Stacey 2.0

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...