a repost from my blog at www.icanrunaminute.com
I got my 238 average back! :) I wasn't overly thrilled with the 239 average I had last week. With August firmly in the books I can lay claim to a 4 lb drop this month and a very nice 10 pound loss over the May & June months when I averaged 248 each month :)
My original goal set in January was a weight in the low 240s because I don't look pregnant at that weight and I have a lot more clothes to wear. With the 230s one things I recall are visual changes and I noticed that in the mirror this morning when I woke up. I hadn't regularly bothered measuring my waist but was looking for a tape measure this morning :) Right now I'm down between 8 & 9 inches in the waist so that's pretty cool.
Back to Back Half Marathons -
I did complete two half marathons this past weekend in two different states, namely Iowa and Minnesota. It took about 1,400 miles of driving over 23 hours but I did it. Something else, I manually entered some data in SmashRun from Athlinks. SmashRun will only accept data from 2007 on up but, the race I did this past Saturday was only 1 second per mile slower than my fastest half marathon back in 2007. In my mind, I'm pushing the clock back and right now I've pushed that clock back close to 8 years in terms of my running performance :)
I haven't gone through all my pictures & videos yet from the weekend but did find a finisher's picture from my Sunday race in Minnesota.
Running 2 half marathons in 2 days is enough to qualify for Jupiter level with the Half Fanatics running club. If I can run another half marathon this coming weekend I'll have 3 in 9 days which qualifies for Mars level :) The closer to the Sun, the higher the ranking.
Up until now, my training has basically consisted of taking the words of the poet T.S. Eliot to heart who said, "We Never Know How Far We Can Go, Until We Risk Going Too Far". So, I've been pushing myself in light of these words. I think breaking is going too far and that's what I'm on the cusp of right now. There is a race in Missouri I could run this coming Sunday. There are also some boat races at the Lake of the Ozarks were my family has a condo and the race is only 1 hour and 46 minutes away from the race. I'm not sure if completing another half marathon would be most responsible for me breaking but rather another goal I've been working on which is to increase my monthly running mileage by 10 miles per month for the next 6 months. I need 117 miles this month to hit that goal for a 2nd consecutive month of mileage increases. I'm around 92 miles right now. I also have a Running Streak goal - to run every day and I've kept that up for 58 days now. I would give top priority to the Running Streak. The second most important running goal I have is to knock out consecutive 100 mile months and I'm well within reach of that goal. When I hit 100 this month I'll be Double Platinum. I mainly wanted the 10 mile per month increase to earn a rarely earned badge on SmashRun but, there are a couple other easier badges to earn. One only requires a 5 mile per month increase and the other only requires an increase of any amount.
We'll see. Gotta Run!