by Striders 5K in Oakland, California. First time I ran it was in July (I
just started running in March), and my time was 33:39. This time I came in
at 30:57, and placed second in my age group. (Yeah, so there were only
three women in the 25-30 age group. So what. ;) ) Woo-hoo!
I'm encouraged, especially as I haven't been keeping track of my time
during many of my weekly runs, since at work (during lunch) I run on
trails that don't have mile markers - one of these days I'll try to get a
trail map and figure out for sure how far I'm going. I'm currently running
4x/week - 40 minutes on the unmeasured Tuesday and Thursday runs, approx.
3.5 miles on Saturdays, 5 miles on Sundays - and I'm probably going to
boost it to 5x/week (adding Wednesdays). I also lift weights 2x/week.
I don't know about my Sunday "long runs" - I had been doing 9 min run/1
min walk, and I got up to nearly 8 miles that way, but then I decided to
see if I could run 5 miles nonstop. I could, but it took over an hour
(barely running!). So I want to try to get that 5 miles in under an hour
before I try to run longer again. Not that I have anything against
run/walk, but even run/walking for much more than an hour takes a lot out
of me and I tend to lie around and nap for the rest of the day.
I had been drinking Gatorade but I wanted to find a sports drink without
artificial colors and other junk. I found a recipe on Dr. Andrew Weil's
site (http://www.drweil.com/) which worked out pretty well. I drank
approx. 8 oz. before and after the race, and I've been carrying it with me
on my long runs. Here it is:
* On the stovetop, dissolve 1/4 cup sugar in 2 cups of water
* Add 1/4 tsp salt
* Remove from stove, cool and add 1/4 cup of orange juice
* Mix with water to fill a quart bottle, and go!
Happy running,
- Julie
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