go Speed Racer, go Speed Racer...

Despite standing vigil over Desktop Weather and whispering sweet nothings at Mother Nature all afternoon, I could not will the windspeed down. In fact, by the time I finally gave up around 1:00, the wind had upped to 21 mph. I figured I'd better get out there while it was still below gale-force, so I packed up my stuff and headed to the locker room. After some self pep-talking and some stretching, I hit the track about 1:45. Around 1:50, I set down my water bottle by a tree and started to run. By 2:25, I was back in the locker room.

I won't lie to you--it was hard. The wind was plenty gusty, and in my face about a quarter of the time. Some of the time, it was trying to blow me over sideways. Of course, the rest of the time it was at my back, but that didn't happen nearly as much as I would have liked. And then, there was the fact that I had never run this long without walk intervals before. By the time Salt-n-Pepa was (were?) through, the voices in my head were in full-on coach mode.

"just make it to the corner...okay, now the other corner..."
"just two more songs, and they're short! And...and, here comes Pink now!"
"For God's sake, don't look at that heart rate again. You are not dying."
"You feel great, right? Don't you feel great? Feel GREAT, DAMMIT!"
"Okay, I'm sorry I yelled, now just make it to the driveway...."
"'since you been goooooone, I can breeeathe for the first time'..."

And when I passed my water bottle for the fourth time, it hit me that I had run 2 miles straight, and I still had 28 seconds of Kelly Clarks0n left. I almost cried. It was completely worth it. When I did the math back at my office, it came out to 12:16 per running mile, so almost 4.9 mph. Total average speed for the 32:42 I was out there? 4.6 mph. So not only did I run 25 minutes straight today, but I was running at personal record speed!

The less good news is, I was also running it at personal record average heart rate. While my max only topped out at 183 bpm (yeah, I know, only), my average was 166. I was only in the 120-170 range for 10 minutes. While I'm sure that 3-5 of those other 23 minutes were under the range during warmup, I'm positive that the majority of them were over it during the running. And I'm using a BIG range, there. I slowed down every time I saw it over 180, but I still really, really need to work on that.

You know what, though? Working on the heart rate is tomorrow's problem. Today, I ran over 2 miles in 25 minutes, and lived to tell the tale. :)

WoOoOoOo HooOoOOoo I know that feeling of wanting to cry when it hits you what you just did. It's one of my favorite feelings in the whole world and sometimes makes up for the scale being finicky.

Congrats Joy, I'm proud of ya :)

hi joy,

congratulations on your run! that is awesome. i hadn't been by to read your blog in a while and enjoyed getting caught up (i had written a comment a long time back about how i found your blog while looking for calorie counts for easter chocolate - wow, i guess that's a year ago!).

a question for you, kind of non sequitur, but it came up because i was reading about how you're now using fitday. i used fitday for a while, but it's the only food diary program i've every used. i've tried just using a notebook a few times, which worked for a short period. what catches me up with fitday is how to account for stuff i cook at home that is just a made up thing - like a stir fry that has oil, veggies, maybe some pieces of meat, a little of this, a little of that...i would be trying to calculate those calories and it made me crazed! how do you handle that? i found i was modifying my diet to eat less variety of foods in order to make data entry easier, which isn't really what i wanted to be doing...

hi alysha...I'm not ignoring your question, I promise! I'm just not sure what the answer is.

I do run into that situation a lot when I'm throwing together a recipe. Like, take last night--chicken breast, balsamic vinegar, some olive oil, chicken broth, dijon mustard, mushrooms, asparagus. It was a weight-watchers recipe, but I modify it enough that their figures are useless.

Do I know how much oil I used? No. Do I want to go to the trouble of measuring everything as I cook? No. So generally, I handle it by entering all the ingredients separately and making a reasonable guess as to how much I ate. If it's something I make a lot, I build the recipe on paper using the figures from fitday, then create a custom food for it in fitday with the combined numbers. It's kind of labor-intensive, but you only have to do it once per recipe.

Come to think of it, I should probably do that for the balsamic chicken...I make it about once a week. :)

it sounds basically like what i was doing but with a bit more sanity built in (i.e., you're more comfortable making some educated guesses). i think as i become more familiar with what various portion sizes look like, this will continue to get easier.

thanks for your thoughts :) and enjoy your running! :)

alysha