April Recap

Through injury and laziness, this has been a short-distance year, but April has things back on track!

April started with a 10 mile race with no training.  This then lead me to take some time to heal up!  Now I am working on building a solid base to prevent my annual injury..  What is coo, is that this month has been my longest mileage since March of 2012. (It seems I have been pretty lazy.. for a year.)  I ran a total of 39.6 miles in 5 hours and 47 minutes and finally went over 100 miles for the year.

April held one race,  the Cherry Blossom 10 mile run, and I set a PR for the distance.

[caption id="attachment_2496" align="aligncenter" width="490"] The Cherry Blossoms!!![/caption]

Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Recap - Cool Statistics

That's right, day 2 after my race - and I am STILL posting about it!  How much mileage do I think I can get out of 10 miles?

After seeing this, I wanted to post it up here for all to see!



I know that it shows me as being slow, with more people in my brackets ahead of me than behind.. But still! HOW COOL IS THIS?

Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Race Recap

So, to set the stage.

I signed up for the Cherry Blossom Festival Lottery, with great hope of getting in.  I thought this would be an AWESOME start to running races in DC.  So, with true jubilation - I found out that I was one of the lucky chosen to run through the streets of our nation's capital, having trained hard and enjoying the fruits of that labor.

So that was the plan.  In fact, I even joyously posted on January 28th that I had started my training.

I was totally going to rock this..

And I'm sure I would have.. if I had actually done some training.

[caption id="attachment_2492" align="aligncenter" width="490"] I'm going to do WHAT?[/caption]

Some times a break is all you need.

So as you all know (well, we will pretend you do), I have been taking some time off of running and doing the Insanity workouts.  I had gotten a bit burned-out on running and needed a break.  Now I completely recognize that this may have been due to the use of the treadmill, but it had affected my desire to run at all.

I started up the Insanity work outs, and while I still hate doing DVD's as a source of exercise - it was a nice change. It also started me working on my core, which I DESPERATELY need.  In fact, I hadn't realized how bad it was - until this time around doing the DVDs.  I know see that my hernia-surgery repair took an already weak core, and made it weaker.  Logically this makes perfect sense, as I spent some time doing everything possible to NOT engage my core (specifically hip-flexor area.)

Now, as what might seem as a segue, I had also started looking back into the SCA.  This reminded me of when I used to fight, and it wasn't stamina I lacked.  I didn't have enough arm-strength.  I could go for a few fights, then my arms would need a break because they simply didn't have the strength to go on.   Since then I have been doing between 80 and 120 push ups a day.  (I lose track of how many I do.  The goal is 100.)

I have ceased (temporarily) on the Insanity, because I feel that if I am going to be running a 10 mile run in 8 days, I should probably have a little bit of recent-running under my belt.  Consequently, I got out on the road on Weds. night.

Starting the Cherry Blossom 10 miler Training Plan

I mentioned a few weeks back that I was fortunate enough to make it through the lottery for the Cherry Blossom 10 miler.  One of the really excellent things about this (in addition to getting to run it,) is the fact that they will give you a free training plan.  All you have to do is sign up for the Beginner, Intermediate or Expert level.

I went for the intermediate, as that seems to fit with where I was (As opposed to where I wish I was) the best.  Today's run was listed as a 2-4 miles, so 3 miles seemed the obvious choice!  It was on a treadmill, so it was fairly dull.