How is it only Thursday? I feel like I've been through two weeks at least in the last two days since school started. I thought I was supposed to have free time once the kids went back to school? Ha! Anyways, it's Thursday and I'm doing a bit of a mind dump AKA Thinking Out Loud with Running with Spoons. Last night was the first running of the Mad Fox Brewpub's Run Club. This has been an idea that we've been tossing around for quite a while since the wife of the owner is also a runner. We had a nice turnout! I ran 3 miles with some lovely ladies, a few other people ran 5, and Beer Geek acted as sherpa and sweeper on his bike. Of course, for me, the best part was the beer and conversation afterwards. Mad Fox will be hosting the run … [Read more...]
TOTR: Hot weather running + Timex GPS watch giveaway
Baby, it's hot outside! OK, maybe I shouldn't complain because my Tuesdays on the Run partners in crime, April and Patty, live in Florida and Arizona. They know hot. But since our topic for the week is hot weather running, I'm going to talk to you about my training plans and give you some tips on how to survive running in the heat. … [Read more...]
Strip marathoning and I chose to do this
My brain is going about a million miles a minute right now. Too bad I can't run that fast LOL. So, I'm hooking up with Amanda at Running with Spoons again for Thinking Out Loud Thursday. 1. As I expected, the weather here has started to warm up. We are looking at starting temps around 50, going up to 70. The big question, of course, is how fast will it go up that high? I'm hoping not until at least noon since the races start at 6am. 2. The beauty of the Mainly Marathons races is that the course is a loop that you do multiple times (14 for marathoners on the courses I'm doing.) This means I can take off layers as necessary and change things up if needed. As Beer Geek said to another spectator at one of the Riverboat races last … [Read more...]
I’m an expert…
Sometimes life is too serious and we need to laugh at ourselves. I saw this topic on A Lady Goes West yesterday and it made me laugh... and think about what I'm an expert in. After all, we all have skills. Some of them we learned, some of them we come by naturally. Some of them are "party tricks", some are actually useful. Many of them are entertaining. [Tweet "Let's have some fun! What are you an expert at doing? I'm an expert at finding hilly races! #runchat #uselessskills"] So here's what I'm an expert in: … [Read more...]
What a lovely day for a run… or not
Pouring rain? Thunder and lightning? Code red air quality? High heat? Freezing cold? Winds that could blow you off the planet? Which one of these have you raced in? That's right, today's topic for Tuesdays on the Run, is "Worst Race Conditions." When Patty, April, and I started discussing this topic, I was like "oh, that's easy." And then I realized that it wasn't. Why? Because I have raced in just about every awful condition except sleet. Yep, not only am I the Queen of Hilly Races, I'm also apparently the Princess of Bad Weather. (To be fair, because I run so many races, I've also had some absolutely beautiful races.) So, here are some of my highlights (lowlights?) in pictures... My very first race (yeah, I started … [Read more...]
TTT: Kindrunner, hot running, and bye bye Jeep Cherokee
1. Kindrunner has been around for a month and to celebrate they've decided to pay the kindness forward. Kindrunner.com announces "48 Hours of Paying Forward the Kindness!" We are so confident that anyone who experiences our website and learns our mission will want to take part that we are willing, for the first time ever, to pay the Kindnessforward. We have now been in existence for just over a month, and want to share our mission with as many runners as possible. From now until we leave the office on Friday (7pm EST) anyone who registers for Kindrunner will receive a $10 Kindness Cash Rewards Credit towards a future purchase of ANY brand and ANY item! Simply register on our site, treat your feet when the time comes, and remember … [Read more...]
I need to be independently wealthy
Why? Because I need a cabin or cottage or beach house in the north in the summer. I mean, Beer Geek works from home four days a week. It would work. He could fly up every Wednesday night, work from our summer home and then fly home on Tuesday evening to be in the office for his Wednesday meetings. That sounds perfectly reasonable, right? So, who wants to share their lottery winnings? Or family money? Or pay me a million a year to run and blog? No? Guess I'm stuck in the land of hot. At least the boys and I get to run off to Wisconsin for a big chunk of August. (Sorry, Beer Geek. Remember to feed the gecko while we are gone.) We have at least a couple of weeks every summer that look like the above. And every summer, I … [Read more...]
Virginia Summer + Foodie Pen Pal!
Virginia is hot and stupid humid in the summer. This is not breaking news. But this year, Virginia has been kind enough to throw in some low humidity days and some cooler weeks. For example, last year's end of school picnics were all cut short because of 100* weather and air quality advisories. This year, we had cold 1st graders when they got wet playing a sponge game at their picnic. But that's ok, Virginia is making up for it now. This week has been all high 80s to low 90s, with matching humidity. It's like trying to breathe soup. As you can imagine, my run did not go well yesterday. It wasn't that hot when I went out at 8am, but the humidity was 96%. I could.not.breathe. I planned to run 4-6 miles at an easy pace. I ran … [Read more...]
Cutting the cheese for WIAW
No, I'm not talking about flatulence... I'm talking about actually cutting cheese out of my diet. Dairy and I have a rocky past. Both of my boys had milk allergies as babies, so I had to cut all dairy while nursing. (Yes, even the trace stuff in processed foods. Yes, it sucked. And it sucked for almost 3 years while nursing Jones and more than a year with Shoo). I'm not sure I could ever go back to that strict elimination and I have zero intention of giving up my milk in my coffee or the occasional bowl of Greek yogurt, but it's time to decrease the amount of cheese I eat. I'm a Wisconsin girl and I firmly believe that everything tastes better with cheese, but quite frankly, it's not the best kind of fat and it's taking up too … [Read more...]
Blue Ridge Half Marathon Race Report
The Blue Ridge Marathon bills itself as "American's Toughest Marathon." I'm here to tell you that the half marathon is no joke either. It was definitely the hardest race course I've ever run on. Short story: I finished in 2:20:48 (my slowest half where I wasn't pacing someone), 13th in my age group and darned proud of my finish. At the end, I felt like I'd run a full marathon, not a half. Long story: I caught a ride down to Roanoke with some runner friends. We stopped at a brewpub for lunch and a couple more for tastings. Thanks to small country roads (and the stops), it took us 6 hours instead of 4, but we finally got there. They dropped me off at my hotel where I immediately met up with T and R. We quickly picked up our … [Read more...]
100% humidity
In some place, 100% humidity would mean it was actually raining. Not in Virginia. Here it meant that all the rain we got last night was coming up from the ground and making it feel like I was running underwater. Since I've never really perfected that breathing water thing, it was a pretty miserable run. I did manage to finish four miles at about a 9:30 pace. After my lovely (NOT) run, I gave blood. When I was getting the initial workup done, the technician took a look at my driver's license and at me and said "how'd you do it?" I looked blank and she pointed to the license and said "It looks like a different person." Oh, that. Well, I was 7.5 months pregnant with Shoo when I got my license renewed. Guess all the running since then … [Read more...]
No tempo for me
Yesterday, a very generous friend offered to take both boys (she has one boy Jones' age) so that I could go for a run. I took her up on it and headed out for a run around 2:30 pm in 86 degree weather. I had my handheld filled with berry nuun and didn't push myself and it still sucked. Even going at a 10 minute pace was hell. After I got home, it took me forever to stop sweating. I figured today's run had to be better. I was wrong. Within the first few minutes, I had to adjust my speed goals. At the end of the first mile (9:56), I knew a tempo of any sort was out of the question, so decided to try for a progressive run. While I did manage that (9:50, 9:48, 9:35, 9:27), it was quite possibly the worst run ever. I had to remind … [Read more...]
