Location: Houston Marathon Course

Distance: 21.67 miles

llr

The bad: It was freakin’ cold, and thanks to the hard concrete, my knees felt like all the cartilage had melted away.

The good:  I covered 21 mi, despite reeeaaaalllly wanting to turn around at the halfway mark.

Location: Memorial Park Loop

Distance: 1.49 mi

Pace: 9:54

Ok, so in truth this run didn’t really count. When I got to Memorial Park, I went into the gym to change…..and realized that I had forgotten to pack my running socks. Auuuugh. I went ahead and put on my shoes and walked out to where Lee and Yong were.   Yong said she’d run without socks before, and I guess I was being too hopeful (besides, I was already at the Park) so I decided to go ahead and run. Besides, I could handle 3 miles, right?  Well, I should have remembered that Yong is an uber-runner (16 marathons last year?? hello??) so her feet can probably handle more things than us mere mortals.

I started off with Lee and Steve, who are both FAST.   I told Lee to run ahead since I was slower, and he said he was going to take it easy….though his “easy” is still a hard tempo run for me, I was glad for the workout.  Anyways, after the first mile, I started feeling some scratching on my foot. By 1.5 miles, I knew it was a blister. Crap.  I told Lee and Steve I had to stop, and once I did…OUCH.  Ugh. Lesson learned - don’t try running without socks.

Location: Sealy, TX

Distance: 13.70 miles

Smart Sealy Run

(oops, got a lot of catching up to do)

The SMART Training for Saturday morning was a trip out to Sealy for what turned out to be good hillwork.  I was driver for the Memorial Park Posse - picked up Maureen around 5am, stopped by the 24hr Starbucks in the Galleria, picked up Randi, then made it to Terry Hershey around 5:50am to meet up with Hoang and the other Striders.   There were three cars in the Strider caravan.

Bad storms were in the forecast, and they hit dead on while we were on I-10.  The wind and rain were so strong, the rain was going sideways.  Visibility was almost nil - I could barely make out the taillights in front of us.   We also watched the temperature gauge drop from 71 to 59.   We started laughing - what the hell were we doing?   Fortunately, we were going against the direction of the storm, so by the time we got to Sealy, the skies were relatively clear.

We exited I-10 and Steeeve led us through some windy roads through the countryside.  After about 20 minutes, we made a pit stop at what looked like an abandoned barn.  The weather was cold and windy, so I put on gloves and another shirt.  We got back on the road and followed Steeve through more winding roads.  We wondered how Steeeve knew where to go.  Randi said ominously, “He’s taking us the long way so we can’t escape….”

Eventually, we made stops to drop off water bottles.  The route was 13 miles out and back, so we stopped every 2 miles to stash bottles.

We parked on the side of the road (next to some super tiny and very cute goats), and headed out.  It was still wet, but the sky was clearing the air was fresh.  I ran with Barb and Maureen.  The first few miles were good…..of course, going DOWN that huge hill at the start really helped.  The first half of the run was OK - the hills didn’t feel too bad, and the weather was perfect at that point.   But, after we made the turnaround, things started to go downhill (harhar).  Maybe it was because I only brought one bottle with sports drink in it, and I stupidly didn’t bring any gu/gel (Barb gave me one of hers).  But, the run back was so much harder, and somehow the hills felt taller and steeper than before.

By mile 10, I was pretty grumpy.   I even started contemplating switching from the Full Marathon to the Half.  I was arguing with myself in my head……I could just do the Half on Jan 13th, still receive a Half Marathon finisher’s shirt and mug but just no official time…..how important is an official time to me?….I’ve already done a Marathon this year…..will I regret it?…..won’t I be prouder of myself to say I’ve done three marathons instead of two?    By this time, Barb and Maureen were long gone and I was shuffling along, doing 5-1s and feeling pretty defeated.  Steeeve drove up in his car looking for me, and I knew that meant I was the last one.  ugh.   I said I wanted to walk it in - the idea of sagging it back to the start was too much.  I handed him my car keys for the Memorial Park Posse, and Steeve joked that I was slow because of the huge weight of my keys (it’s true - I have a zillion keys).   His comment made me laugh, which really helped with my gloominess, and I (slowly) jogged it back in.

At the end, everyone cheered and formed an archway for me to run through.   Striders rock!

Afterwards, we at breakfast at Tony’s.  The grits were so good, I wanted to cry.

Route: Jackson Hill

Type: Intervals

On Thursday night, we did intervals. Warm up to Blossom. Then starting at the corner of Blossom and Crestwood, we ran the first block slowly (30% effort), the next block moderately (60% effort) and the 3rd block fast (90% effort). We repeated these 30/60/90 intervals to the Jackson Hill footbridge and back. A difficult workout, but thankfully the weather was pretty chilly so it wasn’t as bad as Tuesday’s run. Some blocks were much longer than others…..a great thing when we were on our 30% effort leg, of course. I tried working on my breathing (quicker, focusing on breathing out).

Tomorrow: 13.6 miles of hills in Sealy!

Event: Striders 10th Annual Christmas Lights Run

Location: Tanglewood

Distance: 3.5 mi

Time: 41:15

Avg Pace: 11:45

Avg HR: 166

Temp: 52

Just before 7pm, I arrived at the Cafe Express in Uptown Park for my first Strider’s Christmas Lights Run. The event was an easy, social jog through Tanglewood to look at the Xmas lights. I invited Suzanne, and about 30(?) Striders showed up. But, I was the only one in holiday garb - I had a tinsel scarf, reindeer antlers that light up and play music, and a blinking Rudolph nose.

Despite xeroxed maps and numerous Garmins among us, we got lost. But the run was pretty leisurely and took us along streets with the most decorated houses. The best was a house at the corner of Rocky Road and Longmont. Almost every inch was covered in lights, huge streamers of lights and snowflakes hanging from trees and the best was the flashing landing strip for Santa’s sleigh.

Location: Jackson Hill –> Waugh –> Memorial

Distance: 5.24 mi

Avg Pace: 10:43
Avg HR: 182
Splits/HR:
1: 10:17 (174)
2: 10:22 (182)
3: 11:29 (181)
4: 11:24 (185)
5: 10:55 (188)
Temp: 75

The SMART training run was the Jackson Hill route. Maureen wasn’t there (boo!), so I ran with Hoang for the first half. Oh my god, talk about a tempo run, I was dying by the time we stopped for water at Jackson Hill. The weather sucked too - hot and humid. It felt like July.

During the second half, Matt hung back to run with me. I told him I’d be OK running back to the Park, since I always feel bad holding faster runners back. He stayed anyways, which was nice because it was dark and my hat light had broken AGAIN before the run. Annoying. Maybe I need to start wearing a coal miner’s hat during the nightly SMART runs.

By the time we were back near Blossom, I was struggling again and gasping for air. When I get exhausted or feel like I’m going too fast, my habit is to slow down my breathing and take long, deep breaths. I think I do it to maximize my oxygen intake, but also to calm myself down physically. Matt said I should take quicker/shallower breaths, and focus on forcefully breathing out. Also, to speed up my breathing before starting a hill, because it ensures there’s energy in the “bank” during that extra effort. I’m going to start trying to work on my breathing - especially at the hilly 13.6 miler in Sealy this Saturday.

Location: Memorial Loopdeeloop

Distance: Run/walk 3 miles

Met Minh and Sam at Memorial for an easy evening run. When we got halfway around the loop, Sam’s shoulder started hurting so we switched to run/walk the rest of the way.

The weather is hot and humid - I can’t believe it’s mid December and I’m still using air conditioning.