Running workouts leading up to the trail run

I've put in a few noteworthy runs this week. On Sunday G and I went to Rancho and did one of the longer trails that I had never tried before. It was probably 9.5 - 10 miles for me (11 for him since he doubled back for me a few times) and > 1600 ft climbing. I was soooo slow going up the hills that the whole thing took about 1 hour 50 min. But it was a beautiful day, perfect running weather, and we saw some nice views. Oh, and two deer. But no rattlesnakes or lions.

Then I was too busy the next two days to get any running in. Today I made myself go to the gym at lunch and did maybe only the 3rd interval workout I've ever done on a treadmill (ugh). I decided what to do as I went along, especially when I realized mile intervals were too boring.

Warm-up
1 mile at 8:00 pace
rest 2 min (walk)
1/2 mile at 7:45 pace
rest 2 min
1/2 mile at 7:35 pace
rest 2 min
1/2 mile at 7:30 pace
rest 2 min
1/2 mile at 7:25 pace

Then LOTS of rolling and stretching. I noticed my hip flexors were still a tiny bit sore from Sunday's run.

So I have one more easy run tomorrow, then resting Friday before the trail run Saturday. On Sunday I'm going to a 5/10k to officially cheerlead and watch my godson and his brother while his parents run.

Silliness

There is a lot of silliness around here these days. Bubby can carry on short conversations with me now so the ride home is always fun (when he's not tired and cranky that is). Here are some examples of the entertainment he provides:

He loves to sing ABC but he frequently jumps from "Abc..." right to "next time won't you sing with me!" Then he requests that I play the Abc song on his CD repeatedly even though there are 33 other songs to choose from.

Dad has taught him to say to people when they leave "See you! Wouldn't want to be you!" although he's a bit more polite and usually says "See you! Wanna be you!"

Also he really likes making silly faces (stretching out his cheeks with his fingers...who taught him that?) and then he asks me to turn around and say "Boo!" to him when he's doing it.

When you ask him how old he is he'll say "almost two" although some days he changes his mind and says "almost three!"

He was a monkey for Halloween, which seemed really appropriate.

Everything else has been going well too. I've kept up some semblance of running although the last week or so has been very busy. I signed up for a 17k trail run (with 2000 ft elevation) in a week and a half. While it has motivated me to do a few longer runs, I should have done a lot more training by now. I've done a few hilly 5-milers and then a 7-mile on a flat trail with my dog last weekend. Although unfortunately I had to walk one mile in the middle of that due to knee pain, so I've been stretching a LOT on my foam roller since then. I brought my shorter foam roller into work today to introduce to some people who also have knee pain and have never experienced the wonders of the roller.

We also celebrated our 10-year anniversary in Half Moon Bay. Unfortunately K was a bit under the weather, so it was a pretty restful and quiet weekend. Otherwise we could have biked 7 miles along the coastal trail and checked out whether anyone was surfing at Mavericks. But I did get to enjoy sitting by the firepit on our patio watching the fog roll in, which was lovely.

Trailblazer 5k Results

Well, apparently I have some competitive juices after all. I had felt a little antsy going into the race since I knew I was going to try and push a little harder than usual. So this morning we all made it to the race, including Bubby in his BOB with my mother-in-law ready to push him on the 5k walk. We met up with the boys from work who were doing the 10k and my friend doing her first 5k. After the boys started their race it felt like forever to wait the 15 min for the race to start. I positioned myself with the 8-minute milers.

It's a small race so it spread out pretty quickly. I reached the Mile 1 marker at 8:00 (although the race volunteer said 7:50) and realized I felt tired, but not terrible. I realized that if I stayed at that pace for mile 2 and slowed down a little at the end I could pretty easily hit my goal. Mile 2 was fun since it had a small loop and then we started back so I could see other runners coming out. My split on mile 2 was 7:45. Then I definitely started feeling really tired and not caring that a few people were passing me, although at least two of them looked younger, not in my age group (yes, I must have been feeling competitive that I even looked to see how old they were). I finished the last 1.1 mile in 8:31 for a total of 24.18, which is a 7:50 pace!!! I really didn't know I had that in me. I mean, maybe once I ran around that pace for the first half of a 10k but then started fading out so I had always remembered racing at a slower place.

I did not place in my age group since the runners this year were faster, but I'm happier to get a PR than place at 27+ minutes like I did last year. I'm actually not sure what place I was since the results aren't posted yet.

I spent the rest of the day going to lunch with my mom-in-law, taking a nice afternoon nap, swimming with Bubby and Selena in our pool, and having dinner at my parents'. It couldn't get much more relaxing than that.

Dogs and fall races

Okay, I figured at this point some of you are seeing occasional updates from me on Facebook, and while I'm not great at updating that either you may know we adopted two dogs! They both came from a lab rescue organization and once we saw them, we had to take both. Selena is the 2-year old curly-coated retriever and Nikko is the 1-year old black lab. We've had them about 3 weeks and it's going well so far. They're both pretty good runners, although Selena is not well behaved on the leash at all and needs a lot of training! She is a fabulous swimmer and very agile, which she demonstrates by walking along the perimeter of our hot tub which is a weird square shape and only 4-inch wide. They play together really well, meaning that Nikko loves to play with Selena, and Selena tolerates it, and at least they don't show any aggression at all towards each other. It has been great adjusting back to life with dogs.

The end of our summer was packed with visitors. We had a great time inviting people over for countless swim afternoons and bbq's. Then in August we took a two week trip to Hawaii, five days in Maui and a week in Kauai. It was super relaxing and we enjoyed having my parents with us.

Two weeks ago we had the Pacific Grove triathlon, in which I did the swim leg of a relay with my hubby and old tri buddy J. The boys that I've trained with all year were on another relay team. It was a very tough race for me. The water temp was in the mid 50s and I wore my sleeveless wetsuit since I thought it would be easier on my arms given my marginal swim training this year. Well I overestimated my body's ability to warm up, and the colder I felt, the slower I swam. It took me 45 min to swim < 1 mile, which is about 3 min/mile pace. I'm not sure I would even call it swimming, but somehow I did make it through. It took me about 10-15 minutes afterward to begin to warm up. My friend K had to strip off all my layers, put on several jackets, give me a cup of tea, and finally I started to feel normal again. I did enjoy the rest of the race day though.

And what it did for me was motivate me to run harder, since I felt grateful that there is an event that I am much better at than swimming! So I have the 5k Trailblazer Run on Sunday that I'm trying to do every year now. Last year I did it in the high 28 min range. This year I would love to be low 26 min. Also, I found out later that I was 3rd in my AG last year but didn't know it until afterward since they made some changes. I would love to officially place in my AG this time and not find out a year later! Now that I've said this I'll have to come back soon and provide a post-race update!

July summary - where to begin?

I know it's always easy to say this, but this month I truly had almost no time to even think about updating the blog. I hope this will be my longest hiatus for a while. A LOT has happened.

First of all, we moved! I'm usually in denial about the moving process, so I don't do a great job of updating people throughout and I'm sure I'll surprise a lot of our friends when I send out the email with our new address (which I have yet to do). We were able to buy the house, sell ours, close both at the same time, and move - all within 2 months. It's a lovely home a mile away from my parents in a quiet neighborhood. And one of the best parts is the gorgeous backyard pool! It's 12 yds long for those of you lap swimmers who are wondering, and I can actually do some minimal training there but more relaxing and playing with the kiddo. We've been in it almost every day since we've moved. My husband's two youngest sisters were out here for two and a half weeks during our move process helping us out hugely, so we're somewhat settled in already.

And they are very active too so I got them to join for two races the past two weekends! We did the same sprint triathlon again (as I did in June) but as a relay. One of them was the second woman out of the water! I did the bike in 34 min instead of 36 min (in June) for ~11 miles so I came very, very close to hitting 19mph average. Although I hadn't been on my bike the whole month, the winds were a bit favorable this time. It was also very different since I usually pass people on the bike (due to being in the far back from the swim) and this time I got passed a lot, but the roads were a lot more open which was not a bad tradeoff. My other sis had a good run, so overall it was a great day and much speedier race than I usually have!

Then last weekend we did a 1.2 mile open water swim together. They are both swimmers so they did great in their age group, placing 5th and 10th. It was good motivation for me to get up to that distance, even though I was super slow - 55 min, but I took it easy and was glad to get out there. I did a few masters workouts and one swim in my pool for 100 laps (= 1200 yds).

Somewhere in the middle I did my first climb on my "new" bike (meaning the one I've had for 2 years now). We went up OLH, ~3 miles of a windy but pretty road. It didn't feel that much different in a double, although I certainly felt my lack of hill training over the recent years.

And I can't not update about Bubby, since things are constantly changing with him. He is just a very funny, chatty little man who has a lot to say about our "new house" (which he announces every day pulling into the driveway) and "broken trees" (which we saw fallen down in the Redwood forest). I can't wait to go on vacation next month (for 2 weeks in Maui and Kauai!!!) so I can spend some more quality time with him.

Hopefully I'll be back to update again soon!

Bubby's words

At 15 months his favorite words were:

ball
door
daddy
mommy
hi
bye
uh-oh
shoe
book
mey (for more)
pees (for please)
cheese
flower
cracker
no
baby
paper
car
girl
star
boon (for balloon)
dog
po-po (for grandma)
gong-gong (for grandpa)
Copper
Jesus
yogurt

He just had his 18 month check-up this week and now his additional words/phrases are:

hi people
hi bubble, bye bubble
big bus
big car
mo-tee-ta-ta (for motorcycle)
boat
train
mommy's car (which he calls every SUV he sees)
daddy's truck
mommy's glasses, ah gong's glasses
mommy's shoes (when he got his first pair of nikes! how cute is that??)
hat
bear
monkey
yah-yoh (means water), my yah-yoh, mommy's yah-yoh
nuk (means milk)
apple
yah-cho (means sausage)
boy
house
doggie's house
chair
ah-gong's sweetie, po-po's sweetie, mommy's sweetie, daddy's sweetie
dirty sock
bath
eyes
nose
teeth
bobby (for belly button)
bye joo-jee (for our neighbors)
Kookie (for Kirbie, our neighbors dog)
Maisy
names of all his friends at school and teachers - esp his best girl "mina"
"a" and "o" although he gets them confused :)


Yes, he's quite chatty. Given the theme of his recent words and interests, I'm going to paint him a mural in his new room with a train, bus, mo-tee-ta-ta, daddy's truck, and an airplane.

Sprint tri results

We did our tri today! It was a great day. We started out at 5:30 bright and early. My friend G was ready. I kind of felt all day that it was more his race since it was his first one. I picked him up and he had eaten nothing and said there was no food in his house (how is this possible?) so it was a good thing I had brought him some of my race day wheat toast peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Yum!

So let me first say that G did fabulous. There are no official results in this race, but he was likely 1st or 2nd in his age group (and by age group this is men < 40). There was an elite wave that went first, and he started 5 min later and passed some of them but didn't get passed by anyone. I was super proud of him. We're going to be back in July and he's going to start in the elite wave so we can really see what he can do!

My race was okay...honestly I can't say that it was great. The swim felt very crowded. I usually start near the back, and this was one of the first times I wish I had started closer to the middle. Several times I looked around and everyone around me was breast-stroking, and it was hard to get around them! So I just took it easy. It was pretty relaxing, as I usually like it.

The only part of the day where I felt like I was racing hard was the first half of the bike. I passed a bunch of people. But then it got pretty windy, and after I slowed down, it was hard to pick it up again. Then on the turnaround, which is a tight turn on a narrow 2-lane street, I almost got hit by a guy going the wrong way! He was literally on the wrong side of the street and kept veering towards me (and cursing, as he was obviously having some kind of problem, like maybe not knowing how to ride a bike??) and I swerved onto the gravel shoulder but didn't fall off.

The run was leisurely. It's a moderately hilly dirt course which is almost the exact same terrain that we run on at lunchtime, so it felt comfortable. My time was 3 min slower than my 5k last week - yikes! I don't feel bad about my time since I have a lot less time to train now than I did 4 years ago, but I did feel a little bad that my training partner worked so much harder out there than I did.

Here were my splits -

Swim 400 yd: 9:38 (2:25 min/100)
T1: 2:44
Bike 11 mi: 36:42 (18 mph)
T2: 1:29
Run 3.1 mi: 29:49 (9:37 min/mi)
total: 1:20

Anyway, I'm not sure if I'll do the same race again in July but I will definitely be there to cheer my buddies on.

And Bubby has been great these few days. He's sleeping well and we've been having some nice bonding time together. I literally don't know how single parents do it. Today after the tri I went home to relieve my parents, had a friend visit us for lunch, took Bubby to swim class, then dinner at my parents, and home to bed. And in between there was laundry, dishes, taking out the trash, sweeping the floor, returning a few phone calls, and packing a few boxes for our upcoming move. More on that later!