Yeah Sonja!!!

Sonja's performance at the race Saturday was good enough for 3rd place dog!!! Not bad for her first race ever. Not to mention the pretty significant handicap of having me as her human chaperone :p The winning dog was Smelly Ellie. Kudos Smelly!

RESULTS

IT'S SNOW JOKE!!!

Yesterday (Saturday) the gang ran the Snow Joke Half Marathon in Seeley Lake, Montana. It's a beautiful area just east of here in the Swan mountains (I think that's right) at about 4,000 feet (about 1,000 feet higher than here). It's a really nice loop course with guaranteed ice or snow pack for more than half. The conditions were better than last year and it was sunny and gorgeous. And, most importantly, it was Sonja's racing debut. She did great! She was completely focused and very competitive. She seemed to enjoy passing people and dogs especially, which we did right up until the end. For me, running with a dog presented interesting challenges like stopping for a poop break, picking up said poop and running with the bag for a few miles until there was a trash can. We stayed focused but comfortable and finished somewhere around 1:53. I tracked my splits but don't know the race time since there was no clock and I ran before hand and afterwards. I'm pretty sure I ran a negative split -- I was really surprised to be running 8:20s at mile 12. I guess I'm faster right now than I realized. Anyhow, it's a great race and I recommend it to anyone.

As you can see below, Sonja and I wore matching pink cheetah fleece and I wore a super cute cheetah hat Ruth made for everyone. Deb let Ridley and Griffin wear their cheetah costumes, complete with booties that say "dogs rule cheetahs drool." We had such a fun day.

Miles for the week - next week is a cutback week, yay!

M = rest
T = 10 (w Sonja)
W = 10 (w Sonja)+ 14 = 24
R = 6
F = 5 (w Sonja)
S = 15 (w Sonja)
S = 10

Danni = 70
Sonja = 40

Melt and Freeze

It has been warmish (above freezing) during the day and below freezing at night -- so everything melts and then freezes into slickery ice. I have taken a few falls, but this morning Leanne took a spill that required 4 stitches at urgent care!!! Poor Leanne!!!

Sun Worship

I have a cold and am not feeling so hot. But I still slogged through my 23 miler yesterday. I woke up feeling pretty crummy but wanted to get my run over with so I got out of bed and headed towards Deb's, where we were meeting. I picked up breakfast stuff for our foodfest (what's a group run without a post-run feast?) and noticed that it was clear, the Swan range was prominent and there was a perfect sunrise. It *looked* like Spring -- I'm not sure why or how but it just did. Of course, it was in the 20s so not really Spring temperatures.

The run started ok, I felt a little weary but more or less okay. Deb and Ruth wanted to run 8 so they turned around early and I, hopefully not rudely, discouraged Tom from keeping me company. I wasn't sure how much I would need to slog and didn't want to have to worry about slowing someone else down, so I put my iPod in and went on along. (Leanne was pretty far ahead). Before I knew it the sun had come out and completely warmed the road, my hands, my face, my breath and above all, my spirits. I ran back to Deb's with more speed than I've mustered in a good long time. Although I was still stuffed up, I felt great. My legs just wanted to turn over as fast as they could. I made it back to breakfast (that was additional motivation) pretty quickly without feeling exhausted. It's amazing how much my mind affects how I feel. There was nothing physical about the sun's appearance (other than the warmth). But it quickened my pace by about 2 minutes per mile.

I finished up the week with 65 miles (10 miles T,W,R and 23 S and 12 Sun) while Sonja finished with 43 (same T,W,R and 13 on Saturday).

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM Valentines Day Rocks

Happy birthday Chicago Joe!

I don't know exactly WHEN your birthday is, but I know it's around now. Chicago Joe was my old firm mentee, for those who don't know, but got smart before I did and made his escape early on. He's pretty smart.

A message for Lucia -- there will be pictures of the gorgeous chocolates Ted bought me for Valentines Day. Soon. I promise.

Too much cardio? No compute. :p

I've been tracking my caloric intake on sparkpeople.com and there are little helpful hints and info about eating and dieting and health yada yada yada. For some reason this made me giggle. I think this is a good answer, but I was thinking of the meat-head weight lifter types of believe cardio is like poison, eating away at precious muscle making you weak like a sissy boy.

The other thing I wanted to share is that I was very crazy wacky and wild today and wore shorts on my run. It was about 34 and it felt REALLY GOOD to wear shorts. It may still be winter but I'm going to pretend it's Spring.


Q: Is it possible to do too much cardio?

A: It is possible to do too much cardio. What counts as "too much" is different for everyone, and depends on a lot of factors, including the intensity of your exercise, your fitness level, how much activity you do each day, how much you eat, your health status, your fitness goals, etc. Usually, 60-90 minutes of cardio is safe for most people, as long as…
You aren't elevating your heart rate above 80% (of your max) the whole time
You are eating enough carbohydrates every day to replace the fuel you are using up. Your body perceives exercise as a stressor, and chemically reacts the same way it does to "bad" stress. Therefore, too much exercise can have negative effects on your metabolism the same way that eating too few calories can. In addition, too much cardio exercise can result in muscle loss, which is not the outcome you want. SparkPeople's experts recommend taking at least one day off from the cardio during the week—just as a mental health day, if nothing else. It's easy to become compulsive about exercise, and having a day off is a good way to stay away from that. If it really makes you nervous or uncomfortable NOT to exercise, you could be heading for trouble. If you see signs of general fatigue, irritability, sleep problems, physical soreness, or if your workouts start feeling harder than before, you'll probably need to rest from cardio more than one day.

Kalispell Fashion Week Update

Zeke, Sonja and Ted took their places today to see me model my latest design -- a fleece purple cheetah print running skirt, intended to be worn over running tights and worn exclusively at the Cheetah Herders' Snow Joke Half Marathon in two weeks. Sonja wanted to get up close to examine the fabric -- she plans to wear matching purple cheetah fleece herself at the race, which will be her racing debut. Even if she doesn't win the canine division, she will certainly be the most stylish.

In running news. . . oh wait I guess the skirt relates to running. . . anyhow, I felt surprisingly awesome during my 12 mile run with the group today and finished up the week with 62 miles. Sonja finished up with 42 miles for the week.

I learned a little something about snowshoeing. . .

Primarily that it's very hard -- particularly if you're breaking trail. I decided it just wouldn't be enough to run my scheduled 20 miles -- I really want to do some more challenging runs that will get me ready for Western States. I decided snowshoe-running would be a great idea. I talked with some people about where I should go and decided upon Blacktail nordic area -- which has about 40k of trails that are normally groomed. Also, it's at close to 5,000 feet which is decent. Unfortunately, the groomer is broken. And, I was the first person there this morning. I decided to give it a go anyhow. It was beautiful but very very difficult. I couldn't really run and my heart rate was about 30 bpm higher than normal. And it was because it was hard. I decided to go a ways and see if it got better. It didn't. Somehow I managed to hop/walk a mile before I decided to turn around and head to easier terrain. There was just no way I could do that as my long run.

Beautiful!

See look! My feets sink in the "pow" (as Jeannine calls it)

It turned out that coming back was a touch easier -- if I ran where I ran on my way out it was more do-able. Still hard of course, but doable. I decided to run 20 steps and walk 20 steps -- I think I read that in one of Olga's race reports and figured it would be good practice. I eventually made it back to the car and thought "hey, maybe I'll do another two miles." It was just a little easier than before (of course) now that I had double tromped the trail. By now, there were some cross-country skiiers out who were using my trail and making it even better. Then, a group of four snowshoers made the trail even better.

Check it out! Broken trail!

Before I knew it, I had completed 8 miles. The catch, however, is that it took me a full 2.5 hours. I debated continuing on and doing 4 hours of this torture (beautiful as it was, it was torture). I thought I was going to fall over I was so exhausted after the 8. And, I had an OCD attack and knew I wanted my 20 miles.

I drove back to Kalispell and ran the remaining 12 with the furball. It was in the 30s so I actually wore capris. I thought about shorts, but I was really chilled from the drive back. My teeth chattered for about a half mile into the 12 mile run. . . but then I was kind of hot the rest of the run.

All told, this run basically took me all day -- between driving and snowshoeing and sitting on the couch in my change of dry running clothes, trying to decide whether I really needed to run another 12, it was a long long run. But there were a lot of good things about it, and I had my adventure for the weekend.

Which one is the crazy one?

We (Ted and I) think Sonja looks crazy. All.the.time.

Leanne was kind enough to arrange a play date for Sonja & Wally, who are both obnoxiously spazzy and need some sort of exercise on our running day off. Looks like Hunter might be participating a little in the fun. Leanne took this picture and emailed it to me. Pretty funny.

"Just feel free to get into Child's Pose when life requires it. . ."

I attended a yoga class last night -- hot yoga like I did for awhile with Rick. I feel very virtuous, because I'm pretty sure that means I "cross trained." Maybe. I feel so stretched out and good, I think I'm going to keep doing yoga 1-2 times per week. I think it will be good for balance and flexibility and, above all, heat training for WS. I hear WS is hot. Hot yoga is hot. There ya go! Plus, the instructor has great suggestions, like the one quoted above.

If anyone has opinions about whether yoga will be a good use of time for cross-training, let me know. The class is an hour and a half -- when it's all said and done it's about 2 hours of my night. I don't think that two hours would be better spent running, but I suppose it might be better spent at the gym lifting weights or something. I do need to start doing more hill climbing, I know that. I might try to incorporate hill repeats at Lone Pine one night a week. I'm a little panicked after blogger Meghan DNFed at her 100 mile race (and she must have been in first place?!?!? when she dropped due to extreme dehydration). It's a reminder of the very real possibility, even if training is optimal.

Anyhow, it's a little early to think about that. My training is in its infancy -- neither optimal nor failed yet :-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELLEN!

Something tells me this will be a very eventful year for you. I am magical in my ability to make these kinds of predictions.

FUN AT THE PARK!

Right on Kendra!

Looks like Kendra is now sponsored by NUUN! Here is an announcement (scroll down to Jan 31 info). I didn't realize her Le Grizz time was the fastest womens 50 mile time in the US. Go Kendra!

(ok I want some free Nuun now :p j/k)

here she is -- photo by gtach and lifted from linked website

Blogging on Blogging

My former law professor (whose classes I really enjoyed) Ann Althouse is Queen of the Blogosphere. It's pretty remarkable how famous her blog has become. I occassionally see reference to her blog in the NYT and frequently in ABA newsletters. I don't think she was blogging when I was in school. I don't know whether blogging had even really taken off by 2001 or so when I graduated. Maybe I just didn't have any reason to become internet addicted until I started working. I don't even remember using the internet for much other than online research until I started working. Anyhow, this got me thinking -- how weird must it be to be a student in this age of blogging and facebook and myspace? It's tough to imagine reading a current Prof's blog or even weirder, to have them reading my blog or seeing all my indiscretions on some facebook type website (isn't that what kids with poor judgment, which is basically all kids, do nowadays?) I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying it's hard for me to imagine. Professors and teachers were always so mysterious and distant. Evidently, they're people too with lives and opinions and they blog :p

Weather is huge but I'm still lazy

I'm really fascinated by the impact weather has on performance. This morning it was a balmy 30 and I ran 9 miles with an average HR of 124 and an average pace of 9:15. Last week when the weather was around zero, I ran 10 miles with an average heart rate of 125 and an average pace of 10:40. The other factors at play, of course, include the fact that last week was week 3 of a higher mileage buildup while this week is a cut-back week. But that shouldn't make too much difference considering the cut-back thus far only amounts to 10 total miles. Surely I'm not suddenly that rested. Also, I doubt I'm suddenly a lot faster.

One thing that really stands out is that I'm pretty sure that I should be running at at least 135 for general aerobic/recovery pace. Although it's hard to run in the cold, I don't put in a better effort when it's warm. I'm thinking I should try to start including tempo/LT runs to make up for the fact that I do all my runs so easy. Alternatively, I'm thinking I should really try to nail down my max HR to confirm that I'm lazy. When Cheryl was helping me I think I figured it was around 184, which is still quite low for my age. I doubt it's lower than that.

Lastly, on an unrelated note, I'm reading Dean K.'s book, Ultramarathon Man, and I sincerely hope running 100 miles isn't as painful as reading about Dean's taut and cut bod and what an elite he is. He is clearly a total narcissist and doesn't have any concept of what an elite runner really is. Running far does not an elite make -- at least not that fact alone. Does anyone know whether he has ever actually been a top ultra runner? I know he has been relatively fast, but has he ever won a race? I'm willing to bet Kendra could kick his butt any day of the week. Why isn't she sponsored by North Face?

Sometimes Life Throws you a Curve Ball

As many of you know, from reading this blog, Sonja chewed one of my beloved Dansko clogs. It was felt and therefore vegan and less guilt inducing -- not to mention more casual looking and appropriate with fleece, my clothing of choice. (Black fleece is dressy enough for work, no?) Anyhow, there are no more felt clogs. Not only that, I found it really hard to find any Dansko shoes that I wanted. I finally ordered THESE, though not without first having to cancel and re-order them due to total unavailability web-wide. Finally, I was able to get them from a shoe place I'd never heard of and I got them today! And guess what -- they are not Dansko but "Sanita." Turns out, Sanita distributed in the US all along, making shoes for Dansko, but ended its contract but will now distribute the shoes under its own name: SANITA The craziness. And I didn't even know.

My new shoes are very cute and much dressier -- so more appropriate for court, where I do not wear fleece, except for when I forget I have to go to court (ooops). I do not have these, but I think these could go with my fleecewear (!!!):

ICE VILLAGE

It's a little tough to tell but that's Flathead Lake and all those specks are ice fisherman. As Leanne and I were finishing up our 20 miler on Saturday men (they seemed to all be men) were hauling their giant ice crew thingies out in droves and covering the lake. Looks like a giant ice party. In Wisconsin everyone had ice shanties -- here people just sit and fish right out in the open.

I wrapped up my first 3 week block of training -- ran 60 miles this week. Sonja ran 40 miles this week, which hardly tires her unfortunately. I need some miles without her -- she does pull me which makes running a little easier. Since she won't be able to pull me through WS I need to learn to run without her too ;)

Next week will be a slacker week running-wise. I am relieved by that.

For anyone who is curious -- Chris, of the Chicago Runner guys whose link is over -----> on that side somewhere, found out that there is indeed a physiological reason why it's harder to get your heart rate up in extremely cold weather. During the really cold days this week my average HR would be like 123, despite a decent effort. Very interesting. Today it was above freezing, and although we were running through puddles and it was icky my pace was so much faster and it felt so much easier. I'm so fussy about weather I guess. I prefer 34-45 thank you. ;)

SMOKIN' DRINKIN' SOLDIER BEAR -- Ted sent me this story with the subject line: "He drank a bottle of beer like any man"

Law firms are getting cuddly according to the NYT. I think it would be great if clients were always charged a flat rate and I could just come to work 8-5, get my work done and go home. Of course, compared to what is considered cuddly in this article, my job is downright socialist. God I love my new job. YAY! (I still feel gleeful when I think about the job I left behind. I still feel like I escaped. I feel so liberated. I *have* been liberated. I'm so glad I have free will).