Crossing Fingers and Toes

I am sure you are all tired of the Northeastern peeps blogging about the great weather we had this winter, in fact, it didn't feel like winter at all.  Don't get me wrong, I love being snowed in and having many few cocktails, eating comfort food and shoveling snow.  Okay so that is usually Mike shoveling and me on my trainer in the living room.  I normally have to brush off some cobwebs off of at least one of the bikes, but I treated each with equal importance and did about 50% of my riding OUTSIDE.  My premonition was this....

This winter was going to come late, we would have a major snowstorm in March and it would fuck up the weather for the half-marathons scheduled this month.

This weekend I thought that would be true as Yasi and I set out for a 3 hour ride in "feels like" 20 degree weather...about 1 hour 40 minutes in she gets a flat and we are stranded in the middle of farmville.  Our sub-par skills of training flats combined with cold temperatures equated to us getting picked up...

Me as the dumb blonde attempting to help fix a flat....

We still had fun laughing about our skills for 45 minutes....

The weather improved and is now saying 70 and sunny all week - lots of outside activity!  Weather channel says that Washington DC will be 75 on Saturday and a 30% chance of rain.  If that holds true, I will be a happy girl :)  So here's to crossing fingers and toes....

The other hope is that my legs and feet continue on the right path.  The last half-marathon running was last year at Vineman where I had a tendon injury, plantar fascitiis and in major calf pain and hobbling 12.1 miles to a finish (1 mile actually consisted of legitimate running).  That was fun....

I started running consistently in October building slowly-I made a couple of changes to my running...

• Bought Brooks Pure which I have been running in since October (changing shoes once)
• Broke up with my orthodics
• Changed my running style from a heel strike to mid-foot
• Weight training 4 days a week including functional training until HIM training which is now down to 2 days a week (TRX/Plyometrics/free weights).
• Alternate 3 days and 4 days per week of running
• Running SLOW on long runs 

Since then, I have been finishing a long run on a Sat feeling fine with the occasional soreness of running long, and following that with a Sunday field hockey game or a 5 mile track workout, followed by a long bike and have just been the normal exhausted but not unable to walk like in the past.

So here's to crossing the fingers and toes that I have a good, fun race in DC and am able to pull off another 1/2 marathon 2 weeks later in Atlantic City running in a tutu (I signed up when I heard there was a fee tutu...)

Now for outfit planning for DC and celebrating Saint Patty's Day with Nicole and my sister!