Legends 5k and My First Annual 29th Birthday

Seems like I'm on a two week posting routine.   Honestly I think about writing just about every other day but by time I get home and have time, the mental energy is gone to sit in front of the computer. 

Let's get the 'blahs' out of the way first.

Work:

Don't get me totally wrong, I love what I do, I just can't stand WHERE I have to do it.  I knew it would be hard for me to transition back into an office again but now that the weather is nice, it's sucking the life out of me.  Have to stand up if I want to see out the window, none of the windows open, the other people in the office chew their food like they were born in a god damn barn and I live off frozen meals or cans of soup.    I know I could get out and walk or whatever for a break but it's isn't as refreshing as you think walking up and down Washington Ave by yourself.   And not to mention all the driving I have to do while Mark and I continue to have to maintain two houses.  I literally get only minutes outside in the fresh air before it gets dark.  Otherwise I'm in my office or my carThere may be a day in the future where I can spend some days working from home and that will help and I desperately hope that when we get our own office, I have a window I can open right next to my desk!! I'm not an indoors person and I got to have my home office and my windows and my kitties and my run breaks all the time for over 3 years so lately my routine is doing nothing but severely depressing me. Bleh....ok moving on....

Memorial Weekend:

Mark and I had a ton of garage sale items on my parent's sale again this year.  I was super excited that I sold my road bike before the sale even opened.   Listed it on the Craig's List ad and a guy responded Tuesday, came out to see it Wednesday night and paid cash.   I couldn't believe both of our old mtn bikes and my road by were sold by the end of day 1 :) 

Memorial Day we went to the Gunther's House for their "Mixed Up Tri / BBQ party"   They were doing a group ride, transition, group run, transition, group swim.   We opted to sleep in a bit and skip the bike but we got there in time for a 5.5ish mile run and then a swim across the bay (about 2/3 mi).   It was our first time getting back in the lake this year so it was nice to get back in and get used to lake swimming again.

ALARC Legends 5k

We planned for this race to be our last "tune-up" leading up to the William A Irvin 5k (our goal race).   We knew it was a smaller race and the way things had been going at the other small 5ks we have been doing, we knew there was a chance to place well again.   Especially since there was a partnered 10k which a lot of the faster runners there were doing.  I was focused on my overall time but I knew it was going to be hard to get a fast time since this course was hilly and we've been racing flat courses until now.   The first few hills shot my heartrate up pretty high but we got on the limestone trail before mile 1 and stayed on it until about 2.75 maybe.   My body calmed down a bit from the hills once I was on flat ground for a bit and I realized I was first place female. (sweet! but will it last.....)  Somewhere around mile 2 I could definitely feel I was losing steam and the HR wasn't coming down from 190.  The last .2 or so was back up a somewhat small grade and then to the finish.   There was no "push" into the finish but I still managed to cross as the first female and landed a time of 23:58 - AVG hr 186.

-

Minneapolis Marathon:

We volunteered as course marshals for this event the day after Legends.  We might run the 5k event they have here next year but we'll see.  (I have a bit of an issue with the group that runs this but I'll keep that to myself.) We were around mile 4.5 which was perfect.  We got to see everyone go by and then we were off to chase down Mark's brother Michael as he was running his first full marathon.   We saw him right around the wall of mile 20 and then again at the finish.   He did awesome!   I know he really wanted a 4hr marathon, I did too when I ran my first one but it's harder than you think and the sun came out to heat him up midway through the race which didn't help anyone I don't think.  I always look back at my first marathon, not happy with my time but I try to remember all the things it taught me and apply them to my endurance runs.

My First Annual 29th Birthday:
We started the celebration by going out with our Groupon coupon to Forepaugh's Restaurant in St. Paul.  It was this great old house converted to a fancy restaurant.  We picked up a cool geocache in the area before our reservation but I'll talk about that in my post on our "A Life More Complete" blog.

-

The morning of my birthday was just another morning, followed by just another work day.   First time in years I went to work on my birthday.   Would have taken the day off but trying to preserve the vacation days for the wedding :)   Thanks to my birthday showing up on all my "friends" Facebook accounts I got a ton of bday wishes on there all day long which was great.  Also a few phone calls and text and emails :)   That evening we went out for dinner with my parents at Houlihans.   I was uber excited that I got a DSW gift card from Onyx the cat, an Olive Garden gift card from mom and dad and the best of all....Mark got me a gift card to Sanctuary Salon Spa to get my hair done!!!!  OMG you have NO idea how badly my hair has been needing a makeover.   Long story short, I made it all of two days before I made an appointment for my fancy new 'do.  Love it!!    I also got a great Fuschia plant from Mark so now my patio actually has color :)

 

Wedding:

Things are still progressing on the wedding front.   Throwing $$ in all directions but things are slowly coming together.   I think I'll start trying to be more consistent and post wedding updates only on our "A Life More Complete" blog and/or the wedding webpage on The Knot.com.  If you all follow me on Twitter, I usually send out a note when I update either of these pages.

Training:

Has still been pretty much run focused and even that has been suffering due to lack of time/energy lately.  My bike is being picked up from the shop tonight probably.   Had the crank arms looked at and basically they said the true fix is to buy new ones ($170-ish) but for now the temp fix is lots of lock-tite.  Sigh.....

Masters swim is now offering outdoor evening swims at the New Hope pool Tues/Thurs nights so starting next week we are going to try for that option the next two months and see if that is better on our schedule.  I think we can stay up later much easier than we can get up earlier while we are still doing the two house thing.

Next up:

This weekend we have the Manitou Triathlon.  That should be interesting considering we haven't really done any bricks and only one lake swim.   I think our multisport season this year is going to be based around fun and not speed.  And I guess that's ok. buy my competitive subconscious tends to make me feel crappy about not being in top shape for tri's this year.

5k Training and Lake Minnetonka Half Marathon

I feel like I've bounced back and forth with wedding updates.   Tonight my write up is on our "A Life More Complete" blog so go there to check that out. 

I just wanted to quickly update on training.  We are still concentrated on 5k speed and Wednesday we went to Core/Speed class at ALARC where luckily the "speed" part of the group was doing track repeats.   The schedule was to do 1 mile repeats but a few of us were kind of doing our own thing.   Mark and I needed to do 1/2 mile race pace repeats with a few minutes rest in between.   I did manage to make each of the 5 repeats on pace but my heart rate was averaging high 180's and my legs were Jello.   I did what I needed to do but I can't help but keep thinking.....how the hell am I going to keep up THAT pace for 23 minutes and 18 seconds?!?!?

And unfortunately when we got to the Wednesday night training, we got out of the car and out of no where I started feeling a pinch in my right glute/hamstring.   It hurt when I walked but was ok while I ran.   By the end of the evening and most of the next day it was tight and painful mostly behind my knee (argh!!!)  But luckily today (Friday) it seems to be mostly gone.   I've been taking Advil and using BioFreeze so I'm guessing that helped it heal.

Short easy run tomorrow morning and then we are off to a geocaching 10 year anniversary event for the afternoon and getting to go to the Owl City concert.   I managed to win tickets from 101.3 KDWB on Twitter :D   Then we are both hoping for a soak in the spa.   Sunday morning is the Lake Minnetonka Half Marathon.   We haven't been training for this distance so we are mostly doing it for fun (and the 30 year anniversary finisher's medal).  I keep telling myself this race is for fun but subconsciously I know I want to still pull at least an OK time.   Not wanting to push for a new 13.1 PR but at least well under a 10 min/mile pace average.

We are hoping to maybe make some time and find mental/physical energy to get out on our road bikes this weekend.   3 weeks until the Gear West Duathlon and I feel like my attempt at that race is going to be a complete joke at this point.   I haven't been on ANY bike for probably more than a total of 3 hours since last September.  (another sigh....)

Weight loss is ok but very slow since I'm not honestly trying very hard.  I want to be but just not quite sticking to it.  Especially with all these free dinners and drinks we have been getting lately for wedding events.  Still targeting another 4 pounds by my birthday (June 7th)

Trying not to be too depressed over our housing situation.  Absolutely no idea how we are going to come up with the spare cash to make the downpayment so I get really bummed out thinking we are going to be married and still live in TWO houses :(  In the meantime we are working on going through all of our stuff to get rid of what we can at my family's garage sale at the end of May and get my placed cleaned up for showing.  Whenever that can actually happen.  Stay tuned....

A New form of Butt Kicking (and abs, and arms and shoulders....)

As Mark and I are figuring out our working routines, training schedules and races for 2010 we heard about a group that sounded too perfect to pass up on trying.  It's the ALARC running club and their Core/Speed progam.  For what I consider a very reasonable fee, you can join them up to 3x per week for 1.5 hour session of core strength training and speed work. 

Since we are just starting to come off of our winter hibernation we knew going into this that this could be a little tough for the first few sessions.  And boy was it ever!  Being athletes we were handed to the more advanced group.   The session contained circuits of track running with alternating stations of core, legs and arms.   The group leaders were fantastic and gave us great instruction on how to ease back into things and not blow out our bodies before the night was over.  I was doing a lot of the easier positions and still came out exhausted, sore and hungry!   All very good things!  Here's the whole group during the warm up.

I think it's safe to say for both of us that we are HOOKED!  And I honestly recommend this program to athletes of all ages and skill levels.   The group leaders are great at giving options to increase or decrease difficulty and everyone is very friendly.   They even all go out for food and drink after the sessions together.   How great is that?!  I really appreciate finding groups that not only have a strong focus on fitness but also on camaraderie.

And needless to say, now two days after the first ALARC Core/Speed session, everything hurts.....but it's a good pain ;)

Quick note on another subject, so I got my new trail shoes (first pair) and am super excited to try them out this year.  You can see them on our other blog (A Life More Complete).  I/we have a few trail races on the schedule to see what we think of going off-road.  I can really see myself enjoying it.   We opted to stay on the lower end of the price range since at this point, neither of us really know what we prefer in a trail shoe.  I figure as we progress we can move up in price with the features we know we like.  

And I promise we are working hard to get our 2010 scheduled nailed down so I should have my list up soon :)

Anyone have recommendations for trail shoes?  Trail races in the Midwest?