Marathon Monday

Ok, so it's not quite Monday anymore, but close enough! Here's my wrap up of last week's training for the Marine Corps Marathon.

Monday evening was the first day of soccer practice for Big Kid. Seeing as how I didn't get up in the morning for my planned 7 miles, I took Little Man out in the jogging stroller for a little 5K during soccer. I failed to check the temperature before I started and almost died by mile 3 because I started out WAY too fast for the "felt like" 92 degrees. Oops! But at least I got a few miles in.

Tuesday morning was an easy speedwork day for the Ten Miler Team. It was a cut-back week for them. We did a mile warm up and then a 2 mile time trial. I ran my 2 miles in 16:48, my second fastest 2 mile time. Not bad considering the tired legs from the night before and still 12 seconds faster than I need to max my run on my PT test! We ended with a nice easy 1 mile cool down.

I actually managed to get up and run Wednesday morning and I got a nice easy 6.9 miles in! I tackled the hills along one of the bike path routes and then just kind of meandered through the neighborhood to get home. I finished the 6.9 miles in 1:10:09 – not a bad way to start off the day!

Thursday was a rest day for the team, so no practice. I ran a nice easy 3.2 miles on one of my flatter routes. Finished in 30:30.

Friday was a rest day for me. It was nice getting a little extra sleep. However, I was still up about 5:30 or so, so I got some crocheting done and I did a short 10 minute yoga work out!

Saturday I knocked out a super hilly 13.1 miles for my long run (no team practice as most everyone was racing 5Ks). I finished in 2:19:47 – 15 seconds per mile faster than when I ran this same route back in the spring!! After my turn around point (it was an out-and-back route), I saw a snake on the side of the road that was about as big around as my forearm. Thankfully it was dead, but talk about a spike in my heart rate! I felt pretty good after this run despite the hills. Training on hills will be nice come my half marathon in 4 weeks and the Marine Corps Marathon in October – both those courses are fairly flat!!

Sunday was a rest day, and it was nice sleeping in a little more than usual. However Little Man decided that 6:30 was a perfectly ok time to wake up; Mommy would have liked to have slept for another hour or hour and a half.

Total miles for the week – 29.4

It was a really good week of training!!

Wordless Wednesday

To go along with yesterday’s post. . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted via LiveJournal app for Android.

Toddler Tuesday

23 months. How in the world has my baby become a 23 month old toddler?? Almost 2 years! It's so much fun watching Little Man's personality come out more and more every day and his vocabulary growing by leaps and bounds (helped along by Big Brother, of course). If he likes something, he lets you know. If he doesn't like something, he definitely lets you know. I'm going to try and share 23 fun things about my Little Man to celebrate 23 months.

1 – He loves Mickey Mouse. And he knows how make "Mee Mou" appear on the TV – he'll grab the remote and bring it to Ryan or I and ask "Mee Mou peese". Or rather, demand. Once Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is on TV, he will actually sit still for almost 10 minutes!

2 – He knows a whole bunch of animal sounds! Cat, dog, cow, horse, sheep, chicken, rooster, duck, monkey, lion, tiger, snake. Maybe more that I can't remember off the top of my head.

3 – He's talking more and more in 2 word sentences and sometimes even 3 word sentences! "Up peese Mommy." "Light on?" "Cup peese." "Tat oo (thank you) Bubba." "Eat Daddy."

4 – He loves balls. Big ones, small ones, cat toy ones. He can throw and kick really well for a kid his age!

5 – He loves giving our kitty cat hugs and kisses. And he's finally figured out "gentle hands" and is starting to pet Callie more. And even better, Callie is tolerating him.

6 – He loves art – drawing, painting, coloring. One of the first things he heads for at daycare in the morning when we drop him off is the magna-doodle.

7 – He loves his Big Brother. No, he LOVES his Big Brother. If Big Kid is out playing with his friends or otherwise not around, we hear a lot of "Where Bubba?"

8 – He can put away some food. His favorites right now are yogurt (I get Chobani Champions for him), berries, grapes, cheese, corn on the cob, spaghetti, meatloaf, mac & cheese, and pancakes. And fruit snacks. He asks for "snack?" and he knows where they are. In fact. . .

9 – He can open doors with doorknobs (sometimes). We had to get doorknob covers because he could consistently open the pantry door where his fruit snacks and raisins are.

10 – Doors have to be closed. All the time. Heaven forbid you leave a door open when you leave the room. He will go and close it for you.

11 – He loves books. He "reads" by himself and he loves when we read to him.

12 – He loves his mommy. A LOT. If mommy's not in the room, he gets fussy and tries to find me. (Not that I'm complaining one bit!)

13 – He doesn't like to share his daddy (except with Big Brother). We were at a friend's house the other night and they have a 14 month old. Ryan was holding her and playing with her and Thomas ran up to him "No-no-no-no-no. Mine."

14 – He loves swings and slides. If it nice out (which it hasn't been lately again – TOO much rain) and I ask if he wants to go to the playground, his reply is "Yeah! YAY" complete with clapping.

15 – He also just loves playing outside in general. He likes "sweeping" our back patio.

16 – He likes riding his bike with Big Brother and friends. He can't quite pedal his tricycle yet, but he loves being out there and Ryan or I will push him. He wears his helmet just like the bigger kids do.

17 – He loves riding in the trailer behind my bike. He talks and laughs and giggles the whole time. And when we go over bumps, it's "bump, bump, bump!"

18 – He likes "running" with mommy, although the other day when I had him in the stroller he'd ask "Where Bubba?" about every 2 minutes.

19 – He loves to help with the recycling. He knows the difference between recycle and trash at home and will happily bring stuff to the recycle bin (or the trash can) when we ask him to. He also helps bring our recycling to the curb every Monday. And at church – he helps collect the bulletins from people that don't want to keep them and he puts them in the recycling basket. Everyone at church thinks it's really neat!

20 – He loves bringing us our shoes when we're getting ready to go bye-bye. And he knows the difference between boots and shoes and sandals.

21 – He doesn't like sleeping with anything – no pillow, no blanket, no stuffed animals. All his stuffed animals, his blanket, and his puppy pillow reside at one end of his crib and he sleeps at the other end. If you try and cover him with a blanket, he will kick/push it off before going to sleep.

22 – He loves exploring everything, but he's also pretty good about stopping exploring if one of us says "No touch."

23 – He knows "hot!" Every time I open the oven door, he reminds me "hot." And also food. Even yogurt, cheese, and berries are "hot" and need to be blown on.

Wow! That was harder than I thought it would be, but I hope you enjoy the snapshot of Little Man's life! Stay tuned tomorrow for some pictures of my Little Man.

Marathon Monday

It's time for another recap of my marathon training!! It wasn't the best of weeks, so this will be pretty short. It's all good though! One bad week doesn't make for a bad marathon.

Monday got the week off to a good start with a nice little 5K in the morning. Or not so nice. It was supposed to be 7, but everything just felt off so I cut my run short to save it for another day. 3.11 miles in 30:26, 9:47 pace.

Tuesday was our weekly speed session at a local high school track! I'm really enjoying the speed days with the Ten Mile Team. After a 1 mile warm up (9:32), we did 5x1K repeats and then walked from the finish to the start for recovery. I now know what a sub-25 5K feels like (kind of). My time for the 5K was 24:56, an 8:03 pace!! My goal is to someday run a sub-25 5K race. Then it was a mile cool down, again 9:32 for me!

Wednesday had another 7 on the schedule, but I don't remember what happened. Sleep probably.

Thursday was a 65 minute run with the goal of getting a negative split. I made that happen, and had a nice little progression run as well (each mile is faster than the previous). I ran 6.65 hilly miles in the 65 minutes, 9:47 pace!! I'll take that.

Friday was a planned rest day which worked well since I had early formation for a ceremony.

Saturday was our team long run day, but the weather didn't cooperate. It was POURING at 6 a.m. when we were supposed to start. I'll run in the rain, but this was ridiculous and our team coach decided we weren't going to run. Not to mention that there was lightning about 20 miles away and getting closer.

Sunday morning was going to be my long run make-up day, but I ended up sleeping through my alarm and was awakened by my "Thomas alarm" at 8:00! The extra sleep sure was nice, but running would have been nice as well. I had 14 on the schedule and that just didn't happen. Oh well.

Total miles for the week – 14.9

Overall I'm happy with the runs that I did get in, especially with the speed session on Tuesday. On to next week!!

Tasty Tuesday!!

I tried something new for breakfast this morning and it was YUMMY!!! I've been reading about Oatmeal in a Jar on various blogs and hearing about it on Twitter for some time now and I've always been leery of trying it. Cold oatmeal?? Hmm. . . Well, I'm out of my granola that I like to mix with my Chobani yogurt that I have for breakfast and I had an empty peanut butter jar sitting on the counter, so I thought I'd give it a try. I googled Oatmeal in a Jar and found about 6 or 7 different blog posts with varying recipes and then I just kind of did my own thing. Basically I wanted an idea of how much oatmeal and how much liquid to use. Here's what I used:
— a heaping 1/2 cup of old-fashioned oats
— about 2/3 cup of skim milk
— a tablespoon of ground flax seed
— a teaspoon of cinnamon
— a teaspoon of honey (I drizzled that on top this morning)
I mixed it all together in the peanut butter jar and stuck it in the fridge, figuring that if I didn't like it, I wasn't out that much stuff. When it was time for breakfast this morning, I took it out of the fridge, scraped the jar (to get all the peanut butter!), and dumped it into a bowl (you can eat it out of the jar, but our pb jar was rather large and I couldn't get a spoon in it without making a total mess). I gave it a good stir to mix the peanut butter in and proceeded to try it. Like it said at the beginning – it was YUMMY!!!! I was almost sad when my bowl was empty because it was so good.

I will definitely be doing this again next time I have another empty peanut butter jar. Oh wait! That's tonight! I have another empty jar so I'll be having more Oatmeal in a Jar tomorrow morning for breakfast!

(We don't really go through peanut butter THAT fast. The jar from last night was the empty jar from our unit luncheon last week; we brought peanut butter & jelly sandwiches to go with the "Back to School" theme of the luncheon.)

Marathon Monday

I had another really good week of training last week! Training with the Ten Mile Team really helps keep me consistent, and the encouragement I get from the team members is awesome.

I started off the week with a rest day on Monday. When I went to bed Sunday night I was undecided as to whether I would run, go for a bike ride, or put in a yoga DVD. The answer? None of the above. I forgot to set my alarm to workout time, so I got some extra (and probably much needed) sleep!

Tuesday morning was speed work at the track! I've really come to look forward to speed days, and Tuesday was an awesome workout. After a mile warm up, we did 4×800 with 90-120 seconds rest in between followed by 4×400 with 200 meters recovery followed by 2×1 mile with a few minutes rest in between!! My average pace for my 2 miles was 8:47, even after the other stuff!! I'm definitely getting to be a stronger runner. After a .8 mile cool down, my total mileage for the morning was right around 7.3 miles. Not a bad way to start the week!

Wednesday morning was another rest morning. I think I had planned on getting up and getting 5-6 miles in, but I think I must have needed sleep.

Thursday morning was fartleks on one of the dirt roads we run on. We did a 10 minute warmup followed by 5 sets of 5 minutes at 10 mile race pace and 5 minutes recovery and a 10 minute cool down. I had to walk a little during the recovery times, but I still had a great workout! I covered 6.9 miles in an hour and ten minutes.

Friday morning we had a Change of Command ceremony to march, so it was an early formation/no workout kind of morning. It was close to 80 by the time the ceremony started and I think I got my workout in from marching and standing on the field in the heat.

Saturday morning was an awesome long run! It was the complete opposite of last week's. I ran just over 12 miles in 2:07:35 – 2+ miles farther and about 20 seconds per mile FASTER than my 10 last weekend! It's amazing what a couple degrees cooler temperature and proper fueling and hydration can do for a run. After we were done with our long runs (everyone went different distances and routes), we waded around in the lake for a while after just chatting and enjoying the social aspect of running. Although the lake water is pretty warm, it still felt really good on my legs after the run.

I had planned on doing a 3-4 mile recovery run Sunday morning before church, but after the awesome run Saturday morning and a church pool party Saturday afternoon, I was tired. I got a wonderful 10 hours of sleep overnight Saturday! It was kind of nice sleeping in and just using my "Thomas alarm".

My total miles for the week was 26.5 – that makes 2 weeks in a row with mileage over a marathon! Now to keep up on that consistency.

Five Things Friday

Here are five little tidbits to end my week. . .

1 – We are 4 days into the school year (yes, Robert has started 4th grade already – they start early here on Post) and Robert has missed 2 days of school. At lunchtime on day 2 (Wednesday) we got a call from the school nurse that Robert had a 101 degree temperature. Ryan went and picked him up and he spent the rest of that day and most of Thursday cuddled on the couch. We took him to his doctor on Thursday; doc said it is most likely a virus, so not much he can do. Strep test came back negative, but alternating tylenol and motrin every 3 hours helped to finally get rid of the fever and help him feel better. Today he's pretty much back to his normal self.

2 – The Band's change of command season is over for this year. We did change of command #7 this morning – this was a busy year for us here. I know that most other places the band does 6-7 a WEEK for several weeks, but there's not that many permanent party units here. It sure was humid on the field this morning – I had to keep wiping my left hand on my uniform because it was so sweaty my horn was slipping and I didn't want to drop it. But we survived!

3 – We took some time this afternoon to pull probably 75% of the stuff out of the garage, go through some boxes, throw some stuff out, put some stuff in the thrift store box, and reorganize everything. We actually have room to move around in there now and it looks a whole lot better. We still have a few boxes to go through, but it's a ton better than it was.

4 – We really love our neighborhood center pool! We picked Thomas up a little early this afternoon and had a great time playing in the water until they had to close the pool due to thunder. Thomas loves going underwater (he jumps in off the edge or we dunk him under). He always comes up giggling! Robert is becoming quite the fish and has a lot of fun playing with his friends. We don't even worry about him anymore – he just goes off and does his own thing. But then he'll come back and play with Thomas for a while, too.

5 – Thomas love Mickey Mouse. And he knows how to go about watching Mickey Mouse on TV. He'll bring the TV remote to Daddy and say "Mee Mou! Mee Mou!" We've set our Tivo to record Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so we always have "Mee Mou" that he can watch. I'm thinking that when we start working on his big boy room in a few months, it's going to have a Mickey Mouse theme.

Marathon Monday

My marathon Monday posts are back! My next goal race is the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., in October, but that's also going to be part of my training for the Dopey Challenge at Walt Disney World in January. So now you get to read all about my training for the next 5+ months!! Feel free to offer me encouragement and/or words of advice.

This past week I finally got my training back on track and actually logged over a marathon of miles. Training with the Fort Rucker Army Ten Mile team really helps. I didn't make the team but I will still be able to train with them! They are an awesome group of runners and Soldiers.  Anyway, on to my training. . .

Monday was a rest day although it was anything but a sleep in day. One of my Soldiers and I had formation at 0500 for the trip to Fort Benning, GA, for a school for him. It was a long day with the 2 1/2 hour ride there, standing around waiting, and the 2 1/2 hour ride back (on a Bluebird bus, nonetheless), and then I still had a rehearsal to go to in the afternoon.

Tuesday was speed work day at the track with the team. We did a 1 mile warm up and then 4×800 m repeats with 2-3 minutes rest in between and then 4×400 m repeats with 200 m in between. Then we did 4×100 m strides and a 1/2 mile cool down. It was going to be 8×400 and a mile cool down, but with the 100% humidity, it was pretty miserable running. But it was still a really good workout! I got a total of 5.3 miles in.

Wednesday was an easy 5 mile run on my own. It was nice running one of my usual routes again. It was 75 degrees and 94% humidity, but I managed 5.1 miles in 49:47.

Thursday was a short run with the team to taper for Saturday's 10 mile run off. I ran 3 miles in 29:29 on part of the course that we'd be using on Saturday.

Friday was supposed to be a rest day, but we had a Battalion Run so I didn't get a day off, but it all worked out. We ran 3.3 miles in 29:15 (an 8:53 pace). It was a pretty nice little run, our first with our new Battalion Commander.

Saturday morning was our team 10 mile run off to determine the team. Like I said earlier, I didn't make the team, but that's ok. It's been awesome training and I will continue to train with them! I ran my hot, humid, hilly 10 miles in 1:48:17 – about 10 minutes slower than my goal. It was 75 degrees and 100% humidity when we started and I really should have carried my water with me. I didn't get any water until almost mile 5 and that really did me in. Our coach/team captain was at the turn around and had my water bottle and also gave me a bottle of Gatorade. I finished off the 20 oz of Gatorade during the second 5 miles and then finished off my 24 oz water bottle as well. I lost 4 1/2 pounds during the run, if that says anything. But I finished and it was really nice having everyone else there waiting for me and cheering me on (unlike last year's 10 mile run off when there were only 2 other runners left when I finished). The team dynamic this year is a lot better than last year and I really enjoy running with them.

Total miles for the week – 26.7, and I ran 5 days in a row!! It was a great week despite all the heat and humidity. That's what you get when you live in southern Alabama.