#runsar

Half Marathon Training, October Wrap Up!

So here it is, November 7th, and I am just now getting around to posting the results of our last half marathon! I have been a little preoccupied with some other things, but now I am ready to get some closure on this, my fourth half!

I am not going to post our training schedule from October because it was a joke! We did not stick to it at all. We started off ok. October 3rd and 5th went as planned.

I got my 5 miles in amongst the swirling leaves!

and October 5th was a gorgeous 4 miles on a sunny day!

That’s when the wheels pretty much came off the bus! We fly to Kauai and had a marvelous time, not running! Well, my hubby did manage a 4 mile run but the humidity and hiking knocked me out! So when we returned on the 12th, it was a tough 5 miles for me!

Even though the run was hard the weather was stunning! Fall had made it’s way into Seattle while we were gone!

Now it was time to log some serious miles if we wanted to get ready for the half! We did 11 miles around Seward Park on a spectacular day! Mount Rainier was out big time 🙂

It was tough! And with only two weeks to the half, I was getting worried!

I did three shorter runs on the 18th, 20th and 22nd, these would be the last in Seattle, and in the rain, before we hit the road for the 24 hour drive to Tucson.

We were trapped in the car until the 25th. This is when everything became real! We had a total of 5 days to get acclimated to the elevation, heat and hills (so many hills!).

I ran 5 miles on the 25th and 4 more on the 27th-just two days to the half!

I have never felt so unprepared for a half marathon in my life! Training was not where I wanted it to be, I was not acclimated at all and nutrition? Forget about it! But the day came anyway!

Fortunately the organizer brilliantly had the start before sunrise, at 6:30am. The first 8-8.5 miles went really well. I was happy with the temperature and felt pretty good. Then mile 9 hit, like a brick wall! The temperature started to climb and the oxygen felt like it was gone from the atmosphere. My legs turned to lead, as they often do, and I began a strategy of walking up the hills and running the flats and downhills only. Interestingly, I was not that much slower than my worst time. I ran about the same this time as I did for my first half marathon. I did finish, and that was the goal. How did my hubby do? Only off by two minutes from his current PR!! I hate him-no I don’t-yes I do!

We were both happy to have survived! One of the cool things about the medals was that they linked up to make map of Tucson. Do you remember the 10k we ran last month? That is the medal from the 10k race on the right in the picture above. If you finished the half marathon in October, you received the medal on the left, and when you put them together you get a mountain scene. Kinda cool! We have not seen that before. There was a third medal to make the scene even larger, but that was for a 5k back in August and we were in Seattle at that time.

Since it was Sunday we got home, showered and headed out to celebrate our “victories” by watching the SeaHawks Game!

Everything turned out great, we can still walk and the Hawks won the game! Now I am running to just enjoy it and really haven’t thought about the next race. It will be number 5 for me, so I want it to be a special location. Any suggestions??

Half Marathon Training, September Update

It’s October! We are running the TMC Get Moving Tucson Half Marathon in about 4 Weeks! We chose this run because we just bought a second home in Tucson and thought it made sense to run in our new community, and it would be a new challenge to run in the desert environment. It does make sense, but we really underestimated how much of a challenge it would be to run in the heat, at elevation (Tucson in 2200 ft) and the hills! Oh my, the hills! But I am getting ahead of myself, let’s take the month in order!

This was the plan for September.

September

2017

The first part of September went as scheduled, we ran our 8, 5, 4 and 9 miles here in Washington and they went quite well.

The weather was mild and the temperatures were perfect in Seattle.

After this 9 mile run we flew to Tucson to start setting up the house and train in the new environment. What a culture shock! 98F, hills, less oxygen at elevation and this:

Running was hard. We had to start right at sunrise to avoid the high temps, which was gorgeous, and still 70F!

We signed up for a local 10K to get a feel for what it would be like to run a race in Tucson. Bottom line: It was tough! 80F at the 7am start, and 400 feet of elevation gain! I was happy just to survive! Here is my Instagram post that day.

I ran another 6 and 5 miles and my hubby did what he could, as he was working remotely during the whole trip in Tucson, and then we flew back to Washington for the 10 mile runs on 9/23 and 9/30. This gave me a total of 89.33 miles for the month.

Now we are heading into the home stretch and our schedule for October.

October

2017

The tricky part here will be running while we are in Kauai from 10/6 to 10/11. We are not sure how many times or how far we will be able to run while away, but we will try to be ready for the half marathon on the 29th. Again, the goal will be to survive! No PR or crazy goals with this one!

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Roda’s “Critter Connection” Challenge, Day 3

So a funny thing happened on my last short training run. I only had 4 miles on the schedule and I was still trying to get acclimated to running in the heat and the elevation of Tucson, so I went down to my favorite running path at the Rillito River trail. There is no actual river, it is a dry lake bed, but that’s not the point of this story.

It was fairly early because I wanted to avoid the higher temps later in the day. I started out westbound with the sun to my back and, as I was going along the paved trail, I noticed several runner/walkers on the adjacent dirt trail. I started to consider moving over to the trail myself to try out something new. The only reason that I decided not to run on the loose, dry sand was that I was concerned that the surface would be too soft and would stress out my already sore calves. So I plodded along to the 2 mile mark and turned around for the home stretch. I was now pointed directly into the east rising sun. I had my sunglasses on but still could only see a few precious feet in front of me. I was on my last half mile, running on the right hand side of the path when “something big” caught in my left peripheral vision. I had run right past the business end of this beautiful rattlesnake! He was not as far over the center line when I blew past him, but I had to stop and fiddle with my camera to get a shot of him as he continued to advanced across the path. This snake did not care about my presence, or that of the rest of the folks that gathered to watch him cross the road. It never coiled or warned us with his rattle. He was totally unconcerned about the humans and knew he had the right of way. To my credit, I did mange to pause my running app (because every runner knows that keeping your stats intact is far more important than protecting your life) and got a couple shots, at distance, of this impressive 4 footer!

I now have a better reason to not run on the dirt trail by the side of the running path!

Monday	Tuesday	Wed	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
				1	2	3
					Run 8
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
	Run 5		Run 4		Run 9
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
	Run 5		Run 4		Run 9	10k fun run
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
	Run 6		Run5		Run10
25	26	27	28	29	30
	Run 6		Run5		Run10

Monday	Tuesday	Wed	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
						1

2	3	4	5	6	7	8
	Run 4		Run 5		Run 11
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
	Run 5		Run 4		Run 12
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
	Run5		Run4		Run6
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
	Run 4-5		Run 4-5	Carb load		13.1
30	31

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