Thursday, October 13, 2011

Mixing it up!

Mission do-what-I-feel-like is continuing.  Some days I like having the flexibility of doing what I want to and other days I miss the structure of a plan.

I continue to struggle with morning motivation lately.  I have resumed running with friend(s) on Tuesdays and Thursdays downtown.  The accountability factor here can not be underrated as these are the only two mornings lately that I always force myself up.  

For now, the only real plan I am trying to follow is Furman's First to the Finish half marathon plan.  I like the idea of 3 key runs and doing whatever I feel like the rest of the week.  I am planning to run Inland Half on 11/6 and then Fall Classic on 11/20.  Would love to get a half marathon PR this fall!  (Must beat 1:33:18 but targetting sub 1:30).  So I got two shots on two flat courses.

The thing I feel I really need to focus on would be dropping a few pounds as that always makes running easier.  My intake has plenty of room for improvement and I have been really slacking here.  I must say although I love my husband's mom, she is killing me with the Peanut Butter cupcakes and then the whoopies she has given us this week.  Then there was my mom's birthday which we celebrated Saturday at my house and there was waaay too much left over ice cream which we made sure did not go to waste.  Oh I have not behaved.  Not only that, even the food has been a little bad and I have paid dearly during my runs this week as I wince trying to make it to the bathroom.   Must find a way to focus here...somehow!

In other news, I really enjoyed this past weekend.  I got to see several of the ladies Saturday morning for Jen's Birthday / Pancake Run and we hit the the trails of North Chagrin.  Saturday afternoon I headed to the Cleveland Triathlon Club picnic and took my pumpkin, Ember with me.  She was SOOOO cute playing with the other doggies and got so wore out she needed a nap in the middle of all the action!  

Sunday we got out for the first time in awhile and hit the mountain bike trails at West Branch.  This was an awesome time riding and despite not riding a lot this year, I felt very comfortable navigating the rock gardens and just really enjoyed myself!

Just wishing the nice weather would never come to an end!  Also, there are just not enough hours in the day to spend with my lil cutie pie!

5 comments:

Big Daddy Diesel said...

I love the idea of "Mission do-what-I-feel-like"

Ember is soooooo cute

Velma said...

Love the puppy pics!

Kristin Deaton said...

You should have been at Rev3Anderson and you could have met the person responsible for creating the Furman's First Half Marathon plan. I graduated from there and he was there with 6 triathletes from the school. Scott Murr is super fast. Nice fella too. Oh and your puppy is so freaking adorable makes me want another Golden Ret puppy

Anonymous said...

Good Luck with the PR goals! Ember is so cute! Puppies are the best things put on this earth I am convinced...and no matter how old, are still puppies :)

Matty O said...

First off, if you have no structured workouts... ummm I would schedule PUPPY PLAY TIME EVERY MORNING! haha. When we got our pups, I was up every morning and playing with them for like an hour before I went to work... I was horrible going to work haha.

The plan I follow for halfs and fulls only runs 4 days a week. 2 of which are base runs. So really there are only 3 efforts during the week, one effort is long base run, a speed work, and a tempo. Simple, straight forward, and in my opinion, it delivers results :)

Good luck at the half. All I can say is when the lactic acid starts flooding your quads, that is when I really turned on my mental game to not give into this.

More puppy pics ;) the last one is adorable!