Ramblings of a Running-Obsessed Undergrad
Team DailyMile
Feb 1st
Wow. What an honor! I can’t believe it – I’m part of team DailyMile.
For those of you who don’t know what DailyMile is, go to www.dailymile.com RIGHT NOW and sign up! Go on! I’ll wait!
Okay now that you’re back, DailyMile is a website for runners. Let me rephrase that. DailyMile is THE website for runners. It has such an amazing community – there are runners of all abilities, from all over the globe. The two things that all DMers have in common is a love of running and an upbeat, kind, humble, encouraging personality.
Team DailyMile is a group made up of the most enthusiastic DailyMilers. I am so excited to be part of this group. My teammates are some of the runners I admire most – not necessarily for their speed (though some of them are FAST!) – but for their dedication, willingness to help others, and love of the sport. I can’t wait to start working with them to spread our love of running.
Thank you, DailyMile! I’m excited to be able to give back to a site that has been such a great part of my running life.
Strong like Bull!
Jan 22nd
Leg’s still bugging me, but I’ve been keeping up with my 2010 Resolution to do strength training 3x a week for 20 minutes a day – and let me tell ya, it’s been working! I definitely feel stronger than I did in 2009, and I am starting to see the difference as well. T-Rex runner arms be-gone!
A big part of my strength program is the OneHundredPushups program, founded by my fellow Daily Miler Steve Speirs. Check it out at http://hundredpushups.com/ ! I’m on Week 4 of the program. I can’t believe I did 78 pushups the other day! Thanks Steve!
If you’re interested in the rest of my strength program, here it is:
Arms
100pushups
Abs
Plank
Forearms to Plank
Boat Pose
Pelvic Tilt (lie on your back, lifting your feet off the ground with bent knees. Use your abs to straighten your lower back so that it lies flush with the floor. Maintain this position as you lift one leg, then the other, tapping the floor with your feet as you lower them. Continue this for as long as you can, making sure to keep your lower back flush against the floor (abs engaged).
Glutes
Single-leg bridging
Stability Ball Bridging
Wall Sits – I usually do 4 or 5 minutes total, split into 1 minute sections. Sometimes I do my bicep curls at the same time. Multitasking!
Crunches
Medicine Ball (MB) toe-touches
MB Stability Ball Crunches
Bicycle Crunches
Bicep Curls – I use an 8lb weight because I’m a wimp. Also it’s the biggest weight I have.
Injured Groin Rehab
Hip Adductors
Stability Ball Squeezes
Clamshell
That’s it!
All right, I’m off to bed. I’ll need my rest for my swimming in the morning!
Comments4Cans – Thanks everyone!
Jan 19th
Hi everyone!
A while back I started a Comments4Cans drive, where for every 5 comments on my site I would donate a can to the Charlottesville Emergency Food Bank. And you guys came through and posted 34 comments! That’s 7 cans of food to feed the hungry in Albemarle County.
(Excuse my toes there at the bottom.)
I chose black beans because they’re full of protein and are easy to prepare. Also they are delicious.
Again, thanks everybody for your help!
New Year’s Resolution
Jan 4th
I know I already have a bunch of 2010 goals, but to me a resolution is different – unlike a goal(ie PRing in the 10k), a resolution is something constant that you have to work at each and every day, consistently, throughout the year. This year, my resolution will be to consistently strength train – at least 3 days a week for 20 minutes a day.
The 100 pushups program is going to be a part of my strength training for sure. 100 pushups, here I come!
Injury Update
Jan 4th
My injury is doing better! The past few weeks I’ve been going to Physical Therapy, doing strengthening and stretching exercises, and… well… not running. :\ But the past few days things have been looking up, and I did 2 miles on the treadmill on Saturday and today I’ll head back to the gym to try to do more. I’m hoping that 2010 can start off right with a good recovery from my injury.
Due to the unexpected setback, I’ll have to revise my 2010 goals. After 3 weeks of no running, I’m in no shape to jump back into marathon training, especially since I’m not fully healed. It’s going to take a few weeks to build back up the mileage I was doing, and the last thing I want to do is re-injure myself. And so I’ve decided to not run the National Marathon in March – it kills me to have to postpone that dream, but I know its the right thing to do. I’m young and there will be plenty of other marathons to run.
Although I won’t be running the full marathon, I will run the half. With a little over 3 months to get back into the swing of things, I know I can do it.
I hope everyone had a great holiday!
“Muscle Strain” or “My Dad is Awesome”
Dec 13th
Well, a trip to the ER landed me with crutches and instructions to lay off of running for a week (!!! A WEEK !!!) and to take massive amounts of ibuprofen. I’ve made considerable improvements since yesterday (I can put weight on it a bit and I can walk with one crutch instead of needing two) but we’re far from running. The injury is probably a muscle strain in the adductor region.
The second part of this post (beyond the update on the leg) is that my dad is AWESOME. Yesterday morning he drove here from Maryland (3 hour drive) to come take care of me – to take me to the hospital, get me food and settled in bed, get me groceries (since I can’t get them myself) and basically be amazing. I’m so lucky to have him to take care of me! He even spent the night on our dinky couch so that he could help me this morning.
Tonight I made my very first pot pie (chick-pea pot pie, using the recipe from the Vegetarian Times). It was delicious! :)
OUCH
Dec 12th
This morning I headed out for my 2nd 14-miler. I had been having some pain in my inner thigh for a day or two, but it seemed to have subsided. I planned out a 4 mile loop to give things a try – after 4 miles things seemed fine. No pain. So I headed down to Riverview Park to get in 8 miles by the river and then finish things up with 2 miles coming back home, but then…
Mile 6. Stopped to take a GU. Mmm, chocolatey. I start running again and all is not well in inner-thigh-ville. I think, maybe I just need to re-warm up. Mile 6.5 I am by the side of the road, crying, and calling a cab.
:\ I can’t really walk that well right now so I’m in bed waiting for my dad to get here from MD and take me to the hospital.
I hope this won’t lay me up for long… I would hate to not be able to complete my marathon training. That said, I want to heal this the right way. If taking a few weeks off and maybe missing out on the National Marathon is what I need to do to get better, so be it. There will be other marathons; I’m still young.
But I would be crushed. :(
Running off the Stress – Finals Fall 09
Dec 9th
It’s that time of year again – finals. Classes start to wind down, there’s talk of some sort of test in the near future, finally you sit through that last lecture… and then there’s what my roommate and I have taken to calling the “Gilmore Girls” period, where it’s really too early to start studying but you don’t have any homework, so you bake cookies and watch an entire season of Gilmore Girls in a 3-day period.
And then your first final is a few days away, and you have to buckle down and hit the books. Or…. you could hit the pavement. It seems counter-intuitive but I definitely believe that taking 1-2 hours to do my run helps me to be more productive for the rest of my time spent awake :)
- Running forces me to get up early. I don’t know why, but if I have a run scheduled I feel like I have to get up at a reasonable hour. With no classes during finals week, it would be tempting to sleep in.
- Running wakes me up. It’s hard to be sleepy on a 8 mile tempo run.
- Running gets me focused. When I come back from a run I feel like I can do anything, even convert a context-free language to Greibach Normal Form or whatever nonsense they’re teaching us at this learning institution. I am slightly weirded out by the fact that I once solved an algorithms homework problem on a run. That was just weird.
- Running is a stress-buster. Last year at this time (that’s BR, Before Running) I was freaking out – I had finals! I had papers! I had notes to rewrite and problems to redo and hair to tear out. This year I’m a lot more chill. I can’t prove the cause and effect but there’s a definite correlation.
I’m extremely excited because I managed to get exempted from my hardest final – I worked hard in the class all semester and the professor decided to give people with solid A’s a break and let them skip the 4 day long take-home test. :D Wish me luck on the last few.
Also, thank you to EVERYONE who has been commenting – I am so excited about Comments4Cans. Please continue to comment! Remember, for every 5 comments I will donate 1 can to the hungry of Charlottesville! Every comment counts.
Tomorrow I’m meeting up with a fellow runner who will be in town for the day – I’m taking her on a tour of my town! I’ll definitely take pictures of our excursion!
Marathon Training Week 6
Dec 6th
Weekly Total: 39 miles
- Monday 11/30 (Rest)
- Tuesday 12/1 (5 miles Easy)
Today was our “After” mile test for my running class – we timed ourselves in the beginning of the year (September) and now was our chance to see if we’d improved! I don’t really think that using the mile as a baseline makes sense because we didn’t focus on speedwork, but I improved anyway – 7:05 this time versus 7:42 in September. Quite an improvement! I warmed up and cooled down by running to class and back.
5.2 miles / 47:00 / 9:03
- Wednesday 12/2 (8 miles Tempo)
A little bit of pain in my left foot – probably because I didn’t stretch very well after the mile on Tuesday :( I made sure to stretch out super well after this run, and did my favorite Runner’s Yoga routine. The track was packed! ROTC was practicing and there were tons of local runners there as well.
7.5 miles / 1:12:00 / 9:35
- Thursday 12/3 (6 miles Marathon Pace)
Our last PE class! I ran 5 miles beforehand to get my miles in for the day and then headed to class (a little late…. whoops) and did the PACER test. If you don’t know what that is, count yourself lucky. I did improve, though, which is nice! And after running 5 miles, too!
Then we did a great core workout with a stability ball. We ended up laughing too hard to stay on the balls, but we did get a few good workouts in. And I learned new exercises to do with my stability ball! Success.
On a less successful note, I had two tests today and they were rough. Luckily everyone else thought so too, so I am guessing I didn’t do as bad as I thought I did, but it never feels good to get a low grade on a test, even if the average was lower.
6 miles / 55:00 / 9:09
- Friday 12/4 (Rest)
Sleeping in and resting :) Did yoga and felt great!
- Saturday 12/5 (14 miles – long run)
I did it! Snow and all.
14 miles / 2:19:00 / 9:55
- Sunday 12/6 (6 miles Easy)
I didn’t go out with CTRC today :( Call me a wimp buy icy trails do not sound like fun. Maybe someday! I slept in and did my 6 mile loop instead. For some reason my recovery runs always feel harder than my long runs… Is that true for anyone else or am I just weird? I’ll do some yoga and weights later, but for now I’m off to the grocery. I need more greek yogurt!I saw some ducks on my run today – I’ll post the picture as soon as I upload it!
6 miles / 58:00 / 9:51
This week felt great. I think I am going to try to introduce some speedwork next week! Since I don’t have running class anymore I’ll have a bit more control over my running schedule.
Happy running, everyone!
Freezing Fourteen + Comments4Cans
Dec 5th
Whew! That was some run. I conquered the 14 miler that gave me so much trouble last weekend!
When I woke up, it was raining and 33, so I put on my tights and underarmour and beanie and gloves and scarfed a piece of toast with peanut butter. Then I realized that I was wearing all black and might look a little um… threatening… especially with the black beanie. Well, as threatening as a 19 year old girl can look, anyway. So I swapped the beanie for a white headband (much better, but I still felt like a ninja) and headed out.
Mile 2 took me to the track, where the rain started to look more solid and flaky. Kind of like snow, actually. By the time I’d done 2 miles on the track it was full-on snowing! As a girl from Wisconsin, I love snow. My clothing was doing a pretty good job keeping me warm at this point – I even rolled up my sleeves for a little bit, until the snow started to hurt :( Sleeves came back down fast.
After leaving the track I headed around my favorite loop, bringing me back near my apartment at about mile 8. Along the way I snapped this photo of Thomas Jefferson, chillin’ in front of the Rotunda. He doesn’t look too cold to me, though. What do you think? Should I bring him a scarf?
Then I went down to the river, passing by Downtown Charlottesville on the way. By the time I got down there the snow was sticking – to everything! Including my face. Ever get a snowflake right across the eyes?
Looks like I'm not the only one on the trails :)
I love this route :)
I’m not going to lie, miles 12 and 13 were rough. Not because my legs hurt or anything – my hands! Last time I go running in 75 cent Target gloves. By the time I got home I couldn’t really bend my fingers much… the door was definitely a challenge! You know the 10 minute period after you get inside after being out in the cold for a long time? Where your hands BURN with the intensity of a thousand suns? Yep. That happened. But after I was done reheating my hands I made a big pot of coffee and some delicious pancakes for myself and my awesome suitemates. No pictures – they were eaten too fast. Finished up with some greek yogurt and granola!
AND NOW for an announcement – as I was eating my delicious food today after getting inside from my cold, cold run, I thought about all of the people who don’t have delicious food or a warm home. Which is why for the month of December I will be donating 1 can for every 5 comments I receive on this blog to the Emergency Food Bank, which serves the hungry in Charlottesvillle/Albemarle County. So leave a comment! It can be anything – a question, story, random thought… it all goes to a good cause!
Happy running everyone :)
