3 things

Pictures from LPM are in. I had high hopes that even if the race was a bust, the pictures would be good, since my current blog header is from the race last year.

Not the case.

These pictures prove three things.

1. I wasn't half assing it during the race
2. I didn't see the cameras
3. I don't have a future in running modeling

Sexy.

My turn to share a story, apparently.

Fast forward to the finish - I still had delusional hopes at this point.

I "sprinted ahead" of Kari thinking I could PR - as you can see that got me pretty far.

Seeing the clock about this point....

As an apology for assaulting your eyes with my misery, here's a picture of our view during the first mile.

To continue the theme of lists of three, here are three positive things about today.

1. I'm really not sore at all from the race

2. I returned to Bikram (super hot intense yoga) after a LONG absence, and to make it even better, it was with a groupon for a new studio only a mile away from our apartment. I was dreading the workout all day and then it turned out to be glorious.

3. My BFF Casi started an awesome blog, and you should read it, because she gave me this epic coffee, and if you are her friend maybe she'll give you fabulous gifts too (I didn't run that last part by her, but fingers crossed).

I made it into Pioneer Woman iced coffee - WOW.

As a further apology for forcing you to look at those hideous pictures as proof I didn't phone it in, here are three things that were emailed to me recently that made me laugh out loud, so maybe they will make you laugh out loud too.

1. My stepfather sent this to me, and it pretty much sums up every morning in my life.

2. Kara shared this gem, and I challenge everyone to find me a woman who doesn't love it. 

3. My BFF Nicole sent me this, which should help Games of Thrones fans make it through the next 19 days until season 3 begins!

Extra bonus - check out Kari's recap of our race - she actually PR'd so hers is way more upbeat and better all around!

Let's all be touchy feely and self-helpy - can you name three awesome things about your day? 

Lower Potomac River Marathon Recap

Alternate title: the pathetic post I didn't want to write

The short version: I trained my ass off to PR in the marathon for 2 1/2 months, and failed.

Even our beautiful twinsie outfits couldn't save me

Spoiler alert: nothing went wrong in the race. I've thought long and hard about why I couldn't pull it off, and my friend Mike pretty much spelled it out - I ran too slow. Womp womp.

Friday night Kari took the train to Baltimore to visit me and run the race. We lived it up Friday night with crabcakes, Dance Central, and Eric's old yearbooks. We were in bed by 9:30, did a two mile shakeout run in the morning, and headed to southern MD to hang out with Kara for the night.

I meet my BFFs on the internet, you got a problem with that?

I'm not trying to be rude, but someone in her household had certainly put on some weight.

Kara gets full credit for the graphic design here.

We spent the night carb loading like crazy and I was also nearly paralyzed from cuteness overload, thank goodness I don't find dogs cute or I may not have been able to run the race at all (darn). If anyone out there is concerned that Faith is grumpy 100% of the time based on pictures posted on Kara's blog (like my mom), rest assured, she's basically the most adorable happy child on earth.

Sunday morning, we moaned the loss of our hour like every other whiny American and headed to the race. Kari and I had been pretty consumed with anxiety over our goal all weekend, so we were ready to just get running already.

This race is not like most marathons, in the best ways possible. There are less than 200 runners, no chips, and no tech shirts. You park mere feet from the start/finish line (aka traffic cones), hang out and get your bib in the comfortable, heated School of Seamanship, which not only has an awesome name, but tons of empty clean bathrooms. We headed into the cold (the start was 35 degrees) at about 7:11am for a 7:15 start. The course has mile markers, gorgeous views, and that's about it, except this year it featured a banjo player and a guy hitting a gong.

In short, everything went right. If I could have talked to God and put in my request for the weather, it could not have been better. First I was super rested from my snow day on Wednesday, and then the race varied from about 35-55 degrees and sunny with just a slight wind. No stomach problems, I didn't have to pee, nothing. Just too damn slow.

All my best races have happened when I haven't looked at my watch, even once, so I set my Garmin to only show distance and ignored it. It didn't work this time.

Post race sad faces

All of our splits for the first half were 8:45-8:55 with an exception of 8:36 at mile 3. So...perfectly on our goal pace. After that, we hit the hills. The hills weren't big at all, but we logged a few miles over 9 minutes. I guess we slowed down too much because my overall pace according to my Garmin was 8:53 and the last few miles felt like death. I thought we were pushing it, but they were all 8:50-9:00 (although my last .4 was at a 7:55 pace!).

Pushing it in at the end - until I saw the clock

My official time was 3:54:44, which makes this my THIRD 3:54 marathon. I took two bathroom breaks during Wineglass and got 3:54:35, so....yeah. Lame. 

I managed to put on a happy face because I was done!

So I crossed the finish line, dropped a few F-bombs, but then managed to get over myself because I was pretty honored that Kara had brought two small children to the finish line just to cheer us on, and that actually sounded harder than running a marathon to me. Plus, PR or no, it was time to celebrate. 

Well, after the tortuous two hour drive home.

Popping the cork on some fancy Prosecco 

We made this beauty as soon as we showered.

My food photography sucks, so here's a picture to show off the deliciousness.

Source: fahrenheit350.blogspot.com via Alyssa on Pinterest

Across the street from us is an amazing Mexican restaurant. We hadn't eaten anything but one of Kara's unbelievably good dairy free chocolate chip cookies since the race, which made the food taste like a 19 on a scale of 1-10. Then we came home and started the true partying.

Pajamas NOT optional

Somehow Kari had never seen or heard of Catfish, so I introduced her to my man.

He's just not that into you.

So that's the story. Consolation comments not necessary, I swear, Nev and wine cheered me right up last night and let's face it - this isn't exactly the tragedy of the century. But I will happily take suggestions more constructive than "you ran too slow" or ideas for redemption races within driving distance (bonus points if I can stay with you!).

A lot of things cause me anxiety

Here's some "confessions" on this lovely pre-marathon Thursday.

1. Sometimes I have text my sister before leaving for work in the morning to make sure I look presentable. Sometimes I have to text her three times. Today was that day.

She gave me a cute shirt for Christmas and I thought it was finally warm enough to wear something other than huge bulky sweaters (spoiler alert - I was wrong). Whenever I wear something other than a sweater that I've owned for a minimum of six years, I get serious anxiety about showing up to work looking like the dork who tried to dress like one of the cool girls. This persists even though I don't, in fact, work on the set of Clueless.

This final product

2. Oh, were you wondering what those huge plastic bins that are nearly waist - high in that picture are filled with? Well that would clearly be all our emergency supplies, because I married a doomsday prepper. The other day we were kind of quiet in the car so I asked him what he was thinking about, and rather than his usual "nothing", he surprised me with an actual response. "Things to get for the emergency kit". Right, of course.

3. I have the world's smallest bladder, so any activity that requires prolonged time away from a bathroom causes me severe anxiety. (Side note - that's the second time I've used that phrase in one blog post, I should really seek help.) That state testing that I won't shut up about falls into that category. Last year, I implemented a very specific three pronged approach to make it through. One of the prongs is going into the test dehydrated. I ran three miles on my new favorite toy, the treadmill this morning. I didn't drink any water and when you insist on sleeping in tropical temperatures and then running immediately after waking up, you work up quite a sweat. The good news is that I was once again successful with my state testing plan, the bad news is that purposely dehydrating yourself 3 days before a marathon is pretty dumb.

4. I hate texting people without iphones, because they can't see Emojis. I'm forced to use only this crap - :) or :( and can't express my real range of emotions. If you are one of these people, here are just a small fraction of the emojis that exist.

There are soooooo many more.

5. Eric made me an amazing turkey burger last night, and I made pretty delicious sweet potato fries, and it was all so good I just knew it was an instagram worthy dinner. I don't think I've ever had a turkey burger in my life, but feel free to contradict that Mom and Dad. I can't figure out how to turn that into a confession, unless I confess that it was a gluten free meal, or as I like to call it, out of bread. Unless sweet potatoes have gluten.

6. This is the forecast for my race.

This is a confession, because it, once again, causes me anxiety because it means I officially have zero excuses not to PR. I've followed the training plan, tapered to perfection, and now even Mother Nature is rooting for me. Crap.

Quick, help me out with a backup excuse in case things go to hell on Sunday! I can always use that I was trying to cut down on sugar before the race and I failed. Again.

What seemingly innocuous things cause you severe anxiety?

Snowquester

As I mentioned yesterday, the treadmill has been set up, and not a moment too soon. Today is a snow day, and if we didn't have a treadmill, I would have actually had to go outside and run in the dreaded Snowquester.

Terrifying, right?

But thank god that wasn't the case. Instead,I got to run in style, while finishing the first episode of Downton Abbey on my Kindle. I wouldn't say I'm hooked yet, but it wasn't bad and I've been told to stick with it.

I swear I was actually running, not walking.

I thought you could see the sweet display from this angle, but I guess not.

It has buttons 1-10 for speed and incline, so you can just push the button to choose your speed, you don't have to hit the little up arrow a million times. I didn't even know this existed.

Since I might actually run on the treadmill more often now, I set the incline at 1.0 since that's supposed to be the minimum where no one can accuse you of cheating. We also set up a double layer of mats underneath it, and Eric said he couldn't feel the vibrations at all even when he was right next to me taking pictures (as opposed to before we had them when the whole freaking place was shaking).

So that's good since it means:
1. I can run in the morning without being that neighbor that everyone hates.
2. I'm not a fatty who will knock things off the walls with my running impact.

I returned to my handy dandy training plan and did yesterday's workout, 5 miles with 2 at marathon pace. The treadmill only tells me speeds in mph, so I did the 2 miles at 7.0, which turned out to be an 8:34 pace, so a little too fast, but whatev. 

Unlike a normal snowday, I was actually able to be ever so slightly productive. I worked on grad work for most of the morning. I made Eric take a picture to prove it.

And here it is.

He did apparently take a real one, after all.

#studying #proof

Now I have to get ready to go to my second job, and having to leave the house is really killing my snowday mojo. Being a grown up is hard, having to put on real clothes and have a job and all. Rough stuff.

What would you do if you got a snow day tomorrow (aka no work or leaving the house, whatever your job may be, it's imaginary, ok)?

Sleep trumps running - version 2.0

Last night, I moved all sorts of heavy stuff that I had no business lifting because Eric was going to the gym until late and I was determined to run on the treadmill Tuesday morning. I moved a whole bunch of stuff around to set the treadmill up in its new home (did I mention we live in an apartment and have no room for a treadmill?). I was in business for a morning run without having to deal with any of the nasty wind and other crap weather likes to throw at us runners.

Kari is coming to visit this weekend to run the marathon with me so I decided to that that opportunity to carry out my long term plan of SWF'ing her.

OMG, remember Livejournals? My roommates and I had an amazing one in college.

So, I started a book that Kari recommended (Gone Girl) and finally followed her advice to take melatonin before I went to sleep. 

That's nearly a year of killer sleep, right there in my hand.

That stuff is amazing, probably because of science, and I slept great. 

When it was time to run I got up, made the bed, and brushed my teeth. As I was brushing my teeth, I started thinking about how great it was going to be to run on my very own treadmill. Then I started thinking about how going back to bed would be even better. So that's what I did. Eric was pretty confused. 

I'm not too worried though, because as soon as everyone stops bitching about the cold it will be time to bitch about Maryland's horrible humidity, so I'll have plenty of time to develop a close friendship with the treadmill.

I posted a while ago about running 20 miles before work. That was fun and all, but you know what's a really good time? Going to work feeling nice and rested. I recommend everyone try it.

I am nailing this taper so freaking hard.

My morning was already off to a great start with all that extra sleep, and then my friend sent me this tweet, and that really sealed the deal.

I plan on implementing this first thing tomorrow.

Even with a three hour lecture on analyzing accountability data in grad class after school, I'd still rate today as a solid 8 out of 10. Maybe 7, because after dinner I made the unfortunate discovery that the special box of unseasonable Thin Mints that my parents gave me last weekend only had two left. 

Who would you want to SWF? 

You know you need a rest day when...

Here's a little inspirational tale of my night last night.

I finished my early bird special dinner around 4:45 pm, ate some ice cream, then settled in to do some much needed grad work. I could barely keep my eyes open, so I decided to call it a night, and was in bed by 5:30. And that, my friends, is how to push through adversity and truly succeed in life. 

In a cruel twist of fate, I couldn't even fall asleep until the more normal time of 9:30. Actually, it wasn't cruel at all, it was awesome. Like the level of laziness when you are sick, but without all the discomfort of actually being sick. 

Even though I was going to bed with the majority of my to-do list undone, I figured it would all even out, because with such an early bedtime, I'd surely wake up at 5am, raring to go, right?

Um, no. I barely mustered the energy to shut off my 5:30 alarm clock and kept sleeping until 7:30 and still felt wrecked. Marathon week is now upon us, and in my opinion, once you make it here, sleep trumps running. At this point you aren't going to really get any more or less prepared for the race, but you can still easily screw yourself by showing up at the start exhausted. So this will be the one week where I don't follow my training plan, and who knows, I may not even run at all until marathon day!

I wasn't a complete and total sloth yesterday. On the contrary, we had our first football game! We are playing in the same social league that we played Broomball with this past winter.

Our team color is "Daisy". Watch out.

Eric is really, really serious about football - he was captain of his high school team, went to college on a football scholarship, coached high school football, and plays in a minimum of like 5 fantasy leagues each year. I....tried to read the league rules Saturday night, and got bored after less than 10 minutes. 

I get serious anxiety about sports with balls because I'm always terrible at them. Right before the game, Eric told me that he'd bragged about me being a marathon runner to everyone on the team. In my vast experience of this game plus that one other one I played that time, this leads to two things. 
1. People thinking that means I will be able to help out the team by sprinting fast.
2. People being disappointed.

While it does appear on the surface that marathon running and football may be related, as they both involve running, actually training to run 26.2 miles is about as helpful knitting or scrapbooking. 

Still, the game was fun, although we lost, and I "tackled" a guy (it's really two hand touch) and successfully stopped a play, so I sort of helped. 

Even though I played for a whopping 40 minutes, I'm sore in weird places. All the more reason for a rest day. Plus, I have a problem with patience, so even though Eric told me he'd move all our stuff around and set the treadmill up tomorrow, I couldn't wait and rearranged all sorts of heavy stuff after work. 

Do you ever let sleep trump running? Probably not, most other bloggers are majorly hardcore.

Have you ever played any rec sports?

My March Madness

It's FINALLY March! I have been waiting and waiting for this month for a variety of reasons.

1. Today is Harrison's 7 month birthday! Ok I haven't been waiting and waiting for that, but it's still exciting.



2. This year's standardized testing will finally be over.



3. Spring break begins! Only 25 more days. But who's counting?

4. The Host comes out! I only know one other person (my work BFF, Kristin) who is excited about this or even knows what it is, but that's enough for me. The Host is another book by the same author who wrote the Twilight series. Obviously Twilight is on it's own level and this can't be compared to it, but I listened to it on audiobook in the car and it was pretty good. So I've really been looking forward to the movie, especially since all my other young adult dystopian novel events (Catching Fire coming out, the third Divergent book, the Divergent movie, etc) are much too far in the future right now.

This one is about aliens, not vampires.

5. Game of Thrones, season 3 begins. In exactly 4 weeks. Again, not that I'm counting down the days or posting trails excessively on Facebook or anything.

I'm about to make a really bold statement, and I've given it a lot of thought to make sure I truly stand behind it. 

I'm looking forward to GOT season 3 just a tiny bit less than I was looking forward to the Hunger Games movie at this time last year. If HG was a 10 on the anticipating scale, GOT3 is like a 9.8.

The downside is that we caught on to Game of Thrones late in the game, so for seasons 1 and 2 we watched the whole thing back to back over just a few days. Now we'll actually have to wait a week in between episodes, which sounds horrible.

6. It's marathon time.

Just one week left until the Lower Potomac Marathon and the nerves are finally starting to creep in. I've only ran 25 miles this week (5 are on the schedule for later today). Another way to put that would be that I've run fewer miles over the course of this entire week than I will be running all at once and it was still hard. 

Monday: 5 miles

Tuesday: NOPE

Wednesday: I ran 6 miles. It was supposed to be 7 but that damn snooze button got me. It was also supposed to be 2 at 10k race pace (7:50) but that was another fail, those two ended up being 8:15 and 7:55. 

Thursday: NOPE

Friday: supposed to be a 5 mile morning run, ended up being a 4 mile evening run at 8:35 on OUR NEW TREADMILL (more on that once we get it totally situated). 

Saturday: 10 mile run at the pathetic pace of 9:50, pathetic because it actually felt hard.

So as you can see, the theme of this week is run less and run slower than I'm supposed to. I'm not trying to make excuses, but honestly I felt that stress and grief hit me hard and it wasn't my best 7 days all around. But my new motto is "WWGD" (what would Gram do?) and she'd turn it around and focus on the positive. 

Yikes, that was cheesy, but I'm allowed to have my moments in between all the sarcasm.

What are you excited for this month? And if it's Game of Thrones or The Host I will be emailing you to talk about it.