September 25, 2013

Pacing

Today was Wednesday Weigh-in, and this is the first one I've done in about three weeks. It went pretty much exactly how I expected: not good. (I forgot to get a pic of the scale, so this will have to do...)


"A bit"? Hahaha, quite honestly, I was surprised it wasn't more. I only tracked my food for a couple of days over the past week, and there were another couple of days that were a free-for-all. I know that if I get back to tracking this week, I'll be back down next week. Then I just have to keep going to get back to goal (133)! The last time I was 133 for a weigh-in was July 3rd--yikes.

I stuck with my meal plan today, and I am just going to take it one day (and one meal) at a time. Having the meal plan typed out was actually really helpful today. As soon as I started to think about eating when I wasn't even hungry, I just thought, "Nope! It's not on the plan."

I tried to stay busy all day, so I wouldn't think about food--did some laundry, read my book. I even went around the house with the shop vac and vacuumed along the floorboards--that's desperation, hahaha. I put dinner in the Crock Pot, which makes it much less stressful at dinnertime. I hate when I don't have a plan for dinner, and I have to try and figure it out last-minute. I played a few games of solitaire, and lost (I swear, if I ever win that game, I am going straight to the store to get some lotto tickets).



For some reason, I was pretty nervous about pacing Jessica for her run today, and I didn't sleep much because of it. Weird, right? It's not like I was pacing her for a race! It was just a training run. Anyway, I got the kids ready for school, and when they got on the bus, I headed to meet Jessica.

We decided to run at the Metropark. I haven't run there in a while, so I was looking forward to a change of scenery. We did a lot of our Cleveland Marathon training runs there, so I had a bit of deja vu while I was driving there.

The plan was to run six miles at a 9:05 pace (the pace needed for a sub-2:00 half-marathon, which is her goal). Last week, she said she was only able to do one mile at that pace, but I knew she was capable of doing more than that, which is why I volunteered to pace her today. I'm not sure why having a pacer works so well, but whenever someone has paced me, I realize I'm capable of more than I thought I was!

I told her not to wear her Gamin, because I didn't want her to worry about the pace at all. As soon as we started running, we were right along the lake, and it was really windy. I hoped it wouldn't be that windy the whole time, and thankfully, it wasn't. We fell into pace pretty quickly, and we were fairly quiet for most of the run. We saw a bunch of deer at different spots on the trail.

Once we were about a half mile away from a high school right outside the park, we saw two teenage boys sitting on a bench playing handheld video games and smoking cigarettes. I'm sure they were skipping school! ;)  Jessica said, "Shouldn't you kids be in school?!" and they kind of stuttered and mumbled something about having graduated.

Jessica started struggling a little in the last couple of miles, and I was debating whether to slow down for her or just keep running at pace. I decided just to keep the pace and hope she'd be able to keep up! At around mile four, I suggested a 10-second walk break, to simulate a water station during a race. Ten seconds go by really fast in that situation, so I don't know if Jessica liked that or not! I was trying to think of ways to distract her, but I'm not very good at that. I was a little worried she was going to have to stop during the last mile, but I kept reminding her we were almost done.

When we had about a tenth of a mile to go, I told her if she pushed really hard, she could hit a sub-9:00 mile for that last split. So we picked up the pace a bit, and she did it! I think Jessica wanted to kill me for this workout when we were done, but once her breathing returned to normal, she was happy ;)


In my head, I was aiming for 9:00-9:05, so I was VERY happy with my ability to keep the pace in the zone and have such even splits. I don't think I'd ever want to be a pacer in a race, but it's fun to do during training runs!

12 comments:

  1. I just discovered emeals.com - a webite that sends you weekly meal plans. Each week you get 7 dinners, recipes, and shopping list (and there is an app which makes shopping super easy). There are different types of plans too: classic, paleo, low fat, portion control, etc. Plus, you can skip meals in the plan ( on the app) and itll remove those items from your list. And you can xhange your meal plan once a month so you might want classic and next month try paleo, etc.

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  2. What a great friend you are! As a relatively new runner, I find that running with someone else who's more experienced is a real help to my pace.

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  3. Awesome job for both of you!!! I loved reading this!

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  4. I would be curious to know what her heart rate was during the run? I feel like my heart rate is always so high when I run and it's hard to breathe. I'm not overweight, I think running is just not my body's thing. I've been running 2-3 times a week on my treadmill for a couple of years and I'm still really slow! I do enjoy watching TV shows while I jog and feeling healthy so that's why I do it!

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  5. I stopped tracking about 4 wks into maintenance, & surprise, my number's going up too! Ugh! It's amazing what a bite here & there, & "it's been so long since I had that" will do. I'd love to have someone pace me, and really push me! My goal is a sub 2 half too....don't know if I'll ever make it though

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  6. Run baby run!!

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  7. Are you playing spider solitaire?

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    1. No, it's a VERY difficult game that my mom taught me when I was a kid. I don't know the name of it, but I wish I did! I play with real cards, not digital.

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  8. WTG!!

    I can win solitaire all the time, are you playing a more advanced one? As a kid we always played it (with real cards lol)

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    1. You're probably referring to Klondike, which is a really popular solitaire game. The one I play is VERY difficult. I play with real cards, because as far as I know, it doesn't exist in the digital world!

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  9. I would also like to know the solitaire game you are playing. So I can Google it and see if you can actually even win it. :P Great job pacing! Those are some freaking steady splits!

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    Replies
    1. I'm tempted to make a video of it, just to see if anyone knows the name of it. I have no idea what's it's called!

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