Three Things Thursday

1. Today, I biked. And you’re never gonna guess where, so I’m going to tell you. I biked through Creepyville. And I survived!

I know I said I would never, ever, ever bike there again, but it looked fairly safe today with lots of activity going on, so I went for it.

I guess the rail trail club rides the tracks during the week. I had to hop off the trail to let them pass at one point.

I knew I wanted to do more than 6 miles and I didn’t feel like going into town and back twice. I thought Creepyville was 6 or 8 miles one way, but it was only 3, so I went the other way into town as well. Once I got there I decided to get myself an ice cream. Actually, I won’t lie, I stopped to get money out of my car as I passed it, so it was a premeditated ice cream stop.

My mom pouted at me when I told her about my ice cream stop.
You snooze you lose, sister!!

I sat along the docks and enjoyed this view as I ate my ice cream.

Even though I survived Creepyville, I was still uneasy the whole time. The second I set foot (technically wheels, HA!) on my usual route, I was more relaxed and actually enjoyed it. There are more sites and pretty things to look at on the route into town.

2. I decided along this bike ride that I do not like Nuun. Actually I had decided it twice before, but I tried it again today. I’ve given it the good ‘ol college try and I just can’t do it. It reminds me of Airborne or Emergen-C. The effervescent fizz is what gets me. It’s not carbonated, there’s just some fizz left over from the alka-seltzer-like creation that makes me gag. I’ve tried letting it sit out to get all the fizz out and throwing it in the fridge to make it super cold. I just can’t do it. So I have half a tube of Pink Lemonade and an unopened tube of Lemon Tea. If anyone wants it, please let me know.

3. Tomorrow I have big plans to bring a huge-ass iced coffee down to the beach early in the morning. Drink it while drinking in the beauty of the lake (see what I did there?) and enjoy the peace and quiet of the beach before all the families arrive for the day. Then I’ll go for a swim, dry off, maybe get some sun, get back up to the house and shower all before noon (hopefully). Then I’ll spend the afternoon at the outlets! And possibly a pedicure.  That’s my idea of a rest day before my Chunky Dunk Duathlon on Saturday.

My first track workout

I almost died.

I know by now you think I exaggerate when I blog. But I don’t. I almost died. Ok, maybe not, but I could have!

This was by far the hardest running workout I’ve done. Now, maybe a few months ago when I was complaining about not being able to run for 3 minutes straight, that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Now it’s this.

I've decided to use track workouts as a tool to get me used to running outside. I’ve had problems with shin pain while running on pavement and none whatsoever while running on the treadmill. I figured I’d just build up my endurance on the treadmill and then slowly switch to outside running.

After today’s track run, I think I’m going to have to re-evaluate my run training. Again.

My plan was to do a warm up lap, then run a lap - walk a lap 6x, then do a cool down lap for a total of 2 miles. I figured this was do-able for me.

When I got to the track I was reminded of how large the track actually was. I mean, a lap is only .25 mi, but looking at it is quite daunting. And although I’ve been running close to .25 on the treadmill when I do my intervals, I doubted myself. Now that I sit and think about it, I should have pushed myself and made myself complete a lap, running.

What really happened:

I started my warm up lap and half way through, my left knee started hurting and my right mid-foot was hurting. All mental, I told myself, suck it up. During my first lap I refigured my lap running and decided to run on the straight-a-ways and walk on the curved parts of the track. That way I was running half the lap, but with breaks in between. I though if I could do that easily for a lap or 2, I’d try a full lap and see how that went.

As I finished my first lap, I just couldn’t bring myself to start running. It had nothing to do with pain, or discomfort or not thinking I could do it. It had to do with the fact that 2 boys were playing football in the middle of the field and they could see me. Now, granted these boys looked like they’re in high school and probably half my age, so I definitely wasn’t trying to impress them with my "running skillz", but I could feel their judgment. In reality they weren’t even paying attention to me. They were playing football. But I kept walking for lap 2 pretending I meant to do it. I pep talked myself all the way around the track and prepared for my first run interval.

I ran down the first straight-a-way and was tired, but figured it wasn’t too bad and maybe I could run a straight & curve together on the next lap. But my walk breaks didn’t slow my heart rate down quick enough and made my runs harder and harder each time I got to a straight-a-way.

I think a lot of things contributed to this malfunction of a workout. I went into it self conscious of people around me. I hadn’t run in a week. I didn’t workout for 3 days straight last week, and although I know rest days happen and need to happen for proper recovery, the mental anguish of it was weighing on me. So naturally, I couldn’t push myself harder. I had already made up my mind that I couldn’t do it.

I kept track with my Garmin, G-cube (Yes, I named him), and my running intervals were about 30 seconds each. At least I was consistent.

This totally squashed my bubble about my progress of Couch 2 5K. On the treadmill, I’m on week 4. According to today’s workout, I’m at week negative 1. I’m going to start doing track runs regularly so I can re-build up my endurance. I need it to re-gain my running confidence.

This 'after' picture is way better than the
first one I took seconds after finishing.
Trust me.

In the meantime I’m going to spend the rest of my vacation (oh yeah, I’m on a 5 day vacation now and can relax & train a LOT!) cycling and swimming and I suppose running. Blech. Oh and somewhere in there I’m doing a duathlon consisting of swimming and running.

It’s called the Chunky Dunk. I’m not kidding. And I’m so excited for it!

Honestly, I just want the T-shirt.

Travel, no workouts, one gross hotel, extreme temps and an a cappella sensation.

Put all that in a bag and shake it up. You've got my weekend:

This weekend I took a very mini vaca to Atlantic City. The day before I left I wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to take a rest day. I knew I probably wouldn’t get a chance to work out the rest of the weekend but if I could, I would. Even so, I didn’t want that rest day on Friday, because it meant having 3 days in a row of no training. However, it was just one of those things that happened and I had to deal with it.

I hadn’t been to Atlantic City in at least 8 years so I was excited to visit the love child of Reno and Vegas. As we were driving down to AC on Saturday, we noticed the temperature in my car climbing rapidly. I wanted to be able to walk my way around AC or try a run if the fitness center at the hotel wasn’t up to par. But seeing the ridiculous temps while driving pretty much told me that it wasn’t going to happen.

This was 10 seconds after hitting 105.

We arrived at our hotel to find that our room was one of the few that had working air conditioning. Score. That alone was the selling point given that our view was of dumpsters outside the building, the ice machine on our floor wasn’t working, 2 of my pillows had something blackish on them and there was a curious looking stain resembling blood on the carpet that we covered with the ice bucket to ensure we wouldn’t step on it by accident. Whatever, it was one night and I had my own pillow with me.

We had an agenda for visiting AC other than suffocating weather and terrifying hotel rooms. We had tickets to see Straight No Chaser during their residency at Harrah’s Casino. And I love blackjack. We left our ghetto fabulous hotel and went over to Harrah’s for the night.

We had dinner at one of the restaurants near the concert venue (which ironically was named “The Concert Venue”. They’re original.) and I noticed our waitress had on a button that said “Ask Me about Straight No Chaser”. So I asked. Then I asked her about her button and she took it off and gave it to me.

And then I put it on.

I have seen Straight No Chaser in concert more than a few times. I love, love, love a cappella and these guys are amazing. Like, amazing times 100. Each and every one of them is filled to the brim with talent. And ladies, they aren’t bad to look at either!

You’ve probably even heard of these guys and didn’t even know it. Around Christmas time their famous 12 Days of Christmas song is on the radio all the time.

Since I just received my Run Around Sara bracelets I figured I could put them to good use and share a few with these guys. I may or may not have fired a bracelet up on stage during the show. You’ll have to ask them if it’s true or not, but as I talked to them after the show they were more than willing to show their support.

My previous blog post talked about why I got these bracelets in the first place and I’m glad these guys were happy to model them for me.

I SUPPORT MY FRIENDS....DO YOU??

I SUPPORT MY FRIENDS...DO YOU??

One of the guys spotted my button and asked me about it. I said that they were some group of guys that could sing. He asked me if they were any good and I said “Eh, they’re okay”. I don’t think he knew I was joking, because he didn’t seem too impressed with my answer.  What I should have said was this right here:

Because they are all that and a bag of chips!

Check them out if you can. You won't be disappointed.

After all that excitement, we blew some money in the slots and decided that people watching was a lot more fun than the slots and we played a little game I like to call “Who needs a mirror?”.  There were a LOT of contestants.

We went back to our hotel to suffer through one night of gross. (Comfort Inn, I’m looking at you here.)  The next day brought us the same crazy temperatures so after a lackluster continental breakfast (though I’m not complaining...it was free!!) we decided to check out the fitness center. If it had a/c we were gonna do it, since there wasn’t a pool on the premises and it was still in the triple digits outside. I asked at the front desk where it was located and was told that it was on the 4th floor, but it was undergoing renovations and we couldn’t use it. But it was there! Hey, thanks.

So we packed up and left. Three days, people. Three days of no working out. I’m guessing I’m going to have to hurt myself at the gym tomorrow to make up for this. I can’t wait.