Black bean burritos and steamed spinach
It’s almost been a week since I got my last CSA box but here’s a shot of contents. Once I saw the avocados and limes in my box I knew I had to make guacamole. So I decided to make black bean burritos and topped the meal off with some steamed spinach. The recipe for the black bean filling is here and the guacamole is here. This was so tasty I had it for dinner on Saturday and Monday and for lunch on Sunday!
Watch me run
Allison shot a short video clip of me running at mile 4 of the half-marathon. You can view it here. I’m the one in the light blue hat and the salmon coloured vest. You can hear Jeff and Allison cheering me on. Feel free to cheer with them!
Vancouver Half-Marathon 2006
I ran the Vancouver half-marathon on Sunday in a chip time of 2:10:42. The race went really well and I’m thrilled with my result. I originally thought I’d start the race at about a 10:30 min/mile pace. I guess I was a little excited at the start because I started out faster than that. I recorded most of my split times and they’re listed below.
Mile Split Total 1 10:03.3* 0:10:03 2 10:03.3* 0:20:07 3 10:07.0 0:30:14 4 09:52.6 0:40:06 5 09:51.8 0:49:58 6 10:19.8 1:00:18 6.55 1:06:06 (half-way) 7 10:08.3 1:10:26 8 10:30.9^ 1:20:57 9 10:36.0^ 1:31:33 10 09:41.0 1:41:14 11 09:51.0* 1:51:06 12 09:51.0* 2:00:57 13.1 09:44.9 2:10:42 * averaged since I missed mile markers 1 and 11 ^ these miles included the climb up to Prospect Point
These times include approximately one minute of walking per mile. I held pace until mile 5 and then slowed down through Stanley Park. I’m not surprised by this since the course narrowed at mile 6, the pitch become more variable and we had a period of heavier rain (it rained most of the time I was on course). This meant avoiding puddles and being a little bit more aware of your footing. Prospect Point hill slowed me down in miles 8 and 9 but I’m proud to say that I ran up the whole thing. I then picked up the pace on the run out of Stanley Park and through to the finish line. My fastest split was the last 1.1 miles during the mad dash to the finish. My legs started screaming up Prospect Point and never really recovered. The last 5 km were pretty painful but I just dug in and finished strong. I can honestly say I don’t think I could have run any harder. I actually ran a negative split race which means I ran the second half of the race faster than the first.
Running this race was not about comparing myself to others but just for fun, here’s how I ranked. Ranks are based on gun times. My gun time was 2:15:01 (so it took more than 4 minutes for me to cross the starting line!) which placed me 3398/6719 overall, 1727/4345 among females and 342/699 among females aged 25-29.
I owe a huge thank you to Jeff and Allison for getting up early and cheering me on. I really appreciated seeing familiar faces along course. All the spectators on course were great though. Our bibs had our first names on them so anyone could yell your name out and cheer you on. That was nice.
For those of you who know my friend Leah, she ran the full marathon in less than 5 hours! Awesome.
Interestingly running the half-marathon did not immediately want to me start training for a full marathon! The half was hard! It’s too early to make commitments but I think my next big goal may be the Seattle half-marathon in November. I’d love to get my time below 2 hours. I’m not sure how realistic this would be as a goal but it’s something to think about. Until then I’m going to keep up with my running and maybe do the 8-K Torchlight Run at the end of July or something like that.
Half-marathon training – Week 18 – Off I go!
Yesterday I ran 2 miles and that officially ended my half-marathon training program. My week 18 taper mileage was 9 (4+3+2) miles. Now all that’s left to do is run the race on the Sunday. I woke up this morning with a healthy case of butterflies in my stomach. I think it’s anticipation and excitment more than nerves though. We’re heading to Vancouver this afternoon and the adventure begins from there. Off I go!
Half-marathon training – what actually happened
This is what happens when a statistician has tracked all her training for the past 18 weeks – she graphs it!
In order to make this graph I had to convert cross training activities to mile equivalents which were roughly what level of training I thought each ultimate game, weight training session, swim etc was equal to.
I ran a total of 276.5 miles or 445 km in training (not including all the cross-training). That’s greater than the driving distance from Ottawa to Toronto (431 km according to google maps)!
Half-marathon training – Week 17 – Vancouver training weekend
This was the last real training week before my half-marathon. My total week 17 mileage was 20 miles (5+5+10) along with some swimming. I’ve stopped weight training at this point because I don’t want to tire my muscles out any more than absolutely necessary.
I was in Vancouver this past weekend with my friend Leah (who is running the marathon next weekend) watching our fellow Thunderstaters Jeff, Kyle and Fozz play with the UDub men’s ultimate team at Regionals. Leah and I spent most of Saturday watching the boys play frisbee (in the rain – we’re such hard core fans) so we didn’t get around to running until Saturday evening. Originally we were planning on doing 9 miles but I think in the end we did about 10. We managed to chit chat through the run which means we were going at a good training pace. We didn’t eat dinner until after 9pm at which point went to the Banana Leaf and polished off deep-fried spring rolls, steemed rice (our waiter though we’d only need one order but we assured him we could eat two), a chicken dish and a green bean dish. We still weren’t full after that so we went to Tim Horton’s for Nanaimo bars and hot chocolate!
On Sunday we drove parts of the half-marathon and marathon courses. We were mostly interested in seeing the hills. The Prospect Point Hill doesn’t look too bad. It’s steep in parts but it does flatten out at the top and then there’s a lovely downhill stretch after that. The rest of the course is definitely hillier than my usual flat training around Green Lake. It was exciting to see the marathon banners hanging along the Burrard Bridge and signs up around the city warning of road closures for the race.
This upcoming week is my taper week. This basically means rest before the big race. I’m going to run 4, 3 and 2 miles on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I’m not going to go crazy on the carbo loading but I will be having pasta for dinner on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. We leave for Vancouver on Friday. Leah and I are very lucky because Allison and Jeff are going to be cheering us on during the race. We’re going to plot our ETAs at various points along the course so hopefully we’ll actually meet up with them enroute.
6 days to go. I am now checking the Vancouver long range forecast several times a day. Let’s all hope for cool cloudy conditions with no rain!