Why Breaking2 Broke My Heart (& other weekend updates)...

If you're even remotely familiar with anything distance running you probably already know that Nike was working tirelessly with 3 elite distance runners in an attempt to run a sub-2 hour marathon. I'm not going to go into all the details of that journey because if you do a web search you'll be inundated with a ton of info on it. The attempt was run on Saturday May 6th in Monza, Italy (on the Formula One track). It started around 11:30pm EST and 2 hours and 25 seconds later it was over...

Just 26 seconds short of their goal! 

I was a little heart broken about it because I was really hoping they would all make it. But even though they didn't "break 2" it was an incredibly amazing accomplishment. It's the closest anyone has come to a sub-2 hour marathon. And while it doesn't qualify for a world record (because of the Pacers and other fancy stuff they had) it will go down in the history books of distance running. Congrats to the Nike team, to the athletes (especially Eliud Kipchoge, who crossed the finish first) and everyone who was a part of this endeavor. It was a truly incredible effort.

My truly incredible effort for this weekend will take the form of running in the Wings for Life World Run and swimming in the Swim Miami 1 mile open water swimming event tomorrow. It will be a back-to-back event day, and I will be exhausted after, so today I tried to take it easy with a 1 mile run...

It's A Double Race Week!!!!

It's finally here! My double race weekend is this weekend...

And no... I'm still not 100% ready. BUT I did manage to get some training completed this morning. First I did a 1 mile swim...

And then I did my daily run...

Tomorrow and Wednesday are scheduled to be running days, and for Thursday (and maybe Friday) I plan to swim again and do quick one mile runs.

In addition to this week being busy with training and my back-to-back events on Sunday, it will also be a busy work week. I'll be spending more time out of the office (in class or teaching a course) than I will at the office catching up on work. So eating properly, resting and hydrating will be challenging but essential this week. 

It's probably a good thing the weekend wasn't too hectic. I only did 1 mile runs (on both Saturday and Sunday). I spent most of Saturday at a CPR course and then watching movies and TV shows on Hulu. And Sunday was spent hanging out with Dafney and Kai trying to "escape the room"...

And indulging in dairy-free butter pecan ice-cream...

Happy Monday & Happy 1st of May!!!

How was your weekend?

How was your training to start off the week/month?

Back To Reality...

The first day back at work after vacation is always hard and relatively busy. I spent the early morning responding to emails & addressing a few pending items from last week. I spent the late morning to early afternoon in meetings. And I spent the rest of the day working on stuff for two major meetings tomorrow. Needless to say I was busy but my heart still wanted to be on vacation...

Now that I'm home my day is only half finished. Once I'm done with this post, I need to start the work I brought home with me. And then once the sun sets and it gets a little cooler outside, I need to do my daily run to keep my running streak alive. Both the blogging streak and the running streak take time away form other things (like resting) but that doesn't make me enjoy them any less. Even on vacation I set aside time to complete my blog posts...

And of course I ran every day while I was there. Not only did I run, but I had sub-10 runs every time!

Competing Priorities

My training has been resuscitated! It was touch and go for a while. Things weren't looking good at all. Let's face it, I haven't done much anything since the Coral Springs Half Marathon. The truth is life has been...challenging, with lots of competing priorities, and I had no choice but to focus on something everything else except training...

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One of the competing priorities happened to be my national certification as a trauma nurse (Yay!). But I've also had a few unwelcome distractions (I'm still dealing with those actually)...

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Highlights from the past five days...

Today started with a quick session at the gym...

I'm going to aim for more cardio before and after strength training; and longer reps or increased sets for the weights (I only do light weights so increasing the reps and sets will be ok).

In addition to doing more cardio and weights in the gym, I'm trying to improve my swimming endurance in preparation for the April Swim Miami event. I went into the open water swim less than 100% prepared last year, and I want to avoid making some of the same mistakes this year. So I've been doing research to help me perfect my freestyle stroke...

and to learn more about the open water swimming process...