Happy New Year, stayed home catching up on work and promptly went to bed after the ball dropped and a glass of champagne.  

First run of the year, done, met up with team Marathon for their annual New Year's Day run, this normally takes place at someone's house but today they got a suite an the Hampton Inn in Solon and we took off from there for an hour run. This is another hilly course but just a gradual incline, it was very cold and the 20mph wind wasn't helping. My legs started out very heavy hum I wonder why am sure it had nothing to do with hanging with Coach Troy yesterday.

When we turned around I felt so much better and was able to pick up the pace for a respectable base pace average, despite the wind being quite strong.





Got back home after spending another hour or so with the team going over the plans and races for 2016, I really was in no mood to do Cathe Ripped With HIIT Upper Body Circuit which the scheduled called for but felt it wasn't a good start to a new year to skip a scheduled workout so went down to the basement and did the time saver premix which reduced the workout to 33 mins from 46 mins with every upper body worked with cardio blast thrown in, glad I got it done.

Here is to a great and injury free 2016 . Cheers

Still not feeling myself but got up and went for a run, oh Lordy 73degrees and 83% humidity, I drank half of my water bottle by mile 2, intention was to do 12 miles then maybe 3 fast eventually settle for 3/1 run/walk ratio to preserve my sanity, I was sweating so much, luckily I had a small face towel with me, running through sprinklers as much as possible. Ended up with 7 miles and despite the run/walk was still able to come in under an 11 min/mile, I was so beat when done that after church I slept for 4 hours straight.





Life is good, eating a ice cold water melon after a hot humid run is heavenly

Swimming Fears

Well, I made it to my swim lesson on Saturday after running 10 hilly miles probably wasn't a brilliant idea but I know I will not run nor did I have the time to run after swimming, jam packed day. I still did not get into the deep end but did eventually go half way to the 6ft section and swim back, panic and froze the 1st time in, sat out for 10mins then decided to try it again. My confidence grew in the 6ft section and I was able to swim back and forth a couple of times. After the 1 hr class when back to my swimming pool (the pools are about 15mins apart didn't shower, put wet running top and pant back on and left) since it has no deep end and practice for another 30mins. Swimming with the fins make a big difference, coach said most runners have poor flexibility in the ankles, so using it help build much needed strength. I paid for 5 sessions determine to stick with it for now. It was great seeing all the little kids swimming and having no fear of the water, at some point I will have to get over my fear but I think I have come along way considering I won't even get in the pool initially. While in the 6ft section, I was able to see how deep the deepend really is and how people are gliding across the water and the little kids feet learning to tread water. It did occur to me I need to learn to tread water, since I have never been in a deep end, except when I was thrown in I don't know how and that is probably another source of my fear, what do I do when I get tired and I am in the deep section, right now at my pool since it is left than 5ft, I just stand.
I have been watching some videos at www.enjoy-swimming.com and it has really been very helpful in expalining what to do and what I am doing wrong, oh well the battle continues. Focus is just develop a stronger/better kick so I can get through the length of the pool without stopping, then work on breathing.

I had 20 miles on the schedule today and really didn’t want to run it by myself; I looked around online with different group to see what they were running and none was running 20 but people were meeting early to get miles in before meeting to run with group. After considering the idea of waking at 4:30am to drive 45mins to meet at 5:30am to run about 10+ miles before meeting the group back at 7am fro more miles I realized I needed more sleep and will be running this solo.

I really didn’t feel like getting up to run, read chapters out of 4 different book, got up made coffee carry coffee back to bed read some more, but eventually got out of bed, got dressed, made mum breakfast then headed out the door. Getting outside I realized I was running later than I expected, so it was hot and humid and for some reason I decided to only carry my handheld and also run a new route with no idea where a water source was since I do not go to this side of town often. Lots of mistake made for one run, oh forgot I was also wearing my new Adidas marathon 10 with new sockguy sock.

With the temperature also high and tiredness in my legs due to hard trail race on Thursday I decided to do a 5/1 run/walk ratio really my first time doing a run/walk but really had to admit it wasn’t that bad, 1 minute goes by very fast that I was wondering if it was worth stopping for but 5 mins take so long that I was looking forward to the 1 min break.

The new route was great, actually once construction is done on Bainbridge this will be a great route to get to the park via Liberty/Solon Rd and get some trail runs in. The only problem was I only had 1 hand held and by mile 4 I was completely empty and had no idea were water source was, I was hoping someone was going to be out in their yard and I could ask them for water but I could find someone until about mile 6 and he was nice enough to even put ice in my bottle but by this time I was so dehydration that when I took one sip I drank half the handheld and I had 6 miles to get back home. Bummer.

I got home with 12 miles done with my tongue hanging out; I was so thirsty, tired and sweating like a pig, got some water down (probably should have got for something with electrolyte instead of just water) and wipe down with a cold towel. I knew I was done with outside so changed shoes and headed down to the basement to get the last 8 miles in.

Just 2 miles in, even though I still had garmin at a 5/1, I got incredible tired, like I said should have taken something else instead of just water, paused the treadmill and got a can of FRS energy drink and that hit the spot and I was back to running in about 10 mins. This was hard probably one of my hardest long run ever but at least I finish but it does not give me great confidence for a great pace at the Akron Marathon, although I also made a lot of mistakes, live and learn.