Celebrating and Looking Forward

I won't lie..... I am still so very pumped and excited about the Sunday race! I know that 38:20 may not seem all that fast to many runners, but for me it is still hard to believe I could have pulled that out of the hat. Comparing where I was a year ago in terms of my overall health, weight, and physical conditioning to where I am now is like night and day. I still have about 75lbs left to lose before I can call 'victory' but I am so pleased with the progress that has led me to this stage in the game. And it was so awesome to have two of my three kids there to share the experience with me. That was priceless.

So instead of resting on Monday morning, I was back in the club doing my TEAM Weight Loss cardio program with Meghan. Of course, all we could talk about was the race, my execution plan, and how satisfied it felt to be able to finish (and the surprise at the AG Medal). Meghan worked me pretty good during the workout -- the only slack she gave me was that I didn't have to run at all, just walk on the treadmill. Of course she had me walking up 10-15% inclines! But hey, that's her job. And based upon Sunday, I have to say that she is doing it well.

But recovery is important, so I will not do anything on Tuesday or Thursday of this week to give my body a chance to rest. But I will do my cardio workouts on Wednesday and Friday mornings. And Saturday will be my regular long run (hopefully with my friend Mark who is an elite runner and will certainly challenge me). Wednesday night I will join in a Walk Club at LifeTime after work. It will be my first time meeting the run club folks and I am hoping it will turn out to be a great way to meet fellow runners, learn some things, and meet some new friends who share the enthusiasm about running. If it looks good, maybe I will officially join.

Starting June 1st, I will start a CARA Training Program to prepare for my 10K race in mid-August. This will be a weekly 90-minute commitment for the next 10 weeks and should help me focus, increase my endurance, improve my running, and get me in the right mental frame of mind to move up to the 10K level. I will lose one week at the end of July because of a mission trip in Mississippi (but I hope I will be able to get in a few runs while I am out there).

My next race is on June 19th -- another 5K in Chicago. I am setting my sights on that race. I will try to have fun, run a good race, and maybe set a new PR for the 5K. But mostly, I just want to be able to run the race and enjoy the experience. And if I am lucky, I will get to run it with some friends from church and the Christian Youth Theater. Running with friends makes it so much more fun!

5K Race this Sunday!

In less than 72 hours, I will be running in the Weight Watchers WalkIt 5K! Very exciting! So I am taking it easy in my workouts this week cuz I don't want to get hurt right before the race. I have walked/run only 9 miles this week, Wednesday's cardio workout felt great! Did 5.0-5.5 run intervals several times without any trouble at all. I hope that bodes well for Sunday! I will do my usual Friday cardio workout and do nothing on Saturday other than walk the dog for a good 1.5 miles.

My goal is to set a new PR in this race. If I can run 3:2/4:1 intervals at a 12:00 pace, then I should have no problems achieving that. My gear is all clean and ready. The only worry I have is the weather -- thunderstorms are forecasted. FAIL! So I am praying that any storms coming won't show until after 9:30am when the race will be over. I don't want to run in the rain, but I will if it comes to that. (At some point, I need to get a running jacket for rainy weather.)

The only other issue I hope does NOT occur on Sunday is HRM transmitter blues. Monday I had a weird problem where the watch was not getting a good signal from the transmitter. No idea why that was happening. I contacted Polar and they said to put the band through the washing machine and see if that will clean out the salt deposits that could be interfering with the transmitter. So I did that and it seemed to work fine on Wednesday. So I am going to wash it again on Saturday just to be confident about it working on Sunday. I need my HRM and FootPod to be reliable on Sunday. I might also use iMapMyRun on my iPhone during the run as well. That gives me some decent coverage either way. Plus, the iPhone App pauses my music at each mile to announce run statistics (pace, distance, current speed, etc.).

My weight loss continues! I lost 3.6lbs last week which as AWESOME! So now that brings me to having lost more than 80lbs. I am officially at my half-way milestone!!! W00t!! So by this time next year, I should be at my goal weight -- which will be nice considering I want to run my first half marathon next summer and I don't want to be carrying around an extra 80lbs!