Don't Call it a Comeback

Well it’s been a little over a month since the last update. Im excited to say that I’m back to running again! I was cleared a little after six full weeks off (early-ish October). Jer and I wanted to take a more cautious back-to-training plan than what the doctor prescribed though. The thing we’re both worried about is coming back too aggressively only to be sidelined again. So we started off with 8 x 1 minute jogging/1 minute walking and slowly progressed from there.

Finally, three weeks later, I was able to do my first running workout. It had been ten weeks since the last time I went FAST! Jer gave me a fartlek, 5 x 2 minutes on/1 minute off. I had been doing all my runs on grass, but I convinced him to let me do my fast parts on the track because I was curious to see exactly how fast I was going. I ended up average 5:25-5:35 pace for the 2 minutes on segements. I did the minute recoveries on the grass. I was extremely gassed on the last few, but I can’t begin to describe how amazing it felt to move my legs again, to feel my lungs working that hard, and to just be on the track putting one foot in front of the other again.

My next workout was nearly a week later, a three mile tempo at 6:30-6:40 pace. I was really nervous going into this one. To me it was going to be a true testament to what kind of shape I was in after taking soooo much time off. It was also going to show if all that time I spent cross training actually did anything. It was a really muggy day, so I was crossing my fingers that I could even hit the prescribed goal pace; usually my asthma is so bad on humid days. I get started and end up hitting the 200m in 43 (5:45-ish pace) and knew that I’d be ok. I slowed it down and hit 6:13, 6:13, 6:09 for the three consecutive 1600’s. Needless to say I was ecstatic with how the workout went. This is basically what I would consider a good workout after coming back from a season break (1-1.5 weeks off).

My last big workout was Thursday. It was seven by alternating 1000m’s at 6:00 pace for the fast ones and 7:00 pace for the up-tempo ones. I ended up averaging 6:08 pace for the 7000 meters and worked my fast ones down from 3:39-3:31. It has been the best feeling workout since coming back. No issues breathing and I felt like my old self.

As of now I’m running two to three times a weeks with my mileage being around 12-20 miles per week. We’re focusing more on getting in running workouts rather than mileage right now. So I’ve been supplementing the low mileage with hours and hours of cross training (11-13 hours a week of it). The cross training has been more geared towards swimming and aqua jogging now, since the intensity has gone up with running. I’m still doing a little ellipticalling and exercise biking, but not as much as before.

A lot of other wonderful things have happened over the last month. For one, my midget twin/bff recently got engaged to the sweetest guy in Fort Worth. Will and Lizzie are the kindest people and I’m so excited to see them venture into marriage. Oh and that isn’t the only exciting life event that happened to Lizzie recently, just a few weeks ago she qualified for the 2016 Olympic Trials! She ran an impressive 2:42 at the Chicago Marathon. So proud of her!!

The last piece of running news comes from my assistant coaching world. The men and women's teams at Trinity captured their second consecutive conference titles!! Last year the ladies made history by running a perfect score (finishing 1-2-3-4-5). This year they decided to repeat that difficult feat! In the men’s race we knew Colorado College would be our toughest competition. The entire race it was as close as it could be. Well we ended up winning by ONE point! IT was a great day to be a Trinity Tiger!! We just got back from Regionals on Sunday and our ladies won the team title for the second straight year. We’re headed to Indiana tomorrow for the 2013 NCAA Division III National Championships! The girls are actually racing on the SAME course Liz and I ran on our senior year where we placed sixth overall as a team. The team this year is just as driven and is in a great position to make Trinity and SCAC history!

TUXC - 2013 SCAC Champions!

Golden Year

Last Friday, the 27th of September, was my 27th birthday. 27 on the 27th! I just recently found out that means it’s my GOLDEN YEAR!! How cool does that sound? It supposedly means it’ll be my best year and I hope that turns out to be true. It has at least started out that way. I had the best birthday weekend ever, surrounded by so many friends and family.

It started off with an awesome breakfast, post workout, from my wonderful husband Jeremy. He brought me my favorite bagel and drink from Panera. A couple hours later was lunch with the best team in the world, at Trinity’s dining hall. The team gave me a GIANT birthday card (the biggest I’ve ever gotten), a cute stuffed puppy, and a big bag of sour patch kids. They are a great group of kids.

Asiago bagel and caramel frozen drink...yum!

TUXC lunch...sooooooo happy!

Biggest birthday card EVA!

My cute puppy and the kindest words in the world

In the evening time we planned a dinner at one of my favorite places, Sushi Zushi, and then moved the party over to our house. It was also a pretty diverse group, united only by being beautiful, awesome people. It ranged from middle school best friend, college roommates, running community friends, family, work friends, and even a college running rival who has become one of my bff’s. There was tons of yummy food, great drinks, and lots of fun! 

Sushi Zushi group...so good

We made a cake for some awesome friends that came over...I think I'll keep my day job :)

Party peeps!

They forced me to get on the table

The weekend capped off with a trip over to my parents. The food was delicious, the company was spectacular, and I even got to try out some stick shift driving! GAH! It went as well as expected….no one died (except for Jer’s car’s engine a couple times), so I consider that a win.

Now what kind of running blog would this be if I didn’t mention running? Well guys, I haven’t done a lot of it the last six weeks. In fact, today marks exactly six weeks of ZERO running for me. I was experiencing some slight discomfort in my lower right shin and turns out it was a stress fracture. It’s my first serious running injury EVER. 

It's the little black dot on the inside right leg

The news hit me hard, but honestly these last six weeks have gone by faster than I thought they would. I miss it more than words can describe, but I’ve been working hard to make sure I’m not too far behind once I’m on the road again. I’ve been averaging a little under two hours a day of cross training for the last month. It includes aqua jogging, biking, and, with the recent clearance, using the elliptical. I’m seeing the doctor early next week and judging by how the last visit went he should be giving me clearance to run again. Woot!

So even though my golden year started off with me not being able to do one of the things i’m most passionate about, I’ve realized how lucky I am to be surrounded by an amazing husband, loving friends, and an irreplaceable family.

PS: Jer's gonna post an update soon....I promise! 

Greetings from Duluth Minnesota!

It's been far too long since our last post and for this I apologize. We have a lot to catch up on, but for now I'll just give a brief update on what we've got going on this weekend. Jeremy and I are both competing in the US Half Marathon Championships early tomorrow morning! We're very excited! Even though there's some rain and possible thunderstorms scheduled for the race tomorrow, it'll still be in the 50's, which is a huge change from what we're used to training in back home in San Antonio.

A rainy day in Duluth

This will be my second year competing at the Championships. Last year I was going into the race completely blind as far as how I would do. It ended up not being too bad as I raced really well considering my training. The entire month leading up to the race my training was horrible because of allergy induced asthma (it's the worst during March and May). I was unable to complete many of the key workouts that I would've liked to get in. To help with that problem I've been getting allergy shots since August. While getting tested I found out I was severely allergic to dang near everything outdoors! I think the shots have been helping though. I haven't had as many failed workouts compared to last year, but as soon as I did have a bad workout Jer and I freaked out a little. What do we do? So....I decided to get on the treadmill for those tempos/threshold type of workouts. Yes, it's boring. Yes, I'd rather be outside using my legs like a normal person, but I've been able to complete a lot of workouts that I probably wouldn't have been able to finish had I been outside.

We'll see how things go tomorrow. I've averaged roughly 10 miles a week more than last year and I've only had two not-so-great workouts leading up to the race compared to probably 10-12 last year. On the other hand my great workouts this training season have not been up to par compared to last years. So I'm still going into this race a little in the dark as to what my fitness level is at. As far as a goal I'd like to be in the 1:17's. My time last year was 1:18:14 and I feel like I could do a little better. Last year I had such a great time because I wasn't even going to race, but decided to hop in anyways. I started pretty far back since I was going at a conservative pace (I was just hoping to make it to the finish line), so the entire race I worked my way up the line of ladies I was catching and negative split the entire race. It was a blast, but I definitely want to be a little bit more in the game this time around. There are only 60 other women scheduled to be on the starting line with me tomorrow, so I'm really excited about working with some of these other speedy ladies!

The cool personal bibs and jerseys we'll be sporting tomorrow morning!

This will be Jer's first time competing at the US Half Championships. Last year he ran the full marathon and ran a personal best of 2:27! I know he's really looking forward to the race tomorrow. The men's field is MUCH larger than the ladies. They have roughly 156 guys that will be on the starting line, so with a goal of 1:08 he should have plenty of other fellows to work with.

Thanks to our awesome friends, family, Soler's Sports, and Asics for all the great support they've given us! We'll try and make you guys proud tomorrow and get an update out at some point post-race. The gun for the men goes off at 6:15am and the women at 6:25am so we're going to hit the hay with such an early wake-up call. G'night from Duluth!  

A Much Delayed Update

I think the last thing I put on this blog was a race recap for the San Antonio Marathon, which was now many, many weeks ago. Yikes. So what the heck have I been up to in 3+ months? Here it is, in much abbreviated form, with the zero date being the SA marathon.

Weeks 1-3: Recovery
After Grandma’s Marathon in June, I recovered very quickly, and 11 days later I was able to do a light workout - a tempo at roughly 5:45 pace. This time? Not so much. A week later I tried to help Emily do a workout, and ended up exhausted and sore for the next 5 days. 16 days post-race I finally felt good enough to do a short pickup (1 mile in 5:22), and by the end of the 3rd week I had gotten back up to 77 miles.

Weeks 4-9: 3M Half Marathon Buildup
After an awful post-marathon recovery, I felt like a moron trying to get ready to run a fast half marathon. Three weeks of recovery, and the last two weeks before the race is too late for the training to really take effect, so you’re looking at a whopping four weeks to actually prepare. I had been toying with the idea of doing the US Half Marathon Championships in June, and the standard to even get into the race is sub 1:10 (my PR as of 2012 was 1:10:58). To get a hotel room, you have to run sub 1:09. That was the optimistic goal, but it required a two minute PR.

So I put in some good work. A couple of tempos in the 4-5 mile range at around 5:20 pace, a 10 mile race at 5:30 pace, a few other key workouts, and mileage for the six weeks leading up to the race of 104, 113, 112, 93 (Emily and I went on vacation with my family during this week), 108, 102. During that last week, I had basically resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t coming around quite quick enough, and any thoughts of sub 1:09 were a bridge too far. My last big workout (5 days before the race) was a 6 mile tempo, which I did at 5:42 pace, plus two by 1600m at 5:14 and 5:13. Running under 69 minutes for a half requires running 5:15 pace for 13.1 miles. I may not know much, but given how much it hurt to run those two repeats, I did know that doing that 13 times without a break was unlikely.

3M Half Marathon
But what I didn’t count on when I was evaluating the worst case scenario during that last week was a big old Texas cold front blowing in on race day. The 3M Half Marathon course runs almost entirely North to South, and race day dawned with a wind from the North of 10-12 mph, with gusts up to 20 mph. Couple that with a net downhill course and you’ve got a recipe for fast times.

When the gun went off, I tucked myself into the back of the lead pack, and focused on feeling out the right pace. Everything felt pretty good, and I ended up going through the mile in 5:11, trailing the leaders by about 6 seconds. At that point I decided to be practical, not get ahead of myself, and slow down a bit for the next 2-3 miles. But come mile 3, I was at 15:32, and feeling smooth and easy. That would continue to be the case for the next 8 miles: 5 miles was passed in 25:55, 6 in 31:06, 8 miles in 41:27, 10 miles in 51:51 (46 seconds faster than my 10 mile PR from this fall), and 11 miles in 57:06.

Then the course turned decidedly hilly and into the (as previously mentioned) major wind. Mile 12 was 5:27, and mile 13 was 5:20, and I came into the final straight knowing that I would have to majorly choke to lose the time I needed for that entry and hotel room. I toughed out that horrible last minute or so, and crossed the line in 68:35 - 25 seconds to spare, and feeling very good the day.

At the beginning of 3M - photo cred to photowolfe!

Post 3M:
I took a few days easy after the race, and got back into workouts that Friday. I’ve done a couple of 5k road races, which did not go that great, and I ran an 8:51 3k at our newly formed (and awesomely fun) alumni vs current team track meet. That was a pretty solid race, and it was nice to get a win on behalf of the old folks. Workouts have been going great for the last 3-4 weeks, and I’m hoping to start updating details on that type of thing more frequently here. Next up for me is the 5k at the UIW track meet on Friday, where I set my PR last year.

At the Trinity Dual Meet...luckily our color was BLACK