An Unexpected Race...

Hello! It's Nic :)

Since my last post I have done one race, other than the ones we both ran. The funny thing is, I wasn't meant to run that race, the 5K Stadium challenge at Everbank Field in Jacksonville. I was planning on going with with my Gainesville running buddies to cheer them on, and for Mexican afterwards, but their friend who had registered was unable to run, as she has plantar fasciitis, so I ran in her place! Needless to say I wasn't really trained for that type of run, but I managed :)

The run started outside the stadium, ran through the practice fields (that counts as cross country right?!?), then into the stadium where we ran up the ramps (I think there were 8) and down them twice, then finished with a lap around the field. Because I hadn't done ramps in my training, I decided to walk most of the up ramps, but I ran the rest and I was pleased with my time. We got medals too :)

 

Training has started to get serious now! Our mileage is starting to build up, and in 2 weeks the long run will be the farthest that I've ever run! 14 miles! While we are still doing 4:1 run:walk intervals for our long runs, since that is our marathon strategy, I decided to work my way up to running continuously again during my midweek runs. With the heat and humidity, doing the shorter intervals definitely helped, but now the weather is getting cooler I need to start working on my times for shorter distances! Last week I did 5:1s; they seemed kind of hard and I found myself looking at my watch, wondering when the beep was going to come. This week I set my watch to 6:1s and somehow this seemed easier. I decided to try and avoid looking at my watch, since seeing 4 minutes to go is a little disheartening! My pace was slower than my fastest 5:1 run last week, but as soon as I am back to running continuously again, I can work on time.

I decided that I needed somewhere to hang my medals as I'm starting to gather quite a collection, so I looked online. There are some expensive ones out there!! I saw some I like but I really didn't want to pay what they were asking, so I decided to make one myself! I bought myself some wood, spray paint, metallic paint sharpies, hooks and a picture hanging kit and got to work. And this is what I came up with:

This one is full already, so I need to get working on another one!

Until next time...

Nic x