RAGBRAI, broken foot, and the BEST week of my life!

Hello!

I'm sorry blog world. My travels kept me away from you.

I am caught up on school work and heading to bed, but wanted to share a quick update.

First-Let's talk about my RAGBRAI trip.
Day 1-I rode the first half, like 30 miles. It was great. Iowa is beautiful. The fields remind me of my home state of Idaho. We grew up across the street from a potato field so it was really nostalgic to be there.

First day of riding

Okoboji! First over night town

Lake Okoboji! Beautiful view!

Day 2-I rode in the car. I wasn't prepared...and it was super windy. this day we camped at a casino, which was awesome! Yay gambling...but  not really. Losing money is bad.
Day 3-This day for sure I did not ride. It was a 100 mile day and that just was not happening with my out of shape body.
Day 4-This was an easy day. Only 35+ miles. It was a great ride! We even got passed my Lance Armstrong. I don't care what you think about the guy, he has spread awareness for cancer research and donated millions of dollars for research. And this day I also broke my foot. Yeah that was a great feeling.

No good story, sorry. I literally stood up. And my foot broke. That's it. I stood up out of a chair and I heard cracking and fell to the floor. So that was a fun trip to the ER in small town Iowa. P.S. they don't do anything for a broken foot so don't waste your copay money.

So...that left days 5-7 that I drove the car. My foot was so swollen it didn't even fit in my flip flop. And the purple bruising was awesome too. We also stopped at Field of Dreams and threw a baseball and hit a few balls around. Yes, I did it even on my broken foot! So cool playing baseball in a corn field!!!

Dipping the front tires in the Mississippi River.

Yes! Field of Dreams batting!

 Anyway...we got back. I laid on the couch resting the foot.

Then we took off to Camp Periwinkle. Disney World says they are the happiest place on earth? Well, they're lying. Nothing, I mean NOTHING beats the happiness at Camp. Seriously, cancer kids and their siblings get a week off from being "that family". Guess what?! Everyone is that family.

One girl finished chemo while we were there. It was such a beautiful and inspiring moment. Three years of maintenance chemo and she finished. We had a party for her and I had tears in my eyes the entire time. Along with dances and of course, the cute 11 year old boy that made himself and me matching bracelets. It was darling. He also took my to the dance. Seriously, these kids are adorable and beyond inspiring! I can't describe the joy and feeling of Periwinkle. There were literally 6 new counselors. 6. That's it. Counselors come from all over the US to participate in this camp, THAT is how special it is.

My AMAZING co-counselors!

My corsage and matching bracelet!

Cabin Decor. Our theme was "lemme take a selfie"

80s dance! "The Love Boat"

And now we are home.

I started running a week ago. Which, I probably shouldn't have, considering my foot is broken and only healed 4 weeks. Oh well, I gotta train!

I officially signed up for a 10k so I can send Disney a time so they can corral me appropriately. I'm registered to run The Brent Event in Houston. It's my Best Friend's foundation. They started after her husband passed from Ewing's Sarcoma, a pediatric bone cancer. Their mission is to alleviate financial stresses cancer and hospital stays have on families. I am so excited to be a participant. I sit on their planning committee so it'll be fun to be on the other side.

Click the logo to see how YOU can help!

If I could give "Most Inspiring Family Award" it would go to the Weaver's. I love them soooo much.

I haven't ran into the issues Mary is having with shin splints and toe nail blisters. But I am ridiculously out of running shape! Running has NEVER been my thing...so during my run/walk routine,sometimes I walk through the jog part, or stop jogging early. I have not ended a workout early though!

For not being a runner, I have enjoyed getting out there. And Abbey puppy loves the jogs too!

XOXO,
Sara

Heat, Toe Nails, and Negative Splits!

It's been a few weeks since I've posted but really, not a whole lot has been going on. I'm still training, in fact I just finished week 10! Only about 11 weeks left until the half marathon! That really doesn't seem that far away now that I think about it. Since my last post I've had two weekend runs of 5 miles both of which I ended up doing on the treadmill because it was so stinking hot. Today the heat index is about 105*F... Don't mind me, I'm turning my house into a nudist colony!

If you're familiar with running then you'll understand what I'm about to describe but if not then I'll enlighten you. Toe nails... I'm like most other girls and love to paint my toes and have them be all pretty. Well since I started running this doesn't happen anymore. It's important to keep toe nails clipped short to prevent them from banging into the toe box of the shoe and becoming bruised and fall off. Even though I've kept them short I finally got my first bruised nail. After that long 8 mile run I had noticed that my second toe on my left foot was really sore, very sensitive to touch but didn't have a visible bruise underneath it. My big toe on the same nail did have a bit of bruising but wasn't sore at all. Anyways, after a couple of days I finally decided that I'd try clipping it and see if it would help at all, come to find out there was actually a blister underneath the nail. Yeah, found that out when I popped the stupid thing. After some more investigation it was clear the entire nail had lifted from the bed. While it was gross (yet cool at the same time, I mean come on, I work with blood, poop, and other bodily fluids for a living) my toe felt so much better. Now I've just had to refrain from pulling the rest of the nail off, from what I've read and heard from other runners the best thing is to leave it along, a new nail will grow in and push the old one off. So much for getting any more pedicures... And because I'm going to print this blog out after I've run the Disney races I have to include pictures for posterity. So quickly scroll if you need to! Here's a picture of my poor toe, but after talking and looking and some people's toes, this is nothing...

Quickly here's a run down of my training runs for the last few weeks.

*Week 8--The week after my first 8 mile run I started increasing my running interval. My Saturday run was four miles plus a magic mile. I did the MM around my neighborhood and then did the rest on the treadmill. It was hot and I got started late. I did 2.5 miles of the 4 with run intervals and then walked the last 1.5. I've found this normally happens when I do the MMs because I exhaust myself trying to run that mile faster. Total mileage for week 8 was 12.23 miles.

*Week 9--This week I discovered that I started my training plan a few weeks ahead of schedule so I decided I'd repeat some of the longer training runs in the middle. Monday and Wednesday I did a hill/endurance workout on my treadmill. Tuesday I ran 4 miles (52:20) using a :40/1:00 interval, on Thursday I did 4.25 miles (58.05) using the same intervals. For my long run on Saturday I did 8 miles again since last time it was extremely difficult and I wanted to make sure I was comfortable with that distance before I moved up. It went really well, I did it in 1:52:47, faster than last time and I also PR'd my 1 mile and 5K times. I noticed that I started slowing down about mile 4/5 which showed in my times. My intervals were 0:35/1:00. Total mileage for week 9 was 21.95 miles. Here's some pictures from my run. I saw a beautiful heron but my phone doesn't zoom so great... and then I saw my friend Mr. Turtle. By this time I was getting tired and I felt like he could probably beat me home!

*Week 10--This last week has been a struggle. The kids started school for the year and getting up at 5:30 has really kicked my butt! I've taken advantage of an empty house and gone back to bed, probably more then I should have, I'm just not a morning person! The perk about them being back in school is that I can now move my weekly training runs outside. Tuesday I ran 3.14 miles (47:36), I tried doing a 0:40/1:00 interval but that didn't last long. I forgot that I needed to readjust my intervals from my treadmill times. I ended up walking a lot. Thursday, I ran 3.81 miles (55:37) and felt a lot better about my run. I ran 0:30/1:00 intervals. On my outside route the last mile is uphill so that one is always a struggle but I ran all of my intervals and it wasn't that bad! Today was another magic mile plus 4 miles. It's over a 100 degrees here to I ran inside on the treadmill. I ran the mile in intervals but then walked the 4 miles, even in my garage with a fan blowing on my it was brutal. But I finished. Totals this week: 11.95 miles.

One thing that I have to boast about is that on Thursday for the first time I got negative splits! What are negative splits you ask? Negative splits occur when you run the second half of your distance in a faster time then you did the first half, or you can look at each individual mile. My last mile was 6 seconds faster then my first, not much but I'll take it. I'm pretty sure it would have been much more but like I said before, the last mile home is up hill and I had to dart off the road quite a bit for oncoming traffic. The perks of running on a country road with no sidewalk/shoulder!  I read this quote on Thursday morning before I left for my run and it is exactly what I needed to see.

What's in store for next week? Nine and a half miles for my long run! I'm going to start hydrating now!

8 Miles and Some Tears

Last Saturday I increased my long run to 8 miles, woot woot! Most of the time I get nervous the night before a long run because I'm worried about not finishing or something like that. Friday night was totally different. I wasn't concerned and I was confident, in fact I was so sure that I'd PR all of my times, from my one mile to my 10K. My 6.5 mile run was great so adding another mile and a half shouldn't be so bad, or so I thought. So if I was so sure of myself, how did it go you ask? Horrible actually. The first mile I was feeling good, my timing was good and I had a good rhythm going. By mile 3 I was tired, at mile 4 I was so ready to be done. About mile 6 is when I started walking more then what my intervals called for. I'd skip a run here and there or just walk through it. Mile 8 I pretty much walked the whole thing. I was so, so tired, my legs were sore, it was hot, even my arms hurt! I still can't figure that one out... Anyways, I made it home in 1:54:09 (and I did PR my 5k time by 23 seconds), well under my 2 hour time goal so I was happy about that but as soon as I walked into my garage and peeled off my hydration pack and other gear, I started crying. That run was hard and it pushed me, I mean it really pushed me. I think that if I had to go any farther I would have walked the rest of it.

Once I got home and changed and had turned into my zombie self that accompanies a long run, I talked with a good friend who is a veteran marathoner. He gave me some good advice and lots of encouragement, just what I needed. I shifted my focus from how tired I was and how bad I thought the whole run was to the fact that I finished and then moved on to try and figure out if there was anything that I could have done differently to make this run better next time. Maybe not eat that chocolate cake the night before (My rationale? I'm carb loading for my run tomorrow!) Maybe I didn't get enough sleep the night before, or it could have been something as "small" that I increased my run interval by 5 seconds and decreased my walk by 5 seconds. Who knows? But I do know that while those 8 miles were hard, I'm going to keep on going. I'm not going to let one bad run rule the rest of my training. I know I'll continue to have bad runs every once in a while but I also know that I'm going to have a whole lot more good runs!

Happy Running!