June 2019 Monthly Running Challenge

I've missed so many posts.

The last few days have been a bit crazy. I was sick, then hubby came down with the same cold, then a couple of days later our 5yo got it, and last night miss 3 showed symptoms. So that's been fun.

Had my last day of work, that was emotional. They all put in to give me a gift card towards new running shoes!! Wooo hooo! And my shoes arrived from amazon, a week early! And i didn't have to pay duty. Only thing is they are in our new city and we are still in our old one haha.

This weekend is all about packing. But with hubbies cold turning into man flu (I've been up and about about 2 days after getting it, it's been 4 and he's still too sick to do much. WTH.) the packing process is a bit slow. And today we are supposed to have another open home. Sigh. It all happens at once.

Its going to be a few days before I run again, I've got a horrible chesty cough. And someone packed my running gear.

What ever happens this week, it will all be over by Friday. I can't wait!

I did 5.1 miles for my 51 birthday run. Weather was absolutely perfect for a slow run - just about 70 with a nice soft wind and no humidity, sun was out but not direct, just felt like a kindly day.

In fact I felt a little bit like a Disney princess all day, or maybe Saint Francis! It started when I was doing my morning stretching routine on the back patio and six cardinals lined up in a row on our fence, about ten yards away, to watch me. We have a nest in the tree right outside our kitchen window, and this cardinal family watches me eat breakfast every morning, and then I fill the feeder and watch them eat breakfast. If there wasn’t a window, I could reach out and touch them, so they have gotten very accustomed to me. Well, on my birthday, for the first time ever, the children were old enough that the parents brought them to the feeder!

Then we went for a run and on our warm up walk, this happened:
This guy didn’t even seem bothered by us, just kept nibbling. And then when we walked away, we noticed there was a second one just a few feet further down the path. There are scads of bunnies at this park, but we almost never see them on the trails, they mostly hang about in the open meadows.

So then we noticed this tree had some unusual ornamentation:

And while we were standing there, this happened:
At one point, according to my husband, I had six on my hat and two on my shoulder, but they didn’t like him trying to get a picture and most of them flew away.

After our nature encounters we started our run. I was a little concerned because five miles is longer than I’ve gone since my tendon injury, and it was honestly a little sore towards the end of the run, although it never got to the point of what I would call pain. We sprinted the last tenth of a mile and got up to a six minute pace, which is really really fast for me, even sprinting. My leg muscles tired quickly, I think mostly because of lifting the day before, but cardio-wise the run felt really good. And the ankle turns out to be fine afterwards, yay!

I always set six month goals on my birthday. This year’s running goal was to run a sub 60 10k before my birthday, which I did before I was injured. Now my goal is to rehab this ankle solidly while keeping as much fitness as possible.

Also on my birthday, does anyone remember the Sally push-up challenge from a few months back? I have been slowly but steadily chugging along, increasing my time and decreasing my elevation, and I finished the challenge yesterday. Doing proper good form toe pushups on the floor. This has been a long time coming, and it wasn’t easy - every other day I did as much as I could before collapsing, then gave myself a one minute break, then did more. Initially it took me three one minute rest breaks to get through the whole song, then I got it down to two, then one, then a thirty second break, and yesterday I finally managed the whole thing. My arms felt like noodles!

My birthday challenge last year was to do a ten second handstand. Which I am still working on. I have done it a couple of times, but can’t do it consistently.

Looking forward at new goals, I think I want to switch things up a bit. I have a habit of being enthusiastic about new things for a couple of years and then losing interest. So my goal now is to work on having as much fun as possible while keeping up my running and strength goals. To focus on enjoying doing it, and to make it an enriching part of my whole life, so that I keep doing it because I love it.

HI everyone!

I am in for 55 miles again this month.

6/1....4.19 miles (Monon trail)
6/4...6.63 miles ( Monon trail)
6/6...4.24 miles (Monon trail)
6/7...4.24 miles (Monon trail)
6/11...7.76 miles (Monon trail)
6/13....2.02 miles (treadmill)
6/14....4.19 miles (Monon trail)

Total....33.26 miles
Goal....55 miles.

Say, it's tough keeping up with this thread.

I have to work a stretch of days due to having to reconfigure my schedule. So trying to get a short run on the treadmill on those consecutive days that I have to work.

It was cool on Friday and just a pleasure to run on the trail. However I had to quicken my pace quite a bit due to needing to go to the bathroom after running 2.5 miles. Oh well. I am using the 10% rule. I would have run much farther this week, but I like this tool. I think that it is easier to recover if you can build up to longer and longer distances.

As you know, I am a huge horse racing fan. I just read an interesting article about Afleet Alex (2005 Preakness and Belmont Stakes winner). This horse loved working out so much that the trainer used to work him 2 x per day. Pretty interesting. He had almost been knocked to his knees during the Preakness and had so much athleticism that he not only recovered but won the race.

So I am considering 2 a days when I get a stretch of days off, which won't be until the end of June.

I hope everyone is well, and good luck to those racing this weekend.

Goal: 100
June 1: 7 miles
June 2: 7 miles
June 4: 14.58 miles
June 5: 7.8 miles
June 8: 2.3 Miles
June 9: 9.86 Miles
June 11 14.89 miles
June 12 7.6 miles
June 15 6.98 miles (wish Id known i was that close)
Total: 77.98 Miles
Remaining: 22.2 miles

Cruising through June. Going to breeze past 100 miles in the next week

Wow, I'm away from the house for one day and I miss pretty much a million posts here. You guys are THE BEST, and yes I would love to see you all in Spain (but don't come in August, it gets freakin' hot and you can't run without tripping over tourists).
First, a few responses:
@Scott6255 I went through something similar 3 years ago. I had landed what on paper was a really great job on a local newspaper and was quickly promoted to editor. Nobody told me beforehand the only reason was nobody else was naive enough to take it... it involved working about 17-18 hours a day and enduring endless abuse from the owners. I still have nightmares about them now. We needed the money, but I eventually realised that my mental health was far more important, so I quit. Best thing I ever did, I now freelance from home for various different clients. Sure, financially things are a lot tighter, but I'm happy and my daughter is happy and that's what is important to me right now.
@noblsheep @MegaMooseEsq @Elise4270 I'm speechless at your generosity. But we must investigate shipping costs!
@shanaber my mother and I have had weirdo magnets for as long as I can remember. Seriously, if there is a weirdo in the house, he will gravitate towards us within seconds! I am relieved to report that the race was big enough for weirdo to not find me last night (or he wasn't there, probably more likely actually!) :-)

Now for a quick race report. As you all know cause I've been going on about it a lot, I was worried about the 1hr15min cut off time for the 10km race as it was my first time racing that distance (I went from 5km to HM last year with nothing in between). I even considered swapping for the 5km (which had a cut off of 45 min, wth? How does that compute?) but my invisible friends on MFP helped me realise that even if I didn't make it nobody would shoot me and life would go on.
I was also worried because I usually run first thing in the morning on coffee and a banana and this had a 9.30pm start and we had a family member's daughter's first communion celebration during the day which involved a lot of junk food and cake and candy. I am a nervous driver and the race was in the big city about half an hour from home, which I don't know well, and husband and daughter didn't want to come up and hang about waiting for me that late in the day so I had to drive myself.
I left the party at 7pm, came home, changed, sat down for a while then left just before 8pm. Traffic was ok, only one queue to get into the city, I missed my turning but managed to find my way back from the next one and parked in a gap among a bunch of vehicles full of people wearing race shirts. The ugly bright orange race shirt we were asked to wear had its uses!
Found the way into the stadium where the races started and finished in time to watch the kids races on the track and look for the bathroom. Another first for the list.... I was directed towards a line of porta-potties. Is that a runner's baptism of sorts? Thank God I was wearing my ridiculous looking but absolutely awesome trail running belt with a million pockets and space for 2 water bottles, which had a packet of tissues in one pocket :-)
Still had about half an hour to kill and people were jogging on the track to warm up so I decided to join in. I'd never run on a track before, aren't they nice and bouncy!
When they called us to start lining up I made sure I was close to the back, then moved back again when I saw the 60 minute pacer flag even further behind me. Then we were off (surprisingly on time!) and running down towards the beach. It was comfortably cool and pleasant. I ran for 1km, then started my run-walk intervals which I kept up (except I think I missed a few whistles somewhere along the way and ran through a couple of intervals) until I got back to the turn into the stadium at the end of the second loop. There were probably 5 or 6 people who I kept passing when running and then being passed by when walking for most of the first loop, then once I passed the turn off for the 5km finish things spaced out, but I could still see the 60 min pacer flag not far ahead of me so knew I was doing ok. The beautiful sunset behind the city to my left and the sea to my right had kept me distracted during the first loop but by the second it was dark and the views were getting old, at which point I really appreciated my music to pace myself with. There were guys on bikes checking people were ok, and the same one asked me 3 times during walk intervals how I was doing... "awesome!" I kept replying. The 4th time he passed me he yelled over his shoulder "not asking you anymore, you're awesome, if you stop being awesome flag me down!"
Passed the 9km marker and I was feeling tired but still going strong. I thought about running from there but made myself do a couple more 30 second walk intervals, passed a few people who had pretty much run out of steam. At the corner to turn into the stadium and make a lap of the track to the finish line I turned the timer off and went for it. Passed 3 people on that track which really made my competitive streak happy. Crossed the line all on my own, clock showed 1hr4min50secs as I approached, think I got over before it passed 1.05. Strave made it 9.62km not 10km, but it gave me a ton of PRs so I don't care lol.
I have a terrible habit of not cooling down or stretching properly after races and my legs pay the price. So I left the crowded stadium after grabbing a bottle of water and made myself walk around outside for 10 minutes, then went to my car and did a little stretching before getting in and coming home. The journey was ok, but once I got into our street I realised how tired I was when I couldn't for the life of me remember where I had put the garage door remote or my house keys... Eventually found them in the glove compartment. Got home, showered, went to bed, couldn't get to sleep for ages because I was still buzzing!
Still buzzing this morning :-) Legs feel tired but don't actually hurt, but will be resting them today anyway.
I do love racing, even if I'll never win anything. When can I do it again?

ETA... sorry, it ended up not being quick!

Skipped two runs last week because I didn't feel well at all. Never got sick, but I was tired, my legs felt heavy, and had no desire to go out and run. So I gave myself a pass for a few days and will pick up where I left off this week. I have a 5K race on Saturday and a 10K on July 4th. I'm hoping whatever funk I'm in passes quickly. Heading out for 5.5Ms once I finish typing this then leaving for another work trip this afternoon. Is it normal to sometimes just get to a point where you need a few days off despite not being injured or sick?

Played golf with my Dad yesterday for Father's Day since I have to leave this afternoon. Happy Father's Day to all the Daddies out there. Enjoy your day!