The eve of the race is here!

After a good nights sleep and a relaxing morning, Amy and I headed out for a somewhat cursory tour of Cleveland! Funny how this weekend getaway to explore a new city turned into a race with some sight seeing fit in!

After grabbing lunch at the Chocolate Bar (yes they had real food too) we took a "shuttle" (30 minutes!) to the Cleveland Health and Fitness Expo where we picked up our race packets, got our goody bags and did some shopping.

It was at an Expo center and was huge with over 200 vendors selling everything from apparel to 100 kinds of energy gels and chews to....well every running accessory you could think of. We bought a few things including a spi-belt, some apparel and even new phone holders that fit in the palm of your hand! 

Afterwards we hit the rock and roll hall of fame, which we had not nearly enough time to see, saw the better part of the Indians / A's game at Progressive Field and had a delicious carb filled pasta dinner to cap the evening!

As we sit in our hotel room, just feet from the starting line, just 9 hours and change away from 7am, we feel ready as we will ever be.

It's been a long 30 days but we are both ready to realize a crazy idea we had just a month ago and wake up at 5am tomorrow morning and run all over Cleveland with 15,000 of our new running buddies!

Stay tuned tomorrow morning for a pic or two from the starting corral!

A few pre-race notes

Since this is only our second organized race we are not quite sure what to expect in Cleveland, especially since this isn't just some 5k race. We chose to stay at the Hyatt Regency at the Arcade in downtown Cleveland. Why? Because it's the host hotel of the race and they had decent rates. :)

As we check we see the whole place is ready for runners (and race officials and other Rite Aid employees) to descend on the town and hotel. The check in girl asks if we're running in the race and we say yes. She seems excited for us (more on that later) and hands us a paper. Attached to it were 2 coupons for a boxed breakfast to be picked up Saturday afternoon! We were very concerned previously on how we were going to eat so early Sunday morning but apparently not anymore! Personally I thought this was a great gesture by the race/hotel to make the race the best it can be. It's the little things, right?

Also the hotel has a free shuttle to the running expo where packet pickup is and they even moved check out time on Sunday back to noon to give runners more time! 

So far I couldn't be more pleased with how the sign-up, communication and "perks" part of the race has gone. Can't wait to see the expo today!

For now here's a pic of our beautiful hotel!

Welcome to Cleveland!

After driving for 6 1/2 hours we have finally arrived in Cleveland!!! 

Day #30: Final Run!

  It's Day 30, which means our 30 days to the 10k are up!  We have hit the gym, ridden the BWI bike trail and ran ran ran!  I asked us to grade our training efforts this evening and we agreed a B was a low end grade and considering all the other stuff we had going on, A- it is.


  I would like to congratulate Amy for being such a hard worker and helping us stick to the program.

  All in all, Amy ran 31 miles and I ran 36 miles overall in the last month!!!!!!  I know that if a month ago you would have told me to run over 30 miles in a month I would have laughed at you!  But we did it and now we are more than excited to see the city of Cleveland while running through the streets with 20,000 fellow running friends!

  I know we have been back posting for a while here but  starting Friday the 16th we will be live posting, documenting our trip!

  Stay tuned for some pictures and stories from the state of Ohio!!


  Oh and here's my run from Thursday :)

Day #27 through #29

Due to final exams and the Boston Bruins unfortunate demise in the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs, we were forced to suspend our beginning of the week activities.

 It's not easy working full time jobs, going to college, caring for a child AND trying to train for a 10k race.  We had to sacrifice a bit of strength and cross-fit training to get our work done.  Let's hope it doesn't bite us in the butt!

 Either way, we are looking forward to testing our abilities Sunday in Cleveland!

 Day #30 and the final pre-race run is next!!!!

Day #26: 5 Miles on Mother's Day!

 Even though we skipped the 12 mile bike ride, we arent cutting our runs out, so we had 5 long miles to run this morning.

 We didn't get started as early as we wanted and it wasn't until after 10am that we began our run. It was already 70 degrees out and the sun was shining bright.  Amy had a particularly  hard time with the sun, partially due to her not having a hat! (Note to Amy: "just wear the hat!")

  She was a tough cookie, though, and fought through it (she got my hat into the 4 mile!) and we finished those damn 5 miles.  6.2 seems awfully daunting as of now, but it's definitely doable and I am confident that we will at least finish the race. 

  With finals coming we have basically one more run (Thursday) before we go to Cleveland.

Day #24: One Week Until We Head West!

Friday May 9th and it's one week until we head west for the race.  We are feeling somewhere ready but final exams and Boston Bruins hockey are really tightening up our schedule!

Tonight was a short run and we had to do it seperately due to Mother's Day planning as well!

 Tomorrow we will take off because we are just too darn busy, but Sunday we'll tackle 5 miles!!!

Day #23: Harder Than It Looks

Day 23 is Thursday May 8th and unfortunately, due to the fact that we have so much homework to do and Amy is still feeling under the weather AND the Boston Bruins are playing playoff hockey tonight, we are going to skip our night at the gym and do homework.

It's not what we wanted to do, but priorities lie with school first! (hockey, second!)

Friday, we will get back to running for sure!

Day #21 and #22: Rest and a week 4 begins!

 We can't believe we are less than 2 weeks away from running this race! Although, I suppose we were never more than 5 weeks, since that was when we thought of the idea!

  We think our training is going pretty well, at least the running part.  It's been difficult to keep up on everything though.  I seriously commend those who can stick to a daily training plan like this for an extended time!


  So Tuesday was our rest (and class) day and it was a good thing.  Amy started feeling very ill Tuesday afternoon and ended up missing class and laying in bed all evening with a fever of 102!Rest day or no, she wasn't doing any working out today!  Feel better soon, love!

   Wednesday was time to run again and as usual, we were too busy to run together so we ran seperately.  Amy ran right after work, while I had to wait until 7:30pm to run because I had another class.

  Amy said she ran very well! It was a concern after not running so well the time before.  And considering she was sick the day before.   My run was good too, I'm again, the king of negative splits, and not really sure why, but i did 3.5 miles in just a minute more than my 3.1 mile time from under 2 months ago.  I can definitely see some improvement and working toward that 10 minute mile :)

 

 

Day #20: 5 Miles on Cinco de Mayo!!!!

     Well, that was the plan anyway.  

      Monday the 5th was going to be our moved Sunday long run and this week was going to be 5 big fat long miles!  It was going to be the longest we'd ever run! The weather was nice, we felt good and set out on our run..........

      But about 1/'2 mile in Amy's leg was saying "no way Jose!!" We stopped to stretch, we walked for a bit and we tried to keep going, but she just couldn't maintain a real jog.  She did fight though, continuing to try to run as much as she could through 2 miles but for health reasons we simply had to shut it down. 

    It was disappointing to her that it happened but it's better to happen in a training run than in the real race!  Let's hope it was nothing serious. That would truly be no bueno!!!!


  

Day # 19: Just Another Bike Ride Around the Airport

  The weather may not be cooperating on our run days but its certainly been spectacular on our bike ride days, whether it be Saturday or Sunday.  We had a lot to do on Sunday so we had to wake up rather early and get in our ride.  Back to the BWI trail we went in search of a 10-mile ride.

    The trail is 12.5 miles long and while we felt good enough to try the whole thing, we were celebrating Cinco de Mayo a day early in Federal Hill so we kepy it to around 10 miles.

Day #17 & #18: Rest and Running, of course!

So Friday is not supposed to be our rest day but since we pushed back Wednesday's run, we are forced to push back a few days.  This will eliminate our workout day for Monday but won't skip a run day. (Since running is the most importaant part!)

Day #18 we were back on the running path though! It was another short run, basically Friday's run moved back a day.  We ran it together and went 3.5 miles like we anticipated.

For some reason our MapMyRun aps do not sync up together. It always says she ran further than me, despite us going the same route.  So we'll use hers cause it said we went quicker. 

No GU this time, but it was rather warm and Amy made a note to try to run earlier in the AM from now on.  As summer comes this will be even more poignant.

Day #16: May 1st! The Second Half Begins!

The second half of our training that is. Our normally scheduled Wednesday run took place on a Thursday due to the rain.  Since we were on parental duty we ran seperately. It was tough since we hadn't run in 4 days and hadn't really done much exercising in 2. You really realize how much of a groove you have to stay in with fitness!


We both did 3 miles though and felt good doing it.  It's really hitting home now that a 5K is going to be no big huge deal anymore.  Sure we don't run it fast yet, but we're running it!

Day #15: Woah! We're Halfway There!!!

  But today we weren't "livin on a prayer."  We were busy contemplating building an ark! It has been pretty consitently downpouring from Monday night thru Tuesday and into Wednesday evening.  With the weather and our schedules, we are forced to alter our schedules.

 For the rest of the week we will do our short runs on Thursday and Saturday with a rest day on Friday (I work Friday evening) and a bike ride on Sunday.

  In the meantime, check out this video from a sinkhole in Baltimore City!

Baltimore Landslide: Baltimore Landslide



  

Day #13: Gym time!

  With the impending weather coming (April showers) we hit the gym and worked on toning some muscles. As we are busy with school and work we have been unable to develop a good gym routine to get what may be the most of our workouts, but going is better than sitting at home!


  Day #14 is an off day and Day #15 is a short run of 3 miles.

Day #12: 4 Hard Fought Miles

  Sunday Funday? I guess you could call it that!

  Sundays are the pinnacle of our training routine, the long run. Each week we plan on upping the ante and increasing our distance from the short runs on Wednesday and Friday. It was another beautiful day and it was time to go 4 miles. This was longer than either of us had run.....perhaps ever, or at least since we were teenagers!

  We had no real route, we just hit the pavement in Arbutus and decided to see where it took us. We ran to Linden Ave and went up the hill and around to Maiden Choice and back into Arbutus. The first mile wasn't so bad but after that we fought hard. Luckily much of the 2nd mile was downhill.

  Once we reached the 3rd mile, a couple rest walks occurred but we pressed on. Finally, as we hit 3 1/2 miles and turned around for home the burning legs and the heavy breath set in!  But we pushed and made it to 4 miles.  It took us just under 50:30 to run the 4 miles and I'm happy with that! I figure if we can keep that pace for 6.2 miles, we'll be nicely under 1:20:00 for our 10k and that's peachy with me!  (though I'm secretly rooting to be under 1:15:00!)

  Two side notes. I'm impressed with our splits, in the picture you can see they were very even and got a touch slower each mile.  I'm not an expert but I feel that in distance running (yes, that's distance running for us!) keeping those splits even is a good thing.  Also, we tried something new....Gu! Amy bought some runner's Gu at Road Runner Sports and we split a pack.  It was salted caramel or something.  We chased it with plenty of water.  Amy claims to not like it and we both felt like it was in our throats at time.  I may try it again since we bought two packs. :)

  Onto the gym tomorrow and then a day of rest before we try to  up our runs to 11 miles total next week!

Day #11: 8 Miles on the BWI Trail

  8 Miles on the BIKE that is. No we are not running 8 miles yet!

   A beautiful Saturday morning and Amy and I were back on our Treks and heading to the airport to ride a part of the 12 mile BWI Trail. The trail is pretty flat and mostly stays away from crossing dozens of streets. We parked at the observatory park and rode til our MayMyRide app told us we were at 4 miles and then we turned around.

  We could have done more, obviously, but we made a plan and we have 4 miles to run tomorrow. Plus we had 10 other things to do on Saturday.

   I was unsure we would even have time to ride 8 miles today and I am proud of Amy and I for getting in gear and being able to squeeze in the ride AND still get Madilyn to gymnastics EARLY!

  GO us!  

Day #10: A run in the dark for Jarrod

 I suppose it's impossible to think that two people can plan a training routine and have it go off without a hitch. And on Day #10 we had our first. Amy was not feeling up to the task of running on Friday evening. She has done great so far and was very discouraged that she was not able to run with me, but it was not meant to be that evening.

 I didn't think I would be able to run either since it was pouring rain for the early part of the evening, but after 7:30pm it cleared and I was a go to have a sort of wet, puddle dodging run.

 Running alone again, I decided to take a long 3-mile route I hadn't gone on before. It would have some hills but it would take me in a big loop and finish me right back where i started in exactly 3.1 miles.  I found that pushing up the hill was hard but since the major uphill was in the first mile, I could cruise on mile 2 and 3 (more or less). 

The result was what I now know runners to call "negative split". This means I ran each successive mile faster than the previous one.  Part of this, again, was due to the fact that the first mile was a lot of uphill.  Either way, by mile 3 I was indeed cruising. Feeling good and enjoying the cool damp evening...I pushed and made it almost 3 minutes faster than my 3.1 mile run just 2 days before.

It may have been the most tired I've ever been after running but I was super happy to have been able to go 5K in about 31:30.  My goal is to be under 30 minutes for a 5k by end of summer and that looks more than possible now!

Onto the weekend!

Day #9: Just Another Day at the Gym

As we're into our second week of training we are finding that we have plenty of energy and motivation to keep working towards our goal.  After debating on whether to do a lame workout video or drive to Glen Burnie to go to the gym, we headed to Planet Fitness. :)

As before, we worked on the circuit machines and did some elliptical as well. Nothing too crazy as we had a Boston Bruins playoff game to watch so we had to wrap it up by 8pm!

As we head into the weekend though, we have a 3-mile run, an 8 mile bike ride and a 4 mile run, so we felt it was ok to have a rather easy cross train day!

Day 7 & 8 Rest and Run!

On the 7th day, we rest!

Although we just rested last Friday, for the remainder of our training Tuesday will be our rest day.  This is because Amy and I both have class on Tuesday evening, making it almost impossible to do much training.  So while we weren't raising our heart rates or pounding the pavement we spent a full day working and going to class, so I suppose you could call it our mental workout day. :)


Wednesday, though, we were back on it. Due to the fact that I have class on Wednesday too, our short run was done seperately. I ran after work around the city and pushed myself a bit harder today as I was alone. Since I am male and a good bit taller than Amy, it makes it a bit easier for me to run faster.  I paced at just under 11 minutes per mile and felt pretty good running the whole 3 miles. It's kind of surprising to me to think that running 3 miles straight is becoming less of a chore.

Amy did well also running the whole 3 miles.  She also made some cool purchases. She got some new Brooks running shoes, along with a fancy new sports bra, some compression leggings and socks. Now she's super fancy!!!

 



Day #6: We pick things up and put them down!

It's Monday and while we've made it through the weekend and eaten a ton on Easter Sunday, our training does not stop! Monday is cross-training day and so we decided to hit the gym to tone some muscles.

Planet Fitness was our destination.  It's a pretty standard, no-frills gym, but for $20 a month I pay for myself and I can always bring a free guest so you cannot beat the price.  We upped our heart rates on the stationary bikes and then did some circuit machines.  I still feel a bit out of sorts at the gym, more of less wandering from machine to machine.  A personal trainer is in our future as I feel we may be a bit inefficient at what we do there.

After biking we worked on the tricep machine, the fly, biceps, row and shoulder press. I'm somewhere between 70 and 90 lbs on each of those while Amy more in the 30 lbs range. I state this because I'd like to see us improve in the next month so we're about 20 lbs more each.

At the end Amy took on the elliptical and I tried to tone the ole ab muscles.

One thing our training is lacking now is a proper diet.  We've been so busy we haven't been working on what we eat!  Hopefully coming soon are some posts about the nutritious food we've been cooking to try to complement our workouts.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is an off day as we prepare for a 3 mile run on Wednesday!

Day #5: The "long run" begins!

Easter Sunday and it was a beautiful day for our first long run of our training. It's called the long run because it's supposed to be longer than the other 2 of the week so instead of the 2 mile run we did on Thursday, we ran 3 miles! The goal: to simply run the entire 3 miles without walking breaks.

The first mile was relatively quick at a 12:30 pace and as we progressed we got a little bit slower. It appeared as Amy may have been nearly attacked by a dog on mile 2 but he was friendly so nothing to be alarmed over!  As we got into the 3rd mile we did attack a rather large hill and took 30 seconds to catch our breath afterwards, but we finished strong with a 3 mile (and change) time of jst over 39 minutes.

One observation is that it seems that if we jog the entire distance we are actually a touch slower than when we ran/walked in the past. I suppose it's logical but we are not in the business of walking these miles so we will have to take the slower times for now, knowing we are building endurance.

Tomorrow we hit the gym to tone some non-running muscles!

Day #3 & 4: I want to ride my bicycle!

I want to ride my bicycle!

So, Friday (Day #3) was our "rest day" and we enjoyed our night off in the company of Jarrod's father, Mr. Tom.  We had a nice dinner out, a few delicious beers, and watched some hockey playoffs (Go Bruins!!)  Our night off was nice, but I was excited for Saturday's cross-training!

Saturday (Day #4) we planned on taking our bikes out for the first time together.  Jarrod has done a really nice job creating an incremental training plan that includes our schedule and goals.  He had to create a custom schedule due to the fact we only had a month to train!  Well, over the course of the next 4 weeks, we will be building up our endurance not only to run further, but to bike further as well, ultimately biking 12 miles before race day. 

Week 1 we had set a goal to bike 6 miles around town, and did just that.  We actually exceeded our goal, going 6.72 miles in 41:22 minutes.  We biked around the neighborhood, going towards M&T Bank Stadium, and even past a part of the Color Run course.  We looped back around and headed to Carroll Park and biked around there for a while, even going up a pretty serious hill that nearly killed me lol. 

Notes:

• We may want to invest in new bike seats, because although we felt good overall (muscles were not achy), our tushes were quite sore!
• We decided to stay in a gear to make sure we were peddling most of the time we were out there to work ourselves harder.
• We figured out how to put Jarrod's bike rack on his car (thanks to our lovely neighbors Chris & Angela for the help!) so now we can take our bikes to local trails, like BWI, next time.
• Probably going to wear sunglasses from now on, since Jarrod had a bug decide to fly right into his eye! YUCK!

Here's a screen shot of our workout details!

New Bike!!

Part of our training schedule includes a couple days of cross-training every week.  Cross training, for those of you who don't know, is widely recommended for runners. It helps strengthen and build muscle on days that you're not actually out running.  Check out all the benefits here: why we cross-train and benefits of cross-training.  We decided that we would try to incorporate some strength/cardio as well as cycling routines.

Cycling, like running, is largely dependent on the major muscles in the legs. It's also a great workout for the cardiovascular system, which will pay off when we're pounding the pavement.

Problem is, Jarrod has a nice bike and I had one I purchased from Target (or maybe it was even Walmart) years ago that was ok, but not ideal for long distance cruising like we want to do.

WELL, yesterday after our run, we met up with a nice couple out in Columbia who we found on Craigslist that had their Trek Navigator 1.0 for sale.  Now she's all mine! 

I actually got her home and immediately took her out for a short ride around the neighborhood, and talk about a smooth ride!  What a difference from the last bike I had.

Tomorrow is our cross-training/cycling day and we have set a goal of biking 6 miles around Carroll Park, and I am pretty excited to take this baby out for a nice long ride.  We will post our workout results later this weekend and let you all know how we do!

Day # 2: Baby Steps

We set ourselves a goal of 2 (non-stop) miles of running for yesterday's "short run."  This was sort of an important run because it was the first time Jarrod had put his running shoes on since we ran the Shamrock 5k over a month ago, and it had been a few weeks for me as well.  This was also our first training run, so it was going to determine our "starting point."  It was also an attempt (for me) to run longer without stopping than I ever had before.  Typically, I could go roughly 1.5 miles before having to walk for 30 seconds or so.  Not only did we RUN the 2 miles, we incorporated a pretty steep hill, ran through some muscle cramps, and finished really strong (ran as fast as we could for the last 0.20 mile)!  I think we were both feeling pretty motivated due to all the love & support we had received from our families and friends, and I can assure you that we both finished with big ole' smiles on our faces.  I think we felt like it was a definitely a good starting point.

Some notable differences: 
*By the 2nd mile I noticed that I had definitely found a "rhythm" with my pace and breathing. (I think this was a result of trying out some tips I had read about earlier in the week)
*I tried a new breathing technique (one of the tips I had read about online), long steady breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth, and I noticed that I felt much better overall throughout the run.  I was even able to breathe through a side cramp, which usually was my signal to walk.  Jarrod says he is still having a difficult time breathing this way, but he is not experiencing any sort of cramping or extreme fatigue, so whatever works?  (He will be working on regulating his breathing in the next month.)
*We took a friend's advice to incorporate some hills in our course and plan to continue to do so.
*We slowed our "typical" pace to try and go further.  We ran 12:40 mins, which we plan to speed up before race day, but for now we will be focusing on building endurance.

Here is a screen shot of our MapMyRun workout - Find us on there and be our friend to keep up with our progress!

Day # 1: Cross-Training with Jillian

We started our training off with some "cross-training" which we had to do at 10pm, so we picked a fancy workout video; Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred, Level 1.  Some stretching, cardio and strength and she kicked our butts for 20 minutes.  Jarrod had never done a workout video before and was quite tired afterwards.  After completing it we felt good to have day 1 under our belts and were ready for the first run on Day 2!  Lesson learned for the day:  Don't do a 20 minute workout and then sit on the couch for an hour straight after, you will have a hard time standing up!!!

Hi friends, welcome to our blog!

 

This first post will be dedicated to explaining the purpose of this blog, our journey to the Cleveland 10k. It all started when my beautiful girlfriend, Amy, and I decided we desparately needed to get away for a weekend. With the both of us working full time, going to school in the evenings, caring for Amy's awesome daughter Madilyn, and trying to find time for a social life, we barely have any "us" time at all! So we decided a weekend away from town was needed... and well deserved. We chose the weekend immediately after our final exams, May 16-18th.

Amy knew I had been itching to take a road trip, so she suggested we actually go on one. I happily agreed and picked (almost randomly) Cleveland, OH. Sure, its not the sexiest destination, but we wanted a good long drive, but not somewhere TOO far considering we were only going for a weekend. Cleveland is about 6 hours away, which seemed perfect, plus neither of us have been there in a long time (Amy has actually never been). Cleveland also has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which I have always wanted to see, and I thought we could catch an Indians home game. By the end of the day we have a weekend that included the Hall of Fame, a baseball game, a nice dinner equipped with some delicious craft beers (of course), and even a stop in Pittsburgh on the way home. Sounds like a nice little weekend away with plenty to do, right? Not so fast!

As I started to browse around the net for things happening in Cleveland that weekend, I stumbled upon the Cleveland Marathon. A pretty cool event happening in the city the very weekend we'd be there! Now obviously we cannot run a marathon, heck, we just ran our first 5k together a month ago (actually it was Amy's 2nd). However, the event did have a half-marathon, 10k and a 5k as well. This was going to be our second 5k (or so we thought)! Running through the streets of Cleveland, what better way to see the town than to jog through the streets, we were stoked! We then realized we had a small problem. We learned the 5k doesn't even run through the streets of Cleveland, that the track is in some park west of town (Booooo). We wanted to run through downtown! No point in doing that, so let's just scrap that idea... or should we??

I began to think, wait a minute, if we want to run through Cleveland in the race, we'll just run the damn 10k! Sure, we couldn't even run the whole 5k last month, but what's the worst that can happen? The course time limit is 2.5 hours, and figured we could walk it that fast, so surely they won't have to throw us off the course! Amy loves a challenge as much as anyone, so the idea was born and the next day she had us registered for the Rite Aid Cleveland 10K! Crazy, I know. Now, not only are we registered for a 10k, but it's only 30 days away!

So, now that we're in this race, we might as well prepare at least a little bit, right? We began looking at 10k training schedules, tips for distance running, cross training excercises, anything we came acrossed to help us prepare. Most, or all, of the programs we found were 8 weeks long (or more) so we had to condense quite a bit. Needless to say, we will be busting our humps almost every single day for the next month in an attempt to prepare for the race.

This blog will serve as our journal to document our quest to essentially not die on Euclid Ave in Ohio. Every day (or almost) we will update here with our workouts, our successes and/or struggles, our runs, our times, and maybe even some pictures. With our busy schedule, Amy and I don't get a chance to exercise as often as we would like, we go to the gym a couple times a month and run on occasion. So this is a huge task, and we hope having a blog to keep people updated on our progress will in turn keep us motivated!

So feel free to check in, leave us some motivational love from time to time, or just see how we're doing. Maybe it will even motivate someone else out there to get off the couch, put in some effort, and see just exactly what you are capable of doing in just 30 days! Even with our crazy busy schedules of work, school and life in general, we're gonna run the hell out of those 6.2 miles!!!!!!

  
    With love,

 

   Amy & Jarrod