Stacey 2.0

Sheesh, it's been months since I wrote last.  I'm trying to remember exactly where I left off. My previous post was " How Not to Train for a 50k ".  And, shockingly, I did not do a 50k last year.  I didn't even do the 25k, but I did do the 10 mile version of McDowell Mountain Frenzy.  It started out kind of rough, but I pushed through long enough to finish.  I kind of enjoyed it. Not long after, I started working with a functional medicine doctor to try and determine what exactly I was dealing with health-wise.  I took the entire month of December off from running because I wasn't sure what my body really needed to heal and/or lose a few pounds. That is the cliffnotes version to get us to today.  I have worms .  Ugh.   I actually have a bunch of other stuff wrong with me.  My gut is a mess, my microbiome is all out of whack, and there's all sorts of bacterial presence in my system.  My thyroid doesn't work like ...

I've been spending a lot of time obsessing over the numbers these past few days:  the numbers associated with my 50k training, or lack thereof.  I'm trying to decide if I should just push through and DO IT, despite my lack of training, or if I should drop to the 25k distance on race day and do a race that's a little bit more "my speed".  (If anyone reading this has advice either way, I would love to hear it!!!) A little bit about my plan If you've trained for a marathon before, or looked into it, you probably came across one or more Hal Higdon training plans, among others.  For the 4 marathons I've done, I used his "Novice Supreme" training plan, available here .  It's free and available on the internet, pretty much my requirements for a training plan. When it came to 50k training, I had some trouble finding a plan that was - what I considered to be - my level.  Lots of them include strength training, or hill repeats, or timed runs, or w...

I have been meaning to write this up for a long time.  A looooong time, like several months have passed since I went on this adventure.  I briefly mentioned it in my last post, about my hopes to do a separate write-up, but life got in the way and I haven't been able to just sit and write this out from start to finish.  I am having to piece this together over several days and hopefully it doesn't come out too disjointed - but since it was such an amazing trip, and since it's possible I may never do it again, I wanted to make sure I got it down forever on the internet. I don't remember exactly when we decided that we - Kelli and I - would do this, but I believe it was the summer of 2017, and we were both in a running rut.  It's hot as heck here during the summer and it's hard not to be in a rut if you do anything outdoors; plus, that summer I was still trying to figure out what was wrong with my thyroid, so I was just kind of depressed about my weight and genera...

Long time, no see!  I changed my "About Me" profile to reflect that I am the occasional blogger, because let's face it:  I am terrible about updating this on a regular basis.  At least if you see a new post you can probably assume I have news to report (although admittedly there's no guarantee of that either).  I just want to get through a couple of quick updates!  If you've looked at my blog in the past then you may notice that I changed the layout and theme.  I have never really found a format that I love, within my knowledge and skills of Blogger, but I do like this one a lot better than the previous version. I've been experimenting with my eating regimen since I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's late last year - I have been gluten free since September and dairy free since the day after Christmas.  Although I haven't lost any weight yet - ugh - I do feel so much better than I did before my diagnosis.  My energy levels are back and probably b...

If I had to sum up how my training went this summer, it would be...  "Hrmph." Or, insert your own onomatopoeia of disgust. If you know me in real life, or read any of my other recent posts, you know that my running has gone downhill (pun intended); not only in my actual ability but in my love of doing it. I don't know if I can use it as my sole excuse, but I did find out I was hypothyroid back in July and was diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis in September.  I do think these new-to-me medical issues have played a big part in my weight gain, my inability to "run it off", my feelings of lethargy and my discouragement with any type of physical activity.  As of right now I am still working on how to live well with this, but I haven't found a solution that makes me feel great yet.  There are far worse things I could be dealing with, but it's hard to be patient with your own health. As for that dreaded physical activity I was talking about, I ha...

It occurred to me when I threw up my quick post about Phoenix Comicon that I never did update the blog with my last two attempts at the sub-2 hour half marathon. Attempt #3 was the 2017 Phoenix Women's Half Marathon in January, which I finished in 2:25 - even slower than the previous two tries.  Attempt #4 would have been the IMS/Sun Health Half Marathon in February, but I convinced some other lovely ladies to drop from the half and do the four-person marathon relay with me instead.  Our team name was Half Kidding.  Thankfully they all seemed pretty willing and I ended up having a pretty fun time. Since then, I've given up the goal of breaking the 2-hour half marathon, at least for a while.  It'll be too hot for me to set any records until winter, even assuming I wasn't completely discouraged by running altogether! In March I did the Vistancia Sprint Triathlon, to try and "step up" my triathlon game.  I was convinced late last year that I would be sign...

Check out the guest review I did for Droids Canada! Thanks to everyone at Droids Canada for allowing me to attend Phoenix Comicon on your behalf. http://www.droidscanada.com/phxcc17

I looked back at my blog at one point and noticed I started talking about this stupid goal of a (sub) 2 hour half marathon back in like 2014.  Very shortly after that I set a new personal record at IMS of 2:07:10.  People I talked to  about it in real life seemed to think this was an achievable goal for me.  But so far this season, I’ve ran 2 half marathons and didn’t come close – 2:10 in November and 2:18 last weekend.  This is starting to not be fun anymore. I hired an online coach this year thinking that was the missing piece to my training, to get me where I wanted to be.  In my mind, I obviously had some level of fitness but just needed to be guided better instead of piecing together training  plans I found on the internet.  I worked with her from February 2016 until my first attempt in November, the Phoenix 10k/Half Marathon event .  She never sent me anything with pace goals but simply listed the workouts as “easy” runs or “moderate”...

My friends know I tend to get a little depressed around my birthday.  I spend a lot of time thinking about how I'm not as far along in life as I want to be, about how I thought I'd be doing something more important than I am.  Well, today is still a little bit like the other birthdays.  I've made peace with some of my shortcomings, and I'm mostly happy, but I know I've fallen short in areas (like the career department). I decided to celebrate my 35 years on this earth by putting forth a list of 35 things I hope to accomplish in the next 35 years.  A bucket list, I suppose, of things I want to do between now and age 70 that I think will be fun and give my life a bit of purpose.  If and when I get done with these items I can come back and update the list.  Let me know what you think. Here they are, in no particular order: Run a half marathon in less than 2 hours. Run a full marathon in 4 hours 30 minutes or less. Finish an Olympic distance triathlon...

On Sunday I ran my first long-distance trail race  - the Dam Good Run 40k - where I actually had to traverse the distance.  I say it that way because I've ran races of this length before, even trail ones; but they were timed races, running the same 1-4 mi loop over and over again ( Soulmates CYA 6 hour race , Soulmates Tryptophun Rhuns 6 hour, and Across The Years).  But The Dam Good Run would require me to run what was essentially an out-and-back course consisting of 40k in total length - lots of ground to cover.  For awhile now, I had been wanting to do a trail marathon, and locally this was as close as I could find.  Plus with my volunteer credits, it was a free race entry for me.  If things didn't go well, I could back out and not be out a ton of cash for an expensive race registration. Come race day, I was pretty nervous, mostly due to fears of getting lost or seeing a rattlesnake.  I felt confident that I would finish, though, and had hop...

It's 2016!  I don't think I realized my last blog post was from October 2015 when I did the Lake Powell Half.  Whoopsie!  I'll try to be brief in summarizing the end of last year and the beginning of this one. After Lake Powell, I did a Veteran’s Day 5k and the local Thanksgiving 10-miler in November.  We also put an offer in on a new-to-us house (that we ended up getting and closing on in December!).  The new home base is much closer to work for me, a tiny bit closer to work for my husband, and a bigger space than we had before.  We all love it, including the fur babies.  But during November and December, my running and overall fitness took kind of a backseat to organizing finances, packing, moving, unpacking, getting the old house ready to sell, etc. etc.  I gained about 10 lbs from stress eating during this time.  I’m back on the wagon now that it’s March 2016 and the old house should be closing later this month, but that’s also part of ...

I completed the Lake Powell Half Marathon last weekend.  It is a really fun course and a well-managed event, but I had probably one of my worst times ever:  2:34!  I could tell about 4.5 miles in though, that this was not going to be a course "for time" for me.  It's a net downhill but also a combination of road and trail, ups and downs, and possibly a bit of altitude thrown in, although I never really felt like I was out of breath.  It was my first real race of the fall season and I had never been to Lake Powell before so it felt good to cross it off the list. Next week begins my 12-week descent to the Arizona Rock n' Roll Half Marathon, where I've set the goal to complete it in less than two hours.  My current half PR is 2:07:10, so shaving off a little over 7 minutes is kind of a lofty goal, especially since it's been about 8 months since I was even able to run that fast.  Many other runners and blogs of the running kind have suggested getting a ...

Trolling through Pinterest one day, I came across a pin recommended for me:  " 13 Running Books You Should Be Reading Right Now ".  I pinned it to my Run Junkie board to read later.  I listen to a lot of audiobooks in the car on my dreadful commute to/from work, so while I don't feel like I have the time to sit down and read, if I can find any of them on audio, I'd put it on the wish list to download from the library. *This post has been updated with affiliate links from Amazon.com. When I actually had time to look through the article, I came across the  Believe Training Journal . I used to  love  writing in my journal when I was a kid!  It wasn't a training journal back then - I wasn't athletic at all, it was just a bunch of angsty pre-teen stuff or details on whoever I had a crush on at the time.  Still, I know I could use some new tools, tricks, motivation, etc. to give my training a boost.  The summer has been super rough on my runn...

The summer is "running me ragged" this year, pun intended.  While I've only been running for less than 4 years now, I've had some summer runs in that time period that just didn't feel like such a struggle.  This year, for whatever reason, is quite different. I live in a suburb of Phoenix, so it's not exactly my best running weather this time of year.  I don't mind the heat, but my so-called runs are turning into longer and longer walks.  I don't know if I'm actually accomplishing anything by trying to train in these conditions. Some other things I've been pushing through this year as compared to previous years, are: 1.  The lack of a dedicated training partner.  Most of my previous partners in crime are doing the triathlon thing, which is great for them, but isn't something I want to do, at least not at the present moment.  They're not running as many days as I am, and for good reason.  I've lost some other training partners d...

The Vistancia Sprint Triathlon was last Sunday. I wouldn't describe it as my most shining moment.  Nothing tragic happened, but nothing felt like it was going right, either. I thought about going through and describing each moment of the race, but eventually decided against it.  To sum it up, I came in last in my age division on the swim and the bike portions; 3rd from last on the run. Now, I knew well in advance that I wasn't going to win it all, I just wanted to do better than I had in my previous sprint triathlon .  I think I probably could have.  I ended up stopping to attempt to help a friend who had a flat tire on the bike portion of the race.  I wouldn't say I actually helped anything, since I didn't really know how to change a flat tire, but I had seen it done before...  Thought maybe all of that observation would be effective...  Although I don't think it was.  Still, I think his triathlon goals are much bigger than mine, and I gue...

It has come to my attention that whilst my van was running away at Ragnar Del Sol, my best friend and her sister-in-law (both in the other van) decided to set the goal of completing Ironman in 2016. Apparently it is expected that I participate in these shenanigans with them. A couple of weeks have passed and I find myself just as indecisive about the whole thing as when I first heard about it.  Why am I waffling?  I think there are good arguments to do it and good arguments to hold off, or to just be a great spectator.  It's been a weird feeling for me though.  I'm pretty sure if I committed to it, and was able to train for it, I could finish.  So, for the first time, I'm not sitting around worried that I just can't accomplish something, and that's a pretty great feeling.  I was also kinda-sorta worried that I might somehow lose my identity as a "runner".  I've been making some small but incremental progress this year and I don't want to lose m...

Oops.  I haven't posted since October?  Like all of us, the holidays were pretty hectic, and then I took this stupid MySQL online class during some of the heaviest training weeks of the year.  I had to let something slip during that time, so it ended up being this.  Then I had a few weekends of races and now, things will be kinda sorta quiet...  until March. Since the sprint triathlon, my major races in 2014 included the Rock n' Roll Las Vegas half marathon , the Thanksgiving Tryptophun Rhun 6 hour race, the Desert Classic 30k , and Across the Years (24 hours). I didn't post the Vegas race in my "upcoming races" at the time because I have a weird thing about strangers knowing when I'm not at home...  It was my first Rock n' Roll event ever.  My best friend was in Vegas for some work conference and I met her there, along with her cousin-in-law.  It was fun, but packed, as I understand most Rock n' Roll events tend to be; and unexpectedly cold...

Last Saturday, October 11, I participated in the Mesa Sprint Triathlon and my first triathlon of all time.  My day would consist of a 400m swim, 12 mile bike ride, and a 5k run.  For anyone who knows me, I was not looking forward to this.  The joke had been, "my first triathlon would be my last triathlon"; swimming in general had been something difficult for me to really enjoy doing.  I'm also a bit scared to ride in traffic on the bike during training so I tend to shy away from it for that reason.  I couldn't imagine how I was going to like this, but I needed to overcome whatever was holding me back.  Fear, pessimism, lack of confidence?  My best friend was doing it too - not her first triathlon, but something she started within the past year or so - and she has the power to basically get me to sign up for almost anything.  Photo Credit to L Ellis The swim was easily the most chaotic event of the day, but thankfully it doesn't last lo...