Running – blogkitten.com

Well then.

Yes, I know it’s been a while. Ok, so it’s been 11 months.

I’ve been busy! I’ve also been blogging in more than one spot too. Although, since I started this job, I’ve been blogging less. It figures that once I started making and fixing WordPress, I didn’t have any time/energy to USE it. 😀

Terrible problems that I have, I know. In order to catch you up, I’m going to ask myself a few questions.

“You signed up for a race series? With a half marathon? Are you insane?”

“How did your half marathon training go?”

“How did your half marathon go?”

“What are you doing next?”

For the race series, I kinda go into detail into it here. So go read that and I’ll answer the half marathon training question instead.

(And read all the posts on that blog to get caught up even more on what’s been going on.)

It started out well, then it went to shit.

With my job, I get the opportunity to travel a lot – which I love! Since my last update on this blog, I’ve had the opportunity to go to:

Montreal (Canada)
San Francisco (CA) twice!
Santa Cruz (CA)
San Juan (Puerto Rico)
Austin (TX) for the SXSW Festival
Christ Church (Barbados)
Portland (OR)
Philadelphia (PA)

Gorgeous day in Philly. #latergram

A photo posted by Carolyn Sonnek (@csonnek) on Jun 6, 2014 at 11:21am PDT

All this travel is fantastic. However, it also throws a wrench into my normal routine which includes my training routine. I could have a long run scheduled on a travel day and I think “oh, I’ll just do it the next day!” then I get mired in being in a new place with people I’m not normally around and usually dealing with weather I’m not totally used to. You don’t realize how much a sudden 30 degree change in temperature or being at a different altitude can wreck your fitness goals.

Thus, a week where I was supposed to have run close to 18 miles, I only squeezed in 5. The next week, I was sick with a combination head cold and spring allergies. Do not recommend.

Time was ticking away to the half marathon date and I was woefully undertrained. I started planning on running a Galloway-style of speed intervals. For my half, I was going to do a 3min run/1min walk then adjust as necessary. Given the fact that my long run was only 9 miles and that was BEFORE the trips/sickness, I was in a slight panic.

Which brings us to the next question: how did my half go?

Well, it didn’t.

See, this post for that story.

Which leads us to what am I up to now?

Well, first off, I have to miss the last race in my race series! But it’s because of an awesome reason: I’M MOVING!

It’s no secret that winter and I don’t get along. Well, this past winter broke me and Tim and I made the decision to move to the West Coast. After some deliberation and a visit, we decided on the Portland, OR area.

The question I get all the time since we made the decision was “Why Portland?” Well, we’ve always loved the Pacific NW, and upon doing the research, it fits all our desires:

Changes of seasons. While Portland has distinct seasons, it rarely gets above 90 degrees even in the hottest part of the summer and in winter it rarely gets below freezing. It might snow and stick around for a few days, but it’s gone shortly thereafter. I can still wear sweaters/boots – but I won’t want to hole up in my house for 5 months and curse every time it snows because I have to shovel. Some people have said “but it’s cloudy and rainy”. I’ll fucking take it.

And the summers there get warm – and they don’t need air conditioning. SIGN ME UP.

Liberal leaning. Oregon is consistently a blue state. I don’t think I could even live in a red state, to be honest.

Tech community. I have a number of coworkers that are already in Portland, there’s a ton of tech giants and startups, and I can get FIOS internet for half of what I’m paying now for Comcast’s meager offerings. Hell. Yes.

Outdoor activities. I love hiking, biking, and running outdoors. With Portland’s weather, I can run outside year-round (unless it drops below 40 degrees). Where we’re going to live (outside of Portland proper), we’re an hour from the beach, an hour from the mountains, and an hour from wine country. Sounds pretty damn good to me.

Cost of living. The Portland area’s cost of living is very similar to Minneapolis. Seattle and San Francisco were much higher. Not needing to change our standard of living = awesome.

I could keep going on, but I’ll just leave it there. We love the Portland area.

Really the only stress point I have about the whole thing is moving the cats. Twenty-two hundred miles with three cats who hate the car? OMG SEND ALL THE BOOZE.

Since we’re driving both vehicles out, my sister is going to come and ride along with me so I’m not alone with the yowling. Well, I think Chester will be fine, and I think Pixel will chill out eventually, but Roxy will lose her shit.

The battle of stubbornness has begun. #friday #alwayswatching

A photo posted by Carolyn Sonnek (@csonnek) on May 30, 2014 at 8:44pm PDT

The vet has some pheromone stuff that should help – they highly recommended to NOT tranquilize them because it stresses everyone out. I tend to agree.

Well, I guess that’s enough catching up for now! Stay tuned for my next post a year from now. 😀

Otherwise, see my WordPress.com blog linked to above or my other standalone site at carolynsonnek.com for future updates.

Engineering Happiness

A lot has happened in the past few months!

You all know about my career transition plans and goals, but my goodness there’s been a lot going on since I last wrote about it. To make a long story short, I posted about it over on my other blog, carolynsonnek.com.

Go read it. I’ll wait. In the meantime, look at Chester hatching a giraffe:

Cute, right?

Oh, you’re back! Pretty cool, eh? New awesome career -> acquired. 😀

Since I have Awesome New Job, I finally quit Ye Olde Part Tyme Jobbe! With the travel opportunities that my new job offers in addition to the more demanding nature of the position, I need to have my full weekends back. Before, when I was slogging away in Cubicle Hell, I only needed a full day off to recharge. Now? I have much bigger plans!

We also bought a new car! We traded in the old 2003 Mazda Protegé for a 2013 Nissan Juke SL in Sapphire Black. She’s pretty. And fast. And awesome.

Next, I get to go to San Francisco for the first time in May – completely non-work related, funny enough. Our good friends Jason and Vicky (our only in-person guests at our wedding) from the UK are taking a California trip in May and we decided to meet up with them in SF for a few days. I’m very excited. Might have to get in touch with a few friends that live out there to meet for coffee or cocktails. I can’t wait!

Finally (I told you there were a lot of things!), I’m getting back into running and healthier eating after I saw myself in a fitting room mirror today. Who put my head on this fat body? I had been getting back to running on a more regular basis, but as always, I can’t run away a bad diet. The standing desk has really helped in my form and I’m not having as many hip issues like I used to. Score!

Since I don’t have the temptation to eat out for lunch all the time like I used to when I worked downtown, I’m going to refocus my energies into eating healthier and dropping some of this winter coat I’ve acquired. A goal I can stick with!

Hell, if I can transform my work life in 6 months, I can transform my body…right?

So that’s the latest in the life of ye olde Blogkitten! Keep an eye on my other blog as that will be more focused on the tech things I get interested in. And a lot of my Instagram photos. 🙂

Happy blogging!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I just deleted a draft post that’s been sitting there for a week. It was a post about how much I love the Olympics (which I REALLY DO), but I just couldn’t finish it.

Why?

I’ve been embroiled in other things. Things that are taking me away from blogging. Half-marathon training (which is going SLOWLY, might not make it by the end of October :(), managing the bounty of produce from my garden and studying.

Studying?

Yeah, studying. While I’m not at liberty to discuss at this time, I can tell you that it’s big. Big enough to turn things upside down and downside up! 🙂

However, before I can announce anything, I have to finish studying. Which will take some time!

Meanwhile, look at these photos of the various men’s water polo teams from the Olympics. Oh yes.

North Mankato Triathlon

gunshow — Who ordered a ticket to the gun show?

Ten Things I Learned From Doing A Triathlon:

1. You can never train enough for the swim.
2. Training for the swim in a pool (when the swim is in a lake/pond) is ineffective. Also, see #1.
3. Don’t shift too fast into your big ring on the front lest you have the chain completely fall off your bike.
4. If the hill you’re biking up is too steep, just get off and walk it up. Nobody’s going to penalize you for it. Plus, your legs will thank you.
5. Hydrate hydrate hydrate.
6. Gu packs are your friend.
7. People are willing to shit themselves and keep going rather than stop and not shit themselves. (from observation, not practice – I’m not THAT hardcore!)
8. Planning your race pace ahead of time is useful in making sure you have enough “gas in the tank” once you get to the run.
9. Swimming sucks. It really, really does.
10. That I’ll never do another one ever again.
________________________

The sprint triathlon (0.25 mi swim/12 mi bike/3.1mi run) I did on Sunday was my first and will be my last. Why? I hate swimming.

As a kid, I loved to swim. But, in the 30-some years since then, I have fallen out of love with it – especially swimming in a lake. I can’t fathom how much fish poop is floating around in that water and when you’re swimming in a race, there’s a high probability that you’re going to get some in your mouth. ICK!

Anyway, back to the story. Since I don’t like swimming, I made sure that I would train to swim twice the distance non-stop (i.e. 0.5mi) in a lap pool. Aside from the turnarounds (where I didn’t hang on the edge or touch the bottom of the pool), I didn’t stop once. I had a good time split and I felt great. I’m a pretty experienced cyclist and I know what my pace times are for running, so I found a tri pace calculator online to plug in what my finish time would be.

Note: I’m slow. Really slow. I know this. But my goal was to finish and not kill myself.
Continue reading North Mankato Triathlon

Am I A Failure?

I swear the world is fighting against me to thwart my efforts in training for the triathlon on July 1st. I never had this much trouble training for a half-marathon!

I think I narrowed it down to these things:

1. New house/garden.
I’ve never had a vegetable garden before, and the prep work for that has been a lot of work. I also have established plants (asparagus & strawberry patch) that need maintenance and picking on a nearly daily basis. Also, putting the final touches on the house eats up time.

2. Social life.
I know, wah wah wah. I have an active social life. But, having SO many things going on – especially on nights and weekends (my prime workout time) – it puts a cramp in my training schedule.

3. Work stress.
My job – compared to what it was 2 years ago when I was training for the half – has exploded in terms of workload and responsibilities. I’m more mentally exhausted at the end of the day and as a result, it makes it damn hard to get motivated.

4. Eating healthier.
Since the move and due to the above factors, I seem to have less time to cook and plan meals. Which means we’re either eating out or getting takeout a lot more than we used to and I’m getting frustrated with that. Thus, more of my focus is shifting to cooking healthier dinners.

5. Training time.
I can train for running events in a relatively short amount of time on any given day because all I have to do is:

put on workout clothes,
put on running shoes, and
GTFO.

With the bike, there’s:

put on cycle clothing,
put on cycle shoes,
get water bottles filled up,
get bike down from garage rafters and check the tire pressure and address any other mechanical issues,
put on helmet and gloves,
make sure I have my phone in case of mechanical issues, and
GTFO, and
upon return, put everything away.

And swimming?

find swimsuit, goggles and swim cap; pack in gym bag,
find two towels; pack in gym bag,
make sure lock AND KEY for the locker room is in the bag,
drive to the gym,
change into swim clothes,
shower and get hair wet before putting on swim cap (mama don’t need green hair, yo!),
swim (a.k.a. GTFO)
shower to rinse out chlorine,
change into regular clothes,
drive home, and
shower for real.

I don’t count “showering” after running and biking because I usually shower later in the evening after I’ve stopped sweating. No sense showering if I’m still sweating! But with the pool, I can shower once I get home. Why at home? Well, it’s just less crap I have to pack and haul to the pool and frankly, showering (for real) at the gym sucks. But I do need to get the chlorine out of my hair, so I can’t skip it.

Yes, I know the packing stuff with the swimming can be done ahead of time, but it still takes time regardless of *when* I do it. It also doesn’t take that much time. It’s the driving and changing clothes two times that does it.

And I know what some of you are thinking: “Carolyn, why don’t you just work out in the morning?” For those of you who haven’t had the “joy” of seeing me in the morning, I have an alter-ego named GROG who acts a lot like Drunk Hulk over on Twitter and GROG hates getting up early.

(not me, but pretty damn close as to my morning attitude – except more grumpy)

Plus, the few times I tried it, I was so stressed out trying to get everything done before work and was tired/ravenous the rest of the day. Mornings + me = bad.

* * * * *

I saw my cousin who is three years my junior this weekend at my niece’s graduation party – the same cousin who signed up to do a half marathon, the Warrior Dash and now this tri and goaded me into doing the same – and she’s in worse shape than I am. I’m not sure when I got or why I have this sense of competition with her, but I do. Having her tell me that she’s “seriously going to die” doing the tri somehow made me feel better.

I’ve swam a quarter mile already. Albeit, not all at once, but I did that my first (and only) time in the pool! I’m pretty confident if I get to the pool at least 4 more times between now and July 1, I’ll be in good shape. Besides, I’m just shooting to finish, not be super-fast or anything.

Once I install my new saddle on the bike, I’ll be stoked to GTFO and put some miles on. Unless my body/fitness has changed dramatically over the past 3 years, I’ll be able to knock out a 13 miler with no trouble.

With the running, I’m up to 30 minutes nonstop running and I did 4 miles on Saturday. Granted, I had a pee break 1.5 miles in and the last mile was more of a 2min run, 30sec walk. So in the next month, I want to get up to 6 miles running (w/no breaks) and I should be OK doing the 5k after the swim/bike. Going to do some bricks of bike/run the week before the race too.

All in all, I should be in good shape.

My goal: to finish.

And beat my cousin. 😉

So am I a failure? Considering, I think I’m doing pretty well.

Working Out In The Winter

In a few days it’ll be Halloween. After that, it’ll be November.

While this fall has been pretty nice, it’s only a matter of time before the view out my front door resembles the photo above (which is the view out my front door after a snowstorm in 2007). For someone who loves to run outside, winter creates a number of problems for me:

I won’t run in the dark. I’m not a morning person, so working out after a full day at my job works the best for me. Since it gets dark around 4:30pm in the winter – when I’m leaving work – it’s completely dark by the time I get home.
I won’t run in temps below freezing. I have year-round allergies and running in below-freezing weather causes me no end of respiratory problems. I can handle lower aerobic activities like snowshoeing, but running is a no-no.
I won’t run in the snow/ice. Too slippery and I’d rather not injure myself. Plus, combined with the darkness, it’s hard to see any items that would make you trip or fall.

Because of this, I’m relegated to running on the treadmill at my gym over the winter.

As a distance runner (I think anyone who can run more than a 5k on a regular basis is a distance runner), there’s nothing more painful than transitioning from running outside to running on the treadmill. I try so many different things to distract myself from the fact that I’m running nowhere and staring at a wall while I’m doing it. I try audio books, podcasts, and music and it helps somewhat, but I just can’t help but think “am I done yet?” when I’ve barely put two miles in on the treadmill!

To help this year (inspired by Angela’s goals), I’m going to try a number of new items. First, I’m going to try transitioning to running in a minimal shoe – like a Vibram Five Fingers or a Merrell Barefoot – which will allow me to initially run a shorter distance on the treadmill and give me a goal to build up my distance. I picked up a pair of the Barefoot Pace Gloves this summer just to wear out and about and they’re quite nice, so I already have all the equipment I need to start!

Secondly, I’m going to try fartlek workouts on the treadmill. Yes, I know I just said “fart” (heh), but fartlek is Sweedish for “speed play” and it’s training that will help improve your overall speed. That’s one thing I really need to work on over the winter as I’ve lost a good minute per mile since my injury.

Finally, I’m going to try and stick to this plan of exercise throughout the winter months:

I think combining those two plans and following my structure of working out to get me through each week, I think this winter will (hopefully) go by fast!

What’s your winter workout plan?

Weekend Recap

Health Kitten is now on Facebook! Please go “like” it and you’ll make me one happy kitten! 😀

As you know from my brief weekend post, I survived the 10k! In fact, I far exceeded my expectations on my time. It was a beautiful – but COLD – morning and there was a lot of awesome people lining the route cheering us on. At least that’s what it looked like while Lady Gaga was singing in my ears! 😉

I only had a few tiny twinges of pain in the problem area during the run – in which I immediately walked for 15-30 seconds then ran again – and after, my only sore spots have been my quads! So encouraging!!

I have a massage scheduled for tomorrow, but I think I’ll go for the “stress-reducing” kind instead of the “fix my injuries” kind. I think I earned it!

After a weekend of what I’m calling “Sausage Fest 2011,” there was little to no hope of a loss this week and in fact I was fearing a gain. Lucky for me, I’m sticking constant at 168.

*sigh*

To get off this constant, I’m going to need to make a change.

Phase one of my “Not-A-Diet” is going to revolve around upping my vegetable and fruit intake and reducing cheese. I’m going to try to get as many vegetarian meals in as I can and since apple season is still going strong, I’ll have no problem getting those fruits in!

I’m also going to restart the wine boycott as the week I tried cutting back turned out to be one of the most social, “let’s go out for cocktails” weeks in a long time! Now that this week is shaping up to be a quiet one, I’ll have better luck at sticking to it.

Here’s hoping it’s less stressful too!

2011 Mankato 10k

I survived – and I did better than expected!

Since I’m still working on getting my distance and speed back, I was hoping to do it in a 12 min/mi.

I finished with a 11:20 min/mi!! So excited!

Injury Recovery

This past spring I injured my right hip while overtraining – running too much too soon – and I’ve been fighting like hell to get back to shape. Basically what happened is I strained my piriformis muscle and it developed a knot that took WEEKS to resolve.

If you’re familiar with the physiology and musculature of the glutes, you will know just how difficult it is to massage that muscle!

I get a sports massage once a month to deal with that particular issue and I started going to a personal trainer to address the strength issues that caused the problem in the first place. Apparently running doesn’t work all the muscles in your legs/lower body and without proper cross-training, you can develop problems — which is exactly what happened to me. Who knew?

I also had to “start over” with my running.

What I mean by “start over” is just that: I had to start running like I had never run before in my life!

That has been the hardest part. Why? Well, because mentally I can run a half marathon (just over 21 kilometers) but my body couldn’t run a single kilometer! It was so frustrating that I can’t even describe how bad it was! I hampered my recovery from this injury in June by running too much, too soon and I was laid up for 3 days with enough pain that I had a hard time walking, much less doing anything else.

I just really want to get back to where I was last year: able to run 3-4 miles, then do a half hour of really intense cross training/weights, alternate days of 6+ miles running and one long 9-10 miler on the weekend. Last summer that wasn’t an issue, which made the psychological impact of this injury this year even more acute.

So, slow and steady is how I had to do it.

I did the Warrior Dash (link to my old blog post about it) in July, which in hindsight might have been too soon for my body to tackle, but I did it without injury. I walked it, but I finished!

I really wanted to do the half-marathon this weekend, but because of my slow and steady recovery, I was stressing myself out trying to get into shape for it. Because of this, I ended up dropping down to the 10k race at the same event and saving myself a lot of stress.

Rest assured, I’m gunning for that half marathon for 2012! 🙂

However, tomorrow I’m going to run my 3rd 10k race and the first real running race since my injury. I’ve been working my ass off getting back into shape and I’m hoping I have a good result.

Wish me luck!

Since I’ll be out-of-town, I won’t have much time to update the blog this weekend. I might make a quick update post from my phone to let you all know how I did (and if I survived)! 🙂

Happy Friday!

Weigh In Tuesday

169.

Up a half pound from last week (I forgot to weigh myself yesterday). Not surprising since it’s the week that every woman has to deal with. In other words: water retention!

Oh boy!

In other news, I’m struggling to get my miles in training for the 10k a month from now. Right now, I can do a slow 5k, so I’m hoping that I can work that up to a 10k by then. I’m even taking my running gear out of town and making myself keep on track.

It’s difficult to not get down and frustrated with my lack of progress this summer with running and fitness. But, I just gotta keep telling myself that it’s SLOW AND STEADY, not instant gratification.

How do you stay motivated?