The new year is challenging me

In my last post, I wrote that I was on the road to recovery. Well, I wasn't. A few days later I developed a hacking cough. One of those that keeps you up for hours at night. Kaylee developed her first ever ear infection and Emily croup. It has been a tough winter for us. The kids recovered fast, but Emily's sleeping pattern devolved into this wake up every half hour for mommy thing that was killing me. And I had that terrible cough for a little over two weeks. So even when Emily gave me a two hour respite, I wasn't sleeping, I was coughing.

Things are better...I think. I'm not coughing. Emily is sleeping again. Kaylee is happy. Yet, we seem to be fighting off yet another cold virus, but right now it's all sniffles and not much else.

My running has simply been all over the place. During the whole mastitis episode, I took 12 days off. Then with the coughing thing I took off another 6 days. Finally, I just starting running really easy. "Really easy" was making sure my heart rate stayed between 140 - 150, which was 9:30 pace at the time. My heart rate has been so high. Usually before I start running, my heart rate is around 50. While I was sick, it was between 80 - 90 (that's before the running even started). Just crazy!

I'm concerned that I won't run my half marathon well, but what can I do? It's not like I can cram training, and I don't have a lot of control over being sick. I did manage a 13 miler last week at 8:38 pace with an average heart rate of 142. A couple days ago I ran an 11 miler at 7:49 pace with an average heart rate of 144, which sounds good, but it felt harder to me than 144 should feel. Today I ran a 7 miler at 7:19 pace, but I forgot my heart rate monitor. It felt fairly hard though. I really have no idea what I'm in for with this half marathon, but I'll be there ready to find out. When I reminded Nick that I had a half soon he responded with "you're still running it?" To which I replied, "of course!" It might not be pretty, but it's still worth the run...

Oh I had a question for those of you who use heart rate zones to train. I've sort of figured out my "zones," which are as follows:

• Zone 3: 134 - 152
• Zone 4: 152 - 169
• Zone 5: 169 - 187

My question is: what zone should you be in when running a half? I'm guessing zone 4? And what zone should you run a full?

Au revoir 2010, hello 2011!

It's a bit late for a 2010 review. Heck, it's a little late to be writing about goals for 2011, but what can you do? The last month has been rough. My family and I caught this awful cold before Christmas that continues to plague us! Fortunately (and oddly), baby Emily didn't get sick, just the rest of us. Also, two weeks ago I was diagnosed with mastitis, which nearly killed me. Okay, I'm being overly dramatic, but it was bad enough that I didn't run for 12 days and didn't even contemplate or think about running for the first 10 days! That's unlike me. Anyway, I think I'm finally on the road to recovery.

Let's see what is there to say about 2010? Well, I spent most of it pregnant. I was pregnant from January until the end of August. I took most of September off from running to recover from the birth, and by October I was back at the hamster wheel. I raced my first and last race of 2010 on Thanksgiving, where I ran a 5K in 20:25. I was pleased with my only race of the year. Emily had just turned 3 months old and I had only been running for 2 months.

I wound up running a total of 1942 miles for 2010, which is an average of 37 miles a week. That 37 miles a week assumes 52 weeks, given that I took 4 weeks off I really averaged 40 miles a week. Cool beans. Not as much mileage as some, but in 2010 I was able to consistently run with no injuries! I haven't done that in years! After college, I didn't think I could run more than 30 miles a week without getting hurt. And last year I did 40 miles a week while pregnant and 20 plus pounds heavy! For me that's amazing.

Overall, it was a great year. I had a healthy baby girl, ran lots of miles, and stayed healthy. It doesn't get much better. I also had the opportunity to run several races with my mom, which was awesome. I so badly wanted to participate in races, but didn't want to race while pregnant. Running with my mom was a sweet deal. I've never run a race without actually racing before, so when we'd go to races I'd look at her times and make goals for us (without telling her of course). We ran a half marathon together when I was 13 weeks pregnant and it was a great time.

Now what's in store for 2011? I don't do New Year's resolutions, so I don't have one to share. I do have some goals though. I actually made these goals while pregnant. Here were/are my post preggo running goals:

1. Turkey Trot 5K, November (goal 21:45)
2. Hampton Half Marathon, February (goal 1:40)
3. Providence (COX) Marathon, May (goal 3:40)
4. Chelmsford 4th of July 2 miler, July (goal: 12:40)
5. Moose on the Loose 10 miler, August (goal: 1:12)
6. BayState Marathon, October (goal: 3:30)

Technically the turkey trot was in 2010, but I'll just go ahead and say that I'll be running the same turkey trot in 2011. The time goal for the race will have to change...maybe I should make a leap and say I want to break 20:00. The rest of the goals still look reasonable to me. The BayState goal might change. If I qualify for Boston in May, then I might run BayState with my mom. She's pretty close to qualifying for Boston and it would be cool to go to Boston with her.

And completely off topic, we finally have a family picture with Emily! She's sleeping in it, which is ironic because she never ever naps. Anyway, happy new year everyone!

Garmin Forerunner 305

A few of you asked about the iphone app that creates the overexposed artsy photos. It's called Hipstamatic. I used it for the above photo. I like the overexposed look. It hides those pesky skin imperfections, but I digress.

The real reason for the picture is to show off my new toy, the forerunner 305! I'm so excited to use it that I thought I'd wear it to work! No, not really, I just put it on for the picture. I am excited to run with it though. I had it on my Christmas wish list. It's funny a co-worker asked me what I thought I was getting for Christmas, and I told him about the Garmin. He's not a runner, so he looked a little puzzled. And then he asked, "What if you don't get it?" (He seemed to think it was unlikely that any husband would buy his wife a gps running watch.) To which I replied, "Oh, I'll just order one after Christmas." Nick did in fact get me the 305 for Christmas though. He's good like that.

I know the 305 is a bit bigger than the sleeker 405, but I've read a number of complaints that the 405 doesn't work well if it gets wet. And the 305, although older, seems to be the favorite (according to Amazon reviewers anyway). So that's what I wanted. I'm really excited about the heart rate monitor. I've always wondered what my true training heart rate is, you know, without having to stop and take it manually. (And now I'll have an accurate method of measuring it!) I'm hoping that maybe I can start training using heart rate zones. Maybe then I can make sure my easy days are actually easy days. We'll see.

Christmas was good. Well, the whole family was sick, but we had a really low key day so it wasn't too bad. I'm still sick actually. Last week I didn't run much (less than 20 miles), but that's how it goes sometimes. I did manage a 12 mile run at 8:15 pace, so that was reasonable. And I've already run a 12 miler this week too. So I'm sick, but now I seem to be able to run as long as I take it easy.

I hope you all had a great holiday! Oh and what type of GPS watch do you use (if any), and what's your favorite feature?

Asthma & Christmas Decor

On the training front, I did manage another 43 mile week. I also managed to slow the average pace to 8:06. But,(yes there is a but), now I'm sick. And the kids are sick. Sigh. That's the way the cookie crumbles, I suppose (whatever that means).

I haven't mentioned my asthma in quite some time. I haven't needed to mention it. I haven't needed an inhaler in over 6 months! Now I'm back on the highest dosage of Advair. I'm also taking my albertol inhaler every 4-6 hours and a steroid nasal spray. Yikes! I forgot what it was like to have a deficient immune system. Stupid immune system!

I've been feeling a little cocky about my whole asthma situation. I may have prematurely added a little swagger to my step. I didn't even need an inhaler for my 5K turkey trot, which was running hard in the cold (two of my biggest triggers). So this week I've been knocked down a peg or two by old friend, asthma. I imagine it will take a couple weeks to recover back to a steady state. I'll let you know how it goes.

On a more fun note, I was reading this post on Chasing the Kenyans and thought I'd add share some of my favorite Christmas decor. The first picture below is a picture of our tree taken with a new iphone app that Nick found for me. Basically is processes the photos you take with your phone in real time and makes them artsy or old and decrepit, depending on your point of view. As a result, you can't really see many of our ornaments. We have lots of typical ornaments in the way of Santas, bulbs, and candy canes. But we have a bunch of Katie geek ornaments as well. I'm a big Star Wars fan and for the first Christmas in our house I wanted to find some of those Hallmark collectible Star Wars ornaments, but with Hallmark you can only get them the year that they came out. So Nick found someone on Ebay who was selling their entire Stars Wars collection for a very reasonable price! It. Was. Awesome! Here's what some of the ornaments look like. We don't have all the ornaments shown in the link (maybe half) and the pictures really don't do them justice but you get the idea...Yeah, I know, I'm a geek of mammoth proportions. (And now you know too.)

The second picture is of Kaylee and I decorating the tree this year. I am serious, when it comes to the tree decorating. So serious (not really I just look really serious for some reason).

Our Tree

Kaylee and I decorating