November Project

Marathon Training: Week 5

Weeks until Mountains 2 Beach Marathon: 16

January was the first month I’ve run 100 miles! Before January, my highest mileage month was August of last year, when Jeremy and I were in Paris and I joined the Let’s Run Paris group and I ran about 77 miles total. Anyway, I feel really good about the past month and super excited that I hit 100 miles. I can’t wait to see where I’m at later in the year. Four months to go until the big 26.2!

Monday – 5 miles easy with 100m strides at the end

Average pace for this run was 9:29, and I finally felt like I got some mojo back after the tough week before.

Tuesday – rest

Wednesday – November Project

The last Wednesday of the month is always PR day at November Project. We do the same amount of stadium stairs each time, and see if our times improve. The Hollywood Bowl is being worked on though, so a lot of the stairs are inaccessible. Because of this, I haven’t actually been able to compare times lately since we have to change it up. But for this workout we averaged about 2 miles of stadium stair sprints. We wore backwards hats to honor the memory of San Francisco November Project member Sam Dweck, who died in a kayaking accident the weekend before.

Incredible sunrise.

Thursday – 6 mile tempo run

I was pretty sore from the day before and my morning route is hilly and half of it is made of dirt, so speedwork is always a struggle. But nevertheless, this tempo run went well! I started with a warm-up mile @ 9:52, and tempo mile paces: 8:46, 8:47, 8:43, 8:41. I ended with a mile cool down @ 10:13. My goal was to do the tempo miles at 8:30-8:45, so I was happy with this one.

I also upgraded my ice game from frozen veggies to a Pro-Tec Hot Cold Therapy wrap for my knee that I ordered on Amazon. Now I can walk around while icing my knee, and don’t have to deal with the veggie bag leaking water all over the place.

I really like Pro-Tec stuff – I use this compression band on my knee on every run now.

Friday – November Project

I didn’t have time to do three miles after NP on Wednesday, so I made it up Friday, by doing three miles of running up and down an extremely steep sand/dirt hill at Griffith Park. It was tough.

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We had to say goodbye to one of our leaders, Angelo (the guy we’re pointing at), who moved to San Diego over the weekend.

I had to complete my November Project homework by running in a place that you’re not really supposed to run, so I sprinted in the rain on the roof of my work building. People that could see out the window thought I was crazy.

Bonus pic: it rained that day and I took this picture on the roof of my work building downtown. The sunset was so cool.

The sunset was so cool after the rain stopped.

Saturday – 9 miles easy

I took it extra easy on this long run, and just tried to get into a good, slow pace. It took a few miles to get into it since I was tired from the week, but I finally started feeling good and the last mile was my fastest. Ended up with a 10:19 average pace.

I had to go to work after my run, but as soon as I was done I met Molly from Also Ran Again in Santa Monica! We shared a gigantic pretzel at a place by the beach. It was so awesome to spend some time with her and finally meet in person after following her blog for a long time now. We had such a great time, and everyone needs to go visit her in Tacoma. Oh and later that night she took a selfie with Amy Poehler and they’re basically best friends now, which kind of makes me best friends with Amy Poehler too (pretty sure that’s how it works).

Funny, sweet, awesome Molly!!

Sunday – 3 miles easy

My legs felt super heavy for this run, which I expected. I usually take two rest days in a week, but didn’t this time and felt the effects. I’m proud of myself for working so hard all week, though.

Later in the day, my parents came into town and we went to lunch at Ledlow downtown, a restaurant Jeremy and I had been wanting to try. I got a mac and cheese croque with a fried egg on top, with a house-made chocolate root beer on the side. We all shared warm pumpkin bread with pistachio butter, and potatoes cooked in duck fat. It was all delicious.

Jeremy’s fried chicken sandwich with fried chicken skin on top.

Then we walked around the Grand Central Market a bit, then went to Salt & Straw for dessert, maybe my favorite place ever.

Grand Central Market downtown LA.

Total Miles: 28

Happy February!

Christmas Workouts and The Start of Marathon Training

Christmas has come and gone and nobody is even thinking about it anymore, but I had some good workouts last week that I wanted to share, so everyone’s just going to have to deal. Christmas Eve morning was spent at November Project at the Hollywood Bowl, and I wore my special naughty santa Christmas sweatshirt (that I didn’t take off for the next couple days, apparently).

This workout was SO fun because it was a scavenger hunt and we had to run around the Bowl finding letters and completing the exercises listed before moving onto the next, and finally trying to figure out what the letters spelled out. Many of the exercises included singing Christmas carols while doing burpees. It was also fun because I met fellow blogger Kaitlin over at California Endless Summer. I think this was my first real-life blogging meet-up! She’s a native Southern Californian but now lives in NYC and was visiting family over the holidays.

I stole this picture from Kaitlin.

The whole gang.

After November Project, I had to work at home for a few hours, but then we headed up to Santa Barbara to spend Christmas with my family.

Mandatory sunset beach picture.

On Christmas, we opened presents with my family and then ate the feast my mom cooked and Jeremy, my dad, and I headed down to the beach to watch the sunset, per tradition. It was SO cold and windy (the coldest Christmas in memory).

My medal from the Santa Barbara Half Marathon I ran at the beginning of November finally arrived in the mail (there were delays and didn’t hand them out at the race), so that was exciting.

Jeremy got me this awesome Nike tank that has the Santa Barbara Running Company logo on it, and I can’t wait to wear it when it warms up.

We have been drinking some incredible coffee ever since Christmas…

Christmas sunset.

The day after Christmas, I drove to More Mesa Bluffs to get a run in. I don’t know why I didn’t go here more to run when I lived in Santa Barbara. There were barely any people and I had the trails to myself pretty much (except for a run-in with a couple horses that forced me to run along the edge of the cliff and I was convinced I was going to fall to my death). I completed 4.11 miles @ 9:23 min/mile.

The next day, I ran 3.4 miles @ 9:05 min/mile along beach paths near Santa Barbara City College, where I did stadium stairs after. My mom was walking on the track and took some pictures while I was huffing and puffing up and down the stairs.

View from the top of the stairs.

Side note: My Garmin has been acting up and not working properly so I wanted to do a factory reset to try to get it working again. I watched a video online and it said if I did a ‘soft reset’ it wouldn’t erase my data, so I did that. Well it DID erase all my data and I lost the workouts I hadn’t recorded yet. Good thing I was also using MapMyRun at the time and could manually enter them. But still, it was a little heartbreaking.

Anyway, I got back to Los Angeles Sunday and didn’t exercise since I was starting my marathon training plan the day after. So as of Monday, December 29th, I am officially training for my first marathon! I did 5 miles Monday morning.

First day of training for my first marathon!

First day of training! It was 41 degrees and I was wearing three layers on top.

My marathon (the Mountains 2 Beach Marathon) isn’t until May 24th so I’ve got a good amount of time to build up my distance, and my coach Lauren of The Foodie Runner has created a plan for me and I’m so excited to complete it. I want to do weekly recaps on Sundays of my training; I think it’ll be fun to be able to look back on the entire process.

On New Year’s Eve, I went to November Project in the morning and we did 35 minutes of stadiums stairs, and I ran two miles after. It is so cold in LA right now, and I’m pretty sure it’s cold enough to warrant wearing big winter coats and not being made fun of by the rest of the country. I am so spoiled; I don’t know how you guys live in places with real winters that last for months. It’s been in the 30s when I wake up and the wind was blowing so hard during the NP workout. I DO love wearing my cold weather running gear though, I think it looks so much cooler than tank tops and shorts.

It’s supposed to warm up to the 70s again next week, so normalcy will resume.

The rest of New Year’s Eve was spent enjoying this cheese plate Jeremy made, some sparkling wine, walking to a restaurant in our neighborhood for oysters, and going out with my friend that lives in London now. I made sure not to drink too much so I would feel good for my run the next day, but unfortunately I went to bed really late which always results in horrible sleep. I think I got maybe 2-3 hours. I still did five miles the next day with two fast miles at the end, and I think if I had been fully rested I would have reached my goal paces of 8:30-8:45.

Jeremy’s cheese plate with chicken liver mousse and caviar and toasted sunflower seeds.

The rest of the day was spent eating… I had chilaquiles for brunch and the most delicious tacos from a place called Guisados for dinner.

Hope everyone had an excellent first day of 2015!

A 10K and My First November Project Workout

I ran the Cancer Center 10k last weekend in Santa Barbara and it made me realize how much fitness I’ve lost recently. I actually did a pretty good job keeping in shape while we were traveling, and had an enjoyable half marathon in Ireland at the beginning of September. Since then though, I haven’t run that many times, and I got sick and didn’t do anything for a week. I was hoping the 10k would be one of those runs where you surprise yourself and have a great performance, but unfortunately it didn’t happen. The first mile of the course or so is downhill, and I got excited and went out way too fast. The 10k course is two 5k loops, and by the time I hit, oh I don’t know, mile 3? I was spent. It wasn’t pretty, but I managed to finish strong and pass a few people in the last quarter-mile.

Half the reason I run this race – big breakfast buffet from the local Four Seasons Biltmore resort.

There were pain au chocolats, croissants, mini quiches, sausages, bacon, bagels, frittatas, etc.

Pretty excited to be wearing a different shirt to run in for the first time in seven months.

This is the third year in a row that I’ve run this race, and I like it because it’s a local, small race, and in 2012 it was my first ‘real’ race. Last year I set a 10k PR and came in fourth in my age group. This year I also came in fourth in my AG but I was a couple minutes slower.

2012 finished in 60 minutes; 2013 finished in 56:07; and 2014 finished in 58:26. Nice chronological bib order though.

This year’s splits: not pretty. I never run miles in the 8 minute zone, no wonder I crashed and burned quickly.

Anyway, it was a good wake-up call to get my butt back in shape if I want to start training for a marathon and break two hours in the half soon, which I was hoping to do this year but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. I’m trying not to get too down on myself though and trying not to compare my performance to this time last year, but instead just keep in mind that it is a slow progression and I’ve got to stick with it.

November Project

Yesterday morning, I arrived at the Hollywood Bowl at 6:30am for my first November Project experience. I’ve heard a lot about it through other people’s blogs and finally set my alarm at 5:30am to make it there. And it was just as fun as everyone says it is. I’ve done a few group runs/classes before, and I’m pretty quiet and keep to myself since it always seems like people have their own little group that has been established. But as soon as I arrived at the Bowl, people were introducing themselves to me and giving me hugs, even though it was still dark out. Hugging is a big thing in November Project, and I didn’t mind one bit.

The entire hour was really fun, we started with a group huddle and some warm ups, some zombie tag (where a few other people and I had to act like zombies and whoever we tagged had to do five burpees), some freeze tag (but instead of freezing, again more burpees), then we partnered up and one person ran stadium stairs while the other did a series of exercises like push-ups, wall sits, planks, burpees, etc. I got such a good workout, and am feeling it today. I haven’t strength trained in months, and I used to do bootcamp when I lived in Santa Barbara, so this seems like a good way to get some strength training in once a week at least. November Project also meets on Friday mornings at 6:15am, but it’s all the way at the Santa Monica Pier, which would take 35 minutes or so to get there, before finding parking. BUT I really want to do it (last week they ran in the sand then jumped in the ocean afterward), so I’m going to try to make the trek either tomorrow morning or next week. My friend Liz is in town today and we’re going to her show tonight (she tours with a band), so it depends on what time I go to sleep tonight.

From November Project LAX’s Facebook page:

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What happens when it’s somebody’s birthday.

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This guy got the Positivity Award yesterday, he is about to embark on a ten-month walk across the continent of Europe. Way to show me up, man.

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Group picture. I’m in front of the flying baby.

Off-topic question: blog friends, is it worth it to go self-hosted? I’m sure I know the answer, but I was curious what people think about it. I would also pay someone to migrate my stuff since I’m spending all hours applying for jobs and it hurts my brain to even think about doing it myself. Thanks for any advice!

Lily Runs the World

training while traveling

November Project

Marathon Training: Week 5

Christmas Workouts and The Start of Marathon Training

A 10K and My First November Project Workout