Princesses

So, why the princess run, you ask? Well, to be honest, we had tried to get into the Nike Women’s run in San Francisco this year. Instead of a medal, you get a specially made Tiffany necklace from a firefighter, so they have to do a random draw for the spots they have because it’s basically the greatest idea ever. Alas, we didn’t get in, but had decided to run a half marathon, so we needed to find something else. I hate to say Disney was runner up, but now that we’re registered, we think it’ll be just as much fun, and a heck of a lot less hills. We get to dress up like princesses for it AND run a race through Disneyworld, which should be a blast!  Seriously, what could be more fun than that? Plus, the medal looks pretty, and it is a race geared more towards women, so the race shirts should be pretty nice too. In order to decide which princess we wanted to be, we took this simple quiz here:

http://toys.about.com/library/quiz/disneyprincess/bldisneyprincessquiz.htm

Now, we realize this quiz is geared for children, especially with answers like “I have to do what my parents tell me to”, but we needed help deciding which princess and a good quiz never lies. As you can see from our profile images, we are going as Belle, Arial and Mulan, so we’re going to need costumes that show off our princessly sides, yet also wick moisture away as we run 21K through Disney World. I’m thinking since none of us can sew, it’ll be along the lines of child size tutus and glitter crowns over our running gear. We’re hoping that with Halloween not too far away, we’ll be able to find suitable accoutrements!

I think this is what pain feels like?

If you've seen Dr Horrible's Sing-a-Long blog, you'd get this.

Remember how I said my 6.5K run felt good and I could have done more? I think this is a good example of why resting improves performance. I ran that 6.5K on Monday quickly (for me) and felt good during and after.  The next day, I did my usual 4K, which felt really good too, then in the evening played soccer. We were short players on the field the whole game, so I ran the whole 90 minutes.  Well, at least until the end when I was mostly shuffling around the field wheezing and clutching my sides, unable to keep up with the other team AT ALL. Did I mention it was 2C out and I was wearing mittens? The next day, my 5K was like torture. I ran slower than the day before, and had to stop to walk a couple of times.  My legs hurt, my lungs hurt, and I felt like my training had gone backwards. Did I listen to my body and maybe take a break from the schedule? No, on Thursday I plod along with the training schedule and complete another torturous 4K run that involved more walking, wheezing and trying to keep legs from falling off. It was my slowest 4K in months and I hated pretty much every second of it. For the weight training that went with it, I could only do arms because my legs hurt too much.  Now today, both upper and lower body feel like they went through a wringer. I'm supposed to cross train for 50 minutes today, and I think I might take my own advice and take it easy. I'll still do something, but I wonder if eating pizza counts as cross training?

Better late than never!

In Disney's Alice In Wonderland, the White Rabbit is well known for saying "I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date!"

That statement applied to me today when I opted NOT to do my long run on either Saturday or Sunday.  The weather was terrible, I was tired, and so on--I just didn't wanna.  That means this morning I woke up wracked with guilt over skipping it and a gut wrenching fear of not being able to complete a 10K race in 6 weeks.  I went for a run at lunchtime and did 6.5K in 43 minutes flat, and did the last kilometer 30 seconds faster than any of the first 6.   Maybe I will be able to do this 10K after all!

Week 3...almost

Getting to the last day of week 3 tomorrow and was actually on track all week...cross trained on Monday and Friday and ran Tuesday through Thursday, plus strength training.  I think the fact that it rained for 10 days straight in Calgary meant I had nothing to do but stick with it and pound it out on the treadmill. I have to do 6.5K this weekend, and I'm sort of looking forward to it, as I  feel like the whole running thing is slowly starting to come back to me.  Also, in certain lights and at just the right angles, my abs are looking sort of awesome!

Also, I added a new map below.  We thought it would be fun to keep track of the distance of every run and see how close we would actually get to Disneyland on foot during the course of our training.  We're only going to count running distances, not cross training, just to keep it like a half marathon would be.  Since I'm Google Map Illiterate and that simple map took me 45 minutes to figure out, I'm only going to update it on the first of each month, but below you can see our progress up to September 1...halfway to the border, we're currently in Claresholm!  I'm guessing by October first, we could be virtual shopping at the Target in Great Falls and refueling at Fuddruckers.  Check it out!

Lastly, since Halloween is already all over the shelves, I've been checking out the Disney Princess costumes. I'm thinking if I can find a large child's costume, I can hack it up to make a princess running outfit since I have zero sewing skillz.  So far no luck, but I got some laughs tonight at Toys R Us when I tried to cram myself into an "age 3 and up" costume.  I swear, it almost fit.  And the accessories in that aisle are awesome; I might carry a wand for the run.

A few more fails

Two more days by myself and I seem to be getting worse instead of better.  The "flexible" schedule turned into absolute slovenliness until yesterday, when someone actually came to my house to pry me off the couch and onto the Weaselhead path by the reservoir on what has been the only non-rainy day of the past week. Where am I, Vancouver?  So, I think I got my long run in yesterday, it was at least 5K, maybe a bit longer, but I was actually wearing shoes and moving forward, which was a total success in my books.

The weird thing is that this isn't my first half marathon...or my first Disney run! I did the Disneyland half marathon in September 2009, and when I started training for that one, I couldn't run for 15 seconds straight.  By race day, I could run K after K after K!  I did that training by myself, so why is this so hard now? 

 Everyone gets a medal, not just the first 5 thousand finishers!

Oh, right, because now that I've realized it's more fun to run outside with other people than inside on a treadmill, I can't go back to the hamster wheel...even if Food Network is on and it feels like I'm running towards bacon wrapped cheese poppers.  I'll be very happy when my fellow princesses get home, finding other people to haul me out on the trail is exhausting!