Tag Archives: running

Wineglass Marathon Training Week 3: Baby It’s Hot Outside

I totally skipped on two runs this weekend while at the beach, but I told myself this morning that I wouldn’t bail on this update, and that I would continue to hold myself accountable, poor training week or not.

After all, the marathon won’t care about the runs I did or didn’t get in.

So tonight, I set out to get my long run in, heat or not.

Now I can recap my last week of training. (It won’t take very long.)

Tuesday: 4 mile easy run on the treadmill because I was being a weenie about the heat.

Wednesday: A surprisingly great 7-mile tempo run on the treadmill

Thursday: travel day – had previously planned to take as a rest day. The only working out I did was climbing a lighthouse and lifting a lobster roll to my mouth.


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Friday: Went to Flywheel with this sexy crew. (L-R: Ashley | Laura | Daria (who doesn’t have a blog…yet???) | and Blake!)

I’ll blog a bit more about our class when I write more about the weekend, but! Blake had reserved our classes, so our stats didn’t show up in my account, BUT I had a massive PR. My highest score before Friday was a 211 (birthday, lucky number!) but I got a 237 on Friday! I really struggle at Flywheel because I have a hard time matching the RPM they want us to get up to, but I had a good-for-me class Friday. I’d tried to get into SoulCycle instead, but it filled up by approximately 12:00:01 on Monday.

When we planned on Flywheel on Friday, I’d planned to shift my 13-miler and 6-miler to Saturday and Sunday. I slept in on Saturday, went down by the pool…and got to chatting. Before I knew it, it was nearly noon, freaking hot and we were leaving for an afternoon party. We’d planned on leaving on Saturday evening, but ended up staying until Sunday morning. I dropped everyone back off in the city, headed out to NJ, and immediately took a nap.

So…yeah. Not my finest effort this weekend, but I acknowledge this and now realize that for any other beach weekends with friends this summer, I’ll have to get my long run out of the way before I head out of town (like I did last year) so that I only have a shorter run.

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Today: I’m still going to sneak this into last week’s training. Like I said above, I pushed myself to get tonight’s run in since I’d regretted slacking this weekend. I started the run pretty miserable – mad at myself for slacking, knowing my pace was going to suck and with a bit of a headache from my pupils still being a bit dilated from an eye doctor appointment today. I left a bit before 7 so that hopefully it would cool down as much as possible while I could still get some daylight. I was supposed to run 13 this weekend, but I knew that probably wouldn’t happen tonight. I told myself first anything over 6 would be good, and then I forced myself to run far enough away from home that I’d have to do at least 9.

I ran down the East side, over the Brooklyn Bridge, back over the Manhattan Bridge and up through Chinatown to Union Square to get to an even 9, and I called it a day. I was a little bummed when I finished at a slow pace, and when I Instagrammed the picture above, Victoria reminded me of the heat index/pace chart you can use to feel faster. I never used to struggle like this in the heat, so I’d been chalking it up to getting older, heavier, slower, something, but I’m going to go with the heat thing. Since it is pretty damn hot and humid out, after all.

I found the Jack Daniels Running Calculator, and it said I was running about 27 seconds slower per mile because of the heat. While even that pace is a bit slower than I usually run for mid-distance runs like this, it makes me feel a little better.

Mileage total: A whopping 20 miles last week. Awesome. Onward and upward this week! Focuses: getting back to yoga, not freaking out too much over pace, and just focusing on training in general.

Does the heat really affect you or can you usually just run through it…like I used to be able to do?

Al Goldstein Summer Speed Series 5K Recap

I used to have really self-limiting thoughts about my running.

I haven’t been running that long.

I used to be fat.

For probably the first two years I ran, I saw myself as someone who had somehow beat the system, snuck in and pretended to be a runner.

Then I started training for the NYC Half, with the goal of going sub-2, and I started believing in myself. I didn’t do it on the first try (or the second, or the third, but that’s neither here nor there), but I started to think of myself as someone who could run for performance, not just to finish. I was only competing with myself, but that fire in my belly had been ignited.

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Megan | Meggie | Leticia | some weird blonde chick with an accidental side pony | Jenny | Carla | Rebecca

Last night, I ran one of the Al Goldstein Summer Speed Series races. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re awesome. A $5 5K? Um, yes. They happen every other week in the summer, and last year all of my friends from the Internet went and had fun, and I was never able to make any of them. This year, I’m trying to make it to as many as possible.

I got off the subway and got completely lost trying to find the start of this small race. My directional skills are terrible; I’d need Google Maps to get me out of a paper bag were I lost in there. I started running the loop, hoping I’d run into someone I know, and I eventually saw a unicorn Meggie, who led me to the start and our friends. I’d run 3 miles as a warmup (was only supposed to run 2, so Jess, I would like to request a deduction in mileage somewhere else) and my legs were still a little spent from the tri, so I wasn’t planning on “racing” it.

Rebecca and I started off together, both a little unsure about how it’d go, but trying to run hard. Jess wanted me doing it as a tempo at 8:15ish pace. Oops. I held that for about the first mile, then we dropped to 7:43 and 7:50 miles. My 5K PR is around a 7:33 pace, so I knew I wasn’t going to PR, but I decided I wanted to run as strong a race as I had in me yesterday.

That first mile included a bigass hill, and then it was all downhill from there. Rebecca and I chatted a little, but even a not-really-racing 5K pace is difficult to talk at, so after the first mile we occasionally grunted at each other.

In the last mile, once I hit 2.5, I decided I just wanted to be done, so I ran that last mile in hard and finished in 24:33. A full minute off of my PR, but I was still happy with a strong race.

24:33 is a 7:55 average pace. I never thought I’d be able to run under 8-minute miles, or even one 8-minute mile four years ago.

That was not a fluke, and it excites me for the rest of marathon training. (Which is good, because this is only the first week.)

Oh, and then I woke up and ran 6 more this morning with the lovely Jen. I’m enjoying getting back into the swing of things.

What self-limiting thoughts did you get rid of to become a stronger runner?