Merry Mileage

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Raven

Last week I celebrated my 42nd Birthday. Some women and men for that matter fear aging. Not me. I can sit back and feel great about being this age. I look at it this way; I am wiser than I was at 24, I am stronger emotionally than I was at 24, I am healthier than I was at 24, and I am much more physically fit than I was at 24.

On the actual day of my birthday I went out and decided to do a celebratory run; .1 miles for each year. I only had an hour for lunch, so I would not have been able to do something epic. I did have an epic idea, but I lacked the time to complete it; 42 min swim, 42 mile bike ride, 4.2 mile run.

I settled for the 4.2 mile run.

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Run for the Cure

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Raven

This week was my lighter training week. Since I upped my Saturday long run day to eight miles, instead of seven, I was able to cut back in order to run the Komen 5K. In the past when I have participated in this event, I have just walked it. I always admired the runners, but was too timid and out of shape to attempt running a 5K. I always thought though that one day I would like to try, but it was always “next year”.

This year was a different story. On my weekday training runs, I was running at least 3 miles a day; a hair shorter than a 5K. After months of training like this, I knew I could finally run in a 5K event. The Komen Race for the Cure was the perfect chance to get a real 5K under my belt. My company had a team of people walking this, and my partner in crime, Christie’s company was also walking it. This was her first 5K ever. She looked forward to it as much as I did.

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Playing catch up – again

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Raven

So help me, I think about blogging most every day, but everything seems to leap forward and prevent me from sitting down and focusing on writing something. I’m still training, and doing very well actually. I won’t try to post every single map of my training runs over the past weeks, but I will post the latest long run map, because honestly it rocked.

Saturday I set out to do a 7-miler. On the weekend I do one long run, usually a mile more than the previous weekend’s run. Last Saturday I did just over 6 miles, so naturally I needed to up it to a 7-miler – capiche?

I set forth on my little running adventure. The night before I mapped it out, and sent the navigation notes to my iPhone, so I could quickly check them, so as to avoid getting lost. As the running routes increase in distance, so does my chance of running in unfamiliar territory. I can no longer circle the neighborhood, because at this distance it would get boring and dizzy. This new route had me getting to the Houston street bridge, but not crossing into downtown.

Yeah, I crossed it; but only 80% of the way.

It was fun to run over the river – well the dried up version of a river that we have here in Dallas. I had ridden over this bridge MANY MANY times on my bike, but running it was more fun. I could take the time to see the marshy area below, and the cranes that were flying around.

I got right to the point that it enters the downtown area, and turned back. I know how I am about getting caught up in the running adventure, and I didn’t want to risk over doing the mileage so much that I re-visit the foot injury that I just finally healed from.

Oh yeah the foot issue – I ran this without the need of taping and wrapping the arch. How about that? Ha!

Distance 8.16 mi, Duration 1:39:24, Pace 12:15 min/mile, Speed 4.9 mph.

This week begins week 5 of my training. I have cut back the mileage a little, so I can give my body a recovery week, but also so I can run the Komen Race for the Cure 5K on Saturday. I’ve ran 5K upwards of four times a week since March, but I have never ran an actual 5K Event. I’ve always admired the runners at the Komen 5K, but I have always just walked it. Each time I participated, I thought to myself, “Next year I’m gonna run this”, but I never did – until NOW.

This is going to be a blast!