Saturday, I ran Shifter's 5K in Waltham - a fundraiser for Dana Farber. It was great to see some familiar faces from DFMC and some new friends from Team RaceMenu/Mix1 too. Oh yeah, I'm on that team now. I warmed up around the neighborhood with the guy that recruited me to the team, Brian. Then we made it back to the starting area just in time to line up and here Shifter yell "GO!" The course was a nice lollipop through some local neighborhoods, starting and finishing behind the Waverly Oaks Athletic Club. I didn't want to push too hard because I had a half marathon the next day and technically I'm tapering and suppose to be taking it easy. Finished in a respectable 26 minutes.
After the race I went home, showered, and passed out on my couch for several hours. Now that's how to taper! I love naps. Why do we phase them out somewhere after kindergarden and only bring them back into our lives after retirement? I think we should keep naps as part of our daily routine, I felt amazing when I woke up and took another shower and headed out for the night to go to a friend's birthday party. I tried to eat something quickly before the party so I wasn't starving when I showed up. I can be like a hoover when I'm hungry and inhale everything in sight. That plan backfired because I ate too fast and scalded the roof of my mouth so bad it formed a blister. Well, on the brightside, the blister kept me from demolishing the beautiful spread of food my friend had at her party. I left the party around 9:00 and went home and straight to bed. Had to get up early the next day.
Sunday morning, I woke up, not by my alarm clock as planned, but by my fat cat "Slim" whinning in my face at 4:00am!!! He has no concept of weekends and sleeping in and demanded fresh food and water. I tried really hard to ignore him, but he's very persistant. If the loud obnoxious meowing doesn't work he proceeds to jumping up onto my dresser and knocking everything on it off so it goes crashing to the floor with loud bangs that piss me off and force me to get out of bed to try and kill him. Anyway, I was up and had to get ready for the Great Bay Half Marathon anyway (even if I now had a few EXTRA hours to get ready).
Great Bay is run in Newmarket, NH in and around the estuary and nature preserves. It's really a beautiful area, only about 5 miles from where I went to college. I can remember swimming at a nearby waterfall the summer after my freshman year. Those happy memories faded when I started running and remembered why I vowed to never run this course again 2yrs ago when I had last done the race. It's never ending hills that are just as steep as they are long. You can easily ignore the beauty of nature when you're cursing a hill that you can almost walk up faster than running up it. PLUS.......Mother Nature threw in a headwind to make it more challenging.
I held a pretty decent pace throughout the race and just thought to myself, "go easy and don't leave your marathon on this course" and "if you can finish THIS course in a decent time than Boston should be easy". I made it to the last 5K and I was on target to finish in about two hours. So, I picked up the pace and figured why not go for it. I just made it and finished in 2:00:27, not bad considering the hills and headwinds. I'd say I'm ready for April 18th.
Monday, shuold have been a rest day, but I was bored so I went to the gym and just did some upper body strength training. I need to get ready for Tough Mudder after Boston and I really want to be able to get over the 8ft walls and navigate the monkey bars without falling into ice cold water. That should be interesting.
Yesterday, I did an amazing workout, a little combo of my favorite things and my least favorite things. Here's what it looked like:
5 minutes jumping rope - FAST!
1 mile dreadmill sprint on incline
3x10 plyo squats
3x10 jumping jacks
3x10 Mountain climbers (10 each leg)
3x10 push ups
3x10 burpees
3x10 speed squats
3x10 pull ups
3x10 alternating lunges (10 each leg)
3x10 inverted rows
3x10 high knees (10 each leg)
5 minutes jumping rope - FAST!
1 mile dreadmill sprint on incline
It was a good warm up for the Tuesday night Lowell Ladies run and my friend Kim's first post baby run. We did a nice easy 3 miler in the rain. Kim did an awesome job. Right back at it, soon she'll be kicking my butt in the Good Times 5K series.
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