Disney Princess Half Marathon Training Week 5-11 days!

Feb 06-12

Monday Feb 06    After a really bad running day, the day before, I knew I needed to go out and try and get more miles under my feet. So Josh and I went back to Flatwood Park (a park with a paved running trail through the woods). It's mostly used for bikers but I've seen some runners there as well. The thing is about this trail is that it's a BIG loop through the forest with no shortcuts. Once you stop you either have to turn around or go the entire 7+ miles. It has about 4-5 covered bench areas with water but I need more water than that, SO I tried my new hand held water bottle I bought for long runs like this. It has a strap around the bottle so I can just slip my hand into it. I LOVE IT. It doesn't leak, it doesn't feel uncomfortable, I may post pictures of it later.
     The first 3 miles I was doing a lot of walking/running. I'm really trying to pace myself. I would run almost every other chorus in the music I was listening to then speed walk the other times. At the first stopping point I asked my husband how I was doing. He was like "you know you're wearing yourself out more by all this stopping in going. If you really want to train you need to find a comfortable pace and stick to it" (he's ran a 1/2 and a full marathon before).  So after our break (3.5 miles into the run) I started just joggying/running. I picked a pace that I could keep and just stuck with it. It was somewhere around 9.50-10'02. I would go until I couldn't go any farther, then I would speed walk. I would also use points in the trail as check points (I'm going to run to the bridge then stop). That helped a lot. ANYWAY I ended up running much faster than the previous time. I didn't run farther BUT I was happy that I just did it. I ended up running 8 miles in 1 hour and 35 minutes, at a pace of 11:50 (with all the walking at the beginning didn't help my pace..but it's under 16, so..that's all that matters).

Tuesday Feb 07
    Giving my legs a rest I ended up doing 2 Turbo Fire video's Core and Tone. I love core. It's my favorite video.Tone is really good because it works the ENTIRE body. With Turbo fire you're never just working 1 muscle group, she always does the arms and lower body at the same time!

Wed. Feb 08
    Wed. is my bible study group day. After running a few errands I finally put in a 20 minute run right before bible study. I was mainly working on keeping a steady pace the entire time (like I did with my long run). I did 2.01 Miles in 20 minutes at a 10:13 pace.
     After the run, My husband had the car at his job so I rode my bike to my bible study. It was a 3.4 mile ride but I did it in 20 minutes at a 10:02 pace, not bad considering I just did my run!

Thursday Feb. 09
   Oh goodness I was having horrible stomach pains this morning (:P). But, I Just tried to be thankful that it wasn't going to happen during the race. SO, I did 2 Turbo Fire videos- Lower Body and Core. The first time I used the lower body bands in Hawaii, I couldn't walk the next 3 days. It's an intense workout with an elastic band (tied in a knot)around your ankles. You're doing leg kicks, hamstring extensions, and even ballet moves with the extra resistance.   Pretty excited!!! There is an exercise were you take a tied elastic band and put it around your ankles. You are sitting on the floor with your knees bent and feet on the floor. You leave your right foot on the ground and you grab the left leg around the knee. Your goal is to extend the leg your holding fully while the resistance band holds it down. My left leg used to only make it 2 inches up and then start shaking really bad. That's as far as I could push it. As of Thursday I was able to fully extend it! I'm thinking the reason for my knee pain is the weakness of all my leg and hip muscles in the left leg and my knee is compensating for it. I try to do this video at least twice a week, I've really seen some great results and can't wait till I can do the entire video all the way through without taking a break.
        I did another quick run before I had to pick up my husband for work. I did 2.52 miles in 25 minutes, not to bad. Tried to just maintain a quick pace of 6.9-7.0 the whole time.

Friday Feb 10th.
   I didn't run, still having pretty bad stomach pain, so I just did more Turbo Fire videos. I did the Core, Upper Body, and Ab video. The Ab video ALWAYS kills me. It's ONLY 10 minutes long but I always just want to lay on the floor and do nothing afterwards! LOL BUT I want a 6 pack and I'm doing everything I can to get there! We also went to Jacksonville and saw Jeff Dunham, it was hilarious! Great show.

Saturday Feb 11
   We stayed the night at my sisters house and drove home today. We were both exhausted (the show didn't end till 11:30, got back to the house around midnight) then had to do the 3 1/2 hour drive home. With a huge construction patch it took us about 4 hours to get home. We were still pretty tired so, I just had a day of rest with a LDR - Long distance run in mind for the next day.

Sunday Feb 12
  The weather had been REALLY crazy here. It was so cold one morning I had to scrape ice off of our car on the way to take my husband to work! IN FLORIDA LOL...brr, SO I decided to do my long run on the treadmill. I did really well up to miles 4-5. I ran the entire time was keeping a pretty fast pace, but I think I was going to fast and burnt out all my steam. I was dragging through  mile 6-8, I was trying everything I could to just push through it. I ended up just speed walking every other song and then trying to run again. I was pretty tired BUT I wanted to do a double digit run!... but, I made it the pace wasn't pretty BUT I was excited that I didn't quit and I just pushed through it. My Nike + watch accidentally got turned off  instead of paused SO I wasn't sure just how far I had gone. By the time my Nike Phone app said I did 10 miles, My watch (which is also connected to my foot, which I think is more accurate) said I did 10.45, If I would have known that I would have kept pushing till 11. OH WELL. I did it, 10.45 Miles in 1 Hour and 45 minutes at a pace of 10:20, Not bad at all :) Probably have one more double digit run before the race :)

Thanks for reading!