I Can Run Clearly Now…

September 15, 2014September 15, 2014 / Jess / 2 Comments

Last week, after facing my deepest, darkest fears about possibly having to drop to the half marathon, I actually felt lighter. Physically and mentally, I was less burdened by the things I was afraid to say out loud, and I found myself enjoying the run even more. Knowing that I had this safety net to fall back on if my body didn’t want to cooperate actually made the idea of a race FUN again!

I started thinking about how cool it would be to race a half marathon. If I focus on halves for a while, I can take my time to train smart, build up my confidence at that distance, improve my pace, and eventually a half will be nothing. In short, I was excited to run again. Cue the angels and harps and cheesy dancing!

And bad-fake-running-poses.

Which was perfect timing because I was scheduled to host the local NJ meetup of International Mermaid Day bright and early Sunday morning! It ended up being just my friend Kevin and I, but it was a gorgeous, crisp, late summer morning and we had a great time jogging and chatting and living life and making waves 🙂

Fins Up!

The rest of the week I took it easy and focused on strength training. My brain was fried from my day job and a 2-day migraine knocked me out until Wednesday, when I decided to go by feel for my nighttime run. The no-pressure attitude really works, because 6.7 miles later, me and my knees were still smiling!

I stopped the watch for the 10K time but kept running to 6.7 for fun. For FUN!

My 10K time was also a minor victory – my last one was around 1:18, and even a small improvement is still reason to celebrate!

… by drinking almond milk out of a wine glass in an ice bath.

All in all, it was a low-mileage week on my legs but a high-performance week in my self-esteem, and I’ll take it as a win.

How about you? How is your training is going? Are you enjoying your runs? Let me hear it.

The Long Run, in GIFs

August 28, 2014December 9, 2014 / Jess / 11 Comments

You can thank a few things for this post:

My caffeine buzz from QuickChek’s new “Harvest Blend” coffee. I refuse to jump on the Pumpkin Spice bandwagon, and my favorite convenience store is right there with me. You can keep your Wawa’s, Starbucks, and Dunkin Donuts. I prefer the slightly alterna-chick vibe I get by being 100% staunchly pro-QuickChek.
This ridiculously long but still incredibly entertaining list of gifs from Buzzfeed.

As I scrolled through the page before work, it occurred to me that many of these gifs represent my feelings before, during, and after a long run. Thusly, I present you with: The Long Run, in GIFs:

I wake up ready and raring to go.

Or not really, because I may have had a glass or two of wine the night before and set my alarm for WAY earlier than I really want to wake up on a Saturday, and who’s effing idea was it to sign up for a stupid marathon anyway?

So I stumble to the Keurig, pop in a Jamaican Me Crazy k-cup (thanks, Wolfgang Puck!), and begin the prep process. Fuel up, scrub my face, sunblock it all, and get decked out in my running gear finest then throw open the door to greet the morning with some attitude.

Stepping off the porch I remind myself that I should probably do some dynamic stretching; these knees don’t exactly have the get-up-and-go they used to, after all.

But instead I wait and wait, then take off the second my Garmin has satellite reception, like an idiot.

Or a pirate.

The first mile or so is touch and go. My music is pumping, I’m feeling fresh as hell, ready to take on this run. But my legs, knees, hips and ankles sometimes have other plans.

So I slow it down a bit and settle into a nice pace for a few miles. 2, 3, 4, 5+ miles go by, and it’s all good.

Around the halfway point though, I start to get a little distracted. Sure, I’m running, but maybe this song isn’t what I want to hear right now, let me slow down for a few strides here and find a new one. Oh look, sunflowers! That’d make a really great #seenonmyrun pic. I may even do a little run-dancing to break the monotony.

But then I catch a creeper at a red light just watching me with a weird look on his face, so I stop dancing and pick up the pace again for a few miles.

Once I pass the halfway point I start to think a little too much about things. Am I going fast enough? Can I maintain the pace that I just kept for an hour+ for another hour+? GOD my legs are starting to get heavy. Or are they? Is it all in my mind? They say running is all mental, so am I psyching myself out now, or am I really tired? Oh hey another red light.

Thank God. Let me just walk through that.

I glance at my watch and think “OK, 3 more miles. We can do that. That’s just a 5k! You can do that in your sleep. For breakfast. Mmmm breakfast. What kind of food should I eat when I finish this run? Pancakes maybe. Yes. Remember that time you went to IHOP with Jenny for unlimited pancakes and you tapped out after 3? Hahaha what a lightweight. Ugh weight. You know if you weighed less you’d probably be able to run faster. You really are so slow. I mean come on. Maybe you shouldn’t have signed up for this marathon. After all, this is only a portion of what you have to run, and you’re already flagging? You’re kind of pathetic. Just quit. Or don’t, because everyone that you told about this marathon would laugh at you and call you a failure. Maybe you need a new song to motivate you. Not that one. Another one. Another one. Oh my God, WHY DO YOU HAVE A SONG FROM THE LION KING SOUNDTRACK ON YOUR RUNNING PLAYLIST??”

It is hell inside my mind in those final miles.

Before I know it, all of my mental anguish has brought me to the final mile and my legs are ready to give up. I might have hit the wall by now, or I’m close to it. So I dig deep in my energy reserves and call upon my good friends Robyn, Britney, or Freddie for some moral support and head into the final kick.

In the last 5 minutes or so of a run, I will make all manner of uncomfortable faces, say some pretty nasty motivational things to myself, run-dance, jump, air-drum, and basically do everything I need to push through the last .5 mile and call it a day. With every step, I glance at my watch, anxiously awaiting the appearance of the magic numbers after my mileage – ##:00.

And just like that, it’s over!

I stop the watch, do a little fist pump, and maybe bend over for a bit to catch my breath because let’s face it, Brit-Brit knows how to make me work, b*tch. Time to celebrate the fact that I got through it!

With a nice cold bath.

After some stretching, rehydrating, and an ice bath (or shower), it’s food time. Sometimes I feel like eating all of the things after a run, and other times I can’t stand the sight of food, but one thing is for certain: after I eat, it is always, indefinitely, without fail:

Nap time.

FIN.

Let’s Talk Toenails.

August 15, 2014August 15, 2014 / Jess / 4 Comments

Warning – if you’re squeamish about feet, you can ignore this post. There aren’t any gross photos or anything, but just… Sorry in advance.

Also, I can just imagine the search terms that the title of this post will create to bring people to my blog.

As if the #pedicure posts on my IG don’t already bring out the weird fetishists…

But anyway! We’re runners here, right? Or mostly runners. Or walkers. Or people who wear sneakers sometimes. Just go with me, and let’s talk toenails.

Exactly.

I’ll start by saying this: I get the creeps from other people’s feet, like our friend up there. I don’t mean any offense, really, to you people with feet. You could be the most gorgeous foot model in the world and I’d still get the willies. BUT I actually really really like my own feet. They’re the perfect foot shape, my toes are all aligned properly (no Morton’s toe here), and I always keep them immaculately groomed. Regular and consistent pedicures, buffing, daily lotion, the whole 9 yards. It’s one of my quirks, you could say.

…but I’m not cocky about it like Maria here. Tone it down, lady.

However… all that changed when I started running. I’ll spare you the details but let’s just say it’s a friggin mess down there. If you’re a runner or even wear sneakers a lot, you’re probably right there with me, yeah? Everything that can possibly go wrong with a foot has probably done so if you’re a runner. Like having to be the boring one at a party the night before a long run and being able to calculate kilometers to miles in an instant, foot issues come with the “runner” title.

Well, the most obvious issue that I’ve got going on right now is a big honking black toenail, which has been threatening to jump for about 2 months now. And it’s really grossing me the hell out.

Right??!

Seriously – every time I take my sneakers off after a run, I shock myself with that ever-darkening toenail. It’s mocking me even now, as I type this. My feet are propped up on a pillow in front of me, and there it is, laughing at me over the top of my laptop. Just daring me to coat it with another layer of polish, which it will blast right through with its darkness and make a mockery of the rest of my pedicure.

So what’s a girl to do?

bingo!

Go with it! Instead of fighting the evil scourge of the black toenail, I’ve decided to embrace it. Wear it as a badge of honor, if you will. Sure, I’m going to keep taking good care of my feet with regular pedicures, but I’ll smile when I see that funky nail. I’ll remember the first time I noticed it after that 7 mile run that took me on a new route in the rain and made me feel like a real Runner with a capital R. I might even show it off to the guy at the nail salon when I go for my next pedicure!

And then I’ll ask him to just paint the skin where there are no nails, and pick a darker polish 😉

What do you think about toenails? Have you experienced the dreaded black toenail of doom? Go ahead, share your story – no judgement here!

Right Back to Where We Started From

August 11, 2014 / Jess / 6 Comments

I have no excuse for the last 2 weeks.

Well, no running-related excuses. Just a lot of life happening around here. And while I’ve slowly worked training back into my schedule, it hasn’t been my focus. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, I am more than just a runner. I’m a wife, daughter, employee, friend – and lately I’ve found that life is more about balancing those different roles than focusing on one.

However! This is a running blog, right? SO. Let’s take a look at what’s been going on in my running world lately 🙂

When I last left off, I was bouncing back from a bout of hand, foot, and mouth disease (I refuse to call it coxsackie on principle alone) and I was also nursing a tender knee. After my last post, the foot blisters eased up in time for my return to running on my birthday, July 31st!

Full disclosure: I ran just to earn the Nike Plus badge.

My knee felt surprisingly great – the unexpected week+ off from running because of my illness gave the rest of my body the chance to heal up, and while I stayed cautious on downhills and stopping/starting, the sharp pains I had experienced the week or two earlier were nowhere to be found. Score!

Later that day, all I wanted for my birthday was new running shoes and cake, so we went to RoadRunner where I had my gait analyzed again, and discovered that all of my cross training and lifting has helped strengthen up my legs so I don’t need as much stability in my running shoes as I used to! Second score!!

The new babies!

And when I broke in my new Asics Gel Nimbus 16’s on Saturday, I felt like I was running on air! Don’t you just love the first run in the perfect pair of new shoes? There’s nothing like it 🙂

Later that night, I went to a Soundgarden/NIN concert with a group of friends and let me tell you – Trent Reznor is still as hot as ever, and I will fight you to the death over him.

I love you guys. But seriously? I will cut a bitch over those biceps.

He was my very first rock ‘n roll crush – and while I was too young to see them live when my obsession was at its peak, the nearly 20 year wait was entirely worth it. So much so, that I matched my running shorts *and* my sneakers to my music as I rocked out to some early NIN on Monday’s run:

I like to think Trent would be proud.

The rest of the week went by, with 3 progressive runs of 2.5; 3.1; and 3.5 to get my knees back into working order, with the goal of a long run of 5 miles on Sunday. Which I succeeded at. Just barely.

Because I set out too late in the day, it was hot. Like 90 degrees in the sun hot. I also only got about 6 hours of sleep, didn’t fuel very well, and drank just a bit too much on Friday, so my system was NOT long-run ready. But I tried a new route at the park near Rutgers, with a nice path that goes along the Raritan River, near the RU Stadium, past a little zoo, and under a couple of cool bridges. I’m all about switching up the scenery, and this did not disappoint – I will most certainly be going back there again!

I mean, come on! Look at it!

But even though it was beautiful there, I struggled. I took a lot of walk breaks to deal with the cramps and side stitches I kept developing, but I powered through until mile 4.5. I passed a field were a pretty serious soccer game had just wrapped up and slowed to a walk to deal with a new cramp. The teams and their families were all packing up and chatting near the path, when one guy nudged another as I passed, pointing and laughing at me. I had one headphone in so I could only hear snippets, but once those two laughed, the rest of the group they were with all joined in too.

And it really hurt.

I took off running at full speed and kept pushing til I hit my 5 miles, then ran right for the bathroom where I had a little moment. I can usually brush off meaningless immaturity like that, but I was at a pretty low point to begin with, and that just pushed me over the edge into a full on meltdown. My confidence as a runner was tenuous at best, especially after the run I had just shuffled through at a snail’s pace. I was feeling weak and not very prepared, and frankly the thought of running a full marathon in just over 2 months actually makes me laugh because I think it’s that ridiculous and impossible.

But I couldn’t hide in that bathroom forever, so I sniffed it all back and repeated my favorite new mantra a few times: “One run at a time”, snapped an attitude-packed selfie because I was proud of how my legs looked in my shorts (#sorrynotsorry) and headed home for a shower and a big-ass cheeseburger. Because I’m a runner and that’s what runners do. We take it one run at a time and keep moving forward.

Hi, Haters!

So how was your weekend? Tell me about it – is your training coming along nicely?

Change of Plans

July 16, 2014 / Jess / 7 Comments

Many, many people have trained for and successfully completed their first marathon using one of the countless training plans out there. But I can’t shake the feeling that the plan I first picked might not be the right one!

You see, through training for 3 half marathons and going through ACL reconstruction, I’ve discovered a few inalienable truths: I cannot run more than 2 days in a row without extreme joint pain; the day after my long run I need movement but my knees hate me; etc. So the cookie cutter plans that have worked for SO many others kind of won’t work.

After my first month of Hal Higdon’s Novice 1 plan, I’ve found that skipping that middle day of running and replacing it with cross training won’t work – I still need those miles to build a solid running base. But I also have to break up the runs so I don’t burn out, while still incorporating strength and cross training. And don’t forget building up to a distance that’s close to the full 26 miles… It’s enough to make a girl go insane. But instead of losing my mind, I took matters into my own hands and created my very own plan!

I found this great plan on CoolRunning.com and liked the increased mileage on the long runs: mentally, I need to know that I’ve gotten as close to that magic number of 26 in my training so that I’m prepared to take it on come race day. But it lacked cross training, which Hal’s Novice 2 had plenty of, although it only took me up to 20 miles. Factoring in all of my special needs, I finally came up with a custom-made plan that knocks it out of the park, if I say so myself! Here’s a sample week:

Sunday: 15 miles (Long Run)
Monday: Swimming
Tuesday: 3 miles
Wednesday: 7 miles
Thursday: Cross Training or Rest
Friday: 4 miles (Speedwork)
Saturday: Rest

Basically what I did was break up the 3 days of running in a row in Higdon’s plans, changed the rest day after my long run to a cross-training day with swimming (saving my knees around the long runs), and increased the mileage of the long runs each week by 2 or 3 miles to have me peak with 23 miles instead of 20. I don’t know why but it makes me feel more prepared, just let me have my little bit of madness!

So there you have it: my new plan, which will (hopefully) bring me across the finish line in October with both legs intact and a smile on my face. What do you think? How have you worked through your training schedule? Am I being crazy here? Tell me in the comments!

International Mermaid Day is Coming!

July 16, 2014 / Jess / Leave a comment

Exciting news here in Jess Runs Happy-ville:

10360785_502163769917386_2503083998204952304_n International Mermaid Day is coming!

The Mermaid Club is proud to announce the first ever International Mermaid Day! Yeah, we mermaids are so damn cool and badass that we deserve our own special day 🙂 To celebrate this inaugural event, TMC has partnered with the Make-A-Wish® Southern Florida and will be hosting a virtual 5k run, swim or bike event to raise some funds for this wonderful and inspiring charity.

Beginning Sunday, September 7, 2014, you can opt to run, swim or bike your distance on any date that week, with your choice of location. And I’m thrilled to be hosting the local New Jersey meetup!!

When, Where & How

When: Sunday, September 7, 2014
Cost: $25 with 20% of all proceeds being donated to Make-A-Wish^® Southern Florida
Where: Everywhere! You can map your own course, but if you’re local to NJ and you want to join your fellow mermaids (and yours truly!), you’re more than welcome to! Mermaid Club reps will also be hosting meet-ups in: Sarasota, Tampa, & Boca Raton, Florida; South Amboy, New Jersey; Los Angeles & San Francisco, California; New Orleans, LA; and Melbourne, Australia
Registration is available on Active.com right here. That’s your official registration page, and if you want to come to the NJ Meetup, be sure to check in at my Eventbrite page as well so I know who to expect that day!

What happens next?

It’s easy! Sign up & we will mail you a bib. Then you run, bike or swim your event, snap a picture using the hastag #MermaidsMakeAWish and after the event you’ll get the most amazing TMC bling you have ever seen?

So come on Mermaids, what are you waiting for? Let’s Raise our Fins and give back by making a child’s Wish Come True with Make-A-Wish®!

3 towns, 10 miles, 1 bathroom break

July 14, 2014July 14, 2014 / Jess / 12 Comments

This week marked week 4 of marathon training, and it passed pretty unremarkably, until yesterday that is… let me explain:

Since it’s been a month, this was my first experience of training while PMS’ing. Which… WOW. That’s all I can really say. I don’t know whether my husband is ready to walk out or just throw a chocolate cake at me and be done with it. The combination of waking up early, being sore all the time and not eating my usual comfort foods made the holy trifecta of awful, and my hormone swings on top of everything else made it a pretty angry week.

My sucky run on Tuesday was mitigated only by the fact that I got to wear fun new Brooks “Run Happy” shorts that totally matched my shoes:

That smile? Yeah, it’s fake.

It was a hard 3 miles and my time was physically embarrassing, but it was done. So I went to bed angry. Then Wednesday I did yoga on the beach with some friends instead of running for my last “crosstraining instead of running Wednesday” and found myself doing some not-very-zen things like cursing the instructor and wishing I could be on the boardwalk eating curly fries and lobster rolls instead of getting sand where sand should not go with a bunch of granola-chomping hippies. Thankfully, the friends I did the class with were of the same mind, so things worked out.

We call ourselves the Yoga Misfits and we’re thinking of getting jackets made.

Thursday was pretty much the worst day ever. Work was a nightmare, my hormones were raging, and I physically couldn’t bring myself to break through it and go for a run. I promised myself I’d go first thing Friday, but to keep myself from murdering someone, I instead had some chocolate cake and went to bed angry at 9:30. I considered it a public service.

It worked, because Friday morning I turned a corner. I churned out 3 faster miles and rocked out to some “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and even had a woman drive by and applaud me (her kid in the car seat behind her was clapping too)! That gave me some good motivation to rock my long run, so I plotted a course that took me through 3 nearby towns, went to bed early Saturday, woke up early Sunday and had hubby drive me 10 miles out to begin my first double-digit run on this training schedule!

It was overcast and actually kind of cool out, which was a very nice change from the 85 degrees I’ve been running in the past few weeks. However, it was still humid as hell. And so I was drenched by about mile 2, which I discovered when I stopped for an emergency bathroom break:

When will I learn and not pick light colored shorts?

Even despite the beautiful view, the good pacing, and a solid fueling plan, I had soaked clean through my shorts, thus rendering null and void any cool points I had accumulated up til then.

I kept at it though and felt OK til about mile 6. Glancing at my watch, I realized I’d been running for more than an hour so I took a break and grabbed some water from my belt to wash down some Sport Beans. That’s where the day took a turn.

The bottle I carried my water in had been stored in the cabinet I keep all of my scented candles in, too. And it also gets very hot there. Thanks to osmosis, the various candle scents had permeated the plastic of my little handheld Nathan water bottle, making my water taste like every damn Yankee Candle I ever owned.

Which tastes like exactly what you think it does.

After taking my first horrible gulp of funk-water, I gagged on the side of the road and panicked: I still had at least 2 more miles to the Quick Check I had planned on getting water from, and these Sport Beans had turned my mouth into a foul pasty desert!! But I sucked it up (literally), swished some nasty candle-water around my mouth to keep it hydrated, and walk/jogged the next 2 miles to get fresh water.

When I arrived at Quick Check, I downed a bottle of water so fast I gave myself a brain freeze, then walked back outside to find that it was POURING! So I took it as a sign and waited, stretching for a good 5 minutes while the rain subsided. Once it cleared, I set out again and thought “2 more miles! You can do 2 more miles, that’s nothing!” and sure enough, I did! I wanted to quit a few times, but I found that this 10 miler was much better than the 10 miler I did while training for my last half. Then, I wanted to give up at 8 and had to walk almost the entire last 2 miles. But yesterday I pushed through, found a few new songs on my running playlist and made it all the way to my parents’ house at mile 10.00, where I promptly collapsed in a heap of hair and sweat.

…so much sweat.

So while I was a little frustrated with how much I had to walk after the candle-water incident, I’m pretty proud of my final push. It was a strong finish to an otherwise so-so run, and I’ll take it!

However, last night while basking in my post-long-run bliss and updating my training diary, I discovered that I’d read it wrong: as it turns out, I was only supposed to do 9 miles yesterday. 10 is next week’s long run. So that means I have to do this all over again.

giphy

Excuse me while I go sit in the corner and rock back and forth, crying and laughing uncontrollably.

How did your week go? Any training milestones you’re proud of? Have you ever read your training calendar wrong and screwed yourself? Please tell me I’m not the only one!

Week 1 of 18

June 23, 2014June 23, 2014 / Jess / 6 Comments

Well I’m still here! I know I’ve been quiet lately (ok, SILENT), but it’s been a very eventful first week of marathon training and I’m really excited to share it with you!

So I’m officially following Hal Higdon’s Novice 1 plan, and I adapted it to allow for extra cross- & strength-training (and to accommodate my still-kinda-new-ACL). I started on Tuesday of last week – in this plan, Mondays are rest days. This works out perfectly because I’m usually pretty active during the weekend, and Sunday long runs keep me from going out drinking on a Saturday – so even my liver wins! So after mentally prepping and adjusting my diet accordingly on Monday, I was good and ready for an early morning 3.1 miler on Tuesday!

I know that it should be 3 miles, but does anyone else have a hard time just running 3 without the .1 to make it a 5k? No? Just me? Ok then. Moving on!

Anyway, it was hot. And humid. Frankly, it felt like I was running through chicken soup. I was leaking from every pore and slow and kinda hated it, but I kept telling myself to soak it in because it was my first training run for my first marathon. How stinking cool is that? I got to watch the sun come up over the bay as I ran loops around the park, said Hi to some little baby bunnies out for breakfast with their mom on the side of the path, and I got through it with a smile. Winning!

To enhance my training, I also decided to add 15-20 minutes of strength training in each day. Even if it’s 3 minutes at a pop in front of the TV while the commercials are on, I’m getting it in. Arms, abs, back, and legs, no body part left behind (ew). So I did my 20 minutes with some coworkers in the office gym in the afternoon, and topped off my day in the evening with my handstand challenge practice.

Come Wednesday, my knees were extremely achy from wearing high heels at work and the humidity. So I invoked my training plan tweak and opted out of running, choosing instead to get the mileage the plan called for (4 miles) done on the elliptical. This saved my knees a LOT of pain, and it worked out fantastically.

You can tell it’s working because I look like death!

I still got all the cardio benefits (I was dripping with sweat!) by keeping close to my running pace and loved it. When I added another 20 minutes of strength training and more handstands into the mix that day, I was shredded.

So when Thursday called for 3 miles, I was surprised (not really though) to find that my body was not having any of that. I got my strength training in, but suffered all day through my monthly migraine (any of you ladies experience the same hell as me every month?). By the time I got out of work, I wasn’t even close to motivated to run 3 miles. It was 95 outside, about 97% humidity, and I was out of Motrin. I call that The “Trifecta of Suck”.

BUT – when I got home, I put on my gear and told myself to get out there. Even if I did one mile, I’d call it a win. So I got out there in the soupy weather and walked for most of a mile, threw in 4 sprints of around 8:00/miles just to get my heart rate up, and as soon as that damn Nike+ app said 1.00, I called it. I was just not feeling it. But I didn’t beat myself up – I chose to be happy with my training and chalked it up to good experience, and looked forward to rest day Friday!

Instead of 🙂 or 😦 I decided on the third option, not shown here-

After resting (and yes, having a slice of homemade pizza) on Friday, I attacked Saturday and Sunday with what I can only describe as an intense desire to KICK ASS. And kick I did!

I tackled Saturday morning with an 8-mile bike ride before breakfast, and felt unstoppable. It was my longest ride since before my surgery, and I felt like I could have easily kept on going! Then Sunday I attacked my 5 mile training run in under an hour:

by 32 seconds, but it counts!

And then punished my legs just a little bit more with 2 hours of hiking and trail running at Holmdel Park.

My legs were so tired I tried to ride the deer home.

Then I finished the day with some more handstand practice and looked forward to resting today!

So that’s my Week 1 (of 18). It’s kind of scary to think that I have to keep this up for another 17 weeks (my god I’m starving and exhausted!) but I’m feeling stronger than ever and very excited to see where this training takes me!

How about you, are you training for anything right now? How’s it going?

First Marathon Training Time

June 6, 2014 / Jess / 11 Comments

I’m about a week away from starting my first ever full marathon training plan, and – we’re friends right? Good. Then I feel no shame in telling you that I’m about ready to soil myself.

do not want.

I can’t lie – there’s a lot of “why the hell did I ever say I’d do this in the first place?” going through my head right now. I’m an idiot. I watched one video about people finishing a marathon and suddenly I’m ready to take on 26.2 miles myself? Come on, 13.1 just became doable like a month ago!

But alas, I made a promise to myself (and paid the registration fee), so I can’t run away from this problem.

although that sprint might be good training, so on second thought maybe I should?

So now I’m staring down a 16 week training plan that will basically change my life: I’m starting it just as a “runner”. If anything, I can call myself a half marathoner. But at the end of these 4 and a half months, I’m going to be a marathoner. Even thinking about it gives me chills!

Am I scared? Hell yeah. But I’m excited too. And I can’t wait to prove to myself that I can do it. I’m going to start a journey that I never thought I’d ever take on, and it’s going to consume a lot of my life. I’ll have to re-evaluate and shift my eating and drinking habits (oh god my drinking habits) for optimum performance. No more late nights – or late mornings, for that matter. I’ll live and die by the mileage. Whatever the number on the plan, I’m sticking to it and following through. Cross training will be for-realsies, too – biking, swimming, strength training; it’s all going down.

Because come October 19th, when I hit that boardwalk, I want to be as prepared and confident as possible. I will leave all of my doubts in my dust, and I’m going to crush it.

basically I’m going to be Dumbledore

Now I want to hear from you – what are you ready to take on like Albus up there? Are you training for your first race? A 5k? Your first marathon? Tell me what’s going through your mind – I want to hear it all!

My First Nike+ Run

May 20, 2014June 6, 2014 / Jess / Leave a comment

Let me preface this post by saying that I love Instagram. If you are on it, and not currently following me there, please do me a favor and give me a follow (if you’re so inclined). I’m on there multiple times in a day, and I find so much joy in “meeting” new people that like to share their journeys too! On Instagram, it’s all about the community. Everyone there is just so encouraging and helpful and inspirational – and as I’ve mentioned before, it’s even been a source of fashion inspiration for me too!

So last week, my runner friend at work Instagrammed a photo from her nightly run: a gorgeous scenic photo, with her Nike+ run info along the bottom. I’d seen plenty of other IG’ers with the Nike+ jargon, and have always thought “Eh, it’s too complicated, it’d just be one more thing to carry and sync and post and drive my friends on FB crazy with when I post with it.” The photo was gorgeous though, and when I saw her at work the next day I complimented her on it. We got to talking about Nike+ and she reassured me how easy it is to use, how it doesn’t drain your battery, how you can create challenges with friends – well, before I knew it, I was inspired to take the leap and jump on the Nike+ bandwagon, and now I’m wondering why it took me so long to do just that!

…and if all my friends jumped off bridges, I would too.

It took some getting used to – I don’t normally carry my phone with me, and I still ran with my Garmin too, simply out of habit. It’ll be easier on long runs or those jogs where I’m wearing pants that have pockets where I can stash my phone, but overall I found that the Nike+ app was perfectly accurate on my pace and distance, and I’ve already connected with some friends on there! I feel like a part of a bigger community, which is always a good thing, and I can’t lie – my work friend who introduced me to it has already said she’ll challenge me, and I can’t wait to bring it. Talk about motivation!

Plus, it didn’t hurt that today was my first solo run around the industrial park near my office, where I was surprised to find beautiful sights like this one:

perfect running scenery

I can’t wait to lace up again tomorrow and see where I go with my Nike+!

What do you think – are you on Nike+ too? What tracking app/product do you rely on? Share your favorites in the comments!

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When, Where & How

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