Preparing For My Next Race: A 3K!

 My next race is a 3K.

Now if you're a die-hard running enthusiasts, you're laughing at me right now. You're preparing for a 3K?  Really?

Even if you're a casual runner you're probably still laughing at me right now.  And if you're like so many people and you don't like to run at all, you're probably pretty impressed.  You're probably also wondering how far a 3K is.  

Well, don't get too impressed. A 3K is just under two miles or about 1.86 miles. Now, why am I preparing for this race? Well, I haven't run a race in a year now and a year is a really long time to be out of the running game. At least that's what I think so I need to get both my mind and my body ready to race again. 

Before we go any farther, I should be clear that I really only race against myself. I'm not fast enough to ever place. Maybe when I'm 70 and the field has thinned out a bit.

Back to what I am doing to prepare myself for this race.  Well, running is obvious but here are a few others:

• Strength Training:  I'm keeping this really simple.  Typically, my strength training involves doing lunges and squats during our daily walks around the neighborhood.  To work on my arms I'll do push ups against the stairs or tricep dips on the back of the couch.  I'll also use our weight machine downstairs to work my hamstrings (boy, do they need it) or quads.
• Foam Roll:  This has been so helpful for my back!  In the past, I've mostly focused on my legs, specifically my shins and calves, but I'm finding the more I work my lower back, the better my feet and calves feel.  I'm also working on loosening up my hips to help my Achilles which was tight during my last run.  
• Working on my Form:  I wrote a blog post about that HERE.  While I run I'm really concentrating on keeping my shoulders down, my arms low and my foot strike and less on how fast I am running or how fatigued I feel.  

Is this all helping?  I ran 2 miles recently, the longest I've run in about a year, and I felt great the next day.  Even my feet feel fine.  

I can genuinely say that I am excited for my first race of the year on October 28!

When is your race?  Tell me in the comments below!  I want to hear about it.  

A Chip Off the Old Block

My 5 year old daughter is just like me.

But yet she's not.

Alright, so when it comes to running, she is just like I was when I was a kid - she hates it and she's going to let everybody around her know about it and make them miserable in the process. 

I asked her if she wanted to run the Lil' Pumpkins race with me again and she happily agreed.  I warned her that because she's older now she's going to have to run longer.  This year she'll be running 0.3 miles versus 100 yards.  She still wanted to do it so I registered her.  I promised her I'd take her out for a training run. 

After begging me all week to take her running, we finally made it out today, a day when Daddy could watch the baby. 

In the beginning, she was more than happy to get outside and run.

After a few short, warmups, really we are only running 0.3 of a mile, we headed to the road to run.

Reality set in at that point.

I don't think we ran 100 yards before she started complaining that she was itchy, she didn't want to run, that it was too hot.  She kept asking to stop. 

I told her we'd slow down but that we really needed to keep moving so she doesn't get knocked down by the other kids on race day.

With lots of encouraging, she finally made it to the "finish" line. 

She immediately asked if we could walk back and not run.

I compromised with her and we did intervals.  I told her we'd run to the stop sign and then walk and then run to the mailboxes and then walk.

By the time we made it home, she was running to the door to get away from mommy's crazy race training.

I'm MORE than HAPPY that a 12 mm was a comfortable, easy pace for me!

Now, my daughter has more energy than the Energizer bunny.  She's very active in dance and Girl Scouts.  Her favorite activity at school?  Playing outside.  She will run... when she wants to. 

But she's still a chip off the old block and hates running.  I wasn't nearly as active as she is at her age and now I'm paying for it. (I even wrote a blog post about it HERE.)  I'm fine with running not being her thing because she is so active.

What physical activities do you enjoy with your kids?  Leave me a comment below.  I want to know.  

I've Come to the Realization

That I don't know how to run. 

If you know me at all in real life or you've been following along for awhile now, then you know I suffer from a nasty case of plantar fasciitis. So severe, in fact, that I almost had surgery to correct it.  I've since realized my problem isn't my feet but my back. 

This realization has led me to do some extensive foam rolling on said back AND work on my form bringing me back to the title of this post. 

I am a heel striker.  No wonder my feet and back hurt all the time!

I run like the guy on the left.  Tsk, tsk.  

I honestly had no idea you are supposed to run on the front part of your feet!  They don't teach you that in gym class. Or if they did, I wasn't paying attention. 

So, like any other social media savvy person would do, I jumped on YouTube and started searching for videos to help me improve my form.

Below is the video I found that is the most helpful.  Strange as it may sound to some, I'm actually excited for my next run so I can try his techniques.  I'm really enjoying getting back to basics.  

Here I Go Again!

And again.  And again. 

Seriously, it my personal history with staying healthy is any indication, it will be awhile before I consistently workout and eat healthy.  

But I did something that I haven't done yet in the last 3 months since I had baby Vivi - I ran 2 days in a row!

Now mind you, I only ran a mile but it was a hard fought for one. My calves were tight for most of it and it took awhile for my back to stop hurting.  

My speed might not be anywhere near where it once was but running a 12 minute mile never felt so good!

And I got a sleepy baby out of it too.  

Next on the agenda?  Strength training.  

2016 CHaD Trick or Treat 3K and Little Pumpkin Dash Recap

Let me just start by saying I really didn't want to run this race.  I signed up last minute because I thought it would be fun for my daughter to participate in the kids' run and frankly, I knew I would need something to motivate me to get my butt moving again after my second half marathon.  But I woke up exhausted from Trick or Treating the night before and staying up way too late watching scary movies.  Can we talking about The Conjuring?  OMG.  I must have jumped 50 times!

How I wanted to spend my day!

It didn't help that the race was held during The Pats game and if you don't know already football is an institution in this house.

Opening game at Gillete for the 2015 season. 

But after I ran a barefoot mile on my treadmill, I schlepped my butt to Manchester with my costumed family in tow.  

I'm glad I did.

They have a little Halloween "festival" set up for the kids before the races.  Scarlett loved the bounce houses and the bunnies in the petting zoo.  One of her friends from her class was running the race too so she was overjoyed to run around with him.

After a quick warm up led by a man in an apple costume, the girls' ages 4 and under race started.  I ran behind Scarlett so we wouldn't lose her in the crowd.  She sort of stopped towards the finish line so I grabbed her hand and pulled her along.  She loved the medal they gave out but unfortunately it went missing somewhere along the way.

Luckily, she hasn't realized the medal is missing... yet. 

Then it was time for my 3K, the shortest race I've ever run by the way.  I was looking forward to being done in a decent amount of time.  Mentally I couldn't handle another half marathon not with the amount of pain I've been in since my last one.  

This race also had a first for me:  I lined up in the corral WITHOUT MY BIB ON.  What was I thinking?  I was so distracted by helping Scarlett with her race that I completely neglected to put mine on.

I realized this 30 seconds before it started.

Luckily, my family was standing not too far away so I mouthed to my husband that I forgot my bib and we got to work grabbing it out of the bag.  Thank GOD I always pack extra safety pins for just in case.  This was definitely a "just in case" moment.

It probably took me less than a minute to fix my mistake, but I was stuck behind the walkers and strollers by the time I was ready.  In a way this helped me because I took off at an 8 MM pace!  I quickly slowed once I hit the first of 2 decent sized hills.  It didn't help that I was dodging a lot of people who were walking or running intervals.

The second hill helped because I was able to zoom by a lot of people.

OMG, I zoomed up a hill!

Since this was just a 1.86 mile race, it was a nice out and back so you could see the leaders at one point.  It made me feel better to know I wasn't that far behind the pack not that I'll ever be in the front.

Overall, I felt great!  My lungs were a little full but I've been battling colds lately and I changed up my allergy medicine.  My feet were a non issue and it was so nice to run down hills without wincing. 

As I approached the finish line I tried to really kick it. My arms were swinging hard as they did most of the race, but I looked on helplessly as a flood of people passed me.  The last kick has been an issue for me lately and I really don't know what it going on.  I just can't seem to sprint anymore.

My final time was 19:23 and my pace was 10:23/mile.  Not too shabby all things considered.

Next, I'll keep rowing, running barefoot on the treadmill and strength training.  I've got to work on strengthening my hamstrings.  They are so weak!   

10 Miles of Pain or the NH 10 Miler

Let me just start by saying I have plantar fasciitis. I won't go into what it is now, you can find more information HERE, other than to say it causes an incredible amount of pain in your heels.  To find relief, I have tried all of the conservative methods of treatment (rest, ice and compression to name a few).  I've also been seen by a podiatrist who gave me 2 cortisone shots, one for each foot, an acupuncturist and a chiropractor.

I'm still in a fair amount of pain.

So being the smahty pants that I am, I decided I would be fine to run the New Hampshire 10 Miler, one of the hilliest races around.  If you remember I did a practice run with my Mom's Run This Town group and thought it was great, tough, but doable.  It helped that it was a relatively cool morning.  I really felt like this practice run gave me my mojo back.  What I didn't like is that it brought me down this crazy road of foot problems with no relief in sight.

Sigh.

Onwards and upwards, right?  After doing everything I could this month to ease my foot pain, I spent the week before this race prepping just like I would, hydrating and eating the right foods.  I woke up at 6:45 am on the morning of the race feeling calm, cool and collected.  The nice part about going into a race with an injury is your expectations are really, really low.  I wasn't going to PR.  My goal #1 was to just get it done.  Goal #2 was to avoid further injury.

I succeeded in both those goals.

I started out feeling great.  I was trying to keep to an 11 mm even though I knew I could have cranked it up a notch.  I had to keep some energy for those killer hills and I didn't want to risk injury early on.  I was afraid if I really pushed my speed, my Achilles would give out.  It was definitely aching by the end.

 I made sure to wave a friendly "hello" to every face I recognized from my running group and gave out words of encouragement when I saw one struggling.  For most of the race, I was able to get in the zone and just enjoy the ride as I like to describe it.  It's a beautiful thing to just enjoy running.

Then the hills hit.  The worst is at mile 4.  I didn't even try to run it.  I just walked.  My body and my foot needed it.  My game plan was to hit every water stop and dump it on my head.  It was hot at the 9 am start, 72 degrees and climbed to 80 by the time I was done.  Thankfully, the humidity was low so I wasn't miserably uncomfortable.

I hit the 5 mile split at 1:02:21 and was pleased with my time.  My best 5 miler time was 54 minutes at the Boston's Run to Remember which was flat and I just had fun with.  All things considered, being 8 minutes behind that wasn't terrible.

Thankfully, most of the second half of the race was in the shade.  The hard part for me at this point was my body felt great, I had fueled properly and I was hydrated, but my foot was starting to scream in pain.  By mile 7, I was overjoyed that I just had a 5K left, but I was really having to slow down because the pain was only getting worse.  There was a nice downhill around this time too that I would have loved to sprint down, but my foot wasn't having it.  It was a fight all the way down.  Last time I ran this, I lost my left hip and quad.  I didn't want to suffer that pain again as it through out my back in the process.

Like I mentioned, it was a burning hot day, with low humidity thankfully.  As always, I packed my hydration pack backpack which holds 2 liters of water.  It was so hot and the course was so hilly that this was the first time I'd ever drained it!  I still can't believe I drank 2 liters of water that day!

The last 2 miles were in the sun, up a hill and there was a crazy amount of traffic going by including about 100 motorcycles.  The race traffic got so tight that if the person in front of you was walking then you were too because there was no room to pass.  I ran most of the last mile and even turned on my Facebook Live to stream myself going over the finish line.


I wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone who supported me in the last few weeks while trying to heal myself.  I feel like it was a group effort to get me across it so I wanted everyone to experience that finish with me.  Getting all the extra encouragement floating across my stream while I ran was great too and lead me to a strong finish.

My daughter waiting to cheer me on.

I was especially thankful to my husband who insisted on driving me there because he was afraid I wouldn't be able to drive myself home with my injured foot.  As always, I love seeing him and my daughter at the finish line.  It is something that I look forward to the whole race.  My 3 year old even gave me a butterfly tattoo that morning so I could think of her while I ran.  It brought a smile to my face when I looked at it.  I'm sure I looked like a loon to the other runners.

Overall, this wasn't the worst race that I've ever run.  I'm proud for getting it done even though, in retrospect, I shouldn't have done since it will set me back in my recovery process.  But I'm a stubborn Irish woman who makes a commitment and sees it through.  As usual, I'm trying not to beat myself up over the fact that the rest of my body felt great and just wanted to RUN.  My mind and body HATED having to walk, but I had to play it smart and safe to get it done.  Besides, I got a really sweet medal at the end.