Not Running and $1,000 by Thanksgiving!

First of all I want to thank everyone who has donated to my Team in Training effort so far.  I have raised $1,000 which gets me closer to my goal of halfway ($2,500) by Christmas.  I am very thankful for all of the donations I have received so far, each dollar brings us closer to a world without blood cancer!

As for running…I haven’t posted in a while because there hasn’t been much running.  I haven’t found a groove since the Chilly 1/2 and have been running 1-2 times per week due to a very busy work schedule and some other buys life things.  During these few runs I have been trying to reflect on my goals for the coming months and find a good rhythm before I officially start training for Boston in December.  Below are three thoughts on my recent running (or not):

• Time Does Not Always Matter: On a run over this past weekend  I decided to take a little “me time” on my run and go without my trusty Garmin.  I put on some of my favorite music and set out to enjoy the brisk fall day.  I have no idea how far I went or how fast I was going and it was such a great feeling.  I just enjoyed running for the sake of running rather than worrying about pace or distance.  I definitely need to remember to mix a few of these types of runs in especially as I get into my training cycle and busy season at work.  Sometimes it is just nice to get a run in 🙂

After my Garmin-less run

• Sometimes Wine > Morning Run:  Last week was particularly rough for me, between working 14 days straight and trying to keep up with all of the other fun things in my life my running definitely got away from me.  Saturday was going to be my first day off in two weeks, so naturally I planned on going for a kickass long run.  However, when I got home Friday night a cozy dinner at home with a movie and lots of wine sounded like a better idea.  I postponed my run until Saturday afternoon and reduced the planned distance to fit everything in.  Sometimes taking care of myself means adjusting my running and making more time to relax with my people 🙂

Friday Night Dinner

• Running Helps Bad Days Feel Better: Yesterday was a really long difficult day at work for a number of reasons.  We had just come off an exhausting stretch with intense deadlines and pressure and are now expected to go back to our previous goals/work to catch up in time for the holiday.  When I got home the last thing I wanted to do was run…then Jack reminded me how much better I always feel after a run.  I sucked it up and decided to go to the gym to do a quick run (no distance or pace goals).  I turned on my music and had an AMAZING run, 5 miles in 38 minutes (7:40 avg pace).  I hadn’t intended to do any speed work but was feeling my music so I decided to do mini intervals during the choruses of each song. It felt great to feel strong for such a tough workout, I’m looking forward to my speed workouts during marathon training after this one.

I am looking forward to keeping this going with a Turkey Trot on Thursday before spending the day with my Family 🙂  Happy almost Thanksgiving everyone!

 

Training Separately but Together

Fall in New England

Spent the weekend trying to enjoy the last few moments of Fall with the family.  I really wasn’t looking forward to starting another week of work… somehow the weekends seem to fly by!  I had a great running weekend with 4 miles completed on Saturday and another 3 miles on Sunday.

Today started out on a great note, I actually woke up on time and had time to get ready before I headed out for the 7:36 train.  That was the end of my good luck as I ran into 20 minutes of traffic which led me to arrive at the train station at 7:38, missing my train.  Lucky for me there is a later train that still gets me to work on time however, that train was delayed today… after many more obstacles I finally made it to work!

Work was busy right from the start today.  We are working our way into busy season, which means all of my agencies have been working to submit data and reports to our budgeting application.  I then have to work to analyze the data and form a report over the next few weeks.  Without boring you with budget information (I could probably go on for days) I will just sum it up by saying this week is going to be a busy one!

Needless to say, I was not thrilled with the prospect of the 4 miles I had on the schedule by the time I got home.  Jack and I decided we should go to the gym together to help with motivation, so we headed off to the gym where I began my treadmill miles.  I did OK through the first 2.5 then realized 4 miles just wasn’t in the cards for me today.  Instead I did 2.5 then some sprints for a total of 3.5 miles, not bad considering the long day!

not quite the 4 miles on my schedule, but close enough

This got me to thinking about the things that get me through rough running days.  There are a few tricks that I absolutely rely on to make it through bad runs and to motivate me to finish a work out that I don’t want to do.  First, training partners; unfortunately for me my training partners live in Philly so they can’t just pop by for a morning run.  Instead we do something called running separately together.  Mary and I first started this when I was in grad school at Syracuse as a way to keep tabs on each other to make sure we were safe.  One of us would text the other before we were going with our planned mileage and a target time, if the other one didn’t hear within the time span you started calling.  This plan worked flawlessly and helped me get through my first marathon training cycle easily, thanks Mar!  This time around Anne Marie and I are motivating one another from 318 miles away (yes I googled it).  We have been texting each other daily with our progress and our goals for the day.  The second thing I use to get me through my rough runs is my music.  I absolutely love to run with music and tune out the world.  Lucky for me, Taylor Swift released her new album today (you should check it out) and I jammed out to that the whole time I was on the treadmill.  I also love to vary the speed while I am on the treadmill to help make the miles more interesting (hence the sprints for today).

Here’s to a great week of training and a busy week of work!  Here is a cute picture of my sleeping kitten to make you smile 🙂

The Chicago Marathon, Injuries and Fall Race Schedule

Please forgive the lengthiness of this post, I figured it might be useful to catch everyone up on my recent running experiences before I start my Boston training.  Enjoy 🙂

Earlier this summer I began training for my second full marathon, the Chicago Marathon.  I have a small bucket list of races that I want to run at least once in my life and Chicago is near the top of it (Boston is the TOP of the list).  I was very excited to start training for a marathon again and to improve on my PR from the 2014 Marine Corps marathon of 4:25.  I started training early and took my time building mileage; I was feeling great going in to my peak weeks: 16, 18, 20, 12, 20.

Bike Path in Brewster

In the summer my favorite spot to run is the bike path on Cape Cod; each weekend without fail I convinced Jack we should go down on Sunday so I could complete my long run along the trail.  The morning of the 16 miler was no different; I woke up early, had a quick snack and headed out on the road.  Jack and my mom planned to meet me at mile 8 so they could refill my water and give me more Gu.  I remember feeling great when I saw them and continuing my run.  Around mile 14 or so I felt a slight pain in my left foot but did not think too much of it.  I ended up finishing the run in a PR time for 16 miles, averaging 9:34 per mile.

I didn’t start feeling the severe pain until the next morning, when I went to get out of bed and fell over because of the pain.  Unfortunately, this was a familiar pain for me; after the Marine Corps Marathon I wound up in a boot for six weeks from tendonitis.  Luckily I had the week off from work so I was able to lie on the couch and ice my foot all day while trying to make a doctor’s appointment.  I saw the doctor two days later and sure enough, my tendonitis was back and the boot was on for at least two weeks.

This was devastating news to me as it meant I would have to miss my 18 and 20 milers.  I was in denial of the severity of the injury and was more focused on trying to rest up and still race.  I begrudgingly put my boot on and headed to Long Island for a fun weekend to celebrate the wedding of two of our close friends, Melissa and Cory.  I danced the night away, despite the boot and was generally in pretty good spirits.

Melissa & Cory’s Wedding

When we got home, I stupidly tried to run again before I was cleared.  I barely made it a mile before I had to stop because of the pain.  That night I made the difficult decision to defer the Chicago Marathon until 2015 and focus on getting better.  I have been out of the boot now for about a month and am finally starting to feel like myself again.

Slowly I am working myself back into shape (little runs and cross training) so that I am 100% healthy for my Boston training in December.  On that note I should probably get to the last piece of this post which is Fall races!  I have some fun ones coming up… I always find it is easier to train when I have something fun to look forward to.  The First race on the horizon is the Chilly Half Marathon which is in Newton in early November, then another half in December called the Frosty Half.  I’m looking in to adding a third called the Santa Shuffle in Portland Maine later in November but we’ll have to see!

Any other Fall race recommendations?

 

The Road to Boston Begins

For those of you who know me, you know that running the Boston Marathon has been my dream since I saw my mom run when I was 10 years old.  And while I am not yet fast enough to qualify for the race, which I hope to do one day, I have the pleasure of being selected to be a member of Team in Training (TNT) for the 2015 Boston Marathon.

As a part of Team in Training I will be working to raise money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), this funding will help fund treatments that save lives every day; like immnuotherapies that use a person’s own immune system to kill cancer. You may not know it, but every single donation helps save a life with breakthrough therapies such as these.

I am very excited to begin training for the Boston Marathon and plan on keeping this blog to track my training progress and my thoughts along the way.

Please consider making a donation in support of my efforts with Team In Training and help get us all closer to a world without blood cancers.  You can make a donation by following this link: http://pages.teamintraining.org/ma/boston15/dclowes or clicking on the TNT logo on the right side of my blog.

Thank you!