It's been awhile!

So we fell off the bandwagon already.

Lori speaking: Hi again, miss me?  Clearly I haven’t been around for a while, but life gets busy! 

I think you last heard from me over a month ago, soon before we ran our half marathon the end of October.  The good news is that we made it!  We finished our half marathon in 2:17:58 – we’ll take it!  We ran the entire half marathon, minus a couple of walking breaks at water stations.  I have an uncanny ability to make a running event feel like a swimming event by accidentally pouring water up my nose when I try to run through water stations.

We ended the half marathon feeling sore but otherwise good.  Logan was able to run without foot pain (well, besides what is probably normal given he ran 13.1 miles) which made us very excited.  

Since then we have kept up our running.  I haven't ran more than 5 miles since the half marathon in an attempt to allow some pesky shin splints to fully heal before we begin training again in February.  I hope to start picking up some bigger miles before training begins, but with the holiday season approaching it may be difficult to stick by that statement.

Winter running is in full swing now!  I am a huge chicken when it comes to running outside in the cold but only because I am nervous about running on ice.  The cold itself feels great so far - although I have yet to experience any running under 20 degrees so that may change.

Even though we have been neglecting you for a while, I have some posts for you guys in the works.  At least one of which will be spent talking about kicks!

While Logan had to give up his FiveFingers shoes before the half marathon due to his foot injury, I ran the whole thing in mine.  I love my FiveFingers and still plan to do a lot of my shorter training runs in them, however, I have also started doing a lot of running in Brooks PureConnect since the half marathon.  So in the near future I hope to give you guys a little more insight into why I am switching things up and how I feel about the new shoes.

Question of the day:  Do you have any questions for us since we fell off the planet in October?

The Beginning of the End

The title sounds so ominous.  Dun dun dun!

Lori speaking! We are just over two weeks away from the half marathon.  These past few weeks have been the peak of my training.  I say "my" training instead of "our" training because Logan is still not able to run very far on his injured foot.  My long runs have been pretty lonely and boring without him!  But he has been keeping up on his cardio (elliptical is his new friend) and still hopes to be able to run the half marathon, although he may have to take it slower than he would have liked.  We will keep you posted!

My last really long run before the half marathon will be Sunday.  I plan to run at least 10 miles, which is what I ran last week, and possibly run as far as 12 miles depending on how I'm feeling at the time.  After that last really long run, I get to start my "taper" for the race!  For those of you who are not aware, the taper occurs the couple of weeks before a race and involves a big reduction in the amount of running you do so your body can recover and be in tip-top running shape for the race.

I am looking forward to the taper.  In fact, confession time, I have taken it a little easier this week than I have past weeks and have justified it by saying "Well, I am ALMOST tapering."  I guess I am just tapering for my  taper.

That's legit, right?

It is crazy to think that all of the hard training that intimidated me only a couple of months ago is now almost over!  I ran 10 miles, and that isn't so far away from the 13 I will be doing soon.  Trust me when I say that I am not a natural runner.  My roommates in my first year at grad school (shout-out to Karen and Jenny!) would go out for runs and I would sometimes join them...and usually feel like dying at the end.  Karen would tease that I needed one of those "Running Sucks" shirts to wear because of how much I hated running at the time.  My roommates motivated my first running goal of making it through two miles of running without stopping.  I had the same mentality then that I do now when I set out for my long runs - it doesn't matter how slow I go, I am going to make it X many miles.

Now that it is the beginning of the end I am getting a little nostalgic and thinking about the beginning of the beginning.

For those of you who need a little motivation check out this video.

Question of today:  What have you improved on in your life during the past six months?

Running Scared!

Even though Lori and I haven’t run a race in a while I thought I’d do a recap of one that we both found to be a ton of fun! Running scared was a 5k that we ran on June 22^nd. The race wasn’t a regular 5k we not only had to run the 5k but we had to avoid ZOMBIES!!!

We started our day out with the most amazing race fuel you can get in Iowa TASTY TACOS!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m guessing most of our readers outside of Iowa have yet to have a chance to have Tasty Tacos but take my word for it they are amazing! Truthfully, I ate one too many tacos, need to learn to pace myself before we head to a race.

After eating we headed towards the golf course where the race was being held. Since we arrived super early Lori and I decided to play a round of mini golf to kill some of the extra time. When you start sweating while playing mini golf you know the run is going to a bit rough!

In this race we were given two flags that represented our health. Along the course there were zombies randomly placed that were out to ‘kill’ us (removing our flags).  We started off with the other 200ish runners and after finding our 'corral' we were off! Making our way into the woods after the second corner we ran into our first horde of zombies!

So, this is the one thing I didn’t actually like about this race. Most of the race was held on a 4 foot wide path through the woods, which was nice except when you ran into the zombies you had nowhere to run. So, we would run into 4-10 zombies and without fail you would lose at least one flag every single time, because it was less running from zombies and more trying/praying there was enough other people running by with you that the zombies were distracted.

About half way through the race Lori and I were both the running dead. Luckily we found some antidotes a little further down the trail and were back to our healthy running selves. We continued towards the finish with only a handful of zombies left in our path.

This fellow picked Lori out of a large group and killed her, even after she fell on the ground! Zombies have no mercy.

Finally sprinting past the final zombies we came to the finish and eagerly awaited our survivor shirts because we both finished with one of our flags intact! Reaching the shirts table we handed in our flags and they passed us both our “Rundead” shirts which indicated we hadn’t survived. Confused I asked why we didn’t receive survivor shirts the person replied only people with two flags received those. I found this slightly disheartening because it wasn’t explained to us at the beginning this is how it worked.

We quickly got over not surviving, and moved on to grab our free beer after the race! That’s an appropriate recovery drink right? Overall we had a blast and look forward to doing it again next year! 

Our medals!

P.S. We just signed up for Grandma's full marathon in Duluth, MN! Looking forward to it in that I'm scared/excited kind of way.

Question of the day: What's your favorite race and why?

Running Changed My Mind About Fall

Zombie Run 5k (90 degrees & humid)

Hi all!  Lori speaking today.  It is early morning; I am sipping my coffee while Logan is on his way to work.    It is still warm here, more like summer than winter, but some days I get a little taste of fall in the air.  For the first time in my life, I am excited about fall.

I have never liked fall, but not because I have a problem with fall itself.  I always hated that it was a sign that winter is coming (Game of Thrones, anyone?).  This year I find myself looking forward to fall for the first time and I believe it is 100% because we are running.

Prior to running, I was perfectly content to be outside in 85 degree heat with humidity.  I liked feeling like I was wrapped in a warm blanket whenever I was outside.  Surprisingly, however, running when you feel like you are wrapped in being smothered by a warm blanket is less pleasant.  We spent the summer running in the heat and humidity.  We planned our running routes to avoid the sun. We carried a hydro-pack full of water and a water bottle with a dissolved electrolyte tab.  We learned that I can't breathe in the humidity and I will complain loud enough for the whole world to know.  We would come back to our apartment and hang out on the kitchen floor because it was the coldest place in the house - and it was easy to clean up the sweat puddles we left behind there.

Glow Run 5k (cool weather)

That is all about to change because the temperature is slowly dropping.  Pretty soon we will run outside feeling amazing because we can breathe again!  The sun beating down on us won't feel quite so relentless.  I will be able to dig out my comfy running capris and the cooler-weather gear I haven't seen in months.  I am excited to run down a path by our house that is full of trees that will soon be changing colors.  We will be out of our half-marathon training soon and into a more laid-back "I will stop whenever I feel like stopping" approach to running again.  And it will all be glorious.

Just don't remind me that winter is coming.

Question of the day:
What do you love about fall?

Logan on Being Injured

So, I contemplated even sharing this on here or not, but I believe I should share the good, the bad and the ugly of running.

This past week I have had some really awesome highs and some pretty bummer lows. I ran on last Sunday by myself because unfortunately my lovely wife was sick. So, I geared up and went out into the big scary world alone.

After a brief warm up walk and making sure my watch had gps signal I took off on my first nine mile run! Had a great run, listened to my new favorite podcast (thank you Lori for finding it for us) and rocked out all nine miles at a 9:30/min pace. The weather had finally just started turning into fall and temperatures were finally no longer in the 90's.

A little bit that night I felt a small twinge in my foot but nothing out of the ordinary.You learn the more you run, you will always have something that feels weird or off. It is just the normal aches and pains of working out. You learn to friend these pains, it is a reminder of what you did, of what you accomplished, so you wear them as battle scars triumphant after your victory. The next day they subsided and I was back to feeling like my normal self.

On Tuesday last week, I ran with my co-workers on our lunch break. In the future I'm sure I will give a full blog post on what it is like to run with them, for now all you need to know is that they are amazingly fit and fast runners. Again this was a beautiful day for running mid 60's and a slight breeze. We took off fast out of the gate and never slowed down. We ran 5 miles at 8:20/min pace. I've never ran this fast for that long in my entire life.

Unfortunately at around the four and a half mile mark I felt a twinge in my foot. I was so close to the end and so happy with my run I didn't want to ruin it by slowing down or stopping then so I finished it out. By the end of the run I could feel a decent sting on the top of my foot. From reading multiple articles and blogs I had a very real fear that I may have given myself a stress fracture.

For the past 7 days I have been self diagnosing and worrying about my foot but I can now walk normally without pain and can only slightly feel it when I try to jog. Here is to hoping it isn't a stress fracture and I will be back to running soon!

It has been very hard to not be able to go for a run this week. I've had a few bouts of what I can only imagine is depression. I was talking to Lori saying its like my brain is a little man trudging uphill in mud up to his waist. I've found myself longing for the hypnotic plodding noise as your feet hit the pavement. I will continue to rest until I feel like my foot is fully healed and I can run without creating further injury.

This is my life right now. Replacing running with beer is a good substitute right???

Question of the day: Have you ever been injured? How so?

Hello World from Lori

Hi everyone (or maybe just “Hi, Mom” at this point).  This blogging thing is obviously very new to me, and I was/still am apprehensive about this whole process.  While I had given serious thought to writing a blog, I am not sure I would have ever been brave enough to do it without a little big push from Logan.  So be nice to me or I will go hide under a blanket.

As Logan said, we are new to running and have only ever done a significant amount of running in Vibram FiveFingers shoes.  I already have a post in the works discussing minimalist running, so look forward to that!

We are getting into the final weeks of our half marathon training, which has been a fun adventure.  Today I have a 9 mile run on my plan.  I have missed my last two long runs because of illness/minor injury so we will see how it goes!  Luckily I haven’t had to miss any short (5 mile) runs so I am not too worried about it.

Have a wonderful Sunday!  You will be hearing from me again soon.

Question:
What are you up to on this beautiful day?

The Married Marathoners

We are the "Married Marathoners", Lori and Logan.  This is Logan speaking now.  We plan to take turns writing blog posts so you can hear from both of our points of view (and both of our writing styles). I should start out by saying to everyone that we have not run a marathon yet. This blog will be about our adventure of training for our first half (and hopefully full) marathon. For this first post I think I'm just going to start off with a small introduction to what we would like this blog to be about and just try to get the ball rolling on this whole 'blogging' thing!

I suspect that at the beginning of this whole adventure the only people who will be reading this are our family and friends, if even those people are interested, BUT if you do not know Lori or I personally and would like to learn more about us I will direct you to the about me section which should be available over there --->

Truthfully, I never really thought I would be interested in blogging until I started reading Runners World's website. They have a ton of bloggers who post articles on daily, and when I started to read them I realized I really enjoyed it. Then I started to think "Hey, I can do that!" when in reality I have no idea if people want to hear what I have to say or not. 

I have become very much addicted to the sport of running, though, and want to share that excitement with anyone who will listen. So, if you enjoy that same passion, hopefully you will continue to follow us as we progress as runners and share your thoughts as well in the comments. 

I think what will make an interesting blog is if we get feedback from our readers and hopefully we can get to know you as you get to know us through the blog. Hopefully you've stuck through the blathering and we can talk about some running!

For now I'll just start out with where we are at in our running and then in the future we can really break down some of the aspects we'd both like to talk about. 

(From future Logan): I started writing this and thought I wouldn't have enough to fill a page but now I realize I want to put too much in to one post so I think I'm going to keep the rest of this quite short and we can look forward to more information in posts in the future.

To date the furthest run either of us have done is 9 miles.

Lori and I just started our running careers this year. So, neither of us have much experience in the sport at this point but I know we both enjoy it a lot! We have both only really worn Vibram Fivefinger shoes for our runs, so you can look forward to some of our thoughts on the 'barefoot running experience'.  In about one month (October 20th) we will be running our first half marathon!

We have been to  few shorter races/fun runs at this point and I'm sure we will go into more in depth discussions about those later also but here is a quick list of them. 

Color Run 5k x2

Glow Run 5k

Riverben Rally 8k

Running Scared 5k

Question of the Day:
What would you like to see us write about in our blog?