chimesblog

I haven’t run more than 9 miles since last year’s half marathon, but I ran 10 last weekend.

And shattered my old 10 mile PR! By 14 minutes.

Check it out — here are my race times (some are embarrassing — note that my mile time for the marathon is my WALKING pace, though I didn’t walk!).

[previous 10 mi time — Capital Pursuit 2008]

[last Saturday's run — note the epically fast ending at 6:41/mi]

I am definitely giving myself props. And bragging rights.  Not to mention that it was 95° out on Saturday compared to the 50° 2 years ago.  YAY!

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… and I’m not talking public relations.

I’m talking personal record.

I made myself get out of bed this morning bright and early (5:30) and get out and run (6:30 — takes me an hour to fuel/hydrate/wake up).

I go out not expecting to do much, but I figure if I can do 3ish miles or a half hour, that’s pretty good for early in the morning. I totally don’t expect a PR.

I only went 2.83 miles today (I turned around 5 blocks earlier than I normally do for the sake of time), but apparently I set a new mile PR on nikeplus.  It’s not my actual PR because I’ve ran miles in faster times than this, but they just weren’t recorded on nikeplus.  I started using nikeplus when I was distance training for the marathon last year … so my times are pretty slow.

Anywho … here’s today’s run:

Here’s my PR’s from nikeplus:

My PR for a 10K is actually more like 50-something (could be 48-something if I keep my “fast” running trend up and can make it back up to 10K … someday).  My mile PR is more like 6:15 or something. Probably could go faster than that, but I’m afraid to push myself. Never tried running just ONE mile either … except when I was coming off an injury, and there was no speedwork then.

Anyway, I’ve got time to make a real breakfast this morning, so I’m going to go do that now.

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I realized that I haven’t blogged about running for a while, and since the title of my blog is “running+life” (or is it life+running) I think I should probably do that from time to time.

Last weekend I was supposed to run 10 miles for my half marathon training plan (did I mentioned I started that Feb. 2?).  I’ve been kinda half-assing the plan on the weekends (ie. not completing my super long runs)…partially b/c yes, i still have an injury i have to watch but mostly because I’m lazy.  Needless to say, I did not complete my 10 miles. BUT this time it so wasn’t my fault. I was ready and rarin’  to go.

What happened was that my friend Kelly and I were going to go to Revenge of the Prom (see future blog post) and I didn’t know what time she wanted me over there to get ready. Anyway, I got up at 9 AM or so…ate breakfast…and then immidiately had stomach cramps. Fabulous. So I had to chillax till those went away because God only knows what happens if you run with stomach cramps (i’ll give you a hint…it’s not pretty).  Meanwhile, I went grocery shopping because I was all “oh I have plenty of time… prom isn’t til 8 PM!”

So at 2 PM Kelly calls and is all, “welllll you should probably be here around 4.” Mind you, I hadn’t a) ran or b) showered or c) finished packing all my prom attire.  I told her I’d be looking at more like… 5:30…maybe 6.  We had a pre-prom party we were going to (that I completely forgot about!) so I had to somehow squeeze in a 10-mile run.  I told Kelly I’d be there as soon as I could (because I had to do her hair and makeup too — just like real prom) and I’d try to run faster.

I decided 10 miles FAST wasn’t going to happen because I hadn’t ran 10 miles at a decent pace for about 2 weeks.  I tried for a 7-8 mile workout and went out the door.

Randomly, I ran into hills. Apparently Waveland in DM is called that for the hills…? or at least I’m going to assume that. MAN those totally sucked.  I was about ready to die. Somehow I made it home though…and in record time. I beat both my mile PR (as in the mile recorded on the iPod PR) and my 10K PR (again, on the iPod — this was about 1 min slower than my real PR…but that was for JUST a 10K and it was a race).

Woo hoo.  So this weekend I’m scheduled to run 15 miles…and it’s definitely going to rain/snow/hail/sleet/do-god-knows-what to make it impossible. YAY!!!!!

Also new on the running front, Kasey’s older brother, Cory, (not to be confused with my sister, Coree) signed up for the Chicago Marathon. I challenged him to a most miles over 3 or 4 months on nike+. Somehow, I’m kicking his butt. Not sure how b/c I’ve been sooo slacking (I do cross train twice weekly now instead, so not skipping workouts).

AND I bought Kasey an iPod nano for Valentine’s day (went way over budget, but he bought me a wii fit, which I should probably blog about at some point) and a nike+ with the appropriate gear. He’d been wanting to get back into running but didn’t really have time…so I thought this could be a motivator for him. I challenged him to a fastest mile competition since I knew he wouldn’t be putting up the miles I do anytime soon (if ever, really…  I wouldn’t expect that of anybody unless they were as crazy as me).

but…here’s my runs and challenges, yo.

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I had a PR and hit a milestone of 500 miles today while running… but what sticks in my mind about my run today is the new Pepsi bottle stuck in the beautiful snowy country landscape.

It’s not the fact that it was litter — although that bothers me as well — it’s mainly because the bottle wields a terribly redesigned pepsi campaign. argh.

seriously? way to ruin the environment and my run.

I should have taken 2 pictures: one of the landscape and a closeup (shown). Normally I wouldn’t be able to take a picture like this, but I brought my phone with me in case the snow got too slippery.

Anyway, here’s the running stats.

New mile PR.
New 10K PR.
500 miles on the Nike+.

IN THE SNOW. take that Iowa winter.

w00t. I'm about 15 short of 1000 since last March though.

today's run (holy hannah, that big "hill" in the graph: yeah, that's 6:49/mi.

Nike+ gave me the option to buy this t-shirt... for 30 bucks. um no.

Here are my PRs as of today (notice the new mile and 10K time). My HONEST 10K PR is like :51 something, but that was before I had nike+. Also, I've never timed just one mile on this thing...could be interesting.

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yay. finally got that last workout to load.

i rock.

which totally reminds me — on Saturday I ran down Grand Ave. and went past a car with a hilarious license plate: MANIROK. (man i rock)

MANIROK’s entire front end was smashed in…like the owner rammed it aimlessly into a pole. MANILAUGHED.

anyway… today’s run= 2 PRs.  Mile time and 5K time. Probably not the fastest mile I’ve ran in my life, but the fastest since I’ve gotten the Nike+.

Also, I’d set a goal to run 5 times at under 9:35/mi pace in a month.  I’m well ahead of that goal, which I was not anticipating.

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today I had an amazingly short but awesome run — set 2 PRs: 8:06/mi and 26:03/5k.

— but —

NIKE PLUS DECIDED NOT TO RECORD THIS INFO!!!  It’s on my iPod, but the workout data from today decided for whatever reason that it did not want to send to nikeplus.com. GRR.

the last two weeks I’ve been watching my average pace per mile on nikeplus.com go from a sad 10:45ish to a little less embarrassing 10:25ish.  Mind you, the 10:45/mi pace was built up over nearly 300 miles and the amount of miles I’ve ran in the past two weeks barely add up to 30, let alone 300.

a month ago i didn’t think i could hit a 9:00 mile.  now i’m running those regularly for 5mi< runs. the most i’ve run since the marathon tho is 6 miles, which is sad, but i’ve got an injury, so i’ll deal with it so i can keep running for years rather than months.

anyway. annoyed. i was pretty proud of those times even tho they’re seriously slow compared to most people and nike+ apparently agreed. grr.

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