Feet Move Forward

The Richmond Marathon was run today and I Did Not Start .  Because I had been posting about my training for twelve or so weeks , it only seems appropriate that I'd have some sort of post to conclude what turned out to be one of the more disappointing points in my running life. I had high hopes in January of this being a good running year for me, setting challenging goals and developing a training plan that I thought would get me there. The road to hell... Things were going really well for a while but after several weeks of subpar training, getting sick, then getting tackled by a 15 year-old and sustaining an injury that made it difficult to even breathe, my fall marathon dreams disappeared. And while I was disappointed, I was also relieved. Today was my first run in 23 days. One single lap around Lake of the Isles without my Garmin, not worrying about pace, just enjoying a 63 degree day in Minnesota on November 12th. It was a good run.

Nine days after taking a knee to the boob , I feel like I haven't even started on the road to healing. After going to the doctor on Thursday and refusing a prescription pain med, my pain reached a new high on Sunday. Saturday night I went over to a girlfriend's house and spent much of the night laughing (albeit painful laughter). Whether it was all the laughing, sleeping on it wrong or just the nature of the injury, on Sunday I woke up feeling like I got hit by a truck. I immediately took ibuprofen and waited for it to kick in. After two hours, I felt no difference whatsoever. The pain was affecting my ability to breathe deeply- it was like feeling like you have to yawn but not being able to, sort of a constant shortness of breath. This is what a good costume idea looks like when you're on drugs After consulting with two medical professionals (full disclosure: my mom, an RN and my uncle, a doctor) to see what I should do, I was advised that pain meds would probably be...

Perhaps it was the increasing amount of pain I was in or the urge to have a stranger feel me up but last night I went to Urgent Care to have my ribs looked at. Verdict: Not broken, just a "soft tissue contusion." In other words, there's nothing I can do about it, save for applying cold/heat, taking ibuprofen, and telling my jerk coworkers to stop making me to laugh. Laying low this weekend.

I've been meaning to write this post for a few days but there's been a lot going on. First things first, I've decided to not run a marathon in 2011 . I got sick on Wednesday last week, missed even more training and ultimately decided that I didn't want to push my body for three more weeks to run a subpar race. I’m just really, really burnt out. Running hasn’t been fun for a while now and workouts were something that I dreaded. Decent runs were few and far between. Even though I knew it was the right decision (to not run), I was kicking myself since I had decided and wasn't forced to forgo a marathon.  It wasn’t like I had been injured like Emily or Brady . Then Saturday rolled around... By Saturday I was feeling better and ventured out to meet some of my family at a friend’s place. When it came time for me to leave, my 15 year-old brother didn’t want me to and took my keys. He accidentally dropped them and as I rushed to pick them up, he tackled me (yet someho...

This week marked my 12th week of training as well as the 30th running of the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon, meaning work was CRAZY. It's a little tough to train for a marathon when you're running (organizing) a marathon. With the Health & Fitness Expo opening up on Friday, our team moved into a hotel in St. Paul on Thursday. I think I got a combined 6.5 hours of sleep on Friday and Saturday nights. It was a pretty tough weekend. However, with a little planning, I got almost all of my miles in. The one major fail was no long run this week. There was no way it was going to happen on Sunday. One major highlight was when I met Jeri , Susan and Erika at the VIP reception on Friday, all bloggers, all runners. Aren't they gorgeous? Susan ran a 3:18 on Sunday! Even though I'm still technically following the 55-70mpw plan from Advanced Marathoning, I've begun to cut down on some of the miles and plan to peak out around 62-65 miles from here until the marathon. ...

Okay, it's time to get real. It doesn't seem like that long ago that I was shouting from the rooftops that I wanted to run a sub 3:10 marathon , a goal I knew would be a big reach but feasible if I worked my butt off. After 11 weeks of training, I think I need to reevaluate. I haven't been feeling great for the past few weeks and have tried to cut some miles out and modify some workouts to get back on track. It's not happening. I'm exhausted. I'm battling annoying pain in my left calf and right hip. In short, I feel like I'm falling apart. So here is my Week 11 review. And this, my friends, means you are 100% up to speed on my training. Planned: 70 miles Actual: 52.53 miles Monday Rest Rest Tuesday AM- 6  miles PM- 4 miles 0 miles. Had planned to take a break during the work day to run and it was super crappy out so I didn't. I had a hair appointment . And I didn't even feel bad about not running. Wednesday 15 miles 0 miles. C...

Recovery Week. After how awful I've been feeling the past few weeks, I went into this week with the plan to run my important workouts but allow myself to cut some miles/take days off if needed. I was hoping that it would refresh me a little for the coming weeks. Planned: 58 miles Actual: 42.5 miles Monday Rest Rest Tuesday 9 miles 9 miles; 1:12:06 Ran on the treadmill. Had to stop a couple miles in to rub out some shin pain. It starts in my inner left shin and then sort of radiates around my calf and up the back of my leg, ending up in my butt (that's definitely NOT wss). Wednesday 9 miles w/ 6 x 800 meters @ 5K 7 miles w/ 6 x 800 meters Meetings at work tonight so left the office in the afternoon to head to the gym. Traffic was really bad once I got there so I was super crunched for time. Calf hurt again but made it through all of the intervals with pretty consistent effort. Jogged 90% of time between intervals. Thursday 6 mile recovery 0 miles. No running ...

This pretty much sums it up.  I know this is pretty late- Ragnar fever is over and you all are fully recovered. Maybe this will help you relive some of the excitement. I wasn't as late with the recap that I posted on the TCM blog . You can read my Lessons from Ragnar post over there. Here's a recap of my legs: First Leg Desperately seeking water HOT and humid leg. Full sun on fresh black top. It was so hot that I actually removed my shirt. If you know me at all, you know what a big deal that is. My Garmin said 6.09 miles in 45 minutes for an average pace of 7:24. I finished this leg feeling really bad about how I had run and not really looking forward to my other legs. Second Leg Check out that elevation profile. I started this leg around 11:30 p.m. so it was dark. Like pitch black dark. And I was scared. So I ran as fast as I possibly could. I saw my first miles tick off in 6:59, 6:49 and 6:47 which is pretty  much faster than my 5K split...

Week of September 5- 11 TIRED again this week. I think I need to cut some miles out.   Planned: 67 miles Actual: 56.25 miles Monday Rest Rest Tuesday AM- 6 miles recovery PM- 4 miles recover AM- 6 miles, 47:48, 7:57 average pace Didn't run again today. Tired again. Wednesday 14 miles 9.5 miles, 1:19:09, 8:27 average pace Hyland with R.E.D. Major stomach issues. Spicy green curry at lunch. Enough said. Thursday 6 mile recovery AM- 7.20 miles PM- 5.3 miles Tried to make up for missed miles yesterday by tacking on some extra today. Neither run was great. Friday 13 miles 13 miles, 1:45:16 Ran before work and was exhausted. Saturday   16 miles with 12 at Goal Pace 16 miles with 12 at sort of goal pace Flip-flopped my Sat/Sun runs. Did the Capitol Run with Life Time. It got sort of hot out and I wasn't carry fluid with me. I was also running alone for a lot of the time. I definitely did not hit 12 at my goal pace but I d...

Late again. Week of August 29- September 4 I think last week marked my last decent week of training. I had just come off of my highest mileage week and was feeling great. Now I'm exhausted. All. The. Time. Planned: 66 miles Actual: 56.25 miles Monday Rest Rest Tuesday AM- 6 miles recovery PM- 4 miles recover AM- 5.75 miles. Didn't run again that night. Exhausted, body hurt. Wednesday 14 miles 9 miles, 1:18:58, 8:48 average pace I'm pretty sure my lack of miles today and my pace says it all. Sucked.    Thursday 5 mile recovery 5  miles, 38:33; 7:42 average pace I may or may not have been hungover when I went out for this run. And in a hurry. Friday 11 miles with 6 miles at half pace 11 miles with 6 miles at half pace Ran to the gym for a warm up and did my half pace miles on the treadmill. Halfway into the miles, I didn't know how I was going to hang on. But I DID. 7:00, 7:02, 7:01, 7:01, 7:01, 6:59. Couple miles cool down to roun...

I know I'm super late with posting these. To backtrack a little, this is from the week of August 22-28. This training week marked my highest mileage ever. I spent a lot of time this week thinking about how 40 mile weeks used to seem tough. Now I eat 40 mile weeks for lunch. I feel like my body has responded really well to the increased mileage. I've been conciously running my recovery runs as recovery; slowing my pace down, sticking to flat trails, etc. Planned: 68 miles Actual: 68.41 miles Monday Rest Rest Tuesday 10 miles w/ 5 miles at half pace Another run to restore my faith in my ability to maintain my goal marathon pace of 7:15. It was pretty humid so I ran from my apartment to my gym as a warm-up and did my tempo miles on the treadmill. My legs were pretty sore during the warm up and I actually rolled out a little on the foam roller once I got to the gym. For my tempo miles I used the whole set it and forget it- sort of. I felt so good during them that I ...

Holy wow. Six weeks in already. Planned: 55 miles Actual: 43.5 miles Monday Rest Rest Tuesday 8 miles plus 10 x 100 meter strides Stuck to the roads around the lakes to hit some hills.  Did strides on flat path by my house and felt like a freak sprinting back and forth while bikers and runners were going by. I need a shirt or something that says "Not crazy, just a runner." But maybe we're all crazy. Wednesday 12 miles 12 miles, 1:30, 7:33 average pace. Cooler night with almost no humidity. Nights like this are why I am a runner. Thursday 5 mile recovery 5 miles, 45:46; 8:33 average pace Easy run around Isles. Friday & Saturday- RAGNAR RELAY 10 miles and 5 miles recovery 18.24 miles total over three legs. Full recap to come. Sunday 15 miles Off. Rest. Sleep. Food. In case you missed it: Richmond Marathon Training Week 5 Richmond Marathon Training Week 4 Richmond Marathon Training Week 3 Richmond Marathon Training Week 2 Richmo...

Planned: 63 miles Actual: 63 miles Monday Rest Rest Tuesday 9 miles w/ 5 @ 1/2 pace 9 miles, 1:09; 7:40 average, tempo miles at 7:03, 6:55, 6:48, 6:52, and 7:04. Not a very evenly paced effort but it was decent. Wednesday 14 miles 14.16 miles, 1:55, 8:07 average pace Trails at Hyland with R.E.D. Ran the trail loop faster than we'd ever done and my legs were trashed. Did two laps around Normandale to round out my mileage for the day. Thursday 5 mile recovery 5 miles, 38:35, 7:43 average pace Easy AM run around Calhoun. Friday 12 miles 12 miles, 1:33, 7:44 average pace Ran Greenway to Lakes to Parkway. Out and back. Took hills on the route when I had the option. Tired. Saturday 5 mile recovery 5.17, 47:20; 9:10 average pace Ran with my brother. Easy, conversational run. Sunday 18 miles w/ 10 miles @ Goal Pace 18 miles, 2:23; 7:58 average pace Goal Pace Fail. I knew right away this was going to be a bad run. I could barely hold a sub-8. I br...

On Sunday this gem landed in my possession: That's the Le Sueur News Herald. And that's the front page of the sports section. I was pumped because I didn't have any pictures from the 5K I ran .  Now you can see why Fast Girl looked so intimidating. I was exclaiming, "Oh, sweet!" as I unfolded the paper and saw this below the fold: Uh oh. We all know how I can't take a decent race picture to save my life. I was scared to look closer. Heel strike much? Ugh. What a horribly awkward photo. I don't even know where to begin with this. The icing on the cake was my mom calling me yesterday morning: Mom: Hey, you're on the front page of the paper. Me: Yep, I know. It's a horrible picture. Mom: Yeah, when I was watching you run I was thinking you need a tighter sports bra. Your boobs were moving. Me: Yeah, well, they're pretty big. I already have an industrial strength sports bra. Mom: It looks like it hurts when they...

 The Green Giant and I had a brief love affair last summer. Okay, as promised, my 5K race recap from the Giant's Valley 5K I ran last Saturday. This is another one of those small town 5Ks. I grew up in Le Sueur, the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant. It's our only claim to fame. Last year I was the first female with a time of 21:06 so I felt like I had to go back and defend my title. Pre-Race I hadn't registered in advance so I got there at 7 a.m. to register and begin my warm up. When I was walking out to my car to drop off my stuff after registering and saw a girl warming up. She. Looked. Fast. Really thin, hot pink sports bra and short shorts, doing drills. If you're doing drills and strides before a 5K, you generally know what you're doing. Mind you this was like an hour before the race started. She was there to win. Eesh. This is the participant shirt. I think the art is really creative. I ran my warm-up with a friend and then ...

Four weeks down already. I wish I could say that I was feeling better about how my training has been going. And the first week of August is gone. How the heck did that happen? Planned: 62 miles Actual: 58.75 miles Monday Rest Did core and some upper body in my apartment, mostly because I was feeling lazy. It's hard to completely rest! Tuesday 9 miles w/ 10 x 100 meter strides 9.15 miles, including warm up and cool down Track workout. 6 x 800 meters at half marathon pace (6:50) with quarter mile jog in between intervals. I'm not going to lie, this was too easy a workout for me. I didn't get the memo that R.E.D had moved their workout to St. Paul so I ended up on the Edina track with just one other person. I gave him the choice between mile repeats and 800s. He chose the 8s. We should've been running them at tempo or interval pace but it was nice to get the rhythm down for what my half pace will need to be come fall. Wednesday 14 miles 7.3 miles, trails ...

Alternate title: The Week of Almost No Running So this week wasn't so great. This has been the lowest mileage week I've run in a couple months, though not by choice. I feel a little guilty for not spending more time in the gym but I think the mental break did some good, too. I'd much rather take a few days now than a few weeks later on! Planned: 58 miles Actual: 33 miles Monday Rest Rest. Easy peasy. Tuesday 11 miles Track workout with R.E.D . 16 x 200 meters @ 45 seconds, 200 meter jog recovery. Kept all of these slightly under goal pace. It was easier than I thought it would be but the last few were still tough. Added a longer cool down on to get mileage up to 10.5 for the day. Wednesday 13 miles Since I was planning on running the Rice Street Mile, I wanted to break my mileage into two. I went out for 7 miles at an easy pace (7:55 average) in the morning. Throughout the day, my right hip was really tight so I decided to forgo a second run in favor of a b...

This past week in my training can be summed up with this photo: Post long run Sunday morning Planned- 55 miles Actual- 56 miles Monday Rest Took an Intro to Yoga class. Tuesday 8 miles w/ 10x100 meter strides Set out early in the morning and knew almost immediately it was going to be a bad run. It was really hot and I just wasn't feeling it. I quit after 5 miles and hit the treadmill at Life Time Fitness that night to finish up my three remaining miles and strides. Via Here's the thing: Running fast on a treadmill (sprinting) is HARD. I think my balance needs work because I always feel like I'm going to fall off.  Any tips? Wednesday 12 miles 12.17 miles; 1:37; 8:03 average pace Got an early start and ran the lakes to ensure that I'd have enough water. Struggled on this run. Combo of heat, lack of sleep, not eating beforehand and mental stress. Ran the second half faster than the first, which is always good. Thursday 5 mile recovery ...

Off the recommendation of several people, I picked up the book  Advanced Marathoning a few months ago.  I love reading about anything related to running or training so this book was a welcome addition to my ever-growing library of Runner's World, Running Times, Women's Running, and essentially any book that has "run" in the title. For the past two years, I've been writing my own training plans. In all of my prior marathon training, my weekly mileage never surpassed 50 miles a week. I also wasn't cognizant of my pace during runs and would run all of them at the same speed. With the goal of running a sub 3:10 marathon this year, I knew that I would have to shake something up with my training. For the past few months, I've been working on building a consistent base of 45 miles (+/-) a week. I've been feeling really good and decided to start the 55-70 mpw plan with the hope that the additional miles will bring my fitness to a higher lev...

Last Thursday night I ran The Bear Run , a 5-mile race up Grandfather Mountain in Linville, NC. This is Grandfather Mountain. It's supposed to look like the side profile of a man's face: his chin at the bottom, nose, eyes and eyebrows. Use your imagination. Anyway, it's roughly 1540 feet up from where we start in the town of Linville. I ran this race two years ago while I was living in North Carolina. At that time, I did some intensive hill training with a local running group and thought that I was as ready as ever to run. That year I ran the Bear in 53:00 minutes. This year I hadn't done any specific hill training, at least not regularly, and therefore didn't have any goals for this race. I was just running for fun. The race started at 7pm and had over 800 registrants trying to get into two parking lots at the base of the mountain. Thankfully my habit of being ridiculously early to races paid off and we were one of the first cars in the lot. Spectators we...

Or the Henderson Independent. But I'll take it. Records fall at Kraut Fun Run For the second year in-a-row, the womens course record for the Sauerkraut Days 5K Fun Run fell and for the third year in-a-row Andrew Gerdts took home the mens title. Jessica Eibs, a member of the Sibley East cross country team, took ninth overall and set a new womens course record with a time of 19:52. Eibs outlasted previous course record holder Hannah Schroeder who finished right behind Eibs at 11th with a time of 19:57. Schroeder also bested the previous record set by her in 2010 of 20:48. For the third year in a row Andrew Gerdts took home the mens title with a time of 17:28. This was five seconds off the mens course record set by Gerdts in 2009 at 17:23. Gerdts was challenged for much of the race by local Sam Straub. Straub hung with Gerdts for about two and a half miles before fading.    Straub finished with a PR at 17:49. Straub was followed by Alex Wischnack at 18:12, ...

From the girl who rarely posts pictures of herself,  a video race recap of the 2011 Henderson Sauerkraut Day Fun Run. I don't know whether to apologize in advance or say "You're welcome." To preface what you're about to see, my brother Andrew met Olympian Carrie Tollefson at National Running Day where she was filming for her show C Tolle Run . Andrew immediately fell in love with her and adopted her catchphrase of "Get after it!" as his own. You can catch his cameo appearances in two of her episodes- National Running Day and Discovering Duluth . He also got the idea to create a copycat show called "See Andy's Runs" (which has more to do beer shits than running. This will make more sense in a second.) Anyway, Andrew was in Le Sueur last night hanging out with some friends and said he would come watch the race. He called me at 3 a.m. and needed me to let him in our parent's house. When I went to wake him up this morning, the room sm...

1:36:24 Now you don't have to scroll all the way to the bottom to figure out what I ran. Clearly the wind was not at my back and I didn't hit my goal of running under 1:35 but did run a PR. I should say up front that this post is more for me than it is for you, but feel free to keep reading anyway. It was a perfect morning for the race which was completely uncharacteristic of New Prague. It was a little windy but it didn't feel like anything I couldn't handle. I ran a warm-up with Shawn and Regina and settled in near the 1:35 pace group at the start. When we took off, I felt like we were crawling but I stayed behind the pacer. I was so surprised to see the first mile tick off in 7:12 and I couldn't believe that I didn't feel like I was working at all. Gotta love adrenaline. Once we got out of town and turned into the wind, I knew that I was going to have to work a little bit. I tucked in behind the pacer and just kept my eyes on his feet. There were so...

It feels weird to write a race recap because it's been MONTHS! Racing a 5K definitely wasn't in my plans but after last Tuesday's speedwork with Shawn from MN RED , I was persuaded to test my fitness level in preparation for my upcoming half marathon. I'm not going to lie- I was super nervous. I hate running fast and feeling that uncomfortable for that long. I was also worried that I would end up with a way slower time than I wanted and become really discouraged. As the saying goes, 90% of the things we worry about never happen... On Friday night I drove the course so I could see what I was getting myself into. Shawn told me (and Matt confirmed) that the first mile had some decent climbs and it did. After that, though, it was a gentle descent the second mile and then a long, straight, flat third mile before turning to head to the finish. After psyching myself up (and out) with the course, I drove to Target to bribe myself with candy. After a fitful night of slee...