In honor of Lam's victory over commitophobia . . .

Confirmation
Congratulations -- you've just registered for the Sunburst Races. The date is Saturday, May 31, 2008, with the Friday Night Family Walk on May 30. Please be sure to check our site at www.sunburstraces.org as race day approaches for important announcements including start times. If you have questions, please write to us at sunburst@memorialsb.org.

Good luck with your training.
Molly Sullivan Race Director

And for anybody else running the races at Sunburst: FYI, the registration fee goes up after 3/30! SIGN UP NOW and save yourself some mula (and then buy me a beer and/or cheeseburger with that extra mula, since I was kind enough to remind you!) :)

EDIT: Um, oops . . . didn't mean to be so mysterious there! I kind of forgot to mention that it was the HALF-MARATHON race that I signed up for. I figured I can always drop down to the 10K if I don't feel ready (ha, like THAT would ever happen). So yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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RANDOM THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Why oh why did my basketball team have to end their season in such a humiliating way? Didn't I suffer enough last football season?!

Get in Shape Girl, it's so appealing, Get in Shape Girl, you know the feeling!

And because Mallory requested it--

RANDOM THOUGHT OF THE DAY: I was just thinking about how like 92% of the kids I see on a daily basis are totally fat, and was feeling like maybe it's about time to bring back "Get In Shape Girl" (FYI, "Get In Shape Girl" was Irish Cream's very favorite Christmas present of all time--well, besides her Garmin, that is). Then I ran a quick google search and discovered . . . it IS back (see above)! Apparently they have a variety of different activity kits (what, like there's more than one way to get in shape?)--fitness, yoga (how tragically un-80s!), gymnastics--and also various smaller sets that focus specifically around stretching, weights and jumping rope. I might have to pick up a couple of these sets to use on CROSS TRAINING DAYS!! Oh, and guess what little Iris will be getting for her 3rd birthday, Mal? You know it!

Recap: Week One of Half Marathon Training; Also Known As, "What the Eff is Wrong With Me?!"

Hello, loyal readers (all two of you)! As promised, here is a recap of my first full week back in training. It started off pretty well, I have to admit . . . the end part of the week, though? Yeah. Not so good. Here goes:

Monday: 3-mile "easy run" at 9:40/mile pace; strength training-arms.

Tuesday: Hills. The schedule read 6 x hills, but I decided to get creative . . . and by creative, I mean, I copied a Grete Waitz treadmill plan I found on the internet. 1 mile warm-up; then (at around a 10:20 pace--or about 45 seconds slower than my (old) 10k pace) 1 minute at 2% grade, 1 minute at 4% grade, 1 minute at 6% grade, 3 minutes recovery at 0% grade (repeated 3x); 1 mile cool down. In retrospect, this seemed far too easy . . . I was worried about freaking my legs out too early on, but now I'm thinking I really should have pushed the time, considering my "10k pace" came from a year ago when I was a lot slower than I am now. If I attempt this plan again, I'll probably go for between a 9:45/mile and 10:00/mile pace.

Wednesday: 3-mile "easy run" at 9:38/mile pace.

Thursday: 40-minute tempo run was on the schedule, but I ended up working until almost 10 p.m. and was feeling a bit run down anyway. Thus, I ordered it a rest day.

Friday: Actual rest day.

Saturday: 3-mile "easy run" at about a 9:40/mile pace. On a side note, it was a seriously gorgeous day here in NYC! I got to wear shorts and short sleeves! Woohoo! I had been planning to do my long run of 90 minutes, given the gorgeous weather predicted, but was feeling seriously sluggish during my run and decided to swap Sat. and Sun. as a result.

Sunday: Okay, so here's where things went seriously wrong. Wilson and I set out for our respective long runs--he was going to run the first 4 miles with me, since that's what was on his beginner schedule--then I would continue on until I hit 90 minutes. Well, my legs had other plans. They were just ABSOLUTELY dead. I tried to run through it, but it was seriously crazy. I felt like I was back at mile 24 of the marathon! I started questioning myself and whether I was getting back into training too soon after my marathon. Um, well I guess that's probably a little bit true. In the end, I decided that if I at least finished the 4 with Wilson, I'd be keeping up with his schedule; so we both called it quits after running 4 miles at around a 10:10 pace. To punish myself for sucking (ha), I added to some core training to the mix back at home.

So now I'm left with the question of where to go from here. Do I drop to Hal's Intermediate schedule? Do I try to stick with the Advanced Schedule and just take it easy until I recover a little more? Do I forget the half-marathon altogether and run the 10K at Sunburst? UGH. I don't know. I really don't want to have to drop down to Intermediate, but I'm thinking that if I do, maybe I can just transition back into the Advanced Schedule when I start feeling stronger again. Thoughts?

Alright, and one more thing I've been needing to get off my chest. Since I finally have the forum to do so, I figure, why not?

This is a public service announcement for all of the a-holes in Prospect Park who feel the need to a) walk six abreast along the park drive, forcing me to pass their slow asses in a mess of bike and automobile traffic, b) dart across the street right in front of me when there is nobody behind me for MILES, c) pay no attention whatsoever to their devil children riding their crappy bikes all crazily in the direction of my shins, and d) pass me so closely that I can actually feel their breath on my neck when, once again, there is nobody within 500 yards of us: Um, yeah. Please die immediately. Thank you.

Enjoy what's left of your weekend, kids!
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RANDOM THOUGHT OF THE DAY: For some reason, I really love the Reese's Easter Eggs. I would never buy the plain old peanut butter cups, but the eggs? That's a different story! Yum! I guess peanut butter filled chocolate tastes waaaay better when shaped like an egg!

Happy Sick Day!

Confession time. As the title of this post suggests, I finally gave in and called out sick from work today. Am I actually sick? Technically, no. But when the alarm clock went off at 6 a.m., I awoke to a pounding headache. It seriously felt like somebody had bludgeoned the back of my head with a blunt object while I was sleeping. This coupled with the fact that I've been feeling a bit run down and tired since el maraton meant no early-morning 3-miler for Irish Cream. I told Wilson to go ahead and run without me, popped some painkillers and tried to go back to sleep for a while, hoping I could sleep the pain away. I woke up over an hour later and realized my head still kind of hurt.

Immediately, the thought popped into my head. "Should I call out from work?" Hmm. Whenever this question enters my mind, I go through the SAME EXACT ROUTINE. I argue with myself about the pros and cons of calling out . . . I start to write the email to my supervisor, then stop and delete it. I start to get dressed, then decide that even picking out clothes is "just too difficult" and go back to writing my email. Then I stress about the work that's going to pile up, and again try to dress myself. This awful cycle goes on until I realize that it's gotten so late that I'll be ridiculously late to work even if I go. Thus, I always do end up calling out. Why do I force myself to go through this routine every time I feel like crap? I don't know. I should really just write that email right off the bat and go back to sleep. Yet, I always seem to struggle with the thought of missing work (this despite the fact that I actually REALLY hate my job). Bogus.

So once I finally decided that work was out of the question, I decided it was time to pass out on the futon for a little sleepy time. I had a seriously crazy dream during this nap of mine. In my dream, all of the BP girls and I were running in this bizarre obstacle course marathon. I have no idea where it was supposed to be, but I distinctly remember that a decent amount of it took place in a mall. This aspect kind of pissed me off because they kept having us go up and down these escalators. Now, generally, I'd be all in favor of anything that MOVED MY ASS during a marathon. However, there were all of these people just chilling on the rides down/up and, damn it, I wanted to get past them! I also remember that there were a lot of distractions during the race. Like, at one point, we stopped to pose with some famous chick who was also running. I can't remember who it was now, but we were seriously excited to have our picture taken with her (that is, until the photographer proceeded to cut all of us out of the photo and just take a bunch of pics of the celeb--RUDE). For some reason, I also think we must have been lost or something, because we just kept on passing the mile-16 marker. Bizarre. And then at some point, I lost the girls because I had to stop to babysit for this rich couple's three kids (who all had seriously strange names--I'm almost positive one of their names was Timber). Yeah, I don't know. I finally woke up and was kind of pissed when I realized that I never actually finished the race. I tried to go back to sleep, hoping I could jump back into my dream and finish, but to no avail. Sadness. Yeah, so that was random! I'm not sure what the dream means, but it certainly was crazy.

Well, I still have an "easy" 3-mile run to finish up this afternoon. I was supposed to do strength training today as well, but I always get freaked out about going to the gym when I've called out sick . . . like I'm afraid I'll see someone from work at the gym and they'll be all like, "wtf are you doing?" I guess I'll just have to do some legs work after my 40 min. tempo run tomorrow. Should be a blast.

On a not really related note, could daylight savings please die? I am getting seriously pissed about the fact that it's pitch black every time I try to wake up early and run OUTSIDE. ALL I WANT IS TO RUN OUTSIDE! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, can it start to be light outside at 6 a.m.? I live in Brooklyn! It's not safe for a girl to run in the dark!! And also, some actual warmth from the sun would be nice. Am I the only person who really hates looking outside, being tricked into thinking it's warm out, and then stepping foot outside and realizing it's still ASS COLD?

Okay, enough ranting for now. I've got the rest of a sick day to enjoy :)
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RANDOM THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Why am I still so obsessed with Pat Benatar? Wilson claims this is abnormal ...

Superfluous Goals

So with my first marathon behind me, people have begun asking the most predictable of all questions, "What's up next, Irish Cream?" Alright . . . so, maybe that's not entirely true. In fact, it’s a complete and total lie. I just wanted to make it sound like people are actually interested in my training goals! In reality, people haven't at all been questioning me about my plans for the future. Where are you, people? I've been waiting here, all excited to give you an enthusiastic response . . . but no, you have to go and keep the magic question to yourselves! In all fairness, I’m pretty sure many of the folks I know think running a marathon earns you some kind of golden ticket that excuses you from exercise for the remainder of your life. It's as though you can test out of your lifetime fitness requirements just by completing that one race.

Yesterday, brimming with excitement about the imminent start of my next great training plan, I decided to test the waters with a co-worker. If people weren't going to ask, I was simply going to begin volunteering the information to them. Co-worker's and my conversation went something like this:

Co-worker: "Wow, I just seriously don't feel like doing work today."
Irish Cream (way too animatedly): "Well guess what?! I'm running a half-marathon in May!"
Co-worker (baffled): "What?! Again?! Didn’t you just run a marathon?!"
Irish Cream: "Well, yeah. But this one's a HALF-marathon."
Co-worker: “So how long is a HALF-marathon?”
Irish Cream: “Just 13.1 miles”
Co-worker: “JUST 13.1 miles. Wow. When do you have to start training for it?”
Irish Cream: “Actually, I start today!”
Co-worker: “ARE YOU NUTS? Don’t you want some time to just . . . relax? I mean, you just ran A MARATHON!”
Irish Cream: “Yeah, well, no. Not really. I actually am kind of excited to get back into training mode.”
Co-worker: “What?! You are seriously scary.”

So there you have it. I am currently in training for the Half-Marathon at the Sunburst Races in South Bend/Notre Dame, Indiana. My college girlfriends (“the BP girls”) and I have all agreed to run in one of the races (they have everything from a 5k fun walk to a full marathon) . . . and it should be a blast. I really think it will be a special race for me, not only because my girls will be there, but also because it marks my one-year anniversary of getting into road races (I trained for and ran the 10k there last year).

Oh wow. I just realized I never really got into the background story of “why I run.” Ha, most people seem to start their running blogs with one of these stories, but seeing as how I started my own blog with a marathon race report, y’all don’t know my full story! Well, that’s another tale for another day.

On the sched for today? 6 x hills. Yes, hills. Have I mentioned that I’m training for this thing using an Advanced training plan? Cuz I am. Have I ever run a half-marathon before? Definitely not. Am I doing this with the hopes that I'll finish the race in under 2 hours? You betcha. Should be a good time, kids! Oh, and have I mentioned yet that I already know what's up next AFTER the half-marathon? Yeah, cuz I do. I'm starting to scare myself.

Until next time, happy running everybody!

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RANDOM THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Pineapples are delicious. But I really don't get the name.