Race Schedule

Ok, so I think I've got a pretty ambitious race schedule lined up this year...lots of half marathons and of course the crown jewel, the one I've been waiting for, the race I've wanted to do ever since I've started marathoning – the NYC marathon.

Here's what I've got so far:

• Manhattan Half Marathon – January (done!)
• More Half Marathon – April 4th
• Flying Pig Marathon – May 1st
• Brooklyn Half Marathon – May TBD
• Queens Half Marathon – July 30th
• Bronx Half Marathon – August 27th
• Staten Island Half Marathon – October 9th
• NYC Marathon – November 6th

I'm sure I'll throw in a few of my other NYRR favorites here and there. Especially in the summer and especially if my friends join in. Coogan's was fun last year and I always like the Pride Race (mainly for the cool t-shirts, music and popsicles at the end) and there's always a lot of great swag at the Scotland Run. I think it might be kind of easy to get my 9 races if I can do all of this. Then I can do NYC in 2012 too! But I am getting waaaaaay ahead of myself. Maybe right now I should just take one run at a time.

I am going to check out the Pfitzinger plan in Advanced Marathoning. But this might be a little ambitious too. Especially since my points total for this week so far is: 1. Yes, that's right. And that doesn't even come from a workout...it's from eating a healthy dinner. :)

Motivation Plan

Ok. I'm still working on the plan to motivate myself. I want to make it difficult so that it's worthwhile and I am training to the best of my ability, but I think I also need to cut myself some slack because "the best of my ability" today is way different than it was last year...especially because squeezing in workouts has become a major luxury. So I am going to focus on the things I have a difficult time doing (working out, eating healthily) and give myself points when I do them. I was going to take away points when I do something bad (like drink soda, which I have been doing more and more often) but I think I need positive reinforcement, not punishment. I was also thinking about giving myself points for things like getting sleep and taking care of myself (like taking time for myself everyday) because I have been really bad at doing those things, but let's face it – most of that is out of my control now AND getting a workout in is probably going to by my "taking time for myself".

That being said, here is my rough plan of "points" for now.

1 point items

• doing a run
• doing a cross-training workout
• eating a healthy lunch
• eating a healthy dinner
• completing a week's worth (defined as 5 days between Sunday and Saturday) of workouts
• weighing in at under 140lbs (weigh-ins will be on Friday mornings)
• maintaining a 29 inch or lower waist (measured each month)

2 point items (these are bigger challenges for me)

• completing a hill or speed workout
• eating healthy snacks during the day
• completing a long run
• PRing on a race

Bonus points (can only be earned once and are one point each)

• completing my first post pregnancy marathon
• completing a run over 2 miles with the BOB without any walking
• completing a race without walking
• completing a race over 4 miles without walking
• completing a race over 5 miles without walking
• completing a run over 6 miles without walking

And here comes the best part: what these points are good for!

Mostly these are just things I want that I will not buy for myself. My first level is a Speck laptop shell which is worth 60 points. Next is a pair of nice running sunglasses – 120 points. For 180 points I can take a quilting class at the City Quilter that I have been trying to find an excuse to take for 3 years. And the créme de la créme? An ipad. This is for when I BQ. Yes, I know this may take me years. And I reserve the right to change it to another expensive gadget when ipads become obsolete.

This whole thing might flex too. I will have to see if it works for me/if I feel rewarded enough or if it is too easy.

Starts this Sunday!

Hurray! Half Marathon!

Thanks to a very special husband who decided that I had trained way too hard (haha, I guess it's all relative) to skip my half marathon and decided to skip his cooking class instead, I was able to run the first of the Grand Prix races this year!

I have to say, I was feeling pretty guilty about this when I woke up on Saturday and it was FOURTEEN DEGREES and I pretty much just wanted to say "forget it". However, I sucked it up and got my butt over to the park. I was so so layered for the whole thing...sports bra, t-shirt, crazy ninja shirt with speedskater hood, fleecy headband, all weather jacket, compression socks, tights, pants and gloves!

I made my way to the last corral (I was planning on run-walking this thing, so if I would have been in my assigned corral I would have gotten plowed over) to stand around shivering for 34 minutes (because I overestimated how much time I needed to get there). I seriously was starting to wonder about my level of sanity. I think it was a mutual feeling amongst all of the runners there who kept saying things like "WTF is wrong with us?" and "WHY was it a good idea to sign up for this?"

I also knew that this could basically last forever since I was run-walking with 3 minutes on and 2 off. I mean, my 6 miler was done at a 13:47 pace and my 9-miler at a 12:39 pace. I feel like I need the run-walk right now though, so it made me a little nervous when I had to run through 10 minutes of the intervals at the beginning because the field was so crowded. I was kind of sort of okay with it thought because it was SO COLD and walking would have frozen me even more.

Oddly enough though, I felt pretty good. And when I looked down at my watch I saw that I was maintaining a 11:38 for those first 2 miles. Awesome! Of course a lot of that was because I ran the first 10 minutes, but even so...

Another strange thing is that when I got to the second water stop and took the frozen water it actually tasted really good. And not just the water but the ice...in fact the ice was preferable even though I was soooooo freezing and it would take me until mile 5 to even start to feel my fingers a little (this from the girl who never used to wear gloves running because I was always too hot).

I made the first loop and it wasn't so bad, but I didn't know about this whole second loop thing. I didn't know if I was up for it. But before I knew it I was at mile 9!!! And I was still maintaining a pace of under 12 minutes (even though it was inching up to the 11:50s).

In fact, at mile 9 I started picking up the pace big time. I felt awesome! And I kept thinking about how I was going to see Bill and Liam at the finish and we would go get breakfast, which just made me happy.

Before I knew it I was in the final lower loop (The race is two loops and then another lower loop...grueling mentally.) I will say that the last two miles kind of weren't the greatest. I was getting tired. But I still felt good enough to run through my last two walk cycles. I kept looking at my watch, trying to get my final pace numbers down.

And guess what? I finished at an 11:32 pace! And that's run-walking!!! I was pretty proud of myself.

So I guess I could do a half marathon with 21 miles of training over 3 weeks. Although I am pretty sure that this was still a stupid thing to do. I am now going to take a couple of weeks off and start training for my spring marathon (or half marathon, I can't decide). I was also so pumped that I went ahead and signed up for the More/Fitness magazine half marathon again.

Hurray! Half marathons!

Nevermind

So I survived the 6 mile run, Harlem Hill and all. And the next week I even survived the 9 mile run! I was very very sore all day but as I told Bill, it kind of felt good to be that sore again. And the next day I was fine anyway. I will say that it has been a bit of a challenge to get out and running. Some days it is just way too cold to take the baby out, no matter how much you bundle him up.

So I've been trying as hard as I can to bust my butt cross training on the days I can't run. Luckily I got some new DVDs for Christmas that actually push me. But even so, it's just not the same as running. I definitely took a day off from the long run I did on Sunday, yesterday...but it looks like there's no way I can get out today because of another crazy East Coast winter storm. So I'm crossing my fingers for tomorrow.

As for the half marathon this weekend? I think it just wasn't meant to be. When I signed up I forgot that we would need to get a babysitter because of Bill's cooking class, which kind of overlaps timewise with the race. We would need to find a babysitter for a couple of hours, which probably wouldn't be a problem normally...except that this weekend all of our friends are going skiing for my other friend's birthday. Whoops.

Oh well. So is the life of a mother-runner. :)

There is always next year for the Grand Prix, and we are supposed to get more awful weather Saturday anyway. And now I can train properly.

Motivation

Ok. It's pretty hard for me to get motivated to go out for my runs lately. Today was no exception. I usually wait until about three to do this (because it is the warmest time of the day) but today I knew that if I waited until three I would find some excuse not to go :)

The run (run-walk) wasn't even that bad. Don't get me wrong, it had it's pitfalls. Like, when I got to 86th street it was like someone had decided to take ALL of the snow and pile it up at the entrance to the park. It was all trampled on, so it was kind of a mound of icy footprints. Good thing my stroller has super big wheels with massive treads. Ironically, this happened to be my downfall later, when I rolled right through some fresh dog poop and it got impossibly stuck in the wheels. Yay! This meant that afterwards I had to clean out the tire treads in the hallway of my building. (Come on people, I pick up my dog's poop, why can't you pick up yours?)

I did feel like I had more energy, which is kind of funny because this run definitely had more hills.

As I was getting to the last part of my run I was trying to think of things to motivate me. See, normal motivation techniques ("After the run I can have a candy bar," or "If I do all of my workouts this week I'm treating myself to a pedicure") don't work for me. The last time I had to resort to motivation techniques was when I first started running. I put a dollar away for every mile I ran and then bought myself a Tiffany's necklace.

That's not going to work this time because I need something more short term. I'm thinking of giving myself a points system: 1 point for each workout completed, an extra point for mileage exceeded, 1 point for completing 3 runs a week, 1 point for completing 3 cross training workouts a week...etc etc etc. Only what should I make the rewards? I was trying to think of something I really really wanted for a big point reward -- like a Coach bag. But then I remembered that my new purse is a diaper bag and I have no use for a Coach bag. For the low number prizes I thought of the normal things: a bath, a manicure, a night of ordering pizza. But the problem is that I do these things already...not all the time, but enough that I'm not going to be motivated to get them. So I've got to do some thinking on this whole reward business.

It does help that when I got on the elevator when I got home some lady asked how old Liam was and when I told her she said "You don't even look like you had a baby!" I never tire of hearing that. I guess that is at least some motivation. :)

My next run is Saturday. 6 miles with Bill and Liam. Bill gets to push the BOB this time. My secret fear? That he will kick my butt and that pushing the BOB while running really isn't as hard as I think it is. :)

Don't Try This At Home

I was perhaps a little overzealous in my signing up for races before Christmas. See, my goal for the last three years has been to complete the NYRR's Grand Prix of half marathons. This includes one marathon in each borough. They spread them out throughout the year so that you pretty much have to be fit for the whole year. It is kind of a big deal to do all five and you get a patch for doing it.

For one reason or another I have never been able to do this (the first year I missed the Manhattan one, the next year I missed Brooklyn because of my sister's wedding, the third year I missed the last two for obvious reasons.) So I decided that this was my year and signed up for the first of the five which is the Manhattan one.

This one happens to be the most boring and one of the most challenging: two loops of Central Park. That's right, tons of hills! Oh yeah, and being in January it tends to be the coldest too. Two years ago it was below freezing and the cups froze right to the table.

My training schedule was going to have to be pretty aggressive, but I figured I could do it. I did it a couple years ago! The plan for my long runs? A six miler this Saturday, a nine miler the following Saturday, a twelve miler the third Saturday and then the race the following Saturday.

Well, I kind of miscalculated. See, the race is on the 22nd. So I figured I'd better get my butt in gear. I have been not so diligent about my runs since Thanksgiving (yes, I've only been out twice). I have been doing lots of weight lifting and cross training, but we all know that is not the same.

Yesterday I waited until the warmest part of the day, packed up baby in the BOB jogger and headed out along the Hudson Bike Trail for a nice easy three miler.

Hahahahaha.

It was HARD. I forgot how difficult it is to run in the cold if you're not used to it. The breathing totally throws me off. I also just kept getting so TIRED. I know that a lot of this is because I am using a ton of effort to push that stroller. But I also know a lot of it is because I am completely out of (my normal) shape. So I will say there was a lot of run-walking.

And I'm pretty sure there is going to be a lot of run-walking during this race.

I'm still planning on doing it, but I will definitely be backing off of the training afterwards so that I don't injure myself for my spring marathon (or half marathon, I haven't decided).

Yes, running friends, I know this is stupid. But I think I can do it. If anything it will put Gina's and my theory to test: if you are a hard-core runner who does marathons and half marathons all the time we think you could probably do a half marathon with little to no training.

Like I said, I would never recommend anyone else do this. :)