For the Love of Running

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving filled with family, food, and turkey trots! Now time to get back into the normal routines. I ran a Run for Pie 5k Thursday morning and it was so much fun.  I didnt stay for the pie only because I was holding out for all of the homemade goodies later that day. I love that they gave out insulated totes for leftovers and isn't the race bib cute?! I had a secret fantasy of having a pr but knew the chances of that were really rare.  My PR was from this past summer when I had been running consistently and doing a bunch of 5ks.  Still, I was only a little over a minute over for this race which was an awesome feeling.  Now, I am excited to go for it with my next 5k coming up Dec 9th. My run Friday was pretty slow and sluggish.  I'm assuming from all of the food.  Saturday was my long run.  I planned to do 5 but ended up doing 5.83 by my fitbit or 6 by my mom's watch.  Sunday and Monday were easy 2 an...

Before my last running break, I noticed my legs (shin area) started to ache.  I would randomly ice them but didn't give it too much attention.  I figured if it was really shin splints, they would hurt a lot more.  My long run had gone up a bit but my weekly runs hadn't.  So, I figured since I wasn't increasing the mileage too fast, surely it couldn't be shin splints. Once I started running again, the achiness came back.  It's not an all-the-time pain and doesn't even bother me every time I'm running.  So I decided (am really hoping) that maybe it's just an indication the my shins are tight and weak.  It's funny, when I think about a runner, I think about someone really fit and in shape.  Which is definitely true for most runners.  But, for me, it's showing me how much strength I'm lacking and it worries me that it'll make me more injury prone.  So, I turned to trusty Google and found a few things that I want to incorpo...

This morning I completed our local Turkey Trot, 10k.  I did the 5k in 2015 and remembered there was one really short but really steep hill on the course.  This year, I would be doing that hill twice since the 10k was a repeated loop.  However, I forgot about all of the OTHER hills.  While they weren't that steep, they were still hills.  For those of you that aren't familiar with Delaware, it's pretty flat.  So, if you live in an area with significant elevation changes, you may think this course was easy.  But, like I said, I'm from Delaware and these were a challenge to me.  :)  Here are my results: But, I have to say, I enjoyed the challenges and am happy with my results.  Full disclosure: there were only 13 people in my age group.  So yeah, I was one of the slowest in my age group and in the race overall.  But that's okay.  Sometimes it's about speed and sometimes it's about going the distance.  Okay, okay, for...

This graphic passed through on my Facebook feed the other day.  I had never given much thought to my shoelaces, unless they were pulled too tight.  So, I decided to test it out.  Since, I have high arches, lacing technique number 3 was the obvious choice for me.  Fortunately, I don't have any black toenails to worry about and my current shoes don't slip off my heel.  To be honest, my shoes don't usually bother the tops of my arches but, it took about a minute to re-lace my sneakers, so what the heck. Here's a pic of my shoes pre-run: So, I noticed right away that the tops of my feet felt like they had more room which was a pleasant surprise.  I was a little distracted by the fact that my right side was tied tighter than my left but fortunately it was only 3 miles and I chose to get over it.  Was this a life changing discovery?  No, but I think it could definitely make a bigger difference for those suffering from black toenails (mom) ...

I mentioned in the first post that I am a sporadic runner.  For example, in September I ran a ten mile race, the Bottle & Cork.  My plan was to increase a few more miles and complete  my first half marathon.  For some reason, shortly after the 10 mile race, I just stopped running.  I think life had gotten busier and I lost the motivation to juggle schedules and running.  Plus, I think I was so darn sick of the heat. So anyway, I ran 2 miles a week ago this past Sunday and my quads were really sore the next day.  I was surprised at how quickly my body fell out of shape.  I decided to work through it and went out and did a mile and a half the next day.  We'll say the first half mile was intervals because my 4 year old wanted to run with me.  That means we go around the block alternating speeds but mostly him running as fast as he can for a bit and then walking for a longer bit.  Anyway, after I dropped him off, I decided to see ...

I'm a sporadic runner, I admit it.  Sometimes other parts of life take priority and sometimes I've been known to just take a break.  But when I am running, I love it.  My hope for this blog is to connect with other runners of all skill levels to share our experiences with one another. I plan on sharing helpful articles, recipes, race stories, and more. So please check back soon!