Catching Up

Lets play catch up with bullet points!

• Thanks everyone for your comments on my last post about switching marathons. I have decided to go ahead and run the Lake Lowell Half Marathon on May 5th and run the Famous Idaho Potato Marathon on May 19th. I think it was just a better choice for me. This also means I get to meet and run with these two ladies (here & here) at the Lake Lowell Half :) This also pushed marathon training back 2 weeks.

• My strength training has been going awesome. I've been doing about 2-3 strength training workouts a week. I am still using Jamie Eason's Live Fit Trainer. I don't follow every workout to a T but I have seen lot of strength improvement. Arms, back & chest are the area I've been working on most. I want to look good in those tank tops this summer! This past Saturday I did some kettle bell swings while Gene did some heavy rope wave exercise. We take turns usually doing 30 seconds. I always start sucking towards the end and can barely get the wave to go to the end of the rope.  Then we did some tire flips. Man that thing was heavy! I did a few of them before we called it a day.

• My mileage has been low these past two weeks. Part of it is cause I've been a little lazy in the running department (not the best thing since marathon training starts soon). I haven't had the motivation to get outside so my runs have mostly been on the treadmill. The other part is cause I've been experiencing some lower leg pain on my left leg. On Monday I did a 5 mile hill workout on the treadmill. I started at .5 incline for a mile warm up then did quarter mile repeats where I increased the incline from 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5,  then back down to 5, 4.5, 4 with a flat cool down. It made the 5 miles go by pretty quick. After the workout I felt a little bit of soreness on my lower left leg. I've felt this off and now for a few runs. But yesterday, the day after the hill workout, I could actually feel more pain than the day before. And it hurt more when I went up and down stairs. This obviously freaked me out and I was thinking the worst so I turned to the internet for answers, cause you know that's the easiest way to self diagnose yourself. I found that pain I was experiencing was just like posterior shin splints. I've never had shin splints so this wasn't the first thing that popped into my head. In fact I always thought shin splints were only on the front of the leg (Anterior Shin Splints). I found this picture that shows exactly where my pain is (Posterior Shin).

I tried some of the stretches that work the calf muscles that are tight (Gastrocnemius and Soleus) and I definitely feel the tightness. I also did some icing and wore my compression socks yesterday, which I read the compression can help. I did do some slow running today after my strength training. I did a walk warm up with some slow running then a walk cool down for a total of 1.2 miles. I could feel the pain, or more like soreness, at the beginning of the run and I could feel myself wanting to change my stride to compensate for soreness. Towards the middle of the run it started to fade and my stride was feeling more natural. I did some stretching after the run. I wore my compression socks again today and it actually doesn't feel as sore as yesterday. I can feel the tightness going up and down the stairs but not the way it felt yesterday.

 I read that hill training and speed training can cause it as well as outworn shoes. I think the hill workout I did caused the pain to become more apparent instead of just a light soreness I had been feeling the past few weeks. And also wearing my shoes longer than I should have and that may be were why I was feeling the soreness off and on for the past few weeks. I did get 2 new pairs of shoes recently and had a new pair on when I did the hill workout.

 For now I will wear my compression socks, ice, stretch and take it easy on the running this week and see how it goes :/ I have some K-tape at home and I also have access to it at work that I was thinking about trying to see if it helped any.

• On Monday I also registered for the Race to Robie Creek Half Marathon. This race sold out in 9 min and 49 seconds. What makes this race so special you ask? Well it's dubbed the "toughest race in the Northwest" and apparently there are 2100 people who are crazy enough to want to run it and I was one of them. I still am not sure what I got myself into. But this is one of the biggest races in Idaho and I have to try it at least once. You can read the course description HERE.  It starts at Fort Boise (elevation 2725′), 8.5 miles up Rocky Canyon and over Aldape Summit (elevation 4797′), to a 13.1 mile finish at Robie Creek campground (elevation 3065′). Translation: You run up hill for 8.5 miles, followed by a steep downhill till mile 12 where it finally flattens out. Should be fun right? 

I was pretty surprised I got in. I had been going back and forth on if I wanted to run it or not. When it was registration time at 12pm on Monday I logged in at about 12:05 and filled out all my info then hit submit and waited till my transaction processed 3 minutes later and I got my confirmation that it went thru fine. When I logged back onto facebook I read the race had already sold out so I just barely made. I was surprised by the amount of people that were pissed off they didn't get in and were complaining about the registration process. They use Active which is what a lot races use but if you have that many people wanting to register for a race at the same time there is bound to be problems and servers crashing. Guess it pays to have fast internet :)  They do have a second chance lottery drawing and from what I've been reading there's always people selling their bibs as it gets closer to the race. They have a theme every year and this year it's Samurai Sailtoad... I have a few costume ideas floating around in my head :)

Have you ever had shin splints?

Any recommendations on what I should do to improve?

Famous Idaho Potato Marathon Recap

I was having trouble falling asleep Friday night cause my brain just wouldn’t shut off. I ended up waking up at 2 am marathon morning from a dream about being late to the starting line and everyone had already left. I knew this wasn’t going to happen cause I had set both my phone alarm and clock alarm just in case. I woke up at 5:30 am before my alarm went off and decided to get up and start getting ready.
I had 3/4 of a cliff bar (I left the last part of it on the bench while I got dressed and my dog decided she was hungry and wanted to eat the rest of it) and a 1/2 a banana with some peanut butter for breakfast.
As I walked outside at 7 am to to drive to the starting line it was rainy. I posted on Facebook  that mother nature decided to remind me of Tacoma since it was raining.

It was cold, rainy and windy at the starting line and I was second guessing my clothing decisions. The weather had said it was going to be in the 60/70s during the race so I decided to just throw on my arm sleeves.

I waited in the truck till about 5 minutes before the start with Gene and Dash where it was nice and warm.
The start was at 8am. The announcer said there was about 250 full and 1500 half runners (they were starting 30 min after us). There actually wasn’t really a starting line. It was just a line spray painted into the ground.

Before I knew it we were off and running. As we turned the corner about .5 mile in the sun was suddenly out and I was warm already so I took off my arm sleeves and hung them off my spibelt (love that thing!) A girl in front of me took off her long sleeve and another runner told he was worried at how warm it was already.
About a mile in I was thirsty already, not good the next water stop wasn’t until mile 3. I quickly walked thru the water station and kept on going. We were running near the river so there was a light breeze and some clouds that felt good.

I was reaching the half way point and knew I should be seeing Gene soon. I looked out for him and saw his truck parked along the road. I didn't see him where I though he would be so I kept looking out for him.  I never got to see him which was a little hard mentally but I tried not to get discouraged. I guess I was just too fast :) I crossed the half at 2:01 and was feeling good still just really thirsty.

The last few miles is where it started to get really tough. The sun was really beating down and the temps where up around mile 16. We had to run past the fairgrounds around mile 19 and there was a swap meet going on or something so all I could smell was greasy fried fair food that was making me nauseous. I had also been seeing people run towards me for what seemed like miles already but it seemed like the turn around was NEVER in sight, this was really tough mentally cause I just wanted to turn around and head back already.

At mile 20 I started to get a really bad side ache that I just couldn't run thru. I walked for a little bit and kept going. I wanted to just keep drinking water cause I was so thirsty. Even though I would take in water or Gatorade at every station it still wasn't enough. The side ache was also persistent and getting worse as the race went on. I wanted to run faster but my legs didn't want to move any faster.

Miles 22-24 was a lot of run/walking. I was able to consistently fuel with energy chews at miles 6, 12, 18 and 22.

When I reached mile 25 I didn't want to walk and kept telling myself I was almost done I can walk when I cross the finish line. At mile 26 and told myself to "embrace the pain", easier said than done. I managed to hold a 9:34 pace this last mile but it wasn't easy my side was hurting bad. As I made the turn into the park the last .2 were the toughest cause the path was a big U so it looked like the finish line was so far away. I wanted to walk so bad but I sped up which really made the side ache worse and hard to breath.

I finally saw Gene and my friend Adam on the sideline so I waved and pushed it to the finish line crossing in 4:17:33. A 31 minute PR off my first marathon.

Not really sure why the clock reads 4:21 cause I crossed the starting line a few seconds after the gun went off. But my garmin time was only a second off of the official time.

I wanted to get somewhere between 4 and 4:15 cause I knew I was capable of this based on my training runs but I am still 100% happy with the time that I got because I ran uninjured which was my number 1 goal.


This post is long enough already so I'll post some after race pics tomorrow!