Hartford Half Marathon

I haven't written this up because its a little depressing, but this was my slowest solo half ever. I have been dealing with achielles tendinitis this fall, and this was a painful and super undertrained run. But I finished. And the race itself was lovely. Good course support, decent scenery, beautiful weather and a great finish zone. This was also the first time I stayed in a hotel near the start/finish and that totally kicked ass. 

The medal was kick ass and huge and heavy too. 

2:20:16. Less than 50th percentile. Oh well. Better luck next time!

Garage, issue 1

Our garage is in sorry condition to say the least. It really should be demolished and rebuilt, but we'd never get a permit for a two car garage one foot from two property lines on our 5000 sqft lot. So, renovation is the only option. 

We decided to start with the wall with the most visible wood damage (rot of the lower (sill plate?) beam on the floor and obvious water staining on the (apparently thrice replaced) wall covering. 

Before, in the storage section from the door

Before, from the left stall: 

After, same vantage points:

We decided to go with a big header and open the space up. It took about 6 hours of hard labor, but I am pretty pleased with the job so far!

Also, shout out to the Forester for getting all the lumber home on the roof, and props to us for getting that 10"x14'x3" header into place on our own. 

kitchen complete

We finally "finished" the kitchen a month or two ago with the addition of the kick plates under the cabinets. Since that took 18 months or so, it is only reasonable I wait a while to update the blog.

It's not the most impressive kitchen in the world, but it's what we could do without moving an entire bathroom, stairwell, or losing a bedroom. So some (fabulous cell phone) before/afters...

The view from the back door...

Before....

 

 After,  complete with sippies on the drying rack and lunch bags on the counter.

 You can just see the fridge in the right hand side of this photo. The kitchen didn't HAVE a fridge before - here's the wall where it is now...

back on the wagon

A short 2 week goal to stick to Weight Watchers. Starting at 176.2 yesterday.

motivation? 10k on Memorial Day and my 58:22 time from 2012 to beat.  Based on my last half marathon time, I should be able to hit a 57:12 (9:12 pace) 10k.

So McMillan tells me I should be training at 9:23-9:50 steady state (which is, uh, faster than my run this past weekend), 1:55-2:02 400s and 4:00-4:11 800s.  I guess I should knock out some speedwork this week and next...I'm thinking two interval sessions, a short run and a 6 miler this weekend, and the same next weekend (with the race on Monday). Reasonable? I hope so.

NJ Half Marathon

More later, but a quick recap...

2:07:32.  an over 30 PR by 1:13 (I think, it was at least 60 seconds!). Still 15 minutes over my lifetime PR, but for how little I train, this is ok.

Overall Place

2690

of 5347

Womens Rank

1410

of 3352

Age Grade

51.59%

Pace

9:45

mins/mile

NYC half details

Part 2 of 2. The wordy follow up to the much more exciting picture recap.

The NYC Half is a NYRR race, and has grown a TON since I was first registered for it in 2008 (when it was still in July. And I didn't run it because I broke my foot 3 days prior. Womp Womp.).  As you would expect (marathon debacle aside, though I suspect a lot of that had to do with Bloomberg and not NYRR, but guess who took the fall?), it was what you'd expect from NYRR. Clean, polished, well organized and such.

Pros:

• Terrific course
• great corral set up (including potties in each corral, which made a last minute pit stop enroute to the start line easy)
• relatively fast start for a 20k race (took me about 20 minutes to cross, and the streets were moderately full the whole way, so I think this was appropriate spacing)
• TONS of water, every half mile or so
• Did I mention the awesome course?
• Fair amount of spectators
• Tons of photographers (if you're into springing for race photos. some of mine were ok, but I am not buying)
• Great baggage system
• Good weather (30s, dry, not windy) considering the weird winter we had

Cons:

•  kind of weird demand to be in corrals 30 minutes in advance of start time
• TIGHT finish area
• finisher bag had a sport drink, water, and pretzels. Disappointing. I expected a banana and a bagel.
• Medal was so-so

I had a decent race, especially considering I was only 70% trained or so (running theme with me, pun intended, ha ha). I did 90% of my long runs and 30 or 40% of my midweek runs. My Garmin was all over the place, I assume due to the city influence, but here's my splits:

5k: 29:33
10k: 1:00:10
15k: 1:31:20
20k: 2:02:07
Finish: 2:08:42 (9:50 pace)

Age/Gender: 927/1679
Gender: 4134/7609
Overall: 9402/14535

So overall a somewhat sub-average finish, and still no where near back to my 2008 sub-2 hr half time, but for sub-par training, respectable. And no tears, no frustration, and I enjoyed the race, so that's a win.

NYC Half

Part 1 of 2

Just the photos.

This WAS one of the cooler courses I've ever run. Probably second to the NYC Marathon :)

Times Square

Intrepid (shuttle is covered in tarp things)

West Side Highway/new WTC I can't recall the name of

Brooklyn Battery Tunnel

decent medal. It's silver hued, not gold. Instagram magic.

Hiring it out

While we are pretty dedicated DIYers, we decided to hire out a pretty big project recently. We had our second floor and back entry stars redone, and the door opened. I am not sure i have great before photos (oops), but here's a couple of progress pictures!

view of the backdoor and stairs (from the sink) before

view from the door onto the porch in process (old stairs, but railing gone)

same angle as first photo (but 5 feet closer due to tarping!)

up our new stairs!

rundate

I give last week a C+

I missed a 5 miler, and split my long run into effectively 2 5 milers. So mileage sort of in, but not well.

2, 3, 6 and 11 on the plan for this week.

Winter

This has been a good running week.

I did five on the treadmill Wednesday, did a run in the dark for the first time in ages Thursday, and ran after the snowstorm today. I was going to wear my yak traks, but after half a mile decided the streets and sidewalks were too clear (at noon. Seems you have to go early to run in snow when it is a significant storm).

Tomorrow: 10 miles. I may do 8 and do ten next week (seeing as next week is a step back and I am using it to make up last weeks 8, but we will see how I feel, as well as how the roads are and the wind!)

do over

Let's just call it day 1 again :)

173.6

5 months to my 32nd birthday.

8 miles

I knocked out an "easy" 8 miles yesterday for my long run. It actually wasn't that bad, albeit cold, and I only stopped 3 or 4 times. 1:19:19 (without stops). Pretty good.

The amazing part?

I was thinking, around mile 6.5 when I was ready to go home, how 5 (FIVE!) years ago I was knocking out 8 milers midweek marathon training.

That made me feel a little crappy. Besides that I don't run 30+ mpw now, I'm a good 15+ lbs heavier and quite a bit slower now.

But then I got to thinking...in 5 years I've(/we've):

• bought 2 houses
• sold one
• moved three times
• had twins

• took two new jobs, then got promoted/moved to a new role at the latter

So maybe I'm really doing ok?

and on the upside, I'm pretty on track with training for my March 17 half, and its been a LONG time since I said that.

2012 review

Considering I didn't have a "good" training year, I'm pretty damn impressed with myself. I guess every mile does add up.


So far I am on mile 7 of my 1000 goal for 2013. Good thing my half training is starting for real this week...I think I'm going with (the latter 10 weeks) of Hal Higdon's Novice II.

Day 1

Ate: 42 points
Used: 12 earned activity points (6 running; 6 elliptical) and 3 weekly points.

Today's big takeaway: maybe eating two big cookies for breakfast at home (then having real breakfast at work) isn't a great idea.

On the upside,  I ran for the first time in almost a week...30 minutes, 3 miles and change (3.27?). I decided to add "Run 1000 miles" to my goals for the year. That's about 2.7/day and almost 20/week, which is ambitious for me at this point and I think a good motivator. I hit 700 in 2007 running Jan-March (half training) and July - Nov (full training)...

2013

In the spirit of looking forward, I'm not going to rehash 2012...

Here's my goals for 2013:

• Follow Weight Watchers (effective Jan 3, hah). Post-holiday weigh-in to follow tomorrow...
• Lose 25ish lbs by July 7 (my 32nd birthday...that's a bit under 1 lb/week)
• Defend my dissertation proposal
• Complete the IRB process
• Do interviews for proposal
• Complete a first and second draft of dissertation
• Run a 2 hr race at the NYC Half March 17
• PR at the Ridgewood 10k Memorial Day (57:xx?)
• Complete the Warrior Dash in August
• Run the NYC Marathon in November
• Don't buy any clothes/shoes until July (unless I need a new pair of jeans...) and then stick to a $600 budget for the remainder of the year
• Do one kid-centric family activity out of the house each weekend

I might come up with a couple more...