#kimrunsamarathon

Feels good to feel good.

I wrote this post, but I must have accidentally canceled it instead of submitting. It's probably for the best, because it was whiny and included a sentence to the effect of "I lied when I say I always feel better after I run." 

Around 2:30 pm Saturday, I managed to muster up the will/strength to go out for a walk/run. (Thanks for the encouragement, runeatsleepstudydream!) Due to the afternoon heat, I couldn't keep my heart rate under 150 while jogging, so I did some pretty intense power walking most of the time I was out. My muscles were confused.

About 2.6 miles in, I started feeling sick. I was too far away from any buildings I had access to, so I kept going. At 2.75 miles, I sat down on the stairs in front of one of the residence halls on campus. The sick feeling got worse, and I knew I couldn't go any further carrying my lunch with me...so I lost my lunch in broad daylight. Not fun, and I didn't feel better from that run. 

If I had to base my blog name on my activities for the past 4 days, my name would be kimpartieslikeacollegekid rather than kimrunsamarathon.

Fortunately, I was back in the game last night for 11 miles through Natchitoches in 3:02:54. That’s still a 16:37 average mile, but it felt awesome. I’d planned to do 5-8 miles but just kept going. My fast food-loving, beer-drinking self needed a positive change.

I jogged 5 miles Monday afternoon in 1:20:something. Sixteen minute miles are a common thing for me with the 180-formula, but I WILL get faster. I will say that running by heart rate makes afternoon miles in the heat less exhausting; power walking can keep my heart rate up for a bit before I need to jog again.

Tuesday, I played in the faculty/staff vs student flag football game. I don’t understand all of the football positions or what they do, so I required heavy coaching. The old people pulled out a victory, though, and it was tons of fun!

Work is crazy lately, and I am looking forward to a good run (maybe two) on Wednesday to soothe my soul.

My long run for last week was 10 miles, which I did on Saturday afternoon when it was already over 80 degrees outside. (Ew.) The result was a slow run--longer than it took me to run 13.1 miles in the Zydeco--but I did it. It was crazy how the heat affected my heart rate; I hadn't really thought about how much that would change things. Nevertheless, I powered through and kept my heart rate down for 10 miles. Yeesh.

I brought two GUs with me, one for around 3.5 miles and one for around 7.0 miles. At 3.5 miles, a chocolate raspberry Roctane GU was just what I needed. I picked myself back up for a bit and kept jogging. About half a mile after my first GU, I noticed that my other GU was no longer in the pocket of my water bottle, so I backtracked to see where I might have lost it.

When I turned around, I saw it less than a quarter of a mile back in the last crosswalk I'd been through. I remembered waving to a man driving a pickup truck who let me go ahead of him. There, on the ground, was my GU packet, splattered across the bricks of historic Front Street. The friendly man in the pickup truck (or maybe another driver) had run over the GU and left it to bake in the sun.

Well, crap.

Fortunately, I was heading back to campus, so there was some relief. I stopped by the boys dorm and refilled my water bottle with COLD water--so much better than the water that was cold 5+ miles ago but had warmed up in my hands. Without that, I might not have made it through. But I did, and now I can laugh about the memory of my salted caramel GU all over the road.

Quick update on recent running-related activities:

In preparing for my fall race, I thought I'd run/walk in 10:00/5:00 intervals. It maintains my run to walk ratio that worked for the Zydeco Half Marathon, but I'd only have to run 26 times over the course of the marathon. Plus, I'd have the whole summer to get used to those intervals.

I thought wrong.

A few people I know have switched to the Phil Maffetone "180-Formula" so I decided I'd give it a shot myself. I tried it out last week and liked it, so I've started using aerobic training.

A companion to the 180-Formula is the maximum aerobic fitness, or MAF, test, which is used to measure progress. It should be conducted about once a month, and I planned to do my first one on Saturday as a base...then I got sick and was in bed most of the day. 

I finally felt up to running again today, so I did my first MAF test over five miles. My times were as follows:

Mile 1: 14:43  Mile 2: 15:45 Mile 3: 16:17 Mile 4: 16:39 Mile 5: 16:08

After averaging 13:18 over 13.1 miles at the Zydeco, it's not much fun to run miles at these kinds of paces, but I feel so good. Not only that, but all kinds of people who have followed this process have seen spectacular results. I am excited.