May 2019 Monthly Running Challenge

Went out for 5 miles today. I knew it was going to be hot today, mid 80's at this time of year in the PNW is hot, so I had planned to get out by 7 this morning. However, an antsy dog last night messed up my sleep and I ended up sleeping in and I I didn't get up until 9. At that point it was already warm outside and I was considering not going, but then I thought that this was probably the coolest it would be all day, so I went out. In the end the run was really good.

It's funny, I saw that the weather will be cloudy, rainy, and in the 60's next week and even though I'm going to miss the warm summer weather, the first thing I thought was how great the cooler weather will be because it will be more comfortable to run outside.

@ContraryMaryMary fabulous job on the vineyard half! That sounds like a great race and you killed it!

Hoping your race went ok, @midwesterner85.

Good luck to all the racers tomorrow


Date :::: Miles :::: Cumulative
05/01/19 :::: 4.0 :::: 4.0
05/02/19 :::: 3.5 :::: 7.5
05/03/19 :::: 0.0 :::: 7.5
05/04/19 :::: 2.1 :::: 9.6
05/05/19 :::: 10.2 :::: 19.8
05/06/19 :::: 3.0 :::: 22.9
05/07/19 :::: 1.1 :::: 24.0
05/08/19 :::: 0.0 :::: 24.0
05/09/19 :::: 2.8 :::: 26.8
05/10/19 :::: 3.3 :::: 30.1
05/11/19 :::: 3.1 :::: 33.2

Graduation festivities this morning so I didn't go to the usual Saturday group long run. After I got home, I had to take the dog for a much overdue long walk before anything else. I really wanted to take a nap after that but I went back out and did a short run. I am really sore from yesterday's leg workout but it went better than expected given that and my overall lack of energy/enthusiasm. The sun was peeking out a bit which helped after a dreary couple of days.

Then tonight I went axe throwing! It was so much fun. Like darts, but so much more satisfying to hurl a heavy blade. Now I'm tempted to join a league, but not sure I have time for another weekly thing. But it's an awesome way to let out some aggressions

Adding 26.2 miles (as typical, Garmin came up with more because of imperfect tangents, but whatever...) for the Brookings Marathon today.



Race report:

Fortunately, I was able to get the GI issues all worked out with multiple OTC meds in way higher than recommended doses. The weather was great and I was on target for a PR for the first several miles. PR is 4:44:57 and I stayed ahead of the 4:30 pacer for the first several miles.

Towards the end of mile 10, the half marathon and marathon groups split. It was at this point that I stopped in a bathroom for the first time... not for very long, but my Garmin told me I should be either close ahead or close behind the 4:30 pacer... but I couldn't see him either direction. He was wearing a bright orange hat and would have been easy to spot from a distance. I kept asking people - volunteers, spectators - if they had seen him go by... it would have been within a couple min. if they had, so I thought they might be able to remember. Most of the answers were that they didn't know, some said yes and he was just ahead of me, others said he had not yet gone by. I got all these different answers, so kept asking - started when I came out of the porta-john towards the end of mile 10 and the last person I asked was at about 13.25 (the last answer I got was that he was about 2 min. ahead of me). This was a volunteer pointing runners to turn from a short gravel path onto a paved bike trail... it was pretty close to single track towards the end of the gravel path, so it isn't like there were huge crowds of runners at this point.

So at about mile 13.8, the 4:30 pacer caught up behind me... I guess all of those who said they hadn't seen him yet were the ones who were right. Anyway, I stayed with him for about a mile before falling back. My BG had started to run slightly low from around mile 12-ish and it wasn't even close to an emergency, but was starting to affect energy a little bit. Also, I didn't drink enough in the first 5-10 miles either and didn't get enough electrolytes either (I mix with water, so not drinking enough = not enough electrolytes).

At about mile 15 - around the time I fell behind the 4:30 pacer, the drinking/electrolyte fail caught up to me and my calves started cramping. I went from potentially having a PR to walking a lot. I took a Hot Shot to deal with the cramping and focused on drinking more electrolyte mix. Almost every water station after that, for the rest of the race, I added another Ultima pack to water. The cramps started to subside somewhere around mile 17-18, but then I was starting to feel some hot spots / blisters. Towards the end of mile 18, there was a first aid station and I got some moleskin, but it was too little too late.

And that's how I ended up going from a potential 4:30-ish PR to walking a substantial amount of the last 10 miles and finishing somewhere around 5:31 (I haven't checked my official time yet). To be fair, I didn't expect to PR at the start of the day, but the weather was perfect (started at 45F and finished in the 60'sF, and the rain didn't come until I was done). As I got started and was doing so well in the first several miles, I started to get the idea that maybe I could have a PR today and was starting to get excited before everything fell apart. Maybe I went out too fast... and I know there were times where I didn't drink in those first miles because I was pushing too hard to be willing to forgo even a few breaths to hydrate. So I went to the race initially planning to just finish in the allotted time. I did that, and got a lesson about drinking early and often, so I'm still calling it a success.

Race report:
This morning was the 3rd and final race in our local series, 3 times round the riverside park for a total of 7km. Although I've often laughed at the memes asking why one would want to pay to run someone you can run for free every day of the year, there was something for running a race on ground I'm so familiar with (like knowing which bits of grass hide holes and which are safe to run on instead of sticking to the brick path). My husband decided he was coming, so I knew from the start it was going to be more of an easy training run than a race for me. Ok, that is what my physio wanted me to do anyway, she made me promise not to race it hard as the furthest I've done since December is 8km anyway and that was at easy pace.
So we positioned ourselves at the very very back of the pack, a couple of metres behind everyone else. There were a couple of young (probably late teens) English-speaking girls wearing stupid pink sports bras and skimpy shorts in front of us who looked us up and down and laughed, which upset me a bit as my psoriasis and still not being used to not being the fat one makes me very self conscious. Tried to ignore them, but more about them later.
Our plan was to go slow and steady and just finish the race, we had agreed to run for 5 minutes or so and then I'd turn on my interval timer for us to run-walk-run it. It was actually almost 1km when we decided it was time to start the bleeper, which I had set to 90 second run, 30 second walk intervals. I was still deliberately jogging at a very easy pace, but we had passed a few people anyway. After the first couple of intervals husband said he was feeling good and suggested we only took every second walk break, so we did 3 and a half minute run, 30 second walk intervals for the rest of the first lap and around half the second. By then he was starting to look red in the face but still going, I thought he was slowing down but he later told me actually he thought I sped up. We completed our second lap ok, but he was pretty spent by then. At the 5km mark he told me he was going to walk the rest and grudgingly agreed I should go ahead and continue running. I stuck to my 90-30 intervals until km 6, but I was feeling really strong so was running harder during the runs. I passed a guy surrounded by paramedics who had fallen and hurt his shoulder (or that's what it looked like) and a little further ahead there was a woman unconscious on the ground, again surrounded by paramedics. I was glad at that point that I had taken it easy. Then, just after the 6km mark, I saw those 2 girls ahead of me. They were stopping and starting and looked from a distance to be struggling. Well I bet you can guess what thought came into my head.
Yeah, s*d physio, s*d taking it easy, s*d everything in fact but getting past those two judgemental little biatches who laughed at me at the start. So I started to push and overtook them around half a mile from the finish line. One final (very fast so they didn't catch me again) walk break and I decided that was it, no more walking. I didn't sprint the final stretch but I did run it harder than the rest of the race (my pace over the last km was around 1 minute faster than the others according to Strava). The clock read 51.35 as I crossed the line, so yeah slow but I'm still very happy with the way I ran it. It felt absolutely wonderful to have plenty left in the tank to finish strong, and showing silly young ladies in bikinis that scabby old women can beat them was AWESOME :-)

@midwesterner85 Glad you got your GI issues under control before the race. Any race you finish and learn something about yourself is a success. (Listen to me sounding like an expert when I haven't run a race in a couple of years. LOL) Glad you finished, even if it didn't go as planned. That's an awesome accomplishment in itself.

@eleanorhawkins Glad your husband went, to keep you from running harder than you should have. Also glad he told you to run the last lap at your own pace AND that you beat those silly girls. Maybe it taught them something. I doubt it, but we can always hope. Sounds like you had a great race. Hope the downed runners are okay.

Thanks for this. I am in for 60. Restarting my running clock after a long time, so taking it slow.

To all the moms in this thread, Happy Mother's Day! (it is an American thing I know, but moms are universal!)

5-1 injury idle
5-2 rest
5-3 injury idle
5-4 injury idle
5-5 injury idle
5-6 rest
5-7 3.5k slow
5-8 7.5k slow
5-9 rest
5-10 7k easy
5-11 11k slow
5-12 7k recovery

May Total: 36k
May Goal: 100k

January Total: 131k
February Total: 159.5k
March Total: 183k
April Total: 126k

Next year when you pop in here claiming your December 2019 mileage, what accomplishments will you have made?
Run at least 4 5k races.
Get under 30:00 and a PR for 5k.
Average at least 135k per month, which would put me over 1,000 miles for the year.

Run the Year Team: Five for Nineteen

So today's recovery run morphed into an easy run that morphed into a pace closer to threshold pace, so I guess my body is better.

@eleanorhawkins Way to represent!!!

2019 Races:

4-13 Shine the Light 5K - 31:12 chip time; First Place male 65 and older
6-1 Freedom 5K (Will be off the schedule due to another commitment)
6-30 Strides for Starfish 5K

@ereck44 congrats on your HM!
@samthepanda good luck on your HM! Run your plan and trust your training!
@eleanorhawkins WTG and lovely that you were able to get some back with those snotty people.
@midwesterner85 marathons are like bears for me, after I saw one IRL have been content not to see another. Congrats on completing under some struggling conditions sir.
@noblsheep good luck this weekend!
@shanaber good luck with your HM!
@ContraryMaryMary nice job smashing your run and ooohh wine!😮

No running this weekend for me. BIL birthday yesterday....and Friday was an adventure when my FIL, who has dementia, decided to drive around and got lost about 90 min from the house. Of course he couldn't tell me where he was other than Burger King, so I called the next town over, thinking from the area he described that was where he had ended up. The sheriff's department was great, sending officers to the 3 Burger King in their city but to no avail. Called FIL back and had him take his phone in so I could speak to one of the employees. Found out his location and hauled *kitten* up the road to him. Thank goodness he was safe,relatively. Convoy back home at a more sedate pace after getting him fed and calmed down. Today is rest, food prep, and
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Enjoyed the race reports and looking forward to reading more. Congrats to those that raced this week/weekend!

We had an open weekend so we went to our camper this weekend. When packing running clothes, I was a bit optimistic about the weather. After stalling for most of the day as it was cloudy and breezy, I finally decided that a run might actually warm me up. Plus after reading all the race reports there was no excuse not to get my run in. I borrowed a long sleeve shirt from my husband and set off. It’s very hilly here, so by a mile in I was done with the long sleeve shirt and tied that around my waist. The sun had poked out a bit too which was really nice to see. As I made my way down to the lake, I could see lots of colorful dresses. It must have been prom for one of the local schools as the parents were taking pictures of the kids out on the dock. Made for a nice little distraction as I ran past and up towards a hill before the turnaround spot.

Today we walked our dog up a nice big long hill and will likely take her out for another walk later before heading home.

5/1- 4 miles
5/2- 4 miles
5/3 - rest
5/4 - 4.5 miles
5/5 - walk 4 miles
5/6 - XT- cardio circuit
5/9 - 4 miles
5/11 - 5 miles
5/12 - walk 2 miles

Total 21.5 miles/Goal 50 miles

Hi all,

Stumbled across this today and will join late if that's ok!

I completed a sprint tri a few weeks ago and have sat on my *kitten* for 2 weeks eating cake ever since. So in a bid to not let my training go to waste and kick a few pounds before a wedding in June, yesterday I decided to start 30 days of running! 30 days, 30 runs, any distance.

Has anyone done this and got any tips?

Here's my totals so far:

5/11- 3.1 miles
5/12 - 3.53 miles

Total: 6.63 miles