Week 5 of 13: 13.1 in 2:09:57!

I've entered the three week span in September where every weekend I have a bike tour or run.  I ended up sandwiching a half between two century rides.  After killing the first century ride last weekend, this weekend was the half.

In between all of these events, I've been doing yoga, modified strength training, and minimal running and biking so my body doesn't fall apart.  Well, my body had other ideas...

While I was resting, I picked up a funky cold.  A funky cold that had me feeling off on Thursday, weird on Friday, and so bad Saturday night I didn't think I'd be running the half.  I was very upset, but realized this was only a training run for the marathon and that there would be other runs.  I was so sad that I wouldn't have a new medal from a race.  I know this sounds funny, but it's almost what you train for--the race experience.  The awesome shirts and medals don't hurt either.  :)

I hydrated a lot, took the really good, expensive Mucinex, and took Afrin (so I could breathe).  I mapped out what I'd wear, and if I went and what time I would wake up.  I was in bed by 8 on Saturday, and passed out.

I woke up at 5 on Sunday morning, and must've had an overnight miracle.  I could breathe, and decided I was doing the half!  I ate, pulled all of my stuff together and went to meet my friend who was also doing the half.

It was so early when we headed to Philly the sun was rising.

And, it was very picture worthy:

By the time we parked and figured out where we belonged, there were 15 minutes till the race started.  We got our token picture while waiting for the porta-potties.  We also heard the race start and saw corrals moving up, as we were in line.  We missed our corral by about 5 minutes, so we just popped in with another group and started running.

Initially our plan was to stick together.  My goal was under 2, even though I listed on my registration that I'd be done in 1:50.  My running buddy was shooting for 1:50.  

Now, with all of this sickness I wasn't too sure how my body was going to respond.  I had my Garmin and planned to maintain pace per mile to make my sub 2 half marathon happen.  What I forgot to do was change my Garmin to pace instead of speed.  I used it last week during the century ride, and neglected to change it back.  So as we were running it was saying what I thought was a 6, 6.5, and 7 minute pace.  I knew this was way off and I was really annoyed it wasn't cooperating.  Then it hit me, this was the equivalent of the speed on a bike, not my running pace that I wanted, and really needed.

The first 3 miles I was maintaining my 9 minute pace, then I lost my running buddy and started to experience chest pain.  Chest pain that caused me to walk at least a minute for each of the remaining 10 miles.

This was NOT what I had planned or hoped for and it was really frustrating.  As I would hit each mile I started calculating out what speed I'd need to run to finish under 2, and I watched it slowly drift away.  Just as I thought in my mind I had it, i'd have horrible pain that would induce walking so I could breathe.

At this point I just kept moving and breathing as I needed to finish this run.  I came up to mile 13 and just booked it, I was rubbing my chest the entire time trying to fix my breathing as I sprinted uphill to the finish surrounded by a TON of people.  I ran under the clock as my Garmin read 2:09:57.  Not exactly what I had hoped for, but I did still PR.  

My only frustration is that had I not walked, I know for a fact I would've been able to run the half under 2.  With everything else in life, things happen and you just have to go with the flow.

I then found my parents and sister at the finish.

I probably shouldn't have run yesterday because today I'm not feeling so hot.  I now have an additional things to mark off on my running checklist:  running a half marathon with a cold.

If nothing else, I think I've earned some running credential for that!

Week 4 of 13: 100 miles in 6:30

So I obviously didn't run 100 miles this week in 6.5 hours.  I instead decided to do a century bike ride (and also my first organized bike event).  Why not go for the century the first time?!

I ran once this week and did 10x100's, did yoga once, and got my strength workouts in twice.  The rest of the week, I rested.  I also hydrated a lot prior to the bike ride.

Friday after work I went and stayed at a friends house because she lived in the same town as the ride.  We really carbed up the night before with pizza, cheese fries, and bread.  If I was going to burn 4,000+ calories, I'd need some fuel.  :)  It also doesn't hurt that I LOVE food.

We were up at 5:30 to begin the adventure.  And, I conveniently remembered to document this adventure in pictures.

We arrived close to 7, and looked a little sleepy:

Here we are.  Either biking the century or 62 mile ride.  This was right after the local paper took our picture and names, as we were looking at the map.  Since the official start of this ride was 8, and we started at 7 there weren't tons of people around.

The first rest stop was 24 miles in, I think.  It's pretty bad when I don't remember what happened yesterday.  This rest stop had cookies, tons of PB&J and gatorade and water to refill our bottles.  Oh, and most importantly, lots of potties.  We all looked pretty good at this point.  And the ride to this stop was pretty fast, we were averaging 18-20 miles per hour.  A group of men were in front of us, so we decided to try and keep pace.  Around the later miles we regretted that decision.

We then came up on rest stop 2, somewhere around 44ish miles, again I think.  This stop is known for it's pie offerings.  Peach, apple, pumpkin, and shoefly pie were all options.  I opted for a big piece of peach--it was delish.  And for the record, I don't typically like pie.  We still were feeling pretty good at this point, and there were still a decent number of riders around.

Rest stop 3.  Oh, where to begin.  At this point we had separated from the larger group of people we had been riding with who were all doing 62.  At the turn we contemplated turning to complete 62.  At this point I would've been totally fine having biked 62 miles.  But, for some reason at that point we decided to forge ahead.  We met up with two others doing the century.  We managed to keep pace with them until about this stop, but we were slowing to a 17ish pace, and couldn't maintain a 19-20 pace even drafting off of them.  My riding buddy was in pain and it sounded like her IT band.  I don't mess with IT band pain.  After my full last year was almost derailed from an inflamed IT band, I fear them.   She called her husband and we decided we'd stop at their house (conveniently located on the route).  From our poor map reading skills we thought it would be about 75 miles.  We mentally only had 13 more to ride.  The plan was to complete the ride there, not take a rest.

These smiles were forced.  We needed some yoga at this point.  I refueled my gatorade and joked with another cyclist that our gatorade bottles had too many mixed flavors, but that we could care less.  I also got a super soft oatmeal cookie, it was like heaven.  Oh, and another PB&J. :)

Something happened in between these two stops.  We thought we were headed to complete 75 at their house, but the route had other ideas.  We weren't going to be anywhere near there at 75 miles.  Around 72 miles we hit another rest stop, which we obviously stopped at.

And, these are the smiles of death.  I equate this stop to mile 20-21 in a marathon.  Digging deep into yourself to complete the final stretch.

We felt rough, more so just super stiff.  I was getting some low back pain, and my buddy had IT pain.  But it seemed to relieve itself a bit after her seat was adjusted.  This stop they reinforced that we only have 28ish miles to go.  Now, thinking of this today means a few more hours.  Yesterday, this meant we beasted 72 miles and were roughly 3/4 of the way there.

So we were off, and decided to take our time and enjoy the last 28 miles.  Since this ride was in the country it was beautiful.  This was a pretty view, and I conveniently got really good at biking and taking pictures.  So here's my biking buddy while we road.

We then passed a local state park and pretty pond.  Again, here we are.  We did stop for this photo and left our bikes on the other side of the road.

 At some point during the ride I thought it would be amazing if we got wet from a farm sprinkler.  We road by fields all day long, and I know a lot of sprinklers at some point spray the road.  If you look far down the road, there was a sprinkler!!  I was super excited.

This photo was supposed to show my water covered sunglasses from the sprinkler, instead it just appears to be an awkward selfie.

We then passed a large pumpkin patch.  Those orange dots are the pumpkins, it looked better in person.

We then finally stopped at their house at mile 85, refueled and hit the road again.

And, WE DID IT!  100 miles biked in 6.5 hours, not including stops.  It was then time for a BBQ and it was delicious.

So the moral of this story is that anything is possible, and the reward is so much greater with struggles!

Week 3 of 13: 16 miles in 2:57

This post is actually over a week behind, shocker!  So from what I remember here is my 16 mile weekend recap of training.

I needed to get a 16 mile run and a long bike ride in last weekend, so I opted for the run on Friday and the bike on Sunday.

I ran 16 miles with two friends on Friday and ran through most of the local area.  I have to say that I've never run most of the area we ran, so it was interesting to see on foot.  It had rained the night before, so it was muggy, very muggy!

We all met up by 6, I think, or was it 7?  Either way it was extremely early, but also early enough to beat the mid-day heat.  None of us thought that since it was Friday there would be traffic.  Since it was the start of our weekends, we all assumed everyone else was at home sleeping.  Except it wasn't, it was Friday, and everyone was going to work.  We ended up running with rush hour traffic-- that was interesting.  Thankfully most of the area we ran had shoulders or sidewalk to run on.

My goal for the marathon is 4:15-4:30, so these long runs I try to keep around 11 minute miles.  I don't want to burn out for the actual marathon.  Per my fabulous training schedule passed down from a friend, that a friend created 11 minute miles are perfect to finish the marathon in my goal time.

By the end of the run I had averaged roughly an 11 minute mile.  I prefer to pace my entire run at the same pace.  At the start of the run we were going a bit faster than I wanted to start.  I'm really like a turtle, a slow and steady finishes the race type girl!

We finished as it was starting to become disgustingly hot, and I was happy to stop.  We then went to the local, AMAZING bagel shop, and got breakfast.  Total side note:  this is the bagel shop I went to during college, except in college we would all have showered and looked cute.  On Friday I went into the bagel shop, stinky, sweaty, salty skin, no make-up, and starving--and i didn't care.  Funny how things change!

Saturday was a rest day and I really rested and enjoyed catching up on trashy TV.  I was also resting up for my 66 mile bike ride on Sunday.

Sunday morning came around, fast.  I was up around 6 to wake up and get to the spot by 8.  I arrived and met up with friends and others we were meeting to bike with.  And we were off..

Now, I just bought a road bike in June.  So this whole road bike thing is totally new to me.  The only thing I really knew was that I should never bike alone.  I had gone on probably 6-8 rides between 20-50 miles, but 66 was by far the longest ride.

The ride was relatively flat, but given the strong head wind and hills towards the mid-point, I wanted to die.  We biked 33 miles to Chestertown, MD to eat then biked 33 back.  The ride there was ok because I had food to look forward to!  The ride back wasn't as pleasant.  I decided to get an omelette for lunch, which was fine, it was my other food choices that weren't.  We split loaded cheese fries and I got a beer.

By mile 36 I started cramping up, I should've avoided the beer!  I also hadn't hydrated properly before my 16 miler, or on Saturday.  Apparently I thought I was superwoman, again.

We eventually made it back.  66 miles were complete in roughly 4:45!  Phew, if the 100 was at that pace, we'd take forever.