Official Chili Trot Results and Leg Cramps

I got my official results from the Chili Trot 5K that I ran this past Saturday. I was very surprised to find out that I finished 11th! That is out of 71 runners. My official time was 25:03. I was the 5th female to finish. Unfortunately I don't know how I did in my age category because the race results didn't have the ages listed.

I've been having strange leg cramps for a while now, and its really starting to bother me. It doesn't happen while I am running, but it happens sometimes after I run if I ran really hard. But for the most part it is happening at night. I've had Charlie Horses in my legs before occasionally, but never anything like this. Its gotten to the point where its happening multiple times a night. Any time I stretch my legs out and point my toes I get a cramp. Most of the time I can feel when its about to start and I can flex my foot real fast and make it stop. Everyone I've talked to says that I need to, "eat more bananas", but I feel like I have a really well rounded diet (including bananas) and I take vitamins every day. Maybe its time to see a doctor about it.

Have any other runners experienced these leg cramps in the night? If so what did you do about it?

I'm planning on starting a Half Marathon Training program today, but honestly I'm not very excited about it. I think with my strange work schedule I'm going to have a hard time sticking to the training schedule. I'm also not very excited about the runs in the first few weeks. I chose a program for intermediate runners, but the runs in the first couple of weeks are only 3-6 miles long. I've heard good things about the program though, so I'm going to give it a shot unless I find another program in the meantime that fits my schedule better.

Chili Trot 5K Recap

My alarm went off at 6:00 this morning, and I almost decided to blow off my race and go back to sleep. But of course I would never actually do that! So I rolled out of bed and got going. I ate a packet of Quaker Original Grits for breakfast. I figured it was about the only thing I could eat quickly that didn't have much fiber in it.

We got to the church where the race was being hosted and it was absolutely FREEZING. Kelli and Nicole were smart enough to wear long sleeves and pants, but I hadn't invested in any yet because the temperature hadn't dipped below 70 degrees all year long. I wore capri length pants and a short sleeved shirt with a jacket. I seriously considered running in my jacket, but I was afraid I'd start sweating and get it all gross.

We got going just before 9:00, and for the first mile I was really afraid I might fall. I was so cold that my feet were numb and I felt unsteady on them. After the first mile I started warming up and felt alot better although my nose was running and the cold air was burning my lungs. By the third mile I felt great though .. and then of course it was over.

I'm shocked to say that I once again beat my previous time! I hit the finish line at exactly 25 minutes. My previous best time was 26:08. I guess the cold weather made me get my ass in gear and go. My splits were:

Mile 1: 8:05
Mile 2: 7:58
Mile 3: 8:02

I can't believe I ran 3 consistent 8 minute miles. I really am getting faster and stronger!

After the race, Tim and I tasted some of the chili entries in the cook off, ate a hotdog and I may or may not have eaten a chocolate brownie that may or may not have been absolutely delicious. We didn't get to stay for the awards ceremony because Tim had to work this afternoon.

After I dropped Tim off, I immediately went and bought a pair of long running pants and a couple long sleeved shirts. I can't wait to wear them tomorrow morning.

Its Finally Fall!

Thats right, its finally fall in Alabama! I walked outside this evening and it was a chilly 55 degrees. This is my absolute favorite time of the year. I love everything about it: the cooler weather, football, sweaters, pumpkin pie, the colors. Its all wonderful! I think I'm even generally in a better mood in the fall than I am any other time of the year.

To make matters even better there are only 12 days left until our Gatlinburg vacation. I can't wait to get up in the mountains and see the beautiful scenery, relax in the hottub with some wine, eat some good food and just have a great time. I really need it!

Tomorrow morning is the Chili Trot 5K. I've got my playlist all ready and all my clothes layed out. The only thing left to do is figure out exactly where I'm suppose to go.

My friends Nicole and Kelli are running with me this time, and my husband Tim of course. I'm not looking to set any personal records this time, just hoping to have some fun. After the race there is a chili cookoff. I haven't decided yet if I will participate in the judging or not. I had a few weak moments with some Oreos at work the other night that I'm still trying to repent for.

Tomorrow night we have the Fall Festival at the YMCA. I'm not sure what all will be involved but I'm excited to dress Lincoln up in his Halloween costume! Oh ... we also get to go tomorrow to pick up the proofs of our family pictures that we had made a couple weeks ago. I'm excited to see how they turn out.

Sunday we are taking my mother in law out for lunch for her birthday (which was actually today). We are going to Wintzell's Oyster House. I'm absolutely infatuated with oysters. They are one of my most favorite things on earth. I still haven't decided if I'm going to make an honest effort to "be good" or if I'm just gonna say F it. I really want the Oyster Sampler, but I'm sure it will set me back about 1000 calories or more.

The fair is in town this week, but we have decided instead of going to the fair and spending a bunch of money that we don't really need to, that we will forgo it. Instead we are going to take Lincoln to Zoo Boo on Sunday night. Another Halloween costume opportunity! Yes!

So the question of the day is ... should I be good at Wintzell's or should I go all out with the Oyster Sampler? Take a look at the menu and tell me your vote for my entree.

Official Race Results

This morning I ran outside to get the newspaper to check out the official race results from yesterday's Capitol City Half Marathon and 5K. I finished 67th out of 322 runners in the 5K. Not bad!

The newspaper listed my official time as 26:08. So that was even faster than I thought I had finished.

After lunch Tim, Nicole and I went out to Swayback Bridge Trail for some mountain biking. We did the 1 mile course just to try it out since Nicole hasn't ever been out there before, and then we did the 4 mile course. We had a really good time. This was actually the first time that I've been out there when the ground was dry. I didn't get all muddy for once! Yes!

When we finished the trails, Tim wanted to ride down the road a little to the bridge. I've never ridden on the road before and it made me really nervous, but luckily we never saw one car. Coming down the hill towards the bridge I got my bike up to almost 23 mph. I actually started to get scared because I was going so fast!

We stopped by the grocery store on the way home to buy dog food and salsa and ended up spending almost $180 on random stuff. Don't you just hate that?! But one cool thing we got that I've never been able to find before was Spaghetti Squash. I've been itching to try it. So tomorrow night I think I'm going to make spaghetti squash with meat sauce for dinner.

Do you cook with spaghetti squash? What kinds of things have you made with it besides ... spaghetti?

Capitol City Half Marathon & 5K

Tim and I got up at 4:30 this morning to get ready for the Capitol City 5K. I slept pretty good last night though. After all the mexican food, two beers, and a sleeping pill ... I was ready for bed at 8:30 pm.

We drove downtown this morning as the sun came up to meet my friend Nicole and her mom who were running in the race also. It was very confusing with all the one way streets and the roadblocks, but we eventually all got where we were suppose to be.

The Half Marathon started right at 7:00 am, and the 5K got underway about 15 minutes later.

Poor Tim, he mistakenly had his iPod on "shake to shuffle" and kept wondering why he would only hear 10 seconds of a song before it switched. He didn't figure it out until more than halfway through the race. He got so frustrated that he actually threw his headphones away at one of the water stations.

I however, didn't have any iPod issues today. The race went great! I felt like I paced myself well, yet I ran as fast as I possibly could without overdoing it. I didn't get any side cramps today, and the hills that I worried about really weren't an issue at all. I actually wished I could have kept running. I was super jealous of the half-marathoners!

Of course I forgot to stop my Garmin when I came across the finish line again today. But these are my times according to my Garmin (the official results haven't been posted yet):

Mile 1 - 8:55
Mile 2 - 8:45
Mile 3 - 7:44
0.1 Mile - 7:06

My time according to my Garmin was 26:28, more than 2 minutes faster than my previous 5K time!

My father in law caught this shot as I came in to the finish line:

Tim came in a few minutes after me and we got a good shot of him right under the finish line.

After the race we went to the post-race party where they had Jim & Nicks BBQ, free beer, live music and massages!

I won't know my official results until tomorrow morning, they are suppose to be in the newspaper. I'm really glad to have my second 5K under my belt though, and I'm more than pleased with my time.

Tonight at dinner I asked Tim, "who would ever have thought that we would be runners?". Which brought up the conversation of "are we really runners?" What makes a runner? How far do you have to be able to run to be a runner?

What is your opinion? What makes a person a runner?

Fell Off the Wagon

Tim and I went downtown this afternoon to pick up our race packets for the 5K in the morning. I hate to report that the t-shirt is really ugly, but its a nice comfortable material. There weren't very many goodies in the packet, a water bottle and a coupon book were about the best things.

When we got back home for some reason I was starving so I decided to have a snack. Somehow my snack turned in to a major binge! I ended up eating: a soft pretzel, Cheez-Its, string cheese, a trail mix bar and about 4 tablespoons of peanut butter straight from the jar. I wiped out the rest of my daily points and all but 1 of my weekly points that I had left.

To make matters worse about an hour later my friend Nicole called and wanted to go out to dinner at a mexican place. I talked myself into it even though I had no more points left to spare. I ate a full meal there as well and 2 beers. Although I will consider the beer a small victory because normally I would get a medium or large margarita. You know the ones that look like a fishbowl.

I hope I don't feel weighed down and bloated for my run in the morning. I wish I wouldn't do this to myself, but I always seem to justify it at the time.

On another note, I made my playlist for tomorrow. Its got a couple of songs from the previous 5K playlist, but most of them are new.

This course has several hills, some gradual and atleast one steep hill. So I'm almost positive my time won't be anything close to my last 5K time. I'm aiming for finishing in 32 minutes or less.

Getting Excited About Vacation!

I'm starting to get really excited about our Gatlinburg vacation! Only 28 more days to go. I have a countdown calender on my google homepage. We paid the last of our money today for our cabin rental. Here are some pictures of where we will be staying.

I love cozy little cabins. I'm super excited about having our own private hottub also. That will be nice after running up in the mountains. I can't decide if I want to make plans for what I want to do and see each day while we are there or if I want to relax and just do whatever comes up. Knowing me I'll end up planning out every minute of the time that we will be there.

I just finished up my last workday for this week, and now I'm off for 8 glorious days! I love having an 8 day break every 4 weeks. It just hit me that I have a 5K in 3 days. This one is probably going to be a bit different from the last one I did. The course is suppose to have a few pretty steep hills, so I doubt I'll be setting any personal records this time, but you never know. I need to get started on working on my playlist. There are certain songs like I like to listen to when I'm running hills.

What are some of your favorite songs to run to?

Official Race Results and Weigh-In Day

I can't believe I forgot to mention in my last post that I got my official race results from the Big Brother/ Big Sister 5K today.

My official time was 28:50. So pretty close to my estimation. And I finished 38th out of 131 runners. Not bad at all for my first race!

I also forgot to mention earlier that today was weigh-in day. I gain 0.2 lbs this week. I don't know what's going on with my body. Its just bouncing back and forth right now. But I know that I'm eating well and exercising plenty so I'm ok with it.

Race Day Review

My morning started really early this morning. I set my alarm to go off at 5:00 am so that I would have plenty of time to wake up and get everything together before the race this morning. I actually ended up starting to wake up around 3:45, then 4:15, then 4:35 .. you get the idea.

Tim and I got to the race site about 7:20 this morning and met up with several of my friends from work who ran with us.

Me, Sam, Bailey and Bonnie

Before the race some military-type guy lead us in some stretching and calisthenics. Then we got going about 8:00. I made my way to the back of the crowd at the starting line because I was terrified of getting trampled after reading about that happening to people. As the race got going I weaved my way through the back of the pack and ended up fairly close to the front.

I breezed through the first 2 miles with no problem. Actually I was completely suprised at what my Garmin was saying my pace was. I didn't feel like I was running any faster than normal, but my heart rate was running in the 170s and my pace was in the 8:45 range. When I hit the beginning of the 3rd mile I got a side-stitch so bad that I almost couldn't run through the pain. It was sheer willpower that kept me going at that point. I kept telling myself that I knew I could finish and I didn't want to walk during my first race. At one point I was hurting so bad I seriously thought I was gonna puke on the side of the road. But somehow I pushed through and the pain eased off.

I forgot to look at the clock when I crossed the finish line, and oddly enough I also forgot to stop my Garmin for several seconds after I finished. I think my official time is going to be right about 28:45. But for now I'll give you the stats from my Garmin:

Total Time: 28:56
Mile 1: 8:59
Mile 2: 8:54
Mile 3: 9:24

Here are a few pictures from after the race:

Tim and I

As if running wasn't enough, Tim and I decided to go moutain biking afterwards because the weather was actually decent. Its been raining for about 2 weeks straight and this is the first clear day we've had in a while. We biked a 4 mile trail at Swayback Bridge Trail. After we got home from that I was exhausted and starving!

I heated up a Morningstar Spicy Black Bean Burger and chopped it up on top of some Tostitos Scoops and made a huge taco salad out of it.

Overall it was a really great day and I'm glad to have my first 5K behind me. Next up is the Capitol City 5K on October 3rd. That one's going to be a toughy, a good portion of it is up some pretty serious hills. I've also signed up to run a 5K called the Turkey Burner on my birthday, November 21st. I thought that would be a fun thing to do for my birthday.

Pre-Race Post

Well, this will be my final post before my first 5K tomorrow morning at 8:00 am. I started off training with the Couch to 5K program several months ago and finished the program and kept going. At this point I have run up to 6 miles straight, and I do 4-5 miles consistantly several times a week. I don't have any doubt that I'll be able to run the whole 5K tomorrow which is what my original goal was. Now I'd like to finish in a reasonable time. I'd be happy to finish in 31 minutes or less. I think that is very do-able.

I worked on my playlist for my iPod tonight. I picked some songs that have good beats, a fast tempo, or are particularly motivating for me. So here it is:

Forgive the Kanye West. He's an ass, but that song motivates me when I need it. Thats why I chose to put it at the end. This playlist runs about 33 minutes, so hopefully I'll be well done by then.

I went through my race packet tonight. It contained: a course map, my t-shirt, my number, a pedometer, and a few pamphlets.

My tshirt is too big on me! I'm having a hard time realizing what size I actually am. In my mind I'm still a large. I'm hoping I can trade my large t-shirt in for a size medium tomorrow morning before the race. But I did put it on for just a second to take a picture.

Since I was out all day I didn't plan what I would make for dinner tonight, which is very uncharacteristic of me. I went through what we had in the house and came up with this:

Chicken macaroni, green beans and steamed baby carrots. The macaroni includes: diced chicken breast, diced tomatoes, artichoke hearts, black olives, green peas, cream of mushroom soup, cream of chicken soup, mozzarella and cheddar cheese, and bread crumbs on top. It ended up making 2 huge pans! It worked out to be 5 points per serving. Not bad at all. I'll have alot leftover to freeze. For dessert I had a Sedona Frozen Yogurt and Granola Sandwhich. They are so delish!

Have a great night! I'm going to try to get to bed early tonight so I can get a fresh start tomorrow. I'll let you know how the race goes.

Biking in the Park and Another Race

Tim and I went back to the Shakespeare Park this morning and rode our bikes around for a while. I think I ended up riding just over 7 miles in about 52 minutes. I was pulling our son in the trailer behind me so it was much more difficult hauling an extra 30 pounds or so. We had a great time though.

After our ride we had a little picnic and fed the ducks. I packed up Club Sandwhiches, fresh fruit, baby carrots with fat free ranch dip, and Quakes last night for us to eat. This is such a change from when we used to go eat picnics. Normally we would stop by Fresh Market on the way to the park and buy about $75 worth of sushi, pasta salads, paninis, chips or crackers, hummus, etc. Not that all that stuff was bad by any means, but it was definitely unnecessary. For some reason we thought we needed that much food though. Then on top of eating all that if we did anything else at the park besides eat and feed the ducks, it would just be to pull out a couple lawn chairs and read books or magazines.

I signed up for what will be our 2nd official 5K today. The first one is going to be September 19th, and then the second one that I just registered for will be October 3rd. There is a Labor Day 5K tomorrow, but I didn't sign us up ahead of time and it would be $50 for Tim and I to register at the event tomorrow. Not to mention we'd have to be there atleast an hour early to register and it already starts at 7:30 am. I think I'd like to sleep in atleast one day during this holiday weekend.

We went to Books-A-Million yesterday while we were waiting to get my bike tuned up, and I bought a couple books that I'm really excited about. One of them is called Frozen Assets Lite and Easy: Cook for a Day Eat for a Month and the other one is called Don't Panic Dinner's in the Freezer. As the names may suggest they are recipe books of freezable recipes to have on hand. I love those kinds of things especially since I work night shift and I'm not home alot of nights to cook for my family. The recipes in the 1st book look really good! Some of the recipes in the 2nd one look really good too, but because its not a light cookbook I'll probably have to tweak them some to meet my WW requirements. I'll let you know how they turn out!

I Run Because ...

I read a blog post yesterday where a runner asked people to respond with the reasons why they run. It made me think about why I like to run. So I made my own list:

1. It burns more calories than almost any other cardio activity.
2. It gives me time alone with my thoughts.
3. I love the way I feel after I run.
4. I love to sweat!
5. I can listen to really loud fast music.
6. Its impossible to be angry after a good run.
7. It makes me feel strong and accomplished.
8. Because I can!
9. Because so many others can't/don't.
10. It takes me away from the frustration, stress and responsibility of the day.
11. I like to see how far/fast I can push myself.
12. I like seeing how far I've come.
13. I like the way it makes my thighs look.
14. To be a role model for my friends and family, but most importantly for my son.

I felt so motivated to run after I made my list that I signed up for my first 5K. It will be on September 19th and will benefit the Big Brother/Big Sister organization. I'm so excited!