The Little 20 Miler That Could…

Posted by hellyontherun in Marathon Training, Running and tagged with 20 miler, Long Run, Marathon Training September 21, 2017

You guys (and girls), I had the freaking best 20 miler of my life this past Saturday! Do you remember my shitty attempt at a long run from the week before? No? I don’t either because this 20 miler trumps it from my memory bank!

I had plans to meet my St. George Marathon training buddy Ashley at 4 a.m. to start this 20 miler of ours. I set my alarm for 3:15 and I did actually wake up at 3:15 –ONLY TO TURN IT RIGHT BACK OFF!!

At 3:50 I woke up in panic realizing that I’d overslept. I didn’t even have enough time to brush my teeth so off I went with gorilla breath making it to our meeting spot at 4:05. Luckily, like the true training buddy she is, Ashley was there waiting for me.

We paced ourselves perfectly. Our fueling game was on point.

And the only thing negative about this run were the last 5 miles. 😀

Booyah!

Seriously. When we were at the 13 mile mark, we said that we’d try to pick it up for maybe miles 19 and 20. But we found ourselves picking up speed at mile 15 and we just rolled with it.

It was amazing.

I’m not sure I can BQ at St. George. I’m not sure I can PR at St. George. But this run gives the confidence boost I needed to give both a shot.

Trust the process
I can do all things

Viva la taper!

–Do 20 milers (or long runs) scare you? I hadn’t done a 20 miler in over a year! (Remember, I’m a Hanson’s gal.) And I wasn’t so much scared about this run more than just scared about long running in general. Since the last few have been horrible.

–Are you an alarm runner or do you wake up naturally?

Chicago Marathon Training: Week 13 Recap

Posted by hellyontherun in Marathon Training and tagged with 20 miler, Charity Runner, Chicago Marathon 2015, Marathon Training, Running, Team RMHC September 8, 2015

I hope everyone had a great weekend and that those stateside enjoyed their extra day (if you got one) 🙂

Even though I couldn’t get in high mid-week mileage, it was a confidence building week of training–one that I felt I needed at this moment as we’re inching closer and closer to the less than one month away mark!

Last Monday, I started off the week with a short 4 miler but I saw numbers I hadn’t seen in a while.

It was a negative split run and the first mile was actually already starting off at a good pace for me, so to get better from that 9:42 made me super excited. And that 8:36 last mile just had me smiling from ear to ear. Finally, that overall pace was a low I hadn’t seen in a while.

I rested Tuesday as my husband was out of town again and I had kid duty. I could have squeezed in a run but….I didn’t 🙂

Wednesday I met up with my run club and they had a mini hill workout on the schedule. I chose to bypass that and run another 4 miler instead.

A sub 100 degree run??? Wha???

It was close to another negative split and close to a similar overall pace as my Monday run. Again, this made me feel really, really good 🙂

Thursday I stuck to my 4 miler theme and ran around my neighborhood (It actually ended up being 4.2–you know you gotta count that point two). I took this run easier as I had had two good runs and didn’t want to push myself. It was still a great one with an overall pace of 9:48 and I finished with the last two miles faster than my first two.

It was an important rest day Friday as Saturday I had my first 20 miler of the training!

Yep, Saturday morning I woke up at zero dark thirty for this one (2:30 a.m. to be exact) and met up with another crazy friend also doing a 20 miler. We got going at 3:09 and planned to run 10 miles, five out and back, before meeting up with the rest of our run club at 5 a.m. We made one stop around the 7 and halfish mark for a potty break but that was the only stop of miles 1-10.

I was really happy with my consistency (see miles 4-7!!!) and I met up with my back 10 crew in high spirits.

Two running buddies were waiting for me at 5 to run my second set of 10 and we got going not too long after I got to the meeting spot. We were cruising at my pace (I wanted to be around the 10-10:30 mark) and they were uh-mazing at keeping me on track. I was feeling it around miles 12 and 13 and they quickly re-focused me.

I did stop at mile 15 (the turn around) but it was quick as I knew I didn’t want to lose momentum.

Then, at mile 17 I had to go potty 😦 and I was forced to stop again. This super bummed me out as like I had mentioned last week, I wanted to really try and avoid any stopping on my long runs.

I definitely felt that potty stop around mile 18 as my left calf started cramping a little. I didn’t want to stop though so I ran through it and sure enough, it dissipated after a few minutes. Whew!

Finally, I wanted to finish strong so my girls picked it up and I had them finish me at a 9:34 mile 20!!!

These 79 degrees felt great. The 65% humidity did not, lol!

I was so happy with this run and really pleased with the consistency in my splits. My slowest mile was 10:37 and my fastest (besides the last mile) was 10:06 so I was +/- 30 seconds the entire way!

It was also my husband’s first 20 miler this past weekend and he knocked his out of the ballpark too! Much faster than me, lol, but I still love him 😀

I ended the week with 32.2 miles and feeling pretty darn good about myself going into this week. My goal of sub 4:30 is looking realistic and I just hope all this hard summer training pays off. We’ll find out in about a month!

I hope everyone has a great week!! ❤ , helly

–How was your week of running?

–Do you try to keep consistent splits, negative splits, or do you just run and what happens, happens?

Happy Blogiversary To Meeee!!!

Posted by hellyontherun in Running and tagged with 20 miler, Blogversary, Long Run, Marathon Training, Running October 1, 2014

WOW. I seriously cannot believe it’s been year! Talk about time flying!

September 30th last year I wrote a post letting the blog world know I was newbie. 🙂

It’s really all Salt‘s fault. We were chatting one day and she’d been blogging for a while (non-running related) and we both thought about how much we love talking about running–our conversations were mostly always about that. So then we thought about starting a blog. I was apprehensive, being completely new to blogging and having absolutely zero knowledge about what it entailed. But, Salt eased any fears and helped me get the party started. And here I am, still writing one year later!

I want to THANK YOU for following my journey. I still think no one reads what I write lol!!

Here’s of some of my fave posts ❤

Running Home

Who Inspires Me

My Sub 2 Hour 1/2 Marathon Recap

Random Things I Love

Crossing the Grand Canyon.. Twice

Anyway, I haven’t recapped last week’s training so….

Last Monday, I went for a treadmill run to shake off the previous Saturday’s awful long and I was back with my running club on Tuesday for another 5 mile run.

I had to work really hard for both of those runs but I felt like I needed to because my spirits were low from my failed long run a couple of days earlier.

Speed work was Wednesday and I made myself puuush:

The workout was 2×800, 1×1600, and 2×800. It was actually somewhat fun as the high school marching band was practicing the entire time. Made for a great distraction 🙂

Thursdays are supposed to be cross training days and I’ve been REEEALLLY bad about getting it done. So yeah, I didn’t do anything 😦

Friday, rest day.

Okay, so Saturday is where my dilemma begins:

I’m unable to to do my big 20 miler this weekend (3 weeks out and what’s on my training schedule) so I asked my coach if I should attempt it 4 weeks out or 2. Two worries me because I would’t have a lot of taper time and 4 worried me because it seemed, to me, a lot of time.

But I went with 4 weeks.

I set my alarm for 4 a.m. to be out in the streets by 4:30. But at around 1 in the morning, thunder, lightning and rain woke me up. There was no way I was going out in that alone if it continued. So I decided to start an hour later, at 5:30 when the rest of my run club started. I figured at least I wouldn’t be alone for most of my run even though it might get warm later on.

I pulled up to the parking lot, got off, and put my water pack on. Except I’d forgotten my phone! Ugh!!! I didn’t want to be out for 3+ hours without any means to contact my husband in case of an emergency.

So I decided to run 10 and then 10 later that evening. Of course this made me super anxious and I could feel the stress affecting me as I ran.

When I got home, my husband met me with more stressful news. My daughter had a high temperature. The rest of the day was spent making her as comfortable as possible and trying to reduce the fever. By the time evening came, I was so exhausted. It was still raining outside so running outdoors was not an option. I sludged my way to the gym and 5 miles into my treadmill, I ended up calling it quits. A big DNF.

Needless to say, this potentially not getting in a 20 miler has me really freaking out. I’m left with doing it 2 weeks before the marathon or not at all. (My longest run this training is 16 miles)

What would you do?

Total miles for the week: 28.11
Soda count: 1 can, 2 20oz