February Playlist

Another month has passed and it's time for a new (and longer) playlist:

Make Your Move - Third Day
Best Days - Lincoln Brewster
No Chains On Me - Chris Tomlin
Crazy Love - Hawk Nelson
No Plan B - Manafest
Fire In the Kitchen - Manafest
Hello Hurricane - Switchfoot
Boomin' - tobyMac
Christ In Me - The School of Worship
Music - Manic Drive
I Gotta Feeling - Black Eyed Peas
Cross the Line - Superchick
Code Name: Raven - House of Heroes
Goody Two Shoes - Adam Ant
Gotta Be Something - Me in Motion

Run Happy!

To Run or Not To Run

That is the question. Seroogy's Valentine's 15K is fast approaching. I really need to decide if I want to run it this year. I ran the 5K a couple of years ago and it wasn't too bad with temperatures in the mid 40s. Of course, this being Wisconsin, you never know what the weather has in store for the second weekend in February. I'd hate to register and not run because it's too cold, but part of me just says "Suck it up!" and register. What to do, what to do. . .

A Running Funny

My husband found some of these videos on YouTube and this one just had me cracking up.

Ahead Of Schedule

This is my third year of running half marathons. I've always used the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon training plan in preparation. My next half isn't until the middle of May and I'm actually training for the Cellcom.

I took a light week to recover last week from the Disney half, but when I checked the training calendar, it shows I'm only supposed to be running 2 miles a couple of times this week. To my body (and my mind) this just seems wrong. I may need to improvise for the next month or so until the plan catches up and then I can start complaining about it!

January Playlist

Shorter distances are here again (so the playlists aren't quite so long!) Here's what's on my iPod this month:

This Is The Stuff - Francesca Battistelli (quite possibly my new theme song)
Daddy's Money - Ricochet
That's How You Know (from the Enchanted Soundtrack) - Amy Adams
Something That I Want (from the Tangled Soundtrack; anyone noticing I have a thing for Disney?) - Grace Potter
Impossible - Anberlin
Outcast - Kerrie Roberts
The Definition of Me - Mandisa
Avalanche - Manafest
Headphones - Britt Nicole
Almost Missed This Moment - Revive
This Life - MercyMe
The God I Know - Me In Motion

(Almost) Running Saves the Day

Yesterday, I was too tired to get up for my normal morning run and chose to sleep in. I decided to go for my run in the evening instead.

Having set up the husband and Kyra with a movie and Ian working on homework, I headed down to the treadmill. When I got to the basement, however, I was greeted by water running all over the floor into the drain. Our water heater had sprung a not-so-small leak. Though any thought I had of running was immediately cancelled, at least we caught it before the entire tank drained and carpet and other items were ruined!

Racing with the Rodent

This weekend, I traveled to Orlando to run the Disney Half Marathon. I left on Thursday and after a flight cancellation which actually eliminated my need to connect through O'Hare, I arrived in Orlando ahead of schedule and was met at the airport by the fabulous Miss D and her equally fabulous husband Col. M.

On Friday we headed to the Wide World of Sports complex for packet pick-up and the race expo. If I wasn't already aware of what a busy race this was going to be, we arrived and were directed to overflow parking. I think Miss D was a little overwhelmed that so many crazy runners assembled in one place at one time and that there were so many "goodies" available to buy at the expo. Afterward, we haeded to lunch at Downtown Disney followed by a bit of shopping.

After a carbo-loading dinner, I headed to bed around 8 p.m. since we needed to be up at 3:00 to drive over to the race. Unlike any other races I have run, we needed to be in our corrals at 5:00 a.m. for the start of the race at 5:30. When Disney advised to expect severe congestion, they weren't kidding! I think it took longer to drive from the Disney entrance to the Epcot parking lot than it did to drive from the house to Disney! Of course, given that there were more cars behind ours than in front of us, I wasn't worried that I was the only one being held up by race traffic.

The pre-race area appeared to have plenty of port-a-potties but I didn't stick around very long as it was at least a 20-minute walk to the race corrals. I arrived just as hey were singing the National Anthem. Good old Walt might have been defrosting though as there were a significant number of male racers "watering the ground" instead of waiting in line for the potties by the corrals!

The race began with an awesome display of fireworks. I think our corral started about 15 minutes after the first gun. I hung at the back of the corral. After the Bellin Run last year, I discovered I prefer this to starting toward the front. There's a little less jockeying for position and I don't feel a need to keep up with faster runners.

I was excied that this would be a flat course, but I severely underestimated the number of people running in each wave. Some parts of the course were extremely narrow and bottlenecks were frequent. I was also stunned at the number of people stopping and taking pictures during the race. I enjoyed seeing just about every Disney character, but I didn't feel the need to stop and pose for pictures with anyone (if I were to have stopped, I don't think I would have gotten started again).

I ended up with a finishing time of 2:23:41. My exact stats are:

8488 out of 21,953 finishers (38th percentile)
3511 out of 12,403 females (28th percentile)
619 out of 1,973 in my division (31st percentile)

All in all, I enjoyed the experience but it was not my favorite race I have ever run. I'd give the race an A for overall atmosphere, but the course and overwhelming number of participants (there were actually 28,000 registered runners) would actually receive a B-.

Starting over

I started this blog last year to chronicle my running habits but fell miserably short in meeting my goals. I guess today is as good a day as any to start it back up!

I've already got a few races on the schedule for this year including the Disney Half Marathon in Orlando next Saturday. I'm a little nervous because I haven't followed my "usual" half training plan, but I did find a nice "short" training plan and having completed a 10-mile run this morning, I thin I'm up for the task next week. All I know is I'll be looking forward to running on the road rather than treadmill!

Looking forward to some happy running in the months to come!