Strength Training and Running

Saturday morning my alarm went off at 6:30 and my room was FREEZING. I slipped my hands out of the covers just enough to grab my phone and check the weather. It was 36 degrees! I had laid out my "winter" running clothes the night before but I had never run in temps that low. After checking the weather for the rest of the day I decided to try and go later in the day when it was supposed to be warmer. 

I am so thankful that I did. By 2:00 it was sunny and a lot warmer at almost 60 degrees. 

I set my alerts on my Garmin watch to a 6/2 split and headed out the door. I was extremely sore thanks to Jillian and my extra squats on my Runtastic app so I wasn't sure how good the run would be. 

I checked my watch a mile into the run and realized I had just finished my fasted mile at 11:03

That really gave me a boost and I continued to push through the run. 

At mile 2 my legs felt like jello and I really just wanted to stop but I thought about the fastest mile I had just completed and knew I could possibly get a PR on my 5K. So I dug deep for the extra motivation and pushed through.

Once I pushed through those thoughts of quitting the rest of the run was a breeze. Mind over matter people. Mind over matter. 

I couldn't remember the exact time of my PR 5k but when I finished and looked at my watch I knew I was close

Turns out my PR is 35:17 so I was just 50 seconds away. I'm pretty pumped about that considering my current PR of 35:17 was with me running the 5K without stopping and my time Saturday of 36:07 was doing a 6/2 split. 

So I would have to say that all the strength training is paying off. 

Today I did day 4 of Ripped in 30 for the #4MChallenge

Anybody else having Jillian dreams/nightmares? No? 

I am so ready for week 2 and something new. 

I finished up my workout with my runtastic apps

88 Sit-Ups

76 Squats  

54 Push-Ups

How's everybody doing on the #4MChallenge? 

{The Happiest 5K On the Planet}

The Color Run was exactly what they said it would be

{The Happiest 5K On The Planet}

What's kind of funny though is that is wasn't actually a 5K. It ended up being like 2.67. I don't know who dropped the ball on that one.....
But it was definitely focused around fun and people of all different ages, shapes, sizes, and athletic abilities showed up for this colorful race. I use the word race lightly because nothing was timed and most people would come to dead stop in the color sections, some even got down and rolled on the ground.
 Some of the people working the color stations were pretty hard core. My friend Ashley took some pink paint in the mouth and I got nailed in the forehead with orange.
 It was super fun though and I got to hang out with some of my best friends. I even ran into my best friend from high-school!

Enough talk enjoy the pictures!

Some of the {Color Me Fab} Team

Waiting to Start

Headed towards the Orange Cloud

After I took some orange to the face

So Colorful

Best friend from high-school

 Such a fun race

      

    Allie and me rocking our shirts

Look how white our teeth look!

getting doughnuts

aren't we cute?

Pre-shower Lovely-ness

pre-shower praying it would all come off

If you want to check out some other blogs about the Color Run you can check out.....

Allie @ In Stride

Dawn @ A Day in the Life of Dawn

Candace @ The Jerkins

Emily @ The Story of (US)ssery

Not all of them have updated about the Color Run yet but I know they will (No pressure ladies) : )

I'm still waiting on a few pictures from some friends so I'll post them on another post after I get them.

Have a great Monday!!

Race Results and Training

Race results are up and I'm proud to say that I got 10th in my age group (25-29) and 103rd over all (out of 355 runners) with an official time of 35:17.

Not bad for my first race.

A few "borrowed" pics from the race

Stretching takes deep concentration apparently....

I look like death but I promise I'm ok

Crossed the finished line. You'd think I'd look happy....instead I look like I've been run over by a mac truck a few times...
Any-who


With my first 5k and goal completed and behind me it't time to start focusing on my next 5k and goal.

The Color Run and my goal to finish it in 30 minutes....
I'm not as determined to meet this goal the more I think about it. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to train like heck but if I don't finish it in 30 minutes I won't be upset by it. This race is about having fun and thats what I'm going to do.

With the Women Run/Walk group over for the year I needed to find a new training program to keep me motivated. RunKeeper now has the ability to "Coach" you in different trainings so after I browsed a few different ones I decided to go with on of the Half marathon trainings. Not because I plan on running a half race anytime soon but because the training had everything I wanted/needed. It does interval training to help increase your normal pace, and adds milage to your runs.
Today was the first day and I did interval training.

5 minute warm up
3 minutes of hard running (more intense than your normal pace)
3 minutes of light running or walking (I went with walking)
five times

I was averaging on my 3 minute runs about a 10:20 pace. My first two I was probably more around 9:45 and my last one I was probably more of a 10:45 but overall still more intense than my normal pace.
Tomorrow is a rest day and Thursday is a light to moderate 3 mile run.
I'm looking forward to this new training program that by the way is 6 months long.
Next year I plan to run the St. Jude half and I'm looking forward to crossing it off my bucket list.

First 5K Race

Well, I did it! I completed my first 5K race :)

Allie, Ashley, and Ashlee all met at my house at 6:40 this morning for us to ride together to the race. We were all super pumped and ready to go.

We made it to the park around 7:10, checked in, and got our bibs

We had some time to kill so we made a quick (and gross) stop at the porter-potties, did a warm up walk, and snapped some pictures...

At 8:00 we started the race with my goals of running without stopping and to a least finish at the 37:20 I had done on Tuesday.
I was running with Ashley and Marie with the hopes that we would be able to pace each other well. We (being the rookies that we were) started off way too fast and were going at about a 10:15 pace. We started to try to slow down and ended up getting a little slower than we wanted at about a 12:30 pace. So it took us a bit to get it right and at a 11:30 pace. Between mile 1 and mile 2 there was a killer hill that really took a lot out of me but I didn't let it slow my pace down and I kept going. I was really hoping for that second wind or for the adrenaline to kick in after mile 2 but it never happened and I felt like I was barely making it. I really wanted to stop to walk but refused to do so and just kept going.
I finally made it to mile 3 and was met by a coach that helped motivate me to the end by running beside me. It gave me that extra push I needed. I really thought my time was going to be awful because of how exhausted I felt and I was completely surprised when I took the turn and saw 35 on the clock.

I finished the last minute with everything I had (which wasn't much) at a 9:30 pace and crossed the finsh line at 35:17(ish) (I will have my exact time later next week)

I was so excited and couldn't believe I cut 2 minutes off my time from Tuesday. So I completed both my goals today : )

My self portrait with my glittery pink medal for finishing

All the girls showing off their medals

Allie and Me. Allie got 2nd place in her age category with a time of 25:49. Whoa.

My mile break down ended up being

Mile 1 11:29
Mile 2 11:24
Mile 3 11:25

So next up is the Color Run (that is just a month away) I can't wait!