A Day in the Life of Me

I enjoy reading blogs and "A day in the Life" posts are always fun to read. Since my life is super awesome I figured I would share some of my awesomeness with you in telling you how a typical, random day goes for me. That is why I have a blog after all. :)

4:00am - Alarm goes off and I go through the routine of arguing and convincing myself that I need to get up and run rather than sleeping in. Sometimes that extra hour of sleep is too tempting and I lose this argument.

4:05am - Today I win the argument and roll out of bed. Get dressed. Find Mrs. Speedypants still up and watching one of the Twilight movies. I hang out with her for a little while.

4:45am - Put on my Garmin watch and Road I.D. I drink a little water and start my 6.2~ mile run. It had rained that night so everything was still damp but I was fortunate that I didn't have to run through any puddles. I actually ran a personal best on this particular route.

6:00am - Drank some Muscle Milk Protein shake, ate a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, started the coffeemaker, took a multivitamin and an extra vitamin C pill. Drank water.

6:30am - Took a shower, got dressed for work, poured myself a cup of coffee in a to-go cup.

6:50am - My daughter is awake and on her laptop so I say "hi" and "bye" and than I leave for work.

7:30am - I am a Supervisory Data Monitor. I spend the day quality checking the work of the Data Monitors. It is a nice Monday to Friday low-stress job and the people I work with are great. So the days go by fast and I never dread going to work everyday. For lunch I didn't feel like leaving the office so I ate a Powerbar and a chocolate slim-fast shake. I drank lots of coffee and lots of water.

Love my job. 

4:00pm - I leave for home. The Los Angeles Dodgers were playing the New York Mets so I listened to the game on the radio while I was driving. Ever since Time Warner Cable bought the T.V. rights to the Dodgers I have not been able to watch a single game on T.V.

5:00pm - I get home and say "hi" to the family. Since I didn't have much of a lunch, I am hungry so I eat a banana and then Mrs. Speedypants and I start making dinner. We had BBQ beef sandwiches, onion rings, and french fries. Yum, yum, yum. lol.

5:40pm - I do the dishes

6:00pm - Since a lot of our T.V. shows have ended or are ending for the season we decided to go on Netflix and start a "Scrubs" T.V. series marathon to watch as a family. I wanted to get 100 push-ups in for the day so between the episodes I do a set of 20.

8:00pm - We send the kids to shower and get ready for bed. Mrs. Speedypants and I decide we want to watch some "House".

8:30pm - Send the kids to bed. I eat a Popsicle and a bunch of grapes.

Best Popsicles ever!

9:00pm - I go to bed.

So there you have it. An ordinary day for an ordinarily awesome person.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Started Training for my Next Race

Hello everybody! Running post OC Half Marathon has had some ups and downs. I attempted a couple of easy recovery runs the week after the event. The problem was that I could not run slow. I would trot at what felt like a really slow pace but in reality was too fast. Each time I would do a lap I would check my watch and it would tell me 9:00 min mile pace. I then would run slower for the next lap and again the lap was at a 9:00 min mile pace. I ended a couple of recovery runs early just because I mentally could not go any slower. Than last week I caught a nasty cold. It started off innocently with only a little bit of a runny nose. Than out of nowhere I was down with body aches, fever, and everything else that is on those cold medicine commercials. It was awful.

Last Saturday though I had been feeling pretty good for a couple of days and decided that I wanted to check out the course of my next race. I have signed up for the 15 mile option of the Holcomb Valley Trail Run located in Big Bear California. My Brother and I met up at the trailhead and started our run at about 7:30 am. A couple miles into the run the course merges with the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) for a bit. We stopped for a water break and talked to a couple from Germany who were doing the 2650 mile thru-hike of the PCT. Doing the thru hike of the PCT is on my bucket list so it is always fun talking to these hikers and finding out where they are from and why they are hiking. After we chatted for a couple minutes we continued on our way.

 

 

This was the first time I ever pre ran a race course and it was very beneficial. Some of the things I learned:

1. Air is thin in the mountains and I feel like a fish out of water gasping for air.
2. Do not wear ankle socks because the sand and dust got in my shoes and socks.
3. Course has some technical rocky sections and I almost fell a couple times.
4. I hope the course is well marked because I took a couple of wrong turns.

Do you like to preview a race course before or would you rather have the course surprise you?
There is one hill that I think I would have rather of not known about on this course. lol.

2014 OC Marathon Recap

On May 4th I ran my first road half marathon at the OC Marathon. I had a couple of goals for this race but I was mostly going for the experience. This was the largest (13,000 runners) race and my first point to point race. This was also the first race that there was no race day packet/bib pickup. So, my family and I learned a lot about these kind of races over the weekend.

Before The Race

When I originally signed up for the race I only had a couple of criterion. One of those were that it had to be on a Sunday because Saturdays are usually too busy. What I didn't realize and needed  to take into account is that a big race will not have race day bib pickup. This means that Saturday ended up being much more busy than I would have liked for the day before a race. 

Saturday morning the kids and I drove 2 hours down to the Race Expo in Costa Mesa. I had never been to a race expo before and it was an interesting experience. It was easy to find the lines I needed to pickup my bib, and my race t-shirt. After that we decided to check out the vendors since it was still early in the day and the crowd wasn't that bad yet. The kids and I walked around and ate whatever free samples the vendors were handing out. EB let me know that Island Boost would be there so I made sure I stopped by and got myself a couple of the chocolate flavored packets. After we had our fill of samples and had grown bored of looking at the multitude of sock and shirt vendors we decided to head home.

Hanging out at the Expo

We drove home and got my Son ready for his Little League Baseball game. He did awesome and it is really fun watching him play. After the game we went back home and finished packing and than waited for Mrs. Speedypants to get off of work. We ended up getting on the road about 7pm and checked into the Hotel a little after 9. With the super early race start we set our alarms and called it a night.

My cute outfit race gear

Race Day

The half marathon start was at 6:15 am and so we left the hotel at 5:30 am to drive the few miles to the start. The hotel breakfast wasn't ready yet so we had to stop by at a nearby 24hr Subway to get some sandwiches. With the morning race traffic and lack of breakfast planning we were late. it was 6:00 am and we were still stuck at stoplights and so once again I had to be dropped off and my family was going to miss the start of another race. We turned around and Mrs. Speedypants dropped me off at the shuttle drop off at 6:10. I jogged over to the start area and there were lines for the port-a-potties and so I figured I would just skip them and just go find my start corral. I was assigned to Corral 3 and I was able to find it as soon as the race started and the first wave of runners were released. The start of my corral was ten minutes later and I was off and running. About a quarter of a mile in I came to the conclusion that there was no way I was going to be able to make the entire 13 miles without a potty break. Luckily for me I found some port-a-potties at the first mile marker. Stopping mid-race was another first for me. I lost 2 minutes at this detour but it made for a much more pleasant race. The rest of the race went really well. I brought my handheld water bottle and an Island boost with me so I was able to skip most of the aid stations until I ran out of water the last couple of miles. I took my Island Boost about the 50 minute mark and I was able to finish fairly strong. I was passing people the entire 13.1 miles. 

Official Time: 1:58:46

Overall Place: 1872 out of 10389

Age Group Place: 216 out of 650

Happy that I finished

Sun and sweat in my eyes.

Notice how my kids did not want to touch me.

I was completely soaked and dripping sweat as evidenced by my shorts here.

Course

The course was actually fairly nice and the scenery changed enough to keep me amused. There wasn't a lot of spectators but they were enthusiastic with fun signs, unofficial aid stations, music and cowbells. The course had several turns and hills which made it tougher than I was expecting. Even with the early start time it got hot quick on the course which made it even that much more harder.

Goals

I reached my goal of finishing in under 2 hours. Woo-hoo!

Summary

There were a lot of firsts for me and my family with this race. I am glad that I signed up and did it because we were able to learn what we liked and disliked about these kind of races. I will use that information when I choose my first full marathon at the end of this year. I really enjoyed the course, and the atmosphere of the race. It was a fun experience. My hydration and fuel plan worked for me. I don't know what time I put for my expected finish time when I signed up because I definitely felt like I was in the wrong corral. I know I used a lot of energy speeding up, slowing down, and darting side to side trying to pass people the entire race. 

Race firsts

Largest race

First road half marathon

First time using Island Boost at a race.

First point to point race

First race expo

First time I needed a potty break in a race

Recap of the Month of April

April was a very good month for me and my training. I have continued with a basic strength training regime and I was even able to swim laps a few days this month. I have increased my running mileage and can happily say that I am still injury free. Woo-hoo! Here is how my month of April went.



April Stats

Total Miles - 83.66 miles
Longest Run - 10 miles
Total Time - 12:58:19 (hrs: mins: secs)
Elevation Gain - 5,682 ft.


April Races

April 13 - Xterra Black Mountain Trail 16K (recap)

Here is me kicking butt at Xterra in San Diego

Official Time: 1:29:50

Overall Place: 129 out of 326

Age Group place: 21 out of 36

April 20 - Apple Valley Bunny Run 10k (recap)

Here I am with my Brother kicking butt in Apple Valley

Official Time: 47:12

Overall Place: 11th out of 45

Age Group Place: 1st out of ? (Brother got 3rd)

April Things of Note

April ended up being a big month for me in terms of running. I got my first age group win. I raced on back to back weekends for the first time plus I exceeded my expectations in both those races. Even my mileage and elevation gain for the month was the highest of the year so far. So yea, all good stuff.

Summary

The year is a third over and I am doing really well in terms of racing, training, and recovering. I am really excited to see what the rest of the year has in hold for me. I am proud of myself for sticking to the plan and being patient with my overall running. I have kept up with my stretching and strength training, I have incorporated some foam rolling for recovery, and I have continued with my slow mileage build up. It has been hard to not get carried away with the excitement of how well my running has been going but I still have to remember that I am injury free and doing well because I am taking care of myself.

May Plans

I have the OC Half Marathon this Sunday. This will be my very first road half marathon and my first point to point (start and finish are in different locations) race.  So that is where my focus is right now.

Stat Total for the Year

Total Miles - 269.6
Longest Run - 13 miles
Total Time - 44:31:40 (hrs: mins: secs)
Elevation Gain - 18,626 ft.