Resurfacing (Kelsey)

I know all my adoring fans have missed me (my fan list, I suspect, accumulating to a whopping 0) but I have come back again. With some updates.

Good heavens. It has been a long time since I've posted. You know it's bad when Stacey's posted twice since my last = P It has been 2 weeks and one day since I last updated. This is unacceptable. But pretty much unavoidable.

Two weeks ago, I was helping with parking for a concert thing by my church. I ran Tuesday and Wednesday, and if I remember correctly, they went fine. Thursday I was supposed to, but I was doing parking and packing for camp and driving church vans to camp... I'm pretty sure I was supposed to do 4 and I tracked how much I was walking around to complete my various tasks, and I did something like, 3.5 just walking around. Friday was busy too, so I didn't exactly do cross training. And that Saturday, my 9 miler, was a failure. Biggest failure yet really.

That Saturday, I was at Covenant Hills, which is a camp I grew up at and have worked at the previous 3 summers. This past week was family camp, which is the week when families from all over the state come and bring their trailers and hang out and have church services and what not. Covenant Hills provides a terrain that differs quite distinctly from my own. And my first test on it was, of course, my niner. No easing into it. Covenant Hills is quite hilly, hence the name, and quite a bit of it is dirt roads and sand. I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, I totally forgot to carb load, didn't really drink enough either... the run kind of crept up on my honestly... And I did horribly. I ended up doing 6 miles and walked the vast majority of it. I quickly learned that the dirt roads were more forgiving with their lesser amount of impact on my knees and hips, but quite unforgiving of my endurance, taking more force from each step and not giving as much of it back to me like the paved paths at home do. I also quickly learned that when I am not mentally into a run, it's pretty pointless. Most long run days, I psyche myself and get motivated and think about what it will be like to finish. I did not mentally prepare that day, and I had nothing to keep me going.

After that, I skipped my three easy miles on Sunday, gladly rested on Monday, skipped my 4(?) on Tuesday, and then Stacey joined me on Wednesday and I got back on track. We did our threes on Wednesday and Thursday and virtually didn't stop and had respectable times. Friday I cross trained with some swimming and some biking (both very fun) and Saturday, I completed my 10. Actually, my 10 was one of my favorite runs so far. I did much better on the carb loading this week, and also hydration. I peed clear like, 3 times before I left :) haha. My 10 was great because it held a new sort of accomplishment, and was also a route with a wide variety. It started out on paved flat country roads, then switched to hilly dirt country roads. Then I ran a couple miles on dirt trails, which was really challenging with lots of hills and softer dirt, but super fun. Probably my favorite part of the route. And finished up meandering around the campgrounds, mostly consisting of hilly dirt roads, a few sections paved. I figure this is closest to what the actual half-marathon route will be like, and I survived with a time of 2:03:36. That's a little over an average of 12 minute miles, which isn't my best, but since I misbehaved and wanted to make sure I survived, I took it a little easier on myself. I really didn't walk at all except for one brief strip where I was going down hill on a trail in the dark. That was more for safety. But yes. Nonetheless, I finished a double digit mileage, got back up after failing, and felt good about it. And Josh, my boyfriend, gets major kudos for running most of it with me. I met me about halfway through the hilly dirt country road stretch, and finished it out with me. I'm not sure how he does it. I have to train. He just seems to be a natural.

Sunday came, and I did my easy three by walking the whole time and catching up with an old friend on the phone. And then "catastrophe" struck.

It started Sunday night, and by Monday morning, whatever it is, hit. I can't tell if it's allergies, or a cold, or allergies that turned into a cold... whatever it is, it has me down and out and unable to complete my runs the last 2 days. Day one consisted of a tickley throat and a runny nose and a touch of fever. Day two consisted of a fountain-like nose, complete with periods of dripping, congestion, frenzied sneezing, and me feeling like a balloon head. Also, lots of sleeping. This morning, day three, has consisted of more congestion and coughing, and the occasional sneeze, and fever now and then. I am desperately hoping to get off my tush and get some running in tomorrow, but it's quite the dilemma. Because if it is allergies, then whatever it is that my body does NOT want inside it, is out there, and running means going out there, likely getting more rejected substance back in my body. But if I don't run, I don't want to the think of the progress I'll lose : ( No one ever said on the schedule what to do if you got sick! Today, going upstairs and playing my guitar wore me out. So I'm hoping for a bit of a miracle here. Or a surgical mask. One of the two.

That's my update. Not too successful. But what can you do? At least I was blessed with a good 10 miler.

Want to lose 4 pounds in two hours?!?! (Stacey)

Are you run down, listless? Do you poop out at parties?*

Do you wish you could lose just a few more pounds?

Well I have a guaranteed solution for you! I lost 4 pounds myself! In just 2 hours!

You too, can enjoy these fantastic results in 2 hours. Just follow these simple steps:

1.) Wait until a 90+ degree day.

2.) Forget to drink water until about an hour before you plan to run.

3.) Drink at least 16 ounces in said half hour.

4.) Weigh yourself just prior to your run.

5.) Run 4 miles, or about 45 minutes outside.

6.) Weigh yourself just following your run. Try not to drip too much sweat on the scale.

7.) Celebrate your FABULOUS 4 pound results!


Well, it worked for me anyway . . . weirdest moment of my life was when I stepped on that scale before my post run hygiene routine (aka, a shower). Was not aware that kind of water weight was possible.


The next two days I get to be with Kelsey again! Yay for running buddies!


*Bonus points if you can name the origin of that quote.*

WILL THE MADNESS NEVER END?!? (Stacey)

I know, I'm super dramatic. What can I say? I'm a youngest child. :)

I ran 9 miles yesterday. It was gross. I was gross. I hurt a lot afterwords, but I did it. So I suppose I have reason to be proud of myself, but I was SUPER annoyed at how slow I went for the second half so it's sort of bittersweet. There are no major cool/fun stories about yesterday so I'll just share some random facts about the run:

-I ran 4 miles then 3 miles then 2 miles, still not sure how I feel about that arrangement.
-I saw another doe. So that makes 2 does at home, and a doe, 2 fawns, and a buck my engagement weekend run (in the storm . . . now that one was a good story).
-Running PAST your house multiple times over the course of a run is obnoxious. It's kinda mean to yourself. I ran by my house 3 times, 4 if you include when I ran in to get water and Gu.
-Triple berry Gu is much better than the mandarin variety. Although I still gagged a little . . .
-I saw this very large bird/goose thing fly from tree to tree. My parents think it was a wild turkey, I have NO idea what it was, but it was slightly disconcerting to run past the tree I knew it was lurking in . . .
-I have new blisters and have re-chafed areas that have just recently healed. I love running SO MUCH. *barfgagcough*

My brain can think of nothing else interesting . . .

Today I ran an "easy 3 miles" which really was 3.25 miles (ish), so I ran a mile, walked a bit, ran a mile, walked a bit, and ran a mile as fast as I thought I could, which ended up being 9 minutes. I was out of the house for a total of 35 minutes and feel pretty decent.

And that's all I have to say about that.

In regards to the title - I was musing yesterday about how far 9 miles is. It's far. I could run from my home to the Meijer store we frequent. Shoot dang. Also, it's not super far from 13.1 miles. So I'm almost to the half marathon distance! Huzzah! On the other hand, I still have a 10 mile, 11 mile, and 12 mile to run. . . . rawr. So I have 4 super long runs before I get to be done with this whole long distance thing. Plus all the little runs in between. I'm almost to the point where I don't totally HATE all the shorter runs. I actually kinda like my runs when they're less than 4 miles, but still, I am SO READY to be done with chafing and blisters and sweat DRIPPING off my face after a half hour outside and random muscle spasm cramps and not wanting to move for 6 hours after a run. But I still have 5 more weeks . . . ughuhbuh . . .

Halfway Results Are In! (Kelsey)

Well, we'll get the boring stuff out of the way first:

Sunday, I ran 3 easy, and they were very easy. I maybe ran like, a half mile of it. And each time I tried, my body was like, "You think you're doing what to me again? I don't think so..." So I was pretty content with walking. It was a pleasant temperature and I went without headphones. Two little boys asked me what my name was as I walked by. Their mother said they were a friendly couple of dudes. It was fairly uneventful. Monday I gladly rested, and today I ran my 4. I once again, realized about a mile and a half in that I had to pee, so I had my mom come pick me up. But my time, minus my bathroom break, was 43:27 for 4.06 miles... so about 10.7 minutes per mile. Not bad, not bad. I even took a brief walk break to squabble about a parking sign with my dad. Long story... moral of it, though, having your phone strapped to your arm has its ups and downs. And my body felt decent today. Legs and hips felt good, and breathing wasn't too bad either. Hurray, boring stuff done.

And now, to the results of my progress!!!

So far, I have calculated with my less than professional abilities, that 6 weeks into training, I have:

-Lost 0.5" on the widest/flabbiest part of my right thigh
-Lost 1" on the biggest part of my right bicep circumference (toned the muscle, lost some flab)
-Lost 1.5" on the widest circumference of my stomach (yeah buddy!)
-Lost 1" off my bust (that's not exactly exciting, but I guess I can handle losing it there if that's what it           takes to lose it other places. It's what padded bras are for, right? ;))
-Lost 0.5" off my waist
-Lost 1" off my tuchus (butt)
-Lost 1.25" off my hips
-Gained 0.5" in the midpoint of my upper leg
-Gained 0.5" in the thickest part of my calf (MUSCLEEEE!!!! All that pain payed off)
-And thus far, I have lost 7 pounds of weight! Woop woop!

So progress is going well! And we got 6 more weeks to track more progress. Very exciting.

A blogger, I am not (Stacey)

If you are paying attention to this blog at all, it is very quickly apparent who is better at blogging.

That would be my dear friend Kelsey. :) I keep forgetting to write because I don't see much point in it when my runs are boring. Or other times, I just flat out forget that I have to do so. Also, Kelsey is just the superior, and more comical, writer.

Anyway, my most recent hiatus does come with a good excuse. About a week and a half ago, my boyfriend proposed when I was visiting him in Illinois! :) So that weekend was filled with family and people fawning over me and sending me texts, facebook messages, and phone calls. It was a crazy exciting weekend, but crazy busy, and crazy HOT! Where he lives in Illinois is consistently about 5-10 degrees hotter than where I live. That weekend 3 of the 5 days I was there were over 105. The other two were in the 90s. Needless to say, his family didn't let me run on the day I was supposed to do my 7 miles because it was the hottest day of  the summer thus far. Two days later, still in Illinois, I tried to run my 7 miles and started, but then got caught in severe thunderstorm weather in the woods, on a trail, a mile and a half away from somewhere a car could pick me up. So that was an exciting (and fast) mile and a half. I ended up running only 3.5 miles instead of the planned 7 that day.

Needless to say, by that point, it was Monday and I just gave up on the idea of running 7 miles ever.

This past week I have run when I was supposed to, and as long as I was supposed to, but on Saturday when I was supposed to run 8 miles, I was on a camping trip with a bunch of teenage girls from youth group. So, that leads me to today, Sunday. I started my 8 mile run around 7:30 pm, carbbed up and hoping for the best.

Following the advice of Kelsey, I broke my run into two pieces so I could drop by my house to get a drink of water in the middle. All in all, the run wasn't too exciting. Except for, you know, the fact I finished it at all. . . .

Bunny trail: I took a shopping excursion at the beginning of the weekend. I picked up a tank top and a couple pairs of shorts that will be nicer to me while running, moreso than my cotton tees and poly/cotton blend shorts. My favorite pair of shorts are bright orange and yellow, thus affectionately called "traffic cone shorts." I also bought Gu and a Runner's World magazine approved fanny pack so I don't need shorts with pockets. Bunny trail over.

So I was at my house, in my traffic cone shorts, freshly sweaty and gross after my first 4 miles, which I completed in 42 minutes (woop woop!). After my cup of water, I decided to take/eat/ingest my Mandarin Orange flavored Gu while I was stopped anyway.

Now I like oranges. I like Mandarin Oranges. I like sweet things. Not a huuuuge fan of goopy textures, but I had mentally prepared myself the best I could for the experience of what I thought this substance would be like.

I did not prepare adequately . . .

I squeezed this large glop of this stuff in my mouth at once, toward the back of my tongue. Bad idea. After my mouth registered the extreme concentrated sweet taste, my nerve endings realized exactly  how much I truly hate the texture (similar to petroleum jelly, but smoother, and orange-ier), then the large mass of Gu was at the back of my throat and activated my gag reflex. My mom, who had previously been in the kitchen observing the fullness of my reaction, exited quickly saying, "If you're going to throw up! Do it in the bathroom!" She always knows the right thing to say . . . I got the rest of the package in my mouth in one more dollop, and this time I was a little better prepared and didn't aim straight for the back of my throat. For the remainder of my run, any time I burped I got a fresh reminder of the joyous experience. Three hours later, I can still taste the orange flavor occasionally, and I've eaten since.

The offending flavor is on the top left . . . 

That being said, the stuff works. On my way out the door to start my 5th mile, I was pretty beat. 42 minutes is my best 4 mile time yet and to run that and still have another 4 to go . . . I was rather defeated. My legs were a little jello-y and my feet were getting the blistery feeling and my legs were starting to chafe. And above all, I was just worn out. I made up my mind, that if worst comes to worst and the dreaded stuff didn't work, I stop after 7 miles, because I hadn't run that distance yet. At most, I was hoping for 7.5 and decided that would be a disappointing but decent goal considering my past week and a half of running. However, by the time I hit mile 6 my energy was back up again, and when I turned around to come home for my last 2 miles I felt almost fresh. I'm not saying the stuff's magical or anything, but it definitely helped me complete the second half of my run. I highly doubt I would have been able to have the time I did (43 minutes for the second half) or even finish at all without it. I would have probably taken at least 1 walk break or cut it short like I had been planning.

Now, part of that might be psychosomatic. After all, as we've discussed, running is 80% in your head. However, the 25 g of carbohydrates might also have had something to do with it too . . . .

So was it worth it for me? Yes, I think it was. After all, taste is only temporary right? I'm just hoping the Tri-berry flavor (the only other one that sounded mildly appetizing to me at the store) is slightly better, and doesn't haunt my mouth quite so long.

Hot hot hot (Kelsey)

As I had predicted, the hotter than dickens status of our weather, if anything, just got hotter. It was unbelievably hot out this week. So I ran about 4 both Tuesday and Thursday. I was supposed to run 3 on Wednesday, but I don't do fireworks, and they were just legalized in my state this year, so this 4th was particularly explosive. And it was really hot. So I stayed inside and vied to move my 3 miles to next Wednesday and switch over that rest to this week. They both went alright, though my calves are starting to bother me again.

Today's 8 was alright. A lot better than the 7 from last week anyway. I ran all but maybe a half mile of it? I had 3 really brief walk breaks. The last couple miles were still hard, my legs and especially my hips were tired, but I managed to run 8.03 miles in 1 hour, 32 minutes and 46 seconds, and that's including a water stop and a bathroom break when after 2 miles, I realized I had to pee. It was a bit cooler this evening though, thank goodness. I could feel the cool pockets of air in the breeze from time to time. I gave up on trying to make an 8 mile route in my neighborhood and just decided to combine my regular routes. I have also decided that the long runs are getting long enough that I need some water breaks interspersed throughout. So today, we were that cool house in the suburbs that had a folding chair in the middle of the driveway with a water cooler that contained a cup of water, a gatorade, a cool spray bottle, some ice, and a rolling pin. But that seemed to work well. I started out with my 2 mile, then did an elongated 4 mile route, and finished with a shortened 2 mile route, with brief water/pee breaks between, and that worked pretty well.

I did far better at carb loading the day before this week. Actually I was a little concerned that if I ate another bite of a carb, that I would burst or turn into a loaf of whole grain bread. But it did seem to help in making me feel better than the 7 anyway. But seriously. You should hear this. Last night for dinner, I had macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, and a sweet potato. This afternoon I had whole grain pasta with chicken, yogurt, an orange, and some cocoa covered almonds. I did some studying, and all these foods were recommended. It was fun having an excuse to eat so much :) SUCK IT ATKINS DIET!!! I get to eat carbs, AND still get in better shape

Stay tuned! Tomorrow I will post how many inches/weight I have lost!

Keep Walking, Running, Running for Miles (Kelsey)

I have two 3s, a cross training, and a 7 to report on I believe. All in varying degrees of success.

First things first, it is worthy to note that it has been hotter than the dickens around here lately, and it shows no promise of cooling down anytime soon either. This makes running a challenge. My 3 mile on Thursday went alright. I did not want to run it, that is for sure, but Josh was over, so we ran it together. We kept a decent pace and it felt alright throughout, but I sure could sense the cloud of heat that just seemed to be sticking to my body. It was literally almost like the heat from the day just kept stacking on itself, and when we ran at 7:30, the heat of the day was heavy. I hadn't remembered that kind of heat cloud being on me since my days of summer basketball practices in our hot high school gym for four hours a day, In the middle of August. The run went fine, but we were both quite sweaty.

Cross training went fine Friday. I rode my bike again. I don't really know how far I went, but it was a great 30 minutes or so to just clear my head and get in a little exercise. I had a heavy mind that day, and the bike ride really seemed to help.

Saturday, I had another wedding that took up pretty much all day, so once again, and hopefully for the last time, I postponed my long run. It wasn't easy to figure out where to squeeze in 7 miles on Sunday either. I had church in the morning and Josh had a baseball game at 6:15. I intended to run at 1 after church, but decided to take a nap instead. I didn't take off for my run until about 4 PM, and I'm not going to lie, that run was nothing short of a catastrophe. First of all, my route was ridiculous. I tried to map out a route for 7 miles in my neighborhood, but it was just too complicated. I made the map the wallpaper on my iPhone, but it was just too much. I was stopping every block or so to try and figure out where I was supposed to head next, and it was just way too much stopping and starting and not knowing where I was going. I don't think I drank enough before either, and I definitely didn't carb load enough. So I ran the first 4 miles and then called my mom to bring me water. The last 3 miles went horribly. I had nothing left to give. I kept trying to tell myself "Only 2 more miles! You can do it!" Then it became "Okay, at least run to the end of this street!" And eventually, it was "Okay, you only have a half mile more to walk." I didn't even humor myself with the thought of running anymore. I hadn't felt that bad since my disaster of a 3 mile run prior to the actual start of training. I literally almost cried a couple times. But this time I didn't really feel guilty. My feet were blistering. My thighs started chafing. My spit was the consistency of Elmers glue, and it was 91 degrees outside. 91. Degrees. So I finally finished. I didn't even look at my time. I'm sure it was awful. But alas, I couldn't have looked if I had tried because my dear iPhone did not survive. I'm not 100% if it was the heat that made it croak, or the 2 sprinklers I ran through, perhaps the combination, but whatever the cause, my iPhone was too delicate and the backlight broke. As sad and frustrating as that was, it did make me feel more hardcore. I outlasted an Apple product.

Today I went in to AT&T, and they told me I was eligible for an upgrade anyway, so I payed $99 and got a 4GS iPhone. I will have to treat this one more delicately on my runs I guess. But thank goodness, it worked out pretty well and didn't put me out of house and home. And today, to fuse my required easy 3 after the 7, but also to stay true to my rest for Monday, I walked about 2.5 miles. My dad walked with me, and it wasn't difficult obviously. But it was still hot.

OH! I almost forgot! Friday I went to Playmakers, which is a track store here in town, and had them help me out with getting the shoes that I needed to support me best. They are absolute geniuses over there. I told my attendant I had flat arches, she watched me walk across the floor, and told me exactly what I needed to keep my hips and knees and back from hurting after runs. So here are my new kicks! Plus, I have 30 days to see if they help or not... though I hope that promise still stands after today. I wore them for the first time in the walk, hoping to break them in, but a left over blister from my 7 shed my blood over the back heel within the first quarter mile. We'll see if they still take them back after bloodshed, or actually, hopefully, we won't have to see.