I'm No Quitter!

I have SOOOOO neglected this blog since school started. What can I say, I can only focus on one thing at a time and family, teaching and running are two things too many already...so teaching has won out over almost everything but family over the past month.

Running has been blah lately. I noticed on my yearly mileage, I am only 25 miles away from hitting 200 miles in 2011. I think I've got that covered in the next month or so. I've scrapped the training schedule that was created for this event and made my own, "no injuries" plan. I am taking a low mileage approach in my half marathon training. My longest run this far has been 6 miles. I am shooting for 7 this weekend, but we will see...

My body keeps telling me to quit. My mind is also headed in that direction. But I'm no quitter. I finished college, grad school and my Rank 1 (a fancy teacher degree above your Masters) in 7 years, have taught kids with severe behavior, academic, emotional and physical problems, given birth, raised a child for 4 years and completed one half marathon already. So surely I can complete 13.1 measly miles of running (or some form of walking/jogging), right?!?

I'm working on staying focused, running a little longer each week and not worrying about speed.

Any advice for this?? Should I increase my long runs by a mile each week?

Mini-Vacay and the Beginning of Something Big!

 Mini-Vacation...

This weekend we headed to Newport, KY which is right across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, OH. Our plans were just to drive up there for the day to take the little one to the Newport Aquarium. Fortunately, my Dad travels a lot for business and had a free night in a hotel room that we could use. We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, which I had never been to. It was probably the nicest hotel room I've ever stayed in!

She had to break in the bed for us!

We had access to an indoor pool, and I swam more than I have since I was a kid. My legs were so tired on Monday morning! I also used their small gym, which had an elliptical, a recumbent bike (which was broken!) and a treadmill. I did a few minutes on the elliptical (1 mile) and then 1 mile on the treadmill. It was nice running on a different treadmill than my own. I felt faster, even though I really wasn't. And I was able to continually run with only a few short walk breaks. Maybe it was being in a different environment. I think I have burnt out on my treadmill...I really need the weather to cool off so I can run outside!

The aquarium was nice, a great place for kids. It's always fun to see their faces light up when they see something for the first time. There were a few times she acted scared of the fish:

Don't know what was so scary about Nemo...

 Some of the delish food I let myself partake in:

This was our only vacation this year. It was short and sweet, and we succeeded in not spending much money.

The beginning of something big....

Well, half marathon training officially started yesterday. Yesterday was a rest day for me because of traveling  and just being exhausted from hours of swimming. This week is a low mileage week. The training calendar I have has 9 miles for this week, but because I am replacing one running day with cross-training, I will only get 8 miles in this week. My long run is 3 miles, which is doable.

Next week is a completely different story! 4 mile long run next week will be the longest I have done in over a year. My plan is to only increase my weekly mileage by 2 miles per week. Here's how it looks for the next month:

Week 1:   8 miles

Week 2:   9 miles

 Week 3:   11 miles

 Week 4:   13 miles

My hope is that this way I won't get injured if I don't increase my mileage too fast. 3 days a week of running, 3 days of cross/strength training. 1 complete rest day. Sounds simple, right? With starting back to work full-time in a few weeks, we will see how simple it really is. Why in the world I decided to do a half when the training starts right before I go back to work is beyond me...

What if...?

I have yet to register for the half-marathon that I would like to run in November. I've gone to the page several times and stopped myself before I get to the part where you pay. $65 is not a huge amount of money, but parting with it still kind of scares me. There are no refunds. What if no one else I know is running it? What if I get injured during training (happened before)? or get sick and can't run ( I have been feeling icky all week...what if I have some crazy disease)? I keep coming up with all these "what if" questions and they seem to be preventing me from just doing it. There was even a code to get $10 off registration last Wednesday, I didn't even attempt to register. Major fail on my part...

On a more positive note, I had a great day. Went to church, had lunch with the in-laws. My MIL is the best cook. She makes lunch for us after church almost every Sunday. Sundays have to be my indulgence days because of her wonderful not-so-fat-free cooking! Today she had made an awesome raspberry torte.

 Sorry for the horrible iPhone picture, I was carrying it down the stairs as I took it.

This afternoon I got to take a long, much needed nap. Then the hubs cooked a wonderful dinner of grilled asparagus, brown rice and some kind of cajun grilled fish. I'm not a lover of fish (just a little too "fishy" tasting for me), but it was rather delish.

Weirdo cut the tops off the asparagus!

Then I did my supposed-to-be "long" run for the week. It was supposed to be 3 miles, but I have not been feeling myself this past week, especially this weekend, so I only did 2. But I did get my fastest time per mile so far. It's still slower than most people walk, so I will not post my time. One day I will get there...

Almost forgot to mention...I'm now on Twitter. You can follow me @SanitynSweetTea if you're a Twitterererer....you know what I mean!

Here's hoping this week will bring more energy, motivation and healthy eating...