Summer 2013 Recap

 Well HELLO THERE blog!!! It's been awhile. I have big goals to actually actively blog going forward (heard that one before?). I make no real promises, just putting my intentions out there.

So since I was last here, summer has come and (almost) gone... at least in the everyone is heading back to school sense. We have a growing chicken coop, 16 birds now. J is working hard as always, I changed jobs and am all settled in at the new place now. My knee is still bummed out; can't run longer than 1.5 miles or so - trying to find new training ideas that will help me lose weight (always the goal) and work on the continued rehab of my knee. I would love it if I could accomplish that half marathon goal before 2013 is over, I've eyed the local races through the rest of the year and have a target picked, if I can really start seeing improvement in time to actually train back up to that distance. We've spent time with family, kayaked, seen a couple of great concerts, had some beach days, just generally lived and enjoyed life.

Check back... hopefully I'll follow through and be regular with the blog again. 

Here's the summer in pictures...

 July

A dozen chicks hatched on July 1st.

4th of July on the roof, waiting for the shows to start.

Picked up a new sunshade at the flea market.

We enjoyed some evening bike rides at the lake.

Waiting for Counting Crows at the America's Cup Pavilion

The Bay Lights in San Francisco

Zeus checking on the chicks.

Ms. Molly celebrated her 12th birthday!

A great beach day @ Twin Lakes in Santa Cruz.

Waiting for Justin Timberlake & Jay-Z at Candlestick

The show! First time I had been to CandleStick in about 20 years. I'm glad I went before it's final season.

August

Kayaking on the SF Bay from Redwood City

Power tower on the Bay.

Awesome shorebirds on the Bay.

Catching up with the rooster!

The 'baby' birds moved to the coop.

One of the many ways that I used our zucchini.

The babies like to snuggle on each other.

Working on my running... took the dogs with me. Let's just call it interesting.

And finally we celebrated our 5th anniversary yesterday!!

Half Marathon Week 11

I am back on the wagon of running. After two weeks of absolutely no running (with no good excuse, when considering my goal of a half marathon), this week I ran, and I ran a lot!

The plan looked like:
Tuesday - 4 miles
Thursday - 5 miles
Saturday - 5 miles
Sunday - 11 miles

I go a jump start for the week on Monday. My friend asked me to go and run our Rancho run, I figured it would be a fun way to reinvigorate my running spirit. The result was a great workout of running/hiking intervals for a total of 5.5 miles.

On Tuesday I was thankful that I had run on Monday. I was not feeling well, had actually stayed home from work, and somehow needed to run 4 miles. Well that wasn't going to happen, but in the afternoon I managed to get myself out of the house and cover 3 miles, half running and half walking. Definitely better than nothing.

I managed to get Thursday's run completed before work. 5 miles as prescribed, done early so I wouldn't have to worry about it after a late afternoon meeting at work.

Yesterday I should have just gotten out of bed and done my 5 miles again. But I did not. We had plans to meet a friend at 8:45 in San Francisco and a few other things. By the time I was home and ready to run it was almost 5. I could have ran, but decided not to in an effort to preserve myself for 11 miles today. A good decision I think. My legs would have still been tired this morning if I had run late yesterday.

Long run turn around view.

So today is the day it was really all about. I can prep for a half marathon and miss some of the shorter miles and be okay, but to not hit the longer runs would not be beneficial to me at all. Today's 11 miles felt totally badass, or rather they made me feel like a badass! The first mile was easy and immediately after it I started telling myself, 'you're so close, just a few more like this and you'll have it in the bag' HAH!! just a few more, right. I've realized a little benefit to running the same trail like I do, especially the way that I always run out half of my goal distance and turn around; I am very familiar with my course, so when I add mileage (like the 3 I added today), the 'new' ground I cover is in the middle of my run, and by the time I am actually running the additional miles I am back in my homestretch where I would be hard pressed to give up, where I am also so comfortable that I can tick off the quarter mile increments by a particular tree or bush. Today's turn around spot was another interesting view, crossing under the convergence of Highways 101 & 85, an interesting change from my last turn around spot. Well my legs got wobbly by mile 7, this run has led me to resolve to get a camelpack, and most of all I survived!!

Tired, but alive... post 11 miles. Stretched out at a park table, and then had a brief rest on the table.

The rest of today is dedicated to eating yummy food, Left Bank for lunch and homemade Eggplant Parmesan for dinner. Oh and laundry, of course laundry.

My stats immediately after the run... think I'm going to be okay.

Half Marathon - Week 8 & some Jelly Beans

So here we go, the second running recap... Well mileage-wise, not as good as last week. This week's plan was a bit of a step back from last week in terms of total mileage. I was supposed to run:

Tuesday: 4 Miles
Thursday: 4 Miles
Saturday: 4 Miles
Sunday: 6 Miles (I amended this mileage to be 6.2 for a 10k for Run With Jess' virtual Jelly Bean race)

Tuesday was a success, 4 miles done in laps around the lake/park. It was looking to rain and I wasn't feeling up to getting stuck 2 miles from home in the rain, so laps I did, never too far away from home. Of course it didn't rain. The run felt good though! No soreness and right on my 10:30 or so pace that I expect of myself when I'm not trying too hard.

A sad thing did happen on Tuesday morning, we lost a hen. She had started drooping her wings on Friday and we knew something was up with her over the weekend. WE watched her, tried to keep her fed and watered, but by Tuesday morning she had died. This was one of the 'baby' hens that we had incubated. Fortunately, whatever it is that was wrong with her doesn't seem to have been contagious. We have cleaned the coop and are keeping close watch on the rest of the flock, but they all seem dandy so fingers crossed it was just a fluke thing.

Thursday was a no go. Between continued busy-ness at work - we have a production on stage this weekend and there is always a lot of excitement leading up to it - and the last minute project of redoing our living/dining room at home, I just didn't get the run in. Wednesday night J said, "Let's do the front rooms and finish this work." Really he wanted the previously purchased pile of baseboards out of the garage so we needed to get them installed. I of course jumped up, got my paint books (I took every free booklet off the Home Depot shelf the week we got approved for the house), and picked colors. We rushed to the store before they closed, got paint, a new ceiling fan for the room, and a slew of other project needs. Got home and worked until the wee hours moving books and furniture out of the way and ripping out the 1969 original baseboards. Thursday became the day for painting the baseboards and door trim, so that is what I was doing rather than running.

The beginning of the book pile, as we moved everything to paint.

Friday the real painting began. Two coats on the accent wall and cleaning up. Saturday the mission was the paint the remaining walls and to transplant our vegetable garden seedlings who were rapidly outgrowing their little peat containers. I had success with both of those tasks, but the run was not so much. Once again I just totally let it get skipped over. I mean I thought about it. At 7:30 when Zeus first woke me up, I thought about getting up and getting that checked off the list. But I didn't do it. On a personal level to make the progress on the garden and room projects felt good, but I do wish I had made the run.

The front rooms in progress, Saturday night - painting done. Need baseboards and reassembly.

Today though I made it happen! And I had a bit of a milestone. So my plan for today was to run a 10k for the Jelly Bean virtual race. I had paid for and received my finisher's medal, so I kinda had to make the run happen so I wasn't pretending to have accomplished something that I had a medal for. I set off just before 9 and had a great run the whole time - no fatigue, no soreness, worked some things out in my head as I went, and I ended up with a new fastest 10k time: 1:05:25.

The medal I now earned.

So there was a tangential milestone today. Not something I was thinking about or looking for, but I am thrilled with it nonetheless. I hit 100 miles for 2013 so far. I had a modest goal of 200 for the year, so I think that will be no problem! 100 in a quarter, and the first month was only 12, and the last two weeks have been kinda light. Heck, I might be able to pull out something more like 150 for this next quarter, what with the mileage only increasing for the training plan.

Look at that!! Just crossed the threshold.

Well as I type this, J is installing the baseboards. I've left the typing periodically to through a coat of paint on some shelving that is getting an update too. I guess I better get back at it!

Oh and check out some reviews of whats going on at work this weekend.

http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_22856830/review-ballet-san-jose-traditional-meets-contemporary

http://www.sfcv.org/reviews/ballet-san-jose/keep-calm-and-dance-on

Half Marathon - Week 7

Ok. So I'm committed to running the Capitola Half Marathon on May 19. So committed in fact that I am following a training plan to help get me there. Before starting the training plan the longest I had run was a 5k, so I needed something to help me baby step my way to 13 miles. Today is the end of week 7 of the 16 week training plan that I am following (the plan came from Runkeeper, though I track my activity with Nike+ now).

I already have a planner (hard copy & google) dedicated to scheduling the runs and other activities that I should be doing for my plan. But I decided to add one more step to the accountability system and share it here. So be on the lookout for weekly running progress updates.

So now here we go with Week 7! The plan looked like this:

Ignore the sad faces... Runkeeper is sad that I didn't complete the runs, but I just didn't track them in Runkeeper. So this week should have totaled out at 21 miles. What I did though was 14.

Tuesday didn't start out well, I woke up with a bunch of sore back muscles,capped off with an extremely 'stuck' feeling on my right hip. The stuck situation is something I've had periodically for a few years now. I don't have a lot of mobility/flexibility in my right hip, so you mix in a lower back muscle knot and what I get is 'stuck'. I've got a routine of things that I do to release the stiffness and the knots. Nonetheless, come Tuesday afternoon when I headed out for 4 miles, I just couldn't get there. Every step was reverberating through the hip/low back area so I called it good at 2 miles of running. I came home and stretched it all out, then went for another mile of walking around the lake with my cousins.

Thursday just didn't happen. It was a board meeting at work, and even with Daylight Savings time, I didn't get home with enough time to run and do the household things I needed to get accomplished; I made the plan adjustment to move it to Friday. But then Friday came, a crazy day at work (my BFF's last) so again by the time I got home I just couldn't get the run in.

Saturday though was wonderful!! Up and at 'em to run first thing in the morning. Got all 4 miles in and I felt good the whole way. The hip/back problems were nowhere in sight. Came home and spent the afternoon pulling out our blackberry bramble and our guava tree - my total calorie burn was over 3000 for the day (which is over 500 beyond the target).

Today was another fantastic run!! There's a feeling of 8 miles being some kind of 'marker' for the progress to date. A sort of 'well if you can do 8; 13 is a no brainer'. So today running 8 miles for the first time was a great feeling of accomplishment. I missed last week's 7 miles, so I jumped from a 6 mile longest distance to 8 miles.

This is the meadow that served as today's 4 mile turn around point. Loved seeing the abundance of yellow. My favorite thing about running on Coyote Creek Trail for all of my workouts is that you can easily forget that you are running within the 10th largest city of the country, instead it's like being in the beautiful wild of Northern CA. Nevermind that 101 is a few hundred yards to the right of this view.

By the very end of my 8 miles I had a little bit of soreness developing in my calves and knees. The worst thing though was that I was running in a ribbed tank (which I have worn for shorter runs plenty of times), but for the 8 mile distance it was the wrong shirt. I am now chaffed on the inside of both of my arms from rubbing against the ribbing. Lesson learned.

So I made 14 of 21 miles for the week, and that is still 14 more than I was running a year ago so I'm pleased. I've post run stretched, had a cool shower, awesome brunch, and now to relax with laundry and a visit to some bunnies who will be coming home to us soon. (Pictures of them to come sometime soon).

408k

Back in October I registered for the 408k here in San Jose. I had a good friend running it and some of her other friends. As it turned out it's the perfect distance for this spot in my half marathon training plan. On Thursday night Jacob got a gig for this morning so he wasn't going to be able to be there to support me; his job was scheduled for 8am in Oakland, and the race started at 8am. Then late last night Jacob got word that his start time had changed to 4am, and then my friend had to make the decision to skip the race because of a nasty cold. I was looking at running it on my own, but thankfully I was determined to get up on time (despite the time change).

Looking West from the Shark Tank, through Downtown San Jose.

I got the the HP Pavilion parking lot at 7am, before the sun was up. I waited in my car keeping warm and getting my gear ready. This is a one way race, but they offer busing back to the starting line, or I was also contemplating walking/running back - more mileage is always good  and I knew the short cuts that would shave the return trip to 3 miles. By 7:20 I was ready to get out of the car, if only to get to a spot where I could get a picture of the sunrise before it was over.

All set and ready to go!!

A quick bathroom stop and I headed to corral C to wait for the official 8:10 start time. I love my music for times like these, 30 minutes of waiting around with my own music to keep me moving and warming up. I was surprised at how many young kids were gathering for the run, seeing things like this makes me wish I had started pushing through the things that made me quit athletic things all those years ago.

The mass of Corral C

Come 8:10 and it was time to go! I started off great, but it was cold outside the Corral. I hadn't realized that all of the other runners were keeping so much cold air from reaching me. Just keep trucking is the name of this game. I felt good and was enjoying running through one of San Jose's historic and beautiful neighborhoods. A lot of residents were showing some great support from their driveways, clapping, yelling, even some cowbell! Mile 2 of the course actually took me right by my high school and all of the other stomping grounds from back then.

Kinda weird to run past it, I NEVER ran here but today it was just a small marker on the bigger journey.

About mile 3 my ankle was a little sore, but I moved myself to the middle of the road and the change in grade made it feel better. Mile 4 is also known as the Mariachi Mile, we were serenaded by three different Mariachi bands as we ran to and through Valley Fair mall. As we turned into Santana Row and the finish line was in sight, I tried to ramp it up and finish strong, actually finishing at a just under 10' pace. Of course I had turned my music up for the last push, otherwise I would have heard someone calling my name as I made it across the line.

As I stood in line to collect my all important t-shirt, Jacob found me!! He finished work in just enough time to be at the finish line as I crossed, he always works these kind of things out! Plus now I had a ride back to my car! It's great to have him support me  like this!

So in recap I ran 8k in about 55 minutes - my running app got paused when I stopped to take the picture of Lincoln, so it's about .15 miles off. but based on the start time of 8:10 and crossing the finish line before 9:05, I'm proud!! Waiting for the official chip results to be posted. Here's the app's map anyway, even if its slightly off (it thinks I magically flew through the missing .15 so the average pace is a little off); at least the map shows the route.

Now to resume the weekend, feeling proud and accomplished!

Update: For women 30-34 I finished 237/510. Overall I was 2069/3769. Not bad, right in the middle of the pack as I expected.

Kiss Me Dirty Run Pics

I'm waiting for J right now. Figured I could take a moment and step away from the business of today to post the pics from the Kiss Me Dirty run on Saturday. We all really had a great time and got good an dirty.

Sorry for the picture overload. The spectating boys were able to run the course and take pictures at all the obstacles which was really cool. Team Go Muck Yourself! had a great run!