It's been a while...

Oops. I just haven't gotten around to this blog in a while.

Let's see...my Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure was this past weekend. I think I'm just now recovering. It was an amazing weekend. Quick rundown:

Thursday: SB wakes up in the wee morning hours throwing up. That means little sleep for me. Not a good way to start this adventure. DH takes the morning shift with her; I take off the afternoon. She seemed ok, so I left as planned that evening for the hotel with DH and the team. I knew her grandparents could handle it, but she was ok. Got a decent night's sleep in the hotel and got up super early to get ready.

Friday: We head to the Opening Ceremonies. I lose a glove before we even start as I try to put my credential on my lanyard. Opening Ceremonies were emotional, but exciting. We head out walking. The cheering stations were amazing, and I loved seeing my hubby and parents at them. My hubby covered the beginning stuff for our local news station where he works. My parents met us at all the cheering stations Friday...very cool! Half the teams walks fast...the rest, my half, walks quite slowly. We finally make it back to camp, find our gear, shower. I visit the medical tent and get my feet taped up to try and keep the blisters at bay and get my hip worked out...thank goodness for those sports medicine folks. Her name was Linda and she was awesome! Sleeping in a tent in sub-40 weather was chilly to say the least. My sleeping bag/fleece liner combo proves quite warm, although the porta-potty trip is cold. Waking up in cold weather isn't good for sore muscles (which is why two team members headed to a hotel).

Saturday: We head out for Day 2, our longest. Once again, half the team is speedy...finishing by 3:30. The rest of us are almost last and come in at 6:30. Jessica and I battle blisters all day, hers much worse than mine. But we make it! And we promptly eat dinner and head to the hotel. Ahhhhh...a warm shower, carepted floors and a soft bed.

Sunday: Day 3. A short one, but ouch. I hurt so much worse. I self-cared my feet after the bandages came off in the shower. It worked. I learned a lot of tricks. I did visit one medical tent at lunch. Our team tried to stay together. I could tell the rest of the team struggled to go so slow. We loved seeing our kids and families in West End. The sight of those black team shirts was wonderful! Closing Ceremonies were good, but nothing beats connecting with our families again. The Favers and our family headed to Razoo's for dinner. Poor Jessica and I could barely walk. The best sign ever? "Limping is still walking"!!!



I took Monday off, and to be honest, a good night's sleep did wonders. I ended up weith a couple small blisters that healed very quickly and two sore spots, my left knee and my right Achilles. By Tuesday when I went back to school, I was pretty good. My left knee's still talking to me some, but it's not bad.

I actually ran 2 miles yesterday. It went ok. Nothing hurt too bad. It took a sec to get into a good form, but it worked. I need to get a long run in tomorrow...five miles maybe? I just have 24 days until my family's marathon relay. It turns out I am running a 10K leg. I thought I had a 5-miler. Oh, well.

And...the big news? I signed up for the Dallas Rock N Roll Half Marathon through the Susan G. Komen Pledge Program. I have another $250 to raise. My idea? I need to find a coroporate sponsor to pay the money...and I'll gladly airbrush tattoo their logo on my shoulder for my run! It's either that or I sell my miles...I'll run each mile for someone for $20 a mile. Hmmm....

I go walking...

My Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure team had a long training walk yesterday...a scheduled 18 miles that may have been closer to 20...still up for debate. I can't believe how hard it was! I thought my being able to run 6 miles at a time would make walking 18 not so bad. And I was wrong!

It uses a completely different set of muscles. My back is so sore. So are my calves. My quads were killing me yesterday after one rest stop. I really felt like I had cords in my legs. They aren't so bad this morning, but my calves are making up for it. It feels like I have tennis balls back there.

And blisters...wow. I felt them coming at about the 2-mile mark yesterday and covered them one set at the 3-mile mark. Then I covered another set at the half-way point while swtiching socks. I think they'll heal ok without lancing them, but I'm watching them closely.

My biggest fear is that I won't be able to run my 10K Saturday well. I'm going to take tomorrow off of running for sure. I'm hoping to do an easy run Tuesday and Thursday though. We'll see. I'm going to foam roll my legs and back, use Biofreeze and/or Icy Hot, take ibuprofen, and hopefully go get some compression sleeves for my calves.

I have no idea how I'll walk 20 miles three days in a row in November. I know that after this 10K, I'll work on more long walks. It's just that different than running.

It really was a lot of fun though. There were 6 members of the team there yesteray and it was funny watching us all walk around town, fanny packs on, hands in the air...silly stuff!

Intervals, ugh

I figured out a way to do my intervals without losing momentum...the treadmill. Yes, it's that dreaded contraption in the steamy garage, but it worked better than my own motivation on the road...at least for this particular day. I just set the treadmill to one of its preset workouts. Why I didn't think of that earlier, I have no idea. Just like I didn't think to use those workouts and the incline on regular workouts to simulate the road a little more. Duh. Well, you'd think, huh?

But, yesterday, I finally thought of it and set it to one in the "weight loss" category, mainly because I didn't have time to go through all of them to figure it all out at 5 a.m.

I set it to one with a max speed of 7.7 and max incline of 2.0. Wow. I normally do my easy runs at 5.5, maybe a 6 if I'm feeling tough. But I found the more I did the 7.7, the happier I was at 7.0. Crazy. In a good way. I may up tomorrow's speed on my regular run to see if I'm still comfortable there.

But, I realized after the fact, I was supposed to run hills this week. I don't know if that's possible on the treadmill, but I'm going to find out next week. I'm sure I'd be happier outdoors, but I just can't run in the dark that early, and it's still too hot after school.

Still, it was a good workout. I was pouring sweat...literally. And I had a second fan in there, albeit a small one. I'm looking at getting a big one to mount on the wall. Not that it would help. I did cut the workout a little short by about one interval. I guess I'm going to have to resort to getting up at 4:45. That was always my rule...no getting up when a 4 starts the time. But it's one of those rules I may have to break in order to get it all done.

Tomorrow is an easy run, 3 miles if I have enough time. I'm looking forward to my weekend long run outside, but even that may get shuffled around. My 3-Day team is walking 12 miles Saturday morning and I hate missing out on the team walk.