kelseydo hill training

Remember this post a few months ago about my half-marathon training?

Well it’s a few months later, I injured my leg and stopped running for 4 weeks, spent too much money on physio and now I’m back running 10 and 1’s (run 10 mins walk 1 min).

Hill training is a big part of the half-marathon training. It consists of running 3km to a hill, running up and down the hill and then running 3km home. In this training there were 9 weeks of hills which means week 1 wednesday we run 1 hill up to week 9 wednesday we run 9 hills.

The idea behind hill training is that you will most likely only run one to a few hills in a half-marathon so training up to 9 hills makes you feel like a few hills are child’s play.

Hills are hard. This picture is on the first hill, the 9th hill was too messy for the internet. They take a long time and there’s a lot of short breath and burning calves happening. As my mom’s hand me down 80’s running handbook says, every time you get to the last hill, you need to say out loud “character”. This is supposed to remind you that your training/goals are not useless. It is also what you are supposed to say to yourself on race day when you see a hill.

Let’s hope it works!

Here we come Vancouver Scotiabank 1/2 marathon…

kelseydo half marathon training

“Excited” for running faces

Nick and I are training for the Scotiabank Half Marathon in June. We started training once before, a few years ago, but it didn’t work out because a bunch of people decided to get married in the middle of our training and we had to go dance, drink, eat and celebrate instead. Also Nick didn’t want to do hill training. I tried to explain to him that no one ‘wants’ to do it, it simply must be done. Anyways moral of the story is: you can’t tell Nick what to do.

BUT he’s doing hill training now. He even seems to enjoy it. He’s a changed man: he drinks juice made of kale and spinach, runs on a mini foot elliptical while playing video games and goes to bed before 2am.

Running is difficult but rewarding. Our training schedule has us outside 5 times a week rain or shine (or snow a couple times!). We get the benefits of fresh air, taking a mental break and getting some exercise. Also, Nick read somewhere a while ago that “couples who work out together stay together” so there’s that.

Inside this book is the training guide we’ve been using. Obviously it’s from the 90’s and it’s a bit dated but it’s a great beginner’s running guide plus my mom gave it to me so that also means it’s great. Also, I like looking at the pictures of people running/training in the book in their 90’s garb, it makes me feel really cool in my futuristic running gear.

Speaking of running gear. I find running really uncomfortable most of the time and usually I can find at least one thing going wrong with my gear to complain about while running. This is why running gear is so important. If the gear is good, there is less to complain about and the run can actually become fun. I know, weird right?

SPORTS BRAS are muy importante. I used to follow my elders and wear two sports bras at once: one that looked like some kind of post-op device and another run of the mill uniboob maker. Now I have sold my soul and wear the Lululemon TaTa Tamer:

It does the trick. They also carry this one, the Booby Bracer, which I bought and returned a day later:

It’s like putting on a really tight wetsuit every time. I decided it was unnecessary to go through that amount of discomfort to put a bra on. However it is supposed to mold to your body once you begin to sweat and your boobs will not move, I guarantee it. See how in the picture the model’s nipples are on top of her boobs, reaching for the ceiling? They were trying to rid themselves from the clutches of this skin tight device seconds before they got strapped in there and now they’re trapped like Hans Solo in a brick of Carbonite. There’s nowhere to go. It’s locked down in there, air tight.

I highly recommend this item by Moving Comfort that I purchased at Extreme Runners in Courtenay:

It’s an awesome sports bra. Very comfortable and keeps everything in place.

Shoes supplied by Courtenay’s Extreme Runners

RUNNING SHOES are of course another very important part of the gear- some might say the most important. Another reason why I love Extreme Runners in Courtenay is that they let you ‘try out’ (lightly) and return running shoes if they aren’t perfect. They should feel perfect when you try them on. I test out a bunch of different pairs and whichever runners make me feel the most like I’m running on clouds, are the runners I buy.

Dodging puddles

CHAFING is not part of your running wardrobe. I remove this problem by not wearing shorts; pants to the ankle or just below the knee are key. Nick removes this problem by wearing long shorts that have a shelf liner that keeps his business sealed and protected. Whatever you wear, you need to make sure there is no thigh-on-thigh action. Otherwise you will cry.

Another problem that I have, which probably only happens to me and maybe my mother (aka genetics), is that my pants are always falling down for the first 15 minutes of the run (until I start to sweat and the pants stick on). So far, the only solution I have is to a) buy tighter pants and b) wear pants that are slightly damp (aka not fully dry from being washed). If anyone has another solution- running suspenders, waistband glue- I’m all ears.

APPS We use RunKeeper to record and plan our runs. Nick has a Pebble- a watch that connects to his smartphone- which vibrates when we’ve completed our run.

What a beautiful day :S

Hope you enjoyed my tips. Please share some of your own tips/tricks with me! I still have a long way to go and a lot to work on before the half marathon.

kelsey do half-marathon training

Recently I was inspired by a friend to train for a half-marathon. I have jogged before in the past so it wasn’t an insane idea, but I am not too good at maintaining a schedule after about a week so it has been challenging. Nick and I decided we would train for the Seawheeze Lululemon Half-Marathon on August 11th. Then I checked out the entrance fee and decided rather than paying $350 to run 21km, we would just do our own race, that we have nicknamed “the anti-lulu”. We are training simply to finish, so the training is pretty straightforward. I used the book “Running Start to Finish” by John Stanton to sort out the training schedule.

Please note that when I say run, I mean jog. I am the slowest runner in the nation. Nick has a hard time running as slow as I do and has to jog on the spot sometimes so I can keep up to him. In all fairness the man is 6’5″ and I am 5’7″, there is a slight leg span advantage in his favor. But don’t be fooled, I run slowly. One of my friends on Pinterest has a quote pinned that says “it doesn’t matter how slow you run you are still lapping the people on the couch”. I’m not about to speed up.

Nick puts up with a lot of my B.S. in general, but he puts up with most of it on our runs. I try not to complain to much, but I will come up with any possible reason take a break during our runs.