Saturday: Ringing in Hope 10k Race Report

I apparently never wrote this race report... Oops! If I think about it, I'll come back to put SOMETHING in here.

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Race report: 2 yrs later...

Um, not sure how I missed this race report! I loved that the start time was like 10:00am. Makes for a "relaxing" pre-race morning. Met up with Kathy & planned to run as much of it with her as possible. I hadn't really been training for this race & was a bit off my game.

The first 5k went well. People were running all over the place & running into cones. I took a honey stinger along with some water around the half way point. Around mile 5, I had to stop and stretch out my hip. As soon as I did, it popped and felt SO much better! Kathy had gone ahead while I stretched, so I got back to running & finished it up. I ran it in 1:01:50 (which Garmin Connect is telling me is a 10k personal best - I think it is for a stand-alone 10k). If I hadn't stopped to stretch, it would've been under an hour. Ah well.

Shortest race report ever. :)

Week 11 - Not much better than week 10

I've been slacking so majorly. UGH! Cookies, candies, etc, etc, etc. Stress at work, stress at home. I'm in need of a major attitude change.

Tuesday I did a lactate threshold test using Trainer Road. Love their application. Definitely worth the $7 per month. Turns out my LT on the bike is 166. Can't wait to see what that means in my training going forward... once I get my butt moving again!

And... that wraps up my workouts so far this week. WOW. Slackin. I almost missed packet pickup for my 10k that's on Saturday. Oops. I can tell I need to get my head in the game.

Week 11 Low Volume Off Season Plan

It's cardio week this week. Hopefully I'll get back on the band wagon. I've been really slacking off lately. Just very little motivation recently.

 

 

Monday

off/yoga

Tuesday
Spin

Wednesday
Swim: 300m warmup, 12x25 drill set, 6x100 base intervals, 12x25 kick set, 12x25 pull set, 300m cool down

Thursday
Run: 40 min foundation run, 5 drills (30 sec each)

Friday
Bike: 1:15:00 hr foundation ride, 4 drills

Saturday
Swim: 300m warmup, 12x25 drill set, 6x100 base intervals, 12x25 kick set, 12x25 pull set, 300m cool down

Ringing in Hope 10k - Will probably switch to do the swim Sunday instead of Saturday.

Sunday
Run: 40 min foundation run, 5 drills (30 sec each)

Week 10 So Far

This has been my laziest week in a while. I went to TNT on Tuesday and Thursday, but that's about it. Two things to be proud of: I did bicep curls with a 40 lb barbell and did my bench dips with my trainer holding my feet... and he started swinging my legs at one point. That was fun. :) I have a different version of "fun"!

Maybe I'll get a couple of workouts in this weekend. Goodness knows I could use them.

Sunday - Run

35 min foundation run, 5 drills (30 sec each)

I decided to go outside for this run. I thought it was only 30 minutes... so that's all I ran. Oops. Still, great run. Went out way too fast, but it felt SO GOOD!

Week 10 Low Volume Off Season Plan

Mondayoff/yoga

Tuesday
TNT
Spin

Wednesday
Swim: 300m warmup, 12x25 drill set, 6x100 base intervals, 12x25 kick set, 10x25 pull set, 300m cool down

Thursday
TNT
Run: 35min foundation run, 5 drills (30 sec each)

Friday
Bike: 1 hr foundation ride, 4 drills

Saturday
Swim: 300m warmup, 12x25 drill set, 6x100 base intervals, 12x25 kick set, 10x25 pull set, 300m cool down

Sunday
Run: 40 min foundation run, 5 drills (30 sec each)

Saturday - Swim

300m warmup, 12x25 drill set, 6x100 base intervals, 10x25 kick set, 10x25 pull set, 300m cool down

Another great swim. My shoulder was bothering me a bit during this one, but I pushed through. Had the pool to myself the entire time, which was nice!

Friday - Bike

Bike: 1 hr foundation ride, 4 drills

Didn't do it. Blah.

Thursday - TNT/Run

TNT
Run: 35min foundation run, 5 drills (30 sec each)
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TNT was good. Nothing of note. The treadmill run went horribly. I think I lasted all of 10 minutes. It's cold, but I'd rather be outside.

Wednesday - Swim

Swim: 300m warmup, 12x25 drill set, 6x100 base intervals, 10x25 kick set, 10x25 pull set, 300m cool down

Did it! Had a great swim today!

Tuesday - TNT & Spin

TNT was good tonight. My shoulder pain has been tolerable lately, so that's good. T told me about this woman who was spinning last night at a different club and snapped her ankle because she was wearing baggy pants. People are generally stupid, just sayin! Spin was good. D's cycling buddies were there, which always makes for an interesting and funny class. The inside of my knee really hurt after clas. Hopefully it'll be ok. Something to keep an eye on for sure.

Week 9 Low Volume Off Season Plan

I did pretty good last week, only missed one workout. Here's the schedule:

Monday
off/yoga

Tuesday
TNT
Spin

Wednesday
Swim: 300m warmup, 12x25 drill set, 6x100 base intervals, 10x25 kick set, 10x25 pull set, 300m cool down

Thursday
TNT
Run: 35min foundation run, 5 drills (30 sec each)

Friday
Bike: 1 hr foundation ride, 4 drills

Saturday
Swim: 300m warmup, 12x25 drill set, 6x100 base intervals, 10x25 kick set, 10x25 pull set, 300m cool down

Sunday
Run: 35 min foundation run, 5 drills (30 sec each)

Sunday - run, no wait, ride

So, I did my hour long ride today. I decided to finally use Trainer Road since I signed up for their beta. I did the 20 minute FTP and threshold test (which is an hour long). I finished the workout and realized I had it set to measure power and not heart rate! DOH! Now I have to redo he workout. Guess that'll happen next week. Boo!

Friday/Saturday - Off

I was supposed to do an hour long bike ride on Friday, but I took it off instead. Saturday was already an off day, so that was good. :)

Thursday - TNT & Run

Tonight's TNYt workout was good. We had 13 people, so the time went by quick. We also had our body fat tests today. Mine was up, which I figured it would be, I've been slacking lately. My run did NOT go well. My Achilles is still bothering me from the Hot Chocolate Run, so 12 min in, I had to stop today. Hopefully it'll feel better next week!

Wednesday - Swim

Swim today went well. I can tell when I'm starting to get tired, so I'm going to start really working on that. Also, my left side breathing is getting better. I think I'm going to start doing at least 1-3 of the 100s doing bilateral breathing.

Tuesday - TNT/Spin

For the first time in three weeks, I actually did my entire workout tonight! I know, I know, I've been slacking. The scale is showing it. I'm not terribly worried about it. I've been trying to cut back on my calories in the recent week or so. I'm ok until dinner. It'll get easier.

TNT was good tonight. We had another really large class (9 or 10 people), so that makes it a little harder, but it was a decent workout.

Spin was really good. I haven't been in 3 weeks and boy did I pay for that mistake tonight. Oops. Ah well, I needed to mentally check out from it for a bit. We did 30 sec on/30 sec off for 5 minutes at a time... 6 times total. That's right, 30 sprints. Wow. Rough workout to come back to, but much needed. Definitely got anything that was still tight loosened up a bit!

Now, to gear up for tomorrow's swim!

Week 8 Low Volume Off Season Plan

Well, I slacked off less last week, we'll give it another try this week.  Here's the schedule:

Monday
off/yoga

Tuesday
TNT
Spin

Wednesday
Swim: 300m warmup, 10x25 drill set, 4x100 base intervals, 8x25 kick set, 8x25 pull set, 300m cool down

Thursday
TNT
Run: 35min foundation run, 5 drills (30 sec each)

Friday
Bike: 1 hr foundation ride, 4 drills

Saturday
Off/Yoga

Sunday
Run: 30 min foundation run, 5 drills (30 sec each)

Saturday - Hot Chocolate 15k Race Report

Hot Chocolate DC 15k Race Report (I have no pics from this race... ah well)

• Race Name: Hot Chocolate DC 15k
• Race Date: December 3, 2011
• Race Location: National Harbor, MD
• Race Distance: 15k (9.3 mi – measured 9.13 on GPS the day of)
• Division: 30-34
• Total Time: 1:29:37
• Time Breakdown: Split 1 – 21:33, Split 2 (at 10k) – 59:27
• Age Group Placing: 613/1638
• Overall Placing: 2982/7678 (women only)

Pre-race

Race registration was all online (this is pretty much the norm now, I think). As long as you registered early enough, you had no problems with registration. A few people tried to sign up closer to the race and the 5k race was closed, so there were complaints about that. When you registered, you had to select your jacket size, which they told you how to measure. This is important later for many people.

On Friday, we headed down to the National Harbor to do packet pickup. We left Tysons Corner (work) right around 3:00 and were at the National Harbor by 3:45. We checked into our hotel and then went to packet pickup. We went in, got our bibs, picked up our jackets, then walked around the expo for a little bit. It was mostly PRR selling stuff at the expo, so that was a bit weird with it being just one vendor, but it’s all good. I picked up a pair of Kinvara 2s that I’ve been meaning to make the trip to PRR for anyhow. We had dinner, met up with Nadia, then met up with Rachel later. We went to bed around 10 with the alarm set for 5:30.

The morning of the race, we walked the mile from our hotel to the race start. Since it was about a mile walk, we started out at 6:30am. This would turn out to be the biggest mistake we made all day, without knowing it. To give the race director a little bit of credit, they did emphasize that people needed to be there by 6:15, as they were closing roads at 6:30. People in the DC area, as always, didn’t account for traffic and it was a cluster. On that note, they should’ve never allowed people to park at National Harbor for this race. They should’ve shuttled everyone in. Also, they should’ve narrowed down the field to at least half of what they had. Had they done those two things, I think things would’ve gone a lot differently.

We were delayed an hour from our start. Mind you, the 15k was supposed to start at 8am. I had been standing outside from 6:30am in race tights and a long sleeve running shirt. I ditched my jacket in bag check at 7:15 because the 5k was supposed to start at 7:45 (they didn’t end up going until 8:20 or so). Total side note: there were PLENTY of port-a-potties in the after race area. The 15k ended up not going until 9:00. I had been outside for 2.5 hrs in very little clothing in 32-34 degree weather. By the time we started, my heart rate had been consistently in the 120s because I had been shivering so much. Since course maps had been provided, I knew we were headed to 210 and then back through where we started and into the National Harbor to run the 5k course before heading back to our start area. What I didn’t realize was that this was a lot hillier than I thought. Oops.

Run

This race is a hard one to write about. I was in a corral, so I didn’t seem to have a lot of the problems people later in the pack did. I found the course to be wide enough and mostly well staffed. I did have to get water off the table myself because by the time we returned to the water station, a couple of the volunteers had left. I didn’t think this was that horrible, so no real complaints. I took my gel at mile 5, took some water, and kept running. My legs actually felt really good for most of the race. Once I hit mile 7.5, my calves started to cramp up and I figured I might be in trouble a bit. I was definitely right… it wasn’t good! I seriously under-estimated the hills on this run and between the 2.5 hrs in the cold and the hills, my calves were shot. Training a bit more (like… at all) would’ve definitely helped me on this race.

Post-Race

Immediately after I finished the race, I was on the ground and massaging my calves to get them to stop contracting. I knew this was super important to get them to stop as soon as possible given my Achilles issues from 2009. I caught up with Rachel, Nadia, and Jon. Jon helped me massage my legs and stretch out some. We sent the ladies back to the hotel since they needed to pack up and check out. I got my hot chocolate and skipped the chocolate fondue. I just wanted real food. After about 45 minutes, we finally started the 1.5 miles back to the hotel. We stopped at Nando’s Peri-Peri for lunch. Chicken with mashed potatoes and cole slaw was just what I needed! Yum!

Summary and Lessons Learned

The worst part of this race was the lack of communication from the race officials and the waiting. The RAM organization seriously needs to look at what went wrong before returning to the DC area. Once we got started, I thought everything was fine, but again, I didn’t have the issues that apparently others did. I think that the field needed to be cut off at least half of what they had. Ultimately, I’d do the race again. We’ll see if they return.

Note: We were delayed an hour because of the traffic debacle that was the National Harbor this morning. If we hadn't been delayed, I would've loved this race instead of just liked it.

Friday - Off

I took it off cause, you know, I've been slacking on everything lately. I haven't done any yoga in about 3 weeks or so. That has to stop, like, yesterday. Plus, we traveled to the National Harbor for packet pickup and did a good bit of walking around. Glad to at least stretch my legs a bit.

Thursday - TNT/Run

I went to TNT today... pretty normal workout. We had 10 people there, a few too many to have too much of either coach's attention. I donno, I hate the larger classes. T & M handled it well, but blah.

The run... surprisingly (NOT), I skipped it. I've been really lazy about this lately and I have a feeling that'll kick me in the butt on Saturday!

On another note: it's December1st and it feels like December. I'm so not ready for colder weather!