Me, at 5:15 a.m.: Yay! I woke up early! I’ll go do my run workout.

Me, at 9:00 a.m.: Ohmigawd I’m exhausted. Can I nap now?

I was at Barnes & Noble yesterday to purchase a bullet journal. Yes, a person who detests the mall went to a mall the first Sunday of December on her own impulse. Fortunately, it was both brief and not-terrible. Yes, the person who’s a late-adopter and generally scoffs at any trend she reads about on PureWow decided she needed a bullet journal. No, the world has not come completely undone: I still don’t like quinoa or kale unless it’s simmer in animal fat. Continue reading →

With the exception of a 30-minute session on a hotel elliptical, I haven’t done a workout in ten days. That’s not a terrible break, but it’s ill-advised. I’m just three weeks from the 5K, and I need to be gauging if I’m going to sign up for the Deception Pass HM. Instead, I’ve been a sloth. Continue reading →

This is the week of Thanksgiving. We’ve purchased all the groceries (although I can tell already I’ll need to buy more potatoes). No one is joining us on Thursday; we’re planning to head west to visit family – and deliver leftovers – on Friday. This takes some of the pressure off, but I still have a lot to do this week. I need to make several pies Tuesday evening. Tonight’s NFL game may be a preview of the Super Bowl. I need to fry up sausage and make cornbread for one batch of stuffing. (I do a cornbread stuffing and a white bread stuffing.) Continue reading →

We’ve just shifted our clocks back to standard time, and at this latitude that means the sun is setting as I’m leaving work. That complicates my workout schedule. It didn’t when I was training for the Badger Mountain Challenge, as I was still willing to run on pavement. Since I’m avoiding pavement as much as possible, I found myself debating what to do. The Hubs really doesn’t want me running alone at Chamna in the dark (I will refrain from telling him that I have in the past). That leaves me with Badger and the 5K cross-country course in Pasco. I’d rather not run Badger unless I’m specifically doing hill work — this crafty gal has included no hill work in her training schedule — and the Pasco 5K course is really soft. That’s okay for cadence workouts but it’d suck for a tempo workout in which I’m trying to maintain a specified pace.  Continue reading →

Last night was a cadence interval workout, and I nailed it. As in, “damn, girl — you fast!” nailed it. I’ve upped my minimum cadence during the intervals, and over the course of the workout (15 one-minute intervals) I averaged a minimum cadence of 177 spm.

I also think I’ve figured out the course of the Kim’s Bad Knee 5K. This route came in at the perfect distance. I’d like it to be more winding, but I don’t know if I can create a winding route that doesn’t backtrack over previously-trod paths; more importantly, I don’t know if I can re-create that route for the race course. The route I did last night is repeatable, and it’s got a lot of crazy single-track twists. Continue reading →

I’m finding training for a 5K both easy and frustrating. Continue reading →