Well I don't know what came over me today but I decided to look up the pace for a 6:30 hour marathon, which is the course time limit for the marathon I'm supposed to run in 37 days. The minimum pace in case you are wondering is 14:52 min/mile. So I decided to go out and see if I could actually manage to pull that off for more than a mile. I had 5 miles on my schedule today and since I was supposed to meet my fiancé at 5 pm and it was 3 pm, I figured that if I was going to run 5 miles in 1:14:20 (14:52 pace) it was the perfect time to do it. So I got dressed up and headed out.

I went to one of my favorite paved trails and headed out. Since I don't have a Garmin anymore to micromanage my pace I just set my run keeper app up to alert me every mile with my average pace. I kept it pretty easy and walked for the first little bit and then started picking a sign or a tree or whatever to run to and then I walked to the next sign or tree or whatever and repeated for 5 miles. My splits ended up being even for the first two miles. Apparently I got a little faster for mile 3 though, I guess the downhill helped me. Overall though I ended up running 5 miles in 1:10:38 so I beat my goal, though I don't know how well I would do for 21.2 more miles.

Splits

NAME

PACE

CLIMB

1 mi

14:31

45

2 mi

14:23

-2

3 mi

12:58

-45

4 mi

14:13

-12

5 mi

14:47

15

6 mi

19:02

2

My next run on my schedule is 14 miles on Saturday and I'll need to run it in 3:28:08 or less to stay under my time goal.

Oh and did I mention that Saturday is Mardi Gras and that fiancé and I are planning on being downtown for the parade and some day drinking at 8:30 am.

I Am the Stair Master!

Today was a pretty healthy day overall! I ate a total of 1708, which is 318 calories over my goal but fiancé and kiddo and I did a 1 mile walk for his Read, Right, Run program then after kiddo went to bed I headed to the gym.

I took my iPad mini to the gym with me and dedicated myself to the stairmaster. I managed to stay on for 30 minutes and I must say I'm a little proud of myself, seeing as I hate that stupid machine. I actually had sweat running down my face when I was finished. It was fantastic. Afterwards I did 6 miles on the recumbent stationary bike as a cool down. I burnt enough calories to end up with a 100 calorie deficit for the day so not bad overall. I'm hoping that I can stay motivated and reach my goals!

Also, you can friend me on myfitnesspal if you'd like, my username is blb2870.

A Wake Up Call

Fiancé and I weighed in today. It was a little sad for me, the scale said 212.6, which is the highest I've ever seen on the scale. Fiance's number wasn't very good either so we both decided to start tracking our food on myfitnesspal again.

I set my goal at 1.5 pound loss per week, which gives me 1,390 calories per day. I was originally going to do 2 pounds per week but it felt a little to restrictive and honestly with 77.6 pounds to lose I thought that 1.5 pounds a week was plenty fast enough. 

I ended up doing ok for my first day, I went over my calorie count by 410 calories but overall I made some better choices for the day. Hopefully doing this together will make it easier, it helps that kiddo loves his vegetables!

Run For Your Beads 5K Race Recap

This morning my fiancé and I ran the Run For Your Beads 5K. I ran this race in 2012, when I was running 12 races in 2012. You can read the race recap here.

Thankfully if finally warmed up just a bit today and it was in the high 30s for this race. Unfortunately it had been so cold and snowy for months before this race that we had been running only on the treadmill. Treadmill running does not prepare you for running in a city that is fairly hilly. I ran sans all technology but my fiancé ran with his run keeper application so I can show you the elevation chart from his account.

Overall it wasn't a particularly fast race for either of us but it did show us how quickly we have lost some of our conditioning by slacking a bit and also relying primarily on the treadmill. We are both hoping to be more active this spring and to include bonus kiddo since he wanted so badly to sign up for the Go! St. Louis Read, Right, Run Marathon.

The Read, Right and Run Marathon is an excellent program locally, over several months kids have to read 26 chapter books, do 26 good deeds, and run 25 miles. They do the last 1.2 miles at a big event in April (the day before my marathon) and they get finishers medals and everything. Our kiddo is pretty excited about it so we have been encouraging him to read more, encouraging random acts of kindness and doing 1 mile walks with him, his school also lets him do 4 or 8 laps around the peace path after school one day a week. The peace path is 0.25 miles so he had the option of doing 1 or 2 miles once a week which helps out with the mileage.

Valentine's A Day Early

Well, today was not very entertaining, I spent most of it at work or in the car. I was supposed to do 6 miles today but after I got off work, I drove an hour to my parents house. They are out of town and asked me to stop by and check on the house. Since it is a 2 hour drive form my parents to my house I decided to sleep in the guest bedroom.  I slept until about 4:30 and left to drive back home. It was almost 7:30 pm before I made it home.

Once I made it home and showered my fiancé and I decided to go out for dinner and celebrate our valentines day today. Bonus kid is with his mom tonight and we will have him tomorrow so we will do something as a family tomorrow. Speaking of which, I am going to kiddos school tomorrow to help with his class valentines day party. Definitely something new for me, never been in a position to be one of the school moms.

Since it was late by the time we got back from dinner and I had wine with dinner, I'm a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, I decided that instead of 6 miles it might be better to swap out the 6 miles one more time. My schedule said it was a cross train day but again, it was late and I had been drinking. I didn't feel comfortable driving to the gym or doing a video at home so I decided to jump on the treadmill and just she how fast I could do 1 mile. I figured that I usually have my run interval set on the treadmill set between 6.0 and 6.5 so I decided to give 6.5 a try. I figured I could do it for 1 mile, it would only last 9ish minutes right? I was wrong. Overall I did manage to finish the mile in 11:57 but I definitely need to work on improving my stamina. I could cross the finish line for that marathon, I have no doubt, it would just take me about 8 hours. Since Go! St. Louis says I get max 6.5 hours, I'm gonna need to work on that, a lot.

Tomorrow is my last day to make this 6 miles happen. It is supposed to be in the 20s with a possibility of snow so I'm not sure if I will finally make my break from the treadmill quite yet or not.

Cupcakes and Traffic

Well after I finished my blog last night I did manage to stay up until 5 o'clock in the morning. The only problem is that I made cupcakes at 4 am! I'm not a huge sweets person but my fiancé had requested cupcakes and the promise was made to our 7 year that if I baked something he could have it for breakfast. That's right we fed our kid a cupcake with tons of chocolate frosting right before sending him to school.

Like I said, I'm not a huge sweets person but I can't resist batter.  I love all types of batter especially pancake and cake batter. Pancake batter has to be my number 1 favorite though. It's horrible for me, insert disclaimer about how you should not eat raw eggs, but I just can't resist licking the beaters when I'm done. 

Anyway, I did manage to get some sleep before maintenance woke me up and I did manage to get in 4 miles on the treadmill before heading to work. I had 6 miles on the schedule for today and four on the schedule tomorrow but due to time constraints I just did the four and will aim for 6 tomorrow. 

My drive to work was horrible. Apple maps usually tells me 1:44 for my drive to work. I left at 5:10 and hit tons of traffic on the way down and ended up running a few minutes late to work. 

After work I'm headed to my parents, which is much closer to the hospital I work at. They are out of town and asked me to swing by to check on things so I will take advantage of the 45 minute drive and sleep at their house before driving back to the city. 

4 Miles

Today had a slow start for me. I woke up at about 10 am when the pest control company came by to check up on our fly problem, but went straight back to bed after he left. I slept until 2:30 pm when maintenance came to fix a light switch. At that point I knew I had to get my butt in gear or I was going to miss getting bonus kid off of the school bus.

I made it to the bus on time and left straight from there to put gas in my SUV before it died on the side of the road. After that I took kiddo to get some new shoes since he had worn out and nearly out grown his old tennis shoes. Thankfully, kohl's had the exact same pair of shoes 1 size bigger on sale no less so it was easy, peasy.

Next it was off to the pet store, out dog decided suddenly to stop eating his food and start eating the trash. My fiancé thought maybe something had gotten into his food, we had this issue before and I called and spoke with one of the wonderful folks at Purina who suggested that since dogs noses are so sensitive the least little smell can cause them to reject their food. We bought a small bag of dog food and sure enough he gobbled it up. Of course, a small bag of food does not last when you have a 50 pound dog so I went back to buy our usual 20 pound bag.

After a dinner of pasta, turkey meatballs, and garlic bread (not the healthy meal, I know!) my fiancé ran his 4 miles on the treadmill and then we watched the new episode of Walking Dead together before he headed to bed. Since I am working tomorrow I waited until late to run my miles since I'm planning on staying up until about 5 am. I did my 4 miles in 59:20, I'm still doing walk 4 run 1 minute but I decided speed up my run intervals a little each time. Overall I felt great during the run even though I wore my nike free's instead of my saucony mirage that I've been wearing (different pairs, same style) for years. 

Hopefully I'll be able to pull myself out of bed 90 minutes earlier than normal so I can do my 6 miles before I head to work, hopefully I can stand after doing 6 miles and then sitting in the car for 90 minutes.