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Monday, March 25, 2013

Weekly Workout Summary

Time has been going by so fast, I can hardly keep up. Hoping that I'll get some time to breath come April! Here's a recap of my workouts last week.

Monday
My goal was to start implementing a spin class once a week. This would normally take place Monday mornings at 6:00. However, on this particular Monday, sleeping sounded soooo much better. So around 6:40, I dragged myself out of bed and to the gym. I knocked out a slow mile on the treadmill and then spent about 15 minutes on a stationary bike....regretting the fact that I slept in and missed out on a better workout! 

Ran on Treadmill: 1.0 miles
Bike: 15 minutes / 3 miles
Walk: 2.0 miles

Tuesday 
Again, could not bear to drag myself out of bed before sun up (I blame the time change, this spring forward sh*t is really kicking my butt)! This being said, I ended up doing an evening workout...in the rain. Which actually turned out to be quite refreshing

Ran Outside: 2.8 miles
Walk: 2.0 miles

Wednesday
Legs were feeling really tired this morning, so my run was more of a slow jog, probably better known as a shuffle. One foot in front of the other. 

Ran Outside: 3.0 miles
Walk: 2.0 miles

Thursday
Nothing particularly awesome to note here. My run was good. 

Ran Outside: 3.1 miles
Walk: 3.0 miles

Friday
When I signed up for Bay to Breakers, I got a free trial subscription to runcoach.com. I was able to put together a plan for a future race and I got a pretty cool training calendar out of it. As of last week, I'll now be dedicating Friday's to "track" (speed) workouts on the treadmill. We'll see how it goes. 

Ran on Treadmill: 4.5 miles
Walk: 3.0 miles

Saturday
Kept this run pretty light since I had a race the next day. My sister has been getting more into running, so she tagged along with me for this run. 

Ran on Outside: 3.0 miles
Walk: 1.0 mile

Sunday
A few weeks ago, my running club put out an email about an upcoming trail race. I've never run trails, but I thought it would be a great race to "try it out" and it would be a good excuse to get out of the city for half a day. The race was pretty low key, but had some serious runners - the course offerings were 5 mile, half marathon, 30K, marathon and 50K! Being a newbie to the trails, naturally I picked the half marathon. Since this was my first trail music, I decided to take it a lot slower than a road race and take time to enjoy the scenery. The course was beautiful and pretty challenging. I mean, there's nothing like a 500 foot climb in the first mile!! 

Ran Outside: 13.1 miles

Other noteworthy things:

This is the highest mileage week I've had to date - and is shaping up to be my highest mileage month ever.

On Friday, I watched a documentary called "Vegucated" - I was pretty much mortified and decided that I should become a vegetarian, immediately. I tend to have a flare for the dramatic and jump into things head on...so I decided the rational thing was to do a trial run. I challenged myself to go 10 days without meat - I'm at the end of day 3 and so far, no problems. I'm not a big fan of red meat or seafood, so really I only need to wean myself off chicken and turkey. If all continues to go well, I plan to keep this going.

It has been 9 days since my last soda. I'm a lover of diet dr. pepper and hearing the crack of a soda can makes my mouth water (terrible, I know). I've tried to quit - ween myself off of the fake-sugary, brown, bubbly goodness several times...once I even went a month, but I've never been able to make it stick. I always relapse and then, next thing I know I'm drinking a soda every day. We'll see how long I can make it this time around.

The countdown is on....in one month I'll be in Hawaii! Gotta get this bod ready for the beach!

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Chinese New Year 10K Recap

Life has been crazy busy lately and time has been going by at warp speed. This is literally the first chance I've really had in a month to sit down and blog. On top of this race recap, I still owe you a recap on the Tough Mudder and this weekend's latest race, Emerald Across the Bay 12K. But to get us started, here is the race recap for the Chinese New Year 10K from February.

I did this race on a whim - literally, decided on a Thursday to sign up for the Sunday race. Figured it would be a good last effort heading into Tough Mudder the following week.

The Chinatown YMCA Chinese New Year Run raised funds for the YMCA's youth and teen programs. This year's race specifically benefited the Physical Education Program which serves more than 1,600 youth and teens from Chinatown and surrounding San Francisco neighborhoods.

The race is smaller than most that I've participated in over the past few months. Between the 5K walk/run and the 10K there were only about 1,500 participants.

The race was on Sunday, February 17th. The start line was in the heart of Chinatown - a nice 15 minute walk from my apartment. Can't beat a race that's so close to home.


Pre race self portrait


Race start in Chinatown

The race started promptly at 8:00 - it was a brisk morning, but turned out to be perfect racing weather. The 10K route was 2 loops around the 5K route. It was nice to run down some new street and some regular streets - like my street. I told my sister to be outside at 8:10 - but she decided sleep was more important -so I made sure to give her a wake up call for round 2. On my second lap she was outside in her pajamas and snapped this lovely pic. 


Having lots of fun, clearly

I thought I was looking cool in my pink argyle ProCompression socks - but my sister said they give me flamingo legs! Despite her comment - I love them! 

I was running a pretty decent pace and managed to finish strong. After the race there was a small, but well done expo. The swag bags were also pretty awesome too - my favorite part was that the bags were paper. So green! 


Expo tents


Swag - Dasani Water, Hint Flavored Water, hand sanitizer 
AND a $10 Macy's gift card among other things

Perks of running a small race is that you look good when you get the results. 

I finished 86th overall and 7th for my age group (F18-29). If I finished 90 seconds faster I would've placed in the top 3. This probably won't happen again for another 29 years or until the next year of the snake. 

Final time: 53:39
Pace: 8:39

This race was low key and really fun. I would definitely do it again. I'm on the lookout for more small races like this! 

Saturday, March 9, 2013

100 Days of Running

I pulled out my computer about an hour ago so I could start writing this post. Why does the internet facebook have to be so distracting. Doesn't it know I'm trying to get things done?

Today was a huge milestone in my short, but sweet running career. Today marked the 100th day of my runstreak. You heard read that right. I have run (1+ miles) every day for the last 100 days. My journey started on Thanksgiving. I woke up that morning and ran a 5K - it felt great to be active on a day that's synonymous with stuffing your face. Later that day, I saw a feed on twitter mentioning the Runner's World #Runstreak. It was a challenge to run everyday from Thanksgiving to New Year's. I thought that was a cool challenge and I would give it a go. Things were going great, then on the 4th day, I got the stomach flu. Gross! After I was feeling better I decided I would start over and challenge myself to run every day in the month of December. I still felt this would be a challenge, with all the holiday madness and delicious baked goods lurking around every corner - it would be good to stay active. 

Well New Year's came and went and I thought - oh if I go another 8 days I'll hit 40. The on day 40 I was like, you're soooo close to 50, let's try for that. And now here we are on day 100! I am proud of this accomplish - there are very few things I can say that I have done consecutively for any amount of time, you know, except the essentials; eating, sleeping, showering, etc.

I have learned a lot on my 100 day journey. I feel it's definitely made me a stronger runner. I've learned to listen to my body - if it's tired or sore, I take it easy and only run a mile. If I'm feeling good (like today) I push myself a little harder. I've also learned that there is always time to do something for yourself, no matter how busy life may be. 

I'm not sure if I'm going to give up the streak or keep it going. Just going to go day by day and see where I end up. I've done some research and there are runners out there who have been running daily for years, decades even! I think it would be great to go for a year, but we'll see...

Check out my training on dailymile

Also, apologies for not posting for weeks. February was crazy - I owe recaps for the Chinese New Year 10K and Tough Mudder AZ. Hopefully those will come in a few days. 

Do you have a runstreak going? Have you ever done something every day for 100, 50, 20 days?