Young Party of Four

Frustrated. That is literally the best word to describe how I feel about running right now. It's been about 3 months since I hurt my heel. What I thought initially was nothing more than plantar fasciatis (hereafter referred to as PF because I can never spell it right when I write it all out), I now think is more than likely a stress fracture (or something else...) in my heel. I can pinpoint when it happened and likely what caused it. On my last 6 mile training run just before running the OUC Half, I decided to (stupidly) run on concrete rather than my normal asphalt. I see people ask all the time why runners decide to run on the road instead of perfectly good sidewalks. There are multiple reasons, but two that are usually my own are that sidewalks tend to have cracks which can be dangerous, especially at night, and concrete is so much harder than asphalt. It seems weird, but until you spend time walking/running on both,  you don't necessarily notice the difference. The OUC H...

Today is Kenzie's half birthday! We kind of have a thing about half birthdays around here. We don't do anything major, but we like to mark their appearance because it is fun for the kids to know that they are officially halfway to their next birthday. It's a bit bittersweet for me though. As is the usual, here is a brief update on all things Kenzie. - She is still really tall. She is somewhere around 53.5 inches or so. I honestly don't know for sure. They are so hard to measure on my own. It's about 2.5 inches taller than 6 months ago so I think that could be about right. Either way, most of her height remains in her legs. - She is so amazing at math. Seriously, this kid got all her Daddy's math brains. Thankfully. Her teacher made the comment at parent teacher conference that she was so excited to see her best math student this year is a girl. She just figures out math problems super easily. She also loves it. She asks us to play math games with her o...

It's official! We both get to say that we are half-marathoners. 13.1 miles is no joke. There have been a few times that we have walked that equivalent throughout a day (though it is rare because that is a LOT of walking and you are hard pressed to randomly walk that amount in a day even if you are on a mission), but to purposely try to complete it in a set amount of time all at once... that is some serious stuff. The week leading up to the race was nerve racking for me. I ended up having what I think was my plantar fascitis flare up the Sunday before the race after our last 6 mile training run. It was bad. I developed it a few years back when we lived in a house with almost all tile and it comes and goes randomly depending on activities I have done or shoes I have worn. It hasn't bothered me at all though during training until a week ago. Because of course it would show up a week out from race day. Why the heck not? Let's liven up the mood a little. Freaking heel. As a...

It's official! The homestretch. Race day in upon us. Wednesday Plan: 3 Miles, Actual: 3 Miles This was a nice, easy run. I used to not want to do 3 miles as a normal, everyday style run. But here we are! I can do this in my sleep. It was nice weather and super easy. One thing I did notice though... some minor heel pain after my run. Hmmm...  Friday Plan: 3 Miles, Actual: 3 Miles Another easy run. Again, some minor heel pain. I was wondering if it was mostly because I wasn't taping my foot figuring that since I was only going 3 miles, it wouldn't be needed. Looking back, I think I should have taped. The weather was nice this day and I got it done just before the sun came up. I kept my typical pace. It's definitely my happy pace and I'm still feeling good about that overall. I reading in the OUC participant guide that you just have to keep an overall 15 minutes or less pace in order to get your time. They said they could start removing the timing strip...

It's the biggest week of the training plan!! Here. We. Go! Tuesday Plan: 5 Miles, Actual: 5 Miles We have officially hit the point that 5 miles doesn't seem like much anymore. It's just 5 miles. The only downfall with this run was that it was about 5 degrees cooler than I would have liked. Oh well. Beggars can't be choosers so I'm letting that go. It wasn't as cold as I was on Sunday morning so I will take that as a win. I did my normal route and didn't see the bear. Again. So that's about all I felt with this run. I was having a bit of pain on the side of my calf like I have before but it went away after about a mile. My pace was about average for me at around 13:30 or so. The run felt good though. That's about it. It's becoming so routine at this point that I don't have a lot to say about most of these shorter runs. They are standard, I guess. And I guess that is good. Thursday Plan: 5 Miles, Actual: 5 Miles All in all, not a bad ru...

Double digit week is upon us!!! Not only is it Week 10 of the training plan, but it is also the week that we run double digits for the first time as part of training. Okay, as part of life. I've never run double digits before this week. Tuesday Plan: 4.5 Miles, Actual: 4.5 Miles Our last week with 4.5 mile short runs. Next week it goes up to 5 and then drops to 3 for the weeks before the actual race. This was another one of those crazy humid mornings. I screenshot the weather before I left when it said 100% humidity and it was so bad. I couldn't see but maybe a house ahead of me for a while during the run. It did start to burn off just a bit as I was heading home in the final .5 mile stretch. Or maybe I was just accustomed to it by then. Either way, it was rough. It was cool though so I'm calling that a major win because I don't want to another 100% humidity day along with heat. Though it could happen. This is Central Florida after all. This run felt easy. It was de...

Bring on the 18 mile week!!! This is going to be an interesting one since one run I'm doing outside my normal neighborhood (more on that on day 2 of this week's plan). Full disclosure to myself when I read this back one day... I'm writing this a full week removed from the first run of this week so I have no idea what was going on most of the time when I was running a week before. =( Tuesday Plan: 4.5 Miles, Actual: 4.5 Miles This is the first week of short runs being 4.5 miles and I was ready for it. I ran these at about my normal pace averaging 13:49 pace. Overall I was slightly slower, but it was fairly warm this morning and I wasn't feeling it. I think this was a run that I woke up not in the mood to do anything but I did it anyway so I could keep on schedule. Also, I knew that with this week, we were officially just over a month away from race day so I was excited and feeling sort of ready to get the show on the road and finish. Other than the heat, I remember...