I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving Day! We survived our 24-person event & had a nice time, even with one family member who we feared might behave badly. Today - we will sit on the couch and watch Gilmore Girls and relax! Tomorrow, a 9-mile run with the running group & back to the program. I have about 4 pounds to lose & they’re coming off, darn it.
Hope everyone had a great holiday. I chickened out on the plunge–it was too cold for me, but it did result in a donation to the local library. Yes–people actually pay to jump into the freezing Atlantic!!
Congratulations to Fallgirl and Sabaray on your races. We have 12 guests staying here with us (2 have left). Going on a 7 mile (out/back) hike with the young ones. Ha!!
Ran on the Santa Fe rail trial with my daughter this morning. I wanted to go slower, but I kept chasing her and it felt really hard for me. I had to take rest breaks. Every incline just kills my breathing. We’ve been doing a lot of walking and running and I’m just flat tired. She had to pick it up (per her coach) the last 10 minutes, so I was on my own then! 8.4 miles done. Ready for lower elevations!
Hey, everyone. Marathon runner/journalism student/fitness writer, longtime lurker and first time poster here (the other threads are scary). Starting to train for marathon #2 and figure that if I don’t gush/vent about it somewhere, I’ll end up being “that person” on Facebook 
Did a 4-mile turkey trot yesterday and won my age group, 7th woman overall. Not a PR, but there were 13 hills and I’ve been dealing with lower back stuff, so I can’t complain. Resting today for my long run tomorrow!
MOWC, hope the sights were worth the altitude!
Welcome! Congratulations on the age group win!
Welcome @writeandrun! Congrats on the win-hills are hard!!! Are you a college student of “young” or a college student “mature”?? 
Always curious how a newbie found us here!
Hi writeandrun. Welcome!
No running today, but took a nice 3 mile walk and D and I went to yoga together.
Athleta has everything 20% off all weekend. I bought some cold weather running tights as well as a pair of yoga capris.
^^^I shopped at Athleta today for my new DIL. Extra 20% off is great!
Cardio training + core and strength training! Good enough!
Thanks, everyone! good thing my next marathon is in central illinois is all i can say. also good that i didn’t know about that athleta sale this morning
@abasket, i’m fresh out of undergrad! found CC when i was looking for colleges and lingered off and on since then.
Two days without running/biking or swimming. Will get in some LSD before the GAME at noon tomorrow.
So my son introduced me to an interesting weightlifting app for smartphones and tablets. I played around with it yesterday to see how it works. It’s structured around 5x5 sets of bench presses, barbell back squats, rowing,deadlifts and barbell shoulder presses as core exercises plus 3 optional ancillary exercises you can add to each day’s workout. It tells you how much weight to add each week as you progress in completing each workout and for those who are arithmetically challenged or oxygen deprived from a lift, you can even program in the weight of your bar and the number of each size plate you have and it will tell how many of each plate to put on the bar to have the desired weight. When I used it yesterday, for some reason it was only listing squats, benches and rowing as the core exercises and no matter what I did to the settings, I couldn’t get it to list deadlifts and shoulder presses. So I just manually tracked them. At Thanksgiving dinner, l mentioned this to my son, who proceeded to shake his head as he explained that this was entirely correct and that the program is based on an A,B,A,B etc alternating routine with only squats done in each session. I totally missed the software messages about what the next workout would consist of. Silly me, but boy am I glad. Between the added core exercises and the 3 ancillary ones, my workout was 34 work sets which was ridiculous. 
It will be interesting to play with the program to see whether it’s a good tool to give to clients who want a power routine that they can use independently of my coaching.
Today was a semi lazy day. Spent an 1 1/2 vacuuming, dusting and steam mopping my studio, did some charts and then did an indoor wattage ride for an hour. The weather was yucky so indoors it was. 
It’s too soon in the year to be inside. I’m never gonna make it through the winter with my sanity intact!
Ha! At my age, my first thought about LSD had absolutely nothing to do with health and fitness!
Welcome @writeandrun! I always enjoy hearing about other people’s marathons …
Headed out in a few to walk to the Post Office and grocery store. Later the pup will get a good long walk before we throw her in the car to drive to my father’s in the western part of the state. Since we spend Thanksgiving with H’s side of the family, we get together with my side at an annual post-Thanksgiving Pizza Party.
Made me laugh CBB!
Thanksgiving was good. Yesterday, though, I woke up with a cold, which I indulged all day. Today, I’m feeling better but still not recovered. Sigh.
2.2 miles for my last run in Santa Fe. Long travel day ahead. Goodbye to the massive quantities of New Mexican food.
Hey writeandrun – congrats on one marathon down! How long do you have before the 2nd one? Good luck in all the training. I’m an aspiring writer and I find the long runs are really good to work out issues with plot and structure. But it sounds like you do a different kind of writing – hope it also clears your mind.
ohiopublic – before I start staging an intervention for you please translate LSD
FallGirl - great tip about Athleta – thanks! I love their stuff.
I did my 2.5 mile fundraiser run this morning – lots of hills – just wanted to improve on my previous time of 20:56. I guess all my marathon prep paid off because while I felt like I was running hard, I could keep up the pace this time (running neck and neck with a skinny 8 year old boy), whereas before I would slow down (way down) in miles 1.5 - 2.
Time: 17:46. Won my age group (and the one below it). I texted runner DD, and the first thing she said was: I guess {fast mom} didn’t run this year. FastMom (who is 55) did this race last year in 16 minutes! She is one Fast Mom!
Honestly I don’t think the course is 2.5 miles. Personal gauge: my best 1 mile pace was 7:13. No way I could sustain that for 2.5 miles. According to RunKeeper, I can do an average 7:44 pace for 6 miles around the park. So I’m thinking the course is probably more like 2.25-2.33 miles.
Which kind of brings up the question of how these local races are measured. MOWC any insight here? Or anyone else who runs a lot of local races? What is the process for saying a race is a certain length? What is the objective standard?
But I’m proud of my medal. First. Gold. Ever.
LSD = Long Slow Distances, a training approach popularized years ago that in many respects has come back in vogue. There’s a lot to it that makes sense if looking to build a solid foundation to support high intensity work. Runners do it, cyclists do a variation of it.
Wow, lots of action happened here over the holiday weekend! I am impressed with everyone’s work.
Congrats to Classof2015 on her amazing run!
@Classof2015 - that time, I can’t even…
@Classof2015 thanks and congratulations on your own race! even if the course ended up a little short, marathon training can do wonders for your speed too. So I’d just count it as a PR and not ask questions best of luck on your writing, too. especially if you’re going for fiction, long runs are perfect for brainstorming (no facebook to distract you!)
and my next race is 5 months away. hopefully enough time for my hamstring issues to dissipate and train myself to a 3:31.