Baby girl!

I meant to write about a few things over the weekend. Let me just breeze through the highlights so I can cut to the awesome part :)

1) Finished my final long training run for the marathon! I ran 20 miles from Daphne, through Montrose and Fairhope, to Point Clear, and then back to Fairhope. I wanted to show a map of this run because I'm pretty proud of it, but I'm blogging from my phone and that might be a bit much for this ol' iPhone to handle. The run was TOUGH. Much harder than my previous long runs and I think that was partially due to the awesome hills of the Eastern Shore and maybe the 16 mi run that I did less than a week before this one. My friend Sam ran the last half of the run with me and thank goodness, because I really needed the company! Now I just have to heal up and maintain my fitness for the marathon on March 4th!

2) I ate a lot of amazing food this weekend. Xiaobin and Melissa came to Mobile and we hit up this incredible jazz brunch on Sunday morning. Here is a list of things that I ate: eggs Benedict, bananas foster French toast, lasagna (such an amazing breakfast item), king cake pastries (almost choked on one of the babies), scrambled eggs, bacon, and a waffle. If you think this is stupid excessive, allow me to offer an excuse. I was pretty nauseous and icky all day Saturday (after my run) so this was the first real meal I had in 24hrs. I enjoyed the hell out of it.

3) I watched the Super Bowl last night (duh) and came home and chatted with my Hans about our plans for St. Pete next weekend. We were really looking forward to running the 1/2M but not sure what to do because my sister was looking like she might be ready to go into labor sometime soon. Seconds after I got off the phone with Hans, Joann called me and told me that her water broke! I threw some stuff in a backpack and arrived in Slidell, LA at around 2am. I was really scared of what it would be like in the deliery room and what my sister would be like but the atmosphere was not chaotic at all; it was very quiet and focused. It was such a blessing to see my sister and brother in law work as a team to deliver our baby girl. I was floored by how strong and serene my beautiful sister was through her labor and how nurturing and encouraging Ben was to Joey. I wanted to step in and hold Joann's hand and help her push an be part of the action, but it was Ben and Joann's show and all they needed was each other. Lily McCrae was born at 6:05am today. She is such a precious thing! She's goofy like her daddy and sweet and good-natured like her mommy. She's nursing beautifully and great at napping. I don't have a lot of experience with babies, but Lily seems like an awesome one :)

I'm an aunt!

18 miles?? PIECE OF CAKE!

Just kidding, it wasn't actually that easy. I meant to knock this one out on Wednesday, but I didn't get out of work early enough to catch the hours of daylight I would need to run EIGHTEEN MILES. So I ran five and went to spin class instead. As always, Bill's class whooped my ass. I could really feel the burn in my quads as we did the sprint work and lately I've been wondering if I should just bite the bullet and buy some good spin shoes. I have the ones I use for my bike, but I don't think they're compatible with the type of clips on the spin bikes. Hmmm...

Anyway! Yesterday, I mapped out three different ~6 mile loops from my apartment. I left out a bottle of water/gatorade and some GU and hit the road at around 10am. It was very humid and the sky looked like it was fixin' to rain (aww I love Mobile) but the sun burned through at around noon. Then, it was hot. Very hot! I kept my heart rate at right around 155bpm (the upper limit of my aerobic zone) and never felt like I had to breathe through my mouth. Although this run was easy on the cardiovascular side, it felt tougher on my muscles and my joints because my stride was really short and so perhaps the cumulative impact was greater? What was weird (but kind of nice) was that the aches and pains would come and go and be replaced by a discomfort somewhere else. So my left arch (the mostly problematic one) would bother me for about a half hour, and then the pain would switch to my right hip and my arch wouldn't bother me anymore. As I write this, I wonder if it had to do with me adjusting my stride to compensate for the pain in the different parts of my body. I don't think I hurt myself too terribly bad though because I feel perfect today. No lingering soreness anywhere!

I took a break in between loops to grab some water and devour a GU. I feel good about the breaks that I took because they always came just when I was starting to feel tired or thirsty. I didn't time my running or my breaks because I wanted to focus on how my body was feeling and not push too hard- this worked out really well for me! When it was all over, I wasn't exactly tired but my muscles were definitely fatigued and I had to support myself a bit on the railing as I made my way upstairs. But yeah, today I am good as new! I think I will stick with heart rate training for my long runs... seems to be working so far.

Achy Breaky Feet

Yesterday, I planned to do my long run for the week- 18 miles. I mapped out two different 9 mile loops (to keep things interesting for myself), strapped on my heart rate monitor, set a water bottle and blueberry GU outside the gate to my house, and off I went! I tried to keep my heart rate in the fat burning/aerobic zones (50-70%) and would slow down if my heart rate approached 160bpm. Folks, I was moving slower than a swimming sloth.

Leave me alone, lady! Can't you see I'm trying to maintain my target heart rate zone?!

When I finally made it home, my knees and feet hurt but I felt great! My heart rate was low, my breathing was easy, and I was excited to knock my second 9 mile loop out of the park. I devoured the GU and slammed some watered down gatorade and I was on my way! 18 miles?! NO PROBLEM!!!

Two miles later, I was finished. My feet felt like two crushed birds, delicate bones protruding sharply from feathers in my Asics GT-2160s. I hobbled my ass back home and wondered what the fuck had happened. Two miles is a long way to walk when it hurts to walk. When I finally got home and had a hot shower, I realized that I probably hadn't given myself enough time to recover from the 1/2M this weekend. 

Today, I feel... better than ever, actually! My feet and calves are just fine, and I wonder if the stupid long run was just what I needed to flush out the lactic acid (in my feet???). I went to a great spin class during my lunch hour today and I feel confident that I'll be able to handle the 18 miler when I get back from this weekend. Stay tuned!

17 miles in the Eastern Shore

Yesterday, I met up with my friend Sam at the public library in Daphne for the LONGEST RUN OF MY LIFE (seems like I'm doing that every week, these days) - 17 miles. It was in the low 40s and I felt extremely underdressed, but I figured I'd get warm in the first few miles and that it would heat up towards the end of our run. We set off to run along the Eastern Shore Trail from Daphne to Fairhope. 

32 paved miles from Battleship Park to the Weeks Bay Reserve. Awesome!

This was the first run I've done with another person, while training for the marathon- and it was an absolutely critical one to have company. And to make it even cooler, Sam is the only woman I know to have completed a full IronMan! In short, she kicks a lot of ass. 


We talked a lot about her IronMan preparation and she told me that the most crucial thing she learned was heart rate training. She explained that most people struggle with their training because they don't know how to properly pace themselves and will tend to swim/bike/run much faster than they ought to. This is the wrong way to train because it causes your body to operate at heart rate outside of the fat burning zone. Basically, your body stops burning fat because your workout requires something with a higher caloric value so it ends up burning muscle instead. This opens you up to more injury risks and causes you to feel burned out and exhausted by the end of your workout. Training in the appropriate heart rate zone forces people to move slower than they would, but it allows your body to operate in the aerobic zone which is where your body most efficiently burns fat. Sam said that if you do it right, you should feel refreshed by the end of a long workout. I can't say I've felt that way after my long runs!


Before I knew it, we had run 8.5 miles and it was time to turn around! I couldn't believe what a difference it made to run with someone else, especially someone as interesting and experienced as Sam. It was a gorgeous run and I was really enjoying myself... until right around mile 15. Sam has ITBS and it really started to bother her towards the end of our run. My aches and pains were isolated in the arches of my feet, which was annoying but still MUCH better than what I had experienced in my other long runs. Then, we both started to feel nauseous which Sam said was a symptom of dehydration. At mile 16.3 (estimation), we saw an oasis in the desert...

We crawled in and said "we don't have any money, but if you give us some lemonade we'll love you forever and come back from lunch!" and they said "Alright, ya'll!" 

We sipped our half lemonade/half water beverages and they were sooo incredibly refreshing! I felt much better and extremely grateful to the kind folks at East Shore Cafe. Thanks to them, Sam and I were able to safely make it back to the library where our cars were parked. We had to walk a little because our legs had stiffened up from our break at the Cafe, but we survived and I'm still counting it as 17 miles completed!

Today, I'm feeling a little tightness in my calves but other than that, I'm just fine. Might do a spin class with Hans this afternoon to loosen everything up. Might also invest in a heart rate monitor ;)

the longest run of my life, closely followed by the longest run of my life

So 14 miles happened on Friday. I got out of work a bit early, dashed home to throw together a playlist (highlights: David Gueta's "Titanium" (feat. Sia) and Jay-Z & Kanye "N****s in Paris"), and I hit the road, nervous for the adventure to come. It wasn't a mind game until about the 10th mile. My hips started aching, my knees felt like they were swelling up, and the arches of my feet were SOO stiff. It got worse and worse from there, but the silver lining is that I never felt like I was breathing hard. Which probably means I was running slower than shit, but HEY- it's something!

Side note- when "Paradise"- Coldplay started playing ~3/4 of the way through my run, I felt totally euphoric and like everything was going to be alright. It took my mind off the aches and pains and I felt really proud of myself for this 14-mile run (which was a real milestone for me) and for what I have yet to accomplish. 

Saturday and Sunday were a bust. I was in New Orleans eating and drinking all those calories back. Highlights- bread pudding pancakes at The Ruby Slipper Cafe in Mid City and braised lamb shank with grits at The Irish House. Incredible!! It's no wonder that I haven't lost any weight since I started this eating plan- I mean TRAINING PLAN. 

But anyway, today was the start of Week 8! With Christmas being right around the corner, I figured that I probably wasn't going to do much working out after Thursday or Friday sooooo I made an interesting (read- STUPID) change to my work out plan... and did my long run today. FIFTEEN MILES! OUCH! The first five miles were terrific. I felt loose and I was able to find a really comfortable rhythm but, of course, that nice feeling was not meant to last. Today's aches and pains were the same as Friday's but they set in a lot harder, although again I didn't feel like I was working hard, cardiovascularly. Does this mean that I need to replace some spin workouts/runs with weight training? Help! I don't want my legs to pop off in the middle of this marathon!