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I finally got new shoes!!!! Sunday I finally had to motivation to pull Davey and I off the couch to Runner's Roost. Actually, let me back up because their is a little back story:
You see, I have been batteling a cold/flu for the last week and a half and haven't been running in at least that long. The race is almost a month away and I am starting to freak out about training since there have been so many "bumps" in the road over the last couple of months (Little Miss, foot hurting, and a cold). Since our last long run, my left heel has been giving me some trouble and hurting pretty bad. I am pretty sure this is due to the lack of cushening left in my worn out shoes. If I was to get back to training, and I mean TRAINING, I definitely needed new shoes.
So like I said, I finally got the motivation to go get new shoes. I brought my old shoes with me since they were pretty good until the got worn out. The sales girl took a good look at them and brought me out a "comprable" shoe by the same company. Low and behold, they fit great! The shoes I get are Asics Gel-Landreth 5 (see the attached picture). So after only trying on one pair of shoes, I was out of the store and ready to run!
Today I was able to try my new shoes out and they are GREAT!!! I LOVE THEM!!! I did 45min on the treadmill and it felt so good to run again. Plus, I could feel a real difference with the new shoes. My feet didn't hurt like they normally do when I run on the treadmill, and my heel doesn't hurt any more than it did before my run. So now I am super pumped for my last month of training! Horsetooth Half here I come!
It has been really hard to get back to my old routine after Little Miss' mishap, so this Sunday Davey and I got things going again! We are both pretty weak on hills, so we drove to Hughe's Stadium where the half-marathon starts to train on the huge hills the race has to offer. Basically, the first 2 miles of the race are uphill at a 6% and 9% grade (aka Monster Mountain), which is killer for any runner, let alone the two of us that aren't used to hills like that. It was pretty brutal, and I kept having to tell myself "You're almost there" in order to get up the hill. Once we were up the first big hill we were able to chug along pretty well and jut had one more hill (Dam Hill) along the dam. Then we came to a cross-road; either we could turn around and to all the hills in reverse (ugg!) or continue north and loop back around down Overland trail. The latter is what we decided to do and which put us following the path of what used to be the Horsetooth Half. In otherwords, we ran a half-marathon! Bingham Hill along the way was pretty hard, and so was the long straight run down Overland, but we did it! We clocked 2hrs 10min or running (we took some walk breaks) over what my car's odometer said to be 14 miles. It is good to train on the same hills that we will be running on race day. And if we keep running like this, we might not actually do too bad come race day!
I ran Tuesday and today and I feel like I am finally getting back into the swing of running again. Tuesday I ran for 45 minutes and did alright. I am still recovering a bit from a cold and my breathing was tight, but I had a pretty good pace considering I hadn't ran in over a week. I took Wednesday off because I didn't want to push my self too much too soon. I think the rest was worth it because today's run went much better! I ran down to the park on Overland, ran around it, and back home through Rolland Moore park in about 54 minutes. The first time I ran that path it took me 60 minutes, so I am definitely approving and didn't lose too much ground. The plan for the rest of the week is to run tomorrow and maybe again on Sunday (I work Saturday and I'm on-call that night and on Sunday). By next week I want to get back to my normal training schedule and do a 2 hour run that weekend.
I am glad I am back to running. It really does make me feel so much better about myself. It is also very clearing for my mind and is a great way to release some stress. I am so glad I took up this sport!
So it is Saturday January 31st. I haven't been running since January 22nd. Before you get on my case about not running, I have a very valid reason: Little Miss.
So Friday when I came home from school, I found Little Miss (my 7 month old kitten in case you didn't know) batting around a bobbin of thread. Turns out she got into my closet and knocked down my sewing kit. I worried that she ate a needle, but I didn't see any thread unwound like she had been playing with it.
The next day I was working when Davey called me letting me know that Little Miss was vomiting and that she vomited up some yarn (the yarn was next to the sewing kit in the closet). I had him bring her in right away to make sure there wasn't a needle in her stomach. Good thing there wasn't, but she was probably obstructed with string. Long story short (too late), we did an abdominal explore on her on Sunday and removed over 64 inches of string and yarn from her GI tract, all the way from her mouth where some was trapped under her tongue, all the way to her colon.
Everything seemed to be going well until Monday afternoon when Davey noticed that she was struggling to breath when he came to visit her at the clinic. The doctors agreed and we took a radiograph which showed fluid and air in the space between the lungs and the thorax (called the pleural space, she had a pleural effusion and pneumothorax). We tapped her chest and found fluid and air. The fluid had bacteria and white blood cells in it (also called a pyothorax, which is no beuno).
From there we transfered her to the CSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital where she got cared for in the CCU until. The next morning she got two chest tubes put in to drain the fluid and to help clear the infection. We then did endoscopy down her esophagus to see if there was a perferation (tear) in her esophagus, which was the most likely cause fo the pyothorax. In fact, she did have a small lesion in her esophagus. Appartently this is a very rare complication from string foreign bodies, but of course it would happen to my kitten. She then got a feeding tube put in her stomach so she could be fed while allowing her esophagus to heal on its own. Luckly the tear was small and we didn't have to do thoracic surgery to repair it.
She spent the rest of the week in CCU getting her chest drained and being tube fed. I just got her back home this afternoon. I will be tube feeding her here for the next 7-10 days so her esophagus can keep healing.
Needless to say with all of this craziness, I haven't had enough time or energy to go running. I have been beyond exhausted with the lack of sleep and the stress. I plan to do a short run tomorrow and slowly work back up to the 2 hours runs. It feels like forever since the last time I ran, but hopefully it won't take me too long to get back to where I started.
Sunday I had the great idea of running up Horsetooth Reservoir in order to get used to running up Monster Mountain (a huge hill with 9% grade for the first 2.5 miles of the race). It all started out great until Davey and I got to Overland Trail; the second we turned the corner we were blasted by wind. This wind continued as we started heading up the hill. The worst part about it was that the wind was going straight at our faces at about 30-40mph. It was like running into a wall! As we were heading up, another runner coming down informed us that, "It's worse up there." To which I responded, "Good!" It was rough, I won't lie. On the way down it was hard to stand up since the wind was now pushing up down the hill. We finished our run by going around our normal park by Overland and back home. It was 2 hours in all and quite the work out since we weren't just doing hills, but we were also battling the wind.
We got a chance to try out a couple new things during this run. First, Davey got a running belt for his water bottle. He seemed to really enjoy not having to carry a water bottle. I'll have to try it out and see if I should get myself one. Second, we got some sports chews to help us refuel. These are basically hi-tech gummy snacks with more carbs and electrolytes than your normal gummy snacks. Davey really liked them and credited them for how well he felt after the run. I thought they were pretty good, but they made me really thirsty and with my Gatorade it was just too much "sweet" stuff for one run. We have a different brand to try out next week.
Today's run was great! The weather was at beautiful 70 degrees and sunny (and in the middle of January!). I did 45 minutes and I got further than I have yet. I'm glad I am increasing both my speed and distance.
I still need new shoes. Maybe before our 2.5 hour run Sunday.
I don't know why I get behind on the blog, especially since I have been doing nothing this week. Anyways, here's some catch-up from the week:
Saturday Davey and I did a long run of 2.25 hours. Davey ran 2 hours a couple weeks prior and messed up his ankle in the process (I keep telling him he needs new running shoes, but does he listen? No.). Since his ankle was still a little weird we ran at a slower pace than what I ran my 2 hour run the week prior. Funny thing is that we ran the same distance in 2.25 hours as what I did in 2 hours the week before. It would have been nice to go a little faster, but I have to tell myself that going slow is okay because the purpose of these runs isn't to go fast, but to just run for a very long time. I was still exhausted at the end, even though we were going slow.
This week I finally got some new running clothes since I only had one nice tech shirt and my running capris were starting to wear out. At first Davey and I checked out the Nike outlet shop in Loveland just to kill some time while having lunch. I found some awesome capris that ending above the knee (the length that I like the best), but they were still $35! Even a shirt that was on "clearance" was $15. Stupid Nike...We did pick up a running belt for long runs which I am excited to try out. After that I finally did what I had been meaning to do: go to Savers. This was such a great move! I was about to get a new tech shirt, tech capris, shorts, and a jacket (hurray! I no longer have to wear Davey's!) for only $25! Rock! I got to try out the new stuff yesterday and it was great! The jacket kept we warm, but not too warm, and stopped the wind which was great.
Today is an 80min, a couple short runs on Friday and Saturday, then a 2 hour run Sunday. The training right now is at a "plateau" where the schedule is consistant week to week with the long runs getting longer every other week. Now is the time for me to get comfortable with running for 13 miles or more and trying to increase my speed. Three more months to go!
It is very windy here in Fort Collins with wind gusts up to 60mph, so there was no way I was going to do my 80min run outside today. This is a shame since it would have been a beautiful day outside if it weren't for the wind. So I once again found myself at the gym (which is finally back open after being closed for 2 weeks). I did the gym thing on Monday and did some weights after my run and did some more arm and abs work yesterday. All of that had already left me a little sore and tired. So today's 80min run at the gym didn't go too well. I partially blame my soreness, but I also blame the damn gym for being so dang hot inside. Basically, 50 minutes into my run after doing some hill work I felt myself becoming overheated (not necessarily out of breath) and was loosing energy. I ended up having to do some walking for about 5 minutes and then slowly upped the speed. I just want to tell the people at the gym to turn down the heat in there! It's like the keep it at a temperature comfortably for them, not comfortable for the people actually breaking a sweat. Thank you for listening to me vent.
Like I said earlier, I've been doing some weight lifting. I've decided that I need to do some more cross training and lifting to increase my overall fitness and to improve my running. I'm hoping that this will help to increase my speed and endurance during the race. I'll let you all know how it goes.
