Horseshoes and Hand Grenades - Irvin 5k Recap

'Close only counts in horsehoes and hand grenades"  or at least that's what I've always been told.  The William A Irvin 5k was not exactly what either of us had hoped it would be.  I barely ran in the week leading up to the race as we were both tired and having a few pain issues.  So that in itself made me doubt if I could make my goal at the race.  We got to the race and it was hot and seriously windy!   I knew the heat was going to take a toll but we got in a short warm up and I tried to stay calm with my music in my ears.   We both ended up bringing out headphones and ran with music.  We normally don't but figured it was worth a try.   The first mile for me was ok but my mouth was dying out pretty bad from the heat and wind.   7:12 (too fast)
Mile 2 the heat started to play a big factor and I could feel I was slowing down.   I tried to just put my vision onto the shoes of someone in front of me that I could pace. 7:47 (too slow)
Somewhere about 2.75 my legs wanted to fail.  My heart rate was in the mid 190s and the muscles were getting shaky.  I knew my chances of making my time were slipping away so I just pushed as best I could and hoped for the best.  
I rounded the corner with about and saw the clock in the distance click to 23:00 and knew I wasn't going to get there in 18 seconds.   I tried to give it a little gas but there wasn't much left and I crossed the line in
23:29.6 with a HR of 199.

I was a shaky, overheated mess.  But I guess it is a new PR so I'll take that.   Then I find out my "Age Group" is F19-34.  WTF??  Thanks to this being some national race they use the age grading stuff for the age groups and mine is the horrifically large range so I landed 16/332 (and let's point out the two olympian female runners are in their early 30's).  If it would have been the usual 25-29, I would have been 3rd.  Seriously, damn it.....   Mark's age group was normal range 40-44 and even with missing his goal time by over a minute still WON his age group  1/42 :)

We enjoyed the rest of the weekend by doing some geocaching in the area and cheered on a couple friends of ours that were running the full marathon on Saturday. 

Mark jumped on the course to run a few steps with his buddy Steve and take an action shot :)

All our friends finished and we celebrated that evening together before crashing in bed and having to make our way home on Sunday.  We stopped at a few State Parks on the way home and I'll cover and post a bunch of photos when I write up the post "Grandma's Marathon - Caching Duluth and a Few State Parks" in our A Life More Complete blog.  Hope to get that done tonight/tomorrow.  Here are a few teaser pics of some of the places we visited.  ;)

This deer was a great distraction to the not so nice encounters we had when we were here.  Wait for my other post and you can read about it.  Sigh....damn ticks....

So now what you ask? 

Well, we are going to back off a bit on run training for the next week or so to recover and try to move the focus to include more lifting and biking.  It's been a huge weight on my mind that we haven't been able to get strength training to fit into our schedule up until now.  I have been kind of depressed about that lately and it just makes me feel a lot better about myself and how I look when I've been strength training.   We got to the gym last night for some lifting before our outdoor pool swim with Masters.  It felt great!  Swim was a little "soupy" since it was super hot yesterday but we are both really enjoying the 50m pool. 

This weekend is the Tri-Loppet and the Lake Waconia Tri Relay.  We are doing the Tri-Loppet as a relay with our friend (my boss) Jeff doing the paddling, then I'll do the Trail Run and Mark will finish with the Mtn Bike.  It's going to be interesting but I'm looking forward to it.  Different is fun ;)   The Waconia Tri we are doing with Mark's brother Michael.   I will be swimming, Michael biking and Mark running.  I've never been on a relay team so doing two in one weekend is going to be fun.  Especially since I get to run one day and swim the next.  BUT Waconia is notorious for having really choppy swims so we'll see what this year brings.

Oh, and this Friday night we are meeting with our Ragnar Team for dinner/drinks and hopefully finalizing some info.  We may need to look for a replacement for one team member who has been non-existent and has not been replying to emails.   Everyone else is on board and we've been having fun getting to know each other.   Hard to believe that is less than two months from now too!

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.

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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.

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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.