'm sure they finished MUCH faster than I did.
My gun time was 1:09:22. My nike+ said my time was 1:06:09. There was a sensor error at the start line, so chip time is same as gun time, they just set everyone's start at 9am. I finished 4909th overall, according to the nike run hit remix website's results, but according to the active.com results (which are probably more accurate), I was 5471th. For some reason (I think it's cause I had to wear a men's shirt - our shirts were our bibs and the women's shirts ran REALLY REALLY small) my age/sex division results are screwed up - it says under sex on my results 'u'. That really ticks me off, cause I had asked when they set my shirt up if there would be a problem with me being a woman wearing a # for a man and they said no. If my Division hadnt been messed up, I would have finished 634th in my division (W30-34) out of 1116 (not counting the other women in my division who had the same issue!) and 2546 out of all women (4401).

This was taken right before the turn into the tunnel at the end of the race (please ignore the muffin top and the lack of color coordination! We had to wear the shirt as our bib and the pants were the only ones I liked to race in!)

I'm a little sore but it was worth it. My WI wasn't good - but that's cause I weighed in after the race and had eaten bananas and stuff before and after the race and i was still wearing my race shirt (had to go right from race to WI).

There were bands playing on stages about every mile - they had Naughty by Nature, Sir Mix A Lot, The Sugarhill Gang, Dawn Robinson of En Vogue, and a finish line concert by MC Hammer (HAMMERTIME!) It was kinda cool, but at the same time very annoying, as (especially the first stage) 'runners' would stop to listen to the music instead of RUNNING and they blocked much of the road and weren't considerate to the runners trying to get past them!

They also had it set up so you could 'borrow' a pair of nike shoes and an ipod to try out the nike+ sport stuff. I already use that with my mizuno shoes (bought a thing on amazon from marware that lets me use it with shoes other than nike ones) so i didn't try it. I was a little surprised at how many people did, I wouldn't run a race in shoes I've never worn before!

Overall it was a fun day and a great race, the temp was a little hot, but not too bad.