We’re getting a hurricane (Irene) on Sunday so I knew if I wanted to run long this weekend if was going to have to be on Friday afternoon. It was a beautiful, sunny day; about 80 degrees with a bit of humidity and stickiness in the air.

I planned on running 10 miles (but ended up doing 11). The loop I mapped out went near the water, past a campground, a farm and a state park. It’s moderately hilly but nothing too bad.

I do need to start thinking about hills. I am signed up to run the Bar Harbor half marathon in just a few weeks and that is very hilly. But I don’t want to go crazy on my first double digit run since the spring, so I’m only going slightly hilly on this run. Next week I’ll go crazy on the hills.

I just checked my archives and it turns out I ran this same loop almost exactly a year ago when I was training for the same race. It’s funny that I thought this was a hilly run last year, but I’ve since discovered far more hilly routes that make this one seem not so bad. I’ll be running one of those next week….fun!

If you read that post from last year, the final paragraph is quite ominous. You want to talk about foreshadowing.

Anyway, there was a bit of unexpected road work on my route this time. The sandy uneven shoulders felt very spongy and not packed down, but the pavement was not much better so it was tough going at times.

But then I reached the finished pavement area. This was nicer for running, except when there were cars driving past. Since it didn’t have the lines painted on yet, cars assumed that the entire paved area was the roadway. They assumed wrong. When the lines are drawn, there will be a nice shoulder and a road way, but right now without lines, it’s not very safe for runners. Plus, I gotta say, this new black pavement was HOT.

I was glad when it was time to turn off onto a side road. After a little while, I turned onto a gravel road that lead to an ocean front campground. I heard a weird noise but I wasn’t sure what it was. Then I turned around and saw that I was being chased by geese!

Luckily, although they were a bit creepy, they were also quite slow and I was able to get away!

I stopped at the campground for a bottle of water and to use the facilities. Then I passed by the farm and their cows. After the farm, the view opened up quite a bit and really gave me a lift. I was just so grateful to be out running on this glorious day.

A one car wooden bridge…

…at low tide.

I was enjoying this run so much that I ended up running 11 miles instead of the 10 I had planned. But now having found last year’s blog post about this run on the same weekend last year, I feel really good about that decision.

Next weekend I’ll run 12 miles. Then the weekend before the race, I’m not going to run long. For the entire two weeks before the race, I won’t go any longer than 4 miles. I don’t think doing a long run the weekend before last year did me any good. I’ll spend those two weeks doing tempo hill runs and wind sprints. I am worried about the hills more than I am about the distance.

We went on vacation last week to the beautiful island of Matinicus. We had friends of ours from Chicago come and stay with us. A wonderful couple with children about the same ages as ours. It was a week of beach days and relaxed meals.

I love to travel and once of my favorite things to do when going to a new place is to run.  However, Matinicus is no longer new to me, so I found my motivation a bit lacking!

I stayed active every day walking around the island, but I only ran once while I was out there. My friend agreed to slow down her regular pace and run with me. We ran down from the house to the other side of the island, across a deserted sandy beach, and then ended the run very near the bakery. We ran at my pace which must have been excruciatingly slow for my friend (she’s such a good sport) but at least we were able to talk. It probably felt like a fast walk for her!

I don’t have any pictures from the run, but here’s one of the beach when we went back later that day.  The fog that day did not stop our little beachcombers from finding new treasures!

Now I’m back, well rested, and have to train quickly for a half-marathon in mid-September.  I plan to run 10 miles tomorrow afternoon on a hilly course.   I hope I won’t have to walk much, if at all!

Every year the Beach to Beacon 10K gets more and more popular. This year the entries sold out online in 8 minutes. I was lucky enough to snag one of them, along with my husband, sister-in-law, father-in-law and several friends. We all ran the last two years as well, so this is starting to become a tradition for us.

My day started early. Our brother-in-law was kind enough to agree to watch our kids for the morning, but we had to drop them off at 6:30 AM in order to get to the start in time.

We got to the parking area near the start line by 7:30 AM for an 8:00 AM gun. We had plenty of time to use the port-o-potties and pose for a group photo.

The race is very well organized so there is plenty of parking, and almost enough toilet facilities for everyone. Okay, some guys pee in the woods because the lines are so long.

It seemed like the weather was going to be fine. It was a bit overcast and felt a little cool, but not cold at all. My perception of the weather was quite wrong, however.

At the start line, when I was just standing there not moving, I started to sweat. I knew that this was not a good thing.

6,000 people run the Beach to Beacon. Here’s what that looks like from the middle of the pack.

In front of me, you can see the start line (balloons) and you can also see that I was lined up with the 9 minute milers. This wasn’t crazy or wrong. I’ll explain that in a minute.

Here’s what the crowd looked like behind me.

I was standing with my sister-in-law and father-in-law. My plan in being up here in 9 minute mile land was to hang with them as long as I could and use the momentum of a good start to keep me motivated for the rest of the race. I ended up keeping up with them for a quarter mile, which I consider a victory. They were running 8:45s at that point, and then after a quarter of a mile, they picked up the pace. I kept on running at just under a 9 minute mile for the first half mile, then I slowed down a little bit and ended the first mile with a 9:30 time. I was very happy with this first mile time.

Unfortunately, right around mile 1, my left hamstring started hurting. I haven’t had a hamstring injury before so I didn’t know what it meant for the race. I figured I’d just keep going and see what happened. I had to slow down quite a bit at this point so it didn’t hurt as much. I found that an 11 minute mile pace made it feel okay. I was disappointed since I had started so strong, but maybe I started too strong. 9:30 is a sprint for me, and maybe that wasn’t the best way to start a 6 mile run.

I settled down into my 11 minute mile pace and started to enjoy myself. Here’s the course around the half-way point.

There’s a big turn onto Shore Road around mile 3.5. The crowd is always loud here and their enthusiasm and support is something I look forward to every year.

Around the 4.5 mile point, I was passed by a lighthouse. Yes, a guy running inside a lighthouse on wheels passed me. He passed me like I was standing still. He came up so fast on the guy in front of me, he startled him. I had felt pretty good before this, but there’s something slightly demoralizing about being passed by someone with that much of a load to push. It’s like being passed by the baby stroller people. It hurts a little bit.

There was no wind at all during this race and the humidity was hanging in the air. I tried to drink at every water station (every mile!) but I find it difficult to drink and run and I didn’t want to lose time. I forgot to eat a GU at the half way point and knew that now there was no point, it was too late, and I had to hope I didn’t run out of gas.

The hills just after mile 5 get me every time. The race course is really pretty flat, but that last little bit of a hill at that point is challenging. I did okay on it and felt pretty good coming into Fort Williams Park. I finished at a gun time of 1:12, but my net time was 1:09:18. It was 16 seconds slower than last year, which also hurts a little bit.

Last year, however, the weather was cooler and not as humid. The heat and humidity this year made it a tough race. Combine that with my hamstring injury and I don’t actually feel too terrible about not improving my time.

What I am more upset about is that I missed seeing Joan Benoit Samuelson at the finish line. I read in the newspaper the day after the race that she was there at the finish line greeting all the runners. I didn’t see her and I was sad that I missed the opportunity to thank her for this wonderful race and for being an inspiration to me.

Then today, I got this photo. I was just a couple of feet away from her as I crossed the finish line and I totally didn’t see her! Arghhh!

Anyway, I met up with my group and we swapped stories of glory and defeat. Then we grabbed some food and headed toward the bus line. Parking at the start line is convenient but there is then a moderately long wait for a shuttle bus back to the lot. The lines are well organized and the buses run often. Other than having to cut our post race fun short due to the extra time, it’s really not a big deal. But we didn’t want to keep our brother-in-law waiting, since he was kind enough to watch all the kids all morning.

Here’s a picture of the bus lines.

I hope we’re all lucky enough to get into this race again next year. It really is one of the highlights of the summer running season.

Oh, P.S. My sister-in-law would like to know why all the port-o-potties were gone from the start line parking area by the time we got dropped off by the shuttle bus. She was really counting on them still being there and would like to know what was the hurry?

I’m trying really hard to not beat myself up for taking time off from running and eating mindfully in order to focus on a few short term/high stress projects in my life.

Between May 1 and July 15 of this year we renovated our kitchen, staged and sold our house and moved. It goes without saying that not having a working kitchen makes it pretty damn hard to stick to a healthy eating plan. Couple that with the fact that we did a lot of work on it ourselves (I was staining wood most evenings after work) and it just didn’t leave much hope of healthy meals or prepared lunches to bring to work. Our first priority was making sure the kids ate as well as possible, which left us scrounging for what ever we could get…or so it seemed at the time. Luckily, we did eat a lot of salads from a place down the street, so it’s not like we were completely out of control.

On May 1st, we ran a half marathon in Gettysburg, PA. From that day until mid-July I only ran 22 miles. So I didn’t stop completely, but boy did I cut my mileage way back.

As for the damage done? Well, here are the facts:

• I gained 6 pounds
• I added 4 inches to my circumference
  • 1 inch on my waist
  • 1 inch on my hips
  • 1/2 inch on each thigh
  • 1/2 inch on each bicep
• My body fat increased by approximately 1.07%. I say “approximately” because although I have calipers, I struggle with them and am not positive I’m doing it right.  But if I am doing it wrong,  I am at least consistent so the increase is probably spot on.
• My average running speed has decreased by 30 seconds a mile.

I guess it could have been worse. I’m not happy, but I know I can turn this ship around.  I ran twice this weekend, the 8 miler on Friday and then yesterday I ran a 3 mile run that included ten 1 minute sprint intervals in the middle.    Tonight, I went to a boot camp class at the YMCA for a night of cross training.

Saturday is the Beach to Beacon.   This will be a real test to see how much damage I did to my speed and endurance.  My PR for the 10K distance (1:09:02) was set at last year’s Beach to Beacon.    That’s an 11:07 mm pace.  I honestly don’t think I can do that right now.  My average speed for all my runs in the month of July was 13:00 exactly.  Granted, a few of those were longer than 10K, but still…I don’t think 11:07 is in my cards for Saturday.

It was an overcast 72 degrees today so the runner in me said “perfect, I’m gonna run long”. My employer encourages half days on Fridays in the summer so I changed my clothes and headed out for a run right from the office around 12:30.

I headed up the Casco Bay bridge…and my Garmin died. It shouldn’t have needed a charge, so it must have gotten turned on in my bag and used up its battery. Luckily I had my phone on me, so I quickly downloaded the iMapMyRun app and turned that on. I knew my route already but I wanted to know when I was done how fast (or in my case slow) I had run.

The route I chose was from the Old Port to Fort Williams and back. It’s a route I’ve done a few times before (here, here and here) this winter.  This time I only did 8 miles of it because I have to bring my mileage back up slowly. I have plenty of time before the half marathon in September to get to double digit runs. I don’t have to rush it.

I love this route because I love the big old houses (mansions) on the water. This one is my favorite. They’ve been doing work on it since the spring. I wish I could see inside. I think who ever owns it needs to have balls. It looks like it should host grand balls.

Around mile 4, I arrived in the park. I was surprised for such an overcast day that it was bustling with people.

I ran around the back side of the park, and then wound my way back to the front. It was a crappy day to take pictures, but I wanted to get a shot of both lighthouses in the same frame. Oh and the flag where I’m pretty sure I meet my friends and family every year after the finish line of the Beach to Beacon. It always looks so different on race day, I’m never quite sure it’s the same place.

I didn’t spend much time in the park as I’m apt to do. I was all business today. Okay, wait, one more shot.
Hmm, it looked better in person.

More pretty waterfront mansions castles (?).

I finished the 8 miles on the top of the Casco Bay bridge with the words “Welcome to Portland” in view. Nice.

I feel like I’m now officially back in the swing of things. I ran 7 miles on Sunday. Yesterday (Monday), I went to a Boot Camp class at my local YMCA. And today, I ran 3 miles at lunch time.

It wasn’t a pretty run. It wasn’t quick. I didn’t feel like my legs had much to give, so consequently, they weren’t 3 speedy miles but they still count, right?

I’m super excited to be back on track.

I’m eating well, too.

I find that the quality of my food choices is directly related to how much I am working out. I doubt if it’s coincidental. I think it’s more likely that exercises clears the fog from my brain and it leaves me that little extra mental space to be able to think before I eat and to plan ahead.

Plus, I just feel better so I don’t find myself wanting to feel bad by eating crappy food. It’s funny how that works.

Anyway, I’m happy to be back.

Next post will assess the damage I did by taking 3 months off. If I can bear to actually do the calculations that is.

We moved two weeks ago and have finally (mostly) unpacked. This week New England had a pretty crazy streak of hot days so I delayed my triumphant return to running for a few days longer than I would have liked. The heat finally broke a bit today and it was only in the low 80s instead of high 90s so I took advantage and went for a long run today. I’m now living much closer to the water so I can start running outside my house and see the ocean within a few miles. I’m loving it.

Here’s the first peek of water I saw along the way:

Then I headed down to the town wharf. This was just about the half way point.

I bought a bottle of water from the lobster company and then started back. I couldn’t resist veering off course a bit to see the castle. I just love seeing it, it always makes me so happy. I couldn’t get a good picture because of where the sun was at that moment, but you can see the outline of it.

Here’s a view from the street that the castle is on.

I ended up running 7 miles total today and it felt pretty good. Considering how little I’ve run lately, I’m pleased with that distance. I’ve definitely lost some stamina and speed but not as much as I thought after having taken nearly 3 months off. It feels good to be back in the game.

Upcoming races include a 10K in two weeks and a half-marathon in September. I think I’ll be ok. At this point, I don’t expect to be able to set a PR in either of them, but I know I’ll be able to finish them and feel good about my effort.

I feel like I’ve had to take a step back in my running in order to take two giant steps forward in my life. I know the time off was worth it (to get our kitchen renovated, our house sold, and then to move) in order to be able to have the kind of life that we want. I’m sure when I look back these three months will seem like a tiny blip.

A month has gone by since my last post. That is inexcusable.

Now I will proceed to make excuses…or at least try to explain.

Until today, I hadn’t run in a month. It’s hard to write about running when you’re not actually running. The last time I ran, June 4th, I ran 3 miles and during those 3 miles I did 4 quarter mile sprints at paces of 8:06, 8:04, 8:41, and 9:46. I felt good about that. But we were busy all that following week working on the house.

Then on June 10th our dog got into an accident chasing a squirrel in our fenced in yard and had to have about 20 stitches. I started bringing her to work with me everyday to keep an eye on her (so she wouldn’t scratch her stitches). She’s a greyhound so she can’t go running with me. She only does one or two sprints then she wants to sleep. She doesn’t not want to run long. So that meant no running on my lunch hour.

Nights and weekends for the past month have been spent fixing up our house. We really want to sell it so we can move up the coast a bit. It had been on the market for a year at the end of May, so we decided to remodel the kitchen instead of dropping the price again. This really messed with our ability to be healthy because there were several weeks that we couldn’t prepare food in our house.

The stress was pretty bad, so we decided to go easy on ourselves and not worry in the short term about what we were eating. When you’re working all day at a job and then staining cabinets and doing repairs all evening every night of the week, you can’t really beat yourself up for not taking the time to prepare a healthy meal. Is it possible? Sure. Was it logical for us to spend our time doing this past month? Not really. Something had to give and that was it.

The hard work did pay off though.

The before picture of our kitchen:

The after picture. Buyers love granite:

And our house is under contract! Hopefully if things go well with the buyer and their finances, it will be sold two weeks from now. The house passed its inspection on Thursday (more late nights of DIY leading up to that!) so we’ve now done all we can do, and we are relaxing this weekend for the first time in quite a while.

I went for a run this morning, and surprisingly I felt good. My cardio felt like it had lost a bit of fitness, but my legs felt good. I ran 4 miles in 50 minutes and never stopped to walk for even a second.

We keep saying once we get to our new house, we will refocus our eating and we’ll have more time to run. That’s been the whole point of moving. Our new house is in an area where we love to run (see this post), and we designed the kitchen ourselves so we know we will use it. Plus, we won’t be spending all our free time fixing it up, because it doesn’t need work.

We are scheduled to move on Friday. I cannot wait.

p.s. Our dog is doing well. She got her stitches removed a week ago, but one part hadn’t healed properly, so she got 6 staples put in to a small 2 inch area. I’m still bringing her to work everyday. Her staples are scheduled to come out next week.

I apologize for the lack of posts for the last month or so.  I don’t know why I stopped writing.  I have been thinking about it a lot lately and I still haven’t figured out why I completely stopped writing.  I haven’t posted here, I haven’t posted to forums that I’ve been active in, I haven’t even posted much to my personal Facebook page.

I don’t know what is going on.  I don’t feel depressed but I do feel unmotivated.  I have only been running once or at most twice a week ever since the Gettysburg Half Marathon at the beginning of May.  I still owe a race report for that race, and even though I set a PR by 13 minutes, I haven’t felt the desire to write the post.

I have been halfheartedly following the slow carb diet.  I do just enough to keep things status quo but not enough to lose weight.  My cheat days lately have lasted Friday – Sunday.

Luckily, I’m not so self-destructive that I am undoing the good I have done, but I am wasting time.  I have lost 5 weeks that I could have used to get closer to my goals.  I’ve wasted 5 weeks and it makes me sad.

And I don’t have any answers as to why I’ve done this.

It could be that I just can only go so hard for so long and then I just need a break.

It could be that I’ve got too much stuff going on in my life to be able to sustain my focus on my health right now.  My husband’s parents are going through a nasty divorce that has really put a huge amount of stress on my husband and vicariously on me.

We have also been unable to sell our house after having it on the market for a year.  So we are currently right in the middle of a kitchen remodel which does tend to make diet planning….well…difficult at best.  Impossible at worst.

But despite the above excuses, I don’t feel like I have a good reason for not writing for the last 5 weeks.  I should be able to write about the good and the bad, but I haven’t wanted to write a word.  Even writing this post is difficult and seems pointless.  It’s like if I don’t have anything good to say, then I should just shut up.  How I am inspiring anyone with this post?  I’m not and am currently considering deleting it.

But I probably won’t delete it because I just need to get a post up on the site to get over this block that I have.

Now I will write about running:

I went for a nice run today.  It was a beautiful sunny day.  We are up at the beach this weekend (my birthday weekend!) so I was able to run one of my favorite routes, all along the ocean.

Here is  a view from the beginning of my run.

I decided to do sprints so I could (1) have an excuse to walk and (2) I didn’t have to go as far as I would have if it was just a regular tempo or long run.

Here is a stone house that I passed about half way through my route.  I love stone houses. This one is for sale for a cool $1.8 million.

I did just over 3 miles.  One mile was a warm up, then 4 quarter-mile sprints with a short recovery in between, then a one mile cool down.  I was able to sustain a 8:04 pace during the sprints which made me very happy!

After the run, I turned off onto a side path, and found a rock to sit on by the water.

I thought about how lucky I was to be able to run here, and to be able to spend the weekend in such a beautiful place.  I felt very blessed, despite any short term stress that I might be feeling, I am truly blessed and it was good to take some time to remember that today. Maybe it will help to snap me out of whatever funk it is that I am in.

Well, I’ve been following Tim Ferriss’ Slow Carb Diet for 8 weeks now and I’m very happy with how things are going. I have lost a total of 12.6 pounds and 11.5 total inches.  Although I’ve had my up weeks and down weeks, the thing I’m most pleased with is my weekly average.  I’m losing 1.4 pounds per week on average.  That is so much better than I ever did on traditional calories in/calories out eating plans.  I now know it’s just a matter of time before I am at my goal weight.  At a pound and a half per week, that puts me at my goal weight by the end of September.    Of this year.  Wow, that really makes it real.

The only quirky thing about the diet is having to time my long runs for the day after the cheat days.  I definitely have to refuel with carbs the day before if I want to run more than 8 miles. I experimented with having carbs that morning instead of the night before but it didn’t work for me. I have to give my body some carbs the day before in order to get through the long runs. But for the shorter runs 3 – 8 miles, I don’t need to do anything special, the slow carb diet gives me enough energy.

The other amazing thing about my progress so far, is that people are starting to comment on my weight loss. I think it’s because I’m losing weight much faster than I have in the past, it’s so much more noticeable. I’m a very happy girl.

Here’s my totals to date: