Mission Moment- Judy Leukemia Survivor

This week has been a rough week for training. I haven't been sleeping very well, personally, I blame ruffles.

Every so often it's easy to get swept away with the careless worries of our day:

"I'm busy"
"I'm in back-to-back meetings all day"
"I have to pick up my kids after work"
"I didn't have time to grab lunch because I had a presentation to finish," etc., etc.

I don't feel like I usually get in a rut, but this week has been near the point where I've wanted to pull my hair. Then voila! My weekly Team in Training (TNT) newsletter arrives.

The TNT newsletter usually contains a pep talk for fundraising, team runs scheduled for the upcoming week (Sat., Tues., and Thurs.), running tips, and usually a mission-related video or cause marketing for LLS.

Today's email included a video of Judy, a sweet old lady who is a cancer survivor and her story. I won't do it justice reiterating so I've posted the link below.

Stories like Judy's is a great reminder of why I'm doing this half marathon. I'm not just doing it to get back into running more consistently, or even to hang out with my friend Drew (sorry buddy). I'm doing it to raise money for LLS, to help find cures, treat patients, and give people the hope to a healthy life.

It's so easy to lose focus of the end goal with life's distractions. I hope you'll take a few minutes to watch Judy's video.

If you'd like to make a difference and help change other people's lives, please donate to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and support my fundraising efforts as I help raise money for a great cause: http://pages.teamintraining.org/wa/whidbey14/charmiee1y.
 

Let's Talk About Nutrition

Training has been going well. I'm still playing flag football on Wednesdays and between all my other lovely extra curricular activities I'm still squeezing in about 2-3 days of running. I have to admit it's hard with how chilly and wet it's been outside.

Today marks about the 3rd month (or 4th?) that I've dedicated most Saturday mornings to running with Team in Training. Tuesdays have generally been out because there's no way I'm going to get from Redmond to Bellevue by 6:15/6:30pm with traffic. Toastmasters is on Thursday which leaves Saturday as the big day to socialize, see the coaches, and ask for tips.

My gait is picking up (fancy way of saying I'm getting faster :) ). I can tell because I'll run for the same average duration (40-70 minutes) but it's taking me less steps so I see myself fluctuating more on the FitBit dashboard.

In addition to getting stronger and faster I noticed that I feel more exhausted, sometimes dizzy. I spent some time last week talking to coaches Erica and Tessa and they provided me a little more insight into nutrition. So, what have I learned?

Eat More Carbs

The first thing I learned was that I'm not eating enough carbs to compensate for the calories I'm burning. Keeping a quick food diary on MyFitnessPal confirmed this. MyFitnessPal has both an app and a FitBit partnership. This integrates my calorie consumption with FitBit netting out consumed vs. intake calories. I was consistently showing a 1,000-1,200 calorie deficit.

In keeping my food diary I didn't necessarily eat anything bad, but most of what I ate consisted of meat, veggies, and juices (yes, still going crazy with my juicer!). I decided this was a quick fix. I simply transitioned from quinoa with brown sugar and milk for breakfast with scrambled egg whites,  to rice with mint, parsley, or lemongrass (sounds weird but tastes great).

The bigger challenge was carb-loading mid-week (Wed-Fri) before my longer runs. I like to eat dinner late so if I eat a big dinner, I'm not going to get up at 7am to go running for 90, 100, 110 minutes. Not happening. Forcing myself to eat dinner sooner and to carb load on pasta was a challenge.

What stuck was occasionally brown rice with stir fry veggies, or rigatoni bolognese. For race day I'll have to remember to bring some rice for breakfast :).

Get Salty

After long runs I started noticing white crystal residue on my face (gross).I actually freaked out at first and thought that somehow a bunch of sand and dirt managed to kick up to my face. I also needed to increase my sodium intake in addition to rehydrating electrolytes as I was sweating out a significant amount of salt. Needless to say I definitely kept some Yes To Cucumber facial wipes in my car.

 

 

According to an article by Runner's World a few years ago, consuming extra salt can be beneficial to runners who lose a lot during workouts. Salt helps with hydration, and losing too much can contribute to body cramps. I can't say that I'll be sucking on salt packets during my run, but I have taken to shaking salt dispensers quite regularly into my water glass causing some unexpected stares at a café or restaurants.

 

Energy

 

I spent a couple of hours back at Road Runner Sports talking to a nutrition expert. As my runs will only increase in distance it's important for me to think about having a snack or two to during to replenish energy and electrolytes. I wasn't sure what I'd like so I bought a little of everything. I've only tried a few during or after a workout and I do know the Honey Stinger brands are my favorite. Their gummies/gels taste pretty natural (like honey) and is tolerable. When I workout I usually don't think "hey let me stop to have a snack then keep going." In contrast GU and PowerGel (from the makers of PowerBar were absolutely disgusting. It was a texture issue with their gels.

 

GU will be the sponsor for my race so I plan to carry some extra Honey Stinger packets. I'll spend the next several weeks sampling some other brands, products, and flavors. I'll definitely share what's in my must-have list for race day!

TNT Run- Genesee Park

Today's run was about 110 minutes. The last several weeks have been building up to our long distance runs. Overall the run was beautiful! We started at Genesee Park in South Seattle, ran to Seward Park. did a few miles of hill training, then ran back to Genesee Park.

My challenge on this run were tight hips and shins. I woke up late following a yummy Valentine's Day dinner at Blue Water Bistro. Ironically the team breakfast was there, and yes I skipped.

But I digress, back to my tight hips and shins. Because I had one to many snoozes I was running late kinda blew through the stretching spending only 15 min instead of my usual 20-30 minutes. Running hills only exasperated the pain. That and I think I'm due for some new running sneaks soon as the arch support is noticeably worn on my current pair.

Before I submit myself to the torture of an ice-bath to help with my recovery, I wanted to share some pretty photos taken today. Isn't Lake Washington beautiful at the break of dawn?

Lake Washington from Seward Park

Lake Washington

TNT ladies at the water stop



#FirstWorldProblems

I had another good training week, finishing the end of January strong. It's been chilly so I've opted to run indoors at my gym. To help keep myself motivated I decided to treat myself to a few new running pieces I snagged at lululemon (most were on sale). well one piece I splurged on was this new basic runner 1/2 zip jacket:

lululemon

What I like about this top is that it fits over anything without bulging. It also has a little more length than most running track jackets I own so the seams lay flat without riding.

I decided to sport my new jacket at today's long distance run at Lake Youngs. Lake Youngs is basically in the middle of nowhere Maple Valley with really long street names (in Russian or Ukranian I think?) that I save myself the trouble of pronouncing.

One of the reasons I bought this jacket is because it had a well sewn mesh kangaroo pocket, perfect for holding keys, cell phones, smaller items....or so I thought.

I was about 20 minutes into my run and had gone a few miles, passing some fellow TNT marathon walkers along the way. At some point I realized I didn't wear studs but my Tiffany 2012 metal bar French hoop earrings.

As I rocked out to Red Hot Chili Peppers on my headphones, I assumed they would be equally safe in the kangaroo pocket as the zipper compartment located on the back of the jacket. Boy was I wrong. At I turned the corner to begin an incline I instinctively patted my hand over the kangaroo pouch and noticed that the earrings were gone.

Wait you say, you're going to type an entire blog post about earrings?? Yes. Yes I am. #FirstWorldProblems. But the point of this blog isn't to be melodramatic about how I lost a favorite pair of my earrings rather to share how some awesome people I'm just getting to know helped make this day better.

Tiffany 1837 collection RUBEDO metal bar earings

These earrings for a gift from Jon, my boyfriend for our 4-year anniversary. So they had a lot of sentimental meaning. They are also a limited edition production from what he explained to me from Tiffany and they are sold out of this rose gold-like special metal. To sum up they emotional sentiment and they can't be replaced. And I was absolutely foolish for not swapping them out.

After I had a panic attack for the first 3 minutes "Jon's going to kkiiilll me!" I proceeded for the next hour to span every crook, cranky, pebble, and twig looking for my earrings. I gladly encouraged the other TNT members around to not bother as I didn't want to impose on their workout.

But again this is an awesome organization fundraising for an awesome cause, and everyone is, well, awesome. One of the coaches helped me look and we jogged back and forth. A group of walkers also set out to look to see if they noticed anything shiny along the way. What made it difficult is that these earrings are rose gold-like so they unfortunately blended in with everything. 20 minutes later one of the walkers' daughter, a girl scout, found a pair about a half mile back from where I stopped!



By the end of the hour another group of walkers, Caroline, had actually found the other one a mere 3 ft from where I stopped when I noticed they'd fallen out of my kangaroo pouch. I wrapped up just in time for Drew to give me a hard time and to buy 7 boxes cookies from the girl scout as a thank you :).

Morale of the story- there's a few:

1) Don't workout with real jewelry on
2)Don't wear French hoops without backings
3)If you cry about losing Tiffany most people will want to smack you aside the head
4)Wear studs
5)Invest in costume jewelry
6)These TNT people are kinda awesome for helping with something that was important to me, no matter how trivial.
7)Always buy cookies from girl scouts. Always.

Later this afternoon I'll plan on making up today's long distance run and do a loop or two around Queen Anne Boulevard.