May the wind stay at my back and may angels give me wings to fly.

I started avidly running in April of 2007, 8 weeks after my little boy was born. I was only running about 15 miles a week just to lose baby weight but a friend of mine was thinking of running the Honolulu Marathon. I made the bold move of doing it with her with the simple goal of just to finish. I finished my first marathon in 2008 with a time of 5:13. In 2009 I started running more miles, up to 40 a week when my schedule would allow that much. I signed up for my second Honolulu marathon and finished with a time of 4:48. That was with only 6 weeks of training, two of them being taper weeks. I finished with tears of joy and one other thing, the strong desire to run every runner's dream...BOSTON! I have some real good days and some real bad days but I hope someone finds inspiration in my spirit and strength. If you dig deep enough you will find the strength to do whatever your heart desires. "Don't follow your dreams...CHASE THEM!"

Monday, February 15, 2010

First race since new training

Let me start off by saying what a tough week I just had. I had two good running days, Monday and Tuesday, had Wednesday and my scheduled day off. I headed out Thursday morning for my second fartlek run of the week but had to stop after 2 miles due to a migraine onset and mother nature working against me. Well, the migraine really beat me up this time. It took 2 doses of my medicine to help get rid of it but before it left my feeble body I was visiting the bathroom. Friday I was weakened from lack of nutrition from all of it leaving my body the day before so I tried eating as best I could. Saturday disaster hit again at night. I had tried two new supplements for running and one of them triggered another migraine that evening. I woke up at 1am to take my migraine medicine in hopes that Sunday I could rest up from the effects and get my nutrition up to par again. That is my prelude to race day, lol!

So the past 4 weeks I have been training hard and very happily running faster. My fartlek runs have been right on and I've been doing well and feeling great. I've also cleaned up my nutrition and have lost 4 lbs and lost and inch in hips and waist. I'm getting leaner and faster and I'm happy. Today was a test for me on speed endurance but unfortunately I had a few obstacles that I couldn't seem to get away from. The run was 8.1 miles, distance wise, cake, speedwise for me? Trivial still. I had issues with slower runners lining up towards the front so right from the get go I was dodging people for 4 miles but at least still able to maintain a 8:30-8:45 pace, then the last 4 I was next to the military formations with flag bearers getting out of formation and running AGAINST runner's and yelling. The aid stations were not fun either. The guys wouldn't drink the water, instead they were throwing on each other and I kept getting smacked in the face. I also kept getting shoved closer and closer to the curb no matter how hard I tried to keep my space. Cadence callers would stop and run in place outside of the formation too. So it was I either deal with the slower pace or risk an ankle injury by turning my road race into a trail race. That being said, since I'm trying to have an injury free season I opted the slower pace but wasn't at all happy about it.

I just have to learn race strategies. I haven't done many of the smaller races enough to know the do's and don'ts if I want to run fast so my trainer and I are going to work on this. He's been there done that so he'll show me the ropes. My time was 1:16 with avg pace of 9:15. I wanted to be at least just under a 9 min avg pace but things just didn't work out that way for me today. It is still a PR for me just not the one I was shooting for. I do thank God for giving me the strength to do what I did today. It was a tough week for me physically. I can do nothing without him.

I live. I dream. I run.

1 comment:

  1. Awesome race, inspite of all the obstacles. Congratulations!

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