Posted by: Kelly | May 23, 2012

Dirty German Endurance Fest 2012

This past Sunday I ran the 25k option of the Dirty German at Pennypack park.  I had a great time, just like last year, but there were some differences.  Last year there was a lot more rain leading up to the day of the race, which meant there was a lot more mud on the course.  I remember almost losing a shoe a couple of times.  The rain had also washed away a lot of the arrows on the path.  I remember it being much hilly-er and more difficult in general, so I guess that means I’m improving?  I did cut nearly 20 minutes off of my time from last year, which is kind of insane, especially considering that I really didn’t push it or try to go fast at all this year.  I was there just to enjoy running through the woods.  And I ran a little over a quarter of a mile farther this year due to my wrong turn last year.  So I was pretty happy with how it went.  Dare I say I might even consider doing the 50k option next year? Maybe.  Big maybe.

Race stats:

Distance-  15.13 miles

Time-  3:11:57

Place-  131/171

Gender Place-  63/84

Ranking-  57.87%

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Posted by: Kelly | May 23, 2012

2nd Week of CSA

This week the CSA haul was lettuce. lettuce, and more lettuce- 4 kinds!  I’ve been eating salads all week trying not to let any of it go bad.  We also got collards and kale, so there have been a lot of greens going on.  The people who got the full shares this week were given asparagus, but us half share folks didn’t get any.  Super jealous.  But… I just got my “shopping list” email and looks like I will get some in next week’s delivery :)

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Posted by: Kelly | May 17, 2012

I Got A New Bike!

Years before I got into running, I was really into biking.  My friend Lauren, and then time roommate, did the MS 150 City to Shore ride one year, and convinced me to do it with her the next.  Knowing nothing about bikes, I went into a bike shop and walked out with a hybrid Trek that cost me about $350.

I trained hard that summer, freaked out that I wouldn’t be able to ride for 75 miles come the day of the ride.  Turns out my worries were wasted.  I had a blast even though it was rainy and cold at the start of the race and I was the dumbass wearing a tank top and shorts with no plastic bags or anything to keep my sneakers from getting wet.  Yes sneakers.  I was also in the probably 10% of riders who didn’t have true cycling shoes.

I rode again the following year.  I tried to convince Lauren to ride the century loop of 100 miles with me, but she wanted to stick to 75 and so we did.  It was a laid back ride- we stopped at every rest stop and were totally unconcerned with time.

And then she moved away.  I moved into my condo, and my bike got parked in a covered but exposed outdoor area.  It started to get rusty.  I got a new car that my previous bike rack didn’t fit onto, and so I decided to just sell everything on Craigslist before the bike got more ruined.

And then one day at work I broke my wrist.  Badly.  I had to have surgery to get 2 (temporary) screws put in to hold the bones together while they healed.  After recovery I wasn’t sure if I could lean on handle bars anymore, plus I had no bike, and thus my biking hobby ended.

Cut to about 5 years later… I pick up this innocent little book at the library one day:

I got bit by the bug again.  This book was SO inspirational.  I decided I wanted to buy another bike.  This year I hope to ride City to Shore again (with a team from work), and next year I’d like to maybe train for a sprint and an olympic distance tri in the spring, and an olympic distance or half ironman in the fall.  And my far-fetched ultimate dream would be to someday complete a full Ironman.  One can dream.  Having read that book, I realize that anyone can do it as long as they are willing to put in the huge amount of time training.

I bought my new bike at Cadence in Manayunk.  Manayunk is a biking town, and known across the country for the race held here, so I figured they’d know their stuff there.  The guy that ended up doing my 2+ hour bike fit (!) races with Olympians and owns a 25 thousand dollar bike.  Crazy town.

My bike was cheap compared to that, although it still felt like a ton of money to me.  There is just so much gear involved in cycling.  Running is a much simpler sport in many ways, which is one of the reasons I like it so much.

I haven’t even had a chance to ride it yet- it’s been a crazy month with friends’ weddings and I didn’t want to risk new injuries in adjusting to the bike right before Broad Street and the Dirty German.  Speaking of… I’m so excited for the DG trail race this Sunday!  I had the time of my life last year :)

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Posted by: Kelly | May 14, 2012

First CSA Produce of the Season

I love having a CSA share and am so excited that the season has started up again.  Here’s what I got in my first haul:  (all organic) bunch of carrots, bunch of red radishes, red scallions, cremini mushrooms, baby bok choy, romaine, green mizuna, and green leaf lettuce.

It’s all fairly simple vegetables this go-around, nothing that I need to look up a recipe for or figure out the proper way to cook.  I’ll be chopping most up it up and putting it into salads and wraps.  The bok choy I just heated it in a skillet with a smidge of oil, mirin, Braggs, and red chili flakes.  So good.  Bok choy is definitely one of my favorite vegetables :)

I pick up my share on Thursdays this year.  Know what else Thursday means?  Vegan Treats delivery day at Grindcore.  Yay for vegan doughnuts :)

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Posted by: Kelly | May 7, 2012

Broad Street 10-Miler 2012

On Sunday I ran the Broad Street Run for my 3rd consecutive year.  It’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest 10-miler in the country and this year there were a whopping 33,982 finishers!  The weather was nice in the 60′s (although I’d still prefer a smidge cooler) and there was a nice cloud cover but no rain.  A picture of me pre-race…

nerd

Here’s how my day went down (mostly for my own reference come next year):

11:30pm the night before- finally went to bed after attending a wedding 1.5 hrs away

4:30am day of- wake up after only 5 hrs sleep :(

4:50-5:10-  drink 3/4 cup of coffee

5:20- ate a mini clif bar and drink about 400 mLs of water with nuun.  No more fluids after this point (about 2.5 hrs prior to race start)

6:00- leave apartment and eat another mini clif bar

6:30- arrive at sports complex to park (should have only taken 15 min, not 30 but there was already a lot of BSR traffic)

6:30-7:10 eat a banana while standing in a massive line to board the subway.  There was no line like this last year.  Forty minutes?!  WTF is going on?  I did not plan to waste so much time on this.  Also- no more food  ingested after 6:30 (2 hrs prior to race).  This is just what works for me- I get crampy if I run with a full stomach and I have a small bladder, so there ya go.

7:40- finally arrive at the starting area and check my bag onto one of the gear buses.  Then I get in a ridiculously long port-a-potty line and realize that I left my iPod in my bag, so I get out of line and run back to the bus to get it back and then speed-walk back to the bathroom line.

7:50ish- 8:30- stand in line for about 40 minutes to use the bathroom.  Once again, the lines were way more insane than last year.  Really regretted all the coffee and water I drank earlier.  I had to pee so bad I wanted to cry.

8:30- the race begins but my corral doesn’t actually make it to the starting line for another 30 minutes b/c there are so many people

9:00- 10:40ish- run

10:40- 12:00- it takes me almost an hour and a half to:  stand in line to retrieve my gear bag from the bus, stand in another line to wait for a shuttle bus back to the parking lots, and take the shuttle which gets stuck in massive race traffic.  Side note:  my gear bus was of course the only one not lined up with the others by number, so none of us could find it- and when we finally did, there was a huge line to get your bag, whereas for every other bus people walked right up with no waiting at all.  Grr!

12:00- 12:20- another 2o minutes just to get out of the parking lot

12:20- 1:30- and finally a freaking 1 hr and 10 minute drive to get home (when it should only take 15 min w/o traffic).  So basically from the time I finished the run until the time I got home, it was 3 hrs.  That is ridiculous.  I was so pissed that I actually debated whether I want to do Broad Street again next year.  I don’t know why it seemed SO much more insane this year, but it kind of takes away from the fun of the event when you spend 7.5 hours out of the house for a less than 2 hour run.

On the positive side however… the actual run went great!  I had a primary goal to beat my previous PR of 1:45:56 (10:36 pace run the year with the heat from hell) and a second goal to run sub 1:40.  I managed to do both with a new PR of 1:38:47 (9:53 pace)!  I was so proud of myself :)   I ran pretty even splits the entire race and didn’t stop even once to walk which I have never done on a long run!  (My Garmin actually recorded that I ran 10.17 miles which means my pace was actually 9:43- super speedy for me!).  After years of struggling and never getting any faster, I am finally improving.  I guess doing speedwork really does pay off.  My favorite shirt that I saw read “Remind me why I spent 3 hours registering for this”.  Ha.  Here are my splits:

Mile 1-  9:57 (congested start)

2-  9:42

3-  9:48

4-  9:45

5-  9:34  (ate a gel at City Hall around mile 5.7 and finished it by mile 6.0)

6-  9:32

7-  9:27 (!)

8-  9:57

9-  9:55

10-  9:44  (super congested approaching finish line prevented sprinting like I wanted to)

sweaty, unflattering “after” shot

 

I achieved a negative split (my second half was faster than my first half- so hard for me to do!)  One question that I’m hoping somebody can explain for me… any idea how my clock time could be 12 seconds different from my chip time? 

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Posted by: Kelly | May 3, 2012

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?!

I am officially registered for my first full marathon!!! 

For the past 2 years I’d had my heart set on the NYC marathon being my first, but I wasn’t selected in the lottery either this year or last, and I’m of waiting around.  So I researched a zillion other races, and my selection process went something like this…

- No NYC?  I heard Chicago is a great, flat, first-timer’s marathon.  Damn, sold out.

- Okay well third choice is Portland, Oregon marathon.  P0rtland is obviously vegan heaven, and the course is supposed to be relatively “easy”.  But I was just out there last year and hopefully returning in 2013 for the next Vida Veda Con, and three years in a row seems a bit much for traveling so far.

-  Well, let’s rule out flying all together.  My legs tend to swell pretty bad when I fly (and stay that way for days and days), so that’s probably not the best thing to have happen before running 26.2

-Semi-local it is then.  Baltimore?  Eh, too boring as it’s so close to home.  Richmond?  Ditto (it’s where I spent my college years).  Philadelphia, my adopted home town?  Nope again.  I don’t think I could stand the out-and-back portion along Kelly drive where I do so many of my training runs.  Plus, I really want to run it as a half for my 4th year in a row and try to set a new PR.

- Marine Corps marathon?  This one is in my original hometown of Northern VA/DC.  It’s one of the more popular marathons out there and gets great reviews.  Might be kind of nice too, since my brother is a marine.  Can’t beat the convenience of being able to sleep at my parents’ house the night before.  Not the exotic locale I was hoping for, but can’t beat the logistics so MCM it is!  What?  Sold out?  When did that happen?  Argh, back to the drawing board…

- At this point I started to look at any race on the east coast north of Virginia that occurred in the months of October, November, or December.  My reasoning for picking those months is that I want cool race day temps plus I’d like to take a short running break after the Dirty German May 20th and still have plenty of time to complete a full training plan.

- I eliminated any race that flat-out banned ipods.  I need music if I am going to run for that long.  Not even an option.  Bye-bye Cape Cod marathon.  I looked at race size, thinking that larger races would have better energy.  I looked at time limits.  A lot of races have 6 hour cut offs which scares me.  If I follow the common formula of doubling my half marathon time and adding 10 minutes, I have a predicted finish time of just under 5 hours, so the 6 hour limit should be fine but I just have no idea how I’ll do since it’s my first marathon and it would be just about the worst thing ever to make it to mile 25 and then be told they were closing the course.  That was such a run-on sentence.

-  The Hartford, CT marathon and the Breakers marathon in Newport, RI were definite contenders because I really wanted nice New England autumn scenery.

- Ultimately I chose the Mount Desert Island marathon in Bar Harbor Maine.  It was voted “most scenic” and runner-up “best overall” marathon by Runner’s World readers.  Only downside is that the course is majorly hilly.  In every review I’ve read, the common theme is that it is the most gorgeous race anyone’s ever run (even people who have run 50-some marathons) and that the hills are no joke.  I’m worried, not gonna lie!  But the cool thing about it being my first marathon is that I am truly running just to finish, so if my time is negatively affected by all the hills, I really don’t care too much.  It’ll just set me up for a big PR come my 2nd marathon, right? ;)   I can’t wait to make the trip to Maine in the fall- I’ve even convinced my parents to come with me for support.  It’ll be a mini-vacation.  This race is actually fairly small (only about 1,000 runners- compare that to the 33,000 running Broad Street with me this Sunday!).  At first I didn’t like the idea of a small race- I wanted the cheering crowds and the excitement to give me that adrenaline rush.  The more I think about it though, it’ll be really nice to be able to just walk to the start line from the hotel, not have to deal with massive crowds, and for my parents to be able to easily travel to the spectators’ areas.  I am so excited!

Major “Type A” that I am, I stayed up way too late last night making my training plan and journal.

training begins June 24th!

Tom Holland’s “Intermediate” 16 week training plan (I added in some bike workouts “B” and yoga “Y”. I like that there are only four days of running per week. I don’t think my injury-prone self could handle the typical 5 days/week. He also calls for strength-training days (“W”) and core workouts (“C”).

There are two spots in my training plan that I’m not real happy about- a 20 mile run scheduled the week of my beach vacation in August, and the fact that the 75-mile City To Shore Bike Ride that I was hoping to do this year falls exactly two weeks before race day.  Not much that I can do about it though.  T minus 164 days and counting!

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Posted by: Kelly | May 2, 2012

Hip City Veg

There’s a lot of buzz in Philly about our city’s newest 100% vegan restaurant:  Hip City Veg!  I love how vegan-tastic this city is :)

this doesn’t look like your typical “fast food” establishment

The menu consists of burgers, fries, salads, green drinks, milkshakes, and a few desserts.  You place your order at the counter for either dine in or take-out, and it’s ready within a few minutes.  I tried the green lemonade (has kale juice in it), the udon noodle salad, and the chocolate chip cookies.

The green lemonade was refreshing, but not good enough that I’d order it again.  I want to try the “Goothie” green smoothie or one of the milkshakes next time.

all of their containers and utensils are recyclable or compost-able

Chinese black bean dressing, sprouts, carrots, cabbage, daikon, peanuts, and spicy glazed chick’n

With my first bite of this salad, I felt like it was a little on the bland side.  To be fair, I tend to like really strong flavors.  After a few more bites however, this dish totally grew on me and I would definitely order it again.  Very light and delicious.  True story:  the “chick’n” in the salad was so believable that I actually stopped eating to re-check the menu to make sure that it wasn’t actual chicken.  It freaked me out, but once I was sure it was veggie-chicken I couldn’t get over how good it was!

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Posted by: Kelly | April 26, 2012

New 5k PR!

This past Sunday I ran the 5k Run for Clean Air.  I think it was my 3rd or 4th year running this race.  Although I really dislike the 5k distance in general (I’d much rather run long and slow than short and fast), this race is one of my favorites.  I love that it’s all about a healthy planet- compost and recycle bins everywhere, flower seed implanted bibs, vendors for things such as e-waste recycling and solar/wind power, etc.  Granted, all races generate a ton of crap, but at least this one makes a dent.

The morning got off to a bad start.  First I slept a half hour later than I intended.  Not a huge deal since I usually get up really early anyway, but I like to have a lot of time pre-race to eat, prepare, and chill.

The next problem came when my usual parking area was full by the time I arrived.  There was a lot near the race start, but it was $12 and I only had $5.  Second fail. By now I was starting to panic a little.  I ended up finding a metered spot not too far away, but all I had was that 5 dollar bill and no quarters.  I went into the nearby gas station but the guy behind the counter claimed he couldn’t give me any change.  So then I begged a lady pumping gas for quarters.  I’m pretty sure she thought I was nuts.  All she had was a dollar’s worth, so I then ran across the street to try the deli.  The woman there said they were really low on change, but begrudgingly gave me another 4 quarters.  Seriously, she was not happy about it.  I ran back to my meter and put in everything I had and it still didn’t give me enough time.  At this point I think it was about a half hour or less until the start.  I decided to run to the packet pick-up area to get my bib and bag and hope that someone there had quarters.  I managed to get another 4, ran back to my car, and finally it was enough.

I ran back again to the race area and at this point my heart is racing, I’m already all sweaty, and I have to pee.  And of course the port-a-potty lines are a mile long.  I ended up making it to the starting line less than a minute before the race began!  Talk about cutting it close.

The race was painful, as trying to run “fast” for me always is.  What makes it worse, is that with this course it’s pretty much all downhill the first half, meaning that the second half is all uphill.  No bueno.  I resisted the urge to check my watch throughout the race.  I could tell from how hard I was breathing that I was running faster than I usually do, and therefore probably doing fairly well.

Official stats:

Time-  27:29

Pace-  8:52 (sub 9 minute miles- I was stoked with this!)

Overall Place-  488/1,546

Division Place (females 30-34)- 29/148

Gender Place- 155/699

Not too shabby (for me at least)!  I still have the goal to run a 5k at 8:00 pace by the end of the year, so I still have something to work towards.  Last year for this same race I ran 29:24, so I shaved off almost 2 minutes.

 

In other running news, I am majorly bummed that once again I did not get selected in the lottery for the NYC marathon.  I am not putting off my goal of running a full marathon another year, so I am trying to decide which one to run instead.  I am leaning towards to Mount Desert Island Marathon in Bar Harbor, Maine for the scenery, but I haven’t signed up yet.  Suggestions welcome!

Also, I just got the latest issue of Runner’s World in the mail today, and there’s an article on vegan super runner (seriously, what he can do is amazing) Scott Jurek!

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Posted by: Kelly | April 11, 2012

Running Update

Well, I’ve royally sucked at doing weekly running updates haven’t I?  I have been following my training plan, though.  We’re now about 3 and a half weeks out from the Broad Street 10 miler and 5 and a half weeks out from my 15.5 mile trail race.  My Achilles started grumbling at me again a few weeks ago, but since then it’s gotten no worse, so… I’ll take it.  Here’s the progress I’ve made on my shorter treadmill runs:

current 1 mile time:  9:19  (down 6 seconds from 9:25 a month ago)

3 mile time:  30:31 (down 42 seconds from 31:13)

5 mile time:  54:59  (down 2:29 from 57:28)

 

My long run this week is 10 miles.  That is all.  Not feeling in a writing mood ;)

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Posted by: Kelly | April 2, 2012

Vedge!

I finally went to Vedge, the new upscale all vegan eatery in Philadelphia that’s been getting so much good hype.  The funny thing is that it was two non-vegan friends that asked me to go with them!  We ended up with a party of 6 in which the 2 vegans were outnumbered by the four omnis :)

The food was wonderful.  I only wish it weren’t so pricey so that I could justify going there more than once or twice a year.  I ended up spending $55 including tax and tip and that covered a drink (the Kyoto sour), 2 of the more inexpensive “plates”, and one and a half desserts.  My favorites of the evening (including bites I took from other people’s dishes) were the chard and cauliflower dishes (from the “Dirt List” I think), the fingerling fries, the rutabega dish, and the chocolate pot de creme.  I wasn’t super impressed with my sweet potato pate dish or the apple fritters.  Oh and the group of us split the $12 appetizer sampler, which I could easily do without next time- the main dished are much more exciting and worth the money.  This?  Not so much.  There were so many amazing sounding choices on the menu that it was really hard to decide what to get, so I hope I can get my parents to go back with me the next time they come up for a visit!

the "fancy radishes" dish- not mine, and I didn't taste any, but it was so pretty that I had to take a picture

Yeah... so we were a little immature and could not stop laughing at this squished olive on the floor. I swear it was funny at the time...

sweet potato pate dish- one of my least favorite of the evening, but one of the few I actually took a picture of... go figure

chocolate pot de creme with coffee salt and mini biscotti- could have eaten 3 of these!

 

All in all, it was a great special treat kind of night, with more creative food than I normally get to eat.  I can’t wait to go back :)

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