What's in store?

Post Good Life Halfsy with my boys!

So it has obviously been a long while since I have published a blog post.  Why? I haven’t been running.  Last May, right after Market to Market Iowa, I found out that I was pregnant with our third child.  While I felt a mixture of emotions, the two biggest were happiness and fear.  Happiness at the thought of completing our family with a newborn.  Fear at the thought of another miscarriage.  I immediately started taking it really easy with regards to my workouts.  I ran through May (usually about 6 miles at a time around a 9:30 pace), but then moved to strictly elliptical after that as my doctor recommended that I stick to low impact workouts.  Since then, I have run a total of 3 times: the Seward Freedom Run (2 miles), the Lincoln Mile, and one leg at Market to Market NE. 

As I am already an anxious person, I knew that I was going to have to keep myself extremely busy in order to keep negative thoughts and feelings at bay.  In addition to caring for Quinn and Anders, I took two courses this past summer and taught summer school.  This Fall, I began my fifth year teaching Life Skills at the ESU 7 and took on three more classes through UNK.  After this, I will have one class left to finish up my Administrative Endorsement.  It has been tough and I have had to be extremely diligent with my time, but here we are well into November and all is going well.  One more month of grinding and all of this will be behind me.

I have felt much happier now that I have passed 30 weeks into the pregnancy.  I have not experienced any problems^rd.  It would be awesome if he would wait until that point, but I almost have all my ducks in a row if he does come earlier.

up to this point and have scheduled the C-section for December 23

I have also allowed myself to start thinking about what I want to do athletically next year.  This answer is…I want to do a lot.  Not in terms of the number of events I compete in, but I want to do something big.  Again.  It has been awhile.  This time around, I am going to have to be extremely purposeful about my workouts.  And I need to get really, really good about my recovery days.  Add in recovery tactics.  In the past, I have tended to do what I feel like when I feel like it.  I have not done enough or have done too much, resulting in sub-par performances.

So.  Here’s to making it through the next several weeks.

And here’s to a big 2017, whatever that may look like.

State Farm Race Report + Going Long

State Farm has always been a solid race that I have enjoyed.  After sitting out last year due to my "collapsing leg" issues, I was happy that I'd be able to do it again.  Many people chose to do the 10 mile as it is a great warm-up or training run for the Lincoln half, but I have had a pretty good handle on my long runs so figured I could do the 5k.

After taking some down time after the LA Marathon, I got back to my new mix of easy runs, long runs, and speed.  I felt like I was ready to turn out a decent effort that morning, but sometimes that it just not in the cards.  The morning did not go well leading up to the race and I found myself a little on edge.  As Philip was running as well, we dropped our boys off at a friend's house and made our way to 84th and O.  Upon arriving, I met up with Lindsey for a quick warm-up.  We chatted and got ready for our races.  The 10 mile started ten minutes before the 5k, so I saw Lindsey and Philip off and then made final preparations for my event.  (This mainly consisted of finding a warm place to wait.)  I saw that a couple of speedy ladies were also doing the 5k as they were also waiting anxiously for the start.  When the race director called us to the starting line, I sadly took off my warm ups and headed over.  *Brr.  I had to remind myself that I did, in fact, like this.

So, a quick reminder here.  I have not done anything FAST in forever.  I had a crappy spring in 2015 and when I was finally healed, I started training for Ironman Boulder, Ironman Florida, and then the LA Marathon.  It's been awhile since I've done a 5 or 10k.  When the gun went off, I found myself in third place and felt that that was where I belonged.  My mental woes of not believing I could beat the leaders were in full force Saturday.  Although I felt really good during the race (other than being cold), my head was just not in the right place.  I did end up as the third overall woman in the race, but ran a very disappointing time of 20:46.  I was sad when I saw my time and got more upset about this as the day went on.

Anyway.  After feeling sorry for myself for awhile (and being really crabby to poor Philip), I met up with my WRN teammates for a ride at Fly in downtown Lincoln.  We had a really good time, and I found that my mood had lifted. That evening, Philip and I just hung out and watched Netflix and tried to get some rest as I'd planned to do a long run after church.

After doing 100% of my training on the treadmill this winter, this was going to be my first long run outside.  I really like doing long runs at Lake North in Columbus as one loop around is 6.4 miles.  BUT it was still going to be cold.  Seriously! No thank you!  I bundled myself and headed out there.  After the first loop, I almost threw the towel in because I was so.cold.  (The last mile and a half of the loop were into the wind.) But after some water and a gel, off I went.  After the second loop, I was so cold that I had to change out my base layer...this ended up helping quite a bit and felt decent for the last loop.  I ended up with 19.2 miles with the three loops...sometimes I add on to get to the exact number, but this was going to have to be good enough.  I was nervous about how my IT band would react, but it didn't bother me too much (until that night).  Fingers crossed that I can make it another 6ish weeks without a major injury...

*It wasn't that cold out this weekend.  I am just a huge baby about being cold.  I would rather run in the heat any day.

Complete results to State Farm can be found here

Race Report: Bryan Health Indoor Triathlon

This year was the third time that I had competed in the Bryan Health Indoor Tri.  I just really like this event! I tend to be a victim of race anxiety, so the fact that this race is not outdoor really helps.  No wind, rain, or extreme heat or cold.  My kind of race.

The event consists of a 10 minute swim, followed by a 10 minute transition.  Next we get on the spin bike for 30 minutes, a quick 5 minute transition, and hop on the treadmill for 20 minutes.  The goal is to see how much you can get done in the allotted time frames.  While I had been consistently running and biking, I had not been swimming much...well, at all.  The last time I swan was at the indoor tri I had done on January 3rd.  Thank goodness my body knows swimming so well!  I didn't have a lot of anxiety going into the event, but since I had won the previous year, I went into this year's event with the hope of winning.

the swim.
Okay, so 10 minutes of swimming.  Shouldn't be too bad.  And it wasn't.  I felt strong the entire time. I was sharing my lane with Philip, and my sister was in the lane to his left.  Emilie and I ended up getting the same amount of laps (26) in that time frame.   I felt good!

the bike.
Ahhh....my weakness.  I was so embarrassed by my average watts last year of 152.  I REALLY wanted to get more than that this year! So I stuck my ear buds in and pedaled literally as hard as I could.  Philip attends at cycling workout over his lunch break at the Fallbrook Y, so he shared with me where I would be the most bang for my buck (higher resistance + higher RPM = higher watts)
 .  Holy crap.  That was hard.  My average was 157 this year.  Better, but really?! I shouldn't be as tired as I was...

the run.
Oh, here we go here we go.  As I was standing on my treadmill thinking about the pain before me, I was a bit worried.  I knew that I was going to have to get the most miles to secure the 100 given points and heard that I needed to get at least 2.9 to overtake the current female leader.  The current male leader had 3.2.  So, my 'A' goal here became to beat the guy, my 'B' goal to get around 3 miles.  I set my treadmill to about 9.5 to start, gradually moving up to 10.2.  This lasted until I had about 5 minutes left...I felt my legs turning to jello and began having serious doubts about my body's ability to continue at that speed without falling off.  I had to pull myself all the way down to 9.0.  When the 20 minutes was over, I had run 3.25 miles! Woo hoo!

Late that evening, the results were emailed out.  I was happy to see that I had won the event again.  I had done much better than the previous year.  I did try really, really hard though.  I always want to do my best and have been doing a much better job in the past couple years of pushing my body even though it hurts.

Once again, it was a great day.  And not just because of that W.  I got to spend the afternoon with two of my favorite people--my sister and my husband--doing what we love. :):):)