Tag Archives: marine corps marathon

Boost your mood, help a vet!

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Ah, want to boost your mood?  Be charitable, be grateful, give to others.  I have a great opportunity for you to help military veterans and families of the fallen through the Travis Manion foundation (see what i did there?)

This Sunday, 10/28, I will be running the Marine Corps marathon in Washington, D.C. and I am raising funds for Travis Manion.   Consider a donation of any amount to my fundraiser here.       https://donate.travismanion.org/jenn 

2013 Marine Corps Marathon

fundraising-meme

thank you for considering!

Follow my instagram for minute by minute marathon weekend updates.

– Jenn

Lucky week 13

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Got off to a great start last week. Thought about going for a perfect week of exercise but Friday I just couldn’t rally. Saturday I was at the kids swim meet all day so we shall consider that a 2-day rest up for my 20-miler. My training plan is off from what I wanted to do but with two 20 milers done, I think I’ll be fine. I’ve been better trained and less trained before. This ain’t my first rodeo as they say.

This week’s baking challenge: none. We did not do any baking 😦

Here’s the training rundown

Planned/ actual miles: 27 / 32.8

I plan for 27 every week, I suppose I should change it for long run weeks. I do like beating my artificially low goal tho

Monday. Nice easy 5 miles on the treadmill after the Maine Half. Catching up on the Affair on showtime. Can I just say how can do much stuff happen to 1 person. It’s getting a little ridiculous in season 4.

Tuesday. Killer workout at Orange Theory. Top 5 highest calories. They changed the formula for the heart rate monitors that should (allegedly) help women achieve more calories burned or more accurate calorie count. I’ve always come in on the low side for calories and time in the “orange zone” (HR above 84% max) but I also have super low resting HR and blood pressure. It takes a lot to get into the zone. I should dig into the science more but for now just try and kill it when I’m at OTF.

Wednesday. Treadmill track workout. 10 x 400M intervals with 200M ish rest in between. The hardest part is keeping track how many I’ve done. I actually bring pen and paper on the treads.

Thursday. Note to self, don’t be late for the tornado. OTF sometimes has the tornado workout and I walked into it 10 mins late due to just losing track time at the office. In the tornado, you rotate every 1-3 minutes between treads, rowing and floor work. It’s fast switching or rotating, hence the name tornado. I got a pretty good workout once I got into the flow.

Friday and Saturday, OFF. Taking some rest days to handle my other life events and issues.

Sunday. The long run, 20 miles.

I drag my feet so much about the long run.  My best approach is to do it Saturday morning and get it over with as early in the weekend as possible.  this cuts down on the sense of dread, fretting about my outfit, planning the route and all that goes through my mind.  It’s true, i don’t love the long run but i did it, yay me!  I left the house and decided to do an out-n-back run from downtown.   I lean toward point to point from the house if i can get a ride home after.   There are fewer short cuts when i run from A to B than if i am doing a loop, i can always bail out and cut short the distance.

The weather was actually nice, some clouds moving in but 60s and i was fine in my tshirt.  I took the Camelbak again and this time i drained it by the time that i reached town.  Waves at the beach were high and alot of surfers out there (not pictured on this beach but they were a few miles back at another popular surf beach).

I’m feeling pretty ready for Marine Corps. This has been a decent training cycle and look, i even got my blog back up and running for my 3 followers and a few bots! Yay!

see you out there,

-Jenn

Week 11: Popovers and time off

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Following my 20 mile run on 9/16, I took a lot of time off from running last week (9/17-9/23).  It was due to needing some rest but also a lot of family events and commitments on the weekend.  For the gluten free baking challenge for the week, we made popovers and tried a new recipe for chocolate cake.   Total mileage for the week was only 13.1 miles and no long run.    I ran the tempo and track runs and went to Orange Theory twice.   Friday, Saturday and Sunday I took off and I feel more rested this week for sure.  Having hit 20 the week prior, I don’t think this will impact my overall fitness too much.  Trying to get back on track this week after over eating pretty much all weekend.

Planned / Actual miles:   27 / 13.1

Tuesday.
Orange theory workout with my pal John which was actually a pretty hard workout.  I don’t usually get over 400 calories burned but I did today.   We also made popovers with dinner.  The recipe is surprisingly easy; it is essentially eggs, flour and butter poured into a hot pan and baked for about 30 minutes.  Ours did not pop up as much as some that we get at a local bakery–aptly named Popovers–but we figure they must be experts since the place is called Popovers.   Next time i would bake them a little longer, which is becoming a frequent bit of feedback: slightly under baked.  What would Paul Hollywood say on Great British Baking Show?   For one, they call popovers “yorkshire puddings” i believe.  We used the recipe from Gluten Free on a Shoestring – 2nd edition.

Wednesday.
Track workout on the treadmill.

Thursday.
Double fun.   Orange Theory in the morning with Kellie before work and then I went to the Team RWB meet up at our local running store in Manchester, NH.   I did a 5 mile run with the group which counted as my tempo run for the week.    The run was fun but it was in the downtown area with a LOT of busy streets to cross for the first 2 miles.  This week I am going to meet up closer to home in Portsmouth for the Thursday night run.   I work in Manchester, so evening runs there are an option.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Nothing but cake.
No workouts on the extended weekend and I ate too much cake.   We made a new gf chocolate cake for my husband’s birthday and it was delicious.  We have a chocolate and zucchini cake recipe that we like but we had no zucchini this time.   This recipe will be our new go-to chocolate cake recipe.  Our backup  / runner up is gf chocolate cake mix from King Arthur Flour Company which you can buy locally or via mail order.   We also made homemade buttercream frosting.  Here’s a pic!

Hope to get more mileage and workouts this week! See you out there.

-Jenn

Week 9: A rest day or 3 and apple cake

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Last week was an off week and maybe I needed a break from working out all 7 days last week. I took off Monday, Thursday and Friday. And Saturday I slept in but then decided last minute to hit the gym for the 10:30am class. It was a good workout and I felt a lot better afterwards. I really pushed up the calorie burn, maybe because I was off days before but I hit over 400 calories which doesn’t happen all the time.

This week’s baking challenge – Apple cake.  It wasn’t so much of a challenge as we have made this recipe before.  We had a bunch of other first-time recipes to try and we also tried English muffins- gluten free of course.   The muffins taste exactly like Thomas’s English muffins that i remember, but they did not rise enough so were more dense and didn’t look great.  We will retry that recipe later on (not pictured here).   For the apple recipe, it’s adapted from one that I used to make years ago.  Apple picking is already in full swing and there were tons on the trees.

 

Planned  miles = 27 | Actual miles = 23.9

Monday.  Nothing to report.

Tuesday.  Orange theory in the morning and then track workout on the treadmill.  Still super hot outside so sought refuge in the basement.   2 x 1600 and 2 x 800

Wednesday. OTF.  Arrived about 5 mins late but still got it done.

Thursday.   zero activity

Friday.  zero activity.

Saturday.   Slept in and decided at 10am to hit the 1030 OTF class.  All this rest must have gave me the energy to really push my limits.   Over 400 calories burned (per their tracking system)!

Sunday.  I was toying with the idea of doing at least 18 miles or even up to 20 but in the end I ran 13.  I was feeling really stiff from overdoing it at OTF on Saturday.  The Camelbak continues to work well, though there was some sloshing.  I failed to get all the air out to start and the water tasted a little soapy.  I cleaned it last week but needs more rinsing.  Lessons learned!  the weather was great and really cooled down from the heatwave of the past few weeks.

Share a Coke with Jennifer, well of course i had to partake.

Next week’s goals:  Take more photos while out running.  Stretch goal:  Take a jumping picture.  Any running blogger wannabe should be able to pull that off right?   Jump up to 20 miles for the long run?

find me on Strava,

-Jenn

Week 8: 16 miles and Battenburg cake

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Nailed it last, last week!  (Coincidentally if you have not seen Nailed it on Netflix, please stop reading this and go immediately to Netflix. It a cooking show, sort of, where hapless bakers try and recreate fancy cakes).   I decided to go for a ‘perfect week’ according to the Apple watch, which entails hitting my 3 goals for movement (calories burned), exercise (30 mins- yeah kinda low but not really for cross training days) and stand hours (you need to have been standing/walking for 12 hours out of your day and not sitting at the desk for 2-3 hrs straight).     I’ve hit a perfect week a few times in the spring, but unless i work out everyday to some degree, I won’t make it.  Like my 1000 miles challenge this year, having a goal keeps me motivated to workout.  If i miss my morning workout, then i make time to fit in a quick run during the day or after work to meet the goal.  I’d call it a healthy obsession.  Check out the rings, 100% perfect week!

This week’s baking challenge was Battenburg cake. We made our own marzipan which was actually pretty easy. It turned out great and we received rave reviews from the family. It’s a cake we discovered in London and they made it once on Great British baking show.  The key is to have a checkerboard of traditionally yellow and pink with apricot jam in between the squares.  We used raspberry which was a nice tart flavor.

Planned / Actual Miles: 27 / 36

I should probably up my weekly goal as I enter into the longer runs of my marathon training plan.  I just have 27 miles as default on Strava which is a good average goal for fall back weeks where my long run is only 10-13.

Highlights this week include hitting all 3 of my quality runs; tempo, track and long run plus running 16 miles for my long run.  And I took the new Camelbak out for 16 miles and it worked great!

Monday.  OTF 0530 class

Tuesday.  Tempo run on the treadmill.  Was a 3 mile tempo + warm up and cool down for 4.3 miles total.

Weds. OTF 0645 class.  This was a really good workout and I broke 400 calories which doesn’t always happen in every class!  I find that I do get a better workout when the class is 2 groups or 24 people rather than 3 groups/36 max number of people.  With 2 you get about 25 minutes on the treadmill side, with 3 you only get 14-15 minutes which makes it harder for me to get my heart rate up.

Thursday.   Interval workout on the treadmill.   2 x (6 x 400).  So 12 0.25 mile sprints.  It was actually not as hard as I thought it would be.

Friday.  OTF #3

Saturday.  16 mile long run! And cake!

Sunday.  Finishing out the perfect week  with a 3.1 mile run on the treadmill.

More in week 9 update!

See you out there,

-Jenn