I found my way back to this little wordpress corner of the world, remembered my login info (that’s not true, it was automatically saved in my computer, waiting for me to just hit “login”. I didn’t have to remember anything), got into my blog – so I figure I might as well do an update. A quick update. Like, I’m going to try to make it so that if you blink, you miss it. Wouldn’t you be so lucky. You all know that my posts are never so amazingly condensed into such brevity.
Please note before you proceed:
1. There will be no pictures. I have about 8 loads of laundry, dishes, planks, core work, lunches to be packed for the morning and about a billion other things to be doing. Not to mention it’s 9:30, I just ran 13 miles and I have to get up at 4am to run again. But I’m feeling the need to check in, so check in I shall. Without pictures. That takes up way too much time, that I am currently in the red with. You can go to my instagram for pics. Msfitrunner. Have fun.
2. There will be no rhyme or reason to this post. I have not posted in over 2 months. Simply organizing my running and life thoughts to prepare an organized post would take at least one week. So, you get to read whatever’s on the forefront of my brain spewed out onto this post.
3. This post will certainly be ripe with errors of all sorts because the proof reading is not in the timeline for the evening.
It would probably be so much more helpful if I had questions to answer, which I actually do get a lot of the same questions. So maybe I will go through the questions I most frequently get and give short answers. I’ll start there. That sounds organized and put together.
Here we GO!
1. What is your typical day like???
This is a great question. Thank you for asking. I work full time, so about 45ish hours a week. On a typical day – I get up at 4-4:15am, run 8-10 miles/1-1.5 hours. Husband goes to the gym when I get home. I get in the shower, get ready for work and help get the kids ready for school, breakfast, finish up homework with them, make sure they don’t look like ragamuffins walking out the door. You’d be surprised how challenging that can be. I am not that mom that obsesses about what my kids wear to school. They pick out their clothes. Every so often I have to step in. Now it’s just reminding them that yes, you have to brush your teeth and it wouldn’t kill you to brush your hair. I have to leave by 7:30-45am to be at work and the kids leave at 8:20. I’m at work from 8 – 5 with an hour for lunch, if I have time. If I do have time, I will take that hour and go to the gym (3 minutes away) and either cram in the 5 mile secondary run (3x a week I do a short second run) and take a 30 second shower and back to work, or do my core/strength work. I’d say that happens maybe twice a week. On the days I don’t, my schedule either doesn’t allow for a straight hour for lunch or I will run errands that I can’t do because I’m at work all week. If I don’t get the second run in at lunch, I have to do it after work. I have found the best thing to do with that is to not even go home first and just run before I get home. This is more for the kids because they melt down if I get home and then leave again, whereas if I just don’t get home until 6:30, they are none the wiser.
The kids are usually fed by the time I get home and I will then help with homework, etc. and do bedtime. They go to bed anytime between 8-8:30. However, my middle does competitive gymnastics 3 nights a week, so there’s a bit of running around for her. When I’m on top of things, I prep the next days lunches, etc. I’ve not been on top of it lately. Challenging. Once the kids are down, it feels like I could do at least 2-3 hours of stuff around the house, but I usually shut it down by 9:30pm to go to bed and do it all again. In a small nutshell. That’s the day.
2. What do you eat? You must eat a TON of food
I don’t really eat a ton of food. Topic for another post – I have Hashimoto’s thyroid (under active thyroid, and it’s a huge pain, talk about that in another time). I am that person that will eat the same things for breakfast, lunch and dinner and be ok with it. I probably prefer that. I’m also that person that if my co-worker brings in an egg mcmuffin, I’ll eat that, too. Waste not and be thankful….as long as it’s on a biscuit, no muffin, so really an egg mcbiscuit. I try to be a more “aware” of what goes in when training gets a bit more intense and I get closer to a big race. I am certainly very cognizant of what I eat, but don’t go nuts over it. If left to my own devices and enough time to prep, I would eat veggies all day long – I really LOVE veggies. I never did. Now I do. I am that person that you would think, she’s full of crap, no one LOVES veggies. Not true. I do. I also really love my protein shakes. I also really love dark chocolate. My #1 focus in nutrition is getting enough protein and fat. I don’t eat a ton of meat, so my bulk of protein comes at breakfast with the Vega Protein. I am more about nutritionally dense foods than thinking about calories. I don’t have a clue how many calories I eat a day. I eat when I am hungry and stop when I am not. I pack a ton of nutrition into the shake and I love knowing that my muscles are repairing and getting stronger for the next workout with that meal. And historically my hard runs are in the morning, so it’s good for right after that. I’m also super focused on hydration. I notice a 100% difference in how I feel if I am not hydrated – and I’m talking like, probably a gallon of water a day. Ok, maybe not that much. Maybe 4, 24 oz. water bottles full a day, close enough. It’s a lot.
3. How do you balance it all – working, motherhood, running, life?
I don’t always, but I do my best. It is very challenging to run 90+ mile weeks with a full time job and kids. I actually haven’t been running 90+ mile weeks because life just sometimes blows up, funny thing when that happens, and with that kind of stress, running is one of the first things to go. And I was sick for a couple weeks (flu, chest cold from hell) leading up to the biggest half marathon I’ve ever run (what a bummer, Houston, but glad that there will ALWAYS be a race to run – speaking of Houston, I need to write about that instead of sticking it inside parentheses because that was an experience all its own – Hello Meb at breakfast, lunch and dinner and oh, Sara Hall, nice to chat with you). So, I remind myself that there is a season for everything and I have to do my best with what I’ve got and what I am capable of at the moment. I also enjoy and make time to go out and spend time with friends. It’s important to me not to not do those things because I run. I make time for it. And I’ll likely never turn down a spicy margarita or a martini. Or a just a coffee date. I love coffee, too.
4. What are your goals now that you have the OTQ, what are your goals for the Trials?
I want the A standard. That’s a 2:37. I will work towards that. I don’t really have my race schedule planned out yet. I am set to run Boston with the Elite Women’s start – which is completely terrifying and exciting. But I am undecided on Boston at this point. I will have to see how the training goes in the next couple of months. It’s becoming crunch time and I do not have a good rhythm going quite yet. But, it could happen. Boston isn’t going anywhere, either. My other options are to run a later spring marathon, like Grandmas or just skip the spring, train for an awesome fall and do shorter stuff up until then. In short, I have no idea yet what the plan is. I would like to do some shorter stuff, though. Halfs, 10k’s…you know, the painful stuff. I would love to actually work on speed at some point and see how that impacts my half time and shorter distance times. It’s different training than for a marathon to really focus on those distances. But, the marathon is my focus now. I have not thought about the trials other than, holy crap, I get to be there. That’s it. Plenty of other stuff to think about right now.
5. What was your workout tonight?
Ok, no one cares or asked that question, but I’m going to tell you because it was the best workout I’ve had since probably Christmas Eve. I had to do the treadmill because we got slammed with snow.
13 miles total @ 6:37 average pace, all on .5% incline
With 6 x 1 mile repeats, 2.5 minute jog recovery between each mile
5:39, 5:39, 5:36, 5:36, 5:33, 5:33
5:35 average pace
The best part was how they felt. I ran a 5:42 average pace the week of Houston Half and they nearly killed me. They were so hard and I was struggling. These felt so strong, and I handled them. They didn’t handle me. That’s the difference I like to see.
Other notables:
If you haven’t seen it – you can check out my Altra Running video on their homepage, and visit their website - you’ll see a familiar runner on the homepage. That trip was so fun and it’s fun to see the final product. Oh, and the sneakers are amazing, too 
Speaking of Altra – I have a GIVEAWAY that I completely forgot I was going to do until I just typed that sentence. Leave a comment below to enter to win a pair of Altra sneakers of your choice. DO IT people! I’ll let you tweet about it for another entry, just leave another comment telling me you “tweeted”. Tag @altrarunning and @msfitrunner in the tweet, and maybe #zerolimts, too. Too many characters? I think it will work. Deal? And be fair. I will check your comments. Or I’ll have my 7 and 8 year old monitor your comments. Even better. I’ll pick a winner on Saturday. Or maybe Monday. Let’s go with Monday. You have until Monday, my friends.
Perfect timing because the Intuition 3.0′s just came out and you must try them. I’m also a huge fan of the Torins. And the One2′s. Basically, you really can’t go wrong.
Ok. I’m off to tackle some laundry. Or do some planks. Or multitask and knock them both out at the same time. Who knows.
Thanks for reading and feel free to email me more questions – I’ll try to do a more of an actual running recap blog soon….or in two months. Anything’s possible.
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