Camp for Good Grief 5K

First of all, TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!!!  YAY for being born 29 years ago!  Now to the actual point of this entry:

Yesterday I ran another 5K!  It was a very special race, too.  The folks at Camp Good Grief are the same folks who run the Center for Good Grief, which is where I go for grief counseling.  It's a wonderful organization, and I fully intend to be a donor to them some day.  The work that they do is important.

Anyway, this was a great run for me!  The course itself was very hilly, so I took quite a few walk breaks, but I still managed to beat my last official 5K time according to my Garmin.  Yes, that's right, I have a Garmin now, thanks to my wonderful boyfriend and my birthday.  :-)

PINK!

I'm hopeful that this new gadget will inspire me to run outdoors more the next couple of weeks...

The run was special for many reasons.  Everyone running had lost someone special to them.  I was literally surrounded by people who understand what I'm going through.  It was magical.  It was wonderful to see  how not alone I am, and also it was such strong symbolism for what all of us who lose someone have to do every day:  Keep going.

Each bib had a spot for you to write the name of who you are running in memory of.

MOM

Like I said, a very special race.

Plus, Stacey took this extremely flattering shot of me, pre-race.

HOTTIE.

And, Stacey even decided to (illegally!) run the 5K himself.  Here he is, about to cross the finish line, sans bib.

I'm so proud of him!  It was his first 5K.  His first official one will be in a couple of weeks at The Color Run!!!  Now he knows that he can do it.  :-)

I placed #245

So the good news is that I ran a 5K, and I actually did run the majority of it.  The bad news is that I cannot imagine doing a 20.5K (a.k.a "half marathon") in just a couple of weeks...

I think that I will have to do a couple of short runs this week, one half marathon attempt next weekend, a couple of short runs next week, and....  Then again, I don't want to overtrain.

Anyway, Stacey is about to take me out to brunch for my birthday, so I have to go!

Color Me Rad 5K

BEFORE...

I had such a rad time at the Color Me Rad 5K.  

First of all, I had a great team!  Three cousin friends and two new friends (friends of cousins who are now my friends!) all ran with me.  We were "Team Mopey Zoo Lion".

Here's the entire team before the race:

Team Mopey Zoo Lion:
Me, Debbie, Danny, Jeff, Mollie, and Ty in the front

The race was full of all sorts of people!  Different ages, different sizes, different colors (hahahahaha), and different levels of fitness.  I really enjoyed that part.

I had planned to try to run the whole thing, but my training has really fallen behind.  I ended up doing a mixture of running and walking.  Most people in this race were walkers, so I never felt out of place during my walk breaks.  Jeff and Mollie were the only two in our group who ran the entire time, and I came in third place for Team Mopey Zoo Lion, which I was pretty proud of.

We had a great time.

Here is the team after the race:

I had a bit of a color mustache, as well as colors everywhere.  I remember looking down at my neon orange cleavage halfway through the race and thinking that this was a much healthier reason for that than Cheetos.

I had such a fun time, and it has definitely inspired me to keep on running.

I need to get back to the treadmill, and back on track for my half marathon training.  This 5K was rough on me.  My body ached all over yesterday because I hadn't trained correctly.  I cannot imagine adding 10 miles to this distance.

But it will get done!  I still have the goal of running a half marathon in October.

I love having running goals.

One of the things that I'm focusing on in order to get past my EDNOS is to stop counting calories.

I plan to use my appetite as a guide for how much to eat, and my training as a guide for how much to exercise.  

This was a great experience, and I'm so glad that I made it!  It's always fun to see my cousins.

5 Weeks to 5K!

Okay, so I signed up for a 5K for June 22nd...  

Sign up here if you will be in Memphis on 6/22:
http://www.colormerad.com/race.i?raceid=112&t=Memphis

And I started my half marathon training in January.  So if I had followed my plan 100% I would be able to run a 5K already.

But somewhere along the line, I stopped trying as hard.  And I'm basically back to only being able to run for 1 mile at a time comfortably.

So this won't be a real couch to 5K, since I have still be running a couple of times a week most weeks, and since I can run 1 mile comfortably...  but still.  I am going to consider this a new starting point for my running.

Since I really want to run the entire 5K on June 22nd, I need to increase my distance from 1 mile to 3.1 miles in 5 weeks.  Can it be done?

I say "YES."

Here is my entire "5 Weeks to 5K" plan:

• Three runs every week. 
• One or two days of cross training, too.
• "Intervals" means that I will run the distance listed, then walk a quarter mile, and repeat if time allows.
• "Speed training run" means that I will run the longest distance of the week as fast as possible, trying to improve every week.

Week 1 (May 19-May 25)
run 1- 1 mile intervals (walk .25, run 1, repeat)
run 2- 1.25 mile intervals
run 3- 1.5 mile speed training run!

Week 2 (May 26-June 1)
run 1- 1.5 mile intervals
run 2- 1.75 mile intervals
run 3- 2 mile speed training run

Week 3 (June 2-June 8)
run 1- 2 mile intervals
run 2- 2.25 mile intervals
run 3- 2.5 mile speed training run

Week 4 (June 9-June 15)
run 1- 2.25 mile intervals
run 2- 2.5 mile intervals
run 3- 2.75 mile speed training run

Week 5 (June 16-June 22)
run 1- 2.75 miles!
run 2- 3 miles!
run 3- Day of the race!  Run the entire 3.1 miles.

Phew.  This seems like a lot of running. 

And I also am taking a little test called the LSAT on June 10th.  Oh yeah, I am starting summer Spanish classes on May 29th.  So I'm hoping that my runs will be a good time to clear my head and to have some focused "me" time outside of all of the studying.  Running is such a good way to feel better about myself.

And making this goal would feel so great!  And give me another (way more fun) goal than acing the LSAT...

Have you ever trained for a 5K?  

Did you follow the C25K program, write your own plan, 

or wing it?

The good parts of 2012...

Since writing my 2012 recap post, which was very depressing and negative,  I have thought of a couple of good things about 2012.  Here are the good parts of 2012:

Mom was alive and well for almost 5 whole months.  Many happy memories with Mom from 2012, including watching the  Young and the Restless every weekday with her and looking through all of my NYC vacation pictures with her.  She loved ALL of them, especially the ones with me and Joel in them.  :-)

Rose was alive and well for two whole months.  Mom was unfortunately not the only family member that I lost in 2012.  But I enjoyed January and February with my best friend, Rose.  She was a member of the New clan since 1997, and it brings me a lot of comfort to think of Mom being with Rose now.

Diva and Jacques moved back in with me.  They are my chihuahuas, who I raised from babies to 5-6 years or so, then they moved in with my parents when I moved to a place that didn't allow dogs.  Then when I found a place that allowed dogs, Mom refused to let me have them back because she had fallen in love.  And I knew that they were better off there, with her home all day to play with and let them outside than with me.  But I decided that they belonged back with me once Mom was gone.  And they have been such a blessing to have back.  They are now 9 and 10 years old.

I ran my first 5K!!!  Okay, I walked/ran it (walked all the uphills), but still.  Accomplishment!  And it definitely gave me the racing bug.

Alright, there you have it.  Even though 2012 will forever be remembered as the year that my life was ruined, a few good things did happen.  And I'm grateful for that.  Up next:  2013 plans!

30DoB - Day 14 - My First 5K!!!

Today I ran my first 5K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so walked a bit of it.  Whenever we were going uphill, I would walk (except one time when an uphill immediately followed a downhill, so I was able to use that momentum to keep on going!).  The total time for my first 5K was just under 40 minutes, and that counts stopping for a picture once and stopping for a small cup of hot cocoa.  :-)

I call it a huge success!  I really enjoyed this race.  EVERYONE did.  There wasn't a bad mood in the crowd.

Since this was my first race, I have to ask:  Are runners just happy people?  Or was this just because of the fun theme?

In case you couldn't tell by my cousin Jena's and my outfits, this was an Ugly Christmas Sweater Run.  It was a lot of fun.   There were some crazy outfits!  Our looks were relatively tame compared to all of the tutus and reindeer costumes....  I loved it.

There were about 3000 people running!  That's a lot of runners.  It got very crowded, and because of that there was no pressure to run fast, which worked out great for me.  I don't think I'd been running since before Mom died, so this felt great.

I did wish that I could have called Mom about this, because she would have been so proud of me!

All in all, I think that 3.1 miles is very doable for a beginning runner like myself.  I walked up the hills, but otherwise I mostly jogged at a comfortable pace.  I passed some folks, and some folks passed me.  It was very relaxed and judgement free.  I am so glad that I chose such a fun race as my first 5K.

I'm already researching where the next 5K will be...

Sidenote:  Stacey took this picture of me without my knowing it! 

I don't think that I'm as HUGE as I picture myself.  But I do have some work to do!  My newest goal is to be back to a healthy size by next year's Ugly Sweater Run!  Then I can have some real fun comparing pictures.  :-)

 Anyway, I know that the point of my 30 Days of Blogging was to be done in 30 days, but that is sooooooooo not happening.  Still, it has got me back into the spirit of blogging, and I plan to try to blog as often as I can and get the second half of this blogging challenge done by 2013!