My predictions for The Half At the Hamptons....

It's officially race week around here.
This Fall I declared that the Hampton Half was going to be my A race for the winter, a great way to crank up some pre Boston speed work and, most likely, a chance to PR.

I think at this juncture we can all agree that training this winter has been odd.

15 mile runs on the treadmill, that is odd indeed

That certainly should not imply that I haven't been working very hard and putting significant effort into my workouts, because I have.

Quite simply, with so much indoor training and the subsequent reduction in challenging terrain I don't feel that I can predict my race outcome with the almost psychic ability I had last summer.

And not to (continue) complaining about (more) shit weather, but I think we can all agree that it's endless this year! Endless. ENDLESS.

This is special. BARF.

Hopefully soon the conditions really improve and I can get back on the roads. PLEASE RUNNING GODS!

Ahem. Anyway, back on point.
My current PR (2012, Great Bay Half, on a great weather day, running angry) was a 1:36:40
(oh and on a side note, I also met Eric at the GBH. So a PR and a good day in general!)
(And I also met Andy that day too because they do most things together....)
(OH! An that's the day I met Danielle too, but we had known each other for ages on the internets...)
My 2013 PR, on a hot but lovely day, on legs that (theoretically) should not have been fast was 1:37:15

So where am I at now...
I trained almost exclusively on the treadmill for my first half 3 years ago (which was Hampton! It's my Half-aversiry!) I believe I ran in 1:48 (this was the year now famous for sub arctic temps, horrific wind chill and the works. It really was a bit awful.) I hope that my winter of treadmill training leaves me a bit faster lo these many years later!
I ran Hampton again the following year for another 1:48- I used this run as more of a social outing on this particular day so it felt nice and easy. And the weather could not have been better!

Taking into account my finishing time a few weeks ago at the Mid Winter Classic I believe that a 1:40 is a very possible outcome. Realistic.

That is not my official guess though. IF the weather is decent- no frigid temps, no slushy roads, no driving winds I feel confident (perhaps unjustifiably) that I can pick it up a little. But not more than a little.

I predict a finish of 1:38:58 which will leave me wiped out, and possibly annoyed!
I will admit that I think this is a lofty goal and that none of the speed work I have been doing lately indicates that a sub 1:40 finish is in the cards. Screw it, I'm gonna dream big because why not!

Sp plan on that friends, I will run my 1:38:58- then, assuming I am not dying I will run a few more to make it a long run. And then we will all celebrate excellent races, the upcoming Spring season and fabulocity in general with beers and pizza!
And it will be awesome.

Fast people, famous people, and me...

This past week has been pretty normal on the winter training front.
There have been 2 common themes over the past week or so.
1: I am very, very busy at work. 10-12 hour days have not been unusual
(this makes mid week 2 hour workouts a tad tricky. I'm pretty good at managing my schedule but it has been tight!)
2: Winter still sucks

Sucky stupid winter

Despite these little challenges I had another solid training week. I clearly felt a little bump up in my fitness this week (finally! good gahd it took long enough..) With Boston finally registering on my race radar this is a good thing- now all we need are warmer temps and safe roads an I'll be back in the game. Until then, the basement and I are spending serious quality time.

Eric and I went to Boston yesterday for the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix. This was a fun run-nerd road trip an we really had a good time! I was really curious to see the Nike team- since flotrack has more or less been devoted to them and their racing/training I was eager to see them in the flesh.
In an excellent twist of fate we got to see Danielle again (twice in one week!) as she and Sarah were spectating too. I believe we all hold on to hope that breathing the same air as the fast kids will make us fast.
I'm counting on it....

Crappy phone photo's...
Famous people! Alberto Salazar's back! Whoot!

I have been super impressed by the Rupp and Cain phenomenon so I was a bit crushed when Rupp pulled out, clearly hurting in the men's mile race. (Eric and I have been saying in our *expert* tones that he was going to make it or break it.... and we saw him break it...) Mary Cain is really just adorable, she was quite dominant in her race (the 1K) and pretty pumped about her win.
We witnessed a world Record in the 4x800 men's relay- wow it was so exciting!
An we saw a bit of a debacle in the women's 2 mile when Jenny Simpson lost count of her laps an hit the turbo with 2 laps to go.... Needless to say when she realized her mistake it was too darn late and she had to settle for second. As I said to Danielle "You don't see THAT every day..."
Since all the cool kids were out and about I got to say a quick hi to the always super sweet Kate Grace, who I managed not to fangirl all over this time. Kinda. Whatever you guys, she is pretty cool and also a really nice person. So Oiselle meet up success! Unplanned but success!!!

Chillin' with elite runners like it's NBD.

So a quick training wrap up from here- I finished the week with 33 miles (to last weeks 39) 90 minutes on the bike and about 2:40 of core/yoga. Decent. Every run had something of substance, which I find far more beneficial than tons of junk miles. Long runs are easy, fast runs are fast, progressive tempo runs have... tempo that progresses haha. (well they do) So things are shaping up for some bigger mileage soon!

Coming up soon.... My predictions/expectations for the Hampton Half.
More on the amazing things I eat every day! (hint: I eat like a normal person...)
My continued training.
My biggest peeves!

So get excited.

Mid Winter Classic 10 miler

So if my computer/blogger account had been anything but dysfunctional for the past month you all would know of my struggles in preparing for this race.
Horrible weather, kinda crummy speed work, limited road running time and a general feeling of unpreparedness prompted me to give up the idea of racing and resign myself to the fact that, at best, this could be a run with friends and a bit of speed work.

The day dawned as perfect as anything we have seen in months. Dudes, it was 40 degrees by race time! And, for the first time on MWC history there was no wind- miraculous!

I'm so peeved about my blogging issues as of late. All of my adoring fans are not in the know about my race prep and feelings about how I was going to do! This picture will tell you...

Heh heh. 

So let's talk about how this played out.

Eric and I arrived on time. Yes, be impressed. Danielle knows how rare it is for me to show up on time!

Right away we saw friends and the photos began in earnest! It isn't a race unless we have proof for the internet that we are all there.

OK let's see how I do with names.
Me. My new bestie Michelle. Some sexy beast of a man. Jen, Carrie, Jill. Another girl. Stacey maybe? I suck...

I FINALLY FINALLY met Michelle, my internet buddy of "unimpressed" Christmas photo fame. She pretty much is the best. She arrived in time to see some of my finer moments like falling over chairs, spilling Gatorade all over everything and then post race she caught me taking off the majority of my sweaty clothing in the middle of the cafeteria (well, everyone saw that...) I feel I made a solid first impression.
And why we did not take an "unimpressed" picture together I will never know. Missed opportunity!

I think I saw everyone I know and it was delightful. Danielle was there to crush her PR in the middle of a long run (showoff) and we had a joyful reunion. I miss her and am SO damn happy that she's back in the game this year- and killing it! And yes, Andy was there and he photobombed us per the norm.

Me, Danielle and Creeper McCreeperson!
JK love ya Andy. :-)

Shockingly I did not miss the start, despite my social meanderings. Everyone was feeling frisky and took off absurdly fast. Well, everyone is but me! I held my first 2 miles in the low 8's- which felt pretty relaxed. I ran with Michelle for a bit and we exchanged ladylike stories and told lovely tales about how we enjoy spitting and snotting all over the road, how we have a mutual hatred for non stop sponsored blog posts and how we planned to win the race. (not...) At mile 2 or so we exchanged a telepathic message that it was time to go our own ways and we did. (Eric calls that "me being a jerk!" I call it "we are doing our own thing!")

So I ran a ways and things were fine. I caught Eric and Andy at mile 3 and asked Eric if he wanted me to be his rabbit, to which he replied "I don't care." I took this to be a clear sign that we were doing our own thing, and that he and Andy could wage a twin war just fine without me! So along I moseyed.

Mile 5. The face of a focused, dedicated athlete.
Riiiiiiiiiight..
However it is a picture of someone who has improved her running form, shockingly.

Honestly, and boringly not much happened. I did pick up the pace gradually but was very cautious to not be a dick an blow my legs on a training run. I am a dumb jerk who likes to do that! I did want a few sub 8 miles and as it turns out, a few turned into 8. I never felt too aggressive though and I gave myself several small breaks to evaluate and catch my wheezing gasping breath (kidding. I wasn't pushing that hard, gosh!)

Things did get fun at mile 8. In the distance, all bright and shiny in hot pink and neon green I saw Danielle! And decided to catch her.... I plugged along slowly gaining ground until, with about 100 meters to go I was one step behind her. She did a double take and said something flattering like "Oh shiiiiiit..." which I took to mean she was happy to see me! I knew she was really glad I was there when she suddenly turned on some turbo boosters and ran like the freaking wind to totally out kick me. Hah! It was awesome. So when she is going for a huge BQ this spring I will show up at mile 25 or so to activate the same kind of reaction. The girl is scary fast... (thus far, I can't find pics of our epic finish. but I will.......)

Anyway. I finished and even though I ran a 1:15:56 I was 40 seconds off my PR. It was cool though, I was happy the run went well since nothing I have done lately in training indicated it would be a good day. To be brutally honest with myself, it was a bit of luck, a nice weather day and not much else. I've been developing some stronger legs lately but this particular day was more or less a perfect storm. A nice confidence boost though so I'll take it. Eric says I sandbagged but that isn't true. As I said, my training runs had me predicting a 1:25-1:27 finish. I got lucky. There will be more excellence to come in the future though after I put in some more time and work out there on the brutal terrain of my lovely town...

Eric and Andy ran thru a couple minutes behind us with the rest of the gang to follow along shortly thereafter.
Then the post race shenanigans began! I bumped into a reader who claims to be more middleaged than I am, haha (nice to meet you! I'm always excited that it isn't just Eric and my Dad who read my blog...) I talked a little trash to a super speedy Ironman friend (who then challenged me to a rematch... um I think I'm busy that day...) I gave diet advice to the world at large "Cake and WINE people, that's the way to not get too skinny!" (true story) An that was pretty much THAT. Well, there were more pictures- duh. This was really an excellent day to see friends and document our every move!

I think Michelle, Kristal AND Danielle ALL PR'd.
Sweet baby Jesus, you kids are rockstars. 

So a few weeks until the Hampton Half. I'm desperately hoping for more outdoor days of running and warmer temps. This was a nice boost and confirmation that I'm on the right track but I feel that I have a lot of work ahead of me to get where I want to be. Good motivation, right?

In which I talk about cross training in a nice way!

This winter I have only a couple races on the horizon. For a brief moment after Wednesday's 10K I got a feeling of nostalgia for the good old days when I had a race almost every weekend! That dissipated quickly when I remembered how much of that time I spent on the DL... Nothing says "No thanks, not again" like reminiscing about days spent with ice packs, a bag of icy cold peas shoved down my pants, the need to take out stock in my chiropractor's business....

The theme for this winter is to become stronger. I do indeed emphasize that over "faster" which I imagine my running buddies everywhere are cringing about. Faster should, in fact, be a logical by product of stronger and if so, awesome. I always want to get speedier, duh.

But right now? Stronger it is.

Skiing in zero degree temps is indeed crosstraining!

We all know I struggled with my left leg mildly from the time around GCI to after NYCM when I called it quits and took a couple of weeks off. While I still hesitate to call it an injury, as it did not sideline me, it certainly was a nuisance and a worry. The general consensus is that it was a combination of piriformis syndrome, a mild case of sciatica (nice, general term there...) and basic, boring overuse. In a nutshell it was infrequent stabbing pain in my ass. Fun!

I have had ZERO pain since late November. I most certainly feel that that particular leg is still weak and I am working hard with cross training and serious core/strength work to get it to buck up! I do feel that this is something I have 100% control over and that if I can achieve greater fitness I will not have a recurrence.

My non runner acquaintances are baffled that I could have trained all Summer/Fall the way I did and still come out of the season feeling as though I developed a major weakness.
But here is what happened.
Between GCI and Smuttynose I had a great Marathon training cycle- I built up some good running stamina but really neglected any form of cross training. I tended to favor the left leg slightly as it was having occasional painful flare ups. From the time that I began to taper for Smutty (mid September) to the time I finally took a break (Early November) I did little more than race, recover, try to maintain, race, recover and so on!
It was a good way to get thru a busy time but not a recipe for gaining any strength.

So while I might not have high running miles for the next 6 weeks or so I will be putting in very normal total hours of working out. Apparently, I have come to a place in my life where I deem this acceptable. Pre Boston I will ramp up the mileage per the norm, and look forward to that as long runs are definitely part of my lifestyle. This is the first time that I have really accepted forms of exercise other than running as legitimate workouts. Believe me, when you complete one of Kelsey's core routines if you aren't tired and a little (or a lot) sore, you aren't doing it right!!

Look closely. Those are bike rollers! Yikes!

I really hope to be a runner forever. I picture myself as a tiny 75 year old woman running Boston like a boss and finally winning my damn age group! Having life long running goals is a big motivator for staying as healthy and strong as I can. Some people can run 100 plus miles a week, every week and their bodies can handle it. I find that is not the ideal for me, at least not at this time in my life! I like to put in plenty of miles, and I certainly would enjoy a nice, relaxing 8 miles of pure junk over 40 minutes of core and TRX... But I can see that this is for the greater good so I embrace it, dammit!

So here's to you, by left butt/hip/piriformis! A better 2014 for all of us and lunges and squats for the win!

First Run 10k, Hello 2014....

It's always risky business deciding to run any race in the dead of winter, especially is that race happens to be 2.5 hours away...
Between the incessant storms, the truly arctic weather and the fact that I took 2 weeks off from running post upper respiratory infection (and then had 2 abysmal runs for quality "training!") we were basically on the fence about heading to Lowell for this race until the 11th hour.
Interestingly, despite the problematic conditions I really felt like running.
Scratch that, for whatever reason I actually felt like racing. Huh.
I set a goal for this race a while back to run it in 45:00. I suck at running right now. I recognized the fact that I had not run any speedwork since, well.... before Smuttynose (in October, FML) and had not run a mile that started with "7" since NYCM. And, honestly, my virus had knocked me flat on my ass. Whoops.
But for whatever reason I REALLY felt like running this race.
But maybe not so fast. I did some quality math and had trouble imagining that I could run faster than about a 51:00- but I also know that I get way awesomer when I run with others so I figures that 47-49 was well within reach unless I froze to death first.
Several years ago I did this run as my first 10K and had fond memories! So off we went.

Those fond memories linger because, in some stroke of luck, the race weather several years back was legit amazing. It was 60. I wore shorts.... How I long for those good old days...
It was -13 when we rolled out.... F-U-C-K.

The good news is, that by the time we arrived (an hour and fifteen minutes before race time. I hope people are taking note of what a good influence Eric is on my schedule!!) it was almost 20. 20 is by far the warmest weather we had seen in a while. The bummer? It was windy...

We collected our bibs and swag (really useful hats/gloves- AWESOME stuff!) And waited inside staying warm. This is a big deal for me as I freeze to death immediately when I go out into the cold in my running outfit. So having a warm location close to the start is a really wonderful!

Nice and warm and happy!

Eric wanted to run a solid PR, and knowing that he is a fast starter I was all "Just run! Leave me to die!" except not like that at all. More like "Go, you actually might beat me today!" This was basically the way it played out for a while.
So we started running, Eric took off, I promptly tripped on some ice and basically fell down and broke my leg. Jeesh, one point for coordination!

That look on my face says "I just wiped out in front of ALL of you!"

I ran along, feeling pretty good for a while- in which I actually saw miles that started with "7" which was a nice, shiny, happy kind of feeling. At mile 2 I caught a glimpse of Eric up ahead of me and decided to run him down. Too bad that there was a significant headwind from mile 2-3. (and 5-6 since it's a double loop.) I had hoped to be warming up at this point but was actually growing colder, due to the wind, and could NOT feel my feet at all which was disconcerting.

I did manage to catch Eric. I sneakily tried to draft off him for a bit but it didn't really work so I popped up beside him and tried to run him off the road. Hey, since I caught him I wasn't gonna let him win! We actually ran together like lovah's for a bit and then I ran away from him, cackling in glee. BWA-HA-HAHHHHH! (that's me, cackling in glee.)

Athletic Power Couple.
The wind is legit blowing me backwards! 

So I ran for a while and was cold. And I ran for a little while longer. And coughed up some phlegm because I am stunning and attractive. I thought about how glad I was not to be running a marathon. I decided to hurry the eff up and get done (but that pesky headwind was like "OH NO YOU DON'T!!!)

Going FAST. OMG so FAST!!!
Um. Or 7:33 average fast... So fast-ish.
But I look like I'm FLYING!

However. I did finish. And it felt so fun and quick and easy compared to a marathon! And I was so fresh from tapering for 239 days! And at this point it was ALL I could handle because I'm old and out of shape! But I finished in 46:51 so, while not setting any land speed records I don't have to hide in a hole of shame just yet.

Eric scampered thru less than a minute behind me, and he PR'd!
I actually ended up taking 3rd in my AG so, all in all not a bad way to start the year!

Hope that everyone else enjoyed the New Year and that you are looking forward to 2014 as much as we are! It's going to be a good one!

Haha! We are fantastic!