Skunk Cabbage Recap

Hi! I'm still alive. I just didn't post anything, because well I didn't run since the Skunk Cabbage, and I was busy getting my video together for Nuun's Hood to Coast Relay Team! That's right, I decided to send in my application for HTC, and actually managed to shoot and edit a video for it.

But yeah, so here's my very late race recap for the Skunk Cabbage in a nutshell.

The Awesome:

I met two bloggers, Jenny and Jamie, and their husbands P and Mike, respectively. (This was actually my third time meeting Jamie). They were everything that I expected from reading their blog and more. The meet up was fun!

Because it didn't happen unless there's a picture to prove it. Courtesy of Jamie. 

I felt great during the entire run except for my hip pain came back again. But other than the fact that my whole left side of my body was going to hell, I felt fantastic. Surprisingly, not having a Garmin made the run go by so much faster.

The Bad:

After mile 1, my hip started hurting. I seriously considered dropping out, but I just lowered my speed and kept on going. (Probably a bad idea). The whole time, I was thinking about how good compression shorts would feel on my hip. At one point, I really wanted to punch a fellow runner out so that I could steal her shorts. I know, I am a terrible person when I'm not feeling well. But let's just focus on how I didn't do that and just ran in my own pants. 

The result:

I finished in 2:04:13, which was a lot better than I expected. 

Stefan (bf) finished his first ever half in 2:24:55, and didn't walk once. 

Everyone else, Jamie, Mike, and Jenny PR'd! I'm not sure about P. I think he usually runs faster. 

Even though my marathon is rapidly approaching, I decided to take a complete break this week from running. I figured better under-trained than majorly injured. The only form of exercise I got was running to class.

Sorry for this somewhat of a boring post. I just didn't feel right writing no recap at all. So here's a short one, and tomorrow it's back to regular posting! I hope you guys's week have been great! Now I'm off to catch up on blog reading! Oh and feel free to tell me what you think about my application video!


Here's more T-Rex Problem.

My marathon training is derailed, but at least I can hug other dinosaurs or humans. 

Running Long

I finally got back on track and started off this week (yesterday) with a long run. I also have a new distance PR by 0.5 miles. I know that I have the half marathon this weekend, and I actually should be taking it easy, but I had good reasons to go running for 14.5 miles.

"We thought you'd be over the rookie mistakes and not go for a distance PR so close to the half and after the long break."

1. I needed to get back into the distance running mode and on with my marathon training
2. The race this Saturday is purely for fun. I'm not looking to PR and have no time goals for it at all
3. I ran over the half marathon course, so it's relevant to race preparation

For the first time ever, I ran a course pre-race and ran a long run without my Garmin. The course was very boring, and I fear that running the course beforehand made me dread running it again.

As for the Garmin, it refused to catch signal and I didn't feel like waiting for it. Also, the bf had his own garmin that I thought I could hijack. And because I am such a nice girlfriend, I ended up leaving him around mile 5 to keep my pace. We stopped briefly then so that I can figured out what time we started running so that I can keep a rough track of the time it took me to run the course.

Since, I didn't want to be completely stupid and get injured, I even took walk breaks when I wanted to. I never do that during a long run! Surprisingly, including the walk break, I ended up with a 10:38/mile ish pace.

It was a nice surprise, since I thought I had been running 11:00/mile or slower. In addition, other than being sore with tight muscles, I am pretty certain that I didn't cause any lasting damage. I'm ready to get out for some easy miles tomorrow.

If I can only be graceful like that elephant, and be able to run more than 14.5 miles consecutively, I'd be a happy girl.

Now, I have a great internal debate. For the first time ever, I am considering racing without a Garmin. I know that if I have a watch on my wrist, it'll stress me out even though I'm treating it as a training run. However, without the watch, I'm afraid that I'll go out too fast or get discouraged from thinking that the finish line is farther away than it really is.


What are your thoughts on "naked" racing? Btw, thanks for all your comments about the great hair debate. It made me feel better about trying to shampoo every other day. And sorry about the disconnectedness of the post. I wanted to write something about the run, but it's getting to be past 1AM still with plenty to get done before sleeping.