In Every Run That Must Be Done; There is an Element of Fun (comments welcome)

[striker1064]

Great race!

 

[NYC_MW]

Congrats on the PR! Sounds like a fun race.

 

[Naomeri]

59 Days Until: Disneyland Half Weekend

Holy crap, you guys! We’re under 60 days until Disneyland!!

So, I missed a couple run last week. Tuesday’s run got moved to Wednesday because I took most of Tuesday off to do a big shopping trip with my grandparents, and I could barely move by the time I got home. Wednesday was supposed to be 4 miles easy (13:30/mile), but I ended up with 3.72 at 12:52/mile. Meh, close enough.

Thursday should have been 400m x7 @5K, but it was stupid windy on Thursday, right out of the east (my 400m segment goes east-west) so I planned to switch that to Friday, but it never happened Friday either. Saturday was supposed to be 3 miles @ 10K, plus a Magic Mile. I ended up doing another all-day shopping trip with my grandma and ended up limping around the house afterward. I obviously need to start wearing some retired running shoes on shopping trips instead of my little Skechers, I don’t think they’re supporting me enough.

I did finally go out running on Sunday, for my scheduled 8 miles easy, and I threw on my MM at the beginning for a total of 9 planned miles. I ended up with 9.02 running miles, and .41 miles cooldown walk. The walking distance was because there were a bunch of people on the trail when I hit my halfway point, and I find it weird to pass people and them immediately turn around, so I went a couple extra tenths to an intersection to make it less weird (I am aware it’s probably only weird in my head )

On my way back, there was a lady with an off-leash dog, and the sweet, friendly dog thought that running was way more fun than plodding along with his mom, so he hung out with me for a couple intervals until his mom finally got him to come back. She had a leash in her hand, and his harness had a handle, but she chose to let him run off with a stranger anyway

There was a pretty stand of birch that we’re almost glowing in the sunlight



I ended up with a blister on the bottom of my right big toe, right where the toe meets the foot, on Sunday’s run. I guess my garage sale Saucony’s are limited to shorter-than-9.5-miles runs from now on.

My Magic Mile was 10:18, which predicts a 11:51 10K pace. My official pace from my race last weekend? 11:53 I guess the predicted paces aren’t so crazy after all. The predicted HM pace is 12:22, which seems a bit out of reach, but not completely insane. My pace for Sunday’s 9 mile run was 12:46, and that included starting out super fast with the MM (and the subsequent recovery) and having a blister on my toe. Of course, I hold no illusions about my ability to achieve these sorts of paces in summer weather at my current fitness.

I got out for my scheduled 4 easy miles today, and my feet were a bit sore, so it was easier to stay close to my correct pace. It was super windy today, but it was out of the south, so it wasn’t particularly cold or anything, just kind of hard to deal with any time I was headed south (like 90% of mile 4)




In today’s edition of Maureen’s playlist has got jokes: I have “Maybe I’m Wrong” by Blues Traveler on my playlist, but it’s off the Blues Brothers 2000 soundtrack, so there’s a little clip of dialogue at the end, and it ends with Elwood saying “Gimme a mountain tempo in A Minor” and since my playlist runs on shuffle, it’s always a surprise what song will come next. Today, it was “I Gotta Feeling” by Black Eyed Peas, which does start with just a beat (though not what anyone would consider “mountain” and I wouldn’t know A Minor if it bit me) A past memorable follow-up to “Maybe I’m Wrong” was “You’re Welcome” from Moana, which also starts with just a beat.

My life is very stressful right now. I’m now on my 4th manager of the year as my company does some restructuring of teams. This final(?) restructuring came with short notice in September—about 15 minutes before the meeting announcing the change, I got a call from my manager-at-the-time that I was going to be moved to this new team, with a new job (but also keeping most of my old work too, of course ). So then I was under the purview of the head of this new team while she hired her under-managers, and then I got moved to one of them (which I learned from finding the new org chart, not because anyone bothered to tell me) And this new team hasn’t quite worked out what work will be ours to do, and what will remain with the old teams, or exactly how any of this stuff will be working in general. Oh, and the manager that I had from March to September has now left the company without so much as a general notice to the employees that “so-and-so is moving on” or something. So that’s super fun.

Also, my aunt decided yesterday to invite herself (and her dog) to our house for like 11 days in December. We usually have Christmas with her and her grown children and their families the weekend before Christmas, so she’ll be coming then. But normally she leaves on that Sunday. Now she’s decide that she’s not leaving until the afternoon of Christmas Day And my mother will be arriving on the 22nd and staying through the 30th. And I’ll be working most of the time during all these visits. And I’ll be hitting the peak of my DL training the week ending Christmas Eve. So, I’m going to go absolutely insane ‍

 

[WillRunForPizza]

The walking distance was because there were a bunch of people on the trail when I hit my halfway point, and I find it weird to pass people and them immediately turn around, so I went a couple extra tenths to an intersection to make it less weird (I am aware it’s probably only weird in my head )

It might only be weird in your head, but I totally do this too

On my way back, there was a lady with an off-leash dog, and the sweet, friendly dog thought that running was way more fun than plodding along with his mom, so he hung out with me for a couple intervals until his mom finally got him to come back. She had a leash in her hand, and his harness had a handle, but she chose to let him run off with a stranger anyway

Ugh, I was just complaining about this in my journal too. Boo for bad dog owners!

 

[Naomeri]

It might only be weird in your head, but I totally do this too


Ugh, I was just complaining about this in my journal too. Boo for bad dog owners!

And this was on a trail through the woods, so there’s a decent chance of squirrels appearing at any moment

 

[GollyGadget]

At least training will be a good excuse to get out of the house if you need a break from the visitors

 

[azrivest]

Also, my aunt decided yesterday to invite herself (and her dog) to our house for like 11 days in December. We usually have Christmas with her and her grown children and their families the weekend before Christmas, so she’ll be coming then. But normally she leaves on that Sunday. Now she’s decide that she’s not leaving until the afternoon of Christmas Day And my mother will be arriving on the 22nd and staying through the 30th. And I’ll be working most of the time during all these visits. And I’ll be hitting the peak of my DL training the week ending Christmas Eve. So, I’m going to go absolutely insane

As GollyGadget said, you can use your running as an excuse to escape the madness

 

[avondale]

I find it weird to pass people and them immediately turn around,

Yeah, I've done this so many times and it's weird. Usually I stop for a few minutes at my turn-around point, so if I can, I let the people walk by me and then I start back. Otherwise I usually give them a "hello again" like there's nothing at all weird.

 

[Naomeri]

47 Days Until: Disneyland Half Weekend (pt 1)

As usual, training was a little hit and miss.

I had 40 minutes @ 10K pace last Thursday. The overall pace for the 3.72 miles was close to right on at 11:48, but the splits were all over the place: 11:08, 11:37, 12:04, and 12:33. The wind was terrible, and I tired out from that, and starting out too fast.

Friday had an optional 2.5 mile easy run, and I decided to go ahead and do it, since I was was off work at 10am. I did 2.61 miles in 36:13 and nothing remarkable happened.

Sunday was supposed to be a 10K, but I had some issues that delayed me getting out to run and I ended up skipping it.

Tuesday was scheduled at 4.5 easy miles, so I went out on my lunch break to do it. But I had too much on my mind and couldn’t get into the groove and ended up going home with only half the run done. 2.32 miles in 31:26

On Sunday evening, we went out to The Arb for their Winter Lights display. There was hardly anyone there! Now I know for the future, pick a Sunday night when the Vikings are on playing and no one will be out there. Unfortunately, we missed out on cocoa and treats because they closed down the booth at 8pm (which seems stupid when the place is open until 10pm)

My great-aunt and -uncle in the giant apple



The sparkling brook



A romantic rose garden



A weeping willow





A happy little beehive



Lavender that doesn’t make me sneeze!!



I’m a butterfly!



They had a whole village of cute little buildings all lit up



Awesome chandeliers of multicolor lights



A giant tree of poinsettia plants


Still to come, Thanksgiving weekend!

 

[Naomeri]

47 Days Until: Disneyland Half Weekend (pt 2)

My schedule for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend was going to be super busy, but also good practice for Disney race weekends. I had to rearrange the order of the runs due to everything going on.

Wednesday evening, we started making Christmas cookies. Our first item was homemade Tagalongs (which I’ve never actually had, but we found a recipe and it seemed simple enough. A mini peanut butter cup sandwiched between 2 mini nilla wafers, then the whole thing is dipped in a mixture of peanut butter chips and chocolate chips. Unfortunately, our first bag of chocolate chips was defective and wouldn’t melt properly! The whole mixture was too thick to coat the sandwiches. We had plenty more chocolate chips, but not a ton of peanut butter chips, so we could only dip some of our sandwiches; the rest had to wait until Friday morning, after we picked up more PB chips on Thursday.

I moved my 9 mile long run from Sunday to Thursday, because we didn’t have to leave until 2:45 for Thanksgiving dinner and I didn’t have anything to do all day. It was kind of cold, especially in the parts of the run where I was running into the wind. Strava tells me it was 27°F, with a feels like of 18, and 8mph wind out of the NNW. I’m pretty sure the wind was a bit stronger than that because we live out in former farm country and there’s not always a lot to block the wind. I decided to build a 3 mile route and run it three times. I hit the segment button on my watch every time I got back to my house and each loop ended up being a little longer than 3 miles, and not 100% consistent from loop to loop, so I ended up with a full 15K run. I also stashed a bottle of water in my mailbox and I drank it while I walked around my cul-de-sac at the end of each loop, and put it back before I ran off again.



I had just enough time after the run to get cleaned up, drain the annoying blister on the side of my big toe, and get dressed to go to dinner. I felt pretty good through the whole run, (and I’m pretty sure I could’ve done another loop and a bit more to get a full 13.1, so I think I’m in good shape for the DL half) though the cold wind made me want to quit a couple times But it was worth it to do all that running to go to dinner and eat several mountains of mashed potatoes and some King’s Hawaiian rolls (the only Thanksgiving foods I eat) followed by ice cream and some homemade pizzelles.

There was a little ice crystal rainbow thing happening during my run



And I earned a badge on my mileage tracker!



Friday brought more Christmas treats! We finished the Tagalongs, then had a quick lunch and I went out on my quart mile 5K repeats. According to my Magic Miles this training plan, my 5K pace should be about 10:55. I’m really bad at getting these repeats consistent. It’s not that I’m getting tired or anything , I just can’t seem to stay consistent.



After the run, we got started on chocolate chip cookie dough pretzel sandwiches (I swear, we do actually bake cookies, we just start with the candy-like things —my grandma made some fudge and rainbow clusters on Monday while I was working) We made waaaay too much edible cookie dough for this. My excuse is that last year, we used a boxed mix for edible cookie dough that didn’t make as much as the recipe we had from Pinterest this year, and we couldn’t find the boxed stuff this year. So we have almost 300 of these chocolate dipped pretzel things, plus a whole extra container of edible cookie dough.

Saturday brought some actual baking: cranberry orange white chocolate cookies. We’d never made these before, so we didn’t realize how much trouble it is to chop cranberries. We also didn’t realize that the dough needs to cool for several hours before baking. So we got it all mixed up, (it smelled pretty incredible) and shoved it in the fridge.

Then I went for what was supposed to be a 4 mile 10K pace run. This turned out to be an impossible ask for my poor, tired legs. I was only 10 seconds slow on the first mile, so I thought I’d be able to pull it off, but when mile 2 came in about a minute slow, I chose to turn for home instead of finding the rest of the mileage. We were meeting my cousin and his family for dinner, and to hand off some old Christmas decor for their new house, so I didn’t have a lot of wiggle room to run slower, plus if I’d done the full mileage, the last mile would’ve been right into the freezing wind and I was just…over it for this weekend.



After we got home from dinner, we baked the cookies.



I did 17.22 miles in three days, while also spending most of my free time standing around in the kitchen, so it’s been like a runDisney weekend (but in reverse, since the longest run came first, and the shortest was last)

Sunday had more baking, peanut butter blossoms and peppermint pinkies. I forgot to take a picture of the pinkies because by the time they were baked, cooled, and frosted, it was 8:30 and I was too tired to see straight



We had a dusting of snow Saturday evening into Sunday morning, and Lucy had to run outside and check it out. Then my grandpa blew the snow off the deck and all that was left was her cute little paw prints

 

[avondale]

The Christmas light show looks amazing!

You do so much cookie baking for Christmas - please feel free to send a box. They look delicious. I like to make cookies, but I don't think I could handle such a marathon of baking for them.

 

[Naomeri]

The Christmas light show looks amazing!

You do so much cookie baking for Christmas - please feel free to send a box. They look delicious. I like to make cookies, but I don't think I could handle such a marathon of baking for them.

We still have 2 more days left

 

[Scootin'By]

Around this time of year you could re-title your thread, "Run, Bake, Repeat."

Everything looks delicious!

 

[Naomeri]

39 Days Until: Disneyland Half Weekend

I did all my runs last week! And kinda of even on-pace!

Tuesday was 4.5 miles easy. This run was totally fine, and I got to see some Christmas lights around the neighborhood. The only part that wasn’t fine was getting run off the @#$%!&* road by a postal truck. It was a totally straight, totally flat section of road with no trees, bushes or anything, and I had my Noxgear with chest lamp, yet this idiot not only didn’t move over at all, but started to veer towards me! So I bailed into the ditch and miraculously didn’t hurt myself. Let this be a lesson to all people running in places without sidewalks: it’s very important to run against traffic so you can see the vehicles that want to kill you. If this truck had been coming from behind me, I never would have known.




My grandpa ended up having to go to to the hospital on Thursday afternoon (he should be fine, but he’s not home yet) so I moved Thursday’s run to Friday because I ended up taking most of Friday off to help around the house while my grandma handled my grandpa (helping around the house actually meant baking cookies ) I definitely ran Friday’s run too fast, closer to 5K pace than 10K (which is why I’m just short of the 40 scheduled minutes), but I’ll take it.



After my run, we spent hours and hours making butterscotch cookies.



Saturday was another 10K pace run, 5 miles this time. I didn’t think I was going to be able to hit 10K pace, so I told myself that easy would be fine. But I ended up getting reasonably close, so yay! I did have a slow-down in mile 2, but I realized it was because I was overheating and took my vest off and zipped it around my waist. I put it back on later when I was running into the wind in mile 5.



Then my grandma and I made spritz cookies. This was a kind of new experience for us, because usually my grandpa uses the spritz machine, and I decorate (my grandma handles the cookie trays) so I had to pull double duty and use the machine and decorate.



This was finally the end of the cookie and candy making for this year, we are very behind where we normally are. All that’s left is to make up boxes for all the various friends and family members.



Sunday was my 10 mile long run that was also serving as a make-up run for my cancelled TC 10 Miler from October. I just did 2.5 mile loops and used my cul-de-sac as a water stop. I managed to keep my splits relatively even (within 20 seconds or so of each other). It ended up being a little cold by the end, but I was really comfortable in the middle, so I don’t think wearing my vest would have helped. This was only 3 minutes off of my 10 miler PR, so that’s nice.




This week I switched my Tuesday and Thursday runs for 2 reasons: A) the 400m repeats take longer, so it’s easier to do them on Tuesday because I’m taking most of the day off, and B) the 400m repeats are actually really easy on my legs because it’s a lot of walking/easy running, so I think it’ll be better recover after the 18.88 miles in 3 days of the weekend. Also, Thursday is going to get to nearly 50°F, so I’d rather use that weather on a faster-overall paced run. Then I have a short run on Friday, with Magic Mile, off on Saturday, and my 12Ks of Christmas run on Sunday (which will actually be marginally longer than 12Ks just because it’s easier for me to measure out 2.5 miles than 2.485 miles )

 

[jmasgat]

Good Lord that is a $h!t ton of cookies! How many people do you give to? I favor making chocolates myself---but only for my two kids (and me).

 

[Naomeri]

Good Lord that is a $h!t ton of cookies! How many people do you give to? I favor making chocolates myself---but only for my two kids (and me).

We pack 4 boxes for my grandma’s 3 siblings, my 2 uncles, my aunt, my mom, my 2 cousins/their families, 1 neighbor, and a little box for each of our hair stylists, a total of 27 people. Plus we have my aunt and cousins, and my mom come to our house for the holidays, so we have trays of cookies sitting around for everyone to snack on. Anything left over gets put in the freezer for us to eat.

We have some chocolate treats, including some little chocolate people that I made with our too-thick-for-dipping chocolate/peanut butter mixture from Thanksgiving week.

 

[superchime]

So. Many. Cookies!

 

[Naomeri]

32 Days Until: Disneyland Half Weekend

Well, I only skipped one run last week

Tuesday, I was off work after 10am, and I planned to do my 400m repeats because they take too long to do on a lunch break (even an extended one) but I felt absolutely terrible and chose to rest instead.

Thursday, I was planning to run on my lunch break, but had some work stuff that made me feel like the run wasn’t going to go well, and then I couldn’t get motivated to go after work.

Friday, I made myself go running on my lunch break, even though work stuff was still bothering me. I did my Magic Mile and another 3 miles. Magic Mile was 10:18 again, so my fitness is holding steady. The rest of the run was supposed to be easy pace, but ended up 12:18, 13:01, and 12:16. I was wearing my vest for the beginning of the run, but I was getting hot, so I took it off and stuffed it in my paperbox on the way past during mile 3 to pick up at the end of the run.

I wasn’t scheduled to run on Saturday, but I felt like I needed to since I’d missed 2. It was snowing just a little, and super super windy, so I got on the treadmill to do my 400m repeats. I did a half mile at 4.5 mph, then 5.7 and 3.6 mph for the work and recovery repeats. Because I was on the treadmill, I was able to run the work parts continuously with no trouble.



Sunday, I managed to get out for my 12Ks of Christmas run just in time to be home before dark. My watch’s GPS was way off for some reason—I ran these same loops last Sunday and they were only 2.5 miles (and I slightly shortened the loops this week, since 4K is just under 2.5) but my watch was giving me over 2.6 each time this week. Whatever, I entered the times into my rD account and got my finisher certificate. This run was supposed to be 10K pace, but the little skimming of snow from Saturday made the footing potentially treacherous and I just took whatever pace I could get. Plus, with the GPS issue, I couldn’t really adjust my pace during the run.




I’ve been putting out a bucket of water for the wildlife each day, and dumping it out at night. The top sometimes freezes before I get around to dumping it, so I end up with ice chunks in the yard. This squirrel decided that he wanted a whole chunk of ice for himself.




For everyone curious, we got our cookies boxed up for everyone (and yes, we did arrange them all fancy and adjust the lighting to get this particular shot )





My grandpa came home from the hospital last Tuesday, but ended up having to go back in again on Friday. It sounds like he’ll be there at least until Wednesday this week The doctors need to get their act together and figure out what’s happening with him. He’s got bleeding somewhere in his digestive tract, but they can’t find it. He’s been given 4 units of blood in the space of about a week, and adults only have about 10 units, so that’s kind of a lot.

We have our first Christmas gathering this weekend, so I’m doing my long run on Thursday when I’m off work. I also have 5 easy miles Tuesday, 5 10K miles Saturday, and 45 minutes @ 10K pace on Sunday. One of the weekend runs might switch to easy, depending on how I’m feeling.

 

[SheHulk]

I'm sorry to hear about your grandpa, that's stressful! Hope he is sorted out right away.

 

[NYC_MW]

The cookies look
Hope your grandpa's doctors figure everything out soon.