Minneapolis-Star-Tribune-runningkellometers

This week has been crazy at work. The weather here in Chicago has been beautiful all week and I've missed the sunshine both days so far (arrive at work while its still dark, leave when the sun is setting). I woke up this morning thinking it was Thursday. At least I was only 1 day off.

Last night I wanted to get out there and enjoy the temperatures, even though I couldn't enjoy the sunlight. I had a speed workout planned to do 6x400m (last week I did 5x400m) with a 400m recovery jog inbetween. I <3 the interval function on my Garmin because it helps keep track of my average pace per split. Last week I was shocked to see that my splits were in the 6's. Doing the workout again this week, I see more 6's that are even lower!

6:07
6:00
6:19
6:02
6:25
6:10

(Maybe next time I'll have 1 in the 5's?) I didn't feel great during this workout. I was tired and definitely felt like I was going slower than last time. I didn't have the best pre-workout fuel and I think that is part of the reason why I felt so tired. (I worked late and grabbed Cosi on the way to the train. Apparently the Hummus & Veggies sandwich isn't substantial enough for a hard workout. I should have known this and gone with the Subway Veggie Patty instead. Now I know for next time.) My very first post talked about some stomach issues I was having, so I at least learned to not eat chips and guacamole before running. Now I also know to add Cosi veggie options to the list. Although, when Lent is over and I go back to eating meat, maybe a sandwich with some meat would have a different effect? Have you struggled with pre-run fuel while out running errands or working late? What is your favorite "restaurant" pre-run fuel?

Before I went out, I knew the workout I wanted to do but I didn't really think about the total distance. Since I've newly been including a warmup and cooldown to go with my speedwork, this adds additional time and miles. I thought I would be gone for only 3 miles but it ended up being 4. I'm not going to complain but it just didn't really seem like 4 miles. Have you ever had that happen before?

No worries on the post-run food. I have that covered.

I have to add hearts to all my food photos now

Thanks to everyone that has recommended Peanut Butter & Co products in the past. I joined the bandwagon and am never getting off. Their Dark Chocolate Dreams is just as delicious as it sounds.

I had a new running top that I was very anxious to try. It was in the clearance section at Target (for $9) and it was a BRIGHT orange.  I really liked it a lot. It was fitted but not too snug. The perfect size. C9 for Target does it again! If you're interested, the shirt can be found on their website here. I didn't take a photo because the orange didn't show up properly on my camera. :(

P.S. Have you entered my Road ID Prize Pack Raffle yet? Only $3 per entry and it is open to anyone anywhere in the U.S. or Canada!

Morgan at Caution: Redhead Running recently posted her gripes with unisex race shirts. Just as many women are participating and finishing races as men (I wish I could find that issue of RW with the exact stats). Why do races only offer "unisex" shirts? (Read: "unisex" = "men's") I'm willing to pay an extra dollar or two to get a shirt that fits instead of adding to the useless clutter in my closet. Most, if not all, of my "unisex" shirts end up in the goodwill pile, unless I want to keep it for a nostalgic reason. (I was extremely disappointed that my first half marathon shirt is a bulky "unisex" size. I only wear it in the winter as my first layer. Insert sad face here.)

My first half marathon shirt: The 2008 Chicago Distance Classic

Then there are some race shirts that fit like a glove and are awesome. (Thanks Soldier Field 10 Miler for having Adidas as a sponsor to offer awesome race shirts!)

Soldier Field 10 Miler 2009 -- one of my favorites!

Women participants are paying the same amount to enter a race as men. We deserve a shirt that fits! Or at least, let us know when we sign up what kind of shirts are available so we can opt out (if that option exists).


What are your thoughts on unisex race shirts? Are you taking a stand too? See Caution: Redhead Running's post HERE! #onesizedoesnotfitall #sizematters #unisexraceshirtssuck

P.S. Have you entered my Road ID Prize Package raffle yet? Only $3 donation per entry! Every little bit helps!

It's Monday and therefore time for my weekend recap! Saturday morning I went for a 12 mile run in the hills of Palos with my running group. My legs were exhausted by mile 9 and I was happy I was only doing 12 (the rest of the running group was doing 16 and 18 miles). I am ready for my half marathon to be here... beyond ready! Thankfully it is THIS SUNDAY! :) How was your long run this weekend?

After the run, I was very happy to put on my compression sleeves and shorts under my clothes and enjoy the rest of the day.

However Saturday was a bad day in a "first world problems" kind of way. I drove to the city and picked up a bridesmaids dress I'm wearing for my cousin's wedding. The boutique is in the Gold Coast neighborhood so it made for an annoying trip with several rides around the block. After picking up the dress, I headed to the office to do some work. I had about 5-6 hours worth of work to do. Unfortunately, I couldn't access any of the network files. I did what I could and then went home. Before I left though, Toph called to tell me that the dog chewed up a check that I had to have reissued. Needless to say, it was not a great day (other than the run of course). Thankfully we had dinner plans afterwards with our friends Kate and Sam which totally made up for the crappy day I was having!

Sunday I did the rowing machine for about 45 minutes while watching Sex and the City reruns on HBO Go. Then it was time for The Walking Dead. Was anyone shocked by what happened in the episode? I didn't read the comics so I was really surprised.

Next, it is time for another charity raffle! This time, the folks at Road ID donated a "prize pack" that includes:
1) T-shirt (cotton, men's size medium, suuuper soft)

2) E-gift certificate for a Road ID wrist bracelet

3) Wide variety of Gu and Gu Brew packets

Close-up of the Gu packets

In order to enter into the raffle, all you need to do is donate to my charity, Open Heart Magic by clicking HERE. For this raffle, every $3 donation = 1 entry. ($3 for 1, $6 for 2, etc.)

After you donate, you can tweet or blog about this raffle for an additional entry. Please be sure to leave a comment letting me know your twitter name and/or the link to your blog post.This raffle is open to anyone in the U.S. or Canada!

You have until Sunday, March 18 (11:59pm CST) to enter the raffle. The winner will be announced here on Monday, March 19.

Best of luck to all those entering, thanks again to Road ID for the prize pack, and thanks in advance for your donations!

Yesterday work was quite busy. I'm very thankful today is Friday!! As what has become standard for a Thursday night, I met up with the FN Running Club. Toph dropped Pepper off at the train station with me so she was able to come for the run too!

Thursday Night Group! L to R: Susan, Wayne, Melissa, Maggie, Amanda, Kathy, Me (and Pepper)

She enjoyed running with the group and had to be in front. (She didn't want to miss anything!) Then when we were in front, she was looking behind us. Maggie and I ran together for a total of 5.13 miles in 46:18 (9:01 avg). Afterwards, we decided to grab a beer at Old Plank Trail Tavern in downtown Frankfort. It was the perfect way to end the run and meet more fellow runners! Perhaps this will now be part of the Thursday tradition too?

Today I came into work early in hopes of being able to grab a few miles on the treadmill during my lunch break. I seem to say this almost every Friday but it rarely happens...

Tomorrow is my last long run before my half marathon next weekend. I'm so excited I just want the half marathon to be this weekend! It feels nice to go into the race without a time goal. It is nice to have the pressure taken off that I always seem to put on myself for race day. I can't wait for race day to be here! :) Have you ever felt this way the week before race day? That you were already ready and raring to go?

P.S. If you're a fan of Glee and want to hear music from the show all day long, I found a Glee radio station where they are streaming songs from the show. Click here to listen! Are you as obsessed with Glee as I am??

P.P.S. I have another raffle that I'm going to start next week. I'm bad at keeping secrets and super excited to share it with all of you! Stay tuned for more information on Monday! :)

For good measure, here is another picture of my dog. Why? Just because. Happy Friday everyone!

Yesterday I met up with Kim at the Ilax Studio for lunch at a local vegan restaurant, Native Foods Cafe. I gave up meet for lent and Kim is vegan so this was a great place for us to enjoy a delicious meatless meal. Based on Kim's suggestion, I went with the:

Vegan Bacon Cheeseburger

And boy was it delicious. If I wouldn't have told you it was vegan, you wouldn't have known. It was THAT GOOD. We had a pact ahead of time to agree to only eat half of our meals and save the rest for later. Uhh, that worked until about 2pm when we both needed a post-lunch "snack" where the rest of our meals were consumed simultaneously. Haha, I guess we were both thinking the same thing! We were so busy eating and talking that we almost forgot to take a photo of us together.

Thankfully we remembered at the last minute before walking back to our respective work places. The weather was so beautiful yesterday, I was very happy to have an excuse to go out and enjoy it! Through our discussions, we decided it would be fun to plan a blogger run/meet up somewhere between the south and northern suburbs. There will be more on this to come! If you're in the Chicago area and interested in finding out about more local bloggers, check out Chicago Running Bloggers!


Wanting to really enjoy the weather, last night I did some speedwork and decided to do it outside instead of on the treadmill. This was a great decision as it truly felt like spring last night!

Pepper followed me around the whole time I was getting ready to leave, and whined the entire time I was gone.

I have never used the "interval" function on my Garmin before and decided to give it a try (ala OuaL). I did 5x400m with a 400m jog in-between. This workout has worked for me in the past so I decided to stick with what works! (Right now my race goal is to break 40:00 for the Shamrock Shuffle.) I was excited about the challenge of running into the wind. Thanks to the beeping of the Garmin, I didn't have to worry about my exact route or focal points at the end of the distance. I just ran until the beep! I didn't know what pace I was running, but I thought it was probably around 7:20 mile pace. Only when I changed the function away from the metric system did I see my actual per-mile splits:

6:37
6:50
6:31
6:39
6:26

Either there is something wrong with my Garmin, or I was going pretty fast. Some of these were into the wind too (although I don't know which ones. I'm guessing the 2nd one). My first thought was OMG I'm running in the 6's... THE 6's?!?!?! This is something I haven't done before, and considering I didn't know my time at all for these splits, they are pretty consistent. I guess all that hill work and long miles has been paying off. I am hoping/thinking my Shamrock Shuffle goal is accomplishable (if these times are in fact correct)... And maybe the sub 23:00 5k is also in my future?! We will see in the months to come I guess! Have you had a workout where you went faster than you thought, without realizing it?

Last week when my husband and I were watching the Biggest Loser, they had a rowing contest while at home. I made a comment how I wish our rowing machine had a screen that told you how you were doing. My husband looked at me, confused. He said "Kelly, there is a screen that tells you how you're doing." I then looked at him, confused "What are you talking about?" We argued for about 5 minutes because both of us were too lazy to go down to the basement and settle the argument (and I mostly thought I was right and he was just messing with me).

Yes, the rowing machine has a display. All I had to do was flip this piece of metal around and there it was, staring me in the face. Granted it needs some batteries (?) but I will happily be replacing those this weekend. It will be nice to know how far I'm actually rowing for a change and see if/how I'm improving.

And now for something completely different... There are a few things that I'm currently obsessed with and loving right now that I thought I would share.

This isn't really anything new. I'm in love with the book series and cannot wait for the movie to come out. I have a shirt that I'm wearing to the movie premiere (and possibly the Shamrock Shuffle). I know you're jealous. (Thankfully Alyssa at Life of Blyss has a Hunger Games store where you can buy some gear!)

I started reading the book and am totally addicted. At first, I had trouble getting up to speed on the show. With so many characters, I was a bit lost. When I went back and re-watched some of the earlier episodes, things made more sense. Now reading the book, I am even more in love with the series. I think both the show and book are making a lot more sense having done them together. Now after I read however far in the book, I'm going back and re-watching the episode. I hope to be caught up before the new season starts in April. Is anyone else as excited about this as me?

I read Hungry Runner Girl's blog and she always talks about cottage cheese. I went to the store hungry and came home with a giant tub. I am thankful for the impulse purchase and plan on having more large tubs in the weeks/months to come!

I've been running in the hills every Saturday. I always feel more accomplished when completing them and have started to look forward to them. If I have to miss them (like I did this past weekend), I am sad.

What are some things that you're in love with/obsessed with? Andddd who do you think will win Biggest Loser? I really like Cassandra and Emily. I would be happy with either one of them winning!

Wow, what a busy weekend it has been!

First things first, I'd like to announce the winner of the Chicago Spring Half Marathon and 10k raffle...

Congrats to Kevin and thank you to all participants for your donations! This is just the beginning and I have some more fun giveaways in the months to come! :)

Thursday night I had some meetings at work and we went out to dinner afterwards. The group had collectively decided ahead of time to go to Morton's Steakhouse for dinner. Considering I gave up meat for lent this year, I was interested to see how the menu would be. This restaurant definitely does NOT cater to vegetarians. I had very, very few options. In fact, my only option was a chopped salad that I ordered without bacon. Everyone else around me got steak and I was stuck with a crappy salad. (I've had better tasting salads at fast food restaurants.) Oh well, I didn't plan the dinner so there was nothing else I could do. Next time, I might skip a dinner like that. Although, the key lime pie was absolutely delicious! :)

Friday I had additional meetings and no time to blog. I was going to try to fit in some miles on my lunch break, but that didn't happen. Thankfully I was able to complete my long run on Saturday, despite a rocky start to my morning. I met up with the FN Runners out on the Old Plank Trail (standard) for 8 miles. It was a great turnout for a cold Saturday morning!

I got to meet another fellow blogger, Kelly the Culinarian, who made the trip from Addison, IL for our group run! It was great to meet Kelly and it was a great run overall! I had planned to do 12 so after the people looking to do 8 miles went home, Susan and Maggie joined me out on the trail for a few more miles. Susan was looking to do 10 so she joined us for a little while longer while Maggie stayed with me for the full 12. Our overall splits were consistent and we completed the run at an average pace of 9:20. I felt totally comfortable and that is around my goal pace for the Chicago Get Lucky Half Marathon. What was your long run this weekend?

After the long run, I had to take my poor puppy to the groomers. She was overdue and needed a haircut. Unfortunately, she had some mats that needed to be taken care of so she is much shorter than I would have wished.
As much as I am a dog lover and I still love my puppy, I do not love her haircut. Thankfully it is just hair and it will grow back soon. Have you ever had this happen to your pet?

That same night we went out to celebrate my cousin's birthday in downtown Lagrange, IL. It is a cute little place with lots of cool restaurants and bars.

Me and Mom

We had delicious Mexican food (which is much easier to order vegetarian) and of course, margaritas! I was happy to justify the copious amounts of guacamole I consumed with "I ran 12 miles today!" The joys of a long run fulfilled in so many ways! What is your favorite post-run reward?