Tip Tuesday

 

 

Wear a pair of compression socks and you may run better.   The stockings may stimulate an increased flow of blood and oxygen to the muscles, which helps them work more efficiently, and can significantly improve running performance.

Recap

Well it’s been about 2 weeks since we actually posted about our training and how things are going.  Let's recap.

Tuesdays are still on the schedule for hill repeats.  We have 2 more left (8x & 9x repeats).  Last week we shortened the hill to 200m instead of 400m as it was a 7x repeat night and that seemed hard (lol) plus the weather was iffy.  It looked like a thunder storm was brewing so we stayed closed to home on a smaller hill.  Once the hills were over we ran about another 1k and did some sprints at the end just for fun.  We may make this a regular occurrence on our shorter runs during the week (we're talking about the sprints here.  We require no more hills than necessary).

Over the long weekend the parents were up so we relaxed a bit.  We hit up Chapters to look at books on running (Yes we know, we should have bought them at the beginning of training).  We bought these three hoping it will give us some inspiration/motivation to get through this last month of training.  

Notice the bars and Starbucks for motivation/inspiration as well? (I cannot rotate pic..sorry)

The main reason we bought “Women's Complete Guide to Running" was because of this page we took note of while flipping through.  It called our names "Cookie Monsters".

Twin 2 finished the book and what she gathered from this particular chapter is in order to tame the cookie monster we cannot deprive ourselves and starve ourselves and give up something in particular because when we find ourselves alone and in a bad mood/stressed we tend to crave these things (i.e. cookies).  Soooo the best way to tame the cookie monster is to have one cookie a day and eventually you will get sick of them and not desire one anymore.  Meaning COOKIES EVERY DAY!! We’ll let you know how this works for us.

Last Sunday we were scheduled to run 16k but as stated above it was a long weekend and the parents were up so we switched it to Monday evening.  We started running around 5pm and it was another hot and humid day (hopefully the humidity will leave us soon).  We were contemplating on whether or not we should try walk/run intervals but while deciding (during the first 1k) and in true sister fashion we were getting frustrated and annoyed with each other (probably due to the weather AND we left our run so late compared to early morning when we usually do it) so Twin 1 ran her pace and Twin 2 ran her pace.  Technically we ran 16k by ourselves.  Our route stayed on the road with hills included.  It was a good ‘training’ run.  Twin 1 finished about 15 min before Twin 2.  At least we know we can run this on our own if the need ever arises.  During the last 2k all’s Twin 2 could think about when she was finished the run was this:

It was well worth it!

This past week Twin 2 was on vacation and we were going to try to get our runs over with in the morning before Twin 1 had to go to work (just to get them out of the way).  When 4:30 a.m. rolled around we decided we’d prefer to do them at night,

The only run we did this week was our hill run.  We skipped the run on Friday because Twin 2 was at the in-laws and there were thunderstorms happening throughout HRM.  We played it safe.

So today brings us to our long run Sunday again…18K!!! We were up at 4:30 a.m. to get some food into us as we were hoping to be out of the house between 6:00 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.  We actually got out by 6:30 a.m.  Our route today consisted of road and trail.  Road had some rolling hills and trail was a nice relief.  A little bit of balance.

Getting up so early means setting gear out the night before and being ready to roll.  I'm not sure if you can see here but there is a blue elastic amongst the gear.  (Just a side note: Twin 2 does not take elastics on her runs even though they are one of her addictions).

This morning was a little cooler than previous runs this summer.  It was 16 degrees with a cool breeze every now and again.  We had some sun/cloud/rain mixture on this run as well.  We decided to do 10/1 intervals as it had been 3 days since we ran and 18k seemed like a good chuck of distance to cover.  We loaded ourselves with water/honey stingers/toilet paper (just in case) and off we went.  The run went well and around 8:00 a.m. in the trail we started seeing walkers/runners/bikers so it was nice to have a bit of company as we packed on the kms.  When we reached 16k Twin 2 ran out of steam (Note: at the 16k mark her Garmin indicated that she ran 8 mins faster this go around than last 16k).  Her pace started to slow down and it was a struggle to hit the 18k mark but we got it done.

This what we feel like today:

Now onto 21k.