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Posts Tagged ‘running goals’

Long Beach Marathon Race Goals

Posted in Marathon, Race goals, Racing, Running, tagged , , , , , , on October 10, 2013| 5 Comments »

Remember how I joked that you know you’re ready for your big race when you start seeing “signs” or omens? The other night I was doing word puzzles while soaking in a hot bath (one of my favorite taper luxuries) and I solved an 8-letter word scramble:

word puzzle

Yup, I’d call that a sign.

With just two more days until the Long Beach International Marathon, I am busy with last minute details (reservation at Italian restaurant for carbo-loading dinner: check) and I am firming up my goals for the race. This will be my third full marathon. I ran Santa Barbara in 4:02:39, and Mountains2Beach in 3:57:29.

So, my goals, in no particular order:

1. Beat my best time of 3:57:29.
2. Do not bonk (not as hard as last time, anyway. I fully expect to slow down toward the end but I want to stay strong, of course).

Training this round has gone well. I’ve stuck to the plan (from Run Less, Run Faster) and the training has gone even better than it did for Mountains2Beach. I have definitely gained some speed if my ability to complete the speed workouts and tempo runs is any indication. I am also working on my nutrition plans for pre-race carbo-loading and fueling during the race. I think I seriously under-fueled during my last full marathon and it was not a fun experience. I’d really like to fix that for this third full marathon. To that end, I’ve been reading The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond “the Wall” and tweaking my nutrition plans.

If you’d like to follow along with the fun on race day starting at 6 a.m. PDT on Sunday you can plug in my race bib number 3601 into the Racemine Result Kiosk. That site will provide time splits at five points along the course. Wish me luck! And be sure to spare some good race vibes for Kim at Day with KT as she does her 50 mile race!

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April Miles and May Goals

Posted in Family life, Marathon, Miles Log, Nutrition, tagged , , on May 1, 2013| 4 Comments »

Time to check in with my April Goals:

Book the hotel for race weekend. What a relief it was when I finally took care of this! We ended up booking a vacation rental home in Ojai for less than it would have cost to stay at the host hotel. The rental is within five minutes of the starting line in Ojai and that eliminates the need for me to take the early morning shuttle from the host hotel in Ventura. Also, with the rental home kitchen I can cook my own pre-race dinner and breakfast on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Focus on meal planning. I did focus on nutrition for the past month and made it a point to know by breakfast time what I wanted to cook for dinner that night. Only once, though, did I sit down and plan out a menu of meals for a whole week. I flipped through the pages of magazines a friend gave me and I tore out recipes that looked interesting to me — a meat dish, a chicken dish, a vegetarian dish, a fish dish, a stew (which I will double to freeze a batch for another meal) and a casserole (well, a garlic bread bowl thing that looked good to my husband! I have yet to make it). For the remaining night we had the best kind of meal — a home-cooked meal but one that I didn’t have to cook! Hooray for the spontaneous Sunday dinner invitation!

Run two 20-milers and two 15-milers. BAM! I ran 20 miles on Coyote Creek Trail, and 20 miles on Aliso Creek Trail all the way to the beach, and two 15-milers that seemed short by comparison.

April Miles

Swim: 1.75 miles in 1 hour in 2 workouts. Can you hear me singing: “Reunited and it feels so good!”? I finally got back in the pool after a few months’ absence and it felt fantastic. So good that I was kicking myself for not getting back in sooner. It reminded me why I like triathlon so much. The mix of disciplines allows the body more time to recover (by varying the muscles used) while still permitting you to train at a high level of intensity.

Bike: 53.57 miles in 3 hours in 4 workouts.

Run: It was another high mileage month (for me) with 133.89 miles in 25 hours in 13 workouts. While it’s not my highest mileage month ever, it is the most in hours of running — in the 30 days in April I spent an entire day plus one hour running!

Skiing: 2.5 hours in one workout. Can’t forget the spring break trip to Mammoth and the awesome run on the snow.

Weight training: 2.75 hours in 9 workouts. I usually do situps, pushups, and some biceps curls two times a week. Sometimes I get in some adductor and abductor muscle moves if I’m at the gym.

Random Photo for April

My oldest daughter celebrated her 11th birthday in April. She asked for cupcakes with yellow and blue frosting. She shares her birthdate with another friend who is one year older, so we made a yellow “11” and a blue “12”:

cupcake collage

If you’re looking for a great recipe for vanilla cupcakes with homemade buttercream frosting, check out this cupcake and frosting recipe from DC Cupcakes (we made the recipe without the filling). Tip: use whole milk in the recipe, not skim.

May Goals

There’s only one goal for May:

Have a blast at the Mountains 2 Beach Marathon on May 26!!

Of course before that I need to complete one more 20-miler this weekend and then begin to taper! I am actually looking forward to tapering this time around. Come to think of it though, I also have a race on the calendar as a training run: the Spring Blast Half Marathon on May 11. The training schedule calls for 13 miles at an 8:35 pace, so why not make it 13.1 and try to PR on a new and interesting course?

What are your goals for May?

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