"Catching up"

Sorry for the long delay, been meaning to post again but you know how the holidays go, busy busy busy... so if you haven’t heard by now, I qualified for the Boston Marathon last month!!  I had a great time running the Madison Marathon and finished with a time of 3:02:58.  I have a separate post about my BQ race which I started on weeks ago but still need to finish up and get posted so I swear I’ll get that done soon and fill you in more!  In the meantime I just want to follow up on what has been going on with me the last few weeks.

First of all I am currently just coming off a short running break (about 7 days) which I was using to let the legs heal up after a fairly heavy year of running (about 2,200 miles).  I have tried to make it a habit to take off the last two week of the year but haven’t been able to get more than a week so far haha.   I’m also on a short race break as my last race was November 30^th and I don’t have another until January 25^th…  I am missing the competition but in a way it is nice to get a break to focus on both my current training and the 2015 schedule.

I am also about 1 month into a 3 month national triathlon competition with my team from the Dubuque Area Triathlon Club.  The competition totals up the miles from running, swimming and biking and we compete both as individuals and as a team against the other triathlon teams and athletes across the nation, a great way to stay in shape in the off season.  I also plan on swimming again this year in the Iowa Games so it is perfect timing for me to get in the pool more.  So far things have been going great, I’m swimming about 2,000 yards a day(1.1 miles) and pretty much still base building but I’ll start working on speed this Friday and move on from there.   Almost all my biking has been at the YMCA on the spin bikes but I have been doing a bit on my home trainer which I’m going to force myself to use more to get used to being on my bike… as I’ve said many times biking is my weak link in triathlons so one of my main goals for 2015 is to bike much more than I ever have before, I’m really looking forward to the spring when I can get outside to practice though.

Last but not least I am very excited to have joined the MVRA Board (Mississippi Valley Running Association) as their new treasurer and I’m very amped up to work hard and make a positive impact!    I’ve seen first-hand the growth in the Dubuque running community over the couple years and look forward to working with the board members to make more positive changes… more great things to come, I can’t tell you how excited I am for 2015!... now if I could only get my race schedule complete! J

"MY FIRST 50K"

I’m back!  Sorry it has been a  while, been pretty busy with the wrap up of race season and just haven’t had the time to sit down and write.  So since we left off last I had just finished the Quad Cities Marathon just missing my BQ time of 3:05 by 47 seconds... man, seems like so long ago already… I’m already 4 races past that event and I’ll hit the big two over the next two posts, let’s get started…

THE RUNNING VILLAGE 50K – October 11^th -4:10:15

The 50K at the running village was my first introduction to ultramarathon trail running and I got to say I took to it like a fish to water.  I had more fun during this race than any other race I can remember to date, it was truly more of a mental relief from all the road racing I’d been doing it almost felt like a mini vacation run haha.   I went into this one with no plans, no specific training and no tapering whatsoever, I literally smashed this between two 60+ mile training weeks as I was just running it for fun.   All that being said the 31 mile total was not a big stretch for me as I’ve completed many runs of 26 mile distance this year… I’m looking forward to some longer ones in the future.

The course consisted of a ½ trail mile leading up to a 10 mile loop of dirt track that stretched through the woods at George Wyth park in Cedar Falls/Waterloo.   It was a cold day, temps hanging right around 30 degrees, getting up to around 50 by the end… I was very happy to run in the cold after that miserable finish at QC Marathon so I was not complaining one bit J   I started off running very conservatively and even backed off on my pace two or three times over the first lap as I just wasn’t feeling that hot, luckily about 7-8 miles in I started feeling like my old self and consistently dropped pace and pulled negative splits on each of the 10 mile loops.   

With the exception of those first few miles which I figure was just my body warming up, I felt just plain amazing the whole race and had an ear to ear smile right up to the finish.  After finishing the race I had a little trouble digesting water which has become pretty standard for some reason… normally the hour or two following a race I will immediately throw up any liquids I try to take down, this will be something I’ll research a little further in the off season.  But other than that felt great and immediately started plans on tackling a 50 mile race in 2015… any suggestions would be much appreciated!!   

Lastly, it was awesome to see a lot of runners from Dubuque make their way to Cedar Falls for this event.  There were runners from both the DRC and the Driftless Dirt groups and it was just a great time to hang out with everyone and swap stories on the trails… Dubuque over the last couple years has really developed a great running community with multiple running groups filled with good people/runners of all calibers that are a lot of fun to hang out with!!