Racing 40 For 40!!!

This is my blog to help me get through my challenge of doing 40 races in the year that I turned 40 years old!!

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New Treadmill!!!

I am finally getting a treadmill!! Woohoo! I have been researching for the last couple of months and had kind of narrowed it down to what criteria I definitely needed and wanted. I decided to go to our local Sears to see what they had. I knew they wouldn’t have a lot to choose from in the store, but their website was a little overwhelming. TOO MANY OPTIONS!! The lady was very helpful and we sat down and looked online together. I checked out what they had there and actually found one that was perfect. It was less expensive than the ones I’d seen on their website and it had everything I needed. I went with the Nordictrack Elite 3700 Interactive Treadmill. It goes up to 12 miles an hour and has an incline of 15%. It has a 3.5 horsepower motor, which is very sturdy. It has a belt size of 22x60.  It has a weight capacity of 375lbs. It should be delivered October 16 and I can’t wait! Woohoo

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This was the beautiful necklace we got in lieu of a medal for The Goddess Run. It's really pretty!

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The Goddess Run at Cascade Locks, OR! This was such a fun race. I think I’d like to do it again sometime! I had planned on doing the half marathon, but about a week and a half before, decided to cut it down to the 10k. I had not trained properly. This was fine because I ran it with friend Alaina and we had a great time. It didn’t feel competitive at all, just like a nice run with a friend. The day started out cold and I’m glad I wore long pants and a long sleeve top. It turned into a beautiful sunny day. There was great support on the course and lots of fun shwag! My stats were the following: 10k; 1:18:49. I didn’t keep track of my average pace per mile because I forgot to stop my tracker right after the crossing line. Oh well. Awesome race!

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Today’s 10k was my 11th run out of 40. That sounds WAYYYYYY behind schedule! At least I’ve broken the “more than 10″ mark! This was a virtual race (of course) by Full Medal Runs. It was called the “Dog Days of Summer” run. The proceeds of this run went to the ASPCA, which is a charity that I love! I had not run since last Monday when I ran 9 miles and got SOOOO sick afterwards! It was awful. Today was beautiful. I ran around 8:30 am and it was like 65 degrees or something. Beautiful day. My stats were: 6.39 Miles; Duration: 1:08:57; Avg Min/Mi: 10:47 ( a little faster than usual! Woo hoo!). I am planning on doing the same thing tomorrow. I am sad and bummed to say that I changed my race for next week’s Goddess Run in Hood River, OR. I was planning on running the half marathon with my friend Alaina. I have not trained well this year, partly because of the smoke from the fires, partly because of the heat (lots of days over 100 degrees) and partly because of my laziness. However I still have lots of time to get in a half marathon. I’m not done yet!!!! In fact, Dan and I are looking at Precor treadmills so I can continue on this streak through the winter. Anyway, I still love/hate running!

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Another race under my belt! This was supposed to be a 5k but I needed to up my milage in preparation for this half marathon that I'm training for. I ran 9 miles today after not running ANYTHING for 3 weeks! Let me tell you how much it sucked!! It took me 1:34:50. That's not what sucked- it was just so damn hard. When I got home, I was sick for about an hour. Sick means= nauseated, stomach cramping, and dizzy and TIRED!! Finally felt better after eating and drinking.

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Another race under my belt! This was supposed to be a 5k but I needed to up my milage in preparation for this half marathon that I'm training for. I ran 9 miles today after not running ANYTHING for 3 weeks! Let me tell you how much it sucked!! It took me 1:34:50. That's not what sucked- it was just so damn hard. When I got home, I was sick for about an hour. Sick means= nauseated, stomach cramping, and dizzy and TIRED!! Finally felt better after eating and drinking.

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Zombie Run virtual run!!!  Yesterday I did my longest run of the year so far. Not that it was super long or anything, but it felt good to get past the 10k mark since I will need to be running 13.1 soon! I ran with a friend who I haven’t seen in too long, so it was awesome to catch up. Her and her friend are what I call “professional runners”, meaning they rock! They run all of the time and have done lots of races and basically kick ass as runners. So I couldn’t really keep up with them, but they offered to run with me again, which was nice. We ran at a place called the ditch. It’s basically an irrigation ditch up in the hills of Leavenworth, WA. We got all the way to the end and you have to climb up onto the top of the water. There are board hovering over the water and you walk for a few minutes all the way until there is a fence where you can’t go any further. You turn around to go back and look down. You are VERY high up and you can see the town of Leavenworth and the view is UNBELIEVABLE!! Amazing! I’m so happy I got to go and look forward to going again! My stats were as follows: Miles: 6.97, duration: 1:16:33, min/mile: 10:59. My phone with runkeeper stopped at one point and I also had to put it down before climbing on top of the water ditch boards. So............I’d like to think I ran a little more than this!

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Another Medal!

So last week I did another 10 virtual run. This one was the Peace & Love Bug Run. Silly, but whatever. I ran up a road called North Road here in Peshastin. It’s a beautiful little road but with not much of a shoulder. I did not have my headphones in, because I wanted to be able to hear if any cars were coming around any corners. The 3 miles up seemed to take FOREVER, but I finally made it and was able to turn around! My stats were as follows: Miles: 6.21, Duration: 1:10:05, Min/Mile: 11:17. Ugh- still slow! Seems I say that every time! 

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Here are a few goodies from my See Jane Run 5k that I did in Seattle last weekend. The race got you a tech-t and champagne glass also. I’ll use the champagne glass for smoothies since I don’t drink. The cute top is from Activyst, a company that starts sports programs for girls in countries all over the world. These places don’t usually have girls playing sports. It’s a cool idea. The shirt is super soft and comfortable. I bought the larger Spibelt at the pre-race event. Haven’t tried it yet but look forward to. The cool reusable bag came with running the race. It has a great saying on it.

#racing40for40, #seejanerun, #racegear, #raceschwag

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See Jane Run Seattle 5k!!!! This was my 5th race out of 40 for the year! It was today, July 12, 2015. It was in one of my favorite cities, Seattle. My sister and her two boys, Leo and Enzo came to cheer me on. This race was located at Gasworks Park right on the water, as you can see. It was a cloudy morning, starting at 8:30am. The clouds didn’t bother me, The cooler weather was refreshing coming from hot, hot, hot eastern WA. This was my first 5k race! I ran faster than I ever have for about 3 miles. Definitely faster than when I run at home! My stats were the following: my time was 30:01. My pace was 9:40/minute. That’s way faster than I usually run. I usually run 11 minutes per mile! This is nice because it lets me know I CAN run fast if I really want to. I cam in 68th place out of 415 overall, 65th out of 407 females, and 14th out of 64 in my age range (40-44). We got some sweet schwag- a champagne glass, chocolate and a nice t shirt. I really loved this race and would definitely do it again!

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July 4th River Run in Wenatchee! This race was my 4th of 40 for the year. It has been unusually hot here in Eastern WA for the last several weeks. Like triple digits every day! This race started at 8:00am and I arrived at Pybus market at 7:30am and it was already 81 degrees! I have been running at 5am when its much cooler. So, it was a tough race for sure. I’m glad it was only a 10k and not a half marathon. The course is beautiful- it goes along the Columbia River in East Wenatchee. The view is awesome. So my stats were 55th place out of 67. My time was 1:09:42. My pace was 11:14/mile. My age place was 8th. I will say that these results are taken from the website linked to Run Wenatchee’s site and it was a little hard to figure out for some reason. So I hope what I’m saying is true. I had my husband look at what I was looking at and he agreed so I gave it my best shot. This race was difficult for me because of the heat. I had to walk SEVERAL times! But I am still glad I did it. 

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First Race for the Year!

Well...........today was my first race for my 40 for 40 challenge. I did a 10k for the “Get Fit For Bling” virtual race website. It was a Memorial Day race- I will post a pic when I get the medal!! Because I am doing so many races in the year, I figured I need to plan on doing some virtual races in case I can’t find enough “in person” races to do. So here’s the race recap: I did NOT get much sleep last night at all! A friend and his cute little French Bulldog spent the night and my dog, Dexter was going bananas all night and unable to settle down. He just wanted to play, play, play all night and not sleep, sleep, sleep at all. I got up about 7am and drank 8 ounces of pea protein powder in water with some electrolyte powder in it. 

Started running and the sun was already beating down. Fortunately there was a nice cool breeze that unfortunately turned into wind and lasted the whole time. It felt great- no pain anywhere but my ego. I had to walk several times for about 30 seconds at a time. There were some small hills, which are good. I need to get more hills in my runs. My stats were: 6.23 miles; Duration: 1:07:31

Avg min/mile: 10:51 So......I am still a slowwwww runner, but that’s ok. I’ll get faster- I have to! Next post will be about my running history- I promise!

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First race of my 40 for 40 challenge. This is post race with a green smoothie. Looks like someone else wants it!

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My first post!

So this is my first posting of this NEW blog! It’s currently 8:43pm and I’m a little tired so this will be a quick one. I will post a much longer one, probably tomorrow. I will do a somewhat formal introduction and tell you all about myself. The short version is that I am turning 40 years old (aagghh!!) in two days and I gave myself the challenge of doing 40 races (mostly running) for the next year. So I’m doing 40 races for my 40th year!! This will be a challenge but I know I can do it! That’s it for now, more to come soon!