My First Half!!!

I did it!

Here's my bib that I picked up on Friday at the expo. It's the first one I've gotten that has my name on it. I'm pretty sure that it means that I have entered into the big leagues of racing.

The race started at 6am and this is what the view looked liked from outside of my hotel room when I got up. Do you see that glare? That my friends, is rain. Not the best of circumstances if you are going to run your first half, but I just layered a lot and tried not to think about it.

Here are my friends Randi, Chrissy and Shannon at the start of the race.

The course was pretty flat overall and took us around the Denver area.

I'm not going to lie. It was hard and far! The longest run I had done in my training was 11 miles and I was hurting a lot at the end. The best part about the route was after mile 7 when we got to run through a fire station. It really helped motivate me to go faster. While I had a stretch goal of coming in under 2 hours, I knew that coming in under 2:05 was going to be hard for me, so throughout the race I pushed myself to run 9:40m/m or under. I was able to do that for all but four of the miles and I came in just under the 2:05 mark!!
Here we are at the end of the chute that leads out of the finish! I am so proud of us for running our first half!

Now for the results! I did end up running .09 miles more than I had too, but all in all, I am really happy with my numbers. My splits from my garmin looked like this:

Split    Time     Distance    Avg Pace
   1       09:32        1.00           09:32
   2       09:28        1.00           09:28
   3       08:57        1.00           08:57
   4       09:21        1.00           09:21
   5       09:01        1.00           09:01
   6       09:14        1.00           09:14
   7       09:44        1.00           09:44
   8       09:27        1.00           09:27
   9       09:47        1.00           09:47
   10     09:49        1.00           09:49
   11     09:18        1.00           09:18
   12     09:19        1.00           09:19
   13     09:49        1.00           09:49
   14     01:52        0.19           09:39
Sum  2:04:46      13.19          09:27

My official time was 2:04:42 and I had an average pace of 9:32!!
Overall: 1385/3779
20-29F Div: 227/774
Females: 650/2409

My muscles are so sore tonight and I am super exhausted because I didn't sleep very well last night. But I've taken it easy today and had my fair share of Advil today and hopefully tomorrow I'll feel closer to 100%. Now I'm off to bed :)

Scenes from my run

One of the things I've done to keep myself accountable is join a running club. I would say that all in all I am not a 'joiner' so I may not keep it up past the one season, but it has definitely allowed me to find new places to run and keeps me running at times that I haven't necessarily wanted to.

The club is currently training for the Garden of the Gods 10 Miler. So, we've been training there for the past few weeks. It is really, really hilly, but pretty much one of the prettiest runs ever.

I took photos of some of the views on my drive home the other day and thought I would share.

My camera phone pictures definitely don't do it justice.

if you've never been here, I highly recommend visiting this beautiful, free and open to the public park. It is one of the best places to visit in the Springs.

Hopefully you have a pretty run planned this week. Happy running :)

A Typical Dog Park Excursion

Charlie loves the dog park. If I happen to say d-o-g-p-a-r-k out loud, he will literally pace back and forth in front of me until we get into the car.

Normally, we find a ball and throw it around and loop around the park for a bit. And then it happens... we come to the area of the park where the stream is and I say, no water this time Charlie.

This is always what happens anyway :)

Shredding It

Over the holiday season I found Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred DVD for around $6 at Target and picked it up. In February, right around the time that I started my training I decided to give it a try, but I only lasted a record-setting one day! I think that my heart wasn't in it, but still... one day out of 30 does not bode well for traits like consistency and dedication.

Last week I decided to pick it up again and stick with it. Today is day 8 and I've only skipped one day (Sunday). Dan told me that Jillian would tell me, "No Excuses", but I feel like the 9 mile run I did that day was a good trade off.

I plan on doing 10 days on each of the three levels. Since each workout is about 25 minutes, I have been able to do one before I get to work each morning. Charlie gets really confused during the ab portions when I am down on the floor. It took me about 5 days to teach him not to come stand over me during those parts of the work out.

While I'm pretty sure that my abs won't be looking like Jillian's at the end of 30 days, I am getting better at doing push ups. What's most important to me though, is sticking with it for 30 days. Since consistency isn't really my thing, this is a good challenge to take on. Now I am off to Shred it!

Lucky Number 7

Seven years ago today, Dan and I had our first date.

I wasn't too sure of him at that point in time, but after a lot of persistence and quite a few dates, he ended up winning me over :)

I know that Dan looks at those days as pretty much the luckiest time of his life... right hun?

Looking back, it feels like forever ago and not very long ago all at the same time.

In seven years, we've moved across the country with each other, been through various jobs, bought our first home, done a million and five home improvement projects on said home, taken many a road trip through the plain states between Colorado and Michigan, traveled to exotic and not so exotic, but fun locales, seen plenty of concerts, attended too many weddings to count, and raised our pride and joy Charlie boy!

Not too bad for 7 years if I do say so myself!

In many respects, we are total opposites, but I think that is one of the main things that makes us such a good fit.

He reminds me pretty much all of the time to slow down and take things a bit less seriously.

And I can always count on him to have made coffee in the morning (a highly desirable trait in my book). 

He is hardworking and diligent...

a dedicated teacher and coach....

a creative spirit...

and my very best friend. (Even if getting a smile out of him for pictures can be a task.)

We make a great team,

and we're lucky to have each other.

Love you D.

Cheers to lucky number 7.

xo

5K on St. Patty's Day

Dan and I rand our first 5K together a couple of week's ago! It was so much fun. As you can tell from all of the green, it was a St. Patrick's Day weekend race. Can you see us in the picture below?!

This was a really fun race downtown and it was actually a 5K, unlike my Turkey Trot experience, which made it even better :)

Besides actually being the length that the race said it was going to be, my run was so different from my first Turkey Trot. Mostly because I have been working really hard on running consistently lately. But also because I was able to use my Garmin throughout the race which really helped me to control my pace and not get caught up in what everyone else was doing. 

I went into the race wanting to run it in sub 29 minutes, but running with a lot of people can be pretty motivating, and I was able to blow past that time and finish in 27:38, which is a 8:54 avg pace!! I felt pretty exhausted at the end of it, but was really proud of myself overall for doing better than expected! I ended up placing 45 out of 222 in my age group and 222 out of 1,241 for all female competitors!

Even though I am not running races to place or have the fastest time, I do love seeing improvement in myself overall. Looking back at my Turkey Trot run, I remember having to walk at times and I finished with a 10:26 pace. It's awesome to know that all of my training is actually paying off in a tangible way :)

Dan also did well for not training at all. He finished in 28:14 which is a 9:06 average page, coming in 506 out of 937 male competitors and 69 out of 111 in his age group. For not training one bit, that is pretty awesome. Even though he did well, it has taken a bit of work to get him to agree to sign up for another race. But I think I'm pretty close to getting him to sign up to run the Bolder Boulder 10K with my over Memorial Day weekend. I'll keep you posted :)

While Charlie didn't attend, he did stay in the St. Patrick's Day spirit.

I was on such a roll!

I can't believe I haven't posted on here since January 24th! I was doing so well for the year up until then, but now I am back! Whenever I stop blogging for a while I always find that I miss it. It helps me to keep tabs on what is going on in my life and it's even more fun to look back on older posts to see how things have changed.

Plus, what else am I supposed to do with the bajillion photos that I take each year? :)

I'm blaming this hiatus on my new running hobby. Or more specifically, my 1/2 marathon training plan that kicked off at the end of January. I'm pretty new to this whole running thing, so it was a huge awakening to see all of the hard work that it actually takes to get into running shape.

Besides my training, I got promoted at work, went to Breck, ran a 5K with Dan, joined a running club, went on Spring Break to San Diego with D, and generally just started to get way more into health and fitness. Also Dan started doing yoga and loves it now! It is pretty much one of my favorite things to do with him at the moment.

It has been a busy two months, but I hope to start posting more regularly now that I am a bit more used to this whole health and fitness no matter what else is going on mentality :)