A Cow, an Ice Cream Sundae, and an Expo

Today was race expo day. None of my recent races had expos so I was looking forward to this one. We arrived at Lambeau Field around 2:30ish and went to the Club level where they had packet pick-up. I was shocked to see how many more half marathoners there are than full marathoners. Inside the bag was my bib, shirt, a Boston bracelet, and ticket to the spaghetti dinner. If the dinner cost less than $17 I probably would have wanted to go to that with the husband. $17 is way too much money for pasta! Sheesh. We all know I’m a cheapskate, right?

After picking up my bib it was time to walk through the expo. There were tons of clothing and shoe booths and booths for different races in the general area. I was happy to get a couple of discount codes for different races coming up in the next few months. One of the races is a fall race that I have been considering so that was nice.

We drove around a bit on our way from Green Bay to my in-laws. I got to see the sights in Manitowoc. Exciting stuff.

Our first stop was at Beerstens Confectionary in Manitowoc. Nothing says pre-race fuel like an ice cream sundae. It was delicious!

I thought the menu was cute. They had a lot of different specialty sundaes. Mine had tons of almonds in it. I think they served food as well but my eyes locked in on the sundaes and never looked away.

Afterwards we kept driving and saw a cow. I love cows.

To round out the evening we had a delicious carborific meal of lasagna (made all fancy like outside in a dutch oven, woah!), garlic bread, and salad.

I’m carbed up and hydrated. Time to get my bag ready for the morning and attempt to get some rest.

Let’s Do This!

Training is complete.  The miles before dawn, in the dark, in the cold of winter, before the world was awake has prepared me for what I am going to attempt in just a few days.  I have had a great time getting out there in all sorts of weather getting in the miles.  Some were slow and through inches of snow while some were fast with sunny skies.  They all prepared me.

I had a great final run on Thursday morning.  It was a quick 3 miles.  I was able to get up a little later since I wouldn’t need as much time to complete the miles of the day.  My husband came out and ran with me.  Because he just completed the Insanity program he was able to run the entire 3 miles with me.  Even when I started out faster than normal, we were on pace for a 9 minute mile that first mile.  That first mile was enough to give the confidence to know that I can hit my goal pace early on in the race, if I want to.  The run felt easy, the sun was shining, and I was doing something active with  my husband.  It was such a fantastic way to round out my training.

This morning I was able to sleep in.  I forced myself to do no running or strength work this morning.  It is always harder to do nothing when you are supposed to be doing nothing.  It is much easier to do nothing when you are supposed to be doing something, go figure.

I am feeling very reflective right now.  I am taking this whole I’m-running-my-first-full-marathon thing seriously.  I am really proud of what I have done over the last 4 months.  I have ran farther than I ever thought possible.  Two years ago I struggled to run for longer than a minute at a time.  I have now ran for 3 1/2 hours at a time and plan to run for just shy of 4 hours on Sunday morning.  I never thought this was ever something I could do, ever something I even wanted to do.  But here we are.

This has been such an awesome journey.  This journey to find health and balance in my life.  To be ok with eating pasta because I am eating whole and clean in most other areas.  To be ok with having dessert every now and again because I am not eating fast food every night.  To get up at 4:30 in the morning to bang out 10 miles before work because I want to.

I have some goals for the big day.  I have some time goals and I have some attitude goals.  My number 1, over the moon fantastic goal is to finish under 4 hours.  I would be thrilled with 3:59:59.  It is possible.  My training and past race performance shows that it is possible.  It will be tough!  I have no idea what those last miles are going to feel like or the mental and physical strength it is going to take to keep going.  I have a goal and I hope that will be enough to keep me going strong.  Goal number 2 is to remember to have fun.  I have tunnel vision and I take things too seriously sometimes.  I want to remember to look around and enjoy what I am doing.  I run because I enjoy it.  Even when it hurts, I am accomplishing something that I want to be accomplishing.  Beyond that, I want to finish and I want to finish strong.

This is getting a little too serious.

 

Much better.

 

Here’s to being too tough to kill.  Bring it on, Green Bay!

 

Anyone else running Green Bay this weekend?  5k, half or full?

What are some of the things you tell yourself to keep going during those final miles/steps of a race?

Blueberry Muffins & Enjoying the Taper Again

I actually got out of bed when the alarm went off this morning.  It has been a while since I did that so it was a huge surprise.  I was up and out of bed at 5:30 this morning ready to get my taper on.  There was a 5 mile run on the calendar this morning.  I am going down 1 mile per day through Thursday, before taking Friday and Saturday off before the big race.  I went out at an easy pace and enjoyed the sun and the mild weather this morning.

 

Now that the weather is slowly warming up I am starting to notice the same people out running or walking in the morning.  I like seeing the same people out and about.  We may not talk but the nod as we pass makes me feel like we are the best of friends.  There is even a cyclist who says hi to me most mornings.  This is one of the many things I enjoy about being out in the world with other active people.  There is a sense of camaraderie just being out there with similar goals.  Perhaps it is all in my head.  Either way, I feel it and I like it.

Super Healthy Muffins:

I saw these muffins on the Hungry Runner Girl blog last week and had to try them out immediately.  I happened to have three browning bananas ready to go.  As usual, I changed a couple of things but I kept this recipe pretty much the same as is listed on her site.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup low-fat, plain yogurt
• splash of milk
• 3 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 8-10 blueberries per muffin

Directions:

1. Mash up your bananas.  Add the honey, yogurt, and vanilla extract to the mix.
2. I don’t like cleaning more bowls than necessary so I add the dry ingredients to the mix instead of combining all the dry stuff in it’s own bowl.  Add the salt, baking soda, and cinnamon.  Stir to combine thoroughly.  Add the flour, stirring to combine.  The original recipe says to add 1 tbsp of milk but I needed a little more than that.  Start by adding the tablespoon of milk, then add more if you think you need it.
3. Fill your muffin tins with batter and blueberries, layering the blueberries and the batter.  I used muffin liners but they stuck to the muffins so maybe grease the pan instead of using liners… unless you are fancy and have liners that aren’t paper and aren’t from Christmas.
4. Bake at 350 degrees for 15ish minutes.  Makes 12 muffins.
5. Enjoy!

 

These muffins are right up my alley.  They have whole wheat flour and no added refined sugar.  Perfection.  They are tasty, too!  You should definitely try them out.

Do you prefer white flour or wheat flour?  Or another type of flour?

Do you prefer longer or shorter run days?

 

Obsession, Food Recap & a Jogging Stroller

Perhaps you have noticed that I haven’t been posting as much in the last week or so.  I will tell you why that is.  I have a new obsession.  It is taking up all my free time.  I normally blog during nap time, instead this new obsession has taken over.

My Twilight obsession/love has returned.  The new family I work for has a great library with tons of books, like these ones, that are right up my alley.  I wasn’t convinced I wanted to read the Twilight books again until I got started.  Since last Friday I have read 3 1/2 books and watched 3 of the movies.  I have a problem.  Unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon how you look at it) I don’t have the two movies that go along with this final book.  Oh well.  The books are way more detailed anyways so I will let me imagination do the work.  I am guessing I will be done with book 4 today and then I will be able to get on with my life.

Food:

Even though I haven’t been blogging about the meals we have been eating, I have been taking pictures of them.  These pictures were taken for the off chance that I actually did something productive with my day and got my head out of Forks, WA.  Since that didn’t happen, we will do a photo recap of the last weeks worth of meals.

Garlic salmon and whole wheat pasta

Eggs & Potatoes, this always sounds good when nothing else does

Mexican Lasagna

Chipotle @ home, cilantro lime rice, veggies, and chicken

Starting the carbo load early!

Running:

To go along with the laziness of the week, I did not get up to run this morning.  I thought winter had ended but I woke up to 33 degree weather.  Yeah… no thanks.  Luckily it warmed up quickly and I finally took advantage of the jogging stroller at work.  I had intended on running after work today so I had my running gear with me.  I realized that it was much warmer than I thought it would be at this point in the morning.  I changed into the running gear, got the little girl all situated and we hit the road.  I did the 3 mile loop that we ran during the fun/beer run last weekend then did an additional mile to get us to the park.  I set the little one free to run around for a while before finishing up the run with 2 more miles.

When I set out I was convinced that the jogging stroller was going to be so hard that I would be huffing and puffing and wouldn’t make it past 1 mile.  The jogging stroller was tough and it slowed me down but not nearly as much as I expected.  During the downhill and flat portions it was actually quite simple.  I managed to get my pace to 9:19 and one point here without really feeling like I was pushing too hard.  The hardest parts were the uphills.  I felt like I was flailing around like a maniac.  It was not pretty.  Overall my splits were quite consistent around 9:40′s.  I had that one mile at 9:19 and another at 10:10 when I was going uphill most of the mile.  I did 6.01 miles with an average pace of 9:43.  I was expecting closer to 10:30′s so I am very happy with the run today.  I am especially happy that I can be lazy after work and not force myself to be productive and run.

I probably won’t make a habit of running at work just yet but it is nice to know I have that option.

 

Anybody else run with a jogging stroller?  What has your experience been like?

Do you run in the morning, during the day, or at night?

Any other Twilight lovers out there?