Give me back that filet o'fish, give me that fish

This has absolutely nothing to do with..well...anything...and the last time I had a Filet O'Fish was probably sometime in the 90s...but this commercial just cracks me up for some reason



Other things that start with F...February...as in, February Training Recap!
Total miles: 227.7
This was JUST OFF my all time mileage PR of 229.1, set in September '09.  I'm pretty much giving it to myself as my highest mileage training month ever though, since February is a short month so in terms of miles/day, it was definitely a high!
Days off: 5
Workouts: 8 [3 fartlek, 2 tempo, 1 mile repeats, 1 progression, 1 race]
Longest run: 20.6
Weekly mileage range:  49.6-61.9

Wow, I usually despise February with all of my heart and soul, but this was probably the best month of training I've ever had.  No offense to my home state, but leaving the Wisconsin winter behind was definitely a pretty fantastic thing as far as running was concerned.  The winter out here has been super mild by my standards - there really haven't been any days when I've been like "oh, hell no am I running outside in that...", and really the only time I took my workouts to the TM was for the sake of knowing my pace.  I really can't think of any god-awful runs in February either.  I hit pace for every workout, set a big 10K PR, my long runs went reasonably well and I've been running them faster than last training cycle, and I've already got 2 20 milers under my belt.  I guess my only concern at this point is that my training is going TOO well...as in, I really don't want to peak too early.  That might have something to do with the fact that during my last training cycle, I was running a lot but I wasn't really "training" until like...7 weeks out from the race.  So the plan at this point is to just stay tuned in to my physical/mental state as March, ie, training month from hell, progresses, keep an eye on an possible signs of overtraining, and other than that, just continue to rock it out!

Speaking of training, is it weird that lately I have been anxiously looking forward to my speed workouts, and absolutely dreading my longer easy runs? Seriously, why am I totally excited to run fartleks or tempo intervals on the treadmill, with a long warmup and cooldown, and yet an 8-12 mile easy run is something I just dread? I can't quite figure it out. I guess its GOOD that I get excited about speedwork though haha - never really thought I'd see the day when that would happen!  I think it's because my quality workouts have been going really well in general, as far as hitting my paces and not feeling like I'm going to die at the same time.  They've served as really great confidence boosters and kind of stand in my mind as a testament to the fact that I actually AM getting faster and stronger through all of this training. The easy runs just kind of "are" - some days I'm feeling it, some days I'm not.  12 miles is pretty long, but not long enough to be a "long run", but still takes a long time, you know what I mean? Well anyway, maybe if I start thinking of my easy runs as "3 mile warmup, 6 miles easy, 3 mile cooldown" I'll like them better. Haha.

Training aside, here are a couple of random things I've really been enjoying lately [aside from the Filet O'Fish commercial, haha]...mostly food.  Because who doesn't love food?

• Coconut Water!  I had heard about this from some other blog or something, that it's supposedly this big deal in sports drinks because it naturally has a ton of electrolytes [especially potassium] and some sugar, without the obscene dose of fake sugar and dyes that you get in Gatorade or whatever.  I really don't go one way or the other on the whole natural eating thing, but I saw this at Whole Foods and was intrigued.  It was AMAZING! It comes in a bunch of flavors - I tried the VitaCoco tangerine and peach/mango flavors.  I was kind of wary because I don't really like the taste of coconut that much, but the fruit purees that they added [the only other ingredient besides the coconut water itself] really added a nice, light fruity flavor.  Totally not the super sugary, almost syrupy taste you sometimes get with sports drinks. The peach/mango was my favorite.  As for it's properties as a good sports drink, I haven't tested that one yet - I had it for breakfast haha.  I'm doing an 18 miler this weekend, 13 of which will be with a friend, so I'm planning on grabbing one for the last 5 miles and see how I feel!

• Australian Yogurt!  I LOVE yogurt. For breakfast, for a snack, for dessert...don't care, I think it's delicious.  During my last WF visit I wasn't too impressed with the flavor selection or price on their "generic" brand yogurt, so I figured I would spend the extra 20 cents per carton and try something new - enter Wallaby Australian Yogurt. What is Australian yogurt? I'm still kind of trying to figure out the difference haha. As far as ingredients, I think they use a slightly lower percentage milkfat milk than like, Yoplait [1.5% instead of 2%?] and use organic cane sugar.  I'm not sure if there's some sort of difference in the culturing process, all I know is the yogurt is super smooth and very light.  It comes in some pretty tasty and interesting flavors that you don't see in regular yogurt [I mean, I love blueberry and strawberry as much as the next person...but sometimes that gets a little boring].  And I absolutely LOVED their fruit on the bottom flavors.  Like, half the carton is fruit! I had the grapefruit one, which sounded weird but ended up being totally delicious.  I think for the fact that this stuff is natural, comes in fun flavors, and not as uber-sweet as other yogurt tends to be, it might be worth the extra couple bucks to buy it instead. Yum!

• Sweet Potato Fries! I think I got this idea from someone's blog too...and it has quickly become a go-to snack/side for me! So easy: cut up sweet potatoes, drizzle with olive oil, toss with pepper, seasoned salt, and whatever other seasonings you desire, and bake for 15-20 minutes...and there you have GOODNESS!  It's a great way to eat something salty/tastes kind of unhealthy, but really it isn't! Yay for good-for-you food! :)

I really have been trying to eat better lately.  Can you tell? I think the final straw was the day that I worked a long shift, and because someone bought us pizza, ended up eating ONLY pizza, ALL day.  Yikes!  It's not weight I'm worried about, just putting good FUEL into my body as opposed to crap, especially going into this super hardcore final month of training. So I'll keep you posted on any more delicious-yet-semi-nutritious items I discover in my random Whole Foods and Trader Joe's trips :)

Is it really Friday already? Guess I should stop whining about my 12 miles and just Get. It Done!  Have a great weekend!

That one race

So I'm cranky about a number of things right now, one of which is how much my race sucked yesterday. I always have one race every season that just sucks ass, and frustrates me, and my legs just refuse to move, and I spend the entire time KNOWING I'm going to run a time much worse than I'm capable of and there's nothing I can do about it. The Loras Open 5K was that race for this track season. I could see it coming a mile away -my legs felt like crap all week, I was completely not in meet mode when I woke up Saturday morning, and ironically enough, I felt good during the warmup (you would think that would be a good thing, but apparently not in my world). And the thought actually crossed my mind, with all this crap going on "huh, I haven't had my 'bad' race this season yet". Boy. I'm glad I thought that, before I went out and ran practically my slowest time of the season, and by far my crappiest feeling race. It sucks when you think about how much more effort you have to put in to run a crappy time - when your legs are dying and its taking every ounce of your effort just to keep moving forward at a slow pace, and the entire time you know that this isn't going well and there's just nothing you can do. Its frustrating as hell. And its frustrating to know that you're in 19:54 shape, probably even better shape than that, and go out and run a 20:32. UGH. I knew it was going to be bad when I went out in 6:13 and already felt like shit...then the rest of the race was basically just a struggle to survive and keep moving and not completely fail. I was really cranky right after the race. In the grand scheme of things I know its fine, we had a ridiculous week of training leading up to this, and I already broke 20 so I know that I can do it - one crappy race doesn't mean I suck, and of course there's gotta be THAT one race every season. But that didn't stop me from feeling frustrated and annoyed with myself for not being able to run better somehow. The sad part too was that it was my best race of the year, placement wise, and had I actually run well, I would have actually been in the top 10.

I don't want to dwell on it too much because I know a million different things contributed to it sucking and I can't make excuses for myself, but it still makes me cranky. Its hard having a limited number of times to race and I really don't want to end my 5K season on that note. The twilight doesn't have a 5K so I'm doing steeple which will be really fun, and I'm sure I'll PR, but since the 5K really became my love this season I'd really like to get one more crack at a really good time at the end...which I could possibly run at a last chance meet the week after Twilight. I don't know...is that stupid? There's always the chance I'd do even worse. But I feel like after a good taper and NOT dancing every second that I'm not running, I could pull out at least a 19:45. I don't know. All I know is its time to back off - my legs are starting to poop out on me. I know that racing a 5K every weekend all season was probably dumb, I realize I should have jumped in a 1500 or something some weekend, but why - when every weekend up until this one I've been improving? Whatever. But tapering is sounding good, and hopefully my legs will stop feeling like bricks once I stop putting them through so much torture for a little while. Claire and Brittany didn't have good races either, and Brittany has been doing the same hard workouts, while Claire has been training for a freaking marathon - that can't be easy! So I think we all agree that its just the point of the season where the training starts to get to us...but after 2 weeks of taper, that training that got to us this week will be stored in our legs, ready to explode into our best times of the year...or so we hope.

Saturday was also our dual with the Illinois club, which was strange but definitely added some excitement to the meet, even though we ended up losing due to the fact that we don't have sprinters...and they do. So they cleaned up in the 400 and even though our guys ran great races in the 1500 and 800, we ended up winning the 15 but not by a huge margin, and we couldn't pull out the 800 - but what can you do when everyone we have running the race has already run a 1500, and most of their guys are fresh? Then there was the 5K - what a ridiculous mess. There was a huge downpour like 5 minutes before the race was supposed to start, and so there was all this confusion, and they said there was going to be a 10 minute delay. So a couple of our guys are still milling around or hiding under trees outside, but once they announced the delay Zach and (we thought) Ben went inside. Well all of a sudden, they're lining up to start the damn race! So of course our entire team was freaking out because 2 of our fastest runners weren't there...Claire ran inside to get Zach who had to sprint down the track throwing off his sweats to make it to the start line, but we still couldn't see Ben...so we're all freaking out yelling "Where's Garbe??" and Dallas went and yelled at the ref that if they had called a 10 minute delay, there was no way they could start 2 minutes later without everyone there. It turns out Ben was at the line, so everyone made it and it was fine (although it definitely cost Zach his kick), but it was just stupid the way it worked out. Mostly it was just the ref being an ass...whatever. The guys raced really hard but it didn't end up being a big enough margin for the 4 x 4 to not matter...and we had no confidence in our 4 x 4, but nevertheless, it was EXTREMELY exciting. It reminded me of high school - when you're always fighting for team titles and sometimes it all comes down to that 4 x 4 under the lights. It was a great race - I haven't screamed so hard for our team - ever, probably, and we were seriously ahead for awhile, which was amazing...but then...their stupid actual 50 second 400 runner closed, and with that combined with a bad handoff to Jeff, there was nothing he could do. Its funny because all of the guys in their relay were fresh or had only run the 400 earlier, and we had one guy just coming off the 5K, two guys who had run an 800 and a 1500, and one guy who had run an 8K at Crazylegs that morning, then run the 400, and was then doing this. So the fact that they only beat us by a few seconds was pretty respectable.

Well, I really wasn't planning on this being this long...but when I get to rambling, there's no stopping me I guess. I'll sign off for the weekend with this video that I discovered and absolutely love. It makes me really happy and I think just really captures running just for the love of it. Screw bad races. I can deal. There's still nothing like running. :)

Onwards from AKQA on Vimeo.