Runner's World

I am a big fan of Runner's World magazine and the website and on twitter and facebook...

While I was exploring twitter this week, I clicked on this link and after watching part of it thought it would be a good workout. Well, boy howdy, is it ever! It focuses mainly on your legs...quads and hammies as well as balance. We'll have to do planks and other exercises to make our core stronger. It's a start!

We are at a month and a half until the Fort Vancouver Run! Go here and check that out. I think I have said here again and again how much I love Energy Events! They do such a great job that I won't mind that it's raining on race day!

Anyway, go HERE and give the workout a try. It's only 20 minutes!

We Are Back At It!

A reminder that running is a gift!

The running streak ended on January 1 and we took a break until this past Sunday, January 10. I had hoped to get out on the road again on Saturday, but with a migraine type headache first thing in the morning, that was not going to happen. Our schedule now is back to every other day and then doing other cross training activities on the off days. 

Our first run since the streak and it was alright. It felt so good to get out again! As usual, I let my enthusiasm take over and I went out way too fast. Didn't matter though, I just need to get out. This morning I don't know what happened, but I felt like it took FOR-E-VER to run two miles. Not only that, I felt pretty sluggish too. Granted, Sunday was a cool, clear and dry day. Today was pretty wet and kinda sloppy out. Even though my time wasn't horrible, I still felt not so great about it. Yeah, the bad thoughts came back too quickly.

The other thing that I need to transition back into is our regular run time of 5am. With all of my starting later in the morning during vacation to waiting until after getting off of work through the remainder of December...I just don't want to get up in the morning. So I need to retrain my brain to be hapy about running early.

NOOOOOO - I don't want to run early...

I guess the one thing that would motivate me is signing up for the Fort Vancouver Run that is on March 6. I'll shoot for the 12k distance. Which incorporates part of the Vancouver Half Marathon route and would be a good "training" or a reminder of what to expect (again).

That would give me something to think about!

Inactive

This doesn't include all of our days of running. Our final total for the streak was 90.7 miles.

The challenge ended last Friday and I have been happily resting since then - which is a good thing as this week has not been runner friendly. Well, not early in the morning anyway.

It started snowing Sunday morning and then turned into freezing rain by the evening and then continued to be a sloppy mess snowy/icy on Monday to thawing yesterday and then back to freezing overnight again.

I don't mind not running right now though, although I am starting to miss it. Just the other day Tom declared that he missed running and asked if that was weird, to which I replied "I do too!" Also, we felt it was weird to not be thinking about when we would be running again.

According to the competitor.com newsletter that I received today one of the articles is 8 ways to improve your running. All of the items were good, but the one that I really like was #4 Plan your Rest. Aaah...a win for Nancy & Tom! Wanna see how to improve YOUR running check the list out HERE.

Now that it feels like maybe the weather won't be too cold/icy/snowy, I think we'll be out again by this weekend!

3 More Runs

I like all of those colored lines!

Yeah, so I have gotten a little too accustomed to sleeping in and little and running later in the day.  So we have been running after I get home from work. Although, I might try to get out early tomorrow since we'll be going to a gathering at a friend's house for New Years. Not gonna lie, I'm a little weary, which has made it hard for me to get overly excited about "suiting" up for a run.

A quick calculation says that with the 2 mile runs that we will do today, tomorrow and on New Year's Day, we will end the challenge with 90 miles logged over 37 days. This is keeping the distances mostly at the 2 mile minimum that we set for ourselves rather than the 1 mile minimum. I would have liked to have done longer runs, but I think that doing 2 and 3 miles was about right. In all honesty, the challenge was fun for the first couple of weeks, then vacation happened and I realized how I liked hanging out more than getting out early in the morning. Then because I let myself get a little complacent, my enthusiasm started to go by the wayside. I am looking forward to a few days off and resting a bit.

Oh well, we can happily say that we did it and starting thinking about the events that we are going to challenge ourselves with in 2016. I am pretty sure that the Runner's World Half is on the menu again. Tom is pretty confident that he can get a better time with better training in the months leading up to the event. Me, well, I know that I can PR my half time there - I could have done it this year if my back wasn't messed up at the end. There is always next time!

If you totally missed out on this running streak check out the article HERE. Apply the same idea for another period of time and just have fun with it!

Feeling accomplished that we didn't quit and we continue to move forward.

Are We There Yet?

Man oh man, I am ready to be done with this challenge. I think I have reached my saturation point. Don't get me wrong, running is still fun, but 27 days in a row and a total of 32 days is a lot. There was the one day I did not run, but we were back out on the road the day after. I hardly can say that was a break.

It has been getting easier to  postpone running thiss past week. I am getting tired. With 5 days to go and running our minimum of 2 miles...I'm pretty sure that we will finish up this challenge. I'll be ready for a break, but it will be a well earned break.

If you ask me if this is something that I will do again,  I would have to think for a moment before saying "Yes." However, I can't guarantee that my yes would be very enthusiastic.