Running without music

I am one of those people who run without music. Most people are surprised that I don't get bored. I'm sure I would love running with music, except I find dealing with headphones annoying on a run. I also never create play lists. I somehow find time to spend hours on random sites like pinterest, but not enough time to create a running play list.

Besides I sort of like the respect I get from my non-running friends. Does that make me a bad person? Just a tiny bit, I guess. Additionally, I don't want to get dependent on running with music. In my mind, running with music is probably so much more interesting that once I start, I am afraid that I won't be able to stop. Since I am already so dependent on my garmin and take running breaks to answer unimportant texts on my phone, I'd rather not become dependent on another piece of technology.

So instead of listening to tunes, I just imagine that I'm a super cool secret agent running away from bad guys. I think I must actually get really into it and make faces, because I get weird looks when the story gets really exciting in my head.

Look at those intense faces. 

But nothing spurs me to run faster than an imaginary pack of foreign thugs bent on catching me. I play out a whole movie scenario in my head, where I'm usually doing very cool stuff.

Like this. Scaling a super tall glass building. Totally up my alley. 

Is that weird? I totally understand if none of you want to be my friend anymore. But it's like crack. I've always had an overactive imagination, which up till now has been used for scaring myself in the bathroom thinking about ghost stories. Why is closing my eyes in the shower or looking up from washing my hands into a mirror so scary?

This is definitely the sort of kick ass thing I want to do. In my imagination. I actually have no desire to be shot at in real life. 

What cool things do you do when you're running? Do you listen to music? Is listening to music as addicting as I fear? Am I just crazy for wanting to be a cool, smooth secret agent? 

P.S. - Thanks for all your advice. They are very helpful. I'm probably going to run a mile or two at my race pace tomorrow. And then go for a short relaxed run on Thursday as my last run before the half. 

You know you're a runner . . . (Part2)

When you decide to celebrate your birthday by signing up for a relatively expensive half marathon that's held right on your birthday. 

Tons of my non running friends thought I was crazy. Now I'm starting to think maybe I was out of my mind. It was super great to sign up for it in November thinking I was going to beast training and set a super speedy PR. 

Nothing like a shiny medal to say happy birthday. Even better that it spins! 

But then Thanksgiving and finals rolled around where I did zero running. Now I'm having serious misgivings about the race. Maybe I'll end up being slower than my very first half and end up ruining the whole day with a bad race experience. 

But I'm hoping that I can at least PR even by a little bit. All I have to do is keep a faster than 9:40 pace. Easy, right? One thing that's totally great about this race is that it should be mostly flat at sea level elevation. My other races were in upstate NY and had tons of rolling hills. 

One thing that I am worried about is the heat. I know that it's crazy complaining about it being too hot in the middle of January. But I've noticed that it's actually quite hot around the time that I'd probably be starting. Hopefully, if I rein myself in from starting off too fast in the beginning, a PR is attainable despite the heat. 

Dante is totally telling me, "Please woman, you can totally PR. Stop freaking out." Or he's asking for personal space. I like to think it's the former. 

Those are my goals for the half. Hopefully, when I feel like giving up, I'll remember how I told everyone who reads my blog that I can PR. 

Now comes the main reason for this post. I wanted to get everyone's opinion about tapering. The race is this Sunday. And my last long was the weekend before last. I actually didn't run last weekend, because I didn't feel like it. Also, I could sort of feel a beginning of shin splints coming on and didn't want to chance an injury so close to the race. 

This is what i did instead of running. I tortured my dog and forced it to hang out with me. 

But now I have no idea what to do about the rest of the week. Today, I covered 4.6 miles at a relaxed pace. But now I feel like maybe I should have ran faster or longer. 

Should I squeeze in a speed workout? Should I cover 4 miles? 5 miles? Maybe 6, 7 or even 8? And what should I do on Friday and Sat? Should my last run be on Friday? Or should I rest Friday and go for a really relaxed run on Sat? Any advice would be helpful. Thanks and I hope everyone had a great start to their week!

More New Years Goals

I know that everyone's been beating this horse to death already. But I've thought of some really important resolutions that I felt bad not having on my blog at all. After all, I would want accountability this year for my goals so that I can actually achieve some of them. Shoot for the moon, right?

So here's a very late, but important resolutions.

1. Break 2 hours in the half marathon. 
In my last post, my marathon plans sort of drove all other racing goals from my mind. But marathon training won't take the whole year, so I still will have a good 6 months to work on speed. This goal probably won't happen in my nearest half marathon, which is in a week. But it WILL happen.

2. Learn to do this. 

Source I would love to be able to do this. 

Originally it was this:

But clearly, this isn't happening. Maybe in 2013. 

This means, I need to make stretching a regular part of training. It'll also help my running and recovery, or so I hear.

3. Hold a plank for more than a minute. 

I would like to get abs some day. And at my current core fitness level, it's not going to happen. I have a hard time holding it for 30 seconds which is pitiful. 

4. Break under 6 minutes for a mile time. 

I would really love it if this happens. It will also probably lead me to getting a PR for a 5K, which is always great. 

5. Run more than 1000 miles this year. 

My A goal is to run 1500, because 15 is my lucky number. But I will say at least 1000 miles since I have no idea how busy I will be once I graduate. 

Have a great weekend everyone? Does anyone have any last minute resolutions that you want to be held accountable for? I do a great guilt trip. 

You know you're a runner . . .

When you talk to your bf about how he should commit and stop being afraid of commitment, you're actually talking about signing up for a race.

Yup. I am actually in the process of convincing him to run a marathon with me.

I convinced him to do this awesome but girly thing with me. And posted embarrassing pics on fb. So convincing him to become a runner, no problem.  Right?

~~~~ Aside: If you are ever in Santa Barbara California, rent the above bike. It's so much fun. And so much easier than a tandem. We couldn't make it out the parking lot in a tandem, so we had to go back and switch to this side by side double bike ~~~~~~

But after I snuck in a GPS watch to his annual Christmas wish list that gets sent out to his family, he received a pair of vibrams and a Garmin 305. So now, he has no choice but to run. And what better way to say thank you to the gift givers than a marathon registration!

Unfortunately, he's never been a runner and he can't really start running until mid January. The race that I'm looking at is at the end of April. I think/hope that he'll be ready to at least walk/crawl 26.2 miles by then.

I am now in the process of convincing him to commit and fork over those dollars. What can I say, misery loves company. And training for a marathon in frigid upstate NY weather would be a lot better with company.

Yup, I'm a great gf. Oh and cute finish line photos would be awesome. That is, if he can make it to the end and doesn't have to resort to riding in the sad wagon to the finish line, because he couldn't meet the time cut off.

Actually I'm very worried that once he starts to run, he'll get so much faster and leave me behind in the dust. Does that make me too self obsessed? Probably. But I like knowing I can run farther and faster than he can. At least for now.

Face of a man who will hopefully be a marathon finisher. 

So wish me luck! I will hopefully tell you about my first ever marathon registration soon! Do you ever try to convince others to join in his running madness? How do you do it? 

Exciting Morning

For my dog, that is. He had a little morning visitor.

Look how cute it is. I was tempted to try and domesticate it. 

Thanks to this little guy, my dog went into a barking frenzy that started at 5AM and lasted for a good part of morning. So an easy shake out run did not happen. 

Dante, my dog, actually barked right on top of the opossum with his spit dripping on the little guy. But he didn't attempt to bite it or any other thing that normal German Shepherds might do. He just got super excited and wanted to play. 

Please play with me? 

As a result, instead of going for a run, I took Dante out on a long walk in an attempt to let the opossum get over his fear and escape. 

Fun Fact: LA county animal control does not remove wild animals. I've always thought that was what animal control was for. I guess now I know. 

But tomorrow, I will definitely get in some more of the "junk miles." Although, I do think that they are helping me love running. And I will have company. 

Remember when I said that I've been learning tennis from my parents' friend. And how the lesson went on for over two hours? If not, here you go.  Well, tomorrow he wanted to run at least four miles with me. Revenge time! J.K. I will hopefully start him on a road to a marathon. He has the desire, but has a hard time running more than two miles due to boredom. So I'm supposed to force him to run four. 

I love running with people along the beach. It feels very relaxed. And there are no hills. 

Hopefully, I can run faster than he can. Otherwise, it will be embarrassing. Since he's considerably older (my parents' age) and hasn't ran in a long time. That's what sucks about being known as a person who runs a lot. Everyone expects me to be fast. 

Hope everyone's New Year is starting off nicely with a good run. And I forgot to mention this last time, but I plan on running 1000+ miles this year. Who's with me? 

Happy New Year!

There's nothing like kicking off the New Year with a great 12 miles run! Since I've last posted, I've been trying to spend time with my family and friends and run more in preparation for my third half marathon.

I helped the aca dec team prepare their speeches for county competition.  AKA played and took photos while the other alumni did the commenting and improving their speeches. 

And since it's the new year, I felt compelled to take a moment out of family celebration to write about some of my goals.

One huge goal that I have for 2012 is to run a  marathon. Lofty? Yes. But it's something that I've always wanted to do. Before I started running in June, my resolution was always to lose weight. But my fitness goal this year is to run a marathon. And if that goal makes me eat bucketfuls of pasta and more than my considerably taller bf, then so be it.

Like this lovely bowl of frozen yogurt. I even made it healthy with fruit. 

Another goal that I have is to love the training. I am a big fan of junk miles. In fact, for my third half, majority of my training is turning out to be junk miles. I get too stressed out about trying to meet paces and having a tough workout. I want to reach a better balance between hard workouts and fun runs. My main priority is to love running despite the rigors of training. This one is sort of not a great goal, because there's no photo to be had here. And also no way for me to really measure progress.

Blogging regularly. That's a good goal, right? There's been tons of times when I wanted to quit running and blogging. But I realized that blogging makes me take lots of photos. Random ones, but still photos. I come from a minimal photo family. All the photos from the first decade of my life fills up half an album. But now I have tons of photos.

In fact, I bet I have half an album full of just pictures of my puppy. AKA my parents' puppy. 

Find a running buddy. Self explanatory. It's hard to go out for a run when I'm by myself. Probably because of the fact that I have low self will. And I don't LOVE running like other bloggers who just love it and can't live without it. 

Yeah we all look weird. And you can hardly see my brother at the back.. He's covered by my cousin and me.  I took them on their first four miler since the summer. 

Do the 100 push ups challenge. I really want to be able to do 100 push ups at once. Because I can't even do one full on boy push up. My arm strength leaves much to be desired.

Find a job. Not fitness related, but very relevant. No job, no races. Or shoes. Or a garmin when mine dies out. 

I also need a job to get my own puppy. Or steal this one. I would definitely steal this one from my parents. 

Yay! Now let's go out and work out the resolutions! What's your one big resolution? 

Moving Hurts

All this sudden influx of activity is definitely affecting my muscles. This morning, I woke up with back soreness which I assume is from wildly flailing in front of the kinect.

But I kind of enjoy muscle soreness from a workout in a weird masochistic way? I just feel accomplished when my muscles are sore the day after a workout.

Today was a rest day from running, because I met up with my parents' friend for a tennis lesson at 7AM. Here's a small picture of me blending into the background.

Don't worry, I didn't wear the same shirt again. This picture is just from last time. 

Today's lesson started off fun but by the end, I never wanted to look at a tennis ball again. I'm not being ungrateful. I know people pay a lot of money for private tennis lessons that I'm now getting for free.

But two hours and twenty minute of a private lesson? It was a little too much and way too tiring.

Part of it was my fault. I had a little too much pride to say that I was tired. So I kept on smiling and swinging. And now it's hard to think about anything other than sleeping. And I'm rhyming.

So here's a nicer random photo that I took at the beach for you to enjoy while I sleep.

A doggy water fountain! What a fun idea. 

Happy Wednesday!