Dev on Running

Don’t asked me how this happened.

Trust me, I wasn’t all like, “Hey, I think I’ll run nearly all 9:00 miles today.” It just happened. So weird. But it makes me very happy!

There’s something to be said for consistency.

It probably had to do with the fact that I did almost the entire run on the completely flat Green Lake path (elevation gain: two feet). When I start training for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Seattle half, I’ll definitely do hillier runs and even dedicate one run per week to hill repeats. Luckily, I have no shortage of nearby hills to choose from!

Fun fact: Five miles is the farthest I’ve run since I sprained my ankle back in May. The last time I ran five miles was on March 30 in Airlie Beach, Australia (9:13 pace). Not a bad-looking route, huh?

Oh Australia, how I miss your beaches.

ANYWAY. I’m extremely excited to tackle six miles next week!

I lifted some weights after today’s run to squeeze in my second strength-training session of the week. I also stretched, spent quality time with my foam roller, and watched the incomprehensible spectacle that is “Ice Loves Coco” on E!

I… don’t even know.

Louis C.K. was awesome last night!

(Stolen from Aaron’s Instagram)

I had watched one of his stand-up DVDs and seen a few episodes of his TV show before, but I didn’t think I would love Louis C.K. in person as much as I did. He was hil-ar-i-ous (and juuuust inappropriate enough) for two hours straight! My face hurt from smiling and laughing so much.

I made the excellent life decision to use a few hours of PTO that I’ve accrued so far to take this morning off and sleep in, then roll into work at 1 p.m. I got a lovely eight hours of sleep, and even got my run in during daylight hours!

Just a quick two miles down to Green Lake and back.

It started raining during the last half-mile, but it didn’t even bother me after running in hellish wind and rain a few nights ago. I have seen some shit, y’all. Rain will have to try a little harder to get me down.

Aaron has finally converted me to the iPhone, and so I’m officially the last person in the world to have Instagram (just as everyone else is quitting it, naturally). So far I’m just ‘gram-ing food and stuff.

Aaron and I made… hmm… interesting life decisions for dinner and dessert tonight. Let’s just say we were sick of eating big salads at home, so we went out for an end-of-the-world style meal.

The Boar’s Nest: BBQ pulled pork, cornbread, fried mac ‘n’ cheese, onion rings (ate about half; the rest is lunch tomorrow).

Hot Cakes Molten Chocolate Cakery: Dark Decadence molten cake, vanilla ice cream, salted caramel, butter toffee nibs.

And now we drink homemade grape juice* and watch the movie Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. I smell a theme!

* Did you know that it is illegal to ship wine from Italy to the U.S.? It is, however, legal to ship “homemade grape juice.” Not that I know anyone who’s done that.

I’ve never seen legit waves crash up against the shores of itty-bitty Green Lake… until tonight.

Luckily, I was dressed for the relentless wind and rain!

Notice Aaron photobombing me with his version of Strutting Leo. Heh.

I wore Aaron’s beanie to keep my ears warm, my running hat to keep the rain off my face, and the hood of my jacket to stay dry. It all worked well until the wind blew fat raindrops horizontally, right into my face.

Well played, mother nature.

Tonight’s speed intervals:

• 0.5 mi warmup
• Four sets of 0.25 mi fast and 0.25 mi recovery
• 1 mi cool-down

I enjoyed that speedy mile home! Anything to get me away from the windy death trap of Green Lake.

Post-run: Is it rain? Is it sweat?

Who knows? That’s the fun.

I’ve slacked on some areas of my training plan, but in four weeks, I’ve done all my speed workouts. And they’ve really paid off!

I just added the average pace of each of my completed runs to my training plan, and you can see the pace slowly dropping through the weeks. I’ll try longer speed intervals with shorter periods of recovery next week to help me get even stronger and run even faster!

I’ve made tomorrow my rest day and moved a 2 mi run + strength training to Friday because we’re going to see Louis CK perform standup tomorrow night! The show starts at 10 p.m., and I usually try to be in bed by 9:58, so it’ll be interesting trying to stay awake. Not to mention trying to stay awake the next day at work…

And I shall end with a random photo from Aaron’s holiday party last Friday. Shh, just go with it:

…but FUCK YES.

It’s cold (39 F) and windy out, so I ran the first mile quickly to warm up.

My legs just kept going for the second mile.

And the third mile? That’s about when I realized that I wasn’t just running faster than usual because it was cold; I was running faster because I am faster.

Even though I was a bum for the last four (cold, rainy, miserable-weather) days and pretty much ignored my training plan, I ran fast (for me) tonight and didn’t get tired. Every time my watch beeped with a thrilling mile split, I felt a renewed burst of energy to keep running strong. I never stopped, except for stoplights. I was in the fucking zone.

Three of weeks of training, including speed work, equals this incredible feeling.

I’ll take a lifetime supply of this.

Running is the best.

Bonus: Completely unrelated photo strip from Aaron’s holiday party Friday night.

Eek, I’m several days behind on blogging!

On Thursday, my team of about 25 people left work at 12:30 to go rock climbing at Vertical World. I’ve been meaning to try rock climbing for years, but just never made the time or effort, so I was pumped!

The equipment is fairly basic — a simple harness and special shoes — so I was ready to go in just a few minutes, and I found myself staring up at the beginner-level walls. Oh, hmm… this is when I got a little nervous.

I watched several of my co-workers climb first, just so I could get an idea of what I was getting into, and then finally it was my turn. I took on the yellow section above, which I think was the easiest route in the whole place (a 5.3, for you climbers).

The trick, apparently, is to climb with your legs first, and just use your arms to steady yourself. Since 99.9% of my body strength is in my legs, I had a ball. I climbed up to the ledge of the yellow wall, then climbed up on the ledge, and then made the mistake of looking down. Um, yeah, time to rappel back down ASAP!

Perhaps the belayer was just being nice, but when I reached the ground, he was all, “Nice job! You made that look easy. Go try something harder.”

Well, you don’t have to tell me twice.

I walked around to see what everyone else was up to, and found my boss’ boss (blue shirt) belaying my boss (gray tank). They are both avid climbers and did really impressive things on the more difficult routes.

I also found some totally crazy-looking walls with holds that went onto the ceiling. Whaaaaat?

And I wound up climbing five more routes, I think, including a 5.7 and two 5.8s!

No action shots of me climbing; just a bathroom pic instead (naturally).

I really, really, really enjoyed my first climbing experience, and I can see how climbing could become an addiction! It was a lot more of a workout than I expected — I was sweating as I reached the top of every route — and I loved being challenged, having to problem-solve, and having to gather the courage to take risks with my holds on the way up.

Just like running, it takes a lot of determination to reach the finish in climbing, and it is oh-so-satisfying to get there.

I must go back! Aaaaand I’ll drag Aaron, too. : )

Last night’s speed intervals:

I dilly-dallied for half an hour before going on this run because it was sooooo darrrrrrk and soooooo coooooold out, but once I got out, I really enjoyed myself and was all like, “Hey, I want to run an extra mile!” It’s always more satisfying to run a complete loop of Green Lake than an out-and-back.

Of course, it started absolutely pouring during that last mile, but I loved every minute and would do it again in a heartbeat. Oh, hey, I will tonight!

I had Aaron take a pic to show how soaked I was coming back from this run, but you can’t tell at all and I just look silly. Life story.

By the way, almost every time I run a complete loop of Green Lake (2.8 miles), I remember the time I tried to run around Green Lake with a college boyfriend, but I couldn’t even run for two minutes straight without stopping. He was just getting into running and it seemed effortless to him, so it made me feel like a steaming pile of poo that I couldn’t keep up.

I remember thinking I would never be able to run all the way around Green Lake.

And then there was that time he broke up with me, in part because I wasn’t “active enough.”

And then there was that time I saw via Facebook that he ran a marathon, and although his time meant nothing to me (I still wasn’t a runner back then), I was in awe.

And then there was that time that I ran a marathon without stopping.

And then there was that time that I went back and looked up his marathon time and realized that I ran my marathon more than 30 minutes faster than him.

And that makes me smile, friends, it really does. I’ve got nothing against the guy, but man, it feels good to smoke someone who used to make you feel inferior.

So that is what I think about every time I run around Green Lake: The fact that I’m doing something I never thought I could do, and that I’ve done (and will do) much bigger things as well.

/life-reflection

Have a great Thursday! I know mine will be fab because the entire marketing team is kicking out at 12:30 to go indoor rock climbing, and then to happy hour.

Hilarity will surely ensue.

I had it in my head today that even though I substituted spinning for running last night, I still wanted to run tonight in addition to lifting weights.

But, as I waited 25 minutes in the cold for my (very, very late) bus home, that determination waned. The last of it disappeared as it started to sprinkle on my walk between the bus stop and home. I would just pump iron tonight.

And then… we ended up pumping water instead.

I came home to find that the water heater was leaking all over the place. Aaron had pulled the stacked washer/dryer out of the hall closet to soak up the leaking water with towels, and he’d shut off all the water to try to get the leaking to stop.

The possibility of no shower before work tomorrow = no sweat-inducing workout for me tonight.

After many attempts to pump excess water through a hose (pictured) and lots of frustration when water just kept on leaking, we called a plumber to make things right.

The nice plumber is finishing up the paperwork for the new water heater he just installed as we speak.

Oh, life. It doesn’t always go as planned. Shit goes wrong. Plans change.

There’s always tomorrow. And, thankfully, tomorrow includes a hot shower.

I got home late tonight and wasn’t feeling a run after yesterday’s long-ish one, so I subbed 35 minutes on the bike trainer for my planned 3.5 mile run.

I did an easy warmup for a few minutes, then changed to a low gear (to make it difficult) and cranked as hard as I could on that for one minute, then relaxed on a higher gear for two minutes, and repeated one minute low/two minutes high until my 35 minutes were up.

The stats:

• 8.9 miles
• 15 mph average

Sweat galore! And super-worked quads and calves.

The photos from my company’s holiday party were emailed to everyone today, and Aaron and I made a grand appearance in one single shot:

That is premium Kirkland Signature (aka Costco brand) wine you’re seeing in my cup. It made the improv troupe much more entertaining. I had about three five who’s counting? cups of it. Yum.

Anyway, regarding the title of this post, today really was the weirdest day EVER. Aaron discovered something mind-boggling and hilarious that I’ll eventually tell you all about, but I’m not going to say what it is until March or so. Just know that the next few months will be VERY entertaining for us over here, and some of your minds will be blown when I tell you!

(Just realized that sort of sounds like I’m preggo, but trust me, I’m definitely not. Check back in about five years on that one.)

To end this random post on a high note, can I just say that I’m extremely proud of my state for finally voting for marriage equality?

Photo by Matt Stopera.

Check out 60 Moments That Gave Me The Chills During Seattle’s First Day Of Marriage Equality on Buzzfeed.

Word.

It never really got light out today. Dark clouds hovered over Seattle and shat rain all over the place without mercy. It was a good day to get a run in early so I could then shower, get warm, and move on with my life.

I ran these four miles 33 seconds faster overall than last weekend’s four! The fact that the weather was miserable probably helped me get this over with faster. I’ll take motivation in any form.

I will also take cookies in any form.

My mom and I spent hours today whipping up Christmas treats! We made gingerbread cookies, pumpkin spice chocolate chip cookies, and church window candy (minus the nuts) while Aaron and Don watched football. The Seahawks shut out the Cardinals, 58-0 — whaaaaat?!? Go Hawks!

Our gingerbread cookies were mostly classic Christmas shapes, but with a few dinosaurs thrown in for good measure.

A Christmas brontosaurus, of course.

Award-winning decor.

We then watched Love Actually, per tradition. Best Christmas movie EVER.

Now, what to do with all these treats?? I think we’ll eat a few, freeze a few, and share the rest with co-workers. I’m sugared out for today, so we’ll see how I feel tomorrow. : )