North Shore Half Marathon Recap

This is almost two weeks old now, but I figured I would right it up anyway.  Since I know you all love my sweaty, disgusting super flattering race photos.  Spoiler alert: the one-word version of this race recap is "ouch".

I signed up for the North Shore Half in May, a few days before I left for Reach the Beach.  I was grumpy about going into the relay injured and slow and wanted another race to look forward to.  Yes folks, this is how my brain works.  "Injury got you down?  Sign up for a half marathon that's only a month away!"  It seemed logical at the time.  I had great memories of the course from running with my mom (her first half!) last year, and figured a nice, low-key half would be a good way to kick off this cycle of marathon training.  Plus, I love running races at home because I can count on my awesome parents to drop me off at the start, pick me up at the finish, and oh btw watch my puppy while I'm out on the course.

Surprisingly enough, my knee did not magically get better after Reach the Beach, making long runs difficult.  So I went into this race having not done a run of more than 8 miles since my spring marathon in mid-March (and that 8 miler only happened the weekend before the race).  And oh, by the way, a few days before the race I got this lovely email:

Subject: [READ] Weather Advisory

So given the weather and my lack of training, I decided my goal for the day would be a 2:17, a "safe" 10 minutes over my half marathon PR.

FAIL.

This race was one of the toughest non-marathons I've ever run, up there with my first 10K.  The course was hillier than I remembered.  Despite the relatively tame elevation profile (aside from the Park Street Hill at Mile 7) -- it just never felt like we were running flat.  My right hip started bothering me on the uphills early on in the race, and unfortunately hasn't stopped since.

It was also hot in that weird way where you don't so much feel hot as like your body just isn't functioning properly for some reason you can't quite put your finger on.  Or maybe that's just me.  I kept drinking fluids (and pouring them all over myself) but I couldn't get in a groove and my body just did not want to run.    By mile 9 or so, I could feel my heart pounding even at an 11+ min pace.  At that point, I decided my only goal was to count this as a long run and not do anything that would derail my training.

Turns out, I pretty much combined the 5 mile pace run and 8 mile long run I was supposed to do that weekend after all:

As usual, first mile looks a little suspect -- I think my watch hit 1 mile before the course did

While this definitely wasn't my best race ever (official time of 2:30:43 -- almost 24 minutes off my PR and three minutes slower than running this same race with my mom last year but infinitely more painful) I think it was a good way to start off the training cycle. I checked off my first real long run of the training cycle, realistically adjusted my goals before and during the race so I didn't do anything stupid, and (most difficult for me) accepted my disappointing finish time and moved on.

I was pretty much wrecked for the rest of the day.  Lucky for me, neither of my parents kicked me off the couch when I passed out there for the better part of the afternoon and pretty much let me buy whatever I wanted for dinner at the grocery store (chips with guacamole and salsa plus homemade cheeseburgers -yum!).  Have I mentioned how much I love going home?


Back soon with a recap of last weekend's 10K ...

Wednesday Mileage Report

A little late, since I spent all of Monday driving back to Boston (and all of Tuesday freaking out about how I'm going to move all my stuff into my tiny new apartment), but here it is!


Mon - Cross training = Pilates On Demand
Tue - 3.1 mi @ 10:20 pace (GA) + quick strength
Wed - 5.0 mi @ 10:09 pace (GA)
Thu - 3.0 mi @ 11:02 pace (EZ)  + quick strength 
Fri - Rest
Sat - 9 mi @ 11:48 pace (LSD)
Sun - Race Against Hate 10K in 1:02:34


Wednesday's 5 miler felt GREAT.  First run in a long time that didn't feel hard, despite keeping the pace fairly quick (for me, anyway).  My knee has been holding up ok, but of course that means something else has started to hurt -- this time it's my right hip.  Maybe jumping back into a full training load and adding on my hip-heavy PT exercises at the same time was too much ...


This week: 
Mon - Cross training 12 hours in the car
Tue - 3 mi GA
Wed - 5 mi GA
Thu - 3 mi EZ 
Fri - Rest
Sat - 5 mi MSD
Sun - B.A.A. 10K


I didn't have to alter any of the distances this week, but since Sunday's 6 mile long run is actually going to be the B.A.A. 10K, where I know I won't want to hold back  the pace, I'm going to turn Saturday's 5 mile pace run into a medium distance slow run.  My hip is still hurting bad enough to wake me up in the middle of the night, and spending the day hauling things from one apartment to the other isn't helping, so I'm thinking about scrapping/shortening today's 5 miler.  But I'll probably feel guilty and end up running it this evening (high of 99 in Boston today?!) anyway.


I finally have the photos from the North Shore Half, so I'll post recaps of that race and the Race Against Hate 10K asap.

Monday Mileage Report

Here it is -- the first weekly mileage report for a brand new marathon training cycle!  I'm using Hal Higdon's Intermediate I plan again.  Hopefully this time I'll make it through without missing whole weeks due to injury.
The general plan is short runs on Tuesday and Thursday, a moderate distance run on Wednesday, a marathon pace run on Saturday, and a long run on Sunday.  I'll be making small modifications throughout to accommodate a bunch of other fun races I want to run this summer.  For this first week, I combined what should have been a 5 mile pace run and an 8 mile long run so I could run the North Shore Half Marathon without changing the weekly mileage.  Oddly enough, that's about how the pacing of Sunday's race went down (unintentionally) but more on that later ...

So, with the modification, here's how last week broke down:

Mon - "Cross training" aka walked the dog and called it a day
Tue - 3.0 mi @ 10:26 pace (GA)
Wed - 5.0 mi @ 10:59 pace (GA)
Thu - 3.2 mi @ 11:06 pace (EZ)
Fri - Rest
Sat - "Rest" but ended up taking the dogs for an extra long walk and going shopping, which meant even more walking
Sun - North Shore Half Marathon in 2:30:43 (Ouch)

And coming up this week:

Mon - Cross training = Pilates On Demand
Tue - 3 mi GA
Wed - 5 mi GA
Thu - 3 mi EZ
Fri - Rest
Sat - 9 mi
Sun - Race Against Hate 10K

Once again, I'm modifying the plan slightly so I can run the Race Against Hate with my mom, sister, and boyfriend.  And by "with" I mean they're all running the 5K and will be waiting around forever for me to finish.  So I'm swapping Saturday and Sunday and adding a mile and change to the pace run, which should have been 5 miles.

I'll post a full recap of Sunday's North Shore Half as soon as I have photos.

And now, since this has been a boring, photo-less post, here's another picture of my adorable puppy!

Klaus demonstrating "rest day"

Hello Again & A Brief Reach the Beach Recap

Hello again, lovely blog readers!  Apparently I'm really bad at updating this when I a) am not training for a major race, b) have something resembling a social life, and c) have a new puppy.  But fortunately for you all, I've just started training for the Chicago Marathon, most of my friends are out of town for the summer, and the puppy and I are getting used to each other pretty quickly.  In other words, I'm back to blogging!

My new puppy, Clausewitz (we call him Klaus)

Despite being a totally delinquent blogger the past few months, I think I've only missed writing about one race: the MA Reach the Beach Relay.  I won't subject you to a leg-by-leg recap (anyone who's talked to me since then has probably already heard it), but I will say that the race was a blast!  The girls were amazing, the race was really well organized, the course was beautiful, and oh, by the way, we were unexpectedly awesome!

My team, Pretty (Speedy) in Pink, got 2nd place in the Women's Open division with a time of 28:21:21 (average pace 8:29).  We went into the race thinking we had a shot at being competitive, but I didn't really know what to expect given that no one on the team had run a long-distance relay before and that we didn't have a roster finalized until about 10 days before the race (and even when we did, it was short two runners).  All I can say is, my girls crushed it!

Official team photo, at Wachusett Mountain before the start

Post-race team hug (thanks to Linda Chao for the photo!)

Thanks to an increasingly angry patellar tendon and the whole puppy thing derailing any training plans I might have had, I took the spot in the rotation that only involved three legs of 3.7, 3.3, and 2.7 miles.  I ran them about as well as could be expected given the shape I was in, and only brought up the team's average pace a little bit.  I don't know exactly how much, since I left my GPS watch at home for this one, but I think I ran the first (mostly uphill) leg at around 10 min pace and the second two at around 9 min pace.  I did have some extra fun with that second leg when my headlamp went out on a random back road around 11pm.

I also learned a lot about captaining a relay team, which I might write about in a later post.  Maybe when I'm putting together a team for next year's race?

For now, I'm looking forward to an awesome summer racing season, starting with the North Shore Half Marathon this Sunday. We just got an email from RAM Racing with a weather advisory, so I've got my fingers crossed the heat won't be too bad!  Back in a few days with the recap.

Reach the Beach MA

As some of you know, I'm putting together a team for Reach the Beach MA May 18-19.  We've lost a few runners over the past few weeks, so we still need four more ladies to join our team.  Right now our team is all women, mid 20s - early 30s, mostly from the Cambridge/Boston area (although if you're not from Boston we'd still love to have you if you can meet us in Boston or at the race start).  Currently our paces range from 7:00-9:30, but if you can run three segments of 3-7 miles each we'd love have you.  I can guarantee it's going to be a super fun time with some awesome ladies.  Leave a comment below if you're interested in joining us and I can provide more info.  Here's a link to the race details.

BAA 5K Recap & Marathon Weekend Report

What a weekend!  I didn't even run the marathon and I'm exhausted.

I kicked off marathon weekend on Saturday with a trip to the Boston Marathon expo to pick up lots and lots of free samples my 5K race packet.

Very artistic photo of this year's BAA 5K technical t

The trip to the expo became quite an adventure when we showed up at Hynes (having walked the 2+ miles to get there) only to discover that this year's convention was actually being held 2.5 miles away at Seaport World Trade Center.  Fortunately it was a beautiful day, and I had some good company, so the walk wasn't too bad.  Especially when we stumbled upon the official kids relay race.

As always, I had a blast wandering around the expo picking up free samples, and even restrained myself in the shopping department -- only bought a pair of running sunglasses to replace the pair I lost in the Charles during crew practice last week.

It's not possible to take a new sunglasses photo without making a funny face.  I tried.

After the expo adventure and a long walk with Oso, I was pretty exhausted.  So I felt totally justified spending the rest of the day folding laundry and watching tv to rest up for Sunday's 5K.  My choice of Domino's for dinner for the first time in over a month (it's sad, but for me is a very long time without Domino's) did, however, come back to bite me the next morning.

Random adorable Oso photo

At some point this spring I had plans to do a bunch of speed work to get in shape to PR (currently 27:40) this 5K.  Turns out, that's not a super realistic goal less than a month after your spring marathon when you've also decided to add rowing and cycling to your workout rotation.  So I made a last minute goal revision on the T ride to the start.

The start of the race was fairly chaotic.  The start corral was packed too tight to move, and there only appeared to be seeding markers for 5, 6, and 7 minute pace, and even those were hard to see.  So the first mile was a bit of a slog through traffic, but apparently that first split wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was.  For some reason I clearly remember seeing 9:45 on my watch as I passed the 1st mile marker ...

Do I spy possible negative splits?!

I ended up with an official finish time of 29:02.  So didn't quite meet my revised goal, but I'm fairly satisfied with my race, all things considered.  Especially because after it was over I got to go out to an awesome brunch at Masa with one of my Reach the Beach girls and a few of her friends.

Santa Fe Style Eggs Benedict + Chorizo.  Yum.

After the race, I took Oso for another long walk, and then met up with a few friends who were in town for the marathon on Monday.  After a glass of wine, an absolutely amazing Brussels sprouts pizza, and some salted caramel pinkberry, I spent the rest of the evening figuring out my spectating plan and procuring some sponges and sweatbands to soak in ice cold water and have on hand for my friends running in the ridiculous heat.

Monday morning, I watched the early race coverage on tv and then headed out for the 3 mile walk to BC segment of the course, just after mile 22.  I definitely underestimated how much a small cooler of ice weighs, but I still made it to my designated spot along the course just after receiving a 30K update for the first of my friends.  I set myself up in a good viewing spot, and then proceeded to somehow miss ALL THREE of my friends as they came by #cheersquadfail.  Fortunately the people standing next to me did manage to flag down their loved ones, who very much appreciated the cold sponges.

After hanging out around mile 22 for about two hours, I decided to walk along the race course for a few miles on my way to REI (where I had to go to dispute a double charge on my shiny new road bike, which I'll write about soon). I think the walk was actually my favorite part of my whole day of spectating -- I finally got to see my people, the back of the packers jogging/walking/stumbling their way to a 5+ hour finish.  A whole bunch of them had names on their shirts, which made cheering a lot easier and more fun.  And they pretty much mobbed me when I set up for a few minutes to get rid of my remaining sponges, sweatbands, and ice.  Seemed like a mutually beneficial arrangement at that point, since I was much, much happier once I was carrying an empty cooler!

By the time I finally made it home, I had been out for six hours and walked more than 8 miles.  I was completely exhausted and dehydrated, so I really don't know how the runners did it!  My friends absolutely crushed it, running very strong races in incredibly difficult conditions.  Which of course required dragging my exhausted self out for beers and burgers, a perfect way to wrap up an awesome marathon weekend.

Rock 'n' Roll USA Marathon Recap Part 3: Post-Race

As Diane pointed out, I've been totally delinquent writing this.  I'm way behind on this, along with the rest of my life, so I'm going to make this short and sweet and post pictures of all the delicious things I ate.  Maybe eventually I'll come back and revise with more details.

Shake Shack!

I definitely regretted only getting a single cheeseburger ...

In bed early with Gatorade and March Madness

Awesome bagel shop right down the street from my hotel

Egg, cheese, and bacon on a whole wheat bagel with a side of fruit bites from the swag bag

Pizza and Diet Coke at the airport

Next up on the blog: Cambridge City Run race recap, Jess gets a road bike, and quite possibly my search for a puppy to adopt ...