Double Marathon Weekends!

This past weekend was The Flying Pig Marathon and my 80th marathon to date! Luckily for me, it's in Cincinnati! This year it was even bigger and better than ever. Some cities have festivals and events that they build a marathon around. In Cincinnati, we have a marathon that we build quite the event around. The expo is huge, there is a pre race(s) festival and the entire city really gets into it. Which includes....

My Crazy Friends!!!

My fantastic squeal team! Christine (far left) ran the half, and my 3 friends came and waited in the rain, dressed up like little biggies, cheering, and texting me encouragement! I, on the other hand, texted them selfies of me doing impressions of animals running a marathon. Normal? mmmm... sure.

This was my first back to back marathon weekends in a while! It went surprisingly very well. I ran the first 9.5 with a friend at a bit of a slower pace (~10.45), then took off for the remainder of the marathon, finishing  with a 4:12:42 chip time. It was fun to do negative splits and play the passing game.

MB came to run too! She ran a 5:08 and appeared to have quite the fun time! We were having a beer (celebrating a little Cinco de Mayo) when we saw this strolling up...

That's my mama!

A few lessons learned from this marathon...
(because even 80x marathon runners have lessons to learn!)
~Running skirts DO stop the chub rub!!!! Ok... I'll admit, they don't actually look that bad either :)
~I've been running 100% over pronated and bought new shoes-- which makes the ankles very weak. Even when changing to a better form, it's important to build up those stability muscles.
~When purposely holding back to do negative splits, it's easy to get caught up in the start of the second split. It's important to hold back a bit and not burn it all.
~Playing "tough guy" and doing a Century Workout the few days before will STILL hurt if you did exercises you're not used to... stupid. My abs still hurt from the 100 V-Ups. Apparently somebody needs to work on their core!

It was a fun race and always a great time seeing old running buddies from all over the city (and beyond). More to come with the race ratings :)

-Stephanie
"Run to Win" -Meb

My Sports Punishment and Flying Pig Weekend!!!

WOD as Punishment

You've seen the shirt 'My sport is your sports' punishment.' It's true too. When people ask me about my running, 9 times out of 10 they'll go "UGH! I HATE running... they always made us do it in (insert high school sport)." Since running is my sport, what is my punishment? Crossfit! Or any kind of crazy "WOD"-workout of (the) day- in crossfit language.

On Thursday I did a tough WOD with a couple of guys from work over at a high school. Why a high school you ask? Oh because they have monster truck tires we can flip, stadiums we can run repeatedly, and an itchy turf we can crawl all over with burpees, push-ups, bear crawls, etc. This was the workout we did. It is called "Century." I'm sure you can figure out why...

Pretty much what I look like doing Century...hm

~Start with 1/2 mile run, then in any order:
~100 yards of tire flips
~3 Sets of stadium bleacher "laps" (6 rows up and down each time)
~100 Burpees (YEAH-- I said One Hundred... don't even get me started)
~100 Yard walking lunge
~100 Yard bear crawl
~100 Pushups
~100 V-Ups
~100 Air squats

This workout took me about 45 minutes in total. Now you may be saying "Stephanie-- Did you vomit?" Very close! You may be also asking "Why would you do this to yourself?" Well it was PUNISHMENT! My speedwork session on Wednesday sucked and I needed to be punished. I didn't have nearly enough to eat and waited until the end of the day to get my workout in. Not only that, but the track I wanted to workout on was being occupied by the high school students that go to that school. Hey now! I pay taxes, not them! I should get dibs :( My "Yassos" I was supposed to do got reduced down to 0.25 mile pick ups. I still got my legs stretched out and moving faster than normal so I'm happy. Next week the Yassos are happening earlier and after a good breakfast.

Post marathon, flying pig hill training, wanna-be speed work, and a Century WOD... I'm freaking exhausted!! I guess I'm officially back in training mode!

Flying Pig Weekend!

This Sunday is the Flying Pig Marathon in my local city, Cincinnati. I'm a big fan of marathons taking over my city and Cincinnati is fully supportive of it. Almost everybody does the half or full at some point so they are understanding when part of downtown/Hyde Park shut down for a day. I've done this race twice before, but I have yet to race it. The first year I didn't train at all (it was my pre-crazy-marathon O' marathon days) and the second I paced a friend. This year I'm pacing a friend in the half, which will split off around mile 10. One of these days I'm going to take on the tough pig course and see how well I can do... maybe next year!

Happy Anniversary!
No I'm not married-- I'm not even dating anybody. Everybody shares their anniversaries between them and their better halves that they devote their lives to. In my case that's my job... so Happy 7 Year Anniversary GE! Annnnd I officially have 0 life. Good job.

May is the start of prime marathon season so this weekend is always chock full of races! What race are you running this weekend?? Good luck to all the racers!!

-Stephanie
"Run to Win" -Meb