November 2018 Monthly Running Challenge

Today I got to run 3.25 miles around one of my usual lakes, but from a brand new starting point - my new house! Everything has been chaos around here but I DO plan on sitting down after dinner tonight and reading up on how everyone’s week went. Mine has been a doozy, for sure, and no way am I hitting my fitness goals this month, but that is okay.

I started the month wanting to do a 10K training program, but instead I’ll be going into the race on Saturday not having run more than five miles at a time since my half one month ago. I don’t think there’s a PR in my future, but that’s okay too. In the last four weeks I bought a house (doing most of the financial side of things myself and having changed banks three weeks before close), moved, and checked my mother into the hospital with heart failure. A lot of that was just the last week: we closed a week ago yesterday, spent most of the day Friday in the ER with mom before she was admitted, movers came Tuesday, and mom was released yesterday, which was also my first full 24 hours in the new house. Whew!

Never having owned a house, the whole thing is weirder than I expected. I get really excited about certain things, then really irritated at other things. I worry about having taken on so much more debt, but love the idea of slowly making this place into exactly what my husband and I want. And it’s been fun watching how excited he is about color-coordinating bathrooms and planning which rooms to redesign once the money frees up. As I was perfectly happy living in a rental with thrift store and alley rescued furniture, I’m glad one of us cares about that kind of thing.

Mom is doing okay - the doctors think her heart failure (primarily caused by atrial fibrillation probably caused by sleep apnea probably caused by inactivity, obesity, and smoking) is largely reversible with medication and lifestyle changes. Easier said than done, of course, but given how much mom really hated being in the hospital, I’m hoping staying out of it will be enough to get her going. And she REALLY hates having to take medication, so I’m encouraging her to see diet and exercise as a way to at least cut some of those back. And once again, I’m reminded of what my future could look like if I don’t take care of myself.

So yes, not as much running this month as I’d planned or would prefer, but I’m still going strong. My butt is still cold, sadly - the butt-coat has not been the solution I hoped for - but I’m making progress on the rest of my layers. I’ve only ran twice in the last week, with a four-day gap that felt like an eternity, maybe my longest stretch without running since April? My running cave (basement suite w/shower and walk-in closet) needs unpacking but shows promise. And Saturday I will add another medal to the rack, even if the rack is still bolted to the wall of the old house and the medals are in a box.

Ok, the family has left, food has been put away and kitchen cleaned.

I am proud of my 5k today. I shaved 0:45 off each mile from the race 2 weeks ago. This makes me happy.

I am really trying to focus on my form and not just finishing. My oldest daughter, who is in the military, suggested that I focus on lengthening my strides and paying close attention to how much time neither foot was on the ground.

The stride thing made perfect sense, but my time off the ground.... that seemed bizarre to me initially, but once I was seeing it in action it made sense, too

The course today was much hillier than the last. The ups was easier to focus on strides. The downs I focused on both. It really felt good to feel the longer strides and floating down the hills.

47 ran/ 50 committed. I’ll hit my Nov goal tomorrow. 100 for December!!

Hope everyone who celebrates it had a Happy Thanksgiving!

I got double bling at my Turkey Trot, 3rd out of 56 in AG! Plus a PR! 27:03, previous best 28:17!

Man, it was crazy out there. A couple of days ago I was chatting with another runner who warned me that this Turkey Trot was very big and very crowded - hardly enough room to breathe, she said. I looked online at previous year's finishers to figure out how I wanted to run it - if there was no real chance for a placing I could just hang back and stay out of the scrimmage, but if I had a reasonable chance for the podium I wanted to go for it. And it was hard to say, depending on who showed up I could either win my AG or end up not even in the top dozen. So of course we decided to go for it.

The start line was set up confusingly and everyone lined up on the wrong side. The announcer had bad equipment and wasn't really audible, so it took some time for everyone to get the word about where they were supposed to be. Race started ten minutes after official start time, which gives you an idea of what a mess it was. Everyone pressed through the gate to the correct side and 2000 people all standing on top of each other. You couldn't flap your elbows and my husband remarked that if people didn't stop stepping on his shoes he was going to lose his temper. We fought to stay as close to the starting line as possible because I didn't want to deal with walkers, which put us a couple hundred people back. Then everyone moved out at top speed, first onto unpaved dirt road, then down a ditch, and onto a paved barely double wide track. It was wild! My husband and I went single file and I told him I was just going to pass as many people as I could as fast as I could and try to stay with me. At one point a little girl ran past me acting the fool - running backwards and weaving back and forth in front of other runners - I expected to see her fall and get flattened at any moment but then here comes her dad, who is a big, tall, athletic looking serious runner - who pushed me off the trail! I don't think he even noticed he did it, he was too concerned with his kid. I put a foot off the trail and wrenched my ankle pretty good but kept running and fortunately it seems to be okay. There was also a lady in front of us flinging her arms about wildly trying to keep other runners off of her. I said, "I'm passing crazy elbows lady, by whatever means necessary, try to pass when you can," and just ran like hell on a downhill, dodged her, and squeezed through. Somehow my husband managed to keep up with me. After about half a mile we had passed most of the trouble spots and people had mostly sorted themselves and settled into running, but that first half mile was an experience.

Despite all the dodging about our first split was 8:30, which is really, really fast for us. For comparison our fastest 5k pace previously was I think 9:17, and that was on a flat course, while this was hills, and my best single mile is barely under 8.

So once we were in the clear (still three and four people abreast on a double width trail) all we had to do was keep going. This is where our hillwork paid off, as several people unfamiliar with this trail could be heard gasping and cursing at the hills. Our second and third splits were slower but still in the low 9s, as we followed a strategy of passing people who pooped out on the uphill and just rolling down hill as fast and easy as possible. My husband said he started feeling like his heart was going to explode but said, it's just one tenth of a mile, you can do anything for a tenth of a mile... unfortunately a right angle turn on the finishing stretch kept us from getting any real finishing kick, but we made it in going WOOO because we could tell we had a PR.

Husband got himself a cinnamon bun while I got our results - he placed quite well also, 12 out 40 something - and then we tromped back to the car for our water bottles and MY cinnamon bun - I knew I couldn't eat theirs so I brought a 10 net carb 200 calorie cinnamon cranberry pecan muffin made with almond flour! Yay! Then we went for a walk around the lake wearing our bling. It was fun having two medals clanking together! The petting zoo for the Christmas village was setting up so I got to pet a goat, a donkey, a kangaroo, and a camel!

I feel like today had a lot of victories to it, my muffin turned out great, my diabetic safe pie was well received, my mom even complimented my salad (which had pecans, Granny Smith apples, and goat cheese) and by the time I got home my blood glucose was back under 100!

@amirahdaboss WTG with the PR! Especially in the cold. Love your outfit.
@MobyCarp I can't believe that pace is your "easy run." Glad you listened to your body and didn't aggravate your hamstring.
@katharmonic Good for you for doing the 8K. I'm in awe of all of you who are running in those temperatures.
@Beka3695 Congratulations on shaving off almost a minute from your time just 2 weeks ago!
@rheddmobile Congratulations on the double win!

I ordered a Garmin Forerunner 235 today! Got $50 off for an early Black Friday deal. Can't wait until it gets here. Hopefully, it will help motivate me to get off of my "you know what" and keep to my running schedule.

11/1/18 5 miles
11/3 3 miles
11/6 3 miles
11/7 2 miles
11/10 3.1 miles
11/11 13.1 miles
11/14 4 miles
11/17 3.91 miles
11/22 3.01 miles

Total 40.12 /60-90 miles

Seems I have bad luck with turkey trots. Another short course (even their online map measured 3.08) although much closer than last year (at around 2.7). I was a little faster than Vegas 5k. 33 min instead of 35. I'm not sure .09 would add too much more time.

Nice morning for it. Not as warm as last year but not as cold as some other turkey trots I've done (coldest was 12 degrees).

No run today instead we had 3-foot flames coming out of the oven. Which was good since the temps were in single digits F.

11/20 - bike 18.7m (30k) in ~2hrs
11/21 - run 3.7m (6k) in ~35min
1/20 - bike 18.7m (30k) in ~2hrs

Cumulative: bike 37.5 miles / 60k + run 3.7 miles / 6k

As for my goal "I'll aim for 15 miles running and 215 miles biking. If the latter reduces I have to upgrade the former, to compensate ;-)", I realized that I need to roughly 1/3. that, since I only started this on the 20th.

Goal: 7.5 miles running + 90 miles biking.

@amirahdaboss: inspirational! I don't think I could do a race on a holiday. Well done, girl!
There were more here I would like to applaud :flowerforyou:, but I lost track, since I can only catch up with emails the next day I still feel like this is the perfect thread to actively participate in and thank you once again for the welcoming start!

Not much to report about this morning's run. It started out slow as there was some DOMS going on from yesterday's strength training (note to self, FIND time to do it when you're meant to instead of having to leave it until rest day and end up running the following morning or quit moaning when it hurts!).
Improved after I warmed up. I'm falling into the habit of doing speed intervals between lampposts on my way home, it spices things up at least.
Looks like I've pretty much decided I will sign up for my 2nd half marathon in March even if I don't survive the first in a couple of weeks time, at least the spreadsheet that's appeared on my computer which follows the next training plan up from the one I've followed this time and starts on New Year's Day (which also happens to be my birthday!) seems to think so!

2/11: 7km
4/11: 11km
6/11: 7km
7/11: 5km
9/11: 7km
11/11: 13km
13/11: 8km
14/11: 5km
16/11: 8km
18/11: 10km
20/11: 8km
21/11: 5.5km
23/11: 8km
November goal: 125km. Completed so far: 102.5km
ETA: Going up to the village again this afternoon, really looking forward to doing my 14km long run on the trail I found up there last time!

11-1 Rest
11-2 7k intervals
11-3 7k easy
11-4 10.5k slow
11-5 7k recovery
11-6 Rest
11-7 7k intervals
11-8 7k easy
11-9 Rest
11-10 7k
11-11 10.5k slow
11-12 7k recovery
11-13 Rest
11-14 7k intervals
11-15 7k recovery
11-16 Rest
11-17 7k easy
11-18 10.5k slow
11-19 7k recovery
11-20 Rest
11-21 7k intervals
11-22 7k easy
11-23 Rest

November total: 122.5k
November goal: 150k

Scheduled rest day today. Going to decorate cookies with the nieces and nephews. Might eat some, too.
@PastorVincent Glad you made it through the holiday relatively unscathed.