Shamrock Training - Week 1

In the spirit of the old days of this being a running blog, here's a look at how the past week was.

It was great!!

End post.

Nah, okay, I can elaborate a tiny bit. When running I always have a ton to say, but now I'm at a loss.

First up, I had a couple warm up runs before I hit the days marked as official Shamrock 15K training. They were nice and got me mentally ready to work in some runs day or night, rain or shine, stroller or none. My second warm up run was with the stroller, and a training partner that decided to nap instead of cheer me on. What gives?!?

So the officially training has begun. I always do best when I have a race to look forward to. It makes me run better and keeps me outside no matter what. 

Let's talk about the race. I've done this 15K three times. The last one, for lack of a better term, was a total shit show. Not my running, but the event itself. No water. They gave our medals to people doing the 5K and 8K. It was pure chaos. So I said No More! Then they added a half marathon distance to the race day. I registered without hesitation. I always said that if I'm doing a 15K you may has well add just a few more miles and do the half. Well, life happens and I had to make the very difficult choice to not run due to where I was in the whole IVF process. Making a little baby far outweighed running in a race on a cold, rainy day. All that goes to say that I have a lot of history with this race and I fully know what I'm in for. I am kind of excited that they have essentially switched the course and we are running the opposite way we used to. That might make it easier? Harder? Who knows?? Well, I will know in March!

While I'm running, these are the things I think of. It keeps me going! My first official training run was out in my mom's neighborhood. That's the photo above. It's usually pretty quiet out there and flat as flat can be. On this particular run it was nice to see people outside working on their yards and smell the fires some houses had going on inside their homes. I love neighborhood running and basically people watching and seeing what is going on. Running at night is great for this. You can see into houses really well that way!

The second official run was in my own neighborhood. VERY quiet. I can go on a run and never see another person or vehicle if I'm lucky. It always smells so good like trees. One thing it isn't is Flat! I always get a good workout and some gentle to steep hills depending on far I go out here.

I was happy to be alone on that second run, and not with the little toddler. Why? Well, for one, I can't run with a stroller here because there is no shoulder and if a car does come I'm always stepping off the road and teetering on the edge of a ditch. But the big reason was a poor little baby deer was dead on the side of the road. That is the downside to running here. All the nature and wildlife is awesome, but finding my animal friends dead isn't so cool.

Finally, the last run of the first week was also at my house. I was up early in the morning, which let me have one of those runs with zero cards and a ton of fog.  It was so foggy that my eyes kept watering, leaving me with tears streaming down my face. Lesson learned - even when the sun is rising, grab the sunglasses!

Overall, I'm feeling awesome. I'm mentally stronger than ever, probably because I feel extra determined to keep up with it and not let the stupid Meniere's Disease stuff keep me down. Thankfully these runs happened when I wasn't having an attack, so I was kind of lucky. Every weekly report will probably not be the same, unfortunately. But that's not going to stop me!!

Countdown to Race Day: 2 months 2 days 16 hours 33 minutes