Hello! How’s it going? Speaking of ‘cheat days’ today is National Dessert Day!! Oh yeah. Let’s do this. Instead of chocolate or ice cream I did wine as dessert last night and headed to a girl’s night out. SR is trying to get me more social. I don’t know why, but I’m rolling with it as long as alcohol is involved.
It’s still super HOT here so I wore a light sundress because everything else just makes me hot and sweaty (and shows my sweat). And I was sporting my new favorite thing – a California charm. I spotted it randomly at a local boutique and had to have it. I’m not a big jewelry person but I do love running related jewelry and now I love repping CA.
This is how you know wine night is getting serious… the Stick comes out.
And you know you came home too early when you still want to party and have to play around with your cat and new Pirate hat solo…
Before girl’s night I had a great lunch of TJ’s egg white salad on a bed of tons of veggies. Plus some good spicy peanuts and corn nuts.
Random note / random Marshall’s find – Barney Butter! This stuff is great but expensive so I was pretty excited about it.
Marathon Training Week One
In running news… I’ve been struggling with getting on track with marathon training. I’ve been running too often and too many junk miles and it shows in my results. I’ve gotten slower instead of faster toward hitting my PR goals. I’m not upset about it because I have been using running to escape and just get away from the house or life or both.
My mental health is more important than what I weigh or my race performance. I’ve had a really hard time in my relationship this past year. And for whatever reason running when I’m sad makes me run slower. Running when I’m mad makes me run faster but I haven’t felt angry (which I guess is good that I’m not an angry person, but bad because it could have helped my running?). Ha!
Also, listening to podcasts and books while running seems to make me slow a bit too. The pace of the voice reading in my ear makes me want to slow down like I’m taking a walk with a friend. That is fine too. Sometimes I don’t want to think about life during a run and want to get lost in a story.
Now I’ve come to a relatively stable place and am ready to sign up for a goal race and actually follow a marathon training plan. I will do some half marathons in training and maybe a full mary or two since the plan I chose has multiple 20 milers. But it should work fine since I’ll only be running 4 days a week. The other days will be cross training / gym and rest days. I’m using the Run Less Run Faster book as my training plan but am not sure what goal pace to choose just yet so I’ll have to assess based on a few weeks using the plan.
Today I did a tempo run – 1 mile w/up, 5 miles tempo, 1 mile c/d. I wasn’t as fast as I set out to be, but I did a lot better than I’ve done in a while because it was a run with a purpose.
The tempo miles were:
- 8:25
- 8:29
- 8:34
- 8:14
- 8:21
I was aiming for under 8:15 but it will work for a start.
For some reason I am in all purple today. Call me Barney. It’s really random that companies send me A LOT of purple gear and it’s my least favorite color to wear. But, free > purple so I will wear this ish all day. Thank you.
i really appreciate your acknowledging that mental health has to come first. i am a college student and this is always something that’s very encouraging to hear. you’re my fave, monica! <3
Training for my first full marathon in January! I have a half this weekend to prep for and I’m not really looking forward to it!
Purple is your least favorite color to wear??? But it’s so pretty for redheads! It’s my favorite color and color to wear although I’ve been wearing alot of orange for my job. I’m feeling the same as you. Time to have more quality workouts and back off on the quantity. I will have to check out that book! Fast paced music always helps me run faster.
Good luck with your marathon training! I am so with you on audiobooks slowing down my running pace … so I’ve been trying to listen to them only on long slow days. As a strawberry blonde, all pastels look gross on me, so I avoid all shirts in pastel colors … but I’ll rock the heck out of pastel pants!
I LOVE your necklace!! I agree, I run slower when I run sad, but sometimes that’s exactly what our body needs. I have run through heart break and deaths with tears streaming down my face, and it is honestly the best therapy for me. I really don’t like brown 🙁 And I’m super excited about the Nike Women’s tanks they are giving away this year! Yay! What marathon are you training for? I’m debating on the Ventura one in May (Mountains to Coast?, something like that).
I don’t wear orange, yellow, or brown (unless its a shoe). Agree with the others I think you look good in purple, but I will take the offending purple off your hands ; )
Oh no….& purple is my Favorite color!!!
If you want to get rid of your free purple deliveries…. I’d love them!! I’ll pay shipping
Purple is a good color on you!
I’m really happy that you’re in a more stable place, and I hope that place is happy for you :).
I love love love to wear purple and jewel tones, but yellow isn’t really a great color on me. I’m pretty fair, and unless it’s neon yellow, it just doesn’t work for me. :/
I typically never wear yellow, mostly because I’m blonde and I feel like it washes me out but also because I don’t like yellow, like even a little bit. In fact, hate it.
I don’t like working out in brown. It’s hard to have a good colored brown that doesn’t scream “muddy run” (or “muddy runs” I guess).
I think often when we are stressed, trying to force ourselves to run a certain pace or distance just adds to the stress. I did the same thing while my fiancé was laid off and job hunting – lots of runs alone to calm down, escape into my own world, work on biting my tongue and zone out. Now it’s time to use those junk miles as a solid base to begin a focused marathon push.
Hate hate hate wearing red!
I guess I’m just training to be faster. My run today was 6 miles at 7:47 pace 🙂
Canary yellow. I don’t wear it.
I’m tapering now for the NYC marathon. I’ve been running 2-3 days a week with no cross trainings. Lol. Gonna be a slow marathon for me. But I don’t care. Life got in the way and that’s life!
Such a great race!!! Good luck!!!!
Training for a marathon at the end of next month (more of a training run situation since I haven’t been doing much volume) and one in March. My least favorite color to wear is white. Anything white is usually ruined the first time I wear it.
I love wearing white but stain it every single time. My mom has even told me to stop wearing it because I’m so messy! Ha.
yellow and orange are NOT my colors as a fair skinned, hazel-eyed medium-brown haired gal! I can wear everything else tho.
I can NOT wear orange, certain reds/pinks, and yellow. I am very very fair skinned, 100% irish, and those warm colors bring out all the greens and yuck in my skin tone hahah. I am much better off with blues, greens, and some purples…
I love blues and greens too.
Barney Butter! I love it!! The guy who owns the company was taking my spin class for a while and I would get little samples all the time. Sadly I don’t work there anymore… Anyway, found it at Homegoods and thought I was getting a kick ass deal and then it turns out I was paying more than I would have in the grocery store. WTF. So watch out!!! Looks like you got a good deal though 🙂
Ah! That is really cool about the owner guy!!
Not training for anything right now but I will usually avoid black tops, mainly because I love pretty much anything neon…. I LOVE that it is in right now in workout gear!