When I logged onto Facebook for the first time today to peruse all the things that my friends and my non-friends were doing I stumbled upon this little gem from my little brother’s Facebook page:
Hehe, I thought it was funny.
Happy Friday!
Anyone doing anything fun this weekend? Other than the 30k, I am probably laying low this weekend.
This morning Luke and I ran the Houston Young Lawyer’s Association 5k. It started like most race mornings do with a little bit of this:
We got there early because I am paranoid about getting to races late, so we picked up our chips and then just hung out for 30 minutes. My parents ended up meeting us there too – it was fun to have the whole family there! The race ended up starting a little after 7:30am and was an out and back course in downtown Houston.
Luke and I started off together; in fact he was a couple steps ahead of me for the first half. There was a lady with a stroller who I could not get around, which was a little frustrating. I really think all these longer, slower runs I’ve been doing are hurting my 5k’s, I thought I was going to die a mile and a half into it. I also didn’t have my Garmin so I had no clue how fast or slow I was running… not sure if that was good or bad for me.
The course was pretty hilly for a Houston course, which neither of us were prepared for… definitely need to start incorporating more hill work into my running schedule. My one big complaint was that they only had two water stations set up and they were directly across from each other. You hit the first one right before the turn around and the second one right after the turnaround.
Mentally I started leaving the race right after the second mile. It was humid and I was ready to be done running. I kept racing to different points, telling myself just to go a little bit further. I lost Luke somewhere after the turnaround too, he was right next to me for a while and then I was running by myself. When I finally crossed the finish line I thought I had hit pretty close to my last PR – it looked like it was about 23:18. Official results say 23:41. Boo.
Luke came across pretty shortly after that – he finished in 24:24 official time. 
So proud!
We both ended up placing first in our age groups (Luke was the only one in his age group – haha!), and I’m glad that he had something like that happen to keep him motivated to run.
Afterwards my parents took us to breakfast. We settled on Barnaby’s Cafe, which is the cutest little cafe in River Oaks. If you’ve never been, I highly recommend it. My dad kept saying that it was the best breakfast he’d had in a long time.
How cute are the front of the menus? I ended up getting the green eggs – which was scrambled egg whites (I subbed egg whites for the eggs) with spinach and artichokes, chicken apple sausage, breakfast potatoes, and wheat toast. I only had half and it looked like I hadn’t had any, that’s how much food there was. And it was all incredible.
Overall: The race was a lot smaller then I thought it would be, but I’m never opposed to small races, it means I have the chance to place . It was all set up pretty well, and Sean was happy because there were kegs in the park afterward. The course itself was all right – we were running up and down streets so it wasn’t really scenic, plus there were a few small hills. I thought the water stations could have been spaced out a little more, but it was only 3 miles… I’m so excited that my brother ran with me, I’ve been trying to force someone in my family to get into running! Oh and two breakfasts in one day is never a bad thing in my book
Those of you that raced this weekend – how’d you do?!
Those of you with long runs – tell me ’bout it! I need some motivation to do one tomorrow
RACING
I made a commitment on New Year’s to run a 5k a month. Since I’ve progressively gotten more serious about running since then, I’ve changed it to a race a month. After last months disappointing PR, I’ve been hesitant to sign up for a race this month. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to or that I haven’t researched – I have. But quite honestly, I’m scared. I don’t want it to go like last time. I want to PR and I want to PR from running hard and fast the whole time, not from taking short walk breaks.
Now if you remember, someone got bit by the running bug!
Which is the exact reason I now have an August race, because guess who wants to run a 5k
This weekend, little brother and I will be running the Houston Young Lawyer’s Foundation 5-K Fun Run. (I know a few of you are running the Lake Houston one, and I wanted to run that one because yall were, but I also wasn’t sure if LB would have to work or not so I picked the one closer to my house :(… next time).
Hopefully this will be what I need to snap out of my race-running funk.
RUNNING
This morning I woke up early and set out for a 4 mile run. The catch? I don’t have my Garmin right now. The start/stop button has been stuck for a while, and I finally packaged it up and sent it in to get fixed. The thought of running on the treadmill made me cringe, so I decided to take my Nike+ and my regular watch and run for 40 minutes. I generally run anywhere from 8:45-9:15 minute miles when I’m running shorter distances (2-6 miles) outside [and not racing], so I figured 40 minutes would get me a little over 4 miles. I had an awesome run. I felt strong and fast the whole time and I ran in a new-to-me neighborhood that made the run more exciting then looping through my own neighborhood for the billionth time.
I’ve gotta tell ya, running without my Garmin was so… refreshing. Not checking my pace or mileage every 5 minutes was a nice switch. I think maybe once a week I’ll change my mileage goals into time goals and leave it at home. I can pretty accurately guage how fast I’m running, so running without it beeping every mile might be nice…
Do you ever leave technology at home during you runs?!
I did 6 progressive miles outside today.
It’s the first time in weeks that I’ve run outside for longer than 2-3 miles per the doctors orders… He told me to stick to the treadmill… but I just couldn’t do it today.
I tried, I really did.
But when I walked into my living room the thought of running another run on the treadmill made me a little bit sad inside. And I just couldn’t bring myself to walk into the back room and hop on the stupid thing.
So I grabbed my mace, knife, and Garmin and left the house. It’s hot and humid outside. But I ran pretty good considering.
These were my splits:
All I wanted to do this run was make it progressive. I wanted to finish strong and I did. So that’s a win. I can’t wait til it’s a little bit cooler and I don’t feel like I’m running through a sauna.
For whatever bizarre reason, I’m also breaking out a like a 15 year old boy right now. I think it’s from lack of sleep, but I can’t be certain.
Gross.
In other news, I think I have hooked LB on running! One down, one to go. Sean, you’re next.
If he’s reading this, I’m fairly positive he’s going “yeahhhh right” right now. But I am stubborn.
Do you try and get family members to run too?? I have been after Sean for a while but it hasn’t worked yet. Just recently LB has become interested, which makes me very happy.
Merriam-Webster defines the word compete as follows: to strive consciously or unconsciously for an objective
Taken in that context, I am a very competitive person in just about every aspect of my life. Especially running. Nine times out of ten I have some sort of goal that I want to meet. Usually it’s a time goal that I’ve arbitrarily picked out. Sometimes it’s that I want to place in my age group. Sometimes it’s both. For instance when I ran the 10k, I had several goals set, the most important of which was that I wanted to run it under 53 minutes. I finished in 51:13 and finished first in my age group.
Within 20 minutes of finishing almost 2 minutes under my desired time, I already was plotting out the next time that I wanted to beat. My thought process went something like this:
YES! I DID IT! I AM AWESOME!
::20 minutes later::
Hmm… I should run it under 50 minutes. I will be really fast then.
And thus the new goal was born and now I won’t rest until it’s accomplished. The same is true for everything from 5ks to marathons. I set goals and if I reach them I immediately start to plan out how to exceed them.
Don’t get me wrong – I think having goals is one of the best ways to advance in anything and everything. But Em wrote a great post the other day about giving yourself some credit. And it really got me thinking – as competitive as I am, I’m doing some pretty awesome things right now.
I had a really sucktastic 16 mile run on Saturday. I bitched about it, both mentally and verbally, all day long. But I RAN 16 MILES. It was hard, it was miserable, I walked a lot, heck I stopped a lot, there wasn’t a single step that I took on Saturday that didn’t cause me some sort of mental or physical pain, but I did it. And if I can run 16, I can run 18. And if I can run 18, I can run a marathon. And that is a-freaking-mazing, whether I BQ or finish in 6 hours.
Sometimes I think I let my competitiveness with running get the better of me. Sometimes it causes extreme negative self-talk conversations in my head. And sometimes I need a good kick to remind me that every single day I’m working towards incredible things.
And a big tribute to Em for writing the post that sparked this post.
THAT BEING SAID, LB came over last night to run with me. It was a 2 mile training run for me, supposed to be easy, and I figured it’d be a cake walk for him. Needless to say, it was a very humbling experience for me, one that reminded me that we all start at square one.
We ran at about an 8:45 pace give or take – sometimes faster, sometimes slower. But by mile 1.5 he was dying and I could see it written all over his face.
So I stopped my Garmin and we walked. I started it back up and we ran. I let him walk while I ran back and forth until we hit roughly 2 miles (my Garmin died at about mile 1.83). And in that last half mile and for the rest of the night, I remembered everything about when I started running. I remembered getting winded after a mere 5 minutes. I remembered hating it. I remembered my first 5k and how freaking exhilarating it was.
1.5 miles at an 8:45 pace is pretty good for someone that never runs.
Oh and after taking our picture, Sean had to take this picture “for the blog” (his words) so that everyone knows that he was working while we were running, not sitting around eating bon-bons. Even though when we got back 25 minutes later he was sitting on the couch in the dark.
Are you competitive by nature? With what?
Do you set new goals immediately upon breaking old ones?
1. Lately I’ve been hearing the word “epic” to describe things, events, etc (OK, mainly from my little brother). While I assume that, like, epic is the new “like”, I think the term “epic” is WAY overused. Just because you had a good day does not make it “epic”. Just because we went to Yogurt Cup, does not mean it was “epic” (well, that one is debatable…)
2. I just bought these on sale from $30 from White House Black Market. My Vegas trip thanks you for putting these on clearance.
3. There is a slight twinge in my right leg that showed up this morning. I’ve been trying to ignore it today by propping it up on my trashcan and putting an ice pack on it. Britt and I have 10 miles to cover this weekend, so that needs to stop immediately. Unfortunately, my entire leg has gone numb. That tingly feeling is driving me insane right now.
Has anyone else heard the extreme overuse of the word “epic”? (And Luke, if you’re reading this, I promise I make fun of Sean way more than you).
Do you get to wear slippers at work? I don’t really leave my office in them (yes I do), but I wear them sitting at my desk all the time. I also usually have a pair of flats and a pair of heels readily available.
I mean, sometimes I get frustrated with Sean and all, but never that much…
What started out as a comment on Running Girl’s post, turned out looking incredibly long-winded, so I’m just going to go ahead and preface this by saying you should check out her post here and then you’ll get the basis of my post.
