Rock & Roll Half Marathon & Marathons I am coming for you

After being sick which felt like forever I finally got back into training this week logging a lot more kilometers/miles than I have in any other week this far. I did a 15K/9.3 mile run today at an incline of 1.5 varying speeds from 6.5 to 8 miles per hour burning well more than 1000 calories. Surprisingly the run felt easy. During this week I ran 7.1 miles on Monday, 6.98 miles on Wednesday, 6.98 miles on Thursday. I cross trained Tuesday and just did the elliptical for 30 minutes.

The goal this year is to run the Rock n Roll half marathon in Seattle on June 22nd, the Edmonton Derby marathon in August 25th in my city, Rock and Roll marathon in Montreal September 22nd, and then the Rock and Rock n Roll half marathon in Las Vegas November 17 to wrap up the running year. If I feel ready and think I can get a personal best time in the Run Wild half marathon in St. Albert on May 5th I will run it but if not I will just run the 10K. I figure if I can shave 10 minutes off my time every few months I can get my time down to 1:20 to 1:34 some day for half marathon distance and between 3:05 and 3:20 for a marathon I will go to Kauai Hawaii and run their marathon one day since it is where me and Trevor got engaged and winning first place pays out $5000 which would pay for the vacation =).

I set a goal of running 1500 kilometers this year which I think might have been too ambitious but we shall see. There is still lots of time and once the snow and ice melts I'll be outside running again and not running like a hamster on a wheel on the treadmill lol.

Respiratory Infection - Slow Week

I have been sick since Friday February 15th and the worst part was Dayquils and Nyquils weren't working at all. I had a fever, coughed constantly to the point I felt like I was going to barf, had a runny nose whenever I was upright(sitting or standing) and tried to fight it myself through the weekend and even went for a 5K run on Monday since it was a holiday and I figured I couldn't see my doctor and I knew it was bad cause it took me almost 33 minutes to run 5K. On Tuesday I went to see my family doctor and explained my condition to her. The phlegm had changed from a greenish dark yellow to a light yellow by Tuesday but the coughing and runny nose were still persistent. My doctor prescribed me Biaxin XL which is used to treat bacterial respiratory tract infections and oh did it help.The persistent coughing and runny nose stopped. after two days. I stopped coughing in the middle of the night and waking up from coughing on the fourth day and the phlegm is now clear. Possible side effects are diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, upset stomach and head ache. Guess what? I got the last three side effects, but it is totally worth it. There was a warning about hearing loss but that only happened temporarily for the first two days and stopped so I figured it's okay. It says to take with food but doesn't say the time of day to take it. I don't think there really is a good time because it could make you feel nauseous late in the afternoon the next day even if you take it with dinner the night before. If you ever have to take it I would not recommend taking it at dinner because it is slow releasing, it releases while you sleep and you will wake up with a horrible bitter taste in your mouth in the morning. I would recommend having a glass of water on your night stand or lozenges to take in the morning. The pills don't smell bad, but taste horrible in the morning. Total distance this week 8.1K how said. Most of it was done Monday with some walking at 4 mph at incline of 2 on Saturday. 

A nice meal and 10K on a sick day

Somehow the day after Valentine's Day I caught a nasty cough after we had dinner at Madisson's Grill last night.The dinner was great though we started off with P.E.I. mussels and I ordered the Artic Char with Roasted Garlic Butter Sauce, Ratatouille and Mashed Potato. Trevor ordered the Alberta AAA Rib Eye which came with Truffle Potato Melange, Seasonal Vegetables, Apple Whiskey Butter. We both enjoyed our meals and our entree portions were really large and I almost couldn't finish the last few bites of my Arctic Char. There was a down side which was it took us forever to get the bill and pay for it. They were getting busy towards the time we finished our meal so I can understand though. We will dine there again. It just might not be for a while since there are a lot of nice restaurants in the city.

I was kind of undecided this morning on whether or not I wanted to go for a run because honestly each cough felt like I was going to lose part of my lung and you know you're sick when you're phlegm is a nice yellow color and your back has that strange tingling sensation. After I had my morning oatmeal with three tablespoons of blueberries and green tea I sat at my desk watching tv shows for about two hours. After I had two Dayquils I felt a bit better made myself a breakfast burrito with scrambled eggs, a slice of turkey bacon and salsa and had two glasses of water and figured it is time to head over to Spa Lady and get our run on.

When I got to Spa Lady I admit I sat in the changing room feeling like crap and decided if I wanted to pack up and leave, but I changed into my Lululemon shorts and my Saucony Kinvara 3s and went off to the treadmill. I warmed up at 5 mph at an incline of 5 for 5 minutes. I don't like high inclines and normally only turn the incline past 2 for warm ups or cools downs minus hill run days. I burned 55.6 calories and did 0.41 miles during my warm up. I had it set in my mind that I was going to do 10K/6.22 miles today no matter what. I first thought we are just going to run as hard as we can and run between 7.0-8.0 mph to get this run done as fast as we can and go home. I started out at 7.5 mph at an incline of 2.0, that became 6.5 at an incline of 2.0 which then became 6.0 mph at an incline of 2.0. My breathing was strained and I had mucus build up in my throat and my right nostril and that is when I knew today was going to be my slow and steady run day. I ended up varying the incline from 0.5 to 2.0 and ran between 6.0-6.5 mph mainly with some sprints for 30-60 seconds at 8-8.5 mph in between. It ended up being a slower time than I liked at 57 minutes and 4 seconds burning 748.7 calories with heart rate ranging from 92-142 with an average of 113. Not my best day I can say that for sure, but when your breathing is strained due to a sore throat and a partially blocked right nostril it can be acceptable I guess. TMI coming up - After my run I went to blow my right nostril because it felt extremely blocked and it was one of those horribly long, stringy, mucusy boogers that doesn't want to leave your nostril. Ughh after two attempts I was finally able to get it out and we now have clear breathing. I know why they tell you to just take a break when you're sick, but I need to log in that milege/distance for the week or else I will feel like a couch potato.

I am undecided if I will be heading to the gym tomorrow as Spa Lady is only open from 10am until 3pm on Sundays and if I go it will be to cross train and do a little elliptical/biking and some weights. We will see if the Nyquilizing and Vick's Vapor Rub action will be affective enough to get me to leave the house tomorrow.

Hello sore muscles

Monday and Wednesday of this week were my 5k/3.11 mile days and I can really tell that the time I took off in December and January took a toll on my speed as it took 26 minutes and 57 seconds on Monday and 26 minutes 39 seconds on Wednesday to run 5k. I've been running on an incline of 2 at 6-8 mph and warming up at 5mph. I can tell I am not as strong as before we ran the Rock n Roll half marathon in Las Vegas since I got tired around 3.5k each of the days. Saturday will be my 10k run so we'll see how I will fair. I cross trained on Tuesday and I am still feeling sore in my inner thighs, back and biceps from weight lifting. I also did a magic mile just to see where I am at and it is 8:17 which is disappointing, but I am getting back into it and hopefully will be ready to run the Edmonton Derby marathon by August in under 4 hours.

Trevor did an insanity work out with his coworker this morning. I am not going to get into insanity since I need to focus on running and cycling endurance for the duathlons and the marathon.

I admit I am afraid to do the duathlon because I am not sure if I'd be able to do the cycling portion in a decent amount of time as the cut off is 2 hours 45 minutes for one of them so I am hesitant to register unless I know I can do all of that cycling and so far only one out of four of us that are supposed to be doing the duathlons have registered lol. If we don't get our butts into gear and start being hardcore about cycling it probably won't happen.

I have cut out red meat from my diet and have been eating chicken, sole, tilapia, cod and salmon and try to have 2-4 servings of fruits/vegetables with each meal. I still eat oatmeal and brown rice as we still like gariny carbohydrates. My protein comes from non-animal sources for breakfast and lunch and for dinner after I run/work out I will have chicken or fish with vegetables.

Tomorrow is Valentine's day so I shall be having a rest day and same with Friday, but I will make up for it on Sunday with a cross training day and a 10k run on Saturday.

Getting back into it

Looking back on my work out journal December and January were really lazy running months for me and Trevor. I went to the gym 4-6 times each month which is pretty sad considering during a normal week during peak training season I am either at the gym or running outdoors 4-6 times a week. I started to log my distance, time, calories burned, and heart rate in my journal again. My goal for the year is to log 1500 km mostly through running and some from biking. So far this year I have logged a total of 51 km this year so far, not counting what I have done this week. Once the snow melts and it isn't icy anymore I know we will both be running outdoors and doing our long runs on the weekend together on trails. It is time to up the running and cycling since we plan on running a marathon later this year most likely it will be the Edmonton Derby marathon and we are also planning on doing two duathlons. The Footstock Duathlon 5.8 km run followed by a 37.7 km bike, finishing with another 9.7 km run in Cochrane and the Sandy Beach Duathlon which is a 5km run, 30 km bike ride and 5 km run. It will be interesting since I ride my bicycle for leisure and to and from work in the summer and not competitively and Trevor doesn't even own a bicycle yet. With traffic is takes me about 37 minutes to ride to work which is approximately 22 km. I better get a pedaling if we register. Besides those races we will probably do a hand full of the 5 peaks races, the Rock n Roll marathon in Montreal in September and Trevor will be doing a few of the Spartan Races this year.

I have started Jeff Galloway's marathon training schedule, but in order to be ready for the marathon I have cut out weeks 2, 5, 6, 10, 12, 14, and 21 out. Trevor will be doing the same and doing Insanity workouts on non-running days. I figured I can cut weeks out since I will just do the Magic Mile runs on a Monday of a longer run week. Also My work out week starts on a Monday and I exercise Monday to Thursday and Saturday. I will be running Monday, Wednesdays and Saturdays, or Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays with the non-running days being cross training days where I will bike or do weight training.

I use to not run on an incline I admit. I changed my treadmill running after my first half marathon. I know set the treadmill to hill work outs once a week and run on an incline of 2 on interval, farlek, tempo, or long slow steady distance runs. My fiance had the fastest times when he was running on an incline of 2 regularly last year and during training for my second marathon I had started to do so as well and shaved about 10 minutes off of my first half marathon time. 

Planet Organic's Cosmic Cookie - Pretty Guilt Free

I probably have one of the biggest sweet tooth's ever and it doesn't help that we have cookies and cinnamon buns at work all of the time. I remember a while back I stumbled upon Planet Organic's Cosmic Cookie recipe on their website and I am thankful I did. I did make some adjustments to it like replace the raisins with figs and use some stevia to adjust the taste to my liking. It is a cookie I can eat without feeling guilty that's for sure. These cookies are usually something I eat towards the end of a work day to keep myself from going over to the vending machine and ogling the chips and candy in there. It also hits the spot right after a hard work out. I usually make these once a month and actually freeze mine and take them out on days I know I'll need them like on work out days that last longer than 1.5 hours.

The recipe for 8-12 cookies is as follows:

1 cup and 2 tablespoons of quick cooking oats
1 cup of whole wheat flour
5 tablespoons of sunflower seeds
3 tablespoons of pumpkin seeds
4 tablespoons of unsweetened shredded coconut
4 tablespoons of almonds
4 tablespoons of dark chocolate chunks (Bernard Callebaut)
2 tablespoons of flax seeds
1.5 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of sea salt
6 dried figs and 4 dried prunes diced
2 tablespoons of water
2 tablespoons of fancy molasses
6 tablespoons of oil(I used a canola and olive oil blend)
1/2 cup of soy milk
2 tablespoons of demura sugar
2 packets of stevia

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F
2. Mix all of the dry ingredients together except the sugar and stevia
3. Mix all of the wet ingredients together. Add enough sugar and stevia to your liking for sweetness which is why I had to separate the sweeteners because I can't exactly know how sweet it will be in with the dry ingredients lol.
4. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together.
5. Spray a cookie sheet with pam or some other oil spray. Use a 1/3 cup to scoop up the mixture and form into patties. I just eyed it so it made 8 cookies instead of 12 lol. You must form the cookies into patties because they are dense and do not contain a lot of oil they will not flatten out like peanut butter cookies. They will retain the shape you shape them in pretty much. Place them on the pan
6. Bake for about 20 minutes. I baked them for about 18 minutes as I live at a higher elevation. They will be ready when you can see the edges turn slightly golden brown which you can't see from the angle I took pictures at sorry lol.
7. Rest on pan for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool and store in an air tight container and enjoy :)

If you try the recipe let me know what you thought of them

Lululemon Seawheeze 2012



On August 11, 2012 I ran the Lululemon Seawheeze half marathon. It was my first half marathon and definitely won't be the last. I ran amongst 1053 men and 4769 women who averaged a time of 2:21:25:8. I finished with a time of 2:14:38:6 which I am very proud of since I just wanted to beat the 2 hour and 30 minute mark.



To be honest I didn't follow the Lululemon training plan since it didn't seem like it was for me as I am not really a yoga exercising type. Instead I turned to Jeff Galloway http://www.jeffgalloway.com/training/half_marathon.html and followed his training schedule except I modified it and compressed it into a 8 week training schedule except my training week started on a Monday with my long run on a Saturday and actively walked twice a week for 20 to 30 minutes on non running days.



During the weekend Lululemon had set up a Seawheeze Showcase Store at the Vancouver Convention Centre which had clothing that exclusively available for the event but the evil hoarders that ended up picking up sought after items such as the limited edition bag and plaid shorts which I was angry I couldn't get and then saw them on Ebay retailing for $300. I did pick up a running skirt and the shorts shown below. I really love the shorts I picked up and have worn them a bunch of times. The skirt however I think was an impulse buy because of the color and how women were frantically picking up things it was like a frenzy and I got caught up in the moment, but I am positive I will break it out this summer as it has a great fit and I really like the feel of the skirt material.

The registration cost was $128 and  we received a limited edition pair of polka dot shorts(women) or blue shorts with plaid(men), Nature sandals, and the Seawheeze pack. Some of you may think wow $128 is steep and you only get a pair of sandals, shorts, and a bag. But really it is worth it considering all of the activities that they provide prior to the face, during, and after.

Lululemon offered their participants a variety of events to part take in such as sunset yoga, morning dymnaic stretch and runner's brunch and the festival afterwards which consisted of a variety of musical entertainment. Unfortunately we only took advantage of the runner's brunch as we were too tired to participate in the sunset yoga, we were busy stuffing ourselves with breakfast during the morning dynamic stretch and we took a nap after showering and lunch and missed out on the festival/concert portion. Their website http://www.seawheeze.com/vancouver/we-love-vancouver/ also offered a list of places to stay and things to do around Vancouver which is really helpful for first time visitors like my fiance.

The Lululemon Seawheeze half marathon really impressed me. Even though it was my first half marathon I thought that the water/aid stations were spaced out well and had adequate amount of volunteers passing out cups of water and electrolytes, Vega gels, and fruit. The music, bands, drummers and cheering groups of people really kept me going especially towards the end when I had gotten a cramp in my right calf muscle and had to stretch out on the side. I however didn't really like the Vega gels. I didn't think they were as effective as Clif or Gu gels I train with since they didn't kick in as well and I started to get a little light headed like I was going to hit the wall even though I had consumed two during the race and I normally only take one Clif or Gu gel during a longer run. I wouldn't recommend them, but I am sure a lot of people enjoy them. Remember to use what you train with because that is what your body is accustomed to.The brunch after the race included waffles, granola bars, quiche, and fresh fruit. I had two helpings of waffles and about 6 fruit skewers before I left the finishers area with my Zico coconut water which really hit the spot.

I know some people complained about there not being enough food at the end but the friends I had that finished after me got their share still so I am not sure how slow you had to have run to not get brunch. I also saw a complaint from slower racers that there weren't many people cheering from them at the end, which I frankly think that if you finish later you should expect that since I would get tired cheering for people after an hour or two under the sun and many of the people cheering are friends or family members of fellow racers and once their person finishes they leave too.

Me and my fiance ended up staying at The Fairmont which was basically across the street from the Vancouver Convention Centre. We had wanted to take a picture underneath the Olympic Cauldron and finally did but but it was after we had showered and changed and when the crowds of racers and cheering friends and family had dissipated. If you want a picture underneath the Olympic Cauldron I'd recommend going early evening after the race or Sunday as you won't get the chance to take pictures without people around you on Friday or the morning or afternoon of Saturday.

Overall it was a great race. I thought it was well planned and would definitely recommend running the Seawheeze Half Marathon to anyone. I would run it again this year but we're getting married on the Friday before the race. So happy racing to anyone that will be running it this year!