Today marks the halfway point of fundraising, as half my pledge ($1,250) is now due... thanks to everyone's support, I made it! It's about halfway through training, as well, as the marathon is about 10 weeks away.  

After missing several days of training due to the move and subsequent start of law school (which is enough of a story for an entirely separate blog), I am back at it after a ten mile run in the park with my sister yesterday.  Now that the humidity is slowly fading as we near the fall, these long runs are becoming much more comfortable and truly even enjoyable.  We picked up the pace and finished the run in much quicker than our last ten-miler, even running the entire Great Hill at an 8:20 pace, forcing ourselves up the hellish incline in preparation for its very pointed position at about mile 24 of the actual marathon course.  This week is perfect for recovery, however, as we have only a 6 mile run on Wednesday and 3 miles on Thursday.  This should put us in perfect position for our 12-miler on Saturday- from Jen's apartment on the Upper East Side to mine in Brooklyn Heights and back.  This path is also strategically planned as it allows for Jen to get more comfortable with bridge running (in this case, the Brooklyn Bridge, which isn't part of the actual marathon course but can be a bit unnerving to run over as you can see the east River in all its grungy glory rushing past under the grate beneath your feet).  Moreover, it gives us a chance to refill our bottles and hit the bathroom without having to walk into a random convenience store and drip sweat all over their floor while we refresh our Gatorade supply and ask to use the bathroom.

Now that we have transitioned into fewer (but longer) runs, training is also a lot less demanding on our schedules.  This may seem counterintuitive, but it is much easier to carve out three or four longer time blocks on a school schedule (as Jen is a teacher and I'm a newly minted law student) than it is to find time to run six days a week.  After this weekend's long run, we will face another half marathon, a 15-, 18-, and 20- mile run on subsequent Saturdays, with several 6, 8, and 10 mile runs peppered on weekdays.  Additionally, to aid in recovery I get to do more biking in my training time (including to class, because I now have the distinct honor of being nerdy enough to BIKE to LAW SCHOOL), and it's nice to mix it up a bit instead of strictly pounding out miles on the pavement day after day.  Ergo, in many ways, as training gets harder, it actually gets easier; between an augmented level of fitness and the excitement of the impending big day, the dedication to training feels much less forced and much more natural and pleasant.

On one final note, on August 31st I will be joining over one million runners across the world in Nike's The Human Race, which I will be running for the World Wildlife Fund.  This race, whose registration proceeds go entirely to charity (either the WWF, Livestrong Foundation, or UN Refugees' Agency) will be taking place in four U.S. cities (among the 21 other cities around the globe), including my current and former homes of New York City and Chicago.  Thus the highlight of this amazing experience will not only be knowing that my dollars and footsteps are going to a stellar cause, it is that I will be running both in person alongside my sister and training partner, and in spirit alongside several dear friends in the midwest.  I wish them the best of luck in this 10k, and in the remainder of their training for the 2008 Chicago Marathon-- a race for which I will always have a soft spot in my heart.

First, a very grateful thank-you to all who have donated so generously and rendered me closer to my fundraising goal of $2,500 every day. I assure you, I have been holding up on my end of the bargain. This week of training began with the NYC Half Marathon Presented by Nike, a race for which I was massively unpepared, and for which my only goal was to finish, regardless of how slow I dragged my feet across the finish line. It was therefore a pleasant surprise when I started the race at a moderate pace, realized after a 6-mile loop (read: hill) through Central Park that, despite the resident humidity from an early morning thunderstorm, I actually felt GOOD, picked up the pace for the second half of the race and finished with negative splits. My sister jumped in just before Times Square (which housed the biggest crowds of the day and gave her a taste of spectatorship at the marathon, ergo getting her even more excited about the big day) and helped me keep a good pace for last 6 miles of the race. Not having paid much attention to my watch, I realized at about mile 9 that I had a pretty good shot at beating my half marathon PR of 2:11:54 (Banco Popular Chicago Half Marathon 9/9/07). Despite a bad experience with an old carbohydrate gel and the ensuant stomach cramps, I powered through the last 5k and crossed the finish line with a new PR of 2:06:40.

The solid finish also augmented my overall feeling about training and the marathon, and set me up to tackle one of the first truly challenging weeks of training. During training, I follow successive three week periods whose mileages compound upon one another. Essentially, the first week of a new period will be more challenging than the last period, the second similar to the first, and the third week a fallback week where the mileage reduces slightly. This serves as a recovery period before entering into the next phase of training, where the mileage is increased. This week started a new phase, and therefore required 35 miles after an easy 20 last week. After the half on Sunday, I had a day off on Monday (which was not off in its entirety, as 90 minutes of yoga took the place of running). Tuesday was a 3 mile recovery run, which turned into two back-to-back days of 7 mile runs and yoga. As I write this, my legs are finally revolting against my efforts with a bit of cramping and stiffness, and I'm attempting to replenish my salt supply and/or singlehandedly win the award for most amount of trail mix consumed in one sitting. I'll polish the week off with a 5 mile run on Saturday, and start the insanity over on Monday after a well-deserved day off on Sunday.

Apologies for the very long time lapse since my last update-- unfortunately there is no exciting excuse about some whirlwind adventure undertaken preventing me from posting. Rather, I have been doing a lot of relaxing (and running!) to make the most out of these last few weeks before law school commences August 18. Marathon training is now officially underway (with the "official" start marked 16 weeks before race day), although with the base training of early summer, recreational (and actually enjoyable) running on mild spring days, and several months of indoor training in the gym last winter, there is no clear point that marks the end of last marathon's training season and the start of this one. By that measure I suppose I have been training for three years now-- but I assure you wholeheartedly there has been a whole lot of leisure time in there to refute that logic altogether.

And leisure time, my friends, is never appreciated more than on the wickedly hot, humid days we have been served repeatedly in New York. I dearly wish it would be unusual to report that the weather forecast for this week includes 3 days of 90-degree weather, with the rest in the upper 80s, but rather it has been the norm for the past few weeks. Along with the humidity and resident poor air quality, training has been less than enjoyable and at times downright HARD. This is coming from a martyr of the 2007 Chicago Marathon (the first in history to be cancelled due to heat, and which I completed regardless). I'm crossing my fingers for the heat to break, all the while missing the cool breezes from Lake Michigan in which I trained in years past and 100% willing to trade in the hills of Central Park for a nice, flat run in Lincoln Park. I'll be spending this upcoming week in Martha's Vineyard, during which I have five runs scheduled including a 10k-- I'm truly hoping for some nice sea breezes and fresh air to cleanse my running palate.

In less than two weeks I'll be competing in (read: faking my way through) the New York City Half Marathon Presented by Nike. Having been since last October that I have run any distance over 8 miles, I'll be interested to see what happens. I've been known to undertake long races while massively undertrained, and certainly also known for suffering the consequences during the subsequent week of muscle cramps, spasms, pains, and a handful of other ailments. Which means in my hiatus from training following the half, I'll have plenty of time to post my results and update again while icing my quads. And calves. And hamstrings. And ankles. The list goes on.

Until then, thanks everyone for your continued good wishes and fundraising support!

Redhook 5k

This late-start race (11:00) seems to always fall on an unusually warm day. This is of course good news for those celebrating Memorial Day weekend in a non-running fashion, but for the past three years has always made the 3.1 mile race slightly uncomfortable, to say the least. Of course, after the hell that was the 90 degree heat of last year's Chicago Marathon, I suppose I have nothing to complain about. I managed a chip time of 25:35, but with splits all over the place. I crossed the first mile marker at just shy of 7 minutes (6:59), a commendable split but one I knew I would pay for in the next two miles. I was actually quite pleased to cross the second mile marker at 16:20, because even though my pace had dropped significantly to just over a 9 minute mile, it still averaged out to keep me right on pace for my 25:13 goal (my stepdad's chip time from 2007). The last 1.1 miles dragged me up several grueling hills, however, and were exacerbated by the heat, causing me to slow my pace and cross the finish line about 20 seconds over my goal. While disappointed, I still knocked 25 seconds off my 5k time from last weekend. I even made it out of the chute and back as a spectator in time to see my sister and stepdad cross the line in 28:57, a great time since their goal was 10:00/mile and the heat made each mile go that much slower. I was sure to pump her up afterwards with a quick reminder that the marathon (161 days away) was a mere 9 times what we had just run. We polished off our race with some free Redhook Longhammer IPA (Steve's favorite beer!), and with that, marathon training season has officially begun.

A Pleasant Surprise

I should really start sticking around at the end of races since I missed out on my $25 prize!

http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080520/SPORTS/805200342/-1/NEWS11&sfad=1

Winning age-group divisions were:
14-and-under — Exeter's Nicole MacAulay (22:35) and Durham's Mamoon Herz-Khan (21:00).
15-19 — Stratham's Chelsea Blanchette (22:05) and Stratham's Elias Kahan (17:56).
20-29 — Stratham's Meredith Tinkham (26:07) and James King (17:20).
30-39 — Durham's Monika Calitri (22:00) and Exeter's Eric Beidleman (18:21).
40-49 — Newfields' Chantal Defeo (22:12) and Newmarket's Tim Roache (18:03).
50-59 — Exeter's Marianne Barbin (24:07) and Exeter's Jeff Goddard (19:22).
60-69 — Dover's Mary Ulinski (27:33) and Newmarket's Roger Reeser (23:45).
70-and-over — Mary Ann Olsen (1:07:29) of Somers, Conn., and Hampton Falls' John Parker (29:58).

Apologies for my failure to update since the toe incident; graduating and the subsequent move back to the East Coast made it necessary to put posting on the back burner for a bit. But for all those tracking my progress, I have several brief updates. On Thursday, May 1, I ran my first 5k of training season with a friend who is training for Chicago. She finished in 26:50, and I was a few seconds ahead, although for some reason no official time was recorded my finish. Regardless, it was enough for a 7th place finish (no need to point out how small the field was or how uncompetitive the quickest woman's time). The following Sunday I ran a 4 mile race benefiting the Chicago Community Counseling Centers, and finished 11th with a time of 34:08, an almost equivalent pace to the preceding 5k. After a week off to engorge myself in the festivities of graduation, I got back to training with my final run on the Lakefront Path (at least for the foreseeable future), a steady 7 miles that was quite cathartic considering the amount of time I have spent there over my college career (more time than in the classroom, perhaps?) Upon returning to NH, I dragged my boyfriend to a 5k benefiting the PTO of my former elementary school. Perhaps the competitive nature of our relationship or the nostalgic setting of the race led me to knock about 50 seconds off my previous 5k time and complete the race in 26 minutes even. Hopefully I can keep up the good work as this Sunday marks the 11th annual Redhook Brewery 5k, a race my stepdad and I have been running for the past few years. This year, my sister joins the ranks as part of her training for her first marathon (also New York), and it could up the ante as far as competition. With a little luck and a lot of rivalry, I hope to shave a few more seconds off my 2008 PR of 26:00. I'll be sure to update with finishing times for all three of us as soon as I'm done gloating over my new PR :)

Thanks to everyone whose continued support has helped me reach $260 in fundraising, just over 10% of my final goal!

After a week-long hiatus, my toe is close enough to healthy to be back on track with running. After an easy three miles today, I have two races coming up- a 5k tomorrow evening and 4-miler Sunday morning. I'll see how the nail-less toe holds up. According to the countdown feature on my heart rate monitor's wrist unit, the marathon is only 186 days away!