Week 1 of Half Marathon Training
Monday, July 7, 2014 - Sunday, July 13, 2014
16.75 miles completed
16.75 miles completed in half marathon training so far
380.45 miles completed in 2014 so far
Monday, July 7: Strength Training (ChaLEAN Extreme Burn 1) + Ab Burner
New week, new training session! Same ol' Chalene though.
Good workout today. I bumped up a few weights and can definitely feel it, in the arms especially. I also made sure to get in some abs today - I definitely fell off the wagon a little bit last week.
Right now we're trying to take care of last-minute things we need to do before the cruise. We're getting the hardwood floors in the upper level of our house refinished while we are gone...they are pretty beat up, and we want them stained darker to match the rest of the floors in the house. This means we need to clear pretty much everything out of the bedrooms. We have 3 - our room, the guest room, and the future (way in the future!
) nursery, which is painted pink from the previous residents of our house (thus we call it "the pink room"). Right now the pink room is the dumping ground for all of the random crap in the house and is a freaking mess, so we started cleaning it out yesterday - who knew I still had some many old notes from grad school and back issues of Runner’s World magazine! (All went into the recycling bin.) We worked on it for about 1-2 hours yesterday and made a very small dent, so that will be an ongoing project in addition to cleaning out the other two bedrooms (should take way less time, but those rooms have beds and we have two dressers in our room...so much heavier stuff). Yay for added cross training!
This whole process is such a pain, from the cleaning to not being able to actually walk on the floors for a few days when we get back home, but it'll be so worth it to have the floors look nice. The company that's doing it refinished our floors in another room last year and they look amazing - from totally beat up to looking brand new - so I know it'll look awesome when it's done. And this is really the best way to do it, while we (and the dog) are gone for most of the process.
We're also due to get some custom shelving installed in our front room at the end of this week. I love our house, but we just do not have a lot of storage. What we're getting installed is two bookcases on either side of a large window, along with a window seat (with storage) in between. That should help a lot with the pink room crap, and I know Archie will loooooove that window bench. This was supposed to be done by the beginning of this month, but there's been a delay, and I'm really hoping that stuff will get installed this week - stinks that it's going to happen so close to us leaving. It's something that has been in the works for awhile and we're really looking forward to having it done.
I also put a hold on our mail yesterday...a much quicker and less-involved process than the cleaning has been. And the dog got his last dose of ear medicine this morning, so I'm sure he'll be thrilled to not have us messing with him anymore!
And today
I switched from the RNR Cleveland Half Marathon to the RNR Cleveland Mini Marathon and updated my proof-of-time for Wine & Dine. Yay!
Lastly...I submitted an abstract for a work-related conference about a month ago and was notified today that it was accepted! So I'll be heading to Chicago for a weekend in October (the same weekend as the Tower of Terror 10-miler, which is why I didn't sign up for it) to present my paper...which I still need to write. I don't love giving presentations but I know my boss appreciates that I do it, so that's always a good thing.
Tuesday, July 8: Run #1 (3 miles on the treadmill)
Soooo today I woke up and thought it was Wednesday. It's not.
That stinks.
Pretty decent run today (5/1 run/walk intervals - 32:33 finishing time, 10:51ish/mile pace I guess). My legs felt good but my arms and chest are KILLING me. I think it's a combination of yesterday's CLX session plus continuing to move stuff out of the pink room last night. We made some good progress and will have to make some trips to Salvation Army/Goodwill, but the amount we got done last night was pretty encouraging. Despite that fact, I know it's stressing Will out - between getting the upper level ready before we leave and him trying to finish up his semester at school (only 6 more school days left!!!) he's been pretty busy. This cruise will be coming at a perfect time!
Shopping update: Yep, another one. Stupid AM Disney email.
Just like last week's Dooney purchase, I was able to stack discounts (free shipping + 10% off Disney Visa code).
With that I am unsubscribing from the
Disney Store's email list. Just waaayyy too enabling (I had to do the same with the Vera Bradley email list about a year ago
). Pretty much the only things I order from the Disney Store anymore are Dooney & Bourke and Vera Bradleys, and after today I will have recently gotten new things for each of those, so it's time for a break.
Between getting our built-ins installed (hopefully on Saturday!!!), getting the floors refinished and potentially getting our downstairs bathroom re-done (had someone over for a quote yesterday - our bathroom is so gross it's unusable right now, and getting it updated would REALLY improve our house a lot!), we're sinking a good chunk of change into the house this month and are planning on booking a couple more cruises (!!) so cutting down on the spending is a must right now!
As for last week's shopping hijinks…
Raw Threads: I am still planning on purchasing
the 3 tops I originally bought in the racerback style in the equilibrium cut. However, in looking around the Raw Threads website, it looks like the Anna-inspired top (called "Reindeer") is NOT available in equilibrium. It seems the only choices for this top are the racerback cut (which I know doesn’t work for me) or the "Street V" (which has short sleeves, and I'd really prefer sleeveless for Marathon Weekend).
I sent Raw Threads a message yesterday asking if they plan to have the Reindeer top available in the equilibrium cut...if they say no I'll most likely order the short-sleeved version anyway.
Etsy Purchases: I received the
DCL sticker very quickly, but I am not sure when I will receive the camera strap or the
Castaway Club keychain. The person making the camera strap did respond very quickly to a message I sent her with a question, so at least I know I'm on her radar. I guess I forgot that Etsy purchases can take awhile since the people actually have to, you know, MAKE the items! I feel like it's possibly too soon to start bugging the shop owners about when things will ship, but I was hoping both would arrive in time for the cruise. I am thinking that's less and less likely. I may send both shop owners a message later this week, just to check in.
Luggage Tags - personalized via Shutterfly, arrived yesterday. They seem pretty nice!
This is what they look like, except they have our information on them. On the other side I have our address, cell phone numbers and email addresses.
Mom’s birthday gift: Part of it arrived last week...a Baggallini Messenger. I also got one for myself:
I have heard great things about these bags and found a steal of a deal for them on
Amazon ($37 apiece! I just looked on Amazon today and they are listed as costing $55!). Hopefully we will both like them!
After ordering luggage tags for myself and Will, I realized that I should have gotten a set for mom too! ARRG! So I ordered those and got an email that they shipped yesterday (except hers will be blue/green). I also got her a Disney giftcard for our upcoming trip (will talk about that more after our cruise!).
Her birthday is on Sunday so we’re going out to brunch. Yuuummmm!
Shoes! I ordered these at packet pick-up last Sunday and got the call last night that they arrived. Will picked them up today!
His shoes (he went with the pair on top, the blue/green pair. I was expecting him to go for the blue/grey!):
My shoes:
So pretty! I have another unopened blue pair sitting in my closet, so I'll get those out whenever my current pair dies (hoping to get another 100 miles or so out of them). I'm thinking (hoping) that blue pair #1 will last me through most, if not all, of Dopey training, and then I'll start breaking in these two new pairs (pink pair and blue pair #2) when it's taper time...i.e. right around Christmas. Then I'll use one pair for the 5K/half marathon, and the other pair for the 10K/marathon.
Cruise Update
On June 30 I received a
Disney Cruise Line survey in my email, similar to the ones they send out for the parks and resorts. I work in research and know how valuable data collection is (curious to know just how much data they're collecting on those Magic Bands!!
), so I took the survey. One of the final questions was something along the lines of whether I'd participate in further research onboard the ship. I answered "yes" and didn't think much of it.
Well, today I received an email from someone in Disney’s "Consumer Insight" Department asking me to participate in a research panel during our upcoming cruise. Per the email, it will take no more than one hour on Nassau day, we'll basically be asked about our experience so far (what we like and do not like), and in return for our time, we’ll get a $150 onboard credit!
I ran it by Will and we both decided to go ahead and participate - now that we've canceled the chocolate tour our day is very open. We have the Palo reservation at 6 (OMG YUM) and we both want to go to the gym in the morning...and I'd like to have sit-down breakfast and possibly lunch that day, so I want to work around the dining room hours. But other than that, we'll probably just be lounging on the adults-only deck and using our spa passes. So it shouldn't be a big deal to spend an hour on this.
We're both really curious about the whole thing and, hello! $150! That's our Remy meal right there.
I think I'd be less likely to want to do it in WDW just because traveling to wherever the panel is would be a hassle in and of itself, and losing an hour of park time would be hard to swallow, but on the ship it'll be a 10-minute walk to whether we meet at most and we'll just be taking a break from lounging and sipping fruity drinks. I'm really interested to see what they ask us.
Wednesday, July 9: Run #2 (35-minute tempo run...3.25 miles completed)
Okay, now it's ACTUALLY Wednesday!
Tempo run went pretty well this morning. I felt good, just the same problem as always - it seemed to take a long time, I guess because I was watching the clock a lot. But overall it was a good run and I ended up going 3.25 miles. This is the first time I'm trying out my new schedule - normally I'd lift today and do the tempo run tomorrow, with run #3 of the week on Friday and my long run on Saturday. I'm curious to see if switching up the days will help me have a better long run. We'll see how it goes! So far, so good, but I do think that this schedule change-up is what is making me think it's later in the week than it really is.
I realized this morning that I meant to do abs stuff last night and completely forgot, so I'm hoping I'll remember today.
I did got a very nice surprise when I got home yesterday - Will finished cleaning out the pink room! So awesome of him. He said it only took another hour or so, but we are both so relieved it's done. I also started on my closet yesterday - after only about 10 minutes I'm almost done, so that's good. I'm hoping to knock out the guest room this weekend, as well as our dressers and nightstands in our room. Most of this is going to be a solo task since Will is going to be super busy working on school stuff...except for the dressers. I CANNOT move dressers by myself. We're saving our bed until the day before the cruise.
I heard back from the DCL research person and we have a time set up for our onboard meeting. Just need to get some other small details ironed out for that...VERY interested to see what this is all about!
And lastly…
Shopping Update: I heard back from Raw Threads and it sounds doubtful that they’re going to print the Anna-inspired top in the equilibrium cut any time soon, so I went ahead and ordered it in the v-neck, short-sleeved cut, along with the Tiana- and Elsa-inspired tops (both in the equilibrium cut). So now all I need is one Sweaty Band and all of my Disney race outfits are ready to go!
Thursday, July 10: Run #3 (3.5 miles on the treadmill)
Back to the treadmill today! On Tuesday I did run 5 minutes/walk 1 minute. Today I did run 6 minutes/walk 1 minute. Total time for 3.5 miles was 37:44, about a 10:47/mile pace.
I forgot to do abs stuff AGAIN last night. But I did move more stuff out of the guest room, and I pulled all of the drawers out of my dresser in our continued preparation to get the upstairs ready to have the floors refinished. So that's something.
**WW UPDATE**
Weighed in this morning and was exactly the same as last week - I guess I'm disappointed and relieved at the same time. Disappointed because obviously I would have liked to see a loss, but relieved because, just like last weekend, I was a little sloppy this past weekend. Oh well! At least I didn’t gain.
Friday, July 11: Strength Training (ChaLEAN Extreme Burn 2) + Ab burner
Busy, busy day today. It started with some
ADRs, followed by CLX - Burn 2 and ab burner. That went okay.
Then in between whatever work I had to do for today, I had quite a few errands to run. At some point I realized I wasn't going to have time to do everything, so once again, the yoga class I'd signed up for this week (today at 5PM) got the axe. Someday I'll get back to yoga...some day. Maybe.
Also, BIG day for Cleveland today - LeBron James is coming back. Have you heard?
I am definitely among the many Clevelanders that was pretty angry when he left (not that he left - I get it, it's business, he wanted to go somewhere to win and to get paid - but the way he did it with that awful ESPN special, THAT is what left a bad taste in my mouth), but I think we're all ready to bury the hatchet and move on. The letter he "wrote" for SI (of course he didn't write the whole thing - or probably even a majority of it) was great and addressed pretty much everything that I think needed to be addressed. And it's going to be amazing for Cleveland - it'll get us some good, positive national exposure and will be GREAT for the economy. So this is definitely a good thing! I guess I need to start watching basketball again.
Saturday, July 12: Run #4 (7 mile out-and-back)
Weather: 81 degrees and sunny, 54% humidity
1 WEEK UNTIL DISNEY!!! WOOHOO!
Ahem. Anyway...long run today.
As usual, I started it too late (about 10:45AM). Despite the fact that it was warm and sunny out, the conditions (thankfully) didn't bother me too much. There was a bit of a breeze, I was able to stay in the shade for most of the run, and it wasn't very humid at all. Whew!
When I started the run I navigated to the intervals section of my Garmin and decided again to do run 4 minutes/walk 1 minute intervals. I selected the "Do Workout" option and was off!
I was on a route that is very familiar to me, and as I approached what I knew to be the half-mile mark, I began to wonder why the watch hadn't beeped to signify a walk break. Well...turns out not only do you have to say you want to "Do" the workout, you then need to press the button again to actually start the timer. So I actually hadn't started my watch.
ARRRRG! I actually think the same thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago, but I noticed quickly (like, within a step or two of starting the run) and started the timer...and now it had been long enough that I'd forgotten I had to do that.
So I walked until I got to where I thought 0.5 miles was and then started the watch, intending to run until the watch read 6.5 miles. Overall the run was pretty good. In the beginning I drank water every 20 minutes (but quickly moved to more frequent drinks around the halfway point) and I ate a Honey Stinger Waffle at about the 40-minute mark (honey flavor - not bad!). At the 6.5-mile mark my watch read 1:11:18 with a 10:56/mile pace, so I guess the entire run actually took, I don’t know, 1:16:18 (including that portion at the beginning where I didn’t start the watch on time). HH says to do long runs 30-90 seconds slower than goal race pace, and I'd say my goal race pace is in the 9:45 - 9:55/mile range for the half, so I'm happy with that pace for a long run.
I'm not sure what I think about my new weekly schedule (namely running Wednesday/strength training Friday...where it used to be the opposite). I thought it would help me to not have a day of running before my long runs, but my legs still felt pretty sore today from CLX. The last two miles of the run were especially tough. Hmm...I guess I'll see how I feel about it over the next few weeks. Mostly I'm wondering what to do about the upcoming goal race pace runs. As they are scheduled right now, those would be done on Thursdays (on the treadmill as usual) but I really think it would benefit me more to do them outside on the concrete, since that is the surface the race will be on. So I may need to move those goal race pace run to a time where I can do them outside. Hmm...
Also! My shirts arrived from Raw Threads (and they fit!
) and we got our built-ins installed!
Before:
After:
(So hard to photograph. It looks like there's a nuclear event going on outside...and I wish I'd taken a better "before" picture. Oops.)
Very pleased with how these turned out. I think they look spectacular, and we've managed to get lots of the leftover crap that wasn't donated or trashed from the pink room into the cabinets...exactly what I'd hoped for. The last coat of protective oil top of the bench is still curing for 48 hours, which means we need to keep the dog out of the room until then so he doesn't mess up the finish. He does not like this AT ALL and has already managed to sneak into the room once. Tomorrow may be rough!
Sunday, July 13: Rest Day
Today is my mom's birthday!
I ordered her gift last week and was excited to give it to her - next year is a "milestone birthday"for her and I have a pretty big gift planned for that one (will talk about that when I get back from the cruise, as it's Disney-related!) so her gift this year ties into that.
Originally we had plans to go to brunch, but my aunt decided to have a birthday BBQ (two of my uncles also have birthdays around this time of year as well, so it was a three-part celebration), so we went to that instead. I'm not gonna lie...I was a little sad brunch got canceled because I love breakfast food so much, but I guess I can have brunch some other time!
This was good, though, because I had an opportunity to talk to my cousin who will be running the RNR Cleveland Mini Marathon with me. I think she's looking forward to it, and I'd put a little training plan together for her, so she wanted me to text that to her and said she'd follow it. She also said she'd be okay to run it by herself and I was just like, "Nooooo run it with meeeee!" Rather than saying, "No, you're only 13, you're not running downtown by yourself!!" I'm sure it would be fine since she'd be surrounded by race people, but still...
I made 40 mini red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and took those to the party. So that was awesome, obviously! Yum!
And also...1 WEEK UNTIL EMBARKATION DAY! I can't believe it's almost here! I am going to be totally useless at work this week!
Continued in Next Post
So I really try to keep that in mind when I run races now. But yeah, I should have still been at least at 5 miles.
Time seems slower when you are waiting for something you really want!
Or maybe it is a gateway. I mean... if I can run 17 miles surely I can do a full marathon, right? 
) and call at 7. Well, I forgot to do that, but I wasn't super worried - this was the last ADR I needed to make and (in my mind) was the least important, so if it didn't go through it wouldn't be the end of the world. Plus, Captain's Grille is pretty under-the-radar, I think, so I was sure a table would be open.
)
Yep, training is good so far. Nervous to start the actual Dopey training...
Our garage could use a good cleaning out too. I'm definitely planning on doing that sometime next month. We've only been in our house for 4.5 years but we have a lot of stuff people gave us when we first moved, so I'd like to clear some of that out. I'm grateful or what people gave us but some of it we just don't use. Starting fresh and clean does sound lovely!
Delicious...so delicious...but obviously not at all healthy. Between this new little habit of mine (which I intend to break TODAY) and the stomach/sleeping problems I mentioned above, I was not expecting greatness on the scale this morning. So I was very surprised to see that I actually lost 0.4 pounds this week. 
