Exciting Eleven!

So September was a good month for running for me! I had 72.4 miles of running! The most I've ever run in one month by at least 15 miles. Unfortunately biking and especially swimming were very poor this month. In fact I did not swim at all. This is going to have to change.

So running this week first off I had a really great tempo run on Wednesday. I actually ran for the very first time 4 miles straight without stopping to walk. It felt fantastic! I forgot to set my times into my Garmin and didn't want to keep looking at it so I just tried to push myself to keep a pretty good pace. I was suppose to run at 12:46 pace and managed to do pretty good with a 12:08 11:44 11:32 and 12:18. Funny just now as I was looking at my schedule I realized I was suppose to do speed work and not a tempo run... :) oh well I guess this week I will try some speed work. Anyway I was thrilled to have run 4 miles straight.

Cut to my long run today. Kathleen from Dare to Dream and I met up at the Highline Canal to do our run together. We had decided that we would do as much as we could together both worried about holding the other up. It was a beautiful morning around 60ish degrees and the Highline Canal turned out to be a fantastic place to run. Love the dirt path and all the shade from the trees. We decided we would just head out and try to keep an easyish pace and just keep going. At mile 2 Aimee from I Tri To Be Me ran up behind us. She was doing her 20 mile run in preparation for the Denver Rock 'n' Roll Marathon and was on around mile 13 she chatted with us for a little before she headed off to finish up her last 7. No surprise while it is probably Aimee's slowest mile of her run it was our fastest at 11:36. So on Kathleen and I ran chatting and enjoying the morning with a bathroom stop in the 5th mile. We ran to 5 and 1/2 and turned around and headed back as we hit mile 6 Kathleen says this the farthest you've ever run without walking huh? I said yep all the while really amazed that I'm still running with no walk breaks and all in all feel really good. At the end of mile 7 Kathleen says she is going to do some walking but tells me to go on. I debated about it, really enjoying the company and not wanting to go on by myself, but also wanting to know just how much longer I could run without stopping...could I really do 11 miles with no walk breaks? So on I ran. It was indeed lonely those last miles. I had no idea until recently how really nice it is to run with people. Makes the time go so much faster. So mile 8 was ok getting a little rougher mile 9 and 10 I was really ready to be done and mile by mile eleven (still running with no walk breaks here!) I feel like I'm barley lifting my feet and everything is starting to hurt. I just want to be done. You better believe as soon as my Garmin registered 11 I hit the button and started to walk! I ran all eleven miles! I seriously never, never, ever thought that I would be able to do that! I thought that I would always be a run/walker and now I see that it really is just mind over matter. And really once you get passed the first couple miles it's not that hard. It helped tremendously that the weather was so great, the path so flat, and the company so good! Thanks Kathleen for helping me achieve something I never thought I would!

All this and a Cherry on Top too?!

Thanks Aimee for passing on the Cherry on Top Award to me!

Here are the rules:

#1 Answer this question: If you had the chance to go back and change one thing in your life, would you and what would it be?

Really I don't think I would change to much of the past because well, let's face it, it made us who we are today and who I am today is pretty ok with me. On the other hand... :) relating to being an athlete (and I say that with some hesitation as I don't often think of myself as such) I do wish that I had realized at much earlier age just how good it can feel. I wish that I would have discover years ago that exercise does not have to be "work" that it can be fun, an adventure. Now that's not to say that every workout is fun, but I have enjoyed the last 3 years of doing triathlons and running races so much that I keep feeling I need to try and do everything because at the ripe old age of 46 who knows how much longer I have to do this? How much have I missed!?!?! I read this analogy just this morning on Jack Sh*t, Gettin' Fit

I play basketball with some young cats, and they often seem tickled (and somewhat perplexed) by the fact that I still hoop so competitively and so often. I explain it to them like this: “We’re both at Disney World on a bright sunny day. For you, it’s 10 o’clock in the morning and you’ve got all the time in the world to do anything you want. For me, it’s thirty minutes before the gates close and I want to get in every ride I possibly can.”

Says it all!


#2 The second thing you have to do is, pick 6 people and give them this award. You then have to inform the person that they have gotten this award.

First off I want to tell you all how much I appreciate your reading and commenting on my blog. I know there are some that read and don't comment and I appreciate you too, but would love for you to come out of hiding. :) Since many of you have been given this award already I'm just going to give it to anyone who takes the time to read my blog!

#3 The third and final thing is, thank the person who gave you the award

Aimee thanks so much for passing this on to me! I just want to say again how much I enjoyed meeting you last weekend...was that just last weekend?! And for anyone who might not know Aimee had a fantastic race at IronGirl 1st in her age group and 9th over all! Did I tell you she was fast? Make sure to check out her blog! I Tri to Be Me !



Now in other news I'll be running the Park to Park 10 Miler with Kathleen on Monday. It's a point to point run from City Park to Washington Park. I'm a little nervous. The course is only open for up to a 13 minute mile pace and we all know that I am not the fastest runner. :) I'm hoping to be able to stay ahead of the street opening but if not it's not like you can't finish the race you will just have to watch for traffic and the final 1.5 miles is in the park so not a problem. It should be fun though not only will I get to see Kathleen again, (and maybe Aimee, her husband is running but I imagine they will be long gone by the time I cross the line! :) ) but it fits right into my 1/2 marathon training plan and makes just one less long, lonely boring run I will have to do on my own!

Starting the day off right!

Today's 1/2 marathon training called for speedwork. 8 miles. The only problem with that is that 8 miles is just a little to much for me to squeeze in in the morning, so 6 miles it would be. (I'm up at 4:20 to get that done and be to work at 7:30.) So this morning it would be 3 x 1600 in 11:50 plus warm up, cool down and 800/jogs. Well as you can tell from my "speed" I don't do much speed work, but I really enjoyed it this morning. The time went so fast. I did my warm up and had to hit the porta potty at the park..sometimes a real draw back to morning running. :) It's kind of scary to go into a dark porta potty and not be able to see what you are getting into, I knew it was going to be a good day when it was clean! So I hit my first mile with the Garmin beeping to speed up frequently but ended up with an 11:46 mile, mile 2 was 11:39 and the 3rd was 11:34! Can I say I was pretty happy with the results! That includes dragging the dog occasionally. Now my rest 800 jogs were pretty slow but really I can't say that I pushed myself to the limit. I felt good, really good when I was done. Did I say it really was the most beautiful morning for running. It's so quiet out there in the dark and the temp was right around 60 with a light breeze...beautiful! With any luck maybe a little more of this and I will be able to get a little faster. What a way to start the day!

8.6 miles of running Bliss!

Ok maybe only 6.5 of running bliss and 1.6 of this is not bad at all. It was the most perfect day for running! The temps were just above 60 when I headed out and a nice breeze! Perfect I say! I took a bit of a different route today and did a few trails. Not a lot of elevation change around 400' or so overall but I just enjoyed it. And I was beginning to think that I would never say I enjoyed running again! I feel so happy about the whole thing. Not sure what happened to my garmin though. It seems to have known that I Was only suppose to do 8 miles because for some reason that's all that showed even though I actually did 8.6 (I'm sure that's what it said when I thought I stopped it) and the map shows 8.4. Who knows.

I can't believe it's been a week since my last tri. For some reason it feels like it's been forever. I'm getting really excited for the Iron Girl coming up!