running: the dawn

Snowboarding in Vail!  Mr. Dawn and I spent two days on the slopes.  It had been three years since I was on a mountain.  We went snowboarding for our honeymoon and haven’t been back since.  The first day it was snowing so there was fresh powder everywhere.  AMAZING.  The second day was bright blue skies and glorious views of all the peaks.

And, it’s a fitting day to post these snowy pictures because it is a WALL of snow outside today.  Seriously.  Over night it must have snowed at least a foot.  And there’s more to come.  Too bad this didn’t happen 24 hours ago…I do love snow days

This should make running my 15 miles tomorrow super fun!  I’m glad that I was able to hit up the track last week, cause it looks like I won’t be doing that for a while…

100 day until the Boston Marathon!

I should be in bed.  But since it’s been three weeks since I last posted my training stats, I knew I HAD to get this done.

This Week:
Sunday: Insanity
Monday: 13 miles
Tuesday: Jazzercise & Insanity
Wednesday: 6 miles; 4×800′s
Thursday: Jazzercise
Friday: 7 miles; 5@ 8:14

Total Mileage: 26

Hmmph.  Not sure what to do with that low number.  I’m going to have to “trust the system” and believe that this training plan will do good things for me just like the ones with higher weekly mileage.

Today’s run almost didn’t happen.  I was at work WAY later than I wanted to be.  Then there was so much that I wanted to do around the house before the weekend.  As I was driving home I had this text exchange with Mr. Dawn:

D- “I’m screwed.”

Mr. D- “?”

D- “I’m just now leaving work. Supposed to run, but there isn’t going to be enough time.”

Mr. D- “Run, don’t worry about the house.”

D- “I could run tomorrow night.”

Mr. D- “I’ll get food.  You run.”

He ended up picking up groceries, fixing dinner, cleaning the kitchen and making my life 100% better.

I may have been looking for a way out of this run.  I get scared whenever I have a tempo run on the agenda.  I’m not fast.  I’m not good at running fast.  Especially on a treadmill.  I feel clumsy and overheated.  But with all of my excuses swept away I had no choice but to face the beast.  Turns out that I had a great run.  The first mile was a little awkward as I warmed up and found my rhythm.  Somewhere around 3/4 of a mile I knew that it was going to be a good run.  I cranked up the belt and didn’t look back.  All of a sudden the five miles were done and I was cooling down.

Today was the day I finally got to test out my new winter running tights.  Result?  A++

I’ve been looking for a pair of actual running tights so that I’m not running in my snowboarding base layer under a pair of old sweats.  True, I survived all last winter with this combo, but it’s high time I act like a legitimate runner…so I found these:

no, this is not me!

I am in LOVE!  I really wanted to make sure that the pants I got were warm without being bulky, reflective, and included ankle zips.  The description from the Road Runner’s website:

Prevent wind chill in the women’s Road Runner Sports Pro Velocity Windfront Tight thanks to windproof front leg panels. Feel great with muscle-supporting compression, moisture management, and secure-fitting grip elastic leg openings with ankle zips. 360º reflectivity.

Everything I wanted, and more!  I love the compression, it’s not so much that it interferes with range of motion, but just enough to feel supported.  And the wind panels?  Genius.  The material is great.  I’m seriously in love with these pants.  Now, if only I could make a full body suit out of those wind panels…

When we got back into town on Friday, it was 50* and raining.  This was the first time that we’ve come home after our Christmas travels when we haven’t had to snow blow our way into the driveway.  Usually the accumulated snow is well over a foot by now.  The heatwave did not last for long, and it has lightly snowed a couple days since then.  However, the major advantage to our lack of snow is that the high school track is available!!!!  Just in time for me to start back with my training.

Today there were 800′s on the agenda!  Most people have their favorite length of intervals, but I’ve come to love them all.  True I don’t always love them during the last 100m when I’m gasping for air, but I just love the structure and focus of track work.  So, after admiring the glory of my new pants, I headed out towards the high school.  A mile’s worth of warm up later, I was lined up and ready to roll.

Goal: 3:17 per 800

Actual: 3:14, 3:13, 3:19, 3:15

I pretty much nailed it.

Then I ran 2 more miles to cool down and was done.

Honestly…it feels a little weird to only have one more run to do this week.  And by weird–I mean I don’t have a stress headache trying to figure out when I’m going to fit in all the workouts I want to do.  I used to carry the weight of my unfinished workouts around with me all day, every day.  And now, I feel almost breezy about it.  I know that my mileage is going to increase and I know that the track and tempo workouts will get more intense, but I must say that for my mental health this plan was 100% the right thing for me.  I love the tomorrow I can go to Jazzercise and have my Insanity date with Shaun T. without feeling guilty because I’m not running.

We went hiking with my brother and his wife.  Have I ever mentioned what an awesome photographer my brother is?

Like, rockstar level amazing.

He took us hiking and then snapped some of the coolest pictures of us that I’ve ever seen!!!

*shameless plug*

Do you live in or around Denver?  Would you like for him to take pictures of your wedding, baby, family, pet, etc.?

email me at runthedawn@gmail.com and I’ll set you up with Jeremy Jacob Photography.

Mr. Dawn went with me to my classroom today.  First day back is tomorrow.  With a whole new set of classes that I’m teaching this semester I had a lot of work to do.  Midway through stapling and three-hole punching this semester’s assignment tables he pointed out that they were ALL labeled “January 2010.”  Awesome.

His suggestion was to “walk them through an exercise in crossing out the zero and making it a one.”  His next idea? I could also incorporate the collating and stapling into the same exercise….sounds like fun huh?

Seriously this seems to be the theme of my life.  I feel like I’m about a year behind on everything.  I had a fantastic break full of fun, family, and festivities.  Literally every day could be an entire post all to itself.  Not sure if I’ll get around to that… I did not run as much as I had hoped, but very early on I decided to embrace that and just roll with the punches as far as exercising went.

Meanwhile, midstream, I decided to change training plans.  Yes, we are 15 weeks away from the marathon.  No this is not ideal.

You know that whole new set of classes I mentioned?  Yes.  My life has changed pretty dramatically in the last three weeks.  As in moved to a different building on campus, added three different classes to my prep and will be working more hours.  I decided that my previous schedule with it’s 45-60 miles a week just wasn’t going to work.  I needed something that had more flexibility. I am going to take this training seriously, but I won’t be able to have the singular focus that I have in the past.  After reading about Keri’s experience with the training plan from “Run Less Run Faster” I decided to pick up the book and take a look for myself.  Immediately I was in love! I seriously think that this plan was written specifically for me.

The general idea: run three days a week one long, one tempo, and one speed, then crosstrain two days.  AMAZING!  I LOVE LOVE LOVE to crosstrain and always do it even when my plans don’t call for it.  Today when I was typing out the workouts into a spreadsheet I got really excited about the speed work and a little intimidated by the tempos.  Looks like it will challenge me without overwhelming me.

Yes, I will miss my high(er) mileage weeks, but I know that this is right for me.