Destination Me 2009 Challenge

My blog has turned into a running log rather than a blog about the challenges that I was to take in an effort to get fit. I have been focused on my running and I really have started to love it. This week marks not only the final week before my first 10K race but also the deadline to submit my final entry to Jillian Michael’s “Destination Me Challenge” that I joined back in January. I have been following along with her challenge blogs each week, but there really hasn’t been anything exciting to blog here about.  However, I think that is a good thing. The main point about her challenge this time was to think about what you wanted for your life. For 2009 mine was to “do something” and I have! I have really had a lot of success these past couple of months and I am happy to say the year is off to a good start. The challenge was broken down in to three sections: food, fitness and life with the challenge to set a goal in each area.

Mine were:

Food: Get a handle on the eating with a goal of losing 25 pounds by counting calories and eating good, wholesome foods.
Result: For the most part I have stayed in my calorie range and have focused on eating for fuel and energy. I have made some really good food choices and I have come a long way in regards to using food every time I feel frustrated or stress or sad or happy or want a reward, etc. I did not reach my goal of 25 pounds. As of this week I have lost 18 pounds since the start of the challenge.

Fitness: My goal here was to embark on a running training program and a run a 5K in January, February and March. I only ran one in January or February, not March. However, I didn’t run in March because instead of running a 5K I have been focused on training for my first 10K April 4th. I needed all my weekends focused on long runs.  The 10K was not part of the original plan, but goes along with the third part of this challenge…

Life: This piece focused on what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to DO SOMETHING instead of just sitting on the sidelines being an observer. I joined Spartanburg Running Club and joined a group to train for the Cooper River Bridge 10K. This was one of the best decisions I have made. I not only got some great training advice, but lots of support from several people along the way. I have built my confidence up so much with this experience that now I know I can run whatever distance I set my mind to.  When I was first contemplating this distance of 6.2 miles John’s comment that it was “only three more miles” has done wonders for me. It was only three more miles. My longest run so far has been 7 miles. I am not fast by any means, but I can handle the distance fairly well. I know I can eventually handle any distance.

After this race I will have to sit down and plan the next three months. This was a really good time frame to have a goal and work towards it. I liked having a specific goal and a training plan to keep me focused. It was much better than just tyring to lose weight. I still have 43 pounds to go until my first goal weight. However, I do not want to focus on that – I want to keep training. Like the quote I found a couple of weeks ago – “Get fit, eat healthy, thin will come”. I like that philsophy and I am going to stick with it.

I had the park to myself!

After having a beautiful last couple of weeks of bright sunny weather and mild temps tonight was cold and rainy. I headed out anyways. As I started my first mile it was barely drizzling. I ran the plan perfectly. Tonight the plan was:
1 mile 13 min mile
3.5 miles 11:00-11:15 min mile
1 13 min mile

The middle three miles were good.  My first 1.5 were 11:15, the next 1 was 11:05 and the last one was right at 11:00. This was really good. I usually start off too fast and then my final miles are slower. That is not the way it is supposed to be. You are supposed to start off slower and get progressively faster. I am very pleased.

I still have some tightness in my left hamstring. I did the foam roller and some stretching tonight. I will have to Google what else I can do.

Four miles today

I is so funny now that I have been running a couple of months. I remember getting so anxious about my “long” weekend runs… I would think about them all week and wonder how I would do. Now I just go out and run 4 miles no problem. It is pretty exciting. Tonight I ran 4 miles in 44:38. Last July when I participated in a 5K (I cannot even say I ran it at this point), I finished in 46 minutes. My feet were in terrible pain, my shins hurt so bad I could barely walk and I could hardly breathe. Now tonight I ran 4 miles almost 2 minutes faster than that.

Tonight the plan was:
1 mile at 13 min pace
2 miles at 11 min pace
1 mile at 13 min pace

Actual, roughly: it is hard to get exact unless I start my Garmin over each mile. I did start it over after the first mile so I am sure of the first and second mile paces.
1 mile at 11:30
1 mile at 10:30
1 mile at 10:45
1 mile at 11:00+

I just had a urge to run a bit faster. I figured that I am not really going that fast anyway so 30 seconds faster should not hurt me.

On the schedule for tomorrow it says ” cross train or take the day off”, hmmmm… I think I will take the day off from cardio. I will just do my Core Performance routine for the day. I am currently on week 4 of the 12 week program and do feel like my core is getting stronger. There are some balancing moves that I am also getting much better at.

Now I have to go use the foam roller! Believe it or not, that is even getting easier!

7 miles – done!

Today was my longest run yet at 7 miles. I was prepared and felt great heading out. Despite my best intentions I did not get to run in the morning like I had planned. I ran at 5:30 pm. It was a perfect day for running – it was sunny and the temp was perfect. The park was not as crowded as it has been on these nice days. I purposefully waited to go at dinner time hoping that people would actually be at home eating. It worked.

For this run I didn’t feel like listening to music. I started out with nothing, but that got boring so I turned on my new favorite podcast called Phedippidations .It is a free podcast by a man named Steve who each week provides the listeners with “thoughts, opinions, observations and rambling diatribes composed during distance long runs.” He has various subjects each week that he discusses mostly while he is running.  He describes himself as a middle of the pack runner and has run 109 races, according to his website as of today. Sometimes he talks about preparing for races, sometimes technical aspects of running, sometimes he profiles runners, sometimes he just talks about random things. At the end he reads letters from listeners who share their running stories.  It is fun to listen to, if you are interested in running. He talks a lot about marathons, which is something that is far in the future for me, but it is fun to listen to anyway. I have a lot of catching up to do… he has 179 podcasts and I just finished episode 33. Listening to the podcast really made the time fly by.

So, back to my run… I felt good getting started but at about mile 4 I started feeling tightness in my left hamstring. I stopped briefly to stretch it and it felt a bit better. Then I started to get a bit tired and realized that I have 3 more miles to go! I had to stop two more times for just a few seconds each to stretch that hamstring out again.  I maintained a pace between 12:00 and 12:30 the whole time. For the last quarter mile I gave it all I had and finished strong.  I ended up running the 7 miles in 1 hour and 28 minutes.

Friday weigh-in and BMR

I am so pleased. Two pounds are officially gone! I was in shock this morning when the scale showed my loss. I cannot believe I lost with the calorie increase. However, even though I increased my calories by a couple of hundred a day I am still eating at or under my allotment for my BMR.

I think the thing is to recalculate the BMR each time I loose weight. If I go to a BMR calculator
now I will see that my current BMR is 1690. I cannot eat over that amount. This is the amount of calories that my body will burn just operating itself.

To lose a pound I need to burn 3500 calories. I can eat 1690 and exercise off 3500 calories and lose a pound a week.

Jillian’s website currently has eating 1363 calories to lose 2 pounds a week by decreasing my food calories. Her formula uses Total Energy Expenditure which takes into consideration that I have a sedentary job. She already has built in that I will burn 500 calories a day exercising.  This works, too. The months before I started running this is what I was doing and I was consistently losing more than 2 pounds a week.

Exercising for burning calories is quite different than training and running for a race. If I felt tired after a couple of days of hard exercising I just did other  exercises and took at day off. I could burn calories any number of ways. Now with running am trying to run well and do the right thing for my training. I find that I cannot do two and three cardio workouts a day during my race training.

So, I am not burning as many calories a week but I am feeling better than ever. This is definately the way to go for now.

Morning Run

I got to the park at about 9:00 today for my 5 mile run.  It was beautiful outside and I was ready for the challenge:
1 mile @ 13 min pace
3 miles @ 11 min pace
1 mile @ 13 min pace

As usual, my 13 min pace miles were 12:30. That is what feels right so I am sticking to it. I felt good for the first two of my 11 min miles. The last one was tough. My legs started to feel like lead. I maintained my pace and finished that part and felt weak. Not terribly weak, but defininately weaker than usual. I finished up my last mile and walked for a bit.

I think it was the morning run. My body is used to me running at 6:00 at night and having a whole days worth of calories and walking around… I think the morning run threw me off. Which, by the way, is bad. The race is in the morning! I need to try to get in a couple of more runs in the morning. This weekend I have a 7 mile run that I am going to do Sunday morning. I will try to get to the track about 8:30 and get started.

I felt good the rest of the day. I wanted to eat all day long, but stuck to my calorie allotment for the day. Tomorrow is weigh-in day and I will be surprised if I lose anything. I didn’t lose last week and I do not feel any different.

I was ready a running website or blog or something and found this:

Get fit, eat healthy, thin will come.

So, this is my focus right now, getting fit and eating healthy. My whole adult life I have been dieting at one point or another and it has not really worked out for me. So hopefully this method will bring me more success in the long run!

I am happy to say – MUCH EASIER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My speed plan for today on my training calendar was:

10 min warm-up
5 x 1000 in 6:50 w/ 400 meter walks in between
cool down

Easy, no – but easier YES. I had the best speed training session yet. I really worked hard and I actually ran faster than I should have. Compared to my first few sessions this is amazing. Except for the three laps that Beth did with me that one week I do not think I ever finished any 1000’s strong and feeling good. Most of then I think I have even taken mini walk breaks. The very first 1000’s I ran in February I was right at 7:00 minutes and I felt like I was going to die. Even the ones I ran with Beth were in the 6:40’s, but they were TOUGH. Last week I did them, but I was just not giving it my all and did them right at the alloted time, but they were painful and I did not feel good about my performance.

This week I have added more calories to my day and eating good food. For several weeks I have been eating about 1300 and have just felt weak and unmotivated.  This week I have been eating 1600-1700 calories and feel great. My last two runs have been awesome.

Recap of today:

As usual I started out too fast and I felt it. However, I was able to recover enough to keep pushing strong.

Lap 1: 5:50
Lap 2: 6:04
Lap 3: 6:43
Lap 4: 6:17
Lap 5: 6:21

I am feeling so great. This training is the best thing that I have ever done for myself.  I cannot wait for that race!

Sunday run

I waited until late Sunday afternoon in hopes that the rain would stop. It stopped raining, but there was a light mist and about 50 degrees. I ate good that morning and felt great – I was ready for the run. I started off slow – about 12:30 for my first mile or so. I sped up a little bit because it felt right. I averaged about 12:oo for the next few miles.

I was at Harmon Field as usual and ready to run my normal route. There was a horse show there this past weekend and I was happy to see them gone. Even though the people and horses were gone the remnents of the horses were not gone. The track was littered with mud and horse poop. It was up to my soles in some spots and I was so mad. They destroyed the track. I just hope it gets cleaned up. If it doesn’t I have to figure out who to complain to.

This issue to lead my along a new path though. I ran to the edge of the park and up a road. Normally I do not run on roads, but it would have been really hard to get in 6.5 miles without that poopy loop. I ran up Howard Gap Road for about a mile. There was a pretty nice hill along the way. I had to turn off my music so I could listen for cars coming. It turned out to be pretty nice. I just focused on running.

I felt really good the whole time. The cushion shoes really did the trick. I wish I tried them sooner. At about 5.75 miles I tried to run a bit faster. I wanted to run 6.2 miles a little faster than I did last time – I ended up a minute faster than I was before. I continued on to the end and finished strong.

New week, new goal

I had a busy running schedule this week. The speed training on Tuesday was tough with 8 x 400 – each at 2:30 with 200 meter walking intervals in between. I like 400’s better than 1000’s because you get to walk sooner! That’s probably not good since I am training to RUN, not WALK. I met all my times for the 400’s.

Wednesday was a nice cross training day. I ate good all week and drank plenty of water. I wanted to be ready for my 5 miles tonight and the 6.5 this weekend.

The last few times I have been out running I have felt like I was starting to get shin splints. My feet also have been hurting again so I have been icing every night. I also found some different shin splint exercises that I have been doing religiously this week. One is to point your leg out and use your foot to trace all the letters of the alphabet in the air. I also decided to try another pair of shoes. I have been wearing my Supernova Sequences which are very comfortable, but are stability shoes. I felt like I needed more cushion. The extra miles and increased speed (for me) mean more pounding. I switched to my Supernova Cushion. I felt like I was running on air. My feet felt good for the whole 5 miles. A bit of a tingle in my toes, but no real pain. Also, no shin pain.

The best part of tonight’s run is that I set a new record for myself. I ran the 5  miles in 57:36. My previous record was 1:01.  The plan tonight was to run 1 mile at 13 min pace, the speed up to 11 min pace for 1.5 miles, and repeat. I know that now, but I realized when I got to the park that I forgot my plan and I didn’t look at it before I left. I knew I had to speed up, but that is it. I basically spurts of 12 min then 11 min, but unfortunately not for the prescribed length. I just would speed up and slow down every mile or so.

Now I have to get focused for Sunday.

How many excuses….

…can I come up with for having a miserable run today? Well, maybe not MISERABLE, but it definately was not one of the best runs I have ever had. That being said, I think Katheryn had a great run. Considering she does not normally run and she came out with me and ran 5 miles right off the bat, I think that is amazing. I guess when you are a fit 19 yuear old things are easier! I am so proud of her. She even tried encouraging me along when I was struggling up a hill. She was also dancing to the music in her I-pod around mile 3.5. She is great.

I found this greenway on the website of the Knoxville Track Club. It is a 2.6 stretch through an old neighborhood. The neighborhood is full of old, beautiful houses. The pathway is a packed gravel trail through the center of the neighborhood. There are areas of flat and areas of hills.In the days leading up to this run I pictured Katheryn and me running side by side chatting while admiring the beautiful homes.

When drove to the end of the greenway where there was plenty of parking and picnic areas down by the river. The area is very nice with plenty of room for lounging and playing. About a half mile down there is a baseball field and more picnic areas. It is definately a very nice place to be. There were many runners and walkers out doing their thing.

The run started off good enough – we were at a nice 12 min mile pace and I felt really good.  The trail is narrow so Katheryn was running behind me. At some point a realized there was another lady behind her – apparently I was the pacer. Funny. About a mile and a half  or so into the run it hit me – I had to go to the bathroom REALLY bad. Every step jarred my bladder. Normally I make one more pit stop before heading out but this place did not have facilities. I guess a greenway is not a park… you are on your own.  I couldn’t get my mind off the pressure in my bladder. Finally we got to the baseball field area and I was sure that there would be a bathroom. We got off the path and headed down towards the buildings by the field. Nothing. The bad thing is that now I still had to go to the bathroom and now I lost my rhythm I had going on. I usually takes a mile or so to start feeling good so stopping at this point was not good.

Back on the trail again we took off, now I am frustrated becuase of the failed attempt to pee and the brief stop made it had to get going again. After about another half mile of running the hills started. The hills were long gradual stretches that seemed to go on forever. Probably good training for the race, but I was not feeling it.  Near the top of the third stretch my legs felt like bricks and I could barely muster them to move and took a brief walking break. Katheryn tried encouraging me to the top as we were about to hit the turnaround a 2.5 miles.  The good thing was that we got to turn around and look forward to some downhill stretches.

There were some hills going back, but they were shorter in length – there was one and the end I had to walk to the top for about 15 seconds or so.  Going back the problem was the sun. It was blaring down on me and I felt dehydrated. The odd part is that I still had to go to the bathroom… It doesn’t seem like the two should. Back to the heat… It was a beautiful, sunny day and really it couldn’t have been a better day. However, this was the first time I have run in 75 degree, sunny weather since I started my running. It is usually in the 30′ s or 40’s. Last weekend it got up to 50, but is was raining. I do not think I was hydrated enough for  the heat. I hardly drank any water at all yesterday and this morning only had a cup of coffee and MAYBE 2 cups of water. Considering I normally drink about 100 oz of water a day, this was not good. Oh, and it was windy, too.

So, after having to walk part way up that hill I really just started the stupid talk in my head again. I started bashing myself for not being able to get up the hill and convincing myself that I would not be able to make it up the bridge in Charleston. That Katheryn was going to think bad of me for stuggling up the hill (of course she never would) … blah, blah, blah. I could not focus on anything except the bad stuff. Nevermind that I was out doing it and I was pretty much keeping a good pace. I just felt terrible.

All this time Katheryn had been running behind me and I asked her to just go ahead of me for awhile and go her own pace. She got about 30 paces in front of me and I felt a little more relaxed. I realized once again that I think I was putting pressure on myself to do well knowing she was behind me. I do this all the time. When John and I go hiking I always have these weird feelings when I am hiking in the front – like I have something to prove. My family is certainly not judging me and have nothing except support for me. I just need to stop this craziness!

Mile 4.5 comes along and my favorite song comes on (“Bad Influence” by Pink) and it does nothing for me. I was counting on it giving me that last bit of energy. It didn’t and I kept ploding along.  The last 10th of a mile was ahead of me and Katheryn had already finished and ran back to me and ran with me to the end. It was really nice. With out bathroom detour in the beginning we actaully ran 5.16 miles. I felt that last bit was make-up for the bit of walking I did up the hill.

I definately learned so things I need to do better these next few weeks as the training intensifies for the race:

No P.F Changs and martini’s the night before my long runs
No Steak and Shake for lunch the day before the long run
Drink plenty of water and eat healthy everyday

Another thing I learned after was that Knoxville has one of the worst air quality indexes in the south. So, I am going to blame the smog, too.

I finished 5 miles in 1 hour, 5 minutes, averaged a 12:37 pace.

Here is a picutre of part of the path and a link to the greenway: