I Love the Shore

I feel like that is my constant theme this summer, and we've only been down twice. The shore is simply one of my favorite (if not my favorite!) place on earth. I've always been a beach person and for some reason I've fallen in love with this beach in particular.

The only real working out I do while I'm down here is running (just following my training plan) and walking miles and miles along the shoreline. I swear I could walk forever with my toes in the ocean. Although I have to admit, I'm starting to think it's kind of hard on my calf muscles, all of the barefoot walking, because they do tend to bother me when we're down here. I might have to start doing some walking on the beach in my tennis shoes, which will obviously make me look really cool. Ha.

Running down here is miserable though. Or at least it has been so far. Granted, I've made the mistake of not getting up early to run so I'm hoping that's a big part of my problem. I've been running anywhere from 9:45am to noon and each one has been as bad as the next. It kind of kills my confidence for running 13.1 miles down here at the end of August. If I'm barely making it through 3 miles, how the heck will I make it through 10.1 more miles???

I'm trying not to let it get me down, and hoping that 7 more weeks of training will get me ready. I'm also hoping that since the race starts at 8am (or 7am) that it'll be a bit cooler and more manageable than my runs down here have been so far. Hopefully. Otherwise I'm in for a world of hurt come August 28th.

In other news, I'm in my 6th week of being off and feeling the urge to ramp it up in terms of what I'm accomplishing with that time. I need to really focus on the goals I wrote about a few days ago and figure out how to go about accomplishing them with my time off. Of course I'll keep a nice balance of being lazy and reading and hanging out with Pete to make sure I don't overdo it :-)

Why I'm Running the NYC Marathon with Fred's Team

The NYC Marathon is notoriously hard to get into. They have a lottery and the odds aren't great, in fact, I don't know a single person that has actually gotten in via the lottery that lives in the NYC area. The only people I know that have gotten in were from out of town (they have two separate lotteries, one for those of us who live in the area and one for those that don't - the one for those that don't has better odds.)

There are of course other ways to get in besides the lottery, if you lottery three years in a row and don't get in you can get in on the 4th year automatically, or you can run 9 races with the NYRR throughout the year and volunteer for one race and you can get in the next year, or you can be really fast and get a qualifying time (never going to happen), OR you can run for charity which is obviously the option I chose.

I've wanted to run a marathon for a long time, and I've really wanted to run the NYC marathon and do it for cancer in both memory of and in support of people I love in my life who have or are fighting a battle with cancer. Since I'm turning 30 next year (GULP) I figure doing it before I turned 30 was a good goal to set for myself. So I signed up to run with Fred's Team and opted to put my donations towards strategic need research as the people in my life have been affected by many different types of cancer so I didn't feel like I could choose just one type.

Both of my grandparents on my mom's side died within 3 months of each other back in 2007, my grandfather from liver cancer and my grandmother from a decade plus battle with a rare form of intestinal cancer. Since then my stepmother has been battling breast cancer and my great uncle has battled prostate cancer. Of course, these are just a few of the people in my life who have been affected by the disease. And they are the people I think of when I am a quarter mile into a hot and miserable 3 mile run and don't what to run another step. They are also the people I think of when I don't want to get out of bed and train. Training for the marathon is more than just about a goal for me, it's also about honoring people in my life who have been affected by cancer.

I will admit that fundraising is incredibly intimidating for me. Asking people for money is scary and not something I find comfortable at all. But being out of my comfort zone is a good thing! And quite frankly, the more people I have supporting me the more people I feel like I would let down if I don't end up crossing the finish line on November 6th which is much needed extra motivation.

I'm still working on coming up with idea of how to fundraise. I've thought about getting back into painting and selling the paintings to raise money towards my goal. I've also thought about trying to partner with a local restaurant and hosting a dinner with a percentage of proceeds to go towards my fundraising goal. I'm not sure how feasible either of these ideas is, but at least they are thoughts in the right direction. And if all else fails, Fred's Team has my credit card number and they will graciously charge me the balance of the goal if I don't make it. Ha. Just another type of motivation for this girl!

In training news, I had another tough run today. I don't know what it is about running down at the shore but it's much harder for me than running around good old Hoboken. Today I just had three miles on the schedule and it took me an embarrassingly long time to finish them so I'm not even going to post my stats because I'd just like to forget them. All I can hope is that come half marathon time down here in August I'll be in better shape than I am today or I might be crawling across the finish line.

Back to the Beach we Go!

Have I mentioned I love the beach? (or rather, the shore as it's affectionately called in Jersey) One of the things I looked forward to most in taking these three months off is the ability to get down to the shore as much as possible. Jeff's parents have a house down there and they graciously let us stay down there with them. Talk about lucky!

I'm looking forward to another weekend full of walks along the beach, playing fetch with Petey and just relaxing. Life doesn't get any better than that I don't think.

But, while I'm down there I do plan to focus on some of the goals I mentioned in a previous post. I'm taking down the book Joyful Wisdom so I can read it while I'm on the beach. I'll of course do one or two training runs while I'm down there just depending on how long we are there for. I'm vowing right here on the interwebs that I will also spend time strength training (planks/pushups/squats/etc.) and doing some serious stretching. So in between all that relaxing I plan on making some progress towards those goals of mine.

In exciting goal related news I DID make it to the gym today even though I really really really did not want to go. So that's 4 trips so far this summer. Only 26 more to go. Yikes. I'm going to have to start going a lot more often if I want to make that goal even a possibility.

My cross training workout today was as follows:

2 miles on the elliptical - resistance between 6-10, average of 8

3 sets of 10 on the abductor machine with 60 pounds (trying to work on my hip/glute strength)

3 planks for 30 seconds

3 sets of one legged balancing on the bosu ball, 30 seconds on each leg

Ok, so maybe not the most hard core workout out there, but it was something. And I plan to take a long walk on the beach tonight when we get there and spend some quality time playing fetch with the little guy - so not an all together shabby day workout wise. Tomorrow I've got a 3 mile run on tap, and I'm just hoping it's a bit easier than my runs were last time I was down the shore...

To the beach we go!

Goals for the Next Two Months...

I have two months left of my sabbatical. Two months of nothing dictating my schedule but me (and Petey since puppy training is a lot of work!) I want to make the most of it. I feel like I've done a really good job of making the most of my first month off, so I want to make even more out of the next few months if that's possible.

I figure since I'm a pretty goal oriented person that setting out some goals for myself might help me to feel like I've accomplished what I want to this summer when it's all said and done. So here goes.

Fitness Goals:

1. Run 3 days a week, follow my half marathon/marathon training schedule 100%

2. Cross train 3 days a week (yoga, swimming, elliptical, strength training, etc.)

3. Go to the gym a total of 30 times to get the most out of my membership

4. Activate my Local Barre Groupon and attend at least 10 classes (will help with #3!)

5. Activate my Boot Camp Groupon and attend at least 5 classes (will help with #3!)

6. Stretch regularly and use my foam roller every day

Health Goals:

1. Set up bi-weekly massage appointments at Massage Envy to help with my hip/leg tightness

2. Log food into myfitnesspal.com every day

3. Stay at or under my net calories for the day 6 days a week

4. Experiment with vegan cooking, purchase 2 vegan cookbooks

5. Stay away from meat as much as possible

6. Take and track body measurements every two weeks

Personal Goals:

1. Take more pictures

2. Blog 5 days a week and post pictures most of the time

3. Do one more big purge of junk in the apartment and take stuff to goodwill

4. Fix computer before the warranty runs out

5. Petey, training - find a local trainer we can work with

Educational Goals:

1. Purchase Rosetta Stone French once computer is fixed and spend time learning French

2. Watch Damodoran's Corporate Finance Class in it's entirety

3. Start playing the piano again (find a new teacher?)

4. Start playing the flute again (find a teacher?)

5. Read Joyful Wisdom

6. Review the level 1 CFA books

That's a lot eh? And I didn't even mention my biggest goal, to lose weight, because that should happen if I keep to my goals above. I plan to check in once a week, on Fridays to chat about my progress on the goals above, and as time goes on I'll try and add more specifics to some of the goals so they are easy to track!

Week 10 of Training - Complete!

I can't believe I've been training for 10 weeks. I really thought I was on week 7 or 8 when I went to fill in my training schedule today and was shocked when I saw that I was actually finishing week 10 and my next run will be the beginning of week 11. Where has the time gone???

This week was an easy week - the way the training schedule I'm using goes you basically alternate between easy weeks and "hard" weeks. I use them term "hard" lightly as I'm following a very conservative training plan with pretty low miles and only three days a week of running, so the word hard might be a stretch. I do, however, reserve the right to use the word hard later on in my training when the weekly milage starts to get in the 20-30 miles per week range.

The only real cross training I did this week was walking which is not necessarily a good thing. While I got a lot of miles in walking, I really need to get more actual cross training in. I need to add more yoga, swimming, elliptical and strength training into my weekly workouts. There is a yoga class this evening that I'm currently trying to talk myself into going to, but I've already done my 4 mile run for the day so I'm going to need some serious convincing to do a second workout!

If I don't end up going to the gym again tonight (and even if I do) I need to get to the gym tomorrow morning. I freaking paid $300 to join the gym for the summer and my goal is to get there 30 times before I start my new job on September 6th. I've made it THREE times so far. so that's uh, 27 more to go. Yikes.

Running on the Beach is Hard

The beach is my favorite place on earth. Always has been. There is nothing I love more than walking along the shoreline, letting the waves hit my feet, feeling the sand between my toes and looking out at the ocean. I feel completely at peace when I'm at the beach, no matter what is going on in my life.

We made our first trip down to the shore this past weekend to celebrate the fourth of July. It was amazing. The weather was perfect, the company was great and little Petey loved the shore just as much as I do...

Obviously I had a bit of marathon training to do while we were down the shore. Luckily I did my longest run before we left. But I still had a few runs to do while we were there. Let me just say, they were BRUTAL. Honestly, probably some of the worst runs I've had while I've been training. Despite the beautiful weather and scenery the runs were awful which was honestly really frustrating.

I did one run on the sidewalk and one on the beach and they were both hard. There is really no way to describe them other than that. Just hard. I don't know if my legs are still tired from the long run I did, or if they are tired from all of the walking I did on the beach, or it if is some combination of the two, but my training this past weekend was anything but easy.

I'm taking today off from anything other than walking and am planning to do a short run and an hour long yoga class tomorrow in hopes of helping my tired muscles. I'm also thinking about trying to schedule a sports massage to see if that might help. It's a little discouraging to be having trouble with 3 mile runs at this point in my training, but I'm sure its just one of many obstacles I'll face along the way.

The Hardest Day to Get Up = The Best Day to Get Up

I woke up this morning all out of sorts. I had a headache, I felt dehydrated and like I could sleep for another 4 hours and still not feel rested. I also had the longest run of my life (to date) on my training schedule. It felt like a recipe for disaster.

I honestly contemplated bagging it. Pushing the run off until Sunday. But then I thought about how bad I'd feel about myself all day long if I didn't go, and how good I'd feel if I did. Those thoughts plus quite a bit of water and some advil got me out the door 45 minutes later. A little less than two hours after that, I had done it! I ran 9.5 miles! 1.5 miles longer than I'd ever run before.

It really was a perfect morning to run. Bright blue skys, coolish breeze, not humid and beautifully sunny. I ran along the pier for most of the time and the water was sparkling, it was really beautiful.

I will admit to feeling pretty overwhelmed both before and during this run. I ran slowly and never pushed myself too hard, but I wouldn't say it was completely easy mentally either. About 4 miles in I realized I still had to run that distance again plus some more and I wanted to give up. But I just kept telling myself to think about the time/distance/calories burned in small increments because the amount left felt unmanageable. And it worked. Not to say it wasn't hard, it was, but I did it, and I didn't die at the end. In fact the last few miles were the easiest because I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and everything seemed a whole lot easier.

Here are the stats:

9.5 miles

1:59:01 total time

12:32 min/mile

149 avg heart rate

1104 calories burned

I seem to be keeping pretty steady with my 12:30(ish) runs for my long runs. But truthfully, I don't look at my time when I run other than when my garmin beeps to tell me another mile has past. I use my heart rate as a guide for the most part, and when things get really mentally tough (like they did on this run) I also use calories burned - i.e. run for 15 calories burned, walk for 10 calories burned. It helps to break up the monotony. When I run like this on long runs I seem to be fairly steady with my 12:30 pace, but I have to prepare myself that it might get slower as things go on, because the long runs just keep getting longer, and not hurting myself is infinitely more important than keeping any given pace.

I am planning to treat myself to some vegan chocolate chip cookie dough this evening as a reward for burning so many calories (and for getting myself out of bed this morning) - and yes, it's good, I would consider myself a cookie dough connoisseur and this stuff passes the test (and no eggs, so it won't make me sick!)