Category Archives: i like to run.

the final hills

core challenge, i like to run.

It’s been a busy week, but I managed to get in all my workouts.

Tuesday night was our last hill workout. Twelve 200-meter repeats up a bridge, with a goal of 63 seconds. It went pretty well. In the beginning it felt a little tedious, but got better once we had a few hills competed.

Here’s the rundown:

  1. 57
  2. 57
  3. 60
  4. 61
  5. 60
  6. 61
  7. 60
  8. 62
  9. 61
  10. 63
  11. 61
  12. 61

Well, I wasn’t able to keep them too much under my goal like I could with some of the shorter sessions, but I stayed pretty consistent.

I thought I was going to have a tough time getting a second run and core workout in mid-week. My choir has concerts this weekend, which meant rehearsals almost every day. Fortunately we got out early Wednesday night and I got to work!

First I hit the treadmill. I planned on keeping it a slow run so I could also watch TV on my laptop. I figured I could multitask — I had a bit of a backlog on the DVR and really want to be able to clear it off before I go on vacation. By watching an episode online, that was one more thing I could delete!

It’s hard to watch TV when you’re running fast, so I kept it easy. But I did have to kick it up towards the end. I was watching a recent episode of 90210 where the Glorious Steinums take the stage …

What a great song. I definitely switched from jog to run once that came on! I managed to finish 4.5 miles by the end of the episode.

Core Challenge Week 3 Day 1

I also wanted to squeeze in a core workout after my treadmill run. I didn’t want anything too long, though, since I got a late start. It was the perfect time to try out the 10 Minute Solutions DVD I got as a freebie at Fitbloggin’!

10 Minute Solution boot camp

To qualify for my Core Challenge,  I selected “Six Pack Ab Attack.” This was a fast-paced workout, squeezing a lot of good ab exercises into 10 minutes.  I liked that it moved quickly, and there were definitely some challenging exercises in there. I didn’t really care for the ‘Boot Camp’ theme, though. Saluting and calling the viewers ‘recruit’ and ‘soldier’ seemed a bit silly. It can still be a ‘Boot Camp’ without a military angle!

I also was working out in a small room and it was a little hard to maneuver so I could still see the screen.  Overall I liked it, and look forward to trying the other exercises. These will be great when I only have time for a quick workout!

looking forward

i like to run., triathlon

Since the Goofy Challenge in January, there hasn’t been too much on my plate.  The only other race I ran this year was this month!

Things are going to start picking up. At the end of May, I’ll be running the Maryland Half Marathon. I love the half marathon distance and wanted a spring race, so this fit the bill. It’ll be a hilly course so I probably won’t be going for a PR, but I’m still hoping for a strong race!

In June I’ve signed up for another hilly race, the Baltimore 10-Miler. I’ve heard great things about this event, and they are known for their excellent premiums!

The next big event (so far!) doesn’t come until late August, when I’ll be doing the Iron Girl sprint triathlon for the third time. To help me train, I’ve signed up for a triathlon class at the rec center. It starts in June and runs until the week before the race. While I did well training on my own last year, I didn’t get nearly enough brick workouts in. This once-a-week class seems like the perfect solution!

We’ll be ending our summer once again in Virginia Beach, where I’ll be running the Rock and Roll Half Marathon for the sixth time. My training for this race has been a little lacking recently, since my focus over the last two summers has been the triathlon instead of distance.

But this year it’s going to be different. I’m going to have to incorporate a lot more distance training over the summer to prepare for the Marine Corps Marathon on October 31.

In addition to all these big events, I’ll be participating in one or two 10Ks and quite a few of these 5Ks throughout the summer.

I’m excited!

workout update

core challenge, i like to run.

On Tuesday night, we had 10 hill repeats on the schedule. If you haven’t been following along,  we’ve been running 200 meters up a bridge. My prescribed pace is 63 seconds, and most of the time, I’ve been hitting or exceeding my goals.

We had another rainy day and I really wasn’t looking forward to it. But it wasn’t quite as cold as last time. And I really didn’t want to run my hills on the treadmill again!

  1. 56
  2. 59
  3. 60
  4. 60
  5. 61
  6. 61
  7. 62
  8. 61
  9. 58
  10. 65

Yeah … that last lap only looks like it was  too slow.  There were only four of us that braved the rain (that turned to drizzle and stopped) … Two guys and two girls. The guys were faster, and one of them thought it would be funny to move the marker on us. We ran about .01 too far. It makes a difference when you’re only running for a minute!

My only other run was on Saturday this week. It was a sunny day, about 60F. Lovely!

We didn’t have too much time so we just planned a loop through town for a little over six miles. We had to get back in time for another boot camp session!

There’s a trainer in town that offers occasional free classes. I’m going to try to do them as often as I can since they’re really good workouts!

We started with a half-mile warmup run around the track (well, we were already warmed up, but I always like the extra mileage!) and got to work.

After a variety of exercises including push-ups, tricep dips, sideways stair-climbing, medicine-ball passing and tethered running, we had a decent series of ab exercises. Perfect for my core challenge workout!

Core Challenge Week 2 Day 2

I don’t know the names of all the exercises we did, but they included reverse crunches, bicycle, passing a basketball from overhead to our feet and passing a 10-pound medicine ball from overhead to our knees. We finished off with a one-minute dolphin plank hold.

I’m pretty sore today. That means it’s working, right?

race report: cherry pit 10 miler

i like to run.

It’s kind of nice that I so often run races without any expectations.  It’s even more exciting when I have a good race!

Today I ran the Cherry Pit 10-Miler — a local alternative to the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run in DC, also held today.

I ran the Cherry Blossom race once, and it was nice (though it rained that year!). I’m just as happy running my club’s version. It takes about 15 minutes to get to get there,  rather than at least an hour. And I don’t have to deal with the Metro and crowds. Plus today, I waited in line for less than five minutes for REAL restrooms. When I raced in DC the port-o-pot lines were so long that I didn’t get a chance to go before the race!

Our little race (less than 400 finishers) starts just south of Annapolis, but the surrounding area quickly changes from residential to farmland.  There’s beautiful scenery, I love running past the horses and cows. And we had a perfect day. The sun was shining, and it was probably in the mid-50s or low 60s when we started running.

I, of course, was a tiny bit overdressed (capri tights and long sleeve tech shirt layed under my race team singlet), but I was comfortable with pushed-up sleeves once it started warming up.

There was a bit of a tragedy just before we started. We went outside to line up, and my beloved Garmin wouldn’t turn on! A friend of mine said that happened to him once. Apparently if it’s being charged and there is an interruption in the power, it will shut itself down. I had it charging overnight, and didn’t turn it on until we lined up since we waited indoors.  He couldn’t remember what to do to fix it, so I had to run Garminless. (It’s fine now, I just had to look up the reset sequence.)

Luckily, I’m a gadget dork and I had backup — my iPod with Nike+. Unfortunately, it’s not always the most accurate  tracking mileage. Sometimes it tracks way too long, especially when I’m running slow. Lately I’ve been coming up short. It’s usually happy with my race pace  (well, my 5K race pace) — so I was hoping for the best!

It was helpful to have the timer … but I have no splits. I couldn’t even mentally do them because mile two was placed wrong — it was more like 1.5. We are positive we weren’t running seven minute miles!

The other markers seemed about right. We hit mile three at about 28 minutes. Not bad, not bad. Mile four was around 37. I didn’t catch my time at mile five, but it was well under 50 minutes, which would be in line with my previous 10-mile PR. I wondered if I could keep it up! (Also, if those mile markers were right!)

I kept hitting the miles at good times. When I had two miles to go, I pretty much knew I was looking at a new PR. And this is a hilly race!

I kept moving, and was feeling good.  There was little twinge in my hip flexor (which is not unusual), but fortunately mild. And a little achilles pain — likely due to the slope of the roads. But  not bad enough to slow me down.

I know at least once I accidentally paused my timer. I wondered how far off I was from the race clock. But the numbers were still good when I crossed the finish line.

Official time: 1:35:02

Previous 10-mile PR: 1:40:12

Now my first thought was that the course was short.  I checked with a couple people with functional Garmins, and it was spot on. My iPod didn’t do too badly today either,  with 10.14.

Awesome.  I had no idea I could carry a 9:30 pace for 10 miles!

core challenge: week 1 day 1

core challenge, i like to run.

I couldn’t resist. I signed up even before I saw the cute logo.

Laura at Box, Run, Eat decided to create a Core Challenge for the next month. In keeping with the challenge, I will be adding core workouts twice a week until the beginning of May.

The timing was good for this. I just finished the EA Sports Active “More Workouts” 6-week challenge (uh… in 11 weeks), so I was ready to add something different to my routine.

After tonight’s run (4.5 miles — it was another hot and sticky day. But no hills!), I decided to see how long I could hold a plank. I do yoga regularly and am used to the plank position, but I never tried to hold one for a really long time!

Our core challenge hostess recently held a plank for over three and a half minutes. I had no idea what I could do, so I just set a timer on my phone and went for it. Of course my phone goes to sleep after about a minute and a half so I did lift an arm and shift a little to turn it back on … twice. I did manage to stay up for 3:30 before giving up. I think I could have gone longer, but my socks were slipping. Next time no socks, and a better timer!

After that, I returned to my familiar friend, “More Workouts.” Yes I have completed all of the full-body challenge workouts, but they also have separate standalone workouts that I hadn’t tried yet. I selected the ab workout — on hard. This may have been a mistake, but I just finished the whole challenge on hard!

I skipped the warmup since I had just run, so it was 15 minutes of ab work. We did a few sets of the game’s four ab exercises.

  1. Leg lifts (15)
  2. Reverse crunches (15)
  3. Crunches with punches (16)
  4. Curl ups (16)
  5. Leg lifts (20)
  6. Reverse crunches (20)
  7. Crunches with punches (20)
  8. Curl ups (20)
  9. Leg lifts (20)
  10. Reverse crunches (20)
  11. Crunches with punches (20)
  12. Curl ups (20)

By that last set, there was a lot less ‘up’ in my curl ups!

I’ve got a vacation coming up (that actually might make finishing this challenge a bit difficult), but hopefully it will help me get ready to spend a week in a bikini!

It’s not to late to sign up for the core challenge … just visit Laura and let her know you’re joining us!