Princess Runner

Today I was back at the Des Plaines River Trail for a 12 mile group run. I was nervous at the beginning when I did not see my regular running partner. How would I run 12 miles alone? I really should have brought the husband’s iPod shuffle. (aside: why do I want the second generation iPod shuffle when I don’t need it? Well, I know why, it is tiny and cute and…cute. But I don’t need it). I did not have to worry though because the woman who I ran with the second part of last week’s run was there so I was able to run with her.

The run went fairly well. The weather was good today, sunny but not humid. I tried the Clif Shot Bloks this week (last week I did the gels). I also ate a Clif Bar (peanut butter crunch) for breakfast, which I think worked well. The best part about the run was that we went at a pace that was good so that I was never really out of breath and was able to carry on a conversation. My legs were pretty tired the last two miles, though. The end of my second-smallest toe on my left foot got a blister. I am going to experiment with getting 1/2 size up on the shoe and see if that helps. I can feel my foot getting bigger on the long runs, as the small toes on my left foot start to feel squished.

This seems to be a week for animal sightings while running. During the third mile we saw a deer! I think it may have been a mule deer, because it had really big ears. I am not sure, though. I also saw about 14 monarch butterflies, although I lost count. At a few times during the run they were flying along with me, which was fun. The best part, though, was that I finally saw a LIVE cicada! He just flew over and then landed on the ground. I was so happy to finally see one, especially since I thought that they had reached the end of their time here.

For the rest of the day after the run I just could not eat enough to feel full. I guess burning over 1100 calories makes a girl hungry.

I have posted previously about my love of running skirts. They don’t bunch up like shorts and, provided I use the bodyglide on my thighs, I find them to be so comfortable.  They also have a skirt that has compression shorts underneath if that is more your style.

If you are thinking of getting a running skirt, consider Atalanta Athleticwear. They are a female-owned company started by a self-labeled “middle-of-the-pack” runner.

I have partnered with them as part of my fundraising. If you order from them and enter the code “princess” at the checkout, then I will get 20% of the sale price sent to my account at the Leukemia and Lymphoma society.

Check them out here.

I had a forty minute run on the schedule today and I got started about about 6:30 a.m. It was already very warm and humid. The real bummer, though, was that I forgot my sunglasses. I also was not wearing my hat. I considered going back for the sunglasses, but it had already taken me 20 minutes to get out of the house in the first place and I just wanted to be finished already. The run itself was rather unspectacular, filled with a multitude of walk breaks, in part because of the humidity and in part because my first run of the week always sucks. I don’t know why.

I had quite the Dr. Doolittle adventure during my run, spotting lots and lots of animals. Usually I see a bunny or two and maybe a black squirrel if I am lucky, but today it was like a zoo out there.

Nine squirrels, three black, six brown.

I saw what I thought was a 20 oz bottle of pop standing in the road. When I got closer, I realized that it was a squirrel standing on his hind legs, just hanging out.

Behind the apartment building in the little field I saw four bunnies.

As I entered the little brush area that leads to the street, I saw another bunny.

Going up a side street I saw a bunny sitting in someone’s yard.

On the way back, near home, after running into the hubby who was on his way to work on his bicycle, I saw yet another bunny.

Have you been keeping track? That is seven bunnies. Almost enough for a baseball team.

One other thing. I tried my mom’s suggestion of using the body glide on my feet in conjunction with the blister block powder. It kind of clumped weird on my feet and reminded me of the material that I used to make a volcano when I was little. (Wait, did that really happen or I am confusing my childhood with an episode of The Brady Bunch again?)

I just noticed that I have reached the 100 mile mark on my marathon training.

Today’s team long run was 4000 times better than the hills and heat that we had to deal with last week. It was actually a bit chilly when we started the run this morning and it was overcast the entire time. The run went really well from the very beginning. Every time my Garmin (I still need to name him/her) beeped to tell us to talk a walk break, we said “already?” Last week I was constantly checking my watch in hopes that a walk break would happen soon.

My regular running partner had to leave early, but fortunately I met up with another women with a similar pace and I was able to run with her the last three miles.

I tried a new blister protection product: blister block powder. I had mixed results. My feet were very good, definitely not as sweaty as they usually are (although that might be because it was cooler out) and I did get any blisters on my bunions. My toes, however, were another story. I have one good sized blister between two of my toes. I guess I should have used the body glide still, in addition to the powder, on my toes. So next time I will combine the powder with the body glide. That is what my mom suggested that I do, but I wanted to see  how the powder on its own would work.

I tried the Clif gel again this week and it worked well. I had some of the Power Ade that the team provided when the run was over. I then had a banana. By the time I got home (about 30 minutes), my tummy was very owie. I am guessing it was the Power Ade, because my tummy doesn’t usually like it during runs. I thought that it would be okay to drink after the run, but I guess I was wrong.

The trail was littered with cicada carcasses. I suppose that is why we hadn’t run at that particular location in several weeks. I can only imagine how loud all those cicadas would have been when they were living.

Today was a 10 mile long run, our group’s first at this distance. What better way to embrace the new distance than having us run at one of the handful of places in all of Chicagoland that has actual hills?

The temperature was 152 degrees. You may think that I am exaggerating and you would be right, but I am only exaggerating a very little bit. As much as I don’t like to get up early early in the morning, I would be willing to make the sacrifice if we could start at 6:00 a.m. instead of 7:00 a.m. However, given how long it took me to complete the run today, it would have been HOT HOT HOT by the time that I finished anyway.

But, back to the hills. They were not my friend. Although I am not an advocate of torture, if I were wanting to torture someone, I think that I would give them two options: (1) Tell me what I want to know; (2) Run 10 miles of hills when it is 152 degrees. I think that they would give it up by mile three (I certainly would have). At one point, about mile six, one of my coaches ran by and said “Having fun?” and I said “Not really.” I was being subdued in my answer when what I really wanted to say involved curse words.

Despite the overall crappiness, I did press on and complete the ten miles, which I should be happy about. We walked most of the last mile and a half, making our time about 2.5 hours. My Garmin, which I had preprogrammed to do time intervals congratulated us on being finished around mile 9 and stopped recording. I had underestimated how long I thought it would take us, which was why the Garmin thought it was quitting time. I also think that Garmin was tired of the hills, too.

If you don’t believe me about the hills, because I am prone to exaggeration, check out the images below. The first one shows a graph of the elevation. The second image is what I typically have to deal with in terms of elevation and the place that we normally run at. The third image is the elevation that I had to deal with today.

Check out those images and then you let me know if you don’t think that I earned the White Castle I just ate.

Normal day

Today’s Hell

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This week’s schedule is a bit scaled back, I imagine in preparation for our 10 miler this Saturday. Instead of 30 minute and 40 minute runs, we have 20 minute easy runs. It took me almost as long to get ready (sunscreen, body glide, etc) as it did to run 20 minutes.For cross-training yesterday, I played Rayman Raving Rabbids on the Wii. For those you who doubt that the Wii is cross-training, you should try it. I was dancing and shaking my booty and fake running for 40 minutes. That is a whole TEN minutes more than I needed to. I am a fitness machine.

You may recall that the last time that I was scheduled to make eight miles, I didn’t quite make it. I didn’t go to group training that week and was forced to slosh my way through torrential downpours just to eek out seven. Today, however, I had every intention of finishing the eight miles, but it did not quite happen that way.

This week’s training was at the lake front path in Chicago and featured a combined run of all four of the area’s Team in Training teams. In short, there were a lot of people. The run overall was pretty good, although with all of the excitement, we started out too fast and had to slow down later. I need to do a better job of starting out slowly.

The run started at Wilson and headed south to Belmont. We then turned around and headed back north, for about 5.5 miles total at that point. Up to that point, the coaches and other personnel were pretty good at telling us which way to go. When we came under the bridge at Wilson, we saw three other team members head to the left. There were no signs at all, so we followed suit. It was the wrong way. We didn’t realize it at first, because other people had followed us, so we weren’t the only Team folks there.

It was not until we got to Foster and saw Team people coming from the east toward us that we realized we had messed up. We continued up to the end of the path and I waved at my old building, the same way I used to when I lived there (to say hi to the cat). We turned around and headed back south, careful to go back the correct way.

My running partner got a bit of a side ache near the end, which I supremely hope was not because I shared my Clif Shot Blocks with her. I started to run ahead, but that sucked, so I went back and walked with her. We only had a half mile or so left at the point, so it did not make much of a difference.

Since we took the wrong path, we ended up short, with only 7.65 miles. I suppose that it is close enough. In the graph below, you can see that I am still doing the run seven minutes, walk one minute. You can also see how widely varying my running times were (look at every other line to see the running times.  The laps that are total time of 1:00 are walking breaks. I need to get more consistent in the long runs. The first step to that is starting out slowly.

Today I had to go run at the gym because it was rainy/stormy all day. When I go to the gym for a short run, I almost always use the track because I get too bored on the treadmill. The track is only three lanes, designated “Walk, Jog, and Run.” Usually I stick to the jog lane.

Unfortunately I got to the gym later than usual and it was packed with a lot of teenagers. I went to the track and started my run and there were probably 10 people there (normally there are at most three). It was okay at first because the walkers were sticking to the walk lane (except for the dancing/walking woman who kept veering over into the jog lane).

About 15 minutes into my run, three teenage girls came to the track. They stood around giggling a bit before they started SLOWLY walking around the track, three abreast. They were giggling and pointing out songs on their iPods to one another. When they walked by the window that looked into the weight room they giggled more. Everytime I passed them I had to say “on your right” for one of them to move over. As soon as I passed, she went back into the third lane. I was so annoyed. I can understand walking in the walk lane, or even fast walking in the jog lane, but ambling along in the run lane is just plain rude.

All that aside, the run went well. For some reason I cannot get my new foot pod to work, so I had to count laps (which gets more difficult as the run goes on and I cannot remember if I am on lap 8 or 9). Once I got to 10 laps, which is a mile on this track, I hit the lap button. I then walked for a lap around the track and hit the lap button again. Then I did another mile and then two more walking laps.

I was a model of consistency, at least as far as the running part went, as both miles took the exact same amount of time, down to the second: