In keeping with yesterday’s theme of highlighting some new blogs, I wanted to share one that I follow that is completely different from anything else I’ve seen: Hyperbole and a Half. Allie creates stories based on real-life events and adds hand-drawn pictures (made in Paint) to enhance all the details. She covers topics ranging from annoying spelling errors, what the pain scale at the doctor’s office should really look like, and my personal favorite, testing the intelligence of her dog. Anytime I need a pick-me-up, I can always wander over to her blog and find a story that makes me laugh, so I hope you enjoy it as well! 

Since signing up for the 14 in 14 challenge, I’ve been able to see all the awesome races that everyone has been doing this month and I’m absolutely jealous! I know I made the right decision not to do any races before the Ragnar Relay at the beginning of February, but all of the runner’s posts have definitely made me wish I could be out there already. 

The good news is that in addition to all of the pictures from the races that people are doing, everyone is also sharing their blogs. Here’s a couple that I’ve been able to check out so far:

• The Tiny Terror – Amy Lauren shares her experience as the 2:30 pace leader for the Charleston Half Marathon
• Happy Fit Mama – Angela educates everyone on what a reverse bucket list is – what’s on yours?
• Two Moms on the Run – Michelle (1/2 of the two moms duo) goes back to her “hater” days to try to understand some negative comments made on a blog she follows
• Living the Dream – Fancy Nancy shares Monday motivation about staying consistent
• Divas Run for Bling – Heather shares a weekly recap of last week’s goals and sets some new ones for this week

I have a love / hate relationship with running. I’m finally starting to consider myself a “runner” but only after several years of vehemently denying it by saying instead that I’m just a soccer player who runs. Before all of this could happen, I had to get past a few things I thought were facts about runners:

• You have to run continuously. This was a big hurdle for me. In fact, in my first 10k, my only goal was to run the whole thing. There weren’t many people near me after about the 4 mile mark, but there was one guy who was always right there. He would run and get slightly ahead of me, then start walking, where I would pass him. We kept leapfrogging like this until the very end and honestly, I was MAD! I was putting in everything I had in order to be able to run the entire race (I did), and this dude kept passing me after his walk breaks. I did eventually pass him for good once I could see the finish line – I’m a pretty good sprinter and in every race so far, I’ve been able to do some type of “kick” to finish strong. Slowly I got over my annoyance at walk breaks during a run, but it was only once I started training for a half marathon and ended up needing to walk to catch my breath that I realized that I was ok with taking a short walk break during a run. But, even then, I still went into my second half marathon with the goal of running the whole thing (I didn’t). I added planned walk breaks into my third half marathon and took over 12 minutes off my time in 5 months!
• You shouldn’t run with music (aka real runners don’t need music to run, etc.). I have always run with music. First I started with an iPod shuffle connected to a sensor in my shoe. I’ve moved on to a Garmin and my iPhone, but recently I’ve started doing my group runs without any music. I still do all of my solo runs with something (most recently, I’ve been listening to audiobooks), but running with the groups without music has allowed me to talk with my fellow runners (what a concept!) and I don’t feel mentally strained without it. I still fear those races that say “iPods not recommended” but I haven’t run across a race that completely bans them, so I still feel safe. I have to say I’m still in awe of anyone who can go out for a long run and just go – it’s just another one of those mental games that running brings on that you have to figure out how you’re going to tackle. 
• You have to be fast. I don’t consider myself slow and usually, I think I’m pretty fast – I can keep up with the majority of the guys on the soccer field and I actually enjoy sprinting. But push me beyond the length of a soccer field and my speed definitely drops off. Am I ever going to win a race? No. Can I win my age group? It depends on how many other people I have to compete against (I came in #1 out of a group of 7 last March). My favorite quote regarding this faulty concept:

• The only reason to run a race is to beat your previous time (aka beat that person in front of you, etc.). The good news is that when you first start running, it’s pretty easy to beat your times, just by making some small changes, so sometimes it feels like it will always be that easy – unfortunately at some point, you hit a plateau. This happened to me when I first started running and was focusing on 5ks. My first race was one I signed up on a whim for, so I didn’t really “train” for that race – I finished with some major walking and knew that I could do better. So, I signed up for a 5k/10k training group at work and registered for another race. Race #2 took off 2 minutes, as did race #3, so in a matter of 4 months, I had taken 4 minutes off. After that, the record-breaking stalled. It took another year to take off 2 more minutes and another year after that to get 20 seconds off to get under 26 minutes where my PR stands now. Yes, getting faster and beating your previous time is a great feeling, but there are definitely other reasons to run a race – to do something you’ve never done before, to run for fun or for a great cause or to complete a bigger goal. 

I’ve been slightly distracted the last couple of weeks because I’ve been focusing my attention on getting the next season of the Charlotte Women’s Soccer League set up. We kick off our spring season in mid-February, so everything needs to be updated before registration goes live on February 1. I have officially taken over the manager position that coordinates all of the league’s activities (fields, referees, teams, socials, team shirts, etc.) and I’ve got a great supporting crew of captains to support me in this new role, so I’m excited to get things started. For any women in the Charlotte area who are interested in playing some soccer, check our our league!

I was doing some random internet surfing last night and decided I wanted to look for some “must run races” for my 50 State Challenge and what better place to start than with Arizona? I got to go to the Grand Canyon in January 2013, so my first google search was for “Grand Canyon half marathon” and what did I find – a race 5 miles from the Grand Canyon! Even more amazing? There’s a whole series of these races, focusing on half marathons held near various national parks:

• Zion, Utah (March)
• Grand Canyon, Arizona (May)
• Yellowstone, Montana (June)
• Rocky Mountain, Colorado (August)
• Grand Teton, Wyoming (TBD 2015)
• Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee (September)
• Glen Canyon, Arizona (October)

I realized that I never did an update on my 31 in 31 challenge for December… I failed miserably! I only really completed the first week with any consistency. Lots of excuses for why this didn’t work and I didn’t get to the exercises every night, but the days are over and done, so no use rehashing why it didn’t work the first time, just time to make a plan to change some things for next time!

1. Do the exercises first thing in the morning – I kept telling myself I’d do the exercises before I went to bed and then I’d forget until I had already turned off the lights and at that point, all hope was lost.
2. Switch up the exercises from one day to another – One challenge I had was doing the same exercises every day. Either I was doing too many reps with too much resistance or it was just too much to do those exercises after I played in my soccer games. Yet another reason to do the exercises in the morning when my legs would be fresh.
3. Create more accountability – When I originally started the 31 in 31, I was planning to post updates at least weekly here on the blog, but I only did a recap of the first week and then, much like the exercises themselves, I let it fall off the map. The original group also had a discussion board and would keep track of their running adventures. 

The weather got a little warmer Saturday morning, so I went out for an easy 4-ish miles. I didn’t get much exercise in with the cold weather and Christmas activities throughout the week, so I wanted to make sure to get a good run in before I spent another full day driving. Since I didn’t have a good outing last Sunday, I wanted to test out my knee again and see how it would do with some more hills. It went surprisingly well and reiterated that I need to continue to work on building hills into my running routes. My overall pace was 10:45, which is considerably faster than my goal pace of 12:00, but it felt comfortable, so I didn’t worry too much about how fast I was going. 

Mile 1 – 10:16
Mile 2 – 11:11
Mile 3 – 11:40
Mile 4 – 10:10
Last .30 – 2:52

The year is coming to an end and everybody is starting to make their plans for 2014. The two main challenges I’ve seen are Run this Year and 14 in 2014. If you’ve ever tried to keep track of how many miles you can do in a week or a month or even the whole year – Run this Year might be the challenge for you. The challenge is to run 2,014 miles in 2014 (hence run this year). Pavement Runner teamed up with Running Hutch in 2013 to create this challenge and will be hosting it once again in 2014. I hit 1,553 miles in 2013, but that is counting every step I took throughout the entire year (not just running miles), so 2,014 miles seems a bit out of reach for me.

Instead, I’ve signed up for the 14 in 2014 hosted by Marathon Mom and Jill Conyers. You can sign up to run 14 races of a specific distance (5k, 10k, half marathon, marathon, triathalon) or you can do what I did and commit to a combination of events. I know I will probably do several half marathons next year, but I’m also already committed to a marathon and a relay race, so I’m not sure 14 halfs on top of those races is acheivable, so I’m going to flex my distance and just commit to 14 races.