Found in my drafts of blog posts

Apparently, I wrote this about a year ago:

With precisely one month until Avenue, I had a deep thought during my steady state run this morning...We all have marathons. Everybody's marathon is different. Maybe your marathon is to cope with your job, or to take care of child or aging parents, or to jump through the hoops of graduate school, or to figure out your place in our wide world....

Amen--those words from 2010 sum up my current feelings and issues. I'm coping with marathons right now, and they're not the 26.2 mile variety :(  I'm doing my best to hang in there.  I went for a long walk on Wednesday and had a nice, short jog this morning.  I will go swimming next week.

March just marched on by

Parts of this month have been dreary---with tons of rain and work and unpredictability.  Yeah, I ran when I wanted to.  And I went swimming. And I even did a few long walks.  Today it was quite a bit warmer, and I savored running by the track....It reminded me of high school track practice.

Now I need to decide if I'm going to run any races in April....there's a trail race that looks interesting :P

Foodie February

Over the week or so, I've gone for a few nice and easy runs to savor some tastes of springtime, and I've done yoga a couple times.  I'm getting better at flowing through the warrior poses and downward dog, and I even did the eagle pose yesterday!

I've been eating really, really well.  I discovered Bob's 10 grain hot cereal and am enjoying it as a new, savory breakfast.  I also made crepes this weekend, and we definitely enjoyed the sweet French treats :P  I'm loving snacking on citrus, including grapefruit and oranges. For dinner, some recent recipes include arugula pesto and a killer stirfry with a variety of organic greens plus rice.

Kaiser 5K

Last weekend, I raced the Kaiser 5k in Golden Gate Park.  Gracias to my friend, Jenica, for helping me out with parking/driving/coaching.....Of course, she also convinced me to race in buns, which contributed to narnar race photos :)

It was unseasonably warm for February in San Francisco (60s & sunny), and I was happy that I wasn't doing the half marathon.  At the start, I lined up very close to the front and went out pretty hard. For the first mile (7:05 pace), I settled into a good groove and let myself work hard on a couple short hills. There were mainly men running around me, and, of course, I enjoyed passing them! I tried concentrating hard on each individual mile.  In the second mile (6:55 pace), I focused on staying close to people around me and kept driving my legs.  I relished the downhills, too.  A couple times, I looked at Garmalade and really didn't believe my pace :> Frankly, I don't remember the 3rd mile (6:43 pace), but I believe that I kept telling myself that the race was almost over!

I know that once I hit 3.0, I left it all out there (6:29 pace) and knew that I couldn't accelerate even one more tiny bit.

Best news, I have a new 5k PR of 22:26 on a loooong course (Drat! It was almost 3.3 miles long!). I was the 9th woman in a pretty big race.  So, according to my Garmin, I ran at 6:53 pace.  I was SOOO excited after the race to average sub-7 for a 5k :)

Mixed Up

On today's run, I wore mismatched socks---one white with pink and the other purple.  I used to color coordinate my socks with my outfits. Now it's a victory to get out the door!  In other fashion news, I'm not sure what I'm wearing on Sunday's 5K.  I'm considering being brave and wearing my Nike buns....They should motivate me to run fiercely  :>

February

January flew by!!  I did some hardcore workouts and relished training for shorter distances :)  Now it's February, and I'm feeling ready to race hard again.  So, this weekend, I'll run the Kaiser 5K in Golden Gate Park. I've run the Kaiser half marathon several times, but I think the 5K will be an outstanding challenge.

In February, I'd also like to get back to the trails for some long runs--perhaps Briones or even Marin....