Overwhelmed with Olive

So what's been going on lately over here?

The puppy has arrived!! We picked up Olive about 10 days ago today. We named her Olive after a little Olive tree that we have growing in a pot in our kitchen. No real other rhyme or reason to it.
She is the greatest little puppy ever. She's super smart, spunky, and overall obedient. It doesn't hurt that she's freaking adorable too.

This puppy has a LOT of energy. As I sit here writing, she is going absolutely insane over a bunch of tissue paper I gave her to play with. Bill and I really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into with an 8 week old puppy. We knew it would take a lot of time and patience, but we didn't really know just how much energy it would take to keep her fully trained and entertained. We've been sleeping in shifts and neither one of us has really been able to fully relax. The good side is that Bill works from home so he can spend lots of time with her during the day.

Needless to say, I'm tired. My schedule has pretty much become wake up ~5, take Olive out to poop/pee, give Olive breakfast, try to tire her out before 6am crossfit/Run,  (if it doesn't work, Crossfit/Run doesn't happen)commute , work, commute, eat dinner, take Olive out to pee/poop, feed Olive, play with Olive to tire her out before bed, sleep. Basically it's Olive's world and we're just living in it :)

My marathon training hasn't taken too much of a beating from it...yet. I did my 11 mile run on Monday, did a Yoga for Runners podcast on Tuesday, and now I'm mustering up the energy to go for my 5 mile Wednesday run.

What I really want to do right now is this...

Happy National Running Day!

This week I've been a good little marathon trainer, sticking to my plan every day! Here's what's been happenin:

Yesterday I went to 6am Crossfit for the first time in a while. Now that's it's warm and bright out at 6am, the class is much more crowded. During the winter there would usually be 4-5 people in the 6 am class, and yesterday there was ~12. The more the merrier!

Strength

3x5 negative pull ups

2x5 dips (blue band)

WOD: 4 Rounds for Time

• 4 Squat Cleans (75#)
• 8 Deadlifts (75#)
• 200m run

This workout took me 11:20. It was a good one! The combination of leg strength work in the squats & deadlifts + fast short runs left me super exhausted. Surprisingly my legs feel good today, but my arms and back are super tight. super super super.

Today I went for a 5 mile run around JP pond after work. I was feeling pretty tired for most of it so it definitely wasn't my fastest run ever. Oh well, 5 miles is 5 miles when my goal right now is to just get my weekly mileage up.

Then I came home and made this ugly dinner. Chicken, mashed caulilower, sauteed mushrooms. It was a pretty bland meal, but I was tired and it did the trick.

Now I have a tummy ache while watching the Bruins. There's 8 minutes left in the third, and I have no hope of staying awake for the finish. Bedtime for this old lady.

Monday Runday

Today has been a lovely little Monday. Work was pretty good, slower than usual. Day One of Puppy Challenge was also a success.


Lunchtime: salad with kale, quinoa, mushrooms, baby tomatoes, and 2 hardboiled eggs. 4 dates for "dessert" :)

I snacked on some cherries and almonds in the afternoon.


After work I headed to the track at Tufts for a track speed workout.

• 1 mile warm up (9:40 min/mile)
• 400 meter @ 7:10 min/mile, 200 meter walk, repeat 5 times
• 1 mile cool down (9:40 min/mile)

total: 4 miles:

It felt really great. The weather was beautiful- much cooler than the past few days. After the run I did two 1 minute plank holds with 30 second side planks in between.

I was ravenous when I got home. Big salads with romaine, mushrooms, raisins, corns, baby tomatoes, a hardboiled egg, and broiled salmon. 

NOM!

Okay, time to keep catching up with Arrested Development. Night!

6 Week Puppy Challenge!

Happy Rainy, Humid Monday Boston!

So I feel like I've fallen off the wagon a bit- with running, crossfit, eating, AND blogging.

To get back on track and try to feel overall better before this summer is over, the boyfriend and I are starting a 6 week challenge. This won't necessarily be 100% Paleo (will include things like quinoa, greek yogurt, peanut butter, etc), but it will be 100% cleaner eating and more regular exercise. The end goal will not necessarily be to watch numbers fall from the scale (though I will weigh myself before and after)...but I will take body measurements, and just record how I feel overall. For the record, right now I'm feeling pretty Blah.

The thing is- we needed an "end" date. A date to look forward to that that wasn't so far away that we lost interest, but was far enough away that we could work towards measurable results. Hmmm...What could be a  cool event happening in our lives that takes place somewhere in late July-early August....



THE PUPPY ARRIVES!!!

So today is day 1. I'll be blogging here MUCH more to keep myself accountable. I'll be posting my workouts and a lot of what I eat.

So let's get started! This morning's breakfast was a Two Ingredient Pancake topped with Trader Joes crunchy peanut butter...green tea with almond milk on the side.



Also, I still need to do a race recap of the John Kelley Half Marathon from last weekend :)

Back at it

Guess what! I ran yesterday and today... pain free! Granted they were both super short distances... yesterday I did 3.5 miles and today I did 2 directly after crossfit.

Though these distances aren't huge, I'm really happy that I feel like I'm in a place to start training again. Speaking of training, next week begins my MARATHON TRAINING. dun dun dun. I went with Hal Higdon's website for ideas since I've used him in the past for halfs with success. I'm going with the 18 week Novice 2 plan. The Novice I is also for beginners, but that plan makes me feel like a wimp. Then I looked at the Intermediate, and though I think I could handle the mileage, I know I wouldn't be able to balance is with other crosstraining (crossfit/yoga/etc).


To kick off this grand training plan, I have a half marathon is weekend. HAHA. seriously. I haven't run more than 10 miles in a week in quite a few weeks due to a variety of issues. Here's to hoping crossfit is all you need to train for a race like that... heh....



Other great news, our puppy was born today! A few months ago we found a corgi breeder in New Hampshire who was having a litter. We sent in a down payment and we've been anxiously waiting ever sinnce. We get to go pick out the pup in 4 weeks and then take em home 4 weeks after that. We have yet to decide on a name though....

Though i don't care that no one reads this blog, sometimes it'd be cool to have readers to help me with questions. Like, have you ever run a half marathon with no training at all? And more importantly, what would you name a corgi puppy?

My Achilles Heel

Hello! So, latest update on my running life: I'm injured again. SURPRISE!

Since last Friday, the muscles around my achilles tendon have felt irritated. It's not the tendon itself, but more like the soft areas between the tendon and the ankle. They started to bother me after crossfit last Friday. On Saturday I went for a 2 mile run, and that's when it really started to feel weird. Both heels hurt too, which I thought was even weirder.

(image source)

I'm pretty sure the culprit is double unders and not running. We've been doing them a lot in crossfit. I've never really done any sports that involved much jumping so I can only imagine that my form isn't as good as it could be. I also thought that maybe my running shoes were getting to the end of their shelf life (I've trained for and run 2 half marathons in them since last August when I bought them...). 

Buying new shoes was my first attempt at fixing my problem. Ta da!

 I've running Brooks Trance for a few years now and I love them. This time around I upgraded to the latest version, the Trance 12 (before I wore the Trance 10). They feel SUPER comfy and I have no achilles pain at all when walking in them. 

On Monday, I tested them out for their first run- 3 miles around Jamaica Plain. During the run I felt pretty good (probably a 2 on the pain scale but still small irritation), but once I stopped the problem area got super sore. I decided to make a doctor's appointment for Tuesday to make sure I wasn't tearing anything that could turn into a bigger problem.

The doctor confirmed that I hadn't torn the Achilles (YAY!), but that there was definitely some inflammation. He referred me to a physical therapist to work on some stretching and icing techniques, and that is where I went today.

The physical therapist pretty helpful I guess. She basically showed me a bunch of calf and ankle stretches that I am already familiar with from yoga and crossfit. An interesting discover though was that my right ankle is much tighter than my left for some reason. When I went to a deep tissue massage last week, the massage therapist told me that the right side of my back was also more developed than my left. I guess I need to work  on better overall balance!

Anyways, I'm taking the next few days off from running. The PT gave me a list of stretches and icing techniques to do at home. On Sunday I'll try out a run and see how it goes. If it still hurts, she strongly suggested that I sit out of next weekend's half marathon, especially since I have bigger goals of running a marathon in October.

OOF. 

What a month

I'm back! Blogging about running has fallen to the wayside a bit for me this month, and this is not because I haven't had anything to say. I've actually had more to say than ever.

This has been a very long and tough month for Boston, but we are getting better. Tomorrow is the one month anniversary of the 2013 Boston Marathon.

I've also been traveling. Bill and I went to St Thomas for a week!

Anyways, this won't be a full post, just want to write this as inspiration for me to start posting regularly again.


John Kelley half is in two weeks. My heel/achilles is aching bad. If it's not one weird injury it's another right?


Better post later tonight!