The past few days have felt like a whirlwind, and all of a sudden it’s already the first Wednesday of 2006. Here are the Cliff Notes updates:

• Did 10 miles on parts of Kingwood’s Greenbelt (which spans a total of 75 miles) last Friday. Ran along the banks of three lakes, ending with Lake Houston. It was gorgeous.
• Holiday by Greenday is my new favorite song to run to, followed by Take California by the Propellerheads.
• Saw Wolf Creek. I hate, HATE horror movies, and covered my eyes so much that I essentially listened to the movie more than I actually watched. In the end, though, it was a really bad movie and my anticipation of bad things happening in the movie was scarier than the movie itself. Moral of the movie: Don’t accept water from unshaven Aussies bearing a strong resemblance to Harland Williams.
• Also saw Exorcism of Emily Rose. That one didn’t scare me at all. The movies that scare me are the ones that have an evil murderer hunting people down. Ghosts and demons aren’t scary at all. Crazy people scare me more than Casper.
• Saw Munich too. Very powerful. As a movie, I think it’s one of Steven Spielberg’s best.
• Got a new pair of my usual Brooks Adrenaline GTS 6, which is what I’ll be wearing at the Marathon. ACK! Just one more week!!!!!
• I drove the Marathon route this weekend so that I can replay it in my head as I mentally prepare for MDay. I’m going to start breaking the route into small sections so that it feels more like a bunch of smaller consecutive runs versus one huge 26.2.

So, I had a lot of catching up to do, which explains the four new posts:

• A review of my volunteer experience with the Striders’ Longest Long Run
• Two running logs
• A deep, deep review of the crucial plot themes of Narnia.

Also, thanks for the Marathon tips! I’ve added the new ones…..please keep them coming!!!

 

On December 24th, I volunteered at the Houston Striders‘ annual Longest Long Run. The LLR is 21 miles of the actual Houston Marathon course, starting from the George R. Brown Convention Center and ending at the Picnic Loop at Memorial Park. It’s a great training run for the Marathon.

As a member of both HoustonFit and the Striders, I was fortunate to have a choice between two 21-mile runs. Although I knew the Striders run would be more fun, I opted for HoustonFit run the previous week because I wanted to get it out of the way, and it was also a good opportunity to recover from my disastrous 30K race. So, with the 21 miles under my belt, I was looking forward to helping at the Striders run.

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So, I’ve decided to run tomorrow’s 21-miler the way I plan to for the Marathon….taking it VERY slow and easy, walking through the water stops and stopping to stretch the ITB. Since my ultimate goal for the Marathon is simply to finish under 6 hours (the course time limit), my pace needs to be below 13:30 min/miles. That really doesn’t sound bad at all. Hopefully, I’ll see Jon and Steve at the run tomorrow (hope you feel better, Holden!).

I took a break from running this week and spent time on the bike and elliptical machines instead. After Sunday’s race, I didn’t want to burn out on running. Hopefully, my legs will feel fresh for tomorrow’s run.

In other news….I got a phone call yesterday from Bill, the HMSA 25K race director, who said that my medium windshirt was ready for pickup from FleetFeet in the Village. (They had run out of shirts when I finished and I was put on a raincheck list). When I got to FleetFeet, they said they never received any mediums, so I ended up with a small windshirt in a very unique neon green color. I wasn’t sure what a windshirt was, but I discovered it looks just like a sweatshirt with very, very, very thin, tent-like material that makes ruffling noises if there’s a breeze. heh.

Also, I’ve signed up to volunteer at the Houston Strider’s Longest Long Run on Dec. 24th. Yay!

The Recovery:
First of all, thanks SO MUCH to everyone who left such supportive and encouraging comments following my 30K survival shuffle. I truly, truly appreciate it.

My 30K results are finally posted. For about a day, only finish times up to 4:00 hours were posted and I was worried that perhaps I didn’t actually finish the course within regulation time. Then, I checked the results again and there I was, with a time of 4:08. They don’t have any 10K splits for me and listed my chip time the same as the gun time, but it’s probably only a difference of 10-20 seconds so no biggie.

I’m pretty much recovered from Sunday. No more soreness/stiffness, and mentally I’m feeling a lot better than I was on Monday. Last night at the gym, I decided to forego a run on the dreadmill and spent 45 min on the bike instead. It was nice to take a break from running and give my quads a much needed workout.

The 21-Miler:
Saturday’s HoustonFit training run is 21 miles and has all the works - police officers at traffic intersections, water stops, a first aid station and EMTs on bikes. Plus, Fort Bend Fit is joining us. With a 5:30am start time, those Fort Bend Fit people are gonna have one verrrry early commute. I have a hard enough time making it from the Med Center.

Anyways, I haven’t decided whether I’m running the full 21 miles (stopping at water stops), or joining the 5/1 group (run 5 minutes, walk 1 minute, repeat). Doing the course 5/1 would be easier on my legs and I’d still get the mileage in….on the other hand, this is the longest run before January 15th, and it would be good to treat this as a full “dress rehearsal” for the Marathon. Anyways, I’m going to see how I feel on Friday and make a decision then.

The Countdown:
The marathon is a month from TOMORROW. Amazing. Although there isn’t a whole lot of training time left before I start tapering, there are some goals I want to work on before January 15th:

• Strength - I really haven’t been keeping up with any pilates/core exercises or strength training like I should, and I can feel the difference in my runs and overall fitness. So, back to a regular routine of stretching and weights!
• Diet - Basically, I need to stop eating so much crap. heh. More greens, more protein, more complex carbs. Not a problem - except for the fact that I’ll probably have to cut back on my visits to Star Pizza. mmmm…deep dish Margarita pizza…..
• Runs - Now that my work hours are calming down for the holidays, I’ll be getting out of the office earlier (6pm) giving me better running options than the dreadmill. Ugh. It’s definitely better than not running at all, but it’s not much fun running on a human-sized hamster wheel.
• Mental - Since Sunday, I’ve been reading various articles on sports psychology for runners, mental training, etc. I need to strengthen my strategies against negative thoughts that might pop up before/during a race. It’s been really interesting to read sports psychology theories on peformance, cognition and behavior among athletes. Yes, I’m a nerd.
• Sleep - I need to get more sleep during the week. Pretty simple and straightforward.

It may be too close to January 15th for these things to make much difference (especially the strength training), but at least working on them will give me better confidence on race day.

• I still have not seen Rent. *sob*
• Strider’s Holiday party!! I was running late (surprise?), and didn’t make it there until dinner was almost over but it was really great to meet so many Striders. I knew the club was big, but the number of people filling the banquet room reminded me why the Striders is one of Houston’s biggest running clubs - wow. I tried looking for some fellow Houston Running Bloggers, but couldn’t see anyone and I felt too shy to start wandering around the tables…..though as I walked into the room I heard the MC announce Cassie’s name as a winner of one of the door prizes. Yay Cassie! They gave out awards to the top runners and a good number of the awardees had 6 to 7 minute mile paces for half and full marathons. Hello - those are some seriously FAST people. I sat through the award portion of the evening in general awe. Afterwards, I chatted a bit with Yong, Jessica, Steve, Judith and her husband.
• Project Runway! Love it. My favorites so far are Santino and Diana.
• I’m skipping my usual HoustonFit run to join the Houston Running Blogger’s Run the Woodlands 5K tomorrow morning. Since I’m also doing the Houstonian 30K on Sunday morning, I’m planning to run tomorrow’s 5K really slow and easy. There’s a post-race Blogger gathering where we’ll hang out and do blogger-y things. Yay.

Ok. I’m crashing in Kingwood to save some precious morning commute time to The Woodlands. I’ll probably save just 15 minutes, but those 15 minutes are precious at 6:30am.