A Tink in training - journal

[Blue Caterpillar]

I just recently decided to register for my first run disney race, and am beyond excited. I recently realized a few years ago I love Disneyland, and since I enjoy running thought I would try one. So I am doing the tinkerbell half marathon this May. Here I hope to keep on track with training, hopefully stick to a better diet and learn from others. Comments very much welcome!

A bit about me, a 30 something girl who lives in rural arizona, in a very small town. I am a huge fan of nightmare before Christmas, and alice in wonderland, (which are my top contenders for a running costume and my favorite rides at disneyland, along with the tea cups at night when the lanterns are on). My favorite princess is belle. I love tea and coffee. I love dogs. Sometimes when I like a movie I will watch it repeatedly. I like reading, and still think if you listen to an audio book you can still say "I read that book". I do a lot of crafting. By crafting I mean thinking about a project, buying the necessary items, then leaving it in my closet for a few years. I still love catalogs, and miss that when I was a kid you could get a catalog of other catalogs. I love traveling and running in New cities. Most my time online is spent researching things I may or may not buy. I like wildflowers, and birds and trying to learn the names of local ones. I have had My garmin since 2006. I once said I couldn't get a new one until it dies. I go back and forth from wishing Ill will on it.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

So this thread got moved from journals? I added to the title, but I suppose I'll just roll with it for now.

Well I did get out to run today, so that is good. It was cold though. It's strange where I live now one night you go to bed and wake up and its cold in the morning. We have huge temperature swing in the fall winter sometimes around 40 degrees. It takes some getting used to for me. Right now my plan is to run 4x a week, 2x yoga.
M: rest
T: 3 mi
W: yoga
T: 3 mi
F: hiit
S: yoga
S: 5 mi

Here's to best laid plans!

 

[LSUlakes]

Good luck!

 

[Ariel484]

A fellow Tink runner! You will love runDisney races, they are so much fun!

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

Good luck!

Thanks!

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

A fellow Tink runner! You will love runDisney races, they are so much fun!

Thanks for your trip for the Disneyland Half marathon! It made even more excited and also made me realize that I do need a proof of time. I don't race much so I didn't have a qualifying time/distance in the past year. Which I thought was no big deal, Since I may be going slow for character pics at the beginning anyway and then could get back to race pace after the park section. I don't want to worry about being swept up due to standing in a line. So I have also registered for my first 10K.

 

[roxymama]

Thanks for your trip for the Disneyland Half marathon! It made even more excited and also made me realize that I do need a proof of time. I don't race much so I didn't have a qualifying time/distance in the past year. Which I thought was no big deal, Since I may be going slow for character pics at the beginning anyway and then could get back to race pace after the park section. I don't want to worry about being swept up due to standing in a line. So I have also registered for my first 10K.

Great idea and it will probably give you the confidence that you can rock a 10k before having to go straight to the 13.1 distance. I'm slightly jealous as I hemmed and hawed over doing Tink this May but I think talked myself out of it until 2017.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

Great idea and it will probably give you the confidence that you can rock a 10k before having to go straight to the 13.1 distance. I'm slightly jealous as I hemmed and hawed over doing Tink this May but I think talked myself out of it until 2017.

There is still open places so you can still do it! I am actually looking forward to the 10K, it will help give focus to training by basically breaking it into two parts and its a distance I haven't done before.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

So sometimes living where I do now makes me miss the city. There are no gyms, excerise classes (or stoplights for that matter) unless I drive about an hour each way, to a bigger town. I used to really like group classes. I am terrible at cross training, so I used to try other classes which was good. In the summer I can do swimming. I should do biking, as my poor bike just languishes there, but I just have never got into it. I was feeling a bit annoyed by the lack of options and maybe I have been a bit unimaginative as well. But during my last run, only about a mile from my house I ran into these fellows:
Hmm that is bigger than I thought it would be. On the left are three sandhill cranes, which come here in the winter. It reminded me there are pros and cons to where ever you live. I just need to focus on the positive and maybe buy a weight set, or try some workout videos on you tube.

 

[LSUlakes]

Those are either really large birds or the deer are very small. Either way its very interesting. That is a nice looking buck on the right. If you don't mind me asking, what part of the country do you call home? Speaking of cool sights, I normally run around the lakes nears LSU's campus and its a residential area. I often see a little fox if I pass a certain area a few minutes before sunrise. We also get a decent flock of white pelicans make a stop for about 2-3 weeks during their migration. Nature has its perks! Thanks for sharing the picture.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

Those are either really large birds or the deer are very small. Either way its very interesting. That is a nice looking buck on the right. If you don't mind me asking, what part of the country do you call home? Speaking of cool sights, I normally run around the lakes nears LSU's campus and its a residential area. I often see a little fox if I pass a certain area a few minutes before sunrise. We also get a decent flock of white pelicans make a stop for about 2-3 weeks during their migration. Nature has its perks! Thanks for sharing the picture.

They are very large birds and they make noise in scale with their size. Though I think the angle of the camera makes them seem even bigger. I live in SE Arizona, in the desert but the town is pretty close to a river so we gets lots of migratory birds. How I would love to run around a lake! Have you named the fox yet? If I see the same animal a couple of times I always name them.

 

[LSUlakes]

They are very large birds and they make noise in scale with their size. Though I think the angle of the camera makes them seem even bigger. I live in SE Arizona, in the desert but the town is pretty close to a river so we gets lots of migratory birds. How I would love to run around a lake! Have you named the fox yet? If I see the same animal a couple of times I always name them.

I just call it the little fox. I'm sure summer time running is just a blast for you! Hope you get to see more sights like that when you are on your runs. I am looking forward to hearing flocks of geese overhead at sunrise with temps around 35. Ideal!

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

I did do my run today and it was not the greatest. (I had to re-arrange my schedule, something turned up, like it always seems . I had to deal with my weather Nemesis:
Wind. i hate wind. It makes my hair tangly, hurts my ears, dries out my cheeks. and feels like I am running through mud. It never seems to give as much speed as it takes away. i can deal with the heat, mostly as long as I can whine a bit about it. Unlike @LSUlakes I don't much care for temps around 35, but I can deal with those too, and it never stays that cold all day here. Not wind. It makes me grouchy. Add to that I still haven't lost my summer weight. ( I gain in the summer, since I spend a lot more time indoors then in the fall/winter.) It adds up to a hard slog of a run. A few years back Runner's World had an article that said every 1 lb adds 2 seconds to your mile time, assuming effort was the same. I need to fix that. I have at least 10 lbs I could easily lose and probably a bit more. That would be 20 seconds faster, which is a good amount of time. So I have added another goal, lose a lb a week from now until my 10K. Looks like my diet is going to need more attention then my previous statement of "I shall not eat my weight in candy" and time to dust off my old MFP account, though I still think I may use my old school spiral bound notebook. Which also means I will have to be careful to time my runs with my already schedule meals for recovery.

Alright whinging is over.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

Today was a nice day, and I was able to do my run and actually keep to the suggested pace for my easy run. I have a hard time sometimes sticking to paces and a tendency to run all of my runs at the same pace. While I know you are supposed to have a wide range of paces, Its so easy to get caught up in needing each run to be as fast or faster than the last run. Diet has gone well. I really need to work on cross training and strength training. I need to check if they still have the early morning weights for Adults at the high school. Though it used to smell terribly of high school football players, in addition to it being very early in the morning when it is much to cold.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

So yesterday I did not do anything really related to running, unless I can count shopping for new gear? Surely shopping can count as cross training? I did get a super cute sparkly running Skirt, which I might wear for tink. It's flashier then I normally wear but if any run is made for sparkles it would be Disneyland. Since I live about three hours each way from a big city when we make the trip we spend the whole day running from store to store. It makes the day tiring but doable. But on the way home, we got stuck in horrible traffic. Like it took an hour to go about ten miles, it sucked all my energy and I succumbed to late night caffeine. Which keeps me up too late. Other than that it was a great day, and I was able to find holiday tea! I love sugar cookie sleigh ride tea with all my heart.

So today, was intervals. I left it a bit late and it was getting dark and cold cold. We have a hard freeze warning to night, but it was pretty good run all in all. Though I have a long way to go before I am ready to do a half again. I only did 8x 400m with 1:20 recovery. But I was able to stay on target pace mostly.

 

[Ariel484]

Shopping counts.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

Today I nailed my easy pace longish run, if I do say so myself. I still have trouble especially the first mile or so sticking to a slower pace. When all was said and done, I was only a sec off my goal pace( 11:33 instead of 11:34) for my five mile run.
The day was beautiful, through the light wind combined with, bright sun, an dry air leaves my cheeks dry and flushed. I need to remember to moisturize more often. Tomorrow I AM GOING TO DO YOGA. I can't bear to miss runs but pretty much blow off yoga. I miss hot yoga, but I plan on turning up the heat in my living room and doing a DVD. Though on a happy note I did find out they do open the high school gym/ weight room for adults, I will have to wait for next semester though to sign up.

I so want to ride hyperspace mountain. I loved space mountain as it was and when I ride I always pretend I am Kara Thrace from battlestar galatica, but I just can't wait to try it. I so wish I did the Avengers run, of course I wish I could all the runs I read about.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

I had recently read an article, I think it may have been in Running Fitness, (that UK running magazine which if you haven't tried it I really enjoy it. I subscribe digitally) about all the good things running in trying weather/environment can do for you by teaching you perseverance, mental toughness etc. With that in mind I woke up, check my schedule and then looked at the weather. It was freezing cold rain. It gets cold here at night all the time, we are usually below freezing but normally if you kick back with a cup of coffee, the sun comes out and it heats up pretty quickly, by the afternoon its high sixties. Not this days, nary a sight of the sun to see. I decided that I could do this, I was looking forward to all of the expected benefits I could count on later. I only made a mile. It was so so cold, and the rain and wind came at an angle where it felt like no matter which way i went it hit me in the face. Darn you el nino!. I decided to come back. Not sure what that does to my mental gains. I waited till the rain stopped at least. It was so cold that when I tried again my muscles would sometimes quiver with cold. But I did it, 4 miles it was supposed to be at 11:29 pace I started out on target but by the end I just wanted to get back inside so it ended up at 10:57.

And I actually did yoga on Sunday, Yeah! and I got some super cozy fleece pajamas, which may or may not have Mickey on them.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

My last few runs have been really good, probably because the weather has been awesome, cool & Sunny, just how I like it. I am still having a hard time sticking to different paces, but I suppose that can only come with practice. I am trying to have faith in my computer generated suggested times. So I am dutifully following it. I had a really hard time doing a tempo pace. since it wasn't slow or very fast I kept speeding up looking at my Garmin, then having to slow down, oh no I am going way too slow, speeding up, looking at my Garmin then having to slow down and so on and so forth. The last mile I think I finally got what it "felt" like. I will say that my easy runs really do feel easy now. Have I always been doing them to fast? I did my long run today and I felt good the whole way. It was within 12 secs of my goal pace so I think is close enough. Tomorrow I shall do YOGA.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

When ever I go the thrift store I like to look at their workout DVD's, i have been doing this for quite awhile. A long time ago I found a yoga dvd called "Power Yoga with Bryan Kest. I personally find it very difficult, I am not good at doing upper body and there are tons of push ups to downward dogs. I like it so when I realized it was available thru amazon digital, I got it. I don't do it nearly enough so when I did on Sunday it was very hard but I persevered. I woke up Monday very sore all thru my chest and my biceps. When I went out for my easy five miler, I was shocked how much I move my arms. It was slightly painful., but a good run. I feel a bit better today.

I think I am going to move my Weds run to Thurs, as well. I like to run on Thanksgiving (i'm sure it cancel's out some of the meal at least), and I have a niggle in my right knee/leg as I have been neglecting foam rolling, and running to much on banked roads. and it feels a bit tight.

Oh and I just ordered the cutest Jack Skellington pajama's form target for a song since they are 40% off today.