Global Running Day 2016

It’s Global Running Day!

Like we runners really need an excuse to celebrate all things running, right?! Still I love seeing all the positive promotion of running around social media and the interwebs.

Once again, fellow SweatPink Ambassador Kristen from Jonesin’ for a Run has invited us to join in and participate in her annual running survey – so here goes…

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Why do you run?

Honestly I don’t think answer changes much for me from year to year….I run for my sanity, my health, for the challenge. I am a better version of myself when I run for sure.

How do you plan to celebrate National Running Day?

Wednesdays are usually a strength day for me with Trainer Stacy, but I’m sure I’ll slip a mile or two in.

How many miles have you run so far this year? Do you have a mileage goal for the year?

I set no mileage goals for this year. I didn’t want to get fixated on any particular number – just want to run healthy and happy. As such, I’ve been lousy at tracking my miles – sometimes I remember to record on Daily Mile, but often I forget.

What big events do you have on the race calendar so far this year?

I’m looking forward to a race-filled fall, including three Rock ‘n’ Roll races in Philly, Brooklyn and Vegas! Speaking of Rock ‘n’ Roll, be sure to check out their site today for some serious discounts. You can also use code ROCKATTITUDE to save $15 off registration.

Before I leave for a run I must have:

I don’t head out for a run without my phone, SPIbelt, earbuds, hat/visor, and now that the temps are heating up, my Nathan handheld.

Do you track your runs? If so what do you use?

If you caught my May Runfessions, then you know my Forerunner 10 is in my doghouse right now – also why it’s missing from my must have list. I’ve been trying the Map My Run app  on my last couple of runs.

Who is your favorite running partner?

Most of my runs are solo, but I have enjoyed having my husband join me on some of my Saturday runs.

What races have you run so far this year?

Just ran my first race of the year, Boston’s Run to Remember, last Sunday. You can read my recap here.

If you have to give someone one piece of advice about running, what would it be?

Run your race! While reading running blogs is great for inspiration and camaraderie, don’t fall victim to the comparison game. Running is a very individual experience – enjoy your journey.

Bigham

Describe your relationship with running in one word:  Motivating!

How are you celebrating the day? Doing any race shopping?

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2016 Run to Remember Race Report

2016 RTR FinisherI know I have said this so many times, but must say again Boston’s Run to Remember is one of my all time favorite races!

On Saturday morning my husband J and I headed in town for packet pick-up, and as always it was a breeze. There were a ton of volunteers manning the tables, so getting our bibs, t-shirts and commemorative coins took no time at all. I chose the coin honoring the police and J selected the one for EMS. We did a quick loop around the expo, and while I eyed the Oofos, I just couldn’t bring myself to spend $45 on flip flops! On our way out, we stopped to take in the banners acknowledging all of the fallen law enforcement.

Too many names!

Just too many names on this list

On Sunday morning, the race started at 7, so we were up and moving by a little after 5. After facing heat and humidity on Saturday (90’s), it was a relief to wake to cooler temps (60’s). The outdoor parking lots were quickly filling, so we decided to opt for parking at the Seaport Hotel (the host hotel). Yes more expensive, but the clean indoor bathrooms were a huge win in my book!

There was a moment of silence for State Trooper Clardy and Officer Tarentino, both recently killed in the line of duty, followed by the National Anthem and then we were ready to go. I was so glad the race organizers opted for the wave start – we were in the 3rd wave and crossed the starting line in just about 12 minutes. The first mile was still thick, but we managed to find space to run comfortably. I knew I was a little amped up at the start and definitely went out faster than I probably should have. I told J I needed to slow down and encouraged him to go ahead, but he had told me he was planning to run with me and was happy to go at whatever pace. We saw a friend at the first water station and stopped for a quick hello.

The miles clicked along, while we chatted up other runners,  and thanked volunteers and police officers working the course. My left hip/knee woke up shortly after we passed the mile 3 marker, and got more cranky as we went along. I paid no attention to time though, this race was all about enjoying the experience and the camaraderie of runners. Before I knew it we were back on Atlantic Ave and getting ready for the final turn over the bridge to the finish. I will say the climb up the bridge felt l-o-n-g, and I was grateful for the enthusiastic spectators. The best part is once you crest the bridge, it’s a nice downhill into the finish. J and I agreed to push it into the finish – and just like that we were done.

Happy finishers

Post race, boys scouts were handing out medals and there was an abundance of water, bagels, bananas and various snacks (I do urge the organizers to consider adding chocolate milk and Gatorade). We knew our boys would be up by now and waiting for us to get back for breakfast, so we took a few photos and headed for the car.

From start to finish this is a well organized race! The pre-race communication was excellent (including switching from the half to the 5-miler), packet pick was a breeze, and the along the course there was plenty of water, Gatorade and enthusiastic volunteers. If you get the chance to come to Boston over Memorial Day weekend, you should run this one.

RtR Medal 2016

Overall I was happy with the way things went – while I can see improvements thanks to the new strength training routine, there’s still work to do, and I’ve got lots of notes to share with Trainer Stacy this week. I’ve got plenty of time until my fall races, and am getting the details on my training plan finalized (more on that later). For now, I’m happy that my long hiatus from races is over.

Linking up once again with Holly and Tricia for the #WeeklyWrap rp_WeeklyWrap-1-300x300.jpg

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My May Runfessions

We’re at the end of another month which means it’s time for the May edition of Runfessions – a chance to share your confessions about your runs, swims or gym time. Link up with Marcia from Marcia’s Healthy Slice and join us!

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Runfession #1 — I’ve been feeling really off these last couple of weeks.  I’ve managed to get my workouts in, but my energy level has been pretty low, and the runs are turtle slow.  Now to figure out if this is nutrition based …

Runfession #2 —  Speaking of nutrition, I confess that I have seriously dropped the ball on my food journaling. In fact I may have lasted just a week or so. I know it can be effective, but I just found it mind-numbing.

The count

Runfession #3 —  I have finally lost all patience with my Forerunner 10 – you kind of lose the effect of the early morning run if you have to wait forever to find a satellite. Given my aforementioned turtle pace, I’m just fine with running “naked.”

Runfession #4 — Remember my gym eavesdropper? Well I confess that during my training session last week I may have given her some serious stink-eye…and she’s moved on 🙂

Runfession #5 —  My husband J just signed up to join me in Sunday’s race. While I had no serious goals for this race, I must admit that part of me is feeling a little competitive now…

OK so now it’s your turn….what do you run-fess?  

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I’m also joining Courtney, Mar and Cynthia for the Friday Five

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Random Race Thoughts

Just sharing some random race thoughts this morning….

On Sunday, I’ll be running Boston’s Run to Remember 5-Miler. This will be the first time I’ve “toed the line” for a race since last year’s BAA 5K – it’s been 13 months!

There’s been no speed work or hill work …so there are no expectations.

My goal for Sunday is simply to go have fun and enjoy being among runners. I love the atmosphere of this race and always welcome a chance to run through the streets of Boston!

RtR medal and coinsI also love that this race honors the fallen. This year’s medal includes the coin of your choice in honor of fallen law enforcement, fire fighters or emergency personnel. Still not sure which one I’m going to pick.

Which coin would you pick?

Tell me something random…

Linking up with Amanda for Thinking Out Loud Thursday Thinking-Out-Loud2

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Weekly Wrap – All lacrosse all the time

It’s Sunday evening and I am t-i-r-e-d y’all. But it’s a good kind of tired – the kind that comes from a fun whirlwind weekend.

Before I get to the weekend activities, a quick re-cap of the week’s workouts (and, yes, the daily planking continues!):

Monday:  Strength day.
Tuesday:  3.25 mile run.
Wednesday:  Strength with Trainer Stacy.
Thursday:  Migraine = no run.
Friday:  Yoga. I had wanted to make up Thursday’s run, but my head wasn’t having it.
Saturday:  My hubby J ran with me again – 4.25 miles done. I have to admit it makes me crazy that he takes the hills with such ease, but it pushes me to keep up.
Sunday:  Yard and garden work.

So the big question of this week was how much lacrosse can you fit into 7 days? Well, we started with 3 games for my oldest son with his school’s team during the week. I really don’t know why the Athletic Director allowed 3 games in one week, but we were there to cheer him on.

Thayer lax

That’s my kiddo in the black jersey

One could say that was plenty of lacrosse right there – especially when you add in that my youngest son had practice twice this week. But the big doings came this weekend, when we made the trip down to Providence to see my alma mater take on Navy in the NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Quarter Finals. Our tickets covered two games so we first got to see Maryland vs. Syracuse – a great match up, though we were rooting for Syracuse. Then it was on to Brown vs. Navy! We withstood some rowdy Navy fans and cheered our hearts out through a nail-bitter to see Brown move on to the semi-finals!

Brown lax

Source: Brown Lacrosse Instagram

You’d think we’d be all-lacrossed out by this point right? Nope. Both boys played for our town teams this morning (with J coaching), and then watched the other two quarter final games on ESPN this afternoon. Yeah…it’s a bit of an obsession in my house.

This week should be the usual mix of work, school, runs/workouts, and yes more lax…oh and I’ve got the Run to Remember 5-miler next weekend. I haven’t figure out what, if any, my goals are for this race…more on that later.

How was your week? Does your family have a sport obsession?

I’m linking up again with Holly & Tricia for the #WeeklyWrap — thanks to them for hosting!

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Weekly Wrap #17

It’s Monday which means it’s time to wrap-up another week!

Monday:  Strength day.
Tuesday:  3.25 mile run.
Wednesday:  Strength day.
Thursday:  3 mile run. (The group run with BGR didn’t come together but we’re going to try again this week)
Friday:  Spent the day with a friend – lots of walking.
Saturday:  J decided to join me for a run – 4.25 miles done. Followed by an afternoon of yard/garden work.
Sunday:  Rest day.

Plus daily planking continued!

For the most part it was a pretty routine week around here. Mother Nature continued to show she has a sense of humor – after last week where I was prepared to build an ark, this week she flipped the heat switch! I was so not ready for the 30 degree jump in temps and there may have been some whining while running.

mental game

I did get a nice surprise of winning a pair of Zensah Well Rounded Shorts during Tuesday night’s #BibChat. Zensah is my go-to choice for compression gear so I’m very psyched and cannot wait for them to arrive in the mail! And, speaking of fun things in the mail, I came home Wednesday to find these books waiting for me.

Velo Press Books

As a little perk to the Rock’n’Blog team, we each got to pick a couple of books from a collection of great titles from VeloPress! I started reading Racing Weight last night – review to come soon!

Have you read either of these books? How was your week?

I’m linking up again with Holly and Tricia for the #WeeklyWrap.

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Weekly Wrap – Getting Stronger

Happy Monday!

I’m happy to say that last week felt like a turning point for me – dare I say it…I felt stronger…stronger during both my runs and my strength workouts. Still a ton of work to do but last week felt like real progress!

Monday 5/2: Strength work and PT exercises.
Tuesday 5/3:  This was suppose to be a run day, but I had an awful night of sleep and could not get my face out of the pillow when my alarm went off. The pouring rain did not help…and this run did not happen.
Wednesday 5/4:  Session with Trainer Stacey.
Thursday 5/5:  Still raining (seriously I was considering building an ark this week!), but I was up and out early – 3.5 miles done. Deep tissue massage in the afternoon (always a win!)

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Friday 5/6:  Yoga.
Saturday 5/7:  Another soggy run – 4 miles.
Sunday 5/8:  A rare appearance of the sun, so I couldn’t resist starting Mother’s Day off with a 3 mile run to make up for Tuesday.

I also managed to get back on the daily plank bandwagon – thanks to Marcia’s #plankyplanky challenge on Facebook.

The sun is hopefully here to stay this week so I’m looking forward to no more soggy runs, and some cross-training…aka, yardwork, to add to the mix this week. And, I’m hoping to meet up with a crew from Black Girls Run for a group run on Thursday!

So how’d last week treat you? Join the fun group of bloggers for the Weekly Wrap and let us know. Tricia and Holly are great hosts and I swear this link-up gets bigger every week!

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Ultimate Coffee – May 2016

It’s the first Saturday of the month, and time for the Ultimate Coffee Date. As always, a big thanks to Coco, Lynda and Deborah for hosting! When you’re done here, be sure to check out the link-up and see what the other ladies are dishing about.

The Ultimate Coffee Date
If we were having coffee together, I’d tell you that I’m back on my kick to catch up with a friend every week. I started this goal back in March, and managed to finagle lunch/dinner/coffee or something with a friend each week. While I’d hope to keep the streak going in April, I missed out on a couple of weeks. But I’ve already kicked off May with a long-overdue dinner this week with an old college friend, and am determined to make time for more connecting this month.

If we were having coffee together, I’d tell you that speaking of connecting, I’ll be stepping out of my comfort zone this month to participate in some group runs. I’ve never run with a group for fear of being “the slow one,” but I would really like to connect with more local runners so I’m going to give it shot.

If we were having coffee together, I’d tell you that I’m itching to put together a new playlist, and ask you to share your current favorite running tunes.

If we were having coffee together, I’d tell you that it blows my mind that in just 4 short weeks there will be a high schooler in my house! Really how did that happen?! So there are final projects to wrap up, class trips to enjoy and courses to pick. My son mentioned switching from Spanish to Chinese, and I’m thinking I may need to invest in Rosetta Stone just to keep up 😉

Rosetta Stone

Is this in my future?

If we were having coffee together, I’d tell you that my Mother’s Day plan includes sleeping in (if I get to anything post 8 o’clock, it’s a win!), cheering my boys on in Lacrosse (of course!), and, hopefully, a little running. J and the boys will also be cooking one of my fave dishes, Greek-style Shrimp, for dinner.

So what would you tell me over coffee?  Happy Mother’s Day to all my fellow mother runners!

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April Wrap and May Goals

And just like that another month comes to a close! As always, I’m joining Holly & Tricia for the Weekly Wrap. When you’re done here, please visit these two great ladies and all of the other bloggers linking up.

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For April I set 5 goals …so how did it go?

Run all the miles — Hmm a bit of a mixed bag. As I mentioned in my Runfessions, my body is just not tolerating the mileage build up yet, so while runs were not missed, they were sometimes shorter than planned.

Lose the negative thoughts — While there is still work to do here, I think I did much better with this over the past month.

Return to morning runs — YES!

Step-up the strength work — Another big YES!

Lose 3 pounds — Um no…hence the commencing of the food journaling.

All-in-all I would say it was a fairly solid month.

With my first race of 2016 coming in a few weeks, my goals remain pretty much the same. I want to build on the progress I made in April and be able to answer a big YES to all of these by the end of this month. I’m also going to use May to explore training options for my fall races, because the way these days are ticking by, summer training will be here before you know it. Would you believe it’s just 20 weeks until #RnRPhilly in September?…yes, I counted…don’t judge.

Time flies

So tell me how did April treat you? Any big goals for May?

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April Runfessions

Welcome to the April edition of Runfessions – a chance to share your confessions about your runs, swims or gym time. Link up with Marcia from Marcia’s Healthy Slice and join us!

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Runfession #1 — I continue to enjoy my strength workouts and time in the gym far more than my runs and that’s fine with me. I know that my body needs to get stronger before I start really piling on the miles.

Runfession #2 —  Given that my weekly mileage is still on the lower side, I’m seriously leaning towards dropping down from the half to the 5-miler for the upcoming Run to Remember. I know what being in half marathon shape feels like and I’m not there yet…but I will be.

Runfession #3 — While I know the strength training is going to pay off, I’m still feeling very restless about my running – like it’s time to do something different…maybe try a new way to train. Do you ever feel that way? I just listened to the Another Mother Runner podcast on heart rate training and I’ll admit I’m a little intrigued.

Runfession #4 — Actually I guess this one is more of a gym-fession…I dealing with a eavesdropper at the gym. There is this woman who always happens to be in the same section of the gym as my trainer and I and I swear she spends the whole time listening in on the instructions from the trainer instead of working out.  I watched her do it the other day to someone else who was also working out with a trainer. I feel like if she’s going to listen in that closely, perhaps she ought to chip in for the cost of the session, don’t ya think?

Eavesdropping

Runfession #5 — And speaking of gym crazies, last month I mentioned the guy who’s been coming to the gym and working out in jeans. I hadn’t seen him in weeks, but and behold he showed up the other day…and yes in jeans again. I confess it took all of my self control to not ask him about the jeans!

OK so now it’s your turn….what do you run-fess?  Ever deal with a gym eavesdropper?

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I’m also joining Courtney, Mar and Cynthia for the Friday Five

 

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