Where's the Beach?

On Sunday, March 1, I woke up and ran the  Little Rock Half Marathon  for the 5th time. I'm beginning to think this race is completely cursed for me. The only time I've run it well was my first time. Since then, it's been injuries, torn plantar fascia, craptastic weather ... and this year it was seemingly all of the above. Even the finisher medals hadn't arrived! (Though, while we didn't get our real medals, the race directors made certain that we had a temporary medal after we crossed that line.) So, here I was completely untrained coming off of a stress fracture. 100% chance of rain, cold rain at that. I had only been running again for 2 weeks. No speed work, longest distance was 8 miles (done the day before). However, I was feeling pretty good overall. No foot pain. Just a lowered endurance level, to be expected after not running for 37 long days. I didn't really announce that I was going to run. I wasn't completely sure I would. But, when it came d...

Sunday was definitely an Epic day to say the least. That was the theme of the this year's Little Rock Marathon and it lived up to the theme for sure. I apologize for the length of this ramble in advance. This race has always been tough for me. Even though I run portions of the race route during almost every single run I do, I am always shocked at how difficult it ends up being. And the half course isn't as hilly as the full. It starts off relatively flat, even a great downhill going into North Little Rock. But then you come back over the bridge and it's up, up, up .... up before finally getting to some downhills. Of course, by that time, any of the rolling hills on that last mile feel like mountains. The forecast for race day was not looking good. All week they were predicting severe storms rolling through with frigid temperatures behind the front. Thankfully it wasn't pouring rain with thunder and lightening at the start, that was to come later, for those doing ...

As I mentioned the other day , Sunday I will be running the Little Rock Half Marathon . This means this week has been all about tapering, planning what to wear for race day, planning out my race strategy. Many of you are runners, so I thought it would be fun to do a race week list for Fun for Friday . You know it's race week when: You obsess about which days you can and should run as well as the intensity for each run. I might build plans for others, but I'm terrible about following one myself. I got in my last speed work on Wednesday and planned easy yesterday, but Jason and I still went too fast. Sometimes it's hard to scale back. You have memorized every single pace average to get you any range of race times depending on whether or not you're going to race hard, play it by feel, or need to know the slowest possible time you can go without going over your secret race time goal. You watch the weather like it's your paying job. Really? That's the fore...

This coming Sunday I will be running in the Little Rock Half Marathon for the 4th time. I ran this race as my very first half marathon in 2010 . I was nervous beyond words. I had trained hard though, and that training paid off. I finished my first half strong at 1:54. I was beaming with pride. I had done something I never thought possible. It was an accomplishment greater than finishing my MA to be honest. I went on to run my second half marathon that October - Soaring Wings . I was starting to experience piriformis issues. I even had to walk once during the race. And, I was ill-prepared for the hills. My time was slower than I had wanted and expected. But I was still proud. I was still doing something I never thought I was capable of accomplishing. If you haven't followed my blog for long, a quick back story is that I grew up with very severe asthma. There were times when I was a child when I was carried down the hall because I couldn't catch my breath to even walk to ...

Happy Friday! It's been a long one and I even took Monday off after the Little Rock Half Marathon to recoup. The crazy thing is, other than my foot problem, I felt absolutely fine. No real muscle soreness in my legs. In fact, had my foot not been hurting, you better believe I would have been out running on Monday. Unfortunately, I pushed too hard and am sidelined again. Apparently I don't learn. I've tried really hard not to get down about not running this week. The first few days were ok. I got to try out more of Cathe's XTrain series and spent time on my bike trainer. However, the weather was rapidly improving -sunshine, warming temps, no gusting crazy winds. I think it was even harder because I was still riding that post-race high. You know - thinking about running, looking at more races to enter (why doesn't AR have more races by the way), missing that long weekend run. Gotta love runner's amnesia for helping us all forget the hellish parts of a run som...

Yesterday I ran my 5th half marathon. This was the 3rd time to run the Little Rock Half Marathon. Three years ago, it was my very first half. Last year I ran it with Jason after pretty major injuries and not running for 6 weeks. Not smart, but so satisfying to cross that finish line with my husband. This year, more trials and tribulations. In December I discovered I had a blood clot and have been on medication since. I was told no running or even walking for that matter in the beginning. After weeks of no exercise combined with side effects from the mediation, I wasn't sure I would be running this race period, let alone accomplishing a 3+ minute PR. I started the race with my friend, Amy (given clearance to user her name). She was starting to get sick on Friday and said that she'd run with me if she was still not feeling great. She was originally planning to try for a course PR. While I welcomed the company of my running buddy, I certainly didn't want to be holding h...

Source KTHV Today I ran a half marathon. As you know I've been injured and unable to run for 5 weeks now. My last double-digit run was about 7 weeks ago. So, this is definitely not something I'd recommend. Admittedly, it was not a smart move. But, I did it. This was not an easy race, I felt terribly out of shape, I struggled. I struggled a lot. I walked. And Jason walked with me. But we pushed on and succeeded. Our time was 2:10, a little more than 15 minutes off my last race. But I don't care about the time at all. In fact, this was one of my prouder moments - crossing that finish line with my husband. I've done two half marathons before. Both times I ran solo. So this meant so much to me, so much more than a time, a PR, anything like that. Some of you will absolutely understand, others won't. And honestly, I don't know that I have the words right now to explain how special it was for me. Yes, I have felt damn proud racing solo and crossing that line...