Just Plodding Along

This past weekend I decided it was a good idea to run a trail race seven days before my next marathon. What could go wrong? Luckily, nothing did. I stayed upright and besides sore quads everything feels fine.  Trail Running Over Texas  put on the Franklin Mountain Trail Run  this past Saturday. There was a 50k, half marathon, 10k and 5k distance. Luckily some common sense won out and I registered for the 10K. Thank god. This trail race was no joke. Hats off to my friend Michelle who did the half, she is one tough cookie!  Packet pick-up Friday afternoon my friend Sarah and I headed to the packet pick-up located in a hotel conference room. Packet pick-up was small. A small Altra table was set up and some Trail Running Over Texas swag was for sale but other than that it was all business, number, timing band, race swag. The end. Easy enough. It seemed super tiny and unimpressive but I have been to two huge marathons lately so my sense of scale and appropriate...

One of my goals for this year was to race a different distance than my usual half marathon or full marathon. So I decided to either do a 10k or 10 miler. Monday there happened to be a 10K so I signed up figuring it would be a good workout in pushing the pace in preparation for the half marathon. Plus it was on a flat course which is nice since lately I have been running quite a bit of hills. As always when I sign up for a longer distance....as I passed the 5K turn around I was like why do you gotta be an over achiever. But 10Ks are a good challenge. Result- well I was reminded the flat courses are not really that easy and the nice thing about hills are that there are downhills. I also finished in 55:48 with an average mile time of 8:58 and placed second in my age group! Whoop I will take it! The good thing about this 10K is at the end I felt like I could have held a hard pace for a few more miles. This is good since the half marathon coming up in February is longer than 6 miles...

It feels weird to not have a marathon or half marathon looming in the near future. My next distance race isn't until the Georgia Marathon the end of March sooooooooooo now what. At first I was like "sign up for all the marathons in the area! Run all the races!" I don't know if it was getting sick and not being able to do Seven Bridges or just mileage overload the last .....uh.....like two years, but I don't feel the usual drive to sign-up for all the races. Instead I have signed up to run a couple 5Ks and a 10K. I have also joined the Y and have been trying different classes there. So far yoga and Pilates both destroyed me so I think I will keep trying to go to those as my schedule allows. Tomorrow I am going to try a body pump class which is basically weight lifting  class set to music so if I never post again it is because that class killed me. Been nice knowing ya. My general  plan for the next few months are to run but instead of distance I am going to focus...

This morning D & I ran the Celebration of Life 10k that started and ended in our neighborhood. I am happy to announce that this household contains two age group placers. We dominated. Oh yeah. Okay maybe not dominated but we did pretty good. The race started at 9a.m. two blocks from our house so I got up, remembered to charge my Garmin, sifted through tech shirts to figure out what to wear, I went with pink read some blogs.......long, boring, overshare story short 9a.m. race times allow for a pretty leisurely morning especially when you can just walk outside to get to the start. 9a.m. race starts also mean it is going to be freakin hot and the sun will try to melt your organs. After lounging around and eating a banana D & I headed to the start. The race got off to a late start by about ten minutes which bugs the heck out of me. Start on time, my type A just can not handle lateness. The course was an out and back down to Lake Michigan and al...

Saturday is a big day. D & I are running a 10k together. Or at least we will stand at the start line together and find each other at the finish. It has been awhile since we have run 'together'. Not only will we be celebrating life, we will also be celebrating that this race starts a block from our house and doesn't start till 9a.m. The only down side is towards the end of the race I believe we may run right past our house and I will already have my t-shirt at this point so it would be so easy to say hello couch and goodbye run. I ran part of the course this morning and it is a really- beautiful down to Lake Michigan past fields of wild sunflowers and only a little bit hilly but all the hill is at the end- course. Should be fun. I haven't run a 10k in a few years and I believe my time was around a 1:16 but that course was hills from start to finish so I am thinking I can get close to an hour now if not under. Goals: A goal: Under an hour B goal: hour to hou...