Month: March 2015

Monday, Monday

/ Amy / 6 Comments

Ugh…it’s Monday. Monday’s are the worst, aren’t they?  Fortunately, I’ve got some good reasons to be excited for this Monday. Last week, I ordered myself some goodies, and they’re all (magically) scheduled to come today! As long as I make it through the work day, I’ll have some exciting new toys to play with. 🙂

One thing I’m getting is a new heart rate monitor! Hooray!! This one is worn on your arm, and I am so psyched. The chest strap is driving me bonkers. I hate it. I’m really enjoying heart rate training, but the chest strap is so so annoying. So I did lots of research and found a heart rate monitor worn on your arm that had pretty good reviews and works with the garmin. If I can get it to connect quickly, I’ll be able to run with it tonight!

 

2015-03-15 07.21.20

 

My other new “toy” coming tonight is a brand new pair of Newton Gravity sneakers! This is thrilling!

Last fall I bought a pair of limited edition Gravitys that are bright orange, and I love everything about them. Unfortuntely, when I went to purchase a second pair a month ago, they were out of my size, and the normal version came in a hideous pink color. Think pepto bismal. So, I waited, hoping they would release the 2015 models and the colors would be awesome.

Well, they did… And the 2015 model is also neon orange! Yes! I could not be more thrilled. AND, I had a gift card. So, I didn’t even feel guilty buying the brand new model instead of shopping around for a cheaper pink pair.

So, yeah…I guess Monday isn’t always so bad. 🙂

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A Little Update

/ Amy / 1 Comment

I know I owe you/me a recap of my training for the last two weeks, but to be completely honest, I’m not the best at writing up something that happened more than a few days in the past. After all, I still haven’t written up my turkey trot recap, and some of the pictures I have from before that race are some of my all time favorites. OOoohh, maybe I’ll print one. We got a fancy new printer not too long ago that can print pictures wirelessly from my phone (guys, we live in the future!), and I’m still getting used to the idea of having hard copies of pictures again.

2014-11-27 08.51.16

Anyways, I came on here to let you know that after my exam tomorrow, I should be returning, hopefully, to a more regular posting schedule. I’m taking my third acturial exam, and while I would obviously prefer to pass, either way, I should have more free time after tomorrow (at least until the next one!). I’ve still been getting the majority of my runs in while studying, and they’ve been a big help in calming my nerves.

I feel just like I’m about to run a big race. I’ve put in the work and tomorrow I’ll know whether or not it was enough.

See you on the other side!

80/20 5k Training – Week Two

/ Amy / 7 Comments

Or Why We Don’t Run in Winter Boots

I’m trying desperately not to fall off the wagon again by posting two weeks in a row. (I know it’s been something like 10 days since my last post but I haven’t hit the two week mark yet, so it counts.) Really though, I don’t want to fall off the blog wagon. I want to post every day. Or at least every time I run. Unfortunately, there’s about a million other things I want to do, too and also some things I have to do, and there’s only so much time in the day.

2015-03-02 18.14.41Yes, I don’t have enough to do, so I started a new knitting project! I’m calling these my Hermione legwarmers. Because they are legwarmers, and I’m using some left over yarn in Gryffindor colors from a scarf I knit a few years back.

This is how week two went running wise:

80-20 Week2Well, week 1 and week 2, but let’s focus on week 2.

The red ones are what I’m going to call the “unauthorized rest days”. I’ll start with those. On Wednesday, I didn’t feel like going back out after driving home from work. I felt like being lazy. I baked banana bread instead of going to the gym. It was fun and delicious, and you should check out the recipe.

Then on Thursday I went out for drinks with some of my engineer friends to celebrate national engineering week. Who better to hang out with on engineering week, right? I did not go running before, but I did sort of go running after. 😉 As usual, I waited until the last possible second to leave the bar for the train. And then instead of leaving at the last possible second, I said goodbye to all my friends…and THEN I left. So, I had to run to the train station. This was not the first time I’ve had to do this (and I’m sure it won’t be the last).  It was less than a mile from the bar to the train station, but it really was a fun little sprint. I stopped to laugh at myself whenever I needed to wait to cross a street (yes, I’m sure I looked like a total crazy person, but there weren’t really any people out to witness it.)

Unfortunately, the next day I found out that my shins do not like when I run in winter boots. They actually kind of hate it, and were quite painful Friday through Sunday. It took until Tuesday for them to be completely better. Lesson Learned!

2015-03-07 08.30.45Fancy running boots: good at being boots, bad at being running shoes.

Anyways, I should probably mention the actual running I did this week. I did a Foundation Run on Monday and Saturday, Speed Play on Tuesday, and a Fast Finish run on Sunday. They were all fun, and I love running and can’t seem to get enough. I think this has something to do with the fact that with this particular training cycle I am running for MUCH shorter periods of time, so I’m always left wanting more. This sounds like it could be frustrating (and sometimes, it is a little), but I think it’s really helping to keep my excitement levels high.

Now, I know you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about with my different types of runs (although some are easy to guess), so as I write up these recap posts, I’ll try and give a little bit of detail about each type. This week, I’ll talk about Foundation Runs because those are the most prevalent types of runs in my schedule.

Effort level for Foundation runs ranges from extremely easy to comfortable. You start out at extremely easy for 5 minutes, then do easy/comfortable for the majority of the run (about 15 or 20 minutes on my schedule), and then finish up with another 5 minutes of extremely easy running. In this plan, easy is just another word for slow. So slow that I’ve had to walk a few times to keep in the right heart rate zone. Which I find incredibly annoying. But on the other hand, I really enjoy the middle chunk of these runs which is just a relaxing easy/comfortable paced run.

Another thing I should mention is that I’ve been doing the foundation runs using a hill program on the treadmill, because when I go back outside there will be hills. This only make me have to go slower, and I’d probably enjoy the runs more if I didn’t do it. But future Amy will thank me for not completely losing all ability to run up hills.

And now, my questions for you:

Do you use the hill function on the treadmill? How do you deal with excruciatingly slow running? Have you ever run through the city to catch a train, and how’d it work out for your legs?